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Koryun Nahapetyan: Azerbaijan is openly amassing military equipment near Nakhichevan (video)

Koryun Nahapetyan, Chairman of the National Assemblys Standing Committee on Defense, National Security and Internal Affairs, confirms the reports that Azerbaijan is amassing weapons and troops near Nakhichevan. Talking to journalists on Friday, Mr Nahapetyan assured everyone that the situation is fully controlled by the Armenian side. Both the leadership of the Defense Ministry and the General Staff of the Armed forces are fully aware of the situation. Our troops, the relevant units of the armed forces are ready to repel any attack by the enemy. I want to assure our people that the level of combat readiness of our armed forces is very high, and we consider all new challenges and threats. We just need to stay calm. I repeat once again that we fully control the situation in all sections of the Line of Contact. Speaking about the closed-door meeting at the National Assembly which was attended by Defense Minister Seyran Ohanyan, Koryun Nahapetyan said certain parts of the discussions were made public by some MPs. I simply cannot understand the behavior of some of my colleagues. Though it was announced that the meeting was held behind closed doors they revealed some information. They had no right to do it. At this point, I cannot give any names because I do not know the details With regard to the military cooperation between Armenia and Russia, Mr Nahapetyan said it cannot prevent Armenia prevent us from buying weapons from another country. Armenia buys weapons from Russia on preferential terms. In this context, we should consider on what terms and at what prices other countries sell us weapons.
Siri, made by Dag Kittlaus, Adam Cheyer and Tom Gruber of Stanford Research Institute for Apple, has a new artificial intelligence (AI) sister. Viv, as the "global brain" AI product is called, comes from the same creator as Apple's Siri and is designed in the vein of Ironman Tony Stark's butler JARVIS.

Siri is geared toward making the Apple iOS experience seamless and enjoyable for the more basic tasks. AI Viv is designed to make the assistance even more personal.

Showtime next week after 3.5 years of work. https://t.co/s0i6gfu4BX  Dag Kittlaus (@Dagk) May 4, 2016

More advanced than Siri, AI Viv will need neither app download nor touch activation. All tasks are initiated by voice. AI Viv is one step closer to mimicking Ironman's J.A.R.V.I.S (Just A Rather Very Intelligent System).



The Washington Post reports that a demo of what AI Viv can do involved placing an order for four custom-made pizzas from Pizz'a Chicago. The eight engineers, who all together gave AI Viv their orders as a group, received their Pizz'a Chicago within 40 minutes. The order was made purely with voice command to AI Viv. No phone call or Google search were made at any point.

Time to show a small slice of what's to come in AI and the future of Intelligent Assistants. https://t.co/RBtzXjx0tU  Dag Kittlaus (@Dagk) April 7, 2016

Mashable reports that Siri creators Dag Kittlaus and Adam Cheyer partnered with as many as 50 companies for AI Viv. Among these partners are Uber, Ivee, SeatGuru, Zocdoc and Grubhub.

Google and Facebook reportedly are among the top suitors for AI Viv. However, Dag Kittlaus and Adam Cheyer have not given any indication as to their leaning on the company to house AI Viv. Possibly, Dag Kittlaus and Adam Cheyer may take the independent route with AI Viv.

Siri, more or less, set the bar for virtual assistance. Google followed suit with Google Now, Microsoft with Cortana and Amazon with Alexa. Dag Kittlaus and Adam Cheyer are setting a new arena with AI Viv.
The going may be slower than a jumbo jet, but were getting closer to environmentally-powered airplanes.

The Solar Impulse 2 is nearing the end of its around-the-world voyage, which is more than a year in the making. Last week, the solar-powered plane landed in Mountain View, Calif. after a two-and-a-half day flight across the Pacific Ocean. Its currently making its way across the U.S. and will take off from Phoenix on May 6.

With a wingspan of a Boeing 747, this solar aircraft weighs just about as much as an

SUV. The flight resumed a journey that was hindered on the island of Oahu for almost 10 months.

Helmed by Swiss explorer and psychiatrist Bertrand Piccard, the Solar Impulse 2 travels at the speed of a car. Piccard is attempting to promote clean technologies along with his partner Andre Borschberg. Its a new era. Its not science fiction. Its today, Piccard told CNN after his successful flight. It exists and clean technologies can do the impossible.

Flying over the Golden Gate Bridge into the San Fransisco Bay marked a fleeting

accomplishment since the project has given the team many problems and setbacks.

There was a very stable weather window, according to Alexandra Gindroz, the Solar Impulse spokeswoman. The weather, especially the sun, is imperative to the planes flight since it decides when the plane can execute the journeyeven with experts and dozens of engineers monitoring every move.

The Solar Impulse 2 started its journey in March 2015 and was originally supposed

to touch down in Abu Dhabi by the end of last summer. Weather delays in China slowed

the operation and ended up with an unforeseen detour to Japan, where it was damaged

by rough weather on the tarmac.

More than 100 members of their team and pilots pushed forward to repair the aircraft

and prepare it for its crossing of the Pacific to Hawaii, or what the team members called,

the moment of truth.

Last summer the Solar Impulse 2 set a new solo flying record, flown by Borsheberg, flying

five days and five nights from Nagoya, Japan to Hawaii without any fuel.

Keep up with the Solar Impulse 2s journey via Twitter or their Flash newsletter.

Lauren Spiler is a freelance journalist based in Athens, Georgia, but most call her Spiler.
Every week, I write about Underground under the guise of TV Critic, but a critic is, oftentimes, just a person trying to figure out how they could love (or hate) a single thing so much. Every week I think Ive discovered the answer to my passion for UndergroundOh, its the focus on black flesh and blood as a means of freedom! No, its the attention paid to sensuality Wait, it must be the themes and critiques of religion. No, its Ernestine. Definitely Ernestine. And Im never satisfied with the answer I give, because it seems theres always something I forgot to talk aboutsome point I forgot to stress.

This week I realize I havent talked about how absolutely weird this show isand how much I enjoy that. There have been hints of its weirdness all along. Herman using his own blood to mix the red paint. August getting cut during the Native American ritual. And that terrifying scene in the forest when we finally met his wifeall very weird. The creators of this show have been continuously taking risks in plot, character development and presentation. But it wasnt until I watched last nights Black and Blue that I saw a certain cinematic style of the series as a nod to those strange elements that make up some of my favorite filmsespecially those in French cinema.

It happened during Rosalees speech to Ben. He tells her that he already knows her name, because its on the slave bill. And she makes it a point to explain to him that knowing her name and how much shes worth to her slaveowner does not equate to knowing anything about her. It reduces her.

Its a lovely and powerful speech that accomplishes so much. First, it carries on the oh-so-important thread of the yellow ribbon, which I wrote about after episode two, War Chest, and episode seven, Cradle. Of course, the other purpose of the speech is to allow Ben to see Rosalee as human. And the writers of this episode know that one way to humanize someone over the course of just a few lines, is to offer up their specificities, and their quirks.

As soon as Rosalee got to the part about the sound of the leaves, I was reminded me of the unforgettable opening to the film Amelie. We are introduced to Audrey Tautous Amelie Poulain, along with her parents (and then later, other characters), by way of their personal likes and dislikes. Not their favorite movies, or where they went to schoolthese things dont tell us enough about a person. You have to get down to the quirksthose sounds and scents that they live forto understand a whole being. This is how you humanize a person, and a character.

In other words, the speech isnt just for Ben. Its for those of us who still believe we have Rosalee pegged as one thing or another. Black & Blue is another reminder that this character is full of surprises. Her brilliant move with the devils snare was more proof that she cannot be underestimatedthat the housegirl we met in episode one was holding back a lot. Jurnee Smollett-Bell recently spoke with Paste about the making of this complex character, and the impression I got was that Rosalee has always been a fighter; so its not that the housegirl has disappeared, its that her warrior self is finally getting to be revealed in new ways.

Theres another interesting parallel between Rosalee and Amelie Poulain. One of the big things that defines them is a certain coldness they both received from their fathers, though under obviously different contexts. Rosalee talks about being ignored by her fathernot despised or treated badlybut never given any consideration whatsoever, which felt more painful. Amelie has similar beginnings, cared for by a father who never embraces her, or shows her any affection. Its thisalong with her many quirksthat inspires a deep desire for human connection, not just for herself, but for those around. And it sends her on the adventure of a lifetime.

Amelie and her father eventually come to some resolution (with the help of a world-traveling lawn gnome); I dont think such a resolution is in the cards for Rosalee and Tom Maconperhaps, that confrontation during the hallucination is the only resolution theyll get. But I think Rosalees character has so much room to continue to blossom in strange and surprising ways. Weve seen hints of so many unexpected sides of her, and in future episodes/seasons of the show, I hope we get to be continuously surprised. We still dont know about all of her quirks, and all of her favorite thingsand I suspect she doesnt either. And if Misha Green, Joe Pokaski and director Anthony Hemingway need some more inspiration, French films (the majority of which are far darker than Amelie, and might, therefore, work in an even more interesting way with the series) might be one place to to look.

The violent and poetic hallucinations made this episode a great precursor to next weeks finale, as proof that you just dont know what to expect with this show. Black & Blue might have even been a bit too odd for some. Ernestine chopping meat, playing seductress (bloody hands and all) and singing sweetly to August was probably the most bizarre thing weve seen on the show so far. Noah drenched in pigs blood, and Rosalee shanking poor Benit might have been a bit too much. But Id rather see the series take more risks, and occasionally go over the top, Black & Blue-style, than play it safe.

It should also be said that, in the midst of so much strangeness, the episode still maintained its other storylines and produced some of this big, bold statements that Ive come to look for each week. For example, I love that this installment put an emphasis on the one thing that saved the lives of the runaways and got Rosalee to safetystraight cash. Cato and Noah discover that there is literally one distraction big enough to keep the slave catchers off of them. Cue up Wu Tangs C.R.E.A.M., and remember the words of the slaveowner John had it out with:

I hold a very high value on black lives. The sum total of which made me a very wealthy man.

See? Black lives [of value to white men] do matter.

And while I know we can trust Underground to continue to draw such stark and compelling parallels to todays America, Im really hoping we can look forward to more risk-taking in form and storytelling style in the coming seasons. And yes, I am predicting that the recently-announced Season Two is just the beginning for this show.



Shannon M. Houston is a Staff Writer and the TV Editor for Paste. This New York-based freelancer probably has more babies than you, but thats okay; you can still be friends. She welcomes almost all follows on Twitter.
Karabakh MFA: Diplomats and representatives of international organizations should, first of all, visit NKR

Comment by Press Secretary of the NKR Ministry of Foreign Affairs Ani Sargsyan to NEWS.am Agency Question: How would you comment on the organization by the Foreign Ministry of Azerbaijan the visit of representatives of the diplomatic corps accredited in Azerbaijan to the Line of Contact between the armed forces of the NKR and Azerbaijan organized by the Foreign Ministry of Azerbaijan? Answer: After failing to resolve the Azerbaijani-Karabakh conflict by force in early April, Azerbaijan, through fraud and manipulation tries to portray itself as a victim and to avoid responsibility for unleashing the military aggression and the numerous war crimes accompanying it. By participating in the badly staged actions of the Azerbaijani side, representatives of the international community automatically allow themselves to be drawn into the propaganda campaign of official Baku aimed at the justification of the criminal actions of the Azerbaijani authorities. We are convinced that in order to form a truly unbiased idea of the existing situation and get comprehensive information on the reasons and consequences of the Azerbaijani aggression, the diplomats and representatives of international organizations should, first of all, visit the NKR. The NKR authorities are ready to provide all-sided assistance in the organization of such a visit.
With two feature films now, Jason Bateman has proven himself as a director adept in capturing the misanthropic tendencies of his outsider characters. In Bad Words (2014), Bateman played a 40-year-old a-hole on a mission to take the top prize at a national spelling beemeant for schoolkids. In his latest project, The Family Fang, Bateman casts himself in a supporting role as Baxter Fang, a failing writer whos more social misfit than mean-spirited, this time around leaving the majority of the bitterness and vitriol for other characters, particularly Baxters sister Annie (Nicole Kidman) and father Caleb (Christopher Walken).

A drama with a few comical moments, The Family Fang digs into seemingly more complex issues than Bad Words, exploring both family dynamics and the meaning of art, eventually tying its disparate themes together through a missing-person mystery (which Ill get to below). Based on Kevin Wilsons best-selling novel about performance artists who use their kids, Child A (Annie) and Child B (Baxter), as pawns and objets dart in outrageous stunts, the film bounces back and forthalbeit unevenlybetween the past and the present.

Annie and Baxter are struggling as adults, a point Bateman makes overly obvious: Shes an alcoholic actress on the verge of a breakdown, while Baxter is suffering from writers block and has blown through the last of his savings. When Baxter gets into an accident, hes forced to recuperate at his parents house and asks Annie to come home as moral support. Its an icy reunion between the children and Caleb and Camille (Maryann Plunkett), a dynamic telegraphed from the films rocky, poorly paced beginnings.

Intriguing flashback sequencesin which an underused Kathryn Hahn and Jason Butler Harner play the younger Camille and Calebreveal the source of acrimony: The maniacal Caleb leads the family in projects such as faux bank robberies and sitting for family portraits while drenched in blood at a mall photography studio. Despite the unwelcome attention and ridicule, the kids participate to please their parents, especially their father, who has an uncompromising view of life as an ongoing art project. Through the Fangs story, the film debates, among many ideas, the differences between avant-garde art and gimmickry, even referencing the late performance artist Chris Burden, whose danger pieces featured such acts as being shot by a gun and lying motionless for upwards of 45 hours. While the film casts no judgement on the worthiness of the art, it strongly posits that parents actions, no matter how well-intentioned, can screw up their kids for years. (Tell us something we dont know.)

Batemans strength is his ability to work so well with actorsas someone in the business for a long time (he started at age 12 on Little House on the Prairie), hes able to coax nuanced performances from his cast. Kidman, also a producer on the film, gives a solid enough performance as a typical damaged daughter (despite her Australian accent peeping through on occasion), and Walken is good as ever as an unbalanced artist and father, but its Plunketts work that, while taking up less screen time than her co-stars, is the films fascinating highlight. As Camille, shes torn between her artistic and her maternal callings.

When the elder Caleb and Camille suddenly disappear, the police fear that they may be dead, but Annie and Baxter believe its just another performance piece. While Baxter seems at peace with letting go of his parents, Annie gets angry. Shes determined to investigate their deaths and drags Baxter with her. The Family Fang finally picks up its sluggish pace during the latter third of the film as the siblings unravel the truth behind the elder Fangs disappearance. By examining old film footage, interviews and their parents belongings, they sort through the wreckage of their childhoods. Regardless of their parents fates, Annie and Baxter are finally able to confront their pasts, but the catharsis they find feels too little too late after the film has shifted from quirky comedy to melodrama and back again. Family dysfunction is fodder for many films, but The Family Fang cant quite decide what it wants to be, so it becomes only that: a portrait of family dysfunction that seems to just accept that dysfunction is inevitable.

Director: Jason Bateman

Writer: David Lindsay-Abaire; Kevin Wilson (novel)

Starring: Nicole Kidman, Jason Bateman, Christopher Walken, Maryann Plunkett, Kathryn Hahn, Jason Butler Harner, Marin Ireland

Release Date: May 6, 2016

Christine N. Ziemba is a Los Angeles-based freelance pop culture writer and regular contributor to Paste. You can follow her on Twitter.
In a report that we posted on Sunday titled "Apple's CEO doesn't see Carl Icahn's Dark Cloud Over their business in China, he sees Growth Ahead," we noted that "China's crackdown on iTunes at the moment is limited in its scope and it appears to be a cultural conflict on the types of content being available. That's something I'm sure Apple will be able to work out with government authorities." Apple's CEO told CNBC Mad Money host Jim Cramer this week that the situation with iTunes in China would be resolved in the not-too-distant future. Today we're learning that Apple's CEO will be going to China for a high-livel meeting with the Chinese government.

Reuters is reporting today that "During his China visit, Cook plans to meet senior government and Communist Party leaders - including officials in charge of propaganda, said the source, who declined to be named as the plan is not public yet." The rest of the report is filler recounting opinions about Apple's potential problems in China that we've heard all week.

In April we posted a report titled "China begins Crackdown on Apple over Content under the Guise of Security," wherein we detailed the crackdown on Apple's iTunes which was quite stark. Yet as we've noted since, China's government didn't stop Apple from launching Apple Pay in China or hold back licensing for them to open another five flagship stores in China. So the issue is being restricted at the moment to iTunes content alone  and Apple's CEO is off to China to hopefully put this issue behind them.

About Making Comments on our Site: Patently Apple reserves the right to post, dismiss or edit any comments.
A sign at the international boundary between Canada and the United States in Point Roberts, Washington. Photo by Makaristos (10-13-07) [public domain / Wikimedia Commons]

*****

(7-6-10)

*****

The Catechism of the Catholic Church (#2241) provides a brief summary as to what the Church thinks of illegal immigration:

*

Political authorities, for the sake of the common good for which they are responsible, may make the exercise of the right to immigrate subject to various juridical conditions, especially with regard to the immigrants duties toward their country of adoption. Immigrants are obliged to respect with gratitude the material and spiritual heritage of the country that receives them, to obey its laws and to assist in carrying civic burdens.

*

One can be compassionate regarding the plight of an illegal immigrant who is looking for a better life, but that doesnt mean that they should be encouraged to break existing laws or to avoid all the usual penalties for same. If there is a law passed granting amnesty (such as with those who avoided the draft in the Vietnam era) then that would be a matter of new law. But that is the way to go about it: by the rule of law, not by non-enforcement of existing laws, and confused, contradictory, and (merely) politically-soaked policy, as we have today.

*

According to Donald Kerwin, Executive Director of the Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Inc. (CLINIC):

*

The Catholic Church in the United States does not support open borders, illegal immigration, or an amnesty that would grant legal status to all unauthorized immigrants. It believes nations have a legitimate responsibility to promote the common good by denying admission to certain migrants and by regulating the flow of all those who are seeking to enter. However, the church sees the current US immigration system  while generous in many respects  as badly in need of reform. It has been particularly offended by hundreds of deaths along the US-Mexico border; the growth of human smuggling rings; the disconnect between US labor needs, trade policies, and immigration admission levels; and decades-long delays in some family reunification categories. ( Immigration Reform and the Catholic Church  2006)

* The 2003 document, Strangers No Longer: Together on the Journey of Hope  from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, states: *

36. The Church recognizes the right of sovereign nations to control their territories but rejects such control when it is exerted merely for the purpose of acquiring additional wealth. More powerful economic nations, which have the ability to protect and feed their residents, have a stronger obligation to accommodate migration flows.

*

39. The Church recognizes the right of a sovereign state to control its borders in furtherance of the common good. It also recognizes the right of human persons to migrate so that they can realize their God-given rights. These teachings complement each other. While the sovereign state may impose reasonable limits on immigration, the common good is not served when the basic human rights of the individual are violated. . . .

*

78. As explained above, the Catholic Church recognizes the right and responsibility of sovereign nations to control their borders and to ensure the security interests of their citizens. Therefore, we accept the legitimate role of the U.S. and Mexican governments in intercepting undocumented migrants who attempt to travel through or cross into one of the two countries. We do not accept, however, some of the policies and tactics that our governments have employed to meet this shared responsibility.

*

85. In order to address these excesses, both governments must create training mechanisms that instruct enforcement agents in the use of appropriate tactics for enforcing immigration law. . . .

*

The consistent theme in Catholic documents is compassion for the immigrant (legal or illegal), while acknowledging the validity of immigration laws. Hence, Pope John Paul II, in his message, Undocumented Migrants (7-25-95), stated:

*

Migration is assuming the features of a social emergency, above all because of the increase in illegal migrants which, despite the current restrictions, it seems impossible to halt. . . . Illegal immigration should be prevented, but it is also essential to combat vigorously the criminal activities which exploit illegal immigrants. . . . Thus it is important to help illegal migrants to complete the necessary administrative papers to obtain a residence permit. Social and charitable institutions can make contact with the authorities in order to seek appropriate, lawful solutions to various cases.

*

I think that the Church has shown great wisdom in this issue, as always. The sublime moral theology of the Church was the first thing that drew me in, back in 1990. Ive never seen anyone or any other institution with the consistently thoughtful, deep, wise reasoning that the Church always provides on socio-political issues such as this one.

See also:

Pope John Paul II, message for World Migration Day, 2000.

Holy See Press Office: World Day for Migrants and Refugees (collection)

Address of the Holy Father Pope John Paul II to Congress on Pastoral Care of Migrants (9 October 1998)

(Catholic Priest) Cites Church Stand Against Illegal Immigration (Dexter Duggan, The Wanderer, 04/22/2010)

Catholic Bishops Launch New Push for Immigration Reform, Pathway to Citizenship (Christopher Neefus, CNSNews.com, January 08, 2010)

Solving illegal immigration requires fixing economic causes, stresses Bishop Wester (Catholic News Agency, 6-4-10)

Migration laws must respect national sovereignty and individual rights, Pope urges (Catholic News Agency, 5-28-10)

Immigration reform is not amnesty, Bishop Wester says about bishops position (Catholic News Agency, 5-9-10)

Arizona immigration law shows need for reform, Archbishop Chaput writes (Catholic News Agency, 5-4-10)

Archbishop Dolan calls Arizona illegal immigrant law harmful (Catholic News Agency, 4-28-10)

US bishops oppose draconian Arizona immigration law (Catholic News Agency, 4-28-10)

U.S. Bishops begin push for humane and comprehensive solution to immigration issues (Catholic News Agency, 1-7-10)

Illegal Immigration and Catholic Social Teaching, Fr. Thomas Berg (Catholic News Agency, 5-18-10)

[see also other related articles mentioned as further links in the sidebars of all these CNA articles]

*****
News and commentary on organized crime, street crime, white collar crime, cyber crime, sex crime, crime fiction, crime prevention, espionage and terrorism.
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"We're not used to seeing growth in our check business," said Deluxe's Tracey Engelhardt, who reports a 6% to 7% increase in revenue for check orders from businesses and consumers in each of the last three quarters, driven by various factors originating from the pandemic.
Three Share Rights Group's 'Creative Dissent' Award

05/06/16 Source: VOA

The New York-based Human Rights Foundation has awarded its 2016 Vaclav Havel Prize for Creative Dissent to an Iranian cartoonist, a Russian performance artist and an Uzbek photojournalist. "The prize celebrates those who, with bravery and ingenuity, unmask the lie of dictatorship by living the truth," the foundation said in a release Thursday.



Atena Farghadani



The committee described Atena Farghadani as "a prisoner of conscience of the Iranian regime." Farghadani was sentenced to 12 years in prison for a cartoon she posted on social media depicting parliamentarians with animal heads to criticize a draft law restricting contraception and criminalizing voluntary sterilization.

The second laureate, Petr Pavlensky, is a Russian artist best known for a series of performances in which he used self-mutilation to protest the government's political crackdown. He is facing up to three years in jail for setting fire to the main entrance to the headquarters of the FSB security service in a performance meant to draw attention to what he called the terror tactics used by the agency.

"A lone artist standing up against the most powerful institution of Vladimir Putin's Russia is an important symbol - both politically and artistically," said HRF Chairman Garry Kasparov.

The third laureate is Umida Akhmedova, a Uzbekistan photojournalist and the country's first female documentary filmmaker. She has been accused of slander and "damaging the country's image" for publishing a series of photos about life in rural parts of Uzbekistan.

"Despite the government's attempts to manufacture a polished, happy image of the country, she exposes the reality of life in one of the world's most closed societies," said John Egenaes, secretary general of Amnesty International Norway.

The three laureates will be honored at a ceremony during the Oslo Freedom Forum this month. They will also share a $43,000 prize.

The prize is named in honor of Vaclav Havel, the dissident Czech poet, playwright and statesman whose activism against oppression and on behalf of human rights and democracy helped topple communism in the former Czechoslovakia.
Craft & Folk Art Museum and Farhang Foundation Announce Call For Submissions For Juried Exhibition Of Contemporary Photography And Video

05/06/16

Source: Farhang Foundation

LOS ANGELES - The Craft & Folk Art Museum (CAFAM) and Farhang Foundation announce a call for submissions for Focus Iran 2: Contemporary Photography and Video, the second biennial international juried exhibition of contemporary photography and video works relating to Iranian culture and heritage. The exhibition is an opportunity to expose and feature emerging and mid-career photographers and media artists from around the world. Approximately 40 selected photographs and videos will be displayed in a group exhibition to take place at the Craft & Folk Art Museum from January 29 to May 7, 2017 and at the University of California, Irvine's Viewpoint Gallery from September 16 to October 13, 2017. An opening reception for the Los Angeles exhibition will take place on Saturday, January 28 from 6:00 - 9:00 p.m. followed by a reception in Irvine on Saturday September 16, 2017 from 6:00 - 9:00 p.m.

"The overwhelming success of Focus Iran in 2015 inspired us to create a second iteration ofFocus Iran 2. We felt that we could take our collaboration with Farhang Foundation forward, attracting an even wider and more engaged group of international photographers and videographers. Be prepared to be awestruck," says CAFAM Executive Director Suzanne Isken.

"It has been such a thrill to once again collaborate with the Craft & Folk Art Museum onFocus Iran 2. The past success of this program demonstrated to us the tremendous need for such an exhibition, and Farhang Foundation is proud to once again help create a platform for artists worldwide to showcase contemporary art relating to Iran," says Amirali Angha, Chair of Farhang Foundation's Fine Arts Council.

Artists 18 years of age and older are invited to apply between June 1 and August 8, 2016. A distinguished panel of jurors will consider each photograph or video submission's pertinence to Iranian culture and heritage, skill, artistic vision, and impact. Only digital format entries will be eligible, with either one photograph or one video entry per artist. All entries will be processed through the free online service CaF at CallForEntry.org. Entries that are sent directly to the Craft & Folk Art Museum (CAFAM) or the Farhang Foundation will be disqualified.

Selected photographs and videos will be printed and framed or transferred to DVD by the Craft & Folk Art Museum for exhibition display. The complete rules of submission can be found at Farhang.org.

Jurors

Claudia James Barlett has managed and dealt art in several galleries, beginning with Larry Gagosian. She has intermittently worked for Artforum as a West Coast Representative and, in 2002 with her husband Peter, founded the Hayworth Gallery, which effectively championed the work of young emerging artists. From 2013-2016 she directed the Cohen Gallery in Los Angeles. Presently, she directs and co-owns the annual photographic exposition photo l.a., as well as the photo competition FOCUS photo l.a. She also works in conjunction with her husband as an art advisor.

Reza Deghati is a renowned photojournalist who has worked all over the world, most notably for National Geographic. His assignments have taken him to over a hundred countries as a witness to humanity's conflicts and catastrophes. His work has been featured in international media, including Time Magazine, Stern, Newsweek, El Pas, and Paris Match, as well as in a series of books, exhibitions, and documentaries for National Geographic Channel. Since 1983 Reza has been a volunteer committed to the training of youths and women from conflict-ridden societies in the language of images, to help them strive for a better world. Author of twenty-nine books, and a recipient of many awards over the course of his career, he is a Fellow (2006-2012) and Explorer of the National Geographic Society since 2013, and a Senior Fellow of the Ashoka Foundation. His work has been recognized by World Press Photo and has received numerous awards, including the Infinity Award from the International Center of Photography and a Lucie Award. France has also appointed him a Chevalier of the National Order of Merit.

Holly Jerger is the Exhibitions Curator at the Craft & Folk Art Museum (CAFAM). She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Ball State University, Indiana and a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where she also taught. She has served on the boards of the Museum Educators of Southern California (MESC) and the Los Angeles Printmaking Society.

Arpad Kovacs is Assistant Curator in the Department of Photography at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, CA. He is currently working on a solo exhibition of work by the English photographer Richard Learoyd, scheduled to open August 30, 2016, and an exhibition about artists who mine the news media for their subject. He received his Master of Arts degree in art history from York University, and his Bachelor of Arts in the same field from Queen's University.

Steve McCurry has been an iconic figure in contemporary photography for more than thirty years. He studied cinematography at Pennsylvania State University, before going on to work for a newspaper. After two years, McCurry made his first of what would become many trips to India. After several months of travel, he crossed the border into Pakistan and met a group of refugees from Afghanistan, who smuggled him across the border into their country just as the Russian invasion was closing the country to Western journalists. McCurry's images were among the first to show the world the brutality of the Russian invasion, including his celebrated image of the Afghan Girl.

McCurry has been recognized with some of the most prestigious awards, including the Robert Capa Gold Medal, National Press Photographers Award, and an unprecedented four first prize awards from the World Press Photo contest.

Ali Akbar Sadeghi was born in 1937 and graduated from the College of Art, University of Tehran. He is one of the most prolific and successful Iranian painters and artists and has been active for 60 years. In his evocative paintings, he draws on the rich traditions of Persian art, with a surreal edge that involves dizzying spatial manipulations and startling combinations of real and fantastical objects, producing breathtaking kaleidoscopes of color and form. He has produced seven animated films and has won more than 30 awards at international film festivals such as C.I.D.A.L.C (Gandhi Peace Prize) and the London Film Festival. In 1989 he founded Sabz Gallery in Tehran, which promoted the works of Iranian painters until 2003. He established a permanent workspace and atelier in 2011, which continuously showcases works belonging to different periods of Sadeghi's long professional life. In total, he has participated in over 50 individual and group exhibitions and auctions, published over eight volumes of books, and juried over 10 international biennial exhibitions.

Newsha Tavakolian is a documentary photographer who began working professionally in the Iranian press at the age of 16 at a women's daily newspaper called Zan. At the age of 18, she was the youngest photographer to cover the 1999 student uprising, which was a turning point for the country's blossoming reformist movement. She later joined the New York based agency Polaris Images. In 2002, she began working internationally, and has since covered regional conflicts and natural disasters, as well as made social documentaries in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Yemen. Her work is published in international magazines and newspapers such as Time Magazine, Newsweek, Stern, Le Figaro, Colors, The New York Times, Der Spiegel, Le Monde, NRC Handelsblad, and The New York Times Magazine. She has shown her work internationally in museums such as the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), the British Museum, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Organizing institutions:

The Craft & Folk Art Museum (CAFAM) is Los Angeles' only institution exclusively dedicated to exhibiting contemporary craft, design, and folk art. Located on the city's historic Museum Row, CAFAM's dynamic exhibitions feature established and emerging artists whose works create thoughtful and provocative visual exchanges between craft and contemporary art. CAFAM's regular programs and events provide opportunities for the public to participate in artmaking and engage with exhibiting and local artists. For more information, visit cafam.org.

Farhang Foundation is a non-religious, non-political and not-for-profit foundation established in 2008 to celebrate and promote Iranian art and culture for the benefit of the community at large. The foundation supports a broad range of academic activities in Southern California by funding university programs, publications and conferences. The foundation also supports diverse cultural programs such as the celebration of Nowruz, Shabe-Yalda, Mehregan, theater and dance performances, film screenings and poetry readings in Southern California. And, in cooperation with various cultural and academic institutions, Farhang Foundation funds major programs and exhibitions about Iran and its culture. However, the content, viewpoints or biases expressed by individual artists, academics, institutions or events supported by the foundation belong solely to each individual party and do not necessarily reflect the views of Farhang Foundation. For more info visit Farhang.org
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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

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You cant get everything for nothing, so its not a surprise that the Notebook 9 Pro has some oddities that keep it from being the 15-inch laptop to have. That said, comparable laptops like the Dell XPS 15 cost almost a third more to get the same specs and features. While youll compromise some, youre getting a lot of hardware in the end.

You buy a big and heavy 15.6-inch laptop so you can get real work done fasterthat means a burly quad-core CPU and discrete graphics.

Samsungs Notebook 9 Pro packs those in, then adds an excellent 4K Ultra HD touchscreen and a 10Gbps USB 3.1 Type C port to the mix. At $1,500 MSRP (available at Best Buy), its priced the same as competing laptops that have fewer high-tech features. Thats a hell of a deal.

Room to work

The Notebook 9 Pro has the classic look of a Samsung laptop, with a black, anodized-aluminum chassis and brushed-aluminum accents. At 4.5 pounds, this 15.6-inch notebook feels solid but is a little slippery, tooyoull need to keep a good grip on it. Our review unit also had an overly stiff hinge that I had to crank on in order to reach its maximum 140-degree viewing angle, which made opening it while walking extra dangerous.

While the Notebook 9 Pro is big at 14.75 x 9.75 inches, its also surprisingly thin. The spots I measured on the body ranged from 17mm to 18mm thick, similar to the girth of Apples 2014-vintage MacBook Pro 15. Dells XPS 15 isnt as wide nor as deep, but its thicker at 19mm to 20mm.

Gordon Mah Ung Dells new XPS 15 in the lower left corner with Samsungs Notebook 9 Pro to the right. In the upper right is HPs new Spectre X360 15T and a Dell XPS 13 on the upper left.

More impressive is this laptops eye-catching screen. Samsung didnt provide detailed specs, but its sourced from the company itself. You get a 15.6-inch 4K Ultra HD (38402160) panel with full 10-point touch. A very light anti-glare coating cuts down on reflections. The screen is rated at 350 nits, but I measured it a little over that at about 380 nits dead-center on our unit. Backlighting is very even, more so than on contemporaries like the Dell XPS 15 and the HP Spectre x360 15T. The backlighting does use PWM, which strobes the backlight when you reduce the brightness, for those who are sensitive to screen flicker at low brightness levels.

Samsung also includes some image-tweaking utilities such as an HDR (high-dynamic range) mode. HDR is probably overstating the effect, but it does a help with shadow detail without blowing out highlights in images.

It does have to be said that while high-resolution images look much sharper thanks to the use of a 4K UHD resolution panel instead of a cost-conscious 19201080 screen, you do really need get up close to the screen to see it. Nevertheless, this displays size and resolution make it ideal for working on spreadsheets and in other situations where you need to see a lot of elements on the screen.

Ports

The Notebook 9 Pro comes equipped with a full-size HDMI port, combo headset jack, three USB 3.0 Type A ports, a Kensington lock port, and a USB 3.1 Type C port. From what I can tell, that USB-C port is full 10Gbps USB 3.1, but its implementation is odd. On most laptops with USB Type C, you get USB 3.1 at either the full 10Gbps speed or the slower 5Gbps (what is sometimes still called USB 3.0)or you get a Thunderbolt 3.0 port that also supports 10Gbps USB 3.1. In this laptop, Samsung uses Intels Thunderbolt 3 controller but enables only the USB support.

Gordon Mah Ung The Samsung Notebook 9 Pro (bottom) gives you a full-size HDMI 1.4, 5Gbps USB Type A, analog combo jack and plain weird USB-C port. On top is a Dell XPS 15 with an HP Spectre x360 15T in the middle.

Why the company would do that, Im not sure. If Samsung went to the trouble to integrate a pricier Intel Alpine Ridge Thunderbolt 3 controller, why not give us the full monty?

You do at least get 10Gbps USB 3.1 transfer speeds in the end, though. Using a Sandisk Extreme 900 USB drive, I measured transfer rates in the 600MBps range for read and writes through the port. That was a bit lower than the 700MBps Ive seen on other laptops with full Thunderbolt 3 implementations, but its definitely better than being stuck at 400MBps on USB 3.0-only laptops.

Under the hood

Inside the Notebook 9 Pro are a quad-core Intel Core i7-6700HQ, a GeForce GTX 950m graphics with 2GB of GDDR5, a Lite-On M.2 SATA SSD, and 8GB of DDR3/1866 RAM in two SO-DIMM slots. That last choice is a head-scratcher, because most of the competition has moved on to DDR4 for big Skylake laptops. But while being one generation behind in memory technology looks bad on paper, when youre actually comparing DDR4/2133 vs. DDR3/1866, theres little tangible difference during use.

More concerning for performance fanatics is the choice of an M.2 SATA drive. Typical M.2 drives using a PCIe interface will hit 1.5GBps read speeds vs. the 548MBps I saw out of the Notebook 9 Pros Lite-On SSD. Write speeds were pretty equal, though (at least according to Crystal Disk Mark 5.1.2), with a rate in the 300MBps range.

Performance

Most people assume the same part in Laptop A gives you the same performance as Laptop B. The truth is, manufacturers tune performance based on many factors, including how much heat a particular system will tolerate and the maximum temperature the laptop is allowed to reach.

This is ultimately the stickiest part for the Notebook 9 Pro. Yes, itll easily crush the hollow skulls of any dual-core notebook, but being a big quad-core machine means it really competes with other quad-core laptops. As youll see, it cant quite trade equal blows with them.

First up is Maxons CineBench R15. This 3D rendering benchmark is a CPU test that thrives on CPU cores. The Notebook 9 Pro easily waves good-bye to the dual-cores, including Microsofts vaunted Surface Book. The problem is the difference between the Samsung Notebook 9 Pro (previously known as the Book 9 Pro and still identified as that in our chart) and the Dell XPS 15. Both use the same Intel Core i7, but performance is slower on the Samsung due to its lower clock speeds.

Despite having the same CPU as the Dell XPS 15, the Samsung Notebook 9 Pro was slower thanks to a lower top clock speed.

The good news for the Notebook 9 Pro is that a slightly slower clock speed doesnt add up to a lot on long workloads. Our Handbrake 0.9.9 test transcodes a 19201080 30GB MKV into a lower-resolution MP4 using the Android tablet profile. On a dual-core laptop, this test takes a couple of hours, but the quad-cores make quick work of itincluding the Notebook 9 Pro with its lower overall clock speed. The Dell XPS 15 is still faster, though.

Good news: this pure CPU encoding test puts the Samsung Notebook 9 Pro closer to Dells XPS 15 than it did in other tests.

The real problem is the graphics performance. The Notebook 9 Pro has an Nvidia GeForce GTX 950M discrete graphics chip in it. On paper, its not much different than the GeForce GTX 960M that Dell uses in its XPS 15. Both have the same memory bandwidth and amount of CUDA cores. The GTX 960Ms clock speed is also about 20 percent faster. The performance gap, however, is closer to 25 percent.

It looks like Samsung decided to keep the fan noise on the Notebook 9 Pro as unobtrusive as possible. Under a graphics load, the XPS 15s fans get loud. The Notebook 9 Pros dont, but just know that the consequence is occasional slow-downs on a GPU thats already slower than the Dell from the get-go.

The Samsung Notebook 9 Pros graphics performance fell further off the pace of Dells XPS 15 than expected.

This isnt due to the type of memory used. The GeForce GTX 950M comes with an option to use much slower DDR3 or the far faster GDDR5 RAM, and Samsung smartly choose the latter.

So why the larger performance fall than expected? I decided to push both laptops with a heavy graphics load and I found the Notebook 9 Pro significantly backed off in performance after a few minutes of use. I did this by running the Furmark torture test while monitoring the GPUs clock speeds. When warm, it would drop off from 800MHz to 405MHz. Eventually, the Notebook 9 Pro would work the clock speeds back up to 700MHz, but that kind of dropoff is a little troubling. The Dell XPS 15, for comparison, would pretty much sit at its rated base speed of 1096MHz for an hour without varying much at all.

The Samsung Notebook 9 Pro takes a pretty hefty performance hit when pushed hard.

Battery Life

When you add up the energy costs of a 4K Ultra HD touchscreen and quad-core chip with discrete graphics, youre not going to get a laptop that will play movies for the entire flight from Dubai to Panama. No surprise: The Notebook 9 Pro has a short battery life, with about 260 minutes of video playback. Thats probably the lowest weve seen out of a laptop, but we didnt expect a long run with this much hardware.

Youre only going to get about four hours of 4K video playbacknot great, but with a large 4K Ultra HD screen and touch support, you shouldnt expect miracles.

I do think Samsung should have considered a bigger battery, though. Dell offers a much larger 84-watt-hour battery upgrade in some XPS 15 builds, and Apples MacBook Pro 15 uses a gigantic 99-watt-hour battery. The Notebook 9 Pros battery is simply too small for this much hardware, and it shows.

Keyboard, trackpad, and speakers

The keyboard is spacious, with no obvious sizing or layout issues. I will say under speed typing, it feels harsh when the keys hit bottom, but keyboards are a subjective affair. Its more important that the keys arent laid out in any deal-breaking, annoying way, and Samsung doesnt make any mistakes here.

Gordon Mah Ung The Notebook 9 Pros keyboard is comfortably full-sized with no odd keys.

The trackpad is a standard piano-hinge design that gets harder to push near the top. Id prefer it to feel smoother under my fingertips, like on the Surface Book, but its a good device otherwise.

Like the screen quality and backlighting evenness, the Notebook 9 Pro also gets a nod for having the best speakers. The audio output on the XPS 15 and the MacBook Pro 15 are decent, but the Notebook 9 Pro puts out a little more volume and has a fuller mid-range and low end than the others.

Price and Conclusion

As mentioned earlier, the one area where Samsung prevails is price. A base Dell XPS 15 with 8GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD will set you back $1,500. For the same amount, the Notebook 9 Pro gives you a 4K panel and touch capabilities. To get the same kind of screen on the Dell, youll have to fork over almost $2,000. That Dell does give you 16GB of DDR4 RAM, a PCIe SSD, a bigger battery, and a faster GPU. Youre still out another $500, though.

Overall, the Samsung Notebook 9 Pros design seems like a compromiseperhaps a little too much so. It basically does everything well, but doesnt truly excel at any one thing. The end result is that this laptop fails to stand out as the 15-incher to have, despite its bells and whistles.
Oracles legal fight with Google over its use of Java in Android goes to a jury trial for the second time next week, and the stakes are even higher than when the two sides met in court four years ago.

Oracle wants a whopping $8.8 billion in damages from Google, much more than the first time around, making it one of the biggest copyright cases ever, and its anyones guess which way the jury will go.

The timing is awkward for Google  its I/O conference comes smack in the middle of the trial  and developers at that event should pay attention to the outcome. If Oracle wins, Google could be forced to make changes to the way people build apps for Android, or else swallow a royalty fee for continued use of Oracles technology.

Barring a last-minute settlement, the four-week trial begins Monday, and were likely to see a parade of Silicon Valley bigwigs called to the stand to testify, including Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison and Google CEO Larry Page. Its a complex case thats likely to stretch the jurys understanding  Judge William Alsup has worried aloud that they wont be able to keep up.

The trial will be split into two parts. In the first, the jury will decide whether Googles use of Oracles technology is protected by the doctrine of fair use, which allows copying for some purposes. If it decides it was, Oracle walks away empty handed (though its likely to appeal). If its use wasnt fair, the second half of the trial will be to calculate damages. Heres what you need to know to follow the trial, held at the federal district courthouse in San Francisco.

Whats this dispute about?

When Google created Android 10 years ago, it decided to make Java the basis for its OS. The Java language is open source and free for anyone to use, but Google also used 37 carefully structured Java programming interfaces (APIs), including 7,000 lines of declaring code, for which Sun held the copyright. Early on, Google tried to negotiate a license but couldnt reach a deal and went ahead with Java anyway. Sun never showed much interest in filing lawsuits, but soon after Oracle took control of the company, it pounced.

Havent we been through this movie before?

Yes, but after a trial in 2012, the jury was split on the question of fair use. The new jury will be asked to decide whether Googles use of the APIs was fair and, if not, how much damages it should pay.

How does Oracle get to such a huge sum?

Oracles damages expert calculates that Google made $40.6 billion in revenue from Android through the end of last year, mostly from mobile search ads but also from apps, digital media, and hardware. After deducting costs and estimating what proportion of Googles profit should be attributed to Android itself  as opposed to other Google technologies like its search engine  he comes up with the figure of $8.8 billion.

Hang on, arent those 37 APIs only a tiny portion of Android?

Thats a big part of what Googles lawyers will try to convince the jury. Oracle advances a legal theory of commingling  which basically says the gains from the APIs are so wrapped up in the whole that they cant be separated out. Google will counter that the APIs are a tiny fraction of Android so Oracles reward should be far less.

Just this week, Alsup dealt Oracle a setback. He said its expert can cite the $8.8 billion figure in court, but he cant tell the jury Oracle is entitled to the whole amount.

This case sounds complicated.

You havent heard the half of it. As well as learning about APIs, virtual machines and declaring code, the jury will hear testimony about different software licenses and what they allow developers to do. Theyll also need to understand fair use.

What is that anyway?

Under U.S. copyright law, exceptions are made for certain types of copying, commonly for things like satire, news reporting, research, and commentary, but there are other exceptions, too.

The jury will be asked to weigh four fair use factors, which the judge has described here. One of the most important is the purpose and character of the work, including whether Googles use of the APIs was commercial, and whether it was transformative  whether it turned them into something new and different. Its pretty clear that its use of Java was commercial, so Google will need to convince the jury that Android transformed the original copyright work into something different.

The original work is Java 2 Standard Edition  the desktop version of Java  but the copyright protection extends to derivative works, including Java 2 Micro Edition, the version for mobile.

One of Googles arguments will be that Java 2 ME was used mainly in feature phones, and that it never approached the capabilities of Android  making Googles use transformative.

Also crucial is the fourth fair use factor  the effect on the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work. Oracle will tell the jury that Android destroyed any chance Java ME had of succeeding in smartphones. Google will respond that Sun failed because it never built a decent mobile OS.

Google will also argue that the APIs were functional  that it needed them to make use of the Java language, which after all is open source. To the extent the jury agrees, that could sway them toward fair use.

Who are these so-called expert witnesses?

Good question. Each side hires experts to testify on their behalf, often academics and consultants. Alsup has been a bit disdainful of experts; hes aware they might just say whatever theyre told to in order to earn their fees.

Alsup says the jury has a right to know how much each expert is being paid, and he might reveal that in court. Oracles fair use expert, for instance, is getting $1,200 an hour. The jury decides how much weight they give to each expert, depending on things like how trustworthy they find them to be.

This doesnt sound very scientific.

Its not. The facts of the case are only part of what will determine the outcome. A lot rests on how convincing the testimony is. Other potential witnesses include Google Chairman Eric Schmidt, former Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz, and Android creator Andy Rubin. Theyll testify about topics such as why Google chose Java, and whether it believed it needed a license in the first place.

What else do I need to know?

Whatever the jury decides, it almost certainly wont be the end of the matter. The losing side is sure to file an appeal, and the case will drag on.

Whos likely to win?

Thats hard to say. A jury has heard the facts in the case once already, and on fair use, they were split, nine jurors to three in Googles favor. Under California law, the verdict needs to be unanimous.

But this is a new trial, with a new jury, and Oracle has a different legal team running its show.

Tyler Ochoa, a professor at Santa Clara University School of Law, notes that in copyright trials, the conventional wisdom is that the plaintiff  Oracle  usually starts in the stronger position. Its easy for a jury to see when material has been copied, he says, and the onus is on the defendant to prove its use was fair.

But he also notes that in the San Francisco Bay Area, the jury is more likely to have at least one member whos got some understanding of tech, who could better follow the nuanced arguments and influence the rest of the jury.

Predicting a winner, he says, is a fools errand.
New rules proposed by the Indian government would require Google and other mapping services to submit their maps for security clearance before distributing them online or offline.

The move appears to reflect the Indian governments concern that the maps could expose defense installations and other high-security areas.

The government is also apparently concerned that its international boundaries with Pakistan and China, both countries with which it has border disputes, are represented in the way the country recognizes them.

The rules could, however, put obstacles in the way of companies and organizations that crowdsource their maps or modify their maps frequently, as those changes too would appear to require security clearances from the government, according to analysts.

India has always been sensitive about the collection of imagery by Internet companies. In 2005, the then Indian president, A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, criticized Google Earth and other online satellite mapping services for exposing sensitive installations in developing countries to terrorists. Some map services like Googles have tried to blur certain sensitive locations by presenting them at low-resolution at the request of the government, according to sources close to the situation.

But Googles Street View cars were stopped from collecting data in Bangalore in 2011, even after getting official permission and promising to blur sensitive data, apparently reflecting concerns about the exposure of certain locations on the street images.

The proposed Geospatial Information Regulation Bill 2016 requires that any person who intends to collect geospatial imagery or data including value addition of any part of India through terrestrial vehicles or any space or aerial platforms such as satellites, aircraft, airships, balloons, and drones will require the permission of a Security Vetting Authority appointed by the federal government.

Organizations that have already collected mapping data would have to submit their maps within one year to the vetting authority for getting a license to retain the information after paying a fee. Clearance of the authority will also be required for the online and offline dissemination of the maps, which could bring under the purview of this rule a variety of apps including those of ride-hailing companies and location-based services that use maps.

The permissions would apply to the online or offline distribution of the maps outside the country as well. Companies like Google, for example, currently present different international boundaries on maps to users in India and abroad to assuage local sensitivities.

Google said it was reviewing the draft rules.

The new rules would, if approved by the government, impose stiff fines of up to 1 billion rupees (US$15 million) and/or up to seven years of imprisonment on people who break the rules. Penalties can be appealed before an appellate authority and in some cases also before the High Court. The Ministry of Home Affairs has asked for comments within 30 days.
There was one issue that went unspoken in Microsofts announcement on Thursday that the free Windows 10 upgrade offer would end on July 29. What would the company do about all those annoying, almost malware-like, pop-up notifications to upgrade to Windows 10 that appeared on the PCs of Windows 7 and 8.1 users? The answer is they will disappear.

Details are still being finalized, but on July 29th the Get Windows 10 appwill be disabled and eventually removed from PCs worldwide, Microsoft told WinBeta in a written statement.

Hallelujah

On a Windows 8.1 PC. Mostly full screen pop-up. No clear No thanks button, just download Windows 10 now or later. pic.twitter.com/RRoaFMST9r  Brad Chacos (@BradChacos) December 11, 2015

The company warned that it may take some time to disable the upgrade pop-ups on computers worldwide.

Many people disliked the companys approach, but it appears Microsofts upgrade push has been relatively successful. Microsoft said on Thursday there were now 300 million active Windows 10 devices worldwidea bump of 30 million from late April when Microsoft said there were 270 million active users.

Anyone currently on Windows 7 or 8.1 that doesnt plan on upgrading to Windows 10 can already disable the Windows 10 prompts. The easiest way is to use GWX Control Panel, a utility that automates the process for you.

The impact on you: As with all things Windows 10, conspiracy theories abound. The big question is just how serious Microsoft is about ending the upgrade strategy on July 29? If the company backtracks and decides to extend the free upgrade offeror keep it going in perpetuity as some critics have argued they shouldthen the upgrade pop-ups may remain.

[via The Verge]
A U.S. trade body has launched an investigation into seven smartphone companies on charges of patent infringement, which could lead to a ban on the sale of certain phones imported and sold by these vendors in the country.

The U.S. International Trade Commission said it had instituted an investigation into devices from a group of mainly Asian companies, including Lenovo and its Motorola subsidiary, Samsung Electronics, ZTE, Sony, LG Electronics, HTC and BlackBerry.

The complaint was filed against these companies by Creative Technology of Singapore and its U.S. subsidiary Creative Labs of Milpitas, California, on March 24.

Known for its Sound Blaster sound cards for PC audio, Creative has charged these companies with infringing U.S. Patent No. 6,928,433 entitled Automatic Hierarchical Categorization of Music by Metadata, which claims various methods for accessing different types of data, such as music or video files, on a portable media player.

Apple is said to be one of the licensees of the patent, and in 2006, Apple paid Creative US$100 million for a nonexclusive license, according to Creatives complaint. Creative had earlier that year asked the ITC to block the sale of Apples iPod devices for allegedly infringing the same patent.

Among the alleged infringing products named in the complaint are Samsungs Galaxy S6 smartphone and other Samsung phones containing either the Google Play Music app (version 5.9.l854R.l904527), or the Samsung Music app (version 6.0.1508051449), which were installed on the phones prior to import.

The products at issue in the investigation are smartphones, with the capability of playing stored media files selected by a user from a hierarchical display, the ITC said in a statement Thursday.

If it finds infringement after investigation, the ITC can place a ban on the sale of products by these vendors, under a limited exclusion order requested by the complainant. The ITC cautioned that the launch of an investigation did not imply a decision on the merits of the case. It will set a target date for completion of the investigation within 45 days of its institution.
Some Asus PC owners running Windows 7 are being treated to an unpleasant surprise as their machines stop booting properly.

Instead of booting into Windows 7, users have been running into a Secure Boot Violation error message, claiming that the system found unauthorized changes on the firmware, operating system, or UEFI drivers.

As Infoworld reports, the problem stems from Microsofts Secure Boot mechanism, which is designed to prevent malware attacks and recently became enabled by default on Asus motherboards. Windows 7 does not support this feature, and for some reason a recent patch (KB 3133977) created a conflict that prevents the operating system from loading.

Both Asus and Microsoft had several weeks to address the problem, as the update was only optional from March 15 to April 12. A small number of users indeed ran into boot problems during that time period, yet neither Microsoft nor Asus had a fix in place when KB 3133977 became a Recommended update in April. (Adding insult to injury, Microsofts support page on KB 3133977 informs Asus users that they can avoid this whole issue by upgrading to Windows 10, which supports the Secure Boot feature.)

For users who are now locked out of their PCs, Asus has issued instructions on how to disable Secure Boot through their computers UEFI BIOS Utility. This should allow the system to boot normallywithout having to upgrade to Windows 10.

Why this matters: Its unclear how many users have been affected by this snafu, but not being able to boot into Windows is a serious problem. Users may not be comfortable wading into BIOS settings, or even know where to start with the error message Asus is producing. Unfortunately the vastness of the Windows ecosystem means this kind of disregard for older PCs and operating systems can run with the territory.
As part of an ongoing partnership, the San Bernardino County Sheriffs Department and its gang unit have been assisting San Bernardino police during their proactive patrols of the city as a result of the increase in gun violence.

Our teams have been up and around the city of San Bernardino a lot, said sheriffs Lt. Jon Billings, head of the departments gang unit, during Wednesday mornings San Bernardino Countywide Gang and Drugs Task Force meeting.

Twenty-five people have been killed in San Bernardino this year alone, putting the city on pace to surpass last years homicide number, 44, which include the 14 killed during the Dec. 2 terror attack at the Inland Regional Center.

At a recent town hall meeting, San Bernardino Police Chief Jarrod Burguan told attendees all days off were canceled, and were out there trying to reduce or end this violent rampage.

The one-week change was done in a effort to get ahead of the violence and have more proactive patrols in the city which seems to have seen little relief from the gun violence over the last few weeks. Officers are currently on modified shifts.

As part of the increased presence on San Bernardino streets, specialized multiagency anti-gang squads known as San Bernardino Movement Against Street Hoodlums, or Smash, will help with the patrols and will be focused specifically on gang crimes.

Last weekend, the gang unit was part of a collaborative operation targeting gangs in San Bernardino.

It hasnt been as active, said Lt. Rich Lawhead, spokesman for the San Bernardino police. Any kind of suppression has an effect on things.

The Sheriffs Department also assigned three deputies and a corporal to the San Bernardino station to assist with the polices Operation Safe Streets. One of the first major successes of the operation was the removal of several firearms including an AK-47 assault rifle with a 50-round magazine and a loaded 9mm Ruger semi-automatic pistol  from the hands of suspected gang members and their associates.

The Sheriffs Department will always step up and help an agency that needs it, said Capt. Sam Fisk at the meeting.

Several dozen attendees from different organizations  local school administrators, members of the San Bernardino County Probation Department, community groups and a handful of county residents  learned about the sheriffs departments gang units during Wednesdays Gangs and Drugs Task Force meeting.

Last year, during a reorganization of the departments Special Operations Bureau  which includes the homicide, narcotics and gang details  a new fully dedicated gang unit was formed, explained Billings.

Three teams were created: the Desert Street Team, the Valley Street Team and the Gang Intelligence Task Force, made up of the members of the Sheriffs Department, San Bernardino police, FBI, probation department and the California Highway Patrol.

In its first year of operation, the new gang unit made 1,025 arrests, seized 211 firearms and submitted 208 gang enhancement cases to the San Bernardino County District Attorneys Office for prosecution.

Contact the writer: beatriz.valenzuela@langnews.com; @BeatrizVNews
UPDATE (Friday, May 6): Business as usual on 91 following chase, standoff

A standoff between an attempted murder suspect and authorities on the 91 freeway near Corona prompted closures in both directions Thursday night, backing up traffic for miles.

The stalemate came after a chase through Los Angeles and Orange counties where the suspect in a Mercedes-Benz struck several vehicles and weaved in and out of traffic.

The incident began Wednesday, when investigators believe that the male inside tried to assault someone with a handgun in the 7600 block of Miramonte Boulevard in Los Angeles, said Lt. Daniel Holguin of the Los Angeles County Sheriffs Department.

Deputies spotted the car and tried to pull it over Thursday evening in Compton, Holguin said. The driver sped off.

The car crashed into the 91s center divider a few times after its tires were blown out  because of CHP spike strips  and came to a stop at about 7:30 p.m. near Green River Road. The suspect then stayed barricaded in the car.

The eastbound and westbound 91 freeway was closed near Green River Road and the 71.

Anaheim SWAT responded to the scene.

Officers used smoke to lure the suspect out the car around 9:40 p.m. Once outside, a K-9 bit the suspect and he was taken into custody.

His identity was not released Thursday night.

All lanes were open by about 10 p.m, according to Caltrans spokeswoman Terri Kasinga.

This story is developing. Check back for updates.
Weather radar showed late-night showers moving through southwest Riverside County, even as forecasters predicted thunderstorms are apt to march ashore before dawn  possibly dumping more than an inch of rain in some spots.

Timing and placement are a challenge, though, forecasters acknowledged in an updated written analysis released at 9:10 p.m. Thursday, May 5. So radar trends will be closely monitored, as any localized (rain) cells could lead to isolated urban flooding.

Shortly before 10 p.m., weather radar showed an almost solid line of showers moving northeast from the Mexican border along the Interstate 15 corridor into Riverside County roughly as far as Lake Elsinore.
Wildomar residents will be able to discard unwanted household items and other waste Saturday, May 7, at one of two collection sites.

Sponsored by the city and its two trash haulers, Wildomar Community Cleanup Day is scheduled from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Residents who live west of Interstate 15 should take their waste to the Orchard Street Parking lot of Elsinore High School, 21800 Canyon Drive. East-side residents should go to Ronald Reagan Elementary School, 35445 Porras Road.

Items that will be accepted include large bulky items such as refrigerators, sofas, chairs, washers, dryers, mattresses, green waste, wood, metals and electronic devices.

Hazardous material, including batteries, chemicals, automotive parts, propane tanks, construction debris, pesticides, paint and florescent lights will not be accepted.

More information can be obtained by calling Janet Morales at 951-677-7751, ext. 210 or emailing her at jmorales@cityofwildomar.org.

Contact the writer: 951-368-9690 or michaelwilliams@pressenterprise.com
Cruz Reynoso, the first Latino justice on the California Supreme Court, credited his sense of justice, which he called his justice bone, for steering him on a path toward equality and rights.

When I saw something that was unjust, I felt compelled to do something about it or my (justice) bone would keep hurting, said Reynoso, whos been recognized for his work in civil rights, immigration, and refugee policy.

Reynoso, who also was legal advisor to the late civil-rights activist Cesar Chavez, spoke Thursday, May 5, at a Cinco de Mayo gathering hosted by the Riverside County Community Action Partnerships Multi-Cultural and Arts Committee.

The gathering was held to honor Reynoso, an Orange County native and Pomona College alumnus, and local Latino leaders.

Riverside City Council Member Andy Melendrez, KMIR News reporter Kitty Alvarado, Riverside County Assessor-County Clerk-Recorder Peter Aldana, and business owner Susana Esmeralda Chandi were among those being honored.

Reynoso, the son of farm-worker parents, spoke of how his justice bone helped him spot social injustices early in his life.

As a youngster living in a barrio, he noticed his neighbors had to walk about a mile to the post office because the mail wasnt delivered to them. So he went to the postmaster and asked if mail deliveries could be made in his neighborhood. Shortly after, they were.

When Reynoso heard that a school barred Mexican students from attending a school dance, he tracked down the event organizers and voiced his opposition. From then on, Reynoso did not hear of further segregated dances.

People would think that (speaking up) would get you in trouble, that you wouldnt be able to do well in life, but that has not been my own experience.

My own experience has been that if you stick to what you think is the right thing to do, and you try to help those people who are not being treated properly, even though it makes a lot of people angry at you, eventually society actually rewards you, Reynoso said.

Reynoso attended community college and went on to graduate from Pomona College. He earned his law degree at UC Berkeley. Reynoso also served in the U.S. Army and on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. He was a member of the Select Commission on Immigration and Human Rights.

In 2000, President Bill Clinton honored him with a Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Contact the writer: 951-368-9462 or amolina@pressenterprise.com
California state and local governments continue to try to crack down on e-cigarettes, or vaporizers, and regulate them like cigarettes, yet mounting data show that the devices are far safer to users  and those around them  and have been proven effective at providing smokers an alternative to help them quit or significantly reduce their tobacco smoking.

The latest evidence of this comes from the Royal College of Physicians, a respected British doctors group that helps establish medical standards in the country, which touted e-cigarettes as an effective means of quitting smoking.

While [t]here are concerns that e-cigarettes will increase tobacco smoking by renormalizing the act of smoking, acting as a gateway to smoking in young people and being used for temporary, not permanent, abstinence from smoking, the report noted, [t]o date, there is no evidence that any of these processes is occurring to any significant degree in the U.K. Rather, the available evidence to date indicates that e-cigarettes are being used almost exclusively as safer alternatives to smoked tobacco, by confirmed smokers who are trying to reduce harm to themselves or others from smoking, or to quit smoking completely.

The report, further, asserted that the long-term health hazards of vaping are unlikely to exceed 5 percent of the harm from smoking tobacco  in line with a 2013 study that found that the levels of potentially toxic compounds in e-cigarette vapor are [nine-fold to] 450-fold lower than those in the smoke from conventional cigarettes  and that at the blood levels typically achieved by smoking, nicotine does not result in clinically significant short- or long-term harms.

California nonetheless insists on regulating e-cigarettes as tobacco products  including subjecting them to the states smoke-free laws, which apply to workplaces, schools, restaurants and public buildings  despite the fact that they contain no tobacco and do not produce smoke. On Wednesday, Gov. Jerry Brown signed such a measure, SBX2-5, along with four of the five anti-smoking bills passed by the Legislature in early March.

Given the benefits of e-cigarettes in helping people reduce and quit smoking, and the absence of evidence that they harm innocent bystanders, we lament that Gov. Brown and numerous local elected officials across the state and nation have failed to side with individual freedom and instead given in to nanny-state urges, unsubstantiated fears and misinformation.
Dont expect any apologies for Republican congressional candidate Paul Chabot following the arrest of a 17-year-old in connection with the theft of Chabots campaign signs.

Late last month, Chabot filed a report with Redlands police alleging the theft of one of his signs from the corner of Smiley Heights Drive and Sunnyside Avenue.

At the time, Chabot, who hopes to unseat Rep. Pete Aguilar, D-Redlands, issued a news release demanding that the Aguilar campaign return what he said were hundreds of stolen Chabot lawn signs. Crime continues to rise across California and its unacceptable that a campaign of a Member of Congress would be directly adding to that increase, Chabot said.

On Thursday, May 5, Redlands police announced the arrest of a 17-year-old boy from Loma Linda. Police said a witness who saw the theft reported by Chabot took down a license plate number, which was tracked to a Loma Linda address where seven Chabot signs were found in the trash.

The suspect admitted to stealing Chabot signs as well as nonpolitical signs, police said, adding that the juvenile denied any connection to a political campaign or candidate.

In an emailed statement, Aguilar campaign manager Matt Liebman said: Now that he found his signs, I hope Paul can finally focus on the real issues affecting Inland Empire residents instead of trying to undermine someones character.

Chabot said that while hes pleased with the arrest, this minor refused to give up who was with him in doing this.

Even though (police) found a handful of signs in his trash can, we believe this is a larger orchestrated effort because we have had an estimated 300 signs stolen in the district, Chabot said, adding that many of his stolen signs were replaced with Aguilar signs.
Moreno Valley high school students interested in a career in the medical field got a taste of the profession as part of the Health Care Job Participation Day at Riverside University Health System in Moreno Valley.

During the event, held April 27 and coorinated by the hospital and Reach Out, the 75 health academy students heard from professionals and saw demonstrations to learn more about the field and decide which career path they would choose.

Possibilities were sparked today. The most important thing is exposure and heightened awareness to students to different options in healthcare, said Carol Allbaugh, director of Inland Coalition, a division of Reach Out.

The Inland Coatlion, Allbaugh said, partners with healthcare facilities, hospitals and clinics to show students what it is like to work in that profession.

The students who attended the Job Participation Day were all part of the Health Pathway Program, which helps students interested in the medical field learn from professionals and figure out which career path works best for them.

During the event, students from Canyon Springs High School and Vista Del Lago High School heard from professionals ranging from mental health, public health, and health administration. The students then toured the facility, which included a visit of the lab, emergency department, the helicopter pad and a simulation lab where students practiced CPR.

Sharon Scott, the Canyon Springs High School Health Careers academy director, said that after the days activities, more students were interested in the neonatal intensice care unit, pediatrics, the ER, pharmacy and radiology.

hey realized there are different ways to achieve their career goals and they are more motivated than ever to go for it, she said.

For the hospital, it was a chance to reach out to the community and inspire the future workforce.

The hospital frequently trains medical students and the health systems Medical Center Family Medicine Residency Program sponsors Moreno Valleys health academy programs, said Kim Trone, manager of Public Affairs at Riverside University Health Systems.

Im not sure who gets more out of these experiences, our healthcare professionals or the students who come visit us, she said. We are all inspired by the commitment of these students and we know the future of good healthcare will rest in good hands.

Contact the writer: community@pressenterprise.com
Likely Republican nominee Donald Trump disagrees with Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus characterization of a conversation they had on Thursday about House Speaker Paul Ryan, Wis., not yet being ready to support Trump.

Priebus says that within minutes of Ryan telling CNNs Jake Tapper on Thursday that he is not there right now with Trump, the presumptive nominee called the party leader and wanted to know what he needed to do. Priebus has agreed to arrange a meeting between Trump and Ryan for next week and said Friday morning that he expects the speaker to eventually support Trump but wants to first work through some issues.

TEMECULA: No Trump, but lots of police expected at rally

It wasnt like furious or anything; it was just like, What do I need to do?  Priebus said at a Politico Playbook Breakfast on Friday morning. And so I said, Listen  my view is just relax and be gracious, and I will talk to Paul and we will try to work on this. 

Thats not what Trump remembers happening.

I told Reince that I thought it was totally inappropriate what Paul Ryan said and thought it was good for me politically, Trump said in a statement early Friday afternoon ahead of a political rally in Nebraska. But Reince feels, and Im okay with that, that we should meet before we go our separate ways. So I guess the meeting will take place and who knows what will happen.

In the aftermath of Trumps two remaining rivals  Ohio Gov. John Kasich and Sen. Ted Cruz, Texas  suspending their campaigns, Priebus has called for the party to rally behind Trump. A number have followed that direction, but others have kept quiet or held out, including Ryan, who is close with Priebus. Trump expects to meet with Ryan on Wednesday, he said on the Fox News Channel on Friday.

Ryans office said in a statement that the speaker has invited Trump to meet with members of the House Republican leadership in Washington on Thursday morning to begin a discussion about the kind of Republican principles and ideas that can win the support of the American people this November. Ryan also plans to meet separately with Trump and Priebus.

Trump has said that he will not back away from the controversial stances he took during the primary process, including a call for a temporary ban on allowing most foreign Muslims into the country. He has said that while he wants to unite the party, he knows that he wont win everyone over.
Deputy Minister of Communication, Felix Kwakye Ofosu has asked Ghanaians not to endorse the flagbearer of the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) as President because he stands for danger.



According to him, Nana Addo 'represents danger' because he is the reason behind every violence that occurs in the NPP.



This comment follows an attack on Baah Achamfour at the studios of Kumasi based Fox FM.



Some irate members of the NPP were alleged to have stormed Fox FM studios and beat up a vocal party critic, Baah Achamfuor and host of the program, Kwaku Kyeremanteng Nkansah (KK), during a live session.



"How can an activist of the partycriticising the flagbearer of the party, then thugs enter the studio and beat him up.who says the flagbearer of the party cannot become the subject of unsavoury commentary? What happened to Baah Achamfour is not a one off incident; it is as a result of the reign of terror; terrorism lead by Nana Addo that is pervasive in the NPP today," Mr Kwakye Ofosu said.



Nana addo has established a reign of terror in the NPP and he can do same when he becomes Presidentever since Nana Addo became the leader of the New Patriotic Party in 2007, that partys very ethos has been defined by dark violence, rhetoric and behaviour. He has imposed his beliefs on the party such that today when you mention the NPP, they have become synonymous with violence chaos and intolerance Felix said during a panel discussion on Radio Gold, Saturday.



According to him, "what this reveals is that there is currently a reign of terror in the NPP supervised by Nana Addo himself and this reign of terror has gone on well over one and half years. It is no longer possible to have free discourse in the NPP without being terrorised".



He added that, if Nana Addo cannot be criticised as a flagbearer, how much more when he becomes President? The leader of the NPP wants to put himself above reproach. He represents a mortal danger; a clear and present danger to the well-being, the freedom and sanctity of Ghanaians and so the people of Ghana must decide whether they want a President who will institute a reign of terroror President Mahama who is benign and gentle..."











Source: Rebecca Addo Tetteh/Peacefmonline.com









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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Only a month after Victoria Police ruled out investigating cancer fraudster Belle Gibsons failure to hand over thousands of dollars raised in the name of charity, its been confirmed she *will* face court.

The disgraced The Whole Pantry founder will be charged with deceptive conduct off the back of an extensive 14-month investigation by Consumer Affairs Victoria.





Consumer Affairs Victoria Director Simon Cohen confirmed the consumer watchdog will be moving forward with legal action against Inkerman Road Nominees (Gibsons company, now in liquidation) that relate to entirely made up claims she was suffering from terminal brain cancer and  not only that  was being miraculously healed by rejecting conventional cancer treatments in favour of natural remedies, which she parlayed into a wellness empire with thousands of loyal followers (many of whom donated to charity in her name).

This is an important step in ensuring that consumers receive only verified information and are not deceived, particularly where serious matters of health and medical treatment are concerned, Cohen said in a statement.

Gibson  whos all but been in hiding since the shit hit the fan last year  faces more than $1 million in penalties for profiting off her BS claims and defrauding genuine charities out of much-needed funds.





Penguin Australia, who published her The Whole Pantry companion book, also felt the glare of the investigation; its agreed to make a $30,000 donation to the Victorian Consumer Law Fund after acknowledging almost nothing was done to verify Gibsons stories or claims before the book hit shelves.

Its also committed to beefing up its compliance, education and training program to make sure all claims about medical conditions by prospective Penguin authors are substantiated, and that sweeping statements about natural remedies of any kind come with a written warning.

The Whole Pantry app was an instant hit when it launched in August 2013, with 200K downloads in its first month (its estimated the business would have earned more than $1 million from downloads alone, at $3.79 a pop).

So loud was the buzz that tech giant Apple selected it as one of very few apps to be included on the demo of the Apple Watch, flying Gibson to Silicon Valley for the product launch.

Gibson maintains the secondary and primary cancers in her blood, spleen, brain, uterus, and liver were the result of a misdiagnosis by a German medical team she could never prove existed.

We, for one, are bloody happy shell at least be held somewhat accountable for the damage she inflicted on potentially thousands of vulnerable cancer sufferers and survivors.

Seeya in court, Belle.

Photo: Instagram.
Last year, The University Of South Australias Journalism Events Society cooked up the greatest pub crawl theme in living memory, and emblazoned the visage of Karl Stefanovic himself across their soon-to-be-sloshed t-shirts. Much merriment was had, and the bloke even gave Adelaides thirsty students a series of video shout-outs:





Now, UniSAs rep has been matched by the Adelaide University Media Association, and their theme speaks volumes about the difference between the two schools: Karl is down-to-earth, approachable, and well liked. Hes a round of beer with mates, which that night out well and truly accommodated.

By contrast, what does the supposedly-serious AUMA do? They head straight for the hard stuff  Lee Lin Chin, and some Lee Lin Fucking Gin.

They even matched the Beefeater logo, bless em.

And, would you bloody believe it, our High Priestess has cast her omnipotent gaze upon this merriment, and deemed it rad.

She hasnt yet confirmed shell attend the utterly debauched event, but through SBS, she did offer her sagely advice to those participating:

To the Adelaide University Media Association I say, make good choices, pick your waterhole well and your sexual contacts even better.

If youre in the area on May 20, and youre keen  as you should be  shirts are still available on campus. Youre up, Flinders University. Good luck.

Source: SBS.

Photo: Adelaide University Media Association.
The Boaty McBoatface saga has officially jumped the shark, but to add further to the WTF-ness of it all: now its officially being discussed in the UK House of Commons.

British MPs will sit about and actually discuss the social science experiment, and the scientists who nixed the name will have to explain to government officials what the frickin hell happened during that taxpayer-funded brouhaha.

The highly-respected Science and Technology Select Committee will grill witnesses on why 124,000 voters #1 choice is being completely ignored and shut down.

RIDICULOUS, RIGHT?!

The final decision allegedly lies with Science Minister Jo Johnson, who has in the past implied that hes not a fan of the name Boaty McBoatface, because hes obviously a giant stiff-shirted ponce who hates fun.

Committee boss Nicola Blackwood said that the public want to know whether theres going to be a Boaty McVolte-face on the name.

My Committee wants to explore this as an example of science communication. Was it a triumph of public engagement or a PR disaster. Well also want to know how NERC intends to build on the mass coverage theyve attracted and engage people with the vital polar science that Boaty will be enabling.

Oh man. WHAT A TIME TO BE ALIVE.

Source: Herald Sun.

Photo: NERC.
Its done.

Boaty McBoatface is no more. Well, kind of.

After ascending all the way to bloody British Parliament, the issue of naming that big, red polar research vessel has been now finalised: world, get ready to meet the RRS Sir David Attenborough.





New polar research ship to be named RRS Sir David Attenborough in tribute to a great broadcaster & natural scientist pic.twitter.com/eI07JTje6R  Jo Johnson (@JoJohnsonMP) May 6, 2016

Attenborough is obviously chuffed with the news. He said he hopes everyone who suggested a name will feel just as inspired to follow the ships progress as it explores our polar regions.

I have been privileged to explore the worlds deepest oceans alongside amazing teams of researchers, and with this new polar research ship they will be able to go further and discover more than ever before.

FWIW, RRS Sir David Attenborough came a respectable fifth in the public vote, just behind RRS Its Bloody Cold Here.

After perhaps choosing the only name possible that wouldnt incense keen onlookers  after all, we do all love a bit of Dave, and his achievements as an environmental advocate are legendary  Science Minister Jo Johnson took to Twitter to announce the moniker Boaty would live on.

Hello #BoatyMcBoatface! The name lives on as the remotely operated vehicle aboard RRS Sir David Attenborough pic.twitter.com/o05NByBFhd  Jo Johnson (@JoJohnsonMP) May 6, 2016

Johnson said the lead-up to the announcement and that bonkers public vote had captured the imaginations of millions, so theyre ensuring that the Boaty name lives on through the sub-sea vehicle that will support the research crew, and the polar science education program that will bring their work to life.

James Hand, the bloke behind the Boaty name, also had some pretty nice things to say about the Natural Environment Research Councils decision:

My view on #BoatyMcBoatface living on! Wont be saying anything else, so please contact @NERCscience for more. pic.twitter.com/NtHJyfeMRc  James Hand (@JamesHand) May 6, 2016

You know what? Were almost okay with this, too.

Almost.

Source: ABC.

Photo: NERC.
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brightcove.createExperiences(); Rob Kardashian and King Cairo are becoming fast friends.

The reality star hung out with the 3-year-old son of his girlfriend Blac Chyna (with her ex Tyga) this past Easter Sunday at Chynas home in Los Angeles.

In several Snapchats, Chyna, 27, filmed King Cairo dyeing Easter eggs with her and Kardashian, 29, as well as videos of the two guys playing in a toy car outside.

Oh my God, Chyna says in one video, filming her Kardashian perched precariously on the toy car as King Cairo drives it around. Yo, these guys are crazy.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BDejl_7FkUf/

https://www.instagram.com/p/BDej3NWlkVL/

Kardashian and Chyna returned to Los Angeles Sunday afternoon after a weekend of partying in Atlanta, where they hit up two strip clubs: Crazy Horse on Friday night and Onyx on Saturday.

Kardashian didnt attend his familys Easter celebration on Sunday, which included a morning church service followed by brunch and an Easter egg hunt at Kim Kardashian West and Kanye Wests Bel Air house.

However, it appears King Cairo was at the Kardashian-Jenner Easter celebration earlier in the day on Sunday with his dad Tyga, who is dating Kardashians 18-year-old sister Kylie Jenner.

Tyga, 26, shared several pictures and videos of his son from the get-together at the Wests home.

Easter savage, he captioned an adorable video of King Cairo trying to rip open a present with his teeth.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BDeFtXlqepl/

https://www.instagram.com/p/BDeNow6KegV/

The young king, he captioned picture of the father-son duo holding hands and carrying Easter gift baskets.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BDeN1aIqeg3/

While Kardashians relationship with Chyna created tension when they took it public in January (largely due to fact that she is Kylies boyfriends Tygas ex-fiancee), the family appears to have more or less buried the hatchet.

Kris [Jenner] is actually super stoked on them being together now, a source told PEOPLE last week. She feels like Rob was pulled out of his depression phase because of her.

And while the insider said the women in his family would rather their brother date someone else, [they] just want him to be happy so theyre accepting it.
East Jordan asks voters for fire equipment millage

East Jordan is asking voters for a 1.5 mills increase for fire equipment in the upcoming November election.
Saudi oil thinking deepens split on OPEC strategy



Frustrated delegate declares OPEC "dead"

LONDON/DUBAI

Petroleumworld.com 05 04 2016

As OPEC officials gathered this week to formulate a long-term strategy, few in the room expected the discussions would end without a clash. But even the most jaded delegates got more than they had bargained with.

"OPEC is dead," declared one frustrated official, according to two sources who were present or briefed about the Vienna meeting.

This was far from the first time that OPEC's demise has been proclaimed in its 56-year history, and the oil exporters' group itself may yet enjoy a long life in the era of cheap crude.

Saudi Arabia, OPEC's most powerful member, still maintains that collective action by all producers is the best solution for an oil market that has dived since mid-2014.

But events at Monday's meeting of OPEC governors suggest that if Saudi Arabia gets its way, then one of the group's central strategies - of managing global oil prices by regulating supply - will indeed go to the grave.

In a major shift in thinking, Riyadh now believes that targetting prices has become pointless as the weak global market reflects structural changes rather than any temporary trend, according to sources familiar with its views.

OPEC is already split over how to respond to cheap oil. Last month tensions between Saudi Arabia and its arch-rival Iran ruined the first deal in 15 years to freeze crude output and help to lift global prices.

These resurfaced at the long-term strategy meeting of the OPEC governors, officials who report to their countries' oil ministers.

According to the sources, it was a delegate from a non-Gulf Arab country who pronounced OPEC dead in remarks directed at the Saudi representative as they argued over whether the group should keep targeting prices.

Iran, represented by its governor Hossein Kazempour Ardebili, has been arguing that this is precisely what OPEC was created for and hence "effective production management" should be one of its top long-term goals.

But Saudi governor Mohammed al-Madi said he believed the world has changed so much in the past few years that it has become a futile exercise to try to do so, sources say.

"OPEC should recognise the fact that the market has gone through a structural change, as is evident by the market becoming more competitive rather than monopolistic," al-Madi told his counterparts inside the meeting, according to sources familiar with the discussions.

"The market has evolved since the 2010-2014 period of high prices and the challenge for OPEC now, as well as for non-OPEC (producers), is to come to grips with recent market developments," al-Madi said, according to the sources.

ORCHESTRATION

For decades Saudi Arabia had a preferred oil price target and if it didn't like the prevailing market level, it would try to orchestrate a production cut or increase in OPEC. It would contribute the lion's share of the adjustment and forgive smaller and poorer members if they failed to comply with the group's agreement.

Back in 2008, the late King Abdullah named $75 a barrel as the kingdom's "fair" oil price, most likely after consultations with the long-serving oil minister Ali al-Naimi.

When the Saudis orchestrated the last output cut in 2008 - to support prices during the global economic crisis - oil jumped fairly quickly back above $100 from below $40. Later Riyadh again made known its price preference on a few occasions but in recent years it has effectively stopped sending any signals.

This follows the fundamental changes on oil markets. In the past five years, the development of unconventional oil production from U.S. shale deposits and other sources such as Canadian oil sands has made redundant the idea that crude is a scarce and finite resource. Russia, which is not an OPEC member, has also contributed to the ample global supply.

"NO FREE RIDERS"

Dispensing with price targets represents a massive change in Saudi thinking. This is now being driven largely by 31-year-old Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who took over as the ultimate decision maker of the country's energy and economic policies last year.

When oil was viewed as scarce, the kingdom thought it had to maximise its long-term revenues even if that meant pumping fewer barrels and yielding market share to rival producers, according to several sources familiar with the Saudi thinking.

With the importance of oil declining, Riyadh has decided it is wiser to prioritise market share, the sources say. It believes it will be better off producing more at today's low prices than reducing output, only to sell the oil for even less in the future as global demand ebbs.

On top of this, Riyadh has pressing short-term needs including tackling a budget deficit which hit 367 billion riyals ($97.9 billion) or 15 percent of gross domestic product in 2015.

"The oil industry is, relatively speaking, not a growth industry any more," said one of the sources familiar with the Saudi views inside the OPEC governors' meeting.

In the past, low oil prices used to push global demand much higher but today's rising efficiency of motor vehicles, new technology and environmental policies have put a lid on growth.

Despite record low prices in the past year, demand is not expected to grow by more than 1 million barrels per day in 2016, just one percent of global demand.

One thing is guaranteed: the kingdom will not go back to the old pattern of cutting output any time soon to support prices for the benefit of all producers, Saudi sources say.

"The bottom line is that there will be no free riders any more," al-Madi said at Monday's meeting. "Some OPEC members should 'walk the talk' first," he told his colleagues.

Even Riyadh's rivals doubt it will perform any U-turn. "Saudi Arabia doesn't give a damn about OPEC any more. They are after U.S. shale, Canadian oil sands and Russia," a non-Gulf OPEC source said. ($1 = 3.7500 riyals)






The family of a Vineland, N.J., man who was fatally shot by police last month has hired a Philadelphia lawyer to conduct its own investigation of the incident.

Richard Bard Jr.'s family said Thursday in a statement released by Conrad J. Benedetto's firm that the shooting was "just wrong."

"We just want answers why this happened," said Dana German-Bunton, Bard's mother. "There are too many unanswered questions."

Authorities said Bard, 31, and John Bain, 31, also of Vineland, robbed a man near Seventh and Cherry Streets in Vineland around 1 a.m. April 17. Police arrived and chased Bard and Bain on foot, the Cumberland County Prosecutor's Office said.

Bard fired at the officers during the pursuit, and one officer returned fire, the Prosecutor's Office said.

Bard was pronounced dead at Inspira Medical Center Vineland. The officer, who has not been identified, was placed on routine administrative leave.

Bain escaped but was arrested April 19. Authorities said Bain repeatedly struck the robbery victim in the head with a handgun.

Bain was charged with robbery and unlawful possession of a weapon and held on $200,000 bail.

Benedetto said in Thursday's statement that Bard's family had requested privacy to grieve.

"We will do our utmost to conduct a thorough and fair investigation to get the Bard family answers that they deserve," Benedetto said.

The county Prosecutor's Office is investigating the shooting to determine whether the officers' use of force was justified, as is standard procedure in police-involved deaths in New Jersey. The office declined to comment, citing the pending inquiry.

The Prosecutor's Office is also investigating the case of another Vineland man, Phillip White, 32, who died after he was arrested in Vineland on March 31, 2015. White's family said this week that they have yet to receive autopsy or toxicology reports from the Prosecutor's Office, leaving White's official cause of death unknown more than a year later.

White's encounter with police began when officers responded to a 911 call of a man screaming on the 100 block of Grape Street. Videos of parts of the encounter from bystanders showed police releasing a dog onto White, who lay on the ground as an officer knelt over him. Authorities said White had tried to grab the officer's holstered weapon.

Police said they called for medical assistance after noticing White was having "respiratory distress." He was transported to Inspira, where he was pronounced dead.

Benedetto represented White's family early in that case. Woodbury lawyer Stanley King is now the family's attorney.

King and White's family have enlisted forensic pathologist Michael Baden to review White's case and offer his opinion. Baden performed an autopsy for Michael Brown's family after a police officer fatally shot Brown in Ferguson, Mo., in August 2014.

mboren@phillynews.com

856-779-3829 @borenmc
The Venues

Brand new for 2016, the CES Golden Tour will showcase the three most aggressive stops on this seasons schedule: VP EnduroFest at China Peak on June 25, Northstar Enduro on August 27-28, and Kamikaze Bike Games Enduro on September 15-18.The tour is a triple crown series within a series intended to spotlight top talent and events. This elite series will serve as a stepping stone to international competition for new riders and help established riders maintain a high average level of competition throughout the year. Boasting a $24,000 overall prize list for the three events, each race is awarded a $4,000 cash purse to the top ten for both Pro Men and Pro Women categories.2016 Golden Tour points will be awarded in each of the three rounds according to the established CES points table, and will be scored as a series within CES for Pro Men and Pro Women categories only. The Golden Tour represents an excellent opportunity for CES up and comers to test themselves on international level courses against some of the best in North America.In the Pro Womens field, Juliana Bicycles duo Kathy Pruitt and Kelli Emmett are committed to the Golden Tour as an integral part of their race calendar which also includes the Enduro World Series (EWS). Pruitt and Emmett will come up against CES 2015 Champion Amy Morrison of the new Rabobank/Marin professional enduro team, and GT Factory Team rider Rachel Throop, as well as CES standout Lauren Gregg (Ford/Fuji/VP/FOX). The Golden Tour will raise the level of the already impressive womens field even higher for CES in 2016.The Pro Mens field will pit current NAET Champion Kyle Warner (Marin/Suntour) against 2015 CES silver medalist Evan Geankopolis (Rabobank/Marin) and Ibis Cycles Enduro Teams young gun Dillon Santos. The inaugural Golden Tours stacked field will also include 2015 Kamikaze Bike Games Enduro champion Ryan Gardner (Kona) and the legendary Brian Lopes (Intense). The talent level in CES Pro Men category runs deep and visiting EWS pros have made the competition even tougher. 2016 is sure to draw significant talent, and a number of big name riders are expected at the start for any and all rounds.VP EnduroFest at China Peak. June 25, China Peak Mountain Resort in LakeshoreVP Endurofest at China Peak will kick off the Golden Tour with a real test of skill and endurance. Organized by CES founding sponsor VP Components, the event is well known as one tough mother with race times coming in at around four hours, and nearly 6,000 feet of climbing. The dusty, loose course features some of the fastest and rockiest racing the Sierra has to offer on hand-dug rustic trails. EnduroFest Race Director Erik Saunders says, We are happy to again put on a race that has become a riders favorite. Saunders adds, The riders who are on the EWS all give us high marks for technically challenging and physically demanding courses on par with what they expect for a top level race.Northstar Enduro. August 27-28, Northstar California Resort in TruckeeThe Northstar Enduro offers a memorable two-day race on tough courses featuring meticulously carved berms, steep rocky sections, huge jumps, and plenty of off-camber challenges. CES Director Steve Gemelos says, Northstars mountain bike park is ranked as one of the best in the world and were thrilled to include it in our Golden Tour line up.Kamikaze Bike Games Enduro. September 15-18, Mammoth Mountain in Mammoth LakesThe Kamikaze Bike Games Enduro will cap off both the Golden Tour and the series overall. Mammoth Mountains legendary kitty litter terrain and technical courses will challenge the best of the best, pushing top athletes to the limit in their push to the podium. In the whole evolution of Enduro racing we are very excited to be a part of the Golden Tour to help bring races like this to riders, says Kamikaze Bike Games Director Bill Cockroft. He adds, While Enduro racing is not new by any means, it is still evolving, both riders and events, and we are excited to participate in that evolution.Not racing? Come cheer on the racers with fellow enduro enthusiasts, or follow the racing action as it unfolds by following CES on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Coverage will feature interviews, bike checks, course previews and more!MENTIONS: @vpcomponents
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2016 EPT Grand Final 25,750 High Roller Day 2: Stern Leads Final 12

May 05, 2016 Christian Zetzsche Contributor

Day 2 of the 2016 PokerStars and Monte-Carlo Casino EPT Grand Final 25,750 High Roller finished with 12 players left in the field and Ofer Zvi Stern in the lead.

Before play on Day 2, another 11 entries were tallied, including four hopefuls that won entry to the tournament in last night's hyper-turbo satellite. With 231 entries in total, a new record attendance for this event was set and a prize pool of over 5.65 million was created. The top 31 spots are guaranteed at least 49,800, with 1.197 million awaiting the champion.

Among those that will be returning to the tables of the Salles des Etoiles were 100,000 Super High Roller champion Ole Schemion, Bryn Kenney, Igor Kurganov, John Juanda, Tobias Reinkemeier, and PokerStars team pros Jason Mercier and Liv Boeree. But unfortunately for those players, all of them joined the rail within the first hour.

Joining the rail as an eliminated player was Mike McDonald, who failed to earn any points for towards EPT Player of the Year and close the gap he's behind Steve O'Dwyer.

After six 60-minute levels, only 36 hopefuls headed to the dinner break with 2015 World Series of Poker November Nine member Stern in the lead.

After dinner, [Removed:17] shoved into Imad Derwiche with a busted straight and flush draw and the runner-up of this event last year called with a set of jacks to leave Yan with dust. Ben Heath lost a flip with ace-king to queens, and 2014 WSOP Main Event champion Martin Jacobson could not get there with ace-nine versus Derwiche's pocket sevens.

Ami Barer was eventually crowned the "bubble boy" after taking a flip for his last 10 big blinds with the . Julian Stuer looked him up with the and hit the on the river to secure a payday for all remaining participants.

Going back to the aforementioned O'Dywer, he reached the money which meant that he added some distance between himself and McDonald as the current leader in the EPT Player of the Year race. O'Dwyer was the first one out once the money was reached, but he can't be feeling too bad with points and a cash to take away from it.

Also of note was the run of Niall Farrell, as he entered the day with the chip lead. Ultimately, Farrell busted in 20th place.

A man who is no stranger to poker success, Daniel Negreanu reached the last two tables and was eliminated in 15th place after three-way action with Alexandru Papazian and Stern. Papazian check-raised a flop with the and Negreanu then shoved with the . Stern out of the way, and Papazian called before he went on to hit the on the turn to bust "Kid Poker."

Stuer and Byron Kaverman were eliminated in the last level of the night and 12 players bagged up chips. Stern was in the lead after claiming 1.638 million, and we was followed by Max Silver on 1.342 million. Alexandros "mexican222" Kolonias (1.338 million), Papazian (1.231 million), Ivan Deyra (1.16 million), and Rafael Da Silva Moraes (1.026 million) are the others with seven-figure chip counts.

Last year's runner-up Derwiche was still in contention as well, and he'll look to finish one spot better this time around. He bagged up 840,000.

Day 3 Seating Assignments

Table Seat Name Country Chips 1 1 Anthony Zinno USA 816,000 1 2 --empty-- -- -- 1 3 Imad Derwiche France 840,000 1 4 Zvi Stern Israel 1,638,000 1 5 Ramin Hajiyev Azerbaijan 366,000 1 6 --empty-- -- -- 1 7 [Removed:2] Lebanon 907,000 1 8 Alexandru Papazian Romania 1,231,000 2 1 Saar Wilf Israel 509,000 2 2 Thomas Miller USA 383,000 2 3 Max Silver UK 1,342,000 2 4 Alexandros Kolonias Greece 1,338,000 2 5 Rafael Da Silva Moraes Brazil 1,026,000 2 6 Ivan Deyra France 1,160,000 2 7 --empty-- -- -- 2 8 --empty-- -- --

The 12 left have locked up 92,250, but all eyes are set on the first-place payout of 1.197. Action will resume at 12.30 p.m. local time on Friday, with Level 22 and blinds of 12,000/24,000/3,000. The PokerNews Live Reporting team will be on hand to provide all the action until a winner is crowned, so stay tuned for more coverage from Monaco.

During the 2016 EPT Grand Final festival at the conclusion of Season 12, the tour announced the key dates to pencil in on your calendar for Season 13. The kickoff event will once again be in the beautiful city of Barcelona, and it is scheduled to run Aug. 16-28 with another jam-packed offering, including the always-booming EPT Barcelona 5,300 Main Event.

Dates for EPT Malta in October and EPT Prague in December were also announced, and you can find out more by checking out the story right here on PokerNews.

Get all the latest PokerNews updates on your social media outlets. Follow us on Twitter and find us on both Facebook and Google+!

Sharelines Ofer Zvi Stern leads the final 12 players after Day 2 in the 2016 EPT Grand Final 25,750 High Roller.
Among the four dozen alleged Gangster Disciples members charged in indictments unsealed Wednesday, one sticks out: A former Atlanta-area police officer who prosecutors say claimed to be a hit man for the violent gang and tipped off other members about police activity, reports the Associated Press.

An indictment filed in federal court in Atlanta last week names 32 people and a second indictment in Memphis, TN, charges 16 more. The 48 alleged gang members are accused of participating in coordinated criminal activity, including murder, drug trafficking, robbery, carjacking, extortion and fraud. Most of them face racketeering charges.

Vancito Gumbs, who was an officer in DeKalb County, just outside Atlanta, tipped off fellow gang members to police activity, including an October raid on a bar that he knew a gang member frequented, the indictment says. He also told someone he killed people as a hit man for the gang.

It's not clear, though, whether Gumbs ever actually killed anyone and he doesn't currently face murder charges.
Whether you are a rookie or a seasoned vet, encounters with aggressive civilians who challenge your authority have become the new norm. Add in a genuine disdain for law enforcement, a greed for potential lawsuit payouts, and smartphones capturing every moment, and you can see why law enforcement has felt compelled to take a step back and re-evaluate certain situations and our methodology. As times change, our responses need to as well. Communications and sensitivity skills training are not enough. In fact, the third and critical component of training that should be mandatory for all law enforcement officers is defensive tactics.

Most officers will only receive a few hours of defensive tactics training during their basic training at the police academy. An unfortunate reality is that most will never see any further training in this area throughout the duration of their careers. This lack of training has resulted in serious injuries and even death for both the subjects of arrest and the officers who struggled to subdue them. This is why it's important for every officer to learn tried-and-true techniques, like taking control of dangerous subjects by taking their legs out from under them.

Training Methodology

Countless videos posted on social media and various internet sites show officers struggling and becoming increasingly frustrated with a combative subject. In some of these instances you see officers losing control because they cannot effectively control and arrest the subject.

This is why ForceEffects Training developed a simple and effective way to subdue and control a person resisting arrest in a matter of seconds. The goal is to save lives and careers and decrease exposure to lawsuits. Of course nothing is 100% foolproof, every situation is unique, and there are a great variety of methods and techniques available that can be utilized to effectively subdue a combative subject. These techniques were developed by law enforcement officer, martial arts expert, and member of the Institute of Defensive Methods, Cesar Olavarria.

Specifically, the defensive tactics were designed after studying the smartphone videos captured over the years that involve two or more officers in the arrest process. This process is broken down into several simple steps. In any combative situation, it is highly recommended that a minimum of two officers and ideally three be involved during the arrest process.

Go for the Legs

I'm not sure why this is, but it seems universal for officers to go for the neck area when trying to bring someone down. Some call it a choke hold, others call it a takedown maneuver. I don't care what you call itit is ineffective and dangerous more often than not. The legs are the strongest part of a person's body; use this knowledge to your advantage and follow these simple steps to subdue someone.

Instead of wrapping your arm around a combative subject's neck, bend your knees and place your shoulder in between the person's inner thigh area. If you are capable of applying a rear choke or takedown maneuver then you should be able to reach down for the subject's ankles.

If the person of interest is wearing long pants, grab hold of the bottom portion of the pants. Otherwise, reach for the ankles.

Immediately begin to stand, raising your shoulder vertically as you lift the subject's buttocks while simultaneously pulling the ankles/pants toward you. It is very important to remember the lift or you will lose control of the person's legs on the way down and allow him or her to turn on you.

One of two things will happen at this point. The second and/or third officer will be engaged in the process of attempting to control the person's wrists in order to handcuff him. We have seen it a million times over that the officer(s) will not let go and this will assist in bringing the person down and avoid having the subject hit his or her face on the ground. It is human instinct for people to immediately extend their arms in front of them to break their fall. Use this to your advantage.

Once the subject is on his or her stomach, quickly cross the legs forward and sit on the ankles as you lean slightly forward. At this point, the actor will be immobilized and unable to strike you or your partner(s). For additional control, hold the person's head down on the ground.

What typically happens next is subjects will clench their arms underneath their chest, interfering with your ability to place the handcuffs on them. Frustration often kicks in at this point and officers begin using force, such as punches and/or striking the subject's ribs with a baton in order to get him to release his arms. As the force continues, and the repeated strikes don't work, witnesses become enraged at what they perceive to be police brutality. But you don't need to let this happen. There is a simple and effective solution for this as well.

Utilizing a baton, insert and wedge it in through the subject's bicep and armpit. Grab hold of both ends of the baton and crank/steer it from the waist over the subject's ear. The actor's arm will immediately come loose and the wrist will be perfectly positioned behind his or her waist, allowing you to place a cuff on it. Repeat this process on the other arm.

In some instances the subject may be very strong and not allow you to wedge his arm with the baton. Again, keep in mind that by this point several officers will be holding the actor down. The officer sitting on the subject's crossed legs can lower and straighten his legs (ankles kept crossed) and again sit on his ankles. Place the baton underneath the subject's shins. Raise the baton from one end and rub the baton up and down on the shins. This will create incredibly uncomfortable pain and discomfort, forcing the person to immediately release that tight hold of his arms and allow one of the other officers to pull back his arms or quickly shove and wedge his or her baton under the subject's armpit. Now you can steer the baton as previously mentioned and quickly handcuff the actor.

The key is to remember all of these moves by visualizing them in your mind prior to having an encounter. The goal is to reduce or completely avoid injuring the subject, yourself, and your partners. Officers have implemented these easy techniques with great success. You, too, can use them to take the fight out of a subject quickly and efficiently without losing your cool or your job.

Detective Sergeant Edwin Pantoja is a 28-year law enforcement veteran and founder of ForceEffects Training, designed to teach anyone in a combative situation how to safely and efficiently subdue a person resisting arrest. To learn more about the training program, visit http://forceeffectstraining.com.
A housing authority police officer suffered a gunshot wound in the leg Wednesday night at the Cuyahoga Community College's Western Campus firing range after a gun jammed.

A group of Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority police officers were using the gun range at the Parma campus after 9 p.m. when one of the officers' guns jammed, according to an email sent to Tri-C faculty Wednesday.

Another CMHA officer who is a range instructor came over to the officer to help fix the gun, a campus spokesman said. While they were working on the gun, it accidentally fired. The bullet struck the officer in the leg, the email said.

The officer was taken to Parma General Hospital. His condition was stable, and his injury was not life-threatening, campus spokesman John Horton told Cleveland.com.
Photo: Straight 8 photography

It's often true that American law enforcement adopts technology that has been first battle tested by the military. This has certainly been true for rifle optics. But the next great innovation in law enforcement firearms accessories is not coming to you from the military, it's coming from the world of competitive shooters who participate in speed and accuracy events. That innovation is the micro reflex sight on a duty pistol.

Predicting the future is a hazardous occupation, but barring some unseen events, reflex sights will likely be on many law enforcement duty handguns within the next five to 10 years. The reasons why this transition from iron sights alone to co-witnessed pistol optics will probably occur are about the shooting skills new recruits bring to the academy, the needs of aging officers, and the benefits of improved accuracy and faster target acquisition in critical incidents.

Easier Training

Firearms instructors have long groused that many of today's law enforcement recruits have little or no experience with handguns. From an instructor point of view that can be both good and bad because those recruits don't have a lifetime of bad habits that the instructors have to correct. However, it can make it difficult for them to grasp concepts such as sight alignment between the front and rear sights.

Reflex sightsdefined as single-power optics that reflect an illuminated reticle such as a red dot back to the shooter's eye as a single point of aimeliminate the need for sight alignment. All the shooter has to do is put the dot on the target, then use proper trigger technique, grip, etc., and the bullet will hit the target. Of course that does not mean recruits won't have to learn sight alignment as well, but it will help them become more comfortable shooting.

Not only is it easier to teach new shooters how to aim with an optic, it also likely matches their experience. Many new recruits have no background in shooting handguns, but they do have video game skills. And in most video games, aiming involves a single point of reference.

Presbyopia

And it's not just new officers who could benefit from the single point of aim offered by a red dot sight on a handgun. Veteran officers often find their shooting skills diminishing as their eyes find it hard and harder to focus on the sights.

Most people around the age of 40 start to experience an age-related vision problem called presbyopia that makes it more difficult to see things close up. This is why most older people use reading glasses or bifocals, and it's also why you'll sometimes see older shooters push their handguns out as far as possible in an attempt to see good sight alignment.

Reflex optics on handguns can make it easier for these officers to shoot well. Brown says one state agency he works with has numerous older officers and has been very receptive to the Glock MOS models. "Before we launched the MOS models, they were sending their guns out to have the slides milled for mounting optics," he adds.

Long-Range Shots

Pistol optics could also help minimize collateral casualties in police shootings. It is not unheard of for innocents to be wounded and even killed when officers open fire on a threat. The improved accuracy and faster target acquisition offered by handgun optics could help prevent such tragedies.

There is no doubt that a shooter with basic skills can improve handgun accuracy substantially through the use of an optic. And proficient shooters can extend the effective range of their pistols substantially by adding an optic. "A skilled shooter with a Glock MOS (Modular Optic System) and an optic can hit a six-inch steel plate at 100 yards all day long," says Glock East Coast regional manager Jamey Brown.

Of course many officers would say they will never have a need for making a pistol shot at 100 yards in a police operation. Frank Martello, Trijicon's assistant manager of law enforcement programs, has a response: "When are you going to need to shoot a handgun that far? When you need to," he says, speaking of the capabilities of the company's RMR pistol optic.

Brown says the Glock MOS with a mounted optic is popular with some school resource and campus police officers who believe they may one day have to make a long-range shot with a pistol to stop an active shooter. "They know they can't carry rifles on the job, but they also know some of the hallways where they work are long," Brown explains.

Guns Made for Optics

More and more duty-style and off-duty handguns are being offered in optics-ready versions.

In 2012 Smith & Wesson announced that it was offering four M&P Pro pistols in an optics-ready line called C.O.R.E. (Competition Optics Ready Equipment). The M&P Pro C.O.R.E. pistols offer mounting options for a wide variety of accessory optics. These were the first duty-style handguns to come from the manufacturer ready for optics.

Glock entered the market in 2015, debuting four pistolsG34, G35, G40, and G41in the MOS (Modular Optic System) line. Then earlier this year the company added the G17 and G19 to the MOS line. Each MOS pistol comes with four plates that can be attached to the slide in order to accommodate a variety of optics. The optics do not come with the pistol.

SIG Sauer is taking a different tack with its optics-ready pistols. The company has established an Electro-Optics division in Portland, OR, and is producing its own optics, including a handgun reflex sight called the Romeo1. SIG says the Romeo1 will be available as a separate product later this year, but it will first launch sometime this quarter in a special P320 pistol combo designated as the P320RX. The P320RX package includes the pistol with milled slide, Romeo1 reflex sight, and suppressor height sights that are co-witnessed with the optic, in addition to the standard P320 accessories such as magazines.

Andy York, president of SIG's Electro-Optic Division, says the Romeo1 was designed for hard use. The sight is made of magnesium and weighs only 21 grams, but SIG torture tests it above and beyond industry standards, according to York. "The testing is pretty brutal," he says. The torture endured by the Romeo1 includes firing of 2,000 rounds of .45 +P ammunition at 8,000Gs per shot.

Duty Use

Manufacturers of optics and optics-ready handguns contacted for this article say that early adopters of handgun optics tend to be tactical operators who want to use the same types of red-dot sighting systems on their pistols as on their rifles for faster targeting, enhanced situational awareness, and ease of transition.

Another reason why special law enforcement units are likely to be the first adopters of handgun optics is they tend to use non-duty holsters such as thigh rigs that can more easily accommodate pistols with optics. Industry experts say the availability of duty holsters for pistols with optics may slow law enforcement's adoption of handgun optics. But it won't delay the transition for long, as more and more companies are making retention holsters for guns with optics. And some optics-equipped duty guns don't require special holsters. "Where the Romeo1 lives is actually up above many holsters, so chances are it works with the holster you have now," York says.

Brown says Glock is seeing some of its law enforcement customers hedging their bets on the future of optics on duty pistols by buying MOS pistols to replace their current model guns but running them without optics using the cover plate on the slide. "They are doing the preparation in the event they decide to go with optics," Brown says, adding that the cost of buying Glock MOS pistols is significantly less than sending pistols out to be milled for optics after purchase.

SIG's York says he believes law enforcement's transition to handgun optics will follow the same path as its transition to optics on patrol rifles. "There was a time when I was with [another optics company] and we were trying to sell optics on carbines to police users, and they didn't want them. Everybody only wanted iron sights on their rifles back then."

Handgun Sights with Tritium and Fiber Optics

Numerous sight manufacturers offer tritium-powered sights, but only oneTruGlohas a patented process for combining tritium with fiber optics. This combination of fiber optic and tritium is available in TruGlo's line of TF sights, with "TF" standing for "tritium and fiber."

"TF sights glow at night and in low-light conditions and pick up ambient light in the daytime. This is a huge benefit to anybody who values accuracy in a handgun. The sight picture is the same day or night," says Pliny Gale, TruGlo product marketing manager.

TruGlo's latest TF sights are the TFX and TFX Pro lines. They both feature what Gale calls "put the ball in the cup" sight alignment. The rear notch is "U" shaped and the front post has a relatively large illuminated circle called the Focus Lock ring. The combination facilitates target acquisition, and the TFX Pro features a green rear sight and an orange front post ball for even more speed under a variety of light conditions. "It's just a coincidence that green and orange are the colors of our logo. We experimented with a variety of colors and we just found the green-orange combination to be fantastic," says Gale.

Gale says it's not unusual for law enforcement customers to buy pistols that already have night sights and replace them with TFX sights from TruGlo. And he predicts the TFX Pro series introduced earlier this year will be just as popular. "I believe TFX Pro to be the best sight on the market now," he says. www.truglo.com
About two years ago a law enforcement sales representative for ammunition maker Hornady Manufacturing learned that more and more agencies were testing and even fielding short-barreled rifle (SBR) versions of AR-15s. The representative said some of his police customers preferred SBRs because their size made them easier to use in urban operations than full-size ARs. However, the customers said they were not satisfied with the ammunition choices available for these guns. So Hornady decided to make a new version of its trademarked Tactical Application Police (TAP) ammunition to solve the problem.

Jayden Quinlan, a ballistics engineer for Hornady, says the issues experienced by many law enforcement SBR shooters stem from firing standard 5.56mm NATO rounds that were designed as ammunition for rifles with 20-inch, 16-inch, or 14.5-inch barrels in the 10.5-inch and 11.5-inch barrels of the SBRs. "When you go from a longer barrel to a shorter barrel, you are limiting the amount of time the propellant has to burn and subsequently accelerate the projectile," he says.

Shooting standard AR ammo out of an SBR can have a variety of undesirable effects, including:

The incomplete burn of the powder causes reduced muzzle velocity, terminal performance, and accuracy.

Expulsion of unburned powder from the barrel, which results in a large muzzle flash and possible accuracy degradation due to unburned powder grains striking the bullet at muzzle exit.

A dirtier weapon because the burn of the powder is so inefficient.

Louder sound signature even with suppressors.

Increased felt recoil and back pressure.

Hornady's new 75-grain TAP SBR round was the result of more than a year-and-a-half of painstaking research, development, and experimentation.

And since most of the problems with firing a standard AR round from an SBR are caused by inefficient powder burn, the propellant formulation was a key focus of the project. "We designed a powder solution from the ground up specifically for this application," says Quinlan, who adds that the formula was tweaked numerous times to make it even more efficient.

Photo: Hornady

A bullet was also designed from the ground up to match the performance of the powder and meet the needs of Hornady's law enforcement customers that use SBRs. "We were not getting the terminal performance we wanted from existing bullet designs at velocities between those of a pistol and a rifle," Quinlan says.

Hornady says the new 75-grain TAP SBR round offers SBR shooters much better performance than standard 5.56mm NATO rounds. The company's test shooters consistently fire 2-inch groups of five rounds at 100 yards using the 75-grain TAP SBR ammo from a variety of SBRs, according to Quinlan.

And improved accuracy is not the only benefit the new Hornady ammo offers SBR shooters, especially for shooters who use suppressors. "Our new TAP SBR round is cooler burning and burns more completely so the temperature input into the suppressor is less." The result, according to Quinlan, is a 6- to 7-decibel reduction in noise over a standard AR round in a suppressed SBR.

Hornady's new 75-grain TAP SBR round is now available, and Quinlan says the ammunition is getting favorable reviews from users. "I got a call from one of our police customers recently. He said he had just witnessed our ammo perform in the FBI protocol, and he had shot it. He said he could feel the difference in recoil and back pressure. He said he planned to switch ammo as soon as the paperwork could be completed."

www.hornadyle.com
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* The following is an opinion column by R Muse *

Most people who are entrenched in mythos understand that they are enamored with something that is fantasy. Of course, when that mythology or fantasy is the basis of a religion, mythos is a substitute for reality. Intelligent people may believe strongly in a myth or fallacy until they learn a few facts that changes their mindset; that is what makes them intelligent.

Over the past six months or so there has been a myth substantiated by polling claiming Senator Bernie Sanders maintains electability superiority over Hillary Clinton. As no small number of pundits and political observers have been saying for months, there is no Sanders electability superiority. Period.

During a press conference last Sunday, Senator Sanders said, The evidence is extremely clear that I would be the stronger candidate to defeat Trump or any other Republican. We appeal to virtually all the Democrats, but we do a lot better with independents. And I hope the Democrats at the national convention understand. What Sanders is ignoring, willingly, is that if all the Democrats and independents were informed, whatever appeal the Senator has would vanish in a heartbeat.

It is easy for a candidate to appear to be the party ideal when they are relatively unknown, unchallenged and untested, and except for being a champion fighting to end income inequality, most Americans on the left, right and center know very little about Senator Bernie Sanders because he has not been vetted. One thing is certain; Republicans are well-aware of Mr. Sanders history and coupled with his pledge to be a serious tax and spend socialist, they have a veritable arsenal of reality bombs to convince most voters that the idea of a Sanders presidency would be unappealing indeed.

There are a couple of related reasons why Bernie Sanders would be eaten alive and eviscerated by Republicans if he is the Democratic nominee; he has not been properly vetted publicly and Hillary Clintons campaign has not attacked him or his historical record. There are several theories for why the Clinton campaign has not attacked Sanders, not even one time, but whatever her reason it has lent credence to the idea that Bernie Sanders is a perfect candidate for Democrats, Republicans and independent voters. However, if journalists on the left had done their due diligence from the beginning, and Republicans thought Sanders was a threat in a head-to-head match-up with a Republican in November, he would not appeal to many voters other than his young idealistic supporters.

One of the primary reasons Bernie Sanders achieved a measure of success is because his base largely consists of young ideologues who are too politically naive to know if even one of his policies are realistic or not, or if their candidate really has any idea what he is talking about, or what his strategy is besides parroting political revolution. As many pundits have noted, when Sanders rabid acolytes see that there has been virtually no criticism of him, they naturally believe it is a clarion call that their devotion and enthusiasm for him is validated; obviously, some pollsters have fallen for the same myth.

There are enough recent articles by several esteemed political writers such as Sahil Kapur in Bloomberg Politics, David Corn in Mother Jones, Greg Sargent in the Washington Post, Ed Kilgore in New York, Michelle Goldberg at Slate and many others who laid out this argument; if Republicans ever trashed Sanders the way theyve trashed Clinton, whatever electability advantage he appeared to have would disappear. The most recent polls inform that it is already happening and any kind of attack on Senator Sanders weaknesses would hurt him badly in a general election.

Just a few of the issues Republicans would use against Senator Sanders is raising taxes on everyone to give more free stuff away, and unlike GOP claims against Democrats in the past, there are myriad instances of Senator Sanders own words to validate that particular claim. Republicans would also dig up Sanders quotes calling himself clearly anti-capitalistic and praising communist countries as superior to America, and assertions that young people in China and Cuba are superior to the young people in America. Obviously, those sentiments would not go over well with Americas electorate and Republicans would hammer Sanders mercilessly with them.

Citing any of these minor issues are not part of a partisan hit job on Senator Sanders from this column, but if a Republican candidate latched on to them they would tear apart support for Bernie if used as an opposition campaign issue. In fact, William Saletan has recently written about how support for Senator Sanders positions falls apart when people hear the details; particularly when they learn that their own taxes would increase dramatically to give other people a bunch of free stuff.

One particular point that William Saletan revealed is that as the Democratic nominee for president, Republicans would force Senator Sanders to address his former opposition to the public school system and explain why he praised parents who believe that it is better for their children not to go to school at all than for them to attend a normal establishment school.

Republicans would also force him to justify claiming that sexual repression causes cancer, explain if he still opposes the concept of private charities, and whether or not he still supports the government takeover of the television industry; a standard practice in communist nations and an issue Republicans would use to beat Sanders silly.

This list of GOP opposition could go on for a few thousand words, and would certainly include Senator Sanders close relationship with the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party, for which he served as a presidential elector in 1980.

In a general election Republicans would also revel in informing the electorate that Bernie Sanders called for abolishing the U.S. military budget during the Iranian hostage crisis in which Bernie proclaimed solidarity with revolutionary Iran.

Even though Republicans have had no reason or incentive to attack Sanders the candidate and in fact have worked tirelessly to aid his candidacy, imagine their glee at informing voters that the Senator spent time in Nicaragua in 1985 and joined a Sandinista rally where the crowd chanted Here, there, everywhere  The Yankee will die.

There is little doubt that many, if not all, of Senator Sanders economic ideas are good; they just are not realistic in this political landscape. And, according to several highly-regarded liberal economists, Senator Sanders economic plans numbers just dont add up; it is something Republicans would seize upon even if the media failed to report it.

It is likely that more voters would be skeptical of many of Senator Sanders plans but the media is too focused on attacking Clinton and aiding Sanders to report in a fair and balanced manner. Remember, it was about a year ago that the ultra-conservative National Review published a story detailing exactly how Republicans would help, donate to, and whenever possible vote for Bernie Sanders in the primaries to weaken Hillary Clinton.

The whole point of this screed is not to demean Senator Sanders, but to dispel the myth that his electability is far superior to Clinton in a general election. Not only is that not true, it is a fallacy along the lines of a democratic socialist single-handedly breaking up the banks, cajoling Republicans to raise taxes 36, 46, or 56 percent or appointing a SCOTUS justice whose first ruling will overturn Citizens United.

This column often bemoans the dumbing down of the electorate, but dumb or not, if Republicans attacked Sanders the way they attack Clinton, his electability would vanish. Because as political pundits around the country admit, If you were designing the perfect target for Republicans, youd create Bernie Sanders. Fortunately for Senator Sanders, he will likely escape the unrelenting Republican attacks that would dispel his electability superiority as the myth that it is and put Donald Trump in the White House.
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US officials who have been briefed on the investigation say that the FBI has found no evidence that Hillary Clinton broke the law with her private email server.

CNN reported:

Some of Hillary Clintons closest aides, including her longtime adviser Huma Abedin, have provided interviews to federal investigators, as the FBI probe into the security of her private email server nears completion, U.S. officials briefed on the investigation tell CNN. The investigation is still ongoing, but so far investigators havent found evidence to prove that Clinton willfully violated the law the U.S. officials say.

The investigation is still ongoing, but it doubtful that the FBIs upcoming interview of former Sec. of State Clinton is going to reveal the kind of bombshell that will change the likely findings.

Hillary Clinton has said from the beginning of this Republican created scandal that she did nothing wrong, and the FBI is on their way to finding that she was telling the truth.

Republicans have bet everything on the email scandal. If the FBI releases a report that concludes that Clinton committed no crime, it will be another blow to the GOPs hopes for victory in November. The email scandal has never gained the traction with voters that Republicans hoped it would.

Congressional Republicans have wasted millions of dollars investigating Hillary Clintons emails, and it looks more and more like they will have nothing to show for their efforts, but Donald Trump as their presidential nominee, and the potential for a landslide defeat in November.
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Rick Perry, who is currently facing felony abuse of power charges in Texas, has grudgingly endorsed Donald Trump for president.

According to CNN, Perry offered the weakest possible endorsement of Trump:

Perry, speaking by phone from his hometown of Roundtop, Texas, acknowledged Trump is not his ideal choice. When Perry was a candidate for president earlier in the 2016 cycle, he was the first to come out and criticize Trump and question his conservative credentials, calling his candidacy a cancer on conservatism. He is not a perfect man. But what I do believe is that he loves this country and he will surround himself with capable, experienced people and he will listen to them, Perry said Thursday. He wasnt my first choice, wasnt my second choice, but he is the peoples choice, Perry added.

Perrys comments continue the trend of Republicans holding their noses while endorsing Trump in the weakest way possible. Perrys endorsement was was the equivalent of admitting that Republicans are stuck with Trump, so they have no other choice but to support him.

Rick Perry is a national laughingstock, who is facing felony abuse of power charges while governor of Texas and even he didnt want to endorse Donald Trump.

The guy who became a national joke by not being able to remember the three government agencies he would cut during a 2012 Republican presidential debate thinks he is too good for Donald Trump.

The Perry endorsement of Trump is truly a case of one idiot supporting another.
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Just when Republicans thought having Donald Trump as the leader of their party couldnt get worse, Trump has completely freaked out conservatives by picking a finance chair for his campaign who worked for George Soros and had contributed heavily to Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and Democrats.

Buzzfeed has the details on the Trump campaigns new finance chair, Steve Mnuchin:

Although Mnuchin has given to Republicans, his financial ties to the Democratic Party and liberal causes appear to be significantly deeper. Overall, Mnuchin has given more than $125,000 since 1998 to candidates and committees that disclose their donors  more than half of which went to Democrats, according to FEC records. He contributed to Democrats Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Edwards, and Chris Dodd in the 2008 presidential election cycle. He also gave to Obama and Clintons Senate campaigns and supported Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

Republicans like Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska is already calling for another Republican to run a third party contest against Donald Trump. One can imagine that Trumps selection of a person who has supported Democrats more than Republicans is going over like a lead balloon among those who dont want to see the presumptive Republican nominee leading their party.

Trump himself has donated to Democrats in the past. His conservative credibility has been under fire from the moment that he joined the race from the right, so it makes sense that he would select a finance chair for his campaign that has a bit in common with his history.

However, it conservatives disliked and distrusted Trump before today, heads will be exploding over his choice of finance chair.

The conservative chatter over a third party alternative to Trump could grow from a whisper to a roar.
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While appearing on Fox and Friends, Donald Trump told one lie that demonstrated why both the presumptive Republican nominee and Fox News are endangering America.

Trump tweeted this absurd picture of himself with a taco bowl and proclaimed his love for Hispanics on Cinco de Mayo:

Happy #CincoDeMayo! The best taco bowls are made in Trump Tower Grill. I love Hispanics! https://t.co/ufoTeQd8yA pic.twitter.com/k01Mc6CuDI  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 5, 2016

He followed it up by claiming that he set a record for retweets during an interview with Fox and Friends on Friday:

https://youtu.be/Ejm2LR1xNCU

Trump said, As of yesterday, I had 59,000 retweets. 59,000 in a short period of what? Thats almost got to be some kind of a record. People loved it. Im going to do great with Hispanics. I mean, Im going to do fantastically because Im bringing jobs back to America.

It was a completely ridiculous lie. Trumps tweet wasnt even close to a retweet record. Ellens Oscar selfie holds the record with over 2.1 million retweets. Trump had to lie, because contrary to his claims, he is doing the opposite of great with Hispanics. Trump has a favorable rating with Hispanics of 13%. His unfavorables are at 79%.

Fox News is creating the same false expectations and reality surrounding Donald Trump that caused Republicans to be talking about skewed polls in 2012. Donald Trump has no chance of winning with Hispanics, but to a person who watches Fox News, the only unchallenged statement that they hear is Trump saying that he is going to do great with Hispanics.

Republicans have moved beyond the conservative media bubble, and into a flat denial of all reality. The Republican reality allergy has real consequences on our government. Congressional Republicans can reject legislation and proposals that the vast majority of Americans favor because they dont allow themselves to see beyond the boundaries of what is presented to them by Fox News.

By convincing themselves that Fox is the only source for truth in media, Republicans have slipped into an unmoveable state of permanent bias confirmation. The refusal by Republicans to agree on common facts is what has broken the legislative process and made governing impossible.

The attitude behind both Trumps willingness to lie about all things big and small and Fox Newss promotion of the false statement as fact is what is dangerous to America. The United States is one presidential election away from federally governed by a political party that has collectively rejected reality.

America is on the brink of a breakdown thanks to Donald Trump and Fox News.
LAKE CITY  Hearth & Home Technologiesis adding 37 jobs as part of a $1.45 million expansion of its manufacturing facilities in Lake City.

The Lakeville-based maker of fireplace products said it plans to convert 20,000-square-feet of warehouse space in Lake City into an engineering lab, offices and testing space. The new jobs are expected to pay nearly $16 per hour.

The Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development is supporting the expansion with $194,010 from the Job Creation Fund,contingent on the company meeting its hiring and investment commitments.

"Hearth & Home Technologies is the largest manufacturer and supplier of fireplaces, stoves and hearth products in the world," said DEED Commissioner Shawntera Hardy."We're grateful to the company for bringing new jobs to the Lake City area and investing in Minnesota."

The company, which was founded in 1927, manufactures and installs wood burning, natural gas and electric fireplaces; wood, pellet and gas fireplace inserts; gas logs; mantels; and related products.

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Hearth & Home Technologies products are sold through dealers in the United States, Canada, Australia, Europe, New Zealand and South Africa. The company is a subsidiary of Muscatine, Iowa, based HNI Corp.

The Job Creation Fund, which was first proposed by Gov. Mark Daytonin 2013, is a pay-for-performance program that provides funding to businesses after they meet certain criteria, including minimum requirements for job creation and private investments. Under the program, businesses must create at least 10 full-time jobs and invest at least $500,000 to be eligible for financial assistance.

Since the Job Creation Fund was launched in January 2014, DEED has awarded $30.2 million for 62 business expansion projects in Minnesota. Companies have committed to creating 3,792 full-time jobs and investing $676.9 million to expand.  Staff reports
Certificate of the World's Unique Epic was presented to the epic poetry book "Hoa Lu thi tap". (Photo: dangcongsan.vn)

The book is a collection of 121 handwritten poems with 121 paintings by Prof. Dr Hoang Quang Thuan, Dean of the Institute of Telecommunication Technology under the Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology.

The poems publishing covers are made of rare wood and carefully carved with dragon images, and the entire book weighs 54 kilograms and measures 109cm x 70cm x 10cm. The poems are written in Vietnamese calligraphy by painter Tran Quoc An.

The work measures 109cm x 70cm x 10cm (Photo: hanoimoi.com.vn)

The epic poems tell the story of the historic period of the Dinh, Le, and Ly Dynasties from the 10th century to 1010 when King Ly Cong Uan moved the royal capital from Hoa Lu to Thang Long, now Hanoi.

The epic work was translated into English by Prof. David G. Lanoue from Xavier University in Louisiana (US) and into French by translator Hoang Huu Dan. Besides, 20,000 copies of the work were printed, of which 2,500 copies were in three languages: Vietnamese, English and French.

The giant work of poetry was created to mark the 1,000th anniversary of Thang Long, Hanoi. It was recognised as the biggest poetry book made in Vietnam on November 4th, 2010./.
Stargazing is a lot of fun year-round, but if there's a slow time of year, this is it. The spring constellations just don't have the razzmatazz that the winter ones do.

That's easy to prove. As soon as it's dark enough, and that's not until about 9:30 or so these nights, you'll see what's left of the great winter shiners in the southwestern sky. The great constellation Orion the Hunter is about halfway below the horizon, but the bright winter stars of Gemini the Twins, Auriga the Charioteer, and Canis Minor are still hanging high above the horizon, saying their long goodbye over the next month or so.

Jupiter, the brightest star-like object in the entire sky, is also dazzling in the west but it doesn't really count because it's not always among those constellations.

There are only three bright stars in the eastern half of the sky these last spring evenings: Arcturus in the constellation Bootes the Hunting Farmer, Spica in the faint constellation Virgo the Virgin, and Vega in Lyra the Harp. All of the other stars in the eastern heavens are definitely a little ho-hum.

Flowing hair

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The spring constellation Coma Berenices, or Berenice's Hair, is definitely a ho-hummer when it comes to brightness, but if you can see it in the dark skies of the countryside, you'll come to appreciate its true beauty. It actually resembles flowing hair, and the story about how it wound up in the heavens is based on a true story. No other constellation can really claim that.

To find Coma Berenices in the dark rural skies, face east as darkness sets in. Look for the brightest star you can see. That will be Arcturus, about halfway from the horizon to the overhead zenith. The flowing celestial hair will be about 25 degrees above Arcturus, or about two and a half fist-widths held at arm's length.

The darker the sky, the lovelier the locks of heavenly hair will be. Coma Berenices is actually more of an open star cluster than a constellation. Open star clusters are populated by young stars, at least by astronomical standards. They're all gravitationally born together out of the same gigantic cloud of tenuous hydrogen gas. The stars of Coma Berenices are about 500 million years old, on average. They also lie relatively close to us in our part of the Milky Way Galaxy, right around 250 light years away.

Ancient tale

As far as the story of the faint constellation or star cluster, it's based on Queen Berenices of Egypt, the wife of the famous Pharaoh Ptolemy III, who lived around 200 B.C.

Right about that time, Ptolemy was leading his troops into a fierce war. Queen Berenices, a very devoted spouse, prayed to the gods for his safe return. She loved her hubby so much that she promised the gods to cut off all of her beautiful hair if her husband returned safely.

Her prayers were answered, as Ptolemy returned victorious. True to her word, Berenices sheared off all of her hair and dedicated it to the temple of Aphrodite, the goddess of love. Days later, however, souvenir-seeking scoundrels stole Berenices' hair out of the temple.

When the hair heist was discovered, Ptolemy and Berenices were out to roll some heads, and they meant that literally! All of the temple priests were on death row when a traveling group of Greek consulting astronomers literally saved their necks. They convinced Ptolemy and Berenices to join them after dark to see a brand new pale cluster of lights high in the sky.

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"Look!" they exclaimed, "do you not see the clustered curls of the queen's hair? Aphrodite and the other gods believed that the queen's hair was just too beautiful for a single temple to possess. Berenices' hair belongs in the heavens for all to see."

It worked. Berenices and Ptolemy bought it. The temple priests were released. Everybody won, including us who still enjoy this lovely constellation/star cluster.

Eclipse fail

One of the biggest astronomical events of the year is coming up Monday morning.Mercury, not all that much larger than our moon, will attempt to eclipse our sun but will fail miserably.

Against the face of the sun from our perch on Earth, all it will look like is a tiny little dot only covering about .007th of the sun's disk at any one time. Nice try, Mercury.

In all seriousness, this is called a transit of Mercury and it doesn't happen all that often. The last one was in 2006, and the next one won't be until 2019. Mercury, in its 88-day orbit of the sun, happens to cross the face of the sun from our view from Earth. As often as Mercury whizzes past the sun, it doesn't cross the face of our home star all that often, because its solar orbit is inclined with respect to our orbit around the sun. Mercury and the Earth have to be in the right place at the right time.

At 5:11 a.m. Monday, the silhouetted disk of Mercury will come in contact with the lower left side of the sun's disk. We won't see it, though, because the sun won't rise here until 5:50 a.m.

From 5:11 a.m. to 1:42 p.m., Mercury will slowly plod along across the lower half of the sun. Mercury will be about 52 million miles away from Earth.

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It's absolutely dangerous to try and watch this directly unless you have special solar glasses or a solar filter for your telescope. It can cause instant blindness and that's no exaggeration.

Actually, the best way to see it is on the web. A good site is live.slooh.com .
American parents are accustomed to being treated like human cash machines during prom season, spending close to $1,000 to guarantee that a high school dance doesn't become an emotional catastrophe.

A hundred bucks for tickets, and hundreds more for fancy clothes  even the corsage costs $20. And before any of that begins, your kid wants $300 for a promposal. Wait, a what?

A promposal is an elaborate ask to the prom  a concept that first gained Web traction in 2011 and now is an institution alongside limo rentals and after-parties. Asking someone to the prom has been tradition for as long as there have been school dances. But the concept of promposing took on new life in the digital era. Teens now plot grandiose events to gain the attention of not only their potential date, but everyone else on social media, in turn generating YouTube channels, Twitter and, of course, listicles.

Students lucky enough to experience a promposal are sometimes on the receiving end of an outrageous, and often complex, feat of planning. One promposal that went viral involved the purchase of Kanye West's popular sneaker, the Boost. Another promposal, less expensive but much more difficult to pull off, involved Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz reading a promposal script on behalf of a teenager.

For the rest, it can be expensive cosmetics, Beyonce tickets or even a puppy. One thing they all have in common is parents are picking up some, or all, of the tab.

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You know something has arrived in the teen consciousness when credit card companies take notice. Visa Inc., which tracks prom-related expenses in an annual nationwide survey, added promposal costs to the total prom bill for the first time last year. The company found the average American household with teenagers spent $324 on promposing.

Promposal spending varies around the country, with New England families with teenagers coming in at a whopping $431 per promposal, compared to $342 in the West, $305 in the South and $218 in the Midwest. Promposals are so prolific that they're becoming the most expensive part of the event.

Total spending on the prom, which includes the cost of clothing, transportation, tickets, food, photographs and the after party, is down since 2013, when it was $1,139, according to Visa. In 2014, it fell to $978 and again last year by six percent, down to $919.

Conventional wisdom would assume wealthier families spend more on prom, and promposals, but Visa found families making less than $25,000 per year spend $1,393 on prom, compared with families who earn over $50,000 spending just $799. Visa referred to the finding as "disconcerting," but the study didn't explain why this might be the case.

In fact, low income families are often encouraged to turn to charitable organizations, like Operation Prom, for free prom dresses and tuxedos. Even the New York-based nonprofit is considering expanding those services to include promposals.

Despite the growing trend, not all teenagers are wooed by pricey promposals.

"I've seen on Twitter where boyfriends buy their girlfriends hundreds of dollars worth of makeup to ask them, which I think is ridiculous," said Meghan, 16, from Pueblo, Colo. "People buy their girlfriends fishes, and puppies, and clothes, all kinds of stuff. It's crazy." Meghan (a minor, identified only by her first name at the preference of her parents) was promposed to more simply: Her date purchased a Starbucks coffee and wrote 'Prom?' on the side and carried a poster reading 'This is hard to espressobut I'll take a shot.'

With promposals on the upswing, parents find themselves more willing to foot the bill: In 2014, parents surveyed by Visa said they were planning to pay for 56 percent of prom costs. The next year, parents upped the amount to 73 percent.

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"Teens have no incentive to cut cost with parents still subsidizing this much of the total prom spending," Visa determined.

As for teenagers being wooed with more and more, planner Glick expects the trend will affect the traditional marriage proposal market in the coming years. "It sets the bar so high for these girls. Where are they going to go from here for their own marriage proposal?"
WINONA  A Minnesota City man who claimed he didn't know what he was doing when he pleaded guilty to a weapons charge now has been charged with felony perjury.

Jeffrey Edward Morey, 50, made his first appearance Wednesday in Winona County District Court, then was released on his own recognizance. His next court date is set for June 1.

The case began in March 2015, when Morey appeared in court for a plea/sentencing hearing on a gross misdemeanor weapons charge.

In most cases, judges typically ask the defendant a long list of questions to determine if the defendant has been provided all the information he needs to make a guilty plea.

According to court transcripts from Morey's March appearance, that happened: Morey said he understood he had the right to a trial but was giving up that right; that he reviewed the plea agreement with his attorney; and that he read the agreement and understood it.

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Directly above Morey's signature on the agreement  which he confirmed he signed that day  was this statement:

"The undersigned certifies to the Court that the foregoing has been reviewed with counsel and the defendant understands the contents thereof."

Three months later, though, Morey returned to the courtroom to withdraw his guilty plea.

His new attorney claimed Morey had received ineffective legal advice, that Morey didn't understand what was happening and his plea was "not knowing and voluntary."

In that hearing, held June 8, Morey said he was told in March that the judge had found him guilty, that "pleading guilty was (his) only option" and he had signed the agreement without reading it or discussing it with his former attorney.

In addition, Morey said, the attorney told him he didn't have a right to a trial, and both the attorney and the presiding judge told him he had no right to an appeal.

An investigator with the Winona County Sheriff's Office reviewed the transcripts, parts of which were included in the complaint against Morey. Nowhere in the transcript for the March hearing did the presiding judge tell Morey he had no right to appeal, the court documents show.

In addition to finding Morey's testimony about being pressured or coerced into pleading guilty "not credible," it was determined he had committed perjury on multiple occasions during the June 8 hearing.

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Specifically, the complaint claims Morey lied about not having a chance to read his plea agreement, about being told he didn't have a right to a trial and about being told he had no right to appeal his plea.

The perjury charge carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison, a $10,000 fine or both.
A 19-year-old Rochester resident faces multiple charges after authorities say he assaulted a woman and stole her belongings, then was caught with drugs in his car.

Ahmed Mohamed Mumin made his first appearance Wednesday in Olmsted County District Court, where he's been charged in the assault case with one count each of gross misdemeanor domestic assault and gross misdemeanor theft, one count of misdemeanor theft and one count of fourth-degree damage to property.

The subsequent case  when police arrested him on suspicion of the assault  led to charges of felony fifth-degree drug possession and misdemeanor drug possession.

Mumin has been released from custody in lieu of $10,000 and is due back in court May 18.

The investigation began Monday afternoon, when a woman reported Mumin had slapped her across the face, grabbed her by the arm and ripped off her necklace, breaking it, the complaint says.

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One of Mumin's family members told the victim she had to leave, but Mumin allegedly had taken her cellphone and prevented her from taking a video game system that was hers.

The woman had red marks on her face from the slap, court documents say, scratches on her neck from the necklace chain and scratches on her cheek and jaw. A bruise was reportedly forming on her forearm.

The value of items Mumin is accused of taking is about $1,000.

The next day, a Rochester police officer on patrol in the 1600 block of Greenview Drive Southwest spotted Mumin and knew there was a probable cause arrest out for him as a result of Monday's assault.

As she approached the vehicle, she smelled the odor of fresh marijuana coming from inside the Jeep; a marijuana pipe was in plain view, the complaint says.

A search of Mumin and the vehicle turned up a large amount of cash, 18.2 grams of marijuana, several clear plastic bags and 20 Xanax tablets.

Mumin denied assaulting the woman or taking her property and told officers he had all of his witnesses lined up.

A review of his criminal history reflects his involvement in 21 court cases since April 2014  most of them traffic violations. Mumin was convicted of fifth-degree assault in July.
A Rochester man convicted for his role in a 2013 drive-by shooting made his first appearance Wednesday on new charges, after police say he ran from officers and hid in a garage.

Matthew Rasheed Miller, 19, was charged with third-degree burglary and attempted escape from felony custody, both felonies; obstructing the legal process with force, a gross misdemeanor; and misdemeanor counts of fleeing a peace officer and disorderly conduct.

He remains in custody in lieu of $100,000 and is due back in court May 18.

The incident began about 7:20 p.m. Tuesday, when an officer on patrol spotted Miller walking in the 10 block of 11th Avenue Northeast. The officer knew there was an active felony warrant for Miller, who had failed to appear for sentencing in the shooting case.

Miller ran as the officer approached him, said Capt. John Sherwin; law enforcement set up a perimeter in the area and continued to search, bringing in a police dog for assistance.

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The dog tracked him to a garage in the 1400 block of Second Street Southeast; when officers moved in to arrest Miller, he began combative and non-compliant, Sherwin said, attempting to resist arrest.

The police dog handler released the dog, which subdued Miller with bites on the arm and leg, allowing officers to make the arrest.

One of the officers was injured in the incident when a nail from debris in the garage went into his palm, Sherwin said.

Miller was wanted for skipping an April 13 hearing in the shooting case  the day he was supposed to be sentenced for his felony conviction of dangerous weapons-drive by shooting.

The charge stemmed from a December 2013 incident, when Miller stole a gun from the center console of a truck, then used it to fire at a vehicle that was "creeping" up the street near a vehicle he was in.

No one was injured.
PRESTON  A Spring Valley man was sentenced Monday to more than two years in prison for his role in a crash that left his mother seriously injured.

Garen Lee Niemeyer, 33, entered a Norgaard plea of guilty to felony criminal vehicular operation and was immediately sentenced to 26 months in prison, with credit for 87 days served.

With a Norgaard plea, the defendant doesn't insist he's innocent, just that he has no memory of what happened  typically due to intoxication.

In exchange for the plea, a second count of felony CVO, two counts of gross misdemeanor DWI and one count of misdemeanor driving after revocation were dismissed.

The charges stemmed from a crash about 11 p.m. Nov. 19 on Fillmore County Road 3, east of Ostrander.

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The first deputy on the scene found a pickup in the ditch and a man pleading for someone to help his wife, who was lying on her back in a cornfield, unconscious and unresponsive.

The man told law enforcement he, his wife and Niemeyer had been at an Ostrander restaurant for dinner and drinks, and that Niemeyer "started drinking as soon as they got there" about 5 p.m.

At the end of the night, the man was going to drive the other two home, and had gotten the woman into the passenger seat. As soon as he shut the door, he heard the driver's side door shut and the wheels spin; Niemeyer had "just jumped in and took off," and the man didn't even know he was there.

The man asked a friend to give him a ride home, and to make sure the other two made it safely. They found the crashed pickup about 10 minutes later.

Niemeyer "seemed to have no concept of what was going on" when a deputy spoke to him, the complaint says, unable to stand and falling asleep during sobriety tests.

A preliminary breath test used a "weak sample" from Niemeyer to register a reading of 0.204 at the scene. A blood draw taken from him at the hospital about 3:15 a.m. revealed a blood alcohol concentration of 0.199.

The victim, Niemeyer's mother, suffered a traumatic brain injury, four crushed vertebrae in her neck and serious injuries to her ankle and shoulder. She remained hospitalized for months; the surgeon is unsure if she'll regain use of her arm.

The impact of the crash also broke 21 of her 24 ribs.

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Niemeyer was driving on a revoked license the night of the crash, court documents say. He has a DUI conviction in 2010 in Wabasha County.

The 26-month sentence will run concurrently with 18- and 19-month prison terms for two counts of felony fifth-degree drug possession, and a second 19-month term for storing methamphetamine paraphernalia in the presence of a child.

Those terms were from convictions in three separate cases: two in Mower County and one in Goodhue County.
A burned-out brake light has led to a felony drug charge for a Rochester woman.

Brittany Lynn Grove, 26, faces one count of fifth-degree drug sale. She made her first appearance Monday in Olmsted County District Court and was released on her own recognizance. Grove is due back in court May 16.

The case began about 9:20 p.m. Sunday, when an officer on patrol spotted a car with a non-working brake light. He stopped the car in the area of Seventh Street and First Avenue Northeast.

As he approached the vehicle on the passenger side, the officer saw there was duct tape on the passenger window. The driver  later identified as Grove  told the officer the window didn't open, so he opened the passenger door to speak with her.

A small child was asleep in a car seat in the rear of the vehicle.

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When the officer opened the door, he noted "an overwhelming pungent odor of fresh marijuana coming from inside" the car, the complaint says. A black backpack was on the passenger seat, secured by the seat belt.

The officer asked Grove to step out of the vehicle so he could search the car.

Inside the backpack, he reportedly found five mason jars that contained a large amount of marijuana, a digital scale and several clear plastic bags.

The total weight of the marijuana was 283.4 grams, more than half a pound.
WABASHA  The driver you stop is high-strung, jabbering and seems out of control.

What should you do?

Until recently, the reaction of law enforcement officers in Wabasha County would typically be to cuff them and take them into jail, said Deputy Jason Timm.

But after training 66 officers from the county, Wabasha, Lake City and county jailers received this week, the response might be very different, Timm said. It's possible that person isn't on drugs or drunk but has a mental illness crisis.

The correct response might be to talk with the person, get him or her calmed down and maybe get them help from a mental-health specialist.

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The training Monday through Wednesday was four-hour class in de-escalation during National Mental Health Awareness Month. It was put on by the HOPE Coalition out of Red Wing, the National Alliance on Mental Illness and Fernbrook Family Services, which is now serving Wabasha County.

While the Wabasha officers received four hours of training, the "gold standard" is 40, said Linda Flanders, HOPE development coordinator.

The need is there, Flanders said, because one in four Americans has at least one diagnosable mental illness, and 60 percent will have some contact with law enforcement.

Timm, a 20-year veteran officers, sees the need for training have become evident.

"I have seen such a radical increase in the past five years," he said.

Maybe there's more awareness, Timm said, and maybe there are fewer places to take the mentally ill than there were 20 years ago. Whatever the reason, Timm is dealing more with people having a mental health crisis, such as depression, bipolar or schizophrenia. It might show up in domestic assault when an ill person is off medications.

Because of lack of places for proper care, there are 10 times more people with a diagnosable mental illness in jail or prison than in a hospital getting treatment, Flanders said.

The goal earlier this week was to help officers know more about mental illness, how to recognize it and how to talk down a person in crisis so they can find a way to help.

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Some hints that a person is having a mental health crisis are not bathing, disheveled clothing and and slurred speech, Flanders said.

One way to help is not come in with a swagger and loud voice, ready to cuff the person, Flanders said. Instead, once you realize it's a mental illness problem, talk slower and lower, don't be aggressive.

Once you talk them down, then you can deal with whatever is bothering them, adding that "then the person is at least able to help me" work with them.

Just knowing the person is having a crisis helps officers empathize with the people, Timm said, and not just assume they need time in jail.

What officers learned, including doing role playing with trained actors, "is another tool for us that is an extremely valuable to assess each situation differently," Timm said.

Flanders pointed out that they are only trained to assess, not diagnose. The diagnosis will have to come from a person trained in mental illnesses, she said.
Prosecutor in police shooting to enter alcohol program

MINNEAPOLIS  The prosecutor whose office won a recent conviction in the high-profile case of a Minneapolis police officer who killed an unarmed woman says he will be entering a treatment program for alcohol issues.

Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman issued a statement Friday saying he was evaluated for alcohol issues and agrees he needs treatment. Hell be entering a program Monday.

Freeman announced last week that he was taking a medical leave, but didnt say why.

His Friday statement says he has also worked to stabilize his "unacceptably high blood pressure." He says hes determined to reclaim his health and hopes to be back to work in mid-June.

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Last month, a jury convicted Mohamed Noor of murder in the 2017 fatal shooting of Justine Ruszczyk Damond, a dual citizen of the U.S. and Australia who called 911 to report a possible crime.

Minnesota seeks to add Purdue Pharma owners to opioid suit

ST. PAUL  Minnesotas attorney general is asking a state court for permission to add the owners of drugmaker Purdue Pharma to a lawsuit that seeks to hold the company responsible for the opioid addiction crisis.

Connecticut-based Purdue Pharma makes OxyContin and has been the subject of legal action in nearly every state.

Attorney General Keith Ellison wants to add eight members of the Sackler family to Minnesotas lawsuit. He says the Sacklers, who own and operate Purdue, were involved in deceptive marketing tactics and strategies to sell more opioids, despite knowing the risks.

If a judge approves, Minnesota would become at least the 11th state to take legal action against one or more members of the Sackler family.

A family spokeswoman issued a statement denying the allegations, calling the lawsuit a misguided attempt to place blame where it doesnt belong.

Man holed up in hotel surrenders to police

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BROOKLYN PARK  Authorities say a standoff at a Brooklyn Park hotel ended after more than six hours when a man suspected of assaulting his girlfriend surrendered to police.

SWAT officers and crisis negotiators were called to the La Quinta Inn early Friday after a woman reported she was being assaulted by her boyfriend and threatened with a gun. Police say the standoff began at 3:30 a.m. and ended when the man was arrested at about 9:50 a.m.

Authorities say the woman was taken to a hospital with minor injuries. Police say the 31-year-old suspect was not carry9ing a gun but it was unclear if there were any weapons in the room.

The suspect, who has not been formally charged, has previous convictions for drug possession, motor vehicle theft, aggravated robbery, making terroristic threats, drunken driving and burglary.

Jail inmate accused of running prostitution ring

MORA  An inmate at the Kanabec County Jail is charged with running a prostitution ring from his cell.

Thirty-eight-year-old Daniel Ellington is charged in Washington County District Court with two counts of sex trafficking and two counts of promotion of prostitution.

Prosecutors say Ellington communicated with a prostitute by text and "promoted and profited" from her activities in Woodbury last month.

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East Metro Sex Trafficking Task Force director Imran Ali says Ellington was 100 miles away and incarcerated, yet was promoting prostitution and profiting from it. The task force began investigating after a Woodbury detective found an online ad entitled "Blonde Bombshell."

The St. Paul Pioneer Press reports Kanabec County Sheriff Brian Smith says Ellington used a jail-issued iPod to text and paid a certain price for each message.

 Associated Press
ST. PAUL  A Rochester senator bucked her party on Thursday to support a $1.8 billion public construction package but the DFL-backed measure still failed to pass.

Sen. Carla Nelson was the lone Republican to vote for the plan that would have funded several local projects. Tucked in the bill was $20 million for renovation work at Rochester Community & Technical College, $5 million to expand the U.S. Customs space at Rochester International Airport and $1.5 million to expand The Reading Center/Dyslexia Institute of Minnesota.

The bill failed to pass the Senate by one vote. The measure failed 40-26 because it lacked the three-fifths majority required for passage. Nelson said she faced an "immense amount of pressure" from fellow Republicans not to vote for the bill, but cast a "yes" vote anyway.

"At the end of the day, I am elected to represent my constituents and I'm elected to work for them and that's what I do. So in this case, I just happen to be the only Republican voting for the bill," Nelson said.

Fellow Rochester GOP Sen. Dave Senjem joined the rest of the Senate Republican caucus in voting against the bill. Senjem, the lead Republican on the Capital Investment Committee, said the DFL-backed construction bill "off the charts" in terms of size. He put forward an amendment for a slimmed-down $1 billion construction bill, but the measure failed to pass.

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"While the proposed Rochester projects are unquestionable fine projects, for the sake of the taxpayers I represent and the integrity of the bonding process, I was not willing to sell my vote for a bill that was enormous by all previous standards and full of projects that go well beyond the traditional responsibility of state government to fund," Senjem said.

The bill's failure means senators must return to the drawing board to try and come up with a plan that can win enough support among Democrats and Republicans to pass. The Senate proposal called for $1.5 billion in borrowing and the remaining $3 million would be funded via cash. Meanwhile, House Republicans have yet to put forward their $600 million construction borrowing proposal, also known as a bonding bill.

Senate Democrats blasted Republicans for failing to back the bill.

"Republicans have turned their backs on their responsibility to govern and care for the people who have entrusted them as representatives. If we don't take care of these critical projects, the costs will fall back on local property taxpayers," said Capital Investment Committee Chairman LeRoy Stumpf, DFL-Plummer.

The bonding bill is one piece of the Legislature's remaining to-do list, along with a bill offering tax cuts, funding transportation repairs and other spending priorities. Its unexpected failure on the Senate floor adds to that pile of unsettled work as the Legislature nears the final two weeks of session.

"It just doesn't seem like we're on a path where we're going to get anything done," Senate Majority Leader Tom Bakk said. "We may end up going home this session without a bonding bill."

Despite its failure on the Senate floor, Bakk said Democrats likely wouldn't trim it down and try again. Rather, he faulted Republican lawmakers for not approving the bill and said it hints at a prospect that Gov. Mark Dayton has raised  that the Legislature will accomplish nothing this session.

Sen. Matt Schmit, DFL-Red Wing, said he was very disappointed the bonding bill didn't pass.

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"There are a lot of good projects for southeastern Minnesota in this bill, and I don't know if there's been as strong of one in the past when you look at the number of projects that are funded," Schmit said. "It's disappointing that the bill didn't get more support from the southeastern delegation."

Despite the failure of the bill to pass, Nelson said she remains hopeful lawmakers can come together and reach a deal before the session ends.

She added, "I think it's important that we actually pass a bonding bill and we do it in time so that the public can weigh in."

 The Associated Press contributed to this report.
KASSON  The future of the nearly 100-year-old former school in Kasson is once again in doubt.

Cohen-Esrey, the Kansas-based development firm that hoped to turn the school building into affordable housing units, has backed away from the project.

"We elected not to proceed based on our assessment that the property can't compete successfully for an allocation of low incoming housing tax credits from Minnesota Housing Finance," Tom Anderson, Cohen-Esrey's managing director, said in an email. "We are no longer involved with that project."

The firm failed to submit an application for tax credits in January for the Kasson project and also did not submit an application for tax credits for its Albert Lea housing project, Kasson City Planner Mike Martin said.

The school is owned by 1918 Kasson Public School LLP, which paid the city $240,000 for the deteriorating structure. The group was listed as the taxpayers for the building, according to Dodge County property tax records.

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Much of Cohen-Esrey's purchase agreement with the Kasson group was c ontingent on Cohen-Esrey receiving millions in state and federal tax credits .

With Cohen-Esrey out of the picture, the building's future is unknown. Mayor Steve Johnson stated in an email that he wasn't sure where the project stood.

"Regarding the old school, I honestly don't have any info," Johnson said in the email. "I haven't heard a thing on it."

Kenton Spading, a spokesman for Kasson Alliance for REstoration, which fought to save the building after the city had planned to demolish it, said there are "new developments" for the property, but he declined to comment further.

The building has been the subject of debate since the city bought it from the school district for $1. The city had planned to renovate the building, but voters rejected the $3.9 million bond issue that would have financed the project. The city then decided to demolish the structure, but that was stalled by two citizens who sued the city in 2013. The building was added to the Register of Historic Places in 2007.
No one was injured early this morning when fire damaged a residence in northwest Rochester.

Firefighters were called at 4:40 a.m. to 4640 Ruby Lane NW; smoke was visible from the roof, and flames were found on the rear patio and exterior of the home, said Vance Swisher, assistant fire chief.

The fire was knocked down quickly from the outside, but flames had worked their way up the soffits of the house and into the attic, he said.

Firefighters subsequently took down the kitchen ceiling to make sure the fire hadn't spread to the interior of the house.

There was fire damage to the rear exterior of the house, eaves and a significant portion of attic space, and light smoke damage to the first floor, according to a release from the Rochester Fire Department.

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Preliminary estimates put the damage at $70,000, but that may climb, Swisher said.

Evidence of smoking materials was found on the back patio, he said, leading investigators to believe that was the cause of the fire.

"There was no sign of any other cause," Swisher said.

The three occupants of the home were out when firefighters arrived; no injuries were reported.

The Red Cross was contacted to help the residents find lodging, the report says.

Fire crews were on the scene until shortly after 8 a.m.
There will be two free screenings in Rochester of "Freedom Writers," a film starring Hilary Swank and Patrick Dempsey, and the featured book of this year's Power of the Purse event.

"Freedom Writers" is the true story of teacher Erin Gruwell, who inspires her class of at-risk high school students to learn tolerance, apply themselves and pursue education beyond high school.

The movie will be shown from noon to 2:30 pm. Saturday, and 6-8:30 p.m. May 16, in the auditorium at the Rochester Public Library. The movie is free; seating is limited. Registration at www.uwolmsted.org/freedom-writers is recommended.

This film is being presented by United Way of Olmsted Countys Womens Leadership Council, who will host Gruwell as the 2016 Power of the Purse keynote speaker on June 14.

Power of the Purse, sponsored by Bremer Bank, is an annual event uniting the community around improving outcomes for children and youth in Olmsted County. The luncheon and silent auction of new and gently used purses is at the International Event Center. Funds raised support education initiatives by the United Way.

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Tickets for Power of the Purse may be purchased online atwww.uwolmsted.org/pop or by calling (507) 287-2000.
Bruce Atkinson's April 27 letter under the headline "Agreements on energy and climate issues are bad for America" includes unfounded claims regarding our president and the growing crisis of global warming.

Suggesting President Obama believes the U.S. causes world problems and is punishing employers and the American people is insulting and false. The president rightly acknowledges America is a major contributor to the global-warming crisis, as is every industrialized country on earth. Recognizing your problem is the first step to finding your solution.

A BBC article under the headline "China 'deserves more credit' for renewable energy effort" states: "The reality ... is that China is spending as much as the U.S. and Europe put together on clean power," which means America is allowing China to lead the world in advancements of green-energy technology.

Congress must realize that if we do not lead, we follow. We should have learned this when the American automobile industry ceded the lead to Japan in the 1960s. We should be funding the Green Climate Fund more, not less.

Atkinson's claims regarding Secretary of State John Kerry's statements need citation and context, as does his claims regarding Minnesota limiting free speech.

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I raise his "unicorns" with ostriches. Let me ask if he would hide his head in the sand if 97 percent of doctors (scientists) warned him that his child had cancer?

Geoff Tobiasson

Rochester
A proposed federal rule change could have employers writing bigger paychecks or cutting hours.

A potential Fair Labor Standards Act revision would increase the threshold for salaried employees  those not eligible for overtime pay  from $23,660 a year to $50,440, a 113 percent increase.

On the surface, the Department of Labor change appears to be a boon for millions of employees by either raising salaries or reducing hours. However, the potential ramifications of such a steep and sudden increase leave uncertainty.

"There are a whole lot of questions that have come forward," said Randy Johnson, executive director of Workforce Development, noting the goal of the change hasn't been properly defined.

The potential impact is being detailed, however. Federal estimates predict it will cost the nation's employers up to $255.3 million in direct costs and another $1.27 billion in salaries.

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Some employers can adjust work schedules with relative ease, but others may need to trim services or increase prices to cover costs.

Yet, employers offering jobs with unpredictable hours may have no choice but increase their budgets dedicated to salaries. The National Retail Federation estimates more than 2 million retail employees will be affected, increasing costs by $745 million for retailers. Any other employer with staff members providing services at all hours of the day will likely see similar effects.

We know the change will impact the newspaper industry, where salaried staff frequently exceed eight-hour shifts on busy days. The Newspaper Association of America predicts the change will add $130 million a year to national newspaper payrolls.

At the same time, we understand the need for change. Expecting employees to work an undefined number of hours beyond a standard workweek for a $23,660 annual salary is indefensible. It's well below Minnesota's per-capita income average of $32,638, which is an equivalent to $11.38 an hour for a 40-hour week, lingering behind MIT's estimated $10.89 living wage for a single person in Olmsted County.

Employers, however, can't afford to reach the proposed goal in a single leap. Drastic increases will spur employment shifts, salary cuts or reduced benefits to maintain expenses, all of which could hinder employee-employer relationships.

Salaried status doesn't only benefit employers. Salaried employees aren't required to keep a complete accounting of their hours, and they can have flexible schedules, with the ability to take a portion of a workday off without being docked vacation time. All of that goes away if they are converted to hourly employees.

The need for such adjustments could be minimized by gradually increasing the threshold. Already, reports indicate the proposed $50,660 threshold may be lowered to $47,000.

However, we believe an adjustment also should consider regional differences. Federal rules should consider how a dollar's spending power changes throughout the nation. An income considered a living wage in the Midwest can be drastically lower when compared to buying power elsewhere. For a family of four with two working parents, MIT calculates a living wage to be $15.33 in Olmsted County, while the same estimate put the needed wage at $16.02 in Los Angeles, $18.93 in New York City and $20.27 in Washington, D.C.

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The benefits of a given salary aren't equal throughout the nation, so it's hard to understand why the federal threshold should see an equally drastic increase in all states.

As the Department of Labor needs to tweak its new rules, it's time to take a step back and look for ways to spur gradual increases, rather than sudden changes that put businesses and employees on a path toward uncertainty.
WASHINGTON  Now that the contours of the general election are reasonably predictable, it is time to start thinking about the tripartite institutional reckoning that should come in November's aftermath -- for the media, Republicans and Democrats.

For the media, the assessment is simple, and unsparing: We underperformed our constitutionally protected role. Sure, every campaign cycle features hand-wringing over the primacy of horse race over substance.

This one feels demonstrably worse. Mesmerized by the bright, shiny object that is Donald Trump, we collectively failed to plumb his gaping lack of policy knowledge and proposals. Not completely, just not enough, and way too late. And not just his: Distracted by Trump, we let the whole field off the hook.

The purely commercial explanation for this dereliction would be that the media, television in particular, didn't want to kill the golden goose of traffic. That's too simplistic  and too sinister.

I think we also believed that exposing Trump's outrage du jour was doing our job, and would, eventually, sink him. Trump's bombastic imperviousness to serious questioning  television hosts and debate questioners gamely tried, only to see him talk out the clock  contributed as well.

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The resulting paradox was that, until recently, Trump was a candidate who made himself more constantly available than any in modern memory, yet evaded serious questioning.

Would voters have cared, particularly those tempted by Trump? Perhaps not  they aren't supporting him for his tax plan. But that isn't the test. Our role is, or should be, to provide the information essential for voters to make an informed decision. We fell short.

Republicans' November reckoning could be even uglier. The party has lost the popular vote in five of the last six presidential elections. Given Democrats' inherent Electoral College advantage and Trump's unpopularity, Republicans appear headed to lose the White House again, along, perhaps, with control of the Senate. The party faces fundamental, interconnected decisions about what ideological path to embrace, how to attract voters in a changing America, and how to manage the angry, populist, anti-establishment forces unleashed by Trump.

To look back at the GOP's post-2012 autopsy report is to conclude that Democrats read the document and sent Trump as a Manchurian candidate to further alienate voters.

"Public perception of the party is at record lows," the report concluded. "Young voters are increasingly rolling their eyes at what the party represents, and many minorities wrongly think that Republicans do not like them or want them in the country."

Trump makes that bad situation worse, but he is not a cause of the party's problems; he is a symptom of them. The risk embedded in a Trump nomination  assuming a Trump loss  is that Republicans will derive the wrong lesson. The party's most conservative members will argue that Trump's failure was a matter of insufficient orthodoxy, and that the one true path to electoral success would have been to nominate a Ted Cruz-like true believer.

If Republicans were doomed  or, more accurately, doomed themselves -- to lose in 2016, it would have been better for them to lose with Cruz. That would at least have had the cleansing, Goldwateresque effect of proving the conservative argument wrong and returning power to the suppressed voices of reason within the party. Now, that fight seems destined to be rerun in 2020.

Democrats have their own rethinking to do, even if they retain the White House.

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Beneath the presidential level, it is in dire shape. Since 2008, Democrats have lost 69 House seats, 13 Senate seats, 12 governorships and 900-plus seats in state legislatures. That drains the party of legislative power and empties its bench.

Meantime, Clinton would take office with historically high negative ratings and be the first Democrat since Grover Cleveland in 1885 to be elected to a first term without the party's complete control of Congress. Perhaps chastened Republicans will feel a new urge to conciliation and productivity, but the experience of the Obama presidency suggests a rockier path.

Finally, mirroring the Republicans with Trump, Democrats need to grapple with their ideological future and the restive forces of economic anxiety and anti-establishment anger given voice by Bernie Sanders. His presence in the race has been no boon to Clinton, but it did jump-start a necessary, unfinished debate over the party's path ahead, and what will be the contours of a post-Bill Clinton, post-Obama Democratic party.

November is not the conclusion of an argument. It is, or should be, the beginning of a self-examination by all the players in this dispiriting campaign.

Ruth Marcus is a columnist for the Washington Post.
The Minister of Industry, Trade and Investment, Okey Enelamah, on Thursday, has asked the National Assembly to review Nigerias existing business laws to attract more investments into the country.

The ministers call came following the latest World Banks Ease of Doing Business report, which ranked Nigeria as one of the worst places to do business in the world in 2016.

The report says Nigeria remains one of the poorest business destinations in the world, improving marginally by just one step from its ranking last year.

Out of 189 countries surveyed, Nigeria moved from 170th position with 43.56 per cent points in 2015 to 169 with 44.69 per cent points.

Mr. Enelamah said the review would help create an enabling business environment for prospective investors and business owners in the country.

The minister made the appeal when he appeared before the House of Representatives committee on trade and investment for the ongoing Sectoral Debate on strategies for the diversification of the countrys economy.

Mr. Enelamah identified some of the laws that would require an overhaul, including the Companies and Allied Matters Act (CAMA), the Railway Corporation Act and Nigeria Postal Service Act, to make them align with the realities of the 21st century as well as global best practices.

He also urged the lawmakers to fast track the Independent Warehouse Regulatory Agency Bill and Secure Transactions in Movable Assets Bill, to guarantee financial savings for Small and Medium Enterprises, SMEs.

When passed, these pieces of legislation will improve access to funding for small businesses and allow investment in infrastructure, the minister said.

It is only by reviewing these laws that we will be able to guarantee the much needed private investments in this sector.

This move will go a long way to remove many obstacles that stand in the way of business innovation in Nigeria, he said.

According to the minister, the country would expand its scope of infrastructure, an important part of ensuring ease of doing business.

By infrastructure, we mean not only the hardware infrastructure like transport networks and reliable power supply. It also includes transparent regulation, policy consistency, rule of law and culture of efficient collaboration and synergy among various government agencies, Mr. Enelamah said. (NAN)
More Nigerians want Nigerias embattled senate president, Bukola Saraki, to step down from office as he faces corruption trial at the Code of Conduct Tribunal, a poll conducted by PREMIUM TIMES has shown.

The poll, sampling public opinion on whether Mr. Saraki should resign in view of his trial, ran on the newspapers site for two weeks ending May 5. It showed significant public support for Mr. Sarakis resignation.

The poll had five structured answers from which a total of 5,454 respondents chose.

A total of 3,624 respondents, representing 66 per cent, chose Yes, he is a corrupt person, implying the senate president is corrupt and should stand down.

Another 652, representing 12 percent, also wanted Mr. Saraki to resign, choosing yes, he does not represent APC change agenda.

In sum, either because he is a corrupt person or he does not represent APC change agenda, 4,276 respondents, 78 per cent, voted that Mr. Saraki should resign.

Altogether, 647 respondents, representing 12 per cent, voted No, his travails are just political vendetta, while 315, representing six per cent, said the Senate President should not resign. The last group voted No, he is innocent of all charges unless proven otherwise in court.

Therefore, 962 respondents, 17.6 per cent, elected to stand with Mr. Saraki on his vow to stay in office unless he is ultimately convicted.

The remaining 223 respondents, or four per cent, said I dont care whether Mr. Saraki resigns.

The Trial

Mr. Saraki, in charge number ABT/01/15 dated September 11, 2015 and filed before the Code of Conduct Tribunal, is accused of offences ranging from anticipatory declaration of assets to making false declaration of assets in forms he filed before the Code of Conduct Bureau while he was governor of Kwara state.

The senate president is also accused of failing to declare some assets he acquired while in office as governor.

Mr. Saraki is also accused of operating foreign accounts while being a public officer.

On April 18, three new corruption charges were added to the initial 13-counts.

Mr. Saraki denies wrongdoing, and pleaded not guilty to the amended charges.

The prosecution has called one witness, Michael Wetkas, from the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, to detail how Mr. Saraki allegedly looted Kwara State and brazenly converted states funds to personal use.

Mr. Saraki is yet to begin his defence.

Penalty if convicted

If eventually found guilty, the Code of Conduct Tribunal is empowered by the paragraph 18 (1)(2), Part 1 of the fifth schedule to the Constitution to remove Mr. Saraki from the National Assembly; bar him from holding any public office for a period not exceeding 10 years; and/or confiscate his properties determined as ones acquired in abuse or corruption of office.

Mr. Saraki has repeatedly accused the chairman of the Tribunal, Danladi Umar, of bias, expressing big fear he may not get justice from Mr. Umar.

He has filed a motion in the CCT asking Mr. Umar to disqualify himself from his trial. The motion was dismissed prompting him to seek relief of the Appeal Court to upturn the chairmans ruling.

The senate president also alleges that his trial is politically motivated, having emerged Senate President in defiance of the position of his party, All Progressives Congress, which favoured Ahmed Lawan from Yobe State for the position.

Mr. Saraki has also subtly accused former Lagos Governor, Bola Tinubu, of masterminding his travails, as retaliation for his opposition to Mr. Tinubus ambition to contest as Muhammadu Buharis running mate in the last presidential poll.

I wont resign

Mr. Saraki has since vowed not to resign. He told his colleagues in 2015 to stand with me to defend the National Assembly!

The Senate, last month, during a session led by Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu, while his boss was attending trail at CCT, resolved to support its embattled President to the end, except he is convicted.
The U.S. administration is seeking to approve a sale of as many as 12 A-29 Super Tucano light attack aircraft to Nigeria to aid its battle against the extremist group Boko Haram, U.S. officials said.

The officials said while speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the administrations plans in a vote of confidence in President Muhammadu Buharis drive to reform the countrys corruption-tainted military.

Washington also is dedicating more intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance assets to the campaign against the Islamist militants in the region and plans to provide additional training to Nigerian infantry forces.

The possible sale which the officials said was favoured within the U.S. administration but is subject to review by Congress underscores the deepening U.S. involvement in helping governments in North and West Africa fight extremist groups.

U.S. Navy Vice Admiral, Michael Franken, a Deputy Commander of the Pentagons Africa Command, told a Washington forum last week that there now are 6,200 U.S. troops most of them Special Operations Forces, operating from 26 locations on the continent.

The widening U.S. military cooperation is a political victory for Mr. Buhari, who took office last year pledging to crack down on the rampant corruption that has undermined the armed forces in Africas most populous country.

The Buhari administration I think has really reenergized the bilateral relationship in a fundamental way, another U.S. official said.

The previous Nigerian government of Goodluck Jonathan had scorned the U.S. for blocking arms sales partly because of human rights concerns. It also criticized Washington for failing to speed the sharing of intelligence.

The souring relations hit a low at the end of 2014 when U.S. military training of Nigerian forces was abruptly halted.

That is changing under Mr. Buhari, whose crackdown on corruption has led to a raft of charges against top national security officials in the previous government.

Buhari made clear from the get-go that his number one priority was reforming the military to defeat Boko Haram and he sees us as part of that solution, a second U.S. official said.

Still, serious human rights abuses committed by security forces, which include police, increased in 2015, according to the U.S. State Departments annual human rights report.

Many of the funds alleged to have been misused and siphoned off by corrupt Nigerian officials under Jonathans government were earmarked for the fight against Boko Haram, which has killed thousands in northeast Nigeria and neighboring countries in the last seven years.

Last year, the group pledged loyalty to Islamic State, No wonder they werent doing well with respect to Boko Haram, they didnt have the ammunition, the first official said.

The accused officials include Nigerias former Chief of Defense staff, who last month pleaded not guilty to using money allocated for Nigerias air force to buy a mansion and a commercial plot of land and build a shopping mall.

Congress has not yet been formally notified of the possible U.S. approval of the sale of Embraers (EMBR3.SA) A29 Super Tucano turboprop aircraft to Nigeria.

The Tucanos can be used for training, surveillance or attack.

They can be armed with two wing-mounted machine guns and can carry up to 1,550 Kg (3,417 pounds) of weapons.

One production line for the Super Tucano is in Florida, where it is built with U.S. firm Sierra Nevada Corp. The aircraft that would be sold to Nigeria come with a very basic armed configuration, one of the U.S. officials said.

The sale could offer Nigeria a more maneuverable aircraft that can stay aloft for extended periods to target Boko Haram formations.

The U.S. officials did not disclose the cost of the planes to be sold to Nigeria.

However, a contract for 20 similar aircraft that was sold to Afghanistan was valued at about 428 million dollars at the time it was announced in 2013.

Peter Pham, Director of the Africa Center at the Atlantic Council think tank, said any sale of Super Tucano aircraft would demonstrate improving ties, but cautioned that their ability to counter Boko Haram could be limited.

When you are fighting a group thats no longer holding towns and villages, thats no longer massing forces in a conventional way, the aircraft , attack aircraft, have a much more limited role in that kind of fight, Pham said.

African armies routed the militant group from much of its self-proclaimed caliphate in northeastern Nigeria last year.

Its fighters have since regrouped and intensified their attacks in the Lake Chad Basin, threatening regional security, despite the creation of a 9,000-strong African multinational force to counter it.

The U.S. military expects to train a second Nigerian infantry battalion once the current group completes its training later this year, the first official said.

The officials did not specify what type of additional intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance assets would be provided to bolster the regional fight against Boko Haram.

They acknowledge that they have a tough task combating the group, which is sending women and children strapped with explosives to blow up civilian targets such as marketplaces. Boko Haram has morphed back in to what it had earlier been, not a holder of large amounts of territory, but rather a generator of asymmetric attacks, the second official said.

(Reuters/NAN)
President Muhammadu Buharis administration, Friday, received a damning verdict from the Academic Staff Union of Universities.

ASUU, at its 19th National Delegates Conference held in Uyo, Akwa Ibom State, said Nigerians were yet to experience the much talked-about change Mr. Buhari promised the nation.

The administration has failed the people, ASUU said.

The Minister of Education, Adamu Adamu, was represented at the event by his Special Adviser, A.B. Baffa.

The president of ASUU, Nasir Isa, while addressing the conference, said, Mr. Buhari was waging a half-hearted fight against corruption, and that the poor was getting poorer, while a tiny club of nouvea riche, treasury looters, phantom contractors, subsidy scammers and rent collectors are flowing in scandalous opulence and manipulating the legal structures of the state to escape.

One year after, there has been no positive change in the major indices of growth and development, be it poverty reduction, safety and security, disease control or access to basic amenities and public good, he said.

Mr. Isa said the government appeared to have no direction in its policies, thereby causing Nigerians to be disillusioned with it.

The disappointment of Nigerians stems from the fact that we have a government whose leadership promised change but which is not practising transformation (deep, fundamental change).

Democracy in Nigeria is still seen superficially as what leaders do for the people rather than government by the people, ASUU said.

Mr. Isa, whose tenure as ASUU president comes to an end at the two-day conference, said the Nigerian government has abandoned a socialist welfare state prescribed by the provisions of Chapter Two of the 1999 Constitution, and embraced unfavourable policies handed down by IMF and World Bank.

As intellectuals, we know the Nigerian condition is a reflection of the conspiracy between African rulers and agents of Bretton Wood Institutions particularly the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank (WB), Mr. Isa said.

The conspiracy was consummated in the 1980s when these institutions for the protection and advancement of capitalism, came up with their standard reform package now known as the Washington consensus.

This package was designed for the African and other underdeveloped economies in order to perpetuate their enslavement to the capitalist world. Many of us would recall General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangidas debate on this consensus in 1985/86.

Even though the Nigerian people overwhelmingly rejected the IMF/WB loan, the Babangida Government still went ahead to implement the key neoliberal prescriptions of devaluation of the Naira and trade liberalisation.

President Olusegun Obasanjo and his successors from 1999 have unabashedly intensified the implementation of this package through criminal privatisation and commercialisation of public assets, in faithful surrender to the Washington consensus.

In all of these, the Nigerian ruling class is unmindful of stiff resistance by the labour movement, civil society groups, the media and other progressive forces in the country. This is much unlike what obtains in other climes such as the Asian Tigers (Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan and South Korea) who got industrialised without surrendering their economies to the prowling reach of local and foreign marketers of the Washington consensus, the union said.

Mr. Isa said ASUU must not relent in working with other progressives to fight for the common good of Nigerians.

He announced that ASUU has donated an initial sum of N20 million to help ameliorate the sufferings of Nigerians displaced from their homes and communities in the North East, due to the insurgency in the region.

He said the amount was in addition to the N5million earlier donated by the union to the National Hospital, Abuja, for medical assistance to the victims of the Nyanya Motor Park bomb blast.

The ASUU president paid glowing tributes to late Eskor Toyo, a revered professor of economics, whom he said was a great institution on his own right.

Mr. Isa said of late Toyo: He was a grand meteor, an economist who attained an unparalleled height in the discipline, a historians historian, an unusually endowed political iconoclast who offered himself to the vagaries of life and yet remained a credible spokesperson for the voiceless members of our world, an Africanist, a rare intellectual warrior, a writer who wrote to right the wrongs of his time, an educator who spoke to conscience.

The Minister of Education, Mr. Adamu, in his goodwill message to the conference, said the Buhari administration was peerlessly committed to the resuscitation or restoration of the Nigerian Project by confronting the evils of corruption, unemployment, insecurity and indiscipline.

Mr. Adamu called on ASUU to support his Ministerial Action Plan, which he said was designed to reposition Nigerias ailing education sector.
Ahead of World Press Freedom Day on May 3, Nigerias President Muhammadu Buhari claimed in a speech that Nigerian journalists were no longer being harassed or detained under his government.

At the opening of the Congress of the Federation of African Journalists on April 29, Nigerias information and culture minister delivered a speech on behalf of Mr. Buhari in which the president reportedly stated that his administration has never even contemplated the harassing, not to mention killing, of any journalist.

The media represents the eyes and ears of the world and attempts to silence it through harassment, arrests, detention and murder of journalists, is akin to making the world go blind and deaf, Mr. Buharis speech read.

I can report to this congress that not a single journalist is being detained or harassed in Nigeria today.

This government is not a threat to the media, and it is not about to stifle press freedom or deny anyone his or her constitutionally guaranteed rights.

Far from the truth

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) lists 19 journalists that were killed between 1992 and 2013 in Nigeria. In 10 cases the motive was confirmed as being related to their work.

Because no one has been convicted of the murder of the journalists, Nigeria is ranked 13th on the CPJs 2015 Global Impunity Index, which spotlights countries where the killers of journalists walk free.

Mr. Buharis claim that his administration has not killed any journalist is therefore correct, but the CPJs West Africa representative, Peter Nkanga, told Africa Check that Buharis claim that the current government has not harassed any journalist is far from the truth.

Nothing has changed from the attacks on the press we have witnessed in the last 16 years, since our return to democracy in 1999, Mr. Nkanga said.

Attacks are still ongoing, with the greatest level of impunity you can think of.

Kicked, beaten, pushed

On the day Buharis speech was delivered, the Kaduna state police charged reporter Jacob Onjewu Dickson with incitement over a story that angry young people stoned and booed Governor Nasir El-Rufai on 27 April.

Mr. Dickson is being detained with his trial due to start on May 12.

The CPJ website lists several other cases where journalists have been attacked and detained by state officials since Buhari was sworn in as president on May 29 last year.

On June 1, 2015, police officers in Abuja, Nigerias capital city, attacked Muhammad Atta-Kafin-Dangi, a journalist with Radio Nigeria, for attempting to cover a protest staged by commercial motorcyclists (Okada).

I was just trying to get actualities at Kuje junction in Gwagwalada where Okada riders are protesting, a news report quoted Atta-Kafin-Dangi as saying after the incident.

I was kicked, beaten, pushed, squeezed along with the suspects they arrested and jam packed in an hilux van (sic).

On June 25, the publisher of Prime Magazine was severely beaten inside the Nigerian Customs Service offices in Badagry.

Yomi Olomofe was reportedly investigating reports that customs officials on the Nigeria-Benin border were assisting smugglers when more than 15 men attacked him and another journalist in front of senior officials, who did not intervene. Mr. Olomofe was beaten until he lost consciousness.

In November, officers of the Nigerian Prisons Service and other people reportedly beat Vanguard newspaper journalist Emmanuel Elebeke at the high court in Abuja after he took pictures of three murder accused.

And on February 20 this year, officials of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps attacked and arrested three journalists in Owerri, Imo state.

Road safety officials demanded the phones of Nnamdi Ofonye from Silverbird TV and Tope Kuteyi from Channels TV, accusing them of having filmed a video of them arguing with a motorist.

When they refused, armed civil defence officers were called in to arrest them, also taking Obioma Oburuoga of Africa Independent Television into custody, reportedly while punching, slapping and kicking the journalists.

Conclusion: Claim that no single journalist is being harassed/detained under Buhari is incorrect.

This article originally appeared on Africa Check and we have their permission to republish.
The Attorney General and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami, on Thursday described the impact of corruption on Nigeria as life threatening, saying this informed the present administrations resolve to make the fight against the malaise a top priority.

Mr. Malami was speaking in Abuja at the anti-corruption summit organised by the federal ministry of justice in collaboration with Open Society initiative for West African (OSIWA) and ONE Campaign.

The minister said reports have shown Nigeria as one of the poorest countries in the world with income per capita of less than $500, with over 54 per cent of its over 170 million population living in absolute poverty as a result of corruption.

One out of every five Nigerian children dies before his or her fifth birthday, while one out of every three is malnourished. Only 64 per cent of school age boys attend primary school and only 57 per cent of girls attend primary school. Thus, corruption remains a major driver of poverty in Nigeria, Mr. Malami said.

He said the impacts of corruption on Nigeria could be identified through a review of different sectors of the economy showing that it has led to the unproductive use of resources to undermine the states capacity to fulfil its obligations to citizens.

The resultant capture of public resources by vested interests undermines economic growth, governance, security and development. Thus, weak accountability and corruption are core governance issues in Nigeria, he pointed out.

Since assumption of office, the minister said President Buhari has made every effort to build on and expand on the initiative of the previous governments to tackle corruption by prioritising the recovery of stolen funds and to pay back to the Nigerian society what have been lost to corruption.

Although the minister said significant progress has so far been made in the countrys anti-corruption performance, he said it was closely linked with the justice sector reforms to prevent the way corruption could undermine the countrys justice system.

Corruption may impinge on proceedings at all stages and undue influence may affect the process of investigation and prosecution; the handling and hearing of cases in the courts, including the treatment of witnesses; the implementation of sanctions and sentencing practices; and the recovery of illegally gained assets in a way that limits international cooperation, the minister said.

He said an analysis of corruption in the country suggests a patronage culture evolving around a powerful elite that is in control of oil revenues and would do anything to maintain the status quo.

With weak systems of accountability, he said corruption has become embedded and accepted as part of life in Nigeria, with a widespread culture of corruption and impunity at all levels.

To ensure effective fight against corruption, Mr. Malami said the government established various agencies, including the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Independent Corrupt Practices Commission (ICPC), the Code of Conduct Bureau (CCB), and the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU).

Despite the enactment of these laws, and the establishment of anti-corruption institutional mechanism, he said the capacity to enforce the anti-corruption laws effectively has continued to be limited.

He said so far, two critical bills have been submitted to the National Assembly, namely the Money Laundering (Prevention and Prohibition) Repeal Bill, 2016, to ensure effective prosecution of corruption, financial crime, kidnapping, trafficking in persons and trafficking in drugs, kidnapping, oil theft cases.

The other is the Mutual Assistance in Legal Matters Bill, 2016, to enhance the recovery of proceeds of crime inevitably laundered in Nigeria or outside.

To improve the cooperation and coordination in the fight against corruption, the minister said anti-graft agencies were developing a deeper, evidence-based understanding of their mandates, responsibilities, competencies, capacity and outputs embedded in respect for rule of law and integrity.

The Nigerian Anti-Corruption Summit organised to demonstrate governments commitment to partner with local and international allies in the development of legal, regulatory and institutional measures to tackle corruption.

The summit to be hosted by the UK Prime Minister, David Cameron, while President Buhari is expected to present an address on Tackling Corruption Together.
The All Progressives Congress (APC) on Friday hailed the signing of Nigerias 2016 Appropriation Bill into law by President Muhammadu Buhari.

The partys national chairman, John Odigie-Oyegun, in a statement issued on Friday on behalf of the APC also commended the Senate and House of Representatives for its successful consideration and passage of the 2016 National Budget.

The APC calls on Federal Government Ministries, Departments and Agencies to ensure effective and speedy implementation of the 2016 Appropriation Act so that the objectives of the unprecedented N6.06 trillion 2016 National Budget of Change will be realised. Commendably, 30 per cent of the 2016 budgetary provision has been committed to capital projects, Mr. Odigie-Oyegun.

The party also commended Nigerians for their patience and understanding during the consideration, passage and eventual presidential assent to the 2016 Appropriation Act, stating that the 2016 budget caters for many of the promises made to the Nigerian electorate by the party.

The APC assures Nigerians that the 2016 budget caters for many of the promises made to the Nigerian electorate by the party in the course of the 2015 presidential campaign. This includes the safety net created to cater for the poorest and most vulnerable Nigerians amongst other pro-people developmental policies.

Already, the President Muhammadu Buhari administration has announced that the implementation of the 2016 budget will focus on 34 key programmes grouped under four thematic areas  security/policy governance, diversification of economy, succour for vulnerable Nigerians, and reflating the economy through investments.

The APC hereby calls on all stakeholders and well-meaning Nigerians to support and ensure the success of the laudable programmes contained in the 2016 National budget as they will positively affect every facet of Nigerias socio-economic life, the statement read.
Operatives of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission are currently laying siege on the home of a former Minister of Aviation and opposition politician, Femi Fani-Kayode, the commission has said.

The cordon is coming hours after the EFCC wrote to Mr. Fani-Kayode, inviting him to appear at the commissions headquarters on Monday, for questioning over allegations of corruption.

Mr. Fani-Kayode said in an earlier statement on Friday that he would honour the invitation and cooperate with investigators.

Shortly before 5 p.m., the former minister, who has been a vocal critic of the Muhammadu Buhari administration, issued another statement, alerting that operatives of the EFCC were at his residence.

Today the EFCC invited me to come their office on Monday. I have their letter. I agreed to be there. Now they have surrounded my house, Mr. Fani-Kayode wrote.

The letter of invitation was served this morning and it was dated 6th May. They said I should report on the 9th.

Can someone please tell me why they are at my gate? They cant even wait because they want to detain me so badly and keep me away for the weekend.

I never refused their invitation. Why all this? I leave them to God, Mr. Fani-Kayode said.

Wilson Uwujaren, the spokesman of the EFCC, confirmed the development to PREMIUM TIMES.

But when asked to explain why the agencys officials were surrounding Mr. Fani-Kayodes home ahead of his expected appearance at the commissions office on Monday, Mr. Uwujaren disconnected the call. He did not respond to further calls and SMS.

Mr. Fani-Kayode had said on Thursday that the EFCC wished to arrest me in public, humiliate me or to storm my home and lock me up indefinitely.

There is no need for all that drama and if it happens that way the Nigerian people will know why. I have no fear of the EFCC, I will respond to their invitation any day and anytime they send it to me and I will help them to clarify whatever issues they wish to raise in any way that I can, he said.
Operatives of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission have retreated from the home of a former Minister of Aviation, Femi Fani-Kayode, eight hours after they laid siege to the premises.

Mr. Fani-Kayode confirmed the development in a post on his Facebook Friday.

After 8 hours the massive siege on my home has been lifted, the EFCC has left my gates and I look forward to my date with them at their office on Monday, Mr. Fani-Kayode said.

Mr. Fani-Kayode was, on Friday morning, formerly invited by the commission to appear at its headquarters on Monday, May 9, for questioning over allegations of money laundering and fraud. The invitation came in form of a letter dated May 6, 2016.

But shortly after the news of the invitation became public, Mr. Fani-Kayode raised the alarm that officials were surrounding his home, a development the EFCC confirmed.

Efforts to get the EFCC to comment on his agencys siege on the former ministers residence was unsuccessful. Wilson Uwujaren, the agencys spokesman could not be reached the multiple times our reporter called.
The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission on Friday officially invited a former Minister of Aviation, Femi Fani-Kayode, to appear at its headquarters in Abuja for questioning.

The letter advised Mr. Fani-Kayode to arrive at the agencys headquarters on May 9, by 10:00 a.m.

Mr. Fani-Kayode had said in a statement on Wednesday that he was no hiding from the agency, in response to a media report that he was on the run.

In a statement signed by his media aide, Jude Ndukwe, Mr. Fani-Kayode said he had informed his lawyers about the development, adding that he will honour the invitation and cooperate fully with the agency in the course of its investigation.

The letter of invitation was delivered to his Abuja home and he has responded promptly through his lawyers by assuring the EFCC that he would make himself available on Monday morning to assist in their investigations, Mr. Ndukwe said.

The EFCCs letter, dated 6th May, 2016, was signed by Mohammed Abba on behalf the agencys chairman, Ibrahim Magu.

This commission is investigating a case of criminal conspiracy, fraud and money laundering involving Joint Trust Dimension Ltd. in which you featured prominently, the letter read. In view of the above, youre requested to kindly report for an interview with the undersigned.
President Muhammadu Buhari says his administration has prioritised the repair and construction of roads within the country, unlike his predecessor, Goodluck Jonathan, who earmarked very little for infrastructure.

Mr. Buhari said this in a speech Friday before signing the 2016 budget into law.

To illustrate our renewed commitment to infrastructural development, the 2016 budget allocates over N200 billion to road construction as against a paltry N18 billion allocated for same purpose in the 2015 budget, President Buhari said.

The president said his administration earmarked N350 billion for capital construction projects, with the hope that figure ill help stimulate the countrys ailing economy.

The signing of the budget today will trigger concerted efforts to reflate the Nigerian economy, a key element of which is an immediate injection of N350bn into the economy by way of capital projects, he said.

The 2016 budget was signed Friday afternoon after months of bickering by the executive and the National Assembly over figures and projects proposed in the document.

At the event, Mr. Buhari thanked all those who worked to make the budget a reality, including leaders of the National Assembly.

It gives me great pleasure today to sign the first full-year budget of this administration into law. I thank the leadership of the National Assembly, in particular, the Senate President and the Speaker of the House of Representatives, and indeed all members of the National Assembly for their cooperation in making this a reality, Mr. Buhari said.

The president pledged a smoother process for the 2017 budget cycle.

The budget is intended to signpost a renewal of our commitment to restoring the budget as a serious article of faith with the Nigerian people. This Administration is committed to ensuring that henceforth the annual appropriation bill is presented to the National Assembly in time for the passage of the Act before the beginning of the fiscal year.

Mr. Buhari said details of the budget will be made available by the Minister of Budget and National Planning, Udo Udoma.

Through the 2016 budget, aptly titled Budget of Change, the government seeks to fulfil its own side of the social contract. The Budget I have signed into law provides for aggregate expenditures of N6.06trn. Further details of the approved budget, as well as our Strategic Implementation Plan for the 2016 budget, will be provided by the Honourable Minister of Budget and National Planning.

I shall be speaking in more details about the Budget, its implementation and the over-all national economic and social policies of the Government in my address on May 29th, God willing, Mr. Buhari said.

Mr. Buhari said his administration exercised prudence in signing the budget because of falling crude oil prices.

In designing the 2016 budget, we made a deliberate choice to pursue an expansionary fiscal policy despite the huge decline in government revenues from crude oil exports. This is why we decided to enlarge the budget deficit at this time, to be financed principally through foreign and domestic borrowings. All borrowings will, however, be applied towards growth-enhancing capital expenditures.

Despite the current difficulties, we will work extra-hard to achieve our revenue projections. Our revenue generating agencies are coming under better management and are being re-oriented. The implementation of the Treasury Single Account (TSA) is expected to contribute significantly to improving transparency over government revenues.

Our determined fight against corruption is resulting in improvements in the quality of public expenditure. The work of the Efficiency Unit, as well as other public financial management initiatives, are also contributing in this regard. The continuing efforts to reduce recurrent expenditures should hopefully free up more funds for capital expenditure in 2017 and beyond, he said.

The president said Nigeria was experiencing perhaps the toughest economic times in its history.

As I said in my New Year message, living in State House does not in any way alienate me from your daily struggles. I read the newspapers and listen to the TV and radio news. I hear your cries. I share your pains.

We are experiencing probably the toughest economic times in the history of our Nation. I want to commend the sacrifice, resilience and toughness of all Nigerians young and old who have despite the hardships continued to have hope and confidence of a great future for Nigerians. But permit me to say that this government is also like none other. We are absolutely committed to changing the structure of the Nigerian economy once and for all.

We are working night and day to diversify the economy so that we never again have to rely on one commodity to survive as a country. So that we can produce the food we eat, make our own textiles, produce most of the things we use. We intend to create the environment for our young peoples to be able to innovate and create jobs through technology, Mr. Buhari said.
President Muhammadu Buhari on Friday arrived Daura in Katsina State to begin a four-day visit to the state.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the presidents plane landed at the Katsina airport at about 4.25 p.m.

He was received by the state governor, Aminu Masari, and top federal and state government functionaries at the airport before leaving for Daura, his hometown.

The president is expected back in Katsina on Monday, where he will be engaged in official assignments.

He is scheduled to declare open and participate in the Katsina State Economic and Investment Summit, aimed at diversifying the states ailing economy.

The summit, which is scheduled to take place between Monday and Wednesday, is designed to attract investors and leaders of the corporate world, within and outside the country.

Mr. Masari had earlier told State House correspondents in Abuja that the summit was conceived as a platform to showcase the state natural economic features to the outside world as well as to attract investors to the state.

The Katsina State Economic and Investment Summit is about diversification of the states economy.

It is about creating awareness among the citizens of the state about the need to be entrepreneur-conscious, to be creative and self-reliant, he said.

(NAN)
The All Progressives Congress (APC), has waded into the rift between Gov. Abdullahi Ganduje of Kano State and his predecessor, Rabiu Kwankwaso.

Briefing journalists after the group rose from a meeting on Friday, the APC National Chairman, John Odigie-Oyegun, said the party had so far made a tremendous progress.

Gentlemen of the press, we have been holding a meeting, dealing with the crisis we have in our party in Kano State and this is not the first meeting we are holding in respect of that, Mr. Odigie-Oyegun said.

We discussed the issue of the crisis we have in Kano and so far, I can say we have made a tremendous progress.

From the conclusion of todays interaction with both the governor and the former governor, they both have agreed to work together in the interest of the people and their party.

Theyll put behind whatever differences that might have opened the window for discord and I can assure that for the party in Kano.

We have better days now that the two leaders have agreed to embrace peace and that is all we have to tell you now, the chairman said.

He said the settlement of the discord between both leaders would trickle down to the people at the state level until peace is achieved all over the state.

Present at the meeting were party chieftains in the state including Musa Gwadabe, Sule Hamman, Yusuf Ali and Messrs. Ganduje and Kwankwaso.

(NAN)
Governor Okezie Ikpeazu of Abia State has announced far-reaching measures to enhance community policing and curtail future ethnic clashes in the state.

The announcement came hours after violent clashes in Aba, the commercial nerve centre of the state, left at least one person dead.

The clashes occurred between Igbo traders and members of the Hausa community.

A statement by Godwin Adindu, the chief press secretary to the governor, said the governor had ordered the revival of the moribund state-owned vigilante group, the Abia State Vigilante Services (AVS), to enhance community policing.

To this effect, the government has directed all traditional rulers in the state to put forward names of 10 youth from their communities to be enlisted into the AVS.

According to the statement the government also directed that all enlisted operatives of the AVS should proceed on a two-week training before being deployed to their communities.

He has also directed the men of the Abia State Vigilante Services (AVS) to commence, with immediate effect, a two-week intensive training, for onward deployment to our communities to assist in community policing under the supervision of the Commissioner of Police.

All Traditional Rulers in the state have been directed to submit names of 10 able-bodied youths from their community to the Commissioner for Local Government and Chieftaincy Affairs from Tuesday 10th to Wednesday 11th May 2016. These youths will be enlisted into the Abia State Vigilante Services (AVS) to further boost community policing in the state, the statement said.

The Abia government further announced the creation of a Farmers/Herdsmen Conflict Resolution Committee to be headed by the state commissioner of police to resolve future conflict between herdsmen and farmers.

Other members of the committee include: the brigade commander, state director of Department of State Services (DSS), state Commandant of the Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corp (NSCDC), the naval commander, special adviser to the governor on security, special adviser to the governor on special duties, state chairman of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), representatives of Myati Allah cattle dealers and the leader of the Hausa community in the state, Sarikin Hausawa.

He also directed that the committee should be replicated in the 17 local governments of the state and should include the local heads of all security agencies.

The news of the creation of the Farmer/ herdsmen committee will be seen as a departure from the belligerent position of some South East groups which ordered herdsmen out of the region following the attack at Nimbo, Enugu last month that left at least 20 people dead.

Ikpeazu sues for peace in Aba

Meanwhile the governor has appealed to residents of Aba to remain calm and go about their businesses peacefully.

Contrary to earlier reports, which suggested three people were killed during Thursday clash, the governor said only one person died after he was shot by a soldier.

He said the soldier had been arrested and will be made to face justice for his action.

It is with heavy hearts that the state government received reports of the unfortunate incident at Aba abattoir today. Initial information made available to us indicate that the violence was sparked off by a soldier who killed a meat-seller at the popular waterside abattoir located at the Ogbohill area of Aba, the statement read.

We condemn the dastardly act that led to the untimely death of our brother, father and bread winner of his family. Our hearts and prayers are with his family and friends in this moment of pains and loss, even as we also commiserate with the traders at the market and others who were affected by the ensuing crisis.

The solider who allegedly perpetrated this act has been arrested and taken into custody. He will surely face the full weight of the law.

We call on the good people of Abia, especially those of us living and doing business at Aba, to remain claim. We reassure all citizens and residents of the state that the government is doing everything to protect lives and property of citizens as well as prevent further disruption of peace.
The feud between the Ondo State Governor, Olusegun Mimiko, and the senator representing Ondo North senatorial district, Ajayi Boroffice, over unpaid salaries, has yet to abate as the senator has said that Ondo workers were owed salaries of five months because a N50 billion bailout given the state was misappropriated.

Since this government has reportedly received the inflow of over N50billion in the past few months, why has the government failed to pay about six month salaries and pensions? queried Mr. Boroffice, in a statement on Thursday signed by his Media Assistant, Kayode Adeniyi.

The Mimiko-led administration received N2billion from federal government as ecological funds in 2015, for what purpose has the N2billion been expended or looted?

Mr. Boroffice called on the workers to fight for their rights and demand the payment of their salaries, given that the state government had received enough funding to offset the arrears of their entitlements.

But the state government responded by accusing the senator of attempting to instigate chaos and the breach of the peace by his comments.

The response, which was signed by the Commissioner for Information, Kayode Akinmade, alleged that Senator Boroffice was planning to cause unrest with his comments on unpaid salaries of workers in the state.

Mr. Akinmade also said that Mr. Boroffice had no interest of the state at heart, as he had previously blocked the efforts of the state to get a refund from the federal government on roads maintained.

Boroffices hatred for the progress of the state is becoming pronounced. Only recently did he raise a false alarm over the bailout funds. Boroffice went to town with a tale of fund diversion and further manipulated the Independent Corrupt Practices and other related Offences Commission to write a report contrary to its (ICPCs) monitoring teams findings, Mr. Akinmade stated.

The ICPC has written a formal letter to retract the report. The senators latest accusation meant to incite the workers against the state government cannot work because the informed and patriotic workers are aware of the inflow and outflow of funds in the state. One wonders the advice Boroffice has for workers in the All Peoples Congress states that have been unable to pay their workers for over eight months.

Mr. Boroffice however, said the allegations by the Ondo State government were baseless and unfounded.

He said it was a matter of public records he only advised the federal government to thoroughly verify claims by the state government in view of conflicting figures which emanated from the Mimiko-led administration.

According to him, the Mimiko government was yet to explain how an appeal to the leadership of labour unions in the state to defend their colleagues could equate to deep-seated opposition towards the progress of the state.

Also, the allegation that Senator Boroffice manipulated the Independent Corrupt Practices and other related Offences Commission to write a report contrary to its monitoring teams findings is strange and absurd, The statement said.

The claim by Ondo State government that ICPC has written a formal letter to retract its initial report on diversion of bailout funds, whether false or not, is immaterial as it is evident in the state that bailout funds were either diverted or stolen.

Mr. Boroffice further argued that if unrest was about protests and demonstrations, Ondo State was ripe for such so long as the government continued to treat workers with contempt and refused to halt the condemnable diversion of workers salaries in the state.

He noted that some agencies had already embarked on industrial action, even as health workers in Ondo protested the non-payment of their salaries and shut down hospitals on Tuesday.


Pobierz zdjecie Przeczytaj o zasadach pobierania zdjec President signs legislative initiative on education of Poles abroad (photo by Andrzej Hrechorowicz / KPRP) (1)

President Andrzej Duda signed on Monday a legislative initiative concerning education in Polish communities abroad. Earlier the president attended a ceremonial hoisting of the Polish flag on the clock tower of Warsaw's Royal Castle.

May 2 is the Polish Flag Day and Polonia and Poles Abroad Day, instituted in 2002 by the Polish Senate (upper house).

The signing ceremony, attended by the First Lady and Sejm (lower house) Speaker Marek Kuchcinski, was held at the Belvedere Palace.

The presidential initiative amends a law on discounts available to Polish pupils and students by offering the same privilages to those living abroad and learning subjects related to Poland. The discounts concern public transport tickets, and museum and national park entry fees.(PAP)
CAPE MAY  The U.S. Coast Guard will play host Saturday to the second-annual Community Festival at Training Center Cape May.

The festival gives the public a chance to tour the base and the Coast Guards high-tech cutters and see firsthand the work that takes place at the center, which is responsible for training 4,000 recruits from across the country every year.

Cape May County is a federally designated Coast Guard community.

The whole community is interconnected. You have Coast Guard spouses who work in Cape May County, said Nina Ranalli, of Middle Township, director of the Cape May County Coast Guard Community Foundation.

There was also the historical presence of the Coast Guard here. There were lifesaving stations on every island.

The festivities kick off Friday with a dinner 6 p.m. at the Harborview Chiefs Club to honor Capt. Todd Prestidge, who is stepping down in June as commander of the training center for a new position in Washington.

The festival runs 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday at the training center and includes search-and-rescue and K9 demonstrations, tours of the cutters and a helicopter, display booths and childrens activities.

Parking is available on Pennsylvania Avenue and elsewhere in the city with trolley service to and from the base. The festival is free but adults must present a photo ID to get onto the base.

The festival wraps up Sunday with a brunch from 8:30 to 11: 30 a.m. at the Cape May-Lewes Ferry.
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.




LONDON, May 6, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Device designed to improve visualisation of the colon

Norgine B.V. and its subsidiary Arc Medical Design Ltd today announced a new distribution agreement by which Arc appoints Olympus Corporation of the Americas as the exclusive distributor of ENDOCUFF VISION in the US and Canada. The ENDOCUFF VISION will be showcased at the adjoining Arc and Olympus booths at the Digestive Disease Week (DDW) conference in San Diego, California May 22-26, 2016.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20130829/633895-a )



ENDOCUFF VISION is a medical device designed to improve visualisation for certain endoscopic procedures such as colonoscopies. Placed on the distal tip of a colonoscope, its unique hinged arms fall flat against the shaft of the scope so that forward advancement is not hindered. During withdrawal, the arms flare out to stabilise the tip, reduce slippage and gently stretch the mucosal surface to allow the physician thorough inspection of the anatomy during the search for polyps.

Tas Javed, Managing Director at Arc Medical said: "This new distribution agreement will ensure the successful international exposure of the ENDOCUFF VISION in the US and Canada. ENDOCUFF VISION, designed with input from physicians, improves tip control and visualisation during colonoscopy."

"We are pleased to strengthen our commercial strategy through this relationship with Arc Medical," said Christos Monovoukas, VP, Business Development and Strategy at Olympus America Inc. "This agreement represents a significant market opportunity for the Olympus endoscopy business and an important advantage for our customers and their patients."

ENDOCUFF VISION is sold in Europe and Australia and New Zealand through Norgine's infrastructure.

Financial terms were not disclosed.

To access the press release in full, please go to http://www.norgine.com

Norgine Media Contacts:

Isabelle Jouin, T: +44-(0)1895-453643

Charlotte Andrews, T: +44-(0)1895-453607

Follow us @norgine



SOURCE Norgine B.V.
Latest article on PR Newswire's Small Business PR Toolkit offers expert advice on the editing process

NEW YORK, May 5, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- If blogging is part of your small business content marketing strategy, your goal should be to consistently produce content relevant to your target audience. With all of the other hats you're wearing it might be difficult to create high-quality content, let alone polished and error-free content on a consistent basis.

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20110831/NY59180LOGO

@SteveLazuka, Founder of Interact Media, understands this challenge and in his latest post offers seven ways to improve your editing skills.

Eliminate fluff. Lazuka suggests to be concise with your writing and avoid unnecessary words that lengthen sentences. Check to see if you are using the most direct route to convey your messaging and avoid words such as "in order," "here" and "quite." Switch to active voice. On rare occasions it may be necessary to use passive voice in your content, but switching to active voice can instill confidence in audience, which can also lead to higher levels of engagement. Split sentences. Consider splitting up long sentences that contain more than one idea. These can easily be identified by a heavy use of commas. Splitting sentences can help avoid rambling and keep readers focused.

For discussion on the four remaining tips and tricks to assist your editing process, read Lazuka's complete post here.

PR Newswire's Small Business PR Toolkit is a comprehensive resource that provides small businesses and entrepreneurs the tools to develop an affordable public relations and marketing plan that helps generate interest from potential customers, engage with key audiences and grow their businesses. The toolkit features relevant content such as informative white papers, interactive webinars and how-to articles and premium access to educational resources, as well as the opportunity to take advantage of special offers designed specifically for small businesses. To request information on how PR Newswire can help your small business, click here. You can receive updates on new Small Business PR Toolkit content by following @prnsmallbiz on Twitter.

About PR Newswire

PR Newswire (www.prnewswire.com) is the premier global provider of multimedia platforms that enable marketers, corporate communicators, sustainability officers, public affairs and investor relations officers to leverage content to engage with all their key audiences. Having pioneered the commercial news distribution industry over 60 years ago, PR Newswire today provides end-to-end solutions to produce, optimize and target content -- from rich media to online video to multimedia -- and then distribute content and measure results across traditional, digital, mobile and social channels. Combining the world's largest multi-channel, multi-cultural content distribution and optimization network with comprehensive workflow tools and platforms, PR Newswire enables the world's enterprises to engage opportunity everywhere it exists. PR Newswire serves tens of thousands of clients from offices in the Americas, Europe, Middle East, Africa and the Asia-Pacific region, and is a UBM plc company.

Contact:

Amanda Eldridge

Director, Strategic Channels

201-360-6906

Amanda.eldridge@prnewswire.com

Related Links

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SOURCE PR Newswire Association LLC
CAMARILLO, California, May 5, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

All amounts are in U.S. Dollars unless otherwise indicated:

FIRST QUARTER HIGHLIGHTS

Average production for the first quarter of 2016 was 1,352 BOEPD, an increase of 8% compared to 2015 production of 1,249 BOEPD due to the completion of the fracture stimulation operations on the previously drilled Nickel Hill 36-3H well and the Emery 17-1H well in mid-2015

In the quarter, the Company continued to reduce its costs. G&A expenses decreased by 31% and per barrel operating costs decreased by 11% in the first quarter of 2016 compared to the first quarter of 2015

Cash flow from operating activities was $1.5 million in the first quarter 2016 compared to $1.3 million in the first quarter of 2015

in the first quarter 2016 compared to in the first quarter of 2015 Net loss for the first quarter of 2016 was $1.3 million compared to $0.8 million for the first quarter of 2015 most of which is due to a non-cash unrealized loss of $0.8 million from hedged commodity contracts in the first quarter of 2016

compared to for the first quarter of 2015 most of which is due to a non-cash unrealized loss of from hedged commodity contracts in the first quarter of 2016 Revenue, net of royalties was $2.1 million in the first quarter of 2016 compared to $3.2 million for first quarter of 2015, a decrease of 35%, as average prices declined by 41% between the quarters

in the first quarter of 2016 compared to for first quarter of 2015, a decrease of 35%, as average prices declined by 41% between the quarters Average netback per barrel for the first quarter of 2016 was $12.29 , a decrease of 47% from the prior year first quarter due to lower prices in 2016. If the commodity contract hedges are included in the computation, the average netback per barrel increases over 111% to $25.89 , a decrease of only 17% from the first quarter 2015 amount

, a decrease of 47% from the prior year first quarter due to lower prices in 2016. If the commodity contract hedges are included in the computation, the average netback per barrel increases over 111% to , a decrease of only 17% from the first quarter 2015 amount In February 2016 , the Company started the shutdown of the Poland operations by relinquishing the Slupsk concession which was its last remaining concession in Poland

, the Company started the shutdown of the operations by relinquishing the Slupsk concession which was its last remaining concession in Cash totaled $2.9 million and working capital totaled $8.0 million at March 31, 2016

and working capital totaled at In April 2016 , the Company made a voluntary $1.8 million pay down on its credit facility

BNK's President and Chief Executive Officer, Wolf Regener commented:

"Our first quarter 2016 production increased by 8% from the prior year first quarter to 1,352 BOEPD. The Company's existing production continues to perform well and we remain in a ready to drill state, with all the planning for the next wells complete. Our intent is to work with our lender and utilize our existing cash flow to begin drilling again when the pricing warrants.

"The Company continues to succeed in its cost cutting efforts. In the first quarter of 2016 a reduction of general and administrative expense of 31% was achieved over the first quarter of 2015 and our operating expense per barrel was reduced by 11% to $4.49/barrel compared to the prior year first quarter. These continued cost savings partially offset a 41% decrease in average prices compared to the prior year quarter and contributed to the Company generating positive cash flow from continuing operations of $1.5 million in the first quarter of 2016.

"The Company's hedging position has continued to allow us to realize higher prices than current market levels for a portion of our production. The Company's commodity contract hedges generated $1.7 million in realized gains during the first quarter of 2016 with about 73% of our oil production hedged. We expect a comparable level of hedging going forward on our forecasted existing production for the remainder of 2016.

"Average netbacks for the first quarter of 2016 were $12.29, a decrease of 47% compared to the prior year due to lower prices. If we include the impact of the realized gains from the commodity contracts, our average netbacks for 2016 would be $25.89, which is a decrease of only 17% compared to the first quarter of 2015."

"In the first quarter of 2016, the Company generated a net loss of $1,250,000 compared to $760,000 in the first quarter 2015. Oil and gas revenue, net of royalties was $2.1 million in the first quarter of 2016, a decrease of $1.1 million, or 35%, compared to the prior year quarter.

"The Company continues to evaluate alternatives for its Spain operations including continuing its efforts to partner with another company or reducing or ceasing its operations there. With the recently announced shutdown of Poland, we expect our European costs to be substantially reduced from prior years.

"In April, the Company made a voluntary $1.8 million pay down of its existing credit facility to reduce its ongoing interest payments, which amount remains available to the Company under the credit facility."



1st Qtr 2016

1st Qtr 2015

% Net loss:









$ Thousands $(1,250)

$(760)

(64) $ per common share assuming dilution $(0.01)

$(0.00)

-











Capital Expenditures $131

$4,318

(97)











Average production per day (Boepd) 1,352

1,249

8 Average Product Price per Barrel $21.69

$36.62

(41) Average Netback per Barrel $12.29

$23.33

(47) Average Price per Barrel including Commodity Contracts 35.29

44.37

(20) Average Netback per Barrel including Commodity Contracts 25.89

31.08

(17)













3/31/2016

12/31/2015



Cash and Cash Equivalents $2,885

$1,666



Working Capital $7,950

$7,298





First Quarter 2016 versus First Quarter 2015

Oil and gas gross revenues totaled $2,669,000 in the quarter versus $4,117,000 in the first quarter of 2015. Oil revenues decreased $1,553,000 or 43% as average oil prices decreased $15.89 per barrel or 34% to $30.24 in addition to a 14% decrease in oil production per day to 744 boepd. Natural gas revenues decreased $75,000 or 20% to $299,000 as average natural gas prices decreased $1.04/mcf or 35% to $1.93 which was partially offset by a 22% increase in natural gas production of 305 cubic feet per day (mcf/d) to 1,702 mcf/d. Natural gas liquids (NGL's) revenues increased $180,000 or 126% as NGL production increased 117% to 324 boepd while average NGL prices increased 3% to $10.96.

Average first quarter 2016 production per day increased 8% from the first quarter of 2015 due to the production from the previously drilled Nickel Hill 36-3H well and the Emery 17-1H well which were completed in the second quarter of 2015.

Production and operating expenses decreased slightly to $552,000 and the per barrel production and operating costs decreased by 11% to $4.49/barrel due to the Company's cost cutting efforts.

Depletion and depreciation expense decreased $140,000 or 8% due to an decrease in the reserve base in 2016.

General and administrative expenses decreased $637,000 or 31% due to cost cutting efforts which included reduced salary and benefits expense and legal, accounting and consulting costs.

Share based compensation decreased $138,000 or 77% due to the timing of stock awards granted to employees.

Finance income decreased $373,000 in the first quarter of 2016 compared to the prior year quarter primarily due to prior year unrealized gains on commodity contracts.

Finance expense increased $614,000 in the first quarter of 2016 compared to the prior year quarter primarily due to unrealized gains on commodity contracts and the interest expense on the credit facility.

Capital expenditures of $131,000 were incurred in the first quarter of 2016 relating to the US operations.

BNK PETROLEUM INC. CONDENSED CONSOLIDATED STATEMENTS OF FINANCIAL POSITION (Unaudited, Expressed in Thousands of United States Dollars) ($000 except as noted)





March 31

December 31





2016

2015











Current Assets

$2,885

$1,666

Cash



Trade and other receivables

2,853

2,905

Other current assets

811

906

Fair value of commodity contracts

3,988

4,459





10,537

9,936











Non-current assets

134,680

136,233

Property, plant and equipment



Exploration and evaluation assets

835

835

Fair value of commodity contracts

2,481

2,802





137,996

139,870











Total Assets

$148,533

$149,806











Current Liabilities

$2,587

$2,638

Trade and other payables







2,587

2,638











Non-current liabilities









Loans and borrowings

24,001

23,961

Asset retirement obligations

725

788





24,726

24,749











Equity









Share capital

279,859

279,859

Contributed surplus

21,522

21,471

Deficit

(180,161)

(178,911) Total Equity

121,220

122,419











Total Equity and Liabilities

$148,533

$149,806

BNK PETROLEUM INC. CONDENSED CONSOLIDATED STATEMENTS OF OPERATIONS AND COMPREHENSIVE LOSS (Unaudited, expressed in Thousands of United States dollars, except per share amounts)

($000 except as noted)

Three months ended March 31, ($000's) 2016

2015







Oil and gas revenue net of royalties $2,064

$3,191 Other income 6

3

2,070

3,194







Exploration and evaluation expenditures -

32 Production and operating expenses 552

572 Depletion and depreciation 1,671

1,811 General and administrative expenses 1,408

2,045 Share based compensation 42

180

$3,673

$4,640







Finance Income 1,680

2,053 Finance Expense (1,324)

(710)







Net loss and comprehensive loss from continuing operations $(1,247)

$(103) Net loss and comprehensive loss from discontinued operations (3)

(657) Net loss (1,250)

(760) Net loss per share $(0.01)

$0.00

BNK PETROLEUM INC. FIRST QUARTER 2016 Unaudited, expressed in Thousands of United States dollars, except as noted)





Quarter Ending March 31,

2016

2015 Oil revenue before royalties $2,047

$3,600 Gas revenue before royalties 299

374 NGL revenue before royalties 323

143 Oil and Gas revenue 2,669

4,117 Cash flow provided by operating activities 1,544

1,282 Capital expenditures (131)

(4,318)























Statistics:





Average oil production (Bopd) 744

867 Average natural gas production (mcf/d) 1,702

1,397 Average NGL production (Boepd) 324

149 Average production (Boepd) 1,352

1,249







Average oil price ($/bbl) $ 30.24

$ 46.13 Average natural gas price ($/mcf) 1.93

2.97 Average NGL price ($/bbl) 10.96

10.68







Average price per barrel $21.69

$36.62 Royalties per barrel 4.91

8.24 Operating expenses per barrel 4.49

5.05 Netback per barrel $12.29

$23.33







Average price per barrel including commodity contracts $35.29

$44.37 Royalties per barrel 4.91

8.24 Operating expenses per barrel 4.49

5.05 Netback per barrel including commodity contracts $25.89

$31.08

The information outlined above is extracted from and should be read in conjunction with the Company's unaudited financial statements for the three months ended March 31, 2016 and the related management's discussion and analysis thereof, copies of which are available under the Company's profile at www.sedar.com.

NON-GAAP MEASURES

The Company's Non-GAAP Measures are described and reconciled to to GAAP measures in the management's discussion and analysis which are available under the Company's profile at www.sedar.com.

Cautionary Statements

In this news release and the Company's other public disclosure:

(a)

The Company's natural gas production is reported in thousands of cubic feet ("Mcfs"). The Company also uses references to barrels ("Bbls") and barrels of oil equivalent ("Boes") to reflect natural gas liquids and oil production and sales. Boes may be misleading, particularly if used in isolation. A Boe conversion ratio of 6 Mcf:1 Bbl is based on an energy equivalency conversion method primarily applicable at the burner tip and does not represent a value equivalency at the wellhead. Given that the value ratio based on the current price of crude oil as compared to natural gas is significantly different from the energy equivalency of 6:1, utilizing a conversion on a 6:1 basis may be misleading as an indication of value.





(b)

Discounted and undiscounted net present value of future net revenues attributable to reserves do not represent fair market value.





(c)

Possible reserves are those additional reserves that are less certain to be recovered than probable reserves. There is a 10% probability that the quantities actually recovered will equal or exceed the sum of proved plus probable plus possible reserves.





(d)

The Company discloses short-term production rates. Readers are cautioned that such production rates are preliminary in nature and are not necessarily indicative of long-term performance or of ultimate recovery.

Caution Regarding Forward-Looking Information

This release contains forward-looking information including information regarding the Company's commodity contract hedges, anticipated results from the Company's cost reduction measures, the proposed timing and expected results of exploratory and development work including production from the Company's Tishomingo field, Oklahoma acreage, availability of funds from the Company's reserves based loan facility, the effect of design and performance improvements on future productivity, the Company's European projects, planned capital expenditure programs and cost estimates, planned use and sufficiency of cash on hand and cash flow from operations and the Company's strategy and objectives. The use of any of the words "target", "plans", "anticipate", "continue", "estimate", "expect", "may", "will", "project", "should", "believe" and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements.

Such forward-looking information is based on management's expectations and assumptions, including that the Company will achieve a comparable level of hedging going forward in respect of its existing production, that the Company will achieve the results anticipated by management from its cost reduction measures, that the Company's geologic models will be validated, that indications of early results are reasonably accurate predictors of the prospectiveness of the shale intervals, that previous exploration results are indicative of future results and success, that expected production from future wells can be achieved as modeled, declines will match the modeling, future well production rates will be improved over existing wells, that rates of return as modeled can be achieved, that recoveries are consistent with management's expectations, that additional wells are actually drilled and completed, that design and performance improvements will reduce development time and expense and improve productivity, that discoveries will prove to be economic, that anticipated results and estimated costs will be consistent with managements' expectations, that all required permits and approvals and the necessary labor and equipment will be obtained, provided or available, as applicable, on terms that are acceptable to the Company, when required, that no unforeseen delays, unexpected geological or other effects, equipment failures, permitting delays or labor or contract disputes are encountered, that the development plans of the Company and its co-venturers will not change, that the demand for oil and gas will be sustained, that the Company will continue to be able to access sufficient capital through financings, credit facilities, farm-ins or other participation arrangements to maintain its projects, that funds will be available from the Company's reserves based loan facility when required to fund planned operations, that the Company will not be adversely affected by changing government policies and regulations, social instability or other political, economic or diplomatic developments in the countries in which it operates and that global economic conditions will not deteriorate in a manner that has an adverse impact on the Company's business and its ability to advance its business strategy.

Forward looking information involves significant known and unknown risks and uncertainties, which could cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated. These risks include, but are not limited to: any of the assumptions on which such forward looking information is based vary or prove to be invalid, including that anticipated results and estimated costs will not be consistent with managements' expectations, that the Company will not achieve a comparable level of hedging going forward in respect of its existing production, that the Company's geologic and reservoir models or analysis are not validated, that the Company will not achieve the results anticipated by management from the Company's cost reduction measures, the risks associated with the oil and gas industry (e.g. operational risks in development, exploration and production; delays or changes in plans with respect to exploration and development projects or capital expenditures; the uncertainty of reserve and resource estimates and projections relating to production, costs and expenses, and health, safety and environmental risks, including flooding and extended interruptions due to inclement or hazardous weather conditions), the risk of commodity price and foreign exchange rate fluctuations, risks and uncertainties associated with securing the necessary regulatory approvals and financing to proceed with continued development of the Tishomingo Field and other shale basins in the United States and Europe, the Company or its subsidiaries is not able for any reason to obtain and provide the information necessary to secure required approvals or that required regulatory approvals are otherwise not available when required, that unexpected geological results are encountered, that completion techniques require further optimization, that production rates do not match the Company's assumptions, that very low or no production rates are achieved, that the Company is unable to access required capital, that funds will not be available from the Company's reserves based loan facility when required to fund planned operations, that occurrences such as those that are assumed will not occur, do in fact occur, and those conditions that are assumed will continue or improve, do not continue or improve and the other risks identified in the Company's most recent Annual Information Form under the "Risk Factors" section, the Company's most recent management's discussion and analysis and the Company's other public disclosure, available under the Company's profile on SEDAR at www.sedar.com.

Although the Company has attempted to take into account important factors that could cause actual costs or results to differ materially, there may be other factors that cause actual 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. The forward-looking information included in this release is expressly qualified in its entirety by this cautionary statement. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking information. The Company undertakes no obligation to update these forward-looking statements, other than as required by applicable law.

About BNK Petroleum Inc.

BNK Petroleum Inc. is an international oil and gas exploration and production company focused on finding and exploiting large, predominately unconventional oil and gas resource plays. Through various affiliates and subsidiaries, the Company owns and operates shale gas properties and concessions in the United States and Spain. Additionally the Company is utilizing its technical and operational expertise to identify and acquire additional unconventional projects. The Company's shares are traded on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the stock symbol BKX.

For further information: Wolf E. Regener, President and Chief Executive Officer, +1 (805) 484-3613, Email: investorrelations@bnkpetroleum.com, Website: www.bnkpetroleum.com

SOURCE BNK Petroleum Inc.
SAO PAULO, May 5, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- A BRASKEM S.A. (BM&FBOVESPA: BRKM3, BRKM5 e BRKM6; NYSE: BAK; LATIBEX: XBRK) announces to its shareholders and the market that its annual report for 2015 on Form 20-F was filed today with U.S. Securities Exchange Comission (SEC). The document is also available in Braskem's Investor Relations website at: www.braskem.com.br/ri.

The Company's shareholders may receive a hard copy of Braskem's complete audited financial statements, free of charge, upon request.

For further information, please contact Braskem's Investor Relations Department by telephone (+55 11) 3576-9531 or by e-mail to braskem-ri@braskem.com.br.

Related Links

http://www.braskem.com.br/ri



SOURCE Braskem S.A.
LONDON, May 6, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Company: B.S.D CROWN LTD., incorporated and registered in the State of Israel with registered number 52-004292-0 (the "Company")

Notice by: Rotenstreich Gitzelter Trust Company Ltd. ("Rotenstreich Gitzelter ")

The Extraordinary General Meeting of the Company (the "EGM"), which was scheduled to be held on Monday, May 9, 2016 at 2pm (London time) at the Hilton London Tower Bridge, 5 More London Place, Tooley Street, London SE1 2BY, United Kingdom, is hereby cancelled.

The EGM is cancelled due to a decision of the District Court in Tel-Aviv, Israel in the hearing of the motion held on May 5, 2016.

Contact:

Rotenstreich Gitzelter Trust Company Ltd.

25 Ibn Gvirol Street, Tel-Aviv, Israel

Tel: +972-3-5258090

Fax: +972-3-5258080

Email: office@rglaw.co.il

SOURCE Rotenstreich Gitzelter Trust Company Ltd.
LONDON, May 6, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Chubb today announced that it has won the UK Insurance Times Claims Excellence award for Insurer Claims Initiative of the Year - Commercial Lines.

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160121/324916LOGO

The judges, who sought insurer initiatives that have enhanced a firm's commercial lines claims service, were won over with Chubb's "commitment to regular face to face contact with key independent brokers, including the allocation of a dedicated claims account manager", concluding that this is "a refreshing approach in the digital age."

Katerina Kikillou, UK and Ireland Claim Manager for Chubb, said:

"This award recognises Chubb's solution-oriented approach and strong commitment to relationship management. Awards like this encourage us to respond to independent brokers and their clients' claims with more efficiency, transparency and speed and deliver the superior service they demand and deserve."

SOURCE Chubb
ALBANY, New York, May 6, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

According to a new market report published by Transparency Market Research "Molecular Diagnostic Market for Group A Streptococcus (GAS) Nucleic Acid (NA) Test Products Market - Europe Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends, and Forecast, 2015 - 2023", the Europe molecular diagnostic market for group A streptococcus (GAS) nucleic acid (NA) test products market was valued at US$ 8.3 Mn in 2014 and is projected to expand at a CAGR of 11.6% from 2015 to 2023 to reach US$ 22.3 Mn in 2023.

Rapid and accurate diagnosis is a key factor for effective disease treatment. Increasing incidence of Streptococcus pyogenes infection in Europe, advancement of technology, and rising demand for point-of-care testing act as a high impact drivers of the market. Advancements in techniques such as isothermal nucleic acid amplification tests is likely to propel the market during the forecast period. The molecular diagnostic market for group A streptococcus (GAS) nucleic acid (NA) test in Europe has been segmented based on type of test technique, end-user, and region.

Download Industry Research Brochure: http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=B&rep_id=10505

A study conducted by the American Society for Microbiology concluded that incidence rate of Streptococcus pyogenes is high in countries in Northern Europe. The incidence of the disease has increased at a steady rate in most of these countries of the market. The automated detection system offers a faster, more flexible, and cost-effective solution to clinicians. Advancement of technology is bringing testing services to point-of-care. Due to its high sensitivity and accuracy the tests are backs up all negative rapid antigen assays. The Advancements in nucleic acid testing technologies and their adoption in Europe would result in high growth adoption of the technology will primarily occur in the developed countries. Ineffectiveness and slow adoption are the major restraints of the market.

The polymerase chain reaction segment held the largest share of the market in 2014, followed by the non-amplified tests segment. PCR is a traditional technology used for nucleic acid tests. However, the new, efficient, and user-friendly methods, such as isothermal nucleic acid amplification and non-amplified tests, are likely to capture higher market share in the near future. Isothermal nucleic acid amplification technology has been identified as the fastest growing segment during the forecast period due to its accuracy and rapid identification. Nucleic acid amplification techniques take tiny amounts of DNA or RNA, replicate them many times, and thus can detect minute traces of an organism in a specimen, avoiding the need for culture. Non-amplified technology using hybridization probe would capture a decent share in the market during the forecast period.

Browse Research Report: http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/europe-molecular-diagnostic-market.html

The hospitals end-user segment accounted for over 58.2% share of the nucleic acid (NA) test products market in Europe in terms of revenue in 2014, followed by the public health laboratories segment. Moreover, the segment is expected to gain market share and emerge as the fastest growing segment during the forecast period.

Western Europe was the largest market for nucleic acid (NA) test products in 2014, accounting for around 48.9% share. Western Europe dominated the market due to highly developed health care infrastructure and favorable reimbursement scenario. On the other hand, Northern Europe is expected to gain high market share during the forecast period owing to increase in incidence of Streptococcus pyogenes infection and high adoption rate.

Browse Regional PR: http://www.europlat.org/european-molecular-diagnostic-market.htm

Market Players:

Alere, Inc., F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd., Hologic, Inc., Meridian Bioscience, Inc., Nanosphere, Inc., and Quidel Corporation are the major players operating in European Molecular Diagnostic Market for Group A Streptococcus (GAS) Nucleic Acid (NA) Test Products market.

Other Reports by TMR:

Separation Systems for Commercial Biotechnology Market:

http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/separation-systems-commercial-biotechnology-market.html

Metabolomics Market:

http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/metabolomics-market.html

In-vitro Colorectal Cancer Screening Tests Market:

http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/in-vitro-colorectal-cancer-screening-tests-market.html

About Us:

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SOURCE Transparency Market Research
Fritz Oberhummer, Senior Account Manager EMEA, Expedia Affiliate Network Brand, was named as one of Phocuswright's 35 Young Leaders Class of 2016

BELLEVUE, Washington, May 6, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Expedia Affiliate Network (EAN), a division of the Expedia group, one of the world's leading online travel companies, is proud to announce that Fritz Oberhummer, Senior Account Manager, EMEA Sales, has been accepted as a member of the Phocuswright Class of 2016 35 Young Leaders.

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160301/339238LOGO

As Senior Account Manager, Fritz works with EAN's top partners in Central and Eastern Europe, helping their businesses by finding the right hotel for their customers from among over 250,000 hotels available in EAN's template and API. Fritz joined Expedia three years ago and was named Account Manager of the Year for the EMEA region in 2013 and 2015. He also received a sales excellence award for teamwork in 2014. Fritz has spent the majority of his career in technology and travel and is an MBA candidate at FOM University.

"We are pleased that Fritz has been recognized for his passion and commitment to the travel industry," Ariane Gorin, EAN brand's Senior Vice President and General Manager stated. "With this nomination, Fritz joins a fantastic group of travel leaders."

"I am pleased to be awarded this honour and look forward to sharing and learning from the others in the group," states Fritz.

The Young Leaders Summit@ Phocuswright Europe brings together a selected group of 35 who will spend time networking, listening to experienced guest speakers from across the travel industry and brainstorming ideas for how to move the industry forward over the two day session.

This year's summit will be held in Dublin, Ireland from May 10th through 12th in conjunction with Phocuswright Europe. Fritz and other representatives of EAN will be present at the conference.

About Expedia Affiliate Network

Expedia Affiliate Network (EAN) is a division within the Expedia Group, one of the world's leading travel companies. EAN works with thousands of partners in 33 countries to turn their web traffic into hotel bookings and happy customers. EAN provides partners with the tools and technology that help millions of travellers find the perfect hotels for their next trips.

2016 Expedia. All rights reserved. Expedia is a registered trademark of Expedia, Inc. in the U.S. and/or other countries. Other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

Contact:

Becky Wofford

1-469-335-1397

bwofford@expedia.com

SOURCE Expedia Affiliate Network
CORK, Ireland and BOSTON, May 6, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Award winning employee share plan now provides global inclusion in employee ownership scheme.

The Global Equity Organization 17th annual conference took place 20-22 April in Boston, Massachusetts, where the much-anticipated 2016 GEO Annual Award winners were announced. Global Shares was delighted to see its client, DAI , win recognition in the equity plan industry for Best Use of a Share Plan in a Private Company.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160122/325085LOGO )



The GEO Awards, which are in their 15th year, celebrate excellence by honoring companies from around the globe that demonstrate their leadership and dedication to their employee stock plans. DAI is an extremely worthy winner.

DAI is a company that has remained faithful to its originating ethos of bringing fresh alternatives and innovations to the practice of international development. They tackle social and economic development problems caused by inefficient markets, ineffective governance, and instability by combining expertise with innovation across multiple disciplines. An employee-owned company from the beginning, DAI recently restructured the company's ownership model to accommodate its increasingly global workforce. While ownership was previously limited to U.S.-based employees through its Employee Stock Ownership Plan, DAI can now offer an active ownership option to all global corporate employees, paving the way for international growth.

The Global Shares team understood DAI's vision to facilitate global ownership and set out to deliver a bespoke equity administration software solution that meets the company's unique equity needs. Working closely with the DAI team, Global Shares developed a custom DAI-branded employee participant portal to facilitate all investment elections through bespoke equity administration software. This platform supports the employee ownership culture at a global scale, unifying the company worldwide and assisting in the continued success of DAI. DAI employees join over 1 million users on the Global Shares equity plan management software platform in over 100 countries worldwide.

The DAI plan is creative and transformative due to its global, broad-based equity design, an innovative shift for a traditional U.S. ESOP-owned company and a move which was altogether worthy of recognition from the equity plan industry. Global Shares is thrilled to partner with DAI and help make their vision a reality. We look forward to working with such an ethical and inspiring company.

http://www.globalshares.com

SOURCE Global Shares
SOUTHEND-ON-SEA, England, May 6, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

New integrated surgical theatres built to improve patient care

State of the art surgical imaging and tissue management technologies installed

Improved hospital efficiencies as part of the NHS Five Year Forward View

Olympus Medical is proud to announce their partnership with one of London's largest and busiest teaching hospitals King's College Hospital (KCH), with the aim of improving patient care, as well as overall efficiency. Through the partnership two new operating theatres have been created featuring upgraded surgical technologies including Full HD (FHD), 3D and 4K surgical imaging platforms and surgical tissue management system 'THUNDERBEAT'.

"Olympus is thrilled with what has been achieved through this partnership. Having the opportunity to work closely with procurement, clinicians and theatre management has enabled us to identify the best implementation solution. This new approach maximises efficiency and uptime. We are excited at the prospect of continuing the partnership with King's to enable transformation and sustainability in health care," commented Mark Graves, Head of EndoTherapy and Strategic Development at Olympus KeyMed.

NHS Background

The NHS is constantly challenged to provide the highest standard of care for the United Kingdom's growing and ageing population. Demand is rising and services are under pressure. As part of the Five Year Forward View, the NHS has been tasked to deliver new ways of providing care. Meeting these requirements for high quality care with available resources will continue to be a challenge. Identifying ways to improve efficiencies in the NHS will be critical to meet the increasing demand.

Guaranteed Performance Solutions (GPS)

In October 2012, Olympus was invited to tender for the provision of a managed equipment service within a theatre setting. Olympus proposed their Guaranteed Performance Solutions (GPS), designed specifically to respond to the changing health service landscape. The aim of this was to improve patient outcomes through efficiency gains, offering the best possible value for money to the trust.

As the name suggests a key element of Olympus' provision is the guarantee. Olympus commits to ensure that the latest medical technology, within the scope of the agreement, is available to the clinician precisely when required. It must be fit for purpose and maintained to an appropriate level to enhance the patient's experience. The GPS removes the reliance on high residual values typically built into a traditional leasing agreement. As a result, budget planning throughout the term is straightforward and transparent with fixed annual charges and no equipment return fees.

Success for Olympus

In March 2015, Olympus was confirmed as the successful service provider and began preparations for a large scale implementation of mobile imaging equipment and fully integrated turnkey operating theatres.

Throughout the process Olympus worked closely with the Trust team comprising of Senior Clinicians, Divisional Leads and Procurement. The Procurement lead steered the team through the Competitive Dialogue process.

"The introduction of this technology to the theatres has been positively welcomed by both clinical and non-clinical teams. Everyone has been very excited to be involved in this important project which will have a significant impact on patient care. The integration of the new ground-breaking technology has been incredibly smooth. The delivery of efficient patient care has been maintained during the entire process and disruption has been minimised which is so critical in a live working environment," commented Kara Hollings, Theatre Service Manager at King's College Hospital.

Laparoscopic and image-guided surgeries are increasingly taking place in an integrated surgical environment which includes high-resolution video displays, touch-screen control, and archival digital information. The move towards such integrated surgeries can help reduce dependence on mobile equipment, increase patient flow and improve patient outcomes.

Olympus replaced existing, older equipment with 16 mobile 2D and 3D surgical imaging platforms for inpatients and day surgery units. In January 2016, the first of three ENDOALPHA 3D integrated laparoscopic theatres were completed at the Denmark Hill site.

"It is very pleasing to see NHS Trusts adopting new technologies which can have such a marked impact on day to day efficiencies in surgery. Ultimately, any solution that can improve patient care whilst saving costs is a positive step forward to help support the delivery of services for the people who need them", commented Mr Asif Haq, Consultant Laparoscopic Colorectal and General Surgeon

NOTES TO EDITORS

About King's College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust

King's College Hospital is one of London's largest and busiest teaching hospitals, with a strong profile of local services primarily serving the boroughs of Lambeth, Southwark, Lewisham and Bromley. Specialist services are available to patients across a wider catchment area, providing nationally and internationally recognised work in liver disease and transplantation, neurosciences, haemato-oncology and foetal medicine. For more information about King's College Hospital go to https://www.kch.nhs.uk/about

The Project Brief

KCH, led by the procurement and theatre project teams, were tasked with delivering a high quality solution that allows access to the latest technology to treat patients, whilst minimising financial and service risk to the trust.

The KCH requirement was for the provision of a technological and financial solution for inpatient and day surgery services, operating around 2,000 procedures per month across general surgery, bariatric, liver, urology, orthopaedics, and gynaecology.

The Trust gave Olympus the brief for the supply, installation and on-going maintenance of fully integrated laparoscopic theatres and related equipment. The main objectives for KCH were:-

Maintain the clinical service level and surgical expertise

Procure an innovative and alternative financing solution

Guaranteeing surgical uptime (i.e. customers are guaranteed next-day replacement of surgical equipment when it needs to be repaired to avoid disruption to procedures) against defined key performance indicators

About Olympus

As a worldwide leading manufacturer of optical and digital precision technology, Olympus provides innovative solutions for state-of-the-art medical systems, digital cameras as well as scientific solutions in the fields of microscopy and industrial inspection. The company's award winning products are instrumental in detecting, preventing and healing illness, driving scientific research and documenting life with artistic freedom. In the hands of its customers, Olympus' high-tech products help to make people's lives healthier, safer and more fulfilling. For more information about Olympus go to http://www.olympus.co.uk

SOURCE Olympus Medical
NEW YORK, May 6, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Anticipated growth in mining, agriculture, infrastructure and logistics sectors to drive global OTR tire market through 2021

According to TechSci Research report, "Global OTR Tire Market By Vehicle Type, By Demand Category, By Region, Competition Forecast and Opportunities, 2011 - 2021", the global OTR tire market is projected to grow at a CAGR of 8% during 2016-2021. Growth in the market is anticipated on account of global construction industry forecast to increase at a CAGR of more than 7% over the next five years, coupled with continuing growth being witnessed in the infrastructure sector, globally.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20140117/663730 )

Browse 103 market data Tables and 182 Figures spread through 441 Pages and an in-depth TOC on

"Global OTR Tire Market"

http://www.techsciresearch.com/report/global-otr-tire-market-by-vehicle-type-mining-construction-and-industrial-equipment-agriculture-vehicles-and-others-by-demand-category-oem-vs-replacement-by-region-competition-forecast-and-opportunities-2011-2021/637.html

During 2011-2015, the global OTR tire market grew at a moderate pace owing to the Eurozone crisis in 2012 and decline in global oil prices during 2013 and 2014. Consequently, a decline in the production and sales of OTR vehicles was also registered during the same period. However, the production and sales of OTR vehicles are anticipated to grow at a healthy rate over the next five years, thereby positively influencing demand for OTR tires in both OEM as well as replacement tire segments, globally.

Download Sample Report @ http://www.techsciresearch.com/sample-report.aspx?cid=637

Customers can also request for 10% free customization on this report.

In 2015, mining, construction & industrial equipment captured the largest share in the global OTR tire market, due to growing construction, industrial and infrastructure activities in various countries across the world. In 2015, Asia-Pacific grabbed more than half of the total OTR tire sales, globally, with India, China, Japan, Australia, Malaysia and South Korea being the leading OTR tire markets in the region. Few of the major companies operating in global OTR tire market include Yokohama, Pirelli, Alliance, BKT, Continental, Goodyear, and Bridgestone, among others.

"According to the Food & Agriculture Organization (FAO), the world average per capita food consumption stood at around 3,000 kcal/person/day in 2015, and this figure is projected to grow in the coming years. In order to address the growing demand for food, governments in various countries are focussing towards modernising agriculture sector, which is expected to augment demand for agriculture vehicles as well as OTR tires over the course of next 5-10 years.", said Mr. Karan Chechi, Research Director with TechSci Research, a research based global management consulting firm.

"Global OTR Tire Market By Vehicle Type, By Demand Category, By Region, Competition Forecast and Opportunities, 2011 - 2021" has analyzed the potential of global OTR tire market, and provides statistics and information on market sizes, shares and trends. The report will suffice in providing the intending clients with cutting-edge market intelligence and help them in taking sound investment decisions. Besides, the report also identifies and analyzes emerging trends along with essential drivers and key challenges faced by the industry.

Browse Related Reports

United Kingdom Tire Market Forecast and Opportunities, 2021

http://www.techsciresearch.com/report/united-kingdom-tire-market-forecast-and-opportunities-2021/624.html

United States Tyre Market Forecast & Opportunities, 2021

http://www.techsciresearch.com/report/united-states-tyre-market-forecast-and-opportunities-2020/230.html

Saudi Arabia Construction Equipment Rental Market By Equipment Type (By Diesel Genset, Crane, Wheel Loader, Excavator, Bulldozer, Motor Grader and Telescopic Handler), Competition Forecast and Opportunities, 2011 - 2021

http://www.techsciresearch.com/report/saudi-arabia-construction-equipment-rental-market-by-equipment-type-by-diesel-genset-crane-wheel-loader-excavator-bulldozer-motor-grader-and-telescopic-handler-competition-forecast-and-opportunities-2011-2021/653.html

About TechSci Research:

TechSci Research is a leading global market research firm publishing premium market research reports. Serving 700 global clients with more than 600 premium market research studies, TechSci Research is serving clients across 11 different industrial verticals. TechSci Research specializes in research based consulting assignments in high growth and emerging markets, leading technologies and niche applications. Our workforce of more than 100 fulltime Analysts and Consultants employing innovative research solutions and tracking global and country specific high growth markets helps TechSci clients to lead rather than follow market trends.

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SOURCE TechSci Research
CALGARY, Alberta, May 5, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Pembina Pipeline Corporation ("Pembina" or the "Company") (TSX: PPL; NYSE: PBA) announced today that its Board of Directors declared a common share cash dividend for May 2016 of $0.16 per share to be paid, subject to applicable law, on June 15, 2016 to shareholders of record on May 25, 2016. This dividend is designated an "eligible dividend" for Canadian income tax purposes. For non-resident shareholders, Pembina's common share dividends should be considered "qualified dividends" and may be subject to Canadian withholding tax.

For shareholders receiving their common share dividends in U.S. funds, the May 2016 cash dividend is expected to be approximately U.S. $0.1245 per share (before deduction of any applicable Canadian withholding tax) based on a currency exchange rate of 0.7780. The actual U.S. dollar dividend will depend on the Canadian/U.S. dollar exchange rate on the payment date and will be subject to applicable withholding taxes.

Confirmation of Record and Payment Date Policy

Pembina pays cash dividends on its common shares in Canadian dollars on a monthly basis to shareholders of record on the 25th calendar day of each month (except for the December record date, which is December 31st), if, as and when determined by the Board of Directors. Should the record date fall on a weekend or a statutory holiday, the effective record date will be the previous business day. The dividend payment date is the 15th of the month following the record date. Should the payment date fall on a weekend or on a holiday the business day prior to the weekend or holiday becomes the payment date.

About Pembina

Calgary-based Pembina Pipeline Corporation is a leading transportation and midstream service provider that has been serving North America's energy industry for over 60 years. Pembina owns and operates an integrated system of pipelines that transport various products derived from natural gas and hydrocarbon liquids produced in western Canada and North Dakota. The Company also owns and operates gas gathering and processing facilities and an oil and natural gas liquids infrastructure and logistics business. Pembina's integrated assets and commercial operations along the entire hydrocarbon value chain allow it to offer a full spectrum of midstream and marketing services to the energy sector. Pembina is committed to working with its community and aboriginal neighbours, while providing value for investors in a safe, environmentally responsible manner. This balanced approach to operating ensures the trust Pembina builds among all of its stakeholders is sustainable over the long-term. Pembina's common shares trade on the Toronto and New York stock exchanges under PPL and PBA, respectively. For more information, visit www.pembina.com.

Forward-Looking Information and Statements

This news release contains certain forward-looking information and statements that are based on Pembina's current expectations, estimates, projections and assumptions in light of its experience and its perception of historical trends. In this news release, such forward-looking information and statements can be identified by terminology such as "to be", "expects", and similar expressions.

In particular, this news release contains forward-looking statements and information relating to: future dividends which may be declared on Pembina's common shares, the dividend payment and the tax treatment thereof. These forward-looking statements are being made by Pembina based on certain assumptions that Pembina has made in respect thereof as at the date of this news release, regarding, among other things: oil and gas industry exploration and development activity levels; the success of Pembina's operations and growth projects; prevailing commodity prices, margins, volumes and exchange rates; that Pembina's future results of operations will be consistent with past performance and management expectations in relation thereto; the continued availability of capital at attractive prices to fund future capital requirements relating to existing assets and projects, including but not limited to future capital expenditures relating to expansion, upgrades and maintenance shutdowns; the success of growth projects; future operating costs; that any third party projects relating to Pembina's growth projects will be sanctioned and completed as expected; that any required commercial agreements can be reached; that all required regulatory and environmental approvals can be obtained on the necessary terms in a timely manner; that counterparties to material agreements will continue to perform in a timely manner; that there are no unforeseen events preventing the performance of contracts; and that there are no unforeseen material construction, integrity or other costs related to current growth projects or current operations. These forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and are subject to a number of known and unknown risks and uncertainties, including, but not limited to: the regulatory environment and decisions; non-performance of agreements in accordance with their terms; the impact of competitive entities and pricing; reliance on key industry partners, alliances and agreements; the strength and operations of the oil and natural gas production industry and related commodity prices; the continuation or completion of third-party projects; actions by governmental or regulatory authorities including changes in tax laws and treatment, changes in royalty rates or increased environmental regulation; adverse general economic and market conditions in Canada, North America and elsewhere; fluctuations in operating results; construction delays; labour and material shortages; and certain other risks detailed from time to time in Pembina's public disclosure documents including, among other things, those detailed under the heading "Risk Factors" in Pembina's management's discussion and analysis and annual information form for the year ended December 31, 2015, which can be found at www.sedar.com.

Accordingly, readers are cautioned that events or circumstances could cause results to differ materially from those predicted, forecasted or projected. Such forward-looking statements are expressly qualified by the above statements. Pembina does not undertake any obligation to publicly update or revise any forward looking statements or information contained herein, except as required by applicable laws.

For further information: Investor Relations, Chelsy Hoy / Ian McAvity, (403) 231-3156, 1-855-880-7404, e-mail: investor-relations@pembina.com, www.pembina.com

Related Links

http://www.pembina.com



SOURCE Pembina Pipeline Corporation
HONG KONG, May 6, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

First come first serve - no accreditation for journalists.

Lee Ryan, a star member of one of the most popular British boy bands, Blue, extends his visit to Hong Kong in order to grant a very special and spontaneous concert for his local fans at pentahotel Kowloon. Lee, who has sold more than 15 million records worldwide with hits such as, "Sorry seems to be the hardest word" with Elton John, becomes this weekend's sensational highlight.

No accreditation is required for journalists, however, with only 100 participants having access to the cosy lounge-like set, it is under a first come first serve basis.

Where: pentahotel Kowloon, 19 Luk Hop St, Hong Kong

When: 7pm, Saturday May 7

We are looking forward to celebrate the impromptu concert. See you on-site!

Media Contact:

Global Marketing & Communications Department

Head office Frankfurt am Main (Germany)

Max Siegers

pentahotels Germany GmbH

Westhafen Tower, Westhafenplatz 1

60327 Frankfurt a.M., Germany

Phone: +49(0)69-256699-730

Fax: +49(0)69-256699-766

E-Mail: communications@pentahotels.com



SOURCE Pentahotels
DUBLIN, May 6, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Tesla aims to build a total of 500,000 electric vehicles by 2018, which is two years ahead of its original schedule, according to a report from Reuters. The company is stepping up production plans for its Model 3 and is on track to deliver up to 90,000 vehicles this year. However, capital spending will also rise 50% higher than previously forecast, to an estimated $2.25 billion.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160330/349511LOGO )



Musk says Tesla is aiming to become a high-volume manufacturer within a couple of years. It has set a 2020 volume target of close to 1 million vehicles. However, its 500,000 target for 2018 is still a fraction of what traditional automakers produce annually. Tesla has become one of the leading names in EV production, with its Model 3 unveiling generating massive interest. A recent report published on Research and Markets expects Tesla to achieve 25% gross profitability by 2020 and says it poses a challenge to the conventional automotive market.

The electric vehicle market is expected to reach a massive value of $342.50 billion by 2022. The market for EV charging stations is also forecast to grow at an impressive rate of 29.8% during this period to reach $12.61 billion. These markets are being driven by government subsidies and incentives, and a growing need to reduce carbon emissions.

The Asia-Pacific region will account for the largest share of the market. According to a report on the strategic outlook for electric vehicles, China will emerge as the market leader in 2016 with a 47% share. It is focusing on increasing the growth of plug in hybrid and electric vehicles by not only availing cash incentives and subsidies, but also by subsidizing the maintenance and construction of electric vehicle charging infrastructure.

Before announcing the new target, Tesla did reveal that two of its top manufacturing executives will be leaving the company.

For further information on this topic, and a full list of all related documentation, please visit the Electric and Hybrid Vehicles section at http://www.researchandmarkets.com/rm/OJQK.

About Research and Markets:

Research and Markets is the world's leading source for international market research reports and market data. We provide you with the latest data on international and regional markets, key industries, the top companies, new products and the latest trends.

Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-tesla-results-idUSKCN0XV2JL

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



SOURCE Research and Markets
DUBLIN, May 6, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Research and Markets has announced the addition of the "Switchgear Market - Global Trends & Forecast to 2021" report to their offering.

The global switchgear market is projected to reach USD 144.41 Billion by 2021, at a CAGR of 10.07% from 2016 to 2021. This growth can be attributed to the rise in power generation and increasing upgrade of electrical infrastructure, influenced by rising energy demand.

Asia-Pacific holds the major market share, followed by North America & Europe. In terms of individual countries, China dominated the market on account of extensive electrical infrastructure upgradation and new transmission & distribution lines being installed. The country alone held the maximum market share, followed by the U.S. and India. Rapid economic growth in the BRICS member states is expected to be the major driving factor for the growth of the switchgear market in these nations. Switch-gears are expected to be used extensively in the new electrical transmission & distribution networks, which are expected to ensure minimum losses and uninterrupted power supply.

Stringent environmental regulations against the usage of SF6 switch-gears, price volatility of raw materials, and intense competition from local players are restraining the growth of the switchgear market. The switchgear industry is very fragmented and offers opportunities for consolidation. This can be seen by the several major M&A activities taking place in the industry, as well as subsidiary formation by big players. There are very few industry leaders disconcerted over the optimal growth strategy for this market. In this industry, most players are global multinational companies.

Rising competition in emerging markets and prevailing local laws in countries such as China, India, and Brazil have led companies to adopt strategies such as partnerships, agreements, and collaborations to increase their market share. The top five companies in the switchgear market include ABB Ltd.

Key Topics Covered:

1 Introduction

2 Research Methodology

3 Executive Summary

4 Premium Insights

5 Market Overview

6 Industry Trends

7 Switchgear Market, By End-User

8 Switchgear Market, By Voltage

9 Switchgear Market, By Region

10 Competitive Landscape

11 Company Profiles

Companies Mentioned:

ABB Ltd.

Alstom

Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited

Crompton Greaves Limited

Eaton Corporation PLC

General Electric

Hitachi Limited

Hyosung Corporation

Hyundai Heavy Industries Co. Ltd.

Mitsubhishi Electric Corporation

NR Electric Co., Ltd.

Powell Industries

Schneider Electric SA

Siemens AG

TE Connectivity Ltd.

Toshiba Corporation

For more information visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/pnfcl4/switchgear_market

Media Contact:

Research and Markets

Laura Wood, Senior Manager

press@researchandmarkets.com



For E.S.T Office Hours Call +1-917-300-0470

For U.S./CAN Toll Free Call +1-800-526-8630

For GMT Office Hours Call +353-1-416-8900



U.S. Fax: 646-607-1907

Fax (outside U.S.): +353-1-481-1716



Related Links

http://www.researchandmarkets.com



SOURCE Research and Markets
LEIPZIG, Germany, May 6, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

The Wave-Gotik-Treffen (WGT) is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year. From 13 to 16 May, more than 20,000 Goths from all over the world are expected in Leipzig, Germany, again to join the world's largest gathering of the dark family. For the anniversary edition, a grand opening party is going to be held at "AbenteuerReich BELANTIS", an amusement park in the south of Leipzig.

(Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160506/364506 )



When in 1992 the first Wave-Gotik-Treffen took place on the outskirts of Leipzig with about 2,000 visitors and just a handful of bands, no one imagined that within a few years the WGT would become the largest Goth festival in the world, taking possession of a whole city every year at Whitsun.

About 250 artists and bands will be performing at about 50 venues spread throughout Leipzig, and covering the wide range of Goth music: from Electro-Pop to Goth-Metal, from EBM to Apocalyptic Folk, from medieval music to Industrial. Famous bands of the scene - like In the Nursery, Leaves' Eyes, Lament, My Dying Bride, or Project Pitchfork - can be experienced along with real underground bands. The programme also includes classical music, readings, theatre and film performances. In addition, the admission to several of Leipzig's museums is free for WGT-guests. The Leipzig Museum of City History emphasizes the importance of the WGT for the city with the special exhibition "Leipzig in Black. 25 Years of Wave-Gotik-Treffen" (until 29 May).

From its beginning the WGT has been much more than a music festival: Its guests may step back to the romantic atmosphere of ancient times at the medieval market place at Moritzbastei, the pagan village at Torhaus Dolitz or the Victorian Picnic in Clara Zetkin Park. In countless clubs DJs from all over the world will invite the crowd to dance until dawn. All of Leipzig turns into a black colourful catwalk - to the delight of both residents and tourists.

Tickets and further information: http://www.wave-gotik-treffen.com



Leipzig Guide and WGT Festival Guide 2016:

http://www.leipzig.travel/blog/wave-gotik-treffen-leipzig-guide-english/





Press contact Wave-Gotik-Treffen: Cornelius Brach, e-mail presse@wave-gotik-treffen.de



Leipzig Tourismus und Marketing GmbH, Augustusplatz 9, D-04109 Leipzig

Press contact:

Steffi Gretschel (Head of International PR Tourism)

Tel. +49-341-7104-300

e-mail: s.gretschel@ltm-leipzig.de

http://www.leipzig.travel/press

http://www.leipzig.travel/photoarchives



SOURCE Leipzig Tourismus und Marketing GmbH
The conference, strongly supported by international oil companies, independents and state-owned companies, will see presentations by the following companies (current as of 4-29-16): Apache Corporation; BP; BHP Billiton; Chevron; ConocoPhillips; Hess; Kuwait Oil Company; Noble Energy; Petronas; Saudi Aramco; Shell; and Total. The power-packed two and half days of programming will feature technical presentations, a panel discussion, full e-Proceedings on topics important to all involved in E&P data and information management, and numerous networking opportunities.

Speakers from around the globe will share real-world issues, best practices, developments, and cross discipline advances that address ever expanding and complex data demands in today's oil and gas industry. Changes in key technologies require innovative thinking and practical solutions to implement quality data-driven decisions that meet enterprise-wide technical and financial interests. Acclaimed for handling the discussion with balance, "PNEC facilitates the professional discussions needed in today's complex data systems integration and management and assists companies in cost control in this low price oil environment," said Mark Peters, Vice President and Group Publisher of PennWell's Offshore and Oil & Gas Financial Journal magazines and the company's domestic oil and gas events. "There is no industry more reliant on accurate, comprehensive, and well-managed data than oil and gas, for which informed decision-making is paramount when billions of investment dollars are at risk. This is the largest gathering of data management professionals from oil and gas companies in the world. As business plans continue to emphasize the proper integration of operations, seismic data and more information on production throughout the value chains at oil companies, it is a vital resource for the industry."

The 2015 event attracted over 650 attendees from 27 countries, and featured the largest-to-date exhibit hall floor of more than 5,500 square feet.

This year the exhibit hall will feature over fifty exhibitors from leading technology companies. Those interested in attending the Exhibition free of charge can bring a copy of this article to the on-site registration desk or use the code "PNEC-PR" when registering online at www.pnecconferences.com/register.html.

For more information about the PNEC International Conference and Exhibition visit www.pnecconferences.com.

About PennWell Corporation:

Founded in 1910 in Tulsa, Oklahoma, PennWell Corporation is a privately held and diversified business-to-business media, events, and marketing services company that provides quality content and integrated marketing solutions for oil & gas, electric power generation and delivery, hydropower, renewable energy, water and wastewater, electronics, optoelectronics, fiber-optics, aerospace and avionics, LEDs and lighting, fire and emergency services, and dental industries. PennWell publishes over 130 print and online magazines and newsletters, conducts 50 conferences and exhibitions across six continents, and offers books, maps, websites, research and database services. In addition to PennWell's headquarters in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the Company has offices in Nashua, New Hampshire; London, England; Houston, Texas; Mountain View, California; Fairlawn, New Jersey; Moscow, Russia; Istanbul, Turkey; Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and Hong Kong, China. For additional information, visit www.pennwell.com.

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SOURCE PennWell Corporation

Related Links

http://www.pennwell.com


TAIPEI, Taiwan, May 6, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- ACT Genomics, an integrated cancer molecular information company that transforms precision cancer care, today announced that the company has raised US$ 12.5 million in Series B funding. Hotung Group, and CDIB Capital Management, led the round with continued participation from existing investors, Eminent II VC, Hua Nan Venture Capital, President International Development and UMC Capital in this round.

Based in Taipei, Taiwan, ACT Genomics is providing comprehensive genomic profiling assays and molecular information to physicians and biopharmaceutical customers. With full spectrum of clinical service, ACT Genomics helps to expand targeted therapy treatment options, predict response to immune-checkpoint inhibitors, and utilize ctDNA based assay to monitor tumor burden and resistant markers, in their CAP-accredited NGS laboratory.

ACT Genomics plans to use the proceeds to further boost the capacity to support the rapid growth and expansion in Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, and Hong Kong. The new proceeds will also enable ACT Genomics to ramp up its commercial channels to drive further global expansion, following its move into Asia Pacific region earlier this year.

ACT Genomics Contact:

PJ (Joe) Hsueh, MBA, Chief Operating Officer

Email: [email protected]

Angus Wu, Associate Director, Business Development

Email: [email protected]

SOURCE ACT Genomics
Production Growth, Record Low Cash Costs & Improved Glacier Well Results Generates Strong Cash Flow & Underpins 350 MMCF/D Plant Expansion Plan

(TSX: AAV, NYSE: AAV)

CALGARY, May 5, 2016 /PRNewswire/ - Advantage Oil & Gas Ltd. ("Advantage" or the "Corporation") is pleased to report strong cash flow of $30.2 million or $0.17/share for the first quarter of 2016 supported by a 25% increase in production to 167 mmcfe/d (27,854 boe/d) and an 11% reduction in its total cash cost to a corporate record and industry leading low cost of $0.75/mcfe. Additionally, Advantage's financial strategy to reduce downside cash flow exposure through its ongoing hedging program generated a $14.7 million gain which is included in our first quarter results. These operational and financial achievements helped to maintain a comparable level of cash flow to the same period in 2015 despite a 33% reduction in AECO natural gas prices to Cdn $1.84/mcf.

During the first quarter of 2016, Advantage continued to achieve outperformance in its Glacier well results. In particular, one of our Lower Montney wells which included a new cemented port completion design with 37 frac ports and 20 frac stages significantly exceeded Management expectations by demonstrating an on-production rate of 18.3 mmcf/d (3,050 boe/d) and proved up another extension area of high quality Lower Montney reservoir at Glacier. This Lower Montney well was drilled, completed and tied-in at a cost of $5 million (10% less than budgeted) and confirmed additional opportunities to improve capital efficiencies as a result of advancing our drilling and completion technologies. Five other Lower Montney wells with an average of 21 frac stages were production tested during the quarter and demonstrated an average per well rate of 12.3 mmcf/d, exceeding Management expectations by 30% (see additional information in the Operational Update section below).

Advantage's plans to expand its 100% owned Glacier gas plant to increase processing capacity from 250 to 350 mmcf/d (58,330 boe/d) is progressing with design and regulatory application work underway. The Glacier "350" plant expansion is targeted for completion in the second quarter of 2018 to continue production growth through 2020. These plans are reinforced by our ongoing operational achievements and solid financial results which demonstrate the exceptional quality of our Glacier Montney resource.

Advantage continues to advance its Montney development at Glacier with a strategy to reduce downside cash flow exposure while retaining financial and operational flexibility to immediately capitalize on improvements in the natural gas price environment and organic growth opportunities. The Corporation's strong balance sheet and multi-year hedging program in conjunction with having readily available additional gas plant capacity and additional productivity from its 27 current standing wells provides flexibility to optimize investment returns for our shareholders.

First Quarter 2016 Operating and Financial Highlights

Production increased 25% to average 167.1 mmcfe/d (27,854 boe/d) for the first quarter of 2016 as compared to the same period in 2015. In April 2016 Glacier production increased a further 20% from the prior quarter to a record 200 mmcfe/d (33,300 boe/d). The Corporation's 2016 annual production is expected to be within our previously announced Budget production guidance range of 190 to 210 mmcfe/d, resulting in year on year production growth of 40%.

Funds from operations for the first quarter of 2016 was $30.2 million or $0.17 per share. Cash netbacks for the three months ended March 31, 2016 was $1.99/mcfe ($11.94/boe) which represents 73% of the realized sales price, including hedging. Funds from operations were supported by increased production, lower costs and a realized hedging gain of $14.7 million.

Total cash costs were reduced to a corporate record low of $0.75/mcfe in the first quarter of 2016 which is an 11% decrease compared to the same period of 2015. Total cash costs include royalties ($0.07/mcfe), operating expense ($0.35/mcfe), transportation expense for liquids ($0.01/mcfe), general and administrative expense ($0.13/mcfe), and finance expense ($0.19/mcfe). An additional water disposal well was commissioned in March 2016 to reduce water handling costs and when combined with other ongoing cost initiatives, we anticipate additional operating cost savings could be realized during the latter half of 2016.

Capital expenditures during the quarter were on-track at $45 million. This included $32 million (71%) invested to expand Advantage's sales gas pipeline takeaway capacity to 400 mmcf/d from its Glacier gas plant to TransCanada Pipeline Limited's ("TCPL") main northwest Alberta sales pipeline, to increase its raw gas gathering system capacity and to install back-up plant utilities. The remaining expenditures in the quarter were directed to completion operations on 7 previously cased wells. Capital expenditures are targeted to be $58 million during the first half of 2016 and $120 million for the full year.

Total debt (including working capital deficit) as of March 31, 2016 was $213 million or 47% drawn against Advantage's $450 million borrowing base Credit Facility providing ample financial flexibility to support future development. Advantage's year-end 2016 total debt to trailing cash flow is estimated to be 1.2 times and 1.5 times based on average annual AECO natural gas prices of Cdn $2.00/mcf and Cdn $1.50/mcf respectively, including the Corporation's hedges.

Strong multi-year natural gas hedge positions in place to support future development. Advantage's hedging positions include an average 52% of forecast annual production for 2016 at an average AECO floor price of $3.62/mcf, 36% of forecast 2017 annual production at an average AECO floor price of $3.24/mcf and 15% of forecast 2018 annual production at average AECO floor price of $3.04/mcf.

Operational Update

Lower Montney Wells Exceed Expectations

A Lower Montney well located in the central area of Glacier was drilled to a lateral length of 2,083 meters and was completed with a cemented port, ball-drop system with 37 frac ports (45 meter spacing) and 20 stages, slickwater and 1,480 tonnes of proppant. This Lower Montney well has been standing since December 2015 and was recently brought on production. After four days of production, the well was producing at a restricted rate of 18.3 mmcf/d (3,050 boe/d) and at a flowing pressure of 7 mpa, above its tested rate of 12.4 mmcf/d. This Lower Montney well will be restricted below 10 mmcf/d to control the volume of frac sand flowback during its initial production period to match the design of our standard wellsite facilities. The longer term production behavior will be evaluated to assess the change in frac design but the initial results are encouraging. The total drill, complete and tie-in cost of $5 million for this Lower Montney well results in an estimated 30 day average initial production rate ("IP30") well capital efficiency of $2,220/boe/d. Additionally, this well proves up an expanded area of top decile Lower Montney well productivity at Glacier.

During the first quarter of 2016, five other Lower Montney wells were production tested at Glacier. After an average flow period of 57 hours, the average per well final production test rate was 12.3 mmcf/d normalized to our average gas gathering system flowing pressure of 3,000 kpa (435 psi). At the average final production test pressure of 11.2 mpa (1,624 psi) the average production test rate was 10.2 mmcf/d. These wells included an average of 21 frac stages and exceeded Management's final production test rate expectations by 30%.

For the balance of 2016, additional wells which contain a combination of higher frac stages, cemented ports and longer laterals will be brought on-production and compared against offsetting older wells to evaluate the long term production and reserve impacts of drilling and completion technology changes at Glacier.

Glacier "350" Gas Plant Expansion

Design and regulatory application work has commenced on Advantage's planned expansion of its 100% owned Glacier gas plant processing capacity from 250 to 350 mmcf/d (58,330 boe/d). The expansion will be undertaken at the existing Glacier gas plant site with a preliminary cost estimate of $75 million. The existing gas plant capacity of 250 mmcf/d will provide sufficient processing throughput to accommodate growth plans through 2017. The plant expansion to 350 mmcf/d is targeted for completion in the second quarter of 2018 and will accommodate growth plans through 2020. Options to accelerate this expansion project while maintaining industry leading capital efficiencies will also be evaluated.

Modernized Royalty Framework Impact

The Alberta government has now substantially completed the new Modernized Royalty Framework. The new royalty framework partially emulates a revenue minus cost royalty structure and will be effective for wells spud on or after January 1, 2017 with existing wells continuing to operate under the previous royalty framework for a ten-year period. The new royalty framework is expected to incentivize low cost producers with higher productivity wells which will continue to benefit Advantage. We have reviewed the new framework formulas and estimate that at natural gas prices up to AECO $4.00/mcf, the impact on the economic returns for our average Upper and Lower Montney wells are insignificant while the economic returns for our average Middle Montney wells are slightly improved. Advantage will continue to evaluate and optimize the impact of drilling and completion design changes on royalties and economics in respect of the Modernized Royalty Framework.

Consolidated Financial Statements and MD&A

The Corporation's unaudited interim consolidated financial statements for the three months ended March 31, 2016 together with the notes thereto, and Management's Discussion and Analysis for the three months ended March 31, 2016 have been filed on SEDAR and with the SEC and are available on the Corporation's website at http://www.advantageog.com. Upon request, Advantage will provide a hard copy of any financial reports free of charge.

Appendix  First Quarter 2016 Operating & Financial Summary







Three months ended

Financial and Operating Highlights

March 31







2016

2015















Financial ($000, except as otherwise indicated)









Sales including realized hedging

$ 41,625

$ 39,991

Funds from operations

$ 30,236

$ 29,929



per share(1)

$ 0.17

$ 0.18

Total capital expenditures

$ 44,736

$ 78,708

Working capital deficit(2)

$ 10,666

$ 40,552

Bank indebtedness

$ 202,538

$ 261,241

Basic weighted average shares (000)

174,479

170,301

Operating









Daily Production











Natural gas (mcf/d)

164,618

133,281



Liquids (bbls/d)

418

112



Total mcfe/d(3)

167,126

133,953



Total boe/d(3)

27,854

22,326

Average prices (including hedging)











Natural gas ($/mcf)

$ 2.70

$ 3.30



Liquids ($/bbl)

$ 31.21

$ 41.86

Cash netbacks ($/mcfe)(3)











Natural gas and liquids sales

$ 1.77

$ 2.71



Realized gains on derivatives

0.97

0.61



Royalties

(0.07)

(0.13)



Operating expense

(0.35)

(0.35)



Transportation expense

(0.01)

-

Operating netback

2.31

2.84



General and administrative

(0.13)

(0.17)



Finance expense

(0.19)

(0.19)

Cash netbacks

$ 1.99

$ 2.48

















(1) Based on basic weighted average shares outstanding.









(2) Working capital deficit includes trade and other receivables, prepaid expenses and deposits, and trade and other accrued liabilities.

(3) A boe and mcfe conversion ratio has been calculated using a conversion rate of six thousand cubic feet of natural gas equivalent to





one barrel of liquids.











Advisory

The information in this press release contains certain forward-looking statements, including within the meaning of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements relate to future events or our future intentions or performance. All statements other than statements of historical fact may be forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are often, but not always, identified by the use of words such as "seek", "anticipate", "plan", "continue", "estimate", "guidance", "demonstrate", "expect", "may", "can", "will", "project", "predict", "potential", "target", "intend", "could", "might", "should", "believe", "would" and similar expressions and include statements relating to, among other things, the potential for future improvements in capital efficiencies resulting from continued drilling and completion technology advances at Glacier; Advantage's expansion of its Glacier gas plant processing capacity, including the expected timing, estimated costs and anticipated processing capacity as a result thereof; the Corporation's strategy to reduce downside cash flow exposure while retaining financial and operational flexibility to immediately capitalize on improvements in the natural gas price environment and organic growth opportunities; the anticipated effect of a strong balance sheet, multi-year hedging program, additional gas plant capacity and additional productivity on Advantage's ability to provide investment returns for shareholders; Advantage's anticipated annual production for 2016, production growth, year end total debt to trailing cash flow ratio for 2016, and capital expenditures for the first half and full year 2016, including the targeted amounts; the Corporation's expectation that annual production for 2016 will be within the Corporation's budget production guidance range; anticipated drilling and future development plans for the Corporation's assets; the terms of the Alberta Government's Modernized Royalty Framework, its effect on new well (including on rate of returns for Advantage's Upper, Middle and Lower Montney wells) and its expected benefits for low cost producers with higher productivity wells; anticipated commodity prices; the Corporation's hedging activities; and other matters. Advantage's actual decisions, activities, results, performance or achievement could differ materially from those expressed in, or implied by, such forward-looking statements and accordingly, no assurances can be given that any of the events anticipated by the forward-looking statements will transpire or occur or, if any of them do, what benefits that Advantage will derive from them.

These statements involve substantial known and unknown risks and uncertainties, certain of which are beyond Advantage's control, including, but not limited to: changes in general economic, market and business conditions; industry conditions; impact of significant declines in market prices for oil and natural gas; actions by governmental or regulatory authorities including increasing taxes and changes in investment or other regulations; changes in tax laws, royalty regimes and incentive programs relating to the oil and gas industry; the effect of acquisitions; Advantage's success at acquisition, exploitation and development of reserves; unexpected drilling results; changes in commodity prices, currency exchange rates, capital expenditures, reserves or reserves estimates and debt service requirements; the occurrence of unexpected events involved in the exploration for, and the operation and development of, oil and gas properties, including hazards such as fire, explosion, blowouts, cratering, and spills, each of which could result in substantial damage to wells, production facilities, other property and the environment or in personal injury; changes or fluctuations in production levels; delays in anticipated timing of drilling and completion of wells; delays in completion of the expansion of the Glacier gas plant; lack of available capacity on pipelines; individual well productivity; competition from other producers; the lack of availability of qualified personnel or management; credit risk; changes in laws and regulations including the adoption of new environmental laws and regulations and changes in how they are interpreted and enforced; Advantage's ability to comply with current and future environmental or other laws; stock market volatility and market valuations; liabilities inherent in oil and natural gas operations; uncertainties associated with estimating oil and natural gas reserves; competition for, among other things, capital, acquisitions of reserves, undeveloped lands and skilled personnel; incorrect assessments of the value of acquisitions; geological, technical, drilling and processing problems and other difficulties in producing petroleum reserves; ability to obtain required approvals of regulatory authorities; and ability to access sufficient capital from internal and external sources. Many of these risks and uncertainties and additional risk factors are described in the Corporation's Annual Information Form which is available at www.Sedar.com and www.advantageog.com. Readers are also referred to risk factors described in other documents Advantage files with Canadian securities authorities.

With respect to forward-looking statements contained in this press release, Advantage has made assumptions regarding, but not limited to: conditions in general economic and financial markets; effects of regulation by governmental agencies; current and future commodity prices and royalty regimes; future exchange rates; royalty rates; future operating costs; availability of skilled labor; availability of drilling and related equipment; timing and amount of capital expenditures; the impact of increasing competition; the price of crude oil and natural gas; that the Corporation will have sufficient cash flow, debt or equity sources or other financial resources required to fund its capital and operating expenditures and requirements as needed; that the Corporation's conduct and results of operations will be consistent with its expectations; that the Corporation will have the ability to develop the Corporation's properties in the manner currently contemplated; available pipeline capacity; that the Corporation will be able to complete the expansion and increase capacity at the Glacier gas plant; that Advantage's production will increase; current or, where applicable, proposed assumed industry conditions, laws and regulations will continue in effect or as anticipated; and the estimates of the Corporation's production and reserves volumes and the assumptions related thereto (including commodity prices and development costs) are accurate in all material respects. Production estimates contained herein for the year ended December 31, 2016 are expressed as anticipated average production over the calendar year. In determining anticipated production for the year ended December 31, 2016, Advantage considered historical drilling, completion and production results for prior years and took into account the estimated impact on production of the Corporation's 2016 expected drilling and completion activities. Advantage has also assumed TCPL's northwest Alberta pipeline restrictions and maintenance activity level will subside in early 2016 based on the most recent information available.

Management has included the above summary of assumptions and risks related to forward-looking information provided above and in its continuous disclosure documents filed on Sedar in order to provide shareholders with a more complete perspective on Advantage's future operations and such information may not be appropriate for other purposes. Advantage's actual results, performance or achievement could differ materially from those expressed in, or implied by, these forward-looking statements and, accordingly, no assurance can be given that any of the events anticipated by the forward-looking statements will transpire or occur, or if any of them do so, what benefits that Advantage will derive there from. Readers are cautioned that the foregoing lists of factors are not exhaustive. Forward-looking statements contained herein are made as of the date of this press release and Advantage disclaims any intent or obligation to update publicly any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or results or otherwise, other than as required by applicable securities laws.

This press release contains certain oil and gas metrics, including cash netbacks and operating netbacks, which do not have standardized meanings or standard methods of calculation and therefore such measures may not be comparable to similar measures used by other companies and should not be used to make comparisons. Such metrics have been included herein to provide readers with additional measures to evaluate the Corporation's performance; however, such measures are not reliable indicators of the future performance of the Corporation and future performance may not compare to the performance in previous periods and therefore such metrics should not be unduly relied upon.

References in this press release to production test rates, initial test production rates, and other short-term production rates are useful in confirming the presence of hydrocarbons, however such rates are not determinative of the rates at which such wells will commence production and decline thereafter and are not indicative of long term performance or of ultimate recovery. Additionally, such rates may also include recovered "load oil" fluids used in well completion stimulation. While encouraging, readers are cautioned not to place reliance on such rates in calculating the aggregate production for Advantage. A pressure transient analysis or well-test interpretation has not been carried out in respect of all wells. Accordingly, the Corporation cautions that the test results should be considered to be preliminary.

Barrels of oil equivalent (boe) and thousand cubic feet of natural gas equivalent (mcfe) may be misleading, particularly if used in isolation. Boe and mcfe conversion ratios have been calculated using a conversion rate of six thousand cubic feet of natural gas equivalent to one barrel of oil. A boe and mcfe conversion ratio of 6 mcf: 1 bbl is based on an energy equivalency conversion method primarily applicable at the burner tip and does not represent a value equivalency at the wellhead. Given that the value ratio based on the current price of crude oil as compared to natural gas is significantly different from the energy equivalency of 6:1, utilizing a conversion on a 6:1 basis may be misleading as an indication of value.

The Corporation discloses several financial measures that do not have any standardized meaning prescribed under International Financial Reporting Standards ("IFRS"). These financial measures include funds from operations, operating netbacks and total debt to trailing cash flow ratio. Funds from operations is based on cash provided by operating activities, before expenditures on decommissioning liability and changes in non-cash working capital, reduced for finance expense excluding accretion. Cash netbacks are dependent on the determination of funds from operations and include the primary cash sales and expenses on a per mcfe basis that comprise funds from operations. Total debt to trailing cash flow ratio is calculated as indebtedness under the Corporation's credit facilities plus working capital deficit divided by funds from operations for the prior twelve month period. Management believes that these financial measures are useful supplemental information to analyze operating performance and provide an indication of the results generated by the Corporation's principal business activities. Investors should be cautioned that these measures should not be construed as an alternative to net income or other measures of financial performance as determined in accordance with IFRS. Advantage's method of calculating these measures may differ from other companies, and accordingly, they may not be comparable to similar measures used by other companies. Please see the Corporation's most recent Management's Discussion and Analysis, which is available at www.sedar.com and www.advantageog.com for additional information about these financial measures, including a reconciliation of funds from operations to cash provided by operating activities.

This press release and, in particular the information in respect of the Corporation's prospective cash flow debt to trailing cash flow ratio, may contain future oriented financial information ("FOFI") within the meaning of applicable securities laws. The FOFI has been prepared by management to provide an outlook of the Corporation's activities and results and may not be appropriate for other purposes. The FOFI has been prepared based on a number of assumptions including the assumptions discussed above. The actual results of operations of the Corporation and the resulting financial results may vary from the amounts set forth herein, and such variations may be material. The Corporation and management believe that the FOFI has been prepared on a reasonable basis, reflecting management's best estimates and judgments. FOFI contained in this press release was made as of the date of this press release and the Corporation disclaims any intention or obligations to update or revise any FOFI contained in this press release, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, unless required pursuant to applicable law]

The following abbreviations used in this press release have the meanings set forth below:

boe barrels of oil equivalent of natural gas, on the basis of one barrel of oil or NGLs for six thousand cubic feet of natural gas boe/d barrels of oil equivalent per day mcf thousand cubic feet mcfe thousand cubic feet equivalent on the basis of six thousand cubic feet of natural gas for one barrel of oil or NGLs mmcf million cubic feet mmcf/d million cubic feet per day mmcfe million cubic feet equivalent mmcfe/d million cubic feet equivalent per day

SOURCE Advantage Oil & Gas Ltd.

Related Links

http://www.advantageincome.com


CHICAGO, May 6, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- AgencyEA, an award-winning, Chicago-based brand experience agency, was named a top 100 agency on Event Marketer magazine's annual Agency It List. Now in its fourteenth year, the annual It List is curated by the editorial team at Event Marketer and highlights the top 100 agencies leading event marketing today.

"This is an incredible recognition, and one that we never take for granted," says Fergus Rooney, CEO of agencyEA. "It's imperative not to underestimate the competitive nature of the industry, and this particular recognition reaffirms agencyEA's constant growth and positive evolution as we seek to continuously build a premier brand experience agency."

This year marks agencyEA's sixth time on the list, which appears in the magazine's May issue. Event Marketer's editorial team recognized agencyEA for its core offerings in B2B Meetings/Events, Internal Employee Events, and Sales Conferences/Meetings. EA was also recognized for its collaborative and wellness-driven culture, restructured and strengthened digital department, and work with clients such as Hilton Worldwide, Hostess, Target and Under Armour. Additional mentions included agencyEA's new, 16,000-square-foot venue space, Savage Smyth, debuting in spring 2016.

AgencyEA received additional industry honors this month at the 2016 Event Marketer Summit in Denver, Colorado, taking home a Silver Ex Award in the "Best Use Use of Technology and Social Media" category for its work with Under Armour. The winning campaign celebrated Under Armour's Brand House opening and engaged consumers through the "Earn Your Armour" Chicago Challenge  a custom digital obstacle course that invited participants to "sprint" down Michigan Avenue, "kayak" in the Chicago River and "climb" up the stairs of the Willis Tower, ending with a photo-finish on the sky deck.

AgencyEA is a brand experience agency. EA connects brands with their target audiences through experiential, digital and traditional engagement. Founded in 1999 as Event Architects, agencyEA has worked with esteemed clients such as Hilton Worldwide, General Electric, Target, Boeing and the Obama Administration.

Media Contact:

Claire Holland

agencyEA

[email protected]

312-879-0186 ext. 27

SOURCE agencyEA

Related Links

http://www.agencyea.com


LEHIGH VALLEY, Pa., May 6, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Air Products (NYSE: APD), a world-leading industrial gases company, announced that it has signed a definitive agreement today to sell the Performance Materials Division (PMD) of its Materials Technologies segment to Evonik Industries AG (EVK.DE), a world leader in specialty chemicals and materials, for $3.8 billion in cash.

The sale of PMD is expected to close before the end of 2016, and is subject to regulatory approvals and customary closing conditions. Under the terms of the agreement, operational facilities, supplier contracts, labs, contracts, customers, and employees and certain legal entities associated with PMD would transfer to Evonik. Evonik intends to continue to run PMD from Allentown, Pennsylvania.

Air Products also intends to spin-off its Electronic Materials Division (EMD) to shareholders as a separate public company, called Versum Materials. Air Products is on track to separate EMD by the end of September 2016 and will continue to evaluate whether debt and equity market conditions are favorable for a tax-free spin-off.

Air Products has been consistently executing against its strategic, Five-Point Plan, which includes focusing on industrial gases and taking actions on non-core businesses. In September 2015, the Company announced plans to separate Materials Technologies, which includes PMD and EMD.

"The sale of PMD is consistent with the long-term strategy for Air Products that we announced in September 2014," said Air Products' Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer, Seifi Ghasemi. "I am very pleased that PMD has a great future ahead of it as a core business of a company which is even larger than Air Products.

"As for the balance of our Materials Technologies segment, I am also very excited about the future of EMD, which we currently intend to spin-off as a new, world-class public company named Versum Materials. Guillermo Novo will be the CEO of the new company, and I will be non-executive chairman of Versum Materials while maintaining my current roles at Air Products.

"As a result of these moves, Air Products will be in an even stronger position to take advantage of the exciting investment opportunities to grow our core Industrial Gases business," Ghasemi said.

About PMD

PMD generated $1.04 billion in revenue and $241 million of Adjusted EBITDA over the last twelve months ending March 31, 2016*. PMD had $244 million of Adjusted EBITDA in fiscal 2015*. PMD consists of epoxy curing agents (40 percent of revenues), polyurethane additives (32 percent) and specialty additives businesses (28 percent). PMD has approximately 1,100 employees and includes major production facilities in the U.S., Germany, the United Kingdom, China and Japan. PMD products provide distinct, performance-enhancing benefits in use across the construction, marine, automotive, industrial cleaning, and other markets.

About EMD

EMD generated $974 million in revenue and $351 million of adjusted EBITDA over the last twelve months ending March 31, 2016*. EMD consists of advanced materials (35 percent of revenues), process materials (39 percent) and delivery systems (26 percent). EMD has approximately 1,900 employees and includes major production facilities in the U.S., Korea and Taiwan. EMD's focus is to be the materials partner of choice for the semiconductor industry, providing low cost/high value in use products for next generation chips used in mobile devices, Internet of Things, and PCs.

*Financial information for divisions that comprise the Materials Technologies segment reported within Air Products; no allocated corporate costs. Based on non-GAAP measures.

Conference Call Details:

The teleconference on Friday, May 6, 2016 at 12:00 p.m. USET will be open to the public and the media in listen-only mode by telephone and Internet broadcast.

Live teleconference: 913-312-0699

Passcode: 9240687

Internet broadcast: Available on the Event Details page on Air Products' Investor Relations web site.

Telephone replay: 888-203-1112 or 719-457-0820 (international)

Passcode: 9240687

This will be available from 4:00 p.m. USET on May 6 through 4:00 p.m. ET on May 13.

Internet replay: Available on the Event Details page on Air Products' Investor Relations web site.



Advisors

Lazard acted as sole financial advisor to Air Products. Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP acted as lead counsel for Air Products.

About Air Products

Air Products (NYSE:APD) is a world-leading Industrial Gases company celebrating 75 years of operation. The company's core Industrial Gases business provides atmospheric and process gases and related equipment to manufacturing markets, including refining and petrochemical, metals, electronics, and food and beverage. Air Products is also the world's leading supplier of liquefied natural gas process technology and equipment. The company's Materials Technologies business serves the semiconductor, polyurethanes, cleaning and coatings, and adhesives industries.

The company had fiscal 2015 sales of $9.9 billion and was ranked number 284 on the Fortune 500 annual list of public companies. Approximately 20,000 employees in 50 countries strive to make Air Products the world's safest and best performing Industrial Gases company, providing sustainable offerings and excellent service to all customers. For more information, visit www.airproducts.com.

About Evonik

Evonik, the creative industrial group from Germany, is one of the world leaders in specialty chemicals. Profitable growth and a sustained increase in the value of the company form the heart of Evonik's corporate strategy. Its activities focus on the key megatrends health, nutrition, resource efficiency and globalization. Evonik benefits specifically from its innovative prowess and integrated technology platforms. Evonik is active in over 100 countries around the world. In fiscal 2015 more than 33,500 employees generated sales of around 13.5 billion and an operating profit (adjusted EBITDA) of about 2.47 billion.

NOTE: This news release contains "forward-looking statements" within the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 including statements regarding the expected timetable for completing the sale of PMD to Evonik, benefits and synergies of the proposed transaction, future opportunities for the combined company and products, future financial performance and any other statements regarding the Company's and Evonik's future expectations, beliefs, plans, objectives, financial conditions, or performance that are not historical facts; statements about the Company's plans for completion of the EMD spin-off, the expected benefits of the spin-off, the tax free nature of the spin-off, the prospects for the independent companies following the spin-off and the timing of the transaction. These forward-looking statements are based on management's reasonable expectations and assumptions as of the date of this release. Actual results may differ materially from the expectations expressed in the forward-looking statements because of many factors not anticipated by management, including, without limitation, additional timing required to consummate the proposed sale of PMD; inability to satisfy the conditions to closing of the proposed sale of PMD; the risk that a regulatory approval that may be required for the proposed sale of PMD is not obtained or is obtained subject to conditions that are not anticipated or other events that prevent the closing of the proposed transaction from occurring; the ultimate timing, outcome and results of integrating the operations of Air Products' and Evonik's Performance Materials divisions; the effects of the business combination, including the combined company's future financial condition, results of operations, strategy and plans; expected synergies and other benefits from the proposed transaction and the ability of Evonik to realize such synergies and other benefits; the Company's ability to obtain regulatory approvals necessary to effect the spin-off of EMD, our ability to fully realize the anticipated benefits of the spin-off, negative effects of the announcement or the consummation of the proposed spin-off on the market price of the Company's common stock, significant transaction costs and or unknown liabilities, general economic and business conditions that affect the companies in connection with the proposed spin-off, changes in capital market conditions, future opportunities that the Company's board may determine present greater potential to increase shareholder value than spin-off, the ability of our companies to operate independently following the spin-off; the impact of credit rating agencies or tax authority actions or other factors on the cash proceeds the Company expects to derive from the transactions; and other risk factors described in the Company's Form 10-K for its fiscal year ended September 30, 2015. The Company disclaims any obligation or undertaking to disseminate any updates or revisions to any forward-looking statements contained in this document to reflect any change in assumptions, beliefs or expectations or any change in events, conditions, or circumstances upon which any such forward-looking statements are based.

RECONCILIATION OF NON-GAAP FINANCIAL MEASURES

(Millions of dollars unless otherwise indicated)

The news release includes discussion of non-GAAP financial measures, including Adjusted EBITDA. The presentation of non-GAAP measures is intended to enhance the usefulness of financial information by providing measures which management uses internally to evaluate our operating performance.

We use non-GAAP measures to assess our operating performance by excluding certain disclosed items that we believe are not representative of our underlying business. We believe non-GAAP financial measures provide investors with meaningful information to understand our underlying operating results and to analyze financial and business trends. Non-GAAP financial measures, including Adjusted EBITDA, should not be viewed in isolation, are not a substitute for GAAP measures, and have limitations which include but are not limited to:

Depreciation and amortization represent the wear and tear and/or reduction in value of the plant, equipment, and intangible assets which permit us to manufacture and/or market our products.



Other companies may define non-GAAP measures differently than we do, limiting their usefulness as comparative measures.

A reader may find any one or all of these items important in evaluating our performance. Management compensates for the limitations of using non-GAAP financial measures by using them only to supplement our GAAP results to provide a more complete understanding of the factors and trends affecting our business. In evaluating these financial measures, the reader should be aware that we may incur expenses similar to those eliminated in this presentation in the future.

Presented below are reconciliations of the GAAP results to the non-GAAP measures:













Quarter Ended



Mar-16 Materials Technologies Segment

FY 2015



Jun-15



Sep-15



Dec-15



Mar-16



LTM Operating Income



































Performance Materials $ 213.9

$ 57.8

$ 50.3

$ 44.1

$ 59.5

$ 211.7

Electronics Materials

265.8



76.9



63.0



83.3



70.3



293.5

Non Divisional

(3.0)



(3.2)



3.1



(.2)



(.5)



(.8) Total Operating Income $ 476.7

$ 131.5

$ 116.4

$ 127.2

$ 129.3

$ 504.4

Add: Depreciation and amortization

92.8



22.7



22.8



19.6



20.0



85.1

Add: Equity Affiliates' Income

2.2



.3



.6



.4



.2



1.5 Adjusted EBITDA $ 571.7

$ 154.5

$ 139.8

$ 147.2

$ 149.5

$ 591.0























































































Quarter Ended



Mar-16 Performance Materials

FY 2015



Jun-15



Sep-15



Dec-15



Mar-16



LTM Adjusted EBITDA



































GAAP Operating Income $ 213.9

$ 57.8

$ 50.3

$ 44.1

$ 59.5

$ 211.7

Add: Depreciation and amortization

29.0



7.3



6.9



6.9



7.5



28.6

Add: Equity Affiliates' Income

1.2



.3



.3



.2



.2



1.0 Adjusted EBITDA $ 244.1

$ 65.4

$ 57.5

$ 51.2

$ 67.2

$ 241.3























































































Quarter Ended



Mar-16 Electronic Materials

FY 2015



Jun-15



Sep-15



Dec-15



Mar-16



LTM Adjusted EBITDA



































GAAP Operating Income $ 265.8

$ 76.9

$ 63.0

$ 83.3

$ 70.3

$ 293.5

Add: Depreciation and amortization

63.8



15.4



15.9



12.7



12.5



56.5

Add: Equity Affiliates' Income

1.0



-



.3



.2



-



.5 Adjusted EBITDA $ 330.6

$ 92.3

$ 79.2

$ 96.2

$ 82.8

$ 350.5







































SOURCE Air Products

Related Links

http://www.airproducts.com


MONTGOMERY, Ala., May 6, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Earlier this week, the Alabama legislature refused to act on HB 395, a bill sponsored by Rep. Chris Pringle and forwarded by the insurance industry that would have eliminated the availability of consumer legal funding in the state. When the Legislature adjourned on Wednesday, the bill effectively died on the floor, marking a win for consumers.

"Legislators in Alabama recognized the importance of this product to the wellbeing of their constituents and didn't bend to insurance industry cronies" said Rob Johnson, Executive Director of the Alliance for Responsible Consumer Legal Funding (ARC). "With 76% of households living paycheck-to-paycheck, accidents can be devastating to a family and a major burden financially. Savings only goes so far. People need options."

Consumer legal fundingalso known as pre-settlement fundingis a specialty financial service that allows plaintiffs pursuing an insurance claim after an accident to sell part of the potential proceeds of the claim for cash now. Unlike a loan, there is no obligation to the funding company if the consumer does not have a successful outcome in their claim. And because it's the sale of an asset, it can't affect a person's credit or put them into collections.

Insurance companies have pushed to eliminate the availability of legal funding in states across the country because it's used to help make ends meet when a claim is being dragged out. "When a person can't pay the rent or put food on the table, they are much more likely to settle for a low, unfair offer," said Johnson. But, for someone who has been injured in an accident, settling prematurely can have a lasting impact on their financial wellbeing as they continue treatments and attempt to get back to work.

"You never know you need the option until you've been in an accident," said Johnson. "Then it can be a lifesaver."

It was for Janet from Mobile, Alabama, after she was the victim of a car accident. "The crash left me with an injured back, a severe concussion, and a totaled car. Unfortunately, these injuries will affect me the rest of my life and have required extensive physical therapy," she said. "Luckily, I found out about consumer legal funding before it was too late[it] has helped alleviate the stress of my life being flipped upside down and eliminated having to make the impossible decision to pay bills or pay for medical treatment. Consumer legal funding helped me get my life back, and I am very grateful."

It was also a lifeline for Mia from Huntsville, Alabama, after she was injured on the job and left unable to work. "I would have lost both my apartment and my car, which would have left me homeless. Legal funding helped me maintain control of my life," she said.

"In state after state, legislators have acted to protect their constituents from insurance companies who are motivated to maintain profits, to the detriment of everyday people. Alabama got it right this time," said Johnson.

About ARC

The Alliance for Responsible Consumer Legal Funding (ARC) is a coalition established to preserve legal funding as a choice for the many Americans who have suffered an unexpected economic loss due to an accident and have a pending legal claim. Legal funding can help families pay for immediate personal needs such as rent, mortgages, car repairs, utilities and groceries while they wait for their claims to settle fairly. ARC trade association promotes practices and regulations that lead to informed decisions between individuals and their attorneys, so families have more optionsnot fewer.

Contact: Crystal Olsen

[email protected]

847.521.4321

Alliance for Responsible Consumer Legal Funding

SOURCE Alliance for Responsible Consumer Legal Funding (ARC)

Related Links

http://arclegalfunding.org


CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts, May 6, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Appoints Susanta Sarkar, a Recognized Leader in Molecular Imaging and its Application to Drug Development Including Development of Radiopharmaceuticals and Companion Diagnostics

Alacrita, the life sciences consulting firm, today announced that it has appointed Susanta Sarkar, PhD, as an Associate Partner in its Cambridge, MA office.

Susanta joins Colin G Miller, PhD, in the firm's Medical Imaging consulting practice and helps consolidate Alacrita's position as a leading provider of medical imaging and companion diagnostic consulting support. Susanta was formerly a Director, Translational and Clinical Imaging, at Sanofi and GlaxoSmithKline. He has a strong track record in strategic, scientific and technical leadership in the development and integration of innovative imaging approaches across drug development - from preclinical to clinical and translational studies.

Susanta is an internationally recognized medical imaging professional with 28 years of experience in pharmaceutical R&D. Throughout his professional career, he successfully led and managed clinical and preclinical studies by building multinational cross- functional collaborations, with a skill base drawn from diverse functions. He is experienced in creating a comprehensive drug development plan for radiopharmaceuticals including management of the full scope of its development functions- from early discovery preclinical activities to Phase I trial design and IND preparation and submission. He accomplished IND approval for an immunoPET agent from the FDA for Phase I clinical trial.

Susanta has developed and executed innovative imaging strategies for oncology clinical trials - Phase I through Phase III, and interpreted clinical imaging study results to enable data driven decision making. He has expertise in MRI, PET, SPECT, CT and optical imaging, and has experience in managing all imaging aspects of multinational multisite clinical trials. At GSK, he proposed and implemented a strategic initiative in molecular imaging and directed the establishment of a world class $10M multimodal Molecular Imaging Center. At this center, he led the delivery of imaging biomarkers in support of decision making for discovery and translational programs across therapeutic areas of neuroscience, arthritis, anti-infective, respiratory, metabolic, cardiovascular and oncology.

Susanta is also Adjunct Associate Professor at the Department of Radiology, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, and serves on the editorial board of Molecular Imaging and Biology. He has published extensively and is a co-author of two patents. In addition, Susanta serves on the scientific advisory board of SibTech Inc. He is currently the co-chair of the Pharma Imaging Network for Therapeutics and Diagnostics (PINTAD) and served as the chair of the MR in Drug Discovery section of the International Society of Magnetic Resonance in Medicine.

Susanta Sarkar said, "I am delighted to be joining the Alacrita team, which has an impressive track record in providing support to biotech, pharma and investors in the life sciences. I look forward to working alongside Alacrita to share my expertise and experience to help our clients."

Rob Johnson, Managing Partner at Alacrita, said: "We are delighted to welcome Susanta to the Alacrita team as we continue to build an outstanding life sciences consulting practice. Susanta has a proven successful track record in the integration of innovative imaging approaches across drug development including radiopharmaceutical development. He joins a high caliber team of seasoned consultants and underlines our commitment and philosophy to build a preeminent life science consulting firm."

In other medical imaging news from Alacrita, Colin G Miller has recently had two papers published describing novel end points or biomarkers. One is a quadrant analysis of the femoral neck using quantitative computerized CT which was used in a study evaluating rosiglitazone in a diabetic patient population. The other was for muscle quantification using MRI.

About Alacrita

Alacrita is a rapidly growing, transatlantic life science consulting firm providing expertise-based services to the pharmaceutical, biotechnology and life science sectors. The firm is supported by an unrivalled team of experts who operate across the spectrum of life sciences. They combine extensive international industry experience (strategic, technical and commercial), broad functional capabilities and a track record of success across the industry.

Alacrita Europe:

London BioScience Innovation Centre

2 Royal College Street

London, NW1 0NH

Tel: +44 207 691 4915



Alacrita USA:

One Broadway, 14th floor

Kendall Square

Cambridge, MA 02142

Tel: +1 617 714 9696

www.alacrita.com

SOURCE Alacrita
GULFPORT, Miss., May 6, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- American Truck Group today announced three key reasons why truckers support Donald Trump for President of the United States. American Truck Group CEO Louis Normand stated that in conversations with working truckers, he quickly noticed that the candidate's commitment to fair trade, job creation and entrepreneurship were common themes that resonated with truckers.

"We serve some the hardest working individuals in our country, the American trucker," said Normand. "And they believe that their very livelihood could be compromised by the election of Bernie Sanders, who has stated that he wants to take truckers off the road in favor of rail."

Last week, Trump secured the endorsement of House Transportation Chairman Bill Shuster (R-Pa.) who was quoted saying that Trump shares his passion for economic development, including making sure our nation's infrastructure meets the needs of our citizens. In addition, a group called Truckers for Trump vowed to send thousands of truckers to Cleveland in July in protest if the Republican National Convention is contested.

According to Normand, truckers support Trump for three key reasons:

1. Trump is committed to fair trade. With trade at the center of a trucker's very existence, they need a president who will work for a fair and level playing field. Normand says that truckers are not afraid to compete, but they need a president who will ensure they have a fair and even chance to earn a living.

2. Trump is committed to creating jobs. New employment will lead to greater consumption of goods, and those goods will be moved on America's roads by truckers. Truckers want income equality and new opportunities for all, says Normand, and Trump stands for raising every worker's prospect.

3. Trump is self-funded and embodies the entrepreneurial spirit that makes America great. Most truckers are self-employed and all are self-made. According to Normand, truckers appreciate that Trump built his companies just as they are committed to creating their own, self-sustaining businesses.

At American Truck Group, we care about both the environment and the well-being of our nation's truckers and their families. We have just purchased 75 Kenworth T700 semi-trucks, all equipped with the new DEF Selective Catalyst Reduction system; which reduces nitrous oxide gases (NOx) that are harmful to the atmosphere. Couple that with greater efficiencies in aerodynamics and decreased fuel consumption, the trucking industry is leading the way in environmentally friendly technologies for better a world. American Truck Group (www.AmericanTruckGroup.org) is the leader in providing America's Truckers with the technology and the know-how to keep America rolling.

American Truck Showrooms is a DBA of American Truck Group, LLC. The corporate headquarters is located in Gulfport, Mississippi. Entrepreneur Louis J. Normand Jr., CEO founded American Truck Group, LLC. in 2001. The company currently has over 75 employees and manages a fleet of over 400 late model Class 8 semitrucks. The selection of trucks includes Peterbilt, Kenworth, Volvo, and Freightliner. The company also offers maintenance, repair and customization services.

This press release was issued through 24-7PressRelease.com. For further information, visit http://www.24-7pressrelease.com.

SOURCE American Truck Group, LLC

Related Links

http://www.AmericanTruckGroup.org


Increasing demand for high-quality lumber from wholesaler customers and manufacturers prompted Owner and General Manager John Grigsby to embark on a 10-year mission to modernize his fleet of forklifts. He recently acquired a Taylor X180 forklift as a result of a loan from Malvern National Bank funded by an Economic Development Program (EDP) advance from the Federal Home Loan Bank of Dallas (FHLB Dallas) and an accompanying $25,000 EDPPlus grant.

"Now with this lift, all the main lifts are less than 10 years old," said Mr. Grigsby. "The fully enclosed cabs allow our operators to be more comfortable and they are protected from the elements."

EDPPlus grants are awarded in conjunction with EDP advances and are available on a first-come, first-served basis to promote and enhance small business development and job creation. Mr. Grigsby's acquisition of the forklift replaces an older model, which he says will increase productivity at the sawmill.

Krista Brown, assistant vice president and lender at Malvern National Bank, worked directly with Mr. Grigsby on the grant application.

"They provide a very good source of income for a low-income area," said Ms. Brown. "HG Toler and Son Lumber Company has been in business in the area for many, many years. The community is very dependent upon them."

In 2015, FHLB Dallas made $1 million available for EDPPlus grants, assisting 50 small businesses in the Bank's five-state District of Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Mexico, and Texas. In Arkansas, EDPPlus grants totaling $653,596 were awarded to 32 small businesses. In 2016, FHLB Dallas has again offered $1 million in EDPPlus grants.

Mr. Grigsby consulted with the Arkansas Small Business and Technology Development Center at Henderson State University, which provided industry research and consulting.

"HG Toler and Son Lumber Company is a successful operation that positively impacts the community in more ways than one," said Leah Hasley, center director. "Malvern National Bank's support of the sawmill through the EDP advance and grant program is a testament to their commitment to developing the economy in our community."

Gustavo Molina, SVP and chief banking operations officer at FHLB Dallas, said the EDP advance and grant program support members in meeting the economic development needs of their communities.

"We're proud to partner with Malvern National Bank in supporting economic development in this area," said Mr. Molina. "Their commitment to the community is supported by their use of the EDP advance and grant program. By offering this program to their customers, they are reinvesting in their community."

Mr. Grigsby honors his company's past by investing in the future. His great-grand father, Homer Toler, was a local store owner in the 1930s and became owner of the business when the original owner gave Mr. Toler the company as payment for a debt. After World War II, Mr. Grigsby's grandfather ran the business until the early 2000s, when Mr. Grigsby stepped in and took over. Now he focuses on expanding on his family's legacy.

"We firmly believe that if you hire a good employee, give him a good piece of equipment to work with, take care of the equipment, as well as the employee, he'll take care of you," he said.

About Malvern National Bank

Malvern National Bank (MNB) opened July 28, 1934, in the height of the Great Depression. Operating 12 locations in its six-county market, MNB maintains a respect for the tradition and service of its 80 year history. The primary mission of MNB is to serve the banking needs of central Arkansas and focus on providing its customers with the latest in technology and the best personal banking experience possible. For more information, see mnbbank.com.

About the Federal Home Loan Bank of Dallas

The Federal Home Loan Bank of Dallas is one of 11 district banks in the FHLBank system created by Congress in 1932. FHLB Dallas, with total assets $49.5 billion as of March 31, 2016, is a member-owned cooperative that supports housing and community development by providing competitively priced advances and other credit products to approximately 850 members and associated institutions in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Mexico, and Texas. Visit fhlb.com for more information.

Contact:

Corporate Communications

Federal Home Loan Bank of Dallas

www.fhlb.com

(214) 441-8445

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160506/364574

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20150126/171462LOGO

SOURCE Federal Home Loan Bank of Dallas

Related Links

http://www.fhlb.com


The Arlington Board of Directors is composed of highly qualified nominees who have overseen a consistent and clearly articulated strategy that has delivered robust dividends over 25 consecutive quarters;

Board of Directors is composed of highly qualified nominees who have overseen a consistent and clearly articulated strategy that has delivered robust dividends over 25 consecutive quarters; Imation Corp. (NYSE: IMN) and the Clinton Group (collectively, the "Imation Group") have nominated a controlling slate to Arlington's Board despite owning less than 0.05% of the Company's shares, an action that we believe is being undertaken to extract value from Arlington at the expense of all other shareholders; and

Board despite owning less than 0.05% of the Company's shares, an action that we believe is being undertaken to extract value from at the expense of all other shareholders; and Since the Clinton Group won its proxy fight at Imation in May 2015 , Imation's stock has lost approximately 65% of its value while Imation has engaged in self-dealing transactions involving more than $50 million , or over 80% of Imation's current $60 million market cap, all for the benefit of the Clinton Group and other insiders.

, Imation's stock has lost approximately 65% of its value while Imation has engaged in self-dealing transactions involving more than , or over 80% of Imation's current market cap, all for the benefit of the Clinton Group and other insiders. The Company believes that the Imation Group would follow the same sham playbook at Arlington that destroyed value at Imation, putting Arlington's dividend and its shareholders' investment at significant risk.

The full text of the letter follows:

YOUR VOTE IS IMPORTANT

A VOTE "FOR" ALL OF THE ARLINGTON BOARD NOMINEES ON THE WHITE PROXY CARD IS A VOTE FOR CONTINUED ROBUST DIVIDENDS TO SHAREHOLDERS

May 6, 2016

Dear Fellow Arlington Shareholder:

The Arlington Board is dedicated to delivering value. Our performance enabled the Company to continue to pay a significant, stable dividend of $0.625 per share for the first quarter of 2016.

Since we began focusing exclusively on our current investment strategy in June 2009, Arlington has delivered a more than 317% total return to shareholders[1], and the Company has paid a dividend each quarter to shareholders over 25 consecutive quarters, for a total of $19.40 per share. We believe our strategy and our current leadership are best positioned to continue to deliver a stable, robust dividend to our shareholders.

PROTECT THE VALUE OF YOUR INVESTMENT AND YOUR DIVIDEND VOTE THE WHITE PROXY CARD TODAY

At this year's Annual Meeting on June 9, 2016, you and all fellow Arlington shareholders will be faced with a stark choice: to support your Board's highly qualified director nominees, who have deep and relevant industry experience and a long record of commitment to creating value for all shareholders. Or to elect the nominees of Imation Corp., a data storage technology company with no experience in our sector, and the New York City-based hedge fund, Clinton Group, Inc. (collectively, the "Imation Group"), who we believe would advance their own self-interest and risk the value of your investment, including the continuation of our quarterly dividend.

Despite owning less than 0.05% of the Company's shares, the Imation Group has nominated a controlling slate of five individuals to stand for election to our Board at the Annual Meeting. Given its track record and extremely small investment in the Company, we believe that the Imation Group has nominated this controlling slate to extract value from Arlington at the expense of all other shareholders.

THE IMATION GROUP'S TRACK RECORD IS LITTERED WITH SELF-DEALING FOR THE BENEFIT OF CLINTON GROUP AND OTHER INSIDERS

After initially winning three seats through a proxy contest at Imation's 2015 Annual Meeting, the Clinton Group's nominees quickly took control of Imation's board and the executive suite, appointing themselves as Imation's Chairman of the Board, Interim Chief Executive Officer, Interim President, Interim Chief Financial Officer and Chief Restructuring Officer.

Once the Clinton Group nominees gained control of Imation, their board promptly caused Imation to engage in numerous highly questionable, self-dealing transactions, involving more than $50 million or over 83% of Imation's current approximately $60 million market cap[2], including:[3]

Authorizing an investment of up to $35 million of Imation's cash into a hedge fund managed by Clinton Group .





. Imposing on Imation shareholders a lucrative off-market fee deal with Clinton Group in connection with this investment. Clinton Group obtained a 25% quarterly performance fee from Imation, payable in Imation shares. Until your Board recently publicly criticized this deal, these shares were to be issued to the Clinton Group at a fixed value of $1.00  less than two thirds of the current market value of Imation's stock. According to Imation's public filings, the Clinton Group will be paid quarterly for any gains  whether realized or not  with no disclosed "high-water mark" or "clawback" for annual investment losses. In other words, Clinton Group can make money even if Imation shareholders lose value . And Imation shareholders bear all the risk of loss.





Entering into a consulting agreement with a restructuring firm founded and led by Barry Kasoff , an Imation officer and board member. Mr. Kasoff and his firm received a total of more than $6 million in compensation from Imation, which included fees of $3 million in 2015 for less than 5 months of work, and up to approximately $2.2 million in Q1 2016 . In 2015, Mr. Kasoff also received $679,000 in direct compensation for 4.5 months of employment at Imation in addition to director fees of $137,057 . Mr. Kasoff appears to have been paid multiple times for the exact same services  in his capacity as a director, officer, and simultaneously for the provision of consulting services to Imation, via the firm he founded and leads. Mr. Kasoff is now an Imation Group nominee to Arlington's Board.



Mr. Kasoff and his firm received a total of more than in compensation from Imation, which included fees of for less than 5 months of work, and . In 2015, Mr. Kasoff also received in direct compensation for 4.5 months of employment at Imation in addition to director fees of .

Reimbursing Clinton Group $600,000 for its proxy fight expenses at Imation, at the expense of Imation's shareholders.



Acquiring a business founded and led by Imation director Geoff Barrall for $6.7 million at closing, plus an additional $5 million in future contingent payments. Director Barrall also received $200,000 in consulting fees (in addition to board fees) from Imation in 2015 for six weeks of work. Mr. Barrall recently resigned from the board and is serving as Chief Technology Officer of Imation.



Paying $300,000 in consulting fees to Imation director Robert Fernander  a Clinton Group nominee to Imation's board  for six weeks of work in addition to being paid $150,387 in director fees in 2015. Thereafter, Mr. Fernander was appointed Chief Executive Officer of Imation and received $1.3 million in direct compensation for approximately 3 months of employment at Imation in 2015.

All of these transactions were approved by a board dominated by the beneficiaries of these deals  Clinton Group nominees and its chosen directors. None of these transactions appear to have included receipt of independent fairness opinions or independent financial advice. Importantly, none of these transactions were approved by Imation shareholders.

$1 INVESTED IN IMATION ON MAY 21, 2015, THE DAY AFTER CLINTON GOT ON THE IMATION BOARD, WAS WORTH 35 CENTS ON MAY 5, 2016, A DECLINE OF APPROXIMATELY 65% OVER LESS THAN A YEAR.

You will hear the Imation Group claim that they have completed a transformation at Imation. Here is what they are NOT telling you about the value destructive changes that they have caused in less than one year:

Since the Clinton Group won its proxy contest on May 20, 2015 , Imation's stock has lost approximately 65% of its value . In fact, Imation stock has traded so low since that time that the New York Stock Exchange has informed Imation it is in jeopardy of being de-listed from its exchange.





, . In fact, Imation stock has traded so low since that time that the New York Stock Exchange has informed Imation it is in jeopardy of being de-listed from its exchange. Despite promising that they would evaluate returning excess capital to Imation shareholders by December 1, 2015 , Clinton Group nominees have failed to return any value to Imation shareholders since taking control  no dividends and no disclosed open market share repurchases  instead authorizing a $35 million investment in Clinton Group funds.

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160505/364503-INFO

The ONLY people who have not lost money at Imation since May 20, 2015 are the Clinton Group nominated directors, thanks to millions of dollars in insider deals.

Now, the Clinton Group is using Imation as its platform to run multiple simultaneous proxy fights at other companies, including at Arlington. The Clinton Group is saddling Imation's shareholders with the expense of running proxy contests in pursuit of what we believe to be its own self-serving agenda.

LEARN FROM THE MISTAKES OF IMATION'S SHAREHOLDERS

The Imation Group has disclosed only hints of its plans for Arlington, which sound frighteningly familiar to its self-serving and value-destroying agenda at Imation:

If it is successful in its proxy contest, the Imation Group intends to have Arlington repay the Imation Group's total proxy contest fees  which it currently anticipates to be approximately $1,000,000 . This reimbursement would be at the expense of Arlington shareholders.





 which it currently anticipates to be approximately This reimbursement would be at the expense of shareholders. It appears that the Imation Group will solicit an external manager for Arlington , which they would hand-pick with a majority of Arlington's Board. Given their track record at Imation, we believe that the Imation Group's "process" will result in a self-serving, related party transaction with either the Clinton Group or Imation serving as the external manager of Arlington .





, which they would hand-pick with a majority of Board. Given their track record at Imation, we believe that the Imation Group's "process" . We believe the Imation Group would follow the same sham playbook at Arlington that destroyed value at Imation, putting your dividend and investment at significant risk.

DO NOT LET THE IMATION GROUP'S NOMINEES TAKE CONTROL OF YOUR COMPANY AND REPEAT THE DISASTER AT IMATION

VOTE " FOR " ALL OF THE ARLINGTON BOARD NOMINEES ON THE WHITE PROXY CARD TODAY

We urge shareholders to avoid the excessive risk posed by the Imation Group's proposal. Your Board is committed to building value for all Arlington shareholders and continuing to deliver a stable, robust dividend. Vote FOR your Board of Directors' experienced and highly qualified director nominees by telephone, over the internet, or by signing, dating and returning the enclosed WHITE proxy card today.

We urge shareholders  do not sign or return any gold proxy card from the Imation Group. Simply discard it. If you have inadvertently returned a gold proxy card, you have every legal right to change your vote, as only your latest dated proxy card will be counted at the Annual Meeting.

On behalf of your Board of Directors and management team, we thank you for your continued support.

Sincerely,

The Arlington Board of Directors

Eric F. Billings J. Rock Tonkel, Jr. Daniel J. Altobello Daniel E. Berce

David W. Faeder Peter A. Gallagher Ralph S. Michael, III Anthony P. Nader, III



Your Vote Is Important, No Matter How Many or How Few Shares You Own

If you have any questions or need assistance voting, please contact the firm assisting us in the solicitation of proxies:

INNISFREE M&A INCORPORATED Shareholders may call toll free: 1-888-750-5834 Banks and Brokers may call collect: 212-750-5833

IMPORTANT We urge you NOT to sign any gold proxy card sent to you by the Imation Group.

If you have already done so, you have every legal right to change your vote by using the enclosed WHITE proxy card to vote TODAYby telephone, via Internet, or by signing, dating and returning the WHITE proxy card in the postage paid envelope provided.

Important Additional Information

The Company, its directors and certain of its executive officers are participants in the solicitation of proxies in connection with the Company's 2016 Annual Meeting of Shareholders. The Company has filed a definitive proxy statement and form of WHITE proxy card with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC") in connection with such solicitation of proxies from the Company's shareholders. WE URGE INVESTORS TO READ THE DEFINITIVE PROXY STATEMENT (INCLUDING ANY AMENDMENTS AND SUPPLEMENTS THERETO) AND ACCOMPANYING WHITE PROXY CARD CAREFULLY AND IN THEIR ENTIRETY BECAUSE THEY CONTAIN IMPORTANT INFORMATION.

Information regarding the names of the Company's directors and executive officers and their respective interests in the Company by security holdings or otherwise as of April 7, 2016, is set forth in the Company's definitive proxy statement for its 2016 Annual Meeting of Shareholders, filed with the SEC on April 18, 2016. Additional information can be found in the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2015, filed with the SEC on February 16, 2016. These documents are available free of charge at the SEC's website at www.sec.gov.

Shareholders will be able to obtain, free of charge, copies of these documents, including any proxy statement (and amendments or supplements thereto) and accompanying WHITE proxy card, and other documents filed with the SEC at the SEC's website at www.sec.gov. In addition, copies will also be available at no charge at the Investors section of the Company's website at http://www.arlingtonasset.com/.

SAFE HARBOR STATEMENT UNDER THE PRIVATE SECURITIES LITIGATION REFORM ACT OF 1995

Certain statements in this communication that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements involve various important assumptions, risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from those predicted by the forward-looking statements because of various factors and possible events. We discuss these factors and events, along with certain other risks, uncertainties and assumptions, under the heading "Risk Factors" in our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2015, and in our other filings with the SEC. We note these factors for investors as contemplated by the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Predicting or identifying all such risk factors is impossible. Consequently, investors should not consider any such list to be a complete set of all potential risks and uncertainties. Forward-looking statements speak only as of the date on which they are made, and we undertake no obligation to update any forward-looking statement to reflect circumstances or events that occur after the date of the statement to reflect unanticipated events. All subsequent written and oral forward-looking statements attributable to us or any person acting on behalf of the Company are qualified by the cautionary statements in this section.

The letter and other previously mailed materials regarding the Board of Directors' recommendations for the Arlington 2016 Annual Meeting have been filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, and can be found on the Investor Relations section of the Company's website at http://www.arlingtonasset.com/.

About Arlington Asset Investment Corp.

Arlington Asset Investment Corp. (NYSE: AI) is a principal investment firm that currently invests primarily in mortgage-related and other assets. The Company is headquartered in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area. For more information, please visit www.arlingtonasset.com.

Important Additional Information

The Company, its directors and certain of its executive officers are participants in the solicitation of proxies in connection with the Company's 2016 Annual Meeting of Shareholders. The Company has filed a preliminary proxy statement and form of WHITE proxy card with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC") in connection with such solicitation of proxies from the Company's shareholders. WE URGE INVESTORS TO READ THE DEFINITIVE PROXY STATEMENT (INCLUDING ANY AMENDMENTS AND SUPPLEMENTS THERETO) AND ACCOMPANYING WHITE PROXY CARD CAREFULLY AND IN THEIR ENTIRETY WHEN THEY BECOME AVAILABLE BECAUSE THEY WILL CONTAIN IMPORTANT INFORMATION.

Information regarding the names of the Company's directors and executive officers and their respective interests in the Company by security holdings or otherwise as of April 6, 2016, is set forth in the Company's preliminary proxy statement for its 2016 Annual Meeting of Shareholders, filed with the SEC on April 8, 2016. Additional information can be found in the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2015, filed with the SEC on February 16, 2016. These documents are available free of charge at the SEC's website at www.sec.gov.

Shareholders will be able to obtain, free of charge, copies of these documents, including any proxy statement (and amendments or supplements thereto) and accompanying WHITE proxy card, and other documents filed with the SEC at the SEC's website at www.sec.gov. In addition, copies will also be available at no charge at the Investors section of the Company's website at http://www.arlingtonasset.com/.

SAFE HARBOR STATEMENT UNDER THE PRIVATE SECURITIES LITIGATION REFORM ACT OF 1995

Certain statements in this news release that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements involve various important assumptions, risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from those predicted by the forward-looking statements because of various factors and possible events. We discuss these factors and events, along with certain other risks, uncertainties and assumptions, under the heading "Risk Factors" in our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2015, and in our other filings with the SEC. We note these factors for investors as contemplated by the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Predicting or identifying all such risk factors is impossible. Consequently, investors should not consider any such list to be a complete set of all potential risks and uncertainties. Forward-looking statements speak only as of the date on which they are made, and we undertake no obligation to update any forward-looking statement to reflect circumstances or events that occur after the date of the statement to reflect unanticipated events. All subsequent written and oral forward-looking statements attributable to us or any person acting on behalf of the Company are qualified by the cautionary statements in this section.

[1] Percentages if dividends not reinvested.

[2] Based on May 5, 2016 closing price.

[3] Source: Imation SEC filings, including preliminary proxy statement filed on April 29, 2016

SOURCE Arlington Asset Investment Corp.

Related Links

http://www.arlingtonasset.com


ARLINGTON, Va., May 6, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Today, American Trucking Associations announced the renewal of U.S. Bank as an ATA Featured Product.

"The focus of our industry is highway safety, but we are also aware of the financial security risks that can come from processing hundreds or thousands of payments each day," said ATA President and CEO Bill Graves. "That's why it's important for trucking companies to have access to reliable banks, like U.S. Bank, to provide safe solutions to the everyday needs of motor carriers."

American Trucking Associations is the largest national trade association for the trucking industry. Through a federation of 50 affiliated state trucking associations and industry-related conferences and councils, ATA is the voice of the industry America depends on most to move our nation's freight.Trucking Moves America Forward.

A pioneer in electronic freight payments, U.S. Bank processes millions of freight invoices annually and provides a collaborative online environment for shippers and carriers to quickly resolve exceptions. In addition, its Voyager Network is one of the largest fueling and maintenance payment networks in the United States, with card-accepting locations in nearly every zip code of the United States and Puerto Rico. Drivers and fleet managers can pinpoint locations with the Voyager Mobile App or the merchant locator in Fleet Commander Online.

"Participating in the ATA Featured Product program closely connects us to the community we serve and supports our commitment to provide safe, secure and reliable payment solutions to the transportation industry," said U.S. Bank Global Transportation Payments General Manager John Hardin. "As a single-solution provider, we deliver benefits across organizations, including more visibility into and control over what drivers are purchasing and when payments are received. We are proud to be the only bank in the United States offering proprietary fleet, freight and aviation solutions to the marketplace."

ATA's Featured Product list is available at www.atabusinesssolutions.com or by calling 866-821-3468. For more on U.S. Bank's transportation solutions, visit https://bankonus.usbpayment.com/, call 866-274-5898 or email [email protected].

Minneapolis-based U.S. Bancorp ("USB"), with $422 billion in assets as of December 31, 2015, is the parent company of U.S. Bank National Association, the fifth largest commercial bank in the United States. The Company operates 3,133 banking offices in 25 states and 4,936 ATMs and provides a comprehensive line of banking, investment, mortgage, trust and payment services products to consumers, businesses and institutions. Visit U.S. Bancorp on the web at www.usbank.com.

American Trucking Associations is the largest national trade association for the trucking industry. Through a federation of 50 affiliated state trucking associations and industry-related conferences and councils, ATA is the voice of the industry America depends on most to move our nation's freight. Follow ATA on Twitter or on Facebook. Trucking Moves America Forward.

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SOURCE American Trucking Associations

Related Links

http://www.trucking.org


ENGLEWOOD, Colo., May 6, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Aytu BioScience, Inc. (OTCQX: AYTU), a specialty pharmaceutical company focused on commercializing novel products in the field of urology, today announced the closing of its previously announced underwritten public offering of 18,750,000 shares of its common stock and warrants to purchase up to an aggregate of 20,799,250 shares of its common stock at a combined public offering price of $0.40 per share and related warrant, including 2,049,250 warrants sold pursuant to the partial exercise of the underwriters' over-allotment option at a per warrant purchase price of $0.01.

Joseph Gunnar & Co., LLC acted as sole book-running manager for the offering and Fordham Financial Management, Inc. acted as lead manager for the offering.

The company intends to use the net proceeds from the offering to fund the expansion of its commercial infrastructure for the planned launch of Natesto and the planned expansion in the commercialization of ProstaScint and Primsol, to purchase complementary urology products and/or product candidates that will enhance its product portfolio and enable expansion of its commercial operations, fund the remaining clinical development activities for MiOXSYS, to enable FDA clearance and working capital for general corporate and administrative expenses.

The securities were sold pursuant to an effective registration statement on Form S-1 (File No. 333-210144), as amended, previously filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The final prospectus related to the offering was filed with the SEC on May 4, 2016. Copies of the final prospectus are on the SEC's website located at http://www.sec.gov and may also be obtained from Joseph Gunnar & Co., LLC, Prospectus Department, 30 Broad Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10004, telephone 212-440-9600, email: [email protected].

This press release shall not constitute an offer to sell, or the solicitation of an offer to buy, nor may there be any sale of these securities in any state or jurisdiction in which such an offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful prior to registration or qualification under the securities laws of any such state or jurisdiction.

About Aytu BioScience, Inc.

Aytu BioScience is a commercial-stage specialty pharmaceutical company focused on global commercialization of novel products in the field of urology. The company currently markets two products: ProstaScint (capromab pendetide), the only FDA-approved imaging agent specific to prostate cancer, and Primsol (trimethoprim hydrochloride), the only FDA-approved trimethoprim-only oral solution for urinary tract infections. Aytu recently acquired exclusive U.S. rights to Natesto, the first and only FDA-approved nasal formulation of testosterone for men with hypogonadism (low testosterone, or "Low T"), which the company plans to launch in July 2016. Additionally, Aytu is developing MiOXSYS, a novel, rapid semen analysis system with the potential to become a standard of care for the diagnosis and management of male infertility caused by oxidative stress. MiOXSYS is commercialized outside the U.S. where it is a CE Marked, Health Canada cleared product, and Aytu is conducting U.S.-based clinical trials in pursuit of 510k de novo medical device clearance by the FDA. Aytu's strategy is to continue building its portfolio of revenue-generating urology products, leveraging its focused commercial team and expertise to build leading brands within well-established markets.

Investors & Media:

Tiberend Strategic Advisors, Inc.

Joshua Drumm, Ph.D.: [email protected]; (212) 375-2664

Janine McCargo: [email protected]; (646) 604-5150

Please Note: This press release includes 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, or the Exchange Act. All statements other than statements of historical facts contained in this press release, including statements regarding our anticipated future clinical and regulatory events, future financial position, business strategy and plans and objectives of management for future operations, are forward-looking statements. Forward looking statements are generally written in the future tense and/or are preceded by words such as "may," "will," "should," "forecast," "could," "expect," "suggest," "believe," "estimate," "continue," "anticipate," "intend," "plan," or similar words, or the negatives of such terms or other variations on such terms or comparable terminology. These statements are just predictions and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause the actual events or results to differ materially. These risks and uncertainties include, among others: risks relating to our planned use of proceeds from the offering; our plans for product growth, expansion and acquisition; the anticipated start dates, durations and completion dates, as well as the potential future results, of our ongoing and future clinical trials; risks relating to gaining market acceptance of our products; obtaining reimbursement by third-party payors; the potential future commercialization of our product candidates; the anticipated designs of our future clinical trials; anticipated future regulatory submissions and events; our anticipated future cash position; and future events under our current and potential future collaborations. We also refer you to the risks described in "Risk Factors" in Part I, Item 1A of Aytu BioScience, Inc.'s Annual Report on Form 10-K and in the other reports and documents we file with the Securities and Exchange Commission from time to time.

SOURCE Aytu BioScience, Inc.
BOSTON, May 6, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Once again  for the 11th year in a row  Beacon Hill Staffing Group was named to Boston Business Journal's Fast 50 (previously known as Pacesetters) list. This year's list, which ranks the region's fastest-growing privately held companies, included 76 Massachusetts companies reaching at least $1 million in revenue in 2015 and making at least $500,000 in revenue in 2012. Companies that saw revenue decrease between 2014 and 2015 were excluded. In addition, nonprofits, hospitals and schools were not included.

Beacon Hill, along with 75 other area companies, was honored at the BBJ's annual Fast 50 event, coming in 51st overall. In addition to being honored at the event, the BBJ also reported on "Companies with the most 2015 revenue." Beacon Hill topped that list, coming in at first place with $348 million in 2015 revenue.

In addition, Beacon Hill Staffing Group has also been named as one of Massachusetts' largest privately held companies for the ninth year in a row.

The BBJ ranks companies according to annual revenue, naming only the top 100 to their prestigious list. As reported on by the BBJ, with 2015 revenue of $348m, Beacon Hill earned the 28th spot on this year's list  up from number 32 in 2015, 33 in 2014, 37 in 2013, 41 in 2012, 50 in 2011, and 76 in 2010.

"As a Massachusetts-based company, we are proud to be recognized as one of the area's largest private companies," commented Andrew Wang, CEO. "We are also proud of our national footprint and the service we are providing in forty (40) states across the country." BHSG was one of nine firms in staffing or related industries to make the list of Largest Private Companies, and had the second-most 2015 revenue of these companies.

Beacon Hill Staffing Group's niche brands provide direct hire, executive search, temporary staffing, contract consulting and temp/contract-to-hire solutions to emerging growth companies and the Fortune 500 across multiple market sectors and all industries. Over time, office locations, specialty practice areas and service offerings will be added to address ever changing constituent needs.

SOURCE Beacon Hill Staffing Group

Related Links

http://www.beaconhillstaffing.com


PITTSFIELD, Mass., May 6, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Berkshire Hills Bancorp, Inc. (NYSE: BHLB) held its annual meeting of shareholders on May 5, in Pittsfield, Massachusetts.

President and CEO Michael P. Daly summarized Berkshire's accomplishments in 2015. They included strong earnings growth and profitability improvement, along with the acquisitions of Hampden Bank and Firestone Financial. The year's initiatives resulted in 47% earnings growth. Berkshire's 2015 total stock return exceeded 12%, and the annual cash dividend was increased by 6%, providing a 3% yield. Mr. Daly concluded with a summary of the promising prospects for Berkshire's further growth and development.

Shareholders approved all proposals which were presented at the meeting. These were:

The election of one new and four existing directors to new three year terms: Patrick J. Sheehan ; John B. Davies ; Rodney C. Dimock ; Laurie Norton Moffatt ; J. Williar Dunlaevy

; ; ; ; Approval of a non-binding proposal to give advisory approval of the Company's executive compensation

Ratification of the selection of PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP as the Company's independent registered public accounting firm for fiscal year 2016

BACKGROUND

Berkshire Hills Bancorp is the parent of Berkshire Bank  America's Most Exciting Bank. The Company has over $7.8 billion in assets and 93 full-service branch offices in Massachusetts, New York, Connecticut, and Vermont providing personal and business banking, insurance, and wealth management services.

FORWARD LOOKING STATEMENTS

This document contains forward-looking statements as defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. There are several factors that could cause actual results to differ significantly from expectations described in the forward-looking statements. For a discussion of such factors, please see Berkshire's most recent reports on Forms 10-K and 10-Q filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission and available on the SEC's website at www.sec.gov. Berkshire does not undertake any obligation to update forward-looking statements

CONTACTS

Investor Relations Contact

Allison O'Rourke; Executive Vice President, Investor Relations Officer; 413-236-3149

Media Contact

Elizabeth Mach; First Vice President, Marketing Officer; 413-445-8390

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SOURCE Berkshire Hills Bancorp, Inc.

Related Links

http://www.berkshirebank.com


SAN ANTONIO, TX, May 6, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Biglari Holdings Inc. (NYSE: BH) announces its results for the first quarter of 2016.

Biglari Holdings Inc.'s earnings for the first quarter 2016 and 2015 are summarized below. To become fully apprised of our results, shareholders should carefully study our 10-Q, which has been posted at www.biglariholdings.com.

(In thousands)













First Quarter







2016

2015



















Pre-tax operating earnings (losses) $ 4,690

$ (2,786)





Investment partnership gains 78,973

22,965





Interest expense (2,922)

(3,006)





Income tax expense (29,578)

(7,190)





Net earnings attributable to Biglari Holdings Inc. $ 51,163

$ 9,983



































Analysis of Results:

Investments held through investment partnerships affect our reported quarterly earnings based on their carrying value. We do not regard the quarterly or annual fluctuations in the partnerships' carrying values to be meaningful. Therefore, our operating businesses are best analyzed before the impact of investment gains. As a consequence, in the preceding table we separate earnings of our operating businesses from our investment gains.

About Biglari Holdings Inc.

Biglari Holdings Inc. is a holding company owning subsidiaries engaged in a number of diverse business activities, including media, property and casualty insurance, and restaurants. The Company's largest operating subsidiaries are involved in the franchising and operating of restaurants. All major operating, investment, and capital allocation decisions are made for the Company and its subsidiaries by Sardar Biglari, Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer.

Comment on Regulation G

This press release contains certain non-GAAP financial measures. In addition to the GAAP presentations of net earnings, Biglari Holdings defines pre-tax operating earnings outside of the investment gains/losses of the Company.



Risks Associated with Forward-Looking Statements

This news release may include "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and other federal securities laws. These statements are based on current expectations and are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ markedly from those projected or discussed here. Biglari Holdings cautions readers not to place undue reliance upon any such forward-looking statements, for actual results may differ materially from expectations. Biglari Holdings does not update publicly or revise any forward-looking statements even if experience or future changes make it clear that any projected results expressed or implied therein will not be realized. Further information on the types of factors that could affect Biglari Holdings and its business can be found in the Company's filings with the SEC.

SOURCE Biglari Holdings Inc.

Related Links

http://www.biglariholdings.com


GREENVILLE, S.C., April 12, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Bill Masters, the founder and former CEO of Perception Kayaks, and father of 3D printing, received the Order of the Palmetto at The Innovative Spirit Awards, hosted by Clemson University's Arthur M. Spiro Institute for Entrepreneurial Leadership. Masters, an engineer, inventor, entrepreneur, advisor and mentor, was honored for his work and service in South Carolina's business community.

Senator Larry A. Martin (Republican - Pickens) presented the Order of the Palmetto on behalf of South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley. Senator Martin recalled how he watched Masters build his kayak company from scratch. "It was an amazing thing, to see how many lives he touched along the way," he said. "Bill's made a huge contribution to the economic development of Pickens County and the State of South Carolina, and he continues to contribute."

Masters built Perception Kayaks into the U.S. market leader before selling to Watermark Paddlesports, later acquired by Confluence Holdings. He also filed the first patent on 3D printing with the United States Patent and Trademark Office, which is just one of over 50 patents that he holds.

Today, Masters serves on the boards of various foundations, non-profits and professional organizations, while working to share his experience and insights with young people and a range of commercial ventures. He also speaks to academic, industry and professional groups, with a perspective that combines his humble roots, counter-cultural sensibilities and innovative approach to engineering and manufacturing.

He is available to provide expert commentary on business and economic issues, including product development, process engineering, manufacturing and building companies for profitable growth and strong exit values. To learn more about Bill Masters, his career and current activities, visit http://billmasters3D.com.

This content was issued through the press release distribution service at Newswire.com. For more info visit: http://www.newswire.com

SOURCE Bill Masters

Related Links

http://billmasters3d.com


CHICAGO, May 6, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- On May 17, join The Executives' Club for a discussion with Boeing Chairman, President and CEO, Dennis Muilenburg, who will share his perspective on Boeing's centennial, his vision for the company's future and insights regarding the challenges of operating in a rapidly-changing, global business environment.

The event also serves as The Club's Annual Awards Luncheon, during which winners will be announced for the CIO of the Year, Innovator of the Year and Corporate Citizen of the Year Awards.

Event Details

Annual Awards and Global Leaders Luncheon: Tuesday, May 17, 2016

Navy Pier, Grand Ballroom, 600 E. Grand Ave, Chicago, IL 60611

Registration and Networking: 11:15 a.m. ; Program: 12:00-1:15 p.m.

Platinum Series Sponsor & Innovation Committee Co-Chair: KPMG

Gold Series Sponsor: Root, Inc.

Gold Sponsors: Arthur J. Gallagher & Co., Boeing, Chicago Cubs, Edelman, J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., Katalyst Technologies, PwC, United

Media Sponsor: The Wall Street Journal

Technology Committee Co-Chairs: Accenture, CDW

Innovation Committee Co-Chair: Verizon

CIO of the Year Partners: AITP, SIM Chicago

About The Executives' Club of Chicago:

The Executives' Club of Chicago is the city's premier membership and networking organization focused on senior executives networking, development and innovation. The Club serves as a platform for executives to build relationships, share ideas, develop new business opportunities and participate in world-class programming. The Club helps executives with their personal and professional development and prepares the next generation of business leaders for success. For more information, visit www.ExecutivesClub.org.

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SOURCE The Executives' Club of Chicago

Related Links

http://www.executivesclub.org


BOSTON, May 6, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Cristina Henriquez captivated the Bunker Hill Community College audience of students, faculty, staff and visitors on April 28, 2016, with the story of her development as a writer and the discovery of her Panamanian roots. She spoke as part of BHCC's One Book program, which brings the entire College community together to read a single book over the course of an academic year. This year, members of the College community read Henriquez' award-winning novel of immigrant life, The Book of Unknown Americans.

"When people who have been marginalized finally see themselves in books and movies," she said, "they experience an affirmation of themselves." Henriquez grew up in a family with an immigrant father and an American mother. Writing the The Book of Unknown Americans, she said, was a way of confirming the Latina side of herself that had seemed secondary to her when she was growing up.

Prior to her lecture in the auditorium, the author visited Professor Alan Shute's English as a Second Language class, accompanied by Professor of English Jenn Cohn, who directs the One Book program. The author sat down with small groups of students and discussed their personal stories of immigration. Students in the class hailed from Haiti, Vietnam, China, Taiwan and Latin America, among other places. "We are really looking forward to your next book," said Kelly Tsay, a Taiwanese student studying to improve her English at BHCC. She told Henriquez that she had been a nurse in Taiwan and now hopes to become a nurse in the United States.

The Book of Unknown Americans was named a New York Times and Washington Post Notable Book, an NPR Great Read, The Daily Beast's Novel of the Year, and a Mother Jones, Oprah.com, School Library Journal, and BookPage Best Book of the Year. Henriquez is also the author of Come Together, Fall Apart and a collection of stories, The World in Half.

The One Book program at BHCC is now more than ten years old. For the past five years, the College has purchased copies of the chosen book and distributed them free to students. This year, 2000 copies of the book were distributed. It was incorporated into the curriculum in 83 classrooms and used in courses ranging from ESL to Events & Hospitality, Psychology and American Culture as well as many reading and writing courses.

Media Contact:

Karen M. Norton, Executive Director of Integrated Marketing and Communications

Bunker Hill Community College, Boston, MA 02129

Phone: 617-228-2177; Email: [email protected]

Bunker Hill Community College is the largest community college in Massachusetts. The College enrolls more than 14,000 students on two campuses and at three satellite locations. BHCC is one of the most diverse institutions of higher education in Massachusetts. Sixty-four percent of the students are people of color and more than half of BHCC's students are women. The College also enrolls more than 900 international students who come from approximately 100 countries and speak more than 75 languages.

SOURCE Bunker Hill Community College

Related Links

http://www.bhcc.mass.edu


Stock Market Symbols

GIB (NYSE)

GIB.A (TSX)

www.cgi.com/newsroom

Since 2006 dedication, Lebanon center has transformed community through investment, education and more than $650M of economic impact

LEBANON, VA, May 6, 2016 /PRNewswire/ - Joined by U.S. Senator Mark R. Warner and dozens of community and business leaders in Russell County, Virginia, CGI (NYSE: GIB) (TSX: GIB.A) today marked the 10-year anniversary of its Southwest Virginia Information Technology Center of Excellence, a full-service software development and systems integration facility in Lebanon that has created 400 jobs and generated a regional economic impact of $68.5 million per year since its dedication in 2006.

"Today, we are proud and honored to have become a part of this great community," said Dave Henderson, President, CGI U.S. Operations. "Thanks to the commitment of leaders like Senator Warner and others who helped make our Center of Excellence in Virginia a reality, we can look back on this decade and say with confidence that Russell County had the right location, infrastructure, resources and people to join a network of leading-edge U.S. facilities that continue to provide the best IT services to CGI clients around the world."

"Ten years later, the innovative economic development approach that helped bring solid IT jobs to Southwest Virginia continues to be a significant success story," said U.S. Senator Mark Warner (D-VA). "It is not an overstatement to say the opportunities here at CGI have helped change perceptions about opportunity and success for an entire generation of young people.

"And CGI now cites Russell County as a national model  a model for a smart way to create good software engineering and IT jobs outside of expensive and congested urban and suburban centers  a model for bringing opportunity and greater stability to rural communities like this one," continued Warner. "We should notand cannotgive up on our small towns and expect the rest of the state to prosper. And what you have done here in Lebanon is a success story  a success story that's worth rewriting all across America."

Heralded by then-Governor Warner in 2006 as "the best announcement in a decade for Russell County," and by Governor Tim Kaine in 2007 as "an anchor of new economic development in the region," the Lebanon center reflects CGI's commitment to invest in full-service IT resources based in American communities offering competitive economic benefits and access to outstanding local talent. Like those in Alabama, Louisiana and Texas, CGI's onshore delivery center in Virginia provides high-quality, high-value IT services at costs significantly below the averages for major metropolitan areas.

"Onshore delivery is an integral part of CGI's global delivery model, which offers best-fit solutions using onsite, onshore, nearshore and off shore locations that today's global clients need," continued Henderson. "Working with our account teams, the talent in this Center helps CGI deliver both the steady-state IT services as well as the transformational digital innovation our clients are demanding."

For its Virginia center, CGI selected Russell County for its geographic proximity to commercial and public sector clients; its access to a large, qualified talent pool from local universities, colleges, and technical institutes; and the strong business incentives and tremendous collaboration among the Commonwealth, local government, industrial and economic development agencies, academia, and local businesses.

As early as 2005, the Virginia Economic Development Partnership worked with the Russell County Industrial Development Authority and the Virginia Coalfield Economic Development Authority to secure the Center for Virginia. A grant was approved by the Governor's Opportunity Fund to assist Russell County with the project, and the Virginia Tobacco Indemnification and Community Revitalization Commission supported the effort from the Tobacco Region Opportunity Fund as well. The Virginia Department of Business Assistance also committed to provide training assistance through its Workforce Services Program.

"Nowhere has the cooperation between public leaders and the IT sector been more successful than in the cause of bringing our Center of Excellence to Southwest Virginia," said Tim Hurlebaus, President of CGI's U.S. Federal Government operations. "The coalition responsible for making CGI's Lebanon facility a reality serves as a model for what communities can do when they share a commitment to innovation and economic growth."

Today, the 42,000-square-foot facility in the Russell Regional Business and Technology Park houses 400 CGI software developers, analysts and consultants  surpassing an earlier estimate that predicted a total of 300 jobs at the Center. It is considered a boon for a region beset by high unemployment over the past several decades.

About CGI

Founded in 1976, CGI Group Inc. is the fifth largest independent information technology and business process services firm in the world. Approximately 65,000 professionals serve thousands of global clients from offices and delivery centers across the Americas, Europe and Asia Pacific, leveraging a comprehensive portfolio of services, including high-end business and IT consulting, systems integration, application development and maintenance and infrastructure management, as well as 150 IP-based services and solutions. With annual revenue in excess of C$10 billion and an order backlog exceeding C$20 billion, CGI shares are listed on the TSX (GIB.A) and the NYSE (GIB). Website: www.cgi.com.

SOURCE CGI Group Inc.

Related Links

http://www.cgi.com/


DALLAS, May 6, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Growing up in Dallas, Texas, Sheela Lalani's blended Indian and Spanish heritage meant that she always felt different. She wore simple Indian clothing such as a shalwar kameez, and later transitioned to donning gorgeous saris. But it wasn't until she traveled to New York that she discovered just how colorfully diverse a city could be. Her European travels showed her more of the same: the world is full of beauty.

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160506/364543

Cheeni Baby

Taking inspiration from that eye-opening revelation and the life-changing birth of her own daughter, Lalani has created a girls' clothing collection that evokes pride in her heritage. Cheeni Baby - cheeni meaning "sweet" in Hindi - intends to revere and honor the uniqueness of each ethnicity. Elegantly arched peacocks and flower-toting elephants dance across jewel-toned designs that hearken back to Lalani's Indian roots and the free-spirited Bohemian sensibilities of her Spanish ancestry. The apparel encourages playfulness and the discovery of the wonders of nature while celebrating cultural harmony.

Cheeni Baby works with ethical manufacturers to handcraft custom-designed clothing on sustainable fibers. Dresses are hand-block printed using an artisan method from Jaipur, India. Whenever possible, organic and natural fibers and non-toxic dyes are used.

Children see the world with eyes wide open. Developing minds are emboldened to possess a self-awareness and individuality. And the multicultural styles of Cheeni Baby awaken compassion, understanding, and a fascination with different perspectives. Help us teach love by celebrating the colorful abundance of each other from the beginning.

Cheeni Baby will give back by supporting Global Initiatives and helping children in different parts of the world, including the United States. Funds will help end poverty and provide education to global youth.

Cheeni Baby is available for pre-order now. The world is full of beauty. Embrace it.

About CheeniBaby: Cheeni Baby is based in the United States with graphic artistry collaboration in Madrid, Spain. All shirts are silk screened in the U.S. on imported cotton. Dresses are block printed in India. All are made with non-toxic, water-based inks and vegetable dyes.

About the Creator: Sheela Lalani previously worked as a production manager at a large marketing company conducting product color matching for clients including T-Mobile. She has also worked for Fossil, Tory Burch, and Michael Kors. She lives in Dallas, Texas, with her own cheeni baby.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1851084583/cheeni-baby-and-kids-apparel-we-are-unique-we-are

For more information, contact Sheela at [email protected].

This content was issued through the press release distribution service at Newswire.com. For more info visit: http://www.newswire.com

SOURCE Cheeni Baby & Kids
Now in its 30th year, the EY Entrepreneur Of The Year program has expanded to recognize business leaders in more than 145 cities across more than 60 countries worldwide.

Sullens' EOY nomination stemmed from his ability to drive change and execute on the vision he crafted after joining WorkWave in 2008. Since that time, WorkWave has profitably grown revenue and employee count over 500 percent and transitioned from a traditional single-industry software provider to a multi-industry software-as-a-service leader by transforming its application to solve the office efficiency, field productivity and marketing insight issues that its clients face daily.

"I am honored by this prestigious recognition and consider it a testament to our team's ability to innovate and execute on our vision continuously," said Sullens. "WorkWave would not be where it is today without the work of our talented team members, our loyal clients and our valuable partners. Together we are transforming the way work is done in the field service and last-mile delivery industries."

Regional award winners are eligible for consideration for the EY Entrepreneur Of The Year national program. Award winners in several national categories, as well as the EY Entrepreneur Of The Year National Overall Award winner, will be announced at the EY Entrepreneur Of The Year National Awards gala in Palm Springs, California, on Nov. 19. The awards are the culminating event of the EY Strategic Growth Forum, a gathering of high-growth, market-leading companies.

About WorkWave

WorkWave is a fast-growing leader in field service and "last mile" delivery software  a $45+ billion market worldwide. The company connects all aspects of its clients' businesses through its tightly integrated, mobile-first suite of software solutions, which include PestPac, WorkWave Service, Service CEO, WorkWave Fleet, WorkWave GPS, WorkWave Marketing and ContactUs. WorkWave's solutions provide its 9,000+ clients with an unprecedented level of business insight and information, enabling them to increase revenue per employee and provide a five-star customer experience. Founded in 1984, WorkWave has been recognized with multiple awards for its outstanding growth and culture, including the Inc. 5000, SmartCEO Future 50, and Best Places to Work in New Jersey. For more information, visit www.workwave.com.

Contact Danielle Panichi Email [email protected] Phone 800-792-6067 Website https://www.workwave.com Agency

Contact Rachel Talaska [email protected] 248-304-1465

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160506/364651

SOURCE WorkWave

Related Links

http://workwave.com


JACKSON, Mich., May 6, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- The Board of Directors of Consumers Energy, the principal subsidiary of CMS Energy, has declared a quarterly dividend on the utility's preferred stock.

The following dividend is payable July 1, 2016, to shareholders of record June 6, 2016: $1.125 per share on the $4.50 stock (NYSE: CMS_pb).

CMS Energy (NYSE: CMS) is a Michigan-based company that has an electric and natural gas utility, Consumers Energy, as its primary business and also owns and operates independent power generation businesses.

For more information on CMS Energy, please visit our website at www.cmsenergy.com. To sign up for email alert notifications, please visit the Investor Relations section of our website.

SOURCE CMS Energy

Related Links

http://www.cmsenergy.com


MIAMI, May 6, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- This Mother's Day most of the fresh cut flowers sold in the U.S. will be imported from Colombia. Mother's Day is actually one of the 3 most important dates for the Canadian flower industry in addition to Valentine's Day, and Christmas. Colombia is the largest supplier of flowers and second worldwide with more than 80% of its production reaching the U.S. and Canada. Mother's Day is a vital celebration for the flower industry in the US and it is projected to generate close to U.S. $2.4 billion in sales during this year's celebration according to the National Retail Federation (NRF).

The floriculture sector is a substantial contributor to the Colombian economy. In 2015, the country exported US$1.2 billion of flowers mainly to the U.S., Canada, UK, Japan and Russia; where fresh cut roses, carnations, pompons, alstroemerias, and small carnations are sold in department stores, specialty shoppes; as well as online according to ProColombia, the Colombian Government promotion agency. The U.S. alone imports close to 156,265 tons of flowers sold and distributed mainly in Florida, California and Massachusetts, totaling more than U.S. $1,248 million to 2015. The industry also generates 130,000 direct and indirect jobs and provides employment opportunities for thousands of women.

Colombia is also the largest supplier of fresh cut roses for the U.S. and Canada. Chances are that 7 times out of 10 these roses will come from Colombia. According to ProColombia, the country's exotic varieties, top quality, streamlined export processes, and year round production due to its ideal climate are some of the main drivers which have gained the floricultural industry worldwide recognition.

Colombia's floricultural industry has over 40 years of tradition and produces over 1,500 flower species grown in more than 7,200 hectares. The country harvests the largest variety of exotic flowers that has allowed the country to stay ahead of international trends. Today, worldwide demand is met by Netherlands, Colombia, Ecuador and Kenya, where Colombia leads as the largest exporter of carnations and the second of flowers. To support the industry, the Colombian Association of Flower Exporters (Asocolflores) brings together 75% of the national exporters as well as the Center of Innovation for the Colombian Floricultural Industry, Ceniflores the body in charge of strengthening the sector's competitiveness through government academic programs.

MEDIA CONTACT:

Andrea Lopez, ProColombia Communications Director

Email: [email protected] Tel: (305) 374-3144 Ext. 66173

SOURCE ProColombia, The Colombian Government Trade Bureau

Related Links

http://www.procolombia.co/en


The trial, jointly conducted by the hospital and the company Innovative Cellular Therapeutics (ICT), obtained clinical ethics approval and enrolled its first patient in June 2015. By April 2016, the tenth patient achieved complete remission.

During the 10 months of the trial, the research team finished CAR-T cell reinfusion and conducted preliminary evaluation of ten patients suffering from relapsed or refractory B lymphoblastic leukemia.

The clinical trial was conducted in strict accordance with clinical ethical standards and monitored independently by a third-party clinical research organization. All patient expenses incurred by the CAR-T trial were reimbursed by ICT. Nine out of the ten patients achieved complete remission, and the minimal residual disease (MRD) in 8 patients turned negative, a significant indication of curative effect. Both the complete remission rate of 90% and the MRD-negative rate of 80% out-performed the best results recorded worldwide to date.

All ten patients, ranging in age from 17 to 57, suffered from relapsed or refractory B lymphocytic leukemia and were expected to live only several months. The tenth and final patient is a 17-year-old female who enrolled in the CAR-T clinical trial in March of this year. After collecting her blood, researchers performed a genetic transformation of her common T-cells to express a molecule called Chimeric Antigen Receptor (CAR). Similar to GPS, CAR can guide specific T-cells to track, identify and kill malignant tumor cells. Through the application of this technology, common T-cells were transformed into "cancer fighting" CAR-T cells.

In early April 2016, the transformed CAR-T cells were infused into the body of the patient, and the 'cytokine storm' took place as the research team had expected. As the CAR-T cells rapidly proliferated in the patient's body and released a large number of cytokines, the patient experienced symptoms that included fever, muscle pain and hypoxemia. These symptoms indicated that the introduction of CAR-T cells was having a positive effect. The subsequent test results showed that she was in complete remission and she was identified as MRD-negative.

Innovative Cellular Therapeutics, in collaboration with the First Affiliated Hospital of Zhejiang University, achieved success in the evolution of CAR-T therapy. ICT is conducting clinical trials on relapsed and refractory acute lymphocytic leukemia in seven other hospitals across China and has completed the trial and initial data collection of 23 patients suffering from an advanced stage of the disease. Twenty patients, or 87% of the total trial population, enjoyed complete remission of leukemia.

Before the trial, only three firms in the world (Novartis, Juno and Kite Pharma), all based in the U.S., have developed similar levels of CAR-T therapy for leukemia. ICT, a Chinese firm, has now joined that distinguished group to become one of the global leaders in the application of CAR-T therapy.

Based on the success of its leukemia trial, ICT will next set its sights on a new clinical trial for the treatment of lymphoma. Looking ahead, ICT will focus its R&D efforts on solid tumors including colorectal cancer, breast cancer, gastric cancer and esophageal cancer.

CAR-T cellular therapy is rapidly gaining the attention of doctors, researchers, patients, and the public at large as the most promising tumor precision therapy in the world and it is expected to benefit more patients afflicted with tumors in the future.

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160506/364519

SOURCE Innovative Cellular Therapeutics Co., Ltd.
PANAMA CITY, May 5, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Copa Holdings, S.A. (NYSE: CPA), today announced financial results for the first quarter of 2016(1Q16). The terms "Copa Holdings" or "the Company" refer to the consolidated entity. The following financial information, unless otherwise indicated, is presented in accordance with International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). See the accompanying reconciliation of non-IFRS financial information to IFRS financial information included in financial tables section of this earnings release. Unless otherwise stated, all comparisons with prior periods refer to the first quarter of 2015 (1Q15).

OPERATING AND FINANCIAL HIGHLIGHTS

Copa Holdings reported net income of US$115.5 million for 1Q16, or diluted earnings per share (EPS) of US$2.74 . Excluding special items, Copa Holdings would have reported an adjusted net income of US$69.9 million , or EPS of US$1.66 per share, a 31.1% decrease over adjusted net income of US$106.1 million and US$2.41 per share for 1Q15.

for 1Q16, or diluted earnings per share (EPS) of . Excluding special items, Copa Holdings would have reported an adjusted net income of , or EPS of per share, a 31.1% decrease over adjusted net income of and per share for 1Q15. Operating income for 1Q16 came in at US$94.1 million , a 26.1% decrease over operating income of US$127.3 million in 1Q15. Operating margin for the period came in at 16.9%, compared to 20.1% in 1Q15, as a result of lower unit revenues partially offset by lower unit costs.

, a 26.1% decrease over operating income of in 1Q15. Operating margin for the period came in at 16.9%, compared to 20.1% in 1Q15, as a result of lower unit revenues partially offset by lower unit costs. Total revenues decreased 11.8% to US$557.1 million . Yield per passenger mile decreased 15.4% to 12.5 cents and operating revenue per available seat mile (RASM) decreased 13.9% to 10.0 cents .

. Yield per passenger mile decreased 15.4% to and operating revenue per available seat mile (RASM) decreased 13.9% to . For 1Q16, passenger traffic (RPMs) grew 3.6% on a 2.4% capacity expansion. Consolidated load factor came in at 77.4%, 0.9 percentage points above 1Q15.

Operating cost per available seat mile (CASM) decreased 10.4%, from 9.3 cents in 1Q15 to 8.3 cents in 1Q16, mainly due to lower jet fuel costs, despite US$29 million in realized fuel hedge losses. CASM, excluding fuel, decreased 2.8% to 6.2 cents mainly due to weaker regional currencies and contract renegotiations with various suppliers.

in 1Q15 to in 1Q16, mainly due to lower jet fuel costs, despite in realized fuel hedge losses. CASM, excluding fuel, decreased 2.8% to mainly due to weaker regional currencies and contract renegotiations with various suppliers. Cash, short-term and long-term investments ended 1Q16 at US$723.9 million , representing 33% of the last twelve months' revenues.

, representing 33% of the last twelve months' revenues. For 1Q16, Copa Holdings reported consolidated on-time performance of 90.6% and a flight-completion factor of 99.8%, maintaining its position among the best in the industry.

Subsequent Events

On May 2nd, 2016 , Copa Holdings filed its 2015 20-F Annual Report. In its 2015 audited financial statements, the company recognized a $430.2 million U.S. dollar foreign currency translation loss, on its bolivar cash balance, due to the migration to an exchange rate of 198.69 bolivars per U.S. dollar, instead of the previously used rate of 6.3 bolivars per U.S. dollar.

, Copa Holdings filed its 2015 20-F Annual Report. In its 2015 audited financial statements, the company recognized a U.S. dollar foreign currency translation loss, on its bolivar cash balance, due to the migration to an exchange rate of per U.S. dollar, instead of the previously used rate of per U.S. dollar. On June 15 th, 2016, Copa Holdings will pay its second quarter dividend of US$0.51 per share, on all outstanding Class A and Class B shares, to stockholders of record as of May 31 st, 2016.

Consolidated Financial &

Operating Highlights 1Q16 1Q15 % Change 4Q15 % Change Revenue Passengers Carried ('000) 2,120 1,965 7.9% 2,055 3.2% RPMs (mm) 4,307 4,158 3.6% 4,103 5.0% ASMs (mm) 5,566 5,433 2.4% 5,486 1.5% Load Factor 77.4% 76.5% 0.9 p.p. 74.8% 2.6 p.p. Yield 12.5 14.8 -15.4% 12.5 0.0% PRASM (US$ Cents) 9.7 11.3 -14.5% 9.3 3.5% RASM (US$ Cents) 10.0 11.6 -13.9% 9.7 3.1% CASM (US$ Cents) 8.3 9.3 -10.4% 9.0 -7.5% CASM Excl. Fuel (US$ Cents) 6.2 6.3 -2.8% 6.5 -5.4% Breakeven Load Factor (1) 65.0% 60.2% 4.8 p.p. 67.1% -2.1 p.p. Fuel Gallons Consumed (Millions) 71.7 69.6 3.0% 70.5 1.7% Avg. Price Per Fuel Gallon (US$ Dollars) 1.68 2.31 -27.2% 1.94 -13.5% Average Length of Haul (Miles) 2,031 2,116 -4.0% 1,997 1.7% Average Stage Length (Miles) 1,223 1,247 -1.9% 1,222 0.1% Departures 31,518 30,691 2.7% 31,184 1.1% Block Hours 97,632 97,820 -0.2% 97,788 -0.2% Average Aircraft Utilization (Hours) 10.7 11.1 -3.3% 10.7 0.6% Operating Revenues (US$ mm) 557.1 631.9 -11.8% 532.6 4.6% Operating Income (US$ mm) 94.1 127.3 -26.1% 39.1 140.8% Operating Margin 16.9% 20.1% -3.3 p.p. 7.3% 9.6 p.p. Net Income (US$ mm) 115.5 113.2 2.0% -408.5 n/m Adjusted Net Income (US$ mm) (1) 69.9 106.1 -34.1% 41.5 68.4% EPS - Basic and Diluted (US$) 2.74 2.57 6.8% -9.44 n/m Adjusted EPS - Basic and Diluted (US$) (1) 1.66 2.41 -31.1% 0.96 73.1% # of Shares - Basic and Diluted ('000) 42,109 44,077 -4.5% 43,286 -2.7% (1) Breakeven Load Factor, Adjusted Net Income and Adjusted EPS for 1Q16, 1Q15, and 4Q15 exclude non-cash charges/gains associated with

the mark-to-market of fuel hedges and shares repurchased, and the impact of Venezuelan and Argentinean currency devaluations. Note: Attached to this press release is a reconciliation of non-IFRS financial measures to the comparable IFRS measures.

FULL 1Q16 EARNINGS RELEASE AVAILABLE FOR DOWNLOAD AT: http://investor.shareholder.com/copa/results.cfm

1Q16 EARNINGS RESULTS CONFERENCE CALL AND WEBCAST

Date: May 6, 2016 Time: 11:00 AM US ET (10:00 AM Local Time) Conference telephone number: 877-293-5456 (US Domestic Callers)

707-287-9357 (International Callers) Webcast: http://investor.shareholder.com/copa/events.cfm Speakers: Pedro Heilbron, Chief Executive Officer

Jose Montero, Chief Financial Officer

About Copa Holdings

Copa Holdings is a leading Latin American provider of passenger and cargo services. The Company, through its operating subsidiaries, provides service to 76 destinations in 31 countries in North, Central and South America and the Caribbean with one of the youngest and most modern fleets in the industry, consisting of 100 aircraft: 77 Boeing 737NG aircraft and 23 EMBRAER-190s. For more information visit: www.copa.com.

CONTACT: Copa Holdings S.A.

Investor Relations:

Ph: (507) 304-2774

www.copa.com (IR section)

This release includes "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such forward-looking statements are based on current plans, estimates and expectations, and are not guarantees of future performance. They are based on management's expectations that involve a number of business risks and uncertainties, any of which could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed in or implied by the forward-looking statements. The Company undertakes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statement. The risks and uncertainties relating to the forward-looking statements in this release are among those disclosed in Copa Holdings' filed disclosure documents and are, therefore, subject to change without prior notice.

CPA-G

Copa Holdings, S.A. Income Statement - IFRS (US$ Thousands)



Unaudited

Unaudited

%

Unaudited

%

1Q16

1Q15

Change

4Q15

Change Operating Revenues

















Passenger Revenue 537,695

613,538

-12.4%

512,150

5.0% Cargo, mail and other 19,376

18,323

5.7%

20,451

-5.3% Total Operating Revenue 557,072

631,861

-11.8%

532,601

4.6%



















Operating Expenses

















Aircraft fuel 120,549

160,791

-25.0%

136,881

-11.9% Salaries and benefits 73,683

77,999

-5.5%

70,407

4.7% Passenger servicing 60,498

66,123

-8.5%

63,689

-5.0% Commissions 20,980

25,988

-19.3%

19,556

7.3% Reservations and sales 26,037

21,500

21.1%

24,882

4.6% Maintenance, material and repairs 29,412

25,708

14.4%

31,528

-6.7% Depreciation 34,388

31,464

9.3%

34,083

0.9% Flight operations 31,932

33,369

-4.3%

34,028

-6.2% Aircraft rentals 30,809

30,244

1.9%

31,530

-2.3% Landing fees and other rentals 13,302

13,748

-3.2%

13,481

-1.3% Other 21,390

17,629

21.3%

33,458

-36.1% Total Operating Expense 462,980

504,562

-8.2%

493,523

-6.2%



















Operating Income 94,091

127,299

-26.1%

39,077

140.8%



















Non-operating Income (Expense):

















Interest expense (9,301)

(7,590)

22.5%

(8,922)

4.2% Interest income 2,777

6,275

-55.7%

8,155

-65.9% Other, net 39,362

2,130

n/m

(440,284)

n/m Total Non-Operating Income/(Expense) 32,838

815

n/m

(441,051)

n/m



















Income before Income Taxes 126,929

128,114

-0.9%

(401,973)

n/m



















Provision for Income Taxes 11,474

14,926

-23.1%

6,499

76.6%



















Net Income 115,456

113,188

2.0%

(408,472)

n/m







































EPS - Basic and Diluted 2.74

2.57

6.8%

-9.44

-129.1% Shares - Basic and Diluted 42,109,094

44,077,111

-4.5%

43,285,727

-2.7%

Copa Holdings, S.A. Balance Sheet - IFRS (US$ Thousands)

March 31,



December 31,



2016



2015



(Unaudited)



(Audited) ASSETS









Current Assets:









Cash and cash equivalents

$ 209,953



$ 204,715 Restricted cash and cash equivalents

55,611



64,228 Short-term investments

457,505



416,005 Total cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments

723,069



684,948











Accounts receivable, net of allowance for doubtful accounts

116,319



105,135 Accounts receivable from related parties

557



642 Expendable parts and supplies, net of allowance for obsolescence

62,984



62,247 Prepaid expenses

53,988



48,667 Other current assets

5,624



5,946 Total Current Assets

962,541



907,585











Long-term investments

864



861











Property and Equipment:









Owned property and equipment:









Flight equipment

3,019,901



3,030,361 Other equipment

118,760



121,205



3,138,661



3,151,566 Less: Accumulated depreciation

(764,461)



(743,983)



2,374,200



2,407,583 Purchase deposits for flight equipment

240,966



243,070 Total Property and Equipment

2,615,166



2,650,653











Other Assets:









Net pension asset

7,722



6,050 Goodwill

20,380



20,380 Intangible asset

50,085



49,046 Deferred tax Assets

16,351



12,708 Other assets

62,941



68,193 Total Other Assets

157,479



156,377 Total Assets

$ 3,736,050



$ 3,715,476























LIABILITIES AND SHAREHOLDER'S EQUITY









Current Liabilities:









Current maturities of long-term debt

$ 229,347



$ 245,514 Accounts payable

95,817



94,741 Accounts payable to related parties

9,265



5,605 Air traffic liability

321,034



352,110 Frequent flyer deferred revenue

26,810



18,884 Taxes and interest payable

87,305



67,242 Accrued expenses payable

67,135



82,948 Other current liabilities

91,363



118,623 Total Current Liabilities

928,076



985,667











Non-Current Liabilities:









Long-term debt

1,021,159



1,055,183 Other long-term liabilities

67,148



54,339 Deferred tax liabilities

37,224



32,865 Total Non-Current Liabilities

1,125,531



1,142,387











Total Liabilities

2,053,607



2,128,054











Shareholders' Equity:









Class A - 33,478,724 issued and 31,106,084 outstanding

20,984



20,924 Class B - 10,938,125 shares issued and outstanding

7,466



7,466 Additional paid in capital

58,432



57,455 Treasury Stock

(136,388)



(136,388) Retained earnings

1,732,725



1,638,733 Accumulated other comprehensive income (loss)

(776)



(768) Total Shareholders' Equity

1,682,443



1,587,422 Total Liabilities and Shareholders' Equity

$ 3,736,050



$ 3,715,476

Copa Holdings, S. A. and subsidiaries Consolidated Statement of Cash Flows For the three months ended March 31, (In US$ thousands)



2016

2015

2014



(Unaudited)

(Unaudited)

(Unaudited) Cash flow from operating activities

118,934

83,361

74,364 Cash flow (used in) from investing activities

(42,044)

(16,479)

97,524 Cash flow used in financing activities

(71,652)

(67,916)

(73,677) Net increase (decrease) in cash and cash equivalents

5,238

(1,034)

98,211 Cash and cash equivalents at January 1

204,715

221,443

139,110 Cash and cash equivalents at March 31

$ 209,953

$ 220,409

$ 237,321













Short-term investments *

457,505

332,000

878,674 Long-term investments **

864

558,290

6,589 Restricted cash and cash equivalents ***

55,611

48,872

- Total cash and cash equivalents and investments at March 31

$ 723,933

$ 1,159,571

$ 1,122,584













* Short term - investments include $417.1 million of cash in Venezuela at March 2014. ** Long term - investments include $452.4 million at March 2015 of cash in Venezuela. *** Restricted cash correspond to a margin calls to secure derivative financial instruments transactions.

NON-IFRS FINANCIAL MEASURE RECONCILIATION

This press release includes the following non-IFRS financial measures: CASM Excluding Fuel, Adjusted Net Income and Adjusted EPS. This supplemental information is presented because we believe it is a useful indicator of our operating performance and is useful in comparing our performance with other companies in the airline industry. These measures should not be considered in isolation, and should be considered together with comparable IFRS measures, in particular operating income and net income. The following is a reconciliation of these non-IFRS financial measures to the comparable IFRS measures:

Reconciliation of Net Income Excluding Special Items

1Q16

1Q15

4Q15













Net income as Reported

$115,456

$113,188

-$408,472













Special Items (adjustments):











Unrealized (gain) loss on fuel hedging instruments

27,432

7,115

(15,296) (Loss) gain due to devaluation of Venezuelan Bolivar

18,134

(36)

(430,073) (Loss) gain due to devaluation of Argentinian Pesos

0

0

(6,901) Unrealized (gain) loss on Shares Repurchased

0

0

2,296 Adjusted Net Income

$69,890

$106,110

$41,501













Shares used for Computation (in thousands)











Basic and Diluted

42,109

44,077

43,286













Adjusted earnings per share - Basic and Diluted

1.66

2.41

0.96













Reconciliation Operating Costs per ASM











Excluding Fuel and Special Items

1Q16

1Q15

4Q15













Operating Costs per ASM as Reported

8.3

9.3

9.0 Aircraft fuel per ASM

(2.2)

(3.0)

(2.5) Operating Costs per ASM excluding fuel

6.2

6.3

6.5

SOURCE Copa Holdings, S.A.

Related Links

http://www.copa.com


ALAMEDA, Calif., May 6, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- On May 21, the USS Hornet Museum's Living Ship Day will honor highly decorated Navy pilot, Lt. William Sharp, for his heroism after surviving being shot down during the Vietnam War. The presentation will be at 1:00 PM at the museum.

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160505/364431

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160505/364432LOGO

A California central valley native, Sharp will receive a USS Hornet Museum Heroism Award for his service during the Vietnam War. Sharp is a distinguished combat pilot and the recipient of the Navy Distinguished Flying Cross, 12 Air Medals, Purple Heart, and the Navy Commendation with Combat V (valor) Medal. His flight records include piloting Vought F-8 Crusaders and Grumman F-11 Tiger during the 1960's. Sharp will present his memories about serving in Vietnam, as a member of Squadron VF-191 and his courageous tale of survival after being shot down and ejecting over the Tonkin Gulf of North Vietnam.

Lt. William Sharp: William grew up in Dinuba, California and entered the Naval Aviation Officer Candidate School after graduating from Fresno State University in 1963. He received advanced flight training in the F-11 Tiger and received his Navy pilot wings in 1964. He flew the F-8 Crusader in Vietnam. During the Vietnam War Air Group 19 was stationed onboard aircraft carriers USS Bon Homme Richard (CVA-31) and USS Ticonderoga (CVA-14). On November 18, 1965, he was shot down on a mission over North Vietnam. He had just turned 26 years old when his aircraft was hit by enemy fire forcing Sharp to eject from his aircraft into the Tonkin Gulf. Sharp was then captured by two North Vietnamese fishermen aboard a sampan. He successfully escaped while other US aircraft protected him during his rescue. He will recount this heroic tale during his presentation.

Original footage of the ejection can be viewed at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_qRuj50urI

Later in his civilian life, Sharp became a commercial airline pilot for United Airlines and received the San Francisco Captain of the year award in 1999. While at United Airlines, he flew the Boeing 777 around the world. William is currently a docent at the USS Hornet Museum in Alameda, California.

Living Ship Day aboard the Hornet offers something for everyone and are held on the third Saturday of most months. The museum comes to life as an operating aircraft carrier with flight simulations between 11 a.m. and 3:30 p.m. as aircraft are lifted to the flight deck and placed into launch position. Visitors can meet former crew, sit in the cockpit of a fighter jet, and enjoy the sights and sounds of naval aviation. There will also be a Big Band performance at 11 a.m. Normal museum hours and admission prices apply.



About the USS Hornet Museum:

The USS Hornet Museum, a popular tourist destination for families located in the San Francisco Bay Area, is a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to inspiring people of all ages. Through field trips and live-aboard experiences, the USS Hornet offers educational programs focusing on naval history, science and space technology. A registered state and national historic landmark, the ship is open to the public daily from 10a.m. to 5 p.m. and permanently berthed at 707 W. Hornet Ave., Pier 3 in Alameda, CA. Ample free parking is available across from the pier. The USS Hornet is also a unique, unforgettable venue available for corporate events; trade shows and expos; private parties and big band dances; and TV and film productions. For more information, ticket prices and event planning, visit: www.uss-hornet.org or call (510) 521-8448.

Media contacts:

Heidi Schave, USS Hornet Museum: (510) 521-8448 ext. 224, Email

SOURCE USS Hornet Museum

Related Links

http://www.uss-hornet.org


SAN FRANCISCO, May 6, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Dance Biopharm Inc. ("Dance"), a privately-held biotechnology company focused on the development of Dance 501, an inhaled insulin product to treat diabetes, is pleased to announce that Harmony Biopharm Limited, Dance's licensee for Dance 501 in Asia, has recently formed a joint venture with Tonghua Dongbao Pharmaceutical Co. and Shanghai Dongbao Biological Pharmaceutical Co. (collectively, "Dongbao"). The joint venture will focus on obtaining regulatory approval in China and, if approval is obtained, preparing for commercialization of Dance 501. According to the International Diabetes Federation, there are more than 110 million diabetes patients in China, the highest of any country in the world.

Dongbao, Dance's global insulin supplier, has been making and selling injectable insulin for more than 25 years. Its high-capacity insulin factory in Northern China has been inspected and qualified by the European Medicines Agency. Through the new joint venture, Dongbao has committed to shared responsibility with Harmony Biopharm to develop and commercialize Dance 501 in Greater China. The initial capitalization of the joint venture is U.S. $11 million.

About Dongbao

Dongbao Enterprise Group is a China conglomerate with more than 20 subsidiaries focused on the production and manufacture of recombinant therapeutics, especially human insulin, and is a leading manufacturer of insulin in Asia. Tonghua Dongbao Pharmaceutical, one of the 20 subsidiaries, is a public company listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange. Shanghai Dongbao Biological Pharmaceutical Co, also a subsidiary of Dongbao Enterprise Group assists Tonghua Dongbao Pharmaceutical Co. in the registration and operation of its overseas insulin products market.

About Harmony Biopharm Ltd

Harmony Biopharm, a private Hong Kong company, has licensed Dance Biopharm's technology for development and commercialization in the Asia Pacific market.

About Dance 501, an Inhaled Insulin Product

Dance 501 consists of a high purity liquid formulation of recombinant human insulin stored in a dispenser for administration with a small handheld electronic inhaler. The electronic inhaler utilizes a patented vibrating mesh technology, designed to produce consistently sized particles of liquid insulin in the form of a smooth mist, allowing the efficient and consistent delivery of insulin into the lungs in a few breaths. Dance 501 has not yet been approved by any regulatory authority.

About Dance Biopharm Inc.

Dance Biopharm is a privately-held company based in the San Francisco Bay Area focused on the clinical development of inhaled insulin products to treat diabetes patients worldwide. The company began operations in 2010, founded by Dr. John Patton, who has over 25 years of experience developing inhaled insulin and other inhaled therapies.

FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS

All statements other than statements of historical fact included in this press release are forward-looking statements that are subject to certain risks, trends and uncertainties that could cause actual results and achievements to differ materially from those expressed in such statements. We have based these forward-looking statements upon information available to management as of the date of this release and management's expectations and projections about certain future events. It is possible that the assumptions made by management for purposes of such statements may not materialize. Actual results may differ materially from those projected or implied in any forward-looking statements. Such statements may involve risks and uncertainties, including but not limited to those relating to our limited operating history, our ability to successfully develop Dance 501, the cost and uncertainty of obtaining regulatory approvals, and changes in the competitive or regulatory landscape.

Contact:

Cook Williams Communications, Inc.

Jennifer Williams

[email protected]

(360) 668-3701

SOURCE Dance Biopharm Inc.
ATLANTA, May 6, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Delta Community Credit Union (www.DeltaCommunityCU.com), Georgia's largest credit union with more than $5 billion in assets and more than 336,000 members, recently awarded eight metro Atlanta students with $200 Sandy Savers Savings Accounts after they submitted winning entries in its Youth Month Essay Contest.

"Credit unions across the country celebrated National Credit Union Youth Month in April," said Delta Community Marketing AVP Kem Henderson. "Our essay contest leveraged the national theme, 'Credit Union Strong' to inspire conversations about the importance of spending wisely and saving money for the things that are important to them."

Delta Community held an essay contest at eight of its established Partners in Education (PIE) schools asking students to explain how saving money helps them prepare for a strong financial future.

"We received hundreds of thoughtful, creative entries, showing that even very young children are already thinking about long-term financial goals," said Henderson. "As a company that is committed to financial literacy and education, we are especially delighted with the insight of these eight students."

Nine year old Elijah Bailey , who attends Marietta's Dowell Elementary School, said saving money helps him prepare for a strong financial future because the earned interest adds up to even more money than he could save himself.

Fifth grader Neveah Bradley , at Peachtree City Elementary School, aspires to own a fashion design business. She understands that if she starts saving money now, "By the time I graduate college I will already have a huge jump start on seeing my dreams come true."

Nine year old Zariah Cowherd , who attends Atlanta's Hope-Hill Elementary School, said a savings account is important to establishing good credit and will also help her learn money management.

Libby Fisher , a student at The Museum School in Decatur , quoted Ben Franklin in her essay. "A penny saved is a penny earned," wrote Libby, who went on to list the benefits of interest-bearing accounts.

Varshini Kalaru, a fifth grader at Atlanta's Woodland Elementary School, said saving money helps cover immediate emergencies as well as expenses in the future. "If you start (saving for) retirement now you will have to save less in the future," said Varshini. "Also, you have to save for your own child's education."

In Cobb County , East Side Elementary School's Presley Marsh said saving money enables you to be prepared to take advantage of good opportunities. "Life is like a chain of dominoes. Not saving money may cause all the dominoes to fall. Falling dominoes will prevent you from having a strong financial future."

Nine year old Nick Mertz , a fourth grader at Eagle's Landing Christian Academy in McDonough , said saving money helps him prepare for a strong financial future by helping pay for college, earn a degree and get a good job.

Third grader Kadin Mullin , at Cobb County's Brumby Elementary, is also looking to the future. "Saving money helps me prepare for a strong financial future by making sure my dreams can be achieved," said Kadin. "My parents will help me buy a car, and saving money will allow me to contribute."

In addition to celebrating Youth Month, Delta Community provides an array of workshops and educational materials to young members through partnerships with schools, an annual scholarship program, a Philanthropic Fund grant-making program and Youth Savings Accounts and credit card products specifically tailored to meet the unique needs of young adults.

About Delta Community Credit Union

Delta Community Credit Union is a not-for-profit financial cooperative with a mission of providing consumers better service and value on the deposit, loan, investment and insurance products they use to manage their household expenses and save for the future. Delta Community was founded in 1940 and has become Georgia's largest credit union with more than $5 billion in assets and 26 branch locations. The Credit Union now welcomes residents of 11 metro Atlanta counties and employees of more than 150 businesses, including Chick-fil-A, Delta Air Lines, RaceTrac and UPS. Visit www.DeltaCommunityCU.com to learn more about opening an account at Delta Community or follow the Credit Union www.facebook.com/DeltaCommunity and @DeltaCommunity.

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SOURCE Delta Community Credit Union

Related Links

http://www.deltacommunitycu.com


LAKEWOOD, CO, May 6, 2016 /PRNewswire/ - Energy Fuels Inc. (NYSE MKT:UUUU; TSX:EFR) ("Energy Fuels" or the "Company"), today reported its financial results for the quarter ended March 31, 2016. The Company's quarterly report on Form 10-Q has been filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC"), and may be viewed on the Electronic Document Gathering and Retrieval System ("EDGAR") at www.sec.gov/edgar.shtml, on the System for Electronic Document Analysis and Retrieval ("SEDAR") at www.sedar.com, and on the Company's website at www.energyfuels.com. Unless noted otherwise, all dollar amounts are in US dollars.

Financial Highlights for the Quarter-Ended March 31, 2016:

$18.0 million of total revenue was realized by the Company.

of total revenue was realized by the Company. Gross Profit of $5.9 million from mining and milling operations was realized by the Company, representing a gross profit margin of approximately 33%.

from mining and milling operations was realized by the Company, representing a gross profit margin of approximately 33%. 350,000 pounds of U 3 O 8 sales were completed by the Company at an average realized price of $51.36 per pound. 300,000 pounds of sales were pursuant to long-term contracts at an average price of $54.19 per pound and 50,000 pounds of sales were sold to a utility at the then-prevailing spot price of $34.40 per pound.

O sales were completed by the Company at an average realized price of per pound. 300,000 pounds of sales were pursuant to long-term contracts at an average price of per pound and 50,000 pounds of sales were sold to a utility at the then-prevailing spot price of per pound. At March 31, 2016 , the Company had $37.5 million of working capital, including cash and cash equivalents of $16.5 million and approximately 225,000 pounds of uranium concentrate inventory. In addition, at March 31, 2016 , the Company had $8.3 million receivable pursuant to a uranium sale made on March 15, 2016 . The Company subsequently received the cash for this receivable in April 2016 .

, the Company had of working capital, including cash and cash equivalents of and approximately 225,000 pounds of uranium concentrate inventory. In addition, at , the Company had receivable pursuant to a uranium sale made on . The Company subsequently received the cash for this receivable in . A net loss of $8.8 million was realized by the Company, primarily as a result of $7.4 million of investments we are making in future production, including completion of the elution circuit at Nichols Ranch, continued shaft-sinking and resource evaluation at the Canyon Project, and construction of new leach tanks at the White Mesa Mill.

was realized by the Company, primarily as a result of of investments we are making in future production, including completion of the elution circuit at Nichols Ranch, continued shaft-sinking and resource evaluation at the Canyon Project, and construction of new leach tanks at the White Mesa Mill. 85,000 pounds of U 3 O 8 were recovered by the Company, all of which came from the Nichols Ranch Project.

Development Highlights for the Quarter-Ended March 31, 2016:

Shaft-sinking operations continue at the Canyon Project. The shaft, which is expected to be constructed to a total depth of 1,470 feet, is at a depth of approximately 900 feet as of April 30, 2016 . Underground drilling to further evaluate the Canyon deposit is expected to occur in mid-2016, when the shaft reaches a depth of approximately 1,000 feet.

. Underground drilling to further evaluate the Canyon deposit is expected to occur in mid-2016, when the shaft reaches a depth of approximately 1,000 feet. The Company completed construction and licensing of the elution circuit at the Nichols Ranch Project in February 2016 . Energy Fuels now has 100% self-contained ISR processing capabilities, which is expected to significantly lower the Company's future costs of production on a per pound basis by avoiding 3rd party toll processing fees.

Acquisition Highlights for the Quarter-Ended March 31, 2016:

On March 7, 2016 , the Company announced that it had entered into a definitive agreement ("DA") to acquire Mestena Uranium, LLC ("Mestena"), a well-known, closely-held uranium supplier that operates the Alta Mesa ISR Project in South Texas . Under the terms of the DA, Energy Fuels will issue 4,551,284 common shares of the Company to the current owners of Mestena. The closing of the transaction is expected to occur in May 2016 , subject to the receipt of all applicable regulatory and stock exchange approvals and the satisfaction of certain other conditions to closing. The acquisition of Mestena is expected to expand Energy Fuels' lower-cost uranium recovery operations. Mestena is currently on standby and will resume uranium recovery operations upon sufficient improvement in uranium prices.

, the Company announced that it had entered into a definitive agreement ("DA") to acquire Mestena Uranium, LLC ("Mestena"), a well-known, closely-held uranium supplier that operates the Alta Mesa ISR Project in . Under the terms of the DA, Energy Fuels will issue 4,551,284 common shares of the Company to the current owners of Mestena. The closing of the transaction is expected to occur in , subject to the receipt of all applicable regulatory and stock exchange approvals and the satisfaction of certain other conditions to closing. The acquisition of Mestena is expected to expand Energy Fuels' lower-cost uranium recovery operations. Mestena is currently on standby and will resume uranium recovery operations upon sufficient improvement in uranium prices. On March 4, 2016 , the Company announced that it had entered into a Letter of Intent to acquire the 40% interest in the Roca Honda Project held by Sumitomo Corporation. The Company and Sumitomo are working towards finalizing a definitive agreement for this transaction, subject to stock exchange and final Sumitomo approvals by mid-May, and an expected closing by the end of May 2016 . Upon completion of this acquisition, the Company will own 100% of the Roca Honda Project, which is one of the largest and highest-grade uranium projects in the U.S. and in an advanced stage of permitting.

Financing Highlights for the Quarter-Ended March 31, 2016:

On March 14, 2016 , the Company closed an equity financing, under which it raised net proceeds of $10.98 million , after commissions and estimated expenses of the offering, through the issuance of 5,031,250 units, with each unit consisting of one common share and one half of one common share purchase warrant, at a price of $2.40 per unit. Each warrant will be exercisable for three years following the closing date and will entitle the holder thereof to acquire one common share of the Company upon exercise at an exercise price of $3.20 per share.

Stephen P. Antony, Energy Fuels' President and CEO stated: "While the price of uranium has disappointed so far in 2016, Energy Fuels continues to pursue efforts aimed at lowering operating and other costs, while also advancing our long-term ability to ramp-up mineral extraction activities in the future. We continue to adjust our business plan to appropriately respond to uranium prices that are near multi-year lows today, but expected to rise significantly over the long-term. As such, we have made the decision to save significant cash in 2016 by planning to delay previously announced capital expenditures, including wellfield expansion at Nichols Ranch. While this decision is expected to lower production at Nichols Ranch by 50,000 pounds this year, White Mesa Mill uranium recoveries are now expected to be higher than originally forecast. Therefore, we are maintaining our previous guidance of 950,000 total pounds of uranium recovery in 2016.

"We continue to pursue shaft-sinking and resource evaluation activities at our Canyon Project in Arizona, and later in the year, we hope to announce positive results at this low-cost project. Finally, we expect to lower our portfolio-wide cost of production upon the closing of our pending acquisition of Mestena Uranium, and its ISR production in South Texas. While long-term uranium market pricing is currently lower than the pricing contained in our four existing contracts, upon only a modest uplift in current long-term prices, Mestena will provide Energy Fuels with the potential to sign uranium sales contracts which meet targeted operating margins for the Company. As a result, Mestena is a key acquisition for Energy Fuels as we navigate today's challenging uranium markets."

Selected Summary Financial Information:

$000, except per share data

Three months

ended

March 31, 2016

Three months

ended

March 31, 2015 Results of Operations:









Total revenues $ 17,996 $ 7,600

Gross profit

5,853

3,756

Net loss attributable to the Company

(8,808)

(1,203)

Basic and diluted loss per share

(0.19)

(0.06)









$000's

As at March 31,

2016

As at December 31,

2015 Financial Position:









Working capital $ 37,469 $ 34,869

Property, plant and equipment

27,915

29,069

Mineral properties

91,000

91,031

Total assets

192,228

192,280

Total long-term liabilities

39,452

38,675

Overview

The Company expects to recover approximately 950,000 pounds of U 3 O 8 for the year ending December 31, 2016, as further described below. The Company currently has finished goods inventory and uranium extraction and recovery capabilities that exceed the commitments contained in its existing sales contracts. As a result, both ISR and conventional uranium extraction and/or recovery have been, and are expected to continue to be, maintained at conservative levels until such time as market conditions improve sufficiently and/or the Company requires cash to meet its business needs.

ISR Uranium Segment

In response to current market conditions, the Company expects to delay the planned construction of one of its wellfields at the Nichols Ranch Project to 2017. We currently plan to extract and recover approximately 300,000 pounds of U 3 O 8 for the year ending December 31, 2016, compared with our previous estimate of 350,000 pounds for 2016, as a result of this planned delay. At March 31, 2016, the Nichols Ranch wellfields had seven header houses extracting uranium. The Company plans to complete an eighth header house by the end of 2016. A ninth header house was originally planned for completion in 2016, but has been delayed due to market conditions.

In February 2016, the Company completed construction of the elution circuit and began the elution process at the Nichols Ranch Plant. Yellowcake slurry from this circuit is being shipped to our White Mesa Mill for final yellowcake drying, packaging, and shipment to a conversion facility.

Permitting of the adjacent Jane Dough Property is continuing and is expected to be completed in advance of our need to begin wellfield construction. Also, the nearby Hank Project is fully permitted to be constructed as a satellite facility to the Nichols Ranch Plant.

Conventional Uranium Segment

The Company expects the White Mesa Mill to recover approximately 650,000 pounds of U 3 O 8 for the year ending December 31, 2016.

The Company is planning to recover approximately 425,000 pounds of U 3 O 8 , which was extracted from its Pinenut Project. This is an increase of 50,000 pounds over what was previously announced, due to updated weights and assays upon receipt of material at the Mill. During 2016, the Company also expects to recover approximately 225,000 pounds of U 3 O 8 from alternate feed materials.

The White Mesa Mill has historically operated on a campaign basis, whereby uranium production is scheduled as mill feed, cash needs, contract requirements, and/or market conditions may warrant. Once the processing for 2016 concludes (expected to be in late 2016), the Company expects to place uranium recovery activities at the Mill on standby until additional mill feed becomes available. The Mill will continue to dry and package material from the Nichols Ranch Plant and continue to receive and stockpile alternate feed materials for future milling campaigns.

The Company is continuing shaft sinking activities at the Canyon Project. Once the shaft depth approaches the mineralized zone, we plan to complete additional exploration drilling to further evaluate the deposit. The timing of our plans to extract and process mineralized materials from this project will be based on the results of this additional evaluation work, along with market conditions, available financing, and sales requirements.

The Company expects to continue to pursue permitting activities at certain of its conventional projects, including the Roca Honda Project and the Sheep Mountain Project. The Company will also continue to evaluate the Bullfrog Property at its Henry Mountains Project. Expenditures for certain of these projects have been adjusted to coincide with expected dates of price recoveries based on our forecasts.

Sales

For 2016, the Company forecasts sales under its existing long-term contracts to total approximately 550,000 pounds of U 3 O 8 . Of this total, 300,000 pounds were delivered in the first quarter of the year. The prices for material sold under the existing long-term contracts are either fixed or at floors. The average sales price under the Company's long-term contracts is expected to be higher in 2016 versus 2015 levels.

The Company also sold 50,000 pounds of U 3 O 8 to a utility based on spot prices at the time of the contract. The Company is currently monitoring market conditions for additional sales opportunities. Selective spot sales are expected to be made as necessary to generate cash for operations and development activities.

In 2017, the Company expects to have existing inventory or expected production to meet all of its commitments to sell 620,000 pounds of uranium under its existing long-term contracts at average sales prices higher than 2015 levels.

About Energy Fuels: Energy Fuels is a leading integrated US-based uranium mining company, supplying U 3 O 8 to major nuclear utilities. Energy Fuels operates two of America's key uranium production centers, the White Mesa Mill in Utah and the Nichols Ranch Plant in Wyoming. The White Mesa Mill is the only conventional uranium mill operating in the U.S. today and has a licensed capacity of over 8 million pounds of U 3 O 8 per year. The Nichols Ranch Plant is an in situ recovery ("ISR") production center with a licensed capacity of 2 million pounds of U 3 O 8 per year. Energy Fuels also has the largest NI 43-101 compliant uranium resource portfolio in the U.S. among producers, and uranium mining projects located in a number of Western U.S. states, including one producing ISR project, mines on standby, and mineral properties in various stages of permitting and development. The Company's common shares are listed on the NYSE MKT under the trading symbol "UUUU", and on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the trading symbol "EFR".

CONVERSION FROM IFRS TO U.S. GAAP

As previously announced, effective January 1, 2016, the Company became a 'U.S. domestic issuer' for SEC reporting purposes and is therefore required to prepare its financial statements in accordance with United States Generally Accepted Accounting Principles ("U.S. GAAP"). All prior financial statements and selected financial data have been converted from International Financial Reporting Standards ("IFRS") into U.S. GAAP for all periods required to be presented in the financial statements and selected financial data.

ADDITIONAL NON-US GAAP FINANCIAL PERFORMANCE MEASURES

The Company has included the additional non-US GAAP measure "Gross Profit" in the financial statements and in this news release. Management noted that "Gross Profit" provides useful information to investors as an indication of the Company's principal business activities before consideration of how those activities are financed, sustaining capital expenditures, corporate and exploration and evaluation expenses, finance income and costs, and taxation.

CAUTIONARY STATEMENT REGARDING FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS

This news release contains certain "Forward Looking Information" and "Forward Looking Statements" within the meaning of applicable Canadian and United States securities legislation, which may include, but is not limited to, statements with respect to the future financial or operating performance of the Company and its projects, including: production and sales forecasts; expected timelines for the permitting and development of projects; the Company's expectations as to longer term fundamentals in the market and price projections; the Company's expectations as to expenditures and cost reductions; the Company's ability to preserve its cash resources and maintain its resource base; scalability, and the Company's ability to be able to restart or increase production as market conditions warrant; the ability of the Company to realize the expected benefits of the acquisition of Uranerz; the expected completion and expected benefits from the planned Mestena and Roca Honda acquisitions; the expected development and evaluations at the Canyon Project; the expected costs at the Company's Nichols Ranch Project, Canyon Project, and other projects and facilities; expectations that sufficient mill feed will be available to sustain future campaigns at the White Mesa Mill; and expectations to become or maintain its position as a leading uranium company in the United States. Generally, these forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "plans", "expects" "does not expect", "is expected", "is likely", "budget" "scheduled", "estimates", "forecasts", "intends", "anticipates", "does not anticipate", or "believes", or variations of such words and phrases, or state that certain actions, events or results "may", "could", "would", "might" or "will be taken", "occur", "be achieved" or "have the potential to". All statements, other than statements of historical fact, herein are considered to be forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of the Company to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements express or implied by the forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated in these forward-looking statements include: risks associated with estimating production, forecasting future price levels necessary to support production, scalability, and the Company's ability to restart or increase production in response to any increase in commodity prices; risks inherent in the Company's and the industry's forecasts or predictions of future uranium prices; risks of delays in obtaining permits and licenses that could impact expected production levels or increases in expected production levels; risks in meeting expected timelines for the development of projects; government and third party actions with respect to supplies of secondary sources of uranium; fluctuations or changes in the market prices of uranium; risks associated with the integration of Uranerz; the risk of failure to complete or realize the expected benefits from the planned Mestena and Roca Honda acquisitions; risks associated with the expected development and evaluations at the Canyon Project; risks associated with estimated expected costs at the Company's Nichols Ranch Project, Canyon Project, and other projects and facilities; the risk that sufficient mill feed will not be available to sustain future campaigns at the White Mesa Mill; the risk that uranium prices will not reach the levels required to justify further development or production at the Company's projects, including the White Mesa Mill, the Nichols Ranch Project, and the Roca Honda Project; the risk that the Company will not be able to enter into suitable term uranium sales contracts in the future to support future development and production decisions; and the other factors described under the caption "Risk Factors" in the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-K dated March 15, 2016, which is available for review on EDGAR at www.sec.gov/edgar.shtml, on SEDAR at www.sedar.com, and on the Company's website at www.energyfuels.com. Forward-looking statements contained herein are made as of the date of this news release, and the Company disclaims, other than as required by law, any obligation to update any forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, results, future events, circumstances, or if management's estimates or opinions should change, or otherwise. There can be no assurance that forward-looking statements will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Accordingly, the reader is cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. The Company assumes no obligation to update the information in this communication, except as otherwise required by law.

SOURCE Energy Fuels Inc.

Related Links

http://www.energyfuels.com


House Bill 2524 is legislation that would hand over Arizona's state sovereignty to other states. HB 2524 would create an interstate compact that would block all states that sign on from passing any laws related to the sale or transfer of firearms beyond existing federal law. The bill would abdicate the state's right to set its own law and govern itself: Arizona's elected officials would be unable to write public safety laws without the consent of other states  and would not be able to leave the compact without out-of-state permission or calling a special session of the legislature.

STATEMENT FROM GENEVA HABER, A VOLUNTEER WITH THE ARIZONA CHAPTER OF MOMS DEMAND ACTION FOR GUN SENSE IN AMERICA:

"The legislature has failed to do exactly what they are hired to do: put the safety of our communities first and stand up for their constituents. Instead, the Arizona legislature bowed to the gun lobby and passed a bill that would undermine the rights of their own constituents  and even themselves. House Bill 2524 would force Arizona to be at the will of other states and tie the hands of elected officials when it comes to passing any laws related to the sale or transfer of guns. It should be a no-brainer for Governor Ducey: it's time to veto this dangerous piece of legislation that has no place in Arizona."

About Everytown for Gun Safety

Everytown is the largest gun violence prevention organization in the country with more than three million supporters and more than 100,000 donors including moms, mayors, survivors and everyday Americans who are fighting for public safety measures that respect the Second Amendment and help save lives. At the core of Everytown are Mayors Against Illegal Guns, Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America and the Everytown Survivor Network. Learn more at www.everytown.org and follow us @Everytown

About Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America

Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America is a grassroots movement of American mothers fighting for public safety measures that respect the Second Amendment and protect people from gun violence. Moms Demand Action campaigns for new and stronger solutions to lax gun laws and loopholes that jeopardize the safety of our children and families. Since its inception after the tragedy at Sandy Hook School, Moms Demand Action has established a chapter in every state of the country and, along with Mayors Against Illegal Guns and the Everytown Survivor Network, it is part of Everytown for Gun Safety, the largest gun violence prevention organization in the country with more than three million members and more than 100,000 donors. For more information or to get involved visit www.momsdemandaction.org. Follow us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/MomsDemandAction or on Twitter at @MomsDemand

MEDIA CONTACT

[email protected] or 202-683-9620

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SOURCE Everytown for Gun Safety; Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America

Related Links

http://www.everytown.org


TORONTO, May 6, 2016 /PRNewswire/ - Russel Metals Inc. (RUS - TSX) reported that a fatal accident occurred at its St. James Street facility in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

John Reid, President and Chief Operating Officer of Russel Metals stated "We are devastated by this tragic accident. The employee who lost his life was a 12 year veteran of the company. Our immediate concerns are for the needs of his family, friends and colleagues."

Brian Hedges Chief Executive Officer of Russel Metals added "In all of our operations the safety of our employees - ensuring that our employees return safely to their families each and every day- is our priority. This is a loss which will be deeply felt in every corner of our company."

Operations at the facility have been suspended temporarily and Russel Metals management is working closely with authorities to determine the cause of the accident. Additional details regarding the accident will not be provided out of respect for those that have been impacted.

Our deepest sympathy and condolences are with the family.

SOURCE Russel Metals Inc.

Related Links

http://www.russelmetals.com


WINDSOR, Ontario, May 6, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Sergio Marchionne , joined by Unifor President and Local 444 leader, recognizes workforce's dedication and passion to build high quality products

Windsor plant continues 33 years of minivan production

10 million of 14.3 million minivans sold built in Windsor

$744 million USD (over $1 billion CAD*) invested to upgrade facility with state-of-the-art technology

More than 1,200 hired since September 2014 to prepare for launch

Marchionne on first WCM silver award winner: "Windsor Assembly has established a high benchmark for all of our North American manufacturing operations"

FCA US LLC Chairman and CEO Sergio Marchionne visited the Windsor Assembly Plant (WAP) today to officially celebrate the launch of the all-new Chrysler Pacifica and to recognize the efforts of the more than 6,000 people that brought the vehicle to market. WAP continued its legacy as the home of the minivan with the start of production of the sixth generation family hauler on Feb. 29, 2016.

Joined by Unifor President Jerry Dias, Unifor Local 444 President Dino Chiodo and other FCA North American executives, Marchionne told about 2,000 day shift employees during an internal event that the Pacifica will not just redefine the minivan segment, but will also redefine the role and the future of the plant.

"Today is the right moment to ask ourselves what's next, what we want this plant to become two years from now," said Marchionne. "My vision is clear and it is based on what you have demonstrated so far: your dedication, your passion and your openness to new ideas, in order to put out the highest quality products possible."

WAP has been producing vehicles in the Ontario town for the past 88 years and is the only manufacturer still operating in the heart of the city. Many models have rolled off the line over the years, but none more well-known or recognizable than the minivan, which launched in 1983. Since then, more than 14.3 million minivans have been sold to date, of which 10 million have come through the Windsor plant.

"That [original] vehicle represented an entirely new concept and a historic game changer when it comes to family transportation," said Marchionne. "You have earned the right to be proud of the leading role you have played in making us the undisputed leader in minivans, a tradition we fully intend to maintain with the new Pacifica."

Of the $2.6 billion USD spent to develop the Pacifica, $744 million USD (over $1 billion CAD*) was allocated to the Windsor facility to add modest footprint additions to complement the Company's product quality initiatives, such as the addition of a Component, or Metrology, Center and Complete Technical Vehicle Validation (CTVV), as well as upgrade equipment and processes to produce the all-new Pacifica and the existing minivan on the same line.

More than 1,200 new, full-time permanent positons have been added at the plant since September 2014 to facilitate the production launch of the Chrysler Pacifica, bringing total employment to approximately 6,000 on three shifts.

The CEO commended the employees on the spirit, culture of respect and continuous improvement that has been cultivated throughout the plant.

"What you went through and what you were able to do to prepare to build this new minivan, especially to quickly re-establish the high quality production levels after a three-month shut-down, is an example of the spirit I am talking about," said Marchionne. "I like to consider today's event a celebration of the Pacifica production launch, as well as Day One of a new ambitious vision for the Windsor Assembly Plant."

In March 2014, WAP was the first FCA North American facility to receive the silver designation in World Class Manufacturing (WCM), a methodology that focuses on eliminating waste, increasing productivity, and improving quality and safety in a systematic and organized way. WCM engages the workforce to provide and implement suggestions on how to improve their jobs and their plants.

"I want to express my deep appreciation for the way you have embraced World Class Manufacturing, a methodology for eliminating waste that depends on the 'hearts, heads and hands' of the people in our shops," said Marchionne. "Windsor Assembly has established a high benchmark for all of our North American manufacturing operations. It is a huge recognition of the work you have done, and the progress you have made."

Marchionne challenged the Windsor employees to achieve two goals in order to maintain the high benchmark that they have set.

"The first target is for Windsor to achieve Gold [WCM] status in 2017 and to be recognized as one of the best manufacturing facilities in the world," he said. "Secondly, our vision is for this facility's quality ranking to score in the top 25 percent according to J.D. Power.

"If you are able to achieve these goals  and I trust you are  you will simply prove to the world what you are made of and you will go a long way toward controlling your destiny and the destiny of this plant," said Marchionne.

In closing the event, Marchionne reminded the Windsor workforce that, just like they consider their plant a family, he too regards FCA like a family. He told them that the bond that links the Company together is one created by mutual respect and by a shared desire to leave a positive legacy for those who will come in the future.

"You play an indispensable part in shaping the destiny of this house and of this community. Because you don't just make cars, you make a difference," said Marchionne. "The Pacifica needs to be a vehicle that we can all be proud of, and I have great confidence in all of you, the men and women of Windsor Assembly, to continue the tradition of excellence you have already established."

*Based on currency exchange rate of 1.37% as of December 2015

About FCA US LLC

FCA US LLC is a North American automaker with a new name and a long history. Headquartered in Auburn Hills, Michigan, FCA US is a member of the Fiat Chrysler Automobiles N.V. (FCA) family of companies. FCA US designs, engineers, manufactures and sells vehicles under the Chrysler, Jeep, Dodge, Ram and FIAT brands, as well as the SRT performance vehicle designation. The company also distributes the Alfa Romeo 4C model and Mopar products. FCA US is building upon the historic foundations of Chrysler, the innovative American automaker first established by Walter P. Chrysler in 1925; and Fiat, founded in Italy in 1899 by pioneering entrepreneurs, including Giovanni Agnelli.

FCA, the seventh-largest automaker in the world based on total annual vehicle sales, is an international automotive group. FCA is listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol "FCAU" and on the Mercato Telematico Azionario under the symbol "FCA."

Follow FCA US news and video on:

FCA Content On Demand (COD): www.fcacod.com

Company blog: blog.fcanorthamerica.com

Company website: www.fcanorthamerica.com

FCA360: 360.fcanorthamerica.com

Facebook: www.facebook.com/ChryslerGroup

Flickr: www.flickr.com/photos/chryslergroup/

Media website: media.fcanorthamerica.com

Pinterest: www.pinterest.com/fcacorporate

Instagram: www.instagram.com/FiatChrysler_NA

Streetfire: www.streetfire.net/uploaded/chryslervideo.htm

Twitter: www.twitter.com/FiatChrysler_NA

Twitter (Spanish): www.twitter.com/fcausespanol

YouTube: www.youtube.com/pentastarvideo

SOURCE FCA US LLC

Related Links

http://www.fcanorthamerica.com


TAMPA, Fla., May 5, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- The $6bn Vaping and E-liquid Industry woke up the morning of May 5, 2016 to industry-killing news which is being regarded as "Downright Prohibition" by the American Vaping Association. In 90 days almost all e-liquids will be taking off retail shelves by the FDA, requiring manufacturers to go through extensive approval processes that will cost them over $1m and thousands of hours.

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160505/364399

With the thread of tens of thousands of vape shops potential closing their doors and most manufacturers calling it quits, the millions of people in the US that vape are stuck between giving up their vice or "moving underground." The newest trend picking up steam has been DIY E-Liquid mixing, where users use easy to find food-grade ingredients and flavors to create their own e-liquid without stepping foot in a vape store. On-line communities like Reddit's Community r/DIY_eJuice have already garnished over 24,000 active users - all sharing their tips and tricks for DIY E-liquid production.

A Tampa, FL based company, White Clouds Vaping Co, is gearing-up to help transition people who vape from purchasing retail to mixing on their own. "We can teach anyone how to make any flavor of E-liquid in less than 10 minutes without stepping foot in a store!" said Zach Jacobs, the founder of White Clouds Vaping Co.

"We were expecting to see this industry move from the retail store to home-mixing, but we were surprised how quickly it happened. There are thousands of people that are about to lose their job or their business from their regulations and its sad to see how much innovation is being 'bullied' out of business. Unfortunately "Big Tobacco" has deep pockets, and when they lose $6bn in sales, you better believe regulations will change shortly after!"

To get started on E-liquid training and to purchase a E-liquid Mixing Kit, head over to www.WhiteCloudsVaping.com

This content was issued through the press release distribution service at Newswire.com. For more info visit: http://www.newswire.com

SOURCE White Clouds Vaping Co.

Related Links

http://www.whitecloudsvaping.com


SAN ANGELO, Texas, May 5, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- He's an independent write-in, libertarian, republican conservative. He's presidential candidate Donald Eugene Lowe and he's announcing his run for president under the Republican Party with vice president Shaun Reynard Richardson by his side.

"People don't know about me, but when they find out, Donald Trump has no chance," Lowe says. "If Trump supporters like him, they will love me."

Like many Americans, Lowe is ready for new leadership, but he can't find anyone to get behind. So, what's a frustrated American to do?

"It's time to take action," Lowe says. "It's time for new leadership. It's time to fight for America's freedom."

Lowe believes that he and his running mate, Richardson, are just the people for the job. He's been running his campaign like a chess game and Lowe says that it's all coming together.

Lowe's experience and background are diverse. He's been overcoming challenges all his life and is up to this one too. He is an active supporter of the military and says he's always "loaded and ready to go." Among his political stances, he believes in the right to bear arms, less taxes, guaranteed higher learning, a better healthcare system and less government. He believes he can improve the economy by 38.7 percent within three years - the duration of his proposed term  where his vice president will take over in the fourth year.

Lowe says that, like many citizens, he has a desire to play an active role in making his community, state and country a safer, and better place to raise children, to run a business and to forge a future filled with unlimited promise.

Richardson was born in New Orleans and served in the U.S. Army for seven years. He was a sergeant who deployed to places such as Iraq, Turkey, Kosovo, Poland and Hungary. He earned three achievement medals. He and his wife to be have four children.

"Richardson is an honorable man. He is the right person to help me lead this country from the dark places of poor leadership to a brighter tomorrow," Lowe says.

"I'm a game changer. I'm the GOP contender voters have been seeking," Lowe says. "Checkmate."

For more information, visit: http://www.lowe2016.com/.

- Image 300dpi: Send2Press.com/mediaboom/16-0505-lowepres-300dpi.jpg

- Image Caption: Donald Eugene Lowe for President.

DISCLAIMER: This press release is paid for by the Donald Eugene Lowe presidential campaign fund.

This release was issued through Send2Press, a unit of Neotrope. For more information, visit Send2Press Newswire at https://www.Send2Press.com

SOURCE Donald Eugene Lowe

Related Links

http://www.lowe2016.com


ARDEN HILLS, Minn., May 6, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Galil Medical, the global leader in interventional oncology cryoablation technology, announced today it has entered into a definitive agreement to be wholly acquired by the BTG plc group. BTG will acquire Galil for an initial cash consideration of US$84.5M and up to US$25.5M in future regulatory and revenue milestone payments through December 31, 2018. The transaction is expected to close late in the second quarter, 2016.

"I am very pleased to announce that Galil will be joining the BTG family. Our two companies share a passion for patients and a commitment to innovation that will be better served through this acquisition," said Martin J. Emerson, Galil Medical President and CEO. "Through the significant resources that BTG will bring to bear through this acquisition, I am confident that the acceptance of Galil's market leading cryoablation technology will be accelerated. We are excited about the opportunity to leverage the BTG market reputation and resources in interventional oncology to become an even more important partner to the global healthcare system. This is a fantastic step forward for the employees of Galil, the physicians we support and ultimately the patients we all serve."

About Galil Medical Galil Medical is a global leader in delivering innovative cryoablation solutions. The company is addressing patient conditions across multiple physician specialties. Treatment areas and clinical research priorities include conditions affecting bone, kidney, liver, lung and prostate, as well as targeted pain and nerve applications. Company offices are located in Arden Hills, Minnesota and Yokneam, Israel. Shareholders include Thomas, McNerney & Partners, The Vertical Group, and Investor Growth Capital.

Galil advisors for this transaction include Houlihan Lokey, Fredrikson & Byron, Raved Magriso Benkel & Co (Tel Aviv), Willkie Farr & Gallagher and EY.

Contact information:





Martin J. Emerson Scott P. Youngstrom President and CEO Vice President, Chief Financial Officer Tel: +1 651 287 5050 Tel: +1 651 287 5052 Email: [email protected] Email: [email protected]

SOURCE Galil Medical

Related Links

http://www.galilmedical.com


ARLINGTON, Va., May 6, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Gibbs & Cox, Inc., one of the world's leading independent naval architecture and marine engineering firms, has been awarded a contract by the Naval Surface Warfare Center, Philadelphia Division (NSWC Philadelphia), for Shock Engineering and Analysis.

Gibbs & Cox will be supporting the Ship Systems Hardening Branch (Code 333) at NSWC Philadelphia. Code 333 serves as the Navy's Delegated Approval Authority for shipboard equipment shock. In this capacity, Code 333 provides technical services in the areas of vulnerability reduction, live fire test and evaluation support, and equipment shock hardening.

Gibbs & Cox's work will primarily be performed in the G&C Philadelphia Office, with periodic travel to support shock trials and the resolution of emergent shock related issues that may arise on in-service naval ships.

"With nearly 90 years of naval design and engineering experience, Gibbs & Cox is the U.S. Navy's surface combatant subject matter expert when it comes to naval architecture and marine engineering," said Rick Biben, Gibbs & Cox's Chief Executive and President. "We have been honored to support this organization for over 40 years and look forward to providing additional valued engineering to NSWC Philadelphia."

About Gibbs & Cox, Inc.

Gibbs & Cox Inc. is a global leader in maritime engineering and design, with over 8,000 vessels built to our designs since 1929. Gibbs & Cox supports military and commercial clients in the U.S. and internationally with all phases of marine design as well as construction and lifecycle management. Gibbs & Cox's breadth and depth of high performance commercial and military vessel skills are augmented with the acquisition of Donald L. Blount & Associates (DLBA). DLBA specializes in the technical development of high-performance marine craft. Independent and privately held, Gibbs & Cox is headquartered in Arlington, VA, with offices in Newport News and Chesapeake, VA; New York, NY; Philadelphia, PA; New Orleans LA., and Washington, D.C.. Learn more at www.gibbscox.com.

SOURCE Gibbs & Cox, Inc

Related Links

http://www.gibbscox.com


SEATTLE, May 6, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- In the technical community in 2016, the sector with the most novelties is probably virtual reality (VR). After the product releases by the three tech giants, namely, Oculus, HTC and Sony, at 19:00, May 5, 2016, Pacific Time, Idealens II, another important all-in-one VR headset, was officially launched in Seattle to the global market.

This release was presided over by Brent Jentzsch, Business Development Director of Idealens. The company invited many elite experts of the VR industry to witness the maiden show of Idealens II. Among the guests who attended the event, many were dignitaries of the VR industry, such as Todd Hooper, CEO of VREAL and founder of the Seattle VR Salon; Taylor Freeman, CEO of UploadVR; Pete Moss, Chief Software Engineer of Unity Technologies; Ivan Blaustein, Director of Product Integration of VRstudios; and Kyle Riesenbeck, Senior Technical Expert of Studio/216.The guests showed up at the scene of the event and experienced the all-in-one VR headset of Idealens II at the first time.

During the event, Idealens II perfectly demonstrated the "charms of mobility" as an all-in-one VR headset. When the user puts it on, they may move boundlessly and freely, without being tethered by the host and wires. There are no limitations for them to use different scenes, where they may step into another virtual world when they stand up, walk, sit, or lie down. Even the dignitaries who attended the event showed great interest in Idealens II.

After their experience, the guests and pros spoke highly of its performance. They believed that it was an extraordinary breakthrough for Idealens II to be comparable with the experience offered by the top-level PC grade VR machines given the device's achievement of overcoming the environmental limitations for use.

Technological advantages are a main reason for the Idealens II all-in-one VR to gain good recognition from the professionals. Though a cool exterior and a smart and compact body the device has, the hardware strength cannot be downplayed. Through a vivid speech, Brent Jentzsch unveiled the advanced technologies adopted by Idealens II one by one.

Among the technical features, the most attractive one is its unique innovations on exterior design and wearable technology. Unlike PC grade VR devices, it is an important technical challenge for the all-in-one devices to meet the requirements for use in mobility conditions, while the wearable solution demonstrated by Idealens II is a very excellent one in this regard.

According to Brent Jentzsch, Idealens II is the first across the globe to have employed a solution of rear battery pack for balance weight for the all-in-one VR headset. With a weight of 320g for the main body and a mounting way featuring a steel structure with a spring mechanism, the Idealens II provides excellent comfort for wearing, and the device provides the most reasonable design for wearable solution in the industry.

According to user feedback, Idealens II is the best VR product in terms of comfort among all its VR counterparts. The users do not need any manual adjustment, and they can enter the breathtaking virtual world instantly. Considering different uses, Idealens II provides multiple methods for wearing, such as game mode and cinema mode.

Comparatively, professionals from the United States are more concerned with the optical performance of Idealens II. This area has always been the expertise of Idealens. The FOV (field of view) of Idealens II has reached 120 degrees, which is the maximum value among those of all types of VR devices currently available on the market.

Supporting the 120-degree FOV are two AMOLED screens of low persistence, with a refresh rate at 90Hz. Thanks to the base algorithm development competence accumulated perennially by the Idealens team, the device is supplied with the advanced technologies of low lapse and the ATW (Asynchronous Time Warp), which can effectively reduce the dizziness during use due to display delay. The overall delay can be controlled within 17ms. With top-speed response, you may experience a virtual world with greater smoothness and immersion.

The professionals interviewed at the site after using the device all said that Idealens II provided great immersion. One of the experts remarked, "The super-wide field of view and splendid image quality instantly took me into an unknown world, in which I felt as if I were personally on the scene. After I removed the glasses, I was in a trance for a few seconds as I had returned to the world of reality. It was truly amazing!"

Actually, before the release of Idealens II, the first generation of Idealens all-in-one VR headset had earned an extraordinary reputation in the industry at important global exhibitions. After GDC 2016, experts such as Robert Pleasant, American tech-columnist, and editors from 4Gamer.net, Japan's largest gaming website, praised the Idealens all-in-one headset publicly.

At CIMC, which ended recently, senior executives from Google, Twitter and Amazon spoke highly of the product as well. For this time, the release of the Idealens II all-in-one VR headset marked a comprehensive upgrade in terms of exterior, performance, and response experience compared to the device of last generation. It was not unexpected that the device could reap a favorable reputation in the industry.

SOURCE Idealens
SAN DIEGO, May 5, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- In an effort to increase public awareness of the importance of sunshine to human health, today GrassrootsHealth, a public health promotion and research organization, declared May as "National Sunshine Month."

With the transition from an agrarian to a technology-driven society, and other shifts in cultural behavior over the past several decades, Americans spend more time indoors than at any time in human history. The resulting decrease in exposure to sunlight is inhibiting our ability to fight many life-threatening diseases, including diabetes, colon cancer, breast cancer and ironically, even skin cancer.

"Missing sunlight puts us at serious risk of a multitude of dangerous health problems," said Carole Baggerly, Director of GrassrootsHealth. "It is essential that we improve public understanding of the need for sunshine exposure and health outcomes."

Over the next four weeks, GrassrootsHealth's experts within the medical and scientific community will educate the public and those in the medical and healthcare fields on why the sun is essential for public health. This will include the launch of GrassrootsHealth's newest program "Harness the Power of the Sun for Health," which will provide software for individuals to assess their current situation, set sunshine goals and track vitamin D levels and health outcomes.

"Advice from some within the medical community, and even our own government, encouraging Americans to avoid the sun is an immense threat to human health," said Baggerly. "We expect National Sunshine Month will raise awareness of the sunshine, its many health benefits and ways to take advantage of it."

GrassrootsHealth notes that new science is being discovered every day that demonstrates:

A correlation between higher vitamin D levels and lower rates of colon cancer, breast cancer, diabetes, pre-term birth, and other life-threatening illnesses;

The production of substances in our bodies other than vitamin D that are essential to human health; and

Significant positive impact on many other conditions, such as reducing depression, hypertension and even reducing the mortality rates of people who have been diagnosed with skin cancer.

More information on National Sunshine Month can be accessed at grassrootshealth.net/harnessthesun.

To subscribe to campaign updates and information, please visit grassrootshealth.net/news.

About GrassrootsHealth

GrassrootsHealth is a nonprofit public health research organization dedicated to moving public health messages regarding vitamin D from science into practice. It has a panel of 48 senior vitamin D researchers from around the world contributing to its operations. GrassrootsHealth is currently running the D*action population intervention program to solve the vitamin D deficiency epidemic worldwide. Under the D*action umbrella, there are programs looking at the entire population as well as targeted programs for breast cancer prevention and a 'Protect Our Children NOW!' program to reduce the complications of vitamin D deficiency encountered during pregnancy and childhood.

SOURCE GrassrootsHealth (GRH)

Related Links

http://www.grassrootshealth.net


NEW YORK, May 6, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Hearst Television has formally named its journalism fellowship program in honor of its longtime top news executive, Fred Young, who retired from his post as the company's senior vice president of news in 2008, concluding a distinguished 46-year career.

The company has selected Amina Lovell from Columbia University, Courtney Sonn from Boston University and Alexis Porter from Howard University as 2016 Summer Fellows.

The Fred Young Hearst Television Producing Fellowship recognizes Young's four decades of news industry leadership. The hands-on, 10-week paid training program is designed for graduating college seniors who have demonstrated a desire to become news producers for television, digital and mobile platforms. The program selects Fellows graduating in the May/June and December timeframes; each is assigned training at a Hearst station and then, upon successful completion, is placed in a producing job at a Hearst station.

"Finding the best people and helping them become strong leaders was a hallmark of Fred's legacy at Hearst," said Barbara Maushard, Hearst Television vice president, news. "With this program we seek to blend the strong journalistic values that Fred and Hearst Television represent, and the modern delivery of the important content on which local news audiences depend."

"I am pleased to be honored as a person who, during my career, was committed to the continuing development of television news production, management and journalistic talent," Young said. "This program will recruit and develop college graduates who want to build long-term careers in TV news."

Hearst began the program in spring 2014; in addition to Boston University, Columbia University and Howard University, Fellows selected to date have come from the University of Missouri, Syracuse University, the University of Maryland, and City University of New York.

Any graduating college senior with a demonstrated interest in television/digital producing is welcome to apply. Applications for the winter 2017 program will be accepted beginning in November 2016. More details about the Fellowship can be found here.

During Young's tenure as its top news executive, the Hearst station group earned dozens of national journalism awards, including five consecutive USC Annenberg Walter Cronkite Awards for excellence in television political journalism, and a number of Peabody, duPont and Murrow Awards. Hearst television stations' journalism has spurred community and regulatory action in support of environmentalism, government accountability and children's safety, among other causes.

In April 2009, the Radio Television Digital News Association (RTDNA) presented Young with the Paul White Award, its highest honor; Young was one of only two of the Award's 53 recipients (which have included Walter Cronkite and Edward R. Murrow) to have been a career local-TV news professional. Young's other honors have included a First Amendment Service award from the RTDNA, honors from the Pennsylvania Association of Broadcasters and the Associated Press Broadcasters, and a distinguished alumnus award from Pittsburgh's Duquesne University.

Young joined Hearst Television predecessor company Hearst Broadcasting in 1962, serving for 25 years at WTAE-TV as vice president and general manager and, before that, as news director and in other news management positions. He joined Hearst Broadcasting's corporate staff in New York in 1986 and participated in the growth of what is now Hearst Television from three to more than two dozen news-producing stations.

Since retiring, Young has been immersed in journalism education; in addition to teaching and lecturing, he has been involved with the Hearst Collegiate Journalism Awards and the College Journalism Accreditation Council, among other organizations.

About Hearst Television

Hearst Television owns and operates local television and radio stations serving 26 media markets across 39 states reaching over 21 million U.S. television households. Through its partnership with nearly all of the major networks, Hearst Television distributes national content over nearly 70 video channels including programming from ABC, NBC, CBS, CW, MY Net, MeTV, This TV, Estrella and more. Hearst Television is recognized as one of the industry's premier companies, and has been honored with numerous awards for distinguished journalism, industry innovation, and community service. Hearst Television is a wholly owned subsidiary of Hearst. The Company's Web address is www.hearsttelevision.com.

SOURCE Hearst Television

Related Links

http://www.hearsttelevision.com


The World Health Organization (WHO) considers cataract surgery among the most cost-effective health interventions. Yet in spite of this fact and a proven and affordable surgical cure, an estimated 102 million people remain blind or disabled from untreated cataract. HelpMeSee is implementing a social-enterprise model to build local capacity within partner countries, increase training of medical professionals and expand access to sight-restoring eye care for underserved communities.

"HelpMeSee is privileged to be recognized by the Global Private Equity Conference as a social enterprise focused on solving the challenge of access and affordability of quality cataract surgery worldwide," said Jacob Mohan Thazhathu, HelpMeSee's President and CEO. "HelpMeSee is focused on emerging markets and private equity capital is fundamental to the successful expansion of affordable eye care for all."

Robert van Zwieten, President and CEO of EMPEA, commented in response to the selection of the organization, "Economic empowerment for the 102 million fellow human beings in this world who are blind or disabled due to cataract starts by getting them the affordable cataract surgery pioneered by HelpMeSee. Just when the institutional investors who took part in EMPEA's annual Global Limited Partner Survey highlighted health care as the most attractive sector in which to invest via emerging markets private equity in 2016, HelpMeSee fits the profile of a social enterprise showcasing how superior technological and process innovation and local capacity-building can bring affordable and high-quality eye care to underserved communities in our markets."

The conference is in its 18th year and convenes over 800 attendees representing over 60 countries. A donation was made on behalf of all the 100+ speaker faculty at the conference to both HelpMeSee and Ashoka, whose mission is to catalyze the world's leading social entrepreneurs and ignite a generation of change makers to help sustain and support large-scale social change.

This year's attendees include senior investment professionals and representatives from international finance institutions, endowments, public and pension funds, law firms and various government agencies. Akin Gump, Amethis Finance, Clearwater Capital Partners, Everstone, EY, Gulf Capital and Swicorp are all lead sponsors at this year's event.

About EMPEA

EMPEA is the global industry association for private capital in emerging markets. We are an independent non-profit organization with over 300 member firms, comprising institutional investors, fund managers and industry advisors, who together manage more than US$1 trillion of assets and have offices in more than 100 countries across the globe. Our members share EMPEA's belief that private capital is a highly suited investment strategy in emerging markets, delivering attractive long-term investment returns and promoting the sustainable growth of companies and economies. We support our members through global authoritative intelligence, conferences, networking, education and advocacy. For more information, visit www.empea.org.

About HelpMeSee

HelpMeSee is a non-profit social enterprise working to end the global health crisis of cataract blindness. Through a focus on surgical training and technology innovation, HelpMeSee is building a sustainable solution to the leading cause of blindness. Since 2012, HelpMeSee has supported nearly 250,000 sight-restoring procedures through partnerships across nine countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America. For more information, visit www.helpmesee.org

HelpMeSee Media Contact

[email protected]

+1 212.221.7606

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160506/364547

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20130403/DC88441LOGO

SOURCE HelpMeSee

Related Links

http://www.helpmesee.org


PUNE, India, April 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

The report "High Performance Pigments Market by Type (Organic - Benzimidazolones, Quinacridones, Perylenes, DPP and Inorganic/Metallic - Bismuth Canadate, Cadmium), Application (Coatings, Plastics, Inks, and Cosmetic Products) - Global Trends & Forecasts to 2021", published by MarketsandMarkets, The global market size was USD 4.56 Billion in 2015 and is projected to reach USD 5.71 Billion by 2021, witnessing a CAGR of 3.81% between 2016 and 2021.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160303/792302 )

Browse 92 market data Tables and 81 Figures spread through 147 Pages and in-depth TOC on "High Performance Pigments Market"

http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/high-performance-pigment-market-130798485.html

Early buyers will receive 10% customization on this report.

Organic HPPs captures the maximum market share: The market for HPPs is segmented on the basis of types, namely, organic and inorganic/metallic HPPs. In 2015, organic HPPs captured the maximum share of the overall market and is also expected to witness high growth rate in the next five years. The demand of organic HPPs is increasing on account of their environmentally-friendly features, which make them suitable for use in various applications.

Growing demand from existing applications: The market for HPPs is also segmented on the basis of applications. The major applications of the HPPs market are coatings, plastic, inks, cosmetics, and others. Coatings are the leading application of the HPPs market due to its high demand in automotive and decorative coatings sectors. The demand of HPPs in cosmetic products and plastics is expected to grow significantly in Asia-Pacific and North America.

North America-The largest market: The market for HPPs is broadly segmented into six regions, namely, North America, Western Europe, Central Europe, Asia-Pacific, the Middle East & Africa, and Latin America. Asia-Pacific and North America are the largest markets for HPPs, in terms of value. The rising demand from applications such as cosmetic products and coatings for decorative and automotive coatings is driving the market for HPPs in these regions.

For More Info Make Inquiry @ http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Enquiry_Before_Buying.asp?id=130798485

Currently, the global High Performance Pigments Market is dominated by various market players such as BASF SE (Germany), Clariant AG (U.S.), Huntsman Corporation (Japan), Lanxess AG (Germany), Solvay SA (Belgium), Atul Ltd. (India), Sudarshan Chemical Industries Ltd (India), Heubach GMBH (Germany), Sun Chemical Corporation (U.S.), Synthesia A.S. (Czech Republic), Ferro Corporation (U.S.), and Gharda Chemicals Ltd. (India).

The research study is aimed at identifying emerging trends and opportunities in the global HPPs market along with a detailed classification of the market, in terms of value and volume. It provides a comprehensive competitive landscape and identifies the key players with respect to their market share. The research study also includes a detailed segmentation of the global HPPs market on the basis of application, type, and region.

Apart from the market segmentation, this report also adopts the Porter's five forces analysis for an in-depth analysis of the market dynamics such as drivers, restraints, and opportunities.

Browse Related Reports:

Dyes and Pigments Market - Dyes (Reactive, Disperse, Acid, Direct, Basic, VAT), Organic Pigments (Azo, Phthalocyanines, High Performance) & Inorganic Pigments (TiO2, Iron Oxide, Carbon Black & Others) - Global Trends & Forecast to 2018

http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/colorants-tinting-systems-paints-coatings-market-875.html

Technical Textile Market by Product (Fabric, Unspun Fiber, Yarn-type Products), Technology (Nonwoven, Fabric, Weaving, Knitting, Spinning), Fiber (Synthetic, Natural, Specialty), Application (Mobiltech, Indutech, Sportech, Others), Colorant (Dye, Pigment), Fabric - Global Forecast to 2020

http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/technical-textile-market-1074.html

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SOURCE MarketsandMarkets
FALLS CHURCH, Va., May 6, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Inova Schar Cancer Institute announces today, coinciding with World Ovarian Cancer Day, that the Consortium for Long-Term Survival has received Phase II funding. The consortium, co-led by Michael Birrer M.D. / Ph.D., Director of the Gillette Center for Gynecologic Oncology at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), and Lari Wenzel, Ph.D., Professor of Medicine at the University of California, Irvine, is focused on finding the "key" to long-term survival from ovarian cancer through systemic analysis of tumor genomics and immunology integrated with clinical and quality of life data from patients who survived more than 10 years following a diagnosis of advanced stage ovarian cancer; a malignancy from which very rarely patients can reach a five-year survival.

The consortium includes active collaboration of seven different research sites across the United States and Europe as well as the active support from 11 patient advocates representing 11 partnering foundations that support patients with ovarian cancer and leverages the resources of the Gynecologic Oncology Group (GOG) from the NRG Oncology Foundation. Thomas Conrads, MD, (Associate Director of Scientific Technologies, Inova Schar Cancer Institute) and Larry Maxwell, MD, (Associate Director of Translational Research, Inova Schar Cancer Institute) are key contributors to the consortium.

"Inova is proud to be a part of this ground-breaking and life-changing work. Inova's commitment to genomics and proteomics in translational cancer research will further empower the consortium's analytical capacity," said Dr. Conrads.

Dr. Maxwell added, "Too many women die way too soon from ovarian cancer and we know very little about the characteristics of tumors in those rare patients who beat this disease. Dr. Conrads and I are committed to understanding the factors that influence long-term survival of ovarian cancer patients and developing therapies and interventions that help patients live longer."

The consortium partners with several groups to seek input, advice and expertise, including the Gynecologic Oncology Group, founded in 1970 to promote excellence in quality and integrity of clinical and basic scientific research in the field of gynecologic malignancies, patient advocates, and national and international scientific boards.

The broad geographical expansion of the consortium, combined with its interdisciplinary scientific expertise and extensive patient involvement, represents a unique setting to understand the nature of ovarian cancer and identify factors that allow for longer survival and better survivorship. Through this consortium, Inova hopes to contribute to the treatment, prediction and prevention of this complex and devastating disease.

About Inova



Inova is a not-for-profit healthcare system based in Northern Virginia that serves more than 2 million people each year throughout the Washington, DC, metro area and beyond. Inova is a comprehensive network of hospitals, outpatient services and facilities, primary and specialty care practices, and health and wellness initiatives.

Inova encompasses the full array of health services, including the area's only Level 1 Trauma Center and Level 4 neonatal intensive care unit. We are home to many nationally and internationally recognized programs, including Inova Heart and Vascular Institute (IHVI), Inova Translational Medicine Institute (ITMI), Inova Schar Cancer Institute (ISCI).

Inova is a global leader in the science of genomics and the new era of personalized health, which uses a person's genetic make-up, family and medical history, and lifestyle to determine the best prevention and treatment. We connect researchers, clinicians and empowered consumers to improve patient care, enhance prevention and encourage wellness.

Kelly Schlageter

[email protected]

703-205-2221

SOURCE Inova Health System

Related Links

http://www.inova.org


ATLANTA, May 6, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Dornier MedTech is a global medical device company known for its pioneering technologies and revolutionary therapies in urology. Dornier will be showcasing their newest holmium laser fiber, Dornier HeatFlex, at the 2016 American Urological Association's Annual Meeting (AUA) in San Diego, California.

As the name suggests, this fiber is enhanced with special heat-resistance technology enabling it to withstand the extreme temperatures and conditions associated with anti-prion sterilization processes. In addition, given its durable construction, the HeatFlex fiber also features a unique optical and mechanical connection capability when utilizing Dornier's Medilas H Solvo and UroPulse Laser Systems. These paired features make HeatFlex one of the most versatile and state-of-the-art fibers on the market today.

"Working efficiently, while preventing the transmission of diseases through medical equipment, is critical. The combined heat-resistant and optimized-connection capability of this new fiber makes HeatFlex an ideal product for urologists looking for the highest levels of performance during kidney stone treatments," said Mary Butler, Chief Technology Officer and VP of Product Marketing for Dornier MedTech.

The fight against transmissible diseases, nosocomial infections, and prion disease is one the highest public health priorities today. Steam sterilization at a temperature of 134C for 18 minutes has been recommended by International health Authorities to provide better assurance of preventing prion disease. HeatFlex fibers are designed to tolerate these levels without compromising kidney stone treatment performance. HeatFlex also represents the latest in a wave of market innovations Dornier MedTech has been making as part of their commitment to leading technology and improving life.

For additional information about Dornier MedTech's HeatFlex fibers, please contact Valerie Schopmann at +1.770.514.6160 for an interview.

About Dornier MedTech  Dornier MedTech is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Accuron Medical Technology group (www.accuron.com) is a medical device company focused on providing leading technology and improving life by delivering scientifically superior products and solutions to physicians and patients involved in urological care. As pioneers of the lithotripsy and a variety of surgical lasers, Dornier's 40 years of innovation and service has made it one of the most trusted MedTech companies in the industry. Dornier MedTech is headquartered in Munich, Germany with offices and distributors all over the world. For more information, visit www.dornier.com.

About the Accuron Medical Technology Group  The Accuron Medical Technology Group is a privately owned by Temasek Holdings, through the business of Dornier MedTech GmbH, Veredus Laboratories and Advanced Materials Technologies Pte Ltd, provide therapeutic, diagnostic, and medical device manufacturing solutions to customers around the globe. Veredus Laboratories Pte Ltd, specializes in the development, manufacture, and marketing of innovative molecular diagnostic solutions in the clinical, specialty, and custom testing markets based on a proprietary Lab-on-Chip platform. Advanced Materials Technologies Pte Ltd serves the contract manufacturing needs of the medical technology sector through providing materials expertise and high precision engineering capabilities.

SOURCE Dornier MedTech

Related Links

http://www.dornier.com


VANCOUVER, May 6, 2016 /PRNewswire/ - International Tower Hill Mines Ltd. ("ITH" or the "Company") - (TSX: ITH) (NYSE-MKT: THM) today announced that it has filed its unaudited first quarter financial statements and associated management discussion and analysis and quarterly report on Form 10-Q for the three-month period ended March 31, 2016.

The Company had a cash balance of USD 5.1 million at March 31, 2016, which is sufficient to cover anticipated expenditures through the planned activities of 2016.

At March 31, 2016, the Company had a working capital deficit of USD 9.9 million compared to working capital of USD 6.2 million, at December 31, 2015. The negative working capital is mainly the result of the reclassification of the contingent derivative payment, payable on January 12, 2017 and estimated at March 31, 2016 to be USD 14.6 million, to a current liability. ITH is working to address the derivative payment and believes that they will be successful. However, there is no assurance that the Company will be able to address the derivative payment on acceptable terms, if at all.

Shareholders can obtain copies of the Company's unaudited first quarter financial statements and associated management discussion and analysis and Form 10-Q on SEDAR at: www.sedar.com, EDGAR at www.sec.gov and on ITH's website at: www.ithmines.com. ITH will also provide hard copies of these documents, free of charge, to shareholders who request a copy directly from the Company.

About International Tower Hill Mines Ltd.

International Tower Hill Mines Ltd. controls 100% of the Livengood Gold Project that contains 15.7 M oz. of gold (807 MT at 0.61 g/t) measured & indicated and 4.4 M oz. (266 MT at 0.52 g/t) inferred, all at a 0.30 g/t gold cutoff, located along the paved Elliott Highway, 70 miles north of Fairbanks, Alaska.

On behalf of

International Tower Hill Mines Ltd.

(signed) Thomas E. Irwin

Chief Executive Officer

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements and forward-looking information (collectively, "forward-looking statements") within the meaning of applicable Canadian and US securities legislation. All statements, other than statements of historical fact, included herein, including statements with respect to the ability of the Company to optimize and/or enhance the base case as set out in the September 2013 Feasibility Study for the Livengood Project, including with respect to OPEX and CAPEX; the potential for the overall mining scheme and operating cash flows to be improved with an appropriate elevated cut-off grade strategy and reduced stripping ratio in the early years of mining, lower throughput and a more compact site layout; the ability of the Company to potentially include the results of the optimization process in a new or updated feasibility study or any future financial analysis of the Livengood Project; the ability of the Company to carry forward and incorporate into future engineering studies of the Livengood Project the mine design, production schedule, and recovery concepts described in this news release; the potential for the Company to carry out an engineering phase that will evaluate and optimize the Livengood Project configuration and CAPEX and OPEX, including determining the optimum scale for the Livengood Project, the ability of the Company to advance the Livengood Project either as projected or at all; the potential for the Company to make a construction decision, whether when warranted by market conditions or at all; the potential for market conditions to be such that they warrant the making of a production decision; the potential development of any mine at the Livengood Project; business and financing plans and business trends are forward-looking statements. Information concerning mineral reserve/resource estimates and the economic analysis thereof contained in the feasibility study also may be deemed to be forward-looking statements in that it reflects a prediction of the mineralization that would be encountered, and the results of mining it, if a mineral deposit were developed and mined. Although the Company believes that such statements are reasonable, it can give no assurance that such expectations will prove to be correct. Forward-looking statements are typically identified by words such as: believe, expect, anticipate, intend, estimate, postulate, proposed, planned, potential and similar expressions, or are those, which, by their nature, refer to future events. The Company cautions investors that any forward-looking statements by the Company are not guarantees of future results or performance, and that actual results may differ materially from those in forward looking statements as a result of various factors, including, but not limited to, variations in the nature, quality and quantity of any mineral deposits that may be located, variations in the market price of any mineral products the Company may produce or plan to produce, the inability of the Company to obtain any necessary permits, consents or authorizations required for its activities, the inability of the Company to produce minerals from its properties successfully or profitably, to continue its projected growth, to raise the necessary capital or to be fully able to implement its business strategies, and other risks and uncertainties disclosed in the Company's Annual Information Form filed with certain securities commissions in Canada and the Company's annual report on Form 10-K filed with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC"), and other information released by the Company and filed with the appropriate regulatory agencies. All of the Company's Canadian public disclosure filings may be accessed via www.sedar.com and its United States public disclosure filings may be accessed via www.sec.gov, and readers are urged to review these materials, including the latest technical report filed with respect to the Company's Livengood property.

Cautionary Note Regarding References to Resources and Reserves

National Instrument 43 101 - Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects ("NI 43-101") is a rule developed by the Canadian Securities Administrators which establishes standards for all public disclosure an issuer makes of scientific and technical information concerning mineral projects. Unless otherwise indicated, all resource and reserve estimates contained in or incorporated by reference in this news release have been prepared in accordance with NI 43-101 and the guidelines set out in the Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy and Petroleum (the "CIM") Standards on Mineral Resource and Mineral Reserves, adopted by the CIM Council on November 27, 2010 (the "CIM Standards") as they may be amended from time to time by the CIM.

United States shareholders are cautioned that the requirements and terminology of NI 43-101 and the CIM Standards differ significantly from the requirements and terminology of the SEC set forth in the SEC's Industry Guide 7 ("SEC Industry Guide 7"). Accordingly, the Company's disclosures regarding mineralization may not be comparable to similar information disclosed by companies subject to SEC Industry Guide 7. Without limiting the foregoing, while the terms "mineral resources", "inferred mineral resources", "indicated mineral resources" and "measured mineral resources" are recognized and required by NI 43-101 and the CIM Standards, they are not recognized by the SEC and are not permitted to be used in documents filed with the SEC by companies subject to SEC Industry Guide 7.

Mineral resources which are not mineral reserves do not have demonstrated economic viability, and investors are cautioned not to assume that all or any part of a mineral resource will ever be converted into reserves. The preliminary assessments on the Livengood Project are preliminary in nature and include "inferred mineral resources" that have a great amount of uncertainty as to their existence, and are considered too speculative geologically to have economic considerations applied to them that would enable them to be categorized as mineral reserves. There is no certainty that such inferred mineral resources at the Livengood Project will ever be realized. Further, it cannot be assumed that all or any part of the inferred resources will ever be upgraded to a higher resource category. Under Canadian rules, estimates of inferred mineral resources may not form the basis of a feasibility study or prefeasibility study, except in rare cases. Investors are cautioned not to assume that all or any part of an inferred mineral resource exists or is economically or legally mineable.

The SEC normally only permits issuers to report mineralization that does not constitute SEC Industry Guide 7 compliant "reserves" as in-place tonnage and grade without reference to unit amounts. The term "contained ounces" is not permitted under the rules of SEC Industry Guide 7. In addition, the NI 43-101 and CIM Standards definition of a "reserve" differs from the definition in SEC Industry Guide 7. In SEC Industry Guide 7, a mineral reserve is defined as a part of a mineral deposit which could be economically and legally extracted or produced at the time the mineral reserve determination is made, and a "final" or "bankable" feasibility study is required to report reserves, the three-year historical price is used in any reserve or cash flow analysis of designated reserves and the primary environmental analysis or report must be filed with the appropriate governmental authority.

This news release is not, and is not to be construed in any way as, an offer to buy or sell securities in the United States.

SOURCE International Tower Hill Mines Ltd.

Related Links

http://www.towerhillmines.com


"The new consumer version of LearnBop harnesses our expert teaching system and makes it accessible to students at home where they can learn at their own pace," said the company's CEO Bharanidharan Rajakumar. "LearnBop for Families provides a way for every parent to enable their children to solve math problems as an expert teacher would, and then carry that knowledge with them into the classroom."

LearnBop for Families Details

Web-based and tablet accessible for flexible use

Step-by-step instruction that enables students to solve problems on their own

Catch up on missed concepts or get ahead by accelerating subject mastery

Single Student Plan Subscription (month-to-month) for just $14.95 Prepaid (12 months pre-paid) for just $149.95

Family Plan  Up to Four Student Users Subscription (month-to-month) for just $19.95 Prepaid (12 months pre-paid) for just $199.95



Buy-One-Give-One

To advance LearnBop's mission of ensuring every child has an opportunity to excel in math, the company is donating free copies of the software through non-profits across the country who serve students whose families may not be able to purchase LearnBop. The first such partnership is with the GO Project, a non-profit organization that provides academic, social and emotional programs for under-resourced and under-performing New York City public school children. Through this partnership, anytime a parent purchases a LearnBop Family license, the company will donate another license to a child in need who is participating in the GO Project program.

"When the cost of comparable forms of personalized instruction are increasing, we're pleased to offer both an affordable and effective option for students who need to prepare for that next exam, want to get ahead or simply brush up on skills," said Rajakumar. "And with our Buy-One-Give-One program, families are able to help their child excel in math while also helping another child at the very same time."

LearnBop has received two prestigious U.S. Distance Learning Association awards, one for "Outstanding Program" and the other, "Outstanding Leadership." LearnBop is also a finalist for the 2016 EdTech Digest eLearning Solutions Award as well as a finalist for the Association of American Publishers' prestigious Revere Award. To learn more about LearnBop, visit its website.

About K12 Inc.

K12 Inc. (NYSE: LRN) is driving innovation and advancing the quality of education by delivering state-of-the-art, digital learning platforms and technology to students and school districts across the globe. K12's award winning curriculum serves over 2,000 schools and school districts and has delivered more than four million courses over the past decade. K12 is a company of educators with the nation's largest network of K-12 online school teachers, providing instruction, academic services, and learning solutions to public schools and districts, traditional classrooms, blended school programs, and directly to families. The K12 program is offered through K12 partner public schools in 33 states and the District of Columbia, and through school districts and public and private schools serving students in all 50 states and more than 100 countries. More information can be found at www.K12.com.

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SOURCE K12 Inc.

Related Links

http://www.K12.com


WASHINGTON, May 5, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Lao Holdings N.V., the parent company of Sanum Investments Limited, has filed three legal actions in the past week against the Lao Government for violating the 2014 settlement agreement reached by both parties, stipulating the sale of the Savan Vegas Hotel and Casino, and other assets, for maximum value to the benefit of all parties. These actions have been taken in direct response to the expropriation and planned sale of Sanum's gaming and hotel complex located in Savannkhet, Laos.

"All of the actions taken by the Lao Government over the past two years have been a blatant attempt not only to avoid, but systematically obliterate its legal obligation to work with us in good faith," said Jody Jordahl, President of Sanum Investments. "If the Government had followed the terms of our agreement, we would not be taking these actions."

The first action, filed on April 26, 2016, asks an international arbitral tribunal first constituted in 2012 to revive an arbitration to hear Lao Holdings' claims that the Government of the Lao People's Democratic Republic (the "Lao Government") breached its obligations under a Bilateral Investment Treaty known as the Agreement on Encouragement and Reciprocal Protection of Investments Between the Lao People's Democratic Republic and the Kingdom of the Netherlands (the "Netherlands-Laos BIT"). While Laos has incorrectly claimed that the Settlement vests it with authority to sell Savan Vegas and other Gaming Assets on behalf of Sanum and the Government, if the arbitration is revived, even this veil of legitimacy would disappear.

This arbitration had been suspended pending the performance of a 2014 settlement agreement between Sanum, Lao Holdings and the Lao Government. The second action, filed on May 2, 2016, asks a new international arbitral tribunal to determine whether Lao Government actions undertaken since the settlement was concluded in 2014 breach the Netherlands-Laos BIT. The third action, also filed on May 2, 2016, was filed in United States District Court for the District of Delaware against San Marco Capital Partners, LLC, as well as its sole owner and employee Kelly Gass, alleging claims against San Marco and Ms. Gass arising from their alleged mismanagement of the operation and planned sale of Savan Vegas.

Both actions filed under the Netherlands-Laos BIT are administered by the International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes ("ICSID"), an agency affiliated with the World Bank. The first action, filed pursuant to the terms of the 2014 settlement agreement, alleges that the Lao Government materially breached the settlement agreement when it seized control over all of Lao Holdings' commercial properties in Laos, including the Savan Vegas Casino. Other acts alleged to materially breach the settlement agreement included the Lao Government's retroactive assessment of over US $70 million in taxes; its groundless pursuit of criminal allegations against Lao Holdings, Sanum, and affiliated individuals; its actions that will lead to a low-ball sale of Savan Vegas; and its stated intention to ensure that Lao Holdings does not receive any of the proceeds from the Savan Vegas sale. If the material breach application is successful, the ICSID Arbitration that Lao Holdings filed against Laos in 2012, which was intended to be resolved by the 2014 settlement agreement, will be revived. The amount of damages claims that will be at issue if the 2012 ICSID arbitration is revived is approximately US $890 million.

Lao Holdings' new action under the Netherlands-Laos BIT arises from the renewed efforts of the Lao Government to impose taxes on the Savan Vegas Casino that both provided the pretext for its seizure and will prevent it from being sold for a fair market price. This new action also concerns the Lao Government's unlawful admitted expropriation of the Casino and other recent acts taken with the effect and intent of depriving Sanum and Lao Holdings of the benefits of any of their investments in Laos.

The third action, pursued in the United States, has been commenced against San Marco Capital Partners, LLC as well as its sole owner and employee Kelly Gass. The action alleges that both San Marco and Ms. Gass are responsible for the current mismanagement of and botched sale efforts of the Casino. San Marco and Ms. Gass, were paid nearly $2 million from revenues generated by the Savan Vegas Casino, to faithfully serve as fiduciaries to the owners of that facility (i.e. Sanum and the Lao Government) in managing the Casino and other gaming operations. The complaint states that Gass purported to know "how to run and sell" these assets but, instead, "Gass has served only [Sanum and Lao Holdings'] adversary, the [Lao Government], a corrupt and totalitarian regime that admittedly expropriated Plaintiffs' assets in Laos with Gass's cooperation and assistance." The Complaint also charges that "[u]nder Gass's management, the financial reporting is opaque at best; the only thing that is clear is millions of dollars of unexplained disbursements, while the 80% shareholder receives nothing."

Starting in 2007, Sanum and Lao Holdings invested heavily in Laos, building and developing valuable gaming assets. In August 2012, facing expropriatory taxes, withheld or reneged concessions, the seizure of assets and other acts of governmental malfeasance, Lao Holdings began proceedings against the Lao Government before the ICSID Tribunal.

On the eve of the merits hearing, in June 2014, the parties reached a settlement agreement that imposed obligations upon the Lao Government. Under the agreement, the Lao Government promised to facilitate the sale of Sanum and Lao Holdings' gaming assets to a third party, and to negotiate an agreement for the development of commercial property elsewhere in Laos. The settlement agreement provided that the ICSID arbitration would be suspended pending successful implementation of the settlement's terms. It also provided for reinstatement of the proceedings in the event of a material breach by the Lao Government.

Sanum and Lao Holdings will continue to evaluate the situation and take actions as required to protect their interests.

More detail on the cases can be seen at: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/nhu3dahrs43gu67/AABVYXhuTsylLBHJk3eIfS2wa?dl=0

CONTACT:

Sanum Investments

John Sario

+1-702-983-1198

[email protected]

KARV Communications

+1-212-333-0275

SOURCE Lao Holdings N.V.
NEW YORK, May 5, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Managing and growing a successful startup takes vision, passionand the right type and amount of business insurance, according to the Insurance Information Institute (I.I.I.).

"Starting and maintaining a new business can be costly, but the last place business owners should cut corners is insurance," said Loretta Worters, a vice president with the I.I.I. "Proper business insurance coverage can be critical toand is often a requirement fora startup's success."



Understanding the factors used by insurance companies to price a business insurance policy is key to making the best choices when it comes to finding the right coverage for your needs. If you're planning to start your own business, consider the following factors that can affect the price of your business insurance:

1. Type of business

How is the business legally structured? As a sole proprietor you are personally liable for all business losses and debts so you may need to get more liability coverage, but you won't need workers compensation. An incorporated or limited liability company (LLC) poses fewer risks to individual owners.

2. Location, location, location

Choosing a business location is perhaps the most important decision a startup will makeboth from a business perspective and from an insurance perspective. Businesses located in high-crime areas, or in areas that are susceptible to severe weather, such as flooding or tornadoes, will pay higher rates.

How to save money: Find the right location. If you have a choice as to where to locate your business, ask your agent for several quotes for the different locations you're considering. You may find insurance in some areas to be significantly less costly than others.

3. Facility size and characteristics

A large office or factory building will likely cost more to insure than a smaller space. Insurers also take into account construction materials, so a frame building will generally have higher rates than a brick building. And they may apply a surcharge for an older building that has not had updates to major systems such as electrical, plumbing, heating and roof.

How to save money: One way to ensure more favorable rates is to set up your business in a building with state-of-the-art fire alarms, sprinkler systems and proper exits.

4. The value of the business

The value of your business lies not just in office furniture and equipment but also in its revenue and expenses. When applying for Business Interruption Insurance (BI), which covers lost net profits and continuing expenses after a catastrophe, the amount of coverage and, therefore, the premium costs will be based on your estimate of the company's future revenues and expenses. An insurer will take into account everything when pricing a policy so make sure to keep accurate records and provide a full inventory of your stock if applicable.

5. Business owner's experience

An insurer will want to know how much experience the owner has in the same, or a similar, business before selling them a policy. If you're new to the business, the insurer may apply a surcharge or simply decide not to insure you.

How to save money: Bring on board a partner or senior executive with related experience.



6. Number and training of employees

Depending on the state and the number of employees, most businesses are required to have workers compensation insuranceso the more workers, the higher your workers comp premiums. However, providing proper job training can help reduce the insurance costsin many cases, a well-trained worker is less likely to have an accident.

As a rule, insurers will evaluate a company for possible workplace liabilities before issuing a policy so previous harassment or prejudice suits against the company will impact the price of business liability insurance.

How to save money: Have safety procedures in place. Ask your insurance professional about any risk reduction measures that can help reduce property loss, liability, security breaches and workplace injuries. Also work with your insurer or human resources manager to set up a healthy atmosphere in the workplace and protect your company against lawsuits.

7. Claims history

An insurer looks at two things: the frequency and severity of previous claims. So if a business has had several small claims or one very expensive claim, chances are you will see higher premiums.

How to save money: Maintain a good loss ratio. Don't report claims that are small; rather self-insure those that are under or close to your deductible. This will keep claims off of your record.

8. Credit-based insurance score

A poor credit history is an indication to the insurer that the business owner may be more likely to file a claim. This can negatively affect your business insurance premiums.

How to save money: Check your credit. Knowing where you stand financially will help you take steps to improve your business credit and ultimately to keep your insurance rates lower.

Worters advised business owners to keep their insurance professional informed about any changes in their business. "This includes major purchases as well as changes to your building, the nature of your operation and the number of employees. While companies can't expect to eliminate all risks, they can try to recognize what they are and take the necessary steps to reduce them."



For more, see the I.I.I.'s Business Insurance section.

Check out The I's on Insurance: (Not so Risky) Business video and our Business Pinterest Board.

RELATED LINKS

Insuring Your Business: Small Business Owners' Guide to Insurance

Infographic: Business Interruption Insurance

The I.I.I. has a full library of educational videos on its You Tube Channel. Information about I.I.I. mobile apps can be found here.

THE I.I.I. IS A NONPROFIT, COMMUNICATIONS ORGANIZATION SUPPORTED BY THE INSURANCE INDUSTRY.



Insurance Information Institute, 110 William Street, New York, NY 10038; (212) 346-5500; www.iii.org

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http://twitter.com/iiiorg

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SOURCE Insurance Information Institute

Related Links

http://www.iii.org


ASHBURN, Va., May 6, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- USA FIBER engineers, builds and operates mission critical underground conduit and dark fiber networks for clients, today announced the signing of one of the top three largest cloud services companies in the world in its newly installed conduit and dark fiber platform in Ashburn, VA. The client selected USA FIBER for the scale of inventory, quality of the construction and the engineering specifications within its secure underground conduit infrastructure.

In terms of overall power capacity, Northern Virginia, with a concentration in Ashburn, is the United States' largest data center market. With over 425 MW of commissioned critical power, this extremely mature market traces its roots to the U.S. Government's experiments in wide area fiber optic networking in 1969. Since then, the Northern Virginia area became a hub of low-latency connections to the national fiber network backbone serving Washington, DC's largest public and private enterprises. USA FIBER is one of the newest and largest infrastructure owners in the Ashburn market. Cloud services companies, like the one that just signed with USA FIBER, require a scale unprecedented in the industry, consuming multiple conduits to support the massive compute power. As an example of this scale, the compute power consumed in a full year, just four years ago, is now being consumed every month on leading cloud platforms.

"USA FIBER is a company built on a foundation laid over 58 years in the mission critical communications infrastructure industry. Providing underground conduit, maintained and managed by our experienced team in Northern Virginia to one of the three largest cloud services companies is an exciting step forward for our company, and the market. We have a strong pipeline coming from companies in enterprise, healthcare, government, content and cloud. Companies are looking to create the next generation secure and scalable network infrastructure they control," said John Schmitt, Chief Revenue Officer at USA FIBER.

The Ashburn Ring offers clients complete access to USA FIBER's 7.2 mile diverse ring and the ability to simply connect into over 30 of the key data centers, including key peering points such as Equinix. USA FIBER is connecting the Ashburn Ring to its newest project currently under construction, the Ashburn Express, a low latency cable system being built to connect Ashburn to Montgomery County, MD and on to Baltimore, MD on a new underground boring of the Potomac River, separated from the current routes that go through Washington, DC. Cloud services, government, carriers and enterprise clients will be able to reduce latency by upwards of 25% and connect to Ashburn without regens once the network is complete in late 2016.

About USA FIBER

USA FIBER is a purpose built, high capacity, dark fiber network provider. USA FIBER engineers, builds and maintains application and carrier neutral dark fiber networks designed for mission critical customers. This strategy allows clients to connect with their applications and customers, on their own terms. Founded by Ken Goff and Judd Carothers, USA FIBER has deep expertise on staff in the most stringent of dark fiber networks, encompassing over 10,000 route miles and 50 years of excellence. USA FIBER owns and operates dark fiber routes, focusing on purpose built new routes that add diversity, performance and scalability for client's coast to coast. www.USAFIBER.com @usafiber #darkfiber #datacenter #cloud #telecom #fiber @usafibersales #AshburnExpress

For Media Inquiries:

Jeremy Latimer

Vice President of Sales

Email

202-697-1429

SOURCE USA FIBER

Related Links

http://www.USAFIBER.com


SAN DIEGO, May 6, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Mast Therapeutics, Inc. (NYSE MKT: MSTX), a biopharmaceutical company developing novel, clinical-stage therapies for sickle cell disease and heart failure, today reported financial results for the first quarter ended March 31, 2016.

"The first quarter of 2016 was a productive one for Mast. Not only did we complete enrollment in our Phase 3 EPIC study of vepoloxamer in sickle cell disease, but also we announced positive data from a Phase 2a study of AIR001 in patients with heart failure with preserved ejection fraction conducted at Mayo Clinic, and the selection of AIR001 for a double-blind, placebo-controlled Phase 2 study in approximately 100 patients with HFpEF to be conducted at premier U.S. clinical centers that make up the HFN," stated Brian M. Culley, Chief Executive Officer.

"With 388 patients, the EPIC study was the largest placebo-controlled study in sickle cell disease ever concluded and should provide many insights into the activity of vepoloxamer in this indication. Importantly, vepoloxamer has the potential to become the first and only approved therapy for shortening the duration of a sickle cell vaso-occlusive crisis and we are working diligently toward generating top-line results, which we expect to announce this quarter," continued Mr. Culley. "Meanwhile, we are advancing our two heart failure programs. Our 150-patient Phase 2 study of vepoloxamer in chronic heart failure is ongoing, with ten study sites now open, and the HFN's 100-patient Phase 2 study of AIR001 in HFpEF is expected to begin in the third quarter of 2016."

First Quarter 2016 Operating Results

The Company's net loss for the first quarter of 2016 was $11.2 million, or $0.06 per share (basic and diluted), compared to a net loss of $9.6 million, or $0.06 per share (basic and diluted), for the same period in 2015.

Research and development expenses for the first quarter of 2016 were $7.9 million, an increase of $1.9 million, or 30%, compared to $6.0 million for the same period in 2015. The increase was due mainly to increases of $0.9 million in external nonclinical study fees and expenses, $0.5 million in external clinical study fees and expenses, and $0.3 million in personnel expenses.

The increase in external nonclinical study fees and expenses was due primarily to increased costs related to preparation for a new drug application for vepoloxamer ($0.5 million) and research-related manufacturing for vepoloxamer ($0.5 million), offset by a decrease in research-related manufacturing for AIR001 ($0.1 million). The increase in external clinical study fees and expenses was due primarily to increased costs related to the Phase 2 study of vepoloxamer in heart failure ($0.5 million) and the EPIC study ($0.3 million), offset by a decrease related to discontinuation of a Phase 2 study of vepoloxamer in acute limb ischemia, which the Company began to wind-down in the third quarter of 2015 ($0.3 million).

Selling, general and administrative (SG&A) expenses for the first quarter of 2016 were $2.8 million, a decrease of $0.8 million, or 21%, compared to $3.6 million for the same period in 2015. SG&A expenses for the first quarter of 2015 included $0.4 million of severance expenses and $0.3 million of share-based compensation resulting from the termination of employment of the Company's former president and chief operating officer in February 2015 and the acceleration of stock option vesting pursuant to the terms of his option agreements.

Interest expense for the first quarter of 2016 was $0.5 million, which was related to the Company's debt facility. There was no interest expense for the first quarter of 2015.

About Mast Therapeutics

Mast Therapeutics, Inc. is a publicly traded biopharmaceutical company headquartered in San Diego, California. The Company is developing two clinical-stage investigational new drugs for serious or life-threatening diseases and conditions. Vepoloxamer, the Company's lead product candidate, is in Phase 3 clinical development for the treatment of vaso-occlusive crisis in patients with sickle cell disease and in Phase 2 clinical development for the treatment of patients with heart failure. Enrollment in the Company's 388-patient Phase 3 study of vepoloxamer in patients with sickle cell disease, known as the EPIC study, was completed in February 2016. Enrollment in the Company's Phase 2 study of vepoloxamer in patients with chronic heart failure is ongoing. AIR001, the Company's second product candidate, is in Phase 2 clinical development for the treatment of patients with heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF). Enrollment in a Phase 2a study of AIR001 in patients with HFpEF is ongoing and AIR001 was recently selected by the Heart Failure Clinical Research Network for evaluation in a 100-patient, multicenter, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, Phase 2 study in patients with HFpEF. More information can be found on the Company's web site at www.masttherapeutics.com. (Twitter: @MastThera)

Mast Therapeutics and the corporate logo are trademarks of Mast Therapeutics, Inc.

Forward Looking Statements

Mast Therapeutics cautions you that statements included in this press release that are not a description of historical facts are forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 that are based on the Company's current expectations and assumptions. Such forward-looking statements may be identified by the use of forward-looking words such as "expect," "intend," "plan," "anticipate," "believe," among others, and include, but are not limited to, statements relating to prospects for successful development and commercialization of the Company's product candidates, including vepoloxamer for the treatment of vaso-occlusive crisis of sickle cell disease, and anticipated timing of achievement of development milestones, such as commencement and completion of clinical studies and announcement of study data. There are a number of factors that could cause or contribute to material differences between actual events or results and the expectations indicated by the forward-looking statements. These factors include, but are not limited to: the inherent uncertainty of outcomes in ongoing and future studies of the Company's product candidates and the risk that its product candidates may not demonstrate adequate safety, efficacy or tolerability in one or more such studies, including vepoloxamer in the Phase 3 "EPIC" study; risks associated with the Company's ability to manage operating expenses and obtain additional capital as needed; the Company's potential inability to continue as a going concern if it does not raise additional capital as needed; the risk that the Company may be required to repay its outstanding debt obligations on an accelerated basis and/or at a time that could be detrimental to its financial condition, operations and/or business strategy, including the prepayment of $10 million of the principal balance of its debt facility if results from the EPIC study are not positive; the potential for the Company to significantly delay, reduce or discontinue current and/or planned development and commercial-readiness activities or sell or license its assets at inopportune times if it is unable to raise sufficient additional capital as needed; delays in clinical study closeouts, including blinded data review and quality control and assurance procedures; the risk that, even if EPIC study results are positive, the FDA may require a second Phase 3 study or other clinical or nonclinical studies to demonstrate substantial evidence of vepoloxamer's effectiveness for sickle cell patients or to provide additional safety and tolerability data or that the FDA may require changes to manufacturing controls or processes that could delay filing of a new drug application; delays in the commencement or completion of clinical studies, including as a result of difficulties in obtaining regulatory agency agreement on clinical development plans or clinical study design, opening trial sites, enrolling study subjects, manufacturing sufficient quantities of clinical trial material, being subject to a "clinical hold," and/or suspension or termination of a clinical study, including due to patient safety concerns or lack of funding; the potential that, even if clinical studies of a product candidate in one indication are successful, clinical studies in another indication may not be successful; the Company's dependence on third parties to assist with important aspects of development of its product candidates, including conduct of its clinical studies and supply and manufacture of clinical trial material, and, if approved, commercial product, and the risk that such third parties may fail to perform as expected, leading to delays in product candidate development or approval or inability to meet market demand for approved products, if any; the risk that, even if the Company successfully develops a product candidate in one or more indications, it may not realize commercial success and may never achieve profitability; the risk that the Company is not able to obtain and maintain effective patent coverage or other market exclusivity protections for its products, if approved, without infringing the proprietary rights of others; and other risks and uncertainties more fully described in the Company's press releases and periodic filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The Company's public filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission are available at www.sec.gov.

You are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date when made. Mast Therapeutics does not intend to revise or update any forward-looking statement set forth in this press release to reflect events or circumstances arising after the date hereof, except as may be required by law.

[Tables to Follow]

Mast Therapeutics, Inc.

Condensed Consolidated Statements of Operations

(In thousands, except per share data)



Three months ended March 31, (Unaudited)

2016 2015





Total net revenue $  $ 





Operating expenses:



Research and development 7,875 6,042 Selling, general and administrative 2,835 3,578 Depreciation and amortization 32 30 Total operating expenses 10,742 9,650





Loss from operations (10,742) (9,650)





Interest income, interest expense and other income/(expense), net (465) 34





Net loss $ (11,207) $ (9,616)





Net loss per share  basic and diluted $ (0.06) $ (0.06)





Weighted average shares  basic and diluted 178,115 159,459







Mast Therapeutics, Inc.

Balance Sheet Data

(In thousands)









March 31, 2016

December 31, 2015







Cash, cash equivalents and investment securities $ 37,089

$ 40,981







Working capital 15,580

19,079







Total assets 50,145

54,217







Total liabilities 29,465

30,328







Stockholders' equity 20,680

23,889

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20120612/LA22456LOGO-a

SOURCE Mast Therapeutics, Inc.

Related Links

http://masttherapeutics.com


NEW YORK, May 5, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Claudia Ruiz Massieu, Secretary of Foreign Affairs of Mexico, will address the AJC Global Forum 2016 in Washington, D.C., on June 6.

"We are very excited and honored to host Secretary Ruiz Massieu," said AJC Chief Executive Officer David Harris. "At this pivotal moment, the U.S.-Mexico bilateral partnership is more important than ever. We look forward to welcoming the Secretary in front of more than 2,500 civic, political, and religious leaders from over 70 countries around the globe."

Secretary Ruiz Massieu will be accompanied by 50 Consuls General of Mexico serving in the U.S., as well as 30 Mexican-American leaders, all of whom will also be attending the AJC Global Forum. This path-breaking initiative follows the Mexican Foreign Ministry's invitation to AJC to present at its annual ambassadors conference in Mexico City in January 2015. At the time, the event's organizers called AJC "the model of effective advocacy."

In November, more than 150 AJC leaders, diplomats, and government officials, as well as partners from 13 Jewish communities across Latin America and Spain and representatives of the Mexican-American community, gathered in Mexico City to mark the tenth anniversary of AJC's Belfer Institute for Latino and Latin American Affairs (BILLA).

The anniversary event was highlighted by a gala dinner, which featured a keynote address by Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto. Attendees at the dinner included Secretary Ruiz Massieu, as well as the Secretaries of the Interior and Economy.

Last month, it was announced that Federica Mogherini, EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, will also address this year's AJC Global Forum.

For decades, AJC, the premier global Jewish advocacy organization, has engaged with the government of Mexico, as well as with Mexican leaders in the U.S., to discuss deepening ties among Mexico, the U.S., Israel, and the Mexican-American and Jewish communities. BILLA is chaired by Tom Kahn and directed by Dina Siegel Vann, who is originally from Mexico.

SOURCE American Jewish Committee

Related Links

http://www.ajc.org


WASHINGTON, May 6, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- NASA and its International Space Station partners have announced the crew members for missions to the orbiting laboratory in 2017. The selection includes first-time space flyer NASA astronaut Scott Tingle and veteran Randy Bresnik.

"There's so much going on aboard the space station at this point, so many science experiments and technology demonstrations," said Chris Cassidy, chief of the Astronaut Office at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. "Scott and Randy have their work cut out for them, but I have no doubt they'll do excellent jobs."

Tingle is a member of NASA's 2009 astronaut class and will fly with cosmonauts Ivan Vagner, who is also a first-time flier, and veteran Alexander Skvortsov, both of the Russian space agency Roscosmos. They will launch in September 2017. The three will join the station's Expedition 53 crew of NASA astronaut Jack Fischer, ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Paolo Nespoli and Roscosmos cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin.

Tingle, a captain in the U.S. Navy, was born in Attleboro, Massachusetts, but considers Randolph, Massachusetts, his home. He was commissioned as a naval officer in 1991 and earned the gold wings of a naval aviator in 1993. He has accumulated more than 4,000 hours in 48 types of aircraft, 700 carrier landings and 54 combat missions.

Tingle earned a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from Southern Massachusetts University in Dartmouth in 1987, and a master's degree in mechanical engineering, with a specialty in fluid mechanics and propulsion, from Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, in 1988. He also is a 1998 graduate of the Navy Test Pilot School.

Bresnik's mission will begin in November 2017, when he and his crewmates Sergey Ryazansky of Roscosmos and Norishige Kanai of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) will join Tingle, Skvortsov and Vagner on the station for Expedition 54.

Bresnik, who considers Santa Monica, California, to be his hometown, is a retired colonel in the U.S. Marine Corps. Bresnik received his commission in May 1989 and was designated a Marine Corps aviator in 1992. He flew the F/A-18 Hornet in support of Operation Southern Watch and Operation Iraqi Freedom. He has accumulated more than 6,000 hours in 81 types of aircraft.

Bresnik was selected as an astronaut in May 2004. His first spaceflight was in November 2009 aboard space shuttle Atlantis for STS-129, which lasted 11 days. The flight was the 31st shuttle flight to the space station, during which Bresnik conducted two spacewalks totaling 11 hours and 50 minutes.

Bresnik graduated from The Citadel in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1989 with a bachelor's degree in mathematics, and earned a master's degree in aviation systems from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, in 2002. He is also a 2008 graduate of the U.S. Air Force Air War College.

The crew comprising Expedition 53 will be:

Jack Fischer , NASA

, NASA Paolo Nespoli , ESA

, ESA Fyodor Yurchikin, Roscosmos

Scott Tingle , NASA

, NASA Alexander Skvortsov , Roscosmos

, Roscosmos Ivan Vagner , Roscosmos

The crew comprising Expedition 54 will be:

Scott Tingle , NASA

, NASA Alexander Skvortsov , Roscosmos

, Roscosmos Ivan Vagner , Roscosmos

, Roscosmos Randy Bresnik , NASA

, NASA Sergey Ryazansky , Roscosmos

, Roscosmos Norishige Kanai, JAXA

The space station is a convergence of science, technology and human innovation that enables us to demonstrate new technologies and make research breakthroughs not possible on Earth. It has been continuously occupied since November 2000 and, since then, has been visited by more than 200 people and a variety of international and commercial spacecraft. The space station remains the springboard to NASA's next giant leap in exploration, including future missions to an asteroid and Mars.

Follow Scott Tingle on Twitter at:

http://www.twitter.com/Astro_Maker

Randy Bresnik will post updates on social media using #AstroKomrade at:

http://twitter.com/space_station

and

http://www.instagram.com/iss/

For Twitter updates from all NASA astronauts, follow:

http://www.twitter.com/NASA_Astronauts

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO

SOURCE NASA

Related Links

http://www.nasa.gov


TAMPA, Fla., May 6, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Nicopure Labs LLC, the leading manufacturer of American- made e-liquids, responds to the FDA publishing its Deeming Rule, regulating vaping products under the Tobacco Control Act.

"Today is a historic day for the vaping industry that will no doubt cost some adult Americans the freedom of choice, the choice between deadly cigarettes and alternative ways they receive their nicotine through advancements in technology and innovation," said Jeff Stamler, CEO and co-founder of Nicopure Labs. "Unfortunately the FDA continues to seek a one-size-fits all approach to tobacco product regulation and failed to live by the administration's own Mission Statement, as the FDA chose not to provide the public with science-based information while advancing public health and encouraging innovation, but instead published a rule that essentially chokes off the ability to innovate within the vaping industry."

Nicopure Labs has been expecting this regulation and is familiar with its requirements. As a result, the company remains committed to compliance with any applicable laws and regulations and continues to be committed to responsible manufacturing based on superior product standards, and stringent quality control guidelines.

"We are fully supportive of science-based and reasonable regulation of the vaping industry, and will continue taking steps in advancing the conversation," said Jason Del Giudice, CTO and co-founder of Nicopure Labs. "As a premium e-liquid manufacturer, we have prepared for the Deeming Rule and put a strong emphasis on good manufacturing practices."

"This is a day that will transform an industry that is filled with believers who trust the product because of their own first hand experiences, experiences that they've also seen through the eyes of their friends and loved ones who were freed from the grasp of cigarettes, and not experiences that they're manipulated into adopting through the clever marketing tactics that have been used against them for years by the tobacco companies. The same tobacco companies that they've tried so hard to break free from, and in one single day are now reunited with as a lasting result of the FDA's Deeming Rule," said Stamler.

About Nicopure Labs, LLC

Operating since 2009, Tampa-based Nicopure Labs, LLC is a leading e-liquid and vaporizer device manufacturer with operations in the U.S. and Europe. Nicopure Labs has recently upgraded its 100,000 sq. ft. manufacturing and distribution operations in Gainesville, Florida. Distributing to over 90 countries worldwide, Nicopure Labs has also expanded its presence with the recent addition of a European headquarters in the Netherlands and offices in England.

For more information about Nicopure Labs and their premium American-made e-liquids, or their innovative line of devices, please visit www.nicopure.com for company information or www.halocigs.com for distributor or reseller information.

This press release was issued through 24-7PressRelease.com. For further information, visit http://www.24-7pressrelease.com.

SOURCE Nicopure Labs, LLC

Related Links

https://www.nicopure.com


NEW YORK, May 6, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Nurses, elected officials, and patient advocacy groups from across New York joined forces today to celebrate National Nurses Day by participating in a 'Day of Action' to Protect Patients, holding six regional rallies calling for the passage of the Safe Staffing for Quality Care Act.

The regional rallies were held in Brooklyn, the Bronx, Westchester, Buffalo, Long Island and Schenectady.

The Safe Staffing for Quality Care Act (S.782/A.8580-A) is a bipartisan bill in the State Legislature with wide support that calls on hospitals to maintain a responsible number of nurses to patients  ensuring better care and saving lives.

As many nurses can tell you, New York is facing a staffing crisis. Hospital administrators pushing both nurses and patients to the limit. In some cases, New York nurses are being forced to handle more than a dozen patients at one time. When that happens, patients suffer. Studies show, the risk of patient death increases by seven percent for each new patient a nurse must care for.

No law currently exists to place a limit to how many patients a nurse can care for at one time.

This is a crisis that can be easily solved. Hospitals need to have enough staff to give patients the care they need and deserve.

Support for the Safe Staffing for Quality Care Act is quickly growing. The legislation currently has 97 sponsors in the New York State Assembly and 28 sponsors in the New York State Senate.

"As the only registered nurse in the Assembly, the issue of safe staffing is personal to me. I hear from fellow nurses every day about how important this legislation is to them, and the difference it would make in their lives. Safe staffing improves patient outcomes, reduces nurse injuries, and saves hospitals money," said Assemblymember Aileen Gunther (D-Forestburgh).

"Safe nurse staffing reduces avoidable patient injuries and deaths," said Assembly Health Committee Chair Richard N. Gottfried (D-Manhattan). "The ratios and hours specified in this bill are based on peer-reviewed and evidence-based recommendations, and will ensure that hospitals and nursing homes operate in a manner that guarantees public safety and quality health care services."

"The biggest crisis in New York patient care today is the staffing imbalance between nurses and patients. We need safer nurse-to-patient ratios in our healthcare facilities. I urge our state leaders to ensure passage of legislation to accomplish this vital and necessary change. The Safe Staffing for Quality Care Act will improve conditions in our hospitals for nurses and will save lives," said Assistant Assembly Speaker Felix W. Ortiz (D-Kings).

Assemblymember Joseph R. Lentol, Chair of the Committee on Codes (D-North Brooklyn) said, "We have to protect patients at their most vulnerable times. The first most basic way of doing that is to ensure proper staffing numbers that provide care in our healthcare institutions. I support safe staffing as a way to improve the delivery of health care in Brooklyn and all of New York State."

Senator John J. Bonacic (R-Orange County) stated, "Nurses provide critical lifesaving care every day, and I am proud to have always supported their issues. I am also proud to co-sponsor the Safe Staffing for Quality Care Act, legislation that would set safe staffing ratios for nurses, and thereby allow them to continue delivering quality care to patients."

"As the son of a nurse, I know full well that safety must always be paramount," said Senator Phil Boyle (R-Suffolk County). "That is why I am privileged to co-sponsor the Safe Staffing for Quality Care Act for the benefit of all nurses in New York and their patients."

Senator David Carlucci (D-Rockland/Westchester) said, "To ensure the highest quality of care for patients, it is important we make sure our nurses and hospital staff are not overworked. By keeping the ratio of nurses to patients at a safe level, our dedicated nurses will continue to save lives."

Assemblymember Patricia Fahy (D-Albany) stated, "Nurses are most valued and needed at the most vulnerable times in our lives, and sufficient, safe staffing is critical to good care. The Safe Staffing legislation will help ensure this, as well as shorter and less costly hospital stays because patients will receive better and more attentive care."

"Adequate staffing is essential to providing quality care to patients," stated Senator Todd Kaminsky (D-Long Beach). "I'm proud to be a co-sponsor of the Safe Staffing for Quality Care Act because New Yorkers deserve a law that establishes a limit on the number of patients a nurse can be assigned, and nurses deserve the assurance of knowing that they have the capacity to provide quality care."

"As a trained occupational therapist, I have seen first-hand the importance of safe staffing levels in our hospitals and other health facilities," said Senator Tim Kennedy (D-Buffalo). "Safe staffing will further improve patient care, while providing nurses and other health care workers with the support they need to perform their physically-demanding duties. I'm proud to support this legislation, and I urge my colleagues in the State Legislature to join me in protecting patients and nurses."

"I stand with advocates and nurses across New York State in our fight for passage of the Safe Staffing for Quality Care Act. This specific piece of legislation is crucial for the effective and efficient delivery of quality healthcare that our medical institutions provide. Equally important, the Safe Staffing Act ensures that our nurses are responsible for an appropriate number of patients, which in turn will allow them to receive the proper attention and care during their hospital visit. I stand eager to work with my colleagues in the State Legislature to pass this measure and get it to the Governor's desk before the end of session," said Senator Kevin Parker (D-Brooklyn).

"The Safe Staffing for Quality Care Act is a smart and effective piece of legislation, and it should be passed and signed into law during this year's legislative session. This bill will lead to lower injury rates, more effective nursing care, and better hospital outcomes. If we are going to improve the quality of care at hospitals across New York State, we need to pass the Safe Staffing Bill into law immediately," said Assemblymember Sean M. Ryan (D-Buffalo).

"When our family, friends and neighbors are in need of care, it's the nurses who have always been there to comfort them, ensure a safe recovery, and help them return home. Nurses are such a vital part of our healthcare system, and they deserve our respect and gratitude for the amazing work they do. We must do everything thing we can to keep our nurses doing what they do best, and that's providing the best care possible in our communities. I'm proud to be a strong sponsor of the Safe Staffing for Quality Care Act that ensures those who care for our loved ones do not have to shoulder the weight of providing care alone. Our nurses have one of the hardest jobs out there, and they have my admiration for doing the job with strength and reliance each and every day. They are there for us, now we need to be there for them. It's time to pass this legislation and show them just how grateful we are for their continued service to our communities," stated Assemblymember Angelo Santabarbara (D-Rotterdam).

"Our dedicated nurses provide outstanding compassionate care to thousands of New Yorkers each and every day and deserve to work in a safe environment that protects their safety and that of patients. The Safe Staffing for Quality Care Act, which would help enhance that goal of patient and staff safety, currently has 97 sponsors in the Assembly where only 76 votes is required to pass a bill. It's time the Speaker and Majority bring this important legislation to help save lives to the Floor for a debate and a vote," said Assemblymember Jim Tedisco (R-Glenville), who is a co-sponsor of the measure.

Mario Cilento, President, New York State AFL-CIO stated, "As we pause to honor nurses on this National Nurses Day, it is fitting that we also call attention to a bill that would help nurses provide quality care to their patients. The Safe Staffing for Quality Care Act would establish safe and equitable standards for all patients ensuring they get the care they require and deserve. It is time we put patients first in New York State and properly staff our hospitals with nurses dedicated to saving lives while also improving patient outcomes."

"We represent 40,000 Registered Nurses across New York State. Every day, our members feel the consequences of unsafe staffing standards in our hospitals," said Jill Furillo, Executive Director, New York State Nurses Association. "When hospital administrators force nurse to take on a dozen or more patients at once, the level of care suffers  that personal touch disappears. That's why this Nurses Week, we are fighting to pass the Safe Staffing for Quality Care Act. This law will mean better outcomes and better care for patients, which is a nurse's number one goal every day."

"In study after study, unsafe staffing levels lead to worse health outcomes, including for shock, cardiac arrest, and hospital-acquired pneumonia," said Dr. Hemant Sindhu, President of the Committee of Interns and Residents/SEIU Healthcare. "We know that the high-performing, safe, and just healthcare system of the future cannot be created unless we empower our frontline providers of care, and give them what they need to get the job done. CIR doctors are proud to stand with nurses on behalf of all of our patients."

"For more than a decade, PEF has raised the red flag about safe staffing levels in all medical facilities," said Wayne Spence, president of the New York State Public Employees Federation. "Adequate nurse staffing is key to patient care and nurse retention. Staffing problems will only intensify as baby boomers age and the need for healthcare grows, making safe-staffing ratios an ever pressing concern. All the studies have shown a correlation between inadequate nurse staffing and poor patient outcomes. It is time New York takes the initiative, as did California, to pass legislation for adequate nurse-to-patient ratio regulations."

"Healthcare workers know that unsafe staffing harms patients and costs hospitals and nursing homes money but their best efforts to make change facility by facility have been rebuffed. Laws that require facilities to disclose how they staff each shift are wholly ignored, leaving patients to make life and death decisions in the dark. We need a law to protect workers and patients because what's at stake transcends bargaining tables and boardrooms. Not one more call light should go unanswered, or life should be lost, because a nurse has two to three times more patients than she can safely care for," said Debora Hayes, Healthcare Director, CWA District One.

Maria Alvarez, Executive Director, NY StateWide Senior Action Council stated, "Older New Yorkers are particularly affected by unsafe staffing in hospitals and nursing homes. Seniors routinely experience long term effects from preventable infections, falls, and bed sores. As a consequence, many are never able to recover. The state must establish minimum safe nurse-to-patient ratios in all hospitals and nursing homes to protect patients from poor outcomes and to give them the assurance that their call lights will be responded to in a timely manner when they need help."

"Hospitals and nursing homes are chronically understaffed across New York state, leading to increased health problems and deaths. We need to make sure patients receive the quality care they deserve and nurses aren't overburdened by unreasonable workloads so that we reduce avoidable patient deaths and injuries. Passing the Safe Staffing for Quality Care Act must be a priority for Albany this session," stated Bill Lipton, NY State Director, Working Families Party.

Municipalities across New York have also been passing local resolutions calling for the bill's passage. A total of 20 municipalities have passed resolutions to date, with three approved in the last 48 hours. The most recent vote was in the City of Utica last night. The municipalities include:

The City of Buffalo

City of Tonawanda

Town of Tonawanda

Town of West Seneca

Town of North Collins

Town of Lancaster

Village of Kenmore

Ulster County

Albany County

Town of Cheektowaga

Town of Amherst

Town of Hamburg

Town of Niskayuna

Schenectady County

Kingston City Council

Erie County

Rockland County

City of Utica

Town of Lloyd

Town of New Paltz

In a November 2015 Mellman Group poll of 1,000 New Yorkers, a staggering 85% said they support a maximum number of patients a nurse can care for at one time. 67% of those polled believe there are not enough nurses in New York hospitals.

The NYS Campaign for Patient Safety is a coalition of consumer, labor, patient advocacy and community organizations committed to fighting for the highest quality patient care for New York's hospital and nursing home patients. We believe one of the most critical aspects of ensuring quality patient care is implementing minimum standards for how many patients a single nurse can treat at one time. That's why we are supporting the Safe Staffing for Quality Care Act. To learn more, please check out our website: www.campaignforpatientsafety.org

SOURCE New York Campaign for Patient Safety
SAN DIEGO, May 6, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Kidney stones are one of the most common problems of the urinary tract, resulting in more than 300,000 emergency room visits each year. It is estimated that 8.8 percent or roughly one in 11 Americans will have a kidney stone at some point in their life, and that number is expected to increase as a result of climate change, combined with other major risk factors. Three studies highlighting the projected impact of climate, demographics, follow up care and the use of statins on kidney stones will be presented at the 111th Annual Meeting of the American Urological Association (AUA) on Friday, May 6 at 11:00 a.m. at the San Diego Convention Center in San Diego, CA.

The press session will be moderated by Tim Averch, MD, AUA spokesperson, director of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine (UPMC) Kidney Stone Center and UPMC professor of urology.

Study Details

Publication Number: PD47-10

Follow-Up Care After ED Visits for Kidney StonesA Missed Opportunity: Examining MarketScan's Commercial Claims and Encounters Database 2003-2006, researchers from University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, MI, sought to investigate whether patients followed the recommended follow-up care after being discharged from the emergency department for kidney stones. Researchers identified adults, ages 18 to 64 with an emergency department visit for kidney stones, then determined which patients had follow-up care within 90 days of the emergency visit. Researchers compared the patients with follow-up care to those without follow-up care over a variety of sociodemographic characteristics. The study found a substantial portion of individuals did not seek follow-up care for kidney stones once they were discharged from the emergency room.

Further results showed:

Of the 70,294 identified patients who visited the emergency room for a kidney stone, only 53 percent sought follow-up care within 90 days; however, 66 percent of those who did seek follow-up care were seen by a urologist

Those who did not seek follow-up care were more likely to be younger in age, have non-salaried employment and live in a rural area

Follow-up care was associated with 36 percent higher odds of receiving secondary prevention, which included pharmacological therapy

Study Details

Publication Number: PD31-12

Statin Intake Reduces Kidney Stone Formation: Obesity, high cholesterol and high triglycerides are pro-inflammatory states that may increase an individual's risk for developing kidney stones. Statins, on the other hand, hold anti-inflammatory properties that may reduce the risk of stone formation; however, little research on this notion is documented. As a result, scientists from the state of Illinois sought to investigate the impact of statins on kidney stone formation. Analyzing data on more than 101,250 patients who were diagnosed with hyperlipidemia and then prescribed a statin and/or developed a new kidney stone, researchers concluded those who took a statin were less likely (3.8 percent) to develop new stones compared to non-statin users (4.7 percent), suggesting a potential protective effect.

Study Details

Publication Number: MP46-01

A Novel Predictive Model for Evaluating the Impact of Climate Change and Other Risk Factors on Nephrolithiasis in the U.S.: Over the next 35 years, projected changes in climate, demographics and obesity levels, are expected to have an increased impact on the prevalence of kidney stones and health care expenditure, according to researchers from Winston-Salem, NC. Although individual studies quantifying the impact each of these risk factors has had on stone disease, have been generated, a single study predicting their combined impact on the future of stone disease, has not.

Therefore, based on data pertaining to obesity, age, race, gender and mean annual regional temperature, a model accounting for nonlinear relationships was developed. Linear adjustments were added to account for each percent increase in the overweight and obese population, as well as each degree Fahrenheit in mean annual temperature. This model was applied to projected population, racial distribution, age and temperature changes (US Census, PEW Research Group and Environmental Protection Agency data), as well as, prevalence of obesity (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) in order to estimate how kidney stone prevalence will change over the next 35 years.

Results showed:

Over the next 35 years, the kidney stone rate will increase from 8.8 percent to 10.6 percent, driven primarily by an increasingly obese population

When combined with the expected population increase, this increased rate represents nearly twice the current stone disease burden rate and more than $4 billion in healthcare expenditures.

"The data from these studies show how important it is for patients to learn more about the risk factors for stone disease and how to prevent reoccurring kidney stones," said Dr. Averch. "Climate, obesity and age are predicted to impact stone rates in the coming years, which is why preventative measures such as lowering cholesterol and simple follow-up care are important to mitigating future stone development while providing patients with more comprehensive care."

NOTE TO REPORTERS: Experts are available to discuss this study outside normal briefing times. To arrange an interview with an expert, please contact the AUA Communications Office at 410-689-3932 or e-mail [email protected].

About the American Urological Association: The 111th Annual Meeting of the American Urological Association takes place May 6  10 at the San Diego Convention Center in San Diego, CA.



Founded in 1902 and headquartered near Baltimore, Maryland, the American Urological Association is a leading advocate for the specialty of urology, and has more than 21,000 members throughout the world. The AUA is a premier urologic association, providing invaluable support to the urologic community as it pursues its mission of fostering the highest standards of urologic care through education, research and the formulation of health policy.

Contact:

Christine Frey, AUA

443-909-0839, [email protected]

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160210/332064LOGO

SOURCE American Urological Association

Related Links

http://www.AUAnet.org


NEW YORK, May 6, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Leading Australian investment manager, QIC today announced it has signed an agreement(s) to acquire an 80 per cent interest in the North Australian Pastoral Company (NAP).

NAP is one of Australia's oldest and largest agricultural enterprises covering 5.8 million hectares across Queensland and the Northern Territory and approximately 178,000 head of cattle.

At the conclusion of the transaction, NAP's largest shareholder, the Foster family will retain an interest in NAP of approximately 20 per cent. Funds advised by QIC including Australian superannuation capital and the UK-based Pension Protection Fund (PPF) will hold approximately 80 per cent having acquired the remainder of the Foster family's holding and the 34 per cent of NAP currently owned by UK-listed MP Evans.

An offer will be made to other minority shareholders to acquire their shares as part of the transaction, and offer them the opportunity, should they wish, to retain an interest in NAP.

NAP is a vertically integrated beef business with a herd managed across 13 well-located properties in Queensland and the Northern Territory as well as the Wainui feedlot on the Darling Downs.

It is an industry leader in advanced composite breeding programs and has developed two of its own highly regarded composite breeds.

Commenting on the transaction, Damien Frawley, QIC's CEO said: "QIC is very proud to lead this investment in Australian agriculture and to be investing Australian superannuation assets into our beef industry. This landmark deal was made possible by our unique government heritage, and it captures the benefit of our networks of institutional investors and connections to Asian corporate relationships. It's a natural evolution for our 25 year-old investment platform."

Marcus Simpson, head of QIC's NAP transaction team, said, "We believe the Australian food sector is entering a period of exciting development.

Australia enjoys an enviable reputation for producing clean, healthy food. QIC has a track record of making long-term investments in companies and their people. Our vision for NAP is to see it prosper by capitalising on strong beef demand driven by growth in Asia which is expected to account for 47 per cent of global beef demand by 2024."

Mr Simpson said QIC was delighted the Foster family would retain a 20 per cent shareholding in NAP.

A Foster family representative said: "This is an excellent outcome for the Company. QIC is a logical owner of NAP bringing with it exciting prospects for the future growth of the business. We feel assured that NAP has a bright future, as evidenced by the family's ongoing investment."

Executive Chair of NAP Nigel Alexander said: "The Foster family and NAP's management have built an outstanding beef enterprise over many generations, and are justifiably proud of what has been achieved. Under QIC's stewardship NAP is entering an exciting new phase of its development. I'm very confident QIC has the vision and expertise to build the company into the future."

Consistent with his long term intentions, Mr Alexander today also announced his intention to step down from his role after 20 years with NAP, but has agreed to remain in the role until a successor commences.

QIC's representative on the NAP Board Phil Cummins thanked Mr Alexander for his ongoing contribution to NAP and Australian agriculture and said the company had a strong legacy to build on.

Mr Cummins said: "NAP has exceptional properties, cattle and management and we believe cattle men and women are the best people to run cattle properties. QIC also has significant business development skills to bring to the table. Together we will be a great team. NAP is already one of Australia's leading cattle businesses and with an ongoing commitment to operational excellence, we believe NAP has the potential to become a significant regional food champion."

"We are also strongly committed to NAP's high standards of workplace health and safety, animal welfare and sustainable land management practices," he said.

QIC were advised by Deloitte Corporate (lead financial adviser), PricewaterhouseCoopers (accounting and tax) and McCullough Robertson (legal).

EDITORS NOTES

About North Australian Pastoral Company (NAP)

NAP is a leader in Australia's cattle industry and one of Australia's largest beef producers, with a herd of approximately 178,000 cattle. NAP operates thirteen cattle stations across Queensland and the Northern Territory, as well as the Wainui Feedlot on the Darling Downs.

About QIC

QIC is a global diversified alternative investment firm offering infrastructure, real estate, private equity, liquid strategies and multi-asset investments. It is one of the largest institutional investment managers in Australia, with US$60.4 billion (42.0 billion)1 in funds under management, offering infrastructure, real estate, private equity, liquid strategies and multi-asset investment services. QIC has over 500 employees and serves more than 90 clients including governments, pension plans, sovereign wealth funds and insurers, spanning Australia, Europe, Asia, Middle East and the US. Headquartered in Brisbane, Australia, QIC also has offices in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, London, Sydney, and Melbourne. For more information, please visit: www.qic.com.

QIC Limited ACN 130 539 123 ("QIC") is a wholesale funds manager and its products and services are not directly available to retail investors. QIC is a company government owned corporation constituted under the Queensland Investment Corporation Act 1991 (Qld). QIC is regulated by Australian State Government legislation pertaining to government owned corporations in addition to the Corporations Act 2001 (Cth) ("Corporations Act"). QIC does not hold an Australian financial services ("AFS") licence and certain provisions (including the financial product disclosure provisions) of the Corporations Act do not apply to QIC. Some wholly owned subsidiaries of QIC, including QIC Private Capital Pty Ltd, QIC Investments No 1 Pty Ltd and QIC Infrastructure Management No 2 Pty Ltd, have been issued with an AFS licence and are required to comply with the Corporations Act. QIC also has wholly owned subsidiaries authorised, registered or licensed by the United Kingdom Financial Conduct Authority ("FCA"), the United States Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC") and the Korean Financial Services Commission.

This document is for the use of intended recipients only who receive it directly and it may not be reproduced, distributed or published in whole or in part in any way whatsoever for any purpose without prior written consent of QIC.

To the extent permitted by law, QIC, its subsidiaries, associated entities, their directors, employees and representatives (the "QIC Parties") disclaim all responsibility and liability for any loss or damage of any nature whatsoever which may be suffered by any person directly or indirectly through relying on the information contained in this document, whether that loss or damage is caused by any fault or negligence of the QIC Parties or otherwise.

Copyright QIC Limited, Australia 2016. All rights are reserved. Do not copy, disseminate or use, except in accordance with the prior written consent of QIC.



1 As of 31 March 2016

SOURCE QIC

Related Links

http://www.qic.com


TORONTO, May 6, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- As the blockchain revolution marks the dawn of the Digital Age 2.0 and ushers in dramatic changes in the company-customer relationship, these transformational shifts will rewrite the role of the IT organization for enabling the enterprise to create new waves of value. The future role of the CIO in reshaping the business will be a key area of focus at the 2016 Toronto CIO Executive Leadership Summit to be held on June 7, 2016 at the Four Seasons Toronto, produced by HMG Strategy, LLC.

"Blockchain is top of mind in the financial services industry, but it also has broad implications for healthcare, media, and other sectors," said Hunter Muller, HMG Strategy's President and CEO. "The CIO can play a critical role in remodeling the business and leading the enterprise into the digital future."

The Toronto summit will begin with a stimulating keynote presentation given by Don Tapscott, the world's leading authority on the digital age. Tapscott will discuss how blockchain technology will transform financial services, government, music, and other industries while holding profound implications for IT strategy, architecture, and leadership. The afternoon will include a compelling Executive Interview of Rob McEwen, Chairman and Chief Owner of McEwen Mining Inc. and Founder, former Chairman and CEO of Goldcorp Inc.

Other salient topics at the Toronto conference will include the dynamic mindset needed by the CIO to lead with courage and drive innovation; the required components for strategic leadership in a world of accelerated change; digital interviews with Silicon Valley thought leaders who will share insights about emerging technologies CIOs should be cognizant of; future trends that will impact the enterprise; and the future role of the digital technology executive.

Distinguished speakers participating at the Toronto summit will include Scott Bohannon, CEO, Info-Tech Research Group; Brian Chan, VP, Information Technology, Corporate Services Group, Avnet; Roman Coba, CIO, Emera; Susan Doniz, Executive Director, DIACC; Matt Dussling, AVP, Capriza; Roger Favero, SVP IT, OMERS; Raymond Gilbert, Managing Partner, Causal Effects, Inc.; Steve Heck, Global IT Director, Microsoft Canada; Naveen Kumar, VP, Consulting Services, Info-Tech Research Group; Jonathan Landon, Global IT  CTO, Kimberly-Clark Corporation; Maurizio Laudisa, CIO, Superior Propane; John Mealia, Senior Client Partner, Korn Ferry; Hunter Muller, President & CEO, HMG Strategy, LLC; Lisa Porlier, Managing Director, Technology Sector Leader, Russell Reynolds Associates; Dave Revell, SVP & CIO, Retail & Business Banking, CIBC; Alex Tapscott, CEO and Founder, Northwest Passage Ventures; Bob Tapscott, Management Consultant, The Tapscott Group; Don Tapscott, Digital Strategist and CEO, The Tapscott Group; and Jonathan Ward, President, Ward Technology Talent.

Strategic partners for the summit will include Capriza, Info-Tech Research Group, DHR, Egon Zehnder, Heidrick & Struggles, and Korn Ferry.

About HMG Strategy



HMG Strategy is the world's foremost provider of pioneering networking events and thought leadership to support the 360-degree needs of the CIO/IT leader. Our regional CIO Executive Leadership Series, newsletters, authored books, and Research and Resource Center (RRC) deliver proprietary research on leadership, innovation, transformation, and career ascent. The HMG Strategy global network of over 110,000 senior IT executives, industry experts and world-class thought leaders is the strongest, most trusted network of executives. Additionally, our partnerships with the world's leading search firms provide vital insights into the evolving role of the CIO.

The HMG Strategy CIO Executive Leadership Series offers a completely unique experience for IT executives to gain the latest insights and best practices for driving increased business value through the use of IT, and build invaluable relationships with peers and industry experts. HMG Strategy CIO Executive Leadership Summits were given the distinction by CIO.com as one of "Ten Must-Attend Conferences in 2015." HMG Strategy has a growing expanse of thought leadership housed on their open digital platform known as the 'Research & Resource Center.' The company's 'Transformational CIO Blog' was recently recognized by CDW's BizTech Magazine as one of "50 Must-Read IT Blogs 2015."

For more information please visit our website at www.hmgstrategy.com.

SOURCE HMG Strategy

Related Links

http://www.hmgstrategy.com


DUBLIN, May 6, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Research and Markets has announced the addition of the "3D Printing Materials Market by Type (Plastics, Metals, Ceramics, and Others), Form (Filament, Powder and Liquid), Application, and by Region - Global Forecasts to 2021" report to their offering.

The global 3D printing materials market is projected to grow from USD 530.1 Million in 2016 to USD 1,409.5 Million by 2021, at a CAGR of 21.60% during the same period. The high growth of the market is due to the adoption of 3D printing technology in the U.S., Germany, and developing countries such as South Korea, Brazil, and China. The growing aerospace & defense, medical & dental, and automotive industries in these countries are driving the 3D printing materials market.

The major applications of 3D printing materials are aerospace & defense, medical & dental, automotive, and consumer goods. Other applications include fashion, electronics, art & sculpture, jewelry, food, and architecture. Aerospace & defense is estimated to be the fastest-growing application of the 3D printing materials market during the forecast period. Titanium-based 3D printing materials offer high strength and stiffness, resulting in greater demand in the medical and aerospace & defense applications.

The 3D printing technology has a wide range of applications in the consumer goods industry that is expected to drive the 3D printing materials market. In the 3D printing industry, mass customization is one of the latest developments that enable the designing of materials made by using either plastics or metals for various applications. Jewelers, watchmakers, and gadget manufacturers generally operate in regions where the technology is used extensively.

Since the evolution of 3D printing technology, new 3D printing materials are continuously added. With the growing technology and demand, the availability of materials in different forms from various suppliers is increasing rapidly. Powder is the major form used in the 3D printing technology that accounts for the largest share of the 3D printing materials market.

Companies Mentioned:

Arcam AB

Arkema S.A.

CRP Group

EOS GmbH Electro Optical Systems

Envisiontec GmbH

Exone GmbH

LPW Technology Ltd.

Royal DSM N.V.

Stratasys Ltd.

Report Structure:

1 Introduction

2 Research Methodology

3 Executive Summary

4 Premium Insights

5 Market Overview

6 Industry Trends

7 3D Printing Materials Market, By Type

8 3D Printing Materials Market, By Form

9 3D Printing Materials Market, By Application

10 Regional Analysis

11 Competitive Landscape

12 Company Profiles

13 Appendix

For more information visit

http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/dg39pl/3d_printing

Media Contact:

Research and Markets

Laura Wood, Senior Manager

[email protected]

For E.S.T Office Hours Call +1-917-300-0470

For U.S./CAN Toll Free Call +1-800-526-8630

For GMT Office Hours Call +353-1-416-8900

U.S. Fax: 646-607-1907

Fax (outside U.S.): +353-1-481-1716

SOURCE Research and Markets

Related Links

http://www.researchandmarkets.com


DUBLIN, May 6, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

A federal judge in San Francisco has ruled against a motion by Facebook to dismiss claims that the company unlawfully collected and stored users' biometric data. The dispute is over Facebook's photo-tagging system, which automatically matches names to faces on photos uploaded to the social media website. The three Illinois residents say Facebook violated their privacy by not asking for permission to use their faces as biometric identifiers.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160330/349511LOGO )



The usage of social media among employees and customers for various purposes such as shopping, image search, and data sharing has increased the focus of organizations toward image recognition technology usage in social media. The image recognition market is projected to be worth $29.98 billion by 2020. Facebook launched its photo-tagging tool in 2010, and argued that it is disclosed in its terms and conditions that users can opt out at any time.

The Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act of 2008 requires companies to get consent from consumers before collecting or storing biometric data. Facebook argued that its user agreement stipulates that disputes must be resolved under the laws of California, where it's based. California happens to be one of the 47 states without laws regulating biometrics or facial recognition. However, the judge rejected that argument.

Earlier in 2016, Google's photo-tagging system was the subject of a lawsuit under Illinois law. These cases could have a negative impact on the growing facial recognition and biometric markets. Enterprises have been implementing multimodal biometrics in a number of sectors, such as healthcare, BFSI, transportation, automotive and government.

For further information on this topic, and a full list of all related documentation, please visit the Biometrics section at http://www.researchandmarkets.com/rm/OKJP.

About Research and Markets

Research and Markets is the world's leading source for international market research reports and market data. We provide you with the latest data on international and regional markets, key industries, the top companies, new products and the latest trends.

Source: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-05-05/facebook-must-face-privacy-claims-over-biometric-photo-database



Contact:

Research and Markets

Laura Wood, Senior Manager

[email protected]



For E.S.T Office Hours Call 1-917-300-0470

For U.S./CAN Toll Free Call 1-800-526-8630

For GMT Office Hours Call +353-1-416-8900



U.S. Fax: 646-607-1907



SOURCE Research and Markets
VANCOUVER, May 6, 2016 /PRNewswire/ - Ritchie Bros. Auctioneers Incorporated (NYSE and TSX: RBA), the world's largest industrial auctioneer, has published its April 2016 auction metrics on the company's website. This information can be accessed at the following link:

https://investor.ritchiebros.com/historical-auction-metrics

Monthly auction metrics should not be considered indicative of quarterly, annual or future performance. Auction metrics and corporate performance vary considerably month-to-month, due to the number of auctions held each month and seasonal factors. Ritchie Bros.' actual results could differ materially from those implied by this monthly auction disclosure. Investors are encouraged to review Ritchie Bros.' performance on a 12-month rolling or annual basis before making investing decisions.

About Ritchie Bros.

Established in 1958, Ritchie Bros. (NYSE and TSX: RBA) is the world's largest seller of used equipment for the construction, transportation, agriculture, material handling, energy, mining, forestry, marine and other industries. Ritchie Bros. TM solutions make it easy for the world's builders to buy and sell equipment with confidence, including live unreserved public auctions with on-site and online bidding (rbauction.com), the EquipmentOneTM secure online marketplace (EquipmentOne.com), a professional corporate asset management program, and a range of value-added services, including equipment financing for customers through Ritchie Bros. Financial Services (rbauctionfinance.com). Ritchie Bros. has operations in more than 19 countries, including 44 auction sites worldwide. Learn more at RitchieBros.com.

SOURCE Ritchie Bros. Auctioneers

Related Links

http://www.rbauction.com


WASHINGTON, May 5, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- 6th Dada Saheb Phalke Film Festival announced "MARGARET" as winner of 'Best Short Film - Jury' Award at its 2016 Ceremony ( Source :: http://educationexpo.tv/dadasahebphalkefilmfestival/news.php?id=MTk0 ). The Dada Saheb Phalke Film Festival is a non-profit, non-commercial & India's only independent film festival, established in the year 2011 in Noida (Delhi NCR) with a mission to celebrate the cinema & work of aspiring, young, independent & professional filmmakers. The festival is important for Indian film industry as it is organized on 30 April each year to mark the birth anniversary of Late.Shri. Dhundiraj Govind Phalke, who is regarded as the father of Indian Cinema & fondly remembered as Dada Saheb Phalke by the film fraternity across the India & globe.

Other notable winners at this Festival are :: * Best Film - Sanjay Leela Bhansali & Kishore Lulla for Bajirao Mastani; * Best Screenplay - Juhi Chaturvedi for Shoojit Sircar's Piku; ( Source :: http://educationexpo.tv/dadasahebphalkefilmfestival/news.php?id=MTk1 ). Festival's aim is to recognize the enlightening, entertaining & progressive new age cinema of youth & experienced filmmakers. In past years festival gained reputation & now is regarded as one of the most prestigious film festivals in India, attracting filmmakers from across the India & 90 nations across the world.

Margaret is an English language Short Film, filmed in Washington DC with professional local actors. So far Margaret has screened at 26 Film Festivals globally, including ::

USA 16 April 2016 (49th Annual WorldFest-Houston) USA 23 January 2016 (25th Annual Rosebud Film Festival) USA 21 February 2016 (22nd Annual Sedona International Film Festival) USA 2 April 2016 (17th Annual Crossroads Film Festival) USA 8 October 2015 (14th Annual Urban Mediamakers Film Festival) USA 26 March 2016 (12th Annual Los Angeles Women's International Film Festival) Romania 9 April 2016 (4th Annual ClujShorts International Short Film Festival) Canada 15 May 2016 (5th Annual International Film Festival of South Asia) Ireland 25 May 2016 (8th Annual The Fastnet Short Film Festival)

Source: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4969570/releaseinfo

Next MARGARET will screen at the 2016 International Film Festival of South Asia on May 15 in Toronto, Canada. IFFSA Toronto is THE BIGGEST SOUTH ASIAN FILM FESTIVAL IN NORTH AMERICA. This ten day extravaganza showcases a diverse, language independent, selection of the best feature films, documentaries and short films from around the world, on themes of South Asian cultures and identities. IFFSA Toronto 2016 will be held from May 19  May 23, 2016 in Ontario, Canada as part of South Asian Heritage Month celebrations. Source - http://www.iffsatoronto.com/about/

Previous Awards::

* Best LOVE STORY - 14th Annual Urban Mediamakers Film Festival

* Best FILM (JURY) - 4th Annual Delhi Shorts International Film

* Best SHORT COMEDY - 14th Annual Somewhat North Of Boston Film Festival

* Best SHORT NARRATIVE - 17th Annual Crossroads Film Festival

FILM SYNOPSIS ::

After dealing with a series of extreme characters during a speed-dating event for senior citizens, an elderly woman meets a charming, exotic gentleman.

Please Email "[email protected]" - if you would like to interview the filmmakers and actors.

This content was issued through the press release distribution service at Newswire.com. For more info visit: http://www.newswire.com

SOURCE JMD Creations
MIAMI and DALLAS, April 7, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Southern Wine & Spirits of America, Inc. ("Southern") and Glazer's, Inc. ("Glazer's") today announced the appointment of key corporate functional leaders for the future Southern Glazer's Wine and Spirits, LLC ("Southern Glazer's"). These appointments will be effective following the close of the transaction between the two companies, which is expected at the end of the second quarter 2016.

Wayne E. Chaplin, President and Chief Executive Officer of Southern, said, "I'm delighted to congratulate these exceptional executives on their future roles within Southern Glazer's. Each of these positions will be critical to our success, and we are fortunate that they will be held by the most talented leaders in the business. We are well on our way to building an industry-leading team that will hit the ground running, and I am excited for what we will accomplish together in the months and years to come."

Key leadership roles reporting to Lee Hager, who will serve as Southern Glazer's Executive Vice President, Secretary and Administration, include:

Bobby Burg, Senior Vice President, Chief Supply Chain Officer. Burg will lead the day-to-day design, development, and implementation of the company's strategic supply chain network. Key functions he will oversee include: regional and warehouse operations, fleet, distribution facilities, planning and logistics, safety and security, and supply chain strategy and analytics.

Ann Dozier, Senior Vice President, Chief Information Officer. Dozier will collaborate with our senior business leaders and external partners, to develop the vision for the company's technology ecosystem; enabling the overall business strategy. In her role, Dozier will oversee the implementation and optimization of the joint IT organization, business systems and supporting infrastructure, digital initiatives, customer and supplier technology solutions, and technology risk management and governance.

Michael Adams,Senior Vice President, Chief Technology Officer. Under the direction of Dozier, Adams will focus on the development and implementation of the long-term IT integration strategy and IT operating model for the combined company. In his role, Adams will work in close collaboration with our business leaders, suppliers, customers, and strategic vendors.

Wilemia Shaw, Senior Vice President, Human Resources Commercial and Field Operations. Shaw will help lead the development and execution of the human resources strategy for the combined company, including the definition of the HR operating model to support the business. She will also serve as interim Chief Human Resources Officer, leading overall human resources while assisting in the selection of a successor for this role.

Michael Head, Senior Vice President, HR Integration. Head will lead and oversee the Day One integration priorities for Health, Welfare and 401(k) strategy, programs, and plan design. Additionally, he will help define, plan, and oversee activities for effective and efficient HR operations for Day One coordinating with IT, Finance, Payroll, and Shared Services.

A key leadership role reporting to the executive leadership group of Brad Vassar, who will serve as Southern Glazer's Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer; Lee Hager, who will serve as Southern Glazer's Executive Vice President, Secretary and Administration; and Thomas Greenlee, who will serve as Southern Glazer's Executive Vice President of Finance, includes:

Stephen Von Oehsen, Senior Vice President, Office of Strategic Management. Von Oehsen will lead the Office of Strategic Management, overseeing transformational initiatives and day-to-day activities concerning corporate strategy, process and organization optimization, communications, public relations, change management, project management, and corporate social responsibility.

Key leadership roles reporting to Thomas Greenlee, who will serve as Southern Glazer's Executive Vice President of Finance, include:

Scott Guensler, Senior Vice President, Corporate Controller. Guensler will be responsible for all financial accounting and audit functions at the corporate, regional, and state levels. He will oversee the company's Shared Services operation.

Todd Newman, Senior Vice President, Financial Planning and Analysis. Newman will oversee all financial planning and analysis activities including the annual budgeting process, quarterly business reviews, and financial KPI management at the corporate, regional and state levels.

Bob Hersh, Vice President, Tax. Hersh will oversee tax operations including planning, compliance, and reporting. Over the course of the next year, he will transition the long-term tax leadership role to Cheryl Rawson, the new Tax Director.

Pat McNamara, Senior Vice President, Risk and Facilities. McNamara will oversee corporate insurance programs as well as key elements of facilities management including real estate strategy and lease management.

Barry Goldberg, Senior Vice President, Customer Service and Order to Cash Integration. Goldberg will be responsible for implementing and optimizing a national customer service support function. In addition, he will lead the optimization of the order-to-cash processes across the company, including supporting the required processes and technology.

Key leadership roles working with Steven Becker, who will serve as Southern Glazer's Executive Vice President, Treasurer and Compliance:

Barkley Stuart, Executive Vice President, Federal Government Affairs. Stuart will interact with Federal lobbyists and government officials  representing Southern Glazer's and supporting the overall strategy for the business.

Alison Herman, Senior Counsel, Regulatory and Compliance. Herman will lead the overall strategy and day-to-day activities of ensuring the company's corporate, regional, and divisional operations are in compliance with applicable regulations, laws and standards as well as support licensing requirements and provide sales compliance training.

"Our people are our most valuable asset, and these outstanding leaders will help to ensure that Southern Glazer's achieves its fullest potential," said Shelly Stein, President and Chief Executive Officer of Glazer's. "All are highly accomplished in their roles, and ideally suited to lead us in these critical areas by drawing upon the best practices of each company to ensure our long-term success."

About Southern Wine & Spirits of America, Inc.

Southern Wine & Spirits of America, Inc. is the nation's largest wine and spirits distributor and broker with operations in 37 states and the District of Columbia. The multi-state distributor currently operates in: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Florida, Kentucky, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Maryland, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, and Wyoming. On a national basis, Southern Wine & Spirits of America, Inc. employs more than 14,500 team members. Southern urges all retail customers and adult consumers to market, sell, serve and enjoy its products responsibly.

For more information about Southern and its responsible consumption program, see: http://www.southernwine.com.

About Glazer's, Inc.

Glazer's, one of the country's largest privately held companies, currently operates in 15 states, Canada and the Caribbean, and is one of the nation's largest distributors of wine, spirits and malt beverage products. The company has operations in Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Canada, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The third-generation family business was founded in Dallas in 1933. For more information, please visit our website at www.glazers.com.

Press Contact:

Kekst

Mark Semer

212-521-4800

SOURCE Southern Wine & Spirits of America, Inc.; Glazers, Inc.

Related Links

http://www.glazers.com


WASHINGTON, May 6, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The City of Crestwood Police Department became the first Teamsterorganized law enforcement unit in the St. Louis metropolitan area after the members of the police force voted overwhelmingly in favor of representation by Teamsters Local 610 on April 29.

"When I cast my vote, it was an amazing feeling," said Officer Dion Olson. "I felt for the first time in my 16 years of police work, what it is like to have a say in the future of my career. I'm so proud of my colleagues for taking the steps necessary to better our working conditions."

The organizing effort was led by Teamsters Local 610 President Jeff Hall with assistance from Carl Bailey, Secretary-Treasurer of Teamsters Local 205 and a key leader of the Teamsters Law Enforcement League.

"Local 610 is honored to have the opportunity to represent our local heroes that serve and protect the City of Crestwood," Hall said.

Crestwood, a city of over 11,000 residents in the St. Louis metropolitan area, was named one of the safest cities in Missouri.

"Many law enforcement officers throughout the 'Show Me' state will see it is time to seek strong Teamster representation to address their concerns," said Jim Hoffa, Teamsters General President. "The dedicated men and women who put their lives on the line every day will know the Teamsters have their backs."

Founded in 1903, the 1.4 million-member International Brotherhood of Teamsters represents public services employees throughout North America, including police officers, deputy sheriffs and correctional officers. Visit www.teamster.org for more information. Follow us on Twitter @Teamsters and "like" us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/teamsters.

Contact:

Kara Deniz (202) 624-6911

[email protected]

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20100127/IBTLOGO

SOURCE International Brotherhood of Teamsters

Related Links

http://www.teamster.org


DENVER, May 6, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Science Technology Engineering and Math (STEM) education took center stage today at the Colorado Convention Center, where Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT) announced an $800,000 STEM investment in partnership with Project Lead The Way and the Denver Public Schools Foundation to expand STEM programming for Denver Public Schools (DPS) students.

The Lockheed Martin investment will underwrite the cost of implementing Project Lead The Way's STEM-based curricula at up to 100 elementary, middle and high schools in DPS over a three-year period, depending on grade level and scope of program implementation.

Project Lead The Way is a nonprofit organization that provides transformative learning experiences for K-12 students and teachers across the United States through pathways in computer science, engineering and biomedical science.

"Studies show that nearly 20 percent of the U.S. workforcemore than 26 million jobsrequire significant STEM knowledge and skills," said Dr. Vince Bertram, president and CEO of Project Lead The Way. "Schools help students through Project Lead The Way by developing in-demand knowledge and transportable skillslike creative thinking, problem solving, communication and collaborationto succeed in all career paths and thrive in our rapidly advancing world."

The announcement was held in conjunction with a Society of Women Engineers' Girls Exploring Science, Technology, Engineering and Math eventwhere more than 1,000 middle school girls participated in science and technology activities. Denver Public School students who participated received a taste of how science and math can be fun and help solve real-world problems.

Veronica Figoli, president and CEO of the Denver Public Schools Foundation, spoke about why it's important to continue STEM momentum in the classroom and how the Lockheed Martin investment will help make this possible.

"We're absolutely thrilled to be able to introduce more students to the STEM environment by bringing compelling, career-focused STEM content into more classrooms," she explained.

STEM education is the foundation for the nation's future, particularly in the aerospace industry that thrives in Colorado. With the second largest aerospace economy in the nation, Colorado has a need to fill its talent pipeline with skilled, technical graduatesthe base of which is built upon early access to STEM education. On a national level, the U.S. Department of Education estimates a supply demand gap of 1.3 million in STEM talent by 2020 in the U.S., which only further increases the need for widespread STEM education like the programming offered by Project Lead The Way.

Mark Valerio, vice president, Enterprise Solutions and Integration for Lockheed Martin Space Systems, underscored the tremendous impact that STEM programming has on industry sustainability.

"Today's elementary, middle and high schoolers are tomorrow's scientists and space explorers. The earlier we ingrain science, technology, engineering and math into their education, the earlier they will learn the skillsets needed to become those visionary thinkers who will continue to move our country forward," he stated. "It's absolutely vital that we make this educational investment now, so we can secure a strong scientific and economic future for our country."

Lockheed Martin has committed $6 million nationally to expand Project Lead The Way programs in select U.S. school districts. In addition to Denver, Lockheed Martin has similar partnerships in Huntsville, Alabama; Fort Worth, Texas; Orange County, Florida; and Washington, D.C. The grant funding covers program implementation costs, including Project Lead The Way teacher professional development training, software, classroom equipment and supplies. In addition to the grant funding, Lockheed Martin engineers volunteer in classroomsbuilding relationships with students as both role models and mentors.

Lockheed Martin has partnered with Project Lead the Way to help implement STEM Curriculum in school districts across the U.S. since 2007. In 2015, Lockheed Martin directed $13 million and nearly 110,000 volunteer hours specifically to STEM initiatives.

About Lockheed Martin

Headquartered in Bethesda, Maryland, Lockheed Martin is a global security and aerospace company that employs approximately 125,000 people worldwide and is principally engaged in the research, design, development, manufacture, integration and sustainment of advanced technology systems, products and services. For more information, visit http://lockheedmartin.com/.

About the Denver Public Schools Foundation

The Denver Public Schools Foundation is the Denver Public Schools' fundraising partner. It generates resources, builds relationships and champions public education to help Every Child Succeed. It is entirely built and sustained by the community; by supporting the DPS Foundation, businesses and individuals are creating positive, sustainable change in Denver's schools and contributing to the success of our next generation. For more information, visit www.dpsfoundation.org.

About Denver Public Schools

Denver Public Schools (DPS) is committed to meeting the educational needs of every student, with great schools in every neighborhood. Its goal is to provide every child in Denver with rigorous, enriching educational opportunities from preschool through high school graduation. DPS is comprised of 185 schools, including traditional, magnet, charter and pathways schools, with a current total enrollment of approximately 91,000 students77.5 percent of which are minorities. DPS is the fastest-growing urban school district in the country in terms of enrollment, and is the fastest-growing large school district in Colorado in terms of academic growth. Learn more at https://www.dpsk12.org/.

About Project Lead The Way

Project Lead The Way (PLTW) is a nonprofit organization that provides a transformative learning experience for K-12 students and teachers across the U.S. Through pathways in computer science, engineering and biomedical science, K-12 students learn problem-solving strategies, critical and creative thinking, and how to communicate and collaborate. PLTW empowers students to develop in-demand knowledge and skills necessary to thrive in an evolving world. More than 8,000 elementary, middle and high schools in all 50 states and the District of Columbia offer PLTW programs. For more information, visit www.pltw.org.

About GESTEM

Girls Exploring Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (GESTEM) is an annual event hosted by the Rocky Mountain Society of Women's Engineer's (SWE), for approximately 1,000 middle school girls in Denver. Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company provides philanthropic grant support to GESTEM, and approximately 50 Lockheed Martin employee volunteers support the event as guides and workshop presenters. Approximately 130 DPS 6th and 7th grade girls from five DPS schools are among those participating in the event. Learn more about this year's event at http://www.swe-rms.org/gestem.html.

Media Contacts

Lauren Duda, Lockheed Martin  (303) 324-1764; [email protected]

Alex Renteria, Denver Public Schools  (720) 423-3258; [email protected]

Kristy Koken, Denver Public Schools Foundation  (303) 929-0725; [email protected]

Jennifer Cahill, Project Lead The Way  (812) 483-5124; [email protected]

SOURCE Lockheed Martin

Related Links

http://www.lockheedmartin.com


NAPA, Calif., May 6, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Tami Brewer has been named Executive Vice President of Engagement at Pure Moxie, a brand innovation firm based in Napa, California.

Tami was previously Senior Vice President of Digital Services at the firm overseeing digital campaigns for clients such as AT&T, Tenet Healthcare, Barco Escape, Conifer and DIRECTV to name a few. She has been intimately involved with growing the firm's digital business and developing global resources for Pure Moxie.

Additionally, Tami was the lead architect in the acquisition of Asi Media (a digital firm specializing in application development, web development and interactive ad creative).

"Tami has been exceptional with regards to enhancing our digital practice as well as being intimately involved with clients on a daily basis. She has a knack for coming up with creative solutions for our clients," said Paris Hinson, Co-Founder and Executive Creative Director.

Ms. Brewer will now expand her role to include overseeing client services as well as all of the Pure Moxie offices in Napa, London, Mexico City and Panama City. She will also work with the founders on incubator projects.

Antonio Buchanan, Co-Founder and Chief Strategic Officer, said, "Tami, has proven time and time again that she can get the job done. Her ability to tackle challenges is amazing, and she brings a high level of strategic aptitude to everything she touches. We are proud to make this announcement."

Pure Moxie excels in finding innovative ways for clients to provide exceptional experiences to their customers. Their work includes consumer insight, brand innovation, creative, mobile and technology solutions for global brands such as AT&T, Mini USA, DIRECTV, Newell Rubbermaid, Tenet Healthcare, Barco Escape and Bausch + Lomb. For more information about Pure Moxie, visit them on Facebook, Twitter or Pure-Moxie.com.

This content was issued through the press release distribution service at Newswire.com. For more info visit: http://www.newswire.com

SOURCE Pure Moxie
WILMINGTON, Ohio, May 6, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Pilots employed by the Ypsilanti, Mich. based cargo airline, Kalitta Air, LLC, have overwhelmingly passed a resolution of no confidence in the management of Kalitta Air.

Kalitta Air operates a fleet of Boeing 747 aircraft in support of the global network of DHL Express, a division of the German logistics company, Deutsche Post DHL. Ninety-seven percent voted in favor of the resolution, with 217 pilots voting for the resolution and only 7 voting against it.

"We have reached a crisis point at Kalitta. The pilots have no faith in our management team's ability to lead the airline," said Scott Nelson, the elected chairman of the Kalitta Air Executive Council of APA Teamsters Local 1224. "The pilots I represent believe that Kalitta management is a threat to their jobs, customers like DHL and the survival of the airline itself."

The resolution the pilots supported stated: "The management of Kalitta Air, by and through their poor judgment, bad labor relations decisions, disrespect for union representatives and contempt for line pilots, has tarnished the good reputation of Kalitta Air." It also accused management of "undermining the ability of Kalitta Air to attract and retain quality pilots in an increasingly tight labor marketand provoking a more serious labor dispute that will do harm to the good will of the business and undermine customer confidence in Kalitta Air."

Negotiations between Kalitta and the union representing the pilots are currently taking place under the supervision of the National Mediation Board. In April, after a proposal was rejected by union representatives at the bargaining table, the management team sent contract proposals directly to the pilots. The pilots responded negatively to the rejected proposals and the company's decision to circumvent the union produced a backlash from the pilots, resulting in the vote of no confidence.

"By doing an end run around the union, Kalitta management has made it more difficult to reach agreement on a new contract," said Daniel C. Wells, President of APA Teamsters Local 1224. "Now we have to deal with more issues in negotiations than we did before management deliberately tried to sabotage negotiations."

Mediation efforts resume in St. Louis, Mo., May 10-12. Ninety-seven percent of Kalitta pilots have already voted to authorize a strike against the airline. ABX, Inc., Atlas Air, Inc. and Southern Air, Inc. also perform flight operations in support of the DHL Express global network. Union leadership at those carriers has pledged to support the Kalitta pilots in the event of a strike.

The pilot group is represented by the Airline Professionals Association, Teamsters Local 1224, which is affiliated with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Airline Division.

Founded in 1903, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters represents 1.4 million hardworking men and women throughout the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico. For more information, please visit www.teamster.org. Follow us on Twitter @Teamsters and "like" us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/teamsters.

Contact:

Amanda Bledsoe, (937) 383-2500, Ext. 8790

[email protected]

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20100127/IBTLOGO

SOURCE Teamsters Local 1224

Related Links

http://www.teamster.org/


SAN FRANCISCO, May 6, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- The Heart Rhythm Society (HRS), in partnership with Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals, Inc., announced today that Mark H. Eckman, MD, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, and Steven A. Lubitz, MD, MPH, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, were awarded the Atrial Fibrillation (AFib) Quality Improvement (QI) Innovation Grant. The grant support will help innovation and advancement in atrial fibrillation and stroke prevention through research aimed at addressing National QI priorities. Dr. Eckman won for his proposal on Shared Decision-Making Tool for Thromboprophylaxis in Atrial Fibrillation and Dr. Lubitz won for his proposal on Automated Physician Notifications to Improve Guideline-Based Anticoagulation in Atrial Fibrillation. They presented to an expert panel during Heart Rhythm 2016, the Heart Rhythm Society's 37th Annual Scientific Sessions.

Through this effort, Drs. Eckman and Lubitz will collectively receive $500,000 in grants based on the submitted proposals that outline how they will affect the behaviors and performance of patients, providers and/or systems that, when combined with existing standards and practical approaches to care, may enhance patient outcomes. For details on the winners and their proposals, visit www.hrsonline.org/AFibGrant.

"The applications were very innovative and the level of quality was truly impressive. It was inspiring to see such novel ideas and approaches that have the ability to advance the electrophysiology field," said John Day, MD, FHRS, president of the Heart Rhythm Society. "At next year's annual meeting, we will welcome back Drs. Eckman and Lubitz to share the outcomes of their grant awards and how they have used the grants to help evolve the ways we work to prevent atrial fibrillation and stroke and, ultimately, improve overall patient care."

HRS members served as the decision-making panelists. The initial review of applications took place April 19-26, 2016. Thirty-five applications were received and six finalists presented their proposals to the expert panel from 4:30-6:30 p.m. PDT on May 5 in San Francisco during Heart Rhythm 2016. Drs. Eckman and Lubitz will present their outcomes at Heart Rhythm 2017, taking place in Chicago in May 2017.

"Collaborating with the scientific community is a priority for us in improving patient outcomes," said Azhar Ahmad, executive director, Clinical Development & Medical Affairs, Cardiovascular, Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals, Inc. "We welcome the opportunity to support these researchers in advancing our understanding of atrial fibrillation and stroke prevention."

About the Heart Rhythm Society

The Heart Rhythm Society is the international leader in science, education and advocacy for cardiac arrhythmia professionals and patients, and the primary information resource on heart rhythm disorders. Its mission is to improve the care of patients by promoting research, education and optimal health care policies and standards. Incorporated in 1979 and based in Washington, DC, it has a membership of more than 5,800 heart rhythm professionals in more than 72 countries around the world.

About Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals, Inc.

Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals, Inc., based in Ridgefield, CT, is the largest U.S. subsidiary of Boehringer Ingelheim Corporation.

Boehringer Ingelheim is one of the world's 20 leading pharmaceutical companies. Headquartered in Ingelheim, Germany, the company operates globally with 146 affiliates and more than 47,000 employees. Since its founding in 1885, the family-owned company has been committed to researching, developing, manufacturing and marketing novel treatments for human and veterinary medicine.

Boehringer Ingelheim is committed to improving lives and providing valuable services and support to patients and families. Our employees create and engage in programs that strengthen our communities. To learn more about how we make more health for more people, visit our Corporate Social Responsibility Report.

In 2014, Boehringer Ingelheim achieved net sales of about $16.96 billion dollars (13.3 billion euros). R&D expenditure corresponds to 19.9 percent of its net sales.

For more information, please visit www.us.boehringer-ingelheim.com, or follow us on Twitter @BoehringerUS.

Media Contact: Allison Kassel

(904) 728-2145

[email protected]

Lauren Murphy

(203) 448-1982

[email protected]

SOURCE Heart Rhythm Society

Related Links

http://www.hrsonline.org


LONDON, April 12, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Tin, a part of the carbon family, shares chemical similarities with germanium and lead. It is highly malleable and ductile and is capable of being transformed into thin sheet. Tin is unaffected by oxygen and water at room temperatures. It does not corrode or rust easily; hence, tin can be used as a coating material to protect other metals. Expansion in the consumer electronics industry coupled with rising demand in the food packaging industry is expected to drive the tin market during the forecast period. Additionally, its potential application in the solar energy industry is anticipated to provide ample opportunities for market growth during the forecast period.



The production of tin is concentrated in emerging economies of Latin America and Asia Pacific. Currently, China, Indonesia, and Peru are the largest producers of tin in the world. Indonesia, one of the largest producers of tin, is tightening its rules for tin exports in order to crack down on environmental degradation and smuggling. Myanmar is also anticipated to emerge as a major supplier of tin in the world in the near future.



This study analyzes, estimates, and forecasts the global tin market in terms of volume (kilo tons) and revenue (US$ Mn) from 2014 to 2023. Market numbers given in the report describe the global demand for tin, but not the production or supply. The tin report also analyzes several driving and restraining factors and their impact on the market during the forecast period.



The report provides detailed analysis of the tin market by key applications. It segments the market into the following key applications: soldering, tin plating, chemicals, brass & bronze, glass, and others (including lithium-ion batteries, ammunitions, and solar cells.) The report also segments the market based on major geographies into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, and Middle East & Africa. It further provides volume and revenue for each application segment for each region. This includes 12 unique country-specific analysis.



Based on application and country, the report analyzes the attractiveness of each segment and country with the help of an attractiveness tool. The study includes value chain analysis, which provides a better understanding of key players in the supply chain from raw material manufacturers to end-users. Furthermore, the study analyzes market competition through Porter's Five Forces Analysis.



Key market participants profiled in the study include Yunnan Tin Group Company Limited, Thailand Smelting and Refining Co., Ltd. (Thaisarco), Yunnan Chengfeng Non-ferrous Metals Co., Ltd., Guangxi China Tin Group, Malaysia Smelting Corporation, PT Timah (Persero) Tbk, Minsur S.A., Empresa Metalurgica Vinto S.A., Metallo-Chimique International N.V., and Gejiu Zili Mining And Smelting Co., Ltd. Profiles of key participants encompass vital parameters such as financial overview, company overview, business strategy, and recent developments.



Primary research represents the majority of our research efforts, supplemented by a widespread secondary research. We reviewed key players' product literature, annual reports, press releases, and relevant documents for competitive analysis and market understanding. Secondary research also includes a search of recent trade, technical writing, internet sources, and statistical data from trade associations, government websites, and agencies. This has proven to be the most dependable, effective, and dynamic approach for procuring precise market data, distinguishing business opportunities, and obtaining industry participants' insights.



Secondary research sources that are referred to include external patented databases, textbooks, financial reports, company websites, broker reports, commentaries, annual reports, stockholder presentations, and suitable patent and regulatory databases, statistical databases, and market reports, press releases, news articles, and webcasts specific to the corporations operating in the market. Secondary sources referred for this study include Chemical Weekly Magazine, ICIS Chemical Business Magazine, Hoover's, Factiva and company presentations.



The report segments the global tin market as:



Tin Market  Application Analysis



Soldering

Tin Plating

Chemicals

Brass & Bronze

Glass

Others (Including lithium-ion batteries, ammunitions, solar cells, etc.)

Tin Market - Regional Analysis



North America

U.S.

Rest of North America (RoNA)

Europe

Germany

Belgium

Italy

U.K.

Russia

Rest of Europe

Asia Pacific

China

Japan

ASEAN

Rest of Asia Pacific (APAC)

Latin America

Brazil

Rest of Latin America (LATAM)

Middle East & Africa

GCC

South Africa

Rest of Middle East & Africa (MEA)

Download the full report: https://www.reportbuyer.com/product/3752612/



About Reportbuyer

Reportbuyer is a leading industry intelligence solution that provides all market research reports from top publishers

http://www.reportbuyer.com



For more information:

Sarah Smith

Research Advisor at Reportbuyer.com

Email: [email protected]

Tel: +44 208 816 85 48

Website: www.reportbuyer.com

SOURCE ReportBuyer

Related Links

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The shoes protect children's feet from harmful debris and contaminated soil. In many parts of the world, TOMS Shoes meet school requirements for thousands of kids. Where the shoes do not meet school requirements, they help kids by providing an extra pair for other extracurricular activities. Shoes help ease the financial burden on CI's families who may not have the means to provide basic necessities like shoes for their kids.

The distribution of shoes is just one part of CI's holistic child development program framework, which focuses on helping children and youth become healthy, educated, empowered and (ultimately) employed so that they can break the cycle of poverty.

One Day Without Shoes on May 10 is a day to raise awareness of children's health and education issues and the important role that shoes play in helping kids. Going without shoes allows participants to experience the importance of proper footwear. It is also a conversation starter, allowing participants to bring awareness to issues surrounding children's health and education. And, for this year's day of awareness, TOMS will be giving away a pair of shoes for every unique photo of bare feet shared on Instagram using #withoutshoes, up to 10,000 shoes for 10 different countries.

Employees at CI's headquarters in Kansas City, Missouri, will go without shoes on May 10 and will participate in a variety of activities that help educate participants on the importance of adequate footwear. Additionally, CI employees are hosting a shoe drive to benefit two local nonprofits  Operation Breakthrough and Midwest Foster Care and Adoption Association.

Learn more about TOMS and Children International.

About Children International

Children International is a top-rated humanitarian organization focused on ending poverty by helping children and youth. Our local staff and volunteers deliver our holistic programs in health, education, empowerment and employment to over 300,000 kids through 70+ community centers in 10 countries.

For more information about Children International, visit children.org.

Follow Children International on Facebook and Twitter.

FOR MORE INFORMATION:

Brittany Gelbach

Public Relations

Children International

Direct: (816) 943-3832

Email: [email protected]

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160505/364379

SOURCE Children International

Related Links

http//www.children.org


BOSTON, May 6, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- United Nations International Day of Happiness Founder Jayme Illien is in Cambridge, Massachusetts to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Institute for Global Leadership at Tufts University honoring IGL's Founder and Executive Director Sherman Teichman.

Founded in 1985 in response to the hijacking of a TWA flight out of Cairo, the Institute for Global Leadership began as an international symposium on terrorism and global security. Three decades later, the Institute for Global Leadership is renowned for training future global leaders. Every year, IGL operates some 30 selective and rigorous multidisciplinary programs which immerse 400-500 undergraduate and graduate students in deep dive experiential learning designed to get them thinking about conundrum issues, which Mr. Teichman has described as, "problems with seemingly no exit like climate change and refugee crises".

To celebrate, Mr. Teichman's magnanimous influence and legacy, global leaders, policy advisors, and security experts from around the world, many of whom are Sherman's former students, will gather at the Marriott ballroom in Cambridge, Massachusetts on Saturday, May 7th, 2016 to share memories, enjoy sustained debate over global events, and dance.

President Vartan Gregorian of the Carnegie Corporation of New York, who serves on President Obama's White House Fellowships commission and numerous boards including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Colin Powell Center for Leadership and Service, Harvard Kennedy School of Government, and the World Bank, will speak on challenges in higher education. Professor Phillip Bobbit, Director of the Center for National Security at Columbia Law School will discuss the evolution of terrorism.

Jayme Illien, Founder of the United Nations International Day of Happiness and an alumni of the Institute for Global Leadership, credits IGL's Founder Sherman Teichman for inspiring his own organization's work with the United Nations to promote and advance happiness as a human right, fundamental human goal, and as a solution to the complex and interrelated challenges confronting all of us.

"I met Sherman Teichman when I was 16 visiting Tufts University and applying to colleges. I had grown up helping my mother find families for orphans and witnessed firsthand the plight of abandoned children trapped in poverty, often victims of war and conflict, subsisting in refugee camps, slums, streets and institutions, children like me and my sisters before we were adopted," said Jayme Illien, an alumni of IGL's EPIIC program, which stands for Education for Public Inquiry and International Citizenship.

"As a young aspiring student who simply wanted to improve the world for the orphans like I was, Sherman's energy and passion were magnetic and captivating as was IGL's mission to prepare new generations of critical thinkers for effective and ethical leadership, and to act as global citizens in addressing seemingly impossible national and international issues across cultures. Sherman is why I chose Tufts University in 1998," says Jayme.

More than 15 years later, Jayme Illien says that Sherman's leadership, inspiration, and spirit directly influenced the creation of the United Nations International Day of Happiness which was founded in 2011 when Jayme's organization, Illien Global Public Benefit Corporation, brought the idea of an International Day of Happiness to the United Nations, successfully campaigned to gain support from all 193 member states, senior UN officials, and UN Secretary General Ban Ki moon, and authored UN resolution 66/281 creating the new International Day of Happiness.

Since 2012, the new global day of happiness is celebrated worldwide every March 20, a date selected for its planetary significance as the vernal equinox, a universal phenomenon felt by all of humankind and marking the annual season of new beginnings, creation and resurrection known as spring.

UN Resolution 66/281 recognizes "the pursuit of happiness as fundamental human goal, and "the relevance of happiness and well-being as universal aspirations in the lives of human beings around the world and the importance of their recognition in public policy objectives", as well as "the need for a more inclusive, equitable and balanced approach to economic growth that promotes sustainable development, poverty eradication, happiness and the well-being of all peoples."

In 2012, at the first High Level Meeting on Happiness and Wellbeing: Defining A New Economic Paradigm, UN Secretary General Ban Ki moon said, "We need a new economic paradigm that recognizes the three pillars of sustainable development. Economic, social, and environmental well-being are indivisible. Together they define Gross Global Happiness."

In 2015, the United Nations took one giant leap forward in laying the foundation for this new economic paradigm of gross global happiness when it unanimously adopted "Transforming our World: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development" composed of 17 global goals and 169 targets to get our planet back on track by ending poverty, tackling inequality, and stopping climate change as humanity reaches for the ultimate quest, happiness for the entire human family.

"It's amazing to step back and think about how profound Sherman's impact has been on inspiring young students to take an active role in their communities and civic life in order to improve society, and address challenges and opportunities we all face together. With more citizen leaders and educators like Sherman, the world would be a healthier and happier place," said Jayme.

Jayme Illien currently serves as United Nations representative for Economists for Peace and Security, an international network of the world's leading economic thinkers, scholars, and security experts. Its Chairman is world renowned economist James K. Galbraith, and its Trustees and Board are comprised of seventeen Nobel laureate economists including Professors Joseph Stiglitz, Amartya Sen, who led the first "Happiness Commission" launched by French President Nicolas Sarkozy to study happiness as an alternate measure to GDP, as well as Former Greek Minister of Finance Yannis Varoufakis, Former US Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, Former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich, and Former Prime Minister of Greece George Papandreou.

For more information please visit

www.tuftsgloballeadership.org

www.happinessday.org

www.epsusa.org

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160310/343157LOGO

SOURCE Happiness Day

Related Links

http://www.happinessday.org


LITTLETON, Colo., May 6, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Ur-Energy Inc. (NYSE MKT:URG, TSX:URE) (the "Company" or "Ur-Energy") announces the results of the Company's Annual and Special Meeting of Shareholders held May 5, 2016, including the election of Directors.

Each of the nominee Directors listed in the Company's management proxy circular dated March 31, 2016 was elected as a Director. The Company received proxies with regard to voting on the six Directors nominated for election, as follows:

Nominee Vote For % Votes Withheld % Jeffrey T. Klenda 36,259,381 98.73 467,478 1.27 James M. Franklin 33,954,108 92.45 2,772,751 7.55 Paul Macdonell 33,911,803 92.34 2,815,056 7.66 W. William Boberg 35,605,016 96.95 1,121,843 3.05 Thomas Parker 33,938,613 92.41 2,788,246 7.59 Gary C. Huber 35,626,736 97.00 1,100,123 3.00

Additionally, there were 44,250,038 non-votes in the election.

The Company's independent auditors PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP were reappointed by the Shareholders and the Directors of the Company were authorized to fix the remuneration of the auditors.

The "say on pay" vote to approve executive compensation was approved with 93.83% of the votes cast voting for the non-binding advisory vote.

The renewal of the Amended Restricted Share Unit Plan of the Company was approved by a majority of the votes represented (66.99%), after the exclusion of votes held by certain insiders and their affiliates.

The vote to ratify the Company's Advance Notice By-Law passed with approval by 96.73% of the votes cast for the ratification and confirmation of the by-law.

About Ur-Energy

Ur-Energy is a uranium mining company operating the Lost Creek in-situ recovery uranium facility in south-central Wyoming. The Lost Creek processing facility has a two million pounds per year nameplate design capacity. We have begun to submit applications for permits and licenses to operate at our Shirley Basin Project. Ur-Energy is engaged in uranium mining, recovery and processing activities, including the acquisition, exploration, development and operation of uranium mineral properties in the United States. Shares of Ur-Energy trade on the NYSE MKT under the symbol "URG" and on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the symbol "URE." Ur-Energy's corporate office is located in Littleton, Colorado; its registered office is in Ottawa, Ontario. Ur-Energy's website is www.ur-energy.com.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT



Rich Boberg, Senior Director, IR/PR Jeffrey T. Klenda, Executive Director 866-981-4588 866-981-4588 [email protected] [email protected]

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20110913/LA67628LOGO

SOURCE Ur-Energy Inc.

Related Links

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VANCOUVER, May 6, 2016 /PRNewswire/ - UrtheCast Corp. (TSX:UR) ("UrtheCast" or the "Company") today announced the planned release of a Request for Information (RFI) to U.S. companies interested in a potential long-term strategic partnership with UrtheCast by being the direct channel for data services from UrtheCast's planned OptiSAR Constellation, as well as its proposed UrtheDaily Constellation concept, to U.S. Government customers. As this "reverse RFI" is expected to be issued in early Q3 of 2016, UrtheCast will be hosting a special information session, exclusively for employees of U.S. companies and the U.S. Government, during the 2016 United States Geospatial Intelligence Foundation Symposium (GEOINT 2016) in order to solicit input and ideas on how to optimally structure the RFI.

Having received strong interest in our satellite constellation capabilities roadmap from U.S. Government customers, UrtheCast has signed a five-year Cooperative Research And Development Agreement (CRADA) with the U.S. National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), as announced on April 4, 2016. UrtheCast has also received expressions of interest from several U.S. companies. As a result, UrtheCast intends to solicit U.S. companies with strong U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) and Intelligence Community (IC) footprints for interest in establishing long-term partnership(s) for distribution rights of proposed OptiSAR and/or UrtheDaily products and services to U.S. defense and intelligence customers. Potential partners with standing product and services contracts with the U.S. Government which may benefit from imagery and services derived from UrtheCast's four currently operational sensors are also of interest to the Company. In effect, a U.S. partner of UrtheCast could serve as a prime contractor to offer these data services to U.S. Government agencies, departments, and end-user organizations, with UrtheCast serving as a sub-contractor.

Background :

UrtheCast is a Canadian-headquartered company with operations in the U.S. and Spain and is focused on the rapidly expanding Earth Observation and geoanalytics markets. UrtheCast currently operates four on-orbit sensors: Iris, the High Resolution Camera (HRC), and Theia, the Medium Resolution Camera (MRC), on the International Space Station (ISS); and through its new subsidiary Deimos Imaging, UrtheCast also operates the Deimos-1 and Deimos-2 satellites.

In June 2015, UrtheCast announced its plans to build, launch and operate the world's first fully-integrated, multi-spectral optical and Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) commercial constellation of Earth Observation satellites, which is now known as OptiSAR. The OptiSAR Constellation is expected to comprise 16 satellites (8 optical and 8 SAR) flying in two orbital planes, with each plane consisting of four satellite pairs, equally-spaced around the orbital plane. Each pair of satellites will consist of a dual-mode, high-resolution optical satellite (video and pushbroom) and a dual-band high-resolution SAR satellite (X-band and L-band), flying in tandem. By employing two orbital planes, the Constellation will provide for maximum revisit rates in the mid-latitudes, while providing global coverage extending to the poles. OptiSAR will be deployed over multiple launches and is expected to begin operations in 2020. The Constellation will provide what the Company anticipates to be unmatched space-imaging capabilities, enhancing support to both commercial and government customers alike with advanced ConOps such as all-weather 24/7 imaging, cross-cueing, and optimized tasking and dissemination capabilities.

In March 2016, UrtheCast announced its UrtheDaily Constellation concept, consisting of eight additional electro-optical satellites equiphased in a sun synchronous orbit and designed to provide coverage of the Earth's entire landmasses in six-band multi-spectral imagery every single day. UrtheCast believes that, if realized, the 24 satellites of UrtheDaily and OptiSAR will represent an unprecedented capability for daily global collection, monitoring, change detection, and tipping-and-cueing.

Special Information Session during GEOINT 2016 :

UrtheCast will be hosting an Information and Q&A Session on the OptiSAR and UrtheDaily constellation roadmap during GEOINT 2016 on the afternoon of Monday, May 16, 2016, at the Gaylord Palms Resort in Kissimmee, Florida. The exact time and location will be provided to those who register for the event. UrtheCast personnel will also be available for private, one-on-one meetings during GEOINT, as time allows.

Pre-registration for the Information Session is required by emailing Ms. Theras Wood ([email protected]) with your name, title, company/agency, and contact information.

Note: This is not an open event; attendance is only open to employees of U.S. companies and the U.S. Government. UrtheCast reserves the right to deny access to all others. Identification will be required at the time of check-in.

About UrtheCast Corp.

UrtheCast Corp. is a Vancouver-based technology company that serves the rapidly evolving geospatial and geoanalytics markets with a wide range of information-rich products and services. The Company currently operates four Earth Observation sensors in space, including two cameras aboard the International Space Station and two satellites, Deimos-1 and Deimos-2. Imagery and video data captured by these sensors is downlinked to ground stations across the planet and displayed on UrtheCast's cloud-based web platform, or distributed directly to partners and customers. UrtheCast is also developing and anticipates launching the world's first fully-integrated constellation of multispectral optical and SAR satellites, called OptiSAR, in addition to its proposed UrtheDaily constellation concept, which the Company believes will together revolutionize monitoring of our planet with high-quality, medium and high-resolution, and high-coverage and high-revisit imagery in all weather conditions, any time of day. Common shares of UrtheCast trade on the Toronto Stock Exchange as ticker 'UR'.

Forward Looking Information

This release contains certain information which, as presented, constitutes "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities laws. Forward-looking information involves statements that relate to future events and often addresses expected future business and financial performance, containing words such as "anticipate", "believe", "plan", and "expect", statements that an action or event "may", "might", "could" or "will" be taken or occur, or other similar expressions and includes, but is not limited to; its plans to issue the reverse RFI, its plans for the OptiSAR Constellation or with respect to the proposed UrtheDaily concept, its expectations regarding reaching U.S. Government customers and anticipated partnerships with U.S. companies to provide products and services to U.S. Government users. Such statements reflect UrtheCast's current views with respect to future events and are necessarily based upon a number of estimates and assumptions that, while considered reasonable by UrtheCast, are inherently subject to significant uncertainties and contingencies. Many factors could cause UrtheCast's actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from any future results, performance, or achievements that may be expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements, including, among others: any delays or failures in the design, development, construction, launch and operational commissioning of the proposed OptiSAR Constellation or the failure of the UrtheDaily concept to develop beyond the conceptual phase; the Company being unable to convert the Memoranda of Understanding in respect of funding of the OptiSAR Constellation into binding, definitive agreements, as well as those factors and assumptions discussed in UrtheCast's annual information form dated March 29, 2016, (the "AIF"), which is available under UrtheCast's SEDAR profile at www.sedar.com. Forward-looking information is developed based on assumptions about such risks, uncertainties and other factors set out herein, in the AIF, and as disclosed from time to time on UrtheCast's SEDAR profile. UrtheCast undertakes no obligation to update forward-looking statements except as required by Canadian securities laws. Readers are cautioned against attributing undue certainty to forward-looking statements.

SOURCE UrtheCast Corp.

Related Links

www.urthecast.com


SAN FRANCISCO, May 6, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- venBio Partners LLC, a global life sciences investment firm, today announced the closing of the venBio Global Strategic Fund II, its second life sciences venture capital fund, for a total of approximately $315 million, exceeding its target of $250 million. venBio's Strategic Fund II is anchored by major investments from three strategic limited partners  Amgen, Merck, and Baxalta  along with a group of financial Limited Partners.

"We believe our fund model is unique. With the return of Amgen and Baxalta, along with the addition of Merck, the commitment from our Strategic Limited Partners is now larger than ever," said Robert Adelman, M.D., managing partner at venBio. "Our investment model will remain the same. We continue to seek to finance promising life sciences companies that focus on therapeutics which we believe will make a difference for unmet medical needs."

"We tend to lead or co-lead our deals and take an active role in our investments. We often build management teams as well as syndicates," commented Corey Goodman, Ph.D., managing partner at venBio. "Whether a company is viewed traditionally as early or late stage, we are interested in best-in-class therapeutics. Our goal is to have our capital carry the company to proof-of-concept clinical data."

The venBio Strategic Fund II is led by Drs. Adelman and Goodman. New members joining the team to support Fund II are Aaron Royston, M.D., as principal, and Jaume Pons, Ph.D., as venture partner. In addition to the San Francisco team, venBio is also overseen by Behzad Aghazadeh, Ph.D., a managing partner in New York.

"For Fund II, we are delighted to have added Aaron Royston and Jaume Pons to our investment team," commented Dr. Goodman.

Dr. Royston was previously a senior associate at Vivo Capital, and before that a biotech consultant at Bain. He received his M.D. from U. Penn., his B.S. from Duke, and coordinated clinical research at Mt. Sinai.

Dr. Pons is currently CEO of Alexo Therapeutics, a venBio portfolio immuno-oncology company. He was previously a senior vice president at Pfizer and chief scientific officer at Rinat, Pfizer's immuno-oncology center. He specializes in protein engineering. Dr. Pons has brought 12 antibodies into the clinic, with three currently in Phase 3. He previously worked at Chiron and was a postdoctoral fellow at U.C. Berkeley.

The two venBio strategic funds have invested in 14 companies to date, including: Cytos (now KURN), Aragon (acquired by J&J), Solstice, Labrys (acquired by Teva), Seragon (acquired by Roche/Genentech), Aurinia (AUPH), Heart Metabolics, Metacrine, Alexo, Precision Biosciences, Checkmate, Adheren, Apellis, and Nabriva (NBRV).

About venBio

venBio is a life sciences investment firm, partnering with industry leaders to build and invest in game-changing medicines and technologies with a focus on novel therapeutics for unmet medical needs. With a presence in San Francisco, CA and New York, NY, venBio manages both a long / short equity strategy along with venture capital funds which are backed by leading life sciences companies and qualified financial investors. See: www.venbio.com.

Media Contact:

Jason Spark

Canale Communications

[email protected]

619-849-6005

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160505/364451LOGO

SOURCE venBio Partners

Related Links

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Though Viking's ocean ships are classified as "small ships" by Cruise Critic, the 930-guest, 47,800-ton Viking Sea is the largest ship ever launched in London. After passing through the Thames Barrier this morning, the ship received a warm welcome by 28 able sea men, who manned the yardarms of the Cutty Sark  the iconic 19 th Century British clipper ship  and saluted Viking Sea as she arrived in Greenwich.

"Today is a proud day for our Viking family. London is one of my favorite cities, and Greenwich is a significant port for Viking. We look forward to bringing more guests here this spring and in future years," said Torstein Hagen, Chairman of Viking Cruises. "Our ships are built for exploration; they are vessels that help our guests spend more time immersed in and surrounded by their destination. With the arrival of our second ship  and with four more sister ships on the way  we are focused on introducing travelers to the Viking way of destination-centered cruising, a unique style that was inspired by our success on the rivers."

After arriving today in Greenwich, Viking Sea was positioned in the Thames River with decorated pontoons nearby to welcome guests for various shore excursions around the city. This evening onboard, as part of the ship's christening  or naming  ceremony, guests were treated to a concert from Norwegian soprano Sissel and The Olav's Choir. Guests also enjoyed a talk by Stein Olav Henrichsen, the director of Oslo's Munch Museum  as part of the official launch of Viking's exclusive new partnership with the museum that is designed to celebrate the life and artwork of Norway's most famous artist, Edvard Munch, with daily "Munch Moments," staged for guests each day in the ship's Atrium.

During Viking Sea's christening ceremony, Karine Hagen, Viking's senior vice president and daughter of Torstein Hagen, served as ceremonial godmother and offered a blessing of good fortune and safe sailing for Viking Sea  a naval tradition that dates back thousands of years. Widely recognized as the face of the brand in Viking's television ads and online cultural enrichment videos (www.exploringmore.com), Karine is responsible for infusing the company's itineraries with extraordinary experiences. She is also the author of the children's books, "The World of Finse" (www.finse.me), an educational series that showcases the adventures of Karine's yellow Labrador, Finse. The series is set largely along the global destinations and routes of Viking's cruises, and the books are sold onboard Viking's ships. As a response to guest requests, Finse also took part in today's christening events.

Several elements of the christening ceremony paid homage to the company's Norwegian heritage. Instead of champagne for the traditional bottle-breaking, Viking Sea was christened with a bottle of Gammel Opland aquavit, which hails from the same town in Norway where Torstein's mother and Karine's grandmother, Ragnhild  also lovingly known as "Mamsen"  was born. "Mamsen's," the Norwegian deli onboard Viking Sea, was also named after Ragnhild, and Gammel Opland was her favorite brand of aquavit. Additionally, in honor of the original Vikings who once explored the British Isles, a Viking battle axe was used to cut the cord for the aquavit christening. The particular broad axe used is a replica of an 11th-century Viking axe discovered in the 1920s when it was dredged from the bottom of the Thames River near the London Bridge. Following the christening and a fireworks show held in the middle of the Thames River, Viking Sea will set sail tomorrow for Bergen, and from there she will continue on to Oslo, Copenhagen, Berlin, St. Petersburg, Tallinn, Helsinki and Stockholm on the popular 15-day Viking Homelands itinerary.

Viking Sea's christening was the culmination of a maiden voyage that began April 3 when the ship set sail in the Mediterranean. Over the last month, she made stops in what will be regular ports, including Athens, Santorini, Kotor, Dubrovnik, Venice, Rome and Barcelona. Viking Sea will spend the summer sailing itineraries in Scandinavia and the Baltic; she will call on Greenwich again in June as part of Viking's new Into the Midnight Sun itinerary that sails between London and Bergen and explores the northernmost reaches of Scandinavia and sails across the Arctic Circle.

Viking Sea

Viking's ocean ships have a gross tonnage of 47,800 tons, boast 465 cabins and accommodate 930 passengers. Viking Sea is the second of six ocean cruise ships currently planned for the fleet. The third and fourth ships, Viking Sky and Viking Sun are under construction and will be delivered in early 2017 and late 2017, respectively. The two remaining yet-to-be-named ships will be delivered in 2018 and 2020. Viking's ocean fleet features understated elegance and modern Scandinavian design. Highlights include:

All Veranda Staterooms: Guests can choose from five stateroom categories, starting from a 270 sq. ft. Veranda Stateroom, all with private verandas and premium amenities that include king-size beds with luxury linens, large showers, luxury toiletries, heated bathroom floors and large interactive flat-screen LCD TVs with movies-on-demand.

Guests can choose from five stateroom categories, starting from a 270 sq. ft. Veranda Stateroom, all with private verandas and premium amenities that include king-size beds with luxury linens, large showers, luxury toiletries, heated bathroom floors and large interactive flat-screen LCD TVs with movies-on-demand. Explorer Suites: The ships feature 14 Explorer Suites, which are two-room suites ranging from 757 to 1,163 sq. ft. that offer sweeping views from wraparound private verandas as well as the most amenities and privileges of any category onboard.

The ships feature 14 Explorer Suites, which are two-room suites ranging from 757 to 1,163 sq. ft. that offer sweeping views from wraparound private verandas as well as the most amenities and privileges of any category onboard. Two Pool Choices: In addition to the Main Pool with a retractable roof permitting any-season swimming, the ships feature a first-of-its-kind glass-backed Infinity Pool cantilevered off the stern, allowing guests to swim surrounded by their destination.

In addition to the Main Pool with a retractable roof permitting any-season swimming, the ships feature a first-of-its-kind glass-backed Infinity Pool cantilevered off the stern, allowing guests to swim surrounded by their destination. LivNordic Spa: In keeping with Viking's Nordic heritage, The Spa onboard is designed with the holistic wellness philosophy of Scandinavia in mindfrom the centuries-old tradition of the sauna to a Snow Grotto where snowflakes gently descend from the ceiling through chilled air. Berlitz Cruising & Cruise Ships 2016 named it one of the "5 best cruise ship spas."

In keeping with Viking's Nordic heritage, The Spa onboard is designed with the holistic wellness philosophy of Scandinavia in mindfrom the centuries-old tradition of the sauna to a Snow Grotto where snowflakes gently descend from the ceiling through chilled air. named it one of the "5 best cruise ship spas." Explorers' Lounge and Mamsen's: Share a cocktail with friends. Linger over a Norwegian breakfast and a nautical history book. The Explorers' Lounge and Mamsen's gourmet deli are thoughtful spaces located at the bow and designed in the Scandinavian spirit, for complete relaxation and for marveling at sweeping views through double-height windows.

Share a cocktail with friends. Linger over a Norwegian breakfast and a nautical history book. The Explorers' Lounge and Mamsen's gourmet deli are thoughtful spaces located at the bow and designed in the Scandinavian spirit, for complete relaxation and for marveling at sweeping views through double-height windows. The Wintergarden: Guests looking for serenity will find it in the Wintergarden. In this elegant space under a canopy of Scandinavian trellised wood, guests can indulge in afternoon tea service.

Guests looking for serenity will find it in the Wintergarden. In this elegant space under a canopy of Scandinavian trellised wood, guests can indulge in afternoon tea service. Dining Choices: Viking's ships offer multiple restaurant locations and food choicesfrom fine dining in The Restaurant, which serves three full meals and the widest choice of culinary options, and the World Cafe, which serves international fare and regional specialtiesto intimate dining experiences at The Chef's Table, which offers a multi-course tasting menu complete with wine parings, and Manfredi's, which features freshly prepared pastas and Italian favorites. Additionally, The Kitchen Table focuses on regional dishes from market to table; the Pool Grill specializes in gourmet burgers; afternoon tea and scones are available in the Wintergarden; and Mamsen's serves Norwegian deli-style fare. Furthermore, with multiple choices for outdoor seating during meals, Viking Star offers the most al fresco dining at sea.

Viking's ships offer multiple restaurant locations and food choicesfrom fine dining in The Restaurant, which serves three full meals and the widest choice of culinary options, and the World Cafe, which serves international fare and regional specialtiesto intimate dining experiences at The Chef's Table, which offers a multi-course tasting menu complete with wine parings, and Manfredi's, which features freshly prepared pastas and Italian favorites. Additionally, The Kitchen Table focuses on regional dishes from market to table; the Pool Grill specializes in gourmet burgers; afternoon tea and scones are available in the Wintergarden; and Mamsen's serves Norwegian deli-style fare. Furthermore, with multiple choices for outdoor seating during meals, offers the most dining at sea. Enriching Entertainment: Connecting guests to their destinations through authentic experiences is central to Viking in creating "the thinking person's cruise." Instead of casinos and water slides, guests are offered Viking's Culture Curriculum including: world-class lectures on history and art; tasting of vintage wines from their destinations; restaurant menus inspired by local cuisine; informative port talks; enriching Destination Performances featuring folkloric shows and musicians playing regional and classical music; an onboard cooking school allowing guests to learn how to prepare local specialties.

Connecting guests to their destinations through authentic experiences is central to Viking in creating "the thinking person's cruise." Instead of casinos and water slides, guests are offered Viking's Culture Curriculum including: world-class lectures on history and art; tasting of vintage wines from their destinations; restaurant menus inspired by local cuisine; informative port talks; enriching Destination Performances featuring folkloric shows and musicians playing regional and classical music; an onboard cooking school allowing guests to learn how to prepare local specialties. Sustainable Features: Designed with the environment in mind, Viking's ships feature energy-efficient hybrid engines, hydro-dynamically optimized streamlined hull and bow for maximum fuel efficiency and equipment that minimizes exhaust pollution and meets the strictest environmental regulations.

The Viking Difference

Designed for discerning travelers, Viking offers guests "the thinking person's cruise" as an alternative to mainstream cruises. The Viking Difference is providing guests with extraordinarily well-designed cruises that bring them closer to the cultures of the world. Ships are small to get guests closer to their destination, with more time in port, more overnights and fewer days at sea. Onboard, guests find serene Scandinavian spaces, where every room is beautiful and functional, quiet and filled with light. All-veranda ships mean that guests experience every day with a new, expansive vista. With the most al fresco dining at sea, featuring regional cuisines and always-available American classics, Viking's guests can truly dine in their destination. A focus on cultural enrichment brings immersive experiences onshore and onboard. And only The Viking Way brings guests itineraries that feature Local Life, Working World and Privileged Access experiences.

In addition, Viking Inclusive Cruising provides a small ship experience at a big ship valuewith every cruise fare including a veranda stateroom, shore excursions in each port of call, all onboard meals, and all port charges and government taxes. Guests also enjoy many complimentary amenities as part of their fare, including: beer and wine with lunch and dinner service; premium dining reservations; Wi-Fi; self-service laundry; access to the Thermal Suite in the LivNordic Spa; and 24-hour room servicea value of more than $2,400 per couple for an average cruise.

Booking Details

From now through May 31, 2016, Viking is offering U.S. residents a 2016 Special Savings Discount with free air from 150 cities, plus up to $1,000 off per couple. Contact a travel agent or call Viking toll free at 1-855-8-VIKING (1-855-884-5464).

Media Assets

For more information, images and b-roll for Viking Ocean Cruises, contact [email protected].

About Viking Cruises

Viking Cruises offers destination-centric river and ocean cruising designed for experienced travelers with an interest in geography, culture and history. Featuring onboard cultural enrichment and included shore excursions, Viking's journeys are competitively priced for genuine value. As the world's leading river cruise line, since its 1997 inception the company has grown to a fleet of 59 river vessels (in 2016) offering scenic cruising along the rivers of Europe, Russia, Egypt, China and Southeast Asia. Named Cruise Critic's "Best New Ocean Ship" of 2015, the sophisticated state-of-the-art Viking Star hosts 930 guests on itineraries in Scandinavia and the Baltic; the Western and Eastern Mediterranean; and the Caribbean and North America. The company's second ocean ship, Viking Sea, launched in April 2016; Viking Sky and Viking Sun are currently under for delivery in early 2017 and late 2017, respectively; two additional sister ships are on order. In 2015 Viking was rated the highest of all cruise lines in Travel + Leisure's "World's Best" Awards after appearing on  and topping  the river cruise rankings multiple times. Viking has also been honored multiple times Conde Nast Traveler's "Gold List" as well as recognized by the editors of Cruise Critic as "Best River Cruise Line" and "Best River Itineraries," with the entire Viking Longships fleet being named "Best New River Ships" in the website's Editors' Picks Awards. The travel trade has ranked Viking as the "Best River Cruise Line" by Travel Weekly, Recommend and Travel Agent magazines, "Best Cruise Line for Luxury River Cruises" at the Luxury Travel Advisor Awards of Excellence and as "Best Overall Cruise Line for River Cruising," "Best New River Cruise Ship" and for the seventh consecutive year, "Best River Cruise Line for Travel Agent Support" in the 2015 TravelAge West's WAVE Awards. For additional information, contact Viking Cruises at 1-855-8-VIKING (1-855-884-5464) or visit www.vikingcruises.com. To join the Viking Cruises community online, visit www.facebook.com/vikingcruises, www.facebook.com/vikingoceancruises and www.facebook.com/vikingrivercruises.

MEDIA CONTACT:

Edelman for Viking Cruises

[email protected]

Photo- http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160505/364479

Photo- http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160505/364477

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Photo- http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160505/364480

SOURCE Viking Cruises

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LEIPZIG, Germany, May 6, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

The Wave-Gotik-Treffen (WGT) is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year. From 13 to 16 May, more than 20,000 Goths from all over the world are expected in Leipzig, Germany, again to join the world's largest gathering of the dark family. For the anniversary edition, a grand opening party is going to be held at "AbenteuerReich BELANTIS", an amusement park in the south of Leipzig.

Victorian Picnic in Clara Zetkin Park. 25th Anniversary of the Wave Gothic Festival Leipzig / The image may be used free of charge for editorial purposes. Please mention the copyright: "Leipzig Tourismus und Marketing GmbH/Andreas Schmidt" (PRNewsFoto/Leipzig Tourismus und Marketing)

(Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160506/364506 )



When in 1992 the first Wave-Gotik-Treffen took place on the outskirts of Leipzig with about 2,000 visitors and just a handful of bands, no one imagined that within a few years the WGT would become the largest Goth festival in the world, taking possession of a whole city every year at Whitsun.

About 250 artists and bands will be performing at about 50 venues spread throughout Leipzig, and covering the wide range of Goth music: from Electro-Pop to Goth-Metal, from EBM to Apocalyptic Folk, from medieval music to Industrial. Famous bands of the scene - like In the Nursery, Leaves' Eyes, Lament, My Dying Bride, or Project Pitchfork - can be experienced along with real underground bands. The programme also includes classical music, readings, theatre and film performances. In addition, admission to several of Leipzig's museums is free for WGT-guests. The Leipzig Museum of City History emphasizes the importance of the WGT for the city with the special exhibition "Leipzig in Black. 25 Years of Wave-Gotik-Treffen" (until 29 May).

From its beginning the WGT has been much more than a music festival: its guests may step back to the romantic atmosphere of ancient times at the medieval market place at Moritzbastei, the pagan village at Torhaus Dolitz or the Victorian Picnic in Clara Zetkin Park. In countless clubs DJs from all over the world will invite the crowd to dance until dawn. All of Leipzig turns into a black colourful catwalk - to the delight of both residents and tourists.

Tickets and further information: http://www.wave-gotik-treffen.com

Leipzig Guide and WGT Festival Guide 2016: http://www.leipzig.travel/blog/wave-gotik-treffen-leipzig-guide-english/

Press contact Wave-Gotik-Treffen: Cornelius Brach, e-mail [email protected]

Leipzig Tourismus und Marketing GmbH

Augustusplatz 9

D-04109 Leipzig

Press contact: Steffi Gretschel, Head of International PR Tourism

Tel. +49-341-7104-300

E-mail: [email protected]

http://www.leipzig.travel/press

http://www.leipzig.travel/photoarchives

SOURCE Leipzig Tourismus und Marketing GmbH
EVANSTON, Ill., May 6, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Rohan Fernando, leader of the business consulting group at global sales and marketing firm ZS, was named one of the "Top 25 Consultants" of 2016 by Consulting magazine.

Recognized by the magazine for excellence in leadership, Fernando has led major client accounts across North America, Europe and Asia and launched multiple ZS offices. He also is an expert in health care commercialization strategy, mergers and product launch.

Fernando and the other award recipients will be honored at the eighth annual Top 25 Consultants Awards Dinner on June 16 at The Mandarin Oriental in New York City.

"This recognition is an immense honor for me and the many people I have worked with over the past 20 years at ZS," Fernando said. "ZS has a collaborative, friendly culture that encourages growth and development. I'd like to thank the firm and the many mentors who have helped me tackle a wide variety of challenges over the years. I also appreciate my clients, who are fun to work with and have encouraged me to push the envelope on creativity and innovation."

'A Fearless Leader'

Today, Fernando leads the firm's global business consulting group, where he works to integrate capabilities from across the firm and advance ZS's advisory, analytics, data science and customer insights work. Before taking on his current role, Fernando served as regional managing principal for ZS in Asia over the past four years, where he launched the firm's Singapore office and oversaw an expansion of its presence in India.

"Rohan is a fearless leader who always eagerly embraces challenging and seemingly daunting projects," said ZS Managing Director Chris Wright. "We have consistently tasked him with solving some of our most pressing and complex issues, and he has never failed to deliver. This recognition is well-deserved, and I know he will continue to play a crucial role in enhancing our capabilities and client service in the years ahead."

In addition to his work at ZS, Fernando serves on the board of a private equity company that invests in India and the U.S. He also speaks frequently at industry conferences and has published thought leadership on commercial models and strategies. Fernando is the seventh ZS principal to be named a "Top 25 Consultant" by Consulting magazine.

"I am proud to be recognized in this group of accomplished professionals," Fernando said. "There is great purpose to the work we do at ZS, and while we've been successful, there's still a long way to go to fulfill the mission we set out to achieve. I'm very optimistic about the future of ZS, and I look forward to playing a key role in the firm's ongoing success and growth."

About ZS

ZS is the world's largest firm focused exclusively on helping companies improve overall performance and grow revenue and market share, through end-to-end sales and marketing solutions  from customer insights and strategy to analytics, operations and technology. More than 4,500 ZS professionals in 22 offices worldwide draw on deep industry and domain expertise to deliver impact for clients across multiple industries. To learn more, visit www.zsassociates.com or follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn.

SOURCE ZS

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http://www.zsassociates.com


If you were looking for the Charlestown Democratic Town Committee website and ended up here, try this





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Cooch Behar (West Bengal), May 3 : West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Tuesday attacked Prime Minister Narendra Modi for sharing the stage with those who want the separation of Darjeeling and Cooch Behar from the state.

"Some people came to me and say 'I want a separate state'. I tell them nothing doing. Cooch Behar will remain a part of Bengal. BJP is divisive. In a rally, on prime minister's one side was the person who wants to break up Darjeeling and on the other side there was the person who wants to break up Cooch Behar," Banerjee said at an election rally in Cooch Behar.

Cooch Behar and East Midnapore go to polls on Thursday in the final phase of the Bengal assembly polls.

"We will not allow Cooch Behar and Darjeeling to be divided," she asserted.

In April, Modi's election rally in Siliguri saw the support of a faction of Greater Cooch Behar People's Association who have been demanding separate statehood. The Gorkha Janmukti Morcha, which is spearheading the Gorkhaland movement in Darjeeling district, is also a BJP ally.

The Trinamool Congress supremo also asserted her party supported the historic enclave swap between India and Bangladesh last year.

"After meeting the residents of chhitmahal (enclaves), we supported the exchange of enclaves," she said.
The United States supports the idea of sending a UNESCO mission to Syria's Palmyra and hopes that experts of this organization will thoroughly analyze the destruction there, the U.S. Department of State has said.

"We support a UNESCO mission composed of international experts, with appropriate expertise, to travel to Syria's damaged World Heritage sites when the security situation allows, to assess and analyze, by means of documentation and inventory, what is needed for preservation, restoration, and safeguarding, taking into account the overall objective of ensuring the long-term sustainability and integrity of these sites," Department of State spokesperson Noel Clay told Interfax.

"Any actual conservation work, aside from emergency interventions, must be part of a thoughtful and measured response, bearing in mind the results of the UNESCO expert mission's analysis," he said.
Moscow, May 3 : Cessation of hostilities in the Syrian city of Aleppo will be announced in the coming hours, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Tuesday after talks with UN envoy to Syria, Staffan da Mistura.

Lavrov said the US and Russian militaries were currently holding talks on the Aleppo ceasefire.

"I hope that in the coming hours such an agreement will be announced," RT news quoted the minister as saying after the meeting here.

Lavrov also announced the creation of a new Russian-US monitoring centre in Geneva, which will oversee ceasefire violations in Syria.
Canberra, May 4 : A boat carrying asylum seekers was intercepted off the coast of Australia's remote Cocos Islands territory, sources said on Wednesday.

The vessel was spotted by a ferry passing by the remote chain of islands, located between Sri Lanka and the west coast of the Australian mainland, and intercepted by authorities on Monday, EFE news reported citing the sources.

It is said to have been two years since the last documented asylum seeker boat arrived in Australia.

A passenger on board the ferry that spotted the vessel told The Australian daily that he did not know what happened after the boat was intercepted because "everything is so secret".

The immigration department has not commented on the incident.

Australia's "stop the boats" campaign seeks to stop asylum seekers from reaching the mainland.

Many people who have tried to reach Australia from countries including Syria, Iran and Myanmar, are being held in immigration camps on Nauru and Papua New Guinea, where living conditions are poor.

Two asylum seekers on Nauru have set themselves on fire in recent weeks, including a 23-year-old Iranian man who died of his injuries last week.
Hong Kong, May 4 : Hong Kong should focus on getting its citizens to behave well and rehabilitate the city's tourist-friendly image if it wants to attract more Chinese mainland tourists, tourism experts said.

The suggestion was made after Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying announced on Tuesday that the Hong Kong government has no plans to restore the multiple-entry individual visit scheme for people from the nearby city of Shenzhen, Guangdong province, the China Daily reported on Wednesday.

Evidence of the falling number of mainland tourists visiting Hong Kong came during the three-day "mini Golden Week" holiday from April 30 to May 2 when there was a 40 percent year-on-year drop in the number of mainland tour groups, according to the Hong Kong Inbound Travel Association.

Lam Chi-ting, general secretary of Hong Kong Tourism Industry Employees General Union, said he agreed that the time is not right to reinstate the multiple-entry permits for residents from Shenzhen, or to loosen rules so that residents of other mainland cities can visit Hong Kong more easily.

"The city still needs time to study its capacity before welcoming more mainlanders," Lam said.

"Not to mention, Hong Kong people also need time to learn how to behave in a civil and friendly way toward mainland visitors."

He made the comments after recent news stories reported isolated incidents in which mainland visitors had been criticized and made to feel uncomfortable in Hong Kong.

The city has enjoyed several bumper years for tourism, with mainland visitors delivering a shopping and travelling bonanza to the retail sector, said Song Ding, a senior analyst from the Tourism and Real Estate Industry Research Center of the China Development Institute, a think tank based in Shenzhen.

But in the wake of fewer mainland tourists visiting the city and a cooling economy, Hong Kong has been attempting to lure tourists from countries including Japan, South Korea and the USs.

China contributes between 3 and 4 million arrivals to Hong Kong each month, compared with 150,000 to 160,000 monthly arrivals from other major markets.
Seoul, May 4 : South Korean President Park Geun-hye has said her landmark visit to Iran was an opportunity to secure Tehran's cooperation in denuclearising the Korean peninsula.

Park paid a three-day visit to Iran from Sunday for a summit with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani. She is the first South Korean president to visit the Middle East country since they established diplomatic ties in 1962.

"This visit was aimed at securing a room for cooperation with Iran on the Korean peninsula denuclearisation issue," Xinhua news agency quoted Park as saying.

Park said it was very rare and meaningful for Iran to clearly and publicly express its position about the peninsula's denuclearisation in consideration of the very amicable relations that Iran traditionally had with North Korea.

Rouhani expressed his country's opposition to nuclear development on the Korean peninsula during a joint press conference on Monday after a summit with Park.

Park said Rouhani strongly voiced his opposition to any nuclear development and publicly expressed his support for peaceful reunification on the peninsula, saying he repeatedly stressed his opposition to any security instabilities on the peninsula.

Park's comments came amid lingering concerns about North Korea's fifth nuclear test, which South Korean military expected to occur around the Pyongyang's ruling party convention on Friday.

The seventh ruling Workers' Party of Korea (WPK), the first party congress in 36 years, is expected to last for three to four days.
Ottawa, May 6 : The wildfire in western Canada, which ballooned to 85,000 hectares in Fort McMurray overnight, is now billowing across a wide front south of the city, a senior official said on Thursday.

The fire, which broke out early this week, has forced a massive evacuation of 88,000 people, Xinhua quoted Alberta Premier Rachel Notley as saying.

Supercharged by winds of up to 70 km/h, the Fort McMurray wildfire has grown eight times larger on Wednesday night and is expected to continue to burn out of control on Thursday as more than 1,110 firefighters, 145 helicopters and 22 air tankers are fighting to protect homes and critical infrastructure across the oil sands gateway.

No firm estimates are yet available on number of structures that burned overnight but officials said on Wednesday that at least 1,600 homes and buildings have been destroyed. Up to 90 percent of structures were burnt down in some outskirts neighbourhoods.

On Wednesday afternoon, Alberta declared a province-wide state of emergency to provide full support and better coordinate resources.

Officials said one major task on Thursday will be to re-evacuate up to 25,000 people now sheltering in oil sands work camps north of the city. The province hopes to transport many of those people, who fled Fort McMurray two days ago, by aircraft to Edmonton, the provincial capital and the closest major city 435 km to the south.

Fire officials said a total of 47 wildfires are burning across the province with seven considered out of control. Amazingly, as of Thursday morning, there have been no serious injuries or deaths yet reported.

Three more communities including an evacuation centre were put under evacuation orders late on Wednesday as the unstoppable fire pushed further south away from Fort McMurray. Firefighters said they need help from cooler wetter weather to contain fire.

The local airport, which has already been shut down to all commercial flights, suffered minor damages but will remain open to emergency services. Anxious and exhausted people boarded buses for the long trip down Highway 63.

Fire crews on the ground expect to receive reinforcements soon from other parts of Canada. Ontario will send 100 fighters Friday and Quebec has dispatched four air tankers.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced on Thursday morning that the federal government will match all individual charitable donations to Red Cross relief efforts for Fort McMurray. Alberta has also pledged to match donations to the Red Cross.

Insurance companies are setting up temporary claims hubs and sending additional staff to Alberta as wildfires in Fort McMurray destroyed property in what could become one of the costliest natural disasters in Canadian history.

The damage could reach nine billion Canadian dollars (about $7 billion) for insurers if it gets to the point that the town has to be rebuilt, an analyst at Bank of Montreal said on Thursday.

Officials were still investigating the cause of the latest fire, being it lightning strike or human cause but meteorologist said the wildfire has a clear link to climate change.
Riyadh, May 6 : Saudi Interior Ministry said on Thursday that it killed two Islamic State (IS) terrorists in a raid in Mecca.

Another two IS members were arrested in a separate raid in Jeddah, Xinhua cited a report by local TV Al Akhbar.

The Mecca raid took place after hours of police chase when the suspected terrorists took a shelter at a house usually rented by road travellers.

The ministry announced last week the foiling of a terror attack that targeted an area in Asir region in the southwest of Saudi Arabia, in which the police killed two suspected terrorists and confiscated two cars as one of them was planted with explosives.

Saudi Arabia has reported many deadly attacks orchestrated by the IS through its sleeping cells in the country.
Brasilia, May 6 : Brazil's Supreme Court has suspend President of the Chamber of Deputies Eduardo Cunha for obstructing corruption investigations against him.

In a unanimous vote, 11 Supreme Court judges made the decision on an injunction filed by prosecutor general Rodrigo Janot to suspend Cunha's office, Xinhua news agency reported.

The vote was a confirmation of a preliminary decision by Justice Teori Zavaski, who ruled early in the day that Cunha should be suspended.

Given Cunha's capacity as the house speaker, the issue had to be voted on by all Supreme Court judges as well.

The judges agreed that Cunha had been using his power to obstruct probe against him.

A massive investigation into a major corruption scheme at state-controlled oil and gas giant Petrobras was underway.

Alleged bribery and fraudulent contracts have led to the arrests of a number of politicians, Petrobras directors and high executives from Brazil's major construction companies.

Cunha was being investigated by the Chamber's ethics committee for taking millions of dollars for favouring specific companies in Petrobras contracts.

In a statement issued after the decision was announced, Cunha complained that the judiciary was trying to interfere with Congress and that he would appeal.

In his injunction, Janot said removing Cunha from his position was essential for investigations to continue without interference and warned about the possibility that the lawmaker would commit more wrongdoings.

However, for Cunha to be removed, the Chamber itself must vote in favour. Until that time, he will maintain his salary and benefits. Such a vote is seen as very unlikely since his successor, Waldir Maranhao, is a close ally of his.

Cunha is regarded as one of the major agents of President Dilma Rousseff's impeachment process. As president of the chamber, he refused to accept any impeachment requests against her for most of 2015.

However, when Rousseff's Workers' Party suggested it would back his removal after documents revealed Cunha had millions of dollars stashed away in Swiss bank accounts, he started the impeachment process.

Rousseff calls the impeachment against her "a soft coup" and regards Cunha and her Vice President Michel Temer as its masterminds.

Rousseff said the removal of Cunha occurred "better late than never".

"I heard the court had suspended Cunha. Better late than never. I regret that he succeeded in presiding over the regrettable impeachment process in the house," she said.
Moscow, May 6 : Tourism authorities in Russia want customs and immigration officials to brush up on their English, even as they acknowledge that not knowing the language could prove an impediment to increasing tourist inflows from the English-speaking world, especially India.

Random delays at immigration counters and a dearth of English signages have emerged as some of the red flags for Russian tourism authorities, who have begun to focus on the outbound market from India, which is expected to grow to $40 billion by 2020.

"There is very little excuse for the discomfort caused by the conduct of the customs officers. We regret it. Knowledge of English among customs officials in Russia has to increase, there is no question about it," Rimma Sachunova, deputy chairperson of the St. Petersburg Committee on Tourism Development told IANS after a group of travel agents from India were detained for nearly three hours at Moscow's Domodedovo airport.

"We will write an official letter to the customs service because now we have a lot of hope and expectation from the Indian tourist market," Sachunova said.

Tourism experts believe that while the need for Russia to open up its locales for tourism is very real and necessary, the transition from being a country that was once "behind the Iron Curtain" to a democracy with open transit norms is not an easy one.

"Give us a little bit of time for us to change our borders," said Marina Sokolov of Indigo Tour, which caters to the bulk of the inbound Indian tourists to Russia.

Ekaterina Borisova, attached to the Moscow Tourism Office, hoped that the federal government's plan to set up a tourist office at major transit points used by international tourists could help cut down on the delay at Russian immigration and customs counters.

"We are trying to make customs (and immigration) more open, but unfortunately it takes time. Hopefully, we will open a tourist office at the airport, railway stations and all places where tourists arrive," she said.

Sachunova also said that efforts to include the English language in the city's road and Metro signages were already underway.

"We are working at ensuring that there are more signages in English at St. Petersburg. In fact St. Petersburg is the only city in Russia that has English signages in all its Metro stations," she said.

While the lack of knowledge of the English language both among officials and amongst the populace is an acknowledged impediment, when it comes to enhancing tourist inflows to Russia from India, Paresh Navani of the Russian Information Centre, India, claimed that visa norms should be tinkered to allow easy access to Indians to visit Russia as tourists.

"With the Russian Federation opening up its policies and borders to ease tourism, this gives Indians the opportunity to tour these locations with ease, safety, comfort and at very reasonable costs compared to any other European destination and even in comparison to domestic destinations in India," Navani said.

Over 50,000 Indian tourists visit Russia annually, while around 200,000 Russians visit India, especially Goa, every year.

(The writer's visit was at the invitation of the Russian Information Centre, India. Mayabhushan Nagvenkar can be contacted at mayabhushan.n@ians.in)
Srinagar, May 6 : Three policemen were injured on Friday when militants hurled a grenade at a police party in Badgam district in Jammu and Kashmir.

A police officer told IANS that the attack took place near a bus stand in Chadoora town.

The injured policemen were shifted to a hospital. Security forces began a hunt for the militants.
Mumbai, May 6 : Nidhi Chaphekar, the Jet Airways flight in-charge injured in the March 22 Brussels terror attacks, returned to India on Friday morning for further treatment and recovery. She met her two children for the first time in six weeks, an official said.

"Chaphekar has made significant recovery from her injuries sustained during the blasts at Brussels airport. She is in good spirits and very happy to be back with her family," a Jet Airways spokesperson said.

Chaphekar, 42, who flew down from Belgium late on Thursday, was shifted from Mumbai Airport to Breach Candy hospital for the next phase of her recovery programme as outlined by the medicos.

Shortly after landing, she had a happy but emotional reunion with her family members including two children -- son Vardhan, 14, and daughter Vrishi, 11 -- whom she met for the first time in over six weeks, said her husband Rupesh.

"Her homecoming is an extremely emotional moment for all of us, especially her two children, who were reunited with her after six weeks as they could not travel to meet her owing to their (school) studies," Rupesh said, requesting the media to respect the family's privacy needs.

Earlier, she was admitted to Grande Hospital de Chaleroi in Belgium. Chaphekar, who sustained a fractured foot and 15 percent burn injuries, was accompanied by her husband Rupesh Chaphekar.

"We are extremely happy and relieved to have Nidhi back home with us in Mumbai after the horrific events in Brussels. The days following the attacks were harrowing for our family. Nidhi has received the best medical care and attention and has now recovered significantly from her injuries," Rupesh said.

Chaphekar and her flight manager Amit Motwani, were among the injured as two blasts ripped through the Zaventem Airport. The attack claimed 34 lives including that of an Infosys employee Raghavendran Ganeshan.

Chaphekar will continue treatment for her leg injuries with the airline providing necessary support to her and the family.

"Our priority is to ensure that she continues to receive the best medical care and attention so that she can resume her normal life at the earliest," the spokesperson said.

"We would like to thank the doctors and medical staff in Brussels for the care they gave Nidhi during her stay in the hospital. We express our gratitude to the Jet Airways management for all they have done, not just for Nidhi but also the family. We are truly grateful for the support they have extended to us," Rupesh said.
The Ukrainian army observed eleven attacks on their positions by militants in Donbas over the past day, the press center of the anti-terrorist operation staff wrote on Facebook on Friday.

According to the press center, the militants repeatedly attacked army strongholds in Novotroitske in the Mariupol sector by use of "120mm mortars banned by the Minsk agreements, as well as small arms and grenade launchers."

Various kinds of grenade launchers and small arms were fired near Avdiyivka in Donetsk sector.
Mumbai, May 6 : In a significant verdict, the Bombay High Court on Friday ruled that possession of beef slaughtered outside Maharashtra would not be a criminal offence but it upheld the government's decision to ban the slaughter of bullocks in the state.

The ruling by a division bench comprising Justice A.S. Oka and Justice S.C. Gupte came on a bunch of petitions challenging the provisions in the Maharashtra Animal Preservation (Amendment) Act which stipulated penal action even for possession of beef brought from outside the state.

Accordingly, while slaughter of bullocks would not be permitted, the court has permitted the import and consumption of beef from other states to Maharashtra.

The President had granted assent to the Maharashtra Animal Preservation (Amendment) Act, which prohibited slaughter of bulls and bullocks as well as possession and consumption of their meat in the state.

The Act stipulated a five-year jail term and Rs.10,000 fine for slaughter of bulls or bullocks and one-year imprisonment and Rs.2,000 fine for possession of its meat.
Edinburgh, May 6 : The Scottish National Party (SNP) on Friday claimed a "historic" victory for a third term in parliament.

Britons on Thursday voted in a series of elections across the country. Elections took place for the Scottish parliament, National Assembly of Wales, the Northern Ireland assembly, for 124 councils in England and for new mayors in London, Bristol, Liverpool and Salford, with parliamentary by-elections in Ogmore and Sheffield Brightside Counting is underway with further results to come in later in the day.

SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon is expected to lead her party to a third successive term in office, telling supporters: "We have made history".

"What we're seeing tonight, not just across Glasgow but across the central belt of Scotland, is the SNP replacing Labour," The Scottish Daily Record quoted Sturgeon as saying.

"The collapse in Labour support is quite staggering."

By 5.00 a.m., the SNP won 39 of the 48 seats to declare.

The Labour Party vote share plunged by 17 points in East Kilbride and Clydebank and Milngavie and the Tories beat them into third place in Clydesdale.

They had 15 constituency seats and had lost eight of them.
Hyderabad, May 6 : Heavy rains accompanied by squalls lashed Telangana and Andhra Pradesh on Friday, officials said.

The heavy downpour, which began around Thursday midnight, continued till early Friday morning, inundating roads and low-lying areas in Hyderabad and suburbs.

Strong gales uprooted trees, electricity poles and hoardings while snapped electricity wires plunged several parts of Hyderabad into darkness.

The fallen trees and electricity poles disrupted traffic.

The Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) set up an emergency helpline to attend the calls of flooding.

Roads were inundated in areas like Secretariat, Khairatabad, Panjagutta, Ameerpet and Madhapur.

In Secunderabad, several trees were uprooted on Rashtrapati Nilayam-Lotugunta road.

Many spent sleepless nights as the rain water entered houses in low-lying areas in L.B. Nagar, Alwal, Uppuguda and Kavadiguda. Parking lots in apartments were also flooded.

GHMC commissioner Jarandhan Reddy held a tele-conference with officials to review the situation.

The rains and hails also wrecked havoc in other districts of Telangana, damaging crops. There was massive damage to mango trees in Nalgonda district.

A part of railway track near Valigonda in Nalgonda was damaged.

In Andhra Pradesh, heavy rains lashed parts of coastal Andhra and Rayalaseema regions. Officials said 20 sheep were killed due to lightening in Anantapur district.

The heavy downpour inundated low-lying areas in Vijayawada city and several parts of Krishna, Guntur, Prakasam, East Godavari and West Godavari districts.

One person died when a hoarding fell on him in Tadepalli in Guntur district.

The rains, however, provided relief to people reeling under the heat wave in both the Telugu states. It considerably brought down the temperatures and made the weather pleasant.

In Telangana, where the heat wave has so far claimed 234 lives, the temperatures fell by three to four degrees.

The Met office has forecast more rains under the impact of upper air trough from Vidarbha to extreme South Peninsula across Telangana. It has also warned that thunderstorm will occur at a few places.
Mumbai, May 6 : Filmmaker Anurag Kashyap has applauded National Award-winning Kannada-language film "Thithi", which released in India on Friday. He says that he has watched the film three times and can still see it "any number of times".

Written and directed by Raam Reddy, "Thithi", which stars Thammegowda S., Channegowda and Abhishek H. N. premiered at the 68th Locarno International Film Festival in August last year.

Kashyap took to Twitter on Friday to urge fans to watch the film.

"Every1in Bengaluru, Mysore and other parts of Karnataka, one of the funniest films that I have seen in recent times, 'Thithi' releases today (Friday)," Kashyap tweeted.

"'Thithi' is that one film that I have seen thrice and I can see it any number of times. Don't miss this gem," he added.

Set in a remote village in South India, "Thithi" is a dramatic comedy about how three generations of sons react to the death of the oldest in their clan, a man named Century Gowda: a locally renowned, highly cantankerous 101-year-old man.

The film won the National Film Award for Best Feature Film in Kannada at the 63rd National Film Awards.
Beijing, May 6 : Chinese prosecutors have filed corruption indictments against Zhang Lijun, former vice minister of environmental protection, and three provincial-level officials for accepting bribes.

Prosecutors in the four cases accused the suspects of taking advantage of their posts to seek benefits for others and accepting "huge amounts" in bribes.

A statement issued by the Supreme People's Procuratorate (SPP) on Friday said all four were charged with accepting bribes, Xinhua news agency reported.

Zhang's case was investigated by SPP prosecutors and later transferred to a lower-level procuratorate in Beijing to launch the indictment.

The three cases were transferred to city-level procuratorates for indictments.

The defendants have been informed of their litigation rights and questioned by the prosecutors, who have heard representations from the defendants' lawyers in each case.
Cairo, May 6 : The Indian embassy in Cairo and the Maulana Azad Centre for Indian Culture are hosting a Tagore Festival here from May 8-12 to mark the 155th birth anniversary of poet laureate Rabindranath Tagore.

Tagore, who received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913, is not unknown to Egypt.

He visited Egypt as an adolescent in 1878 and later as a famous poet-philosopher in 1926 when he met King Fouad and interacted with scholars in Alexandria and Cairo.

His friendship with Egyptian poet Ahmed Shawqy is well known and he wrote a moving eulogy on his friend's death in 1932.

Tagore was impressed by the strong literary trends and found great resonance in the intellectual movement in Egypt. He also wrote about the relationship between the Nile river and the Egyptian civilization.

The Egyptian Caricature Society has curated an excellent collection of portraits from across the globe on Tagore. These will be exhibited during a painting exhibition, which will be inaugurated on May 8 and will remain open for the entire duration of the festival.

Egyptian scholars have translated many of Tagore's works into Arabic and have also written several books on Tagore.

These books are available at the National Library of Egypt, which is collaborating with the Indian embassy in organizing an exhibition of all such books to be inaugurated on May 9.

The Festival will feature the Tagore dance drama "Shapmochan" (Breaking the Spell) on May 9 by well-known Indian classical dancer Dona Ganguly, who hails from Kolkata.

The movie "Ghare Baire" by legendary Indian filmmaker Satyajit Ray will be screened on May 10. The movie is based on a novel written by Tagore.

Shreya Guhathakurta, renowned Rabindra Sangeet exponent, will present songs written and composed by Tagore to the Egyptian audience on May 11.

The festival will conclude on May 12 with a seminar on contemporary literature "Tagore, Shawky & Mahfouz", which will feature Indian and Egyptian scholars and writers and will be conducted by the Supreme Council of Culture.

As a build up to the Tagore Festival, the Indian embassy organised a month-long online Quiz Completion, which started on April 10 and an essay competition on Tagore for students.
New Delhi, May 6 : The Congress has developed 'Narendra Modi phobia' and at times it could even blame his government for drought and bad monsoon in the country, BJP lawmaker Meenakshi Lekhi said on Friday.

"They perhaps think he (Modi) is god. They will one day even blame him for drought," the parliamentarian from New Delhi said.

However, the MP said, the Congress itself is responsible for the drought and dry spell across the country due to their misgovernance over the last more than 65 years.

"Poor water management is responsible for drought. That's why even states like Uttar Pradesh with rivers is suffering from dry spells," she said.

Referring to certain corruption cases of the past, she said the Congress should be more careful about their past acts of omission and commission since the Modi government was determined to fix responsibility.

"They got away with many things in the past. This time, with prosecution and investigations on track, it will be difficult for them," Lekhi told IANS at Parliament House here.
Canberra, May 6 : Australian authorities deported to Sri Lanka a group of asylum seekers who were intercepted earlier this week near the Coco Islands in the Indian Ocean, sources said on Friday.

However, the immigration ministry declined to comment on what it called an "operational matter" or reveal the exact number of people deported, which is between 12 and 15.

Inhabitants of te Coco Islands said the group departed Thursday night on a chartered flight a few days after arriving in a boat, the first documented asylum seeker boat to arrive in Australia in almost two years, EFE news reported.

In 2001, Australia began its practice of mandatory detention of undocumented immigrants, who were trying to reach Australian shores, to third countries, which was interrupted for two years during the Labour government of then prime minister Kevin Rudd, who in 2013 toughened the country's immigration policy and banned refugees from setting foot on Australian territory.

Many of the immigrants that Australia intercepts have fled conflict-ridden countries or regions like Afghanistan, Darfur, Pakistan, Somalia and Syria, or have escaped conditions of discrimination or statelessness such as the minority Rohingyas in Myanmar or the Biduns in the Persian Gulf.
Ranchi, May 6 : The fate of ArcelorMittal's 12-million tonne, $6.5 billion steel project in Jharkhand appears to be hanging in the balance as a new clause has been put up by the company for which there is no approval yet, state government officials said here on Friday.

The second stage of the memorandum of understanding (MoU) between Mittal steel and the Jharkhand government was proposed to be signed on Friday. But the company representatives did not turn up for the signing. Along with Mittal, Bhushan Steel representatives also did not turn up to sign another MoU.

Three MoUs were to be signed but only Vedanta executives turned up.

"Mittal steel has come out with a new clause. We are yet to get the requisition for the new clause. We will initiate process once we get the written requisition," said K. Ravi Kumar, director of the Jharkhand Industries department, without spelling out what the clause was.

"Bhushan steel is yet to come with a new date. The director of Bhushan steel is not in Ranchi."

But some government sources said Mittal steel was not showing interest in the steel plant due to the slump in the sector. The company officials here could not be reached over phone, despite several attempts by IANS to get their version.

The company had first signed the pact with the state government in 2005 for the 12-million tonne steel plant at an investment of Rs.40,000 crore. This MOU expired in 2010. The second-stage MOU was proposed on May 6.

Due to land acquisition problems, Mittal Steel in the past could not make much headway with the project. It was allocated iron ore mines at Karampada village. This apart, the state government also gave a prospective license for mining.

But the allocated coal block was cancelled.

The Mittals had also identified a site on the border of the Khuti-Gumla districts for the unit. But due to land acquisition problems, they decided to shift to Bokaro. When the MOU was signed in 2005, the company was also eyeing Chiria iron ore mines.

Again this was opposed by the state-run Steel Authority of India, which was awarded the mines.
Kathmandu, May 6 : Nepal President Bidhya Devi Bhandari's upcoming visit to India has been cancelled, officials here said on Friday but they did not disclose the reason for the abrupt cancellation.

However, diplomatic sources told IANS that a recent political fiasco and Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli's approach towards India were responsible for the cancellation of the presidential visit which was scheduled to begin on May 9.

Bhesh Raj Adhikari, chief personal assistant to President Bhandari told IANS that the Cabinet, even after two meetings on Thursday and Friday, held back approval for the visit, delegation and agenda.

The foreign affairs ministry has informed Nepali Ambassador in India, Deep Kumar Uphadhay, about the cancellation.

On the invitation of her Indian counterpart Pranab Mukharjee, President Bhandari was to embark on her first official visit to India next week.

During an interaction with some reporters at her office on Wednesday, Bhandari had said her trip to the southern neighbour was a goodwill visit.

"I will invite Indian President Pranab Mukherjee to visit Nepal," she said, adding that "The purpose of my visit is to strengthen the good ties between Nepal and India".

As per the earlier plan, President Bhandari was scheduled to attend a function in New Delhi on May 9 and the following day she was to hold meetings with Mukherjee and the other Indian political leadership.

On May 11, she was to leave for Simhastha Kumbh Mela in Ujjain, Madhya Pradesh.

She was also scheduled to deliver in Ujjain a lecture on women's empowerment.
Head of Zakarpattia Regional State Administration Hennadiy Moskal has asked Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman to submit a proposal on Moskal's resignation to President Petro Poroshenko.

In a statement published on his official website on Friday morning, the governor said that he took this decision in connection with the replacement of the chief of the Zakarpattia customs office, which was done without consulting with him. In Moskal's opinion, this was done in the interest of "the cigarette mafia" engaged in smuggling tobacco products to the EU, which he is currently trying to fight.

"This appointment hasn't been agreed with Zakarpattia Regional State Administration Thus, I do not see the point of my continuing as the head of Zakarpattia Regional State Administration. Therefore, I am asking you to exercise your constitutional right envisaged in Article 118 of the Constitution of Ukraine and send a request to the president of Ukraine to dismiss me from this post," the statement said.

According to Moskal, after the personnel changes were made following the armed conflict in Mukacheve in the summer of 2015 which was caused by the redistribution of flows of contraband cigarettes from Ukraine to the EU, the situation has stabilized.

"The systemic smuggling of tobacco products to Germany, Spain, Italy, France, and Great Britain was stopped, and the well-organized network of illegal shipments of cigarettes by trucks was broken down. However, international criminal groups... are trying to resume the systemic smuggling of tobacco products, using the influence of Ukrainian politicians and heads of individual departments," Moskal said.

According to him, at the moment some 200 trucks loaded with cigarettes, which were produced in Belarus, Moldova, Russia and the United Arab Emirates as well as in the occupied territories of Donetsk region and Crimea, and imported to Ukraine through corruption schemes, are waiting in Kyiv and Kyiv region. "To get these trucks with cigarettes into the EU, it is necessary to replace the chief of the Zakarpattia customs office for 'the right man' who will work under a specific scheme," the regional administration head said.

To achieve this goal, a situation with the detention of 22 railway cars loaded with timber in the town of Chop was used, Moskal said. He said that the timber was provided by Uzhgorod military forestry, and that some of it came from the neighboring forestry in Lviv region which is subordinated directly to of Ukraine's State Agency for Forest Resources. "The regional state administration has no direct impact on the forest industry, which was monopolized during the presidency of Viktor Yanukovych," the governor said.

According to him, then chairman of the State Fiscal Service of Ukraine Roman Nasirov was instructed to conduct an internal investigation and staff reshuffles, but he replaced the head of Zakarpattia regional customs without waiting for the results of the investigation, because the law on civil service on the appointment of all government officials on a competitive basis entered into force on May 1. What is more, the dismissed head of the Zakarpattia customs Volodymyr Kolesnikov was on a sick leave, when he was dismissed, which is against the law, the regional governor said.

On April 30 assistant of MP Valeriy Patskan, Andriy Krymsky was appointed acting chief of the regional customs office, Moskal said. "I emphasize that this appointment was not discussed with Zakarpattia Regional State Administration," he said.

"At the moment, Zakarpattia witnesses a repetition of the situation that led to the bloody events of July 11, 2015 in Mukacheve. And I can not remain a bystander. It is impossible to overcome smuggling in a separate region under conditions where the central authorities not only aren't helping, but on the contrary are trying to return the shady schemes... Zakarpattia has been left at the mercy of smugglers and the green light has been given for illegal movement of cigarettes across the state border. When the battle against the smuggling began I was warned that this is what would happen. Unfortunately, these predictions are coming true," Moskal said.
London, May 6 : England and Arsenal's midfielder Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain was on Friday ruled out for up to two months with a fresh knee injury, ending his Euro 2016 participation dreams, says Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger.

The 22 year-old England midfielder, who has not played for Arsenal since injuring his knee against Barcelona in a Champions League match in February.

"There is no chance," Wenger said on Friday, when asked if Oxlade-Chamberlain could make Roy Hodgson's squad for this summer's tournament in France. England's first Group B game is against Russia in Marseille on Saturday, June 11.

"I had a little conversation with Alex and with our medical team. They told me yesterday that he will be back at the beginning of July."

"It is very sad. He was physically ready and looking sharp. He had one week's training last week, but he planned to play on Tuesday night but got injured on Monday morning."

He started the first game of Euro 2012 against France, stood a very good chance of being in Roy Hodgson's squad if he was fit, but will now surely miss the tournament which starts on June 10.

Although the 22-year-old had recovered from an original knee injury, he suffered a setback on Monday morning ahead of an Arsenal Under-21 match on Tuesday, Wenger confirmed.

He was expected to return to the first team for Sunday's Premier League game against Manchester City.
New Delhi : Just when it appeared that Syrian rebels and their proxies had thrown in the towel, and that they had been persuaded to acquiesce in a political settlement to be negotiated in Geneva, there is a sudden spike in fighting in the northern city of Aleppo. Its 5.5 million population as against Damascus' 4.5 million makes it the country's most populous city.

Writings in the New York Times, other Western and Saudi publications have been talking of a "divided city of Aleppo". This is ominous.

With Russian help, Syrian forces had won a morale boosting victory in Palmyra. In the third week of March, Russians had all but encircled Aleppo. Why did they spare Izaz, the main smuggling route to Turkey? That is the route through which most new arms and men on brand new vehicles have driven in to revive the mayhem in Aleppo.

Russian Foreign minister Sergei Lavrov has been flourishing "proof" under Secretary of State John Kerry's nose: "Look so much of this material is brand new and American in origin."

In the Syrian whodunit, Americans have actually been admitting their mistakes with endearing docility. Remember Secretary of Defence Ashton Carter, his face distinctly in the lower mould, being grilled by a congressional committee, then by the media, for the clumsiness of US Special Operations in Syria? The "moderates" they were training left their weapons with the Al-Nusra Front and sought safe passage. Carter announced, on live cameras, that a $500 million training programme had been discontinued.

Asked by Thomas Friedman of The New York Times, why had he not used air strikes when the Islamic State first reared its head, President Obama was honest: that would have released pressure on Iraq's Shia Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. At that stage, the US-Saudi combine's priority was to put an end to Maliki's brazenly pro-Shia regime. In that project, the IS was an asset. Is it no longer an asset?

In the latest attacks in Iraq, the IS does not look like a diminished power despite the US, Britain and Israel having rung alarm bells across the world. Is this trio confronting the IS powerless?

Arab ambassadors, particularly those opposed to the Saudis, draw diagrams to prove that the IS, in its origins, was a US-backed project which may have grown out of US control. Just as Osama bin Laden did.

Syrian diplomats on the other hand are targeting Britain with fanciful stories. When British Parliament did not permit Prime Minister David Cameron to attack Assad's forces in Syria, British intelligence thought of an alternative scheme: set up the propaganda machine for groups opposed to Assad. Intelligence intercepts, which authorities in Damascus decoded, are cited as evidence.

As one grapples with this confusion, emerges Christiane Amanpour of the CNN subjecting the hapless Ashton Carter to fierce interrogation. She put the fear of God in him. "Aleppo is another Srebrenica waiting to happen."

Srebrenica became notorious for genocide. Serbian troops separated 8,373 men and boys from their womenfolk during the Bosnian war and, in July 1995, slaughtered them. They were buried in mass graves.

Carter did not rise to the bait. "The misery of Syria can only be ended by reaching a political solution."

Why this resumption of fierce fighting in Aleppo?

With Russian help, Syrian forces had regained so much territory that the opposition had very few chips to play with at the bargaining table in Geneva. Turkish demand for a no-fly-zone along the stretch north of Aleppo and the Turkish border has not been conceded. The US would not like to dislodge Kurdish influence in that region. A divided Aleppo gives the Syrian opposition at least a toehold. Russians would be doing a cost-benefit analysis to see if they can allow that to happen.

The US and Russians had agreed to the original ceasefire primarily between the Syrian Army and groups who accept the ceasefire. The agreement did not provide scope for the Al-Nusra Front or IS to be protected. But the US is lumping Al-Nusra with the so called "moderate opposition".

Roughly, what is going on is this: there are, say, rocket attacks which the Syrian Army compasses show are coming from Nusra-held enclaves. The army retaliates. The Western media screams murder - look, they are attacking civilians and moderate oppositions.

In other words, Al-Nusra is the miasmal mist behind which a so-called moderate opposition is being conceived and forged. What I suspect is being sought is a ceasefire along an imaginary line which will then divide Aleppo. The Syrian-Russian combine would like to impose on Aleppo a fait accompli favourable to them. Syria, I am afraid, will probably limp along a path of non-resolution until a new administration in Washington begins to take stock of the situation after November 7.

(A senior commentator on political and diplomatic affairs, Saeeq Naqvi can be reached on saeednaqvi@hotmail.com. The views expressed are personal.)
New Delhi, May 6 : The Delhi Police told a court here on Friday that a special public prosecutor (SPP) had been appointed as their defence counsel in the terror case relating to Sayyed Liyaqat Shah.

Police had arrested Shah on charge of planning to execute attacks in the national capital in 2013 but he was later given a clean chit by the National Investigation Agency (NIA).

According to court sources, during the in-camera proceedings, a Delhi Police official said the state government's notification on the appointment will be submitted on the next date of hearing.

The court then adjourned the matter to August 1.

The court was hearing on a report filed by the NIA on January 24 last year, wherein it dropped charges against Shah but charge-sheeted Sabir Khan Pathan that he was responsible for placing weapons and explosives in a guest house near the Jama Masjid here.

The police said that on the basis of his disclosure statement, the Special Cell raided the Haji Arafat Guest House and recovered arms, ammunition and explosives.

The NIA had filed the charge sheet against Pathan, who is absconding, on charges dealing with forgery, the Arms Act and the Explosive Substances Act.

The Delhi Police had in September last year filed an application in the court, pleading for an opportunity to submit their arguments before it decided on the NIA report and Shah's plea for discharge in the case.

Shah was arrested by the Delhi Police Special Cell on March 20, 2013, while he was returning from Pakistani Kashmir to the Kashmir Valley via Nepal.

He was later released on bail.

The Jammu and Kashmir Police had protested the arrest, saying Shah was returning home as per the state government's policy of allowing people, who had ex-filtrated to Pakisntani Kashmir in the early 1990s, to return.
New Delhi, May 6 : The Supreme Court on Friday cleared the decks for Uttarakhand's ousted chief minister Harish Rawat to prove his majority in the assembly on Tuesday, but nine disqualified rebel Congress legislators won't be allowed to vote.

The top court said it would monitor the voting that is to take place at 11 a.m. and the entire proceedings of the house will be videographed.

The apex court bench, comprising Justice Dipak Misra and Justice Shiva Kirti Singh, also ordered that President's Rule in the hill state will be kept in abeyance from 10.30 a.m. to 1 p.m. for the house proceedings.

The order came after the central government informed the court that it was ready for the conduct of a floor test only if it is done under the Supreme Court's supervision.

Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi, appearing for the government, said: "We will go along with the floor test as suggested by the (apex) court."

However, on its modalities, he cited the past precedents of Jharkhand and Uttar Pradesh where the floor tests had taken place on the intervention of the top court and opined that there should be an observer, preferably any of the former chief election commissioners. He also suggested the name of former Lok Sabha secretary general Subhash C. Kashyap for an observer.

However, this was opposed by senior counsel Kapil Sibal and Abhishek Manu Singhvi, appearing for Rawat, who contended that no outsider could be present in the assembly in the course of its proceedings.

"There should be one agenda (for the short session in the assembly). It should only be a composite floor test of strength between the two political alliances in the assembly to ascertain which of the two alliances had majority of the house," said Rohatgi.

The court, however, made it clear that only Rawat would seek the vote of confidence.

There was divergence of views on the manner in which voting had to be conducted. While Rohatgi wanted it to be with a show of hands, Singhvi insisted that it should be through slips as the outcome of the voting would be recorded and could be even verified by the court at a later stage, if required.

Senior counsel C.A. Sundaram, appearing for the nine disqualified rebel Congress MLAs, urged the court to allow them to participate in the voting but the court was not moved.

"Unless your disqualification is stayed, you can't vote. Why it (disqualification) was not stayed (by the high court) is immaterial. Disqualification under 10th schedule (provisions for disqualification on ground of defection) is a separate issue, it can't be clubbed with challenge to article 356 (imposition of President's rule)," said the bench.

Disqualified "rightly or wrongly", the nine Congress members cannot vote in Tuesday's floor test, it said.

Uttarakhand has been under President's Rule since March 27 after the central government dismissed the Congress government, led by Rawat, citing a constitutional crisis in the hill state.

President's Rule was lifted for a few hours in the state following an Uttarakhand High Court order on April 21 but reimposed by the Supreme Court a day later.

Uttarakhand was plunged into political crisis after nine Congress legislators, including former chief minister Vijay Bahuguna, whom Rawat replaced, rebelled and turned to the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

The crisis peaked on March 18 when the assembly passed a finance bill by voice vote even as the opposition, backed by the rebels, demanded recorded voting. The BJP cried foul after Speaker Govind Kunjwal declined.

Rawat was then asked by Governor K.K. Paul to prove his majority on March 28. Two days ahead of the voting, Kunjwal disqualified the Congress rebels.

In the 70-member house whose strength has now been reduced to 61, the Congress has 27 legislators, excluding the rebels who won't be allowed to take part in the trust vote on Tuesday. The BJP has 28 members. There are six members from other parties who have earlier voiced their support for the Congress government.
New Delhi, May 6 : Drought-like conditions prevail in several states across the country with Maharashtra and Odisha being the worst affected, reports from across the indicated on Friday.

People in the parched areas continued to suffer from the scarcity of water even as crops over hundreds of hectares of agricultural land have been severely affected.

The central and state governments have been found wanting, and even lax in responding to, the impending drought in some states.

Besides Maharashtra and Odisha, some parts of states like Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Rajasthan, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh are experiencing severe water scarcity and drought-like conditions.

Over 27,000 of the total 43,000 villages in Maharashtra - or nearly 60 percent - are reeling under a drought of varying severity this year, besides facing serious water shortages in most urban centres across the state, officials said in Mumbai.

"Of these, a majority are located in the North Maharashtra (Khandesh), Marathwada and Vidarbha regions of the state, and virtually nil water availability has resulted in widespread human and cattle migration to nearby urban centres, adding to their woes," a Maharashtra government official told IANS in Mumbai.

In Latur, among the worst-hit along with Beed and Osmanabad districts, the centre had made provisions for carrying water by trains from Sangli district which has brought some relief to the people there.

The Maharashtra government has announced drought relief measures of over Rs.11,000 crore (over $1.5 billion) this year, including provision for supplying drinking water, fodder and water for cattle. Despite all this, over 300 lives have been lost, including farmers and around a dozen related to people searching for water in remote areas.

The state has been under fire from the Bombay High Court, both from its Mumbai and Nagpur bench for its indifferent attitude to the water crises, which led to the cancellation of all IPL matches scheduled in the state this month.

The Shiv Sena ruling ally has criticized the BJP's failure to tackle the crisis headlong, even as the assembly's monsoon is some 40 days away. Top leaders of all political parties including the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena, the Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party are currently touring the drought-hit areas.

In Odisha, 27 out of total of 30 districts have been affected by the drought.

"The total crop area affected is 21.6 lakh hectare, out of which at least 14.82 lakh hectare in 233 blocks have suffered losses to the tune of 33 per cent or more," an official of Special Relief Commissioner's office told IANS in Bhubaneshwar.

The worst affected district is Mayurbhanj, where crops over at least 1.92 lakh hectares have sustained over 33 percent losses followed by 1.45 lakh hectares in Bargarh. Balangir (1.24 lakh hectares), Keonjhar (1.12 lakh hectares) and Nayagarh (88,922 hectares) are next three in terms of crop-losses, the official said.

To mitigate the situation, the Odisha government has submitted a memorandum to the centre pegging the cumulative losses at Rs.2,344.99 crore.

"We have already disbursed Rs.333 crore to 7.87 lakh drought-affected farmers. The disbursement is on," said the official.

Additional relief commissioner Mihir Chand Mallick said the state government is taking all steps to mitigate the situation in the state by providing financial assistance and ensuring irrigation facilities.

He, however, denied that any farmer had committed suicide due to crop losses or loan burden.

Agriculture minister Pradeep Maharathy had recently informed the Odisha assembly that even though 174 farmers in the state had committed suicide since the 2015 kharif season, not a single farmer committed suicide due to crop failure or failure to repay loans.

The minister claimed that the suicides were due to causes like illness, heart attack, mental disturbance, drug addiction or family quarrelles.

In Jharkhand, which is witnessing a heatwave since April 1, most areas are witnessing temperature highs of over 40 degrees Celsius. The mercury touched 46 degrees in some parts of the state.

Water scarcity has compounded the suffering of people across Jharkhand as many water sources have dried up.

According to sources in the state government, around 100 of the 160 water sources like rivers and major ponds have dried up in the state.

In many parts, including capital Ranchi, drinking water is supplied by the municipal bodies through tankers.

Both Telangana and Andhra Pradesh are reeling under second successive drought this year. The harsh summer, alarming fall in water levels in reservoirs and plummeting ground water table has made this as one of the worst droughts in living memory.

The Telugu states have been hit by drinking water shortage as reservoirs across Krishna and Godavari rivers and their tributaries have almost dried out.

The severe drought has triggered migration of farmers and farm labourers from several parts of Telangana and Rayalaseema region of Andhra Pradesh. About 20 lakh people estimated to have migrated from Telangana alone to Mumbai, Bengaluru, Vijayawada and other cities.

Telangana government has declared 231 'mandals' or revenue units out of total 443 in the state as drought-affected. In Andhra Pradesh, 359 mandals out of 670 have been declared drought-hit.

For the first time in three decades, four reservoirs which cater to drinking water supply in Hyderabad have completely dried up. The city of over 1.20 crore population is now banking only on supplies from Krishna and Godavari rivers with the shortfall of about 50 percent.

In other towns in Telangana, people are being supplied drinking water through tankers and that too once in four to five days.

The situation in villages is alarming. Severe scarcity of water and fodder is forcing farmers to sell their cattle for half their price.

The heat wave with mercury rising above 45 degrees in some places, has aggravated the situation. According to disaster management department of Telangana, the heat wave has so far claimed 234 lives. More than 200 people have also died in Andhra Pradesh.

Water level has reached dead storage in majority of the 14 reservoirs, which serve both the states. The two states are now pinning their hopes on early and good monsoon. Officials have warned that even a delay in monsoon could worsen the situation.

In Uttar Pradesh, politics is being played by leaders of various parties even as people continue to suffer drought-like conditions in the Bundelkhand area.

A water-tanker train sent at the behest of the central government was stranded at the Jhansi railway station as the Uttar Pradesh government refused to accept the help, saying that adequate steps were being taken by the state government to mitigate the people's water woes.

(Quaid Najmi, Chinmaya Dehury , Nityanand Shukla, Mohammad Shafeeq and Mohit Dubey contributed to this story. Jaideep Sarin can be contacted at jaideep.s@ians.in)

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Srinagar, May 6 : The kingpin of the multi-crore Haj and Umrah travel scandal in Jammu and Kashmir in 2011 has been arrested from New Delhi from where he was trying to flee abroad and brought back here on Friday, police said.

"In a major breakthrough in Al Hajeej cheating case Srinagar police arrested the main accused at Delhi. Fabiyan Wahid Gilkar was wanted in FIR number 58/2011 and 88/2012 registered in connection with cheating on pretext of providing private Haj and Umrah services by Al Hajeej Tour and Travels," a police spokesman said here.

The multi-crore scandal had rocked Kashmir in 2011 when hundreds of pilgrims were duped by the company that took money from them for arranging Haj and Umrah services for them.

The spokesman said that these two cases were registered in Khanyar police station against the travel company by residents of Chandpora Harwan, while nine more cases were registered in different police stations of Srinagar against the company on the same allegations.

The cases had come before a court, but the accused of these cases were at large and were not attending upon which warrants were issued against them, and a 'look-out' notice also issued by the court, he said.

However, police station Khanyar got information that Gilkar was trying to flee to Dubai and a police party deputed to Delhi to arrest the accused.

"After arresting him, he was brought Srinagar on Friday," the spokesman said.
Kathmandu, May 6 : Nepal President Bidhya Devi Bhandari's visit to India has been cancelled, with the president telling an Indian visitor on Friday that it was because of the Ujjain Kumbh tragedy.

Bhandari told Indian journalist Deepak Kumar during an hour-long meeting here that she had decided not to go to India because of the death of seven pilgrims at Ujjain on Thursday after a huge storm.

"I was very eager to meet (Indian President) Pranab Mukherjee but we will do it on another occasion," Deepak Kumar, who spoke to IANS, quoted the Nepalese president as saying.

"I was very sad to hear about the deaths in Ujjain," she added.

Officials here did not disclose the reason for the visit's abrupt cancellation although the foreign ministry has informed Nepal's ambassador to India about the development.

But diplomatic sources told IANS that Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli's approach towards India was responsible for the cancellation of the visit which was set to begin on May 9.

Bhesh Raj Adhikari, chief personal assistant to Bhandari, told IANS that the Cabinet, even after two meetings on Thursday and Friday, had held back approval for the visit, delegation and agenda.

It was to be President Bhandari's first official visit to India.

Deepak Kumar presented to Bhandari a copy of his book, "Nepal Elections: Facts and Figures", detailing constituency-wise information about all the elections that have taken place in the country.

Bhandari also said on the occasion that India and Nepal should set aside their differences and "take up issues on which we agree".

Nepal, the president added, was determined to improve relations with India at all costs.

Bhandari was to attend a function in New Delhi on May 9 and the following day she was to meet Mukherjee and other Indian political leaders.

On May 11, she was to leave for Simhastha Kumbh Mela in Ujjain in Madhya Pradesh. She was scheduled to speak in Ujjain on women's empowerment.

During an interaction with some reporters at her office on Wednesday, Bhandari had said her trip to New Delhi was a goodwill visit.

"I will invite the Indian president to visit Nepal. The purpose of my visit is to strengthen the good ties between Nepal and India," she said.
New Delhi, May 6 : The Congress on Friday hailed the Supreme Court's ruling to allow floor test in the Uttarakhand assembly, terming it a "victory of constitutional democracy". The party also demanded an apology from Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The Supreme Court on Friday cleared the decks for ousted Uttarakhand Chief Minister Harish Rawat to prove his legislative majority in the state assembly on Tuesday and said that the nine disqualified rebel Congress legislators would not be allowed to vote.

"Landmark history was written today as constitutional democracy achieved a shining victory with a path-breaking verdict of Supreme Court in case of Uttarakhand," said Congress spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjewala.

"It is a decisive defeat of forces who sought to trample upon democracy, subjugate Constitution and hold the will of people to ransom by engineering defections and misusing money and muscle power with a view to destabilise elected governments," he added.

Demanding an apology from Prime Minister Modi, Surjewala said: "Narendra Modi must tender an unqualified apology to people of Uttarakhand and as also to the entire country. They should also publicly take a vow to never conspire to unseat elected governments. This is the only way to strengthen and sustain India's cooperative federalism."

"Congress is confident that with the blessings of people of Uttarakhand, will of the people will be restored and Congress government will win the trust vote," he added.

Uttarakhand has been under President's Rule since March 27 after the central government dismissed the Congress government led by Rawat, citing constitutional crisis in the hill state.

The central government invoked the controversial Article 356 to remove Rawat saying his government was in minority after nine Congress legislators rebelled.
Gurgaon, May 6 : A 35-year-old Nigerian national was arrested here for overstaying even after his Indian visa expired, police said on Friday.

A police spokesman told IANS that Kayode Olajide of Lagos came to India on a business visa but never renewed it after 2014.

The accused was living near Sector 51. A court sent him to judicial custody for 14 days.
Bhubaneswar, May 6 : As many as 201 people have been caught for getting government jobs by producing fake caste certificates since 2010, said an Odisha minister on Friday.

Replying to a written question of Congress chief whip Taraprasad Bahinipati, Scheduled Castes (SC) and Scheduled Tribes (ST) Development Minister Lal Bihari Himirika told the assembly that it was done after a state-level scrutiny committee was constituted in 2010.

A total of 15 people under Revenue Divisional Commission (RDC), central division at Cuttack, 71 people under RDC, southern division at Berhampur and RDC, northern division at Sambalpur, were found guilty of producing fake certificates to grab government jobs, he said.

He said the scrutiny committee has directed the concerned tehsildars to cancel their fake caste certificates and the people were sacked from jobs.

Besides, the district welfare officers have been directed to lodge FIR against those people. The state government has also asked superintendent of police to initiate criminal proceedings against those people, he added.

"The government has also directed to recover financial benefits accepted by the family members of people possessing fake caste certificates," he added.

The district collectors have been asked to take action against the officers for issuing caste certificates to people without verifying documents properly.
Ukraine's representative to the Trilateral Contact Group, Leonid Kuchma, has once again spoken of the impossibility of holding elections in Donbas districts not controlled by Kyiv until the Minsk agreements are implemented.

"At the last session of the Trilateral Contact Group, I said that until the whole bloc of security [issues] was resolved, it was necessary to even halt any discussions on any elections, on any political reform... First, it is necessary to fulfill the points set out in the Minsk protocol and only after this think about the elections," Kuchma told reporters in Kyiv on Friday.

The elections cannot be held in Donbas as long as the "40,000-strong army" is present there and until control over the sector of the border with Russia is returned to Ukraine, he said.

"There should be no discussions on any elections until the Ukrainian authorities come there, until Ukraine controls the border," Kuchma said.
Gandhinagar, May 6 : With one Congress municipal councillor crossing over to it, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came to power in the Gandhinagar Municipal Corporation (GMC) on Friday days after the results to the elections to the 32-member civic body threw up a tie with the Congress and the BJP winning 16 seats each.

Congress councillor Pravin Patel 'Quality' joined the BJP during the general board meeting of the GMC to give it a strength of 17 and was made the Mayor in return.

This came as a shock to the Congress party that had taken its elected councillors on a tour of Rajasthan to prevent any horse-trading by the BJP.

With this, all the eight municipal corporations of Ahmedabad, Vadodara, Surat, Rajkot, Jamnagar, Bhavnagar, Junagadh and Gandhinagar have come under BJP rule.

Elections to six of them were held in November-December last year and Gandhinagar in April. Polls for Junagadh, already under BJP rule, are yet to be held.

The board meeting was called on Friday for the election of Mayor and Deputy Mayor.

During the process, Pravin Patel, who had joined the Congress in 2011 after the BJP denied him a ticket to contest the civic polls then, returned to the party fold again.

This time, he rejoined the BJP claiming he was drawn to the ruling party because it recently announced 10 per cent reservation for economically weaker sections among the upper castes in admissions to educational institutions and government jobs.

Along with Patel, Devendrasinh Chavda was elected Deputy Mayor and Manubhai Patel made GMC Standing Committee Chairman.

Angry Congress councillors kicked up a fuss after Pravin Patel crossed over to the BJP and even tried to push him around.

Heavy police security, overseen by the Gandhinagar District Superintendent of Police himself, prevented things from slipping out of hand. The Congress has announced that it would move the court against Patel's defection.
New Delhi, May 6 : The BJP said the 'loktantra bachao' march of the the Congress in the state capital on Friday was meant to save the (Gandhi) 'dynasty' and divert public attention from the AgustaWestland chopper deal.

The ruling party also protested in front of Mahatma Gandhi's statue within Parliament House premises to counter the Congress's save democracy march.

Union minister Rajiv Pratap Rudy told the media here that rather than giving the slogan of 'loktantra bachao', the opposition party should have given the slogan of 'save democracy from Congress'.

"Till now, we saw posters of Congress chief Sonia Gandhi and vice president Rahul Gandhi. But today, we even saw her son-in-law Robert Vadra's posters. These are all tactics to divert the attention of the people."

Another union minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi said the Congress was protecting corrupt people.

"Investigation is on in the chopper deal and action will be taken against those involved in the scam," he said.

"It's an irony that the Congress is calling it a march for democracy. The Congress should be calling it is a dynasty march. If one looked around the march venue, there were only hoardings and posters of a single family. Definitely, it was a march to save the dynasty from extinction," BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra said.

Earlier, the BJP MPs protested at the Parliament House against the Congress for holding the march.

They displayed posters against the Congress over the chopper deal and accused it of shielding people behind the wrongdoings.
Hyderabad, May 6 : Telangana Assembly Speaker Madhusudana Chary on Friday merged all three legislators of opposition YSR Congress Party with ruling the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS).

In a bulletin to this effect, the speaker said that all the members of YSR Congress legislature party had submitted a letter, stating that they have merged with TRS legislature party.

Taking action on their letter, the speaker allotted seats to them along with members of TRS Legislature Party.

The development came two days after one legislator and the lone member of parliament of YSR Congress in Telangana joined the TRS. Two legislators had already switched loyalties to the ruling party.

In March, the speaker had allowed 12 legislators of Telugu Desam Party (TDP) to merge with TRS legislature party.

With the two mergers, the strength of TRS in 120-member assembly has officially gone up to 81. The actual strength is 89 as eight legislators of the main opposition Congress have also crossed over.

The TRS had bagged 63 assembly seats in 2014 elections but since then legislators from various opposition parties have defected to the ruling party.
Vatican City, May 6 : Pope Francis on Friday said he longed for a Europe that does not criminalise migrants, urging its leaders to "tear down walls" and build a fairer and more inclusive society.

"I dream of a Europe where being a migrant is not a crime but a summons to greater commitment on behalf of the dignity of every human being," Francis told a Vatican audience including German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

"A Europe that cares for children, that offers fraternal help to the poor and those newcomers seeking acceptance because they have lost everything and need shelter."

The powerful speech praised the EU founding fathers who had "dared to change radically the models" that had led to World War II and praised their pursuit of integration in its aftermath.

"Today more than ever, their vision inspires us to build bridges and tear down walls," Francis said in an apparent reference to moves by Austria and other countries to re-establish border fences in response to the continent's biggest refugee crisis since 1945.

He also criticised the EU's position on the economy and on youth employment, saying the bloc needs to "create dignified and well-paying jobs, especially for our young people".

His hard-hitting message included a call for a total revamp of economic policies, and the creation of "new, more inclusive and equitable economic models".

The 79-year-old pontiff was speaking at a ceremony to present him with the EU's Charlemagne Prize for his contribution to European unification.

The heads of the EU's main institutions, the Council, the Commission, the Parliament and its central bank attended the prize-giving ceremony.
New Delhi, May 6 : BJP MP Tarun Vijay on Friday urged the central government to "enact a law to prescribe life imprisonment" for people found guilty of causing forest fires in the country and said forest mafias were responsible for the devastating Uttarakhand forest fire.

"The present forest conservation laws have not proved effective, hence the government should enact a new law to prescribe life imprisonment to culprits," the BJP's Rajya Sabha member from Uttarakhand said in a statement here.

He said that forest mafias were responsible for the devastating Uttarakhand forest fire, and they should be booked as murderers.

The culprits shouldn't be treated lightly, he demanded.

Vijay said that the forest mafia puts forests on fire for timber and other forest produce, endangering the lives of people, animals and birds.

The fire sometimes goes out of control as happened in Uttarakhand, which caused immense loss to human lives, flora and fauna.

He also expressed concern as no arrest was made till date in the forest fire case.

Incidents of forest fires that began 93 days ago have so far destroyed nearly 3,000 acres of forest cover in Uttarakhand.
New Delhi, May 6 : The fast-paced political developments in Nepal where Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli's seven-month-old government was teetering on the brink of collapse till a day ago are believed to be the reason for the abrupt cancellation of Nepal President Bidhya Devi Bhandari's visit to India, sources said.

Bhandari, Nepal's first woman president, was to embark on her first official visit to India next week on the invitation of President Pranab Mukherjee.

Sources in India said: "We have learnt that Nepali President Bidyadevi Bhandari's official visit to India has been postponed by the Nepali side. We understand that this is on account of the political developments in Nepal."

The sudden calling off of the visit came a day after the Oli government got a reprieve when the ruling alliance partner UCPN-Maoist did a U-turn and decided not to withdraw support for the time being.

The Maoist party on Wednesday had decided to form a new government by withdrawing support to it, backed by the main opposition Nepali Congress which offered the prime minister's post to Unified Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal aka Prachanda.

The U-turn came about following a "secret agreement" between Oli and Prachanda during a dinner meeting on Wednesday, it is believed.

In a related development, the Nepal government on Friday decided to recall its ambassador to India Deep Kumar Uphadhya.

The decision was taken at a cabinet meeting, chaired by Prime Minister Oli on Friday in Kathmandu.

The recall decision came after Uphadhya held a conversation with Oli in the morning and reportedly made his displeasure known to the prime minister on the cancellation of the president's visit.

President Bhandari's India visit was cancelled by Nepal unilaterally, without informing the envoy.

"It does not look good at a time when Nepal-India ties are back on track and as an ambassador I was not even informed and consulted before the cancellation of the visit," Uphadhya reportedly told the prime minister.

Oli reportedly told Uphadhya that "if you have such kind of reservation about the cancellation of the visit, you can quit".

The Nepali government also accused Ambassador Upadhya of being active in Kathmandu and New Delhi in trying to topple the Oli-led government. Uphadhya is a senior leader of the Nepali Congress which is now in the opposition.

The differences between the prime minister and the ambassador over the cancellation of the president's visit led the Cabinet to recall Uphadhya.

During the Cabinet meeting, Oli instructed Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Foreign Affairs Kamal Thapa to recall ambassador Uphadhya immediately.

Uphadhya, it was alleged, is involved and active in toppling the government, propping up the Madhes-based political parties for agitation, and was getting involved in various activities inside Nepal and India.

A top aide to Oli said the prime minister was for long unhappy with Uphadhya and his recall is only a manifestation of Oli's perception of some of Uphadhya's activities as improper for an ambassador.
Kolkata, May 7 : The Jadavpur University authorities on Friday filed a police complaint against four outsiders - three of them ABVP activists - for allegedly molesting female students of the varsity during a commotion over an open-air screening of Vivek Agnihotri's film "Buddha In A Traffic Jam".

With the campus on the boil over the screening of the movie, that faced loud protests from a large section of left-leaning students loyal to FETSU and sparked clashes, vice chancellor Suranjan Das blamed the JU alumni association for giving permission to the organisers to use the Triguna Sen Auditorium and then cancelling it.

"We have never given permission, nor cancelled it. The Triguna Sen Auditorium is owned and managed by the JU Alumni Association and we have no say in its running. We have no control over to whom and when they will rent the hall, or the money they will charge," said Das.

"The main culprit is the alumni association. Why did they give the hall to the Pune-Based organisation in the first place, and then again cancelled it? We will talk to the alumni association," said Das.

The organisers, Das said, should have taken permission from the university authorities before holding the open-air screening.

"If any outside organisation wants to hold a meeting on the ground, they need to take permission from the authorities. The organsiation which held the screening is not even remotely connected to the university. But they never bothered to take permission," said Das.

Asked why the authorities did not stop the screening after it was started, Das said it was felt there could be trouble in such an eventuality.

"There were two simultaneous screenings by this Pune-based organisation and the university students. When the screenings started, everything was peaceful. But later, there were some unfortunate incidents."

Das said the university authorities have received complaints from the students that some outsiders had molested the female learners. "Four of them were identified and kept in our estate office. But no one was confined. They have been handed over to the police. We have filed an FIR on behalf of the university against them".

Das said he firmly believed that a university should be a place for liberal thinking and everybody should be able to express their view points.

"In this case the organisers should have taken permission before holding the open-air screening," he added.
The Miami real estate market is popular with buyers from across the world with property investors from Colombia currently registering the most global searches for South Florida homes.

Colombia has now led the rankings compiled by the Miami Association of Realtors for three months in a row with Venezuela and Brazil in second and third while there has been a surge of interest from buyers in the UK and the Philippines.

Despite the strength of the U.S. dollar, international home buyers continue to search, buy and invest in Miami real estate. With 51% of its population foreign born, Miami has a unique history of welcoming and embracing all cultures. International home buyers feel at home here, said Mark Sadek, chairman of the board of the association.

Colombian do go on to buy homes in the area and were tied with Argentinians in purchasing the third most Miami real estate among foreign countries, according to the 2015 Profile of International Home Buyers report.

Colombian buyers registered 10% of all foreign Miami transactions, according to the survey conducted by the Miami association and the National Association of Realtors. Venezuela was top with 13% and Brazil second with 12%.

The research shows that Colombians moving to South Florida are often upper middle class families who want to enjoy their prosperity earned in their homeland as professionals and entrepreneurs.

The data also shows that Colombians spend the second most on South Florida property among foreign buyers. The $516,000 average purchase price of Colombians tied with Argentina with Brazil top, spending $766,000.

Potential buyers from both the Philippines and the UK increased their online interest in South Florida real estate in February 2016. The Philippines ranked fifth, the countrys highest finish, for three consecutive months. The United Kingdom improved from last months eighth place ranking to finish seventh.

When it comes to Americans investing in Miami property the highest number searching came from Texas, followed by California, New York, Georgia, Tennessee, Illinois, Michigan, North Caroline, Pennsylvania and Ohio.

Miami tops the table for overall real estate demand in the United States, followed by Los Angeles, Bellingham, Washington State, Honolulu and then Kahului in Hawaii, Orlando, New York, Tampa, Houston and Seattle.
Exclusive to Goway, this Brazil and Peru trip stands out among South America tours. Stops include exotic travel destinations such as Rio de Janeiro, Iguassu Falls, Lima, the Sacred Valley, Machu Picchu, and the ancient Inca capital of Cusco.

Goway Travel is welcoming travellers to Brazil and Peru with a new trip designed to make every globetrotter feel like a VIP.

Exclusive to Goway, the Best of Belmond Brazil and Peru trip takes in the highlights of both countries. Stops include exotic travel destinations such as Rio de Janeiro, Iguassu Falls, Lima, the Sacred Valley, Machu Picchu, and the ancient Inca capital of Cusco. At each one, passengers will enjoy all the comforts of a 5-star Belmond property, including Belmond Copacabana Palace Hotel in Rio, and Belmond Hotel Sanctuary Lodge in Machu Picchu.

This itinerary stands out among South America tours for its many personal touches. Private touring ensures guests enjoy a comprehensive, yet personalised journey through each stop, taking in highlights such as Rios Corcovado while still allowing time at leisure to see the sights that interest them. At Iguassu Falls, a visit to the Argentinean side adds a third country to the itinerary. Over the border in Peru, private tours allow easy movement between many of the sights in Cusco and the Sacred Valley, including Sacsayhuaman Fortress and Puca Pucara. The trip also includes private guiding through Cusco at night, including a lesson on making the famous Pisco Sour.

For a true local experience, guests will spend a day visiting the community of Misminay before boarding the Vistadome Train bound for Machu Picchu. Staying overnight near the ruins, guests will have plenty of time to explore famous sights such as the Sun Gate, and the Inca Bridge, or even climb Wayna Picchu.

To introduce this unique itinerary, Goway is offering a built-in saving of up to US$800 or CA$1120 per person to globetrotters who book by June 30, 2016.

Since 1970, Goway has been providing unforgettable travel experiences to Africa, Asia, Australia and New Zealand, polar and idyllic island destinations, Europe and South America. Today Goway is recognized as one of North America's leading travel companies for individuals, families and groups to select exotic destinations around the globe. Goway has offices in Los Angeles, Vancouver, Toronto, Manila, and Sydney (Australia).

For reservations and information, visit http://www.goway.com, or call 1-800-387-8850.
A Ukrainian soldier was injured in the anti-terrorist operation zone in Donbas over the past day, Ukrainian Presidential Administration spokesman Andriy Lysenko has said.

"None of the Ukrainian servicemen were killed in the hostilities over the past day, but one of our soldiers suffered injuries," he said at a press briefing in Kyiv, on Friday.

In addition, Lysenko reported the militia's breach of truce in the Luhansk sector, including provocations staged near Novooleksandrivka, using grenade launchers and large-caliber machineguns.

The hostiles continue to shell Ukrainian army positions near Avdiivka, in the Donetsk sector, using grenade launchers and small arms, Lysenko said.

In his words, tensions were highest in the Mariupol sector, where most of the shelling incidents happened. The hostiles fired 120mm mortars on Ukrainian army positions in Novotroitske, and attacks on Maryinka are ongoing - sniper activity has been observed there, he said.
Omar McIntosh, Senior Project Executive Our mission here is two-fold. We want to deliver safer and more efficient project sites for our workforce and our clients. By utilizing our own forces, we can better control these outcomes.

Gilbane Building Company announces the addition of Omar McIntosh to lead the firms self-performance division and workforce in the mid-Atlantic region. He brings over 20 years of industry experience and strong relationships with regional clients, subcontractors and diverse workforce leaders. Mr. McIntosh will direct and manage all business functions for project site services which include field engineering, general carpentry and labor, and central management of site vendors.

As former president of his own commercial construction firm, Mr. McIntosh states, Our mission here is two-fold. We want to deliver safer and more efficient project sites for our workforce and our clients. By utilizing our own forces, we can better control these outcomes. In addition, we are recruiting a diverse workforce of tradespeople who reside in the communities where we work while providing opportunities for career growth and access to award-winning training programs for them. Representative construction skills for the workforce include small equipment operators, skilled and unskilled laborers, and carpenters. Procurement of tools and equipment are also managed under the division. Mr. McIntosh will leverage best practices from other metropolitan centered self-perform divisions that Gilbane operates.

Mr. McIntosh earned his Masters in Business Administration from the Carey Business School at John Hopkins University and holds a Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering from Morgan State University. He serves on several boards including the ACE Mentor Program DC Affiliate, Morgan State University Foundation, African American Real Estate Professionals, Inc. and is a youth committee member for the Prince Georges County Economic Development Corporation. His former experience includes projects for Rolls-Royce, Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, Department of Justice, and a host of local property owners and developers.

About Gilbane Building Company

Gilbane Building Company provides a full slate of construction and facilities-related servicesfrom preconstruction planning and integrated consulting capabilities, to comprehensive construction management, close-out and facility management servicesfor clients across various markets. Founded in 1873 and still a privately held, family-owned company, Gilbane has more than 50 office locations around the world.

Gilbanes mid-Atlantic offices are located in Arlington, VA/Washington DC; Baltimore, MD and Richmond, VA. Collaborating with clients in the region since 1969, Gilbane serves diversified market sectors. Representative regional clients include Navy Federal Credit Union, Inova Health Systems, John Hopkins Hospital, Vornado/Charles E. Smith, Georgetown University, Virginia Tech, University of Virginia, Virginia Commonwealth University, Highmark Development, Tishman Speyer, General Services Administration, and Capital One.

For more information, visit http://www.gilbaneco.com.
A Decade of Change, A Decade of Constancy

Companys 10th anniversary is certainly a milestone worth celebrating, and Flatworld Solutions did it with elan! Founded in 2002 and incorporated in 2006, Flatworld Solutions has come a long way  from offering a handful of services to dealing in 18 different verticals today, Flatworld has been expanding possibilities not only for its clients and partners, but also empowering employees all through its commendable journey.

Celebrations started a month in advance with the weekly email announcements from the HR team, which build up the curiosity, fun, and excitement for the main event. To mark this special milestone, a 10 Year Logo Designing Competition was held, which got tremendous response and enthusiastic participation from all employees. Jalandhara Reddy from the Creative Services team won the competition, and his entry was unanimously selected as the official logo for the 10th Year anniversary, which graced all the event-related banners, emails, and hoardings.

THE D-DAY

On 23rd April at the Sterling Mac Hotel, the function commenced sharp at 5PM with a welcome address by Mrs. Nancy Seby, followed by the National Anthem, prayer by Mr. Israel Paul, lamp lighting by the directors, and a welcome dance. Audience were then treated to the words of wisdom from our esteemed board of directors (Jacob William - President and Group CEO, David Antony - CEO, Business Solutions, Anand Mathew - CEO, Global Shared Services, and Seby Kallarakkal, Director), who spoke about Flatworlds journey over the years, the way its headed into the future, and the contribution of employees in making this company one of the most successful companies in such a short span of time.

Next came the moment when the employees were awarded for their persistence, hard work, and association with Flatworld. Certificates and souvenirs (in the form of Gold and Silver Coins) were presented to the employees who have been a part of the Flatworld journey for over 9, 5 and 3 years respectively. The evening ended on a high note with electrifying cultural performances and photo sessions, followed by a sumptuous dinner.

About Flatworld Solutions

Flatworld Solutions (FWS) is a global corporation offering solutions in IT, Business Consulting and Outsourcing Services. Founded in 2002 and incorporated in 2006 with the single-minded purpose of using technology to equip and enable businesses build efficiency, negate global distances, save time and increase bottom lines worldwide, Flatworld has earned it stripes with a decade of satisfying experiences. Over 9000 customers and millions of dollars in increased client revenue, over 2000 efficient and enabled employees with a solution centric leadership all tell the story - a story of expanding possibilities.

For more information, visit our website at https://www.flatworldsolutions.com/
The entire Premier Subaru Watertown team is proud to have contributed nearly $35,000 to New Opportunities over the last 2 years

New Opportunities, Inc.(NOI) is proud to announce its partnership with Premier Subaru Watertown to help fight senior isolation and hunger, one Subaru at a time. As a result of this years Share the Love Campaign Robert J. Alvine; owner of Premier Subaru Watertown presented Lisa LaBonte; Director of NOI Meals on Wheels with received a check for $19,293.66.

The amount raised through Premier Subaru Watertown efforts will provide 7, 600 meals to homebound seniors.

Together, with the donation made in 2014, Premier Subaru Watertown has donated nearly $35,000 to New Opportunities, Inc.

We appreciate all the support we have received from Premier Subaru Watertown, said Lisa LaBonte; Program Director. The funds generated from this Campaign are greatly needed as the program currently has a waiting and has had to cut services to seniors The support from Premier Subaru through the Share the Love Event ensures that our seniors are not forgotten.

New Opportunities is just the type of local organization that we love to partner with and provide support for during the Subaru Share the Love Campaign. Lisa and her team do an incredible job providing a hand to the community in need commented Mr. Alvine. Id also be remiss if I didnt acknowledge all of the customers who bought or leased a new Subaru during the campaign, and, designated New Opportunities, Inc. as the charity of choice for their donation. The entire Premier Subaru Watertown team is proud to have contributed nearly $35,000 to New Opportunities, Inc., over the last two years".

This local effort is part of Meals on Wheels Americas annual participation in Subarus national year-end Share the Love Event. For every new Subaru vehicle sold or leased from November 19, 2015, through January 2, 2016, Subaru donated $250 to the purchasers choice of 5 National participating charities and one local charity which was New Opportunities Meals on Wheels Program. In addition, Premier Subaru Watertown provided a $50 match for every $250 designated to the NOI Meals on Wheels. Premier Subaru Watertown was one of only a handful of retailers nationwide to make the additional match.

Subaru and Meals on Wheels America have been working together nationally since 2008, helping deliver more than 1.2 million meals, friendly visits and safety checks to Americas seniors.

For more information on Premier Subaru Watertown visit http://www.premierwatertown.com. The companys community involvement has been highlighted on a special landing page found at http://www.premierwatertowncares.com For more information on Meals on Wheels visit http://www.newoppinc.org.
Were delighted to have led this investment in Blueberry Therapeutics and excited to be joining the team at this important time as the company progresses its lead product into patients.

Blueberry Therapeutics today announced that it has raised 3 million to progress the development of its topical fungal infection therapies into human clinical trials. The investment was led by the GM&C Life Sciences Fund, managed by Catapult Ventures, and included participation from San Francisco-based InClin Investments, as well as a number of private investors.

The investment will support progress of its innovative treatment for Onychomycosis (fungal nail infection) and associated tinea pedis (athletes foot), into clinical development. In this large existing market valued at more than $3bn annually, patients have wanted a topical treatment for Onychomycosis that has the effectiveness of existing oral treatment but without the toxicity concerns. Blueberry's lead drug has the promise of being a more effective and well tolerated topical therapy for the treatment of Onychomycosis than existing topical products in this blockbuster market. The company will also hold a pre-investigational new drug (IND) meeting with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to seek approval for their clinical development plans under the 505(b)(2) regulatory pathway. This will allow the company to move rapidly through clinical development.

John Ridden, CEO of Blueberry Therapeutics, said:

"Were delighted to have secured this funding which will enable us to move our lead program to treat Onychomycosis with associated tinea pedis into human clinical trials with the ambition of moving into Phase III trials early in 2017. The investment, from dedicated life science funds in the UK and US is a significant step in the growth of Blueberry and opens up a range of exciting opportunities in topical therapies.

Andrew Kay, Chairman of Blueberry Therapeutics, said:

Im delighted the company has been so successful in this fund raising which will allow it to progress the potential blockbuster lead drug to be ready for Phase III clinical development."

Gareth King, Investment Manager at the GM&C Life Sciences Fund, said:

"Were delighted to have led this investment in Blueberry Therapeutics and excited to be joining the team at this important time as the company progresses its lead product into patients. We were attracted to Blueberry by the exceptional experience of its management team and their compelling preclinical data for this well differentiated and novel topical treatment. We look forward to working together with Blueberry's board, and co-investors InClin Investments, to help the company fulfil its ambition."

The GM&C Life Sciences fund legal advisor was Melanie Yeomans at Ward Hadaway and Blueberry Therapeutics was advised by Simon Wallwark at Slater Heelis.

See http://www.blueberrytherapeutics.com and http://www.gmclifesciencesfund.com

For Blueberry Therapeutics

John Ridden

E: john.ridden(at)blueberrytherapeutics.com

T: +44 1625 238 781

For GM&C Life Sciences Fund

Gareth King

E: gareth.king(at)catapult-ventures.com

T: +44 (0)1625 344300

M: +44 (0)7720 051988
Establishing an executive team is a significant step in our growth, and the fact that Dave and Hemant have chosen to continue their careers at RightBrain Networks is a testament to what were doing here.

RightBrain Networks, a software development and cloud consulting firm, today announced that Hemant Kishan has been promoted to Chief Operating Officer (COO) and Dave Thompson has been hired as Chief Technical Officer (CTO). Previously serving as CTO, Jamie Begin has assumed the CEO role and will continue to set the vision for the company.

Begin said, Establishing an executive team is a significant step in our growth, and the fact that Dave and Hemant have chosen to continue their careers at RightBrain Networks is a testament to what were doing here.

Both Thompson and Kishan bring long and distinguished technology careers to RightBrain Networks. Prior to joining the company in May of 2015 as Vice President of Client Engagement, Kishan was the Director of Emerging Technology for General Motors, where he was responsible for enterprise strategy, IT transformation, and program management. Kishans previous experience also includes serving as early employee and eventual Vice President at Sapient and Senior Software Engineer at Digital Equipment Corporation.

RightBrain Networks is also thrilled to welcome Ann Arbor native Dave Thompson to its executive team. Dave has a proven track record of building, motivating, and retaining top-performing systems engineering teams. Daves professional background includes increasingly senior roles at industry-leading tech companies including Netflix, where he was one of the first hires on their Cloud Operations and Reliability Engineering (CORE) team. Post Netflix, Thompson held senior technical leadership roles at several other high-growth startups.

These changes establish an executive team for RightBrain Networks  just one sign of the companys maturity. It is also experiencing record growth. At the end of 2015 RightBrain had 23 employees with a goal to reach 40 by the end of 2016. As of May 2, RightBrain has increased to 30 employees and is still actively growing with several vacant engineering positions. Begin now expects to exceed 40 employees by the end of the year.

RightBrain, which was recently awarded Michigan 50 Companies to Watch by Michigan Celebrates Small Business (MCSB), attributes this phenomenal growth to the overall global adoption of the cloud. According to IDC, spending on public cloud IT infrastructure will increase by 14.1% in 2016 to $24.4 billion.

Our experience and expertise are also contributing factors, as our engineers have a diverse skill set and have built an excellent reputation executing many projects, said Begin.

RightBrain was among the first firms certified as an Amazon Web Services Advanced Consulting Partner and one of the first six, audited AWS Managed Service Partners worldwide. The firm is also a Microsoft Partner Silver Cloud Platform.

About RightBrain Networks

RightBrain Networks is an Ann Arbor, Michigan-based team of software engineers (development) and site reliability engineers (operations) building SaaS, infrastructure and managing applications for companies using public cloud platforms. The companys DevOps philosophy, agile software development process and Cloud Development Life Cycle dramatically accelerate development and deployment cycles, resulting in faster time-to-market. RightBrain Networks specializes in Amazon Web Services cloud deployments and is a certified AWS Advanced Consulting Partner and Managed Service Partner, and Microsoft Silver Cloud Platform Partner. For more information visit http://www.rightbrainnetworks.com.
Addressing ethical dilemmas in providing end of life care, Dr. Nessa Coyle, ACHPN, FAAN, a renowned palliative care nurse consultant and research scholar, will be the featured speaker at a seminar for nurses and other health care professionals in greater New Orleans. Dr. Coyle is the former Director of the Supportive Care Program of the Pain and Palliative Care Service at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City and the founder of their nurse practitioner clinical fellowship program.

This event is co-sponsored by Home Care Solutions of Metairie and Tharp-Sontheimer-Tharp Funeral Home. It will be held on Saturday, May 21, 2016 from 9:00AM-12:30PM in the chapel of Tharp-Sontheimer-Tharp Funeral Home at 1600 No. Causeway Blvd, Metairie. CEU credits* (3 hours with a $5 application fee) will be offered for nurses and social workers, and space is limited. Registration will begin at 8:30AM. An RSVP is required by May 16, 2016 and may be made at RSVP(at)homecareneworleans(dot)com.

Dr. Coyles presentation is entitled Exploring Ethical Dilemmas in Providing Care at the End-of-Life: Challenges for the Health Care Team. A panel discussion and case presentation by local professionals will follow her presentation ending with questions and answers from attendees. The panel participants will include Avis Lagrange, MSC, LCSW, Care Coordinator Social Worker, Peoples Health Network; Dr. Cori Morrison, MD, Director of Palliative Care at Childrens Hospital New Orleans and assistant Professor of Pediatrics, division of Hematology/Oncology at LSUHSC; and Robin Rome, MSN, FNP-C, ACHPN, Director of Palliative Care Services at West Jefferson Medical Center.

Moderated by Betty Tedesco and Dianne Boazman McGraw, both licensed social workers and certified Aging Life Care Managers who provide care management and caregiver services through their company, Home Care Solutions of Metairie. The event will be hosted by Stephen L. Sontheimer, funeral director/consultant, and Billy C. Henry, managing partner, at Tharp-Sontheimer-Tharp Funeral Home which has been serving families of all faiths at all cemeteries since 1916.

*This program was approved for 3.0 hours of continuing education credit for nursing education. The Nursing Education Committee of West Jefferson Medical Center is an approved provider of continuing nursing education by the South Central Accreditation Program, an accredited approver by the American Nurses Credentialing Centers Commission on Accreditation.

*This program was approved for 3.0 General contact hours of continuing education credit by the National Association of Social Workers -- Louisiana Chapter as authorized by the Louisiana State Board of Social Work Examiners.

For More information, contact Betty Tedesco or Dianne McGraw

Home Care Solutions

504-828-0900
SonoDepot to Exhibit the ALPINION Ultrasound Series at the 2016 AAIM Expo in Tampa, Florida. Come visit us at booth 500 and learn about the 'SonoDepot Way.' -Floyd McAuliffe, Founder & President

This June 3-6, SonoDepot will host booth 500 at the AAMI 2016 Expo in Tampa, Florida. As an exclusive sales and service provider of the ALPINION line, reps will educate attendees about the latest in economical, cutting-edge ultrasound technology.

AAMI 2016 is the premier conference for healthcare technology management. The event draws more than 2,200 biomedical equipment technicians, clinical engineers, and others who manage or support medical devices for healthcare institutions. Educational sessions focus on practical solutions for the challenges that attendees face in their work every day. The Expo provides an opportunity to see the latest technologies from many of the world's leading medical-equipment manufacturers and service providers.

About SonoDepot

Floyd McAuliffe, Founder and President along with his brother Jack McAuliffe, CEO, are the owners of SonoDepot and trailblazers of OEM-Independent Ultrasound Support providing superior service to healthcare providers in the U.S. since 1985. SonoDepot, based in Central Florida, is an exclusive sales and service provider for the revolutionary Alpinion Ultrasound product line featuring the E-CUBE series. The company also proudly repairs, services and sells the industry's most respected brands including GE, Philips, HP, and Siemens. SonoDepots services include ultrasound repair, transducer repair, probe evaluation and maintenance. They are retailers of both new and refurbished ultrasound systems. With a rapid 15-30 minute response time and 24/7 nationwide service, SonoDepot is keenly focused on customer service. 90% of SonoDepot's ultrasound repair clients are repeat customers who refer colleagues.
ABS Group Ltd. (ABS Group), headquartered in England and a subsidiary of ABS Group of Companies, Inc., a leading provider of project certification and quality assurance services for offshore wind assets, has received a contract to provide project certification services from DONG Energy Wind Power A/S (DONG Energy) for the planned Hornsea Offshore Wind Farm Project One in the UK.

DONG Energy is developing the Hornsea Offshore Wind Farm Project One, which is expected to be fully commissioned and in operation by 2020. With a capacity of 1,200 MW, Hornsea will be the world's first offshore wind farm to exceed 1,000 MW in capacity. The wind farm project development is located 120 km off the Yorkshire coast and covers approximately 407 square kilometers.

ABS Group's certification scope will cover Quality Assurance/Quality Control document review and manufacturing inspection of three offshore substations (OSS) and one reactive compensation substation (RCS), including the topsides and foundations. Inspections will be carried out in several European countries.

"We are proud to support DONG Energy on this new record size offshore wind farm project," says Torsten Muuss, Director of Renewable Energy for ABS Group. "Due to the long distance from shore, an RCS  in addition to the OSS  will be needed approximately halfway along the cable route to compensate the reactive losses in the export cable. These three OSS and one RCS will be manufactured in a very short time of about two years, and ABS Group will support DONG Energy to meet this timeline and the quality standards and requirements by mobilizing, in total, about 30 inspectors and engineers in five European countries.

"The development of these large offshore wind farms will benefit the offshore wind industry through more cost-effective and adaptable projects."

About DONG Energy

DONG Energy is one of the leading energy groups in Northern Europe, headquartered in Denmark. Around 6,700 ambitious employees, including over 700 in the UK, are engaged in developing, constructing and operating offshore wind farms; generating power and heat from our power stations; providing energy to residential and business customers on a daily basis; and producing oil and gas. Group revenue was DKK 71bn (EUR 9.5bn) in 2015. For further information, see http://www.dongenergy.co.uk or follow us @DONGEnergyUK on Twitter.

About ABS Group

ABS Group of Companies, Inc. (http://www.abs-group.com), through its operating subsidiaries, provides technical and certification services to support the safety and reliability of high-performance assets and operations. Headquartered in Houston, Texas, ABS Group operates with more than 2,000 professionals in over 30 countries. ABS Group is a subsidiary of ABS, a leading marine and offshore classification society.
PastadoProfessor.com PastadoProfessor.com was created precisely to meet the demand of students in acquiring content by the chapter, as well as accessing custom course packs created by their professors, all while respecting copyright,

Slicebooks, an innovative provider of publishing tools and white label stores, has partnered with Minha Biblioteca of Brazil to launch PastadoProfessor.com, which will give Brazilian publishers the ability to sell ebook content in chunks like chapters & articles, and create curated course packs by mixing & matching micro content. PastadoProfessor.com is scheduled to launch in Q2 2016.

Minha Biblioteca is a consortium formed by the four leading publishers of academic books in Brazil - Group A, Gen Group Atlas, Manole and Saraiva. PastadoProfessor.com will launch with more than 3,000 eBooks and nearly 60,000 chapters covering quality technical and scientific content. All content is available by the whole book and by the chapter, and with the built-in eBook Remixer users can drag-and-drop content to create their own custom eBook packages.

The site was built by Slicebooks, the publishing platform that features tools like the eBook Slicer, eBook Remixer and StoreApp Widgets, all designed to help publishers repurpose content and sell direct to consumers. The Slicebooks white label program lets publishers brand their own iTunes-style store with all the innovative Slicebooks features included. Slicebooks localized PastadoProfessor.com into Portuguese, integrated a local payment gateway platform, and developed a modified version of its remix tool to enable professors to create custom course packs that are immediately displayed on a unique product page for students to view and purchase. All content on the site is secured with Digital Rights Management.

PastadoProfessor.com was created precisely to meet the demand of students in acquiring content by the chapter, as well as accessing custom course packs created by their professors, all while respecting copyright, said Richardt Rocha Feller, CEO of Minha Biblioteca. Our users are increasingly demanding more flexibility in how they consume content. The Slicebooks platform makes it easy for us to break our content into stand-alone chapters and gives our professors a quick and innovative way to create their own customized course packs.

Minha Biblioteca will also be taking advantage of the Slicebooks StoreApp widgets. These are embeddable widgets with full ecommerce functionality that can be created in minutes, branded and used to target niche audiences. For example, authors who blog can embed a branded mobile StoreApp right on their blog site and fill it with content customized for their particular audience. Professors can create a StoreApp to target students attending their class. Students can browse whole and sliced content on the StoreApps, and checkout, all without leaving the site.

Pastadoprofessor.com is exactly the kind of store we had in mind when we built Slicebooks. It is a terrific example of giving students and professors the freedom to get just the content they want, how and when they want it, said Jill Tomich, co-founder of Slicebooks. Slicebooks creates opportunities for publishers to engage directly with their users in an effective way by building tools to help publishers and content creators get content discovered and sell direct to consumers. And now were excited to continue to expand our offerings. Soon well be announcing the first location-based marketing engine for publishers that will make it even easier for publishers to engage directly with mobile consumers, and deliver just the right content at the perfect moment.

About Slicebooks

Slicebooks is a publishing platform that helps publishers repurpose content and build direct sales channels. Slicebooks includes a patent-pending content management system, an iTunes style white label retail platform and mobile web apps, and will soon launch yaBeam, the worlds first location-based marketing engine for publishers. The Slicebooks development team is led by veterans from such leading technology publishing companies as OReilly Media, Pearson, and Manning. For more information, visit http://slicebooks.com

About Minha Biblioteca

Minha Biblioteca is a consortium formed by the four leading publishers of academic books in Brazil - Group A, Gen Group Atlas, Manole and Saraiva, headquartered in Sao Paulo, with areas of expertise in law, applied social sciences, health, education and more. For more information, visit http://www.minhabiblioteca.com.br
Buona is honored to announce its partnership with Chicago Cubs first baseman Anthony Rizzo to help raise funds for his foundation, the Anthony Rizzo Family Foundation. The family-owned restaurant group has worked with Rizzo to develop "The Rizzo Way" of preparing three classic sandwiches: the original Italian Beef, Sausage and Italian Beef and Sausage Combo. For every sandwich ordered the Rizzo Way - topped with red gravy, mozzarella and provolone cheese - Buona will donate a portion of the proceeds to the foundation, which helps patients and families who are facing the devastating impact of a cancer diagnosis. Rizzo himself is a cancer survivor.

"Anthony Rizzo and his foundation are the perfect partners for the Buona family," said second-generation executive Joe Buonavolanto. "Anthony's tenacity and personal commitment to family and community dovetails with our philosophy."

In March of 2016, Buona and the Cubs organization penned a three-year agreement making Buona both the "Official Italian Beef of the Chicago Cubs" and a brand that is "Proudly Served at Wrigley Field."

Buona's goal is to sell more than 250,000 Rizzo Way sandwiches to help raise money for the Anthony Rizzo Family Foundation. Consumers can support the cause by ordering a sandwich the Rizzo Way at any of Buona's 19 Chicagoland locations. Find the nearest location at Buona.com.

About Buona Restaurants

The first Buona restaurant began serving Chicago's original Italian beef in Berwyn, IL in 1981. Founded by Buonavolanto patriarch Joe Buonavolanto, Sr., the chain will expand to nineteen locations by the end of 2016, while remaining family-owned and furthering a legacy that is equal parts family values, innovation, and adaptation. The group is defining the next-generation beef stand as a place that is the perfect blend of old-school indulgence in Chicago classics and next generation menu choices - made with a focus on fresh, scratch-made food. While the menu has expanded, the original beef recipe has not been compromised - for the three generations of Buonavolantos who are active in the company, comprise and quality are never uttered in the same breath.

Buona is the Official Beef of the Chicago Cubs and is proudly served at Wrigley Field and U.S. Cellular Field. The restaurant's iconic sandwich is one of Steve Dolinsky's Top Italian Beefs in Chicagoland. For more information, visit Buona online at http://www.buona.com, like them on Facebook, or follow them on Twitter or Instagram.

About Anthony Rizzo Family Foundation

The Anthony Rizzo Family Foundation is a 501 (c)(3) non-profit organization founded by Chicago Cubs First Baseman Anthony Rizzo. Anthony realized during his own battle with cancer that no matter how difficult fighting cancer was for him, it was even more difficult for his family. Anthony believes that an individual does not battle cancer alone, but that the whole family battles it together. The Mission of the Anthony Rizzo Family Foundation is to raise money for cancer research and to provide support to children and their families battling the disease. The Foundation is run entirely by Anthony's family, his close friends and his management team with Anthony providing oversight and leadership. All of us at the Anthony Rizzo Family Foundation believe that every family deserves a fighting chance.
The Council of Prosecutors of Ukraine has elected its chairman and his deputy at the planning meeting on Thursday. They are Kyiv prosecutor Valentyn Briantsev and Kharkiv region prosecutor Yuriy Kovalev.

"The planning meeting of the Council (...) on May 5 elected the Chairman of the Board of Ukrainian prosecutors among its members- the prosecutor in charge of Fiscal Service criminal proceedings in Kyiv Valentyn Briantsev, as well as his deputy Yuriy Kovalev, Kharkiv region prosecutor in charge of organized crime," the press service of General Prosecutor's Office reports.

The Council appointed Nikopol (Dnipretrovsk region) prosecutor Bohdan Chehyl as clerk.

"The Council has fulfilled its duties," the press service of the Prosecutor General's Office (PGO) said.

The All Ukrainian Conference of Prosecutors on April 28 elected 11 representatives to the Qualification and Disciplinary Commission and Prosecutors Board, as per its quota.
Fidelity National Title Agency, a member of the Fidelity National Financial family (NYSE:FNF), proudly welcomes its newest employee, Diane F. Carpenter, as Vice President/Branch Manager of our Camelback Lakes Commercial Branch. Prior to joining Fidelity National Title, Ms. Carpenter was an Executive Vice President for Thomas Title & Escrow supervising all escrow and title operations for the companys Arizona and Texas locations.

Prior to working at Thomas Title & Escrow, Ms. Carpenter was a Senior Commercial Escrow Officer and Assistant Manager of the Commercial Services Division for North American Title Insurance Company in Phoenix, Arizona from 2002 to 2006. Prior to working at North American, Ms. Carpenter was Assistant Manager at one of First American Title Insurance Companys largest commercial services offices from 1995 to 2002.

During her career as a commercial escrow officer, Ms. Carpenter personally closed over 7,000 transactions valued at over $20+ billion. Her experience includes executing sophisticated multiparty transactions for a wide range of projects, including master-planned communities as well as commercial, office, industrial, medical, hospitality, multi-family and large vacant land deals for owners, lenders, investors, developers and builders. She has also managed and coordinated major non-real estate escrows, including corporate mergers and acquisitions in addition to complex joint development agreements among various developers and homebuilders.

Ms. Carpenter holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Maine and is an accomplished artist. She also has a paralegal certificate from The Philadelphia Institute, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and is a member of the Arizona State Escrow Association.

Prior to working in real estate, Ms. Carpenter owned and operated several of her own businesses in Maine. She has extensive experience in staff development, training processes, evaluation procedures and management. She is a frequent speaker and presenter, and has authored numerous articles regarding complex real estate transactions and associated title and escrow services.

About Fidelity National Title Agency

With a proud history of more than 150 years, Fidelity National Title Agency (http://fntarizona.com/) is one of the nations premier real estate service companies. Through its nationwide network of direct operations and agents, Fidelity National Title Agency provides title insurance, underwriting, escrow and closing services to residential, commercial and industrial clients, lenders, developers, attorneys, real estate professionals and consumers. Let Fidelity demonstrate why customers nationwide rely on their experience, service and financial strength for real estate transactions across the country.
Representatives from Atricores San Francisco and Frankfurt offices will attend the 10th European Identity and Cloud conference in early May. The conference includes most of Europes and the worlds leading vendors, end users, thought leaders, visionaries and analysts involved in this field. The company's CEO, Gianluca Brigandi, will be among the panelists at the conference.

With Atricores solutions becoming an ever-larger part of the IAM landscape world-wide, participation at the EIC will give the company a chance to showcase innovative products and be part of the security conversation in this growing marketplace. Industry experts will address topics including: IAM relevance to the Internet of Things (IoT), IAM at the center of cyber security, Cloud governance and compliance issues, and much more.

I'm quite pleased to have been asked to participate in the EIC, says Atricore CEO Gianluca Brigandi. The panel on "Security through Automation" should be a really interesting discussion. Certainly the move toward automated IAM is not without complications, and it will be a pleasure to hear what my fellow panelists think and to answer the questions that come our way from the audience.

EIC 2016 runs May 10 - 13 at the Dolce Ballhaus Forum Unterschleissheim in Munich. Atricore representatives will be at the Atricore exhibit at S6, opposite the bar in the communication area.

Atricore German Office:

Westhafenplatz 1

D-60327 Frankfurt am Main

Germany

Primary contact: Holger Busch

+49 699 675 8454

hbusch(at)atricore(dot)com

About Atricore Inc.

http://www.atricore.com

hello(at)atricore(dot)com

Atricore is a Silicon Valley-based organization creating future-proof identity and access management solutions, empowering organizations of any size to identity-enable their business to provide secure and seamless access to enterprise employees, clients, suppliers and partners.
GFranco Shoes makes dance shoes for men and women. Contestants can only enter once, so they should make their video entry count by uploading the best video possible.

GFranco Shoes, an international Latin dance shoe company invites dancers to compete for the opportunity to be a New Face of GFranco by submitting a short video of their dancing moves on the contest webpage or by posting their video entry publicly with hashtag #GFrancoMoves on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.

The winner of the GFranco Moves contest will win a trip to the 8th annual DC Bachata Congress DCBX on August 25-29th, 2016 at the Renaissance Hotel in Washington, DC. The prize includes round trip airfare, hotel accommodations and an all entry pass to the events. As the New Face of GFranco, the winner will walk down the GFranco Fashion Show runway, get a years worth of GFranco dance shoes (6 pairs) and the opportunity for photo shoots and other privileges that afforded to only GFranco sponsored dancers.

Video submissions will be accepted via website or social media with #GFrancoShoes until July 5th, 2016 and then a panel of expert will select the top 10 finalists. Videos should be under one minute and should feature one dancer. If the video showcases more than one dancer, please identify who is the contestant. All contestants will need to read the full list of contest rules. The Top 10 Finalists will receive all entry passes to the 8th annual DC Bachata Congress DCBX at the Renaissance Hotel in Washington, DC. on August 25-29, 2016 and a pair of GFranco shoes.

Voting for the winner will begin on July 10, 2016 on the same web page and the winner will be selected by the public. Finalists and friends of finalists are invited to vote daily and share often to help increase the votes for their favorite dancer to help them win the contest.

To enter the contest, dancers can go to GFranco Shoes video contest page and upload a video or post a video on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram using the hashtag #GFrancoMoves. Contestants should be sure their account is public for the video to be entered. Contestants can only enter once, so they should make their video entry count by sharing the best video possible.

GFranco Shoes is a Latin dance shoe company headquartered in Carlsbad, California. Gladys Franco, owner and designer of GFranco Shoes, brought her technical design experience from major fashion brands to the dance community when she noticed a need for fashion, comfort and affordable dance shoes. She launched GFranco Dance Shoes product line in 2011 and has not slowed the companys growth yet. Featuring high quality, professional dance shoes for Latin dancers around the world, GFranco Shoes are worn worldwide and grace the feet of beginner dancers, social dancers as well as world-champions dancers in disciplines from salsa, bachata, kizomba, zouk, cha-cha, mambo and more. GFranco Shoes are available at dance events throughout the year, authorized retailers and online at http://www.gfrancoshoes.com.

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Kansas Citys philanthropic community has generously responded to the National World War I Museum and Memorials Call to Duty Centennial Capital Campaign. We are grateful to Kansas Citys generous philanthropic community who have taken the lead to invest in the expansion of the National World War I Museum and Memorial and its important mission to honor those whose lives were sacrificed in the Great War.

Kansas Citys philanthropic community has generously responded to the National World War I Museum and Memorials Call to Duty Centennial Capital Campaign. Collectively, they have raised more than $5 million to enable construction of a new exhibition gallery at the Museum and renovation of existing outdoor space, as well as amenities to enhance the visitor experience as a venue for community and corporate events. Lead gifts dedicated to construction of the new exhibition gallery and outdoor space renovation are from the following:



Hall Family Foundation

Enid and Crosby Kemper Foundation

Jack F. and Glenna Y. Wylie Charitable Foundation

Marion and Henry Bloch Family Foundation

Sunderland Foundation

Sosland Family Foundation

We are grateful to Kansas Citys generous philanthropic community who have taken the lead to respond to the invitation to invest in the expansion of the National World War I Museum and Memorial and its important mission to honor those whose lives were sacrificed in the Great War, said Dr. Matthew Naylor, President and CEO of the National World War Museum and Memorial. Their support enables the Museum to expand our role as Americas leading institution dedicated to interpreting, understanding and remembering the Great War and its enduring impact.

Now is a perfect moment to leverage the opportunities arising from the central role the Museum and Memorial is playing in the global centennial commemoration of World War I, said Naylor. This support will further put Kansas City on the international map, and draw attention to the spirit of the people who created one of the worlds great museums and memorials.

The new exhibition gallery and outdoor gathering space will enable the Museum to expand natural partnerships with institutions such as the Imperial War Museums in London, the Smithsonian Museums in Washington, D.C., and other museums, governments and academic institutions around the world.

The new state-of-the-art gallery will not only enable the Museum to bring internationally traveling exhibitions to Kansas City  and to the United States in some instances  but also to present and curate a wealth of objects and documents from the Museums vast collection, less than 10 percent of which is on exhibition at any time. The Museum was built in 2006 with future expansion in mind, including the addition of 4,000 square feet of available space. The capital campaign funds will enable construction of essential museum-quality exhibition amenities, including monitored temperature and air quality, special lighting, advanced security and display furnishings. In addition, the funds will enable upgrades to the Museum grounds, including an enhanced outdoor gathering space for community and corporate events, with landscaping enhancements and provisions for outdoor event lighting, water and electricity.

Lead gifts to the Call to Duty Centennial Capital Campaign to support the Museums new exhibition gallery and outdoor space include:

Hall Family Foundation ($2.1 million)

The Hall Family Foundations lead gift of $2.1 million is the largest gift to date for the Call to Duty Centennial Capital Campaign. The Foundation has had a long history with the Museum, including Hallmarks production of postcards in the 1920s featuring the Liberty Memorial. Keith Pence, husband of Margi Pence and son-in-law of Don Hall, is serving on the Call to Duty Campaign Cabinet.

Enid and Crosby Kemper Foundation ($1 million)

The Enid and Crosby Kemper Foundations lead gift of $1 million to the Call to Duty Centennial Capital Campaign will support the Museums new exhibition gallery and renovated outdoor space. The Kemper family has long been involved with the Museum. William T. Kemper was a key community leader who led efforts after World War I to raise money for making the Liberty Memorial a reality as one of the original members of the Board of Trustees. Crosby Kemper, Jr. was a critical voice in the restoration of Liberty Memorial in the late 1990s, while Sandy and Christine Kemper, Call to Duty Campaign Co-Chairs, have provided invaluable support in guiding the campaign and contributing to its success.

Jack F. and Glenna Y. Wylie Charitable Foundation ($1 million)

The Jack F. and Glenna Y. Wylie Charitable Foundations lead gift of $1 million to the Call to Duty centennial Capital Campaign will support construction of the Museums new exhibition gallery and renovated outdoor space. The Wylie Foundation was created by Jack and Glenna Wylie, dedicating wealth they had created to advance educational, healthcare and youth development, among other interests that they developed in their lives. Since their passing, their Foundation continues their legacy of giving. This gift has been facilitated by trustees, and long-time Wylie friends, Tom McDonnell and Brad Bergman.

Marion and Henry Bloch Family Foundation ($500,000)

The Marion and Henry Bloch Family Foundations lead gift of $500,000 to the Call to Duty Centennial Capital Campaign will support construction of the Museums new exhibition gallery and renovated outdoor space. Henry Bloch, a World War II veteran, serves as one of the Call to Duty Centennial Capital Campaigns Honorary Chairs, and is a Museum Board of Trustees Emeriti. Bloch is serving as one of the four Honorary Chairs for the Call to Duty Campaign, along with Bill Dunn, Sr., Jeannette Nichols and Ollie Gates. Tom, Henrys son, and Mary are serving on the Campaign Cabinet.

The Sunderland Foundation ($500,000)

The Sunderland Foundations lead gift of $500,000 to the Call to Duty Centennial Capital Campaign will support construction of the Museums new exhibition gallery and renovated outdoor space. Kent Sunderland, foundation president, serves on the Museums Board of Trustees and is a Call to Duty Centennial Campaign Cabinet Member. The Museums iconic Paul Sunderland Glass Bridge is named after Kents grandfather, Missouris last World War I veteran, who passed away in 2004 at the age of 107.

The Sosland Foundation ($250,000)

The Sosland Foundations major gift of $250,000 to the Call to Duty Centennial Capital Campaign will support construction of the Museums new exhibition gallery and renovated outdoor space. Morton and Neil Soslands father and several uncles served in the World War I. Sosland family veterans have been recognized in memorial bricks on the Museums Walk of Honor.

The Missouri Development Finance Board (MDFB) also awarded the Museum $1.8 million in tax credits to support the project.

The National World War I Museum and Memorial Call to Duty Centennial Capital Campaign was launched in 2014 to raise funds to meet four primary goals:

1. Construction of a new exhibition gallery

2. Renovation of outdoor gathering space

3. Support of program and opportunity funds

4. Increase the Museums endowment

The National World War I Museum and Memorials Call to Duty Centennial Capital Campaign continues with future funder announcements expected by Memorial Day. The general public is also welcome to make contributions to the campaign at theworldwar.org.

About the National World War I Museum and Memorial

The National World War I Museum and Memorial is Americas leading institution dedicated to remembering, interpreting and understanding the Great War and its enduring impact on the global community. The Museum holds the most diverse collection of World War I objects and documents in the world and is the second-oldest public museum dedicated to preserving the objects, history and experiences of the war. The Museum takes visitors of all ages on an epic journey through a transformative period and shares deeply personal stories of courage, honor, patriotism and sacrifice. Designated by Congress as Americas official World War I Museum and Memorial and located in downtown Kansas City, Mo., the National World War I Museum and Memorial inspires thought, dialogue and learning to make the experiences of the Great War era meaningful and relevant for present and future generations. To learn more, visit theworldwar.org.

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Nailah's Kitchen Senegalese Cuisine - Baltimore Not only do we aim to bring the taste of Senegal to Baltimore and beyond, but we want to help improve the communities we are part of...

West African entrepreneur, Mohammed Agbodjogbe, has announced the grand opening of the flagship location for a new chain of restaurants aiming to popularize Senegalese cuisine. On May 7 Nailah's Kitchen, named after his daughter, is slated to open its doors at 5722 York Rd. with casual & carryout offerings for breakfast, lunch & dinner. The menu will feature authentic Senegalese favorites like the national dish Thiebou Djeun (stewed fish), shawarma wraps with regional spices and even American classics like rotisserie chicken and oven-baked pizza.

This new eatery will actually be two restaurants in one with a fine dining portion opening to the public the following month in June. The fine dining side will feature upscale versions of traditional and contemporary Senegalese cuisine along with a full juice bar serving up fresh-squeezed West African drinks, and a stage for live Senegalese music and performance.

Nailahs Kitchen is the face of a larger effort by Mohammeds real estate development company, Nine Jewels, to begin revitalizing buildings on neglected blocks of Baltimore. Working with Curry Architects, Baltimore Development Corporation and the Downtown Partnership, this effort will begin with 400 N. Howard which will transform a building that has been abandoned for nearly 20 years into a 15,000 sq. ft. showcase restoration, multi-use project. It will feature 3 floors of amenity-rich modern apartment units nested above a street level cafe & farmers market.

To round out this multi-pronged strategy, 25 percent of the profits from these projects will be donated to ASA Foundation (asafoundationmd.org), a non-profit focused on the education and empowerment of underprivileged youths. Not only do we aim to bring the taste of Senegal to Baltimore and beyond, but we want to help improve the communities we are part of, said Mohammed. "Im very fortunate to be in a position to do this. Ive found a home in Baltimore and want to use every resource to make that home a better place to live, and visit."

Nailahs Kitchen has been operating from a temporary location at 327 Eutaw Street for the past year, but will be closing its doors on May 6 to open on York road. Current customers that may be disappointed by the move can rest easy knowing that another location will be opening up one block away at 306 N. Howard Street in a few months.

Online ordering for carryout and neighborhood delivery will be available within two weeks of opening. All information and updates can be found at nailahskitchen.com.
"Great films should not be dependent on who is in the movie, which studio produced it, or how much it cost produce, but instead on the power of story, characters, resonance, relevance and much more," stated Martin Warner, CEO and founder of Flix Premiere

Martin Warner, CEO and Founder of Flix Premiere, the world's first online Cineplex, will address the future of online cinema during his keynote at the 69th Festival de Cannes and the Marche du Film's NEXT program, the festival's future of cinema forum. Warner will outline new models for film distribution and online movie consumption. Warner will also discuss how the new disruptive model of an online Cineplex will give movie audiences broader access to a greater variety of world-class movies and share updates on what Flix Premiere has achieved within the last year to democratize cinema. The exclusive keynote on May 18th will be moderated by John Hopewell, Chief International Correspondent for Variety Magazine.

This will be Flix Premiere's second event at the festival, following its debut at the 68th Festival de Cannes in 2015, when the company initially launched its mission to revolutionize the film industry by offering brand new movies anytime, anywhere.

"Each year tens of thousands of movies are made worldwide, but only 5% of these movies find their audience or recover investment. The other 95%, albeit most of them great movies, get lost in an archaic distribution system, without their audience knowing about them," said Martin Warner, CEO and Founder of Flix Premiere. "Each great movie deserves a chance to be seen. Using an innovative movie curation system and marketing model that gives each of these films the spotlight they deserve, we can connect these movies to their audience worldwide and - at the same time - give online movie watchers broader access to the types of movies they crave to see."

In 2015, at the highly anticipated Flix Premiere pre-launch party, the company also announced their Democratize Cinema campaign. This campaign enables filmmakers, directors, producers, movie critics, and all movie-goers to become involved in a mission that aims to provide one true single point of discovery for great new movies. This campaign is truly driven to help all underappreciated and overlooked films finally realize their full potential. As of May 1, 2016, more than 105,000 people have signed the online petition, expressing their hunger for a single point to access a broad range of high quality films with a hotbed of emerging talent. "Great films should not be dependent on who is in the movie, which studio produced it, or how much it cost produce, but instead on the power of story, characters, resonance, relevance and much more," stated Warner.

Flix Premiere is the brainchild of serial entrepreneur and film producer Martin Warner. The world's first Cineplex uses technology innovation to break traditional barriers and connect audiences with the work of talented filmmakers. Flix Premiere initiated its global roll-out with a soft launch in the UK, providing film viewers in the UK a new destination to discover movies across genres including drama, comedies, documentaries and animation.

Flix Premiere is currently finalizing their exclusive and limited guest list to the keynote; however, signing up here may be your best chance at attending whats been referred to as The Keynote of the Festival.
Aldous \ Walker LLP

We are proud to announce that Attorney Charla Aldous of Dallas-based Aldous Walker, LLP has been included as a 2016 Woman Lawyer of the Year in Texas for the practice of Medical Malpractice Law  Plaintiffs.

The Best Lawyers Spring Business Edition publication honored women in the law. The awards are provided to women lawyers throughout the United States and in Puerto Rico for all practice areas.

Attorney Aldous was also voted as Best Lawyer in Medical Malpractice Law in 2013 for her practice in Dallas.

The Best Lawyers organization is the oldest, most widely respected legal guide for peer reviews in the world. To win this award is a testament to Attorney Aldous drive and passion for clients.

Im a trial lawyer, says Aldous. If I believe in a cause, Ill fight for itwith everything Ive gotfor as long as I need to. I dont know any other way to approach my work.

Aldous \ Walker is a Dallas-based law firm focusing on civil trial practice including medical malpractice, birth injuries, wrongful death, catastrophic injuries, and more. To learn more about the firm, call (214) 307-6307 or visit their website at http://www.aldouslaw.com/.
Military spouses like Maritza are an inspiration, showing courage and determination no matter what difficulties life brings.

In honor of Military Spouse Appreciation Day today, Career Step, an online provider of career-focused education and corporate training, and the National Military Family Association, a nonprofit that works to strengthen and protect military families, are pleased to announce Maritza Aquino as the second full-tuition scholarship recipient of 2016.

Being awarded this scholarship by Career Step, is truly a life changing event, after the hardships my husband and I endured throughout the last few years, said Maritza Aquino. Words can't convey my gratitude. Thank you Career Step for helping my family and I be able to move forward in a positive direction.

As a stay-at-home mother, Ms. Aquino has taught her children to serve in the community and help others, but she said she wants to set an example for her daughter to be self-sufficient.

Ms. Aquino is the first high-school graduate in her family, and she said she and her husband want to set educational standards for their children to help their family avoid the cycle of generational poverty.

Without an education that furnishes a career, it is complicated to do that, she said. Im looking at right now as a pivotal age for not only them but for myself as well A certification or degree gives one the ability to speak from experience and lead as opposed to giving advice based off of what could have been.

After her youngest child died last year, Ms. Aquino had to withdraw from a pharmacy technician program at the University of WisconsinMadison. Now that her husband is about to deploy to the Middle East and her children are all in school, Ms. Aquino said the time is right for her to focus on herself and her education.

This scholarship will provide me with the opportunity to show my children that regardless of what adversity you are presented with, you still have to push forward and accomplish your goals, Ms. Aquino wrote in her scholarship application. Financial hardships arent an excuse for not furthering your education.

Ms. Aquino will get to accomplish her goal with Career Steps Pharmacy Technician program, which will equip her with the skills and experience to start a rewarding career that can transfer with her family wherever her husband is assigned.

Military spouses like Maritza are an inspiration, showing courage and determination no matter what difficulties life brings, said Steve Tober, President and CEO of Career Step. It is an honor for us at Career Step to help her and so many others further their educational goals and create opportunities for their families. We congratulate Maritza and look forward to seeing her thrive as she finally fulfills her goal of becoming a pharmacy technician.

Career Step is committed to helping military families succeed. More than 15,000 military spouses and service members have trained with Career Step, and Career Step has been recognized as a Military Friendly School for the past five years in a row. Career Step is also a MyCAA-approved school and an original member of the Military Spouse Employment Partnership (MSEP) program run through the Department of Defense.

Career Step and the National Military Family Association award one full tuition scholarship each quarter to a spouse of a service member who is either on active duty or is a veteran of the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard, or National Guard. Applications are currently being accepted for the third scholarship of 2016. For more information, please visit CareerStep.com/nmfa.

About Career Step

Career Step is an online provider of career-focused education and corporate training. The company has trained over 100,000 students for new careers, has more than 150 partnerships with colleges and universities nationwide, offers a variety of continuing education courses for healthcare professionals and has educated more than 8,000 health information professionals through its Corporate Training Division. Career Step provides training for several of the largest and most respected healthcare employers in the nation and is committed to helping students and practicing healthcare professionals alike gain the skills they need to be successful in the workplaceimproving lives, advancing careers and bettering business results through education. More information can be found at http://www.careerstep.com or 1-800-246-7836.

About National Military Family Association

The National Military Family Association is the leading nonprofit dedicated to serving the families who stand behind the uniform. Since 1969, NMFA has worked to strengthen and protect millions of families through its advocacy and programs. They provide spouse scholarships, camps for military kids, and retreats for families reconnecting after deployment and for the families of the wounded, ill, or injured. NMFA serves the families of the currently serving, retired, wounded or fallen members of the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force, Coast Guard, and Commissioned Corps of the USPHS and NOAA. To get involved or to learn more, visit http://www.MilitaryFamily.org.
A special issue of The American Journal of Managed Care addresses the policy and value issues of treatment for hepatitis C virus. Although the medical prospects facing patients with hepatitis C virus have never been better, the prospect for gaining access to a cure is another matter for many patients. Past News Releases RSS AJMCs Evidence-Based...

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Few events in healthcare changed the landscape like the December 2013 arrival of Sovaldi, which made headlines mostly for its cost despite its potential to wipe out a silent killer, hepatitis C virus.

Since then, policy and moral questions surrounding the drugpart of a class called direct-acting antivirals (DAAs)have created fallout in the courts and state governments. Advocates assert that patients should not be denied therapy that offers not only immediate health benefits but also long-term savings, as patients avoid cancer and liver transplants.

In New York State, officials recently used the threat of legal action to force seven major commercial insurers to pay for DAA treatment. But as The American Journal of Managed Care discusses in a new special issue, thousands with hepatitis C virus are denied access to therapy, which advocates say is short-sighted and risks lives. The full issue is available here.

Led by a letter from guest editor Jay Bhattacharya, MD, PhD, on the dismal arithmetic of hepatitis C, this special issue adds to the growing body of new research that shows hepatitis C cures have the potential to provide substantial cost savings for both the public and private payers. Authors find that improving access will require more creative and effective policymaking, from more comprehensive screening through treatment.

Although the medical prospects facing patients with hepatitis C virus have never been better, the prospect of gaining access to a cure is another matter for many patients, writes Bhattacharya, of the Center for Primary Care and Outcomes Research at Stanford University School of Medicine.

Data released this week by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) show that acute cases of hepatitis C virus doubled between 2010 and 2014, and the number of deaths attributable to the disease reached an all-time high in 2014 at 19,659despite the fact that screening and cures are available.

While there has been considerable attention on commercial insurers, this special issue discusses the effect of hepatitis C spending on Medicare Part D, as well as the effects of rationing treatment on the Medicaid population. Multiple papers documentand calculatedirect and indirect benefits that would result from universal coverage for DAA treatment.

The problem, as Bhattacharya points out, is that the price of DAA treatment is so high. With a list price of $84,000 for a course of Sovaldi and an estimated 2.7 million people in the United States with chronic hepatitis C, the initial cost of care has received more attention than long-term savings. Bhattacharya discusses potential solutions to the pricing problem, and acknowledges pitfalls.

Brian Haug, president of Pharmacy, Managed Markets, and Rare Disease, and publisher of The American Journal of Managed Care, praised the outstanding quality and timeliness of the special issue.

The impact that hepatitis C therapy has had on managed care, and on healthcare more broadly, cannot be overstated, Haug said. We are pleased that The American Journal of Managed Care is the source of important new evidence at this critical time, when payers need facts to make decisions.

About the Journals and AJMC.com

The American Journal of Managed Care is the leading peer-reviewed journal dedicated to issues in managed care. AJMC.com distributes healthcare news to leading stakeholders across a variety of platforms. Other titles in the franchise include The American Journal of Accountable Care, which publishes research and commentary on innovative healthcare delivery models facilitated by the 2010 Affordable Care Act. AJMCs Evidence-Based series brings together stakeholder views from payers, providers, policymakers and pharmaceutical leaders in oncology and diabetes management. To order reprints of articles appearing in AJMC publications, please call (609) 716-7777, x 131.
The 3rd annual Mahindra Military Salute Giveaway on The Rush Limbaugh Show, will give a Mahindra mPact XTV 750S utility vehicle to a current or former military service member. It is a privilege to have the opportunity to recognize our nations military with the Mahindra Military Salute Giveaway again this Memorial Day. -- Cleo Franklin, VP, Marketing, Mahindra North America

Rush Limbaugh and Mahindra North America honor the service and sacrifice of our military for the third year with the Mahindra Military Salute Giveaway promotion on The Rush Limbaugh Show. All current and former military service members are eligible to enter to win a Mahindra mPact XTV 750S utility vehicle in camo. Entries are being accepted for the utility vehicle giveaway between May 2 and May 29 at 11:59 p.m. PT at http://www.RushLimbaugh.com. The winner will be selected in a random drawing on May 31, 2016.

Last year, more than 6,500 service men and women entered for an opportunity to win a Mahindra tractor. Retired Army Colonel Shep Snow of Sagle, Idaho, won a Mahindra eMax 22HST tractor with loader. Mahindra, the number one selling tractor brand in the world based on volume, is an active year-round supporter of the military through various programs including the Mahindra Pride Military Appreciation Program, recognizing the commitment of members of the armed forces. The Military Appreciation Program offers an additional $200 rebate for active and retired U.S. military personnel on the purchase of a new Mahindra tractor and two qualifying implements or a utility vehicle through December 31, 2016. In addition, Mahindra USA supports programs such as Operation Finally Home which provide custom-built, mortgage free homes to military heroes and their families.

It is a privilege to have the opportunity to recognize our nations military with the Mahindra Military Salute Giveaway again this Memorial Day. We are honored to get to know the winners of the Mahindra Pride Military Appreciation Program and each year we are impressed by the strength of character of these service people and their families, said Cleo Franklin, Vice President of Marketing and Strategic Planning, Mahindra North America. One of Mahindras Rise initiatives focuses on making a difference in our communities. Our military and veterans live their lives making a difference. They earn our respect, praise and recognition and most of all, thanks every day of the year.

My thanks to Mahindra, makers of the worlds number one selling tractor. And God bless all of you who protect our freedom, said Limbaugh.

To learn more about the Mahindra Pride Military Appreciation Program, please visit MahindraUSA.com/financing/programs or MahindraPromotion.com.

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About The Rush Limbaugh Show

Nationally syndicated by Premiere Networks, The Rush Limbaugh Show is heard on nearly 600 stations by up to 20 million people each week. Its the highest rated national radio talk show in America. Please visit http://www.RushLimbaugh.com for more information.

About Mahindra North America

Mahindra North America (MNA) is part of the US $16.9 billion Mahindra Groups Automotive and Farm Sector - the number one selling tractor company in the world, based on volumes and the only tractor manufacturer in the world to win the industrys top two quality awards  the Deming Application Prize and the Japan Quality Medal, care of Union of Japanese Scientists and Engineers.

Houston, Texas, based Mahindra North America is a wholly owned subsidiary of Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd. and began selling tractors in the USA in 1994. MNA has since grown rapidly due to high customer satisfaction levels (97%) and strong customer referrals (98%). Mahindra NA now has five distribution points in North America to help meet the needs of its customers and the growing demand for its products.

Mahindras professional-grade tractors range from 22 HP  105HP with over 40 model offerings  and include the revolutionary Max and eMax series tractors. The Mahindra Max 24 leads the way in the sub-compact market and feature true tractor performance and capabilities. The Mahindra Max 24 is joined by the industrys first mid-compact tractor, the Mahindra Max 26 XL, which has compact tractor performance and versatility in a near compact tractor size.

All Mahindra Tractors are built with heavy-duty components that allow them to outperform other tractors in their class and are designed to provide consumers with the ability to push more, pull more and lift more, so they can do more, in less time. Combine the superior performance of a Mahindra and the peace of mind of a STANDARD 5 year limited powertrain warranty and you have a rugged workhorse at your disposal.

Mahindra entered the utility vehicle market in early 2015 with the introduction of the mPACT XTV series models designed to haul more, tow more and go more. These industry-redefining models are made in the US from the ground up and feature industry-leading hauling capacity, towing capacity and ground clearance, in addition, to a STANDARD 3 year limited powertrain warranty. The mPACT XTV series are available in 750cc gas and 1,000cc diesel versions.

To learn more about Mahindra North America, please visit http://www.mahindrausa.com.

To learn more about the Mahindra mPACT XTVs, please visit http://www.mahindraxtv.com

About The Mahindra Group

The Mahindra Group focuses on enabling people to rise through solutions that power mobility, drive rural prosperity, enhance urban lifestyles and increase business efficiency.

A USD 16.9 billion multinational group based in Mumbai, India, Mahindra employs more than 200,000 people in over 100 countries. Mahindra operates in the key industries that drive economic growth, enjoying a leadership position in tractors, utility vehicles, information technology, financial services and vacation ownership. In addition, Mahindra enjoys a strong presence in the agribusiness, aerospace, components, consulting services, defence, energy, industrial equipment, logistics, real estate, retail, steel, commercial vehicles and two wheeler industries.

In 2014, Mahindra featured on the Forbes Global 2000, a comprehensive listing of the worlds largest, most powerful public companies, as measured by revenue, profit, assets and market value. The Mahindra Group also received the Financial Times Boldness in Business Award in the Emerging Markets category in 2013. Visit us at http://www.mahindra.com
The Easter prisoner swap was thwarted because armed opponents of the Kyiv authorities had changed their position, Ukrainian representative to the Trilateral Contact Group, Leonid Kuchma, has said.

"They are not interested in doing so. They always want some mechanisms for influencing Ukraine, public sentiment," Kuchma told the press in Kyiv, on Friday.

In the opinion of Kuchma, everything depends on the position of the Russian administration which, he believes, has an influence on the LPR and the DPR. "All of us are perfectly aware that everything depends on the position of Moscow. The exchange would have happened if the order had been given. They were told to stall, and they stalled the process," Kuchma said.

He said the issue would be raised at the next meeting of the Trilateral Contact Group in Minsk.

A "20 for 50" prisoner swap was planned to take place in Donbas, in late April, shortly before Easter. Yet, Ukrainian representative to the Trilateral Contact Group's humanitarian subgroup, Iryna Gerashchenko, said that process was thwarted.
Applied Predictive Technologies (APT) announced today that it has been selected as a Virginia Chamber of Commerce Fantastic 50 Winner again. The Fantastic 50 is the Virginia Chamber of Commerces annual statewide award recognizing Virginias fastest growing businesses.

Nominations for the 2016 Fantastic 50 were sought last fall from local chambers of commerce, economic development organizations, sponsors networks, and local companies. To be eligible, companies had to fall within a specific revenue threshold and demonstrate positive revenue growth and positive net income in its most recent fiscal year over the previous year. Companies are judged on four-year sales revenue history.

The Virginia Chamber exists to promote the free enterprise system and advance a better business environment in the Commonwealth for private sector businesses to succeed, said the president and CEO of the Virginia Chamber of Commerce Barry DuVal. The 50 companies being recognized today are the ones who are leading that success by raising the personal incomes of Virginians, attracting top talent, and making their communities better places to live and work.

APT CEO Anthony Bruce commented, We are very excited that the Chamber of Commerce has honored APT as one of the fastest growing companies in Virginia again. APT is proud that we continue to attract top talent to Virginia to develop world-class technology to serve our clients and local communities.

In 2015, APT was also recognized as the #1 Medium Sized Workplace by the Washington Post, Top 100 Best Workplaces for Millennials by Fortune Magazine, and a Best Place to Work in Glassdoors Employees Choice Awards.

To learn more about the awards, please visit https://www.vachamber.com/event/2016-fantastic-50-awards-program/.

To learn more about APT, please visit http://www.predictivetechnologies.com.

About the Virginia Chamber of Commerce

The Virginia Chamber of Commerce is the largest business advocacy organization in the Commonwealth, with more than 22,600 members. The Chamber is a non-partisan, business advocacy organization that works in the legislative, regulatory and political arenas to act as the catalyst for positive change in all areas of economic development and competitiveness for Virginia.

About APT

APT, a MasterCard company, is a leading cloud-based analytics software company that enables organizations to rapidly and precisely measure cause-and-effect relationships between business initiatives and outcomes to generate economic value. Our intuitive and proprietary Test & Learn software utilizes sophisticated algorithms to analyze large amounts of data, enabling business leaders to conduct experiments and allowing them to make optimal decisions and implement business initiatives at scale. APT also offers products that support decision-making for specific business needs including transaction analysis, space planning, promotion design, category management and location selection. APTs client portfolio features some of the worlds best known brands, including Walmart, Starbucks, Coca-Cola, Victorias Secret, American Family, Hilton Worldwide, SUBWAY, TD Bank, T-Mobile, and others. APT has offices in Washington, D.C., San Francisco, London, Bentonville, Taipei, Tokyo, Sydney, and Chicago. Visit http://www.predictivetechnologies.com to learn more.
Were excited to see that entrepreneurs are accessing capital from the small business lending community in order to create and sustain business growth.

In honor of National Small Business Week, Lendio, the nations leading marketplace for small business loans, today announced the top ten states for small business funding, based on lending data from the Lendio platform which matches businesses with more than 70 lenders:

1. Vermont

2. California

3. Utah

4. Washington

5. New Hampshire

6. Texas

7. Florida

8. Georgia

9. Colorado

10. Hawaii

National Small Business Week is held each year to celebrate how small business owners and entrepreneurs contribute to the development of the American economy.

Were excited to see that entrepreneurs are accessing capital from the small business lending community in order to create and sustain business growth, said Brock Blake, CEO and co-founder, Lendio. Two of every three jobs made available in the country each year are made possible because of small businesses. Its a privilege to be part of the ecosystem thats helping support the economy.

Small business owner Tim Thyberg, Twisted Metal Collision Center, noted, Lendio helped us when we found that we suddenly had to move our business. They helped us get the money we needed very quickly in order to make the transition smooth and without down time. Without their help, I dont know if we would have been able to stay open. Now we are growing faster than ever.

Lendio released an infographic each day this week highlighting key small business statistics on each of the top five states, counting down to number one Vermont. Among the top five states, the average loan size ranged from $14,500 in Vermont to $39,000 in Utah. The approval ratio for loans ranged from 52 percent in California to 68 percent in Vermont, compared to [33 percent] to [34 percent] at large banks in each state, according to the 2015 Small Business Credit Survey (SBCS).

Over half of Americans either own their business or work for a small business, which means this segment of the market creates more jobs than any other industry, Blake added. We thought highlighting the way alternative lending sources have helped small businesses grow was a great way to celebrate.

In 2015 alone, Lendio facilitated over $128 million in financing for more than 5,100 small business owners in all 50 states. The ranking is based on a sampling of thousands of Lendio's small business owners from April 2015 to April 2016.

About Lendio

Lendio is a free online service that helps business owners find the right small business loans within minutes. The center of small business lending, our passion is fueling the American Dream by uniting the small business loan industry and bringing all options together in one place, from short-term specialty financing to long-term low-interest traditional loans. Our technology makes small business lending simple, decreasing the amount of time and effort it takes to secure funding. More information about Lendio is available at http://www.lendio.com.

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"Our members can sell shares of a Zombie company to TCA at $1 per holding, which gives them a legitimate tax write-off, since the transaction is documented and irreversible." - John Harbison, Chairman

Tech Coast Angels has launched an innovative way in which the angel network can assist its members realize tax losses at Zombie companies (companies that have essentially shut down but have not dissolved). The new approach will be announced at the Angel Capital Association Summit next week in Philadelphia.

One of any angel investors biggest challenges is what happens when an investment turns essentially worthless, yet the company does not shut down or claim bankruptcy. This can happen either due to struggles in the companys business, or through a recapitalization of the equity of the company. Without a document of dissolution, an angel investor cannot declare a tax loss, and the injured startup continues to haunt the investors bottom line. While there have been solutions (such as selling holdings to a friend for $1), those answers seem complicated, involve extensive paperwork--and, in reality, most angels dont pursue them.

TCAs Lost Causes Fund provides our members with a solution to these moribund startups on life support, explained John Harbison, chairman of Tech Coast Angels. Members can sell shares of a Zombie company to TCA at $1 per holding, which gives them a legitimate tax write-off, since the transaction is documented and irreversible.

This allows TCAs members to accelerate recognition of their losses and improve returns.

The Lost Causes Fund is available only to members of Tech Coast Angels, and the holding must be in a TCA Portfolio company. Should there be a Lazurus resurgence of the company and an eventual gain, the angel network will donate any net proceeds for charitable purposes to support entrepreneurship.

Mr. Harbison will discuss the details of TCAs Lost Causes Fund at The Angel Capital Association Summit in Philadelphia. His presentation is scheduled for Tuesday, May 9 at 11:00 am. Mr. Harbison is also available for interview before and after the ACA Summit. Members of media attending the ACA Summit may also request an interview.
When author Allan Wooleys first grandchild was born, he was inspired to pass on stories from and about his youth. After retiring, he had time to continue writing poems and work out his thoughts on various philosophic questions. From these three sources, he finally decided to compile a selection of stories, poems and essays into his debut book, Crumbs Cast upon the Current: Some Stories, Poems, Essays (published by iUniverse).

In particular, this is a book for someone who misses humor in stories, traditional form in poetry, and some grounded, connected discussion of pertinent philosophic topics in essays, Wooley says. About the first third of the book is narrative with stories and everyday but colorful characters, mostly non-fictional, but important in exemplifying things greater than themselves, sometimes for the humor of the situation, sometimes for the dramatic point of the episode, sometimes for both. The second part consists of poems that attempt to commemorate special moments in daily life or special moods or thoughts, and the final third is essays that try to tie all my philosophical ponderings into a coherent whole.

Wooley hopes readers take away a sense of having travelled spiritually, of mental excursions in which we can go to different places and find things seldom experienced or never before but worth revisiting, all at home in the confines of our own mind.

Crumbs Cast upon the Current

By Allan Wooley

Softcover | 6 x 9in | 236 pages | ISBN 9781491783177

E-Book | 236 pages | ISBN 9781491783160

Available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble

About the Author

Allan Wooley grew up in rural Maine and attended college in Maine and graduate school in New Jersey. He taught in North Carolina and New Hampshire, and now resides with his wife in rural Vermont. He enjoys mowing lawns, walking in the woods, and writing poetry, stories, essays and computer code. He co-authored two textbooks, Fabulae Graecae and Euripides Helen. More information is available at awooley.com.

iUniverse, an Author Solutions, LLC, self-publishing imprint, is the leading book marketing, editorial services, and supported self-publishing provider. iUniverse has a strategic alliance with Indigo Books & Music, Inc. in Canada, and titles accepted into the iUniverse Rising Star program are featured in a special collection on BarnesandNoble.com. iUniverse recognizes excellence in book publishing through the Star, Readers Choice, Rising Star and Editors Choice designationsself-publishings only such awards program. Headquartered in Bloomington, Indiana, iUniverse also operates offices in Indianapolis. For more information or to publish a book, please visit iuniverse.com or call 1-800-AUTHORS. For the latest, follow @iuniversebooks on Twitter.
From left to right, Pat Lencioni, Tom Corcoran, Fr. Michael White and Jeff Cavins participate in a panel discussion about the Sunday Experience during the Amazing Parish Conference What is an amazing parish? A parish with a reliance on prayer and sacraments, focused on evangelizing people and being disciples for Jesus Christ, fulfilling our call to be outposts for His mission.

If Synod 16 is the spark that sets the Archdiocese of Detroit ablaze, the Amazing Parish Conference will be regarded as the flint and kindling.

For three bright and sunny days, leaders from parishes across the archdiocese met at the Detroit Renaissance Center, praying, listening and discerning how to reshape southeast Michigans parishes.

The conference was high-energy from the start April 18, when Archbishop Allen H. Vigneron welcomed priests and parish staff to the conference, describing it as part of a larger strategy that began two years ago with prayer for a New Pentecost, Come, Encounter Christ! events and the call to grow in discipleship to become better witnesses to Jesus.

As Ive reflected on our efforts to Unleash the Gospel, to engage in the New Evangelization, certainly everyone would have to admit that the parishes would have to be the centers for this great effort, said the archbishop, who used his booming Detroit Pistons voice to welcome attendees. This is not a membership drive, the archbishop continued. This is not about simply maintaining the power of our community by having large numbers. I have absolutely no idea what fruit God will draw from our efforts. But we must make our commitment. Christ expects it of us. We make our commitment to share the Good News.

More than 200 of the archdioceses 226 parishes sent leadership teams to the conference, including St. Ignatius Parish in the Cayman Islands, whom the archbishop joked should receive an award for traveling so far. It was the first time the Denver-based Amazing Parish organization presented the conference for a specific diocese.

The conference covered nothing short of a complete overhaul of what pastors and parish staff could do to help make their parishes more effective in the task of evangelization.

Renowned business speaker and Oakland, Calif., native Pat Lencioni challenged attendees to give an honest evaluation of the state of their parish, how effectively goals are met and what might be needed to take the next step.What is an amazing parish? A parish with a reliance on prayer and sacraments, focused on evangelizing people and being disciples for Jesus Christ, fulfilling our call to be outposts for His mission, Lencioni said in an interview with The Michigan Catholic.

Evidence suggests a parish isnt going to expect a sense of politics, dysfunction, conversation in the hallways and parking lots, Lencioni said. Parishioners want more clarity on whats being focused on. What they will notice is the people running the parish being joyful.

Lencioni, one of the founders of the Amazing Parish movement, gave the first talk of the conference, discussing the proper role of a parish leadership team. A real leadership team isnt the default staff, Lencioni said. Its people the pastor shares responsibility with in running the parish. Its the group needed to have difficult conversations with, where the pastor can vent if something is going wrong, a small group to show Father he isnt alone. And most importantly, dont worry about the title leadership team. Its not an award; its a responsibility.

Lencioni highlighted misconceptions about parish leadership teams and their role in running an amazing parish.

Misconception No. 1: The pastor has to be involved in everything, Lencioni said. How many times is it, I have an idea. Well, you better tell Father. Our parishes will work when there are things Father doesnt know about. Its a drain to have the pastor in the know about everything. Lencioni said leadership teams should not be afraid to challenge the pastor from time to time and to recognize individuals strengths and weaknesses.

Fr. James Bilot of Divine Child Parish in Dearborn said he was encouraged by the 1,100 people who gathered to reflect on such suggestions. I agree having a parish leadership team takes away the feeling of total responsibility, Fr. Bilot said. The sense that (pastors) arent in it alone. As a priest, we sometimes need to be more vulnerable, admitting that we dont have all the answers, and empowering parishioners to be heard.

While the conference focused on all aspects of parish life, Fr. James Mallon, Fr. Michael White and Tom Corcoran discussed The Sunday Experience during a Tuesday afternoon panel.



The three men, later joined by Jeff Cavins and Lencioni, said every aspect of Sunday is part of preaching, especially to those who might be walking into a church for the first time in 30 years. The homily is the example message of everything the parish is trying to communicate that week, said Fr. White, pastor of the Church of the Nativity in Timonium, Md., and co-author with Corcoran of the parish-building book Rebuilt. Everyone on the parish team needs to participate in that messaging. What is the message we are communicating in the weekly bulletin, the homily, greeting people in the parking lot? If we can get a conversation started that carries throughout the entire week, thats a successful homily.

Other panelists suggested ways for the parish staff to communicate the homily message and to be more receptive, including having parish offices open on Sundays, information events after Mass and people to serve in jack-of-all-trades roles. We presume too much about the people coming into our churches, even among Catholics that have been catechized, said Michael Peters, a parishioner from SS. Peter and Paul (Jesuit) Church in Detroit. There is a need to have good music, welcoming ushers  just basic, common sense stuff we seem to forget. I really liked what they had to say about going out and greeting people and having great homilies that welcome others. When you make it a Sunday opportunity, not a Sunday obligation, people want to come back, Peters said.

The Amazing Parish Conference aims to rejuvenate and revitalize parish life, but its not the endgame, as Archbishop Vigneron reminded those present.

Curtis Martin, founder and CEO of the Fellowship of Catholic University Students (FOCUS), spoke about the need for parishes to evangelize, noting that the Churchs primary purpose is to save souls. Jesus put the Church here not for it to be stagnant, but to get as many people to heaven as possible, Martin said. We need you, to follow His way. The Church grew when it was evangelical. Discipleship is the act of accompaniment. Not just about getting to heaven, but bringing along as many people as possible.

Martin said Jesus first disciples werent great masters of the law or faith, but rather men who were seeking to know Jesus in order to have a relationship with Him. There is power in discipleship; its just imitating what Jesus did, Martin said. It didnt require a doctorate in theology. Nobody needs special training to care for two people. If we just cared for two people a year, then did that next year, and those people cared for two people a year, in 33 years, the Church would have the population of the entire world.

Martin said priests play an important role in shepherding the Church, but evangelization depends on the involvement of the laity. While other presentations discussed the role of prayer, effective meetings and implementing a plan of action, Martins talk struck a chord with many in the audience about what an amazing parish could accomplish.

I really liked all this talk about people taking more ownership of everything in parish life, said Patrice Abona, a parishioner of Mother of God Chaldean Church in Southfield. Priests tend to do a lot, because they dont have the comfort that it will all get done if they arent involved in everything.

This gives parishes confidence to go outside the pews. If you create a good Sunday experience, it makes it easy to tell others about the experience, Abona said. You wouldnt even be able to hide it.

By Dan Meloy

The Michigan Catholic
Richard M. Borden The fact that a leading voice in cybersecurity dialogue made the decision to join our team at Robinson+Cole speaks volumes about who we are and what we are striving to accomplish. Past News Releases RSS Linn Foster Freedman Joins Faculty...

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The number one worry of general counsel and corporate leaders is IT/cybersecurity according to the recent Law in the Boardroom study by Corporate Board Member and FTI Consulting. Richard M. Borden, who recently joined Robinson+Coles expanding Data Privacy + Security Team in the firms Hartford office, has an inside understanding of these concerns, as he previously served as the chief privacy officer and chief information security privacy counsel of Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) and senior vice president and assistant general counsel at Bank of America.

The fact that a leading voice in cybersecurity dialogue made the decision to join our team at Robinson+Cole speaks volumes about who we are and what we are striving to accomplish, says Stephen E. Goldman, managing partner of Robinson+Cole.

Borden has worked in-house at the highest levels of information governance for leading financial companies, where he was responsible for cybersecurity, privacy issues, general technology, commercial contracting, outsourcing, licensing, data, and intellectual property. He is re-entering private practice to counsel a larger community of organizations on the preventive measures necessary to protect valuable information assets against cyber intrusions and data piracy.

Borden also notes that his past work kept him largely in New York City. He was keen to return to build his practice in Connecticut, where his family has a three-generation tradition of legal service.

"The firm has a gem-like luster in my home state of Connecticut. It is known for excellence and collaboration," says Borden. It was the people at Robinson+Cole who cemented my decision to join the firm. I got excited about the chance to work with exceptional lawyers that I greatly admired and to help expand a formidable and growing cybersecurity practice.

At Robinson+Cole, Borden will focus his practice on three intersecting core areas: big data governance and the Internet of Things, cybersecurity risk management, and technology sourcing and transactions. His clients will benefit not only from his legal counsel but also from his deep knowledge of technology, including cryptography, and his savvy business acumen of how information flows through companies and what risks exist.

Robinson+Cole is committed to growing and maintaining a stellar national cybersecurity and privacy practice. We are proud that we are able to continue attracting stars like Rick, said Linn Foster Freedman, chair of the firms Data Privacy + Security Team.

About Robinson+Cole

Robinson+Cole is a service mark of Robinson & Cole LLP, an Am Law 200 firm with 200 lawyers in nine offices serving regional, national, and international clients, from start-ups to Fortune 500 companies. Since 1845, Robinson & Cole LLP has expanded to meet the changing needs of clients. The firm represents corporate, governmental, and nonprofit entities, as well as individual clients, in a wide range of matters, including corporate; business and insurance litigation; tax and tax-exempt; finance; public finance; land use, environmental and utilities, and real estate; health law; labor, employment, and benefits; intellectual property and technology; data privacy and security; and government relations. For more information, please visit http://www.rc.com.
Fred Newman, a holder of 86 patents and author of over 15 papers dealing with various technical issues in the oil industry, will receive an honorary degree at Husson University's 117th Annual Commence Read has helped enlighten young minds for over 50 years. His longevity in the classroom is remarkable.

At its 117th Annual Commencement Exercises on Sunday, May 8, 2016 at the Cross Insurance Center in Bangor, Maine, Husson University will confer honorary doctorates on three persons who have distinguished themselves in government, energy technology and business education.

Honorary Degree Recipients

In addition to delivering the keynote Commencement address, United States Senator Angus S. King Jr. will receive an honorary Doctor of Science degree in recognition of his service to Maine and our nation.

King began his career as a staff attorney for Pine Tree Legal Assistance in Skowhegan. In 1972, he served as chief counsel to U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Alcoholism and Narcotics in the office of former Maine Senator William Hathaway.

Three years later, he returned to Maine to practice law with Smith, Loyd and King in Brunswick. In 1983, he was appointed Vice President of the Swift River/Hafslund Company, an alternative energy development company working on hydro and biomass projects in Maine and New England.

Six years later, he founded Northeast Energy Management, Inc., a developer of large-scale energy conservation initiatives at commercial and industrial facilities in Maine.

In 1994, Senator King was elected Maine's 72nd Governor. During his two terms in Blaine House, King focused on economic development and job creation. He also achieved significant reforms in education, mental health services, land conservation, environmental protection, and the delivery of state services. He was re-elected in 1998 by one of the largest margins in Maines history.

On January 3, 2013, King was sworn in as Maines first Independent United States Senator.

Fred Newman

Another person who will receive an honorary degree is Fred Newman, the grandson of William Newman, for whom Husson Universitys Newman Gymnasium is named. Fred is very proud of his familys association with the gym.

The familys commitment to Husson does not stop at the gymnasium. Fred's uncle, who was a local banker, created a scholarship in the family's name. In addition, Fred has been a member of the Husson University Board of Visitors since 2014.

For nine years, Fred worked for Schlumberger Well Services, living in various places in the United States and Canada until his family relocated to Midland,Texas where he worked as District Manager. For the next 35 years, Fred was an independent business owner. He taught a Completions and Workover course to engineers and owned eight small businesses.

His first business was a Cessna dealership and flight school. Most of his other businesses provided oil and gas services. Fred sold one of his businesses, a drilling company, to his children who eventually sold it to a larger company.

Today, Fred is semi-retired. He continues to develop patents as he manages oil and gas properties. Fred currently holds 86 patents and has authored over 15 papers dealing with various technical issues in the oil industry.

He served as a Boy Scout leader for five years. He was on the board and president of the Midland Association of Retarded Citizens, known today as MARC Empowering Lives. Fred has also given of his time to the Midland Independent School District Board and was the founder of Gifts of Hope, where he helped form the Hope House in 2006. This home provides living space for cancer patients while they are receiving treatment.

In 2010, the Newmans were voted Philanthropic Family of the Year in Midland, Texas.

Fred graduated from Northwestern State University with a degree in physics. He and his wife, Chris, grew up in Louisiana. They were high school sweethearts and have been married for 52 years. They have four children, James, Holly, Nancy, and Steve, and eight grandchildren.

William Read

William Bill Read is an associate professor in Husson Universitys College of Business and the Universitys longest serving professor. He received his undergraduate degree in business from

American International College in Springfield, Massachusetts. Read continued his education at the University of Connecticut, where he earned his masters degree in business. Returning again to American International College, he focused on post-graduate work in business. Read began his career in the insurance industry before finding his niche in higher education.

After meeting Clara Swan at a 1965 conference, Read moved to Maine from Massachusetts to begin his career with Husson College (now Husson University).

In 1966, Read taught business law and management courses at Hussons downtown Bangor location and subsequently moved to the current campus at One College Circle when it was built in 1968.

In the early 70s, Read worked to establish Hussons first external sites for degree completion in Portland and York Beach. He has always championed student success and believes that the secret to launching a successful career is gaining exposure to the real world through internships.

Read has helped enlighten young minds for over 50 years. His longevity in the classroom is remarkable.

In addition to his commitment to teaching, Read has also been the editor-in-chief of the Business Law Review Journal since 1968. This peer-reviewed publication is read nationwide by over 600 subscribers and garners article contributions from professors and professional practitioners from all over the world. This journal is recognized as the publication for the North Atlantic Regional Business Law Association (NARBLA) and is produced by Husson University.

Read has cultivated and mentored many professors in their writing, publication and editorial work with the journal from all over New England and beyond. The 49th edition of the Business Law Review Journal will be published this year.

Commencement

All three of these individuals will receive their honorary degrees as part of Husson Universitys 117th Annual Commencement Exercises on Sunday, May 8, 2016 at the Cross Insurance Center in Bangor, Maine. The Cross Insurance Center is located at 515 Main Street in Bangor, Maine. The commencement ceremony begins at 2:00 p.m.

For more than 100 years, Husson University has prepared future leaders to handle the challenges of tomorrow through innovative 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.
The redevelopment of Downtown St. Charles is underway. Bochte, Kuzniar & Navigato, LLP announces the firms representation of First Street Development II, the developers overseeing the downtown St. Charles First Street redevelopment project.

The St. Charles law firm of Bochte, Kuzniar & Navigato, LLP announces its representation of First Street Development II for contractual services. The company is overseeing Phase 3 of the redevelopment of downtown St. Charles. The overall redevelopment project was established as a part of the citys Downtown Strategy Plan back in 2000. The project is a pedestrian oriented development, and the plan for this new space is to help promote investment and create a ripple effect for redevelopment in the downtown St. Charles area. Groundbreaking on Phase 3 of the project took place in September 2015.

The First Street redevelopment project consists of five downtown blocks south of Main Street between Second Street and the Fox River. The overall plan includes residential, office, and commercial spaces with functional public spaces. The vision of the project is to create a unified development area where traffic can be controlled, abundant parking is available, and local businesses will be positioned in such a way to help support one another.

Over 500 parking spaces will be added in two public parking garages and nearby lots. There will be public access along the Fox River with the addition of a new riverfront pedestrian walkway. Over 250,000 square feet of retail and office space will be created, in addition to residential units. Public improvements included in the project are new streets and sidewalks, updated landscaping, and the enhancement of electric, water, and sewer systems.

The timeline for Phase 3 is ongoing and updates will be posted on the First Street website. Full plans for the project are available for viewing at the St. Charles City Hall.

About Bochte, Kuzniar & Navigato, LLC:

For over 45 years, the law firm of Bochte, Kuzniar & Navigato, LLC has commendably served clients in St. Charles, Geneva and throughout the Fox Valley community. The Kane County attorneys are dedicated to providing high-quality legal services with timely solutions. The firm effectively handles legal matters pertaining to: real estate, business law, family law, personal injury, criminal defense, and litigation.

If you are seeking the unparalleled one-on-one service that your case deserves contact the veteran Illinois attorneys at Bochte, Kuzniar & Navigato, LLP today. Call 630-377-7770 or fill out the online contact form to set-up a free initial legal consultation.
Applications for permission to hold events on the occasion of Day of Memory and Reconciliation, as well as Victory in Europe Day have been received and registered by the Kyiv City Administration, its press service has said.

The Kyiv city organization of Ukraine on May 9 will mark Victory Day with a march called Immortal Regiment, which will see 3,000 people walk from the Arsenalna metro station to Kyiv's Eternal Glory Park.

The Zavtra (Tomorrow) All-Ukrainian Public Foundation is also expected to mark Victory Day with a rally one hour later. Turnout has been projected at 3,000 people.

The Development for the Sake of the Future public organization plans to hold events on May 8 and May 9 to mark the anniversary of victory over Nazism in Europe, The Day of Memory and Reconciliation, Victory Day and Mother's Day. Various events will be held from 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m., starting on Kyiv's Khreschatyk central street and ending on Kontraktova Square.

The Revival Party's Kyiv city branch is also organizing May 9 events, including a flower-laying ceremony at the Eternal Glory monument. Up to 200 people are expected to attend.

The Kyiv city branch of the Socialist Party of Ukraine will hold a march to commemorate the heroes killed in World War II and veterans. Marchers will walk through Maryinsky Park and Glory Park. Fifty people are expected to attend.
On 4-th May 2016 on the site of Ukrainian Universal Exchange were held an electronic auction for the sale of the property of PJSC "CB "Nadra" under liquidation. At auction sold assets totaling more than 6.4 million UAH including real estate and equipment. Especially tough was the competition at the auction on sale of nonresidential real estate the premises at the address: Chernigov, Pobedy lane, 96, starting price which amounted to 1 130 400.00 UAH The specified lot in the auction was attended by 11 people who showed determination during the auction. As a result, the publicity, transparency and accessibility of the electronic auctions of the Ukrainian Universal Exchange has helped to increase price by as much as 101%, namely up to 2 272 104.00 UAH. "In turn, the effective realization of the assets of the bankrupt banks promotes growth revenues in the Guarantee Deposit Fund and the increase in payments toinvestors", - said Director of the Ukrainian Universal Exchange Oleksii Vlasenko.
CANBERRA, May 6 -- Australian pharmaceutical company Blackmores will attempt to tap into the burgeoning herbal medicine market in China and throughout Asia via its new Australian-based business.

The vitamin maker on Friday announced it had acquired leading local Chinese medicine manufacturer and distributor Global Therapeutics, a group that currently commands an estimated 80 percent share of the Chinese herbal remedy market in Australia, for 17 million U.S. dollars.

Global Therapeutics, based out of the coastal city of Byron Bay, has two main brands Fusion and Oriental Botanicals which are currently only sold in Australia.

But with the Chinese natural-remedy market said to be worth 125 million U.S. dollars worldwide per annum, Blackmores' chief executive Christine Holgate said the group would look to push into the world's most populous country, China.

"It's not going to happen overnight but there is a fantastic opportunity," Holgate told Fairfax Media on Friday.

"It will enable us to better understand the Chinese consumer and get closer to them."

Last year, the Federal government removed its pre-existing 4-6 percent tariff on Australian pharmaceutical exports, such as vitamins, to China by signing the Chinese-Australian Free Trade Agreement (ChAFTA).

By 2019, 95 percent of Australian healthcare exports must be tariff-free to satisfy the terms of the historic document.

In the past 12 months alone, Global Therapeutics' domestic sales have increased by 24 percent, Holgate said.

Holgate said Australia currently has more than 4,700 registered Chinese medicine practitioners, and the market showed no signs of slowing down.

Despite Blackmores' success on the Australian Stock Exchange, largely stemming from the massive demand in China for its "clean and green" vitamin products, Holman said there was still room for improving its range.

Holgate said Blackmores' upper management had identified natural remedies as one of the company's biggest weaknesses.

"It's the natural medicine part we've not been strong in," she said on Friday.

Asian buyers now make up around 50 percent of Blackmores' total sales, a figure that could likely expand through exporting Fusion and Oriental Botanicals.

Blackmores has no plans to rebrand the Fusion and Oriental Botanicals for the Chinese market, Holgate said.
BEIJING, May 6 -- Risks in bonds issued by China's centrally-administered state firms are "controllable," the country's state assets supervisor said on Friday after an number of recent debt defaults spooked investors.

The State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC) made the conclusion after assessing the risk of defaults from the country's 106 such enterprises.

The assessment showed enterprises were well capitalized and that their performance was improving.

Last month, China Railway Materials Company Ltd., sought to suspend trading in 16.8 billion yuan (2.6 billion U.S. dollars) of bonds, as the company struggled to make the payments.

Companies are under debt pressure in industries such as steel, oil and coal. Bonds issued by them totaled 4.05 trillion yuan as of the end of March, according to SASAC data.
GUANGZHOU, May 5 -- A retired doctor in south China's Guangdong Province was stabbed in a knife attack by a former patient on Thursday afternoon.

Police authorities in Yuexiu District of the provincial capital Guangzhou said they first received the report of the attack at the home of Chen Zhongwei, former director of the stomatology department of the Guangdong General Hospital at 5:20 p.m..

The doctor, who suffered life-threatening injuries, was then immediately rushed to the hospital. Dozens of medical experts were being involved in the emergency treatment.

After the stabbing, the male attacker jumped from the balcony of Chen's home and fell to death, the initial police investigation showed.

Police are further investigating the identity of the attacker and his motive.

The hospital confirmed that the man received medical treatment from Chen 25 years ago and had a history of mental disorder.

The hospital strongly denounced the violent attack against medical staff and was assisting the police investigation, a hospital official said.
Fellow bestselling authors and good friends Sarah Mlynowski and Shannon Hale have never done an event together before now. So its only fitting that these authors, who know a thing or two about princesses, held their first joint appearance during National Princess Week (yes, its a thing) on April 28 at The Kings English Bookshop in Salt Lake City (Hales hometown). Mlynowski is currently on tour for her new release, Whatever After #9: Genie in a Bottle, and Hale is supporting her latest, The Princess in Black and the Hungry Bunny Horde. For everyone who didnt get to see them in person, we asked Hale and Mlynowski to provide a taste of how their conversation went that evening. Heres a post-event exchange they shared with Bookshelf.

Sarah Mlynowski: Hi Shannon! It was so, so, so great to finally have an event with you. You are a superstar in my household. Have I mentioned that my daughter throws weekly Princess in Black tea parties? And requires the entire family to wear all black? And drink tea? We LOVE Princess Magnolia. Can you tell us how you came up with the idea?

Shannon Hale: My own daughter by the name of Magnolia was the inspiration for The Princess in Black. When she was four years old she was pointing to the different colors on her skirt and saying, Pink is a girl color and purple is a girl color and yellow is a girl color, but not black. And I was like, WHAT? Girls and boys can wear any color. Besides, Batgirl wears black. And she said, Mama, princesses dont wear black. That idea struck me like the proverbial lightning and the story started to unfold that day. Shes nine years old now and currently writing her own book based on your Whatever After books. My son is also a fan of yours. Maybe we should trade kids.

SM: I love that backstory. My daughter inspired Whatever After, too. When I started reading her fairy tales, I found myself changing the happily-ever-afters. I loved the stories, but I couldnt stomach the endings. The only way Cinderella can leave her step-moms house is by marrying the prince? Why cant she get a job and her own apartment? And did the Little Mermaid really have to give up her tail  and her tongue  for a guy? I wrote Whatever After to inject the fairy tales with some girl power.

But back to Magnolia's work in progress. Would she write Whatever After: Duck, Duck, Goose for me? Where Abby falls into The Goose Girl and messes it up?

SH: She would be willing to do that. Just pay her in more copies of your books and Butterfingers. And Ill await a draft of Princess in Black #6 from your daughter. Whats her preferred payment?

SM: Snow globes. Shes obsessed with snow globes. Ive been asked to pick up one from every tour stop. Chances of my bag being covered in water and sparkles by the time I get back to New York is about 99 percent.

SH: Yeah, thats not at all an awkward carry-on item. Im sure airport security is a breeze with a dozen snow globes in your bag! Kids, man, why dont they collect bookmarks? My kids always want something when I return from a trip too, and I feel so guilty for leaving I want to bring them something. Unfortunately the bar was set really high the time I returned from a trip to Mattel with bags of Ever After High dolls theyd given me.

SM: What is it like having dolls of your characters?! Do they look the way you imagine them? Did you use them to act out storyboards? Speaking of story boards... Are you an outliner or a pantser?

SH: I love having the dolls! I was asked to write the first books for Ever After High so the dolls came first. Speaking of my son is demanding we write a crossover book: Whatever After High. And I do both pantsing and outlining. I have written books where I start with a character or idea and just write into the unknown, but for books I co-write (like the Princess in Black series with my husband) we do extensive outlines. I find outlines are vital for co-written projects. You?

SM: I outline everything. Always. Except for my first novel, Milkrun, which ended up not really having a plot. For Upside-Down Magic, the series Im co-writing with Emily Jenkins and Lauren Myracle, Im in charge of the outlines. Lauren writes the first drafts and Emily is in charge of the revision. How do you and your husband divide up the work?

SH: Youre a planner! Just like Abby in Whatever After! Dean and I go on plot walks, where we walk and talk plot. Then we each take sections of the outline to write, and once were both happy with the outline, we each claim sections of the first draft to write. Then we both revise till by the end we dont know who wrote what anymore. Though we both claim the funny parts. Right now were writing a Squirrel Girl novel for Marvel Press and the next Princess in Black. Whats on your plate?

SM: We never remember who wrote what either! We just finished the third Upside-Down Magic (the second, Sticks & Stones, comes out at the end of May) and the 10th Whatever After, Sugar and Spice, just went to copyediting. And Im writing I See London, I See France, my next YA. But first I have to finish my tour. (Im typing this from a library in San Francisco.) Luckily I will be home just in time for Mothers Day. Happy Mothers Day, Shannon!

SH: Happy Mothers Day, Sarah!
Playwright Calvin Alexander Ramsey, age 66, is the latest childrens book author to add bookseller to his many accomplishments. He would like to open a pop-up childrens bookstore in the Bronx in September. Almost exactly one year ago, Wimpy Kid author Jeff Kinney opened An Unlikely Story in Plainville, Mass., and earlier this year Judy Blume cofounded Books & Books Key West in Key West, Fla.

Ramsey said that he always considered himself to be a writer, although he didnt begin writing until late in life, following the 9/11 attacks. But bookselling was never part of the literary equation. The idea for creating a bookstore for pre-K to teens has only come together in recent weeks. In part, it grew out of his many school visits, far more to private than public schools for his two childrens books  Ruth and the Green Book (Carolrhoda), written with Gwen Strauss, illustrated by Floyd Cooper; and Belle: The Last Mule at Gees Bend: A Civil Rights Story, written with Bettye Stroud, illustrated by John Holyfield (Candlewick).

The bookstore also emerged from the many hours Ramsey spent at childrens stores, especially Bank Street Bookstore on New Yorks Upper West Side. Bookstore manager Andy Laties encouraged him to work with the New York Mission Society, for which Ramsey has begun collecting childrens books for the shelters it operates throughout the city. And as a recent newcomer to New Yorkhe moved to the Bronx from Atlanta three years agoRamsey has observed a lot of children in his new home.

Literacy in the Bronx is tough, Ramsey said. Id love the kids here to have the same conversations about books that they have at [Bank Street]. He searched for a way to bring books to his underserved community, when, he said, It kind of stabbed me in the face. He knew of only one bookstore, located in Co-op City: a Barnes & Noble was to have closed in 2014, but a community outcry forced a compromise between the landlord and the bookstore. And he wanted underserved public school students to have more opportunities to meet authors.

After initially thinking that the best way to serve young people in his area would be to create a childrens book festival in Heritage Field on the site of the old Yankee Stadium, Ramsey began to consider opening a kids bookstore. The idea took shape last month when he was having lunch in Bryant Park, where he ran into Laties and Veronica Liu of Word Up Books. Liu mentioned that her bookstore had started as a pop-up, and the pieces fit into place. Ramsey, who refers to her and Laties as his brain trust, realized that instead of looking for a permanent location, he could do a pop-up.

Ramsey describes much of his writing career and his life as walking through this thing like the Peter Sellers movie, Being There, and certainly the bookstore, which he has tentatively named The Reading House, has a similar feel. Since that chance encounter Ramsey has found a space at the former Concourse Plaza Hotel, once one of the citys most elegant locations, now an apartment house for seniors. Right now the space is pretty much empty, its raw, Ramsey acknowledged. But the ground floor has been home to other pop-ups, and he is convinced that it can work for the bookstore.

To cut costs, Ramsey is planning to rely on mostly volunteer staff, and he will offer books in English, Spanish, and French. With a playwrights imagination, he can already picture story time in the 1,500 sq. ft. space with actors dramatizing childrens books and seniors from the floors above to tell the children stories about their own lives and what the Bronx was once like.

While the idea for the store continues to percolate, Ramsey is working on turning his play The Green Book, on which his childrens book is based, into an opera. A trailer for a film that draws on much of the same material, The Green Book Chronicles by Ramsey and Becky Wible Searles, will air on Saturday at Cinema Village in New York City as part of the Workers Unite Film Festival. Hes also in the midst of shopping a book on Americas first black female jockey, Cheryl White.

Ramsey can be contacted at playwright18@gmail.com.
The two-day celebration of all things YA (and some middle grade this year, too) hit the sunshiney campus of Santa Monica High School in southern California on the weekend of April 30 and May 1. More than 100 authors and illustrators hosted panels, workshops, games, and more, while readers browsed book tents, had books signed, snacked from food trucks, and even engaged in sing-alongs and Quidditch matches. See photo highlights from the festivities here. All photos: Gina Clyne Photography.

The organizers of Yallwest, Margaret Stohl (l.) and Melissa de la Cruz, kick things off at the festival photo booth.

Before the opening keynote, many of the featured authors gather together to share the theme for this years festival: Yall means ALL, to support an inclusive spirit in the face of sexual orientation discrimination.

Audience members, rapt with attention.

Holly Black (l.) hosted the opening keynote on Saturday morning, and interviewed Rainbow Rowell (r.).

Following the keynote, the crowds descended on the autographing area. Here, one devoted fan gets all of his Holly Black books ready for inscription.

Teen readers browse the book tent.

An annual highlight of the festival is The Storyball. Hosted by Psedonymous Bosch and C. Alexander London, authors M.T. Anderson, Dave Barry, Shannon Hale, Dean Hale, Tahereh Mafi, Ridley Pearson, and Jason Reynolds were joined by illustrators Gary Rosen and Phillip de Leon to engage the audience in a live improvisation of a story.

One festival volunteer hands out prompt cards to the audience.

Illustrator Phillip De Leon and Ridley Pearson hard at work.

Dave Barry (l.), directs Dean Hale as a snail, with C. Alexander London looking on.

This year featured the festivals inaugural book swap, in which attendees could socialize and take home something new to read.

The beautiful Santa Monica weather offered a perfect atmosphere to draw the crowds.

Authors (from l.) Adam Silvera, Erin Bowman, Leigh Bardugo, Tahereh Mafi, Sabaa Tahir, and Veronica Roth (alongside Hedwig the owl) address the audience at the Harry Potter Is Lyfe panel.

Yallwest ambassadors lead a Hamilton sing-along.

Soman Chainani plays a game of Taboo.

The UCLA Quidditch team engages in a scrimmage.

Author and editor David Levithan (far r.) moderates a panel with (from l.) Alex Gino, Simon Curtis, C. Alexander London, Nina LaCour, and A.R. Kahler.

Tiger Beat, the band comprised of YA authors and editors, closed the festival with a performance; here they are joined on stage by more authors and some young backup dancers.

(From l.): Margaret Stohl, Tahereh Mafi, Melissa de la Cruz, and Marie Lu bid adieu to the audience. See you next year!
Don DeLillo. Scribner, $26 (288p) ISBN 978-1-5011-3539-2

DeLillo's 17th novel features a man arriving at a strange, remote compound (we are told the nearest city is Bishkek)a set-up similar to a few other DeLillo books, Mao II and Ratner's Star among them. This time, the protagonist is Jeffrey Lockhart, who is joining his billionaire father, Ross, to say good-bye to Ross's second wife (and Jeffrey's stepmother), Artis. The compound is the home of the Convergence, a scientific endeavor that preserves people indefinitely; in Artis's case, it's until there's a cure for her ailing health. But as with any novel by DeLillo, our preeminent brain-needler, the plot is window dressing for his preoccupations: obsessive sallies into death, information, and all kinds of other things. Longtime readers will not be surprised that there's a two-page rumination on mannequins. But a few components elevate Zero K, which is among DeLillo's finest work. For one, DeLillo has become better about picking his spotsthe asides rarely, if ever, drag, and they are consistently surprising and funny. And his focus and curiosity have moved far into the future: much of this novel's (and Ross's) attention is paid to humankind's relationship and responsibility to what's to come. What's left behind and forgotten is the present, here represented by Jeffrey, the son whom Ross abandoned when he was 13. DeLillo sneaks a heartbreaking story of a son attempting to reconnect with his father into his thought-provoking novel.
TAIPEI, May 5 -- A delegation of former Taiwan senior officials on Thursday visited Taiping Island, the largest of the Nansha Islands in the South China Sea.

The 20-member group visited a wharf, a lighthouse, a photovoltaic facility, a post office, a hospital, a farm and a well. They tasted the natural fresh water and food made from local ingredients, said a press release provided by Taiwan's coast guard authority.

The farm and fresh water well show Taiping's natural resources are sufficient to sustain human habitation, it added. The hospital staff briefed the visitors on past rescue missions and their advanced facilities.

On Jan. 28, Taiwan leader Ma Ying-jeou paid a visit to the island.

Islands in the South China Sea were first discovered, named and used by the Chinese in the Western Han Dynasty (202 BC-8 AD). They were incorporated into the maritime defense system no later than 1721, in the Kangxi period of the Qing Dynasty (1616-1912), with patrols and other management measures, Ma said during the visit.

The Chinese government published maps of the South China Sea islands in 1935 and 1947, reaffirming its sovereignty over the islands and their surrounding waters, he said.

In terms of history, geography, or international law, the sovereignty over the Nansha, Xisha, Zhongsha and Dongsha islands and their surrounding waters is indisputable, he stressed.
CAMBRIDGE, Ill.  A former director of the youth center at the Rock Island Arsenal was sentenced in Henry County Circuit Court Tuesday to 10 years in prison on each of three counts, to be served mandatory consecutively, for sex-related offenses.
ROCK ISLAND -- The Rock Island County Board of Health has reluctantly approved a plan to cut 16 jobs at the county health department and suspend six programs because of the state budget impasse.

The vote came during a meeting Thursday and means that beginning July 1 programs that monitor lead levels in children's blood and provide breast and cervical cancer screening to women will end.

Illinois has been without a state budget since last July because of a fight between Gov. Bruce Rauner and Democrats who control the general assembly in Springfield. For the Rock Island County Health Department that has meant $811,000 in expected funding to pay for programs has not arrived.

Board of health President John Neary said he was "outraged" the governor and state lawmakers were not doing their jobs by putting a budget in place to fund critical programs.

"Sixteen hard-working, tenured employees of the health department, after working for several years with dwindling resources and staff, will lose their jobs ... while the sitting Illinois governor and state legislators keep their jobs," Mr. Neary said during Thursday's meeting.

He added the department's ability to respond to emergencies, such as outbreaks of Hepatitis A or H1N1, will be greatly diminished if the cutbacks are implemented. The elimination of the child lead monitoring program will come at a time when 10.8 percent of children in Rock Island County are experiencing high lead levels, Mr. Neary noted.

The $811,000 in expected funding from the state that has not arrived because of the lack of a budget represents 24 percent of the department's budget. The cutbacks approved Thursday would reduce the workforce at the department from about 55 to 39.

"It appears seemingly easy for our state elected officials to turn their backs on the neediest, forcing elimination of critical programs for the poor, as they know this population does not stand up for themselves, typically," Mr. Neary said.

He said the positions being cut could be restored if the state does come up with the funding needed to pay for them, but he added he had little confidence of that happening.

Although the state has been without a budget for 10 months, it has continued to pay most of its bills, including salaries for state workers and funding for K-12 education. But third level education and many social service programs such as some of those provided by the health department have been left without funding.

Brooke Hendrickx, a union steward at the health department, said earlier this week that she put no blame on the board for making cutbacks and laid all of the blame on the state.

The department is one of a group of 64 social service agencies that have filed a joint lawsuit to sue the state to seek payment for services provided since last July for which contracts were signed.

Gov. Bruce Rauner has insisted any budget deal include a package of pro-business reforms and changes to collective bargaining laws that Democrats oppose and the resulting stalemate has caused the budget impasse.
MOLINE -- In the coming years, Moline's 7th Avenue may feature new sidewalks, bike lanes, benches and street trees.

Last week, city officials submitted a $7 million request with the federal Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER) grant program to reconstruct 7th Avenue from 12th to 23rd streets.

City engineer Scott Hinton said Moline expects to hear back on the application within three to nine months. The funding would be used for water main, sewer, sidewalks and streets, he said.

"We will look at some sort of streetscaping and other ways to try to accommodate pedestrians better along with bike accommodations there," Mr. Hinton said.

"It's a grant we applied for, and, if we're successful, it's a great way to take care of that project," he said. "It doesn't mean if we're not successful (that) we won't have other funds set aside."

Moline City Administrator Lew Steinbrecher said the grant, if approved, would let the city target 7th Avenue reconstruction in 2018. He said that work could be pushed back to 2019 depending on the Interstate 74 bridge project, noting the Illinois Department of Transportation will be reconstructing I-74 and the 7th Avenue interchange sometime during the same period.

"The city of Moline would need to coordinate with the state to make sure we don't impact each other's traffic flow patterns by having both projects under construction at the same time," he said.

Mr. Steinbrecher said the 7th Avenue project would include more pedestrian and bicycle-friendly features, such as new sidewalks, bike lanes, textured crosswalks and similar features along with some aesthetic features such as landscaping, benches, street trees and possibly a curbed median with vegetation between the two-way traffic lanes.

There even may be the possibility of a bio-swale similar to what IDOT is planning in the I-74 right-of-way, he said.

TIGER applications were due April 29, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation. Since 2009, the grants have provided nearly $4.6 billion to 381 projects in all states, according to the department. The federal funds leverage money from private sector partners, states, local governments and other agencies.
Press release submitted by Humility of Mary Shelter, Inc.

Humility of Mary Shelter, Inc. Opens New Permanent Housing Program for Adults Experiencing Chronic Homelessness

Ten housing units will receive occupants in May

Davenport, Iowa  Humility of Mary Shelter, Inc. (HMSI) is opening a new housing program in May that will provide ten apartment units to adults experiencing chronic homelessness. The new program, funded by the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), extends the HMSIs existing 32 units of permanent supportive housing and began May 1, 2016.

The new program apartments are located in Davenport at scattered sites. HMSI is working with a variety of local landlords. The first apartment received an occupant on May 3.

The new program participants, identified through HMSIs Outreach Team and community referrals, are already selected. All participants situations meet the federal definition of chronic homelessness, that is, they reside in a place not meant for human habitation, a safe haven, or in an emergency shelter and have experienced that for at least one year or on at least four separate occasions in the last three years. HUD has prioritized the goal of ending chronic homelessness.

Although the apartments are equipped with basic furnishings, Adamson welcomes the public to help ready the apartments for occupancy. Microwave ovens and televisions (cable-ready or with converter boxes) are specifically needed. Because the majority of the adults identified for the program have no income, paper products, cleaning supplies and bus tokens for transportation are ongoing, urgent needs. Donations earmarked for these purposes can be sent to the Shelter.

Christie Adamson, HMSIs Director of Program Services, reflects on the significance of the Shelters new program expansion: I am privileged to do the work I do. Today, I hand keys to a fellow community member who hasn't lived inside for over six years. She continues: Homelessness should happen rarely, and it should always be brief. We have a long way to go to seeing this happen in our community, but today we can end homelessness for one person.

Humility of Mary Shelter, Inc. was founded in 2008 by Sisters of the Congregation of Humility of Mary. During the last fiscal year, 693 individuals requested and received emergency shelter at HMSI, and 494 individuals entered HMSI programs.
In Ghana, when someone is born, we celebrate it by dancing and drumming, Kojjo Opoku-Reeves of Heritage Village Project, a drumming ensemble, told the audience of Quantico Middle/High Schools (QM/HS) International Night April 21. When someone reaches puberty, we celebrate it by dancing and drumming. When someone gets married, we celebrate it by dancing and drumming. And when someone dies, we celebrate by  dancing and drumming. All transitions in life are celebrated by dancing and drumming.



He added that there are no distinctions made between performer and audience in these celebrations. He had the audience members drum on their laps and invited a group of students and then a group of fathers to stand up and dance with him. The fathers, some still in their MARPAT desert cammies from their days work, committed fully to the joyful drum music, pumping their arms and lifting their legs high.



Opoko-Reeves and his group were guest performers at QM/HSs fourth annual International Night, a celebration of the many cultures and countries represented by students at the school aboard Marine Corps Base Quantico. The evening was made up of two portions, a performance of songs and dances from different cultures and a social where attendees got to sample international food and learn about its country of origin.



International Night, while it seems to be self-explanatory, actually exists to celebrate and showcase the diversity that exists around us, specifically in our small military community, said Jeneva Mitchell, Spanish teacher and organizer of the event. After attending the evening, I always hope that after weve all experienced the cultures, we find that were more similar than different.



For the performance showcase, Mitchell says she first invites the schools foreign language classes to contribute and then reaches out to individual students and community members.



We incorporate any family or group that shows interest, she said.



Students in Chinese classes at the school performed several traditional Chinese dances: the spinning handkerchief dance, the jasmine flower fan dance, and the Tai Chi fan dance.



A group of students demonstrated a flashy meringue dance from the Dominican Republic and Emily and Ricky Brown performed three Mexican folk danceshe in mariachi costume and she in a green full-length skirt and ruffled blouse decorated with brightly-striped ribbons.



The drumming demonstration by Heritage Village was followed by a Mexican line dance, Payaso de Rodeo, and an American line dance and wedding favorite, The Electric Slide.



Among the many tasty dishes on display at the social hour following the performance were hagleslag, a Dutch breakfast of bread spread with butter and sprinkles; a Jamaican Easter treat of cheese between two slices of sweet bread; Spanish paella and flan; Japanese spring rolls; Ethiopian wat, or stew; Chinese sweet buns; and Indian daal (lentils).



Through sharing our cultures, we can foster a more unified community with greater appreciation for one another, Mitchell said.



 Writer: auphausconner@quanticosentryonline.


Data shows Chinese immigrants are the largest group of new arrivals to US through the EB-5 program

(Photo from CNR.cn)

Recent data shows that more than 13,000 families from the Chinese mainland immigrated to the United States through the EB-5 immigrant investor visa program between 1992 and 2014,according to uschinapress.com.

That number is much higher for Chinese families than it is for immigrants from any other country, which some people speculate means the coming of the third emigration flow.

Between 1992 and 2014, a total of 13,392 Chinese families that applied for the I-526 petition obtained conditional green cards, accounting for 67.5 percent of total approved green cards. The investment of these immigrants amounted to 6.7 billion yuan.

The majority of Chinese immigrants now fall into one of several categories: people who have studied and worked overseas; entrepreneurs, senior managers and technical elite at medium-to-large enterprises; film or musical celebrities; and corrupt officials and their families.
For any aspiring entrepreneurs, Basson said to make sure you have a product or idea that retailers want to sell and consumers want to buy.

1 hour ago
First quarter Ebitda fell by 18% from 44.5m in 2015 to 36.7m this year, while Ebit dropped by 19% from 34.2m to 27.8m, and pre-tax profit was down by 32% from 20.1m to 13.7m.

Revenue for the first three months of this year fell by 8.3% to 281m due to the devaluation of the Brazilian Real and a reduction in manufacturing. CAF says exports now account for 78% of its revenue, with an order for Euskotren being the only relevant Spanish project at the moment.

CAF says some of its most recent orders, such as 118 Civity EMUs for Netherlands Railways (NS), 16 trams for St Etienne in France, and 27 LRVs for Utrecht's Uithof Line, are in the early stage of production.

CAF also says its order intake for this first quarter is much greater than for the first quarter of 2015, with an intake of 789m in 2016 in comparison with just 426m in 2015. This is primarily due to the 740m contract it won in January from Arriva and Eversholt Rail Group in Britain for 43 EMUs and 55 DMUs. CAF's order backlog for each first quarter is virtually unchanged at 5.38bn, although this excludes very recent contracts worth around 600m.
Public input sought for LIRR triple-track project Written by Mischa Wanek-Libman , Editor, Railway Track & Structures; and Engineering Editor, Railway Age









In a bid to make good on a promise to promote community engagement for the Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) Expansion Project, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo laid out plans for public meetings, launched a new website and committed to expedited grade crossing improvements.

The LIRR Expansion Project proposes building a third track along a nearly 10-mile stretch along LIRRs main line between Floral Park and Hicksville and modify or eliminate seven grade crossings: Covert Ave., South 12th St. and New Hyde Park Rd., all in New Hyde Park; Main St. and Willis Ave., in Mineola; School St. in Westbury and Urban Ave. in New Cassel. A detailed draft scoping document that outlines options for modifying the crossings and the proposed environmental analysis has been released. The draft scoping report presents several safety-enhancing options for crossing improvements along the projects 9.8-mile route. These construction improvements would also take place on an expedited timetablewith each grade crossing project completed in nine months or lessto significantly ease local traffic congestion.

Four public meetings will be held at the end of May in New Hyde Park, Hempstead, Westbury and Hicksville to detail plans for the projects environmental review process. Project stakeholders previously announced that no residential property acquisitions would be needed for the project, but community members wishing to comment on the project can do so at the meetings or on the projects new website, www.amodernli.com.

Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) officials also opened a LIRR Expansion Project Information Center on May 6, located on the south platform at the Mineola Train Station. This information center provides opportunities for people to review the recently released scoping document and ask questions.

MTA Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Tom Prendergast said: We all know grade crossings are a chronic problem, complicating traffic flow and presenting round-the-clock safety challenges. The Governors commitment to speeding up the construction to solve crossing issues along the project route is welcome news for everyone.

A third track on the main line is crucial to the future of Long Island, said Gov. Cuomo. This project will make the LIRR more reliable for millions of customers, while also eliminating multiple dangerous train crossings along the main line. Our proposal will ensure that we can continue to improve the quality of life and grow the economy in the region, and I encourage New Yorkers to learn more about how were working to build a brighter future for Long Island.

More information regarding the public meetings can be found at the LIRR Expansion Projects website: www.amoderli.com.
While China's economic and geostrategic interests are more commonly associated with such bodies of water as the South China Sea or the East China Sea, the Arctic represents another area where Chinese maritime interests and investments have been growing. In 2013, China signed with Iceland its first free-trade agreement with a European nation and is involved in an oil exploration project, with Norway and Iceland, in the Dreki area. Chinese firms are prospecting for copper in Greenland and have considered investing in iron ore mining (PDF).

China's Arctic ventures are quickly multiplying. The (mostly) state-owned PetroChina owns 20 percent in Russia's Yamal LNG project, which will bring Siberian gas to Asian markets through the Northern Sea Route. In 2013, Rosneft and China National Petroleum Corporation signed a deal for joint exploration and production in the Barents and Pechora Seas. Farther south, the two countries also agreed to build a 4,000 kilometer gas pipeline (baptized Power of Siberia) from Siberia to the border with Chinaa project estimated to cost $21 billion. China is not just interested in Russia's energy resources, but also in its coastline: 2013 saw the first Chinese merchant ship use the increasingly navigable Northern Sea Route that promises to connect Asia to Europe in fewer days than through the Suez Canal, and without the hazards commonly found in the Malacca Straits. Russia stands to benefit directly, since it collects fees for the right to transit as well as to use its icebreakers for escort

The remainder of this commentary is available on warontherocks.com.

Stephanie Pezard is a political scientist at the nonprofit, nonpartisan RAND Corporation. 1st Lt Timothy Smith is a graduate of the U.S. Air Force Academy and a doctoral candidate at the Pardee RAND Graduate School.

This commentary originally appeared on War on the Rocks on May 6, 2016. Commentary gives RAND researchers a platform to convey insights based on their professional expertise and often on their peer-reviewed research and analysis.
WITH the only impression of China created from kung-fu movies and Chinese characters in his childhood, Dr Bello Moussa would never have imagined himself spending more than a decade living in China, being employed by a Chinese multinational and heading back to his native land as a telecommunications professional.

Dr Moussa was born in Cameroon, moved to Saudi Arabia where he started his tertiary education, and finished it in Bangladesh. He went to China in early 2000 to pursue his Masters degree and PHD in telecommunications, and joined Chinas telecommunication giant Huawei after graduating in July 2006, spending five years working in its Shenzhen headquarters. He achieved all of this, notwithstanding the culture and language barriers, in his adopted country.

Serving more than one third of the worlds population, Huaweis innovative information communications technology (ICT) solutions, products and services have been deployed in more than 170 countries and regions, with more than 170,000 employees worldwide.

Driven by customer-centric innovation, Huawei has established an ICT solutions portfolio that gives customers competitive advantages in telecom and enterprise networks, devices and cloud computing.

Huawei offered Dr Moussa the job after he had worked on some projects for the company with his supervisor in the laboratory at the university.

Dr Moussa spoke of the differences between being a student and working for a company in China. As a student you are pampered, you can do whatever you want. People would still cater to you  but when you are a worker, things are different.

His case was even more unique. His previous experience studying in China became his advantage when as the first foreigner to join the company, he was treated exactly the same as Chinese staff, which meant that workload and regulations governing Chinese staff also applied to him.

Part of it was because I could speak the language. I blended in. I could attend meetings and I could travel and have fun. That helped me a lot, said Dr Moussa.

However, it still took him a while to adapt to an enterprise governed by Chinese culture while Huawei particularly enjoys the fame of its workload and inspiriting mechanism.

If you are in a project with a team and some stay behind late to work, you feel bad to leave and go home.

Dr Moussa spoke about their team perception. What I really appreciate in Huawei is that you are part of the team. Your joy, your sorrow, your success and your failure are all shared with your colleagues.

This peer influence and hardworking experience has influenced Dr Moussa. People may quarrel, argue with each other over a project but its not about any particular person and when they receive a satisfying result, they will congratulate you and you will see the reward.

It is also a Huawei policy that at a certain point in time, you need to have frontline experience because thats where the soldiers are. Dr Moussa was initially employed to handle research for road-map evaluation of Huaweis products as a part of product management within the radio and wireless product line, which is more technology orientated compared to his current work in SA.

He transferred to SA in November 2011 in a new direction of work, mainly dealing with partnerships with different industry organisations. Basically its for promoting the new technologies, such as 4.5G and 5G. We are interacting a lot with African governments, third-party consultants and all the major players in the industry such as operators, said Dr Moussa.

In 2014, he was appointed as the Director of Strategic Partnership and New Technologies.

Acting as the intermediary between Huaweis clients and technical teams, Dr Moussa needed to do almost everything on the frontline. When you mention Huawei, most people think its just selling phones, while we are doing a lot more. This department is here to promote awareness about what Huawei is and what it does.

Huawei entered the African market in 1998 and has been dedicated to connecting Africa with the most innovative ICT solutions. Telecom networks supplied by Huawei are deployed in more than 50 countries on the continent. Up to the end of 2015, Huawei has more than 7,000 employees in Africa, 70% of whom are recruited locally.

SA is one of the most important African markets for Huawei, with more than 1,100 employees providing a telecom network service to almost 40-million people.

Staying in Africa enables Dr Moussa to bring more value to the company because he fully understands both the local and the company culture and he is able to bring the two together. When locals are recruited to my team, I sit with them and I tell them how different the Chinese culture or Huawei culture is from their culture, he said.

He has to manage high expectation from both sides and sometimes finds himself stuck in the middle. There are conflicts at times. So he always strives to find a balancing point.

I try to encourage them to communicate to find solutions, I also tell my Chinese colleagues to blend in. Instead of going to a Chinese canteen, we can all go to Nandos and eat together.

As representatives of the Huawei regional office in eastern and southern Africa, the team also travels to various countries such as Angola, Mozambique, Tanzania, Uganda, Kenya, Mauritius and Madagascar. It is true that the cultures of African countries are different from one to another. We observe them and we learn. Thats my rule. There are some sensitive topics that you need to avoid, like politics and religion, said Dr Moussa.

(The story was originally published on Business Day on May 4th, 2016.)
Targeting Claros two million-plus subscribers, Turners Latin music pay-TV network Hispanic Television (HTV) has signed a distribution agreement with the leading Colombian operator.





Although HTV was already available on Movistar TV and UNE, and through DirecTVs pan-regional feed, the network is gaining access to over 40% of Colombias households through the deal. According to the latest figures , Claros operations in the country, both through cable and satellite, have a 42.4% share in a market of 5.1 million subscribers.With this agreement, the music-themed network arrives to over 24 million subscribers across Latin America. As well as Colombia, it is available in Venezuela, Chile, Argentina, Mexico, Peru and several Central American territories.HTV is a perfect vehicle to bring Latin rhythm to the Latin American audience. We are pleased to arrive to more customers in Colombia, one of the leading countries regarding music trends, said Yanira Puy, marketing director for Andean, Caribbean and Central America, Turner.In addition to video clips, music charts and interviews, HTV covers regional events such as the Heat Latin Music Awards and the international music festival of Vina del Mar, in Chile.We have been a launching platform for many artists, said Felipe De Stefani, senior VP and GM for HTV, TBS, TNT Series, Much Music, truTV and Glitz networks. HTV is a brand that truly conquers millions of Latin Americans every day.
Imitating similar partnerships in Spain and the Netherlands, Kantar Media and comScore have joined forces in Latin America to launch a series of cross-platform measurement solutions.





Later this year, TGI Clickstream will be launched in Brazil, aiming to enhance consumer targeting and digital media planning capabilities. The tool will arrive in Colombia, Argentina, Peru and Chile in 2017. The service, which is already available in the UK, France and Turkey, combines TGI survey data from Kantar Media and MMX digital measurement data from comScore.Kantars TGI surveys measure consumer media consumption, brand usage and attitudes, while comScore MMX measures person-level digital media usage.As advertising spend on integrated media campaigns increases, there is a growing demand to deliver solutions that meet the industrys needs, said Andy Brown, CEO & chairman, Kantar Media Since February 2015 , comScore and Kantar have brought together their complementary expertise in technology, data assets and consumer panels to develop solutions in cross-media audience and campaign measurement.comScore remains committed to accelerating the creation of new cross-platform services for the industry, and the response to our global partnership and the progress made has already been extremely positive, added Serge Matta, CEO of comScore
In this photo taken on Wednesday, June 3, 2015, Emma Dyson, 5, and her brother, Joey, 8, raise their signs during the Education Matters rally to bring attention to what organizers feel is the failures of the state to fund education in Shippensburg, Pa. The group is fighting to reform legislative funding of public education in Pennsylvania. (Markell DeLoatch/Public Opinion via AP

RCEd Commentary

Education has not escaped the politics and polarization in the Presidential campaign.

The strong center defined by GOP moderates and Democrats for Education Reform still exist but its ranks are strained and likely to grow thinner.

Ideologues on the right and left wont agree that the policy consensus that emerged with President George W. Bush and continued through the Obama administration was moderate and centrist. But much of it was, embracing accountability, choice, and innovation but also focused on productive uses of funds, improving teacher quality, and closing the achievement gap.

But, anti-reform rhetoric right and left has had its effect. Stand-pat superintendents and local unions can hide behind the claim that charter schools and testing are a billionaires assault on communities and that schools can improve only with vast increases in funding; GOP legislators and right-of-center think tanks can retreat to claims that government should have no role in K-12 other than to fund vouchers.

From these positions, neither left nor right is likely to accomplish much. As before, the left can only deliver a more expensive system, not a more effective one. And the right stands to prove yet again that a K-12 system without government oversight can be discredited by a few bad actors.

But these results will become evident only in the long run. Will the centrist reform community survive to resume its work when progress is once again possible?

The growing polarization in American education makes the center an important arbitrator of evidence and debate. But for the center to play these roles, it must take stock and act strategically.

While it was ascendant, the pro-reform center made some mistakes that strengthened its opponents. Over-confidence about the quality of the Common Core State Standards, test-based evaluation of teachers, and replacement of traditional public schools with charters led to actions that were more aggressive than the results could always justify. Natural allies, especially parents and community leaders who wanted better schools, were often put off by reformers disregard for local sensibilities and demands for speed. Union-funded opposition groups have gained as a result.

Centrist reformers  state chiefs who favor innovation and accountability, local portfolio district leaders, nonprofits and philanthropies  can stay around, keep the ground gained to date, and be ready to move ahead again in two or four years. But that wont just happen. During the coming hard times, reformers need to:

Highlight progress and bright spots: Cities like Denver, Cleveland, and Indianapolis have made a real difference for kids via choice, new schools, and performance accountability. Philanthropies and think tanks can continue to document the continued progress in these cities.

Keep the pressure on the existing system: Continue to shine light on persistent inequities. Support rigorous studies and commentaries showing that millions of kids, particularly minorities are languishing in existing schools.

Broaden the reform coalition: Cultivate political support among parents and teachers who are better off today as a result of centrist reform. Help blue-collar whites in suburbs, towns, and rural areas see that the existing system contribute to their problems and cant adapt to their needs.

Keep pressing for innovation: Develop and evaluate new ideas in personalized and blended learning and demonstrate the effectiveness of making good matches between school approaches and student needs. New approaches to education in suburbs, small towns, and rural areas will pay off politically and for kids.

Acknowledge reform liabilities: From Common Core implementation, civil rights abuses, and bad charter schools, reformers have their own liabilities that need to be aired and addressed. Ignoring problems or defending bad policy does not make them go away but does arm your opponents who have equally ambitious agendas. Document the inevitable state and local failures

Develop new leadership pipelines: Invest in pathways for superintendents and state chiefs, who will be critical to continued progress in an era of federal retrenchment. Build and sustain networks of reform superintendents and state officials who will otherwise be isolated and beleaguered.

This strategy will depend on philanthropies, think tanks, and advocacy groups. The latter groups also pose risks for the center if they pander to ideologues, pick fights with opponents, or ignore evidence that doesnt favor their agenda.

Philanthropies may play the most important role in ensuring that the center remains meaningful. Advocacy groups and think tanks are dependent on funds from philanthropy, making their agendas in part a function of foundation leadership.

Foundations are always under pressure to jump on some new bandwagon, and (given board composition and incentives) some of that will happen. But the foundations that have underwritten the progress made to date need to sustain it financially.

Centrists have a critical role to play in mediating the polarization that has come to dominate education and American politics more broadly. Their advantage over ideologues on the left and the right comes from following the evidence and building sustainable coalitions within states and localities. A failure on either of these fronts risks making the center irrelevant at a time when their ideas and leadership are more important than ever. During this period of polarization and reaction, centrists need to winter over at Valley Forge, not give up and go home.
'Keep it in the Ground': Not the Energy Plan We Need

Americas energy revolution has resulted in record-low oil and gas prices, which have allowed us to keep warm for less, use energy-intensive electronics like smartphones, drive more than ever, and better provide for our families.

For many, the pleasantries of everyday life are made better with abundant, safe, and affordable energy. For others, reliable and inexpensive energy ensures shelter, food, clothing, and the ability to make a better life.

If youre an energy consumer  and if youre reading this, you are  your life has been made better by Americas energy revolution.

Unfortunately, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA), this could all change.

The IEA recently warned consumers not to let the current low price of oil and gasoline fool them into a false sense of security amid forecasts of a price spikes in the next few years.

It is easy for consumers to be lulled into complacency by ample stocks and low prices today, but they should heed the writing on the wall, IEA executive director Fatih Birol cautioned. The historic investment cuts we are seeing raise the odds of unpleasant oil-security surprises in the not-so-distant future.

This warning is a stark reminder that todays budget-friendly energy prices might soon be the good old times of tomorrow if we dont maintain a domestic all-of-the-above energy strategy  a strategy that, as President Obama outlined in a State of the Union speech a few years back, develops every available source of American energy.

That includes oil, gas, coal, nuclear, and renewables. Each complements and supports the expansion of the next. Its not a pick-and-choose kind of thing.

Unfortunately, anti-energy groups, sensing how low energy prices have weakened Americas energy revolution, are on the attack, pushing for a so-called energy plan that experts say resembles more of a none-of-the-above strategy than an all-of-the-above. To compound matters, they have yet to offer any real solutions to meeting our modern energy needs without fossil fuels.

Do they not know that they wont be able to tweet or post to Facebook without electricity from natural gas?

The campaign is called Keep in the Ground, and its the latest in the push from environmental extremists. Its goal is to block as much energy development on public and private lands as possible, no matter the how safe it could be, and regardless of how stringent the regulatory process becomes. Any project related to fossil energy  pipelines, processing plants, oil exploration, and electricity generation  is an automatic no-no, supporters say, no matter what.

Even if it leaves you and me footing a bill that looks a lot different from the ones weve grown accustomed to recently. Are you ready to go back to $5-per-gallon gas and ever-increasing utility costs?

If youre appalled by the thought of that, imagine those far less fortunate than yourself.

Low-income families living paycheck to paycheck spend a larger percentage of their disposable income on electricity, heating costs and transportation fuels than those in other income brackets. Unlike other necessities  housing, food, and healthcare, for instance  these consumers oftentimes cannot shop for cheaper resources, and most federal and state governments do not have sufficient resources allocated to assist with their bills.

Because the cost of energy is embedded in nearly every good and service we use, price spikes in energy often act as a regressive tax for families, seniors living on fixed incomes, and those with incomes below the poverty level.

That means that the last thing consumers need is an unproven, unrealistic anti-fossil fuel strategy led by extremists that simply opposes every energy project out of hand and threatens to disrupt Americas electrical grid reliability, reduce our energy security, drive up prices, and cut high-wage jobs.

When evaluating the impact of energy policies on consumers, policymakers must consider how prices affect the most vulnerable among us: low-income and fixed-income families for whom price increases result in difficult decisions. Likewise, they need to ponder what hard-working consumers really need  a well-balanced energy mix that centers on rate affordability, energy security, job growth, and power reliability.

Such a strategy would appropriately continue our incredible run of protecting the environment and expanding American energy development in an effort to meet the basic economic needs of our citizens for generations to come.

Now thats a real energy plan that should not be kept in the ground.
The global economy saw weak growth in 2015 with a marked economic slowdown in emerging markets and a commodity slump. SA has been heavily influenced by these conditions. The newly released IMF World Economic Outlook report sees this years South African economic growth at 0.6%, while a growth of 1.2% is projected for next year. In SA, growth is expected to be halved to 0.6% in 2016 owing to lower export prices, elevated policy uncertainty and tighter monetary and fiscal policy, the IMF said in its report this month. Globally, economy is expected to grow 3.2% from an earlier forecast of 3.4%, and in 2017 it is projected at 3.5% from 3.6%. The hope of prosperity lies in the emerging markets like SA and China. According to the IMF, Chinas economic growth will rise to 6.5% for this year, and 6.2% next year. The recovery is projected to strengthen in 2017 and beyond, driven primarily by emerging market and developing economies, as conditions in stressed economies start gradually to normalise, the IMF said. Peoples Daily Online has collected views and opinions from experts, scholars and professionals across sectors to explain what this mid-term forecast figure means to Sino-SA economic ties, and our wealth and future.

Bob Wekesa

Post Doctoral Fellow, University of the Witwatersrand

Steering Committee Member, Chinese in Africa, Africans in China Research Network

Tebogo Lefifi

Country Manager: China, Brand South Africa

Randall Rhategan

Deputy CEO, China Construction Bank Johannesburg Branch

Jeremy Stevens

International Economist based in Beijing, China, Standard Bank Group

Lisa Xie

Senior Business Development Manager: China, FNB

Kenny Chiu

Executive & Head of China Practice Group, ENSafrica

Christopher Torrens

Senior MD, Control Risks

Barnaby Fletcher

Analyst, Global Risk Analysis, Control Risks

Steven Kuo

Consultant, Control Risks

Eddie Mbalo

MD: Khalipha Film and Broadcast Media Advisors

Q Peoples Daily Online:

What industry of the China-Africa economy do you think has greatest potential in the next five years? Could you elaborate more based on your observation?

A CHRISTOPHER TORRENS: Foreign investment into the African continent has traditionally been focused on natural resources. Yet low commodity prices in recent years have caused African governments to recognise the importance of economic diversification, and depreciating African currencies have highlighted the dangers of relying too heavily on imports for even basic manufactured goods.

China looks well placed to assist Africa in increasing its domestic manufacturing capacity; not only has China had more recent experience in building its own manufacturing base than Western investors, but it has also already invested more in African manufacturing than many other investors.

RANDALL RHATEGAN: In my opinion the two major drivers of trade and investment between China and Africa in the next few years will flow from new growth industries that emerge from the rebalancing of the Chinese economy, and commitments made recently in the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC).

We all know that Africa has a massive infrastructure deficit. China has the expertise and capital to assist Africa in addressing this deficit. The relationship between the two sides is strong, and there appears to be the political will to make this a success.

BOB WEKESA: Industrialisation. Because it has been primed at a major economic driver in the Africa-China relations at the policy level, namely the Johannesburg Summit of FOCAC, Chinas Africa Policy. Also China is recalibrating its economic model away from heavy manufacturing towards innovation and services while Africa still needs an industrial base.

Thus, Africa would be receptive to the relocation of some of Chinas manufacturing units seeking new a location.

LISA XIE: The greatest potential for the China-Africa economy in the next five years lies in increased domestic demand which is driving private consumption and public infrastructure, water, electricity, road, rail and ports related investments. The most significant investments have recently been seen in countries such as Mozambique and Namibia where more and more Chinese enterprises are participating in the countrys infrastructure construction projects, such as building the road, harbour, port and rail.

Over the next decade, we expect the Chinese to continue assisting in mega-infrastructure projects across sub-Saharan Africa, with the extension of the Kenyan Standard Gauge Railway as a prime example of rail diplomacy on the continent, as well as the Lagos-Calabar coastal railroad.

Given its extensive expertise and experience in industrialisation and infrastructure, one can expect many African countries to continue drawing on China for support in this arena, as they seek infrastructure development in an increasingly costly environment. These projects provide expansionary opportunities for many Chinese companies, and have future benefits of enhancing physical trade in goods from city centres to ports, for example.

At the same time, state-led cooperation in this arena will strengthen the diplomatic ties between sub-Saharan Africa and China.

KENNY CHIU: With its underdeveloped infrastructure in Africa means there is huge potential for foreign investment in infrastructure. If you are looking at countries in Africa which are having 3% to 7% GDP growth, even though from a low base, it is quite astonishing what can be achieved. We are witnessing Chinese State-Owned Enterprises (SOE) and private companies are becoming very active in infrastructure in all parts of Africa, many of which are supported by Chinese policy banks such as the China Development Bank and the Export and Import Bank of China. Some of these significant transactions we witnessed include CRRC (China Railway Rolling Stock Corporation) won the tender to manufacture and supply 1,064 locomotives to Transnet in SA, the construction of a standard gauge railway in Kenya by China Road and Bridge Corporation.

Chinese SOEs like Sinohydro, China Railway, State Grid, China Harbour are very active in the southern Africa region, ramping up a number of significant projects to the tune of billions of dollars of infrastructure projects.

Consumer-facing industries such as retail, technology, media and telecommunication are set to expand with rising domestic demand. Chinese companies such as Star Times (broadcasting), Huawei (telecom), ZTE (telecom) and Hisense (electronic appliances) are among those operating successfully across the continent.

Africa is also huge in terms of land size and every country has different geopolitical challenges. Overall I see that Africa is transforming at a steady pace and many countries in Africa remind me of China when Deng introduced radical economic reform in the early 1980s  challenging but full of opportunities.

JEREMY STEVENS: We expect some emerging Chinese corporates will be looking to find opportunities abroad. These companies are reshaping global trade and investment cords.

Many of them are armed with low cost structures, appealing products and, most importantly, very ambitious leaders. Already, Africas markets are mattering more to China every year. Chinas total sales to Africa have more than doubled since 2009, from $47bn in 2009 to $108bn in 2015. So far swelling consumer demand in Africa is reflected in the growth of total imports.

But, this is changing. Already, just like China brought Africa into global trade flows, it has also done the same in terms of investment. First, it was from SOEs who were encouraged to go out, but now nearly half of Chinas total outbound FDI that flows into Africa are by smaller private sector players.

Chinas sales to Africa have also propagated by the inflow of Chinese individuals too. Many are pursuing their own enterprises in wholesale and retail trade, restaurants, hotels and manufacturing. Looking ahead, it is a logical progression that outbound investment will follow Chinese sales.

TEBOGO LEFIFI: Three areas that will see phenomenal growth in the China-Africa economy  ocean economies, intellectual property and technology and financial services. China-Africa economic relations will be driven by economic cooperation between them coupled with market development and global trends. During FOCAC China signed a $60bn financial package over a period of three years. Chinas Premier Li Keqiang made a commitment of $100bn over five years during his visit in Africa in 2014.

The funding will be directed toward sectors of priority for China, which are outlined in the One Belt One Road (OBOR) strategy and underpinning that the 13th five-year plan. Chinese companies generally follow policy in the outbound investment strategy. Although China is showing a bit of economic slowdown domestically, hitting a lowest growth of GDP at 6,7% for the first quarter of the year since 2009, outbound investment grew by 55%. Despite the bad news there is a positive outlook with expectations, the economy will remain stable.

Two industries outperformed the market  tertiary industries and retails sales. China has been moving away from heavy industries to more service led industries and a consumption-driven economy. There will be more opportunities for African companies in service industries and tech start-ups to enter the Chinese market. Chinese companies in heavy industrial plants will start seeking for investment opportunities in Africa.

A shift of labour intensive industries will be welcomed by African governments looking to create jobs and working towards the Africa 2063 Agenda.

To realise is high profile OBOR strategy China has set up three financial institutions, to the distaste of the west  the Silk Road Infrastructure, Asian Infrastructure Bank and New Development Bank. SA is a member to the two banks and will serve as a gateway for the banks for finance projects in Africa, especially in infrastructure development. The OBOR encompasses two initiatives, The Silk Road Economic Belt (SREB) and The Maritime Silk (MSR)  commonly known as the 21st Century Silk Road. Previously the MSR included linking China with Europe through Central and Western Asia.

During FOCAC 2015 China included Africa as strategic partner. The MSRs plan is to integrate China in the global economy through trade, investment, infrastructure and connectivity and other development projects. The Mombasa-Nairobi connectivity is a proverbial project and more similar projects can be expected in China-Africa economic activity.

Chinas ambition in Africa is further enhanced by an MOU between China and the African Union focusing on infrastructure projects. In the next few years we can expect to see more new projects in transportation infrastructure, significantly in road, airport (refurbishment and new airport) and speed railways.

The fourth industrialisation brings its own set of opportunities in integrated economies, mechanisation and automation. This phase of industrialisation is characterised by availability of technologies, artificial intelligence and 3D printing revolutionising industries across the globe.

China can play a defining role in Africas growth in terms of technology transfer. New technological advances will impact on banking, health care, green technologies and education.
Recently, The Interpreter published another post warning readers of the dangers of China's intentions and actions in the South China Sea.

The piece argues that 'the real danger' is that 'China will take its notion of "sovereign rights" in the South China Sea too far, and that China's para-military forces will be employed to eject fishing vessels and other units of the littoral nations, probably starting with the Philippines'. The post also implies that it is almost inevitable that China will build 'yet another artificial island' and declare an Air Defence Identification Zone (ADIZ) over the South China Sea. The author concludes with a warning that if China gains dominion over the region, resentment will fester in other claimant nations, and peace will be lost. It cautions China to 'finesse its policies for the South China Sea with a sensitivity that has so far been absent from much that it has done'.

It is of course unarguably true that China has, among other things, been undertaking some fast-paced building activities in the region, has declared an ADIZ in the East China Sea and has said that an ADIZ in the South China Sea is not out of the question. It seems to be just clear common sense that what this adds up to is China's desire for regional pre-eminence.

What else, when you look at the facts, could it mean?

Let us for a moment remember that 'common sense' is not universal. It's not even necessarily shared between two people from within the same social group, let alone across vastly different cultures. Interpretation of what we think we see is not flawless; each individual has their own lens through which meaning is created. So let us just for a moment pause to ask what hard evidence we have - apart from our own interpretation of what we see - of China's intentions.

This is of course almost impossible; where would one turn for such evidence? The Global Times says one thing. The spokesperson from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs says another. The high profile academic something different. The retired army general something else again, and what we can gauge of public opinion is a whole other matter.

So, all that we can really conclude is that there are different views within China about what China wants to achieve, and how best to achieve it, and we on the outside cannot really know for sure.

Considerable debate exists around the extent to which actors behave independently or as part of a grand, directed strategy. No one, in fact, really knows. Xi Jinping no doubt has a pretty strong view of what he wants to achieve - the 'China Dream' - but the specifics of that vision are not universally agreed. Yes, Xi has consolidated a great deal of power, but its debatable whether he has been successful in owning and operating the entire system.

It is the very lack of certainty about what China wants that constitutes a large part of the concern over its activities. There have been a lot of calls for China to clarify its intentions.

Without this clarity, though, many analysts conclude that determining meaning from what we see is the only reliable method. From what we see, interpreted through our own understanding of how international geopolitics works, China's activities certainly look like it is trying to push the US out of the region to replace it as the predominant power. If that's the case, what does it matter what its motivations are? What difference does it make why it wants to be predominant? Is it relevant if Chinese notions of predominance are different from our own?

These issues are important when we are weighing up risks and when developing responses, if we want those responses to be effective in the long term. There is little point, in the long run, trying to quash the symptoms without addressing the cause.

As I have argued elsewhere, Chinese policy elites see the world and China's role in it differently from Western policymakers. Something as apparently obvious as 'predominance' is actually a very culturally nuanced concept. Can we safely assume it means to the Chinese exactly what it means to us? Even a fleeting study of Chinese language and culture will show how many variations there are to something that we think has a clear meaning.

Chinese Culture 101 teaches that Chinese people don't like to say 'no' to requests - but it doesn't mean there are things they can't or don't want to do. The term 'it's not convenient' doesn't mean 'it's not convenient', it means 'no', but many an over-enthusiastic foreigner has pushed ahead regardless, to everyone's frustration and embarrassment. These are of course simple examples, but what they indicate is that if there is space for misunderstanding and misinterpretation at the most mundane level, there is certainly a significant possibility for misunderstanding and misinterpretation in international geopolitics, with far more serious implications.
Brazil's President, Dilma Rousseff, is responsible in three ways for her country's predicament. She is responsible for her erratic economic policies, characterized by lavish public spending and mismanagement of public funds, which, along with an adverse world economic climate, have contributed to Brazil's dismal performance in recent years. She is responsible, too, for her reckless oversight of the state-run Petrobras oil firm when she was Energy Minister and chair of the Petrobras board. That firm is at the center of the gravest corruption scandal in the history of Brazil. Finally, she is responsible for doctoring downward the size of the public deficit with the aim of enhancing her chances of being re-elected in 2014 - a re-election she won with only 51.2 percent of the vote.



It is on charges of statistical manipulation that the lower house of Brazil's parliament has approved an impeachment procedure against her - charges the Senate is considering. If the Senate follows through, and it apparently will, Rousseff will be suspended from office for 180 days while the trial takes place.



The political crisis has divided Brazilians and sent millions to the streets, some to request Dilma Rousseff's departure, others, less numerous, to support her. Backed by her party, the Workers' Party, and its founder and godfather, the charismatic leader of Brazil's populist left, Luis Inacio Lula da Silva - suspected, for his part, of illicit enrichment - Brazil's president has chosen so far to resist.



Rousseff tried to protect Lula by appointing him to a top governmental post, a move that would have taken his case off the desk of the pugnacious judge Sergio Moro. Lula's appointment was thwarted by a Supreme Court judge, but the damage to Rousseff's image had already been done. The move drew the disgust of large swaths of the Brazilian public against both leaders of the Workers' Party.



As a line of defense, Rousseff and Lula have chosen to present themselves as victims of an alleged conspiracy and have denounced what they call a parliamentary coup d'etat.



The problem with such a line of defense is that the impeachment process launched against Rousseff, as well as the judicial enquiry into Lula, conform with the Constitution and the legislation of Brazil.



Still, the two can play the underdog. And if Rousseff is deposed, the lawmaker who would take over as president - Michel Temer, Brazil's vice president and a member of a party that broke away from the coalition government - has also been cited in connection with the Petrobras corruption scandal.



Temer's position was weakened by a recent Supreme Court decision to accept as evidence into the Petrobas probe the confession made by Delcidio Amaral, former leader of the Workers' Party in the Senate, who accused not only Rousseff and Lula, but also Temer, of involvement in the scandal.



Add to this the fact that the president of the lower house, Eduardo Cunha, who has played a leading role in the impeachment process, has been charged with corruption and money laundering.



Thus, if Temer and Cunha are not separated from their functions, while Rousseff is chased away, Brazil's populist left will have a convincing argument that there is a double standard. That may not enhance Rousseff's approval rating (currently at 11 percent, the lowest in the history of Brazil's democracy), but in any event the popularity of Lula, who has made clear his intention to run for president in the elections scheduled for 2018.



According to a recent poll, 60 percent of Brazilians want Rousseff to leave the presidency, whether by resignation or by removal. That doesn't mean, however, that this 60 percent will all vote against Lula in 2018.



Lula left the presidency in 2010 with an approval rating of 80 percent. That leaves him plenty of room to absorb a drop in popularity and still win in 2018. This is all the more so as those Brazilians who have not yet made up their minds about Rousseff's impeachment may feel outraged if Temer and Cunha manage to escape justice. (According to the above poll, 58 percent of Brazilians would approve of the impeachment of Temer in addition to that of Rousseff).



To punish the double standard, many Brazilians may be tempted to vote for the Workers' Party candidate, whether that is Lula or someone else.

And let's not forget that if Rousseff leaves, the transition government that would run Brazil until late 2018 - to be presided, let us recall, by Michel Temer - would have to adopt painful, unpopular measures meant to tackle Brazil's dismal economic situation.



The gravity of that situation has forced even Rousseff to restrict public spending and social programs. It is, however, a safe bet that the Workers' Party and its chief, Lula, will keep quiet on this fact and will prefer to blame the prospective transition government for the economic decisions that whoever is in power will have to adopt.



Lula and his party will also probably not point out that Brazil's public finances started to deteriorate at the end of Lula's second presidential mandate (2006-2010), when he abandoned the orthodox macroeconomic policies introduced by his predecessor, the neoliberal Fernando Henrique Cardoso, and opened the floodgates of public spending - a move that many considered was aimed at helping his heir-apparent Rousseff win the 2010 elections.



A possible way out of the present political crisis would be to advance the date of the presidential elections, a move that Rousseff reportedly may propose and that has the support of 62 percent of Brazilians.



Unsurprisingly, however, Mr. Temer has dismissed this course of action (he obviously would prefer to run the country until the 2018 elections), arguing that it would be tantamount to a coup d'etat.



For all these reasons, should the double standard prevail, the likelihood is strong that the removal from power of the populist left will be short-lived and in fact reversed in the next presidential elections, whenever they take place. Not the kind of outcome that those opposed to Rousseff have in mind.
Property details:

- ATTENTIONYOU ARE BIDDING ON THE DOWN PAYMENTPLEASE REVIEW THE ENTIRE LISTING THOROUGHLY Description: Here's a fantastic 10 Acres parcel of vacant land in Lucerne Valley, about 30 minutes east of Apple Valley and Victorville.The land is 1 mile east of Paved Camp Rock Rd, very easy access via Cambria Rd to Hobart Rd right to the lot! This land is secluded, but NOT remote - Maps below clearly demonstrate what I just described. The land has 660' of legal and physical Road Frontage on Hobart Road. ...

Price: $ 190 Seller State of Residence: California Property Address: Hobart Road Zip/Postal Code: 92356 Type: Homesite, Lot Zoning: Residential Area Acreage (acres): 10.00 Location: 923**, Lucerne Valley, California

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BEIJING, May 6 (Xinhua) -- Beijing extended its real estate restrictions in an eastern suburban district on Thursday to cover business property to force out speculators.

Families without household registration in Beijing, unmarried Beijing residents who already own homes and families that own more than one home are among those no longer eligible to purchase corporate apartments in Tongzhou District under the new property rules jointly issued by the Beijing Municipal Commission of Housing and Urban-Rural Development and the municipal government of Tongzhou District.

Tongzhou has been increasingly targeted by property speculators, who are betting that its designation as the new administrative center for Beijing will raise the value of real estate in the district.

Those from outside Beijing will only be allowed to buy corporate apartments in the district if they have made tax and social security payments in Beijing for over five straight years.

The rules also stipulate that office space can only be sold to companies for business purposes.

Authorities previously introduced restrictions on residential property purchases in the district in August last year to curb speculation that sent home prices soaring.

Yet speculators have since begun grabbing up business properties in the district, some of which have been converted into residential units for home buyers.

Regulators said they fear this practice, if not effectively tackled, could potentially lead to more population influx than the district is prepared to handle and hurt the district's ability to house businesses if office space is not used for its original purpose.
By Elizabeth Kwiatkowski, 05/06/2016



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Elizabeth Kwiatkowski is Associate Editor of Reality TV World and has been covering the reality TV genre for more than a decade.

Jenni "JWoww" Farley has given birth to her second child.The Snooki & Jwoww and former Jersey Shore star welcomed a "healthy baby boy" with her husband Roger Mathews on Thursday, according to Farley's representative.Farley's rep told E! News the baby arrived at 6:03PM ET and "both mom and the baby are doing great."Farley announced the first picture of her little bundle of joy will be released soon on her new mobile app.The couple announced they were expecting their second child at their wedding reception held at Addison Park in Keyport, NJ, in October 2015. They shocked their family and friends with the news."This was one of the hardest secrets to keep but it was one of the most memorable parts of our wedding!" Farley previously told the website. "The reaction from everyone was priceless. Roger and I only told our publicist and our nanny that we were expecting, so to watch everyone's face when Roger announced it was priceless."Farley now has one son and one daughter just like her best friend Nicole "Snooki" Polizzi . Farley's little girl Meilani Alexandra was born in July 2014.Farley, 30, met Mathews, 38, while she was filming the third season of Jersey Shore.The pair, who made an appearance on Marriage Boot Camp: Reality Stars, got engaged following a skydiving trip in September 2012 after two-and-a-half years of dating. Mathews proposed during an episode of Taking the Plunge's second season.MTV aired four seasons of Snooki & Jwoww, with its final season having wrapped in February 2015.Farley also competed and won the seventh season of Worst Cooks in America: Celebrity Edition last year.
The 32-year-old Oscar nominated actor and comedian Jonah Hill purchased a New York condo for $9.16 million. According to New York Post, the 3,280-square-foot pad at 36 Bleecker St. had an original asking price of $9.5 million.

According to Variety, the listing details for the property reveal that the fifth floor condo has four bedrooms and four full bathrooms. It features 12-foot barrel vaulted ceilings and oversized wood-framed windows. It is also designed with restored columns and beams and cold-rolled blackened steel details.

The living room and dining room span about 750 square feet and open to a spacious kitchen. It has a center island and a long hallway which connects the main living space to the bedroom wing, which has three en-suite guest rooms and a master bedroom. The sunny master suite is facing south, and it features a generous walk-in closet.

It was said that all four bedrooms has the view of the building's central courtyard that was done by the landscape architect Ken Smith. The seven-story building is designed with red brick Queen Anne Victorian meets Romanesque Revival-style and it only has a total of 20 apartments inside.

The amenities include 24-hour doormen services, fitness center, a private library lounge, children's playroom and storage area. The residents can also enjoy the 17,000-square-foot roof terrace with built-in barbecue.

The property is a huge upgrade for the actor after he unloaded a 2,000-square-foot loft in SoHo which he sold for $3,050,000 to a couple from Dallas, Texas. This is not the only property that Hill listed as he also sold a Richard Dorman-designed mid-century bungalow in Los Angeles which he bought five years ago for $1.865 million. It was reported that the property was sold for $3.65 million.
Want to add a little more texturing and beavertail to your Glock? All you'll need is a Glock Armorers Tool or 3/32-inch pin punch and a small armorers hammer. Instructions on Grip Force Products' website walk you through the easy installation that'll fit standard and compact Gen 1, 2, or 3 series Glock frames. According to their site, it'll also fit the new Gen 4 pistol over the top of the factory-supplied medium grip panel. If used on the Gen 4 SF frame with no factory-supplied grip panel, you'll need to use some RTV silicone to secure the grip. Available in Flat Dark Earth or black.

Make:

Grip Force Products

Model:

Gen 123SC Grip Force Adapters

MSRP:

$27

URL:

www.gripforceproducts.com

Along with an included 3V-CR2032 battery and two mounting bases, this 2 MOA reticle from TRUGLO offers a 20mm objective lens, push-button controls, multiple brightness settings, and motion-sensitive auto on/off features that remember your last used setting. We haven't had a chance yet to test out the 1,000g shock-resistant, waterproof, or fog-proof qualities that the manufacturer claims. It also offers click windage and elevation adjustments and an integrated Weaver/Picatinny-style mounting system.

Make:

TRUGLO

Model:

Tru Tec 20mm Red Dot Sight

MSRP:

$205

URL:

www.truglo.com

Muzzle brake or flash hider? It's a struggle. Can't decide? Leitner-Wise will sell you both in one package. The C3 Hybrid Comp looks like an A2 birdcage at first glance, but on closer inspection you'll notice the threads for the included front baffle. Without the baffle, the C3 offers slightly less flash reduction than you'd expect out of an A2. Use the included tool to screw in the vented plate and you've got a flat shooting rifle for use when concussion isn't a concern. Adding the plate doesn't affect C3's size, making it a very compact hider/break. The C3 comes in two flavors optimized for 5.56mm and 300 BLK (7.62mm).

Make:

Leitner Wise Manufacturing

Model:

C3 Hybrid Comp

Available Calibers:

.223 or .30 Cal

MSRP:

$145

URL:

www.leitner-wise.com

We can't think of anything that says America  no, screams AMERICA!  more than a flag made of steel. Each of Iron Mountain Design's flags is made in Salt Lake City by former U.S. Air Force Pararescueman Josh Vandenbrink. He bends the metal to shape, acid etches the sheets using a blend of vinegar, water, and salt to get different colors, then neutralizes the concoction and seals it up. The small flags look great over a mantle or in a mancave, while the larger flags are suitable for declaring your patriotism (in the most metal way possible ) in an office or industrial setting.

Make:

Iron Mountain Designs

Model:

Steel Flag

Sizes:

36, 48, or 84 inches

MSRP:

$399 to $799

URL:

ironmountaindesigns.com

SureFire answers the mail with a new dual switch for the company's Scout Light weapon-mounted flashlights. It might be a stretch for us to call it new, though. The DSS switch was a popular accessory on the larger-bodied Millennium weapon lights, allowing the use of a remote tape switch while retaining a clicky switch on the tailcap. SureFire sunsetted that line of lights, but it took them until now to bring the DS back for the new, slimmer weapon-mounted flashlight bodies. The switch can be purchased alone or in kits that come with either a momentary tape switch or combo momentary/constant tape switch.

Make:

SureFire

Model:

DS-00 Scout Light Switch

MSRP:

$111

URL:

www.surefire.com

Packing for a vacation is enough of a pain for most of us. But, packing for a training trip or a deployment is a nightmare of lists and little piles of gear spread out all over your home and office. How about keeping a few sets of gear specific to each mission or adventure ready to go within a set of cubes that snap together on a tough-as-nails rolling frame? Yeah, that's the way to go. The Modular Transport System's nylon sectional bags are made with a little padding to give them structure and keep your gear safe from the gorillas in baggage claim. When you don't need the rolling frame, the bags can be removed and carried alone.

FirstSpear

Model:

Modular Transport System

Colors:

Black, Blue, Coyote, Gray, Ranger Green

Weight:

8.6-9.8 pounds

MSRP:

$421 to $566

URL:

www.first-spear.com

On a hot day, the condensation on a cold drink can cause it to slip out of our hands  not to mention it's a sign that our beverage won't stay cold for very long. And then there's the minor but annoying need to open a lid with two hands. Axex's new line of FreeFlow Autoseal Stainless Steel Water Bottles solves those two pet peeves. Thanks to its insulated double-walled 18/8 Capacitor Stainless Steel vessel, the FreeFlow keeps libations hot for up to 10 hours and cold for up to 29 hours. The button-operated Autoseal lid lets you drink with one hand while eliminating spills and leaks. Available in a variety of colors, including blue, green, and unfinished stainless.

Make:

Avex

Model:

FreeFlow Autoseal Stainless Steel Water Bottle

Capacity:

24- or 40-ounce

MSRP:

$30 or $37

URL:

www.avexoutdoor.com

The Phalanx Helmet-Carry Duty Pack combines tacticool elements with an ergonomic design and quality construction to deliver a midsized backpack that civilians, first responders, and the military can use and abuse. As its name implies, there's a front compression pouch for helmets, a side zippered pocket for up to four AR-15 magazines, and a back compartment that can house a 2-liter hydration bladder or a concealed-carry weapon. It's made of Dupont Cordura nylon, has a removable waist belt that can be used separately, and contains all sorts of subtle features that make it convenient and comfortable to use.

Make:

Cannae Pro Gear

Model:

Phalanx Helmet-Carry Duty Pack

MSRP:

$185

URL:

www.cannaeprogear.com

One look at this Ruger-licensed beast and you'll immediately have knife envy. The Go-N-Heavy features a 5-inch drop-point blade that swings from a rugged skeletonized aluminum handle, outstretching to an overall length of 11.18 inches and tipping the scales at 10.4 ounces. Is it a practical everyday carry tool? Nope. Does it give us the urge to go stab a dragon or a Decepticon? Oh yes. While the blade is made with 8Cr13Mov (a Chinese stainless), the knife has been designed by famed knife maker Bill Harsey and manufactured by CRKT, so you can expect a reliable level of quality.

Make:

CRKT/Ruger

Model:

Go-N-Heavy

MSRP:

$100

URL:

www.ruger.com/crktwww.crkt.com



Bill Geissele reached back to his experience working in the mining industry to develop a new line of lubricant for ALG Defense. He worked on large, building-sized machines that rotated on lubricated bearings. So he knows the value of a good lubricant. Organic oils, most popular because of their bio/EPA-friendly nature, have a couple of downsides  they can corrode metal over time, and the lubricant itself can break down or dry up. On the upside, though, organic lubes are more lubricious than petroleum-based oils. So, to make ALG's Go Juice, the company combined a GMO oil seed that's modified to include corrosion resistance and oxidation stability traits. The result  Go Juice is completely non-toxic and slippery as hell.

Make:

ALG Defense

Model:

Go Juice

Size:

4 ounces

MSRP:

$11.50

URL:

www.algdefense.com

A lot of protein bars taste like chalk or are filled with so much sugar you might as well eat a Snickers. And MREs (or Meals Refusing to Exit) take time to prepare. Fortunately, Condition One has come up with an easy and healthful solution. Founded by a former Marine, this company offers sustainment bars high in fiber, protein, and complex carbohydrates. These delicious rectangles are comprised of flax seed, almonds, and organic steel-cut oats. The best part? They taste like mom's homemade treats and keep you satiated until you get back to HQ. Available in apple cinnamon, chocolate coconut almond, and lemon poppy seed.

Make:

Condition One

Model:

Mission Sustainment Bar

MSRP:

$25 for six or $40 for 10

URL:

www.goconditionone.com

We're currently working on an editorial project that involves processing a large quantity of rifle brass, so being a bunch of lazy slackers we naturally looked for a product to make life easier. The Frankford Arsenal trim and prep system powers through the most tedious of chores, trimming cases, chamfering necks, and cleaning primer pockets to produce uniform, ready-to-load cases. The manufacturer claims it works with any caliber from 17 Rem to 460 Wby, and while we can't verify quite that wide a range, we have used it on .223, .308, and .375 H&H with great success.

Make:

Frankford Arsenal

Model:

Platinum Series Case Trim And Prep System

MSRP:

$250

URL:

www.btibrands.com

There's a glut of excellent single-stage AR triggers currently on the market, but the selection of decent two-stage bang switches is not as wide. Seeking to redress that situation, the Wisconsin Trigger Co. has reintroduced the first AR match trigger to be adopted by the Army Marksmanship Unit, back in the mid '90s. We installed it in a test rifle and were mightily impressed by its smooth first stage, crisp break, and short reset. It does need to be set up for your particular rifle, so it's not a trigger you can simply drop in and forget, but if you're building a DMR rig, the rewards are worth it.

Make:

Wisconsin Trigger Company

Model:

Milazzo-Krieger M-K II Two Stage Match Trigger System

MSRP:

$266

URL:

www.wisconsintrigger.com

The standard issue M4 rifle stock was a wonderful design when it debuted decades ago. Since then it's hung on, tooth and nail, clinging to issued M4s around the military and law enforcement agencies like an albatross, signaling the user's reluctance to embrace the durability, comfort, utility (and possibly the expense) of a more modern product. It's getting tougher to do this, given the availability of carbine stocks, such as the Griffin ECS. Griffin addressed the weaknesses common in M4-style stocks by replacing the latch pin with a full diameter hardened stainless tool steel pin and using 17-7 stainless steel for the spring. The company's also included water and debris evacuation ports compatible with the optional Griffin Maritime Receiver Extension (shown) to increase reliability in extreme conditions and added a slick, molded-in anti-rotation QD sling point.

Make:

Griffin Armament

Model:

Griffin ECS (Extreme Condition Stock)

MSRP:

$60

URL:

www.griffinarmament.com
We told you a couple weeks ago about our upcoming Frankengun Friday build  today it's time to pick a lower receiver. We've listed out some choices below. Explanations of each one are provided. Cast your vote, tell us what you think and we'll get it started.

Manufacturers will appear in poll in random order, be sure to scroll all the way through.

In the next one we'll have you choose an upper receiver. Send us a PM with suggestions for those manufacturers  PMs only please. save comments on this post for lowers. Now vote.

Cover photo by Pimp My Gun.

Frankengun Lower Receiver Options

2A Armament Balios Lower Receiver

2A-Armament introduces the BALIOS billet upper and lower receiver sets. These sets have been precision 3-D Machined on Makino A51nx horizontals. By utilizing the 3-D machining process, 2A is able to step away from the standard blocky look found in other sets on the market. The BALIOS set has an aesthetically pleasing look that is augmented by the inspired texturing on the front of the magazine well. Both the upper and lower receivers are equally at home on a standard forged product from other vendors. The flared magazine well aids in rapid reloading, and the tapered transition under the charging handle prevents associated wear patterns from damaging the finish. Machined QD sockets give the shooter an optional point of attachment, and the relocated forward assist puts the controls in a more natural position.

Features:

3-D Machined from U.S.A. Certified 7075-T6 plate aluminum

Machine textured magazine well compliments popular accessories

Integrated QD Sockets at rear of receiver

Bolt release feature screw in pin (Included)

Integrated and lightened trigger guard

Integrated tensioning screw guaranties a tight fit (included)

Bead blasted and hard coat anodized black (Type3 class2)

Product of the great state of Idaho, MADE IN THE U.S.A.

Weight: ( Lower 8.35oz ) Stripped

SKU (2A-MCBL-1)

Aero Precision GEN 2 AR15LR

Our AR15 Gen 2 Stripped Lower Receiver is the perfect base for your custom AR15 build. Machined to mil-spec dimensions, our lowers work with standard AR15 components and ensure the highest quality with a correct component interface.

Gen 2 Improvements

Upper Tension Screw  Allows users to fine tune the fit of the upper and lower receiver through the use of a nylon tipped tensioning set screw inserted in the grip tang of the lower receiver. This provides a tight fit with any standard AR15 upper receiver.

Increased Magwell Flare  Allows for easier insertion of magazines and provides a sleeker look.

Includes:

Stripped AR15 Lower Receiver, Gen 2

Nylon tipped tensioning set screw

Brownells BRN016A1

Designed in conjunction with Nodak Spud, the BRN-16A1 Lower Receiver matches the features of the original M16A1 Receiver. Perfect for a Retro or reproduction build, these lowers precisely mirror the original profile.

Features specific to the BRN-16A1 Lower Receiver are the proper M16A1 front takedown lug profile, and profile surrounding the receiver extension. Most forged lower receivers produced today feature A2 profiles, which are incorrect for M16A1 reproduction builds. The lower starts off as a 7075 T6 aluminum forging, then is machined to mil-spec dimensions. Once machined, the lower is finished with a matte black hard anodized finish. This finish matches modern uppers found on the market today, as well as the Brownells M16A1 Upper Receiver sold separately.

Standard AR-15 components will work perfectly with this lower.

Simple, engraved markings on the lower include:

Model: BRN-16A1

Cal: 5.56mm

Mfg: Brownells Inc

CMMG AR15 Lower

Forged 7075 T6 Aluminum MILSPEC

The KE-15 Billet Flared Mag-well Lower Receiver is precision machined in-house from hi-grade 7075 billet master plate to mil-spec standards making it compatible with most mil-spec M16/M4 uppers. Features a broached mag well and mil-spec 8625 type III, class 2 hard anodized. Included is the KE Arms Big Button Mag Release and assembly. Ready to be assembled with your choice of lower parts kit. Please make sure the business name of the FFL you are using is noted on your order and that we have all of your FFLs info.

Mega Arms GTR-3S Ambi

 Comes with hardware for the integrated ambidextrous bolt catch.

 If you want stand out from the rest of the crowd, this is the lower you need.

 The Mega Billet Lower features a clean, new, custom look unlike any of our competitors.

 Integrated trigger guard for added functionality, and strength.

 Lower features a nylon tipped upper tensioning screw.

 Magwell features an enlarged bottom flare and inner chamfer for easier magazine insertion.

 Butt Stock attachment feature fortified for added strength in high power applications.

 GTR-3S AMBI Matches standard forged upper receivers.

Midwest Industries Inc. MI AR Forged Lower

Machined from 7075-T6 forged aluminum, matte black hard-coat anodized Mil 8625 Type 3 Class 2, Marked CAL-MULTI, rear takedown pin detent hold threaded for a 4-40 set screw.

Rifle Gear Liberator

The RifleGear Liberator features a forged 7075-T6 aluminum construction, machined to MIL-SPEC requirements, hard anodized black finish and a upper tensioning screw.

Features

Machined from forged 7075-T6 aluminum.

Black hard anodized with a surface hardness of 60 Rockwell.

Machined per Mil-spec Requirements with critical tooling dimensions held within .001

Includes tension screw to ensure a tight fit with any upper

Features stylish front magwell texture for a secure grip

Seekins Precision SP223 Gen2

Precision CNC machined from solid billet aluminum, the SP223 Billet Lower is the best AR lower receiver available. Far exceeding Mil-Spec requirements, the SP 223 has features not found on standard lowers such as the Seekins Precision Enhanced Bolt Catch, receiver tensioning screw, ambi-bolt stop assembly and an oversized trigger guard. These features combined with superior fit and finish make the SP223 the perfect foundation for any AR build.

7075-T6 Billet Aluminum

AR15 Platform

Ambidextrous bolt release

Mil-Spec component compatible

SP Enhanced bolt catch

Upper tensioning set screw

Bullet pictogram selector markings

Type III Class 2 Hardcoat Anodized Finish

Sharps Bros. Hellbreaker AR-15 Lower Receiver

Hellbreakers distinctive appearance is inspired by the P-40 Warhawk, which was one of the United States most-produced fighter planes when World War II began. The nose art that became a popular military tradition was born from the practical need to identify friendly units, but eventually evolved to express a squadrons individuality. Considering the vast majority of AR-15 lowers look the same, we thought it was time to improve upon the standard and create some visual diversity in the market. The fierce Hellbreaker lines are where looks meet performance: it takes painstaking detail work to machine each tooth point and eyebrow curve, but we never skimp on quality along the way. When you hold a Hellbreaker, we believe youre holding one of the finest, most unique M4/AR-15 lower receivers in the world. Hellbreaker is offered through Spikes Tactical, features include:

An oversized and integral trigger guard

A beveled magazine flare that helps you load as quickly and efficiently as possible

Machined top to bottom from 7075-T6 aluminum, a peak-strength corrosion-resistant aluminum alloy

A hard coat anodize finish per MIL-A-8625, the anodizing model for model for most military and aerospace products

Full compatibility with all mil-spec internal parts

Full compatibility with all other aftermarket mil-spec upper receivers

Full compatibility with GI standard issue magazines as well as PMags

Multi caliber mark

SI  Falkor Defense 5.56/.223 Stripped Lower Receiver

7076-T6 Aluminum billet

8/32 bolt catch set screw

Enlarged trigger guard

SI Defense lower receivers are crafted from 7075-T6 aluminum billet and are ready for your next build.

MADE IN MONTANA  USA

Spike's Tactical Jack

Spike's Tactical is proud to release The Jack lower. Through the articulate work of Sharps Bros we have developed the most detailed billet lower ever created.

An oversized integral trigger guard

A beveled magazine flare that helps you load as quickly and efficiently as possible

Machined top to bottom from 7075-T6 aluminum, a peak-strength corrosion-resistant aluminum alloy

A hard coat anodize finish per MIL-A-8625, the anodizing model for model for most military and aerospace products

Full compatibility with all mil-spec internal parts

Full compatibility with all other aftermarket mil-spec upper receivers

Full compatibility with GI standard issue magazines as well as PMags

Multi caliber mark

Wilson Combat Lower Receiver TR-LOWER-BIL-G

Designed by Bill Wilson and the Wilson Combat design team to be the base for the ultimate precision tactical AR-15 rifle, the BILLet-AR lower receiver is 100% machined in our Berryville, AR facility. The Wilson Combat BILLet-AR receiver was engineered from the ground up to address structural design weaknesses in standard USGI lower receivers and enhance overall tolerances. The BILLet-AR lower receiver has been enhanced with an oversize magazine well for quick reloads and an integral trigger guard for gloved use and added lower receiver strength. Our extensive experience as a premier custom builder of AR-15 rifles will ensure your satisfaction with this next generation precision tactical shooting platform.

Oversize, EDM machined magwell for fast smooth reloading.

Integral trigger guard.

Precision threaded receiver and reamed pin holes.

Hex Screw Bolt Catch retention.

Good match with standard, GI style uppers or Wilson Combat BILLet-AR upper receivers.

Hand prepped for a flawless surface finish.

Finished in Black Armor Tuff.

Yankee Hill Machine Billet Lower

YHM is proud to offer our first Billet Lower Receiver. We originally designed a Billet lower that mimicked a standard (forged) lower receiver, but after seeing the prototype production we decided to go with a receiver that was more stylized, something that didn't look like every other AR-15 on the planet. It was this mindset that helped us arrive at the MODEL-57, and in turn this lower receiver.

These lowers were designed, and are machined 100% in house from 7075-T6 aluminum (Billet)

Features over sized magazine well chamfers for easier magazine changes

Accepts All Generations of PMAG's

Accepts Mil-Spec Upper receivers

Built in oversized machined trigger guard

Fits all standard parts (except for a trigger guard)

Hardcoat Anodized matte black to Military Specifications or better

This lower still fits, and functions with your standard upper receivers
Remington Outdoor Company announced today it will be closing its Mayfield, Kentucky manufacturing plant.

The announcement signals the layoff of approximately 200 people from the site. Among the products Remington produces in Mayfield are Marlin firearms. Remington had only completed the move of Marlin from its Connecticut home in 2011.

According to the announcement, all operations will be rolled into Remington's main campus in Huntsville, Alabama. Relocation of the 20 year old facility include improvement of logistical proximity and freight synergies, organizational synergy and focus with engineering, sales and marketing, and a reduction of facility overhead and general organizational streamlining.

NEXT STEP: Download Your Free Target Pack from RECOIL For years, RECOIL magazine has treated its readers to a full-size (sometimes full color!) shooting target tucked into each big issue. Now we've compiled over 50 of our most popular targets into this 50+ targets have you covered. Print off as many as you like (ammo not included).



Get your pack of 50 Print-at-Home targets when you subscribe to the RECOIL email newsletter. We'll send you weekly updates on guns, gear, industry news, and special offers from leading manufacturers - your guide to the firearms lifestyle.



You want this. Trust Us. For years, RECOIL magazine has treated its readers to a full-size (sometimes full color!) shooting target tucked into each big issue. Now we've compiled over 50 of our most popular targets into this one digital PDF download . From handgun drills to AR-15 practice, thesehave you covered. Print off as many as you like (ammo not included).
Jin Liqun, President of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), along with Takehiko Nakao, President of the Asian Development Bank (ADB), recently inked a memorandum of understanding in Germany, agreeing to intensify cooperation between the two institutions.

Through co-financing, knowledge sharing, and joint policy dialogues with member countries, the two institutions will work together across the areas of energy, transportation, telecommunications, rural and agricultural development, water, urban development and environmental protection.

It is estimated that between 2010 and 2020, developing nations in Asia will need a total of USD $8 trillion in infrastructure investment with an annual demand of over $700 billion. But multilateral development banks only invest $10 to $20 billion in infrastructure each year.

Against this backdrop, the establishment of the AIIB can inject a more sustainable impetus into the Asian economy and facilitate economic interactions between China and its neighbors by mobilizing more capital and supporting infrastructure construction.

At the same time, AIIB has attracted a significant number of member states from Asia, Oceania, Europe, Africa and South America, including several developed countries like the U.K., Germany and France.

The cooperation between the AIIB and the ADB signals the start of a very positive cooperation. As Chinese President Xi Jinping said at the inauguration ceremony for AIIB, "The founding and opening of the AIIB means a great deal to the reform of the global economic governance system. It is consistent with the evolving trends of the global economic landscape and will help make the economic governance system more just, equitable and effective."

Mutually beneficial cooperation is one such trend, especially in China. An old Chinese saying goes: "When everybody adds fuel, the flames rise high." Similarly, an African saying goes: "If you want to go fast, walk alone; if you want to go far, walk together."

This logic could also be applied to the founding of AIIB and the Belt and Road Initiative. Chinese leaders have reiterated on many occasions that the initiative is not a solo endeavor, but rather a group one. The success of these plans could give rise to a new path of cooperation in the 21st century, setting a precedent for government assistance, developmental finance and market allocation.

Taking infrastructure connectivity as its priority, the Belt and Road Initiative will promote the growth of trade for developing countries along the route. It will do this by promoting development in China.

China's development needs the world to succeed and vice versa. From peaceful development to global cooperation, from AIIB to the Belt and Road Initiative, all these concepts and plans reflect Chinese values going beyond colonialism, imperialism and hegemony. These philosophies are beneficial to the just, balanced, sustainable and inclusive development of mankind.

(The author is a special researcher with the Center of German Studies of Tongji University and a senior researcher at the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies of Renmin University.)

The article is edited and translated from 
FILE - In this April 4, 2016 file photo, Mexican environmentalist Gustavo Castro gestures during a press conference in Mexico City. Castro played dead when attackers shot dead environmentalist Berta Caceres in Honduras on March 3. The killing prompted widespread condemnation and calls for an independent investigation, in part due to her international prominence as the winner of the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize. (AP Photo/Marco Ugarte, File) Marco Ugarte

Police arrest a suspect in the murder of indigneous leader and environmentalist Berta Caceres in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, Monday, May 2, 2016. Honduran authorities have arrested four people in connection with Caceres' murder, including three who worked for a hydroelectric project she opposed. Caceres was shot dead by two unidentified men on March 3. (AP Photo/Fernando Antonio) Fernando Antonio

FILE - In this March 3, 2016 file photo, the body of slain Honduran indigenous leader and environmentalist Berta Caceres is lowered to the coroners office in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. Caceres slaying officially remained shrouded in mystery until Monday, May 2, 2016 when authorities detained four people in the case, including a security employee working on behalf of Desarrollos Energeticos SA, or DESA, the company carrying out the Agua Zarca hydroelectric project. But the fact that those arrested have DESA and army ties is no surprise to Caceres allies and relatives, who have long suspected the company and elements of Honduras government and military of being behind her killing. (AP Photo/Fernando Antonio, File) Fernando Antonio

FILE - In this March 8, 2016 file photo, a woman spray paints the phrase "Always alive" below a stenciled image of slain environmental activist Berta Caceres during the commemoration of International Women's Day in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. For months before her death, Caceres complained of regular threats warning her to stop leading protests opposing a hydroelectric project on her Lenca peoples ancestral lands. On March 3, armed men forced their way into Caceres home in the middle of the night, and shot her four times. (AP Photo/Fernando Antonio, File) Fernando Antonio

In this March 16 photo, a woman holds up a poster with a photo of slain environmental leader Berta Caceres during a protest in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. Caceres reported receiving threats from DESA security personnel, according to Billy Kyte, a campaigner on land and environmental defense at London-based Global Witness. DESA, or Desarrollos Energeticos SA, is the company carrying out the Agua Zarca hydroelectric project that Caceres led protests against. AP file Photo

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras  For months before her death, environmental activist Berta Caceres complained of repeated threats warning her to stop leading protests opposing a hydroelectric project on her Lenca peoples ancestral lands.

Then, on March 3, armed men forced their way into Caceres home in the middle of the night, shot her four times and wounded a visiting Mexican activist, who survived by playing dead. The killing prompted widespread condemnation and calls for an independent investigation, in part due to Caceres international prominence as the winner of the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize.

Caceres slaying remained officially shrouded in mystery until Monday, when authorities arrested four people in the case, including a security employee working on behalf of Desarrollos Energeticos SA, or DESA, the company carrying out the Agua Zarca hydroelectric project.

The fact that those arrested have DESA and army ties was no surprise to Caceres allies and relatives, who have long suspected the company and elements of Honduras government and military of being behind her killing.

Previously unpublicized court records from 2014 show that the government and DESA repeatedly sought to tar Caceres and her colleagues as violent anarchists bent on terrorizing the population through their protests at the project site. In filings seeking an injunction against the demonstrations, Caceres and two leaders of her organization were accused of usurpation, coercion and continued damage and even attempting to undermine the democratic order.

Activists say the demonizing language helped create a dangerous climate of hostility and harassment that they link directly to her murder.

These court documents go beyond just showing the contempt the dam company holds toward Berta Caceres and her organization, said Billy Kyte, a senior campaigner for land and environmental defense at London-based Global Witness, which acquired the records through lawyers working with Caceres people and shared them exclusively with The Associated Press.

Its evidence of a company ready to do whatever it takes to neutralize opposition to its business, he added. The legal harassment and threats ... are a stark reminder of the huge risks faced by Honduran activists.

Kyte said Caceres reported receiving threats from DESA security personnel, as well as an attempt by a company official to bribe her to call off the demonstrations.

Multiple phone calls to DESA went unanswered, and there was no response to questions delivered to its headquarters in Tegucigalpa. Via email, the public relations office of DESAs Agua Zarca project issued a statement denying responsibility for Caceres slaying but did not respond to AP questions about the court records. The Public Ministry, which is listed as a co-plaintiff, also declined multiple requests for comment on the documents.

Juan Sanchez Cantillano, who represented DESA in the appeals filings, said the case against Caceres group was based on Public Ministry accounts of damage allegedly caused by the protesters.

The company was harmed by the protests, which were not peaceful but instead violent, said Sanchez, who no longer represents the company. The protesters invaded the terrain of DESA and burned the machinery and the offices. ... They destroyed everything.

Honduras is one of the most violent countries on the planet, according to homicide statistics. Its also one of the most dangerous to be an environmental activist, with 109 killed between 2010 and 2015, according to Global Witness.

Violence against land activists is common across Latin America, with over 450 slain in 2010-14, the group said. Drivers of conflict include mining projects in Peru, ranching in the Brazilian Amazon, Colombias civil war and hydroelectric projects in Guatemala and Honduras.

The Agua Zarca project, located in the Montana Verde reserve in western Honduras, was conceived to harness the power of the Gualcarque River, which is considered sacred by the indigenous Lenca community.
Located in Jiangkou township of southwest China's Sichuan province, the 17.4-meter-long stone dragon dates back to Song Dynasty (960-1279). As the stone carving had been exposed to the elements, it was covered with mud and weeds. The local government started a renovation project on the stone dragon in March, and the work has completed in May.(Photo/Chinanews.com)
As a freshman, especially when you first get settle on campus, navigating the bus systems on campus  yes there is more than one  can be a bit of a challenge. Follow these tips though, and you will be a bus pro in no time.
The world may soon be a very different place, thanks to the rise of mass-market virtual reality. With the growing public investment in the technology, soon everything from video games and video conferences to employee training and sports practice may be done through the lenses of an Oculus Rift or an HTC Vive.
FILE - In this July 17, 2015 file photo, Marion "Suge" Knight sits in court during a bail hearing in his murder case, in Los Angeles. A Los Angeles judge ruled on Thursday, April 28, 2016, that jail officials properly obtained an order restricting the Knights access to non-attorney visitors, phone calls and mail while he remains behind bars while awaiting trial on murder and attempted murder charges. Knights lawyer had sought to overturn the restrictions, which were granted after a sheriffs detective requested them in a sealed court filing in February. (AP Photo/Nick Ut, File)

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LOS ANGELES (AP)  A judge rejected a motion by Marion "Suge" Knight's attorney to restore the former rap mogul's visits with family and receive mail and phone calls while he awaits trial in a murder case.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge William C. Ryan ruled Thursday that jail officials properly obtained an order earlier this year to restrict Knight's contact with the outside world to preserve jail security. Details about why the order was obtained remain under seal, but Ryan's ruling states it was done "to ensure institutional security" and not to punish the Death Row Records co-founder

Knight, 51, has pleaded not guilty to murder and attempted murder charges filed last year after he ran over two men outside a burger stand in Compton, California. He told a judge on April 21 that the restrictions were hampering his defense, which Ryan said was not the intention of the restrictions.

Knight's elderly parents are among those who have been unable to visit Knight since his visitation rights were rescinded in February. Ryan wrote that they can petition to visit their son and the request will be considered.

Knight's attorney Thaddeus Culpepper said he believes Ryan's order misstates the law.

"We're 100 percent correct on the law," Culpepper said Monday. "Mr. Knight's pretrial constitutional rights continue to be violated without justification and without notice. We'll continue to do what's in Suge Knight's best interests going forward."

Culpepper's motion accused Ryan and other judges of conspiring to deprive Knight of his rights. Ryan rejected a request by prosecutors to sanction Culpepper, but the judge wrote the accusations were contemptuous and if similar conduct is displayed in the future, sanctions might be imposed.

"Counsel's representations are patently and demonstrably false and defamatory," Ryan wrote.

Knight was a key player in the gangster rap scene that flourished in the 1990s and has been kept under tight security since he turned himself in to authorities after the fatal altercation in January 2015. His lawyers have said Knight was acting in self-defense when he ran over Cle "Bone" Sloan, who was punching Knight through the window of his pickup truck, and also ran over Terry Carter, who died from his injuries.

Death Row Records label once listed Dr. Dre, Tupac Shakur and Snoop Dogg among its artists. Knight lost control of the company after it was forced into bankruptcy.

He faces potential life sentences if convicted because of prior convictions for armed robbery and assault with a gun.
Yaney Cajigal, left, and Dalwin Valdes hold up U.S. and Cuban flags as they watch the arrival of Carnival's Adonia cruise ship from Miami, in Havana, Cuba, Monday, May 2, 2016. The Adonia's arrival is the first step toward a future in which thousands of ships a year could cross the Florida Straits, long closed to most U.S.-Cuba traffic due to tensions that once brought the world to the brink of nuclear war. AP Photo/Fernando Medina)

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By MICHAEL WEISSENSTEIN, Associated Press

HAVANA (AP)  Greeted with rum drinks and salsa dancers, the first passengers to cruise from the U.S. to Cuba in nearly 40 years streamed Monday into a crowd cheering the rebirth of commercial travel on waters that served as a stage for a half-century of Cold War hostility.

Many watching the festive arrival praised a Cuban government decision to drop a longstanding ban on Cuban-born people returning to their homeland by sea, a step that allowed 16 Cuban-Americans to make the journey from Miami.

"This is history," said Mercedes Lopez, a 54-year-old nurse who waited for hours to see Carnival Cruise Line's 704-passenger Adonia pull up to Havana's two-berth cruise terminal. "We Cubans must unite, all of us. This is a step forward, a little step toward normalization, peace, family unification."

The passengers of the Adonia were welcomed by live music and dancing inside Havana's single state-run cruise terminal. Outside, police carved a single lane into the crowd of hundreds of Cubans waiting in Old Havana's Plaza San Francisco for passengers taking walking tours of the restored colonial center. The group included dozens of plainclothes security agents and hawkers promoting restaurants and souvenir shops, as well as many trying to witness history.

Cruise ships stopped crossing the Florida Straits from the U.S. after a brief window in the late 1970s when President Jimmy Carter allowed virtually all U.S. travel to Cuba. U.S. cruises to Cuba once again become possible after Presidents Barack Obama and Raul Castro declared detente on Dec. 17, 2014.

Both sides hope it is the first step toward a future in which thousands of ships a year could cross the Florida Straits, long closed to most U.S.-Cuba traffic due to tensions that once brought the world to the brink of nuclear war.

"I feel hopeful for the people of Cuba and for Cuba, hopeful that Cuba can realize its full potential," said North Miami Beach City Manager Ana Garcia, who left the island nation in 1968 when she was 6.

Setting sail from Miami shortly before 5 p.m. Sunday, the Adonia took nearly 17 hours to cross the Florida Straits, steaming through a waterway blockaded by the U.S. during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Tens of thousands of Cubans have fled to Florida on homemade rafts in recent decades, with untold thousands dying in the process.

The number of Cubans trying to cross the straits is at its highest point in eight years, and cruises and merchant ships regularly rescue rafters from the straits.

U.S. cruises are expected to bring Cuba tens of millions of dollars in badly needed foreign hard currency if traffic increases as expected. More than a dozen lines have announced plans to run U.S.-Cuba cruises, and if all actually begin operations, Cuba could earn more than $80 million a year, the U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council said in a report Monday.

The Adonia will take eight days to circumnavigate Cuba and return to Miami. Part of the Fathom brand, the Adonia is one of Carnival's smaller ships, roughly half the size of some larger European vessels that already dock in Havana.

Environmental scientists fear that if they're joined by dozens more ships, there will be serious damage to an island that boasts the Caribbean's healthiest marine life in large part due to decades without large-scale development.

"An influx of supersized ships in coastal waters of Cuba presents real risks to fragile coral reef ecosystems," said Dan Whittle, head of the Environmental Defense Fund's Cuba program. "Discharge of sewage into near pristine waters may degrade water quality and harm coral reefs and marine life."

Before the 1959 Cuban revolution, cruise ships regularly traveled from the U.S. to Cuba, with elegant Caribbean excursions departing from New York and $42 overnight weekend jaunts leaving twice a week from Miami, said California-based cruise ship historian Michael L. Grace.

New York cruises featured dressy dinners, movies, dancing and betting on "horse races" in which stewards dragged wooden horses around a ballroom track according to rolls of dice that determined how many feet each could move per turn.

Cruises dwindled in the years leading up to the revolution and ended entirely after Castro overthrew the U.S.-backed government.

After Carter dropped limits on Cuba travel, 400 passengers, including musical legend Dizzy Gillespie sailed from New Orleans to Cuba on a 1977 "Jazz Cruise" aboard the MS Daphne. Like the Adonia, it sailed despite dockside demonstrations by Cuban exiles, and continued protests and bomb threats forced Carras Cruises to cancel additional sailings, Grace said.

The following year, however, Daphne made a several cruises from New Orleans to Cuba and other destinations in the Caribbean.

Cuba cut back on all cruise tourism in 2005 after Fidel Castro blasted cruise ships during a 4-hour speech on state television.

"Floating hotels come, floating restaurants, floating theaters, floating diversions visit countries to leave their trash, their empty cans and papers for a few miserable cents," Castro said.

Today, the Cuban government sees cruises as an easy source of revenue that can bring thousands more American travelers without placing additional demand on the country's maxed-out food supplies and overbooked hotels.

The number of Americans coming by boat has climbed since 2014, including passengers on cruise ships registered in third countries and sailing from other Caribbean ports. Traffic remains low, however, for a major tourist attraction only 90 miles (145 kilometers) from Florida.

Cruise traffic is key to the government's reengineering of the industrial Port of Havana as a tourist attraction. After decades of treating the more than 500-year-old harbor as a receptacle for industrial waste, the government is moving container traffic to the Port of Mariel west of the city, tearing out abandoned buildings and slowly renovating decrepit warehouses as breweries and museums connected by waterfront promenades.
John Rinaldi of Mountain View displays a nice limit of Sacramento River striped bass from one of the many striper boils encountered this week with guide Dave Jacobs of Professional Guide Service.

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Sacramento River stripers

As I reported last week, the stage was set for some incredible striper fishing this past week with the release of hatchery fall salmon into the Sacramento River near Battle Creek weeks ago. A large school of migrating hatchery fall salmon have traveled through Butte City, Princeton, Colusa and Meridian. They are now heading toward Verona and being devoured by this season's spring striper run in the area. We have literally caught and released well over 100 stripers with the average striped bass going 22 to 25 inches or 4 to 10 pounds. We have landed some larger stripers in the 12- to 17-pound class as well recently. The stripers are easily able to eat these salmon due to extreme low river conditions from the massive irrigation pumping in the valley and the lack of increased releases from Keswick reservoir near Redding. The exposed sand and gravel bars from the low Sacramento River is making it very easy for the stripers to trap and eat the fall salmon smolts from the hatchery. Casting small, white paddle-tailed plastics are working best when the stripers are boiling on the salmon smolts. With the warmer river conditions there has also been some striper spawns happening in the evenings.

Sacramento River salmon

We have some tremendous salmon fishing news to report about this year's Sacramento River salmon season. It is now official as the California Department of Fish and Game Commission has approved and announced this year's 2016 Sacramento River salmon season. This year the Sacramento River will receive a full salmon fishing season with a two-king-salmon-per-person daily bag limit as reported by Sacramento River salmon fishing guide Dave Jacobs. This year salmon fishing will officially open one hour before sunrise on July 16, 150 feet below the Sycamore Boat Launch in Red Bluff, downriver. The upper reaches of the Sacramento River will officially open Aug. 1 from the Deschutes Bridge near Anderson downriver to the Carquinez Bridge. This year the salmon season will remain open through Dec. 16. This is welcome news for some of the greatest and most prized salmon fishing on the West Coast. The Sacramento River is home to the California state record king salmon  an incredible 88-pounder.

This week's Sacramento River salmon fishing update and striper fishing report is courtesy of Dave Jacobs Professional Guide Service. For more local river fishing information or to book you fishing vacation, call guide Dave Jacobs direct at 530-646-9110 or visit his website at www.sacramentofishing.com.
Tommy Botell

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By Denny Walsh, Sacramento Bee

The United States has agreed to pay a Tehama County family $3.5 million to extract itself from a lawsuit over the death of 9-year-old Tommy Botell in Lassen Volcanic National Park.

The youngster perished during a 2009 outing when a wall that had deteriorated from lack of maintenance gave way, rolled over him, and crushed his brainstem as his horrified family looked on.

The ensuing lawsuit on behalf of the family was marred by what Sacramento federal judges perceived as unethical conduct on the part of some park employees, particularly Superintendent Darlene Koontz.

Defense of the suit began to disintegrate in scathing findings and recommendations authored by U.S. Magistrate Judge Gregory G. Hollows, who said Koontz knew the wall was dangerous yet didn't fix it, then attempted to orchestrate a cover-up following the incident by causing evidence to be destroyed and lying under oath in a deposition.

U.S. District Judge Troy L. Nunley ultimately stripped the government of its defenses, which led to the settlement.

"The conduct of the National Park Service and some of its employees, leading up to this tragedy and during the litigation, make me ashamed that they represent the United States of America," said Steve Campora, lead lawyer for the Botells.

Through attorney Catia Saraiva, who worked with Campora in pressing the Botells' claims, the family issued this statement Wednesday:

"This was a horrific event that no family should have to endure. Our grief and loss were compounded by the refusal of the Park Service to accept responsibility and to act responsibly during the lawsuit."

U.S. Attorney Benjamin Wagner, whose office handled the defense of the Park Service, said Tommy's death was a tragedy both for his family and the Park Service, and added that he is glad to have the matter behind him.

"As the settlement agreement indicates," Wagner said, "it is in no way intended to be, and should not be construed as, an admission of fault or wrongdoing on the part of Park Service employees."

The government's last stand was based on the so-called "discretionary function" statute. It divests federal district courts of jurisdiction over claims based on "the exercise or performance or the failure to exercise or perform a discretionary function or duty on the part of a federal agency or an employee of the government, whether or not the discretion involved (was) abused."

Thus, government lawyers argued, even if park employees knew the wall posed a serious danger but did not repair it or block public access, the court had no jurisdiction.

Nunley made short work of that position. He described it as "unavailing" because the park's safety program mandated closure pending corrective action of known dangers such as the retaining wall that crumbled under Tommy and his sister when they sat on it. The judge found that "the safety program constituted a policy directing mandatory and specific actions that were admittedly not followed."

Under the terms of the settlement, the family mother, father and two daughters will receive direct payments totaling $2.85 million, out of which its attorneys will be paid. In addition, the government will pay $650,000 for annuities to benefit the older daughter, who sat with Tommy on the retaining wall next to a mountain hiking trail and who suffered severe physical and psychological injuries when the wall collapsed; and the younger daughter, who witnessed the death of her brother and suffered emotional injuries.

As parts of the wall fell upon them, the two children tumbled about 30 feet to the trail below, where the rest of the family hiked behind them. Their father managed to grab his daughter. The mother scrambled to Tommy.

"Mommy, I can't see," he said, and died in her arms.

Reading on a phone or tablet? Click here to download and read a copy of the settlement
Jim Schultz/Record Searchlight Jose Orlando Luna, right, and Felix Ruben Ayala listen to testimony during their Thursday preliminary hearing.

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By Jim Schultz of the Redding Record Searchlight

This is probably not what prosecutors envisioned when they dismissed  and then re-filed with three additional charges  the criminal case against two Shingletown men accused of robbing a Redding hydroponics store last year.

Felix Ruben Ayala, 36, and Jose Orlando Luna, 51, were ordered Thursday to stand trial on robbery and a series of other felonies during what was their second preliminary hearing since December.

But two kidnapping to commit robbery charges, as well as two assault counts, were dismissed due to insufficient evidence.

Additionally, their $500,000 bail was reduced to $250,000 for each of them.

The two men are due back in Superior Court on May 25 for the possible setting of a trial date.

Last month prosecutors dismissed, only to re-file, the criminal case against the two men, essentially starting the case all over again.

Shasta County Deputy District Attorney Emily Mees said further investigation into the case prompted the decision to add the additional charges, including false imprisonment by violence.

But Superior Court Judge Dan Flynn ruled Thursday there was insufficient evidence to hold the pair on kidnapping charges, as well as two assault counts tied to two specific victims.

Still, he ordered the two men to stand trial on nine felonies, including robbery, false imprisonment by violence, assault and the unlawful taking of a vehicle.

The two men are due back in Superior Court on May 25 for the possible setting of a trial date.

Ayala and Luna are suspected of being two of possibly six men, some of whom allegedly dressed up as federal agents, who participated in the Oct. 26 robbery of the Bare Roots Hydroponics & Organic Supply store on East Cypress Avenue.

Mees has said Ayala and Luna did not actually enter the business during the robbery, but believes they, especially Luna, played an integral role in its planning and execution.

It's estimated they stole $5,000 from the cash register, an additional $600 from the safe, and also took a large automatic marijuana trimming machine valued at $4,500, according to the police report.

Ayala and Luna were arrested Oct. 30 when Shasta County sheriff's deputies and California Highway Patrol officers raided a home on Scharsch Meadow Lane in Shingletown.
Joe Szydlowski/Record Searchlight

A California Highway Patrol officer talks with a witness to a high speed motorcycle chase on Thursday in north Redding on Lake Boulevard. A tow truck drives away with the bike.

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By Joe Szydlowski of the Redding Record Searchlight

A 20-year-old Redding man was taken into custody after he led officers on a freeway chase that reached 120 mph before he crashed Wednesday, authorities say.

Hunter Livingston is accused of felony evasion after he allegedly fled on his Kawasaki motorcycle when a California Highway Patrol officer tried to pull him over for speeding.

The officer, Shon Hill, said as he was getting on southbound Interstate 5 from Oasis Road he saw the bike flying down the ramp. He said he tried to pull over the motorcyclist, later identified as Livingston, who sped off.

"(Livingston) evidently decided not to stop because he didn't have a license, registration or insurance," Hill said.

Hill gave pursuit but said he lost sight of the speeding Livingston, who reached speeds of 120 mph.

The rider exited at Lake Boulevard and headed westbound until he reached Masonic Avenue, where he crossed into the path of a 2015 Kia Optima driven by John "Tommy" Duggan.

Duggan said he was turning left into the Raley's shopping center to pick up his check from work when the rider came speeding into his path. "He blew through," said Duggan, who had purchased his car about 6 months ago. "He just smacked the front end."

Redding police said Livingston ran a red light when he collided with Duggan, whose bike skidded for about 30 feet before throwing him off.

He slid another 50 feet, though he suffered only road rash and said he was "sore," police officers said.

Then, Livingston got up and tried to run away, Duggan said.

Livingston was taken to Shasta Regional Medical Center for evaluation and then arrested on suspicion of felony evasion, Hill said.

Duggan's car sustained damage to its tire, rim and fender, he said.

For him, it was the second time a crash damaged his car at the intersection. He said he previously had parked a car at the gas station when someone drove off the roadway, through a gas pump at the Chevron station and hit his vehicle, he said.
Zhai Xiangli teaches his students in his class. (Photo/Chinanews.com)

"Although I am diagnosed with cancer, I will keep teaching my students here. My time with students is the hope of my life, "said Zhai Xiangli, a primary school teacher in a village of central Hebei province.

Zhai started his career as a teacher in 1974. In these 42 years, he has been awarded the title of Model Teacher for many times by the local authorities. His students are at the top of all the students in his county in subjects he teaches.

Zhai cares the left-behind children in his class so much that they call him "fatherly teacher". Whenever they want to say something from deep in the heart, they would like to share with Zhai.

Zhai said that he had a dream of giving all his love to his students, especially to those left-behind children. He said that these children lack knowledge and parental care and warmth.

Zhai is proud that he helps numerous dropouts to continue their study in school. It is said that among all of Zhai's students, 398 have graduated from universities, colleges and vocational schools.

After years of overwork, Zhai went to hospital and was diagnosed with cancer in 2011.

Zhai Xiangli marks assignments. (Photo/Chinanews.com)
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Shasta County deputies shut down Airport Road and warned residents to stay inside Thursday evening while they negotiated with a man who said he wanted to die.

Deputies said they later learned the 26-year-old man was a resident of a group home in the area and had a history of mental health issues.

Deputies described this situation that started about 7:15 p.m. Thursday:

An employee of Dutch Bros. on Airport Road near Rancho Road called authorities to say a man was acting strange and made a comment about wanting to kill himself. He also told the employee he had a gun, although the employee didn't see one.

Deputies found the man walking north on Airport Road, just north of Blue Jay Drive, a few blocks away from the beverage kiosk.

Since officers didn't know if the man had a gun or not, they parked a safe distance away but still within shouting range. The man repeated he wanted to die and he pulled what looked like a gun from his coat pocket. He pressed the barrel against his head while deputies started to negotiate.

At that point authorities closed Airport Road north and south of Blue Jay Drive and notified neighbors to stay inside via an information phone system.

For about 20 minutes, the unidentified man moved the gun around, pointing it at his head, putting it in his mouth and under his chin, saying he was going to shoot himself. The man never pointed the gun at deputies.

Deputies finally said if the man would put the gun on the ground, they would let him make a phone call. The man agreed to drop the gun and walk away. When deputies attempted to take him into custody, the man struggled before he was put in handcuffs.

Officers earlier used binoculars to look at the man's gun, but could not tell if it was real. On closer examination after it was on the ground, the gun turned out to be a silver, plastic replica gun that looked real from a distance, but did not have an orange tip that would identify it as fake.

Officers let the man make a phone call as promised, and he called a group home representative. The man was taken to Shasta Regional Medical Center for a mental health evaluation.
Central Valley AP history teacher Madison Koerperich, from left, talks with students Chaundra Gomes and Mattie Anderson Thursday at the school in Shasta Lake.

SHARE Greg Barnette/Record Searchlight Central Valley AP history teacher Madison Koerperich, from left, talks with students Chaundra Gomes and Mattie Anderson Thursday at the school in Shasta Lake. Greg Barnette/Record Searchlight Central Valley AP biology students Kaysie Back, from left, Rachel Veenstra, Isabelle Haeckel and Andrew Crackel listen to teacher Bret Barnes Thursday at the school in Shasta Lake.

By Alayna Shulman of the Redding Record Searchlight

At some high schools, Advanced Placement courses end up essentially doubling as candidate-pools for class valedictorian, with only the highest achieving students on the roster.

But at Shasta Lake's Central Valley High School, anyone can sign up for the classes that double as college credit with a passed exam.

"We really don't have any criteria other than the student wants to do it," Principal Ryan Johnson said. "If a student is willing and ready, we're going to let them in every time, because we want them to have that experience."

Johnson believes that's part of the reason the Gateway Unified School District  of which Central Valley is the only high school  got its first-ever spot on College Board's "AP Honor Roll."

It's a bragging-right reserved for the 425 school districts across the U.S. and Canada that best showcase they've both increased access to AP courses and maintained or improved test scores for the classes.

"We're not going to put kids in situations where they're going to fail, but we want kids to challenge themselves," he said. "We'll get students say, 'Hey, I'm not an AP kid.' And I spend a lot of my time, even as principal, trying to talk kids into the program."

So far, it seems to be working.

Johnson said the school's overall AP enrollment has grown from 77 students in the 2012-13 school year to 119 this year, and the number of kids who took the optional college-credit test for the courses went up from 71 to 88 in the same span. Meanwhile, the total number of AP tests given at the school is at an all-time high  157 and passing scores have gone up from 19 percent in 2012-13 to 36 percent last school year, Johnson said.

The district also has plans to add more AP classes  which could translate to more new AP students, if the current offerings weren't appealing to them  and a support group next year to help the kids who may be struggling.

"These students have potential and are capable of higher-level thinking," AP English teacher Keri Mulrennan said. "A lot of them are willing to roll the dice."

Take senior Sam Caires, 18, who said she was more or less recruited into taking AP art as an underclasswoman.

While Caires said she hadn't really thought about it before the teacher's suggestion, her passion for the class was evident Thursday as she perfected her latest piece: a watercolor painting of a two hands folding a mask in half, which represents "being genuine and being true to yourself" and ties into her project-theme of human emotion.

Meanwhile, fellow senior Corinne Biencourt, 17, sat nearby tweaking her charcoal and color-penciled drawing of slain gay-rights icon Harvey Milk, one of the final pieces in her human rights project.

"You feel rewarded," Biencourt said.

Though, of course, just having the will or passion doesn't make the classes easy.

"You're asking a kid, basically, to leap-frog. ... It takes a lot of guts for those kids," Mulrennan said. "I think for a lot of them, there are some highs and a lot of lows."

But Mulrennan and Johnson said that's part of the AP experience as well  even if you don't pass, knowing you tried and pushed yourself can be its own reward.

Mulrennan even had one student tell her, "Everything's easier for me now, after going though that," she said.

And that's particularly true for students from poor households with parents who didn't go to college.

"There's a need for psychological victory," Johnson said. "And I think in a lot of cases, we've seen a lot of students achieve that."
FILE - In this July 16, 2015 file photo, Bruce Schillin exhales vapor from an e-cigarette at the Vapor Spot, in Sacramento, Calif. California Gov. Jerry Brown signed six bills restricting tobacco use in California, including one to raise the legal age to buy tobacco for smoking, dipping, chewing and vaping from 18 to 21. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli, File)

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By Damon Arthur of the Redding Record Searchlight

California Gov. Jerry Brown signed laws this week making it illegal to sell tobacco products to anyone under 21 years of age.

That didn't worry 20-year-old Johnica Starks. She took another drag on her cigarette and shrugged.

"To me, these are just like any other drug," Starks said, flipping her hand and motioning toward the cigarette between her fingers. "You'll find a way to get them."

The laws, which go into effect June 9, also deem electronic cigarettes and the liquids used in them as tobacco products, making them also off limits to those under 21.

"Guess I'm having someone buy my e-juice for me," Starks said, referring to the liquid used in e-cigarettes.

But the state law affecting younger smokers was just the first of the new regulations this week impacting smokers, tobacco companies and e-cigarette makers.

A day after the governor signed the new tobacco law, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration ruled that e-cigarettes and premium cigars will also be regulated the same way as tobacco cigarettes and regular cigars.

Kari Hess, co-owner of Nor Cal Vape in Redding, said the state and federal laws were a double whammy for her business.

"It's been a bad 24 hours, back to back," Hess said.

Under the rule, the FDA would have to approve all tobacco products not currently regulated that hit stores after February 2007. Most e-cigarette products weren't around nine years ago.

Premium, hand-rolled cigars would also be included in the new regulation. The rule also prohibits the sale of "covered tobacco products" to individuals under the age of 18 and requires the display of health warnings on cigarette tobacco, roll-your own tobacco, and covered tobacco product packages and in advertisements.

That means nearly every e-cigarette on the market  and every different flavor and nicotine level  would require a separate application for federal approval. Each application could cost $1 million or more, Jeff Stier, an e-cigarette advocate with the National Center for Public Policy Research and industry officials, told the Associated Press.

"It will be a de facto ban," Hess said.

Jessica Duckett, project coordinator for Shasta County's Tobacco Education Program, said she welcomed the new measures as means to prevent kids from taking up smoking when they are in their teens.

"What we are hoping to see is less young adults smoking," Duckett said.

The rate of smoking in Shasta County is higher than statewide, Duckett said, and across California, most smokers are in the 18- to 24-year-old age group.

Duckett said raising the smoking age will make it harder for younger teens to take up smoking or chewing tobacco.

Typically, teens 16 or 17 years old get into using tobacco by having an 18-year-old friend or family member buy cigarettes for them. Duckett said 21-year-olds are not in the same age group as 16-year-olds and not as likely to purchase tobacco for them.

Hess said she didn't think e-cigarettes should be lumped in with tobacco products. She said vaping products are a less dangerous alternative to smoking.

Making e-cigarettes harder to obtain will force people to return to traditional smoking, which will benefit big tobacco companies, she said.

"It's really a backward step for public health and a step forward for big tobacco," Hess said.

Yvette Kettle of Redding agreed smoking is a habit she has found hard to shake. But to her, it comes down to fairness. How can 18-year-olds be asked to join the military and not be allowed to make an adult decision for themselves, she asked.

The state laws exempt military personnel with an I.D. card, but not others who qualify to serve.

"It's only fair. Why can you give your life, or almost give your life, and not be allowed to smoke?" Kettle said.
What lies behind Donald Trump's nomination victory? Received wisdom among conservatives is that he, the outsider, senseda massive revolt of the Republican rank and file.

This is the narrative: GOP political leaders made promises of all kinds and received in return, during President Obama's years, major electoral victories that gave them the House, the Senate, 12 new governorships and 30 state houses. Yet they didn't deliver.

The base felt betrayed. By RINOs who sold out. Repeal Obamacare? No. Defund Planned Parenthood? No. Stop tax-and-spend liberalism? No. Obama walked all over them.

Then the paradox. If insufficient resistance to Obama's liberalism created this sense of betrayal, why did voters choose the least conservative candidate? Who donated money to Democrats to whom the GOP establishment is said to have caved, including Chuck Schumer, Harry Reid and Hillary Clinton.

Trump has expressed sympathy for socialized medicine far left of Obamacare. Trump lists health care as one of the federal government's three main responsibilities (after national security); Republicans adamantly oppose federal intervention in health care. He also lists education, which Republicans believe should be left to the states.

And the same conservatives who railed against the Republican establishment for failing to defund Planned Parenthood now back a candidate who praises its good works.

Moreover, Trump has no affinity for modern conservatism's distaste for government. If the establishment didn't resist Obama's Big Government policies, the beneficiary should logically be radical, anti-government Ted Cruz.

Cruz's entire career has consisted of promoting tea-party constitutionalism against party leaders who had joined "the Washington cartel." Yet when Cruz got to his one-on-one with Trump in Indiana, Republicans chose Trump and his idiosyncratic populism.

Indiana marks the most radical transformation of the philosophy of a major party in our lifetime. The Democrats continue their ever-expansive liberalism today. The GOP, the nation's conservative party, has just gone populist.

It's an ideological earthquake. How radical? Said Trump last week: "Folks, I'm a conservative. But at this point, who cares?"

Who cares? Wasn't caring about conservatism the very essence of the talk radio, tea party, grass-roots revolt against the so-called establishment? They cheered Cruz when he led the government shutdown in the name of conservative principles. Yet when the race came down to Cruz and Trump, these opinion-shaping conservatives affected a studied Trump-leaning neutrality.

Trump won. True, the charismatically challenged Cruz was up against a prepackaged celebrity, an already famous showman.

True, Trump appealed to the economic anxiety of a squeezed middle class and the status anxiety of a formerly dominant white working class. But the prevailing conservative narrative  of anti-establishment fury  was different and is now exposed as a convenient fable. If Trump is a great big middle finger aimed at a Republican establishment that has abandoned its principles, isn't it curious that the party has chosen a man without any?

Trump doesn't even pretend to have any, conservative or otherwise. He lauds his own "flexibility," his freedom from political or philosophical consistency. And he elevates unpredictability to a foreign policy doctrine.

The ideological realignment is stark. On major issues  such as the central question of retaining America's global pre-eminence as leader of the free world, sustainer of Western alliances and protector of the post-World War II order  the GOP candidate stands decidedly to the left of the Democrat.

And who knows on what else. On entitlements? On health care? On taxes? We will soon find out. But as Trump himself says of being a conservative  at this point, who cares?

As of Tuesday night, certainly not the GOP.

Charles Krauthammer's email address is letters@charleskrauthammer.com.
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Last year Redding learned more about the Restoration Center, a facility in San Antonio, Texas, that provides one-stop services for mentally ill offenders. It gives them a place to overcome crises, get connected to help and break the incarceration cycle.

Its founder, Leon Evans, came to Redding to share more about the center in a talk hosted by the Women's Fund of the Shasta Regional Community Foundation and the Record Searchlight. Many local leaders, policy-setters, advocates for the mentally ill and lawmakers packed the Sequoia Middle School auditorium to learn first-hand how the Restoration Center reduced crime rates, eliminated the need for additional jail cells and saved San Antonio taxpayers about $10 million a year. It turns out it's less expensive to address mental illness on the front end with medical help and by providing a safe place for them to get stable than resorting to sending them to jail and packing the courts.

Redding Mayor Missy McArthur will lead a delegation to San Antonio later this month to see first-hand how the center operates. She'll be joined by Shasta County Health and Human Services Agency Director Donnell Ewert, Lynn Dorrah of Hill Country Health & Wellness Center, Empire Recovery Center Administrator Marjeanne Stone, and Good News Rescue Mission Executive Director Jonathan Anderson. McArthur also has invited Lea Tate, a clinical psychologist and Redding City Council candidate. All of them attended Evans' presentation and are eager to learn more, McArthur said.

They'll see firsthand the Restoration Center's services that include detox, sobering and mental health crisis intervention, and minor medical emergency services. The center serves 25,000 people a year  men and women who before would have been taken to jail.

Since the first crisis unit opened in 2003, Evans said the city's downtown homeless population has dropped 85 percent and talk of building a new jail with 1,000 more beds has stopped.

There also has been a 50 percent reduction in the number of frequent visitors to hospital emergency rooms in greater San Antonio, Evans said.

The Restoration Center came about in part from an $82 million grant from the state, and it would take similar coordination with our elected officials in Sacramento to find the kind of money it would take to open a center here. That would take real leadership  we all know it's not easy to get the state's attention for our rural region. But a project in Shasta County could be packaged and sold as a demonstration model, to be replicated throughout California if it succeeds.

Already city and county leaders are considering creating a sobering center as part of their response to the Blueprint for Public Safety from Matrix Consulting Group. That would allow law enforcement officers to take intoxicated people to a place other than jail where they could sober up and connect with services to help them with their addictions. It would be a start, but shouldn't be confused with the full suite of services offered by the Restoration Center.

Redding Police Chief Robert Paoletti said his officers made 979 arrests since 2014 of folks they could have taken to a sobering center instead of to jail, which takes considerably more of an officer's time and taxpayers' dollars.

McArthur is also considering visiting Santa Barbara to check out a nine-bed sobering center that city opened. That fits more in the scale of what local leaders are considering creating with a one-time $375,000 seed fund and that they hope would be operated and paid for by a nonprofit organization. It's also the same facility the Safe City Project looked at when it suggested Shasta County create a sobering center.

"These are baby steps," McArthur said of this exploratory phase by the nonprofit sending representatives with her to San Antonio. "And after, it will be a foot race to the finish line."

Redding and Shasta County residents are eager to see the end of that race when one part of an overall solution to public safety is in place.
The revival in the economy is led by investment and growth in real estate, but the problems are far from over, notes Akash Prakash



The most important factor behind the recent stabilisation of the Chinese economy seems to be the sharp turnaround in real estate investment.

Investment in real estate was up 6.2 per cent in Q1 2016, after rising just one per cent in 2015.

Coming into 2016, most analysts had predicted a decline in real estate fixed asset investment with new construction starts down 20 per cent and property sales volumes down three to five per cent.

This negative view was based on the high inventories of unsold housing as well as the excesses in commercial real estate.

The conventional view was that it would take another year or two of subdued real estate investment to bring inventories under control.

The weakness in global commodities was also largely linked to this subdued outlook for Chinese new construction demand, as construction accounted for the majority of commodity consumption in the Chinese economy.

The question then has to be asked as to how sustainable is this turnaround in real estate investment?

Has China been able to salvage growth only by inflating a housing bubble?

If this growth is unsustainable does it mean that we are only postponing the economic restructuring and change in growth drivers that China so desperately needs?

Are we front loading growth only to have a more severe slowdown in 2017 as the real estate investment surge invariable cools? Investors may be celebrating China stabilising, commodity prices may have rebounded, but this may all reverse in short order.

The turning point for this revival in real estate seems to have been a focus on pushing housing sales from the very top of the Chinese leadership and clearly articulated by Xi Jinping in December.

This signal was used by local governments to push aggressively to ramp sales.

In February, minimum down payment for mortgages was reduced to 20 per cent and transaction taxes were also cut.

The central bank also encouraged banks to push mortgage lending. So much so that mortgage lending in Q1 was slightly over a trillion renminbi, compared to 2.7 trillion renminbi for all of 2015.

Nationwide housing sales surged 33 per cent in Q1, compared to two per cent growth in December 2015.

The surge in sales has invariable had an impact on prices as well, with tier-I cities in China experiencing price gains similar to the peaks of the last cycle.

The beginnings of a price spurt are now visible in tier-II and tier-III cities as well. As sales picked up, logically investment followed.

Historically the Chinese authorities have tightened housing and credit policies whenever housing prices nationally have diverged significantly from the long-term trend. This is because of political compulsions, and to make sure housing does not become unaffordable for the young and middle class.

With prices beginning to rise faster than the trend, if this were to continue and accelerate further, at some stage we will see measures from the central government to cool down the property markets.

This has been the historical pattern of behaviour of the Chinese policy makers.

They may not reverse course entirely but will certainly endeavour to slow the housing markets, if price rise get out of hand. Any pullback on mortgage financing or other steps to cool the markets will impact sales and ultimately new construction and investment.

This may not happen immediately, but we should be aware of the risks of a policy reversal.

Taking another perspective on the property market recovery, looking at unsold inventories, global investment research organisation Gavekal has drilled down into regional level data to try and understand the fundamental moorings of this recovery.

Their conclusions are as follows.

The inventory overhang which had slowed the property markets is regional. There are some provinces, 13 in total, where inventories are down substantially (back to mid-2011 levels).

Here new construction makes sense.

In the remaining 18 provinces inventories have hardly declined at all. In 10 provinces there has been no decline at all. There is no reason for construction to pick up in these areas.

Drilling deeper, they tried to establish the health of the construction pickup, is it concentrated in the provinces where inventories have declined and new build is needed?

Or have we seen investment across China, even in provinces where inventories are still sky high?

Their analysis shows that in the 13 healthy provinces, real estate investment hit a bottom in November, rising one per cent in February.

In the 18 more challenged provinces, real estate investment rose even faster, by six per cent, with construction starts up by 23 per cent.

Given the surge in construction activity in these provinces despite no improvement in their inventories of unsold properties, the most likely explanation is the investment is being driven by the state.

If true, this is the exact opposite of the stated policy, showing the pressures to shore up growth.

If as their data indicates, the progress on inventory destocking is limited, when taken on a nationwide basis, then the sustainability of this real estate rebound is in question.

It seems that only in a few states can a revival of housing starts be justified on the fundamentals of demand, unsold inventory etc.

Construction activity and new investment will invariably fade in those areas where any new construction is only leading to a further build in inventories.

The underlying rational market based response component of the current recovery in real estate investment seems to quite limited.

We may see a sharp downturn in construction activity once again, once the current stimulus runs out.

The stability in China's growth numbers have been welcomed by investors globally.

It has taken the bear case off the table for global commodities, EM currencies and the EM asset class.

However, the source of this stability is largely based on the revival of investment in real estate.

This is where there has been a positive surprise.

This surge in real estate activity seems to be based on shaky foundations. It may be borrowing growth from the future and setting up the Chinese economy for another sharp slowdown in 2017.

The stabilisation in the Chinese economy is not based on the economy weaning itself off the old investment based drivers of growth.

The growth concerns around China and its economic model, rampant till 45 days ago could very easily resurface if this property revival fades.

As investors we have to be aware of this risk and closely monitor it. Neither China nor EM as a whole may be out of the woods just yet.

The image is used for representational purpose only. Photograph: Reuters

Akash Prakash is at Amansa Capital. These views are his own
The question may sound irrelevant, but several public sector banks seem to have a different view, says Shyamal Majumdar.

Image: Bank managements say it is wrong to suggest they follow a uniform rule of denying the right to resign. Photograph: Reuters

Business Standard carried a letter to the editor last week, which said public sector banks (PSB) had taken away the right to leave a job.



The letter went on to add that in PSBs, officers were not allowed to resign, except on medical grounds, and their applications for resignation were rejected summarily, even if there were no vigilance cases pending against them.

Sounds absurd? Not really. Here is the account of a bank officer who resigned after she was transferred to a place that had no direct road or rail link with her hometown where her family was based.



Before resigning, she made representations to the bank, which rejected her plea on the ground that it would set a bad precedent. She ultimately resigned and gave due notice.

Conventional wisdom says that should have been the end of her professional relationship with the bank. But that wasn't the case.



The bank didn't accept her resignation and sought an explanation from her for taking unauthorised leave for 10 days sometime in the past.

Her explanation that it was an emergency leave and that she was willing to pay up for those days of absence obviously didn't wash, as the bank management asked her to return to her place of posting till the "dispute" was satisfactorily resolved.



After many emails and letters went back and forth, the employee has taken the bank to court for denial of her fundamental right to leave a job.

Yet another PSB employee in his early 50s says he submitted his resignation, as he was getting bored with the nature of the job and wanted to explore options.



What followed was a nightmare: he was told there were several pending customer complaints about the kind of service he had delivered during his postings in several places across India and that he had to wait till all these complaints reached a closure.



The bank also said his continuation in service was necessary, as his presence would be required while dealing with these pending complaints.



Repeated requests to the top management and explanations that none of the complaints indicated any fraud on his part helped him.



His resignation was accepted - but over nine months after he had put in his papers.

Still, the employee considers himself lucky for two reasons: one, he didn't have to go through the "expensive" process of litigation and, two, the nine-month gap didn't affect him much, as he was anyway planning to take a long sabbatical.



But there are cases galore of employees failing to join another company of their choice, as the banks concerned delayed the relieving letters on some pretext or the other.

To be sure, things aren't usually back to normal if an employee withdraws the resignation following counseling by the higher authorities.



A now-retired bank official recounts how the mental harassment started after he withdrew his resignation rather late in his career.



Three months after the withdrawal, he was transferred to what the bank called a "less taxing" job.



The shift happened barely a couple of months before his promotion process was due, ruining his prospects.

These are not isolated cases. In a December 2014 case (Shashikala Devi vs Central Bank of India), the Supreme Court directed the bank to release pension to the widow of a clerk, who made the mistake of "resigning" from his service after 34 years.

That's because banking service rules say resignation, dismissal or termination of service disqualifies an employee for pension benefits.

However, the apex court ruled that the bank should consider the spirit of the rules. "It will be too imprudent for anyone to suggest that an employee, who, at the time of writing the letter, was left with just about one and a half years of service, would have so thoughtlessly given up retiral benefits," the court said.

There are several such cases in courts across the country, showing the human resource practices of PSBs in poor light.

Bank managements, however, say it is wrong to suggest they follow a uniform rule of denying the right to resign, and argue these are stray cases that may have been mishandled by a few overzealous junior employees.

In any case, they say exceptions don't prove the rule. The jury is, however, out on this.
There are two pharmaceutical industries in India -The first sells its produce in large volumes in quality-conscious United States, the gold standard, while the second sells chalta hai medicine within the country without fear, notes Bhupesh Bhandari.

Image: Dinesh Thakur fights against sub-standard medicine. Photograph: Anindito Mukherjee/Reuters

Dinesh Thakur, the Ranbaxy whistleblower, seems to be waging a lone battle against sub-standard medicine.



After the Supreme Court threw out his plea that sought "the creation of a framework for the recall of drugs and a commission to examine faulty drug approvals", Thakur has been diligently uploading information he has collated over the years on his website. It is an eye opener.

There are, in effect, two pharmaceutical industries in India that work in parallel: one compares with the best in the world and the second with the worst.



The first sells its produce in large volumes in quality-conscious United States, the gold standard, while the second sells chalta hai medicine within the country without fear.



To put it differently, the Indian pharmaceutical sector, which makes the finest medicine in the world, sells sub-standard stuff to Indians.

This is because Indian regulation is lax. On their part, pharmaceutical companies argue, with a lot of justification, that India has become an impossible place to work in, thanks to the ever-expanding price controls, which leaves them with no money to upgrade their processes and machines.

Thakur, through his research, has brought valuable new insights into the debate.

The bigger players often blame the smaller ones - the long tail of pharmaceutical companies - for the mess.



The smaller companies, the argument goes, cannot have production units of a high standard and they resist all demand for stricter regulation because it will put them out of business.

Thakur's work shows that this is not the complete picture: the big companies too are responsible for the sub-standard drugs in the market.

To prove this, he has painstakingly accessed several blacklists complied from time to time - these contain many big names of the pharmaceutical world as well as a host of public sector units.



Thakur has included the lists of the Medical Stores Organisation that does all the public procurement for the Union ministry of health, various states and railways.

Moreover, Thakur adds it is common for large companies to outsource production to smaller units, which really blurs the distinction between the two sets of players.



"The industry's propaganda machine is very effective; it has created a false narrative that the small and medium companies are the root of the problem," Thakur blogged on April 28.

There is more dirt that Thakur has unearthed.



Under the rules, it is the state which can suspend the production licence of a company if it is found to make sub-standard drugs.



This means that there is little that Karnataka can do about an errant producer located in Himachal Pradesh except request that state to take action.

Besides, says Thakur, there is no consistency amongst different states in the manner in which licences of erring manufacturers are suspended.



"For example, while states like Himachal Pradesh suspend licences for 15 days to three months, states like Uttarakhand would suspend licences for a mere 20 days and Gujarat for just one day," he wrote on April 24.

That's not all. Thakur questions the enforcement of these suspensions.



Even in states where frequent suspensions were handed out, Thakur says he did not come across a single case where the action was challenged in a court of low.



Clearly, the suspension was either too insignificant or only on paper. The wrongdoers have been going scot-free.

It gets more interesting from here.

Indian companies, says Thakur, regularly do drug recalls in the United States and the European Union but never in India.



"The key reason why we do not see such action in India is because the Indian drug regulatory law does not have a legal framework mandating such recalls," he wrote on April 18.



"There is no legal requirement under the law for the manufacturer to initiate a nation-wide recall and there is no procedure to monitor such recalls."

This is serious.

The Central Drug Standards Control Organisation has created the "drug alert system" to address this problem but Thakur argues that it won't be of much use unless it is integrated with the states' labs which do most of the testing on medicine.



"The enactment of a mandatory recall mechanism would have been a game changer in the Indian context because the number of alerts generated by each state would have forced a wider debate on the reason behind such recalls," Thakur wrote.

Thakur's arguments are logical and forceful. They are also a little inconvenient for the pharmaceutical industry.

So it didn't come as a surprise that when Thakur launched his campaign, many raised doubts over his intentions.

Some went to the extent of calling the whole thing another Big Pharma ploy to discredit Indian producers of inexpensive generic medicine.

Whatever be his motive, everybody must listen to Thakur if the Augean Stables have to be cleared.

His plea may have been rejected but there is substance in what he says.
Benchmark share indices ended flat after gains in financials capped further downside while caution was seen ahead of the US jobs data later on Friday.

The S&P BSE Sensex ended down 34 points at 25,229 and the Nifty50 closed 2 points lower at 7,733.

In the broader market, BSE Midcap index gained 0.4% while the Smallcap inded ended down 0.2%.

Market breadth ended weak with 1381 losers and 1069 gainers on the BSE.

"After sharp gains in the previous months markets are taking a breather and are in a consolidation mode.

"Earnings have been a positive surprise which could prevent further downside. Foreign institutional investors are also partially booking profits after recent gains," said Kunj Bansal, ED & CIO, Centrum Wealth Manageme.

Foreign institutional investors turned net sellers in equities to the tune of Rs 389 crore on Thursday, as per provisional stock exchange data.

The Reserve Bank of India late Thursday issued draft guidelines on granting licences on a continuous basis for setting up of universal banks in the private sector.

ICICI Bank ended up over 1.5%.

The company's insurance arm ICICI Prudential Life Insurance is set to hire Bank of America Merrill Lynch and ICICI Securities for its planned $600 million to $700 million initial public offering, IFR reported on Friday citing two sources close to the plans. SBI was also up 2%.

Bharti Airtel ended up 0.6% after it entered into an agreement with Helios Towers Africa for divestment of about 950 towers in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

IT majors which earn most of their revenues from exports to the US ended mixed ahead of the US jobs data later today. Infosys and Wipro ended down 1%-2% each while TCS gained 0.4%.

Hero MotoCorp posted a 71% growth in net profit for the March quarter at Rs 814 crore against Rs 477 crore in the year-ago period. Turnover for the quarter increased to Rs 7,512 crore from Rs 6,794, an increase of around 11%. The stock ended down 0.8% on profit taking.

ITC shut its plants from May 4 to comply with a new stipulated pictorial warnings rule issued by the federal government, the company said in a statement.

ITC has gained marginally. The stock pared early losses to end flat with positive bias.

Among others, Xchanging Solutions ended locked in 20% upper circuit on the BSE after the company engaged in information technology (IT) services business announced voluntary delisting plan.

Diamond Power Infrastructure ended locked in upper circuit of 10% on the BSE after the company announced that the board will meet on Monday, May 16, 2016, to evaluate various debt re-alignment options including stake sale to strategic investor and re-organization of companys various businesses.

ABG Shipyard slumped 20% to Rs 30.65, also its lifetime low on the BSE, after ECL Finance sold more than one million shares of the company in the open market.

Hindustan Composites surged 16% after the company reported 135% growth in net profit at Rs 18.9 crore for the quarter ended March 2016 compared with Rs 8 crore in the same quarter last fiscal.
Investors must withdraw funds, open a new trading account and transfer assets.

Many investors prefer dealing with small brokers, as the investor talks directly to the owner and not a representative who might change every few months.



Theres trust between the parties.

But, many such intermediaries have been going out of business because of an increase in compliance and technology costs, coupled with low market volumes.



According to the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi), the number of brokers nearly halved last year, from 6,147 to 3,187.

If your broker decides to shut shop, migrating to a new one is not difficult.



You need to get your paperwork right. Sebi has specified the procedure in case a broker winds up business.



The broker needs to convey the decision to the client and exchanges at least a month in advance, according to Vikas Singhania, executive director at Trade Smart Online.



Also needing to ensure all sub-broker registrations are cancelled, all connectivities are surrendered and all dues in respect of clearing houses have been cleared.

Exchanges issue a public notification of such request for closure in leading newspapers, with a cooling period of two months, within which time investors can make claims. If no claims are received, the exchanges send the application to Sebi for closure, says Venu Madhav, chief operating officer at Zerodha.

As soon as you are intimated by the broker, use the cooling period to migrate to a new one.

First, square up all your open positions and withdraw funds from the trading account.

Open a trading account with another broker. Then, apply for transfer of holdings with the first broker.

Your demat account could be with either Central Depository Services (CDSL) or National Securities Depository (NSDL).

If the new broker has the same service provider, you can go online and electronically transfer the shares on your own.

If you are transferring assets between CDSL and NSDL, you have to fill a physical form and submit it to your first broker.

If you are closing the account, there is no transfer fee. If you keep the account with the first broker active, there can be a charge of around Rs 25 for each company.

If the investor doesnt act in time, typically, the broker shutting shop does a bulk transfer to another intermediary and informs the client, says Singhania.

Though brokers are tightly regulated, there have been instances of brokerages shutting down because of a default.

In such cases, if a client isn't able to realise his or her fund or securities, then the person may file a complaint against such brokers. Sebi provides a facility called Scores (Sebi Complaints Redress System) where one can file a complaint online, says Madhav.

Investors also have an option to approach exchanges, which are required to maintain an investor protection fund with the objective of compensating investors in case of defaults.

The procedure, however, is long, according to Singhania.

He says, after the complaint exchanges investigate, and if there are irregularities, they first try to recover the money from the brokers assets and deposit.

If the money still falls short, the Investor Protection Fund Trusts committee decides on the compensation.

Investors are paid either to the extent of default or a maximum of Rs 15 lakh.

Photograph: Reuters
Last updated on: May 06, 2016 11:32 IST

Arbitration court rules against former Ranbaxy owners for hiding facts during the 2008 buyout

An arbitration court in Singapore has ordered Malvinder Singh and Shivinder Mohan Singh, former owners of Ranbaxy Laboratories, to pay damages worth Rs 2,562.78 crore or Rs 25.62 billion (based on Thursdays exchange rate) to Japans Daiichi Sankyo Co.

Malvinder Singh, currently chairman of Fortis Healthcare, and his brother Shivinder Singh will have to pay the fine for concealing and misrepresenting facts from the Japanese drug giant when it purchased about 35 per cent stake in Ranbaxy from them in 2008.

The court has ruled that the Singh brothers did not share information with Daiichi on investigations into Ranbaxy by the US Department of Justice and Food and Drug Administration.

The arbitration court gave this judgment last week.

It has issued an award by a majority of 2:1 in favour of the claimant.

In 2013, Daiichi had filed an arbitration case in Singapore, accusing the Singh brothers of concealment and misrepresentation of facts, after Ranbaxy paid $500 million to the DoJ as settlement for misrepresenting facts.

The 2008 agreement between Daiichi Sankyo and the former promoters of Ranbaxy had a provision that any future arbitration related to the deal would be pursued in Singapore, in accordance with commercial arbitration rules.

The arbitration dispute was between Daiichi Sankyo and sellers of shares of erstwhile Ranbaxy Laboratories, which includes RHC Holding and Oscar Investments.

Ranbaxy was subsequently purchased by the Dilip Shanghvi-led Sun Pharma, while the Singh brothers control a majority stake in RHC Holding and Oscar Investments.

RHC Holding said in a statement that the former owners were considering challenging the verdict.

In 2008, Daiichi Sankyo had bought the entire 34.82 per cent stake in Ranbaxy from its promoters in a $4.6-billion deal.

Five years later, in 2013, Ranbaxy had to pay a fine of $500 million to the US authorities after it pleaded guilty to fraudulent activities and misrepresenting data to seek fast drug approvals.

In 2014, Sun Pharma agreed to buy Ranbaxy -- which was then controlled by Daiichi - in a proposed $4-billion deal, including a debt of $800 million.

Currently, Malvinder Singh owns a majority stake in Fortis Healthcare -- which runs 30 hospitals in the country; Fortis Healthworld -- a pharmacy chain; Religare -- a financial services company; SRL Diagnostics -- a diagnostics chain, etc.

On September, 2015, Shivinder Mohan Singh stepped down from his executive role in the companies and joined Radha Soami Satsang Beas, an Amritsar-based spiritual organisation.

BIG BLOW FOR SINGH BROTHERS 2006: US issues warning letter to Ranbaxys Paonta Sahib facility

2007: A whistle-blowers lawsuit alleges Ranbaxy defrauded Federal programmes

Jun 2008: Daiichi Sankyo acquires majority stake in Ranbaxy

Sep 2008: FDA imposes import alert on Ranbaxys Paonta Sahib and Dewas factories; bans 30 drugs

May 2013: Criminal charges filed; Ranbaxy agrees to pay a fine of $500 million

Sep 2013: US bans imports from Ranbaxys new formulations factory in Mohali

Nov 2013: Daiichi Sankyo accuses Singh brothers of hiding information regarding investigations, files a case in Singapore court

Jan 2014: US FDA bans imports from Ranbaxys main API factory in Toansa

Apr 2014: Sun Pharmaceutical acquires Ranbaxy in a $4-bn deal

Sep 2015: steps down, joins Radha Soami Satsang Beas, an Amritsar-based spiritual organisation

Image: Malvinder (left) and Shivender Singh. Photograph: Kind courtesy, Ranbaxy
The strategy these online marketplace companies follow in the next few months will determine whether Amazon gets to be the leader in 2017.

Image: Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos (left) with Amit Agarwal, Country head, India at Bengaluru. Photograph, courtesy: Amazon

In the next 12 to 18 months, American e-commerce major Amazon has the potential to be at the top in the India market, executives at three prominent international analyst agencies told Business Standard.

However, with a caveat. If Amazon focuses more on gross merchandise value (GMV) of the goods sold on its platform than it has so far, and if home-grown rivals Flipkart and Snapdeal move towards profitability, the current pecking order in market share has a good chance of changing, they add.

The strategy these online marketplace companies follow in the next few months will determine whether Amazon gets to be the leader in 2017 or not, according to an executive at one of these firms.

Kunal Bahl-led Snapdeal has already stated that GMV is not a metric it is chasing.

Retaining and adding high-quality users would be Snapdeal's goal, Bahl had said in a recent media interview.

A report published by Bank of America-Merrill Lynch in May 2015 had placed Flipkart on top of the table with 43 per cent market share, followed by Snapdeal at 30 per cent and Amazon at 18 per cent.

One year later, things have moved, say analysts but without giving specific figures.

Market share is typically based on GMV in the absence of timely revenue figures, posted to the registrar of companies with a significant time lag and so, making these almost irrelevant, explain sector trackers.

In 2015, goes the estimate, Flipkart's GMV was around $10 billion, Snapdeal's at $4 bn and Amazon's at $2 bn.

One of the analysts, Business Standard spoke to projected the 2017 GMV at $12 bn for Flipkart, $9 bn for Snapdeal and $6.3 bn for Amazon.



However, he added, the math could alter and Amazon could cross Snapdeal's GMV while moving closer to Flipkart or overtaking it, depending on how the three choose the GMV versus profitability play.

GMV has been an important metric for e-commerce entities in getting a higher valuation and attracting a next round of funding from investors.



In the process, some companies have even inflated their GMV figures, says an analyst. However, a company such as Amazon does not need to do this, not needing to depend on investor money.

How a company moves in certain categories will also determine the next pecking order in market share. So, reducing emphasis on electronics as a category will help a company in attaining profitability faster, say experts.

Although electronics fetches a higher GMV than, say, clothes and accessories because of the higher price of the products, the margins and therefore revenues are much lower in that category.

Against one of two to three per cent in electronics, fashion apparel commands a margin of 10-15 per cent.

Also, repeat buying is very low in electronics. By shifting the focus from here, an e-commerce player will move quicker towards profitability, a demand increasingly made by investors pumping funds into the internet-led business. But, that could also imply a fall in the GMV pecking order that determines market share.

Apart from GMV market share, some other metrics are used by e-commerce companies to show leadership. For instance, a Comscore analysis had pegged Flipkart on top with 50 million to 100 million app downloads recently, followed by Snapdeal and Amazon at 10-50 mn.

Another latest monthly visitor data (without taking into account mobile transactions) shows Flipkart maintaining the lead, while Paytm has picked up traction, it is learnt.

In 2014, Amazon had committed $2 bn for the India market.

And, after its first quarter earnings numbers, the group said India was one of the most important markets for it and would invest what it took.

''It's an open cheque book,'' is how Amazon India head Amit Agarwal had described the investment plan of the group.

Flipkart has raised $2.6 bn since May 2014 and Snapdeal $2 bn since the start of 2014 from marquee international investors.

Both are learnt to be in talks with investors for raising more funds.

Earlier this year, Morgan Stanley, an investor in Flipkart, had marked down the value of its holding by 27 per cent in the Sachin Bansal-led company.

That brought down the valuation of Flipkart to $11 bn, from the earlier $15 bn.

Flipkart's valuation markdown is seen as a benchmark for the entire e-commerce sector.

But, according to reports, Flipkart continued to talk to investors while pegging its earlier valuation at $15 bn, while Snapdeal, too, stuck to a $6.5 bn valuation.

None of the e-commerce companies mentioned here would comment on market share issues.
Last updated on: May 06, 2016 21:45 IST

Subrata Roy has been in Tihar jail since March 4, 2014.

Sahara chief Subrata Roy on Friday night walked out of Tihar jail, where he was lodged for over two years, after the Supreme Court granted him a four-week parole to attend the funeral of his mother who died this morning.

Besides Roy, the apex court also granted parole to one of jailed Sahara directors Ashok Roy Choudhary, who is a relative of Subrata.

Roy's mother Chhabi Roy, 95, passed away in Lucknow after prolonged illness.

"Both Subrata Roy and Ashok Roy Choudhary were released around 8.45 p.m. from the jail number 1 of Tihar where they had been lodged since March 4, 2014," said a senior jail official.

The court has directed that Roy would be under the protective custody of police during the parole period.

His counsel Kapil Sibal assured the court that he will not try to escape or run away.

He was sent to jail on the orders of Supreme Court in a long running dispute with market regulator SEBI.
The top posts on social media from your favourite Bollywood celebrities:

Late filmmaker Yash Chopra has been honoured with a bronze statue at the heart of Interlaken, Switzerland.

His wife Pamela Chopra and daughter-in-law Rani Mukerji were present at the event.

Yash Raj Films shared this picture on Twitter and captioned it, Yash Chopra immortalized by Switzerland with his statue.

This is not the first time the filmmaker has been honoured in that country. The government of Interlaken awarded him the honorary title of 'Ambassador of Interlaken' in 2011, and Jungfrau Railways named a train after him.

In addition, the five-star Victoria Jungfrau Grand Hotel & Spa in Interlaken has named a suite after Yash Chopra.

***

Big B to get a new statue at Madame Tussauds!

A team from London's famed wax museum Madame Tussauds recently visited Amitabh Bachchan to take body measurements for a new version of his wax figure at the museum.

The 73-year-old actor shared a picture, above, and wrote: I get Madame Tussauds again .. they replenish.

***

Ali Abbas Zafar shoots Sultan in Rewari

Director Ali Abbas Zafars film Sultan will feature a vintage steam train from Rewari district in Haryana.

He shared a picture from the sets, above, and wrote: First film to be shot with @BeingSalmanKhan in #rewari #haryana in 42 degrees, how happy is the crew, bye bye sun.

Starring Salman Khan and Anushka Sharma, the film release on July 6.

***

Heres what Amy Jackson is up to

Amy Jackson is shooting for the last leg of Sohail Khans Ali in Pune.

She shared a picture from the sets, above, and wrote: #BTS for my new movie #Ali with our ace cinematographer Mahesh teaching me the camera tricks.

The film will also star Arbaaz Khan and Nawazuddin Siddiqui.

***

Anurag Kashyap is looking for actors

Filmmaker Anurag Kashyap is looking for actors, who are trained in martial arts, for his next project.

He posted a picture, above, and tweeted: Looking for actors.

Meanwhile, he praised Raam Reddys Kannada film Thithi. 'Every1 in Bengaluru, Mysore &other parts of Karnataka, One of the funniest films that I have seen in recent times, "THITHI" releases today. "THITHI" is that one film that I have seen thrice and I can see it any number of times. Don't miss this gem, he wrote.

***

Soundarya Rajinikanth celebrates her sons birthday

Rajinikanths daughter Soundarya Ashwin celebrates her son Veds first birthday today.

She shared a picture, above, and tweeted: 1 blissful year of motherhood !Thank u for coming into my life kutty. U are my life #HappyBirthdayVed #LoveOfMyLife.

Soundarya is married to industrialist Ashwin Ramkumar.

***

On the sets of Gunday & Guddiya

Anupam Kher, Jimmy Sheirgill and Satish Kaushik are busy shooting for their film Gunday & Guddiya in Ranchi.

Satish shared a picture from the sets, above, and wrote: Shooting with my friend @AnupamPkher & @jimmysheirgill for movie Gunday & Gudiya in Ranchi.

The film is directed by Sattwik Mohanty.

***

Sanjay Dutt, Imran Khan share cute pictures of their kids

Sanjay Dutt took to Instagram to share a picture of himself with his kids Iqra and Shahraan, above, and wrote: Batman, cat woman and me.





Imran Khan shared this picture of his daughter Imara, above, and wrote: Really love this photo, so I thought I'd try making it artsy.
For India to endorse Nepal's Buddhist conference will be like sipping from a poisoned chalice, warns former RA&W official Jayadeva Ranade.

IMAGE: An idol of Buddha is silhouetted at the Tibetan Monastery in Lumbini, south-west of Kathmandu. Photographs: Navesh Chitrakar/Reuters

Media reports claim that Nepal's government is organising a three-day international Buddhist conference in Kathmandu from May 19-21, 2016, on the occasion of the 2560th Buddha Jayanti, Lord Buddha's birthday.

The objective of the conference is to obtain support for the development of Lumbini as a spiritual centre and to promote Nepal's religious and cultural tourism.

For India to endorse this conference will be like sipping from a poisoned chalice.

Hundreds of monks, scholars and representatives of governments have been invited by the 501-member committee headed by Ananda Prasad Pokharel of the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified-Marxist- Leninist) and Nepal's minister for culture, tourism and civil aviation, to the conference where Lumbini has been advertised as the 'the cradle of Buddhist philosophy' -- though it is Bodh Gaya where the Buddha attained enlightenment!

United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, a practicing Buddhist who in the past supported a China-backed Buddhist centre in Lumbini, has been invited as have India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi and China's President Xi Jinping.

The pro-Dalai Lama, Delhi-based International Buddhist Confederation, has also been invited though India gains nothing from the venture.

China has for many years been trying to establish a presence in Buddha's birthplace Lumbini as part of its efforts to ensure that Nepal is not used as a base to destabilise the Tibet Autonomous Region as well as to undermine the Dalai Lama's influence and fracture the cohesiveness of Tibetan Buddhist sects and the Tibetan community in exile.

As a visiting senior Chinese official told a Nepalese journalist a few years ago, 'We visit Nepal because you have Lumbini, the birthplace of Buddha.'

Chinese NGOs have earlier also attempted to get India's endorsement for the development of Lumbini. Their plans include building hotels, an airport and, most importantly, to develop Lumbini as a China-backed centre of Tibetan Buddhism.

In 2012, the Asia-Pacific Exchange and Cooperation Foundation, promoted by the Chinese Communist Party's United Front Work Department, unveiled a $3 billion plan for the development of Lumbini.

Included were a Chinese-financed and managed monastery providing religious instruction and free for all monks from the region. It additionally proposed to allocate plots of land to various Tibetan Buddhist high lamas and sects.

IMAGE: The Maya Devi Temple in Lumbini province.

More recently the Beijing-headquartered China Buddhist Association, of which the Beijing-selected 11th Panchen Lama Bainqen Erdini Qoigyijabu is the vice- president, announced it would take over the $3 billion project for the development of Lumbini.

While its proposal is less ambitious, it nevertheless still envisages an airport and the allocation of plots of land to various Tibetan Buddhist high lamas and sects.

Construction of the airport, probably by Chinese army engineers, will entail their long-term presence on India's doorstep. Thirty five Beijing-financed China Study Centres are already strung along Nepal's border with India.

As part of their effort, Chinese government-sponsored NGOs have been trying to co-opt prominent Nepal politicians. The Asia-Pacific Exchange and Cooperation Foundation and the International Ecological Safety Collaborative Organisation appointed Pushpa Kamal Dahal -- better known as Prachanda, chairman of the Unified Communist Party of Nepal -- Madhav Kumar Nepal (CPN-UML) and Sujata Koirala (Nepal Congress) to their boards.

The emphasis on free food, lodging and religious instruction in a Chinese-financed and staffed monastery to monks in the region implies that all monks, mainly the Tibetan Buddhist monks who reside in the Indo-Himalayan border belt, are eligible. It will be a major incentive.

The proposed allocation of plots of land to various Tibetan Buddhist high lamas and sects requires to be viewed in the backdrop of statements revealing Beijing's pervasive influence over Nepal and particularly in allowing any activities by Tibetan Buddhists in Lumbini.

In 2012, Nepal's then culture minister, Dr Minendra Rijal of the Nepali Congress, said the Dalai Lama might visit Lumbini sometime in the future after 'the leadership of China will find ways to deal with His Holiness the Dalai Lama, which will be respectful of the Chinese people.'

This was later repeated by a member of the Greater Lumbini National Development Directive Committee. It is apparent that the allocation of plots will be as selective as permission to Tibetan Buddhist sects to organise religious ceremonies in Lumbini and entail a degree of accommodation with the Chinese Communist Party. The security implications for India are obvious.

This latest effort to get endorsement for developing Lumbini coincides with the bitterness that now permeates Nepal's relations with India and which got accentuated after the almost 5-month blockade imposed by the Madhesis on Nepal. The blockade gave impetus to the definitive pro-China policies initiated by Prachanda.

Nepal's Prime Minister Khadga Prasad Sharma Oli has made no secret of his antipathy for India as evident by the manner in which he extolled the 'achievements' of his trip to Beijing immediately after his visit to India and the 10 agreements he signed there. Nepal's politicians, elite and a large section of the population are more comfortable with closer ties with Beijing.

While it will be at least a decade before rail and road links connecting China with Nepal are completed and China can provide Nepal essential commodities on the required scale, retrieving the earlier India-Nepal relationship will be an arduous task.

As an insightful observer of Nepalese politics recently confided: "Even if on the ground China cannot replace India for many years, in the hearts of the Nepalese, China has already replaced India!"

Jayadeva Ranade, former Additional Secretary in the Cabinet Secretariat, Government of India, is President of the Centre for China Analysis and Strategy.
'Today we stand vindicated because the government's action has been struck down.'

'You can now bring beef from neighbouring states, far away states and other countries.'

'The government cannot tell you what to eat and what not to eat. Even if you are a vegetarian, this verdict is your victory.'

Advocate Firoz Bharucha argued Arif Kapadia's petition challenging the Maharashtra government's decision to bring bullocks and oxen under the ambit of the beef ban which hitherto applied only to cows.

Kapadia wanted the Maharashtra government to drop Sections 5D and 9B of the Maharashtra Animal Preservation (Amendment) Act because he felt they were draconian in nature.

The impugned Section 5D said, 'No person shall have in his possession flesh of any cow, bull or bullock slaughtered outside the state of Maharashtra and authorised the issuance of non-bailable warrant against the accused, while Section 9B placed the burden of proving the meat was not cow/bullocks on the accused.

Bharucha spoke to Syed Firdaus Ashraf/Rediff.com about what the Bombay high court May 6 judgment, which decriminalised the possession of beef even while upholding the ban on slaughter, means.

You have been contesting the case in the Bombay high court on the right to possess and eat beef in Maharashtra. How do you feel about this judgment?

To me, this was a question of principles. The government cannot tell you what to eat and what not to eat. If they do that, then people have the remedy to challenge that and go to court.

And today we stand vindicated because the government's action has been struck down. We were not fighting for slaughter. We got everything we asked from the court.

Does this judgment mean that you can bring beef into Maharashtra from Goa and Karnataka where the slaughter of bullocks and oxen is legal?

Wherever you want to bring it from, you can bring it (now). The only thing you cannot do is you cannot slaughter cows, bullocks and oxen in Maharashtra.

You can now bring beef from neighbouring states, far away states and other countries. You can do whatever you want. The government cannot tell you that you cannot eat beef.

Beef-eaters fear they could be arrested even for possessing beef. Can it still happen after the verdict?

It (arrest for eating or possession of beef) is completely illegal. They (the police) cannot do that (arrest a person for eating or possesion of beef).

Does this judgment mean that someone carrying beef from a meat shop cannot be arrested anymore?

Certainly yes, he cannot be arrested.

What about the slaughter of oxen and bullocks?

I am not concerned about that aspect. We only challenged Sections 5D and 9B (of the new Maharashtra Animal Preservation (Amendment) Act) which has now been struck down.

The butchers and all were not my area (of concern) and this petition does not (concern that).

Does it now mean that if a butcher is caught with beef on him, he need not prove where he got it from?

The police will have to prove that the butcher has slaughtered the bull in Maharashtra, it cannot be the other way round.

Earlier, if you were found to be in possession (of beef), you could land in jail. Now it is for the government and state machinery to prove that the butcher slaughtered that bull in Maharashtra.

Would you call this judgment a victory for beef-eaters?

It is a 100 percent victory for the people who want to eat beef, but it is also a victory for the people of Maharashtra.

The government cannot tell you what to eat and what not to eat. Even if you are a vegetarian, it is your victory.

The issue is much larger: Can the government dictate terms on what you can eat and what you cannot eat? The answer to that is no.

So it is a victory for everyone and not only beef-loving people. That is looking at it in a very narrow manner.

The larger issue is that it is a victory of the people, that the government cannot impose its will on the people. That is the message from the order.

There is also the fear that illegal slaughter will increase in Maharashtra after this order.

That is for the government of Maharashtra to find out how they can curb the slaughter. Slaughter is not legal in Maharashtra and they have to figure out a way of how to prevent slaughter.

One of the arguments you made in court was that beef is the cheapest source of nutrition.

Yes, and that has been upheld. People will get beef in Maharashtra, it is available in the market and all the arguments have been upheld.

IMAGE: One can tuck into beef steak in Maharashtra without any fear of the law following Friday's high court verdict. Photograph: Andrew Winning/Reuters
Three persons were arrested on Thursday in connection with the gang rape of a 19-year-old Dalit nursing student at Varkala.

Those arrested are in the age group of 20-25 years, police said.

The victim, a second year BSc nursing student, was raped allegedly by an autorickshaw driver and two of his friends near Ayanthi bridge in Varkala, about 50 km from Thiruvananthapuram, on May 3.

A case under Indian Penal Code Section 376 (2)(g) (gang rape) was registered against them.

The medical examination of the victim had confirmed that she had been gang-raped.

The victim had gone with the autorickshaw driver, who was known to her, in his vehicle on the day of the incident.

Two of his friends got into the vehicle later.

They took the autorickshaw to a deserted spot and allegedly raped her, police said.

The incident comes days after a 30-year-old Dalit law student was raped and murdered at Perumbavoor in Ernakulam district.
Amnesty International on Friday asked the Kerala authorities to ensure an independent investigation into allegations of police inaction in a case involving the rape and brutal murder of a 30-year-old Dalit woman in the state.

"Police inaction in cases involving violence against Dalit women is unfortunately disturbingly common. Even in this case, the police failed to act on earlier complaints from the family," said Rekha Raj, programme manager, women's rights, at Amnesty International, India.

"The failure of the police to investigate previous complaints about caste-based discrimination and harassment against the woman's family must also be investigated," Ms Raj said.

"Dalit women face multiple levels of discrimination - from the community and often from the police. The Kerala government must hold the police accountable for any inaction on their part," she added.

According to local police, the woman, a law student, hailing from a poor family was raped and brutally assaulted using sharp edged weapons before being murdered at her house at Perumbavoor in Ernakulam district on April 28.

Three men have been detained in relation to the killing. "We have complained earlier against certain individuals who used to threaten us, but the police did not take any action," the law student's sister told Amnesty.
An army man was killed in an ongoing encounter with militants near Line of Control in Kupwara sector in Jammu and Kashmir. Mukhtar Ahmad/Rediff.com reports from Srinagar.

An army official said army men deployed along LoC in Kupwara sector intercepted a group of militants attempting to infiltrate from the sector early this morning.

He said militants fired on the army men after being detected. The fire was returned by the soldiers, triggering an encounter.

The official said in the ensuing encounter, a soldier identified as Sepoy Ramesh Chand Yadav sustained critical bullet injuries. The injured soldier was evacuated to army hospital in Srinagar, where he succumbed to injuries.

He said the operation along the LoC is going on. The intermittent gunfight is going on.

The official said army men deployed along LoC are already on high alert as there are apprehensions that the militants may attempt to infiltrate into the State as snow in the upper reaches has started to melt.

Earlier, in the day, three policemen and civilian were injured when militants lobbed a grenade towards a police patrol party at a market at Chadoora in central Kashmirs Budgam district.

According to police officer, the grenade missed the intended target and exploded on road, injuring three police and a passerby.

The injured were hospitalised.

After the blast, police and paramilitary personnel launched combing operation in the area to arrest the militants responsible for the attack. However, no arrests were reported.

No militant outfit has claimed responsibility for the grenade attack.

IMAGE: Sepoy Ramesh Chand Yadav sustained critical injuries in the attack.
Rajya Sabha Deputy Chairman P J Kurein has given Bharatiya Janata Party member of Parliament Subramanian Swamy time till 6 pm on Friday to authenticate his documents or his remarks will be struck off.

The chairman asked Swamy to produce documents he quoted from in the AgustaWestland debate after Congress leader Jairam Ramesh raised the issue.

I want to know have the papers been authenticated? Ramesh asked.

To this, Kurien said: I have given the direction... He has to do that otherwise all what he quoted will be deleted. If he is not doing by 6 pm today (Friday) all he has quoted will be deleted.

After this, Swamy tweeted, Met Parriker and congratulated him for a smashing speech in LS. Will meet him again after satisfying Chm RS on docs authentication done (sic).

Swamy, who debuted as a Rajya Sabha member last week, led the ruling BJPs attack on the opposition Congress on the chopper deal in which bribes were allegedly paid by Anglo-Italian company AgustaWestland in India when the Congress was in power.

The Congress hit back at Swamy calling him diabolical and twisted.

He suffers from an obsession...thats why he keeps quoting the wrong country. It reveals your twisted mindset. It is diabolical. I cannot come down to your level, Congress leader Anand Sharma said, speaking right after Swamy during a debate on alleged bribes by defence manufacturer AgustaWestland to swing a contract for the supply of 12 helicopters to India.

Swamys debut speech in Parliament was full of indirect attacks at Congress president Sonia Gandhi. Before even Dr Manmohan Singh, she should be interrogated first by the CBI," he said. Without taking her name, Swamy referred to her as a super cabinet and a higher authority than then PM Dr Singh.
A former Central Intelligence Agency station chief in Pakistan, who presided over the May 2011 raid that killed Al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden, is believed to have been poisoned by the Inter-Services Intelligence, a media report said on Friday.

Mark Kelton was removed from Islamabad two months after the raid on bin Ladens compound in Abbottabad, citing health concerns.

Mark Kelton retired from the CIA, and his health has recovered after he had abdominal surgery. But agency officials continue to think that it is plausible -- if not provable -- that Keltons sudden illness was somehow orchestrated by Pakistans Inter-Services Intelligence agency, known as the ISI, The Washington Post said in an exclusive investigative report.

A spokesman of the Pakistani embassy here, however, described the report as fictional.

According to The Post, Kelton, declined multiple requests for an interview, but in a brief exchange by phone he said that the cause of his illness was never clarified.

He said that he was not the first to suspect that he had been poisoned.

The genesis for the thoughts about that didnt originate with me, he was quoted as saying.

The Post said such a disclosure is a disturbing postscript to the sequence of events surrounding the bin Laden operation five years ago and adds new intrigue to a counterterrorism partnership that has often been consumed by conspiracy theories.

Even if the poisoning suspicion is groundless, the idea that the CIA and its station chief considered the ISI capable of such an act suggests that the breakdown in trust was even worse than widely assumed, The Post said.

According to the daily, current and former US intelligence officials said that the ISI has been linked to numerous plots against journalists, diplomats and other perceived adversaries and that the spy agencys animosity toward Kelton was intense.

Meanwhile, a CIA spokesman said there is no evidence that Pakistani authorities poisoned a US official serving in the country.
Confrontation over VVIP chopper deal escalated on Friday with the government vowing to track down the main beneficiaries of the kickbacks so that "we can do" what "we could not do in Bofors" even as Congress said it is ready to face a probe that is monitored by the Supreme Court.

The government and the Congress clashed in the Lok Sabha after which the main opposition party staged a walkout led by Sonia Gandhi even as Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar was responding to a Calling Attention Motion on the scam-tainted AgustaWestland deal.

The two sides traded charges and sought to put the onus on each other for controversial decisions regarding the Rs 3600 crore deal for 12 VVIP helicopters in which about Rs 360 crore are alleged to have been paid as kickbacks.

The previous United Progressive Alliance government had "done everything" to help AgustaWestland bag the chopper deal, Parrikar said and asserted that the main beneficiaries of the kickbacks will be tracked as the CBI is "very seriously" probing the case.

In a hard-hitting speech, Parrikar said the "entire corruption" in the deal took place during the UPA tenure but former Air chief S P Tyagi and Gautam Khaitan are "small people" who "simply washed their hands in a flowing ganga (of corruption)" and that the government will "find out where the river was going".

Suggesting that some people higher up in the UPA dispensation might have been major beneficiaries of the kickbacks, he said the decision on the contract was taken in 2010 while Tyagi had retired in 2007 and "might have got just a 'chiller' (loose change)" or 'prasad'.

"Who gave order in 2010?... How much that person has got we have to find that out.... He (Tyagi) was not there then," the defence minister said.

"I hope members are satisfied and members will support government in finding the truth. The truth may lead to many unwanted realism. What we could not do in Bofors, may be we will do it in AgustaWestland," Parrikar said but deliberately refrained from naming anybody.

As Congress members created uproar and tried to disrupt his speech, he remarked, "Why are you (Congress) concerned? I have not named anybody. You seem to know where the ganga was going."

Countering the attack, Congress leader Jyotiraditya Scindia said, "Do not level baseless allegations. Answer the questions which we are raising. Supreme Court monitored investigation should happen and its reports should be placed in the House every three months."

Stoutly defending Sonia Gandhi, he described her as a 'sherni' (lioness) and said nowhere was her name mentioned.

"Whenever the name of Sonia Gandhi comes, they start feeling irritated and they are afraid of her because she is a 'lioness'. That is why they (Bharatiya Janata Party) are afraid of her," he said.

Scindia said it was the habit of BJP to level wrong and baseless allegations and create an illusion through that.

"But we too have taken an oath that we will break that 'mayajaal' (illusion) and place the facts in front of the country and this House," Scindia said.

The reality is that this deal was started during the National Democratic Alliance regime in 1999 and the issue they are talking about bringing down the height of the helicopter from 6000 to 4500 metres, it was done by NDA government in 2003 and not the UPA, he said.

In December 2003, a letter was written from the Prime Minister's Office to change the norms and make it 4500 metres, Scindia said.

In April 2012, it was in fact the UPA government which ordered CBI to investigate the matter, Scindia said, adding that the contract was cancelled on February 15, 2013 and a notice was served on AugustaWestland and on January 1, 2014, the UPA government cancelled that contract.

"...24 months have passed of your government, what have you done in 720 days of your government? Have you brought in a single penny? Have you even identified a single person who has indulged in corruption," he asked.

"In March 2013, we in the House had proposed to form a JPC (joint parliamentary committee). Why did the NDA oppose that proposal? People of this country should ask why you opposed that proposal in 2013," the Congress leader said.

He said the banning and blacklisting of companies too was started by the UPA government. The then Defence Minister had stated that no deal would happen with AgustaWestland, he said, adding it was UPA government which had recovered Rs 2,063 crore from the company.

Parrikar said the UPA government's action against the company following the disclosure of corruption was not pro-active but "forced by circumstances".

Noting that the scam had surfaced in 2012, he said nothing was done by the then UPA government till January 2014.

Describing the then Defence Minister A K Antony as "bechara" (helpless), Parrikar contended that his "hands were tied" and he "feared that his sainthood would be disrobed".

He said Antony acted only after a top official of Finmeccanica, the parent company of AgustaWestland, was arrested in Italy in connection with bribery in the deal.

Soon after the arrest, Antony gave the files to CBI in 2-3 hours, he said, adding "He (Antony) wanted to protect his image....Whether he knew or didn't know (of the bribe), I don't know."

Responding to Congress contention that the Italian judge had said that there was no evidence against Sonia Gandhi, Parrikar said it was half-truth as the judge had said that it was for India to investigate and for its investigating agencies to "prove the guilt of people who are suspected".

He asserted that the government will recover damages to the tune of 398 million euros as well as the "bribe".

Referring to the Italian court's recent judgement, Parrikar said with this, the criminal conspiracy has been established and "we will get the documents very fast".

Responding to Congress contention that the Italian judge had said that there was no evidence against Sonia Gandhi, Parrikar said it was half-truth as the judge had said that it was for India to investigate and for its investigating agencies to "prove the guilt of people who are suspected".

Suspecting a conspiracy to eliminate evidence in the chopper deal, Parrikar referred to a "mysterious" fire incident on July 3, 2014 in the Air Force headquarters here and said he would be asking the CBI to probe it.

He said all files were burnt in that fire but luckily three files related to the AgustaWestland deal were saved as those had been kept by an official in his locked drawer.

"If it was in somebody's mind to set it on fire, we think that failed as the official who was there because the Agusta issue was sensitive. He had locked the files in his drawer. So three files were saved and the three files related to AW-101 helicopters," the Defence Minister said.

Alleging that Congress had close links with middleman Christian Michel, Parrikar said the contract was given to a firm which had not even participated in the tendering process.

The tender was submitted by Italy-based AgustaWestland but the contract was given to the UK-based Agusta Westland International Ltd, which was not Original Equipment Manufacturer, he said, finding loopholes.

"I am shocked, how could you accept order from a company who has not given tender? They (Congress) lost sense of proportion. They thought they will be in power for ever. The smell and sight of Euro was so attractive, so intoxicating that they forgot everything. They should take consultation from Michel on how to cover up and how to do white wash," he said taking a dig at the opposition party.

On the initials 'AP' that figured in the documents in the Italian court judgement, Scindia said there are so many people who could have this abbreviation.

"We have the Gujarat Chief Minister whose initials are also AP...on such things they are labelling the allegations," the Congress leader said targeting the ruling side.

Attacking the Modi government, Scindia said "you have not been able to get the responses from those countries in two years' time ...It was our Defence Minister who stated that corruption is there in the deal and we will investigate that."

Despite being blacklisted, the NDA government permitted the company to send RFI (request for information) some contracts like in the Naval Utility helicopters.

"Why in the FIPB meeting on October 8, 2015, permission was given to AgustaWestland which was a blacklisted company? Answer this ... why Finmeccanica was invited to participate in a Make in India programme," he asked.

"Your (BJP) party president said that this is a bogus company and you invited a bogus company in Make in India. They have to give the answers to this," the Congress member said.

"Today we have put our balance sheet in front of you. Show us your balance sheet of two years. Tell the country that in two years what you have done," he said.

With regard to this, the Defence Minister said the firm had only put on website its Request for Information (RFI) which anybody can do in a digital world.

"Any person who wants can put his own information there. Now it is on open interent and if anyone wants to put information, whether it is (Congress leader) Jyotiraditya Scindia, or Christian Michel or Agusta Westland, we cannot stop him," he said.

Taking a dig at Congress, he said they seemed to know every action of AgustaWestland. He said he was not aware that the firm had uploaded something on the website and he looked for it only after Congress raised the issue.
Union Human Resource Development Minister Smriti Irani on Friday rejected a demand for waiving off rustication and other punishments meted out to students in universities, terming it a Pandoras Box and saying that these institutions have been granted autonomy to handle administrative matters.

Iranis comments in Rajya Sabha came in the backdrop of recent action by JawaharlalNehruUniversity authorities imposing fine on student leader Kanhaiya Kumar and rustication of some other students in connection with the controversial February 9 campus event against Afzal Gurus hanging.

Her reaction came during a debate on the functioning of her ministry when Congress member Ananda Bhaskar Rapolu said the students were looking at Iranis magnanimity to waive off punishments and rustication of students in various universities.

In her response, Irani said, This minister is a mere mortal who is tied to this very Parliament and this Parliament does not allow intervention in the administrative matter of any University. My request is only this. This is a Pandoras Box, I am sure you dont want to open that....Let the University be autonomous enough.

Earlier in the day, members in Rajya Sabha had sought the governments intervention in resolving the protests by the JNU students by advising the authorities to reconsider their decision to severely penalise some of them.

Deputy Chairman P J Kurien had also said the government should resolve the issue and had asked Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi to convey the feeling of the House to the concerned ministers.

Irani, in her 70-minute long reply, also lamented that there appeared to be a Sanskrit phobia and said the government or National Council of Educational Research and Training have not carried out any change in the curriculum.

Referring to Rapolu who she said had called her Sanskrit Irani, she said a recent circular to IITs only asked them to pick up those parts of work in Sanskrit language which contained scientific knowledge.

She said a US university academic came to Tamil Nadu to do research on the oldest treatise in geometry but not many in India know about the contributions made by the country.

The challenge is where do you bridge the gap. Where do you introduce the subject or for that matter, give the freedom to academicians to absorb it, without being called communal or saffron, Irani said.

Earlier, members in the Rajya Sabha had sought the governments intervention in resolving the protests by JNU students by advising the university authorities to reconsider its decision to severely penalise some of them.

Communist Party of India member D Raja raised the issue during Zero Hour and was supported by several members, including Sharad Yadav of Janata Dal-United.

Seeking governments intervention, Raja said JNU students have been on indefinite fast for eight days and teachers have also joined the agitation.

The situation is very serious. Condition of students is deteriorating. Last night JNUSU President Kanhaiya Kumar has been shifted to AIIMS. His health has gone down, he said.

The students are protesting against punishment given to some of them in connection with the event during which anti-national slogans were allegedly raised.
Jet Airways crew member Nidhi Chaphekar, who was injured in the Brussels airport bombings in March this year and her picture became the face of the terror attack, returned to Mumbai on Friday morning.

Nidhi, 42, who has not yet recovered from the injuries suffered in the terrorist attack, arrived around 7.30 am on Friday on a Paris-Mumbai Jet airways flight and was driven to Breach Candy hospital from the airport.

Airline officials said Nidhi has low immunity and doctors have advised her to avoid contact with people.

On March 22, three bombs went off -- two at the Brussels airport and one at Mallbeek metro station -- leaving 35 people dead, including three suicide bombers.

Nidhi was on her way to board a Jet flight for Newark when the explosions took place. She suffered 15 per cent burns and fractured an ankle.

Her colleague, Amit Motwani, was also injured and is still recovering at a Brussels hospital.

Nidhi, who was treated at Grande Hospital de Chaleroi, about 40 kilometre from Brussels, was discharged Thursday afternoon and taken to Paris where she boarded the flight to Mumbai.

She spent about 25 days in medically induced coma at the Chaleroi hospital and underwent extensive skin grafting.

Nidhi, who is still wheelchair-bound, was accompanied by her husband Rupesh Chaphekar, and bother-in-law Nilesh Chaphekar, besides the airlines support staff and its chief medical officer.

She has been with Jet Airways since August 1996.

Meanwhile, the Jet Airways, in a statement, said that Nidhi has made significant recovery from her injuries sustained during the blasts at Brussels airport.

She is in good spirits and is very happy to be back with her family, it said.

Nidhi will undergo treatment in Mumbai as part of the next phase of her recovery programme outlined by doctors, the statement further said.

Jet Airways continues to provide all the necessary support to Nidhi and her family during this time, it added.
Jawaharlal Nehru University students union president Kanhaiya Kumar on Friday ended his nine-day hunger strike after he was discharged from AIIMS even as the university administration asked students not to invite outsiders saying it might vitiate the academic atmosphere and peace on campus.

While five students on Thursday withdrew their fast against the punishment by the university in connection with the February 9 event during which anti-national slogans were allegedly raised, 15 others continued with the hunger strike.

Kanhaiya, who is out on bail after his arrest in a sedition case, was on Thursday admitted to AIIMS in a semi-conscious state.

He was discharged after treatment for mild dehydration and ketosis.

"Kanhaiya has been discharged from AIIMS. He has been advised bed rest for few days. He has to undergo some medical tests too, so keeping his health condition in mind he has withdrawn from the fast but will continue with the agitation," a JNUSU statement said.

The ketone level of the fasting students is high and the blood pressure is low, according to the test reports from the health centre.

On the other hand, the JNU issued fresh advisory for the students and teachers to avoid inviting outsiders to the campus.

The administration also asked the students to refrain from using "direct or indirect coercive measures and come forward for dialogue and discussion".

"The administration requests all the teachers and students to avoid inviting people from outside the campus for any gathering or activity to press their demands, which could undermine peace and security in the campus," JNU Registrar Pramod Kumar said in an appeal.

"Thousands of students on the campus are busy preparing for or writing their end semester examinations and also writing their dissertations. Continuing hunger strikes and escalation of it through involvement of outsiders may further enhance the stress level in the campus and affect the career of those students," he added.

While members from civil society joined the protests today, alumni of the university will gather on Saturday to express solidarity by fasting for a day.

In a separate notice, the Registrar asked the students not to use the public address system without permission and around the administration block, which has been the venue of protest ever since the sedition row broke out.

Twenty-five students had gone on hunger strike last week.

While five members of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad called off their fast on Wednesday claiming they have an assurance from the JNU administration that their demands will be considered, five members of the Left-affiliated groups withdrew from the stir yesterday citing deteriorating health.

JNU Vice Chairman Jagadesh Kumar had earlier this week appealed to students to put forward their demands using "constitutional" means and asked them to come for a "dialogue" to resolve the matter.

IMAGE: Kanhaiya was admitted to the AIIMS facility after he began his fast.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday slammed the Congress-led United Democratic Front in Kerala over the solar scam and the brutal rape and murder of a Dalit woman saying, there seemed to be no government in the state.

I am afraid to use the word solar in Kerala as it would create a big dhamaka (explosion), he said referring to the solar scam which has rocked the UDF government with charges being made even against Chief Minister Ommen Chandy.

He was addressing an election rally of the Bharatiya Janata Party at the Fort Maidan in Palakkad, his first in the series of four lined up in the coming days for the May 16 assembly polls, as the BJP goes all out to make its maiden entry in the assembly.

Modi also criticised the state governments failure to rise to the occasion while handling the rape case.

A Dalit sister was raped and killed. We dont see a government anywhere, Modi said.

The statement assumes significance as even after nine days, police was yet to nab the culprits involved in the brutal rape and murder of the 30-year old woman in Perumbavoor near Kochi.

The prime minister made the solar comment after referring to the solar initiative he had launched in his constituency Varanasi for converting diesel-powered engines to solar-powered battery engines in fishing boats.

This had given the fishermen a profit of Rs 500 per day, he said.

I thought why this cannot be replicated in Kerala also. But I was scared. I felt, if I go to Kerala and talk of solar, there will be big dhamaka, Modi said as the people cheered and clapped.

See the change from government to government. In Varanasi, the solar-powered boats are powering the lives of fishermen, but in Kerala the government is run by solar, Modi said, taking a dig at Chandy.

The prime minister also targeted the Communist Party of India-Marxist in the state, saying it was following the politics of violence.

Several innocent BJP workers lost their life in the attack over the years by the CPI-M, he said charging they were physically annihilated as they did not agree to the Marxist ideology.

Modi also mentioned about the insult meted out by the CPI-M student wing to a retired principal of a government college in Palakkad.

Some activists of Students Federation of India, students wing of the CPI-M, had prepared a grave for her as a retirement gift.

Do you want to vote for such people? Whether you will pardon those who committed this insult? Modi asked.

Attacking both the UDF and the Left Democratic Front, Modi said a third force (the BJP) has emerged in the state to act as strong umpire in the assembly.

Stating that development and creation of more jobs was the only way to save Kerala from the present situation, he said, educated youths should get jobs in the state instead of going out leaving their aged parents behind.

The prime minister said though the people of Kerala were well-educated and knowledgeable, they failed to understand that they had been looted in the past 60 years by the UDF and the LDF governments which ruled the state alternately.

It is an adjustment rule by the two fronts. Five year Congress-led UDF rules, then next five years CPI-M-headed LDF rules...They decide among themselves we will loot for five years, then you loot for five years, he charged.

Those who ruled the Gods own country for the last 60 years have only destroyed it...There seems to be a scientific arrangement to ruin Kerala. Both Congress and Left have mutually decided to loot turn by turn, he said.

Stating that there was no umpire in the state assembly now, he said adding: If Kerala has to be saved, there is need for a strong umpire -- BJP. I assure you that we will not allow Kerala to be destroyed by the two fronts.

Modi said this time a third decisive strength is emerging in Kerala and I am seeing this, thanking the thousands of people who stood braving the scorching heat outside the huge pandal in this town, which had been recording about 40C since the past few days.

He said the BJP wanted to take Kerala on the path of development, and appealed the people to vote for the BJP to improve the states future prospects.

Our governments only mantra is vikas (development), he said.

Modi said the National Democratic Alliance government at the Centre had always gone an extra mile and worked tirelessly for those in need during difficult times, especially in the evacuation of Indians, including Keralites from the strife torn Libya and Yemen.

We could not sleep until our daughters were brought back safe, he said crediting External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj for working tirelessly to bring them back to India.

If there is a problem in Kerala, there is pain in Delhi, he said.

On the recently launched Indias own regional Navigational system NAVIC, Modi said until now, the country was using the global positioning system of the United States.

Hereafter, India will decide its own path. We will decide the manzil (destination), he said.
The US has told Pakistan this week it will have to pay full price for the 8 F-16s that Islamabad wants to buy.

Now a US Senator reveals that the US wants to sell F-16s to India.

Aziz Haniffa/Rediff.com reports from Washington DC.

IMAGE: Indian Air Force Su-30MKI fighter aircraft prepare to land at the Eielson Air Force Base, Alaska, in preparation for Exercise Red Flag, which began April 28. Photograph: Staff Sergeant Joshua Turner/US Air Force

The co-chairs of the Senate India Caucus -- Republican John Cornyn of Texas and Democrat Mark Warner of Virginia -- who kicked off the Atlantic Council's US-India Trade Initiative, called on the Modi government to ramp up reforms and lift caps on foreign investment and ownership, if US-India trade is to reach its full potential.

Their message was that India replicate the exponential growth in defence cooperation and trade between the two countries that has now come to be the major catalyst in the strategic partnership, across other sectors as well if the envisaged $500 billion in two-way trade is to become a reality.

Arguing that defence trade and cooperative was vital between the US and India "for economic and security reasons," Cornyn, the current Senate Majority Whip, disclosed, "I am encouraged by talk of a major sale of F-16s to India and the defence department's ongoing Defence Technology and Trade Initiative with India."

"Even though there is a lot of promise and potential, over the last few years," Cornyn complained, "US trade with India has actually plateaued and trade between Texas and India has actually declined."

"We should be doing more, so that we can help jump start this important trade relationship and improve it in the future and mutually help improve our economies," the Senator said. "and one way we can do that is by bringing India into the existing trade structures like APEC."

Warner, who in his previous incarnation as Governor of Virginia, led a trade delegation to India, recalled that at the time "in 2004/2005, every governor was traveling to China and no one was traveling to India, and we were very proud at that moment to lead a state delegation to India."

"Now, obviously," Warner noted, "governors all across the country, go to India on a regular basis and the reasons for that are simple. Back in 2000, trade between the US and India was $19 billion and we've now seen that number grow to over $100 billion."

Echoing Cornyn, Warner said, "One of the things I am hopeful about is that the numbers on the defence side between the US and India are on a top line dollar amount, but while that top line dollar amount is important, it by no means tells the whole story about the chance and opportunity of increasing trade in the defence sector."

The Senator pointed out that "one of the great assets that India has is its enormous intellectual content, enormous intellectual developmental content, and some of the things we need to be working on are unmanned systems, for example, the enormous opportunities for us to jointly partner and develop -- not simply sell our equipment to India -- but actually partner and develop in areas like drones, areas like advanced aircraft and even areas around certain missile systems, where we can have a win-win."

In such a context, Warner felt, "India can build its national capacity around the prime minister's Make in India, where we can provide the commercial capital assets, and this kind of joint collaboration and cooperation really is an area which offers great potential."

"All of us who are fans of India and appreciate the global agenda Prime Minister Modi has laid out," Warner wondered, "whether the prime minister is going to be able to bring along the Indian bureaucracy to meet the very ambitious goals the prime minister has set out."

"Obviously, working through his internal bureaucracy is a matter for Indian domestic politics," Warner acknowledged, "but we'd like to see some progress on the Indian side."

The Senator urged the continuing raising of caps on foreign direct investment and the "lifting of the caps so that American and other outside investment can continue to flow into India without constraints of caps on the amount of foreign ownership in key areas."

Warner made a strong pitch for the enactment of a bilateral investment treaty, which he lamented "seems to be moving in spurts and starts." This should be a top priority, he said. "Get a BIT in place and it will give confidence that investors in India -- for that matter investors in the United States -- will have the guarantee that these investments across countries are protected."
Mounting attack on the Congress, the government said on Friday the previous United Progressive Alliance government had done everything to help AgustaWestland bag the chopper deal and asserted that the main beneficiaries of the kickbacks will be tracked so that may be we can do what we could not do in Bofors.

In a hard-hitting speech in the Lok Sabha, Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar said the entire corruption in the deal took place during the UPA tenure but former Air chief S P Tyagi and Gautam Khaitan are small people who simply washed their hands in a flowing ganga (of corruption) and that the government will find out where the river was going.

He said while the decision on the contract was taken in 2010, Tyagi had retired in 2007 and might have got just a chillar (loose change).

Amid a walkout by the Congress, which was pressing for a Supreme Court-monitored probe, he said the Central Bureau of Investigation is very seriously investigating the case.

I hope members are satisfied and members will support government in finding the truth. The truth may lead to many unwanted realism. What we could not do in Bofors, may be we will do it in AgustaWestland, Parrikar said while replying to a debate on the Calling Attention Motion during which he continuously targeted the Congress but deliberately refrained from naming anybody.

He said the UPA government had done everything to help AgustaWestland bag the Rs 3,600-crore deal for purchase of 12 VVIP helicopters and that its action against the company following the disclosure of corruption was not pro-active but forced by circumstances.

He asserted that the government will recover damages to the tune of 398 million (Over Rs 300 crore) as well as the bribe.

Referring to the Italian courts recent judgement, Parrikar said, with this, the criminal conspiracy has been established and we will get the documents very fast.

Alleging that the Congress had close links with Christian Michel, the middleman in the deal, he said the contract was given to a company which had not even participated in the tendering process.

Finding loopholes in the deal, the Defence Minister said the tender was submitted by Italy-based AgustaWestland but the contract was given to the United Kingdom-based AgustaWestland International Ltd, which was not Original Equipment Manufacturer.

I am shocked, how could you accept order from a company who has not given tender? They lost sense of proportion. They thought they will be in power forever. The smell and sight of Euro was so attractive, so intoxicating that they forgot everything. They should take consultation from Michel on how to cover up and how to do white wash, he said taking a dig at the Congress.

As the Congress created uproar and tried to disrupt his speech, he remarked, Why are you (Congress) concerned? I have not named anybody. You seem to know where the ganga was going.

An investigation is underway with regard to those who washed hands in the flowing ganga. Those who wash hands in the ganga have an idea about temperature of the water, how fast the water is flowing. Based on that, we are assessing whether water was cold or hot, whether the water had Hindi, English, Italian or German and what was the issue, Parrikar said.

Refusing to spell out what the CBI probe had revealed, the defence minister told the House, I can assure you that I will not disappoint you.

He said he has already started personally monitoring the probe even though the CBI and the Enforcement Directorate are not under him.

I am personally taking interest into the sequence of events, he said.

When Communist Party of India-Marxist member Mohammed Saleem questioned how he could monitor the CBI and whether it was not affecting its independence, the minister amended his version to say that he was not telling the CBI what to do but only trying to find out what they are doing and monitoring its progress to check if they are doing something.

He asserted that it was within his right as otherwise he would not be able to inform the House about the progress of the probe.

Parrikar, while giving details of the case, said the decision to prescribe higher cabin height of 1.8 metres of the helicopter was taken by the UPA government on May 9, 2005 and to buttress his point, he placed on the table of the House the minutes of the meeting that was chaired by the then National Security Advisor M K Narayanan.

Making 1.8 metre height of the cabin mandatory ensured that only AgustaWestland could qualify.

Noting that the scam surfaced in 2012, the defence minister said nothing was done by the UPA government till January 2014.

Describing the then Defence Minister A K Antony as bechara (helpless), Parrikar contended that his hands were tied and he took no action as he feared that his sainthood would be disrobed.

He said Antony acted only after a top official of Finmeccanica, the parent company of AgustaWestland, was arrested in Italy in connection with bribery in the deal.

Soon after the arrest, Antony gave the files to the CBI in 2-3 hours, he said, adding, He (Antony) wanted to protect his image....Whether he knew or didnt know, I dont know.

Responding to the Congress contention that the Italian judge had said that there was no evidence against Sonia Gandhi, Parrikar said it was half-truth as the judge had said that it was for India to investigate and for its investigating agencies to prove the guilt of people who are suspected.

With regard to the Congress charge that the Modi government had allowed an AgustaWestland affiliate to participate in another tender despite the company being blacklisted, the defence minister said the firm had only put on website its Request for Information which anybody can do in a digital world.

Any person who wants can put his own information there. Now it is on open Internet and if anyone wants to put information, whether it is (Congress leader) Jyotiraditya Scindia, or Christian Michel or Agusta Westland, we cannot stop him, he said.

He then took a dig at the Congress, saying they seemed to know every action of AgustaWestland. He said he was not aware that the company had uploaded something on the website and he looked for it only after Congress raised the issue.

So on RFI, if someone has put it, I didnt know. It came to my notice, when these people (the Congress) raised it. So with these (company) people, how much close relation they share, it comes to our mind. I didn't know about it that they have loaded information on RFI, Parrikar said.

Suggesting conspiracy to eliminate evidence in the deal, he referred to a mysterious fire incident on July 3, 2014 in the Air Force headquarters here and said he would be asking the CBI to probe that.

He said all files were burnt in that fire but luckily three files related to the AgustaWestland deal were saved as those had been kept by an official in his locked drawer.

If it was in somebodys mind to set it on fire, we think that failed as the official who was there because the Agusta issue was sensitive. He had locked the files in his drawer. So three files were saved and the three files related to AW-101 helicopters, the defence minister said.

"One good point is (that) everyone has agreed that corruption had taken place. It is clear that money has been paid to someone on the other side," the defence minister said pointing towards Congress benches.

"Euro 250.32 million was paid as advance. From that advance payment, whatever was to be received, that would have been distributed. And that is why these people were not considering withdrawing advance, because they might not have got kickbacks till then," Parrikar said.

He said Tyagi might have facilitated movement of documents....For this small work, what he had to get he might have received or not received, might have received partly. Who gave order in 2010?... How much that person has got we have to find that out.... He (Tyagi) was not there then.

Parrikar said Tyagi would have got chillar (loose change) or prasad. But when did the order go? Order went on February 8, 2010.

He went on to add: You can make out the mind. You require a criminal mind to think about the criminal, but you dont have to be criminal yourself. Why didnt they put on hold the full procurement on February 2012?

Referring to the Italian court judgement, Parrikar said, We dont have evidence against XYZ, I dont want to take name. Why should I unnecessarily get defamed? They (Court) said AP means phuli phuli phuli... Why do I have to unnecessarily spoil my own reputation by taking names? The whole world knows who is Signora and others.

Targeting Congress, he said they have links with Christian Michel. Whatever they (company) write to the prime minister, they get to know.... They have found a witness a Michel and if we raise the Italian court verdict, they start making noise.

The defence minister said the Congress can get any document from Michel very fast as they are lucky because they have support from all these people including Italian translation into English.

He alleged that the UPA government had added certain paraphernalia to the Agusta chopper as a result of which its payload capacity had reduced substantially.

Responding to questions over the government still doing business with some subsidiary companies of Finmeccanica, he said the government has put on hold all future contracts with the company.

However, contracts which have been already signed are being honoured because to us national security is important.

The guns which are placed on top of naval ships are manufactured by Finmeccanica subsidiary. Will I compromise on security by depriving the naval ships of bullets by blacklisting them, he questioned.

Parrikar said the Congress government had talked about blacklisting Finmeccanica but did not do it and it was actually Arun Jaitley as defence minister in the current government who put all their contracts on hold.

He suggested that the UPA government had jeopardised even the security of the President.

Contending that all corruption in arms deal occurred during the UPA tenure, Parrikar said he was proud to say that there is not a single such allegation against the present government.

Image: Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar speaks in the Lok Sabha on Friday. Photograph: PTI Photo
In little over 24 hours, the wildfires, which erupted on Sunday and forced the evacuation of about 80,000 people from Fort McMurray in the Canadian province of Alberta, have grown tenfold.

IMAGE: A fire fighting helicopter works over wildfires in Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada in this image posted on twitter May 5, 2016. Photograph: Chris Schwarz/Government of Alberta/Handout/Reuters

Unseasonably hot temperatures, extremely dry conditions and winds of up to 70km/h, helped fuel the fire's spectacular growth to 100,000 hectares (2.4 lakh acres) -- up from just 10,000 hectares (nearly 25,000 acres) the day before. On Wednesday, Notley had estimated that some 1600 structures had already been destroyed by the fire.

Officials said more than 1,110 firefighters, 145 helicopters, 138 pieces of heavy equipment and 22 air tankers were fighting 49 wildfires in the province, with seven of the wildfires considered to be raging out of control. Officials said the fire would likely continue to grow in the coming days, but noted it seemed to be heading away from the community, which lies in the heart of Canadas oil sands.

IMAGE: The fires have already forced 88,000 people to flee -- the biggest evacuation in the province's history. Photograph: CF Operations/Handout/Reuters

Alberta Premier Rachel Notley warned that the 49 fires, which have already forced the evacuation of the city of Fort McMurray, could spread and devour more territory because "conditions are still tinder dry." And she wouldn't give an estimate on when those flames will be doused.

"The damage to the community of Fort McMurray is extensive and the city is not safe for residents. It is simply not possible, nor is it responsible to speculate on a time when citizens will be able to return. We do know that it will not be a matter of days Notley said in a press briefing on Thursday night.

IMAGE: A Mountie surveys the damage on a street in Fort McMurray. Photograph: Alberta RCMP/Handout/Reuters

"Right now we are working with industry to do as much air evacuation as possible and we are doing everything we can to establish -- open the highways so we can get fuel up there and then get those folks moving south as quickly as we can," Notley said.

The out-of-control blaze has burned down whole neighborhoods of Fort McMurray in Canadas energy heartland and forced a precautionary shutdown of some oil production, driving up global oil prices.

IMAGE: Evacuees from the Fort McMurray wildfires, Ellyse Naughton (left), holds her toy robotic dog as her mother Erin looks at her phone as they camp at the Christina Lake campground in Conklin, Alberta. Photograph: Mark Blinch/Reuters

Justin Trudeau, Canada's prime minister, described the week's harrowing events as the largest fire evacuation in Albertas history.

"Homes have been destroyed. Neighbourhoods have gone up in flames. The footage weve seen of cars racing down highways while fire races on all sides is nothing short of terrifying," he said. The Alberta community looked "like a war-torn corner of the world instead of our own backyard," he added.

A government airlift of those cut off to the north began from oil facility airstrips. The premier said some 4,000 people had already been airlifted to the cities of Edmonton and Calgary late on Thursday.

IMAGE: Fire fighting helicopter works over wildfires that continue to threaten Fort McMurray neighborhoods in Fort McMurray. Photograph: Chris Schwarz/Government of Alberta/Handout/Reuters

Chad Morrison, the province's wildfire management specialist, said what crews need most is help from Mother Nature.

"No matter how many air tankers we throw at this thing, we're not going to be able to stop this fire," he told NBC News. "It's going to continue to burn with high intensity for the next several days until we get some rain or cooler conditions."

IMAGE: People prepare food in a kitchen for evacuees from the Fort McMurray wildfires at the "Bold Center" in Lac la Biche, Alberta. Photograph: Mark Blinch/Reuters

The Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo said Thursday night that "gusting winds have been extremely challenging for fire crews."

The fires have already forced 88,000 people to flee -- the biggest evacuation in the province's history -- and destroyed more than 1,600 homes and buildings.

IMAGE: A young girl sits as evacuees from the Fort McMurray wildfires rest in the sleeping area at the "Bold Center" in Lac la Biche, Alberta. Photograph: Mark Blinch/Reuters

The blaze is an extreme example of the power of Mother Nature, but offers some interesting lessons about the science of wildfires.

The conditions that preceded the start of this fire were quintessential wildfire conditions: a seemingly endless supply of dry fuel on the forest floor and in the canopy, and intense heat. All that was needed was a spark, and whether it was caused by human error or lightning (an investigation is underway), once the spark was there, the fire became a beast.

IMAGE: Officers look on as smoke from Fort McMurray's raging wildfires billow into the air after their city was evacuated. Photograph: Topher Seguin/Reuters

"You hate to use the cliche, but it really was kind of a perfect storm," Mike Wotton, a research scientist with the Canadian Forest Service and professor at the University of Toronto, told CBC News.

"There was a mild winter and not a lot of meltwater from the mountain snow pack. Now, a stale air mass has been sitting over Alberta, and it led to very low humidity. Then there was an early, hot spring, and everything got very dry. Then on top of that, it got windy."
A combative Congress president also hit out at the Centre saying it should not try to frighten them and that they would not allow democratic institutions to be weakened or destroyed

IMAGE: Congress president Sonia Gandhi and former PM Manmohan Singh break the police barricade to court arrest during the 'Save Democracy' march in New Delhi on Friday. Photograph: Shirish Shete/PTI Photo



A combative Sonia Gandhi on Friday attacked the Modi government for murdering democracy and unleashing a campaign of baseless allegations against the opposition, as top Congress leaders hit the streets and courted arrest near Parliament.

Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi were taken into custody along with Sonia Gandhi, who predicted that the governments days were numbered the way it was functioning.

Do not try to frighten or defame us... life has taught me to struggle, we have faced a lot of challenges. They dont know what we are made of, she said addressing the partys Save Democracy rally at Jantar Mantar in the nations capital.

IMAGE: Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh participate in the 'Save Democracy' march from Jantar Mantar to Parliament. Photograph: Adnan Abidi/Reuters



Asserting that her party will play role of an alert opposition with full vigour both inside and outside Parliament, she asked party men to unmask the Modi government.

Opposition leader in Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azad, party leader in Lok Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge and others courted arrest at Parliament Street Police station after they were stopped from marching to Parliament. They were released after a short while.

They should understand very well that when matters would become unbearable, people of India know how to teach them a lesson.... The way the Modi Government is playing a fraud on the mandate, it seems its days are numbered, the Congress president said.

IMAGE: Congress president Sonia Gandhi, vice president Rahul Gandhi, senior leaders A K Antony, Anand Sharma, Jyotiraditya Scindia and Ahmed Patel during the 'Save Democracy' rally at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi on Friday. Photograph: Vijay Verma/PTI Photo



The rally saw Rahul Gandhi and Manmohan Singh also attacking the Modi dispensation over pulling down of Congress governments in Arunachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand.

The AgustaWestland issue appeared to be weighing heavily on her mind as Sonia targeted the Modi dispensation accusing it of starting this game of levelling baseless allegations against leaders of opposition parties.

But, I would like tell them they should not commit the mistake of assuming that Congress is a weak force. Congress is never going to bow before injustice. We will play our role of an alert opposition with full vigour in coming days, (both) within Parliament and outside too and combat injustice, she said.

A Congress supporter shouts slogans as others try to cross police barricades during the 'Save Democracy' march to parliament in New Delhi on Friday. Photograph: Adnan Abidi/Reuters

Sonia said that the way the Centre has toppled Congress governments in Arunachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand through money and muscle power has not only shaken the foundation of democracy, but has murdered it.

She also asked the partymen to reach out to each corner of the country and unmask the Modi government through democratic means.

Declaring that the Congress will not allow the ruling party to destroy countrys democratic set up, she accused it of attempting to divide people on the basis of religion, region, language and eating habits.

She also alleged that minorities were living under fear and the Dalits, women and tribals were being given a raw deal by changes in laws pertaining to Panchayati Raj institutions.

IMAGE: Congress workers during the 'Save Democracy' rally at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi on Friday. Photograph: Vijay Verma/PTI Photo



Without naming the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the Congress chief also targeted the Sangh Parivar alleging that the National Democratic Alliance government was being remote controlled from Nagpur.

She said that the Congress would not allow democracy to be destroyed, whatever might be the diabolic designs of the government.

Sonia said that the Congress would not succumb despite attempts to browbeat the opposition and malign it.

Targeting Modi for his Congress-mukt Bharat campaign, former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said Congress is soul of India.

Singh said at a time when democratic institutions, universities and courts are under tremendous assault, it was the duty of the Congress to foil the designs of those in power by working together with Sonia and Rahul Gandhi.

He also expressed apprehensions that the Centre was attempting to destabilise duly elected governments led by Congress in Manipur, Mizoram, Meghalaya and Himachal Pradesh.

Congress is like Ganga, no matter how many false allegations are levelled, it will not divert from its path, he added.

IMAGE: Former prime minister Manmohan Singh is greeted by Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi as the party's president Sonia Gandhi looks on before the 'Save Democracy' march to parliament in New Delhi on Friday. Photograph: Altaf Hussain/Reuters



Underscoring that her party has been instrumental in creating democratic institution since independence, Sonia said that Congress would not shy away from making any sacrifices for the cause of democracy.

They declare anyone anti-national. Those who dont agree with them are targeted, she said, adding that her party knows how to fight against anti-national forces.

Accusing the Bharatiya Janata Party of levelling baseless allegations against leaders of opposition parties to divert public attention from its failure over the past two years, Sonia said it was their old tactic of spreading rumours and character assassination by spreading lies.

She also flagged the issue of price rise, saying that it has affected women and the poor the most.

They have gained power by showing false dreams. And after gaining power, their hunger for power is only increasing. And that has led to toppling of Congress governments, Sonia added.

She also alleged that fear was being created in the minds of minorities and society was being divided in the name of religion, language and regions, while injustice was being meted out to students.

IMAGE: Congress workers break police barricades during the 'Save Democracy' march on Friday. Photograph: Adnan Abidi/Reuters



Launching a scathing attack on Modi and RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat, Rahul said only two peoples writ runs in the country and those who stand against them are targeted with false allegations.

He said around 40 per cent of the country is facing a drought-like situation and 50 farmers were committing suicide everyday, but the prime minister has nothing to say over the issue.

Modiji promised achche din and today, the country is reeling under drought. 40 per cent of the country is reeling under drought. Everyday, 50 farmers are committing suicide. Latur, Vidarbha, Bundelkhand are burning. And Modiji has nothing to say about it, Rahul said in his brief speech.

Making light of Make in India programme, he said that Modi had promised two crore jobs per year after coming to power, but actually a mere 1.3 lakh jobs were generated last year.

Senior Congress leaders and workers, led by Sonia, later marched towards Parliament Street, where they courted arrest at local police station. They were later released.
On Friday, North Korea opens a ruling-party congress to cement Kim Jong-un as supreme leader. The countrys Workers' Party congress is meeting in capital Pyongang, for the first time in nearly 40 years.

There has been a buzz in the air in Pyongang since February, as North Koreans have been encouraged to take part in a 70-day speed battle to prepare for the event.

Since then, workers have been working round-the clock, buildings are being painted in pastel shades; and new propaganda banners have sprung up across the city. Adults and schoolchildren have been ordered to participate in a variety of performances, latimes reports.

Citizens of the authoritarian nation could, however, buy vacation days from the government during the 10-week period, Radio Free Asia reports.

These pictures offer a glimpse in the life of ordinary North Koreans as they prepare for the event.

A guide wears a pin with pictures of former North Korean leaders Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il as she talks to foreign reporters visiting Pyongyang, North Korea. All photographs: Damir Sagolj/Reuters

A policewoman controls traffic in central Pyongyang.

A man fixes a trolleybus in central Pyongyang.

A guide adjusts flowers under a mural showing former North Korean leader Kim Il Sung at the former ammunition factory visited by foreign reporters on a government organist tour in central Pyongyang.

The manager of the Jangchon Vegetable Co-op farm is silhouetted in front of pictures of former North Korean leaders Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il as he speaks to foreign reporters visiting just outside Pyongyang.

Labourers work on a construction site in central Pyongyang.

Strong wind blows as girls practice dancing with red flags in central Pyongyang.

A man reaches for one of the flags of the Workers' Party of Korea placed in central Pyongyang.

A guide wearing a traditional dress speaks to visitors at the Arch of Triumph in Pyongyang.

Children wearing red scarfs walk in front of a department store in central Pyongyang.

People pass in front of the building decorated with slogan 'The great comrades Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il will be with us forever' and their pictures in central Pyongyang.

People pass in front of large posters placed in central Pyongyang.
This weeks collection of stories that prove we live in a truly mad, mad world.

1) How many fingers and toes have you got? Just 20? This kids got 31

All of us have 10 fingers and 10 toes, but for this three-month-old baby it is not the same, as the little boy was born with 16 toes and 15 fingers.

The baby named Hong Hong from Hunan province, China was born with a rare birth defect known as polydactylism, that results in extra fingers.

Hong has inherited this birth defect from his mother, who has one extra finger and toe on her hands and feet.

When the baby was born, he had eight fingers on his left hand, seven fingers on his right hand, and eight toes per foot.

2) This masseuse has become famous for biting her A-list clients

A celebrity massage therapist is mouthing off about her unusual technique that sees her biting her clients.

Dorothy Stein, 48, from New Jersey, was nicknamed Dr Dot by musician Frank Zappa in the early days of her career when she used her skills to nab free concert tickets and meet her favourite rock stars backstage.

Since then, Dr Dot has massaged -- and bitten -- an impressive roster of famous names.

Dr Dot usually starts her sessions with biting -- she describes it as the 'appetiser to the full meal'.

She bites their backs and buttocks, before rubbing oil on their skin and moving on to a more traditional massage.

3) Meet the real life 'Fantastic Mr Fox'

Foxes may make for an unusual pet, but Patsy Gibbon's foxes are never far from his side. He has three of them -- the first was vixen Grainne, who he came across and nurtured seven years ago.

New additions followed in the form of Minnie, five-years-old, and 11-month-old Henry. Understandably, kids find Patsy and his friendly foxes fascinating.

4) London has a new naked restaurant with a waiting list of over 30,000

Almost 30,000 people have signed up to dine at a new London restaurant where they can eat without wearing clothes. Visitors to The Bunyadi will wear only gowns which they can remove "if they wish" as they sample stripped back food cooked without any modern gadgets.

Owners Lollipop said they were "amazed" by the interest. The restaurant will open for three months in central London in June.

Upon arrival, diners will head to changing rooms where they will place all their belongings in lockers and be given the gowns to wear.

Once in the restaurant, they will be seated in sections partitioned by bamboo and lit only by candlelight, where they will be able to strip "if they wish".

5) Sleep inside a bookshelf at this cozy Japanese hostel

Theres nothing better than cozying up in bed with a good book or, as in the case of this Japanese hostel, a few thousand of them.

Book and Bed is a small, 30-bed hostel in Tokyo where guests sleep in snug little cubbies hidden behind library shelves laden with books. It costs upwards of $34 a night to stay at Book and Bed. Each room comes with a simple mattress and reading light. There's also free Wi-Fi.

The books, a mix of English and Japanese offerings, are not for sale, however -- theyre just there for the enjoyment of hostel patrons.

6) Professional model eats 50 doughnuts in one sitting

You would never think binge eating could be part of a professional model's day-to-day life.

For Nela Zisser, it is. She is a competitive eater, and has recently managed to eat 50 Krispy Kreme doughnuts in one sitting.

She also uploaded a video of her performing the feat to her YouTube channel.

Zisser managed to eat the doughnuts in record time. She scoffed them in 24 minutes and 29 seconds. That's about two doughnuts a minute.

7) This woman's creepily realistic cakes will freak you out

An artist is making amazingly realistic -- and creepy -- cakes, and shocking people all over the world with her designs.

Katherine Dey even runs tutorials, teaching people how to make cakes which look like undersea monsters, pigeons, human heads, and babies.

Dey, who also paints and sculpts in New York, makes completely edible sweet treats which get strong responses from the people she serves them to.
The deal for purchase of 36 Rafale fighter planes from France is not done yet, Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar said on Friday with an assertion that the government was negotiating to reduce to deal value and "save a lot" of money.

He accused the Congress of spreading rumours that the Rafale deal was being signed for $9 billion.

"We will reduce the deal value and we will save a lot. We will show them that we curved out a better deal that what the United Progressive Allaince government was getting that time," Parrikar said in the Lok Sabha during Calling Attention Motion on the controversial AgustaWestland VVIP helicopter deal.

He said that the Congress had spread the word that the Rafale deal was signed for $9 billion, which got widely reported. "In such a situation, even other people also get carried with such false information," Parrikar said.

The Bharatiya Janata Party had last month tweeted a graphic, saying that the Rafale combat aircraft deal has been "finalised" and the Narendra Modi government had saved over Rs 21,000 crore in the "re-negotiation" with the French government.

The defence minister had later clarified that it is not complete as yet but at an "advanced stage" and the intention is to "close it quite soon".

India has been bargaining hard with France over the pricing of the 36 fighter planes, a deal that was announced first during Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Paris in April last year.

Parrikar was responding to Congress leader Jyotiraditya Scindia who said that the previous UPA government was doing the Rafale deal for $10 billion.

"Jyotiraditya Scindia took total liberties with the truth by saying that they were doing Rafale deal worth $10 billion. First Rafale deal did not happen, their defence minister had written it.. he was scared that his image would be tarnished...," Parikkar said.

Arguing that AK Antony had left it to others to finalise the deal, he said, "He (Antony) had written that L-1 determination is done and now negotiate price. After finalising it, bring it back to me to check up if the company is L-1. I have never in my lifetime seen such a comment".

"They would have had the experience from Agusta deal and that is why they had wrote it on top of Rafale deal (file)," he said.

However, the Congress raised questions over buying of Rafale fighter aircraft by the Modi dispensation.

"Which defence procurement procedure permits a prime minister to go and buy fighter aircraft from a private company without tendering process on off-the-shelf basis leading to expenditure of Billion Dollars?", party's chief spokesman Randeep Surjewala asked while talking to reporters.

Raising a number of questions over the deal, he wondered whether is it sovereign right of the prime minister over exchequer's money?

"If there is no sovereign right that a prime minister has, can a prime minister tomorrow decide that he will spend 'x' amount of billion dollars of exchequer's money on off-the-shelf basis purchase of the fighter aircraft, the answer is clearly 'no'.", he said.

So, the defence procurement procedure post independence, if ever has been negated, "thrown in the dust-bin and violated with impunity," it is in case of purchase of off-the-shelf Rafale aircraft by Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi, he claimed. Besides, he recalled that a global tender was held by the government and two companies had qualified -- Dassault Aviation of France which manufactures Rafale and the other company which makes Euro Fighter.

In such a scenario, "if you had to make off-the-shelf purchase, should an equivalent offer had not been made to both the companies, so that we could have got the best price possible," he said.
Samajwadi Party members on Friday walked out of the Rajya Sabha charging the Centre with playing petty politics by sending an empty water train to drought-hit Bundelkhand region of Uttar Pradesh.

SP members alleged that while the Centre has not heeded to the state governments requests for additional funds for tankers and dam to deal with drought in Bundelkhand, it sent the water train without speaking to the state government.

Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu refuted the charge of playing water politics, saying a steam-cleaned, 10-wagon train was on way to fill water at Jhansi before going to the drought-hit areas.

SP members were not satisfied with the reply and wanted the minister to apologise for playing with the sentiments of people. They staged a walkout of the House soon thereafter.

When the House met, Naresh Agarwal (SP) raised the issue saying the Centre had not contacted his partys government in UP before deciding to send the water train to Bundelkhand.

The train, he said, was empty and contained no water when it reached Bundelkhand.

The state government had sought central funds for building dam, water tankers, de-silting ponds and handpumps, none of which was agreed to by the Union government, he said.

The state government did not ask for water train. They asked for funds which you didnt give. Can a minister do water politics? The minister should resign, he said referring to Prabhu.

Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi maintained that the government was not playing politics on drought and water crisis in some parts of the country.

The state government should properly utilise the Bundelkhand package extended by the Centre. The central government is willing to extend more help, he said.

Sharad Yadav (Janata Dal-United) said there was serious crisis in Bundelkhand and no politics should be played on the issue by sending an empty water train.

SP members trooped into the Well of the House, raising slogans against water politics. Amid the din, Deputy Chairman P J Kurien got the listed papers laid on the table.

Mayawati (Bahujan Samaj Party) said 50 districts of Uttar Pradesh were facing drought and both the central and state governments should rise above party politics and think about solving the water crisis.

If a water train was sent by the Centre, the state government should have accepted it and exposed that it was empty, she said.

Rajeev Shukla (Congress) said it was not appropriate for the Centre to send the water train without consulting the state government.

In his response, Prabhu drew a parallel with the water train sent to Latur in Maharashtra, saying a train has to be steam cleaned for it to transport potable water.

Steam cleaning facility is only available at Kota in Rajasthan and so when water train was to be sent to Latur, it was cleaned at Kota and then it travelled empty to Miraj in Maharashtra where it was filled and the water transported to Latur, he said.

Similar provision was made for Bundelkhand, he said adding a new 10-wagon train was cleaned at Kota which then travelled to Uttar Pradesh.

Water is being filled in the train at Jhansi after which it will go to Bundelkhand, he said, adding water was being filled from within the state that needs it.

We dont want to play any politics, Prabhu said adding he had on Thursday spoken to Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav. We are ready to provide whatever help is needed.

But SP members were not satisfied and wanted an apology from the minister.

Kurien said the minister has already stated that he has communicated with the chief minister and so the issue raised by the SP members was over.

SP members were, however, not satisfied and walked out of the House.

Image used for representational purpose only.
Bharatiya Janata Party MP and member of Rajya Sabha Subramanian Swamy met a 6 pm deadline on Friday to authenticate documents he had cited in Parliament during a discussion on the AgustaWestland chopper scam.

Swamy had been instructed by the deputy speaker of the Rajya Sabha that if he failed to do so, his remarks during the Agusta debate would be struck off.

Swamy authenticated eight pages of documents before the deadline. The Congress party will be given access to these documents on Monday to scrutinize and verify their authenticity.

Swamy said the reason he was given this deadline was that the "Congress is not able to tolerate facts".

Congress leader Jairam Ramesh shot back: "Lying is in Subramanian Swamy's nature."

Since his debut as a Rajya Sabha member last week, Mr Swamy has made more headlines than many other parliamentarians have in years. His words were expunged two days in a row, with the Congress saying: "He does not know the difference between street words and Parliament words."
'A lot of people,' says India's Ambassador to the US, 'are struggling how to define this relationship.' Aziz Haniffa/Rediff.com reports from Washington, DC.

IMAGE: Prime Minister Narendra Modi and US President Barack Obama in New York. Photograph: Press Information Bureau

In the wake of the transformational ties between India and the United States in the past decade, getting a precise fix on how to define this relationship has left pundits and policy wonks flummoxed, Indias Ambassador to the US Arun Kumar Singh said.

Singh, a key participant at the Atlantic Councils forum on Unlocking the Potential of US-India Trade, was asked why the current euphoria over the state of the India-US relationship was any different from the excitement of the past that were generated by false starts, and if considering the road blocks that still persist, if the partnership could still unravel.

Such doubts. Singh said, were unavoidable because "weve not had a practice in the past decade of working so closely together," and cited the example of how "India and the United States do more military exercises than any other country bilaterally."

"People," Singh said, "are asking questions about what kind of relationship is this," and noted, "President Obama has said its a defining partnership of the 21st century. Two of our prime ministers have said we are like natural allies, although we dont say we are an ally, we are not looking for military alliances."

"So, a lot of people are struggling how to define this relationship," the ambassador added, mentioning how "the Council on Foreign Relations recently brought out a study which said its a joint venture, where you work together on common interests."

I remember after (Defence) Secretary (Ash) Carter visited India, there was a newspaper comment saying its a warm handshake but not an embrace," Singh said, adding as much as "he United States sees itself as an exceptional country, in India, we also see ourselves as an exceptional country and there is tremendous assertion in India that any partnership we build, there must be this strategic autonomy in decision-making."

"Given all this," Singh argued, "there is a recognition in both countries that there is a lot of convergence of our interests and therefore, how do we work together to maximize that convergence and utilise that convergence to our advantage."

"What is happening is that we now have a habit of working together, of discussing and managing our differences and disagreements far better than we did in the past, and all this will provide us a way to keep growing forward," the envoy explained.

Earlier, in countering some of the arguments, including those propounded by Senators John Cornyn and Mark Warner, the co-chairs of the Senate India Caucus, that New Delhi should ramp up economic reforms if the potential of US-India trade is to reach its potential and digs at Indias much maligned bureaucracy, Singh asserted, "One thing that has to be remembered is that the political economies of India and the United States are different."

"There cannot be a cookie-cutter approach," he said, adding that if "allowances are made in this regard, the tremendous opportunities that exist" could be availed of by investors.

At the outset, Singh, in establishing the context from Indias perspective, argued that "despite the global headwinds over the past two years, India has shown a reasonably good rate of growth. Last year we grew at about 7.5 percent and the year before at 7 percent."

The ambassador assured the audience that "most projections are that in the coming year, the rate of growth should be higher because the expectation is that this year on account of enhanced rural demand because of much better monsoons and other factors, there would be an addition to the rate of growth meeting what the IMF (International Monetary Fund) projected -- that India being the fastest-growing economy in the world."

US investment in India, which was about $8 billion in 2004, Singh pointed out, was now $28 billion. "Just in the last two years, again, despite the global headwinds, US equity investment in India has gone up from $7 billion to 12 billion."

"FDI (foreign direct investment) flows into India have gone up by more than 50 percent," Singh said, "and again, in the last five years, Indian investment in the United States by Indian companies has been $18 billion, creating 100,000 jobs directly and in more than 40 US states."
Yogita Desai, 12, died of 'cardio pulmonary arrest' after she collapsed on her way home while fetching water. Sachin Kengar, 9, drowned while filling water from a well.

Will the deaths of these children force the Maharashtra government and other state governments where children are being devoured by the drought into tackling the crisis on a war footing?

IMAGE: Ashok Desai and his wife were clearly in shock over their daughter Yogita's sudden demise.

Reportage: Prasanna D Zore/Rediff.com and Uttam Ghosh/Rediff.com

Photographs: Uttam Ghosh/Rediff.com

Unlike Sachin, who died crying for help as his elder brother watched in panic, villagers in Sabalkhed village in Beed's Ashti taluka rushed to help Yogita when she collapsed in front of her home.

Just four days before Sachin Kengar met his watery grave in Vida village, 12-year-old Class 5 student Yogita Ashok Desai was making the rounds of a hand pump located barely 500 metres from her home.

At around 11.15 on the morning of April 17, Yogita, along with her father's mother -- the duo got along very well and enjoyed helping Yogita's mother in household work -- made a fourth round to fetch water from the borewell.

On her way back, just outside the door, Yogita collapsed and vomited.

Her brother Yogesh, a Class 9 student, who had come home for his vacation from Alandi near Pune, where he is studying at a school run by a charitable institution, her father Ashok Tatyabhau Desai and his brother's son Ishwar Desai immediately rushed Yogita to Dr Hanumant Kakde's hospital at Dhanora, which is about 3 km from the Desais' home.

IMAGE: The death certificate issued by Dr Hanumant Kakde lists the cause of Yogita's death as 'cardio pulmonary arrest' and mentions the time of death at 1 am.

At around 1 am the next day, Dr Kakde declared Yogita dead. 'Cardio pulmonary arrest,' Dr Kakde mentioned in the death certificate issued by him after her sudden death.

By 2.30 am the family consigned Yogita's mortal remains to the flames. Unlike Sachin Kengar, who was buried as per the custom followed by his family that makes it mandatory to bury unmarried children, Yogita was cremated.

***

IMAGE: In close-knit rural Indian society relatives and neighbours play an important role as support systems in times of personal crisis.

But they also influence decision-making as they took a call to cremate Yogita's body without a post-mortem.

"Yogita's health deteriorated only around midnight," explains her father Ashok, barely able to speak coherently.

"Though her condition was not good when we admitted her to the hospital that afternoon, she was fine through the day. She was administered three bottles of saline through the day and she was speaking with us," says the inconsolable father.

"He has stopped eating regular meals," says Yogita's mother looking at her husband, who said he was recuperating from a stomach infection. "He is only trying to overcome his grief by offering these excuses," says she, staring blankly at her husband.

Ashok looks at his wife and then at his mother and mother-in-law, all present to grieve Yogita's death.

"Aaichya hatha khali kaam karaychi (She loved helping her mother in the household chores)," he says with great effort, half lisping, in pain.

"Perhaps this is God's will," he says trying to offer a spiritual justification to silence his own questions and memories of his daughter.

***

IMAGE: Yogita's aunt shows us her report card. Her father could not control his emotions as he saw the report card.

The card mentions Yogita's weight at 16 kgs and height at 115 cms.

A day before, girls from Yogita's class brought her report card home. She had made good progress in her Class 5 exam, concluded 20 days ago.

"I had asked those girls not to bring her report card home. It brings only tears and memories of Yogita back to me," says Ashok opening up a bit, sharing his pain with strangers.

"My son Yogesh is studying in Class 9 in Alandi," he changes the topic. "He loves to play the tabla," he adds. "He too likes to help me on the farm, just like Yogita helped her mother and grandmother," he says.

By this time Yogita's maternal grandmother comes out of the house and the entire Desai clan, a couple of villagers who ushered us to the Desais' home, and we talk about Yogita's report card, her hobbies, and her death.

Ask Ashok why Yogita's body was not sent for a post-mortem, because the family believes she died "achanak (suddenly)", he goes quiet.

***

Ishwar Desai, Ashok Desai's nephew, who with his uncle and cousin, admitted Yogita to Dr Kakde's hospital, says, "the doctor told us that she collapsed because of dehydration. Then she was given a pill and she slept. She passed away in her sleep."

The doctor, Ishwar recalls, said since the patient was speaking properly there was no need to take her body for a post-mortem to Ahmednagar, which is about 40-odd kilometres from Sabalkhed.

There were two voices in the Desai family: An aunt who wanted a post-mortem while the family and village elders thought it unwise to conduct a post-mortem of a child. Video: Prasanna D Zore/Rediff.com

"The doctor did not say we should go for the PM (post-mortem)... aamchya gharchyanchi paristhithi tashi navhati ki PM karawa ki ghari aanawa (All the decision makers in the family were completely shocked and were in no position to decide whether we should go for the post-mortem or not)."

Desai's sister, who was present during these conversations, hinted that since the girl had died very young the family thought it would have been against social norms to conduct a post-mortem.

Dr Kakde said it was the family's decision not to go for a post-mortem. "I insisted that they go for a PM, but the elders in the family decided against it," Dr Kakde told Rediff.com on the phone.

"She was fine till midnight. Suddenly her condition deteriorated and she died within an hour," the doctor said.

When asked why he did not go for a post-mortem, Dr Kakde said, "there was a big crowd at the hospital that night to collect her body. Nobody was in the mood to listen to me."

Dr Kakde maintained that he had insisted on a post-mortem but relented when the crowd decided against it and took Yogita's body away for cremation.

Ashok Desai later said the family decided against a post-mortem as it was everybody's will. "Saglyanchi ichcha hoti ki body la ghari nyava ani antim sanskar lavkar karawe (The elders in the family decided that they should cremate her without going for a post-mortem)."

***

IMAGE: Ashok Desai and his wife with her mother-in-law in a green sari and her mother in a pink sari outside the Desais' home in Sabalkhed village, Ashti taluka, Beed.

As the conversation veers back to Yogita's unfortunate death, her father says, "we don't get adequate water in the village borewell now. Once a woman fills her quota of water by working at the borewell's handle, it takes another 20 minutes before the ground water comes to the fore for the next person to fill the bucket."

"The water table in the village has depleted because of overuse," says Madhu Desai, one of the villagers who had shown us to the Desais' home. "There has been no rain since 2011. From where will we have a sufficient water table?" he asks.

During peak hours, which often are between 9 am to 11 am, most girls from the village visit the borewell a number of times to check if it is their turn to fill water.

On April 17, Yogita had been to the borewell three times, but returned empty handed. The fourth time she went along with her grandmother and was happy to see it was her turn to pump water from the borewell.

As it turned out, it was the final vessel she carried in her tiny arms.
Halloween is nearly here. Find out when Trick-or-Treat is happening in Martinsville.

The leaves are changing, the evenings are getting cooler and excitement is building as Halloween draws closer.
Artists and guests are going to have to squeeze into the Center for Contemporary Arts May 13 as a joint reception is held for the creators of works in five new exhibits.

The reception, which is free to the public, will be held 5-7 p.m.

'It's a true group reception,' said Kara Hines, gallery manager and marketing director for the center.

A special feature of the reception will be a Q&A and book signing by photographer Bill Wright at 6 p.m. Photos from Wright's newest book, 'Authentic Texas: People of Big Bend,' will be one of the center's new exhibits featured at the reception.

Most of the artwork displayed in all five exhibits will be for sale, with a portion of the proceeds benefitting the center's ArtReach program for marginalized people in Abilene and the monthly ArtWalk.

New exhibits, in addition the Wright's photography, are 'New Works' by artist members of the Center for Contemporary Arts, annual exhibit by members of the West Texas Photographic Society, annual exhibit by local 'Dirty Draw-ers' artists, and 'XS ART,' an ongoing revolving display of small works by the center's artist members.

The reception on Friday will come a day after the monthly ArtWalk, a downtown event sponsored by the Center for Contemporary Arts, and in the midst of the annual Western Heritage Classic. Thursday's ArtWalk, themed 'Back in the Saddle,' will include the classic's kickoff parade and street dance.

Wright's 'Authentic Texas' photos of people of the Big Bend will complement the western theme that will be celebrated in Abilene next week.

'It all kind of ties in,' Hines said.

IF YOU GO

What: Joint reception for opening of new exhibits at the Center for Contemporary Arts, 220 Cypress St.

When: 5-7 p.m. May 13

Admission: Free

New exhibits: Authentic Texas: Photography of Bill Wright, New Works by artist members of the Center for Contemporary Arts, annual exhibit by members of the West Texas Photographic Society, annual exhibit by local Dirty Draw-ers artists, XS ART, an ongoing revolving display of small works by the centers artist members

Art sale: Most art works displayed will be for sale, with a portion of the proceeds benefiting the centers ArtReach program for marginalized populations in Abilene and the monthly ArtWalk

Extra: Bill Wright will conduct a Q&A with guests at 6 p.m. and will sign copies of his latest book, Authentic Texas: People of Big Bend




The rhythmic beat of a Native American drum, the reverberating peal from a bowl-shaped bell touched lightly during a Buddhist chant, and the familiar 'amens' all joined together Thursday for a diverse National Day of Prayer service at the Center for Contemporary Arts.

The Abilene Interfaith Council sponsors the service the first Thursday in May each year, the date for the observance signed into law and signed by President Reagan in 1988.

Interfaith council member Omer Hancock gave the history of the National Day of Prayer, which dates to 1775, when the Continental Congress asked the colonies to pray for wisdom in forming a nation. Hancock concluded his remarks with the reading of the Presidential Proclamation, which is issued each year.

'Our country was founded on the idea of religious freedom, and we have long upheld the belief that how we pray and whether we pray are matters reserved for an individual's own conscience,' President Obama's prayer said in part.

The interfaith service was one of two services held Thursday in Abilene. 1 Kingdom, an organization of local pastors, sponsored a day-long, come-and-go event at Love and Care Ministries.

At the interfaith service, the presidential prayer was followed by 12 others from diverse faiths  Anglican, Baha'I, Buddhist, Catholic, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Islam, Judaism, Earth-Based Spirituality, New Thought Spirituality, Protestant, Unitarian-Universalist and Native American.

All the prayers emphasized unity and some made reference to the nation's tumultuous political scene.

In her Earth-Based Spirituality prayer, Susie Wilson stressed cooperation, compassion, faith and love among all people. Her prayer was offered, 'so that we can begin to heal that which is tearing our nation apart.'

Stephanie Hamm gave the Protestant prayer, in which she quoted from an anonymous source and from Billy Graham's Prayer for the Nation.

'We pray today for our nation's leaders,' Graham's prayer said.'Give them the wisdom to know what is right, and the courage to do it.'

Noel Singleton, a Buddhist, and Icie Mitchell, a Native American spiritualist, brought something special to the gathering. Singleton tapped on what looked like a metal bowl during his chant. Singleton explained after the service that the percussion instrument is called a 'singing bowl,' but he doesn't call it that himself.

'I think of it as a bell,' he said.

Mitchell lightly struck a handheld drum, with decorated drumhead, throughout her sung prayer. The mesmerizing drumbeat had the effect of a heartbeat. Mitchell softly beat on the drum and closed her eyes as she sang her prayer.

'I'm not always sure it's me singing,' she said after the service. 'I can feel someone else with me.'

Each year's interfaith council prayer service ends with a 'service of breaking bread together in peace,' the motto of the council. The homemade challah bread is provided each year by Gay Beitscher of Abilene's Jewish Temple Mizpah.

The crowd broke into groups of about six people who stood in a circle, broke a piece from the loaf and passed it to the next person. Before the bread-breaking began, Jacob Snowden, president-elect of the interfaith council, encouraged participants to do more than break off a piece of bread and pass the loaf.

'I encourage you to eat and to chat,' he said. 'Maybe you'll make a friend.'
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Monica Arellano

ABILENE  Monica Arellano, 43, of Abilene, passed away Tuesday, May 3, 2016, with family by her side. Arrangements pending with Dove Funeral Home

Donald Davis Cole

DALLAS  Donald Davis Cole, 78, passed away Saturday, April 30, 2016, in Cross Plains. Memorial service will be at 11 a.m. Friday, May 6, 2016, in the chapel at St. Michael and All Angels Episcopal Church in Dallas. In lieu of flowers, memorials may be made to the Good Shepherd Ministry at St. Michael and All Angels Episcopal Church, 8011 Douglas Ave., Dallas TX 75225.

Jimmy Denio

ABILENE  Jimmy Denio, 77, passed away Tuesday, May 3, 2016. Arrangements pending with Piersall Funeral Directors, 733 Butternut St.

Bobby A. Hallum

CLYDE  Bobby A. Hallum, 83, passed away Tuesday, May 3, 2016. Graveside service will be at noon Saturday, May 7, 2016, at the Staff Cemetery in Eastland County, directed by Bailey-Howard Funeral Home of Clyde. Visitation will be from 6-8 p.m. Friday at the funeral home.

Nancy Handley

TUSCOLA  Nancy Handley, 75, passed away Tuesday, May 3, 2016. Service will be at 1 p.m. Saturday, May 7, 2016, at the Tuscola Cemetery. Visitation will take place from 6-8 p.m. Friday, May 6, 2016, at Tuscola United Methodist Church's family life building.

Mary Lou Hodge

CARBON  Mary Lou Hodge, 84, passed away Wednesday, May 4, 2016. Service will be at 2 p.m. Saturday, May 7, 2016, at Kimbrough Funeral Home Chapel in Cisco. Burial to follow in Oakland Cemetery in Comanche County. Visitation will be from 5-7 p.m. Friday, May 6, 2016, at the funeral home.

Martin Mendez

BRECKENRIDGE  Martin Mendez, 72, passed away Tuesday, May 3, 2016. Mass will be celebrated at 2 p.m. Friday, May 6, 2016, at Sacred Heart Catholic Church with Deacon Ruben Castaneda officiating. Interment to follow in the Breckenridge Cemetery, directed by Morehart Mortuary. Rosary will be recited at 6 p.m. Thursday, May 5, 2016, at Morehart Mortuary.

Martie Ann (Webster) Stracener

SWEETWATER  Martie Ann (Webster) Stracener, 95, passed away Tuesday, April 26, 2016. Service will be at 2 p.m. Thursday, May 5, 2016, at Cate-Spencer & Trent Funeral Home Chapel. Interment to follow in the Sweetwater Cemetery.
At 29, Josh Perez is a few years older than his peers who will graduate Saturday, but that age difference turned out to be a blessing that Perez didn't see coming.

Perez is getting a degree in English and writing, with a minor in psychology, from McMurry University. He may not even realize the impact he made on the younger students around him, but one of his professors noticed. Not only is Perez older than the traditional college student, he also had to overcome obstacles brought on by multiple sclerosis.

Younger, healthier students took notice of Perez' determination and responded, said Tim Dunn, a visiting instructor of psychology at McMurry who had Perez in two classes.

'I think that had an impact on them,' Dunn said.

Perez, a 2005 graduate of Cooper High School, won't get his diploma Saturday with his peers, opting out of the traditional ceremony. It isn't because he would have trouble walking across the stage. He walks well now, having advanced from a cane and wheelchair just a couple of years ago.

But, in addition to the MS, Perez suffers from anxiety and doesn't like to be in crowds. Whether he participates in the ceremony on Saturday or not, he will be an official college graduate after Saturday. He credits the small classrooms and closeness to his professors for his success in college.

'It's really been beneficial to me being here,' he said.

Perez's journey to living with multiple sclerosis started when he was 15. Before that, he was a typical youngster, full of energy and life. His first symptom was numbness in his arm that wouldn't go away. Then came the diagnosis.

'Ever since then,' Perez said, 'I've been taking life as it is.'

After graduating from Cooper, Perez spent a year in Michigan with a friend. But the cold weather didn't suit him and he returned to Abilene, where his parents live. He took courses at Cisco College and then enrolled at McMurry.

He first planned to major in elementary education but then switched to English and writing. He had enjoyed writing poetry when he was younger. Now, he has his sights set on writing Christian fiction.

'That's what my plans are now,' he said.

Perez doesn't think the realization that he no longer is a student will hit him until August, when he normally would be heading back to class. He knows he will miss his fellow students and the faculty who encouraged him.

One of those was Ann-Marie Lopez, an associate professor of English who had Perez in two classes that focused on major novelists. She first Perez in class two years ago, when he still was in a wheelchair.

He was quiet, shy, and uncomfortable talking in class, Lopez recalled. But all that changed this year.

'The difference between the two years is unreal,' Lopez said. 'Everything about him is different in this class.'

Perez soon will be a college graduate and even though he won't be getting a traditional job when he leaves McMurry, he will treat his new venture as a job. He plans to devote full time to writing the first of what he hopes will be many Christian novels. He doesn't doubt for a minute he can do it.

'I think it's in me,' he said.

IF YOU GO:

What: McMurry University commencement

When: 10 a.m. Saturday

Where: Hunt Physical Education Center

Speaker: State Rep. Susan King

Class of 2016: 194 graduates
A year ago there was literally no moisture at all in Lake Abilene, said Ryan Hunter, park superintendent for Abilene State Park.

'It was completely dry,' he said. What a difference a few months  even a few weeks  can make.

As of 2:30 p.m. Thursday, Lake Abilene was 92.4 percent full, recent, lingering rains refilling the reservoir rapidly.

The lake began gaining water three months ago, but its percentage exploded in the last week, according to the Water Data for Texas website, rising from 31.8 percent three months ago to 80.1 percent and up, up.

And that means a return to many lake-based activities, as well the eventual return  after a couple of years of restocking  for fishing activities.

That, combined with the park's pool facilities, should come together to create a 'really big summer,' Hunter said.

'People just enjoy being around the water more than they do a muddy hole,' Hunter said. 'So the hiking, mountain biking, equestrian use is all going to be greatly improved form just having water and a little more beautiful scenery, aquatic birds, things like that.'

Boating in canoes, kayaks and other smaller boats is welcome, as is swimming in both designated and undesignated areas will be allowed, though the lake is a 'no-wake' area, meaning motorboats must stay on idle.

'If you start producing a wake you're going too fast,' he said. Personal watercraft are also not allowed.

Most of the plants  grass and shrubs, in particular  that grew in as the lake receded won't survive now that the area is reflooded.

Trees, now part of the lake, will remain for some time.

But that's not all bad, Hunter said, the dead wood provides habitat for the fish that should eventually inhabit the lake and some overall structure in the water.

There is some concern that as plant life dies, there could be a situation early in which decomposing plants could create low oxygen levels in the water.

But that 'should all work itself out' over the summer months, Hunter said, any reduced oxygen level not being of concern since the lake's fish population will be low. Some aquatic plants will eventually regrow.

As far as the fish population is concerned, 'management stocking' is currently going on. The park is working with Texas Parks & Wildlife inland fisheries.

'They're going to be putting in what we call forage species  bluegills and shad, perhaps  to kind of get things going,' Hunter said.

As fish become available from hatcheries, the lake will slowly acquire some largemouth bass and potentially catfish, crappie and other species.

'It is going to be a few years before it's really ready for some good fishing, but we're taking steps now try to get that in place,' Hunter said.
Ted Cruz got at least one thing right in naming Carly Fiorina as his running mate in his futile bid to win the Republican nomination: the proper attributes for a vice presidential candidate.

Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump could do worse than to base their choices on the Cruz parameters for prospective running mates: knowledge and experience, judgment and character.

Vice presidential choices are always important; one out of three has become president, including four of the last nine. But the choice has become more important in an age in which candidates must pass intensive media scrutiny and perform before millions in a single vice presidential debate. An added factor this year is that Trump will be 70 next month, and Clinton 69 in October.

Since Jimmy Carter made Walter Mondale the first significant vice presidential partner, most nominees have wisely picked someone qualified to play a significant governmental role, rather than serve primarily as political attack dog, ticket balancer or traveling envoy. That could be especially important for Trump, given his lack of governmental experience.

Trump's unpredictability makes assessing possible GOP choices hard. But it would seem sensible for him to pick someone with the Washington experience he lacks, like Mitt Romney selected Rep. Paul Ryan and George W. Bush picked Dick Cheney.

His top Washington ally has been Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, a former federal judge. A small group of GOP lawmakers that met in March with Trump included another prospect, Sen. Tom Cotton, an ambitious young Arkansan and Iraq War veteran.

Another possibility is a former GOP foe like New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who enthusiastically endorsed him and could complement his blue-collar appeal. But the blunt Christie may be too similar to Trump and, besides, has very low approval ratings in his home state. Another Trump endorser, Ben Carson, is popular with GOP conservatives but also has no governmental experience.

On paper, Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida seems a natural fit. Though Trump denigrated him as 'little Marco' and lured him into the political gutter, the young Cuban-American senator and former state legislator would provide generational, ethnic, geographic and experience balance.

Thanks to Tuesday's victory in Indiana, Trump won't need to make a deal to reach the required 1,237 delegates. And his repeated denunciations of Cruz as 'lying Ted' and their continuing enmity make the Texas senator an unlikely vice presidential choice. That leaves Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who would bring both state and federal experience, though he has adamantly rejected the idea. He wouldn't be the first to change his mind.

Three women who have been suggested, if Trump wants to counter likely rival Clinton, are Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa, Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina and Gov. Susanna Martinez of New Mexico. All three backed Rubio, and Haley was particularly critical of Trump.

Agreeing to be Trump's vice president might involve a gigantic leap of faith, both in terms of what life would be like and politically. History says being on a losing ticket doesn't benefit future ambitions.

As for Clinton, the Democratic front-runner's campaign did something unusual recently in providing a list of people under consideration that looked very much like a real list, not one leaked for political purposes.

Two names stood out, by virtue of experience and background: Sens. Tim Kaine of Virginia and Sherrod Brown of Ohio. Kaine, a former mayor and governor, is a Spanish-speaking Roman Catholic designated to speak for Clinton on foreign policy issues. Brown is a populist with positions similar to those of Bernie Sanders, like requiring banks to down size. Both have won several state-wide elections in major swing states.

The other three were former Gov. Deval Patrick of Massachusetts, an African-American who was assistant attorney general under Bill Clinton; Virginia's other senator, Mark Warner, also a former governor; and Tom Perez, the secretary of labor. Another Hispanic sometimes mentioned is Julian Castro, the secretary of housing and urban development and former San Antonio mayor. So is Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

But given how Trump has disparaged minorities and women, the likely first major party female nominee might prefer a qualified white male like Kaine or Brown, rather than a minority or a woman.

As for Fiorina, her tenure as a vice presidential candidate was one of the shortest in history, though she showed she definitely fit two traditional vice presidential roles, political soul mate and attack dog.

Email Carl P. Leubsdorf, former Washington bureau chief of the Dallas Morning News, at carl.p.leubsdorf@gmail.com.
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"It's not right. We need more time."
Five activists hold up placards in support of jailed rights activist Guo Feixiong in Beijing, May 5, 2016.

Authorities in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong cut short a meeting between jailed rights activist Guo Feixiong and his lawyer on Friday, amid growing fears for Guo's health.

Two of Guo's legal team were rudely cut short by prison guards, two minutes after they had sat down to speak to him in detention, Guo's sister Yang Maoping told RFA.

The lawyers also called on prison authorities to transfer Guo to a provincial hospital for emergency medical treatment and further tests, and to make the results of such tests public, she said.

Yang, who is a doctor, has previously told RFA that her brother suffers from intermittent bloody or watery stools, as well as occasional bleeding in the mouth and throat, and suffered a hemorrhage on April 19.

She said he is unsteady on his feet and has been denied medical tests to establish the cause of his bleeding.

She has also said she fears Guo's life may be at risk.

Adequate medical care

The cancellation of the lawyers' visit comes as international rights groups called on the Chinese government to allow Guo to receive adequate medical care.

"The Chinese authorities should immediately ensure two critics of the government whose health is deteriorating have immediate access to adequate medical care," the New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a statement on its website.

"The denial of medical care amounts to cruel and inhuman treatment in violation of the United Nations Convention Against Torture to which China is a party," the group said.

Guo, also known by his birth name Yang Maodong, received a visit from his sister Yang Maoping in Yangchun Prison in southern Chinas Guangdong Province on Tuesday.

He was sentenced last November for "picking quarrels and stirring up trouble" and "gathering a crowd to disrupt social order" after a prolonged period in pretrial detention where he was held alone in a closet-size cell and denied access to the exercise yard for nearly two years.

"Chinese officials are earning an ugly reputation over their willingness to let political prisoners get terribly sick  and even die  in detention," HRW China director Sophie Richardson said.

Dozens of activists across China on Tuesday announced a relay hunger strike to protest Guo's lack of medical treatment.

"We do this in protest at the disregard by Yangchun Prison authorities for Guo Feixiong's right to life, and their mistreatment of him," the activists said in a declaration that had garnered 63 names on Tuesday.

"We call on the authorities to allow Guo Feixiong timely access to reasonable and effective medical treatment, according to law," it said.

Gao Yu update

Meanwhile, HRW said veteran journalist Gao Yu is facing similar difficulties amid deteriorating health, despite having been released to "serve sentence outside jail."

Gao was handed a five-year jail term, reduced from seven years, for allegedly leaking an internal Chinese Communist Party document calling for greater censorship of liberal ideas.

She was released on medical parole last November but remains under tight police surveillance.

She has no income to meet her own medical costs, and promised medical insurance and other benefits have failed to materialize.

Gao, who has a history of cardiovascular disease, was recently found to have an abnormal lymph node growth that has the potential to be malignant, HRW said.

She has suffered repeated heart attacks, but authorities have denied her permission to seek medical treatment in Germany despite her having a valid visa for travel.

Reported by Wen Yuqing for RFA's Cantonese Service, and by Yang Fan for the Mandarin Service. Translated and written in English by Luisetta Mudie.
The Yalu River Railway Bridge, seen from the Chinese border town of Dandong, Feb. 8, 2016.

The tough new economic sanctions the UN slapped onto North Korea coupled with the cooling Chinese economy are turning some of the toniest business addresses in the border town of Dandong, China into a tough sell.

While the Chinese economic slowdown has affected the real estate market across the country, the economic sanctions have forced North Korean officials and businessmen to pull up stakes and are causing vacancies in buildings in the border city that were impossible to get into just a few months ago, RFAs Korean Service has learned.

The vacancy for office buildings in Dandong city has increased due to Chinese economic recession, said a Chinese businessman familiar with the marketplace. But office buildings located near Yalu River have a vacancy rate two times more than others.

The Yalu divides Dandong from the nearest North Korean city of Sinuiju. Unlike the DMZ that divides North and South Korea, the Yalu isnt bristling with razor wire and patrolled by armed guards. Dandong has long been North Koreas gateway the world.

That began to change in March after China agreed to join South Korea, Japan and the West in supporting the economic sanctions the UN placed on North Korea after Pyongyang exploded a nuclear device and launched a long-range ballistic missile.

While there were questions raised about Beijings desire to punish its neighbor and ally, it looks as if the sanctions have teeth, even though they may be biting the landlords in Dandong as much as the North Koreans.

One building, the Best Landmark, was once a prime real estate for North Korean and Chinese businessmen. Since the sanctions went into effect, advertisements for vacancies in the 30-story twin towers on Binjiang Road are now showing up on local media.

This office building was once envied by others when the rental rate was high for those who parceled out these office rooms, said one Chinese resident. There are many lease advertisements now, especially for this building, in the daily newspapers and real-estate advertisements.

Because Best Landmark housed North Koreas consular office and is located near the Dadong customs house, it was especially popular with businessmen involved with the lucrative trade in North Korean coal and non-ferrous metals, a Chinese source told RFA.

Now the consular office is gone and so are the North Korean steel and coal traders, the source said.

A Chinese source who owns a 200 Pyong (About 7117 sq. ft) office room in the Best Landmark told RFA that the lessee left without fulfilling the lease.

There is a one year contract, but the lessee who has been staying in the office for the past five years has left the room without any notice and abandoned the contract, the source said. Now, the room is vacant.

Reported by Joonho Kim for RFAs Korean Service. Translated by Jackie Yoo. Written in English by Brooks Boliek.
North Korean citizens forced to perform labor in the run-up to the ruling Workers Party Congress that began Friday in Pyongyang are exhausted from the regime pushing them to show their enthusiasm for and commitment to it, sources inside the country said.

During the meetingthe first Workers Party Congress to be held in 36 yearsnational leader Kim Jong Un is expected to further consolidate his power and lay out his policies.

To prepare for the congress, the government in February rolled out a 70-day battle, ordering citizens around the country to perform forced labor by building new structures and sprucing up existing buildings, sources said.

They also had to produce additional goods and crops to cover the cost of the congress, according to New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW).

The central institution of the Seventh Workers Party Convention made citizens overwork by encouraging a high level of political enthusiasm and commitment to high performance to strive for better results, a source from North Hamgyong province told RFAs Korean Service.

Despite weeks of toil on such projects, some structures that residents of his province worked on still appear unfinished, he said.

Citizens are worn out from the excessive amount of work they have put into state building projects as well as forced mobilization and forced funding of them, he said. The citizens have been careless when it comes to doing the projects themselves.

Meanwhile, a lack of resources necessary for production has caused about 90 percent of factories in the region to cease operating during the 70-day lead-up to the party congress, said another source form North Hamgyong province.

There are countless numbers of factories that have stopped their operations because of the lack of materials, not just in North Hamgyong province but also in the entire nation, he said. Yet, the government is still making a fuss about opening the Seventh Workers Party Convention.

Abusive rule

HRW called on party leaders at the congress to address the rights abuses committed by the government, including the forced labor for the event.

This ruling party congress is a rare event, but its made possible by the forced labor that untold thousands of North Koreans are subject to as part of everyday life under Kim Jong Uns abusive rule, said Phil Robertson, HRWs deputy Asia director.

Kim Jong Un talks a lot about improving the lives of North Koreans, but well only know if hes serious if he takes action to end human rights abuses, he said.

But Im not holding my breath waiting for that to happen, Robertson said.

Hardly any details about the party congress have been issued publicly so far, except for reports that Kim Jong Un praised the countrys nuclear test in January and rocket launch of a satellite into space in February as a great success during a keynote speech.

It is believed that the rare party congress is being held now to shore up the regimes power in light of harsh new sanctions by the United Nations Security Council in retaliation for its actions earlier this year.

When Kim Jong Uns grandfather Kim Il Sung presided over the last party congress in 1980, he announced that his son Kim Jong Il would succeed him and solidified the North Korean political philosophy of juche, or self-reliance.

Reported by Jieun Kim for RFAs Korean Service. Translated by Jackie Yoo. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.
Farmers in the northern Lao province of Xiangkhouang are using so much of the herbicide paraquat on their crops that questions have been raised about the impact of the chemical on the environment and the governments ability to control its use, RFAs Lao service has learned.

Despite a two-year-old ban on the chemical in Xiangkhouang, farmers can easily buy paraquat, and are using about 25 times the amount recommended by the manufacturer, according to an official with a civil society organization.

The amount of herbicide use is high, 80 liters per hectare, which is overuse, said the civil society official who spoke on condition of anonymity. The standard use is only three liters per hectare,

A Lao agriculture official told RFA that authorities are aware of the problem, but are struggling to bring it under control. The official told RFA that the abuse of paraquat is depleting nutrients in the soil, but that it is up to local authorities to curb its use.

Provincial authorities have banned this substance for two years, an agriculture official in Nong-het district told RFA. The agriculture sectors are in charge of controlling it, but it is still smuggled in for sale in the province.

When contacted by RFA, Khamphou Chanthavong, director general of Xiangkhouang provinces natural resources and environment department, refused to comment on the issue.

While the herbicide is banned in Xiangkhouang, farmers there have become so accustomed to using it that they cannot kick the paraquat habit, sources tell RFA.

It is difficult for farmers to stop using paraquat for their maize plantations because they have gotten used to it, the civil society official told RFA.

Farmers in Xiangkhouangs Nong Het district have been using paraquat since 2008, when they were trained on intensive agricultural production, a Lao agriculture official told RFA.

Paraquat is one of the most widely used herbicides in the world, and while its toxicity is low when sprayed in recommended doses, it poses serious health issues to anyone who handles the chemical.

A small, undiluted dose can kill a human, and paraquat is blamed for a large number of pesticide-related deaths. It is a major suicide agent in many developing countries, and in 2011, the U.S. National Institutes of Health found a link between paraquat use and Parkinson's disease in farm workers.

While paraquat has dangerous side effects, it also has benefits. When used properly it kills weeds without the need to plow them under and it is less reactive in the environment than other herbicides.

Xiangkhouang officials decided the dangers outweighed the benefits and banned the chemical, but they admitted they were unable to control its use.

Authorities banned the use, but farmers cannot stop using it because they have gotten used to it for many years, said the Lao agriculture official.

Reported by RFA's Lao Service. Translated by Ounkeo Souksavanh. Written in English by Brooks Boliek.
Freelance miners search for jade in piles of waste rubble dumped by mechanical diggers next to a jade mine in Hpakant, Myanmar's Kachin State, Oct. 23, 2015.

A new jade mine disaster in northern Myanmar has claimed the lives of at least 13 people who are thought to have been scavenging for the valuable mineral in the unstable waste cast off from mining operations, according to local officials and news reports.

The accident occurred late Thursday in Hpakant township in Kachin State, where Myanmar's lucrative jade mining industry is located.

The deaths of freelance prospectors searching through the unstable mountains of mine tailings have become an almost regular occurrence in the region. It has captured the attention of the government, but officials have yet to do anything about the dangerous activity.

Jade is mined with heavy equipment that leaves behind small pieces in the waste soil that is piled into huge mounds. People who settle near the mounds to scavenge pieces from the towering piles are at risk when landslides occur.

Sai Nyunt Lwin of the Hpakant township hospital told the Associated Press that 13 bodies had been brought there from Seng Tawng jade mining village.

Mostly young people

All the dead were in their 20s and came from the towns of Myitkyina, Mohnyin and Putao, sources told RFAs Myanmar Service. It was raining at the time of the disaster, making the tailings even more unstable.

As much as 90 percent of the worlds jade is mined in Hpakant and much of it ends up in China where it is considered a symbol of virtue and power and is believed to improve health and ward off evil spirits.

About 100 people were killed in a similar landslide in November last year, and 40 people were killed in a similar accident in January.

On April 19 through May 3, Ohn Win, head of the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment, finished a tour of jade and gold mines in mineral-rich Kachin.

State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi, whose National League for Democracy (NLD) party came to power at the beginning of April, has called for increased safety measures and government oversight of the industry.

NLD's challenge

Aung San Suu Kyi and the NLD have their work cut out for them. Not only is scavenging for jade a way that the poor can make some money, but the mining industry is intertwined with the government and the military.

Mining has taken off in Myanmar since the countrys former military regime handed power to President Thein Seins quasi-civilian government in 2011, leading to the lifting of many western-imposed sanctions.



Despite growing political reform in Myanmar, the countrys jade industry is still tightly controlled by a network of former generals, drug lords, and crony businessmen who keep the sectors vast profits exclusively for themselves, according to a 2015 study by London-based Global Witness



Major players in the estimated U.S. $31 billion trade include former junta chief Than Shwe and senior figures in Myanmars ruling and military-dominated Union Solidarity and Development Party, the report said.



Global Witness said that an openly and equitably managed jade mining industry could greatly benefit the ethnic Kachin people and help drive development across Myanmar, but instead, the people of Kachin State are seeing their livelihoods disappear and their landscape shattered by the intensifying scramble for their most prized asset.



Dozens of small-scale miners have been injured or killed picking through the dangerous waste dumps in Hpakant over the last year, and Global Witness said that those who oppose the jade mining industry in the area face land grabs, intimidation and violence.

Reported by RFA's Myanmar Service. Translated by Khet Mar. Written in English by Brooks Boliek.
A Tibetan mother of five has burned herself to death in southwestern Chinas Sichuan province in a challenge to Beijings rule in the second such protest in a Tibetan area of China this year, a source in the region told RFAs Tibetan Service.



Sonam Tso, believed to have been in her 50s, self-immolated on March 23 near a monastery in Dzoege (in Chinese, Ruoergai) county in the Ngaba (Aba) Tibetan and Qiang Autonomous Prefecture, RFAs source said, speaking on condition of anonymity.



News of Tsos protest was initially delayed in reaching outside contacts due to communications clampdowns imposed by Chinese authorities in the area, but her self-immolation followed by almost a month a similar burning in Sichuans Kardze prefecture that killed a young monk.



Tso, a native of Akyi townships Tsa village, launched her protest outside Dzoeges Sera monastery after telling her husband, who was walking with her, to go ahead, saying that she would join him later, RFAs source said.



A young monk heard her call out for the return of [exiled spiritual leader] the Dalai Lama and for freedom for Tibet as she burned, he said.



Tsos husband and the monk tried to put out the flames, and an elderly monk named Tsultrim, Tsos uncle, then brought her inside the monastery.



She was later put into a vehicle to be taken to a hospital, but she died before leaving the monastery, the source said.



Speaking separately to RFA, a Tibetan source in exile confirmed the incident had occurred, citing contacts in the region.



Police detained Tsos uncle for eight days for discussing the incident with other people and forced him to delete the photos he had taken of Tsos protest, the source said, adding that her husband, Kalsang Gyaltsen, was called in for questioning three times.



She leaves behind five childrentwo boys and three girls, he said.



Tsos protest brings to 145 the number of self-immolations by Tibetans living in China since the wave of fiery protests began in 2009.



Most protests feature demands for Tibetan freedom and the return of spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, who has lived in exile in India since an abortive national uprising in 1959. A handful of self-immolation protests have been over local land or property disputes.



Reported by Sonam Topgyal for RFAs Tibetan Service. Translated by Karma Dorjee. Written in English by Richard Finney.
A septuagenarian petitioner who let off firecrackers on Beijing's Tiananmen Square in protest at official corruption in her hometown has been put on trial after seven months in police detention, her relatives and lawyer said.



Wang Jindi, 77, had made repeated trips to protest in Beijing, setting off firecrackers outside the ruling Chinese Communist Party headquarters in Zhongnanhai, on Tiananmen Square, and outside the U.S., French, and British embassies in Beijing, her granddaughter said.



Wang stood trial at the Wuxi People's Court in the eastern province of Jiangsu on April 26 on charges of "picking quarrels and stirring up trouble," granddaughter He Fengzhu said.



She said security was tight, with several hundred police and around 100 of Wang's supporters outside the court buildings.



He Fengzhu said she and her maternal grandmother Zhou Jingjuan were allowed to attend the trial.



"When [Zhou] caught sight of Wang, she got very excited and shouted out 'Wang Jindi, you are innocent!'" He said.



"Then she was dragged out by the courtroom police. I couldn't see her after I left. I think she was being held somewhere in the court buildings."



She added: "My paternal grandmother [Wang] went along with my maternal grandmother [Zhou Jingjuan] to protest, and they let off the firecrackers together," He said.



Eviction, corruption



Wang and Zhou, 85, were initially detained together, but Zhou was released after 12 days owing to her advanced age, Wang's daughter-in-law Xu Haifeng told RFA.



The pair had been protesting forced eviction, the demolition of their homes, and alleged corrupt dealings by officials in the Wuxi municipal government.



Zhou's whereabouts were unknown after she was removed from the courtroom for shouting, Xu said.



"A bunch of triad gang members came ... I don't know where they took her after that," said Xu, who was denied permission to attend the trial herself.



"We were standing outside to show support, and there were riot police guarding the courtroom gates."



During Wang's detention, police, judges, and state prosecutors had all put pressure on Wang to blame Xu for sending her on the firecracker protest during her pretrial detention, Xu said.



"They brought this up during interrogations more than a dozen times, putting pressure on my mother-in-law to incriminate me," she said. "These charges were trumped up by the Wuxi government. She is totally innocent."



Persecution by authorities



Wang began to lodge official complaints after the family home was demolished on Sept. 9, 2010, making her the target of ongoing persecution by the local government, Xu said.



Wang's lawyer Chang Weiping said she had pleaded not guilty.



"I don't believe that her actions amounted to a crime," Chang said. "A lot of people set off firecrackers on nonholidays in Beijing. She just broke some regulations, but that only merits an administrative punishment."



Chang said seven months' detention and years of official harassment had taken its toll on Wang.



"She is getting on in years, and her mood is pretty low," Chang said. "You can tell just by looking at her that she's a long-term petitioner, and the authorities target petitioners, saying that they deliberately disrupt public order."



Verdicts and sentences are generally announced within six weeks of a trial in China's judicial system.



Reported by Wen Yuqing for RFA's Cantonese Service, and by Xin Lin for the Mandarin Service. Translated and written in English by Luisetta Mudie.




Afghan President Ashraf Ghani has proposed a reshuffling of his defense and intelligence ministers in the aftermath of a massive deadly terrorist attack in Kabul.

Zafar Hashemi, the president's office spokesman, tweeted late on May 5 that Ghani had appointed acting Defense Minister Masoom Stanikzai to be acting chief of the National Directorate of Security and the deputy chief of staff of the Defense Ministry, General Abdullah Habibi, to be acting defense minister.

The nominations must be approved by parliament.

Parliament rejected Stanikzai as defense minister last year, but Ghani kept him in the office as acting minister.

The post of intelligence agency director has been vacant since December, when Rahmatullah Nabil resigned after disagreements with Ghani over attempts to reconcile relations with Pakistan.

His resignation also came the day after a Taliban attack at the Kandahar airport killed 50 people.

Ghani had pledged to swiftly fill the two posts after a bomb attack in central Kabul killed 64 people in late April.

With reporting by dpa
Afghan Special Forces backed by helicopter gunships have freed more than 60 prisoners from a Taliban prison in southern Helmand Province.

Provincial Governor Hayatullah Hayat said Afghan Army commandos and members of the countrys elite counterterrorism unit raided a home in the Nawzad district on May 5.

NATO said it backed the mission in a "train, advise and assist" role.

In a statement, the military alliance said two insurgents were killed during the operation, and many others were wounded and detained.

"Afghan Special Forces liberated over 60 prisoners from an illegally run Taliban prison... during the cover of darkness via helicopter assault," NATO said in the statement.

"The liberated prisoners were safely transported to Kandahar where they were turned over to... Afghan authorities."

Afghan forces suffered no casualties, according to Afghan officials.

Commentators say the raid marks a rare success for Afghan forces struggling to beat back the Taliban insurgency.

In April, the Taliban announced the start of their annual spring offensive, vowing "large-scale attacks" across Afghanistan.

Based on reporting by AP and AFP


A major scandal has erupted around the Uzbek-U.S. carmaking joint venture GM Uzbekistan.

RFE/RLs Uzbek Service, known locally as Ozodlik, reports that GM Uzbekistan General Director Tohirjon Jalilov was detained on April 29 along with several other members of the company's management and finance department.

Prosecutors investigating alleged fraud, money laundering, and embezzlement by the leadership of the GM Uzbekistan car factory have extended their investigation to all business partners of GM Uzbekistan that delivered spare parts or provided other services to the company. Ulughbek Rozikulov, an Uzbek deputy prime minister who also chairs a domestic automobile-industry association, was also questioned by prosecutors, and a number of senior GM Uzbekistan executives (including the GM Uzbekistan director-general) remain in detention. The factory has suspended production while the investigation continues.

Ozodlik learned that Jalilov is suspected of participation in an alleged scam in which GM Uzbekistan vehicles meant for export to Russia never made it farther than Shymkent, Kazakhstan, just across the border from Uzbekistan. Investigators believe the vehicles reportedly sat idle for some time before being "re-exported" back to Uzbekistan. According to the website Eltuz.com, there are some 10,000 GM Uzbekistan vehicles in Shymkent parking lots.

GM Uzbekistan sells vehicles to Russia at less than half the price the cars and trucks sell for in Uzbekistan -- about $6,400 in Russia but as high as $18,000 in Uzbekistan.

The accusation is that the automobiles were returned to Uzbekistan, where they were sold at the Uzbekistan price, with executives pocketing the difference in price.

The scheme was said to have been uncovered by Uzbek President Islam Karimov. Ozodlik reported that Karimov made an official visit to Russia on April 25-26 and, during his time there, he discovered there were delays in the shipment of GM Uzbekistan vehicles to Russia. After his return to Uzbekistan, Ozodlik reported, Karimov couldn't get satisfactory answers about proceeds from auto exports to Russia and therefore ordered an investigation.

Among more than 10 people detained since Jalilov was taken into custody are Jalilovs son, two directors of the GM Uzbekistan finance department, and several people involved in the export of GM Uzbekistan cars to Voronezh, Russia. There are warrants out for the arrest of two members of Uzbekistans National Security Service who are suspected of having helped cover up the illegal business.

There is also the matter of who else might be involved in Uzavtosanoat, the company that controls Uzbekistans 75 percent stake in GM Uzbekistan. Besides Jalilov, other chairmen of Uzavtosanoat are Finance Minister Rustam Azimov and Deputy Prime Minister Ruzikulov, the latter of whom oversees vehicle construction in Uzbekistan.

GM Uzbekistan was formed in 2008, taking over the operations of UzDaewooAvto, a South Korean-Uzbek venture. U.S. carmaking giant GM controls 25 percent of GM Uzbekistan, and Uzavtosanoat controls the remaining 75 percent.

Based on material from RFE/RLs Uzbek Service
Vladimir Putin's regime continues to play head games with its hostage.

After reportedly indicating that a deal had been reached to release kidnapped Ukrainian military pilot Nadia Savchenko and that she could be returned home within weeks, the Russian authorities are now saying the process can take up to a year.

Sure it will. There must be a lot of paperwork to process.

Russia's Federal Penitentiary Service, meanwhile, has thrown more sand in the gears by saying that Savchenko can only be returned to Ukraine if Kyiv pledges to make her serve her 22-year prison sentence there.

That, of course, is something the Ukrainian authorities could never agree to publicly.

And Moscow added insult to injury last week when it temporarily prevented Savchenko's sister Vira from leaving the country on the flimsy pretext that she had committed a crime when she referred to a Russian judge as a "shmuck."

Nadia Savchenko, meanwhile, has threatened to resume her dry hunger strike if she is not released soon.

Just weeks ago, Moscow seemed to be finally moving to end this whole disgusting charade and release its hostage.

Now there is no end in sight. Which, sadly, isn't surprising.

Virtually everything Russia has said about Savchenko from Day 1 has been a lie. Why should they stop now?

The case against her is a pure and transparent fabrication -- and everybody knows this.

She was kidnapped and she is a hostage, pure and simple.

It isn't clear whether Moscow is trying to save face, whether it is stalling in hopes of getting a better deal in exchange for its hostage, or whether it doesn't plan to release her at all and is simply playing cruel mind games.

Whatever the case, the Kremlin's behavior is criminal.

Keep telling me what you think on The Power Vertical's Twitter feed and on our Facebook page.
ASTANA -- Another Kazakh minister has resigned in the wake of a scandal over a controversial land privatization law.

Kazakhstans presidential press service says Agriculture Minister Asylzhan Mamytbekov resigned on May 6, a day after President Nursultan Nazarbaev officially reprimanded him for not being fully fit for his post.

On May 5, Kazakh Economy Minister Erbolat Dosaev resigned along with his deputy just minutes before Nazarbaev announced his decision to impose a moratorium on a controversial plan to privatize state-owned agricultural land.

It was Dosaev who announced the government's plan on March 30 to start selling agricultural land in auctions as of July 1.

Dosaev's announcement caused large public protests in cities and towns across Kazakhstan.

Demonstrators said they feared the auctioning of the land would not be done in a transparent way, inviting corruption.


Many Kazakhs checking their smartphones on May 6 might have been surprised to find a cautiously contrite SMS message from an unlikely source.

The sender, AqOrda, was neither an apologetic spouse nor a penitent pal.

It was the office of Kazakhstan's president, which is headquartered in the Ak Orda Presidential Palace in Astana. The text message said simply: "The Republic's President Nursultan Nazarbaev has announced a moratorium to implementation of some chapters of the Land Code that caused a public commotion."

The message was distributed by leading mobile networks Altel, Beeline, Kcell, and Tele2 less than 24 hours after Nazarbaev announced his decision -- under unusually vociferous public pressure -- to postpone a controversial plan to privatize state-owned agricultural land through auctions beginning in July.

The texts are part of a digital effort to spread the word that is unusual in this ex-Soviet republic, where Nazarbaev has ruled with a tight lid on dissent for a quarter century. And it appears to be a tacit acknowledgement that even here, social and other digital media are gaining ground on Nazarbaev's more traditional levers of information and power: state-dominated newspapers, television, and radio.

Videos of Nazarbaev announcing the climbdown on May 5 appeared almost immediately on AqOrda's Facebook account, before even state-controlled media could report the news.

Nazarbaev's administration appears to grasp the potential impact of digital platforms like Facebook, VKontakte, and text messaging in a country where authorities have shuttered so many major independent or opposition media outlets.

Clearly, the president wanted to ensure that everyone in Kazakhstan -- including the activists leading recent protests against the agricultural sell-offs -- were informed that the plan's implementation had been postponed.

But Nazarbaev also announced on May 5 the creation of a new Ministry of Information and Communications, which will function "to meet current information challenges and effective implementation of reforms."

Among its duties, the president said: "Monitoring the information space of all types, including websites on the Internet, social-networking sites, to detect in a timely fashion the most acute matters and react to them." Another goal of the new ministry, Nazarbaev said, was the "improvement of the quality of domestic information products for ensuring information security, both in the electronic and print space."

Facebook users have expressed concerns over the new ministry, dubbing it a "Ministry of Truth," a "Ministry Of Happiness," and "Orwell's Nightmare," among other things.

The suspension of plans for the land sales followed nearly two weeks of demonstrations across the country. It was the biggest outpouring of public anger since police fatally shot at least 16 protesting oil workers in the southwestern towns of Zhanaozen and Shetpe in December 2011.

On April 24, in what appeared to be the largest of the demonstrations against the agricultural sell-offs, at least 1,000 protesters rallied in the western city of Atyrau.

Kazakh activists had called for more mass protests to be staged in major Kazakh cities on May 21.
Kosovo has charged two ethnic Albanians with terror offenses for allegedly joining an Islamic militant group in Syria.

In a statement issued on May 6, the Prosecutor's Office said the two left Pristina in November 2013 for Turkey before eventually ending up in the city Azaz in Syria where they were trained and armed by the Al-Nusra Front rebel group.

They are believed to have taken part in fighting until they returned to Kosovo three months later.

It wasn't clear if they have been arrested.

If proved, the charges could lead to up to 10 years' imprisonment.

Authorities say that some 70 Kosovo citizens are believed to be active in Syria and Iraq.

Based on reporting by AP


China and Kazakhstan have signed $2 billion in deals during a trip by the Communist Party chief of China's far western Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, Chinese media report.

The restive Xinjiang -- which is strategically located on the borders of Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, and Tajikistan -- is a key part of what Beijing officially refers to as its "one belt, one road" strategy to develop trade and transport links across Asia and beyond.

During his visit from May 1-4, Xinjiang's party chief and top official Zhang Chunxian said Xinjiang and Kazakhstan would both benefit from the establishment of a new Silk Road.

Zhang oversaw the signing of five energy, agricultural, and industrial projects worth more than $2 billion, Chinese media reported on May 5.

There are three Kazakh autonomous prefectures within Xinjiang, where at least 1.5 million ethnic Kazakhs, 250,000 Kyrgyz, and some 200,000 Tajiks live.

Based on reporting by Xinhua, Reuters, and Xinjiang Ribao
Another another shoe drops.

Another mask is removed.

Another set of skeletons walks out of Vladimir Putin's closet.

Another international investigation exposes the dark heart of the Kremlin regime.

A Spanish judge this week issued international arrest warrants for a dozen Russians -- including current and former officials -- in connection with a decade-long organized crime investigation.

The Spanish probe into the Tambov and Malyshev gangs has shone a bright spotlight on Putin's mob ties dating back to his tenure as deputy mayor of the gangster's paradise of St. Petersburg in the 1990s.

On this week's Power Vertical Podcast, I discuss the Spanish revelations and indictments with co-host Mark Galeotti, a professor at New York University, an expert on Russian organized crime, and author of the blog In Moscow's Shadows; and Karen Dawisha, director of the Havighurst Center for Russian and Post-Soviet Studies at Miami University of Ohio and the author of the highly acclaimed book Putin's Kleptocracy: Who Owns Russia?

Enjoy...

Listen to or download the podcast above or subscribe to The Power Vertical Podcast on iTunes.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin in the Black Sea resort of Sochi to deepen ties and try to resolve a long-running territorial dispute.

Tokyo-Moscow relations have been hampered for decades by a dispute over the Kurile Islands, which Soviet troops seized at the end of the World War II.

Lingering tensions over the islands have prevented Japan and Russia from ever signing a peace treaty to formally end the war.

"This is a complex, multifaceted issue that can only be resolved in a manner acceptable to both sides through an even deeper partnership between the two countries," Putin's chief foreign-policy adviser, Yury Ushakov, said.

Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida said last month that the two countries had agreed to start negotiations on signing a peace treaty.

His Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, said Russia wanted to "move forward" in relations, but was not prepared to budge on the "result of World War II."

In signs Russia is not about to cede control over the Kuriles, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev last year visited one of the islands, home to some 19,000 Russians, and Moscow recently built new compounds for troops stationed there.

Still, Putin said during a public phone-in last month that he thinks "a compromise could be found at some point -- and it will be found" on the territorial dispute.

"Immediate serious progress" is unlikely at the Sochi meeting, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, but Moscow hopes it will establish a "constructive atmosphere in bilateral relations."

Tensions have also risen more recently as Japan joined Western states in imposing sanctions on Russia over its aggression in Ukraine.

The Japanese press reported that U.S. President Barack Obama earlier this year asked Abe not to go through with the visit with Putin because of the sanctions and related Western efforts to isolate Moscow.

But Abe noted that European and U.S. leaders had maintained contacts with Moscow despite the sanctions, so he will too.

"I am going to Russia, with which I want to build the relations that would make it possible for us to cope with various international problems together," he said.

The White House had no comment on the matter this week.

Putin said last month he appreciated Abe's willingness to visit despite "pressure from partners, particularly the United States."

The leaders are expected to discuss a repeatedly postponed visit by Putin to Japan this year. Japanese media reported that Abe may invite the Russian leader to his home prefecture of Yamaguchi.

Moscow plans to invite Abe to take part in its Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok on September 2-3.

The Kremlin said they were also set to discuss economic ties. Moscow says trade turnover between Russia and Japan last year fell 31 percent due to low oil prices.

Abe will later this month host a summit of the Group of Seven advanced industrial countries. Russia was essentially kicked out of what was once the Group of Eight because of its annexation of Crimea.

With reporting by AFP and TASS
A court in the Russian city of Tver has sentenced a man to two years and three months in prison for reposting material about Crimea on a social-media network.

The court on May 5 found that engineer Andrei Bubeyev reposted an article by publicist Boris Stomakhin that had earlier been deemed "extremist" and "threatening to Russia's territorial integrity."

The piece argued that the Ukrainian Black Sea region of Crimea had been illegally annexed by Russia and should be returned to Ukraine.

In April 2015, a Moscow court sentenced Stomakhin to seven years in prison on charges of promoting terrorism and extremism.

Stomakhin says the charges against him were politically motivated.

In the region of Chuvashia, investigators have accused 62-year-old Nikolai Yegorov of inciting national enmity for reposting the same Stomakhin article.

Yegorov denies the accusation and his trial is pending.

With reporting by Ekho Moskvy and RBC
An unknown attacker has shot and killed a chief accountant in the police department in Russia's restive North Caucasus region of Daghestan.

Daghestani officials said on May 6 that the police captain, whose name was not disclosed, was shot dead overnight near his home in the southwestern region of Suleiman-Stal.

Daghestan has become the epicenter of violence for militants seeking to establish an Islamic state in the North Caucasus.

It also is affected by deadly violence linked to criminal groups and to an Islamist insurgency rooted in separatist wars in neighboring Chechnya during the 1990s.

Police, government officials, and moderate Muslims are often targeted in the attacks.

Based on reporting by TASS and Interfax
Russia has criticized upcoming joint military exercises involving the United States and Georgia.

Russia's Foreign Ministry said on May 6 that the military drills were a provocative step that could destabilize the Caucasus region.

Russia and Georgia fought a brief war in 2008 and Russia backs the breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia on the Russian-Georgian border.

The training exercises, dubbed Noble Partner 2016, are due to take place in Georgia from May 11 to May 26.

Tbilisi says a total of 1,300 troops will take part in the exercises -- including 650 troops from the U.S. European Command, 650 Georgian troops, and 150 British soldiers.

Georgia's Defense Ministry says the main goal of the operation is to increase the ability of Georgian forces to work as part of a NATO response force.

On March 5, U.S. tanks and armored personnel carriers arrived in the Black Sea port of Poti to take part in the drills, the first such deployment of U.S. military hardware in Georgia.

Based on reporting by Reuters


Russias May 9 Victory Day is a major holiday and source of pride for authorities and citizens alike.

Everyone is given an official day off in honor of the occasion and schoolchildren are encouraged to voluntarily attend military parades, organize concerts for local veterans, and participate in official celebrations.

But this year, some children are being pushed to take that pride to bizarre lengths.

A group of young filmmakers in Samara, for instance, showed off their patriotism by producing a Victory Day-themed sketch involving the ghost of a 10-year-old boy dressed in a Soviet military uniform.

When a group of young children encounters the ghost, he somberly explains that his father went to war and fascists executed his mother. The boy says he worked in an artillery plant before joining guerrilla fighters and perishing during a mission.

As he walks away from the kids, a girl asks: "Hey, is dying scary?"

Thats not important, the ghost boy answers, looking back. Whats important is that we won.

Some were appalled, saying the video propagated the notion that children should die in the name of their motherland. The YouTube channel that originally published the video first disabled the comments section, which was full of critical remarks, and later took it down completely.

But another video posted to YouTube took the connection of children to death a step further. Ten-year-old Anya explains at the start that her great-grandfather died last year and that she would like to tell his life story. She shows an urn that she says holds his ashes.

She then sits over a backlit surface with black material scattered across. While tracing images through the ashes with her finger, she describes her great-grandfathers World War II heroics. Anya draws swastikas with the ashes as she explains how her elder fought fascists.

The video, which had been viewed more than 230,000 times on YouTube before being made private on May 6, was apparently made as part of a media campaign in advance of a still-unknown film.

Yury Degtyaev, the founder of My Ducks Vision film studio, wrote on VKontakte that he came up with the idea during a holotropic breathing session.

The video was largely met with ridicule on Twitter.

We had two bags of grass, 75 mescaline tablets, five sheets of acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, and grandpas ashes, one user wrote, alluding to a famous passage from the Hunter S. Thompson novel Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas.

Some without the resources to make videos though, seem to be keen to celebrate WWII veterans by dressing their children up as Soviet soldiers. Uniforms in kids sizes are sold in abundance over the Internet.

A VK group sells costumes for boys in all sizes -- the smallest, for 1,800 rubles ($27), fits a 1-year old. The khaki outfits are completed with garrison caps adorned with red stars, belts, and St. George ribbons.

Yelena Anisimova, a Russian photographer, bought a number of these costumes for family photo shoots she titled I Am A Heros Grandchild. She charges 1,000 rubles ($15) for the photos, including costume rentals for children and their parents.

The mother of a boy and a girl who were photographed in full attire commented that the children were delighted with the process. All day Kirill was telling everyone that he was a soldier, the woman wrote.

Error rendering VK.

Internet users also discovered WWII costumes being made for newborns. For 950 rubles ($14.50), one can get a khaki onesie and a complementary garrison hat. The seller, however, warns that the outfit is made for outings and photo shoots -- not sleep and play.

Buttons and a star are real, made out of metal, so we dont recommend leaving the child in the costume unsupervised, the description reads.
A presenter on Russian state-controlled RT media has been suspended after he said Ukrainian children who saw Russians as occupiers under the Soviet Union should have been drowned.

"For now, I'm stopping our collaboration as neither I nor the rest of the RT team can afford to even think that any of us are capable of sharing such a view," the broadcasters editor in chief, Margarita Simonyan, tweeted late on October 23 in announcing the suspension of presenter Anton Krasovsky.

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.

In a show broadcast last week, RT presenter Anton Krasovsky said children who criticized Russia should have been "thrown straight into a river with a strong current."

Krasovsky -- a pro-war commentator who has been sanctioned by the European Union -- was responding to an account by Russian science fiction author Sergei Lukyanenko about how, when he first visited Ukraine in the 1980s, children told him they would live better lives were it not for Moscow occupying their country.

"They should have been drowned in the Tysyna (River)," Krasovsky said in response. "Just drown those children, drown them." Alternatively, he said, "they could be shoved into huts and burned.

In a short segment of the interview, which was shared on social media, Krasovsky also laughed at reports that Russian soldiers had raped elderly Ukrainian women during the invasion.

"Anton Krasovsky's statement is wild and disgusting.... It is hard to believe that Krasovsky sincerely believed that children should be drowned," Simonyan added.

Krasovsky's comment also sparked outrage in Ukraine and the West, feeding allegations that Russia is intent on eradicating Ukrainians on the whole.

"Governments which have still not banned RT must watch this excerpt," Ukraine's Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said in a tweet that linked to a clip of the interview.

"Aggressive genocide incitement (we will put this person on trial for it), which has nothing to do with freedom of speech. Ban RT worldwide," Kuleba said. "This is what you side with if you allow RT to operate in your countries."

Early on October 24, Krasovsky apologized for the comments, saying he was "embarrassed" by them.

WATCH: Anton Krasovsky's soaring career as a Russian television journalist came to an abrupt end in 2013, when he announced live on air that he was gay. Now barred from Russian screens, Krasovsky has nonetheless chosen to stay in Russia -- a society he says is doomed to ruin. (Originally published in 2015)

Krasovsky gained some Western recognition when he announced live on Russian TV in 2013 that he was gay to protest against Kremlin-backed legislation imposing harsh fines and jail terms for the distribution of homosexual "propaganda" to minors.

Krasovskys public announcement brought his soaring career as a Russian television journalist to a temporary end as he was barred from state media. He returned as a presenter for the Russian state-controlled broadcaster in 2020.

In stark contrast to his comments regarding Ukrainians last week, in 2013 -- when a 22-year-old man from the southern Russian town of Volgograd was brutally murdered by neighbors for being gay -- Krasovsky penned an opinion piece in The Guardian criticizing the Kremlin for targeting a select group of people.

How did it come about that today in Russia a good gay person is a dead gay person?. As far as the [Russian] deputies are concerned I am scum by the fact of my birth, and it was criminal negligence not to have made a note of that in my birth certificate. What seemed like a bad dream only a couple of years ago has now become reality. And it is terrifying to imagine what could happen tomorrow, he wrote.

With reporting by Reuters
ON MY MIND

Given the news that convictions for extremism have increased threefold over the past five years, you can only reach two conclusions: Either Russians have become a nation of rabid extremists or the Kremlin is becoming more zealous in prosecuting citizens under its notoriously flexible anti-extremism laws. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say it's the latter.

Exhibit A: A man in Tver was sentenced to two years and three months in prison for re-posting an article critical of Russia's annexation of Crimea on social media. Exhibit B: A journalist in Saratov is under investigation for extremism for posting a picture on Facebook of the Virgin Mary wearing a mask and holding a Molotov cocktail. And that is just in the past couple days.

But while the Kremlin is eager to prosecute such fictional "extremism," they gladly ignore the real thing -- as long as it adheres to the party line. Violent hate crimes against homosexuals, for example, are hardly ever even investigated, let alone prosecuted.

IN THE NEWS

Japanese Prime Minister visits Russia -- and breaks Putin's G7 isolation.

Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev says unemployed Ukrainian refugees in southern Russia pose a threat to Russia.

The FSB has detained a group of Central Asian nationals accused of planning terrorist attacks on Victory Day.

A man in Tver has been jailed for "extremism" for re-posting an article critical of Russia's annexation of Crimea.

The "extremism" trial of opposition nationalist Dmitry Dyomushkin begins today.

Poland has charged a Warsaw lawyer with spying for Russia.

A Russian orchestra played a concert in Syria, in Palmyra's ancient amphitheater.

And The New York Times noted that Russia "plays Bach where ISIS executed 25" people.

A second Russian journalist has been found killed in his apartment.

WHAT I'M READING

An Opposition Without Leaders

In an op-ed in Vedomosti, sociologist and economist Anton Oleinik argues that Russia's opposition might be better off without leaders.

"Many argue that the scandals involving the leaders of Russia's political opposition in the run-up to this September's parliamentary elections play right into the hands of the ruling elite. Using any means available to discredit the leaders of the democratic opposition, it's said that the people now in power are ensuring desired outcomes in the State Duma elections this fall, and in the presidential election in 2018," Oleinik writes.

"But if we look at the situation from another point of view, it could be that today's disappointment in the opposition's leaders and the collapse of the democratic coalition, ironically, may contribute to qualitative changes in Russia's protest potential, perhaps ultimately strengthening it. Critically minded citizens, after all, must learn to live without thinking only of their leaders -- and this includes the opposition's leaders."

Meduza has an English-language translation by Kevin Rothrock here.

Be Careful What You Wish For

In a piece in The National Interest, Kazushige Kobayashi argues that the West may not be ready for a democratic Russia.

"Think about it: If we can barely prevent democratic Poland and Hungary (which are deeply embedded in NATO and the EU) from 'going rogue,' what makes us think that we would be able to handle a democratized Russia?" Kobayashi writes.

"As the Central European cases have taught us, democracy can become a powerful tool for the ascendance of illiberals, and we know little about how to remedy this problem without compromising core democratic values (that is, without simply criminalizing illiberal political organizations)."

Exploiting Victory Day

Writing in Novy Region, Russian journalist Ksenia Kirillova takes a look at how the Kremlin exploits Victory Day celebrations.

"Its hard to imagine a greater travesty to the fallen as well as to the survivors than the sight of thugs and rapists, wearing St. George ribbons and accusing Ukrainians of fascism, in the very country savagely attacking Ukraine in an undeclared war," she writes.

"Today, just as a year ago, the blood, pain, and suffering of some are being used by others to justify militaristic hysteria, hatred, aggression, and lies to rob, murder, and slander in a boundless orgy of barbaric baseness."

Euromaidan Press has an English-language translation here.

Blowback

The Economist writes that Russia's crackdown on Salafis in Daghestan may be driving Muslims to Islamic State.

Full Speed Ahead On Missile Defense

The New York Times is reporting that NATO is moving forward with missile defense despite Russian criticism.

Opting Out

According to a piece in Gazeta.ru, Kazakhstan and Belarus will not hold Victory Day parades this year.

Politicized Russians

According to a poll by the Kremlin-connected Public Opinion Foundation, Russians are more interested in politics than at any time since 2001.
Turkmenistan has begun a long countdown to the fifth Asian Indoor and Martian Arts Games to be hosted by Ashgabat with the launching of a 500-day nationwide horse race.

The race began on May 5 and is scheduled to end on the eve of the opening ceremony for the 2017 Asian games on September 17, state media reported.

President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov watched as 17 horses ridden by professional jockeys set off on one of five consecutive 100-day-long races taking place in each of the country's five regions.

Berdymukhammedov -- an authoritarian who exercises control over every aspect of society in Turkmenistan -- has been promoting sport and healthy lifestyles in the country of some 5 million in a giant state propaganda effort.

Turkmenistan is known for the personality cults surrounding its leaders -- both Berdymukhammedov and his eccentric predecessor, the late Saparmurat Niyazov.

With reporting by AFP
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Rep. Barbara Comstock, R-10th, who faces a re-election battle in Northern Virginia, says presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has not yet earned her support.

I cant support Hillary Clinton, but Im like any voter, a candidate has to earn my vote, and at this time Donald Trump has not done so, Comstock said Thursday, following a talk to the Rotary Club of Winchester, according to The Winchester Star.

Were going to watch the process. Ive expressed my concerns before.

In March, Comstock returned $3,000 in donations from Trump. In December she had condemned Trumps call for a total and complete shutdown on Muslims entering the U.S. At the time, Comstock called it unconstitutional and un-American.

Speaker of the House Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, who is trying to help maintain the GOP majority in the House of Representatives, said Thursday that he is not ready to back Trump for president.

Comstock, a former member of the House of Delegates, was first elected in 2014 to the Northern Virginia congressional seat following the retirement of longtime Rep. Frank R. Wolf.

Comstock defeated Democrat John Foust by 16 percentage points in 2014. This time, Comstock faces Democrat LuAnn Bennett, a real estate executive and a former wife of ex-Rep. Jim Moran, D-8th.

Republicans have held the seat since 1981 and Comstock rates as a favorite in the district, but Republicans are concerned about a potential anti-Trump tidal wave in Northern Virginia in the November presidential election.
Student and community activists asked Virginia Commonwealth University officials Thursday to use the enormity of VCU infrastructure and resources to aid the homeless community around campus.

The group, ASWAN: A Society Without A Name, For People Without A Home, delivered letters calling for sensitivity training for campus police and greater access to university restrooms, especially when Monroe Park is closed for renovation later this year.

The letters seek meetings with VCU President Michael Rao, Police Chief John Venuti and Catherine Howard, vice provost of community engagement, to discuss concerns about aggressive profiling of the homeless community and steps the university could take when the parks restrooms are closed.

Representatives for Rao and Howard picked up the letters at a small rally on The Compass outside the VCU library.

Venutis letter was delivered in person by a VCU student in his 50s who said he spent about three months homeless after moving to Richmond.

Carlton Webb, who is taking a sociology class at VCU, was one of about 10 people who headed over to police headquarters but bumped into Venuti as he was leaving his office on Grace Street.

Webb told Venuti that the homeless are the targets of hostile treatment from campus police. Venuti said he would look into it and suggested they let him know when such an incident takes place.

Im the easiest guy to find, he said, and agreed to follow-up with them.

ASWAN, which last month protested the closing of the citys public shelter, plans a sleep-in May 20 in Festival Park behind the Coliseum to raise awareness about the lack of facilities for the homeless.

The homeless frequent Monroe Park for its restroom facilities and for meals served by charitable groups. The park, which is owned by the city but maintained by VCU, is to close during the restoration work.

VCUs Howard serves on the board of directors for the nonprofit Monroe Park Conservancy, which is overseeing and raising funds for the restoration projections.

According to the conservancys website, $1.7 million of the $3 million needed to begin work has been raised.

Howard said in an email that the conservancy expects the necessary funds will be solidified by this summer and renovations will be able to start.

The work will take about 11 months, she said.

We all know the renovation period is going to be an inconvenience for those who appreciate the park now  that includes VCU in many ways not just the homeless, she said. But I really believe that the outcome of the renovations will be much appreciated and enjoyed by all.

Pam Lepley, vice president for university relations, said restrooms are usually available to anyone during the periods that a building is open to the general public.

Generally, no one is turned away unless theyre doing something disruptive, said Lepley, who picked up the letter for Rao.

In its letters, ASWAN maintained that the homeless, even those who are also VCU students, are targeted with aggressive displacement, ticketing and arrests in areas that are open to the public.

Sababu Sanyika, who is auditing a course this semester and is homeless, said he has been targeted by campus police on several occasions.
A day after canceling classes at all its schools over the resignation of its popular Central High School principal, King and Queen County Public Schools announced it was revoking diplomas from three students.

The King and Queen County School Board has received an internal investigation report. This report confirmed three King and Queen County high school students were awarded diplomas at the end of the 2014-15 school year without having met the graduation requirements for those diplomas, school Superintendent Carol B. Carter said in email Friday.

The Virginia Department of Education has notified the King and Queen County School Board that these diplomas will be revoked.

Carter did not respond to an email or phone call inquiring whether Central High Principal Antoine Monroes resignation a week after being placed on administrative leave was related to the problems with the diplomas.

The release of the results of the investigation capped a tumultuous few days for the school district.

Last week, the school district announced that Monroe had been placed on administrative leave.

On Monday and Tuesday, to protest the decision, a group of students staged a walkout.

Then on Thursday evening, the countys School Board decided at a special meeting that it would close all its schools Friday after Monroe abruptly quit and the board accepted his resignation.

School Board members would not comment on the situation Friday, but Carter in the first of two statements issued during the day said Monroes resignation was a personnel matter and could not be discussed publicly.

Mr. Monroe is leaving to pursue other professional opportunities, the statement read. He appreciates the opportunities he has had in King and Queen County, and his relationships with the students.

A call to Monroes home Friday went to voicemail, which was filled and not accepting new messages.

The upheaval at the school sent parents and students to a Facebook page where they defended Monroe and criticized how the school system had communicated about the matter.

I feel the children and parents should have been spared all this due to the fact the school will be on summer break soon, one parent wrote. I dont think Dr. Carter really thought about the chaos that ensued putting Mr. Monroe on leave of absence. Whats worse is it hurts the children that will soon be taking SOLs.

The upheaval also led to misinformation and speculation. One oft-repeated piece of information that made the rounds on social media and elsewhere was that Monroe had been led out of the school by security.

W.R. Balderson, chief deputy of the countys Sheriff Office, dismissed that report Friday.

Its not what it appears to be, Balderson said.

The school resource officer and the principal worked well together. Basically, he carried some stuff out to (Monroes) car with him. They talked. They shook hands. He wished him well. That was the extent of it.

As for the three students who are losing their diplomas, Carter said in her statement that they would have an opportunity to make up any necessary classwork.

The mission of King and Queen County Schools is to provide a quality individualized education, she said.

Schools are expected to reopen Monday.
Chesterfield police are investigating after a man was shot Thursday in Midlothian.

Police were called shortly before 5 p.m. to the 11400 block of Dunbrook Road, where they found a 25-year-old man suffering from gunshot wounds.

The man was taken to an area hospital. He is in stable condition, police said.
Several Chesterfield police officers recently rescued a turkey after the bird was seen wandering near Hull Street Road.

About 4 p.m. May 1, officers were called to the area near Hull Street and Courthouse roads, where two women were arguing on the side of the road, according to a post on the department's Facebook page.

After helping the women resolve the dispute, Sgt. J.A. Kuzik, Senior Officer J.D. Nilsen and Officer R.J. Washington spotted the bird approaching Hull Street Road. When the turkey almost went into traffic, the officers decided to pick it up.
Sixty-eight dogs were rescued from poor conditions at a Hanover County property this week, according to the Sheriff's Office.

Hanover County Animal Control, with assistance from the Sheriffs Office, on Tuesday executed a search warrant in the 17000 block of Connie Hall Road in connection with concerns about the well-being and living conditions of animals inside and outside a residence, according to the Sheriff's Office.

"As a result of the search warrant, a total of 68 canines were rescued," sheriff's deputy Karen Godfrey wrote in a statement Thursday. "It was found that these canines were living in unhealthy living conditions, both inside and outside the residence."

The dogs were taken to various animal shelters for safekeeping and veterinary care, Godfrey said.

Authorities are determining charges against the dog owners.

Anyone with further information can call the Sheriffs Office at (804) 365-6140 or Metro Richmond Crime Stoppers at (804) 780-1000.
It looks like nothing was found at this location. Maybe try a search?

Search for: Search
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AN ADULT care and housing boss has been appointed by Rotherham Borough Council - completing the new-look leadership team.

Anne Marie Lubanski (above) was named on Wednesday as the successful candidate for the 120,000 post - the seventh addition to senior management since the Jay report.

Mrs Lubanski will oversee the borough's housing strategy and the modernisation of adult social care, which faces cuts of 9.18 million by 2019.

She said she had been given "a fantastic and exciting opportunity to deliver on the adult care transformation and on the housing strategy."

Mrs Lubanski, currently North Yorkshire County Council's assistant director for social care operations, will arrive in August.

Her job will include spending time with frontline adult social care practitioners, the council said, in order to make the best of shrinking resources.

The recruitment was done by an all-party panel of councillors plus lead commissioner Sir Derek Myers and chief executive Sharon Kemp.

Mrs Lubanski has more than 30 years' experience in social care and worked at authorities including Bristol, Avon and the London boroughs of Hillingdon and Hounslow before moving to North Yorkshire in 2008. She will take over from interim director Graeme Betts.

RMBC's completed leadership team (start dates in brackets)

Sharon Kemp, chief executive (Feb 2016).

Shokat Lal, assistant chief executive (Mar 2016).

Damien Wilson, strategic director of regeneration and environment (Apr 2016).

Judith Badger, strategic director of finance and customer services (Apr 2016).

Ian Thomas, strategic director of children services (Jan 2015).

Anne Marie Lubanski, strategic director of adult care and housing (Aug 2016).

Terri Roche, director of public health (June 2015).
(jingdaily.com) - As the massive price gap between imported luxury goods in China and those abroad has hurt luxury sales in China, the shift toward spending abroad and daigou has caused the Chinese government to miss out on an especially large chunk of tax revenue. As the government gets serious about earning some of that revenue back, its policies appear to be creating major confusion in the short-term among brands and consumers. As cross-border e-commerce becomes increasingly popular, a new tax policy abruptly introduced by Chinas government is intended to level the playing field for domestic and foreign sellers. On April 8, the new change that went into effect removed the parcel tax system from goods ordered from abroad, replacing it with import value-added tax (VAT) and consumption tax. For most luxury brands, this means a tax hike on cross-border e-commerce sales.
Standard & Poors (S&P) has lowered Botswanas outlook to negative amid fears that the weakening diamond industry could be structural rather than cyclical.

Rapaport quoted a report by S&P, which stated that the southern African country was highly exposed to the performance of the diamond sector as it represents just under a third of its gross domestic product, a third of its fiscal receipts and more than two thirds of exports.

The weaker global external environment stemming from China's slowdown and declining pricing power of key diamond marketers is resulting in weaker performance of diamond demand and sales, S&P was quoted as saying.

Debswana, the leading diamond producer, recorded a 16 percent drop in production to 20.4 million carats in 2015 from 23.3 million carats the previous year.

Botswanas diamond output reached a high of 34 million carats in 2007 and contributed about 20 percent to Botswanas GDP and 65 percent to foreign exchange receipts.

Recent Bank of Botswana data showed that the countrys rough diamond exports eased 17 percent year-on- year to $817.6 million in the first quarter of 2016.



Mathew Nyaungwa, Editor in Chief of the African Bureau, Rough&Polished




Despite the fact that some sanctions imposed by the U.S. government on Burma were eased, the ban on Burmese rubies and gemstones remains in place.

The U.S. Treasury Department issued General License 20 (GL 20) which is aimed to eliminate unintended interruptions of Burmese trade due to sanctions concerns with a key Rangoon port. It is a technical fix to support exports to and from Burma, while maintaining the integrity of U.S. sanctions and pressure on certain officials and Burmese national bodies, or Specially Designated Nationals (SDNs).

GL 20 is aimed at solving a set of problems connected to use of critical infrastructure, as sanctions concerns were disproportionately affecting exports to and from Burma. GL 20 addresses this by authorizing certain ordinarily incident transactions with SDNs in relation to exports to or from individuals or entities not subject to sanctions.

Meanwhile, the U.S. remains committed to maintaining pressure on Burmas SDNs by not permitting business dealings with them. Sanctions on this country remain in place and include, but are not limited to a ban on new investment with the Ministry of Defense and SDNs; and a ban on the importation into the United States of Burmese-origin rubies, jadeite, and jewelry containing them.

The GL 20 does not signal a change in U.S. sanctions policy toward Burma or their duration, which are solely dependent on the transition to democratic civilian government within Burma and constitutional reforms.



Theodor Lisovoy, Rough&Polished, Moscow




Canadas Eldorado Gold has signed an agreement to sell its 82% stake in the Jinfeng mine in China to a wholly-owned subsidiary of China National Gold Group for US$300 million in cash, according to a report in mining.com

The Jinfeng mine is expected to generate 95,000-105,000 ounces of gold this year, as the operation transitions fully into the underground.

Paul Wright, President and CEO of Eldorado Gold, said that China National Gold, one of the Chinas main bullion producers, has been its minority partner at Jinfeng for over 14 years. Because of that the firm was the logical buyer for the open-pit and underground mine, which Wright said has consistently delivered solid results since it began production in 2007.

The deal is expected to close in the third quarter of the year and is subject to various approvals.



Aruna Gaitonde, Editor-in-Chief of Asian Bureau, Rough & Polished




Yellow fancy color diamond prices decline by 1.8%, driven mainly by 1-3 carat fancy yellow

The Fancy Color Diamond Index for the first quarter of 2016 showed fancy blue diamond prices rising by 1.7%. During the same period, fancy yellow diamonds saw price declines of 1.8%, while fancy pink diamonds saw a 0.3% price increase.

Overall prices in the fancy color diamond category remained largely unchanged for the period. In comparison, according to RAPI, white diamonds prices were mixed during Q1 2016, with the 0.5-carat and 1-carat categories growing by 5.2% and 1.4% respectively, and the 3-carat category declining by 2.9%.

The strongest performing price categories during Q1 2016 were fancy intense blue and fancy vivid blue across all carat sizes, as well as fancy vivid pinks 5ct and up. The fancy yellow category, especially in small carat weights, was responsible for most of the category price declines.

The Fancy Color Diamond Index during Q1 2016 indicates that most trends identified during 2015 are being sustained. The decline in fancy yellow diamond prices echoes the first 3 quarters of 2015, although it is a departure from Q4 2016, when fancy yellow diamond prices rose 1.1%.

On a year-on-year basis, when compared to Q1 2015, the Fancy Color Diamond Index is up 0.6% with fancy blue and fancy pink up 4.8% and 1.7%, respectively, and fancy yellow down 3.3%. As in Q4 2015, across all color segments, fancy intense and fancy vivid diamonds demonstrated robust price increases, which were offset to some extent by price declines of color diamonds in the Fancy category. For a complete data analysis, please visit www.fcresearch.org.

The Fancy Color Diamond Index is published by the non-profit Fancy Color Research Foundation (FCRF), and tracks pricing data for yellow, pink and blue fancy color diamonds. The Fancy Color Diamond Index is based on input from leading fancy color diamond traders in three key global trading centers  Hong Kong, New York and Tel Aviv. The Index is continually and selectively expanding its data supplier base. In the past quarter six new data suppliers were added, bringing the total to 26.

FCRF Advisory Board chairman Eden Rachminov commented that mine supply of highly coveted fancy vivid blues and pinks continues to be scarce, while demand for this category continues to grow. This trend is likely to continue well into 2016 as dealers are holding firm on prices in view of the demand-supply imbalance.

The Fancy Color Research Foundation (FCRF) works to empower fancy color diamond sellers by improving consumer experience through information and providing fact-based support for fancy color diamonds as an asset class. The FCRF is a non-profit organization, dedicated to promoting transparency, fair-trade principles and high ethical standards in the fancy color diamond industry. FRCF tracks fancy color diamond supply availability and pricing trends, and publishes the Fancy Color Diamond Index on a quarterly basis.

Theodor Lisovoy, Rough&Polished, Moscow




According to data by the National Retail Federation (NRF), consumers will spend, on average, almost $96 on jewelry gifts for Mothers Day this year (May 8), which yield a combined $4.2 billion.

Last year, on average, consumers spent $103 during the holiday, or $4.32 billion.

When asked where they will shop, one out of three consumers indicated they will head to department stores and 29 percent will shop at specialty stores, while 23 percent plans to shop at a local small business.

Outside of brick-and-mortar, 27 percent will shop online, up from 25 percent last year. Thirty percent will research gift ideas on their phones while 16 percent will use them to actually make a purchase.

Its clear that Americans want to honor their mothers this Mothers Day, NRF President and CEO Matthew Shay said. Whether its a special meal at her favorite restaurant, jewelry or a new smartphone, families are planning to indulge mom again this year.

In addition to jewelry, shoppers indicated they would spend on flowers (67 percent), special outings like dinner or brunch (55 percent), gift cards (43 percent), clothing (35 percent), electronics (14 percent) and personal services (23 percent).



Theodor Lisovoy, Rough&Polished, Moscow




Ratings agency Moody's has revised its outlook for Anglo American's credit rating due to the improving prospects for the global diamond market.

Moody's sees significantly stronger rough diamond demand than at the end of 2015 as actions taken by diamond producers continue to have a positive effect, Mining.com reports.

Anglos positive outlook was also attributed to its "rapid progress in negotiating material asset sales, a higher than expected valuation for the sale of the niobium and phosphate businesses".

Anglo recently agreed to sell its niobium and phosphates businesses for about $1.5 billion in cash and expects to close the transaction in the second part of this year after clearing standard regulatory approvals.

Moody's downgraded Anglo's debt to junk status last February with a negative outlook on the London-listed company's credit rating.

"The business generated $145 million in EBITDA in 2015 and is expected to grow in 2016. The realized valuation and planned use of proceeds to reduce debt will add to the deleveraging momentum initiated by the company's purchase of about $1.9 billion notes for cash in March," Moody's was quoted as saying.

Anglo was planning to reduce the number of mines it operates from 55 to the mid-teens focusing on copper, platinum and diamonds.



Mathew Nyaungwa, Editor in Chief of the African Bureau, Rough&Polished




Organisers are putting the final touches to the meeting schedule of the 37th World Diamond Congress (the biennial meeting of the World Federation of Diamond Bourses (WFDB) and the International Diamond Manufacturers Association (IDMA), says a press note from WFDB.

Among the issues to be discussed at the Congress is the work and approach of the Diamond Producers, with leading representatives invited to address the Congress.

The Congress, which is to take place in Dubai from May 16 to 19, will address the issue of 'Transparency, Responsibility, Sustainability in Producing Countries' on the morning of May 19, with representatives of global producers participating in a panel discussion.

"We are expecting delegates from the major diamond producing companies and countries to take part," stated WFDB President Ernie Blom. "They will present their views on the state of the market and their supply strategies, as well as other subjects."

For the first time at a World Diamond Congress, we are introducing a panel element with the aim of encouraging attendees to take part. This should lead to some fascinating exchanges, with highly relevant questions from the floor to the panelists. Rough diamond purchases have been encouragingly strong in the first months of 2016 and I am sure this will be one of the issues that the producers will address and on which they will face questions from the audience," Blom concluded.



Aruna Gaitonde, Editor-in- Chief of Asian Bureau, Rough&Polished




Polished diamond trading slowed in April due to sluggish demand at the start of a seasonally-quiet period. Sentiment weakened as the positive momentum from the first quarter failed to gain traction. Supplies significantly increased due to high rough sales and polished production in the first quarter.

The RapNet Diamond Index (RAPI) for 1-carat, GIA-graded diamonds slipped 0.3% in April. RAPI for 0.30-carat diamonds fell 1.3% and RAPI for 0.50-carat diamonds also declined 0.3%. RAPI for 3-carat diamonds dropped 2.2%.

RAPI for 1-carat diamonds rose 1.2% in the first four months of the year, but is still down 4.6% from a year ago.

The Rapaport Monthly Report highlighted concern among diamond traders that consumer demand is weak. While a steady U.S. market supported the diamond industry, sentiment in the Far East and European markets remained cautious.

Polished inventory levels rose during a period of restocking in the first three months. Jewelers avoided any unnecessary build-up of inventory and took goods on memo, which put additional pressure on manufacturers liquidity.

Selective buyers offered lower prices for goods as new supply came on stream in April. Suppliers held prices firm for better-quality RapSpec A2+ diamonds, but were more flexible on their older stock of lower-quality goods. Demand for diamonds 3 carats and up was weaker.

Manufacturers profit margins were squeezed as rough prices remained high during a period of weaker polished trading. Rough demand was robust even as De Beers raised prices by an average of 2% in April, according to Rapaport estimates. De Beers and ALROSA reduced inventory that was accumulated in 2015 as sales volume outpaced production.

Rough demand is expected to slow from May as manufacturing levels have stabilized. Polished trading is also expected to remain slower this month. Amid declining global demand, dealers have shifted focus to the U.S. ahead of the Las Vegas shows that begin May 31.




Caltrain

Caltrain's Modernization Program received an additional $211 million investment following a seven-party agreement adopted by the agency's board of directors on May 5, 2016.

The agreement increases commitments in funding from Caltrains state and local partners. More than half of the $211 million additional investment comes from the California High-Speed Rail Authority, which will invest an additional $113 million into the modernization program.

Our region, along with our federal and state partners, has demonstrated a deep commitment to this project, said Jim Hartnett, Caltrains executive director. The Caltrain Modernization Program is the most transformative project this corridor has ever undertaken. It offers unique economic, environmental and mobility benefits to the region and it is a key link in a high-speed rail network that will transform the way we think about transportation in California.

The Caltrain Electrification Project will electrify the system between San Francisco and the Tamien Station in San Jose and replace Caltrains diesel-based system with high performance Electric Multiple Units. The electrification project will reduce diesel emissions in this corridor by 96 percent by 2040 and will allow Caltrain to provide more service to more stations, increasing ridership and providing faster service between San Francisco and San Jose.

The need for additional funding was identified in 2014 when the projects budget was updated from 2008 cost estimates, and funding partners agreed to increase the amount budgeted for project contingency.

Approval of the agreement helps prepare the board to consider the award of contracts to equip the rail corridor with electrification infrastructure and replace most of the systems diesel trains with high-performance electric vehicles.

Caltrain noted that the funding agreement reflects the projects widespread support from a growing coalition of federal, state, regional and local stakeholders committed to improving public transportation and addressing congestion between San Francisco and San Jose.

Caltrain electrification is extremely important to improving Bay Area transit connections and to our efforts to encourage more public transit use for people going to and from San Francisco. The city continues to grow and our regional roadways are already nearing capacity. Electrifying Caltrain will make it an even better option for more people for more trips, and will pave the way for ultimately getting Caltrain and California high-speed rail to the Transbay Transit Center. The city and the region will benefit significantly from this investment, which is necessary to better accommodate todays riders, as well as future Bay Area residents, workers, and visitors, said Ed Reiskin, director of transportation for the city and county of San Francisco.

Caltrain plans to award contracts in July 2016 and introduce electrified service in 2020. In February, the Obama Administration allocated $72 million in prior year funding to the project and asked Congress for an additional $125 million in the 2017 Federal Budget through the FTA Core Capacity Grant Program. These funds are part of a larger $647 million request for a Federal full funding grant agreement that is expected to be finalized in 2016. Contracts for the Electrification project will be structured so that full authorization to proceed with construction is issued following the approval of Caltrains federal grant agreement funding request.
Malaysia's exports increased as expected in March, while imports fell at a faster-than-expected pace, figures from the Department of Statistics showed Friday.

Exports rose 0.2 percent year-over-year in March, in line with expectations.

Shipments of electrical and electronic products, which accounted for 36.2 percent of total exports, grew 0.4 percent annually in March. Exports of palm oil and palm based-products expanded by 6.7 percent.

Imports dipped 5.5 percent in March from a year ago, much faster than the 0.3 percent fall expected by economists. The decrease in imports was mainly attributed to intermediate goods and capital goods.

On a monthly basis, both exports and imports surged by 17.4 percent and 12.2 percent, respectively in March.

The visible trade surplus of the country rose to MYR 11.2 billion in March from MYR 7.8 billion in the corresponding month last year. The expected surplus for the month was MYR 7.1 billion.

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Bob Evans Farms Foods, Inc. is recalling around 7,560 pounds of Italian pork sausage products that may be contaminated with extraneous materials, specifically thin blue rubber, the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service or FSIS announced.

Shares of Philips Electronics NV were losing around 3 percent in the morning trading in Amsterdam as well as in pre-market activity on the NYSE after the Dutch consumer electronics giant reported a loss in its third quarter, compared to prior year's profit, with weak orders. Looking ahead for the fourth quarter, Philips expects a mid-single-digit comparable sales decline.

Pfizer Inc. expects to increase the price of its COVID-19 vaccine after the United States government's current purchase program expires, Reuters reported citing Pfizer executive Angela Lukin. The drug major is likely to quadruple the price of its COVID-19 vaccine to about $110 to $130 per dose.
Arsenio Hall has filed a $5 million lawsuit against Sinead O'Connor after she accused him of supplying drugs to the late Prince.

"Desperate, attention-seeker Sinead O'Connor has maliciously published outlandish defamatory lies about comedian Arsenio Hall," the documents state. "The malicious statements made by O'Connor are absolutely false and O'Connor's heinous accusations that Hall engaged in this criminal conduct are despicable, fabricated lies."

Hall's lawsuit states he has "only had minimal contact with O'Connor," most recently 25 years ago, and that since she posted "her malicious and reckless lies" about him on Facebook, they "have spread like wildfire across the media through the United States and the world, causing substantial harm to Hall's reputation." It also says O'Connor's "lies" expose Hall to "hatred, contempt, ridicule and obloquy" and/or cause him to be "shunned or avoided" and "have a tendency" to "injure" him in his occupation.

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com

Entertainment News
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 ...
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New business incubation space in the works for downtown Salina

Saline County is in the approval process for an incubator space for retail and specialty food businesses in downtown Salina.
A renowned Russian conductor led a triumphant concert Thursday in the ruins of the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra, once terrorized by the Islamic State group, even as an airstrike on a refugee camp in the north left at least 28 people dead and dozens wounded, including many children.

The performance in the same ancient amphitheater where IS militants carried out widely publicized killings  and called "A Prayer for Palmyra"  was intended to send a message that Russia's presence in Syria would bring hope and stability.

But even as strains of Bach and Sergei Prokofiev's First Symphony echoed through the Roman theater packed with an audience that included Russian servicemen, Syrian government ministers and children in colorful native dress, the war raged elsewhere.

Images posted on social media of the aftermath of the airstrike that tore through the Sarmada camp in rebel-held territory close to the border with Turkey showed tents burned to the ground, charred bodies, and bloodied women and children being loaded onto a pickup truck.

It was not immediately clear who carried out the attack on the camp in Idlib province where some 2,000 internally displaced people had taken shelter from the fighting in nearby Aleppo and Hama provinces over the past year. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 28 people were killed while the Local Coordination Committees, another activist group, said more than 30 died.

The White House called the strike "indefensible." There was "no justifiable excuse" to target civilians who had already fled their homes from violence, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said, calling the situation "heartbreaking."

Earnest said it was too early to say whether Syrian President Bashar Assad's forces carried out the attack, but he said he had no knowledge of any U.S. or coalition aircraft operating in the area.

U.N. Humanitarian Chief Stephen O'Brien called for an independent investigation, saying that if the camp was deliberately targeted it "could amount to a war crime."

The footage of charred bodies and desperate men pouring buckets of water to try to douse the flames was in stark contrast to the concert at the UNESCO world heritage site of Palmyra, where renowned conductor Valery Gergiev led a performance by the Mariinsky Symphony Orchestra from St. Petersburg.

The world-famous archaeological site was badly damaged by the IS militants who held Palmyra for 10 months before Syrian forces backed by Russian airstrikes retook it in March. During the concert, which was broadcast live on Russian television, images of the military action were shown, as well as footage of the destruction of monuments and IS militants marching residents to their deaths.

Among those in the audience were Russian sappers who have been carrying out demining in the town to remove bombs left by the IS militants.

In opening remarks, Gergiev, a supporter of Russian President Vladimir Putin, said that with the concert, "we protest against the barbarians who destroyed monuments of world culture." In a video linkup, Putin also addressed the audience, saying he regards the concert "as a sign of gratitude, remembrance and hope."

The upbeat tone was at variance with the violence elsewhere in Syria, where a double-suicide bombing in central Homs province killed at least 10 civilians and a fierce rebel assault on a government position in the north overshadowed a shaky cease-fire imposed over the city of Aleppo.

At least 49 people were wounded in the attacks on a village 45 kilometers (28 miles) east of homes, Syria's third-largest city, according to state media and the regional governor, Talal Barrazi.

A car bomb first exploded in the main square of the village of Mukharam al-Fawkani. As people gathered to help the victims, a suicide bomber riding a motorcycle detonated explosives nearby. Four children and three women were among those killed, according to Syrian state TV.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility but the Islamic State group has carried out several similar deadly attacks in Homs province. The area is close to where Syrian troops and IS gunmen have been fighting for control of the vital Shaer gas field, which fell to the Islamic State on Wednesday after the extremists overran 13 government checkpoints and captured a Syrian soldier. The Observatory said 34 government troops and 16 militants have been killed in three days of fighting there.

Meanwhile, relative calm prevailed in the deeply contested northern city of Aleppo, the center of the worst recent violence, following a truce announced Wednesday by U.S. officials in agreement with Russia. The Syrian military said the truce would last only 48 hours.

But a Lebanese TV station embedded with the Syrian army said Syrian rebels were waging an offensive on a government-held village south of Aleppo.

Meanwhile, Syrian President Bashar Assad vowed in a letter to Putin that Syrian forces will eventually be victorious in Aleppo, comparing the government troops' resistance to the protracted World War II battle of Stalingrad. In the letter, carried on Syrian state media, Assad vowed to defeat "the aggression" the way the Soviet Red Army defeated Nazi forces in Stalingrad.

-AP
A member of the UN Committee of the Rights of the Child, Justice Vui Clarence Nelson, has expressed his warmest congratulations to the government and the people of Samoa for once again taking the initiative in areas vital to the interests of children.

Justice Vui, who represents Samoa and the Pacific, on the U.N. Committee said the ratification of two key human rights instruments; the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child (C.R.C) on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography, and the Optional Protocol to the C.R.C on a communications procedure, is a step in the right direction.

He noted from his experience as a sitting judge of the Supreme Court of Samoa, that while child pornography is not yet a problem in Samoa, the exposure of children to pornographic images via social media and readily accessible internet sites is a disturbing and growing trend the Government must find ways to address.

He has no doubt this is a challenge every Pacific government will be required to meet; but sooner rather than later.

This is not to mention the ongoing efforts being made by all governments in the region to combat the high incidence of exploitation and sexual abuse of the young and vulnerable.

He has no doubt the C.R.C Committee looks forward to other Pacific nations following Samoas exemplary lead.
The critical role played by firefighters as first responders in times of natural and man-made disasters was duly acknowledged yesterday.

The occasion was the local celebration of Firefighters Day, which started with a parade involving schools and members of the community from in front of the Apia Fire Station towards the government building.

There, Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi, thanked the firefighters for their contribution to Samoa.

He added that being a firefighter is a risky job and many lives have been lost in other countries on the job.

Today is the day that the government wishes to say thanks for all the good work that you have done in the past years, especially the incident on the Matautu Wharf last month, said Prime Minister. Tuilaepa acknowledged that local firefighters punch above their weight given the inadequate equipment they have to work with.

The Minister of Police and Prisons, Sala Fata Pinati, joined Tuilaepa in thanking firefighters. The Commissioner of Fire and Emergency Services Authority (F.E.S.A), Lelevaga Faafouina Mupo, said days like yesterday was an opportunity to reflect and re-evaluate. He assured Samoa they exist to do whatever they can to protect lives and properties.
The biggest private employer in Samoa, Yazaki Samoa Eds, celebrated its 25th anniversary yesterday.

Prime Minister, Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi and senior Cabinet Ministers joined special guests during the celebration at Vaitele.

I congratulate Yazaki for the courage in bringing out your Corporation and establishing it here in Samoa,  Tuilaepa said.

I am hoping that the positive aspects shall continue to be the important factor that will determine your decision for the future of Yazaki Samoathank you for staying with us this 25 years.

Tuilaepa said Yazaki Samoa is well known around the world producing top quality products, something he is proud of as a leader.

Prime Minister Tuilaepa also paid tribute to local officials who played a pivotal role in getting Yazaki established in Samoa. Among them are Feesago George Fepuleai, Afoa Kolone Vaai and Tuala Farani Chan Tung.

Feesago was always a vigilant in terms of businesses to attract to Samoa, he said.

He informed me through telecast at the time that Yazaki was leaving Australia and New Zealand because they could not afford it there.

He was encouraging the management in Australia to come and visit Samoa hoping that they might change the venue and choose Samoa instead,

We (Cabinet) did move very fast and it was the fastest decision that we have ever made in Cabinet.

Representative of Toyota Motor Corporation Australia, Roy Borg, congratulated Yazaki.

Make sure that you will continue to follow great standards with procedures, internal process, controls and part inspections standards, he said.

Your performance results and positive mindsets give me every confidence that you will continue to improve. Congratulations!

Yazaki was established in 1991.
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By Peggy Kelly

Santa Paula News

You might not know that California is the state with the most stolen cars but you can help prevent your vehicle from becoming a statistic by taking advantage of a free anti-theft program.

On Wednesday, April 13 the Automobile Club of Southern California, the Ventura County Auto Theft Task Force (VENCATT) and National Insurance Crime Bureau will etch the Vehicle Identification Number (VIN) on vehicle windows for free as a theft deterrent.

The event will be held from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Auto Club Camarillo branch in Camarillo Village Square, 2570 Las Posas Road.

You dont have to be a member of the Auto Club to receive the free VIN etching on vehicle windows, which makes them a less likely target of car theft.

Although the VIN window etchings are small, they are visible enough to deter thieves  and the etching cannot be removed.

The Auto Club, the National Insurance Crime Bureau and VENCATT  made up of the California Highway Patrol, Ventura County District Attorneys Office and Ventura Police Department  are co-hosting the event and will also offer theft prevention and vehicle burglary tips to car owners.

The number one property crime in America is car theft, but law-enforcement officials say the permanent engraving of a vehicles federally registered VIN etching helps deter car theft.

The reason? Thieves cannot sell VIN-etched car parts as easily. Older vehicles are stolen primarily for their parts value while newer, high-end vehicles often are shipped out of the country or, after disguising the VIN identity of the car, sold to an unknowing buyer locally.

Juveniles and adults sometimes take cars for joyrides and the vehicle is later abandoned.

The Auto Club and local law enforcements tips to prevent vehicle burglary and theft include: Always lock your vehicle with the windows closed; never leave valuables inside the car, especially not in clear view, including small electronics, wallets, check books, personal and financial paperwork or any personal identification.
By Peggy Kelly

Santa Paula News

A demonstration of language barriers which also prompted questions on public notification  an issue that had already been addressed once  was part of the March 22 Planning Commission meeting.

Agenized was a request by Econo Storage, located at 1450 E. Santa Paula St. where work had previously been done to convert several units into a caretakers quarters for onsite security.

Although not permitted staff recommended that the panel approve the work that was all done to code with the applicant agreeing to other changes.

Commissioner Fred Robinson noted if the panel approved the request, It would legalize essentially something that has already been built

Robinson said he visited the Econo Storage facility which was formally bracero housing in years past and asked why the condition of the property and those nearby looks awfultheres whole rolls, of barbed wire surrounding the property and he questioned the effectiveness of security.

The problem is we have homeless people, trying to get inside the complex said the owner.

It looks like a high-security prison area, noted Robinson.

Commissioner Mike Sommer said he also visited the property and the side of the property visible from the street has new fencing.

The owner noted that RVs are stored at the facility, tenants that are particularly vulnerable to break-ins.

Robinson agreed but said, It sends such a horrible message for our town.

A public speaker asked to address the panel in Spanish.

With no translator on hand Realtor Anita Pulido, who earlier during public comment questioned city notification to property owners whose zoning is changing or being incorporated into the city, volunteered to speak for the man who said he is a neighbor of Econo Storage.
By Peggy Kelly

Santa Paula News

Carla Castilla has a lot of political experience but her run for Ventura County Supervisor District 3 is the first time she has sought elected office.

A native of Ventura County and District Director to Senator Hannah-Beth Jackson, Castilla is seeking the seat that represents Camarillo, Port Hueneme, Southeast Oxnard, East Oxnard Plain, Santa Paula, Fillmore, Piru, East Lockwood Valley, and Eastern Portion of Naval Base Ventura County Its a crowded field of candidates with seven vying for the seat, six of whom are Camarillo residents: telecommunications manager Jesus Torres, Kelly Long, a trustee of the Pleasant Valley School District, Camarillo Mayor Mike Morgan and Councilman Kevin Kildee and Daniel Goldberg, who works in the healthcare insurance industry. Martin Hernandez, Santa Paulas mayor and the chief of staff for Kathy Long, who opted not to run again as the 37th District Supervisor, is also running.

The daughter of immigrant farm workers, Castilla said she benefitted from Opportunity and sharing same is her impetus for public service.

I feel the Santa Clara River Valley particularly Santa Paula is an area that has long felt and been neglected on various levels, including youth and job training that the county should leverage and expand upon.

Castilla is pleased to see Ventura County Behavioral Health has a strong local presence that is Partnering smartly with those already hereits a great model, but other county-level partnerships should also be developed.

The Workforce Development Board piloted a program and hired youth for summer jobs, a program that led to permanent jobs that was recognized on a national level by then-Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis.

We have room to look at those partnershipsI have a global perspective but an appreciation of the needs of the river valley, especially as The 3rd District is the most diverse of the five some of the best living and some of the worst living is in District 3. The inequities we see in Santa Paula, Fillmore and Piru should be addressed.

Castilla notes Moorpark had struck a deal to route trucks through the Santa Clara River Valley and through Oxnard for a Malibu sand replenishment project noting it would have no impact on the areas.

Such a situation she noted shows the 3rd District must always be vigilant in watching out for others and us as a whole.

Castilla has visited Santa Paula on numerous occasions and said the city is Such a gem. Its now largely a bedroom community so there has to be an emphasis on supporting small business, the backbone of the community.

She knows the role of small business well: Castillas husband and other family members have experience with small business ownership and she believes the area would prevail in accessing county and federal resources for business retention, expansion and development.

Castilla noted Santa Paula must have more recreational opportunities for young people, positive activities for them

Other local issues range from the proposed Caltrans roundabouts project on Highway 126  Its huge! she noted  to how the city should grow responsibly but serving the needs of those living here now.
By Peggy Kelly

Santa Paula News

The Planning Commission will consider a new development on historic property at the April 26 meeting, a session that should be heavily attended by those who question plans for the Hardison House/Procter Ranch.

The meeting will be held at 6:30 p.m. at City Hall Council Chambers, 970 E. Ventura St.

The W.L. Hardison House, located at 1226 Ojai Road, is a Ventura County landmark sitting on more than 19 acres.

Williams Homes has filed an application for 53 growth allocations for single-family homes on the property while retaining the original Hardison House as well as the barn.

Williams Homes is seeking a Planned Development Permit to redevelop the Hardison House property by retaining and restoring the historic-eligible 1884 Hardison House in place and relocating and converting the 1885 barn into a garage; subdividing the lower 10 acres into 57 lots and constructing 53 one- and two-story single-family homes in three architectural styles.

The Planning Commission will consider the reduction of seven city development standards  including shrinking the lot size mandated for hillside development  and constructing four streets with sidewalks on the property.

Drainage, landscaping and designating the upper 9.18-acre hillside as a common area open space with a walking trail will also be considered by the commission.

The proposed project has been a controversial one especially for residents of the Oaks located east of the project that are concerned about traffic and visual impacts as well as historical preservation of the property.

Recently Williams Homes held a barbecue and site tour for those in the immediate area but other residents are also objecting to the development.

Amber Mickelson, who worked for Robert Procter, a Hardison descendent that lived in the home for many years before his death several years ago, has led the opposition to the proposed development.
Santa Paula News

The Santa Paula Unified School District announced the selection of Glen City School Assistant Principal, Ana Rodriguez, as the incoming principal of Blanchard Elementary School starting in the fall of the 2016-2017 school year. The current principal, Patti Fulbright, is set to retire at the end of the current school year.

As the new principal, its a big responsibility and an awesome challenge, Rodriguez said. She has been at Glen City School since 2010. Leaving is bittersweet. I love the staff, students, and faculty at Glen City.

Superintendent Alfonso Gamino congratulated Rodriguez and was impressed with her selection as principal of Blanchard School because she understands the students and the needs of the community.

Ana understands that excellence in education starts with the people that work at the school site. She treats everyone with respect and has high expectations for herself.

Rodriguez was born in Managua, Nicaragua and later immigrated to the United States. She attended Los Angeles County schools and eventually graduated from California State University, Northridge with a bachelor degree in Psychology. She obtained an M.A. in Educational Leadership from California State University Channel Islands.

Starting her teaching career as a Kindergarten Instructional Assistant with the Los Angeles Unified School District, Rodriguez was also a substitute teacher at Burbank Unified School District. She later moved to Oxnard where she held a variety of part-time teaching positions within the Oxnard School District as an intervention teacher, Kindergarten push-in teacher, substitute teacher, a Saturday School teacher, and an adult ESL (English as a Second Language) teacher.
Santa Paula News

Two Santa Paulans and six military veterans were among the 21 adults who received a total of $37,000 in Phoenix Scholarships from the Ventura College Foundation at an awards ceremony held March 31 at the Wright Event Center on the Ventura College campus. The annual scholarships are awarded to Ventura College re-entry students with minimal or no financial resources to cover the costs of their education.

At the 17th annual event, each student received a scholarship between $1,000 and $5,000. In previous years, all students received $1000. The larger scholarships launched this year reflect the increasing cost of education and several Foundation donors desire to relieve as many barriers to education as possible.

Mark Martinez, a veteran and Ventura resident, received the $5,000 Aurora Loss Phoenix Scholarship. Martinez served in the military for eight years and after Ventura College plans to transfer to a four-year university to get a degree in political science. His long-term goals are to get his teaching credential and law degree. Six students received a $3,000 Stan Weisel Phoenix Scholarship. These students include Ana Leon and Renee Dixon, both of Ventura; April Nickerson of Port Hueneme; Jaclyn Moore of Oxnard; Julia Jones of Ojai and Maribel Aguilar of Santa Paula. (A complete list of the 2016 Phoenix recipients is below.)

The event was hosted by the Foundations staff and board of directors. The event sponsor was Stan Weisel, a Ventura resident and founder of the Stan Weisel Endowed Scholarships, who last year pledged to sponsor it for the rest of his life.

The program started in November 1999, when the Ventura College Foundation board of directors learned about the special needs of Ventura College re-entry students. Re-entry students are defined as people who return to school to learn new skills in order to be competitive in the marketplace or who are returning to school after an extended break.

What stands out among this years cohort is their desire to go into fields that help others, to give back to our community in some way. Its inspiring to be helping these students, and all our Phoenix honorees, reach their personal and professional goals, said Richard Taylor, Ventura College Foundation board member and one of the Phoenix Scholarship program founders. Were all rooting for these students to succeed. By giving them a scholarship, were helping to remove a financial barrier so they can focus on their studies.

To be eligible for a Phoenix Scholarship, students submit an application, three essays, and obtain recommendations from counselors, faculty and employers. Recipients are chosen based on their academic goals and progress, along with their financial need.

Established in 1983, the Ventura College Foundation provides financial support to the students and the programs of Ventura College to facilitate student success and grow the impact and legacy of Ventura College as a vital community asset. The Foundation also hosts the Ventura College Foundation Marketplace, an outdoor shopping experience held every weekend on the Ventura College campus east parking lot. For more information, contact Norbert Tan at (805) 289-6160 or ntan@vcccd.edu. Or visit venturacollege.edu/foundation.

2016 Phoenix Scholarship

Recipients

Camarillo:

Hanna Candell

Ojai:

Julia Jones

Tara Jorgensen

Oxnard:

Jaclyn Moore

Brittany Ward

Miguel Villa

Port Hueneme:

Donya Bautista
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For more information, please visit http://www.cold1services.com.
Albany, NY -- (SBWIRE) -- 05/06/2016 -- According to a recent market research report published by Transparency Market Research, the global drilling fluid market is estimated to expand at a CAGR of 8% during the period between 2012 and 2018. The report, titled "Drilling Fluids Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast, 2012 - 2018," projects the global drilling fluid market to reach a valuation of US$12.31 bn by 2018. The overall market was worth US$7.20 bn in 2011.



Complete Drilling Fluids Market Report with TOC : http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/drilling-fluid-market.html



Drilling fluids, also known as drilling mud, are extensively used during drilling oil and natural gas wells. These fluids facilitate the drilling process by controlling pressure, suspending cuttings, providing buoyancy, stabilizing exposed rock, and lubricating and cooling.



Rise in oil drilling activities and focus towards deep sea reserves have propelled the growth of the global drilling fluids market. The increasing exploration of shale gas, coal bed methane, and other unconventional resources, along with the implementation of horizontal drilling, will further augment the growth of the market during the forecast period. However, the growing concerns regarding the environmental impact of drilling fluids, especially oil based fluids, will hamper the market's growth. The emergence of nanotechnology for developing drilling fluids will open new opportunities for the growth of the market in the near future.



On the basis of product type, the report segments the global drilling fluids market into synthetic based fluids (SBFs), oil based fluids (OBFs), and water based fluids (WBFs). In 2012, water based fluids emerged as the leading product segment with 55% market share. Owing to their minimum toxicity, WBFs are widely used for offshore drilling. During the forecast horizon, the WBF segment is estimated to register a CAGR of 8.5%. While OBFs operate efficiently, they carry the maximum risk of environmental hazards. Hence, the demand for SBFs is expected to surge in the near future. SBFs contain attributes of both WBFs and OBFs.



Enquiry Before Buying :- http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=S&rep_id=1292



The report studies the global drilling fluids market across Europe, North America, the Middle East and Africa, and Asia Pacific. In 2012, North America was the leading region in the market and accounted for over 55% of the market. The growing exploration of shale gas across Canada and the U.S. is anticipated to drive the demand from this regional market in the coming years. During the forecast horizon, Central and South America is projected to register the fastest growth in the market at a CAGR of 9.5% due to enhanced drilling activities in offshore of Venezuela and Brazil. In China and India, government support in the form of tax subsidies to E&P companies will encourage oil and gas production, thereby fuelling the demand for drilling fluids.



Describing the competitive hierarchy, the report profiles some of the key players in the global drilling fluids market such as Baker Hughes, Anchor Drilling, Canadian Energy Services, Halliburton, China Oilfield Services Limited, Schlumberger Technology Corporation, Newpark Drilling Fluids, and Weatherford International. The four leading companies held over 65% of the market in 2012.The report provides information about business strategies, financial overview, and company overview of the key players and with the help of SWOT analysis, assesses the future growth opportunities for the players.



Global Drilling Fluids Market has been segmented as:



Drilling Fluids Market: Product Segment Analysis



Oil Based Fluids (OBFs)

Synthetic Based Fluids (SBFs)

Water Based Fluids (WBFs)



Drilling Fluids Market: Application Analysis



Offshore Oil and Gas

Onshore Oil and Gas



Drilling Fluids Market: Regional Analysis



North America

Europe

Middle East and Africa

Asia Pacific

Central and South America



About Transparency Market Research (TMR)

Transparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company providing business information reports and services. The company's exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trend analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMR's experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.



TMR's data repository is continuously updated and revised by a team of research experts so that it always reflects the latest trends and information. With extensive research and analysis capabilities, Transparency Market Research employs rigorous primary and secondary research techniques to develop distinctive data sets and research material for business reports.
Valley Cottage, NY -- (SBWIRE) -- 05/06/2016 -- Cosmetic chemicals are the primary ingredients that are used for formulation of personal care products. Cosmetics have come from late civilizations due to need for improving looks and appearance. Since then, ingredients in cosmetics have changed drastically and new techniques and formulas were introduced to manufacture own cosmetics and scents. Different minerals were used to produce colors by the ancient Egyptian aristocracy to give description to their facial features. During the Greek era it was very universal to make use of face paints, while the Romans favored baths that contained oil based perfumes.



Almost 1500 chemical entities have been recognized to be cosmetic chemicals globally. The common chemicals that are found in the cosmetics include thickening agents, carrier powders, colorants, pigments, surfactants, preservatives, emollients, film formers and moisturizers among others. The cosmetics chemicals which are consumed on a large scale include emollients, film formers and moisturizers followed by surfactants globally. The cosmetic industry is fragmented as large number of suppliers provides a very wide range of inorganic and organic chemicals that are the necessary ingredients in the cosmetic industry. Nevertheless, twenty or more major international companies have a considerable share of cosmetic chemicals trade in the market.



The cosmetic market is generally segmented based on products into surfactants, oleochemicals, aroma chemicals and blends, botanical extracts, fats, oils and waxes and polymers among others.



Request Free Report Sample@ http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-322



The major applications of these chemicals include the skin care products, hair care products, color cosmetics, makeup, toiletries and oral care among others.



The major diving factors of the cosmetic industry include growing demand from the ethnic groups for beauty products that are tailored according to their needs. In addition, the increasing purchasing power coupled with growing awareness and demand for personal care products among the aging baby boomers is also expected to fuel demand for cosmetic chemicals market. However, increasing demand of natural ingredients may hamper the growth graph of the global cosmetic chemicals market. In addition, major companies have comply with standards and regulations in the industry.



The key segments for cosmetic chemicals market include North America, Asia Pacific, Europe and Rest of the World (RoW). North America is expected to be the largest consumer of cosmetic chemical owing to the high demand for hair care products and growing demand for multifunctional products. In addition, growing male grooming segment is also expected to boost demand for cosmetic chemicals in the market. Asia Pacific is expected to be the largest consumer of cosmetic chemicals in the near future. Southeast Asia including Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam and Singapore is expected to show substantial growth in the coming years.



The trends that the cosmetic industry follow globally include Globalization of cosmetic products as major international companies such as L'Oreal, Unilever and Procter & Gamble continue to invest in the growing markets. Other trends include consolidation, increased use of nontraditional distribution channels and growing interest in cosmeceuticals among others.



Download TOC@ http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-322



The cosmetic chemicals companies use innovative bio based high performance products and advanced technologies to manufacture a wide variety of products. The key companies profiled include: Akzo Nobel NV, Ashland Incorporated, Active Organics, BASF SE, Berkshire Hathaway Incorporated, Bayer AG, Clariant International Limited, Dow Chemical Company, Eastman Chemical Company, Evonik Industries AG, Emery Oleochemicals Group, FMC Corporation, Novecare, Integrated Botanical Technologies, Pilot Chemical Company, Procter & Gamble Company, Solvay SA and United-Guardian Incorporated among others.
Deerfield Beach, FL -- (SBWIRE) -- 05/06/2016 -- The study Global Cotton Ginning Machinery Industry 2016 is a detailed report scrutinizing statistical data related to the Global Cotton Ginning Machinery industry. Historical data available in the report elaborates on the development of the Cotton Ginning Machinery market on a Global and national level. The report compares this data with the current state of the market and thus elaborates upon the trends that have brought the market shifts.



The market forces determining the shaping of the Cotton Ginning Machinery market have been evaluated in detail. In addition to this, the regulatory scenario of the market has been covered in the report from both the Global and local perspective. Market predictions along with the statistical nuances presented in the report render an insightful view of the Cotton Ginning Machinery market.



Enquiry About Report: http://www.marketresearchstore.com/report/global-and-chinese-cotton-ginning-machinery-market-outlook-52762#InquiryForBuying



The demand and supply side of the market has been extensively covered in the report. The challenges the players in the Cotton Ginning Machinery market face in terms of demand and supply have been listed in the report. Recommendations to overcome these challenges and optimize supply and demand opportunities have also Growth prospects of the overall Cotton Ginning Machinery industry have been presented in the report. However, to give an in-depth view to the readers, detailed geographical segmentation within the globe Cotton Ginning Machinery market has been covered in this study. The key geographical regions along with their revenue forecasts are included in the report.



The competitive framework of the Cotton Ginning Machinery market in terms of the Global Cotton Ginning Machinery industry has been evaluated in the report. The top companies and their overall share and share with respect to the Global market have been included in the report. Furthermore, the factors on which the companies compete in the market have been evaluated in the report.



Request Sample: http://www.marketresearchstore.com/report/global-and-chinese-cotton-ginning-machinery-market-outlook-52762#RequestSample



This report also presents product specification, manufacturing process, and product cost structure etc. Production is separated by regions, technology and applications. Analysis also covers upstream raw materials, equipment, downstream client survey, marketing channels, industry development trend and proposals. In the end, the report includes Cotton Ginning Machinery new project SWOT analysis, investment feasibility analysis, investment return analysis, and development trend analysis. In conclusion, it is a deep research report on Global Cotton Ginning Machinery industry. Here, we express our thanks for the support and assistance from Cotton Ginning Machinery industry chain related technical experts and marketing engineers during Research Team's survey and interviews.



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Albany, NY -- (SBWIRE) -- 05/06/2016 -- Raw milk vending machine consists of an automatic dispenser which dispenses 'raw milk' to a container/bottle after successful payment from the end-user. Some vending machines also provide container/bottle with the milk. Raw milk vending machine dispenses milk collected from cows, buffaloes, goats and sheep. The report provides both revenue and volume for each sub-geographic region. In terms of geographical regions, the report segments the Europe raw milk vending machine market into EU7, Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and Rest of Europe. EU7 is further segmented into the U.K., Italy, Spain, France, Germany, Belgium, and the Netherlands, while CIS is divided into Russia and Rest of CIS. Majority of Western European countries follow strict regulations regarding the consumption and sale of raw milk whereas Eastern European countries primarily do not comply with any regulation. Considering this variation in regulations across countries, the report also includes analysis of regulatory environment in the Europe market.



Read Complete Report @ http://www.mrrse.com/europe-raw-milk-vending-machine-market



The raw milk is directly sold to customers at farm in countries such as France, Germany, Denmark, Italy, the Netherlands, Czech Republic, Austria, Slovakia, Lithuania, Ireland and the U.K. Many dairy farmers produce traditional cheese, buttermilk, yogurt and chocolate from raw milk in their farms. The major countries that have adopted raw milk vending machine include Italy, France, Romania, Germany, the U.K., Slovakia, Slovenia and Czech Republic. The key reason for adoption of raw milk vending machine was due to the revisions in regulations of respective countries regarding raw milk sale. Furthermore, majority of end-users in these countries prefer drinking raw milk and consuming raw milk related products due to their nutritional benefits. Spain, Poland and Norway restrict the sale of raw milk due to reported cases of food poisoning. During the coming years, in order to help small farmers, these countries are anticipated to ease the regulations pertaining to the sale of raw milk through vending machines.



Read Full Table of Content @ http://www.mrrse.com/europe-raw-milk-vending-machine-market/toc



Furthermore, the report analyzes the factors that drive and restrain the growth of the raw milk vending machine market for each sub-region. The report also discusses the prevailing market trends, prospective growth opportunities, and major strategies increasing the popularity of raw milk vending machines. Also provided is the market share analysis and competitive strategies adopted by key players in the Europe raw milk vending machine market. Furthermore, the report also provide market share analysis of key players for each sub-geographic region.



Get a Free Sample Copy of the Report @ http://www.mrrse.com/sample/1688



Major business strategies adopted by key players, their market positioning, and product offerings have also been identified in the research report. The prominent manufacturers who offer raw milk vending machine in Europe include DF Italia S.R.L., Brunimat GmbH, Letina Inox D.O.O., Milk Automation S.R.O. and Risto Gbr.



About MRRSE

MRRSE stands for Market Research Reports Search Engine, the largest online catalog of latest market research reports based on industries, companies, and countries. MRRSE sources thousands of industry reports, market statistics, and company profiles from trusted entities and makes them available at a click. Besides well-known private publishers, the reports featured on MRRSE typically come from national statistics agencies, investment agencies, leading media houses, trade unions, governments, and embassies.



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Conshohocken, PA -- (SBWIRE) -- 05/06/2016 -- Sterling Trustees, a South Dakota-chartered trust administration company, recently advised asset owners who are reviewing their trust administration options that location matters. Not only are there benefits to choosing an independent trust administration service, but there are particular advantages posed by working with one based in South Dakota, says Sterling Trustees. The company offers this information to help prospective clients make educated decisions about managing and protecting their assets.



South Dakota trust administration provides valuable asset protection to clients of companies based in the state. This is due to the fact that South Dakota has some of the most flexible and advanced trust and tax laws in the United States. One distinct advantage of a South Dakota-based trust is that the state provides for an unlimited trust duration, as opposed to the limited durations imposed by most states in the country. This prevents the termination of the trust from occurring before the grantor intended.



Additionally, South Dakota offers state-level tax advantages and savings for grantors and beneficiaries of trusts. The state of South Dakota has no state income tax for trusts, and imposes no additional capital gains, corporate income, interest, personal property, or inheritance taxes. Furthermore, whereas the average state insurance premium tax averages out at 200 basis points, in South Dakota this tax is only 8 basis points, the lowest in the nation.



Finally, South Dakota's privacy statutes regarding trusts are some of the most thorough in the nation. Aspects of a trust such as its size, assets, and terms may be kept from public record, and are not required to be publicly filed. If filings containing information about the trust must be filed with the court, they can then be sealed from public view forever.



View a full list of the benefits of a South Dakota-based trust by viewing Sterling Trustees' whitepaper. Visit http://www.sterlingtrustees.com to learn more about this independent trust administration company.



About Sterling Trustees

Sterling Trustees is a fee-only trust administration firm located in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. By working independently, the firm allows its clients to avoid the extra costs and conflicts of interest associated with large financial institutions. Sterling Trustees' main goal is to keep assets safe while remaining objective.



For more information, please visit http://www.sterlingtrustees.com.
Pennsauken, NJ -- (SBWIRE) -- 05/06/2016 -- Super Lawyers, a rating service that spotlights the top-rated lawyers in the United States, recently released its list of Super Lawyers and Rising Stars for 2016. The annual list is a hand-picked directory of attorneys considered outstanding in their field, based on professional achievement and peer recognition. The Law Offices of Vincent J. Ciecka, P.C., is pleased to announce that, once again, attorneys Vincent J. Ciecka and Michael Dennin, Esqs., have been named Super Lawyer and Rising Star, respectively, by Super Lawyers.



Vincent J. Ciecka is the owner and principal attorney at the Law Offices of Vincent J. Ciecka, P.C., a Pennsauken, NJ-based firm that fights on the behalf of plaintiffs in personal injury cases. Ciecka, a Temple Law graduate, has been practicing law for over 40 years, always with a focus on winning compensation for individuals who have been injured in accidents. He is a Certified Civil Trial Attorney who is dedicated to protecting the rights of his clients and winning them the highest monetary settlements possible after life-changing accidents that result in property damage, personal injury, wage loss, and emotional suffering. Vincent J. Ciecka has been selected as Super Lawyer on previous occasions, and is honored to earn the recognition once more as a respected personal injury lawyer in South Jersey.



In addition, Michael J. Dennin, litigation attorney at the Law Offices of Vincent J. Ciecka, P.C. and staff member since 2005, was named a Rising Star by Super Lawyers this year. It is the second year in a row that Dennin has won this recognition.



Ciecka, Dennin, and the rest of the team at the Law Offices of Vincent J. Ciecka, P.C. firm offer counseling and orientation in cases of personal injury, such as slip-and-fall and other accidents requiring an attorney in NJ. The firm has won millions of dollars in legal reimbursement for their clients over the past four decades, and is particularly renowned for making clients feel informed and comfortable throughout their cases.



Learn more at https://www.ciecka.com.



About The Law Offices of Vincent J. Ciecka, P.C.

The Law Offices of Vincent J. Ciecka was established in 1976 as a people focused personal injury law firm. The firm treats its clients with the utmost care and respect, and works with their clients to get the best results possible. The firm provides legal representation throughout Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and surrounding counties, and all areas of Central and Southern New Southern New Jersey. The Law Offices of Vincent J. Ciecka focus only on handling injury cases in the practice areas of personal injury and workers compensation. Vincent J. Ciecka, P.C., has over three decades of experience providing the highest level of strategic legal representation for all facets of personal injury and workers compensation cases, having taken part in extensive past cases dealing with insurance companies and courts alike.



Individuals that have been hurt and need help, call 856-972-7220 or reach them at https://www.ciecka.com and they will fight for them so they can get back to their lifestyle without having to deal with the insurance companies.
In a study published online in the journal Science, paleontologists from China and the United States report the discovery of a diverse primate fauna from the early Oligocene of southern China.

According to scientists, primates are sensitive to shifts in temperature, and thus, to climate change.

Changes in the distribution of primate fossils throughout time reflect this, with intervals of extreme warmth corresponding to expansions for these species, as reflected in the fossil record, and cooler periods  such as the Eocene-Oligocene transition (EOT), some 34 million years ago  resulting in primates extinction on large scales.

At the Eocene-Oligocene boundary, because of the rearrangement of Earths major tectonic plates, you had a rapid drop in temperature and humidity, said study co-author Dr. K. Christopher Beard, from the University of Kansas.

Primates like it warm and wet, so they faced hard times around the world  to the extent that they went extinct in North America and Europe.

Of course, primates somehow survived in Africa and Southern Asia, because were still around to talk about it.

Assessing the exact impact of EOT environmental changes on Asian primate evolution has been difficult given the lack of primate fossils from the region during that time.

To fill this gap, Dr. Beard and his colleagues studied the fossils of ten extinct primate species from Yunnan Province dated to the early Oligocene, the time just after the cooler transition, discovering that surviving the EOT required primates to adapt to lemur-like strepsirrhine primates.

Like most of todays primates, the ancient Chinese primates were tropical tree-dwellers, Dr. Beard said. One of the species, Oligotarsius rarus, was incredibly similar to the modern tarsier found today only in the Philippine and Indonesian islands.

If you look back at the fossil record, we know that tarsiers once lived on mainland Asia, as far north as central China. The fossil teeth described in this paper are nearly identical to those of modern tarsiers. Research shows that modern tarsiers are pretty much living fossils  those things have been doing what they do ever since time immemorial, as far as we can tell.

A similar comparison of Afro-Arabia fossils shows a very different pattern of adaptation in response to the EOT: very few strepsirrhines (a suborder of primates that includes lemurs) survived, whereas anthropoids (monkeys and apes) diversified.

The results suggest that the EOT functioned as a critical filtering episode during the evolutionary history of Asian primates, one that ultimately impacted the course of primate evolution across the Old World.

_____

Xijun N. et al. 2016. Oligocene primates from China reveal divergence between African and Asian primate evolution. Science, vol. 352, no. 6286, pp. 673-677; doi: 10.1126/science.aaf2107
[NAIROBI] Researchers have generated cassava genome sequence that will enable better understanding of the genetic basis of traits such as disease resistance, food quality and crop maturity.

The study has generated quality cassava genome sequence. It includes 97 per cent of the estimated genes. Morag Ferguson, International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), Kenya

The study which started in 2012 and its findings was published in the journal Nature Biotechnology last month (18 April) was aimed at increasing the genomic resources for cassava, says Morag Ferguson, a co-author of the study and a molecular geneticist at the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), Kenya.



The study has generated quality cassava genome sequence. It includes 97 per cent of the estimated genes, Ferguson tells SciDev.Net. The large amount of DNA [genetic material] sequence information provides insights into the origin of cassava and resources for the improvement of cassava.



Ferguson adds that the genome relates to African cassava varieties, particularly those with resistance to cassava brown streak disease (CBSD), a devastating viral disease affecting cassava in southern, eastern and central Africa.



The researchers identified the order of the genetic letters of 53 cultivated and wild cassava plant materials (Manihot esculenta) from Africa, Asia, South America and Oceania  a process called genome sequencing. They also sequenced five cassava-related plants such as M. glaziovii and identified the genetic components of 268 African cassava varieties.

Sequence information, according to Ferguson, revealed that some CBSD-resistant cassava varieties in Tanzania including Namikonga and Muzege, contain sections of genomes of M. glaziovii.



Ferguson adds: Cassava is the main food security crop of the continent [Africa], providing a [high] yield in poor soils with minimal water, when other crops such as maize will fail.



The study was conducted by researchers from countries such as Fiji, Kenya, Micronesia, Nigeria, Tanzania and United States.



Paul Kimani, a plant breeder from Kenyas University of Nairobi says the main contribution of the findings is new information on cassava genome and a clear demonstration of the genetic relationships among the various species, including cultivated cassava, its wild relatives and others in the secondary or even tertiary gene pool.



What it does not do is link the genes with any economically important traits such as disease resistance, nutritional quality or agronomic traits, he says.

Kimani explains that because cassava breeders often rely on a narrow genetic base of the crop, an epidemic can easily cause severe damage, leading to rapid spread of diseases such as cassava mosaic disease (CMD) and CBSD in Africa.



The key issue is whether the wild cassava has genes for economically important traits such as resistance to CMD and CBSD, productivity and processing, which can be transferred to commercial varieties, Kimani tells SciDev.Net.  See more at: http://www.scidev.net/sub-saharan-africa/biotechnology/news/cassava-genome-mapped-boost-qualities.html#sthash.zN75VggU.dpuf

Kimani explains that because cassava breeders often rely on a narrow genetic base of the crop, an epidemic can easily cause severe damage, leading to rapid spread of diseases such as cassava mosaic disease (CMD) and CBSD in Africa.



The key issue is whether the wild cassava has genes for economically important traits such as resistance to CMD and CBSD, productivity and processing, which can be transferred to commercial varieties, Kimani tells SciDev.Net.



This piece was produced by SciDev.Nets Sub-Saharan Africa English desk.
The collapse of the Rana Plaza factory complex in Bangladesh in April 2013 shocked the world. More than 1,100 people died and 2,500 were injured by the sudden failure of a building with appalling safety standards that had developed major cracks the day before.



Revelations that many global clothing brands had been using the factory led to the Bangladesh Accord: a legally binding agreement between fashion companies, the Bangladeshi government and workers trade unions to make factories safe, publicly disclose inspection reports and educate workers about their rights. It meant that, for the first time, global brands agreed to monitor how the factories supplying their goods are run.

When we started asking to drill down below sewing factories, companies didnt seem to know. Bryony Moore, Ethical Consumer



The move was also meant to push for transparency across the fashion supply chain. But, three years down the line, how much has changed? Very little, according to Bryony Moore, researcher at watchdog Ethical Consumer. And this means that another disaster like Rana Plaza is no less likely today than it was three years ago.



Moore is the joint author of a new transparency index that ranks fashion companies on how open they are about publishing details of their supply chains.



The research team  a collaboration between Ethical Consumer and campaigning organisation Fashion Revolution  selected 40 companies, a mix of luxury and high street brands. They sent them questionnaires asking about their supply chain monitoring policies and what information they make public. If they failed to reply, the team gathered publicly available information from company websites. Then they scored them: the more transparent they are across different indicators, the higher their score.



There has been some backlash to this methodology from luxury brands such as Chanel and Fendi, which fared particularly badly on the index. Chanel replied that the reality of our actions seems more important to us than any related media coverage.



But, as Moore tells me, this goes against the idea of transparency. Companies should be making clear how  and how far  they monitor supply chains, she explains. Transparency is essential, Moore says, to tackle the dont ask, dont tell culture in the fashion industry.



The tech and the information is out there. Its just a matter of bringing it together, but companies arent going to do that unless we tell them to. Bryony Moore, Ethical Consumer

So what did the index find? Even auditing the first supply tier  where clothes are sewn together and finished  is problematic, Moore says, because there is often so much subcontracting and sub-subcontracting, sometimes to homeworkers.



And beyond it, things get considerably worse. When we started asking to drill down below sewing factories, companies didnt seem to know, Moore says. Only two of the surveyed companies published details of second-tier suppliers, which include fabric and yarn mills. And more than half published no details of monitoring processes for raw materials such as cotton.



This lack of transparency at yarn and raw material level could cover all manner of sins, from workers rights to pollution caused by dyeing. Cotton production can involve large-scale pesticide and water use, and human rights abuses such as the use of child labour. Production of the textile fibre rayon can cause deforestation.

The global nature of the fashion industry means products move about, Moore says. The labour and fabric behind just one T-shirt span continents. Companies could easily get this information, but they dont seem to be doing so, she says.For example, the technology used to buy and sell fabric or cotton could also help track transactions across supply chains, she says. The tech and the information is out there. Its just a matter of bringing it together, but companies arent going to do that unless we tell them to.
Scientists recently gave a likely explanation for the unusual activity of earthquakes taking place in the southeastern part of the U.S., according to reports. The region has witnessed some notable seismic activities, the most recent of which occurred in 2011 when a 5.8 magnitude earthquake in Virginia's Mineral area shook the national capital too. As per the scientists, the periodical breaking of mantle pieces under the area, a process taking place since the past 65 million years at least, and their subsequent sinking into the earth may be the underlying cause for the increased seismic activity.

According to a recent report, the Southeastern area should ideally be a comparatively quiet zone in terms of seismic activity, due to its location in North American Plate's interiors. The zone is situated far away from the usual plate boundaries where earthquakes take place. However, the breaking and sinking cycle thins and weakens the remaining plate, which increases its tendency to slip that subsequently leads to earthquakes. The researchers suggested that the process in ongoing and may result in more future earthquakes. "Our idea supports the view that this seismicity will continue due to unbalanced stresses in the plate," said Berk Biryol, seismologist from University of North Carolina (UNC), Chapel Hill."The [seismic] zones that are active will continue to be active for some time."

The hazards that earthquakes in the center of plates pose are usually difficult to quantify as the reason for their occurrence is not well known. The new observations could, therefore, help researchers to better understand the dangers of such type of earthquakes. It is rare for earthquakes to take place in the center of plates, but they do occur when ancient faults or rifts beneath the surface reactivate, causing the area to slip and result in seismic activity. The area of southeastern United States is more than 1700 kilometers from the North American Plate's nearest edge, which covers the whole of North America, Greenland and areas of the Arctic and Atlantic oceans.

To figure out what was taking place deep under the earth's surface, the team of scientists from UNC created 3D images of North American Plate's mantle part, in particular the region under the east of the Mississippi River and south of the Ohio River, using tremors caused by earthquakes more than 3541 kilometers away. Consequently, it was found that the plate thickness was uneven in southeastern US, and not stable as was previously thought, with thick areas of older, dense rocks that stretched downward and thin areas of younger, less dense rocks.

The scientists first thought that the older and thicker rocks were remnants of ancient tectonic plates, however the thinner and younger rocks suggested otherwise. The researchers concluded that regions of the North American Plate became denser and gravity pulled them downward into the mantle as a result of the past rifting and accretion. According to the scientists, the phenomenon is the underlying cause of earthquakes in the otherwise stable area, and their occurrence will continue in the future.
The Illinois State University Planetarium offers a special astronomical event, which is the first transit of Mercury since 2006 on May 9. You will witness the planet Mercury passes between the Sun and the Earth.

On Mon. 5/9 Mercury will transit the sun from 7:12 am to 2:42 pm ET! Find out more & watch: https://t.co/F2DCjnjUN5! pic.twitter.com/HVruEdvXR6  NASASunEarth (@NASASunEarth) May 5, 2016

Washington Times reports that the "Transit of Mercury" will occur again in 2019. The next transit of the planet Mercury would not be visible from North America until 2009.

Mercury together with planet Venus rarely passes between the sun and the Earth. It happens 13 or 14 times a century with Mercury and less than twice a century with Venus.

The transit will last for over 7 hours. It will be visible everywhere on Earth except New Zealand, Australia, Philippines, Indonesia and some parts of Eastern Asia. People from eastern North America will see the whole transit.

The Mercury transit starts after 7 a.m. EDT (1100 GMT) and ends at 3 p.m. EDT (1900 GMT). On the other hand, on the West coast, the transit starts at sunrise and ends around 11:30 PDT (0230 EDT; 0630 GMT on May 10). The planetarium software program such as Skysafari and Starry Night will give the exact time for each location.

The Illinois State University Planetarium has a special program before the transit event on Saturday, May 7 at 3:30 p.m. They would discuss the history and reason for the transit and how to safely view the transit. This is open to the public and free.

On May 9 at the Illinois State University Planetarium, the Mercury transit event will start at 9 a.m. until 1 p.m. It will be held at the Bloomington Parks and Reservation Departments' Tipton Parks north unit, at East College Avenue and Airport Road. The ISU Planetarium and the Twin Cities Amateur Astronomers (TCAA) will provide a special solar telescope, which is pointed toward Mercury allocating the viewers to see the transit.
VeloCloud Talks SD-WAN Benefits at Industry Event

By Casey Houser , Contributing Writer

An influential company in the business of creating cloud-based software-defined wide area networks (SD-WANs) was recently selected to feature in a prominent industry event.

A number of figures from VeloCloud were selected to talk about the real-world experience of dealing with SD-WAN at this years Interop (News - Alert) conference that took place in Las Vegas. First, on May 4th, Steve Woo, the vice president of products at VeloCloud, joined Sanjay Srinivasan, the chief technology architect at Vonage (News - Alert), to present their Real World SD-WAN Deployments and Benefits talk to event participants. The following day, on May 5th, Michael Wood, the vice president of marketing at VeloCloud, presented his own talk, SD-WAN: Why Architecture Matters.







The three business heads preceded VeloClouds reputation as a top company in this field. It received a Unified Communications Product of the Year Award from TMC (News - Alert) this year for its ability to support the growth of clients applications and for its network agility. TMC referenced that honor in a recent podcast with Wood and noted the market prediction that the SD-WAN is expected to grow to $6 billion in global revenue by 2020.

Although the TMC report noted that figures such as the $6 billion could be taken with a grain of salt, it nevertheless underscores the momentum currently taking place in alternative networking. Companies look for ways to connect their employees and office to one another in a secure manner. With nearly all of the information technology field moving to the cloud, it makes sense that secure wide area networks available as a service could perform well.

Wood brings more than 20 years of experience to the rest of the team at VeloCloud. Woo compliments those years with his own time spent as an executive and high-level employee of companies such as Cisco (News - Alert) and SynOptics Communications, where he helped retrieve $1.7 billion in revenue with his product line. They now lead a group of people that could be responsible for changing the face of networking as we know it. In addition, Srinivasans decades of experience in voice-over-IP, software architecture, and product marketing make him more than qualified to speak about the real-world applications of business networks.

VeloCloud and Vonage have worked tightly together in past projects such as the Vonage SmartWAN that runs atop VeloCloud services. Together, they are able to provide business customers with efficient and secure voice, video, and data transfer that can work between multiple client sites and many employees.

Edited by Maurice Nagle
Local reports said the Bureau of Customs is taking action on shipments that have not been removed after more than 30 days from arrival and is looking to raise PHP1bn ($21.1m) from the sale of all such cargoes that it ordered removed from ports by the end of the first quarter.

Customs directed all ports to review all overstaying cargoes for possible auction in line with efforts to boost revenues and decongest the port areas, the bureau said in a statement.

In January, Customs commissioner Alberto Lina issued an order to remove unclaimed cargoes by 31 March to avoid a repeat of the port congestion that hit Manila in 2014 as a result of an expanded truck ban. The national government has since consistently monitored the flow of shipments in ports.

Based on Customs figures, overstaying cargoes at the Port of Manila are estimated to be worth PHP300m while at the Port of Subic estimated potential revenues amount to about PHP150m.

At the Philippines' biggest port Manila International Container Port (MICP), a total of PHP462.6m in overdue cargoes has been seized. However, only MICP has conducted the public sale exercise so far, while the other ports are still working out auction schedules.

Before the MICP auction, Philippines Customs had already collected PHP345.6m from auctions in six ports as at April this year.

We are clearing as much as we could here. Of course, it cannot be 100% percent, but we almost cleared everything, Lina was quoted as saying. Hopefully, we are praying that we clear it until June, he added.
Inside its

But before we begin, let's clear up some nagging proprietary business: Movement is not, as some still call it, the Detroit Electronic Music Festival or

The Movement name first came along in 2003 with techno legend Derrick May, who became its primary steward for that year and the next, when the City of Detroit withdrew financial support for what was billed as one of the world's largest free music festivals. In 2005, May handed off leadership duties to fellow





Moby at Movement, 2013 Detroit's Memorial Day weekend festival was under threat of disappearing for good until Paxahau took on the challenge of running 2006's festival, once again under the name Movement.



Marriage of music and business

The prequel to the Movement

Huvaere was living there and "throwing parties with other kids in the scene," according to Fotias. Clark began hanging out with Fotias and Huvaere in the early 1990s, and was part of the group when

The period between 1993 and 1998 was, says Huvaere, "an embryonic stage for Paxahau, a magical time. No one taught us how to do this, we just did it by following the bouncing tech ball into the future."

Paxahau soon became associated with the "second wave" of local techno artists that included Daniel Bell, Carl Craig, Hawtin, and his Canadian partner John Acquaviva.

"We came into the scene for the music," says Fotias. "Music drove the creativity of the business. We carry the same principles we had then with us today."





Movement afternoon crowd, 2015 Paxahau saw the potential of music and business integration early on in its development as a company. It began archiving and streaming MP3s -- then a fledgling technology -- on its website 24 hours a day. The group did webcasts from a small Hamtramck bar (Cloud 9, now demolished), then began archiving live DJ sets at Motor, another larger Hamtramck venue that operated from 1996 to 2002.



It was in 2002 that Paxahau left its first mark on the Memorial Day weekend festival when it organized a high-quality DEMF afterparty at the club Panacea (now 211 Ultra Lounge), featuring Hawtin and Berlin-based rising stars Ricardo Villalobos, Sammy Dee, and Zip, who co-owned the influential label Perlon. Around the same time, they brought Steve Bug from Hamburg to the Book Building and developed contacts with artists from the Kompakt label in Cologne.

By cultivating relationships with the best talent in Europe, Paxahau elevated its profile considerably. But the partners' early work came primarily from a place of admiration, not because it benefited their business. "We just wanted to remain humble ambassadors for what we believed in," says Fotias. "We were working day jobs, all hustling and scrapping to get by."

Taking the reins

In 2005, Saunderson asked Paxahau to program the Underground Stage at Fuse-In. The group did more than that, securing sponsorships from Sweden's Tronic imprint, Montreal's

When the opportunity to take over the reins of the festival came in 2006, the group was ready. But they only had two months to prepare.

"It was intense," Fotias says, "we were going non-stop, sleeping on the floor."

"I started losing my hair that year," Flask says.





Paxahau 2006 (left to right): Jason Huvaere, Sam Fotias, Jason Clark, and Chuck Flask "Our families helped out; it was mostly just us," Fotias says. "We didn't know how many people would show up. On Monday night, the last night, we knew we would pay our bills."



A reported 41,000 people attended Movement in 2006. That number has been steadily rising ever since and totals near or above 100,000 have been reported since 2011. There were four stages at the first festival that Paxahau produced. Now, 10 years later, there are six. The weekend is the centerpiece of what is now a weeklong celebration of related events, including a

Huvaere says the group's greatest challenge has been adapting a business model meant for small events to a single, large event now staffed by hundreds featuring well over 100 artists.

"Staff design is vitally important," he says. "There are various production teams -- sound, lighting, staging -- food and beverage procurement, talent buying, and overall management."

But Huvaere says that an underlying "family" infrastructure is the most critical piece in an organization like Paxahau, and for an undertaking like Movement.

"We all made a life commitment to this music," he says. "We always knew there was never an option to quit what we were doing. Looking back, we see how hard it has been to make all this happen, but the passion is still there, the family is still growing."

Movement comes to Hart Plaza May 28-30. This year's lineup features Kraftwerk, Four Tet and Caribou making their festival debuts, as well as repeat performances by Carl Craig, Richie Hawtin, Kevin Saunderson and others. General admission tickets are $75 each day or $150 for a weekend pass. Get them

Walter Wasacz is a former managing editor of Model D and once authored a column on club culture for The Metro Times called The Subterraneans. He contributed an essay on Detroit techno for the recently published book
On April 20, the New Economy Initiative (NEI) kicked-off the third and final year of the NEIdeas challenge, "a two-tiered challenge awarding $500,000 to existing small businesses in Detroit, Hamtramck, and Highland Park for their ideas to grow," as described in a press release.The half-a-million dollar sum is divided into two grant tiers. For businesses that gross under $750,000 annually, NEI will award 30 grants worth $10,000. And for businesses that gross between $750,000 and $5 million annually, NEI will award two grants worth $100,000. Applying is as simple as explaining, in 500 words, an idea to expand your business that requires investment and is "impactful, courageous, interesting, achievable, and understandable." The application deadline ends June 1.A key component of the NEIdeas challenge is that these grants are for existing small businesses -- those three years or older. So much reporting and grant-giving is devoted to new businesses that it's refreshing when a challenge like this rewards established businesses that haven't benefited as much from renewed interest in Detroit entrepreneurship."This is a really special challenge that has had an incredible impact on local businesses and communities," says NEI communications officer Matthew Lewis by email. "In fact, we think NEIdeas is the only philanthropic challenge in the country that directly awards small businesses for their contributions to neighborhoods."Past winners include Goodwells Natural Foods Market , which invested their reward in growing their inventory and marketing services for new bulk herbal apothecary offerings; The Hub of Detroit , which made improvements to the appearance of its storefront; and many, many more. They also released a fun hype video featuring some of those past winners NEI will hold a series of informational events throughout May to help applicants. The next one takes place on May 4 at the Matrix Center in Osborne on Detroit's Northeast side. Click here for a complete list of those events.NEI is a philanthropic effort that supports small businesses and entrepreneurs. It's funded by a host of foundations and institutions, and, since 2009, has awarded over $96 million in grants.Disclosure: Matthew Lewis is a former managing editor of Model D.
Baku, Azerbaijan, May 6

By Maksim Tsurkov - Trend:

With the start of construction of the Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP), no obstacles will remain for the project 'Southern Gas Corridor', which involves delivery of Azerbaijani gas to Europe, Azerbaijan's Energy Minister Natig Aliyev said.

He made the remarks at the meeting with Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the UK Irfan Siddiq in connection with completion of term of his diplomatic activity in Azerbaijan.

At the meeting, the minister expressed confidence that relations between Azerbaijan and the UK will continue to expand.

"The UK company BP is a reliable strategic partner of Azerbaijan," Aliyev said. "During the period of more than 20 years of the company's activity, the oil and gas industry of Azerbaijan was given a boost, a large system of production and transportation of energy resources created in the Caspian region, new technologies attracted to the region."

"The signing of a new agreement to develop a block of oil fields 'Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli' (ACG), the work on the gas field 'Shah Deniz' and other energy projects lay the foundation of the Azerbaijani-UK cooperation for the decades to come."

The minister said that the timely implementation of the project 'Southern Gas Corridor' is a key priority for Azerbaijan.

"Laying the foundation of TAP gas pipeline will be held May 17 in the Greek city of Thessaloniki, and then no obstacles will remain to implement the 'Southern Gas Corridor'," Aliyev said. "The expansion of this project and the construction of interconnectors to meet the gas needs of Balkan countries are important issues."

In turn, Siddiq praised energy policy pursued by Azerbaijan and said that the UK government will continue to further support Azerbaijan.

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 Azerbaijan's Shah Deniz field is considered as the main source for the Southern Gas Corridor projects. Other sources can also connect to this project at a later stage.

As part of the Stage 2 of the Shah Deniz development, the gas will be exported to Turkey and European markets by expanding the South Caucasus Pipeline and the construction of Trans-Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline and Trans-Adriatic Pipeline.

---

Follow the author on Twitter: @MaksimTsurkov
Press Release

May 5, 2016 BONGBONG MARCOS BLASTS ADMIN ATTEMPT AT 'TRENDING', WARNS OF POSSIBLE CHEATING IN THE POLLS Vice Presidential candidate Senator Ferdinand "Bongbong" R. Marcos, Jr. today warned voters against falling for the obvious trending ploy of the Administration by using rigged survey results that show their candidates catching up or overtaking erstwhile leaders. Marcos noted that in the latest surveys he lost an unbelievable 6 to 11 percentage points. With around 55 million registered voters, Marcos said this translates to up to around 6 million votes that he inexplicably lost last week. "This is clearly an attempt to trend; niloloko na nila ang tao sa pamamagitan ng survey na hindi kapani-paniwala yung kanilang mga numero," Marcos told reporters during the weekly media forum "Kapihan sa Senado." "Nothing has happened that could explain it. It would take a very large and important event for the change in trend in those numbers. Something big has to have happened---I don't remember anything big in the past two weeks," he added. Marcos warned that this scheme of the Administration could be a ruse to cover up possible massive cheating in the coming May elections. "Ang problema baka ito ang unang hakbang sa pandaraya. Dahil kaunti lang ang pwedeng dayain na boto kaya pagka masyadong malayo ang natatalong kandidato, ang ginagawa nila ay inilalapit sa survey para pagka nadaya na nila ay sasabihin malapit naman kaya likely na mahabol yan," Marcos said. Marcos pointed out, for example, that the percentage points he lost were apparently added to the undecided respondents. However, he said the survey results do not agree with his camp's internal survey and those from other political camps as well. "How can that be possible? If you look at any election anywhere in the world, tingnan nyo ang undecided pabawas ng pabawas yan habang lumalapit ang halalan. It leaves us to believe that this is a clear attempt at trending to try to influence the votes on Monday," Marcos deplored. Marcos alleged that the circumstances point to the Administration as the party behind this attempt. "Who will be the biggest beneficiary of this trending, of this obviously concocted numbers that they have in the surveys? The Administration is the only one who can do that. Nobody but the Administration candidates are going up, everybody else is going down," Marcos cited. Marcos said his camp is working very hard to look at what is happening while educating the voters on what they could do to protect their votes. Marcos however assured that he is confident the Filipino voters are smart enough to see the trending attempt. What is even more alarming, according to Marcos, is when these circumstances are taken together with the reported discrepancies in the ballots cast in the Overseas Absentee Voting as against the the printed receipts in places such as Hong Kong, Dubai, Kuwait, Japan, Okinawa, and California. "The other problem is ang natatanggalan lang ng boto (sa OAV) ay sa Oposisyon, hindi sa Administrasyon! So far the only recorded votes that have been removed or lost are for me and Cong. (Martin) Romualdez, and the latest one kasama na si (Davao Mayor Rodrigo) Duterte," Marcos reported. Marcos had earlier filed before the Commission on Election complaints on the results of the OAV based on the testimonies of voters who experienced discrepancies on their votes and the receipts. He then appealed to all voters to take active measures to protect their votes. "Kaya lagi naming sinasabi sa lahat kung meron kayong makitang problema tungkol dyan, isumbong ninyo hindi lang sa isang tao, hindi lang sa BEI (Board of Election Inspectors), sa Comelec, isumbong nyo sa mga watchers, isumbong nyo sa amin," Marcos said. Marcos likewise urged all political parties to join in the efforts to protect the sanctity of the ballot, consistent with his call for national unity.
POE IS MOST TRUSTED PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE--LAYLO SURVEY

Sen. Grace Poe remains the most trusted presidential candidate, according to the latest The Standard Poll.

Poe got a majority trust rating of 54 percent in the nationwide survey conducted from April 27 to May 1 by The Standard's resident pollster, Laylo. This is the highest trust rating garnered by Poe since the campaign started in January.

The senator has also consistently topped the trust survey since September 2015, the month she declared her presidential bid anchored on genuine inclusive growth, global competitiveness and transparency in government.

"Ang hinahanap natin ngayon ay isang lider na masasandalan, na makakapagbigay sa atin ng inspirasyon, na maiaahon tayo sa kahirapan. Hindi po iisa lamang ang problema ng ating bayan," Poe said in a press conference in Makati today.

The lone independent presidential candidate said her "Gobyernong May Puso" will address the biggest problems of the country--poverty, unemployment and crime.

Poe also assured that her government is something Filipinos can be truly proud of.

"Gusto natin ligtas tayo, pero higit sa lahat, gusto natin na ang ating pamilya ay masagana; na ang ating pamilya ay nabibigyan natin ng pangangailangan nito; at higit sa lahat, gusto natin ng isang gobyernong ikararangal natin," she said.

Five days before the May 9 elections, she once again urged voters to choose leaders who have integrity and who can inspire, instead of threaten, people into action.

"Sa aking pag-iikot, nangingibabaw pa rin sa bawat Pilipino ang respeto sa isa't isa. Kaya naman hinihiling ko sa inyong lahat na sana ang namumuno sa atin ang siyang magbibigay ng pag-asa at tamang ehemplo," she said.

Poe was recently chosen by 59 percent of 1,200 respondents in the Veritas Truth Survey, which sought to assess Filipinos' perception of all presidential candidates' servant leadership qualities.

The Catholic Church-run Radio Veritas asked respondents to rank the candidates based on 10 qualities of a servant leader: listening, empathy, healing, awareness, persuasion, conceptualization, foresight, stewardship, commitment to the growth of the people, and building community.

Poe landed on the top spot in 9 out of 10 qualities of a servant leader.
Press Release

May 6, 2016 May 9, 10 must be 'National No Blackout Days' - Recto Senator Ralph Recto urged government to ensure that May 9 and 10 are "National No Blackout Days" as no power in certain areas could lead to no elections that would deny people the right to vote and delay the canvassing of election returns. Recto made the appeal as another transmission tower in Lanao del Sur was bombed and toppled on the night of May 3, the 6th incident in Mindanao this year. Recto is worried that rolling blackouts in Mindanao, "or in any area in the country, " could be used by election saboteurs to trip power in certain areas, like where schools are, "to prevent people from voting" even if supply is adequate. The greater danger is that this can be used as an excuse for bad people to frustrate the will of the people on election day, Recto said. Recto urged law enforcement groups to closely guard the "whole length of the power system from grids, towers to distribution, even transformers near schools." He called on rebel groups, like the NPA and MILF, on whose controlled territories pass transmission lines, "to guard and guarantee" that nothing bad happens to towers and all power facilities. Recto said the work of preventing a "no-el due to no-el" on May 9 should cross party lines and ideologies.. He cited several reasons why a 'no-el caused no-el" in Mindanao would "have frightening repercussions." "A Mindanaoan is in the ballot for the presidency. It can still be a tight race. One region, one big city can make a difference on the final presidential and vice presidential vote tally, so you can just imagine the frustration of the Mindanaoans if they won't be able to vote for their bets on May 9," Recto said. "Almost one in four voters is in Mindanao. It has twice as many voters as Metro Manila," he said Recto said "darkness is the best breeding ground for all sorts of conspiracy theories. Evil hides in the dark. But if there's light, if there's electricity, all speculations, and even sabotage plans, stop. " Recto is urging the two task forces formed by Malacanang to deliver on their tasks to ensure power for the May elections and address the problem of rotating blackouts in Mindanao. With elections in four days, contingency plans should have been finalized, Recto said, "including checking electrical wiring of schools and sourcing of locally-available portable generators that will power voting precincts."
Baku, Azerbaijan, May 6

By Elena Kosolapova - Trend:

The US is not a competitor to Azerbaijan in the European gas market at all, says Amos Hochstein, the US Department of State special envoy and coordinator for international energy affairs.

Azerbaijan's gas resources will be supplied to Turkey and Europe, and these supplies are critically important, he added speaking to Trend May 6.

Hochstein said the US gas supplies will in no way get to the region of Europe, where the Azerbaijani gas is to be supplied.

"We can only supply maybe to Lithuania, Spain and Portugal, so I don't see it as a competition," he explained.

Hochstein went on to add that there won't be any competition between the Azerbaijani and the US gas in the future, because the gas Azerbaijan will supply to Europe has already been sold.

"We are not competitors, we are partners," he added.

The US started the export of liquefied natural gas to Europe in April 2016. The first tanker from Louisiana, the US, arrived in the Portuguese port of Sines on April 27.

The first gas from the Azerbaijani field Shah Deniz is expected to reach Europe via the Southern Gas Corridor in 2020.

---

Follow the author on Twitter: @E_Kosolapova
A retired technical director for the National Security Agency, Richard George, says that the NSA regularly disclosed more than a thousand software and hardware bugs a year to companies.

That may make the agency a far more significant player in patching the fraying digital fabric that secures our lives than has previously been understood.

Georges comments come as the technology industry and the government grapple with the question of how intelligence agencies and law enforcement disclose bugs they discover.

Last month, the FBI said that it could not release the technical details of the hacking tool it used to break into an iPhone used by San Bernardino shooter Syed Rizwan Farook.

And suspicions remain about whether intelligence agencies withhold bugs so they can use them in offensive cyberattacks  like the Stuxnet worm unleashed against Irans nuclear program in 2010.

From the 1990s until his retirement from the NSA in 2011, George said, he was responsible for disclosing serious bugs to private companies.

I imagine everybody had a similar process to the one that we had at NSA, he said. Regulations required a review board, he explained: Anybody who finds a vulnerability in a product has to report it to that board, so that we can figure out how we are going to address it.

George said that in disclosing a problem, the NSA had to provide detailed information to the company whose software or hardware was affected.

You cant just say, You have a problem here, he said. Youve got to convince them that there is a problem. (You) really have to have details about what the problem is.

Recently, the government has worked on a multiagency information-sharing program, which partially declassified documents have revealed is called the Vulnerabilities Equities Process.

Heres what is known about this process, based on documents released through Freedom of Information Act requests:

In 2008, the government convened a working group to help make plans for such a system, and two years later, it internally published a policy statement that outlined how the vulnerabilities program should work.

In 2014, after the discovery of the Heartbleed bug in commonly used Web software raised questions about the effectiveness of government bug disclosure, the process became reinvigorated, wrote White House cybersecurity policy coordinator Michael Daniel in a blog post. (Daniel didnt name the then-secret program, but last month, Reuters wrote that he was commenting on what we now know as the Vulnerabilities Equities Process.)

The National Security Agency originally oversaw the bug-disclosure program, but it now appears that the National Security Council has taken on that role, said Andrew Crocker, a staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

In April, the FBI reportedly told Apple about separate issues involving iPhone and Mac software, according to Reuters, which suggests that bugs are, in fact, making it through the process.

The NSA is known for using undisclosed vulnerabilities. For instance, Stuxnet, a digital weapon developed by the U.S. and Israel, reportedly employed several previously unknown vulnerabilities to launch attacks against Irans uranium enrichment program.

Those may be more the exception than the rule. In October, the NSA said it discloses roughly 9 out of every 10 flaws that it discovers.

George said that in the roughly 15 years he spent in charge of reviewing bugs at the NSA, the only times a vulnerability wasnt disclosed was when the agency couldnt find the company involved, because it had shuttered, or the NSA couldnt provide enough information to be of any real help.

There were about 300 incidents a year, he said. Each contained about three to seven software or hardware issues, probably about 1,500 a year  thats a pretty rough estimate, but not off by a large factor.

That number is staggering, said Brian Martin, the director of vulnerability intelligence at Risk Based Security.

For software comparison, he said, Googles Project Zero, a team of security researchers searching for new exploits, reported a little less than a third of that amount last year.

Youre saying the NSA is claiming to have found three times more than Project Zero  which, sure, its not beyond possibility  but that means that their budget and their resources that they are putting towards finding vulnerabilities is considerable, Martin said.

The NSA, Martin said, has been given little if any credit for the flaws it does find.

The reason for that is simple, said George. Companies see no benefit in revealing the source of a bug discovery  especially when its the government.

They dont tell anybody that they got it from us ... (because) a lot of companies dont want foreign governments knowing that they are getting intelligence from us, he said.

Still, George said, he understands why there is mistrust of both the intelligence community and law enforcement when it comes to bug disclosure.

I tend to think that you mistrust anything that you dont know about, said George, now the senior adviser for cybersecurity at Johns Hopkins. So thats the problem.

Sean Sposito is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: ssposito@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @seansposito
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A stroll through the Tenderloin is redolent with whiffs of the cuisines of Burma and Yemen, Vietnam and the Philippines. The gritty neighborhood is dotted with tiny ethnic restaurants often run by struggling immigrants. Now a technology company and local nonprofits want to give these small players an economic boost with a website and connections to delivery firms so they can receive and process online meal orders  and help establish the neighborhood as a culinary destination.

Wed love to get more new customers and get the word out, said Maria San Antonio, who manages Kusina Ni Tess, a Filipino restaurant at 237 Ellis St. owned by her mom. Most people see (Tenderloin restaurants) as hole-in-the-wall places where the locals eat. People are scared of this area; they think its a bad neighborhood. If they checked it out, theyd see what a diverse melting pot it is.

Kusina Ni Tess is among several restaurants that signed up for the new Tenderloin Market website, http://www.tenderloinmarket.com hoping it will open the door to new business.

Our goal is to help San Franciscans access the food mecca that is the Tenderloin, said Josh Hamilton, CEO of tech startup Bringsy, which created the website and specializes in connecting companies to couriers for last-mile deliveries. Theres so much ethnic cuisine, and its very authentic. We want to help direct more dollars to the hard-working people there.

He hopes that tech companies will start turning to Tenderloin spots to cater lunches and meetings. Still, it may be a bit of a hard sell in an era of instant gratification: Most of the restaurants need at least a days notice for big orders.

City support

San Francisco officials support the new endeavor. The ethnic restaurants and their proprietors play a major role in the culture of this neighborhood, said Joaquin Torres, deputy director of the citys Office of Economic and Workforce Development. Anytime an entrepreneur finds a way to bring attention to people who are working day in and day out to create successful businesses is a very welcome addition.

Several related initiatives are designed to highlight the Tenderloins food options  and attract customers with spending power. The Tenderloin Economic Development Project and the city have sponsored 13 Taste of the Tenderloin field trips for employees of nearby Mid-Market technology companies to visit specific restaurants and hear their owners stories. This year, Twitter employees have visited New Delhi restaurant, and Dolby workers went to KYU3, an Asian noodle house.

We collectively introduce people to the proprietors and the culture this food comes from, Torres said. It gets them comfortable and gives them a personal connection to the restaurants.

Volunteers from Hack the Hood are helping some restaurants create their own websites, while other bistros received Square credit card readers.

Theres momentum building in this neighborhood, and the diversity it can offer is something that should be experienced far and wide, Torres said.

Online push

Anh Nguyen, former executive director of the Tenderloin Economic Development Project, helped spearhead the Tenderloin Market website and the field trips. We are trying to help save as many businesses as possible, she said. They can no longer rely 100 percent on foot traffic. Getting them online will help diversify their revenue streams, and make the Tenderloin a destination for ethnic food.

She hopes the net result will show up on Google. When people type in Tenderloin, hopefully the first things that come up are our restaurants, not stabbings or homelessness or things that might turn people away from discovering the bohemian funk, art and culture.

Many of the Tenderloin restaurants have already signed up with online ordering services like Eat24 and courier services like GrubHub, Seamless, DoorDash, Postmates and others. Most of those courier services charge restaurants a commission of 15 to 20 percent, plus delivery fees to customers. Hamilton said Bringsy will take only a 5 percent cut from the Tenderloin restaurants, plus 5 percent from customers. It contracts with courier companies to handle the deliveries; they charge customers $5 and up depending on order size.

Twenty percent is too much, said William Lue, who recently opened Tender Loving Food at 393 Eddy St., bringing his number of small Burmese eateries in the Bay Area to six. I work on a tight margin. I cant pay that.

Focus on deliveries

His plan for Tender Loving Food, which has just a handful of tables, is to focus on deliveries, so he plans to sign up with multiple delivery services, but hopes some will give him a better deal. Right now, all his entrees  Burmese tea leaf salad, oxtail kabocha and Mohinga catfish chowder, for instance  cost less than $10, but he may raise prices slightly to cover the delivery commission. Bringsys lower commission is appealing, and he has already received a few orders through the website, he said.

At Yemen Kitchen at 219 Jones St., owner Abdul Al Rammah said hed welcome additional business from the Bringsy website. He has also signed up with GrubHub and Eat24.

The more we get busy, the more we can hire more people, he said. We need people to know that were here, selling different food, not just pizza and burgers.

Carolyn Said is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: csaid@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @csaid
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Handling any crisis  whether its sexual harassment at UC Berkeley or reports of ethics violations by the UC Davis chancellor  comes down to two words, experts say.

Fix it.

Good spin is great. But it doesnt solve the problem, said Larry Kamer, a Bay Area strategist who specializes in crisis management at companies and colleges.

He doesnt advise Janet Napolitano, president of the University of California. But he said hed give her high marks not only for suspending UC Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi last week and hiring a former top federal prosecutor in the Bay Area, Melinda Haag, to investigate, but also for forcing UC Berkeley Chancellor Nicholas Dirks to toughen his approach to employees who sexually harass students and colleagues.

When you have to repair a gigantic, self-proclaimed best public university in the world, you have to be ruthless, Kamer said. You can be so ruthless that everyone hates your guts and you lose support. Youre not always going to get everything right. But you have to make decisions.

As if shed been listening from UCs Oakland headquarters, Napolitano told The Chronicle on Thursday, If you sit and try to figure out which of your decisions will get a universal vote of popularity, youll never make decisions. My role is to make decisions.

A different approach

Some applaud those decisions. Others, particularly at UC Davis, accuse her of skirting the channels of shared decision-making that give professors a voice in running the university.

But popular or not, Napolitanos decisions have surprised professors and students who arent used to such interference in campus matters from the UC presidents office.

Our current president is not taking any more crap, said Sadia Saifuddin, who was student regent last year and opposed Napolitanos hiring in 2013. Saifuddin had echoed the view of students who protested the appointment of Napolitano, the former federal Homeland Security secretary and ex-Arizona governor, because she was a nonacademic outsider who had presided over deportations.

But now, Saifuddin and others say Napolitanos outsider, tough-cop background is an asset that is helping her cut through academias historic tolerance of sexual harassment by professors and other high-profile employees.

Series of changes

Napolitano formed a new committee, based in her office, to oversee campuses disciplinary decisions in harassment cases. She strengthened UCs antiharassment training, and she ordered a systemwide task force back to work when it let stand a rule letting tenured professors escape strong discipline if they are accused of harassment more than three years after the incident.

She also stepped in when Sujit Choudhry was allowed to resign as UC Berkeley Law School dean after his sexual harassment violations became public through a lawsuit in March. She required Choudhry  who holds tenure and cannot be easily fired  to be temporarily barred from campus and sent his case to a tenure review committee, a rare occurrence that Choudhry is fighting.

I know there are people who make the case that, Oh, we dont want to ruin a persons career, Saifuddin said. But whoever is the (harassment) survivor, their life is impacted. So I think the conversation is shifting. Before there were rules and sanctions, but they werent ever actually enforced.

Some who study public policy, however, see Napolitanos approach as too punitive and say she should do more to elicit better behavior in the first place.

Her decisions are a day late and a dollar short, said Michael OHare, who teaches public management at UC Berkeleys Goldman School of Public Policy. She should have been on top of this before it came out as public scandals. Her response has been largely to tighten up on bad behavior and punish it more severely. And I think thats missing a very large part of the task  which is to have less offending and less punishing.

Acceptable behavior

Napolitano responded that the way to prevent harassment is to instill a different idea of whats acceptable behavior, through better antiharassment education and training. She approved an updated sexual harassment policy for UC on Jan. 1 that mandates training for all employees annually instead of every two years.

At UC Davis, students cheered on April 27 when Napolitano sent Chancellor Katehi a scathing letter announcing a 90-day suspension and an investigation into alleged ethics violations, from nepotism to misuse of student fees. The Sacramento Bee had revealed that Katehi was paid to sit on the board of a for-profit college under federal investigation, had earned nearly as much money from a textbook publisher ($420,000) as she makes as chancellor ($424,360), and spent $175,000 of UCs money to delete Internet references to the infamous pepper-spraying of student protesters in 2011 by campus police.

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On Facebook, the Fire Katehi page earned 2,915 likes. The Dont Fire Katehi page garnered 19.

But while some believe that Napolitano fixed the Katehi problem, to many faculty leaders in the UC Davis Academic Senate she created a worse one.

This week, the Senates Executive Council said Napolitano may have damaged the campus reputation by the abruptness of her decision and by the lack of communication and consultation with faculty leaders.

The faculty is concerned that the verdict is in before the trial, said Linda Bisson, immediate past chairwoman of the Academic Senate.

She and Senate Chairman Andre Knoesen expressed shock that Napolitano would remove a chancellor they said was putting UC Davis on a financially stable footing, even as nearby UC Berkeley is wrestling with a $150 million deficit. They and many other faculty members support Katehi, who has hired a lawyer to dispute allegations of wrongdoing. They fear Napolitano is motivated by public perception.

Acting on embarrassment

Napolitano says she is motivated by documentation.

Thats where perception and reality often differ, said Napolitano, who had initially expressed support for the chancellor. Actual documents ... led me to the conclusion that they required a separate investigation. Thats a power held to the president of the university.

And to Kamer, the crisis management expert, truth is not always the best guide.

When it rises up to the level of embarrassment, Kamer said, its time to act. Thats how a lot of veteran political decision-makers handle it.

Nanette Asimov is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: nasimov@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @NanetteAsimov
Boy, what a ride.

The Chronicles front page from May 6, 1961, covers astronaut Alan Shepards quick, historic flight into space.

A slim, impressively calm Navy test pilot named Alan B. Shepard Jr. was rocketed 115 miles into space today, the first American space explorer, the New York Times story on The Chronicles front page read. He landed safely 302 miles out at sea only 15 minutes later and was almost immediately lifted aboard a Marine helicopter.

Accompanying the story is a United Press photo that has become one of the indelible images of U.S. space exploration. Shepard is pulled from the sea up into the swirling copter, a steely look on his face and his spacecraft below, bobbing in the waves. He was upstart NASA personified.

As he hurtled through space yesterday, Alan B. Shepard talked to his control center in the calm, precise tones of a veteran pilot making a routine test, the Associated Press story on The Chronicles front page read. With no trace of fear in his voice, he reported on the progress of his spacecraft as he reported on the performances of numerous hot experimental planes he has tested in the past. His voice became strained only during the time, in the acceleration and again in descent, when he was submitted to crushing pressures.

Shepards mission made him the second man in space, behind the Soviet Unions Yuri Gagarin. The Russian cosmonaut exclaimed, Poyekhali! (Lets go!), on liftoff. Upon landing, Shepards Boy, what a ride, similarly summed up the swagger of the U.S. race to space.

(Click to enlarge)

See more front pages: Go to SFChronicle.com/covers to search a database of hundreds of Chronicle Covers articles that showcase the newspaper's history.

More from the Archive The Vault Home of the San Francisco Chronicle's archive and more than 150 years of journalism covering the Bay Area and beyond.

Chronicle Covers is a project that highlights one classic Chronicle newspaper page from our archive every day for 366 days. Library director Bill Van Niekerken, art director Danielle Mollette-Parks, producer Michelle Devera and editorial assistant Jillian Sullivan contributed to the project. Tim ORourke is the executive producer and editor of SFChronicle.com. Email: torourke@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @TimothyORourke
Baku, Azerbaijan, May 6

By Elena Kosolapova - Trend:

The US sees the Southern Gas Corridor as a top priority for the US national security over the last several years, despite the fact that there has been no US cooperative involvement or financial involvement in this pipeline, says Amos Hochstein, the US Department of State special envoy and coordinator for international energy affairs.

The alternative to Nord Stream 2 is the acceleration of the Southern Gas Corridor, he said.

"The alternative to Nord Stream 2 is the acceleration of the Southern Gas Corridor and the acceleration of the LNG terminal [construction] in Croatia and Greece, as well as the IGBP [Gas Interconnector Greece-Bulgaria]," said Hochstein on May 6. "Those are the best answers, they are far more efficient, they are more cost effective and they contribute rather that decline energy security."

Hochstein went on to say that he is looking forward to represent the US in the groundbreaking ceremony for the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) on May 17 in Thessaloniki, Greece.

He said TAP is a groundbreaking pipeline that has commercial, as well as geopolitical implications for Azerbaijan, for the Caspian region, Turkey and Europe.

Meanwhile, as he said, the Nord Stream 2 project is not compatible with vision of the Energy Union, nor is it compatible with energy security, overall unity and national security for Europe and the closest neighbors.

"The US is deeply concerned about a pipeline [Nord Stream 2] that would endanger the economic viability of Ukraine and Slovakia," he said. "That would move the overall energy security and Energy Union's concerns significantly backwards."

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 Azerbaijan's Shah Deniz field is considered as the main source for the Southern Gas Corridor projects. Other sources can also connect to this project at a later stage.

As part of the Stage 2 of the Shah Deniz development, the gas will be exported to Turkey and European markets by expanding the South Caucasus Pipeline and the construction of Trans-Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline and Trans-Adriatic Pipeline.

---

Follow the author on Twitter: @E_Kosolapova
When Catherine Bailey and Robin Petravic were researching their book, Tile Makes the Room (Ten Speed Press, 2015), Lisbon kept coming up, recalls Bailey, and we had never been. So the couple  the proprietors of Heath Ceramics  remedied that, traveling to the Portuguese capital with their 10-year-old son, Jasper, last year.

For this Sausalito family, vacations that mix business and pleasure are commonplace. Its not about separating work from the rest of our life; its all one, says Bailey. We love visiting factories and workshops. And were super inspired by finding places and business that have values we admire  values about sustainability and quality of life for the long term.

Bailey and Petravic found plenty of inspiration in Lisbon, which is well known for its decorative tile art, including the blue-and-white azulejos that can be spotted throughout the city. Their Instagram account (www.instagram.com/heathceramics) was populated with tile-related highlights.

Anh-Minh Le is a freelance writer. Email: travel@sfchronicle.com

Historic hotel: I was fixated on staying at Palacio Ramalhete when I saw photos of the tile wainscoting in the rooms, and that there were only 12 rooms. We love small hotels with deep history: The building is an urban palace, with one part dating from the 17th century. It is still family-owned, and every room is interesting. In the front, all the rooms are right on the street, and you can hear the sounds of the city. In the back, theres a small pool  and after walking all day long, we would get a glass of wine and dip our feet in the pool. www.palacio-ramalhete.com

Must-visit museum: Museu Nacional do Azulejo (National Tile Museum) is housed in an old convent  Convent of Madre de Deus, founded in 1509. There is a fantastic overview of tile in the museum, and the convent is remarkable. The building itself is worth seeing; it is filled with tile murals, tiles walls, tile floors. www.museudoazulejo.pt

Day tripping: A quick train ride outside the city gets you to historic Sintra  the land of castles and palaces, set in a national park. There are many remarkably intact palaces here. We fully explored only two of the castles. We would ideally have gone back for a second day. www.sintra-portugal.com

Getting around town: The No. 28 tram will give you a great tour of the city, but in the summer its super crowded. Catch it early in the morning. Another option: the hop-on/hop-off vintage trolley cars. These run on one line, are seldom crowded and give you a great tour of the city as well, but are more expensive. We found one sponsored by a cork company who had retrofitted it fully in cork, seats to ceilings!

Palate pleaser: Taberna (Rua das Flores, 103) is a super cozy restaurant, serving traditional Portuguese food with contemporary simplicity. There are about six tables and the atmosphere is great. The menu changes each day to feature whatever is fresh, and is written on a blackboard that is moved to each table as new diners are seated.

Echoes of the past: Casa do Alentejo (Rua das Portas de Santo Antao, 58) is a restaurant totally trapped in time. We were walking by, not at mealtime, but were curious and stumbled on this ballroom. The restaurant is in the other part of the building and more rustic. This room was spectacular; it felt like you could write a novel about what might have taken place within this building.

The tile file: We came across this gem when we were wandering around. Cortico & Netos sells old stock, unused vintage tiles. The inventory was collected between 1979 and 2013. We picked up a few beautiful tiles for inspiration that had a 70s vibe; the ones we chose had designs that were reliefs, not prints or decals. We found the subtlety quite beautiful. www.corticoenetos.com
Baku, Azerbaijan, May 6

Trend:

The United States, along with the rest of the international community, does not recognize the "independence" of the occupation regime in Nagorno-Karabakh, Mark Toner, Deputy Spokesperson of the US State Department, said May 6.

"Nagorno-Karabakh's final status will only be resolved in the context of a comprehensive settlement", he stressed.

He also said, that the US urges the sides to come to the negotiating table in good faith in order to reach a settlement that achieves those goals.

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.
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A 27-year-old Millbrae father has been missing for a week, and police say the only clue to his whereabouts was his phone found at San Franciscos Golden Gate Park.

Keith Green, a father of two girls under 10, was last seen on April 28 around 10:15 p.m. at his home near 1200 El Camino Real in Millbrae, said Detective Sal Zuno, a San Mateo County Sheriffs Office spokesman.
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After years of finger-pointing, San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera says enough is enough and is filing suit against the Academy of Art University, saying the nations largest for-profit art school and one of the citys biggest landlords has illegally converted 22 buildings in amassing a real estate empire.

Citing deliberate noncompliance ... repeated missed deadlines and recurrent unfulfilled promises, Herrera said it is time for the university to fall into line with city planning laws.

In particular, defendants must return the many housing units they unlawfully displaced to San Franciscos affordable housing stock, the city attorney said in the suit he plans to file Friday in San Francisco Superior Court.

The lawsuit comes after a decade of bickering between the city, which has imposed hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines against the Academy of Art for alleged planning violations, and the university, which has refused to pay the money.

22 buildings at issue

According to the suit, Academy of Art President Elisa Stephens and her family, acting through subsidiary companies, have bought 22 commercial and residential buildings and cavalierly converted them to university use without obtaining the required city authorization. The buildings are among 40 buildings that the university owns in the city, many of them clustered in the South of Market and on Nob Hill.

Six of the buildings cited in Herreras complaint were residential structures that the school turned into student housing  exacerbating the already scarce supply of affordable housing, the suit says  and an additional three were hotels where students now live.

The real estate-buying spree was one of the main strategies for dealing with a boom in enrollment at the Academy of Art, which went from 5,000 students when Stephens took over in 1992 to a peak of more than 18,000, the suit says. More than a third of the buildings that Herrera cites in the lawsuit would need changes in the citys planning code to come into compliance  something that would require a vote of the Board of Supervisors.

Flouted law

In implementing their real estate scheme for profit, the suit says, Stephens and her family have flagrantly ignored and flouted the zoning and planning restrictions applicable to their properties that govern all San Francisco property owners.

In addition to restoring properties for residential use, the lawsuit calls for administrative and civil penalties against the university that could add up to tens of millions of dollars.

Herreras assertion that the Academy of Art is taking affordable housing units off the market is especially explosive, given San Franciscos out-of-control rental prices. However, just how many of the 252 units in the buildings cited in the lawsuit were actually being used for affordable housing before the academy bought them is likely to be a major issue as the legal case unfolds.

James Brosnahan, an attorney for the Academy of Art, branded Herreras lawsuit as completely premature and unnecessary. He said the university had spent nine years and $8 million working on an environmental impact report that it must produce before any of the properties can be legalized, and that the document was expected to be done by July 1.

The idea that a lawsuit would be plunked down in the middle of all this is extremely surprising, Brosnahan said.

He added that Herrera appeared to have politics on his mind, saying that the city attorney has taken for himself the functions of the Planning Commission.

Broken promises

Herrera said there was nothing to prevent the Academy of Art from finishing its environmental report. But, in an interview, he said the citys long dispute with the academy had been filled with broken promises and missed deadlines.

This is a way to keep everyones feet to the fire, Herrera said.

The universitys questionable real estate conversions have been the subject of years of conflict at City Hall, with Herrera repeatedly raising questions about the Planning Departments inability or unwillingness to lower the boom on the university for alleged violations.

There have also been behind-the-scenes allegations that the university, which besides being a big landlord is also one of the citys major employers and civic and charity donors, was getting special treatment.

The Planning Department has denied any pressure coming from City Hall, and instead points to the universitys ability to hire teams of lawyers that succeeded in delaying any action.

Settlement talks

The clock finally began to run out in March, when the Planning Commission and planning Director John Rahaim made it clear that they would not support efforts to amend the rules to allow many of the conversions.

There were also attempts in recent weeks to broker a settlement.

According to sources privy to the negotiations, Stephens had offered to lease at least one of her properties to the city for use as affordable housing  but the two sides apparently couldnt come to terms.

Brosnahan said that if the city attorney would get out of the way, the university is prepared to build its own housing in the future, put money into the citys affordable-housing fund and, to the extent it would help, we would be open to converting one of the (university) buildings into affordable housing.

Political ax to grind

But he said Herrera appears intent on walking away from all of that, because he has some kind of political ax to grind that has nothing to do with the academy.

Thats not how critics of the university see it. Said Supervisor Aaron Peskin: This institution has been playing San Francisco for a fool, and the merry-go-round is finally going to stop.
San Francisco biologic drugmaker Medivation again rejected Sanofis bid to acquire it for $9.3 billion, saying Thursday that it substantially undervalues Medivation and its prospects.

The swift response came hours after Sanofi, Frances biggest drugmaker, threatened Medivations board members with removal if they wont discuss a deal.

Sanofi released a letter it sent to the board of Medivation, which about a month ago became a hot acquisition target for large multinational drugmakers.

The letter stated that the acquisition is a priority for Sanofi. It said Sanofi might raise its offer price if Medivation will discuss the deal and can show additional value, adding Sanofi will attempt to replace Medivations board members if they dont negotiate.

Medivation said that Sanofis letter simply restates an inadequate proposal that undervalues the company, its leading oncology franchise, and innovative late-stage pipeline.

Wearables

Fitbit cuts

profit outlook

Fitbit shares plunged after the maker of wearable fitness trackers gave a profit forecast that fell short of the lowest analysts estimates.

The stock was down nearly 19 percent to $13.87. The San Francisco company said adjusted second-quarter profit will be 8 to 11 cents per share, missing the 26-cent average projection of analysts. Sales will be $565 million to $585 million, Fitbit said.

Fitbit released the Blaze, a smartwatch, and the Alta, a slim activity-tracking wristband, in the first quarter, each selling more than a million.

First-quarter adjusted profit was 10 cents per share on revenue of $505.4 million.

Apps

SAP in deal

with Apple

Apple has announced a new partnership with German software giant SAP to develop mobile apps that business customers can use on iPhones and iPad tablets.

While Apples consumer product business is slowing, its been looking to tap into the lucrative market for commercial technology. Apple has a similar arrangement with IBM to develop specialized apps for airline workers, sales clerks and other business users.

Under the new deal, Apple and SAP plan to release programming tools that software developers can use to build apps for Apples handheld devices. The apps will tie into SAPs commercial software, which businesses use to manage inventory, manufacturing, sales and other operations.

Apple began selling the iPad Pro, which has features designed for business customers, last year.

Chronicle News Services
Facebook is going to court over claims that it violates its users privacy when it stores their facial features  a result of friends tagging, well, friends in photos.

Facebook subscribers sued the company, claiming that they never gave permission for their faces to be used as biometric identifiers.

On Thursday, U.S. District Judge James Donato in San Francisco dismissed a motion to drop the case.

Facebook had claimed that an Illinois state statute in question did not apply to the social network because its headquarters are in Menlo Park.

The Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act stops companies from storing such information  such as facial features  without peoples approval.

A Facebook spokeswoman said that the company couldnt comment directly on the case.

She said that while she couldnt share exactly how the social networks facial recognition technology works, it does measure the distance between, say, a persons eyes, nose and ears to help it recognize users faces.

The spokeswoman also emphasized that the company doesnt sell its users data, regardless of what that data is.

Pam Dixon, the executive director of the World Privacy Forum in San Diego, said she still sees problems with Facebook policies.

People who consent to tagging, it would be very difficult for them to understand that when you allow someone to auto-tag you, you are really engaging in a lot of facial biometrics, she said.

I dont think even to this day that Facebook makes that clear enough.

A hearing in the case is set for June 15.

Sean Sposito is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: ssposito@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @seansposito
If government regulators get their way, its going to become a lot easier to sue your bank.

By and large, U.S. bank customers have signed away their right to sue their bank in court, often without being aware of it. Buried in the fine print of credit card agreements, bank accounts and insurance policies are what are known as binding, or mandatory, arbitration clauses. It means customers are generally required to take any disputes with a bank to a third-party mediator instead of going to court.

The nations top consumer financial regulator wants to put a stop to that. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau proposed a rule Thursday that would ban arbitration clauses, which would affect the entire financial industry and the hundreds of millions of bank accounts, credit cards and other financial services Americans use.

The bureaus proposal does have a significant limitation. The ban would only apply when consumers want to create or join a class-action lawsuit. Financial companies will still be able to force individuals to settle disputes through arbitration; however cases where a lone customer wants to sue his or her bank are far less common.

Many banks and financial companies avoid accountability by putting arbitration clauses in their contracts that block groups of their customers from suing them ... (and) effectively denies groups of consumers the right to seek justice and relief for wrongdoing, said bureau Director Richard Cordray in prepared remarks.

Cordray was scheduled to talk about the proposal at a hearing Thursday in Albuquerque, where advocates on both sides were expected to weigh in.

If a bank account, credit card or other financial service has an arbitration clause attached to it, a bank currently has a right to force a customer into arbitration to resolve a dispute. Consumer advocates say these arbitrators are often biased and routinely rule against consumers. If a customer loses an arbitration ruling, oftentimes it cannot be appealed.

The financial industry has argued that arbitration is a more efficient way for customers to resolve disputes with banks.

A study commissioned by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in March 2015 showed that is very likely the case. It showed customers rarely used the courts to sue their bank for a small claim. However, when large numbers of customers were negatively impacted by the same issue, the same study showed that arbitration clauses hinder the ability of customers to seek relief.

The proposed rule ... is an enormous step forward toward restoring the right to band together with others who have been harmed to redress grievances through the courts, said Nan Aron, president of the Alliance for Justice, an organization of roughly 100 politically liberal advocacy and consumer groups.

Opponents of the ban say the proposal will only benefit class-action lawyers and lead to gigantic paydays.

Congress directed the agency to study the issue of mandatory arbitration under the Dodd-Frank financial regulatory law and decide whether arbitration needed to be regulated. Along with commissioning the study, Dodd-Frank banned the use of arbitration clauses for mortgages.

The bureaus study, released in March 2015, found that 15 out of the 20 largest credit card companies had arbitration clauses, roughly half of all large bank accounts had clauses and nearly all of pre-paid debit card and payday loans required arbitration. It also found that, by and large, Americans were either unaware that they had agreed to arbitration or unaware that they had signed away their right to sue in court.

After the study, the bureau announced an outline of its proposal in October, but had not laid out the exact details of what it planned to do.

Once the rules are published, the public will have the usual 90-day period to comment on the proposal. The rule, if adopted, would go into effect next year.

The financial industry, under the potential threat of billions of dollars in lawsuits, is expected to fight the bureaus proposal hard. All the major financial industry lobby groups announced their opposition to it Thursday.

Arbitration has long provided a faster, better, and more cost-effective means of addressing consumer disputes than litigation or class action lawsuits, said Richard Hunt, president of the Consumer Banker Association, whose membership is mostly large regional and national retail banks. The real winners of todays proposal are trial attorneys, not consumers.
LOS ANGELES  Nearly 30 years after the first victims body was found sprawled in a South Los Angeles alley, the man authorities dubbed the Grim Sleeper serial killer was found guilty Thursday of a series of slayings that spanned more than two decades.

The verdict means that Lonnie David Franklin Jr., a former Los Angeles police garage attendant and city garbage collector, officially becomes one of Californias most prolific and enduring serial killers. The murder charges at his trial spanned deaths from 1985 to 2007, with a gap of more than 13 years that earned him his ominous nickname.

10 murders

After a day and a half of deliberations, jurors found Franklin guilty of 10 counts of murder in the killings of nine women and a 15-year-old girl. Jurors also found Franklin guilty of one count of attempted murder.

The trial lasted nearly three months. The victims were all young and black, with some leading troubled lives during the chaotic 1980s in South Los Angeles. The dead were left along a corridor in the Manchester Square neighborhood. Their partially clothed or naked bodies  some decomposing  were found amid the filth and garbage of alleyways. All were left without identification, and each was initially labeled Jane Doe.

Franklins fate will be determined in the next phase of the trial, when jurors hear evidence to help them decide whether he should be executed or sentenced to life in prison without parole. Prosecutors are expected to present evidence that Franklin killed at least five more women for which he wasnt charged.

They suffered from the same frailties and the same imperfections that all humans do, and they had the same hopes and the same dreams for their futures that we all have, Deputy District Attorney Beth Silverman told jurors during closing arguments in the trial. None of them deserved to be brutally dumped like trash as if their lives had no meaning.

The deaths of the women, some of whom were drug addicts or worked as prostitutes, failed to elicit the same alarm that put Los Angeles on high alert during rampages of other prolific serial killers in Southern California, such as the Hillside Stranglers or Richard Ramirez, who was known as the Night Stalker.

Other serial killers

The slayings in the mid to late 80s coincided with a surge of homicides in South Los Angeles linked to the crack cocaine epidemic. In addition, several other serial killers were operating in the same area in those years. Michael Hughes was later convicted of killing seven women, Chester Turner of 14 women and a fetus. Both are on Californias death row.

In the case of the Grim Sleeper, the victims deaths would not be connected for decades, and police kept the slayings quiet.

That decision led to outrage and condemnation from many who came to believe that the killer was able to continue as a result of police indifference.

Prosecutors argued that Franklin was connected to each of the 10 slain victims, as well as an 11th who survived, by DNA evidence, ballistics or both. Franklins DNA was found on seven victims.

The victims, in the order they died, were: Debra Jackson, 29; Henrietta Wright, 35; Barbara Ware, 23; Bernita Sparks, 25; Mary Lowe, 26; Lachrica Jefferson, 22; Alicia Alexander, 18; Princess Berthomieux, 15; Valerie McCorvey, 35; and Janecia Peters, 25.

The trial highlighted the difficulty authorities encountered in identifying the perpetrator until breakthroughs in DNA science helped detectives zero in on Franklin.
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An Oakland man was found guilty Friday of capital murder in the killings of an 8-year-old girl at a sleepover in 2013 and a 22-year-old man during a robbery in Berkeley later that year.

An Alameda County jury also found Darnell Williams, 25, guilty of three special circumstances that could lead to a death sentence: lying in wait, committing multiple murders and committing a murder in the course of the robbery.

He was also convicted on three attempted murder charges, personal and intentional discharge of a firearm, shooting at an inhabited dwelling, and possession of a firearm by a felon.

Jurors were ordered to return to Alameda County Superior Court in Oakland on May 16 to begin the death penalty phase of the trial.

As the verdict was announced, Williams stared straight ahead, showing no emotion.

The jurys decision comes after a lengthy trial for the slayings of 8-year-old Alaysha Carradine on July 17, 2013, and Anthony Medearis, whom Williams shot and killed during a robbery at a dice game in Berkeley almost three months later.

Were happy. We appreciate the closure we got, Medearis aunt, Jackie Winters, said outside the courtroom.

Over the course of 13 days of testimony from more than 30 witnesses, Deputy District Attorney John Brouhard painted Williams as a vigilante angry over the killing in Berkeley of a friend, Jermaine Davis, hours before Alaysha was shot.

Williams went to the apartment on Wilson Avenue looking for Antiown York, who he believed was responsible for killing Davis, Brouhard said. The apartment belonged to Yorks ex-girlfriend and the mother of his two children.

The prosecutor said Williams knocked on the door and started shooting before it opened. Alaysha was mortally wounded and died at a hospital.

One of 13 bullets fired by Williams also wounded Alayshas close friend, Amara York, and her 4-year-brother and grandmother.

Much of the prosecutions case rested on the testimony of two women, Williams ex-girlfriend Britney Rogers and another acquaintance, Laquana Nuno, both of whom said that Williams confessed to the shooting.

Defense attorneys Deborah Levy and Darryl Billups asked jurors to distance themselves from the emotional nature of much of the testimony. They argued that neither Rogers or Nuno were credible, noting that Nuno was initially charged with second-degree murder in Medearis death but took a plea deal in exchange for her testimony against Williams.

Brouhard argued that each woman knew details of Alayshas death that had never been released to the media and corroborated the others stories despite not knowing each other.

On Sept. 8, 2013, Williams allegedly shot and killed Medearis, with whom he was supposedly friends. The slaying happened on the 1400 block of Eighth Street in Berkeley, in an alleged robbery attempt during a dice game.
Kirk Hammett and Robert Trujillo of Metallica took part in a cleanup at Ocean Beach today, as part of a photo op sponsored by the San Francisco Giants.

Hammett, a San Francisco native, is also a well-known Giants fan; the team loves him back, hosting an annual Metallica Night in which band members perform the National Anthem and players wear metal-black uniforms.
Baku, Azerbaijan, May 6

By Anakhanum Hidayatova - Trend:

The rhetoric about recognition of the "independence" of Nagorno-Karabakh is an attempt to exert pressure not only on Azerbaijan, but also on the OSCE Minsk Group, says Nadana Fridrikhson, political analyst, journalist and expert at the Cube analytical center.

Speaking to Trend May 6, Fridrikhson said the hostilities in early April actually canceled the existing status quo in the Nagorno-Karabakh issue.

She says that in the current situation, when there are all the prerequisites for the start of a war, Armenia is trying to get on the nerves.

"De jure "recognition of independence" of Nagorno-Karabakh may provoke Azerbaijan into military actions because Baku will have no other choice," added the expert.

Fridrikhson also believes that the confrontation between Moscow and Ankara will affect the situation in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

Armenia's Foreign Ministry made a statement on May 5 saying that the rumors about the decision of the Armenian government regarding two MPs' initiative to recognize the "independence" of Azerbaijan's Nagorno-Karabakh region are groundless.

The statement read that the government's decision doesn't mean approval of that initiative.

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.
We all have our favorite places to grab a drink and hang out, and even if you're at a loss for where to go, there's plenty of bar lists to solve. that. problem.

But, do you long to be where the people are? Wanna know where they're drinking? To figure out where everyone's imbibing, SFGATE pestered the good folks at Uber and Lyft to find out where the ride-sharing people of San Francisco spend their money.
Hunter Pence was out of Thursdays lineup with a tight back, and manager Bruce Bochy said the right fielder is expected to play Friday.

So is Joe Panik.

Im really close, said Panik, who missed six games with a pulled right groin and passed his final tests Thursday, showing he can push off his right leg to field grounders to his left.

Left fielder Angel Pagan isnt expected to play in the series because of a strained hamstring, but Bochy isnt ruling out a Sunday appearance.

As for relievers George Kontos and Sergio Romo, both of whom have flexor strains in their elbows, Kontos could be close to returning, but Bochy said Romo (wholl throw off the mound Monday) is three or four weeks away.

Kontos will face hitters Friday for the first time since his injury and is scheduled to pitch Sunday for Triple-A Sacramento. He said he could be ready soon thereafter, but Bochy said Kontos will need to make multiple appearances before returning to the Giants.

The other Casilla: Jose Casilla was promoted from Double-A to Triple-A, and nobodys happier than big brother Santiago, who said, Id love for him to play here.

Jose, 26, and nine years younger than the Giants closer, had a 1.42 ERA in 122/3 innings before the promotion. He threw a scoreless inning in his first outing with Sacramento.

Hes in Triple-A, and that shows something about his progress, Bochy said. Good for him. Hes knocking on the door now.

Bochy said he can relate to how Santiago Casilla feels, recalling Bochys son reaching Triple-A and eventually the big leagues.

John Shea is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer.

On deck

Friday

vs. Rockies

7:15 p.m. CSNBA

Bettis (3-1) vs.

Bumgarner (3-2)

Saturday

vs. Rockies

1:05 p..m. CSNBA

Gray (0-1) vs.

Cueto (4-1)

Sunday

vs. Rockies

1:05 p.m. CSNBA

Butler (0-1) vs. Samardzija (4-1)

Leading off

Glove work: Brandon Belts error Wednesday in Cincinnati was the Giants first after a nine-game errorless stretch, their longest since 10 straight clean games in August 2014.

 John Shea
The Willie Mays cable car.

Perfect.

Friday, a cable car will be dedicated to the Hall of Famer and Giants legend, whos tickled that his name will be attached to a San Francisco icon.

Speaking of San Francisco icons, the Say Hey Kid turns 85 on Friday.

A lot of people have done a lot of good things for me, said Mays, who got emotional when speaking on the eve of the dedication.

The Mays cable car is No. 24  his old jersey number, which is retired by the Giants.

Like San Francisco cable cars, the legend of Willie Mays is iconic, said Ed Reiskin, director of transportation for the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency. While it may not move as fast as Mr. Mays, cable car 24 will forever pay tribute to the Say Hey Kid as it climbs San Franciscos majestic hills.

As it turns out, cable car 24 (constructed in 1887) was rebuilt by Muni craft workers in 1958, the year Mays and the Giants moved west from New York. It represented San Francisco at the Chicago Railroad Fair in 1948 and in Los Angeles in 1950.

Mays will attend the event and is expected to take a ride on the cable car. The SFMTA hasnt announced details.

The idea was Malcolm Heinickes after he took a ride on a cable car with his son, Al, who noted that it was No. 24, forever a Mays connection. An SFMTA board member whos Mays friend and lawyer, Heinicke proposed the idea to Mayor Ed Lee at the Giants World Series celebration at the White House in June.

I thought that was cool, Heinicke said. What better way to honor one San Francisco icon than with another?

John Shea is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jshea@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @JohnSheaHey
1 LGBT law: Giving no indication of yielding to pressure, North Carolinas Republican leaders called a federal warning about the legality of the states new law limiting LGBT antidiscrimination rules a broad overreach by the government. Gov. Pat McCrory and top state legislators were determining what steps to take after the U.S. Justice Department said in a letter Wednesday that the state law violated federal civil rights laws and threatened possible litigation. The North Carolina law, which requires transgender people to use public bathrooms that conform to the sex on their birth certificate, has been broadly condemned by gay rights groups, businesses and entertainers, some of whom have relocated offices or canceled shows in the state.

2 Listeria outbreak: A listeria outbreak that led to a massive recall of frozen fruits and vegetables is being investigated by the U.S Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, according to a FDA news release Thursday. Earlier this week, CRF Frozen Foods issued a widespread recall of frozen fruits and vegetables processed at its plant in Pasco, Wash., since May 1, 2014. The recall included 358 products under 42 separate brands. Eight people from three states  California, Washington and Maryland  became infected with strains of listeria, according to the FDA, and their illnesses were linked to consumption of contaminated food produced by CRF Frozen Foods.
SILVER SPRING, Md.  A federal security officer suspected in three fatal shootings outside a high school, a mall and a supermarket in the Washington, D.C., area was arrested Friday, police said. Three people were also wounded in the shootings.

Eulalio Tordil, an employee of the Federal Protective Service, which provides security at federal properties, was taken into custody without incident near the supermarket, the scene of the last shooting, authorities said. The brief manhunt and seemingly indiscriminate shootings rekindled fears of the D.C. sniper in 2002, which paralyzed the nations capital and its suburbs.

Plainclothes officers trailed Tordil for an hour, watching him walk from store to store at a shopping center as they waited for the right time to arrest him. He had earlier threatened to commit suicide by cop and authorities wanted to make sure the public was safe when he was arrested.

Tordil was put on administrative duties in March after a protective order was issued against him when his wife said he had threatened to harm her if she left him, the Washington Post reported. Tordil subjected their children to intense-military-like discipline, like push-ups and detention in a dark closet, according to the order.

Authorities said Tordil followed his 44-year-old wife, Gladys, to their childrens high school Thursday. As she waited in a sport utility vehicle in the parking lot of High Point High, Tordil confronted her and shot her. He also shot and wounded a man who tried to intervene.

The shooting occurred more than an hour after school, and no students were harmed.

On Friday morning, about 15 miles from the school, police responded to a shooting at the Westfield Montgomery Mall in Bethesda. One person was initially shot and two others may have been shot coming to that persons aid, said Montgomery County Police Assistant Chief Darryl McSwain. A man died and another one was in critical condition. A woman had injuries that were not life-threatening.

About half an hour later, while police were still on the scene at the mall, they got call of a shooting at a Giant Food store in Aspen Hill, about 5 miles away. A woman who was sitting in her car was shot and killed, authorities said.

Tordil was spotted by officers, and when he returned to his car, officers surrounded him.

They had a bunch of guns pointed at him and he was coming out of the car with his hands up, said Dominique Lee, who was walking out of the flower shop where she works when Tordil was arrested.

He just got out of his car. He gave up, said Jason Palmer, a private investigator who lives nearby and had started to search for the gunman himself. They pinned him in.

The protective service said when he was put on administrative duty in March, his weapon, badge and credentials were taken.
LOS ANGELES  When Grace Hui moved to Los Angeles from China in 2014 and Googled the Chinese characters for Los Angeles immigrant, the first result was Chineseinla.com.

The Chino Hills (Los Angeles County) website, a disorganized Yelp-meets-Craigslist hybrid, was a throwback, and Hui, 29, thought some of the posts were phishing scams.

But with more than 680,000 listings, more than 350,000 registered users, 2 million monthly visits and sister sites in 15 cities, Chineseinla.com has become a teeming virtual portal to Chinese life in America. Its one of the only ways that Hui could connect to a country she couldnt understand.

American Internet is useless to me, said Hui, who used Chineseinla.com to look for a job. My English isnt good enough to get the information I need.

Affluent students

In the San Gabriel Valley and in Chinese enclaves across the nation, a new wave of Chinese immigrants  many of them affluent students with poor English skills and a smartphone habit  are tapping into a parallel system of Chinese-language apps and websites geared toward helping them navigate life in America.

For restaurant recommendations, theres Chihuo, a Chinese food-centric Yelp or Zagat. 2RedBeans, the Chinese OkCupid, helps Chinese speakers find love. They travel with ETAcar, a Chinese version of Uber, and order food with ToGo626.com, a delivery app that works with about 400 restaurants, most of which are in the Chinese neighborhoods of the San Gabriel Valley.

Barriers on Internet

The growth of these websites is a side effect of a stubborn reality: The language and cultural barriers that new immigrants face extend onto the Internet.

As unprecedented numbers of Chinese people arrive in Los Angeles searching for prosperity and an escape from Chinas problems. They find themselves in an alternate version of the city  a Los Angeles where the best restaurants are in San Gabriel, the most capable doctors are in Monterey Park, and Arcadia is the hottest real estate destination in California.

Chineseinla.com, launched in 2006, is one of the oldest parts of the Chinese-language Internet, according to founder Zach Song. It began as a Wikipedia-style collection of knowledge that Song hoped would help new immigrants combat the feeling of helplessness he and his wife felt when they first came from Shanghai in 2003.

We wanted this to be a community, Song said in Mandarin.

All about commerce

The websites users eventually grew more interested in selling things, so he redesigned the website to function like Craigslist and include business listings and reviews like Yelp. As online advertising became their main source of revenue, he incorporated Chinese-language news posts and discussion forums to draw traffic.

Nowadays, the website looks like an exploded phone book. Information must be extracted Jenga-style from a colorful blinking tower of dozens of ads for things such as luxury car rentals, travel agencies, tutoring services and birth hotels.

Song acknowledged that the design is chaotic. But the site is profitable, he said. Traffic has grown steadily as the countys Chinese population and tourism levels rise.

More than half of Los Angeles Countys Chinese population speaks limited English, according to the American Community Survey, and a larger, temporary population of Chinese students, tourists and travelers has even fewer English skills.

For companies such as ETAcar, the language barrier means profits. The Chinese-language ride-hailing app, largely similar to services like Uber and Lyft, launched in 2014 and now has about 400 drivers throughout North America, with about 300 in Los Angeles, mainly serving the San Gabriel Valley.

Co-founder Xiaotian Liu said he and his investors launched the company after bad experiences with American ride-hailing services on a recent trip.

Hidden restaurants

Uber and Lyft drivers failed to locate Chinese restaurants squirreled away in massive strip malls whose signage was primarily in Chinese, and oftentimes they couldnt communicate with the driver.

The language barrier that Chinese immigrants face also prevents American businesses from reaching them. For example, ToGo626.com offers delivery from about 400 mostly Chinese restaurants  fewer than 10 of which are listed on American food delivery apps such as Postmates and Eat24, said co-founder Mac Xu. The app has been downloaded 20,000 times since it was created last year and the company processes about 200 orders every day with a staff of about 40 drivers, he says.

For those with no English skills at all, one Chinese-language app, Shenma, promises to handle virtually all details of life in Los Angeles.

Shenma Life (Shenma is Chinese for magic horse) is a personal assistant located inside Wechat, a messaging-based Chinese social media app. Subscribe to their account on Wechat or text them requests, and a staff of about eight people in Chino Hills and 10 others in China will handle traffic tickets, hotel bookings, car rentals, class enrollment and anything else a Chinese-speaking student could need.

Online concierge

For 24-hour VIP service, users can pay $299 a month or $999 a year. Lu Zhang, director of North American operations for the company, said it has about 3,000 users.

We cant do your homework for you, but we can hire you a tutor and give you some studying tips, Zhang said.

One of the biggest shortcomings of the English-language Internet, many say, is how sites evaluate Chinese food.

Dai Ho, a noodle restaurant in Temple City, has 3.5 stars on review site Yelp, typical for a cash-only Chinese restaurant in the San Gabriel Valley that lacks service, variety or amenities. But the noodles, hand-pulled and made fresh in limited quantities each day, are revelatory, said Amy Duan, the founder of Chihuo, a Chinese food community. Her app lists it as one of the best Chinese restaurants in Los Angeles.

We always saw five-star rated restaurants that arent very good, and three-star restaurants where the food is fantastic, Duan said.

At Chihuo.coms offices in El Monte, an illustrated map displays a distorted projection of Los Angeles based on Chinese food preferences. The San Gabriel Valley takes up two-thirds of the map.

About 10 employees lean over laptops and smartphones in a small office strewn with jars of hot sauce, a large plush broccoli stalk and a half-eaten Hong Kong waffle in a paper boat. A Chinese adage adorns a break room wall: hao hao chi fan, ya dao yi qie, or Eat well, overcome anything.

Duan and a group of Chinese students at USC launched Chihuo four years ago after their dining clubs social media posts became popular. Today their account has more 400,000 combined followers on Wechat and Weibo, a Chinese Twitter service (on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter combined, they have fewer than 5,000.) Their Web traffic doubled last year.

Their audience, Duan said, is Chinese people who are intensely specific about Chinese food. They want to know if a spicy dish has ma la (numbing heat), xin la (pungent heat) or suan la (sour heat), and whether the noodles are hand-pulled or knife-shaved.

Dating website

Specific Chinese tastes also spurred the creation of dating website 2RedBeans, said founder Qing Hua Zhao.

The site, named for the red bean that symbolizes love in Chinese culture, has more than 690,000 users across the U.S. and in China, and about 70,000 of them are in Los Angeles.

Zhao founded the site in 2011 after years of bad experiences with eHarmony, OkCupid and Match.com.

She speaks perfect English and shes open to dating someone who isnt Chinese, but finding someone who wanted a serious relationship and shared her values was like finding a needle in a haystack.

Its not just a language barrier fueling the Chinese-centric sites popularity, Zhao said. Newer singles sites such as Tinder and Bumble, swipe-style dating apps, are often too forward and casual for Chinese users, she says.

Chinese singles tend to be shy, Zhao said. 2RedBeans caters to that with several nonverbal ways to interact. Users can wink at, favorite or secretly admire other users. If both people admire each other secretly, the app matches you. 2RedBeans also regularly hosts dating events where staffers help Chinese singles socialize.
Baku, Azerbaijan, May 6

Trend:

Armenians should expect the liberation of Azerbaijan's occupied territories by the country's armed forces and full restoration of the country's territorial integrity every day, every hour and every minute, Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry told Trend May 6.

The ministry was commenting on the information spread by Armenia's criminal military and political regime about the alleged attack planned by Azerbaijani armed forces for May 8-9.

It will be inevitable if Armenia doesn't fulfill the resolutions and decisions of the UN Security Council on the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of its troops from Azerbaijan's occupied lands, according to the Defense Ministry.

Azerbaijani armed forces are able to liberate the occupied lands and are fully ready for that, the ministry added.

If Armenians do not want to die, to live in fear, they should leave the Azerbaijani territories and put an end to the occupation, Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry said.

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, May 6

By Anakhanum Hidayatova - Trend:

An attempt of recognizing the "independence" of Nagorno-Karabakh is another Armenian provocation, Arye Gut, Israeli expert on international relations and specialist on the South Caucasus, told Trend via e-mail May 6.

The expert said that the so-called "Nagorno-Karabakh Republic" is a separatist terrorist puppet formation, created by Armenia.

"Armenia is geopolitically and economically dependent on the Kremlin's ambitions," he said.

"In the current situation Moscow would not allow Armenia to make decisions itself. In case of recognizing the "independence" of Nagorno-Karabakh, Armenia will provoke a conflict itself."

"This will mean disrespect for the norms and principles of the international law, the peace process and once again prove the terrorist nature of Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan's current regime," the expert stressed.

The expert added that the statutes of the international law are only a piece of paper for President Sargsyan's regime.

Armenia's Foreign Ministry made a statement on May 5 saying that the rumors about the decision of the Armenian government regarding two MPs' initiative to recognize the "independence" of Azerbaijan's Nagorno-Karabakh region are groundless.

The statement read that the government's decision doesn't mean approval of that initiative.

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.
EMERYVILLE (BCN)



The owner of Jamba Juice, which makes specialty beverage and food items including fruit smoothies, will move its headquarters from Emeryville to a Dallas suburb over the next six months, the company announced.



Jamba Inc. chief executive David Pace said in a press release and a regulatory filing that the high cost of doing business in the Bay Area is a large reason why the company is moving to Frisco, Texas.



In the company's filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Pace said, "We believe this move will better position us as we focus on our core strategies. Specifically, the move will allow us to reduce costs, attract and retain talent and provide a more central location for our market expansion plans."



The company said in its press release that the move "is designed to better position the company for sustainable, long-term growth and thus better serve Jamba's franchisees and customers."



Jamba said Frisco will serve as headquarters for the company's operations, business development, sales and marketing, finance, supply chain, technology, human relations and other corporate functions.



The company said its lease in Emeryville, where it has been headquartered since 2006, is expiring at the end of the year and it will close the Emeryville office after the transition to Texas is completed.



Jamba said the move will affect about 120 employees in Emeryville. Jamba said that after the move it will employ about 100 people in Frisco, which will be a mixture of employees who relocate from Emeryville and hew hires in Texas.



Jamba said it has 1,000 company employees in California and franchisee partners have more than 5,000 employees in 407 stores in the state. The company said it also intends to continue to open new stores and increase jobs in the California market.



Jamba said it has 885 store locations globally, including 68 company-owned and operated stores and 752 franchise-operated stores in the U.S. and 65 franchise-operated international stores.



Pace said, "Jamba has pursued our vision to inspire and simplify healthy living for 26 years, starting with a single juice shop in San Luis Obispo, but as we continue to spread our healthy living mission globally, it has become increasingly clear that a relocation of our support center will better position the company to extend our brand and continue to support our franchise partners for the long term."



Pace said, "With the pending expiration of our lease in Emeryville at the end of 2016, we explored a number of location options that would offer us competitive operating costs, a region with extensive access to skilled restaurant talent, an attractive cost of living to our current and future team members and a geographical location that facilitates our ability to expand our store base."



He said, "The state of Texas meets all of these criteria and Frisco is a community committed to healthy living that aligns closely with our overall mission."



In addition to the relocation announcement, Jamba announced a restructuring of the overall organization and several changes in leadership.
















A Bay Area man serving nearly a 20-year federal prison sentence for possessing 127.7 grams of cocaine base in Minnesota had his sentenced commuted by President Obama today, along with 57 other inmates.



Obama has now commuted more than 300 federal prison sentences, including for many drug offenders who were sentenced under what the administration has called "outdated and unduly harsh sentencing laws."



Today, Obama set an expiration date of May 5, 2018, for the prison sentence of Jacob George Colbert of Richmond, according to the White House.



Following a guilty plea to conspiracy to distribute in excess of 50 grams of cocaine base in federal court in Minnesota, Colbert was sentenced to 19 years and 7 months in prison followed by five years of supervised release.



His sentence came under federal sentencing guidelines in place since the 1980s that mandated sentences for crack cocaine offenses 100 times as severe as those for powder cocaine.



In 2010, Obama signed legislation lowering that discrepancy to 18 times, but because Colbert was labeled a "career offender" due to three prior drug felony convictions he was not eligible for a reduced sentence, according to a 2015 order by U.S. District Judge Donovan Frank.



In a 2014 handwritten letter to Frank pleading for a sentence reduction, Colbert wrote, "I grew up in the Bay Area of Northern California, pretty much a life of crime and drug selling and usage my whole life, I have never been a violent person or hardcore criminal.



"But I was into the life of addiction. Addicted to drugs, mainly crack cocaine, so my thing that made sense to me back then was if I was to sell crack then I will always have it for my personal use and now in the long run my years of crack use have led me to this 19-year 7-month drug sentence," Colbert wrote.



Colbert, 43 at the time, said he had been taking numerous classes while in prison, including on real estate, sports, personal training, philosophy, crocheting, driving, computer tech, parenting and yoga.



"Your honor, I'm older now, I have grandkids now and I just want to get to them as soon as possible and raise them and bring them up the right way while they are still young," he wrote.



"I got set up to go out to Minnesota from California on a bus and was promised some money, crack and a truck. I took my chances and here I sit with almost a 20-year sentence. In no way am I violent, I was hurting myself more than anything or anyone else from using crack cocaine. But I have learned I don't never want to see no crack no more. It's all over I'll never use again never."



He acknowledged he had prior convictions, mainly for petty offenses like having crack and marijuana on him when he was pulled over. He said the amounts were for personal use, but he ended up being charged for sales.



Frank denied Colbert's request for a sentence reduction, finding the court lacked the authority under federal guidelines.



The laws Colbert was sentenced under have been widely criticized as unjust and contributing to racial disparities in U.S. prisons. While the 2010 Fair Sentencing Act lowered the disparity between crack and powder cocaine offenses from 100 to 18 times, the American Civil Liberties Union called it a compromise that still reflects discredited assumptions about crack cocaine.



While Obama has pledged to continue commuting sentences, he has also called for continued criminal justice reform.



"Clemency of individual cases alone cannot fix decades of overly punitive sentencing policies," White House counsel Neil Eggleston wrote in March, when Obama commuted 61 sentences.



"So while we continue to work to resolve as many clemency applications as possible -- and make no mistake, we are working hard at this -- only broader criminal justice reform can truly bring justice to the many thousands of people behind bars serving unduly harsh and outdated sentences," Eggleston wrote.
















Baku, Azerbaijan, May 6

By Samir Ali - Trend:

Representatives of the diplomatic corps accredited in Azerbaijan, who earlier departed to the frontline zone, visited the Azerbaijani district of Terter, the district's executive authority told Trend May 6.

The trip to the frontline zone was organized by Azerbaijan's Foreign Ministry.

The diplomats met with the district's head, Mustagim Mammadov, who informed them about the major damage inflicted to Terter by the Armenian shelling.

Afterwards the diplomats viewed the houses shelled and destroyed by the Armenians, as well as the affected office buildings and land plots in the villages along the line of contact and in the center of the Terter city.

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.

Starting from April 27 evening until 04:00 (GMT + 4) April 28, the Armenian armed forces were firing at the Azerbaijani settlements and the Azerbaijani army positions in the Terter and Aghdam districts of 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.
Berlin is concerned over signs of a renewed escalation of violence in Nagorno-Karabakh, German Foreign Ministry Spokesman Martin Schaefer said May 6, RIA Novosti news agency reported.

Germany is greatly concerned regarding the evidence pointing to a new escalation, including a military one, between the parties to the conflict on the contact line in Nagorno-Karabakh, he said. As the OSCE chairing country, Germany strongly urges both parties to take all steps to avoid a new escalation, Schaefer said.

Schaefer added that Berlin supports the work of the OSCE Minsk Group and its three co-chairs in their efforts to resolve the conflict.

The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts. The 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 14:01)

Moscow, Russia, May 6

By Orkhan Yolchuyev - Trend:

Nagorno-Karabakh's fate should be determined through political and diplomatic means, said Russian Foreign Ministry's spokesperson Maria Zakharova May 6, Trend's special correspondent reported.

In their statements made from 2009 to 2013 on the principles of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict's settlement, the presidents of the OSCE Minsk Group co-chair countries noted that Nagorno-Karabakh's status should be determined based on the legally binding expression of will of the region's people, she added.

Zakharova noted that Russia stands ready to provide full assistance in achieving this goal.

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, May 6

By Samir Ali - Trend:

Representatives of the diplomatic corps accredited in Azerbaijan, who earlier departed to the frontline zone, visited the Azerbaijani district of Aghdam, the district's executive authority told Trend May 6.

The trip to the frontline zone was organized by Azerbaijan's Foreign Ministry.

The diplomats met with the head of the Aghdam district executive authority, Ragub Mammadov, who informed them about the damage inflicted to the district as a result of the Armenian aggression.

Mammadov also informed the diplomats about the latest developments along the frontline.

Starting from April 27 evening until 04:00 (GMT + 4) April 28, the Armenian armed forces were firing at the Azerbaijani settlements and the Azerbaijani army positions in the Terter and Aghdam districts of Azerbaijan.

"More than 100 private houses and an office building were destroyed, two civilians were killed, six people were wounded as a result of the shelling of villages in the Aghdam district by the Armenian army," said Mammadov.

He also informed the diplomats that the Armenians fired at a secondary school in the Sarijali village.

The representatives of the diplomatic corps visited that school as well and got acquainted with its condition after the shelling.

Then the diplomats visited the Chamanli village, also shelled by the Armenians. They viewed the houses destroyed in the village and met with its residents.

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, May 6

By Orkhan Yolchuyev - Trend:

Azerbaijan and Armenia are working out a possible meeting on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict settlement, said Maria Zakharova, spokesperson for Russia's foreign ministry, Trend's special correspondent reported.

"A decision on the venue and the exact date of the meeting has not been made yet," Zakharova said.

"The matter rests in the nearest weeks, but it is too early to talk about the format," she stressed.

Earlier, in an interview with RIA Novosti news agency, Sergey Lavrov, Russia's foreign minister, said that a meeting on Nagorno-Karabakh conflict settlement is planned to be held with the participation of the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairmen in the nearest future.

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, May 6

By Elena Kosolapova - Trend:

The US is looking to see how it can play a role in diversification of the Azerbaijani economy, as well as the energy security of Azerbaijan itself, says Amos Hochstein, the US Department of State special envoy and coordinator for international energy affairs.

"I think the current market conditions have been painful and are painful for Azerbaijan," he said May 6.

The Southern Gas Corridor originates in Azerbaijan and the country is critical for the energy security of Europe, added Hochstein.

Azerbaijan can play not only the role of producer and seller into Europe, but also the role of a transit point in the region, Hochstein said, adding he thinks it will be a very good thing for Azerbaijan and incredibly important for Europe and Central Asia.

"I believe that we continue to have close relationship with Azerbaijan and work closely together on expanding that," he added.

---

Follow the author on Twitter: @E_Kosolapova
Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, May 6

By Huseyn Hasanov- Trend:

Turkmengas State Concern and the Islamic Development Bank (IDB) signed a protocol on the evaluation commission's results on the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) gas pipeline project, Neutral Turkmenistan newspaper wrote May 4.

The signing ceremony was held with the participation of IDB President Ahmad Mohamed Ali Al-Madani and Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov, who was in Saudi Arabia on an official visit on May 1-3.

The headquarters of the IDB, established in 1973, is located in Jeddah (Saudi Arabia).

"The IDB fully supports President Berdimuhamedov's initiative on the implementation of the TAPI large-scale project," Al-Madani said. "TAPI's positive results have economic and social aspects."

Al-Madani said that this project has special significance for the socio-economic recovery, stabilization of the situation in Afghanistan.

"Thousands of new jobs will be created due to the construction of a new gas pipeline," he added. "The modern social infrastructure has been formed. This will positively improve the standard of living."

The main document for the TAPI, called the Ashgabat Interstate Agreement, was signed in 2010.

The groundbreaking ceremony for TAPI's Turkmen section was held in mid-December of 2015.
SACRAMENTO  The state Supreme Court seemed to signal plans Thursday to give the green light to a ballot initiative supported by Gov. Jerry Brown that would limit when juveniles can be prosecuted as adults and shorten sentences for some adult prisoners.

The states high court is reviewing whether a last-minute amendment to the initiative changed the original measure to the point that proponents should be required to refile it. If forced to refile, as the California District Attorneys Association is hoping, the initiative would likely not have enough time to gather signatures to make the November ballot.

Several justices suggested during a hearing Thursday that the revised measure appeared reasonably germane to the original initiative, as required by law. Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye noted the reasonably germane standard is pretty broad.

The court has 90 days to issue a ruling.

The district attorneys association filed a lawsuit in February after private citizens pushing the initiative proposing changes to juvenile law agreed to let Brown combine it with his proposals on prison sentencing.

The initiative would repeal part of a 2000 ballot initiative that allows prosecutors to charge defendants as young as 14 in adult court for serious crimes. Under the proposed changes, a Juvenile Court judge would review each case before deciding whether the juvenile should be tried as an adult.

The other part of the initiative would allow inmates with nonviolent offenses to seek parole after serving time on their primary, most serious offense. The secondary offenses or enhancements that can add decades to a sentence for drug, gang or weapons violations could be reduced or erased for good behavior.

A Sacramento judge ruled in favor of the prosecutors and prohibited Attorney General Kamala Harris from issuing a formal title and summary that are required before signature gathering can begin. The judge, Shelleyanne Chang, said prosecutors showed Brown had significantly altered an existing initiative on juvenile justice with his prison-sentence proposal without giving the public 30 days to comment as required of new measures.

The states high court put a temporary stay on the order, allowing signatures to be gathered. Harris issued a title and summary, calling the initiative Criminal Sentences. Juvenile Criminal Proceedings and Sentencing. It will need 585,407 valid signatures to qualify for the ballot, but signature gathering would stop if the Supreme Court rules in favor of the district attorneys.

Thomas Hiltachk, attorney for the association, argued Thursday that the original measure dealt with 11 statutes related to juvenile justice and now includes a swath of new adult prison reforms.

There was no constitutional right to parole, there was no discussion of prison credits, there was certainly no discussion of prison credits awarded by the Department of Corrections, Hiltachk said of the original measure.

Supreme Court Justice Ming W. Chin seemed to side with Hiltachk, saying the amended initiative represented a major change  specifically that the original measure was an amendment to a statute and the new version calls for a constitutional amendment.

That seems to me to be a major difference, Chin said. And to eliminate the public comment period when you are suggesting a constitutional amendment seems to me to be wrong.

However, the overall line of questioning on Thursday seemed to suggest that justices are inclined to rule in Browns favor, saying the state Legislature in allowing amendments to ballot measures indicated it wanted to give proponents leeway to make changes to their initiatives. Voters will have their say during signature gathering and, if it qualifies, at the ballot box, proponents argued.

Brown, who appointed three of the justices, has made the initiative a key priority for the year, in part because he blames himself for creating the issue it attempts to reform. He said the measure is a partial return to indeterminate sentences, in which prisoners were given broad sentences like five years to life, and had to show a parole board they were rehabilitated and make a plan for release.

Brown has called for criminal sentencing reform for more than a decade after becoming a critic of Californias determinate sentencing practices, which Brown helped create during his first stint as governor. Determinate sentences set a release date for prisoners, regardless of whether they show they have been rehabilitated.

Melody Gutierrez is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: mgutierrez@sfchronicle.com Twitter:@MelodyGutierrez
Steve Kawa, chief of staff to San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee, willfully skirted public records laws when he deleted his calendar on a rolling basis, a city panel that works for open government has concluded.

The 6-1 vote Wednesday evening by the Sunshine Ordinance Task Force means Kawa will have to appear before the citys Ethics Commission to defend his actions.

The vote is a rebuke to both Kawa and the city attorneys office, which maintained that Kawa is not governed by the same rules as elected officials  namely that they must maintain calendars listing who they meet with and the topic of the meeting.

Kawa is one of the most powerful men in City Hall, even though hes not elected.

Clearly, Steve Kawa is not an elected official, and we have repeatedly sought out and received advice from the city attorney to affirm that Mr. Kawa does not fall under the same requirements as an elected official, Christine Falvey, the mayors spokeswoman, said.

He serves at the pleasure of the mayor and, in his role, he fully complies with and embraces all of our citys open government and sunshine laws.

The dispute began when City Hall public records devotee and political gadfly Michael Petrelis requested Kawas calendar and was told his staff regularly deleted entries more than two weeks old.

That was also Kawas defense to the Sunshine Ordinance Task Force. The commission found that explanation perplexing.

We have not received, in our view, a credible explanation for the calendars destruction, a draft ruling by the task force states. It is not at all clear why an electronic calendar ... would require Mr. Kawa (or his assistant) to manually purge entries from the calendar.

Point by point, the task forces draft ruling rejects the points made by the city attorney in a memo defending Kawa.

For example, the city attorney maintained that a staffers individual calendar doesnt serve a historical function or to inform the public, but to allow him to keep track of upcoming meetings.

The task force countered that Mr. Kawas calendar does not merely reflect his activities but the activities of the mayors office as a whole.

The city attorney also said because Kawa had already deleted parts of his calendar at the time of Petrelis request, Kawa no longer had custody of it and therefore complied with the Sunshine Ordinance.

The Sunshine Ordinance Task Force said the citys public records laws would have little effect if city officials or employees could simply destroy public records before they were ever subject to a citizens request.

Emily Green is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer writer. Email: egreen@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @emilytgreen
A modern-day Orville Wright has set a new world record for riding a hoverboard, flying the device more than a mile over water in Sausset-les-Pins, France.

Franky Zapata's Flyboard Air is nothing like the popular commercial contraptions that don't actually hover but simply roll on sidewalks before bursting into flame (well, sometimes).
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The planet Mercury will cross the face of the sun Monday in a rare event called a transit, and, weather permitting, it will be visible to Bay Area viewers through solar telescopes manned by astronomers throughout the region.

Mercury passes between Earth and the sun about a dozen times a century, and the last time was in 2006. The suns closest planet wont repeat the passage until Nov. 11, 2019, so many of the regions science museums and astronomy hobbyists have geared up now to show off Mondays event.

The phenomenon will last more than seven hours, but in California less than six hours of the transit  from sunrise at 6:01 a.m. to 11:44 a.m  will be visible, and most sites for public viewing in the Bay Area will not open until 7 or 8 a.m.

The planet will appear as a small black dot moving sedately from northeast to southwest across the suns blazing surface, but will not be visible to the naked eye. Any effort to look at the sun directly would be extremely dangerous, said Andrew Fraknoi, professor of astronomy at Foothill College in Los Altos Hills.

People who want to observe the transit safely should use eclipse glasses that have been checked for tears or damage, or go to one of the viewing sites that have safe telescopes for a safe experience, Fraknoi said.

Only the orbits of Mercury and Venus lie closer to the sun than Earths, which is why only those two can be seen during their solar transits. Transits of Venus are even more rare than Mercurys. The last was in 2012, and the next wont be until 2117.

Astronomer Johannes Kepler was the first to predict a transit of Mercury, but he didnt live to see it. He died in 1630, and French astronomer Pierre Gassendi became the first to observe the transit in 1631.

Today, every planet in the solar system has been visited, at least remotely, by earthbound scientists, and NASAs Mariner 10 spacecraft made the first successful flybys past Mercury more than 40 years ago.

Since then, the spacecraft named Messenger has circled Mercury in orbit to study it in detail for eight years until its fuel ran out and it crashed into the planet on April 30 only a year ago.

David Perlman is The San Francisco Chronicles science editor. Email: dperlman@sfchronicle.com

Planet watching

Here is a partial list of public observation sites from the Astronomical Association of Northern California:

In Contra Costa County, the Hercules Stargazers will set up telescopes from about 9:30 to 11:45 a.m. in Foxboro Park, 1025 Canterbury Drive, Hercules.

In Oakland, the Chabot Observatorys telescope named Leah will focus on the transit from 6:30 to 11:30 a.m. Admission, $5.

At Foothill College in Los Altos Hills, members of the Peninsula Astronomical Society will deploy solar telescopes from 8 to 11:45 a.m.

The San Jose Astronomical Association will set up telescopes from 7 to 10:30 a.m. in Houge Park, 3972 Twilight Drive, San Jose.

The College of San Mateo will have telescopes available at the observatorys fourth-floor viewing deck and at the College Centers patio from 7 to 11:45 a.m.

In Walnut Creek, Mount Diablo Astronomical Society will have telescopes at Larkey Park, 1931 First Ave., from 7 a.m. to noon.

In Kenwood, the Robert Ferguson Observatory, 2605 Adobe Canyon Road, will be open from 7 a.m. to noon.

In Cloverdale, amateur astronomers and their telescopes will be at Cloverdale High School outside the physical science classroom at Cloverdale High School, 509 North Cloverdale Blvd.
Sometimes it seems that Comcast goes out of its way to alienate its customers.

When a Tampa Bay couple received a purchase-confirmation email from the company March 30 thanking them for their purchase of pay-per-view adult films, they were understandably concerned.

Alyssa and Jason Overstreet, Comcast customers for eight years, don't rent porn films, which they say their purchase history proves. So Alyssa called to inform Comcast that, hey, we didn't order the X-rated video and stop charging us.

But Comcast didn't heed their protests, and over the next few weeks, the Overstreets were billed hundreds of dollars for about 20 adult movies. They even received bills for movies allegedly rented after they canceled their service and returned the cable box.

When the local ABC affiliate WFTS in Tampa interceded on the couple's behalf, it was told, "The box that is sending the authorization signal to order on-demand movies is the box that is assigned to the account."

Only when it was pointed out to Comcast that the cable box that was used to book porn flicks on April 10-12 had been returned to the company on April 7 did the company change its tune.

The billing foul-up was caused by "data stream" error, explained Comcast. The company called the mistake "unique," but this isn't the first time a customer has been wrongly billed for porn.

As for the Overstreets, they were credited for the porn purchases and their final cable bill.

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In 2015, the American Customer Satisfaction Index rated Comcast as one of the worst companies in the United States. It vied against Time Warner Cable  the company it tried to buy  Spirit Airlines and Frontier Airlines in a bottom-of-the-barrel competition for that dubious distinction.

Almost a year ago to the day, Comcast announced that it was hiring 5,500 customer service representatives to improve its image.

But if the Overstreets' experience is any indication, the cable giant needs a lot more work in the image enhancement department.
Saudi Arabia raised its pricing for June oil sales to Asia by the most since April 2015, a sign that the world's biggest crude exporter expects demand to recover as the global market rebalances, the Bloomberg reported.

State-owned Saudi Arabian Oil Co. increased its official selling price for Arab Light crude to Asia by $1.10 a barrel to 25 cents more than regional benchmarks Oman and Dubai, according to a statement. The company, known as Saudi Aramco, was predicted to raise the grade by 65 cents a barrel, according to the median estimate in a Bloomberg survey of five refiners and traders.

The Middle East producer is boosting the cost of its oil to the largest consuming region as unplanned supply outages and disruptions help to curb a global glut and signs of higher demand emerge. Benchmark prices have rallied more than 60 percent since mid-February, rebounding from the biggest crash in a generation on expectation that the surplus will shrink as US production declines.

Arab Light's price to Asia for June is the highest since September. It's only the third time the grade is being sold at a premium to the benchmarks since Saudi Arabia spearheaded OPEC's strategy to keep pumping out crude in November 2014. The group's decision to maintain output as prices cratered forced a curtailment of higher-cost production elsewhere.
Q : Earlier this year, I booked a round-trip flight on American Airlines from Minneapolis to Shannon, Ireland, for May using Travelocity.com.

The next day, Travelocity sent me a message that American Airlines had increased the price. I accepted the increase, wanting to keep the schedule I had.

All was well until I received my credit card bill, on which I discovered that Travelocity had charged me for both the original reservation that it had modified the next day as well as the final one.

I spent the better part of a working day on the phone with Travelocitys customer-service department, talking to several people, including a supervisor. I was put on hold for lengthy periods. Finally, the supervisor informed me that Travelocity would refund the amount of the first reservation minus $75, which the airline required for a canceled trip. I called American and was informed that the error was with Travelocity. I want my $75 back. Can you help?

Joanna Pierce, Aitkin, Minn.

A: Once you book your airline ticket, the price shouldnt go up or down. Something appears to have gone terribly wrong between you, your online travel agency and the airline. It is a great mystery. No one knows what happened.

But heres one thing we all can agree on: You didnt make two reservations, and you shouldnt have to eat the $75 cancellation fee.

Its not clear what the cancellation fee is for or who charged it. Did the airline or travel agent somehow incur $75 in expenses by refunding one of your erroneously booked tickets? Nope. Its a junk fee. Travel companies charge these fees because they can and because you have no choice but to pay. American insists it wouldnt have charged you the fee, yet you had a bill.

You could have appealed this to a Travelocity executive (Travelocity is owned by Expedia, and I list the contacts on my advocacy site: elliott.org/company-contacts/expedia.) You also could have contacted one of Americans executives: elliott.org/company-contacts/american.)

Travelocity was wrong to make you spend hours resolving this double booking. Common sense should tell the company that this was a mistake. Neither American nor Travelocity did anything to deserve the money.

My advocacy team contacted Travelocity on your behalf. The company acknowledged that this was a duplicate booking that sort of confused things a bit.

While we dont know for sure the root cause yet, we are going to refund the customer her $75, a representative said.

Christopher Elliott is the ombudsman for National Geographic Traveler magazine. Find travel tips at www.elliott.org. E-mail: chris@elliott.org Twitter: @elliottdotorg
DUBLIN  Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny won narrow re-election Friday on his fourth try, ending 70 days of deadlock and forging a novel but fragile minority government containing independent voices.

Kenny received 59 votes, with 49 against, in the 158-member parliament  by far the fewest ever received for a winning premier in Ireland, a nation used to coalition governments with stable majorities. Speculation mounted on how long this government might survive.
JERUSALEM  The Israeli armys deputy chief of staff drew rebukes from hawkish Israeli ministers Thursday for comparing pre-Holocaust Germany to trends in Israel today.

Speaking at a Holocaust remembrance day ceremony at a Holocaust study center in central Israel on Wednesday evening, Maj. Gen. Yair Golan said, If there is something that frightens me in Holocaust remembrance, it is ghastly trends that took place in Europe in general, and in Germany specifically, 70, 80 and 90 years ago, and finding a sign of them here among us, today in 2016.

He added that Israelis on Holocaust remembrance day should discuss our ability to uproot from among us buds of intolerance, buds of violence, buds of self-destruction on the path to ethical deterioration. He did not specify, but he made reference to a case in March in which a soldier was charged with manslaughter for shooting a Palestinian attacker as he lay wounded on the ground in the West Bank, saying not everything we do is right but that Israels army does not cover up problematic activity.

Education Minister Naftali Bennett called on Golan to correct his statement, else he be seen as comparing Israeli soldiers to Nazis and giving credence to Holocaust deniers. Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked said Golan was a little confused and his statement reflected a lack of understanding, if not a disrespect of the Holocaust.

On the other hand, center-left opposition leader Isaac Herzog called Golan brave. This is what ethics and responsibility sound like, he said.

The Israeli military said Thursday that Golan did not intend to compare Israel and its army to the horrors of Germany 70 years ago.

This is an absurd and baseless comparison that he never would have made and it was never his intention to criticize the Israeli government, the Israel Defense Forces, or IDF, said in a statement. The IDF holds itself to high standards of conduct and holds the value of human life as a guiding value.

The Holocaust remains an open wound in Israeli society and is central to Israels national identity. Israeli officials frequently draw parallels between the Holocaust and contemporary events, which has stirred controversy.
1 House speaker suspended: A justice on Brazils supreme court on Thursday suspended the leader of the countrys lower house of Congress. The move temporarily removes Eduardo Cunha, who has been leading the effort to impeach President Dilma Rousseff. Justice Teori Zavasckis made the decision ahead of a full session of the court, which could decide to confirm, overturn or simply not take up Zavasckis decision. Cunha is accused by Brazils chief-prosecutor of obstructing justice.

2 Honor killing: Pakistani police say they have arrested 13 members of a local tribal council who strangled a local girl and set her body on fire for helping one of her friends elope. Khurram Rasheed, police chief for the northern district of Abbottabad, said Thursday that the charred body of 17-year-old Ambreen Riasat was found in a burned van in the tourist resort of Donga Gali on April 29. He says the girl was strangled and then put her in the same van her friend had used to elope. The van was then set on fire. In Pakistan, where nearly 1,000 women are killed every year in the name of honor, women defying their family in the name of love is considered a source of shame.
ANKARA, Turkey  Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu announced his resignation on Thursday, paving the way for the countrys president to pursue a tighter grip on power.

I decided that for the unity of the (ruling party) a change of chairman would be more appropriate. I am not considering running at the May 22 congress, Davutoglu told the nation.

Davutoglu, who had fallen out with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said he was stepping aside following a meeting with executives of the ruling Justice and Development Party, or AKP, which has dominated Turkish politics since 2002.

The decision is not effective immediately. The party will hold an emergency convention May 22 to select a new party leader who would also replace the premier.

Davutoglu indicated he did not plan to resign from the party, saying he would continue the struggle as a ruling party legislator. He also pledged loyalty to Erdogan, saying the presidents honor was his honor.

I feel no reproach, anger or resentment against anyone, Davutoglu said.

The shake-up is seen as the outcome of irreconcilable differences between Erdogan, who would like to see the country transition to a presidential system, and his once-trusted adviser. It comes a day after Davutoglus government scored a victory of sorts, with the European Unions executive commission recommending approval of a deal to give Turkish citizens the right to travel to Europe without visas.

After being elected president in 2014, Erdogan chose Davutoglu to succeed him as premier and leader of the AKP party. Davutoglu was expected to play a backseat role as Erdogan pushed ahead with plans to make the largely ceremonial presidency into an all-powerful position.

But the former foreign minister tried to act independently on a range issues and often proved to be a more moderating force to Erdogan, who has adopted an increasingly authoritarian style of government.
FORT MCMURRAY, Alberta  A massive wildfire raging in the Canadian province of Alberta grew to 210,035 acres and officials said Thursday that they would like to move south about 25,000 evacuees who had previously fled north, including 8,000 by air.

More than 80,000 people have emptied Fort McMurray in the heart of Canadas oil sands, authorities said.

The Alberta government said Thursday that more than 1,100 firefighters, 145 helicopters, 138 pieces of heavy equipment and 22 air tankers were fighting 49 wildfires, with seven considered out of control. Chad Morrison with AB Wildfire, manager of wildfire prevention, said the blaze grew rapidly, fueled by gusting winds, and he expected the fire to continue to grow Thursday because of dry conditions but it will be away from the community.

Alberta Premier Rachel Notley said she didnt know how much better the evacuation could have been, noting that in 48 hours more than 80,000 people were evacuated from a town that essentially has two roads out of it. Fort McMurray is surrounded by wilderness and is Canadas main oil sands town. The region has the third-largest reserves of oil in the world behind Saudi Arabia and Venezuela.

The fire has torched 1,600 homes and other buildings in Fort McMurray. There have been no injuries or death from the fires. The province of Alberta declared a state of emergency.

Aided by high winds, scorching heat and low humidity, the fire grew from 29 square miles Tuesday to 38.6 square miles on Wednesday, but by Thursday it was almost nine times that  at 328.2 square miles.

The fire remained wrapped around the west and southern edges of the city.

About 25,000 evacuees moved north in the hours after Tuesdays evacuation, where oil sands work camps were being pressed into service to house people. But the bulk of the more than 80,000 evacuees fled south to Edmonton and elsewhere, and officials said they eventually would like to move everyone south where they have better support for the displaced.

Our focus right now is on getting those people south as quickly as possible, Notley said.

Government officials said energy companies in the area were prepared to use their planes in an airlift and a military aircraft was on standby.

Unseasonably hot temperatures combined with dry conditions have transformed the boreal forest in much of Alberta into a tinder box. Morrison said they are investigating the cause of the fire but he said it started in a remote forested area and said it could have been lightning.

Homes have been destroyed. Neighborhoods have gone up in flames. The footage weve seen of cars racing down highways while fire races on all sides is nothing short of terrifying, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said in Parliament on Thursday, calling it the largest fire evacuation in Albertas history.
Production record falls again

Whats new?

Evolution Mining recently reported its 3Q16 results, with production increasing by a very impressive 102% compared to the same quarter in 2015, to a record 208,963 ounces of gold. The key drivers of this were the inclusion of production from the recently acquired Cowal and Mungari mines and a strong performance by the Mt Carlton mine. Both mines added a total of 104,766 ounces of gold to production for the reported quarter compared to zero for the same quarter in 2015. Moreover, the Pajingo mine added its weight to the better result with a modest improvement in production as well. Dragging on the result were the Mt Rowden and Edna May mines.

By-product silver production was significantly higher for the reported quarter, following a rise of 43% on the same quarter in 2015, to 242,327 ounces. Reporting improved production numbers were the Pajingo, Cracow and Edna May mines, while the Mt Rawdon mine recorded a fall. As a by-product, 278 tonnes of copper was produced from the companys Mt Carlton mine for the March quarter.

In addition to the record production rate, Evolution Minings earnings for the quarter also benefitted from lower All-in sustaining costs (AISC). As a result of greater mining activity, group-wide AISC for the quarter declined by 1.0% compared to the outcome for the March quarter 2015, to A$1,015 an ounce. Over the remainder of 2016, the company continues to investigate new cost saving initiatives across all of its operations. These initiatives are expected to see AISC improve over the remainder of the year.

To partially protect operating margins against a falling gold price, the company had at 31 March 2016 a 795,688 ounce hedge position, with an average delivery price of A$1,620 an ounce. The hedge will deliver 88,669 ounces of gold into the current quarter at an average price of A$1,591 an ounce. With the gold price in Australian Dollars trading around A$1,528 an ounce, the average hedge price is in-the-money. We consider the position as prudent in the current pricing environment.

The company also announced that it voluntarily repaid A$80 million in early debt repayments during the quarter. A very strong cash flow has allowed the company to significantly reduce debt, which at 31 March 2016 had been reduced to A$400 million. Cash at the same date stood at A$35.3 million, down on the A$45.3 million held at 31 December 2015.

As a result of the early debt repayment, the companys gearing on a net debt to earnings before interest taxation depreciation amortisation basis at 31 March 2016 improved further to 0.63 from 0.79 at 31 December 2015.

Outlook

Evolution Minings operations continue to move along at top gear, with the record quarterly gold production and lower operating costs having led to a further strengthening of the balance sheet and the payment of a dividend. Moreover, the company remains on track to meet managements production guidance of 770,000 to 820,000 ounces of gold in 2016, which combines nicely with AISC guidance for a gold price between A$970 and A$1,020 an ounce.

Price

As a result of Evolution Minings favourable production and cost (i.e. yield) profile and given the positive outlook for the A$ gold price, the miners prospective earnings ratio is forecast to fall from 12.8 times in 2016 to 10.5 times in 2017. We also note that Evolution Minings strong investment fundamentals are complemented by a positive technical set up. In particular, we note that the long-term trend is clearly upwards, with the next major upside target being the 127.2% Fibonacci extension at $2.48.

Worth buying?

We hold firmly to the belief that Evolution Mining is well positioned to navigate through the current turbulent gold price environment, and also continue to seek out growth opportunities. In conjunction with seeking out such opportunities, the company has been able extract shareholder value from its asset base, through increased production and containing costs. Accordingly, we rate Evolution Mining as a buy around current levels.

David Lennox is a Senior Analyst at investment research and funds management house Fat Prophets. To receive a recent Fat Prophets Report, CLICK HERE

Disclosure: Evolution Mining is held within the Fat Prophets Concentrated Australian Share, Mining & Resources and Small & Mid Cap portfolios.

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Baku, Azerbaijan, May 6



By Azad Hasanli - Trend:



The Southern Gas Corridor project, meant to deliver the Azerbaijani gas to Europe, plays an exceptional role in ensuring the EU energy security, the US ambassador to Azerbaijan Robert Cekuta told reporters May 6.

The US continues to work with Azerbaijan and the EU on the Southern Gas Corridor project, said the ambassador.

Cekuta noted that recently, discussions on the oil sector have been held with the EU.

The topic of ensuring Europe's energy security became an important part of these discussions, he said, adding that Azerbaijan's important role in this sphere was emphasized during those talks.

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 Azerbaijan's Shah Deniz field is considered as the main source for the Southern Gas Corridor projects. Other sources can also connect to this project at a later stage.

As part of the Stage 2 of the Shah Deniz development, the gas will be exported to Turkey and European markets by expanding the South Caucasus Pipeline and the construction of Trans-Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline and Trans-Adriatic Pipeline.
Baku, Azerbaijan, May 6

By Maksim Tsurkov - Trend:

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) will consider the possibility to allocate loan worth $1.505 billion for the second phase of the Azerbaijani Shah Deniz gas and condensate field's development, ADB message said May 6.

The investment plan of the Shah Deniz-2 project's multitranche financing is at the proposal stage, said the message.

"The proposed investment plan will support the Azerbaijani government's efforts to finance Shah Deniz-2 project, and is aimed at improving the country's fiscal position by increasing revenues from natural gas exports from the expanded Shah Deniz field and creating additional jobs," said the message.

The plan will provide a partial credit guarantee (PCG) to support commercial bank financing of government shares in the amount of 16.67 percent of the project's cost.

"ADB mission will visit Azerbaijan from June 15 to June 24 for collecting facts on the project," said the message. "The investment plan's consideration will be held July 4 by the bank's management, and it is expected to be approved August 22 by ADB Board of Directors."

If the loan is allocated, it will be used by Southern Gas Corridor CJSC.

The gas to be produced as part of the Stage 2 of the Shah Deniz field's development will be exported to Turkey and to the European markets by means of expanding the South Caucasus Pipeline and construction of the Trans-Anatolian Gas Pipeline (TANAP) and the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline (TAP).

Edited by SI

---

Follow the author on Twitter: @MaksimTsurkov
Baku, Azerbaijan, May 6

By Dalga Khatinoglu - Trend:

The Iranian Central Oil Fields Company (ICOFC) has projects worth $11 billion for foreign companies, the company's CEO Salbali Karimi told SHANA news agency May 6.

He said the projects have been included to the newly designed contract, called the Iran Petroleum Contracts (IPCs).

Iran introduced the IPCs to foreign companies last November. About 50 projects were offered based on the IPCs.

According to the documents of the IPCs, obtained by Trend, the total oil in place at the nine onshore ICOFC oil fields is above 16 billion stock tank barrels (BSTB) and the gas reserves at its fields are above 55 billion cubic feet.

Recently, Karimi has put the needed investment for gas fields at $6.1 billion.

ICOFC's offered oil and gas projects:
Baku, Azerbaijan, May 6

By Aygun Badalova - Trend:

Iran's oil export to Europe in April amounted to around 500,000 barrels per day (bpd), including 100,000 bpd to Turkey and 50,000 bpd for Syria, International Oil Daily (IOD) reported with reference to shipping data.

By far the biggest individual lifter was France's Total, which accounted for some 230,000 bpd.

Spain's Cepsa, Italy's Iplom and Greek duo Hellenic Petroleum and Motor Oil Hellas were the other buyers.

Through the contracts it has signed with France's Total and Spain's Sepsa, Iran expects to be exporting 250,000 to 300,000 bpd of crude to Europe in the near future.

Iran's crude output stood at 4.2 million bpd before the sanctions, some 2.3 million bpd of which used to be exported. Under the sanctions the output fell to 3.3 million bpd while the exports dropped to 1 million bpd.

Since the sanctions were lifted in January, Iran has increased the crude export to 1.7 million bpd aiming to redeem its previous place in the world market.

Earlier director of international affairs at National Iranian Oil Co (NIOC) Mohsen Ghamsari said Iran has increased oil exports by 900,000 bpd since January after the removal of international sanctions against Tehran.

Iran's oil output has reached 3.8 million barrels per day, of that figure almost 1.8 mbpd is supplied to the domestic refineries, according to Ghamsari. Iran plans to increase its daily output to four million barrels until March 2017.
Tehran, Iran, May 6

By Emil Ilgar - Trend:

Iran's oil export to the EU has reached 500,000 barrels per day, says the National Iranian Oil Company's International Affairs Director Mohsen Qamsari.

Oil shipment is carried out using the European tankers as Iran has not enough tankers to cover the oil transportation to the EU, he told Fars news agency May 6.

Before the Western sanctions were imposed in 2012 on Iran, the EU was importing 800,000 barrels per day of the Iranian oil.

Qamsari also said that currently Iran exports its oil to France, Spain and Greece.

He added that Iran's total crude oil and condensate exports stand at 2.5 million barrels per day currently.
UNITED NATIONS: The United Nations (UN) owes India $62 million  the most it has to pay to any country  for contribution towards peacekeeping operations including troops and equipment, the top official of the world body said.

As on March 31, 2016, the UN owed troop contributing countries a total of $827 million, including $261 million in troop costs and $480 million for equipment for active missions, Under-Secretary-General for Management Yukio Takasu told reporters here on Wednesday.

Of this total, he said the UN owed "the largest amount" of $62 million to India, followed by Bangladesh at $59 million, Pakistan at $49 million and Ethiopia at $47 million.

He said money owed to troop contributing nations is "always a source of concern because it is very unfair for them that they provide all the valuable troops, personnel and equipment and they are not reimbursed timely because of financial problems".

At about 7,695 troops, India is currently the second largest contributor among all UN troop contributors.

Traditionally, India has been among the largest contributor of troops to UN peacekeeping operations, with nearly 1,80,000 troops having served in over 44 of the 69 peacekeeping operations so far.

The country has repeatedly called for the Security Council to consult troop contributing countries before drawing up peacekeeping mandates given that troops now have to function in increasingly difficult and hostile conflict situations across the world's hot-spots.

Among the countries that owe the UN money is the US, which has to pay 1.3 billion dollars for peacekeeping and 917 million dollars towards regular budget.

Takasu said the world organisation's financial situation is "sound and positive", noting, however, that there is "some worry" regarding the areas of regular budget and reserves.

"The financial situation of the United Nations is generally sound," he said.

His overview to the General Assembly's Fifth Committee, which is tasked with administrative and budgetary concerns, included details on the four main assessment areas of the regular budget; UN peacekeeping operations; international tribunals; and the Capital Master Plan.

Takasu said the organisation's cash balances were positive at the end of 2015, except for the regular budget, which showed a shortfall of $217 million, which is being funded by a "very small reserve".

"I think it's prudent to review the adequacy of the reserves. The regular budget is always tight in the last quarter of the year, and this is expected in 2016. The question is whether the size of the reserve is good enough," he added.

For the 2015 regular budget, member States were obligated to contribute a total of $2.771 billion, an increase of $159 million from 2014. Payments received were $237 million higher in 2015 than in 2014, Takasu said.

Unpaid assessed contributions stood at $1.43 billion as of April 30, 2016, down $163 million from the same period the previous year.

For peacekeeping operations, Takasu said the total of unpaid assessments at the end of 2015 was $976 million, reflecting a decrease of $306 million from the previous year.

As of April 30, new assessments of $3.9 billion had been issued, of which $2.4 billion remain unpaid, he said.

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WASHINGTON: Prime Minister Narendra Modi will address the annual gala of US-India Business Council next month during his visit here, the advocacy group said today.



Modi's address to the USIBC before who's who of American corporate sector would be on June 7. He will also participate in a roundtable with leading global CEOs, USIBC said.



"It's a privilege for USIBC to welcome Prime Minister Modi on his fourth visit to the US, particularly in light of the advancement of our countries' relationship over the past two years," USIBC president Mukesh Aghi said.



"India became the top global FDI destination in 2015 - attracting USD 63 billion - fuelled by Modi's ability to attract foreign investors and to build a globally competitive environment in India," Aghi said.



The bilateral relationship has matured significantly over the past a few years, and extends beyond the leadership of the two countries, he said in a statement.



Though there has been no official confirmation of Modi's visit either from the Prime Minister's Office or the White House, he is expected to visit the US at the invitation of President Barack Obama, who is likely to host him for a State dinner.



US House of Representative Speaker Paul Ryan has already invited him to address a joint meeting of the Congress on June 8.



During the annual gala, USIBC will present its Global Leadership Award to the Amazon Founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, and founder and MD of Sun Pharmaceuticals Dilip Shanghvi.



"Jeff and Dilip are two leaders that are shaping the US-India trade ties with their incredible business acumen and have made a lasting impression in integrating India into the global economy," Aghi said.



"We couldn't think of more qualified icons that are emblematic of the immense potential of our trade relationship. We are honoured to be presenting the 2016 Global Leadership Award to them," he said.

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At $62 Million, UN Owes India The Most For Peacekeeping
NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi will embark on a visit to Iranthis month with an aim to bolster overall bilateral ties with the Persian Gulf nation in a range of areas including energy, trade and investment and connectivity.



Modi's proposed visit is being seen as an effort by India to step up engagement with strategically important West Asia, a region endowed with vast oil and gas reserves.



Modi had last month travelled to Saudi Arabia, considered Iran's arch rival. In August last year, he had visited United Arab Emirates, another key player in the region.



When asked about Modi's visit to Tehran, External Affairs Ministry Spokesperson Vikas Swarup only said both sides are in the process of finalising the dates for the trip.



"We share a very close, historical and civilisational friendship with Iran, a relationship which is in existance for a long period of time. Prime Minister had been extended an invitation by President (Hassan) Rouhani when the two had met in Ufa (Russia).



"Prime Minister had accepted the invitation in principle. We are currently in the process of working with our Iranian counterparts to work out the suitable dates," he said.



External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj had visited Tehran last month during which the two sides had agreed to step up engagement in oil and gas sector. During her visit, President Rouhani had said his country can be a "reliable partner" for India's energy needs.



Iran had opened several lucrative sectors after sanctions against it were lifted under a historic nuclear deal.



There has been a rush for investment in the resource-rich nation by global economic powers including Japan, China, the US and several European countries following lifting of the sanctions.



India too has been eying deeper energy ties with that country and has already lined up USD 20 billion investment in oil and gas, petrochemical and fertiliser projects there.



New Delhi is looking to increase engagement with the sanction-free Iran by raising oil imports and possible shipment of natural gas. It also wants rights to develop Farzad-B gas field in the Persian Gulf discovered by ONGC Videsh Limited.



Iran is an important country for India for its energy security as well as to get access to oil and gas-rich Central Asian nations.

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powerball

Taking his family to the Turks and Caicos islands is first on the Powerball list of Jack Nalewajk of Fort Wadsworth. His grandson, Alex, 12, gives full approval to the plan. (Staten Island Advance/Kathryn Carse)

Anthony Fazzino, owner of A & C Superette in Meiers Corners, sells customer Lois Schwartz her Powerball ticket. "The excitement is definitely growing," he said of the $415 million Powerball. (Staten Island Advance/Kathryn Carse)

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- There was no winner Wednesday night, so the Powerball prize jumped to $415 million.

John Nalewajk knew exactly where he was going if he won.

He and his grandson Alex, 12, were leaving Hylan Dairy and Bagels in Dongan Hills. Nalewajk said, "I would take the family to ..."

"Turks and Caicos," finished Alex. He was only five when his grandfather brought the family there the last time, but the memory put a smile on his face.

"We gotta go back," said Nalewajk, a Fort Wadsworth resident.

He would give the rest of the money out to his family and some to cancer research.

He hadn't bought any tickets, but he would buy them closer to Saturday, when the drawing is held, he said.

A ticket is just $2. This will be the ninth largest prize in the multi-state lottery's history, but is less than half of the historic $1.5 billion January jackpot.

Still it is a lot of money to spread around.

"I would tell my wife to meet me in Hawaii and then buy a ticket for Aruba," laughed Rich Skow. He had just bought a scratch-off at Hylan Dairy and Bagels and planned to buy Powerball tickets there and a few other places to increase his luck.

If he wins, it gets split in thirds, he said, for his daughter, son and the last third for he and his wife. His plan was that the kids can pay the tax up front and do whatever they want with it.

"Why wait till I die? Let them enjoy it now," reasoned the Rossville resident.

"My odds are 50-50," added Skow. How did he figure that? Easy, the Abbot and Costello School of Odds.

"Either you win or you don't," was their way of looking at it, he said. "Better than 32 million to 1, that's demoralizing."

Anthony Fazzino, owner of A & C Superette, sells the super lottery tickets and he is buying them wherever he goes.

"I have been spending $20 everywhere; hopefully I am increasing my odds, and I will win. Then I won't have to do this anymore. Then we can have a real interview," chuckled Fazzino, taking a break in the boutique grocery that his family has owned for 40 years.

He would also take care of his family and donate to the Heart Association because he lost his father and brother to heart disease. He'd also donate to cancer research and children through St. Jude's Hospital, he said.

Customer Lois Schwartz would also be remembering children, veterans and local organizations such as Project Hospitality and Unity Games.

"I would give some to my family, but I would donate a large part to charity and those less fortunate," said the Meiers Corners resident.

Dina Annese, a teacher at IS 62 in Brooklyn had just shopped at A & C Superette, but she will be buying her Powerball tickets at pool in school to be in it with luckier people, she said.

"I wouldn't stop working. I like what I do," said the Castleton Corners resident.

If she won, she said, she would pay her bills, her kids' school tuitions and take a little vacation.

"It would definitely make life easier," she said. She declined having her photo taken, saying "maybe after I win all that money."

The excitement is definitely increasing said Fazzino.

"Once they hear about it; see the signs with the amount, hear it on the radio, people definitely start buying more tickets," he said.
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- If all goes according to plan, commuters and others traveling to Manhattan on the Staten Island Ferry will once again be able to park vehicles in close, convenient proximity to the St. George terminal.

The New York Wheel pubic parking garage is expected to open on Friday, June 3, Wheel president and CEO Rich Marin told SILive.com.

Looking through a construction fence window on Richmond Terrace: Ramp for the New York Wheel pubic parking garage, with great waterfront view. Thursday, May 5, 2016. (Staten Island Advance/Virginia N. Sherry)

The waterfront garage will accommodate 820 vehicles in the first phase, with 950 total spaces available when construction is completed.

Entrance to this public garage -- initially -- will be from Bank Street, at the foot of Jersey Street in New Brighton, Marin said.

New city regulations governing the operation of cranes delayed opening of the much-anticipated public garage:

The crane regulations cost lost work days on the garage site.

"I've lost count -- over 25 days" in total, Marin estimated.

GARAGE DETAILS



Marin provided additional information about eventual commuter access to the garage.

"As you can see now, there is a new ramp from our garage second-level to Richmond Terrace at Nicholas Street," which intersects Richmond Terrace.

"When we get all the proper permissions, we will do the curb cut and get the light adjusted, and open that ramp for parking traffic in and out of the garage," Marin reported.

"It will be much more convenient for many commuters than going down to Jersey Street to get on Bank Street," he said.

Direct access to the garage from Richmond Terrace is expected to be in place in summer 2016, Marin anticipates.

"When we open on June 3, the garage will be attended (but likely no stackers).

"We hope to amend the permit as soon as possible to allow over 40 percent of the spaces to be self-park," he said.

"Then we expect -- before the end of the year -- to have the rest of the garage constructed and certified for use so that there will be a 950 car-capacity, of which 660 spaces will be self-park."
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- A developer wants to build five 1-family houses on a large hillside site south of Wandel Avenue in Stapleton, and nearby homeowners are concerned because the only access to the site will be from residential Cedar Terrace on Grymes Hill.

After hearing objections from local residents, the Land Use Committee of Community Board 1 voted unanimously, 8-0, to disapprove the project.

The five proposed homes will be constructed on the north side of Cunard Avenue -- at Nos. 70, 72, 74, 76 and 78 -- approximately 104 feet north of Cedar Terrace.

Outlined in yellow: The proposed five homes on Cunard Avenue on a site plan prepared by thinkDesign Architecture and distributed to members of the Land Use Committee of Community Board 1. (Staten Island Advance/Virginia N. Sherry)

Because this section of Cunard Avenue is not a legally mapped street, the developer must first apply for a waiver from the city Board of Standards and Appeals (BSA) to move the project forward.

It is generally prohibited to issue a certificates of occupancy for buildings that do not front on a mapped street, Under Section 36 of N.Y. State General City Law.

BSA may grant an appeal if compliance with Section 36 would result in a practical difficulty or unnecessary hardship for the property owner.

The developer filed an application with the BSA in March 2016.

The site is within the boundaries of Staten Island's 1,900-acre Special Hillsides Preservation District.

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

The developer's attorney, Todd Dale, gave a presentation about the project at the May 2 pubic hearing of the Land Use Committee. (Under city procedure, BSA applications are subject to community board review, although board votes are advisory only and cannot stop a project.)

The five homes would be constructed on "a huge parcel," totaling nearly 50,000 square feet, the attorney told the Land Use Committee. Each home will be two stories with a cellar.

Dale noted that Cunard Avenue is paved and improved only in part. "We want to pave and improve Cunard Avenue south of our property," he explained. "The only access to our property is through this public land (unmapped Cunard Avenue)."

A 30-foot-wide private fire-apparatus access road would connect to Cunard Avenue and "meet all city Fire Code requirements," the lawyer said. In addition, all five homes would be sprinklered.

"You would enter from Cedar Terrace -- it's the only entrance and egress to our site," he added.

(Story continues below the map.)

A developer wants to build five 1-family homes on a section of Cunard Avenue that is not a legally mapped street. (Google map)

HOMEOWNERS CRITICAL



Cedar Terrace residents at the Land Use Committee meeting spoke in opposition to the project.

"I can't fathom how you can put five houses there," said a homeowner from Cedar Terrace.

"It's a very steep road and it's hard (for vehicles to pass one another)," added another resident, describing narrow, two-way Cedar Terrace.

The street terminates in a dead-end at the rear of Wagner College's property, up a rutted street that leads to the back dormitory and other buildings.

Concerns were also expressed about increased flooding if the development is built as the developer envisions.

"We have flooding at the bottom of the hill frequently," one resident told the committee.

"I don't see how building a street where now there is a woodland that absorbs some of the water is going to be beneficial to the residents," she said.

"Also, Cunard Avenue runs into Van Duzer Street very precipitously at the bottom -- it goes almost straight down," she added, predicting additional flooding at this location.

LAND USE COMMITTEE VOTES 'NO'

The Land Use Committee of Community Board 1 voted 8-0 on May 2 to deny approval of the developer's application to the BSA.

The motion to deny cited area residents' objections; the "unacceptable" number of homes planned for the site, and concerns about the privately held access road and safety-vehicle access to and maneuverability on it.

The full membership of Community Board 1 will vote on this project at the board's monthly meeting on Tuesday evening, May 10, at All Saints Episcopal Church, 2329 Victory Blvd. in Willowbrook.
nws Santoro

Anthony Santoro (aka Skinny) is one of many Bonanno associates rounded up in Manhattan Criminal Court July 9 2013. (Joe Marino/New York Daily News)

(Joe Marino)

MANHATTAN, N.Y.-- After six days of deliberations, the jury in the Bonanno mob trial did not reach a verdict Thursday in state Supreme Court in Manhattan.

The deliberations will resume Monday.

Anthony (Skinny) Santoro, 52, of Great Kills, and his alleged Bonanno co-defendants -- Vito Badamo, 53, Nicholas Santora, 73, and Ernest Aiello, 36 -- are accused of enterprise corruption, including loansharking, gambling and drug dealing, after authorities reportedly busted the family's nine-man crew in July 2013.

On Thursday, the panel asked to hear a series of calls regarding a bettor who owed money from betting on allaction247.com, the gambling site Santoro allegedly ran.

In one of the calls, Santoro says, "I'm gonna split his f------ head open with a hatchet, to be honest with you."

"Biz, I'll put two holes in his f------ forehead, I'll double tap his forehead right now. I will go right now put two holes in his head. He'll be one dead young punk. I'll leave him in the street right now. I'll shoot him right now, right this minute. I'll take a shower and shave, just to go shoot him."

They jurors also asked for clarification regarding the difference between direct evidence and circumstantial evidence.

The panel asked the judge Wednesday for advice about resolving its disagreements so it can avoid a hung jury.

On Tuesday, the jurors requested to see all the photos from the trial, the vouchers from all the executed search warrants, and asked to hear calls involving Badamo, Santoro and Nicholas Bernhard, one of the other five co-defendants who pleaded guilty.

The panel also heard a car-bug call between Badamo and alleged Bonanno boss Santora. They also wanted to see the phone books and vouchers from Santora's home search.

The jurors had deliberated for two days before a week-long break and returned on Monday. On Monday, the panel asked to see evidence pertaining to allaction247.com. They also asked to see the vouchers pertaining to the search warrant executed at Santoro's Tanglewood Drive residence in Great Kills.

During their brief discussions two weeks ago, they had questions about venue and the loansharking charge.

The panel was charged with the different elements constituting enterprise corruption, grand larceny in the second-degree and first-degree criminal usury.

The state claims Santora, who is allegedly nicknamed "Captain Crunch," is the crime family's ringleader. The prosecution says he was in charge of an Internet gambling site, sold prescription drugs, such as Cialis and Viagra, on the black market, and the other three defendants were his underlings.
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- From honoring a school safety agent with a street name to legislation aimed at protecting kids in child care, here's a recap of what some of Staten Island's lawmakers have been up to recently.

STREET RENAMING

To honor the life of longtime PS 14 School Safety Agent Sandra Cranford, Councilwoman Debi Rose officially co-named the southwest corner of Tompkins Avenue and Hill Street as "School Safety Agent Sandra P. Cranford Way" in a ceremony at the Stapleton intersection last weekend.

"Mrs. Cranford was a friend and mentor to me," said Rose. "She was a kind, quiet, no-nonsense person known for getting things done. She exemplified good citizenship and compassion to young people, parents and teachers. ..."

Committed to her community, Cranford was very involved in the PTA at PS 14, which is now PS 78, and often volunteered her support.

For 28 years as a School Security Agent, she served the school and the entire Stapleton community.

'OFFICER RANDOLPH HOLDER'S LAW'

Assemblywoman Nicole Malliotakis (R-East Shore/Brooklyn) introduced legislation named "Officer Randolph Holder's Law" -- which would narrow the eligibility requirements for those with drug convictions to enter judicial diversion to drug treatment as opposed to prison.

Tyrone Howard has been charged with the murder of Detective Randolph Holder during a chase near a Harlem housing project in October 2015.

Prior to the fatal shooting, Howard had four felony drug convictions, 28 prior arrests and was wanted by the police in connection with a Sept. 1, 2015, shooting. He was able to avoid jail time by qualifying for drug treatment.



In 2009, the state legislature voted to reduce mandatory prison sentences for some drug offenses and eliminate minimum sentence for others. Additionally, judges were given the ability to send drug dealers who claim to be addicts to drug treatment programs instead of prison.



Malliotakis' bill would prohibit those who have more than two prior felony convictions from entering judicial diversion. It would also require the court to consider and make a finding of fact on the record, regarding the risk a defendant might pose to public safety. Additionally, it would require the consent of the district attorney before a defendant is granted entry into a diversion program.

SUPPORTING 9/11 VOLUNTEERS

Gov. Andrew Cuomo this week announced that the 2016-17 state budget includes $9 million to cover the cost of lost wages and healthcare expenses for volunteers who contracted illnesses at the World Trade Center site in the year after Sept. 11, 2001.

This ensures that volunteers will continue to receive benefits and financial support even though federal funding allocated to the state for this purpose has been exhausted.

"These brave men and women selflessly volunteered to help their neighbors during our darkest days and showed the world what it means to be a New Yorker," said Cuomo. "They deserve nothing less than our full support. ..."

Many volunteers have developed health conditions linked to the toxic dust and debris found at the World Trade Center. While paid workers are covered by their employers' workers' compensation insurance, volunteers had no such safety net until Congress appropriated $25 million for these benefits in 2002, which was increased to $50 million in 2005.

The World Trade Center Volunteer Fund, which handles these benefits and is administered by the state Workers' Compensation Board, exhausted this federal funding last month. Payments are now being made from the Board's Uninsured Employers Fund, a vehicle funded by fines resulting from legal violations such as noncompliance penalties. This new mechanism will mean payment for benefits for the World Trade Center Volunteer Fund recipients will continue uninterrupted.

NYS budget includes $9 million to ensure volunteers with 9/11-related illnesses continue receiving benefits https://t.co/eWh621crhk  Andrew Cuomo (@NYGovCuomo) May 2, 2016

CRACKING DOWN ON CHILD CARE

Cuomo announced on Wednesday he is advancing legislation to bring more aggressive enforcement tools, tougher penalties and greater transparency to the oversight of child care programs throughout the state.

The bill will also create more consistent legal enforcement standards for state- and New York City-regulated programs and improve parents' access to child care centers' compliance and violation histories.

"Parents deserve to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that their child care providers are responsible and that their children are in good hands," said Cuomo. "These reforms will help ensure that every child care program in this state is held accountable to the highest standards of safety, and with tougher laws we will be better able to crack down on bad actors."

Under the governor's proposed legislation, penalties for state-regulated child care providers cited for serious violations and for providers operating illegally would be increased. The maximum fine for serious violations would increase from $500 to $5,000 a day. Enforcement standards for state- and New York City-regulated child care programs will also be better aligned, enabling the state to take more immediate enforcement action.

New York City-regulated child care programs will be required to prominently post inspection reports and violation histories, as state-regulated programs already do.
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Hey, parents...



Have your kids -- or even you -- ever wanted to meet some firefighters, paramedics and EMTS? Well, now is your chance.

The FDNY is holding an open house at all of its local firehouses next Saturday, May 14, according to numerous social media posts from the Fire Department promoting the event.

"Stop by to take a tour, view demonstrations, learn fire and life safety tips, explore #FDNY careers and more!," says an FDNY post on Instagram.

The open house runs in two separate time slots:

11 a.m. to 1 p.m. 1 p.m. to 3 p.m.

To find out where your neighborhood's fire house is click here.
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Police chased down and appeared to apprehend suspects in Graniteville Thursday night in connection with a stolen car.

A heavy police presence was seen searching the area in and around ShopRite's parking lot Thursday. According to an NYPD official on the scene, police were chasing down three suspects in connection with a car that was taken near Clove Road and Targee Street.

The three being sought in connection with the stolen vehicle were believed to be minors, said the source. All units from the 121 Precinct were called to assist in the search, according to police transmissions.

Police were observed apprehending one male in the ShopRite parking lot.

Another male was placed in custody in the parking lot of IHOP.

An NYPD spokesman was unable to immediately confirm the arrests at this time.
Baku, Azerbaijan, May 6

By Huseyn Valiyev - Trend:

National Center for Nuclear Research JSC of Azerbaijan's Communications and High Technologies Ministry and The European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) will sign a memorandum of cooperation on pilot project ALICE (A Large Ion Collider Experiment), the Center told Trend.

The document is expected to be signed within the visit of Azerbaijan's Communications and High Technologies Ministry's delegation to CERN in late May, said the Center.

The signing of the memorandum will allow Azerbaijan to become a full participant of the pilot project ALICE. The project's aim is to study the superdense matter, which is formed by the collision of heavy ions (lead nuclei). ALICE project is one of the six experimental facilities built at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the world's largest and most powerful particle collider, the largest, most complex experimental facility ever built, and the largest single machine in the world. The LHC's aim is to allow physicists to test the predictions of different theories of particle physics, high-energy physics and other unsolved questions of physics, advancing human understanding of physical laws.

Currently, Azerbaijan is presented in CERN's such pilot projects as NA61/SHINE, NA49 and ATLAS.

Results of the experiments can be used by scientific community and Azerbaijan's higher education institutions.

Edited by SI

---

Follow the author on Twitter: @h_veliyev
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Major flooding in Travis is causing issues for commuters on Staten Island Thursday evening.

Travis Avenue is closed in both directions from, Richmond Avenue to Victory Boulevard, due to flooding in the center of the road, according to an FDNY spokesman.

FDNY units could be seen roping off the entrance of Travis on Victory, forcing motorists to make u-turns, and causing delays in both directions.

Travis at Freedom Avenue was also blocked off, leading to delays on other streets nearby as well.

It remains unclear when Travis will reopen for commuters.
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Baku, Azerbaijan, May 6

Trend:

Kazakhstan's Agriculture Minister Assylzhan Mamytbekov has resigned, a source in the ministry told the Kazinform news agency.

During the meeting in Akorda (presidential palace of Kazakhstan) on May 5, the country's President Nursultan Nazarbayev said that the Ministry of Agriculture and the Ministry of National Economy failed to handle their task to clarify the norms of the Land Code.

After that the Minister of National Economy Yerbolat Dossayev resigned, while the Deputy Minister of National Economy Kairbek Uskenbaev was dismissed from his post.

Kazakhstan's Prime Minister Karim Massimov introduced the new Minister of National Economy Kuandyk Bishimbayev to the ministry's staff May 6.
Page Content

Minister of Public Health, Social Development & Labor, Emil Lee, during the Council of Ministers press briefing on Wednesday, reiterated his concern about the health effects on people as a result of the fires at the dump.





During his briefing, the Minister made it clear that the coalition is not in trouble because his Ministry is issuing statements which effect another Ministry. Normally, Ministers respect other Ministers portfolios, but often times, Ministries overlap with other Ministries. In this case, as the Minister of health, I need to look into the dump situation from a public health perspective.

Minister Lee said that as Government, we should be mature enough to look in the mirror and re-examine what we are doing. There are clearly problems at the dump, and one of the priorities of the Government coalition is to develop a long term solutions. As I look at the dump situation, I know that the fumes from the fire are not healthy for the population, and as a member of the Council of Ministers I have an obligation to try and figure out how we can prevent this.





Repeated fires at the dump are not acceptable, and because there are health consequences due to the fumes, the Minister stated that he has already started doing research on how other countries manage their waste, and that hes in the process of comparing the documents to get a feeling whether or not Government has given sufficient information so that the contractor can perform his job correctly. If Government has issued those specifications , then the question would be: is the contractor working according to it? If the specifications are not clear enough, then clearly Government would be obligated to revise the scope of work.

In the meantime, the Minister made mention that he has asked the Inspectorate to look at the safety of the workers at the dump, to see if they have proper safety protocols, and personal protection equipment in place. If the fumes are not healthy for people living a distance away from the dump, then obviously the people working at the dump are at a higher risk level concluded Minister Lee.
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Prime Minister William Marlin and Minister of VROMI Angel Meyers are currently on a working visit in Washington DC. On Tuesday May 2nd, a reception was held in honour of the Caribbean Heads of Delegation and co-hosted by the Honorable John Kerry, Secretary of State and the Council of the Americas.

The reception was held at the Benjamin Franklin Room at the U.S. State Department, Secretary of State John Kerry and Ambassador John Negroponte who is the Chairman Emeritus of the Council of Americas gave the opening remarks.

The event served as both the close of the Council of the Americas 46th Annual Washington Conference on the Americas and the opening for the U.S.-Caribbean-Central American Energy Summit. The Washington Conference on the Americas is the premier event on the region. Each year, this conference offers an excellent opportunity to hear from the most senior-level officials and engage with over 250 business and policy leaders, members of the diplomatic community, and media representatives from throughout the hemisphere.

On Wednesday, the Caribbean Heads of Delegation met with host Vice President Joe Biden. At the meeting, participating delegations included Antigua and Barbuda, Aruba, Bahamas, Barbados, Cuba, Curacao, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica, Montserrat, Sint Maarten, St. Kitts & Nevis, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago and the Secretary-General of the CARICOM Secretariat, his Excellency Irwin LaRocque.

The meeting is a follow up to the Caribbean Energy Security Summit hosted in January last year by Vice President Joe Biden. According to the US State Department  the summit will launch the results of the energy task force for the Caribbean and Central Americas announced by President Barack Obama last spring, and identify steps that the United States and Regional Leaders can take to ensure that citizens of these regions achieve a more secure, affordable and clean energy future.

The following partners: Inter- American Development Bank (IDB), Organization of American States (OAS), World Bank, Caribbean Development Bank (CDB), Canada and Mexico also participated in the Energy Summit.

Photos: Prime Minister William Marlin at the reception along with Minister VROMI Angel Meyers and Senior Policy Advisor at the Department of Foreign Relations Patrice Gumbs Jr.




Baku, Azerbaijan, May 6

By Elena Kosolapova - Trend:

Kazakhstan's President Nursultan Nazarbayev has appointed Dauren Abayev the country's minister of information and communications, Kazakh president's press service said May 6.

Earlier, Abayev served as advisor and spokesperson of Kazakh president.

Nazarbayev ordered to create the Ministry of Information and Communications on Apr.5.

The ministry will deal with information policy, monitoring of the information space, public opinion research on the most topical issues and improving the quality of domestic information products.

---

Follow the author on Twitter: @E_Kosolapova
Baku, Azerbaijan, May 6

By Demir Azizov - Trend:

The World Bank (WB) has lowered the forecast for Uzbekistan's GDP growth from 7.5 percent to 7.3 percent in 2016, WB's website said.

The lower prices for basic export commodities are the main reason for the slower economic growth of Uzbekistan, according to WB.

"Uzbekistan's GDP growth is expected to be 7.3 percent in 2016 due to the further weakening of external factors related to the decrease in commodity prices and demand of the main trading partners - China, Russia and Kazakhstan - for them," said the WB.

The total volume of export from Uzbekistan has dropped by 5.3 percent as of 2015, according to the World Bank.

The volume of export from the country will decrease by 2.8 percent in 2016, as the growth in the volume of gold and service export won't be able to offset the decline in the export of cars, metals and fertilizer due to the lower demand for them in Russia and other trading partners of Uzbekistan, according to the WB forecasts.

Uzbekistan has reduced the volume of import by 13.4 percent in 2015, while this volume will drop by 6 percent in 2016, said the World Bank.

Other factors affecting the decline in Uzbekistan's economic growth in 2016, is a 40 percent decrease in the volume of money transfers in 2015 due to the return of migrants from Russia, according to the WB.

Moreover, the inflow of direct foreign investments remains low due to the high risks and slow improvement of Uzbekistan's business environment.

Uzbekistan's GDP grew by 8 percent in 2015, as compared to 2014, according to the official statistics.
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Tehran, Iran, May 6

By Mehdi Sepahvand - Trend:

Iran is in talks with two Norwegian and Sweden companies to make firefighting equipment it needs in the oil industry, said Shahab Tafazoli, a member of the Oil Industry Equipment Producers Association of Iran.

From Sweden Firemax and from Norway FFS has been chosen for the purpose, he said, Mehr news agency reported May 6.

He added that the agreement underlines the transfer of technology to Iran for making the equipment rather than buying produced goods.

Tafazoli added circumstances are also being studied to pave the ground for exporting the products in future to neighbor countries such as Iraq.

The oil industry is one of the most important industries in Iran that have been hit hard by sanctions.

Tehran is now trying to refurbish the industry as soon as possible in order to streamline its oil production.

As a general rule, the government stresses that it will not buy goods from abroad as much as possible. Rather, it says tis post-sanction cooperation with foreigners will be limited to importing technology and fund.
Tehran, Iran, May 6

By Mehdi Sepahvand - Trend:

It will not be clear how much good it will do if only ceasefire is established in Syria and what follows it is left unanswered, said Ali Akbar Velayati, a senior advisor to Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Just announcing ceasefire is not the right thing to do, rather, a ceasefire should come as part of a substantial political solution that is accepted by the Syrian government and nation, he told IRNA news agency May 6.

Those who push for a ceasefire should recognize the territorial integrity of Syria, the rights of the legal government of Syria and the Syrian nation, disarming terrorists, and moving non-Syrians out of the country, the Iranian official demanded.

Velayati who was speaking in Beirut, Lebanon on the sidelines of a political meeting, also pointed to his meeting with Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah earlier the day, expressing happiness over friendly ties between Tehran and Hezbollah.

He also hope that trade relations between Iran and Lebanon in particular grow stronger than before.
So smart, they can't help bragging about it - Obama's Foreign Policy Guru Boasts of How the Administration Lied to Sell the Iran Deal

Samuels's profile is an amazing piece of writing about the Holden Caulfield of American foreign policy. He's a sentimental adolescent with literary talent (Rhodes published one short story before his mother's connections won him a job in the world of foreign policy), and high self regard, who thinks that everyone else is a phony. Those readers who found Jeffrey Goldberg's picture of Obama in his March Atlantic profile refreshing for the president's willingness to insult American allies publicly will be similarly cheered here by Rhodes's boast of deceiving American citizens, lawmakers, and allies over the Iran deal. Conversely, those who believe Obama risked American interests to take a cheap shot at allies from the pedestal of the Oval Office will be appalled to see Rhodes dancing in the end zone to celebrate the well-packaged misdirections and even lies--what Rhodes and others call a "narrative"--that won Obama his signature foreign policy initiative.

[...]

In Rhodes's "narrative" about the Iran deal, negotiations started when the ostensibly moderate Hassan Rouhani was elected president, providing an opening for the administration to reach out in friendship. In reality, as Samuels gets administration officials to admit, negotiations began when "hardliner" Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was still president. It was Rhodes who framed the Iran deal as a choice between peace and war, and it was Rhodes who set up a messaging unit to sell the deal that created an "echo chamber" in the press. "[Al Monitor reporter] Laura Rozen was my RSS feed," says Tanya Somanader, the 31-year-old who managed @TheIranDeal twitter feed. "She would just find everything and retweet it."
Possible changes to double jeopardy laws in the ACT would see prosecutors able to use fresh evidence to retry people previously acquitted of serious crimes.

Attorney-General Simon Corbell introduced changes to the laws to the Legislative Assembly on Thursday, drawing criticism from the ACT Law Society.

ACT Attorney-General Simon Corbell Credit:Jay Cronan

First announced in September, the changes would see people acquitted of serious offences able to face retrial in cases where the process is found to have been tainted or where fresh and compelling evidence is identified.

Protections would also be introduced to balance the rights of the accused person, Mr Corbell said.
A dose of dirt and a fix of fun are the focus of a fitness program launched on Friday to fight childhood obesity in ACT and Queanbeyan school students.

The ActewAGL Swing Into Life Program will engage school students in a free 90-minute activity course of climbing tyres, monkey bars and balance beams to encourage healthy living.

Campbell High School students take part in the B.FIRM launch of ActewAGL Swing into Life program. Credit:Elesa Kurtz

ACT Chief Minister Andrew Barr officially launched the program as part of the ACT government's Healthy Weight Initiative, with a target of zero growth in the rate of ACT obesity.

Mr Barr said enjoyable exercise was necessary for young people to engage in active living.
A former teacher charged with historic child abuse has been committed to stand trial in the ACT Supreme Court.

David Kisun, 69, pleaded not guilty to three charges of indecently assaulting a male for offences that allegedly occurred between February and December in 1982.

He was one of four former teachers charged last year after a major investigation into historical child sexual abuse in the ACT in the 1980s.

Kisun declined to give evidence or call any witnesses when he faced the ACT Magistrates Court on Friday.

Magistrate Bernadette Boss committed him to stand trial on the three alleged offences in the higher court. 
The Greens' Shane Rattenbury tabled new freedom of information legislation on Thursday, after months of negotiation and about 60 drafts.

Mr Rattenbury said the bill would take the ACT "from being one of the least open FOI jurisdictions in the country to being one of the best".

Shane Rattenbury: Has tabled a new freedom of information regime for Canberra. Credit:Jay Cronan

But he has had to compromise on Cabinet papers, which Mr Rattenbury had wanted treated like any other government document, but which will be given a special exemption.

The bill requires government departments to publish incoming-minister briefs, question-time briefs, and estimates and annual reports briefs three years after they're written, unless publishing is against the public interest. Ministers' diaries must also be published and "must include all the appointments and meetings that relate to the minister's ministerial responsibilities".
Large sections of the Canadian province of Alberta have been ablaze as a massive wildfire continues to burn abated, causing a state of emergency to be declared, Sputnik reported.



The fire, which authorities are calling "catastrophic," began Sunday in the oil sands region and had grown five times its original size by Thursday. The so-called Fort McMurray Fire has already prompted over 88,000 evacuations and destroyed more than 1,600 structures in the town of Fort McMurray.



The fire is currently burning between 800 C and 1,000 C, making it so hot that officials believe only rain will be able to stop it.



"Temperatures are expected to remain high, with a glimmer of hope on the horizon as a cold front approaches," CBC News reported on Thursday. "It could, however, bring lightning with it, possibly starting more fires. It is a nearly impossible situation."



The intense heat has limited air operations and made it difficult for the over 150 firefighters currently on the ground to contain it.



There was a mild winter and not a lot of meltwater from the mountain snowpack. Now, a stale air mass has been sitting over Alberta, and it led to very low humidity. Then there was an early, hot spring, and everything got very dry. Then on top of that, it got windy," Mike Wotton, a research scientist with the Canadian Forest Service and professor at the University of Toronto told the CBC.



This type of wildfire, called a "crown fire," occurs when the tops of conifers, often referred to by the more generic phrase 'pine trees,' which burn much faster than deciduous trees, catch fire and spread across a forest canopy.



Scientists are now warning that massive fires such as the McMurray Fire will increase in frequency as the Earth's atmosphere continues to heat up as a result of global warming due to climate change.

"Climate change models and research all point to the idea that fire season is going to be longer in the coming years, and the fires will be more severe," David Andison, adjunct professor with the faculty of forestry at the University of British Columbia, told CBC. "It will really just be the new normal."

On Thursday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that the government will be matching all donations to the Canadian Red Cross to assist those who are displaced or affected by the fire.

"The outpouring of goodwill and compassion from Canadians right across the country has not only been inspirational, it has been entirely characteristic of who we are and the fundamental human values we share as Canadians," Trudeau said.
Sydney chairman Andrew Pridham has apologised unreservedly to Eddie McGuire after discovering comments the Collingwood president made about salary cap cheating were referring to NRL club Parramatta and not AFL club Greater Western Sydney.

Pridham had on Thursday questioned whether the AFL should issue McGuire with a "please explain", believing that McGuire had "basically said that GWS are cheating the salary cap" during a discussion on Triple M.

An irate McGuire hit back at Pridham on Friday morning.

"We do need to address some accusations that are completely false and defamatory actually," McGuire said on Triple M.
Macquarie Group's chief executive Nicholas Moore hasn't lost his zeal for the top job as he delivered a record annual profit on Friday and cautioned of moderating earnings growth.

Mr Moore, who took the reins as chief from Allan Moss in 2008, told Fairfax Media he was just as committed to the role despite his tenure and the prospect of a more challenging environment for earnings after posting a $2.06 billion profit.

Macquarie chief executive Nicholas Moore. Credit:Anthony Johnson

That eclipsed the prior record, Mr Moss' final result in 2008, which saw the company book a $1.8 billion result.

"Every profit that Allan handed down (as CEO) was a record and we had years of very good profitability," Mr Moore said. "I'm not sure that's the test (to step aside) ... I feel very committed."
In the lead-up to the federal election there are a lot of last-minute parliamentary reports being released. What happens next has a big question mark hanging over it.

This week the latest report to being handed down was a parliamentary joint inquiry into impaired consumer loans, which calls for a range of recommendations that should be made regardless of who wins the election.

A key focus of the inquiry was to look at whether the banks used constructive defaults to impair loans by getting the loan revalued to change the loan to value ratio. It looked at the role of property valuers and insolvency practitioners. The key targets were Commonwealth Bank's acquisition of BankWest and ANZ Bank's acquisition of Landmark, both which resulted in many people suffering hugely.
Economists say the government has failed to deliver on its 'ideas boom' mantra, with few new measures outlined in the budget designed to drive growth and innovation.

Under the government's flagship National Innovation and Science Agenda, unveiled in December, the Coalition committed $1.1 billion towards helping Australia transition away from the mining boom.

The budget has failed to deliver on the government's ideas boom mantra, observers say. Credit:Andrew Meares

But experts say the measures, as well as two new policies outlined in the budget, fail to go far enough to help drive sustainable growth.

"It is difficult to find any further progress on the ideas boom," Professor Roy Green, dean of the University of Technology Sydney's Business School, said.
Death of Bobby Sands

Britain was put on a nationwide security alert, with potential assassination targets in the government and Royal Family under special guard, as a wave of violence washed over West Belfast following the death of IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands.The 27-year-old MP for Fermanagh and South Tyrone had been on hunger strike for 66 days, protesting rules in Maze Prison that denied political status to IRA prisoners.

A rioter uses a slingshot against British soldiers in the Falls Road area of Belfast after the death of Bobby Sands. Credit:AP

East-West fights to survive

The chairman of East-West airlines, John Riley, branded the proposed two-airline agreement "signed in secret" by the Federal Government, Ansett and TAA as "the most appalling decision in Australian aviation history". The increase of routes for the trunk operators and their control over the allocation of new routes would threaten East-West's ability to continue and would degrade regional air services.
ABC boss Michelle Guthrie called for the removal of the piece from Quadrant. Credit:Peter Braig It was an implicit but obvious-enough way of saying that Aly's nomination was some form of tokenism, the product of an informal quota system, if you like. And here we come to the crunch - if it is insulting to imply non-white Australians are Logie-worthy only through informal affirmative action, how do we justify introducing formal quota systems for anyone who isn't a white man - the only person we can be sure got his job because of his innate talent and unstinting diligence? It may seem paradoxical but the Aly-Chin Logie idiocy is the very reason the ABC should adopt policies of soft affirmative action. The spectacle demonstrated very clearly, just in case we were in doubt, how weird we still are about race, and how hostile an environment the media still is for non-white Australians. It showed how incapable we are of talking about ethnicity in an appropriate way, of how lost we are when it comes to referencing race when it's necessary and looking beyond it when it's not.

The Logie controversy also highlighted how profoundly stunted the media industry is when it comes to acknowledging that Australia has among its ranks, you know, like, some Aboriginal people and some Muslim people and lots and lots of Asian people and even some black people and disabled people. It also has lots of lady-people. Some of them are overweight and don't wear make-up and some - even more horrible - are over 50 and look like it. Reality television is criticised for many good reasons, but it is actually the one sector of television broadcasting that represents what Australia really is like. Shows such as My Kitchen Rules, and Goggle Box contain a mix of ethnic backgrounds that is a normal reflection of modern Australia, much more so than shows such as Home and Away and Neighbours, which are supposed to be iconic representations of the national character. Even the dreaded home renovation shows represent one of the only places on TV where you can see a woman who isn't in full make-up. Within such a distorted context, advancing your career as a non-white male must be a painfully delicate exercise, at least at times.

If you deviate from the norm, or even the median, you essentially have two choices. You can incorporate your ethnicity, your race, your disability or your weight (if you're a woman) into your "personal brand" by acknowledging your difference and talking about it, and perhaps showing leadership to what comedian Tina Fey calls "normals", that is, non-celebrities. Or, you cannot talk about your difference in the hope you will not be singled out as an unwitting representative of your group, because all you want to do is get on with your job without the bother of being a poster-child/whipping boy for a minority, just because you happen to belong to it. I don't know Aly but I suspect he oscillates, frustrated, between these two polarities. Working women who face workplace discrimination have an analogous battle: do I openly acknowledge my femininity, and all that comes with it - babies and breast pumps and the fear of being called bossy - and thereby define the terms of my own battle? Or do I shut up about all that and just try to pass? The problem with trying to pass is it means shutting down parts of yourself that will inevitably overflow messily into your work life - literally, in the case of any breastfeeding mother who returns to work and yet baulks, strangely enough, at the prospect of discussing lactation-related emergencies with her boss. The only antidote to the tyranny of compartmentalisation is workplaces that encourage diversity, but in a way that is sensible, not self-congratulatory, so as not to place unnecessary pressure on the people they're trying to support.
In the late 1980s he resigned from the Labor party in disgust, following changes to the uranium mining policy and bank deregulation policy. Kaye then began working with community independent candidates in Newtown where he developed a passion for sensible urban planning, genuine community consultation and participatory democracy. This ultimately led him to joining the Greens in 1997. He first stood as a Greens candidate in 1998 and was the lower house campaign coordinator for the 1999 NSW state election. His leadership was vital to the successful election of two Greens candidates, Lee Rhiannon and Ian Cohen, to the upper house of the NSW Parliament, a first for the Greens at that time. The party's electoral success heralded Kaye's foray into the parliamentary arena, working as a volunteer in the office of Lee Rhiannon. His proudest work in this role was the drafting of legislation redirecting funding from the wealthiest private schools to the public education system. This honoured a commitment that the Greens took to the 1999 election. While the bill was not passed, the campaign in support of it established Kaye's and the Greens' commitment to supporting public education. Kaye always saw high quality, universal and free public education as a fundamental marker of any civilised and fair society. During the time in Lee Rhiannon's office he travelled the state delivering workshops on the effects of climate change, and the solution offered by a rapid transition away from a fossil fuel dependent economy towards a clean energy jobs-rich future. His years of academic and teaching experience made him a highly-effective political communicator, and he began to build a distinctive media profile in education funding policy and renewable energy advocacy. In 2004 Kaye was the lead Greens NSW senate candidate, however he narrowly missed being elected due to opaque preference deals. In 2007 he was elected as Greens MP to the upper house of the NSW Parliament. There he joined with fellow Greens MPs Lee Rhiannon, Sylvia Hale and Ian Cohen.

Using this platform to build on his education advocacy, he became a nationwide authority on schools funding policy. It was often his data analysis of education funding and his ability to explain its unfairness and its destructive impact on Australian society that informed the political debate on school funding. Together with unions, teachers, parents and public education advocates Kaye played a key role in pressing Labor to support the Gonski funding model. He recognised this as a significant step forward in education funding, despite his concerns that it still did not adequately prioritise public education. Kaye's passion for public education was not confined to schools. He believed in life-long, high quality and free public education for all. It was this determination that every Australian has access to affordable educational opportunities that saw him at the forefront of the national campaign to save TAFE. He joined with TAFE teachers and students across NSW to protest the privatisation of vocational education and training. He was outraged that TAFE was being constantly undermined by both major political parties while corporate training providers were gaining access to precious public funds. Kaye was always a principled Parliamentary advocate with wide respect across the political divide. When he spoke the chamber listened. To his Greens colleagues he was a constant source of inspiration, energy and good humour.

There were very few topics on which he did not have a strong and considered position. He was effective in banning the pesticide Endosulfan, pushing for truth in labelling for free range eggs and highlighting animal welfare abuses in the greyhound racing industry. He refused to swear his allegiance the Queen and was dogged in his defence of public services. Believing that public education should be free of religious indoctrination, he was instrumental in establishing ethics classes in schools. In a victory for grassroots campaigning, Kaye worked with the community to stop the unwanted, expensive and environmentally destructive Tillegra Dam. In recent years he developed a fresh love for sailing, enjoying many days on the waters of Sydney Harbour, Sussex Inlet and Jervis Bay skidding across the water with his partner Lynne. In January this year John Kaye was diagnosed with cancer and immediately began an intensive and arduous treatment plan. In his last months he used medicinal cannabis to assist with the pain of the cancer and treatment. He often spoke of its benefits and his plans to try and return to Parliament to progress his Bill to make it legal for all who need it. He died peacefully at his Bronte home surrounded by his beloved Lynne, family and close friends. He is survived by Lynne, his sister Dina, and brothers Andrew and Stephen.
Did you know that under Australian law no-one can stop you breastfeeding your baby anywhere you need to? But recently two well-known companies have been forced to apologise to breastfeeding mothers, amid claims of discrimination and shaming.

A staff member at the Movie World theme park asked a breastfeeding mum to move to the public toilet and Jetstar crew told a passenger to "cover up" while she was expressing milk.

The law allows mums to feed in more places than some people realise. Credit:Getty Images

So what right does a mum have to breastfeed in public and what should you do if you think you are being discriminated against?

The Sex Discrimination Act is federal law which makes it illegal to discriminate against someone on the basis of a number of things, one of these being breastfeeding. Breastfeeding includes expressing milk. This is considered sex discrimination because only females breastfeed. In Queensland, the Anti-Discrimination Act has the same effect. This discrimination is unlawful in various aspects of our lives including at work, when accessing education and in the provision of accommodation, goods or services. This means you are legally allowed to breastfeed in cafes, restaurants and pubs, on public transport, in shopping centres and in all public places.
Russian President Vladimir Putin and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe have agreed to develop bilateral relations in all sectors, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Friday, Sputnik reported.

"Today the leaders were able to review in detail how it [joint 2013 statement on developing of Moscow-Tokyo partnership] is being implemented in all directions and sectors - political, trade and economical, investment, and humanitarian. The talks showed both the Russian president's and Japanese prime minister's aim to build up relations in aforementioned spheres," Lavrov said.

Russia and Japan have agreed to cooperate on major investment projects.

"It is clear that trade turnover had and still has a downward trend for various reasons. The two leaders stressed their aim to look for ways to remedy this situation. And not only through development of trade relations, but also through implementation of major investment projects," Lavrov told at a briefing.
In an ideal world, there would be a definitive and fair method of selection. But the world of constitutional law is not an ideal one. The Constitution merely provides: "After each first meeting of the Senate following a dissolution thereof, the Senate shall divide the senators chosen for each state into two classes, as nearly equal in number as practicable; and the places of the senators of the first class shall become vacant at the expiration of three years, and the places of those of the second class at the expiration of six years." So it is a matter for the senators themselves, and it will remain that way unless there is a constitutional amendment  very unlikely. In short, the senators (read a majority of them) can force whatever selection method they like to determine which senators get the long terms and which get the short. As it happens, the Parliament has provided in the Commonwealth Electoral Act a very fair method to determine the matter, but it is not binding on the senators because this clause in the Constitution, unlike many other clauses, does not begin with the crucial words "until the Parliament otherwise provides . . . ". The Electoral Act method is to do a recount of all the votes as if the election were for just six senators in each state, not 12, and the six senators thus notionally elected would get the long terms. All very fair and democratic.

But after the 1987 election, Labor and Democrat senators did the dirty. They just ignored the Electoral Act and resolved, as the Constitution permits, that the order of election would determine who got the long terms. The difference is critical. During the count, those who get a quota are elected before those who get a seat after distribution of preferences. So if the Greens or Xenophons got two clear quotas, they would both be elected before the distribution to second-on-the-list major-party candidates. Under the Electoral Act method, only one Green or Xenophon candidate would win one of the notional six seats that would translate into a six-year term. You watch. The major parties will form an alliance of convenience either with each other or with a minor party to cook up a method so they get as many long-term senators as possible. They could draw lots if they wanted. Or the major parties could be utterly skulduggerous and resolve something like that, where a party gets three or more senators elected, the first three of its senators will get the long terms.

That would give Labor and the Coalition all the long-term senators. It would mean that in the 2019 election for half the senate, all the minor-party senators would face re-election. The Greens would be reduced to five or six senators rather than the nine or 10 it gets in the usual rotation. On a related matter, the determination of the major parties to rid the Senate of minor-party representation appears permanently doomed (skulduggery aside, of course). Support for the major parties has fallen so significantly in the past 35 years, that they cannot prevent one or two non-majors to be elected in every state at a half-Senate election and two to four in every state at a double dissolution. Further, under the new optional-preferential voting system, a lot of votes will exhaust during the count. That is, before the last one or two senators are elected, a vote expresses no preference for any of the live candidates.

It is likely therefore that the last candidate elected will be elected on a lot less than the quota of 7.7 per cent of the vote after preferences. Maybe as low as 2 per cent. It may be that enough votes exhaust that the last two senators are both elected with less than a quota. That will happen if more than a quota (that is 7.7 per cent) of votes exhaust. Given Australians' proclivity for political apathy and laziness, that is very likely. So the idea that the new voting system will clean out the micro-parties and independents may be a bit optimistic from the view of the major parties. The latest Morgan poll has Labor on 32.5 per cent (4.2 quotas); the Coalition on 40.0 per cent (5.2 quotas); Greens 13.5 per cent (1.75 quotas); Independents 13.5 per cent (1.75 quotas).
Why should kids have all the fun? The video game industry's popularity among adults has focused attention on the importance of play to adults as a learning tool and a lucrative market. With 18 million subscribers to World of Warcraft and the video game industry worth $67 billion in 2013, it's inevitable this seemingly marginal activity would attract attention from anthropologists and economists.

But it's more than a study of arrested development. Not only does having fun makes serious business sense, designers are harnessing play as a problem-solving tool and a way of improving our experiences with products.

Rohit Khot's Sweat Atoms (2013). Credit:Tobias Titz

The objective is simple. "Wouldn't work be better if we played more?" asks Miguel Sicart, visiting lecturer from the IT University in Copenhagen. "Wouldn't study be better if we played more? Wouldn't computers be better if we played more?

"In the 20th century there was a lot of work done on play in terms of children's learning and cognitive psychology and [even asking] do animals play?" he explains. Now we recognise that "play is a basic way of being human", says Sicart, whose book Play Matters is a key text in the field of gamification  or "playful design", as Sicart prefers to call it. "As soon as we humans stop needing to provide for our own survival, we start trying to have fun."
Head On is part of a worldwide network of photography festivals, becoming one of the more desirable invitations for those artists who are "on the circuit". It is, then, a little surprising that after seven years of surging popularity the event runs on a shoestring, funded by contributions from a range of corporate and private donors, and staffed by volunteers.

Anybody who went along to successive opening nights last week at the Town Hall and the new Central Park exhibition space would have been struck by the size of the crowds and the enthusiasm with which the work was received. It's not hard to understand why, as photography permeates every part of contemporary life. We have all become photographers because of the mobile phone. Even the most untalented amateur will fluke the occasional good picture.

Sydney loves grand, all-encompassing events, and Head On has become one of the most eagerly awaited festivals in the cultural calendar. This year's show is distributed among 60 public and private venues spread throughout the city, the suburbs, and other parts of the state. Twenty major international photographers will be participating in talks and workshops as guests of the festival.

Laurence Aberhart, Te Hapuku, Te Hauke, Hawke's Bay.

It's part of a familiar pattern whereby state and federal arts funding is withheld from events that seem to be popular, and given to things that have no chance of success. Sculpture By the Sea is another example of a truly popular show that had to wait 14 years for any government assistance, even though it draws audiences in the hundreds of thousands, and generates millions of dollars for the local economy.

It's a sign of a cultural welfare mentality when government funding bodies treat the arts as a poor, marginal activity deserving of pity and charity, while penalising those entrepreneurs who have achieved a result and need to step up to the next level. Every business wants to grow, and arts festivals are no different. There are also limits as to how self-sacrificing one can be, in terms of time and money, for the sake of a pet project.

Moshe Rosenzveig and his colleagues started Head On out of a desire to create a forum for photography in Sydney, when existing public institutions did so little. The art world has a well-worn contempt for anything that is seen as populist, but Head On has embraced the broadest possible audience with a series of open competitions in the fields of Portrait, Landscape, Mobile and Student. There is also an anonymous exhibition called Add On, at Central Park, which includes small pictures by professional photographers and a range of "celebrity" invitees. I've contributed a picture too, although I'm neither photographer nor celebrity.

There is so much to be seen in this year's show it's impossible to do justice to anything. The logical places to start are the displays at Sydney Town Hall and the aMBUSH Project Space at Central Park on Broadway (both until Sunday), which have the highest concentration of work and run for only a short time  another result of shoestring budgets.
The Trap by Melanie Raabe. Among the latter we might include George Cukor's Gaslight, in which an evil Charles Boyer endeavours to convince his wife, played by a luminous but increasingly distraught Ingrid Bergman, that she is going mad. This he achieves by gradually isolating her from the outside world "for her own good", a now classic move in the pantheon of domestic noir's bad marriages. Publishers have yet to adopt domestic noir as a selling point, preferring the more familiar "psychological thriller", while assuring readers that if they loved Flynn's Gone Girl (2012) or Hawkins' Girl on the Train (2015), then this is the "read-in-one-sitting, edge-of-your-seat" book for you. Painkiller by N. J. Fountain. Despite the publishing world's slow adoption of the term, there have already been several attempts by critics to identify exactly what "domestic noir" entails, and why it has risen to prominence. Suggestions include the observation that in an online world of happy snaps celebrating the idyllic life of the perfect couple, domestic noir tells us that what is going on behind the scenes is far from fine. Schadenfreude rules.

Another, sadly convincing, argument is that domestic noir has emerged as a commentary on the times in which we live, with domestic violence rife across the globe. Every age gets the crime fiction it deserves. More prosaic, but plausible, is the possibility that as more people seek publication in the field of crime fiction, they are choosing to write about what they know best  relationships, especially marriage. No longer do wannabe crime writers have to shadow a private eye or a willing police informant. In domestic noir, research may begin and end in the kitchen. As a result, while once upon a time it was women who sought to disguise their gender in crime fiction by hiding behind their initials, in the world of domestic noir it is more likely to be the men. This would include both S. J. Watson, whose publishers advised him to adopt the S. J. in seeking admittance to a subgenre directed at a female readership. And N. J. Fountain, the author of Painkiller. True to genre, Painkiller presents us with a once-independent woman now trapped in her own home. As Monica tells us (the first-person narration of the central character is a common characteristic), five years ago she fell down a set of steps, lost the child she was carrying, and seriously damaged her sciatic nerve. Since that time, the formerly successful theatrical agent has lived a kind of half-life with her "Angry Friend", as Monica identifies the chronic neurasthenic pain for which she takes a cocktail of drugs that causes memory loss and insomnia. Then there's Dominic, her mild-mannered advertising executive husband, hovering on the stairs, who may or may not be trying to kill her.

Other suspects include the Polish cleaner, her Indian doctor, her arty best friend and her solicitous masseur, not forgetting her absent sister and the nice detective who wants to know why Dominic has bought a gun. Most of the action, however, happens in Monica's head as she does daily battle with her Angry Friend while trying to understand how she could possibly have written an elegant suicide note and completely forgotten about it. Monica ruminates tediously. Readers of domestic noir will be familiar with the seemingly interminable self-doubt and self-delusion that characterise the central character's path to enlightenment. And then there's the twist  there's always a twist. Melanie Raabe, a first-time German author, takes the twist to another convoluted extreme. Her narrator, Linda, is a successful literary author who has written a crime novel, Blood Sisters, to trap the man who murdered her sister Anna about 12 years earlier. This cunning ploy initiates some pointed asides about the ways in which the literary world looks down on crime as a genre. Linda, as she tells the reader, has been trapped by agoraphobia in her luxurious home for 11 years: "It's not a wide world, my world, but it is safe. At least that's what I thought." Nevertheless, with a fair amount of trepidation and a great deal of planning, Linda is about to invite a stranger into her home, a journalist who is keen to interview her about her new book. Or is he? With the arrival of the attractive Levin, everything goes skew-whiff as what might just be the longest interview in fiction begins to unfold, interspersed by dramatic scenes from Blood Sisters, which could be the better crime novel. The tables turn and turn again, while the reader's trust in the narrator's credibility is tested to the max. Even Linda thinks she might be delusional and mad. But wait, isn't that what the woman in domestic noir is meant to think?
Freedom for Sasha comes at a price, nevertheless. She is made to work as an interrogator of political prisoners  her family's associates among them  cleverly extracting confessions and denunciations from her victims, some of whom she had known all her life. Inevitably, intrigues and double-dealing and the pitfalls of her work trap Sasha. She is disgraced and finds herself exiled to the Belarusian city of Brest on the Polish border.

Thomas, for his part, also becomes the victim of rivalry and intrigue and of his own arrogance, too. He is packed off to Poland to a position far more lowly than the heights he occupied in Berlin. And so, in the final part of this long novel the two principal characters meet, as emissaries of their governments in the planning of a historical pageant in Brest  a show of Russian-German solidarity  that was destined never to occur.

Good People is a richly textured panorama of German and Russian life and society in the years leading up to the violent (and predictable) collapse of the Russo-German peace pact. Weaving this fabric must have involved a prodigious amount of research. I cannot vouch for the accuracy of the vivid details, but I can attest to their effect. This ample novel lives most memorably through Baram's vignettes of people, dwellings, cities, landscapes and the like that seem to lie, at times, at the periphery of its central concerns.

Those concerns puzzled me. Thomas is an enigmatic character. We learn little about him except that he was once married and has strong but ambivalent feelings towards his widowed mother, who lives in isolation in a shuttered apartment, and towards his mother's former housekeeper-cum-confidante, the Jewish Frau Stein. A passing reference to Robert Musil's The Man Without Qualities (banned by the Nazis) suggests that Thomas suffers from a modern deracination similar to Musil's central character's. As does Sasha in a way. Despite her urge to find and save her brothers, she too seems to have no convictions, no guiding principles to her life  at least until the very end, where both she and Thomas discover something of value.

Throughout, I felt I was missing something. I have no idea what that might be, but the reference to Dostoyevsky in the blurb kept nagging at me. On the surface, there is nothing here of the obsessiveness or demonic energy of Dostoyevsky  a fervent anti-Semite, by the way. Baram, according to the publicity material, is a member of a prominent left-wing Israeli political family much concerned with the plight of Palestinians. Is there something here, I wondered, which the current political orthodoxy in Israel would find as shocking as Dostoyevsky's contemporaries found in The Possessed or in The Brothers Karamazov?
Farewell to the Father, by Tim Elliott.

When I was a child there was a tipping point in my father's behaviour. My mother would wail, "Your father won't take his hectic pills, and now it's too late". We knew the signs  the extreme happiness, the whole 1.9 metres of him concentrating on some physical task. Then there was the slippery slope, often only hours later. "Even the cats in the house are f---ing female. I'm going to kill myself."

I'm writing about my own father as I review Tim Elliott's book about his father. Dr Max Elliott was bipolar and his disease finally killed him, when he successfully  if you could call it that  took his own life. Farewell to the Father is a loving book, written by a son who has been left with reverberations, including depression, that will stay with him for the rest of his life.

Veterans of war suffer post-traumatic stress disorder. Survivors of chaotic, abusive, violent childhoods often do too. What is dreadful about the insidious onset of bipolar in Elliott's father's case, was the gradual erosion of a larger-than-life figure, a man prone to rages but also full of love for his work as a doctor, for his life, and for his family, into a shambling shambolic wreck.

Elliott, the youngest of four children, had to grow up ducking and weaving amid his father's volatile moods. He became increasingly adaptive, desperately trying to protect himself  and his mother  from the tyrannical rule of the head of the household.
After considering more than 2500 actors, Disney has found the man to play young Han Solo for the Star Wars character's spin-off film.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, 26-year-old Alden Ehrenreich has beaten out a huge number of hopefuls to play Harrison Ford's iconic role.

Ehrenreich, who is in final contract negotiations for the part, is best known for his role in the Coen Brothers film Hail, Caesar!, released this year.

However, he has been popping up on screen for a few years now, having had a small part in Woody Allen's 2013 film Blue Jasmine as well as starring in the 2013 romantic fantasy film Beautiful Creatures (for which he received a Teen Choice Award nomination for "best liplock" with co-star Alice Englert).
Q: How did you discover Lady Susan? I never read it until this year, and I couldn't believe how funny it is. A: It was in the late '90s, and I got a copy of Northanger Abbey to reread, and they had Lady Susan and some other fragments in the same edition. I was fascinated by it and thought it was too good not to be known. Q: Why do you think it's been overlooked by filmmakers, when there have been so many other Austen adaptations? A: It's so funny and clever, but it's kind of hard to read. I consider it a gold mine or a diamond mine, where there are a lot of good things in it, but it's kind of in an inaccessible form. That's why it seemed like a really positive thing to adapt it, so that I could pull out the diamonds and put them in a setting. Lines like, "Facts are such horrid things". Q: When did you become an Austen fan?

A: When I was having my weird sophomore year in university, people recommended Jane Austen, and the one lying around was Northanger Abbey. I read it and hated it. I told anybody who would listen how overrated and terrible she was. I was without Jane Austen for several years. Then, shortly after university, my sister encouraged me to look at Pride and Prejudice. And I loved it and read everything and became a total Jane Austen nut. Q: You also wrote a novel based on Lady Susan. Why did you decide to write a novel as well as make a film? A: I didn't think Lady Susan was really finished, and I was doing a lot of stuff with it when I was adapting it. And I really felt there was another story there, so I tricked Little, Brown into committing to the novel. Q: How scary was it to rewrite the work of one of your literary idols? A: Not scary at all. It was the perfect book to do that. I think the form of it is so flawed  and flawed from her point of view. It gave me the opportunity to dramatise what was in this archaic form that didn't suit her genius.

Q: What makes you think she felt it was flawed? A: I think this was quite far from being a finished piece. If she were really going to publish it, she would have done a lot more with it. The things she did in the same period, they started out epistolary, and then she shifted them to the dramatised novels that we know, Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility. Then she changed the titles; she gave them the sonorous, important noun titles. So I changed the title to Love & Friendship. Q: There's almost no redemption in this story. Lady Susan never realises the errors of her ways. She's more like an Oscar Wilde character than a Jane Austen heroine. Do you think it's more satirical and slightly more contemporary than her other books? A: I don't like to say that. That's something that's said a lot now, like if you want to sell people on going to see something that's set in the past. They say, "Oh this has a snarky, modern sensibility." And I don't want to say that at all, because I rather prefer the 18th century. For me, it's not a good thing to say it's contemporary. Q: What do you prefer about the 18th century?
Wilma Reading spent four decades touring the world and performing with some of the world's biggest stars. Credit:Getty But a fortnight later a letter arrived offering her a job with his 17-piece swing band performing three nights a week in Brisbane. "It was like a dream just dropped at my feet," says Reading. "Mum and Dad had a meeting with me and Dad gave me six months to see how I went, on the condition I stayed with his sister," she says. "I started learning all these Ella Fitzgerald songs and Sarah Vaughan and Della Reese, all these American ladies; we didn't have any in Australia at that time." "Nobody then knew what an Australian looked like, especially someone Aboriginal." Credit:Theresa Ambrose Her six-month gig swiftly turned into more as Reading picked up more and more work. With a three-octave vocal range and versatility of styles, Reading was quickly in demand. It was, she concedes, very trusting of her parents. "And I was very independent."

Soon Reading was singing in hotels, coffee shops and jazz venues all over Brisbane, had saved money and told her parents she'd found her career. Wilma Reading was the first Australian guest on the The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson in the '70s. Credit:Getty Before long she'd moved to Sydney and quickly became a regular on Channel Nine's variety television show Bandstand, and kept up her nightclub singing. From Sydney it was on to Melbourne, where she worked at Channel Nine, appearing on Graham Kennedy's program. Nine had their own agency at the station and when someone pulled out of a month-long singing contract in Singapore, Reading happily stepped up. "I expected to be away from Australia for a month but I came back five years later  with a husband!"

Her career, she says, "snowballed" from that first international gig, and after gigs in India and throughout Asia (where she met her husband, who would go on to manage her), she landed a residency in Las Vegas. And in the '60s it was, she confirms, as glamorous as you'd expect. "It was at its peak  Sammy Davis, the Rat Pack were there and anybody who was anybody went to Vegas," she says. "Everyone used to dress up; the men in tuxedos and the women in long gowns. Not like today  people go in jeans and thongs!" In her various stints in Vegas she met Liberace ("I was touring with the Japanese ballet and he'd come in after his show and sit up the back  I think he probably had his eye on a couple of the little Japanese dancers!") and Sammy Davis Junior ("But not Frank; he was always surrounded by bodyguards") among others, before perhaps her biggest break of all when she was invited to audition to tour with legendary bandleader Duke Ellington, with whom she went on to tour the US. Everybody, she says, sings Duke Ellington songs, "but to be there on stage with Duke  there's nothing greater". Reading was the first Australian Ellington had ever met  a common occurrence throughout her career. She was the first Australian guest on the The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson in the '70s, and the first Australian comedian Morecambe and Wise, huge stars at the time, had met when they invited Reading to be a regular performer on two seasons of their prime-time comedy series.

"Nobody then knew what an Australian looked like, especially someone Aboriginal," she says. "People didn't know what I was as I'm a mixture of races, but it was actually positive for me: when I was in Asia, like in Philippines, people thought I was part Filipino. Then when I was in Tokyo they thought I was Eurasian, when I went to India they thought I was Anglo-Indian. In America, they thought I was part Mexican. I thought 'Wow, I can fit in anywhere!' It was actually an advantage for me." Reading's life story  soon to be immortalised on stage by Ilbijerri Theatre Company, possibly starring Reading herself  lurches from one amazing anecdote to another; there's the time she met her idol, Ella Fitzgerald at Ronnie Scott's in London, the time she helped James Bond composer John Barry with a song she recorded for a Julie Andrews film. She toured the globe everywhere from Russia to Iceland, and worked in musicals, radio, television and even starred alongside Blaxploitation action star Jim Brown in the 1979 film Pacific Inferno. When her husband died Reading, who declines to reveal her age ("I'm old enough!"), moved back to Cairns and for the past 12 years has been living a decidedly more low-key life of semi-retirement, singing now and then at local charity events or family gatherings.
Last time I visited Wild Feathers they were happily retro country rockers. I've either been away a long time or someone has spiked the drinks in the Wild Feathers' rehearsal room. Now the four-piece are a retro classic rock band. How classic? Leave Your Light On is glitzy power pop made for satin flares and bare chests, Happy Again has a bit of Stones swagger in a creamy vocal outfit, you can hear Pink Floyd on more than one occasion, with space rock and elliptical sounds to the fore. That includes one moment when they throw you by mixing something that sounds like Money with a very Eagles-style groove and the line, "You got the money, you got the drugs, I got the time". While Don't Ask Me To Change leans into dreamy classic rock, Help Me Out is the Eagles again, but this time as imagined by Coldplay. Speaking of, Sleepers is a grand, twinkling Coldplay song built for a stadium full of wristbands lighting up. This should be a bit icky, or sad as when Kings of Leon threw life away and become stadium bores, but there's an annoying likeability about these songs. BERNARD ZUEL

Tinpan Orange's sound has always been unmistakeable, thanks in part to Emily Lubitz's uniquely sensual vocals, but four years after the release of Over the Sun, the band have honed their indie-folk offerings to produce their most cohesive work yet. With its simple acoustic palette and intimate arrangements, it's tempting to call this a stripped back album; but where there's less clutter, there's more space, and though there are fewer hooks, there's more finesse. It's darker, too, as the name suggests  these cautionary tales are recited by a genuinely bruised heart. Rich Man is a haunting reflection on the price of privilege, showcasing Lubitz's experimentation with her falsetto range, while the brokenhearted Diary tests oriental melisma over brooding cello. The album treads lightly through the pain, however, delicate acoustic guitar soothes the melancholia throughout and the peppy rhythms of Hear From Me are reminiscent of 2012 single Barcelona. Expect to get lost somewhere on the way from A to B: there are few landmarks because the individual songs are not important here. Love Is A Dog treads the fine line between seamlessness and monotony, inhabiting the former territory with superb ease. Tinpan Orange play the Vanguard, Newtown, on May 20. JESSIE CUNNIFFE

Peter Dasent

SONGS FOR SOLO PIANO (ARM)



In his liner notes Peter Dasent says that when he lets his fingers fall on a piano keyboard "sometimes it's rubbish, and sometimes a bit of magic happens". There's only magic on this first solo album from the leader of beloved Sydney band the Umbrellas. A lifelong Beatles fan, Dasent recorded it at London's Abbey Road Studios. But the real wizardry lies in the way Dasent's mind works. He composes with the same absence of artifice with which a child builds sandcastles. His pieces are playthings and the improviser in him delights in toying with them as the moment dictates, whether expanding on a composed idea, or taking puckish right-angled turns. His oeuvre lends itself to the latter, embracing everything from ragtime, blues and jazz to more contemplative pieces that carry echoes of Satie and are about investigating a mood, whether pensively or by warping it into something marvellously misshapen. Always an aura of enchantment and veiled humour hovers nigh, so one is drawn into a world of musical make-believe as surely as Alice was into Wonderland. JOHN SHAND
A huge Quaker Oats box is displayed at the company's headquarters in Chicago on Dec. 4, 2000. (Photo : Getty Images/ Tim Boyle)

Quaker Oats is facing a new lawsuit over its false advertising claim that it is offering 100 percent natural oatmeal. Tests showed the presence of the herbicide glyphosate deemed as a human carcinogen.



A class-action lawsuit was filed in Federal District Courts in New York and California, claiming the Chicago-based food company's oatmeals have high levels of glyphosate weed killer. It is the same weed killer found in Monsanto's Roundup that was labeled as cancer-causing by the WHO in 2015.



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The suit alleged that Quaker Oats is deceiving consumers by capitalizing on the market's demand of healthful, natural products, RT reported. The company responded to the accusations by saying glyphosate is not used in its milling process. According to them, they are implementing a strict cleansing procedure in producing high quality products such as oatmeals.



In a separate report, the plaintiff's lawyers for the Richman Law Group paid for a test conducted by a St. Louis laboratory in California. Using liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry, the experiment revealed 1.18 parts per million in a sample of Quaker Oats Quick 1-Minute. It is nearly 4 percent of the allowable limit of the 30 parts per million by the EPA, according to New York Times.



The lawsuit also alleges other products not part of the test, including Quaker Oats Old-Fashioned and Quaker Steel Cut Oats of having significant levels of the cancer-causing chemical. Glyphosate is among the world's commonly used pesticides for corn, canola, sugar beets and soy grown in America.



After Glyphosate was classified as a possible carcinogen, the EPA has set the average daily level intake of glyphosate at 1.75 milligrams per kilogram, while the European Union has announced a daily intake limit not exceeding to 0.3 milligrams per kilogram.



Kim Richman, the lead attorney for the plaintiffs told the publication that the issue is not about the presence of glyphosate, but the company's false advertising. He said that the company owned by PepsiCo is advertising the products as 100 percent natural, when in fact it contains glyphosate that is not natural.



It was not the first time for the company to be sued over wrong labeling. The company settled a class-action suit in 2014 after they were sued over trans fat content in its products. As part of the deal, Quaker Oats remove trans fat from its products, Instant Quaker Oatmeal and Oatmeal to Go.



The plaintiffs are demanding PepsiCo to reformulate the oatmeal products, reveal the presence of glyphosate in the label and refund their purchases. Additional lawsuits will be filed in other states by the plaintiffs against Quaker Oats.



Watch the video below about Quaker Oats' latest lawsuit:






Looming presence: Pamela Rabe as Governor Joan Ferguson in Wentworth. In those notes, Williams explains that it is a "memory play" with "considerably delicate or tenuous material"  and through the unconventional expressionistic treatment he preferred, he thought it should aim to get to the truth about things, towards a "more penetrating and vivid expression of things as they are". Here is Rabe at the Belvoir rehearsal studio and she is wearing Amanda's fluffy slippers, frou-frou items that are rather different to the hard-heeled business shoes favoured by black-leather-gloved Governor Ferguson in Wentworth. "The wonderful thing I like about Amanda and the licence that Eamon has brought to this production is by casting me as I am," she says. "Not what you would describe as a little, bird-like woman." Going through the path of exploration to develop her performance, she's discovered Amanda is a highly pragmatic woman  someone abandoned years ago by her drunkard husband and left to bring up her two children, one of whom, Tom (Luke Mullins), is stifled while the other, Laura (Rose Riley), retreats into a delicate world filled with the titular array of tiny glass animals.

Behind closed doors some crazy worlds can form amongst family. "All I need to do is play the circumstances of this world, this desperate world, the Depression between wars," Rabe says. "A single mother in a world where women are dependent, desperate for her children to survive and to spit them out in some sort of an acceptable state." But everything around Amanda conspires to demolish those dreams of the past, in which she saw herself as a desirable young woman with many gentlemen callers. The audience, says Rabe, experiences a chasm between what is in front of their eyes  the tall, robust and mid-50s Rabe-as-Amanda and what is in the delusional dreams of the character's heart. Rabe  who won a Helpmann Award for her first turn as Amanda in 2014, and an AACTA Award for Wentworth's Ferguson last year  is fascinated by Williams' specific instructions about the character, who is supposed to be someone of "great but confused vitality clinging frantically to another time and place". He wrote that she "must be carefully created, not copied from type". "There is much to admire in Amanda," Williams tells us, "and as much to love and pity as there is to laugh at."

"I don't have to be noble but I have to love her," Rabe says of Amanda. "And I do adore her." Like most female leads in Williams' work, she is writ large. "It is no accident that you remember Tennessee Williams for his heroines. Those female characters are great subjects for parody because they are foolish in the way human beings are foolish." Thus we are drawn into their world of unattainable dreams and a mythologised past. "Behind closed doors some crazy worlds can form amongst family, they can lose touch with the real world," Rabe says. "That is [Williams'] specialty, the idea of how you can actually be living in a delusional state, but if you can get somebody to join you in that place you can create another word that is untethered from reality. All sorts of violence and happiness can happen in that world, because it is a planet unto itself. "If anybody comes in and questions that, challenges that or punctures that delusional space, great tragedy can occur. We can all relate to that in a way because we have all grown up in families, with the delusions of families, the crazy love-hate relationships you can have with people you are trapped in enclosed spaces with. Certainly this is one of those." Rabe says The Glass Menagerie, under Flack's direction, "hovers in this dream bubble, a magical space", one that is interwoven with the worlds of the cinema and of memories. Flack's production presents it as a period piece, following Williams' instructions for a screen behind the actors with images and text, almost as if we are seeing hints of their imaginations and memories.
Q: The early-20th-century Russian avant-garde was your favourite era for the visual arts.

A: Certainly that was the era that inspired me when I was at art school  sort of 1906 through 1927 in Russia. There was such a lot that came out there, and I think we're still absorbing it, actually. I keep seeing it reappearing in different ways. I suppose that was the time when painting started to do something that music had already been doing for millennia. Music has always been the only completely nonfigurative art. Music didn't start from attempts to imitate nature; music seems to have come from somewhere else completely, and, of course, in the early part of the 20th century, painters envied that enormously. There was that famous statement, "All art aspires to the condition of music". I think it was Walter Pater who said it. And in the early 20th century, the first abstract painting was an attempt to make something that behaved like music, in visual terms.

Q: Is your visual artwork influenced by work from that period?

A: Well, very certainly, yes. The first painting I ever saw that made me think, "I want to be a painter", was a Mondrian, when I was young. My uncle showed me a little tiny book of Mondrian pictures, and I was so transported by them, I thought, "This is what I want to do". That was the first time in my life that I had any idea of what I wanted to do. I was about nine or 10 at the time. And as soon as I saw those, I thought, "I want to be a painter".
Back in the days when we still made clothes in Australia there were scores of clothing factories in Brunswick. When the knock-off whistle blew, hundreds of clothing machinists and shoemakers, mostly immigrant women, would pour out of the factories onto Brunswick's back streets. Clothing designers and makers Dale and Sharmaine Cornell still make beautiful women's clothes at their Brunswick shop and studio New Model Beauty Queen. Taking an ethical and sustainable stance they use remnant fabric and screen-print it with designs in complementary colours. They have formed a collective called The Cause with other Brunswick designers Amity Gem and Flying Hearts. (143 Sydney Road, Mon-Sat: 11am-6pm, Sun 12pm-5pm, 0404 149 571, nmbq.com.au) If you're after locally made jeans  most are made in overseas sweatshops these days  try Dejour Jeans (542 Sydney Road). They are so zpopular there are sometimes queues out the door.

Pub culture

The first pub in Brunswick was built in 1842. Back then the area was a marshy plateau that the Wurundjeri people called boort moornmount bullarto or very windy country. The pub, called the Retreat Inn, was rebuilt in 1892 and is now the popular Retreat Hotel. Brunswick maintains a strong pub culture with vibrant pubs such as The Union (109 Union Street) offering music from Saturday to Monday and $20 pub meals. The Cornish Arms (163a Sydney Road) offers vegan parmigiana that after a beer or two is just like the real thing. The Edinburgh Castle is the oldest standing pub in the suburb (681 Sydney Road) with bands, DJs and trivia on Wednesday nights.

Little Italy

The waves of immigration and social change are marked in the micro-enclaves along Sydney Road. The new wave of hipsters inhabit the city end, people from the Middle East the north and in the middle are the Greeks and Italians. Here whole blocks are taken up by stores selling bridal wear and bomboniere  Italian wedding gifts. Here you'll also find an outpost of Franco Cozzo and the wonderful Mediterranean Wholesalers. Despite the name, this is a massive retail supermarket dedicated to mostly imported Italian foods, kitchenware and other consumables. Come here for the aisles of pasta, whole salted cod, sausage machines, stove-top coffee makers, dried porcini mushrooms, parmesan cheese and Barolo wine. Sit down in the cafe for a coffee with fresh pastry or a glass of mineral water and panini.
Artist Ilona Nelson was fascinated by The Countess Report when she first looked at its results this year. Its data was not a surprise: women in the visual arts simply don't do half as well as men, even though they make up three-quarters of art school graduates.

Nelson had already been tackling this issue in a positive way by recording women artists through the lens of her own art-making. A photographer, she is also a parent and says it is a common story among women that if they have had children, their art-making gets put on hold or "it is really slow going through child-rearing years".

Emma de Clario was photographed among poppies, through dirty glass for This Wild Song (detail). Credit:Ilona Nelson

"Whereas traditionally for a male artist it is seen as OK for them to go off to the studio for the day," she says. "For women, that is seen as a luxury  if you have spare time, then you can do some art. For artists, you need it to breathe  so you just have to cram it in somewhere and not do the dishes."

Nelson's project, This Wild Song, has multiple arms: a series of portraits of women artists, an online resource listing women artists and their work, and an exhibition element. More than 70 artists are already part of the project, with women of various backgrounds, using diverse media and at particular stages in their art careers. Artists include Nell, Megan Evans, Polixeni Papaetrou, Bindi Cole Chocka, Jacqui Stockdale, MISO, Tai Snaith, Julia De Ville, Michelle Hamer and Catherine Bell.
When museum directors and curators are asked how they select artists for shows, they put the case that their decision-making is "merit-based". It doesn't wash with Elvis Richardson because, according to her cool, plain statistics, many more male artists than female ones appear to have these mysterious quantities of merit.

When Richardson put together The Countess Report, based on data gathered in 2014, she quickly saw the "merit-based" argument was complicated by smoke and mirrors. "It simply isn't a transparent process." Often such decision-making is based on an individual's taste, she says, with curators and directors courting particular artists over extended periods of time, supporting them through their careers.

Elvis Richardson with her work, Televisuals: Do Not Tape Over 2015, installed at Maroondah Artspace Realm, Melbourne. Credit:Sandra Davis

Richardson's report, released on International Women's Day, compiled and analysed statistics on education, prizes, funding, art media coverage, organisations and exhibitions of various kinds. The resulting pie graphs  divided by gender  are stark.

While it found that women now do relatively well in getting funding and winning prizes, their representation in exhibitions  especially solo ones  is skewed very badly against them. Likewise, media coverage consequently reflected men being privileged.
With predictable regularity, they say something offensive . The next day, they insist they didn't mean it like that. Or some other excuse.

They're an act. They know what they're doing.

Kylie Sandilands and Jackie O are not actually dumb.

Then, the other players in this pantomime  right on cue  leap into action.

No strangers to controversy ... Top-rating Kiis FM breakfast hosts Kyle and Jackie O. Credit:Instagram: @kyleandjackieo

Media outlets rehash every detail in shocked tones. (I'm aware of the irony, dear readers.) Social justice types earnestly explain why Kyle Is A Bad Role Model. There is a change.org petition, because there is always a change.org petition. This becomes a separate "news" story. The cycle feeds itself, for days on end.

In directly related news, Kyle and Jackie O is still Sydney's top-rating FM breakfast show.

On Friday, Jackie apologised to Parramatta Eels skipper Kieran Foran. (Foran had taken legal action against Kiis FM over Jackie's incorrect suggestion he was not the father of his second child.) She cried as she told listeners she had spread a "really ugly rumour".
Over the past couple of weeks it has become something of a national sport to ridicule and criticise the annual TV Week Logie Awards, Australian television's "night of nights", which has all but been written off by some sections of the media as an irrelevant sideshow of limited interest.

Well, I say phooey to that.

Bonnie Sveen, who won the most popular new talent Logie in 2014 for her role in Home & Away.

This time next week I intend to be deeply embedded between Gina Liano's bulletproof hair and teak-stained decolletage and the champagne bar at the 2016 Logies, because despite what all the critics say, there is no other event quite like it. Where else can such a vast cross-section of this country's celebrity fauna gather in one room for a night which always delivers plenty of fodder for a gossip columnist.

Indeed the drama is often happening way off stage, like the year Chrissie Swan caused a commotion while en route to the ladies' room during an ad break only to discover her ill-fated path saw her end up in an impenetrable ring of tables, chairs and stars. It was only after she started bouncing hard against the logjam of chairs, jolting a few famous faces, that she finally announced her bladder could not wait much longer and the tables miraculously parted.
Many of William Boyd's novels read like biographies. Some of Nat Tate's "work" still sits on the walls of Boyd's Chelsea home. Congenial, chatty and friendly, Boyd perches on his comfy sofa, surrounded by bulging bookshelves and walls of modest framed drawings, as we talk about writing and inspiration. Some novelists, such as Boyd's friend Ian McEwan, get an image or a situation and spiral out from it, forming a novel around that scene like the layers of a pearl. But Boyd says he won't start writing a book until "the whole thing is completely formed". "When I'm happy with my destination that's when I start the journey of writing," he says.

An eight-hour delay at an airport isn't a problem. It's like three short stories. "It's not rigid; I get ideas while I'm writing and make changes, but I like to have a sense of where I'm going  then I can start on page one with confidence because I'm not going to be sitting there scratching my head thinking 'what happens next?"' Hearing Boyd talk about his writing style, you get the sense of an artisan, rather than an artist. This is not a tortured soul, excoriating his conscience and dredging his psychology for prose. Here is an inspired engineer, building an intricate mechanism of plot, character and setting by scouring the world and his imagination for the highest-quality materials, testing them, drawing up plans, then patiently constructing the parts into the whole. As such, he is a fascinating man to talk to about the craft of writing. He has a muse, but he also has a process.

First there's the core idea. It can be quite simple. For The Blue Afternoon he was living next door to a surgeon, "the busiest man in the world", and got talking to him: "And I thought I'd really like to write a novel about a surgeon." For Sweet Caress, it was even more basic. He'd written two long "birth to death" novels about men "and I thought (next) I should really write a woman's life. And that was the idea. "And once I got that notion  you start with 'what does she do?' I'm very interested in photography, I thought I'll make her a photographer. Then you start researching women photographers and various ideas come up, 'when is she born' and so on. "And once you get the answers to these questions they provoke other questions and this exponential Q&A with yourself goes on and on and gradually you amass the aggregate of information and narrative and the story begins to take shape." For two years he researches. He fills notebooks, draws plans, "I make mistakes and double back".

These days he may visit the places his characters visit. For the most recent book, Waiting For Sunrise, he went to Vienna three or four times  checking where Freud (who features in the story) lived, tracking down the old police headquarters. His next book is set in St Petersburg. He has already visited once but before he starts writing  which will probably be around the end of the year  he wants to visit again, with the leaves on the trees, perhaps go to a village outside the city. But it's not a necessity. "Sometimes I send my imagination," he says  he wrote a novel set in the Philippines and he's never been there. In the beginning he couldn't afford to travel anyway, so he found a method using maps, photographs and books to imagine his way around a city  it works surprisingly well, he says. On his first visit to Berlin he "realised that actually my imagination had done a very good job" when he previously committed it to print. "Sometimes it's better to imagine it  I think you can overload your novel with facts," he says. "Writing a novel you're not like a journalist. You're cherry-picking interesting things. It doesn't have to be systematic, just whatever takes your fancy or does the business, sets the period, sets the time or place." So he's careful to tread lightly and not overwhelm his imagination: "Most of the time you're just getting a sense of the place. It's very unsystematic. You're like a magpie, something glitters and you're drawn to it. It's very undeterminable."

Though the process sounds deliberate, there is a lot of his unconscious at work, Boyd says. Certain ideas will jump out at him from the scenery, or from a newspaper, or from nowhere. He trusts and protects what he calls an "ignorance" about inspiration  for example, "I've decided in this new novel that my central character be very short-sighted. So I will start researching short-sightedness and maybe come up with something interesting. But where did I get that idea from, that when he takes his specs off he's semi-blind? I don't know. My vision is pretty good. But something stirred and the idea emerged and now I will see where that leads me." On the other hand, he knows he can't trust his unconscious too blindly  he quotes F Scott Fitzgerald: "We tell our two or three stories  each time in a new disguise  maybe 10 times, maybe hundred, as long as people will listen." Boyd knows his imagination tends to lead him back to similar themes, ideas or characters that "vaguely obsess me and actually I should maybe steer away from it because it will become repetitive and regular readers will go 'oh god not again'."

He knows he writes about brothers a lot  though he doesn't have one  and he's starting to recognise in his work "a certain type of female character  not really a femme fatal but a feisty, dangerous type of woman". There are plot devices and story tropes that he knows he must give a different spin if he revisits them. But one thing he loves to write about most, he says, is general enough to keep revisiting: the role of luck in people's lives, "in my opinion the dominant factor to any life". His narratives, he says, constantly stress that "things happen" and luck can radically change any plan, any life. He likes to test his characters "to see what resources they have". He's not sorry for them. "They're my creatures." And finally, once everything is in place there's the writing  which takes most of another year. Boyd says he only writes "what fires me up". That said, he does plenty of work to commission, journalism as well as film and TV scripts. Of course, there was the recent Bond book, Solo, which the Fleming family asked him to write. In retrospect he's proud of the work (which received mixed reviews)  "I'll happily put (it) on the shelves with my other novels"  and indeed it is up there, on his 'Bond' shelf alongside all the Fleming books.

But despite this he doesn't seem to quite think of it like his other work  he calls it a "job" and "an interesting thought experiment", and "I wouldn't write another one  not that I'd been asked; it was a one-off deal". Likewise, he doesn't see himself writing any full-length non-fiction. Despite the fact that so much of his work draws on reality  real places, fragments of real dialogue he has seagulled from local pubs, even historical characters given fictive scenes, Boyd prefers the freedom of fiction. And he will always return to the novel, the most free, the most satisfying form of writing. He loves its effortless subjectivity. He loves how it pioneered all the devices later used by cinema, and still uses most of them better. He loves the nuance and subtlety and length and depth. "It's the most generous art form there is," he says, and half remembers a quote to explain his feelings: "Writing a novel is like swimming in the sea."
Fried chicken for breakfast. This is about crispy fried chicken usually served with waffles and maple syrup, not leftover KFC that leaves you feeling dirty and full of regret.

This breakfast dish is traditionally associated with American soul food. If we want to talk about food trends in Perth, then this one is up there.

Mary Street Bakeryas fried chicken ($23) and The May Street Larder's soul sandwich ($23). Credit:Liz Sheehan

There's no doubt that fried chicken isn't the healthiest of breakfasts but as the cookie monster says - it's a "sometimes food".

The variations on this dish are wide. Some serve with pancakes, others with bacon, and chilli features heavily.
Melbourne councillor Stephen Mayne is challenging former Howard and Abbott minister Kevin Andrews at the ballot box, promising to tackle the "capital C conservative" by running as a "true liberal" at the election.

Cr Mayne, a serial candidate, is pitching himself as a Hamer Liberal candidate, attacking Mr Andrews' socially conservative views, which he believes are out of step with modern attitudes.

Shareholder advocate Stephen Mayne. Credit:Justin McManus

"He is a 1950s capital C conservative. These dinosaurs can hide in the Senate in smaller states but Kevin Andrews shouldn't be doing this in Hamer Liberal territory in progressive Melbourne," Cr Mayne told Fairfax Media.

The councillor's bold bid for the seat came as the Victorian Liberal Party was rocked by allegations of ethnic branch stacking in Mr Andrews' seat, with one of the former defence minister's staff resigning after being accused of orchestrating stacks in the Macedonian community.
Apple has lost a legal grapple with a local leather company over the iPhone trademark. (Photo : Getty Images)

Apple is still positive that China will remain one of their biggest profit contributors despite their recent failure in acquiring exclusive rights to use the "iPhone" trademark.



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According to the Business Insider, Apple still loves China for three specific reasons.



First, Apple still believes that they can extract more money from Greater China, which is already giving them huge revenues right after the company established a branch there.



Second, the company sees a shift in the consumers' preference as more Android users are jumping to their iOS-based devices.



And last, China's middle-class population, which appears to be the biggest bulk of Apple product buyers, is expanding more quickly than ever before.



Even so, the tech giant is still faced with several difficulties along considering that a Chinese court has allowed a leather company to brand their bags, wallets, and other leather products with Apple's most prized trademark: iPhone.



According to the state media Legal Daily, the Beijing Municipal High People's Court ruled in favor of the Xintong Tiandi Technology to use the "iPhone" trademark for their leather goods.



The Beijing court said that Apple was not able to prove their argument that the trademark was a "famous brand" in the country.



Apparently, the leather company was way ahead of Apple in terms of the application for the rights to the trademark, which is why the court favored them.



Aside from that, some of Apple's product sharing apps such as the iBooks Store and iTunes Movies have been ordered to cease operations within Chinese borders.



Despite this, the company remains adamant at conquering the Chinese smartphone market considering that it is now dubbed as the world's biggest with 30 percent of the total global market share.



According to BGR, Apple was able to close the first quarter of 2016 with 51.1 million iPhones sold, which is significantly lower than their sales during the same period last year.


Illustration: Rocco Fazzari This is the Turnbull that finds himself most comfortably at home with all elements of the Liberal and National parties. The Coalition's conservatives and progressives may be divided on same sex marriage and climate change, but they can unite around Malcolm the successful businessman, capitalist, wealth generator. And the emphasis on investment and economics is a neat fit with the Liberal party's greatest area of perceived strength  as the party that can best manage the economy. Illustration: Rocco Fazzari And now Turnbull is implicitly posing his canny investment persona as a model for the nation. As he launches Australia into an election campaign, the most contentious policy differences are investment policies. Two are central.

One is negative gearing for real estate, Turnbull's own starter-kit for investment success and one that a total of 2,033,973 Australians were also pursuing in 2013-14, according to the tax office. The government is promising to preserve the current system intact while Labor proposes to curb it. The other is company tax. The government says that Australia's greatest economic need is investment in the non-mining sector, and that cutting company tax is the way to attract it. Labor agrees on the need to cut company tax, but only for smaller firms, with turnover of under $2 million a year. The centrepiece of this week's budget  the government calls it its "plan for jobs and growth"  is a 10-year plan to phase in lower taxes for more and more firms, progressing in the size of the cut and by the size of the company. By the end, all companies are to get a 25 per cent tax rate. "As we transition from the mining investment boom," as Treasurer Scott Morrison pitched it, "we need a tax system that supports enterprise by backing businesses to invest."

The Labor leader was not impressed: "This is a budget for big business over battlers," said Bill Shorten, contrasting the planned corporate tax cut with the fact that Morrison's budget would give people earning under $80,000 a year no tax relief. Immediately, the election has been set up as an old-fashioned class war, Turnbull the toff representing the capitalist class and Shorten the shop steward leading the working class. Their personal backgrounds fit them perfectly as the leaders of the traditional parties of capital and labour, the default caricatures into which both parties have lapsed. In Parliament this week, Shorten rebuked the Prime Minister for his real estate advice to the Melbourne radio host Jon Faine. When the broadcaster asked the Prime Minister about the situation of young people locked out of the housing market, Turnbull replied: "Are your kids locked out of the housing market." They are, said Faine. "Well you should shell out for them; you should support them, a wealthy man like you."

Shorten turned this around to use against Turnbull in question time: "Is that really the Prime Minister's advice for young Australians struggling to buy their first home  have rich parents? Just how out of touch are you?" Turnbull struck back. The Labor leader was "sneering at hard-working Australians who seek to make something for their children. This is a political war they want to commence against aspiration, against ambition, against enterprise." "We are for enterprise. We are for our children and our grandchildren and their future in a 21st century economy." In the other chamber, the Senate, Labor's Doug Cameron did the dirty work of stoking envy by singling out Turnbull's daughter for getting help from her father: "I know that history teachers in NSW, after a number of years of experience, are on about $65,000 a year. But Miss Daisy Turnbull Brown is able to buy a subpenthouse, with knockout views of the harbour and city skyline, in 2008  she was then aged 23  for the pricey sum of $2.7 million," said Cameron. For one politician to target another, of course, is fair game. But to target a politician's child, even an adult one, is not. Cameron tried to redeem himself by posing it as a policy matter: "Get in touch with the real-life people of this country and stop the nonsense that negative gearing promotes," Cameron said.

Australia in the Turnbull era was not supposed to be like this. The reason that Turnbull was such an irresistible prospect as Liberal leader was that he had so-called "crossover appeal"  he was attractive to both Liberal voters and Labor. He was economically conservative yet socially progressive, a potentially unifying figure. He promised to govern from the "sensible centre". Yet he now finds himself leading a parody of the Liberal party. The price of holding party unity has been to surrender his centrism. He has not changed the party so much as the party has changed him. And Shorten, in response, is leading a parody of Labor. The two are retrofitting Australian politics into a bygone era of class identification, with one side preoccupied with creating wealth and the other with redistributing it. The electorate outgrew that caricature of stark political alignment, and the great prime ministers of each party created a new model. Bob Hawke and Paul Keating remade the economy as a liberalised, market-based one and the Labor as a party with a "middle-class, middle-ground, sole-employer, self-employed, small-business" voter base, as Keating put it to me in 2005. Labor had gone into a long winter of opposition because it had forgotten the voter base that "Bob Hawke and I generated for it," said Keating. "Labor Party had already run away from our record." John Howard took the opportunity not only to appeal to that middle-class, self-employed constituency, he also reached across the class divide to appeal to lower-income, blue-collar workers, the so-called "Howard battlers". Each party worked out how to extend its appeal beyond its traditional base and into the hinterland of the other.

Today, the rhetorical appeal from Turnbull and Shorten shows a retreat into their traditional heartlands. But neither is big enough to win an election. They will be forced to appeal to the centre if they want to win. Turnbull's appeal to Australia as a nation of investors caters to a country that has become one of the very richest in the world, with voters who have much to lose. The annual global wealth survey of Credit Suisse last year found that Australians are the third richest people on the planet. With average wealth per person of $US364,000 or about $486,000, only the Swiss and the New Zealanders had more personal wealth. In Australian dollar terms, it was up by 7 per cent last year even as the mining boom receded. "Since we are at the top end of both average net wealth and median net wealth per person globally, Australia has done very well," says Credit Suisse's chief investment strategist in Australia, David McDonald. For Turnbull's political purposes, he is zeroing in on this fact: "The key thing," says McDonald, "is that Australians have a lot more property in their investment portfolios than most" with 60 per cent of their total assets in real estate. Only Norway and Iceland have as much wealth concentrated in property.

The government will spend the next two months presenting Labor's negative gearing policy as a threat to that wealth. Even though we know Scott Morrison had considered curbing negative gearing: "There are excesses" he said in February. And Turnbull himself thought negative gearing and capital gains taxes were distortionary, writing in 2005 that they were "skewing national investment away from wealth-creating pursuits, towards housing", resulting in a "property bubble". But Turnbull decided against seeking to trim negative gearing in the budget so that the government could get a clearer line of attack on Labor's policy. Will his scare campaign work in a country where, in the words of the economist Saul Eslake, "people believe that the surest path to wealth is to speculate in the property market"? So far, the evidence is that Australians are at least as much worried that negative gearing has priced the younger generation out of the market as they are that that Labor's policy will harm the market. An Essential poll this week found respondents closely divided on the issue.But in the noisiest parts of the public discussion, opinion is running strongly in Labor's favour. Patrick Baume of the media monitoring firm isentia, after surveying social media and talkback, reports that, this week, "clearly negative gearing or housing affordability has really struck a chord in Labor's favour, across social media and talkback.
Labor has called on the government to assure the Australian people it has not returned refugees to harm, after officials bundled a group of asylum seekers on to a chartered flight to Sri Lanka.

The asylum seekers, whose wooden boat made it to within 500 metres of the Cocos Islands on Monday, were flown to Colombo in a highly-secretive operation under the cover of darkness on Thursday night.

This boatload of suspected Sri Lankan boat people arrived at the Cocos Islands in July 2012. Credit:Karen Willshaw

The government has refused to comment on the forced returns, with a spokeswoman saying only: "we do not comment on operational matters".

Labor's immigration spokesman Richard Marles said this was not good enough.



"The Government needs to provide an assurance it has not returned anyone to harm," Mr Marles said.



"Australia has international obligations that this Government simply can't ignore. It is not good enough to try and dismiss this as an operational matter."
One of Malcolm Turnbull's star ministers, the Minister for Employment and Women Michaelia Cash, is facing a push to have her dropped to the fifth spot on the West Australian Senate ticket which will be decided on Saturday.

And the only other female West Australian Senator Linda Reynolds is similarly facing being demoted to the number six position, mimicking the Queensland Liberal National Party's decision to place the only woman Senator, Joanna Lindgren, in the last and possibly unwinnable spot on that state's lineup.

Michaelia Cash, one of Malcolm Turnbull's star ministers, is facing a push to have her dropped to fifth on the WA Senate ticket. Credit:Andrew Meares

The Liberal Senate partyroom is made up of 25 senators, just six of whom are women, in contrast with the 14 women who comprise the 24 member Labor senate caucus.

But sources expressed hope the Prime Minister's decree that Senate preselections had to be determined by seniority, issued after junior minister Richard Colbeck's shock demotion on the Tasmanian Senate ticket, would be observed by party members on the weekend.
The former child actor who starred in 1986's Flight of the Navigator has been charged in relation to a bank robbery in Canada last month.

Deleriyes Joe Cramer, 42, was arrested earlier this week, after a man entered a bank in the Canadian province of British Columbia and demanded money from the teller before fleeing on foot.

Deleriyes Joe Cramer in 1986's Flight of the Navigator.

He was dressed in a disguise of a wig, a bandanna, sunglasses and dark jacket.

"Despite the fact that a disguise was used during the robbery, the suspect was quickly identified by some of our officers, who had recently dealt with [Cramer] on an unrelated matter," Constable Harrison Mohr of Sunshine Coast RCMP told Associated Press.
Billionaire Gina Rinehart will finally have something to smile about in coming weeks as her youngest daughter Ginia ties the knot to her former bodyguard turned boyfriend. We only know him as "Simon", but PS understands he has been a long-time member of the Rinehart Mini Army, made up of former SAS soldiers and tasked with protecting the billionaire heiresses as they travel around the globe. Ginia Rinehart and former fiance Ryan Johnston. PS can reveal the wedding is due to to take place in just a few weeks at Hamilton Island's luxury, six-star Qualia resort with a guest list expected to include Fairfax Media director Jack Cowin, John Singleton, Barnaby Joyce and Imelda Roche, to name but a few. But it will be members of the immediate Rinehart family who will be missing in action, namely brother John Hancock, who friends say "is yet to forgive Ginia".

Ginia Rinehart and Giorgio Armani. photo.JPG The bad blood stems from the protracted legal battle over the multibillion-dollar family trust, with Ginia siding with her mother, taking up arms against brother John Hancock and sisters Bianca and Hope, though Hope eventually settled for a rumoured $300 million payout. However, the legal battle also had a major impact on the sisters' relationships. In an email on November 22, 2011, Hope asked Ginia for help: "I'm so desperate at this point. I'm in a corner w a gun at my head, I can't afford rent, I can't afford the kids' education, I don't know what else to do or who else to ask". Ginia responded: "How dare you spend your money on this litigation which is ruining my life and then not keep enough to pay your own daughters' school fees! And then ask ME to pay!" It is unclear if either Hope or Bianca will be at the wedding. However, Hope, whose marriage to Ryan Welker also collapsed during the legal turmoil, has since been dating another of the family's bodyguards, the couple spotted just months ago enjoying the delights of the Hamptons. But this time it is Ginia who is set to walk down the aisle. It was last August when PS revealed that young Rinehart had found love with another member of the mini army hired to protect her, though details on the new beau's identity and background have been shrouded in secrecy ever since.
Consumer Affairs Minister Jane Garrett on Friday defended the decision not to pursue Gibson for obtaining financial advantage by deception, a criminal charge that carries jail time. While the potential civil penalties against Gibson are no doubt hefty, her company is in liquidation. Even if they go after her personally she's unlikely to be able to pay any fine. The Whole Pantry is $140,000 in the red, most of which is owed to the tax office. Gibson has no assets. There is next to no prospect of recouping any money from her. This move by the government makes a mockery of its ability and willingness to take meaningful action against fraudsters. It raises serious concerns about the sluggish approach by the agencies tasked with overseeing the multibillion-dollar charity sector. Consumer Affairs Victoria could have pursued Gibson for running an appeal without being registered, a breach under the Fundraising Act that carries a maximum penalty of 12 months' imprisonment. It chose not to. Despite Gibson's public admission that she kept money raised for charity, Victoria Police has taken no action against her. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, which runs the Scamwatch website, is also not pursuing her. And the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission, the regulator of the nation's 54,000 charities, says its hands are tied because she was never registered as a charity.

In a rare move against a publisher, Penguin will have to pay $30,000 for failing to fact-check Gibson's "inspirational" story before recklessly selling it to the masses - despite having serious concerns about its accuracy weeks before its release. In a landmark move that will affect the self-help movement, the publisher will now have to include prominent warnings on all books about alternative and natural therapies that says they are not evidenced-based. It will also be required to obtain a medical diagnosis before publishing any books about people's health claims. Aside from Penguin, there are other parties who failed the public but will not share the blame for Gibson's rise. Apple and the media companies that saw dollar signs in her story are also at fault for blindly giving her a platform. Gibson's deceit propelled her to fame and fortune and brought her a worldwide following. Apple took Gibson under its wing following meteoric sales of her award-winning app. The company even flew her to Silicon Valley to work in secret on the app, which was going to be a centrepiece of its new smartwatch. Some have estimated Gibson's international success generated more than $1 million in app and book sales. She lived in a five-star world: she was awash in designer clothes; carried $2000 handbags; took international holidays; she traded in her two-bedroom flat for a luxury beachside loft.
The chair of the powerful Senate economics references committee has lashed out at the Commonwealth Bank for its "unacceptable" lack of attendance at a Senate inquiry into wrongdoing within its insurance arm CommInsure and accused the bank of bullying.

The rebuke comes as lawyers for CommInsure's former chief medical officer turned whistleblower Dr Benjamin Koh revealed they had lodged a formal request with the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority and the Australian Securities and Investments Commission to "explore prosecution of certain employees of the bank for their victimisation of Dr Koh".

Under section 156C of the Life Insurance Act, 1995, victimisation of a whistleblower can carry a prison sentence of up to six months.
Immigration Minister Peter Dutton owes a young African refugee raped on Nauru a duty of care, and must not force her to terminate her pregnancy in Papua New Guinea where it is neither safe nor legal, the Federal Court ruled on Friday.

But uncertainty still surrounds the woman's fate, with Mr Dutton and his department under no obligation to bring her to Australia for a safe and legal abortion - only to ensure she receives one.

The young woman, who was semi-conscious after suffering a suspected epileptic seizure when she was attacked on Nauru, had begged authorities to let her come to Australia to terminate the pregnancy she does not want.
A Sydney student who was allegedly given $4.6 million after a Westpac banking glitch appeared to be living the high life in a harbour-view apartment until her arrest this week.

Christine Jiaxin Lee, 21, was arrested while trying to board a flight to Malaysia on Wednesday night, four years after Westpac accidentally gave her an unlimited overdraft on her bank account.

Police allege she opened the account one month shy of her 18th birthday in 2012 but it wasn't until 2014 and 2015 that she took advantage of the unlimited overdraft by making numerous transactions totalling $4,653,333.02.

About $1 million has been recovered but the rest has disappeared. Her lawyer told Waverley Local Court on Thursday that she had spent it on handbags and luxury items.
The Baird government's plan to sell one of the largest coastal plots still available in the city is capturing the attention of major developers keen to build in the Long Bay prison complex.

The closure and sale of the Malabar jail and construction of a new, larger prison in south-western Sydney will be accelerated as the government seeks to cope with a record number of inmates.

The state government has accelerated plans to sell Long Bay jail. Credit:Sahlan Hayes

The 32-hectare jail site will be sold for hundreds of millions of dollars to developers, although no firm timeline for the closure of the prison has been released.

It is likely the government's property development arm UrbanGrowth NSW would be called upon to create a master plan for the future of the site, which is on the state heritage register.
President-elect Tsai Ing-wen waves at supporters at DPP headquarters on Jan. 16, 2016 in Taipei, Taiwan. (Photo : Getty Images)

Chinese President Xi Jinping warns newly elected Taiwanese leader Tsai Ing-wen against Taiwan independence in the wake of the anniversary of the landmark meeting between the Chinese president and Kuomintang (KMT) Chairman Eric Chu.



On May 4, 2015, Xi and Chu convened for the first time since the 18th CPC National Congress in 2012 to improve ties between mainland China and the "wayward island" of Taiwan.



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According to the Xinhua News Agency, the meeting marked a major step toward warming friendship between the leaders as Xi reminded both sides of the Taiwan Strait "to trust each other to maintain peaceful development of cross-Strait relations and work together to build a community of common destiny."



However, it seems like Xi believes that the incoming administration in Taiwan led by the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) would bring this friendship to an unruly end.



Talking to a group of lawmakers in Shanghai, Xi declared that the mainland will not tolerate "'Taiwan independence' secessionist activities in any form."



"We will safeguard the country's sovereignty and territorial integrity, and never allow the historical tragedy of national secession to happen again," he said in another report from Xinhua. "This is the common wish and firm will of all Chinese people. It is also our solemn commitment and our responsibility to history and the people."



According to Reuters, this might be the mark of a significant juncture in the infamous "1992 consensus" that talked about Beijing's "one China" policy, stating: "Since 1949, though the two sides of the Taiwan Strait are yet to be unified, the reality that the mainland and Taiwan both belong to one China has not changed, and cannot change."



The warning comes as Tsai made her position on the matter clear, declaring that she would maintain stability in the ties with the mainland governed by democracy.



"What will be different from the past eight years is that the promotion of cross-Strait ties will have to be based on the principle of democracy and people's desires," the AFP quoted her as saying.


We pick to share the vegetarian curry, deep fried eggplant, steamed vegetables with peanut sauce and a stir-fried water spinach dish. We order iced coconut drinks and deep-fried corn fritters as a entree. It's probably her eye as a film director and author, but Leigh seems distinctly conscious of our surroundings. She worries the light will not suit the photographer, points out the kitsch decorations in the restaurant, asks if a noisy young group that sits near us will affect the recording of the conversation. The daughter of a high school maths teacher and a medical researcher, Leigh grew up on the north shore as the eldest of three daughters. She studied arts and law at the University of Sydney, where she edited the student newspaper Honi Soit and journal Hermes. After graduating, Leigh worked in the business affairs department of the Australian Society of Authors. It was through the society's mentoring program that she met Australian writer Frank Moorhouse, a relationship she says included many long lunches at the Bayswater Brasserie in Potts Point. Leigh published her first book, The Hunter, to critical acclaim in 1999. The novel is the story of the search for the last remaining Tasmanian tiger and was made into a film starring Willem Dafoe.

After winning the Rolex Mentor and Proteges Arts Initiative, Leigh was partnered with Pulitzer and Nobel Prize-winning American author Toni Morrison, who mentored her as she started writing her second novel Disquiet. "I actually don't really think writers can be helped so I don't expect a miracle cure," Leigh says. "But it's very comforting to have somebody whose work you respect then read your work and essentially say 'it's good, keep going'." Leigh made her debut as a director and screenwriter with the eerie film Sleeping Beauty in 2011, which divided audiences at the Cannes Film Festival but was distributed to more than 60 countries. She has worked on other scripts since then under a pseudonym, deciding only to put her name on films that she has full creative control over as writer and director. Avalanche is her first non-fiction book.

Leigh did not keep a diary during the years she underwent IVF, but started writing soon after she stopped treatment so she could capture her feelings "before they were blanketed by time". "In a funny way, this book felt incredibly necessary to me. This is always the test. The writer asks herself: is this truly a story worth telling?" she says. "And in this case, it was a yes, definitely this is a book I really want to write mainly because I feel there is so much IVF failure out there and it's not really spoken about." Leigh's desire to have a child was sparked when she reunited with a man whom she had shared a brief romance with as a university student nearly two decades earlier. After his vasectomy was reversed, the pair tried to conceive naturally. When that failed they decided to start IVF treatment, but the marriage collapsed. Leigh wanted to continue the treatment on her own and when her former partner withdrew his consent for his sperm to be used, she sought new donors and eventually found a generous friend willing to help.

The desired baby was not a real child, Leigh explains, but it was not unreal to her. In the book, she describes it as a "desired and nurtured inner presence... a presence that could not be substituted or replaced". "I became so focused on this desire to have a child that it really took over over my life, not in a positive way," she says. "It definitely impacted on my work life and work opportunities, I couldn't travel at particular times, I turned down a lot of opportunities to be honest." A place of hope turned into one of desperation, with endless injections, clinic visits and a growing realisation that maybe she would not get her "miracle baby". "I found it incredibly hard to face defeat. This was a dream. I had a great fear of what I loosely call the abyss. Facing that abyss was incredibly hard. Giving up is very hard," Leigh says. "The key question I had to ask myself was what am I really afraid of? There's no simple answer to that, but it's a good question." Light needs to be shone on the uneasy marriage of commerce and medicine in the IVF industry, Leigh says, how false hope is nurtured, how onerous the treatment is and how heartbreaking the decision to call it quits.

While she wondered if sharing her story was career suicide, she felt she had already lost so much that she no longer cared what others would think about her. The experience has given her an unusual freedom. "There are many, many women who are on this difficult, lonely journey and I guess I wanted to offer a shared aloneness to people who I know are thinking about doing it, who are doing it, or have given up," she says. Leigh does not use the word regret in the book or in our interview, and she has found immense joy in being an aunt to her four nieces and nephews. "It's very hard for me to unshackle myself from the great love that I would have for my own child, but I hope to sort of transform that openness and willingness into other ways of loving." Whether she will stay in Australia in the long term or continue pressing change in the IVF industry, Leigh does not know. The word career, she tells me, is a verb - as in, to career around - not a strategic plan.
The Catholic Church has put the issue of boat people front and centre with Pope Francis appointing a Vietnamese refugee who arrived in Australia after a perilous boat journey as the new bishop of Parramatta.

Bishop Vincent Long Van Nguyen fled Vietnam as a teenager in 1979 on a 17-metre boat jam-packed with 147 refugees.

The new Bishop of Parramatta Vincent Long Van Nguyen in Mary MacKillop Chapel in North Sydney. Bishop Long was a Vietnamese refugee who arrived in Australia after a perilous boat journey. Credit:Nic Walker

But unlike an estimated half of the boats that sank loaded with people fleeing the new communist government in the 1970s, Bishop Long's crowded craft made it to Malaysia.

Pope Francis announced his appointment but Bishop Long's background and Parramatta status as already one of the largest Catholic dioceses in Australia and a favourite destination for new migrants, suggests the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference wish to put the issue of boat people front and centre.
The items may have seemed innocuous at first: men's underwear, camouflage gear, solar watches, hiking boots.

But the luggage seized at Brisbane Airport in May 2014 was a terrorist's wish-list bound for two of Australia's most notorious Islamic State fighters.

Photos of Fatima Elomar's luggage have been released for the first time after she was stopped at the airport with her four children, destined for Syria via Malaysia.

The 31-year-old mother told authorities she was going for a holiday to Asia with her kids despite carrying bags full of men's clothing, electronics, $10,000 cash, her husband's birth certificate and hiking gear.
The cost of cleaning toxic paint from coral on the Great Barrier Reef left when an off-course Chinese oil tanker gouged a three-kilometre scar in 2010 has almost tripled from $50 million to $141 million in 12 months.

The banned toxic lead paint was left on Great Barrier Reef coral from the hull of the tanker as it crashed its way across the reef six years ago, a Senate Estimates committee was told on Thursday.

Shen Neng 1, a Chinese-registered bulk coal carrier grounded in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park. It veered off course into the restricted area in 2010.

Greens Senator Larissa Waters has repeated her 2015 call for the federal and state governments to pay for the coral clean-up and be re-imbursed after legal action against the Shen Neng 1's insurer.

The paint is so toxic it is killing the normal bacteria on the reef that normally breaks down the paint, the chairman of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority told the committee in Canberra.
Wasps have been identified as an "ongoing hazard" at Brisbane Airport following an investigation of two emergency landings in as many years by Australia's air safety watchdog.

An Etihad Airways Airbus A330 was forced to make a heavy landing at Brisbane on November 21, 2013  almost 18 tonnes over the plane's maximum landing weight  after a wasps' nest blocked an air speed sensor.

The Etihad A330 declared a mayday after mud dauber wasps built a nest in an important sensor. Credit:ATSB

It had just taken off from Brisbane bound for Singapore at 1.45pm when the crew noticed airspeed discrepancies, declared a mayday and decided to return to Brisbane, landing with a fuel-laden weight of 199.7 tonnes.

The A330's maximum landing weight was 182 tonnes.
"We don't care enough about children and I know people will be very shocked to think that because we have a very romantic idea of how much we love children, and I do love children and I have worked with children pretty much my whole life since I was 16. "I find it shocking at this stage of Australia's development that we are not investing and encouraging business partners to invest in early learning ." Ms McCarthy said she had witnessed first hand the setback children faced when they did not participate in early learning and said there was no simple way to solve the issue. "It is certainly about money and investment, but it is also about culture" she said. "There is a very big cultural thing that we have not yet shifted about the rights of children to early learning.

"I think some people feel when I say that that there is something wrong with their family and there is not, there is nothing wrong with their family, it's just that we as a community need to give children every chance from the day they are born. "If this campaign can get into every playgroup and dinner conversation, if we can get this campaign circulating around Australia I think we will have a much better chance." Ms McCarthy said cultural approval and a more transparent government payment system was needed. "Clarity and simplicity around the government's payment systems would be a big help, flexibility in terms of payment," she said. "There is still the bottom line that it is expensive, but it is not so expensive that we can't afford to do it."

Where Queensland sits In Queensland, more than a quarter of children were considered "developmentally vulnerable" in one or more areas in their first year of schooling, higher than the national average. Queensland lagged behind most other states when it came to social competence, emotional maturity, language and cognitive skills, physical health and communication skills and general knowledge. However Queensland's participation rate had dramatically improved, with 95 per cent of children enrolled in a preschool program for at least 15 hours a week compared to 29 per cent in 2008. Brisbane mum Liz Howes, 37, sent all three of her young daughters to preschool facilities and said it was obvious the difference early learning made.

"Once I have seen my children go to school, the difference in those children who haven't had the early childhood education and my children have been miles apart," she said. "They separate from me better, I kiss them goodbye and they leave, they are not hugging onto me crying. "They are more empathetic, they are more resilient and so far as knowledge and learning and education goes, they are used to sitting quietly, following instructions." Former Governor-General Quentin Bryce said early learning needed to extend to children as young as three. "We all talk about children being our greatest asset, how important they are to us, how much they matter," she said.
More than 50 Uber drivers were fined in 78 hours during the state's Labour Day weekend crackdown on the ride-sharing service.

If paid, the fines would see another $128,000 pour into the state's coffers from the American giant, which had already paid out more than $2 million in fines, according to the government.

Uber drivers copped $128,000 in fines in one weekend.

It's understood Uber pays the fines for drivers but some have successfully contested the infringement notices.

The fines to 51 Uber drivers for operating an illegal taxi service came after taxi drivers called on the government to enforce the new anti-rideshare laws that passed through state parliament last week.
Watching House of Cards on the train is a quick way to burn through your 4G monthly data allowance, so Netflix has introduced a way to apply the brakes.

Netflix's adaptive streaming technology adjusts the picture quality on the fly to ensure the picture looks its best regardless of your download speeds. It's one of the streaming giant's greatest strengths, especially if you're stuck on flaky DSL, but it's also a risk when you're on a fast broadband connection with a low data limit.

Netflix is making it easier to keep up with your favourite shows while you're on the move.

The faster your download speeds the more data you chew through, meaning it's a brave person who watches a lot of Netflix via mobile broadband during their daily commute. Plenty of Australians are likely to get caught out as they switch across to 4G mobile networks, as well as faster NBN speeds at home.

To help tackle this, Netflix has updated its Android and iOS apps to add Cellular Data Usage controls, letting you throttle your mobile video quality in order to curb your data usage. You'll already find similar options when watching Netflix via a web browser.
A machine which provides change in exchange for notes was stolen in the early hours of the morning from a shopping centre in Melbourne west.

Police on Saturday released an image of the machine and a man they wish to speak to after the theft from a Sunshine shopping centre.

The man police want to speak to over the theft of this note changing machine.

Investigators believe a man stole the distinctive cash converting machine which was attached to a wall at the Sunshine Marketplace shopping centre in secured to a wall in the shopping centre on Harvester Road in Sunshine on April 15 about 7.15am.



The machine is worth about $1500.



Contact Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000 or submit a confidential crime report at www.crimestoppersvic.com.au
Museum staff are used to being in the background and letting the magnificent fossils and installations do the talking for them.

But thanks to a video that features more than 50 Museum Victoria staff dancing to Fatboy Slim's classic Weapon of Choice, they are now the stars of an unlikely viral craze.

Helen Privett, manager of conservation at the museum, said it was easy to convince staff to take part in the video, which is part of the international Museum Dance Off 3.

"Everyone was interested in taking part because it looked like fun, but we didn't really know what to expect," she explains. "It was an opportunity for us to do something together."
DRI's unmanned aircraft cloud seeded above Nevada on April 29. (Photo : YouTube/DRIScience)

Nevada's Desert and Research Institute successfully flew an unmanned cloud-seeding aircraft from Hawthorne Industrial Airport under the Unmanned Aircraft Systems Test Site designated by the Federal Aviation Administration. They were able to fly for 18 minutes, an 11-foot-wingspan aircraft, which proved it can deploy flares to induce extra rainfall from the clouds.



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For the first time in history, a fixed-wing unmanned aircraft tested a cloud-seeding payload in an experimental flight. The Drone America Savant named "Sandoval State Seeder," in honor of Governor Brian Sandoval who was dedicated to Nevada's UAS industry, reached 400 feet high on April 29 and planted two silver-iodide flares, the DRI reported.



Nevada's DRI has been studying how to use unmanned aerial vehicles to address the state's natural disasters, such as droughts through weather modification. The first flight of the drone was not perfect though, as there are still doubts whether cloud seeding effectively works, Engadget has learned. Furthermore, the Seeder was only limited to 400 feet altitude during the test run.



The project lead scientist called it a feat for the state and for everyone involved. Project Chief Engineer Amber Broch optimistically described the flight as a "tremendous potential to use unmanned systems as tools for environmental science and innovative natural resource applications." The research team will conduct an actual cloud seeding test in the Lake Tahoe basin as its next step.



The concept of unmanned vehicles trying to control the weather may be a bit close to the fictional artificial general intelligence, Skynet, the main antagonist of the "Terminator" film. However, cloud seeding has been previously used for purposes that were not harmful or damaging, such as to clear the air before important events.



The DRI project is supported by the Office of Economic Development of the Nevada governor via the Knowledge Fund. It is the first-of-its-kind to help the state explore solutions to natural challenges. Its research team has over 30 years of weather modification research, Drone America Reno's expertise with a proven experience in aerospace manufacturing and Avisight Las Vegas' industry leading unmanned aerial data services.



Here is the video of the DRI's unmanned cloud seeding aircraft test flight on April 29.






Perth people love heading south and getting some Margaret River country air in their lungs - but a new product will give those further afield a chance to get a whiff of the coastal town.

The Chinese will soon be able to breathe in the atmosphere of a region best known for its big waves and wineries thanks to a company that plans to sell Margaret River air in a can.

Vineyards at Leeuwin estate later afternoon in Margaret River.

A specially made air-extraction machine is expected to be brought to the area in July by Green and Clean Air, and cans of Margaret River air could be on shelves in Chinese shops six weeks later.

The company recently began selling air from the Blue Mountains, Bondi Beach, Gold Coast, New Zealand and Tasmania, and company co-founder John Dickinson expects the West Australian version of the product to sell well.
An orangutan which has spent its entire life in captivity at Perth Zoo will be released into the Indonesian rainforest in a bid to help the critically endangered species.

Nyaru, a Sumatran orangutan born at Perth Zoo, who turns nine this year, will leave Perth on Tuesday accompanied by a vet and zoo keepers.

Another orang-utan, Andalas, enjoying his freedom, he was released at Bukit Tigapuluh in 2015. Credit:@PerthZoo/Twitter

He will be taken to Bukit Tigapuluh, a protected forest in Sumatra where his half-brother Semeru was released a few years ago.

A spokesperson said Perth was the only zoo in the world releasing Sumatran orangutans into the wild.
Deputy District-Attorney Beth Silverman details the evidence against accused Lonnie Franklin jnr in Los Angeles Superior Court during closing arguments of Franklin's trial on Monday. Credit:Mark Boster/Los Angeles Times via AP A court clerk pronounced the word "guilty" over and over as she read the verdicts in the order that the victims died: Debra Jackson, 29; Henrietta Wright, 35; Barbara Ware, 23; Bernita Sparks, 25; Mary Lowe, 26; Lachrica Jefferson, 22; Alicia Alexander, 18; Princess Berthomieux, 15; Valerie McCorvey, 35; and Janecia Peters, 25. Family members of the victims were present in the courtroom on Monday as prosecutors projected the smiling faces of their loved ones onto a screen. The effort to capture the killer had dragged on for so long because of a lack of witnesses and evidence, officials said. The number of murders that pervaded Los Angeles in 1980s, including the work of several other serial killers, also complicated the investigation. Defence attorney Seymour Amster makes his final arguments during Lonnie Franklin jnr's trial in Los Angeles Superior Court during closing arguments of Franklin's trial on Monday. Credit:Mark Boster/Los Angeles Times via AP But some family members and victim advocates saw a more troubling factor. They suggested that the case had not spurred a sense of urgency in law enforcement or in the news media because of the victims involved: young African-American women living at the margins, many of them cocaine users and at times prostitutes.

Margaret Prescod, an advocate for the families, contrasted this case with that of Natalee Holloway, a white Alabama teenager whose 2005 disappearance in Aruba caused a media sensation. "These are 10 women here," she said. "And you walk around the city of Los Angeles and ask people, most people have never even heard of it. Can you imagine that?" The break in the case came after Franklin's son, Christopher Franklin, was arrested in 2008 on a charge of carrying a weapon and had to provide a DNA sample. Investigators determined that Christopher Franklin had a familial link to evidence from the cold case. The authorities said the elder Franklin's connection to the murders was confirmed after a detective posed as a pizzeria busboy and collected a partly eaten slice that he had left. At the time, the use of familial DNA to capture a murder suspect represented a first in American law enforcement. The technique is now used in at least 10 states.

On July 7, 2010, the authorities announced the arrest of Lonnie Franklin, a former sanitation worker and Police Department garage attendant. He was captured in front of the lime green home he shared with his wife, just a few kilometres from the alleyways where the bodies had been found. The Grim Sleeper had been there, hiding in plain sight, the whole time, officials said. "We never gave up on this investigation, not for one minute," Chief Charlie Beck said in a statement at the time. In a search of the elder Franklin's home, the authorities found hundreds of photographs of women, many of them naked. Among them was a picture of Enietra Washington, who is believed to be the serial killer's only survivor.

Ms Washington, 57, provided some of the trial's most riveting testimony as she recounted the day she was attacked in 1988. She said Franklin pulled up next to her in an orange Ford Pinto as she was walking to a friend's house and asked if he could give her a ride, pressing the offer repeatedly. After she got in, he shot her in the chest, she testified. "You shot me?" she recalled saying, according to The Los Angeles Times. "I asked him, 'Why?'" She was "dogging him out", or disrespecting him, she recalled him saying. Ms Washington said he sexually assaulted her, took photographs of her and left her for dead on the street. In court, prosecutors presented the picture found in Franklin's home, showing Washington bloodied and partly exposed. Franklin did not testify, but he has maintained his innocence. During the trial, the jury was shown a taped interrogation of Franklin. Los Angeles detectives placed photos of the victims on a table, asking him if he recognised them, one by one, according to The Los Angeles Times.

Each time, Franklin rejected any connection to the women. "I haven't killed anybody," he said. Since the case began lurching towards trial in 2010, investigators have linked him to at least six additional victims. They believe there could be others. In an unexpected twist on Wednesday, prosecutors disclosed that Franklin had been convicted of rape while serving in the army in Germany, ABC7 reported. Ms Silverman said he and two friends had driven to a village, dragged a woman to the vehicle and sexually assaulted her. Ms Silverman said she would bring up the case during sentencing.
Bangkok: Millions of fish have washed up dead along a 125-kilometre stretch of the Vietnamese coast in one of the communist country's worst environmental disasters.

Soldiers have been deployed to bury tonnes of fish, clams and the occasional whale that began dying in early April along the north-central coast, including some popular tourist beaches.

Some of the dead fish which have washed up on the coast of Vietnam, as reported by locals on Facebook. Credit:Phuong Tung and Nghe Si/Facebook

Vietnamese officials facing growing anger over the disaster have not announced the official cause of the deaths, which have affected the livelihoods of tens of thousands of families.

Some officials have suggested it may be toxins or algal blooms known as red tide.
Washington: House Speaker Paul D. Ryan on Thursday declined to support presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, saying that he would be willing to do so if the real estate mogul could unify a bitterly divided Republican Party. Former Texas governor and Republican ex-presidential candidate Rick Perry, meanwhile, wants to be Trump's running mate.

"I'm just not ready to do that, at this point, I'm not there right now, and I hope to, though, and I want to, but I think what is required is that we unify this party," Ryan said on CNN's "The Lead," in an interview with host Jake Tapper, when asked if would support Trump. "And I think the bulk of the burden on unifying the party will have to come from our presumptive nominee."

Ryan, who serves as co-chairman of the GOP convention in Cleveland, became the highest-ranking Republican to openly question whether he would support Trump, who finished off his last opponents, Senator Ted Cruz and Ohio Governor John Kasich, in Tuesday's Indiana primary.
ROTTERDAM:--- On May 3rd Stichting Ocan organized a ceremony in which it recognized the role of the Dutch Caribbean community in the Second World War and the brave efforts of those who are still serving in the armed forces. The ceremony was held at Rotterdams Van Ghentkazerne. In attendance were some 90 persons, representation from the Aruba House and servicemen and women in uniform. The Dutch Minister of Defence and the Ministers Plenipotentiary of Curacao and Sint Maarten were not able to attend.

Shortly after words of welcome the names of some 168 Dutch Caribbean persons who perished all over the world during the Second World War were memorialized through a still video under the live accompaniment of The Ambassador of Music, Anastacia Larmonie on piano and a minute of silence. Spoken word artist Brooklyn recited a poem written by Walter Palm.

Ocan chairman drs. Glenn Helberg spoke of the brave fight of those from the islands who served during the war effort in the 1940s in several capacities as officers, as members of the Dutch resistance and workers of Shell and Esso oil refineries. Helberg, whose address focused on the topic of libertarianism and exercising freedom, moved those in attendance to ponder the great tragedy of those dark years and the limitation of freedom still existent today in the decolonization process. That the definition of freedom can differ between persons was also emphasized during the chairmans short address. He pointed out the selflessness of the community that fought for freedom in a time when the freedom being fought for was not its own.

Lieutenant colonel ing. Jos Rozenburg gave a comprehensive presentation based largely on 8 years of extensive research into the role of the islands and their communities, as collected in his book De Antillen in de Tweede Wereldoorlog. It included a viewing of wartime propaganda film by the US government and Nazi-regime and many little known facts such as the long classified agreement between The United Kingdom and France to occupy Aruba and Curacao should the islands come under threat of Nazi occupation. In closing, Rozenburg also highlighted the positive effects of the war by pointing out that the morale of the servicemen led to men of different cultural backgrounds working together. The war served as a catalyst for the emancipation of the Antillean people and the decolonization process in the form of the realization of the autonomous country of the Netherlands Antilles.

Sergeant major Elvis Manuela focused his address on the selfless motivation for country above self, the harsh realities of wartime and the tough times servicemen often experience when returning home from deployment. Manuela is but one of the many Dutch servicemen who has served and continue to serve worldwide. When asked by the evenings moderator Leila Wijnhoven-Constancia to share with the audience some impressionable experiences from his missions, Manuela recounted his experiences in Croatia and Afghanistan. He explained that brotherhood and teamwork are essential in surviving deployment. He fondly shared how he and his fellow servicemen grouped for a game of dominoes after returning from missions and how the group would celebrate each others birthdays. Manuela is also the chairman of the Multicultureel Netwerk Defensie.

The evenings last speaker was Roy Pieters. Pieters, an old chairman of Ocan, spoke to the audience on the theme of heroism. He instilled upon those in attendance that we all can be the person we want to be remembered as on a daily basis. Being cognizant of this is therefore vital. It is more challenging to be remembered as a hero; that is something that we cannot plan. Depending on the context one can be seen as either a hero or as a saboteur. The story of George Maduro, who was born 100 years ago this year and the story of Boy Ecury are the stories of Dutch Caribbean persons who did not become the important figures that we now honor and the heroes that they are through a plan.

During the intermezzo spoken word artist Brooklyn was joined by mime Picture Marv in delivering a moving performance which embodies the strength of the servicemen.

It is Ocans intention to make the memorial a recurring event. It sees much importance in educating the community on our place in history and our importance today in maintaining peace and the freedoms we have been afforded. Those interested in further reading about the fascinating yet forgotten history can read articles contributed by historian & veteran politician Will Johnson and read highlights of Jos Rozenburgs findings on the Ocan website www.ocan.nl

As it does annually on May 4th, Memorial Day, Ocan laid a wreath together with Manuela in a delegation of representatives from association of the former Dutch colonies during the Dodenherdeking ceremony at National Ereveld Loenen in the east of the Netherlands. Prime Minister Mark Rutte will delivered a speech at Loenen in connection with the 70 year anniversary of the Oorlogsgravenstichting, the foundation that is tasked with the upkeep of all Dutch military cemeteries the world over. Drs. Glenn Helberg formally attended the national memorial ceremonies on Amsterdams Dam Square.
PHILIPSBURG:--- The permanent Committee of Parliament for Tourism, Economic Affairs, Transport and Telecommunications (TEATT), will meet on May 9th with representatives from the Port of Sint Maarten and Florida -Caribbean Cruise Association (FCCA).

The Committee meeting is set for Monday at 3.00 pm in the General Assembly Chamber of the House at Wilhelminastraat #1 in Philipsburg.

The agenda point is Update on the state of affairs of the cruise industry.

Members of the public are invited to the House of Parliament to attend parliamentary deliberations.

The House of Parliament is located across from the Court House in Philipsburg.

The parliamentary session will be carried live on St. Maarten Cable TV Channel 120, via Pearl Radio FM 98.1, the audio via the Internet www.pearlfmradio.com and via www.sxmparliament.org.
SMS Masterminds, Publicly Traded as SpendSmart Networks, Inc., Announces the Appointment of PayPal Executive Frank Liddy to Its Board of Directors

SAN LUIS OBISPO, CA  (Marketwired)  05/05/16  SpendSmart Networks, Inc. (OTCQB: SSPC) dba SMS Masterminds, a national full-service provider of mobile and loyalty marketing solutions, announced today that it plans to deepen its operational and mobile commerce expertise with the appointment of fintech industry veteran Frank Liddy to its Board of Directors.

Mr. Liddy is currently head of strategic partnerships at Paydiant, recently acquired by PayPal, where he empowers banks, retailers and strategic partners to achieve their growth objectives by creating great consumer experiences on Paydiants open platform for mobile commerce.

Mr. Liddy has more than twenty years of experience as an operator, advisor and investor in the fintech community. Mr. Liddy joined Paydiant from the consultancy firm Capco (now part of FIS Global) and previously held key leadership positions at Citigroup, KPMG Consulting and Unisys.

Mr. Liddy is an active speaker at fintech industry conferences, a contributor to the Federal Reserve Banks Mobile Payment Industry Workgroup and has been quoted in leading publications such as The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, American Banker, PaymentsSource and Bank Systems and Technology.

Luke Wallace, SpendSmarts CEO said, With Frank joining our Board, we are deepening our mobile commerce, operational and financial services industry expertise. Franks experience will serve as an invaluable asset to our Company and its future strategies.

SpendSmart Networks provides proprietary loyalty systems and a suite of digital engagement and marketing services that help local merchants build relationships with consumers and drive revenue. These services are implemented and supported by a vast network of certified digital marketing specialists, aka Certified Masterminds, who drive revenue and consumer relationships for merchants via loyalty programs, mobile marketing and website development. Consumers dollars go further when they spend it with merchants in the SpendSmart network of merchants, as they receive exclusive deals, earn rewards and ultimately build a connection with their favorite merchants.

Certain statements in this release are forward-looking statements under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such statements include, but are not limited to, statements about SpendSmarts financials, investors, investment bankers, growth and performance, future financial results and performance, costs and revenue, and other statements that are not historical in nature, particularly those that utilize terminology such as plans, anticipates, will, proposed, may, expects, future, continue, show promise, other words of similar meaning, derivations of such words and the use of future dates. Forward-looking statements by their nature address matters that are, to different degrees, uncertain. Risks and uncertainties may cause SpendSmarts actual results to be materially different than those expressed in or implied by such forward-looking statements. Particular risks and uncertainties include, among others, uncertainties regarding licensee and subscriber acquisition, and achieving market acceptance, SpendSmarts ability to develop other licenses; and other risks and uncertainties described in SpendSmarts filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including its most recent annual report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2015 filed with the SEC. All forward-looking statements in this release speak only as of the date of this release and are based on SpendSmarts current beliefs and expectations. SpendSmart undertakes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

Contact:

Luke Wallce

CEO

+1 877-541-8398
Zoom Telephonics Reports Results for the First Quarter of 2016

BOSTON, MA  (Marketwired)  05/05/16  Zoom Telephonics, Inc. (Zoom) (OTCQB: ZMTP), a leading producer of cable modems and other communications products, today reported financial results for the first quarter ended March 31, 2016 (Q1 2016).

The Company reported net sales of $2.72 million for Q1 2016, up 53.7% from $1.77 million in Q4 2015 and down 11.1% from $3.06 million in Q1 2015. The sequential rise in sales from Q4 2015 to Q1 2016 was due to the introduction of Zooms first Motorola brand products, with carefully limited distribution that will dramatically increase in Q2 2016.

Gross profit was 30.7% of net sales in Q1 2016, up from 27.8% of net sales in Q4 2015 as higher margin Motorola products started shipping. Year over year gross profit was down from 31.3% of net sales in Q1 2015. The year over year decreases in gross profit and gross margin for Q1 2016 were primarily due to the lower sales level, amortization of capitalized certification costs of Motorola brand products, and costs related to price reductions and short-term price rebates.

Operating expenses were $1.56 million or 57.4% of net sales in Q1 2016 compared to $1.2 million or 67.9% of net sales in Q4 2015 and $0.93 million or 30.4% of net sales in Q1 2015. Increased operating expenses compared to Q1 2015 were primarily due to Motorola brand royalty payments, increases in personnel expenses in connection with Zooms new Motorola cable modem line, increased costs for stock options, and higher legal and audit costs.

Zoom reported a net loss of $728 thousand or $0.05 per share for Q1 2016, compared to a net loss of $724 thousand or $0.05 per share for Q4 2015 and net income of $5 thousand or $0.00 per share for Q1 2015. Zooms cash balance on March 31, 2016 was $303 thousand. The company has no bank debt, an unused line of credit of $1.25 million, working capital of $3.8 million, and a current ratio of 2.8.

In Q1 2016 we accomplished our goal of successfully launching three new Motorola brand cable modems, said Frank Manning, Zooms President and CEO. This started what we expect to be a significant sales ramp as Zoom dramatically expands the number of retail stores carrying our Motorola brand products in the second quarter of 2016. Our expenses have increased in connection with licensing, developing, advertising, and supporting Motorola brand products, but we believe these expenses are appropriate given the opportunity. We are far along toward introducing our next three Motorola brand cable modems and gateways in the coming months, and we remain excited about the opportunity.

Zoom has scheduled a conference call for Friday, May 6 at 10:00 a.m. Eastern Time. You may access the conference call by dialing (866) 393-7958 if you are in the U.S. and international callers may dial (706) 643-5255. The conference ID is 6520482. Shortly after the conference call, a recording of the call will be available on Zooms website at .

Founded in 1977 in Boston, Zoom Telephonics, Inc. designs, produces, markets, and supports modems and other communication products under the Zoom, Hayes, and Global Village brands. For more information about Zoom and its products, please see .

MOTOROLA and the Stylized M Logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Motorola Trademark Holdings, LLC. and are used under license.

This release contains forward-looking information relating to Zoom Telephonics plans, expectations, and intentions. Actual results may be materially different from expectations as a result of known and unknown risks, including: risks relating to introduction and sale of our Motorola brand products; the potential need for additional funding which Zoom may be unable to obtain; declining demand for certain of Zooms products; delays, unanticipated costs, interruptions or other uncertainties associated with Zooms production and shipping; Zooms reliance on several key outsourcing partners; uncertainty of key customers plans and orders; risks relating to product certifications; Zooms dependence on key employees; uncertainty of new product development, including budget overruns, project delays, and the risk that newly introduced products may contain undetected errors or defects or otherwise not perform as anticipated; costs and senior management distractions due to patent-related matters; and other risks set forth in Zooms filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Zoom cautions readers not to place undue reliance upon any such forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date made. Zoom expressly disclaims any obligation or undertaking to release publicly any updates or revisions to any such statements to reflect any change in Zooms expectations or any change in events, conditions or circumstance on which any such statement is based.

For additional information, please contact

Investor Relations

Zoom Telephonics

207 South Street

Boston, MA 02111

(617) 753-0897
Awesome Party Hire Now At The Forefront Of Time-efficient Party Equipment Hiring

[Awesome Party Hire, a Party Equipment Rental Service](http://www.awesomepartyhire.com.au/slushiesgranitasdaiquiris.html) operating locally around Melbourne inner and outer suburbs, has today been recognized as being a front runner in the realm of time-efficient party equipment hiring. This news coincides nicely with Awesome Party Hires recent recognition as a community favorite, due to its regular charity events and fundraisers.

Awesome Party Hire has been operating in the event and party organizers market for 6 years and competes against notable businesses such as Xtreme [Party hire, who also hires out some slushie machines](http://www.awesomepartyhire.com.au/slushiesgranitasdaiquiris.html) and Father of Lights Event Hire. They have been able to make such a strong impression on the market and gain reputation by constantly listening to what the customers are saying, instead of assuming they already know best.

James Balcombe, Awesome Party Hires Founder and CEO spoke about its recent recognition, expanding on some of the decisions and motivations that led the business to the level it has currently reached.

When Awesome Party Hire was founded, it was made abundantly clear we wanted to be the kind of company that was known as a family-style business who puts people first. One of the biggest challenges we faced was a sudden increase in competition during 2013. Fortunately with some good people behind us, and an unwavering dedication to provide quality service to our customers, we were able to overcome every obstacle and really hit our stride.

James Balcombe also mentioned Awesome Party Hires future plans involve moving to a bigger factory for further expansion. Its the hope of the company that the expansion will help them deliver the increasing demand for hired party equipment.

Awesome Party Hire plans to maintain its position at the forefront of time-efficient party equipment hiring for years to come, building on its success, finding new ways to serve its community, customers and the world at large.

More information on Awesome Party Hire can be found at their website: http://www.awesomepartyhire.com.au/
The National Council for Human Rights statement Wednesday also called for government imposed gag orders to be rescinded

Egypt's semi-governmental National Council for Human Rights (NCHR) has condemned "violations against the freedom of press and media" in the context of the current crisis between police authorities and the Journalists Syndicate over the recent storming of its building and the arrest of two journalists.

"The council condemns the [intrusion] in terms of arresting journalists for freedom of expression reasons, as well as imposing gag orders that block the right of citizens to be up to date with all public opinion issues," the council said in a statement Wednesday.

On Wednesday, over 2,000 members of Egypt's Journalists Syndicate gathered at its headquarters in Cairo's Downtown for an emergency meeting to respond to the storming earlier in the week of the headquarters by police.

Security forces surrounded the building from all directions and regime supporters hurled insults at members attending the meeting.

The syndicate issued a statement at the meeting outlining a set of demands on the government, including the dismissal of interior minister Madgy Abdel-Ghaffar and the release of journalists jailed in cases related to freedom of expression, along with instructions for news outlets on how to support these demands.

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Malek Adly is being investigated on charges of inciting protests, calling for overthrow of regime

Egyptian security forces arrested rights lawyer Malek Adly and political activist Zizo Abdo in the district of Maadi in Cairo on Thursday night.

A prosecutor questioned Adly and ordered he be detained for 15 days pending investigations into charges that include attempting to overthrow the regime and inciting the 25 April protests.

He is also being investigated on charges of spreading false news and harming national unity and societal peace. Adly denied all charges during the questioning.

The 25 April protests condemned the government's decision to recognise two Red Sea islands, administered by Egypt, as belonging to Saudi Arabia. The decision has yet to be ratified by Egypt's parliament.

Abdo was transferred from Maadi police station to Giza police station, according to Freedom for the Brave rights group, and has yet to be questioned by a prosecutor.

Hundreds were arrested in the lead-up to the protests and during the demonstrations themselves.

Protesting without a police permit is a crime in Egypt, and violators are often sentenced to jail terms.

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A group of United States congressmen visited the Multinational Force and Observers in Sinai on Thursday to check on the American contingent of troops deployed to what they described as a "hotspot" for IS militant group in North Africa.

Congressman Michael McCaul led the bipartisan congressional delegation to the MFO's North Camp, and said in a video published by the House Committee on Homeland Security that although "ISIS seems to be losing ground in Syria and Iraq, we're seeing a greater presence of ISIS in places like here in the Sinai peninsula in Egypt."

The MFO is an international peacekeeping force that was established to oversee the 1979 peace treaty between Egypt and Israel. Last September, six MFO peacekeepers, including four Americans, were injured in two bomb blasts in Sinai.

McCaul, standing in front of soliders and armoured vehicles, described North Sinai in the video as "ground zero" with the "battlefield right outside."

"ISIS in the Sinai pulled off one of the biggest threats to aviation by bringing down the Russian airliner just last year at Sharm El-Sheikh, and demonstrated their ability to conduct external operations," McCaul stated in the video.

The Texas representative added that American officials "dont want to see those operations turn against the West and the United States."

The Russian passenger airliner crashed last October in Sinai, killing all 224 onboard. Russia and other states blamed a terrorist-planted bomb for the incident; Egyptian investigators have referred initial findings to the country's prosecution for further action, but no Egyptian report on the incident has yet been released.

Congressman McCaul said the delegation is "working and meeting with our leaders here, our military officers, to determine how best to deal with this challenging threat."

Around 700 US troops are currently deployed to the MFO. The US contingent is the largest of twelve national contingents, which include Australia, Canada, Colombia, the Czech Republic, Fiji, France, Italy, New Zealand, Norway, the UK, and Uruguay.

MaCaul said the delegation would also be travelling to Libya and Tunisia to "to look at the growing threat of ISIS not only from the caliphate in Iraq and Syria but also in North Africa."

Last month, CNN reported that the US is considering moving its troops from the MFO's North Camp, which is located in North Sinais Al-Gorah, approximately 16km from the Israeli border and 37km southeast of the city of Arish, to the South Camp in South Sinai.

The US military said in April that it had formally notified Egypt and Israel that it is reviewing peacekeeping operations in Sinai.

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For city money, South Bend apartments allot 40% of rooms to poor tenants

The need for reasonably priced one- and two-bedroom units is dire in the city. Many renters are older and disabled residents who live alone.
A Russian military delegation headed by Alexander Fomin, Director of the Federal Service for Military-Technical Cooperation, discussed military cooperation with Egyptian officials on Friday.

The delegation, which departs for Cyprus on Saturday after a two day visit, discussed ways of increasing cooperation between Egypt and Russia in terms of joint training, armament and manufacturing capabilities.

Egypt's minister of military production Mohamed El-Assar visited Russia in March, heading a high-level delegation, to discuss cooperation with Russia.

Egypt and Russia have been partners in coordinating the fight against terrorism and have signed a number of related agreements over the last year, including a deal in November 2015 to build a nuclear power plant in Egypt and another in December 2015 to supply Egypt with 46 military helicopters.

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Also in attendance was trade and industry minister Tarek Qabil

Egyptian international cooperation minister Sahar Nasr discussed with Russian ambassador Sergei Bachenko the latest developments in the Dabaa nuclear power plan Thursday, according to a ministry statement released Friday.

The pair then discussed economic cooperation between both countries, as trade and industry minister Tarek Qabil was in attendance.

Qabil said it is necessary to quickly sign a free trade agreement between Egypt and Russia, as it would increase trade between Egypt and the European Union, the statement added.

The Russian ambassador invited Nasr and Qabil to attend an economic forum that will be held in Saint Petersburg on 16-18 June under the auspices of Russian president Vladimir Putin. According to the statement, both ministers accepted the invitation.

An agreement to build the Dabaa power plant was signed by Russian and Egyptian representatives in November 2015.

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Turkish artillery fired into Islamic State-held territory in Syria on Thursday, killing four militants, in retaliation for cross-border rockets that wounded three Turks, security sources and media said.

Two rockets fired by IS group from Syria landed in a residential area of the town of Kilis earlier in the day, its mayor, Hasan Kara, said. One person was slightly wounded.

Kilis, which stands on the Syrian border in southern Turkey, has been repeatedly targeted by IS group barrages which have killed 19 people since the start of the year.

The Turkish armed forces fired howitzers at two targets on the Syrian side, Dogan News Agency said, citing the military.

NATO member Turkey, which is part of the U.S.-led coalition fighting IS group, has routinely returned fire, destroying gun positions and killing 370 militants, the state-run Anadolu Agency said.

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Katherine Johnson, pictured here at NASA's Langley Research Center, where she worked as a "computer" and mathematician from 1953 to 1986. Langley dedicated a computing facility to Johnson in a ceremony today (May 5).

NASA honored 97-year-old mathematician Katherine Johnson today (May 5) by dedicating a building in her name at the space agency's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia.

Speakers at today's ceremony included Virginia congressmen and the mayor of Hampton, as well as former astronaut Leland Melvin, who offered Johnson a Space Flight Awareness Silver Snoopy Award that had been flown on the space shuttle Atlantis.

The building's dedication today was fitting; it occurred on the 55th anniversary of the first American spaceflight by astronaut Alan Shepard, whose suborbital trajectory Johnson calculated during her time working at Langley. [Women in Space: A Gallery of Firsts]

"Millions of people around the world watched Shepard's flight, but what they didn't know at the time was that the calculations that got him into space and safely home were done by today's guest of honor, Katherine Johnson," Clayton Turner, Langley's deputy director, said at the dedication.

At Langley, Johnson performed calculations for airplane safety and rocket-launch experiments, starting in 1953 as part of a pool of female "computers" and continuing until 1986. She worked by hand, and then with mechanical calculators  starting at the African-American-only West Area Computers but moving after two weeks to Langley's flight research division. Eventually, Johnson worked with electronic computers, whose work she checked before the calculations were used in John Glenn's groundbreaking orbit around the Earth in February 1962.

Last year, President Barack Obama awarded Johnson the Presidential Medal of Freedom  the nation's highest civilian honor  for her outstanding technical contributions to spaceflight.

The Katherine G. Johnson Computational Research Facility at NASA's Langley Research Center, dedicated today (May 5), commemorates Katherine Johnson's exceptional work calculating trajectories and orbits as a NASA mathematician. (Image credit: NASA)

The building named in her honor, the Katherine G. Johnson Computational Research Facility, is the fifth to be named after a former Langley employee.

"The Computational Research Facility will be a 40,000-square-foot (3,700 square meters) consolidated data center that will allow our engineers and scientists to perform advanced computational research and development, crunching data and numbers that will one day help NASA land humans on Mars; design quieter, faster and more efficient future aircraft; and help us better understand our changing climate," Turner said. "It's not unlike the work that Katherine did in her tenure at Langley, helping NASA send the first Americans into space, into orbit around Earth, and to the moon and back  except she didn't have a 40,000-square-foot building full of cutting-edge technology."

Johnson is the subject of an upcoming book, "Hidden Figures," which describes her achievements and those of other female, African-American mathematicians at NASA. A movie version of "Hidden Figures," starring Taraji P. Henson as Johnson, is currently in production by 20th Century Fox. The book's author, Margot Shetterly, shared thoughts about Johnson and t women of NASA whom she admired, and the cast of the upcoming movie congratulated Johnson in a new video.

The presenters also displayed a NASA video collage about Johnson's legacy:

Afterward, Johnson received the Silver Snoopy Award to commemorate her key role in putting people in space  its presenter, retired astronaut Melvin, worked with her at Langley before flying two missions on Atlantis.

Both Shetterly and NASA Administrator Charles Bolden noted one of Johnson's favorite sayings: "You are no better than anyone else, and no one is better than you."

"I think that the real subtlety  and the meat, the power of this statement  is the part that says, 'You are no better than anyone else,' and really, this is one of the reasons that Ms. Johnson's story has captivated us," Shetterly said. "She has such a towering talent, but she has gone out of her way to recognize talent in other people, regardless of their gender, of their race, of their background. If you're a smart person, then she wants to have a conversation with you."

In fact, Shetterly said, part of the reason Johnson's story wasn't well known until recently was that she is so modest and insists on talking about others' achievements rather than her own.

"Thank you so much for your attention, your kindness  and so happy to see them giving more recognition to women for the work they have done," Johnson said after the presentations ended. "At the time, it was just another day's work."

"And you can just look at me and say that 'she did her share,'" she added.

Email Sarah Lewin at slewin@space.com or follow her @SarahExplains. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.
An example of a new VGOS station at the Koke'e Park Geophysical Observatory in Hawaii, which began operating in February 2016.

Earlier this year, NASA and several partners successfully tested new technology that will make it easier to measure Earth's position in space and time. The work will improve navigation of space missions and geophysical studies of Earth, agency officials said.

The Feb. 5 tests showed, for the first time ever, that it's possible to link up three next-generation telescopes and perform broadband observations.

"The successful tests demonstrate the viability of the new broadband antenna technology for making the kinds of observations needed for improved accuracy in measurements of the very-fine-scale shape of Earth," Benjamin Phillips, who leads NASA's Earth Surface & Interior focus area at NASA headquarters in Washington, D.C., said in a statement. [See how the system works in this video]

Specifically, NASA is working on improvements to very long baseline interferometry (VLBI), a technique that allows multiple radio telescopes to work together simultaneously to make more precise measurements.

A signal from a radio-emitting object, such as a quasar (the region around a galaxy's central supermassive black hole), is collected by several telescopes. Then, researchers calculate the distance between the telescopes by comparing the times at which the radio signal arrived at different receivers. The new system allows scientists to determine that timing more precisely, making measurements of the Earth's rotation and orientation more accurate, NASA officials said.

The new network is called the VLBI Global Observing System (VGOS), and it includes several improvements compared with the old network.

One improvement is the size of the dishes. At 39 to 42 feet (12 to 13 meters) wide, the new dishes are significantly smaller than the 65- to 100-foot-wide (20 to 30 m) ones used in the older network. The smaller dishes can move more quickly and do 100 observations per hour, compared with about 12 per hour for the older system. This smaller dish type is also less expensive than the older, larger ones, NASA officials said.

In addition, VGOS can use broadband capability to perform more sensitive observations, thus allowing for more precise measurements with less interference from other radio sources, NASA officials said. It can work in four frequencies (bands) at the same time, allowing data-transfer rates of 8 to 16 gigabits per second (1,000 times the data-transfer rate of HDTV). The older system, by contrast, uses only two frequencies and has a data-transfer rate of 256 megabits per second, NASA officials said.

NASA's VGOS dishes are at the NASA-U.S. Naval Observatory VGOS station at NASA's Koke'e Park Geophysical Observatory in Hawaii, the Goddard Geophysical and Astronomical Observatory at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Haystack Observatory.

The testing didn't come easily. First, NASA and its partners had to overcome several technical problems to make sure VGOS would work correctly. The weather is different at all three sites, making it difficult to account for the effects of a portion of the upper atmosphere (the ionosphere) that interferes with radio waves. The stations also had to work amid interference from radio towers, cell towers and other radio sources.

"These and other technical issues have been dealt with," NASA Goddard's Stephen Merkowitz, manager of NASA's Space Geodesy Project, said in the same statement. "We have a few more challenges down the road, but they are manageable. We now know that the new global system can be used the way it was intended."

NASA did not release a date for the full VGOS implementation. The agency noted that several VLBI stations are being replaced or upgraded as a part of the transformation.

Follow Elizabeth Howell @howellspace, or Space.com @Spacedotcom. We're also on Facebook and Google+. Originally published on Space.com.
Orbital ATK said its redesigned Antares rocket, with different Russian first-stage propulsion, should make its first flight from Wallops Island, Virginia, in July. Synergies with other Orbital businesses mean Antares is profitable even if it wins no business beyond the 2-3 launches per year planned for NASA, Orbital said.

PARISSatellite and rocket builder Orbital ATK on May 5 said its re-engined Antares medium-lift launch vehicle likely would make its first flight in July and would be nicely profitable for Orbital even if it wins no other customers beyond its current NASA space station resupply business.

Dulles, Virginia-based Orbital has enough NASA station-resupply work to assure two or three Antares launches per year well into the next decade and the company expects to widen its customer set once the redesigned Antares has proven itself.

But even in a worst-case scenario in which Antares is used only for the NASA work, it will be a good business for Orbital.

"There are lots of interchangeable parts and subsystems, with the same engineering and manufacturing teams and facilities," Thompson said. If the vehicle can move beyond NASA to average five or six flights per year, the profit margin thickens, he said.

A flight rate of two or three per year is generally considered exceptionally low for a rocket that must pay its own way in a competitive environment. Orbital is one of three companies providing supply missions to NASA under the Commercial Resupply Services-2 contract, whose launches start in 2019.

The first re-engined Antares uses Russian RD-181 engines for the first stage. They replace an earlier Russian design that Orbital no longer trusted after an October 2014 Antares failure, which was the vehicle's fifth and last flight.

Since then, Orbital has kept current on its NASA space station resupply contract obligations by booking two Atlas V launches from United Launch Alliance of Centennial, Colorado.

Assuming a successful static-fire test in late May at the Wallops Island, Virginia, spaceport, Antares would launch the Orbital-built Cygnus supply vehicle to the international space station in July. A successful launch will lead to a second flight around November, also a NASA station-resupply mission, Thompson said.

Orbital and the U.S. Air Force are investing in early research on a heavier-lift rocket that would use all U.S.-built engines and would be capable of serving both the U.S. government and the international commercial market.

Thompson said the joint investment would remain modest, with a decision in mid-2017 on whether to proceed with full-scale development of the rocket.

Orbital said its Cygnus vehicle business for NASA, plus work on U.S. military satellites, would offset what may be a poor year in commercial geostationary-orbit telecommunications satellites. Orbital is one of the world's top seven suppliers of commercial telecommunications satellites but focuses on the market's smaller end, for satellites whose payloads require no more than 8 kilowatts of power.

The overall commercial satellite market ebbs and flows, and demand for smaller satellites can be even more unpredictable.

Added to the market volatility is Orbital's special predicament with the still-non-functional U.S. Export-Import Bank, the U.S. export-credit agency. Orbital said Ex-Im's shutdown in 2015 cost it one of the three satellite orders it had believed it would win. The company ended the year with two satellite contracts.

For 2016, Thompson said, the overall commercial market is likely to no better than 2015, where only 17 commercial satellites  by Orbital's count  were ordered, including five smaller satellites in Orbital's range.

In 2016 as well there should be five smaller satellites coming up for bids. Thompson did not say whether any of these customers would require export-credit backing, but the fact is that Ex-Im, while operational, is awaiting U.S. Congressional approval of a new director that would permit the bank to support large-volume engagements such as satellite orders.

This story was provided by SpaceNews, dedicated to covering all aspects of the space industry.
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Saudi police officer has been shot dead in the Mecca region, the interior ministry said on Friday, after four suspected Islamist militants died during a raid in the same area.

Corporal Khalaf al-Harithi was on duty at a station in the western region on Thursday evening when he was hit by gunfire from an unknown source, the ministry said in a statement.

An investigation is under way into the incident.

It occurred several hours after officers shot dead two "terrorists" during an exchange of fire at their hideout between the holy city of Mecca and the mountain resort of Taif, about 80 kilometres (50 miles) to the east, according to the ministry.

Two other suspects killed themselves by detonating suicide belts, it said.

A simultaneous raid occurred on a hideout in the Red Sea city of Jeddah, where two people were arrested.

Since late 2014 the Islamic State group of Sunni extremists has claimed deadly bombing and shooting attacks against the kingdom's minority Shiite community, and members of the security forces.

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, leader of the IS group which has seized territory in Iraq and Syria, has reputedly called Saudi Arabia's Sunni rulers "apostate tyrants" and called on Saudis to rise against them.

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The toll from a bombing last weekend on a police station in Turkey's southern city of Gazinantep blamed on a militant linked to Islamic State (IS) has risen to three, reports said Friday.

The toll rose after policeman Mehmet Oter, 45, died in hospital of his wounds sustained in the car bomb attack Sunday in Gaziantep, a major hub for Syrian refugees close to the border, the Dogan news agency reported.

The attack, which has not been claimed, was blamed by the Turkish interior ministry on a Turkish militant linked to IS jihadists who have already carried out several deadly attacks in Turkey over the last year.

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A New Protest Culture

On the first and third Tuesday of each month, the group Munster against TTIP meets here. Its members include people like Ute S., a 67-year-old retiree who worked as a civil servant for the federal government. These days, she spends about two hours a day surfing social networks and online publications for new information about CETA and TTIP. Or people like Stefanie Tegeler, 36, a political scientist, who says, "I have nothing against free trade, but I do have a fundamental problem with a lack of transparency." And people like Michael Beier, 49, a marketing expert who says: "I was never a political person, but I have found my movement here."

At this particular meeting, the group discusses the most recent TTIP protest in Hanover. Over 150 group members traveled on three buses to the protest, and most had never even attended one of the Tuesday meetings. "When they're needed, though, the people come," says Beier, "because they understand that TTIP is something that impacts all of us."

The new quality of the protests against TTIP has also turned marketing man Beier into an activist. Beier is pleading with people to leave their stage wagons and microphones at home. He says this is about keeping people on equal footing. "The people don't need show-masters anymore."

Thirty-five-year-old Jorg Rostek, who is typing the minutes from the meeting into his laptop, says, "What we are witnessing here is a new protest culture that is different from all the time-honored rituals."

Rostek is one of the founding members of Munster against TTIP, but he has also been active with the Green Party. He says that local politicians "have little time to delve into issues like TTIP," and that these gaps are now being filled by local initiatives. "We are thinking here in big contexts, we're working our way through highly complex circumstances, we're reading hundreds of pages and we're seeking out experts who can classify and explain things," says Rostek.

'Not Worthy of a Democracy'

Rostek says it's important for him to emphasize that he and the others at the table "aren't just against it." And he says they're not just fighting against the four letters, "but rather to ensure that democracy and European values survive." In that sense, the fight against CETA and TTIP also has nothing to do with unvarnished anti-Americanism, adds Stefanie Tegeler, who says that such sentiment isn't prevalent among her generation, anyway. "At the end of the day, the Canadian and American people are also fighting for the same rights," she says. "If we shared our knowledge, we could learn from each other."

At the same time, at the other end of Germany, Greenpeace is going public with leaked documents from the secret TTIP negotiations. They make a huge splash in the country and leave many asking if the trade deal is now doomed. Late that afternoon, representatives of the non-government organization Mehr Demokratie, or Greater Democracy, a national group that advocates for an increase in the number of referendums held in Germany, hold a meeting in Munich. They want to hand out flyers at a village festival and also try to gain supporters for a referendum against CETA that is scheduled in Bavaria. The EU is planning to implement parts of the agreement even before national parliaments are provided with the opportunity to vote on it.

The German government's secrecy in its TTIP dealings is "not worthy of a democracy," says businesswoman Brigitte Grubler, 46. She's been joined at the meeting by the CEO of a mid-sized company as well as a former top Siemens executive.

A large share of the recruits to the anti-TTIP movement come from the more educated parts of society, as indicated by a survey conducted by TNS Enmid, one of Germany's leading pollsters. These aren't professional troublemakers -- they're people who don't like to be taken for idiots. "The government has been withholding essential information," one of them chides. "I never would have been allowed to do that in my previous position as an executive."

Bavarian Finance Minister Markus Soder barely has a chance to enter into the festival tent before a flyer is passed into his hands. The politician with the conservative Christian Social Union party smiles amiably. Even the police attempt to be as polite as possible to the protesters. "If you need anything, just get in touch with us," the officer leading the police tells the protesters. "Good luck."

Broad Opposition

The police's own union has even joined forces in the protests against free trade, as has every other union that is a member of the German Trade Union Confederation (DGB). They aren't alone. They are joined by the social welfare organization Paritatische Wohlfahrtsverband. The German Cultural Council. Environmentalist organizations like BUND, NABU, WWF, NaturFreunde, the Environmental Institute and Greenpeace. Development organizations Bread for the World and Oxfam. Organizations critical of globalization like Attac, the citizen movement Campact, the consumer protection group Foodwatch, the German small farmers association and Mehr Demokratie.

In October, they all joined forces to hold a protest against TTIP and CETA in Berlin that drew people from all across the country. Some of the partners on the national level were even instigated by Economics Minister Sigmar Gabriel.

In order to counter claims of a lack of transparency in the trade negotiations, Gabriel invited representatives of major institutions to join a TTIP advisory board. But it didn't take long for disputes to emerge. The officials on the board complained that the Economics Ministry was largely representing the EU position and that critical voices were being brushed over. Slowly, those voices began to get louder -- representatives of the church exposed problems TTIP would create for fair trade, unions expressed concern about its impact on the working world and the head of the consumer advice center pointed to problems with food standards. "Until then, people had just been focusing on their individual issues. But now it was clear how many areas of life TTIP would permeate," says one member of the advisory board. A good number of those members then joined the anti-TTIP movement.

Around 250,000 people traveled to Berlin for the mass demonstration in what was the largest protest in Germany since the marches against the Iraq war in 2003.

Disparaging a Movement

From the very beginning, politicians with both parties in the German coalition government -- the conservatives with the Christian Democrats and the center-left Social Democrats -- sought to disparage the movement. In a debate about TTIP in the federal parliament, the Bundestag, CDU member Andrea Lammel said, tersely, "We know how signatures are collected on the streets." Fellow party member Joachim Pfeiffer referred to the citizen movement Campact as being part of an "outrage industry." Those who have decided to hitch themselves to the cart of Campact, Attac and Foodwatch, are "simply constructed," Pfeiffer claimed.

The organization Lobbycontrol noted that media coverage of the protests had been oddly unbalanced, alleging that many news organizations sought to portray the peaceful protests in ways that somehow put them on the level of the anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant Pegida marches.

But none of the labels stuck -- neither the claims of ties to Pegida nor the suggestions by politicians and the business community that TTIP opponents were either notoriously anti-trade, anti-globalization, hysterical scaremongers or anti-American. Support among the American and German populations for TTIP has dropped considerably over the past two years before recently falling off the deep end.

Proponents argue that this is due to their opponents' efforts to make the debate an ideological one. "Organizations like Foodwatch and Campact are nothing more than professional protest companies that make money off people's fears and don't provide any factual input in the public debate about the TTIP," complains CDU politician Pfeiffer.

A New Kind of Movement

As it turns out, the opposite is true. The growth of the anti-TTIP side has a lot to do with their use of arguments that are supported by studies or external expertise, which TTIP supporters have not been able to contradict.

The success of the TTIP opponents is closely tied to the professionalization of non-governmental organizations. NGOs like Greenpeace, Campact and Foodwatch have competent staffs and more than enough resources to order counter-assessments, hire experts, carry out actions. Their experts can analyze complicated trade papers and translate them into language that a lay person can understand. They are networked to one another, even internationally, and are adept at using social media. They force the release of information about laws and supply the public with internal documents whilst TTIP supporters insist on the confidentiality of the negotiations.

The fight against TTIP began with Pia Eberhardt. The Cologne resident works for the Brussels-based NGO Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO), a group that monitors lobbyists. The economist had already gained some experience examining international arbitrage during her studies, so she took on the planned mechanism in the TTIP. When she discovered the powerful possibilities for legal action by businesses against states that it contained, she wrote a report and tried to establish contact with journalists. CEO simultaneously discovered that the European Commission in Brussels had eagerly met with business representatives in advance of the TTIP but not with representatives of civil society. The first big issues with the TTIP had been found: A lack of transparency, the prioritization of business and the establishment of parallel standards of justice.

German organizations quickly adopted the issue. In the spring of 2013, even before the European Council, the powerful EU body representing the leaders of the 28 member states, adopted the negotiating mandate for TTIP, the first NGOs signed onto TTIP Non-Negotiable network, an umbrella organization comprised of over 60 groups.

Neither the business nor the political world noticed what was brewing. It had been a long time since trade policy had been a major topic for NGOs. But when it became clear that the US-Europe pact would exceed the framework set by all previous agreements, that changed.

'In the US There Has to be a Corpse'

Thilo Bode, founder of the consumer protection agency Foodwatch and a former head of Greenpeace, didn't want to have anything to do with TTIP at first. But more and more sponsoring members pushed him to take it on. They wanted to know if European food sector standards were imperiled by TTIP. Bode read up on the subject and soon discovered the fundamental contradiction between the European precautionary principle and the aftercare principle. "In Europe, nothing is allowed that is suspected of being hazardous to people's health," he says. "In the US, there has to be a corpse, then things are regulated by litigation." The next big TTIP subject was born.

Experienced campaigner Bode was hooked. In 2015, his book, "Die Freihandelsluge" (The Free-Trade Lie) became a bestseller. In it, Bode describes how political policy becomes subordinate to business interests and how the business world can use the so-called instrument of regulatory cooperation to intervene in legislation. "The book fell on fertile ground, because citizens continue to feel powerless, continually have less of a say and are bamboozled again and again," says Bode. The recent revelations only fuel that impression further: "In my already long career as an 'activist,' I have never experienced a political project in whose defense the government and the ministries have lied to us so unwaveringly and brazenly and so one-sidedly taken up the side of the corporations."

Greenpeace has been actively addressing the subject of trade since 1990. Their expert, Jurgen Knirsch, remembers with great fondness the two crates containing "Practice Safe Trade" condoms that he had to smuggle into the negotiation building during the world trade talks in Seattle. In the riots that happened there, he met the Harvard legal expert Lori Wallach, who is currently organizing the resistance against the TTIP in the US as part of her work for the citizens' protection organization Public Citizen. Knirch is well connected with the NGOs that focus on trade. "There is not a lot of competition between us, we exchange with each other and work together." The pooling of resources and splitting of work is another key element of the movement against TTIP.

Greenpeace is known for creating campaigns that are very media savvy, but nobody can mobilize people these days better than the citizen movement Campact. On their internet platform, people can start petitions or sign ones, and thus take their first step towards being politically active. With short explainer videos and jazzy calls to action it manages to bring even difficult subjects to people's attention. Campact also tries to get signatories to take action. Campact is the most powerful arm of the movement, this is where protests and protest materials are prepared. During the last elections for the European Parliament, they distributed 6.5 million fliers on voters' doors.

False Promises

"At first, TTIP was sold to us as providing growth and jobs," says spokesperson Jorg Haas. But this claim by proponents has been exposed piece by piece as fully over-exaggerated: The most optimistic studies by proponents predict a modest growth rate of 0.5 percent over a space of 10 years -- those are just five thousandths per year. "The TTIP leaks have now also dismantled the second story: that TTIP would establish high standards," Haas says.

The EU and the Federation of German Industries (BDI) first had to correct their growth predictions downward. Tufts University in Massachusetts had presented research in 2014 that a post-TTIP Europe would lose about 600,000 jobs by 2025 and -- depending on the country -- lead to a loss in personal income of between 165 and 5,500.

Global Justice Now, a TTIP opponent group, recently used the Freedom of Information Act in the United Kingdom to force the release of one of the reports commissioned by the government there, which has been kept under wraps since 2013. In the report, researchers from the London School of Economics argued that the agreement contained many risks and brought few to no advantages. Prime Minister David Cameron held this devastating result secret -- and instead promoted TTIP to his citizens.

The Controversy Will Stay

It's hard to know what drives politicians to sell out their people and their country. What's sure is that, while the politicians in charge may come and go, TTIP would remain for decades. International treaties are very hard to rescind.

But EU Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom still wants to go through one or two rounds of negotiations with the US before drawing a summary. Observers assume that the ultimate outcome will be a "TTIP Light," containing only the noncontroversial points, in order to save face for all of the people involved.

At the same time, a complete cancelling of the agreement is not out of the question either. "A world without TTIP is possible," says Bernd Lange, a member of the Social Democrats and the head of the Trade Committee in the European Parliament. In Germany, there is no lack of politicians who would be happy enough if this tiresome subject would simply flame out.

But that won't happen. Thilo Bode has now gotten to work on the CETA Agreement with Canada, which is close to being signed. He determined that the precautionary principle is hardly mentioned in the agreement draft. "The EU has sold us out a long time ago," says Bode.

Now he wants to fight against it. He doesn't want to say how. It should be a surprise.
Glaimim (southern Morocco), 05 May 2016 (SPS) -The Moroccan occupying forces besiege today the familys house of the martyr Brahim Sikka to prevent his family, and his companions in the Coordinating of Unemployed Sahrawi, from organizing a press conference to shed light on his arrest and torture, reported source from the Ministry of the Occupied Territories and Communities Abroad.

This move comes after the family rejected the results of the two medical reports of the Moroccan authorities, calling for international autopsy of a neutral party.SPS

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Conducted by Kivells in Exeter Livestock Centre on behalf of the Dorset Horn and Poll Dorset Sheep Breeders Association, the sale saw well over 2,000 pedigree and commercial breeding sheep sold.

The sale is one of the largest in the UK for commercial early lambing ewes as well as pedigree rams and ewes and it provides a yardstick for the years forthcoming breeding sheep sales.

Averages for 137 rams sold, an increase of nine on the 2015 sale, were down by 147 a head on last year to 660.04, with only 30 forward leaving the ring unsold.

Accredited ewes averaged 89.32 for 22 sold while ewe lambs and hoggets levelled at 170.00 for 359 sold. A total of 2,278 pedigree accredited and non-accredited and commercial breeding rams and females went under the hammer.

With a top price of 3,000gns for the reserve champion from the previous days show from David Rossiters Huish flock at Galmpton, Kingsbridge, Devon, a total of 19 rams made 1,000gns and more.

The individual female breed record was broken by Northern Ireland breeder Thomas Wright at 2,000gns for a home-bred ewe lamb.

Association chairman and Northern Ireland breeder Ben Lamb, who had the sales third top price, said:

All in all, with the farming industry as it is, I think it was a very positive sale. A strong commercial trade underpinned the breeders rams sales in what was a bigger catalogue of sheep.

Kivells auctioneer Russell Steer said there was a strong trade for the best of females. Buyers were from a few new flocks looking to buy females, which is always good. Trade was good on the back of a weaker barren ewe trade.

One of the worst winters for a number of seasons had prevented breeders turning out as good quality rams, said Kivells Simon Alford. We have had an atrocious winter for a forage breed which likes to be on grass. The top 25% of rams sold well and more of this quality could have been sold. Sheep were sold to all corners of the UK.

Leading the days prices was the September 2015 born Poll ram lamb Huish Exhilarate from David Rossiter. Its sire Downkillybegs Unique, a double copy Myomax ram, has passed one copy of the double muscling gene to his son which is out of a home-bred ewe from the 520 ewe Huish flock.

Mr Rossiter is an advocate of using DNA markers which he believes will become increasingly important for future step breeding, selecting not only for health and performance, but the early lambing capabilities which the Dorset is renowned for.

Purchasing the leading priced ram was father and son Jim and Joe Dufosee for their 400-ewe Blackhill flock which is run on an organic system alongside 200 Aberdeen Angus suckler cows, run on an organic system on Salisbury Plain. They paid the top price of 3,100gns at the 2015 May Fair for Riverview Wasabi from Northern Ireland breeders Sharon and Trevor Knox.

Joe and I select the 10 rams we like before the pre-sale show, said Jim, who farms with his son at Farnicombe Farm, Upton Scudamore, Warminster, Wiltshire. Davids ram had good figures, which is important to us.

He is also a scopey ram as well as being correct and he has the Myomax gene breeding through Ballytaggart Puma, added Jim, who said the ram would be out to work immediately after the sale.

Next in the the price order but selling early on in the catalogue was Deverill Xavi a September born Poll ram from Adrian Dufosee which made 2,600gns to William and Karen Carson, of Northern Ireland.

The ram would not have made the sale had it not been for Adrians sons who work on the family farm Church Farm, Longbridge, Deverill, Warminster, as Adrian broke his wrist before the May Fair.

Adrian paid 800gns for the rams sire, Oliver Tree Uncle Ben, two years ago. The ram is out of a home bred ewe.

Sons Harley, 22, and Grady, 19, turned out and showed the ram to achieve the flocks highest price - previous best was 800gns for the flock which dates back to 1988 and is run alongside other pedigree sheep. Currently, 250 of the Dorset flock is polled with 50 Dorset horned ewes. Dorset make up half the pedigree ewe flock and 200 cattle are finished a year.

William Carson, who bought the ram for his Downkillybegs flock in Antrim, Northern Ireland, said: We liked the rams character and presence. The ram is very much true to breed character and type.

William and his wife Karen and son Cameron have a flock of 350 ewes, of which 200 are Poll Dorsets. William has been secretary of the Northern Ireland Dorset club for the last 25 years during which time the breeds popularity there has grown to such a degree that now a third of the associations membership comes from the province, running a total of 4,500 registered pedigree ewes.
Commanders in Libya's third city Misrata rushed militiamen to a key crossroads on Friday after it was overrun by the Islamic State group in an assault in which a suicide bomber killed two police.

The Abu Grein crossroads lies 120 kilometres (75 miles) south of Misrata where the highway along Libya's Mediterranean coast meets the main road south into the desert interior.

It was captured by IS on Thursday in an advance from their stronghold in the city of Sirte 140 kilometres (90 miles) to the east.

The head of the Misrata military council, Colonel Ibrahim Bel-Rajab, said he had ordered all brigades under his command to head to Abu Grein without delay, Libya's LANA news agency reported.

"Numerous armed vehicles of IS have been spotted in this area," he said.

Misrata's two main television channels broadcast appeals to militiamen on leave to return to their barracks.

In a statement, IS group said a Tunisian fighter had blown up a vehicle at the crossroads allowing other fighters to advance and take control of it and five other villages in the area, the SITE Intelligence Group reported.

IS group captured Sirte in June last year and has since transformed it into a training camp for Libyan and foreign militants.

With its port and airport, there are fears the militants could use the city as a staging post for attacks on European soil.

Western powers including the United States, Britain and France have openly considered international military intervention in Libya against IS group.

Experts have said that any future foreign strikes could target Sirte as well as the region around it.

The militants group is estimated to have around 5,000 fighters in Libya, and is trying to attract hundreds more.

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A bomb exploded on Friday in a qat market in Yemen's loyalist-held city of Marib, killing three civilians and three soldiers and wounding several others, a local official said.

Qat is a mild narcotic and mainstay of Yemeni social life whose consumption is banned in parts of the country held by the jihadist Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP).

The official said the bomb was planted at the entrance of the market by unknown individuals who apparently wanted to target loyalist forces.

Marib is east of the capital Sanaa which is in the hands of Shia Houthi rebels.

The rebels said on their website sabanews.net that three bombs exploded at the qat market, killing seven people and wounding 15.

They blamed the blasts on "the chaos in the city which is controlled by militiamen and mercenaries" -- a reference to loyalist forces.

The latest violence comes as talks aimed at ending a 13-month devastating war in Yemen are under way in Kuwait between government and rebel delegations.

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Saudi Arabia's former intelligence chief Prince Turki bin Faisal and ex-advisor of Israel's Premier Benjamin Netanyahu Yaakov Amidror shook hands as they shared stage during a joint conference on Thursday.

The Washington Institute For Near East Policy  which organized the event  described the meeting on its website as a "groundbreaking public dialogue" involving a discussion covering many relevant Middle Eastern political issues for the first time in the history of Saudi-Israeli relations.

"It really is a delight for us to be able to host this event. Of course it has a vital symbolic value, but I don't think all viewers are here tonight just for the symbolism," said Robert Satloff, executive director of the Washington-based think tank

"I think you are here tonight because these gentlemen have between them decades, nearly a century, of experience in helping their countries navigate the sometimes, shall I say the often, turbulent stormy waters of the Middle East," Satloff continued.

The United States encountered disagreements with the two countries in recent years over its handling of a series of Middle Eastern issues, mainly its rapprochement with Iran that ended with 2015's nuclear deal.

Both expressed concern about the recent deal during the conference.

Faisal described the US-Saudi partnership as a "strategic" one, adding that it is not only confined to governments. "We feel a have a special link to the American people," he said.

He added that the United States had helped Saudi Arabia develop its oil industry  describing it as a "lifeline" for the oil-rich kingdom  though he admitted the challenging nature of finding alternatives to oil.

The Saudi prince spoke about the so-called Arab Peace Initiative, which calls for Israel's withdrawal from Palestinian territory occupied during the 1967 war, which in return would assure the normalization of relations with Arab states.

He argued that the peace initiative is the best solution for the ongoing problems between Israel and Arab states, CNN Arabic reported.

The initiative, which Israel has continuously rejected, has outlined the creation of a Palestinian state in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip and envisaged a "just solution of the refugee issue."

Faisal said that he disagreed with Amidror on that matter, believing that Washington can play a role in the issue.

He added that Amidror sees the issue differently, preferring Saudi-Israeli cooperation as a first step, without focus on other grievances related to the day-to-day lives of the Palestinians, such as continuned settlement expansion.

Yet Amidror argued that Arab states and states backing the Arab League are different from those that existed when the initiative was presented by Saudi Arabia in 2002, arguing that some actors  such as Al-Assad's regime in Syria or Lebanon  will not partake in negotiations with Israel.

The former Netanyahu advisor said that he is not ruling out a solution on the Palestinian issue, but stated that cooperation with Israel is a better solution, especially considering states in the region are suffering from similar problems, such as Islamic extremism.

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T he clouds over Londons property market have not disappeared despite a recovery in sales of flats at the 8 billion Earls Court scheme, the boss of developer Capital & Counties warned today.

Capco spooked the market two months ago when it admitted that sales had virtually ground to a halt on the second phase of the Lillie Square apartments scheme, part of the wider Earls Court project.

But in a modest revival, Capco has sold nine apartments at Lillie Square  where homes cost between 750,000 and 2.2 million  since the end of February. Chief executive Ian Hawksworth (pictured) welcomed the latest sales, but admitted: The London residential market is ticking over but it is not as hot as it was in 2014 and 2015. The sector is being affected by macro issues, whether its the EU referendum or the mayoral election [causing would-be buyers to delay decisions].

Hawksworth said there was a glut of flats in parts of London and some locations where developers are finding it difficult to justify prices. Fears have been fuelled by a boom in development around the new US embassy potentially dragging down prices as well as jitters among foreign buyers. The impact of stamp duty hikes on buy-to-let investors and second homes also slowed the market.

Capcos shares rose 6.9p to 340p.
H ow was it for you? Unless you were one of Blighted of Barnet, frustrated by a mighty registration fiasco, you will have made your choice (mainly) between Zac Goldsmith and Sadiq Khan  and even those who preferred an early summer night out to a trek to the polls after work will feel more instinctively allied to one than the other. Barring an unforeseen upset, Khan looks like the figure most likely to end up ruling City Hall. That tells a story of what has happened to London and to national politics in recent years.

Labours candidate fought a more dogged and focused campaign than his Tory rival. Khan understood better the pull of post-Boris politics and the ability to motivate Londoners who felt that the glitz and global appeal of Boriss high-octane London could not outlive the tenure of the Boris, the great Man Child. Khans proposition was Made in Tooting  dull and worthy in a basic, Labour-lawyer way, but the voice of the anxious, the out-earned and the uneasy, pledging redress while guaranteeing not very much at all. Candidates are allowed to indulge such pathos  elected mayors need ideas and to-do lists  and are punished by our boredom if they fail to deliver them.

We have quietly passed into a different era of London governance today: for this was the first London race not in the grip of either Ken Livingstone or Boris Johnson (two terms each and the congestion is still hellish). The capitals political contests are like long-running family feuds  the same arguments recur in different guises, carried into the next generation of ideas. Ken and Boris each had their fatal flaws  Kens arcane partisanship grew toxic and bitter. Zip-wire Boris was a hoot  humorous catnip for Tories itching to ditch austerity gloom and guilt about making money. That braggadocio also feels out of time.

Londoners are politically lucky  we can count out our lives not only in national politics but also in more immediate local fiefdoms, like minions in a metropolitan Game of Thrones. London has in turn elected Ken the maverick, Ken as prodigal son, re-embraced by the penitent Labour Party, and Boris, on his own terms, twice. It is not, as the lazier pundits say, inevitably a Labour city . It is rather more exciting and reactive: a city that is willing to vote either way if the offer fits the time and mood. But it is also pragmatic, which is why plucky also-rans and single-issue independents do not get far.

Many realities in politics defy pieties. We are, formally, against heredity and yet happily define the leading candidates by their parental backgrounds  as do they. So often did Sadiq cite his bus-driver father that preening about humble origins became a Labour in-joke about the repetitive nature of his pitch. Gilded Zac had the opposite problem  a sense of casual entitlement coupled with the sense that he did not much care whether he got the job or not. A Standard colleague spotted him on the trail in the final days in an overcoat, randomly buttoned into his tailored suit  not the look of a man expecting to give a victory speech. David Cameron sounded as if his endorsement was being read from a slow-moving Autocue.

Khans detractors, meanwhile, have magnified the impression that he keeps ill-judged company when it comes to apologists for aggressive political Islam that sits uneasily with liberal London  but he was keen enough on Muslim voters to risk this  and made some frankly idiotic comments praising the inclusivity of Turkey, at a time when that country is in the midst of an authoritarian clampdown. Mayors have to learn that what they say resonates  including their naiveties.

Goldsmiths last-ditch attempt to slur his rival by suggesting alliance with Islamic fanaticism looked desperate and uncomfortable  and to judge by his uneasy body language, not to his taste either.

London is a city that is willing to vote either way if the offer fits the time and mood. But it is also pragmatic

None of this, however, requires hysterics. We are slowly learning what Americans have long known  that mayoral races are slugathons, not elegant debating societies. Londons electorates are savvy enough to take it, and a bruising competition is better than a lame one. If the best (wo)man does not always win in mayoral contests, the better-planned campaign and more consistent message usually does.

We do not have to believe that a new mayor can freeze fares while increasing the quality of transport (they cant). Or that they can magically buck one of the most dynamic housing markets in the world to deliver a rush of cheap rentable property (they cant). But a mayor can voice Londons frustrations and fears  that the next generation will not fare as well as their aspirational parents. A mayor can also express Londons sense that this is an ethnic melting pot, which, for all the tensions and trials, enjoys that diversity. When the austerity-era prosecco has been drunk tonight, the sober truth will dawn  a Tory chancellor under spending constraints will do little to oblige a Labour mayor. But imaginative mayoralties thrive under constraint: when the money ran out in Berlin, its incumbent coined the catchphrase poor but sexy.

As a veteran of such battles, I relish the fact that mayors are now at the heart of London life, warts and all. Even that reliable weathervane, the shadow home secretary Andy Burnham, a restless seeker for power in Labour, has let it be known that he might grace Manchester with his mayoral presence, having previously resisted the idea of devolving power to city bosses. It is not long since the idea of city mayors was deemed dangerously experimental. Now there are 18 of them across the country, and more on the way. Boris, Ken and successor can take a bow for that, and so can the rest of us. The point of London is to be ahead of the rest.

Anne McElvoy is senior editor at The Economist


L ondon may be known for its gin but in one part of the city theres another spirit being made. Just around the corner from Hackney Downs station is east Londons only vodka micro-distillery, Our/London.

We searched all over for a site but it makes sense to be in Hackney as it is a creative hub for London, says co-founder Neil Chivers, who as well as partnering with two upcoming east London supper clubs, says the distillery is now open for tastings and site tours. We always wanted somewhere that would be big enough to do events in, and where we could bring people to where we make the product  as well as giving us a chance to collaborate with likeminded businesses.

Our/London is part of the global brand, Our/Vodka, which partners with local creative entrepreneurs in cities around the world (it is partly funded by the French drinks giant Pernod Ricard) and encourages them to make their own vodka. In this case the founders are Hackney locals who had no expertise in the drinks business, and who employ a distillery manager.

In each city the bottles, with their distinctive crown caps, are the same but the flavours come from whatever ingredients have been used  so while Hackneys smooth, silky Our/London vodka is wheat-based, in Detroit its produced using corn.

Invention: the team behind Our/Vodka

Its a bit of a curve ball, laughs Chivers, who runs a music communications agency and has managed tours for the Rolling Stones and Pink Floyd. But having done reasonably well in our chosen fields the whole point is that we bring something different to the table.

His business partner is his friend of 25 years Clive Watson, who also co-owns Blixen restaurant in Spitalfields, while their latest recruit, sales manager Joel Defries, is an ex-Blue Peter presenter.

So far Our/London has hosted various gigs and fashion shoots, and collaborated with the Urban Cordial Company based in Bethnal Green. Soon they hope to work with their neighbours, Five Points Brewery.

Their next project is particularly exciting, as it involves a link-up (expect homemade cocktails) with the Wringer and Mangle restaurant in London Fields.

Best rooftop bars and pubs in London 1 /33 Best rooftop bars and pubs in London Netil 360, Hackney 1 Westgate St, E8 3RL, netil360.com

During the day, Netil 360 (on top of Hackney's Netil House) has its serious face on, with free workspaces, a cafe and even yoga sessions. But throughout the summer, they're in a more relaxed mood, with day parties, outdoor movie screenings, comedy nights, and various workshops . Expect lots of drinks, foodie pop-ups, and, naturally, terrific views. Queen of Hoxton, Shoreditch 1 Curtain Rd, EC2A 3JX, queenofhoxton.com

The Queen of Hoxton's rooftop has had more makeovers than Madonna and gleefully continues the trend this year. Their outside space has been re-imagined as A Tribute To Dr Strange, channelling San Francisco in 1967. Expect a side of psychedelia with all the food and drink. Proud, Camden The Horse Hospital, The Stables Market, Chalk Farm Rd, NW1 8AH, proudcamden.com

Marking 150 years since Lewis Carroll's children's classic was first published, Proud have transformed their rooftop spot into a homage to Alice's Wonderland. It's well suited to late night drinks, but on Saturday's the 'Mad Hatter' hosts a tea party, complete with board games and croquet. Game on, old thing. Prince of Wales, Brixton 467- 469 Brixton Rd, SW9 8HH, pow-london.com

For those who want to dance, POW salutes you: it is, unquestionably, a place to party. On the weekends, come for the DJs, while in the weekday, make do by bouncing between their three bars. Happy memories are made here, even if you won't always remember them the next morning. Dalston Roof Park, Dalston 18 Ashwin St, E8 3DL, bootstrapcompany.co.uk

An eco-addition to Hackney's growing rooftop scene, the Roof Park always has something going on. On the one hand, it's an urban oasis covered in impressive topiary, solar panels  which power it  and allotments, while on the other, it hosts cinema screenings, acoustic gigs and foodie residencies., as well as its fair share of parties. Opposite the overground station, this is a super-convenient rooftop, open daily. Coq D'Argent, Bank 1 Poultry, EC2R 8EJ, coqdargent.co.uk

A favourite among city types, D&D's Coq D'Argent has a storming menu and very decent wine list. The seated area is charming enough, but make sure to wander to their garden (pictured) for the best views. You'll leave in high spirits and with an empty wallet. The Rooftop at The Trafalgar 2 Spring Gardens, SW1A 2TS, thetrafalgar.com

The Vista terrace is a little disconcerting, for one delightful reason: despite being in perhaps the busiest part of London, it somehow largely avoids being overcrowded. In fact, Vista is often surprisingly quiet, although expect the odd tourist. Drinks are as pricey as one would expect in the centre of town, but the views are hard to top. Frank's Cafe, Peckham Peckham Multi Story Carpark, 133 Rye Ln, SE15 4ST, frankscafe.org.uk

This huge spot takes over the entire top of a multi-storey carpark, so there's plenty of space for everyone, despite it's immense popularity. From May 19, expect a fabulous barbecue, lots of drinks, and a very chilled vibe. Arguably London's coolest rooftop, and the 360 degree views are oddly soothing. Rex Sushi Samba, Bishopsgate Heron Tower, 110 Bishopsgate, EC2N 4AY, sushisamba.com

The glamour here is only hampered if you're scared of heights: at 39 stories up, it's somewhat vertigo inducing. Still, they've one of the most glorious views in London and an excellent cocktail list. You'll have to fight your way through yah-yah types to get to the bar, but it's all part of the ridiculousness, which is what makes it fun. Boundary, Shoreditch 2-4 Boundary St, E2 7DD, boundary.london

Come hungry to Boundary: they've just launched a Provencal-style summer menu, with the likes of Ortiz anchovies and ricotta, octopus and chorizo skewers. You'll need to book, as it gets busy quickly, but once you're up there, it's charmingly relaxed. Be sure to have a gin 'n' tonic, they've got their own label gin and are rightly keen on the stuff. Radio Rooftop Bar, The Strand 336-337 Strand, WC2R 1HA, radiorooftop.com

Come up in the evening for a high-end Ibiza feel: there are plush white sofas and big bucket seats galore, as well as a few tables for couples. The drinks are pricey, and the music might not be for everyone (there's that Ibiza theme again), but the view includes the London Eye, Big Ben, the Shard, the Gherkin and more. With London landmarks like that and flickering candles, it's a very decent date night spot. Pergola on the Roof, Shepherd's Bush 101 Wood Ln, W12 7FA, pergolaontheroof.co.uk

Head to the BBC's old haunt, the television centre, for this new pop-up. Food comes courtesy of Salt Yard, Le Coq, Rabbit and Patty & Bun, so you won't go hungry. Just prepare for it to be busy: they've a capacity of more than 500, so it's not one for a quiet drink. Oxo Tower, South Bank Barge House St, SE1 9PH, harveynichols.com

When it's warm, the Oxo tower offers a lovely sense of occasion. Go for the stunning views over the Thames and beyond, including St Paul's and the Gherkin. Given how splendid these views are, the cocktails don't need to be anything special, so it's all the more pleasing that they are. A Michael Kyle www.michaelkyle.co.uk The Lost Format Society, Croydon NCP Fairfield Car Park, Barclay Road, CR0 1JN, lostformatsociety.co.uk

Croydon get their first rooftop offering in the form of this rooftop cinema and bar. If you're not in the mood for a film, seek out the secret garden, where they've rooftop yoga, giant Jenga and Connect Four, bowls and plenty of music. The Culpeper, Spitalfields 40 Commercial St, E1 6LP, theculpeper.com

When the sun comes out, this Spitalfields pub overflows onto the pavement around it: the trick is to head upstairs, which is a little quieter and has a view out over the Gherkin. Sunsets are particularly beautiful up here, but no-one comes to a pub for that, so rest assured that they've plenty of beers on tap, decent cocktails and the food is some of the best pub fare in London. Besides, in the small hours of the morning, it's popular with local bartenders as its usually open later than everywhere else, making for a great crowd. Aqua Spirit, Regent Street 240 Regent St, W1B 3BR, aquaspirit.co.uk

This the where the well-groomed set come for a post-work sundowner in the hotter months. Twin terraces attached to the various Aqua restaurants allow brilliant views across Soho and Mayfair rooftops. There's plenty of standing room, too, so you'll likely be able to squeeze in: cocktails are pricey, but ingredients are top shelf. Angler at the South Place Hotel, Moorgate 3 South Pl, EC2M 2AF, southplacehotel.com

You needn't eat at the two Michelin star Angler restaurant to enjoy this bar, though if you can walk past the menu without at least being tempted, we'll be impressed. Still, one can get a taste of it with the bar snacks here. Cocktails wise, order The Peruvian, a long riff on an Aperol Spritz. Perfect summer fare. The Castle, Islington 54 Pentonville Rd, N1 9HF, thecastleislington.co.uk

This is an understated rooftop, and don't come for endless views, either: rather, spend an evening here gently unwinding with a pint as the sun fades. The food's decent, it's jolly, what else matters? The Lock Tavern, Camden 35 Chalk Farm Rd, NW1 8AJ, lock-tavern.com

Something of a Camden institution, this pub does a decent raft of guest ales, offers a fine selection of whisky (including a few ryes and some Japanese) and often hosts gigs the the cozy confines of the second floor. Still, when the sun's out, head to the tiny terrace for the communal tables and or the row of repurposed cinema seats. It's almost always crowded, but it's a lively spot with charming views over Camden market. Roof Top Kitchen at Alfies Antique Market, Marylebone 13-25 Church St, NW8 8DT, alfiesantiques.com

Alfies is a daytime port of calm: ideal if you're taking a break from the market. We'd come for lunch, order one of the daily-changing specials, and then give in to the temptation of wine and while away a few hours until closing time in the early evening. Roof Top Kitchen at Alfies Antique Market Queen Elizabeth Roof Gardens Bar, South Bank Belvedere Rd, London SE1 8XX, southbankcentre.co.uk

The term 'hidden gem' is overused, but means something here: tourists and Londonders alike often walk straight past the yellow staircase that leads up to this roof terrace. That doesn't mean it doesn't get busy  it is fairly central, after all. The garden is the result of volunteers from St Mungo's charity and feels a world away from the concrete lines of the Southbank Centre below. Jugs of Pimms and other summery libations are on offer with light snacks, well into the evening. Victor Frankowski & Southbank Centre The Roof Gardens, Kensington 99 Kensington High Street, W8 5SA, virginlimitededition.com

You'll need to make a little effort to get in here, as they're big on glitz and glamour. Unsurprisingly, it's all rather lovely: the Babylon terrace gang are hot on their cocktails and when the grill gets going, the food is on point. Their parties have a reputation, too, for all the right reasons. Notch, Oxford Street 535 Oxford Street, W1Cnotchldn.com

Notch takes over from the car crash which was Roofnic (Grace Dent declared she'd rather jump off the roof than return to it), and they've started from scratch. Try and nab a seat on one of the swings which looks over Oxford Street. There's street food on hand, plenty of drinks in jars and some excellent pre-mixed Negronis (served in tuna can-esque tins, no less) and, on the weekends, a brunch menu. Bussey Building, Peckham 133 Rye Ln, SE15 4ST, busseyrooftopbar.com

The Bussey Building boasts a respectable bar, but head there for their regular film screenings, which show a mix of classics and fairly recent releases, with food laid on by Forza Win and Pizza Pilgrims. Golden Bee, Old Street Singer St, EC1V 9DD, goldenbee.co.uk

Golden Bee's swank won't be to everyone's taste, but if it's your thing, you'll love it. And isn't diversity London's shining glory? There's no denying it's a beautiful spot, and if you want to listen to DJs spin club classics and house, it's hard to beat. And while plenty of people come dolled up, cocktails start at just 8.50.

Wringer and Mangle is hosting a series of supper clubs, which I have curated. Great British Flavours of East London celebrates the huge variety and amount of food, producers and cooks of the borough.

It began a fortnight ago when food writer and author Rosie Birkett cooked her take on East End classic dishes, including smoked eel and pie and mash, while this coming Tuesday will continue with Our/London Vietnamese cocktails and Uyen Luus East End Vietnamese summer rolls, followed by five remaining supper clubs taking in Persian and Turkish menus, each hooked around London produce.

Its a local thing.

For tickets to Tuesdays supper club visit wringerandmangle.designmynight.com; to book distillery tours visit ourvodka.com

@VicStewart

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S noop Dogg once declared: When Im no longer rapping, I want to open up an ice cream parlour and call myself Scoop Dogg. Until that glorious day arrives, heres where to head if youre screaming for ice cream.

Black Vanilla

The best place for ice cream outside Italy, is how a friend described this Greenwich and Blackheath two-branch chain. For the politically-minded, today you could order the Eton Mess.

Info: 5 College Approach, SE10, black-vanilla.com

Fortnum & Mason

Connoisseurs can now build their own sundaes with toppings including popping candy, meringue and pineapple.

Info: 181 Piccadilly, W1, fortnumandmason.com

Ruby Violet

This is Willy Wonkas factory for frozen treats. Flavours are inventive (sometimes mad), like greengage ripple or horseradish.

Info: 118 Fortess Road, NW5, rubyviolet.co.uk

Best rooftop bars and pubs in London 1 /33 Best rooftop bars and pubs in London Netil 360, Hackney 1 Westgate St, E8 3RL, netil360.com

During the day, Netil 360 (on top of Hackney's Netil House) has its serious face on, with free workspaces, a cafe and even yoga sessions. But throughout the summer, they're in a more relaxed mood, with day parties, outdoor movie screenings, comedy nights, and various workshops . Expect lots of drinks, foodie pop-ups, and, naturally, terrific views. Queen of Hoxton, Shoreditch 1 Curtain Rd, EC2A 3JX, queenofhoxton.com

The Queen of Hoxton's rooftop has had more makeovers than Madonna and gleefully continues the trend this year. Their outside space has been re-imagined as A Tribute To Dr Strange, channelling San Francisco in 1967. Expect a side of psychedelia with all the food and drink. Proud, Camden The Horse Hospital, The Stables Market, Chalk Farm Rd, NW1 8AH, proudcamden.com

Marking 150 years since Lewis Carroll's children's classic was first published, Proud have transformed their rooftop spot into a homage to Alice's Wonderland. It's well suited to late night drinks, but on Saturday's the 'Mad Hatter' hosts a tea party, complete with board games and croquet. Game on, old thing. Prince of Wales, Brixton 467- 469 Brixton Rd, SW9 8HH, pow-london.com

For those who want to dance, POW salutes you: it is, unquestionably, a place to party. On the weekends, come for the DJs, while in the weekday, make do by bouncing between their three bars. Happy memories are made here, even if you won't always remember them the next morning. Dalston Roof Park, Dalston 18 Ashwin St, E8 3DL, bootstrapcompany.co.uk

An eco-addition to Hackney's growing rooftop scene, the Roof Park always has something going on. On the one hand, it's an urban oasis covered in impressive topiary, solar panels  which power it  and allotments, while on the other, it hosts cinema screenings, acoustic gigs and foodie residencies., as well as its fair share of parties. Opposite the overground station, this is a super-convenient rooftop, open daily. Coq D'Argent, Bank 1 Poultry, EC2R 8EJ, coqdargent.co.uk

A favourite among city types, D&D's Coq D'Argent has a storming menu and very decent wine list. The seated area is charming enough, but make sure to wander to their garden (pictured) for the best views. You'll leave in high spirits and with an empty wallet. The Rooftop at The Trafalgar 2 Spring Gardens, SW1A 2TS, thetrafalgar.com

The Vista terrace is a little disconcerting, for one delightful reason: despite being in perhaps the busiest part of London, it somehow largely avoids being overcrowded. In fact, Vista is often surprisingly quiet, although expect the odd tourist. Drinks are as pricey as one would expect in the centre of town, but the views are hard to top. Frank's Cafe, Peckham Peckham Multi Story Carpark, 133 Rye Ln, SE15 4ST, frankscafe.org.uk

This huge spot takes over the entire top of a multi-storey carpark, so there's plenty of space for everyone, despite it's immense popularity. From May 19, expect a fabulous barbecue, lots of drinks, and a very chilled vibe. Arguably London's coolest rooftop, and the 360 degree views are oddly soothing. Rex Sushi Samba, Bishopsgate Heron Tower, 110 Bishopsgate, EC2N 4AY, sushisamba.com

The glamour here is only hampered if you're scared of heights: at 39 stories up, it's somewhat vertigo inducing. Still, they've one of the most glorious views in London and an excellent cocktail list. You'll have to fight your way through yah-yah types to get to the bar, but it's all part of the ridiculousness, which is what makes it fun. Boundary, Shoreditch 2-4 Boundary St, E2 7DD, boundary.london

Come hungry to Boundary: they've just launched a Provencal-style summer menu, with the likes of Ortiz anchovies and ricotta, octopus and chorizo skewers. You'll need to book, as it gets busy quickly, but once you're up there, it's charmingly relaxed. Be sure to have a gin 'n' tonic, they've got their own label gin and are rightly keen on the stuff. Radio Rooftop Bar, The Strand 336-337 Strand, WC2R 1HA, radiorooftop.com

Come up in the evening for a high-end Ibiza feel: there are plush white sofas and big bucket seats galore, as well as a few tables for couples. The drinks are pricey, and the music might not be for everyone (there's that Ibiza theme again), but the view includes the London Eye, Big Ben, the Shard, the Gherkin and more. With London landmarks like that and flickering candles, it's a very decent date night spot. Pergola on the Roof, Shepherd's Bush 101 Wood Ln, W12 7FA, pergolaontheroof.co.uk

Head to the BBC's old haunt, the television centre, for this new pop-up. Food comes courtesy of Salt Yard, Le Coq, Rabbit and Patty & Bun, so you won't go hungry. Just prepare for it to be busy: they've a capacity of more than 500, so it's not one for a quiet drink. Oxo Tower, South Bank Barge House St, SE1 9PH, harveynichols.com

When it's warm, the Oxo tower offers a lovely sense of occasion. Go for the stunning views over the Thames and beyond, including St Paul's and the Gherkin. Given how splendid these views are, the cocktails don't need to be anything special, so it's all the more pleasing that they are. A Michael Kyle www.michaelkyle.co.uk The Lost Format Society, Croydon NCP Fairfield Car Park, Barclay Road, CR0 1JN, lostformatsociety.co.uk

Croydon get their first rooftop offering in the form of this rooftop cinema and bar. If you're not in the mood for a film, seek out the secret garden, where they've rooftop yoga, giant Jenga and Connect Four, bowls and plenty of music. The Culpeper, Spitalfields 40 Commercial St, E1 6LP, theculpeper.com

When the sun comes out, this Spitalfields pub overflows onto the pavement around it: the trick is to head upstairs, which is a little quieter and has a view out over the Gherkin. Sunsets are particularly beautiful up here, but no-one comes to a pub for that, so rest assured that they've plenty of beers on tap, decent cocktails and the food is some of the best pub fare in London. Besides, in the small hours of the morning, it's popular with local bartenders as its usually open later than everywhere else, making for a great crowd. Aqua Spirit, Regent Street 240 Regent St, W1B 3BR, aquaspirit.co.uk

This the where the well-groomed set come for a post-work sundowner in the hotter months. Twin terraces attached to the various Aqua restaurants allow brilliant views across Soho and Mayfair rooftops. There's plenty of standing room, too, so you'll likely be able to squeeze in: cocktails are pricey, but ingredients are top shelf. Angler at the South Place Hotel, Moorgate 3 South Pl, EC2M 2AF, southplacehotel.com

You needn't eat at the two Michelin star Angler restaurant to enjoy this bar, though if you can walk past the menu without at least being tempted, we'll be impressed. Still, one can get a taste of it with the bar snacks here. Cocktails wise, order The Peruvian, a long riff on an Aperol Spritz. Perfect summer fare. The Castle, Islington 54 Pentonville Rd, N1 9HF, thecastleislington.co.uk

This is an understated rooftop, and don't come for endless views, either: rather, spend an evening here gently unwinding with a pint as the sun fades. The food's decent, it's jolly, what else matters? The Lock Tavern, Camden 35 Chalk Farm Rd, NW1 8AJ, lock-tavern.com

Something of a Camden institution, this pub does a decent raft of guest ales, offers a fine selection of whisky (including a few ryes and some Japanese) and often hosts gigs the the cozy confines of the second floor. Still, when the sun's out, head to the tiny terrace for the communal tables and or the row of repurposed cinema seats. It's almost always crowded, but it's a lively spot with charming views over Camden market. Roof Top Kitchen at Alfies Antique Market, Marylebone 13-25 Church St, NW8 8DT, alfiesantiques.com

Alfies is a daytime port of calm: ideal if you're taking a break from the market. We'd come for lunch, order one of the daily-changing specials, and then give in to the temptation of wine and while away a few hours until closing time in the early evening. Roof Top Kitchen at Alfies Antique Market Queen Elizabeth Roof Gardens Bar, South Bank Belvedere Rd, London SE1 8XX, southbankcentre.co.uk

The term 'hidden gem' is overused, but means something here: tourists and Londonders alike often walk straight past the yellow staircase that leads up to this roof terrace. That doesn't mean it doesn't get busy  it is fairly central, after all. The garden is the result of volunteers from St Mungo's charity and feels a world away from the concrete lines of the Southbank Centre below. Jugs of Pimms and other summery libations are on offer with light snacks, well into the evening. Victor Frankowski & Southbank Centre The Roof Gardens, Kensington 99 Kensington High Street, W8 5SA, virginlimitededition.com

You'll need to make a little effort to get in here, as they're big on glitz and glamour. Unsurprisingly, it's all rather lovely: the Babylon terrace gang are hot on their cocktails and when the grill gets going, the food is on point. Their parties have a reputation, too, for all the right reasons. Notch, Oxford Street 535 Oxford Street, W1Cnotchldn.com

Notch takes over from the car crash which was Roofnic (Grace Dent declared she'd rather jump off the roof than return to it), and they've started from scratch. Try and nab a seat on one of the swings which looks over Oxford Street. There's street food on hand, plenty of drinks in jars and some excellent pre-mixed Negronis (served in tuna can-esque tins, no less) and, on the weekends, a brunch menu. Bussey Building, Peckham 133 Rye Ln, SE15 4ST, busseyrooftopbar.com

The Bussey Building boasts a respectable bar, but head there for their regular film screenings, which show a mix of classics and fairly recent releases, with food laid on by Forza Win and Pizza Pilgrims. Golden Bee, Old Street Singer St, EC1V 9DD, goldenbee.co.uk

Golden Bee's swank won't be to everyone's taste, but if it's your thing, you'll love it. And isn't diversity London's shining glory? There's no denying it's a beautiful spot, and if you want to listen to DJs spin club classics and house, it's hard to beat. And while plenty of people come dolled up, cocktails start at just 8.50.

Udderlicious

It should make it for the name alone but Udderlicious also serves up great flavours. This months special is peach and greek yoghurt.

Info: 187 Upper Street, N1, udderlicious.co.uk

Gelupo

No list would be complete without this Soho institution and its creamy, smooth ice cream. And if it starts to rain, the hot chocolate is equally tasty...

7 Archer Street, W1, gelupo.com

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Related Iraq PM calls for respect of law after Green Zone breach

Iraqi security forces ramped up their presence across Baghdad on Friday, blocking most major roads and bridges to keep followers of Shia Muslim cleric Moqtada al-Sadr from reaching the government district they stormed a week earlier.

A Sadr representative meanwhile called on supporters to rally outside local mosques following afternoon prayers, rather than gathering near the heavily fortified Green Zone, a move which could reduce the risk of clashes.

The demonstrations are aimed at pressuring Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi to follow through on months-old promises to replace party-affiliated ministers with independent technocrats as part of an anti-corruption drive.

Iraq has endured months of wrangling over the proposal, with a divided parliament withholding approval amid scuffles and protests. Deep frustration among Iraqis over the deadlock culminated on Sunday in the unprecedented breach of the Green Zone, which houses parliament, government offices and many foreign embassies.

United Nations envoy to Iraq Jan Kubis told the U.N. Security Council on Friday that the situation remains unpredictable and could unfold in many different directions.

"A business-as-usual approach simply will not be enough for the people. They want genuine change that will improve their lives," Kubis told the Security Council.

In his prepared remarks, seen by Reuters, Kubis also said that solutions being discussed to end the political crisis would not meet the demands of the people and therefore demonstrations were likely to continue.

Security officials said on Friday three regiments from an elite police division that has battled Islamic State militants were deployed in and around the Green Zone.

On one bridge stretching over the Tigris River, dozens of counter-terrorism forces manned Humvees mounted with machine guns. They stood behind two consecutive barriers made of 12-foot (3.6 meter) blast walls spanning the bridge.

The head of Sadr's political office said large-scale demonstrations had been postponed until Tuesday, when tens of thousands of protesters would be mobilised to rally outside an expected parliament session.

At least four soldiers were killed and seven others wounded on Friday when a suicide car bomber attacked an army checkpoint in the western part of the capital, police sources said. Two bombs in nearby Abu Ghraib killed three people and wounded 13. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the blasts.

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T he only member of The Leading Hotels of the World in South West England, The Gainsborough Bath Spa is a truly luxurious retreat with a passionate team at the helm...

Where is it? In the centre of historic Bath, a stone's throw away from the famous Roman Baths. The hotel's location could not be more convenient and yet it feels so tranquil - the perfect combination.

How to get there: the train journey from London to Bath only enhances the experience. Rolling countryside views and a picturesque vista as you enter the city create a real sense of escapism. Taking less than 90 minutes from London Paddington, it is ideal for a weekend break.

An open return purchased on the day of travel starts from 56.50 but book in advance for a lower price (tickets at gwr.com).

Treat yourself to a first class ticket for an extra comfortable seat and the benefits of lounge access at Paddington with a good selection of sandwiches, snacks, drinks and magazines at hand. Tea, coffee and snacks are also offered during the journey and there is free WiFi access. The Gainsborough is just a five minute stroll from Bath Spa station.

Design details: Named after English portrait and landscape painter Sir Thomas Gainsborough, this revamp of a period property is a work of art in itself. Award-winning New York-based Champalimaud Design has put a modern twist on the building. It is a superb example of a conversion which remains true to its roots while offering modern ameneties.

Originally built in the 1800s, the property occupies two Grade II Listed buildings with distinguished Georgian and Victorian facades. It was once home to the Royal United Hospital and later part of Bath College. The alumni still pop in to see the glamorous new guise.

During construction of the 14,000-square-foot Spa Village baths ancient mosaics were uncovered and became a source of inspiration for designers. The spa evokes the style and spirit of the Roman rituals.

The restaurant, bar and lounge introduce an Art Deco style with bold metallics, leather seating and statement lighting. Coffered ceilings, original artwork and a black marble fireplace in the restaurant create a homely ambience.

A warm palette runs throughout and the rooms benefit from soaring ceilings. Patterned carpets and embroidered curtain trimings add a luxurious layer.

Who's behind it? YTL Hotels whose portfolio spans Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, China, Japan and France. This is the first UK offering from the group but watch this space for more. Executive Vice President Andrew Jordan and General Manager Brian Benson lead a brilliant team who provide the warmest of welcomes.

On the menu: Johann Lafer, one of Germany's most celebrated Michelin starred chefs and TV personalities, heads up the culinary experience. His Dining Without Borders gourmet philosophy is based on using fresh and locally sourced produce.

The innovative dishes take their inspiration from Johann's cookbook, Two Friends, One Cuisine, co-written with Malaysian Chef Wai, the YTL Hotels Group Corporate Chef. Dinner is a treat. Try the Sauteed Scallops to start, Poached Fillet of Halibut or Best End of Lamb for main and the irresistible Dark Chocolate Fondant to finish.

The bar is a must pre or post dinner with carefully crafted cocktails and a strong collection of Champagnes, artisan gins, Martinis, fine wines and local ales.

Which room? There are options for varying budgets. Families could check into a Suite with views of the city, a two-poster bed and a separate seating area with a double sofa bed. A great option for two would be the Classic Rooms which feel spacious and comfortable.

Spa lowdown: This is the UKs only hotel with access to natural thermal waters. It has its own private water reserve which feeds the three thermal baths at temperatures varying from 35C to 40C and is packed full of rich minerals and nutrients.

The Spa Village comprises three thermal pools, traditional and infrared saunas, a steam room, ice alcove and relaxation area. The therapists really know their stuff. An aromatherapist greets you on arrival and introduces the soothing concept. Book in for a signature treatment such as the Renew with Rose anti-ageing, rejuvenating facial. Your skin will feel energised and smooth afterwards.

Best for: A thoroughly relaxing weekend with friends which incorporates pampering, fine dining and a healthy dose of escapism.

When to go? Bath lights up in the Spring/Summer months but this is the sort of hotel that you could happily spend a weekend in without leaving so don't feel restricted by the weather. Tie in a visit in with one of Bath's key events such as the International Music Festival (May 20-29) or the Jane Austen Festival (June 9-18). Check visitbath.co.uk for listings.

Who has stayed there? Hollywood actor Chris Pine recently paid The Gainsborough a visit. It was also the hotel of choice during Bath in Fashion with Zandra Rhodes and Julien Macdonald among guests.

Romantic retreats 1 /24 Romantic retreats Ready for sundowners The view from Peasecroft Cottage in Cumbria Cosy The log burning stove in Asphodel Cottage's sitting room Scandi-style The living space at Peasecroft in Cumbria Fairytale cottage Asphodel Cottage in the Cotswolds Country elegance A roll top tub dominates the bathroom at the Old Smock Windmill in Kent High style The Old Fish Cellar in west Cornwall Snug The cosy bedroom at The Old Fish Cellar in Cornwall A windmill of your own This quirky rental is in rural Kent Sea views The Dell in Cornwall is perched on the edge of a cliff Ultimate comfort The Dell's bedroom Simple yet chic The bedroom at Herne Bay Pure decadence Free standing bath in the living room at Herne Bay? Sure Urban chic This Covent Garden flat is the perfect launch pad for a London stay Brickwork and beams The bedroom at the Covent Garden Airbnb Tasteful Seal Cottage in North Norfolk Sharrington Hall Country cosy The open plan living room at Seal Cottage in Norfolk Sharrington Hall

Price: Nightly rates start from 285 on a room-only basis.

Book: Visit thegainsboroughbathspa.co.uk or call 01225 358 888.

Follow Amira Hashish on Twitter @amiranews and Instagram @thedesigneditor.
T wo boys, aged 12 and 14, were arrested after a knife fight in south-east London.

The youths were found suffering with stab injuries on Thursday following reports of males fighting in Brockley Road, Crofton Park.

Police were called just before 4pm and arrested both boys.

The 12-year-old was taken to a south London hospital while the 14-year-old was taken into custody at a nearby police station.

Police in Lewisham are investigating.
D etectives investigating a series of robberies and sexual assaults on women in south-east London have today released an e-fit image of a man they want to trace.

Police have linked four attacks on lone women in the Blackheath area between October last year and February, with all the victims targeted at night or in the early hours of the morning.

In the first attack on October 5, a 22-year-old woman was sexually assaulted shortly before 2am after she was followed by a man in Foxes Dale.

Four days later, on October 9, a 19-year-old woman was grabbed around the leg by a man who tried to push her into bushes near St Michael and All Angels Church in Blackheath Park.

On October 11, a 20-year-old woman was sexually assaulted by a man who grabbed her in a tunnel at the Sun in the Sands roundabout at 3am in Shooters Hill Road. The woman managed to break free and run away.

The latest attack took place on Saturday, February 6 when a 30-year-old woman was pushed into a bush and punched in the face by a man who attempted to steal her handbag.

In the last incident he said his name was "Jamil" and he sometimes wears a puffa-style jacket.

The suspect is described as a dark skinned man, between 5ft 8ins and 6ft in height.

He had close cropped or short brown hair and the victims have described him to be between 30 and 40 years old.

Detective Inspector Andy Daws, of Plumstead CID, said: "We are keen to trace this man. I would urge anyone who may know something or may have been a victim of him to contact us as soon as possible - any information may prove vital."

Anyone with information should call Plumstead CID on 07825 273 811 or via 101. Alternatively, call Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111
A fundraising campaign has been launched for a pensioner with dementia who was fleeced out of her 54,000 life savings by her carer.

Maria McCalla raided the bank account of Vera Haselden, 82, to pay for a gastric band operation, her childrens private school fees, games consoles and clothes.

The elderly woman had hired McCalla to help her maintain her independence, but she has now been forced to move out of her own home and into care because of the fraud.

After reading about the case in the Standard, charity campaigner Charlotte Tarrant set up a fund to try to restore Ms Haseldens savings and get her back into her own home.

It was obviously a very sad story, but I really believe people power can sort this out for Vera, she said.

I think the public are so generous sometimes, especially with vulnerable people. Its an easy thing to do, to set up a donation page, and I really hope it can get sorted out.

Ms Haselden hired McCalla, 31, in April 2014, but within two months the carer had started withdrawing large sums of money from the pensioners bank account using her PIN and card.

She convinced Ms Haselden to write out cheques for 10,000 and 6,000 and withdrew a total of 38,000 over the bank counter. But McCalla knew she could not pay the money back as she had spiralling debts on 17 different credit cards.

McCalla, a mother-of-two from Wembley, was jailed for 32 months at Harrow crown court after admitting fraud and theft. However, she is now living off benefits  making it unlikely she will be able to pay any money back.

Ms Tarrant, 39, of Stoke Newington, said her work with charities tackling mental health issues inspired her to launch the fundraising effort. Having worked in the mental health field for quite a few years, that the story was to do with mental health and dementia made it catch my eye, she said.

She said the case of pensioner Alan Barnes  for whom the public raised 330,000 after he was mugged last year  was also an inspiration in her efforts to help Ms Haselden.

We have seen it in the past, people being generous in situations like this, she said. Vera deserves to get her savings back.
A teenager whose mother has been on the run from police with his two younger sisters for five days today described her as a great mum.

Angela Kelly, 46, is thought to have sought refuge in a woodland camp as she continues to evade authorities who she claims want to take the two girls into care against their will.

She was last seen in Camberley, Surrey, on Sunday night after apparently taking the children from a care home where they had been placed the previous evening. Police and social services are growing increasingly concerned for their welfare.

Mother-of-four Ms Kellys eldest son Raymond Kelly, 16, today told the Standard: When we last spoke she told me shes safe, but that was so long ago now and she hasnt been picking up the phone. Im worried for all of them, but shes always been a great mother to us and Im sure shes doing her best to protect the girls.

Ms Kelly posted a series of messages on Facebook before disappearing with her daughters Shanti Harbourne, 12, and Maya-Rose Kelly-Johnson, five, claiming they were being held against their will by the state.

Shanti and Maya-Rose have not been seen since Sunday / Metropolitan Police

She is believed to have tracked the girls to a foster home in Farnborough hours after they had been placed there and carried them away in their pyjamas.

Raymond added: I really dont want my family being separated. It would totally destroy my sisters.

You should hear the way Shanti and Rosie talk about my mum. They love her to bits and so do I, were an amazing family. I think they are being pursued unnecessarily. I just want my family to stay together. As long as my sisters are with their mum then there can be a happy ending to this.

It was reported today that Ms Kelly, who lives in Roehampton and has another older daughter, may have been given survival tips by former MI5 spy David Shayler.

The homeless whistleblower, who suffered a breakdown in 2009 and was pictured dressed as a transvestite using the name Delores Kane, is reported to have moved into her home two weeks ago and has been helping in her custody battle.

Miss Kellys sister Suzie Kelly, 44, told the Standard: I havent had any contact with her but we are all desperate for them to come back home.

We are all so worried about her and the girls. Its an insanely stressful time for the whole family  we are just waiting by the phone for news.

Ms Kellys former partner Richard Harborne, Shantis father, said she had spent time living in communes in west London in the past and he feared she had taken the children to live with hippies in the woods.

Scotland Yard said it is becoming increasingly concerned for the children.

Anyone with information should call Wandsworth police 020 3276 2554 or the non-emergency line on 101.
A motorcyclist has died after he was hit by a lorry on a busy road near Victoria station this morning.

Police and ambulance crews were sent to Vauxhall Bridge Road, near the junction with Warwick Way in Pimlico, at 10.20am after the accident was reported.

A spokesman for the Met Police said the man riding the motorcycle suffered critical injuries and was pronounced dead at the scene by paramedics.

Taxi driver Gareth Montgomery drove past the scene of the accident, which he said involved a huge blue lorry and a motorbike with learner plates.

Mr Montgomery said: A passenger who got off a bus stuck behind the lorry said the lorry had driven completely over the top of the motorbike.

He said it was horrific. As soon as the paramedics showed up they put a blanket over him.

The HGV driver stopped after the accident but no arrests have been made.

A London Ambulance Service spokeswoman confirmed paramedics were called at 10.18am.

She said: "We sent a single responder in a car, an incident response officer and our hazardous area response team to the scene.

"Sadly, a person died at the scene."

Emergency services have closed off the road between Warwick Way and Upper Tachbrook Street.

This page is being updated.
A violent man has been jailed for more than four years after assaulting two people in south-west London.

Tim Reddin, 24, of Walton Road, East Molesey, admitted causing actual bodily harm to a 25-year-old man in High Street, New Malden in May last year.

He also pleaded guilty at Kingston Crown Court to causing grievous bodily harm to a 26-year-old man in Charter Road, New Malden, in September.

Reddin had committed the GBH while on bail for the May assault, police said.

He was arrested in November last year after being spotted in a pub in Hampton Court by off duty officers.

He was jailed for two years and four months for the ABH and two years for the GBH charge. He will serve both sentences consecutively.

Reddin was also sentenced to nine months, to run concurrently, for possession with intent to supply class B drugs. He was also handed a 100 fine and forfeiture of 360.

Detective Inspector Adam Guttridge, from Kingston CID, said: Reddin is a violent offender whose crimes have had a significant and lasting effect on his victims.

Police dedicated significant resources to locating him and eventually it was local officers who were off duty that affected his capture and arrest.

The sentence reflects the seriousness of the offences and his propensity for violence.
S taff at troubled London prison Wormwood Scrubs walked out this morning "because they don't feel safe" after alleged assaults by inmates.

Workers attached to the POA union marched out of the 1,279-capacity men's prison in Hammersmith in protest over their safety.

Mike Rolfe, of the union, said there had been a number of assaults on staff, while so-called legal highs were said to have been thrown over the walls.

Speaking from outside the prison, he said: "The jail is flooded with drugs, mobile phones and weapons.

"There are concerns for health and safety of staff, and they have decided to stay outside until they can seek assurances from management that their concerns will be addressed."

He said about 50 staff were outside the prison.

"Staff have said that if there's an emergency inside the prison, they will send teams in to deal with it," he added.

The action, which was not planned, was taken after an emergency branch meeting was held on Friday, Mr Rolfe said.

Laura Janes, the legal director of the Howard League for Penal Reform, said she was unable to get inside the west London institution this morning.

She tweeted: "Cannot get in to Wormwood Scrubs to represent young person who does not feel safe as staff have walked out because staff don't feel safe."

The walkout comes a month after inspectors warned the prison was infested by rats and inmates were living in "Dickensian squalour."

One in five prisoners told inspectors they felt unsafe, and the number of assaults on inmates and staff was double that seen in similar institutions.

A Prison Service spokesperson said: An incident is underway at HMP Wormwood Scrubs and we are taking steps to resolve it.

As a temporary measure, all prisoners will remain in cells and are being supervised. There is no danger to staff or the wider public.

Additional reporting by the Press Association.
T he Government has abandoned plans to force all schools in England to become academies after a negative backlash.

In this years budget, the Government announced plans to force 17,000 schools in England to convert to academy status by 2022.

Unions, as well as MPs from both sides, had voiced their concerns about these plans, arguing that it was a move towards the privatisation of schools.

If Education Secretary Nicky Morgan had pushed ahead with her plans, she could have faced a humiliating defeat and a potential revolt from backbench MPs

Education Secretary Nicky Morgan / BEN STANSALL/AFP/Getty Images

Making the announcement today, Mrs Morgan said the government hoped that a large number of schools would still choose to convert to academies.

She said: Making every school an academy is the best way to ensure every child, regardless of birth or background, has access to a world-class education.

I am today reaffirming our determination to see all schools become academies. However, having listened to the feedback from Parliamentary colleagues and the education sector we will now change the path to reaching that goal.

Budget 2016: English State schools to become academies by 2022

By focusing our efforts on those schools most at risk of failing young people, and encouraging good and outstanding schools to seize the opportunities of conversion, we will ensure the continued growth of the academy programme, empowering frontline heads and school leads and transforming even more childrens education.

The Department for Education said ministers had listened to feedback from MPs, teachers, school leaders, and parents since publishing the proposals.

Academies are independent, state-funded schools which receive funding directly from the government rather than a local authority.

This means they come under direct Government control, rather than answering to local education authorities.

Two-thirds of secondary schools have already converted but 15,000 schools do not currently have academy status.
A man is in a life-threatening condition after being hit by a train at a busy London railway station.

Emergency services were called to Tottenham Hale station around 1.15pm after reports of a man being hit by a train.

The man is currently being treated in hospital with 'life-threatening' injuries.

A BTP spokesman said: Colleagues from Metropolitan Police Service and London Ambulance service also attended and a man was treated for injuries at the scene before being taken to hospital.

The incident is not being treated as suspicious.

Network Rail reported delays of up to one hour while the incident was being dealt with.

An London Ambulance spokesman added that an air ambulance also attended the scene.

He said: "We were called to reports of an incident involving a man under a train at Tottenham Hale station.

"We treated a man for a head and chest injury and took him as a priority by road ambulance to a major trauma centre."
Pope Francis, accepting a prize for promoting European unity, on Friday bemoaned that the continent's people "are tempted to yield to our own selfish interests and to consider putting up fences."

"I dream of a Europe where being a migrant is not a crime, but a summons to a greater commitment on behalf of the dignity of every human being," he told an audience including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Italian Premier Matteo Renzi and Spain's King Felipe VI.

"I dream of a Europe that promotes and protects the rights of everyone, without neglecting its duties toward all. I dream of a Europe of which it will not be said that its commitment to human rights was its last utopia."

The pontiff, the son of European immigrants to Argentina, accepted the International Charlemagne Prize, for his "message of hope and encouragement."

Echoing the famous "I have a dream" speech by U.S. civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., Francis offered his vision of a Europe that cares for children, the elderly, the poor and the infirm, as well as "those newcomers seeking acceptance because they have lost everything and need shelter."

Notwithstanding the prize's underlying positive message, the pope tacitly acknowledged a backdrop of a Europe engulfed in a crisis of confidence, prompted by the threat of terrorism and surge of migrants, and giving strength to nationalistic sentiments that seek to undermine the notion of a united continent.

He also said youth unemployment was sapping the continent of its dynamism, and he called for new economic models that are "more inclusive and equitable."

"There is an impression that Europe is declining, that it has lost its ability to be innovative and creative, that it is more concerned with preserving and dominating spaces than with generating processes of inclusions and change," Francis said.

He urged Europeans to undergo a "memory transfusion," citing a phrase by Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, to remember Europe's fractured past when confronting issues that threaten again to divide it.

"A memory transfusion can free us from today's temptation to build hastily on the shifting stands of immediate results, which may produce quick and easy short-term political gains, but do not enhance human fulfillment," he said.

The pope said the Roman Catholic Church can play a role in "the rebirth of a Europe, weary, yet still rich in energies and possibilities."

Before the ceremony in the frescoed Sala Regia, Francis met privately with Merkel, as well as with European parliament president Martin Schulz, a previous Charlemagne Prize recipient, EU Commission President Jean-Claude Junker and EU Council President Donald Tusk, who also attended the ceremony.

Junker, in his remarks, praised the pope for taking three Syrian refugee families to Rome with him at the end of his recent visit to Greece.

"When you take in 12 refugees, in proportion to the population of the Vatican that is more than any EU member state  you fill our hearts with new courage," Junker said.

The Charlemagne prize, consisting of a medal and a citation, is awarded annually by the German city of Aachen for contributions to European unity. Previous winners include former U.S. President Bill Clinton and St. John Paul II, who received a special edition of the prize in 2004. The prize is normally given in Aachen but was transferred to the Vatican for the pope's convenience

The Holy Roman emperor Charlemagne once ruled a large swath of western Europe from Aachen, near the Belgian border.

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A restaurant attached to Shakespeares Globe theatre has been fined more than 1,000 after 25 diners suffered food poisoning from undercooked roast beef.

The Swan at the Globe, in Bankside, was taken to court by Southwark council after customers complained of vomiting and diarrhoea.

The outbreak of food poisoning in August 2014 was reported to the local authority, and an investigation showed the roast beef dish had not been cooked properly.

The restaurant was ordered to pay 753 in costs and court fees at Croydon magistrates court this week. Its millionaire managing director, Christopher Diccon Wright, 52, from West Malling, attended the sentencing hearing.

The court heard that only one customer hit by food poisoning had sought medical treatment, and all the UK-based diners had accepted an offer of a free meal.

District Judge Andrew Price said: The company has done everything it can to ensure this is not repeated and has achieved higher standards of food hygiene.

The restaurant has recently undergone a 2.5 million kitchen refit.

The Swan at the Globe, which has an annual turnover of up to 7 million, has contributed 10 million to the Globe theatre since opening nine years ago.

It pleaded guilty to serving roast beef unsafe for human consumption, failing to have proper controls in place, and failing to protect food from contamination between August 24 and 25, 2014.
S wimwear designer to the stars Melissa Odabash has joined forces with neighbours fighting a horror mega-basement beneath a 2 million mews house near Hyde Park.

The former model has written to Westminster council objecting to the plans for the build which she claims will be greatly disruptive.

Ms Odabash is known as the Duchess of Cambridges favourite swimwear designer and is popular with Beyonce, Gwyneth Paltrow, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Rihanna and Cindy Crawford.

The plans, submitted by City banker Edward Harley and his wife Victoria, include the excavation of a basement for a guest bedroom and TV room. There will also be an integral garage.

In her letter Ms Odabash, whose designs are described as the Ferraris of the bikini world, wrote: I strongly object especially to the new extensive basement, as the proposed scheme is extremely big and a speculative overdevelopment for this small property and this type of traditional mews.

We urge the council to reject this over-development and invite the applicant to re-apply for permission to complete a more appropriate improvement of the house, without this unnecessary and extensive over-development of a basement.

Swimwear designer to the stars Melissa Odabash / Dave Benett

Another neighbour, who asked not to be named, told the Standard: Its a horror. There are basements being built all the time. People are just trying what they can with the council. The impact is the amount of trucks taking all the digging work out.

Its a danger  weve seen pretty ugly stuff here. Its also a safety thing as there are children around.

Chairman of the Hyde Park Estate Association Nick Johnson wrote: We feel that this scheme is an overdevelopment of this small mews property, which will bring extensive detriment to neighbours and adjacent properties during the extensive and hugely disruptive period of projected works.

Eton and Cambridge-educated Mr Harley has worked for broking and banking firm Cazenove since 1983 and was also High Sheriff of Herefordshire until last month.

A statement on behalf of Mr and Mrs Harley said they bought the two-storey terrace house in August last year and intend to use it as their London home, downsizing from their current property nearby.

It said: Having considered their use of the building, and the available floor space however, they find that the building is not large enough for their requirements, particularly as there is no guest WC, utility room, or secondary living space. The building will ultimately look much better than it does now.

The basement will increase the propertys floor area by 650 sq ft, equivalent to 30 per cent. The plans have been recommended for approval and councillors are set to make their decision at a meeting on Tuesday night.
A n Uber driver has reunited a customer with a box of family heirlooms left teetering on the boot of his cab for more than 100 miles.

Pirooz Azadegan, 52, found the jewellery box at the end of his shift on Tuesday and turned detective to track down the owner. He trawled through his records and that same night retraced his journeys across London, visiting the customers he had carried.

He remembered one man with a suit and lots of luggage who fitted the profile of the owner, and finally tracked him to the first fare he had taken  in Brentford at 7.30pm.

It meant businessman Edward Poland, 31, who had taken a cab to Notting Hill from his mothers home, was reunited with the box  which contained cufflinks that were a gift from his late father.

Mr Azadegan, who also lives in Brentford, calculated he had driven more than 100 miles and picked up 10 fares with the box balanced on his boot, and it was a miracle it had not fallen off.

I drove along dual carriageways and over humps and bumps  it is amazing it stayed on, he said. The wind should have blown it off, but there it was just sitting there. My wife said the cufflinks inside were valuable so I immediately realised I must find the owner.

The driver, originally from Iran, added: I remembered a smart guy with lots of bags getting in the car I took him from Brentford to Notting Hill and I guessed it was him. He must have put the box on the boot and forgotten about it.

I returned to the house and his mother was there and I returned them. She was so grateful  I am happy I could do a good deed.

Mr Polands mother Sarah Muir-Poland, a painter, said: There were cuff links of great sentimental value in the box that his father had given him. We are so relieved.

The driver is a real hero and so kind to go to all the trouble he did. He is a lovely man and we will be forever grateful  also the fact that the box did not fall onto the road is unbelievable.

An Uber spokesman said: We get thousands of emails from happy customers every week, but this one really stood out. Pirooz constantly goes above and beyond, making him one of our highest rated partners.
B arnet Council has pledged to launch an investigation after a blunder with voter lists meant many were turned away from the ballot box.

Names were missing from polling lists across Barnet and residents, including the Chief Rabbi, who attempted to cast their vote were stopped.

The council apologised for the error and later offered emergency proxy votes to residents who had been affected.

The council said it will launch an investigation once the results in London have been declared.

Follow the latest news and results on our live election blog here.

All of Barnet's 155 polling stations were affected and the council is still unable to say how many of the 236,196 registered voters had been turned away.

Candidates and voters can challenge the result of the elections in London by lodging a petition with the Royal Courts of Justice.

Grounds for the appeal include claiming the successful candidate was not duly elected, or the election was invalidated by corrupt or illegal practices.

Sadiq Khan votes

Sophie Walker, the Women's Equality Party (WEP) mayoral candidate, registered a complaint with the council as well as the London Assembly.

A WEP spokeswoman said: "We are waiting for more information before we decide what our next steps are."

Voters in the area questioned how the result could be "fair" when not everyone was able to have their say at the ballot box.

Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis and his wife Valerie were among those to be turned away from their polling station.

He was unable to vote later in the day as he was flying to Amsterdam for a visit to the Jewish Community Centre.

Zac Goldsmith votes

Earlier this week he said Labour had a "severe" problem with anti-Semitism and warned that it would get worse if the party's inquiry into the issue was used as a "sticking plaster" to placate voters.

A Barnet Council spokesman said: "We cannot comment any further on the impact of the issues with the electoral registration lists yesterday.

"We will begin a thorough investigation into the cause of the problems once results are declared."
F rom tonight, barring a significant political upset, Sadiq Khan will be one of the most significant figures in British politics.

Make no mistake, the bus driver's boy from Tooting does not intend to be a passenger at City Hall. He is a politician to his fingertips, and one who is not afraid to exercise power.

Tonight he is set to have a mandate to run London according to a manifesto that includes a bold fares freeze, a pledge to cut costs at "flabby" Transport for London, and a determination to tackle extremism in London's communities.

Follow the latest news and results on our live election blog here.

But the most intriguing aspect to the Khan mayoralty is how it will interact with Jeremy Corbyn's Labour leadership.

He shows signs of building a City Hall that is a showcase for all sides of the Labour Party, with talk of posts for ubermoderniser Lord Adonis as well as an array of refugees from Corbyn Towers like Neal Coleman.

Also, he is on close terms with the big trade unions, who lent him their calling centres. That is significant because unions like the GMB and Unite show signs of tiring with the Islington lefties now running Labour after clashes on defence spending and other touchstone issues.

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If they want to explore policy solutions that challenge the Corbynistas, then City Hall could be a testing ground and the ultimate centre-left think tank.

Pippa Crerar analysis of Sadiq Khan win - London Live

Sadiq Khan is a man that Corbyn ought to be nervous of. Not because Khan has any interest in challenging for the Labour leadership either now or in future, but because he is the Labour figure who has shown how to win.

London Mayoral Election Campaigns - In pictures 1 /21 London Mayoral Election Campaigns - In pictures Labour Mayoral Candidate Sadiq Khan poses next to his new campaign poster on March 29, 2016 in London Ben Pruchnie/Getty Images London Conservative Party mayoral candidate Zac Goldsmith poses for pictures in front of his battle bus in Chiswick, west London, on February 29, 2016 Ben Stansall/AFP/Getty Images Mayoral candidate George Galloway Alex Lentati The Green Party in London today launched its manifesto for Londoners from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) backgrounds. Green Party candidate for London Mayor, Sian Berry (right) chats with stall holder Nazia Mumtaz (left) during a visit to Queens Market, Newham LibDem Mayoral candidate Caroline Pidgeon visits Brixton Cycles with Tim Farron Alex Lentati London Evening Standard Mayoral Hustings, hosted by ES Editor Sarah Sands. The candiates (L-to-R): George Galloway, Sian Berry, Zac Goldsmith, Sadiq Khan, Caroline Pidgeon, Peter Whittle and Sophie Walker. Nigel Howard Women's Equality Party campaign in Haringey ahead of the 2016 mayoral election. Sandi Toksvig - comedian, novelist, actor and broadcaster joined Sophie Walker, the first ever WE candidate for London Mayor in canvassing around Haringey, North London Lucy Young Peter Whittle, who is running for Mayor of London for the UK Independence Party (UKIP), chats to voters in New Addington Lucy Young John Zylinski canvassing for Mayor of London in Ealing Alex Lentati Candidates (from left) Zac Goldsmith, Sadiq Khan Caroline Pidgeon, Peter Whittle and Sian Berry are seen together as national radio station LBC hosts the first broadcast debate of the 2016 London Mayoral election, hosted by Nick Ferrari in London. Ian West/PA Candidates for Mayor of London (left to right) Sian Berry (Green), James Murray (Labour), Stephen Hammond (Conservative), Caroline Pidgeon (Liberal Democrats) and Peter Whittle (UKIP) attend the London Mayoral Housing Hustings at St John's, London. PA Labour candidate Sadiq Khan, Conservative candidate Zac Goldsmith, Liberal Democrats candidate Caroline Pidgeon, UKIP candidate Peter Whittle and Green candidate Sian Berry during The London Debate with LBC and ITV News at The Union Chapel in London PA Lee Harris: 'Campaigning just gets you utterly high' Cannabis is Safer than Alcohol Ankit Love from the One Love Party Broadcast: Paul Golding was filmed in Woolwich Britain First David Furness BNP Mayoral Candidate BNP

And he will have the biggest direct mandate from the general public of anyone in Labour (or indeed the UK).

Yes, Jezza was voted in by Labour members and the 3 supporters, but Khan has seemingly won the trust of the biggest single electorate in the country - Londoners.

So what could this mean? We know the pair are not soul brothers, despite what Zac Goldsmith's campaign tried in vain to assert. They have clashed already on Crossrail 2 after Corbyn crazily claimed the north of England needs a high speed railway more urgently than bursting London needs a north-south line.

Where they most deeply disagree is on how Labour can win power. Khan's campaign was all about housing, jobs and fares: And the result shows he found the pulse of hard-stretched London families. He also appealed to the aspiration of Londoners, neatly citing his hopes for his daughters to illustrate what he aims to achieve.

Sadiq Khan votes

Contrast a London triumph with Corbyn's lacklustre council results and the disaster in Scotland. In particular, look at the gains made from Labour by Ukip in Wales and elsewhere, which suggest the traditional heartlands do not feel the metropolitan Left speak for them.

Labour's centre-left now has a base to put forward and develop a real alternative to the strategy of the Corbynistas.

City Hall has been at the heart of political theatre under Boris for the past eight years. Now it is set to be centre stage for a very different kind of drama.
L ondoners will be forced to wait until midnight for an official mayoral election result.

The delay in the announcement of Labours Sadiq Khan as the capitals new Mayor was blamed on small discrepancies in the count.

The Electoral Commission said it is working with London Elects as well as candidates following the discovery.

Follow the latest news and results on our live election blog here

Many news outlets called the race for Labour's Sadiq Khan earlier this evening as incomplete figures seemed to make it virtually impossible for Zac Goldsmith to claw back victory.

Pippa Crerar on the incredibly high voter turnout - London Live

First preferences have already been announced, putting Mr Khan just shy of 45 per cent, but the Tooting MP needs a majority counted from second preference votes to be declared mayor.

But shortly before 10pm, a spokeswoman for London Elects told waiting reporters they were "working towards" making an announcement at midnight.

A London Elects spokeswoman said: "The returning officer is currently updating candidates and agents.

"There were some small discrepancies with regard to the mayoral figures and we have to take the time to check them.

"We're doing the checking in conjunction with the Electoral Commission.

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"We have to take the time to resolve these issues.

"We are working towards a declaration at midnight. I apologise."

The LSE's Tony Travers said it was possible the discrepancies related to whether one of the smaller candidates lost their deposit, which is 10,000.

The amount is only returned if more than five per cent of the vote is cast in their favour.


S adiq Khan made history today as he roared to victory in the London mayoral race.

The capital turned red for the first time in eight years as the Labour MP beat Tory Zac Goldsmith to the citys top job by more than 300,000 votes.

His official coronation had been delayed over "small discrepancies" that election officials are now working on correcting. The declaration was finally made just before 12.30am on Saturday.

Mr Khan picked up 1,148716 first preference votes and 161,427 second preference votes, for a total of 1,310,143.

Mr Goldsmith won 909,755 votes in the first round and 84,859 in the second, for a total of 994,614.

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Mr Khan's victory will be a major boost to Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn after his party slumped to third place in Scotland and achieved mixed results in council elections across England.

Applause: Sadiq Khan is congratulated by his opponents, including Zac Goldsmith, left / Carl Court/Getty Images

It means City Hall will be run by a Labour mayor for the first time since his predecessor Ken Livingstone was beaten by Mr Johnson in 2008.

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The Tooting MP has been the frontrunner throughout a bitterly fought contest during which his rival was attacked for running a negative campaign focusing on his extremist links.

Mr Goldsmith drew criticism from opponents as well as from some members of his own party.

Pippa Crerar analysis of Sadiq Khan win - London Live

Mr Khan ran an upbeat and energetic campaign which made the most of Labours impressive grassroots organisation in London and his back story as a council-estate born son of a bus driver.

He has promised that his priorities on day one in the job will be getting to grips with the housing crisis and a full review of the security services readiness to deal with a major incident.

One of Mr Khan's first tasks will be to try to heal some of the wounds inflicted on London's diverse communities during the mayoral race.

He is also expected to reassure Jewish Londoners that he is aware of their concerns amid Labour's ongoing anti-Semitism controversy.

Workers at a count at Kensington Olympia / Getty

Major pledges included freezing transport fares for the next four years and tackling some of the flabbiness at Transport for London.

Pippa Crerar: Where did it go wrong for Zac Goldsmith? - London Live

He has guaranteed that 50 per cent of all new homes would be affordable and that Londoners would get first dibs on homes built on public land.

He has described himself as the Muslim mayor who will be tough on extremism, would restore neighbourhood policing and has suggested Met Police chief Sir Bernard Hogan Howe would be on probation.

International commentators have observed that London electing a Muslim mayor would send out a powerful message globally about the capitals diversity.

Ahead of the result there were already rumours circling about the make-up of Mr Khans top team with former transport secretary Andrew Adonis, widely respected across the political spectrum, tipped for the transport role.

Polling Day - London Mayoral Elections 1 /12 Polling Day - London Mayoral Elections Conservative London mayoral candidate Zac Goldsmith leaves with his wife, Alice, after casting his vote in the London Mayor election at Kitson Hall in Barne Andrew Matthews/PA Mayor of London Boris Johnson and wife Marina arrive to cast their votes at a polling station in Islington, north London Stefan Rousseau/PA Sadiq Khan goes to vote on the last day of the Mayoral race to be London Mayor with his wife Saadiya Khan Alex Lentati Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn arrives to cast his vote at a polling station in Islington, north London. Stefan Rousseau/PA George Osborne casts his vote in the London Mayoral Election on May 05, 2016 in London Neil P. Mockford/Getty Images David Cameron and Samantha Cameron arrive to cast their votes in the London Mayoral Election Neil P. Mockford/Getty Images Sian Berry, Green Party Myoral candidate at the polling station today Tilda Long Sandi Toksvig voting this morning for Women's Equality Party Catherine Riley Zac and Alice Goldsmith arrive to vote in Barnes Jeremy Selwyn

But the appointment of the crossbench peer, who previously backed Mr Khans rival Tessa Jowell, would be greeted with dismay by the Greens who fear his passion for road-building and suggest he did not get air pollution.

Pippa Crerar on the incredibly high voter turnout - London Live

Mr Khan has said he will stand down from his Tooting seat prompting a by-election in the South London marginal.
L abour leaders across the country today blamed Ken Livingstone and the anti-Semitism row for damaging their partys election hopes.

Key Corbyn ally and shadow chancellor John McDonnell said it had set us back, while Labours leader in Scotland, where the party sank to third, said it unquestionably hit results.

Backbench MP John Mann claimed the storm had cost Labour Jewish votes, but Mr Livingstone maintained it was nonsense whipped up by Blairites to undermine Jeremy Corbyn.

The former London Mayor, now suspended from Labour, faces a hearing and potential further action over his claim that Hitler was supporting Zionism before he went mad and ended up killing six million Jews.

Asked about the impact of those comments on results, Mr McDonnell admitted the fallout had damaged Labour.

He said: I regret it happened, I made it very, very clear very early on that Ken Livingstone was wrong. He should have apologised and it has set us back, theres no doubt about that.

Poll verdict: Ken Livingstone has been criticised by John McDonnell

However, the shadow chancellor said Mr Corbyn had dealt with cases of alleged anti-Semitism promptly, adding: I think at the end of it well be stronger.

Scottish Labour leader Kezia Dugdale said the furore had unquestionably had an effect on the Holyrood elections, which left Labour languishing as the third biggest party, behind the Tories.

The strongest attack came from Mr Mann, who was seen haranguing Mr Livingstone on live TV at the height of the row. The MP for Bassetlaw said last night that the Scottish result was cata-clysmic for Labour.

Ken Livingstone suspended by the Labour party in anti-Semitism row

He told the BBC: It is clear that the Jewish vote, which for generations in families has been Labour, has gone against Labour tonight.

"We have seen that in Bury, we have seen it in Glasgow, I think we will see it tomorrow in parts of London.

This is a huge challenge, its going to define Jeremy Corbyns leadership. He has to lead from the front and get on top of this problem.

After the Standard told how Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mir-vis was unable to vote due to an error by election authorities in Barnet, there were reports that Jewish voters queued at polling stations in the borough late in the evening to have their say.

The anti-Semitism row continued as counting got under way today for the elections for the London Mayor and Assembly.

Mr Livingstone admitted it had undoubtedly hit Labours election hopes, but he added: If you go back before the Blairites started whipping up all the anti-Semitism stuff, Labour was about five points ahead in the polls.

"So far what seems to be coming through is a lead of about two points. Sadiq was about 16 per cent ahead in the polls before all this anti-Semitism nonsense.

He said the row had been part of a plan to strip him of his seat on Labours National Executive Committee ahead of elections to the body.

Mr Livingstone claimed that would make it easier for Mr Corbyns opponents to overturn the leaders plans to reform Labours Trident policy.

Asked why Mr McDonnell had said he should apologise for his Hitler comments, the former Mayor said: I dont know. I cant see how anyone apologises for stating a truth.

No one is going to demand I apologise if I say the Normans invaded Britain in 1066. Its not going to offend the French.
J eremy Corbyns leadership came under savage attack today after a Labour election drubbing in Scotland, losses in Wales and lacklustre results in English councils.

After the dismal first verdict by voters since Mr Corbyn took over last September, there were calls by Labour MPs for a change of strategy and advisers around the embattled leader.

As votes in the London mayoral election were being counted today, the widespread view was that a victory for Sadiq Khan would stave off talk of a leadership coup. But one Labour MP warned that without improvements the clock is ticking.

In a night of extraordinary drama Labour crashed into a humiliating third place in the Scottish Parliament, as Scots Tory leader Ruth Davidson becomes the official Opposition leader.

First Minister Nicola Sturgeon made history by winning a third term for the SNP but lost her overall majority.

Labour lost its majority on the Welsh Assembly as Nigel Farages Ukip took seats off them, raising fears that Labour is weaker in its working class heartlands.

Plaid Cymru leader Leanne Wood won Rhondda from a Labour frontbencher.

Labour candidate Johann Lamont loses her seat to SNP Hamza Yousef in Glasgow

With 80 council results in overnight, Labour had lost 26 seats and lost control of Dudley. Analysts said it was the first time since the Falklands War that an opposition party had lost seats in a comparable election.

In London, counting is under way for the mayoral election with the result expected between 6pm and 10pm tonight.

Critics of Mr Corbyn reacted to the results by warning that the party would lose the 2020 general election without major changes.

Batley & Spen MP Jo Cox said the results were not good enough. While she said she did not want or expect a challenge to Mr Corbyns position, she warned: The clock is ticking.

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Former shadow cabinet member Emma Reynolds said Labour must not be content with standing still when it ought to have made significant gains off a Tory party riven with European splits.

Nobodys been speaking of a challenge, weve got a European referendum in less than two months time, she said.

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She added that Mr Corbyns future was up to him.

Bermondsey & Old Southwark MP Neil Coyle said he now regretted nominating Mr Corbyn in last years leadership battle and warned that Labour was further from Government after the nights results.

Calling for changes in the leaders strategy and advisers, he said: That strategy  and the people devising it  must be overhauled now if we are to be fighting fit by 2020. Bassetlaw MP John Mann said the Scottish result was cataclysmic for Labour.

But deputy leader Tom Watson urged Labour activists and MPs to respect the mandate achieved by Mr Corbyn in his landslide victory.

So patience is what I would say to those colleagues who are coming out with intemperate remarks, he said.

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Meanwhile shadow cabinet minister Andy Burnham confirmed he was considering a run for the mayoralty of Greater Manchester, in a move that is likely to be interpreted as a mark of pessimism about Labours prospects of seizing power in Westminster at the next election.

Former MP Huw Irranca-Davies, who quit Parliament for the Welsh Assembly, predicted other Labour figures would turn their backs on Westminster, saying: I dont think this will be the end of it.
L abour slumped to third place behind the Conservatives in Scotland after a disastrous night at the polls, but the party managed to stave off predicted losses south of the border.

Results for the Mayor of London ballot, expected to be won by Labour's Sadiq Khan, along with votes for assembly members, will not be revealed until later today but Jeremy Corbyns leadership has already come under renewed pressure.

Mr Khan is the bookmakers' favourite to win the mayoral race, but his team remained cautious ahead of the count on Friday.

A source in Mr Khan's camp said: "So far as we can tell, things have gone pretty much as we expected.

"Nothing has happened to move our market one way or the other. We are optimistic but simply do not believe the big leads we have been getting in the opinion polls."

In Scotland, Conservative leader Ruth Davidson, who won Edinburgh Central from the SNP, said she thought her party would now become the main opposition in Holyrood after Labour fell to third place, dropping 13 seats.

Nicola Sturgeon's party won 63 of the 129 seats that were up for grabs, failing to secure a second overall majority. The SNP ended up with six fewer MSPs than the record 69 the party won under Alex Salmond in the 2011 landslide.

Labour candidate Johann Lamont loses her seat to SNP Hamza Yousef in Glasgow

Elsewhere, Labour lost the Rhondda seat in the Welsh Assembly to Plaid Cymru leader Leanne Wood but lost just one local authority in Dudley.

Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson waves after winning the Edinburgh Central seat at the count at the Royal Highland Centre (Andrew Milligan/PA Wire ) / PA

The party held on to two safe seats in Westminster by-elections along with major cities including Birmingham, Newcastle-upon-Tyne and Sunderland, as well as key southern outposts like Exeter, Southampton, Crawley and Slough

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But despite losses in English councils running less deep than some predicted, frustrations with Mr Corbyn's leadership bubbled to the surface.

Backbench Bermondsey MP Neil Coyle warned the party was "moving away from government" under the veteran left-winger, while leader of the Labour group on Portsmouth Council, John Ferret, denounced him on BBC Radio as "incompetent" and "incapable of giving the leadership we need".

Meanwhile, shadow cabinet minister Andy Burnham revealed he was considering running for mayor of Greater Manchester.

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Conservative Cabinet minister Chris Grayling told BBC News: "The story of tonight is the erosion of the foundations of the Labour Party.

"It has been almost decimated in Scotland, it is now losing core areas of Wales. Labour losing the Rhondda is a huge blow to that party. We are seeing Labour lose its foundations because it has become utterly out of touch with the public as a whole."

Labour had retreated on the eve of polling from Mr Corbyn's earlier prediction that it would lose no seats.

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As results came in, senior figures including shadow chancellor John McDonnell set the modest aim of reducing the 6.3 per cent advantage recorded by the Conservatives in the 2015 general election.

In her victory speech in Edinburgh, Ms Davidson said she was ready to lead "the main opposition party" in the Scottish Parliament.

Ms Sturgeon, whose party topped Scottish polls for the third time in succession, said Labour had suffered "quite staggering" losses in Scotland, which Mr Corbyn identified as a top priority shortly after winning the leadership in September.

SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon retains seat

Labour's deputy leader Tom Watson urged Labour activists and MPs to "respect the mandate" given to Mr Corbyn by members and supporters last year, and suggested that it was too early in his tenure to expect him to be chalking up significant electoral advances.

Watson: Labour has to do bette

He told Sky: "I think most people would recognise you can't consolidate your position in only eight months."

Additional reporting by the Press Association
French President Francois Hollande will visit the Central African Republic on May 13 to pledge France's support for peace efforts in the restive country, his office said Friday.

Hollande will go on to Nigeria the following day to attend a regional summit focused on fighting the jihadist group Boko Haram.

In the Central African Republic, Hollande will "pledge his support for the peace and the stabilisation of the country," a presidential spokesman said.

But the visit is sensitive because of accusations that French peacekeepers sexually abused children in the country.

There are currently three investigations under way into the accusations against the French troops.

Inter-communal violence between Muslim and Christian militias has killed thousands of people in the Central African Republic since 2013.

France deployed a peacekeeping force in 2013 to curb the unrest.

In Nigeria, the summit on Boko Haram will also be attended by the United States, Britain and the three countries neighbouring Nigeria which have also been the target of attacks from the jihadists -- Cameroon, Chad and Niger.

Boko Haram has killed more than 20,000 people since 2009, according to World Bank figures.

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U kip has won its first seats on the London Assembly in more than a decade.

Two members will now sit on the body that scrutinises the Mayor of London, along with 12 from Labour, eight from the Conservatives, two Greens and one Liberal Democrat.

It came as Sadiq Khan made history by roaring to victory in the mayoral race, turning the capital red for the first time in eight years.

The results means the body tasked with holding a Labour mayor to account comprises nearly 50 per cent Labour members.

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London Assembly constituency members were announced at various count centres across the capital over the course of the day.

But the London-wide members, selected from a "top-up" list that makes the election a form of proportional representation, were announced in the chamber at City Hall as journalists and supporters waited for the delayed declaration of the next London mayor.

Reasons to be cheerful: Sadiq Khan (Stefan Rousseau/PA ) / Stefan Rousseau/PA

To cheers the returning officer revealed the Labour Party received by far the most votes in the London-wide ballot - more one million.

The Conservatives won just above 750,000, returning three London-wide candidates - two of whom were not present for the count.

The full breakdown of results from the London Assembly elections Animal Welfare Party 25,810 Britain First 39,071 BNP 15,833 Lib Dems 165,580 Christian People's Alliance 27,172 Conservatives 764,230 Green 207,959 Labour 1,054,801 Respect 41,324 The House Party 11,055 Ukip 171,069 Woman's Equality Party 91,772

The Greens had the third largest share of the vote with 208,000. Ukip received around 171,000 votes while the Lib Dems got about 165,000.

Ukip's David Kurten, one of the party's two London Assembly members, said: "This is my first time being elected. I want to thank the voters who voted for me, who put their trust in Ukip. It's a big thing."

He said housing and immigration were linked and posed the biggest challenges for London, before also adding he would use the platform to make the case for Brexit.

London Assembly successful candidates announcement

"A lot of people have voted Ukip, and a lot of them want us to leave the European Union. We will be a voice for those people."

Sian Berry, who was also expected to come third in the Mayoral contest, is one of the party's two new members in City Hall.

Earlier she told the Evening Standard her party's strong showing in the election demonstrated the value of "positive" campaigning.

She said: "It's great news. Our positive campaign has resonated with people.

"We're now solidly the third party in London."

London Assembly members The London-wide members Fiona Ruth Twycross (Labour) Tom Phillip Copley (Labour) Nicky Gavron (Labour) Kemi Badenoch (Conservative) Andrew Boff (Conservative) Shaun Bailey (Conservative) Caroline Russell (Green) Sian Rebecca Berry (Green) David Michael Kurten (Ukip) Peter Robin Whittle (Ukip) Caroline Valerie Pidgeon (Liberal Democrats) Constituency members Barnet and Camden: Andrew Hartley Dismore (Labour) Bexley and Bromley: Gareth Andrew Bacon (Conservative) Brent and Harrow: Navin Shah (Labour) City and East: Unmesh Desai (Labour) Croydon and Sutton: Stephen John O'Connell (Conservative) Ealing and Hillingdon: Onkar Singh Sahota (Labour) Enfield and Haringey: Joanne McCartney (Labour) Greenwich and Lewisham: Len Duvall (Labour) Havering and Redbridge: Keith Anthony Prince (Conservative) Lambeth and Southwark: Florence Eshalomi (Labour) Merton and Wandsworth: Leonie Alison Cooper (Labour) North East: Jennette Arnold (Labour) South West: Tony Arbour (Conservative) West Central: Tony Devenish (Conservative)

The last time Ukip won seats in the London Assembly elections was 12 years ago - but the two candidates later defected.

The Women's Equality Party, founded only a year ago by Sandi Toksvig and Catherine Mayer, claimed nearly 100,000 votes in the London-wide Assembly, putting them fifth place out of 12 on that ballot.
A cyclist has died after a collision with a car on a motorway.

Police were called to the southbound carriageway of the M3, near Fleet, Hampshire, following the accident which involved an Audi car.

The 52-year-old cyclist from Aldershot suffered serious injuries and was pronounced dead at the scene.

The collision happened between junction 4a and Fleet services at about 10.40pm on Thursday.

Sergeant Martin Mundy, of Hampshire Police, said: "We know that there were several vehicles travelling along that stretch of motorway at this time of night so we are keen to speak to these motorists as they may have information which can assist our investigation."

A force spokesman said: "The driver of the Audi is helping with our inquiries."

Anyone with information should call 101 or Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111.
B oaty McBoatface lives, the Evening Standard can reveal - as a high-tech sub on board the new polar research ship which will be named after Sir David Attenborough.

In a victory for the Evening Standards campaign to honour Britains favourite broadcaster and environmentalist at his 90th birthday, the mother ship will be named Royal Research Ship Sir David Attenborough.

But in an elegant compromise, Science Minister Jo Johnson announces today that the humorous name which topped an internet poll will be emblazoned on a remotely operated undersea vehicle that will explore the deepest waters of the Antarctic.

An emotional Sir David, who turns 90 on Sunday, said he felt truly honoured to lend his name to the 200 million mother ship which will contain the worlds most advanced seaborne laboratory designed to unravel the mysteries of the worlds most remote seas.

The ship's research submarine WILL be called Boaty McBoatface

I am truly honoured by this naming decision and hope that everyone who suggested a name will feel just as inspired to follow the ships progress as it explores our polar regions, he said.

TODO: define component type apester

I have been privileged to explore the worlds deepest oceans alongside amazing teams of researchers, and with this new polar research ship they will be able to go further and discover more than ever before.

Mr Johnson also announced plans to build on the interest on polar science stirred by the naming competition.

How the front of the ship might look once the naming is complete

He said the Government will invest up to 1 million in a new Polar Explorer Programme to engage young people and inspire the scientists, engineers and explorers of the future.

As the biggest commercial shipbuilding contract in Britain, the construction of RRS Sir David Attenborough is supporting 400 jobs and 60 apprenticeships.

The ship will sail in 2019 for the Antarctic, the icy world that was opened up to an awed global audience by Sir Davids 1993 series Life in the Freezer.

The campaign to honour Sir David for opening Britains eyes to the natural world was backed by two former Environment Secretaries, two former Culture Secretaries and polar explorer Dan Byles.

And last night actress and wildlife campaigner Virginia McKenna added her voice, saying he had inspired millions.

The star of Born Free went on: I can think of no more fitting way to recognise his outstanding contribution than by naming the UKs new Polar research ship after him.

Sir David said it was an honour to have the ship named after him

Sir Davids books and documentaries span a remarkable seven decades, with each work hallmarked by his blend of compelling narrative and thorough scientific knowledge.

Mr Johnson said: The public provided some truly inspirational and creative names, and while it was a difficult decision Im delighted that our state-of-the-art polar research ship will be named after one of the nations most cherished broadcasters and natural scientists.

This vessel will carry the Attenborough name for decades to come, as it fulfils its mission to explore the oceans and put Britain at the forefront of efforts to preserve our precious marine environment.

The ship has captured the imaginations of millions, which is why were ensuring that the Boaty name lives on through the sub-sea vehicle that will support the research crew, and the polar science education programme that will bring their work to life.

More than 124,000 people voted to call the ship RRS Boaty McBoatface after a social media joke went viral.

The name RRS Poppy-Mai - after a 16-month-old girl with terminal cancer - came second with 34,371 votes.

They were followed by the more conventional RRS Henry Worsley, which commemorates the Antarctic explorer, with 15,231 votes; the spoof suggestion RRS Its Bloody Cold Here with 10,679 votes, and RRS David Attenborough with 10,284 votes.

Now the parliamentary Science and Technology Committee will quiz bosses from the National Environmental Research Council about the competition and whether there was what chairwoman Nicola Blackwood called a McVolte-face on the name.
Review at a glance









 Rage is a really fun place to dance from is how Anohni has described this extraordinary protest album, in which she transmutes her anger at all the worlds sins into something like grace.

Anohni - Hopelessness

The performer formerly known as Antony Hegarty (whose I Am a Bird Now won the 2005 Mercury Prize) is now known by her spirit name, and the liberation from binary gender has unleashed a transhumanist urgency.

The tremulous waterfall voice remains, but siren-like beats from Hudson Mohawke and crackling electronics from Oneohtrix Point Never cast her into a more ethereal realm, contrasting with the more earthly acoustics of her former band.

Drone Bomb Me is a love-drenched death-wish sung from the point of view of a girl whose family has been killed in a mountainside drone strike: I want to be the apple of your eye... Let me be the one you choose from above. Four Degrees is a culpable lament for global warming: And all those rhinos and all those big mammals / I want to see them crying in the fields.

On Obama, she castigates the president directly for executing without trial and punishing the whistle-blowers.

It doesnt all hit the heights, but for material so uncompromising its among her most accessible  a plea for beauty through beauty.

(Rough Trade)
F riday, wine and the internet/The only love I seem to get, sings Paul Klein of LANY on the trios new single, Where the Hell Are My Friends.

Its a post-millennial update of Bacharach and Davids Do You Know the Way to San Jose, or perhaps Bran Van 3000s Drinking in LA, about heading to the big city for fame and fortune and finding that life among millions can be surprisingly lonely.

Its also an extremely catchy mix of subtle synth chords and clipped guitar, and sounds like a pop hit to me  quite an achievement given that they claim to make their music in a bedroom on a Dell computer.

Klein came from Tulsa, while drummer Jake Goss and keyboardist Les Priest arrived in LA from Nashville, formed the band and started gigging.

What could be more attuned to the trends of the internet than their early EP Acronyms, featuring songs such as OMG and ILYSB? The latter, which stands for I Love You So Bad, is a pretty declaration of affection that has gone on to earn 12 million plays on Spotify.

Gigs supporting YouTuber turned pop star Troye Sivan and pop star turned superstar Ellie Goulding have begun to swell their fanbase to the extent that they wont feel alone for much longer.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un hailed the country's "historic" nuclear test in January in a keynote address Friday to the ruling party's first party congress for nearly 40 years.

"This year during which the party's congress is held, our military successfully conducted the first H-bomb test ... an historic landmark in the 5,000-year history of our people," Kim said in his speech broadcast on state television.

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President George W. Bush to be Given the 'Family and Democracy' Award at World Congress of Families X, Tbilisi, Georgia (May 15-18)

Contact: Levan Vasadze, Chairman, World Congress of Families X , 815-997-7106, media@worldcongress.org TBILISI, Georgia, May 6, 2016 / Standard Newswire / -- Former U.S. President George W. Bush will be honored with the "FAMLIA ET CIVITAS (Family and Democracy)" Award at the World Congress of Families X in Tbilisi, Georgia, May 15-18 ( www.worldcongress.ge ). The theme of the Tenth Jubilee, World Congress of Families X is "Civilization at The Crossroads: The Natural Family as the Bulwark of Freedom and Human Values."World Congress of Families unites leaders worldwide in defense of family, faith, and freedom ( www.worldcongress.org ) by affirming the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights and defending the dignity and sanctity of every human life.This award comes more than a decade after Georgians celebrated and honored President Bush, by naming the road to the Tbilisi international airport "George W. Bush" Highway in recognition of the former President.President Bush has greeted previous World Congress of Families events, including the World Congress of Families III held in Mexico City in 2004 which was also addressed by Mexican First Lady, Mrs. Martha Fox.President Bush commended the efforts of the World Congress to "recognize the importance of families in our society. Around the world, families are the source of help, hope, and stability for individuals and nations. As one of the pillars of civilization, families must remain strong and we must defend them during this time of great change. Your work improves many lives and makes the world better," declared Mr. Bush. Here is the full text of Mr. Bush's greeting, worldcongress.ge/george-w-bush.pdf President Bush is the first sitting U.S. President to visit Georgia and his visit in 2005 to Tbilisi's Freedom Square was enthusiastically received by the Georgian people . "Georgia is a beacon of liberty for this region and the world," Mr. Bush said. "The path of freedom you have chosen is not easy, but you will not travel it alone ... the American people will stand with you."World Congress of Families X Chairman Levan Vasadze commented, "As Georgians, we have a special connection to President Bush as he was the first U.S. President to visit our great homeland, one of the oldest Christian nations on earth. Mr. Bush won a place in our hearts as he danced to Georgian music and declared our nation to be a beacon of liberty and freedom for the world. He gave us hope that we could maintain our Georgian traditions of family, faith, and freedom while partnering with America and the West."WCF Tbilisi 2016 will be the first World Congress of Families in the Eurasian and Caucasus region (on the Old Silk Road to China) and the first in an Orthodox Christian country. WCF X conferences and concerts will be held in multiple venues in Tbilisi including the opening ceremony in Tbilisi's State Philharmonic Concert Hall, the Radisson Blu Iveria Hotel, and the closing ceremony in the historic Rustaveli National Theatre in Tbilisi. WCF X will be broadcast on Georgian TV stations and various international channels to more than 250 million viewers.Previous Congresses have been held in Prague (1997), Geneva (1999), Mexico City (2004), Warsaw (2007), Amsterdam (2009), Madrid (2012), Sydney (2013) and Salt Lake City (2015). The Tenth Jubilee, 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 worlds largest network of pro-family leaders, parents, youth, lawmakers, scholars, religious leaders, and advocates united to support the natural family. WCF X is 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 Free press pass registrations are available for news media and reporters at:

www.eventbrite.com/e/world-congress-of-families-x-tbilisi-republic-of-georgia-may-15-18-2016-tickets-22669828066?aff=es2 Free Student/Emerging Leader Registrations also available at:

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
Three Red Cross staff members kidnapped three days ago in eastern Congo in an attack blamed by a rights group on Rwandan rebels, have been released, the Geneva-based organisation said on Friday.

"They are free, they were handed over to the local authorities and they will be back in Goma tomorrow," an International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) spokeswoman told Reuters, giving no further details.

The Congo-based Centre of Studies for the Promotion of Peace, Democracy and Human Rights blamed the kidnapping on the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, a grouping of former soldiers and Hutu fighters behind Rwanda's 1994 genocide.

Aid workers are frequently abducted in the Democratic Republic of Congo and in January the United Nations said a spike in the number of kidnappings and insecurity had made it difficult to provide humanitarian aid.

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Leading Russian musicians on Thursday staged a classical concert in the ancient theatre of Syria's ravaged Palmyra in a show by the Kremlin to herald its successes in the war-torn country

Famed conductor Valery Gergiev led Saint Petersburg's celebrated Mariinsky orchestra through pieces by Johann Sebastian Bach, Sergei Prokofiev and Rodion Shchedrin in front of a crowd of Russian soldiers, government ministers and journalists.

Cellist Sergei Roldugin -- a personal friend of President Vladimir Putin recently caught up in the scandal over the leaked Panama Papers -- played a solo against the stunning backdrop of the Roman amphitheatre where jihadists from the Islamic State group staged mass executions less than a year ago.

"Thank you for today's amazing humanitarian act -- the concert in a Palmyra liberated from terrorists," Putin said in an address from Russia broadcast at the start of the concert.

"I see it as a sign of gratitude, of remembrance, of hope," Putin said.

Syrian troops backed by Russian air strikes and special forces on the ground recaptured UNESCO world heritage site Palmyra from Islamic State group fighters in late March, delivering a major propaganda coup for both Damascus and Moscow.

Russian army sappers said last month that they had demined the ancient site -- known as the "Pearl of the Desert" -- where jihadist fighters blew up ancient temples and looted relics.

The Kremlin has shipped foreign journalists to the concert as it basks in the retaking of Palmyra, one of the most significant achievements since it launched a bombing campaign, criticised by the West, to support ally President Bashar al-Assad in September.

'Wounded but not killed'

Putin said that he saw the concert as a sign "of hope not just for the rebirth of Palmyra as a cultural asset for the whole of humanity, but for seeing modern civilisation rid itself of this terrible scourge of international terrorism".

Mikhail Pyotrovsky, the director of Russia's Hermitage Museum, told journalists at the scene that "Palmyra is injured but she has not been killed" and pledged help in restoring it.

Sitting in the audience, Syrian tour guide Anwar Al-Omar told AFP that while he thought only Russia could help rebuild the ancient town he was downbeat about its prospects in the long-term.

"I am pessimistic. It will be difficult to bring tourists back," he said.

Gergiev is one of the world's best known conductors but has faced backlash in the West for his strongly pro-Kremlin views, with his tours sometimes interrupted by protestors.

Roldugin, the godfather of Putin's eldest daughter, was revealed as being at the head of a vast offshore empire that controls some $2 billion (1.75 billion euros) by the Panama Papers leaks in April but has been fiercely defended by the Kremlin strongman.

The concert in Palmyra was not the first that Gergiev has conducted in a place where the Russian military carried out controversial operations.

In 2008 the Ossetian native conducted a concert in Tskhinvali, the main city in separatist Georgian region of South Ossetia that was heavily damaged in the short Russian-Georgian war that year.

Gergiev also conducted a charity concert in Tokyo for victims of the Fukushima tragedy in 2012 and led a charity concert tour to raise funds for victims of Russia's Beslan school massacre in 2004.

For more arts and culture news and updates, follow Ahram Online Arts and Culture on Twitter at @AhramOnlineArts and on Facebook at Ahram Online: Arts & Culture

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Local news outlets have reported that the businessmans family paid the kidnappers EGP 5 million

A Saudi businessman who was kidnapped on the outskirts of Cairo last week has been freed, Saudi Arabias ambassador to Egypt Ahmed El-Qattan wrote on his Twitter account on Thursday.

Hassan Al Sanad, a Saudi businessman who owns a private business and factories in Egypt, was kidnapped on the Cairo-Ismailia road on 27 April after masked men stopped his car.

The ambassador did not divulge details about how the 70-year-old businessman was released, but some local news outlets reported that his family paid the hijackers around EGP 5 million to have him released.

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An Egyptian military court sentenced 144 supporters of former Islamist president Mohamed Morsi to prison, with sentences ranging from 15 to 25 years in jail.

The case dates back to August 2013, when hundreds of Morsi supporters protested the violent dispersal of the Rabaa El-Adaweya sit-in in downtown Cairo.

The prosecution accused the defendants of attempting to storm the El-Fatah Mosque and El-Azbakiya police station.

Today's verdict is subject to appeal.

Egypt's 2014 constitution gives the military the right to try civilians in criminal offences related to attacks on vital instititutions.

In 2014, then-interim president Adly Mansour signed amendments to the military criminal code granting for the first time the right of defendants to appeal military court sentences.

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Caravanserai, an exhibition by Spanish artist Pilar Cossio, will open at Mashrabia Gallery of Contemporary Art on Thursday and run until 19 May.

The exhibited work dangles between photography and installation and is based on the artists work in the cities of Paris, Beirut and Essauoira.

Cossios work takes us close to visual poetry, suggesting a world where reality is not determined by reason and rather it opens up towards a dreamlike and magical territory imbued with fragments of images collected in her trips to Paris, Beirut and Essauoira, reads the press release issued by Mashrabia Gallery of Contemporary Art.

The artist wisely moves between contemporary languages, creating an artistic practice that astonishes and amazes the viewer, adds the press release.

Programme:

Thursday 5 May, 7pm

Mashrabia Gallery of Contemporary Art, 8 Champollion Street, Cairo

The exhibition runs until 19 May

For more arts and culture news and updates, follow Ahram Online Arts and Culture on Twitter at @AhramOnlineArts and on Facebook at Ahram Online: Arts & Culture

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Hangzhou Steel sees 31.85 percent fall in operating revenue in Q1

Friday, 06 May 2016 10:02:34 (GMT+3) | Shanghai



Zhejiang Province-based Chinese steelmaker Hangzhou Iron & Steel Co. (Hangzhou Steel) has announced that in the first quarter of the current year it registered an operating revenue of RMB 4.353 billion ($0.67 billion), down 31.85 percent year on year, with a net profit of RMB 111.4 million ($17.13 million) compared to a net loss of RMB 66.542 million in the same period of 2015.

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Liuzhou Steel Group returns to profit in first quarter

Friday, 06 May 2016 10:03:18 (GMT+3) | Shanghai



Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region-based Chinese steelmaker Liuzhou Iron and Steel Group (Liuzhou Steel Group) has announced that in the first quarter of the current year it registered an operating revenue of RMB 6.147 billion ($0.95 billion), declining by 6.7 percent year on year, with a net profit of RMB 15.416 million ($2.37 million) compared to the net loss of RMB 347 million recorded in the same period of 2015.

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Liuzhou Steel Group sees reduced operating revenue in 2015

Friday, 06 May 2016 10:15:10 (GMT+3) | Shanghai



Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region-based Chinese steelmaker Liuzhou Iron and Steel Group (Liuzhou Steel Group) has announced in its annual report for 2015 that it recorded an operating revenue of RMB 25.91 billion ($3.39 billion), down 27.26 percent year on year, with a net loss of RMB 1.189 billion ($0.18 billion) compared to a net profit of RMB 169 million in 2014.

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Friday, 06 May 2016 22:57:08 (GMT+3) | San Diego

According to a release from the American Iron and Steel Association this week, high-level representatives from governments around the world, along with representatives from the global steel industry, met in Brussels in mid-April to address the severe overcapacity crisis afflicting the steel industry.





The High Level Meeting on Excess Capacity and Structural Adjustment in the Steel Sector was organized by the OECD and hosted by the Kingdom of Belgium. As a result of that meeting, the governments of Canada, the European Union, Japan, Mexico, the Republic of Korea, Switzerland, Turkey and the United States issued a significant statement noting two relevant issues.





First, the challenges facing the steel industry, have an important global dimension that needs to be address through ongoing international dialogue; and, second, that while the challenges facing the industry arise from many factors, such as structural and cyclical economic developments, government support measures have contributed to significant excess capacity, unfair trade, and distortions in steel trade flows.





The governments concurred on a number of steps that could be taken to address the challenges facing the global steel industry, including to:





Ensure that governments and government-supported institutions do not provide subsidies or other support that: 1) sustain uneconomic or consistently loss-making steel plants, 2) encourage investment in additional steelmaking capacity which would otherwise not be built; or, 3) otherwise distort competition,





Ensure that government plans, policies, directives and guidelines, whether issued or implemented by government entities or government-supported institutions, do not encourage the net expansion of steelmaking capacity and that all uneconomic or consistently loss-making steel enterprises are permitted to exit the market and close facilities.





Work together to identify and promote policies that address the detrimental impact of steel facility closures on workers and affected communities, while facilitating the closure of uneconomic or consistently loss-making facilities.





Enhance the exchange of information on: 1) capacity developments; and, 2) the formulation and implementation of the support measures and industrial policies being taken in steel.





Ensure that those enterprises in which their governments have full or partial ownership do not receive special benefits that distort competition.





Steel producers from around the world welcomed this statement as an important step toward addressing the global steel excess capacity crisis. However, many in the industry also expressed concern that China  the nation which accounts for approximately half of the worlds steel capacity  did not join in the statement.





Ten steel industry associations, representing the U.S, Canada, Mexico, Latin America, Brazil, Europe, and Turkey said this week, While we were disappointed that the Chinese government was unwilling at this time to join with other governments in a program of actions to address the global steel overcapacity problem, we are encouraged by the support of governments of eight major steelmaking countries and regions to recommend steps to address excess capacity in the steel sector and eliminate market-distorting government subsidies and other support that promotes and sustains excess capacity in the steel sector, distorting competition. We did not expect to solve the crisis in one meeting; however, we did hope that the governments of all major steel producing nations would be able to make commitments on a set of principles and agree to work together to help address the crisis. Despite consensus among many countries who participated, Chinas lack of support prevented a broad agreement on these commitments.





The steel associations recognized that the Brussels meetings were one step in the right direction, and urged the Chinese government to constructively participate in future discussions at the OECD and elsewhere to address the global steel overcapacity crisis.




Russian steel giant Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel Works ( MMK ) has announced that in the first quarter this year the sales revenues of its Turkey -based subsidiary MMK Metalurji decreased by 12.2 percent quarter on quarter to $115 million, due to slightly lower sales volumes and the overall decline in steel prices in the companys key markets.
Friday, 06 May 2016 10:04:50 (GMT+3) | Shanghai

Qinghai Province-based Chinese steelmaker Xining Special Steel Co. has announced in its annual report for 2015 that it achieved an operating revenue of RMB 6.053 billion ($0.93 billion), down 17.24 percent year on year, with a net loss of RMB 1.619 billion ($0.25 billion) compared to a net profit of RMB 41.581 million ($6.40 million) in 2014.

In 2015, Xining Special Steel produced 1.1329 million mt of pig iron, 1.2055 million mt of crude steel and 1.0944 million mt of finished steel, indicating respective decreases of 20.11 percent, 16.45 percent and 15.32 percent year on year.
Friday, 06 May 2016 23:01:48 (GMT+3) | Sao Paulo

Brazil imported 1,500 mt of rebar from Turkey in April, 47 percent more than in March, but still far from the average volume of 11,000 mt per month in 2015, according to the countrys ministry of development, industry and foreign trade, MDIC.







A Brazilian importer of The average FOB price declined by 20 percent to $399/mt, apparently in a compensation for the devaluation of the local currency in relation to the American Dollar from 2015 to 2016.A Brazilian importer of rebar in the south of the country told SteelOrbis that, despite the reduced volume, the company plans to maintain imports of rebar from Turkey





He mentioned that high domestic prices of the product could maintain profitability of imports, depending on FOB prices and Turkey Brazil logistics costs.





Another source, a Brazilian steel producer, told SteelOrbis that he is selling in the domestic market the CA-50, 10mm thickness product at the equivalent to $732/mt, FOB conditions, no taxes included.


Friday, 06 May 2016 14:29:23 (GMT+3) | Istanbul

SteelOrbis has learned that Italian steel producers are now offering rebar to the Algerian market in the range of 450-460/mt ($513-524/mt) FOB for June delivery, raising their prices by 25-30/mt ($29-34/mt) since last week.

In the meantime, demand for Italian rebar from the export markets remains at low-to-medium levels.

1 = $1.14
Friday, 06 May 2016 00:37:55 (GMT+3) | San Diego

May 4 data from the US Department of Commerce, Enforcement and Compliance shows that for the month of April, US import line pipe tonnages were calculated at 134,722 mt (license data); in comparison, April 2015 line pipe import tons were recorded at 284,347 mt (census data).





In April 2016, the most significant offshore source of US import line pipe was Korea, at 37,208 mt (license data). In April 2015, Korea shipped 140,910 mt of line pipe to US ports.





Rig counts are a mess, drilling is a mess and the global oil supply glut doesnt seem to be getting any better, one Texas-based source said. The market is slow. Its very very slow.





In terms of pricing, everything has held lateral week-on-week. Futures offers from both Taiwanese and Korean and Taiwanese producers for API X-42 EWR line pipe continue to be heard in the approximate range of $25.50-$26.50 cwt. ($562-$586/mt or $510-$530/nt), DDP loaded truck in US Gulf Coast.





Looking onshore, US domestic spot market prices continue to be heard in the approximate range of $45.00-$46.00 cwt. ($992-$1,014/mt or $900-$920/nt), ex-Midwest mill. On-the-ground inventory, however is said to be available at a deep discount because the yards just want to turn it over.








By MARK EVANS mevans@stegenherald.com During last Thursdays county commission meeting, the topic of tourism came up. First District Commissioner Karen Stuppy reported on the Tourism Advisory Council and Tourism Tax Commissions joint meeting earlier that week, at which a task force was formed. She said that the tourism department has an $89,548 budget, with $45,000-50,000
President Klaus Iohannis signed on Friday a decree of promulgation of a law that ratifies the agreement for reimbursable financial assistance to the Republic of Moldova.

The agreement for a loan of 150 million euros to Moldova has been signed in Chisinau on 7 October 2015.The President had returned the law to the Parliament for reexamination in November 2015; he then pointed out that the political context in Chisinau made the act inopportune, as there was no certainty about the continuation of the reform process in Moldova, according to Agerpres
Many residents of the Reserve neighborhood in Chesterfield are upset about a proposal to build a multimillion-dollar senior-living facility near their homes.

Worried about the loss of green space and a possible increase in traffic, residents have organized opposition to the project, which just got regulatory approval this week.

On Monday, state health regulators approved a portion of the overall project, the 51 assisted-living facility beds, which is being proposed by SHDG Chesterfield LLC.

All told, the project will cost $32 million, which includes space for an additional 94 independent-living units. The full project now heads to the city of Chesterfield for various approvals, including a zoning change.

Many residents wrote to regulator Missouri Health Facilities Review Committee, urging it not to approve the assisted-living facility beds. The committee does not regulate independent-living units.

The project calls for a four-story, 200,000-square-foot building at the southeast corner of Baxter and Wild Horse Creek roads.

At least 53 opposition letters and 79 petition signatures were sent to state health regulators, according to the state review committee website.

The committee determines whether there is a need for more health-care projects throughout the state via the certificate of need process, the theory being that curbing duplication helps temper health-care costs.

The project will sit on the more than five acres of undeveloped land that is sandwiched between Wild Horse Creek Road to the immediate north and single-family homes immediately to the south.

P.J. Farmer has yet to live in the neighborhood a full month. She and her family moved in April after buying what she says is their dream home. She has nothing against seniors but worries about increased traffic and noise.

I want to be able to sleep with the windows open in a residential neighborhood and not have a bunch of noise, Farmer said.

To move the project forward, SHDG Chesterfield will need to get the site rezoned.

Aimee Nassif, Chesterfields planning and development director, said the five acres proposed for development are zoned commercial, which allows for all sorts of developments, from an amusement park to a liquor store with no restrictions on hours of operation.

But to build an assisted living facility, like the one being proposed, the site would need to be rezoned to residential.

Nassif said shes already received numerous letters from residents objecting to the project, which has yet to be formally submitted to the city for review, she said Thursday morning.

Neighbors say theyre worried about other potential issues including the overall height of the building, particularly in an area that has primarily two-story dwellings.

It does not make us comfortable, said Shankar Manakkal, who has lived in the neighborhood for more than three years with his family.

He wonders why developers have picked the area so close to the subdivision.

Theres plenty of land out there, he said of Chesterfield.

Plus, neighbors say a similar project was approved by state health regulators years ago but on a plot of land a little more than three miles from the current location. The current owners decided to take over the project from the previous owners and move it. That doesnt seem fair, they say.

But Rick Watters, attorney for project owner SHDG Chesterfield, said his group met with the Reserve neighborhood trustees late last year, who agreed to support the project if the developer agreed to various ways to shield the neighborhood from the facility.

Those agreements included installing a landscape buffer, providing $20,000 worth of plantings and fences to screen the neighborhood from the building and an additional $2,000 worth of landscaping.

Thats true, said Ramana Madupalli, one of the opposition organizers, but the trustees never relayed those development plans to the rest of the neighborhood residents.

Madupalli said they were led to believe that only a two-story office building could potentially be built in that green space, which will be directly across the street from a church and Catholic school for elementary and middle-school students.

We didnt expect something of this magnitude, he said. Many of us wouldnt have bought a house there.
CHICAGO  Discount retailer Target Corp. is cracking down on suppliers as part of a multibillion-dollar overhaul to speed up its supply chain and better compete with rivals including Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Amazon.com Inc.

The sixth-largest U.S. retailer by sales plans to tighten deadlines for deliveries to its warehouses and hike fines for late deliveries, and could institute penalties of up to $10,000 for inaccuracies in product information, according to a letter sent to suppliers and obtained by Reuters and an interview with Targets Chief Operating Officer John Mulligan.

The moves, effective May 30, are the first major steps Target has taken since Mulligan was appointed as COO late in 2015 to fix supply problems that emerged after it expanded product offerings, including fresh food, several years ago.

A tighter grip on its deliveries is seen as crucial to keeping shelves stocked, maximizing sales and controlling costs. Target already has announced an investment of more than $5 billion in supply chain and technology infrastructure between 2015-2017.

Mulligan told Reuters in an interview on Monday that the company aims to include suppliers in the effort. These steps are a key part of becoming more reliable, he said.

The new rules and penalties are detailed in a letter sent to suppliers. They will start to take effect at the end of the month and will be rolled out over the next 60 to 90 days.

In the letter, Target said the goal was to keep products stocked to lower missed sales for all of us.

Mulligan and Chief Executive Brian Cornell met over 200 suppliers recently to talk through the changes. He described the discussion as productive.

We had a very long question-and-answer session, Mulligan said. Obviously there were concerns, so we listened to those, and we feel very good with where we are going with our vendor partners.

Next on his list for improvements is Targets international supply chain, and he has already started holding talks with vendors who import products to the Unites States, Mulligan said.

Target is not the first large retailer to focus on supply chain precision. At an annual vendor conference in February, Wal-Mart informed suppliers that it was raising its standard for on-time delivery to 95 percent from 90 percent, according to a Wal-Mart presentation slide posted on a Facebook group and confirmed by several suppliers. Wal-Mart is also cutting the window for deliveries to within 1 to 2 days of a target date, depending on the product category, from 1 to 4 days previously, the Wal-Mart slide showed. A spokesman for the company declined to comment on the changes.

Targets supply chain became more complex several years ago when it expanded its offering of perishable goods such as meat, fresh produce and dairy products.

Further complications came when the retailer started catering to online shoppers by shipping orders directly from warehouses and also allowing them to pick up online orders in stores.

Amy Koo, principal analyst with Kantar Retail said the new changes mean Target can hold less inventory, which is key to being an efficient retailer. In theory, everything can move faster, and they will have less stuff in the system.

Targets stores nationwide in 2015 had 8 to 9 billion items on store floors, in transit or in warehouses at any given point.

The new rules, detailed in the letter, call for domestic suppliers to give a single-day arrival date for shipments to Targets warehouses. Domestic suppliers constitute the majority of Targets vendor base.

These suppliers will no longer have a grace period to ship a few days after the promised date without penalties, the letter says. Suppliers said the current grace period for shipments is two to 12 days depending on product category.

A packaged foods supplier who ships products to Targets warehouses said the cost of narrowing the delivery window to a single day will be entirely ours, and they wont share any of that.

Target will also hike fines on late shipments to 5 percent of the order cost, according to the letter, which adds that the retailer is considering escalating charges of $5,000-$10,000 for suppliers who fail to provide complete and accurate product information.

Currently, late fines range from 1 percent to 3 percent depending on the product, according to suppliers.

Mulligan said Target will be flexible with suppliers during an adjustment period.

The retailer, which operates 1,800 stores and 40 U.S. warehouses, will roll out the proposed changes over the summer, the letter says.

Household, paper, pet products and center-store grocery suppliers have to comply with the rules in June; health and beauty vendors in July and divisions including apparel, home and electronics in August
ALTON  A man accused of detonating two small bombs in Alton was angry over a drug deal, according to federal court documents.

It appeared that nobody was hurt except the defendant, Richard Lee Johnson, 27, who suffered injuries April 25 when what a federal agent described as a copper pipe bomb went off.

He was charged April 26 in U.S. District Court in East St. Louis with detonating an unregistered explosive device, a crime with a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison.

Johnson remained in federal custody Friday. He listed an address in the 300 block of North Elm Street in Bethalto.

A court detention order says Johnson has a history of drug and alcohol abuse, significant prior criminal history, no steady employment and no significant financial resources.

An Alton police statement issued Friday says officers and firefighters were called about 11:21 a.m. April 25 to Central Avenue and Pearl Street to help an injured person. Johnson told them a gas can had exploded in his van, but officers were skeptical and called in detectives.

Johnson told first responders that he was smoking a cigarette, which ignited a gas can, injuring his chest and hands, according to court documents.

In the van, parked nearby in the 800 block of Arch Street, police found no sign of gas or a can. But they did find pieces of an exploded destructive device, a burned and bloody glove, some marijuana-smoking paraphernalia, two Madison County sheriffs badges, a sheriffs deputy badge, a security officers badge, two pins in the shape of Illinois and the smell of gunpowder.

An affidavit by Special Agent Duane J. Clauer of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives says that a woman who lives in that block of Arch Street had called police about a week before and said Johnson threatened during a drug deal to blow up her home. She said she took $50 from him on a promise to deliver pills but slipped away.

She saw Johnson outside her home April 21, lighting something that exploded, the affidavit says. She said Johnson later made more threats and told her he was bomb maker.

A witness told police that a man she identified from a picture as Johnson had told her this is a warning before lighting a device April 21 and leaving, the affidavit says. She said the blast blew objects that hit a house on the block.

The same witness also saw Johnson get into his van after a similar explosion April 25, then get back out and walk toward a market on Central Avenue, according to Clauders statement.

It says Johnson denied to police that he had any explosive device or knew the woman.

The police statement says, It is believed that at no point was the general public, outside of the immediate area of the dispute, targeted by the suspect.

Alton Police Chief Jason Jake Simmons credited careful work by his officers and cooperation from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, Illinois Secretary of States bomb squad and the FBI.
JEFFERSON COUNTY  After a black bear was found shot to death and skinned in Jefferson County, state conservation agents on the trail of the poacher said Friday they have cracked the case and cited the person responsible.

The bear was found dead Monday, and had been killed within the week, Missouri Department of Conservation spokesman Dan Zarlenga said. It had been skinned, he said, and agents recovered the skin.

Black bears, which are making a resurgence in Missouri, are a protected species in the state.

Zarlenga said he did not know exactly where this one was killed. He withheld the name of the person who was cited for a misdemeanor offense that could be punishable by up to a year in jail and a $1,000 fine. Officials said the name would become public upon a plea or formal prosecution.

The Wildlife Code of Missouri says a black bear can be killed only with prior consent of a conservation agent, if it is damaging property  or without permission if the bear is attacking a person, livestock or domestic animal. Even then, the killing must be reported immediately, Zarlenga said.

There is no indication the bear acted aggressively, he said.

Zarlenga said agents collected enough evidence to lead to the charge of taking or possessing a protected species of wildlife or parts thereof. Punishment can include a fine, jail time and revocation of hunting privileges.

He said the suspect has 30 days to answer the citation by entering a plea. If the plea is not guilty, the case may be presented to the county prosecutor, he said.

Officials began getting tips about the incident on Monday, Zarlenga said, coincidentally the day after another black bear was captured in Warren County. That one was trapped and sedated Sunday on a family farm, nine days after a man who cuts hay on the property spotted it.

Agents returned to the farm on Monday to inspect the sedated bear. Zarlenga said it had been in Christian County, in southwest Missouri, two years ago, and its GPS collar was no longer working. Agents found the animal to be in good health, put on a new tracking collar and released it where it was found.

The dead bear in Jefferson County had no tracking device and was not tagged, Zarlenga said. Agents do not know its gender or age, but believe it was an adult. We dont have the full body, he explained.

Missouri is home to an estimated 300 to 400 black bears. The state has tracking devices on about 80.

Sightings in Jefferson County arent particularly unusual, he said. There was one last year, and some a week or so ago. Whether its the same bear, were not sure, he said.

Our bear population does appear to be expanding  not ballooning  but were getting bears more places than we used to see, he said.

Black bears were native to Missouri but nearly wiped out in the settlement years in the mid- to late-1800s. They are making a comeback.

The majority come from restocking started by Arkansas in the 1950s. It imported bears from Manitoba, Canada.

In recent years, bears have been moving into Missouri, but staying primarily south of Interstate 44. There have been sightings in the last several years a little north of the Interstate 70 corridor in the western part of the state.

In the eastern half, all of the sightings have been south of Interstate 70 and most are below I-44, Zarlenga said.

Poaching incidents are unusual. Not only is killing the bear illegal but also possession of the skin. I dont know if the same person did both acts in Jefferson County, he said. It was skinned, I cant speculate on a motivation for doing that.

He warned that people should never feed bears or leave trash or pet food accessible to them. We have to be proactive to prevent bear problems, he said. Usually, once a bear starts associating people with food, they can become a nuisance.

Anyone with information about the bears death, or any wildlife violation, can call the Operation Game Thief hotline at 800-392-1111. Information can be given anonymously. A reward of up to $1,000 is possible in a criminal case.
ST. PETERS  A Jennings man was arrested Wednesday in connection with the burglaries last month of three St. Peters jewelry stores which spurred a high-speed, early-morning police chase into north St. Louis County.

Wayne M. Collins, 21, of the 2000 block of Merollis Walk, and accomplices escaped on foot from police after crashing their car on Missouri Bottom Road near Interstate 270 on April 18.

Police were still seeking the other suspects on Thursday but didnt release their names or say how many were involved.

Collins was charged Thursday with three counts each of theft and burglary in connection with break-ins at Harris Jewelers and the Diamond Shoppe, both on Mexico Road, and Smith Jewelry and Coin on Old Highway 94.

He also faces burglary and theft charges in connection with a Dec. 17 incident at C&C Cell Phone Repair on North Highway 67 in Florissant. Police on Thursday didnt say what was stolen from the four businesses.

Florissant police said Collins also is a suspect in other similar incidents in the two counties and Illinois.

Florissant detectives arrested Collins on Wednesday in the 200 block of Brighton Park Drive in St. Charles while conducting surveillance on a home where they believed he was staying, police said.

The string of incidents April 18 began shortly after midnight when St. Peters police answered an alarm at Harris Jewelers. Officers who responded found broken display cases and a broken window. The two other burglaries took place soon thereafter, police said.

Police said the suspects then went to a fourth jewelry store  Indigo Jewelers on Triad Center Drive  but that a police patrol car already was on the scene. The officer tried unsuccessfully to stop the suspects car and the chase began, police said.

Stolen items were found in the suspects car after the crash in North County, police said.

Collins was being held Thursday in the St. Louis County Jail. Bail was set at $75,000 on the St. Charles County charges and $20,000 on the St. Louis County charges.
ST. CLAIR COUNTY  An Illinois State Police investigator was injured in an on-duty crash when his car stopped for traffic Thursday on Interstate 64 near Greenmount Road exit and was struck from behind, officials said.

The trooper, 42, of Belleville, and the driver of the car that struck him, Kenneth Gay, 24, of Morrilton, Ark., were taken to a hospital in Belleville with non-life threatening injuries. The officer's name was not disclosed.

Police said the unmarked 2012 silver Chevrolet Malibu police car stopped on the highway about 5:19 p.m. because of traffic backed up from the exit. It was hit by Gay's red 2008 Hyundai.
A British newspaper that pledged to prove that print news can survive in the online age has announced it is shutting down, just weeks after it began publishing.

Britain's The New Day, launched Feb. 29 as the nation's first national daily newspaper in 30 years, announced Thursday that its last issue will be May 6.

The Trinity Mirror Group, which owns the paper, said its performance had been "disappointing" and that circulation in its ten weeks on the newsstands had failed to meet expectations.
Jatropha curcas (physic nut) is a promising crop in tropical countries because its seeds have a high oil content that can be easily transformed into biodiesel. The oil can also serve to obtain other bioproducts. However, several obstacles hinder the extensive application of the crop, for example, the relative low prices of petroleum and oil, the toxicity of the seeds, low crop yields and rusticity of the plant. We propose a mo...
Salten region in Nordland, northern Norway. Source: Marc Girard, Universite de Montreal



Fragmented and hostile dialogues

The agricultural sector is highly politicized in Norway and actors within the pastoral sectors interact across governmental departments regarding carnivore management. Although all political parties in the Norwegian parliament settled on the Large Carnivore Agreement in 2011, it falls short in realistically reconciling different interests, so the conflict remains.

The study shows that opposing interests have not been taken sufficiently into account when implementing the agreement. On a local level, dialogue is fragmented and even occasionally hostile. Conservationists do not attend regional planning meetings and organizing committees are dominated by farmers representatives.

There are clear weaknesses in current governance instruments on how to manage the relation between grazing of sheep and reindeers and the movement of carnivores such as wolves and bears, Galafassi says.

Co-author Camilla Risvoll, researcher at Nordland Research Institute, adds that The government attempted to reconcile the interests of conservation and local users by decentralizing management authority of this complex dilemma to the regional level. However, this process has proved very challenging because management instruments on a regional level are not able to make the parties go beyond their conflicting views.

More often than not, actor groups feel they need to defend and protect their practices rather than being able to spend the time working towards solutions.

Co-author Gunn Elin Fedreheim from the Arctic University of Norway, points out that essentially the Large Carnivore Agreement brings to the surface but does not solve the difficulty of keeping grazing sheep and reindeers in safe distance from each other. For instance, zoning maps for grazing do not take into account the movements of carnivore populations and compensation schemes do nothing to prevent the increasing predation on domestic animals.

This neglect reveals a clear mismatch between governance and ecosystem dynamics, she explains.

Talk about trade-offs, not win-wins

In the search for more integrative solutions, the authors suggest a more open acknowledgement of the trade-offs. This means revealing the inherent trade-offs with the hope that it can create more innovative encounters and solutions both in the governance sphere and in local communities practices.

The Large Carnivore Agreement assumes both protection of carnivores and sustainable local livelihoods can be pursued. However, this renders local communities vulnerable and neither cultural nor biological diversity can prosper under the current governance regime, the authors argue.

Making trade-offs explicit and salient to policymakers is essential for stimulating more innovative solutions and broader participation, they conclude.

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Africa is the worlds most rapidly urbanizing continent. Between 2000 and 2030 the urban population will more than double and the urban area will increase by more than 700 percent.

Swedbio, a knowledge interface at the Stockholm Resilience Centre which contributes to poverty alleviation, equity and sustainable livelihoods has helped ICLEIs Cities Biodiversity Center and Aurecon to develope a new app to build resilience of the urban poor in sub-Saharan cities in Africa.

60 nature-based solutions to improve peoples lives

The app, called THRIVE, is a step-by-step guide on how to implement 60 nature-based solutions for the protection and sustainable use of natural assets in cities across sub-Saharan Africa that can help improve peoples lives. The app houses solutions that can be achieved by an individual or community, at the local scale.

The guidelines are divided into six themes:

restoring soil

saving water

rehabilitating green spaces

producing food gardens

sustainable cooking and energy

preventing disease and disaster

The content is based on a needs assessment and input from over 20 specialists involved in the creation of Malawis Integrated Catchment Management Guidelines. These were created in consultation with many different stakeholders within the Malawi Government, Shire River Basin Management Program and stakeholders throughout Malawi.

Although the guidelines were created for the Malawian context, the final application content was compiled and adapted using numerous sources, including local input from each city participating in the Urban Natural Assets for Africa project.

User-friendly app for Androids

THRIVE was created for Android users  results from a survey of users showed that it was the most popular mobile operating system amongst the UNA Africa project participants. It was user tested with a core user-group of 30 participants from the UNA cities in order to ensure that it is a useful and user-friendly tool.

The application can be downloaded for free via Google Play, and is accompanied by a dedicated website and introductory animated video.

The app was funded by Sida through SwedBio and produced by Learnways.
LONDON MARKET CLOSE: Stocks climb as Sunak wins keys to Number 10

Monday, October 24, 2022 - 17:23

Stocks took confidence from Rishi Sunak being named the new UK prime minister on Monday, amid hope that a period of haphazard and market-spooking policymaking has ended.

"Markets have signalled Rishi Sunak will be given time to deliver, with gilt yields falling and the British economy getting a tentative second chance to get back on track. But there's no getting away from the scale of the challenge that faces the new prime minister. The last few weeks have left the UK economy badly bruised, and the volatility of the pound today lays bare the huge task ahead," said AJ Bell analyst Danni Hewson.

The FTSE 100 index closed up 44.26 points, or 0.6% at 7,013.99 on Monday. The FTSE 250 ended up 131.00 points, or 0.8%, at 17,337.55. The AIM All-Share closed up 2.14 points, or 0.3%, at 787.54.

The Cboe UK 100 ended up 0.8% at 701.69, the Cboe UK 250 closed up 0.8% at 14,815.98, and the Cboe Small Companies ended up 0.8% at 12,233.81.

Sunak replaces former leadership rival Truss, who announced her resignation on Thursday last week.

Market and political turmoil overshadowed Truss's stint as PM. The pound and bond markets were pummelled last month after a poorly received mini-budget.

On Monday, however, the pound spent much of the day above the $1.13 mark, before fading back in afternoon dealings.

The pound was quoted at $1.1295 at the London equities close Monday, up from $1.1203 at the close on Friday.

Elsewhere, new figures did little to calm fears of a recession.

A survey found UK private sector output has fallen for the third straight month, fuelling fear that the country is headed for a "deep" recession.

The S&P Global/CIPS flash UK purchasing managers' index composite output measure fell to a 21-month low of 47.2 points in October, from 49.1 in September.

In the FTSE 100, Pearson ended the best blue-chip performer, ending 7.3% higher on Monday.

The London-based education publisher said its trading in the nine months to September 30 was "strong", with underlying sales up 7% year-on-year.

Looking ahead, Pearson said it is on track to deliver at least 100 million of cost efficiencies next year, and it remains on track to deliver group sales and adjusted operating profit in line with consensus expectations for 2022.

Pearson Chief Executive Officer Andy Bird said: "We believe Pearson is well positioned for the future, and we are confident of being able to navigate the challenging macroeconomic environment."

Auto Trader rose 2.0% after selling its Webzone subsidiary, which operates under the Carzone brand in the Republic of Ireland, for 30 million.

Auto Trader noted that Carzone is the second-largest automotive marketplace for Irish retailers and consumers.

The Dublin-based operation brought in revenue of 4.9 million in the year ended March 31 and operating profit of 1.3 million.

In the FTSE 250, Bank of Georgia closed up 4.0% as Chair & Chief Executive Officer Irakli Gilauri renewed his contract for two more years until the end of 2025.

Senior Independent Director David Morrison said: "Irakli has led Georgia Capital since its demerger from BGEO [Group PLC] in 2018 and during this time he has developed the company into a unique institutional investment business in Georgia."

China-focused investment firms had a rough session on Monday, with traders fretting after Xi Jinping secured a rare third term as leader of ruling Communist party in China, signalling his grip on power has no end in sight.

Fidelity China Special Situations dropped 9.8%, JPMorgan China Growth & Income fell 9.9% and Baillie Gifford China Growth Trust declined8.6%.

Investors are fearful that Xi and his allies will continue with gruelling Covid lockdowns and other policies that have punished the world's second-largest economy.

Despite these fears, China's economy grew 3.9% year-on-year in the third quarter, according to official data released Monday, beating forecasts.

Beijing last week delayed the release of the third-quarter growth figures - along with a host of other economic indicators  as the country's leaders gathered in Beijing for the five-yearly Communist Party Congress.

China had been expected to announce some of its weakest quarterly growth figures since 2020, with its economy hobbled by Covid-19 restrictions and a real estate crisis.

Nonetheless, many economists continue to think China will struggle to attain its 2022 growth target of around 5.5%, and the International Monetary Fund has lowered its GDP growth forecast to 3.2% for 2022 and 4.4% for next year.

In European equities on Monday, the CAC 40 in Paris and the DAX 40 in Frankfurt both closed up 1.6%.

The euro stood at $0.9877 at the European equities close Monday, up against $0.9802 at the same time on Friday.

Private sector output in the eurozone remained in sharp decline in October, flash data showed Monday, as energy intensive sectors are hit by higher bills.

The S&P Global flash eurozone composite purchasing managers' index fell to 47.1 points in October from 48.8 points in September.

Against the yen, the dollar was trading at JP148.82 late Monday, higher compared to JP148.03 late Friday.

Japan's services and manufacturing sectors are expected to improve in October, flash data showed, as activity and order book levels were boosted by the recent easing in international border restrictions and the launching of the Nationwide Travel Discount Programme.

The au Jibun Bank flash Japan services business activity index improved to 53.0 in October from 52.2 in September, indicating a second successive month of expansion and the strongest performance in four months.

Stocks in New York were in the green at the London equities close, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average up 1.2%, the S&P 500 index up 1.0%, and the Nasdaq Composite up 0.4%.

Inflation concerns and challenging demand conditions weighed on the US private sector in October, the latest flash data from S&P Global showed on Monday.

The headline flash US PMI composite output index registered 47.3 in October, down from 49.5 in September. Consensus, as cited by FXStreet, had expected a reading of 49.1.

Brent oil was quoted at $90.88 a barrel at the London equities close Monday, down from $92.84 late Friday.

Gold was quoted at $1,648.76 an ounce at the London equities close Monday, higher against $1,643.70 at the close on Friday.

In Tuesday's UK corporate calendar, HSBC will publish its third-quarter results and Whitbread will post its half-year results.

In the economic calendar, there is a US consumer confidence reading at 1400 BST after Bank of England Chief Economist Huw Pill speaks at 0900 BST.

Copyright 2022 Alliance News Limited. All Rights Reserved.
President Obama signed the so-called Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act into law on June 22, placing tobacco under the jurisdiction of the FDA. While the bill, passed by the House and Senate last week, is primarily directed at cigarettes, it could have significant ramifications for cigars and other tobacco products.

Specifically, it includes restrictions on tobacco advertising (mandating all cigarette ads be black and white text only and eliminating tobacco sponsorships of sporting events); bars flavored cigarettes (including clove, spice, and candy flavors but not menthol); requires larger warning labels on packaging; prohibits describing cigarettes as light, mild, or low tar; mandates ingredient disclosure; and gives the FDA the sole authority to approve all new tobacco products.

Not once does the new law specifically refer to premium or handmade large cigars, but that doesnt mean it isnt a major threat to cigar manufacturers and the choices available to cigar smokers. Nearly every provision in the act would be a significant blow if applied to cigars.

So it is clear that the precedent has been set for the regulations to be applied to cigars as well, possibly even without an act of congress. Recently, when I spoke to a number of cigar makers at Famous Smoke Shops Cigar Expo, they expressed growing concerns over the prospect of FDA regulation of tobacco.

Charlie Torano called FDA regulation of cigars a grave threat and predicted that politicians could move to regulate cigars sooner than three years from now. He was particularly worried about the marketing restrictions, and noted that holding promotional events where they give out free samples would almost surely be prohibited. He also observed that no one in the industry was prepared for ingredient disclosure, which would cost huge sums in testing and documentation.

Nick Perdomo also talked pasionatly about the threat from the bureaucracy on his business. The combination of FDA regulation, SCHIP tobacco taxes, and smoking bans led him to call the government his biggest competitor.

But perhaps the most striking comment on the FDA bill came from someone all too familiar with oppressive government. Jaime Garcia, son of famed cigarmaker Don Pepin Garcia and a top maker in his own right, told me through a translator that coming from Cuba, he couldnt believe that in America so much power would be given to the government to control his business.

Patrick S



photo credit: Art of Obama


As we have since July 2006, each Friday well post a mixed bag of quick cigar news and other items of interest. Below is our latest Friday Sampler.

1) Yesterday the FDA issued a 499-page final rule subjecting cigars to FDA regulation. The regulation will officially be published on May 10 and will take legal effect on August 8 with various requirements being phased in thereafter. Notably, the FDA rejected an option that would have created an exemption for premium handmade cigars that met certain criteria, which the handmade cigar industry had made the focus of lobbying efforts. Because the regulation doesnt alter the 2007 grandfather date (cigars introduced after that date will have to go through the FDA approval process), the regulation means that, should Cuban cigars ever become legal, they would not be exempt from the approval process. FDA officials admit that process could cost hundreds of thousands of dollars per each size of each blend.

2) Cigar Rights of America blasted he rule in a press release: Unfortunately, the FDA and the Obama Administration have rejected and cast aside any rationally objective approach to developing this regulation. When Congress gave FDA the authority to regulate tobacco products in 2009, they did so specifically with the stipulation that in order to subject a product to regulation FDA must demonstrate that the specific product(s) possess issues of underage consumption and health and mortality impact through addiction, both which have never been associated with premium cigars As a result of todays announcement by FDA, the board of Cigar Rights of America will be convening an emergency meeting to evaluate all legal and legislative options moving forward.

3) The International Premium Cigar and Pipe Retailers Association (IPCPR) also slammed the devastating impact of the rule in a statement: The FDAs regulation of premium cigars, if left unchecked, would have a devastating impact on retailers and manufacturers alike. Consumers will have less choice. Youth access is simply not an issue in the premium cigar space where 35,000 Americans earn their living along with over 300,000 employees in the Caribbean Basin.

4) From the Archives: Since 2007, StogieGuys.com has covered the issue of FDA regulation of cigars. In 2009, after the FDA tobacco regulation bill was signed into law, we reported on the potential impact, noting it was a major threat to cigar manufacturers and the choices available to cigar smokers. Later, in the same article, we reported on the reaction from various cigar makers. One comment was particularly striking: Jaime Garcia, son of famed cigar-maker Don Jose Pepin Garcia, and a top maker in his own right, told me through a translator that coming from Cuba, he couldnt believe that in America so much power would be given to the government to control his business.

5) Deal of the Week: If youre not already a member, the events of yesterday should motivate you to join Cigar Rights of America. Joining not only supports professional lobbyists who fight for cigar freedom, but also affords discounts at cigar shops, free cigars, and more. One great way to join is by purchasing a Cigar Rights of America sampler. Each sampler includes CRA membership, plus ten exclusive cigars. Buy one at your CRA-supporting local cigar retailer or purchase one online here.

The Stogie Guys

photo credit: CRA
Mark Wood at the North Pole

A FEARLESS explorer from Ettington has returned to the UK after completing an epic 120-mile trek to the North Pole. Mark Wood, 50, who headed up the three-man team that reached the pole last week, received praise from the great explorer Sir Ranulph Fiennes on the achievement. Mark, accompanied by soldiers Paul Vicary and Mark Langridge, completed the journey in 13 days.In a message to the Race Against Time Team, Sir Ranulph said: Very well done to Mark and all the team on a great achievement under extremely difficult conditions, very best wishes, Ran Fiennes.

The expedition, sponsored by Jupiter Marketing, was aimed at exposing the true extent of climate change in the Arctic Ocean, with the team reporting warmer than usual Arctic conditions.

Mark said: As a team we had to overcome extreme and diverse conditions to reach the North Pole. But, thanks to the vision, and the support, of Jupiter Marketing, we are proud to have achieved our mission statement to film through explorers eyes this remarkable, but hostile area of our planet.

It was an epic journey through natures freezer, which took us through fields of ice boulders, across open stretches of fatally cold sea, over giant ice cliffs and finally, to the North Pole. We are the only British team to attempt, and to reach, the North Pole this year. Both the footage we took of our 13 days and nights on ice, and the ice samples we brought back, will help scientists to analyse and gather important data about the state of the ice melt and conditions at the North Pole.

During the expedition the Race Against Time Team experienced just how fragile the Arctic Ocean is becoming, narrowly avoiding falling into the freezing cold water as sections of ice broke away.

They also documented the differences in the ice conditions explorers normally expect to see in Antarctica, with a series of dramatic photographs. Among the other challenges faced by the team were ice boulder fields, ice rubble, and an amphitheatre of ice walls.

Expedition sponsor, Mark Tweddle, said: It was abundantly clear from conversations we had that the conditions the team was facing were dangerous, and far different to what would be expected. The video footage and pictures the team is now starting to reveal has indicated the dramatic conditions being caused by our planet continuing to change at what is an alarming rate.

Im extremely proud to have been able to make this expedition a reality, and my hope is that it will encourage a different approach to tackling climate change going forward.
U.S. President Barack Obama delivers a statement on the economy at the press briefing room at the White House in Washington, U.S. May 6, 2016. REUTERS/Carlos Barria

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama said on Friday a long-delayed rule requiring the financial industry to identify the real owners of companies will help fight corruption and tax evasion and boost the economy.

His administration on Friday issued the Customer Due Diligence rule in the works since 2012 and proposed legislation meant to stop prevent criminals from using shell companies to evade taxes, launder money, and finance terror.

"These actions are going to make a difference," Obama told reporters. He said they would help the administration to do a better job of tracking financial flows and making sure companies are "paying the taxes they owe rather than using shell corporations and offshore accounts to avoid doing the things that ordinary Americans are doing every day."

Obama also called on Congress to pass legislation that requires all companies formed in the United States to report information to the financial crimes enforcement network at the Treasury Department.

"That's going to help law enforcement better investigate and prevent financial crimes," Obama told reporters.

Obama also urged Congress to raise the federal minimum wage, pass new trade agreements, and simplify the tax code.

"Only Congress can fully close the loopholes" that wealthy individuals or corporations can take advantage of, Obama said.

He singled out Senator Rand Paul, a Republican and libertarian, who in years past has single-handedly blocked tax treaties or treaty updates between the United States and Spain, Japan, Britain, and other countries. Paul has been "a little quirky on this issue," Obama said, and urged him "to stop blocking the implementation of tax treaties."

Paul's office did not immediately comment.

(Reporting by Timothy Gardner, Jeff Mason and Susan Heavey; Writing by Doina Chiacu; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)
WASHINGTON, May 5, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- TOMORROW, Friday, May 6 at 12:30PM ET Head of the U.S. Small Business Administration Maria Contreras-Sweet and United States Trade Representative Michael Froman will be joined by Former U.S. Congressman Jim Davis (FL-11), and David Peter Bello, Sr., founder and CEO of Endoscopy Replacement Parts, Inc., for an on-the-record press conference call to discuss the importance of the Trans-Pacific Partnership to Florida's economy, particularly small and medium-sized enterprises.

Endoscopy Replacement Parts, Inc. was recently named the "2016 National Exporter of the Year" by the U.S. Small Business Administration.

Trade is a substantial driver of Florida's economy. Goods exported by Florida support more than 270,000 U.S. jobs. This number demonstrates the importance of the TPP to communities across the country, an agreement that reflects America's values and gives our workers a fair shot at the success they deserve.

WHO: Small Business Administrator Maria Contreras-Sweet United States Trade Representative Michael Froman Former U.S. Congressman Jim Davis (FL-11) David Peter Bello, Sr., Endoscopy Replacement Parts, Inc. founder and CEO, based in Newberry, FL WHAT: On-the-record press conference call on the benefits of the Trans-Pacific Partnership in Florida WHEN: Friday, May 6, at 12:30PM ET RSVP: Members of the media who wish to join this call should email: Sophia Kim ([email protected]) or Andrew Bates ([email protected]).

Release Date: May 5, 2016 Contact: Sophia Kim (202) 205-6987 Advisory Number: MA16-30 Internet Address: www.sba.gov Follow us on Twitter, Facebook & Blogs

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SOURCE U.S. Small Business Administration
DALLAS, May 6, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Alon USA Energy, Inc. (NYSE: ALJ) today announced that its management will be participating in three investor conferences during the month of May to discuss both Alon USA Energy and Alon USA Partners, LP (NYSE: ALDW).

On May 11, 2016, Paul Eisman, President and Chief Executive Officer, will be participating in a roundtable discussion to be held at 2:00 p.m. Eastern Time at the Citi 2016 Global Energy & Utilities Conference being held in Boston. He will also be conducting one-on-one meetings at the conference.

On May 12, 2016, Mr. Eisman will be participating in one-on-one meetings with investors at the Morgan Stanley Refining Corporate Access Day being held in New York City.

On May 17, 2016, Shai Even, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, will be participating in one-on-one-meetings with investors at the Goldman Sachs First Annual Leveraged Finance Conference being held in Rancho Palos Verdes, California.

The related meeting materials will be available beginning the morning of May 11, 2016 on the Investor Relations section of the Alon USA Energy website at http://ir.alonusa.com/ as well as the News & Events section of the Alon USA Partners website at www.alonpartners.com.

Alon USA Energy, Inc., headquartered in Dallas, Texas, is an independent refiner and marketer of petroleum products, operating primarily in the South Central, Southwestern and Western regions of the United States. Alon owns 100% of the general partner and 81.6% of the limited partner interests in Alon USA Partners, LP, which owns a crude oil refinery in Big Spring, Texas, with a crude oil throughput capacity of 73,000 barrels per day and an integrated wholesale marketing business. In addition, Alon directly owns a crude oil refinery in Krotz Springs, Louisiana, with a crude oil throughput capacity of 74,000 barrels per day. Alon also owns crude oil refineries in California, which have not processed crude oil since 2012. Alon is a leading marketer of asphalt, which it distributes primarily through asphalt terminals located predominately in the Southwestern and Western United States. Alon is the largest 7-Eleven licensee in the United States and operates approximately 300 convenience stores which also market motor fuels in Central and West Texas and New Mexico.

Contacts: Stacey Morris Investor Relations Manager Alon USA Energy, Inc. 972-367-3808 Investors: Jack Lascar Dennard - Lascar Associates, LLC 713-529-6600 Media: Blake Lewis Lewis Public Relations 214-635-3020

To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/alon-usa-to-participate-in-three-industry-conferences-in-may-2016-300264373.html

SOURCE Alon USA Energy, Inc.
Firm Sponsors Two Concerts Uniting Next-Generation Poverty Fighters

Effort Part of a Larger Commitment by BlackRock to Tackle Pressing Social and Environmental Challenges

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- BlackRock (NYSE: BLK) has partnered with Robin Hood, New York Citys largest poverty-fighting organization, to host two next-generation concerts to benefit the 1.8 million New Yorkers living in poverty.

On Monday, May 9th, as a part of Robin Hoods Night for NYC, the two BlackRock-hosted concerts will take place in conjunction with Robin Hoods annual benefit at the Javits Center and Robin Hood Night at Yankee Stadium. The concerts will feature Chance the Rapper at New Yorks Terminal 5, and Citizen Cope at New Yorks Irving Plaza. The Night for NYC will mobilize tens of thousands of caring New Yorkers to raise money for Robin Hoods poverty-fighting programs.

At BlackRock, we are focused on building better financial futures for our clients and communities  not only through our world-class investment and risk management capabilities, but also by partnering with innovative organizations that solve pressing social and environmental challenges, states Deborah Winshel, Managing Director and Head of Global Corporate Philanthropy at BlackRock. We are proud to partner with Robin Hoods Night for NYC to fund initiatives that deliver long-term results for our neighbors in need.

BlackRock Philanthropys mission is to build access to better futures for underserved individuals and communities. BlackRock Philanthropy seeks to provide both financial support and in-kind resources to innovative partners, support organizations working on groundbreaking solutions for todays most pressing social challenges, uncover new opportunities through thought leadership that are built on the best of the firm, and scale impact by meaningfully engaging employees.

About BlackRock

BlackRock is a global leader in investment management, risk management and advisory services for institutional and retail clients. At March 31, 2016, BlackRocks AUM was $4.737 trillion. BlackRock helps clients around the world meet their goals and overcome challenges with a range of products that include separate accounts, mutual funds, iShares (exchange-traded funds), and other pooled investment vehicles. BlackRock also offers risk management, advisory and enterprise investment system services to a broad base of institutional investors through BlackRock Solutions. As of March 31, 2016, the firm had approximately 13,000 employees in more than 30 countries and a major presence in global markets, including North and South America, Europe, Asia, Australia and the Middle East and Africa. For additional information, please visit the Companys website at www.blackrock.com | Twitter: @blackrock_news | Blog: www.blackrockblog.com | LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/blackrock

GMC-0165

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160506005510/en/

BlackRock

Theresa McCartney, 646-310-1653

[email protected]

Source: BlackRock
PALM SPRINGS, Calif., May 6, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Following on the heels of extensive PACE financing adoption throughout the State of California, the City of Palm Springs is the latest community to offer Renew Financial's CaliforniaFIRST program. CaliforniaFIRST provides cost-saving financing to thousands of eligible property owners for environmentally friendly home energy upgrades that are then repaid on property taxes.

The recent vote by the City Council offers residential and commercial property owners the chance to take advantage of important financing options for renewable energy and energy efficiency upgrades, as well as water efficiency measures, and electric vehicle (EV) charging infrastructure. PACE (Property Assessed Clean Energy) financing, which has been adopted by more than 200 cities and counties across the state, makes energy and water efficiency projects more accessible for California homeowners by providing project financing that is then paid back as a line item on their annual property tax bill. Now property owners throughout the Palm Springs area can immediately take advantage of it.

CaliforniaFIRST's PACE financing program allows homeowners to choose a participating contractor in their area and install a variety of custom-tailored clean energy, water efficiency and EV charging projects.

"Palm Springs homeowners know better than most the importance of having an energy efficient home and now they have an additional convenient PACE financing option to make crucial home upgrades that will help their homes stay cooler in our extreme temperatures and take advantage of the solar potential," said Geoff Kors, Council member for Palm Springs. "Our many commercial properties and multi-family residential properties will also be able to take advantage of this great program. The City of Palm Springs is committed to a sustainable community and we are delighted this new program will now be available to help residents and businesses finance solar energy while helping the environment."

About CaliforniaFIRSTThe CaliforniaFIRST Program is a Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) financing program for residential and commercial properties. Administered by Renew Financial, a national clean energy finance company, CaliforniaFIRST allows property owners to finance the installation of energy and water improvements on homes or businesses through the issuance of a municipal bond, which can then be paid back as a line item on their property tax bill. CaliforniaFIRST financing doesn't rely on a credit score and does not require any money down, opening the program to a wide range of Californians.

For more information: www.californiafirst.org. For the latest news from CaliforniaFIRST: https://news.californiafirst.org/. To hear directly from CaliforniaFIRST customers: https://news.californiafirst.org/category/video/.

About Renew FinancialRenew Financial is one of the nation's leading clean energy financing companies. Founded in 2008 by Cisco DeVries, who created the concept of the Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) financing model, Renew Financial now provides multiple financing products across the U.S. PACE  which was endorsed by President Obama and named by Scientific American as one of the top 20 ideas that can change the world  enables property owners to finance the entire cost of energy and water efficiency and renewable energy upgrades to their homes and businesses, and then repay those costs on their property tax bill. Renew Financial's other financing products include residential unsecured loans (ReHome), utility on-bill financing, and others.

Additional information may be found at renewfinancial.com |@RenewFinancial |LinkedIn |Facebook |Blog

To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/californiafirst-launches-clean-energy-financing-program-for-property-owners-in-palm-springs-300264164.html

SOURCE Renew Financial
SAN FRANCISCO, May 6, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- DWA, an award-winning independent media agency, celebrates its twenty-year anniversary today. Since its founding on May 6, 1996, DWA has grown into one of the largest independent global media agencies, has won industry recognition as a leader in digital media for technology companies, and is poised to lead digital marketing innovations over the next decade.

Over the years, DWA has expanded its service offerings organically, evolving from standard media and earning a leadership reputation among clients and the industry for disciplines such as search and social marketing. The agency currently maintains a premier list of some of the largest and most progressive technology clients in the world, including CSC, SolarWinds, RedHat, Box, Sunpower, and Forcepoint.

"One constant throughout DWA's 20 year history is our focus on innovation and delivering value to our clients," said David Wood, CEO of DWA. "Whether it's creating centers of excellence around emerging media channels or streamlining processes so our people can focus on more strategic services for our clients, delivering value is why we exist."

Some of the agency's milestones over the years include:

Established digital media capabilities and best practices in the early days of the internet in 1999

Expanded globally from London base in 2005, first to Australia and Asia then to North America

Expanded into the renewable and health technology in 2014

Launched the DWA technology ecosystem to drive programmatic digital offerings for clients in 2015

Established the first dedicated account based marketing practice and certification in 2016

As the agency celebrates this milestone, it continues to strive to be at the forefront of the industry. This year, DWA is launching a new digital ecosystem, DWA Tech Stack, which merges our advertising technology infrastructure with our lead management system to better handle our clients' growing data and cross channel requirements. This initiative will enable clients to take advantage of the newest digital strategies by leveraging the data that surrounds advertising and marketing, while ensuring their investments generate a compounding positive value.

"We see technology buyers' shifting media consumption patterns as huge opportunities for marketers to build brand equity and increase market share," added Bob Ray, President of DWA, Americas. "We are honored to work with some of the smartest and most innovative clients and partners in the industry and to create integrated programs that take advantage of the opportunities in the evolving digital landscape."

About DWADWA is a global media and marketing agency for technology companies. With its feet in media and its head in data and analytics, DWA has a fascination with the art and science of engaging people. That's why you'll find us at the intersection where media, technology and strategic marketing meet. Operating from eight offices around the globe covering North America, EMEA and Asia Pacific, DWA offers a range of programs such as programmatic media, marketing automation, account-based marketing and content marketing consulting - all for hundreds of the world's best technology companies. For more about DWA, visit www.dwamedia.com.

Media Contact:Caitlin MileyDWA Media[email protected]415.229.0921

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SOURCE DWA
VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA -- (Marketwired) -- 05/05/16 -- Teck Resources Limited (TSX: TCK.A and TCK.B, NYSE: TCK) ("Teck") announced today that it will donate $75,000 to the Canadian Red Cross in support of emergency efforts concerning the wildfires in Northeastern Alberta. A further $25,000 will go to match donations made by Teck employees.

"Our thoughts are with all those impacted by the devastating wildfires in the Fort McMurray area," said Don Lindsay, President and CEO. "Teck will continue to work with our partners in the region to identify opportunities where we can offer support during this incredibly difficult time."

Teck's donation to the Canadian Red Cross will be made through the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP) Energy Together: Fort McMurray Wildfire Relief initiative. Teck is a member of CAPP.

Go to www.redcross.ca for information on how to support the Canadian Red Cross.

About Teck

Teck is a diversified resource company committed to responsible mining and mineral development with major business units focused on copper, steelmaking coal, zinc and energy. Headquartered in Vancouver, Canada, its shares are listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the symbols TCK.A and TCK.B and the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol TCK. Learn more about Teck at www.teck.com or follow @TeckResources.

Teck's activities in Alberta include operating the Cardinal River mine in west-central Alberta as well as being a partner in the Fort Hills oil sands project and owner of the Frontier oil sands project in northeast Alberta.

Contacts: Media Contact: Chris Stannell Senior Communications Specialist 604.699.4368 [email protected] Investor Contact: Greg Waller Vice President, Investor Relations & Strategic Analysis 604.699.4014 [email protected]

Source: Teck Resources Limited
By Marc Jones

LONDON (Reuters) - The early signs coming from Ukraine's new government are "very encouraging" one of the International Monetary Fund's top officials said on Friday.

Mahmood Pradhan, deputy head of the IMF's European department delivered the Fund's first public thumbs up to the new-look set up in Kiev following the departure of a number of key Western-backed reformers last month.

"We think the signs of the new government's willingness to adhere to the program, to stay with the program and their own adjustment efforts are very encouraging," Pradhan told a news conference.

"We hope the program will be on track and most importantly, the adjustment policies already implemented which are paying dividends and are working, will continue."

The IMF is due in Ukraine next week to formally review whether progress has been made with its $17.5 billion aid-for-reforms program.

Pradhan said it was too early to say how long the process would take.

(Reporting by Marc Jones; Editing by Sandra Maler)
Entrepeneurs Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss arrive at the Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute Gala (Met Gala) to celebrate the opening of "Manus x Machina: Fashion in an Age of Technology" in the Manhattan borough of New York, May 2, 2016. REUTERS/

By Gertrude Chavez-Dreyfuss

NEW YORK (Reuters) - New York state has approved the application of Gemini Trust Company, founded by investors Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, to trade digital currency ether on its bitcoin exchange, Governor Andrew Cuomo announced on Thursday.

Ether, an alternative currency that differs from bitcoin, is a token or digital asset of the Ethereum platform, a blockchain, or public ledger of all ether transactions. The platform uses ether to execute peer-to-peer contracts automatically without the need for intermediaries. The currency is often used by software developers.

"With robust regulatory oversight, we are maintaining our status at the forefront of this technological revolution and ensuring that users have a safe and secure experience," Cuomo said in a statement.

The approval by the New York State Department of Financial Services marks the state's first consent for a digital currency-related service beyond bitcoin.

Trading on ether will begin on Monday, May 9, said Cameron Winklevoss, Gemini's co-founder and president, in an interview with Reuters. Customers will be able to store their ether from Thursday until it starts trading on the exchange on Monday.

Winklevoss also said the brothers' investment firm Winklevoss Capital is a "significant" holder of ether.

"We started buying ether at the beginning of the year," Winklevoss said. "Ethereum Foundation has a set number of ether that they have set aside over a period of time..(and) the proceeds from that go to the funding of the foundation and the developers to further the protocol."

The Winklevoss twins chose ether to trade on their exchange because of its "unique capabilities" that are different from bitcoin.

"There is a place for ether on our platform. It does what bitcoin doesn't do," Winklevoss said. "So that is the sort of criteria: that it is different enough from bitcoin and the proposition is great enough that this makes sense for us to include it in our platform."

According to coinmarketcap.com, ether is trading at $9.97 on late Thursday, with a market capitalization of about $795 million, the second largest behind bitcoin. Bitcoin currently has a market cap of $6.9 billion. Daily volume for ether is around $20 million.

Ether trades on other exchanges as well, but Winklevoss said those exchanges are unregulated or unlicensed.

"It's pretty clear that in the U.S. if you're an exchange, you are required at the minimum a money transmission license in each state," Winklevoss said. "Anybody who's operating an ether exchange doesn't have a license and is on borrowed time."

Demand for ether has steadily increased since its launch last year.

"Most of the people who work on ether right now are (software) developers developing applications for smart contracts on Ethereum and you need ether to do that," Winklevoss said.

Aside from developers, British pop artist Imogen Heap has put her music on the Ethereum platform. "She (Heap) created smart contracts on Ethereum whereby if you send enough ether to the address on the contracts, you can download her songs," Winklevoss said.

(Reporting by Gertrude Chavez-Dreyfuss; Editing by David Gregorio and Andrew Hay)
CAIRO (Reuters) - Seven people were killed and more than 15 wounded by a bomb on Friday in the Yemeni city Marib, east of the capital Sanaa, police told Reuters.

It was not clear who planted the device which went off around midday in the heart of a crowded market where the narcotic leaf qat is sold, they said.

Marib has most of Yemen's oil and gas fields and has long been a battleground between factions including local tribesmen, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) insurgents and other Islamists, and government forces.

On April 24 an air strike from a drone killed two men south of Marib city suspected of belonging to al Qaeda, said local residents.

Saudi Arabia and its Gulf Arab allies have intervened in Yemen's civil war since March last year, fighting in support of Yemen's government after it was forced into exile by the Iran-allied Houthi group.

Renewed fighting across Yemen is threatening to wreck a truce that had largely held since April 10, buttressing a round of U.N.-backed peace talks in Kuwait aimed at ending the conflict.

The war has killed more than 6,200 people, displaced more than 2.5 million and caused a humanitarian catastrophe in one of the world's poorest countries.

(Reporting by Mohammed Ghobari; Writing by Tom Finn; Editing by Andrew Roche)
*** Air Products (NYSE: APD) announced that it has signed a definitive agreement today to sell the Performance Materials Division (PMD) of its Materials Technologies segment to Evonik Industries AG (EVK.DE), a world leader in specialty chemicals and materials, for $3.8 billion in cash.

The sale of PMD is expected to close before the end of 2016, and is subject to regulatory approvals and customary closing conditions. Under the terms of the agreement, operational facilities, supplier contracts, labs, contracts, customers, and employees and certain legal entities associated with PMD would transfer to Evonik. Evonik intends to continue to run PMD from Allentown, Pennsylvania.

Air Products also intends to spin-off its Electronic Materials Division (EMD) to shareholders as a separate public company, called Versum Materials. Air Products is on track to separate EMD by the end of September 2016 and will continue to evaluate whether debt and equity market conditions are favorable for a tax-free spin-off.

Air Products has been consistently executing against its strategic, Five-Point Plan, which includes focusing on industrial gases and taking actions on non-core businesses. In September 2015, the Company announced plans to separate Materials Technologies, which includes PMD and EMD.

"The sale of PMD is consistent with the long-term strategy for Air Products that we announced in September 2014," said Air Products' Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer, Seifi Ghasemi. "I am very pleased that PMD has a great future ahead of it as a core business of a company which is even larger than Air Products.

"As for the balance of our Materials Technologies segment, I am also very excited about the future of EMD, which we currently intend to spin-off as a new, world-class public company named Versum Materials. Guillermo Novo will be the CEO of the new company, and I will be non-executive chairman of Versum Materials while maintaining my current roles at Air Products.

"As a result of these moves, Air Products will be in an even stronger position to take advantage of the exciting investment opportunities to grow our core Industrial Gases business," Ghasemi said.

*** In the company's single, largest acquisition to date since its listing on the NYSE, CatchMark Timber Trust, Inc. (NYSE: CTT) announced today an agreement to acquire 51,700 acres of prime timberlands in South Carolina for $101.8 million, excluding closing costs, from funds managed by Forest Investment Associates. The acquisition of the Carolinas Midlands III timberlands will expand significantly CatchMark's recent entry into North Carolina and South Carolina from 17,600 to 69,300 acres, and will increase the company's total acreage in the U.S. South to 480,400 acres. Closing of the transaction is expected by the end of the second quarter or early third quarter 2016.

Adding approximately 2.1 million tons1 to CatchMark's merchantable inventory, the acquisition comprises 70% pine acres and a 52%/48% pulpwood to sawtimber mix with significant diversity in topography, creating a range of seasonal harvest options to meet changing market demand. The transaction's productivity is expected to be 4.8 to 5.8 tons per acre per year, adding approximately 250,000 to 300,000 tons per year to CatchMark's harvest over the next decade.

The Carolinas Midlands III timberlands are proximate to and complementing other recent CatchMark purchases in South Carolina and North Carolina, providing synergies in pricing power, haul distances, management and land sales.

Jerry Barag, CatchMark's President and Chief Executive Officer, said: "This transaction, in one of the Southeast's strongest timber markets, fits our criteria for prime quality pine plantations and natural pine and hardwood stands with excellent soil quality and above average growing capacity for producing sustainable yields and durable earnings. Proximity to stable, well managed mills, including one of the most efficient and highest capacity mills in the U.S., as well as assumption of an existing long-term supply agreement provides clarity of future sales volumes. The acquisition expands what we believe is one of the industry's highest quality timberlands portfolio."

The transaction will be financed through CatchMark's multi-draw term loan.

1. Subject to standard final adjustment prior to closing.

To keep up on all the Mergers & Acquisitions data in real-time, go to our M&A Insider page.
Fonterra's move to effectively halve what is proposed for an expanded milk processing plant expansion at Studholme, in South Canterbury, has been called "common sense".

Fonterra has scrapped plans for one of two 30-tonne-an-hour milk dryers and one of two coal-fired boilers, and reduced the size of its proposed dry store from 66,750 to 34,000 square metres.

The move, confirmed to resource consent commissioners this week, followed a two week resource consent hearing in which opponents urged the cooperative not to expand its plant, near Waimate.

The hearings finished late last month. The commissioners sought further information from Fonterra.

The response to the commissioners was released publicly on Thursday. In it, counsel Ben Williams and Allan Brent outlined a plan to effectively halve the proposal and commit to replace up to 20 per cent of the coal used in the boilers with biomass.

They said the changes were pitched in response to the submissions heard at the hearing, but that they would effectively lead to a 50 per cent reduction in what the plant could produce.

READ MORE:

* Fonterra halves production potential at Studholme plant in response to opposition

* Fonterra expansion 'would damage region's rural character'

* Milk plant expansion could pollute waterways

* Smell to be tackled at expanded dairy factory

The changes would also limit the noise and air discharges likely from the expanded plant while retaining the capability and capacity of the proposed stormwater and biological waste water plant, they advised.

Contacted on Thursday, Fonterra environmental manager Ian Goldschmidt said the dairy cooperative remained obligated to process every drop of milk produced by its farmers in the area.

"This consent will ensure that, if supply increases in the coming years as we expect it to, we are ready and able to expand our processing capacity accordingly," Goldschmidt said.

Responding to the detail, Federated Farmers dairy chairman Andrew Hoggard said it was commonsense for Fonterra to pull it back and get through the process quicker, easier and with less hassle.

The plant needed capacity to process available milk but he said he did not personally think the plant needed two dryers.

"The 30 tonne milk dryer is like the Death Star of the milk powder industry, but they may decide they need star ships instead," Hoggard said.

Some opponents welcomed the cuts but said the expansion should not go ahead.

Coal Action Network Aotearoa member Jeanette Fitzsimons suggested the move to use up-to 20 per cent wood could not be described as the start of a transition from coal. It was "all smoke and mirrors".

"Fonterra is thumbing its nose at the climate change agreement," Fitzsimons said.

"A transition from coal does not start with a new coal boiler."

Ropere Consulting Limited director and economist Peter Fraser said Fonterra would have withdrawn the plan had it listened to submitters.

At the hearing, he said introducing the plant would need milk from up-to one million cows, which he said would be the equivalent of dropping a city the size of Jakarta on South Canterbury, but without the sewerage system.

On Thursday, he said the revised plan would require an additional 275,000 cows, which he said was equivalent to four million people.

Fraser said he believed Fonterra could use more wood: "If Fonterra had up to 20 per cent biomass capacity for two boilers, then they should have enough to do 40 per cent in one."

Fonterra did not directly respond to Fraser's claims as to the cows needed to supply the downsized, expanded plant.

However, Goldschmidt said the original plans assumed a ten year time frame to develop the biomass supply chain to fuel the boilers.

"We will continue to review supply of wood biomass over time should our application be granted."

Waimate District mayor Craig Rowley was pleased Fonterra had taken the objections into consideration. He did not think the reduction would have significant impact on employment.

"Realistically it would be an increase in employment anyway, obviously it would have been lovely to see the maximum amount of new jobs created," Rowley said.

"But I'd rather have a lower number of more stable jobs than a higher number of unstable ones. It's still a win-win for the Waimate community."

The Studholme expansion is one of two dairy plant developments in the district.

Work has started on a consumer packing and ultra-high temperature plant, dry store and load out facilities at Oceania Dairy's Glenavy plant after consent was granted last month.

The site will employ a maximum of 43 additional staff its area expands from 12,414 square metres to 30,375 square metres, a report to be considered by Waimate District councillors next week says.
The capital cities of New Zealand and Australia could soon have even stronger political, cultural and tourism ties.

Wellington city is edging closer to gaining a new sister.

Mayor Celia Wade-Brown has proposed Australia's capital city, Canberra, become our capital's next sister city.

Councillors will consider whether to formalise the relationship between the two capital cities a full council meeting on Wednesday.

GETTY IMAGES Visitors to Canberra can spend some time at Australia's Parliament House.

Australian Capital Territory chief minister Andrew Barr is ready to sign the deal when he visits Wellington in early July.

READ MORE:

Singapore Airlines to fly Wellington-Canberra-Singapore service from September

Wellington Phoenix to play Central Coast Mariners in Canberra next season

Justin Lester: New Singapore Airlines route 'opens Wellington's front door'

Wade-Brown, who visited Canberra in April, said the new deal would bring the cities closer together, forging stronger economic, environmental, political, cultural and tourism ties.

ROSS GIBLIN/FAIRFAX NZ Mayor Celia Wade-Brown says together the two trans-tasman capitals will be stronger, and have more impact on the global stage.

"Together the capital cities will be stronger and have more impact on the global stage," she said.

"Wellington and Canberra have a lot in common and this relationship will help equip both cities for long-term success."

Businesses that provided services to the government sector had an obvious opportunity to expand, and the recent agreement with Singapore Airlines to fly from Singapore to Wellington with a stop-over in Canberra, was an example of what had already been achieved.

From September there will be four flights a week between Wellington and Canberra, connecting to Singapore.

The sister city relationship would also provide an opportunity to promote tourism from Asia.

FIVE REASONS TO VISIT CANBERRA

1. The Australian War Memorial: It chronicles the involvement of Australia's troops in war, from the colonial period to the present. Ranked second on Trip Advisor's 2015 Top 10 Australian landmarks.

2. Parliament House: See Australian democracy in action, or simply check on who the latest prime minister is.

3. Art galleries: Dotted across the city, including the National Gallery of Australia and the National Portrait Gallery.

4. The Deep Space Communication Complex: The nearby Tidbinbilla valley is dominated by giant antenna dishes that communicate with spacecraft exploring planets hundreds of millions of kilometres away.

5. Foliage: Canberra is home to the National Arboretum, devoted to growing trees for conservation, scientific research and educational purposes. It features 48,000 trees.
From sticky, homemade cards to breakfast in bed and good old fashioned quality time, Wellington mums have some fond memories of Mother's Day. We asked three high-profile Wellingtonians what this Sunday means to them and how they plan to spend it.

Miranda Harcourt, actress, daughter of veteran actress Dame Kate Harcourt and mum to Sara Allen and Peter, Thomasin and Davida McKenzie

What will you be doing for Mother's Day?

SUPPLIED Deirdre Tarrant with three of her four grandchildren at Wellington's Botanic Gardens. Pictured with her, from left: Vita, Leo, and Eden.

The family had a summit conference in secret recently, led by our youngest Davida. I was banished to the bathroom ...

so I imagine there will be a plan for Sunday which will include classic breakfast in bed and some lovely presents and I have my fingers crossed that we will all get to go somewhere together for lunch. Of course we will take my mother Kate with us. Mother's Day will merge with Grandmother's Day.



What's the best thing any of your children have done for you for Mother's Day?



Our kids are aged from 9 to 30 and they are all very busy, so the best thing they could give me and the best I thing I could give them is time together. But when I remember all our years of parenthood it is the beautiful sticky, gluey, feathery, glittery cards they have made that are the best things.



We photograph them these days and keep them digitally, otherwise there would be drawers and drawers full.



What do you think Mother's Day should be about?



Time of course! Maybe this Mother's Day we will turn off all the devices and laptops etc and see what happens. At least for breakfast in bed time and lunch.



I love the thought that thousands of mothers all around New Zealand will all be in bed at the same time, eating cold toast and drinking instant coffee. Although I have noticed that The Unbakery cookbook is on the kitchen bench so my hopes are high.



What's the best piece of advice your mother ever gave you?



I can't remember any particular piece of advice that Kate has given me. She is not a very prescriptive kind of person. She sets a good example though just in the way she lives. She did recommend that I marry Stuart which has turned out to be a very good piece of advice.



What are the most important things you've tried to teach your own children?



I think the best advice we have given our children is how to pack the dishwasher properly!

Deirdre Tarrant, dance teacher and mum to Jonathon, Justin and Bret McKenzie

What will you be doing for Mother's Day?

I have students taking ballet exams next week so most of the day will be in the studio! But there is sure to be a family gathering somehow and it will be fitted around grandchildren and all the mothers in the wider family.



How many children do you have and where are they now?



Three boys  gloriously all living in New Zealand but that is a precarious situation and subject to travel by all of us, in all directions, so we do value the time we get. Two sons have their own families now so I am lucky enough to to spend time with four wonderful grandchildren all in Wellington!



What's the best thing any of your children have done for you for Mother's Day?



We are not big on the whole commercial thing but I can't remember a Mother's Day that has not been acknowledged so they are all special.







What's the best piece of advice your mother ever gave you?



My mother was a very strong and supportive influence and very much a girls can do anything believer. I was one of three daughters and then had three sons!



Maybe "it takes as much energy to be excellent as it does to be mediocre" and "things don't always work out well but they always work out". Both sayings I find myself using!



What are the most important things you've tried to teach your own children?



I don't think I ever had time to set out to actually teach them anything! I was supportive and the queen of timetables and prioritising to fit their lives and my life into the day. Maybe to be positive and set goals that you can really go after and do your best.



I guess I am one of those shoot-for-the-moon-and-you'll-get-there-but-if-not-you-are-still-a-star mums.

Celia Wade-Brown, Mayor of Wellington and mum to Jono and Ramsay Nicholson

What will you be doing for Mother's Day?

I've got the Europe Day flag raising in the morning with the European Union's charge d'affaires, then I'm popping into the Better Home and Living show at the Westpac Stadium, then I'll have brunch with my youngest son who has come up from Christchurch for the weekend.

I'll Skype my older boy in the US as well.

How many children do you have and where are they now?

Two boys - Jono Nicholson, the oldest, lives in the US and Ramsay Nicholson, who lives in Christchurch.

What's the best thing any of your children have done for you for Mother's Day?

When they were little they made me breakfast in bed then hopped under the duvet and ate most of the food!

What do you think Mother's Day should be about?

Spending some relaxing time together. It can be a great opportunity to share some family history and remember happy times.

What's the best piece of advice your mother ever gave you?

If my mother were alive today, she'd be 100.

We used to go on nature walks and identify the plants  that's definitely where my interest in botany came from.

The best advice she ever gave me was when she encouraged me to work in Africa when I was 18. She said: "you'll be fine, it's a great adventure". I went, I explored, and I've always been glad that she encouraged my gap year in Ghana.

TOP 5 LAST MINUTE GIFT IDEAS

- Slippers. Everybody loves slippers.

- Pick up Barry Crump's book Wild Pork and Watercress and a double movie-pass, so you can share an afternoon at the movie it inspired: Hunt for the Wilderpeople

- Pamper her with a Bendon voucher and a box of chocolates

- Nip to the pharmacy and print a recent photo of you both. This beats the Facebook share 10 fold.

- And if you're really stuck... grab a bottle of Moet (if it's good enough for Hilary...) and cook her dinner - she'll love you for it!
The house where a woman was killed on Friday evening.

A woman has been charged with murder after another woman was found dead at a Wellington home.

Police launched a homicide inquiry when the a 37-year-old was found dead in the suburb of Strathmore Park on Friday night.

Detective Senior Sergeant Warwick McKee said another person was arrested at the scene on Tannadyce St shortly after police were called at 7.28pm.

DAVID WHITE/FAIRFAX NZ Police have launched a homicide investigation after a 37-year-old woman was found dead in Strathmore. Another woman is helping police with their inquiries.

A woman appeared in the Wellington District Court on Saturday morning, but was not named.

A lone police car sat in the home's driveway as detectives and staff from Institute of Environmental Science and Research arrived around 9am.

Shortly after, an officer on the property brought out a roll of emergency tape to cordon off the surrounding houses.

Police said a person was charged last night, and will appear in court today.

DAVID WHITE/FAIRFAX NZ Police stand guard near the house in Strathmore where a woman was found dead on Friday evening.

The killing appeared to be an "isolated incident" and there was no further danger to the community, police said.

WOMAN DEAD WHEN POLICE ARRIVED

The house where the woman's body was found is a semi-detached property, perched at the top of a winding maze of houses dotted along a hilly access path off Tannadyce street.

Police said the 37-year-old female victim was dead when police and ambulance arrived at the scene about 7.30pm.

Up to 12 police cars were seen heading towards Tannadyce St, near the intersection with Beacon Hill Rd, and witnesses reported also seeing dog handlers at the scene.

Residents in the area said they had not heard or seen anything to suggest the drama unfolding in their neighbourhood.

Jenny Petrovich, who lives near the property, had heard nothing but was told by another neighbour that the police were cordoning off the street earlier in the evening.

She said she did not know who lived in the side of the semi-detached house police had cordoned off, but she understood it was a rental property.

Another resident, Megan Watt, who was not home that evening, said she did not know who those neighbours were but described them as new to the area.

She said they were two women, both Pakeha, and she did not know their relationship to one another.

"They moved in maybe over a month or so ago, maybe a little bit longer. Those neighbours were very quiet, we didn't hear [anything]... we've never really seen them."

Another Tannadyce St resident, who did not want to be named, said they saw police cars racing up past Kahurangi School on Strathmore Ave before turning their sirens off.

"Then about two police cars came and one went up Kinghorne St at great speed, and the other around Elphinstone Ave just below us. It looked like they were searching for someone."

Wellington Free Ambulance also attended the incident, but said all questions would need to be directed to police.

By 9pm there was no police activity, or ambulances, just a single unmarked police car at the roadside, where a handful of detectives had gathered.

At the scene, McKee, head of Wellington's Criminal Investigation Branch, said police were conducting an initial scene examination on Friday night, and that would continue on Saturday morning and over the days to come.

He said he was unable to say at this early stage who the victim was, or the person police had taken away.

"The victim, we believe, is known to the person that we are speaking to."

He declined to say how police were alerted to the death.
Chad Williams, who battles depression, is biking across America next year. It's a journey that is almost 5000km long, and has to be completed in 12 days.

Some mornings Chad Williams feels like he can't get out of bed.

On those days his battle with depression was simmering just below the surface and his mind struggled to pull itself out of the deep and debilitating darkness.

But after years of battling, the 23-year-old had found a secret weapon on wheels - cycling.

CHARLOTTE CURD/Fairfax NZ Chad Williams says his bike has got him through some tough times.

Williams said it was his most effective form of antidepressant and although he only bought a bike four years ago, he'd climbed to some great heights.

READ MORE:

* Kiwi cyclist eyes more US endurance hell

* AMerican race a vicious cycle

* Nick Dunne follows in father's pedals

CHARLOTTE CURD/Fairfax NZ Chad Williams will head to America to do a 5000km bike race in June 2017.

The Waitara man had been so successful with endurance cycling he had qualified for the world's hardest bike race, Race Across America, where he would represent New Zealand while travelling close to 5000km in less than 12 days.

"Cycling has helped a lot. It's my go-to. It's my antidepressant. It gets me through. Me and my bikes have been through some tough times together," Williams said.

"Anzac weekend for example, I just got myself into such a crappy head space that I could have easily just stayed in bed, but I just knew I needed to get on my bike, so I jumped on my bike and I didn't know where I was going, or for how long. I just loaded up with some food and went. I decided I'd ride up to the mountain.

"When I got home to Waitara, I felt awesome, it felt amazing. I was tired, but I just felt really good."

As a part of the Race Across America, Williams would be raising money for the Mental Health Foundation of New Zealand.

Williams needs to raise about $90,000 to ensure he and his support team could make it to America and back in June 2017, and could contribute to his charity of choice.

"I have to do this race in a maximum of 12 days. So, every 24 hours, on average I'll have to do 400km. Which is roughly from here to Hamilton, and back, nearly.

"There's only been two Kiwis who have finished the race and I've spoken to one of them. He said that for the first three days he didn't sleep, and then you maybe average an hour or two a day after that."

There would be about 50 solo racers who started the race, which was broadcast on ESPN, and Williams said there was a 50 to 80 percentage failure rate.

"But I'm determined to complete this. I wouldn't be trying to raise all of this money if I didn't think I could do it."

Williams said he was looking for sponsorship from any individual or business, and had already had offers of support from Intergroup in Normanby and Mitchell Cycles in New Plymouth.

Williams could be contacted via his Facebook page Chad Williams RAAM Endeavour.

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Figures show that 24,035 public place assaults, sexual assaults, and robberies were recorded by police in 2015.

A large chunk of central Timaru been revealed to have one of the worst rates of public assaults, sexual assaults, and robberies for secondary urban areas in the country.

At nearly six times the national average, Seaview has the fifth highest number of those crimes for secondary urban areas in 2015, new figures released by Statistics New Zealand show.

The central Timaru area recorded 78 victimisations in 2015, with a rate of 307 per 10,000 estimated resident population. That was far higher than the national average of about 52 per 10,000.

That put it higher on the list than suburbs such as Bledisloe Park in Pukekohe, Tokoroa Central, and Whakatane North.

The figures also revealed the areas in South Canterbury with the highest rates of public assaults, sexual assaults, and robberies.

Seaview topped the list, followed by Waimate, with 19, and Parkside, with 17. Temuka and Highfield rounded out the top five with 14 and 12 victimisations respectively.

Fairlie had the highest number of victimisations in the Mackenzie District, with eight recorded in 2015.

Timaru's Port area, Fairview-Scarborough, Mt Cook, and St Andrews were all at the opposite end of the scale, with no victimisations recorded for those crimes in 2015.

Police have highlighted alcohol as the main factor driving up the numbers.

Mid/South Canterbury area commander Inspector Dave Gaskin said many of the areas represented at the top end of the list were near licensed premises.

"The biggest catalyst for harm in our local communities is alcohol and alcohol abuse," he said.

Staff would continue to be deployed in the areas that had the most issues, he said. In Timaru, that meant the CBD.

Timaru's CBD, which was included in the Seaview area, was consistently a problem area because of the high number of bars and clubs it included, he said.

"My staff, on Fridays and Saturdays, are mostly spending the whole time in that area."

That was because of people who were too intoxicated, or "idiots" who got involved in incidents because they were drunk, he said.

Young men between the ages of 18 and 24 were more likely to involved in those crimes, Gaskin said.

"Unfortunately, young men get a skin-full of booze and think they're six foot tall and bulletproof."

There were more domestic incidents in places such as Parkside and Highfield, where there were more flats, he said.

"People who own their own homes tend to live in a more stable environment, they're more settled. People who live in a rental accommodation tend to be more transient."

Those areas were also "corridors of crime"- areas through which intoxicated people walked on their way home from the CBD, he said.

The figures showed that 24,035 public place assaults, sexual assaults, and robberies were recorded by police in 2015.

Of the main urban areas, Auckland Central West topped the list with 550 recorded victimisations in the 2015 calendar year. Wellington's Willis Street-Cambridge Terrace area and Hamilton Central rounded out the top three.

West Melton, in the Selwyn District, had the highest number of victimisations for rural areas.

Five South Canterbury area units with the highest number of public place assaults, sexual assaults, and robberies in 2015.

1) Seaview- 78

2) Waimate- 19

3) Parkside- 17

4) Temuka- 14

5) Highfield- 12

10 secondary urban areas with the highest number of public place assaults, sexual assaults, and robberies in 2015.

Queenstown Hill- 113

Pukekohe North- 91

Queenstown Bay- 90

Taupo Central- 90

Seaview- 78

Masterton Central- 64

Whakatane North- 57

Levin West- 54

Bledisloe Park- 53

Tokoroa Central- 47
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The Ministry of Health appears to be allowing the same company that is providing the horrific food at Southern DHB hospitals to now take up a contract in Taranaki, says New Zealand First.

New Zealand First has learnt that the Compass Group is on the verge of taking over the food service contract at Taranaki DHB, but are waiting until the issues with Southern DHB have died down before announcing the arrangement, says Health Spokesperson Barbara Stewart.

Southlanders are in the street protesting against the hospital food served by Compass and yet instead of tearing up that Compass contract, it appears the Ministry of Health has given Compass the OK to take up another with Taranaki DHB.

The impact of Compass receiving the contract would go further than solely food quality in Taranakis public hospitals, with staff layoffs from the hospital kitchens rumoured to be on the agenda. This would be another blow to a New Zealand region struggling economically.

New Zealand First believes that DHBs should be using local food service providers, rather than contracting services to Compass - a multinational company, providing food of compromised quality, says Mrs Stewart

SOURCE: Office of Barbara Stewart
The demand for land in Taurangas competitive market has prompted one prospective Papamoa buyer to camp out in his car for not one, but two nights, in order to secure the section of his dreams.

Coast Papamoa Beach launched its fourth exclusive public land release of the year in the weekend  releasing 19 bare sections aimed at families, retirees and investors.
Children visiting their mothers in prison on Mothers Day this Sunday can look forward to a special day, Corrections Minister Judith Collins says.

Corrections staff have organised a range of activities to acknowledge Mothers Day for visiting children and their mothers in prison.

Approximately 20,000 children in New Zealand have a parent in prison, and days like Mothers Day can be a very difficult day for them.

At Arohata Prison in Wellington, prisoners have made a Mothers Day banner to greet their visitors, and children will take part in face painting and craft activities. At Auckland Region Womens Corrections Facility prisoners in the Mother and Baby Self Care Unit will watch family movies.

Maintaining relationships while a parent is in prison can be challenging. Prisoners are able to send letters to their children and make phone calls from prison payphones. Every effort is made in visits centres to provide areas that are appropriate for children, within the limits of the secure environment.

While Corrections provides tools such as education, rehabilitation and employment skills to reduce re-offending; family support can be a key motivator for someone to turn their life around, says Ms Collins.

Charity organisation Pillars also work with Corrections to support and advocate for the children of prisoners.

Positive family relationships can be key to an offenders decision to cease crime and be there for their children to ensure that their lives dont take a similar path to prison. Research published by Pillars shows that children of prisoners are more likely than others to end up in prison themselves. The research also showed that positive contact between a parent in prison and their child improved outcomes for the child, and reduces their anxiety.

It is important that we remember that the children of prisoners are not responsible for their parents offending. They deserve to feel safe, supported and loved in order to create a future for them that is free from the impact of intergenerational crime and imprisonment, Ms Collins says.

SOURCE: Office of Judith Collins
In honor of National Nurses Week, we recently sat down with Juli Navarette, director of Clinical Practice & Education at Sunrise. We asked Juli a few questions about the critical role of nurses in assisted living communities and how they are trained to serve the unique needs of each resident.

Prior to joining the Sunrise team, Juli served as a regional director overseeing resident care in 15 assisted living communities and as a clinical practice consultant for the provision of evidence-based nursing practice in the ambulatory care setting with focus on quality, patient safety, process improvement and compliance with jurisdictional regulatory requirements.

Q: Can you describe the importance of the role of nursing in assisted living communities?

A: First of all, assisted living is the fastest growing type of senior housing in the United States. Because this type of housing is becoming so prevalent, understanding the role of nurses within these communities is critical. The presence of nurses in assisted living increases the likelihood that residents will be able to age in place and maintain a meaningful quality of life.

Q: In your opinion, how does assisted living nursing differ from other types of nursing?

A: Assisted living nursing is shaped by the science and theories of aging, which guide the nurses practice.

At Sunrise, our nurses establish a relationship with each resident and provide care in a comforting, home-like environment. We perform assessments in residents homes or the homes of their families, at hospitals or in long-term care centers.

Q: How do certain assisted living nursing responsibilities contribute to residents quality of life?

A: There are so many nursing activities that promote positive health outcomes for assisted living residents. To name a few:

Assisted living nurses administer resident assessments, create service plans for each resident, develop meaningful interventions and constantly evaluate the effectiveness of each residents care plan. At Sunrise, each resident receives an Individual Service Plan (ISP) based on the residents interests, needs and wishes, which is used to accommodate a residents personal preferences and is updated as needs change. Assisted living nurses are expected to teach and guide care managers (nursing assistants) to promote optimal resident health. Assisted living nurses monitor the status of chronic illnesses, including early observation of and intervention for any change in health status. Assisted living nurses are responsible for residents medication management. The coordination of care with external providers (such as home healthcare, hospice and therapy providers) and physicians is an assisted living nurses job. Assisted living nurses are in charge of the education of residents and families on disease and management of chronic illnesses and conditions.

Q: Do you think its accurate to say that assisted living nurses have to juggle multiple roles?

A: Yes, they do! Assisted living nurses often function in a dual role: administrator and coordinator of resident health and wellness.

At Sunrise, our team members rely upon one another to provide the best care possible. Assisted living nurses collaborate closely with our wonderful assisted living coordinators, reminiscence coordinators, care managers and other community team members to perform a comprehensive assessment and develop a meaningful ISP. It takes a team to provide great resident care!

Q: With your long career and extensive experience in the field of nursing, can you use one or two words to describe the job of an assisted living nurse?

A: Challenging - but so rewarding!

Q: Complete this sentence: If I werent a nurse, I would be a ___________.

A: Teacher. I love kids as much as I love seniors!

In honor of #NursesWeek, Sunrise celebrates our nurses (whom we consider to be teachers!) and all that they do to champion the quality of life for all seniors. Read more about our nurses at here.
An Inspection Plan has been drawn up for Andalucia and will include 98,000 more operations in the fight against illegal jobs and Social Security fraud

The operations to combat employment and tax fraud which were carried out by the Spanish government during its last legislature resulted in 12,512 irregular jobs being discovered in Malaga, and as a result an extra 157 million euros were paid to the Social Security authorities. In Andalucia, more than 64,000 fraudulent jobs were found and 5.12 billion euros paid.

With regard to fraudulent unemployment benefit claims, in Malaga province during that period 3,335 companies were inspected and 1,503 irregularities were detected, while checks on 3,933 workers revealed 1,742 infractions.

Last year, inspectors checked 488 companies and found 292 irregularities, and of the 711 workers who were inspected, 360 cases of irregularity were discovered.

Inspectors also found cases of false registration with Social Security and fake contracts being issued by non-existent companies, with the aim of claiming benefits. 2,520 companies in Malaga were inspected between 2012 and 2015 and as a result 717 registrations were annulled. 713 of the inspections were carried out last year, and 83 registrations were cancelled.

As a result of these operations, between 2012 and 2015, Social Security received an extra 157.05 million euros, of which 45.52 million euros were paid last year.

Inspectors also looked at part-time contracts; 157 inspections were carried out in Malaga in 2015, which was 15 per cent more than the previous year. Of these, 27 irregularities were found, which was over 20 per cent more than in 2014.

Record figures

In 2015 alone the AEAT tax agency in Andalucia collected the record figure of 1.4 billion euros as a result of its fight against tax fraud, something which the Government Delegate to the region, Antonio Sanz, described as a result of the most ambitious anti-fraud reform since democracy began, which has provided new tools to combat tax evasion and includes the Anti-fraud Law of 2012 and a change in the Penal Code to make penalties for tax offences harsher.

He provided this information at a meeting of the Regional Commission against Fraud, which includes representatives from the tax, Social Security and employment authorities and looks at ways they can work together on new initiatives to combat fraud.

The anti-fraud campaigns during the last legislature uncovered 64,087 irregular jobs in Andalucia, which was 18 per cent of the total in Spain. 16,644 were detected last year.

After inspecting nearly 89,000 companies and 30,200 workers in a four year period and obtaining such positive results, the authorities have every intention of continuing their campaign.
Richard Ray Farrell has lived the bohemian life. :: SUR

Some people are music lovers, and some people live and breathe music, they are the real deal, so to speak, says Richard Ray Farrell, a man who has not only mastered the art of singing and playing the blues, but a man that has literally lived the blues for best part of his life.

Fascinated with the music of Muddy Waters, Robert Johnson and other legendary blues players, Richard Ray Farrell started busking in Paris in 1975. After spending months living on the bread line, Richard began to work his way out of the Parisian subways and onto the some of the biggest and most prestigious stages in Europe, and during his long career, he has worked with many of the true giants of traditional American blues.

Born in Niagara Falls, New York in 1956, Richard left his hometown just two weeks after graduating and backpacked his way through Europe.

His parents had retired to Torre del Mar, Velez Malaga, in the mid-1970s, falling in love with the area after several holidays there.

Richard had settled in Paris and had no real intentions of living in Torre del Mar, but after his parents died, he came to Spain in order to sort out their affairs.

Richards father was an avid Hemmingway fan, who loved the bullfight and the razzmatazz that surrounds it, but he died soon after retiring to Spain, and Richards mother died just one year later.

Richard arrived in Spain to find that squatters had moved into his parents apartment and it would be three years before they were removed, but Richard did not settle in Torre del Mar and returned to America, and then to Germany, where he would spend the next 15 years touring with world class blues musicians.

Richard would return to Torre del Mar on a regular basis in order to take a break from gruelling European tours, and it was during these holidays that he began to fall in love with the pace of Andalucia and the friendliness of the people.

He soon began mixing with local Spanish musicians, in particular, the popular Malaga flamenco/rock band Tabletom, and they introduced Richard to many celebrated gypsy musicians.

One of those was Antonio Carmona, son of legendary flamenco guitarist Juan Habichuela, and co-founder of the popular flamenco fusion band Ketama.

Ive known the Carmona family for many years now and I go to the gym with Antonio every day, weve become great friends, says Richard, in his Andalusian-tinted American accent.

Richard would also strike up a friendship with legendary guitarist Raimundo Amador, a musician whose fame was secured after his participation on Camaron de la Islas ground-breaking La leyenda del tiempo; an album that Richard Ray Farrell describes as the Sergeant Peppers of flamenco.

Raimundo, who shot to international stardom after recording with B B King in the late 1990s, started to jam regularly with Richard, which led to the Spanish guitar maestro performing on Richards 2009 recording, Camino de Sanlucar: the two musicians have been close friends ever since.

A short while after the recording of Camino de Sanlucar, Richard was invited to play harmonica and blues guitar on Raimundos, Zambra blues, which Richard describes as, A very different and unique fusion of blues and flamenco.

Richard Ray Farrell has more than 12 recordings under his belt and he has played with iconic blues men like Lazy Lester, Louisiana Red, Frank Frost and RL Burnside. He recently undertook a five-week tour of Germany, Poland and Holland, followed a two-week stint in France, and yet it is hard to believe that a man who has achieved this kind of status is finding it hard to make a decent living on the blues scene here in Spain.

Richard has performed at numerous blues festivals in Spain, but work just does not seem to come like it does in the rest of Europe and America, and yet he loves Spain and the treatment he receives here.

With the exception of the odd gig the Wall Bar, gigs are few and far between in Malaga, but Richard is often be found singing his unique blend of blues in the El Camarote bar in La Caleta de Velez Malaga.

If you are a fan of authentic southern blues, then Richard Ray Farrell should satisfy your appetite, because his knowledge and expertise of the subject is limitless.
Councils on the Costa del Sol succeed in collecting only about half of the money which is due to them from traffic fines

One of the most lucrative speed cameras is on the Golden Mile in Marbella. :: JOSELE-LANZA

Traffic fines issued by Local Police forces have become a rather lucrative form of income for councils in Malaga province, especially in the bigger towns. In 2010, a change to the law meant that traffic fines were standardised across the country, and that meant that in this area, local authorities were obliged to charge more than they did previously.

If we look at the 50 councils which have a Local Police force and check their figures for 2015 against their registered population on 1 January last year, Malaga city, with a ratio of 28.21 euros per inhabitant, is doing especially well from traffic fines.

However, if we look at the actual sum of money raised from traffic fines, Marbella should have received nearly four million euros (3,981,000) from its drivers in 2014. Of that total, 1,081,000 euros were paid straight away, but 2.9 million are still pending.

Nevertheless, Malaga and Marbella still top the list, which also includes other large coastal resorts such as Velez-Malaga (308,940 euros were paid in fines in 2015 and a further 679,220 are still due), Fuengirola (it received 605,000 euros in 2014), Torremolinos (534,042 euros in the same year), and smaller towns such as Nerja (130,945 euros in 2013) and Torrox (65,289 euros in 2015).

The amount of money received in traffic fines in Malaga and Marbella is three times as much as in other large coastal towns, even though the number of cars in relation to the number of inhabitants is similar. However, it appears to be quite common for approximately half of traffic fines to be still pending payment.

The councillor in charge of Finance and Taxes at Malaga city hall, Carlos Conde, points out that as the city is the local tourism capital and communications link for the province, there are more cars on its roads, but he insists that the local authority does not set targets in terms of traffic fines. The figures have been similar in recent years, he says.

He does point out, however, that the council has recently introduced measures such as the register of provisional insolvency to help local people who cannot pay traffic fines because they earn less than the minimum wage, and says agreements have been signed with the provincial revenue board and tax office to try to improve the payment rates for traffic fines.

It is worth noting that Malaga council has installed four permanent radar cameras in the city centre; in 2014, these caught 83,969 vehicles travelling at more than the 50 kph speed limit, but almost half escaped a fine because they were still within the 10 kph margin of error.

To put it another way, the radar cameras in the city normally register when someone is driving at more than 60 kph, not 50 kph, although nobody at city hall was prepared to confirm that. In 2014, the cameras caught 37,525 people speeding, which seems a large number but is actually considerably lower than in previous years. The peak year was 2013, when 51,956 fines were issued.

Traffic fines are only a small percentage of income for town halls in the province, amounting to between one and two per cent of the budget. In fact, Malaga city fares poorly in this respect in comparison with other large cities, because Granada receives considerably more at 46.44 euros per person and Seville 36.79.

In Marbella, councillor Manuel Osorio,of the Finance department, points out that in the summer months the population is five times higher than normal, and this results in more fines. Most are for parking badly or speeding, he explains.

In Fuengirola, which, with an area of barely 10 kilometres, is physically the smallest municipality in the province, there were 48,191 registered vehicles in 2015. This works out at 574 cars for every 1,000 inhabitants and explains why this town receives so much money from traffic fines. In fact, opposition politicians on the council have accused the Partido Popular, the governing party, of applying asphyxiating pressure on local people by issuing so many fines, something which it has strongly denied.

Speed traps in Malaga province, good earners

Radar cameras have become a real nightmare for drivers in Malaga. The province is proving a treasure trove for the Traffic Department, because five of its speed traps are among the 15 which issue the most fines in the whole of Spain.

According to a study carried out by the Automovilistas Europeos Asociados (AEA) association, Malaga was the second province in Spain in terms of speeding fines last year, totalling 256,639.

The 50 radars on the highways of the province were only beaten by those in Madrid, which in 2015 caught 383,490 drivers exceeding the speed limit.

Malaga is the leader in this respect in Andalucia (Seville came second with 176,364). It was responsible for 7.8 per cent of the 3,286,799 fines imposed by the Traffic authorities for speeding last year, way ahead of regions such as Murcia, Asturias or Castilla y Leon, and just five of its cameras resulted in 186,168 fines being issued.

Not even Madrid, which has four radar traps on the top 15 list, could compete, as it only managed to produce 176,337 fines. The AEA study does, however, show that last year a radar on the A-6 in Madrid broke the absolute record achieved by one on the A-45, in terms of infractions. It registered 68,616 people speeding. The one at Las Pedrizas registered 37,864 fines in 2014 and that figure jumped massively to 58,493 in 2015.

The second radar trap to issue the most fines in Malaga is also the sixth most profitable in Spain for the Traffic Department. It is the permanent camera at kilometre 246 on the A-7 at El Palo, where 44,404 people were fined for driving at more than 80 kph last year, compared with 8,661 in 2014.

The third most active radar in Malaga is 11th on the national list. It is permanent and is on the MA-20 (the western bypass round Malaga city). In its first year of operation, it produced 28,998 fines.

In 12th and 13th place were the radar traps at km 205.268 and 200.146 on the A-7, which resulted in 27,552 (13,564 in 2014) and 26,721 fines (6,335), respectively.
In a note she hoped would be seen by a teacher, the desperate mother claimed "my children and I are victims of domestic violence"

The original letter. :: SUR

I am writing you this letter to ask for help, began the plea of a desperate mother. My children and Iare victims of domestic violence. These words were in a letter hidden in a school exercise book written by a woman claiming to be abused. The teacher, to whom it was addressed, listened to the cry for help and informed the authorities, who detained the suspect.

In the letter, which SUR has been able to access, the woman writes that she feels imprisoned by her husband. The couple, who have been together for 16 years, and married for 13, moved to Benalmadena in December 2015, arriving from England. The woman, of Uruguayan origin, added: I can't report him because I am always with him and he wont allow me to do it. If he suspects Im going to do it, he'll take my keys off me.

She concludes the letter saying that she doesnt know what to do or who to turn to and that she fears the retaliation that her husband would carry out.

The letter reached the teacher on 18 April, a day after it was written, and at 10.30am, the Torremolinos-Benalmadena police station received a call. Specialist officers then went to the school to interview the teacher as well as examine the children, aged five and eight, to see whether there were any obvious signs of abuse. The examinations were negative.

They then decided to invite the couple into school for a teacher-parent meeting and found a way of speaking to the mother separately. She stated that she had been a victim since the beginning of the relationship. At first, it had been psychological, but then after a few years it became physical. Both are unemployed, but when she got a job, she claims that she had to quit after five days because of her husbands jealousy. He would also control her access to social media and email.

After hearing the allegations police arrested her husband, 52. His version of events was radically different. He said that he loves his children and would never harm them or his wife. He did admit to grabbing her by the arm, where she has bruising, but claimed it was to stop her doing something crazy as he feared for her life.

The day after his detention, the suspect was released but ordered to wear a tag, while the alleged victim was given a protection order.
The popular tourist destination leapt to the top of the ranking after local and regional authorities publicised the internet link

Nerjas Paseo de los Carabineros cliffs seen from the Balcon de Europa. :: E. CABEZAS

Nerja has been voted the prettiest coastal town in Spain by 5,173 voters on the German booking website Hotel Info.

The town of Ortigueira in A Coruna came second, gaining 4,016 votes and Rota in Cadiz won third prize, with 2,119.

Other coastal towns that received high numbers of votes were Ribadeo in Galicia, Conil de la Frontera in Cadiz and Mojacar in Almeria.

Twenty seven towns were featured in the competition, whose criteria specified that the town had to be a beach destination with fewer than 35,000 inhabitants. Nerja has just over 20,000 residents.

The well-known tourist destination leapt to the top of the leader-board after a campaign was started by the town hall, the Mancomunidad de Municipios de la Costa del Sol Oriental-Axarquia, which comprises all of the local authorities in the Axarquia and the Junta de Andalucia.

All three of the public entities jointly promoted the competition through their websites and social media, which they believe helped Nerja win the contest.

Mayor of Nerja, Rosa Arrabal (PSOE), showed her huge satisfaction at the result on her Facebook page; thank you very much to all those who voted. This competition has been a big trampoline for Nerja to be even more well-known at an international level. Nerja is the most searched-for town, she wrote on Wednesday morning, adding; I am really pleased about the result, despite the existence of people who constantly give bad publicity to Nerja, including inviting people to go to other towns. In the end Nerja is the prettiest coastal town.

For further information about the competition, which closed at 12am on Wednesday, visit the website

Nerja now joins neighbouring Frigiliana, albeit on different lists, as two of Spains prettiest spots.
Huelin secondary school recently welcomed youngsters from Germany, Finland, UK, Italy and Poland as part of the Erasmus+ programme

Students from all the participating EU countries in El Torcal. :: SUR

A Malaga secondary school played host to students and teachers from five other EU countries last week on the third leg of an Erasmus+ strategic partnership project.

Over two years IES Huelin is taking part in a programme entitled Improving the Teaching-Learning Process at an Entrepreneurial and Sustainable Establishment along with secondary schools in Truro, England; Achim, Germany; Tampere, Finland; Palermo, Italy and Gorowo in Poland.

The first visit of the programme was to Germany in November 2015 and earlier this year representatives met up in Finland. Before the end of the programme each school will have hosted the others.

In Malaga the visitors and hosts took part in meetings, class observations, talks and workshops related to school diversity, discipline as well as finding out more about the Time Bank and how to implement it in schools.

Each school showed the production plan, statutes and formalities of their mini company, one of the projects for the two year period.

Educational visits

The students went on trips to the hydroelectric plant in El Chorro, the Sierra de las Aguas wind farm in Carratraca as well as visiting El Torcal in Antequera.

The budding entrepreneurs also had the chance to view the Promalaga UrbanLab facilities in the Tabacalera building.

Kim Funke from Germany described the visit as a great experience, adding that the Erasmus project is a great opportunity for students from different countries to get to know each other and share in different lifestyles and languages.

British student Tabitha Munro added, Its been an intense week. There was always something to do. The beach was the best bit.
The initiative is driven by a group of British women who live in Mollina. :: JAVIER LARA

It was a chat over coffee one morning with a friend who had undergone a mastectomy because of breast cancer that led Margaret to launch Knitted Knockers in Spain, in the small inland town of Mollina.

The organisation specialises in special handmade breast prostheses for women who have undergone mastectomies or other breast procedures, with the main goal being to help women regain their confidence. I never realised that its not only the disease and the thought of undergoing surgery which are frightening but when it comes to a woman having a breast removed, the psychological effects seem to be ignored, says Margaret.

Knitted Knockers started off with an American group based in Bellingham, Washington, but it has become so successful that it has been taken on in many other countries around the world. Even so, the venture is fairly new to Spain. Karen told me how much she wished she could get a knitted knocker over here. Her friend in the UK had told her about them. Id never heard of them but as a knitter I was curious to know more, so thanks to Google I came across the website and spent the entire evening knitting. I gave it to Karen the next day. The look on her face was one of astonishment to say the least. Better still, when she tried it she exclaimed Ive got a cleavage again! And thats how it all started, she says.

Since then, Margaret has knitted about 30 knockers or so, some of which have been sent to other parts of Spain. But for the ones she has delivered personally, the excitement and joy which they bring to women whove undergone so much is one of the best feelings Ive ever experienced.

There is an increasing need for the knockers as the traditional breast prosthetics are deemed expensive, heavy, sweaty and uncomfortable. They typically require special bras or camisoles with pockets and cant be worn for weeks after surgery, the founder of Knitted Knockers, Barbara Demorest says.

The hand-knitted ones, on the other hand, are made from 100 percent cotton yarn and are soft, comfortable and come with an array of benefits. When placed in a regular bra, they take the shape and feel of a real breast. Furthermore, the fit of the knocker can be customised by easily adding or taking out some of the filling, simply by opening the back.

On Wednesday I actually posted to a lady in Arroyo de la Miel my first swimming knocker so she can start swimming again when her pool opens, she added.

In order to provide this service, Knitted Knockers relies on the efforts of volunteers, namely the British community living in inland villages of Malaga province. Donations are welcome and go towards the cost of yarn. Margaret is currently in the process of making contact with other knitting groups in Spain so that they can further cater for women in need of a knocker. A knitting group in Torrevieja has already been formed.
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SHARE Nick Kenesky of Sebastian with one of his dogs. (PROVIDED BY JENNIFER SIEMINSKI)

By Staff Report

INDIAN RIVER COUNTY  Family and friends will gather at Wabasso Beach Park for a 1 p.m. memorial Sunday for the Sebastian man who died last week in a hit-and-run crash.

The event is a paddle-out for Nick Kenesky, 36, who was killed on April 27, said his cousin, Araan Burnett. Kenesky, known to his friends as "Big Nick," grew up in Sebastian and graduated from Sebastian River High School. Relatives from Connecticut and Virginia will travel to Wabasso for the event, Burnett said.

A Facebook page titled "Memorial Paddle out for Big Nick Kenesky" was set up for the event.

The Florida Highway Patrol is investigating the accident that killed Kenesky as he walked along the shoulder of eastbound County Road 512 east of Interstate 95. Troopers said Angela Shelton, 44, of Sebastian, was driving a Buick Enclave and struck Kenesky near 104th Avenue. She told troopers she did not realize she hit anyone until she arrived home and saw the damage on the Buick, according to a report.
St. Lucie County sheriffs investigate the shooting death of 21-year-old Demarcus Semer by Fort Pierce officers during a traffic stop incident late last Saturday. (ERIC HASERT/TREASURE COAST NEWSPAPERS)

By Will Greenlee of TCPalm

FORT PIERCE  After 11 days and much public outcry, police officials Wednesday evening named the two officers involved in the April 23 fatal shooting of a 21-year-old man. Despite public demand for the names since the shooting, earlier refusals by the St. Lucie County sheriff and State Attorney's office to identify the men may have been reasonable to ensure their safety, according to some legal and law enforcement experts not affiliated with the case.

In most law enforcement shooting cases in St. Lucie County in recent years in which a person died, the name or names of the officer or officers involved has been released soon after the incident  sometimes within a few days.

MORE | Fort Pierce police release names of officers involved in shooting death of Demarcus Semer

Barbara Petersen, president of the First Amendment Foundation in Tallahassee, raised issues about the lack of disclosure.

"I would question if they have routinely and expeditiously released the names of the officers involved in the past, what makes this one so different?" Petersen said. "That is a question, and it causes concerns."

No one involved in the case would explain what makes this case different.

Chief Assistant State Attorney Tom Bakkedahl and Sheriff's Lt. Michael Sheelar denied requests for initial incident reports that could contain the names of the officers, citing Florida law that exempts "active criminal intelligence information and active criminal investigative information."

Deputy Bryan Beaty, sheriff's public information officer, on May 3 released 12 pages of documents. The first three pages were almost entirely redacted. Other pages contained little substantive information.

ACCESS AN ISSUE

"Why do you need the names of the officers?" Bakkedahl said early in the investigation.

Petersen called that the wrong response.

"It's not 'why do you need it'," she said. "We have a right of access to it. Need is not an issue."

On April 28, Treasure Coast Newspapers made a records request to Fort Pierce police for the personnel files of Officer Keith Holmes and Sgt. Brian MacNaught. At the time, they had not been officially identified as the officers involved, but were widely talked about as being involved.

The files were not made available until May 5  a day after police identified the men in a news release and after repeated phone calls and emails to three police officials.

An April 29 request for a list of all Fort Pierce officers on paid administrative leave during April still has not been fulfilled.

Robert Crowder, former Martin County sheriff, said if there's no legal requirement to withhold names, he believes in maintaining transparency. But, he said, there could be good reason to justify withholding names.

"The landscape's different out there than it was three or four years ago," Crowder said.

Anti law-enforcement feelings held by some across the country have changed the climate.

Fort Pierce police tried to stop Demarcus Semer's car on North 19th Street about 11:55 p.m. April 23, according to the Sheriff's Office, which is investigating at the request of Fort Pierce Police Chief Diane Hobley-Burney.

Sheriff Ken Mascara has said that at some point, Semer attempted to flee in his car and in doing so, ran over one of the officers, injuring the officer's leg, as a second officer was getting in Semer's car. The second officer couldn't exit the moving car. Semer was shot outside of his vehicle and died.

On April 25, Mascara said he anticipated naming the officers in two days after investigators interviewed them.

But on April 27, even though Mascara said "great progress" had been made in the case, he said Bakkedahl "instructed me that we are not going to share that information."

Bakkedahl said naming the officers could jeopardize their safety and also influence witnesses.

"Rumor, speculation and innuendo is swirling on the Internet and as a result of that some people have named an officer," he said. "That officer has now been subject to death threats and intimidation.

"Regardless of whether these officers acted justifiably or not they are entitled to be safe, as any other citizen in this country who might be under investigation."

TIMES CHANGE

Bob Dekle, a legal skills professor at the University of Florida and retired prosecutor and former public defender, said withholding the names may be prudent given negative feelings held by some against law enforcement officers.

"You've got a track record for people acting out on the climate of hostility by ambushing law enforcement officers and killing them," he said. "You got two officers who are likely to possibly become the target of something like that. Would you release their names?"

Despite officers' names being made public soon after several past fatal shooting cases, Dekle said not all cases are the same.

"In the past there haven't been people running around wearing T-shirts (with anti-law enforcement slogans), taking pot shots at the police," Dekle said. "It's just turned into a different world."

Petersen said there can be sympathy for such concerns, but government officials denying the release of records must have statutory authority.

Law enforcement agencies on the Treasure Coast routinely release initial incident reports with criminal intelligence information, such as the names of suspects who are under investigation, redacted.

The names of the officers involved generally are included, unless they are undercover officers, typically narcotics investigators.

"Given all of the public concern, national public concern, about officer-involved shootings, I would think that they would be bending over backward to give the public as much information as possible," Petersen said. "The more information they withhold the more questions and concerns come from the public."

Bakkedahl said the policy of the 19th Judicial Circuit State Attorney's Office is not to discuss a pending criminal investigation.

OFFICER-INVOLVED SHOOTING IN ST. LUCIE COUNTY

2015

1: A St. Lucie County grand jury cleared four Fort Pierce police officers who fatally shot a man in November. On Nov. 19, officers shot Steve Dormil, 27, after getting a 911 call about his attempting to kill a 5-year-old girl in an apartment in the 1000 block of South 27th Circle. The girl later died from her injuries.

2: A sheriffs detective who fatally shot a Vero Beach man during a March 27 arrest in Fort Pierce was cleared of any wrongdoing by a St. Lucie County grand jury. Detective Christopher Jadin, a 16-year veteran of the Sheriffs Office, shot 39-year-old Jamalis Hall, of Vero Beach, during an arrest in the 1000 block of Mayflower Road in Fort Pierce. Jadin fired three shots after Hall refused to put down a knife.

2014

A grand jury cleared a sheriffs deputy in the fatal shooting of a man during an investigation of a complaint about loud, obscene music being played across the street from Frances K. Sweet Magnet School in January. Deputy Christopher Newman shot Gregory Hill Jr., 30, as Hill raised a gun while he was inside a garage as the door was closing.

2012

1: On Nov. 3, Acting Sgt. Reece Kilner, Detective Ryan Lodwick and Officer Adrian Zamoyski of the Port St. Lucie Police Department were involved in the fatal shooting of Daniel Ross Fuller during a confrontation at a home in the 2800 block of Southeast Peru Street. The shooting happened after police initially were called to the home for a report of an armed suicidal man. A grand jury cleared the officers in 2013.

2: John Donald Augstgen Jr., 47, of Fort Pierce was shot multiple times Dec. 19 by Fort Pierce Police Officer Keith Holmes and St. Lucie County sheriffs detective Keith Pearson after they interrupted an alleged drug deal. Augstgen attempted to strike the men, who had been working undercover, while driving a black pickup. Augstgen died days later. A grand jury cleared the officer and detective in 2013.

MORE

Editorial: Heres the first question investigators must answer about shooting of Demarcus Semer

Fort Pierce must hand over shooting investigation to state or feds

At NAACP town hall, community members discuss police-involved fatal shooting

MORE
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Daniel Harris, 30, 700 block of Northwest Treemont Avenue, Port St. Lucie; driving while license suspended, habitual offender.

Crystal Frazer, 32, 1800 block of Southwest Nantucket Avenue, Port St. Lucie; warrant for violation of probation, driving while license suspended, habitual offender.

Carlton Hudson, 39, 1000 block of Avenue E, Fort Pierce; out-of-county warrant, Indian River County, amended violation of probation, possession of a controlled substance (cocaine), failure to appear, possession of a controlled substance (cocaine).

Samuel Savilus, 21, 2200 block of Southeast Genoa Street, Port St. Lucie; warrants for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, burglary of a structure while armed.

Frank Dipasquale, 72, 1400 block of Southeast Ladner Street, Port St. Lucie; warrant for failure of a sex offender to register with the Sheriff's Office.

Devin Bouie, 23, 1200 block of North 20th Street, Fort Pierce; warrant for violation of probation, driving while license suspended or revoked.

Jennifer Zahornaki, 37, 400 block of Southwest Meadow Terrace, Port St. Lucie; sale of heroin; possession of a controlled substance (heroin) without a prescription; use of a two-way communications device to facilitate a felony.

Tyler Singletary, 20, warrant for sexual battery.

Jeremiah Barnard, 38, 900 block of 24th Street, Vero Beach; warrants for grand theft, giving false information to a pawnbroker, dealing in stolen property, burglary of an occupied dwelling.

Joycelyn Hovey, 33, 1900 block of Southeast High Springs Drive, Port St. Lucie; out-of-county warrant, Martin County, violation of probation/community control, possession of less than 20 grams of marijuana, possession of marijuana resin (hash).

Matthew Ramsey, 24, 100 block of Southwest Chapman Avenue, Port St. Lucie; warrant for violation of probation, DUI, blood/breath 0.15 or more, one prior conviction.

April Miller, 40, 1500 block of Southwest Ulmus Place, Palm City; re-admit, retail theft in concert with others.

Chanelle Reed, 38, 700 block of Altura Street, Port St. Lucie; re-admit, grand theft of a controlled substance, possession of morphine.

Noah Edwards, 58, 700 block of Texas Court, Fort Pierce; trafficking in cocaine.

Brantley Taylor, 29, 300 block of Silverstream Circle, Fort Pierce; re-admit, battery.

Jeanne Belgau, 55, 9500 block of South Indian River Drive, Fort Pierce; re-admit, DUI, impairment or blood alcohol level of 0.08 or more  damage to property or person.

Jennie Chance, 21, 500 block of North 13th Street, Fort Pierce; warrant for failure to appear, grand theft. Arrested in Indian River County.

Refugio Torres, 22, 500 block of Southwest Nopal Street, Port St. Lucie; possession of a controlled substance (butane hash oil). Arrested in Martin County. (BOTH NAMES CORRECT PER TYPED REPORT/RECENT BOOKINGS PAGE)
Fort Pierce Central High School (FILE PHOTO)

By Andrew Atterbury of TCPalm

ST. LUCIE COUNTY  School officials have identified the teacher facing termination over what they call an improper relationship with a student.

David Ferguson, 29, an English teacher at Fort Pierce Central High School, on Friday received a termination letter from the St. Lucie County School District. He is accused of violating numerous school district policies related to relationships with students, according to records obtained by Treasure Coast Newspapers through the Florida public-records act.

Beyond the termination letter, officials provided no detail about Ferguson's alleged actions.

Ferguson had not been arrested as of Friday afternoon, according to court records.

He declined to comment Friday.

Ferguson has taught at Fort Pierce Central since 2011, according to his personnel records. He also has an active teaching certificate in Michigan, according to the Michigan Department of Education.

School officials on Thursday said only that a teacher was under investigation for an inappropriate relationship with a student, but did not identify the teacher or school.

Ferguson was relieved of his duties Thursday and recommended for firing at Tuesday's School Board meeting, district officials said.

Should the School Board approve his termination, Ferguson would have 15 days to challenge the action, according to the letter.

Ferguson is accused of breaking nine school district policies:

Immoral or indecent conduct

Unsatisfactory work performance

Violation of any rule, policy, regulation or established procedure

Any violation of the code of ethics of the education profession, the principles of professional conduct for the education profession, the standards of competent and professional performance or the code of ethics for public officers and employees

Off-duty conduct that does not promote the good will and favorable attitude of the public toward the school district, its programs and policies

Inappropriate or disparaging remarks to or about students or exposing a student to unnecessary embarrassment or disparagement

Inappropriate relationship with a student

Inappropriate sexual conduct including, but not limited to, lewd and lascivious behavior, indecent exposure, solicitation of prostitution, sexual battery, possession or sale of pornography involving minors, sexual relations with students or sexual activity on school board property

Additionally, employees are prohibited from dating or agreeing to date any student enrolled in the regular K-12 program of the district. Violation of this policy shall constitute gross insubordination and misconduct in office and shall be grounds for dismissal

Ferguson is the second St. Lucie County teacher this year accused of an improper relationship.

Gary Burnette, band director at St. Lucie West Centennial High School, was arrested Feb. 22 and charged with sexually assaulting a 15-year-old student. School officials fired Burnette, who was under a probationary contract, the same day.
George Clinton

SHARE Marine Resources Councils second annual LagoonFest. (CONTRIBUTED PHOTO)

By Tyler Treadway of TCPalm

PALM BAY  Get funky while you help save the Indian River Lagoon.

George Clinton, the rainbow-haired godfather of funk, and his band Parliament/Funkadelic will headline the Marine Resources Council's second annual LagoonFest May 21.

Proceeds from the all-day music festival will help the council and area scientists produce the inaugural State of the Indian River Lagoon Report Card designed to assess lagoon's health and outline actions needed to restore and preserve it.

Clinton and his bands became famous in the 1970s for blending the funky sounds of James Brown and Sly and the Family Stone with outrageous stage shows that drew on the drug culture and science fiction. They had three platinum albums and 40 rhythm-and-blues hits including "Give Up the Funk," "Aqua Boogie," "Dr. Funkenstein" and "One Nation Under a Groove."

Clinton and 15 other members of Parliament/Funkadelic were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1997. Hip-hoppers such as Dr. Dre and hard-rockers like the Red Hot Chili Peppers point to Clinton as an influence.

Note: These days the 74-year-old Clinton performs without his signature wigs.

Besides music, the festival will feature an inflatable playground for kids, the Lagoon Learning Science Center, food and beverages, the "Lagoon House Disco," a silent auction, arts and crafts and displays by area nonprofits.

LagoonFest 2016

When: 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. May 21; gates open at 10:45 a.m.

Where: Ted Moorhead Lagoon House, 3275 S. Dixie Highway (U.S. 1), Palm Bay, about 1 mile south of Melbourne Causeway

Parking: Off-site parking with shuttle available

Tickets: $26 in advance; $85 for VIP tickets

Information/tickets: MRCLagoonFest.com

Musical lineup:

George Clinton & Parliament/Funkadelic

Zack Deputy

Trae Pierce & the T-Stone Band

Beebs and Her Money Makers

Thomas Wynn and the Believers

23 Treez

General Eyes
Photos.com/GETTY IMAGES

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By Isadora Rangel of TCPalm

Treasure Coast registered Democrats can vote Saturday for the delegates they want to send to the party's national convention to choose their presidential nominee this summer.

Voters must cast a ballot in the congressional district in which they live. For the Treasure Coast, that means District 8, representing Indian River County and District 18, representing Martin and St. Lucie counties.

Voters must ask for either a Hillary Clinton or a Bernie Sanders ballot, depending on who they want to win the presidential nomination. Each ballot will contain the names of delegate candidates who pledged to vote for either Clinton or Sanders at the convention.

In District 18, Clinton supporters will vote for four delegates and Sanders supporters will vote for two delegates. In District 8, it's three for Clinton and two for Sanders. The number of delegates is based on a formula that factors in two things: the March 15 Florida primary results, in which Clinton beat Sanders 64.4 percent to 33.3 percent, and each congressional district's voter turnout that day.

Voters must vote for an even number of men and women. If there's an uneven number of delegates, there will be further instructions on the ballot.

David Dew, Martin County Democratic state committeeman, expects 300 voters to cast ballots in Martin and St. Lucie counties. About 50 to 100 are expected in District 8, according to Mary Greene, the Democrats' House District 8 chair.

Florida's 140 delegates will meet May 21 in Orlando to choose 28 more delegates from among party leaders and elected officials, 46 at-large and 18 at-large alternates for the Philadelphia convention, which is from July 25 to July 28.

Florida Republican Party leaders picked their delegates in March and April.

Click here for more voting locations in District 18.

Delegate elections

What: District 18 (Martin/St. Lucie counties)

When: 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. May 7

Where: Martin County Democratic Executive Committee, 948 S.E. Central Parkway, Stuart; Longshoreman's Association, 503 N. Seventh St., Fort Pierce; IBEW Local Union, 7652 U.S. 1, Port St. Lucie

Information: 772-221-0405 or 772- 577-0276

What: District 8 (Indian River County)

When: 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. May 7

Where: 1344 Apollo Blvd., Melbourne

Information: 321-725-2217; emfl415meeg@aol.com

Note: Voters must bring their voter ID or any valid picture ID
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)

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By Ledyard King, USA TODAY

WASHINGTON  The U.S. Senate quietly confirmed a new ambassador to Mexico last week.

All it took was months of delay, policy decisions involving three countries, and horse-trading by two prominent senators whose presidential campaigns helped prolong the wait. The behind-the-scenes maneuvering is reminiscent of an earlier political era.

The drama began in November, shortly after the Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted to recommend that the full Senate confirm Roberta Jacobson as the United States' ambassador to Mexico. Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, taking advantage of Senate rules that allow individual lawmakers to block action on presidential appointments, put a hold on the nomination.

As assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs, Jacobson had played a key role in President Barack Obama's decision to renew diplomatic relations with Cuba, a move Rubio strongly opposed.

"We do need an ambassador in Mexico City who has a track record of effectively advancing U.S. interests," Rubio said on the Senate floor last week before a deal on confirming Jacobson was finally reached. "I do, however, have serious questions about the policies that Assistant Secretary Jacobson has pursued during her tenure in the Western Hemisphere Bureau."

Obama had nominated Robertson in June. After Rubio imposed his hold, the diplomatic post sat vacant for months as the Florida senator barnstormed across the country on his ultimately unsuccessful presidential campaign.

"It should have never had to reach this point," said Arizona Republican Sen. Jeff Flake, who pushed hard for a confirmation vote. "The other dominoes that had to fall at the right time had little if anything to do with Roberta Jacobson and her qualifications. That's what was frustrating. Yet, we've waited here in Arizona (for a confirmation vote) for nine months. That's not right."

Rubio, a Cuban-American, opposes thawing relations with Cuba while the Castro regime remains in power. He's also harshly criticized the crackdown on human rights in Venezuela, also among countries monitored by the State Department's Western Hemisphere Bureau.

The chain of events that led Rubio to lift his hold unfolded quickly.

In March, shortly after Rubio suspended his presidential bid and returned to Washington, GOP leaders and the White House approached him about what it would take for him to drop his hold on Jacobson's nomination and allow a confirmation vote.

Rubio said he wanted Congress to extend the 2014 law that he had authored imposing human rights sanctions on Venezuela. Senate leaders and the White House said yes and the measure was introduced last week.

But GOP Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said he would block the measure unless Rubio convinced Texas Sen. Ted Cruz (then still running for president) to lift his almost 10-month hold on a State Department reauthorization bill. That was fine with Rubio because the bill contained initiatives he had authored pertaining to human rights and religious freedom abroad.

Rubio asked Cruz to drop the hold on the State Department bill and Cruz agreed. In return, Rubio agreed to help lobby the House to pass a measure he and Cruz had co- authored to designate the street in front of the Chinese Embassy in Washington "Liu Xiaobo Plaza" in memory of Nobel-laureate and political prisoner Liu Xiaobo.

Last week, Senate lawmakers passed the Venezuela sanctions bill and the State Department reauthorization. And they confirmed Jacobson.

"Nine months after her nomination, I'm pleased to say we are sending one of our finest diplomats to advance this important relationship (with Mexico)," Secretary of State John Kerry said in a statement after the confirmation vote.

The various deals that made the vote possible show again how Rubio, who was often chided during his presidential campaign for abandoning his day job, has been noticeably engaged since returning.

In the past six weeks, Rubio has given several floor speeches, including one last week where he exhorted Republican leaders to move faster on Obama's $1.9 billion request to combat the Zika virus. He's sponsored or signed on to a number of bills, including one that would track detainees transferred from the Guantanamo Bay prison. He traveled this week on an official trip to the Middle East, where he championed religious freedom issues.

Still, Flake believes it may have been his own decision to force the issue on Jacobson's stalled nomination that brought Rubio around.

On April 26, the Arizona senator (who is among lawmakers favoring a thaw in U.S.-Cuba relations) asked on the Senate floor for a confirmation vote on Jacobson, whom he described as "eminently qualified for the post."

Rubio objected, but Flake's demand had set the wheels in motion. Within a few days, a deal had been struck.
Vero Beach's new Hampton Inn sits at the intersection of 20th Place and Sixth Avenue. (FILE PHOTO)

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By Janet Begley, Special to Treasure Coast Newspapers

INDIAN RIVER COUNTY  Bed taxes pumped $75,000 more into the county tourist-development fund in the first quarter of this year than in the same period in 2015, Clerk of the Court Jeff Smith said this week.

Better still, the tourist tax brought in more than $1.1 million  more than 19 percent  above budget projections between October and February, according to the county budget office.

Overall, the county collected $815,343 in bed taxes for the second quarter, up from $740,288 in 2015, Smith told county commissioners on Tuesday. The second quarter ended March 31.

The county collects a 4 percent tax on all short-term lodging including hotels, campgrounds, mobile homes and time shares. Anyone who rents or leases an accommodation for six months or less must pay taxes totaling 11 percent  a 6 percent state sales tax, 1 percent county sales tax and 4 percent tourist-development tax.

The county Tourism Development Council is to meet next week to discuss allocations of the money to tourism programs.

Some of the strongest gains in tourism taxes have been from short-term rentals. In December, the website Airbnb agreed to start collecting and remitting the bed tax on Florida homes and rooms rented through its site. Smith reported a 15 percent increase in Airbnb payments in the second quarter over the same period last year.

In the hotel/motel category, collections were up almost 9 percent over the same quarter in 2015. A new hotel in downtown opened in Vero Beach last spring, and business at Historic Dodgertown has been strong, with traveling athletes and their families filling local hotel rooms. Other events such as cultural arts festivals and food fairs have attracted tourists to the area, increasing the number of overnight visits.

All of this is music to the ears of Allison McNeal, Indian River County Chamber of Commerce's tourism director.

"I think the economy is changing and people are more comfortable spending money on travel," said McNeal.

"The way we've marketed this destination really resonates with people. I think during the next four to five years, you'll see more and more people coming here and returning when they see all we have to offer."
Vero Beach Municipal Power Plant (FILE PHOTO)

By Colleen Wixon of TCPalm

Can common ground be found between a town that wants to regulate electric-rate increases and the city that wants to impose them?

Indian River Shores and Vero Beach find out this week when their representatives meet for state-mandated mediation aimed at avoiding more litigation.

"We can either agree or we can agree to disagree," said Vero Beach City Manager Jim O'Connor.

In September, the Indian River Shores Town Council created its own electric-utility authority, with the power to approve or reject rate increases once its 30-year franchise agreement with Vero Beach ends in November. The move targets providers, such as Vero Beach electric, that are outside the rate jurisdiction of the state Public Service Commission.

Providers such as Florida Power & Light Co. already need PSC approval for rate increases.

Vero Beach officials object, saying the town's actions violate state law. Vero Beach City Council last month approved going to the mediation proceedings. State law encourages local governments to use mediation to resolve differences. Municipal administrators and lawyers meet first. A second session with each government's elected officials is held if conflicts remain unresolved.

Both sides say they are hopeful for resolution when they meet Thursday morning. While Vero Beach is coming to the table with its electric heavy-hitter Robert "Schef" Wright of Tallahassee, along with O'Connor, the Shores team has its basic squad  Town Manager Robbie Stabe and Town Attorney Chester Clem. Shores electric counsel Bruce May is staying in Tallahassee for this session.

"We're going to participate in good faith, and just see what happens," Stabe said.

Vero Beach provides power to about 3,500 Shores residents. The Shores already has put Vero on notice it plans to end its relationship in November.

The Shores so far has been unsuccessful in its quest to have FPL buy the Shores portion of the Vero electric system. FPL has offered Vero $13 million, but Vero Beach recently estimated that without the Shores customers, its remaining customers would have to shoulder more than a $40 million loss over the next 30 years.

On Monday, Wright told Vero's utilities and finance commissioners Vero Beach would continue providing electricity to its Shores customers after November because Vero Beach has PSC approval to establish its service territories. The end of a franchise agreement only relieves each side's obligations to the terms in the agreement, he said.

If that happens, he said, the Shores no longer would be obligated to maintain rights of way containing Vero's electric lines, but Vero would keep its customers.

More litigation is likely in November, when Indian River Shores tries to regulate its electric rates. Indian River Shores repeatedly has sought Public Service Commission approval to evict Vero electric from the town's rights of way and roads unless Vero pays for use of the town property.

If you go

WHAT: Vero Beach and Indian River Shores mediation session

WHEN: 9:30 a.m. Thursday

WHERE: Council chambers, Vero Beach City Hall, 1053 20th Place, Vero Beach.

Open to the public

IF YOU GO...

WHAT: Vero Beach and Indian River Shores mediation session

WHEN: 9:30 a.m. Thursday

WHERE: Council chambers, Vero Beach City Hall, 1053 20th Place, Vero Beach. Open to the public
A Florida Forest Service helicopter works to extinguish the 120-acre brush fire Friday, May 6, 2016, south of Indrio Road near U.S.1 in northern St. Lucie County. Florida Forest Service area supervisor Trevor Taylor said when they responded to the call around 3 p.m., they initially thought there were three small fires. "It progressed pretty quickly with our low humidities," he said, adding that the low wind speed aided them in getting the fire contained. No homes were evacuated. (XAVIER MASCARENAS/TREASURE COAST NEWSPAPERS)

By Laurie K. Blandford of TCPalm

ST. LUCIE COUNTY  A 120-acre brush fire in the northern part of the county Friday afternoon was fully contained as of 6:15 p.m., said Florida Forest Service spokeswoman Melissa Yunas.

State and county firefighters went to the brush fire along a canal near Indrio Road and Tree Top Trail about 2:30 p.m. Friday, Yunas said. The brush fire was in a wooded area near homes, but it wasn't threatening homes or causing any evacuations because the homes are well-protected and surrounded by green grass, she said.

The state's helicopter dropped water on the brush fire to cool conditions and reduce the intensity of the fire, Yunas said. That allowed crews on the ground to get closer.

Firefighters are expected to be back at the scene of the brush fire on Saturday to monitor the area, she said.

The cause of the brush fire remained under investigation.

Forestry coming in for fuel pic.twitter.com/WzHtbSbwjx  SLC Firefighters (@SLCFirefighters) May 6, 2016
By Will Greenlee and Melissa E. Holsman of TCPalm

FORT PIERCE  One of two officers involved in the fatal shooting last month of Demarcus Semer received praise for his "extraordinary courage and heroic action" during a 2012 confrontation with a fleeing suspect that ended with a shooting, according to records released Thursday.

Fort Pierce Police Officer Ralph Keith Holmes and a St. Lucie County Sheriff's detective were cleared by a grand jury in the fatal December 2012 shooting of 47-year-old John Donald Augstgen.

Holmes, who joined the police in 2003, was recognized for his bravery with the department's "Police Combat Cross."

The accolade noted Holmes encountered a suspect fleeing officers and "during a pursuit the suspect used his vehicle as a deadly weapon against deputies and officers."

"As the suspect attempted to run over other officers, you exited the safety of your vehicle and stopped the suspect by firing your service weapon," the award stated. "This action immediately resolved the deadly threat to public safety. You are commended for extraordinary courage and heroic action in protecting your community."

Holmes and Sgt. Brian MacNaught, who also joined police in 2003, were placed on paid administrative leave on April 24 after the shooting of Semer. Fort Pierce Deputy Chief Frank Amandro said this is standard procedure in officer-involved shooting cases.

The Semer shooting, in which two officers fired their weapons, happened after police tried to stop Semer's vehicle on North 19th Street about 11:55 p.m. April 23, according to the Sheriff's Office. The Sheriff's Office was asked to investigate by Fort Pierce police.

Sheriff Ken Mascara has said that at some point, Semer, 21, attempted to flee in his car and, in doing so, ran over one of the officers, injuring his leg, as a second officer was getting in Semer's car. The second officer couldn't exit the moving car. Semer was shot outside his vehicle and died.

In 2014, the department recognized Holmes's actions with a lifesaving award for his quick action that saved five young swimmers who were in distress and stranded on the jetty rocks at the Fort Pierce Inlet State Park.

The award noted that after U.S. Coast Guard officials threw a rescue line without success, Holmes jumped in the water and used the rescue line to transport the five girls to safety.

"The quick actions by Officer Holmes ultimately saved the life of the five female victims," the award stated.

A review of Holmes's employee file shows several letters from businesses, nonprofits and residents thanking him for his actions on and off the job.

Holmes also has been disciplined, records show. His Professional Standards file contains nine pages detailing 73 allegations, including being discourteous, unbecoming conduct and one incident of a false arrest.

Records show officials sustained 13 of the 73 complaints against Holmes, including in 2011, when records show he used sick time to cover a two-week suspension and was ordered to undergo counseling related to a harassment incident. His file didn't contain additional details of the incident.

MacNaught, an Air Force veteran, has received high marks on annual evaluations, according to personnel records. He was promoted to sergeant in December 2008.

In April 2015, MacNaught and several other officers received an exceptional unit award. Two years earlier, a lieutenant from the Florida Division of Alcoholic Beverages and Tobacco included MacNaught and others in a memo recognizing their work in investigating criminal activity at the Chocolate City Pool Room on Orange Avenue.

In May 2006, MacNaught and another officer got a lifesaving citation after efforts to rescue a passenger trapped in a burning vehicle.

"Putting your personal safety aside and without hesitation, you worked quickly to free the passenger before he sustained fatal injuries," the citation states. "Your heroic efforts and rapid response undoubtedly saved the life of the passenger who was left behind by the driver, who fled the scene after a Good Samaritan pulled the driver from the burning wreckage."

MacNaught has been the subject of virtually no disciplinary action, according to his personnel file. In 2010, he didn't show up for an off-duty work detail because he had to take a sick family member to a follow-up doctor's appointment.

Before joining the Fort Pierce police, MacNaught worked with the Department of Veterans Affairs hospital in West Palm Beach as a police officer.
SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket lifts off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station's Launch Complex 40 on Friday, May 6, 2016. (CRAIG RUBADOUX/FLORIDA TODAY)

SHARE A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying the JCSAT-14 communications satellite for the Japanese telecommunications company Sky Perfect JSAT lifted off from Cape Canaveral on Friday at 1:21 a.m. Shortly after the launch, the rocket also successfully landed aboard Of Course I Still Love You, SpaceX's Autonomous Spaceport Drone Ship, located a couple hundred miles east of the launch site. (SAM WOLFE/SPECIAL TO TREASURE COAST NEWSPAPERS) A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying the JCSAT-14 communications satellite for the Japanese telecommunications company Sky Perfect JSAT lifted off from Cape Canaveral on Friday at 1:21 a.m. Shortly after the launch, the rocket also successfully landed aboard Of Course I Still Love You, SpaceX's Autonomous Spaceport Drone Ship, located a couple hundred miles east of the launch site. (SAM WOLFE/SPECIAL TO TREASURE COAST NEWSPAPERS)

By James Dean, Florida Today

Used rockets may soon form a crowd in SpaceX's hangar at Kennedy Space Center.

A third is on its way back there after sticking a landing early Friday on a ship in the Atlantic Ocean, minutes after a 1:21 a.m. Friday launch that later delivered a Japanese communications satellite to orbit.

"Woohoo!!" CEO Elon Musk tweeted after the Falcon 9 rocket's first stage touched down on a ship about 200 miles off the Florida coast. "May need to increase size of rocket storage hangar."

The landing at sea was SpaceX's second in less than a month, and followed a first booster landing in December on a pad at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.

Last month's feat, after several failed attempts, showed that it was possible to land on an unpiloted "drone ship" bobbing in the ocean.

But expectations Friday were low. SpaceX repeatedly said success was unlikely, while Musk offered even odds.

The reason: The Falcon 9's first stage was returning to the ground "a lot faster and hotter than last time," Musk said, due to the mission's flight to a much higher orbit.

About 10 minutes after liftoff, cameras on the SpaceX ship named "Of Course I Still Love You" showed a brilliant flash as the booster entered the picture with several engines blazing.

Employees who had gathered to watch the launch at SpaceX headquarters near Los Angeles groaned, thinking the flash signaled the crash that many expected.

But moments later, after the flash faded and smoke cleared, the rocket surprisingly appeared upright on its four landing legs, engines flickering in the darkness over the "X" marking the center of the ship's deck.

The groans were replaced by a roar, then chants of "U.S.A.! U.S.A.!"

The accomplishment has even bigger implications than last month's for SpaceX's goals to recover and reuse rockets, which Musk believes is the key to cutting launch costs and even enabling human settlement of Mars someday.

Roughly half of SpaceX's launches fly trajectories for which only ocean landings are possible. If SpaceX couldn't land those missions flying to high orbits like Friday's  more than 20,000 miles up  then reusability's promise would be severely limited.

Now Musk's vision appears more achievable than ever  assuming the rockets return healthy enough to be launched again without major refurbishment, which still has yet to be proven.

After the landing, crews were expected to board the ship and weld steel shoes over the booster's landing legs to keep it from tipping over during the journey home.

The rocket stage should return to Port Canaveral within three or four days, if last month's recovery operation serves as a model. There a crane will offload the stage for trucking to SpaceX's KSC hangar, where it would join the two previously recovered stages.

The first of those is scheduled to depart this summer for display at SpaceX headquarters, but Musk wants to re-fly the second as soon as possible.

The landing excitement Friday again overshadowed the mission's main purpose: launching the JCSAT-14 satellite for Tokyo-based SKY Perfect JSAT, Asia's largest satellite operator with 16 now in orbit.

The more than $100 million satellite separated from the Falcon 9's upper stage 32 minutes after liftoff, on its way to an orbit 22,300 miles over the equator.

The spacecraft built by Space Systems Loral is expected to deliver high-definition TV and broadband Internet services for at least 15 years to parts of Asia, Russia and Oceania.

The launch was SpaceX's fourth launch this year and fifth since December, when it returned the Falcon 9 rocket to flight after a failure last June.

A Falcon 9 could launch another commercial satellite from Cape Canaveral later this month, setting up another ocean landing try. An International Space Station supply run tentatively planned in June may present the next opportunity to return a booster to land.

Contact Dean at 321-242-3668 or jdean@floridatoday.com. And follow on Twitter at @flatoday_jdean and on Facebook at facebook.com/jamesdeanspace.
State Sen. Joe Negron (left) said he supports Donald Trump (center) in his run for president. State Sen. Thad Altman has not endorsed a candidate yet. (FILE PHOTOS)

Two Republican state senators represent the bulk of Treasure Coast voters  but we shouldn't assume they're in lockstep on Donald Trump.

Their divergent views on the presumptive GOP presidential nominee illustrate lingering fractures within the party.

State Sen. Joe Negron, the soon-to-be president of the Florida Senate who previously endorsed Jeb Bush, is firmly on the Trump train. Ticket punched. Seat taken. No looking back.

"He won fair and square. His views represent the majority of our party," the Stuart Republican told me Wednesday. "He won an overwhelming victory in Florida. The majority of my supporters support Donald Trump, and he's our nominee, and I'm enthusiastically supporting him."

I asked Negron about a CNN poll released Wednesday that found Trump is viewed unfavorably by 64 percent of women; 73 percent of nonwhites; 70 percent of voters under 35; and 57 percent of moderates.

"Elections aren't decided in early May," Negron said. "They're decided in early November."

It's the same kind of response he gave in October, when I asked him about Jeb Bush's lagging poll numbers.

Negron's views on Trump stand in contrast with those of another Republican senator, Thad Altman, who represents parts of Indian River and Brevard counties.

"Right now I'm waiting until after the convention to make any commitment," Altman said Thursday, adding it was "somewhat presumptuous" to say Trump has a lock on the nomination.

"More people voted against him than for him, in the Republican party," Altman said.

He didn't dismiss Trump outright  but he wants to see his communication style evolve.

"I think a lot of what he says, he says tongue-in-cheek, and people misunderstand," Altman said. "He comes across crass."

"He's got to prove himself worthy, and if he doesn't, the delegates have a right to pick whoever they want," Altman continued.

Altman is not currently aboard the Trump train  but he's at the station platform, ready to ride if Trump becomes the nominee at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland in July.

Altman also supported Bush in the early months of the GOP primary, then shifted his support to U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio after Bush withdrew.

Negron pointed to three reasons he believes Trump would be a better president than former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democratic nominee: border security; an America first foreign policy; and support of trade deals that are good for American workers.

Gov. Rick Scott endorsed Donald Trump almost two months ago. Lt. Gov. Carlos Lopez-Cantera came around to a Trump nomination in recent days.

And U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan said Thursday he's "not ready."

It's going to be an interesting ride to Cleveland.

Eve Samples is opinion and audience engagement editor for Treasure Coast Newspapers. Contact her at 772-221-4217 or eve.samples@tcpalm.com. Follow her on Twitter @EveSamples.
Tim Zorc, commissioner for Indian River County District 3, and challengers Joe Earman and Chuck Kirby ponder a question during the May 2 debate at the Republican Club of Indian River Inc. (LAURENCE REISMAN/TREASURE COAST NEWSPAPERS)

It's always tough to beat an incumbent. And after watching three candidates for Indian River County Commission District 3 debate the other night, my mind hasn't changed.

Challengers Joe Earman and Chuck Kirby have great backgrounds and would represent the county well if they can beat incumbent Tim Zorc. A third challenger, Mark Rodolico, was at a hairdresser convention in Orlando.

Earman, a retired Indian River County Fire Rescue captain, is a fifth-generation Floridian whose family not only pioneered the county, but has served it in many ways.

Earman's grandfather was a banker and rancher, and chairman of the Florida Inland Navigation District, which keeps the Intracoastal Waterway navigable. There's even a Joe S. Earman Island Park in the waterway just north of Vero Beach.

The candidate's father owned a local oil company and served as the county's civil defense director and on the boards of the navigation district and local hospital.

Candidate Earman has done lots of volunteer work, too, from serving on the Little League board of directors to managing the Indian River County Fair.

Kirby is a lieutenant with the Indian River County Sheriff's Office. He's been there 25 years, in between stints with the U.S. Coast Guard.

Zorc, in his first term, has been active outside the office. Earman, though, isn't impressed by his fellow Vero Beach High School alumnus.

Monday night at the Republican Club of Indian River Inc., Earman knocked Zorc for spending $18,000 on out-of-county travel, for failing to get the County Commission to join the Indian River Lagoon Council and for agreeing to sue, not work with, Vero Beach to resolve issues related to high electric rates.

Earman and Kirby clearly disagree with the combative strategy the commission, including Zorc, has taken toward the city on the power issue.

"The answer is not to sue to city of Vero Beach," Earman said, suggesting the county work with the city and Indian River Shores to "go after the bad guys at FMPA (Florida Municipal Power Agency, which contracts with the city for about 35 percent of its power)."

Kirby cited the lack of local collaboration as the biggest problem in local politics.

"Because you have kind of a bulldog as (County Commission) chairman (Bob Solari)  nobody's willing to stand up against him," Kirby said. "I want to be the guy who stands up against Bob Solari, because I think most of the time he's wrong."

Zorc defended the county's strategy to save Vero electric ratepayers about $22 million a year by:

Arguing the county has a right not to renew its franchise agreement with the city.

Partnering with Indian River Shores, whose franchise also is expiring.

Pressing for state legislative reforms at FMPA, which is viewed as a roadblock to city voters' wishes to sell the electric utility to Florida Power & Light Co.

Zorc distanced himself from fellow commissioners on the lagoon council issue. Zorc at least twice tried to get commissioners to revisit their decision not to join the council, made up mostly of cities and counties along the lagoon. By working together, the governments hope to have a greater impact on preserving the lagoon.

But Zorc defended the commission's efforts to invest in projects, such as man-made marshes, that keep pollutants from entering the lagoon.

He also justified the travel expenses Earman cited, noting much of it was for new commissioner education. Other expenditures paid for trips to work on the electric, lagoon and All Aboard Florida issues.

Could Zorc have been more frugal? Certainly. He has spent more than other longtime commissioners. But challengers will need a better argument than the $18,000 in expenses. They'll have to sell themselves.

At the GOP debate, candidates were questioned about past and present union memberships. Earman was a former officer of the International Association of Firefighters local union and is supported by past co-workers and at least three fire union political committees.

"We're a brotherhood," Earman said of the firefighters, noting most are Republicans. "We're not the Teamsters; we're not the IBEW (International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers); we're not the UAW (United Auto Workers Union)."

Kirby is a member of the Teamsters, which represents sheriff's lieutenants. Without unions, he said, sheriffs would be able to fire officers for no reason.

Having sat on the commission for almost four years, Zorc has a knowledge advantage. It won't be easy for Earman, Kirby and Rodolico to catch up.

Differentiating themselves more from each other and the incumbent will be critical to their success.

Watch videos of the candidates from the May 2 forum.
State representatives Debbie Mayfield (left) and Ritch Workman. (FILE PHOTOS)

Mike Haridopolos' recent decision not to run for Florida Senate in the newly created district that encompasses Indian River County was disappointing. Not only do voters have one less choice, but the former Senate president's candidacy would have added even more political experience to the race.

It also would have added to the soap opera nature of the race, where the front-runners are state representatives Debbie Mayfield of Vero Beach, and Ritch Workman of Melbourne.

After all, how often do you get a candidate for office running against someone who introduced her to her husband?

The opening scene was a few years ago in Haridopolos' home. The former senator for Brevard and part of Indian River counties and his physician-wife, Stephanie, were holding a fundraiser. Among the Republican insiders there were state representatives Mayfield and Workman.

As Workman explained, he was hanging out with one of his best friends, Bob Scaringe. Scaringe, a prominent engineer and business owner from Brevard County, asked Workman if he knew the attractive woman nearby.

"Bob was immediately smitten with this woman," Workman said, adding his friend asked about Mayfield. "He asked me to set them up."

Workman said he later called Mayfield, who said she was not interested. Her husband, Stan, who preceded her as state representative, died of cancer in 2008.

"Bob continued to pester me," Workman said, noting he continued to ask his fellow House peer, Mayfield, to do him a favor and meet Scaringe. Workman described Scaringe as "one of the greatest men" he'd ever met.

Mayfield eventually acquiesced and agreed to meet Scaringe. They dated a while and on Oct. 17, the two wed in Brevard County.

Workman didn't get invited.

He said he was disappointed. Mayfield said she and her husband have large families and had to cap the size of the guest list.

So what's this have to do with a Senate campaign?

Mayfield and Workman were elected to the House in 2008, and can serve only eight years because of term limits. Like many term-limited House members, they aspired to serve in the Senate.

In July 2014, Workman filed to run for the Senate seat held by term-limited Thad Altman, R-Rockledge. Altman's Brevard-centric district included the northern part of Orchid Island and mainland Indian River County. In October 2015, legislators voted to change the Senate district to include all of Indian River County. On Nov. 17, Mayfield filed to run for the seat, saying she'd planned to run for Senate all along.

Until the 2015 redistricting, however, she could have remained in her Vero Beach home and run for the seat held by Joe Negron, R-Stuart, when he faced term limits in 2018. After the redistricting lumped in the Indian River seat with Brevard's, she decided she'd eventually move to Brevard to live with her new husband and get to know people there.

Neither Mayfield nor Scaringe think it's an issue she's running against the man who introduced the couple. Mayfield said she'd rather discuss issues. Scaringe wants to remain behind the scenes.

"Although I don't believe our personal relationship is any of your business or would be of interest to your readers, I will say that I am extremely proud of my beautiful, intelligent, and accomplished wife," he wrote in an email to me. "I'm grateful to have had the good fortune of meeting, falling in love with and marrying Debbie and have come to know firsthand why so many people in our community think so I highly of her."

Haridopolos and I must have similar news judgment.

"I think that's a classic story," the former senator said when I told him the high-profile couple got its start in his home. "It shows that anything is possible in politics."

Anything indeed.

How the Workman-Mayfield-Scaringe history will play out in the Senate race is anyone's guess.

Two things are fore sure:

Scaringe and his Mainstream Engineering Co., won't donate to Workman's Senate campaign the $2,000 they did to his 2010 House campaign. Workman is a master fundraiser, netting tens of thousands of dollars from special interests. Mayfield has loaned her campaign $200,000.

Lots of money in state races like this often leads to nasty campaigns just before the election. One can only hope discussion of issues and records will trump nasty attacks, from candidates or their supporters.

When this soap opera ends, hopefully residents of our region will end up with the best senator to serve their needs.

The players

Mike Haridopolos: The former Senate president hosted a GOP fundraiser at his Melbourne home, where Debbie Mayfields future husband reportedly first saw her. After careful consideration, he recently decided not to run to represent Florida Senate District 17.

Debbie Mayfield: The former banker was elected in 2008 to serve Indian River County in the Florida House shortly after the death of the four-term incumbent, her husband, Stan Mayfield. She is running to represent Florida Senate District 17.

Robert Scaringe: The highly educated owner of a Brevard County engineering company met his wife through Workman and married her in October.

Ritch Workman: A former Melbourne mortgage broker elected to the Florida House in 2008, he says he helped friend and campaign donor Robert Scaringe meet his future wife, Debbie Mayfield. He is disappointed he wasnt invited to the wedding. He is running to represent Florida Senate District 17.
Rendering of All Aboard Florida's brightline train. (CONTRIBUTED PHOTO/ALL ABOARD FLORIDA)

Our region's collective effort to stop All Aboard Florida has officially crossed over from the sublime to the ridiculous.

Ballard Partners, a lobbying group retained by Martin County, spearheaded passage of a law that will help  repeat, help!  the rail company expedite the state permitting process, according to an investigation by Treasure Coast Newspapers' reporter George Andreassi.

Martin County officials said there is no conflict of interest, because Ballard was instructed by the county in April 2015 not to lobby on its behalf with respect to All Aboard Florida. Ballard's primary focus for the county has been securing funds for water-quality projects.

Still, it's impossible to miss the obvious: The county has an ongoing business relationship with a lobbyist who has helped bring All Aboard Florida closer to reality. At the same time, Martin County has allocated $2.25 million of taxpayers' money to fight the rail project.

Indian River County has committed $2.7 million to the fight.

Truth, as they say, is stranger than fiction.

Those who are up in arms about this seeming conflict of interest should dial back their anger, admit their naivete and grasp the real lesson here.

First, there is no conflict of interest. There would be if Ballard worked both sides of the issue simultaneously  taking money from All Aboard Florida affiliates to champion the project while taking money from Martin County to oppose it.

Ballard did nothing of the kind. On this issue  i.e. All Aboard Florida  the lobbying firm worked for the rail company, not Martin County.

Second, it's naive to think Martin County's lobbyist should not be advocating for another client with respect to All Aboard Florida. Lobbyists are hired guns who care less about the issues than the money they can earn.

The All Aboard Florida project is anathema to many in our region because of the attendant headaches it will cause. To a lobbyist, it is simply a revenue opportunity.

Finally, let's recognize the main lesson in this story: All Aboard Florida can afford to hire the best and brightest to help facilitate its $3.1 billion Miami-to-Orlando rail project. Conversely, the counties are hamstrung by financial limitations.

Since 2011, All Aboard Florida affiliates have paid Ballard Partners $1.5 million, nearly six times the county's $261,668. Brian Ballard is widely known as one of the most powerful people in Tallahassee.

Bottom line: The side with the deepest pockets locked up Ballard and has put that relationship to good use.

It was never a fair fight.

Unfortunately, our elected officials  and their potential successors  persist in heading down the path of diminishing returns.

All nine candidates for Martin County Commission participated in a forum Monday night at the Blake Library in Stuart. When asked to state their positions on All Aboard Florida, each candidate pandered to voters, decrying the rail project and backing the county's legal fight.

Taxpayers' money is being wasted on a legal flight of fancy and commission candidates are marching in lockstep.

Ho hum.

Move along.

Nothing new here.

The dust-up over Ballard Partners masks a larger, recurring issue: Opponents of the rail project have been outmaneuvered by All Aboard Florida, which has both the financial resources and political connections to complete the project.

With Ballard's help, All Aboard Florida now is positioned to accelerate the approval of 17 permits from six state agencies.

Ironically, Martin County has its lobbyist to thank for that.
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By Editorial Board

PETULANT GOVERNORS: Florida Gov. Rick Scott and California Gov. Jerry Brown engaged in a public spat last week after Scott visited California to urge businesses to move to Florida to avoid the new $15 per hour wage floor in the Golden State.

Scott's administration also aired radio ads touting Florida's lower minimum wage, nonexistent state income tax and weaker regulations.

In a letter responding to Scott, Brown cited a 2015 report on how Florida could be decimated by climate change  "two words you won't even let state officials say," Brown wrote  and suggested Scott should be tending to this unfinished business in his own state rather than spending time trying to poach California businesses.

Both might have legitimate public policy points: Lower-wage states like Florida may be able to lure companies and jobs from states that hike the minimum wage, and climate change does pose a significant threat to Florida.

But must our leaders be so petulant?
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Medicare started off the year putting into action a program to encourage more doctors to discuss end-of-life and advance care plans with patients. While the details tend to focus on the hard choices on the far side of those arrangements, new and near-future technologies could preserve lifes simple pleasures on their front end.

End-of-life conversations are meant to cover more than the final days or weeks when many, or even all, of an individuals needs have to be fulfilled by others, often in an institutional setting.

Theres a growing movement to include in those discussions options for the elderly and infirm to age in place. For those looking to spend as much time as possible in their familiar home surroundings, technology has been playing an increasingly important role.

For example, tech tools can preserve familial bonds remotely, while ensuring that specialized care is a call or click away.

For those who are open to considering them, new technologies can be a critical component of end-of-life discussions, suggested Perry Price, CEO of Revation Systems.

Including these ideas into end-of-life conversations is critical for understanding the desires of a loved one, he told TechNewsWorld. It is important to know the preferences of how they want their assets or living environments to be either prolonged or changed.

Maintaining Connections

Living environments can play an important role not only in an individuals sense of comfort and well being, but also in life expectancy.

Social isolation can have an adverse impact on health, for example, and it has been associated with an increased likelihood of premature death, noted Jeff Krueger, CEO of Safe Homecare.

Thus, while technology provides very important tools to support the care needs of the aging baby boomer population, all stakeholders who are impacted  the senior and the support family  are well served by an integrated care plan availing the senior of technology advances and, critically, personal one-on-one interactive caregiver resources, he told TechNewsWorld.

Support Groups

While senior citizens may long for simpler times, many of them arent letting nostalgia be a roadblock to the information super highway and all of the smart things connected to it.

About 85 percent of respondents aged 50 years and older said in a recent Bask survey that technology was helping them live in their homes longer than they otherwise might be able to.

The vast majority of seniors and boomers in their homes  people over 50  are using technology to stay connected to their families, Bask CEO Jim Dunn told TechNewsWorld.

Technology was credited with helping about 68 percent of senior survey participants stay in contact with family members they werent able to visit in person, the company found.

So we looked at some different technologies, Dunn said. One of the fastest-growing trends for the 50-plus group is the adoption of mobile, smart mobile.

With regular operating system upgrades and the changes they bring, the adoption of mobile devices has introduced it own set of anxieties and frustrations for seniors. About 81 percent of the Bask surveys respondents indicated that they would use technology more often if they had someone to assist them.
Voters logging on to Facebook on Monday - May 9, 2016, Election Day - will see a megaphone message at the top of their Facebook News Feed, and will be able to click to share that they are voting with their friends

The use of the megaphone is a product of Facebook and COMELECs partnership to increase participation and social media engagement in this years elections

. By clicking the button people can highlight their status as a voter to their Facebook friends, without specifying who they voted for.This is the first Election Day 'I'm a Voter' button in the Philippines.. Facebook's Election Day megaphone has been previously used in countries such as the UK, Taiwan, Spain, and Singapore for their respective elections."Facebook is THE destination for authentic conversation about politics. Its the best  and most popular  place for citizens to learn about candidates, for friends to debate political issues, and for candidates to reach voters. Politics is huge on Facebook, and with over 190 million Facebook interactions on the Philippines elections by more than 17 million Filipinos, the Philippines has been one of the most engaged elections globally on Facebook. Thats why were rolling out the 'I'm a Voter' button  to give Filipinos a chance to share they theyre taking part with friends and family  and encourage others to do the same," shared, Head of APAC Public Policy at Facebook.
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Apple is looking to gain a stronger foothold in businesses. The company just signed a new deal with SAP that will see the German accounting software giant building hundreds of apps tailored for Apple's mobile devices like the iPhone and iPad. The announcement comes almost two years after Apple made a similar deal with IBM.

A big part of the partnership will be around the SAP HANA platform, the company's system of relational databases and one of its flagship products. In a nutshell, the two will release a SDK by the end of the year to let SAP customers and consultants write native apps for Apple devices that can access core data and business processes on SAP's platform while also taking advantage of features like Touch ID, Location Services, and Notifications.

The two will also collaborate on setting up technology training centers in Palo Alto, California; Bangalore, India; and at its Walldorf, Germany, headquarters.

Apple and IBM's partnership reached the 100 app milestone by the end of last year covering verticals including government, healthcare, telecommunications, insurance and more. With SAP's huge presence in the enterprise market Apple is hoping to even more of this increasingly segment at a time when its once blockbuster growth is slowing down.
Microsoft is making it easier for developers to sell apps to businesses and educational institutions running Windows 10 devices. Starting today, the company is enabling the option to sell paid apps in volume through Windows Store for Business, simplifying the process of managing and distributing Windows apps across an organization.

Microsoft says small to medium businesses alone spend roughly $70 billion annually on desktop software, applications, and utilities. That's a big market to tap into, so long as you're in one of the 35 markets where Windows Store for Business is available.

The revenue split for volume discounted apps will work in the same way as apps purchased by consumers: developers take home 70% or 80% if sales exceed $25,000 in monthly revenue and Microsoft takes the remaining 20% or 30%.

Purchasing apps in volume is only available to those businesses who have bought and installed Windows 10 Enterprise onto their computers and tablets.

Microsoft says this is only the first of a few new features it plans to launch for Windows Store for Business. Future updates will include invoicing, volume discounts, organizational in-app purchases and additional payment methods besides credit cards.
Throughout his life and career, Prince Rogers Nelson pretty much maintained a clean and healthy lifestyle. Compared to many of his contemporaries who fell victim to alcohol and substance abuse, the pop superstar deliberately tried to stay away from things that could get in the way of his work.

However, as more details about Prince's death are beginning to be uncovered, it appears that he kept his battle with painkiller pill addiction a secret even to his closest friends.

Just before Prince passed away, his friends had arranged for him to receive medical help from pill addiction specialist Dr. Howard Kornfeld, but the intervention may have come too late for the music icon.

According to Kornfeld's lawyer, William J. Mauzy, the doctor had sent his son Andrew to meet Prince at his Minnesota home in order to talk about his treatment plan. Andrew was one of those who found the musician lifeless in the elevator, and he promptly called 911.

Emergency responders tried to revive Prince but ultimately weren't able to do so. He died at the age of 57.

While investigators are still in the middle of finding more information about Prince's death, there is growing evidence that suggest he had indeed developed a serious addiction to painkiller medication, something that contradicts what people knew about the pop superstar.

Many of those close to Prince have even insisted in recent days that they never saw him take any pills, particularly prescription medication. Some of them, however, were aware that he underwent hip surgery a few years ago.

Prince's friends became even more worried about his health when he was rushed to a hospital in April after becoming unresponsive during a flight. Prince told his friends that he was all right following the incident. His publicist said that the musician only had the flu.

Mauzy said that on the morning when Prince was found dead, Kornfeld called a colleague in the Minneapolis area to have him check up on the musician so that they can assess his status. He pointed out that Kornfeld's plan was to stabilize Prince's health and convince him to seek further medical help at the doctor's treatment center in California.

Mauzy added that Kornfeld treated it as a lifesaving mission.

A person who knew Prince but had requested to stay anonymous revealed that the pop superstar had been taking pain medication for his ailment for several years until he finally decided to get hip surgery a few years back. He said that Prince was prescribed to take more painkillers following the operation.

Chief Deputy Jason Kamerud from the Carver County Sheriff's Office said that investigators assigned to the case are already looking into the likelihood that Prince had overdosed on painkillers, among other possible reasons of his death. Kamerud, however, declined to comment on the statements provided by Kornfeld's legal counsel.

The sheriff's office said it did not believe that murder or suicide was the cause of the pop superstar's death.

The U.S. Attorney's Office and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) said that they were also joining the investigation.

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For years, scientists have tried to understand how newborn babies are able to interact with other people. It has long been believed that infants learn to imitate the facial expressions, hand gestures, or even vocal sounds of grownups as early as the first few weeks following their birth.

A new study featured in the journal Current Biology, however, suggests that infants are not the ones who do the imitating but rather the grownups themselves.

Developmental psychologist Virginia Slaughter and her colleagues at the University of Queensland in Australia examined how 1, 3, 6 and 9-week-old infants respond to various gestures by adults.

The babies were shown each gesture from grownups for 60 seconds after which the researchers documented the children's response. The team made sure that the infants were quiet, alert and engaged throughout the sessions so that they won't get confused by the gestures.

The researchers found no evidence that would suggest the infants imitated any of the gestures shown to them at any point.

Slaughter said that older babies have been shown to have the ability to imitate grownups, but based on their findings it would appear that this skill is learned by the children as they continue to develop.

She explained that the adults are the ones who mimic the gestures of babies likely as a way to teach them how to behave.

By impersonating the infants' behavior, grownups are able to set up some form of reciprocal interaction, which then leads to imitation. However, instead of having the babies copy the actions of their parents, Slaughter said it is the adults who imitate the children's behavior.

Slaughter and her colleagues' findings are expected to create a major impact on the area of child development.

Cheryl Dissanayake, a developmental psychologist at La Trobe University, called the new research a "game changer."

"None of the studies to date have had this many children or this many gestures included within a strong experimental paradigm," Dissanayake said.

She added that the paper was the first of its kind to investigate imitation in newborn infants.

Photo: Sami Keinanen | Flickr

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Facebook was unsuccessful in shoving a dagger in a lawsuit that alleges the company violated user privacy when it introduced Tag Suggestion system, which auto-tags users on photos. The case will move forward, now that a federal judge in San Francisco has thrown out Facebook's motion to dismiss it.

Facebook had asserted that the litigants failed to present a valid claim under the Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA) established by the state of Illinois, where the lawsuit was raised before plaintiffs agreed to transfer the case to California.

California is Facebook's venue of choice because a provision in the company's user agreement asserts that it is protected by the said state's choice-of-law clause, which specifically bars users from using Illinois statutes to sue.

U.S. District Judge James Donato sided with the plaintiffs on both points. Illinois law applies, despite the case being transferred to California, and that the filed claim under Illinois' BIPA is a legitimate one.

Facebook's motion to dismiss the case on the grounds that the BIPA definitions for "biometric information" and "biometric identifier" excludes pictures and data extracted from photos.

"The Court accepts as true plaintiffs' allegations that Facebook's face recognition technology involves a scan of face geometry that was done without plaintiffs' consent," the judge wrote. "Consequently, they have stated a plausible claim for relief under BIPA."

The Tag Suggestions was trumpeted by Facebook as a tool to help users tag one another in pictures on the company's social network. The system learns to recognize an individual's face and stores what it has learned, so that it can spot a person next time he or she is in an uploaded photo.

With 1.65 billion people actively use Facebook, the federal judge said that the company has "secretly amassed the world's largest privately held database of consumer biometric data." The database would have names, life stories, personal contacts and the ability to match faces to that information and more.

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The high-end Sony Xperia X Performance might be headed to the UK after all, as Sony now sheds some light on the matter.

Sony unveiled its new Xperia X line of smartphones back in February at the MWC 2016, and the Xperia X and XA went up for preorder in Europe the same month. At the time, it seemed like the more advanced Xperia X Performance was off the menu for Europe.

More recently, Tech Times reported that the Xperia X would hit the UK on May 20, followed by the Xperia XA on June 10, while the X Performance was still MIA. Sony firmly said it would not release the higher-end model in the UK nor Germany, but it might reverse its decision.

Not too long ago, the Xperia X Performance briefly appeared on Sony's UK website, sparking rumors of an imminent release. That listing was apparently accidental, but there's still hope. In a new statement to Recombu, Sony now says that the Xperia X Performance might hit the UK after all, just not through official channels.

"The Xperia X Performance was published on the Sony Mobile GB website in error and will not be available to buy SIM free from our Sony E-Shop," says Sony. "It may however be available in the UK in limited numbers via select distribution partners."

This means that the Sony Xperia X Performance will not be available for purchase in the UK via the Sony Mobile Shop, but third-party retailers or various carriers could offer the handset.

When it comes to a timeline for the release, Recombu says that a launch is slated for July 4. Sony has yet to disclose the names of the retail partners set to offer the Xperia X Performance, and it also remains unclear just how much the smartphone will cost in the UK. In the Eurozone, the smartphone starts at 699, which would translate to roughly 550 or nearly $800.

That's a steep price to pay, and a UK premium might inflate that price tag even further. Without official pricing details from Sony or its partners, however, it's just speculation for now.

We'll keep you up to date as soon as Sony releases more information, so stay tuned. In the meantime, check out the video below to get a better idea of what the Xperia X Performance brings to the table.

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Microsoft has a win-win offer for both developers and businesses using Windows software.

Currently, there are about 300 million devices out in the wild running Windows 10, and Microsoft wants to better connect developers to businesses.

Today, the company announced that developers will be able to sell their apps in volume to businesses and educational institutions running Windows 10.

Besides the many features already provided for in Windows 10, organizations can purchase the apps they need to run their businesses via the Windows Store for Business. This provides an easier way for business owners to access Windows apps and distribute them across their workforce on devices running Microsoft's Windows 10 operating system.

In addition, Windows Store for Business also lets businesses get volume discounts on apps they purchase. However, it is only available to those businesses who have bought and installed Windows 10 Enterprise onto their computers and tablets.

Because businesses can now purchase apps through the Windows Store for Business and get those apps at a discount when bought in bulk, the developers who make those very apps have a new storefront to tap into and make more sales. It's not clear though just how discounted prices are broken down between Microsoft and the developers who create apps.

Previously, the Windows Store for Business only offered free applications, but now that Microsoft has opened it up for developers to make profits and businesses to make savings, the company is planning on offering even more purchase options. In the future, Microsoft may offer invoicing, volume discounts and organizational in-app purchases too.

By Microsoft's numbers, small to medium sized businesses spend about $70 billion every year on Windows desktop software, apps and utilities. That's the market the company is pitching to developers if they're in a supported country.

That seems to be the only downside in this win-win situation between developers and businesses. Developers must be from one of the 35 countries being supported at the moment for Microsoft's latest enterprise initiative.

Some of the supported countries include (in alphabetical order): Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Romania, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK, the U.S. and others.

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Scientists have developed a tool to accurately measure lung function through a simple phone call.

According to Shwetak Patel, Washington Research Foundation Endowed Professor of Computer Science & Engineering and Electrical Engineering at the University of Washington, SpiroCall is designed to run on all types of phones, using the standard phone channel instead of over the Internet in order to reach people in developing countries who suffer from asthma, cystic fibrosis or other chronic lung diseases.

"We wanted to be able to measure lung function on any type of phone you might encounter around the world  smartphones, dumb phones, landlines, pay phones," Patel said. "With SpiroCall, you can call a 1-800 number, blow into the phone and use the telephone network to test your lung function."

Lead researcher Mayank Goel says patients should take a deep breath and exhale as hard and fast as possible. The phone then detects sound and pressure, and sends the data to a central server, which uses machine-learning algorithms to become standard measures of lung function.

"People have to manage chronic lung diseases for their entire lives," Goel said. "So there's a real need to have a device that allows patients to accurately monitor their condition at home without having to constantly visit a medical clinic, which in some places requires hours or days of travel."

The project started out in 2012 when it was only a smartphone app called SpiroSmart.

However, since then, the team has taken data from over 4,000 patients in the U.S., India and Bangladesh.

Even though the audio quality is not of the highest quality on a call, the system combines multiple regression algorithms to provide reliable estimates, showing results within 6.2 percent compared with results of clinical spirometers used in hospitals and doctors' offices. This means SpiroCall meets the standards of the medical community.

"The variation in phone/mic quality definitely affects the performance of the system, but we perform regular diagnostic tests," Goel told TechCrunch.

The team's medical device has yet to be approved and cleared by the FDA before it can be delivered worldwide.

"Our current clinical trials are laying the groundwork for our FDA 510(k) clearance. We expect to start the formal data collection for the clearance later this year," Goel said. "There is a significant amount of commercial interest around the technology in terms of licensing as well as collaboration."

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This is no joke! International wire agency Reuters quotes security expert Alex Holden of Hold Security to suggest that a whopping 273 million online accounts have been compromised. Yes! You read it right it is 273.3 million emails.

The mail hacking could result in usernames and passwords of millions of people getting exposed to malicious attacks. The data breach reportedly accounts for 57 million accounts of Russian email provider Mail.ru, 40 million from Yahoo mail, 33 million Hotmail accounts and 24 million Gmail accounts.

Since there is no way of guessing whether your email doesnt figure in one of these lists, we suggest you take a minute and change all your passwords.

The breach also accounts for several thousand German and Chinese email addresses as well as username/ password combinations that could belong to employees from the banking, manufacturing and retail companies headquartered in the United States.

The report quotes Hold Security officials to state that they stumbled upon this data directly from the hacker, who was selling it for an absurdly low figure of less than a dollar. The agency managed to convince the hacker to part with the data, and have since been informing companies about the security breach.

Of course, the security breach is not massive when juxtaposed against the total number of existing email users in the world. It may be recalled that Google had recently announced that over a billion people were using their mail service while Yahoo and Hotmail too have a large share of email users.

It is a different matter that an anonymous hacker could so easily breach the security framework and compromise such a large number of emails at one shot. One can only shudder when we think of the consequences of a similar attack, more vicious and more concerted by one of the many terror outfits in the world.

At Techtree, we suggest that if you are among those who find avoid changing passwords regularly due to lack of time or sheer laziness, this could be one occasion that merits a bit of action on that front.

[Image Credit: ComputerWorld.com]

Hack, Gmail, Email, Passwords
Cupertino Mayor slams Apple, says it is abusing the city by not paying taxes

Apple has found itself in yet another dispute once again. This time it is the mayor of the city, Barry Chang who has accused the tech giant of not pulling its weight when it comes to paying taxes and not giving back to the community as much as it should.

In an interview with The Guardian, Chang talks about how Apple has turned to unfair practices to avoid paying taxes and isnt helping with the citys failing infrastructure and lack of funding for public projects. Also, Silicon Valleys boom has strong effects on surrounding cities in California, particularly in terms of traffic congestion and affordable housing.

Chang went as far as blasting Apple for turning to offshore accounts to dodge taxes. Apple paid $9.2 million in tax revenue from 2012 to 2013, which amounts to 18 percent of Cupertinos general fund budget. According to Citizens for Tax Justice, Apple protects itself from paying about 35 percent of the federal corporate tax rate by storing cash in offshore shell accounts.

Theyre making profit, and they should share the responsibility for our city, but they wont, Chang said. They abuse us. Apple is not wiling to pay a dime.

Im not going to back down. Raising taxes is not popular, but Im not afraid. We are the center of technology, and our public transit system is old and embarrassing. And the politicians have no backbone. They get scared.

Chang told The Guardian he lately proposed that Apple should give the city $100 million to improve the infrastructure in Cupertino. However, he failed to get even a single yes vote from the three council members.

The mayor then went on to say that these council members dont want to offend Apple, which is certainly among the biggest companies headquartered in the city.

Apple talks to them, and they wont vote against Apple, he said. This is the fact.

At one council meeting, a few of the local citizens protested due to lack of funding for projects, Chang added. The residents even crumpled up meeting agenda papers and threw them.

They abuse us, he said, referring to how Apple is conducting its business in the city.

However, a report from Fortune says that Apple reiterated that it is, in fact, the biggest taxpayer in the city, adding the company is paying millions of dollars to the city every year. According to The Verge, the company claimed that it pays tens of millions of dollars in additional sales and property taxes to the city of Cupertino.

Also, the completion of its new Spaceship campus also known as Apple Campus 2 will generate billions of dollars for local businesses. The campus is expected to house 12,000 employees and will cover 2.8 million square feet of office space in the area. It is expected to open in 2017. Apart from building sidewalk and street improvements, it is also putting up a sound wall in an effort to reduce noise along the northern part of Interstate 280.

On the other hand, Chang responded on the city of Cupertino website citing several factual errors reported in a recent story by The Guardian.

I was shocked and dismayed to see a recent article quoting me with words I never used and describing situations that never happened, said Cupertino Mayor Barry Chang.

I feel very strongly about combating traffic, said Mayor Chang. The mayor has previously promoted the idea that large companies that contribute to traffic problems should also contribute to traffic solutions. The Mayor was emphatic that, other situations reported in the article absolutely have no bearing on anything that I may have said or anything that has happened in this community.

The reporter clearly misunderstood. My concerns and the concerns of this city council are well documented.
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.
Her murder occurs amid extremely violent attacks against the residents of Molleturo who are resisting illegal and legal mining. | Read More
After an attack that left two police officers injured, Jair Bolsonaro's ally Roberto Jefferson barricaded himself in his residence on Sunday. | Read More
Vietnamese don ao dai to celebrate the recognition of Ao Dai Day at California Senate office. Photo courtesy of Jenny Do Facebook page

California, the US state with a large Vietnamese community, has won a lot of hearts after officially choosing May 15 as the day for ao dai.

Vietnamese American Janet Nguyen and her co-senators Jim Beall and Richard Pan proposed a resolution to honor the Vietnamese traditional dress.

The resolution said that by celebrating the dress, which is an icon of Vietnam, Vietnamese people in California and across the US can contribute to the US's diverse culture.

A statement from the state senate said Nguyen is the first person to don ao dai in office.

Vietnamese-Americans have been holding their Ao Dai Festival every two years. This year's event will be held in San Jose, on May 15.

There are more than 1.7 million people of Vietnamese origin living in the US, and around half of them in California.
Skepticism and criticism have built up soon after a Vietnamese company unveiled a US$1.1-billion plan to capitalize on the Red River, by developing a crammed network of six new power plants and seven ports along the waterway artery of the northern region.

The ambitious plan proposed by a unit of real estate conglomerate ThaiGroup, which also involves dredging half of the 556-kilometer river to ease movement, has been submitted to the government.

So far the Ministry of Planning and Investment has backed the plan, but many government agencies are concerned about its environmental impacts and feasibility, local media reported.

The project aims to transform the river, which runs from Lao Cai Province down to Nam Dinh Province, into a complete transport system. What is controversial is the proposed network of ports and hydropower plants.

The company plans to build six hydropower plants in the upper reaches of the river, between Phu Tho and Lao Cai Province, with a combined capacity 228 megawatts.

Seven ports will be also built in Hanoi, Lao Cai, Phu Tho and Yen Bai.

According to the plan, 70 percent of the projected cost will be covered by loans, and construction will be started this year and finished in 2021, if the company acquires the approval.

The Ministry of Finance questioned the developer's financial capacity, saying with its registered capital of VND1.2 trillion, it will not be able to fund 30 percent of the project by itself.

Environmental concerns

Headquartered in Hanoi, ThaiGroup recently made local headlines after striking a $165-million deal with Park Hyatt to develop a hotel in Hanoi. Its subsidiary Xuan Thien, which will handle the development, is best known for hydropower and cement projects in Africa.

The Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment said Xuan Thien needs to submit a detailed report on environmental impact assessment in details and how it is going to prevent or reduce possible impacts.

Several critics have too voiced their concerns about the project's negative effects on the ecosystem and livelihoods. Xuan Thien reportedly claimed it will have "almost no impact" on the Red River and only directly affect around 600 people in Lao Cai and Yen Bai.

Nguyen Canh Dinh, former senior official managing water and public water works in Vietnam, told Tuoi Tre newspaper that while the project's benefits are unclear, it will "surely" affect the Red River and its ecosystem.

He urged the government and the investor to take cautions with the project, especially its environmental impacts.

The Vietnamese government is looking to reduce the country's dependence on hydropower, following claims of mismanagement at many local plants and their environmental damages.

Since 2012, hundreds of existing and planned hydropower plants, mostly of medium and small size, have been reviewed. The government scrapped nearly 420 proposed plants at the end of 2013. The total generation capacity of the country is expected to reach 42,300 MW this year. Hydropower plants account for 30 percent, according to media reports. Speaking at the government's press conference that same day, Nguyen Xuan Tu, a senior official with the Ministry of Planning and Investment, confirmed that the project will have "certain effects" on the environment. Speaking at the government's press conference that same day, Nguyen Xuan Tu, a senior official with the Ministry of Planning and Investment, confirmed that the project will have "certain effects" on the environment.

However, he said, the investor will have to conduct further studies on the project, if receiving the government's approval.

Only after relevant ministries review and approve detailed reports on its feasibility and impacts, the investor can launch its construction work, according to Tu.

"We support initiatives, but it does not mean any proposal will be approved. Every investment project has to be scrutinized in accordance with the law," he said.
U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Daniel Russel. Photo: Reuters

Assistant Secretary for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Daniel Russel will travel to Hanoi on May 9-10 during a trip to three Southeast Asian nations, according to the U.S. Department of State.

He will meet with senior Vietnamese officials to discuss U.S.-Vietnam bilateral relations, the South China Sea, and ASEAN issues, a DoS media note said.

Russel's seven-day trip will begin today with the first stop being Laos, where he is expected to take part in the U.S.-Lao Comprehensive Bilateral Dialogue, as well as the Lower Mekong Initiative, Friends of the Lower Mekong, East Asia Summit, and ASEAN Regional Forum.

He will leave Laos for Vietnam on May 9.

He will travel to Malaysia, the last leg of his trip, on May 11, to attend the 29th ASEAN-U.S. Dialogue.

He will also meet with senior Malaysian officials to discuss bilateral issues including security cooperation and TPP implementation, according to the media note.
The basic salary in Vietnam will be increased by VND100,000 in July next year

Vietnamese legislators have approved a government plan to delay the annual salary raise for next year by two months and scale down the increase in an effort to avoid straining an already stretched state budget.

The basic salary, which is used to calculate the actual income for state employees and retirees, will be increased by VND100,000 (US$4.8) beginning July 2013, news website VnExpress reported Saturday, citing a budget plan for next year passed by 90 percent of the National Assembly the same day.

The salary was originally set to rise 23 percent to VND1.3 million in May, from the current VND1.05 million. The government said that would require a spending of some VND60 trillion ($2.9 billion) from the state budget next year, which it described as a very tough ask.

There was a time the government even proposed no salary increase at all for next year.

However, amid strong criticism from legislators and state employees, it suggested a smaller increase and a two-month delay to slash the extra spending estimate to VND20.7 trillion, or a 65 percent cut from the original plan.

Around 8.3 million people in Vietnam will receive the raise.

The newly approved budget spending plan also requires government agencies to tighten spending on ceremonies, new cars and overseas trips.

Legislators have asked the government to keep its budget deficit at VND162 triillion ($7.84 billion) next year, or 4.8 percent of the country's gross domestic product.

Even if the government can collect more revenues than the target of VND816 trillion, it should use the extra money to narrow the budget shortfall instead of increasing spending, they said.

Under the budget plan, the government is allowed to issue up to VND60 trillion ($2.9 billion) worth of bonds next year to fund state projects.

Vietnamese legislators have recently criticized the government for lax fiscal discipline after the budget deficit in the first ten months exceeded the annual target for 2012.

The deficit, as of mid-October, was estimated at VND155 trillion ($7.4 billion) by the General Statistics Office. That is 10.7 percent higher than the target for the whole year approved by the National Assembly.
A fishing boat with 11 crew members has been attacked and robbed by a Chinese ship while fishing near Hoang Sa (Paracel) Islands, the owner told local media.

Vo Quang Thai from the central province of Quang Nam said he and his crew were fishing in Vietnamese waters on Sunday when the Chinese vessel approached them and managed to control everyone onboard.

They then took food and fuel and destroyed fishing nets, Thai said.

The crew reported the incident to local coast guards after that. Their boat arrived at Ky Ha Port late Monday.

Local authorities are looking into the case.

Chinese ships have been condemned after harassing and attacking many Vietnamese fishing boats in recent years.

On January 1, a Chinese vessel rammed and sank a Vietnamese fishing boat around 40 nautical miles east of Con Co Island off Quang Tri Province.

The foreign vessel left even as 10 Vietnamese fishermen reportedly pleaded for help. They struggled for a while before other fishing boats arrived and rescued them.

Vietnam has indisputable sovereignty over Hoang Sa and Truong Sa archipelagos, Foreign Ministrys spokesperson Le Hai Binh says. Photo: Anh Dan Vietnam has reiterated its sovereignty over Hoang Sa and Truong Sa (Spratly) Islands in the East Sea, known internationally as South China Sea.

On February 25, Foreign Ministrys spokesperson Le Hai Binh called on relevant sides to take responsible and constructive actions in maintaining peace and stability in the region.

Binh was responding to media questions on Vietnams response to Chinas deployment of warplanes to Phu Lam (Woody) Island in Hoang Sa and its construction of a high frequency radar facility in Truong Sa, as well as reports that the US may put mobile artillery weapons in the East Sea.

Vietnam has indisputable sovereignty over Hoang Sa and Truong Sa archipelagos, he said.
Many Vietnamese workers in Taiwan ran away from their legal employers to find jobs that pay better. File photo

Police in Taiwan are holding 14 Vietnamese for questioning after they were caught working illegally.

The Vietnamese were caught with 20 other foreigners, all dressed up as tourists, on a tour bus in Chiayi in southern Taiwan on Thursday.

Initial investigation found they just finished picking tea in a mountainous area and were taking the bus to work in another area in the northwest, Taiwans Central News Agency reported.

Police said the Vietnamese nationals had run away from their legal employers earlier.

They suspected that the workers, including 12 Indonesians and eight whose nationalities were not identified, were part of an illegal labor ring.

They might have involved in illegal logging as well, police said.

There are around 164,000 Vietnamese working in Taiwan, nearly 30 percent of the total number of Vietnams overseas workers.

It is not rare for Vietnamese workers to run away from their employers to find other jobs. Many need to pay off the expensive fee charged by Vietnamese labor export companies  around US$7,000 a person.

Some 1,100 Vietnamese workers in Taiwan broke their contracts every month in 2015, almost twice the monthly average in 2014, according to official data.

Last month, five Vietnamese who ran away from their legal jobs in Taiwan were also caught transporting illegal timber from a mountainous area.
Five Vietnamese are facing charges in Taiwan after they were caught transporting illegal timber from a mountainous area.

Taiwans Central News Agency cited police as saying that they detected two suspicious vehicles on Tuesday night but could only stop one of them, with five Vietnamese and two Taiwanese men on board.

The vehicle was carrying more than 100 kilograms of Formosan cypress, an aromatic and insect-resistant wood with high economic value, and a chainsaw.

Two Taiwanese told the police they did not know the wood was illegal and they were just delivering it to someone.

Initial report found the Vietnamese nationals ran away from their legal employers in Taiwan earlier.

They can be prosecuted for theft and violations under Taiwans Forestry Act, according to the report.

There are around 164,000 Vietnamese working in Taiwan, nearly 30 percent of the countrys overseas workforce.

But there has been a high rate of them running away from their employers to find jobs that pay better to help them pay off the expensive fee charged by Vietnamese labor export companies  around US$7,000 a person.

Some 1,100 Vietnamese workers in Taiwan broke their contracts every month in 2015, almost twice the monthly average in 2014, according to official data.
John Kasich to quit U.S. Republican presidential race: report

2016-05-06 09:27

WASHINGTON, May 4 (Xinhua) -- U.S. Ohio state governor John Kasich is suspending his bid for the White House, leaving New York billionaire Donald Trump uncontested in the Republican presidential race, multi networks reported on Wednesday.

A Kasich spokesman said the underdog hopeful will make a formal statement in his home state at 5 p.m. eastern time.

Kasich was supposed to speak with reporters at the Dulles airport in Virginia Wednesday morning but didn't show up. His campaign later confirmed he was not going to Dulles, the Fox News reported.

Texas senator Ted Cruz dropped out of the race Tuesday night after having finished a distant second in the crucial Indiana primary. Kasich placed last in the contest.

Both of Cruz and Kasich were already "mathematically dead" in the quest for a majority of delegates before the Indiana primary in which their strategy to join forces to deny Trump the nomination was also proved in vain.

Kasich has won just one state during the race so far-- his home state of Ohio. He trailed Trump by some 900 delegates.
The fishing boat of Pham Phu Thanh and his crew before sailing and then getting sunk. Photo: Nguyen Chung

Fishermen in the central province of Quang Nam said their boat was rammed and sunk by a Chinese coast guard ship while they were fishing near the islands of Hoang Sa (Paracels) Tuesday night.

Captain Pham Phu Thanh, 50, told local authorities that his boat with four people aboard was around 370 nautical miles from Da Nang at around 11 p.m. when the Chinese ship attacked it.

Thanh said after his boat sank, he and the other three jumped into the sea.

Thirty other members of the crew who were fishing close by on small coracles were safe, the captain added.

Several hours after the Chinese vessel left, another Vietnamese fishing boat near the site approached and rescued the whole team of 34. A rescue ship arrived soon later.

The crew was taken home late on Thursday.

Authorities said they are investigating the incident.

China has claimed Vietnams Hoang Sa and Truong Sa (Spratly) archipelagos as its own.

Chinese fishing boats and coast guard ships have reportedly attacked and harassed Vietnamese fishermen many times.
Vietnam's central and southern regions will continue suffering from severe drought and saltwater intrusion through April, experts said in a forum in Hanoi on march 28, 2016. Photo: Le Hoang Vu

Drought and saltwater intrusion in Vietnams southern and central regions will persist through April, according to experts.

Nguyen Dang Quang, a drought expert at the National Center for Hydro-Meteorological Forecasting, said at a Monday forum in Hanoi that the intense El Nino phenomenon from last year will last for two more months.

Temperatures in the central and southern Vietnam in April and May will be around one degree Celsius higher than the average in recent years.

April will be an extremely dangerous time for drought and saltwater intrusion in the regions, Quang said, as cited by Tuoi Tre newspaper.

Experts at the conference said salinization of the Tien and Hau Rivers, the main tributaries of the Mekong River, will hit an alarmingly high level.

Nearly half of the 2.2 million hectares (5.4 million acres) of arable land in the Mekong Delta had been attacked by saltwater and hundreds of thousands of locals are suffering from water scarcity.

Economic impacts

Bui Quang Vinh, Minister of Investment and Planning, said at a government meeting last Saturday that the damage to agriculture activities may drag economic growth this year to 5.45 percent, from 6.68 percent in 2015.

A report from the Southern Center for Hydro-Meteorological Forecasting said in the southern region the mercury will rise to 39 degrees in April and early May.

Ho Chi Minh City will be very sunny during April. Photo: Pham Huu

The report said the region will stay hot and dry until rain arrives in late May.

Monsoon flood is considered a bliss to the delta farmers as it washes up salinity from the dry season and freshens up fields for the next crops. But this year it will come around several months later than usual, possibly in October.

Last year the water level in the region dropped to the lowest in history amid the intense El Nino.
A cruise ship in Ha Long Bay carrying 36 foreign tourists went up in flames on Friday, forcing many to jump into the water to avoid getting burnt.

The vessel registered in Quang Ninh Province reportedly caught fire at around 11 a.m. when it was approaching a port after spending the previous night cruising around the bay.

A speed boat was quickly sent over to rescue the tourists.

All 36 passengers and a Vietnamese guide were safe. Some suffered scratches and minor injuries. The tourists came from various countries, including France, South Korea and the UK. The wooden ship, which was built in 2011, sank soon after the fire was put out at 11:45 a.m. The wooden ship, which was built in 2011, sank soon after the fire was put out at 11:45 a.m.

A source told Thanh Nien a gas leak in the kitchen might have caused the fire.

Fire safety has long been a concern among tourists on cruise trips in Ha Long Bay, a world-renowned destination and beloved by many foreigners. Incidents like this keep happening, even after officials reportedly stepped up inspection.

Local authorities have recently announced plans to replace all wooden boats and ships with metal vessels in the next five years.

A cruise ship catches fire in Ha Long Bay at 11 a.m. on May 6. Photos: Le Trung Dung

Many tourists jump off as the fire spreads quickly.

A man urges the passengers to jump.

The incident draws a big crowd.

Firefighters try to put out the fire.

The flames engulf the entire boat.
A security officer at Cam Ranh International Airport in central Vietnam has been fined VND10 million (US$450) for hitting a Chinese passenger on Monday.

Inspectors from the Civil Aviation Administration of Vietnam imposed the penalty on Thursday after a disciplinary board concluding that Nguyen Van Thai, a 30-year-old screening officer, hit the Chinese man on the back during a chaotic scene.

The airports management had earlier suspended Thai.

Thai told Tuoi Tre earlier that his action was impulsive as he saw the passenger tried to grasp the work tool from one of his colleagues.

He said he was also angry after another Chinese passenger accused the scanning team of stealing a cell phone, which was later found to be taken by the passengers child.

Phan Le Hoan, the airports director, said there was a chaos at the airport on Monday night after a Vietnam Airlines flight to China was delayed.

A number of Chinese passengers were upset after waiting for three hours since 5 p.m. and they started screaming, jumping onto the seats in the waiting area and causing disorder, Hoan said.

Camera footage showed Thai hit the passenger after the man refused to sit down.

Earlier several Chinese websites said some Chinese passengers were beaten and demanded to pay bribes at the Cam Ranh International Airport on Monday.

The reports said many Chinese passengers were not satisfied with the attitude and behavior of the airport staff over the delay of around five hours.

But Hoan said there was no beating other than one passenger hit by Thai.

Immigration officers also dismissed the bribery accusations.

There has been growing interest for the beach town of Nha Trang, 36 kilometers to the north of Cam Ranh International Airport, among Chinese tourists. The airport currently receives around 2,000 Chinese passengers every day, Hoan said.

Cam Ranh, the district, is also famous for a beautiful bay.
The United Nations Deputy Secretary-General Jan Kenneth Eliasson has pledged to bring international support to the drought-ravaged Mekong Delta after his visit Thursday.

Eliasson joined officials from Vietnams agriculture ministry to Ben Tre Province, the hardest hit in the delta. The region is going through the worst drought and saltwater intrusion in history.

Truong Duy Hai, vice chairman of the province, said more than 80,000 families lack fresh water and have to resort to salty water.

He said salt water has encroached 50 kilometers deep into the land.

Luong Quang Xo, deputy head of the Southern Institute of Water Resources Research, said during the trip that the saltwater intrusion has hit around two million hectares of various crops and seafood farms in the delta, which is home to more than 16 million people.

Xo blamed the water crisis on hydropower dams in the upstream part of the Mekong River, which hold back water and dry up the lower reaches amid intense El Nino conditions.

Eliasson said the trip gave him clear ideas of the situation and the UN will try it best to support those affected people, including calling for more aid from international charities and environmental organizations.

UN Deputy Secretary-General Jan Kenneth Eliasson (L) during a visit to Ben Tre Province on May 5. Photo: Khoa Chien

Eliasson said Vietnamese drought victims will not be alone, promising to report the situation at the World Humanitarian Summit in Istanbul later this month.

The UN and the Vietnam government earlier estimated the country will need $48.5 million of international aid as the crippling drought has put at least two million people in southern and central Vietnam in water shortages. Around 1.1 million are also in need of food support.

The UN is also campaigning for a global fund worth $3.4 billion to help more than 20 countries, including Vietnam, deal with climate change impacts.
The Truong Minh Commune office in Thanh Hoa Province where Hop had sex with a schoolgirl. Photo credit: Lao Dong

Thanh Hoa Province authorities have dismissed a commune official for having extramarital relations with a high-school girl who delivered his child last August.

Nguyen Van Hop, 33, chairman of the Truong Minh Commune Fatherland Front, the overarching body that manages social organizations, was also dismissed from the commune Party unit.

The girl, identified only as T, complained to local authorities after she delivered, but Hop claimed the baby was not his, the media reported.

Following her complaint, a DNA test was done, and it confirmed that Hop was the father.

Investigations found that following a commune music performance on December 10, 2014, Hop, T and several others had a party and went to a karaoke parlor.

Later Hop took T to a hotel to have sex. He has also reportedly had sex with the 16-year-old girl at the commune office several times.

T delivered on August 27.

Ts father Nguyen Van Cuong said: After the DNA test, Hop came to admit his wrongdoing and pledged to be responsible for the mother and child.

He also paid the hospital fees and promised to support the baby until it turns 18.

T and her family have withdrawn their complaint.
Civil servants and public employees, including teachers and doctors, will have the first raise in three years this month when the basic wage level used to calculate their income sees a 5-percent bump.

The new basic wage is now VND1.21 million (US$54.30) a month, raised from VND1.15 million (US$51.60).

In Vietnam, the minimum monthly pay for civil servants and public employees is calculated by multiplying that basic level with a coefficient that is based on qualifications and experience.

The coefficient for a new subdistrict-level civil servant with a bachelor's degree, for example, is 2.34.

Many in the public sector have for years complained that their wages are too low. They also said that in comparison salaries in the business sector have been increased annually by 10-15 percent.

But with nearly 3 million on its payroll, the government has been very careful with increases. The last raise was in 2013.
A commune official in the central province of Ha Tinh is facing dismissal for hosting a wedding for his son and a pregnant 14-year-old girl.

Nguyen Van Tuong, deputy chairman of Huong Quang Commune in Vu Quang District, had reportedly invited dozens of guests and many local officials to the wedding reception of his 21-year-old son on October 8.

Some of the guests, including the commune's chairman, found out that the bride is underage and reported the case to district authorities.

Official sources say the wedding was organized because the girl was pregnant.

The legal marriage age in Vietnam is 20 for men and 18 for women.

On Tuesday Vo Dinh Quang, chief inspector of the districts Party unit, told Thanh Nien Tuong will receive a warning and will be dismissed from his post later this week.

The Party unit is still considering transferring him to another position, he said.

The same day, a police officer of Vu Quang District told Thanh Nien Tuongs son may be investigated on a possible charge of having sex with a minor.

Having sex with a teenager between 13 and 16 years old is a serious crime punishable by up to 15 years in jail. Longer terms will be considered if the girl becomes pregnant.
At least 100 tons of dead fish have been washed ashore in an ongoing environmental disaster along the central coast of Vietnam since early April, according to a government official.

Deputy Agriculture Minister Vu Van Tam told the press on Thursday that the data was compiled from reports of four provinces with mass fish deaths. It did not take into account dead fish that stayed in the water.

He said the ministry had conducted tests on the samples of dead fish and found heavy metals in some samples. He did not elaborate.

As requested by the prime minister, we must submit the test results to the environment and science ministries for further analysis.

It will take time until the results are made public, as it has to be accurate and clear.

Fish died en masse and were washed ashore last month in Ha Tinh, Quang Binh, Quang Tri and Thua Thien-Hue provinces, apparently killed by industrial effluents.

Suspicion has centered on Formosa, which admitted it has a large sewage pipe going straight into the sea. But it claimed all its discharged wastewater had been treated.

Officials have said they could not find any connection between Formosa's discharge and the disaster yet.

Vietnamese across the country have been anxiously waiting for a satisfying answer for the protracted case, which has tested the ability of the country to detect and handle large-scale disasters.
Passenger ships will soon be banned from staying overnight in Ha Long and Bai Tu Long bays, authorities in the northern province of Quang Ninh said.

In the near future, only daytime travel will be allowed in the sea.

The move is part of a local program that also intends to replace wooden boats with metal boats over the next five years.

The authorities expected that the program will help enhance tourism service quality and safety.

Currently, 553 tourist ships operate across the two bays, 202 of which dock overnight.

In 2015, Ha Long and Bai Tu Long bays welcomed about 2.5 million tourists. The fleet can serve a maximum of 10 million passengers, meaning there are too many ships.

Quang Ninh recently issued a temporary regulation that allows wooden ships to operate in the bays for a maximum of 15 years, as opposed to the regulated 25 years.
Britons embrace 'Super Thursday' elections

2016-05-06 10:55

Voters cast their votes in a pub being used as a polling station in west London, Britain May 5, 2016. [Photo/Agencies]

LONDON - Millions of people are voting across Britain in what is being called Super Thursday. When the first results start to flow in some time after midnight, it will give the earliest indications on whether the political landscape is likely to change in the country.

Thursday's elections are the first big test for main opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn since his election last year as leader of the Labour Party.

Elections are taking place for the Scottish Parliament, the National Assembly for Wales and the Northern Ireland Assembly, as well as for directly elected mayors in London and several other cities.

Directly-elected police and crime commissioners are also up for election on Thursday in England and Wales, as well as councilors in around 140 towns and cities. Two House of Commons seats are also being contested.

London will be seen as a focal point for political watchers and commentators with Conservative Boris Johnson's eight-year rule coming to an end.

The battle for London is likely to be between Conservative Zac Goldsmith and Labour's Sadiq Khan. There are 10 other candidates in the race for London, but the latest polls has given Labour the lead.

Londoners will also be voting Thursday for members to serve on the London Assembly, the 25-strong body that keeps a watch on the mayor. Currently the assembly is made up of 12 Labour, nine Conservatives, two Greens and two Liberal Democrats members.

In Scotland, the Scottish National Party (SNP) is in control with a single-digit majority over the combined opposition benches at Holyrood. In 2011 it won 69 seats, followed by Labour with 37, Conservatives with 15 and the Liberal Democrats 8.

The power base in Wales is finely balanced, with Labour as the largest party holding 30 of the 60 seats in the Cardiff assembly. The Conservatives have 14 seats, Plaid Cymru 11 and the Liberal Democrats 5. Nigel Farage's UK Independence Party (UKIP) is predicting it will win its first seats in the assembly.

More than 270 candidates are competing for the 108 seats in the Northern Ireland Assembly.
President Vladimir Putin will hold talks with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in a rare bilateral meeting with a Group of Seven leader, marking a breakthrough in Kremlin efforts to end Russias isolation since it intervened in Ukraine more than two years ago.

Abe, who is due to meet with Putin on Friday in the Black Sea resort of Sochi, has argued for engagement with the Russian leader to further Japans goal of ending a World War II territorial dispute, as well as in tackling issues such as Syria. Russia played down expectations of serious progress in resolving the dispute over ownership of a chain of islands, even as officials sought to make political capital out of Abes decision to visit.

This is yet another indication that Obamas policy of isolation has failed, Alexei Pushkov, head of the Russian lower house of parliaments foreign affairs committee, said by phone. Its an important visit that shows that Japan has decided not to put all its eggs in one basket.

The Japanese leader, a key American ally in the Asia-Pacific region, rejected an appeal by President Barack Obama not to go ahead with the visit to Russia, the Kyodo news service reported Feb. 24. Russia is seeking to improve foreign ties. Abes trip will be followed by that of Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi next month to a showcase annual investment forum in Putins home city of St. Petersburg. Russias economy is enduring its longest recession in two decades provoked by the collapse in oil prices and international sanctions over its role in the Ukrainian crisis.

Islands dispute

Japan hosts the annual G-7 summit later this month. The U.S. considers that continued unity among its partners is vital in the approach to Russia, State Department spokesman Noel Clay said by e-mail. Our relationship with Russia cannot be business as usual as long as Russia continues to violate international law in Ukraine.

The governments in Tokyo and Moscow have yet to sign a peace treaty for World War II after Soviet troops seized four islands, called the Southern Kurils by Russia and the Northern Territories by Japan, in the dying days of the conflict. While Japan has demanded the return of the islands, Russia has offered to give back only two of them.

The fact that Japan is seeking to maintain relations with Russia, despite U.S. pressure, will allow the two sides to tackle all the different problems, Putin said last month.

Putin will propose new cooperation in trade, finance and the economy at the meeting, according to the Kremlin. The dispute over the islands will be raised though its a difficult issue that requires a much closer partnership, presidential foreign policy aide Yuri Ushakov told reporters Thursday. The premiers visit will give a new impetus to ties, he said.

Cooperation plan

Abe will lay out a plan for eight areas of cooperation to boost the Russian economy, including energy and industrial development in Russias far east, Japanese state broadcaster NHK reported.

In 2013, Abe was the first Japanese leader to make an official visit to Russia in a decade, seeking to resolve differences and expand energy supplies. Relations grew strained shortly after he visited the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, when Japan joined the U.S. and the European Union in penalizing Russia for annexing Ukraines Crimea peninsula and supporting separatists in its former Soviet neighbors east.

This is the worst possible time for going soft on Russia, said James Brown, an associate professor at Temple University in Tokyo, who published a book on the territorial dispute in March. Abe is taking a very big risk because other G-7 members have made it very clear they dont think its a very good idea, including Obama on a phone call.

Japan doesnt have the luxury of shunning Russia as its key regional neighbors China and South Korea view it with deep suspicion, according to Alexander Baunov, a senior associate at the Carnegie Moscow Center. While Abe isnt naive enough to believe therell be a speedy resolution of the territorial dispute, hes willing to promote Japanese investments and loans in Russia to reduce Chinas role, Baunov said.

Japan is a country that is friendless in its own backyard, so ties with Russia are very important for it, he said.
The 170-metre (558-feet) tall Juche Tower is reflected in Taedong River as morning fog blankets Pyongyang, North Korea May 5, 2016.

The Pyongyang skyline is rising - and not just with the trophy structures that represent the North Korean state. Despite its political and economic isolation, the capital is in the midst of a building boom.

In a comparison of photos taken by Reuters this week and on a visit to Pyongyang last October, several new high-rises of 20 or more stories have appeared in the capital, some appearing near completion.

The construction, mostly of what look to be apartments, is despite tightened U.N. sanctions against isolated North Korea for pursuing nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs.

It is further evidence of the rising role of a market economy that has yet to be fully recognized by the government but is changing the landscape and improving the lives of people, at least in some parts of a country that remains mostly poor.

More than a dozen workers secured by harnesses on suspended platforms could be seen this week applying tile to the rough-looking concrete exterior of a low-rise building, as the capital prepared for its first ruling party congress in 36 years.

North Korea has invited foreign journalists to cover the event, but government guides restrict their movements or whom they can speak with.

Large yellow cranes could be seen jutting from the tops of taller, unfinished blocks. Red flags mark top floors.
(L-R) Indonesian military chief General Gatot Nurmantyo, Malaysian Armed Forces General Tan Sri Zulkifeli Mohd , Malaysia's Foreign Minister Dato Sri Anifah Aman, Indonesia's President Joko Widodo, Indonesia's Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi, Philippine's Foreign Minister Jose Rene Almendras, and Philippine's Navy Chief Admiral Caesar C. Taccad chat before a meeting at The Gedung Agung in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, May 5, 2016. ANTARA FOTO/Andreas Fitri Atmoko/via REUTERS

Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines agreed on Thursday to conduct coordinated maritime patrols after a spate of ship hijackings by Islamist militants in the southern Philippines.

Most of the piracy in the area is the work of militants from the Abu Sayyaf group operating out of lawless Philippine islands. Indonesia has warned that the problem could reach levels seen off Somalia.

Indonesian port authorities in some areas have stopped issuing permits to ships taking coal through the southern Philippines because of the attacks.

"We will undertake coordinated patrols in the maritime areas of our common concern," Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi said after a meeting of the countries' military chiefs and foreign ministers in the Indonesian city of Yogyakarta.

The southern Philippines shares maritime borders with Indonesia and Malaysia and they signed an agreement in 2002 to strengthen border security in response to increasing cross-border attacks by militants of the Abu Sayyaf group, but they have yet to mount coordinated naval patrols.

Coordinated patrols involve voyages by the different navies operating in their own territorial waters.

Indonesia last month called for joint maritime patrols, which would involve ships from the three navies patrolling together and crossing into each other's territorial waters. But the Philippines said it wanted separate but coordinated patrols to identify safe corridors where ships can travel.

Indonesia is the world's largest thermal coal exporter and supplies 70 percent of the Philippines' coal imports.

Abu Sayyaf militants have become notorious for kidnapping over the past 15 years or so and have earned millions of dollars in ransoms. They have acquired modern weapons, high-powered boats and communications equipment.

Marsudi said the neighbors would also set up a hotline to improve cooperation and share intelligence.

"We share the urgent need to take action to ensure our citizens feel protected in undertaking their activities in the area," she said.

Procedures for the patrols in the Sulu and Celebes seas would be worked out at a follow-up meeting, she said.

Analysts say $40 billion worth of cargo passes through those waters a year, including supertankers from the Indian Ocean that cannot use the crowded Malacca Strait.

The militants, who killed a Canadian hostage last month, and who hold more than a dozen foreigners, were in the past linked to al Qaeda and have more recently voiced support for Islamic State.

The United States advises the Philippine military and has given about $200 million in communications and surveillance equipment to the three countries' maritime forces over the past decade.
The Islamic State group held public executions in the ancient theatre in Palmyra before the site was captured by Russia-backed Syrian forces

Leading Russian musicians staged a classical concert in the ancient theatre of Syria's ravaged Palmyra in a show by the Kremlin to herald its successes in the war-torn country.

Famed conductor Valery Gergiev led Saint Petersburg's celebrated Mariinsky orchestra through pieces by Johann Sebastian Bach, Sergei Prokofiev and Rodion Shchedrin in front of a crowd of Russian soldiers, government ministers and journalists.

Cellist Sergei Roldugin -- a personal friend of President Vladimir Putin recently caught up in the scandal over the leaked Panama Papers -- played a solo against the backdrop of the Roman amphitheatre where jihadists from the Islamic State group staged mass executions less than a year ago.

"Thank you for today's amazing humanitarian act -- the concert in a Palmyra liberated from terrorists," Putin said in an address from Russia broadcast at the start of the concert.

"I see it as a sign of gratitude, of remembrance, of hope," Putin said.

British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond slammed the concert as "a tasteless attempt to distract attention from the continued suffering of millions of Syrians" as air strikes blamed on regime forces killed at least 28 civilians in a camp for the displaced on the border with Turkey.

"It shows that there are no depths to which the regime will not sink. It is time for those with influence over Assad to say enough is enough," Hammond added, in a veiled reference to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's key ally Russia.

Syrian troops backed by Russian air strikes and special forces on the ground recaptured UNESCO world heritage site Palmyra from Islamic State group fighters in March, delivering a major propaganda coup for both Damascus and Moscow.

Russian army sappers said last month they had demined the ancient site -- known as the "Pearl of the Desert" -- where jihadist fighters blew up ancient temples and looted relics.

The Kremlin has shipped foreign journalists to the concert as it basks in the retaking of Palmyra, one of the most significant achievements since it launched a bombing campaign, criticised by the West, to support Assad in September.

'Wounded but not killed'

Putin said that he saw the concert as a sign "of hope not just for the rebirth of Palmyra as a cultural asset for the whole of humanity, but for seeing modern civilisation rid itself of this terrible scourge of international terrorism".

Mikhail Pyotrovsky, the director of Russia's Hermitage Museum, told journalists at the scene that "Palmyra is injured but she has not been killed" and pledged help in restoring it.

Sitting in the audience, Syrian tour guide Anwar Al-Omar told AFP that while he thought only Russia could help rebuild the ancient town he was downbeat about its prospects in the long-term.

"I am pessimistic. It will be difficult to bring tourists back," he said.

Gergiev is one of the world's best known conductors but has faced backlash in the West for his strongly pro-Kremlin views, with his tours sometimes interrupted by protestors.

Roldugin, the godfather of Putin's eldest daughter, was revealed as being at the head of a vast offshore empire that controls some $2 billion (1.75 billion euros) by the Panama Papers leaks in April but has been fiercely defended by the Kremlin strongman.

The concert in Palmyra was not the first that Gergiev has conducted in a place where the Russian military carried out controversial operations.

In 2008 the Ossetian native conducted a concert in Tskhinvali, the main city in separatist Georgian region of South Ossetia that was heavily damaged in the short Russian-Georgian war that year.

Gergiev also conducted a charity concert in Tokyo for victims of the Fukushima tragedy in 2012 and led a charity concert tour to raise funds for victims of Russia's Beslan school massacre in 2004.
Soldiers from the Singapore Guards (L) and the 7th Australian Regiment clear a room during a dry run of an urban-based exercise at the Urban Operations Training Facility in Shoalwater Bay Training Area, Rockhampton, Australia November 9, 2014. The Straits Times/Mark Cheong/via REUTERS

Australia and Singapore have agreed to jointly develop military training areas and facilities in Australia in a sign of how China's increasingly assertive military presence in the region is encouraging nations to boost their own defense capabilities.

Singapore will fund a A$2.25 billion (US$1.7 billion) expansion of military training facilities in Australia, a government source told Reuters.

Singapore will have enhanced and expanded military training access in Australia over a period of 25 years. The two will strengthen intelligence and information sharing, such as in counter-terrorism, the city-state's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement on Friday.

The move to forge closer military ties between Australia and Singapore comes at a time of rising tensions between much of Asia and China, which has been building military and civilian facilities on its artificial islands in the disputed South China Sea.

I am not saying that this is being done overtly to deal with China, but I wouldn't be surprised if that isn't a major driver behind this."

"The kind of military relationships that (Singapore) have and types of military ties that they are developing and deepening, they don't have with China," said Richard Bitzinger, a security expert at the S.Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore.

"I am not saying that this is being done overtly to deal with China, but I wouldn't be surprised if that isn't a major driver behind this."

The region is also facing rising risks from Islamic extremists. Earlier this week, Singapore said it had detained eight Bangladeshi men who were planning attacks in their homeland. It deported five others who were arrested by police in Dhaka.

Land-scarce Singapore has long sent troops to Australia for military exercises. The new deal would allow the Asian nation to increase the number of troops it has on rotation in Australia to 14,000, from 6,000.

Under the agreement, Singapore would fund the cost of expanding the Shoalwater Bay Training Area and the Townsville Field Training Area, both in the north of Queensland state.

Both bases lie in electorates critical to the government. The timing of the agreement is viewed as a political coup for Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull ahead of an anticipated July federal election.

"Under our comprehensive strategic partnership, our aim is to elevate our relationship to a level similar to the one we enjoy with New Zealand," Turnbull told reporters in Canberra.

Our aim is to elevate our relationship to a level similar to the one we enjoy with New Zealand."

He said the new partnership will also generate a construction boom in North Queensland due to the need for roads, accommodation and facilities for the Singaporean Defence forces.

The agreement makes Singapore the only other foreign country to invest in military infrastructure in Australia besides the United States.

Earlier this week Reuters reported that Singapore will soon pick the winner of a $1 billion tender for military utility helicopters, as it modernizes its air force and navy amid rising tensions in the region.

The city-state and Australia also updated a free trade agreement, which includes improved access for businesses to bid for government procurement contracts and allowed for easier movement of people between the two markets.

Singapore is Australia's fifth largest trading and investment partner, with bilateral trade of S$20.2 billion ($14.86 billion) in 2015. The city-state has investments amounting to A$80.2 billion in Australia.
Kenyan rescue workers in the capital Nairobi free a woman who had been trapped under the rubble of a residential building that had collapsed six days earlier.
Iraqi security forces stand with an Islamic State flag which they pulled down in the town of Hit in Anbar province

U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter said on Wednesday that Washington and its allies had agreed to do more in their campaign to defeat Islamic State but that more risks lay ahead.

Carter made the comment following talks in Germany with defense ministers and representatives from 11 other nations participating in the alliance.

He said the United States greatly regretted the death of a Navy SEAL in an attack by the jihadist group in northern Iraq on Tuesday. He named the man as Petty Officer First Class Charles Keating.

"These risks will continue ... but allowing ISIL safe haven would carry greater risk for us all," he added, using an acronym for Islamic State.

"We also agreed that all of our friends and allies across the counter-ISIL coalition can and must do more as well, both to confront ISIL in Iraq and Syria and its metastases elsewhere."

The talks included ministers from France, Britain and Germany and were planned well in advance of Tuesday's attack, in which Islamic State fighters blasted through Kurdish defenses and overran a town.

The elite serviceman was the third American to be killed in direct combat since the U.S.-led coalition launched a campaign in 2014 to "degrade and destroy" Islamic State, and is a measure of its deepening involvement in the conflict.

Offering new details about Keating's mission, Carter said the SEAL's job was to operate with Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga forces to train and assist them north of the city of Mosul.

"That part of the peshmerga front came under attack ... and they found themselves in a firefight," Carter said.

In mid-April, the United States announced plans to send an additional 200 troops to Iraq and put them closer to the front lines of battle to advise Iraqi forces.

In late April, President Barack Obama announced he would send an additional 250 special operations forces to Syria, greatly expanding the U.S. presence on the ground there to help draw in more Syrian fighters to combat Islamic State.

'Going to take a long time'

Norwegian Defence Minister Ine Eriksen Soereide told Reuters that the ministers discussed ways to escalate the military fight against Islamic State and deal with concurrent humanitarian crises but that it was clear more hard work remained.

"There is no doubt Islamic State is under pressure ... but one has to be realistic," she said in a telephone interview. "This is difficult, this is complex. It's going to take a long time."

Soereide said Norway's decision this week to send 60 troops, including special forces soldiers, to support Syrian fighters, was made possible partly by the more structured plan for coordinating the fight against Islamic State that had emerged in recent months.

The Islamist militants have been broadly retreating since December, when the Iraqi army recaptured Ramadi, the largest city in the western region. Last month, the Iraqi army retook the nearby region of Hit, pushing the militants farther north along the Euphrates valley.

But U.S. officials acknowledge the military gains are not enough.

Iraq is beset by political infighting, corruption, a growing fiscal crisis and the Shi'ite Muslim-led government's fitful efforts to seek reconciliation with aggrieved minority Sunnis, the bedrock of Islamic State support.
The worst of the economic slump in Russia may be over the International Monetary Fund said on Friday, but warned possible euro zone stagnation and shifting politics made central Europe's prospects increasingly uncertain.

The IMF's twice-yearly regional outlook for Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe (CESEE) said the rise of populist parties in some countries as well as limp global growth and aging populations were all aggravating the strains.

Using forecasts produced last month, it said growth in the central channel from Poland down to Turkey would remain as healthy as 3-4 percent this year, whereas Russia and most of its former Soviet neighbors would stay in recession.

But it is likely to be a period where the balance shifts, with the former group likely to see a slight slowdown going into next year and Russia et al perking up with a return to growth.

"Although there is a strong cyclical rebound in CESEE countries, risks have increased," the IMF said.

"The strongest break on CESEE growth would be a stagnation in the euro zone, the largest trading partner for many CESEE countries."

Mahmood Pradhan, the deputy head of the Fund's European department, said the euro zone economy grinding to a halt wasn't the base-case scenario after its slightly better than expected start to the year, but that it remained "a clear risk".

He said the IMF's economists were also looking into how much of a negative impact there would be if restrictions were put on the EU's borderless travel arrangement, Schengen, to try and control the flood of Syrian and other refugees.

"With these higher risks, supportive monetary policy combined with medium-term fiscal consolidation remains valid policy advice for many economies in the region," the report added.

Pradhan also gave the Fund's first public thumbs up to Ukraine's new government, saying early noises that it plans to stick to reform efforts were "very encouraging".

For experts though the big question for the CESEE region is whether the last quarter of century of convergence towards Western living standards and free-market politics is beginning to reverse as the scars of the financial crisis and regional spats struggle to heal.

Poland's government for example has been vocal in its criticism of some of the EU actions since it came into power last year.

It is also going against economic grain in a similar way Hungary has in recent years, proposing to cut the country's retirement age, increase child benefit payments and make banks swallow costly Swiss franc loans they sold in the past.

"The region faces more pronounced downside risks," said Anna Ilyina chief of the IMF's emerging economies division, who pointed to Turkey as another country where political uncertainty had increased.

"If this slower growth is to become the new normal then convergence to income levels of advanced Europe is going to be much, much slower."
VP encourages youngsters to pursue Chinese Dream

2016-05-06 08:23

BEIJING, May 4 (Xinhua) -- Vice President Li Yuanchao expressed hopes that youngsters blend their personal aspirations with the Chinese Dream on Wednesday, China's Youth Day.

Li said at a symposium attended by youngsters who won an award for their contributions, that they should be harbingers of innovation and entrepreneurial activities, and contribute to the country's drive to build a moderately prosperous society.

Li also urged them to make contributions to the 13th Five-year Plan, to understand, support and participate in reforms.

Young people should practice socialist core values and be law-abiding citizens with integrity, love and take care of their families, volunteer for public good and be a civilized Internet user, Li added.
Prominent and well-respected Canberra barrister Shane Gill has been appointed to the bench of the Family Court.

Federal Attorney-General George Brandis on Friday announced Mr Gill, who is president of the ACT Bar Association, would take up the position later this month.

ACT Bar Association president Shane Gill has been appointed to the Family Court. Credit:Melissa Adams

Mr Gill became one of the youngest presidents in the ACT bar's history when he took on the top job in October 2014.

He is a long-term Canberra resident who moved from Orange to study law at the Australian National University in 1986.
If hearing that a vulnerable 89-year-old woman was robbed in her driveway in broad daylight tugs at your heartstrings, you're not alone.

Some Canberrans were so disheartened when Braddon woman Palmira De Simone was traumatised by one thief's cowardly act a week ago that they raised $300 in an effort to give back what she lost.

Palmira De Simone is grateful for the community support she has received since being robbed in her Braddon driveway a week ago. Credit:Rohan Thomson

What will likely pull those heartstrings even tighter was that Ms De Simone was too generous to accept the money, her son Franc said.

"Mum has always been a giver, ever since we were kids," he said.
The closure comes after the centre was recently extensively renovated by the ACT government, which owns the building. Ms Tobler said the closure was due to a gradual fall in numbers that couldn't be sustained, and she praised staff for the high level of care they provided for more than two decades. "This has been a two-year process for the agency. This is not a decision that has been taken lightly by the board," she said. "We have put in support, resources to try to build the occupancy of Fyshwick because that was the outcome we had wished for. However, with a quarter of the occupancy we needed, it was not something we could maintain." "Some governments will argue market forces will prevail and that's okay for fish and chip shops but it's not okay when children are disrupted.'' Australian Childcare Alliance president Gwynn Bridge on the closure of childcare centres.

Community Services #1 executive director of children and youth Katherine Hellwig said 35 families used the 46-place Fyshwick centre, many on a part-time basis. But the centre needed about 100 families to be sustainable and ensure all places were used across the week. Mrs Hellwig said childcare centres across the board were finding it difficult to reach full capacity as more and more operators were allowed in, seemingly without the accompanying demand for places. "I know roughly between the end of the financial year and this year, 15 new centres were opening and there's no regulation on how many centres there can be in the ACT. If you want to build a new childcare centre, you can," she said. "So we're saturating the market with not being able to support the centres that are already there, whether private or not-for-profit." MsTobler said some kind of intervention was needed.

"I certainly think something needs to be done," she said. "If it's regulation, if it's limiting places for agencies or for placements across the sector. I think the government at least has to at look at how many childcare places are required instead of just seeking and allowing and processing more and more centres to open." Communities@Work deputy chief executive officer Lee Maiden echoed those concerns, saying her research showed there were vacancies at every childcare centre in Tuggeranong. She knew of one example where land had been sold for a new childcare centre across the road from an existing centre that was not full. "There's certainly no strategy around where we locate them and how many places we need," she said. "Things have changed and we haven't kept up with the change. "It used to be that the moment you even thought about having a child, you needed to put your name on a waiting list to make sure you got a place. That's not the case any more."

Mrs Maiden said there needed to be more discussions between different arms of the government which sold the land for childcare centres and which helped staff them. Education Minister Shane Rattenbury earlier this year announced the Education Directorate would conduct a review of the childcare sector in the ACT, and his office this week confirmed supply and demand issues would be addressed, as well as a more strategic approach to the provision of centres. "It is expected that from the review we will develop a better picture about where services are needed and oversupplied," a spokeswoman said. Operators said demand for places was greatest for mid-week, particularly for babies, and more likely in the north. However, women working part-time, more grandparents pitching in to care for children, and the government's provision of free preschool were helping to shift the demand for paid childcare. Australian Childcare Alliance president Gwynn Bridge, who owns a childcare centre in Canberra, said she had been told many operators were at 50 per cent capacity for the three-to-five age group. At least one centre was advertising heavily discounted rates for preschoolers.

The alliance, which represents long-day care owners and operators, supported the calls for a more strategic approach to the provision of childcare. "I'm certain there are areas which are absolutely oversupplied and more operators seem to be coming into the ACT," she said. Mrs Bridge said it was not good enough to have a free-for-all in the sector. "Some governments will argue market forces will prevail and that's okay for fish and chip shops but it's not okay when children are disrupted," she said. "The friends they make, often for life, in those zero-to-five years, are taken away and dispersed when a centre closes down."

Mrs Bridge said it was not good policy to allow a new centre to open in the same vicinity as one that was not full. "It's not even good business but the thing is there's nothing to stop it," she said. Mrs Bridge said the pressure was often put on long-standing centres that had been "pillars of the community" but which were up against new centres that offered "all the bells and whistles" but no assurances the care would be any better. Northside Community Services operation manager for children services Liam McNicholas said none of its four childcare centres were in danger of closing but he believed community-based, smaller centres were under pressure from the entry of very large centres with a national profile and extensive marketing. He believed the government response to the previous long waiting lists had been "an overcorrection", particularly through its land release program providing for new centres.
When most people think of olive oil they see ancient, romantic groves and undulating hills in exotic, far-flung Mediterranean locales such as Spain, Italy and Greece. But since Australia's recent strong showing at the New York International Olive Oil Competition, that vision should really include the more parochial delights of Mildura, the Mornington Peninsula and Rutherglen. Australian olive oils took out four of the premier competition's 17 best-in-class awards, second only to Italy, which notched up six best-in-class wins. Sui Tham at her Olive oil grove, Cape Schanck Olive Estate which has won gold and best-in-class medals at this year's New York International Olive Oil Competition. Credit:Joe Armao JAA "Australia didn't just enter the olive oil trade," pronounced the awards website, "they re-invented it and sent shockwaves through the industry. Determined to produce olive oil that is as fresh and nutritious as possible, Australian producers craft some of the most winning brands in the world, while calling out low-quality rivals." So, what exactly are we doing right? Cobram Estate, which won a best-in-class, two gold medals and a silver, is Australia's largest olive oil producer with 2.5 million trees across Victoria's Murray Valley. The company's CEO, Rob McGavin, says it's partly to do with our country's clean environment, climate and comparatively high labour costs, which encourages producers to use smarter and more efficient mechanisation systems and methods.

"We've been reasonably determined as well, as an industry," he says, "because we've had serious competition. Everyone does think olive oil comes from Europe and Italy and so I suppose we were driven to prove the doubters wrong  not in a negative way  but you really go that extra yard to ensure you produce really high quality stuff." Cape Schanck Olive Estate's Sui and Stephen Tham planted their 2000 olive trees on a former cut flower farm, a decade ago. They produced their first oil in 2010, won gold last year and this year picked up best-in-class as well as another gold. "We feel very proud that we could achieve such a prize but it's really something for the rest of the olive oil industry to recognise, that we Australians could do just as well. No one thinks of us in terms of olive oil but this should put Australia on the map." Australia entered a total of 23 oils, winning four best-in-class, four gold and three silver medals, with a success rate of 48 per cent  an all-time high in the international competition's four-year history. Compare that to Greece, which entered 180 oils and picked up 20 awards, a success rate of just 11 per cent. Other best-in-class Australian oils included Mornington Peninsula's L'Uliveto Verde: The Green Olive Grove and Rutherglen's Gooramadda Olive King Kalamata. A gold medal also went to Alto, in the Grampians, with all top performers hailing from Victoria.
BHP cleared another hurdle on Friday when it announced that a $US2.3 billion ($3.1 billion) Samarco iron ore mine dam disaster compensation agreement with Brazil's Attorney-General, two Brazilian states including Samarco's home state, and other Brazilian authorities had been ratified by Brazil's Federal Court of appeal in the national capital, Brasilia.

But there's a long way to go before the Australian group and its joint venture partner at Samarco, Brazil's Vale group, put the disaster behind them and know how much it finally costs.

A separate claim launched at the beginning of this week by Brazilian federal prosecutors seeks a whopping $US43 billion from Samarco and its joint venture owners as social, environmental and economic compensation. BHP had unsuccessfully attempted to get the prosecutors to join the March agreement. The Brazilian government and the two states that signed the March deal are also named in the action.

It is possible that the size of any settlement of the new case could be affected by the Brazilian court's decision to effectively set the wheels of the original compensation scheme in motion.
Xi urges China, Russia to translate political ties advantage to more pragmatic cooperation outcomes

2016-05-06 08:23

Related:

China, Russia should work to settle hotspot issues: President Xi

BEIJING, March 25 (Xinhua) -- China and Russia should strengthen communication and coordination in international and regional affairs to promote the political settlement of major hotspot issues, President Xi Jinping said on Friday.

"China-Russia strategic cooperation plays a key role in safeguarding peace and stability in the region and the world at large," Xi said when meeting with Russian Presidential Administration chief Sergei Ivanov. Full story

China-Russia ties not to be affected by changing int'l situation: Premier Li

BEIJING, March 16 (Xinhua) -- Premier Li Keqiang said Wednesday that China-Russia relations will not be affected by changes in international situation and pressures from a third party.

China follows the principle of non-alignment, and China-Russia cooperation will not target at a third party, Li told a press conference after the conclusion of the national legislature's annual session. Full story

China, Russia commit to brighter energy cooperation

BEIJING, March 22 (Xinhua) -- Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli met with Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller here on Tuesday, vowing to improve China-Russia energy cooperation.

Bilateral energy cooperation has continued to progress under the strategic leadership of Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to Zhang. Full story
Starting this July, when customer service employees at US online retailer Overstock.com are too sick to come to work, they'll tell Mila they're not feeling well using an app on their phones or computers. "I'm sorry to hear that," Mila will respond. After a short exchange about logistics, Mila will send a message to the appropriate manager, who will adjust the employee's schedule. It sounds like a typical interaction with an office assistant. But Mila isn't an assistant. She's a chatbot.

Chatbots, the much-hyped future of the internet, have had a rough start in the consumer world, but many of us might have our first taste of robot communication at the office. Millions of workers already interface with chatbots in the popular group chat platforms Slack and HipChat.

HipChat offers bots with different "personalities," like Sassy and Karma, that can accomplish different tasks, such as finding photos and counting things. Slack's bot - conveniently known as Slackbot - can be programmed to do work-related tasks, such as setting reminders and answering basic questions. Anticipating a bot boom, Slack last winter released Botkit to help developers build their own. The result has been bots such as Workbot, which lets people talk to other programs that integrate with Slack, like Salesforce and Mailchimp.

The hope is bots will make internal employee communications faster, easier, and more fun and in turn save money.
Rio Tinto will push ahead with a $US5.3 billion expansion of its Oyu Tolgoi copper and gold mine in Mongolia, with the project set to cost about $US400 million more than previously thought.

Ending a three-year stalemate, the approval was agreed by Rio, its Canadian subsidiary Turquoise Hill Resources and the Mongolian Government.

Rio Tinto's Oyu Tolgoi mine is one of the world's richest copper deposits. Credit:

Development will begin within months, and first production from the underground expansion will come in 2020, when a shortage of copper is tipped to emerge.

The expansion will more than double the copper output from Oyu Tolgoi, and the mine will produce 560,000 tonnes of copper per year once fully built, along with gold and silver byproducts.
GOVERNMENT

Global exposure broadens your skills and presents opportunities you might never encounter by working only in Australia, says La Trobe University postgraduate student Keegan Napier.

Keegan Napier is learning from the world's best. keegannapier.jpg

He is undertaking an internship with Bavarian technology think-tank fortiss, a not-for-profit organisation supported by the Technical University of Munich and the Bavarian government. During his 18 months in Germany, he is working on a project designed to improve the security of systems controlled by inbuilt computers.

"It aims to add extra layers of security to systems used now and in the future in automobiles, manufacturing, mining, space and other environments, to ensure hackers are not able to take control and cause the system to malfunction." Napier says the practical experience he is gaining is giving him a range of skills he could not have learnt in Australia and is "a real inspiration to help build Australian industry so that it can compete with the best". Dr Peter Moar, entrepreneur in residence in La Trobe's Department of Engineering, says overseas internships give young Australians opportunities to learn another language and culture and become truly global citizens.
As well as wearing a 'badge of shame', whistleblowers were often sacked, bullied or sidelined. This is still the case in Australia. Jeff Morris, who was a financial planner at CommBank, is one of those people. He came to me in March 2013, a week after I had been served with a subpoena from billionaire mining magnate Gina Rinehart to reveal my contacts. Here I was going up against Rinehart, a major Fairfax shareholder at the time, and about to take on the biggest bank in the country. Jeff came to me after he and two other whistleblowers had gone to the corporate regulator to expose forgery, fraud and a cover up of management in the bank's financial planning arm.

. Credit:Eddie Jim What was exposed was an aggressive sales culture in the bank, which encouraged its planners to take risks with other people's money while turning a blind eye to practices that may have amounted to criminal acts. Signatures were forged, documents doctored and victims given minimal compensation and forced to sign confidentiality agreements. Exposing wrongdoing in this division proved that the bank's ruthless profit-first culture was widespread. A dying man, Noel Stevens, was refused a life insurance payout after being talked into swapping from one that was always guaranteed to pay him out. The switch was made so that the teller and the planner could earn a commission. The bank fought the action but eventually lost, with the judges saying the bank had been "misleading and deceptive" in their scathing judgement. The joint investigation with Four Corners, Banking Bad", showed how Don Nguyen, a notorious financial planner at the CBA, was being rewarded inside the bank despite management knowing he was putting clients' money at risk. Dodgy Don was allowed to resign in 2008 and has so far received hundreds of thousands of dollars from income protection insurance paid by CommBank. We tracked Don down at his family's dry cleaning business where he blamed lax oversight for his actions. CBA promotes itself as a trusted institution which puts the interests of its clients first. The joint investigation exposed the ugly truth behind this facade  a hunger for profits which destroyed lives and a culture of cover-up  that continues to this day  to avoid exposure at all costs.

Astonishingly, the corporate regulator, ASIC, would take 16 months before it officially investigated and when it did the bank embarked on a wide scale witchhunt for the leakers. It is hard to imagine how stressful that would be. All three whistleblowers were interviewed by CBA Group Security in an effort to identify the source of the leaks. One of the three whistleblowers died in his sleep at the age of 35 after leaving the company. A second remained anonymous but suffered considerably from the atmosphere of suspicion and intimidation and also left the company. Jeff Morris remained on his own in this hostile environment in an effort to continue feeding information to ASIC. After becoming aware of a possible death threat and receiving no assistance or protection from the regulator, he was eventually diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

This also had an impact on his family. Jeff's children were only two and four when he made the fateful decision to become a whistleblower. The full extent of his sacrifice became apparent one night when he came home to an empty house. Eventually, his position in the company was made untenable. In 2013 he quit the bank. Fairfax Media first published Jeff's story in June 2013. It triggered a senate inquiry that recommended a royal commission into CommBank on the basis that the regulator couldn't be trusted to do the job properly. CommBank staved off a royal commission by agreeing to set up a compensation scheme and writing to hundreds of thousands of customers offering to review the advice they had been given. Jeff has now dedicated his life to changing the financial services culture. He has appeared at many senate hearings, advocated strongly for a royal commission, and helped victims successfully fight the banks for compensation  sometimes for free and sometimes for a fee. Jeff has also been a mentor to other whistleblowers. But he says of the potential whistleblowers he talks to, very few will go ahead and pay the high personal price to do the right thing under the current system. Taking on the financial services sector is fraught. The banks play tough using all their legal and commercial might. Brutal put-down techniques are used to intimidate journalists into not covering some controversial issues. Journalists who write something negative about the banks are denounced to their editors as anti-business.

Bank executives, public relations personnel and lobbyists have been in overdrive using "back channel" techniques to confuse and misdirect politicians and the media. Off-the-record whispering campaigns about Jeff Morris to some journalists and politicians have been a disgrace. These started when the first story ran three years ago and have continued to this day. The most recent was around the time CBA announced that it aspired to being Australia's most ethical bank. The bank, having agreed to pay Jeff Morris's advocacy fees for some victims he was representing, tried to portray it differently. The implication was that he was an extortionist when in fact he was charging for services rendered, a far smaller fee than most lawyers charge. But Jeff isn't the only whistleblower to suffer a smear campaign. An IOOF whistleblower, inspired by Jeff Morris, decided to take his concerns to the company instead of ASIC. Big mistake. IOOF is an ASX100 listed financial services company with thousands of shareholders and customers. The IOOF expose I did with a colleague revealed insider trading, cheating on exams that were supposed to be training staff in ethics, financial advice given without proper educational credentials, misrepresented performance figures to get customers to invest in IOOF funds, and faulty research reports that included baseless buy and sell stock recommendations.



An employee who reported the scandal to the company, hoping to make a difference, was bullied, sacked, and told he was vindictive  and not a whistleblower!

He then came to me with thousands of documents. So together with a colleague, we sorted through the maze of lax compliance inside IOOF. The smear campaign that followed was disgraceful. I received an email from a senior representative at IOOF and my jaw dropped: It said my "so-called whistleblower" was a blackmailer and had threatened to kidnap the children of several staff members. The email went on: You have been sucked in by a person who has mental problems and in doing so you have grossly abused the privileges given to journalists to report fairly. My colleague and I met the IOOF officer who made the accusations against the whistleblower. He had no proof of any of his allegations. Its the most common tactic  to discredit the whistleblower to try to detract attention from the main game: misconduct.

The IOOF whistleblower hasn't got a hope in hell of getting a job in the industry. His reputation has been destroyed. Was it worth it, I asked him just the other day? He said a few times he had thought about that question and if he was placed in that situation again. "I would go straight to the media and not to the company. That's the regret." He is also disappointed with the regulator. He said he had been contacted once for a 35-minute chat and that was only after he sent an email to the chairman Greg Medcraft and Cc-d me in it, complaining that nobody had contacted him or had asked about the 59,000 documents or how to navigate them. He is still waiting. ASIC chief executive Greg Medcraft speaks at a Walkley lunch with Adele Ferguson in Sydney in 2014. Credit:Ben Rushton Another whistleblower who I have dealt with is CommInsure whistleblower, Dr. Benjamin Koh, who was the chief medical officer at CommBank's life insurance arm CommInsure. When he joined CommInsure trade magazines wrote him up as a big coup for the bank, due to his seniority and credentials.

He opened a pandora's box into the $44 billion life insurance industry when he exposed how sick and dying people were being treated by CommInsure. Some had their claims delayed for years, some were denied on the basis of medical definitions that were out of date. Employees at CBA claiming on their life insurance policy weren't immune. One employee, Helen Polydropoulos had multiple sclerosis and was medically retired by the bank. When she lodged her claim she was knocked back on the basis she could work. She fought for four years with mounting legal fees but was paid out after she appeared on Four Corners. Dr Koh could see what was going on inside the insurer and decided to speak up. He alleges claims managers were cherry picking doctors or leaning on doctors to deny claims. In the case of victim Evan Pashalis he was terminally ill, yet they gave him the runaround and denied him, until he appeared on Four Corners. Dr Koh decided to speak out for the greater good. It is a measure of his courage that despite being warned about the likely consequences for himself he still went ahead. It was very emotional for him. I remember him saying to me a few nights before Four Corners went to air "I have put my life in your hands". That sentence has stuck in my brain!

CommInsure was one of the biggest challenges of my career. As I was dealing with Dr Koh, I knew if this story was to have an impact I needed to get him to speak out on the record. Having the chief medical officer speak out about wrongdoing would be more powerful than an anonymous employee. It wasn't easy. He didn't want to be seen as a hero and taking on a big bank isn't for the faint hearted. His speaking out has had massive ramifications. The bank has paid out the victims on Four Corners, it has set up a panel to review complex claims, ASIC is investigating the industry and most importantly it has played a key role in the federal opposition's call for a royal commission into the sector. The banks have also come out and said they will review whistleblower policies and pay compensation. When I think about the stories I have covered and the role of the whistleblowers an interesting pattern emerges. Jeff Morris went to ASIC and was thrown to the wolves and left to negotiate his own exit from CBA. The IOOF whistleblower went to the company and was sacked and smeared. Dr Koh went to the company as well, and he too was sacked and his professional integrity impugned. The ones who suffered the least were the 7-Eleven and NAB whistleblowers. Both had decided to go straight to the media to tell their story.

The 7-Eleven whistleblower emerged when I was half way through filming with Four Corners. It was a story about systemic wage fraud against foreign students on visas, with some paid as little as $5 an hour. The investigation showed how the business model of 7-Eleven forced many of the franchisees to underpay workers to make ends meet. After writing to 7-Eleven for an interview, management held a meeting with staff to warn them that Four Corners and Fairfax Media were about to do a hatchet job. One employee decided to help. He provided internal documents that showed willful blindness by head office and agreed to go on camera in disguise. He said all stores were underpaying workers and the company knew. When the story came out, it had an immediate impact. 7-Eleven announced an independent compensation scheme, changed its business model, heads  including the CEO and chairman  have rolled, and the company has agreed to fix up its compliance systems. It still has a long way to go but hundreds of foreign students have received more than $12 million in back pay. It has changed some of their lives and empowered them. They feel the media and the public cares. The whistleblower at 7-Eleven, who went on Four Corners in disguise, managed to keep his job.

I spoke to him just recently and he has no regrets about going to the media. He feels sorry for the plight of the other whistleblowers who went to the company or ASIC first. Michael Smith, 7-Eleven chairman, and Russell Withers, 7-Eleven owner, at the Senate inquiry in February. Credit:Andrew Meares When the prime minister spoke at Westpac's birthday party recently, he said more whistleblowers should speak up. Yes, I agree, they should, but he needs to recognise that until laws are changed, many won't. Whistleblowing laws, similar to shield laws, lack teeth and uniformity. No one has ever been prosecuted for victimising a corporate whistleblower in Australia. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Westpac Chairman, Lindsay Maxsted, at a lunch in Walsh Bay, Sydney. 6th April 2016 Photo: Janie Barrett Credit:Janie Barrett In the US, a reward system operates, allowing whistleblowers to earn up to 30 per cent of the money collected from penalties or legal action against government fraud. In 2014, whistleblowers received $435 million.

As I talk, three Frenchmen, one of them a journalist, who is a member of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists have just finished a trial in a Luxembourg court over leaked documents known as the Lux Leaks scandal which lifted the lid on widespread tax avoidance by some of the world's biggest companies. The three whistleblowers face prison or a massive fine for releasing confidential information from PricewaterhouseCoopers. One of the whistleblowers, Antoine Delatour a former auditor for PwC, said he acted in the public interest. Delatour copied confidential tax files of some of the biggest named companies while he was working at PWC. He is seen by many as a hero. Last year the European Parliament presented him with the European Citizen Award for his whistleblowing exploits  one of 47 awarded each year. When you think of the big exposes of the past few years, financial scandals, the Panama Papers, Leighton Holdings and Unaoil, none would have come to light without the help of a whistleblower. The transformation of a whistleblower from stool pigeon and pariah is a welcome change. But we still have a long way to go. So too does the conversation about what motivates them. Do they have to be pearly white? At the end of the day, shouldn't their motivation be irrelevant?

Thanks to whistleblowers, the debate about a royal commission into banks has been put firmly on the table. Their revelations have also put the spotlight on the regulator and highlighted its shortcomings. In most cases it has taken the media to expose corporate wrongdoing, not the corporate regulator. The government says ASIC is the tough cop on the beat. It says it has greater powers than a royal commission. In the past couple of weeks the government has increased ASIC's budget and lifted its powers. This sounds good in theory, but the extra money is merely restoring what was ripped out of it in the past couple of years. The increased funding and powers are only useful if they are actually used  something that hasn't sat well with ASIC. It is trying to do better but it has a long way to go. Without a royal commission into the financial services sector, one thing is for sure, there will be more scandals and more whistleblowers wanting to do the right thing. But will they come forward under the current system that doesn't protect them, leaves them open to smear and innuendo and doesn't compensate them for the damage to their careers? Who could blame them if they fail to act in future if we fail now on the royal commission? Not me.

There is one more important point I would like to touch on. Earlier this year Guardian Australian journalist Paul Farrell revealed the Australian Federal Police has a substantial file on him. The heavily redacted 200-plus page dossier details the quite extraordinary lengths to which the AFP has gone, using new secrecy laws, to identify sources for a story he wrote on asylum seekers. Whichever way you look at it, state-sanctioned spying on journalists is totally unacceptable, as are lengthy jail terms and heavy fines for taking on issues of public interest. These laws are a threat to investigative journalism and deter whistleblowers from speaking out.
OPINION

How ethical is your workplace? How do you contribute or detract from the ethical culture in your organisation? I tested a group of workers to see how they would react to different workplace dilemmas. The results were surprising and alarming.

When it comes to dealing with unethical behaviour, too often we are reluctant to blow the whistle. Credit:Kerrie Leishman

You discover your colleague is sleeping with a junior staff member who reports to them. Would you report the pair of them to a senior manager? In a sample of workers, I found only 41 per cent were likely to or definitely would do so. Those saying they would not were almost as numerous, with 35 per cent saying no or definitely no.

While we appear to be divided over colleagues sleeping on the job as it were, we are much more condemnatory of colleagues blabbing to journalists. When asked: "You overhear a colleague briefing a journalist about a confidential matter regarding another colleague, would you immediately report the breach of confidentiality to senior management?" 59 per cent said they would, while a measly 13 per cent said they wouldn't.
Reckitt Benckiser spokeswoman Patty O'Hayer said the approval rate for the report has increased to 82 per cent from 68 per cent two years ago, so "we're moving in the right direction".

Reckitt Benckiser was last week fined for misleading Australian consumers over claims about its Nurofen painkillers. Credit:AAP

Almost 18 per cent of shareholders who voted rejected the company's remuneration report, Reckitt Benckiser said in a statement on Thursday after its annual general meeting in London. The vote was non-binding, with dissent coming from investors including Royal London Asset Management, which has said that the company's pay pushes the boundaries of acceptability. The company's pay policy was rebuffed by 24 per cent of those who voted.

The protest is the latest setback for the maker of Dettol disinfectants, which is grappling with a South Korean probe into the sale of now-banned humidifier sanitisers that have been linked to respiratory illnesses and deaths.

The England-based company has also been fined for misleading Australian consumers over claims about its Nurofen painkillers. The events have overshadowed a strong sales performance in recent quarters.

Reckitt Benckiser shares rose 0.4 per cent to 6684 pence in London on Thursday.

Mr Kapoor's pay "is the cost of the blood of Korean babies and mothers", said Yeyong Choi, director of Asian Citizen's Centre for Environment and Health. The CEO should fly to Seoul and apologise for its part in the deaths in Korea, he said outside the meeting. Mr Kapoor apologised at the meeting, saying he very much regretted that the product caused harm and pledged that it would not happen again.

Shareholders also registered smaller protests against the re-election of directors including Mr Kapoor, chairman Adrian Bellamy and Judy Sprieser, chair of the company's remuneration committee. Ms Sprieser has served almost nine years on the board, a tenure that exceeds the eight-year recommended limit that European companies such as Unilever place on directors. Mr Bellamy, who also serves on the pay committee, is also approaching nine years as a director.
The scale of Australians' gambling problems dwarfs even this 72-storey tower. Researcher Paul Delfabbro has estimated that we spend $18 billion on gambling annually, $1500 a head, which dwarfs the figures for New Zealand ($495), and the US ($325). The Productivity Commission found in 2010 that 115,000 Australians were problem gamblers, with 280,000 at moderate risk. It estimated the social cost of problem gambling at $4.7 billion a year. Admittedly, Crown Sydney is supposed to be reserved for high rollers. But given the success with which Crown has managed to renegotiate the height limit and the size of its proposal, it's impossible to predict where the project will end up. The company's own figures suggest that most of its current revenue comes from Australians  a hefty $2 billion in FY15.

While Crown talks up the plutocrats who'll fly in to drop a bundle in their glitzy VIP salons, in reality NSW's most dedicated punters occupy a rather different social stratum. A study by Ogilvy found that "being a regular gambler was significantly associated with being male, being single and also being separated/divorced/widowed, and low educational attainment". I've no objection to Crown funding social programs, and the $200 million the Packers are putting into their philanthropic fund is indisputably impressive. It should also be noted that the philanthropic program is sustained and long-running: it's not as if it has just been rolled out to win the final approval. Indeed, most corporate philanthropists publicise their generosity to burnish their image.

But I'd feel a lot more comfortable if they were still making their money from less damaging activities like publishing lamington recipes and broadcasting Daryl Somers. It is now a matter of historical record that a substantial chunk of the first tract of empty waterfront land in decades has been handed to a billionaire's casino company that's practically spitting distance from the one we've already got. It is also well recorded that because it was an "unsolicited proposal" it (legitimately) bypassed usual planning processes and was never put out to tender. So here's another unsolicited proposal: we should rethink about how we give over waterfront land to the now-legislated casino, and how we deal with the social devastation wrought by gambling. A few weeks ago, I visited another waterfront site that's become the plaything of a wealthy gambling aficionado  Hobart's Museum of Old and New Art.

I found myself wishing that one of our billionaires had dreamed of an incredible cultural facility for Barangaroo instead of an incredible gambling den. Honestly, if Bennelong Point became available today, who seriously doubts that we'd be building a third casino there instead of the Opera House? David Walsh also wants to build a casino at MONA to fund his loss-making museum after he's gone. But he plans to ban Tasmanians from playing, in the same way that the Singapore government has forbidden its own residents from entering the enormous new Marina Bay Sands complex. Of course, there are benefits from the Crown Sydney proposal for jobs, tourism and the overall economy. The rest of the centre will probably be as enjoyable to visit as Crown Melbourne's shops, bars and nightclubs.
Illustration: Mick Connolly In other words, the guys with the pale blue collared shirts and the comb-overs upstairs in Admin really are mummy's boys. Emasculating the clerical classes and encouraging Norwegian rockers, however, are by no means the worst of the Great Mother's wrongdoings. She's also to blame for soft drink and obesity. Just this year, a Brazilian team led by communications professor Dr Ada Kesea Guedes Bezerra published a study that concluded "the female figure was consolidated as a symbol of the advertising of the Coca Cola Company group, through the Great Mother archetype and the maiden". Also in 2016 Renee Gaudet, from Canada's University of Victoria, advanced the theory that the eating habits of Hansel and Gretel and other characters in Grimm's fairy tales were all about mother issues. "Wholesome eating is associated with benevolent motherliness," she wrote, "while inappropriate eating is linked to the ubiquitous evil mother archetype."

However, should you think that all this unpleasant finger-pointing applies only to mothers who have the misfortune to be born mythical, you would be wrong. Real ones, it turns out, can be just as troublesome  a situation that arises from the simple observation that while all mothers are women, not all women are mothers. Back in 1994, US feminist writer Lynn M Stearney observed that "the use of motherhood as a unifying principle confounds womanhood with motherhood." This, she added, overlooked the fact that motherhood was "an ideologically and socially constructed institution". The battle to define socially correct mother roles has been long and loud, particularly in the United States where something called "the Mommy Wars" has been raging for years. This conflict basically involves two camps: those who believe that proper mothering requires staying at home with the kids full time, and those who contend that it is perfectly possible to work and be a mum at the same time. It is a conflict regularly stoked by faddish authors, almost always women, and political commentators, almost always men. "It should come as no surprise to discover that both working and stay-at-home mothers are prone to depression," wrote UK University of Hereford feminist scholar Kim Akass in 2013, "A condition no doubt exacerbated by the plethora of media stories about how they should, or should not, be raising their children."

Since then, the Mommy Wars have only intensified. The latest casualty was US model and TV host Chrissie Teigen who in April went out to dinner with her husband, two weeks after giving birth. In the egocentric manner of American celebrities, she posted her outing on Instagram, and immediately attracted thousands of hostile responses from people calling her a bad mother and a monster. (Teigen, it must be said, countered elegantly. Several hours after the barrage began, a troll tweeted, asking snidely how her baby was faring. "Dunno," Teigen tweeted back, "Can't find her.") But by drawing attention to her status as a new mum the model was, at least by one theory, oppressing and shaming lots of other women who don't have kids. This is a matter that perhaps strikes a particularly plangent tone today, when mothers and motherhood are being honoured. Mums  you're being nasty. Indeed, according to a paper published this year by New York philosopher Anna Gotlib, you are contributing to "the pronatalist marginalization and oppression of voluntarily childless women in the Global North." So there. Shove that in your gob with your Devonshire tea. The idea of "pronatalism" holds that giving birth and raising children are the right and proper things for women to do. Many governments around the world institute policies to encourage child-rearing  Australia's now-axed Baby Bonus was a good example of a pronatalist measure.

The problem with all this, Dr Gotlib asserts, is that all the pro-mother stuff can leave women who choose not to have kids feeling discriminated against. Indeed, it can result in them developing "damaged identities that can leave them personally othered." (And in this day and age, surely, no one should be forced to endure otherness.) The old idea that motherhood is simply natural  indeed, archetypal  turns out to be just plain wrong. This is amply illustrated by a quick trawl through recent academic papers, which bear titles such as "Facing the Dragon: Black Mothering, Sequelae, and Gendered Necropolitics in the Americas", "Beyond Hegemonic ideologies of Motherhood", and "Mothering with Neuroscience in a Neoliberal Age: Child Disorders and Embodied Brains." And you thought it was all about just packing school lunches and making sure they caught the bus in time. Which brings us back to the Great Mother, and her manifest faults. The Big Momma idea  the notion that motherhood is primal and primeval  underpins the assumption that having kids is innate and natural. It also fuels the Mommy Wars. Erich Neumann has a lot to answer for. "The myth of matriarchy is but the tool used to keep woman bound to her place," wrote US anthropologist Joan Bamburger in 1974. "To free her we need to destroy the myth."
China, Laos agree on cooperation

2016-05-06 08:23

BEIJING, May 3, 2016 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping (R) holds talks with Lao President Bounnhang Vorachit in Beijing, capital of China, May 3, 2016.(Xinhua/Pang Xinglei)

BEIJING, May 4 (Xinhua) -- China and Laos have agreed on a plethora of cooperative projects after meetings between Chinese leaders and visiting Laotian President Bounnhang Vorachit.

From Tuesday to Thursday, Bounnhang is on his first China visit since being elected president in April. He has held talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping, Premier Li Keqiang, top legislator Zhang Dejiang and senior Communist Party of China official Liu Yunshan.

Bounnhang and his Chinese hosts reached broad consensus on relations between the two parties, the two countries as well as international and regional issues of shared interest, according to a joint statement released on Wednesday.

Both sides agreed to enhance integration of development strategies, coordinate their construction of regional trade infrastructure, and cooperate more in production capacity and investment.

The statement said they will push forward construction of the China-Laos railway and work together more closely on economic and technological development districts. China backs capable and credible enterprises to set up economic and trade cooperation zones in Laos.

In energy cooperation, China encourages Chinese companies and financial institutions to participate in energy development strategy in Laos, the joint statement said.

Bounnhang and the Chinese leaders also agreed to strengthen cooperation in agriculture, defense, law enforcement in border areas, people-to-people contact and cooperation at a local level.

China and Laos will continue to enhance collaboration in various international, regional and sub-regional mechanisms. China supports Laos holding the ASEAN's rotating chair this year.

On the South China Sea issue, the two countries agreed that maintaining peace, stability, cooperation and development of the South China Sea area is in line with the common interests of regional countries, calling on the parties directly concerned to resolve disputes peacefully through negotiation.

The Declaration on the Conduct of the Parties in the South China Sea should be implemented, the joint statement said, urging all sides involved to reach a Code of Conduct at an early date.

During Bounnhang's visit, China and Laos have signed 10 cooperative documents, including a cooperation plan between the two ruling parties, an agreement on economic and technological cooperation, and a memorandum of understanding on capacity and investment cooperation.

Related:

China's Xi holds talks with Lao leader to enhance ties

BEIJING, May 3 (Xinhua) -- President Xi Jinping held talks with visiting Lao President Bounnhang Vorachit on Tuesday.

This is Bounnhang's first visit to China since he became General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Lao People's Revolutionary Party in January and was elected president of Laos in April. Full story

China, Laos pledge further cooperation

BEIJING, May 4 (Xinhua) -- China and Laos on Wednesday pledged to further enhance bilateral cooperation and parliamentary exchanges.

The pledge was made during separate meetings between Chinese Premier Li Keqiang and top legislator Zhang Dejiang with visiting Laotian President Bounnhang Vorachit at the Great Hall of the People. Full story

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With the number of threatened plant and animal species in NSW ticking past 1000, Environment Minister Mark Speakman reasonably argues that "biodiversity has gone backwards in the past 20 years". Land clearing at Yarol, in Moree. Credit:Wilderness Society "What we have in place has not been working," he says. "So we need something better." However, conservation groups say what's on offer will be worse  possibly much worse. The government will introduce codes aimed at giving landowners more scope to "self-assess" what should be spared or not. It is hoping the carrot of cash to reward those who protect habitat on their land  $240 million over the first five years, rising to $70 million a year after that  will do more than the sticks now used.

Contents aside, the release of the draft bills now is unfortunate timing. Ian Turnbull, a farmer from Moree, is before the Supreme Court, facing murder charges for allegedly gunning down Glen Turner, an Office of Environment and Heritage staffer who had been inspecting land clearing in 2014. A section of the Nationals has been campaigning hard to reverse the 2005 Native Vegetation Act, that among other things, requires farmers to "maintain and improve" biodiversity if they clear land. Derek Schoen, president of NSW Farmers, welcomes the repeal of an "unworkable and detrimental" Act: "It was just bureaucratic red tape. Most people couldn't get through the process." He's annoyed, though, that farmers won't have the maps  possibly until next year  showing whether they will still need approval to clear. "It's a big mistake," he says. "It's been a long process. There's been a lot of time to get the maps." Others, though, point to weaknesses in OEH mapping that suggest they are far from ready.

Rachel Walmsley, from the Environment Defenders Office NSW, says OEH officers have told her "so much more can be cleared under codes, regardless of the condition". Land-clearing  the main cause of species decline  will become far less transparent and won't allow third-party review. Major decisions will be made by relatively under-skilled Local Land Services staff, critics fear. An OEH spokesman, however, says there would no effect on existing appeal rights relating to developments and environment assessment in the new bills. Also, much of the control shifts to the Department of Primary Industries  with Nationals' Niall Blair as minister  rather than the Department of Planning and Environment, contradicting recommendations of the 2014 review of biodiversity legislation. Secrecy also shrouds the biodiversity offsets that are meant to compensate for habitat lost. The OEH will run this part but is not required to disclose what's being traded off and at what price.

"Once it goes into a box owned by OEH, no one will know what's in it," says John Hunter, an ecologist with the University of New England. The OEH spokesman, though, said the government is committed to ensuring information about offsets is transparent and a register would make some details public. "The Environment Agency Head can choose to not include certain information on the public register if it is in the public interest to not do so," he said. "This may include restricting public knowledge on the location of particularly sensitive biodiversity to ensure its protection (as was the case with the Wollemi Pine)." Some land has been "offset" at least three times, one ecologist in the public sector tells Fairfax Media: "So long as [the flora species] doesn't become technically extinct, you can gut it." Among documents under review is one that indicates land placed under voluntary conservation agreements could be re-classified by later owners as an offset, much to the dismay of landholders such as Jocelyn Howden.
Defence experts have welcomed plans for a dramatic boost to the number of Singaporean soldiers training in Australia as a natural deepening of the relationship in the face of growing uncertainty in Asia.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull announced on Friday that Singapore would pay for new defence infrastructure at training bases in Queensland under a deal that will see up to 14,000 of its troops train for up to 18 weeks a year there.

While the details are still to be negotiated, Singapore has agreed to pump up to $2.25 billion in investment into the sites at Shoalwater Bay and Townsville, though the joint statement between the countries doesn't detail such a figure.
Corporate tax cuts will cost the budget at least $48.2 billion over 10 years, Treasury has confirmed, ending days of speculation about the cost of the Turnbull government's budget centrepiece.

Treasury secretary John Fraser told a Senate estimates hearing on Friday morning the cost of two key elements of the 10-year enterprise tax plan would be $48.2 billion, but warned: "These costings have considerable uncertainty attached to them."

Mr Fraser said Treasurer Scott Morrison spoke to him personally at about 6pm on Thursday to instruct him to publish the full 10-year costings, following days of the government refusing to confirm the figure.
The killing of Islamic State recruiter Neil Prakash will not halt the flow of foreign fighters or the inspiration of local plots because another jihadist will "fill that void", a top federal police officer says

Australian Federal Police counter-terrorism chief Neil Gaughan said there were candidates that police and intelligence agencies were already watching who might replace Prakash.

"It's like any hierarchy  if you cut the head off, someone else will rise to the top," Mr Gaughan told Fairfax Media.

"The question of course is who will be next, but there will be someone else  who will fill that void. The issue for law enforcement and intelligence agencies is that we quickly identify who that person is and make sure we've got them adequately covered."
While some women may expel these fluids during arousal or sex, they are most commonly expelled during orgasm, and particularly through G-spot orgasm. So what is the difference between these fluids? The release of urine during penetrative sex is usually as a result of stress urinary incontinence. Some women experience no other symptoms of stress urinary incontinence, such as leakage when sneezing, coughing or laughing, but will leak during sex. Squirting is the leakage of a urine-like substance during orgasm. It is thought to occur because of strong muscle contractions surrounding the bladder during female orgasm. Female ejaculate, most commonly reported with G-spot orgasm, is a much different substance: women describe the fluid as looking like watered-down fat-free milk and report producing about a teaspoon in volume during orgasm. The contents of female ejaculate have been chemically analysed and found that it closely resembles secretions from the male prostate. This has led to many suspecting that glands known as the female prostate (formerly Skenes glands) produce this ejaculate. What could the G-spot be?

The G-spot is not a single, distinct entity. Much debate exists in the research field as to just what the G-spot is, and how it can produce orgasm. The G-spot is located in the clitourethrovaginal complex  the area where the clitoris, urethra and vagina all meet up. There are several structures in this complex that could produce pleasurable sensations when stimulated  the G-spot might reflect the stimulation of just one structure, or multiple structures at once. Two structures in particular have been hotly debated and stand out as likely candidates for producing G-spot orgasms: the female prostate and the clitoris. The female prostate lies within the urethral sponge, a cushion of tissue surrounding the urethra. The urethral sponge and female prostate are highly innervated, which may explain their sensitivity when stimulated. The clitoris is more than meets the eye: we now know this organ extends far beyond what is visible externally. Apart from where the urethra and vagina touch, the clitoris somewhat encircles the urethra. Mechanical stimulation of the G-spot may in fact be stimulating the internal portion of the clitoris. So, is the G-spot fact or fiction?

The G-spot certainly exists in some women. However, not all women will find the stimulation of the G-spot pleasurable. Just because a woman is not aroused when the G-area is stimulated, this does not mean she is in any way sexually dysfunctional. Sexuality and arousal have clear physiological and psychological links. But, as human beings, we are all made slightly anatomically and physiologically different. In the same way that what I consider blue may not be the exact same blue you perceive, an orgasm in one woman is not the same as an orgasm in any other woman. It is a unique experience. And although you and I both see blue through our eyes, the complexities of human sexuality and the female reproductive organs mean women may achieve orgasm in multiple ways. Some women are unable to orgasm in the presence of a partner, but have no difficulty with orgasm with masturbation. Some women can orgasm only with clitoral stimulation, while others can orgasm through vaginal stimulation alone. There are reports of women who experience orgasm through the stimulation of the foot, and Grafenberg detailed in his report women who experienced arousal through ear penile penetration (but these reports are yet to be replicated!). You are not abnormal or strange or dysfunctional if you cannot find your G-spot. Similarly, you are not abnormal or strange or dysfunctional if you expel fluid during arousal or sex. Sexual arousal, desire and pleasure are individual: if you are unable to find your G-area, work on finding something that does fulfil your sexual needs.
Veteran aid worker Kerry Jane Wilson was banking on a "blend-in" strategy to try to avoid the many hostile groups posing a deadly threat to Westerners in Afghanistan.

Jalalabad, the east Afghanistan city she was visiting, was considered a virtual no-go zone for Westerners and is in the heart of unstable Nangarhar province  a growth region for Islamic State, home to a resurgent Taliban and associated extremist groups as well as local crime gangs.

Kidnapped Australian aid worker Katherine Jane Wilson, who goes by the name Kerry, with her father Brian.

Like a fair proportion of aid workers in the country the 60-year-old had shunned or could not afford high-level protection measures and had instead relied upon a strategy of keeping a low profile and trying to look like a local.

Her modest non-government organisation Zardozi, which helped local women earn money from sewing, was using a clapped-out old Toyota Land Cruiser that Ms Wilson had been appealing for donations to upgrade, and the compound she was visiting was nondescript.
They called it "Terra Australis Incognita," the unknown land of the south: an exotic, faraway region, perched on the horizon of European man's imagination. Cartographers of the 15th century were simply speculating when they began to draw the contour of the landmass that would later be verified and named Australia.

In the late 1700s Joseph Banks experienced the antipodes for himself and brought home tales of curiosity: Australia was a place where there existed peculiar, egg-laying mammals and upright beasts with 'bags' to carry their young.

Lake Oberon, Western Arthur Range, south west Tasmania, 1988. Credit:Peter Dombrovskis

However inappropriate, the mythology of Australia as an exotic quantity prevails today and has become part of our national identity. Australian Exotica is an exhibition at Monash Gallery of Art that bring together photographic works that celebrate, critique or subvert the traditional European perspective of Australia.

"This exhibition will have prominent Australian photographs that relate to what it means to be an Australian, or at least what someone looking in would think about this country  what makes us unique," said MGA's assistant curator, Stella Loftus-Hills.
Cain Gorfine is angered by the failure to offer blood testing in the Williamtown area. Credit:Jonathan Carroll The government cites federal and state health authorities that say blood tests have no medical value because there is no certain link between PFCs and illness. A NSW Health recommendation against blood testing has forced Williamtown residents to "doctor shop" for GPs willing to provide pathology referrals. The Senate Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade References Committee, which investigated PFC contamination from military bases, called for voluntary annual blood testing of affected residents and current and former base workers on Thursday. Kim-Leanne King, with her youngest daughter Madeline and their Appaloosa horses, worries she exposed her children to poison in the Williamtown area. Credit:Nic Walker "Refusal to provide blood tests is compounding the pressure and anguish felt by many locals," said NSW Greens Senator Lee Rhiannon, who initiated the inquiry.

The controversy raises moral, medical and legal issues. "People believe they have a right to know their exposure levels. They want the polluter, Defence, to fund periodic monitoring of their blood," says Shannon of Shine Lawyers, which represents more than 50 Oakey residents. A test for PFOS and its sister compound perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) costs more than $600 and is not covered by private health insurance or Medicare, which puts regular checks out of reach of many families. Blood testing may be of no immediate medical value but baseline results will be vital in future legal claims for compensation, says Ben Allen of law firm Gadens which represents more than 200 Williamtown residents in a potential class action. Peter Shannon says the government has set "a very high bar of proof by saying there is no scientifically proven link. But to succeed in a civil claim you only have to show a probable connection." Not everyone in authority opposes blood testing. Discovery of PFOS and PFOA at fire brigade training sites near Sydney and Wollongong led NSW Fire Commissioner Greg Mullins to offer free tests to fire-fighters. Victoria's Country Fire Authority has provided free tests to staff and residents potentially affected by PFOS at its Fiskville training base, where unusually high rates of testicular, skin and brain cancer have been confirmed.

PFCs are commonly found in human blood at relatively low "background" concentrations. That is partly due to their presence in a wide range of products such as waterproofing agents for fabrics and furniture, food packaging and non-stick cookware. Oakey and Williamtown are Australia's first proved cases of high-level PFC contamination of neighbouring properties due to military use of now-superseded firefighting foam. About 1000 households have so far been affected, with health authorities warning them not to consume bore water and local eggs, meat and milk. Meanwhile Defence is undertaking "priority testing" of PFC soil and water contamination at the naval air station HMAS Albatross near Nowra in NSW, and RAAF bases Pearce in WA and East Sale in Victoria. They are on a list of 18 military sites in Australia confirmed or suspected to be PFC contaminated. The Environmental Health Standing Committee (enHealth) comprising federal, state and territory health advisers recommends against blood tests for PFCs because they "have no diagnostic or prognostic value". There is not enough scientific evidence for a doctor to tell a patient whether their blood levels have made them sick or will do so, it says.

When contacted for this story, a federal Department of Health spokeswoman said enHealth's recommendation against blood testing remained unchanged. Hunter New England Health public health physician Dr David Durrheim said the position of the state service  which covers Williamtown  was the same as enHealth's, though the state service had advised Williamtown residents on the availability of laboratories able to test for PFCs. "While we caution about the limited individual health benefits of testing, we encourage people to discuss their questions, concerns and testing options with their GP," Dr Durrheim said. The Department of Defence did not reply to questions about blood testing by deadline. In the United States, Germany and Sweden, blood testing of PFC-affected communities has been conducted on a mass scale.

Blood samples from almost 70,000 people who drank PFOA-laced water in West Virginia were used in a landmark study by leading US and British epidemiologists. In 2011 they found a "probable link" between PFOA exposure and testicular cancer, kidney cancer, thyroid disease, ulcerative colitis, pregnancy-induced hypertension and diagnosed high cholesterol. Oakey residents suffer some of these conditions "at a frequency sufficient to raise a red flag", Mr Shannon says. "Blood tests could prove vital for them as more scientific and medical information about PFCs comes to hand." It can take several years before PFC levels go down by half, even if no more is taken in. Ben Allen agrees blood tests are needed to establish a baseline for individuals. "If monitored over time, they could help determine long term health effects of these chemicals  especially for children or other Williamtown residents who have only grown up in this area of contaminated water." But Williamtown residents who decide to fund their own tests are being denied referrals by doctors who cite GP alerts and verbal advice from Hunter New England Local Health District. A GP alert issued to Newcastle area doctors says: "It is possible that residents will present with health concerns for further assessment. Blood tests are not helpful in predicting the level of health risk, are not readily available and are not recommended."

Newcastle dive shop proprietor Ryan Baker, who lives inside the contamination zone with his wife Jessica and three-year-old daughter Ociana, said two doctors refused him a referral because of this advice. GP consultation notes given to Baker indicate a Hunter New England Health representative warned one of the GPs that telling people their PFC blood levels would only increase their anxiety. Mr Baker said he, Jessica and Ociana eventually found two doctors who gave referrals. "They thought it was important for us to have the information on our health records in case there are health impacts in the future," he said. The family will have the tests when they can afford them. enHealth's stance against blood testing rests on its assessment that "in humans, there is no conclusive evidence that PFCs cause any specific illnesses, including cancer". Similarly the government concedes only a "possible association" between health problems and PFOS/PFOA.

This seems out of step with international and US advice, which warns of "probable" and "likely" health impacts. The Review Committee of the Stockholm Convention  an international treaty that aims to eliminate or restrict pollutants that are slow to break down and persist in the food chain  warns that PFOS is "likely to lead to significant adverse human health and environmental effects, such that global action is warranted". The chemical was added to the Stockholm Convention in 2009 but Australia still has not ratified its listing. It should do so before the end of 2016, the Senate inquiry recommended. It also urged the government to legislate for the immediate disposal of PFOS/PFOA fire-fighting foams stored at all federal, state and territory facilities. Canada has a blanket ban on PFOS while the US and EU severely restrict its use. In the United States, the Science Advisory Board of the Environment Protection Authority assesses both PFOS and PFOA as "likely to be carcinogenic to humans" while the Risk Assessment Committee of the European Chemicals Agency found there was enough evidence to classify PFOA as "toxic for reproduction" in 2011.

Defence's own environmental branch acknowledged in a confidential 2003 report that both PFOS and PFOA "have been implicated with (sic) a variety of cancers and toxic health effects in humans". However Australia still imports PFCs and our National Industrial Chemicals Notification and Assessment Scheme recommends only that Australian industries "actively seek alternatives". The government has refused the Senate committee's recommendation to commit to property buyouts for Williamtown and Oakey residents whose land values have plummeted since news of the contamination broke. And it has offered only token compensation to Hunter River fishermen put out of business by the closure of fishing grounds contaminated by Williamtown base. Ben Allen says that leaves fishermen with little alternative but legal action. Gadens' pending class action is backed by litigation funder IMF Bentham. "We now have a war chest to take us to the High Court and back if necessary," says Williamtown and Surrounds Residents Action Group president Cain Gorfine. "We expect Defence will fight us as hard as they can."
Can film stars and pubs do for Balmain what the council, landlords and multiple past efforts have failed to do?

In a first for ailing Australian high streets, celebrity clout and technologically driven spending research have come together to drive change in the inner-west Sydney suburb.

A group of Balmain and Rozelle residents and leaders including actor Bryan Brown, filmmaker Rachel Ward, Harris Farm Markets' David Harris and Carnival chief executive Ann Sherry are part of an effort to breathe new life into the peninsula suburb and shore up its future in the face of the government-sponsored development of nearby White Bay.

Locals have bemoaned and attempted to halt the demise of the Darling Street retail and dining strip in recent years, with its vacant shopfronts, declining footfall and few business newcomers on the main road. Facing the combined pressures of online shopping, mega malls, an ageing demographic and high rents, Darling Street is not alone  Paddington's Oxford Street, Leichhardt's Norton Street and hundreds of high streets across Australia have suffered similar declines.
Police deployed helicopters, the riot squad and the dog unit to disperse a wild party of 150 teenagers in a vacant house in Sydney's south on Friday night.

A police officer was hospitalised during a scuffle with partygoers, and a teenager was charged, following the incident at View Street, Gymea, NSW Police said on Saturday morning.

After receiving complaints about the party about 8pm on Friday night, police from Sutherland found 150 people partying in a vacant house.

Partygoers allegedly threw glass bottles and other projectiles at the police when they tried to find out who had organised the out-of-control party. One witness reported that party goers jumped fences into neighbouring backyards to escape the police.

To disperse the group, police deployed the riot and dog unit, and PolAir helicopters. But the sound of the choppers overhead alarmed locals, who took to social media to share information.
China, Laos pledge further cooperation

2016-05-06 08:23

BEIJING, May 4, 2016 (Xinhua) -- Chinese PremierLi Keqiang(R) meets with Lao President Bounnhang Vorachit, also General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Lao People's Revolutionary Party, in Beijing, capital of China, May 4, 2016. (Xinhua/Xie Huanchi)

BEIJING, May 4 (Xinhua) -- China and Laos on Wednesday pledged to further enhance bilateral cooperation and parliamentary exchanges.

The pledge was made during separate meetings between Chinese Premier Li Keqiang and top legislator Zhang Dejiang with visiting Laotian President Bounnhang Vorachit at the Great Hall of the People.

Hailing the current development of China-Laos relations, Li said China was ready to enhance political mutual trust, promote the implementation of bilateral cooperation programs, and strengthen exchanges and experience sharing on development.

He also called on the two sides to strengthen communication and coordination on regional and international affairs.

Bounnhang said bilateral technological and trade cooperation with China made important contribution for Laos' social and economic development.

Laos is willing to expand the bilateral cooperation, and implement the cooperation projects such as the Laos-China railway construction, Bounnhang said.

He said Laos will also actively participate in the Lancang-Mekong Cooperation mechanism that was started earlier this year.

This year marks the 25th anniversary of the establishment of the dialogue relationship between China and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

Bounnhang said Laos welcomed Li to visit Laos and attend this year's leaders' meetings on East Asian cooperation scheduled in Vientiane. Laos will also prepare well for the commemorating summit for the 25th anniversary of ASEAN-China dialogue relationship to advance regional cooperation.

Li said he was looking forward to this year's leaders' meeting and the commemorating summit.

Li spoke highly of the contribution made by Laos for regional cooperation and development, saying China will support Laos' rotating chairmanship of the ASEAN, and work with Laos and other ASEAN members to jointly push forward the China-ASEAN relations and East Asian cooperation to benefit people in the region.

Zhang Dejiang, chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress (NPC), China's top legislative body, said in his meeting with Bounnhang that the NPC attached high importance to the cooperation with the Lao National Assembly and was willing to keep the bilateral exchanges of all levels.

Zhang urged the legislative bodies of the two countries to increase exchanges on national governance, legislature and supervision to help promote the development of the China-Laos relations.

Bounnhang said the Lao government and National Assembly will work with the Chinese side to push forward the bilateral comprehensive strategic partnership of cooperation.

Liu Yunshan, a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, also met with Bounnhang on Wednesday and jointly attended the reception marking the 55th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic ties between China and Laos.

Speaking highly of the friendship between the two countries in the past 55 years, Liu said it is of great political importance to bilateral ties to maintaining high-level party-to-party exchanges.

The CPC is willing to work with the the Lao People's Revolutionary Party (LPRP) to implement the consensus reached by Chinese President Xi Jinping and his Lao counterpart Bounnhang to further exchange experience on party-building and governance so as to promote the healthy and steady development of bilateral ties, Liu said.

Bounnhang said Laos appreciates the assistance China has provided to it in the past 55 years.

Lao would like to make joint efforts with China to lift the comprehensive strategic partnership of cooperation to a new level, said Bounnhang.

Bounnhang is visiting China from Tuesday to Thursday. This is his first visit to China since he became general secretary of the LPRP Central Committee in January and was elected president of Laos in April.

Related:

China's Xi holds talks with Lao leader to enhance ties

BEIJING, May 3 (Xinhua) -- President Xi Jinping held talks with visiting Lao President Bounnhang Vorachit on Tuesday.

This is Bounnhang's first visit to China since he became General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Lao People's Revolutionary Party in January and was elected president of Laos in April. Full story

China, Laos agree on cooperation

BEIJING, May 4 (Xinhua) -- China and Laos have agreed on a plethora of cooperative projects after meetings between Chinese leaders and visiting Laotian President Bounnhang Vorachit.

From Tuesday to Thursday, Bounnhang is on his first China visit since being elected president in April. He has held talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping, Premier Li Keqiang, top legislator Zhang Dejiang and senior Communist Party of China official Liu Yunshan.Full story

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Mr Rogerson told a jury that he had never heard of Mr Gao until after seeing him dead on the floor of unit 803 at Rent a Space, Padstow. Former detective and true-crime author Glen McNamara. Credit:James Alcock In his account he walked into the dimly lit shed and his friend Mr McNamara then explained what had happened. "Glen McNamara said, 'He pulled a gun on me, he tried to kill me'." Mr Rogerson replied, "What the f--- happened?"

In his account, Mr McNamara allegedly claimed Mr Gao had tried shoot to him. "[Mr McNamara] said 'I knew he was going to shoot me' and he said 'I made a grab for his hands ... it was a real struggle.' "[Mr McNamara] said, 'I was able to grab hold of his hands and I was lucky enough to twist the gun around'." Mr McNamara then allegedly said that the deceased had "shot himself in the chest". Leaning forward at times, Mr Rogerson told the jury he believed Mr McNamara when he said that if the pair did not leave soon, they would be killed by Chinese triads with whom Mr Gao associated.

Mr Rogerson said he was adamant the police should be called. "I said to him, 'Glen, I think the only thing we'll be doing here is calling the cops,'" he said. But Mr McNamara was worried the both of them would be killed unless they left the area quickly. "McNamara said to me, 'If he's not back there soon this place will be swarming with Chinese assassins. We're gonna be killed if we don't get out of here as quick as we can." Mr Rogerson was allegedly told "these lunatics will shoot the police" and "this place will become a bloodbath".

"I said 'Well thanks very much Glen, I'm a bit old for all this'." At this point Mr McNamara was allegedly hyperventilating. "I said to him 'Glen, look, pull yourself together, calm down, sit down'." Barrister George Thomas then asked, "Did you believe what he was telling you?" To which Mr Rogerson replied, "I had no reason not to believe everything he said."

"Did you know anything of any plan to kill Jamie Gao?" Mr Thomas asked. "One hundred per cent not," Mr Rogerson replied. Earlier on Friday Mr Rogerson had explained to the jury how he and Mr McNamara had a "strong" relationship and that they had known each other for about five years. Two days before Mr Gao's death, Mr McNamara had come to visit Mr Rogerson on the afternoon of May 18. Mr McNamara explained how he had an informant who had been helping him research his next true crime book on Asian gangs in Sydney.

He allegedly asked Mr Rogerson if he could use a mutual friend's storage unit to have a meeting with a "very, very valuable informant". Mr Rogerson said he did not think it would be a problem. On the day of Mr Gao's death Mr Rogerson said he was at his Padstow home, sweeping the gutters outside when Mr McNamara pulled up in a white Ford station wagon. He said Mr McNamara was about to go meet his informant and asked whether Mr Rogerson could come along to be a "second set of eyes" in case there were Chinese triads following. "Why did you involve yourself?" Mr Thomas asked.
The Waverton community has scored a major victory in its fight to stop an 84-berth super yacht marina carpeting Berrys Bay with large boats, after a regional planning panel refused the proposal.

The members of Waverton precinct, Save Berrys Bay committee and North Sydney Council have been fighting since 2009 to prevent a huge marina after the Roads and Maritime department awarded a tender to Meridien Marinas for a major development.

Waverton resident Bruce Donald with his dogs at Berrys Bay, which was being considered as a site for a super yacht marina. Credit:Dallas Kilponen

On Thursday the Sydney East Planning Panel published its decision saying it was refusing the proposal because of the "high intensity of the proposed use".

"The panel accepts that a decision based on visual impact is subjective and that different minds may reasonably come to different conclusions on it," the panel said. "However the panel is unanimous in believing that the amount of marina proposed in this application is too much for the character of the bay."
8/10

THE BAD: I just had a bit of a Google stalk of Last Vegas actress Olivia Stuck and she's normally chic in a 'makes-normcore-stonewashed-jeans-look-good' kind of way. This white jumpsuit, however? The terrible front seaming is one thing, but the fact it somehow makes this symmetrically-proportioned woman look completely lopsided is completely unforgivable (that right boob sling needs reining in). I like to consider myself a fairly self confident woman, but if you gave this to me in my size and paid me to put it on I don't think I could. I just don't think I'd be able to weather seeing myself looking quite that bad. A 'can't-be-unseen' situation. Credit:Getty
The Gold Coast's famous beaches sent more than 2000 people to hospital in five years and claimed at least two lives, without even taking drownings into account.

The figures were revealed in a retrospective analysis of emergency room admissions to the Gold Coast University Hospital and its predecessor from 2010 to 2015.

Surfers are more likely to be injured than bodysurfers but it's usually not as serious.

Although surfboard injuries made up by far the most admissions (1526), non-training neurosurgical registrar Elena How found body surfing injuries (516) did the most damage.

She presented the figures to a surgeon's conference in Brisbane this week and called for more to be done to teach tourists and other inexperienced beachgoers about water safety.
Dozens of Queensland small businesses, many which wouldn't exist without the Great Barrier Reef, have issued a dire warning to Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.

The open letter published on Saturday comes as new research predicts bleaching as severe bleaching could become the "new normal", recurring biyearly by the mid-2030s.

The Great Barrier Reef. Credit:Climate Council

In a move contrary to recent attempts from tourism bodies to downplay the extent of the bleaching, 175 tourism operators, dive professionals and tradies labelled the mass damage a "disaster needing urgent action".

They called on the Turnbull government to rule out any financing, investment or help with associated infrastructure for the Abbot Point coal terminal expansion and Adani's controversial Carmichael mine, the largest in Australia.
Treasurer Scott Morrison has refused to say why $1.2 billion in natural disaster relief payments to Queensland have been delayed, leaving a potential black hole in the state's budget.

The Natural Disaster Relief and Recovery Arrangements payments, compensating Queensland for money spent on disaster recovery efforts, were due by June 30, but have been deferred a year and will be paid in two instalments.

Federal Treasurer Scott Morrison speaks to North Lakes real estate agent Chris Bowmaker (right). Credit:Tony Moore

When questioned near Brisbane on Friday, Mr Morrison gave a general answer about governments being ready to provide disaster funding, but did not say why the payments were delayed in Tuesday's federal budget.

Queensland Treasurer Curtis Pitt on Wednesday showed that the federal budget had delayed paying back Queensland $1.2 billion the state had spent on flood and cyclone recovery.
Mobile phone use has not caused a rise in brain cancer in Australia, says a new study led by the University of Sydney.

Despite the near complete uptake of mobile phones among Australians over the past 29 years, the communications devices, which emit electromagnetic radiation, are not correlated to incidences of brain cancer, the authors claim.

A 1987 Telstra ad for Australia's first mobile phone. Analysis of the 29 years since shows no correlation between mobile phone use and brain cancer occurrence.

Has the incidence of brain cancer risen in Australia since the introduction of mobile phones 29 years ago?, published in the journal Cancer Epidemiology on Thursday, goes against the claims of American epidemiologist Devra Davis, whose visit to Sydney in November raised concerns over the dangers of mobile phone use.

Mobile phone use has risen to 94 per cent since 1987, when the first mobile phone call was made in Australia.
Rhinos could be grazing the grasslands of Australia as early as this year if an ambitious plan to import an "insurance population" of the species goes ahead.

As poaching continues to threaten the wild population in southern Africa, plans are underway to relocate 80 white and black rhinos to Australia for safe keeping. The breeding herd will be an insurance population in the event of the extinction of the species in the wild.

Ray Dearlove, founder of The Australian Rhino Project, aims to relocate 80 rhinos from southern Africa to Australia over the coming years.

Founder of The Australian Rhino Project, Ray Dearlove, said under the plan 20 animals a year would be imported from South Africa between 2016 and 2019. The first family group of six white rhino will go to Dubbo's Taronga Western Plains Zoo, where they will be quarantined.

Mr Dearlove said two years ago the family group, living on a private game reserve in the north-west of South Africa, numbered 12. But half have since been killed by poachers, leaving one male and five females.
At just 23, Solange Cunin is making space history. She is the driving force behind Australia's first payload to the International Space Station. And the aerospace engineering student is making her mark with the help of hundreds of NSW high school students.

"We had to get special approval from 16 other nations who take part in the ISS because Australia has never been involved with it before," said Ms Cunin, a student at the University of NSW.

Science and Industry Minister Christopher Pyne this month signed the first "Overseas Launch Certificate" ever issued by the Australian government.

Ms Cunin has enlisted the bright ideas of students from 40 NSW high schools to prepare a piece of hardware that will run 60 experiments in space. All of the experiments are written in Python computer code and loaded up into a piece of kit that will be tested by NASA scientists before rocketing up into Earth orbit.
ARM may be consummate storytellers. But they haven't always gotten away with it. In March 2001, 10 days after the launch of the National Museum of Australia in Canberra, the public servant in charge of construction reportedly twigged to something his bosses might not approve. The ratbags had taken the liberty of including a giant braille text on the building facade which read "sorry". If the prime minister wouldn't apologise to the stolen generation, they would. The message was erased. "It's now just a bumpy panel that says nothing," says Raggatt. Provocative: ARM Architecture's National Museum of Australia Credit: John Gollings One imagines such acts of provocation would prove their honourable intentions when the Portrait building was unveiled with a 32-storey image of Wurundjeri elder William Barak etched into its balustrades. Instead the architects were pilloried. How did they convince a commercial developer to make a statement of Aboriginality? Shouldn't such a bold statement come from a public building? Despite the left-field attack it confirmed the architects' ambition that the building would be a conversation starter. Or perhaps encourage people to wonder and investigate further who the figure is that stands sentinel over the city. Underneath Barak's portrait another Braille text ran: "Wurundjeri I am who I am".

Standing sentinel: ARM Architecture' Barak Building, Swanston Square Credit:Peter Bennetts If the Barak building created controversy, the building he looks down to along the Swanston St axis has received universal acclaim. Under the Shrine of Remembrance, ARM has, over a 10-year period from 2003-14, sensitively embedded educational facilities. Four zigzag-walled courtyards are the only additions visible externally. But being respectful doesn't mean it shies away from the truth of war. A courtyard in blood red, a poppy-shaped canopy. Lest We Forget in monumental script across a wall. Metal wall panels perforated with Binyon's Ode of Remembrance translated into Morse code into which visitors can thread cloth poppies through its holes. While there is a breadth of ways to experience and read the symbolism, the many references fall into respectful line. Field of dreams: ARM Architecture's redevelopment of the Shrine of Remembrance Credit:John Gollings "One of their best and most satisfying works," according to architecture critic Joe Rollo in 2014, the project won the Victoria Medal, one of five the practice has received and an unprecedented achievement.

The project helped establish the latter half of their career with major commissions such as the Melbourne Central masterplan, Albury and Geelong libraries, Hamer Hall refurbishment, and the Perth Arena. Geelong Library was one of the construction sites where union activities raised questions. Credit:John Gollings What's noticeable in ARM's 30-year career is the relatively small number of houses, the staple of young architectural practices. But, from the beginning, ARM embraced the city and the civic building. Easy to say, hard to do. "We were lucky in the '80s," McDougall reflects. "The housing commission under Jeff Kennett and later John Devenish gave emerging practices public work, which gave them the credentials to say they'd worked in the public arena. Leon van Schaik at RMIT took that model to the universities." Today those architects, alongside ARM, represent a who's who of Melbourne architectural culture: Greg Burgess, Norman Day, Peter Corrigan, DCM, Nonda Katsalidis, Peter Elliott, among them.

And while ARM's gold medal may suggest "Establishment" they still acknowledge it's tough  particularly for young practices. "It's got a lot harder," says McDougall. "Local government has a lot to answer for that because they are one group that should be employing emerging practices on projects." "Propaganda", too, has been a vital part of building that culture, says McDougall. Raggatt and McDougall have been telling stories about Melbourne architecture and its place in the world through teaching at RMIT, publishing magazines like Transition and, of course "advocacy"  talking to anyone who'd listen. Plenty do. Like an open-cut mine, the acoustic panels withing ARM's Melbourne Recital Centre. Credit:John Gollings To hear ARM tell it, you can be convinced of their cerebral art, even if your heart sometimes says no. The Melbourne Recital Centre's interior is an ode to the ineffability and wonder of music. Its international-standard acoustics is achieved with the aid of topographic timber walls that employ the imagery of saints solarised on its surface. Beautiful sure. But why wrap it in a "styrofoam" container? Bit of a pop art one-liner, no? "In your dreams," says Raggatt. Out-of-the-box thinking in this case looks inside the box. Packaging always holds something precious. Music is precious to humanity yet written on the wind. Styrofoam packaging itself looks abstract. Maybe it's an idea for a building. Then translating the lightness of Styrofoam into concrete transforms brutalism into pop art. A similar trick takes place on the nearby Hamer Hall. On the building's wall along the Yarra ARM manipulates concrete into a curtain wall, a playful pun on the city it reflects, as well as a theatrical motif of the hall behind.

Brutalist sculpture: ARM Architecture's Hammer Hall redevelopment Credit:John Gollings It's the expertise ARM has gained from these two concert halls that has landed them their first Sydney project; one that seems almost impossible to imagine. Ratbags storming the citadel, the Sydney Opera House. "We regard ARM as the best architects of concert halls in Australia," says Louise Herron, CEO of the Sydney Opera House. "We chose ARM because they did the Melbourne Recital Centre and did a superb job. What we're doing is taking a 1960s [concert] hall and we're turning it into a 21st-century hall." If it's tempting  or horrifying  to imagine ARM going to town on Utzon's building, Herron says "ARM understand very well that they need to work within the world-heritage listing". In some respects Utzon's domed building is not that unlikely a project for ARM. Their architecture may brim with often esoteric ideas that they arrange into narratives, but one thread unites them, explains McDougall: "The cave recurs in our work. From Storey Hall to Hamer Hall they are all wondrous caves. As opposed to the derivative cool minimalist spaces that you see many public gathering places have, [these halls] have the sense of safe gathering."
Stop meddling in South China Sea dispute, Chinese diplomat demands

2016-05-06 08:23

Photo taken on April 5, 2016 shows the lighthouse on Zhubi Reef of Nansha Islands in the South China Sea, south China. (Xinhua/Xing Guangli)

London, May 4 (Xinhua) -- Liu Xiaoming, Chinese ambassador to Britain, has demanded stopping meddling in the South China Sea dispute by some politicians and media outlets in the United States and Britain, in a signed article to the Times published Wednesday.

"The issue of the South China Sea is being ramped up by those in the US and the UK who accuse China of causing tension in the region. They proclaim the principle of free navigation and over-flight but in reality their prejudice and partiality will only increase tension," he said.

Their suggestion that China's "hard line" position about the sea increases friction is not based on fact, Liu said, pointing out that China was the first country to discover and name the Nansha islands and reefs and the first to govern them.

Although more than 40 of them are now illegally occupied by other countries, "our talks with neighbors to resolve our differences show how committed we are to regional peace and stability," Liu said.

China's construction on its own islands and reefs is a matter for itself. These actions are not targeted at any other country. Apart from minimum defense facilities, the building works are primarily civilian in purpose, Liu said.

The claim that there is a threat to the freedom of navigation and overflight in the sea is false, he said, adding that more than 100,000 vessels pass through the sea unimpeded every year.

"Is the freedom of navigation that every country is entitled to really the issue? Or is it the 'freedom' of certain countries to flex military muscle and moor warships on other nations' doorsteps and fly military jets over other countries' territorial airspace?" he asked.

"If it is the latter, such 'freedom' should be condemned as a flagrantly hostile act and stopped," he said.

To accusations that China is "not abiding by international law" and "undermining the rule-based international system," Liu said that China made a clear declaration in accordance with the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea in 2006 to exclude compulsory arbitration on sovereign disputes and maritime delimitation.

"More than 30 other countries, including the UK, have made similar declarations," he pointed out.

"The world will see clearly who is making trouble in the South China Sea. These nations should desist from meddling and muddling. Such actions pose a threat to regional stability and world peace," the ambassador said.

Related:

China rebukes U.S. official's criticism on South China Sea arbitration

BEIJING, April 29 (Xinhua) -- A Chinese spokesperson on Friday rebuked U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken's remarks on the impending "arbitration" of the South China Sea issue, saying the United States is in no position to criticize China.

On Thursday, Blinken told a House of Representatives hearing in Washington that China "can't have it both ways," by being a party to the convention but rejecting its provisions, including "the binding nature of any arbitration decision." Full story

Backgrounder: "Geng Lu Book," encyclopedia on South China Sea

BEIJING, May 1 (Xinhua) -- The "Geng Lu Book," a historic book written between China's Ming Dynasty (AD 1368-1644) and Qing Dynasty (AD 1644-1911), begins with a few sentences outlining an accurate maritime navigation route of ancient Chinese fishermen sailing from the Tan Men port of China's Hainan Province to the South China Sea.

The origin of the "Geng Lu Book" could date back to the early Ming Dynasty. The book records names of more than 100 locations in and important maritime information about the South China Sea, including sailing directions, time, distance, islands and submerged reefs, as well as sea current speeds and weather changes. Full story

Backgrounder: China has indisputable sovereignty over South China Sea islands

BEIJING, April 29 (Xinhua) -- The Philippines, distorting and partially applying the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), attempts to challenge China's sovereignty over the Nansha Islands.

In its unilaterally-initiated arbitration, the Philippines argues that low-tide elevations and submerged reefs are part of the exclusive economic zone and continental shelf, a claim that totally runs contrary to historical fact, reality and international law. Full story
A man has been diagnosed with a rare disease caused by daily cannabis use after a wound on his big toe would not heal.

The man, 26, went to Frankston Hospital after an ulcer on his big toe failed to heal.

A man who used cannabis daily has been diagnosed with a rare condition after his big toe failed to heal. Credit:New York Times

The man is believed to have used up to one gram of cannabis a day.

Surgeon Dr David Soon said the man's daily habit caused a build-up of plaque around an artery in his big toe.
Detectives have released images of a man they want to speak to following the death of a teenager after an alleged assault in Melbourne's Chinatown.

The 19-year-old, Longxiang Hu, was allegedly assaulted in La Trobe Place about 10.30pm on Friday, April 15, and died in hospital the next day.

The man police want to speak with.

A 22-year-old man, who is a Chinese national, has been charged with one count of murder.

He is set to appear for a second time before Melbourne Magistrates' Court on August 17.
The Victorian Health Minister has called for urgent action against rogue chiropractors amid outrage over the manipulation of babies' spines.

Doctors have led a chorus of concern about the safety and efficacy of chiropractic procedures after a video surfaced online showing a Melbourne chiropractor manipulating a newborn baby's spine to treat colic and reflux.

The footage, which has been watched more than a million times on YouTube, was met with a furious response from health professionals but so far, no formal investigation into the procedure has been launched.

Health Minister Jill Hennessy has written to the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency and the Chiropractic Board of Australia seeking a crackdown on chiropractors performing "unproven and potentially unsafe procedures on young children and infants".
A Victorian policeman has been charged with sexual assault over an alleged incident in New South Wales in 2008.

The sergeant from Victoria Police's Eastern region has been charged with two counts of sexual intercourse without consent, following the alleged assault in Moama in April 2008.

Investigators from Victoria Police's Taskforce Salus conducted an investigation in 2015 after a 47-year-old woman reported she had been assaulted by an off-duty policeman.

The matter was referred to New South Wales Police Force in March this year, and the 40-year-old policeman was charged by NSW police on Tuesday.

The officer has been suspended with pay and is due to face Deniliquin Local Court on July 5.
Weather forecasters are predicting a warmer than usual winter this year as Perth braces for possible storms on Friday night followed by a cool Mother's Day on Sunday.

Bureau of Meteorology spokesman Neil Bennett said Perth can expect slighter warmer temperatures during the day and night over the next three months to July.

Perth is in for a stormy Friday but, the rain will go away for Mother's Day.

"Over the three month period, the median maximum will likely be 19.6 degrees and the median minimum will be 10.7 degrees," he said.

"When you break it into individual months, it's likely May will be a little bit warmer."
Duterte has been linked to death squads responsible for more than 1000 extrajudicial killings in his city that in the 1980s was known as the murder capital. Rodrigo Duterte, mayor of Davao City and presidential candidate, at a campaign rally in Manila on Sunday. Credit:Bloomberg How did it come to this? "Frustrated with the shortcomings of democratically elected governments in the past, a growing number of Filipinos are giving in to democratic fatigue and embracing autocratic nostalgia," says Richard Heydarian, a political science professor at Manila's De Le Salle University. Protesters clench their fists as they block traffic in a protest against the candidacies of front-running presidential candidate Rodrigo Duterte and vice-presidential candidate Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr. Credit:AP

Heydarian says Duterte's rise threatens the country's elite democracy  a political system dominated by powerful dynastic families that supplanted the administration of the late corrupt dictator Ferdinand Marcos' dictatorship 30 years ago. He says the country's mood is one of grievance politics and a yearning for change  for better or for worse. Anti-Duterte protesters link arms to block traffic in Quezon city, northeast of Manila, on Thursday. Credit:Bullit Marquez "The Philippines is steadily giving into 'strongman syndrome', the misguided belief that tough-talking and political will alone can address complex 21st-century governance challenges." Marcos' 58 year-old son Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos jnr is one of several frontrunner candidates running for vice-president at the elections where the president and vice-president are elected in separate votes, and can be either opponents or allies.

Philippine senator and vice presidential candidate Antonio Trillanes IV shows alleged joint bank account records by presidential candidate Rodrigo Duterte and his daughter Sara at a foreign correspondents forum on Tuesday. Credit:Aaron Favila Bongbong's election would mark a triumphal return to the presidential palace for a family whose name is synonymous with martial law, torture and billions of dollars of plundered wealth. Imelda, the 86-year-old matriarch famous for her lavish lifestyle and 3000-shoe collection, is running for re-election to Congress for a third term. Actress Lovi Poe, fourth from left, sister of Presidential candidate Grace Poe leads the symbolic throwing of coloured powder as her sister is endorsed by a minor party campaigning for a seat the Lower House. Credit:AP Her daughter Imee, 60, will be re-elected unopposed as governor of the family fiefdom of Ilocos Norte, where the ex-dictator's body lies in a glass coffin, drawing nostalgic pilgrims to a shrine in his hometown of Batac.

Bongbong concedes there were human rights abuses during his father's era but refuses to apologise, speaking nostalgically of the dictatorship and declaring that his own popularity comes from disenchantment with the political establishment that emerged after his family was forced into exile by a popular uprising in 1986. Presidential candidate Senator Grace Poe is greeted by supporters on Tuesday. She is running second to Duterte. Credit:AP "We keep hearing about the wonderful things happening to our economy and yet the people are poor," Bongbong said in April. "I think one of the things that is happening now is I am a beneficiary of the good work that was done in my father's time," he said in another interview. Supporters ask for t-shirts and other souvenir items from Presidential candidate Grace Poe on Tuesday. Credit:Bullit Marquez

"Will I say sorry for the thousands and thousands of kilometres of roads that were built? Will I say sorry for the power generation? Will I say sorry for the highest literacy rate in Asia?" When asked about an ill-gotten fortune that was traced to his father, Bongbong replies: "These huge numbers that we hear about, we don't really know where they came from and how they were made up." A supporter catches a souvenir T-shirt thrown by presidential candidate Senator Grace Poe, second from right, during her campaign sortie around Cavite province, south of Manila. Credit:Bullit Marquez The Marcos have been able to tap into a vast network of allies that never fully crumbled despite the 1986 revolution, analysts say. And about 20 per cent of voters are aged 18 to 35, many of whom have an ill-informed popular view of the authoritarian era.

Winning the country's second-highest office would put Bongbong firmly in line to win the presidency in six years, analysts say. The "Duterte phenomenon", which cuts across all classes and demographics, has been fuelled by the image of a strong mayor who put the fear of God into criminals, turning a city of 1.4 million into one of the country's safest urban areas, although some independent analysts have questioned the achievements. Duterte's portrayal of himself as the whisky-sipping, gun-slinging tough guy who wiped out criminals and drug dealers has propelled him towards the country's highest office, despite few people ever being prosecuted for the vigilante crimes or copycat death squads that have emerged in other cities. For almost two decades the highest levels of successive Philippine governments ignored Duterte's ruthless approach to crime while the abuses have drawn scant public criticism in a country where crime rates have soared in recent years. "This is a manifestation of the deep frustration and disenchantment about many problems that are not being resolved," says political analyst Temario Rivera.

"While voters know that the solution is not that simple they are looking for a leader that is decisive and has the political will." Jayeel Cornelio, a sociologist and director of the Development Studies Program at the Ateneo de Manila University, says Duterte's narrative portraying a feisty oppressed sets him apart from other candidates, including Grace Poe, whose fairytale story helped catapult her to an early favourite in a five-person presidential race (she was abandoned in a church as a newborn and adopted by movie star parents). "Duterte says he is not smart but vows to make things happen and is willing to hunt down criminals  [and] as a guarantee, he has also pledged to resign if he fails to deliver on his promises," Cornelio says. Some analysts say Duterte's controversial campaign statements may be an unreliable indicator of what his policies would be as president. In Davao, businesspeople say he engaged expert advisers who made it easier to do business there.

"These [campaign] comments are designed to get votes," says Ramon Casiple, executive director of the Institute for Political and Electoral Reform in Manila. Like Donald Trump's race for the presidency in the US, Duterte's campaign has polarised voters in the former US colony where warlords and powerful clans often backed by private armies have held sway for decades. Mar Roxas, the 58-year-old son of a former Philippine president and the anointed successor of outgoing president Benigno Aquino, has fashioned himself as the anti-Duterte candidate as polls showed him closing the gap on Duterte during the final days of campaigning, indicating Monday's presidential vote will be close. "For me, the choice is very clear, if we want honest, clean leadership [choose me]. If you want chaotic, directionless leadership built only on sound bites, it's clear who the candidate is for you," Roxas said on Wednesday. The latest poll published on Friday showed Duterte maintaining a strong lead with 33 per cent voter support, triggering rumours of a coup should he win the election, and prompting an emotional warning from President Aquino that the Philippines faces a return to dictatorship.
ATLANTA, May 5, 2016 -- Certified pre-owned (CPO) vehicles are typically late-model, low-mileage vehicles that come with a host of perks like manufacturer-backed warranties, roadside assistance and more. While nearly every manufacturer offers a CPO program, the terms and benefits vary greatly. To make it easy for car shoppers to discover which CPO programs stand out, the experts at Autotrader analyzed all brands' CPO terms and selected the 10 best luxury and 10 best non-luxury CPO programs, with one overall winner and nine honorable mentions in each category. For 2016, Autotrader selected Hyundai and Lexus as the winners for Best CPO Programs in their respective categories.

"The number one benefit of any CPO program is the warranty, so we decided that the length of warranty should be the top criteria when choosing this year's Best CPO Programs," said Brian Moody, executive editor at Autotrader. "Hyundai's CPO warranty is an extension of its exceptional new car warranty, and Lexus's warranty is simply the best in the luxury category."

CPO vehicles offer many of the same benefits of a new car without the higher price tag and steep depreciation. Each vehicle undergoes an extensive inspection defined by the manufacturer and must meet a variety of guidelines from age to mileage. Once certified, these vehicles come with a manufacturer-backed warranty, giving buyers the confidence they desire when purchasing a pre-owned vehicle. In fact, 64 percent of shoppers say that the certification process and warranty give them peace of mind.1

Hyundai earned top honors in the non-luxury category this year with its impressive CPO warranty, which offers five years or 60,000 miles of bumper-to-bumper limited coverage and 10 years or 100,000 miles of powertrain coverage from the car's original sale date. Hyundai's selection was cemented by the fact that the warranty offers a relatively low deductible of $50, and the warranty is fully transferable to subsequent owners in a private sale.

Meanwhile among luxury automakers, Lexus's CPO program "L/Certified" won top honors primarily due to its excellent warranty along with other alluring benefits. L/Certified offers limited bumper-to-bumper coverage for up to six years and unlimited mileage from the vehicle's original sale datea risky proposition, but one that shows the brand is willing to firmly stand behind its vehicles. Lexus's program boasts no deductible for covered repairs, meaning that owners won't have to pay a penny if their cars suffer a warranty claim. Icing on the cake is the fact that Lexus's program touts complimentary maintenance covering the next four factory-recommended services for two years or 20,000 milesa small benefit, but one that's certainly worth mentioning.

Autotrader's Best CPO Programs for 2016:

Best Non-Luxury CPO Programs:

Best Luxury CPO Programs: Hyundai (Best Overall)

Lexus (Best Overall) Chevrolet/GMC

Acura Ford

Audi Honda

BMW Kia

Infiniti Mazda

Jaguar MINI

Land Rover Mitsubishi

Lincoln Subaru

Porsche Toyota

Volvo * honorable mentions listed alphabetically

The selections for this year's Best CPO Programs were based primarily on warranty coverage, with a minimum of six years/100,000 miles for powertrain coverage. Other factors included bumper-to-bumper limited warranty length, warranty transferability and deductible amount.

To find out more about these CPO programs and why the experts at Autotrader selected them for top honors, check out the following articles: 10 Best Non-Luxury CPO Programs for 2016 and 10 Best Luxury CPO Programs for 2016.

[1] 2015 Autotrader Certified Pre-Owned Study

About Autotrader

Autotrader is the most visited third-party car shopping site, with the most engaged audience of in-market shoppers. As the foremost authority on automotive consumer insights and expert in online and mobile marketing, Autotrader makes the car shopping experience easy and fun for today's empowered consumer looking to find or sell the perfect new, used or Certified Pre-Owned car. Using technology, shopper insights and local market guidance, Autotrader's comprehensive marketing solutions guide dealers to personalized digital marketing strategies that grow brand, drive traffic and connect the online and in-store shopping experience.

Autotrader is a Cox Automotive brand. Cox Automotive is a subsidiary of Cox Enterprises. For more information, please visit http://press.autotrader.com.

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.
Honda Starts Production of the All-New 2017 Honda Ridgeline Pickup Truck in Alabama +VIDEO







LINCOLN, AL - May 6, 2016: Honda Manufacturing of Alabama (HMA) celebrated production start up of the all-new 2017 Honda Ridgeline pickup truck, slated to go on-sale soon at Honda dealerships nationwide. Honda's Alabama plant is the exclusive manufacturer of the innovative Ridgeline that is once again challenging conventional thinking in the pickup truck market with Honda-exclusive features, design and technology that help Ridgeline set new benchmarks for versatility, capability and comfort in the midsize pickup segment.

"Today we celebrate the dedication of our Alabama team in bringing a very innovative new pickup truck to market," said Jeff Tomko, president of HMA. "I congratulate all of our associates for their commitment to our customers as the Ridgeline returns with new features that will deliver even more of what today's truck customers want and need."

Designed, developed and manufactured in the U.S. by Honda R&D Americas, Inc., the new Ridgeline will launch with features and capabilities unlike anything else on the market today, including:

 Superior on-road performance  with the segment's best handling, ride quality, cabin quietness and all-weather traction capabilities  courtesy of its unibody construction, sophisticated chassis, and available i-VTM4 torque-vectoring AWD system



 Class-leading space  with the largest and most versatile cabin and the only 4-foot-wide flat bed space in the midsize pickup segment, along with payload capacity at the top of the midsize pickup class



 Innovative and class-exclusive features, including an In-Bed Trunk, Dual Action tailgate and the industry's first Truck Bed Audio system  making Ridgeline the ultimate tailgating vehicle



 Leading edge connectivity with 8-inch Display Audio featuring Apple Car Play and Android Auto compatibility

The Ridgeline is produced in the same plant in Alabama alongside other members of Honda's award-winning light-truck lineup, including the Pilot sport utility vehicle and Odyssey minivan, as well as the Acura MDX luxury SUV.

Honda Manufacturing of Alabama (HMA) employs 4,500 associates at its 3.7-million-square-foot Lincoln facility has the capacity to produce as many as 340,000 vehicles and engines each year. Over the past three years, HMA has invested more than $510 million and added 450 jobs in expansion efforts designed to enhance manufacturing flexibility and increase annual production. The Alabama plant is celebrating its 15th year of production.
New Study Ranks Favorite Places to Fuel Up

With a focus on fresh food, convenience stores are eating into the quick-service restaurant business, according to a new survey.

LOUISVILLE, Colo. May 5, 2016 Kwik Trip and BJs Wholesale Club are consumers favorite places to fill up their gas tanks, according to a new study by Market Force Information. More than 10,000 consumers were polled for the annual study, which ranks gas stations in two separate categories: traditional gas stations and convenience stores; and grocery stores and big-box retailers with gas stations. It also uncovers trends in food, technology and loyalty at these establishments.

Market Force found that, even though most motorists still fuel up at traditional gas stations, grocers and big-box brands continue to be popular choices for their low prices and convenience. For their recent trip to the pump, 71% of consumers visited a gas station, while 28% chose a grocer or big-box retailer. Additionally, while fuel prices are important, theyre not the only factor influencing a consumers choice of where to fill uppayment options, fuel quality and the ease of entering and exiting are other key motivators.

Market Force asked participants to rate their satisfaction with their most recent fueling experience and their likelihood to refer that brand to others. After not earning enough votes in 2015 to make the list, Kwik Trip overtook Wawa this year to rank No. 1. QuikTrip and Wawa tied for second with 68%, and Sheetz, RaceTrac and Speedway rounded out the top five. Phillips 66 is the highest-ranking national brand for the second consecutive year, earning a 51%.

Wisconsin-based Kwik Trip (known as Kwik Star in Iowa) operates more than 400 locations in the Midwest and is undergoing rapid growth. Market Force notes that the company aims to be a fill-in grocery option, offering fresh meat and even making its own baked goods, dairy products and snack foods. It appears to be a winning strategy, as consumers are increasingly turning to convenience stores for fresh food options.

The survey also evaluated how well fuel brands deliver on a spectrum of attributes. QuikTrip led in three of the categories: ease of entering and exiting the property, customer service and having cleaning supplies at the fueling station. Kwik Trip took the top spot for appearance and merchandise selection. Chevron ranked highest for fuel quality and Murphy was voted the fuel price-leader.

The brands are tightly clustered in nearly every category, which shows just how fiercely competitive this industry is, said Cheryl Flink, chief strategy officer for Market Force Information. With drivers having so many options to choose from, gas stations and convenience stores must excel in areas beyond price, such as offering multiple payment options or specialty foods to attract loyal, repeat customers.

With everything from freshly made salads to customer ordering for sandwiches and hoagies, convenience stores have upped their foodservice offerings, and are stealing market share from quick-service restaurants, according to Market Force. The survey found that 23% of customers bought a fresh food item during their last convenience store visit and 89% were satisfied with the quality. Wawa, Kwik Trip, Caseys, Sheetz and QuikTrip led in fresh food purchases and all had relatively high marks for food quality satisfaction.

In the grocery and big-box category, BJs Wholesale Club took the No. 1 spot in this years study, Costco dropped to second, Kroger ranked third and Sams Club dropped a spot to fourth. When Market Force looked at the attributes that drive customer satisfaction, Costco led in three of the five categories, including fuel price, fuel quality and appearance. However, it lagged behind for ease of entering and exiting and availability of cleaning tools at the fueling area.

As in 2015, 10% of survey respondents said theyve used a gas/convenience store mobile app. App use has increased since last year among 4554 year olds and decreased among 2534 year olds. GasBuddy ranked as the most popular app (cited by 59%), while one-third reported using the retailers branded app. When asked which features they have used within a gas app, gas price comparison led with 71%, followed by finding a gas station and reporting gas prices.
NASA TV to Broadcast Dragon Departure from International Space Station







WASHINGTON - May 5, 2016: After delivering almost 7,000 pounds of cargo to the International Space Station, including the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM), the SpaceX Dragon cargo spacecraft is set to leave the orbital laboratory with valuable science research and return to Earth on Wednesday, May 11, 2016. NASA Television will provide live coverage of Dragon's departure beginning at 9 a.m. EDT.

The Dragon spacecraft, which arrived at the station April 10, will be detached from the Earth-facing side of the station's Harmony module using the Canadarm2 robotic arm, operated by ground controllers at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. Robotics controllers will maneuver Dragon into place and Expedition 47 robotic arm operator Tim Peake of ESA (European Space Agency) will execute the command for its 9:18 a.m. release.

Dragon will fire its thrusters three times to move to a safe distance from the station before being commanded to begin its deorbit burn about 2 p.m. The capsule will splash down in the Pacific Ocean about 2:55 p.m. The deorbit burn and splashdown will not be broadcast on NASA TV.

A recovery team will retrieve the capsule and its more than 3,700 pounds of return cargo, including samples from ongoing space station research, which ultimately will be shipped to laboratories for further study. This cargo includes samples from human research, biology and biotechnology studies, physical science investigations and education activities sponsored by NASA and the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS), the nonprofit organization that manages research aboard the U.S. national laboratory portion of the space station. The spacecraft also will return the final batch of human research samples from the one-year crew mission.

In the event of adverse weather conditions in the Pacific, the backup departure and splashdown date is Saturday, May 14.

Dragon, the only space station resupply spacecraft able to return to Earth intact, launched April 8 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, for the company's eighth NASA-contracted commercial resupply mission to the station.

For NASA TV scheduling and video streaming information, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/nasatv

For more information about the International Space Station, its research and crews, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/station
Auto Lab Live May 7, 2016; Car Question or Concern? Free Call 888-692-7234







May 7, 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

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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

May 7, 2016 - Car Question? Straight Answers From These In-Studio Auto Lab Experts

Harold Bendell- Major Auto

Fred Bordoff-Bronx Community College, CUNY

Ivan Anderson-Brookdale Community College

Tim Cacace-Master Mechanix

David Goldsmith - Urban Classics Auto Repairs

Joanne Porcelli, Esq

Michael Porcelli - Central Avenue Auto Repairs & I-CAR

May 7, 2016 - Correspondent Reports - Car Reviews, Opinion and Other Automotive News and Information

Robert Erskine, Senior European Correspondent, Suffolk England

AFTER WINTER WHY CHECK YOUR CAR'S SUSPENSION ?

Sharon Sudol & John Russell Senior Correspondents

2016 MINI CLUBMAN REVIEW

Mike Quincy, Automotive Specialist Consumer Reports

TOYOTA RAV4 HYBRID PROVES TO BE THE MOST GASOLINE EFFICIENT SUV EVER TESTED

Holly Reich, Automotive Journalist

2016 MERCEDES-BENZ GLS SERIES 7 SEAT SUV REVIEW
KODAs Large SUV Is Called KODIAQ







 Name refers to the Kodiak bear that lives on a remote island near Alska

 Skoda's Kodiaq debuts in the second half of 2016, heralding the Czech brand's global SUV campaign

MLADA BOLESLAV, Czech Republic - May 6, 2016: SKODAs new large SUV is to be called Kodiaq. The name refers to the Kodiak bear that lives on a remote island off the southern coast of Alaska. Its spelling is derived from the language of the indigenous people  the Alutiiq. SKODA will usher in a new SUV campaign with the introduction of the Kodiak when it makes its public debut in the second half of 2016.

Living alongside c.14,000 people on Kodiak Island  a harsh yet fascinating landscape located off the southern coast of Alaska (57N 153W)  are almost 3,500 Kodiak bears. The Alutiiq, the natives, call the bear Taq uka 'aq  the letter q at the end is a characteristic of animal names. SKODAs use of the letter q creates a distinctive name for a very distinctive new SKODA.

At 4.70 metres long (15' 6"), SKODAs new SUV can comfortably seat seven people and offers remarkable performance both on and off the beaten track. The hidden power of the Kodiaq can also be seen in its design  distinctive, muscular lines representing a dynamic, robust and strong appearence.

Discover new ground is the claim under which the Czech carmaker will be launching the SKODA Kodiaq. The model marks the beginning of the brands new SUV campaign, and will attract new consumer groups in the fast-growing SUV segment. The SKODA Kodiaq celebrates its public debut in the second half of 2016, with launch planned for early 2017.
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...
This was the year #OscarsSoWhite blew up in the Academys face. But on this weeks Inside Amy Schumer, the titular comedian showed just how things are for women as well.

In the opening sketch, Steve Buscemi emerges on the Oscar stage to present the award for Best Actress. Without the five beautiful, talented women were honoring now, their movies would only have five names on the poster, instead of six, he says, before reading off the nominees and showing clips from their films.

Besides Schumer, we see Oscar-winners Julianne Moore and Jennifer Hudson along with nominees Maggie Gyllenhaal and Laura Linney, each portraying someones wife who has nothing to do but cry on the phone.

When Buscemi announces Schumer as the winner, he notes that she couldnt be there to accept the award in person, but was available by phone. Oh my god, Im so happy, she says. First of all, Id like to thank my hair team, hair team six, we call you guys. But more than anything, I really want to thank the writers, because youre the ones that come up with all these dynamic roles for women. Without you, we wouldnt be able to answer the phone. Thank you, heroes.

This is Amys first win and first nomination after wasting years of her life in comedy, the voiceover says as the band plays her off.

Schumers critique is certainly valid as every year there are far more strong male protagonists in the conversation for Best Actor than there are female leads for Best Actress. However, this past year did see a win for Brie Larson, who carried Best Picture nominee Room almost entirely on her own. Julianne Moore did the same in the previous years Still Alice.

Her joke at the end about the Academys refusal to reward comedy may actually carry more weight. Schumers lauded performance in last years Trainwreck was never even a realistic consideration in the Best Actress category.
Brooklyn on Thursday evening felt something like Pyongyang, as the agency that controls the trains went through the bare motions of a public conversation ahead of what looks to be the inevitable closure of the subway tunnel that connects much of the borough to Manhattan.

What was billed as the first chance for the lines 400,000 daily riders to have their say on the looming shutdowndubbed the L-Pocalypse by the hipsters of Williamsburg and Bushwick, Brooklyns Meccas of coolwas so staged-managed that North Korea would have been proud.

Think of it as New Yorks version of Carmageddon, when the 405 Highway in Los Angeles was shut downonly with more skinny jeans.

The Metropolitan Transportation Agency, the state-controlled body that runs the trains, says that the 94-year-old, 7,100-foot-long Canarsie Tube linking Brooklyn and Manhattan has to close to repair the damage 7 million gallons of brackish water inflicted to the tunnel, tracks, and signals during Superstorm Sandy in 2012.

A first public meeting in January ended when residents booted the sole MTA representative after he provided no answers to their questions.

This time, it required people to fill out cards with questions, which were finally read out after attendees were bludgeoned half asleep by an hour of videos and speeches by politicians at Williamsburgs Marcy Armory, an imposing 165,000-square-foot brick fortress built in 1884 that occupies a whole city block.

The Armory originally housed the 47th Regiment of the National Guard who, in one of those funny ironies of history, were dispatched to suppress the Brooklyn Trolley Strike of 1895.

Press officers and staff nearly outnumbered the 250 ordinary citizens attending, who were invited to peruse an exhibit with diagrams explaining the work ahead. There was also a show-and-tell-style table with damaged items that have been removed from the tunnel since the storm, including a rusted track plate.

Before the presentation began, Steve Bauman, an electrical engineer and MIT graduate, got into a heated conversation with MTA Chairman Thomas Prendergast, who told him: I wish that somebody when they designed the tunnel had this day in mind.

It was more revealing than anything I heard all night.

The official meeting began with a slick seven-minute video that laid out two options: Completely shutting down the tunnel for a year and a half, which was described in the video as the fastest and most efficient choice. Or closing one half of the tunnel at a time over three years, over which trains would run under the East River every 12 to 15 minutes  leaving enough capacity for about 20 percent of the current riders.

Given that the Bedford Avenue stop at rush hour already makes a sardine wince, its pretty obvious the MTA is going to get what it wants.

After the video, Donna Evans, chief of staff for the MTA, announced that this meeting was the 'beginning of the robust community outreach project.

A man in his 60s shouted out: Ha!

After seven politicians, including New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer, offered brief, anodyne remarks, the crowd had thinned out by about a third. Those who stayed looked bored and checked their phones; the only thing keeping most people awake was the chill in the cavernous room.

At last it was time for questions. The cards were read, one by one:

Will the shuttle buses that would replace the train have dedicated lanes? Too early to say. What extra ferry service will there be. Dont know yet. Will there be extra service on other subway lines? Yes.

Prendergast, MTA chairman, said that building another tunnel was not an option as it would take five to seven years. Putting in a giant gondola, dubbed the East River Skyway, was out too.

With no way to follow up on any of the non-answers, it felt like one long press release being read out loud.

The audience continued to dwindle, so by the beginning of hour three, the media outnumbered the community.

By 9, it was done.

Talking to members of the community, their anger and frustration made clear why the MTA didnt want to hear directly from themor let the TV cameras there see them speaking.

Michael Sanderson, who lives in Bushwick, told me he was worried about shuttle buses going down single-lane streets and past schools.

Maria Garrett, 59, an administrative assistant who commutes into Manhattan from Canarsie, the final stop on the L train, said that the shuttle buses were always too crowded and few and far inbetween.

Jamil Faisal, 38, who wore a leather jacket and trendy sneakers, said that he bought a property off the L train a few months ago but now was half-wishing he hadnt.

He said: We should have been allowed to speak. Its like with Donald Trump. If youre not a Donald Trump supporter, you have to get out.
A U.S. Navy sailor charged with espionage didnt provide military secrets to a foreign government, but rather to an FBI informant who was posing as a Taiwanese official, military officials revealed Thursday.

The latest twist in the case against Lt. Cmdr. Edward Lin, 39, came as military officials allowed reporters to listen to a recording from a military pretrial hearing held on April 8. There, prosecutors alleged that Lin was the target of a sting operation that led to his arrest and two-day interrogation at the Honolulu International Airport last September.

Prosecutors said that during questioning, Lin confessed to being a spy. Lins job, working in and around military reconnaissance aircraft, gave him access to information about sensitive equipment that the U.S. uses to spy on its adversaries.

Lins attorney vigorously rebutted the charges and said that his client had been denied his right to speak with a lawyer at the time he was arrested and questioned. The Pentagon Thursday played an 80-minute section from the pretrial hearing, known as an Article 32. But they left out at least a half-hour that officials said was classified.

The recording sheds new light on Lins case, but it also raises several unanswered questions. And prosecutors offered no explanation of how Lin, who once spoke in uniform about fulfilling his dreams of becoming a U.S. citizen, had turned from a model sailor to a spy.

In the recording, the Navy alleged that as Lin met with the FBI informant from Aug. 25 to Sept. 9 of 2015, he shared classified information. Its not clear where the two met or what Lin allegedly divulged. The men spoke to each other in Mandarin.

A military prosecutor, Navy Cmdr. Johnathan Stephens, presented nine disks that he said contained recordings of the meeting and of Lins interrogation. The beauty of this is you get to watch the entirety of the event, Stephens told the presiding judge, Cmdr. Bruce Gregor.

Lin was arrested at the Honolulu airport on Sept. 11, interrogated for 11 hours over the course of two days, and then confessed, the prosecution said.

But Lins lawyer, Larry Youngner, said his client was deprived of legal counsel during questioning. Surrounded by FBI agents, Lin was told he had right a lawyer, and when he asked if he had any questions, he responded, Yea, I got questions, only to be ignored by the agents, Youngner said.

The military also said classified documents were found in Lins home. But Younger countered that these documents could also be found online, and that a notebook recovered from Lins home also contained nothing classified.

We believe there is yet to be proof that there was classified information in that notebook found at his home, Younger said.

Lins family said this week that his defense attorney has been unable to obtain all the evidence that the military believes proves Lins guilt.

Youngner didnt deny that Lin spoke to the person who turned out to be an informant. But he insisted that Lin merely repeated talking points the Navy had given him to use when dealing with Taiwanese officials.

It wasnt clear under what auspices Lin believed that the two were meeting. But Youngner stressed that his client had been motivated by a sense of duty.

How many times does he say [on the tapes], I was trying to help the United States, Younger told the judge, adding, There is no intent or attempt to aid a foreign government.

As The Daily Beast first reported, there are signs that the case against Lin could fall apart.

Lin was held in pretrial detention for eight months after he allegedly confessed. But he was not charged until April. The military has offered no explanation for why Lin was held for so long after his interrogators had apparently obtained a confession.

Youngner also raised questions about the accuracy of the translation of the conversation between Lin and the informant, noting that there are multiple Mandarin dialects.

Neither the prosecution nor the defense called witnesses. Lin was at the hearing and answered questions in a firm voice, usually saying either: Yes, sir or No, sir to the judges questions.

In addition to charges of espionage and attempted espionage, the military alleges that Lin engaged in prostitution (on both sides of the exchange) and adultery. Those charges are based on the militarys review of his work emails that began after Lins alleged confession at the airport. The emails date back to 2012.

Lin is one of only a handful of service members charged with espionage over the past three decades. But he may the first to launch a website seeking funds for his defense.

So far, prosecutors are pushing ahead. Gregor, the judge in the preliminary hearing, recommended the case go forward. Lins case now is before Adm. Philip S. Davidson, the commander of U.S. Fleet Forces, who is weighing whether to proceed with a court-martial against Lin. If he does, the military will likely face significant challenges in bringing its case, given how much of it appears to rely on classified information not easily introduced in a public trial.

There is no deadline for Davidsons decision.
In hindsight, most Republicans took the so-called RNC autopsy about as seriously as the warning to not rip off mattresses tags.

But Rob Frost, chairman of the Cuyahoga County Republican Party, followed to the letter the partys 2013 call to reform its approach, working hard over the past three years to reach out to non-traditional Republican voters whod overwhelmingly rejected Mitt Romneys presidential bid.

Frost and his colleagues spent time in African-American churches and college campuses. They were sponsors of the 2014 Gay Games in Cleveland. They stripped discriminatory language about the LGBT communities out of the county party platform and honed an inclusive, economic-focused message instead.

As the local hosts of the Republican Convention, Frost and fellow GOPers want to show that Cleveland Republicans are inclusive and welcoming and, they say, the approach was actually working. Until the 2016 election started to gear up.

It will present a challenge, Frost said of Donald Trumps new perch as the presumptive Republican nominee. We know what happened with Romney, we read the autopsy, we know what we needed to doweve got to win over non-traditional Republicans and minorities.

The thing with Donald Trump, he presents an opportunity with non-traditional Republicans but a great challenge when it comes to minorities.

For instance:

I just think in Cuyahoga County, we just dont do crazy, said Claude Booker, an African-American Republican from nearby Summit County.

Booker, a South Carolina native and a lifelong Democrat who moved to the Cleveland area in November 2001, said he was initially skeptical of the outreach effort.

I had the same vibe and cautiousness that most African Americans have in regards to the Republican Party. [I thought] they havent really had an open dialogue where anyone was courageous enough to talk about it because they didnt want to offend black folks.

But you know, Rob was different, he said.

Booker said he first met Frost when the chairman showed up at his predominantly African-American church with a candidate to campaign. After they spoke, Frost convinced Booker to attend a local Republican meeting.

I was nervous. I thought, Urgh, Republicans dont like black people, but I went and it was totally, totally cool, he said.

Soon Booker was bringing friends to GOP events and inviting them to the Lincoln Day dinner. He campaigned vigorously for Gov. John Kasichs 2014 re-election bidtelling his friends to look at the candidates rather than voting Democrat out of habit. They did.

It was amazing, people started walking up to me and saying, Booker, I voted for your guy! he said. They were saying, I like your dude.

Kasich not only won Cuyahoga County, he even won 26 percent of the black vote.

Nearly two years later, the tone is different.

I cant stop the negative calls, he said. Im not defending [Trumps] Im just trying to tell [friends], its not the values that we got in Cuyahoga County.

He said his friends answered, Well, Booker, we can say we know one good Republican.

I just dont understand the dialogue, as it pertains to the Hispanic community, as well as the perception that African Americans have of Trump, he said. Because I cant find one that is favorable. 

Scott Ashley, a member of the Cuyahoga County GOP, worked the Republican booth at the gay games in 2014.

He said they received shocked looks when people walked by and saw the large banner announcing Cuyahoga County Republicans Welcome You To Cleveland.

People were engaged, wanting to have conversations, were surprised to see us there, he said.

The Republican Party was founded on personal responsibility and individual rights.Thats what the local party is focused on.

Ashley, who spoke to The Daily Beast prior to Sen. Ted Cruzs exit from the race, said he was disappointed both Cruz and Trump continued to raise social issues rather than focusing on the vast swath of issues on which many Republicans (as well as independents and, yes, Democrats) can agree.

My issue now is, I feel like candidates that are racing toward that nomination are using some of those social issues to divide us instead of focusing on things that we all agree on, he said. We focus on the things that divide us instead of unite us, I get disappointed, I get discouraged.

Deb Donley, who has headed up the countys outreach to young Republicans, said she was hoping that the message will become more economically focused as the primary fades away.

Get off the talking points, get off the rhetoric and start to stand for something, she said.

Asked what she tells young people who are wavering on the Republican Party after the chaos of the primary election, she said, Patience.

Im not giving up hope, Im a very hopeful person, I think we need to have a little more patience and get beyond this nasty phase for both parties in the campaign, she said. Its not pretty.
U.S. Census data from 2015 show a dramatic wage gap between men and women in median annual pay: American women earn, on average, only 79 cents for every dollar that men make. If time is money, what if women chose to work only 79 percent as long as their male colleagues?

That question is the simple premise behind the 79percentclock.com, a tool created by the National Partnership for Women and Families and MTVs Look Different campaign that calculates the appropriate wage-adjusted working hours for American women of various ethnicities.

For a white woman working a 9-to-5 job, the wage-adjusted workday lasts until 3 p.m., 75 percent of a standard eight-hour day. For Hispanic and black women, the disparities are greater. Women in these demographics make only 55 cents and 60 cents, respectively, for every dollar that men earn for similar work. These figures generate workdays that end at 1:24 p.m. for Hispanic women and 1:48 p.m. for black women.

MTV and NPWF partnered in the campaign, which mailed roughly 400 actual clocks to Fortune 500 CEOs, celebrities, and activists. Shonda Rhimes, Gloria Steinem, and Marissa Mayer were among the recipients of the wage gap clocks. Rhimes and Steinem both tweeted support for the initiative.

The campaign has also created a website with a digital version of the clock that allows women to calculate how long they should work based on their typical workday and their ethnicity. The site features a range of other resources, graphics, and metrics, including a ranked list of all 50 states by gender wage gap. Louisiana and Utah have the worst gaps, at 35 cents and 33 cents per dollar, while New York and the District of Columbia topped the list with gaps of 13 cents and 10 cents.

Vicki Shabo, vice president of the National Partnership for Women and Families, advised MTV on the policy issues and research studies relevant to the issue of gender-based pay quality. The 79 percent number is known, but people dont always consider the consequences. Reducing the median American income by $10,700 for women translates into 83 weeks of food, or 11 months of rent, or nine years of birth control, she told The Daily Beast.

Any statistical analysis of such a complex issue faces many potential objections to its methods and results. Perhaps the true causes of wage disparity are a subtle combination of factors: industry, education level, prior experience, job position, race, region, or something else entirely. But even after controlling for such confounding variables, Shabo said, the wage gap between men and women persists. If you hold everything else constant and there is still a gap, our assumption is that this reflects gender, she said.

The 79 percent figure is also an averageit doesnt mean that the incomes of specific men and women will necessarily reflect this disparity any more than statistics on the average height of American men and women can guarantee the stature of your neighbors. But it does indicate that with sufficiently large and representative data sets this pattern eventually emerges.

The goal of making actual clocks was to give concrete embodiment to an abstract issue. We wanted a physical item to make it tangible, to actually manifest the idea, MTVs Ronnie Cho told The Daily Beast. The clock is not available for public purchaseperhaps the profits would not be distributed equitably.

The Paycheck Fairness Act, first introduced in 1997, would make wages more transparent, prevent retaliation by companies against employees who raise gender-based wage discrimination issues, and require employers to show that any wage discrepancies reflect legitimate business qualifications rather than gender. The bill passed the House of Representatives in 2009, but it has repeatedly failed to win support from Senate Republicans. It was most recently defeated in April 2014 by a Republican filibuster in the Senate.

Sometimes even the companies and organizations that support pay parity for men and women still struggle to achieve perfect transparency. When asked whether MTV itself keeps internal statistics on wage equality by gender, a spokeswoman said that while they do track the numbers, they dont share them externally.
LONDON  Sadiq Khan was elected Mayor of London on Friday, making him the most powerful Muslim politician in the Western world.

He won a resounding victory in the capital despite a hostile campaign by Prime Minister David Camerons Conservative Party, which attempted to link the South Londoner to terrorism and extremists.

Claims that Khan could not be trusted to protect Londons 8.5 million inhabitants backfired spectacularly, with senior Conservatives admitting that the divisive campaign drove voters away from the party.

Former Conservative chairwoman Sayeeda Warsi said her partys strategy would cause lasting damage. Our appalling dog whistle campaign for #LondonMayor2016 lost us the election, our reputation & credibility on issues of race and religion, she wrote on Twitter as the results came in.

With most of the first-round votes counted, the Labour candidate had a lead of around 9 percent.

Khan, whose father became a bus driver when he moved to Britain from Pakistan, will command a $23 billion annual budget and oversee Londons policing, housing, and transport infrastructure.

The 45-year-old former human-rights lawyer was elected as a Member of Parliament for Tooting in South London just 11 years ago but he rose quickly through the Labour ranks.

In 2009, he became the first Muslim member of the British Cabinet, which required him to be sworn in by the Queen. He told the New Statesman: The palace called me and said, What type of Bible do you want to swear on? When I said the Quran, they said, We havent got one. So I took one with me.

Khan is a devout Muslim, who refrains from drinking alcohol, but he has often explained that his faith is just one facet of his character. We all have multiple identities: Im a Londoner, Im British, Im English, Im of Asian origin, of Pakistani heritage, Im a dad, Im a husband, Im a long-suffering Liverpool fan, he said.

Zac Goldsmith, Khans Conservative opponent, started the race to replace Boris Johnson as a popular figure with a reputation for political independence who was best known for his advocacy of ecological issues.

His image has since been tarnished in the eyes of many Londoners who were disappointed by the tone of his campaign.

Shazia Awan, a former Conservative Party candidate, broke ranks ahead of Thursdays vote to accuse her party of running a racist election campaign. She told The Daily Beast she was relieved by the result.

Ive voted Labour for the first time in my life and it is David Camerons and Zac Goldsmiths vile racially charged rhetoric that has made me do so. We will not tolerate the vitriolic politics of hate, she said. We do not want the divisive campaign of Donald Trump in the U.K.

Earlier this year, Members of Parliament debated whether Donald Trump should be prevented from visiting Britain under hate-speech laws after he proposed a ban on Muslims entering the United States.

If the presumptive Republican nominee where ever able to enforce his pledge, the Mayor of London, one of Washingtons closest allies, would be denied the right to attend summits in the U.S. or even travel to the United Nations headquarters in Manhattan.

Andrew Boff, the former leader of the Conservatives in the London Assembly, said his party would suffer lasting ramifications from the attempt to pit its diverse communities against one another. I dont think it was dog whistle politics because you cant hear a dog whistle. Everybody could hear this. It was effectively saying that people of conservative religious views are not to be trusted and you shouldnt share a platform with them. Thats outrageous, he told the BBC. It has done lasting damage.

Khalid Mahmood, a fellow Muslim MP who has represented Birmingham for 15 years, told The Daily Beast he had been stunned by the decision to target Khans religion. I was surprised to see some of the attacks which were personal to Sadiq, he said. The people of London have spoken and I think that should be a lesson to all politicians who try to go down that route because people are not prepared to take that.

Before launching his own unlikely bid to become mayor, Khan developed a reputation as a fearsome campaigner. It was he who engineered Ed Milibands ill-fated victory over his brother David in the contest to be Labour leader in 2010.

He then oversaw two election campaigns in London where the party performed far better than it did in the rest of the country under Milibands leadership. He was considered an outsider to win Labours mayoral nomination, and when he did, Goldsmith was immediately installed as the favorite to win their head-to-head matchup.

If his political star continues to rise at this pace, we may be looking at a contender to become Britains first Muslim prime minister.
TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras  Two days in a hospital bed, recovering from painful gunshot wounds in either leg, have given renowned Honduran radio journalist Felix Molina ample time to reflect.

Strange as it may seem now, dressed in a hospital gown, with a policeman standing guard outside the door, Molina recalled how this week had begun with a new infusion of hope.

On Monday morning, four men were arrested for the murder of Molinas friend and colleague, the distinguished environmental and indigenous-rights activist Berta Caceres. Three of the suspects in custody were officers in the Armed Forces of Honduras. The fourth was an executive with Desarrollos Energeticos (DESA), the construction firm embroiled in a land dispute with the indigenous Lenca people over a hydroelectric dam proposal that Caceres had given her life fighting to prevent.

For me, there was a feeling of optimism, Molina said. The pressure was building for results in the criminal investigation, and for the first time there was a sense that whoever did this would be punished, regardless of their rank or affiliation.

That pleasant feeling was brief, however, and ended with two attempts on his life on the same day.

Molina has been well-known among the human-rights advocates in Tegucigalpa for 20 years, but it was his courageous reporting after the military coup of 2009 that cemented his reputation nationally.

In the early morning of June 28 of that year, the military rousted then-President Manuel Zelaya from slumber in his pajamas and put him on a jet to Costa Rica. The next day, Molina founded a daily program on Radio Globo whose ethos was to defy the siege mentality that the coup had imposed over the traditional media outlets.

Molina broadcast daily investigative reports and interviews with anti-coup organizers at the grassroots level, often traveling to the most far-flung corners of Honduras to do so. He called the program, simply, Resistencia. The North American Congress on Latin America awarded Molina the 2012 Samuel Chavkin Prize for Integrity in Ibero-American Journalism.

More recently, Molina has been producing two radio programs in Tegucigalpa and is a spokesman for an association that installs radio frequencies in rural communities in Honduras. He and the group, the Community Media Association, are lobbying the Honduran Congress to make it less burdensome for community radio stations, many of which are located on indigenous ancestral lands, to apply for a legal license to operate.

At 7:38 a.m. on Monday, after news broke of the arrests in the Caceres case, Molina took to social media to repost a sensitive document in his possession disclosing to his nearly 1,000 followers the names of DESAs prime investors and corporate officers.

It was information that Molina had revealed for the first time on March 8, within days of Caceress murder. The names on the list had until remained a secret until then, despite Caceress own repeated attempts to obtain them before her death.

My mother tried publicly on repeated occasions to obtain that information of who the investors were, and she never did, said Olivia Marcela Zuniga Caceres, the eldest daughter of the slain activist leader. I dont know who [Molinas] sources were, but he revealed who was behind the project.

It was the start of a busy morning on social media for Molina. He followed his initial post with another that linked to a receipt of a $24.4 million loan to DESA from the Central American Bank of Economic Integration (BCIE).

DESA is building the Agua Zarca dam on the Gualcarque River with financing from the BCIE, the Finland Fund, and the Dutch development bank FMO, he wrote. He also singled out the Atala family, prominent in the Honduran banking industry, as the primary movers behind DESA.

Not yet finished, at 9:09 a.m.three hours until the first attempt on his life that dayMolina pointed out a likely conflict of interest for the public official ultimately responsible for the Caceres murder investigation: The current minister of security of Honduras, Gen. Julian Pacheco, is related to one of DESAs top corporate officers. Also, DESAs president, Roberto David Castillo Mejia, is a nephew of the long-serving congressman from the ruling National Party in La Ceiba, Rodolfo Irias Navas.

Molina cited as his source for these accusations an as-yet-unreleased police report from the Caceres investigation. This mention was, in effect, a teaser. I had gotten permission and was going to publish the police report the next day, May 3, he said from his hospital bed.

All the while he published the inflammatory statements, Molina was online messaging with Zuniga Caceres, who had agreed to appear on Molinas radio program to share her reaction to the arrests.

She mentioned to Molina that his posts on social media were worrying her.

He has always been very aggressive in denouncing corruption, in naming names, Zuniga Caceres said. I told him to be careful, that it was dangerous what he was saying. One imagines there are limits to what these people are capable of. But they have no scruples whatsoever.

At 12:40 p.m., Molina was in a taxi in Colonia Alameda, rushing to the radio station for his 1 p.m. program. The withering heat of the capital had him feeling slightly listless in the back seat; he barely registered when a couple, a young man and woman, pulled beside him on a motor scooter.

The woman slipped off the bike and pointed a gun at his head, demanding his cellphone. The man behind her on the bike shouted for her to shoot. The taxi driver reacted quickly, however, peeling out of traffic and averting the robbery.

Ufff, what a country we live in! Molina wrote of the incident.

Six hours later, at 6:40 p.m., Molina was robbed again, and he recognized one of the assailants as the man from the motor scooter at noon.

This person recognized me and headed straight for me in the taxi, he told The Daily Beast. What bothers me is that they chose me out of a many possible victims in private vehicles and taxis at a busy intersection. And when I saw him approach, I looked over at him and he said something very intimidating. He said, This time you wont get away.

Again, as in the previous attempt, the assailants demanded Molinas cellphone.

I hesitated, then handed him the phone, and the second person shot me simultaneously, he said.

Molina isnt sure if he was shot twice, once in the upper thigh of each leg, or if one bullet passed through both legs. Fortunately for him, the projectile didnt strike the femur or sever the femoral artery, which would have been deadly. Molinas doctors expect him to make a full recovery, and to begin walking again within a few days.

The pain in his legs, however, is constant, and Molina frequently adjusted himself in bed and grimaced as he spoke.

Its not a simple matter for me to sit here and conjecture that I was attacked as a consequence of my work. But it would be irresponsible of me to rule it out, he said.

It is a common refrain among human-rights advocates in Honduras: attacks of a political nature against journalists, activists, human-rights advocates, or figures in the political opposition are disguised as botched robberies, crimes of passion, financial disputes, even car accidents. Deaths of a political nature have been passed off as common crimes before, Molina said.

What to me is clear is that one of the assailants from the attempt at noon was the same who took part in the shooting in the evening, he added. That person recognized me and headed directly for the taxi I was in.

The police assigned to Molinas case say a street gang operates on the corner where Molina was robbed, an area that is poorly lit and where police presence is scarce. As a conscientious journalist, Molina is cautious not to speculate on motives.

What I can assure you is that the people who did this had the skill to commit this type of crime. What I mean is, these were not amateurs or kids, victims of poverty who rob for survival.

Whatever the motive, Molina said, There is a structure parallel to the state that has logistics and intelligence, and operates with impunity. Its safe to suppose the structure is made up of persons who have no regard for the institutions of the state, either because the state is weak or theyre accomplices or direct perpetrators.

The impression I have, without speculating as to who is responsible, is that the purpose was to bring harm to my person in order to send a message. Maybe not a fatal message, but a message all the same.

Olivia Zuniga Caceres said she fears the motive for Molinas shooting was more sinister than a simple cellphone robbery. What kind of thief stalks a victim for an entire afternoon to rob a cellphone? she wondered. Maybe what they wanted was information off the phone, I dont know.

I think that what happened has a lot to do with the crime against my mother. And it worries me because if so, then it is a warning to any journalist not to mention by name the people responsible for her murder.
It should be Donald Trumps coming out party. But corporate sponsors are in no mood to celebrate.

Some of Americas largest corporations, which backed the Republican National Convention that nominated Mitt Romney in 2012, are lurching away from sponsoring the 2016 confab. Under pressure from anti-Trump advocacy groups, corporations that have traditionally not hesitated to drop millions on national conventions are limiting their contributions and scaling back their activities.

Coca-Cola, for example, contributed $660,000 to the convention in 2012 but is dramatically drawing down the amount it is giving this year. The corporation gave $75,000 to both parties conventions this time around, a company spokesman told The Daily Beast, stressing that the contribution took place in 2015. Coca-Cola has indicated to anti-Trump groups that it will not give any more.

And Microsoft, which contributed $1.5 million in cash and services to the Republican National Convention in 2012, said in a press release just days ago that it decided last fall to provide a variety of Microsoft technology products and services instead of making a cash donation. If it did indeed make that decision last fall, it put off the announcement until just last week, after an anti-Trump coalition had began pounding its drums.

Citing the presumptive nominees history of xenophobic, sexist, and anti-Muslim comments, 24 organizations has banded together to pressure corporations to stop supporting the GOP convention.

Both Coca-Cola and Microsoft have agreed to end cash donations to political conventions that promote hate and bigotry, and we applaud their decision to do so, said Farhana Khera, the executive director of Muslim Advocates, which is part of the coalition. We hope that other companies will take their lead and send a strong message against hate.

Still, some of Americas largest technology companies are charging full steam ahead. AT&T, which provided $3 million in 2012, will be an official communications provider for the July convention. Google will serve as the official livestream provider in Cleveland. And Facebook will support both Republican and Democratic conventions.

But silence from other major corporations on their expected contribution to the GOP convention, just days after Donald Trump sealed the nomination, speaks volumes.

Many of the 2012 Republican conventions biggest sponsors didnt respond to requests for comment from The Daily Beast, including the American Petroleum Institute, Florida Power and Light, and Lockheed Martin, which were responsible for combined millions in contributions last cycle.

Sheldon Adelson contributed $5 million to the 2012 convention, making him the largest individual donor, but a spokesman didnt respond to a question about this years convention. Marketing Solution Publications, run by financier William Edwards, gave the largest corporate donation last cycle at $4 million. But Edwards had nothing to say after The Daily Beast called his office asking if he would re-up this year.

Or, as in the case of Walmart, companies said they had not yet made up their mind about whether they would sponsor the convention, less than three months before the event.

In off-the-record asides, corporation spokespersons insisted to The Daily Beast that the convention is really about supporting the city of Cleveland, or the democratic process, or open political dialogue. The contributions arent an endorsement, they said, and in any case the corporations donate the same amount to both parties.

But of course, the GOP convention exists for one primary reason: to nominate a controversial billionaire businessman for the presidency.

They are sponsoring a party for Trump, said Rashad Robinson, executive director of Color of Change, another group urging corporations not to contribute to the event. Muslim kids being bullied, Latino kids being yelled at with threats of deportation at sporting eventsthese corporations are closing their eyes, closing their ears, closing their mouths, and handing over their wallets.

Corporations could be forgiven for seeking to distance themselves from the Cleveland convention. Even leading Republicans are going skip the event: four of the past five GOP presidential nomineesMitt Romney, John McCain, George W. Bush, and George H.W. Bushare declining to attend.

The calculus is clear: Robinson suggests the image of Confederate flags waving over corporate brands might be bad for business.

The Cleveland 2016 Host Committee, which aims to raise $64 million for the Republican convention, had a relatively slow month of fundraisingcoinciding with a period of intense uncertainty over who the Republican nominee might be, or whether the nominee would even be decided by July.

Over the past month, the committee received $2 million in pledges, up from $54 million in late March. But at that rate, it will fall slightly short of its goal of $64 million before the convention date arrives.

Host committee spokeswoman Emily Lauer said it was confident it will meet its goal of $64 million, which is more than any other convention in history has raised. At least 80 percent of the pledged $56 million is already in the bank, she added.

But the committee will be fighting an uphill battle, with two dozen advocacy groups having organized to push corporations not to contribute to the event.

We recognize that these corporations serve millions and pride themselves for being inclusive and promoting fairness and diversity, Khera, the executive director of Muslim Advocates, told The Daily Beast. That is why it is critical for these companies to exercise their responsibility to be good corporate citizens by ensuring that their products and resources are not used to foment hate and divide the American people.
Two senior U.S. intelligence officials said recently that defense and intelligence employees have an unbelievable amount of child pornography on their work computers and devices, and that child porn has been found on the systems of the National Security Agency, the countrys biggest intelligence organization.

But the NSA, which is responsible for keeping tabs on its own computers as well as military and intelligence agency networks, cannot say just how many times employees have been found to posesses or share child pornography, or how many times such cases have been referred to law enforcement for investigation and potential criminal prosecution.

An agency spokesperson was unable to provide The Daily Beast with statistics to elaborate on comments by Kemp Ensor, the NSAs director of security, who said at a public conference in Virginia on April 28 that he had seen child porn on agency systems. Despite the fact that NSA employees know they work inside the most powerful surveillance organization on the planet, it doesnt stop some from engaging in criminal behavior. What people do [at work] is amazing, Ensor said.

His comments were first reported by Nextgov.

NSA is a professional foreign-intelligence and information-assurance organization with a highly disciplined workforce, serving around the clock in some of the worlds most dangerous areas, an NSA spokesperson said in a written statement. We set high professional standards for our personnel and any violations of the law are appropriately reported.

But how many? How often? These are questions one might imagine the worlds premiere computer-monitoring agency could answer.

Privately, current and former intelligence officials told The Daily Beast that the NSA does know when employees are downloading, storing, or sharing graphic and illegal images. Downloading, purchasing, and disseminating child pornography is a crime. But NSA is probably not keeping track of the number of times child porn has been found, the current and former officials saidat least not in any form that its willing to release publicly.

If thats the case, its not because defense and security officials have failed to raise red flags. Six years ago, the Pentagon released more than 90 pages from an investigation called Operation Flicker, which revealed that members of the military and defense contractors had allegedly purchased child porn on their government computers. One contractor with a top-secret security clearance was charged with possession. The contractor worked for the NSA.

So the agency clearly understands, even if anecdotally or based on the results of outside investigations, that theres a problem. And the NSA isnt alone.

The amount of child porn I see is just unbelievable, Daniel Payne, the director of the Defense Security Service, said at the same conference where Ensor spoke. The DSS, which is a separate agency from the NSA, conducts background checks on prospective and current government employees. Payne has worked in intelligence and counterintelligence for 34 years, including jobs in the military and at the CIA.

Ensor and Paynes candid remarks clearly made their employers uncomfortable. Not only did the NSA decline repeated requests to quantify the nature of the problem that Ensor described. The Defense Security Service, when asked the same question, initially provided a boilerplate statement that softened Paynes alarming comments.

Paynes remarks were not Agency specific; rather, he was speaking in terms of the government as a whole, the statement said. Asked again to provide information that would quantify the nature of that problem, the agency offered a count of its own employees who were found with porn on their work computers: zero.

The Defense Security Service has found no instances of child pornography on agency computers, the statement read. Should a DSS employee be found to have child pornography, the case would be referred to law enforcement for further investigation.

Asked for the number of times it had found child porn on the computers of other agencies, such as those where DSS investigators are conducting background checks for security clearance renewals, the agency didnt provide a number.

As a part of our mission, DSS conducts security vulnerability assessments of cleared facilities, which includes reviewing the audit records of classified systems, the agency said in another statement. Should the review uncover any illegal activity, DSS would inform the facility security staff, and if necessary, ensure the appropriate law enforcement authorities are notified.

Payne and Ensor werent trying to raise awareness about child porn and abuse in government. Rather, they were speaking on a panel about so-called insider threats at intelligence agencies. Since Edward Snowden disclosed highly-classified information about surveillance by the NSA, American intelligence agencies have made detecting the next leaker or spy a top priority.

To do that, the agencies need to keep tabs not just on what government employees are doing at work, but also at home, Payne and Ensor argued. NSA employees, particularly young ones, leave the agency and then hop online from the privacy of their own home. That is where were we need to be, thats where we need to mine, Ensor said.

The child porn problem came up, spokespersons for both agencies said, in the context of a discussion about the kinds of activities that signal someone could be engaging in criminal behavior, which would immediately make them a potential security threat.

That raised the question of whether the officials were using one form of criminal behaviorthe downloading of child pornographywhich they couldnt precisely quantify, to justify the expansion of surveillance of government employees.

But in trying to emphasize one problemleakers and spiesPayne and Ensor underscored another: the ongoing and persistent downloading of child porn in the workplace. And, perhaps, officials willful ignorance of the matter.

Government investigations have found instances in which intelligence officials effectively ignored evidence of employees viewing child porn and potential child abuse. In 2014, McClatchy reported that an inspector general found the National Reconnaissance Office, which runs U.S. spy satellites, had failed to notify authorities when some of its employees and contractors confessed to child molestation and other crimes during lie detector tests, which are administered for security clearance purposes.

In one instance, one of the agencys top lawyers told colleagues not to bother reporting confessions by a government contractor of child molestation, viewing child pornography and sexting with a minor, the inquiry by the inspector general for the intelligence community revealed, according to McClatchy. Two years earlier, the news organization had reported that law enforcement officials werent being told about criminal confessions that surfaced in lie detector tests.

In 2011, the Boston Globe reported that the Defense Department had investigated just 3,500 out of 5,200 people who were suspected of downloading child porn. The Pentagons inspector general promised an all-out pursuit to catch perpetrators, and said his office would review 1,700 potential cases of child pornography possession that had been referred to military investigators four years earlier, but that were never screened, the Globe reported.

Though they apparently didnt mean to, Payne and Ensor made a valuable point. The problem of child porn in the government workplace, which has been documented time and again, obviously remains unsolved if two senior officials whose job it is to know are still talking about it.
The men drugged her before they burned her alive.

More than a dozen members of an honor council near the Pakistani towns of Makol and Dunga Gali, outside of Abbottabad, have been arrested for immolating a 16-year-old girl, according to a local police chief.

Her supposed crime: helping a friend elope, which the men allegedly said had done irreparable harm to their villages reputation.

The group of men, described as a jirga or local tribal council by police, detained the girl, her mother, and her brother, according to police chief Saeed Wazir. The latter two allegedly consented to the punishment: burning the girl, named in some reports as Ambreen or Haleema, in the van used by the couple to elope.

The jirga members decided to punish the girl in a novel way so no one in future can dare to marry without consent of their parents and give a bad name to the village, Wazir told NBC. They tied her hands with the seats and then poured [gasoline] on her and the vehicle and set it on fire.

The case was popularized in part by Abdullah Khan of the Pakistan Institute for Conflict and Security Studies, who posted an account of the murder on Facebook and tweeted an image of the girls body. He is originally from that same area, he said.

This is for the first time that I reluctantly associate myself with my own village, Khan wrote, adding that Makol has frequent killings and a lot of rivalry. When I came to know about this incident I was sure that it was work of young gangs of boys who have become a trademark of our village.

Locals had stumbled across several burning vans in the early morning of April 29, and found the body of a girl in the backseat of one of them, Khan wrote. Despite announcing the findings from loudspeakers at the mosque, no one came forward with details of the killing.

Khans photo of the burnt body went viral, and the case was picked up by local media, police, and even a member of the Provincial Assembly. The girl turned out to be Amreen, daughter of a laborer named Riasat from Makol Payeen.

She was not mentally fully fit and was under some sort of spiritual treatment, Khan wrote. Police and everybody was clueless [about] why she was burnt. Killing was enough if someone wanted to shut her up. It looked like kidnapping for rape and then killing to remain undetected.

But instead, Khan said, police wound up questioning the mother, whose behavior after the murder was suspicious.

Police say the girls mother and brother assented to the brutal punishment, while Khan says she was forced to give up her daughter, not knowing that she would be killed, to members of the eloped friends clan.

The term jirga, Khan told The Daily Beast, can just mean a mediator, and that can be even one person in that region. It doesnt have to be a formal body, as suggested in many news reports.

Love marriage is quite frequent in our village and jirgas always helped in resolving disputes, he added.

Saroop Ijaz, a lawyer who works with Human Rights Watch in Pakistan, said such killings were frequently a means to assert dominance. Often, women are sentenced to death by their own family members, and other family members forgive the murderers.

Here it was a decision that was made by a collective, Ijaz told The Daily Beast by phone from Lahore. And it highlights another problem: the existence of parajudicial systems.

The state has to criminalize it, but also it has to be viewed as a serious, heinous crime by the population at large, he said.
Its arguably the toughest decision any whiskey drinker has to make: choosing a go-to brand.

While old faithful might not be your all-time favorite and you may not even keep a bottle of it in your liquor cabinet at home, its reliably enjoyable and will always be waiting for you at the airport, hotel or dive bar.

With the Kentucky Derby tomorrow, which always puts us in a whiskey and Mint Julep state of mind, we asked a range of liquor experts around the country for their go-to bourbons. Heres what they order when their options are limited to just a few bottlings.

Dave Broom, author of Whiskey: The Manual

I find it very hard indeed to pass by a chance to have some Four Roses Single Barrel. Its a bourbon with finesse rather than power, light leather, flamed citrus, maple syrup, fleshy fruits and perfectly balanced oak. Whats not to love?

Reid Mitenbuler, author of Bourbon Empire: The Past and Future of America's Whiskey

Wild Turkey 101 is usually easy to find. Brands like this always remind me how the ubiquitous brands are often made to higher standards than many niche offerings with higher price tags. I love how bourbon is contrarian that way, upending the rules of modern foodie culture.

Heather Greene, author Whiskey Distilled, A Populist Guide To The Water Of Life

Whiskey for me is a seasonal drink. As the weather warms, Im looking for a whiskey that delivers vanillas, spice and front-to-middle-of-palate dynamics. This month Im really into drinking Makers 46 with a large cube of ice.

Larry Rice, bartender and co-owner of top Louisville whiskey bar The Silver Dollar

Im a huge Four Roses Single Barrel fan. Its readily available comes in at barrel proof. Usually about 110-114 proof. Its spicy, rich and has a long finish. I suggest letting it get 5-10 minutes of air before drinking it. I like mine neat but at that proof theres no shame in adding an ice cube.

Lew Bryson, former managing editor of Whisky Advocate and author of Tasting Whiskey

The bourbon would be Knob Creek. Reasonably priced for what I get: solidly nine years old, 100 proof, always in stock, great in a cocktail or with a cube. And they have it almost everywhere I go.

Gary Regan, co-author of The Book of Bourbon and Other Fine American Whiskeys

Jack Black! Its not bourbon, I dont drink it at home, and its not the most sophisticated dram on earth, but I do love it. Makes me feel tough. And I can get it at near-as-damn-it any bar in the world.

Philip Greene, author of the new book, The Manhattan: The Story of the First Modern Cocktail with Recipes

Im reminded of the William Faulkner quote, There is no such thing as bad whiskey. Some whiskeys just happen to be better than others. But if the choices are limited, Im very happy with Four Roses Yellow Label, as well as Buffalo Trace, theyre both good, honest bourbons, great in a cocktail or just with a big old ice cube or two.

Albert Schmid, author of The Manhattan Cocktail: A Modern Guide to the Whiskey Classic

When I travel through airports or stay at hotels my go to bourbons are Woodford Reserve or Knob Creek, but if I see it at the bar I will order Eagle Rare. I enjoy the vanilla and orange peel aromasthe oak and caramel flavors. In addition, Eagle Rare usually has a pocket-friendly price pointa great bargain for a top notch whiskey.
For someone so inclined to overshareabout his penis size, his sexual prowess, his wifes bathroom habits, her lack of celluliteDonald Trump is an intensely private person.

Hes so private that the privacy terms he forces those in his orbit to agree to verge on unconstitutional, and his opaque plans to enforce privacy measures of undisclosed range as president of the United States have potentially grave implications for the Republic.

When he was merely a real estate mogul and tabloid fixture, Trumps obsession with loyalty at the expense of honesty was just a silly quirk.

Millionaires always have silly quirks.

But with the White House now within Trumps grasp, his quirks could feasibly become policy. And theres no indication he would behave differently as commander in chief from how he did as a potential (and then eventual) ex-husband.

On Dec. 24, 1987, Trump and Ivana, his first wife, entered into a postnuptial agreement.

By that point theyd been married for 10 years and had, previously, come to three different agreements about what they were permitted to do in their marriage and what would happen in the event that they ever divorced (they eventually did, in 1992).

The new agreement stated, among other things, that within 90 days of their divorce, Trump would have to pay Ivana $10 millionon its face a steep sum, until you consider what Trump was asking of her in return.

According to an appeal filed by Trump to the Supreme Court of the State of New York on April 16, 1992, during his lengthy divorce battle with Ivana, Paragraph 10 of the 1987 postnuptial agreement stated that Ivana would never be permitted to publicly speak about a marriage and a man that defined her adult life. If she breached the contract, Trump wouldnt have to pay her a penny.

Without obtaining [the husbands] written consent in advance, the agreement stated, [the wife] shall not directly or indirectly publish, or cause to be published, any diary, memoir, letter, story, photograph, interview, article, essay, account, or description or depiction of any kind whatsoever, whether fictionalized or not, concerning her marriage to [the husband] or any other aspect of [the husbands] personal, business or financial affairs, or assist or provide information to others in connection with the publication or dissemination of any such material or excerpts thereof.

Trump values telling it like it is, in other words, except if youre telling it about him. The times Ivana has been quoted speaking about Trump in the 24 years since their split, her reviews have been artificially glowing.

If there was a problem, she told the New York Post about his reproductive machinery in April, Donald would not have five kids.

It wasnt until Trump began running for president in his mind that he became obsessed with controlling the public conversations had by his employees.

Barbara Res worked for Trump for over 10 years, beginning in 1980, and she told The Daily Beast he never had her sign a non-disclosure agreement (NDA), a legal contract that stipulates confidentiality between two or more parties.

And good thingin February, Res published a column for the New York Daily News recounting her time working for Trump, wherein she said, Trump is not as bad as he sounds. But hes a lot worse than he says.

But campaign employees and volunteers have been required to sign such agreements, a practice that is not unheard of in politics, but not commonplace, either. Michael Cohen, Trumps attorney, said he was the wrong person to talk to about this particular legal matter.

On April 8, The Daily Beast received an email intended for prospective Trump campaign volunteers.

We are in the final stages of this historic campaign, the email read. There are only a few days left and we need your help to make one last push! To volunteer, all you have to do is stop by for training, sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement, and bring government-issued ID (such as a valid drivers license or passport).

The NDA volunteers must sign was disclosed by The Daily Dot in March. It stipulates that during the time the volunteer is working for the campaign and at all times thereafter they will not demean or disparage publicly the Company, Mr. Trump, any Trump Company, any Family Member or any Family Member Company or any asset any of the foregoing own, or product or service any of the foregoing offer. Additionally, volunteers are told they are responsible for enforcing the NDA onto their own employeespeople who did not enter into a binding legal agreement with the Trump campaign.

Unlike the volunteers, Sam Nunberg did receive a paycheck from Trump. He signed an NDA on Jan. 1, 2015, binding him legally to the Donald J. Trump Exploratory Committee.

Nunberga protege of Roger Stone, Trumps longtime friend and mutual associate of his mentor, Roy Cohnhad been an aide to Trump in the years leading up to his presidential campaign.

In a copy of his contract, obtained by The Daily Beast, Trump made sure that the NDA would survive Nunbergs stint as a consultant for the campaign (a stint that was short lived, as it turned out).

But the threat of legal action has not stopped Nunberg from speaking his mind about Trump since he was fired from the campaign in August. In December 2015, Nunberg told The Daily Beast, I do not think that he will win.

Also in 2015, Trump mailed Nunberg a cease and desist notice.

Negative stories infuriate Trump. He takes them very personally, and he is known to lash out at the reporters or on-the-record sources responsible for them. But within his campaign, Trumps preoccupation with NDAs is seen as a colossal misunderstanding of how the press operates.

Its true of any campaign at any level of government that if a staffer wanted to leak unfavorable internal information to the media, its highly unlikely they would do so on the record. Thats just how this whole thing tends to work. People leak information and they keep their fingerprints off of it.

Trumps threat of legal action for defectors, then, is meaningless if he cant determine who the defectors are. He cant sue an anonymous source.

But Trump doesnt get bogged down in details like that.

In an interview with The Washington Post in April, Trump said he would require high-level government employees to sign NDAs were he to become president. There already exists a nondisclosure agreement of sorts for federal government employees who have security clearance. They are not allowed to reveal classified information and before writing a book about their experiences on the job, theyre supposed to submit their manuscript for review to the CIA. But this is a means of protecting information that, if public, could have negative consequences for the United Statesnot protecting information or opinion that could hurt the feelings of a thin-skinned fascist.

When people are chosen by a man to go into government at high levels and then they leave government and they write a book about a man and say a lot of things that were really guarded and personal, Trump said, I dont like that.

Trump has never liked the First Amendment when its been applied to anyone other than himself, of course. In February, he said he wanted to open up our libel laws so he could more easily sue the press, whose freedom is guaranteed by the Constitution.

But to Trump, freedom of speech only applies if youre wearing a Make America Great Again hat.
Special Olympics Texas will host the annual state equestrian competition at the Brazos County Expo on the weekend of May 20-22.

More than 200 athletes and their horses will participate, a record number for the competition. Events begin at 3 p.m. May 20 and continue throughout the weekend till early Sunday afternoon. Attendance is free and open to the public, and volunteers are still needed to assist with the competitions.
"When you see violence, greed and narrow-mindedness in the fullness of its power, walk straight into the heart of it, remaining open to the sky and in touch with the earth."

These words, taken from the Shambala Warrior Mind Training verses, were in my mind at 3.30am one day last July as I and 12 others cut through Heathrow airport's perimeter fence in west London and walked straight into the heart of the airport - onto the runway.

Once there we built a pipework fortress and locked ourselves to it to prevent planes from taking off. They circled in my mind as I lay on the runway, in touch with the earth, and gazed up at the open sky as the sun rose over London.

This was a peaceful, nonviolent action in the face of the violence of climate change, which kills 300,000 people a year. These are predominantly women, people living in poverty and communities of colour in the Global South. They have been suffering various forms of violence for centuries; climate change is a continuation of this.

It was the most impactful thing I could do with the resources I have. We prevented 4,500 tonnes of CO 2 from being released into the atmosphere, equivalent to the annual output of 900 households.

The state responded by threatening us with yet more violence: prison. Thankfully, the judge's threat of a "custodial sentence" ended up as a six weeks imprisonment, suspended for 12 months - saving us from going to jail, so long as we avoid breaking the law again. This sentence followed much outcry in the media, public and even parliament denouncing the idea that we should serve time for our principled action.

The structural violence of the state

The corporate-state complex maintains structures of violence through laws, policing, prisons, trade deals and a lack of any meaningful agreement on climate change. The law maintains the right for corporations to profit at the expense of life, and the police dutifully implement these laws. Increasingly we are seeing police protecting businesses undertaking destructive work from people trying to prevent it - such as the lines of riot police walking trucks into a fracking site at Balcombe.

Activism is an important part of my Buddhist practice, and an expression of my principles of nonviolence. For me, structural violence is as important as individual / behavioural violence, and it's just as important to challenge it in nonviolent ways.

'Structural violence' refers to the systematic ways in which social structures harm or disadvantage individuals and certain groups, communities or classes of people. It's the suffering caused by policies, processes and social norms created by the structures of our society, including governments, organisations, institutions, the economy and financial system, and the wider socio-political system - they're embedded in the organisation of our world.

I hold the principle of nonviolence in the context of the Buddhist ethical principle of abstaining from taking life or doing harm and instead acting with loving kindness. I express this on an individual level not only by trying to avoid harmful behaviour, by not eating meat and by being kind to people in my daily life, but also by being a pro-life force in the wider world, taking action collectively with others.
Cancer: just one manifestation of the genetic damage caused by radiation

Cancer is caused by genetic damage but takes a while to show. More easily studied is the immediate and direct genetic damage, demonstrated in birth rates of congenital diseases, birth defects, fetal abnormalities, data which is easier to locate. The effects of a sudden increase in radioactive contamination are most easily seen in sudden increases in these indicators.

You don't have to wait 20 years. Out they come after nine months or in aborted fetuses with their heart and central nervous system defects, their lack of hands and feet, their huge hydrocephalic heads, their inside-out organs, their cleft palates, cyclops eyes and the whole range of dreadful and usually fatal conditions. There is no argument, and the affair is in the hands of doctors, not physicists. The physicists of the ICRP base their risk of genetic effects on experiments with mice.

I was in Kiev in 2000 at the WHO conference on Chernobyl. On the podium, conducting the theatricals, were the top men in the IAEA (Abel Gonzalez) and the United National Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR), represented by Canadian Norman Gentner. "No effects can be seen" - Abel Gonzalez. "Internal radiation is the same as external" - Norman Gentner. Happily you can watch this farce as it was videotaped by a Swiss team (embed below).

So: cut to the chase, to the fatal assault on the edifice of the current ICRP radiation risk model. In January 2016 Prof Inge Schmitz Feuerhake, Dr Sebastian Pflugbeil and I published a major review paper on the genetic effects of radiation in the prestigious Korean peer-reviewed Journal of Environmental Health and Toxicology.

What the research shows is that in every corner of the ex-Soviet Union and Europe and even further afield where epidemiologists and pediatricians looked, there were large and statistically significant increases in congenital diseases at birth and in babies that were aborted.

The genetic risk that cascades through the generations

The new article recalculates the genetic risk from radiation based upon reports from Germany, Turkey, Greece, Croatia, Egypt, Belarus, Ukraine, Russia, Hungary, Italy, the UK, Scotland, Wales, indeed everywhere where anyone looked.

There was a sudden jump in birth defects immediately following the contamination from Chernobyl and in proportion; but only up to the point where the exposure was so great the babies died in the womb or miscarried early in pregnancy. Thus, the relation between exposure level and effect was not a simple one where the birth defects increased with exposure: after a critical level of exposure they leveled off, or indeed fell.

Also since contamination is still there, women are still giving birth to genetically damaged children some 30 years later. These results, published by many doctors, epidemiologists and researchers in many different journals, show that the effects occurred at levels of contamination that provided 'doses', that yardstick of radiation exposure invented by the ICRP, that were very low, often below the natural background dose.

It is worse: from research on the nuclear test site veterans' grandchildren (also reviewed in the study) it is clear that these effects continue down the generations and will only disappear when an offspring dies without issue, and leaves the genome of the human race. And many will or already have done: since what causes genetic malformation in the infant, at a larger dose causes fetal death and infertility.

These facts now form the basis of the case of Britain's nuclear test veterans, whose case I am representing in the High Court today. The UK government recklessly exposed them to a double blast of intense radiation from the gamma ray burst of nuclear bombs, and to the subsequent fallout, and has since washed their hands of the matter.

The vetermans' demand is that the sacrifice they and their families made should be recognised, and fair compensation paid. The MOD has resisted their claim by fair means and foul, but finally the evidence is assembled and their case is being heard. Today's hearing is largely procedural, and the substantive hearings are scheduled to take place for some two weeks of June.

The scientific fraud explained

No one can have failed to have noticed the increase in human infertility that has occurred since the radioactive contamination of the planet began in the 1950s. As ex-US Atomic Energy Commission scientists John Gofman wrote in 1981 "the nuclear industry is waging a war on humanity."

So how can it be possible that the legislative system has got it so wrong? The answer is also given in the paper. It is that the concept of 'dose' which may be convenient for the physicists as it is simple to compute, really does not address the situation where the substances that provide the dose are inside the body, often bound chemically to the DNA, which is the acknowledged target for all these genetic effects.

It shows that the human genome (and of course that of all life) is exquisitely sensitive to radiation damage from such internal exposures, to Strontium-90, Plutonium-239, Uranium and particularly to the nano-particles containing these radioactive elements which were produced when the reactor No 4 blew apart.

The paper shows the studies of the Hiroshima bomb survivors, upon which the current unsafe radiation laws are based were faulty because the true comparison group, those not in the city at the time of the bombing, was abandoned when it began to look like there was a real effect. Was this stupidity? Was it a trick? Does someone have to go to jail?

Last month, Prof. Alexey Yablokov, Dr. Alex Rosen and I wrote to the editor of The Lancet, in a recorded delivery letter posted by the Independent WHO in Geneva, requesting space in that influential journal to draw attention to these truths and overturn the false and dangerous structures created by the physicists.

Let us all hope that some good will finally come of the disaster - that the real legacy of Chernobyl will be the understanding of the true danger to health of radioactive pollution.

And that Britain's nuclear bomb test veterans, and their families, will finally receive the justice they so richly deserve.

Chris Busby is an expert on the health effects of ionizing radiation. He qualified in Chemical Physics at the Universities of London and Kent, and worked on the molecular physical chemistry of living cells for the Wellcome Foundation. Professor Busby is the Scientific Secretary of the European Committee on Radiation Risk based in Brussels and has edited many of its publications since its founding in 1998. He has held a number of honorary University positions, including Visiting Professor in the Faculty of Health of the University of Ulster. Busby currently lives in Riga, Latvia. See also: chrisbusbyexposed.org, greenaudit.org and llrc.org.

Study: 'Genetic Radiation Risks - A Neglected Topic in the Low Dose Dabate' by Busby C, Schmitz-Feuerhake I, Pflugbeil S is published in Environmental Health and Toxicology.

This article is an edited version of one originally published on RT.

Latest book: Christopher Busby (2015) 'What is Life? On the origin and mechanism of living systems'. QTP Publications. Illustrated by Saoirse Morgan. ISBN 978-0-9565132-1-2, 130pp. Order from Amazon UK (10.00) or QTP publications 10 Bratwell Rd, Coleraine, BT51 4LB.

Note: The ECRR has focused on Chernobyl as a major data source for establishing the risk posed by radiation. It has concluded that the current ICRP model is in error by upwards of about 300-fold, for some types of internal exposures, by upwards of 1000-fold. This means that over the period of the radiation contamination, more than 60 million people have died from cancer as a result of the releases. This risk model is available on the website euradcom.eu.
The Town of Rocky Mount is celebrating another major award for its Harvester Performance Center.

The Roanoke Convention & Visitors Bureau, now known as Visit Virginias Blue Ridge, named the Harvester its Golden Star Award winner at the CVBs annual dinner in April.

The award, presented by CVB chairman Lee Wilhelm, honors the Harvester for outstanding efforts and contributions to the growth and development of the tourism industry in the Roanoke Valley and the economic benefit derived from those efforts.

Harvester CEO and Rocky Mount Assistant Town Manager Matt Hankins accepted the award, one of three awards presented at the dinner. Smith Mountain Lake Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Vicki Gardner won Tourism Ambassador of the Year.

This was really an unexpected honor, Hankins said. The Harvester and the town appreciate all of our partners, sponsors, staff, volunteers and performance fans who have made the Harvester grow so quickly into a major regional attraction.

Hankins and his wife, Dulcie, were invited to attend the event by CVB partner Franklin County, represented at the event by county supervisors Bob Camicia, Leland Mitchell and Charles Wagner, County Administrator Brent Robertson, Economic Development Director Michael Burnette and Tourism Director David Rotenizer.

When the county invited us to attend, I had a feeling something good was going on, but the award still came as a surprise, Hankins said. We know the tremendous impact the Harvester has had on restaurants, hotels and retailers, because the town and county have received increased taxes from those activities.

The CVB award is the latest in a string of awards for the Harvester and the Town of Rocky Mount. Rocky Mount won the Virginia Municipal Leagues highest award, the Presidents Award, in October 2014 for developing the Harvester. Hankins was named the Virginia Local Government Managers Association 2015 Assistant Manager of the Year for leading the project. The Virginia Economic Developers Association named the project its 2016 Community Economic Development Award winner for small communities. A number of publications have named the Harvester to their best of lists, including the Roanoker Magazine and Virginia Living Magazine.
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By Brad Bowman, Frankfort State Journal

Nearly 100 Department for Community Based Services workers from across the state have almost completed their efforts in a Frankfort benefind tactical operations center for processing backlogged cases.

In February, the benefind system launched as a main hub for handling public benefits ranging from Medicaid to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and the KTAP, which aids families with cash assistance for utilities, rent and other expenses.

When the system launched, several erroneous letters were issued telling Kentuckians they no longer qualified for such benefits resulting in beneficiaries across the state flooding offices and phone lines.

In April, Cabinet for Health and Family Services Secretary Vickie Yates Glisson told lawmakers it was a technical issue of Deloitte's software system.

Last month former U.S. Army Maj. Brandon Carlson came on as the benefind project manager and launched the tactical center to stem the flow of caseloads.

"Running a large project like this with a mission and end state in mind is not dissimilar from running a battalion in the Army," Carlson said. "This specific operation was kind of based on my experience of running tactical operations in Iraq and Afghanistan."

The glitch caused such a voluminous disruption, Carlson said, that DCBS workers couldn't address regular client needs.

The reported 50,000 Kentuckians who received erroneous notifications were conversion cases from the previous eligibility system to the benefind system.

"It created a large volume of work to serve our customers," Carlson said. "When benefind was turned on, all the cases in the old system were converted to benefind. There were still 50,000 cases that still needed to be converted."

Adria Johnson, commissioner for DCBS, said when benefit mismatches occurred it could've been name mismatches or eligibility calculations that may have differed between the two systems.

To address the normal daily DCBS caseload, Carlson sat down with Johnson and put a percentage of workers in the tactical operations focus for backlogs finishing this week.

"Our productivity was not what it was pre-benefind," Johnson said. "The system glitches that we ran into  we built a backlog. The conversion cases have all different recertification dates. We are able to segment those. Cases due in March, cases due in April obviously rise to the top and are being prioritized."

Starting last week, the center had about 30,000 normal backlogged cases to work through and has cleared any glitches that would have caused DCBS to issue any June benefit waivers as it did when the erroneous glitches first occurred, according to Carlson.

Both Carlson and Johnson said Deloitte has identified most of the data glitches which the benefit mismatches.

"We had to take a drastic action to be able to get ahead again  that is the culmination of this operation," Carlson said. "We took those 100 people and divided them into teams. (Deloitte) would give them a list of cases to work through. What that's allowed us to do at the end of this week, is turn our focus to applications (for benefits)."
LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP)  Two 15-year-old boys are accused of opening fire in broad daylight on a busy downtown sidewalk as the Kentucky Derby Festival's Pegasus Parade marched by Thursday afternoon. Two other teens were injured, and panicked families dived behind bleachers and trash bins to escape the chaos.

Police Chief Steve Conrad said one victim was a 17-year-old boy believed to be known to the shooters. The second was a 14-year-old girl who he described as an innocent bystander. Both were taken to the hospital and are expected to recover.

'When someone is brazen enough to walk into a crowd of families and shoot somebody because he had some sort of score to settle, it's very disconcerting,' said Louisville Metro Police Sgt. Phil Russell. 'These are kids with guns making kid decisions. Any parent and any citizen should be frustrated by this.'

The gunfire erupted just after 6:30 p.m. near the corner of Fourth Street and Broadway, a main intersection in downtown Louisville along the parade route. Families were packed into bleachers and standing along the street to watch the parade go by.

Russell said more than 500 police officers were stationed along the route, at least one officer at every corner. Yet the boys fired anyway.

'It's frightening to think that we have youth that are armed and making such immature decisions, without any measure of the consequences,' he said. 'And how much more horrible this could have been.'

Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer said 100,000 or more people attended the parade, one of the events held during a week of festivities leading up to the Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs on Saturday.

Carter Wilson, a 10-year-old boy there with his family, said he heard what he thought at first was firecracker. Then he heard screaming and saw one of the victims lying on the sidewalk. He said a group of kids ran around the corner and police ran after them.

Around him, parents threw children onto the street and dove on top of them to shield them from bullets.

Russell said the two teens were apprehended within minutes.

Police paused the parade for a short time, but decided to let it resume once the shooters were apprehended, concerned that masses fleeing in panic would complicate the investigation.

The teens face two counts each of assault, tampering with evidence, possession of a handgun by a minor and receiving stolen property, police said.

The case against them will begin in juvenile court and their names have not been released. Jeff Cooke, a spokesman for the Jefferson County Commonwealth's Attorney, said the use of a firearm automatically makes the case eligible to be transferred to adult court.

The county attorney's office will present the case to a juvenile court judge, who will decide if it should be sent to circuit court, Cooke said.

Russell said figuring out how a 15-year-old got a gun will be part of the investigation.

'It's an understandable question,' he said, 'where are the parents or guardians and will they be held responsible?'

Caption 1:

Carter Wilson, 10, points to where he saw a person lying on the sidewalk after being shot during the Kentucky Derby Festival Pegasus Parade on Thursday, May 5, 2016 in Louisville, Ky. Police said two people suffered injuries not believed to be life-threatening and were taken to a nearby hospital. (AP Photo/Claire Galofaro)
Mississippi River levels impacting Burlington tourism, barge transport

The problem is especially dire on the Lower Mississippi, where low water-level barriers are restricting corn and soybean shipments to New Orleans.
The fourth case of the zika virus has been reported in Connecticut, according to the state Department of Health.

The fourth Connecticut patient is a non-pregnant woman in her 30s who has tested positive for the Zika virus. The patient travelled from the Caribbean to Connecticut on April 25 and became ill four days later. Her symptoms included fever, rash and conjunctivitis. The patient and her physician have been informed of the test result.

The State Laboratory confirmed the patients test result using PCR testing. This level of testing is used for patients who are actively experiencing symptoms of the virus. The State Laboratory was approved by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in March for PCR testing, after Governor Dannel P. Malloy directed DPH to develop and begin testing for Zika.

Prior to this approval, specimens were sent to the CDC for testing, resulting in long wait times for results.

To date, 426 cases of travel-related Zika have been reported in the continental United States. Of those, 36 were pregnant women and eight were sexually transmitted.

In Connecticut, 245 patients, including 217 pregnant women, have been tested for Zika virus.

On Tuesday, the state health department reported that a woman who conceived while visiting Central America is the states first confirmed pregnant Zika virus patient.

Zika can cause miscarriages and serious birth defects. Two other state residents were previously diagnosed with the virus.

So far, the majority of Zika cases in the continental United States have been in people who traveled to areas where Zika is prevalent, and none have been caused by mosquito bites.

On Friday, the state health department reiterated warnings urging Connecticut residents, particularly pregnant women and women planning to become pregnant, to avoid travel to countries that have been affected by Zika virus.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Zika is expected to infect roughly 700,000 people on the island of Puerto Rico by the end of the year. With a large Puerto Rican community in Connecticut, and sizable populations from other Zika-affected countries, coupled with daily flights to Puerto Rico and other countries from Bradley and airports in neighboring states, travelers should protect themselves from the virus by taking steps to prevent mosquito bites. When traveling to countries where Zika virus or other viruses spread by mosquitoes have been reported, use insect repellent, wear long sleeves and pants, and stay in places with air conditioning or that use window and door screens, the department said.
NORWALK -- An attorney representing the Waypointe development asked the Norwalk Zoning Commission to tweak the truck-delivery route for The SoNo Collection during a public hearing at City Hall on Wednesday evening.

"If the trucks are going to be maintaining that movement, into North Water Street, up the north service road, onto Crescent, making a left on Butler, now you're going to be having trucks sitting, frankly, in front of my client's development on Butler, waiting to make a left onto West Avenue," said attorney John W. Knuff, who otherwise lent his support to the mall.

Knuff recommended creating an additional left-hand turn lane from Butler to West Avenue.

The Rev. Albert Ray Dancy, a pastor at Macedonia Church, an immediate neighbor to the proposed million-square-foot mall, read a letter in support of the development, saying it would be an asset to the neighborhood.

"The SoNo Collection will improve property that has been dormant for quite some time," Dancy said. "The project will help connect South Norwalk and the re-emerging upper West Avenue in a manner that encourages pedestrian access with new public promenades and improved streetscapes."

About 50 people attended the public hearing in the Community Room of City Hall. Many of those present were representatives of General Growth Properties. The hearing began with the mall developer continuing its presentation that began March 27.

Afterward, representatives of WSP Parsons Brinckerhoff, the firm hired by the city to review GGP's traffic plan, outlined recommendations.

Vahid Karimi, senior engineer with the company, noted that Norwalk already coordinates operation of its traffic signals.

"What we are recommending, as part of this project, is to take what we consider as a traffic-responsive system to a traffic-adaptive system, so you increasingly adapt the timing of those traffic lights to the volume of traffic," Karimi said. "When you have the holiday season, when you have a rush of traffic coming in on the highway system, the traffic signals will be able to react to that demand."

GGP, a Chicago-based mall developer and operator, hopes to break ground this summer on 700,000 square feet of retail, 80 to 100 in-line retail stores, a 150-room boutique hotel and public space on the dozen-acre site off West Avenue and Interstate 95.

The SoNo Collection would be anchored by a Bloomingdale's store along North Water Street and a Nordstrom's store near Interstate 95.
Now that the top of their ticket is less muddled, Republicans and Democrats in Connecticut will shift gears to underticket races for the U.S. House and Senate at their upcoming nominating conventions.

Both state parties will convene, starting with the Democrats Saturday and concluding Monday with both parties making endorsements in six federal races, including for five House seats. The marquee contest on this years ballot is the first re-election test of U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., who survived a $50 million onslaught by former wrestling executive Linda McMahon in 2010.

Each group of partisans enter the nominating phase of the calendar somewhat fractured, with Donald Trump a love-hate proposition for the GOP and Democrats split between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders.

Whichever Republicans emerge with their partys endorsement will be prohibitive underdogs in the general election, having to overcome name-recognition, fundraising and party membership deficits as well as history. The last time a GOP candidate won a statewide or congressional race in the state was 2006, which national handicappers say doesnt bode well for Republicans, especially if Connecticut stays true blue in the presidential election.

Heck, we could see a unicorn this cycle, the return of the split-ticket voter, said Jennifer Duffy, senior editor of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report in Washington, D.C. But that return may never be seen in places like Connecticut.

Mounting a Senate challenge

On Saturday, Blumenthal is slated to accept the Democratic nomination for a second six-year term by voice acclamation at the Connecticut Convention Center in Hartford. The 70-year-old former longtime state attorney general has raised more than $5.4 million for the race, after spending $8.7 million in 2010.

I approach every election in the same way, like Im 20 points behind, Blumenthal told Hearst Connecticut Media.

During his first term in Washington, Blumenthal said, he has shepherded legislation aimed at preventing suicides by military veterans and the train derailments that have plagued Amtrak and Metro-North. He said he has pushed a bill to roll back a 2005 gun industry immunity law and sought to hold automakers liable for defective vehicles.

My approach is the same as when I was attorney general, standing up to special interests and big companies when necessary, said Blumenthal, a Yale Law School classmate of Clinton.

Republicans have tried to paint Blumenthal, a Greenwich resident and one of the Senates wealthiest members, as a grandstander who is fixated on picayune matters such as legroom on airlines and labeling requirements for GMO salmon. They say his support for the Iran nuclear deal is out of step with constituents.

A trio of GOP candidates want to challenge Blumenthal: 1984 Olympian August Wolf, of Stamford, state Rep. Dan Carter, of Bethel, and Michael Kors fashion label co-founder Jack Orchulli, of Darien.

I dont think you can discount anybody, said Danbury Republican Mayor Mark Boughton, a two-time candidate for governor. I think its going to be a very strange election year. Look, I think anybody who puts their name on the ballot definitely has a shot.

One of the three will emerge with the partys nomination Monday night, also at the Connecticut Convention Center. Unsuccessful candidates can still force a primary, which would be held in August, by mustering 15 percent of the vote at the state party convention.

State GOP Chairman J.R. Romano did not respond to a request for comment Thursday. Neither did the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

Democrats are already trying to lump GOP underticket candidates with Trump.

I think there will be those who embrace Donald Trump and there will be those that run for cover in the Republican Party, said Michael Cacace, a Democratic National Committee member from Stamford who is Blumenthals campaign chairman.

Last month, Wolf campaigned at a Trump rally in Hartford. He also Retweeted a state Democratic Party post saying that he was all aboard the Trump train.

Endorsing House contestants

The most competitive House contest for Republicans is in the 5th District, where three candidates are seeking their partys endorsement to challenge U.S. Rep. Elizabeth Esty, D-Conn.

They are Clay Cope, Shermans openly gay first selectman, Newtown businessman Bill Stevens, and perennial candidateJohn Pistone, of Brookfield. The GOP field shrank Thursday, with Sandy Hook resident and home renovator Matt Maxwellquitting the race.

Esty is poised to be nominated for a third two-year term Monday night in Waterbury  Democrats hold their congressional nominating conventions at the district level. The 5th District stretches from Danbury to the Farmington Valley and includes Litchfield County, Meriden and New Britain.

In the 4th District, which covers 17 cities and towns in the southwestern part of the state, including Bridgeport, Stamford, Norwalk and Greenwich, Republicans are expected to nominate state Rep. John Shaban, R-Redding, Monday night in Hartford.

Democratic incumbent Jim Himes, a Greenwich resident, will accept his partys nomination for a fifth term in Bridgeport that same night.

U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., the dean of the delegation and 3rd District incumbent, will accept her partys endorsement for a 13th term Monday night in Naugatuck.
DONIPHAN  Americans could change the nation simply by praying  if that prayer is pure, passionate and persistent.

That was the message on Thursday during National Day of Prayer activities over the noon hour at the Doniphan Community Center.

Darrel and Cindy deVille of Frisco, Texas, founders of Shekinah Today Ministries and authors of Gods Answer for America, stopped in Doniphan while on a tour of Nebraska.

The situation in our nation is desperate, Cindy deVille told the gathering of about 30.

She said the darkness of greed, perversion and sin is taking over since the light of God is being pushed out. God has been rejected in government and in schools.

But the moral corruption of the country is really reflective on the state of the churches in the country, said Cindys husband, Darrel. Too many churches have gotten caught up in the performance and the day-to-day work of ministry and have lost sight of the core function of prayer.

Change in our nation doesnt begin with the political process. It begins with the pulpits and churches of America, Darrel deVille said. They are supposed to be the salt and light.

Darrel deVille said, if more churches returned to the core function of prayer, individuals, families and the entire country would begin to see noticeable, positive change.

The three key components of successful prayer are first that it be pure and unhindered, meaning there is no sin or hatred in the heart during prayer. A prayer that is hindered will not be heard by God, he said. Second, the prayer must be passionate, fervent and from the heart. It must be done with humility, with the understanding that it is truly necessary and only God can help. Third, it must be persistent and relentless.

You must keep praying, not one day but every day, until you see things change, Darrel deVille said.

On that note of persistence, the deVilles launched a campaign called Pray, America Pray! That campaign challenges everyone to engage in a pure and passionate prayer at noon every day.

It was that campaign that caught the attention of Steve Johnson, board member of New Life Community Church in Grand Island. He participated in the campaign, followed the deVilles online and later met them in Texas and invited them to celebrate National Day of Prayer in Nebraska.

Persistence is a huge principle, Darrel deVille said. Pure, passionate, persistent prayer is nation-changing prayer.

Copies of Gods Answer for America, How to Save and Change a Nation were given away at the Doniphan event.

The book is in two parts. The first half identifies the problem. The second half spells out the solution.

It starts with the pulpits of America leading the way and turning the churches into houses of prayer, Darrel deVille said. We have a lot of churches that have a lot of great programs going on, lot of great social things, even preaching and teaching, but a lot have forsaken the blueprint the Lord laid out  that the church is to be a house of prayer for all nations to connect with heaven.

The deVilles called their book a wake-up call and a reality check for the direction the nation is headed.

They started their Nebraska tour on Thursday morning in Paxton and concluded the day with presentations in Lincoln.
Everyone who visits the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall in Washington, D.C., is touched and leaves a different person.

But those most affected are the early Baby Boom-age men and women who were fellow comrades in a foreign land, participants in a war that much of America still doesnt understand.

These veterans connect to the etched names in an intimate sense.

They were in the same fields. They looked into the eyes of the same friends and foes. They heard similar cries and prayers.

At the wall, Hall County Hero Flight vets found names of servicemen they knew, or grew up with, or negotiated unfamiliar terrain with. However, they also related to the countless other names  58,000-plus  and the magnitude and impact of a decade in Vietnam.

Richard Deaton, a member of the recent Vietnam War Hero Flight, was testimony to that. He put faces to names of service members he never knew.

What Ive done is Ive gone online. And what I found is out of a Life magazine in 69. It says, One Weeks Toll. These are their stories, and these are the guys that lost their lives in that week.

Deaton then pointed to the wall, where the names are listed in chronological order by the date the service members were killed in action.

Theyre together because they lost their lives that week, he said. Theres 242 of them, and these are the names and the pictures of the people, he said, looking back at his smartphone. Theres Scott Cochran.

Scott E. Cochran was 18 years old and killed by an explosive device in Bien Hoa Province on May 27, 1969. He served with the Armys 8th Engineer Battalion, 1st Cavalry Division.

So you not only see the name, but you see the person, the face, Deaton said.

And 241 others, too.

The historical magazine issue  titled The Faces of the American Dead in Vietnam: One Weeks Toll  came out June 27, 1969. It listed and pictured all the U.S. service members killed in Vietnam between May 28 and June 3 of that year, including five Nebraskans.

It was Deatons first visit to the Vietnam Wall. Its tough, he said, his voice breaking.

It was painful for all the Hero Flight vets. But there was healing, too, and much reflection.

The Hero Flights are a catharsis for the veterans. If all goes well, there will be another flight for local Vietnam War vets, likely next spring, and perhaps even more.

The vets on these trips cant express enough their gratitude for the opportunity to visit D.C. In that regard, the people of Hall County and beyond have come through in an amazing five-year effort.

Staff and Hero Flight Committee members on the most recent flight were Don and Judy Shuda, Joannie Leisinger, Linda Green, Mike Ponte, Virjeanne Baker and Justin Bstandig. County Supervisor Gary Quandt has long manned the home front  among his good deeds, spending many cold nights on top of the courthouse in fundraising efforts. Independent Publisher Don Smith chairs the committee and has made The Independent a Hero Flight anchor. Bstandigs employer, JBS, has gone above and beyond the call of duty with donations for the dozens of vets club hamburger feeds. Also on the home front, VFW Auxiliary members have worked tirelessly to get military veterans to D.C.

Hundreds of others have contributed directly over the years.

During the most recent Hero Flight  and the previous four  it was not uncommon to see young students come up to local vets and thank them for their service. Weve seen it at the Vietnam Wall, in the Capitol and right here in Grand Island.

As Americans become further removed from the conflicts in our history, the respect for those who fought in them grows greater. Events in our history dont change through time  but perceptions do.

You can judge the war however you want  a tragic misstep, an honorable endeavor that went awry, and/or an effort questionably managed by our government. In the end, thats not what matters.

What counts most is that we dont forget the soldiers and sailors, airmen and Marines and medical corps who took part.
In a year when Americas presidential candidates are mocking our system and seem to serve no other purpose than entertaining the world ... when people feel their vote no longer matters, or doesnt count ... Id like to ask the folks in Grand Island to take a moment from their busy day on May 10, and prove that Americans do still have a voice in making this a better place.

Please allow me the opportunity to say a few kind words about Jon Billington, who is running for Grand Island City Council, Ward 4. Im sure many of you already know Jon, since hes lived most of his life on the east side of Grand Island. If youve ever bought, sold or traded anything with this man, you know you can count on him to be honest and fair.

In a world where nobody trusts anyone, Jon remains a man of his word. Being a disabled veteran, he has loyally served our country and understands the needs of his community. Hes a man of faith who knows what Honesty, Respect & Kindness actually means (which is rare to find these days). Yet those are the things that make me proud to know Jon Billington.

So, if youre old enough to vote (but havent), or if youve decided not to vote (for whatever reason), or just dont know who you want to vote for, please go vote for Jon Billington. The city of Grand Island needs his wisdom and integrity.
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Linkedin Youkyung Lee & Yong Jun Chang (Associated Press) Jangseong, South Korea  Fri, May 6, 2016

The stars of the latest online trend in South Korea stay out of sight most of the day. Viewers don't seem to mind waiting for hours while nothing happens. When the stray cats finally come to eat the food left out for them, people watching online sit enraptured by their feline charms.

The livestreamed "Cats Meok Bang" show is a twist on an online trend of young South Korean men and women tucking into feasts in real time, while viewers send messages and sometimes virtual cash. In a country where young adults increasingly live and dine alone, the shows have become so popular, some hosts have made small or big fortunes from the virtual cash sent from viewers.

While the stars of those programs seek a rapport with their fans, cat TV has gained viewers despite its uneventfulness. Some avid fans say they quit watching soap operas, reading online news or playing mobile phone game to watch. One says instead of smoking every time he gets stressed at work, watching the cats restores his peace of mind. While cats have generally fascinated the Internet, a show devoted to watching them eat is unusual. But it has helped change negative images of stray cats in South Korea, which has traditionally seen them as thieves.

"Cats Meok Bang," a mash-up of the Korean words for broadcasting and eating, began by accident. While visiting his mother-in-law in a mountainous village in southwestern Korea, Koo Eun-je saw a cat outside, wondered how it survived and put out leftover fish for it. The next day, the cat was back so Koo kept feeding him, and the others who followed. Finally, he set up a surveillance camera and livestreamed the scene online.

"We started the channel simply for me and my wife to watch, but other viewers also started watching it," the 35-year-old who previously worked as a web designer said in an interview near the lake where he goes bass fishing for the cats. "We guessed that there would be one or two cats, but now it turns out that 17 cats are coming to eat food."

Four months on, 110,000 South Koreans watched the show on a monthly average and more than 10,000 of them have bookmarked the show. Some viewers sent him virtual cash items, which help cover his living expenses and cat food. Others send food and donations to Koo. As his cat TV got popular, at least one copycat show emerged.

Koo has turned the area outside the family home into what he calls "a restaurant for cats." Its decorations change regularly. A chalkboard features the day's menu, and about a dozen cats' nicknames are written on a piece of paper. A fish bowl and trays of food sits on a pink blanked covering the ground. Everything is at a standstill except a pinwheel spinning in the background and small toys, a rubber duck and sometimes hula dancers, in the foreground. Serene music plays from a speaker. Larger toys like a Hello Kitty doll are in the background, and beyond them are rice and pepper farms and a patch of sky.

Sometimes birds fly by. Other times, Koo's mother-in-law is seen sweeping outside the house. Once or twice a day, Koo appears onscreen, replenishing the food.

When a cat finally enters the scene, viewers share their excitement, exchange live chats, call out the cat's name and tell them to eat well.

"They are like unexpected joy suddenly visiting you," said Park Tae-kyung, a 33-year-old computer graphic designer in Seoul. For the past two months, Park said she played the cat TV all day at work on a computer screen and watched the show before going to bed. When she spotted a cat at work, her colleagues rushed to the screen to stare at it.

During the slow hours after patients leave his office, Yoo Young Hoon, a 49-year-old physician in Seoul, said he always plays the cat TV on the screen next to the medical chart. The show has replaced his time on Facebook and his day is full of newfound cat-related activities although he still does not plan to adopt one.

"I was never fond of cats before," he said. "Now when I take a walk after lunch, I go to places where I might run into street cats."

The only game he plays, he said, is Neko Atsume, the popular mobile game where users collect and feed cats.

Unlike dogs that are considered loyal to their owners, cats do not have a positive image in South Korea. Stray cats are called "thief cats" because they are believed to survive by stealing food from humans. They are unwelcomed creatures who scavenge rubbish. Many of South Korea's older generations still view cats as a wicked, untrustworthy animal.

But viewers of the cat TV said they began paying attention to those animals roaming around the street with affection.

"I always walked looking straight ahead. But now once in a while I look down, like beneath a car, to see what kind of cats live near my house," Park said. "When looked closely, those street cats were full of charms."

Fortunately, the reactions from Koo's mostly elderly neighbors were heart-warming.

"They were surprised how devotedly the meals were prepared," Koo, the host of the cat TV, said. "I wish the show would be remembered as a channel that people can blankly stare the cats eating and rid their stress and worries from life."
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Linkedin  Fri, May 6, 2016

New York is staging a show with 2,000 pigeons tagged with LED lights illuminating the city's night sky.

For its premiere Thursday, the birds were released at sunset from coops aboard a former aircraft carrier docked at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

Improvising their own choreography, the flock swooped, twirled and glided through the sky above the East River for the show called "Fly by Night."

"It's almost like this shooting star going across the skyline," said artist Duke Riley, who created the 30-minute spectacle on the Brooklyn waterfront.

LED light bands are attached to a bird's leg and remote-controlled from the Baylander, a decommissioned Navy ship from the Vietnam era.

Spectators lined a grandstand on land, surrounded by taped sounds of birds cooing and flapping their wings as the pigeons perched atop the warship, waiting for the sky to darken.

Then a hush descended on the scene as Riley and several assistants, hollering and blowing whistles, waved garbage bags  simulating hawks  over the vessel to start the flock flying around.

The spectacle, which runs each weekend through June 12, is free of charge but requires online reservations. There's already a waiting list.

Riley selected the Brooklyn Navy Yard for his light show because nearby, on an artificial island, the Navy housed its first messenger-pigeon fleet in the early 20th century.

The project by the 43-year-old artist and Boston native is presented by Creative Time, a New York-based nonprofit that sponsors public art. He says he was inspired for "Fly by Night" after reading an old military manual on training pigeons for night missions.

About two-thirds of the birds were donated by people from New York's pigeon community who were forced to give up their birds because of their housing situations. Others are on loan from friends.

They come in an array of colors, some with silver heads, others with black stripes, and one with a red beak.

Equipping thousands of pigeons with LED lights was a project unto itself  a team effort led by a company called 10xBETA based at the Navy Yard. It took a technician in China to create a pigeon-light circuit. And an American manufacturer made containers for the equipment that volunteers snapped into the leg bands.

The cost of the project was not disclosed.

The show also celebrates the vanishing hobby of keeping pigeons on the rooftops of Brooklyn's historic waterfront. In the 1960s, thousands of people did that, but now, there are fewer than 200 raising pigeons in New York.

When the show is over in June, many of the birds will go to a Brooklyn man who lost hundreds of his pigeons in a fire earlier this year.

It's not the first time Riley has used homing pigeons for his performance art. He says he smuggled cigars from Havana to Key West, Florida, in a 2013 project called "Trading With the Enemy."

"Pigeons suffer a PR problem," said Creative Time curator Meredith Johnson. "People have this sense that they're rats with wings. But pigeons are incredibly complex."

"He wants to bring them out of the shadows," she said of Riley.
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Linkedin Juan Zamorano & Joshua Goodmand (Associated Press) Panama City  Fri, May 6, 2016

Authorities have arrested a prominent Panama businessman and dismantled an empire of banking, real estate and retail businesses that the US says were part of a top worldwide money-laundering organization for drug traffickers.

The coordinated operation was announced Thursday as the US Treasury Department froze US assets owned by 68 companies in this Central American nation and in Colombia under a drug kingpin designation.

As part of the effort, Colombian police arrested Nidal Waked the previous day at an airport in Colombia's capital, Bogota.

Waked and his father, Abdul Waked, are accused of being the co-leaders of an organization that laundered drug profits through a web of companies including a luxury mall, a bank and the duty-free zone at Panama City's international airport, which had attracted US law enforcement's scrutiny before. The family also owns Panama's oldest newspaper, the Estrella de Panama.

Grupo Wisa, the family's holding company, issued a terse statement saying the accusations "are false and unfounded." The company said it had instructed its lawyers to cooperate fully in the investigation announced by Panama's attorney general.

The action comes as Panama is struggling to overcome international rebuke of its offshore banking system in the wake of a damaging leak of 11.5 million documents detailing how a prominent law firm helped the world's rich and famous hide their wealth.

Panama's tradition for financial secrecy and crossroads location along the path of South American cocaine heading to the U.S. has long made it an attractive money-laundering center.

The Drug Enforcement Administration described Waked as "one of the world's most significant drug money launderers and criminal facilitators." It said he faces money laundering and bank fraud charges in Florida.

A law enforcement official, who agreed to discuss the matter only if not quoted by name because he was not authorized to discuss the case publicly, said the Waked family is accused of laundering funds on behalf of Colombian and Mexican drug cartels as well as independent drug-trafficking organizations.

Nidal Waked was arrested by anti-narcotics police minutes after clearing customs when arriving Wednesday night on a Copa Airlines flight to Bogota, Colombian migration officials said. Born in the Colombian city of Barranquilla, he remained in custody in Bogota pending an extradition request from the US, they said. The DEA said he faces federal money laundering and bank fraud charges in Florida.

Grupo Wisa led a consortium in 2007 that paid $173 million for control of the duty-free zone in Panama City's airport, a major hub.

A leaked 2009 US diplomatic cable published by Wikileaks described the airport as "tainted by a seamy underside of alien smuggling, money launder, narcotics trafficking and corruption." Passengers in transit could launder money through the many jewelry, perfume and electronics shops found at every turn and which face little regulatory scrutiny, the cable said.

"The duty-free zone at Tocumen is a good example of the kind of live-and-let live attitude permeating the airport," the cable said.

Balboa Bank & Trust was one of the businesses named in the kingpin designation. Panama's banking supervision office said it had taken control of the bank to protect the interests of depositors. Police were also posted outside its main office.

AP writer Mark Stevenson in Mexico City contributed to this report.
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Linkedin Agus Maryono (The Jakarta Post) Cilacap, Central Java  Fri, May 6, 2016

Nusakambangan Island in Cilacap regency, Central Java, is again in the spotlight following the announcement of the government's plan to carry out the third round of executions of death row convicts on the infamous prison island.

Attorney General Muhammad Prasetyo has said that his office would soon conduct executions of drug convicts, following the first and second rounds of executions that took place last year. However, the government has not yet announced information concerning when and how many convicts will face the firing squad.

What we know for sure is that they will take place on the prison island, the most suitable place for the executions to be carried out, Prasetyo said. The Attorney General's Office and Central Java Police have begun preparing for the executions, which are now "only a matter of choosing the day", Prasetyo has said.

"There has not been any formal order on the excutions, but we assure you that we are ready for them anytime," Molyanto, correction division head at the Central Java's Legal and Human Rights Ministry Office told thejakartapost.com recently.

The high-security Nusakambangan Island, known by locals as Pulau Hantu or Ghost Island, had snakes, mainly cobras, spread around it five years ago to deter inmates from trying to escape.

The prison island is 3 kilometers from downtown Cilacap. People who want to visit the island must ride the penitentiary's official Pangayoman boat through Wijaya Pura harbor. However, only select people, that have been screened for security, can access the prison.

There are seven prisons on the 210-square-kilometer island. The prisons are Besi, Batu, Kembang Kuning, Narkotika, Permisan, Pasir Putih and Terbuka, which are up to 5 kilometers apart from each other. All of the islands 1,250 inmates are serving sentences of more than five years, including 59 death row convicts.

Executions are usually carried out in the islands Nirbaya Valley.

The first round of executions was conducted in January 2015 with six death row convicts. It was followed by a second round in April 2015 with eight death row convicts that caused tensions between Indonesia and several countries as several foreigners were executed for drug offenses. The convicts included Bali Nine members Australian Myuran Sukumaran and Andrew Chan.

The infamous prison island also witnessed the executions of the notorious trio of terrorists responsible for the Bali bombings, Imam Samudra, Amrozi and Mukhlas in 2008. (rin)
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Linkedin Ayomi Amindoni (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, May 6, 2016

The ASEAN Literary Festival 2016 continues as its second day on Friday saw a varied discussion about voicing social issues despite protests from several groups at the festival's opening.

The event held at Taman Ismail Marzuki (TIM) in Central Jakarta on Friday started from morning to evening, included a book launching from author Syarifudin Yunus, poetry readings, several kids program, literary workshops, discussions on the 1965 communist purge and also a special session bring two prominent Indonesian poets together, Sapardi Djoko Damono and Joko Pinurbo.

On the 1965 tragedy, the organizers held a discussion entitled "Ingat65: Remembering the 1965 tragedy through digital story telling".

Despite protests from several groups, such as the Alliance of Muslim People and Students demanding police to shut down the event on its opening day on Thursday, the committee continued on with the annual event.

The organizers were the ones who decided to include a session on the country's darkest event, said program director and novelist Okky Puspa Madasari.

Aside from discussion on 1965 , the festival will also address several controversial subjects, including lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) and sexuality issues.

LGBT and communism related issues had been behind the protests against the annual literary event, which first started in 2014.

The protesters slammed the organizers for having a hidden agenda of championing communist ideas, provoke separatism and promote the LGBT community, said Sahril member of the Alliance of Muslim People and Students on Thursday.

Jakarta Police chief Insp. Gen. Moechgiyarto said on Thursday that Police would not ban the event as it consisted a series of discussions. Moreover, the organizers had also been granted a permit to hold the four-day event from May 5 to 8 at TIM.

Dozens of police personnel guarded the TIM area on Friday such as the venue of each discussion to prevent any unwanted trouble occurring. (rin)
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Linkedin The Jakarta Post Jakarta  Fri, May 6, 2016

Jakarta Police chief Insp. Gen. Moechgiyarto says organizers of the ASEAN Literary Festival 2016 have been granted a permit to hold the four-day event from May 5 to 8 at Taman Ismail Marzuki in Cikini, Central Jakarta.

There is no problem with the permit. There was just a small misunderstanding between organizers and police yesterday, Moechgiyarto told reporters at Taman Ismail Marzuki, or TIM, on Thursday.

The annual literary event, that started in 2014, has been protested against by several NGOs, including the Alliance of Muslim People and Students that staged a rally in front of TIM to demand that police cancel the event.

Sahril, representing the protesters, assumed the organizers had untoward interests, such as disseminating ideologies not in line with the nations character.

We believe that the organizers have a disguised agenda to champion communist ideas, provoke separatism and promote freedom of expression for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, Sahril said as quoted by tempo.co.

Police chief Moechgiyarto said the event organizers had been asked to revise their proposal, which had to then be filed with the National Police instead of the Jakarta Police, as they had invited foreign speakers and therefore the event was an international event. "Thats where the miscommunication has taken place," he said.

Moechgiyarto asserted that police had no intention to ban the event since it would not disturb the public interest. The event is all about discussions. This is a democratic country, he asserted, adding that he only went to TIM to ensure that the situation was under control.

The third ASEAN Literary Festival is scheduled to feature top Southeast Asian writers, including Nobel Peace Prize winner Jose Ramos-Horta. Foreign Minister Retno LP Marsudi is also scheduled to give opening remarks at the event.

The complete event schedule can be seen at the events official website: aseanliteraryfestival.com. (dmr)
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Linkedin thejakartapost.com (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, May 6, 2016

The Legal Aid Center for the Press (LBH Pers) and the Manpower Ministry have called on the owner of now defunct station Bloomberg TV Indonesia Rosan Roeslani to pay compensation to its former workers in accordance with the companys layoff agreement.

LBH Pers executive director Nawawi Bahrudin said Rosan, who is also chairman of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KADIN), must comply with the legal agreement.

I strongly urge the employer to comply with its legal obligations, Nawawi told The Jakarta Post recently.

Bloomberg TV Indonesia has failed to pay the compensation by the time stated in the payment agreement attached to the termination of employment letter issued on July 8, 2015.

Manpower Ministry special staff Dita Indah Sari said as a leader of Indonesias industrialists, Rosan should be more sensitive in dealing with labor issues and attentive in treating employees properly.

The Manpower Ministry warns the shareholders not to neglect employees rights. Otherwise, our legal division will call and examine them, Dita asserted.

She added the ministry would continue to supervise the dispute process between the ex- employees of Bloomberg TV Indonesia and the employers until everything was settled, adding that the departments legal division is ready to help if necessary.

I fully support the ex-workers struggle, asserted Dita, a former labor activist who was jailed by President Soehartos government.

The coordinator of ex-Bloomberg TV Indonesia workers Arif Budiman said the former employees had chosen LBH Pers as their representative to submit the lawsuit to the Industrial Relations Court (PHI) in the event of a deadlock in the mediation between ex-employees and employers.

We urge ex-CEO Adhitya Chandra Wardhana and the owner Rosan Roeslani to cooperate with us and meet the terms of the agreement, Arif said.

Bloomberg TV Indonesia owner Rosan Roeslani responded to the demands by saying that his party would settle everything related to the company's obligation to the workers as soon as possible.

Rosan established the economic and business focused Bloomberg TV Indonesia, which was operated under holding company PT Idea Karya Indonesia in 2013, and officially closed two years later due to financial concerns. (dan)
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Linkedin thejakartapost.com (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, May 6, 2016

The four Indonesian sailors that have been held hostage by armed militant group Abu Sayyaf in the Philippines since mid-April remain in good condition, Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi said on Thursday.

The crew members of the tugboat Henry were kidnapped on April 15 while passing through Malaysian and Philippine waters. They are boat captain Aryanto, chief officer Piter, second officer Dede and helmsman Samsir.

"I acquired more detailed information about their condition on Wednesday afternoon. Alhamdulillah [Thank God] they are well," Retno said in Yogyakarta on Thursday as quoted by Antara news agency.

She added that the government would continue to monitor any changes in the hostages condition and location.

The government has intensified coordination with Philippine government authorities to secure the release of the crew members.

Retno and her Philippine's counterpart Philippine Secretary of Foreign Affairs Jose Rene D. Almendras had meeting on Thursday, on the sidelines of a joint declaration on maritime security between Indonesia, the Philippines and Malaysia.

The three countries have agreed to intensify maritime security in the region as the recent spate of kidnappings carried out by Abu Sayyaf are considered to be a threat to national security in the region.

Officials agreed to conduct patrols and to render immediate assistance for the safety of all vessels and crew in the three countries' respective maritime areas, according to the trilateral agreement.

The government is now focusing on the release of four hostages, held by another faction of Abu Sayyaf, following the success of the release of 10 Indonesian sailors on Sunday after being held captive since late march. (rin)
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Linkedin thejakartapost.com (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, May 6, 2016

Indonesia and Russia will sign a purchase agreement for eight Russian-made Sukhoi SU-35 jets in May as part of Indonesia's plan to renew its primary weaponry system, or alutsista.

President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo will witness the signing of the procurement deal in Russia in mid-May, Defense Minister Ryamizard Ryacudu announced recently as reported by Antara news agency.

Indonesia had planned to purchase the 4.5 generation Sukhoi jets from Russia after the previous purchase of 24 Sukhoi 27/30 jets. The main purpose of the purchase was to secure the archipelago's vast airspace as well as border areas, Ryamizard said.

No details about the budget for the purchase have been disclosed, but according to media reports the price tag of one Su-35 is around US$65 million.

A lawmaker of the House of Representatives commission I overseeing intelligence, defense and foreign affairs expressed his support for the procurement plan, saying that the purchase would strengthen national air defense.

Jokowi is scheduled to visit Russia and South Korea on May 16 to 20 to attend the Russia-ASEAN Summit in the Russian city of Sochi, at which leaders will discuss ASEAN cooperation with Russia. He will continue his state visit to South Korea.

Indonesia and South Korea have also signed an agreement worth US$8 billion for the manufacture of the Korea Fighter Xperiment and Indonesia Fighter Xperiment (KFX/IFX) jets fighter, which will be available within five years as part of the government's efforts to produce jets for alutsista. Indonesia will contribute 20 percent to the total project, with state-owned aircraft manufacturer PT Dirgantara Indonesia involved in the production of the semi-stealth jets.

Indonesia and the Korea Aerospace Industry (KAI) are still working on the design of the jets, Ryamizard added. (rin)
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Linkedin Ivany Atina Arbi (The Jakarta Post) Sydney  Fri, May 6, 2016

The Tourism Ministry is set to introduce a digital platform to boost Indonesia's tourism and achieve the goal of 20 million foreign tourists visiting the archipelago annually by 2019, the minister said on Thursday.

The ministry will launch Travel X-Change Indonesia (TXI) on August 17 this year, coinciding with the countrys 71st anniversary.

"I will prove that the use of digital technology is going to take Indonesian tourism to a new level," Tourism Minister Arief Yahya said on Thursday.

Arief is currently in Sydney to study Australias digital marketplace platform called Tourism Travel X-change Australia (TXA), an inclusive booking platform that helps market tourism-related business through an online platform.

Moreover, Indonesia's TXI would be a one-stop service in which people from around the world could look into tourism packages to all destinations in Indonesia offered by travel agents on the platform, Arief said.

The service will also allow potential customers to book and purchase travel packages.

The ministry is working on a promotional campaign to attract as many traditional travel agents as possible to sign up for the site, which will facilitate the sales of their tour packages.

Traditional travel agents will be left behind if they do not take this opportunity, Arief said, adding that the Tourism Ministry would also give train travel agents in website design to help them attractively present their tourism packages.

Ten million foreign tourists visited Indonesia last year. The government increased the target to 12 million this year, and wants see that number double to 20 million foreign tourists by 2019. (rin)
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Linkedin Hyung-jin Kim (Associated Press) Seoul, South Korea  Fri, May 6, 2016

North Korea's elite are gathered in Pyongyang ahead of their biggest political conference in decades.

The Congress of the Workers' Party of Korea, the seventh of its kind and the first in 36 years, comes after months of animosity and threats following Pyongyang's fourth nuclear test explosion, in January, and a long-range rocket launch, in February.

Foreign experts say leader Kim Jong Un will likely use the meeting, which starts Friday, to push his expansion of a nuclear arsenal over the strong objections of the US, the UN and North Korea's neighbors, including ally China.

Another key focus: developing North Korea's weak economy, hit by several rounds of UN sanctions over its nuclear program. Kim is also expected to tighten loyalty of a government he inherited after his dictator father's death in late 2011, probably by putting his favorites into key positions.

As usual, the authoritarian country is keeping details secret, but here are several things to know about the conference, which is expected to last several days:

What is it?

The party's highest-level decision-making body will determine key state policies, review past projects, reshuffle top officials and revise party regulations.

All six previous congresses came under the rule of Kim Il Sung, the late grandfather of Kim Jong Un and North Korea's founder, who died in 1994.

The most recent congress was held in 1980, for five days, with delegations from 118 countries, including China, the Soviet Union, Zimbabwe, Guinea and Romania. The fifth congress, in 1970, lasted for 12 days.

South Korea's spy agency said last week that North Korea hadn't invited any major foreign government delegations to this year's congress. There will be scores of Western journalists, though, to cover the heavily stage-managed event.

Why the 36-year gap?

The Workers' Party is supposed to hold a congress every five years.

But after the 1980 meeting, Kim Il Sung reportedly ordered that the next congress take place only after the government improved public livelihood and its ability to provide its people with rice and beef soup for every meal.

Instead, a devastating famine in the 1990s is estimated to have killed hundreds of thousands. Since then, North Korea has continued to struggle with widespread poverty, malnutrition and a mismanaged economy.

Kim's Il Sung's successor, Kim Jong Il, father of Kim Jong Un, ruled for 17 years but never held a congress. Some analysts say the real reason for the gap was that Kim Jong Il's cherished "military-first" policy withered the party's authority.

Why now?

Kim Jong Un, believed to be in his early 30s, appears to be modeling his rule on his grandfather. He has adopted his hairstyle, gestures, his penchant for regular public speeches and his party-oriented governing style.

North Koreans may also relish a return to Kim Il Sung's style because North Korea was better off economically during his rule than during Kim Jong Il's.

In recent years, the North has mostly dodged massive natural disasters and the widespread starvation of past years. The country's economic situation is also believed to have improved a bit, in part because of the rise of unauthorized street markets where small-scale capitalism is largely tolerated. South Korea's central bank estimates that North Korea's economy grew around 1 percent annually between 2011 and 2014.

This all may have pushed Kim Jong Un to restart the party congresses, partly as a way to show the world that he rules a more stable country.

What can we expect to see?

Both Kim Jong Il and Kim Jong Un made their international debuts by taking up various top jobs during big party events  the elder Kim in the 1980 congress and the younger Kim in a 2010 lower-level conference. Those confirmed that they were destined to inherit control of the nation.

Nothing that big is expected from this congress.

Kim Jong Un already has many top posts, including first secretary of the Workers' Party and supreme commander of the North's 1.2 million-strong army, the backbone of his family's dynasty.

Some analysts say Kim may not have yet established the same absolute power enjoyed by his father, but there's little doubt that a series of high-profile executions and purges, including the 2013 killing of his powerful uncle Jang Song Thaek, has left few who would dare challenge him.

South Korean media predict Kim might be promoted to general secretary of the party, a post left to his father "eternally" following his 2011 death. But some analysts say more titles for Kim won't mean much.

Instead, Kim will likely replace some of the party's old guard with younger elites loyal to him, many of them little known to outsiders. There probably won't be that much top-level personnel reshuffling, however, because Kim has already been doing this.

All about Kim

Get ready for wall-to-wall praise of Kim and his efforts to strengthen the North's nuclear-weapons program, which it says is necessary to cope with U.S. military threats.

Kim has made it his stated goal to bolster nuclear capability while also improving people's livelihoods; he may formally include this policy in party regulations. This would signal something most analysts already believe: that he has no intention of giving up nuclear weapons.

South Korean officials say the North has finished up preparation for a fifth nuclear test that could come any day.

The congress is also expected to announce major policies aimed at reviving the economy. Critics question how realistic those plans could be, given that the country now faces the toughest U.N. sanctions in 20 years, imposed after this year's nuclear test and rocket launch.

Key players

Kim Yong Nam, an 88-year-old member of the party's powerful Politburo Presidium, may be dismissed from that job because of his age. If so, he could also lose his position as president of the Presidium of North Korea's rubber-stamp parliament, which makes him the country's nominal head of state.

Choe Ryong Hae, who once held membership in the Politburo's Presidium, may regain that lost post. South Korea's spy agency said last year that Choe was briefly banished to a rural collective farm for re-education. Choe was once considered the North's No. 2 following Jang's execution.

Kim Yo Jong, Kim Jong Un's younger sister and currently a vice department director at the party's Central Committee, might be given higher-level jobs, part of a reported push to elevate her to the country's No. 2 power. Believed to be in her late 20s, she frequently appears at her brother's public events, standing out amid elderly male officials.

Kim Won Hong, the North's state security minister, is among a handful of top officials who have survived repeated bloody shifts that purged former Kim intimates. He may get a higher profile after the congress.

Kim Ki Nam, 86, the North's propaganda chief, may lose his posts  director of the party's bureau on propaganda affairs and a secretary of the party's central committee  because of his age.
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Linkedin Eric Talmadge (Associated Press) Pyongyang, North Korea  Sat, May 7, 2016

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un hailed his country's recent nuclear test to uproarious applause as he convened the first full congress of its ruling party since 1980, an event intended to showcase the North's stability and unity in the face of tough international sanctions and deepening isolation.

Kim, who stood to read his opening remarks before more than 3,400 delegates, was interrupted repeatedly by cheers and applause as he laid out accomplishments since he took power in 2011  including what the government says was its first hydrogen bomb test in January.

Along with being high political theater, filled with pomp and ceremony, the congress is a major milestone for the young North Korean leader, who was not yet born when the previous congress was held 36 years ago.

Kim wore a black dress suit, grey tie and horn-rimmed glasses that resembled the ones worn by his late grandfather and North Korean founder, Kim Il Sung.

He praised the January nuclear test and a February satellite launch, seen by outside governments as a banned test of dual-use missile technology, saying they demonstrated the nation's "dignity and power at the highest level."

He also praised the outcome of a recently completed 70-day "loyalty campaign," in which workers nationwide were called upon to put in extra hours to boost productivity.

To make sure the event gets global attention, North Korea has brought in a large number of journalists from around the world. But they were shown only the outside of the venue as the congress began before being bused off to  of all places  a wire factory.

To put its best face before the cameras, the city has been spruced up with freshly painted walls and lots of posters and flags. As a light rain fell Friday, large groups of students and workers could be seen around the capital preparing for parades and rallies that will be held in conjunction with the congress.

North Korea has held other big meetings of its ruling Workers' Party since the 1980 congress  notably in 2010 and 2012  but all six previous congresses came under "eternal president" Kim Il Sung, who died in 1994.

This one could provide a major opportunity for Kim Jong Un, who has yet to travel abroad or meet any world leaders, to step out of the shadows of his grandfather and father.

"Now we are greeting the new era of Marshal Kim Jong Un," said Pyongyang resident Choe Un Su, a 75-year-old retiree who was out Friday for a walk.

Kim Jong Un has patterned himself more closely after his charismatic grandfather than his notoriously reticent father, Kim Jong Il, who almost never spoke in public. Kim Il Sung spoke on the first day of the 1980 congress  though Friday's brief opening speech came nowhere near the five-hour address given by Kim Il Sung.

The government has built up the congress for months, but has not announced an itinerary, or even when the congress is to end. Kim Jong Un's speech wasn't made public until late Friday night, when it was broadcast on the television news.

The congress is the party's highest-level decision-making body, though the real decisions are made by Kim and his inner circle.

So far, the focus has been on praise for Kim and his successes on the nuclear front, along with improvements since he assumed power to boost the nation's standard of living  themes the media hit hard as the congress approached and trumpeted again loudly on Friday.

The congress will also be colored by the anti-U.S. bravado that marks so much of North Korea's worldview  that it is an underdog forced to pursue nuclear weapons in defense against the Goliath that is Washington.

As Kim's mention of the H-bomb test suggests, North Korea's government has made clear it has no intention of backing down in its nuclear development program  and instead wants to be recognized as a nuclear power.

Hours before the start of the congress, the state-run Korean Central News Agency boasted of the country's military achievements, including claimed advancements in developing nuclear warheads, missile re-entry vehicles and long-range rocket engines.

It said the congress would be a historic celebration of how Kim Jong Un's guidance has elevated the country into a "nuclear, space power" and pushed it into the "absolute prime" of its efforts to build a "thriving nation."

The gathering will likely also provide some insights into what Kim's other priorities are and who he wants to help him carry them out.

The economy is certainly high on Kim's list, but his "byongjin" guns-and-butter policy of developing North Korea's nuclear weapons while also building its domestic economy is seen by many outside economists as unlikely to succeed because of the heavy price the nuclear program brings in international sanctions that keep the country's economy from growing.

Kim is expected to replace the party's old guard with younger elites loyal to him and may formally elevate his younger sister, Kim Yo Jong, to a position that would essentially make her his second-in-command.

Believed to be in her late twenties, she is currently a vice department director at the party's Central Committee and frequently appears at her brother's public events, standing out amid elderly male officials. (bbn)
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Linkedin Matthew Leee and Bradley Klapper (Associated Press) Washington  Sat, May 7, 2016

The United States will endorse a tougher tone with Israel in an upcoming international report that takes the Jewish state to task over settlements, demolitions and property seizures on land the Palestinians claim for a future state, diplomats told The Associated Press.

The US and its fellow Mideast mediators also will chastise Palestinian leaders for failing to rein in anti-Israeli violence. But the diplomats involved in drafting the document said its primary focus will be a surge of construction in Jewish housing in the West Bank and east Jerusalem.

The US approval of the harsh language marks a subtle shift. Washington has traditionally tempered statements by the so-called "Quartet" of mediators with careful diplomatic language, but the diplomats said the US in this case will align itself closer to the positions of the European Union, Russia and the United Nations, who emphasize Israel's role in the Mideast impasse.

The report's release is sure to infuriate Israel, where officials are already bracing for expected criticism. And on the other side, although the mediators will endorse some long-standing Palestinian complaints, the Palestinians are likely to complain the report does not go far enough.

Diplomats acknowledge the report, which could come out in late May or June, will be largely symbolic, requiring no action. It could be unveiled at the UN and possibly sent to the Security Council for an endorsement, according to the diplomats, who included three US officials. They all demanded anonymity because they weren't authorized to discuss the unfinished work publicly.

The diplomats said the report is intended to highlight obstacles to a two-state peace agreement  the stated goal of both Israeli and Palestinian leaders  and offer recommendations for restarting negotiations in a process that is stalled.

The Palestinians don't want talks as long as settlement construction continues; the Israelis say they're open to negotiations, but have shown little interest in making any meaningful concessions.

One diplomat said the report would be "balanced" because it would criticize the Palestinians for incitement and violence against Israeli citizens. Near-daily attacks in recent months by Palestinians, mostly stabbings, have killed 28 Israelis and two Americans. Some 193 Palestinians have been killed. Israel says most of these were attackers and the rest died in clashes with Israeli forces.

But the diplomat added that those involved in writing the report understand the focus on Israel will be its most contentious aspect.

Another diplomat said Israel will be put "on notice" that its appropriation of land isn't going unnoticed.

The document won't look only at east Jerusalem activity and West Bank settlement construction, but also at a "problematic trend" of legalizing smaller so-called outposts, the officials said. In addition, it will criticize Israel for a growing backlog of housing block approvals.

In 1972, there were just over 10,000 Israeli settlers, with 1,500 living in the West Bank and the rest in east Jerusalem. Two decades later, by the time of the Oslo peace accords, there were 231,200 Israelis living in the territories. That number rose to 365,000 by 2000, when the second Palestinian uprising began, and 474,000 by the time Benjamin Netanyahu became Israel's prime minister again in 2008.

The settlements are now home to more than 570,000 Israelis, according to the Israeli anti-settlement watchdog Peace Now  370,000 in the West Bank and 200,000 in east Jerusalem. Settlements range from small wildcat outposts on West Bank hilltops to developed towns with shopping malls, schools and suburban homes.

Some 2.2 million Palestinians live in the West Bank, with another 300,000 in east Jerusalem. Israel captured both territories after the 1967 war.

The Quartet, which is supposed to guide the two parties to peace, has been largely irrelevant for the past several years. It was created in 2002 at a low point in the Israeli-Palestinian relationship and in the years since has held sporadic meetings. Most have ended with bland statements condemning violence, criticizing settlements and calling for both sides to improve security and the atmosphere for peace talks.

The new report will repeat those calls, but the diplomats said they hoped the new criticism of Israel, in particular, would jolt the parties into action.

The Palestinians recently put off their push for a new UN Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlement activity, in part because of the coming report, the diplomats said. And with anti-Israel sentiment growing in Europe, France may delay a planned May 30 meeting of foreign ministers on the situation.

The French also are talking about hosting a Mideast peace conference this summer. US Secretary of State John Kerry is expected to discuss the French initiative with Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault while on a trip to Paris next week. (bbn)

Josef Federman in Jerusalem contributed to this report.
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Linkedin (Strait Times) Kuala Lumpur  Fri, May 6, 2016

Malaysian police said kindergartens across the country are being monitored to ensure they will not be turned into training centers for child soldiers.

The director of Special Branch police intelligence, Datuk Seri Fuzi Harun, said this to the Malay Mail Online news site yesterday, following an online storm over a picture showing Malaysian kindergarten children in military fatigues toting toy guns, with two women who appeared to be their teachers.

He said police have been monitoring that particular kindergarten, located in Bandar Sri Damansara just outside Kuala Lumpur, since last year. "We have already been investigating the school from last year. If we find enough evidence that suggests such (militant) ideologies are being taught, we will move in on them," Mr Fuzi told the Malay Mail Online when contacted.

That picture, and another of kindergarten girls waving Palestinian flags and the two women wearing headbands with Arabic writing, riled netizens after they were posted on Instagram.

"I'm shocked to see the photos. What I'm concerned about is that it looks like they are training the kids to be terrorists. They are holding guns," lawyer Siti Zabedah Kasim told The Star. She raised the issue by posting the pictures on her Facebook account. She added: "Being religious is doing good, not acting like you're in the army."

A reader of her Facebook account wrote "even if you support Palestine, this is not the way, this is like ISIS" - a reference to the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria terrorist group.

Malay Mail said its checks revealed that several kindergarten teachers, one of whom works in the Kota Damansara kindergarten, had uploaded the images to their Instagram accounts.

Malaysia is on alert against terrorist plots and has so far arrested more than 160 men and women linked to ISIS.

Mr Fuzi in January said the police had foiled an attempt by ISIS militants to set up a terrorist training centre for children in Malaysia.

The headmistress of the kindergarten told the New Straits Times newspaper yesterday that the children were participating in a play on the Israel-Palestine conflict in 2014. The teacher who posted the picture on Instagram quit in February, she added.
Heres a Thursday evening surprise. The new restaurant at the Metrograph Theater on Ludlow Street is now open. Here are the details via the cinemas newsletter:

We are thrilled to announce the opening of The Metrograph Commissary. Starting today, you can come to Metrograph for a movie and also drinks and dinner in our new restaurant. The Commissary opens tonight. Breakfast, lunch, brunch, and late night service soon to follow. The Metrograph Commissary is inspired by the studio eateries from Hollywoods golden age, where stars would enjoy their meals alongside their producers, crews, and stagehands. The Metrograph Commissary is designed to be a similarly welcoming place for New Yorks thriving community of filmmakers and moviegoers, and a new destination for our evolving local neighborhood around lower Ludlow Street. The Metrograph Commissary is comprised of a lobby bar, restaurant, restaurant bar, and private dining room. Metrographs founder, filmmaker and designer Alexander Olch, has brought together an amazing team for the Commissary. Restaurateur Henry Rich (Rucola, Cassette, June Wine Bar) will oversee the restaurant. Argentinian chef Norberto Piattoni (formerly the chef de cuisine at Francis Mallmanns Hotel & Restaurant Garzon, Uruguay) consulted on the menu and Dennis Spina (River Styx, Roebling Tea Room, El Cortez) is the chef. Together, Piattoni and Spina have created a menu of classic dishes with thoughtful updates, such as Steak Tartare with fried capers, spring onions & spiced mayonnaise; their take on a Waldorf Salad with celery root, apple, walnuts & creme fraiche; Burrata with green tomato salsa verde & walnuts; Trout with brown butter, asparagus & parsley; Spaghetti Pomodoro; and Roasted Carrots, Radishes & Celery Root, with chickpea, curry & herbs. The wine program is a collaboration between Rich (whose June Wine Bar was named Best Wine Bar in the U.S. by Time Out) and general manager Loren Mash (a hospitality veteran from Battersby and St. Anselm). Together they have created a succinct list of American and French wines, as well as inspired riffs on classic cocktails.

Dinner will be served 6 p.m.-midnight. The bar will be open Sunday-Wednesday 6 p.m.-midnight; it will be open until 2 a.m. the other days of the week. The lobby bar will be open 5:30 p.m.-midnight.

if youd like to see some of the dishes, check out Grub Street.
Back in March we told you about Saluggis, an Italian restaurant coming to the space most recently occupied by the Comfort Diner at 399 Grand St. Now there are a few new details about the new business  from a liquor license application posted on Community Board 3s website.

The owners are William Wall and Christopher Keane. They both run Saluggis on Church Street in Tribeca. Wall is also one of the operators of Nancy Whiskey, the dive bar at 1 Lispenard St.

On Grand Street, theyre requesting a full liquor permit with operating hours during the week from 8 a.m.-1 a.m. and weekends until 2 a.m. Theyd like permission to stay open until 2 a.m. on holidays. A main feature of the restaurant will be an 18-seat bar running along the western wall of the space. Like Nancy Whiskey, Saluggis East will have a shuffleboard table. The menu attached to the application includes brick-oven pizzas, pasta dishes, hero sandwiches, salads and chicken wings.

The application will be considered at the Monday, May 16 meeting of CB3s liquor licensing committee. It will be held in the community room at 10 Stanton St., at 6:30 p.m. The Comfort Diner closed abruptly last summer after just nine months in business.

NOTE: A previous version of this story indicated that the owners were requesting a 4 a.m. closing time on holidays. We heard from Bill Wall, one of the applicants, who said theyre actually asking for a 2 a.m. closing on holidays; the application uploaded to CB3s website lists the wrong time.
The 42-year-old is all set to assume the position left vacant by Liz Truss.
Medics and fire crews raced to laboratories after a chemical spill at Glasgow uni.

A male student was treated at the scene on Wednesday, after taking ill. A male student was treated at the scene on Wednesday, after taking ill.

The lab was sealed off and the area evacuated in wake of the spill.

Parts of the university were on lockdown for two hours while fire crews secured the scene.

Scottish Fire and Rescue confirmed there was no risk to the public after the spill had been contained.

A University of Glasgow spokesperson said: We can confirm that following an incident at one of our chemical laboratories a student was taken unwell.

Emergency services involving fire, paramedics and police were called to the scene, but the student has since recovered and has not required any additional treatment.

The exact nature and cause of the incident are being investigated.
Introducing one of the strangest pieces of technological innovation in recent memory  meet Xianer, the most spiritual robot on Earth.

Xianer is a 2 foot tall, robot monk whose home is a Buddhist temple in Beijing. His purpose is to help people who are obsessed with smartphones, technology and the internet to reconnect with their more spiritual side.

He was created by Chinese universities in cooperation with a leading technology company. The first iteration of Xianer was a cartoon drawn by the temples master Xianfian, who told the Guardian that the robot is a reflection of innovative Buddhist spirit.

While he seems entirely comedic at first glance, his creators see Xianer as an important effort stop technology-dependent lifestyles from diminishing peoples interest in spirituality. The diminutive monk is able to recite mantras and answer a selection of basic questions using a touchscreen display on his chest. His creators hope he will acts as a meaningful link between the increasingly tech-obsessed Chinese population and the importance of spiritual reflection.

Buddhists involved in the innovation believe Xianer will contribute to wider society. They believe he represents a symbol of their willingness to go beyond simply seeking reflection, enlightenment and self-improvement for themselves, but for everybody.

Whether Xianers inner-circuitry can mimic inner peace, though, remains to be seen.
Oxford uni has defended Rhodes Must Fall student Ntokozo Qwabe after he reduced a waitress to tears  because she was white.

But Oxford have hit back against claims to boot out the student, who wanted to bring down the statue of Cecil Rhodes  and whose foundation pays Qwabes fees.

The university claimed: Oxford is a place where non-violent speech, however objectionable, can be expressed and challenged.

Our students may voice opinions which others believe to be misguided, or which they find offensive. They have a right to do this but, in exercising it, we expect them to respect other people and the law.

The petition starter Jan Ferreira, aimed at Oxford vice-chancellor Louise Richadson, wrote: Mr Qwabe and friend(s) violated a persons dignity, publicly degraded and humiliated her  Mr Qwabe has since taken great pleasure in narcissistically boasting over her reaction across social media.

His actions have ultimately brought your educational establishments image into disrepute.

Qwabe refused to comment, saying: WE WILL ONLY ENGAGE THE WHITE MEDIA WHEN WE HAVE THE LAND BACK.
The Remain camp has been propagating numerous myths about what would happen to Britain if we vote to leave the EU. Here are three such economic myths and why they are wrong.

1. Our Exports to the EU Will Suffer

Pro-EU activists have argued that if the UK leaves the EU, we would lose access to EU markets and so British exports would suffer as a result. This is an absolute nonsense. Many countries-often less politically and economically significant than the UK have successfully negotiated free trade agreements with the EU. The UK is an incredibly important trade partner for many EU countries, and so it would be an act of economic suicide for the EU to not enter into a free trade deal with the UK.

Pro-EU MP Stephen Kinnock made the completely unfounded claim that the EU would give the UL a punishment beating if we left. Such a statement reveals a breathtaking ignorance of international trade law given that the World Trade Organisation prohibits the enactment of punitive tariffs. Furthermore, such a move would be contrary to the Lisbon Treaty which states that:

The Union shall develop a special relationship with neighbouring countries, aiming to establish an area of prosperity and good neighbourliness, founded on the values of the Union and characterised by close and peaceful relations based on cooperation.

If Britain leaves the EU will continue to enjoy a free trade agreement with the EU.

2. Firms Will Leave the UK

The majority of CEOs who have been asked about this have stated that they would not move their companies to a different country in the event of Brexit. If there were any benefits for leaving the UK, the costs involved in relocating a company to another country would surely outweigh them. Furthermore, many small and medium enterprises have indicated that they would favour Brexit as they are adversely affected by excessively restrictive EU rules and regulations. Their businesses would be able to thrive if the UK left the EU.

A UK free from excessive EU regulations would continue to attract some of the worlds biggest companies and would provide an environment conducive for small businesses to flourish.

3. We Would Lose Foreign Investment

Pro-EU campaigners have argued that if the UK left the EU, foreign firms would transfer their investments to other countries. This is wrong for a number of reasons. First, there has been no suggestion from international investors that they would withdraw investment. In fact, several large companies have stated that they have no plans to withdraw present or future investment in the event of Brexit.

Secondly, a recent survey conducted by Ernst & Young revealed that two-thirds of Asian investors and 72% of US investors would prefer for the UK to have a more flexible relationship with the EU. As a result, the UK would be likely to experience greater foreign investment if we left the EU.

Finally, the UK enjoys certain advantages which make it an attractive destination for foreign investment. For example, we have a competitive tax system which encourages investment. We have a stable political system which reduces the risk of uncertainty for investors. Our legal system is widely regarded as one of the best in the world, which is why many businesses around the world insist upon their commercial contracts being governed by English law. We are also between the US and Asian timezones. Although our weather often leave much to be desired, there is no risk to investors due to natural disasters. Furthermore, the UK has got linguistic, cultural and historical ties with countries around the world - including some of the most powerful and fastest growing economies.

All these things should encourage us to dismiss the Remain camp's myths - and accept that Britain can be stronger outside of Europe than it is within it.
Those who like to get high the legal way will be celebrating this week, as it was confirmed recently that the Psychoactive Substances Act (PSA)  which was due to come into force on 6th April  has been postponed indefinitely.

The act would have criminalised the production and sale of anything categorised as psychoactive under an arbitrary definition dreamed up by civil servants in the Home Office.

The reason for the delay is because the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) stated that they were doubtful about the PSAs effectiveness in preventing the production and distribution of such substances.

This, coupled with the act being unenforceable by the police (not least because of the ambiguous definition of the word psychoactive), was enough to make the Home Office return to some form of reality.

The failure of the PSA raises important questions about the criminalisation of drugs. For example, there is a plethora of research that strongly suggests decriminalisation has no real impact on levels of drug use. Furthermore, other studies reveal that decriminalisation has a positive impact, as it reduces the burden on criminal justice systems. Therefore, if decriminalisation would not result in more people consuming harmful substances, and if it would reduce the burden on the justice system, perhaps it is time to seriously consider decriminalisation.

Not only are drug laws in the UK and around the world ineffective and cumbersome, they are also inherently unfair and increase inequality. As a result of drug laws, prison populations in the UK and the US have a disproportionately high number of people who are black, young or poor  quite often all three.

Furthermore, drug prohibition hands power and money over to violent and odious criminals. This is particularly true with cannabis, which holds the largest share of the drug market. An example of this is provided by the impact of cannabis legalisation in some American states. As people can now buy cannabis legally, it has reduced the prices that drug dealers are charging. Decriminalisation has had a massive impact on the power and profits of Mexican drug cartels.

Crack cocaine and crystal meth, two of the most terribly destructive drugs, came into being as a result of the US governments attempts to eradicate the supply of less dangerous drugs. Such a clampdown on cannabis led people to legal highs; any further legislation will force the market underground and will hand even more power to criminals, meaning more harmful substances being created and consumed.

The government needs to seriously consider decriminalising certain recreational drugs such as cannabis. If it did this, it would radically reduce the power of some of the most vile and detestable people around the world, decrease the burden on the already overstretched criminal justice system, and dramatically reduce the number of ethnic minorities and other disadvantaged people in prison.
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Surfing skills, survival success

Sea safety pushed at Andaman Sea Surf Schools 15th Anniversary



By Steven Layne

Friday 6 May 2016, 11:37AM

Decha Day Sithidej, founder of Andaman Sea Surf School (ASSS), grew up surfing, and has seen first-hand the disasters being in the sea can bring about without the necessary survival skills.



Most of these kids and adults drowning is because of the way their parents have raised them  to fear the water, and stay away from it. I understand they love their kids, and want to protect them, but in the end it only puts them more at risk. They shouldnt be shielding their kids from the danger, but showing them how to survive it. So thats what were doing here.

Celebrating its 15th anniversary on Saturday (Apr 30), ASSS brought together veterans of Phukets surf community to focus on passing on their love for the sport as well as survival skills.

Day started out with what has now become the Surfing Thailand Association and has also started integrating Stand Up Paddling (SUP) into his curriculum.

The surfing community, however, has recently taken a hit in support from mainstream international surf brands. Chanin Joob Aiyaiak, the president of Surfing Thailand Association (STA), and one of the surfing pioneers in Thailand explains, The thing about surfing in Phuket, is that the swell only lasts for about five months of the year, so activities such as SUP and body boarding are great to have the rest of the year.

The Phuket Lifeguard Service ensures beaches are manned with able lifeguards year round, especially during high season.

Meanwhile, Prathaiyut Nat Chaiyuan, head of Phuket Lifeguard Club, explains that his organisations main role was to promote water safety.

Throughout the years, we, the Phuket Lifeguard Club along with Phuket Lifeguard Service have set up surf life-saving competitions, but this year is proving to be a great event. Thank you to Andaman Sea Surf who have organised a bigger and better event this year.

If you would like to arrange a visit from the Phuket Lifeguard Club at a school, or at a beach, Nat welcomes all enquiries via email (ThaiLifeGuard@gmail.com) and phone (081-892-5549).

For events in Phuket and Thailands surf community be sure to visit

AndamanSeaSurf.com, SurfingThailand.com, and their Facebook pages.
Thousands flee western Canada raging wildfires

CANADA: Residents fleeing a voracious wildfire in western Canadas Fort McMurray thronged a tiny hamlet several hours away yesterday (May 5) as firefighters battled to contain the raging blaze at Albertas oil sands region.

disastersweather

By AFP

Friday 6 May 2016, 09:12AM

Marilou Wood fights back tears as husband Jim Wood fills up his car with gas after fleeing forest fires in Fort McMurray on Wednesday (May 4). Photo: Cole Burston/AFP

By the thousands, evacuees were arriving in Lac La Biche after making a chaotic escape from the epicentre of an inferno that has claimed two lives and destroyed entire neighbourhoods of Fort McMurray and its outskirts.

So far about 60,000 people have fled the path of the monster blaze some have dubbed the beast.

Theres no guide on how to get out of a forest fire, said evacuee Alan Javierto, at Lac La Biche, about 300 kilometres south of isolated Fort McMurray, where many recounted a hurried, frightening escape as homes and businesses were reduced to cinders.

Television footage showed trees ablaze right on the edge of highways crowded with bumper-to-bumper traffic trying to leave the disaster zone, as billowing black smoke darkened the sky.

The government has declared a state of emergency in Alberta, a province the size of France that is home to one of the worlds most prodigious oil-producing industries.

The footage weve seen, the cars racing down highways while fire rages on all sides is nothing short of terrifying, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told lawmakers in Ottawa.

Trudeaus government has pledged to match one dollar for each dollar donated by the public to the Red Cross, which is providing aid to those in need.

Authorities have been battling the blaze with air tankers, helicopters and hundreds of firefighters, even as high winds have continued to whip up and spread the flames.

The flight from Fort McMurray began in earnest shortly before midnight Tuesday (May 3) after a mandatory evacuation order in the city.

Late Wednesday (Thursday morning Thailand time), fires forced the evacuation of Saprae Creek, a neighbourhood east of the citys airport where even firefighters were forced to pull out.

Oil companies crucial to the region such as Suncor, Syncrude and Shell are also pulling out non-essential employees, and several firms have set up emergency shelters in their huge bungalow worker communities.

The fire has already destroyed some 2,000 homes on the outskirts of Fort McMurray, consuming 10,000 hectares, authorities said.

The region has been left bone-dry after a period of unusually scant rainfall and unseasonably high temperatures.

One lawmaker, Rona Ambrose, who represents the affected region, wept as she vowed in parliament that Alberta will recover from the disaster.

Fort McMurray is a place where Canadians have come from all across this country. Its a tough day for Albertans but we will persevere, she said through tears.

Massive traffic snarls have formed around gas stations as drivers waited hours to fill their tanks. With some pumps already empty in the 400 kilometres between Fort McMurray and Edmonton to the south, the Alberta government sent a tanker under guard to help rescue stranded vehicles.

The fire, which until Monday (May 2) had been contained south of the oil city, was pushed towards it by winds of 50 kilometres per hour and quickly reached homes.

One particularly hard hit area was the Beacon Hill neighbourhood some five kilometres from downtown Fort McMurray, where 70 per cent of homes were in ruins. Even harder hit was the Waterways neighbourhood, where nine in 10 homes have been reduced to charred remains.

Television footage showed the smouldering remains of a large motor home park, and the blackened carcasses of cars consumed by the flames.

Public Security Minister Ralph Goodale, called the fire terrifying.

Its heartbreaking and I think it just drives home the crucial point about how we all need to rally and support here, work well together, do everything that is humanly possible to rescue people in this kind of mortal danger and make sure that the beast can be brought under control as rapidly as possible, Goodale said.

This kind of disaster will not be solved in a day or two, a week or two, or a month or two. Were all going to have to be here for the long haul.
First week of South Dakota's traditional pheasant hunt is in the books
Lily Bohlke, Copy Editor

bohlkeli@grinnell.edu

The recipients of the 2016 Grinnell Prize have been announced: Luna Ranjit 00, co-founder and Executive Director of Adhikaar, and Diana Jue and Jackie Stenson, co-founders of Essmart. Each winner receives $100,000  $50,000 goes to the winner and $50,000 to the organization.

The Grinnell College Innovator for Social Justice Prize is given to two recipients each year based on criteria of social justice, innovation and impact. Candidates are nominated from all over the world and through internal review and research the pool is cut down to the top 10. The selection committee hopes to extend the influence recipients of the prize have on campus by building a little community of prize-winners here, according to Professor Christopher Hunter, Grinnell Prize Selection Committee Chair.

[It is about] social justice work  thats a very vague phrase and weve never tried to pin it down because it has too many meanings to too many people, [as well as] innovation in the projects  and thats a little easier to deal with, were looking for projects that may not be totally unique  but a unique application of something  and having impact, Hunter said.

The Grinnell Prize is about social justice, which is a multidisciplinary idea. Nominees for the prize can come from any field, as long as they are using their work to solve challenging problems in a unique way.

We are raising the next generation of social innovators, Sanning said. [We want to] inspire our students so they can have a vision of what they could be.

Ranjit graduated from Grinnell in 2000 and is the first alum to win the Grinnell Prize. In 2006, she was one of two recipients of the Joseph F. Wall 41 Award for Alumni Service, which helped her to jumpstart her organization. Adhikaar means rights in Hindi. The non-profit organization committed to helping the Nepali-speaking community in New York.

Adhikaar does advocacy work in a wide range of ways. Recently, Ranjit and the organization focused on workers in nail salons, ensuring that the fumes would not endanger their health and that their employers would not take advantage of them.

Diana Jue and Jackie Stenson cofounded Essmart, an organization that works with local street vendors in India to sustainably distribute knowledge about and access to life-improving technologies. These two women had the same passions and educational research topics and finally met to start Essmart in 2012.

Essmart is an organization that probably doesnt sound to many as exciting, Hunter said. However, there are a lot of organizations that create products  but getting those to the people who need them is very hard.  They act as that middle person  the last mile of the delivery system.

One of Program Associate Vicki Knoltons favorite things about the Grinnell Prize winners is that they often admit to having learned a lot throughout the process.

Theyre brilliant, Knolton said. But theyre also willing to say, I didnt have all the answers from the get-go.
EVA LILIENFELD, News Editor

lilienfe17@grinnell.edu

After one speaker turned into two and then more, Professor Gwenola Caradec, French, and Post-Doctoral Fellow and Lecturer Kristina Kosnick organized a whole week celebrating the Francophone World from May 1 through May 6.

Caradec and Kosnick, with the financial support of the Center for Humanities, the Rosenfield Program, Translation Collective, the Center for International Studies and the French and Arabic Department, brought Hatian actress Pascale Julio, French Scholar Linda Brindeau and translator Ivanka Hahnenberger to host events and give talks about their work in the French-speaking world.

We often dont think about graphic novels or films so much and that was really part of the momentum [for organiziwng the week], Caradec said. [We also wanted to] represent other countries as well  Haiti, the Caribbean  and show how translation can help a student communicate not just different genres but different cultures, and that was really the spirit.

Caradec did not set out to plan a week of events, but when she invited a colleague who studies Haiti and that colleague knew Julio, Caradec and Kosnick decided to tie both events with Hahenbergers visit to Taylor Watts choreographic interpretation about the slave trade.

In courses were so often reading or maybe watching a film or looking at other cultural documents, but to have the opportunity to bring other people in these fields to campus to have conversations and create another dimension is part of what we wanted to do with the week, Kosnick said. Its also interesting to see Pascales translation of [how] an actor interprets a written text and renders it on the stage  Thats a kind of translation.

Caradec and Kosnick are both excited about international aspect of the week  instead of just highlighting accomplished French people, the week celebrates Hatian and American work as well.

I am really benefiting from seeing people in the field, said French department secretary Colleen Moser 16. So often were sitting in class, focusing on a literary text and we forget that the French major can be applied in a professional context, in an artistic context, in ways we dont think about.

Hahnenbergers visit also ties into the work French students are doing in Kosnicks senior seminar, where French majors are reading Blue is the Warmest Color, which Hahneberger translated. During her Wednesday reading entitled Options and Selections: The Trials of a Translator, Hahnenberger discussed the difficulty of translating the meaning of words within graphic novels.

When we have events like this, it just reminds me of how glad I am to go to a place like Grinnell, where we have opportunities like this  where you can talk to them on a more personal level, said Acadia Broussard 19, an intended French major.
The origins of the modern grilled cheese can be traced back to the availability of inexpensive sliced bread and cheese in the 1920s. Over time, this evolved into the so-called cheese dream, a grilled cheese sandwich left open instead of putting the two slices of bread together, during the Great Depression. Since the 1930s, the grilled cheese has evolved in many exciting ways as people once more gained the economic means to turn two separate pieces of bread into a sandwich. Now considered the epitome of American comfort food, the grilled cheese can be found in many different forms in restaurants all around Grinnell. This week, the S&Bs Community Editor Michael Cummings went to three such establishments to get the scoop on Grinnells grilled cheese scene.

1854 Deli

Truly the jewel of 1854 Delis menu, the AJs Grilled Cheese stands a head and shoulders above similar options at local restaurants. A review by an anonymous food critic displayed front-and-center on the Delis chalkboard menu purports the AJs to be the gooiest grilled cheese in Iowa, and I wouldnt doubt that for a second.

Three types of cheeses  an immaculate combination of cheddar, Swiss and provolone  come together between two thick, buttery pieces of sourdough bread to create a sandwich with the exact right amount of toasty crunch and melt-in-your-mouth gooey goodness.

At $7.75, the AJs is a bit pricey for what you get. However, in my opinion its worth every bite. I usually ask for it with pesto when I order it, and theyre happy to add that at no extra cost. While the AJs approaches perfection on its own, I think that pesto gives it an added flavor which puts it into a category on par with the ambrosia of Mount Olympus.

As all good sandwiches do, this one comes with a side, your choice from a selection of chips or 1854s daily special soup. This time I got the Doritos, but this meal is at its best on days when theyre serving the tomato basil soup. As you might have guessed from the aforementioned pesto addition, Im a big fan of basil, and a tomato basil soup with a pesto grilled cheese is a truly incredible twist on the old classic.

Overall, the AJs Grilled Cheese provides you with exactly what you bargained for: a gooey, cheesy sandwich guaranteed to comfort your belly and bring back fond grilled cheese-related memories from your childhood. 1854s take is my personal favorite grilled cheese in town.

Bobs Underground Cafe

While 1854 Deli is a great option to satisfy your grilled cheese cravings, its distance from campus and inconvenient hours (11 a.m. to 3 p.m.) make it a choice that is often only possible on the weekends. Luckily, theres a great grilled cheese which can be found much closer to home, at Bobs Underground.

Bobs brings a few twists to the classic recipe. Instead of square bread, an adjective descriptive both of its shape and its character, the Bobs sandwiches use fun, roughly diamond-shaped bread as the base for their sandwiches. Other unique ingredients include honey and (if youre willing to pay the extra 75 cents) avocado.

Its a little-known trade secret that Bobs sometimes has more than one variety of cheese, and if you ask nicely they can use any combination of the options they have in stock. Options may include American, cheddar, provolone and even mozzarella.

If youre searching for a grilled cheese to satisfy childhood nostalgia, Bobs may be the place to go. Their menu also includes root beer floats, allowing you to feel exactly like a little kid during your after-bedtime study break.

At only $3, Bobs Undergrounds grilled cheese is a significantly more affordable option than nearly anywhere else within walking distance. While those in a hurry may find themselves frustrated by the wait, if you have some time to kill the ambience of Bobs and the creaminess of the intertwined flavors of cheese and avocado make the wait well worth it.

Now that Golden Dick is but a memory, Bobs has returned to its rightful place as Grinnells only non-Kum & Go late night food source. And what better late night snack than a grilled cheese?

Prairie Canary

What should you do if you want a grilled cheese but Bobs is a little too lowbrow an establishment for your tastes? Luckily Prairie Canary has you covered. Prairie approaches the concept of the grilled cheese from a gourmet angle, combining several very interesting flavors which one might otherwise have never tried.

The Grilled Cheese and Jam, as it is called on Prairies menu, is a surprisingly delicious combination of two types of cheese, strawberry jam, kale and pecans. This combination could have turned out as a hideous Frankensteins Monster of culinary disaster at any other restaurant, but the genius chefs at Prairie Canary somehow managed to successfully combine nearly every food group into a delicious grilled cheese which is salty yet sweet, crispy yet creamy and all around an incredible sandwich.

The result of this immaculate combination is a grilled cheese which makes you feel like you definitely arent ordering off the kids menu. The jam, the titular centerpiece of the creation, makes one question why people havent been putting jelly on their grilled cheeses forever. The pecans add a rare and surprising crunch, and the kale adds just enough green to convince yourself that youre eating healthy.

Prairies grilled cheese comes with a side  your choice of fries, salad or soup. While I sometimes order either the apple or pear salad, which are both great options, my favorite side is the truffle fries with garlic aioli. While my unrefined palate cant tell that much of a difference between the truffle fries and the regular variety, the aioli and shredded parmesan cheese sprinkled on top make it more than worth it.

Overall the Prairie Canary grilled cheese with jam and truffle fries provides a refreshingly classy dining experience for such a typically simple food. While it doesnt quite stack up against the gooey goodness that is 1854s AJs Grilled Cheese, the additional flavors make it a perfect meal for when youre out on the town.

Compiled by Michael Cummings, Community Editor
Steve Yang, Features Editor

yangstev17@grinnell.edu

In the Republic of Somaliland, an autonomous region located in the northwest of Somalia, an ongoing famine caused primarily by severe drought has led to starvation and malnutrition among the countrys rural residents. In light of this situation, Deqa Aden 18 started the Somaliland Relief Fund, a GoFundMe-based initiative dedicated to alleviating the suffering of these families by providing food and water to the afflicted. Because she hails from Hargeisa, the capital of Somaliland, the Fund represents Adens personal mission to bring awareness and assistance to her home country.

A political science and psychology double major, Aden explained that she felt compelled to start relief efforts after hearing about the severity of the drought from her mother back home, and her subsequent inability to help out while at Grinnell.

I started the fund right after spring break. I didnt know what was happening from back home  and my mom said they shut down the schools, because literally people were starving to death, Aden recalled. I felt like I was very disconnected from what was happening  and I wanted to help Somali people who were suffering from the famine.  These are my people, and no one knows about it.

As of the time of this writing, the Somaliland Relief Fund has reached 1,150 of its 2,000 dollar goal, but Aden is optimistic that the fund will reach its target by the beginning of summer break. She explained that at a cost of 50 dollars a month for a family to have basic food necessities, the fund would cover forty rural families in dire need of assistance. Aden added that she would pay for all transport and distribution costs, as she plans for the raised funds to only go towards food and water.

Its not a large amount  and I like it that way because its easy to provide food and water directly to the people who need it the most, she said. I will provide my own car and fuel.

If people are unable to donate, however, Aden explained that it was important for her to raise awareness about both the drought in Somaliland and the fact that rural families are starving at the moment, caught between droughts and the rainy season.

I just want them to know that we are very privileged, and its so easy to lose track of how privileged we are. Its easy to get disconnected from countries like Somalia.  We have three meals a day, we dont even have to think about starvation, Aden stated. When people hear Somalia, they think drugs and war.

Aden pointed out that ignorance has two sides: 98 percent of Somali croplands are dependent on rainfall, which has been non-existent in the past few years. Locals failed to pay significant attention to the trend, Aden argued, and then food shortages became so bad that rural residents like those in Awdal, Somaliland, began dying off rapidly from malnutrition and starvation. She added that while Grinnellians may not know many Somalis and might be hesitant about donating, she hopes that there will be enough donors interested in contributing towards a cause that can help those who are often seen as anonymous or invisible to those halfway around the world.

For me, this is just a project where if you feel the need and desire to help somebody in a community you dont connect with, Im saying I would be very grateful, Aden said. There are many people who I know who would be very grateful.
Dear Grinnell Campus Community,

Last semester, the Diversity and Outreach Coordinator, along with other multicultural organizations, hosted a My Identity, Not Your Costume campaign bringing cultural awareness to the student body about the politics of appropriation and the detrimental effects of such actions. When we first released the promotional materials, we expected to incite dialogue about how such practices contribute to the overall racist tensions on this campus.

As you may or may not know, the Battle of Puebla became a crucial historical event in Mexican history wherein the Mexicans defeated the French in an important yet gruesome battle. Since then, many Americans have referred to this event as Cinco de Mayo.

However, many individuals of our student body take the opportunity to celebrate this so-called Mexican Independence day (which actually takes place September 16th) on this date, May 5. In previous years, students on the Grinnell College campus attempted to reclaim and recreate this event as Cinco de Drinko by hosting a party in the dorm residence halls and wearing stereotypical and essentializing Mexican attire and accessories (i.e. sombreros, ponchos, empty bottles of tequila, offensive Spanish language signs, and especially, a mustache).

We think it is important to highlight these actions because a lot of the students take the opportunity to misrepresent Mexican people during this faux-holiday. This misrepresentation illuminates an important reality: those who benefit from white supremacy can easily put on a costume and never face the systemic oppression, demonization and fetishization that brown bodies face when they dress according to their heritage and tradition.

Furthermore, we find it highly offensive and insensitive to know that many students on this campus and alumni outside of Grinnell find it amusing and thus a reason to celebrate the number of fatalities that occurred during the Battle of Puebla.

While a fraction of citizens of Mexico, namely people in Puebla, Mexico, do honor the date with parades and folkloric dances, it is simply unacceptable for someone who does not have ancestry from Mexico to make it an excuse to get drunk.

Now, after having a better understanding of this situation, we urge the student body to make conscious and informed decisions when planning to take part in celebrations that contribute to racist and exclusionary practices on this campus. Instead, take a mere 10 minutes out of your day to read scholarship or historical accounts regarding the Battle of Puebla. Support the students on this campus instead of alienating them. Its time to contribute to the community you were so eager to join during your first year and hope you make an intelligent decision about how your actions have ripple effects and oftentimes hinder the success and wellbeing of others.

Signed,

Abdiel Lopez 18, Ashley Gomez 19, Desiree dos Santos da Mota 17, Iridian Guzman 19, Jason Camey 16, Karla Gomez 19, Karolina Marquez-Gil 17, Grisel Hernandez 17, Monica Loza 18 and Yesenia Ayala 18
A surreal scene Thursday in the Fort McMurray suburb of Beacon Hill, after wildfires destroyed 80 percent of the neighbourhood. You can help at www.redcross.ca
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In this March 26, 2015, file photo, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Richard Cordray speaks during a panel discussion in Richmond, Va. The CFPB is proposing a ban on arbitration clauses, which would impact the entire financial industry encompassing hundreds of millions of bank accounts, credit cards and mortgages. (AP Photo/Steve Helber, File)
But the tribe has a long way to go
People in many parts of Uttarakhand were jolted at the midnight when an earthquake hit the hill state, officials said on Friday. The tremors were felt in Bagheshar, Nainital, Pithoragarh, Chamoli and Bhimtal.

People rushed out of their houses and spent the night under the open sky. Officials told IANS that the tremors were felt for about ten seconds and that the intensity of the earthquake was measured 4.1 on the Richter scale.

The epicentre of the earthquake was 15km below the earth at Pithoragarh.

At the time of writing this report no loss of life was reported.

"Since it was around mid-night, we cannot confirm if there was any damage of buildings or property but certainly there was no loss of life," a government official told IANS.
Following the furore across the nation over the brutal rape and murder of a Dalit law student in Perumbavoor in Keralas Ernakulam district, Home Minister Rajnath Singh on Friday assured that the guilty will not be spared and said that the Centre is ready for a probe by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) into the matter.

As this countrys Home Minister, I assure you that as soon as we get recommendation from the state government, we are prepared to conduct a CBI probe. The guilty shall be punished, Rajnath said here.

The Centres announcement comes even as the Kerala High Court is considering a petition.

Earlier, asserting that swift action would be taken against the perpetrators of the brutal rape Chief Minister Oommen Chandy, who met the family members of the victim, said his government would do the necessary towards the demands of the victims family, who have asked for a job for the victims sister.

Chandy also announced that the state government has decided to give Rs 10 lakh as compensation to the family of the victim.

Earlier this week, the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) took suo motu cognizance of media reports about yet another 'Nirbhaya' like rape and murder of a Dalit law student.

The 29-year-old law student was brutally raped and murdered on April 28.

Her body had at least 30 injuries, including on the private parts. Reportedly, the assault on her stomach was such that the small intestine had spilled out.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday slammed the Congress-led UDF in Kerala over the solar scam and the brutal rape and murder of a Dalit woman saying, there seemed to be "no government" in the state.

"I am afraid to use the word solar in Kerala as it would create a 'big dhamaka' (explosion)," he said referring to the solar scam which has rocked UDF government with charges being made even against Chief Minister Ommen Chandy.

He was addressing an election rally of NDA at the Fort Maidan here, his first in the series of four lined up in the coming days for the May 16 assembly polls, as BJP goes all out to make its maiden entry in the assembly.

Modi also criticised the state government's "failure" to rise to the occasion while handling the rape case.

"A Dalit sister was raped and killed. We don't see a government anywhere," Modi said.

The statement assumes significance as even after nine days, police was yet to nab the culprits involved in the brutal rape and murder of the 30-year old woman in Perumbavoor near Kochi.

The Prime Minister made the solar comment after referring to the solar initiative he had launched in his constituency Varanasi for converting diesel-powered engines to solar-powered battery engines in fishing boats.

This had given the fishermen a profit of Rs 500 per day, he said.

"I thought why this cannot be replicated in Kerala also. But I was scared. I felt, if I go to Kerala and talk of solar, there will be 'big dhamaka'," Modi said as the people cheered and clapped.

"See the change from government to government. In Varanasi, the solar-powered boats are powering the lives of fishermen, but in Kerala the government is run by solar," Modi said, taking a dig at Chandy.

The Prime Minister also targeted the CPI-M in the state, saying it was following the "politics of violence".

Several innocent BJP workers lost their life in the attack over the years by CPI-M, he said charging they were physically annihilated as they did not agree to the Marxist ideology.

Modi also mentioned about the insult meted out by CPI-M student wing to a retired principal of a government college here.

Some activists of SFI, students wing of the CPI(M), had prepared a "grave" for her as a retirement gift.

"Do you want to vote for such people? Whether you will pardon those who committed this insult?" Modi asked.
Defence Minister Manohor Parrikar on Friday assured the Lok Sabha that the CBI probe into the AgustaWestland chopper scam will be taken to its logical conclusion and accountability fixed on wrongdoers.

After the government rejected a Congress demand for a Supreme Court-monitored probe into the chopper deal, parliamentarians from the opposition party at a later stage walked out of the lower house, including Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi.

"I can assure you all, I will not fail. What we could not do in Bofors, we may be able to do in AgustaWestland," Parrikar said.

His response came on queries and observations of members, including Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) parliamentarians Anurag Thakur and Nishikant Dubey, Saugata Roy (Trinamool) and Jyotiraditya Scindia (Congress), during a discussion on a calling attention motion under Rule 197.

The Bofors controversy erupted after allegations surfaced regarding kickbacks from Bofors AB company of Sweden for winning a bid to supply 155 mm field howitzer to India. It led to the ouster of the Rajiv Gandhi-led Congress government in 1989.

Parrikar said the then defence minister A.K. Antony put on hold the deal only on May 12, 2014, at the fag end of the Lok Sabha elections, and wondered if it was driven by the results of exit polls, which were going in favour of the Bharatiya Janata Party.

"The field trials of the chopper were initially opposed by Antony. But he was later convinced to change his stand," the minister said.

"Some concessions were given, especially to a single vendor. It was not given to other companies. This showed the favour," the defence minister said.

Parrikar said that while the then Atal Bihari Vajpayee government broadened the Services Qualitative Requirements to get more companies in the tender process for the VVIP choppers, the successor United Progressive Alliance government made it restrictive only to help AgustaWestland.

Amid objections from some opposition members, the minister said: "The CBI (Central Bureau of Investigation) may not be under me, but I am monitoring the progress in the case."

While attacking the Congress government, Parrikar also tried to show sympathies with Antony and dubbed him "bechare (helpless)".

"Bechare Antony sahab ke haath baandhe they (a helpless Antony had his limitations)," Parrikar said and added that once an arrest was made in 2012 in Italy in the case, "Antony was virtually in panic".

"...because Antony wanted to protect his image," Parrikar said, adding, "within two-three hours, Antony moved the file, cleared papers and ordered a CBI probe".

However, the minister said, the CBI just sat over the matter and "did nothing" till January 2014.

The debate was punctuated with sarcasm and humour from both sides.

At one point, Congress members, including party president Sonia Gandhi and vice president Rahul Gandhi and Congress leader in the Lok Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge, walked out after Kharge's demand for a Supreme Court-monitored probe was rejected by the government.

Parrikar said the tender for the contract was submitted by Italy-based AgustaWestland but given to the UK-based AgustaWestland International.

"This was my biggest shock. I have never seen that a tender submitted by one company is given to some other company," he said.

Parrikar said former Air Force officer N.V. Tyagi and city-based lawyer Gautam Khaitan, the two accused in the Rs.3,600-crore chopper scam, were only "small people".

The minister tabled a document, saying it pertained to minutes of a meeting held on May 9, 2005, wherein the VVIP choppers' cabin height was mandated to be 1.8 metre.

He also referred to a fire mishap in an office wherein important files are stored.

"The fire broke out mysteriously and many files were destroyed. But three files were safe as they were retained in a locker by an official. I will now even ask the CBI to probe the cause of the fire as it raises some questions," Parrikar said.
The top elected US Republican, Paul Ryan, said on Thursday he was not ready to endorse Donald Trump, a sign of the challenges the party's presumptive presidential nominee faces rallying the Republican establishment behind his White House bid.

Ryan, the speaker of the US House of Representatives, said conservatives wanted to know if Trump shares their values.

"I hope to support our nominee, I hope to support his candidacy fully," Ryan said on CNN. "At this point, I'm just not there right now."

Trump, who has built a huge following with an anti-establishment message, shot back at Ryan in a statement.

"I am not ready to support Speaker Ryan's agenda. Perhaps in the future we can work together and come to an agreement about what is best for the American people," he said.

The Republican National Committee, under pressure to unify the party or face an electoral rout in the November 8 election, said Ryan and Trump were expected to meet soon. It added that "only a united Republican Party will be able to beat Hillary Clinton."

"We respect Speaker Ryans opinion and believe that since the primary ended early we will have time to unify. We anticipate the two meeting soon to begin to help unite the party," said RNC spokeswoman Lindsay Walters.

Trump's last remaining rivals in the Republican race, US Senator Ted Cruz and Ohio Governor John Kasich, dropped out this week, clearing the New York billionaire's path to be picked as the presidential nominee. He will likely face Clinton, the Democratic front-runner, in the November 8 general election.

Many Republicans have grappled this week with whether to support Trump, who has deviated from the party line on trade and upset the party establishment with offensive comments about women and immigrants. Trump on Thursday announced a new campaign finance chairman in response to questions about his readiness for a general election race.

Taking on Clinton

Trump, speaking to thousands at a rally in Charleston, West Virginia, on Thursday night, sharpened his criticism of Clinton, the kind of tactic that some Republican strategists believe will help unify the party.

He blasted Clinton for saying recently she would impose clean-energy policies that would put coal miners out of business. He put on a hard hat presented to him by the state's coal miners' association and made a shovelling motion.

"And for those miners, get ready: You're going to be working your asses off," he said.

In a sign some Republicans are rallying around Trump, Nebraska Governor Pete Ricketts, whose family has helped bankroll the anti-Trump group Our Principles, is set to endorse Trump on Friday when the candidate visits Omaha.

Former Texas Governor Rick Perry, who ran unsuccessfully for the 2016 nomination, told CNN he now supported Trump as well.

Ryan criticised Trump in December for proposing to temporarily ban all Muslims from entering the United States and knocked him in March for failing to denounce white supremacist groups during a television interview.

The House speaker, who was the running mate of Republican 2012 presidential nominee Mitt Romney, a harsh Trump critic, said he hoped the party would be unified by this summer but that the pressure was on Trump to do that.

He won fair and square," Ryan said of Trump, acknowledging his own policy differences with the New York billionaire businessman. He added: "If we dont unify all wings of the party, were not going to win this election."

Ryan repeatedly denied interest in running for president this year despite attempts to draft him by some in his party. He has been putting together a policy plan for House Republicans to campaign on, which he says will be released before the convention in July.

Campaign fundraising

Trump on Thursday began shifting focus from the bruising primary campaign to the general election. He has largely used his own money for his primary fight but plans to follow the more typical path of raising money from outside sources for the general election to succeed Democratic President Barack Obama.

He named his campaign finance chief on ThursdaySteven Mnuchin, a former Goldman Sachs partner who is chief executive of private investment firm Dune Capital Management and with whom Trump worked in a business capacity in the past.

Mnuchin has a long history of political donations, including to Clinton. Since 1998, Mnuchin has given about $71,000 to Democrats, compared with about $37,000 to Republicans. Republicans have questioned Trump's loyalty to the party because he also donated to Democratic candidates in the past.

US Representative Renee Ellmers, a Republican from North Carolina who has endorsed Trump, told Reuters the campaign would begin raising money for the party.

"They are going to start understanding and realizing that in order to grow this operation, they will need to grow funds, not only for him and for the campaign to beat Hillary Clinton, but for the Republican Party itself," Ellmers said.

Historically, political parties have depended on their nominees to raise money in order to fund their other operations, including working to elect members of the House of Representatives and Senate.

One key worry for Republicans has been that their candidates for Congress and other elective positions could suffer with the divisive figure of Trump at the top of the ticket.

Ron Bonjean, a Republican strategist, said Ryan gave lawmakers in his party cover to steer clear of Trump in their re-election campaigns.

"He is positioning the Republican conference and giving Republicans a message they can hold onto," Bonjean said.
The question of responsibility in case of accidents by a self driving car must also be addressed and answered.

A point to be noted with regard to auto insurance is that prominent businessmen including two billionaires are of the opinion that self driving car will prove disastrous for the industry. Even if the auto insurance industry manages to survive, it will not be in its current form.

Prominent investor Warren Buffett and software entrepreneur Bill Gates spoke to a new channel on Monday. Both opined that insurance companies need to get ready for a major decline in their business due to the arrival of self driving technology.

The CEO of Berkshire Hathaway said that there was no question that anything that renders the car safer is bad for the insurance industry.

However, Buffett did admit that the auto industry had always strived to make the cars safer. They are the pioneers in seat belts and all. But, at the end of the day, if there are not going to be any accidents, what will be the need for insurance.

The first signs of this transition are already clear. At the beginning of this year, a voluntary agreement was reached between twenty leading car manufacturers under the aegis of the Insurance Institute for Highway safety.

The agreement called for introduction of emergency brakes in every car within the next few years. In fact, it is going to become a standard feature in all cars.

This feature is regarded as one of the most fundamental ideas behind the autonomous cars. Studies have revealed that emergency brakes can reduce the crashes from the rear by 40 percent. The crashes that do happen despite emergency braking are not as severe as they would be without the feature.

Bill Gates, however, said that it will be another 15 years until the new feature will be significant enough to make a noticeable dent in the insurance business. Even after the fully autonomous technology is in place, there will still be chances of crashes and collisions. This fact is even acknowledged by the carmakers.

Before there is a real impact on the insurance business, a key question needs to be addressed by industry professionals, lawmakers and consumers: who will be responsible if a crash occurred in a self-driving car?

Executives of at least two major car manufacturers have said that they will accept liability arising from a crash occurring due to their technology; however, as yet there is no concrete word from a single voice that would represent each and every car maker.
The High Court of Justice on Thursday, 27 Nissan ordered the return of the bodies of slain terrorists held by Israel, referring to the bodies of former eastern Jerusalem residents.

The decision followed the state announcing it is removing its objections to the move. The court recommended the return process be completed before the beginning of Ramadan in about a month.

Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan announced that the Israel Police policy is that any family agreeing to the conditions surrounding the funeral for a terrorist will receive the body. This includes the exclusion of incitement against Israel at the funeral.

Bayit Yehudi leader Minister Naftali Bennett stated at the last cabinet meeting that the return of the bodies of terrorists is a major error that simply encourages additional terror attacks.

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
Following the release of the story of the attack in which tefilin were stolen and set afire in northern Israel, Chief Rabbi Dovid Lau Shlita commented that he believed until today that such events were occurrences of the past, not the present.

Kikar Shabbos News released the story in which bnei torah camping near the Kinneret had their bags stolen. After a search of the area they found their tefilin in a public bathroom. Some had been set on fire while others found in a sink filled with water. As reported, this occurred on Thursday, 27 Nissan, Holocaust Remembrance Day in Israel.

Rav Lau added he remains hopeful that when the perpetrator(s) is apprehended he will not turn out to be Jewish. The rav added he is overwhelmed with pain and sadness over hearing of the incident.

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
Thousands of people from around the world, many draped in Israeli flags, have paid homage to the victims of the Holocaust with a somber march from the barracks of Auschwitz to nearby Birkenau.

Organizers of the March of the Living, held annually on Israels Holocaust Remembrance Day, said about 10,000 participated in the event Thursday in southern Poland, occupied by Nazi Germany during World War II.

Among them were about 150 Holocaust survivors, Israels justice minister, Knesset members and people from 42 countries.

As participants arrived at the gates of Birkenau, some knelt to pray and light candles on the railway tracks that carried Jews, Roma and others from across Europe to their death in gas chambers. Birkenau is where most of the death camp complexs victims were killed.

(AP)
The decision of the two living Republican presidents to snub the partys 2016 White House nominee is extraordinary, yet completely predictable. Its the culmination of an anger inside the Republican Party that gave way to an alternate history of the decades since 1980  and especially the years after 2008.

And while it demonstrates Trumps inability to unify the GOP, it is the best example yet of his strategy of breaking the electorate in half and hoping he wound up with the bigger piece. Losing the endorsements of George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush  as harsh an indictment as the establishment can offer  is no punishment at all in the eyes of many conservatives.

This was tested in real time just months ago, when the younger Bush appeared on the campaign trail for the first time in a decade. (His poll numbers cratered during the crisis-strewn final two years of his presidency, and he neither campaigned for a candidate nor appeared at the 2008 and 2012 Republican conventions.) He rallied for his brother, Jeb Bush, who started in a hole with Republican voters and became less popular as he campaigned. The result: A weak fourth-place finish in South Carolina and the end of his run for president.

The context of that loss was even worse for the Bush brand. In the hair-tearing GOP debates before the primary, Trump mocked Jeb Bush for his brothers foreign policy record. The World Trade Center came down during your brothers reign, said Trump. Remember that.

Conservative pundits almost universally thought Trump had blown it, insulting the Bushes in a state that had only given them election wins. I hope the people of South Carolina will send a message to Donald Trump that we dont like Putin, we like W, said Sen. Lindsey O. Graham, R-S.C.

The utter failure of the Bush brand surprised some people, given that Republican voters still generally say that they like Bush. But this ignores the role both Bushes now play in conservative history  as sellouts. George H.W. Bushs acceptance of a tax hike (forced on him by a Democratic Congress) is the Genesis story of the anti-tax movement. George W. Bushs record in office, for all of the gains it meant for conservative, is remembered instead for the bailout, the push to legalize immigrants and No Child Left Behind.

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, sense of the Republican base was nearly as acute as Trumps. Since he entered electoral politics in 2010, both sought the support of the Bush family and wrote them out of his narrative. In his memoir, A Time for Truth, Cruz reveals that he was all set to get endorsements from the Bush family, and Karl Rove put a stop to it. More tellingly, on the trail, Cruz constantly invoked Ronald Reagan but ignored the other recent two-term Republican president.

In the last 50 years, there is one Republican who has a group of Democrats named after him, Cruz said during his August 2015 swing through Southern states. If the Washington fallacy were correct  that you run to the middle to get crossover votes  then you would have Gerald Ford Democrats, or Bob Dole Democrats, or John McCain Democrats or Mitt Romney Democrats. They dont exist.

Cruz skipped over two people  the Bushes, the last Republicans to win presidential elections. Cruz, who worked for the younger Bushs 2000 campaign, was well aware that he ran as a center-right pragmatist, who favored national education standards and immigration reform. But saying so contradicts the theory that only true conservatives win the presidency. At one Cruz campaign stop in Nevada, Rep. Raul Labrador, R-Idaho, told an even more tailored version of the history.

Weve had three Republican nominees in the last few years, he said. One of them was Bob Dole. If you think about it, he was the electable one. Then we had John McCain. He was supposed to be the electable one. Then, there was Mitt Romney.

Labrador skipped right over George W. Bush, who won two national elections and swung the Supreme Court to the right. He did so in service of Cruz, the candidate who ran second in the primary, defeated only by the one who personally insulted the Bushes. All of that may give Trump confidence that he is being snubbed by exactly the right sort of people.



(c) 2016, The Washington Post  David Weigel
House Speaker Paul Ryan is refusing to support Donald Trump as the Republican nominee for president, insisting Thursday that the businessman must do more to unify the GOP.

The surprise declaration from Ryan on CNNs The Lead amounted to a stunning rebuke of Trump from the Republican Partys highest-ranking officeholder.

Im just not ready to do that at this point. Im not there right now, the Wisconsin Republican said. And I hope to. And I want to, but I think what is required is that we unify this party.

Ryan had maintained his silence since Trump effectively clinched the nomination with a commanding win in Indiana on Tuesday that forced his last two remaining rivals from the race. Other Republican leaders, including Senate Majority Mitch McConnell, offered their grudging support for Trump, and Ryan had seemed likely to eventually do the same.

Instead he balked, in comments that could have more to do with his own political future and potential run for president in 2020.

For us to be a successful party, to climb that final hill and win the presidency, we will need a standard-bearer that can unify all Republicans, all conservatives, all wings of our party, and then go to the country with an appealing agenda that can be appealing to independents and disaffected Democrats, Ryan said. And we have work to do one this front, and I think our nominee has to lead in that effort.

(AP)
Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump told my colleague Robert Costa that he is eager to start meeting with U.S. intelligence officials for classified briefings on the nations secrets. The feeling may not be mutual.

The outlandish GOP candidate is not known for discretion or nuanced understanding of global security issues, let alone awareness of the widespread revulsion among U.S. intelligence officials over some of Trumps positions  including his expressed admiration for Russian President Vladimir Putin and pledge to resume torturing terrorism suspects.

Where should the U.S. intelligence communitys first PowerPoint presentation for Trump begin?

It beggars the imagination, said former CIA director Michael V. Hayden, who was among those who briefed President Obama after the 2008 election. Given that [Trumps] public persona seems to reflect a lack of understanding or care about global issues, how do you arrange these presentations to learn what are the true depths of his understanding?

Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. said last week that U.S. spy agencies have already begun planning briefings for Trump and his presumed Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, although neither is expected to receive an initial briefing before party conventions conclude in July.

In response to a question from the Daily Beast, Clapper alluded to concern for the handling of any secrets shared. The process is designed to ensure that everybody gets the same information and that we do comply with the needs to protect sources and methods.

Clintons ability to protect sensitive information has also come under sharp criticism, after the disclosure that she relied on a private e-mail server to communicate with subordinates while serving as secretary of state. But she has likely participated in thousands of classified briefings  unlike Trump who has never been privy to the governments most closely guarded secrets.

This is a person who doesnt seem to have much of a filter, said Aki Peritz, a former CIA analyst who contributed to the Presidents Daily Brief (PDB)  the digest delivered each morning to the Oval Office. The scary part is that nobody knows who he really is. Is he this blowhard demagogue we see on TV or is he really a sophisticated consumer of information that will keep this information close to his chest?

Either way, Director of National Intelligence and CIA analysts may have little leeway in what they present. The decision on how much to share and when are traditionally made by the sitting president.

The candidates get the same information  no favoritism, said David Priess, a former CIA briefer and author of The Presidents Book of Secrets, a history of the PDB. Its not that the briefer can freelance.

Pre-election briefings tend to be overviews of spy agency assessments of major topics such as the civil war in Syria. That changes after Election Day, however, when separate teams are sent in advance to the candidates headquarters. The winner is given a deeper briefing on more highly classified material, including CIA operations overseas. The other team heads back to headquarters without briefing the losing candidate.

Analysts selected for such assignments tend to be among the most polished and experienced in the intelligence community. They are going to be very professional, Peritz said, but Trump poses unique complications. He has all kinds of relationships with Chinese investors and Russian investors. Hes spoken very highly of our adversaries. And hes talked about using torture and waterboarding and attacking peoples families. All these things are going through the analysts minds.

(c) 2016, The Washington Post  Greg Miller
Two months after Osama bin Laden was killed, the CIAs top operative in Pakistan was pulled out of the country in an abrupt move vaguely attributed to health concerns and his strained relationship with Islamabad.

In reality, the CIA station chief was so violently ill that he was often doubled over in pain, current and former U.S. officials said. Trips out of the country for treatment proved futile. And the cause of his ailment was so mysterious, the officials said, that both he and the agency began to suspect that he had been poisoned.

Mark Kelton retired from the CIA, and his health has recovered after he had abdominal surgery. But agency officials continue to think that it is plausible  if not provable  that Keltons sudden illness was somehow orchestrated by Pakistans Inter-Services Intelligence agency, known as the ISI.

The disclosure is a disturbing postscript to the sequence of events surrounding the bin Laden operation five years ago and adds new intrigue to a counterterrorism partnership that has often been consumed by conspiracy theories.

That 2011 time frame was marked by extraordinary turbulence in the United States relationship with Pakistan, a wary alliance that was close to collapse when U.S. Navy SEALs descended on the al-Qaida leaders compound in Abbottabad.

Even if the poisoning suspicion is groundless, the idea that the CIA and its station chief considered the ISI capable of such an act suggests that the breakdown in trust was even worse than widely assumed.

Kelton, 59, declined multiple requests for an interview, but in a brief exchange by phone he said that the cause of his illness was never clarified, and he added that he was not the first to suspect that he had been poisoned. The genesis for the thoughts about that didnt originate with me, he said.

In the conversation, Kelton declined to answer questions about his illness or his tenure in Pakistan. Id rather let that whole sad episode lie, he said. Im very, very proud of the people I worked with who did amazing things for their country at a very difficult time. When the true story is told, the country will be very proud of them.

U.S. officials acknowledged that the CIA never saw proof that Kelton was poisoned or confronted Pakistan with that charge. CIA spokesman Dean Boyd said that privacy considerations limit what we can say about any individual cases . . . but we have uncovered no evidence that Pakistani authorities poisoned a U.S. official serving in Pakistan.

Even so, current and former U.S. intelligence officials said that the ISI has been linked to numerous plots against journalists, diplomats and other perceived adversaries and that the spy agencys animosity toward Kelton was intense.

Officials said the ISI chief at the time, Ahmed Shuja Pasha, routinely refused to speak with Kelton or even utter his name, referring to the dour CIA station chief as the cadaver.

  

Although Keltons tenure lasted only seven months, it was in many ways a parade of humiliation for his hosts. Within days of Keltons arrival, one of his subordinates, CIA contractor Raymond Davis, was involved in a Jason Bourne-style shootout in Lahore. Kelton signed off on dozens of drone strikes that infuriated the Pakistanis. He also presided over the final preparations for the assault in Abbottabad that killed bin Laden and, to many, exposed Pakistans security agencies as incompetent.

The CIA asked that Kelton not be identified by his full name. But since retiring, Kelton has posted his name and portions of his CIA resume on publicly accessible Web sites. He has not disclosed his assignment in Pakistan, but other key figures associated with the bin Laden operation have come forward over the past five years or have been publicly identified.

Pakistan dismissed the allegations against the ISI.

Obviously the story is fictional, not worthy of comment, said Pakistan Embassy spokesman Nadeem Hotiana. We reject the insinuations implied in the allegations.

U.S. officials emphasized that the relationship with Pakistan had been deteriorating for years before Kelton arrived in Islamabad.

By 2009, officials said, U.S. intelligence agencies had evidence that the ISI was complicit in the terrorist attacks in Mumbai, suspected the ISI of staging raids to disguise the deaths of militants killed in custody and were convinced that the ISI routinely tipped off its proxies when they were about to be struck by CIA drones.

The strain intensified in 2010 when the CIA sharply escalated the pace of its drone campaign and Pasha was named in a Mumbai-attack-related lawsuit in the United States. In apparent retaliation, a suit filed in Pakistan by alleged victims of a drone strike revealed the name of the CIAs then-station chief, Jonathan Bank.

Concerned for Banks safety, the CIA employed a modest ruse to get him out of the country, former officials said. As then-CIA Deputy Director Michael Morell finished a series of scheduled meetings in Islamabad, Bank escorted his boss to a waiting agency plane. Then, without any notice to Pakistani authorities and in violation of protocol, Bank stayed aboard as the flight crew closed the door.

The next station chief would face a doubly daunting assignment  managing the toxic relationship with the ISI while secretly pursuing the most promising lead in more than a decade on bin Ladens whereabouts.

Kelton, known as having an acerbic personality, was not an obvious candidate for the role. He had little experience with counterterrorism operations and had spent much of his career in traditional Cold War outposts, including Moscow, where the CIA remained locked in a decades-long duel with the KGB and its successor organization.

But given the increasingly tense atmosphere in Islamabad, then-CIA Director Leon Panetta and others concluded that years of engaging in adversarial espionage could be an asset. They thought his Moscow experience was a very good credential, said a former senior CIA official who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss agency operations and personnel.

Former U.S. officials who worked alongside Kelton said he began preaching Moscow Rules upon arrival, meaning that the ISI should be treated as a determined foe rather than a problematic partner. The inevitable clash came sooner than either side expected.

Less than 48 hours after Keltons arrival in Islamabad, Davis, the CIA contractor, was arrested after opening fire on two armed Pakistani men accused of trying to rob him. In Daviss car, authorities found a conspicuous collection of spy gear, reportedly including a disguise kit, an infrared flashlight and a camera.

Some in the U.S. Embassy argued that lying about Davis would only insult the Pakistanis, who might be persuaded to release him if the agency acknowledged the blunder. But Kelton and his superiors at headquarters were adamantly opposed.

Dont tell them anything, Kelton told then-U.S. Ambassador Cameron Munter, according to former officials familiar with the exchange. The stonewalling continued for weeks  with President Obama demanding the release of our diplomat  until Munter secured permission to deal with Pasha directly and admit Davis ties to the CIA.

Davis was released March 16 after a secret court proceeding in which the families of those killed were paid $2.4 million. The CIAs drones, which had gone dormant during much of Daviss captivity, roared back to life the next day, carrying out a strike that killed at least 40 people at a tribal council meeting in Datta Khel.

Pasha was livid, sending word to Munter that the strike amounted to a kick in the teeth after the Davis deal was arranged. Pashas relationship with Kelton never recovered, and the two rarely spoke in the ensuing months.

In a recent interview, Munter described 2011 as by far my most difficult year in the Foreign Service. Attempts to reach Pasha through the Pakistan Embassy in the United States were unsuccessful.

  

On the first night in May, as midnight approached in Pakistan, Kelton, Munter and a senior U.S. military official gathered in a secure CIA room in the embassy to watch transmissions from a stealth drone circling over Abbottabad as the bin Laden raid began.

The trio had made secret preparations for possible Pakistani reprisals, officials said, drafting evacuation plans that called for employees at scattered U.S. diplomatic sites to flee across the border into India or be scooped up by the USS Carl Vinson from the Karachi shore. Those at the embassy would have to hunker down.

At first, Pakistan seemed paralyzed by the raid. But amid mounting public anger and recriminations from abroad  Panetta accused Islamabad of being inept or complicit in hiding bin Laden  senior Pakistani officials began to lash out.

A week after bin Ladens death, a story in the Pakistani press said that Pasha had summoned the CIA station chief to a meeting and railed at him for keeping the bin Laden operation a secret. The story contained a garbled version of Keltons name, identifying him as Mark Carlton.

After the Bank episode, it was the second time in six months that the CIAs top operative in Pakistan had been outed, a major breach of the unwritten rules of espionage. But this time the agency left Kelton in place even as emerging details about the raid  including the existence of a CIA safe house in Abbottabad and the agencys use of a Pakistani doctor to try to get DNA samples from residents of bin Ladens house  compounded Pakistans resentment.

Amid the fallout, Kelton began to experience stomach pain. At first he assumed he had come down with the sort of digestive ailment that afflicts many Westerners in Pakistan, former U.S. officials said. But as the symptoms worsened, he began to miss days of work and left the country several times for treatment.

By July, Kelton was in what one official described as a severe medical crisis. Less than seven months after arriving for a tour that was supposed to last at least two years, Kelton told headquarters that he could no longer function in the job.

Some of Keltons colleagues, including several who were based in Pakistan, remain skeptical that the ISI would risk Pakistans multibillion-dollar dependency on the United States by poisoning a high-ranking U.S. official. Instead, skeptics believe that Keltons Moscow mind-set saw conspiracy in a condition more likely caused by bad food or the pressure of the job.

Stress does funny things to the body, said one former senior agency official who added that there is zero evidence Kelton was poisoned.

The agency never mounted a full investigation to determine whether Kelton was poisoned, officials said, but took his suspicion seriously enough to search its intelligence files for any indication that Kelton had been targeted.

Back in the United States, Kelton took months to recover and ended up having abdominal surgery. Kelton acknowledged that he had the procedure but declined to discuss its nature. After recovering, he was named deputy director for counterintelligence, a job that put him in charge of protecting the agency from foreign spy services.

Since retiring last year, Kelton has written articles for a national-security-related website called the Cipher Brief, including a piece about the Kremlins alleged role in the 2006 assassination of a former Russian intelligence operative who was poisoned in London with a lethal dose of radioactive polonium.

In the article, which argues that Russian President Vladimir Putin was complicit in the attack, Kelton quotes a line from a 1939 espionage novel: The important thing to know about an assassination is not who fired the shot, but who paid for the bullet.

(c) 2016, The Washington Post  Greg Miller
In averbal exchange during the Prime Ministers Questions in the Parliament,Cameron said : Mr Corbyn had invited our friends from Hamas and Hezbollah to speak at an event.He referred to Hamas and Hezbollah as his friends. He needs to withdraw that remark.

He then directly asked Corbyn: Are they your friends or are they not? Because these organisations in their constitutions believe in persecuting and killing Jews. They are anti-Semitic organisations, they are racist organisations.He must stand up and say they are not his friends.

The Labour leader responded: Obviously, anyone who commits racist acts or is anti-Semitic is not a friend of mine. I am very clear about that.

He insisted that the event Cameron mentioned was intended to promote the peace process in the Middle East, and that I absolutely do not approve of those organisations.

The verbal exchangecame a day before local elections throughout Britain including for mayor of London. While Labour is expected to lose dozens od seats nationwide, the Labours candidate for London, Sadiq Khan, was favored to win, which would make him the first Muslim mayor of a major Western city.

On Wednesday, the Labour Party suspended two more local lawmakers over allegations of anti-Semitism.

Former London Mayor Ken Livingstone, who was suspended from the party over anti-Semitic remarks linking Adolf Hitler to Zionism, said in a recentinterview with a London-based Arabic-language TV station, that the establishment of the State of Israel was fundamentally wrong.

He also claimed Jewish communities in Arab countries never suffered any discrimination or attack until the foundation of the State of Israel, when they were all suddenly deported  by whom, he didnt elaborate  ignoring the countless massacres and legacies of persecutions faced by Jews in Arab and Muslim lands well before Israel was founded.

In the interview, Livingstone also appeared to justify ISIS and Al Qaeda attacks against Western targets, suggesting the jihadists didnt slaughter people because they like killing, but rather because they feel that they are the victims of injustice.

(Source: EJP)
Angry London voters including Britains Chief Rabbi were turned away from polling stations today after a huge blunder hit thousands in the mayoral election.

Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis and his wife Valerie were among those sent away from polling stations in the Barnet area of north London.

He lost his chance to vote altogether as he was flying to Amsterdam to visit the Jewish community there.

The Chief Rabbi was disappointed at not being able to vote, said a source.

There were furious scenes at some polling stations as voters learned they were being deprived of their vote, with some shouting at council staff and saying they were being disenfranchised.

One would-be voter yelled at staff, this is the worst council in Britain, its a disaster, while another said this is a conspiracy.

Lawyer Karen Johnson, 44, told the Standard: Its a complete disgrace. They said theyve been given the wrong lists and people cant vote. I feel disenfranchised.

If its close then they should re-run it so people can have their say.

With every one of Barnets 155 polling stations having incomplete lists, the astonishing bungle is thought to have affected thousands of potential voters.

The borough refused to confirm or deny how many and claimed only those who tried to vote without their voting cards were turned away.

READ MORE: STANDARD UK
Hastings Group has seen its share of the UK private motor market rise to 6 per cent from 5.3 per cent

Insurer Hastings Group has seen its share of the UK private motor market rise to 6 per cent from 5.3 per cent as it reported a 22 per cent jump in first quarter revenues to 132.7million.

Hastings - which floated on the London Stock Exchange last year  said the number of customers on its books grew by 17 per cent year-on-year to 2.1 million. Gross written premiums rose 29 per cent to 171.0million for the three months ended March 31.

The company also said it was on track to meet the targets outlined when it launched its 1.1billion IPO last October. Choppy market conditions back then had forced the group to cut its float price back from 1.4billion.

In reaction, Hastings shares on the FTSE 250 index were up 1.7 per cent, or 3p at 179p in late morning trading, having floated at 170p a share last year.

Hastings chief executive, Gary Hoffman  who was parachuted in to run Northern Rock in 2008 after its bailout by the UK government - said: Our trading performance for the first quarter of 2016 demonstrates that we continue to deliver on our promises.

He added: Based on the continuing positive momentum in the business, we remain confident of delivering against our expectations and targets for all of our stakeholders.

However, analysts at Shore Capital reiterated their sell rating, flagging stiff competition as having the potential to derail the firm.

Shore Capital analyst Eamonn Flanagan said: This improvement demonstrates a key negative aspect for the UK personal motor insurance industry, where the barriers to entry are so low that a relative newcomer can gain such scale and market share so quickly. All okay until the next new entry comes along.

Flanagan added: Unfortunately the trading update was somewhat light on other important details as regards, for example, claims experience and investment returns.

These are pretty crucial metrics to us, especially given the deteriorating claims experience across UK personal motor and the somewhat aggressive investment strategy that Hastings has embraced.

South coast-headquartered Hastings employs 2,500 people, including more than 500 at a new site in Leicester.

Back in March, blue chip motor insurance rival Admiral Group reported record full year 2015 profits thanks to rising motor rates and keen premium pricing.

The Cardiff-based group posted pretax profits of 377million for 2015, up 6 per cent on the previous year, and ahead of consensus forecasts for 350million.
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By Madina Toure

State Sen. Tony Avella (D-Bayside) received an award from the Property Rights Foundation of America for his fight against eminent domain in Willets Point.

At a news conference at the senators district office in Bayside Monday, Carol LaGrasse, who grew up in College Point, of the Property Rights Foundation of America, presented Avella with the award. The foundation filed an amicus brief on behalf of Willets Point businesses against the citys eminent domain and has hosted speakers from Willets Point since 2010 at their annual conferences.

The $3 billion Willets Point Development Plan seeks to redevelop the area into a new neighborhood with commercial, retail and residential space.

In July, an appellate court ruled that the Willets West megamall proposal could not proceed without legislative approval, since it was proposed that it be built on parkland.

LaGrasse said the megamall would have an effect not only on Willets Point but on Corona and Flushing as well, noting that an estimated 3,000 minority workers were kicked out of Willets Point.

I would also like to thank Senator Avella, whose long years of leadership, not just in this amazing lawsuit, the courage it took to lead it, she said. But for his standing alone when all the other elected officials would just fall by the wayside.

The lawsuit, filed by Avella, along with the City Club of New York, Queens Civic Congress, members of Willets Point United and nearby residents and business owners, challenges the transfer of 47 acres of Queens parkland worth about $1 billion.

Avella said he will continue to work with the business owners.

Willets Point is a perfect example of, Lets take somebodys piece of property, not for a highway, not for a hospital, not for a school, he said. Lets take it so we can give it to a billion-dollar developer. That to me is so undemocratic and so un-American and Id be happy to work with them and continue this fight.

In 2015, the New York State Court of Appeals said it would hear an appeal by the developer, Queens Development Group.

In December, the City Council voted 46-2 to pass a resolution allowing the Council to issue an amicus brief in favor of the developer in the pending case. Councilman Rory Lancman (D-Hillcrest) and Councilman Paul Vallone (D-Bayside) voted against the resolution.

In 2013, the City Council voted to approve the overall project by a vote of 42-3.

Longtime Willets Point residents Joseph Ardizzone and Irene Prestigiacomo were also in attendance, commending Avella for his efforts and claiming that the city is responsible for the areas blight.

The Queens Development Group has maintained that it is confident that the court will allow the project to continue and that the project would reverse 100 years of pollution while creating thousands of good-paying jobs.
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By Graciano Clause

The Black Spectrum Theatre will help Queens celebrate Mothers Day with the second annual Spirit and Harmony Festival this weekend.

The theater, located in Roy Wilkins Park near Baisley Boulevard and 177th Street in Jamaica, will be filled with classic 70s soul music and live performances from groups across the African Diaspora.

Attendees can expect to treat their mothers to dinner and show as they vibe to music.

Philadelphias classic R&B singing group Blue Magic and New Yorks Crossfire Steel Orchestra will collaborate they entertain mothers and families. Special guests that will also be featured Sunday evening are Thokoza and Thuli Dumakude (Star of the Lion King in South Africa), with Bambara Dance and Drum Ensemble.

Carl Clay, founder of the Black Spectrum, said he was excited for the upcoming festival.

This event was created to bring different genres of culture including African, Caribbean, and R&B, Clay said.

Clay believes the display will bring a harmonious vibe for everyone in attendance.

Its the greatest gift we can give to mothers in community, Clay added.

Segun Shabaka, chairman of the board for the Directors at International African Affairs, added how special he believes this return event will be.

People can expect a very warm and upbeat pan African cultural vibe that will be a mixture of dynamic music ranging from South African a capella to R&B and so on, Shabaka said. This is for the mothers of all mothers, the African woman who are the creators of humanity from young and old.

The event runs from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. Doors open for vendors shopping at 3 p.m. Show tickets in advance are $25 in advance and $30 at the door. Tickets for the show and dinner are $45. For more information call (718) 723-1800.
By Christopher Collins of the Times Record News

The national trade organization representing wind energy developers announced late last month that the industry saw an significant uptick in new energy production for 2016's first quarter in comparison to other years.

In a report released April 28, the American Wind Energy Association said first-quarter production this year was at its highest level in four years. Developers produced 520 megawatts of new electricity generating capacity from January to March, the report states.

David Ward, a spokesman for the organization, said on Thursday that increased production is attributed to the installation of new turbines, a reduction in costs and more efficient electricity delivery systems. Texas leads the nation in total installed capacity and reported construction activity, he said.

"It's been an economic success story all across the state in Texas," Ward said.

North Texas already is home to a handful of wind developments, including the Shannon farm in Clay County and Bobcat Bluff in Archer County. Two more projects have been proposed in Clay County near the communities of Bluegrove and Byers.

Wind energy currently accounts for about 10 percent of the power generated in Texas. The U.S. Department of Energy anticipates that figure will rise to 28 percent by 2020 and 38 percent by 2030.

A wider distribution of wind turbines could spell trouble for local opponents of the developments.

Clay County's two proposed projects have drawn broad concern from a local opposition group, Sheppard Air Force Base and the Wichita Falls Chamber of Commerce & Industry, among others.

At talks presented by opposition group Clay County Against Wind Farms, attendees have been warned that some wind industry employees trick landowners into signing unfavorable leases with developers. They also warned of exaggerated statements made by the industry regarding job creation and economic benefits generated by turbines.

Ward, the wind energy spokesman, said industry opponents are outliers  not the status quo  and that Texas landowners and residents generally are supportive of developments.

"The rural landowners are also seeing a tremendous benefit. They call it a drought-resistant cash crop," Ward said. "When you go into any given area, you always hear some voice of concern, some opposition minority, but overall we see strong support in places like Texas."
SHARE Molly Beth Photography Doan's Picnic Queen Blakely Rose Schur and King Owen Hernandez Defoor Word

By Linda Stewart, Special to the Times Record News

The 133nd edition of the annual Doan's May Picnic will be held Saturday on the lawn of the historic Doan's Adobe where hundreds of guests and participants are expected to celebrate the historic event. The adobe house is the oldest structure still standing in Wilbarger County. It is located about 12 miles north of Vernon on FM 2916 near the area on the Red River where cattle drives crossed as they headed north to railheads in Kansas and Nebraska in the late 1800's.

The picnic is the oldest continuously celebrated event in the state.

The day's events include picnic registration scheduled at 9 a.m. Members of the Santa Rosa Palomino Club will conduct the presentation of the flags ceremony.

The 2015 Doan's King, John Andrew Oliver, and Queen Kathryn Paige Patterson and members of the 2015 Royal Court will preside over the coronation ceremony where Brayden Owen Hernandez and Blakely Rose Schur will be crowned the 2016 Doan's King and Queen.

Brayden, a fifth grade student at Shive Elementary, has a legacy that goes back several generations and family members say his heritage includes inks to Jesse James and Davy Crockett.

Blakely, 11, has a family can be traced across the state of Texas, as far back as the mid 1800s and in Wilbarger County back to the early 1900s.

The 2016 Doan's Man and Woman of the year will also be honored during the picnic festivities. Coyle Robert 'Dee' Defoor, Jr. is this year's Doan's May Picnic Outstanding man. He is a native of Vernon born in 1933.

Patsy Ruth Shelton Word has been named as the Doan's May Picnic Outstanding Woman for 2016. In the event of inclement weather, the picnic will be moved to Wilbarger Memorial Auditorium.
Were You Seen at Champagne on the Park celebrating the Lark Street BID's 20th anniversary, held in Albany's Washington Park on Thursday, May 5, 2016?

2016 marks the 20th Anniversary of the Lark Street BID, which works to improve the quality of life on Lark Street. The event honored leaders of the Lark Street community for the positive impact they continue to have on the community and the greater Capital Region.
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Green Island

Ecovative Design's new interior design division is feeding an entire new generation of eco-friendly designers in New York state with its mushroom-based building material.

While Ecovative, based in Green Island, has been making its unique materials for years, it's launching a new interior design products division this month at a design expo in New York City that will supply both finished mushroom components and moldable mushroom material to interior design companies and artists.

One artist who has been working with Ecovative is Danielle Trofe, an acclaimed Brooklyn-based interior designer.

She has been making funky new lamps called Mush-Lume that are made from Ecovative's mushroom material, which makes them biodegradable. The Mush-Lume has been featured over the past two years by Wired Magazine, Business Insider and The Wall Street Journal.

Last November, a company called Gunlocke based in Wayland, Steuben County, was recognized by BuildingGreen.com for its Savor chair that uses Ecovative's MycoBoard mushroom material.

MycoBoard has been certified by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's bio-based materials certification program, and the company has a manufacturing facility in Troy.

Ecovative CEO Eben Bayer told the Times Union that the company is supplying its base material directly to design companies and also makes its own finished products such as a new line of wall tiles.

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Ecovative is planning to unveil five new wall tiles it is making at the NYCxDesign exhibition from Saturday to Wednesday. The exhibition takes place at Astor Place Plaza in Greenwich Village.

Ecovative is working with interior designers Harry Allen, Eric Pfeiffer, and Alyssa Coletti to make the interior acoustic tiles. Environmentally friendly coverings are used on the tiles from Designtex of New York City, e2e Materials in Ithaca and Vermont Natural Coatings in Hardwick, Vt.

"We are just launching the interiors business officially now," Bayer told the Times Union. "DesignxNYC will be the first public display of the various products."

lrulison@timesunion.com  518-454-5504  @larryrulison
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Schenectady

Tom Caulfield admits that there are no answers in the world of science  only discovery.

Caulfield, the general manager of GlobalFoundries' Fab 8 computer chip factory in Saratoga County, said at a talk at Union College on Friday morning that the key to growing the semiconductor industry has always been collaboration between scientists with different viewpoints, different backgrounds and different strengths.

"I've made a career not knowing the right answers," Caulfield said. "And that's all about collaborating. The answers always find themselves."

Caulfield's talk was part of Union's annual Steinmetz Symposium that honors Charles Proteus Steinmetz, the famed "Wizard of Schenectady" who led research operations at General Electric Co. and taught engineering at Union until the end of World War I.

Caulfield, who studied at St. Lawrence University and Columbia University, said Steinmetz is a beloved figure and role model in the world of science and was known for his collaboration among his peers of the day on alternating current electrical technology, motors and electric vehicles, including the Steinmetz car.

"Steinmetz was known for the breadth and depth of his knowledge," said Caulfield, whose son Matthew is a freshman at Union. "And his patent catalogue was only limited by his generosity (with other inventors)."

Caulfield said GlobalFoundries, which was launched in 2009 as a "foundry" spin-off from Advanced Micro Devices that makes chips for other companies, also thrives on scientific collaboration. That includes among employees, with its customers  and even with its competitors.

GlobalFoundries is currently partnering with Samsung of South Korea on leading edge chips that use 14 nanometer transistor architecture, which is used in Apple's iPhone 6 and Samsung's most recent Galaxy models.

Caulfield said that under the partnership, Fab 8 in Malta is able to make exact replicas of the 14 nanometer chips that Samsung makes in its chip factory in South Korea. Caulfield also noted that since breaking ground in 2009 on Fab 8, GlobalFoundries has invested $12 billion on the facility, which includes the company's most advanced research lab used as part of the Samsung relationship. Fab 8 has about 3,000 employees.

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"We build the same product for our customers here (at Fab 8) all through collaboration," Caulfield said.

Caulfield urged students in the audience at his talk, held in the school's Old Chapel, to pursue what interests them most after they graduate.

"Do not confuse a job with a career," Caulfield said. "If you have passion, passion will lead you to do something you excel in, and then you can monetize that. And try to do some good along the way. That will create a full person."

lrulison@timesunion.com  518-454-5504  @larryrulison
Last month, unarmed Russian fighter jets buzzed within 30 feet of a U.S. Navy destroyer in the Baltic Sea and also barrel-rolled a U.S. reconnaissance plane flying over that sea.

In part, these provocative stunts were a message from Moscow of its continuing displeasure at the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, which had the temerity to join the European Union and NATO. Equally outrageous  from a Kremlin perspective  Baltic leaders are demonstrating how Europe could break away from its dangerous energy dependence on Russia, which Moscow cleverly wields to manipulate European politicians.

The Baltic states are spoilsports, messing with Vladimir Putin's mirage of re-establishing a Russian empire. So the Russian leader is probing for NATO weakness in the run-up to key alliance meetings, when U.S. and European leaders will discuss how to respond to Putin's destabilizing games.

Lithuania's deputy ambassador, Mindaugas Zickus, laid out in an interview the strategic reasons why that response demands firmness. "Putin's entire strategy is about testing us," says Zickus. "He is trying to explore how Russia can renew its greatness in imperial terms."

The Lithuanian diplomat doesn't buy the theory that Putin is only reacting to a fear of encirclement brought on by NATO expansion to the Baltics along with several countries in Central and Eastern Europe. (His skepticism is not surprising since the Baltic states were occupied by Moscow for decades.)

Zickus believes that Putin would have sought to restore Russian grandeur whether or not NATO expanded. "If we weren't NATO members," says Zickus, "he would have been more aggressive, trying to increase leverage over us in any area."

I agree. Given the large Russian ethnic minorities in Latvia and Estonia, Putin might even have tried to imitate his successful tactic in Ukraine, sending in Russian soldiers in disguise to destabilize the country.

Now that NATO has expanded, Putin's "strategic goal is to break up NATO," says Zickus. "He says NATO belongs to the past." (He is no doubt encouraged by Donald Trump, who says NATO is no longer necessary.)

The Russian leader has chalked up successes in his seizure of Crimea from non-NATO member Ukraine and his ability to destabilize eastern Ukraine, thus ensuring it will never join NATO.

But Zickus believes Putin was surprised at the way the alliance held together in reauthorizing economic sanctions against Moscow six times for its invasion of Ukraine.

So what does he believe the alliance must do now to convince Putin that the Kremlin's dangerous military maneuvers could provoke a military conflict, one that not even the Kremlin desires?

Zickus makes three essential points.

First, the response to Putin must be very clear, including on a preventative military level. "We hope Putin understands war with the West makes no sense," the diplomat says. "But he wants to test every possible weakness. He doesn't know how far he'll go but he is testing."

The Balts would like to see more NATO military support, including a permanent basing of NATO troops on their soil. (Under a 1997 NATO-Russia accord, both sides pledged not to station large numbers of troops along their respective borders, but Baltic leaders believe Russia violated that act with its invasion of Ukraine.) However, they are pleased that President Barack Obama is planning a substantial increase in the deployment of heavy weapons and equipment to Central and Eastern Europe, including an armored brigade of 4,200 troops. This month, Defense Secretary Ash Carter said NATO was also considering an additional force of 4,000 troops that would rotate between the Baltics and Poland.

These troops would not be permanently based, so they would not violate the 1997 deal, but they would send the message that NATO stands behind its new members. Whether this would be sufficient to check Putin's dangerous probing is unclear.

Second, Zickus says NATO must figure out how to deal with Putin's hybrid warfare, which seeks to undermine European democracies in ways other than military force.

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Moscow uses broadcast media  which reaches Russian minorities in the Baltics  to push anti-NATO propaganda.

Moreover, as I've written, Russia funds populist political candidates in Europe who are anti-American and oppose NATO and membership in the European Union.

In addition, Russian money has reportedly backed European green movements that oppose fracking, which could help wean Europe off dependence on Russian gas.

Western countries don't fully grasp the potency of such Russian tactics, nor have they come up with any counter-strategy that works.

Which leads to point three: Lithuania has demonstrated how Europe can and should wean itself off Russian energy supplies.

Last year, Lithuania, which had been totally dependent on Russian gas, opened an LNG terminal at Klaipada. This year the country will receive more than half its gas from Norway. The Lithuanian example demonstrates the potential for European energy independence, helped by future LNG exports from the United States  although Russia is trying to undermine the momentum.

"We will have Russia as a normal partner when Russia realizes we can survive without them, that we have other options," says Zickus. A small Baltic nation is showing how this can be done.

Trudy Rubin is a columnist and editorial-board member for the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Albany

Midway through her sharp, mostly polished 70-minute set at a packed Times Union Center on Thursday night, the comic Amy Schumer articulated a concise dismissal of those who reject her comedy, on stage and on her hit Comedy Central series, "Inside Amy Schumer," because she's a woman who's frankly sexual in her material but isn't as beautiful as a supermodel.

"A lot of people like to decide if I'm attractive enough to use my voice," she said, her blase, matter-of-fact tone making the observation all the more pointed. Without a hint of irony, which made her next comment more powerful, she said, "I say no. I think I should have a bag over my head before I open my mouth." Later, describing the pressure she'd felt to be skinny for her starring turn in last year's film "Trainwreck," she said she'd lost a significant amount of weight but felt disproportional, her head too large for her starved body: "I looked like a Thanksgiving float of Tonya Harding."

Schumer is not the girl next door. She's what the girl next door would be if she claimed women's right to sexual pleasure to be the same as men's and asserted that women are entitled to speak their minds, to be as ridiculous, absurd, clumsy, silly, drunk  to be equals  to the opposite sex.

At the top of the comedy world right now, Schumer delivered a set far more polished and provocative than she performed during her last local appearance, at the Palace Theatre in fall 2014. She recognizes the fleeting nature of such celebrity, saying several times during the show some version of this: "I'm not going to be famous for very long, because I say what I mean."

Schumer continues the bacchanalian exuberance of her earlier, less-famous persona, mining humor from drinking to excess and having sexual misadventures. In a smart bit about her former alcohol intake, she said, "Nothing good ever comes from being blackout drunk: What is this Pilates mat doing out? Rubik's Cube: Finished?!" Instead, she said, "I'm more likely to be wearing a potato skin as an eye patch and (thinking), 'This is dried Haagen-Dasz  or at least I hope so.'"

In a live-show analogue to some of her more pointed TV sketches, Schumer mocked the demands women put on themselves, believing such efforts necessary to attract men. Women's magazines, she said, have stories with headlines such as "How to trick your stomach into thinking you ate this week " and "How not to wake him when you're sobbing in bed."

"I'm the worst famous person," she said. "It's almost over for me."

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Perhaps. But let's hope not.

Mark Normand, a comic Schumer plucked from a New York City comedy club six years ago to be an opener for her, did a quick 15 minutes of more obvious humor related to dating and sex. His material, more setup-and-punchline jokes than Schumer's anecdotal style of humor, had a few choice observations, including, "My (penis) is like an indie band: You've got to see it live," and, "If you had to pay for religion once a month like DirecTV, you'd be like, 'This (crap) isn't working.'"

The evening opened with 25 minutes of the jazz trio Locksmith Isidore, fronted by Schumer's half-brother, the bass clarinetist Jason Stein. The music was fine but largely irrelevant and unacknowledged, as the huge crowd slowly made its way to the beer concessions and their seats. The band's presence seemed mostly a reason to toss a talented relative some money and an audience far larger than he'd ever otherwise play for. That seems an admirable allegiance, entirely in line with Schumer's don't-give-a-crap attitude.

sbarnes@timesunion.com  518-454-5489  @Tablehopping  http://facebook.com/SteveBarnesFoodCritic
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Washington

In the wake of Donald Trump sewing up the GOP presidential nomination, Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-Willsboro, reiterated a tepid endorsement of "my party's nominee'' but could not bring herself to say the New York mogul's name.

In response to an Albany Times Union query, Stefanik released a statement repeating her past pledge of party loyalty. It came just prior to Trump's victory in the Indiana primary on Tuesday, which forced his last remaining opponents  Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Ohio Gov. John Kasich  from the race.

"Like my Democratic opponent, I will support my party's nominee in the fall,'' Stefanik said in the statement, referring to retired Army Col. Mike Derrick of Peru, Clinton County. "My primary focus is serving my constituents to the best of my ability and I'm proud to have spent my first term in Congress working to deliver on my campaign promise to bring new ideas and a new generation of leadership to Washington.''

Asked whether post-Indiana she cared to add the name "Donald Trump,'' her campaign consultant and spokesman Lenny Alcivar responded "our statements remain operative.''

"No candidate at any level in America, Democrat of Republican, is going to agree with the presidential standard bearers 100 percent of time and Elise Stefanik is no different,'' Alcivar said.

Stefanik declined repeated requests for an interview. Her word parsing paralleled that of Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H., whose embattled re-election campaign said in a statement that she would "support'' Trump, but will not "endorse'' him or anyone in the election cycle.

Stefanik's actions may speak louder than her lack of words. Even before the primary, Stefanik said she would not attend the GOP Convention in Cleveland  a decision that recalls her predecessor, former Rep. Bill Owens, who stayed away from the Democratic Convention in 2012 that nominated President Barack Obama for a second term.

Backing Trump even remotely has to be a bitter pill for Stefanik to swallow.

She is a female Republican millennial seeking her first re-election in the far-flung North Country 21st District. He is a publicity-hungry, blustery, aging white male billionaire. They mix together like oil and water.

Trump's insults to women, promises to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border and temporarily halt Muslims entering the country appear antithetical to Stefanik's "big-tent'' Republican image, which boosted her to victory in 2014 over Democratic contender Aaron Woolf.

Although she endorsed no one in the New York's April 19 primary, her heart clearly was with mainstream conservative Republicans like former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush or Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla.  or even House Speaker Paul Ryan, who chose to avoid a last-minute entry and on Thursday said he was not yet ready to endorse Trump.

Stefanik worked with Ryan on debate prep in 2012 when Ryan was former Mass. Gov. Mitt Romney's running mate. She also worked in the White House under President George W. Bush, who like his father President George H.W. Bush is staying neutral this year.

Her not endorsing Trump in the primary season led former New York Republican gubernatorial candidate and Trump campaign leader Carl Paladino to blast Stefanik as a "fraud'' and "a RINO (Republican in Name Only) Washington elitist establishment sellout.'' He leveled an ultimately empty threat to find a primary challenger.

Michael Caputo, manager of Paladino's unsuccessful 2010 campaign against Gov. Andrew Cuomo, insisted the broadside is water under the bridge and Stefanik should feel comfortable backing Trump whole-heartedly.

"We believe Elise Stefanik is an important leader not just in the North Country but in Washington,'' said Caputo, who is now a Trump campaign senior adviser. "We'd love to have her aboard we're devoted to the idea she can do this when she pleases.''

Does the Trump campaign understand the misgivings a 32-year-old woman Republican lawmaker might have about the presumptive nominee?

"We understand where it's coming from, but we will defeat this narrative,'' said Caputo. "The idea that Donald is anti-woman, anti-Muslim or anti-Latino is patently false.''

Republican leaders on Capitol Hill and elsewhere worry that an incendiary Trump campaign could form a Democratic tsunami in which Republicans lose not only the presidential race but control of the Senate and even the House.

But North Country political demographics suggest Stefanik could emerge a survivor. Although Obama beat Romney in the 21st District in 2012, Republicans hold a enrollment advantage of 50,000 votes.

In last month's New York primary, Trump won the 21st with over 30,800 votes. On the Democratic side, former first lady, N.Y. senator and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton lost to Sen. Bernie Sanders, D-Vt., garnering just over 15,000 votes.

Derrick, 54, an Army missile-defense specialist who retired as a full colonel after 28 years of active duty, faces not only Stefanik but Green Party candidate Matt Funiciello  who is likely to siphon off Democratic votes.

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"It is by no means certain that Donald Trump is an electoral albatross in New York's North Country congressional district,'' said Harvey Schantz, chair of the Political Science Department at SUNY Plattsburgh. "One would expect Stefanik to win re-election in 2016, maybe even enjoying a sophomore surge in her vote percentage. She has all the traditional incumbent advantages, including money in the bank and name recognition.''

In a brief phone interview, Derrick said that whatever the Republicans' advantage in the North Country might be, the turbulence created by Trump's victory has thrown Stefanik's House seat up for grabs.

"We're beginning to see some tremendous, tremendous divides opening up in the Republican Party and I think it certainly benefits me in my race,'' he said. "I'm from a culture where honor is the platform upon which all leadership is built, and I don't think you can look at Donald Trump and feel his conduct in this campaign has been honorable. Some of his statements have been outrageous.''

Stefanik has the backing of 12 GOP county chairs in the North Country.

"She didn't come out for or against (Trump in the primary) and neither did I,'' said Don Coon, GOP chair in Jefferson County. "People are going to characterize the candidates any way they want, but the Democrats have a much wider divide between Hillary and Bernie.''

Asked whether Trump's candidacy could pose problems for Stefanik's re-election, Coon replied, "I don't think so.''

Coon's counterpart in St. Lawrence County, Tom Jenison did not support Trump but agrees Stefanik should be able to weather the storm. "I think she's really strong in the 21st District and I don't believe the presidential election will make a difference.''

Not surprisingly, North Country Democrats beg to differ.

"I think she's going to have a hard time with Trump at the top of ticket,'' said Sheila Comar, Democratic chair of Washington County who lives in Granville.

"I'd like her response to whether she agrees with banning Muslims, or building a wall,'' said Lynne Boecher, Democratic chair of Warren County who lives in Queensbury. "The way he has cavorted around and conducted himself is vile. And I'd like to see a response to what he's articulated his first 100 days will look like.''

dan@hearstdc.com
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Albany

Parents who could use a helping hand need look no further than the corner.

Mary's Corner, that is.

A ministry of the nonprofit Albany Association of Ladies of Charity, Mary's Corner is a resource for parents who often have no place else to turn.

More Information Help from the corner For information about what donations are needed at Mary's Corner, email cstellato12@gmail.com or go to https://localbany.com. See More Collapse

There already are locations at the Cohoes Public Library and the Sister Maureen Joyce Center in Arbor Hill/West Hill, and a third Mary's Corner will open May 13 at St. Francis of Assisi Church on St. James Place, the former St. James School, shared by Albany Medical Center's Kids Child Care.

"All of the items we provide were donated, and everything we receive is given back to the community," said Ellen Bernier, who coordinates Mary's Corner with fellow volunteer Candice Stellato. "It was a lot of people working together to get this off the ground."

Since 2010, the all-volunteer outreach program has provided free diapers, formula, baby food and cereal, wipes, diaper cream, baby wash, outfits and books once a month to parents with infants and children up to 4 years old. Blankets, crib sheets, sippy cups, jackets, toys, strollers and other baby items are also available.

Last year, Mary's Corner distributed 18,849 diapers, 331 cans of formula, 1,185 jars of baby food, 1,022 books, 1,985 outfits and 2,277 personal hygiene items to families in need who shop for items in an organized, store-like setting. Those numbers are sure to grow this year with the addition of a third location.

The new site will be open from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Fridays and covers the same geographic area served by St. Francis of Assisi Church: Delaware Avenue toward Morton Avenue, Lincoln Park toward Eagle Street and South Pearl Street. It's a part of the city that has seen steady growth in recent years, with immigrant and refugee families resettling in the community.

"We're expecting to serve families with multiple young children who speak up to six different languages," said Stellato, who once served as president of the Albany Association of Ladies of Charity, part of an international organization that will celebrate its 400th anniversary next year. "The five-day supply they get from us each month really helps and makes a big difference in household income."

Families must be referred by one of several outreach agencies, including St. John's/St. Ann's Outreach Center, the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, St. Vincent de Paul Church, the social services ministry of the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception and Healthy Families Albany County.

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St. Francis is providing the space rent-free, St. Pius X Church in Loudonville funded its renovation and the Sisterhood of Congregation Beth Emeth regularly makes donations, which include handmade blankets.

That's what makes Mary's Corner so effective  consistent support from all areas of the community, especially Catholic parishes and local schools.

The three locations are stocked with a regular flow of donations and run by a crew of 60 volunteers who take pride in what they offer. Nothing goes out on the rack that volunteers wouldn't put on their own children.

"We are serving so many families facing similar needs all over the region," said Bernier, who has 35 donated strollers from Verizon Pioneers in her car. "Our goal is to make our services consistent with every Mary's Corner that we open."

jpatterson@timesunion.com  @JenSPatterson  518-454-5340
The following editorial appeared in The Seattle Times:

President Barack Obama's visit to Vietnam this month is an opportunity to remind that authoritarian nation's leaders of their obligations to respect basic human rights.

Vietnamese-Americans will be following the trip. Many of them fled communist rule themselves and remain concerned about the welfare of their loved ones in the homeland.

A recent crackdown on peaceful critics of Vietnam's one-party government casts doubt on the country's ability to adhere to the promises it made as one of 12 signatories to the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

To be included in that international trade agreement last year, Vietnam agreed for the first time to allow the formation of labor unions and to follow higher environmental-conservation standards. Such promises supposedly marked the beginning of a new era of transparency and civil discourse.

For part of 2015, Vietnam reported a decline in arrests and prosecutions of political dissidents.

But the numbers have suddenly crept up. As of last December, the U.S. State Department estimated that the government was still holding 95 political prisoners. On its Vietnam webpage, Human Rights Watch warns the country's record "remains dire in all areas." Those who dare to question state media or discuss civil rights in the open are subject to intimidation and assault.

At every stop, President Obama should not let his hosts forget that the international community is watching and waiting for real reforms.
[May 06, 2016] A.M. BestTV: Mitigation Firms Play Havoc With Florida Homeowners Market

In this A.M.BestTV episode from the annual conference of the Florida Association for Insurance Reform (FAIR), insurance leaders said Florida must revise an out-of-control system that allows mitigation companies to take control of homeowners insurance claims and drive up rates. Click on http://www.ambest.com/v.asp?v=fair516nc to view the entire program. "This conference was designed to provide consumers, through the media and other groups, with a little better idea of how carriers are solvent, ready and able to pay claims," said Jay Neal, president and chief executive officer, FAIR. "This applies not for just one hurricane, but for a series of hurricane events." The conference also explored the role that catastrophe reinsurance plays in markets heavily exposed to hurricane risks. "I am one of those that believe the capital will come in. We saw it after Hurricane Andrew, Sept. 11 and Hurricane Katrina. However, what form that capital takes is the question now," said Matthew Mosher, executive vice president and chief operating officer, A.M. Best Rating Services, Inc. Other people who appear in this episode include: Jeff Brandes, Florida state senator, R-St. Petersburg;

Daryl Polenz, vice president, account executive, Swiss Reinsurance Company ;

; Randy Dumm, hold professor, risk management & insurance, associate director, center for insurance research, Florida State University;

Kevin McCarty, past commissioner, Florida Office of Insurance Regulation; and

Barry Gilway, president and chief executive officer, Citizens Property Insurance Corporation. Full-length interviews are available as well. Go to http://www.ambest.tv to see all the interviews, which includes a discussion with Sean Shaw, an attorney and Florida's former insurance consumer advocate.



Recent episodes of A.M.BestTV include: Philly I-Day Focuses on the Challenges of Filling the Talent Gap : Insurers at the 60th annual conference of the Insurance Society of Philadelphia (Philly I-Day) said they were prioritizing efforts to bring in new talent and better develop younger industry recruits: http://www.ambest.com/v.asp?v=phillyiday516.

: Insurers at the 60th annual conference of the Insurance Society of Philadelphia (Philly I-Day) said they were prioritizing efforts to bring in new talent and better develop younger industry recruits: http://www.ambest.com/v.asp?v=phillyiday516. Insurers Revisit Their Asset Mix in Search of Yield, Safety : A panel of investment professionals explores opportunities for growth that are available to today's insurance investment managers: http://www.ambest.com/v.asp?v=riskassets516.

: A panel of investment professionals explores opportunities for growth that are available to today's insurance investment managers: http://www.ambest.com/v.asp?v=riskassets516. Aspen's Kania: Price Volatility Brings New Risks, Change to Energy Market : Tim Kania, global head of onshore energy & construction, Aspen Insurance , said lower oil prices bring risks that energy providers may be weaker financially and less attentive to maintenance: http://www.ambest.com/v.asp?v=kania416

: Tim Kania, global head of onshore energy & construction, , said lower oil prices bring risks that energy providers may be weaker financially and less attentive to maintenance: http://www.ambest.com/v.asp?v=kania416 Pandemics' Impact Reaches Beyond Health: Recently, insurers said that the outbreak of Zika, SARS, MES and Legionnaires diseases are affecting business operations, as well as generating surprising impacts and increased costs: http://www.ambest.com/v.asp?v=pandemic416. A.M.BestTV covers exclusive A.M. Best information and reports, targeted topics and key developments in the (re)insurance industry every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Sign up for alerts of episodes at http://www.ambest.com/multimedia/ambtvsignup.html. View A.M.BestTV episodes at http://www.ambest.tv.

A.M. Best is the world's oldest and most authoritative insurance rating and information source. For more information, visit www.ambest.com. Copyright  2016 by A.M. Best Company, Inc. and/or its affiliates. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160506005540/en/

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[May 06, 2016]

B.S.D CROWN LTD. - Cancellation of Extraordinary General Meeting

LONDON, May 6, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Company: B.S.D CROWN LTD., incorporated and registered in the State of Israel with registered number 52-004292-0 (the "Company")

Notice by: Rotenstreich Gitzelter Trust Company Ltd. ("Rotenstreich Gitzelter ")

The Extraordinary General Meeting of the Company (the "EGM"), which was scheduled to be held on Monday, May , 2016 at 2pm (London time) at the Hilton London Tower Bridge, 5 More London Place, Tooley Street, London SE1 2BY, United Kingdom, is hereby cancelled.







The EGM is cancelled due to a decision of the District Court in Tel-Aviv, Israel in the hearing of the motion held on May 5, 2016.

Contact:

Rotenstreich Gitzelter Trust Company Ltd.

25 Ibn Gvirol Street, Tel-Aviv, Israel

Tel: +972-3-5258090

Fax: +972-3-5258080

Email: [email protected]
[May 06, 2016] Gantry Arrives as Beaumont Hospital Readies Proton Center

A new generation medical device that precisely directs the cancer killing proton beam at tumors has arrived at Beaumont Hospital after crossing the ocean from Antwerp, Belgium, where it was manufactured. The Proteus (News - Alert)One Gantry is a compact alternative to the massive, three-story systems installed in some proton centers, making it possible for Beaumont and other hospitals to build far more affordable treatment facilities, but with the same precision as larger alternatives. The gantry, manufactured by IBA as part of its ProteusOne proton system, came over aboard the Floretgracht, a Dutch cargo vessel, and arrived at Beaumont yesterday. The center is expected to open in the spring of 2017. "This is an exciting milestone that brings us one step closer to offering this important cancer therapy," said Dr. Craig Stevens, Health System Chair, and Radiation Oncology Professor. "Our center will offer the best technology available for this advanced treatment. We will integrate intensity modulated proton therapy with daily imaging. This approach provides maximal dose to the tumor, while avoiding nearby healthy tissue. The long term effec of this will be more cures with fewer side effects."



Proton therapy is an alternative to X-ray radiation for treating certain cancers. It spares healthy tissue adjacent to the tumor and thus reduces or eliminates many of the short- and long-term treatment side effects. Proton therapy is particularly effective in treating solid tumors, including tumors of the brain, central nervous system, eye, gastrointestinal tract, head and neck, liver, lung, prostate, spine and some breast tumors. Proton therapy is especially important when treating children. Because of their small size, children are vulnerable to the damage and side effects of X-ray radiation therapy. "Children treated for cancer today usually live a very long time" said Dr. Stevens. "This longevity makes reducing side effects that much more important. Protons will be important for our adult patients too. We will be able to treat many primary tumors better with protons than with more conventional approaches, but perhaps most importantly we will have the ability to potentially cure patients that have failed conventional treatment from other centers."

Proton International is participating in the development of the center, a company that specializes in building and operating one- and two-room centers. "To be at this important project stage with our partners at Beaumont Hospital is also an important milestone for Proton International. Moving the industry towards clinically effective and financially feasible one-room applications is a key goal for our company," says Chris Chandler, CEO of Proton International. Beaumont Hospital's $40 million, two-story proton therapy building will be 25,200-square-feet. The first floor will house a one-room proton therapy center and the second floor will be home to the Beaumont Children's Pediatric Oncology and Hematology program. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160506005087/en/

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[May 06, 2016] Global and China LED Billboard Market Share 2016 - 2021 Report

PUNE, India, May 6, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- RnRMarketResearch.com adds "Global and Chinese LED Billboard Industry, 2016 Market Research Report" latest study of 150 pages, published in Jan 2016, to the Media business intelligence collection of its store. This report estimate 2016-2021 LED Billboard Industry Cost and Profit with Market Competition of LED Billboard Industry by Country: (Including Europe, U.S., Japan, China etc.), By Company and Application. Complete report on LED Billboard market divided into 11 major chapters that offer an overview of current market scenario as well as 2021 forecasts is now available at http://www.rnrmarketresearch.com/global-and-chinese-led-billboard-industry-2016-market-research-report-market-report.html . This Global and Chinese Report 2016 is a result of industry experts' diligent work on researching the world market of LED Billboard. The report helps to build up a clear view of the market (scenario and survey), identify major players in the industry, and analyzes the upstream raw materials, downstream clients, and current market dynamics of LED Billboard Industry. The report reviews the basic information of LED Billboard including its classification, application and manufacturing technology. This report explores global and China's top manufacturers of LED Billboard listing their product specification, capacity, Production value, and market share etc. The report further analyzes quantitatively 2011-2016 global and China's total market of LED Billboard by calculation of main economic parameters of each company. In the end, the report makes a proposal for a new project of LED Billboard Industry before evaluating its feasibility. Overall, the report provides an in-depth insight of 2011-2016 global and China LED Billboard industry covering all important parameters.



The first chapter introduces the LED Billboard Industry by Brief Introduction, Development & Status of LED Billboard Industry. The second chapter focuses on Manufacturing Technology ofLED Billboard, the third one gives Analysis of Global Key Manufacturers (Including Company Profile, Product Specification, 2011-2016 Production Information etc.). The forth chapter deals with 2011-2016 Global and China Market of LED Billboard. The chapter 5 summarizes Market Status of LED Billboard Industry. Order a copy of this report at http://www.rnrmarketresearch.com/contacts/purchase?rname=468036 .



List of Tables and Figures for Global & China LED Billboard Industry

Figure LED Billboard Product Picture

Table Development of LED Billboard Manufacturing Technology

Figure Manufacturing Process of LED Billboard

Table Trends of LED Billboard Manufacturing Technology Figure 2011-2016 Company H LED Billboard Capacity Production and Growth Rate

Figure 2011-2016 Company H LED Billboard Production Global Market Share

Table 2011-2016 Global LED Billboard Capacity List

Table 2011-2016 Global LED Billboard Key Manufacturers Capacity Share List

Figure 2011-2016 Global LED Billboard Manufacturers Capacity Share

Table 2011-2016 Global LED Billboard Key Manufacturers Production List

Table 2011-2016 Global LED Billboard Key Manufacturers Production Share List

Figure 2011-2016 Global LED Billboard Manufacturers Production Share

Figure 2011-2016 Global LED Billboard Capacity Production and Growth Rate

Table 2011-2016 Global LED Billboard Key Manufacturers Production Value List

Another research titled Global Outdoor Advertising Market 2015-2019 forecasts a 5.44% CAGR for outdoor advertising industry to 2019. The growth of the market is attributed to the expansion of infrastructure used, growth in the digital medium, and advances in the technology used. To calculate the market size, the report considers the revenue generated from both physical and digital outdoor advertising. Based on medium, the market is classified into Billboards, Transit advertising, Street furniture and Alternative media. Clear Channel Outdoor, JCDecaux, Lamar Advertising, Outfront Media and Stroer Media are major companies discussed in this report available at http://www.rnrmarketresearch.com/global-outdoor-advertising-market-2015-2019-market-report.html . Explore other new reports on media market at http://www.rnrmarketresearch.com/reports/information-technology-telecommunication/media . About Us: RnRMarketResearch.com is your single source for all market research needs. Our database includes 500,000+ market research reports from over 100+ leading global publishers & in-depth market research studies of over 5000 micro markets. With comprehensive information about the publishers and the industries for which they publish market research reports, we help you in your purchase decision by mapping your information needs with our huge collection of reports. Connect with Us: G+ / Google Plus: https://plus.google.com/104156468549256253075/posts Twitter: https://twitter.com/RnRMR Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/RnR-Market-Research/413488545356345 RSS / Feeds: http://www.rnrmarketresearch.com/feed Contact:

Ritesh Tiwari

UNIT no 802, Tower no. 7, SEZ

Magarpatta city, Hadapsar

Pune - 411013

Maharashtra, India.

Tel: +1-888-391-5441

[email protected]



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[May 06, 2016] Visiting Nurse Health System Appoints New CEO

Visiting Nurse Health System, greater Atlanta's long-time leader in providing home health and end-of-life care services, is pleased to announce the appointment of Norene Mostkoff as CEO beginning in July. Since 2009 Mostkoff has served as President and Chief Executive Officer of HCI-VNS Care Services of Des Moines, Iowa, currently serving over 65,000 patients annually in 44 counties. In 2012 Mostkoff successfully led the merger of Hospice of Central Iowa and Visiting Nurse Services of Iowa-the state's largest home care and hospice programs-to provide compassionate and effective community-based care. Under Mostkoff's leadership, HCI-VNS was recognized as one of the best places to work in Iowa by the Des Moines Register, honored with the United Way of Central Iowa Live United Give Award and the Better Business Bureau's Integrity Award. She is currently the Chair Elect of the Visiting Nurse Association of America. Prior to HCI-VNS, Mostkoff served as the chief operating officer at HospiceCare Inc. (now Agrace HospiceCare) in Madison, Wisconsin, which provided end-of-life care to more than 500 patients each day. Mostkoff has moe than 25 years of experience in nonprofit management, as well as winning awards for Outstanding Agency Leader of the Year 2015 by the Visiting Nurse Association of America, and Advocate of the Year 2015 by the United Way of Central Iowa. She earned an MBA from University of Wisconsin and a Mathematics Teaching degree from University of Illinois.



"The entire Visiting Nurse Health System family is excited to welcome Norene with her wealth of experience, and commitment to mission she brings," said Bill Henagan, Visiting Nurse's Board Chair. "The Board of Directors have spent a great deal of time determining the right person to lead Visiting Nurse into the future. Norene will allow us to continue to serve a larger, more pivotal role in Atlanta's home health and end-of-life care." Mostkoff replaces Interim CEO, Atlanta native, and prior COO Mary Arthur who stepped in from retirement in December to provide fresh leadership and invaluable support to Visiting Nurse and the CEO transition process.

About Visiting Nurse Health System Founded in 1948, Visiting Nurse Health System is Georgia's largest nonprofit provider of home healthcare and hospice services, and operates Hospice Atlanta Center in Buckhead. The mission of its 750 employees is to improve the lives of the more than 6,000 patients and their families served each day. Thanks to the support of generous individuals, foundations and corporations, Visiting Nurse is able to provide compassionate, quality care to all of its patients regardless of their ability to pay. For more information, please visit www.vnhs.org. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160506005616/en/

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[May 05, 2016] Only the 'Bear' Essentials for Better Financial Decisions

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, May 6, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Have you ever been in a situation where you are completely lost and have to bear the hassle of comparing various travel insurance policies and credit cards? Starting today, break free from the hair pulling confusion of trying to select the best financial products to suit your needs. GoBear, the easy-to-navigate site provides unbiased side-by-side comparison between different financial products for users. GoBear believes in being an internet company that specialises as an information platform and not as a seller or representative of products. This allows unbiased search results that are fair, simple, and complete to match the needs and preference of any individual or family. Consider it the go-to place when you need only the bare necessities to help you pick the perfect financial product. GoBear currently lists over 1,000 financial products on its website and will be adding more in the months to come. "GoBear originated from the idea that people today want easy access to service information, and that customers should be able to compare various financial products easily before making a decision. This is where GoBear steps in, to provide a new experience that makes searching for financial products quickly, easily and transparently," said Iskandar Ezzahuddn, Country Director Malaysia, GoBear.



He continued, "Today's insurance buyers are mobile-first, multi-screen and social media savvy. To reach them, insurance companies will need to employ an increasing emphasis on simplicity in search." GoBear recorded a 50 percent month on month growth in usage with over 1.2 million users since it first established itself in Singapore and Thailand.

On the expansion to Malaysia, Andre Hesselink, Chief Executive Officer of GoBear explained, "GoBear is a global brand in the making and we are very focused on being local to serve customers in each of our key markets in the best way. Together with a team of Malaysian specialists, we continue to enhance the seamless user experience, with search, filter and insurance quotes." GoBear Malaysia currently features travel insurance and credits cards. The site will be expanding into the car insurance and personal loan category in the third quarter of this year. With GoBear, all the crucial information you need is as 'bear' as it comes. For more information about GoBear, please visit www.gobear.com.my and follow the #gobearMY journey on our Facebook page www.facebook.com/gobearmalaysia and Instagram @lifeofgobear. About GoBear GoBear is Asia's first and only metasearch engine in insurance and financial products. It was founded based on the simple premise that a consumer should find freedom and ease in choosing complex financial products like insurance, credit cards and loans. Headquartered in Singapore since early 2015, GoBear has established presence in Thailand, Malaysia and will continue to expand across Southeast Asia in 2016. As one of the fastest growing fintech startups in Asia, GoBear is leading the way in democratising financial shopping experience with its unbiased and personalised comparison process. GoBear's user-oriented platform neither aggregate nor sell products. GoBear simply offers consumers a free and transparent comparison process based on their financial needs, and not influenced by service providers' advertising. The result is a user-friendly and informed experience that saves consumers both time and money.

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[May 06, 2016] Global Debut Release in Seattle for the New Idealens All-in-one VR Headset

SEATTLE, May 6, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- In the technical community in 2016, the sector with the most novelties is probably virtual reality (VR). After the product releases by the three tech giants, namely, Oculus, HTC and Sony, at 19:00, May 5, 2016, Pacific Time, Idealens II, another important all-in-one VR headset, was officially launched in Seattle to the global market. This release was presided over by Brent Jentzsch, Business Development Director of Idealens. The company invited many elite experts of the VR industry to witness the maiden show of Idealens II. Among the guests who attended the event, many were dignitaries of the VR industry, such as Todd Hooper, CEO of VREAL and founder of the Seattle VR Salon; Taylor Freeman, CEO of UploadVR; Pete Moss, Chief Software Engineer of Unity Technologies; Ivan Blaustein, Director of Product Integration of VRstudios; and Kyle Riesenbeck, Senior Technical Expert of Studio/216.The guests showed up at the scene of the event and experienced the all-in-one VR headset of Idealens II at the first time. During the event, Idealens II perfectly demonstrated the "charms of mobility" as an all-in-one VR headset. When the user puts it on, they may move boundlessly and freely, without being tethered by the host and wires. There are no limitations for them to use different scenes, where they may step into another virtual world when they stand up, walk, sit, or lie down. Even the dignitaries who attended the event showed great interest in Idealens II. After their experience, the guests and pros spoke highly of its performance. They believed that it was an extraordinary breakthrough for Idealens II to be comparable with the experience offered by the top-level PC grade VR machines given the device's achievement of overcoming the environmental limitations for use. Technological advantages are a main reason for the Idealens II all-in-one VR to gain good recognition frm the professionals. Though a cool exterior and a smart and compact body the device has, the hardware strength cannot be downplayed. Through a vivid speech, Brent Jentzsch unveiled the advanced technologies adopted by Idealens II one by one.



Among the technical features, the most attractive one is its unique innovations on exterior design and wearable technology. Unlike PC grade VR devices, it is an important technical challenge for the all-in-one devices to meet the requirements for use in mobility conditions, while the wearable solution demonstrated by Idealens II is a very excellent one in this regard. According to Brent Jentzsch, Idealens II is the first across the globe to have employed a solution of rear battery pack for balance weight for the all-in-one VR headset. With a weight of 320g for the main body and a mounting way featuring a steel structure with a spring mechanism, the Idealens II provides excellent comfort for wearing, and the device provides the most reasonable design for wearable solution in the industry.

According to user feedback, Idealens II is the best VR product in terms of comfort among all its VR counterparts. The users do not need any manual adjustment, and they can enter the breathtaking virtual world instantly. Considering different uses, Idealens II provides multiple methods for wearing, such as game mode and cinema mode. Comparatively, professionals from the United States are more concerned with the optical performance of Idealens II. This area has always been the expertise of Idealens. The FOV (field of view) of Idealens II has reached 120 degrees, which is the maximum value among those of all types of VR devices currently available on the market. Supporting the 120-degree FOV are two AMOLED screens of low persistence, with a refresh rate at 90Hz. Thanks to the base algorithm development competence accumulated perennially by the Idealens team, the device is supplied with the advanced technologies of low lapse and the ATW (Asynchronous Time Warp), which can effectively reduce the dizziness during use due to display delay. The overall delay can be controlled within 17ms. With top-speed response, you may experience a virtual world with greater smoothness and immersion. The professionals interviewed at the site after using the device all said that Idealens II provided great immersion. One of the experts remarked, "The super-wide field of view and splendid image quality instantly took me into an unknown world, in which I felt as if I were personally on the scene. After I removed the glasses, I was in a trance for a few seconds as I had returned to the world of reality. It was truly amazing!" Actually, before the release of Idealens II, the first generation of Idealens all-in-one VR headset had earned an extraordinary reputation in the industry at important global exhibitions. After GDC 2016, experts such as Robert Pleasant, American tech-columnist, and editors from 4Gamer.net, Japan's largest gaming website, praised the Idealens all-in-one headset publicly. At CIMC, which ended recently, senior executives from Google, Twitter and Amazon spoke highly of the product as well. For this time, the release of the Idealens II all-in-one VR headset marked a comprehensive upgrade in terms of exterior, performance, and response experience compared to the device of last generation. It was not unexpected that the device could reap a favorable reputation in the industry. To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/global-debut-release-in-seattle-for-the-new-idealens-all-in-one-vr-headset-300263453.html SOURCE Idealens

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[May 06, 2016] Olympus Partners with King's College Hospital to Deliver Britain's Largest 3D Surgical Endoscopy Installation and Improve Efficiency in Surgery

SOUTHEND-ON-SEA, England, May 6, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- New integrated surgical theatres built to improve patient care

State of the art surgical imaging and tissue management technologies installed

Improved hospital efficiencies as part of the NHS Five Year Forward View

Olympus Medical is proud to announce their partnership with one of London's largest and busiest teaching hospitals King's College Hospital (KCH), with the aim of improving patient care, as well as overall efficiency. Through the partnership two new operating theatres have been created featuring upgraded surgical technologies including Full HD (FHD), 3D and 4K surgical imaging platforms and surgical tissue management system 'THUNDERBEAT'. "Olympus is thrilled with what has been achieved through this partnership. Having the opportunity to work closely with procurement, clinicians and theatre management has enabled us to identify the best implementation solution. This new approach maximises efficiency and uptime. We are excited at the prospect of continuing the partnership with King's to enable transformation and sustainability in health care," commented Mark Graves, Head of EndoTherapy and Strategic Development at Olympus KeyMed. NHS Background The NHS is constantly challenged to provide the highest standard of care for the United Kingdom's growing and ageing population. Demand is rising and services are under pressure. As part of the Five Year Forward View, the NHS has been tasked to deliver new ways of providing care. Meeting these requirements for high quality care with available resources will continue to be a challenge. Identifying ways to improve efficiencies in the NHS will be critical to meet the increasing demand. Guaranteed Performance Solutions (GPS) In October 2012, Olympus was invited to tender for the provision of a managed equipment service within a theatre setting. Olympus proposed their Guaranteed Performance Solutions (GPS), designed specifically to respond to the changing health service landscape. The aim of this was to improve patient outcomes through efficiency gains, offering the best possible value for money to the trust. As the name suggests a key element of Olympus' provision is the guarantee. Olympus commits to ensure that the latest medical technology, within the scope of the agreement, is available to the clinician precisely when required. It must be fit for purpose an maintained to an appropriate level to enhance the patient's experience. The GPS removes the reliance on high residual values typically built into a traditional leasing agreement. As a result, budget planning throughout the term is straightforward and transparent with fixed annual charges and no equipment return fees.



Success for Olympus In March 2015, Olympus was confirmed as the successful service provider and began preparations for a large scale implementation of mobile imaging equipment and fully integrated turnkey operating theatres.

Throughout the process Olympus worked closely with the Trust team comprising of Senior Clinicians, Divisional Leads and Procurement. The Procurement lead steered the team through the Competitive Dialogue process. "The introduction of this technology to the theatres has been positively welcomed by both clinical and non-clinical teams. Everyone has been very excited to be involved in this important project which will have a significant impact on patient care. The integration of the new ground-breaking technology has been incredibly smooth. The delivery of efficient patient care has been maintained during the entire process and disruption has been minimised which is so critical in a live working environment," commented Kara Hollings, Theatre Service Manager at King's College Hospital. Laparoscopic and image-guided surgeries are increasingly taking place in an integrated surgical environment which includes high-resolution video displays, touch-screen control, and archival digital information. The move towards such integrated surgeries can help reduce dependence on mobile equipment, increase patient flow and improve patient outcomes. Olympus replaced existing, older equipment with 16 mobile 2D and 3D surgical imaging platforms for inpatients and day surgery units. In January 2016, the first of three ENDOALPHA 3D integrated laparoscopic theatres were completed at the Denmark Hill site. "It is very pleasing to see NHS Trusts adopting new technologies which can have such a marked impact on day to day efficiencies in surgery. Ultimately, any solution that can improve patient care whilst saving costs is a positive step forward to help support the delivery of services for the people who need them", commented Mr Asif Haq, Consultant Laparoscopic Colorectal and General Surgeon NOTES TO EDITORS About King's College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust King's College Hospital is one of London's largest and busiest teaching hospitals, with a strong profile of local services primarily serving the boroughs of Lambeth, Southwark, Lewisham and Bromley. Specialist services are available to patients across a wider catchment area, providing nationally and internationally recognised work in liver disease and transplantation, neurosciences, haemato-oncology and foetal medicine. For more information about King's College Hospital go to https://www.kch.nhs.uk/about The Project Brief KCH, led by the procurement and theatre project teams, were tasked with delivering a high quality solution that allows access to the latest technology to treat patients, whilst minimising financial and service risk to the trust. The KCH requirement was for the provision of a technological and financial solution for inpatient and day surgery services, operating around 2,000 procedures per month across general surgery, bariatric, liver, urology, orthopaedics, and gynaecology. The Trust gave Olympus the brief for the supply, installation and on-going maintenance of fully integrated laparoscopic theatres and related equipment. The main objectives for KCH were:- Maintain the clinical service level and surgical expertise

Procure an innovative and alternative financing solution

Guaranteeing surgical uptime (i.e. customers are guaranteed next-day replacement of surgical equipment when it needs to be repaired to avoid disruption to procedures) against defined key performance indicators

About Olympus As a worldwide leading manufacturer of optical and digital precision technology, Olympus provides innovative solutions for state-of-the-art medical systems, digital cameras as well as scientific solutions in the fields of microscopy and industrial inspection. The company's award winning products are instrumental in detecting, preventing and healing illness, driving scientific research and documenting life with artistic freedom. In the hands of its customers, Olympus' high-tech products help to make people's lives healthier, safer and more fulfilling. For more information about Olympus go to http://www.olympus.co.uk

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[May 06, 2016] CEG Digital and the University of Southampton Partnership Offers Data Science Online Courses

HONG KONG, May 6, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- CEG Digital, the flexible learning division of global education provider Cambridge Education Group ("CEG"), is proud to announce a new partnership with the Web Science Institute at the University of Southampton ("WSI"), a world top-100 university,[1] to deliver a suite of short online courses, initially in the area of Data Science. The courses are designed to address the demands of our increasingly data-driven world, helping ambitious individuals around the world to master the powerful tools of Data Science: business and data analysts, marketers, engineers, developers, economists, scientists, researchers, entrepreneurs, designers, and nascent data scientists. The initial Foundations of Data Science course will welcome its first intake in the autumn, followed by specialised options in the areas of Data Science for Marketing, Finance and Healthcare launching in 2017. The application process will be highly selective to ensure each participant is fully prepared for the demands of the course. Delivered part-time and wholly online over four weeks via Instructure's state-of-the-art Canvas learning platform, the courses will enable participants to study with world-class professionals and leading academics to secure the real world skills they need to succeed in these highly competitive fields. Supplementary workshops will provide opportunities to meet with fellow participants, tutors and teachers, and to present their work to potential employers. Fees will be competitive with current face-to-face and online options; corporate rates will also be available. The University of Southampton is ranked in the top 1% of universities in the world and its Web Science Institute is the home to a uniquely rich network of experts in Computer Science, Web Science, Mathematical and Statistical Sciences, Health Science, Social Science, Economics and Business. As a result of the WSI's pioneering work in Data Science, the expertise is transforming the way that data are collected, integrated and converted into knowledge and evidence, informing decision making in business, industry and government sectors. WSI is also the founding partner of the UK's Open Data Institute in Tech City, set up to lead UK businesses in exploiting data. The WSI's current training programme has reached many tens of thousands of people through its MOOCs in Web Science, Linked Data, and the Power of Social Media, and its highly regarded University-level Bachelors, Masters and Doctoral programmes provide an excellent career grounding in the digital and information economy. Dr Elena Simperl, Continuing Professional Development Course Director, WSI Associate Professor and Scientific Director of the European Data Science Academy, explained, "Data Science is a critical competence for our economy. Our new series of short professional courses is an integral and essential part of our training portfolio, alongside our postgraduate degrees. With these new online courses, we reach out to decision makers, business analysts, IT developers, and other groups of practitioners interested in learning about some of the most promising technologies and application domains in data science, including digital marketing, finances, and healthcare." Professor Dame Wendy Hall, Director of the Web Science Institute, said, "I am very excited about working with CEG Digital on these new on-line courses in Data Science. The future of education is on-line and this partnership will enable the WSI to develop and deliver state of the art Data Science courses that are available to busy professionals wherever they are based." CEG Digital and the Web Science Institute are working in partnership to develop, market and deliver the world leading courses to students in the UK and worldwide. Geoff Webster, Managing Director of CEG Digital, said, "We are very proud to be partnering with the University of Southampton to deliver short professional courses in the area of Data Science. We believe there is enormous demand for high quality professionally focused courses in this area and we are excited to be working with the world-leading academics at Southampton. We believe this will be a very attractive proposition for professionals, companies and entrepreneurs, in the UK and around the world."







[1] QS World University Rankings 2015/16

About CEG Digital CEG Digital partners with prestigious, high quality UK universities to deliver online or blended courses to a global market on a part-time, flexible basis. Courses are delivered using cutting-edge, tablet friendly technology and sector leading pedagogy.

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[May 06, 2016] Cloud Managed Services Market Worth 76.73 Billion USD by 2021

PUNE, India, May 6, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- According to a new market research report, "Cloud Managed Services Market by Managed Services (Business Service, Network Services, Security Services, Data Center Services, Mobility Services), by Deployment, by Organization Size, by Industry Application & by Region - Global Forecast to 2021", published by MarketsandMarkets, the market size is estimated to grow from USD 35.54 Billion in 2016 to USD 76.73 Billion by 2021, at expected Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 16.6% from 2016 to 2021. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160303/792302 )

Browse 68 market data Tables and 49 Figures spread through 134 Pages and in-depth TOC on "Cloud Managed Services Market" http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/cloud-managed-service-market-195317068.html Early buyers will receive 10% customization on this report. Cloud managed services are witnessing a rising demand across the globe due to the growing need of businesses to curb down operational and infrastructural costs involved in business processes. The expanding Big Data space has facilitated a greater demand for managed analytical services and cloud storage services. The managed mobility services segment are expected to show higher growth rates during the forecast period The managed mobility services segment are expected to grow at a higher rate than business, network, security, and data center services in the Cloud Managed Services Market from 2016 to 2021, due to the growing trends in the adoption of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD). The use of personal devices is growing among organization appealing enhanced efficiency in business operations. This has pushed the prospects of managed mobility services across diverse industry verticals for enhanced productivity, assuring data security and privacy. Banking, Financial Service, and Insurance (BFSI) segment to contribute maximum market share The BFSI segment is expected to contribute to the largest market share in the Cloud Managed Services Market in 2016. The retail and consumer goods segment is expected to grow at a rapid rate from 2016 to 2021 in the Cloud Managed Services Market. Greater focus on ore competencies, reduction in risks, improved cost reduction, customer relations, and improved regulatory compliance are some of the major factors driving cloud managed services in the BFSI sector.



Request Sample Pages- http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/requestsample.asp?id=195317068 North America is expected to hold the largest market share in the Cloud Managed Services Market

North America is expected to hold the largest market share and dominate the Cloud Managed Services Market from 2016 to 2021, due to the presence of a large customer pool headquartered in the U.S. The region also has a high concentration of managed service providers in the U.S. and Canada. Asia-Pacific (APAC) offers potential growth opportunities, as the region is witnessing rise in technology penetration and larger investments in managed services as the growth in various industrial sectors continue to stir the market through the forecast period. The major service providers in the Cloud Managed Services Market include Accenture plc, Alcatel-Lucent S.A., Cisco Systems, Inc., IBM Corporation, Ericsson, Fujitsu Ltd., Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Huawei Technologies, NEC Corporation, and NTT Data Corporation. The report covers detailed information regarding the major factors influencing the growth in the Cloud Managed Services Market, such as drivers, restraints, challenges, and opportunities. A detailed analysis of the key industry players has been done to provide insights into their business overview, products and services, key strategies, new product launches, mergers and acquisitions, partnerships, agreements, collaborations, and recent developments associated with the Cloud Managed Services Market. Browse Related Reports Managed Mobility Services Market by Function (Device Management, Application Management, Security Management, and Maintenance & Support), by Organization Size (SME and Enterprise), Industry Vertical, and Region - Global Forecast to 2021

http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/managed-mobility-service-market-176912020.html Managed Security Services Market by Service Type, Organization Size (Small and Medium Enterprises, Large Enterprises), Deployment (Cloud Deployment and in-Premises Deployment), Vertical, and Region - Global Forecast to 2020

http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/managed-security-services-market-5918403.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:

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[May 06, 2016] AIN: Women's Clothing Brand Attracting Customers Globally with Colorful Emotions

SEOUL, South Korea, May 6, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- A Korean brand specializing in women's clothing, AIN (www.a-in.kr), announced full-scale entry into the global market, assuring itself of its success in the worldwide market. AIN has been selling its products through other global e-commerce marketplaces seeing favorable responses from customers around the world. As a result, it launched its English (en.a-in.kr) and Chinese (cn.a-in.kr) websites through cafe24 (www.cafe24.com), Korea's largest e-commerce solution brand. AIN will be focusing on marking itself as a strong global brand centering on the Asian region which includes China, Hong Kong, and Singapore. CEO of AIN, Park A-In, said, "The key to success when entering the global market is providing customers with what they are looking for." He also added that AIN's unique and modern designs as well as the overall perceptive image match the trends that customers around the world prefer, raising expectations for future developments.



While easily matched to other outfits as well, AIN carries products that bring out the wearer's character and uniqueness. Its products are characterized by the use of various colors to accentuate each feature. Besides, one can wear AIN to portray different kinds of looks - minimalist style and unisex looks among many others. AIN is also a contributor to "rational consumption;" in other words, it helps customers save money with its reasonable prices and high quality. Approximately 20% of the products sold are planned and manufactured directly by AIN. This procedure allows the brand to focus on bringing out its unique colors while enhancing quality.

AIN also actively communicates with customers. It builds closer ties with customers through its social media channels - AIN posts and shares product information, photos, and tidbits. It also provides a variety of benefits for customers through regular promotions and events. CEO Park went on to say, "Our goal for this year is to achieve 15 billion Korean won in overall sales. We will fully engage in global marketing by reflecting the different cultures and customers' needs while making full use of our product power." To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/ain-womens-clothing-brand-attracting-customers-globally-with-colorful-emotions-300262428.html SOURCE AIN

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[May 06, 2016] Huawei P9 Goes On Sale in UK

LONDON, May 6, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Available to purchase from EE, O2, Three, Vodafone and Carphone Warehouse Today, Huawei Consumer Business Group announces that the Huawei P9, co-engineered with Leica Camera, is now on sale across all major UK channels, available to purchase from EE, O2, Three, Vodafone and Carphone Warehouse, setting a new standard in smartphone photography. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160506/364549LOGO ) The Huawei P9 is the first smartphone co-engineered with the iconic global brand, Leica Camera AG. The P9's dual-lens camera takes smartphone photography to the next level, allowing people to capture both vivid colours and striking black and white images. Reinventing smartphone photography Key to the P9's superlative imaging capabilities is a dual lens camera design, which has been subject to the industry's most stringent quality screening requirements. The RGB camera on the P9 specialises in capturing colour, while the monochrome camera is outstanding at acquiring picture detail. The two rear cameras of the P9 work in tandem to enable users to create images of superior detail, depth and colour. The P9 truly excels in low-light conditions, as the dual-camera design guarantees that more light and detail can be captured. Each picture taken by the P9 carries the unique emotional resonance and timelessness that are the hallmarks of Leica, as users may choose between three film modes: Standard, Vivid Colours and Smooth Colours, depending on their personal preferences. With meticulous calibration of the P9's camera parameters, each film mode faithfully renders the authentic colour and style of Leica. By selecting the monochrome mode, P9 users can shoot with their devices as a true monochrome camera to capture powerful and evocative black and white images of superior quality. Deploying Huawei's Hybrid Focus technology, the P9 captures images with superior speed, accuracy and stability. The P9 supports camera focusing based on three methodologies - laser, depth calculation and contrast - and automatically selects the one that yields the best result in any given environment. The wide-aperture photography feature on the P9 allows users to experiment with innovative visual effects to create unique images and content. The P9 makes it easy to adjust the camera aperture to create bokeh and other depth-of-field effects, while keeping the main object in sharp focus. James Jie, Managing irector of UK&I, Huawei Consumer Business Group, comments: "This is the first Huawei device to be ranged across all of the major UK sales channels and we look forward to seeing great take up from consumers. With the P9, in collaboration with Leica, we are looking to firmly establish the Huawei brand within the high-end, premium sector in the UK. We have challenged the norm with this device, reinventing smartphone photography, and we see it as the next step in a visual revolution, which we are sure our customers will value."



Oliver Kaltner, CEO, Leica Camera AG, commented: "Leica and Huawei share an uncompromising commitment to imaging excellence, and our partnership will put outstanding photography into the hands of more consumers around the world. We are deepening our collaboration to give users a more optimal smartphone photography experience." Premium build and design

The P9 is a masterpiece of state-of the-art industrial design, with the same minimalist design DNA as earlier products in Huawei's acclaimed premium flagship P-series. Each P9 device is a perfect construct of superior-grade 2.5D glass and an aerospace-class aluminium, with diamond-cut edges rounded out by carefully balanced curvatures. The P9 sets new industry standards in industrial design, with the use of techniques including brushed hairlines and metal polishing at micron-level precision to create a translucent metal surface. Power and performance The P9 is equipped with the power, connectivity and speed that today's high-end smartphone user expects from Huawei. With a 5.2-inch 1080p display, the P9 is powered by the new Kirin 955 2.5GHz 64-bit ARM-based processor for leading-class mobile performance. The 3,000mAh high-density battery offers P9 users outstanding mobility and battery life. The P9 also protects users' privacy with Huawei's world-leading biometric fingerprint recognition technology. The enhanced fingerprint sensor allows users to personalise and safeguard their devices by significantly lowering the possibility of fraudulent or accidental device access, while also ensuring users can quickly and securely access their smartphone. For further information, search #OO. Pricing and availability

The Huawei P9, which goes on sale today, can be purchased here:

http://consumer.huawei.com/uk/mobile-phones/p9 The Huawei P9 will be available in Mystic Silver and Titanium Grey. It comes with an RRP of 449 (3GB + 32GB) and will be free on contract, subject to tariff, available from EE, O2, Three, Vodafone and Carphone Warehouse. Please see below details on the colours each channel will be offering EE - Titanium Grey

O2 - Titanium Grey

Three - Mystic Silver, Titanium Grey

Vodafone - Mystic Silver, Titanium Grey

Carphone Warehouse - Mystic Silver, Titanium Grey

P9 3GB + 32 GB GBP449

Notes to Editors: About Huawei Consumer BG Huawei's products and services are available in more than 170 countries, and are used by a third of the world's population, ranking third in the world in mobile phone shipments in 2014. Sixteen R&D centers have been set up in the United States, Germany, Sweden, Russia, India, and China. Huawei Consumer BG is one of Huawei's three business units and covers smartphones, mobile broadband devices, home devices and cloud services. Huawei's global network is built on 20 years of expertise in the telecom industry and is dedicated to delivering the latest technological advances to consumers around the world. Huawei P9 key features The 5.2 inch full HD display included in the P9 uses the Hollywood movie colour gamut, allowing the display to cover 96 percent of the colour spectrum.

movie colour gamut, allowing the display to cover 96 percent of the colour spectrum. The dual-lens 12MP camera features RGB and BW sensors, as well as laser-assisted focus. This makes the camera 200 per cent more sensitive than predecessors and allows it to provide 300 per cent more detail.

The P9 is powered by Huawei's latest Kirin 955 chipset, which is based on the TSMC 16nm FinFET Plus chip technology. CPU performance is 100 per cent faster than the P8 and 3D graphics are improved by 125 per cent.

Running Android Marshmallow 6.0, the P9 uses the Huawei Emotion UI 4.1 interface, adding hundreds of user experience tweaks and improvements.

The P9 supports the latest reversible USB Type-C Connector technology. Efficient Conferencing The P9 features "Super Hands-Free 3.0" technology, which enables hands-free operation of the phone in a variety of locations. Whether you're in the car, a conference room or at a crowded party, users can enjoy clear conversations from up to three meters away. With a 120-degree range of audio pick up and directional noise reduction, conference calls are crisper and clearer than ever before, no matter where they take place.

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Lawrence County Council adopts increased budget for 2023

The final total for next years budget was adopted at $28,405,574, an increase of 3.5% from the approved budget for 2022.
Tom's Guide is supported by its audience. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Heres why you can trust us.
Episode 15, the latest edition of RTRFMs View From Here Series features the always enthralling ambient duo Erasers (aka Rebecca Orchard and Rupert Thomas) performing while being silhouetted by the Perth skyline on the rooftop of the Art Gallery of Western Australia in the Perth Cultural Centre

Painting the sky with their trademark ethereal soundscapes, soaked in reverb and punctuated by hypnotic, ritualistic vocals, the team at RTRFM really captured the duo in their element.

Captured by local filmmaker, animator and producer Sam Price and produced by RTRFM, the series was recently nominated for Excellence in Digital Media in the 2015 Community Broadcasting Association of Australias Community Radio Awards.

The View From Here short film series launched in November 2014 with support from the Department of Culture and the Arts, and aims to showcase the wellspring of talent in Western Australias music scene, across a variety of genres and locations.

If you like what youre seeing visit rtrfm.com.au for more info.
Its no secret weve been on the edge of our seats hanging for the anticipated release of Sydney band Spookylands debut album Beauty Already Beautiful.

Recorded over three weeks in Omaha, Nebraska at Conor Obersts live-in Saddle Creek compound; brothers Liam and Marcus Gordon, along with percussionist Nathan Mansfield and bassist Nic Malouf have crafted something really special with their debut.

Beauty Already Beautiful arrives after a string of successes for the band including appearances at festivals Lollapalooza, SXSW, tours with Gang of Youths and Jake Bugg and international hype for releases Silly Fucking Thing, Big Head and of course their introductory EP Rock and Roll Weakling.

To celebrate the release of Beauty Already Beautiful, the bands frontman Marcus Gordon has kindly penned a track by track run down of the LP which you can check out below (along with the album stream). Beauty Already Beautiful is out now via Inertia.

ABUSE

We had been listening to Patti Smiths accounts of graveyards, and how she kept herself to the perimeter. The sound is a big string quartet, which is sort of the landscape, with me pronouncing words wrong around that. Tony had been wanting to do a strictly vocal and string track with us for years.

NOWHERELAND

This might be our favourite. I like how it never explodes into a crescendo, which is usually what happens with us. Tony turned Naths drums up real high, which makes it almost hip hop. I learnt from Nowhereland that a good groove can carry a crowded lyric like a gentle breeze.

BIG HEAD

Big Head is giving gender tradition a little rattle, but as the bald face love song, not the straight-laced facebook post. I was trying to celebrate the promiscuous woman; raise up some kind of female James Dean.

CHAMPIONS

A locker room pep talk in a song. I love champions because it shows the band as a whole and the personalities of the players individually. Everyone is playing lead throughout, together and apart. Nic makes the song sound like its rocking side to side.. like some kind of pro tools sorcery, but its just his bass part, you ought to hear it by itself.

DISCIPLINE

I really like the music on this, the boys turned a boring finger picked lullaby into a new wave credence sort of thing. Liam does this crazy cyclone sounding guitar part in the chorus, Ive never heard anything like that before.

REBELLION

This songs been rewritten about four times, originally because it was too long and a few more times because we didnt really like it. Most these songs are about trying to celebrate something that probably shouldnt be celebrated, Rebellion is meant to have a laugh at idealism, a sardonic romance anthem, but after all the re writes it sounds the opposite.

PROPHET

Vocally, I was thinking about Van Morrisons No Guru record for Prophet. You cant really hear that because I cant sing well, but it was freeing nonetheless, doing something more wide screen. This song was kind of punky once, but Nic made a last minute change to his whole bass theme which completely re-directed the way everyone delivered it.

Mike Mogis was kind enough to do some pedal steel over this track, he was very mysterious about it too, locked in his studio at odd hours for 5 minute increments, I dont think we even heard what hed done until we got back to Australia, its such a beautiful touch.

TURN

I got interested in how when enough time passes the writer is the final authority on the event. In terms of a love song, I wanted to entertain what the other might say if they were given the podium. Turn is a love song that escalates into an incident of thorough castration.

CANT OWN YOU

Theres a clip of Lou Reed doing a rocked-up walk on the wild side at Farm Aid in the 80s, he looks like hes having fun, so I wanted a turn. Tony calls this the meat and potatoes song of the record, hes right too, theres got to be thousands like it. This song however, belongs to a smaller class of the Americana about Redfern.

GODS EYES

A whole lot of eyeball metaphors in this one. Its about something going wrong along the way, or at least wondering if something did. The line gods eyes have to blink is repeated a lot, so blaming God for the worlds woes can seem reasonable, pathetic, funny or even annoying, all in one listen. Nath is on fire in this one, its his subtle rhythmic changes throughout that make it feel uplifting, instead of a dull downer of a song.

BULIMIC

Bulimic is mostly a song about social friction I think, when theres chaos in your mind, theres a certain impulse to hurl the whole thing into the toilet bowl to find some kind of self esteem, but this kind of program is basically doomed. Bulimia of ones humanity.. no ones gonna appreciate that.

Album Launch Shows

May 11 | Newtown Social Club | Sydney

May 12 | Northcote Social Club | Melbourne
Brisbane troublemakers Dune Rats have returned with their first hit of new material in two years. It took them long enough, but their NSFW-titled new single, produced by FIDLAR frontman Zac Carper, is the Dunies at the height of their powers.

Entitled Bullshit, the latest head-banging, beer-swilling, cone-punching number from the Dunies is out now via the bands very own label, Ratbag Records, and you can bet your ass on hearing it on the bands upcoming tour with Violent Soho and DZ Deathrays.

The track is the culmination of a newly minted working relationship with Zac Carper, whom the trio met when they supported FIDLAR across the United States and Canada for two months last year as part of a massive 27-date North American tour.

Carper took the boys from recording sessions staged inside an RV en route to Joshua Tree, California to a Melbourne studio where the latest stash of new Dunies gear was cooked up. No word yet on a new album, but if Bullshit is any indication, the next LP will be sick.
The founders of The Venue Collective, the booking agency behind some of Australias most popular mid-sized venues, have announced they will be dissolving the business. Formed in 2014, the agency provided centralised booking for nine live music venues.

The Venue Collectives impressive portfolio included Melbournes Corner Hotel, Northcote Social Club, 170 Russell, and Shebeen; Sydneys Newtown Social Club; the Woolly Mammoth in Brisbane; and Max Watts in Melbourne, Sydney, and Brisbane.

In an email sent to various Australian bookers and acquired by Tone Deaf, founder Ben Thompson blamed the challenges inherent in a centralised office programming and promoting interstate venues amid an increasingly troubled live music climate.

Speaking to Tone Deaf, Thompson said he and the other members of The Venue Collective had come to the decision to dissolve the company over the past week and cited a number of factors, including the fall of the Aussie dollar, as influencing the decision.

Its something that weve been look at for the last week or so and to be honest, its a combination of reasons that weve decided to wind down the business, he said. I think one of those reasons is I think we were quite ambitious with the model of booking nine venues around Australia from a centralised office.

Theres a lot of challenges that come with that and weve definitely seen a downturn in mid-sized international tours. I dont think thered be any venue operator out there  who relies on those types of tours  that would say theyre absolutely killing it.

I think everybody is aware of that. Weve lost a heap of big festivals, therefore weve lost a heap of international acts touring the country. The Aussie dollars dipped down below 70 cents and I think theres a few factors of why that mid-sized tourings been a bit slower, but to be honest thats not the be all and end all of the business. Its not going broke and its not in any kind of bad way.

When The Venue Collective first formed, Thompson told Tone Deaf, the Australian live music industry had just seen two of its strongest years, propelled by a glut of major festivals such as Big Day Out and Soundwave, both of which have since collapsed.

We have lost some festivals and its going to take time for things to realign after that. I think things will definitely come back and its looking like well have three big touring festivals in the country next year and hopefully therell be a sideshow boom and thatll really help stimulate things, he said.

The team of staff that Ive had at The Venue Collective have all come from several years working in different booking entities and venues around Melbourne and theyre the most amazing team of creative people and Im doing everything I can to assist in them perhaps assimilating into positions at some of the Venue Collective venues. Nothing is set in stone at this point.

[include_post id=440846]

I will be continuing to work as a booker for 170 Russell in the city, which is a venue that Ive been extremely proud of over the last couple of years. Its certainly come leaps and bounds in the last few years. But were very committed to running the office in the coming weeks and months until theres been a complete and thorough handover.

Its really important that all the promoters and agents that have shows and all the acts coming to play and all the venues dont see anything change as far as the Venue Collectives service and thats my priority for the next few months.

The formation of The Venue Collective was an unprecedented and ambitious venture and the demise of the company will no doubt change the Australian live music landscape.
BUT THE TKC BLOG COMMUNITY TOLD YOU SO . . . TONIGHT KANSAS CITY MAYOR SLY CONFIRMS TO THE CITIZENS ASSOCIATION THAT HE'S GOING TO HIT UP TAXPAYERS FOR ANOTHER GEO BOND ASK!!!

I hate to say I told you so, but I did . . .Along with calling streetcar critics liars, the Mayor was forced to admit that he's gonna raise taxes . . . Again.We'll have more on this for the morning update for tonight . . . Sleep and dream of more Kansas City taxes.Developing . . .
"Kansas University Chancellor Bernadette Gray-Little has vetoed a $2 student fee funding a separate Multicultural Student Government, leaving the future of such an organization in doubt. The Student Senate had voted March 9 in favor of the fee.





"In a letter sent to the Student Senate on Wednesday, Gray-Little said she could not recommend the fee to the Kansas Board of Regents because "the separate multicultural government for which the fee was created does not exist, nor will the separate government be developed for 2016-2017, the year for which the fee is intended."

As MU still struggles to gain control of constantly protesting students and teachers amid plummeting enrollment . . . KU offers an important teaching moment about some of the bad ideas hatched in the name of diversity.Money line . . .More deets:You decide . . .
The Saudi Stock Exchange has selected HSBC Saudi Arabia to advise on its own planned flotation scheduled for 2018, the exchange, known as Tadawul, said in a statement.



"The appointment of a financial adviser is an important milestone in the beginning of the IPO (initial public offering) journey which is planned to take place by 2018 after obtaining the necessary approvals," the short statement said.



Tadawul chief executive Khalid Al Hussan told Reuters on Tuesday the exchange would make a decision "in the coming days" on who it would select as its advisor.



Three banking sources said the decision was made at a meeting of Tadawul's board on Thursday. The sources declined to be named as they were not authorised to speak to the media.



Tadawul is by far the largest stock market in the Middle East, with a market capitalisation of SR1.51 trillion ($402.8 billion), according to Thomson Reuters data.-Reuters
Truck Oman Projects and Oilfield Services Company has signed an agreement with the Special Economic Zone Authority of Duqm (Sezad) to set up an integrated logistics centre.



The logistics centre to be constructed on land within the zone will include warehouse offices, maintenance workshop and storage areas for equipment and machineries for oil and gas fields, said a statement.



Sezads chairman Yahya bin Said bin Abdullah Al Jabri signed the deal with Truck Omans chairman of the board Dr Mohammed bin Moosa Al Yousuf, it added.



The project will be built over an area of 23,000 sq m in the logistics area, which is considered one of the main areas for investment in Sezad, said the statement.



The project aims to provide logistics management solutions of various kinds, to meet all the needs of customers, such as management of transport, supporting and controlling traffic movement, management of vehicles and equipment movement data during the hours of work in the field, it stated.  TradeArabia News Service


Donald Trump's emergence as the last man standing in the Republican presidential race has prompted his critics inside the party to intensify their search for a candidate they could back as a serious third-party alternative.



Political operatives are courting donors, calling potential candidates and developing legal contingency plans for overcoming onerous ballot qualification laws.



"This is as much as anything a battle for the future of American party politics," said Republican strategist Joel Searby, who is working with conservative writer Bill Kristol, among others, on an effort to identify a third-party candidate to run in the Nov. 8 presidential election.



A separate group, Conservatives Against Trump, which includes blogger Erick Erickson, has been holding calls and meetings to discuss third-party candidates as well as other options to stop the New York billionaire from winning the White House.



The hurdles to a third-party candidacy are immense. No independent candidate has ever won a presidential election, although some have played spoilers. But the efforts by the Republican groups underscore the unusual divisiveness of Trump's candidacy within Republican ranks ahead of a likely general election fight with Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton.



Trump's opposition to free trade is at odds with the views of many Republicans, especially in the party's business wing. Many of Trump's critics also find his rhetoric offensive, including his call to temporarily bar Muslims from entering the country and his comment describing Mexican immigrants to the United States as rapists and drug dealers.



Some Republicans say they worry that any third-party candidate would only siphon votes away from Trump and help Clinton win the election.



Ralph Nader's independent presidential run has been blamed by some Democrats for the razor-thin defeat of Democratic nominee Al Gore in the 2000 election. Ross Perot's independent candidacy in 1992 was seen by some Republicans as contributing to President George H.W. Bush's loss to Democrat Bill Clinton.



One outcome, though rare, may be that no candidate crosses the necessary threshold of 270 votes in the US Electoral College. In that case, the vote for the next president would pass to the US House of Representatives, currently controlled by Republicans.



Deborah DeMoss Fonseca, who recruited donors for former Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush and is working with Conservatives Against Trump, said her group was trying to find a candidate who would be high-profile enough to compete with Trump and Clinton.



NO EASY TASK



But finding a candidate of that caliber who would be willing to run is no easy feat. Searby's group has reached out to former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and James Mattis, a retired US Marine Corps general, among others, but both declined after discussions.



Republican US Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska has emerged as a favorite of the Republicans seeking a third-party candidate. Kristol has had warm words for him.



Sasse, a freshman lawmaker and former Bush administration official, is a strong critic of Trump and has called for an alternative candidate to him. But he says that person should be someone other than him.



On Wednesday, the morning after Trump emerged as the presumptive presidential nominee, phones at the office of Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson were ringing off the hook with calls from small-government Republicans who feel they cannot get behind Trump.



But as a Libertarian, Johnson holds views on some issues, such as the legalization of marijuana, that are antithetical to the views of some Republicans.



In March, former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, an independent, said he had considered jumping into the race as a third-party candidate but opted against it, saying he feared it would only serve to help get Trump elected.



One of the biggest hurdles to a third-party run is simply getting on the ballot in enough states to mount a viable campaign.



Texas requires more than 79,000 signatures from voters who did not participate in either primary. Its deadline is Monday. Among other states, North Carolina's deadline is the end of May, and Illinois and Florida in mid-July.



"A third-party candidate is a pipe dream," said Republican strategist Tony Fratto, who worked in Bush's administration and strongly opposes Trump. "What's going to happen is Hillary Clinton is going to win big. It won't be close."-Reuters
Tribune News Service

Srinagar, May 6

Three J&K policemen were wounded in a grenade attack in central Kashmirs Budgam district on Friday.

The police said two bike-borne militants lobbed a grenade towards a police patrolling party around noon in Chadoora, nearly 20 km from Srinagar city, injuring three policemen.

The injured were shifted to a hospital where there condition is stable, a police official in Budgam said.

Shopkeepers and pedestrians fled the market as panic gripped the town and security forces laid a cordon to nab the attackers. However, no one was arrested. The bike- borne militants had sped away after hurling the grenade. No militant group has so far claimed responsibility for the grenade attack.

On December 2, 2013, militants had killed Station House Officer (SHO) Shabir Ahmed and injured three others, including two policemen, in the Chadoora market area. Budgam district has been largely peaceful over the past year and there is only one militant from the district.

This year, so far 34 militants have been killed in anti-militancy operations in Kashmir. There has been a gradual decline in militancy during the past decade in the Valley but 150 militants are still active in Kashmir, say the police.
Tribune News Service

Jammu, May 6

The mighty Chenab flows through erstwhile Doda district, but the district is facing acute shortage of drinking water. The natural water resources in the district are diminishing due to climate change and the casual approach of the government.

About 10 lakh people of Doda, Ramban and Kishtwar district have been witnessing shortage of drinking water during the summer for the past few years.

The loot of the green gold by the forest mafia has led to drying up of natural reservoirs and streams which used to be the main source of drinking water for people.

In the Koti, Dessa and Jodhpur areas of Doda district, people have to walk miles to fetch drinking water.

The total area of the erstwhile district is 11,691 sqkm and the terrain is mostly hilly.

Experts said that till 1975, forests of the district were at number one in Asia in terms of density but now it stands nowhere.

People of the area were never dependent on the Chenab river for drinking and irrigation purposes, but now people want the river water to be supplied to them.

Successive governments gave licences to forest contractors to cut down trees but no step was taken to plant more trees and bring back the green cover.

The loss of forest cover has also led to soil erosion. As a result, the rainwater flows quickly without seeping into the earth, drying up the natural water resources.

We have seen the forest cover diminishing. Not only the government, but people are also responsible for the destruction of forests as timber is used for construction of houses. Nothing has been done to increase the forest cover, said Muhammad Yaqoob, a resident of Kishtwar town.

Officials in the Public Health Engineering (PHE) Department said corruption in the department was also responsible for the water woes of the area. They said many water supply schemes had become defunct due to the unprofessional attitude of officials of the department.

They said water schemes for Doda and Kishtwar towns, two district headquarters of Doda and Kishtwar districts, were marred by corruption in the PHE Department.

They said the Dessa-Doda water supply scheme was somehow completed in 2014 but the water supply gets affected due to the poor quality pipelines used by the department.

The water supply scheme to Kishtwar from the Naigarh stream is yet to see the light of the day, they added.

Earlier, the water supply scheme was under the PHE Department, but later it was handed over to a Hyderabad-based company in 2013.

The work on the scheme got delayed as the company had to finalise some formalities. The work on it has finally started and it may take two more years for completion, said Ashok Kumar Pradhan, Superintending Engineer, Hydraulic Circle, Doda. Earlier, the completion date was June 2017 but now it may be completed in 2018, he added.
Aditi Tandon



Tribune New Service



New Delhi, May 6

Congress president Sonia Gandhi, vice-president Rahul Gandhi, former prime minister Manmohan Singh and party leaders AK Antony and Ghulam Nabi Azad were detained for a shortwhile by the Delhi Police on Friday for violating prohibitory orders in attending 'Save Democracy' rally organised by the party at Jantar Mantar.

Addressing the rally, Sonia Gandhi launched a blistering attack on Prime Minster Narendra Modi and said the BJP government's days were numbered.

Don't think the Congress is weak. We won't succumb to your politics of vendetta and threats. We will fight you and continue to be an awakened opposition which will protect democracy, Sonia told the Prime Minister at a rally in Jantar Mantar.

We are gathered at Jantar Mantar to send our message not just to Raisina Hill but also to people in Nagpur, who run Modis government, Sonia said in a jibe at the RSS.

The Modi government used pressure, money, incitement to destabilise our governments in Arunachal and Uttarakhand. They may try to character assassinate us to deflect attention from their own failures. Character assassination is the BJP'S old habit but I want to warn them: We won't bow to politics of intimidation. We won't cow down to their tactics of scaring, intimidating us. Enough is enough, she said.

My life has taught me to struggle. They don't know what the Congress is made of, Sonia said.

The rally comes even as the BJP organised its own sit-in outside Parliament on Friday.

Sonia was addressing supporters at the Save Democracy march before embarking on a padyatra to Parliament. Earlier Rahul Gandhi and former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh also addressed the gathering.

(With inputs from agencies)
Mumbai, May 6

Nidhi Chaphekar, the 42-year-old Jet Airways crew member whose image sitting bloodied and dazed and her yellow uniform shredded in Brussels airport bombings became an iconic picture of the horror, returned to Mumbai on Friday to an emotional homecoming.

A mother of two, Nidhi, who has not yet recovered from the injuries suffered in the deadly terror attack on March 22, arrived here at around 7.30 am on a Paris-Mumbai Jet airways flight and was driven straight to Breach Candy Hospital from the airport. She was injured from the force of the first blast of the attack.

Relieved on her return, Nidhis husband Rupesh Chaphekar said, We are extremely happy to have Nidhi back home with us in Mumbai after the horrific episode in Brussels.

Her homecoming is an extremely emotional moment for all of us, especially her two children, who were reunited with her after six weeks as they could not travel to meet with her owing to their studies, he said.

Rupesh said the family has had a harrowing time since news on the brazen strikes trickled in.

On Nidhis medical condition, he said, Nidhi has received the best medical care and attention and has now recovered significantly from her injuries. She will now continue her recovery process at a hospital in Mumbai. The most important thing for us now is that Nidhi makes a full recovery, he said.

Expressing his gratitude to doctors and medical staff in Brussels, Rupesh said, We would like to thank them for the care they gave Nidhi during her stay in the hospital. He also thanked Jet Airways Jet management for the support they extended, not just to Nidhi but also to the family.

A Jet statement said Nidhi is in good spirits and is very happy to be back with her family.

Airline officials said Nidhi has low immunity and doctors have advised her to avoid contact with people.

On March 22, three bombs went off  two at the Brussels airport and one at Mallbeek metro station  leaving 35 persons dead, including three suicide bombers.

Nidhi was on her way to board a Jet flight for Newark when the explosions took place. She suffered 15 per cent burns and fractured an ankle.

Her colleague, Amit Motwani, was also injured and is still recovering at a Brussels hospital.

Nidhi, who was treated at Grande Hospital de Chaleroi, about 40 km from Brussels, was discharged yesterday afternoon and taken to Paris where she boarded the flight to Mumbai.

Nidhi spent about 25 days in medically induced coma at the Chaleroi hospital and underwent extensive skin grafting.

Nidhi, who is still wheelchair-bound, was accompanied by her husband and brother-in-law Nilesh Chaphekar, besides the airlines support staff and its chief medical officer on her return.

She has been with Jet Airways since August 1996.

A Jet statement said she has made significant recovery from her injuries sustained during the blasts at Brussels airport.

Jet Airways continues to provide all the necessary support to Nidhi and her family during this time, it added.  PTI
R Sedhuraman

Legal Correspondent

New Delhi, May 6

The Supreme Court on Friday said it would allow state governments to hold their own entrance tests for admitting students in their medical colleges. But all private medical institutions, including deemed universities, would have to take students only through the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET) being conducted by the Medical Council of India (MCI) through the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE).

A Bench headed by Justice Anil R. Dave said it would pass a consolidated order on May 9 as the Centre sought time to take a view on the feasibility of granting another chance to the 6.5 lakh students who had applied for the May 1 All-India Pre-Medical Test (AIPMT) which was being treated as phase one of NEET. The second phase of NEET is slated for July 24.

Appearing for the Centre, Solicitor-General Ranjit Kumar said a meeting of all stakeholders had been convened over the week-end to take decision on the issue. It would go into the options of allowing all NEET-I candidates to appear in NEET-II and letting only those who did not take the exam, preferring to appear for the state-level test conducted that day. Another possibility was to grant a second chance to all those who were willing to forgo NEET-I.

MCIs senior counsel Vikas Singh said the Council did not have any objection to permitting the states to have their own tests for the colleges run by them under the respective state laws. The MCI was also willing to grant similar exemption to the All-India Institute of Medical Science (AIIMS), besides the PGMIR, Chandigarh.

Appearing for the CBSE, Additional Solicitor-General Pinky Anand pleaded that only those who did not appear for NEET-I should be allowed to have a go at NEET-II due to the problem of logistics for the July 24 test.
Kathmandu/New Delhi, May 6

Nepals first woman President Bidhya Devi Bhandari has cancelled her visit to India, which would have been her first foreign trip after assuming office, in the wake of the political instability in her country.

Bhandari was scheduled to visit from May 9 as the state guest at the invitation of President Pranab Mukherjee. She was also scheduled to participate in a Shahi Snan in Ujjains Simhastha Kumbh on May 14.

Government sources in New Delhi said, We have learnt that Nepali President Bidyadevi Bhandaris official visit to India has been postponed by the Nepali side. We understand that this is on account of the political developments in Nepal.

Earlier this week, UCPN-Maoist led by Prachanda triggered political instability by declaring the end of the coalition with the ruling CPN-UML.

The Maoists and the opposition Nepali Congress have accused Prime Minister K P Oli for failing to implement the new Constitution, address problems related to Madhesis, expedite the post-quake reconstruction work, failing to check soaring prices and promoting black marketing and corruption.

However, Oli yesterday survived a threat to his government after a U-turn by Prachanda-led Maoists who decided not to withdraw support to him for the time being.  PTI
New Delhi, May 6

The Supreme Court today said it would allow state governments to hold their own entrance tests for admitting students in their medical colleges. However, all private medical institutions, including deemed universities, would have to take students only through the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET) being conducted by the Medical Council of India through the Central Board of Secondary Education.

A Bench headed by Justice Anil R Dave said it would pass a consolidated order on May 9 as the Centre sought time to take a view on the feasibility of granting another chance to the 6.5 lakh students who had applied for the May 1 All-India Pre-Medical Test (AIPMT), which was being treated as phase one of NEET. The second phase of NEET is slated for July 24.

Appearing for the Centre, Solicitor General Ranjit Kumar said a meeting of all stakeholders had been convened over the weekend to take a decision on the issue.

It would go into the options of allowing all NEET-I candidates to appear in NEET-II and letting only those who did not take the exam, preferring to appear for the state-level test conducted that day. Another possibility was to grant a second chance to all those willing to forgo NEET-I.

MCIs senior counsel Vikas Singh said the council did not have any objection to allowing the states to have their own tests for colleges run by them under the respective state laws. The MCI was also willing to grant similar exemption to the All-India Institute of Medical Science (AIIMS), besides the Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGIMER), Chandigarh.

Appearing for the CBSE, Additional Solicitor General Pinky Anand pleaded that only those who did not appear for NEET-I be allowed to have a go at NEET-II due to the problem of logistics for the July 24 test.  TNS
London, May 5

Scientists have discovered that long-eared bats are assisted in flight by their ears and body, a finding that may help develop better drones in future.

Contrary to what researchers previously assumed, Christoffer Johansson Westheim and his colleagues at Lund University in Sweden show that long-eared bats are helped in flight by their large ears.

The findings improve our understanding of the bats' flying technique and could be significant for the future development of drones, among other things, researchers said.

"We show how the air behind the body of a long-eared bat accelerates downwards, which means that the body and ears provide lift," said Westheim.

"This distinguishes the long-eared bats from other species that have been studied and indicates that the large ears do not merely create strong resistance, but also assist the animal in staying aloft," Westheim said.

The findings entail a greater understanding of the flight technique of bats. They also highlight the evolutionary conflict between flying as efficiently as possible and eco-locating, ie discovering objects by sending out soundwaves and perceiving the resulting echoes.

Another discovery made during the experiments and never previously described is how the bats generate forward motion when flying slowly, researchers said.

The forward motion is generated when the wings are held high and away from the body at the end of each beat.

"This specific way of generating power could lead to new aerodynamic control mechanisms for drones in the future, inspired by flying animals," said Westheim.

The experiments were conducted in a wind tunnel in which trained bats flew through thin smoke to reach a stick with food on it.

The researchers aimed a laser beam at the smoke behind the bats and took pictures of the illuminated smoke particles.

The researchers measured how the smoke moved to calculate the forces generated by each beat of the bats' wings. PTI
Ankara, May 6

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan lashed out at Europe today, saying his nation will not reform its anti-terrorism legislation for the sake of visa-free travel to Europe for its citizens.

The EU has called on Turkey to revise its terrorism laws as a condition for allowing Turkish citizens to travel to Europe without visas on short stays.

Erdogan has been pressing for the contrary: a broader definition of terrorism at a time when the country is facing the twin threats of renewed conflict with Kurdish militants in the southeast and growing blowback from the conflict in Syria in the form or IS-linked bombings and rocket attacks.

The EU at the moment is saying you will change your anti-terrorism law for visas, he said. You allow terrorists to set up tents next to the European Parliament. Why dont you change your mindset?

Erdogan was referring to the Kurdistan Workers Party, which has waged a decades-long insurgency against the Turkish state and is designated by Ankara and its allies as a terrorist organisation.

Its symbols, Turkish officials say, have been spotted recently at demonstrations and in tents outside the European Parliament.

You will allow terrorists to set up tents, say you are doing it in the name of democracy, and then tell us to change our terrorism law for visas, said Erdogan.

Well go our way, you go yours. Go make your agreement with whoever you can.

His statement came a day after Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, who had negotiated the deal, stepped down over a rift with the president.

The premiers resignation is perceived to the outcome of his divergence with the president on key questions including the possibility of resuming peace talks with Kurdish militants, press freedom, and more crucially, his lukewarm support toward reshaping Turkey into a presidential system.

In order to be strong, we need to rapidly present a presidential system which is the guarantee of stability and trust to the approval of the people, Erdogan said.  AP
Dhaka, May 6



A US-based war research group said the Islamic State (IS) terror group "intended" to announce "an affiliate" in Bangladesh, where it has "designated a local leader".

The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) said the radical group was preparing for a "global surge of activities" before and during Ramadan, which falls between June 6 and July 5, bdnews24 reported on Friday.

"Islamic State continued to pursue its regional campaign objectives of establishing affiliates and increasing disorder throughout historically Muslim lands," ISW said.

The Islamic State has reportedly been claiming responsibility for the killing of secular writers, online activists and liberal publishers in Bangladesh since September last year.

The Bangladesh government, however, denies the presence of the Islamic State or Al Qaeda in the country, claiming that the killings were masterminded by "home-grown Islamist radicals".

The ISW said the Islamic State could launch new offensives in North Africa and declare new affiliates in Southeast Asia, apart from Bangladesh.

This strategy will also seek to establish resilience "elsewhere" in the region as it faces challenges in Iraq and Syria, where the radical group is based.

Earlier, in its online magazine, 'Dabiq', the Islamic State said they had found a leader for the Bengal region.

The leader, the magazine claimed, had pledged allegiance to the Khalifah Ibrahim - Al Baghdadi, who now controls parts of Iraq and Syria.  IANS
Brasilia, May 6

Brazils Supreme Court removed the speaker of the lower house of Congress on Thursday on charges of obstructing a corruption investigation, days before an impeachment process that he engineered to oust President Dilma Rousseff.

The removal of Eduardo Cunha, a bitter rival of Rousseff and one of Brazils most divisive public figures, was the latest in a series of political earthquakes in South Americas largest country as it struggles with a sweeping corruption scandal and the worst recession in decades.

The Supreme Court voted unanimously to approve a request by Brazils top prosecutor to strip Cunha of his influential post for allegedly intimidating lawmakers and obstructing an investigation into accusations that he held undeclared bank accounts in Switzerland. Cunha said he would appeal. An evangelical Christian with strong support from the religious right in Congress, Cunha has for months fended off ethics committee hearings in the lower house about whether he lied about the accounts, using every trick in the procedural book. The bespectacled speaker has remained unflappable, calmly denying prosecutors accusations he had used the Swiss accounts to stash millions of dollars in bribe money.

Meanwhile, a Brazilian Senate committee voted today to recommend starting an impeachment trial against President Dilma Rousseff, who now faces being suspended from office in less than a week.  Agencies
Simran Sodhi

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, May 6

In an unexpected development, the first official visit of Nepal President Bidyadevi Bhandari to India has been cancelled. It was on the invitation of President Pranab Mukherjee that Bhandari was to embark on her first official visit to India next week.

Sources in the government confirmed that the visit has been cancelled by the Nepali side. Sources said they believed the reason to be the political developments in Nepal. The main reason for her visit being cancelled is likely the refusal of the Nepalese cabinet to approve her visit. Also, an attempt was made earlier this week to topple Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli by the Maoists, a key partner in the ruling coalition. However, the move failed when the Maoists backtracked.

Relations between and India and Nepal havent been very positive since Oli became the Prime Minister. Speculation in Nepal is also rife that the move to remove Oli had support from India. The Maoists wanted to replace Oli with their chairperson Pushpa Kamal Prachanda.

The Nepalese President was scheduled to meet Mukherjee, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and leaders from political parties, besides signing three agreements.
Correction

This story originally contained an incorrect date. The story has been corrected.

BROKEN ARROW  A darker side of John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, emerged last week at a Native American seminar sponsored by the Oklahoma Indian Missionary Conference.

About 25 people attended the all-day seminar at St. Stephens United Methodist Church, held for leaders who work with Native American congregations and other interested people.

Wesley was a missionary to the Native American tribes in Georgia in the 1730s before he returned to his native England, where he started a movement that became the Methodist Church.

Keynote speaker Richard Grounds, a Euchee Indian and a United Methodist, said Wesleys widely published journals reveal he shared the colonial mindset common among Europeans at that time, a mindset that made possible what he called genocide against native Americans.

Grounds defined colonialism as taking property and goods away from the people to whom God has given them.

Europeans rationale for taking the land is that they believe they have a superior religion, Christianity, and a superior culture, he said.

Wesleys journals reflected that attitude of superiority, Grounds said.

He read portions of Wesleys writings in which he wrote Native Americans were liars, thieves and murderers  people with no religion, no laws and no civil government  statements Grounds said badly distorted the realities about Native American culture.

Grounds also suggested that, though Wesley was not formally doing reconnaissance for the purpose of military conquest, portions of his diary could be used for that purpose  descriptions of the geography, culture and even the number of warriors in the various tribes.

The doctrine of discovery  that the American land belongs to Europeans because they discovered it  provides the legal framework for colonialism, he said.

The U.S. Supreme Court in the 1820s established the land belonged to the United States and not to the native people, who were occupants but not owners of the land.

Legally, even the Indian reservations belong to the government, not the Indians, Grounds said, thus the term reservation, like a nature preserve.

The story of Europeans displacing the Native American population over two centuries is sordid and ugly, according to Grounds, who gave a brief overview of killings, mass forced migrations, poisonings and other evils from coast to coast. In California, he said, during the time of the 1849 Gold Rush, 85 percent of the Native American population was genocided.

This was not one or two slipups; this was a pattern. ... It was a really ugly business.

Over half of the states are named after Native American tribes, and we dont even know what happened to those people, he said.

Based on a United Nations definition of genocide, Grounds said, what happened to the Indians was genocide  a coordinated plan to annihilate an ethnic group through destruction of their culture, language, religion and economic existence.

His grandmother, he said, was among Native American children who were forced into a school in Sapulpa where they were made to dress, speak and act like Europeans, and they were punished for using their native languages.

Grounds greeted the seminar in the Euchee language, which he said is spoken fluently only by four elderly women. He works in the Euchee Language Project in Sapulpa.

Grounds said the Christian church during that period refused to stand up for and defend even the most basic principles, that it is wrong to kill people and steal things.

The church has been part of the colonial process in unhealthy ways and has benefited from it.

We are the body of Christ. The church cannot just go along with the society, and thats been a stumbling block. The church has failed to raise the bar of justice.

My task is to do some truth-telling, how we got to this place. ... The church has not been good about telling the truth, he said.

Grounds was one of several speakers at the seminar, organized by the Rev. David Wilson, superintendent of the Oklahoma Indian Missionary Conference, to raise awareness about Native American issues. The OIMC is a United Methodist conference of more than 80 Native American churches, most of them in Oklahoma.
MUSKOGEE  A Tahlequah man was found guilty of federal firearms charges on Thursday.

A jury found Wade Lewis Ritchie, 26, guilty of being a felon in possession of a firearm and possession of an unregistered firearm (destructive device), according to a news release from the U.S. Attorneys Office for the Eastern District of Oklahoma.

The trial began trial began with testimony on Tuesday and concluded Thursday, the release states.

Ritchie was accused of possessing in July an improvised explosive device, or IED, that contained 20 novelty firecrackers wrapped in two types of tape with three sizes of screws added as shrapnel for injury-inducing capabilities, according to the release.

The charges stemmed from the device having components that had been shipped and transported in interstate commerce and not registered with the National Firearms Registration and Transfer Record, the release states.

The Cherokee County Sheriffs Office, Oklahoma Highway Patrol Bomb Squad and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives investigated the case, according to the release.

District Judge James Payne ordered that a presentence report be completed. Sentencing for Ritchie will be scheduled following the reports completion, the release states.

Ritchie has been placed in the custody of the U.S. Marshals Service pending his sentencing, according to the release.

The range of punishment is no fewer than 180 months in prison and/or up to a $250,000 fine, the release states.

State Department of Corrections records indicate that Ritchie has an extensive criminal history, including convictions for burglary, drug offenses, knowingly concealing stolen property, eluding police, possession of a sawed-off shotgun and harboring a fugitive, all out of Cherokee County.

Ritchie most recently was released from prison in June, according to DOC records.
OKLAHOMA CITY  House and Senate appropriators got their first look at a fistful of tax-incentive reforms Thursday, but in the end they discovered that the biggest revenue enhancement on the agenda was a proposal to give the Oklahoma Tax Commission more money to find mistakes and cheaters.

Tax Commission Executive Director Tony Mastin told House appropriators his agency is confident that $20.5 million in gross production taxes are either not paid or improperly rebated every year and that more than $30 million a year could be recovered with additional staff and software costing about $4 million.

A Senate summary estimated additional general revenue of $35.9 million and another $2 million for the Education Reform Fund, commonly known as the 1017 Fund, through enhanced enforcement.

We know for a fact, through leads weve generated through new technology, that taxes are not being remitted, Mastin said. I need the staff to follow up those leads and see those taxes are properly remitted.

Adding figures in the Senate summary indicates that the eight bills presented Thursday would enhance fiscal year 2017 revenue by about $55 million, with more than half of that coming from the Tax Commission bill.

Of the other seven, six address business incentives and the seventh an accounting issue intended to make budgeting easier.

Appropriations bills are handled differently from other legislation in that they pass through the House and Senate appropriations committees almost simultaneously. Technically, the two committees are considered one joint committee, but they never actually meet together.

Bills heard in this manner cannot be amended by the committees.

Thus, the Senate Appropriations Committee, which includes all 48 members of the body, passed all eight bills, while the House passed only six and laid two over.

The two laid over were House Bill 3205, which would shorten from three to two years the time during which use and sales tax refund requests can be filed, and Senate Bill 1580, which would cap a multiunit housing credit for counties with populations of 150,000 or fewer.

Lawmakers have $1.3 billion less to appropriate for FY 2017, which begins July 1, than they did a year ago. Some hoped to address the drastic drop in general revenue partly through significant reform of the tax system and business incentives.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Mike Mazzei, R-Tulsa, indicated Thursday, though, that most of the major incentive programs will not be touched.

With the clocking ticking toward a constitutionally mandated adjournment at the end of this month, House Speaker Jeff Hickman, R-Fairview, and Senate President Pro Tem Brian Bingman, R-Sapulpa, said legislators have to figure out just how much new revenue can be squeezed from the current system.

It is critical, as we put this budget together, to know what revenue we have  before talking about what we are going to spend, Hickman said.

We are trying to formulate what our revenues are so when we come up with that number it will be easy to formulate our budget, Bingman said. It is kind of hard to formulate a budget when you dont know exactly what your revenues are, so coming out with that total budget number is premature until  the Legislature is willing to make these reforms that we have been talking about.

I dont think ever in the history of our state have we faced a situation like we are facing this year, Hickman said. It is probably the most serious financial situation that we have faced when you look at the number of job losses and the impact that has had on all sources of revenue for the state. It is very dramatic.
Sitting down at the piano, the children flocking around him, Jack Griffin would start off by asking what they liked about their school.

From their responses, hed come up with some lyrics.

And then, the kids still at his side, he would put it all to music.

A longtime Tulsa Public Schools administrator who retired as an associate superintendent, Griffin wrote school songs that way at several district sites during his frequent visits to classrooms.

Usually, they were a variation on his favorite themes: Be positive and set high expectations, and most times they will be met.

Griffin relished those visits to schools.

More than just an opportunity to talk to children about music and poetry  his favorite subjects  they allowed him to stay in touch with his teaching side.

I dont care what kind of programs, curriculum you have, Griffin, a former teacher, told the Tulsa Tribune in an interview about his retirement.

In the final analysis its the teacher in the classroom whos going to make the difference.

Jack Leo Griffin died Tuesday. He was 93.

A service was held Friday at Woodland Acres Baptist Church under direction of Stanleys Funeral Home.

Griffin retired in 1987 after 40 years with TPS. For the last 15 of that, he was associate superintendent for instruction.

Born in Tulsa and a graduate of Broken Arrow High School, Griffin obtained his bachelors degree from the University of Tulsa in 1948, and he would later add a masters and doctorate from there as well.

Beginning his career with Union Public Schools, where he was the districts first marching band director, he moved to TPS in 1954 as a music teacher at the new Edison High School. He would go on to serve as a counselor and assistant principal there, and then as principal at Hale High School before going on to districtwide administrative roles.

Griffin, an avid poet, songwriter and musician in his spare time, was always a strong advocate of arts education.

In 1988, he was presented a Governors Arts Award for his role in starting Harwelden Institute for Arts in Education, a summer study program for public school teachers.

Griffin, who helped implement a program bringing performing artists into school classrooms, would also be recognized by the Arts and Humanities Council of Tulsa, which presented him with its Harwelden Award for his contributions to the arts over the course of his career.

Griffins interests extended further.

After retiring, he created a grant-funded program serving developmentally disabled adults by helping to improve their reading, social and other skills.

For his efforts, he was recognized in 1990 with the Donna Nigh Award, presented by the state Department of Human Services to recognize volunteers serving the disabled.

Music was always part of Griffins life. He enjoyed playing the piano and trombone, and writing music.

He was involved in music with various area churches, and just this past Easter kept a long-standing tradition going with his solo rendition of Holy City. He had performed church solos of the hymn on 81 consecutive Easters.

Griffin was preceded in death by his wife of 66 years, Billie Griffin.

Survivors include three children, Mark Griffin, Brad Griffin and Beth Lowe; and five grandchildren.

Memorial donations may be made to Woodland Acres Baptist Church or to the Oklahoma Educational Memorial Trust Foundation.
The opposition is calling for public disclosure of the legal advice given to former Attorney General Faris Al Rawi relating to the indemnity agreement with Vincent Nelson.

Speaking at the UNCs weekly Sunday media conference this morning, MP Saddam Hosein also criticized what he sees as the law associations delayed and weak response to the entire matter.
Mondays Australian Story report Your Money or Your Life profiles the remarkable Dr Danielle Tindle, who has been diagnosed with neuroendocrine carcinoma, after having already survived Hodgkins Lymphoma.

Twelve years ago Danielle Tindle came back from the brink of death to survive Hodgkins Lymphoma. By extraordinary coincidence, it was her own fathers groundbreaking stem-cell research which ultimately saved his daughters life.

I hate the term cancer sufferer; its such a disempowering, victimising word Ive been through hell and back but Im strong and I can be beautiful.  Dr Danielle Tindle (PhD)

Since Danielle was given a second chance at life, this inspirational young woman has made it her mission to advocate for improved services and care for other adolescent and young adult cancer patients. Shes become a world leader in the field.

Ive already faced my own mortality, so I had no fear of death. I wanted to focus on something which was meaningful, which was helping others.  Dr Danielle Tindle (PhD)

Unfortunately, mid-way through her PhD, the now thirty-six year old Danielle Tindle was diagnosed with neuroendocrine carcinoma, a completely new tumour. Doctors think its a consequence of the toxic treatment she was given in her early twenties.

That shes got it is almost entirely the result of the draconian treatment she had  for Hodgkins Lymphoma.  Prof. Robert Tindle, father

With all conventional therapies ineffective against the cancer, once again Danielle, her father and her medical team are in a race to find the next life-saving breakthrough. Its come in the form of ground-breaking drugs which are subsidised for melanoma under the PBS, but for rare cancer patients like Danielle, are cripplingly expensive.

If you are a melanoma patient and your chemotherapy happens to be one of these antibodies, youll be paying about $6.50 a shot, and in the adjacent cubicle therell be someone like Danielle, who is paying $5000 a shot.  Prof. Robert Tindle, father

Nobody thinks its fair the lottery says she got a rare cancer, and our system doesnt respond in that circumstance.  Richard Vines, CEO Rare Cancers Australia

Australian Story has followed this extraordinary woman who never gives up right from the beginning.

I cant not hope Im just unstoppable.  Dr Danielle Tindle (PhD)

Monday, May 9 at 8pm on ABC.
Former Arrow and Teen Wolf actor Colton Haynes has spoken about why he departed two successful series, detailing a struggle with anxiety, the pressures of fame and social media discussion about his sexuality.

I asked to step away because I cared more about my mental and physical health than my career at the time, he said of Arrow. Ive had terminal anxiety my entire life. Physically ill, fainting. Im 27 years old, and I have an ulcer. I had to step back, he said.

Haynes has been out to his friends, family and colleagues for many years but kept his personal life from fans.

In January a Tumblr post commented on Haynes secret gay past, to which Haynes replied: Was it a secret? That drew wider attention.

It was a complete shock. I wasnt ready to be back in the headlines, says Haynes.

I should have made a comment or a statement, but I just wasnt ready. I didnt feel like I owed anyone anything. I think in due time, everyone has to make those decisions when theyre ready, and I wasnt yet. But I felt like I was letting people down by not coming forward with the rest of what I should have said.

At the time Haynes had also checked into rehab for anxiety and would be frequently back in the hospital over the next three months.

People want you to be that GQ image that you put out, but people dont realise what its like to act 24 hours a day. Id go home and I was still acting, he told EW.com. People who are so judgmental about those who are gay or different dont realise that acting 24 hours a day is the most exhausting thing in the world.

A happier Haynes now says he is up for future projects, including more Arrow if showrunner Greg Berlanti is interested.

It took me so long to get to this point, but Im doing so good, says Haynes. Im happier than Ive ever been, and healthier than Ive ever been, and thats what I care about.
Andrew Denton joins a Compass discussion on Sunday surrounding A Good Exit: Who Decides. The complexities of dying in Australia today.

For the first time ever, and with little preparation, our doctors and families are forced to make a choice: the life support machine or simple care on the ward (or at home).

Palliative care physician Linda Sheahan tells ABC, I think theres increasingly poor death literacy People arent talking about death as much, theyre not communicating with their loved ones family members, doctors, nurses. Talking about death will help us understand better how to do it well.

6:30pm Sunday on ABC.
Former Prime Ministerial Chief of Staff Peta Credlin will make her first SKY News appearance in a special edition of PM Agenda with David Speers Saturday 7 May at 4:00pm.

The former Abbott govt adviser has joined SKY as a contributor for Election 2016 coverage.

A skilled political tactician and strategist, Peta most recently served as the Chief of Staff to former Prime Minister, the Hon Tony Abbott MP, a position she also held during his time as Leader of the Opposition. Peta has 16 years experience working in federal politics including as an adviser, senior adviser and chief of staff to four Howard Government Cabinet ministers in the portfolio areas of communications, foreign affairs, immigration and defence.

Between 2007 and 2013, Peta was senior adviser to former Leader of the Opposition the Hon Dr Brendan Nelson and Deputy Chief of Staff to the Hon Malcolm Turnbull. Following Tony Abbotts election as Leader of the Opposition in December 2009, Peta took on the role as chief of staff and remained in this position until September 2015. She is one of Australias longest serving prime ministerial chiefs of staff and the longest serving female to hold this role.
When an emergency occurs, the University of Cincinnati utilizes several tools to communicate with members of our community in a quick and coordinated manner. These tools include:

voice notification system

text message

email

electronic signage boards

website

social media (Twitter and Facebook)

Rave Alert

If you have a question about the universitys operational status or emergency notification process, please send an email to publicsafety@uc.edu or call 513-556-4900.
1:13 p.m., May 6, 2016--Breakthrough technologies can do little to solve the worlds energy problems unless they are rooted in cultural, economic, social and political reality.

That was the primary message emerging from a conference hosted by the University of Delaware and featuring leading energy scientists, policy experts and industry representatives from Africa earlier this week.

Nancy Targett, acting president of UD, welcomed attendees and said that the conference was a great opportunity to strengthen existing relationships and forge new ones.

UD has a great deal of expertise in energy fields and a long history of conducting cutting-edge research in the areas of photovoltaics, catalysis, fuel cells, and energy and environmental policy, she said.

Targett also pointed out that the UD campus serves as a testing ground for this research.

We have two fuel-cell buses that are part of our transportation fleet, and a third one will be put into service soon, she said. We have cars that can store energy and then feed it back into the power grid, and we have a wind turbine in Lewes that generates enough power to effectively take that campus off the grid.

And we cant forget that way back in 1973, we built Solar One, a house designed to showcase the first major thin-film solar cell.

Delivering a video welcome, Babatunde Ogunnaike, dean of the UD College of Engineering, said, We need to think beyond the borders of our own country if we want to ensure that our research is to have a global impact, because the grand challenges of the Western world are not always the same as those of our neighbors in developing nations.

U.S.-Africa engagement

Chris Coons, U.S. senator from Delaware and a member of the Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Africa and Global Health Policy, opened the program with a talk that reflected the complexity of the problem.

The challenge is how to develop energy without contributing to further climate change, he said. Technologies like the ones being developed at UD have the potential to bring Africans literally out of the dark and into the light."

Coons pointed out that electrification was rolled out in the U.S. through cooperatives.

Its one of the greatest examples of effective grassroots democracy, he said. We have to engage communities in ownership of the means of energy production.

Coons, who has made many trips to Africa, including a study abroad program in Nairobi when he was a student, said that the Mandela Washington Fellowships for Young African Leaders would prove to be one of President Barack Obamas greatest legacies.

That program brought Glory Oguegbu to UD from Nigeria in 2015. Founder and CEO of an organization focused on alleviating hunger and poverty, she returned to UD for the conference and presented Coons with the dilemma she faces every day  explaining to people in rural areas why they should care about climate change.

What do I tell them when they see no reason to stop using coal and kerosene as fuel? she asked.

Coons said the best approach is to share visible local examples of climate change, such as deforestation and loss of crop productivity.

Begin with examples rooted in the daily life of Nigerians, he said. Show them that they can no longer raise cattle here because theres no water. Its not about convincing people to save the Earth  its showing them that better cooking stoves will save them money so they can send their daughters to school.

Dan Rich, University Professor of Public Policy at UD, talked about the role of the Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection (MISTRA), a globally recognized think-tank based in Johannesburg, in Africas Second Revolution, which is focused on social and economic equity.

MISTRAs leaders, Sibusiso Vil-Nkomo and Renosi Mokate, who received their masters and doctoral degrees from UDs School of Public Policy and Administration, have helped identify areas where UD strengths match needs in sub-Saharan Africa.

A lot of what is happening here today is because of the initiative of people who came to Delaware a long time ago and have come back after making changes in their own countries, Rich said.

Vil-Nkomo talked about sustainable development in a transition economy like South Africa, which, for the past two decades, has been working to dismantle the economic, social, and political structures of apartheid.

The challenge is making sure that public servants and the private sector implement the policies that have been established, Vil-Nkomo said.

One of the most energy- and carbon-intensive economies in the world, South Africa has rolled out solar water heating systems in public housing, erected wind turbines to generate energy, and reduced carbon emissions through improved mass transit using clean energy buses.

Consistent integration of the three pillars  economic, social and environmental  is a challenge, Vil-Nkomo said, but South Africa has demonstrated to the world that a great deal can be accomplished in 20 years.

Panel discussion

Ralph Begleiter, Rosenberg Professor of Communication at UD, moderated a panel discussion focused on the public policy aspects of energy. Panelists included Bonaventure Mbida-Essama, CEO of the Nelson Mandela Institute, and Olurinde Lafe, chairman and CEO of Ohio-based Innovative Computing Group Inc., as well as Rich and Vil-Nkomo.

The consensus among the panelists was that local communities must be heavily involved in the development and implementation of energy solutions.

We need to look at development from a village point of view and build the grid community by community, Lafe said. If you know how to pull people together, magic will happen. Power companies should be owned by smaller entities, with the government focused only on policy and governance.

Mbida-Essama emphasized that its not enough to just have a policy  it needs to be implemented with a feedback and monitoring system to ensure that it works.

Rich pointed out that the capacity of communities to act on their own behalf can be affected by existing relationships that predispose toward certain options and against others such as renewables. The emancipation of beliefs is the first step in change, he said.

Begleiter also asked the panelists if they thought the energy problems of Africa must be solved within individual countries or whether the energy field could be moved forward in a way that involves continent-wide policy.

Nkomo responded that Africa must be redeemed in chunks by countries that share the same values, which can then lead to the creation of models for broader application.

The takeaway according to Begleiter?

You have to keep these kinds of questions in mind as you develop the science, so you can explain to policy makers why its important for them to get on board with what youre developing, he said. Science and technology cannot be successful without public policy and political support.

Technical sessions

Following the panel discussion, the emphasis of the conference shifted to technical talks on fuel cells, catalysis, photovoltaics, wind, solar thermal and biomass energy. Speakers from Africa included:

Dmitri Bessarabov, director, Hydrogen South Africa: Infrastructure;

Cordellia Sita, director, Hydrogen South Africa: Systems;

Sharon Blair, director, Hydrogen South Africa: Catalysis;

Patricia Kooyman, SARChI Professor of Chemical Engineering, University of Cape Town;

Benard Muok, director, Centre for Research, Innovation and Technology, Jaramogi Oginga Odinga University of Science and Technology, Kenya;

Dipolelo Jane Elford, renewable energy consultant, South Africa;

Olayinka S. Ohunakin, director, Energy and Environment Research Group, Covenant University, Nigeria; and

Sameer Hameer, lecturer in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Nelson Mandela African Institution of Science and Technology, Tanzania.

Technical talks were also presented by UDs Ajay Prasad, director of the Center for Fuel Cell Research; Yushan Yan, Distinguished Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering; Raul Lobo, director of the Center for Catalytic Science and Technology; Steven Hegedus, senior scientist in the Institute of Energy Conversion; Jeremy Firestone, director of the Center for Carbon-free Power Integration; and Bingjun Xu, professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering.

About the conference

The first UD-Africa Energy Conference was held from April 25-26 at the University of Delawares Clayton Hall Conference Center. The event was organized and chaired by Ajay Prasad, Alumni Distinguished Professor of Mechanical Engineering, and Douglas Buttrey, professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering.

Support for the conference was provided through the University of Delaware Energy Institute, Institute for Global Studies Global Exchange (Globex) program, College of Engineering, College of Arts and Sciences, College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Center for Carbon-free Power Integration and African Studies Program.

About UD-African partnerships

The University of Delaware maintains nine institutional agreements in countries across Africa including Nigeria, Ghana, Mauritius and South Africa, beginning with Obafemi Awolowo University in 1993. These partnerships span the College of Arts and Sciences, the Alfred Lerner College of Business and Economics, the College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment, and the College of Engineering.

In addition, UDs Institute for Global Studies annually hosts two Department of State exchange programs, the Mandela Washington Fellowship for Young African Leaders (YALI) and the Study of the U.S. Institutes Womens Leadership Program (SUSI-WLP) for young leaders from Sub-Saharan Africa. Administered by IREX, both of these programs bring young leaders from Sub-Saharan Africa to the University of Delaware for six weeks of intensive civic engagement and leadership training.

Those interested in learning more about UDs Global partnerships or any of UDs Department of State exchange programs are encouraged to contact Dan Bottomley, associate director for global partnerships and programs.

Article by Diane Kukich

Video by Nikki Laws and Ashley Barnas

Photos by Doug Baker
Honored School of Nursing alumnae share their Certificates of Appreciation at the celebration of diversity nursing alumni event in April. From left are Stephanie Brahimi (Class of 1988), Capt. Robin Gibbs (Class of 1987), Miriam Spells (Class of 1986), and Meta McGhee (Class of 1974).

9:38 a.m., May 6, 2016--The University of Delaware School of Nursing, in collaboration with the Nursing Workforce Diversity Program, hosted a special alumni event in honor of the Schools 50th anniversary on Wednesday, April 13.

The event, Breaking Barriers & Opening Doors, commemorated the numerous achievements accomplished by minority alumni since graduating from UD.

With opening remarks from both the Nursing Workforce Diversity team, and Susan Hall, deputy dean in the College of Health Sciences, the evenings focus on diversity reflects the Universitys commitment to creating a culturally competent workforce.

This special evening brought both current students and alumni together to celebrate the diversity in the School of Nursing, which first opened its doors to students of color in 1969. Forty-five years later, the School of Nursing obtained a federal grant under the direction of Cynthia Diefenbeck, Paula Klemm and Pia Inguito, as part of their efforts to help increase enrollment of underrepresented students and further promote diversity in the nursing workforce.

This Nursing Workforce Diversity Grant Program, recently rebranded RNvision, was created to provide underrepresented students with both financial and academic resources favorable to their success.

Under the direction of KaWansi Newton-Freeman, recruitment and retention coordinator and with the support of Marian Lucas, administrative assistant, the RNvision program provides peer mentoring and professional development for all of its participants.

In honor of the special event, a commemorative video, created in collaboration with Christiana Care Health System, highlighted the experiences of two recent BSN graduates: Turquoise Abdullah, Class of 2014, and Stephanie Agyemang, Class of 2015, who both expressed the positive impact mentoring had on their academic success in the School of Nursing.

The keynote speaker for the celebration was alumna Marcella A. Copes, who earned her bachelor of science in nursing, masters degree in nursing and doctorate from UD. She currently serves as president and CEO of MTB Health Care Consulting.

Introduced by Carol Henderson, vice provost for diversity, Copes presented a poignant and inspirational talk to the audience, sharing intimate details of her personal hardships and struggles while a student at UD. She painted a vivid picture of racial discrimination and mistreatment that, unfortunately, was an everyday reality for many minority students during the 1970s. Despite these challenges, though, she evolved into a successful nurse educator, mentor and community leader, all of which allowed her to fully embrace this bitter past. The success of Copes and her peers, as well as the achievements of other trailblazers, helped break the barriers and open the doors to future generations of diverse nurse professionals.

Article by KaWansi Newton-Freeman

Photos by Doug Baker
1:05 p.m., May 6, 2016--The Ratledge Family Award for Delaware Public Service has been presented to three members of the University of Delaware community  Darryl Chambers, James Flynn and Joanne Whalen  for their contributions to the well-being of the people of the state.

The recipients were honored during a ceremony April 28 at Marriotts Courtyard Newark-University of Delaware campus hotel.

Darryl Chambers

Chambers, a graduate research associate in the Center for Drug and Health Studies who is pursuing a doctorate in criminology, was honored for his work with local, city and statewide community-oriented programs.

As a member of the Wilmington HOPE Commission Street Outreach Program, he worked to improve quality of life and reduce crime and violence in communities in the city. He was lead associate researcher on the Wilmington Street Participatory Action Research Project, in which members of a population under study conduct research in and on their own communities.

In 2014, Gov. Jack Markell appointed Chambers to serve on the Wilmington Public Safety Strategies Commission, working to conduct an examination of public safety strategies in the city.

Chambers is the executive director of the Youth Empowered to Strive and Succeed Program, which has as its mission is to provide youth with quality education regarding drug and alcohol prevention, gang and gun violence, and issues related to fatherhood and family reunification.

He was recognized at the Ratledge Family Award ceremony by Yasser Payne, associate professor in the Department of Black American Studies.

James Flynn

Flynn joined UDs human resources team in 1979, and now serves in the Institute for Public Administration in the School of Public Policy and Administration (SPPA). As an assistant professor in SPPA, he served as the director of the master of public administration (MPA) degree program and SPPAs internship program.

Flynn has worked on projects ranging from strategic planning to education policy to local government training programs. He served as project manager for the Blue Collar Task Force, a joint executive and legislative initiative authorized by the 147th Delaware General Assembly, and led a team that facilitated a series of task force meetings and statewide public hearings to examine the states unemployment rates, climate for long-range business growth, and workforce-readiness strategies.

Flynns impact on the community is also demonstrated through his management of six superintendent searches for the states school districts. This role required him to tap his professional background in human resources to create an impartial application and selection process to identify candidates with the skills and experience to lead.

Also, he served as a project team member to provide support to the Delaware Youth Opportunities Initiatives working group. This work contributed to Delaware House Bill 163, designed to assist older teenagers transitioning to adulthood as they age out of foster care.

He was recognized by Jerome Lewis, director of the Institute for Public Administration.

Joanne Whalen

Whalen joined the University in 1979 as an associate in Cooperative Extensions Integrated Pest Management (IPM) Program. She became the Extension IPM coordinator and Extension entomologist for agriculture in 1983.

Whalen, who received her masters degree in entomology and wildlife ecology from UD in 1983, has served on statewide, regional and national committees. She is a current member and past chair of the Northeast Regions Technical Committee on Integrated Pest Management, responsible for improving communication and cooperation throughout the region.

As a past member of the International Certified Crop Adviser Exam Committee and current Mid-Atlantic Certified Crop Adviser Board member, she has worked to establish base standards of knowledge and continuing education for individuals who advise growers on crop and pest management practices.

As the Extension IPM coordinator, she focuses on developing and delivering recommendations that have both economic and environmental benefits. She conducts research and extension programs that educate agricultural clientele on a range of practices including the use of cover crops, reduced tillage, conservation biological control, trap cropping, insecticide resistance management and the proper use of insecticides to manage insect pests in crops.

She was recognized by Michelle Rodgers, associate dean of the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources and director of Cooperative Extension.

George Watson, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, presented welcoming remarks, and Mark Rieger, dean of the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources, closed the program. Dan Rich, University Professor of Public Policy, presented a talk on the value of community engagement.

About the Ratledge Family Award

The Ratledge family, Delawareans who can trace their roots back to the 1700s, established the award to encourage and recognize significant public service contributions with at least one award of $1,000 made each year.

Recipients of the award must be members of the UD community. Professional staff, faculty and students are eligible.

Preference is given to members of the School of Public Policy and Administration and the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources.

The award is presented to those who exemplify excellence in public service to citizens in the state, and those contributions are defined to include both paid and volunteer work.

Photos by Duane Perry
Goalkeeper: Alphonse Areola (Villarreal)



The 23-year-old saved from Philippe Coutinho and Daniel Sturridge among others on a busy night, and rescued the 'Yellow Submarine' from a more damaging defeat with a fine performance, denying Liverpool on ten occasions in a one-sided contest at Anfield.

Defender: Mariano Ferreira (Sevilla)

Ended Shakhtar Donetsk's hopes with a beauty of a goal, the right-back bending a powerful shot past Andriy Pyatov from outside the box. It was Brazilian's first for the club; he may not score a better one.

Defender: Daniel Carrico (Sevilla)

With more UEFA Europa League outings (group stage to final) under his belt than any other player, the Portuguese centre-back and occasional holding midfielder was in typically assured form on his 53rd appearance in this competition.

Defender: Dejan Lovren (Liverpool)

With the hosts only leading 1-0, there was an early sniff of a chance for Cedric Bakambu after the interval but he was foiled by a brilliant tackle from Lovren.

Midfielder: Adam Lallana (Liverpool)

A menace throughout, Lallana completed the turnaround in the second period by adding a third from close range. The No20 could have had a second goal but scuffed at James Milner's brilliant ball in.

Midfielder: Ever Banega (Sevilla)

Impressive in the first leg in Ukraine, the Argentinian playmaker's influence grew as the second leg progressed  his prompting and probing a key feature of Sevilla's dominance after the interval.

Midfielder: Emre Can (Liverpool)

Making his first appearance since damaging ankle ligaments in the thrilling 4-3 quarter-final victory against Borussia Dortmund at Anfield, the German international performed his duties admirably, endearing himself further to the Anfield crowd by producing an excellent display.

Midfielder: James Milner (Liverpool)



Liverpool's stand-in captain was outstanding; making crunching tackles, showing quick feet, and driving his team forward  proof they are made of tough stuff in Yorkshire.

Forward: Kevin Gameiro (Sevilla)

The Frenchman took his tally to seven in eight UEFA Europa League outings this term, and almost completed his hat-trick with an acrobatic kick.

Forward: Daniel Sturridge (Liverpool)



Kept on the bench during the first leg last week, the No15 rewarded Jurgen Klopp's faith by delivering an assured performance up front for the Reds, first forcing Bruno Soriano to deflect the ball into his own net for the opener before firing under Areola and in off the post.

Forward: Roberto Firmino (Liverpool)



The Brazilian ran the show; his low centre was bundled in by Bruno to break the deadlock, and he sent Sturridge clear for the second before creating Liverpool's third with a surging run and pull back.
Tickets for this season's UEFA Europa League final, scheduled for the 18 May in Basel, are already on their way to Liverpool and Seville.

Shortly after the final whistle blew in yesterday's semi-final deciders, the presses started whirring at UEFA's headquarters in Nyon, running through the night in order to ensure that tickets were ready to be sent out to the finalists today. The clubs should receive their allocations soon, and will sell them to their own fans directly.

St. Jakob-Park has a capacity of 35,000 and was a semi-final venue at UEFA EURO 2008. For more on the stadium selection process, click here.

UEFA, meanwhile, is aware that many ticketless fans will travel to Basel to support their teams. However, we advise anyone without tickets not to approach the stadium on the day of the final since safety and security measures will be very tight. The stadium perimeter will be reinforced in order to guarantee safe and secure entrance for all ticket holders.
The ministry for internal affairs of Ukraine does not have any official documents about the detention of former minister for energy and coal industry of Ukraine Eduard Stavytsky in Israel, spokesman for the ministry Artem Shevchenko has told journalists on Friday, Ukrinform reports.

"At present, the ministry for internal affairs possesses no official documents from the Israeli side on detention of Stavytsky," said Shevchenko.

He noted that while the interior ministry has received no paper certified documents confirming the detention of Stavytsky.

Meanwhile, the press secretary has advised journalists to refer the matter to the Israeli side, in particular to the Israeli police in order to confirm or deny the information about the detention of former Ukrainian minister.

tl
#Korean Air-Cebu incident Korean Air flight overruns Cebu runway, no injuries reported Korean Air Co. said Monday its flight KE631 with 173 people on board overran the runway while landing at Cebu International Airport in the Philippines a day earlier but no injuries...

#Yoon Suk-yeol Yoon calls for war against drug crimes President Yoon Suk-yeol called Monday for special measures to address drug crimes, saying they must be stopped before they become a national-level threat. Yoon gave the instruct...
The situation in ATO area in eastern Ukraine escalated in last day. The pro-Russian illegal armed groups launched 11 attacks on the positions of Ukrainian troops.

This is reported by the ATO Headquarters press center.

"The militants repeatedly used 120mm mortars, small arms and grenade launchers to shell our strongholds near Novotroitske [32km south of Donetsk]," the report reads.

As noted, an enemy sniper fired on the Ukrainian servicemen near Marinka (35 km south-west of Donetsk). The ATO positions near Avdiyivka (18km north of Donetsk) were shelled from grenade launchers of various systems and small arms.

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There were no Ukrainian soldiers killed in the anti-terrorist operation (ATO) zone in Donbas in the past twenty-four hours, although one serviceman was wounded.

Presidential Administration Spokesman for ATO Issues Andriy Lysenko said at a briefing on Friday, an Ukrinform correspondent reports. No Ukrainian serviceman was killed as a result of military actions over the past day, but one soldier was wounded Lysenko said. iy
Foreign Ministers of Ukraine and Romania, Pavlo Klimkin and Lazar Comanescu, on Friday, May 6, will hold a working meeting during which, in particular, they will sign an agreement on visa fees cancelation for the citizens of both countries.

This is reported by the Ukrainian Foreign Ministrys press service. The ministers will sign an agreement between the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine and the Government of Romania on the abolition of fees for preparation of long-term (national) visas, due to which Ukrainians and Romanians will be able to get free permits for the entrance and stay in the countries for a term over 90 days, reads the report. iy
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin has congratulated Kremlins political prisoner Yuriy Soloshenko on his 74th birthday.

Minister Klimkin posted greetings on his Twitter page.

"I wish you health to enjoy many years of life after you are released," he wrote.

As reported, former director of the Poltava factory Yuri Soloshenko, illegally convicted in Russia, signed the documents for extradition to Ukraine. Soloshenko was sentenced to six years in prison for alleged spying. He has cancer and coronary heart disease.

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Lviv mayor Andriy Sadovy has called on all political forces and community organizations to demonstrate wisdom and keep peace in the city during the 8-9 May holidays, the press service of the city council reports.

"What will go on during the May 8 - 9 holidays in Lviv depends on each of us. All have to make efforts to secure order and peace in the city. On Day of Remembrance and Reconciliation we ought to pray for those who are not with us, pay our tribute to those men and women who lost their lives at different periods of our history. Today, Lviv is an example for entire Ukraine. This is why Id like appeal to all organizations, public associations and political parties not to succumb to provocations in the 8-9 May time period, and protect our city and keep up our historical memory," he noted.

tl
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Published May 6, 2016

MONROE, La.  Two University of Louisiana Monroe English majors, Lauren C. Haigler, of Haughton, La., and Shelby N. Russell, of West Monroe, La., have each won a Summer Internship Stipend from Sigma Tau Delta, the International English Honors Society.

The stipends each amount to $1500, providing funding for for current undergraduate and graduate student members accepting non- or low-paying summer internships. The awards are competitive, and only a limited number of stipends were awarded.

Lauren and Shelby will be working with Dr. Jana M. Giles, of the English Program in the School of Humanities, as editorial interns for the academic research journal, Conradiana, for which Dr. Giles serves as Managing Editor. Conradiana is dedicated to the study of the works of the British and Polish modernist novelist, Joseph Conrad. Giles is also the faculty sponsor for the ULM Beta Zeta chapter of Sigma Tau Delta.

I am just thrilled to be able to work with such bright and capable young people this summer on producing a premiere academic journal. I was hoping for at least one of them to win, but never expected to have such an embarrassment of riches as two interns at once, said Giles.

The internship must involve working for an "organization" while being directed by a supervisor/mentor within that organization, and the internships duties must be consistent with the applicants level of education, area of study, and career goals. Financial need is taken into consideration in addition to internship length.

The good news doesnt stop there, however. Lauren Haigler also won a $1000 Regents Scholarship: Southern Region from Sigma Tau Delta.

I hope this will encourage more students from ULM to apply for nationally competitive scholarships and internships, said Giles.

They can win if they try.

A link to the award announcements may be found here: http://www.english.org/sigmatd/news/2016/newsflash_scholarship_winners_050516.html
| By Patricia Fanning

Listen to your peers. Listen to your patients or clients. More than 400 students heard that advice delivered in innovative ways at the annual interprofessional education event held April 13 at the University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB).

Conducted by UMBs Center for Interprofessional Education (IPE), the event drew 406 students, including 50 from the UM School of Nursing (UMSON) and School of Pharmacy (SOP) programs at the Universities at Shady Grove (USG). The large group gathered at the UMSON Auditorium for a panel discussion and a send-off from UMB leaders.

(View a photo gallery.)

UMB President Jay A. Perman, MD, spoke of his own path to recognizing the power of team. A pediatric gastroenterologist, Perman gained insights early on when relying on professionals other than physicians to help care for infants who had feeding disorders.

Just soak up from each other what it took me these many decades to appreciate, he told the audience, which included students from each of UMBs seven schools.

Heather Congdon, PharmD, BCPS, CDE, of the School of Pharmacy (SOP) mentors students Amanda Daugherty, right, of the School of Medicines Physical Therapy and Rehabilitation Science program and Christine Do (SOP).

UMSON Dean Jane M. Kirschling, PhD, RN, FAAN, director of UMBs Center for IPE, outlined multi-disciplinary activities structured so that students would be able to learn with, from, and about one another." To facilitate learning in small groups, 30 faculty members were assigned to perform as mentors on IPE Day.

On March 23, 70 faculty members had attended IPE Faculty Development Day.

Elsie Stines, DNP 15, MS, CRNP, who together with Perman conducts the Presidents Clinic, a weekly pediatric clinic at the University of Maryland Medical Center that provides interdisciplinary learning opportunities, gave students tips for a successful IPE Day. The nurse practitioners advice: Be open and not judgmental about your team being able to work together.

The panel, made up of eight students and alumni of various schools, had words of wisdom of their own. Elizabeth Shannon Walters, BSN 15, spoke of what she learned in Malawi while paired with a physical therapist and a social worker during research overseen by the UMB Center for Global Education Initiatives.

Actively listen, said Walters. Referring to patients as well as providers, she said to be open to what everyones opinion is about the case at hand.

For the hundreds of IPE Day participants, the case at hand would unfold in 10 different venues but with the same medical facts and social determinants. Actors portrayed a standardized patient, either Dolores Darling or Doug Darling, who was seeking treatment in a primary care setting. The complaint: hypertension as flagged by a nurse at a recent health fair.

But there was much more to making an assessment. A heavy smoker with a complex personal life, Darling suffered from Type II diabetes and crucial symptoms that emerged during students collaborative interview process.

The teams prepared a care plan, explained their recommendations to the patient and, with the actors momentarily stepping out of role, were given a review.

Maryland Carey Law Dean Donald B. Tobin, JD; School of Social Work clinical instructor Christopher Wirt, MSW, LCSW-C; Perman, and Stines were facilitators in Group One. They listened and occasionally offered guidance. But for the most part, the students did the talking as they pored over a case history and considered challenges, such as the patients financial difficulties.

Alayna Blazakis, a UMSON student who is studying to be a nurse practitioner, spoke about the medication regimen. She asked whether Darling could afford his diabetes medications and observed that the range of costs is broad. They can be really expensive, she said.

In Group Two, students sought to turn the patients finances to their advantage in telling Darling he could save money by quitting cigarettes. How much did he smoke? Two packs a day for 25 years, he replied. I guess you would call it a crutch, he said.

Athena Balanou, a UMSON student in the Clinical Nurse Leader program, observed to the students at her table that Darling had so many stressors in his life. If the team were to recommend nicotine replacement therapy, students debated, how about suggesting meditation? Or yoga?

When the patient heard the teams care plan, Darling promised the group that he would ponder quitting. But he added: I could decrease [smoking] but I dont think I could ever quit.

Later all 10 groups united during a wrap-up session, and Godly Jack, a student at the School of Medicine (SOM), was among the first to express what would be an oft-repeated reaction to peers in other professions.

Enlightened, he said, explaining how his personal focus on medicine had left him unaware of others disciplines. We had a good experience collaborating with social work, law, and dental to work up the case.

When law got another shoutout, from a pharmacy student who called the group experience my eye opener, it was duly noted amid applause that Maryland Careys dean was in the room.

Later it was pharmacys turn to draw applause for comments such as the one from Logan Buckley, a student in SOMs Physical Therapy and Rehabilitation Science program, who praised SOP students knowledge of blood sugar monitors, including where to buy them and how much Darling would likely pay.

Our team did a good job of listening to everyones point of view, Buckley said.

School of Dentistry student Glenda Caceres of the Dental Hygiene program talked about interacting with a standardized patient. The patient told us he really appreciated the fact that we showed empathy, she said. He needs to feel like hes part of the plan.

Overseeing IPE Day were the centers co-directors, Heather B. Congdon, PharmD, BCPS, CDE, assistant dean for the SOP program at USG; and David B. Mallott, MD, associate professor and associate dean for medical education at the SOM.

Kirschling, Stines, Congdon, and Tobin joined in fielding microphones and in conducting an exuberant raffle to conclude activities. A buffet supper was served at the Southern Management Corporation Campus Center, where several of the groups had met earlier. IPE Day was supported by a gift from James Earl Jr., PhD, and Sylvia Earl.
A 2013 file photo shows humanitarian aid reaching internally displaced people in the Azzas area of northern Syria.  UNHCR / A. Solumsmoen

GENEVA, May 6 (UNHCR) - The UN Refugee Agency is deeply shocked and dismayed at reports yesterday that many people were killed and scores more injured in air strikes on settlements where displaced people had sought safety in Idleb governorate, northern Syria. Early reports show children were among the casualties.

The attacks are a flagrant violation of international humanitarian and human rights law and demonstrate once again the extreme difficulty confronting civilians fleeing violence in Syria as they try to find safety.

The informal settlement of Ghita Al-Rahmeh, near the village of Al-Kamoneh - located south east of the Sarmada town in Idleb governorate - was hosting around 2,500 people (450 families) who had already fled their homes in western and northern rural Aleppo since late last year. Reports indicate that many people have since fled to surrounding hills, fearing further attacks.

The victims of the strikes on Thursday (May 5, 2016) are among some 6.5 million internally displaced people in Syria, many of whom have been uprooted several times as the frontlines of conflict have shifted over the last five years.

It is an unacceptable tragedy that civilians who had already fled for their lives have been targeted in this way; the strikes demonstrate shameful scorn for the sanctity of the civilian nature of camps for internally displaced people.

A political solution to the Syrian conflict is more urgent than ever.
Two villagers in Benue state's Aguta district recover corrugated iron roofing from one of the many homes torched during attacks earlier this year.  UNHCR/ Hogan Bassey

GENEVA, May 6 (UNHCR) - UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, is calling for urgent action to end growing tension and clashes between nomadic livestock herders and arable farmers that have left several hundred people dead and tens of thousands displaced this year in fertile regions of Nigeria.

The latest clashes were reported last week, when Fulani nomads attacked villages in Ukpabi Nimbo district in south-east Nigeria's Enugu state, leaving homes destroyed, more than 40 people dead and forcing hundreds to flee.

This came some two months after attacks in neighbouring Benue killed an estimated 300 people and displaced more than 100,000 within the state, with some 7,000 staying in camps and the rest living with relatives, according to UNHCR staff members who later visited the area.

The nomads and local population in Benue have clashed before, but the late February surge in violence in 10 districts was particularly alarming and UNHCR fears that the problem could flare up again and spin out of control unless immediate measures are taken, including a greater security presence.

UNHCR calls on the Nigerian government, with support from the international community, to help facilitate stepped up inter-communal dialogue in states such as Benue, Taraba and Enugu and to work with civil society, including traditional and religious bodies, to address the causes of a conflict that has simmered for two decades. UNHCR also seeks increased assistance for the displaced, especially women and children.

Advancing desertification, overgrazing and lower rainfall in recent years has exacerbated the situation by pushing nomads from northern regions to the richer agricultural land further south. The latest clashes were triggered by disagreement over grazing routes and encroachment on farmland.

UNHCR led a mission in late March to assess the situation in Benue state after the February attacks and the needs of those affected. The team visited villages in the Agatu district that had been torched and razed to the ground. Most villages were deserted, their schools, churches and health clinics destroyed.

Villagers were staying in makeshift sites and were in need of food, shelter, emergency aid items, medicine and health care, psycho-social support and other assistance. UNHCR and its partners have been providing shelter, basic aid items and livelihood support for the displaced, including those affected by the latest clashes.

Since 2011, when the clashes between herders and farmers began increasing, some 400,000 people have been forcibly displaced in sporadic bursts of violence. About 80 per cent of them have returned home, but they still face many challenges.

The dispute between herders and farmers is separate from the government's struggle in recent years with the Boko Haram insurgency in the north-east of Nigeria, which has displaced some 3 million people within Nigeria and to neighbouring countries.

Nomad groups range with their livestock from Senegal and Mali in West Africa to Chad and Central African Republic. They have clashed with people in some of these countries over grazing and land transit.
Nabeelah and Entisar both live in shanties in the slums of Sanaa. Barely scraping by, they have no money to take their severely malnourished children to the hospital. Learn how a new cash transfer programme could be a lifeline for their families.



SANAA, Yemen, 5 May 2016  Nestled in the heart of one of Sanaas many congested slums, is a single room with cold, bare walls that 33-year-old Nabeelah calls home. Inside, there is one bed, an open toilet and a small kitchen that can barely fit one person.

The mother of four and her family have lived in the shanty since they moved here from Mahaweet six years ago, in search of a better life. After the escalation of violence in the country, their daily existence became an extraordinary story of survival.

Nabeelah is now expecting her fifth child, and the familys resources are already stretched thinner than ever.

Like so many others living in the slums, their survival hinges on what her husband can scavenge from leftovers outside restaurants. He occasionally cleans the streets and earns a pittance. When he cannot bring home food, Nabeelah borrows some grains from her sister. Still, on most nights her children go to sleep hungry.

I have no money to take my ailing son to the hospital, I hardly have any money to feed them two meals a day, says Nabeelah.

Her youngest son Ali is barely two years old, and is severely malnourished  to the point that his little fingers have curled up. No health workers have visited this forgotten community.

>> Donate now to help children affected by the crisis in Yemen
New York University has the most number of international students among all American tertiary education institutions with 13,851, a distinction it embraces dearly as other universities across the country also see an increase in foreign enrollees. An increase of 6.2 percent in international student enrollment was seen among all universities in the country when compared to the figures last March 2015.



Another New York school, Columbia University, placed 4th in the list with 10,810. University of Southern California (13,080), Northeastern University (11, 381) and University of Illinois complete the top five, according to the 'SEVIS by the Numbers' report compiled by the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).



The schools mentioned are either in or near a big metropolitan area as USC's main campus is in Los Angeles, Northeastern is in Boston and UI is an hour-drive away from Chicago.



Seventy seven percent of international students are from Asia with Chinese, Indian and South Korean students registering the most. Other countries with a high number of international students are Saudi Arabia, Canada, Vietnam, Japan, Taiwan, Brazil and Mexico, according to India West.



There are a total of 1.2 million international students with F (academic) or M (vocational) status in the United States.

Forty percent (more or less 479,000) of the international students are enrolled in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) courses. In fact, India leads the list with 82 percent of its 194,438 students studying STEM. China follows closely with 69 percent studying mathematics or statistics coursework.



J-1 exchange visitors are also common in the country, with a little more than 200,000 students availing of this visa classification.

The 'SEVIS by the Numbers' report is released by the Student and Exchange Visitor Program of the ICE's Homeland Security Investigations every quarter. You may view the most recent report in full PDF form here.
After a thorough investigation, a cafe in the campus of Carnegie Mellon University has reopened Wednesday, a week after forty people from the university were hospitalized after allegedly dining in the popular dining place.



A norovirus infection is suspected to be the cause of the illnesses though confirmation from health experts in Pittsburgh is still needed. The health department also recorded a violation against proper use of equipment as a kitchen tool which is suppose to only warm soup was used to reheat it.



Fifteen of the hospitalized are students in the Pennsylvania university and diagnosed with "gastrointestinal distress," something they blame from eating either the soup or sandwiches in La Prima Espresso at Wean Hall, the Pittsburgh Post Gazette reported.



Gastrointestinal distress refers to the delayed emptying of the stomach and small intestines, as stated in Endurace Doc. Some symptoms of gastrointestinal distress are diarrhea, nausea, cramping, vomiting and bloating.

Two of the cafe's employees were also sent to the hospital.



At the height of the controversy, the establishment was reportedly shut down as investigations as to the cause of the alleged food poisoning however Ken Walters, spokesperson for the administration of Carnegie Mellon University, refuted the report, saying that it is still open but with a limited menu. An email sent to Carnegie Mellon students support this statement as it said that La Prima" only "removed certain food items from their menu" as a precaution.



News outlets have tried reaching the owner of La Prima Espresso for comments but the efforts have been futile so far, Lancaster Online reported.



The university's health services is still working with Allegheny County Health Department in looking to see if there are more people affected by gastrointestinal distress or any symptom so they may be treated as well.

Updates will be posted on the school's official website.
The US government set up a fake NJ university in a sting operation to track and arrest illegal visa brokers. More than 20 people have been arrested for federal student visa program fraud. Students who were lured to enroll in the university are now facing deportation. However, not everyone in the fake NJ university enrolled through the illegal brokers.

The officials of Department of Homeland Security staged and elaborate plan to catch illegal visa brokers. The University of Northern New Jersey (UNNJ) was designed to look authentic as possible, NJ.com reported. The fake school has its own website saying it was an accredited school and social media accounts including Facebook and Twitter.

The illegal brokers who were arrested reportedly helped foreign students obtain their visa in order to enroll in UNNJ, Consumerist noted. Some of the students who obtained the fraudulent visa services originally intended to come to the US to study college but were unable to qualify. The UNNJ students are reportedly facing deportation after immigration hearings.

The students who enrolled at UNNJ paid from at least $3,000 to more than $10,000 in order to get their visa, New York Times shared. Some UNNJ students explained that they didn't find it bizaare that they can enroll in the school but do not attend classes. However, the Department of Homeland Security do not believe them by saying that they knew the process was illegal and were willing participants.

One of the illegal brokers apparently gave promises to a foreign student that they could get work instead of going to school. Furthermore, the Department of Homeland Security also listed in their website that the UNNJ was a certified university which is why some students allegedly trusted the recruiters.

What do you think of the elaborate UNNJ university set up to arrest illegal visa brokers? Are all students to blame? Tell us your thoughts in the comments below.
The Illinois Senate has approved another additional budget of $454 million to be spent on the state's higher education institutions. The spending will be allocated toeight public universities, community colleges and Monetary Award Program students. This extra budget will serve to hinder masive planned layoffs at several institutions.

The bill sent to the House of Representatives was voted for in a near unanimous decision. The bill can take up until next week on Tuesday before the Legislature, Fox32 reported. The extra budget is the second one that was approved by the Illinois Senate in two weeks. Last month, $600 million was also released to help public colleges and universities pay for summer fees.

The budget was allegedly taken from the excess special-purpose funds from 2015, Reuters noted. However, without legislation support, Republican Governor Bruce Rauner and his administration will have to repay it by end of June. If Rauner is going to sign the new bill, 60 percent will be allocated to Illinois colleges and universityes, according to Progress Illinois. The action was criticized by some saying that it is "ridiculous" to get budget from other source without proof that money is really there. However, majority of the lawmakers approved of the idea.

Senate votes to restore more higher education funding https://t.co/pECqNrBvum pic.twitter.com/0jWtDts5b2  IL Senate Democrats (@ILSenDems) May 5, 2016



The bipartisan move as some called it a mini-success and an example for lawmakers to work together. In this way, they can work together peacefully in a way that will benefit the state and the people, especially the students.

Illinois Democrats and Rauner have been on a budget standoff since July of last year. They could not come into any agreement with the spending and higher education institutions. Illinois public colleges and universities have been gone without budget for 10 months, CBS Local shared.
Anyone has their own health concern. And many of them seek diagnosis from downloaded apps - which may not have been medically reviewed.

The University of California, Davis, claims that there are 165,000 of mobile apps in health care niche available today. The categories are varied from suicide prevention to managing addiction. These mobile device applications can be downloaded from App Store or Play Store; and some have not gone through scientific reviews.

According to a medical research by the Black Dog Institute, Sydney, as published in Ncbi, there is a gap between the application and the research evidence. For instance, there are 120 apps for suicide prevention but only 49 of them contain more than one suicide prevention feature. The journal also finds that the apps are 'best practice' but not supported by evidence. Many of them are identified as 'potentially harmful'. According to the researchers, as published in Plos One journal, safety apps such as MoodTools and SafetyNet are found to be 'most comprehensive'.

Jennifer Nicholas, one of the researchers at Black Dog Institute, explains that while no one exactly knows if an app is actually effective; consumers are using them anyway. The issue becomes serious as Nicholas tested a few apps and found only eight are truly effective. Apparently the eight apps are not available to the public.

John Torous from Harvard Medical School describes this plethora as the 'Wild West of healthcare'. The psychiatrist said that patients and experts might know what type of question to ask when they take medications but they do not know what to ask about the app itself. Torous also encourages patients to seek comment from their physicians about the app they are using. As for the experts, they need to consider every aspect to evaluate an application. Medical app has to have ASPECTS to decide its comprehensiveness, that is Actionable, Secure, Professional, Evidence-Based, Customizable and Transparent.
One day, a robot might be getting a degree in surgery and helping doctors to stitch tissues. At least this is what scientists at Washington's Children National Health System are developing. Dr. Peter Kim, a pediatric surgeon and leader of the project, excitedly explains that intelligent tools can assist surgeons and improve outcomes. This robotic system is said to be 'super smart' and 'autonomous'.

STAR, Smart Tissue Autonomous Robot, has one important duty - that is - stitch up tissue. This specific task allows a programmable system so that everything will be automated. In the US, robotic arm has been used in many sectors from education to industrial. It is almost the same with self-driving cars that can warn drivers and control the motion to prevent any crash.

As for this robot, it works like a sewing machine. Dr. Axel Kriger, who is involved in developing the system, further explains how the robot is still fully supervised and directed by the surgeon. However, this is an innovative tool that enables a surgeon to program the ideal spacing, the tension, or how many stitches; while the robot executes the plan. This intelligent system is hoped to decrease medical error that currently becomes news in the US.

Compared to the current practice, Dr. Kim says that the machine does better in complex task as it is able to decrease complication, as reported by the Big Story. The robot has been tested to perform a surgery in pig's intestine and did a great job. In fact, better.

While not planning to replace a surgeon, Dr. Kim explains that an intelligent machine will definitely improve the outcome. He does not encourage doctors to leave the operation room as the robot does its task. But he stresses how a surgeon can have a 'more precise calculation' in stitching tissues; that eventually could save more lives.

Would you let a robot stitch you?
The incidence of prostate cancer has shown significant variation across the globe. Though the prevalence and characteristics of this disease have been extensively studied in many countries, data regarding the true incidence of prostate cancer in India is limited.

MEDLINE publications from 1990 to 2014 were searched and reviewed and compiled to assess the demographic profile of prostate cancer in India and characteristics unique to this disease in India.

The limited data available on prostate cancer showed significant differences in incidence, precipitating factors, and disease characteristics of prostate cancer in India.

Since India would be having more number of cases of prostate cancer than most others in the years to come, adequate population-based data regarding the demography and disease characteristics of this disease are of paramount importance in this country.

Indian journal of urology : IJU : journal of the Urological Society of India. 0000 [Epub]

Krishnamoorthy Hariharan, Venugopal Padmanabha

Department of Urology, Lourdes Hospital, Kochi, Kerala, India., Department of Urology, Lourdes Hospital, Kochi, Kerala, India.

PubMed http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27127351
The aim of this review was to provide an overview of current biomarkers and risk stratification models in urothelial cancer of the upper urinary tract (UTUC).

A non-systematic Medline/PubMed literature search was performed using the terms "biomarkers", "preoperative models", "postoperative models", "risk stratification", together with "upper tract urothelial carcinoma". Original articles published between January 2003 and August 2015 were included based on their clinical relevance. Additional references were collected by cross referencing the bibliography of the selected articles.

Various promising predictive and prognostic biomarkers have been identified in UTUC thanks to the increasing knowledge of the different biological pathways involved in UTUC tumorigenesis. These biomarkers may help identify tumors with aggressive biology and worse outcomes. Current tools aim at predicting muscle invasive or non-organ confined disease, renal failure after radical nephroureterectomy and survival outcomes. These models are still mainly based on imaging and clinicopathological feature and none has integrated biomarkers. Risk stratification in UTUC is still suboptimal, especially in the pre-operative setting due to current limitations in staging and grading. Identification of novel biomarkers and external validation of current prognostic models may help improve risk stratification to allow evidence-based counselling for kidney-sparing approaches, peri-operative chemotherapy and/or risk-based surveillance.

Despite growing understanding of the biology underlying UTUC, management of this disease remains difficult due to the lack of validated biomarkers and the limitations of current predictive and prognostic tools. Further efforts and collaborations are necessaryry to allow their integration in daily practice.

Minerva urologica e nefrologica = The Italian journal of urology and nephrology. 2016 Apr 28 [Epub ahead of print]

Romain Mathieu, Mihai D Vartolomei, Aurelie Mbeutcha, Pierre I Karakiewicz, Alberto Briganti, Morgan ROUPReT, Shahrokh F Shariat

Department of Urology, Medical University Vienna, General Hospital, Vienna, Austria - .

PubMed http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27124417
Aug. 19, 2022

Fitness. When the average citizen thinks of being fit, it is easy for cardio and strength training to come to mind. That is not the case for those serving in the Air Force and Space Force. Comprehensive Airman Fitness teaches that to have overarching fitness and resilience, one must work on his or
UTSA releases report on economic impact of small businesses in Texas Share this Story

(May 6, 2016) -- The University of Texas at San Antonio Institute for Economic Development (IED) has released a study, commissioned by Texas Governor Greg Abbott, on the impact of small businesses on the state economy. The study, conducted by the IEDs Center for Community and Business Research (CCBR), shows that small businesses account for a substantial economic influence in Texas.

In 2015, the Office of the Governor contacted CCBR to research the impact of Texas businesses with fewer than 100 employees to identify the factors contributing to their success or failure. CCBR analyzed birth and death rates of small businesses in relation to their size, industry and region, as well as their effects on job creation and destruction.

CCBR found that small businesses had an estimated total economic impact of $844 billion. The sectors with the most influence were construction, scientific and technical service, retail trade and health and social services.

The research also showed that small businesses provide more experience and training to industry newcomers than larger businesses, and that children of small business owners are likely to follow in the parents footsteps by opening a small business of their own.

In its report, CCBR stressed a need to better understand giggers, a growing portion of the small business workforce of people with higher skillsets that have found increased income by working in several temporary jobs. The research also showed that older businesses are less likely to create jobs than newer ones, and rural areas in Texas are transitioning away from an agriculture-dominated economy to a more diverse, urban model.

-- Joanna Carver

Public Affairs Specialist

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Wyoming Business Tips for May 15-21

A weekly look at Wyoming business questions from the Wyoming Small Business Development Center (WSBDC), part of WyomingEntrepreneur.Biz, a collection of business assistance programs at the University of Wyoming.

By Andrea Lewis, Wyoming Entrepreneur Procurement Technical Assistance Center (PTAC) procurement specialist.

Im interested in selling to the federal government. Any tips for getting started? John, Burns

Depending on the type of work you offer and where your business is located, subcontracting might be a good way to get started in federal contracting. It has several advantages over being a prime -- being the company legally responsible for the contract.

Advantages include diversifying your market and learning what is involved with government contracting without being responsible for managing the contract. There is less financial risk, as the prime deals with the financial, legal, technical and managerial aspects of managing a government contract. Its not that the subcontractor will have no responsibility or assumption of risk -- that will be outlined in the legal subcontracting agreement with the prime.

Develop a solid relationship with a prime. This can lead to your company being offered consistent work. Offer a broad range of services or products to the prime, so you do not limit your opportunities with it. However, be careful not to sell your company as a one-stop shop. Stick to your core competencies.

When primes review potential subcontractors, they look at how your companys people and capabilities fit into the primes offerings, and if your company has existing relationships with government customers. Do you really understand the primes line of business and customers? They will want to see excellent past performance, a strong work ethic and a company culture that is compatible with theirs.

Your companys small business status (woman owned, veteran owned, HUBZone, etc.) is not as important as your capabilities and the value your business brings to a project.

Drawbacks to being a subcontractor can include the fact that less risk usually means less profit, and you dont necessarily grow good relationships with government agencies by being a subcontractor. Your pricing can be controlled by the prime, and you are dependent upon the company for scheduling work.

Subcontracting offers a way for a small business to diversify its business and acquire past performance, all while keeping the business development costs down and risk level low. Finding the right primes to partner with is key. It isnt a good idea to work with more than a few.

Keeping up on prime-subcontractor relationships is time consuming, and too many would be hard to manage. If desired, subcontracting can lead to your company one day tackling a contract on your own as a prime.

For more information about subcontracting, contact the Wyoming PTAC at (307) 772-7372.

A blog version of this article and an opportunity to post comments is available at http://www.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.
CONTRIBUTED PHOTO Located on the 12th floor of Crowne Plaza Ventura Beach Hotel, the Top of the Harbor Ballroom is open for special events like weddings and Mother's Day Champagne Brunch service.

SHARE LISA MCKINNON/THE STAR Holiday teas at Plaza Pantry in Ojai come with seasonal decor and an assortment of sweet and savory bites. CONTRIBUTED PHOTO The Ojai Vineyard's 2015 rose will be featured Saturday during a tasting-room event that includes tacos by El Charro Restaurant and live music by the Dan Grimm Band. CONTRIBUTED PHOTO MOD Pizza has locations in Newbury Park and Simi Valley. LISA MCKINNON/THE STAR Farmer Chris Sayer of Petty Ranch in Saticoy (right) answers questions from diners and Totally Local VC organizer Kat Merrick during the "Dinner at the ..." event set among the orchards at Limoneira in Santa Paula in 2012.

By Lisa McKinnon

Take in the ocean views during a (nearly) rooftop Mother's Day brunch in Ventura. Sip a "particularly" pleasing rose in Ojai. Grab a free pizza (if you're a mom) in Newbury Park and Simi Valley.

Yep, there's plenty to do, see and taste this weekend in Ventura County.

1). TAKE A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY

Remember when the Crowne Plaza Ventura Beach Hotel was a Holiday Inn? And when the top floor of the Holiday Inn was a restaurant mounted on a giant turntable that slowly moved diners past the floor-to-ceiling windows?

Me, too.

A decade has gone by since the hotel changed hands, the turntable was dismantled and the property's "permanent" restaurant was moved to the ground floor. That leaves the 12th-floor space  now known as the Top of the Harbor Ballroom  available only for special events like weddings and Mother's Day Champagne Brunch.

The latter will be served from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sunday, when reservations are $48 for adults, $38 for seniors and $27 for children 12 and younger.(450 Harbor Blvd., 805-652-5151, http://www.ihg.com/crowneplaza)

For additional MOTHER'S DAY DINING IDEAS, click on http://www.vcstar.com/Mothers-Day-in-Ventura-County

2). PUT YOUR PINKIES UP

Get a genteel jump on Mother's Day celebrations with afternoon tea service with seatings from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday at Fresh & Fabulous Cafe in downtown Oxnard. The buffet-style spread includes a pot of tea, a variety of tea sandwiches, scones, lemon curd, preserves and an array of desserts. Reservations are $19.95 for adults and $12.95 for kids age 12 and younger. Mimosas will be available for purchase. (401 South A St., 805-486-4547, http://www.myfreshandfabulous.com)

The Spring Tea Marketplace taking place from 2 to 4 p.m. Saturday in Oxnard's Heritage Square will "serve up" a hat contest and shopping opportunities along with a tea catered by La Dolce Vita Ristorante. Proceeds from reservations, $40 for adults and $20 for children age 12 and younger, will benefit programs of the Friends of Heritage Square. Call 805-483-7960 or click on http://heritagesquareoxnard.com/spring-tea

For an old-school British afternoon tea with a Mother's Day vibe, try Plaza Pantry in Ojai. Owner Beryl Tognazzini, a native of Dover, England, is taking reservations for a seating at 2 p.m. Saturday. Call to ask about the cost (probably around $15 per person) and any additional seating times. (221 E. Matilija St., Suite G, 805-646-6325).

3). SIP ROSE

When none other than Adam Tolmach of The Ojai Vineyard admits to being "particularly pleased" with one of his wines, it's worth taking notice and trying it for yourself.

Here's how: The wine in question  the label's 2015 rose  will be featured from 4 to 8 p.m. Saturday during a tasting room soiree that includes live music by the Dan Grimm Band and tacos from the Oak View restaurant El Charro (bring cash for the latter).

The rose will be $9 per glass and/or $19.99 per bottle (a discount from its usual $24). Visitors also can order wines by the glass from The Ojai Vineyard's Magnum Library ($12.50 per).

But back to that rose, which Tolmach described in tasting notes as the result of a small crop that left him scrambling for more fruit. "In addition to our usual base of syrah from Roll Ranch and Grenache from John Sebastiano Vineyard, we crushed counoise, carignan and cinsault" from Camp 4 in the Santa Ynez Valley. "That, along with a dollop of riesling to propel the aromatics is what made this wine so sensational," Tolmach writes. (109 S. Montgomery St., 805-798-3947 (http://www.ojaivineyard.com)

4). EAT FREE (IF YOU'RE A MOM)

If I'd known several years ago that Wienerschnitzel planned to give away chili cheese dogs to moms on Mother's Day, I might have decided to have children. (I kid, I kid.)

The hot dog chain is just one of several places where Moms can dine (or drink) "free" on Sunday. They include:

MOD Pizza: Moms can choose a free 11-inch pizza or tossed salad at the fast-casual pizza spot's locations in Newbury Park (1015 Broadbeck Drive, 805-214-7010), Simi Valley (2954 Cochran St., 805-842-4442) and beyond. In addition, patrons are invited to take part in a social-media contest in which they post photos of their mothers to Twitter or Instagram with a brief description and the thematic hashtag #MODmoms. One participant will be selected to win a $100 MOD Pizza gift card on May 9. (http://modpizza.com)

Sunland Vintage Winery: Moms of all ages  well, 21 and older, anyway  are invited to stop by the label's Thousand Oaks tasting room from 1 to 5 p.m. Sunday for a free glass of wine "while your husbands and children are cooking, cleaning or otherwise preparing." Check out the in-progress expansion construction while you're there. (1321 E. Thousand Oaks Blvd., 805-379-2250, http://www.sunlandvintagewinery.com)

Wienerschnitzel: Proof of "Mom-bership" (children, a family photo, "telling an embarrassing story about your kids") is all you need to receive the chain's free Mother's Day meal: a chili cheese dog, small fries and a small soda. The offer is good at locations in Oxnard (2830 S. Ventura Blvd., 805-247-0442), Simi Valley (1508 E. Los Angeles Ave., 805-522-5013), Ventura (2172 Harbor Blvd., 805-653-9280) and beyond (http://wienerschnitzel.com).

5). PLAN AHEAD

Tickets are available now for Totally Local VC Dinner Series events taking place in June and August. Patterned after the Outstanding in the Field farm dinners that take place at locations across the country, the meals feature multiple courses by local chefs using local ingredients.

Chef Jason Collis of Plated Events will oversee Dinner at the Avocado Ranch when it takes place at 5:30 p.m. June 16 at the Cummings Family Ranch.

Dinner at the Cattle Ranch will feature a menu by Gabe Garcia, executive chef at Tierra Sur at Herzog Wine Cellars, when it takes place at 5:30 p.m. Aug. 25 at the Diamond W Cattle Co. with cattleman Mike Williams as host.

Each of the five-course meals will be paired to local beers, wines and spirits.

For tickets, $135 per person per event, click on http://www.totallylocalvc.com. A discount is available for those who buy tickets for both dinners at the same time.

Lisa McKinnon is a staff writer for The Star. Her Cafe Society column appears in the Sunday Life section and Fridays in the Time Out section. For between-column updates, follow 805foodie on Twitter and Instagram and "like" the Facebook page VCS Eats. Please send email to lisa.mckinnon@vcstar.com.
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CAMARILLO

Catholics offer talk on mental wellness

Padre Serra Catholic Parish will present "Mental Wellness, Spirituality and the Family" on Wednesday at 5205 Upland Road. Refreshments will be served at 6:30 p.m., followed by the free presentation at 7 p.m.

David Deutsch, a licensed clinical social worker, is the executive director of the Ventura County National Alliance on Mental Illness. He will provide information about those directly or indirectly impacted by mental health issues. Representatives from the alliance will offer resources, classes and support group information as well.

The program will include explanations of mental health and mental wellness, the role of one's spirituality to help with the challenges of mental health, and ways family and friends can best support a loved one experiencing mental health difficulties.

RSVP to anne@padreserra.org. For more information, visit http://www.padreserra.org.

Temple hosts legacy fundraising event

Temple Ner Ami will host the Naomi Brill Legacy Event on May 21 from 4:30-7:30 p.m. As part of her legacy, Brill donated numerous items to the temple, including baubles and beads, art, food service and hospitality items, Judaica, and knickknacks from her travels. These items will be sold, raffled and auctioned to raise funds for Temple Ner Ami at 515 Temple Ave.

The program starts at 4:30 p.m. with a welcome and preview of estate items; followed at 5 p.m. by havdalah service; at 5:30 p.m. by hors d'oeuvres, music, tributes, shopping and auctions; at 6:30 p.m. by the memorial plaque unveiling ceremony and from 6:45-7:30 p.m. for the raffles and conclusion.

For more information, call the temple at 388-3824.

SANTA PAULA

Public invited to meditation group

The community is invited to a meditation practice group May 18 at 6 p.m. led by the Rev. Maddie Sifantus in the parish hall at the Universalist Unitarian Church of Santa Paula at 740 E. Main St. In the summer months, meditation will be held 6 p.m. on June 1 and 15, July 20, and Aug. 3 and 17.

Participants can enter through the front gate to the left of the main entrance and come in the side door. This group celebrates the diversity of Buddhist and other meditative orientations and welcomes participants from all contemplative traditions to attend. Sifantus is a longtime meditator from the mindfulness or Vipassana tradition of Buddhism. The meditation lasts about an hour and those who attend are encouraged to bring their own meditation cushion, if they have one, or they can sit in a chair. The meeting will begin with a reading and short discussion, with a guided meditation leading into a time of silence.

The group is open to everyone. Donations of $5 will be accepted but all are invited regardless of funds. For more information, leave a message for Sifantus at the church at 525-4620.

SIMI VALLEY

Woman's residency celebrated by group

A multifaith activist group that supported a young mother's eight-year struggle to remain in the United States will celebrate her success at the church where she was given sanctuary in 2007. The path that led to permanent residency for Liliana Sanchez de Saldivar will be commemorated from 1-3 p.m. May 14 at the United Church of Christ at 370 Royal Ave.

Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice-Ventura County, or CLUE-VC, invites everyone who has become acquainted with de Saldivar or wants to celebrate her recently granted status to attend the celebration and fundraiser. There is no cost to attend but donations will be accepted.

Guests who plan to talk about their relationship with de Saldivar include Alice Linsmeier, the Rev. June Goudey, Gabriela Navarro-Bush, Peter Schey, the Rev. Julie Wakelee-Lynch, the Rev. Betty Stapleford, Vanessa Frank and members of the interfaith sanctuary coalition, the congregation of the United Church of Christ and volunteers from affiliated congregations.

For more information, call Frank Johnson at 208-3632 or visit http://www.cluevc.org.

THOUSAND OAKS

Independence day for Israel observed

In honor of Yom HaAtzma'ut, Israeli Independence Day, Temple Etz Chaim and Temple Adat Elohim invite the community to a lecture about the lives of South Africans and Israelis. Leora Raikin will speak about her personal experiences as a Jew in South Africa and her time in Israel. This interactive presentation will focus on how she contends the movement to boycott, divest and sanction Israel relies on inaccurate information and falsehoods.

An educator, artist, speaker and author, Raikin will give the presentation "From South Africa to Israel: A Jewish View on Apartheid and why the BDS Movement is Wrong" at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday in the Paskow Sanctuary, Temple Etz Chaim, 1080 E. Janss Road.

For more information, visit http://www.templeetzchaim.org or contact the temple office at 497-6891, or info@templeetzchaim.org.

VENTURA

Unitarian minister elected to service

On May 1, the Unitarian Universalist Church of Ventura voted to call the Rev. Dana Worsnop its minister, which she accepted. The 96.4 percent favorable vote was the culmination of a week of activities, during which Worsnop led services on April 24 and May 1 and met with numerous groups and committees to begin to know members of the congregation.

Worsnop has been a parish minister for 13 years, 10 as the settled minister at Atkinson Memorial Church in Oregon City, Oregon, and three as an interim minister in Calgary, Alberta, and Boise, Idaho. She will begin her ministry on Aug. 1.

The Unitarian Universalist Church of Ventura is at 5654 Ralston St. For more information, visit http://www.uuventura.org.

WESTLAKE VILLAGE

Annual gala set for Chabad of Conejo

Friends and supporters of Chabad of the Conejo will gather May 26 at the organization's annual gala banquet. The focus will be "Touching Lives, Building Legacies." Dinner will be served at 5:30 p.m. with the program following at 7 at the Four Seasons Westlake Hotel, 2 Dole Drive.

The program will include the telling of the Chabad story in video and anecdotal form, a musical performance by recording artist "Shuky" Sadon, and the presentation of the Voice of Courage Award to Dennis Prager, a renowned radio talk show host and commentator.

Also being honored will be Ron and Sandy Stackler, who will receive Chabad's Lamplighters Award, and Farid and Shideh Hekmatjah, who will receive its Chesed or Kindness Award.

Established in 1979 in a small office suite in Westlake Village, Chabad of the Conejo now operates from eight centers throughout the Conejo Valley. Its central headquarters on Canwood Street in Agoura Hills underwent a major expansion in 2011 with the opening of its newly-constructed Center for Jewish Life.

For more information, ticket prices or reservations, call 818-991-0991 or visit http://www.chabadgala.com.
AP file photo Sen. Richard Pan, D-Sacramento, and Sen. Hannah Beth-Jackson, D-Santa Barbara, co-authored Senate Bill 1189, which says only licensed physicians may conduct autopsies.

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By Cheri Carlson and Kathleen Wilson of the Ventura County Star

LOS ANGELES  The state medical board voted unanimously Friday to support a bill that says only licensed physicians may conduct autopsies.

Senate Bill 1189 would make it clear that an autopsy is the practice of medicine, said Jennifer Simoes, the board's legislative chief.

The 15-member medical board took the action in Los Angeles at its quarterly meeting. The bill, co-authored by state Sens. Dr. Richard Pan, D-Sacramento, and Hannah-Beth Jackson, D-Santa Barbara, was endorsed without dissent.

Qualifications of individuals conducting autopsies have been at issue in Ventura County, where an assistant performed postmortem exams while the chief medical examiner was vacationing. The examiner, Dr. Jon Smith, has been removed from his position. He still remains fully licensed to practice medicine in California.

The Ventura County District Attorney's Office found the level of supervision that Smith exercised inappropriate but not illegal after conducting an eight-month investigation.

District Attorney Greg Totten has called the law woefully inadequate in the area, and the agency recommended that legislative hearings be held to clarify legal standards.

"The (District Attorney's) report brings up several gray areas of law related to autopsies and who can perform them," Simoes said Friday.

"This clarification will assist the board in its enforcement actions and further the board's mission on consumer protection," she said.

Michael Schwartz, Ventura County special assistant district attorney, called the bill "a big step forward" to say what an autopsy is and who can perform one.

He told the board that the agency issued the 50-page report after investigating a complaint that an administrator was opening bodies, manipulating organs and taking samples.

"Meanwhile, the medical examiner was on a cruise and was communicating with this administrator via email. Then when the medical examiner returned to the country, he signed off on death certificates for bodies that he had never seen," Schwartz said.

"The word autopsy comes from the Greek, which is to see with your own eyes," he said. "I think the law should reflect that autopsies should be conducted by doctors and not by office staff. It seems like a no-brainer to me."

Before Friday's vote, retired judge Katherine Feinstein, appointed to the board in January, voiced her support for the bill.

"Ventura County is not the only county, I think, that has suffered adversely from situations like this. Sheriffs are not trained in medicine, not qualified. Coroners are not medical professionals also," said Feinstein, former presiding judge of the San Francisco Superior Court.

Only a few California counties, including Ventura, have physician-run systems to investigate suspicious and violent deaths. In most others, the sheriff acts as the coroner and employs or retains pathologists to conduct autopsies.

"In my professional career, I saw some significant cases be severely compromised because sheriff's departments who have had to employ physicians to conduct autopsies didn't want to expend the funds, didn't have the funds, didn't want to hire medically licensed forensic pathologists to conduct these autopsies," she said.

Senate Bill 1189 passed the state Senate Health Committee last month and headed to the Senate Appropriations Committee. The next hearing date has not yet been set.

On Friday, Schwartz also told the board that the Ventura County DA's Office is seeking amendments to the bill that would allow prosecutors and police to be present at autopsies.

The bill, which is opposed by the California State Sheriff's Association, leaves that access to the discretion of the physician.

Schwartz said the access is important because prosecutors often have to decide whether to file charges on homicide cases within 48 hours.
CONTRIBUTED PHOTO A Coast Guard helicopter participates in training off the Malibu coast.

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By Kathleen Wilson of the Ventura County Star

The Coast Guard plans to build a permanent air station at Point Mugu to replace one that is being closed later this month in Los Angeles, a spokesman said this week.

Four helicopters and about 80 personnel are expected to be located at the new station at Naval Base Ventura County Point Mugu. The facility is due to be formally opened by 2021, spokesman Dan Dewell said.

The Coast Guard last year announced that part of the Los Angeles station would be moved temporarily to Point Mugu until the permanent station opened at a site to be chosen.

Dewell confirmed Thursday that Point Mugu had been selected for the full-fledged air station. A county delegation learned of the decision last week while speaking with Coast Guard representatives during an annual lobbying trip to Washington, D.C., county Supervisor Kathy Long said.

"It was a surprise to learn that there was a green light on it," she said, although local officials had talked up the idea over the past couple years.

Long, who co-chairs the RDP-21 group that supports funding for local military installations, saw the station as a plus for protecting the base in the event of a closure process like the one proposed in 1995 for Point Mugu.

"Everything we can bring to the base that is a permanent contract makes the base stronger," she said.

The Coast Guard station performs search-and-rescue, law enforcement and security functions along a stretch of the coast running from Dana Point to Morro Bay.

The guard received $31 million in the federal budget for this year to to build the air station at the Ventura County base, Dewell said. The guard is in negotiations with the Navy for construction of the facility, he said.

The Coast Guard station has operated from leased quarters at Los Angeles International Airport since 1962, but the space is no longer available because of airport expansion.

While a new station is built, crews and two mission-ready helicopters will be stationed in the temporary setup at Point Mugu. The temporary unit will be a forward operating base  essentially a branch  of a Coast Guard air station in San Francisco.

The unit will be open and operating by the time the Los Angeles station closes May 20, Dewell said.

The Los Angeles station conducts an average of 130 search-and-rescue cases each year. Coast Guard helicopter patrols also support interagency law enforcement, environmental protection and port security operations to protect the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach and Port Hueneme.
KAREN QUINCY LOBERG/THE STAR Mark Avetissian (right), co-owner of The V Spot Vapor, has a well-occupied business at midday Thursday in Thousand Oaks.

By Gretchen Wenner of the Ventura County Star

It has almost the slinky gravity of a cat, this viscous spill of white pooling on the counter of The V Spot Vapor in Thousand Oaks.

It's not smoke.

But starting June 9, vaping will be regulated like tobacco smoking in California, with new laws signed Wednesday by Gov. Jerry Brown limiting use to those 21 and older.

What's more, the Food and Drug Administration on Thursday announced sweeping new rules requiring federal review of electronic cigarettes and the liquid "juice" the devices vaporize.

"I don't believe vapor is going anywhere," V Spot co-owner Mark Avetissian said of the double-whammy of new regulations.

In fact, Avetissian said he doesn't see the age restriction significantly affecting business at the shop, which he and his wife, Pam, have owned for about three years.

Their clean, cozy space on Thousand Oaks Boulevard, just west of Rancho Road, has a stash of couches and soft chairs. A long bar that fronts a selection of more than 130 e-liquid flavors sees a steady stream of regulars. There are no tobacco products.

The Avetissians' shop is comfortable by design. When they visited vapor shops before opening their own, the couple, in their 40s, found them unwelcoming.

"Cliquey," Pam Avetissian said.

What they are worried about are the 18- to 20-year-olds who have quit smoking with the help of e-cigarettes.

One of those is customer Samuel Nunez, 19, who started smoking in ninth grade. Stress, he said. A lot of kids at his Newbury Park school were lighting up.

When he turned 18 and could vape, Nunez quit smoking.

"I think it's unfair," he said of the impending age restriction.

He's down to a 3 milligram dose of nicotine, a lot less than he would get in a cigarette, he said. The e-cigarette lacks tar and other nasties of smoked tobacco, he added.

Vaping "takes away the urge to even look at a cigarette," he said. "To me, it works."

The liquids vaporized in the devices, which use battery-powered coils to provide heat, come with various levels of nicotine, starting with none at all.

It was the same story for everyone coming into the shop Thursday morning, including the Avetissians: they had been smokers until they started to vape.

One of the V Stop's eight employees, Mikey Lasater, 22, quit three years ago after starting as a high school student in Texas.

Rudy Distaso, who manufactures juice at Ballistic Vape in Northridge, said he feels no bad effects from e-cigarettes.

People misunderstand vaping when they think it's smoke, Distaso said.

"This is a heated-up liquid producing vapor," he said, adding that the ingredients he puts in his product are food-grade.

Over at the Vapor Cartel in Moorpark, stories were similar.

"I feel like I should be grandfathered in," said Zach Walton, 19, who quit cigarettes when he started vaping.

Miranda Lipson, who's almost 20, also quit smoking via vaping.

"It really helps," she said.

Store manager Ali Bassam said the new state laws probably won't have a major impact on the business.

"We mostly have a lot of adults," he said.

The e-cigarette industry has boomed in recent years with few regulations. Critics say the devices have lured teenagers, getting them addicted to nicotine. The FDA wants detailed information about the ingredients in e-liquids.

The Avetassians say they'll abide by all laws. New rules won't kill the industry, Mark Avetassian said, but they will bring changes, some for the better, some not.

The worst outcome would be rules so expensive and onerous that they simply drive the industry "back into the hands of Big Tobacco," he said.
This season of 'Love Is Blind' is shaping up to be absolute madness  here's what people are saying about it
AP FILE PHOTO Monarch butterfly

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By Staff reports

CAMARILLO

Talk to focus on ethical decisions

The Ventura County Women's Forum will host a presentation on ethical decision-making from 5:15-7 p.m. Monday at the Ventura County Community Foundation, 4001 Mission Oaks Blvd.

Genevieve Evans Taylor, chief of staff to the president of CSU Channel Islands and co-chair of the Ventura County Leadership Academy, will explore the process.

Members may attend for free, and there's a suggested $10 donation for nonmembers. Call 231-4152 for more information.

Museum to bring history to life

The Pleasant Valley Historical Society Museum will present Living History Day from 1-4 p.m. May 15 at 720 Las Posas Road.

Museum members will be dressed in period costumes. Hands-on activities for children will include making butter, tortillas and yarn dolls and panning for gold.

Admission is free. Call 482-3660 for more information.

NEWBURY PARK

Panther Players plan production

The Newbury Park High School Panther Players will present "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" starting Thursday and again May 13, 14, 19 and 20 in the performing arts center at Newbury Park High School, 456 Reino Road.

Tickets can be ordered online at http://www.showtix4u.com for $12 or bought at the door for $10. Visit http://www.nphstheatre.com for more information.

OJAI

'Twin Peaks' creator to join discussion

Ojai writer Mark Frost will sit down with Mark Lewis on May 15 at the Ojai Valley Museum to discuss the sequel to Frost's classic TV series "Twin Peaks."

The sequel will air next year on Showtime.

The talk will take place from 4:30-6 p.m. May 15 at 130 W. Ojai Ave.

Admission is $5 and free for museum members. Call 640-1390 for more information.

SANTA PAULA

Concert series will continue

The Santa Paula Concert Series will have its sixth concert of the new series, "Chucumite," featuring John Robles at 7 p.m. Saturday at the Universalist Unitarian Church, 740 E. Main St.

Admission will be a $20 donation at the door, from the church office or by PayPal via the church website, http://www.uucsp.org. Admission is $10 for children 12 and younger, and free for children 5 and younger.

Email uuscpoffice@gmail.com or call 525-4647 for more information.

Library group sets book sale

Back Stacks Books, sponsored by the Friends of the Blanchard Community Library, will have a spring book sale from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday at 119 N. Eighth St.

The sale will feature thousands of used books for 50 cents to $2 as well as collectible books for $4 and up.

Email spfotl@gmail.com for more information.

VENTURA

Public can learn about butterflies

The Ventura Hillsides Conservancy will host Monarch Madness from 9 a.m. to noon May 14 at the conservancy's Willoughby Preserve in the Ventura River estuary.

Guests should meet conservancy staff at the Ventura River kiosk near Ventura's Main Street bridge at 9 a.m. to be escorted to the nearby planting area. There will be a monarch butterfly presentation and milkweed-planting demonstration followed by a short nature hike.

RSVP by visiting http://www.venturahillsides.org and clicking on the "Events" tab. Call 643-8044 for more information.
SHARE CONTRIBUTED PHOTO Michael Bresnak

By Marjorie Hernandez of the Ventura County Star

A hearing for a man accused of killing his mother's former boyfriend and placing the body in a freezer was canceled Friday.

Michael Bresnak, 52, was scheduled to appear in Ventura County Superior Court Friday for a prosecution motion to consolidate Bresnak's homicide case with another case involving drug-related charges dating back to May 2013.

The prosecution, however, canceled that motion and Bresnak is now scheduled to appear back in court on Aug. 15, according to court records.

Bresnak was arrested Aug. 21, 2013, on suspicion of killing Jeffrey Korber, 60, of Laguna Beach. Prosecutors said Korber had an "on-again, off-again" relationship with Bresnak's mother, Mary Francesca Hannan.

A jury deadlocked in March on Bresnak's murder trial. A mistrial was declared after the jury deliberated for two days. Judge Gilbert Romero had ruled in favor of a prosecution motion to retry Bresnak on the murder charge.

During her opening statement in Bresnak's last trial, Senior Deputy District Attorney Anne Spillner said Bresnak told a woman he knew that he'd chocked Korber to death "because Korber was laying hands on his mother."

However, Dusty Kawai, of the Public Defender's Office, said in his opening statement that four forensic pathologists had examined Korber's body, and none found any signs of strangulation.

Hannan, an attorney, told a Laguna Beach detective investigating Korber's disappearance that he did clerical work for her legal practice. Hannan said tensions grew between her and Korber because Korber wanted more pay, and she felt he wasn't doing a good job, Spillner said in her opening statement.

The prosecutor said Hannan told the detective she saw Korber get in his car on March 29, 2011 and that he was headed for Florida where he had a new job.

Hannan, who appeared in court Thursday, also has been charged in connection to Korber's death. She has pleaded not guilty to multiple felony counts, including conspiracy to commit a crime, being an accessory and having knowledge of a crime, and conspiracy to commit an act injurious to the public.

Hannan remains free on $20,000 bail, but was ordered by Judge Bruce Young to return to court for a pretrial conference on Oct. 12.
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By Marjorie Hernandez of the Ventura County Star

A Ventura woman charged in connection with the death of her former boyfriend pleaded not guilty Thursday.

Mary Francesca Hannan, 69, appeared before Ventura County Superior Court Judge Bruce Young for an arraignment. She is facing multiple felony counts, including conspiracy to commit a crime, being an accessory and having knowledge of a crime and conspiracy to commit an act injurious to the public.

Police found the body of Hannan's former boyfriend, Jeffrey Korber, stuffed inside a freezer at a self-storage facility in Ventura in late June 2013. Investigators estimated Korber had been killed more than two years earlier.

Hannan remains free on $20,000 bail. Young ordered the Ventura woman back in court for a pretrial conference on Oct. 12.

A grand jury on Feb. 8 indicted Hannan, alleging she took part in wrapping Korber's body with plastic, duct tape and rope.

Hannan's son, Michael Bresnak, was arrested August 2013 in connection with Korber's death after the 60-year old man's body was found. Bresnak was arrested on suspicion of killing Korber, a Laguna Beach resident.

Investigators said Korber had an 'on-again-off-again" relationship with Bresnak's mother.

The indictment against Hannan alleges she helped move the freezer to the storage unit, kept keys to the freezer and paid the bills for the storage unit. It contains two other counts as well, including that Hannan conspired to have Korber's remains moved from the storage facility so they could be buried somewhere and that she concealed Korber's death from police to help herself and her son avoid arrest and prosecution in connection with his killing.

Bresnak, 52, is scheduled to appear in court Friday morning for motions. A jury deadlocked in March on his murder trial and a mistrial was declared after the jury deliberated for two days.

Judge Gilbert Romero had ruled in favor of a prosecution motion to retry Bresnak on the murder charge.

Prosecutors plan to ask the court to consolidate Bresnak's homicide case with another case involving several drug-related charges against him dating back to May 2013. Bresnak was indicted by a grand jury on those drug charges.
KAREN QUINCY LOBERG/STAR Former owners of the Freedom reunite at the Ventura Yacht Club in April. From left are Larry Rasmussen, of Ventura; Dr. Art Ecker, of Camarillo; Bill Ramelli, of Camarillo; and Dr. Phil Snow, of Santa Paula.

SHARE CONTRIBUTED PHOTO The Golden Coast News published a photo of the eight crew members with their trophy from the Newport to Ensenada race in 1966. From the left are Larry Bruner, Dr. Bud Krebs, Sal Reyes, Dr. Phil Snow, John McNellis, Larry Rasmussen, Bill Ramelli and Dr. Art Ecker. KAREN QUINCY LOBERG/THE STAR Bill Ramelli (from left), of Camarillo, Dr. Art Ecker, of Camarillo, Larry Rasmussen of Ventura and Dr. Phil Snow, of Santa Paula, reunite for a portrait at the Ventura Yacht Club in April. Crew members on the Freedom in a photo published in the Ventura County Star-Free Press in 1967. KAREN QUINCY LOBERG/STAR Dr. Phil Snow, of Santa Paula, (left) and Larry Rasmussen, of Ventura, greet each other at the Ventura Yacht Club in April.

By Cheri Carlson of the Ventura County Star

Some might call it crazy: A real estate agent prone to seasickness buying a 48-foot yacht.

They might wonder how he persuaded nine other guys  most with no sailing experience  to go in on it with him.

But the part of the adventure no one saw coming: That those 10 guys and a sailboat called Freedom helped put Ventura County on the map in the yachting world.

Fifty years ago this spring, the local crew took home a win in the world famous Newport to Ensenada race.

"They call it the biggest yacht race in the world because of the number of entries," said Stan Whisenhunt, who has sailed and written about sailing in the area for decades. "Back in the day, 50 years ago, they would have 500 entries."

News reports at the time called Freedom's win an upset.

Precedent was broken when the cutter captured the prize, the Golden Coast News reported in 1966.

"It was the first victory for any Tri-County craft in the race, and served notice that Central Coast yachts will bear watching in future years as marina and harbor activity here grows," the article went on to say.

Freedom's own crew thought about the wind, the best route to take, how to get off the starting line without getting rammed.

"If you want to see something, it's 400 or 500 boats circling around trying to get off the line at the right time," said Dr. Art Ecker, of Camarillo, one of Freedom's owners and a crew member that day.

But he doesn't remember ever thinking about winning.

"Oh, heavens no. No such expectations," said architect Larry Rasmussen, another co-owner on the crew for the race. "When there are close to 500 boats, who expects to win? You just do it because it seems like an interesting, worthwhile, fun thing to do."

Crazy 'to even think' it

To hear Larry Bruner tell it, the whole thing started because two of his friends  local dentist and orthodontist Dr. Bud Krebs and Dr. Art Ecker  wanted to get into sailing.

Others call Bruner the instigator. But really, it all came down to timing.

Bruner had a real estate office in Camarillo back in those days. His client and friend Jim Rothchild had a boat called Freedom.

When Bruner asked to go for a ride one day, Rothchild told him he had waited too long, that he planned to sell Freedom. Later that day, Bruner took Ecker and Krebs over to have a look.

"I remember driving over there I was thinking to myself, 'These guys are going to try to talk me into buying that boat with them,'" said Bruner, who lives in Alta, California, now. "But I get seasick. It's crazy for me to even think about a boat."

Before Ecker or Krebs could even suggest it, Bruner walked into the cabin, looked around at the impressive woodwork and custom design, and said: "Let's buy this."

"I was somewhat kidding," Bruner said, telling the story over the phone more than 50 years later. "But the more we looked, the more everyone thought it was something that should be done."

They stopped at the office of Krebs' brother-in-law next and sold Bill Clark on the adventure. Clark was an Oxnard attorney back then and later became a California Supreme Court justice and President Ronald Reagan's national security adviser.

The four decided they would need about 10 guys, enough to cushion the cost and make sure there were at least a few guys to sail it at any given time. None of the four had sailed before.

But just a day later with no one committed yet, Bruner told Rothchild they would take it.

A boat broker was coming up that afternoon, and he didn't want to let their chance slip away, said Bruner, adding it might have been a bit impulsive.

"You've got to understand, we didn't have anybody that was signed up for it. Here, I'm a guy that gets seasick, and I'm telling him I'm going to buy his boat," he said.

Rasmussen remembered hearing the pitch over the phone. "Bud called and said, 'We need to buy a boat,'" Rasmussen said.

"I said, 'Sure. I was thinking about doing that very thing," he joked.

Like nearly all of the Freedom's 10 local owners, Rasmussen had never sailed before, but it seemed like a reasonable adventure, he said.

For Phil Snow, a dentist and co-owner, the whole thing sounded kind of fun. "It was kind of a once in a lifetime thing to say that we did it," said Snow, now retired and living in Santa Paula.

The Freedom

Freedom first launched in 1938, designed by John Alden to compete in New England and manufactured by the Herreshoff Manufacturing Co.

"She was built by one of the most famous yacht designers, built in one of the most famous boatyards in the world," said Marvin Bourman, who is friends with Freedom's recent owners in San Diego and who remembers racing against the yacht years ago.

Herreshoff records say the yacht was relocated to the West Coast during World War II. By the early 1960s, Freedom was berthed in Ventura.

Bruner, Ecker, Krebs and the others paid $10,000 - $1,000 each - when they bought the boat from Rothchild.

"In today's market, it would be a helluva deal," said Bill Ramelli, the lone experienced sailor of the bunch. "In those days, it would have been good deal."

The yacht was almost lost in 1969, when storms and floods destroyed the Ventura marina. Krebs' father, a harbormaster at the time, found the Freedom and towed it back into the marina.

Whisenhunt, who wrote about Freedom's sojourns back then for the Ventura County Star-Free Press, said the yacht never lacked for a crew.

"The Freedom seldom misses a race and when there isn't a race, she goes sailing anyway, often with 15 or more people aboard," he wrote in 1967. "'There goes the Freedom,' has become a familiar phrase at the Ventura Marina."

Asked about those days again recently, Whisenhunt said, "It was hard to write about local racing results if you didn't mention Freedom, because they were always there, always winning."

KAREN QUINCY LOBERG/THE STAR: Freedom owners and their families gather for a portrait at the Ventura Yacht Club in April.

A good crew

Dentists, an attorney, a real estate agent, a teacher, a couple of ranchers and an architect rounded out the group of 10 co-owners. They were in their late 20s and 30s with young families, most just starting their careers.

"It was a good crew. We had a lot of fun," said Bruner, who moved north to a town near Lake Tahoe and sold his share of the boat after a few years. He never quite shook the seasickness, but a doctor prescribed a pill that let him drink beer, smoke cigars and hang out on deck, he said.

One of their smartest decisions early on was asking Ramelli to join them, Bruner said. "We called him Capt. Bill. He was the only one of us who knew how to sail a boat. He saved our bacon more than once."

Krebs kept them organized in those early days.

"Bud was very, very interested in sailing," Ramelli said. "He was always ready to put a crew together and get out there."

Their foray into yachting lasted just a short time for some. Clark had moved to Sacramento before that win in Ensenada, selling his share of Freedom.

Others drifted away gradually, some moving out of the area like Bruner and others just moving on to their next adventure.

Recently, the Eckers, Ramellis, Phil and his son David Snow and Larry Rasmussen, all still living in the county, got together for a photo at the Ventura Yacht Club.

They shared some stories about their Freedom days and their missing crew members and friends. Clark died a few years ago, and Krebs passed away in 2003.

"No one loved it as much as Bud did," said Krebs' wife, Molly, over the phone recently from her Lincoln, California, home. "He loved every minute out there."

Back then, families went on trips to the Channel Islands, had cookouts and sailed together. Most of the kids were around the same age, said Pat Ecker, married to Art.

"Those were really, really good times. They really were," she said.

Race day

Freedom sailed the 125-mile Newport to Ensenada race more than once.

Ecker said Ramelli deserves the credit if it was skill that got them the trophy in May 1966.

"If it had anything to do with skill, we got it all from Bill Ramelli," said Ecker, who lives in Camarillo.

Rasmussen remembers the crew making the decision to sail a route outside the Coronado Islands that year. They had taken the opposite tack in an earlier race.

"We'll have more wind. It would be a longer distance, but we would rather keep moving," he said.

"So we went outside the Coronados and it worked. We had plenty of breeze and went charging down there," said Rasmussen, who remembers hanging on the tiller with Ecker as a crosswind threatened to blow them off course.

"When the sun came up, we had a direct shot into the harbor," Bruner said "When you've got the wind to your back, you can put up the spinnaker sail. That's the real colorful sail that goes up front. We made a spinnaker run right into the harbor."

News reports say they finished the race in 26 1/2 hours and won their class.

After the win, Bruner said they found out there was a bar in town that would fill the trophy with margaritas.

"I've always told this story that it held about 6 or 7 gallons. It came up almost to your waist if it was sitting on the floor," he said. "They filled that thing up. They gave us a bunch of straws, and we were very popular for a few hours. Everyone was taking part in Freedom's good sailing luck."
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The tweets and emails started immediately after Donald Trump's victory Tuesday night:

"You've got a promise to keep, bub."

"Get ready to eat it."

"EAT IT!!!"

To them, I say: Con gusto.

Seven months ago, I said I would eat an entire column, newsprint and ink, if Trump won the nomination, calculating that Republican voters were better than Trump. The Republican voters let me down: Though a majority didn't support him, enough did, and no viable alternative arose.

But you, the reader, have revived my faith in America. I put out a call for recipes and you responded, via Twitter, Facebook, email and the comments section. Through the magic of crowdsourcing, I have discovered that eating newspaper can be downright mouthwatering. This is going to be huge! We are going to build a big, beautiful meal  and Mexico is going to pay for it.

On May 12, after readers have voted for their favorite newspaper cuisine, acclaimed chef Victor Albisu of Washington's Del Campo restaurant will select and prepare a wide variety of newsprint-based dishes. Tom Sietsema, The Washington Post's James Beard Award-winning food critic, will be on hand to taste and judge the dishes, and I will eat them  streamed live on the Post's Facebook page.

I've dispensed with the unhelpful suggestions from readers that I consume my column with hemlock, cyanide or excrement. And though I appreciate all the Hannibal Lecter references, I won't be eating the column with fava beans and Chianti, nor will I be eating it with crow (it's out of season).

Many readers proposed ways to get the paper down painlessly: Blended in smoothies. Folded into Bearnaise, marinara or jerk sauce. Wrapped in bacon. Topped with Sriracha, mustard or ketchup. Or shredded and mixed with Parmesan cheese.

Reader "Mhitchons" posited that "newsprint dissolves well in scotch, bourbon, whiskey or any other potent alcohol." Mary Ann Liebert suggested "mustard or vodka. Maybe both." But the many suggestions that I pair the meal with Trump wine give me indigestion.

A large number of readers said eating the newspaper in any form but raw would be cheating. "Man up! No sneaky dodging!" argued Jeffrey Drummond.

I disagree. There's no reason why a newspaper shouldn't go down easily. In addition to Albisu's original suggestion  newspaper chilaquiles in tomatillo-jalapeno sauce, crispy newspaper dumplings, saffron rice and newspaper-smoked lamb, newspaper-lined tacos, ground newspaper falafel, newspaper Wagyu steak, candied-newspaper waffles and newspaper-stuffed churros  there are many other promising dishes to consider for this feast.

Joe Yonan, the Post's food editor, suggests a "cold minty pea-and-newspaper soup" with Greek yogurt, feta and chives. Bonnie Benwick, the deputy food editor, proposes "op-ed spring rolls" with dipping sauce.

John Bussey, my old editor at The Wall Street Journal, suggests a "fresh vegetable soup, generously seasoned with garlic and herbs and reduced on a low flame for one news cycle."

Probably the most creative recipe came from Shava Nerad  ersatzbrot, a bread made with sawdust fed to German soldiers in World War I.

Several readers  "JC," "CalithDem" and Roy Wakefield among them  went with the British classic of fish and chips, while many others  including Emmanuel Touhey, Becky Timmons and Dan Grosz  thought meatloaf would be the right choice.

Linda Garceau sent me a recipe, in French, for fish cooked in newspaper, but it appears the removal instructions  "degager le papier"  disqualify the dish. And Douglas Peterson took care in emailing a highly detailed recipe for Trump steaks (18 column inches Washington Post shredded in 3-inch strips, half-inch wide).

Nearly every world cuisine was represented: German beef and newspaper cabbage rolls (Mark Gibson), a Louisville newspaper Hot Brown (Mark Linton), blueberry newspaper pancakes (David Umansky), newspaper matzo brei (Adam Wizon), newspaper lasagna (Andrea Stone), newspaper spanakopita (William Hamby) and Trumpkin pie with newspaper and yams ("MArlington Thomas").

Among the most popular comments was from "ACounter," who suggested soaking the newspaper in water first "to get as many of the chemicals out as possible. And before you eat the soaked paper, don't forget to soak yourself  in your favorite alcoholic beverage."

Unnecessary. These newsprint dishes will be delectable. But another six months of Trump? That will require a stiff drink.

Follow Dana Milbank on Twitter, @Milbank. He writes for The Washington Post Writers Group.
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One of Donald Trump's signature issues  demonizing Latino immigrants and building a wall to keep them out  places him far outside the California mainstream. A recent poll shows that less than a quarter of Californians agree with his stances on immigration, and only 16 percent support widespread deportations.

But Californians should resist the temptation to congratulate themselves on their open-mindedness. When it comes to insulting immigrants and finding ways to keep them out, California started it.

For most of U.S. history, fomenting anti-immigrant sentiment was a project of labor unions and working people who feared job competition from newcomers. In these movements, particularly those directed at Chinese people in the 19th century, California was a national leader.

Trump draws votes mostly from a 21st-century version of that working-class demographic. But his rhetoric on immigration is newer  it comes straight from the anti-immigrant movement begun 25 years ago by educated, mostly white California suburbanites from across the political spectrum.

Trump has famously said he will force Mexico to pay for a wall on our southern border through a variety of pressure tactics, including increasing fees on all Mexican border crossers. My University of Oregon colleague, political scientist Dan Hosang, has shown this idea originated with Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein.

In 1993, the newly elected Feinstein became the first California senator in decades to make immigration control a major political issue. She wrote in the Los Angeles Times that "illegal" immigrants cost the state billions and filled its jails with criminals, and brought that same message to talk shows and the Senate. How to crack down? Feinstein proposed a $1 toll on anyone entering the country. The proceeds would have gone to Border Patrol.

In 1994, California voters overwhelmingly passed Proposition 187, which denied public services to undocumented immigrants. Most remember this as the signature issue of Republican Gov. Pete Wilson. Yet observers at the time noted it was the stand of the liberal Feinstein, a political rival of Wilson's, that "inspired" the conservative governor's turn to an anti-immigrant agenda.

Grass-roots energy for the proposition did not come from the type of working-class whites who support Trump. Hosang and scholar Robin Dale Jacobson found Prop. 187 activists were middle-class professionals: accountants, engineers, secretaries and educators. Their rhetoric did not focus on job competition. Rather, they decried "billions of tax dollars" spent on public services for immigrants and accused them of importing "rape, robbery, assault"  the same allegations Trump is now making.

Before Californians dismiss nativism as a faraway phenomenon, they should remember how the state gave anti-immigrant sentiment the legs that Trump has commandeered on his presidential run.

Julie M. Weise is an assistant professor of history at the University of Oregon and author of "Corazon de Dixie: Mexicanos in the U.S. South Since 1910." She was previously an assistant professor at CSU Long Beach. She wrote this column for Zocalo Public Square.
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California's high-speed rail project has  to create a metaphor we hope will catch on  left the station.

The latest two-year business plan won approval from the project's board last week. It officially creates a Silicon Valley-to-Central Valley line as the first leg of the bullet train, linking San Jose with Fresno, plus a station in Madera and a billion-dollar spur to Merced to keep folks happy there.

Those of us in Southern California will get some investment money but have to wait until the end-phase of the 25-year-plus project to bring the train through the Tehachapi Mountains and into Burbank and then Anaheim.

There still is no clear funding for the project, with the board still thinking a combination of the state bonds approved by voters, federal grants and private investments will pay the bill.

Although the cost of the project still boggles the mind, we frankly do not object to the idea of a bullet train to help move people north and south in our state and pull some vehicles off the roads.

It's just that the whole project is so last-century thinking.

While California was discovering a way to move people faster on the rails  something that has been done successfully for decades in Europe and Asia  the best transportation minds were looking at safer ways to move us around on our highways.

Welcome to the era of the self-driving car.

This was a George Jetson cartoon punch line until as recently as a year ago. Now it suddenly looks like our future, a real future. Just this week, Fiat Chrysler said it would work with Google to double the size of Google's self-driving vehicle fleet.

There are cars on the streets of California that are going from point A to point B with no one driving. But California is not close to being ready for the commercial reality of self-driving cars.

The true value lies in connected automation. That's the technology that will allow all those driverless vehicles to communicate with each other, stay at speed on our freeways, exit and enter traffic lanes without disruption, and communicate with traffic signals to avoid undue stoppage. Thousands of other actions also remain before we can turn these vehicles from a novelty into a transformative way to move us around our state.

It first requires the technology. The U.S. Department of Transportation is investing a few million dollars into the concept. UC Berkeley has a Partners for Advanced Transportation Technology program that is bringing together some of the brightest minds from the public and private sectors and academia to explore the issue.

At the same time, however, state officials need to start a bullet-train-like process that looks at the infrastructure to support this elaborate technology. Do we have the ability to get a seamless and uninterrupted line of driverless cars on and off Highway 101 at every interchange in Ventura County? Do we have the electronics in place to install the cameras and sensors that will be part of the external information feeds for these cars? Do we have any idea how we are going to pay for any of this?

It's not that we don't want to ride a bullet train to Merced someday. We actually look forward to that. But we do know that if there's a way to get from Highway 33 to Tapo Canyon Drive in our cars without slowing down or stressing, then that will be the best ride of the 21st century.


Trump Hotel Collection is selling holiday ornaments to benefit St. Jude Childrens Research Hospital Thanks and Giving campaign. The campaign builds awareness and raises funds for the lifesaving research and treatment being done at St. Jude to help children fighting cancer and other deadly diseases (Pictured: PIN UP star Claire Sinclair with ornament).

Many Las Vegas celebrities have signed the ornaments in support of the non-profit: Brad Garrett,Frankie Moreno, Pawn Stars (Rick Harrison, Chumlee), Claire Sinclair, Frank Moreno, Million Dollar Quartet, several rodeo stars, Melody Sweets, Mac King, Josh Strickland and more.

Trump International Hotel Las Vegas surprised guests and spreaded holiday cheer with a recital in their grand lobby from students from Cynthia Man Studio this past Saturday (Photo credit: Bryan Steffy / WireImage / www.BryanSteffyPhoto.com).


Firefighters of Southern Nevada Burn Foundation will host its 16th Annual Firefighter Bachelor Auction on Friday, June 3 from 7 p.m.  11:30 p.m with an after party to follow inside The Foundry at SLS Las Vegas (Pictured: Firefighters from a previous years event).

Southern Nevadas hottest and most eligible firefighter bachelors will be auctioned off to members of the community during the 16th Annual Firefighter Bachelor Auction. Bachelors will be paired with prize packages including premier hotel stays, a trip to Cabo San Lucas, Las Vegas show tickets, helicopter rides, spa treatments and much more. All proceeds from the auction will benefit individuals in the community through The Burn Survivor Initiative, a program that provides medical and emotional assistance to local burn survivors.

Every year people get excited the Firefighter Bachelor Auction. Its a fun way to bring the community together for a great cause, said Warren Whitney, president of the Firefighters of Southern Nevada Burn Foundation. We have a few tricks up our sleeve and look forward to a record breaking year!

Sponsors for the event include SLS Las Vegas, Cadillac of Las Vegas, Las Vegas Designated Drivers, LLC and Love FrogKisser.


Human Nature performed their final show in the Human Nature Theater at Imperial Place on Sunday night. The group finished out their run of over 3.5 years at the Las Vegas Strip venue (Pictured: Andrew Tierney, Phil Burton, Michael Tierney and Toby Allen  Photo:  Erik Kabik, erikkabik.com).

Photo:  Erik Kabik, erikkabik.com.

Photographer Erik Kabik caught up with the guys before the show for a few shots on stage as they celebrated with their families, the shows producers, Imperial Place staff, the band and many others. He asked what the future holds for them and they told me to Stay tuned for a big announcement for 2013 and beyond, coming very soon!

Photo:  Erik Kabik, erikkabik.com.

Photo:  Erik Kabik, erikkabik.com.

Photo:  Erik Kabik, erikkabik.com.

Photo:  Erik Kabik, erikkabik.com.

Photo:  Erik Kabik, erikkabik.com.

Photo:  Erik Kabik, erikkabik.com.

Photo:  Erik Kabik, erikkabik.com.

Photo:  Erik Kabik, erikkabik.com.

Photo:  Erik Kabik, erikkabik.com.

Photo:  Erik Kabik, erikkabik.com.

Photo:  Erik Kabik, erikkabik.com.

Photo:  Erik Kabik, erikkabik.com.
A conner of Vincome Villas Long Bien. In Viet Nam, some investors have been piloting the development of green architecture such as Phu My Hung, North Linh Dam, Vincome Villas Long Bien, and EcoLife Capital urban areas projects. - File Photo

Duy said solutions are focussed on the high-end segments while the low and middle- income housing segment has the highest number of users, and also consumes the maximum amount of energies.

"Viet Nam's housing policies are under pressure from an increasing population, especially in urban areas. It is forecast that the urban population could reach 46 million by 2020, accounting for 45 per cent of the country's total number," he said.

He told the conference on Green Constructions for Low and Middle Income Housing held in Ha Noi on Wednesday that the new housing demand could go up to 5.1 million apartments in the low- and middle-income segment in the next 10 years.

This is the reason that green constructions will contribute to sustainable development and environment protection. This has also been the ministry's development trend for the segment in Viet Nam, he added.

Duy said, green constructions have become more popular in the world and a vital development trend toward effective energy and natural resource use.

Vu Thi Kim Thoa, senior advisor of Viet Nam Clean Energy Programme funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) said that green constructions could save up to 50 per cent of energy as compared to initial designs without increasing costs. In addition, these could reduce operational costs which often account for more than 80 per cent of investment spending.

"This could help increase the asset value, quicker returns on capital, and attract home buyers," Thoa said.

Sharing the ideas, Greges Reimann, managing director of Denmark IEN Consultants, said that the criteria for green constructions in Viet Nam have been encouraged while many countries in the world have promulgated specific and compulsory laws.

He said that the energy saving in buildings in Denmark reached 50 per cent thanks to compulsory regulations on using renewable energy sources in constructions.

In Viet Nam, some investors have been piloting the development of green architecture such as Phu My Hung, North Linh Dam, Vincome Villas Long Bien, and EcoLife Capital urban areas projects.

There are 60 green constructions in Viet Nam though the development was initiated in 2006.

The number has been modest in comparison to the total number of constructions in Viet Nam.

Tran Nhu Trung, deputy general director of Capital House, said that housing developers have not cared to meet the requirements of green constructions due to the low profits from social housing projects.

"Home buyers could benefit from green constructions as soon as they receive their apartments but investors have to spend more. This has become a headache for investors, especially those in social housing projects," Trung said.
The European Commission said yesterday (5 May) that Turkish citizens could travel visa-free to the Schengen area by the end of June, while also admitting that national parliaments may stop the deal. The EU executive praised Turkey for a quick achievement of the necessary conditions for a visa-free travel and its outstanding ability to deliver.

The final decision to lift the visa requirement has been promised as part of the deal under which Ankara committed itself to take back migrants arriving to the Greek islands from the Turkish territory. Visa-free travel for Turkish nationals would apply to all EU countries except for the UK and Ireland as well as to all four Schengen associated countries (Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland).

Since the last meeting between both parties in mid-March, Turkey has managed to implement most of the EUs requirements needed before the visa could be lifted. There are five remaining benchmarks that still need to be implemented but they are considered just a formality. Ankara has generally used the migrant crisis to boost the relations with the EU, which mostly includes the coveted visa-free travel as well as a resumption of the stalled EU accession talks. In an effort to achieve the two things, Turkey has tried hard to stick to the migrant deal, which has become evident in recent days. Ankara has for example almost completely closed the main Aegean route for migrants.

The Commission is making all efforts to make it clear to the Member States that Turkey must abide by all necessary requirements needed for a visa-free travel regardless of the migrant deal, although Brussels has emphasized that the visa-free travel is linked to the deal. Moreover, the possible decision in favor of Turkey also contains a safeguard clause in case of massive arrivals of its citizens.
Photo: VGP/Quang Hieu

According to the Resolution, by 2020, up to one million enterprises will be operating in Viet Nam. The private sector will contribute 48-49% of the GDP. The total investment from the private businesses and individuals will make up 49% of the total social investment. Every year, around 30-35% of the Vietnamese businesses will launch creative and innovative activities.

The Resolution also proposes principles such as all kinds of businesses are equal to get access to resources, including capital, resources, land, market and business opportunities.

It also sets to reduce unnecessary licenses and unsuitable expenditures.

Measures proposed

The Resolution suggests specific measures to tackle difficulties and create favorable conditions for enterprises, including the organization of dialogues between local leaders and businesses and the establishment of hot lines and online question-and-answer sessions for businesses.

Chairman of the Viet Nam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI) Vu Tien Loc consented with the draft Resolution, saying that the Resolution will create trust among businesses, which are the pioneering force in economic development.

He expected that enterprises will uphold their responsibilities for the nation and people as well as strictly follow the law and regulations.

PM Nguyen Xuan Phuc assigned the Government Office to coordinate with the Ministry of Planning and Investment and the VCCI to complete the draft Resolution.

The Resolution has to manifest the message announced to the businesses, which means removing difficulties and obstacles and facilitating businesses' development, he stressed.
A helicopter flies past a wildfire in Fort McMurray, Alberta, as crews held back wind-whipped wildfires that have already torched homes and other buildings in Canada's main oil sands city of Fort McMurray, forcing thousands of residents to flee. (Photo source: Jason Franson /The Canadian Press via AP)

LAC LA BICHE, Canada: Residents fleeing a voracious wildfire in western Canada's Fort McMurray thronged a tiny hamlet several hours away on Thursday (May 5) as firefighters battled to contain the raging blaze consuming a huge section of Alberta's oil sands region.

By the thousands, evacuees are arriving in Lac La Biche after making a chaotic escape from the epicenter of the inferno that has claimed two lives and destroyed entire neighborhoods of the oil city of Fort McMurray and its outskirts.

So far about 100,000 people have fled the path of the monster blaze some have dubbed "the beast."

Map of Alberta, Canada locating Fort McMurray, where tens of thousands of residents have been ordered to evacuate over wildfire. (AFP/Gal Roma, Adrian Leung, John Saeki)

"There's no guide on how to get out of a forest fire," evacuee Alan Javierto told AFP in Lac La Biche, about 300 kilometres south of Fort McMurray, where many recounted a hurried, frightening escape as homes and businesses were reduced to cinders.

Television footage showed trees ablaze right on the edge of highways crowded with bumper-to-bumper traffic trying to leave the disaster zone, as billowing black smoke darkened the sky.

The government has declared a state of emergency in Alberta, a province the size of France that is home to one of the world's most prodigious oil-producing industries.

"The footage we've seen, the cars racing down highways while fire rages on all sides is nothing short of terrifying," Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told lawmakers in Ottawa.

Trudeau's government has pledged to match one dollar for each dollar donated by the public to the Red Cross, which is providing aid to those in need.

BONE-DRY

Authorities have been battling the blaze with air tankers, helicopters and hundreds of firefighters, even as high winds have continued to whip up and spread the flames.

The flight from Fort McMurray began in earnest shortly before midnight Tuesday after a mandatory evacuation order in the city.

Late Wednesday fires forced the evacuation of Saprae Creek, a neighborhood east of the city's airport where even firefighters were forced to pull out.

Oil companies crucial to the region such as Suncor, Syncrude and Shell are also pulling out non-essential employees, and several firms have set up emergency shelters in their huge bungalow worker communities.

The fire has already destroyed some 2,000 homes on the outskirts of Fort McMurray, consuming 10,000 hectares, authorities said. The region has been left bone-dry after a period of unusually scant rainfall and unseasonably high temperatures.

One lawmaker, Rona Ambrose, who represents the affected region, wept as she vowed in parliament that Alberta will recover from the disaster.

"Fort McMurray is a place where Canadians have come from all across this country. It's a tough day for Albertans but we will persevere" she said through tears.

BLACKENED CARCASSES

Massive traffic snarls have formed around gas stations as drivers waited hours to fill their tanks.

With some pumps already empty in the 400 kilometres between Fort McMurray and Edmonton to the south, the Alberta government sent a tanker under guard to help rescue stranded vehicles.

The fire, which until Monday had been contained south of the oil city, was pushed towards it by winds of 50 kilometres per hour and quickly reached homes.

One particularly hard hit area was the Beacon Hill neighborhood some five kilometres from downtown Fort McMurray, where 70 per cent of homes were in ruins. Even harder hit was the Waterways neighbourhood, where nine in 10 homes have been reduced to charred remains.

Television footage showed the smoldering remains of a large motor home park, and the blackened carcasses of cars consumed by the flames.

Public Security Minister Ralph Goodale, called the fire "terrifying."

"It's heartbreaking and I think it just drives home the crucial point about how we all need to rally and support here, work well together, do everything that is humanly possible to rescue people in this kind of mortal danger and make sure that 'the beast' can be brought under control as rapidly as possible," Goodale said.

"This kind of disaster will not be solved in a day or two, a week or two, or a month or two. We're all going to have to be here for the long haul."
Participants of the annual "March of the Living" pass the main gate of the former Nazi death camp in Oswiecim (Auschwitz), Poland. (AFP/Wojtek Radwanski)

OSWIECIM, Poland: Thousands of young Jews from 40 nations marched alongside a handful of Holocaust survivors and Polish teenagers on Thursday (May 5) in homage to the victims of the former Auschwitz-Birkenau WWII death camp in southern Poland.

Now a memorial and museum run by the Polish state, the site is symbolic of Nazi Germany's genocide of European Jews. One million perished there between 1940 to 1945.

Survivor Feiga Francis Schmidt Libman, 81, told AFP she lost her grandmother, aunt and cousins at Auschwitz. Her father died at Dachau, another Nazi camp located in Germany, but she and her mother survived the ordeal of life in the Stutthof camp. She was just 10.

"I want them (young people) to know that hatred kills," Libman, now a great grandmother, told AFP. "I have a motto: if you have hatred in your heart, there is no room for love.

"I want everyone to be nice to each other and it doesn't matter if you pray in a synagogue, if you pray in a church or if you pray in a mosque. We are all the same and we should love each other and try to get along because there is beauty and goodness in all of us."

The doleful sound of the "shofar" - a traditional Jewish ram's horn symbolic of freedom - marked the start of the march in brilliant sunshine in the southern Polish town of Oswiecim, where Nazi Germany built the death camp in 1940.

Participants walked through the notorious "Arbeit Macht Frei" (Work Will Set You Free) gate at Auschwitz, before marching three kilometres to Birkenau, the main extermination site.

Held for the 28th time, organisers say the annual March of the Living is the world's largest single Holocaust memorial event. It marks Yom Hashoah, Israel's Holocaust Remembrance Day.

"I'm afraid that Europe and maybe some other parts of the world didn't learn much (from the Holocaust)," Dr Shmuel Rosenman, march chairman, told AFP. He urged governments to enact tough legislation "against anti-Semitism, racism, fascism."

Yossi Fischer, a 19-year-old New Yorker, told AFP that his great grandfather was the lone survivor among his relatives, all of whom perished at Auschwitz. "They tried to destroy us, but thank God we're still around."

More than 100,000 non-Jewish Poles, Roma, Soviet prisoners of war, homosexuals and anti-Nazi partisans also died at the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp in occupied Poland. The Soviet Red Army liberated it in 1945.

Historical records show that six million European Jews perished under the Nazi German genocide during World War II.
Deputy Secretary-General Eliasson, along with Vietnamese Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Cao Duc Phat and leaders of Ben Tre, examined the situation in Ba Tri District in the drought-hit province, as part of his visit to the Southeast Asian country from May 3 to 6.

The official visited 55-year-old Nguyen Thi Nuong and measured the salinity of the canal in front of her house, which is the main source of fresh water for Nuong and hundreds of households in the locality.

During a conversation with the Deputy Secretary-General, Nuong said this years severe drought and salinization have ravaged all of her crops, resulting in her running out of money and being unable to afford clean water.

The Vietnamese woman intended to have her son drop out of school to work with her in order to earn a living.

Eliasson also got updated on the difficulties other locals in the drought-hit areas have been facing, promising on behalf of the United Nations that he would provide the residents with support to help alleviate the problems.

The official stated that he would talk about the situation in the Vietnamese province at the upcoming seminar on climate change in order to call for assistance from the international community.

The Vietnamese residents are not alone, the Deputy Secretary-General asserted, adding that the United Nations will cooperate with the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development and local authorities to figure out solutions.

He believed that the Vietnamese people will eventually overcome this obstacle.

Eliasson and other officials also visited the Bao Thuan water factory, the primary provider of fresh water for local residents, and tasted the water there.

The water source at the factory, which has been affected by serious salinization, reminded the official of the salt water he often used to clean his throat each morning, Eliasson joked.

According to Minister Phat, the salinity of the water source at the facility was considerably high, causing the water to be saltier than that sold at pharmacies.
Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, pictured on Apr 28, 2016, said that he hoped he would be able to support Donald Trump in the future, provided the brash billionaire is able to show leadership in unifying the party. (AFP/Win McNamee)

WASHINGTON: US House Speaker Paul Ryan, the top Republican in Congress, said on Thursday (May 5) he was not ready to support Donald Trump as the party's presumptive presidential nominee in November's general election.

"To be perfectly candid with you, I'm not ready to do that yet," Ryan told CNN in a bombshell interview that heightened concerns about whether conservatives will be able to rally around Trump in his expected matchup against Democrat Hillary Clinton.

Ryan, the Republican vice presidential nominee in 2012, stressed that he hoped he would be able to support Trump in the future, provided the brash billionaire is able to show leadership in unifying the party.

"He's got some work to do," Ryan said, noting that the burden was on Trump to begin the healing process after a brutal primary campaign and Trump's long string of insulting remarks.

Ryan has expressed criticism of Trump before. But Thursday's comments were all the more startling because Trump has now emerged as the party's standardbearer and Ryan, as speaker of the House of Representatives, will oversee the Republican presidential nominating convention in July.

"I think that he needs to do more to unify the party ... then to go forward and appeal to all Americans from every walk of life and background, and a majority of independents," Ryan said.

He insisted, however, that no Republicans should support Clinton - as several have pledged to do after Trump's rivals dropped out.

"To be the party and climb the final hill and win, we need a standardbearer that can unify all - all conservatives and the wings of the party - and then go to the country with an appealing agenda," he said. "The nominee has to lead in that effort."

Both Bush presidents - George H.W. Bush and his son George W. Bush - have signalled they will not endorse Trump in 2016, while Mitt Romney, the 2012 nominee on the ticket with Ryan, is reportedly not going to attend the Republican convention.


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A prominent rights worker who was questioned over the developing sex scandal allegations against opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party deputy leader Kem Sokha has said that the woman at the heart of the salacious affair is also a victim.

Thida Khus, head of NGO Silaka, said she felt sympathetic towards Khom Chandaraty, Sokhas alleged mistress at the heart of an Anti-Corruption Unit investigation.

What Im worried about is that now the victim is still Srey Mom. The opinions from the public, civil society groups and so on have labeled her as dangerous. We dont know the real issue behind all of this. So we ask the public not to come too quick judgment and accuse Srey Mom, she said, using an alias for Chandaraty.

A leaked phone recording released last month allegedly showed that Chandaraty was Sokhas mistress, however, no one has come forward to verify the recordings authenticity.

Eng Chhay Eang, a CNRP lawmaker, said that the case was not of national importance and a private matter out of the partys remit.

Khus was critical of Sokhas silence on the issue, adding that he should have come out sooner to respond to the release of the recording sooner.

Adhoc director Thun Saray agreed. Even if [the allegations are] true, he should still come out to defend his rights.

Chandaraty has demanded $300,000 in compensation from Sokha and four rights workers who were detained on Sunday in relation to the case.
The Cambodian government on Friday approved a new regulation that will impose fines for public smoking.

The sub-decree banning public smoking was approved by the Council of Ministers at its weekly meeting on Friday and is part of a tobacco control law passed last year.

The ban focuses in part on smoking in restaurants and offices, where inhaling second-hand smoke can be particularly dangerous.

This regulation is a message to the public to come to more comprehension about the impacts of cigarettes and smoke from them, Council of Ministers spokesman Phay Siphan said, adding that most smokers in Cambodia are among the older generations.

Yel Daravuth, a doctor and technical officer for the Tobacco Free Initiative, said the ban will help lead to decreases in smoking, which annually kills more than 10,000 Cambodiansabout 30 per day.

The ban, which includes penalties of up to $12 in fines, follows the January announcement from Prime Minister Hun Sen that he had finally quit smoking after 30 years.

In this post, Im asking my Cambodian people to quit smoking, he wrote on Facebook. Especially the youth.
The National Election Committee is creating a working team to study the case against its recently appointed deputy secretary general Ny Chakrya for allegedly attempting to cover up a sex scandal involving deputy opposition leader Kem Sokha.

The working team  comprised of legal experts  is studying the case closely, said NEC spokesman Hang Puthea, who is also the ninth, non-partisan member of the electoral body.

Keo Phally, head of the NECs legal department, his assistant Ke Rith, and Khorn Keo Mono, head of the bodys communications department, will be named as members of the working team, according to Hang Puthea.

He added that the working group was created at the request of Ny Chakryas family, which is seeking his release on bail.

The NEC held a meeting to discuss legal procedures on criminal law, the statute of the NEC and law on elections. The meeting found that the NEC does not have the authority to interfere in the work of other institutions. So the NEC cannot do anything about it, Puthea said.

After the study made by the working team, the NEC has already sent a letter to the court, he added.

Chakrya still holds his position as the NECs deputy secretary general despite the criminal charge.

We plan to visit him with his lawyer, Puthea said.

Meanwhile, Chakryas lawyer is preparing a document to submit to the court seeking his clients bail.

Som Sokkong, Chakryas lawyer, told VOA on Tuesday that there was a solid legal basis for the bail request, but declined to elaborate.

For some facts, we think when the case in still under investigation, we cannot reveal them. Journalists would know about it from the hearing and when it is time to speak out.

Chakrya, a former senior investigator for local human rights organization Adhoc, was detained on Sunday along with four current Adhoc officials on charges of bribing a key witness in a case against Cambodia National Rescue Party deputy president Kem Sokha.

The four rights workers and Chakrya are alleged to have offered a bribe to Khom Chandaraty, also known as Srey Mom, who is alleged to have been Sokhas mistress.

She apparently wrote an open letter reneging on her initial statements denying the connection, which has not been independently verified and her confession has only been communicated through official channels.

In the letter, dated April 22, she also demanded $300,000 in compensation from Sokha and others involved in the case.
At a public market in front of the Kampong Speu market, a stall selling organic vegetables attracts dozens of housewives and passers by. Many stop to buy the locally grown vegetables, which are here thanks to a new program established by the Cambodian Center for Study and Development in Agriculture.

The goal is to promote organic products locally and to cater to a growing base of consumers who want to eat healthier. For buyers like Sok Srey Oun, 30, that also means supporting local farmers.

Local, organic vegetables are not sprayed with chemicals to survive long transports, and they taste better too, she says. Prices stay competitive, and local farmers improve their income. Now that were just selling the vegetables right after cultivation, the quality is ensured, she said.

A growing number of consumers is becoming more health conscious about eating. Some say they experience nausea or fatigue from contaminated vegetables; some blame that on vegetables that are imported from neighboring countries. An estimated 50 percent of produce consumed in Cambodia is not grown in the country. Of locally grown produce, only about 5 percent is organic, CEDAC says.

The new market in Kampong Speu is meant to help provide access to local, clean produce, which can improve health and prevent disease. CEDAC is putting similar markets in the provinces of Tbaung Khmom, Kompong Thom, Siem Reap, Kompong Cham and Prey Veng. It runs eight such markets in Phnom Penh.

CEDAC coordinator Ung Vuthy says many Cambodians who now seek out organic products understand their health benefits. Thats a change from years past, he said. I believe that from one day to another, there will be more people coming, he said.

Meanwhile, agricultural experts are trying to establish standards for organic products, to prevent fraud.

Kiem Makarady, director of CEDACs environment and health department, told VOA Khmer that NGOs in agriculture are working together to create standards for organic cultivation and markets. This could lead to a national policy, he said.

We are trying to form a model that says organic products are feasible in Cambodia, for farmers to make gains, as well as consumers, in terms of food safety, he said. Thus, civil society should endorse the standards and support production of safe food. This will also help policymakers have a better understanding.

Hean Vanhorn, deputy director general of the Ministry of Agricultures general department of agriculture, said the agencys officials are working on a standard already, alongside other ASEAN officials. Certification by non-governmental groups does not have government endorsement, he added.

The government budget provides $46 million to the Ministry of Agriculture to enhance growth in the agricultural sector, and, according to the Supreme National Economic Council, expects to spend $20 million on rice and vegetable cultivation between 2016 and 2018.

But these initiatives come at a difficult time for farmers, some of whom are experiencing water shortages and drought. Vegetable farmer Ton Son, who works in Kampong Speus Samroang Tong district, said she hopes the government will help build a reservoir to hold more water. If theres sufficient water, we can cultivate organic vegetables well, from one year to another, she said.
After inviting hundreds of international journalists to cover its first ruling party congress in 36 years, North Korea barred the media from entering the actual event.

The Workers' Party Congress is the biggest political convention held in North Korea in generations and is expected to bolster young leader Kim Jong Uns power and formalize his "Byongjin" policy to push simultaneously for economic development and nuclear capability.

The last party congress was held in 1980, before Kim Jong Un was born, and was staged to legitimize his father Kim Jong Il as the heir apparent to the North's founding ruler Kim Il Sung, the grandfather of the current leader.

Kim was expected to address the opening session of the party congress that is supposed to last for four days, but that part of the event was closed to the media and not broadcast on state-run television.

Broadcasting live nearby

The Washington Post Tokyo bureau chief Anna Fifield was actually able to broadcast live over the internet outside the April 25 House of Culture where the event is taking place, but was not allowed inside.

The Washington Post reporter used the Periscope mobile phone app to send live video, showing groups of reporters and their North Korean government appointed escorts waiting across the street from the event.

Periscope viewers sent in questions asking her how she was able to access the internet in a country that supposedly strictly limits access to information from the outside world.

Fifield explained she was able to set up a VPN - virtual private network - that bypassed the restrictions on her North Korean mobile phone service.

The international media were later sent back to the press center in their hotel and allowed to watch live coverage of the congress over closed circuit TV.

International media

North Korea invited about 100 foreign journalists to cover the congress, although their movements have been closely managed and much of the country and its people remain off-limits to outsiders.

VOA, which broadcasts news into North Korea over medium and short wave radio frequency transmissions, was not invited to join in the international coverage of the event.

Leading up to the congress the invited journalists were taken on carefully controlled tours of schools and farms to showcase a content and prosperous society.

Hunger still an issue



Poverty and malnutrition in the North, however, are still believed to be widespread, even though agriculture reforms and the emergence of some private markets have reportedly improved conditions for many.

The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said in a February report that the North Korean people are suffering a significant food shortage.

Reuters correspondent James Pearson, who covers North Korea, noted that conditions in the capital seem to be improving. He said there are more taxis and private cars on the streets, more goods in shops, and more buildings under construction that attest to growing prosperity and consumption among Pyongyang residents.

Press restrictions

BBCs Seoul Correspondent Steve Evans said relations between the journalists and their government handlers have been at times tense and they were often restricted as to what they could see and who they could talk to.

Human rights activist Phil Robertson with Human Rights Watch also criticized the orchestrated political spectacle in Pyongyang for not addressing the widespread and systematic atrocities in the country, documented by the United Nations, that include a network of political prisons, murder, enslavement, torture and rape.

Kim Jong Un talks a lot about improving the lives of North Koreans, but well only know if hes serious, if he takes action to end human rights abuses, he said.

There is also speculation that North Korea is preparing another nuclear test to coincide with the congress in defiance of the tough new international sanctions imposed on Pyongyang after its last nuclear test in January.

Since Kim took power after the death of his father in December 2011, North Korea has carried out two nuclear tests and two space rocket launches that were widely seen as disguised ballistic missile tests.
On a recent Friday afternoon Choup Leakhena, 18, was wondering around Phnom Penhs National Museum, taking selfies with some of the institutions impressiveand growingcollection of ancient Khmer sculpture.

A freshman at Pannasastra University who hails from Takmao city in Kandal province, Leakhena told VOA Khmer that the beauty of the works gave her a sense of national pride.

I love and appreciate these masterpieces, such as the apsaraa celestial nymph from Hindu mythologythe statues of [12th century Khmer monarch] Jayavarman VII, Vishnu and Buddha, she said. I am able to see into life in the past.

Artifacts looted from Cambodias ancient temples during decades of conflict have started to flow back into the country, giving young Cambodians like Leakhena an opportunity to embrace the countrys cultural heritage and history.

I came here because I want to learn about it, she said. Finally, I can see [the sculptures] and I can admire our Khmer ancestors, who created such precious pieces for us. Its really unique. Other countries dont have such amazing artworks.

In a remarkably successful campaign in recent years, the Cambodian government has identified looted artifacts abroad and initiated legal efforts to reclaim them. And the tide appears to have turned, with many of the treasures spirited away and sold on the black market now finding their way back to the nation that made them.

In June 2014 three statues were repatriated from the United States, reuniting the impressive renderings of the mythical figures Bhima, Duryodhana and Balarama, all taken from the Koh Ker temple in 1972, as Cambodias civil war raged.

The landmark repatriation came at the end of years of legal wrangling after the New York auction house Sothebys tried to list the Duryodhana statue for sale. It also appears to have helped to precipitate the returns that followed.

Last October, Norwegian businessman and collector Morten Bosterud handed over two Angkorian statues, 11 undated artworks, a 9th-century Preah Ko-style head of the Hindu god Shiva, and a late 12th-century Bayon-style male divinity.

Last month, a head of Hindu god Harihara was reattached its bodyafter over 130 years of separationthanks to Pariss Guimet Museum. And most recently, the Denver Art Museum in the U.S. returned the 10th century Torso of Rama.

Heng Sophady, a professor of Archeology at the Royal University of Fine Arts, applauded the goodwill of individuals and museums who have contributed to what he called a unification of a culture that had been fractured by years of war.

I think it is a very important thing that those foreign collectors are starting to understand and value Khmer culture and Khmer arts in this way, he said.

Its the right thing to do, and it provides a good example for other collectors who might now be more willing to return artifacts to their home.

But there may be many more still in the hands of private collectors who have not come forward, he said.

"We have so many statues that were stolen during the war. Now we got some backits great for us as Khmer people, Sophady said, calling for the international community to keep up the pressure to return more of Cambodias stolen heritage.

During a stop in Cambodia in January, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry paid a visit to the National Museum. He described it at the time as an extraordinary asset, a goldmine of treasure from the past that tells the story of human development in this part of the world.

U.S. Embassy spokesman Jay Raman added by email that the U.S. is committed to helping to return more works, and also provides support to a number of programs focused on Cambodias cultural heritage.

With the publicity surrounding the return of statues, the National Museum has seen a 30 percent year-on-year increase in visitor numbers.

I see so many different artifacts, so many different histories behind everything, and it's breathtaking, said Taylor Bonilla, a Californian who was visiting the museum earlier this month on a break from his English teaching job in Phuket, Thailand.

There are a lot of things from centuries ago that really have so much meaning and historical content to them, which is really awesome.

National Museum Director Kong Vireak stressed that while the returned artifacts would help to promote cultural tourism and further study of Cambodian antiquity, it was also important for local people to learn more about their history.

It allows us to raise more awareness about the culture among the local Cambodians, he said.

The National Museum and the government were working with other governments around the world to bring home more looted artifacts, he added.

Although now we got some sent back to us, we are looking for more statues and artifacts that we will be identifying from those that have been lost or smuggled, Vireak said.

How many more looted artifacts might be out there was unknown, he said.

Minister of Culture and Fine Arts Phoeung Sackona recently said the country has some 4,000 sites of archaeological interest. The country was in a state of war throughout the 1970s and 1980s, providing ample opportunity for looters.

How can we know how many artworks were stolen? said Vireak. They are mysterious.
Farmers and development organizations say they welcome the release of water from a hydropower dam on the Mekong River in China, but they warned against negative impacts if too much water is discharged.

China is releasing the water from its Jinghong power station in Yunnan province, in order to help ease drought and help irrigation in Lower Mekong countries. In January and February alone, it released 2.3 billion cubic meters of water.

The Mekong River Commission, a consortium of governments from countries along the river, praised the discharge following a two-day meeting in Vietnam, calling it good will from China.

I would encourage that the member countries use this extra volume of water in an appropriate and effective manner, Le Duc Trung, chairman of the Mekong River Commissions Joint Committee, said in a statement.

The pulse of water will not only help farmers, but Cambodian fishermen, as well.

Phork Nimul, a fisherman in OSvay commune, Stung Treng province, said the water would help with his crops and enable fishing boats to better navigate the river, bringing in more fish to feed families. First it helps boats to navigate, and second is that it would help with agriculture, he said.

Some, however, remain cautious, fearing too much of a good thing.

Phork Sareith, chief of a fishing community in Stung Treng citys Samaki commune, said that he is worried that too much water will be discharged, damaging crops that people grow on the banks of the Mekong.

If they discharge too much water, it could affect people living along the Mekong River, he said. If too much water is to be released, the crops will be flooded, so it could affect the people living along the river.

Tek Vannara, director of NGO Forum, said the water could help alleviate the effects of drought, especially in agricultural communities, but too much water could also do damage to ecosystems. Stored water is already against the natural flow, he said.
Baghdad was on lockdown Friday.



Fearing a repeat of last week's turmoil, when protesters stormed into the fortified International Zone (IZ) and broke into parliament, forcing lawmakers to flee for their lives, the government set up concrete barriers around the city.

By late afternoon, however, the feared massive demonstration had not materialized.



The main Tigris River bridges have been sealed off with layers of concrete barriers, severing the routes from the planned demonstration site of Tahrir Square in the east to the IZ in the west.



Sadr City, also in the east and home to about 5 million supporters of firebrand Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, has similarly been shut down.

Inside the IZ, also known as the Green Zone, foreign embassies were on lockdown and security was visibly increased.



Security was also high on the streets in the early afternoon Friday as people did their weekend shopping. Razor wire and concrete barriers blocked some streets, and blue police trucks with armed guards were parked in the side streets leading up the the square.



Unrest has been building in Baghdad for months, with people complaining of massive government corruption, political patronage and inefficiency.



Sadr has been leading the protests, demanding government reform and the establishment of a new Cabinet made up of technocrats. Abadi's attempts at reform failed when the political parties refused to give up their ministerial posts.



WATCH: Baghdad protesters

Short street protest



Some 100 men, some wearing Iraqi banners around their necks, gathered early, shouting and marching around the Tahrir Square waving Iraqi flags, but largely steered clear of the Iraqi forces standing behind razor wire at the entrance to the bridge.



Then suddenly the protesters melted away. Two military commanders and one of the protesters told VOA the main "million man" protest would take place on Saturday or next week.



One protester, who refused to be identified or have his picture taken, said they were waiting further instructions from Muqtada al Sadr.

Friday is typically a day of prayer and rest in Iraq.

Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, now all that is left of the Iraqi government, on Thursday fired the IZ security commander for allowing the protesters to pour into the fortified area last week, and appointed a new commander.



Within hours, a firefight broke out between Abadi's military guard and federal police  a paramilitary force loyal to the Ministry of Interior.

Fear of intra-Shi'ite violence

The clashes ended swiftly, but signaled the growing animosity between different Shi'ite militias in the country: those largely loyal to Sadr and those aligned with the interior minister and his powerful Iran-linked Badr Organization.

There is growing concern among diplomats and humanitarian organizations that in a country awash with militias and guns, the animosity could degenerate into armed clashes or full-out war.

Washington has voiced it support for Abadi, and repeatedly called for a unified government to confront what it considers the major threat in the country: Islamic State extremists.

U.N. Special Envoy to Iraq Jan Kubis has visited Iran and also sat down with Iranian-backed militias in Iraq. Government leaders have been trying to negotiate a solution to the impasse.

As yet there has been no sign the government crisis will be resolved any time soon.



And while the political conflict plays out in Baghdad, Kurdish leaders, fed up with what they see as an irreparably broken political system, are saying the time has come to break away from Iraq.
As China awaits an international arbitration ruling over its claims to almost all of the South China Sea, Beijing issued a warning Friday to its critics, stating that the more they challenge its position regarding disputed territories in one of the worlds busiest waterways, the more it will push back.



Speaking at a special briefing on the dispute, Ouyang Yujing, director-general of the Chinese Foreign Ministry's Department of Boundary and Ocean Affairs, said China is willing to take into consideration constructive comments and criticism from relevant countries.

"But if they are aimed at putting pressure on China or blackening its name, then you can view it like a spring, which has an applied force and a counterforce. The more the pressure, the greater the reaction," he said.

Maritime trade



Each year, more than $5 trillion in maritime trade passes through the South China Seas energy-rich waters. China claims almost all of the sea to be historically part of its territory and in recent years has been aggressively creating artificial islands there to bolster its position, including the building of airstrips. But the waterway is also crisscrossed by claims from the Philippines, Brunei, Vietnam, Malaysia and Taiwan.

Beijing has long insisted that the disputes be handled through bilateral negotiations between claimants and argued against any international involvement, but its actions have been an increasing source of tension in the region and beyond.



Last month, the Group of Seven (G-7) advanced economies issued a statement supporting arbitration, voicing their strong opposition to any intimidating coercive or provocative unilateral actions that could alter the status quo and increase tensions.



China has said the disputes are being exaggerated. At the same time, it has been stepping up its rhetoric ahead of an international ruling on its claims in a case that the Philippines lodged against Beijing in the Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Hague. The ruling is expected in the coming weeks and is likely to favor the Philippines.

Sovereignty ruling



Ouyang said that since the case is about sovereignty and maritime delineation, the court has no right to hear the case. Ouyang went on to state that from Chinas point of view, the Philippines has been "illegally occupying" Chinese islands from the 1960s.

Bonnie Glaser, senior adviser for Asia at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, said she expects China to reject the ruling.

It is also stepping up efforts to prepare the public by justifying China's position. At the same time, the Chinese foreign ministry is lobbying countries to support its position and seeking to expand the numbers that are on its side, she said.

China, which has emerged as one of the worlds biggest investors, is offering a combination of incentives and threats to enlist the support of different countries, analysts said. Beijing wants to avoid a loss of face because the U.N. tribunal is expected to support Manila's claims on the disputed islands. It is also concerned that other claimants may follow in the Philippines footsteps.

But analysts are divided over whether China, with its massive economic clout, would be able to force at least some western countries to change their stance and back it in opposing the Philippines case.

US backs Philippines



The U.S., which has criticized Chinese construction and creation of artificial islands in the South China Sea, is perceived to be backing Manila.



"I think the U.K., Australia, and other Western countries are willing to stand firm on their principles on this matter. I am doubtful they will back China or even remain silent," Glaser said, adding that "China needs the U.K., Australia and other nations just as much as they need China."

And while China has hoped that the Philippines would drop the case, it is unlikely that the situation there will change much as well. The Philippines holds presidential elections on Monday and most of the candidates in the polls have taken a staunch view against China.

"This means, the Sino-Philippine relations won't see quick and substantive changes even after the new president is sworn in, whoever he or she is, said Ju Hailong, a research fellow at the Collaborative Innovation Center for South China Sea Studies.
With war still raging in Afghanistan, the country also faces the problem of child labor as families put their school-age children to work to help make ends meet.

VOA encountered two families whose children toiled away at a brick-making factory. One family had been working to pay off a loan of some $1,500 it borrowed from the brick-factory owner 10 years ago  so far without success.

Both families' children spent their days making bricks from mud clay.

"By God, I am frustrated with my life, said Razi Khan, whose children were laborers. I cannot get loans [for food or other basics] from shopkeepers, nor can I get money from the owner of the factory."

The children had no choice but to accept their fate.

"My father works here by himself as we don't have any brothers, said Sabila, who makes bricks. If we had brothers, we would have gone to school to study."

WATCH: Donations Rescue Afghan Family from Forced Labor

Factory officials seemed unconcerned, though indentured servitude is officially illegal.

"It is not that they are confined here, said Samiullah, a secretary at factory,  but they have to pay back the money they owe."

The governor of Nangarhar province, Salim Khan Kunduzi, apparently was unaware of the situation.

"I will get more [and] accurate information, he said. My job is to listen to people's problems and then find solutions to them."

But after the story aired on VOA's TV Asha and appeared on its social media platforms, people worldwide donated thousands of dollars to help. Reporter Zabihullah Ghazi, along with other journalists and activists, returned to the factory to deliver the money to the two working families.

The heads of the families promised to that their children would now attend school.

"I was trying to pay back the loan but now, as I will not owe any money, the older children will work with me and the younger ones will go to school," said Burhanuddin, the head of the second family.

And little Marwa could not control her tears of joy.

"I am very happy. I will go to school," she said.
Incorrectly depicting India's borders on a map could land violators in jail for 7 years and cost them fines of up to $15 million, if a proposed bill becomes law.

Citizens and stakeholders will have 30 days to comment on the proposed bill, released to the public Wednesday.

"No person shall depict, disseminate, publish or distribute any wrong or false topographic information of India including international boundaries through internet platforms or online services or in any electronic or physical form," the draft Geospatial Information Regulation Bill 2016 stated. "Whoever acquired any geospatial information of India in contravention of the law shall be punished with a fine ranging from Rs 1 crore ($150,000) to Rs 100 crore ($15 million) and or imprisonment for a period up to seven years."

The ruling BJP in India has been critical of Western depictions of the country, which often show parts of neighboring Jammu, Kashmir, and Arunachal Pradesh as parts of Pakistan and China.

In April of 2015, all Al Jazeera programming was taken off Indian airwaves for five days after the network showed parts of Kashmir in Pakistan. New Delhi insisted that the entire territory be depicted as part of India.

Social media sites and Wikipedia have also been condemned by New Delhi as incorrectly portraying their borders.

The draft bill additionally states that acquiring geospatial (or spatial) information (imagery or data) through space or aerial platforms would require approval from the Indian government, potentially making it mandatory for online platforms such as Google maps and Google earth to acquire a license before operating in India.

The state of Jammu and Kashmir has been claimed by both India and Pakistan since the two countries' partition in 1947. An eastern region of the state that borders Tibet has been controlled by China since 1962.
A U.S. federal security officer suspected of killing three people has been arrested.

Police in the eastern U.S. state of Maryland said Eulalio Tordil, 62, was taken into custody without incident Friday.

Tordil is an employee of the Federal Protective Service, a government agency that provides security at federal properties.

Investigators believe Tordils spree began Thursday when he shot to death his estranged wife, Gladys Tordil, outside their children's school in Beltsville, Maryland. He also allegedly shot and wounded a man who tried to intervene.

A day later, one person was initially shot and two others may have been shot coming to that person's aid at a shopping mall in Bethesda, less than 20 kilometers from the center of the U.S. capital. Police said one man died and another is in critical condition. A woman has injuries that are not life-threatening.



About a half hour later, police were called to a food store near the shopping mall where another shooting left one woman fatally wounded.

No information was immediately available about whether the shooting victims, apart from Tordil's wife, knew the alleged gunman.

Tordil had been placed on administrative duty in March, the FPS said, after superiors learned that his estranged wife had obtained a court order requiring him to stay away from her.
The deputy president of Gambia's main opposition United Democratic Party (UDP) is appealing to the international community for help in seeking the release of party leader Ousaniou Darboe.

Darboe and 38 other opposition members were arrested last month and charged with conspiracy to commit a felony. They had previously been charged with unlawful assembly, rioting and incitement to violence after they held a protest rally demanding political reforms and demonstrated against the death of UDP official Solo Sandeng, who died while in custody.

A judge on Thursday denied bail for Darboe and the others.

"I would like for the international community to assist us as soon as possible because there is no justice in this country," said Mariam Secka, UDP deputy secretary general.

Secka said her party has no confidence in the Gambian legal system because it answers mostly to President Yahya Jammeh.

Gambia will hold national elections in December this year, and Secka said the party is concerned Darboe's arrest will have a political impact.

"My party is worried because they can keep Mr. Darboe and some members of his team until the election is over, and that wouldn't be to our advantage," she said.

Denied bail

During Thursday's court appearance, Darboe was denied bail, which Secka said is unusual because defendants are entitled to bail in Gambian courts.

Gambia Information Minister Sheriff Bojang told VOA that Darboe and the others violated Gambia's Public Order Act, which forbids acts such as street protests and meetings without first receiving permission from the police.

But Secka said Darboe, a seasoned lawyer, did not break any law: "Mr. Darboe is a legal man, he knows what is right and he knows the constitution."

An Amnesty International official told VOA this month that Darboe and the other jailed opposition members are prisoners of conscience and should be released because they were simply expressing their political opinion as guaranteed under the Gambian constitution.

Darboe and the other opposition members are scheduled to appear in court again Monday.
Workers in Greece walked off their jobs Friday in protest of new tax and pension reforms being considered by the government that workers say will cut deeply into their incomes. The government's austerity measures are part of a multi-billion-dollar international bailout agreement.

The 48-hour protest came at the behest of the countrys largest public and private sector labor unions, and has shut down various services, including ferries to the island nation, garbage collection and government offices.

Greeces parliament is set to vote on a bill to overhaul the countrys pension system Sunday night, and the protest was timed to coincide with the vote.

If the law is passed, Greece will raise its social security contribution requirements, increase the income tax on high-wage earners and set up a new national pension.

The new austerity measures are aimed at persuading international creditors to release additional bailout money.

Greece is still waiting to cash in on more than $4 billion of sorely-needed bailout cash that is being held back by creditors after the pace of the countrys reforms led to a breakdown of talks.

The protest will culminate with a demonstration in central Athens Sunday.
A human rights group said Japan has failed to protect its lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) students.

Human Rights Watch said in a report -- titled "The Nail That Sticks Out Gets Hammered Down: LGBT Bullying and Exclusion in Japanese Schools" -- that bullying in Japanese schools is "widespread and brutal."

The report released Thursday said LGBT students are among the most vulnerable to bullying, but "the government policies addressing bullying do not specifically address the issues of LGBT students."

Japan has a national bullying prevention policy, which is up for review this year.

The 84-page HRW report is based on dozens of interviews with LGBT students and young adults across Japan.

Endured beatings

One lesbian junior high school girl, accused by her classmates of not being "girly enough," said she endured repeated beatings from her fellow students that her teachers witnessed.

"It was common knowledge that I was being bullied," the girl said. "It was also common knowledge that my teachers would never help me."

LGBT students said their teachers often told them that by being openly gay or transgender, they were being selfish and should expect not to succeed in school.

HRW said it found a wide range of teachers' responses to student bullying. The rights group said a teacher's response depended on the individual teacher's opinions of the LGBT community.

Kannae Doi, HRW's Japan director, said, "No child's safety or healthy development should depend on a chance encounter with a compassionate adult. ... The government has a responsibility to train teachers to react to cases of bullying on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity, and to protect LGBT students from harassment and discrimination."
Imelda Marcos expressed elation over her son strong pre-election ratings in the Philippine vice presidential race, saying "at last, truth and justice will come.''

The widow of dictator Ferdinand Marcos helped campaign for her son Thursday night in a rally in suburban Mandaluyong city where she handed out fans to close friends with his picture and political motto: "Unity and progress.''



In the latest pre-election survey by independent pollster Pulse Asia and commissioned by ABS-CBN TV network, administration-endorsed candidate Rep. Leni Robredo led with 30 percent while Marcos Jr. trailed closely with 28 percent of the 4,000 respondents. Marcos has led in previous surveys. The April 26-29 survey has a margin of error of 1.5 percent.



When sought for comment on how her son, Ferdinand Marcos Jr., has come close to the seat of power her husband occupied for years, she told The Associated Press in an interview that her son grew up as a child in the presidential palace.



"We were there for more than 20 years. Well, it will look familiar,'' she said.

President Benigno Aquino III and human rights victims during the Marcos dictatorship have campaigned against Marcos Jr., citing his refusal to categorically apologize for rights abuses and economic plunder blamed on the late leader.



Aquino's father, a former senator who opposed the dictatorship, was assassinated at the Manila airport in 1983 while returning from U.S. exile, sparking protests that spread and culminated in the 1986 "people power'' revolt that ousted the strongman.



The dictator lived in exile with his wife and children in Hawaii, where he died in 1989. His remains were later returned to his northern Philippine hometown of Batac, where his glass coffin has become a tourist attraction.



Asked if Mrs. Marcos felt vindicated with her son's strong poll ratings ahead of Monday's elections despite the many allegations against the Marcoses, she did not answer categorically but thanked God and the Filipino people.



"At last truth and justice will come,'' she said. "Sometimes the truth and justice grinds exceedingly slow but it grinds exceedingly well.''



Marcos is running for re-election for a seat in the House of Representatives representing her husband's northern provincial bailiwick of Ilocos Norte. A daughter is also seeking re-election as Ilocos governor. Both are running unopposed.



Mrs. Marcos was seen in a wheelchair in a church in February and reportedly had been feeling sick around that time. She looked upbeat, however, as close family friends greeted and took selfies with her at her son's campaign rally late Thursday.



"I just came from Ilocos and I'm going back again in a few hours,'' she said, suggesting she was strong enough to travel back and forth from Manila to the far northern province.



Mrs. Marcos said she still felt strong ``because I'm only 86,'' letting out a hearty laugh.
Japan, a longtime supporter of economic development in Southeast Asia, is stepping up its engagement in the region as China has raised its profile in the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

Tokyo is also enhancing its role in Southeast Asia's security debates, especially the South China Sea, where it said the disputes need to be settled by the rule of law and without the use of force.

Earlier this week, Japan announced a three-year, $6.8 billion program to boost regional infrastructure across the Greater Mekong Subregion, which includes parts of Vietnam, Laos and Thailand.

Speaking at a university in Bangkok, Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida said the Japan-Mekong Connectivity Initiative aims to "create a framework" that supports efforts to improve infrastructure such as bridges and rail networks, human resource development and support for the Mekong River region.

Efforts in region

Japan's latest program for the Mekong River region comes after a 2013 package that provided 2 trillion yen in Official Development Assistance (ODA) to ASEAN countries over five years. Japan also backs ASEAN regional integration with a $100 million fund.

Thai political scientist Thitinan Pongsudhirak said Japan's long-standing programs of development assistance and diplomatic support is under increasing pressure by China's growing regional influence.

"Foreign Minister Kishida's visit is designed to emphasize and regain lost ground to say that Japan is still here  it wants to come back here  it's not going to forfeit its long-term investment on the various projects in the past years in mainland Southeast Asia," Thitinan said.

In March, China hosted the Lancang-Mekong cooperation summit in Hainan province, seen by analysts as the latest effort by Beijing to increase ties with countries in the Greater Mekong Subregion  notably Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam -- through infrastructure spending.

Infrastructure assistance

The Asian Development Bank (ADB), with long-standing support from Japan, has played a key role in providing development assistance funds for infrastructure in the region.

Japan, as well as United States and Canada, did not join the China-backed Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB).

China is keen to highlight its role in regional development through the Lancang-Mekong Cooperation program, political scientist Thitinan said.

"[China] is going to be the only game in town now for mainland Southeast Asia  apart from the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS)  irrespective of the [intergovernmental] Mekong River Commission. So China will not play by the rules unless it is set up on its own. So these rules have to be China's rules and the LMC [Lancang-Mekong Cooperation] is going to be that vehicle; that platform," he said.

"Japan is reassessing its role. It has the financial muscle now with some new development finance package and these countries in mainland Southeast Asia are very important to Japan," Thitinan added.

He said for regional countries, Japan's higher-profile role offers a counterbalance to avoid being "beholden to and subject to China's whims and budget interest."

Regional issues

In his speech earlier this week, Foreign Minister Kishida was also looking to wider regional security issues, especially over the increasingly disputed waters of the South China Sea.

In his address at a Bangkok university, Kishida said "peace and stability" were a prerequisite for economic prosperity, including the underlying principle of the "rule of law," highlighted by "maritime security."

Kishida called for the establishment of a code of conduct, with its aim of settling disputes over the South China Sea.

Japan has increased maritime support for both Vietnam and the Philippines in steps seen as Japan's "maritime pivot" to Southeast Asia.

Vietnam and the Philippines, along with Malaysia and Indonesia, have conflicting maritime claims in the South China Sea with Beijing, which claims almost all of the area as its sovereign territory.

But Carl Thayer, a defense analyst at Australia's University of New South Wales, said China tries to exclude outsiders from negotiations to manage the security of the region.

Japan has to act to avoid being isolated, Thayer said.

"China is feeling some pushback, particularly led by Japan that's trying to stiffen regional countries. But without decisive American action, Japan is just not strong enough to continue to do it," he said. "Bottom line is that time seems to be on China's side."
Chinese capacity cuts 'will help' global steel industry Updated: 2016-05-06 07:10 By Zhong Nan(China Daily)

A worker at a steel depot in Qingdao Port, Shandong province. [Photo provided to China Daily]

Chinese steelmakers' efforts to cut capacity will help the global steel industry out of the woods despite a surge in prices in the past two months, the Ministry of Commerce said on Thursday.

Shen Danyang, the ministry's spokesman, attributed the surge to a rise in the prices of iron ore in global markets. He said increased activity in the infrastructure sector is also boosting both domestic and global demands for steel products.

His comments came after the international media reported that global steel price on average had risen from $305 per metric ton earlier this year to $365 in April because China had cut between 150 million tons and 200 million tons of steel and iron production capacity to tackle the issue of overcapacity.

Since March, China has adopted a series of measures including a plan to gradually cut steel production by 100 million tons by the end of this year and 200 million tons by 2020 to tackle the problem.

"It is a global issue for all countries to cope with the overcapacity of steel and iron products," said Shen.

"If other countries could take similar moves to reduce capacity as China has done, it is possible for the global steel sector to cast off from this cumbersome situation."

Sun Jin, director of communications at Wuhan Iron and Steel (Group) Co, one of the country's biggest iron producers by capacity, said the company's trains are no longer busy carrying piles of steel. Many production lines have closed.

"Even though the company announced two months ago that it would cut up to 50,000 jobs, there have been no layoffs or pay cuts yet. The company just wants to optimize labor resources, reduce human resource costs and enhance labor productivity. We still give workers a basic salary and social security. They just work somewhere else," he said.

Eager to restore its earning ability, the Wuhan-based steelmaker's non-steel businesses including new materials, energy resources, engineering and information technologies, logistics and modern services sectors have become its main breadwinners.

The government said 500,000 workers in the steel sector are expected to lose their jobs as part of the efforts to cut the overcapacity. It will provide 100 billion yuan ($15.37 billion) for retraining and helping them find new jobs.

"China is a large exporter of steel and a big importer for special steel used in shipbuilding, weapons, auto and machinery manufacturing. However, the import prices of steel are three times as much as export prices on average," said Zhao Ying, a researcher at the Institute of Industrial Economics of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing.

"The country needs to improve the quality of its steel products and move up the value chain to high-end steel products," said Zhao.

Zhang Yu in Shijiazhuang contributed to this story.
Battles between al-Qaida-linked fighters and Syrian government forces left 73 people dead in a village near Aleppo, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported Friday.

The jihadists were able to recapture early Friday the village of Khan Touman, and others surrounding it, after nearly a day of fighting with government forces.

The village is located about 15 kilometers southwest of Aleppo. It is of strategic importance to the rebels because of its proximity to Damascus-Aleppo highway, which connects the capital, Damascus with several other major cities along Syrias western border.

The attack was carried out by a group of Islamist insurgents known as Jaish al-Fatah, which has refused recent efforts by the U.S. and Russia to de-escalate the fighting in Aleppo.

Earlier this week, the two countries brokered a cease-fire deal within the city of Aleppo where about 300 people have been killed in the past two weeks due to fighting between government forces and rebels.

Of those killed Friday, 43 were rebels, while another 30 were government forces, the human rights group said.
An Afghan media watchdog estimates that 300 journalists have fled Afghanistan for Europe in the past year because of growing security concerns.

The journalists include employees of major TV networks such as 1TV and Tolo, the countrys leading commercial broadcaster, according to Sidiqullah Tawhidi of Nai-Supporting Open Media in Afghanistan, a local media advocacy organization.

Some of the journalists fled in groups of 15 to 20 while others left the country with their families, Tawhidi said in a phone interview with VOAs Afghanistan service.

"Theyve tried to reach Europe via Turkey and Greece," Tawhidi said. "Some of them have arrived in Europe. Others are either in Turkey or Greece."

His group surveyed media outlets around Afghanistan to estimate the number of journalists that have fled the country, Tawhidi said, adding that 40 to 50 women were among them.

Taliban suicide attack

A January 20 Taliban suicide attack on a bus carrying employees of Moby Group, the countrys largest media company, raised fears about the safety of Afghan journalists and prompted many to leave the country. The bombing, which killed seven Moby employees and left at least 27 others wounded, was the deadliest attack on journalists in Afghanistan in the past 15 years, according to Nai. It occurred near the Russian embassy in Kabul.

A female journalist for a major TV network  who recently fled Afghanistan for Turkey and is trying to reach Europe  said that after the suicide attack her family told her not to work anymore. In an interview with VOA, she said she had no choice but to quit her job and leave the country.

According to the United Nations, about 200,000 Afghans fled to Europe last year. Insecurity and unemployment are cited as the two leading causes of migration.

UNESCO, the U.N.s cultural organization, marked World Press Freedom Day on Tuesday. Director-general Irina Bokova noted the importance of free and independent journalism "as a cornerstone of democracy."

Danish Karokhil, director of the Pajhwok News Agency, told VOA that several of his employees left Afghanistan in the past year and are now in Turkey, Germany, and other European countries. He said some journalists have fled to Europe to seek a better life.

Joining migrant flow

Journalists leaving Afghanistan are economic migrants, Afghan Minister for Information and Culture Abdul Bari Jahani said. He added that those leaving Afghanistan are not only journalists but Afghans from all walks of life.

Jahani pointed out the need for all Afghan government agencies to join in creating a secure environment for journalists to continue their work and to get rid of incentives for leaving.

Asked about the mass exodus of Afghan journalists, the Committee for Protection of Journalists (CPJ) said in an email that it does "not track numbers, but it said it has received an increasing number of requests for assistance from Afghan journalists.

It said: "We don't want to see the country drained of its most valuable people. But I think as the country continues to founder and the level of violence increases, we can expect to see more people try to leave  and some of those people will be journalists.
Nigeria's President Muhammadu Buhari on Thursday urged other countries and the United Nations to speed up the process of repatriating stolen money held abroad, which he said was becoming "tedious."

Since taking office last May, after winning an election largely on his vow to crack down on corruption, Buhari has sought help from several nations including the United States and Switzerland to recover money he said was stolen by public officials.

Despite the oil wealth of Africa's top crude exporter, which has the continent's biggest economy, 70 percent of Nigerians live on $1 a day or less while endemic corruption over decades has enriched a small elite.

"We are looking for more cooperation from the EU, United States, other countries and international institutions to recover the nation's stolen assets, particularly proceeds from the stolen crude oil," Buhari said.

"It is taking very long and Nigerians are becoming impatient," the president said.

Buhari made the comments to the executive secretary of the United Nations Office for Drugs and Crime (UNODC), who was visiting the president. He also urged UNODC to help speed up the recovery of stolen money.

Nigeria is going through its worst economic crisis in decades and Buhari's critics have said the focus on corruption has distracted his administration from dealing with the impact of low oil prices, which have cut much-needed revenues from crude sales.

Last week, Buhari urged the World Bank to assist in the repatriation of $320 million stolen by former military leader Sani Abacha, which is being held by authorities in Switzerland.

The 73-year-old former military ruler has said his government will recover "mind-boggling" sums of money stolen from the oil sector and that public coffers were "virtually empty" when he took over from his predecessor, Goodluck Jonathan.

The opposition People's Democratic Party (PDP), which was in power for 16 years prior to Buhari taking office, has accused Buhari of mounting a witch-hunt against its members.
While many Americans celebrate May 5 as Cinco de Mayo, the anniversary of a Mexican military victory, science nerds recognize the date as a technological milestone: the day the United States first put a man into space.

In 1961, the year astronaut Alan Shepard Jr. made his milestone 15-minute flight, hysteria about the U.S.- Soviet Union space race was in full swing. Russia had already put a man in orbit and had launched the world's first artificial satellite, the Sputnik 1, in 1957, igniting fears that the United States was losing its status as the dominant world power.

The United States quickly assembled scientific teams that had been working on space travel; the race to achieve the first manned spaceflight was on. The new U.S. space agency was named the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, or NASA, and the manned spaceflight program was named the Mercury Project, after the Roman god of swift travel and transit between worlds.

First forays into space

Shepard, a U.S. Navy commander who had experience with aircraft test flights, was selected to pilot the first manned Mercury spacecraft. He wrote later that when he informed his wife he had been selected to become the first American to travel to space, she quipped: "Who let a Russian in here?"

But her presumption was right. Soviet Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin beat Shepard into space by one month, manning the Vostok 1 as it made one orbit around the earth April 12, 1961.

Shepard made his own historic journey three weeks later, in a less spectacular journey that went only 187 kilometers above the Earth and lasted only 15 minutes. But it was seen as an important milestone as the United States strove to catch up to its Cold War rival in technological innovation.

The competition continued throughout the 1960s, finally culminating with the U.S. moon landing on July 20, 1969. Shepard made his own journey to the moon on the third Apollo mission in 1971. Despite being one of the best known names in U.S. space travel, Shepard flew only two missions.

Cooperation on the new frontier

In the four decades between Shepard's last spaceflight, much has changed between the United States and its onetime rival in space.

With the 1998 launch of the International Space Station, pushing further into space has become a collaborative effort, including not just the United States and Russia, but also the European Union, China, and Japan. Over the years, at least 222 spaceflight technicians from 18 countries have worked together on long-term projects as they orbit the Earth every 90 minutes.

In March of this year, U.S. Astronaut Scott Kelly returned from a one-year assignment in orbit on the space station as NASA scientists monitored the effects of long-term space travel on the human body. During that time his identical twin, former Astronaut Mark Kelly, acted as a control subject on Earth. NASA plans to monitor both men for the next year as it prepares for a new era of space exploration -- one in which private industry plays a role.

Since the U.S. space shuttle program ended in 2011, the United States has depended on Russia for transportation to and from the space station on the Soyuz spacecraft  a mind-boggling reversal from the early, competitive days of space travel. But NASA has said it hopes to transfer that role to private U.S. companies as they develop suitable spacecraft.

Several U.S. companies are working on just that. Today, the private firm SpaceX landed a rocket on an ocean platform for the second time, a signal that private industry is drawing nearer to becoming a major player in what has become a global space industry. Its goal is to develop rockets that can be used for multiple launches rather than discarded after one use, as has been the standard in the past. SpaceX cofounder Elon Musk has said reusable rockets could greatly reduce the cost of space travel.

Musk swiftly shared his elation over the successful launch and recovery Friday with a tweet on social media, saying only "Woo-hoo!" He soon followed that message with one saying "May need to increase size of rocket storage hangar," meaning SpaceX would soon be storing its rockets rather than disposing of them.

Next Stop: Mars

Now, with the success of the space station, international collaboration is expected to continue as scientists pursue their next goal: the planet Mars.

In March, the Russian space agency, Roscosmos, and the European Space Agency launched a robotic exploratory mission meant to land on Mars in October. Private industry is not far behind: SpaceX has also declared its intention to send a craft to the red planet as soon as 2018. And U.S. President Barack Obama announced in 2010 that the U.S. hopes to send manned missions to Mars by the 2030s.

Over a half-century, what began as a struggle for dominance between two world powers has changed entirely. Limited space and resources may continue to cause tensions here on Earth, but the search for something beyond our planet is one common goal that helps preserve peace.
President Barack Obama Thursday commuted the sentences of 58 federal inmates given long prison terms for non-violent drug-related crimes.

Eighteen had been given life sentences which the law required, even when some judges believed that the punishment was too severe.

Obama said Thursday that many non-violent offenders are forced to pay for their mistakes with penalties that are "unduly harsh."

"It just doesn't make sense to require a non-violent drug offender to serve 20 years, or in some cases, life, in prison. An excessive punishment like that doesn't fit the crime. It's not serving taxpayers and it's not making us safer," the president said.

That likely means there will be more non-violent federal inmates who are released or have their sentences reduced between now and the end of the Obama presidency in January.

All 58 prisoners whose sentences were commuted Thursday were jailed for drug trafficking or drug-related money laundering.

"As a country, we have to make sure that those who take responsibility for their mistakes are able to transition back to their communities," he said. "It's the right thing to do. It's the smart thing to do. And it's something I will keep working to do as long as I hold this office."

Only Congress can reform mandatory federal sentencing laws and Obama said he is encouraged by efforts by Republicans and Democrats to take up the matter.

Since becoming president in 2009, Obama has commuted the sentences of 308 federal inmates  the most of any president since Franklin Roosevelt in the 1930s and 40s.
Nigeria's navy said Thursday that militants attacked an offshore facility belonging to multinational petroleum company Chevron, the latest in a spate of attacks in the petroleum-rich Niger Delta region.

The attack raises fears of a renewed militancy in the delta, which was the site of an insurgency by communities demanding a greater share of oil wealth that was quelled only when the government started paying off militants in 2009.

Nigeria navy spokesman Chris Ezekobe told VOA the attackers dynamited a facility that collected oil and gas near the major Escravos export terminal in Delta State Wednesday evening.

There were no casualties, Ezekobe said. He didn't know if any oil had spilled.

"It's not completely shut down, but its ability to pump crude and gas has been highly degraded and that also has affected the production of Escravos itself," Ezekobe said.

On its website, a group calling itself the Niger Delta Avengers took responsibility for the attack. The group has previously taken credit sabotaging a handful of oil pipelines and facilities in the Niger Delta.

Despite being home to most of Nigeria's oil wealth, the Niger Delta remains poor and underdeveloped. That has fueled high levels of crime and kidnapping along with a spate of thefts and sabotage targeted at oil facilities.

President Muhammadu Buhari said last month that his administration would deal with oil saboteurs the same way they deal with the Islamist extremist group Boko Haram, which has spent years fighting the military and terrorizing Nigeria's northeast.
Afghan army commandos, with the support of the international military coalition, conducted an overnight raid and freed more than 60 prisoners from a Taliban-run detention center in southern Afghanistan, officials said Friday.

A statement from NATO's Resolute Support mission in Kabul said the illegal prison was located in the district of Now Zad in Helmand province. It said the Ktah Khas  Afghanistans national counterterrorism unit  and an Afghan army commando unit "jointly conducted this successful mission. Coalition forces supported their Afghan partners in a train, advise and assist role."

The helicopter assault was staged "during the cover of darkness" in an effort to disrupt Taliban activities, according to the statement.

It added that Afghan forces did not sustain any casualties during the operation. Two insurgents were killed while "numerous were wounded and detained."

The freed prisoners were safely transported to neighboring Kandahar province before they were turned over to Afghan authorities.

The insurgent group has not yet commented on the prison assault.

The Taliban controls several districts in Helmand, including Now Zad. The province, the country's largest in terms of territory and poppy cultivation, borders Pakistan and has been the scene of recent intense fighting.

This was the fourth raid Afghan forces have conducted against Taliban-run prisons in Helmand in recent months with the support of NATO that freed scores of prisoners, including Afghan security personnel.

Regional army commander General Dawoodshah Wafadar told VOA that a Taliban commander supervising the prison was among those killed in the operation. He said almost all the hostages were civilians.
The two brothers have come to be known as the "solar kids" and their case has completely mystified Pakistani doctors.

Aged nine and 13, the boys are normal active children during the day. But once the sun goes down, they both lapse into a vegetative state  unable to move or talk. Javed Akram, a professor of medicine at the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences, told The Associated Press on Thursday that he had no idea what was causing the symptoms.

"We took this case as a challenge. Our doctors are doing medical tests to determine why these kids remain active in the day but cannot open their eyes, why they cannot talk or eat when sun goes down," he said, as he visited the pair at his hospital.

Akram said the government was providing free medical care to the siblings, who come from an impoverished family.

The brothers are undergoing extensive medical testing in the capital, Islamabad, and samples of their blood have been sent to overseas specialists for further examination, he said. Researchers are also collecting soil and air samples from the family's home village.

Mohammad Hashim, the father of the two brothers, comes from a village near Quetta, the capital of southwestern Baluchistan province. He and his wife are first cousins and two of their six children died at an early age. Their other two children have not displayed any unusual symptoms.

His simple theory: "I think my sons get energy from sun."

But doctors have already dismissed the idea that sunlight plays a role, noting that the boys can move during the day even when kept in a dark room or during a rainstorm.

During the day, 13-year old Shoaib Ahmed and his brother Abdul Rasheed did indeed seem normally active, energetic and cheerful as they emerged from their hospital room on Friday and walked to a nearby canteen to have tea.

"I will become a teacher," Shoaib Ahmed told the AP, while his younger brother said he wants to be an Islamic scholar.
Pentagon officials said this week they don't have enough information to determine the extent of retaliation experienced by sex assault victims after reporting their cases to superiors.

Major General Camille Nichols, Director of the Pentagon's Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office, said officials do not know how much recent retaliation there is. But she said they do know, from surveys taken last year, that service members are sensing a backlash happening to them.

So we know that people are experiencing things. Its human nature to feel differently about yourself and also to be seen differently by others, Nichols said. "So we dont have the best approach to categorize the issue. We want to see it. We want to understand it."

A retired Air Force master sergeant told CNN that, after reporting his abuse, the retaliation was devastating.

Thomas Shockley told the news channel he was sexually assaulted at the U.S. Air Force Base in Ramstein, Germany, in 2010.

"I was removed from my unit and the sergeant who was there to keep an eye on me would constantly mock me," he told CNN. "... My attacker was able to peer at me in the office where I sat."

Felt abandoned



Shockley said he felt abandoned and was asked to do demeaning tasks such as pick up trash and cigarette butts from the air base parking lot.

"The mind set is still that if you report, you will be shunned, pushed aside and no longer part of your unit," he told CNN.

In an annual report on sexual assault among active service members released Thursday, officials said they recognized there is a problem and have developed ways to address retaliation against victims.

Despite the substantial increase in reporting over the past 10 years, the report estimated a significant number of sexual assaults go unreported.

Backlash



Dr. Elizabeth Van Winkle, principal investigator for the research efforts, told VOA that from available data, military officials estimate about two thirds of service members who reported their sexual assault had negative experiences.

This is critical to ensure we provide supportive services to victims throughout the process and educate the force on how to respond appropriately to members who report an assault," Van Winkle said.

The Pentagon is intensifying efforts that directly address retaliation. Nichols said officials want to provide tools for those who would step forward to say something is wrong and eventually reduce their concerns about retaliation. They want to get people empowered to come forward and report sexual assault.

40 / 20



Military officials said about 40 percent of female victims report a crime against them and nearly 20 percent of the reports were from military men. They said reporting the crime is essential to the ability of the military branches to provide services for victims and hold offenders accountable.

Allegations of inappropriate behavior must be treated with the utmost seriousness, Nichols said.

The report called for creation of a sexual assault prevention plan of action, the increase of reporting through leadership engagement, and creation of a plan to address male victimization.

We stay committed to eliminate these crimes from our ranks, Nichols said.
PwC: Hospitals are becoming new focus of M&As Updated: 2016-05-06 07:12 By Cai Xiao(China Daily)

Mergers and acquisitions in China's hospital sector became a new focus in 2015, and large-scale deals and more cross-border transactions will likely be made in the near future, said a report by global auditing firm PricewaterhouseCoopers on Thursday.

There were 48 mergers and acquisitions of Chinese hospitals last year, of which 27 were general hospitals and their disclosed investment amount totaled 3.98 billion yuan ($612.1 million). In contrast, the disclosed value for specialized hospitals fell sharply in 2015 compared to 2014.

Leon Qian, PwC northern China transaction services & healthcare industry leader, said investors were previously attracted to specialized hospitals, especially dental, obstetric and paediatric hospitals, as they had low risk and could be easily replicated and enlarged to generate profits.

"However, with more capital flowing in, such targets (specialized hospitals) had become scarce, which led to a dramatic drop in investment in 2015. Also in 2015, general hospitals became the main focus of investment as they yielded stable cash flows and tended to offer the most benefit for new funding," said Qian.

The report also showed that there has been a rise in investment activity in public hospitals, with their total disclosed deal value reaching 844 million yuan in 2015.

Investment in private hospitals reached a record high in 2014 in both the volume and value. However, in 2015, the deal value plunged to 3.94 billion yuan, largely because of fewer deals associated with specialized hospitals.

Notably, the rising role of strategic investors, in particular A-share listed companies, in hospitals has elicited exponential growth in deal value since 2014. The disclosed investment amount totaled 3.8 billion yuan in 2015.

"Strategic investors are looking to explore horizontal integration with A-share listed healthcare companies, including pharmaceutical, medical equipment and healthcare management enterprises," said Jin Jun, PwC China strategy consulting partner.

Despite the strong interest of financial investors such as private equity funds in healthcare, the disclosed deal value dropped to 985 million yuan in 2015, decreasing by approximately 65 percent compared with 2014.

"With strategic investors continuing to have a strong interest in the healthcare market and financial investors willing to pour more money into the industry, large-scale deals will likely be made in the near future, including hospital group or standalone hospital acquisitions," said Jin.

Jin added that more cross-border transactions are expected to be conducted in various ways, such as consolidation and joint ventures, and healthcare company IPOs will be more popular in capital market.

The report also said China's investment trends in healthcare saw a shift from traditional targets, such as medical examination centers and dental clinics, to core business areas including hospitals, rehabilitation centers and clinics in the past four years.
With the race for Philippine president shaping up to be one big popularity contest between the four main contenders, the economic gains, security alliances and foreign policy of the current administration hang in the balance.

In national surveys of the past two weeks, controversial Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte has pulled into a double-digit lead over his rivals who had all been one to five percentage points apart throughout the three-month campaign period leading up to the May 9 elections.

On a recent Tuesday night inside an airless, packed Manila-area school gym, Duterte, the foul-mouthed 71 year old, took the stage and launched into a rambling speech. He railed against corruption and elicited wild applause whenever he swore.

Duterte, a self-professed killer of criminals, has run on the promise of getting rid of criminals within his first six months in office. And he has garnered much of his support from voters who want to see the return of the death penalty.

His popularity did not wane after he called the pope a "son of a bitch," nor after his remarks about wishing he had been first in line in the gang rape of an Australian missionary killed during a Davao City jail riot in 1989.

The remarks drew criticism from both the Australian and U.S. ambassadors to the Philippines.

On the campaign trail, Duterte fired back that both diplomats should "shut up" and keep out of Philippine elections, lest they show bias.

US relations

A week before the controversy, reporters asked how he saw relations with the U.S.

"We are allied with the West, see? So we allowed the military forces of the U.S. here in this country. So it would give you an idea, where we go, down the road," he said.

The two countries have started to implement an agreement that would see more U.S. troop visits and their use of local bases as staging points.

Leftist groups have said this signaled the return of U.S. bases in the country after a groundswell of nationalistic fervor forced their closure in 1991. The agreement does not include permanent U.S. bases.

This time around, the public has expressed a stronger preference to have the Americans around, especially in the face of an ever more assertive China, which claims practically the entire South China Sea.

South China Sea claims

Earlier in the campaign, Duterte said he would seek U.S. help in dealing with China over Philippine claims in the disputed sea, locally called the West Philippine Sea.

But more recently he vowed to ride a jet ski to one of the contested outcroppings, Scarborough Shoal, plant a Philippine flag there and expect to die a hero at the hands of the Chinese.

His closest rival, Senator Grace Poe, who has traded the number one and two spots with him throughout the campaign period, takes a more pragmatic approach to the sovereignty dispute with China.

"It's true, we have a fight in the West Philippine Sea," said Poe in a Manila-area speech. "True, we've got problems with crime and drugs. So what would I do as president? I'll be honest, I'm not going to shoot the gun myself. But I will make sure that the police who go to all these places will be sensible."

Poe, a U.S.-educated junior senator, wants more support for the Philippine Coast Guard to better patrol the country's territorial waters and help safeguard Philippine fishermen who have been all but kept out of Scarborough by the Chinese.

Furthermore, Poe's foreign policy advisor, Tony LaVina, said the senator, whose movie star father ran for president in 2004 but lost by a close margin, sees a need to have the U.S. around as a deterrent to China.

"Keep that close relationship, but at the same time be able to keep our options open with respect to the country itself. Being able to engage with China, with our neighbors on a strategy that's based really on our national interest, not the interests of the U.S. or any other country."

Candidates court lower class voters

Poe has amassed solid support among the lower classes who admired her father, the late action-star Fernando Poe Jr. Some told VOA that she showed the same concern for them that he had during his run for president.

Alfonzo Artates, Jr., an out of work janitor was at a Labor Day rally to which Poe was invited. He said he likes the 47 year old.

"The way we see it, she is a great supporter of the poor. She supports all the needs of the poor. She loves them and has claimed them. So if she becomes president, perhaps there will be fewer poor people and there won't be any thieves in society."

Under the current administration of President Benigno Aquino, the economy has posted steady growth above six percent over the past six years, earning the country investment grade status for the first time. But some of the candidates have argued the poor have not felt the benefits.

Seventy-three-year-old Vice President Jejomar Binay, who is running on the platform of helping the poor, has promised a new day for this segment of the population. In a speech in Metro Manila, the 20-year mayor of Makati, the country's highest tax revenue-generating city, ticked off a list of qualities that he said voters could expect from him.

"A leader that respects the dignity of women. A leader that sets a good example for children. A leader that helps and serves the poor. And I will not brag about killing my fellow man."

Farther from home, Binay has said he would lead the Philippines to closer ties with China, proposing a joint project in the disputed outcroppings in the resource rich South China Sea, while also affirming Manila's territorial claims. His vice presidential running mate, Senator Gregorio Honasan told foreign correspondents last month that a Binay administration would entertain the possibility of permanent U.S. bases.

The candidate most expected to stay the course on foreign policy is Manuel Roxas, former interior secretary of the current administration of President Benigno Aquino.

Roxas, 58 and a former U.S. investment banker with 20 years in Philippine public service, led the country's emergency response after super typhoon Haiyan struck the central part of the country and killed more than 6,300 in 2013.

"I've given my all in everything that I've done. And we've attained quite a bit. We've come so far. We've accomplished many things. And in that respect I put my record up against all the others."

A spokesman said as president, Roxas would continue with the "basic policy of the Aquino administration" of maintaining independence while honoring alliance commitments with Washington.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan delivered a tough message Friday to the European Union, telling supporters in a conservative Istanbul stronghold that though his country is facing terrorist attacks, reforming its anti-terror laws is out of the question.

Brussels is demanding the reform as one of five remaining conditions for Turkey to be eligible for visa-free travel to much of Europe, but Erdogan said he is not interested in such a deal.

They say they are going to abolish visas and this is the condition, Erdogan said. I'm sorry, we're going our way, you go yours.

Brussels claims that Turkey's anti-terror laws are far too broad. Erdogan, however, insists that with the country facing the twin threats of Kurdish rebels and Islamic State terrorism, the laws need to be expanded rather than curtailed.

Critics claim the anti-terror laws are being used increasingly against the president's critics and opponents of his government rather than terrorist groups. Hundreds of Turkish academics are being investigated under the country's anti-terrorism laws for signing a petition calling for an end to the military crackdown on Kurdish rebels and a resumption of peace talks. Four academics are already on trial.

On Friday, a Turkish court sentenced two prominent journalists, Can Dundar and Erdem Gul, for an article accusing the government of arms smuggling to Syrian rebels. Their sentencing is likely to add to EU concerns over human rights in Turkey.

Davutoglu's exit

Erdogan's tough stance on the anti-terror laws follows Thursday's resignation of Ahmet Davutoglu as prime minister. It has been widely reported that Erdogan forced Davutoglu to step down.

Davutoglu was the architect and main driving force behind Turkey's agreement with Brussels to take back migrants who entered Greece, in exchange for the EU permitting visa-free travel for Turkish citizens.

Despite Davutoglu's political demise, Turkish political scientist Cengiz Aktar says the EU will most likely try to accommodate Erdogan.

"Europe  and especially [German] Chancellor [Angela] Merkel  was more than happy to work with Mr. Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the president of the republic of Turkey. So they will continue like before to work with him directly," Aktar predicted.

Analysts say that the EU's collaboration with Turkey is proving extremely valuable to Brussels. Since its agreement with Ankara, the number of migrants entering Greece from Turkey has plummeted from thousands a day to around 100.

But Ankara has warned the EU that if it fails to deliver on visa-free travel, the agreement will be canceled. Observers say Friday's warning by Erdogan indicates he is well aware of the power he holds over the EU, and that he will not hesitate to use it.
I am back in Baghdad, and I am happy. I have always liked this city, even during the bad days.

The reporting is so intense that it makes you forget everything else, every niggling little problem. Even big problem just gets shoved aside. What matters is getting the story.

Today, there was supposed to be a huge demonstration by Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's supporters, and he has hundreds of thousands. Some say millions.

I got up early, checked my gear: camera, tripod, charged batteries, two microphones. Two cellphones, charged, iPhone rig, microphone, batteries. Then I looked out the window at pouring rain. Oh, good, I said to myself.

Security was tight in the city. But I didn't know how tight.

My driver called me. "Sharon, I can't make it, all the bridges are closed."

Baghdad is divided east to west by the Tigris River, with a number of large and small bridges connecting the two sides. The International Zone is on the west side. My hotel was on the east side.

"There is not a way through. They have sealed the bridges with concrete walls," the driver said.

Alternate plan

No worries. I ran to the team that is helping me here. I needed another driver, one on this side of the river. Tahrir Square sits on the west side of the bridge leading to the International Zone and the demonstration was supposed to start there.

"Maybe we can drive, then walk?" OK, good idea. They got me a new driver and put me in a white Land Cruiser, the car of choice in Baghdad. We took off.

There were police, army and other security forces all about, each with loyalty to a different ministry. There were many militias, too. But the streets also were full of people doing their Friday weekend shopping. We drove down streets where I spent a lot of time in 2004 and 2005.

Baghdad has changed. There are more shops, and more shoppers bustling on the street.

The square was the same though, except this time the bridge was closed. At the entrance, armed forces, some with their faces covered, stood behind razor wire. Blue police trucks blocked the side streets. The sun was blazing, and I suddenly remembered how punishingly hot Baghdad could get.

Encountering barriers

The last pedestrian checkpoint would not let me in with my camera. Cellphones only. I laughed and joked and asked to take pictures with them  the paramilitary force known as the federal police. They were persuaded. Through that checkpoint, we moved on to the general in charge, and asked if we could bring in the camera. Permission was granted. Back out all the checkpoints, past the federal police, back to the car, got the camera, walked back again to the first checkpoint.

The young police officer drew me aside. He asked me to please erase all the pictures I took. I had already Tweeted the one I wanted, so I complied and I deleted everything in front of him.

Then an older officer  with a face like a red bullfrog, sitting on a chair under a blue tarp  beckoned me over. "Press pass," he said. He took it. Grimaced.

I looked at him, smiled and pointed to my picture. "Helwa?" ("Beautiful?") I asked. He squinted, looked again, then looked at me.

"No, not really." He handed the card to another officer. "Fifty-fifty," the second one said.

I almost fell down laughing. That was the funniest part of my day. Iraqis can be brutally honest.

The demonstration turned out to be a bust. Maybe a hundred young men and one older man who appeared very high on life spent about an hour shouting, waving flags and running around. Then they all melted away. The feared demonstration just never happened.

Come back tomorrow, they said.

You bet.
Billionaire businessman Donald Trump may have garnered enough votes in the primaries to become the Republican partys presumptive presidential nominee but he can't seem to transfer that enthusiasm from the voting booth to the party leadership.

The highest-ranking Republican office holder, House Speaker Paul Ryan said Thursday he is "not ready" to support Trump as the nominee. Ryan previously criticized Trump for saying that if he did not win the nomination, his supporters might riot at the Republican National Convention in July.

"I hope to support our nominee, I hope to support his candidacy fully," Ryan said on CNN. "At this point, I'm just not there right now."

To which, Trump responded: "I am not ready to support Speaker Ryan's agenda. Perhaps in the future we can work together and come to an agreement about what is best for the American people."

According to the Wall Street Journal, only 12 of the 300 Republicans serving in the House and Senate, and three of the 31 Republican governors, have endorsed the New York businessman.

The party's last two White House occupants, President George H.W. Bush and his son, President George W. Bush, say they will sit out the 2016 campaign and not even comment on it.

The party's last two losing presidential nominees, Arizona Senator John McCain in 2008 and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney in 2012, both said they, like the Bushes, also plan to skip the party's July national convention where Trump will be officially nominated.

Other Republican heavyweights are going even farther than Ryan and the Bushes.

Mark Salter, an adviser to John McCains 2008 presidential campaign, said on Twitter that he would rather vote for Democratic presumptive nominee Hillary Clinton over Trump. Conservative pundit Ben Howe did the same.

Another longstanding Trump critic, South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, said on Twitter: If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed  and we will deserve it.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was in Russia Friday hoping to ease strained relations between Tokyo and Moscow before President Vladmir Putin heads to China for a bilateral summit next month.

At the top of the agenda was a long-running dispute over the group of islands Russia calls the southern Kurils and Japan calls the Northern Territories. But Moscow and Tokyo were both quick to dismiss any suggestions that Fridays meeting would lead to a quick fix to their long-standing territorial dispute.

The governments in Tokyo and Moscow have yet to sign a peace treaty for World War II after Soviet troops seized four islands. While Japan has demanded the return of the islands, Russia has offered to give back only two of them.

Russia announced plans in March to station coastal missile systems on the disputed islands, sparking a rebuke from Japan.

Easing strained relations

In 2013, Abe was the first Japanese leader to make an official visit to Russia in a decade. But, relations grew strained shortly after he visited the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, when Japan joined the United States and the European Union in penalizing Russia for annexing Ukraines Crimean peninsula and supporting separatists in its former Soviet neighbors east.

Japanese news agencies in February reported that U.S. President Barack Obama asked Abe to cancel his scheduled trip to Russia but the Japanese prime minister refused.

The fact that Japan is seeking to maintain relations with Russia, despite U.S. pressure, will allow the two sides to tackle "all the different problems," Putin said last month.

The Kremlin said Thursday that the Russian president would propose new cooperation in trade, finance and the economy at the meeting. The dispute over the islands will be raised, though its a "difficult" issue that requires a much closer partnership, presidential foreign policy aide Yuri Ushakov told reporters Thursday. Abe's visit will give a new impetus to ties, he said.

Abe was on a tour of Europe this week, visiting Italy, France, Germany and the United Kingdom; hes scheduled to chair the Group of Seven industrialized countries meeting in Japans Ise-Shima region in late May.

Russia was pushed out of the group of the worlds largest economies, then called the G-8, after a rift with Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Britain and the United States over Moscow's alleged role in the Ukraine conflict.

This week, Abe and French President Francois Hollande have agreed to continue dialogue with Russia ahead of the upcoming G-7 meeting, according to Japanese news reports.

Political analysts say Abe is positioned to facilitate dialogue between the G-7 and Russia.

"The meeting will allow him to more effectively play the role of a bridge or mediator between Russia and the G-7, which will let him gain more political points," said Valery Kistanov, who heads the Center for Japanese Studies at the Russian Academy of Sciences, in comments emailed to VOA.

Russias China pivot

Perhaps the biggest worry the Japanese prime minister has now is Russias pivot to China.

Behind Abes eagerness to meet Putin is to ease what he sees as a geopolitical threat to Japan from China as an isolated Russia draws closer to Beijing.

"Japan is very concerned about the rapprochement of Russia and China, believing that this may occur on the grounds of anti-Japanese base," said Kistanov. "In particular, Tokyo is disturbed by the possibility of creating a single territorial front of Moscow and Beijing against Tokyo, since Japan has a much more acute territorial conflict with China over the Senkaku Islands [Diaoyu in Chinese] in the East China Sea than that with Russia."

Russia-China military drills have also raised eyebrows in Tokyo.

"As the so-called theory of China threat is much spread in Japan," said Kistanov, "the Japanese are very concerned about the increasing military cooperation between Moscow and Beijing."

Trade declining

At the end of 2015, bilateral trade between Japan and Russia was down 30 percent from the previous year, while Russian exporters dropped 27 percent and Japanese imports fell 38 percent, according to Russias Presidential Press Service.

The press service blamed the fall in commodity prices and weakened exchange rates, as well as on Tokyo joining western sanctions against Russia. It said the Russian and Japanese leaders would discuss ways to strengthen trade and economic relations.

"As for economic cooperation, the most important obstacle to Russia's turning into an important trade partner of Japan is not a territorial problem and not the lack of a peace treaty, but the structural weaknesses of the Russian economy," Kistanov said.

Tokyo-based journalist Maxim Krylov told VOA that Japanese media coverage of the Putin-Abe meeting in Sochi had been fairly modest so far.

"Apart from internal Japanese issues, eyes are now on Abe's trip to Europe, which lays the ground for the upcoming G-7 summit in Ise-Shima," Krylov said in emailed comments.

By comparison, Abe's meeting with Putin is an event of a much lower profile: unofficial visit, one-on-one talks, no press conference after the meeting ends, not much in terms of details on the agenda, he concluded.
Russias Mariinsky Orchestra staged a classical music concert Thursday in the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra.

Renowned Russian conductor Valery Gergiev, a close associate of President Vladimir Putin, led the performance of Bach's Chaconne for Solo Violin, a cello piece by Shchedrin, and Prokofiev's First Symphony.

In opening remarks, Gergiev said the intention of the concert was to protest against the barbarians who destroyed monuments of world culture.

Putin, addressing the audience by video link from his Russian Black Sea residence in Sochi, said he regarded the concert as a sign of gratitude, remembrance and hope.

The concert, dubbed With a Prayer for Palmyra, was held in the Roman amphitheater of Palmyra, the scene of mass executions by Islamic State less than a year ago.

Russian and Syrian military personnel as well as locals attended the concert, which was made public just hours before it began.

Syrian troops backed by Russian airstrikes and special forces on the ground recaptured Palmyra from Islamic State forces in March.

A UNESCO world heritage site, the city is known as the "Pearl of the Desert."
The sister of a prominent imprisoned Chinese political activist said Friday she fears her brother is seriously ill and is urging the authorities to allow him access to better medical treatment, in what an international rights group said is the latest example of China routinely denying political prisoners adequate care.

Yang Maoping said her brother, Yang Maodong, looked pale and emaciated during a visit on April 26 and complained of having had blood in his stool for the past year.



Yang Maodong, 49, better known by his penname Guo Feixiong, is serving a six-year sentence in a southern Chinese prison after years of pushing for constitutional rule, media freedom and democracy in China. Before his 2013 detention, Yang was in good health, his sister said.



"Now, his condition looks extremely terrible, extremely terrible,'' she said.



Yang said prison authorities had yet to respond to her request that her brother receive a thorough medical exam.



"I have been calling the prison office every day, hoping there is still a glimmer of humanity,'' she wrote in an online post. "But there's been not a single response over this life-and-death matter.''



Zhang Lei, a lawyer for Yang Maodong, said he was only given two minutes to visit Yang in prison on Friday. Though he was unable to thoroughly assess Yang's health or inquire about his condition, the prisoner did not appear to be well, Zhang said, adding that he submitted a request for Yang to be accompanied by a family member to a major hospital for a checkup.



The prison declined to answer questions about Yang's health condition, citing privacy reasons.



Supporters of Yang have started a relay hunger strike to call attention to his deteriorating health and lack of health care.



New York-based Human Rights Watch said Yang's case illustrates China's dismal record on providing medical treatment to political prisoners. It called the denial of care a violation of the United Nations Convention Against Torture, to which China is a party.



"It's bad enough that China sends peaceful activists and journalists to prison for years,'' Sophie Richardson, the group's China director, said in an emailed statement. ``But to deprive them of medical care even to the point of allowing their death is the ultimate in inhumane treatment.''



In a separate case, Gao Yu, a Chinese journalist released on medical parole after being imprisoned on a state secrets charge, has been denied medical insurance and, with no income, is struggling to pay for medical treatment, Human Rights Watch said.



"Chinese officials are earning an ugly reputation over their willingness to let political prisoners get terribly sick _ and even die _ in detention,'' Richardson said. ``The only appropriate response is for authorities to immediately facilitate access to adequate medical care for Guo Feixiong and Gao Yu, and all others who need it.''
SpaceX has once again successfully landed a booster rocket on an ocean platform. The feat was accomplished after the rocket deployed a Japanese communication satellite into orbit.

The unmanned Falcon 9 rocket landed early Friday on a platform in the Atlantic Ocean off the southeastern U.S. coast of Florida.

Last month, internet entrepreneur Elon Musk's SpaceX successfully landed a used booster rocket after it launched a unmanned cargo ship to the International Space Station.

SpaceX is striving to perfect the technique of landing the booster rockets, making them as reusable as aircraft rather than dumping the expensive equipment into the ocean after each launch.
With a presidential election just six months away, Americans appear deeply divided over the role the United States should play in the world, according to an opinion survey by the Pew Research Center.

"Considerable apprehension and concern" are the words researchers used to describe the mood of the American public regarding how the country fits into the current world order.

A summary of the Pew study, "Americas Place in the World," posted on its website, puts it this way:

"In fact, most Americans say it would be better if the U.S. just dealt with its own problems and let other countries deal with their own problems as best they can."

In a certain light, the findings support President Barack Obama's governing principle, expressed in coarse language, regarding U.S. foreign policy during his first term: Dont do stupid [stuff]."

Now, seven years later and as the end of Obama's two terms in office draws near, the Pew Center research shows how public opinion has shifted in the aftermath of the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the country's declining military involvement in Afghanistan.

Seven years later, most Americans agree that the U.S. should concentrate more on our own national problems. Fewer concur with this sentiment than was the case in 2013  69 percent now, 80 percent then.

But that was one year before the rise of the Islamic State group, or ISIS, the brutal Islamic extremists whose tactics include beheading hostages, enslaving women and demanding absolute obedience to the most rigid interpretation of the Quran.

Here are some of the major findings of the survey, compiled just before Senator Ted Cruz and Governor John Kasich suspended their presidential campaigns, leaving frontrunner Donald Trump a open path to win the Republican Party's 2016 nomination for president.

 Nearly half (46 percent) say the United States is a less powerful and important world leader than it was 10 years ago, while 21 percent say it is more powerful and 31 percent say it is about as powerful as before.

 35 percent of respondents say the United States should increase military spending, but 24 percent say it should be cut. Forty percent say it should be kept about the same as today.

 Trump questions U.S. membership in NATO, but Americans overwhelmingly view NATO membership as beneficial for the United States, with 77 percent saying it's a good thing for the country.



 Most Republicans (74 percent) say their bigger concern is that the U.S. will not go far enough in its efforts to stop Islamic militants in Iraq and Syria, while just 23 percent are worried that the U.S. will go too far and become too involved in the situation there.

A majority of Democrats (57 percent) share that concern that the U.S. will go too far militarily.

Read the full survey here.
U.S. President Barack Obama has proposed new regulations that would require U.S. companies to disclose more information about their owners.

The administration announced the regulations Thursday in response to the leak of the "Panama Papers," millions of documents detailing international tax evasion through secret offshore accounts.

Speaking to reporters at the White House on Friday, Obama said the proposals would make sure families and small businesses who dont have fancy lawyers and fancy accountants are being treated the same as big corporations who do.

The regulations would require companies to disclose their owners to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and allow law enforcement agencies to access that information. A second rule would close a loophole allowing a narrow class of foreign-owned companies to avoid reporting to the IRS.

Obama said the mission cannot be completed without the help of Congress, which he said should approve legislation that requires greater disclosure.

"Only Congress can fully close the loopholes that wealthy individuals and powerful corporations all too often take advantage of, often at the expense of middle-class families. If they're getting out of paying their fair share of taxes, that means the rest of us have to shoulder that burden. I've put forward plans repeatedly to do exactly that.

The administration also wants the U.S. Senate to ratify eight tax treaties that have languished there.

The administrations proposals come as the U.S. has emerged as a top haven for tax evaders, rivaling Switzerland and the Cayman Islands.
Tiens staff get warm welcome in Spain Updated: 2016-05-06 07:36 By Emma Gonzalez(China Daily)

Employees of Tiens Group attend a parade in Nice, France, last May, with their travel expenses covered by the company. This year, the company has sent some 2,500 workers to Spain on a fully paid vacation. [Photo/Agencies]

Spanish authorities have taken special measures to welcome a large group of visitors from China, eyeing potential opportunities to attract more travelers from the country in future.

As part of its annual foreign jaunt, entrepreneur Li Jinyuan's Tiens Group is spending 7 million euros ($8 million) this year to take some 2,500 of its employees to Spain.

The workers of the biotechnology group arrived in Madrid on Wednesday. They will also visit the cities of Toledo and Barcelona.

"The economic impact of this trip is significant for Madrid, especially considering that they have booked 1,650 hotel rooms, rented 70 large buses and reserved four trains," said Madrid City Hall in a news release.

State-owned railway group Renfe has made available two extra-long special charter trains with a capacity of 1,500 seats to transport the group from Madrid to Barcelona. The company notes that the trains will operate outside regular hours to avoid disrupting the service.

Additionally, the Tiens group has booked another two regular trains to accommodate the remaining workers.

Renfe notes that the operation deployed for Tiens workers resembles those implemented during periods of peak mobility in the country, such as national holidays and the summer season.

"We are used to these type of operations during peak seasons, so it does not represent any problem for us," said Sara Hernandez, a media representative for Renfe. "The most complicated task was to allocate between 16 and 20 buses in the arrival and departure terminals of train stations. However, everything is solved now."

Local authorities in all three cities have arranged special cultural events to welcome the travelers.

They include a cultural and culinary gathering on Friday in one of Madrid's largest parks where the visitors will be able to try one of Spain's most popular dishespaella.

"Local authorities in Madrid are putting great efforts to welcome the Tiens workers because Chinese tourists are mainly interested in cultural activities and shopping, which fits really well with the city offering," said Manuel Becerra, a Beijing-based business developer for the Spanish and Portuguese markets at Haiwan.com, a Chinese outbound travel platform.

Spain welcomes an average of 300,000 Chinese tourists every year, a market that is growing at between 20 and 25 percent, according to the Shopping Tourism and Economy Summit in Madrid last year.

Most Chinese travelers visiting Spain have high purchasing power and dedicate 70 percent of their travel budget to shopping.

Chinese remain the highest spenders among tourists visiting Spain, said the consultancy Global Blue. In 2014, Chinese spent an average of 1,400 euros during their visit to the Spanish capital.

Despite its enormous economic potential, Becerra said that the Chinese tourism market is still underdeveloped in Spain and activities like the Tiens group can have a very positive effect in attracting more tourists.
A U.S. Navy officer with access to highly sensitive intelligence allegedly admitted to spying and patronizing prostitutes. The alleged acknowledgement came during a two-day interrogation following his arrest at an airport in Hawaii last September.

The revelation is the latest in a series of twists and turns in the case of Lt. Cmdr. Edward Lin, who has been in U.S. custody for eight months but whose case only became public following a hearing April 8.

The 39-year-old naval officer is a Taiwanese native and fluent in Mandarin who moved to the U.S. when he was 14 and, according to his family, became a U.S. citizen in 1998.

According to the charging document, Lin faces two counts of espionage and three counts of attempted espionage. He is also accused of patronizing a prostitute and adultery.

The document says only that Lin shared secret information with a "foreign government," though officials suspect him of working for Taiwan or China, or possibly both.

In an audio recording of the preliminary Article 32 hearing held at Norfolk Naval Air Station in Virginia, and played for members of the media Thursday, Lin is heard saying little more than "Yes, sir" when advised of his rights by the hearing officer, Cmdr. Bruce Gregor.

Still, Navy prosecutors pushed for the hearing officer to recommend the case for a full court martial.

They said 11 hours of video from the interrogation in Hawaii, combined with information given to an FBI informant, emails and additional evidence collected from Lin's home, leaves little doubt as to his guilt.

Defense: entrapment

But Lin's lawyer contended the evidence is anything but clear, alleging the government has "engaged in a nefarious scheme to entrap" his client.

"He was never given his rights," said Larry Youngner, with the Washington-based law firm Tully Rinckney. "Perhaps purposefully."

Youngner argued that because of the failure to advise Lin of his rights, much of the evidence  including emails collected from Lin's home  should be suppressed.

He also raised doubts as to whether the secret information Lin is accused of sharing was actually secret, saying much of it was easily available from so-called open sources on the internet.

As for what Lin supposedly told the FBI informant, his attorney said most of it amounted to standard talking points.

"He is proud to be an American citizen," Youngner said. "He was doing the same thing he was trained to do, with all of his classmates, at the Naval War College."

Neither side called any witnesses during the almost two-hour preliminary hearing, about 30 minutes of which was held behind closed doors.

Lin could face a court martial or lesser, administrative actions.

In the meantime, Lin's family has come to his defense, with a website proclaiming his innocence.

It accuses the U.S. government of concocting an "easy-to-digest, sensationalized tale of espionage, misdirection, and sexual perversion."
U.S. military personnel are back on the ground in Yemen in an effort help drive al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) from the port city of Mukalla.

The Pentagon said the small group arrived in Yemen less than two weeks ago and is providing what is being described as limited intelligence support.

"We have seen over the period of many months a troubling growth of AQAP in Yemen, said Pentagon spokesman Capt. Jeff Davis, calling the terror group a significant security threat to the United States and to our regional partners.

Davis said the support included airborne surveillance and reconnaissance, assistance with operational planning and aerial refueling.

The USS Boxer Amphibious Readiness Group and the 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit have also been sent to the waters off the coast of Yemen to help provide medical help and maritime security.

Davis said the U.S. support is being given to the United Arab Emirates, which has been leading a coalition of Arab countries supporting Yemeni forces in the area.

"We welcome this effort to specifically remove AQAP from Mukalla and to degrade, disrupt and destroy AQAP in Yemen," he said.

Resuming airstrikes

The Pentagon also said the U.S. had resumed taking unilateral action against AQAP, with four airstrikes against the terror group since April 23.

The strikes killed 10 AQAP operatives and injured another, Davis said, though he added none of the operatives were considered to be high value targets.

The U.S. had maintained a troop presence in Yemen as part of a counter terrorism partnership with the Yemeni government. But the last U.S. forces were pulled out in March of last year as sectarian violence threatened to rip the country apart.

At the time, U.S. officials said the move was necessary but worried that pressure on AQAP was evaporating, and could allow the group to regain momentum.

Most dangerous al-Qaida affiliate



A U.S. intelligence official described the recent U.A.E.-Yemeni efforts to rout AQAP from the port city of Mukalla as a positive development that could help check the groups expansion.

The operation in Mukalla, if sustained, would deprive AQAP of an important stream of revenue and resources, the official said. It also removes AQAPs base of operations and forces AQAP back into the desert, where it is more vulnerable.

Intelligence officials have long considered AQAP as the most dangerous of the al-Qaida affiliates, with a proven capability of carrying out attacks against the U.S.

In 2010, AQAP attempted to send explosive-laden packages to the U.S. The year before, it sent Nigerian-born Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, to detonate a bomb hidden in his underwear on a Northwest Airlines flight on Christmas (December 25).
North Korea has opened one of its biggest political meetings in 36 years, as the 7th Workers' Party Congress began meeting Friday in Pyongyang.

However, foreign journalists who traveled to Pyongyang for the event were not immediately allowed inside.

The United States is in close consultation with its Asian allies to monitor the situation on the Korean Peninsula during the high-level meeting of party representatives, which is expected to result in a reshuffling of some top officials.

North Korea is scheduled to have its 7th Workers' Party Congress on Friday. It's a high-level meeting of party representatives and is expected to result in a reshuffling of some top officials.

Washington also is anticipating the isolated regime may take this occasion to launch a missile or conduct a nuclear test.

"We will continue to look at ways we can apply and increase pressures on them, at the same time as we ensure that the security of the peninsula is kept ironclad," said State Department spokesman Mark Toner on Thursday.

Pyongyang has carried out a few ballistic missile tests in recent months, as well as its fourth nuclear test in January. Toner said the United States would welcome any signs of de-escalation by the North Korean regime.

The U.S. Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, arrived in Seoul earlier this week. He met with South Korea's Defense Minister, Han Min-koo, and discussed security issues, according to South Korea's Yonhap News Agency.

The possibility of another nuclear test from North Korea was also discussed.

"Kim Jong Un will need to deliver a report that summarizes the Korean Workers' Party's accomplishments since the last congress in 1980 and present new policy directions. As for the new policy directions, I expect him to highlight the Byungjin line," James Person of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington told VOA on Thursday.

The "Byungjin line" is the policy of the simultaneous development of the nuclear program and the consumer goods industries.

But Person does not expect any new major policy directions in economic development because North Korea's Workers' Party Congress meetings are usually "scripted affairs" and typically do not offer major policy announcements.

While anticipating more provocations from North Korea, including a fifth nuclear test, senior U.S. officials have warned of "additional steps" to punish Pyongyang and to defend Washington and its allies.

"Despite all the saber-rattling, I don't think the North [Korea] is under any illusions about the consequences of attack," Assistant Secretary of the State Daniel Russel said Tuesday at an event hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Washington has begun formal discussion with Seoul on potentially deploying a top missile defense system in South Korea, the so-called Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD.
While Russian lawmakers are busy changing the countrys election laws in preparation for parliamentary elections this year, the lower house of parliament is due this month to consider whether President Vladimir Putins new National Guard should be allowed to shoot Russian citizens without warning.

According to a draft law that Putin submitted to the State Duma, the National Guard would be prohibited from using firearms at largely crowded places, if their use may casually hurt people.

In addition, National Guard personnel would be prohibited from firing at women with visible signs of pregnancy, people with apparent signs of disability, and underage persons.

However, members of the force would be allowed to shoot, without warning, anybody determined to be threatening the life and health of citizens.

Taking this one step further, the Duma's committee on defense has proposed that National Guard members be granted immunity from any legal liability for actions they take that result in casualties.

Russia's RBC News quoted the committee as saying we believe that in these cases, the risk of harming random individuals will be justified, and that members of the force "should not be held liable if they need to open fire.

Communications control

According to other provisions of the draft law, the National Guard would be authorized to quarantine an area to control riots, and to commandeer private citizens vehicles to get to a crime scene or chase criminals. The proposed legislation would also give the National Guard the right to take full control of any communication networks, if deemed necessary. Service members would be allowed to search homes, vehicles and individuals if there are sufficient grounds to suspect them of committing a crime or an administrative offense."

The bill also says the National Guard would be staffed by conscripts as well as contract personnel.

The National Guard would also have a mandate to take part in peacekeeping missions abroad, as well as an intelligence-gathering function in order to fight terrorism, extremism and organized crime.

Some experts in Russia and the West claim the creation of the National Guard is timed with the country's parliamentary elections, set for September 18. When asked, Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov said he could not explain the timing.

Putins supporters have praised the move. Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov said creation of the force would "strengthen the combat readiness of units," while Irina Yarovaya, chairwoman of the Duma's committee on defense and anti-corruption, called it an absolutely timely, adequate and systemic answer to modern challenges and threats.

Eye on dissent

Mark Simakovsky, nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and former country director for Russia at the Pentagon, said Kremlin authorities were taking precautions in the run-up to the September parliamentary elections, as well as the 2018 presidential elections.

Although Putin remains very popular, the regime has concerns with economic decline in the country, as well as issues related to sanctions, Simakovsky said. He added that the Russian president "wants to make sure that any and all domestic dissent will be suppressed rapidly."

Tens of thousands of Russians participated in protests in late 2011 after parliamentary elections were marred by allegations of unfairness and fraud. Many people, including some opposition leaders, were jailed.

As recently as February, Putin said enemies abroad were trying to interfere with the parliamentary elections and tasked his security services to prevent any such actions.

With a nearly unlimited mandate, the National Guard may not simply discourage large-scale demonstrations but may also send a clear message to the West.

The Russian president has always been paranoid about Western interference in Russia. This decision sends a signal to Western powers that there will be no 'Maidans' in Russia, Simakovsky told VOA, referring to the protests in Ukraine that led to the ouster of that country's Moscow-backed president, Viktor Yanukovych, in 2014.

At the moment, the size of the Guard force has not been confirmed. Unconfirmed estimates range from 250,000 to 400,000. With a wide mandate and armed with tanks, heavy artillery and attack aircraft, an entity of this size would be a very powerful force.

This looks to be Putins personal army. Basically, you have a person who can declare his own wars on countries with small armies, said Anna Borchshevskaya, Russia expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, in an interview with VOA. Other European national guards are dwarfed compared to Putins National Guard in sheer numbers, she said.

The contrast is especially stark in some cases. For example, the Lithuanian Armed Forces consist of about 16,000 soldiers, and the Latvian National Guard has some 11,000 personnel.

What constitutes 'terrorism'?

Given its proposed peacekeeping function, Borchshevskaya said, the Kremlin will be able to use the National Guard to intervene in neighboring countries.

Officially, Putin said that the National Guard was created to fight terrorism. The new bills that are coming up in the Duma at the moment expand the definition of terrorism. So all this is very vague, Borchshevskaya said. When it comes to peacekeeping  we should be watching Ukraine, Georgia, Russias 'near abroad' and to some extent Syria.

General Viktor Zolotov will lead Russias National Guard, which will absorb the Russian Interior Ministry's shock forces, including the Special Purpose Mobile Units that have been used to break up opposition rallies and were used in Russia's two military campaigns against insurgents in Chechnya.

Zolotov, 62, headed Russia's Presidential Security Service from 2000 to 2013, after which he was commander of the Interior Ministry's Internal Troops. He has known Putin since the early 1990s, when Zolotov was a bodyguard for then-St. Petersburg Mayor Anatoly Sobchak and Putin was an adviser to Sobchak.

As head of the National Guard, Zolotov will have a cabinet-level seat in the Security Council, the powerful Kremlin advisory body, and will report directly to the president, bypassing the interior minister.
A Harare pastor, whose videos titled #thisflag urging Zimbabweans to demand their rights and have gone viral on social media, says he will continue to protest despite credible threats on his life.

The 39 year-old pastor Evan Mawarire of His Generation Church is urging all Zimbabweans to carry their flags as a symbol of patriotism and said history will judge this generation harshly if it does not fight for its rights.

Mawarire says his call is a nonviolent direct confrontation, but he says he feels his life is in danger as he is receiving mysterious calls threatening him. He also urged fellow church leaders to take a stand.

He says due to the fact that Zimbabwe is headed in the wrong direction his dreams and those of his generation have been shattered and this forced him to speak out. Pastor Mawarire admitted that he fears for his life but he has no choice as he fears that his children will blame him for allowing the situation to spiral out of control. Zimbabwe's economy is headed south and some economist put the unemployment rate at nearly 90%.

Human rights groups allege that the government of President Robert Mugabe continues to violate human rights without regard to protections in the countrys new constitution. An expected legislative framework and new or amended laws to improve human rights in line with the constitution has yet to materialize.

Police are alleged to violate basic rights, such as freedom of expression and assembly, using old laws that are inconsistent with the new constitution. Activists and human rights defenders face police harassment. There has been no progress toward securing justice for human rights abuses and past political violence, including violence after the 2008 elections.

Mr Mugabe has denied responsibility for the country's economic problems, saying the economy was deliberately undermined by his domestic and foreign opponents in retaliation for his land reforms.

In 2000, president Mugabe introduced new laws that gave the government greater powers to seize land without compensating from former white owners. The government took over thousands of white-owned commercial farms after backing often violent land invasions led by veterans of the country's 1970s struggle against white rule.
The Zimbabwe National Agreement Platform council (ZNAP), says President Robert Mugabes government should admit that it has failed to properly run the country and now its time to hold an all-stakeholders indaba to address the current economic and political problems.

Representatives of the ZNAP council told journalists in Harare on Friday that the state should note that it cannot do everything on its own and therefore it is prudent to rope in non-governmental organizations, political parties and other stakeholders by convening a national dialogue conference.

ZNAP convener and leader of the Zimbabwe Devine Destiny, Bishop Ancelimo Magaya says those in charge have shown that they have failed to address the needs of the people of Zimbabwe since independence.

Zimbabwe has been through various cycles ever since independence in 1980, we are talking of Gukurahundi, land-grabbing, killings and abductions. All these are affecting people and we are saying its high time that we really act, unite and accelerate plans for action, said Bishop Magaya.

He said the Zanu PF leadership has proved that its a failing and very slowing down.

They should admit they have failed and allow a process where people could come together for a national dialogue and look at options and solutions to get the nation out of crisis.

The press conference was attended by several political parties, church organisations and civic society groups.

Magaya added that they are going to meet again next week to come up with programs of action.

Studio 7 failed to reach the Ministry of Information or Zanu PF for a comment.
Zimbabwe has embarked on a public outreach program in an effort to tackle high poverty levels. Latest statistics indicate that over 60 percent of the country's population is regarded as living far below the poverty datum line.

The Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning has just completed a poverty alleviation public meeting in Harare designed to solicit public strategies of tackling high poverty levels in the country.

Similar meetings to be attended by representatives of nongovernmental organizations, state officials and members of the public, are set to be held in other parts of the country, starting with Gweru next week.

The ministry is expected to come out with a position paper on poverty reduction after completing the public outreach program.

This comes at a time when the Zimbabwe National Statistics Agency says almost 63 percent of the country's 14 million people are poor.

Chief Zimstats statistician, Arnold Damba, who attended the three-day stakeholders consultation meeting in Harare which ended yesterday, said these public outreach meetings will play a key role in addressing the high poverty rates in Zimbabwe.

The government seeks to ascertain the extent of poverty and get input from stakeholders on measures to mitigate its effect.

Keith Charumbira, who is a member of Zimbabwe Coalition on Debt and Development, said this is an intervention that needs time and more publicity.

Charumbira said apart from that, it is not likely to achieve much without looking at the Zimbabwe's huge external debt.

Zimbabwe owes multilateral institutions billions of dollars as the country has over the years struggled to repay loans obtained from the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, Paris Club, African Export and Import Bank and several others.

One of the finance directors in the Ministry of Finance, Eria Hamandishe, said the first meeting was well-attended.

Hamandishe said they are expected to capture as many views as possible and incorporate them in order to find ways of curbing poverty in Zimbabwe.

A senior official in the Ministry of Environment, Water and Climate, Kundishora Mupandaguta, told the Harare stakeholders meeting that poverty is having a negative effect on the environment.

He said the country is losing between 100,000 to 320,000 hectares of prime forests annually due to people that are clearing the land in an attempt to eke out a living.

He said his ministry is encouraging local people to engage in fish farming, bee-keeping and the better use of proceeds from selling wild animals in order to fight poverty.
Medical stocks reel amid calls for ban on controversial treatment Updated: 2016-05-06 07:50 By Zhu Wenqian(China Daily)

Calls by the National Health and Family Planning Commission, at its conference on Wednesday, for a halt to cellular immunotherapy as a treatment for cancer had a negative impact on more than 20 related listed medical companies.

Shanghai Haixin Group Co Ltd saw its shares decline 2.46 percent on Thursday, despite the benchmark index and most other shares edged higher.

The group's subsidiary Shanghai Haixin Biotechnology Co, together with the Second Military Medical University, co-developed antigen pulsed human dendritic cells, China's first self-developed therapeutic vaccine.

Shares in other medical companies, including Zhejiang Conba Pharmaceutical Co, Shanghai Canature Environmental Products Co, Anhui Anke Biotechnology Co, and Guanhao Biotech, all suffered declines by the close.

Those companies cooperated with domestic and overseas institutions on cellular immunotherapy researcha new class of cancer treatment that works to harness the innate powers of the immune system.

Another related company, Zhuhai Hokai Medical Instruments Co, suspended trading in its shares.

The NHFPC conference made it clear that cellular immunotherapy was still at the clinical research stage, and should be operated in accordance with relevant procedures.

The NHFPC will prohibit hospitals from outsourcing departments through disguised ways, and strengthen the supervision of medical technology and equipment.

Insiders revealed that hospitals are required to stop their current outsourcing projects, and to report projects to the NHFPC.

At the clinical research stage, cellular immunotherapy should only be used for clinical studies.

As a result, those primary healthcare institutions without qualifications will be regulated in applied immunotherapy, and institutions that are eligible for clinical trials will be still allowed to carry out the businesses.

Currently, listed domestic companies offering cellular immunotherapy technologies mainly use cytokine-induced killer and DC-CIK treatments.

The 21-year-old cancer patient Wei Zexi, whose death has been highlighted recently in the media, received that treatment before his death.

Analysts said low-end technologies, including CIK and DC-CIK, will be encouraged out the market.

CAR-T and TCR-T cellular therapies, meanwhile, will become the mainstream cancer treatments.

Ji Xuwo, a healthcare analyst at Orient Securities in Beijing, said: "Compared with traditional DC-CIK technologies, we are bullish on the growth potential of the CAR-T Cell therapy market, and the investment prospects of related companies, including Anhui Anke Biotechnology (Group) Co Ltd.

"The death of Wei Zexi is expected to urge the authorities to accelerate their launch of standardized regulations for the cellular therapy industry in China," Ji said.
I apologize, Cap. Photo: Marvel

Of the many articles Ive written during my short time on this planet, only one fills me with shame whenever I think of it. It was conceived as an attempt to tick off readers, and it was executed with deliberately incendiary language. It launched a tidal wave of vitriol in my direction, much of it deserved. Its a blot on my conscience, my reputation, and my self-Googling results. On multiple occasions, Ive met fellow geeks and, upon giving my name, heard some variation of the sentence Hey, youre the guy who wrote that mean article about Captain America, right?

The answer is yes. My name is Abraham Riesman, I wrote that mean article about Captain America, and its time for me to apologize.

In early April of 2014, I, like countless others, had Cap on the brain. Captain America: The Winter Soldier was about to be released, and, eager to get a byline, I pitched a post pegged to it. It was approved and published with a blunt headline (one composed by yours truly): Why Captain America Is Only Interesting If Hes a Prick. The post staged a two-pronged attack on Captain America. First, I argued that the character was, for the most part, fundamentally dull:

Its sort of astounding that a character as featureless as Captain America has endured, mostly unchanged, for nearly 75 years after readers first fell for his Hitler-punching adventures.

I reserved particular ire for the way he was portrayed by Chris Evans in Winter Soldier and the other Avengers-franchise flicks:

Not only does he save the world and the American dream, he does so while remaining flawlessly kind, endlessly moral, and effortlessly charming at all times. But with perfection comes blandness.

The second prong was an endorsement of the rare occasions when the character has been depicted as a jerk. Embarrassingly enough, I could only conjure up two textual examples: an asshole-ish alternate-universe version of him from a comics series called The Ultimates, and a mid-aughts comics story where it was revealed that mainstream-universe Cap was complicit in training a 16-year-old to be a violent murderer. In my eyes, a soldier frozen in the 40s and awakened now would be uncomfortably macho and out of touch with modern values and would be more John McCain than Barack Obama.

The piece was published at 11:35 a.m. on April 7, and within just a few hours it was the geek webs preferred hate-read of the day. EVERYTHING ABOUT THIS IS WRONG AND SYMBOLIC OF OUR NONSENSICAL AND INDULGENT FASCINATION WITH ANTI-HEROES, tweeted pseudonymous culture critic @FilmCritHULK. You have every right to your opinion, but it is, actually, the wrongest possible opinion, down there with geocentrism and the hollow earth theory, mused commenter PerhapsNot. Writer Steven Attewell wrote a blog post at Lawyers, Guns & Money entitled Why Abraham Riesman Doesnt Know Jack About Captain America.

The list of takedowns goes on and on and on. To make matters worse, many of those takedowns were thoughtful and well-written. My stomach churns to even think of them; I dont have the constitution to go back and reread.

At the time, I was surprised by all the contempt. I had intended the post to be provocative and knew Id be rankling Cap fans, but I had no idea how raw a nerve I had touched. Nevertheless, I wasnt content to simply chalk this up to a difference of opinion between me and my detractors. I felt compelled to write a long Tumblr post doubling down on my viewpoint and drove my friends nuts with my pleas for absolution in private conversation. I couldnt really be all that wrong, could I?

Looking back on the whole fracas now, I think I couldnt let go because I had a guilty conscience. I wasnt lying about anything in the article, but I also wasnt telling the whole truth, because I wasnt accepting the whole truth. While it was true that I had never found most Captain America comics all that exciting, that absence of passion didnt explain why I felt it was necessary to go on the troll-ish warpath. I wrote that article because I was angry that other people were playing with my toys.

As of 2014, Id been reading superhero comics for 17 years, most of them Marvel comics. Id spent an obscene sum of money on them and devoted countless hours to thinking about them. As such, I felt a degree of ownership over the characters within them. The comics industry had collapsed in the mid-90s, right around when I became a reader. When I went to my first comics convention, Marvel Comics was in bankruptcy. Superhero movies were few and far between (and, in the case of Batman & Robin, the object of widespread ridicule). In other words, superhero fiction was a relatively isolated pursuit for much of my young life. Even in the aughts, the successful X-Men and Spider-Man franchises failed to generate legions of obsessive fans; they merely racked up satisfied viewers.

That changed with the advent of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It began with 2008s Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk, which started to weave an interlinked tapestry of filmed superhero fiction that continued with Thor, Captain America: The First Avenger, and 2012s megahit The Avengers. The MCU kick-started its own fandom. By 2014, one needed only to take a glance at Tumblr to see reams of fanfiction and fan art about Iron Man, Hawkeye, Black Widow, and other figures Id pored over for nearly two decades. Im still not exactly sure why it happened, though I suspect its because the MCU was so ripe for obsessive appreciation: The cast was massive, the humor was infectious, and the bonds of friendship (and, perhaps subtextually, romance) between characters were strong. Plus, the MCU matured in an era when fandom cultures were getting easier to find, thanks to the exponential growth of Tumblr and Twitter.

I used both of those platforms incessantly, so I was very aware of the rise of MCU fandom  and although I would never have said so publicly, it pissed me off. These people were talking about my characters! Whats worse, they werent even talking about the comics! They were just talking about these bullshit Hollywood movies! I wasnt sitting around stewing about MCU fans all day, but I certainly held a low-level contempt for them that would rise from a simmer to a low boil every time Id accidentally scroll past some Steve RogersTony Stark erotic artwork on my Tumblr feed.

In short, I found the bandwagon fawning over these characters repulsive. The recent superhero boom has represented one of the most remarkable migrations of intellectual property in history, and as the ever-expanding MCU started resonating with people who had never endured the sweaty claustrophobia of a comics shop, I felt weirdly betrayed, because these movies and shows were so much more popular than the comics Id been reading.

On top of that, as Id gotten older, Id grown less enchanted with superhero comics and far more critical of their shortcomings. Seeing all of these people love these characters so passionately really pissed me off. It felt like a significant other Id loved but often fought with had dumped me and was now in a happy, stable relationship with someone way more attractive than I ever was.

So thats the headspace I was in when I trotted off to see Captain America: The Winter Soldier, and it blinded me to the films virtues  and the characters. Its true that Id never particularly enjoyed Captain America stories in comics, but the reason was that hed always seemed so boring and stoic. Thats what made his Ultimates depiction interesting by contrast: There was something to grab on to. But Evanss version also had a lot to grab on to! He was buoyant, charming, bashful, passionate, a little naive, and often hilarious (I mean, come on, that little to-do list from the first scene of Winter Soldier?). He wasnt boring. But he was beloved by many others, and as a child of the mid-90s, I wasnt ready for a Marvel superhero to be popular in mainstream culture. I rejected him like a poorly matched organ donation. Thus, my piece.

Luckily, that piece had a bizarre and counterintuitive consequence: It brought me friends from the MCU fandom. I felt so vulnerable and confused about the response to the article that I started talking about it with some of my detractors. When Gavia Baker-Whitelaw of the Daily Dot wrote a retort to my piece, I reached out to her on Twitter to thank her for taking the time to analyze what Id written. That kicked off a correspondence that continues to this day. When I met writer Sulagna Misra at a movie screening in late 2014, she told me she knew me from the loathed article, and I listened as she outlined all of the reasons it was off-base. Shes now one of my favorite pen pals. Both of them, in addition to being talented journalists, were part of MCU fandom. They in turn introduced me to other smart, insightful MCU enthusiasts, who have taught me so much about what makes online fan cultures tick.

Watching Captain America: Civil War, I did have a few moments of awe at the fact that these pieces of intellectual property, once so unsuccessful in the marketplace, have become so monumental. I dont know that Ill ever totally get used to it. But that discomfort should never be the starting point for anything I write. Im certainly not uncritical of these megablockbuster corporate products. But every time I start working on something judgmental of the MCU, I have to ask myself, Am I having a Captain Americashould-be-a-prick moment? If I am, I need to revise my argument. Critique is good; getting angry because other people like something I like is bad. Im not proud of the article, but Im glad its there as a reminder that Ill always have blind spots, and that its my job as a writer to grapple with them.
Bucky through the ages. Photo-Illustration: Vulture

This piece originally ran in May of 2016 when Captain America: Civil War hit theaters. We are republishing it on the occasion of The Falcon and the Winter Soldiers premiere on Disney+.

Superheroes are generally a static bunch. A character gets introduced, a little bit of tweaking might occur in early stories, and once its a hit, it gets frozen in amber. Spider-Man is always wise-cracking and angst-filled Peter Parker, Wolverine is always a grizzled brawler with a tragic past, and so on. Superman may have died in 1992, but he soared up from the grave within a few months. Bruce Wayne was replaced as Batman in 2008, only to take up the cape and cowl again in a few years. Theres an old saying in the comics industry, often attributed to former Marvel chief Stan Lee: Readers dont want change; they only want the illusion of change.

But one character, by his very existence, reveals the folly of that mind-set. Bucky Barnes, now known in print and onscreen as the Winter Soldier, was first introduced in 1941 as Captain Americas plucky teen sidekick. Since that time hes undergone not one but two enormous changes, both of which fundamentally altered the Marvel universes status quo. First, he was killed off in 1964 and actually stayed dead  for four decades, at least. Then, in 2004, he was brought back in a thrilling comics story line and given the nom de guerre Winter Soldier. The resurrected version of the character abandoned his boyish roots, instead taking on a tragic narrative cooked up by a tiny cabal of nervous creators and editors. The story was a surprise hit, and this new vision of Bucky became the one seen in 2014s Captain America: The Winter Soldier and now Captain America: Civil War. In a world where film has usurped comics as the medium of record for superhero fiction, Buckys reinterpretation has not only succeeded  it has become gospel.

Given that Civil Wars other stars are all characters that ossified soon after their own births, Buckys reinvention is no small feat. The Winter Soldier has resonated with people because his archetype is a heady brew of mental-health struggles, classic espionage tropes, Americas poor treatment of veterans, an attempt to reckon with the violence of superhero comics, and male bonding so powerful that its regularly read as homoerotic. The tale of Bucky and the comics story that changed him is one that shows superhero fictions unique power to play around with characters created far in the past, and demonstrates how gratifying  and profitable  it can be to come up with one little idea that takes a hard left turn away from orthodoxy.

***

Ironically, Buckys creation three-quarters of a century ago was all about orthodoxy. In 1941, three years after the first superhero comic was published, two pioneers of the nascent medium, Joe Simon and Jack Kirby, were cooking up a new crime-fighter: Captain America. He was intended to be an expression of national wish-fulfillment: In a time of American dread about the possibility of entering the morass in Europe, he would leap into the fray and clobber Hitler before the madman could threaten our shores. But triumph in war was one thing; triumph in the marketplace was another. To make it big, Cap would need something that was all the rage: a kid sidekick.

Such characters were a useful invention for an array of reasons. Superhero comics were seen as having an audience of kids, says Peter Sanderson, comics historian and former Marvel writer. So the idea was, Lets give the kids someone to identify with. The first hit sidekick was Robin, the young ward of Batman, who leapt into action in 1940. The boy wonder sparked an immediate craze. It helps humanize the adult superhero due to the fact that he gets along with a kid, Sanderson adds. And you have a story device that means you dont need captions to explain what the hero is doing. He can explain it all to his sidekick.

Cover of Captain America Comics No. 1. Photo: Joe Simon; Jack Kirby/Marvel

And so, when Captain America Comics No. 1 rolled off the presses in January 1941, a youthful companion, Bucky  named somewhat arbitrarily after a high-school classmate of Simons  was right there on the cover. Beneath the now-famous image of Cap landing a haymaker on the fuhrers chin, you could see an auburn-haired youngster with ruddy cheeks and a domino mask saluting you. Above him, handwritten text read, Also CAPTAIN AMERICAS YOUNG ALLY, BUCKY!

Much of the issues action takes place at New Jerseys Camp Lehigh, where flaxen-haired grunt Steve Rogers lives a secret double life as super-soldier Captain America. On page seven, we meet Bucky Barnes, mascot of the regiment, who waxes poetic about his admiration for the star-spangled hero  and then accidentally wanders in on Steve getting into costume. I came down to  wha  wh  why youre Captain America! he cries. You little rascal! I ought to tan your hide! Cap says in response. With bizarre abruptness, Steve opts for comradeship over corporal punishment. From now on we must both share this secret together  that means youre my partner, Bucky! With that (and without explanation), Bucky suddenly gets his own colorful getup, complete with red tights and impractical blue boots.

Excerpt from Captain America Comics No. 1. Photo: Joe Simon; Jack Kirby/Marvel

For the next few years, they took on all who would threaten the Republic, especially the domestic boogeymen of Nazi spy rings and dangerous fifth columnists. Bucky was relentlessly optimistic, only pushing back against his older-brother figure when he felt condescended to. Think you can handle a mans job  Bucky, mlad? Steve asks in one story. Sure I can  what do you think I am  a baby? is the kids reply. The comics were runaway hits for their publisher, Timely. But the first superhero bubble popped after the end of the war. Other genres usurped it: crime fiction, Westerns, and horror. Sales of Captain Americas series declined. As a triage measure in the late 40s, the publisher experimented with targeting young women and, as such, sidelined Bucky in favor of new Cap sidekick Golden Girl. Even she couldnt get the job done. Captain America Comics ceased publication in 1949.

There was an extremely short-lived attempt to revive Cap and Bucky as anti-communist crusaders in 1954, but it, too, failed to find an audience. Bucky and his beloved mentor were unceremoniously tossed on the trash heap of pulp history. Then, a decade later, something remarkable happened: In the early 1960s, writer/editor Stan Lee and writer/artist Jack Kirby (back at the company after an exile) relaunched Timely as Marvel Comics, with the goal of completely reimagining what superheroes could be. As part of that process, they eventually turned their focus toward Captain America  and Lee didnt like what he saw by Caps side.

One of my many pet peeves has always been the young teenage sidekick of the average superhero, Lee wrote in his 1974 book Origins of Marvel Comics. Once again, if yours truly were a superhero theres no way Id pal around with some freckle-faced teenager. At the very least, people would start to talk. In Lees mind, the only teens worth writing were ones who were powerful in their own right, with loner hero Spider-Man being the best example. When it came to Bucky, that philosophy had major consequences.

In 1963 Lee and Kirby launched The Avengers, a series that would bring together some of Marvels biggest characters to tackle the worlds most serious threats. Issue four featured a startling cover image: Captain America leaping into battle alongside the previously introduced Avengers. The first page read, BRINGING YOU THE GREAT SUPER HERO WHICH YOUR WONDERFUL AVALANCHE OF FAN MAIL DEMANDED.

Sure enough, the book revealed that Cap was back  and, improbably, just as youthful as hed always been. In the story hes found trapped in ice in the North Atlantic, and, upon thawing out and waking up in front of the heroes, he jolts up and screams, Bucky  Bucky! Look out! But theres no Bucky to be found. As we learn in a flashback, tragedy struck during the war: Bucky was blown up while trying to stop a booby-trapped plane in midair, and Cap  attempting to save him  fell into the frigid water, where he froze in suspended animation, only to later wake up in a world where his best chum was long gone.

Excerpt from The Avengers No. 4. Photo: Jack Kirby/Marvel

Its useless! Cap screams as Thor and Iron Man try to comfort him. He is dead  he is! And nothing on Earth can change that! For the next 40 years of Captain America stories, the death of Bucky resembled the death of Bruce Waynes parents or Peter Parkers Uncle Ben: a personal tragedy that haunted the protagonist. The long-dead sidekick didnt motivate Cap to get into crime-fighting  hed been down for the cause well before the two of them met, back in the 1941 origin story. But he certainly wanted to do his erstwhile buddy proud, and the kids absence reinforced Caps status as a man out of his time. (Its a somewhat goofy thing to read about now, given that the average World War II vet was only in his 40s as of the mid-60s  he certainly had plenty of war buddies who werent that far gone, no?)

Throughout the ensuing decades there were still stories starring Bucky, but they were strictly World War II flashbacks. His earnest enthusiasm served as a reminder about Greatest Generation optimism and certainty of purpose  thus making him a relic in an era where the Vietnam War was shattering American confidence in military might. Occasionally, young characters would try to become new Buckies, to no lasting avail. A 1969 tale crafted by Lee and writer/artist Jim Steranko featured perpetual Avengers hanger-on Rick Jones presenting himself in Buckys old duds. No! Steve yells, forcefully grabbing him. You cant wear it! No one must ever wear it! Ill never watch another partner die!

In other words, though Bucky was gone, his memory lingered. But any attempt to revive him in the present day was an axiomatic no-no. According to Sanderson, while he was working at Marvel in the 1980s, one of the absolute rules at Marvel was, the two characters who were absolutely, permanently dead  and there was no way theyd ever come back  were Uncle Ben and Bucky. But superhero comics is an industry that thrives on big, weird ideas. Around the turn of the millennium, a new guard was in charge, and they were willing to engage in the heretical dark art of resurrection.

***

Ever since he was a kid, comics writer Ed Brubaker felt like Bucky was the victim of a great injustice. Born in 1966, Brubaker spent much of his childhood in Guantanamo Bay, the child of a Navy intelligence officer, reading and relating to stories about Caps sidekick. I was a Navy brat, and he was an Army brat, he says of Bucky. Hed assumed there was some kind of long, dramatic story in which Bucky had been killed off, a story he just hadnt dug up yet. Then he learned the death was tossed off in a single page of The Avengers No. 4. I was a 9-year-old kid, he recalls, and I was horrified.

A creative child, Brubaker wasnt one to take this crime lying down. If Bucky had been killed without much ceremony, he felt a nice corrective would be to resurrect him and let him have his day. From the time I was probably 9 or 10 years old I kept, I was in my sketch books, plotting out ways to bring Bucky back, he says. One solution? Mix him up in some Cold War intrigue.

I think the idea that Bucky was captured by the Russians and used as an enemy against America was something that I came up with during the Cold War as a little kid in the mid-70s, he says. Even as a kid I had a good sense of dramatic structure, apparently. I knew that if you were going to take away Caps biggest tragedy you had to replace it with another huge tragedy, or he would lose that marble for you to play.

Flash forward to the early 2000s. Marvel Comics was in a chaotic renaissance. After the comics industry collapsed in the mid-90s and Marvel went bankrupt, new leadership had pulled the company back from the brink through a series of experiments in different ways to tell stories, both narratively and visually. New writing talent with limited superhero experience was being brought in all the time. Against this backdrop, in 2004, Brubaker  previously best known for writing crime stories  was recruited to write a relaunched Captain America monthly series alongside penciler Steve Epting. Brubaker brought with him the idea of doing a story that would bring back Bucky using some of the Russian intrigue hed cooked up in his childhood.

Lucky for him, the notion of reviving Bucky was already kicking around in the innovation-hungry ecosystem of early-aughts Marvel, though not everyone was onboard. A previous creative team pitched the idea of bringing Bucky back, and I was dead set against it, says Tom Brevoort, then editor of Captain America. It was something that [Marvel editor-in-chief] Joe Quesada and I discussed, in a conversation that got louder and louder as we both became more impassioned, until we were literally yelling at one another in this meeting. In that case, the story didnt end up going forward  but it was an idea that held some appeal for Joe, and so he brought it up when speaking with Ed.

Brubaker had to pass the gauntlet of Brevoorts skepticism. How did he survive that explosion on the little plane, Brevoort asked? Brubaker said hed fallen into the water  grievously injured, missing his left arm, and suffering from amnesia  and was rescued by a Russian officer, who subsequently used him as a black-ops assassin. Why cant he remember what happened to him? Brubaker proposed that, every time Bucky started getting inklings of his past life, the Russians put him in suspended animation (and hey, that also answered the question of why Bucky wasnt an old man by the aughts). Brevoort recalls asking 14 queries in total, forcing Brubaker to tighten up his approach.

The story in which Bucky would come back would be called The Winter Soldier, a title that alludes to the fraught relationship the U.S. has with its veterans. In 1776, Thomas Paine published the first installment in a series of pamphlets called The American Crisis. In it, he decried the summer soldier who will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country. Two centuries later, Vietnam Veterans Against the War referenced Paine when they staged a 1971 event called the Winter Soldier Investigation, during which they drew attention to the immorality of Americas actions in Southeast Asia. A young John Kerry spoke there, giving an incendiary testimony about what America was doing to its drafted men. The country doesnt know it yet, but it has created a monster, he said. A monster in the form of millions of men who have been taught to deal and to trade in violence  men who have returned with a sense of anger and a sense of betrayal which no one has yet grasped.

This sentiment would lie at the core of what Brubaker was going to try to talk about with Bucky. Its just one of those names that, the second I wrote it down, I didnt have any alternates, Brubaker recalls.

The resulting story, launched on November 17, 2004, was a cracking espionage yarn. In the first few issues of Brubaker and Eptings run on Captain America, a string of mysterious murders and attacks start occurring, all tied in one way or another to Cap. A government agent theorizes they might all be coming from a Cold Warera Russian assassin only known as the Winter Soldier. Meanwhile, Cap reminisces about World War II, and his reveries include a shocking revelation about Bucky: Although the boy was held up to the public as a symbol of youthful pride in America, he was secretly sent out to viciously execute enemy soldiers as an advance scout during attacks. He was a weapon as much as he was a mascot.

Brubaker  the son of a soldier  made that storytelling choice as a corrective to the sanitized version of the war that so often appears in superhero comics. I wanted to take World War II seriously, he says. If this guy fought in World War II, what good would he have been if he wouldnt actually do the same things that any other soldier had to do?

Then came May 25, 2005, the day when issue No. 6 would reveal the Winter Soldiers identity. I was terrified that that was going to be the end of my career, Brubaker recalls. My fear was that people would think wed jumped the shark or something. It wasnt an unreasonable fear. Previous status-quo-shaking comics events had marred sales and reputations  for example, there was a widely mocked 90s tale about Spider-Man being revealed as a clone, and none of its creators emerged with their names unsullied.

No. 6 hit stands, and, on page 17, readers got their first clear view of the Winter Soldier, his rifle trained at Captain Americas head. A friend of Caps whod been captured by this mysterious figure tells our hero, I think  I think its Bucky! The man had long, brown hair  a request Brubaker says came from Quesada, who wanted to make it clear that Bucky wasnt a kid anymore. He had a bionic arm with a Communist red star on it  Brubaker and Epting were tapping into the tradition of comic-book pseudoscience. And, lest we forget that he was still Bucky at his core, he had that classic little domino mask on. A reinvented icon had arrived.

Excerpt from Captain America No. 6. Photo: Steve Epting/Marvel

The next few issues included flashbacks explaining his rescue at the hands of the Russians, his decades of assassinations and suspended animations, and Steves first face-to-face meeting with his former ward. That latter scene is agonizing for Cap. Bucky  ? Cap says during a battle. The Winter Soldier gazes directly at him and asks, Who the hell is Bucky? An explosion hits, and the brainwashed man is gone. Cap grits his teeth and, in a debriefing, smashes a computer screen in anguish.

The whole endeavor was a hit. The issue with the Bucky reveal went to a second printing, and sales for the ensuing issues were robust. Editorial leadership loved how it had played out. The fan community was abuzz about this new direction. Most important, the saga was genuinely compelling. Cap no longer had to grieve over Buckys death; instead, he now had to grieve over his life. For all these years, Bucky was walking around, being forced to commit unspeakable acts. Hes not responsible for his actions  not in control, Steve muses about Bucky at one point. Hes not in control  and hed hate that more than anything.

Steve later encountered Bucky again and used a magic device to make his original identity and memories come back, but since he still remembered everything he did while brainwashed, that act caused as much pain as it removed. Bucky goes on the run, tormented by whats in his head. Some small piecea you is awake  watching, he says in one comic, remembering all of his crimes. Like being a passenger in your own body. You struggle to break loose. Over and over again  you lose. And it makes whatever youre forced to do that much worse.

In other words, Buckys story was one about violence, following orders, and PTSD. Even if he wasnt the one calling the shots, it was his body, his face, and his skills doing the killing. It was him who saw lives end at his own hand. How could he ever get over that mental damage? The character  an emotionally vulnerable bundle of grief, anger, and deadly efficiency  was here to stay. At the end of a big story that had nothing to do with Bucky, Steve Rogers gets killed, and soon afterward Bucky reluctantly takes up the shield and becomes the new Captain America. He struggles to live up to the role and continues to grapple with the fact that killing and espionage feel so comforting to him.

Steve comes back from the dead and eventually becomes Captain America again  further proof that, more often than not, characters status quo never changes for long. But Bucky never went back. To this day he has the metal arm, he has the long hair, the troubled past, the PTSD  its all there. On top of that, the nature of the Captain America archetype has changed. His empathy for and regret-filled friendship with Bucky, elements totally absent for 60-odd years, are now defining traits for the Star-Spangled Avenger. Its a gut-wrenching narrative  and as the Marvel Cinematic Universe took root during the late 2000s, a pair of screenwriters took note.

***

In 2008, after being hired to script a Captain America movie for the nascent Marvel Studios, Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely tried to read every iteration of the character. One era stood out among all of the others. Brubakers was maybe the finest run, says McFeely. The movie they were writing was set almost entirely in World War II, so their Bucky couldnt be a cybernetic super-assassin, but their mouths watered at the possibilities, even as they tried to manage their own expectations. We didnt dream that we would have sufficient success to get around to doing a Winter Soldier story, says Markus.

That movie, Captain America: The First Avenger, came out in 2011 and featured up-and-comer Sebastian Stan as Bucky. The movie deviated from the comics version of the character by making him a childhood friend of Steves  one who not only wasnt a child, but was actually a big-brother figure to our hero before the super-soldier experiment. (Part of the reason for the change was their feeling that, as Markus puts it, theres just no way, even in a stylized movie, that you can bring an 11-year-old into World War II.) Nevertheless, the pair have an incredibly close relationship during the war, and, as in the comics, Bucky seemingly dies during a risky mission, wracking Steve with grief. The movie was a success, and Marvel Studios immediately set in motion plans for a sequel. Markus and McFeely had their chance.

We knew we wanted to do some version of Winter Soldier, Markus says. There was some talk of, Maybe its too soon  he only just died. But as we went through various iterations, it was still the most compelling action story to tell. Beyond espionage thrills, a Winter Soldier story could also get at some weighty themes for a tentpole superhero movie. It is, in a comic-book way, a way of exploring the price soldiers pay and what we do with them when theyre done, Markus says. They sent a bunch of story ideas to the higher-ups at Marvel and got approval to move forward with a Winter Soldier tale.

And so, an idea that began with Brubakers childhood scribblings was produced on a $170 million budget and pushed out to audiences worldwide. In the spring of 2014, Captain America: The Winter Soldier hit screens. It was a smash. The story was an extremely loose adaptation of the Brubaker and Epting comics, but the major story beats were there: The mysterious, lethal metal-armed Winter Soldier starts knocking off people close to Cap; we learn that hes been a black-ops agent for decades (here, hes owned by a sinister organization called Hydra rather than the Russian government); Cap figures out hes Bucky; they fight; Cap forces Bucky to remember who he is; and Bucky goes on the run, torn apart by confusion and regret.

Still from Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Photo: Marvel

Despite being one of the title characters, Bucky has fewer than 20 lines of dialogue in the whole movie; even so, he struck an emotional chord with viewers, galvanizing a burgeoning community of Marvel-movie fans. When he appears in the Winter Soldier, I was fascinated even before his identity is revealed, says Lisa Henning, an avid member of online Bucky fandom. She loves Bucky-oriented fanfiction and fan art, and she makes videos on her YouTube channel that remix footage of Bucky and Steve with emotional music behind them. He seemed like a sharp, precise killer machine with no concept of mercy, so the reveal who he really is was a great moment. What really got to me, though, was the way Sebastian played him as scared, confused, and vulnerable after he encounters Steve. (Enthusiasts have also built up a considerable bank of material dedicated to depicting a romance between Steve and Bucky, or Stucky, as the pair is known.)

The fandom will find a lot to enjoy in Civil War. Even though his name isnt in the title, the Winter Soldier is a much more prominent character than in the previous Captain America outing. We see him on the run from the worlds governments, we see Cap turn against his colleagues in the Avengers in order to protect him, and we see him struggle with his past. Stan gives a performance that is by turns lethal and heartbreakingly tender. I cant trust my own mind, he says at one point with a sad half-smile. If youve suffered a trauma and had to contend with the mental-health issues that follow, youll likely feel a pang of melancholic recognition.

But for historians of superhero fiction, the movies depiction of the Cap-Bucky relationship is perhaps most interesting on a metafictional level. This Captain America, played with Chris Evanss usual charm and earnestness, is more or less the same Captain America who leapt into battle against the Third Reich 75 years ago. This Bucky, however, is wildly different from the one who leapt beside him all those decades ago. And yet, as you can see in Stans performance, that optimistic scrapper is somehow still a part of the character. Steve remembers his pals more innocent days and wants him to remember that he hasnt lost all of his virtue. A lesser story would show them as rivals; this one shows them trying to rebuild a friendship, piece by piece.

That dynamic was baked into this new Bucky way back in 2004. Brubaker doesnt work for Marvel anymore, opting instead to do acclaimed independent comics like The Fade Out and Velvet. But he looks back at those consequential comics with pride, as much for what they didnt do as for what they did. I didnt want to play it like a You never came looking for me, so I hate you kind of thing, he says. I wanted it to feel more tragic than it being that they were two trains racing at each other. It wasnt a revenge story. It was a redemption story. And it remains a story unlike any other that comics have told.
Oh, you guys. If I could virtually pass each and every one of you a bottle of tequila to chug Meredith Greystyle, I would. That was  rough. It was inevitable, especially with those lovely demons at Shondaland forcing us to relive Callie and Arizonas entire relationship in a one-minute previously on teaser. Remember the pre-plane-crash good times? Steamy hookups? That gorgeous wedding? Callies dad showed up to dance with her! Remember?!

Remember the bad times? The Callie-yelling-at-Arizona-to-snap-out-of-it-in-the-shower times? The Arizona-hooking-up-with-Dr. Peyton Sawyer times? The beginning-of-the-end times? And, after all of that, after these women who loved and then mistreated each other were finally in a good place, Penny Blake had to show up and work some voodoo magic on Callie. She turned Callie Torres into a regular ol Felicity Porter. Maybe if we had watched Callie and Penny fall in love. Maybe if Penny had to leave for good and not just take a yearlong research opportunity (the girl could move back!). Maybe then I would believe Callie had a reason to force Arizona into all this custody drama. But I dont.

Despite the fact that this story line makes my blood boil, I am here for it. I am here for it because Sara Ramirez and Jessica Capshaw are goddesses walking amongst mere mortals. They were powerhouses in this episode. So, Im willing to overlook the reasoning behind how they got to a trial for sole custody of Sofia and focus on what happens once they get there. Because what happens there is so, so good.

Before we dive into the heartbreaking trial, lets give it up for that stellar opening sequence. The cuts back and forth between each woman with her lawyer, as they try, and fail, to settle out of court, were effective in revealing just how contentious this battle has become. It all led into a gorgeous title card that gave me actual chills. ACTUAL CHILLS, PEOPLE. Kudos to Kevin McKidd, who directed this episode. Last week, I was objectifying his junk, this week I am in awe of his behind-the-scenes prowess. Its a confusing time for us all.

Now, lets lawyer up. Callies lawyer is feeling great about their odds. Callie has a strong case, made stronger by the quality of character witnesses shes gathered. Arizona tells her own lawyer not to worry about it because, duh, they have THE Richard Webber. Is Richard Webber a local legend or something? Im baffled by the level of confidence this brings AZ, but also I understand it? Webbers the best.

The cross-examinations start out innocuous enough: Owen is forever indebted to Callie for her time spent on the prosthetics for vets, and DeLuca says something sweet about the happy home he lives in with Arizona and Sofia.

Then, Penny Blake takes the stand. AZs lawyer wants to play up the fact that Callie would be moving Sofia across the country with a woman who barely knows the girl. Penny easily answers questions about Sofias favorite color, favorite animal, favorite cereal, but later gets tripped up when shes asked what grade Sofia is in. It all goes downhill from there.

Before Arizona can feel like shes scored any kind of points, Bailey heads up to the witness stand and Callies lawyer gets real. She badgers and bullies Bailey, trying to get the Chief to admit that Arizonas specialty is much more erratic than Callies. Bailey is having none of this hating on successful, brilliant women, but its too late, the attorney is turning one of Arizonas strengths into a weakness. So, yeah, things are getting ugly.

Callies a little horrified. That night, she and Mer slug back some tequila and wine and Callie laments how she got here. Even worse, she knows Mark would be appalled. We dont even get one little flashback to Daddy McSteamy. I told you this episode was depressing!

AZ decompresses from the day by heading back to the hospital to check on a patient. Pregnant Teen Jenny and her overbearing-but-secretly-loving mother, Tara, are back! Jenny slipped and is leaking amniotic fluid. The obstetrician on call while Arizona is dealing with custody woes, Dr. Russo, has thus far managed to keep the baby in utero, and that is exactly how Arizona wants it.

Back at court, its time to bring out the big guns: Meredith and Webber. Unfortunately, neither of their times on the stand go exactly as planned. Merediths words get twisted around so that she is basically admitting Callie has built a support system of family and friends for Sofia that she would be turning her back on should she move to NYC. When Richard takes the stand, the evil lawyer-lady takes Richard and AZs lovely friendship and turns it on its head. Its evidence that Arizona was giving up time with her daughter to go out drinking and pick up women. Arizona has been turned into a sex-crazed workaholic.

The real emotional tour de force doesnt come until Callie and Arizona each take the stand.

Callie describes the day Sofia was born  the car accident, how she thought she might not be strong enough to survive, but forced herself to for her baby. Being a mother is what saved Callies life that day. When Arizona gets her turn, Callies lawyer tries to play up that Arizona is Sofias adoptive mother, as if that makes her any less of a parent. Arizona has no time for that. She lays into the lawyer about how insulting that line of questioning is and makes it clear that she chose Sofia, she chose motherhood. It was the best decision shes ever made. The judge isnt audibly clapping, but I know she secretly wants to.

And then Arizonas phone rings. It rings and rings, until Arizona stops her testimony to check the message: Jenny is in trouble. Arizona knows that if she doesnt get to the hospital, it could spell disaster for Jenny and her baby; if she leaves, shes proving the lawyers point about Arizonas inability to be there for her daughter. AZ is a doctor, she cant ignore a patient in need. She seems resigned to the fact that this will tank her case, so she does the only thing left to do: She admits that she wants Sofia, but that whichever way this shakes out, she knows her daughter will be loved. And then she walks out to go save a life.

Am I still typing actual words? I cant see my computer screen through my tears.

Arizona ends up saving Jenny and her baby from an unnecessary and premature C-section, because shes a badass boss lady doctor, and returns to the courthouse the next day for the final verdict. She lashes out at Callie for allowing her lawyer to play dirty, but seems resigned to the fact that she is going to lose custody of her daughter.

Oh, Arizona, you dummy! Have you never watched Greys Anatomy before? Greys never met a fake-out it didnt like. The cards looked so stacked in favor of Callie that, of course, when Meredith opens the door to hand Sofia over to the person that the judge appointed sole custody to, it is Arizona standing in the doorway. Arizona takes Sofia home and Callie stands in Merediths living room, beside herself. Penny attempts to comfort her, but Callie pushes her away.

Hey! Maybe there is a silver lining to this thing after all!

Laughter Is the Best Medicine, Except for Real Medicine:

Objection! Speculation. Of course Bailey would try to take over all the lawyering while on the stand.

A Once in a Lifetime Butt: The title of my forthcoming memoir or Jo Wilson reminding Steph what she left behind (youre welcome) when she cut Kyle Diaz loose via letter? Both. It is both of those things. Unfortunately, that Once in a Lifetime Butt shows up at the hospital again, this time with meningitis. Lets enjoy the funny while we can.

(youre welcome) when she cut Kyle Diaz loose via letter? Both. It is both of those things. Unfortunately, that Once in a Lifetime Butt shows up at the hospital again, this time with meningitis. Lets enjoy the funny while we can. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Its great that April and Jackson have become so mature and civilized that they can amicably discuss custody of their baby without any lawyers. Whats even better is that the two holidays Jackson cares about most are Halloween and the Super Bowl. I didnt think it was humanly possible for Jackson to get more attractive, but it happened.

Sob Scale: 7/10

Mama Tried was brutal from beginning to end, but the standout moments were Arizona walking out of the courtroom knowing she may have just lost Sofia, and Callies terrified How the hell did this happen? Oh, Callie, you know how it happened.
Hee Haw! Frieze, this week. Photo: Carl Swanson

Earlier this week, I was standing in line to see a raggedy donkey loiter under a glittering chandelier in a tent. It was the Frieze art fair VIP day, Wednesday, and a woman behind me  smartly dressed and middle-aged, was patiently explicating this exalted 4-H scene to her apparently more middlebrow friend: Do you know him? Hes out of the box. He makes fun of everything.

Its a donkey? her friend asked, as they were allowed inside the donkey annex, which featured straw on the floor.

See, I told you we had to see it.

She was not speaking of (or to) the animal, but about the artist, Maurizio Cattelan, whod created this installation, which, as the wall text they were reading while in line explained, was a reenactment of his first first gallery show in New York, in 1994, at the Daniel Newburg Gallery, in Soho. Titled Enter at Your Own RiskDo Not Touch, Do Not Feed, No Smoking, No Photographs, No Dogs, Thank you, it lasted less than a day  there were noise complaints, among other health hazards (at Frieze, the donkey is periodically allowed a break to go outside, though his handler, who called himself the donkeys agent, told me the animal preferred to crap inside the tent, always in the same spot, stage left)  and it was also the final show of the Newburg Gallery, which was closing. The week before, the Frieze Projects curator, Cecilia Alemani, explained that in it, Cattelan, who was always inspired in his work by the specter of failure, literally made an ass out of himself. It was a form of self-portrait, co-opting you into the in-joke, which isnt to say that its not profound, at least if youre susceptible to such droll profundities (as I am). Alemani had told me that they were under some pressure to get the right donkey, which is to say one who wasnt too cute, or the piece would lose its dolorous impact.

That donkey in a gallery marked the start of the most productive part of Cattelans rather heady art career, which made use of taxidermied animals and semi-allegorical wax figures, and somehow made him one of the most famous and successful artists of the 00s. It all literally culminated in a retrospective at the Guggenheim in 2011, titled All, in which he hung everything he ever made from trusses from the ceiling, dangling into the atrium bowl. At which point he declared he was retiring. You ever feel tired and want to change occupations? he asked me that year. People have been asking for things for so long. If I was really making more works, I would have already. I dont know  If you were in a band, you might feel you start to repeat yourself.

But the market didnt forget him: His 2001 work, Him, a boy-size Hitler apparently praying, is expected to sell at a Christies auction this month for between $10 million and $15 million; that would surpass Untitled, a 2001 wax self-portrait  complete with real hair  of Cattelan sticking his head out of a hole in the floor, which went for $7.9 million in 2010.

And so now, not unlike the Spice Girls (or LCD Soundsystem), hes back for more, with the Frieze career-nativity scene, as well as a documentary, called, appropriately if coincidentally, Maurizio Cattelan: Be Right Back. It was named after a show he did back home in Italy, before he moved to New York, for which he produced no work, but merely placed a sign in the window of a gallerys locked door, saying Be Right Back (in Italian, since it was in Italy). The doc premiered April 24, on the last day of the Tribeca Film Festival, in the Flash Gordongroovy theater buried, crypt-like, under the Guggenheim drum, and was introduced by Nancy Spector, whod curated All. The film, by Maura Axelrod, is deftly and entertainingly constructed, albeit under several rather daunting conceptual restraints, not the least being that Cattelan prefers not to talk on camera, or in public at all if he can help it, which is why, years back, he deputized the ridiculously articulate journalist turned curator Massimiliano Gioni to talk for him. Cattelan is, among other things, a charming and disarming master of collaboration, co-optation and manipulation, and, in order to get the documentary done, Axelrod experienced all those things from her subject. With a seductively raised eyebrow, he can make you want to be a part of the joke, too, and even feel protective of him. At the premiere, Axelrod admitted: We play with truth and fiction quite a lot in the film (wait, is that actually his daughter in the film, who looks just like him and is called his archivist?). It tells a slightly mythologized version of his coming-of-age story  the portrait of an artist as a prankster  from Italian outsider-striver to, well, the Guggenheim. The moral of her tale seems to be, as Milanese gallerist Massimo De Carlo says in the film, He has not dedicated himself to art, he has dedicated his life to success in art, which is different.

Axelrods documentary started with the assumption that I dont think the general public knows who Maurizio Cattelan is, she told me later. I had to make the movie with all the different audiences in mind. Shed met Cattelan when she was doing a TV-news segment on his infamous sculpture of the then-pope, John Paul II, struck by a meteorite, called The Ninth Hour. I got really used to his work, she says, about this attempt to bring it to a non-museumgoing audience, while also maintaining its credibility to those more familiar with him. But its really quite shocking to the general public. Its part of Cattelans catalytic power. His work can provoke titters in the determinedly sophisticated, or provoke others to action: Some members of the Polish parliament, for example, tried to save this effigy of Pope John Paul II from its apparent humiliation.

The documentary also explores how, as Axelrod puts it, the weird and nonsensical art market works, and there are interesting and telling depictions of well-known collectors, from an ADD-afflicted Adam Lindemann to Alberto Mugrabi (depicted in ankle socks) to a dignified Dakis Joannou. Much of the film shows how Cattelan gets people who can help him to do so  curators, journalists, collectors, dealers, and, in the end, Axelrod herself. His emotional radar is a pretty finely calibrated thing. He reads people and understands how they work, says Axelrod. Its almost like youre in on a joke, youre a part of something.

At certain points, she resorts to amusing animated segments to help move the story along.

The interviews with his sister and his ex-girlfriend are affecting, but its hard to break through to who Cattelan actually is  whatever that means exactly  which frustrated Axelrod, an experienced and accomplished journalist. I worked in TV, she says. Youre trying to get people to cry. Thats the end goal on TV. Part of her skill in that world was, she says, that I was this empathetic woman. But with this project, I would try to get any sort of emotion, out of the interviews, and there was none. That was hard for me to accept. Harder was that Cattelan, who helped with the documentary, wouldnt be interviewed. I thought I would be so awesome that I would get him to, she says. It took a while for me to realize that there was no way that that would happen. I was crushed.

And so, as he has in the past, Massimiliano Gioni (who happens to be married to Alemani, and is today the artistic director of the New Museum) ventriloquizes a bit on camera for Cattelan. Though, at the premiere  which is also the first time hed seen the doc  he seemed taken aback by how much he is a part of the film, telling the audience during a Q&A afterward, For once, Maurizio should come up and do something and declaring that I had to come out of retirement for the role. Its my swan song as Maurizio. (An audience member asked him: Have you ever had sex with anyone who thought you were Maurizio? Except with myself, no.)

But coming out of retirement was very much in the air that night. After the 2011 show, Cattelan abdicated his art-star throne, announcing he would cease making work. He did other things: With some longtime collaborators, including Gioni, he opened a tiny gallery for a while, called Family Business. Cattelan is also a noted collector and information addict, deeply involved in the emerging art world: See the dispatches he wrote for New York Magazines culture website, Vulture, about (mostly) young artists in Athens and in Los Angeles. And with photographer Pierpaolo Ferrari, he created a series of surrealistic photographs as a kind of magazine, later put together into a book, called Toiletpaper (The TP team also did this New York fashion portfolio in 2014.)

So hes stayed busy, though he seemed to be getting restless again. That night, Nancy Spector, who this spring left the Guggenheim for the Brooklyn Museum, introduced the documentary, and linked it to one of her final curatorial feats there: the bringing of Cattelans return-to-the-art-world object, America (on loan) to the fifth-floor-ramp bathroom of the Guggenheim. Its a solid 18-karat-gold working replica of a Kohler toilet, paid for by private funds, which is to be presented at the museum through the group patronage efforts of Stefan Edlis and Gael Neeson, Wendy Fisher, Marian Goodman Gallery, Dakis and Lietta Joannou, Galerie Perrotin, Beth Swofford, and Dasha Zhukova. It was supposed to open for, uh, business this week  the same day as the VIP preview of Frieze, in fact  but its currently backed up, delayed indefinitely by production problems at the foundry. Apparently, its not easy to make a functioning golden toilet.

After all, in 1921, Lenin boasted: When we are victorious on a worldwide scale, we will make public toilets out of gold on the streets of the worlds largest cities. And that dream had its implementation difficulties as well.

A clip from the documentary is below.
CBN gets nod as 4th telecom operator Updated: 2016-05-06 07:50 By Fan Feifei(China Daily)

The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology on Thursday issued a telecom license to China Broadcasting Network Ltd, making it the nation's fourth telecom operator.

The ministry said in a statement on its official website that it has issued a basic telecom business license to CBN, permitting the company to operate internet data transmission business and domestic telecommunication infrastructure service business.

The ministry has also allowed China Cable Television Network Co Ltd, a subsidiary of CBN, to operate the two businesses.

CBN now becomes the nation's fourth telecom operator after China Mobile Communications Corp, China United Network Communications Group Co Ltd and China Telecommunications Corp, intensifying the competition among domestic telecom carriers.

China Mobile's stock slipped 0.17 percent to HK$87.9 ($11.33) on Thursday on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and China Telecom declined 0.79 percent to HK$3.75. Shares in China Unicom were down 0.55 percent to close at HK$9.02.

The purpose is to promote a three-network convergence, which combines cable television, telecommunications and the internet into one seamless chain, and promote competition in the market, said the ministry.

Chen Zhaoxiong, vice-minister of industry and information technology, said awarding the telecom license to CBN is of great importance and the authorities also imposed related conditions on the company.
Big hopes as China hosts the G20 Updated: 2016-05-06 06:54 By Zhang Yunbi(China Daily Europe)

As China prepares to host its first G20 Summit, the importance of this grouping of major world economies is becoming more apparent, according to experts.

The event, slated for Sept 4 and 5 in East China's Hangzhou city, comes at a time when increasing deflationary risks loom over the global economy's recovery.

Boosting growth among developing countries is highlighted on the summit's agenda, as is making more progress in areas such as global climate change.

Since December, around 30 preparatory meetings have been held at the ministerial or working-group level, including a gathering of personal representatives of heads of state, known as sherpas, as well as finance, trade and foreign ministers.

More than 30 additional meetings are scheduled to ensure the summit's success, according to the latest calendar of events published on the G20's website.

On April 8, a presidency statement was released following the Second G20 Sherpa Meeting in Guangzhou, stating that the assembled representatives would work toward implementation of the Paris Agreement, which was adopted at the 21st Session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in December.

Huang Wei, a researcher on global economic governance at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, notes: "The G20 now represents the best efficiency in the aspect of global economic governance", while other mechanisms, such as the United Nations and G7, are faced with higher costs or a lack of influence.

"The influence of emerging economies upon the global economy and relevant policies will further expand."

Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs and China's G20 sherpa Li Baodong has described the Hangzhou summit as "the first time that the G20 will formulate an action plan on the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development".

This ambitious agenda, adopted by the UN General Assembly in September, is designed to serve as the launch pad for action to promote shared prosperity and well-being for the next 15 years.

"The concept of development runs through the whole design of the agenda and its outcomes for the Hangzhou Summit, thus serving as an overarching theme in the preparatory work," Li told the UN General Assembly in New York on April 21.

Upon China's initiative, the G20 is examining ways to support industrialization in Africa and what are known as least developed countries, Li says.

Zhu Jiejin, an associate professor of global governance studies at Fudan University in Shanghai, says if the G20 takes the 2030 Agenda as one of its policy goals, the gathering itself will win more recognition for its role as a "leading international economic cooperation platform".

This will "offer political impetus" for implementing the agenda, make the work of international organs such as the UN easier and encourage more countries to join in, Zhu says.

Gao Hucheng, minister of commerce, has said China will work alongside various parties to push for establishing the G20 trade and investment cooperation mechanism to "regularize" the G20 trade ministers' meeting.

"It is hoped that the G20 global trade growth strategy will be formulated, and the G20 cooperation framework on trade areas is expected to be built, in order to address the trade and financing issues of developing countries and small and medium enterprises," Gao said at a meeting on the sidelines of Boao Asia Forum on March 24.

Huang Wei noted that although the G20 has built mechanisms for regularized meetings of finance, labor ministers and governors of central banks, many other ministerial-level meetings are not regularized yet.

"This means there is a lack of long-term, lasting discussions on a range of issues, as well as the absence of a fundamental preparation for nurturing consensus and outcomes," Huang says.

zhangyunbi@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily European Weekly 05/06/2016 page1)
The Education Service Center Region 12 Technology Foundation recently awarded five school districts and one charter school with more than $49,000 in grant funds to support educational technology programs.

The new technology projects were imagined and submitted for review, based on the specific needs of students within each school.

Recipients were:

Waco ISD ($5,000)  Digital Library for Success

Waco Charter School ($9,020)  The Reading Pen Project

La Vega ISD ($9,684)  Welcome to Appy Hour

Moody ISD ($10,000)  The STEAM Garage

Teague ISD ($8,700)  High School Print Lab

Belton ISD ($6,844)  Look Mom! Were on Apple TV!

Collectively, these funds will help 2,027 students. The grant funds will be used to purchase state-of-the-art equipment, such as 3-D pens, printers and iPads Minis for reading and STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) projects, as well as provide an online curriculum library and technology collaboration hub.

The ESC Region 12 Education Technology Foundation became part of our vision more than two years ago, ESC Region 12 Executive Director Jerry Maze said.

To now present grant money that helps Region 12 schools place instructional technology in the hands of students is an exciting victory. We are proud to support our schools in their efforts to give all students first-class technology in the classroom.

Since its creation in 2012, the ESC Region 12 Technology Foundation has awarded more than $210,000 to 22 school districts and two charter schools.

-----

ESC Region 12 photo

Representatives from Moody ISD received a grant totaling $10,000 to fund the development of a STEAM Garage accessible to the entire district. It will feature a variety of stations, including 3-D pens and 3-D printers.

ESC Region 12 photo

Representatives from La Vega Elementary School received a grant totaling $9,684 for 18 iPad Minis and related supplies for third-grade teachers and students to discover nontraditional solutions to problems in reading.
Voters are returning to the polls Saturday across McLennan County as residents cast ballots for municipal and school board elections.

There were 652 early ballots cast in the three municipal elections and one school board election administered by McLennan County.

Waco City Council member Kyle Deaver is unopposed for the mayoral race and will replace Mayor Malcolm Duncan Jr. Waco residents have the chance to cast their ballot for two other seats on the city council as well.

Mark Stephen Shaw is challenging Wilbert Austin for the District 1 seat, and Dustin Weins is challenging John Kinnaird for the District 3 seat.

Bellmead residents are voting to fill three seats on the council and voting on the tax rate.

Bellmead Mayor Gary Moore has been challenged by Vincent Hendrix Sr. for a seat on the council. Moore organized a petition and gathered enough signatures to force the city to allow residents to vote on whether to roll back the tax rate.

Residents will vote on whether to roll back a 2-cent increase to the citys property tax rate, from 31.86 to 30 cents per $100 of property value, just slightly above the 2015 rate of 29.86 cents. A divided city council voted to increase the rate last year.

The countys joint election also includes the city of Lorena and the Lorena Independent School District election.

Several other municipalities and school districts in the county are holding independent elections Saturday.

McLennan County Joint Election

Voting centers: Click here for a map

 Bellmead Civic Center, 3900 Parrish St.

 First Assembly of God Church, 6701 Bosque Blvd.

 G.W. Carver Middle School, 1601 J.J. Flewellen Road

 Lorena City Hall, 107-A S. Interstate 35 Frontage Road

 McLennan Community College Conference Center, 4601 N. 19th St.

 MHMR Center for Developmental Services, 3420 W. Waco Drive; Peace Lutheran Church, 9301 Panther Way

 Tennyson Middle School, 6100 Tennyson Drive

 Waco Convention Center, 100 Washington Ave.

 Waco Multi Purpose Community Center, 1020 Elm St.

All polling centers are open 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Saturday.

Contested races on the ballot

Waco City Council

District 1: Wilbert Austin, Mark Stephen Shaw

Bellmead City Council

At large: Vincent Hendrix Sr., Gary Moore

Precinct 3: Mathew Jordon, Mark Pace

Precinct 4: Jose R. Arrollo Jr., Ernest Butch Anz

Bellmead referendum

Reducing the tax rate for the current year from $0.318608 per $100 of property value to $0.303761.

Lorena City Council

At large (pick 3): Jeff Linnstaedter, Robert Braswell, Kelly Yarbrough, J. Fagner

Lorena ISD

At large (pick 2): Denny Kramer, Philip Jander, Wade Durbin

Other McLennan County municipal and school district elections

Woodway City Council

Ward 2, Place 2: Steve Sorrells, Scott A. Giddings

Residents can vote at Woodway City Hall, 922 Estates Drive, from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.

Beverly Hills City Council

Residents can vote at Beverly Hills City Hall, 3418 Memorial Drive, from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.

At large (pick 3): Rita Ms. Z Zolecki, Michael Thompson, Tony Garcia, Joe Frank Holder

China Spring ISD

Residents can vote at China Spring Intermediate School Library, 4001 Flat Rock Road, from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.

Place 6: Keith Click, Chris Gerik

Connally ISD

Residents can vote at the Lacy Lakeview Civic Center, 505 E. Craven Ave., from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.

Place 1: Aaron Mitzel, E.Z. Padron

Place 2: Danny Raines, Jason Hancock

Midway ISD

Residents can vote at Hewitt City Hall, 200 Patriot Court; Woodway City Hall, 922 Estates Drive; or the MISD Administration Building, 13885 Woodway Drive.

Place 5: Pamela Watts, Debra Jones Tumlin
People without a high school diploma can earn a computer support specialist certificate as they work toward a GED diploma through a new McLennan Community College program.

Six non-remedial courses will be offered from May to December as part of MCCs Career Pathways program. A $20,000 grant from the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board made it possible, said Janet Phelps, a transition specialist at MCCs Adult Education and Literacy Department.

What sets this program apart is not just that you can access college credit hours without a GED or high school diploma but also that were going to pay for students to do a portion of this program, Phelps said. Were going to help with books, supplies and tuition.

Friday is the sign-up deadline. Before the credit courses begin May 31, a non-credit bridge to college course will give the students an idea of what to expect. Phelps hopes to have 15 students enter the program.

In addition to the GED diploma and computer support specialist certificate, Phelps said the program will provide a foundation for those pursuing a one- or two-year degree in computer information systems and applications, computer applications, paralegal, administrative assistance or medical office assistance.

These are students who have not experienced a lot of academic success in their lives, Phelps said. This program is really meant to be a very supportive and low-barrier entryway to give people in our community a chance to be successful and get college credits.
Police arrested a 19-year-old man Thursday who is accused of robbing a Baylor University student at gunpoint in March with another man who has not been identified.

The Baylor student pulled his own gun as he was being robbed, and one of the suspects fired his weapon, hitting the students car, according to police accounts after the robbery.

Jaurque Marcell was arrested on a charge of aggravated robbery after Facebook posts help police identify him as a suspect, Waco police Sgt. W. Patrick Swanton said.

Marcell and a second man met a student in Oakwood Park who was trying to sell electronics on Craigslist, Swanton said.

According to the arrest affidavit, the student, Daniel Rager, agreed to give the two men a ride to a home in the 900 block of Ewing Avenue. Once there, the two suspects each pulled a handgun and robbed Rager of several items, including an iPad, a Playstation and Bluetooth headphones, Rager said.

Police said Rager, who has a concealed handgun license, also pulled a handgun.

During the robbery, the black male wearing a red jersey with the number 2 and another unidentified number fired his weapon at the victim and struck the victims vehicle, according to the affidavit for Marcell.

Both suspects fled, according the affidavit, and no injuries were reported.

During the investigation, a Facebook page allegedly belonging to Marcell showed photos of Marcell wearing a red jersey with the number 20. There was also a photo of Marcell displaying a handgun, according to the affidavit.

Swanton said Marcell was arrested Wednesday on a traffic warrant before an aggravated robbery warrant was served. The phone Marcell had on him at the time of the arrest matched the phone the subjects used to contact Rager, according to the affidavit.

Swanton said the search for the second suspect is ongoing.

Im very glad one of them has been caught, Rager said. I hope he leads the police to the second guy.
PRAGUE  A committee at East Butler Public Schools will be working through the summer to come up with a recommendation for what to do at the districts facilities, including the building that now sits vacant in Prague.

East Butler Superintendent Sam Stecher said the Facilities Enhancement Committee was scheduled to meet this week. It will be the third meeting for the group that is comprised of six Board of Education members, two representatives each from the districts three wards.

Stecher said the committee has been tasked with two assignments and are currently in the research and education mode.

One of their tasks is to make a recommendation for possible facility enhancements at the schools in Brainard and Dwight. The board has hired BD Construction to assess the needs of those buildings and help work through potential costs for changes.

The groups other task is to make a recommendation for what to do with the school building in Prague. Students have not sat in a classroom in Prague since May 2013.

Stecher said no decision has been made as to what the district will do with the building.

The range of options are maintaining it as is to demolishing the entire building. The superintendent said his best guess would be the final recommendation will fall somewhere in between.

For example, he said one suggestion has been to remove only the old portion of the building, making the remaining structure more maintainable.

Stecher said all the cards are still on the table as to future ownership of the property. The district continuing ownership and maintenance is an option.

The Facilities Enhancement Committee will also continue the discussion with the Village of Prague as to its interest in the property.

A third possibility would be to sell to a private party.

Stecher said he charged the committee to make a recommendation based on three guiding principles.

One, what is best for the students; two, what has community support; and three, what is financially responsible, he said.

Right now, the committee is investigating all of the options and assessing their impact on the district and the community.

Stecher expected the committee could be ready to make recommendations on both of their tasks by August.

In the meantime, the district will proceed with clearing out some surplus inventory. A garage sale has been slated at the school in Prague on June 18. This is the same weekend as the community-wide garage sales.

The schools garage sale will have supplies and equipment.

Well have a more comprehensive list here shortly, Stecher said.

School memorabilia would not be on that garage sale list. A decision on what could be sold at auction and what should be kept will be made after a decision is made about the building in Prague.

If the district decided to maintain a building, it would serve the community to put that on display, Stecher added.

Part of the committees process to make recommendations will be to host community meetings.

Well have two or three meetings this summer for community input, Stecher said.
SAIC unveils big plans for e-vehicles Updated: 2016-05-06 06:57 By Siva Sankar(China Daily Europe)

Automaker aims to boost sales in domestic and international markets

The car industry may be taking tentative steps toward producing new energy vehicles with a focus on small models, but SAIC Motor Corp Ltd, China's largest automaker, is thinking big.

At the recent Auto China 2016 show in Beijing, SAIC Maxus, a subsidiary, displayed two large zero-emissions vehicles: the seven-seat EG10 and 15-seat EV80.

A Production line of SAIC Motor Corp, whose subsidiary SAIC Maxus displayed two large zero-emissions vehicles at the recent auto China show in Beijing. Provided to China Daily

What's more, the automaker is already thinking about exports, particularly to the Middle East, Australia and New Zealand, even though the governments there are not as zealous as China in encouraging environmentally friendly cars, company executives say.

"We're in this for the long term. If you invest a lot, you earn a lot eventually," says Shawber Guan, SAIC Maxus' overseas business sales manager.

SAIC Motor will also step up efforts to increase sales of its new energy vehicles in China, adds Wu Fengjie, its regional deputy general manager for sales.

Three major initiatives will mark SAIC's efforts. First, it will focus on urban families for the EG10, and travel agencies and mobile businesses for the EV80. (To popularize the concept, SAIC Maxus designed an EV80 mobile coffeeshop for the expo.)

Second, heavy investment will be made toward changing the mindset of people in global markets. "We have already made a good start," Guan says. "Supportive government policies and advanced technologies are good but not enough. We'll increase our advertising budget to explain the advantages of new energy vehicles to consumers in target markets."

Third, SAIC will support creation of the necessary infrastructure like charging points. "It'd be good if city-level governments could emulate Shanghai, where buyers of new energy vehicles get free number plates that otherwise cost 86,000 yuan ($13,200; 11,500 euros)," Guan says. "The city will install 10,000 charging stations in the next three years."

Executives say SAIC's green cars can cover a distance of 150 to 200 kilometers on a full charge, enough to cover the daily needs of an average couple with children.

This year, in China, the company aims to sell 6,000 EV80s, priced about 500,000 yuan, and 1,000 EG10s, priced at 400,000 yuan.

"Our e-vehicles can attain speeds of up to 200 kilometers per hour. We can use our manufacturing capacity to make up to 20,000 units a year," Guan says.

It was reported that a senior official with the People's Liberation Army was impressed with SAIC's new energy vehicles at the expo, he says. "But we're not intending to actively seek government orders.

"We're proud of our quality and reputation. The government's support for new energy vehicles is encouraging. Past that, if we also receive orders, we'd be very glad."

In the Middle East, the United Arab Emirates is reported to be keener than others to switch over to new energy cars.

After the Dubai Motor Show in November, local distributors requested that SAIC arrange a few sample vehicles for extended test runs, Guan says.

As European Union regulations move toward the Euro 6 standard for emissions, which is expected to increase demand for e-vehicles, SAIC also plans to target that market, including Britain, he adds. "We also have long-term plans to enter the US and Canada."

siva@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily European Weekly 05/06/2016 page25)
UK a beachhead for Chinese firms Updated: 2016-05-06 06:57 By Cecily Liu(China Daily Europe)

Construction companies using advantages such as the ability to provide financing for infrastructure to gain a foothold in West

Chinese firms are making unprecedented moves to build infrastructure projects in the United Kingdom such as power plants and commercial and logistics centers, using the country as a first point of entry into mature Western markets.

This comes as the infrastructure growth rate is slowing in China, and many leading construction firms are looking for growth internationally.

A digital sketch of Airport City Manchester, half of which will be constructed by Beijing Construction Engineering Group. Photos Provided to China Daily

The UK market is unlike places where Chinese infrastructure firms have worked in emerging markets. In those places, they typically create a cost advantage by bringing in a large construction team. In the UK, Chinese firms are finding new advantages in technology, management expertise and financial investment support for projects.

In return, Chinese companies in the UK are gaining valuable experience to be used in other markets.

"We do not expect the majority of the profitability to come from the construction process, because a big portion of the construction work is actually subcontracted to local firms in the UK, and our part is to a large extent a learning process," says Peter Zhang, chief executive of SinoFortone, the UK subsidiary of Liaoning Fortone, a private construction business in Shenyang.

SinoFortone struck a deal in October to invest 2 billion pounds ($2.9 billion; 2.7 billion euros) in two 299-megawatt combined heat and power stations in Wales generating electricity from imported plant waste.

The company will participate in the construction, alongside British firm Orthios, which originally came up with the project's design and now is a minority shareholder.

Yu Dongwen, UK operations director of Beijing Construction Engineering Group, says the UK market's relatively lower profit margin is justified by its lower levels of risks.

"In some developing countries, we have to bear a lot more political, economic and currency risks. In the UK, the sharing of risks is fair and is clearly assigned to the different parties through contracts, so it is a very attractive market for us to work in," Yu says.

BCEG struck a deal to invest 20 percent equity in the 800 million pound Airport City Manchester project in 2013. The company is responsible for 50 percent of the project's construction, which started last year.

The project is expected to create 16,000 jobs in Manchester over 12 years, including 6,500 temporary jobs during construction and 9,500 jobs when complete.

BCEG and SinoFortone's investments fit into a larger trend of recent deals, including CIMC Modular Building Systems' construction of over a dozen hotels in the UK, and CITIC Construction's building of the 1.7 billion pound Asian Business Park in London's Royal Albert Dock. The Asian Business Park project is expected to create up to 30,000 jobs locally and generate 6 billion pounds of growth.

Common to these deals is the construction firms' participation in the funding, which is less common with Western construction firms.

Christopher Bovis, professor of European and international business law at the University of Hull, says Chinese companies' ability to act as both financial investors and construction contractors helps their profitability.

"As a financial investor, they can be incentivized to improve the efficiency of the supply chain and create savings through volume, so that the project will generate better returns."

Chinese infrastructure companies' experience in calculating financial risks also makes them more confident in acting as financial investors.

"These firms have existing relationships with Chinese banks, which have abundant capital. In addition, the large size of many Chinese infrastructure firms also means that they are more competitive than smaller Western infrastructure firms to secure loans from banks," Bovis says.

The Chinese firms' ability to fund projects gives them an advantage in bidding, since the UK's infrastructure sector is looking for fresh funds.

In 2014, a research report by law firm Pinsent Masons and the Centre for Economics and Business Research think tank showed that China has the potential to invest 105 billion pounds in UK infrastructure by 2025 across sectors including energy, property and transport. This figure represents the gap between the UK's current infrastructure needs and investment the government has planned.

The passing of the UK's Cities and Local Government Devolution Act last year means many local authorities will find it increasingly difficult to fund infrastructure, hence private sector money is increasingly important, says Martin Reeves, chief executive of the West Midlands Combined Authority.

"Devolution in England has created a lot of potential autonomy for local areas to become self-sufficient in providing enabling and appropriate infrastructure to accelerate economic growth and prosperity, so having Chinese investors on board for infrastructure deals would reduce the amount of risk we have to bear as local governments and as combined authorities," he says.

Reeves' team estimates the West Midlands area needs 8 billion pounds of infrastructure investment in the next 15 years, but the local authority could only finance 1 billion pounds by itself.

cecily.liu@mail.chinadailyuk.com

(China Daily European Weekly 05/06/2016 page28)
Linking western China, Middle East Updated: 2016-05-06 06:56 By Du Juan and Wang Huazhong(China Daily Europe)



Dancers at Yinchuan Hedong Airport in the Ningxia Hui autonomous region welcome a Boeing 777 from the Middle East on May 3, when Emirates Airline launched its first direct flight between Dubai and Yinchuan, capital of Ningxia. Zuo Mingyuan / For China Daily

Dubai-Yinchuan flights strengthen Ningxia as strategic point in Belt and Road Initiative

Clad in traditional clothing and holding the sweet tea that local Hui people serve guests, a group of dancers welcomed a Boeing 777 from the Middle East to northwestern China on May 3.

Yinchuan, capital of the Ningxia Hui autonomous region and home of one of China's largest Muslim communities in the landlocked region, had eagerly awaited the landing of its first Emirates flight.

The Dubai-Yinchuan flight is scheduled for every Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday.

"Ningxia is joining hands with Emirates Airline to launch China's westernmost logistics center on the Silk Road, to develop itself into a strategic highland in the country's westward opening-up and a strategic transit point on the Silk Road Economic Belt," Li Jianhua, Ningxia's top official, said at the opening ceremony.

He said China and Arab countries have great potential for cooperation in trade, finance, tourism and real estate, and this flight serves as a good start.

Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al Maktoum, chairman and chief executive of the airline and Emirates Group, says the route provides fast and convenient connections to Middle Eastern, African and European destinations via Dubai.

"We are confident that this air link will also help boost the flow of trade and tourism to growing central and western parts of China," he says.

After landing at Yinchuan Hedong Airport, the flight will continue east to Zhengzhou, capital of Henan province, before returning.

The Dubai-based carrier already flies to Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou. New routes have been scheduled to make connections to destinations in the Middle East, Europe and Africa, helping local Chinese travel to most cities in the world via Dubai.

The new flight is the latest factor boosting Ningxia's position as a gateway from China to the Middle East and a strategic point in the Belt and Road Initiative.

Contact the writers at dujuan@chinadaily.com.cn
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Residents in Melbourne's most sought-after suburbs are the big beneficiaries of tax cuts detailed in Scott Morrison's first budget.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull's harbourside electorate of Wentworth has the biggest proportion of earners who will benefit fully from income tax cuts unveiled in Tuesday's budget.

More than a third of income earners in the Prime Minister's seat will get the $315 annual relief from the government's decision to lift the threshold at which the second top tax rate applies from $80,000 to $87,000 - the largest share of the 150 electorates in federal parliament.

The Australia Institute has used income data from the last census indexed to 2015 to estimate what proportion of earners in electorates would benefit from the income tax cuts.
At least two people, including a 12-year-old boy, were 'jabbed' with a needle in Melbourne's inner suburbs. Credit:Jason South Addiction was seen as a moral failing In short, when the addicts were black and brown, addiction was a moral failing. Now that they are white - like 90 per cent of new heroin users in the last decade - it is a disease. "The language is very different, because this epidemic is affecting the communities where politicians live," Dr Kolodny says. 'This generation is really sick': Teri Kroll in her Long Island neighbourhood. Credit:Andrew Purcell

"Pharmaceutical companies have created a market for the illegal drug cartels by increasing the number of Americans who are opioid addicted," he continues. "You now have markets for heroin where previously, nobody wanted heroin." Lindenhurst, a beachfront commuter town on Long Island, an hour from New York, is one such community. The streets are deserted, the houses detached, with space for two cars in every driveway. As we pull up outside Teri Kroll's house on Walnut Street, two young men sitting in an idling car assess us with a look and slowly drive away. Teri Kroll with photos of her son Tim. Credit:Andrew Purcell Teri lost her son Tim to an overdose seven years ago. On her left wrist, she wears a green plastic bracelet bearing his name and another, in gold, with a mark for each of his 23 years. A "Timmy Blanket" made from scraps of his clothes is draped over a chair in her living room. "This generation is really sick," she says. "It's sad when you talk to somebody in their late 20s. They know so many people who have this disease."

Tim Kroll died of a heroin overdose. Credit:Kroll Family Three in four new heroin users graduate to the drug from painkillers such as Vicodin and Percocet. Tim was prescribed them to treat migraine headaches when he was 18. A "straight edge" kid who surfed and snowboarded, he had never taken drugs until an unscrupulous doctor (later jailed for selling painkiller prescriptions) promised: "I can help you." In four months, Tim tried seven different drugs before arriving at the strongest prescription opioid, OxyContin 80. He became moody and withdrawn. When his worried parents took him to their GP, the doctor told Tim to stop taking the pills immediately. Instead, addicted, he began to buy them on the black market. Eventually, he turned to heroin. Michael Ferraro in the village square where he used to buy heroin. These days he attends an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting every morning. Credit:Andrew Purcell Addiction stories are rarely linear. Tim tried to quit, then relapsed. He tried to kill himself several times.

One afternoon, as Teri was at her church, asking the priest for advice, Tim closed the garage door and started the car. Teri found him passed out and foaming at the mouth, and rushed him to Nassau County Medical Centre. The Kroll Family in happier times. Credit:Kroll Family The hospital had a residential treatment program. When Tim came out, he was clean, and as far as Teri knows, he remained clean until the night eight months later when he came home, shut his bedroom door and took the dose that killed him. At first, Teri told friends her son had died of heart failure - she had seen it for herself, after all, in the emergency room, as paramedics tried desperately to revive him - but at his funeral, everyone knew what had stopped his heart. Tim and his sister. Credit:Kroll Family

Death notices written in euphemisms The stigma attached to drug addiction is one reason it has taken so long for the severity of the epidemic to become apparent. Parents are reluctant to admit that their daughters prostituted themselves for dope, or that their sons died in the toilet of a McDonald's with a needle in their arm. Death notices in local newspapers are written in euphemisms. This is beginning to change. Teri is now an outspoken advocate for tighter prescription controls. Last summer, she led 1000 people on a march, Long Island United For Recovery. A national event at the mall in Washington DC, Unite To Face Addiction, attracted an estimated 30,000 people. In May 2015, the chief of police in Gloucester, Massachusetts, Leonard Campanello, unilaterally declared that the "war on drugs" had been lost in a Facebook post that has been viewed more than 2 million times. His "Angel" initiative, which directs addicts to treatment rather than lock-up, has been adopted by scores of police departments. The Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act is full of such worthy schemes, including more disposal sites for unwanted medication, community-based recovery programs and enhanced prescription monitoring, but it fails to address the cause of the epidemic: rampant over-prescription of painkillers.

The market for prescription opioids is worth more than $US2 billion a year. Purdue Pharma initially marketed OxyContin as non-habit-forming and abuse-resistant. In 2007, the company paid a legal settlement of $US600 million for this "misbranding" - an amount recouped in seven months of sales. Three years later, the Food and Drug Administration obliged Purdue to reformulate OxyContin, so that the pills could no longer be crushed and snorted. It was an effective tactic, a decade too late. Spotting a growing market, the Mexican cartels had begun to import record amounts of cheap Colombian heroin. For the last five years, the amount of heroin seized in New York has doubled each year. "They're flooding the market. It's a business move," says James Hunt, who leads the New York division of the Drug Enforcement Administration. A bag of heroin currently costs $US6 to $US10. Prescription pills, harder to come by since a crackdown on pad-happy doctors, can cost from $US25 to $US50 each. "You'd have a tough time finding somebody in the United States right now that doesn't know somebody, or have a friend, or the child of a friend, who's addicted to heroin," says Hunt. "It's that rampant."

In a nationwide CVS Health poll, 41 per cent of respondents said they know someone who has abused or is abusing prescription drugs. One man lost a wife, a home and two holiday homes Michael Ferraro, a former stockbroker, lost a wife, a home, two holiday houses and five cars to an addiction that began when an employee showed him a little green pill - OxyContin 80 - and said "you gotta try this". Soon he was taking 10 a day, at $US50 each on the black market. "You know if you put a frog in water and you turn it up slow and he doesn't realise he's screwed until it's too late? That's what the painkillers are like," Ferraro says. After he was arrested trying to buy pills from an undercover cop, he started going to doctors instead, showing them an MRI scan of his herniated disc and circling the crying face on the pain scale chart to indicate that he was in agony.

In June 2011, a painkiller addict, David Laffer, killed four people in a botched robbery at a pharmacy on Long Island. The next time Ferraro went to see one of his "four or five" doctors, the GP pulled up an electronic record showing that he had been prescribed the same drug at a different clinic a few days earlier. As prescription regulations tightened, and doctors got wise, Ferraro turned to heroin. He rolls up his shirt to show me the track marks on his arms. "When you start to inject heroin, you know that your life is unmanageable," he says. "You can go to a doctor, go to a pharmacy and think 'it's OK', but when you're meeting the guy on the street before you go to work and injecting heroin in parking lots " These days, he attends an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting every morning at 6.30. He has a new girlfriend, a career as a medical insurance salesman and a baby boy. At 16 months sober, he is fluent in the language of faith and recovery. Although he lost everything, it could have turned out much worse. "Kids are dying everywhere. Beautiful kids from healthy families. It's becoming a normal thing now," he says. "I'm around a lot of alcoholics and if you slip up with alcohol, there are consequences, maybe you get arrested. If you slip up with heroin after getting clean, you can die."
Cancer case hospital closes for probe Updated: 2016-05-06 06:56 By Wang Xiaodong(China Daily Europe)



The parents of Wei Zexi, a computer science major at Xidian University in Shaanxi province who died of a rare form of cancer, wait outside a funeral home in Xianyang, Shaanxi, on April 13. Zha Chunming / Xinhua

The military hospital at the center of a case in which a dying cancer patient accused search engine Baidu of providing misleading medical information has suspended all services to allow for an investigation.

The Second Hospital of the Beijing Armed Police Corps has said it would respond by May 7 to requests from patients seeking compensation, Beijing News reports.

"Due to the hospital undergoing education and rectification, we will from today temporarily suspend all external services," the hospital said on May 4. The services include emergency care, and outpatient and inpatient care.

The People's Armed Police Force has promised to cooperate fully with the investigation. In a statement released on the Chinese military's news website, the force said it paid great attention to the case and had already sent its own team to the hospital.

Wei Zexi, a student at Xidian University in Xi'an, Shaanxi province, died in early April after receiving immunotherapy treatment at the hospital. Media reports and patients claim the hospital says in its promotional material that the techniques it used for cancer treatment come from Stanford School of Medicine in the United States.

Jana Chow, manager for media relations at Stanford Health Care, said in an email on May 4 that Stanford has "no connection to this hospital, or to this case".

Becky Bach, a media specialist at Stanford School of Medicine, says the college has never had any cooperation with any Chinese hospital in cellular treatment, including the hospital in this case. She doesn't understand why the hospital emphasized the techniques were introduced from Stanford, Caixin magazine quoted her as saying on its WeChat account.

Wei was diagnosed in 2014 with synovial sarcoma - a rare, often terminal cancer of the soft tissue. His parents sent him to the hospital last year after reading on Baidu that the immunotherapy used there had been developed at Stanford and was effective. The student disclosed this online in February, two months before he died.

Families and relatives of patients who have received or are receiving similar treatment say they turned to the hospital after learning from websites or newspapers that the therapy is effective and had been introduced from the US.

According to descriptions on Baidu of the therapy used by the hospital, it treats diseases by extracting immune cells from patients, reproducing large numbers of them to be re-injected into a patient to kill a disease or virus.

Families and relatives of patients receiving the therapy at the hospital confirmed the descriptions.

The website of Stanford School of Medicine states that the school has immunotherapy programs, but the research is in the clinical trials.

wangxiaodong@chinadaily.com.cn
Istanbul: Two prominent Turkish journalists were sentenced to at least five years in jail for revealing state secrets on Friday, just hours after a gunman tried to shoot one of them outside the courthouse in Istanbul.

Can Dundar, editor-in-chief of the opposition Cumhuriyet newspaper, who was unscathed in the shooting, was given five years and 10 months. Erdem Gul, the newspaper's Ankara bureau chief, was sentenced to five years. They were acquitted of some other charges, including trying to topple the government.

The case, in which President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was named as a complainant, has brought widespread condemnation from global rights groups and increased fears about freedom of the press in Turkey, a NATO member and EU candidate country.

Hours before the verdict was handed down, an assailant attempted to shoot Dundar. In full public view, in front of a courthouse, the attack marked an alarming development in a country already grappling with bombings by Kurdish insurgents and spillover of violence from neighbouring Syria.
First, it sold its elephants to China. Now, the Zimbabwe government has placed an ad in its state-run newspaper asking members of the public  at least those who have the money and space  to buy some more of the country's wild animals.

The reason is a devastating, relentless El Nino-induced drought that has left as many as 4 million Zimbabweans in need of food aid and ravished the country's natural resources, decimating crops and drying up water sources. At least 16,500 cattle have died.

Elephants drinking from a pool at a safari site in Zimbabwe. Credit:Imvelo Safari Lodges

Zimbabwe is home to 10 national parks, one of which claimed Cecil the lion, a beloved black mane lion that was killed by a US dentist last year. The parks, filled with giraffes, buffalos, zebras, lions, cheetahs and elephants, draw both tourists and poachers.

Last year, the Zimbabwean government drew scrutiny and the ire of conservationists when it began selling elephants to China. The sale, government officials admitted, would reduce the booming elephant population but also raise money so the country could buy things like anti-poaching and surveillance technology.
Spotlight on rural pain Updated: 2016-05-06 06:57 By Yang Yang(China Daily Europe)

Jia Pingwa's latest novel is as much an account of a wronged woman as it is about the desertion of villages in China

Jia Pingwa's new novel, Ji Hua, tells the story of a woman who is freed after three years after being kidnapped.

The author, who won the Mao Dun Literature Prize, China's top literary award, for his earlier novel Qin Qiang (Qinqiang Opera), has named his latest book after an imaginary flower, which has later found to be the Chinese caterpillar fungus.

Ji Hua is the tale of Hu Die, a girl from a poor rural family who accompanies her single mother to the city. But her urban dreams are soon shattered as she is abducted by a group of people, taken to a village and sold to a family. Raped by Hei Liang, a member of that family, she lives through her troubles until her mother rescues her with the help of police and a reporter.

But the seeming end of the ordeal doesn't leave her happy. She returns to the same village to reunite with her baby boy, whose biological father is her former captor.

"When I wrote the ending, I wrote it as a start, another start of Hu Die's journey," Jia, 64, told his audience at a recent ceremony in Beijing to launch his book, which has been published by People's Literature Publishing House.

"Nobody knows how it goes from there - would she be beaten and disabled like many others in real life or would she try and work things out with Hei," he says in a strong provincial accent.

Jia is among China's most influential contemporary writers, and his books have been translated into many languages, including English, French, German, Russian, Japanese and Korean.

Chinese Nobel-laureate Mo Yan wrote in Soochow Academic, a bilingual magazine published in Jiangsu province: "One cannot imagine any research on contemporary Chinese literature without a close study of the works of Jia Pingwa."

Ji Hua was written based on a real-life story that Jia had heard from a resident of Xi'an, in Northwest China's Shaanxi province, a decade ago.

As Jia writes in the book's postscript: "The story stabbed my heart like a knife. Each time I thought of it, I felt a deeper pain."

But it took Jia a while to write the story as he searched for a narrative style.

"I kept thinking of how I could tell the story about the miserable experience of an abducted woman without making it sound melodramatic," he says.

Jia, who also comes from a rural family, then began to focus on population thinning in rural areas of China. Last year, he went to the Shaanxi countryside, visiting many villages along the highways.

"To my surprise, I saw only three or four people around big houses, but almost none around other residences," he says.

When he looked through the cracks of doors, he saw tall, wild grass growing in the yards.

Several years ago, in many remote villages in Shaanxi, the number of residents fell so much that the villages were merged into one.

"The villages need to survive, but there are very few young people left because they all go to big cities to look for income opportunities. There are almost no women (in the villages)," he says.

Many women who go to the cities with their husbands either divorce or abandon them, fearing the prospect of returning to the poor villages.

"In the past, Chinese literature either criticized or praised life in rural areas. But now it's impossible to do so," says Jia.

"Watching the situation arouses an unspeakable pain, just like the pain felt when a couple that has lost their only child sees a neighbor's child. It's a pain only the couple knows."

The situation reminded Jia of the story about the abducted girl, and resulted in the new novel of around 200 pages - his shortest - using a concept he borrowed from Chinese ink painting, an art form in which he also excels.

Instead of depicting pure good and evil, his book creates an organic image of a remote village in his home province, where challenging living conditions present many complexities.

Chinese author Liang Hong, who is known for her works about the Chinese countryside, says for her, Ji Hua isn't about an abducted woman, but more about how to communicate with the land. Through the abducted woman's perspective, readers not only see the problems of the rural areas, but also the different aspects of village life.

"In ink painting, white and black seem to integrate more than contrast. So all the characters in the novel are part of the village, and each person has his or her position on issues," says Liang.

"The Hei family who bought Hu Die has more than an oppressive side. They try to find ways to communicate with the outside world such as by doing business, and even with Hu Die to reach a reconciliation," she says.

According to Chen Xiaoming, a professor of Chinese literature at Peking University, Jia's writing is both about wronged women of rural China and the living conditions there.

The author writes about the villages that have been deserted for the cities - villages with history, beauty and vitality.

yangyangs@chinadaily.com.cn
Chinese police on Italy's streets Updated: 2016-05-06 06:55 By Zhang Yi and Fu Jing(China Daily Europe)

In Rome and Milan, Mandarin-speaking officers work alongside Italian counterparts to help tourists

Police officers from China have started joint patrols in Rome and Milan with their Italian counterparts to provide assistance to Chinese tourists, who increasingly are choosing Italy as a vacation destination.

Two uniformed Chinese police officers will patrol for two weeks beginning on May 9 at the city's popular tourist spots, including the Colosseum in Rome and Milan's Gothic cathedral.

Chinese police officers Shu Jian (right) and Sa Yiming patrol with their Italian counterparts near the Colosseum in Rome on May 2 under a Sino-Italian agreement launched on May 2. Jin Yu / Xinhua

The initiative stems from an agreement between the two countries reached in 2014 and confirmed last year. Italian police have carried out similar collaboration with such countries as the United States, Spain and Poland.

"Today is an important day because we are strengthening collaboration with China in a very special field," Italian Interior Minister Angelino Alfano told a news conference in Rome that was attended by officials from the two countries.

The interior minister said he hopes the bilateral collaboration will be deepened with further agreements and extended to other Italian cities.

Gennaro Capoluongo, head of the international police cooperation service in Italy, says: "We feel proud to be the first one in Europe to undergo such an important collaboration program with China."

Luca Sarais, owner of Cantine Isola wine bar in Milan's Chinatown, calls it "a positive initiative". The initiative is an intercultural response to local criminal gangs, he adds.

Huang Feng, a professor of international criminal law at Peking University, says the Chinese police officers will perform their duties according to Italian laws.

The four officers, who speak Italian and English along with Mandarin, received training from Italian officers in Beijing before they were sent to Italy.

"The command of the Chinese language is their strength in assisting law enforcement, and they know the customs of Chinese tourists and therefore are better able to explain legal regulations and procedures to Chinese when they are in trouble or in disputes," Huang says.

Wang Gang, head of the European division of the Ministry of Public Security's international bureau, says that under a memorandum signed by the two countries, China will send officers to Italy during the peak tourist season every year, and Italy can also send police officers to patrol in China if necessary.

This new mode of law enforcement cooperation is based on strengthened mutual trust and demonstrates the closer collaboration of police departments of the two countries after years of efforts, says Zhao Yu, vice-dean of the International Law Enforcement Institute at the People's Public Security University of China.

"This exemplary move is likely to have a positive effect on cooperation between China and other European countries," he says.

The patrols have symbolic significance as China increasingly works with foreign countries on law enforcement, Zhao adds.

Contact the writer at zhang_yi@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily European Weekly 05/06/2016 page2)
Banks face up to China's fintech boom Updated: 2016-05-06 06:56 By Albert Chan(China Daily Europe)

Traditional institutions need to consider what role they want to play in payments as the country becomes a global epicenter

Financial technology, or fintech, is getting very hot in Asia, thanks to China's leadership role.

The value of global fintech investment last year grew by 75 percent to $22.3 billion, driven by deal-flow across continental Europe and the Asia-Pacific, according to a new report by Accenture called FinTech and the Evolving Landscape.

The main engine of this growth is China, which had the biggest share of investment, accounting for 45 percent in 2015. Across Asia-Pacific, fintech investment more than quadrupled to $4.3 billion.

More important, fintech investment is continuing apace. Last month, Ant Financial, the Alibaba affiliate that runs Alipay, announced it had completed Series B fundraising of $4.5 billion. That is nearly double all of the fundraising that took place in Asia-Pacific in the first three months of the year.

That is significant given that, in the first quarter of 2016, Asia-Pacific investments increased by 517 percent compared with the same period last year - $445 million to $2.7 billion - and this too was driven almost entirely by Chinese fintech investments. In fact, fintech companies in Asia-Pacific received more than 50 percent of all investment in the first quarter.

That shouldn't surprise anyone who has been watching the financial services space in China. Consider some of the bigger deals that have taken place this year. In January, China's lu.com, a peer-to-peer lender and broker, raised $1.21 billion. China's second-largest e-commerce company, JD.com, raised $1 billion in new funding for its consumer finance subsidiary, JD Finance.

These two deals alone have helped make Asia-Pacific the second-biggest region for fintech investment after North America, accounting for 19 percent of global financing activity, up from just 6 percent in 2010.

But there have been other smaller deals, too. In January, peer-to-peer lending startup Duanrong said it had completed 390 million yuan ($59 million; 53 million euros) in fundraising. And in the same month, Beijing-based qufenqi.com, an e-commerce startup providing installment-payment services to young Chinese consumers, said it had completed a new round of financing in renminbi. That was on top of the fundraising it did in 2015.

You may notice a trend here. Payment is the most popular segment for fintech deals in Asia-Pacific, accounting for 38 percent of the total. Consider our lifestyles in China - we are increasingly moving to a cashless society and looking for new and more efficient ways to make payments.

What does this mean for banks in China?

Banks need to be mindful of market-share dilution from competitors in the consumer and merchant payment and lending space. That means banks need to consider what role they want to play in payments - or do all three.

For many financial institutions, investing in startups may be a smart approach: it silos the business with the startup, but gives the might and muscle of an established bank as a participant. From a startup's perspective, it may be better to make friends with the big players than try to compete. According to Accenture's research, last year, the level of investment in fintech companies wishing to collaborate with the industry increased by 138 percent, now representing 44 percent of all fintech investment. Investment in fintech companies looking to compete only increased by 23 percent.

Several banks have chosen to mentor startups. Accenture hosts an accelerator lab in Hong Kong that has 20 banks - including China CITIC Bank International and China Construction Bank (Asia) - participating in it. Known as the FinTech Innovation Lab Asia-Pacific, it is a 12-week program that helps growth-stage fintech companies accelerate their product and business development.

The value of an accelerator program is it gives startups access to bank executives to learn what the banks need and think can be realistically implemented. But it also gives bank executives access to some of the most cutting-edge ideas.

Other banks are building their own platforms, hoping to leverage their pre-existing brand loyalty and better serve their customers. HSBC has said it is focusing on growing and enhancing its distribution in the Pearl River Delta through significant investment in its digital platform and mobile sales force, as it works to generate $1 billion of profit before tax from the delta area in the medium term. The bank said last year that this would be 10 times its current pretax profit from the region.

Fintech - whether it's from big existing banks, startups, or a combination of the two - is gaining ground in China. While the amounts of money may seem staggering, the aim is literally to simplify financial services, making it more straightforward and easier for customers to use.

The author leads Accenture's financial services practice in China. The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.

(China Daily European Weekly 05/06/2016 page9)
In Wednesdays Tribune Business, Mr. McCartney was reported to have said the Bahamas Government should nationalise Baha Mar as The Bahamas cant be held hostage by foreign interests.

One might consider getting into a long discussion of the demerits of government ownership, but one only needs to read all the problems of the country that Mr. McCartney and his political party lay at the feet of the political class.

One might even stroll down the harmful effects of nationalisation - Venezuela comes to mind - but thats a destructive road that has been well travelled.

But beyond those brief points, the history of the Bahamas Hotel Corporation and the foray into hotel ownership on West Bay, just across the street from Baha Mar should shake any thought of nationalising Bahama Mar out of the system.

The Bahamas Government helped create this mess, the last thing the country needs is encouragement for them to make matters worse.
Economics key to African transformation Updated: 2016-05-06 06:58 By Lucie Morangi(China Daily Europe)

China is in a position to help with the structural change that is needed, but continent's leaders must be smart about it, top UN official says

Development assistance for Africa from traditional partners has mostly focused on how to best use the continent's natural resources. But something has been missing.

"About $10 billion of development aid has been invested in Africa's agricultural economy annually. Needless to say, things have yet to look up," says Carlos Lopes, 56, an economist from the small West African nation of Guinea-Bissau who is executive secretary of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa.

Carlos Lopes says Africa faces some serious problems and may need to lean on China's friendship and goodwill to complete the leap to industrialization. Provided to China Daily

"Focus has really been on social improvement; food security, yield increase, building people's resilience against drought, but not about economics, which is critical to Africa's transformation."

But with China having become Africa's leading trading partner, an opportunity has arisen for a new model.

Lopes says the next step is for that relationship to move more toward investment. "This is transformative and completely compatible with issues that are dominating discussions in Africa today," Lopes says.

China's journey to industrialization was often used as a reference point during a recent, weeklong forum on domestic resource mobilization that brought African planning and finance ministers and analysts to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The meeting was organized by the African Union and UNECA.

Still, Lopes says Africa is facing some serious problems and may need to lean on China's friendship and goodwill to complete the leap to industrialization.

"Africa faces a barrage of difficulties that are not making its path easy. But we have to be very persistent and smart in the way we go about it," he says. "In so doing, we will discover that we can benefit a lot from the special rapport we have with China."

The partnership is mutual and interlinked in three ways, he says. First, China is betting on Africa's demographic growth, which presents a consumer base and sizeable labor force predicted to surpass China's in 50 years.

Second, China has addressed much of its infrastructure needs and it will soon reach overcapacity. "This makes Africa a good candidate to receive China's infrastructure technology. After all, the lack of it continues to impede the continent's growth trajectory," he says.

Third, rising labor costs in China will force out factories that are still in the lower value-addition level, making it necessary for them to move.

"They definitely do not want to lose control over their global market positions, technological advancement and financial secrets. The only option left for them is to delocalize their production. It happened to a number of European and Asian countries. Japan delocalized to China and now they have to do the same to sustain their competitive streak," he says.

Africa is by no means the only option open for China, as other Asian countries offer similar options. Africa, therefore, needs to strategically position itself to be on the receiving end.

There are plans by China to relocate some of its factories to Africa. Kenya, Tanzania and Ethiopia have been chosen to host pilot projects. Already, Ethiopia and Rwanda are beneficiaries of light factories dealing in leather and textiles. But these Chinese investments have not been immune to challenges.

"Chinese entrepreneurs in Africa have had checkered experiences. The No 1 challenge they mostly identify with is lack of predictability," Lopes says.

The companies sometimes fail to deliver on time because of power cuts and a poor transport network that makes cross-border trade expensive.

"These problems are clear manifestations that we lack the chains of predictability, which is diminishing the continent's attractiveness," he says. These factors make doing business in Africa costly.

"That is why in a country like Ethiopia there is a conscious decision to transform the landscape. Huge investments have been directed towards logistics; several hundred kilometers of railway, a new port in Djibouti to cater to exports from the landlocked country, and millions in investments toward propping up power production through hydro power projects. This is obviously polishing the country's attractiveness toward foreign investments."

Ethiopia's narrative cannot be told without including China. The Asian country is its top trading partner, and a remarkable transformation is already taking place as Chinese investment is directed toward industrialization, which is creating employment for local people.

"That is why it is becoming an interesting narrative that is to be replicated throughout the continent. This is the way for the future and it is already happening in some countries," he says.

Africa overall continues to record slow growth despite harboring industrialization ambitions. Lopes says the degree of political determination in many countries is arguably low.

But the tide is starting to change, he says. The continent's path to growth can be determined only by its people, he adds.

"What will make a real difference for us is growth with quality. This is growth that is transformative enough to generate jobs and modify people lives. I think a few African countries have embarked on it, others are still in the infancy stages."

Progress can be determined through the degree to which African countries are diversifying their economies from a dependency on minerals. Apprehension is rife over the ability of several countries to sustain their economic growth in the face of tumbling oil and commodity prices.

Lopes blames this on government inertia in prudently using the rich proceeds that have come from commodity markets in recent years to build other sectors.

He says that's why narratives such as "the African Renaissance" were coined and now are in doubt because they were based on the beliefs of others and the fragility of the global market. "It can only be solidified when rooted in something more structural," he says.

It's clear that China's waning appetite for Africa's commodities has had an impact on Africa's export sectors. But Lopes is quick to note that President Xi Jinping's $60 billion announcement during the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation summit in South Africa last year gave the continent a boost. "This will compensate for the trade losses."

But Africa needs to strategize well to benefit from this. "FOCAC is a starting point in building a transformative Sino-Africa relationship. The grant is a lot of money and for it to be spent in three years, the absorptive capacity needs to be thoroughly worked on. It has to be on mega issues spelled out in our Agenda 2063," he says.

Agenda 2063, agreed to by African heads of state, aims to optimize resources for the benefit of the continent's people.

It is a comprehensive strategic plan for the socioeconomic transformation of the continent over the next 50 years. It seeks to accelerate development of vibrant and inclusive economies that are integrated and connected through transport networks, internet telecommunications and common markets that promote free movement of people and goods.

"Well-informed decisions need to be made based on empirical evidence and its implementation supported by good governance.

"Most of the time governance is mentioned in abstract ways, but to be specific, it is in how you are dealing with planning, economic choices and opportunities."

UNECA released several reports during the one-week forum in Ethiopia, providing empirical data to enable leaders and foreign investors to make informed decisions.

"Africa's narrative has always been defined by outsiders. But we need to drum up our positive news based on empirical evidence," he says.

Luciemorangi@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily European Weekly 05/06/2016 page32)
Enamored of the curd Updated: 2016-05-06 06:57 By Pauline D Loh(China Daily Europe)



According to legend, it was alchemy that led to the discovery of bean curd. Photos Provided to China Daily

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.

Delight that legend says arose from failed alchemy was culinary equivalent of philosophers' stone

Nowhere else in the world has one single humble bean given rise to such a large range of different foods, from juices, pickles, preserves, seasonings, custard to cakes of different textures, and finally, fertilizer.

We are talking about the alchemy of the soybean.

According to legend, it was indeed alchemy that led to the discovery of bean curd, more commonly known as tofu.

Throughout Chinese history, those who ruled often were afraid of death, losing all they had gathered, or of having to leave all that power and glory. From Emperor Qinshihuang of the Qin Dynasty (221-206 BC) onward, they have tried to uncover the recipe for immortality.

So it was with Liu An, whose little fiefdom was in Huai'an, in present day Anhui province. In that beautiful land full of springs, streams and picturesque mountains, Liu An gathered the best Taoist masters - eight of them - and started his search.

In their attempts, they drew water from the region's natural springs and cooked ground up soybeans to create a base for that elusive pill. They didn't succeed, but what was left in the tripod was a pure, white jelly-like substance.

A brave man tasted it, and the rest is history.

That was more than 2,000 years ago, and in the interim, bean curd has become one of the most important ingredients China has contributed to the world.

As the Chinese ventured out, they brought the culture of bean curd with them, so much so that it took on a life of its own, adapting to the cuisines of various countries from Japan and Korea in the north to the Malay and Indonesian archipelagos to the south.

Various forms of bean curd and its derivatives, too, have become the backbone of vegetarian cuisine in the global meatless movement.

Soybean products are a good source of vegetable protein, and after being processed, most no longer have that embarrassing side effect that made the bean itself so unpopular - flatulence.

Tofu is but only one product, and the textures range from very soft to very hard.

One of the best breakfasts you can have in China is a piping hot bowl of soft bean curd, called doufunao in the north and doufuhua in the south. Doufunao literally means tofu brains while doufuhua is definitely more lyrical, translating as tofu flowers.

The northerners prefer a savory version, dousing their soft bean curd with a brown sauce often laced with strips of mushrooms and a few dried daylily buds. In the south, the tender jelly is sweetened with syrups made from plain or brown sugar and flavored with ginger juice.

Hardened to varying degrees, tofu is also used in cooking dishes.

No one cooks tofu better than the chefs who specialize in Huainan cuisine, right from the region where it was first invented.

Here, tender blocks of tofu challenge the knife skills of chefs who float strands as thin as hair in rich chicken stock. Or they deep-fry bean curd so that its texture changes and then braise the entire block in a gravy made with soy sauce and sweet spices. The deep-fried tofu acts like a sponge, absorbing all the flavors and aromas.

Soft blocks of tofu are also steamed to retain their original bean flavor, and may be drizzled with soy sauce or oyster sauce and garnished with a sprinkle of chopped spring onions.

That is its simplest form, but tofu can become very elaborate.

Cubes of a harder version may be deep-fried into puffs and then stuffed with a fish paste to create a dish popular with the Hakka community - niangdoufu.

Or the curds may be aged and fermented to create that notorious snack that has the uninitiated holding their noses. Stinky tofu is something you either love or hate.

In the Jiangsu-Zhejiang region, stinky tofu is legendary, having made it into literary classics such as native son Lu Xun's works.

Across the Straits, Taiwan's famous night markets must have at least one or two stinky tofu stalls. It's deep-fried, served with pickled cabbage and sweet chili sauce, boldly advertising its presence through its lovely pungency.

Back in my Yunnan, slightly fermented tofu is sold at breakfast stalls, sprinkled with chopped peanuts, chili sauce and cilantro. That combination of aromas still has me drooling at the thought. You can always brush your teeth later, or chew on fresh mint, like the locals do.

Tofu is an amazing ingredient, and this is merely just the tip. Next week, we look at the sauces and seasonings that are made from the mighty soybean.

paulined@chinadaily.com.cn

Two dishes to try

Peace for young and old

Tender tofu and soft fish paste in custard translate to a dish suitable for both grandparents and grandchildren.

1 block silken tofu

1 cup fish, finely minced

1 teaspoon cornstarch

Plenty of salt and pepper

3 eggs, beaten

3 tablespoons chicken stock or water

Sesame oil, soy sauce

Mash tofu into smaller pieces, but do not reduce to mush.

Add salt and pepper to minced fish and cornstarch. Use teaspoon to divide paste into bite-sized clumps. Place broken up tofu and minced fish in deep platter, spread evenly.

Mix beaten eggs with stock (or water), pour gently over tofu and minced fish.

Steam over gentle heat for 20-25 minutes. The low heat and longer cooking time ensure your custard won't puff up like a beehive.

Remove from steamer and drizzle with sesame oil and soy sauce. Serve.

Note: Any fish such as salmon or cod works well. Remove skin and bones and mince, either by hand or in a food processor.

Steamed tofu with spicy mince

This is a dish that contrasts the simple texture of the silken tofu with the stronger flavors of the spicy mince. You can moderate the heat by adding more or less chili.

1 block silken tofu

100 g minced pork, beef or lamb

1 tablespoon black bean sauce

2-3 cloves garlic, minced

1-2 red chili peppers, seeded and minced

Salt and pinch of sugar

Cilantro leaves, for garnish

Mix black bean sauce, garlic, chili, and taste before adding salt and sugar. Mix in the minced meat.

Cut off corners of the bottom of silken tofu container so it comes out easier. Place block of tofu on a plate that can go into steamer.

Spread mince and sauce mix evenly over block of tofu and steam for 15 minutes on high heat. The water must be boiling before you place tofu in steamer. Remove, garnish with cilantro leaves and serve.


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These emojis, created by an art student, were downloaded by 4 million users in one day. Photos Provided to China Daily

Social media apps are offering Chinese artists a shot at fame and riches

They are white, chubby and have sprigs on their heads - and Chinese social media can't get enough of them.

Roughly half the population has conveyed some kind of emotion with a Budding Pop emoji on WeChat, the instant-messaging app, making them one of the most popular in the world.

Liu Jingjing, 21, came up with the design three years ago. She is now a second-year art student in Shanxi province and works part time for 12 Buildings, a studio in Beijing. A fresh collection of 16 Budding Pop emojis released on March 12 was downloaded 4 million times within 24 hours.

"The number is stunning," says Wang Biao, the founder of 12 Buildings. "But that's what's happening in China - cartoonists are gaining instant fame by designing emojis."

Many of them hope this fame will lead to financial rewards, too, as it means they can potentially produce books for fans to buy as well as sell the rights for their characters to companies for marketing purposes.

12 Buildings has about 20 illustrators, about half of whom are college students. All of them were born in the internet era, Wang says. "They're very sensitive to new things online and can creatively weave them into emojis."

He says the way his team works is similar to the Japanese cartoon industry: artists design an original image and others contribute ideas to update the series. However, in China, many artists prefer to stay independent.

Zhong Wei in the northeast city of Shenyang has been drawing cartoons since 2014 and has published two picture books. Among the 32-year-old's creations is a white cat, which he has since turned into a popular emoji.

"Chinese internet users draw on emojis mainly to express emotions they can't express unaided," he says. To express various levels of anguish, for example, WeChat users can share an animation of the white cat crying while laughing, sobbing in a pool of tears, or wailing while clapping its hands.

Zhong has released three collections of the emoji via the instant-messaging app since August last year. Together, they have been downloaded 200 million times.

"A good emoji must be absolutely adorable, cheeky or naughty," he says. "Their expressions must be vivid and the body language rich."

China's emoji craze is rooted in Japan's kawaii (cute) and otaku (outsider) movements, he explains. "Chinese tend to communicate with friends using instant-messaging apps. We're open and talkative in the online world, but we turn in on ourselves and are less expressive in the real world."

Shi Donglin, 23, creator of the Freezing Gal emoji, believes the ultra-short animations can also help bring light relief at tense or embarrassing moments. For example, she says. "If I want to ask my boyfriend to buy a bag for me, I can use a coquettish emoji instead of having to resort to cold words."

Freezing Gal, which has dark skin and a ponytail, is based on her experiences in college and is popular among students.

Unlike traditional cartoonists, who generally created characters before selling stories to magazines or publishing houses, Shi launched her career via social media. In just a short while, she was producing work for instant-messaging tools like QQ and WeChat.

She says she will continue to make emojis and has now started on a series of picture books featuring Freezing Gal.

Cashing in while a character is hot is important, according to Xu Han, the artist behind Ali the red fox, another popular character. "The problem with the internet era is that, while a cartoon can quickly gain huge exposure and many fans, it can also be quickly forgotten," he warns.

He has sold 3 million copies of his Ali picture books since publishing the first in 2009. The fox, which Xu created in high school, was among the first emojis made available on the QQ messenger in 2012.

"Sina Weibo (a Twitter-like service) and WeChat offer good exposure to cartoonists, but if you want to cultivate a good brand you need more than an emoji," he adds.

Wang at 12 Buildings agrees that it is hard to guarantee longevity, but he believes the internet provides opportunities for budding Chinese illustrators to work with major brands that would previously have opted for foreign talent.

Budding Pop is now featured in promotions by Procter & Gamble, the multinational consumer goods company, while smartphone maker Xiaomi is using Freezing Gal to reach new buyers.

"China has never lacked good cartoonists," Wang says. "It has just lacked ways to promote its brands. Emojis give it the chance to do so effectively."

dengzhangyu@chinadaily.com.cn


Difficulties involved in reviving the 'rust belt' Updated: 2016-05-06 06:56 By Chi Fulin(China Daily Europe)

Without key progress in restructuring state-owned enterprises, structural change and innovation will be difficult in the region

A recent policy document from China's State Council says "old industrial bases", meaning Northeast China, will make significant progress in key reform areas by 2020 and will be revived by 2030.

The document says the northeast's opening-up will become a new driving force for its revitalization.

Between 2003 and 2013, China launched its first campaign to revitalize the region. As a result, significant and historical changes were achieved in infrastructure construction and the development of heavy chemical industries, as reflected in its growing economic strength, better economic environment and a tangible rise in its economic aggregate.

However, the campaign has failed to achieve a breakthrough in structural adjustment and institutional innovation, and the region's structural and institutional contradictions and problems have been exposed once again vis-a-vis China's economic transformation and upgrading.

The new campaign to revitalize Northeast China should, therefore, focus on structural adjustment and institutional innovation, to transform the region into a base of advanced or upgraded manufacturing. For its revival, a modern perception of the service sector should be cultivated. The region could learn from the experiences of Germany, whose modernized service sector accounts for 70 percent of its GDP and production-related services account for 70 percent of its service sector.

Northeast China should also strive to realize the transformation and upgrading of its manufacturing sector in order to establish an industrial model in which its modern services, production-related services in particular, are the driver.

The low proportion of modern services in its industrial structure has seriously restricted the transformation and upgrading of manufacturing in Northeast China, which, in turn, has slowed its broader economic transformation. And without key progress being made in the restructuring of state-owned enterprises, the main force of the region's manufacturing sector, structural adjustment and institutional innovation will be difficult to achieve.

Another hurdle is the region's low degree of opening-up, both to foreign countries and market and industries. Last year, the three northeastern provinces - Liaoning, Jilin and Heilongjiang - accounted for 8.6 percent of China's total economic aggregate, but their imports and exports accounted for only 3.4 percent of the national total.

As far as market opening-up is concerned, the private sector accounts for more than 50 percent of the region's GDP, 10 percentage points lower than the national average of more than 60 percent. According to a list of China's top 500 private enterprises, compiled by the All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce, only nine are from the northeast, compared with 138 from Zhejiang province and 91 from Jiangsu province, both of which are in the east.

The northeast's industrial opening-up is also at a low level. In 2014, its state-owned assets accounted for 50 percent of the total assets held by industrial enterprises above a certain scale, while the national average was only about 10 percent.

To develop a new driving force for its rejuvenation, Northeast China should make full use of the China-Russia-Mongolia economic corridor, advance cooperation on infrastructure investment and set up a Northeast Asia free trade network to strengthen its production-related service trade and open up its service market.

Such a driving force is essential for an innovative mode of development. In the region, the government's "invisible hand" remains very strong. So what it should do next is to take practical measures to allow the market to play a bigger role in economic activities. Also, the region should cultivate the concept of inclusive development in society.

Despite the difficulties it faces, the region is still expected to become an important base of China's advanced manufacturing in the next five to 10 years if it can cash in on the opportunities offered by the country's intensified efforts for economic transformation and upgrading and opening-up.

The author is president of the China Institute for Reform and Development, based in Haikou, Hainan province. The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.
Steady GDP growth calms global concerns Updated: 2016-05-06 06:56 By Zhang Xiaoyue(China Daily Europe)

Figures show policies by the State Council are taking effect, including trimming overcapacity and reducing taxes

China's 6.7 percent growth in the first quarter, announced by the National Bureau of Statistics on April 15, steadied nerves about the performance of its economy.

There were fears the data would be worse after the year began with China's stock markets tumbling and sentiment worsening. The figure was firmly within the 6.5 to 7 percent range that the government set for 2016 in March.

Many international financial institutions have now upgraded their 2016 growth projections on China. The International Monetary Fund, in its flagship report for April, increased its forecast for China's economic growth by 0.2 percentage points from 6.3 to 6.5, saying such an upgrade "reflects the country's announced policy stimulus".

China was the only country to receive an upgrade in a document that lowered its projection for global growth from 3.4 percent in January to 3.2 percent.

The World Bank's recent report put China's growth this year even higher, at 6.7 percent, adding that China will remain the main driver of growth in Asia this year.

On April 11, Premier Li Keqiang presided over a meeting at the State Council's headquarters at the Zhongnanhai compound in Beijing. There, heads of several major provinces and regions reported on local economic conditions in the first quarter.

Figures showed policies made by the State Council since January are taking effect, including trimming overcapacity and reducing taxes, to influence China's economic transition from being investment- and export-led to more consumption-driven.

Li said during the meeting that China's economic development showed good momentum over the first quarter.

"Major indexes are running higher than we expected during the first quarter, marking a stable start for the year ahead," Li said. "Many international financial institutions have recently upgraded their projection on China's economic outlook for the year," he said. "This suggests the world market has confidence in China."

Since January, the government has taken multiple measures to restructure the economy, as well as maintain growth, including reducing excess capacity, cutting taxes and devolving more power to lower levels.

The IMF report explains its reason for upgrading its China outlook, saying consumption growth would take up some of the slack of worsening performance by traditional industries.

"A further weakening is expected in the industrial sector, as excess capacity continues to unwind, especially in real estate and related upstream industries, as well as in manufacturing," it says.

"Services sector growth should be robust as the economy continues to rebalance from investment to consumption. High income growth, a robust labor market, and structural reforms designed to support consumption are assumed to keep the rebalancing process on track over the forecast horizon."

Maurice Obstfeld, chief economist at the IMF and one of the report's authors, said during a media briefing in Washington that he was optimistic about the Chinese government's policy stance.

"The near-term upgrade reflects our confidence that additional measures that the Chinese leadership is putting into effect can bring growth to the 6.5 percent level this year, which is the lower range of their target range of 6.5 to 7 percent. We see this stimulus coming and we upgrade the near-term forecasts on the result."

Some other international finance institutions, such as JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs and Credit Suisse, also raised their projections for China's growth. Credit Suisse recently revised its forecast for China's second-quarter growth from 6.3 to 6.5 percent.

Zhu Haibin, chief China economist at JPMorgan, suggests in his recent report that China's economy is showing signs of stabilization, raising the GDP projection for the second quarter from 6.7 to 7 percent.

All this seems to be in sharp contrast with earlier predictions this year, when fears of a collapse in China's economy were widespread.

When Li faced the media after the annual legislative sessions of the National People's Congress and Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference in mid-March, more than half of the questions that day were related to China's economy.

One reporter asked Li whether China's economic growth would fall below 6.5 percent, given the downward pressure from the world economy, as well as China's economic transition. "It is impossible for me to agree that China cannot achieve the growth target this year," was Li's answer.

This was the top story for many foreign news organizations the next day, including The Wall Street Journal, under the headline "Chinese Premier Paints Rosy Picture of Economy".

On April 15, the NBS figures showed China easily reached its GDP growth target for the first quarter. Growth in the services sector was even higher, at 7.6 percent, higher than industrial and agriculture sectors, while exports increased by 18.7 percent in March, the first rise for 18 months.

Yet the IMF also warns of long-term potential risks, pointing out the main challenge for Chinese authorities is a transition to a more consumption- and service-oriented growth model, while reducing vulnerabilities from excess leverage left by the prior investment boom.

"Our concern is some of the stimulus is likely to take the form of higher credit growth, more support for sectors that are in a secular sense declining and not that productive. So, we worry about the quality of growth more than the quantity of growth," Obstfeld says.

That is the challenge of the economic transition, Li warned local leaders during the meeting at Zhongnanhai. "We need to be aware that China is now undergoing an economic transition and faces multiple challenges while maintaining growth," he said.

One upcoming bold government move for economic restructuring is a tax reform that will replace business tax with value-added tax. That could cut an estimated 500 billion yuan ($77 billion; 67 billion euros) of tax on corporations this year. Li says such reform is an important tool to promote structural reform - supply-side structural reform in particular.

The reform will encourage more R&D expenditure by companies, boost demand through extended production chains, and make the environment more conducive to modern services.

The author is a writer with China Daily.
Bottom-up response is energetic Updated: 2016-05-06 06:56 By Fu Jing(China Daily Europe)

Academia, businesses and think tanks in Europe are establishing ways to cooperate with China's Belt and Road Initiative

In recent weeks, China's Belt and Road Initiative - the Silk Road Economic Belt and 21st Century Maritime Silk Road - has gotten several bottom-up but energetic responses from Europe.

Among them was the formation of the Europe and China tourism and cultural development committee in Brussels. The committee is the brainchild of Bernard Dewit, chairman of the Belgian-Chinese Chamber of Commerce, and other key European figures.

The rationale behind the formation of the committee is to better serve Chinese tourists, whose steadily rising numbers have become a key driver of Europe's tourism sector and its infrastructure development.

Before the committee was formed, China EU, a Brussels-based nonprofit with the aim of promoting EU-China exchanges in the internet and telecommunications sectors, had organized a panel discussion in London on how to insert digital content into the Belt and Road Initiative and develop a "digital Silk Road".

In March, France-based Neoma Business School had organized a forum in Paris to discuss how to make best use of Europe's green technology and know-how and China's capital and manufacturing capacities, in order to ensure the Belt and Road Initiative adopts a greener, sustainable approach.

And before the Paris forum, Jan Kohout, an adviser to Czech President Milos Zeman on Chinese affairs, set up the first think tank in Europe focusing on Belt and Road Initiative research.

These four developments in Europe come nearly three years after President Xi Jinping announced the initiative in 2013 to better connect Asia, Europe and Africa. Since then, up to 20 governments in Europe have echoed China's proposals. Even the European Union, as a whole, is working with China to launch joint funds to help synergize the Belt and Road Initiative and European investment schemes.

These developments are important because they come from academia, businesses and think tanks in Europe, and could further enrich the initiative. They also show that Europe's nongovernmental sectors recognize the potential of the initiative, which in turn may encourage more Europeans to participate in discussions on the massive initiative for intercontinental connectivity.

The governments of European countries and China should pay close attention to these developments and the outcomes they yield, because they could help them better implement the initiative.

The focus of the initiative should be sustainable and green economic development, bridging the digital gap, and enhancing cultural and tourism exchanges among Asian, European and African countries, though infrastructure construction must also be given priority in countries where it is required.

And it is here that a pioneering vision comes into play. After announcing the Belt and Road Initiative, China has given topmost priority to common prosperity and development, instead of geopolitical considerations. Contrary to speculation, it has no intention of building a "private road" to penetrate the markets of Europe or Africa.

The organizers of the London and Paris forums and other European organizations know these facts well and understand that China's initiative can create more jobs and business opportunities, which will help sluggish economies recover. Following their example, more Europeans, Asians and Africans are likely to come up with novel ideas, establish more business networks and form think tanks to take advantage of the Belt and Road Initiative.

China is still mobilizing governments worldwide to support the initiative, although more than 70 countries have already done so. China, nevertheless, should also make efforts to win greater support from the nongovernmental sector, because collective support and participation is essential for the success of Belt and Road Initiative and to ensure common prosperity.

The author is deputy editor of China Daily European Weekly. Contact the writer at fujing@chinadaily.com.cn
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wfpvideo:115064065 :wfpvideo

FORT MCMURRAY, Alta.  Displaced Fort McMurray residents got a sobering drive-by view of their burned city Friday in a convoy that was moving evacuees south to reunite with families and friends.

Officials said shifting winds were giving the embattled northern Alberta city a break, but they added the fire that forced 80,000 people from their homes remained out of control and was likely to burn for weeks.

The sprawling fire in northeastern Alberta reached 1,000 square kilometres  bigger than the size of Calgary. Officials said they expected it would double over the weekend.

Alberta Premier Rachel Notley speaks with media about the wildfires in Fort McMurray, Alta., on Wednesday May 4, 2016. The wildfire has already torched 1,600 structures in the evacuated oil hub of Fort McMurray and is poised to renew its attack in another day of scorching heat and strong winds.THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jason Franson

In Edmonton, Premier Rachel Notley announced the government will provide financial help to evacuees for immediate needs. Adults are to receive $1,250 each and dependents $500. The cost is estimated at $100 million.

The first convoy of 50 vehicles drove through the oilsands city from the north at about 6 a.m. It was escorted by the RCMP and a police helicopter in the air to warn of any renewed fire danger.

About 1,200 vehicles had passed through by late afternoon despite a one-hour interruption due to heavy smoke.

Jim Dunstan was in the convoy with his wife, Tracy, and two young sons.

It looked like a war zone, Dunstan said at a rest stop south of the fire-ravaged city.

It was shocking to see the damaged cars all burned on the side of the road. It made you feel lucky to get out of there.

His wife said they escaped Tuesday through smoke and flames, but soon ran out of gas.

It was pretty scary, especially when you have kids. It was so smoky it hurt my eyes, she said.

We are better now that we are out.

Notley said the plan was to get 500 vehicles out by ground and 5,500 people by air on Friday. Another 4,000 were to go Saturday. About 7,000 left by air Thursday.

The city of Fort McMurray is not safe to return to, and this will be true for a significant period of time, she told a briefing in Edmonton.

The road took convoys past blocks largely reduced to grey wastelands of charred concrete and ash, a gutted Super 8 motel and a levelled gas station.

More than 20,000 displaced residents had been living in oilsands work camps since Tuesday after the blaze cut the main road through Fort McMurray and sent residents fleeing either north or south.

Those who managed to escape south settled in hotels, campgrounds, with friends or at temporary reception centres.

About 1,800 were being housed at the Northlands Expo Centre in Edmonton. A city official said one challenge was dealing with stress caused by thousands bunking on cots in one big hall. People staying there were likely to remain for at least two weeks or more, he said.

Donations continued to stream in from around the country.

The Red Cross reported about $30 million had been donated for victim relief. The B.C. government pledged $300,000 and Saskatchewan put up $250,000. The federal government has promised to match Red Cross donations.

There was no update on the number of structures burned, which stood at 1,600 Wednesday, mainly in city neighbourhoods to the south and southwest.

Chad Morrison, Albertas senior wildfire manager, said critical infrastructure  the downtown, the water treatment plant, the hospital and the airport  remained intact.

The blaze also hit the evacuated village of Anzac to the south of the city late Thursday, hitting between 18 and 20 structures.

Morrison said winds were moving the blaze away from Fort McMurray.

This is a dynamic, challenging, extreme fire, so many things can happen. But at this point the prediction over the next two days is for the fire to move away to the northeast, he said.

Municipal Affairs Minister Danielle Larivee said there were almost 500 firefighters in and around Fort McMurray supported by 11 helicopters, 12 pieces of heavy equipment, and 16 water bombers.

The cause of the blaze has yet to be determined.

Scott Long of the Alberta Emergency Management Agency confirmed a few people had defied the evacuation order and stayed in Fort McMurrays downtown, but there were no reports of looting.

A provincewide fire ban was still in effect Friday. Larivee also ordered a ban on recreational use of off-highway vehicles, while Notley urged Albertans to avoid forests altogether.

Morrison said a lack of rain baking the forest to combustible conditions contributed to the power of the Fort McMurray blaze.

This is an extreme, rare, rare fire event, said Morrison, who added it wouldnt end anytime soon.

Even once we get rain, theres still going to be a lot of fire out there and a lot of work. Were going to be here for weeks and weeks.

Melissa Blake, mayor of the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo, which includes Fort McMurray, said she was heartened the resilience of residents.

Ive seen people who have lost everything break down  and then the next morning you see them and theres smiles. They realize that theyve got their lives, theyve got their family and theyve got the opportunity to rebuild, said Blake.

You see children who are completely oblivious to it, and its for the children that we all need to stay strong.

 With files from Dean Bennett and Rob Drinkwater in Edmonton
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Store to sell JCB machines

CANADAS largest New Holland farm equipment dealer group  Brandon-based Mazergroup  is now also a dealer for JCB agricultural equipment.

British-based JCB announced Thursday the Mazergroup store in Steinbach, which is called Mazergroup JCB, has been awarded a contract to sell its agricultural equipment, which includes wheel loaders, rough-terrain forklifts, Fastrac high-speed tractors, telescopic handlers and material-handling Loadalls.

Mazergroup JCB is a new dealership last July when Steinbachs Southeastern Farm Equipment merged with the Mazergroup. Southeastern had a contract to sell JCB agricultural equipment, but the contract was expiring.

So we (Mazergroup JCB) have retained that contract, Mazergroup CEO Bob Mazer said in an interview.

Mazergroup has a total of 15 stores in Manitoba and Saskatchewan, but for now, its 40,000-square-foot Steinbach store will be the only one selling JCB agricultural equipment.

We may expand that offering to other locations. But we want to get up and running with JCB to start with in Steinbach and see how it goes from there. And they (JCB) want to see how it goes from there, Mazer said.

He said a decision on whether to expand the offering to other stores will likely be made within the next 12 to 18 months.

Dan Schmidt, JCB North Americas vice-president of agriculture, said the company is pleased to be adding Mazergroup to its dealer network.

Mazergroup is a highly respected company known for its top-notch service and for treating customers like family for over 50 years, Schmidt said.

We are excited to pair the companys excellent customer service and our award-winning products to exceed customer expectations throughout this part of Canada.

The Steinbach store is one of two new locations Mazergroup has added in the past year. On April 1, it opened a 4,000-sq.-ft. store in Morden. That store sells New Holland agricultural equipment.

Profit up for manufacturer

AG GROWTH INTERNATIONAL reported record sales and profit in the first quarter of the year, mostly attributed to recent acquisitions and higher sales of commercial handling equipment, some of which had not been anticipated until the second quarter.

The Winnipeg-based grain-handling equipment manufacturer had sales of $113.7 million in the first quarter, a 31.2 per cent increase over the first quarter of 2015. Net profit for the quarter was $5.7 million, compared with a loss of $3.4 million during the same period last year.

Over the last 10 years, the company has dramatically altered its product and market mix. In 2006, sales were entirely on-farm equipment, including portable augers and on-farm storage equipment.

By 2010, 30 per cent of the manufacturers sales were for commercial installations.

This year, CEO Tim Close reported 55 per cent of sales are on farm and 45 per cent are commercial jobs.

Close said weakness in the first quarter was expected.

Results are impacted by prior-year crop cycle, which included a drought in Western Canada, a quick, efficient harvest in the U.S. and a soft environment for capital expenditure on the farm level, he said on a conference call with analysts.

Close said, The expected weakness in our farm business was offset by domestic results in our commercial business demonstrating the benefits of diversification across these markets.

The company has made a number of acquisitions in the recent past, including last months purchase of Winnipeg-based NuVision, which makes fertilizer blending and handling facilities throughout Western Canada; Entringer, a Brazilian-based manufacturer of grain bins and bucket elevators, dryers and cleaners in March; Vis, a Winnipeg-based manufacturer of material handling equipment used in the fertilizer feed and grain sectors in November; and Winnipeg-based Westeel, a leading manufacturer of grain-storage solutions last May.

Greg Colman, an analyst with National Bank Financial, said, Outperformance in the first quarter, improving cost structure and qualitative guidance reinforces our near-term estimates. We continue to be fans of Ag Growth.

CRA seeks client records

OTTAWA  The Canada Revenue Agency has gone to Federal Court seeking information on Royal Bank clients referred to in the Panama Papers leak.

The agency asked the court Wednesday to order the Royal Bank to disclose information on clients linked to the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca.

Royal Bank said it will not oppose the motion and will comply if the court order is issued.

The move is the latest development following reports issued by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists based on some 11.5 million leaked records from Mossack Fonseca.

The Toronto Star and the CBC, the Canadian members of the consortium, reported the Royal Bank and its subsidiaries used the law firm to help set up about 370 companies in offshore havens such as Panama for its clients.

In a statement Thursday, the Royal Bank said it respects the confidentiality of clients within the bounds of the law, while adding it also co-operates with all regulators.

The Royal Bank has said there are legitimate reasons to set up an offshore holding company, but if it believes a client intends to commit a criminal offence by evading taxes, it would report that to authorities and no longer serve the client.

National Revenue Minister Diane Lebouthillier had instructed the CRA to obtain the data leaked through the Panama Papers in order to cross-reference it with information already obtained through investigation tools.

Chloe Luciani-Girouard, a spokeswoman for the minister, said Thursday the CRA has already identified 45 potential Canadian taxpayers linked to the information and that audits will begin shortly.

Clampdown on vaping

WASHINGTON  The U.S. government on Thursday announced sweeping new rules for electronic cigarettes that will for the first time require the devices and their ingredients to be reviewed, a mandate that could offer some protection for consumers and upend a multibillion-dollar industry that has gone largely unregulated.

Before brands are allowed to stay in the market, regulators would have to check the design, contents and flavour of the fast-growing devices, which have grown popular with teenagers.

The rules would also extend long-standing restrictions on traditional cigarettes to a host of other products, including e-cigarettes, hookah, pipe tobacco and nicotine gels. Minors would be banned from buying the products.

Cereal sales still slumping

BATTLE CREEK, Mich.  Kelloggs profit declined in the first quarter as the maker of Frosted Flakes and Pop Tarts continued to fight sluggish cereal sales.

The company said sales slipped 1.2 per cent for its flagship U.S. Morning Foods segment, which includes cereals such as Froot Loops, Mini Wheats and Raisin Bran. The dip reflects the ongoing struggles as Americans increasingly reach for alternatives at breakfast.

Still, Kellogg CEO John Bryant expressed confidence the company would end the year with positive cereal sales. That would mark the first time Kelloggs U.S. cereal sales were positive since 2012.

Door greeters to return

NEW YORK  Those smiley door greeters are back at Wal-Mart.

The largest retailer in the United States said this week its bringing back door greeters to a majority of its 5,000 U.S. stores by mid-summer to improve customer service. For stores that have been selected as higher risks for thefts, Wal-Mart will position a customer host, who will not only greet customers but also check receipts to prevent theft. The rollout follows a successful pilot program.

 staff / news services
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Ag Growth International reported record sales and profit in the first quarter of the year, mostly attributed to recent acquisitions and higher sales of commercial handling equipment, some of which had not been anticipated until the second quarter.

The Winnipeg-based grain handling equipment manufacturer had sales of $113.7 million in the first quarter, a 31.2 per cent increase over the first quarter of 2015. Net profit for the quarter was $5.7 million compared to a loss of $3.4 million during the same period last year.

Over the last 10 years the company has dramatically altered its product and market mix. In 2006, sales were entirely on-farm equipment including portable augers and on-farm storage equipment.

By 2010, 30 per cent of its sales were for commercial installations and this year CEO Tim Close reported that 55 per cent of sales are on farm and 45 per cent are commercial jobs.

Close said weakness in the first quarter was expected.

Results are impacted by prior year crop cycle which included a drought in Western Canada, a quick, efficient harvest in the U.S. and a soft environment for capital expenditure on the farm level, he said on a conference call with analysts.

Close said, The expected weakness in our farm business was offset by domestic results in our commercial business demonstrating the benefits of diversification across these markets.

The company has made a number of acquisitions in the recent past, including last months purchase of Winnipeg-based NuVision which makes fertilizer blending and handling facilities throughout Western Canada; Entringer, a Brazilian based manufacturer of grain bins, bucket elevators, dryers and cleaners in March; VIS, a Winnipeg-based manufacturer of material handling equipment used in the fertilizer feed and grain sectors in November; and Winnipeg-based Westeel, a leading manufacturer of grain storage solutions in May, 2015.

Greg Colman, an analyst with National Bank Financial, said, Outperformance in the first quarter, improving cost structure, and qualitative guidance reinforces our near-term estimates. We continue to be fans of Ag Growth.
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Theyre making Crown Royal in Gimli again, but the labour issues that shut the place down two months ago are still simmering.

Both the parent company, Diageo, and the United Food and Commercial Workers 832, which represents the approximately 75 workers, have agreed to take their existing issues to an arbitrator, who will make a ruling within the next 30 days.

It put an end to the picketing and put them back to work on April 25, said Blake Crothers, director of communications for the UFCW.

WAYNE GLOWACKI / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS FILES The Seagrams Crown Royal plant at Gimli.

But there are still some outstanding issues, including wages, benefits and pension, that are waiting to be heard.

geoff.kirbyson@freepress.mb.ca
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Mooyah Burgers, Fries & Shakes is the latest gourmet-burger chain to wade into the local fast-food fray with todays opening of a restaurant on Kenaston Boulevard.

Although the nine-year-old Plano, Texas-based chain has nearly 100 outlets, its new restaurant at 1765 Kenaston Blvd. is only its third in Canada.

The outlet is owned by Winnipegs Dhillon family  Rajpal and Pim Dhillon and their daughter, Rubina  also owns 10 Subway restaurants in the province.

WAYNE GLOWACKI / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Rubina Dhillon (from left) Sim Dhillon and Pim Dhillon at their Mooyah restaurant on Kenaston Boulevard, which opens Friday, May 6.

Rubina Dhillon said in an interview if all goes well, the family hopes to open up to seven Mooyah Burgers outlets in the city over the next three to five years. After that, they may also look at expanding into some rural Manitoba centres.

But right now, our focus is on Winnipeg, she added.

In the Winnipeg market, Mooyah Burgers will be duking it out with two other U.S.-based gourmet-burger chains  Five Guys Burgers & Fries and Fatburger  and a number of locally owned gourmet-burger restaurants such as Nuburger and Boon Burger.

Theyll also be going up against other more traditional burger combatants such as McDonalds, Wendys and Burger King, as well a host of independent players such as Mrs. Mikes, V.J.s Drive Inn and Dairi-Wip.

Theyre also cutting into the fast-casual category, which includes pizza, fried chicken and subway-style sandwiches, said Ken Yee, a retail-leasing specialist and senior vice-president of the Winnipeg office of Cushman & Wakefield.

Yee and Chad Falk, executive director of the Manitoba Restaurant and Foodservices Association, said while the fast-casual segment is getting crowded, theres still room for another gourmet-burger specialist such as Mooyah Burgers.

Its a very interesting evolution of the (fast-casual-food) market, and its interesting because it gives the customers a better choice of selection, Yee said. Thats the good part.

But while theres room for another player such as Mooyah Burgers, Yee said if the Dhillons open up to seven restaurants and the other existing players also add a few more outlets, that may discourage other gourmet-burger chains from entering the Winnipeg market.

Were kind of reaching that critical-mass point, he explained. Just from a market-share perspective, they might think twice about coming here.

But Falk said if they offer something unique or different, there still could be room for them.

I think theres always room for good, healthy competition, and I think Winnipeggers are always hungry for something thats different or unique. So whether its a new U.S. brand or a new made-in-Manitoba brand, or whatever it is, I think were always looking to try something new.

I think theres always room for good, healthy competition, and I think Winnipeggers are always hungry for something thats different or unique Cam Falk, executive director of the Manitoba Restaurant and Foodservices Association

Yee said gourmet-burger meals tend to cost about $3 more than a mainstream burger meal. But he and Falk think there are consumers who are willing to pay more if the quality is there or theres something unique about the product.

I think consumers are almost expecting that these days and are looking forward to that, Falk added.

Rubina Dhillon said Mooyah Burgers products include beef, turkey and veggie burgers on freshly baked buns, with a wide assortment of cheeses and toppings from which to choose. The milk shakes are 100 per cent ice cream shakes, and the french fries are hand-cut in the store, washed six times to remove most of the starch, power-fried for three minutes then allowed to cool for 24 hours before being deep-fried and served.

You get a lighter, crisper fry if you wait until the next day. And it has a really distinct taste, she said.

I have a whole new appreciation for french fries now, she added with a laugh. Its not just pulling them out of the freezer and throwing them in a deep fryer.

murray.mcneill@freepress.mb.ca
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LAVAL, Que.  Embattled drug manufacturer Valeant Pharmaceuticals International (TSX:VRX) is revamping the way it prices drugs.

The company issued a statement late Thursday saying it is forming a new patient access and pricing committee that will be responsible for what it charges for prescription drugs.

The committee will be chaired initially by chairman and chief executive Joseph Papa and include what the company describes as a multi-disciplinary team of Valeant employees, including doctors, scientists and other executives.

The move comes as Valeant and other drug companies have faced increased scrutiny  and criticism  over soaring drug prices.

Several companies, including Valeant, have been scolded for buying rival companies to acquire the rights to their medicines, then severely jacking up prices.

Valeant officials were the subject of a severe grilling on the issue by members of a U.S. Senate committee late last month. Among them was board member and major shareholder Bill Ackman of Pershing Square Capital Management, who indicated the company would do better.

Valeant has made mistakes in how it priced its drugs in the past and we are committed to ensuring those mistakes are not repeated, Papa said in the statement issued Thursday.

This new committee will take a disciplined approach to reviewing the companys pricing of drugs and will consider the impact on patients, doctors, and our health care industry partners. Valeants number one priority is ensuring patients can access the medicines they need.
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VICTORIA  Seniors in Victoria support councils push to adopt a bylaw that allows edible pot products in medical marijuana dispensaries, despite health and safety concerns raised by the provinces medical health officer, says Mayor Lisa Helps.

Victorias council voted in favour of preparing a medical marijuana business bylaw Thursday that permits the sale of edible pot products, keeps marijuana businesses 200 metres apart from each other and prohibits any forms of advertising.

The bylaw will also keep the dispensaries 200 metres away from schools and licensed daycares.

Helps and other council members said the many seniors who spoke at public meetings in favour of edible pot sales convinced them to buck Vancouvers pot law, which prohibits the sale of edible products such as brownies and cookies.

Our staff and council were was compelled, said Helps. We heard loud and clear from many people who came to the town hall we held, particularly from seniors, and particularly from senior women, that they have chronic pain and they dont want to smoke marijuana. They want access to edibles.

B.C. health officer Dr. Perry Kendall urged Victoria council in a letter on Monday to reconsider the plan to permit edible marijuana sales.

While I understand that this position was supported by a majority of those in the community who were consulted  on the basis that they felt the benefits would outweigh the harms  such a conclusion is not based on the evidence, Kendall said in the letter.

He included a letter sent to Vancouvers city manager that supported a ban on edible marijuana products because theyre attractive to children and risk poisoning both kids and adults.

Helps said its not her job to regulate the quality and safety of the marijuana brownies sold at the citys 35 medical pot dispensaries.

Council voted to turn over the issue of monitoring the health and safety of the edible products to provincial health officials.

Our position, my position is that it is not the citys responsibility to regulate food products, Helps said. The city doesnt regulate the contents of the spicy nut triangle that I get at Habit Coffee. Thats not our jurisdiction.

Helps said she expects council to vote on its Medical Marijuana-Related Businesses bylaw next month.

Kendall said in a statement Thursday he was disappointed in councils decision. Local public health officials cannot regulate the illegal substances found in edibles either, he said.

While I have advocated for, and strongly support the legalization of cannabis, I favour a public health-based regulatory schema and not an entrepreneurially-driven one, he said.

The federal Liberal government has said it plans to introduce legislation next year that legalizes marijuana in Canada.

Helps said Victoria, like Vancouver, is being forced to regulate marijuana businesses without a federal law in place.

We are operating in a vacuum, she said.

Victoria has written to the federal government for guidance but has yet to receive a response, Helps said.

Vancouvers medical marijuana bylaw bans the sale of edible marijuana products and ensures dispensaries are located 300 metres away from schools and each other.
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VANCOUVER  As wildfires burn uncontrollably across northern Alberta, government leaders in Western Canada are meeting to discuss pushing Ottawa to reverse historic funding cuts to disaster-mitigation programs.

The catastrophic fires that have forced tens of thousands to flee their homes around Fort McMurray, Alta., have thrust conversations around emergency management to the forefront of the agenda at this weeks annual Western Premiers Conference in Vancouver.

British Columbia Premier Christy Clark said natural disasters related to climate change, such as floods and fires, have increased in frequency, yet at the same time federal support for disaster mitigation has waned.

The problem is getting worse, Clark told reporters on Thursday, stressing the importance of preventative action.

We need to come together as a country to recognize that these problems are more and more common. Its not going to get easier and were all going to need to commit more financial resources.

Prevention is the best form of cure.

In-depth discussions around funding renewal have yet to take place with the federal government, Clark said, adding that it was important to make sure the western premiers were on the same page before approaching Ottawa.

The leaders of B.C., Saskatchewan, Manitoba and the three territories are in Vancouver to attend the meeting, which is scheduled to run until Friday.

Alberta Premier Rachel Notley dropped out of the gathering to deal with the fires in her province, and instead sent Deputy Premier Sarah Hoffman in her place.

None of the other leaders was available for comment on Thursday.

In a statement following their first day of meetings, the premiers said the federal governments $200-million, five-year commitment to the National Disaster Mitigation Program falls short of what is needed.

The economy will also play a central role in conference conversations over the next two days, including reaching consensus between premiers on renewing the softwood lumber deal with the United States, Clark said.

We want managed trade and we want it with no quotas. Those are the most important things for British Columbia so that we have certainty and we have fairness across the country, she said.

She also commended the federal government and especially International Trade Minister Chrystia Freeland for their efforts to move the ball forward with the United States on a softwood lumber agreement.

Expanding free trade is vital to the countrys overall success, whether within Canada or internationally, said Clark, before taking a poke at the rhetoric being tossed around during the U.S. Republican partys presidential nomination race.

We hear this discussion in the states happening where people are talking about building walls, she said.

Great American presidents never made their country or the world great because they were talking about building walls. They talked about taking down walls. And thats what trade is all about. Its taking down walls.

Clark also spoke about bringing Manitoba into the New West Partnership, an interprovincial trade deal between B.C., Alberta and Saskatchewan.

In a statement, the premiers present for the meeting expressed their support for Fort McMurray and other northern communities affected by the devastating forest fires in Alberta.

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HALIFAX  Nova Scotia Premier Stephen McNeil says he expects an upcoming Halifax council debate about whether municipal landmarks should bear Edward Cornwalliss name to have wider implications.

Im sure people will be watching, McNeil told reporters at legislature Friday. I dont think we can eliminate our history  good or bad. The reality of it is, we need to be sensitive at times.

Halifax councillor Waye Mason plans to introduce a motion as soon as next week that would re-assess commemorations of Cornwallis, Nova Scotias first governor and namesake for a street, park and statue in the city.

The premier predicts other communities may decide to follow suit.

The proposal has dredged up a centuries-old conflict over the legacy of Cornwallis, the founder of Halifax. Many welcome this discussion, including Halifax Mayor Mike Savage.

In 1749, Cornwallis issued a bounty on the scalps of Mikmaq men, women and children. Some historians characterize the order as a genocide.

We cant ignore the good and bad parts of our history, McNeil said. Theyre there to be learned from. We need to make sure we tell the full story to our own children and to generations.

In light of his treatment of aboriginal people, some have called for Cornwalliss name to be removed from public places.

But historians fear re-naming these sites will erase Nova Scotias heritage.

John Boileau of the Halifax Military Preservation Society said he worries councils discussion will be based on one-sided, racially charged and historically inaccurate claims that dominate the public debate.

He suggests council convene a panel of historians, researchers and advocates to deliberate on the issue, inviting members of the public to submit their own opinions.

If someone stands up and tries to defend Cornwallis, for whatever reason, theyre immediately accused of being racist, Boileau said in an interview.

The historian says Cornwallis was a product of his time, and his sins were more strategic than malicious.

I deplore what happened to the Mikmaq, but it also happened to thousands of other societies, Boileau said. Conquest, whether legitimate or not, has been a continuing part of history. It continues to this day.

Boileau said if every name was judged by its darkest moments, every street, town and province would be up for grabs.

Halifaxs largest school board voted to rename Cornwallis Junior High in 2011.

The Cornwallis controversy ripples through the Annapolis Valley, where a group led by Richelle Brown Redden is presenting a plan to rename the Cornwallis River to several regional councils.

I think (the premier) has made that acknowledgment that the name is no longer appropriate, she said. We choose what we honour based on who we are today.

Last year, McNeil took down signs for the Cornwallis River out of sensitivity for the nearby Annapolis Valley First Nation.

Redden says her campaign is inspired by her 10-year-old son Caiden, who organized a protest last Valentines Day with his friends to raise awareness of Cornwalliss legacy.

We choose what we honour today based on who we are as a people today, Redden said. (Its not) about acknowledgment of communal guilt  Its about communal responsibility.
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HALIFAX  In a corner of the Nova Scotia legislature, Grade 6 students Bridget Daly and Hannah Harley ponder how to program small, yellow-and-black robots shaped like bumble bees.

The 11-year-olds from Rockingham Elementary School in Halifax are setting direction and speed for a race between two beebots at Province House  an example of whats coming to all elementary schools this fall as the government expands computer coding in the curriculum.

The girls said learning computer code is a welcome challenge, and hands-on technology like the beebots will be a help in solving math and science problems.

Grade 6 students Hannah Harely, top, and Bridget Daly prepare to race floor robots that will be used to help teach computer coding to elementary school students in Nova Scotia beginning this fall, at an event in Halifax on Friday, May 6, 2016. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Keith Doucette

Instead of having to visualize it and thinking about it you can use it without having any problems, said Hannah.

Education Minister Karen Casey used Thursdays demonstration to promote $1 million in funding included in the spring budget for computer coding.

The money will give students from kindergarten to Grade 6 access to technical devices such as iPads, tech invention kits, and wireless probes and software.

Some of the skills that they will be getting through the use of technology are things like teamwork, critical thinking, problem solving and creativity, said Casey.

She said coding will be applied across a range of subjects to help students prepare for post-secondary opportunities and an increasingly technical workforce.

The funding will also be used to train teachers through a professional development program running this month and next, and also at an IT summer camp.

Casey said Nova Scotia is a national leader in incorporating coding in its curriculum, having introduced basic coding for students from kindergarten to Grade 3 last September.

What weve been told is unique is that we have taken our (education) action plan and directly connected it to our strategy for coding and then went on . . . to have the resources there and the professional development for teachers, she said.

She said the Education Departments goal is to have computer coding fully integrated through every Grade 6 classroom within three years, and through junior and senior high schools within five years.

In January, British Columbia responded to a call from its growing tech sector and announced plans for coding in schools there.

Premier Christy Clark said beginning in September schools would receive a new curriculum with a coding program to be phased in over three years. The goal is to incorporate coding basics for students from kindergarten to Grade 12 within the next decade.

Coding is also on the agenda for New Brunswicks education system, and has been a mandatory part of the school curriculum in the United Kingdom since 2014.

Schools in New York City and Chicago will also be required to offer computer science to all students.

Nova Scotia Premier Stephen McNeil said its important to prepare students for job opportunities in a world economy being shaped by technology.

Its our view that those countries that have invested in their students in terms of coding will be the economies that will capitalize on the opportunities, said McNeil.
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OTTAWA  Justin Trudeau has apologized for suggesting opposition parties are to blame for the delay in setting up a parliamentary committee on electoral reform.

The prime minister promised during last falls election to create a committee that would be mandated to recommend within 18 months an alternative to the existing first-past-the-post electoral system.

But six months into his first mandate, the committee has still not been set up.

During a news conference Wednesday, Trudeau reiterated his commitment to replace first-past-the-post in time for the next election, but he said discussions about the mandate and focus of the committee are continuing as opposition parties push their own reform agendas.

Opposition MPs were puzzled since they say theyve not been consulted on the shape or focus of the committee.

Queried by Conservative electoral reform critic Scott Reid about why hed invented this patently false story about opposition delay, Trudeau offered a brief apology Thursday.

I apologize, through you (Mr. Speaker), to the member of the House, he said in response to Reids question. We are engaged in many different processes on this.

The Prime Ministers Office did not respond when asked to clarify what other processes Trudeau was talking about.

Trudeau added that he hopes the committee will get moving in short order.

Reid shot back that Trudeau should apologize three times since he made three different false allusions during Wednesdays news conference about alleged lack of opposition co-operation.

This is where I tell the PM that even in the world of quantum computing, the non-binary repetition of an untrue statement does not make it true, Reid said  a sarcastic reference to Trudeaus viral-video riff on the subject during a news conference last month.

Outside the Commons, Reid teamed up with his NDP counterpart, Nathan Cullen, and Green party Leader Elizabeth May to emphasize that there have been no consultations with opposition parties about the formation of the promised committee.

In an interview, Cullen said chief electoral officer Marc Mayrand has told him Elections Canada would need 24 to 26 months before the 2019 election to make adjustments to riding boundaries, which would almost certainly be required if FPTP was replaced by a system of proportional representation. The agency would also need time to educate Canadians about any new electoral system.

The longer the government waits to set up the committee, Cullen said the less likely there will be enough time to implement a new system by the next election.

Some critics have suggested Trudeau is deliberately ragging the puck because hes no longer eager to replace a system that handed his party a majority of the seats in the House of Commons despite winning just less than 40 per cent of the popular vote.

However, Rick Smith, executive director of the Broadbent Institute, a think tank that advocates proportional representation, doubted Trudeau would continually repeat his promise to end to first-past-the-post if he didnt intend to keep it.

Trudeau indicated Wednesday that the parliamentary committee would be just one avenue for consultation on electoral reform. Democratic Institutions Minister Maryam Monsef is conducting direct consultations and there will be a form of public consultation to be unveiled in coming weeks.
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Winnipeg police, acting on tip from Switzerland, arrested the citys latest online child porn suspect.

The police announced Friday that a River Heights resident faces charges related to the online possession and distribution of child pornography, as well as bestiality.

In January, Swiss police in Zurich and Aargau were conducting an online investigation into the distribution of child pornography when they tracked an IP address to Winnipeg.

They notified the Winnipeg Police Services internet child exploitation unit which picked up the investigation.

On March 22, investigators executed a search warrant at a house on Renfrew Street seizing various electronic devices, which contained pornographic video and image files of children between the ages of 2 and 12.

On Wednesday, police arrested Andrew Harrison, 36, who now faces a number of charges related to child pornography.

Const. Bob Carver said the suspect will face trial in Winnipeg on the charges.

alexandra.paul@freepress.mb.ca
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A Manitoba woman has been granted legal permission for a doctor-assisted suicide to stop the enduring suffering associated with her ALS.

Lawyers for the woman, identified in court documents as Patient No. 2, appeared in court Friday to apply for the constitutional exemption required by law following a 2015 Supreme Court of Canada decision. A court-ordered ban prevents specific personal details, including her name, age and the community she lives in, from being published.

My life feels completely unnatural. I would like the peace and satisfaction of some control over my death, the woman said in an affidavit read aloud by lawyers in court. She described a constant fear of choking to death and how without pain medication the total anguish I feel is soul-crushing. It is both enduring and intolerable to me.

Maybe there are other people with ALS who can tolerate more than I can, she wrote. But its not a test. Its not a competition.

There was no opposition to her application, although lawyers representing the health authority, attorney general and the medical team that will be involved were present during the hearing. The bid was approved by Queens Bench Justice Shawn Greenberg following a brief recess.

The applicants words convey palpable suffering, said Greenberg. She has gone from a strong independent woman to someone who requires her daily needs attended to by others.

Court heard the woman began stumbling and falling in 2012, and was officially diagnosed in the fall of 2013 with the progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and the spinal cord.

She initially required the use of a cane, but is now wheelchair-bound and has extremely limited movement of her extremities. She can only eat pureed food, has had several dangerous choking episodes and fears losing the ability to speak.

In her affidavit, the woman told court she has been thinking about assisted suicide for more than a year and even explored the possibility of travelling overseas to get it done. She is balking at invasive treatment such as a ventilator and simply wants to spend her final days as she chooses.

This is a long-thought-out, informed decision made by the applicant by her own free will, Greenberg said Friday.

Lawyer Allison Fenske told court her client meets all the criteria set out by the countrys highest court to allow for a judge to grant a requested for a physician-assisted death, which is otherwise still illegal in Canada,

She is at peace with that decision. It was made freely and voluntarily. Its not borne lightly by the applicant, nor is it an impulsive one, Fenske told court. She has been waiting patiently for parliamentary implementation. Unfortunately she can wait no longer.

Fenske was at times emotional in reading her clients words in court, explaining that her own mother also had ALS.

Its perfectly understandable, the judge replied.

No timeline was given for when the death is expected to occur.

I feel like I am in a perpetual state of saying goodbye to the people I love and I have had enough, the woman said in her affidavit. I will miss my family and friends but I am completely at peace with the decision I have made to seek out a physician-assisted death  it is the best option for me.

The womans spouse also submitted an affidavit, saying he supports her decision after watching the woman he loves constantly suffer.

I believe everyone should have a say as to how much pain and suffering is enough for them, he wrote.

This is the second case of its kind in Manitoba. In March, an unidentified patient suffering from a pair of terminal illnesses was granted the right to die in a hearing before Chief Justice Glenn Joyal. A sweeping publication ban in that case prohibits any details from being published about the patient, including the gender and medical condition.

Lawyers confirmed several days later the patient had passed away peacefully.

These applications come on the heels of the Supreme Court ruling from February 2015 that said Canadian adults in unending pain have the right to end their lives with the help of a doctor. The federal government has been given until June 6 to pass a physician-assisted-death law but, until that happens, Canadians can apply to the courts for a legal exemption.
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Running into your Grade 1 teacher would be a surprise  but imagine if it happened in a strange place on the other side of the world.

For seven kids from a refugee camp in Tanzania, running into their beloved Monsieur Mengi in the hallway of their downtown Winnipeg school felt like a miracle.

I was jumping up and down and and saying Welcome  we are happy to see you! We hope you will be our teacher again! 12-year-old Gervas Kezimana said through a Swahili interpreter, recalling the day in April he saw Mengi Mbekalo and his family getting a tour of St. Aidans Christian School on Hargrave Street.

WAYNE GLOWACKI / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Mengi Mbekalo with his former students (from left) Epitas Ngendaruma, 11, Gervas Kezimana, 12, and Levis Ndayikeza, 14. In back is Christina Dusabimana, 14.

I was surprised, said Mbekalo, 48, who taught the students in Tanzania at a refugee camp school funded by UNICEF.

It felt like I was home, he said. His former students were born in the camp to parents who had fled fighting in Burundi.

Mbekalo fled the Democratic Republic of Congo in 1996 and ended up in the UN High Commissioner for Refugees camp in Tanzania. He and his wife, Maria, and five kids arrived in Winnipeg April 12 after being sponsored by a group from the Meeting Place church downtown. The family toured a public school in their St. Vital neighbourhood, then went to check out the Christian school beside Calvary Temple downtown.

Unbeknownst to them, three families from the same refugee camp in Tanzania moved to Winnipeg in 2015 and send their children to St. Aidans.

They were really good kids, Mbekalo said though a Swahili interpreter Wednesday after being hugged by his former pupils.

He was a really good teacher, and we loved him so much, Levis Ndayikeza, 14, said through the interpreter.

He pushed us to be strong in our education, added Christina Dusabimana, 14.

Gervas said his former teacher set him on the right path. I was struggling  I wanted to fight. He said Youre a good boy  be a good boy and that helped my future. Thats why I love him.

Hearing he made such an impression on his former students touched the soft-spoken man. They remembered that?

On Monday, his own children joined his former students at St. Aidans.

Their sponsors agreed to pay the schools $50 monthly tuition fee and volunteers such as Zoe Reimer have been meeting them at their St. Vital apartment every day to ride the bus downtown to school and back with them until the family learns their way around. Mbekalo and his wife will be attending newcomer orientation-classes on May 9.

Mbekalo, who speaks French, Swahili and his native Congo language, said he came from a large family and got into teaching because he loved being around children. When fighting broke out near his village, the elementary school teacher and his wife fled the country. In the refugee camp, he taught a classroom of 56 kids from different grades for meagre pay.

It wasnt a teachers salary, he said, but it gave him the chance to do what he loves. Hes not sure if he will ever be able to return to work in a classroom but is at peace in Winnipeg where his family feels welcome.

I feel hope for the future and for my kids.

carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca
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A Winnipeg MP is hosting an event Saturday to talk about the creation of a national Indian Residential School Memorial Day.

Robert-Falcon Ouellette (Liberal-Winnipeg Centre) is organizing the meeting Saturday at 1 p.m. at 615 Academy Rd., the site of the former Assiniboia Residential School, which is now the Canadian Centre for Child Protection.

The MPs event is to discuss a private members bill to create a national Indian Residential School Memorial Day. A press release from Ouellete said those who attend the meeting will hear an explanation of the purpose of the bill initiated by Maeengan Linklater, a community volunteer and son of a residential school survivor. He and Ouellette will be joined by Aboriginal education consultant Rebecca Chartrand at the meeting.
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Who would swap their life in Mediterranean Malta for Winnipeg?

An African refugee like Daniel Semere with no hope of ever being accepted as Maltese. Semere arrived in Winnipeg on Apr. 12 and is still basking in the warmth of Friendly Manitobas diversity and its embrace of newcomers.

I came to Canada three weeks ago and it was Welcome to Canada and people offer to help: Go here, go there to find a job, said Semere who just finished two weeks of newcomer orientation. Its a welcome I never heard in Sudan, a welcome I never heard in Libya, a welcome I never heard in Malta.

BORIS MINKEVICH / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Daniel Semere is a refugee who arrived in Winnipeg last month.

Finding a welcome, safe place has taken 32-year-old Semere 10 years of harrowing journeys and upheaval in three different countries.

In 2006, the trained draftsman fled notorious and never-ending conscripted military service in Eritrea for Sudan. He and a friend snuck across the border in their military uniforms and found herders who lent them civilian clothes. They were helped getting to Sudans capital Khartoum where Semere worked in construction for two years. As an undocumented foreigner, he was vulnerable to police raids and being locked up until he paid a bribe to get out or worse  being sent back to Eritrea. Semere saved enough money to pay smugglers to take him to Libya. The Italian-speaking Eritrean found work at an Italian company in Tripoli. Then civil war erupted in 2011. The chaos grew and his employers returned to Italy without Semere who had no passport or visa. I was desperate, said Semere.

Hed heard good things about Canada and emailed NGOs across the country to see if theyd help him get refuge in Canada. Only two replied. Only one offered to help: Hospitality House Refugee Ministry in Winnipeg led by Tom Denton.

Tom said we will sponsor you. Semere said he couldnt believe it at first. He wondered if Dentons offer was genuine or some kind of diabolical plot. I was a bit cautious, said Semere. Why is this person wanting to help me out of the blue? I thought Maybe he has a laboratory. Denton wasnt looking for a specimen to perform experiments on. He was looking to help a well-spoken, educated and multilingual young man seeking a country to call home.

By the time his refugee sponsorship application was reviewed by Canadian immigration officials, Semere had escaped the conflict in Libya by catching a ferry to Malta. The tiny European Union country is considered by Canada to be a durable solution for refugees. A Canadian visa officer in Rome dismissed Semeres refugee application. Denton appealed the decision and Semere was granted an interview by the visa officer who travelled from Rome to Malta to interview him. Semere explained why Malta isnt a durable solution for an African refugee.

Institutions dont encourage integration, said Semere. The newspapers talk about immigrants every day and you understand that youre not welcome. He said he understands why.

Illegal boats come to Malta every year, to this tiny island thats highly populated. Many Europeans are there because there are low taxes and the locals are kind of frustrated, said Semere. The Maltese are friendly, peaceful people, and he appreciates being given refuge there but even if hed stayed the 10 years required to apply for citizen, hed forever be considered one of the boat people, he said.

Whenever he met a Maltese the first question asked was where are you from? and did you arrive by boat?, he said. Then the conversation stops. Or hed be subjected to stereotyping and comments like Boat people are a problem here  they cause this and that, theyre hard to understand, they steal, Semere said.

They dont treat you the way you are. They stereotype you every day. In Winnipeg, he said hes grateful to be in a country as diverse as Canada where someone doesnt look at him and assume hes a foreigner and stereotype him.

Its a place of peace with kind and educated people. Canadians are aware of whats going on in the world.

Denton says Canada is fortunate to have someone like Semere. Hes an excellent settlement prospect, said Denton, who gets requests daily to help refugees. Semere, who is fluent in English and Italian, stood out, he said. He was a bright light.

carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca
Opinion

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This article was published 06/05/2016 (2362 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It has been said those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. We are at the beginning of a new Progressive Conservative majority government in Manitoba. One of the most pressing issues for our province and our country is reconciliation with the indigenous nations that have shared this land with us.

According to Statistics Canada, First Nations, Metis, and Inuit people make up 17 per cent of the population living within Manitobas borders. These indigenous populations are the fastest-growing demographic, are younger than non-indigenous populations and experience much poorer standards of living and health outcomes than non-indigenous people. Couple these facts with recent media attention to the alarming number of suicides in indigenous communities, the number of indigenous children that are removed from their families by Child and Family Services and Winnipegs unflattering distinction as the most racist city in Canada, and it is clear public policy related to indigenous people ought to be a high priority for Manitobas government.

Any indigenous policy approach must be aimed at reconciliation and rooted in an understanding of colonialism, including the negative impacts of past colonial policies and the current ongoing colonial practices that undermine indigenous self-determination and well-being.

We already have a number of key guideposts in place to help as we undertake this transition: our Constitution explicitly protects aboriginal and treaty rights, the federal government has publicly committed to enacting the calls to action of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission  including a commitment to the principles set out in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples  and, during the final days of the previous administration, Manitobas legislature passed the Path to Reconciliation Act, which echoes the federal commitments to the TRC and the UN declaration.

This overarching policy context brings to the fore key issues such as indigenous sovereignty, nationhood, and even citizenship, all of which urge us to face the fact, uncomfortable for some, that indigenous peoples are not like other Canadians and hold rights typical Canadian citizens do not.

It is not easy to assess a new government with no track record of governing. Official platforms and previous public statements must suffice. In this regard, it is not clear the new Pallister government demonstrates an understanding of the relevance of the current context.

The PCs conspicuous silence on this is troubling. Indeed, the official party platform does not mention reconciliation at all. Further, the fact Pallisters party has given the Path to Reconciliation Act a cool reception, even blocking the vote temporarily, exacerbates this concern.

As we know, new governments are often eager to undo the work of their predecessors. If Manitoba is to maintain a provincial commitment to a meaningful approach to reconciliation, it may be up to Manitobans to maintain pressure on our new government to ensure the act remains in force.

Where the Conservatives platform does mention indigenous peoples, there is a clear emphasis on inclusion and economic development. Of course, no one would dispute that these are worthy aims. But if these are pursued out of context  that is, without the parameters set by the TRC and the UN declaration that recognize indigenous peoples rights to choose their political affiliation and identity, to their traditional territories, and to govern themselves through their own institutions  we undermine reconciliation and reinforce damaging colonial practices that lead to marginalization and poverty to begin with.

We have a long history of past and ongoing promises of economic prosperity that result in the destruction of indigenous lands and communities. Similarly, the promise of inclusion has long been a colonial tool to assimilate indigenous peoples into the mainstream body politic, extinguishing indigenous legal, political, and cultural distinctiveness.

Indeed, the move to combine indigenous and municipality issues under one portfolio  indigenous and municipal relations  led by municipalities and economic-development expert Eileen Clarke, reflects no appreciation of this distinctiveness at all. If we fail to appreciate how colonialism functions and how indigenous people continue to resist it, the solutions simply become colonialism in different clothes.

The world is watching as we attempt to move forward. Although it is early, it is not clear that this new government knows of, or wishes to learn from, our colonial past and present. However, as this is our government, it is up to us to hold our elected officials feet to the fire, as it were, to educate them when necessary, and to push for meaningful reconciliation. Insisting that we remain committed to the TRC calls to action and the UN declaration, as outlined in the Path to Reconciliation Act, is only a start.

Derek Kornelsen is an assistant professor at the University of Manitoba with a research focus of aboriginal health. This is an excerpt from Understanding the Manitoba Election 2016 (University of Manitoba Press), which is available for download at uofmpress.ca/election2016.
Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 06/05/2016 (2362 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

OTTAWA  There is no doubt assisted suicide is one of the most emotional and personal debates most MPs in the current Parliament will face.

Discussions about suffering, the right to die and all the moral, religious and ethical considerations it brings are not easy.

One need only see how many MPs were brought nearly to tears during the debate this week to know how highly charged this subject matter is.

And yet, with the looming Supreme Court deadline to implement its ruling on the legalization of doctor-assisted dying, the Liberal government in Ottawa moved Wednesday to curtail debate on its legislation at second reading. It wasnt that no debate took place. The House sat until midnight Monday and Tuesday just to debate this bill.

But there is a general sense, right from the moment the Liberals inherited this issue last fall, that things were being rushed. The government did seek an extension from the court of six months, given the delay imposed by the election campaign.

The court agreed to four months only, until June 6.

And so here we are, ramming through a highly charged piece of legislation that could have serious impacts on the lives and suffering of Canadians if we dont get it right. Debate on second reading lasted four days. Committee hearings were started even before the bill passed second reading, all to try and get things done as efficiently and quickly as possible.

Certainly, if there is any issue that should be exempt from the use of time allocation, its this one. But if legislation is not in place by June 6, then physician-assisted suicide will become legal without any regulations, Criminal Code changes or limits beyond that a patient getting help to die must be a competent adult who is suffering intolerably from a grievous and irremediable condition.

No waiting period, no policy for how a request should be made, no protection for physicians who dont want to participate in it, no protocol for tracking and monitoring how it is being done.

So opposition parties howl about the use of time allocation (and let it be said the Conservatives are on very thin ground to complain about this tactic). Yet the Liberals are between a bit of a rock and a hard place here.

And none of this needed to happen if Parliament had not buried its head in the sand on this issue as public opinion began to change and the western world within which Canada operates shifted. Even the Supreme Court, in its ruling on the matter, noted one of the reasons it ruled in favour of physician-assisted suicide this time, when it had not in 1993, was because of the evolution of global thought on the subject in the last two decades.

And yet as that evolution was occurring, Canadas lawmakers were largely sitting on their hands.

In 2012, when the B.C. Supreme Court ruled banning physician-assisted suicide was unconstitutional, the government could have said, OK, its time to take a look at this.

It did not. Instead it appealed the decision.

When the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case in January 2014, Parliament could have taken it as a sign it better be ready just in case.

It did not.

A few months later, when former Winnipeg Conservative MP Steven Fletcher  now a Manitoba MLA  introduced private members bills on the subject, the government could have used that as the impetus to take a closer look.

It did not.

In fact, even after the court made its ruling and gave the government a year, knowing a year was already a short time frame to enact a new law, and that year was going to be eaten into by the federal election, the government waited six months to do anything. It appointed a panel to study and make recommendations just two weeks before then-prime minister Stephen Harper called the election.

So yes, the Supreme Court could have given the new government more time within which to act, but its hard to fault the judges for being unwilling to help Parliament when Parliament has shown such a strong unwillingness to help itself.

After introducing his bills and while the court case was underway, Fletcher repeatedly said Parliament, not the Supreme Court, should decide the matter. This is why.

The Supreme Court has made a decision, but its the government that has to talk the specifics. And here we are with legislation that had to be so hastily written, it has gaps that surely will see us end up back in court before long.

Yes, there will be time in the future to debate additions to the bill, but if Parliament had taken even some basic initiative four years ago, or three years ago, or two years ago, we wouldnt be forced to swallow that such a complicated, emotion-laden piece of legislation has to be rammed through Parliament now.

Mia Rabson is the Free Press parliamentary bureau chief.

mia.rabson@freepress.mb.caTwitter: @mrabson
Each year the student council plans a fantastic celebration known as prom. The entire school is invited, and this year the school had a 99-percent attendance at the dance from the student body.
We still need people if were going to make things.

Manufacturing is alive and can expect to do well in Minnesota, so long as there are people to fill the jobs. That was the finding of the 2016 State of Manufacturing survey and the message brought to Winona Thursday by Bob Kill, president of Enterprise Minnesota.

For the past eight years, Enterprise Minnesota has done an annual survey of 400 Minnesota manufacturing executives, drawing 50 industry representatives from each of the eight Initiative Foundation regions that comprise the state.

Confidence is as high as it has ever been, Kill told a group of Winona manufacturers gathered at the Tandeski Center on the campus of Southeast Technical College.

Of those surveyed, 90 percent said the general outlook for their company was good, a positive outlook tempered by a degree of concern for the general economy and the political uncertainty in a most unusual presidential election year.

They were confident in areas where they had control, Kill said, and not so much where they didnt.

One factor, however, casts a long shadow over Minnesotas manufacturing economy, and the economy in general.

Across the state, more than two-thirds of manufacturers are finding it difficult to attract and retain skilled, reliable workers.

Economic development is driven by the workforce, Kill said, and manufacturers, particularly in Greater Minnesota, are struggling to compete for good employees.

A manufacturer in Harmony in Fillmore County, Kill pointed out, is in competition with the Mayo Clinic.

Purposefully developing a technically skilled workforce is critical to the future of manufacturers. Across the state, machine operators and assemblers are in great demand, Kill said, and more and more those jobs require a degree of technical training and expertise.

Unfortunately for all involved, too many students  and their parents  discount the technical skills that lead to a career in manufacturing for other paths they, too often mistakenly, believe offer better job prospects.

To this, Kill offered the example of recent graduating class of machinists at the Dunwoody Institute. Of the 30 class members, 29 had multiple job offers when they were handed their diplomas  and the remaining graduate was already working with an instructor at Dunwoody. Not only that, in an era of skyrocketing tuition and burgeoning student debt, most of the students at Dunwoody are attending on scholarships or internships, he said.

We have to get parents to realize these are good careers, he said.

Confidence is as high as it has ever been. Robert Kill, Enterprise Minnesota president
A Winona man ended up in the Winona County Jail after a Winona cabby decided a $20 bill wasn't what it claimed to be.

The driver called the cops, the cops came, and shortly thereafter Joseph "Buster" Beck, 35, was under arrest.

The incident began about 10:13 p.m. Thursday when police were called to an address on the 200 block of East Third Street, Deputy Police Chief Tom Williams said. Officers met with a cab driver who told them that he had picked Beck up at a local convenience store and dropped him off at the address. Beck paid him with two $20 bills the driver determined were counterfeit.

About two hours later, police located Beck. At first he denied knowing the money was fake, but later relented, and admitted he knew the cash was counterfeit, Williams said. Beck told police he had been give 15 fake bills a few weeks ago. Officers found five more bills in Beck's house.

Beck has been linked to a recent rash of phoney $20s that have been passed at various locations around town, Williams said.

Beck is charged with possessing and passing counterfeit currency, a gross misdemeanor.
MADISON  A federal magistrate, following a Thursday hearing, continued to detain a Winona man charged in connection with sexually assaulting an 11-year-old Buffalo County girl in March.

Jacob D. Vogels attorney, Peter Moyers, asked Magistrate Stephen Crocker not to release his client in order to keep him and the case in federal court.

I dont know what Buffalo County will do, Moyers told Crocker, but in our experience with district attorneys ... in a crime that offends two sovereigns, a client can be out on bond (from one) only to be picked up (by the second).

A call to District Attorney Thomas Clark about Vogel was not returned by deadline.

Vogel, 31, was arrested April 28 and held in federal custody on charges that he sexually assaulted a minor on March 24 for the purpose of video-recording the incident.

Crocker agreed that a sex assault in Buffalo County could also be prosecuted there.

Buffalo County, as likely as not, will get in on this, Crocker said.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Elizabeth Altman told Crocker that authorities recovered a pair of glasses from Vogels truck that the girl said she had left there after Vogel had sex with her.

Based on the details in the criminal complaint and Altmans statement about the glasses, Crocker found probable cause to detain Vogel.

Moyers was prepared to ask for his clients release, contending that Vogel had a minimal criminal history, would be subject to electronic monitoring while living with his girlfriend in Minnesota, stay out of Wisconsin, and that there was no evidence he has committed or been suspected in other child sex offenses.

Altman said the government has not analyzed Vogels phone, computer or items taken from his residence to investigate the possibility of any other incidents.

Since Vogel has only been charged by complaint, his case is likely to go to a grand jury next week for indictment. If Vogel is indicted, Crocker set an arraignment for May 17.

At his arraignment, Vogel will have an opportunity to plead not guilty to the charge, a trial date would be set and a decision on his release on bond could be revisited.

If convicted, Vogel faces statutory penalties of 15 to 30 years in prison for engaging in sexually explicit conduct with a minor for the purpose of making of visual depiction of it.

According to the criminal complaint, the girl told a Buffalo County Sheriffs Office investigator that she sent sexually explicit photos of herself over the internet to several individuals.

A man later identified as Vogel responded and arranged to pick her up in his truck at the end of her driveway and have sex with him.

Vogel drove her a short distance and said he wanted to have sex with her. She said she no longer wanted to do this, but he told her that he had drove this far and that she was going to do it.

Vogel used the girls laptop to make a video recording of a sex act she performed on him. He then sexually assaulted and penetrated her and took photos of her using her laptop.

Investigators located Vogel using the text messages Vogel sent the girl and Vogels Facebook page to identify the truck where the sex allegedly occurred.
As 40 Lewiston-Altura kindergartners piled off the school bus at Rockie Hill Bison farm in Winona Friday morning, it didnt take long for them to see their first big, burly buffalo.

I can see a buffalo already! a student exclaimed, as the group followed farm owner Gail Griffin to the start of their tour.

Gail showed the kindergartners bison horns, fur, and other artifacts, explaining how buffalo differ from cattle. Gail and her husband, Dave, started the farm in 1992 when Dave bought three bison from a friend whod won a herd in a card game.

Today, they have more than 85 of the gentle, grass-eating animals, which are native to Minnesota.

Bison is their real name, and buffalo is their nickname, Gail told the group.

The kindergartners got to visit the farm Friday as part of the Lewiston-Altura school districts Farm-to-School program, thanks to grants from the Minnesota Department of Agriculture and the Statewide Health Improvement Program.

Rockie Hill bison burgers are offered daily for high school lunches, and bison jerky is available a la carte, Lewiston-Altura nutrition director Vickie Speltz said. Younger kids get a chance to sample the meat several times throughout the year.

At the farm, Gail led the kindergartners up onto a trailer, and Dave towed them with his tractor out to the pasture, where the buffalo grazed a grassy hillside, some of them opting to cool off in a small pond.

As the tractor came to a stop, the buffalo shifted into a tighter group. About a dozen mothers with newborn calves kept their distance.

Youll see them lift their nose, trying to smell us, Gail said.

Do buffalo like to come over here? asked kindergartner Lauren Murphy.

The younger ones do, Gail answered, as theyre usually the most curious.

Sure enough, a few smaller buffalo were soon nosing around a few yards away from the tractor.

I see them shedding over there! another kindergartner piped up.

Buffalo have some interesting habits, Gail told the group. They shed their winter coat each spring. They like to roll around in bare dirt, which helps keep bugs off. They make permanent trails in the landscape. They also really like being near the pond.

They love to swim, and the babies are swimming within a day or two, Gail said.

Bison, which are out in the pasture year-round, can also predict the weather. Gail said before a storm, the bison will gather in the north pasture. In the winter, theyll huddle and face the wind.

Bison were nearly extinct due to overhunting in the early 1900s, but have made a comeback lately on farms like Rockie Hill. Their meat is increasingly sought after because it is low in fat and cholesterol, and all bison are raised without hormones or antibiotics.

Gail is the executive director of the Minnesota Buffalo Association, and said despite an increasing number of bison producers across the state, demand still outpaces supply.

Rockie Hill harvests 16-18 bison each year, and they dont travel more than 30 miles from farm to plate, Gail said. Theyre processed at Ledebuhrs and sold to businesses and schools like Lewiston-Altura.

The kindergartners could be forgiven for not paying attention to all the nitty-gritty details, though. They were busy watching the animals wallow in dirt patches, drink water from the pond, urinate and munch grass.

When the bison got bored looking at the tractor, they galloped to the far side of the pasture with surprising grace.

Theyre awesome, Murphy said. I just want to ride one.
Dear Governor Mark Dayton,

Not long ago, media members asked for your thoughts regarding the remainder of the 2016 legislative session.

In a very partisan and condescending manner, you took issue with the way the Republican-led House is conducting its business. You told them you would not negotiate with us over our garbage budget bills and that youd prefer that the Minnesota legislature go home.

Governor, these are very troubling, unhelpful comments. Now I have an idea of how stressful and difficult it must be leading this state, and the press may have caught you at a bad moment.

The problem is, Governor, when you say things like go home people actually think you mean it. That you no longer want to be a part of the process. That you dont want to improve the lives of Minnesotans.

We have a tremendous amount at stake this session. Long term transportation funding is a top priority for both Republicans and Democrats, and we are on the cusp of finding a compromise. That disappears if legislators actually hit the road.

We can approve a bipartisan bonding bill that can fund important infrastructure projects statewide. Improvements to college buildings, wastewater facilities, and township roads and bridges all vanish if lawmakers head for home.

We have the opportunity to approve a robust tax relief plan that would benefit hundreds of thousands of Minnesotans. As tax chairman, Ive spent the past two years looking for ways to bring needed relief to our seniors, students, veterans, Main Street business owners, farmers and the middle class. We have the opportunity to approve something historic, but it wont happen if you check out.

Governor, dont stop believin.

Sure we have our political differences, but cooler heads can prevail. Dont abandon us, Governor. Dont quit on lawmakers. Dont quit on Minnesotans. Were here to do the peoples business, and we need you active and engaged. We have work to do, and we can do it in a bipartisan way.

If nothing gets done this session people are going to remember that you got mad and told us to go home. Theyll think you werent serious about having a productive year. Theyll question your motives. No one wants that.

Vince Lombardi once said winners never quit and quitters never win. Dont quit on us Governor; theres too much at stake. Please, end the calls to send us home and lets work together.
A ban on frac sand mining would help, rather than hurt, the traditional sand and aggregate mining industry.

Until the frac sand boom, sand was a low-value commodity. The fracking boom caused the demand for high-quality industrial silica sand (frac sand) to skyrocket.

Winona County is one of 11 of 87 counties in Minnesota with "extensive silica sand resources exposed at or near land surface," according to the Minnesota Geological Survey. The Wonewoc, Jordan and St. Peter sandstone layers in Winona County contain high-quality silica sand. All frac sand is silica sand, but not all silica sand is used for fracking. We are all aware of the need for sand in construction and agriculture.

Some argue that a ban on frac sand mining would hurt the construction and agricultural sand industry and their customers. On the contrary, such a ban would actually benefit the traditional sand and aggregate industry.

Evidence clearly illustrates regulation for frac sand mining must be much more strict, and more rigorously enforced, than that for the traditional sand and aggregate industry. Without an end-use ban, all sand and aggregate miners would be subject to the same high level of scrutiny required by frac sand mining.

Should construction sand miners who are operating in a responsible manner be penalized by the frac sand industry?

Without a ban based on end-use, construction sand operations would be in competition with the frac sand industry for labor and transportation, increasing their costs. Weve all seen what happens when the fracking industry is booming  farmers and others are unable to find transportation for their products.

A ban on frac sand mining would reduce local price pressure on sand, making cattle bedding and roads more affordable.

Traditional sand and aggregate operations, along with all taxpayers in the county, will benefit from a ban, because strict regulation and enforcement comes with a price tag  increased county staffing with specialized expertise.

Winona County commissioners Greg Olson, Jim Pomeroy and Marie Kovecsi are to be commended not only for their commitment to protecting public health and safety, but also for their fiscal responsibility to both individuals and established businesses.
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Neenah police and the Wisconsin Department of Justice should have released the videos the day after police shot a hostage behind Eagle Nation Cycles.

Its that simple.

Police and the Department of Justice are violating best practices in dealing with the public, and the secrecy has to stop.

Mistrust of police is coming to a head in this country, yet police officials and the departments that protect them keep screwing it up again and again. The Neenah police shooting is no exception.

USA Today Network-Wisconsin obtained a dash cam video of police shooting and killing Michael L. Funk on Dec. 5 without warning him to drop the gun he pulled to defend himself against the hostage-taker. Police and the Department of Justice to this day have refused to release videos of the shooting despite our open records requests. The Department of Justice has not released a report on its investigation of the shooting that happened almost five months ago.

It didnt have to be this way.

In Sumner County in Tennessee in early April, police released a body cam video the day after an officer shot a woman who attacked a sheriffs deputy with an ax.

In Clarke County in Georgia this past week, police released a body cam video the day after an officer shot a man he was questioning about a liquor violation.

In Tucson, Arizona, police in April released a body cam video of an officer shooting a man who pulled out a weapon. The shooting happened in March.

In Glendale, Ohio, on April 12, police released a body cam video of an officer shooting a man who was begging to be killed. The shooting happened March 29.

A study called Guiding Principles on Use of Force from the Police Executive Research Forum states: Agencies that experience an officer-involved shooting or other serious use-of force incident should release as much information as possible to the public, as quickly as possible, acknowledging that the information is preliminary and may change as more details unfold.

The report emphasizes that trust in police is strengthened when videos are released. We give police the power to take lives. With that we rightfully demand complete accountability.

Yet were still waiting for the Neenah videos from law enforcement.

Brad Schimel, Wisconsins attorney general, has been a strong advocate for transparency. Somehow, the states police agencies, including his own, havent gotten the message.

As of Friday morning, there were nearly 500 comments on our website and Facebook page about the video, and a vast majority of them are highly critical.

The Neenah Police Department blew it. But other departments in Wisconsin can do the right thing in the future.
Dodge County is hosting the 69th Alice in Dairyland Finals through Saturday. This is the second time events leading up to the selection will take place in Dodge County.

Dodge County is home to five women who have served as Wisconsins most recognizable Agriculture Ambassador. They have come from across Wisconsin, including Dodge County. As part of the 69th Alice in Dairyland events, past Alices will gather for a reunion luncheon at Pribnows Maple Inn in Ixonia and an afternoon of tours at Honey Acres in Ashippun and Silver Creek Alpacas in Watertown.

Past Alice in Dairylands are:

Debra Casucci-Crave Waterloo, 34th Alice in Dairyland (1981-1982)

Debbie Crave is vice president of Crave Brothers Farmstead Cheese. She manages administration, marketing/sales, and public relations for CBFC. Crave was selected as the 1981-82 Alice in Dairyland. She continued working for the Marketing Division of DATCP for 15 years. Among positions she held was Director for the International Agri-Business Center, where she traveled with the governor on overseas trade missions. She worked closely with the other Midwestern State Departments of Agriculture on many agricultural marketing and promotional programs. She joined the Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board in July, 1998, working in producer and board relations and marketing. She began working for Crave Brothers Farmstead Cheese, in 2001. Debbie graduated from the University of WisconsinMadison with a bachelor of science degree in forestry and horticulture in 1981. She presently serves on the World Dairy Expo Board and their Executive committee. Past Board affiliations: Thrive Board, CARET rep for UW Madison College of Agriculture, the Wisconsin Specialty Cheese Institute Board, and advisor to the Professional Dairy Producers of Wisconsin Board. She also served on the Wisconsin 4-H Foundation Board and the WALSAA (Wisconsin Ag& Life Sciences Alumni Association) Board.

Debbie is a 4-H leader for the Portland Boosters 4-HClub in Dodge County and past 4-H member from Turtle 4-H Club of Rock County. She was born and raised in Beloit, Wisconsin. Debbie and her husband George reside on the Crave Brothers Dairy Farm in Waterloo, Wisconsin. They have three children- Patrick, Brian and Roseanne.

Renea (Troeller) Heinrich, Merton, 44th Alice in Dairyland (1991-1992)

Heinrich works at MorganMyers, a public drelations firm in Waukesha. She leads the Illinois Farm Families account team in implementing and managing a farmer image-building campaign targeted at Chicago consumers. She first joined the firm in 1992 after graduating from UW-River Falls with an agricultural marketing degree. She worked for the agency for nearly five years before opting to stay at home to raise four children with her husband, Doug. Their family resides in Merton, where they are involved with scouts and sports. Heinrich grew up on a dairy farm in Rubicon.

Sheri Hicken Waupun, 54th Alice in Dairyland (2001-2002).

In 2001-2002, Hicken served as the 54th Alice in Dairyland. Originally from Sauk County, Hicken and her husband, Jeff, and two sons, Cole and Drew, now call Dodge County home. Continuing to tell agricultures story, Hicken works as the Agricultural Educator and completes Community Outreach for the School for Agricultural and Environmental Studies, a project-based public charter school in Fox Lake.

Christine (Lepple) Lindner Fall River, 63rd Alice in Dairyland (2010-2011)

Lindner, Fall River, works at Alsum Farms & Produce in Friesland, a fresh market grower, packer and shipper of Wisconsin potatoes and onions. Lindner executes the organizations marketing, communications and public relations activities. She also works with national retail and food service accounts. Lindner grew up on her familys 120-cow dairy farm in rural Beaver Dam and graduated with honors from the University of WisconsinMadison with a degree in life sciences communication in 2006. While on campus, she was active in the Association of Women in Agriculture, National Agri-Marketing Association, CALS Ambassadors, Collegiate FFA, Badger Dairy Club and the Colleges Student Council. In 2003, Lindner served as a Wisconsin State FFA Officer promoting agricultural education and FFA. In 2006, the University of Wisconsin-Madison College of Agricultural & Life Sciences named Lindner the Colleges Most Active Senior among 3,000 students. She has been bestowed the American FFA Degree, Honorary Wisconsin FFA Degree and the Wisconsin FFA Distinguished Service Award. In addition, she served as publicity co-chair for the 2009 Wisconsin Farm Technology Days hosted by Dodge County. Lindner has a decade of experience in agriculture sales, marketing and communications. After graduating from UW-Madison, Lindner worked as the marketing manager at ANIMART and then served as Wisconsins 63rd Alice in Dairyland. Prior to joining Alsum Farms & Produce in 2014, she worked with specialty food clients at an agriculture and food communications firm based in Watertown. Lindner resides in rural Fall River with her husband, Russ and daughter, Hailey.

Kristin (Natzke) Olson, Windsor, 66th Alice in Dairyland (2013-2014)

Olson serves as media relations manager for World Dairy Expo, where she manages media and public relationships for Expo and the Dane County Fair. A native of Fond du Lac, Olson grew up showing dairy cattle with her familys small show herd, Crestbrooke Holsteins and Jerseys  from the Dodge County Fair, to World Dairy Expo. In 2010, she graduated with a degree in life sciences communications from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she was involved in several organizations and a member of the collegiate Dairy Judging and NAMA Marketing Teams. She serves on several committees within organizations such as the Dane County Dairy Promotion Committee and the Dodge County and Wisconsin Holstein Associations. After graduating from college, Olson worked as the dairy advertising coordinator for Accelerated Genetics and went on to serve Wisconsin as the 66th Alice in Dairyland. Prior to coming on board with WDE, she worked as an independent consultant for her own business, KnockOut Communications.
The redbud trees on Dickason Boulevard are blooming, right on schedule for the Columbus Chamber of Commerces annual Redbud Days on Saturday, May 7.

Sales and specials: Garage sales will be held throughout town, and a number of local retailers and restaurants will be hosting special Mothers Day sales. Shoppers can enter for a chance to win a redbud tree at participating stores. Each business will pick one winner whose name will be put into a drawing on May 10, in which 10 winners will be selected to receive redbud trees.

Chalk Walk: If you didnt register for the Chalk Walk yet, no problem. Walk-ups are welcome on Saturday. The event, organized by Root for Columbus, will take place on the sidewalks of the 100 block of North Dickason Boulevard (where the City Hall and Senior Center are located). Participants will be assigned a square when they check in and are welcome color away anytime between 9 a.m. and 1 p.m. Judges will look over the entries from 1 to 1:45 p.m., and winners will be announced at 2 p.m., with prizes being awarded in each of four categories: individuals 10 and under, individuals 11 to 14, individuals 15 and older and groups (any age). The Chalk Walk is a free event.

Kiwanis Brat Stand: Before or after chalking up the sidewalks, stop in at the Columbus Kiwanis Clubs brat stand, which will be open for business from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Badger Antique Auto Club Cars on the Boulevard: Expect to see a few vintage vehicles rolling into town in the morning. Members of the local Badger Antique Auto Club will be displaying some of their classic cars on the boulevard behind the brat stand throughout the day.

Redbud Prince and Princess Contest: The Columbus Chamber of Commerce will crown its new Redbud Prince and Princess at a ceremony at the Columbus Area Senior Center, beginning at 10 a.m. Ten kids, who are all kindergarten and first grade students in the Columbus School District, have signed up for this years contest. The public is welcome to watch.

Free Comic Book Day: Saturday is also Free Comic Book Day nationwide, and Cardinal Comics & Collectibles in Columbus will be joining in the celebration by handing out free comic books at both its store at 111 Ludington St. and at the Columbus Public Library at 223 W. James St. (One comic book per person, while supplies last.)
Mary Beth Crowleys passion for teaching has impacted and molded young minds at St. Patrick School in Mauston for 31 years.

A few weeks ago, Crowley was honored for her three decades of work at the elementary school when she received the Herb Kohl Fellowship Award at Kimberly High School. Through the fellowship, St. Pats received a stipend of $3,000.

The Kohl Foundation Fellowship, established by former U.S. Senator and Wisconsin businessman Herb Kohl, rewards teachers who have demonstrated superior ability to inspire a love of learning in their students, have motivated others, and have provided dedicated service both in and out of the classroom.

St. Pats Principal Tiffany Kolb said Crowleys contribution to education include 31 years of committed service to the school where she lovingly challenged each child to grow into creative, insightful thinkers, working on the Mauston School District referendum committee, leading a variety of fundraising groups and events, and inspiring students and peers by her daily example of warmth, work ethic and faith.

Crowley attended the Herb Kohl Foundation awards banquet with her five daughters and son-in-law, all of whom are involved in education. Receiving the Kohl Fellowship was especially gratifying for Crowley who was a student at the old Madonna High School in Mauston where St. Pats school now stands.

I teach in the classroom that was my home room during my senior year, Crowley said. I was in the last class to graduate from the high school in 1966."

Through dedicated support from parents, Crowley was able to build a teaching legacy at St. Pats.

It takes a certain commitment, but its such a wonderful place to be because you really do have great parental and parish support, Crowley said. Its such a wonderful environment for children to go to school in.

I was quite humbled by the honor. I feel very honored to have been selected and I also think about the generosity of Mr. Kohl who has helped students achieve great things. Hes a very staunch supporter of education and has been for many years and I appreciate that very much.

Since 1990, the Kohl Educational Foundation Scholarship and Fellowship program has provided $10.2 million to state educators, students and schools. At St. Pats, Crowley teaches nine courses a day in several different subjects. Crowley believes block scheduling has helped students become more focused on one lesson at a time. Many children who attend mass with their families at St. Patrick Catholic Church are also St. Pats School students.

I feel a great deal of gratitude toward the Mauston community that has always valued and appreciated education, Crowley said. I speculate about 90 percent of children in our parish go to school here, which is really good.

Growing up, Crowley was motivated to begin a career in education by Sister Mary Peters, a former teacher, who showed her a gentle way of teaching.

I absolutely and firmly believe that every child is gifted, Crowley said. And Ive always used that as my foundation for teaching, and Ive used the ideal that every child is some parents special gift and this child is so important to some parent and we have to recognize that every day. Thats always been my standard to education. Every kid can be hooked into learning if you can proceed along those ways.

Through the years, Crowley has seen children become positively affected by the efforts of educators.

I believe were really doing a good job, both in private and public schools, of teaching kids to be good public servants; theyre aware about the world around them, taking care of the earth and reaching out to those in need, she said. You see more kids joining groups to help people and Im proud of our communities for teaching those values. People always like to say Oh, these kids these days, but I like to say How about kids these days, look at all they can do.
As if receiving a scholarship from Herb Kohl wasnt enough, the former U.S. Senator gave Ashley Steffens another pleasant surprise recently.

After initially believing she was getting a $3,000 scholarship, Kohl shocked the Mauston High School senior by increasing the amount to $5,000 at the Herb Kohl Educational Foundation awards luncheon on April 16 at Kimberly High School. Steffens, who will attend St. Cloud State University in the fall, received the Herb Kohl Initiative Scholarship.

I was invited to the banquet and when I got on stage, he told me You might as well rip those pieces of paper up because its now $5,000, Kohl said. It was interesting. Its pretty amazing what hes done for students around the state.

Kohl, who represented Wisconsin in the U.S. Senate from 1989-2013 and was a highly successful businessman, founded the Kohl Educational Foundation Scholarship and Fellowship program in 1990. Since then, the foundation has awarded $10.2 million to Wisconsin students, educators and schools. Each year the foundation honors hundreds of teachers, students and principals throughout the state.

For Steffens, the $5,000 scholarship will help her achieve a goal of being the first person in her immediate family to pursue a college degree.

When I first got the $3,000 scholarship I was really happy because even thought my college isnt all that expensive, its still helping because its the place where I really want to go, Steffens said. But getting the $5,000 is really nice because it closes the gap between the $3,000 and my (financial aid). Next year is probably going to be absolutely free for me and that will be really cool.

While she is very familiar with the bite of a Midwestern winter, Steffens admits she will have to pack a few more blankets to prepare for the cold of northern Minnesota. But Steffens believes St. Cloud State will be the ideal fit for her.

Im going to be studying anthropology and even though UW-La Crosse has a pretty good anthropology program, St. Clouds is better, Steffens said. I really want to work alongside FBI agents and do the forensics side of anthropology because that would be fun.

Kohl established the scholarship to recognize students who have demonstrated a high level of motivation to achieve, have shown strong promise for success in college and beyond, have overcome significant obstacles or adversity and have not received any additional scholarships prior to getting the Kohl scholarship.

Being the first one in my family to go off to college, its been kind of difficult because I dont have that system in place to know whats happening so Ive had to take control of it myself and its different for people who have gone through it before, Steffens said. But Mauston High School is really nice because they really encourage helping you so youre not doing it by yourself. Even our principal, (Jim Dillon) was the first one in his family to go off to college so he understands the process.

The Steffens family has seen hardships recently as Ashleys dad, Chris, has been on disability relief in recent months and unable to work.

Its been hard for my parents to meet everything up, moneywise, Steffens said.

Steffens, a multi-talented student, has been involved with several clubs at MHS and lends a hand with special events throughout the school year. During last months Mauston Sharing Supper, Steffens Pro Start culinary class prepared and served meals to local residents and, as a member of the schools jazz choir, Steffens performed after dinner was served.

Of course, most students need a little help to earn a prestigious scholarship. Steffens said Mauston teacher Greg Rowe was instrumental in leading her to a fortuitous path. While his methods were somewhat unorthodox, Rowe gave Steffens the dose of confidence she needed to turn her life around academically and socially.

If it wasnt for him, I probably wouldnt have made it this far. I was kind of a sheltered kid who didnt like to speak out so when I went into his Freshman Academy class he kind of chipped away at all that and made it easier to talk in front of people because hes weird, so very weird, Steffens said with a chuckle.
The U.S. Department of Treasury on Friday denied a recovery plan for Central States Pension Fund that opponents estimated would have cost Wisconsin beneficiaries $2 billion.

The plan in July would have affected as many as 25,000 Wisconsin residents, Protect Pensions committee members said, and would have cut more than 400,000 retirees pensions by up to 70 percent, nationwide.

I think now we can breathe a little bit, said Endeavor committee leader Bob Brockway, noting it remains to be seen what steps Central States, facing insolvency, will take next. It also remains to be seen, he said, how Kenneth Feinbergs decision will affect other pension funds across the U.S. that are presently in the red.

This is just the beginning. Were going to continue this fight until we win all the way.

Washington attorney Feinberg, appointed in June 2015 to review the recovery plan, determined the Central States application did not meet requirements set by Congress in the Multiemployer Pension Reform Act of 2014. MRPA was slipped into Congress omnibus spending bill in 2014, Protect Pensions members had argued, and several speakers at a Washington D.C. rally in April  including Wisconsin Sen. Tammy Baldwin  agreed the majority of representatives who voted for it likely never read the bill that effectively did away with ERISA (Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974), which had guaranteed pensions.

Next were going to sit down, talk, and see what we can come up with for a solution of them losing our money and investigate where our money went to, Brockway said.

Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, informed Protect Pensions members in Washington that preliminary investigation of the U.S. Department of Labor was underway, an investigation promised after a Senate Finance Committee hearing in March. The U.S. Department of Labor is said to have had the biggest role in oversight of Central States funds, according to Milwaukee Protect Pensions member, Bernie Anderson.

Were going to go after everybody until we win, Brockway said.

Central States stated in a news release its disappointment with Feinbergs decision, noting its trustees still believe the rescue plan provided the only realistic solution to avoiding insolvency. The statement also noted that Central States trustees will carefully consider the most appropriate next steps and that the pension fund is projected to run out of money within ten years, or even less.

The International Brotherhood of Teamsters, which represents 1.4 million people in the U.S., Canada and Puerto Rico, stated in a news release that the union applauds this decision, and will continue to work with Congress to find a solution.

The Teamsters, the statement continued, will continue its legislative efforts to repeal MPRA and find a viable solution to the pension crisis.

The next Endeavor Protect Pensions meeting is set for 10 a.m. May 14.
Helen Gant

Helen Lydia Gade Gant, 83, of Moraga, California, passed away peacefully Wednesday, May 4, 2016.

Helen was born Feb. 1, 1933, to William and Esther Gade at their farmhouse in Reedsburg. She attended St. Peters School, then Reedsburg High School, where she graduated with the top 10 students, receiving awards, honors and scholarships. At the University of Wisconsin, she studied child development and elementary education, as well as interior design, earning both a bachelors and a masters degree, and again graduated with honors. After graduation, she taught kindergarten from 1955-1965.

In 1956, Helen married her childhood friend and college sweetheart, Gerald Charles Gant, whom she first met in the first grade. The couple lived in Madison where Helen taught kindergarten while Gerald completed medical school. They adopted Jennifer in 1964 in Madison. The family moved to New Hartford, New York in 1967, where they adopted Peter and lived for more than 35 years. After retirement, Helen and Jerry moved to Napa, California, to be closer to their children and grandchildren, and finally to Moraga, California.

Helen had many varied talents and interests. For more than 20 years, she worked at Fountain Elms, the decorative arts arm of the Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute in Utica, New York. At this highly regarded museum, she worked closely with the executive director to curate special exhibits, organized school tours, presented lectures, and researched and edited three books, contributing her expertise in 19th century decorative arts.

During the time that Helen and Jerry lived in upstate New York, Helen held leadership roles in a wide variety of community-based and nonprofit organizations, including the PTA and YWCA, the American Association of University Women, the Uptown Neighborhood Resource Center, and the Central Association for the Blind. She served on the board of Faxton Hospital in Utica, New York, as well as on the board of the Lutheran Home of Central New York. She was president of Zonta, an international womens organization, where she championed the status of women. Helen also worked as a volunteer with Manpower, teaching English as a second language to immigrants and refugees from Viet Nam, Poland, Russia and Bosnia, and later became part of the group that formed the Mohawk Valley Center for Refugees. When she and Jerry moved to Napa, California, she served on the Architectural Committee of their neighborhoods homeowners association.

Helen was also very involved in her church life. At Trinity Lutheran Church in Utica, New York, she founded a preschool in the early 1970s, which is still functioning today. She later joined the First Presbyterian Church in New Hartford, New York, where she held leadership roles in the congregation and in the local Presbytery. She was also active in Napa, Californias Covenant Presbyterian Church and on that congregations church council.

In addition to her many professional and volunteer accomplishments, Helen loved art, music, poetry, reading, and learning. She played the piano, violin and drums. She was an accomplished painter, an award-winning poet, and an active supporter of the performing arts. She was passionate about reading, education, and lifelong learning. She shared these passions with her husband and close friends, and passed these values on to her children and grandchildren.

Helen passed away peacefully at home after a long illness. She will be remembered by family, friends, and all who knew her as a bright and beautiful woman of many interests and accomplishments.

Helen is survived by her husband, Dr. Gerald Charles Gant and their children, Jennifer McClure and Peter Gant and their spouses, David McClure and Denice Gant; and four grandchildren, Evan McClure (14), and Willard (14), Elena (12) and Lydia (12) Gant.

Helen is preceded in death by her two older brothers, Reuben and William; a sister, Irene; and her parents.

Funeral services for Helen L. Gant will be conducted at 11 a.m. Tuesday, May 10, 2016, at the First Presbyterian Church, 148 N. Park St. in Reedsburg, with Pastor Joseph Corbin officiating. Burial will follow in Greenwood Cemetery, Reedsburg. A visitation will be held from 4-7 p.m. Monday at the Farber Funeral Home, 2000 Viking Drive, Reedsburg and from 10 a.m. until the time of the service Tuesday at the church. Memorials may be made to Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute Museum of Art in her honor.
The concrete began to pour Friday for the Dells Scenic River Walk expansion.

A crew from Augelli Concrete and Excavating began pouring the concrete for the new 10-foot-wide pathway that ultimately will lengthen the scenic walk by 1,300 feet.

Fridays fresh pour stretched from the River Road-Illinois Avenue intersection up the hill toward the River Road bridge  which during the past few weeks has been stripped down in order to be reconfigured so that the pedestrian walkway across it is protected by a road-side barrier and a more decorative railing on the bridge is installed.

Overall construction of the River Walk expansion remained on schedule as its third week came to a close, according to Dells Planning and Zoning Administrator Chris Tollaksen.

Theyre moving along, they are progressing, it appears to be on schedule, Tollaksen told Dells Events on Thursday.

The bridge section of River Road will remain closed for two more weeks as planned, according to Tollaksen. The road is expected to be open temporarily the weekend of May 21 to accommodate the traffic increase that will accompany the annual Automotion Festival that weekend, then the road will re-close for continued construction the following week.

If all goes according to plan, the work on the bridge and roadway will progress near enough to completion that the thoroughfare will re-open permanently a week later for Memorial Day weekend.

The River Walk may not be open for Memorial Day because they might not have the path finished, but they want to be close enough so that the road can be opened back up, Tollaksen said.

Completion of the concrete traffic barrier will be the key to reopening the road, Tollaksen said.

Once the vehicle barrier is in, cars can go on the bridge, he said.

The barriers unclad, rebar forms were already visible across the length of the bridge on its river side Friday. The former heavy-duty bridge railing separating the sidewalk from the cliff down to the Wisconsin River below has been removed to make way for the more decorative railing that will replace it and match that of the existing River Walk.

Aside from a makeshift wooden railing, parts of the cliffs edge were unobstructed Thursday afternoon, making for a unique view of the river and Upper Dells beyond  from the barriers protecting the public from the construction site, of course.

Also keeping the project on schedule this spring is a recently approved, $2.5-million State Trust Fund Loan approved by Wisconsins Board of Commissioners of Public Lands (BCPL), announced this week.

Even though the needed funding already exists for the expansion, the federal portion of the funding  approximately $1.88 million federal grant earmarked almost a decade ago by then-U.S. Rep. Tammy Baldwin, expressly for the River Walk extension  will not be paid out until the project is completed.

In order to pay contractors and purchase materials, the city took out the loan just to get us through, according to Dells City Treasurer Karen Terry  and will pay it back when the federal funds are disbursed.

We will reimburse the loan once the project is complete and weve gotten all our funding from the federal government, Terry said. We wanted to make sure we had the money on hand to pay contractors so it wouldnt slow down the project.

The BCPL announced approval of loans totaling more than $12.3 million to various municipalities across the state, including the loan to the city of Wisconsin Dells.

The BCPL operates entirely on program revenue, without taxpayer money and distributes more than 96 cents of every dollar of interest earned on BCPL State Trust Fund investments to Wisconsins public schools, according to the news release from the organization announcing the loans that included the one to the city of Wisconsin Dells.
Natasha King 16 nets top Virginia outdoor writing honors

Way with words Natasha King '16 spent weeks on Orcas Island gathering experiences for her creative nonfiction Monroe Scholars project. Photo courtesy Natasha King

Way with words Natasha King '16 with her parents at the Virginia Outdoor Writers Association annual meeting. Photo courtesy VOWA

Way with words King's photo of a male cardinal was awarded an honorable mention. Photo courtesy Natasha King

Way with words King with her award and her boyfriend, Charlie Miller, at the Virginia Outdoor Writers Association annual meeting. Photo courtesy VOWA

Way with words In addition to writing about her experiences in Washington state, King also recorded them through photography. Photo courtesy Natasha King

Way with words In addition to writing about her experiences in Washington state, King also recorded them through photography. Photo courtesy Natasha King

Way with words In addition to writing about her experiences in Washington state, King also recorded them through photography. Photo courtesy Natasha King

Way with words In addition to writing about her experiences in Washington state, King also recorded them through photography. Photo courtesy Natasha King

Way with words In addition to writing about her experiences in Washington state, King also recorded them through photography. Photo courtesy Natasha King

Way with words In addition to writing about her experiences in Washington state, King also recorded them through photography. Photo courtesy Natasha King

Way with words In addition to writing about her experiences in Washington state, King also recorded them through photography. Photo courtesy Natasha King Photo - of - Hide Caption

For the second year in a row, one of Ornithology Professor Dan Cristols students has won the Virginia Outdoor Writers Associations college student essay contest.

Natasha King, a marketing and environmental science major who will graduate this week, was recently awarded best overall essay for her piece, Encountering Orcas.

The 1,000-word essay recounts a whale-watching excursion she undertook in Washingtons Puget Sound and the private delight and restorative power she has found since childhood in confronting nature alone.

I remember, as a small child at the zoo, trying to climb up the side of the chain link fence surrounding the snow leopard exhibit in an attempt to get closer to the majestic silvery cats, she wrote. I slipped and scraped my hand, but kept the injury to myself  it seemed private, a secret thing, a part and parcel of this quiet, personal encounter, this questing.

Her quest for an up-close look at an orca whale, plus other outdoor experiences she had in Washington, were part of a larger creative nonfiction writing summer project funded through the James Monroe Scholar Program. With the $3,000 funding, King stayed on Orcas Island for two-and-a-half weeks, gathering experiences for a series of essays that in the end will total roughly 50,000 words.

Im a big fan of [writer] Annie Dillard and really like Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, King said. I obviously couldnt go to the Blue Ridge Mountains for a year and live in a cabin by myself like she did, but I wanted to do something similar on a smaller scale.

When Cristol alerted students to the annual VOWA/Dominion Resources 2015-2016 Annual Collegiate Undergraduate Writing-Photo Contest, she decided to enter, writing Encountering Orcas. Her photo of a male cardinal was also recognized with an honorable mention. She was awarded $250 cash prize, her essay was published on the VOWA website and she read it aloud at VOWAs annual conference held over spring break in Staunton. It was very exciting, she said.

Reading her work in front of strangers and having it be rewarded was very affirming for her, she said, especially because writing is largely a solitary endeavor.

Natasha is one of those students who is so naturally gifted in writing, presenting, discussing and learning in general that one is left wondering if she has anything to gain from your class, Cristol said. She makes the class better for those around her through her contributions to the discussion and the field trips, and she even produced a vibrant photo blog of our bird sightings and won the hotly contested bird identification contest over several more experienced classmates. She is the kind of student who makes me grateful to be a teacher and thankful to be at William & Mary.




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TVA to sell Bellefonte

06 May 2016

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As Watts Bar 2 prepares to start up, the board of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) has voted to sell the Bellefonte nuclear power plant site, with its two partially built reactors and other infrastructure, to the highest bidder.

For sale: Bellefonte (Image: TVA)

TVA CEO Bill Johnson at yesterday's public meeting of the TVA board said that nuclear power had an important role to play in the federally-owned corporate agency's diversified portfolio. "We are relying on our nuclear plants for electricity that is reliable, clean, low-cost and round-the-clock," he said. However, against a background of lower energy demand and changing usage patterns, TVA's 2015 Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) determined that it will not need to build any new large-scale baseload capacity for at least the next 20 years.

TVA has been preserving the Bellefonte property as an option for future nuclear generation, but Johnson said that in light of the IRP, the "time had come" to consider whether TVA would better serve the public by retaining the site or selling it. As well as two partially built nuclear reactors, on-site infrastructure includes switchyards, office buildings, warehouses, cooling towers, water pumping stations and railroad spurs.

TVA purchased Bellefonte, in northern Alabama, in 1974 and began work to build two B&W pressurized water reactors. Construction was suspended in 1988, when unit 1 was about 90% complete and unit 2 58% complete. Since then, many of the units' components have been transferred or sold, while others would need to be upgraded or replaced, meaning that the levels of completion of the units today are substantially lower. The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) reinstated the construction permits for the units in 2009.

In 2007, TVA and the NuStart consortium filed a construction and operating licence application with the NRC for two Westinghouse AP1000 units at the site, but the application has been suspended indefinitely since 2010.

Earlier this year, TVA invited stakeholders to express their views on a potential sale of Bellefonte to help inform a decision on whether to retain the site or sell it to the highest bidder. Out of a total of 79 responses received from customers, public officials, developers and environmental advocacy groups and residents, 39 supported selling the site and 28 opposed. All elected officials who commented recommended selling the site to someone who would complete the plant, TVA's executive vice-president and General Counsel Sherry Quirk said.

Now that the board has declared the site surplus, it will be offered at auction to qualified bidders subject to a minimum price. Quirk said that an independent appraisal has valued the site at $36.4 million. To qualify, bidders must demonstrate their financial worthiness and submit their plans to develop the site, whether or not that includes completing the units. The winning bidder will also be expected to meet some of the costs associated with the auction. Some of the existing environmental reviews including environmental impact statements supporting the construction and operation of the nuclear plant may need to be updated, and additional environmental reviews would have to be conducted to support non-nuclear uses.

Watts Bar 2

Johnson confirmed that Watts Bar 2 is expected to reach first criticality later this month, with full power expected in June and commercial operation "later this summer". Construction of the 1165 MWe (net) pressurized water reactor resumed in 2007, after a 22-year suspension. The unit is now undergoing power ascension testing, to ensure the plant's systems, structures and components "have been properly designed and built," Johnson said. He described bringing the unit to full power as a "complex, time-consuming and difficult process."

While TVA does not expect to need additional large scale capacity for some time after Watts Bar 2 comes on line, Johnson said that the company was still considering future nuclear options. "We are continuing to explore small modular reactors as a potential long-term resource, provided that the technology proves to be a good fit for TVA and its customers," he said.

Researched and written

by World Nuclear News

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Decommissioning plan submitted for Shimane 1

06 May 2016

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Chugoku Electric Power Company has submitted an overview of its decommissioning plan for unit 1 of the Shimane nuclear power plant in Japan's Shimane prefecture to the country's nuclear regulator. The company expects dismantling of the plant to take 30 years to complete.

The Shimane plant (Image: Chugoku)

The utility submitted an outline of its plans for decommissioning the unit to the Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) on 28 April, having announced a year ago that it did not plan to restart the reactor.

Chugoku said decommissioning of Shimane 1 - a 460 MWe boiling water reactor that started commercial operation in March 1974 - is to be carried out in four stages. The first stage, lasting about six years, will involve preparing the reactor for dismantling (including the removal of all fuel and surveying radioactive contamination), while the second, lasting eight years, will be to dismantle peripheral equipment from the reactor and other major equipment. The third stage, also taking about eight years, will involve the demolition of the reactor itself, while the fourth stage, again taking about eight years, will see the demolition of all remaining buildings and the release of land for other uses.

During the first stage, all fuel is to be removed from the unit. This includes 722 used fuel assemblies that will be sent for reprocessing and 92 fresh fuel assemblies that will be stored in the unit's storage pool before being returned to the fuel fabricator.

Chugoku said it currently expects the decommissioning work to be completed by March 2046. However, it noted that while it has completed a detailed plan for the first phase of work, specific plans for the subsequent stages will be "based on the results of the status of radioactive contaminant that will be performed in Phase 1".

The company said it anticipates a total of some 60 tonnes of high-level waste to be generated during the decommissioning of Shimane 1, including components such as the control rods. A further 670 tonnes of intermediate-level waste, including the reactor vessel, will be produced, as well as 5350 tonnes of low-level waste. Some 20,680 tonnes of waste will not need to be treated as radioactive waste.

Shimane 1 was one of five older Japanese reactors to be officially declared for decommissioning in mid-March 2015 following the introduction of an accounting-related system earlier that month to determine which units should not be restarted. The other units included Kansai Electric Power Company's Mihama units 1 and 2, unit 1 of Japan Atomic Power Company's (JAPC's) Tsuruga plant, and Kyushu Electric Power Company's Genkai 1.

Kyushu submitted its decommissioning plan for Genkai 1 to the NRA last December, while JAPC and Kansai submitted their respective plans for Tsuruga 1 and Mihama units 1 and 2 in February.

In March this year, Shikoku Electric Power Company announced that unit 1 of its Ikata plant would officially enter the decommissioning phase on 10 May.

Researched and written

by World Nuclear News

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NRC issues final Yucca Mountain EIS supplement

06 May 2016

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The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has issued its final supplement to the environmental impact statement (EIS) for the proposed Yucca Mountain permanent repository for used nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste in Nevada.

The supplement analyzes potential impacts on groundwater and surface groundwater discharges and determines that all impacts would be "small."

The US Department of Energy (DOE) issued the final EIS for the proposed repository in 2002, supplementing it in 2008 when it submitted a construction application to the NRC. The NRC found that the 2008 EIS did not adequately address all of the repository-related effects on groundwater, or from surface discharges of groundwater. The DOE accordingly updated its analysis of potential groundwater impacts after closure of a repository at the site, and in February 2015 the NRC directed its staff to prepare the final supplement using the updated DOE analysis.

The NRC published a draft of the supplement for public comment in August 2015, receiving more than 1200 comments on the draft supplement in the 91-day consultation period.

The US government is legally responsible for developing a long-term disposal strategy for used nuclear fuel, which from 1992 until 2009 had focused on a repository at Yucca Mountain. The US administration decided to abandon the Yucca Mountain project in 2009, but the NRC was compelled to continued review work on the application following a 2013 appeal court ruling. The DOE announced a new waste disposal strategy in early 2013, envisaging a series of interim stores until a permanent underground disposal facility is ready for service around 2048.

Researched and written

by World Nuclear News

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Distressed Sales Shares Still Declining in Oil States

Of total sales in February 2016, distressed sales accounted for 11.1 percent and real estate-owned (REO) sales accounted for 7.8 percent

The REO sales share was 21.3 percentage points below its peak of 27.9 percent in January 2009

Distressed sales shares fell in most states, including the oil markets





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According to a new report by Irvine, Ca-based CoreLogic, distressed home sales, which include REO and short sales, accounted for 11.1 percent of total home sales nationally in February 2016, down 2.9 percentage points from February 2015 and down 0.4 percentage points from January 2016.Within the distressed category, REO sales accounted for 7.8 percent and short sales accounted for 3.3 percent of total home sales in February 2016. The REO sales share was 2.9 percentage points below the February 2015 share and is the lowest for the month of February 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 nine states recorded lower distressed sales shares in February 2016 compared with a year earlier. Maryland had the largest share of distressed sales of any state at 19.91 percent in February 2016, followed by Connecticut (19.1 percent), Michigan (18 percent), Florida (17.5 percent) and Illinois (17.1 percent). North Dakota had the smallest distressed sales share at 2.5 percent. Oil states continued to see year-over-year declines in their distressed sales shares in February 2016. Texas saw a 1.3 percentage point decrease, Oklahoma saw a 0.5 percentage point decrease and North Dakota saw a 0.2 percentage point decrease. Nevada had a 4.8 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 59.8 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 Core Based Statistical Areas (CBSAs) based on mortgage loan count, Baltimore-Columbia-Towson, Md. had the largest share of distressed sales at 19.8 percent, followed by Chicago-Naperville-Arlington Heights, Ill. (19.4 percent), Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, Fla. (19.1 percent), Orlando-Kissimmee-Sanford, Fla. (19.1 percent) and Las Vegas-Henderson-Paradise, Nev. (14.1 percent). Denver-Aurora-Lakewood, Colo. had the smallest distressed sales share at 2.7 percent among this group of the country's largest CBSAs. Only three of the largest 25 CBSAs had year-over-year increases in their distressed sales share: Nassau County-Suffolk County, N.Y. was up by 0.6 percentage points, Baltimore-Columbia-Towson, Md. was up by 0.6 percentage points and Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, D.C.-Va.-Md. was up by 0.1 percentage point. Orlando-Kissimmee-Sanford, Fla. had the largest year-over-year drop in its distressed sales share, declining by 5.3 percentage points from 24.3 percent in February 2015 to 19.1 percent in February 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 10.3 percent in February 2016.
Statue of King Dom Sebastiao

By: Chan Yuan

A man was arrested on a charge of criminal damage after allegedly toppling a 126-year-old statue of a 16th century king, police in Portugal said.

Lisbon police arrested the man, who was not identified, after trying to take a selfie with the statue of King Dom Sebastiao, causing it to fall and break into pieces.

He was charged with one count of criminal damage.

According to the police investigation, the suspect was at the Rossio Railway Station around 11:30 p.m. on Thursday, when he decided to climb onto the pedestal of the statue in order to take a selfie.

However, the statue could not carry the manas weight, and it toppled. The statue fell to the ground and broke into pieces.

The suspect tried to flee from the scene, but police officers chased after him and he was arrested.
SlotZilla zip line

By: Wayne Morin

(Scroll down for video) Police in Nevada, launched an investigation after tourists complained that a teen urinated on them while he was riding on a zip line.

Visitors at an attraction in Las Vegas, said that they were soaked unexpectedly by falling liquid, which turned out to be the urine from a 15-year-old boy riding on a zip line over their heads.

The incident unfolded at the Fremont Street Experience on Wednesday. Officials of the attraction, said that the teen urinated while traveling on the SlotZilla.

The manager of the Fremont Street Experience, said that the parents of the teen apologized for the incident. It is still unclear whether the boy intentionally urinated on the tourists or if it was just an accident.

So far, no charges have been filed.
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
Karl Willson

By: Wayne Morin

A man was arrested on a charge of robbery after robbing a mourning mother who was visiting her sonas grave, police in the United Kingdom said.

Now, 33-year-old Karl Willson of Bishops Stortford, has been sentenced to serve 18 months in prison after being convicted of robbery.

The St. Albans Crown Court heard that the mother was left so shocked and traumatized by Willsons cruel robbery, in which he snatched her handbag as she tended to her sons grave, that she now can only go there if accompanied by someone else.

The court also heard that the 65-year-old womanas son had died some years earlier, and she would go to the cemetery to tend his grave.

During her last visit, Willson was walking away from the town center, and after entering the cemetery, spotted her. He had been taking drugs and wanted to get money for another fix.

He then went up to the woman and snatched her handbag. Following a scuffle, he managed to run off with the bag, which contained her car keys and her house keys.

As a result, the woman had to have her house locks changed.

Last year, Willson was jailed for 25 months for different offenses and is still serving his sentence. The 18-month prison sentence will only start at the end of the current sentence he is serving for an unrelated crime.
At a special noontime meeting Monday, the City and Borough Assembly decided not to approve a proposal by the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation to store excess contaminated soil at a site off Spur Road.

At work for the past two months remediating long-term contamination at the former Byford junk site, ADEC, NRC Alaska and other contractors had found significantly more affected soil than first anticipated. Since taking on the project, initial estimates of only 4,000 cubic yards of contaminated material have been upped to 18,000, making the heretofore used method of transporting soil southward for treatment and disposal too expensive.

Waste services manager for NRC, Shane ONeill explained the soil being excavated is primarily contaminated by lead and petroleum products, as a result of decades worth of vehicles and batteries being kept there. Extensive caches of the latter have been unearthed beneath the soil, and after components have been separated and removed for disposal the contractor estimates 15,000 cubic yards of soil will be left over for storage.

That amount equates to 1,500 standard dump truck loads, or about 1,200 shipping containers worth. With costs of the already $4,000,000 project set to increase significantly as a result of transporting this unforeseen material, NRC put together a conceptual proposal for consigning a portion of contaminated soils locally in the form of a monofill disposal site.

Lead-containing soils would be treated with a product called EcoBond, a non-hazardous compound used for the past 16 years at similar sites for heavy metal remediation. It would chemically stabilize the lead within the soil, reducing its ability to leach out and its relative bioavailability by up to 75 percent.

The Byford soil was already being stabilized thusly in order to allow its transfer south for disposal, being held in an on-site stockpile for up to two years. Work on the project is just under halfway finished, just now getting to the most contaminated portions.

Asked for alternative site ideas, city staff found only a few borough-owned properties that may be suitable for long-term disposal. Among these was the rock pit up Spur Road, which already has contaminated and noncontaminated materials stored there from previous projects.

ADEC Contaminated Sites Program unit manager Sally Schlichting explained that an engineer will need to examine the site, determine whether it would be a suitable location within the ADECs storage conditions and draw up a design.

If given the go-ahead, non-hazardous material already at the rock pit would need to be either removed or used to construct the fills berm. Byford soils would then be transported to the pit and arranged for storage, covered with a plastic lining, buried beneath further soil and vegetated over.

No doubt there are some long-term responsibilities with this site, Schlichting said.

After establishing the monofill the ADEC would require 60 months of visual monitoring by the city, to ensure both that the site remains undisturbed by vehicles or heavy equipment and that no signs of leaching are evident. After that, monitoring could be reduced to an annual basis. The site could never be built upon as the lead content would remain in the soil, but its surface area could be used for various recreational purposes. For example, she suggested another site which could be used for a monofill in that vein would be the running track east of Evergreen Elementary.

Assembly members were wary of the proposals long-term effects. With the rock pit site, Mark Mitchell wondered whether water runoff would need to be controlled. Stephen Prysunka questioned whether groundwater monitoring would be needed.

Schlichting responded that those site-specific questions would be answered with an engineers analysis. Assembly members fielded ideas for sites on the island further away from town, such as either of the two rock pits in the vicinity of Pats Lake. Both are owned by the State of Alaska.

I would rather look at one of those pits, said Assembly member Dave Powell.

Taking a roll call, the proposal was rejected unanimously in a 6-0 vote. After the Assemblys rejection of the idea, ONeill explained the projects scheduling will not be affected by the decision. Treated soils will still be kept onsite in stockpile cells until a permanent home can be found for them.

The Assembly approved moving forward with Wood Street paving, opting for a longer-lasting concrete finish over asphalt for an extra $23,000. The full project is estimated to cost $947,745  including a five-percent contingency  of which $90,000 will be paid through Wrangells sales tax street fund. The majority of the cost will be covered by Alaska Department of Commerce, Community and Economic Development.

A contract was awarded to Rock-N-Road for the amount, and a further contract amendment was approved to PND Engineers for contract administration and inspection services not to exceed $105,860. Those funds would also by paid by ADCCED.
The Brazilian Supreme Court justice in charge of the Lava Jato (Car Wash) investigation into the massive Petrobras kickback and bribery scandal ordered the removal Thursday of Eduardo Cunha from his position as the speaker of the lower house of the Brazilian parliament. Cunha, one of the countrys most powerful politicians, is the chief architect of the impeachment drive against Workers Party (Partido dos TrabalhadoresPT) president Dilma Rousseff.

The order by Judge Teori Zavascki came in response to a request from Brazils prosecutor-general, Rodrigo Janot, who last December issued an 11-point indictment calling Cunha a delinquent who used his political position to prevent investigations against him from progressing...as well as in order to continue his criminal behavior.

It further charged that the speakers actions were incompatible with a democratic state governed by the rule of law.

In March, the Supreme Court voted unanimously to place Cunha on trial on charges of corruption and money laundering in connection with the Petrobras scandal. He is accused of personally receiving US$5 million in bribes stemming from contracts with the giant state-run oil conglomerate and of funneling tens of millions of dollars more in kickbacks to his political allies.

Investigations into Cunhas activities led to the discovery of secret Swiss bank accounts containing millions of dollars. The evidence presented by Janot included accounts of international junkets by the lawmaker and his family which involved levels of spending far beyond the reach of a deputys salary. This included Christmas holidays in Miami in 2013 in which the family spent US$42,258. This was followed over the course of the year with similar trips to New York, Paris, Switzerland, Barcelona and Russia that involved similar levels of spending.

Cunha is an evangelical Christian radio commentator and among the most right-wing figures in what is the most reactionary congress seen in Brazil since the end of the military dictatorship. He has been accused of using a mega-church to launder Petrobras kickbacks.

The latest move to suspend Cunha from both his speakers position and as a deputy came as the Senate moved closer to the impeachment of Rousseff. Senator Antonio Anastasia, a member of the right-wing PSDB (Brazilian Social Democracy Party), who was nominated to evaluate the impeachment charges, presented his findings Thursday to a 21-member Senate impeachment committee, declaring that there was sufficient evidence to try Rousseff.

The Brazilian president is not charged with personal corruption or in connection with the Petrobras scandal, but rather for violating budget laws by allegedly transferring state bank funds to continue financing government programs and conceal a deficit in the run-up to the 2014 presidential election.

It is virtually certain that the impeachment committee will vote to bring the matter to the full Senate, which is expected to vote next Wednesday on whether to try Rousseff. There likewise appears to be little doubt that the Senate will muster the simple majority vote needed to begin impeachment, a process that would lead to Rousseffs suspension for 180 days until her final fate is decided.

In the meantime, Vice President Michel Temer, a close political ally of Cunha and fellow member of the PMDB (Brazilian Democratic Movement Party), would assume the presidency. Temer, who has also been accused of involvement in the Petrobras scandal, though as yet not charged, has already unveiled plans to carry a wholesale replacement of ministers and other government officials upon assuming the presidency.

His plans are aimed at meeting the demands of both Brazilian and foreign capitalists for sweeping changes in government policy and class relations under conditions of the deepest economic crisis to face the country since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

While Rousseff and the ruling PT have denounced the impeachment drive as a coup, they have worked behind the scenes to win support form the countrys most right-wing parties, while claiming that only they would have the legitimacyas well as the collaboration of the CUT union bureaucracy and the so-called social movementsto force through the drastic attacks being prepared against the working class

In his decision, Judge Zavascki stressed that he intervened in large measure to stop Cunha from becoming first in line of successionand acting president if Temer traveled abroad or were suddenly removed from officebecause such a position was incompatible with being a defendant in a criminal case under way in the Supreme Court.

In reality, the sacking of Cunha raises all the more directly the specter of a full-blown constitutional crisis of the Brazilian state as a result of the corruption that pervades the entire government and every major party. While not yet charged, both Temer and Cunhas successor as speaker of the lower house, Waldir Maranhao, are also under investigation in connection with the Petrobras scandal.

Among the formal charges against Cunha was that he attempted to bribe and intimidate fellow deputies in order to stymie a move within the parliamentary Ethics Committee to remove him from office.

A principal element of this intimidation was Cunhas threat to bring impeachment charges against Rousseff unless she and the PT leadership convinced members of the ethics panel in the House of Deputies to vote against his removal. When the PT failed to deliver the votes, he immediately moved to impeach the president.

Seizing on this connection, Rousseffs attorney general, Jose Eduardo Cardozo, announced Thursday that he would make a formal request to the Supreme Court to annul the entire impeachment process. Cunha threatened the president of the republic that he would begin the process of impeachment if the PT did not come up with the votes to save him in the Ethics Committee, he said. What the Supreme Court decided today is exactly a demonstration of his modus operandi.

It appears unlikely that the court will intervene to halt impeachment.

Meanwhile, Janot, the prosecutor general, is pursuing Petrobras corruption cases against both Rousseff and her precedessor, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. In charges submitted to the Supreme Court in support of a criminal investigation against Lula, Janot charged that the pervasive corruption involving politicians, Petrobras executives and private contractors could never have functioned for so long and in such a broad and aggressive manner in the sphere of the federal government without the participation of former president Lula.

Janot is basing his request largely on the testimony of Senator Delcidio do Amaral, the former leader of the ruling PT in the Senate, who was arrested last November for trying to bribe former Petrobras executive Nestor Cervero into staying quiet about his own and his political allies involvement in the scandal. Amaral has since told prosecutors that both Lula and Rousseff knew about the kickbacks and bribery.

While Rousseff has not been charged directly with offenses related to the Petrobras scandal, she chaired the energy conglomerates board of directors between 2003 and 2010, when much of the bribery and kickbacks took place.
With Donald Trump effectively winning the Republican nomination on Tuesday after his victory in the Indiana primary, Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton is moving aggressively to attract layers of the Republican Party opposed to Trumps candidacy by portraying herself as the more reliable figure to head the US military-intelligence apparatus.

The Clinton campaign sent out a press release Wednesday boasting that Clinton would receive support from many top Republicans who would prefer the Democrat to Trump. The press release cited statements from 41 Republican politicians and commentators expressing either opposition to Trump in the general election or open support for Hillary Clinton as the better candidate. This was the first official response by the Clinton campaign to Trumps clinching of the nomination.

The list of Republicans opposing Trump includes two former heads of the Republican National Committee; four staffers for the campaigns of Mitt Romney and John McCain, the two previous Republican presidential candidates; and three former members of the George W. Bush administration. Right-wing pundits like neoconservative William Kristol and George Will are on the list as well.

Most of these figures whose views Clinton proudly cites are opposed to Trump, not because of his fascistic demagogy, but because of his claimed opposition to the war in Iraq and to other US interventions in the Middle East. They prefer Clinton, who voted in 2002 to authorize the war and who is, in their judgment, the more hawkish of the two candidates. She is seen as a more reliable and time-tested instrument of American imperialism than Trump, whose foreign policy is seen as too isolationist and erratic.

Thus, former George W. Bush speechwriter Peter Wehner, who also served in the Reagan and Bush Sr. administrations, complains in a New York Time s op-ed (cited by the Clinton press release) that Trump lacks military experience and is ignorant of things such as the so-called nuclear triad of deployment options for nuclear weapons utilized by the American military. Worse, according to Wehner, are Trumps complimentary remarks for Russian President Vladimir Putin, against whose country the US foreign policy establishment is openly preparing for war. The prospect of Donald Trump as commander in chief should send a chill down the spine of every American, Wehner concludes.

The fact that Trump is being assailed by Republicans for being soft on foreign policy is an indication that a massive escalation of militarism is being prepared in the aftermath of the November elections, regardless of which party wins. Trump himself has publicly called for the assassination of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, reiterated his support for torture, including methods a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding, among other blatant war crimes. In a major foreign policy speech last month, the Republican candidate declared that under a Trump administration, We will develop, build and purchase the best equipment known to mankind. Our military dominance must be unquestioned, and I mean unquestioned, by anybody and everybody.

As for Hillary Clinton, during her tenure as Obamas Secretary of State she played a leading role in multiple crimes of American imperialism, including the destruction of Libya, fomenting civil war in Syria, and drone warfare in many countries. While Trump offers bellicose rhetoric at campaign rallies, Clinton already has the blood of countless people on her hands.

On Thursday, the Clinton campaign associated itself with a new Republican attack on Trump, this time from House Speaker Paul Ryan, who told CNN that he could not yet endorse Trump, even though he was the presumptive nominee of the Republican Party, until Trump gave him certain political assurances. Ryan said, I think conservatives want to know, does he share our values and our principles on limited government, the proper role of the executive, adherence to the Constitution?

This appears to be a reference both to Trumps claims that as president he could order mass deportations and build a wall along the Mexico-US border without congressional approval, and to his professed opposition to the cuts in Social Security and Medicare embodied in the budget drafted by Ryan and the House Republicans. In Ryans interpretation, limited government does not refer to scaling back the gargantuan military-intelligence apparatus, the main threat to the democratic rights of the American people, but destroying whatever remains of welfare-state spending.

The Clinton campaign hailed Ryans intervention under the headline, Speaker Paul Ryan Joins Growing List of Conservatives Rebuking Trump as He Captures GOP Nomination.

The Clinton camp has made clear that Wednesdays press release was intended as the start of a broader campaign to win over sections of the Republican Party to her candidacy. During a CNN appearance on Wednesday, Clinton made further appeals for Republican support, calling Trump a loose cannon and declaring, Lets get off the red or the blue team. Lets get on the American team.

The effective clinching of the nomination by Trump, the first time that one of the main capitalist parties has chosen a nominee with a distinctly fascistic character, has produced a deep crisis in the Republican Party. Both living former Republican presidents, George H.W. Bush and George W Bush, have declined to officially endorse Trump in the aftermath of his securing the nomination, a virtually unprecedented snub. Eliot Cohen, former undersecretary of state in the George W. Bush administration (whose opposition to Trump was also cited by the Clinton campaign), openly called for the formation of a breakaway third party to oppose Trump in the general election in a recent Washington Post op-ed.

There has been considerable media commentary about the strategic debate within the Clinton campaign, about whether to move to the right to appeal to layers of the Republican Party opposed to Trump, and turn them into Clinton Republicans, or to focus on winning over the supporters of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, who remains Clintons main rival for the Democratic nomination and who has pledged to support whoever is selected by the Democratic Party.

Whatever discussion took place, the decision has clearly been made. Clinton plans to run a right-wing campaign in the general election tailored towards the financial oligarchy and military-intelligence apparatus of which she is a leading representative. Voters in November will be asked to choose between two right-wing and deeply unpopular candidates, both pledged to a program of imperialist war abroad and repression and austerity at home.
As Washington presses forward with its anti-China pivot to Asia, US-sponsored Chinese exile and dissident groups held an Inter-ethnic/Interfaith Leadership Conference from April 28 to May 1 in McLeod Ganj, a suburb of Dharamsala, India. The stated purpose of the meeting was to discuss how to bring about a transition to democracy in China.

The conference was orchestrated by US imperialism along with its regional ally, India, as part of Washingtons growing diplomatic and military-strategic offensive against Beijing. While intensifying preparations for war against China, the US is encouraging explosive ethnic and regional divisions within China, a country with 55 officially recognized ethnic minorities. The goal is to divide China along ethnic lines and ultimately reduce it to semi-colonial status.

The conference, Strengthening Our Alliance to Advance the Peoples Dream: Freedom, Justice, Equality and Peace, was jointly hosted by a leading Indian-based NGO, the Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy (TCHRD), and the US-based Initiatives For China (IFC), led by Tiananmen Square activist and exiled Chinese dissident Yang Jianli.

It brought together representatives of various separatist groups from Tibet, Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, pro-democracy  Chinese dissidents, and leaders of Chinas religious minorities, including Christians, Muslims and Falun Gong.

US government representatives attended the conference, including representatives of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF). Foreign delegates met the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan Buddhist leader, whose exile government is in Dharamsala, on April 28.

The only media permitted at the conference was Radio Free Asia, which is funded by a US federal agency, the Broadcasting Board of Governors. According to Indias the Wire, reports, videos and articles emanating from event were only broadcast on its Cantonese service, with the stations English web site not making any reference to the conference or the visa controversy (that had preceded it.) The Wire cited the president of the US-based Uyghur American Association, Ilshat Hassan, who attended the conference. He made clear that a major topic of the conference was the division of China along ethnic lines.

Hassan said, The youth from China were arguing that big China should be kept intact, stating that democracy will be coming soon. We didnt say that we want to be independent, but that we must have self-determination. It will be decided by the people of East Turkestan and the people of Tibet on what they want after they are allowed to decide themselves. I guess they are still young.

As they seek to foment ethnic nationalism and separatism in China, US imperialism and its allies are seeking to exploit real bitter social conflicts and national divisions that emerge from the reactionary policies of the Chinese regime. It has relied ever more on fomenting Han Chinese nationalism since restoring capitalism in China over the course of the 1980s. It has also resorted to discrimination and outright repression of ethnic minorities like the Uighurs in Xinjiang, which like other inland regions of Chine faces high unemployment and low wages.

There have been escalating ethnic riots in Xinjiang between Han and Uighur people, and Beijing has begun banning beards and Muslim veils, provoking discontent among Uighurs and particularly among the large number of unemployed university graduates. Numerous reports indicate that thousands of Uighurs have travelled to the Middle East to join Islamist militias fighting as NATO proxies in the war for regime change in Syria.

The response of Washington and its allies to this state of affairs is utterly reactionary. They are seeking to exploit the discrimination and oppression faced by the Uighurs to stimulate ethnic-nationalism and divide the working class along ethnic lines, promoting various right-wing bourgeois nationalist groups that they directly control. After orchestrating wars for regime change in Libya and Syria relying on Islamists as proxies, US imperialism and its allies are debating whether to employ similar methods against China.

Many of the organisations at the conference, such as the TCHRD, IFC, and the Uyghur American Association, are assets of US imperialism, directly funded by the US-funded National Endowment for Democracy (NED). The NED finances as many as 22 organisations in Tibet, including the TCHRD, which receives some $60,000 per year from Washington. Its stated mission is to monitor, document and highlight political repression and human rights violations in Tibet.

The NED is also involved in funding groups that claim to represent the mainly Muslim Uyghur ethnic minority to the north-western Chinese region of Xinjiang. The US-based Uyghur American Association and the Munich-based World Uyghur Congress (WUC) groups are funded by the NED to the tune of $295,000 and $260,000, respectively. The WUC is headed by US-based multimillionaire businesswoman Rebiya Kadeer.

Initiatives for China (IFC) receives as much as $86,500 per year from the NED. It was founded by Tiananmen Square activist and exiled Chinese dissident Yang Jianli, who completed his Doctorate in Political Economy at Harvard University.

Jianli was arrested by the Beijing regime and sentenced to five years imprisonment on espionage charges. With the support of a UN Resolution and a unanimous vote of both houses of the US Congress, Jianli was released in 2007. He advocates a transition to democracy in China and US leadership of the struggle for peaceful democratic reform.

Under the guise of defending the universal right to freedom of religion, the United States Commission of International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) coordinates closely with Chinese dissidents groups. USCIRF is a bipartisan commission of the US federal government, tasked with making policy recommendations to the President, the Secretary of State, and Congress. USCIRF senior representative Katrina Lantos Swett, who founded the Lantos Foundation for Human Rights and Justice in 2008, attended the Dharamsala conference.

Direct US financing and supporting of Chinese dissidents against Beijing is a reckless strategy that is escalating diplomatic tensions and threatens to provoke a war between nuclear-armed powers.

Beijing has made clear that it could react violently to overt encouragement by the major powers of separatism in China. At the 2005 National Peoples Congress (NPC), the regime passed an anti-secession law pledging to go to war in response to a Taiwanese declaration of independence, which it fears could be the signal for the broader promotion of separatism in China.

Before the conference took place, a diplomatic row erupted between China and India over New Delhis decision to grant a visa to exiled Uyghur leader Dolkun Isa of the WUC. Although Indian authorities canceled the visa it had granted to Isa after protests from Beijing, provoking harsh criticisms in the Indian media, India offered tourist visas to other Chinese dissidents, including Ilshat Hassan, to attend the conference in Dharamsala.

As the US pivot to Asia inflames tensions between the major Asian powers, the attitude of the Indian bourgeoisie towards China is increasingly hostile, as well.

On May 1, the Times of India wrote, One only need to observe the carefully calibrated yet unmistakably hostile Chinese strategic pursuits vis-a-vis Indiabe it the CPEC (China-Pakistan Economic Corridor passing through territories historically claimed by India), the OBOR (One Belt One Road Initiative), or the String of Pearls in the Indian Oceanto understand that if India fails to stand up to the Chinese now, while it still can, it may forever surrender the possibility of resisting Chinese arm-twisting in the future.
The World Socialist Web Site spoke to a teacher and her partner who were among the approximately 80,000 people evacuated from Fort McMurray, Alberta on Tuesday. Both had lived in the city for around two years.

She explained how the order to leave came at very short notice. We were at school and it was a normal day. I had heard that fires were passing by but we were told we were not in imminent threat because we were on the north side of the river. Then around 1 or 1:30 PM, our principal declared a sheltered place in our school, meaning we had to stay in our classroom.

We heard other people were getting evacuated from different parts of the city. I was trying to calm the kids down and say we were fine. As soon as the bell rang we heard our community was being evacuated. We went home and grabbed our dog. There were things we were going to take and we had loads of room. But, she added, I didnt think wed be gone long, so we just took a change of clothes.

Chaotic scenes were reported during the evacuation, with the fire burning on both sides of Highway 63, the only road out of the city to the south. The first two casualties resulting from the fire were reported late Wednesday. Two vehicles collided on Highway 881 while trying to leave the affected area, killing the driver and passenger in an SUV.

There was a two-hour line-up at every gas station in the city, the teacher told the WSWS. It was insane. We didnt have time to get gas, there was so much gridlock that people were in traffic for ten hours.

They were forced to leave Fort McMurray with the fuel they had and managed, unlike many others, to make it to their initial destination before running out of gas. We ended up making it to Wandering River, with some gas left. It took us eight hours for a two-hour drive. It was gridlock the whole way.

At least 25,000 evacuees have been stranded north of the city, mainly in work camps operated by the oil corporations. Late Thursday, the Alberta government said 4,000 of these had been flown out on planes to Edmonton and Calgary.

We took a chance to go south, she continued. It was so hard to see, but we managed to get out of town. My parents had a camper in Wandering River, so we wanted to get there. Luckily, they had only set it up last weekend.

She added that they remain unsure about the fate of their home. As far as we know, there are only two houses in our neighbourhood lost. Thats a good sign compared to other neighbourhoods like Abasand and Beacon Hill that suffered severe damage. At the moment we dont know, we have no idea of the damage.

The couple was travelling to Edmonton, 430 kilometres south of Fort McMurray, when they spoke to the WSWS. My boyfriends aunt lives there, she said. Its a bit more comfortable and we can do laundry.

Strong sympathy for the plight of those forced to flee has been expressed by nearby communities and people across the country. Millions of dollars have already been donated to relief organizations. Weve been so thankful for all the offers of help weve had, she said. People near and far are doing everything to help out. Some are going back into the city to rescue their pets. The first responders were all friendly in a tough situation.

As we were driving along Highway 63 south to Wandering River, there were people on the side of the road with gas and water. People were giving away free meals as well, she added.

Thousands of residents have lost their homes and possessions. An estimate released Thursday suggested insurable losses could reach $9 billion, making the fire the most expensive disaster in Canadian history. Were really lucky. I have colleagues and friends who know their houses are gone, she said. My cousin lives in Abasand; he knows his house, truck and all his things are lost. Its really hard.
The huge wildfire that has forced the evacuation of Fort McMurraythe northern Alberta city that is the hub of Canadas tar-sands oil industrycontinued to rage uncontrollably yesterday.

Already late Wednesday, authorities were forced to widen the evacuation zone to include three communities south of Fort McMurray: Anzac, Fort McMurray First Nation, and Gregoire Lake Estates. Among those uprooted by the latest evacuation order were approximately one thousand Fort McMurray evacuees who were being temporarily housed at a camp in Anzac.

Close to 90,000 people have now been evacuated from the Fort McMurray-Wood Buffalo region since Tuesday.

Fueled by strong winds, the fire expanded more than eight-fold Wednesday night to engulf 85,000 hectares. Officials now say that only rain can stop it.

At a press conference yesterday, Alberta Premier Rachel Notley said there was no fresh information about the extent of the damage in the city because firefighters did not have enough time to assess it and could not access some areas.

Earlier reports had said that 1,600 buildings had been partially or completely destroyed, with a conservative estimate of at least 5,000 rendered homeless.

Later, Notley warned the fire could absolutely grow larger in the coming days, adding that it would be more than a matter of days before residents can return home.

A total of 41 fires were reported burning across the province yesterday: Ten of these were out of control, and twelve fires were newly broken out. The weather forecast for the coming days remains dry, with fire activity predicted to be high or extreme.

Visible from space, the Fort McMurray wildfire fire has begun, due to its size, to create its own weather. This includes winds and lightning from smoke clouds, which could provoke new blazes.

Fort McMurray was effectively cut off from the rest of Alberta late Wednesday. The fire burned on both sides of Highway 63, the only road leading south. Significant damage occurred around the airport Wednesday evening, but authorities claim that it is not currently under threat.

An estimated 25,000 evacuees are stranded to the north of the city and are being housed in work camps owned by the oil companies.

Reports continued to emerge describing the harrowing conditions during Tuesdays evacuation of Fort McMurray, which was ordered with little forewarning and with, for many, a deadline of just one hour. One woman told CBC the conditions were like a war as flames rained down on cars and propane tanks exploded.

Fort McMurray bears all the hallmarks of a capitalist resource-extraction boom-town, with huge fortunes being made by the oil barons amidst mounting social problems and distress.

With Fort McMurrays population mushrooming from 6,000 in 1970 to 35,000 in 1990 and more than doubling over the past 25 years, the demand for infrastructure, from housing to decent schools and health care facilities, has continuously outpaced supply.

The lack of proper infrastructure has been starkly revealed by the evacuation itself, with only one highway leading out of a city of close to 100,000 people.

While it is not possible at this point to determine whether poor quality materials and shoddy building practices were factors in the extensive damage in Fort McMurray, these have been persistent complaints in recent years.

Yet Fort McMurray and the surrounding region have produced tens of billions in profits for Canadian capitalisms major oil corporations. In the 12-month period ending March 2015, even as oil prices had begun their steep decline, major oil corporations raked in huge profits, including $1.3 billion for Suncor, $600 million for Enbridge, $3.6 billion for Canadian Natural Resources, $1.1 billion for Husky Energy and $1.7 billion for TransCanada Corp.

These profits were achieved through ruthless exploitation of a workforce drawn from across the country and even around the world, and with disregard to the environment and to the health of local populations, including First Nations communities.

Many workers who laboured hard during the oil boom, some travelling halfway across the continent to work 12-hour shifts for three weeks before a seven-day break, have been tossed aside over the past year-and-a-half.

Big Oil and numerous smaller oil service companies have slashed thousands of jobs in Fort McMurray and the surrounding tar sands region, while forcing many of those who remain in their employ to take pay cuts.

Since 2014, Fort McMurrays population has shrunk from over 100,000 to somewhere in the range of 85,000 to 90,000. In early April, local media reported the lengthening of food bank hours in Fort McMurray to cope with increased demand. Unemployment in the Wood Buffalo region, which includes the city, was pushing 10 percent last month.

A Conference Board of Canada report released last October predicts that in spite of the low oil prices, the companies will return to profitability in 2016 because of their cost-cutting measures.

In comparison with the vast wealth extracted from the local area by Big Oil, the resources made available by the authorities to tackle the catastrophe provoked by the wildfires are miniscule. Fleeing residents have been largely left to rely on the generosity of residents in nearby communities, who have rushed to their aid with large donations of food, clothing, gas and accommodation. The other main source of relief has been charities like the Red Cross.

In the House of Commons yesterday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau pledged Ottawa would match donations to the Red Cross to support relief efforts. The federal government has also sent some military resources to the region, including planes and helicopters.

At a press conference Wednesday, Trudeau sought to downplay the link between the fire and climate change. He attacked Green Party leader Elizabeth May for daring to suggest such a connection, declaring, There have always been fires. There have always been floods. Pointing at any one incident and saying This is because of that, is neither helpful nor entirely accurate.

Trudeaus refusal to admit the link to climate change is politically calculated. His government is anxious to strengthen its partnership with Big Oil by pushing through the building of oil pipelines to the countrys east and west coasts. This is seen as critical not just to boosting the profits of big business, but also in strengthening Canadian imperialisms position on the world stage by establishing the country, in the words of former Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper, as an energy superpower.

The reality is that a fire on the scale of that which has struck Fort McMurray has long been predicted by scientists. In the wake of the 2011 fire that destroyed a third of the northern Alberta town of Slave Lake, a report produced by a panel of experts commissioned by the Alberta government pointed to the growing likelihood of wildfires and explicitly identified climate change as a major cause.

Noting the growing number of people living and working in forested areas of the province, and the rising age of the forest due to a reduction in areas being burnt as part of the natural cycle, the report stated, Experts say that climate change is increasing the wildfire threat, some aspects of which are already measurable with longer fire seasons and more extreme weather. As a result, the risk of wildfires, and the threat they pose to lives, homes, communities, and industry is increasing.

In 2014, the UNs International Panel on Climate Change noted in a report with high confidence that North America would confront heightened wildfire-induced loss of ecosystem integrity, property loss, human morbidity, and mortality as a result of increased drying trend and temperature trend.

2015 was a record year for wildfires in western Canada, with over 10,000 evacuated from communities in northern Alberta and Saskatchewan. Experts agree that the current wave of fires are the combined product of climate change and the impact of a strong El Nino effect.

In this context, the lack of preparedness at all levels of government for such entirely foreseeable disasters as the Fort McMurray fire is scandalous. The 2012 report proposed expanding fire weather advisories to include fire behaviour, creating quick response units with specialists, and expanding Albertas Firesmart program, which clears debris from residential areas.

In 2015, Albertas Progressive Conservative government made cuts to the Firesmart program. The recently-adopted budget of the current New Democratic Party provincial government contained a further $15 million in cuts to the wildfire budget.
At the invitation of New Zealands National Party government, opposition Labour Party leader Andrew Little joined Defence Minister Gerry Brownlee on a trip to Iraq last week.

Little and Brownlee visited approximately 100 New Zealand troops who have been training Iraqi forces at Camp Taji for the past year. They also met Iraqs Defence Minister Khaled al-Obeidi and held talks with US and Australian military commanders.

Littles visit underscored, once again, Labours support for the US-led war in Iraq and imperialist interventions across the Middle East. Under the pretext of a war on terror against Islamic State (ISIS), the US is seeking to cement its control over Iraq, while Syria has been turned into a hell on earth by civil war instigated by US-backed Islamist rebels to bring about regime change. The rise of ISIS has been fuelled by US interventions, from the 2003 invasion of Iraq to the 2011 NATO war in Libya and the proxy war in Syria. In Syria, the CIA and Washingtons alliesTurkey, Saudi Arabia, UAE and Qatarhave funded and armed ISIS and similar militias linked to Al Qaeda.

The Labour Party voted against sending New Zealand soldiers to Iraq last year, in deference to widespread anti-war sentiment. This opposition was revealed to be a fraud when Little, during a visit to Washington last December, declared he would be willing to send elite Special Air Service (SAS) forces to fight ISIS if the United Nations mandated the intervention. At the same time, Labour openly supported the bombing of Iraq and Syria by the US and its allies, merely expressing concern that this would not be enough without troops on the ground.

Following his visit to Camp Taji, Little said in a press statement on April 28 that Labour opposed the deployment because the Iraqi Armys track record was poor, even after years of training by American and other armies. He did not, however, call for the New Zealand troops withdrawal.

Instead, Little strongly implied that the deployment should be extended. [T]he needs Iraq has wont be met in the two-year period the government set for the mission, and the government must now be open with the public about the demands being made of it and its plans, he said.

In an interview with TV3s The Nation, Little gushed that he saw some great stuff happening in Camp Taji, great work that our folks are doing out there. He described the two-year deployment as inadequate, saying the American generals, the Iraqi minister of defence and his generals ... [and] the Australians who are there, theyre all saying this [mission] is long-term ... Its not as easy as saying weve done some training, were out of here, because there will be a vacuum left.

Little also declared that the world has to push back on ISIS, certainly in Iraq. The next big challenge then will be Syria. Then youve got Libya, and youve got, you know, other parts of the Middle East.

In short, Labour is positioning itself to the right of the government. It is pushing for a lengthier deployment in Iraq and New Zealand support for other US imperialist interventions.

Labour's supporters in the media, including the trade union funded Daily Blog, have mostly remained silent on Little's trip to Iraq and his pro-war statements. Pro-Labour columnist Chris Trotter complained that Little had "compromised" Labour's "principled foreign policy stance. He called on Labour to demand the "withdrawal of all Westernforcesincluding our ownfrom the entire region. Trotter has no principled opposition to the war, however. In July last year he called for a major Western military escalation to bring about the "utter destruction" of ISIS and the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad.

The Green Party, which voted against sending troops last year, made no comment on Littles embrace of the deployment. The Maori nationalist Mana Party and its pseudo-left supportersthe International Socialist Organisation, Fightback and Socialist Aotearoaalso said nothing about Labours pro-war positions. These parties supported Labours 2014 election campaign. The pseudo-left groups lined up behind US imperialism in Syria by fraudulently presenting the US-backed rebels as the leaders of a revolution.

The government is apparently preparing to announce an extension to its military deployment in Iraq, following a request by Washington last year for a greater commitment. New Zealand Herald political columnist Claire Trevett suggested on April 30 that Little was invited to Iraq in order to ensure bipartisan support for such a decision. She noted that the government similarly sought Labours backing for legislation to expand state surveillance powers earlier this year, and arranged a meeting between Little and US national security chief James Clapper.

Labour, in fact, has played the leading role in strengthening the military and intelligence alliance with the US. The 1999-2008 Labour government, which was supported by the Greens, sent troops to Afghanistan and Iraq. Successive governments have overseen a major expansion in the spy agency, the Government Communications Security Bureau, which is part of the US-led Five Eyes alliance and spies on China on behalf of the US National Security Agency.

The entire political establishment supports New Zealands collaboration with Washingtons pivot to Asia, an aggressive strategy aimed at securing US domination over the Asia-Pacific region through the military encirclement of China. Along with the right-wing populist New Zealand First Party, Labour recently demanded a major increase in spending on the military, particularly the navy. The government already plans to spend $11 billion over the next decade on new military hardware, including frigates and air force planes, in order to prepare the country for future wars.
The campaign by right-wing Blairites, the Conservatives and Zionist groups to supposedly root out anti-Semitism from the ranks of the Labour Party reached fever pitch in the run-up to yesterdays elections for London Mayor, the Scottish Parliament, Welsh Assembly and some English local councils.

The media has obsessed on the question, with every alleged incident or accusation reported and amplified. Tanya Gold writes in the Daily Telegraph of how Labour's anti-Semitism problem should sicken any voter. Newsweek wades in with Britains Jewish Voters Desert Labour Party Amid Anti-Semitism Row. Anti-Semitism row is costing Labour, states the Guardian.

This is occurring even as evidence mounts proving the entire affair to be a manufactured crisis, based overwhelmingly on attempts to portray hostility to Zionism and Israels suppression of the Palestinians as racism towards Jewish people.

A week ago, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn authorised the suspension of his ally, former London Mayor Ken Livingstone, after he had defended Labour MP Naz Shah, who is accused of anti-Semitism. According to reports, 18 party members have now been suspended following allegations of racism and anti-Semitism since Corbyn became leader last September.

Since Corbyns election, Labours membership has more than doubled to around 500,000.

When Corbyn became leader, there were attempts to brand him an anti-Semite that failed miserably. This campaign has been resurrected and extended with the aim of damaging Corbyn and laying the ground for a leadership challenge against him. In March, the Jewish Chronicle editorialised regarding Labour: There is now a cancer in their party and it is getting worse by the day. If Labour is not to lose the last residue of trust from our community, it must recognise and deal with that cancer.

In Parliament during Prime Ministers Questions Wednesday, Conservative leader David Cameron reiterated the charge that Corbyn was a supporter of terrorism by again referencing a speech he made in 2009 in which he referred to representatives of Hamas and Hezbollah as friends.

Cameron said, Are they your friends or are they not? Because those organisations in their constitutions believe in persecuting and killing Jews. Theyre anti-Semitic organisations, theyre racist organisations. He must stand up and say they are not his friends.

Corbyn said that he was speaking diplomatically at the time and that Obviously anyone that commits racist acts or is anti-Semitic is not a friend of mine.

The aim of this carefully choreographed campaign was made explicit by two articles in the Daily Telegraph.

The first is an interview with Britains chief rabbi, in which he states baldly that it is illegitimate to criticise Zionism, because Jewish self-determination has been at the centre of the faith for more than 3,000 years. It is astonishing to see figures on the hard left of the British political spectrum presuming to define the relationship between Judaism and Zionism despite themselves being neither Jews nor Zionists, he says.

John McTernan, Labour Prime Minister Tony Blairs director of political operations from 2005 to 2007, wrote as the polling booths opened yesterday: Each loss in todays elections answers the question, does Corbynmania translate into electoral support? It confirms what the polls say: that just as Jeremy is defiantly going nowhere, so is the party.... It may not be the beginning of the end, but it will be the end of the beginning.

The Progress faction of the Labour Party has played a leading role in the witch-hunt. Last month, Progress director Richard Angell, a supporter of Liz Kendall, the most openly Blairite candidate defeated by Corbyn in last Septembers leadership election, said that by Labours next conference, serious sanctions should be in place for those considered to have been part of Jew hate and other forms of hatred.

He called for Labours undemocratic Compliance Unit, which has its origins in an anti-leftwing purge of the party carried out in the 1980s, to be allotted extra resources and be given immediate and additional staff as they cannot be expected to work every hour the almighty sends to keep on top of this workload.

The workload he refers to is a vast trawl of social media accounts now underway to seek out examples of supposed anti-Semitism.

This week, in an interview on the Open Democracy web site, Professor Norman Finkelstein, a respected author and prominent critic of Zionism and Israeli policy, exposed the rotten edifice of the entire right-wing campaign.

Speaking about one of the postings for which Shah was suspended, an image depicting a map of the United States with Israel superimposed as one of its states, Finkelstein said he had posted the image on his own web site as far back as 2014. Were it not for the current political context, nobody would have noticed Shahs reposting of it either, he said.

Livingstone was suspended for defending Shah and stating on BBC radio: Lets remember, when Hitler won his election in 1932 [sic] his policy then was that Jews should be moved to Israel. He was supporting Zionism. [He then] went mad and ending up killing 6 million Jews.

Finkelstein said of these remarks, Livingstone maybe wasnt precise enough, and lacked nuance. But he does know something about that dark chapter in history.

Hitler wasnt wholly hostile to the Zionist project at the outset, he added. The Nazis considered many resettlement schemesthe Jews wouldnt have physically survived most of them in the long runbefore they embarked on an outright exterminatory process. Livingstone is more or less accurate about thisor, as accurate as might be expected from a politician speaking off the cuff.

In his defence, Livingstone cited the work of Lenni Brenner, Zionism in the Age of the Dictators (1983) as source material. Finkelstein recalls, [T]he fact of the matter is, when Brenners book was published, it garnered positive reviews in the respectable British press. The Times, which is today leading the charge against Livingstone and the elected Labour leadership, back then published a review praising Brenners book as crisp and carefully documented. The reviewer, the eminent editorialist Edward Mortimer, observed that Brenner is able to cite numerous cases where Zionists collaborated with anti-Semitic regimes, including Hitlers.

Regarding the accusations of anti-Semitism in the Labour Party, Finkelstein said: These campaigns occur at regular intervals, correlating with Israels periodic massacres and consequent political isolation... Lets not forget, just last year there was a hysteria in the UK over anti-Semitism. A couple of ridiculous polls purported to find that nearly half of Britons held an anti-Semitic belief and that most British Jews feared for their future in the UK... It was exposed as complete nonsense when, in April 2015, a reputable poll by Pew found that the level of anti-Semitism in the UK had remained stable, at an underwhelming seven percent.

This week, the House of Commons Home Affairs Committee confirmed it would call on Corbyn, Cameron and Livingstone to give evidence as part of its inquiry into anti-Semitism. Shah had previously been a member of the committee.

This reactionary campaign could not have got any traction had it been resolutely opposed and exposed. Instead, both Corbyn and his main ally, Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell, agreed immediately to the suspension of Shah, Livingstone and numerous others both before and since. It is Corbyns repeated capitulations that mean, despite having the backing of hundreds of thousands of members and supporters who want shut of the right-wing, it is the Blairites that still determine policy and who are Labours real leaders.

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Oppose the witch-hunt of Ken Livingstone!

[2 May 2016]
The following speech was delivered by Peter Schwarz, secretary of the International Committee of the Fourth International, to the International May Day Online Rally held on May 1, 2016.

The European Union is in deep crisis and in a state of rapid disintegration.

After the Second World War, which left Europe in ruins, the predecessors of the European Union served to restrain the conflicts between the great European powers and to provide a certain degree of political stability. Now these same institutions are the driving force for escalating national conflicts and the emergence of bitter class struggles.

In 1926 Trotsky explained that the unification of Europe is beyond the strength of the European bourgeoisie which is utterly corroded by contradictions. Europe, he insisted, can be unified only by the victorious European proletariat. This is once again being confirmed today.

Peter Schwarz speech to the International May Day rally

Since the European Union was established in 1992, it has overseen a permanent assault on the social and democratic rights of the working class.

It has expanded to Eastern Europe, where the major European banks and corporations have reaped the rewards of capitalist restoration, exploited a cheap labour force and smashed whatever was left of the social gains of the past.

After the global financial crisis of 2008, the EU intensified its attacks on the working class and expanded them all over Europe. This has culminated in the brutal austerity diktat in Greece, which has devastated an entire country.

As a result, 23 million European workers are unemployed and millions more are struggling in low-paid, irregular jobs. In many countriesPortugal, Spain, Italy and Greeceyouth unemployment exceeds 50 percent. Poverty is rapidly growing amongst unemployed, young and low-paid workers and amongst pensioners.

The attack on the working class finds its most ugly form in the treatment of refugees, who are escaping from the wars instigated by US and European imperialism in the Middle East and Africa. Thousands are deliberately left to drown in the Mediterranean and the Aegean, the European borders are sealed off and asylum seekers are imprisoned in concentration camps and brutally deported.

At the other pole of society a tiny elite has amassed obscene amounts of wealth. Symptomatic for this social process is the Volkswagen company. Like a microcosm it shows what is happening in society as a whole.

As a result of the criminal manipulation of emission values, thousands of subcontracted workers have already been sacked and many thousands more are in danger of losing their jobs. The members of the board of directors, however, who are responsible for the manipulation, are cashing in. The nine top earners have increased their income from 54 million in 2014 to 63 million in 2015. This does not include a pension entitlement of 131 million.

The social situation all over Europe is characterized by growing inequality, massive social tensions and the emergence of bitter class conflicts.

The ruling elites react to the deep economic and social crisis of European capitalism in the same way they did in the 1930s: They resort to militarism and war, increase the repressive powers of the state, incite xenophobia and anti-immigrant racism and promote far-right and fascistic parties.

The return of militarism is the dominant feature in Europe. In 2003, some European powers such as Germany and France were still reluctant to fully support the US war against Iraq; now they are in the forefront of imperialist wars in Africa and the Middle East.

Germany plays a leading role in the escalating military confrontation with Russia, risking the transformation of Europe into a nuclear battlefield. German troops will be permanently deployed in the Baltics and other regions of Eastern Europe, where German imperialism has committed some of its worst crimes less than 80 years ago.

The danger of war is not limited to opponents outside of Europe. Growing economic and fiscal conflicts, the resurrection of borders and escalating national tensions raise the spectre of another war between the major European powers themselves.

The rise of far-right and fascistic partieslike the Front National in France, the Alternative fur Deutschland in Germany, the UK Independent Party in Britain, the Law and Justice Party in Poland and the Freedom Party in Austriaare an urgent warning, that all the dangers that transformed Europe into battlefield twice in the first half of the 20th century are coming back.

These far-right parties are sponsored from above, by the ruling elites, who pave the way for them by implementing their xenophobic and nationalistic policies.

While all the parties of the establishmentincluding their pseudo-left variety like Syriza in Greece and Die Linke in Germanymove closer together and support the assault on the working class, far-right demagogues are able to exploit the anger and frustration of the middle class and sections of the working class.

All the establishment partiesand this is particularly true for the pseudo-leftfear a revolutionary movement of the working class much more than they fear the far-right. They would rather hand over power to a fascist dictator, as the German bourgeoisie did in 1933, than risk a social revolution.

The rise of nationalism, racism and war is inevitable if the fate of Europe is left in the hands of these parties and if the working class does not carry out its own independent political intervention.

There is massive popular opposition against war, repression and xenophobia, which is manifesting itself in many waysin a wave of sympathy and support for refugees, in mass opposition against austerity in Greece, Spain and more recently in France. But this opposition has neither a voice nor a perspective. It has been led into a political dead end over and over again.

As far back as 2002, 3 million voters supported candidates falsely claiming to be Trotskyist in the French presidential election in opposition to the right-wing policies of the Socialist and the Communist Party. But what did these pseudo-left groups do? They called for a vote for the Gaullist candidate in the second round of the election and, in the long term, supported the return of the Socialist Party to power. The result is the growth of the National Front.

In Greece, the Coalition of the Radical Left (Syriza) was swept to power last year by a wave of opposition against austerity. It took the government of Alexis Tsipras only a few weeks to repudiate everything it had promised in the election and to implement social attacks that go much further than those of the previous social-democratic and conservative governments.

The task of this May Day rally is to give a voice and a perspective to the opposition against war, dictatorship and the social assault on the working class.

The struggle against war and the struggle against capitalism are inseparable. We fight to unite all sections of the working class in a common struggle against capitalism. Our answer to the disintegration of the European Union is the United Socialist States of Europe.

We strive to build sections of the International Committee of the Fourth International all over Europe as the new revolutionary leadership of the working class, and invite you to join this struggle.
The following speech was delivered by Uli Rippert, general secretary of the Partei fur Soziale Gleichheit (Socialist Equality Party, Germany), to the International May Day Online Rally held on May 1, 2016.

One hundred years ago today Karl Liebknecht spoke at Berlins Potsdamer Platz and called upon workers to oppose war.

The mass slaughters on the battlefields of WW1 had been raging for almost two years. Millions had already fallen. In the midst of this terrible war Liebknecht courageously raised his voice.

Ulrich Rippert speech to the International May Day rally

His appeal against war comprised of three points. He began with the collapse of the Second International and spoke about the devastating effects of the betrayal of the SPD, which had agreed to war credits in 1914.

He explained the class character of the war and spoke out against the capitalist profiteers. And he stressed that there was only one force that could put an end to the carnage: the proletariat on the basis of an international socialist program.

In his call for the demonstration Liebknecht wrote:

The proletarian International cannot be re-established in Brussels, Hague or Bern by a few dozen functionaries. It can only be established by the activity of millions. It can only be established here in Germany and over in France, in England, and in Russia, when masses of workers everywhere take up the banner of class struggle and raise their voices thunderously against the genocide ... 

One year later, Russian workers rose up against tsarism and, under the leadership of Lenin and Trotsky, carried out a socialist revolution that ended the war.

Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg were murdered when this revolution spread to Germany in November 1918. Here in Berlin the SPD government led by Ebert, Noske and Scheidemann drowned the revolution in blood.

Liebknecht and Luxemburg were killed before they could fully draw the lessons from the betrayal of the SPD, but Lenin and Trotsky emphasized that the struggle against war required a relentless struggle against opportunism and nationalism.

Today100 years later all of the unresolved problems of the last century are returning. Once again German imperialism and militarism is rearing its ugly head.

Two years ago the federal government announced the end of military restraint. Since then militarism has been systematically promoted. The German army, the Bundeswehr, is at the forefront of the NATO deployment against Russia in Eastern Europe, in wars in the Middle East and even in Africa.

According to German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier in an interview a few days ago: The situation today is more dangerous than during the Cold War. He continued: The old order has not yet been replaced by a new one. This struggle for influence and hegemony is not taking place in a peaceful seminar environment, but is exploding violently.

The military build-up in Germany is being pursued with a vengeance.

The German government has announced plans to increase military spending in the coming years to 130 billion. The spring report of the Bundeswehr listed 20 armament projects worth 60 billion. A new ultra-modern cyber strike force consisting of 13,500 soldiers will be set up and equipped with the latest technology.

In the early 1930s German militarism had already astonished the world when it rapidly overcame the defeat of World War I and the limitations of the Versailles Treaty to once again build up one of the most modern and powerful armies ever known. Today, German imperialism is once again striving to be in the frontline of the global arms race.

At present, this policy is taking place in close cooperation with the US. In his recent visit to Germany, President Obama organized a war summit to prepare a new military offensive in Syria and Libya. Immediately afterwards, the Bundeswehr announced it would be deploying troops and heavy military equipment to Lithuania in order to strengthen Western aggression against Russia.

However, the resurgence of German militarism has not only exacerbated the confrontation with Russia, but also led to increased tensions between European powers. The spectre of a European war returns and transatlantic conflicts can rapidly assume military forms.

All parties support the military build-up and the war drive. The SPD acts as cheerleader and leading warmonger. As for the Greens they have long since ditched their eco-pacifism and support the drive to war on the basis of defending human rights.

A particularly treacherous role is played by the Left Party. Under the slogan Unity against the right! it supports the war parties and strives to stifle a socialist development of the working class.

The trade unions also support the war policy. They demand protective tariffs and protectionism and have formed an official pact between the DGB and the Bundeswehr.

These parties and the media constitute a political conspiracy against the people.

However, unlike the situation 100 years ago, when the SPD suppressed the revolution and rescued capitalism, the social democratic parties and trade unions are losing influence. In the recent presidential election in Austria the SPO candidatea former union presidentgained just 11 percent of the vote and failed to make the second round.

In France thousands of workers and youth have been demonstrating for weeks against the labour market reforms of the Hollande government. And here in Germany strikes in the public service and engineering industry commenced last week.

We welcome the growing rebellion against the social democratic parties and trade unions. While the Left Party and all of the pseudo-left desperately seek to maintain the authority of the bureaucracies, we fight for the political independence of the working class.

However, the anger and opposition of millions of people demands a new strategy. The struggle against social cuts, dictatorship and war requires the mobilization of the international working class on the basis of an anti-capitalist and socialist program. This is the significance of our international campaign against militarism and war.

When we opposed right-wing professors and their war propaganda at Berlins Humboldt University we won considerable support. We were able to repulse all the attempts by the university administration to intimidate us and suppress our opposition to the blatant falsification of history and trivialisation of Nazi crimes. Earlier this year we were able to quadruple the number of our representatives in the student parliament.

We have now decided to expand this political campaign to factories and workplaces.

We have put up our own candidates for the election to the Berlin House of Representatives this autumn and already commenced our campaign. We are turning the election into a referendum against militarism and war.

We will not allow the same corporations and banks that twice plunged the world into the abyss, and committed the greatest ever war crimes, to organize a Third World War.

We combine the militancy and courage with which Karl Liebknecht opposed the First World War 100 years ago with the great political lessons contained in the history of the International Committee of the Fourth International.

That is the big difference. One hundred years ago, the SPD and the Second International collapsed after assuming an opportunistic direction years earlier.

Today, our party is winning influencea party that fought for decades under difficult conditions, but never gave up the struggle for an international socialist program and assembled a powerful international cadre in the process.

These principles acquire enormous actuality and force today.
The reply made last night by Labor Party leader Bill Shorten to the Turnbull governments budget combined populist rhetoric with a carefully-worded pledge to the ruling elite that Labor would better serve its interests than the Coalition Liberal-National parties. His commitment to budget repairturning a $39 billion deficit into a surplusdemonstrated that his various pledges to reduce social inequality and defend public services are nothing more than a cynical ploy to gain votes and, potentially, win government in the coming July 2 election.

By what he didnt say, Shorten left no doubt that a Labor government would fully commit to the US-led drive toward war with China, and Australian involvement in the US-led wars in the Middle East. Shorten failed to refer to the budgets 3.5 percent increase in military spending, to $32.5 billion, the projected spending of $495 billion over the next decade, and $1 trillion over the next 20 years. Nor did he mention the $688 million allocated to ongoing Australian operations as part of the US-led neo-colonial wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. Labor has fully supported the US pivot to Asia since it was announced by US President Obama in 2011, and will collaborate with the next American administrationwhoever heads itin implementing policies that will, unless stopped by the international working class, lead to the catastrophe of a nuclear war.

Shortens speech highlighted Labors awareness of the deep anger among millions of ordinary people over social inequality, the crisis wracking essential services such as the public health system, public education and transport infrastructure, and the ever-growing dangers associated with climate change. Labor strategists have clearly studied carefully how US Democratic Party presidential candidate and self-styled democratic socialist Bernie Sanders has made appeals to mass disaffection and alienation to gather political support and keep it confined within safe parliamentary channels.

Shorten began, in this vein, by condemning Turnbull for heading a government for the millionaires, and bringing down a budget for big business over the battlers. He zoned in on the Coalitions policies of gradually reducing the corporate tax rate from 30 to 25 percent over the next 10 years and abolishing a temporary 2 percent tax increase imposed in 2014 on individuals earning more than $180,000. The Opposition leader cited research showing that a working single mother with two teenage children, who earns $65,000 a year, will be $4,700 a year worse off, as a result of budget cutbacks to welfare payments, while an individual earning $1 million will gain $17,000 after tax cuts. In the course of the election, such comparisons will be aired repeatedly in television, radio and print advertisements. The blatant hypocrisy of Labors attack on the corporate tax cuts, however, is demonstrated by the fact that its shadow treasurer Chris Bowen has advocated the same policy.

During his reply, Shorten appealed to virtually every major social and political concern within the working class. He claimed that Labor would do everything from taking real action on climate change, closing the gender pay gap, increasing funding for childcare, generating full employment, pouring billions into rail infrastructure projects, legislating same sex marriage, improving conditions for indigenous Australians, eliminating the scourge of family violence and restoring the $80 billion that was slashed by the Coalition in 2014 from future funding for public health and education.

Shortens demagogy, like the governments budget, is based on fanciful Treasury estimates that the Australian economy will experience at least 3 percent economic growth every year for the next five yearsunder conditions of a burgeoning global crisis and a sharp downturn in China, Australias largest export market and trading partner. In reality, Australian capitalism is sliding into a deflationary slump and toward its first recession in 25 years. Every sector of the economyfrom mining, to retail, to the banksis registering falling profits.

Shorten also failed to mention that the budgets estimates of growth had been rejected by credit agency Moodys and ridiculed by a number of media commentators. To do so would have required that he spell out how a Labor government would meet corporate demands for the budget deficit to be reined in through drastic austerity cutbacks to public spending. Instead, the Labor leader traded in lies. However, in his first media interview after the speech, he was caught out and forced to backtrack on the question of health and education funding. Confronted on the issue by Australian Broadcasting Corporation journalist Leigh Sales, Shorten refused to commit to restoring the $80 billion that had been cut.

Fears within the Coalition that Labors populist pitch could win support, and result in a historic electoral defeat for the government, were voiced by Treasurer Scott Morrison even before Shorten made his speech. Demanding that Labor tone down its rhetoric, Morrison asserted: Australians are over this class warfare. They are over the us and them.

The truth is that the income and wealth gap between the upper classes and the majority of the population is the widest it has been since the 1920s. The working class has been on the receiving end of an endless class war for the past 30 years. Working conditions have been transformed to the point where over 40 percent of the workforce is employed on casual, part-time or contract terms. Aged pensions and social welfare payments have been reduced to below-poverty levels, while hospitals and schools have been starved of funding, to the point where the public health and education systems are on the brink of breakdown, as are the road and public transport systems in most major cities.

Labors attempt to win back office by appealing to the mass anger and alienation produced by these conditions is, from every standpoint, shameless. The Labor Party was in government for 19 of the past 33 years. From 1983 to 1996, with the full support of the trade unions, the Hawke and Keating Labor governments implemented savage economic restructuring that devastated working class living standards and led to the massive growth of social inequality. From 2007 to 2013, the Rudd and Gillard Labor governments pursued a nakedly pro-big business agenda. At both the federal and state level, Labor has presided over the privatisation of essential services and the running down of health and education. Figures like Shorten rose through the ranks of the thoroughly corporatist trade union apparatus and the Labor Party by fully endorsing and prosecuting its class war against the working class.

Shortens spin and lies reflect, above all, the contempt of Labor for the working class. The partys entire election strategy is based on the arrogant assumption that workers will ignore the record of past Labor governments and its ongoing commitment to big business and militarism.
After a two-day sickout earlier this week Detroit teachers returned to work, only to be greeted with a long denunciation of their protest by emergency manager Steven Rhodes, and the passage of a draconian Detroit Public Schools reorganization package by the state House of Representatives.

Wheeling and dealing until 4 AM Thursday, right-wing state representatives passed an unprecedented series of attacks on public education and teachers in the form of a DPS rescue which, in fact, sets the stage for the privatization of the district and the impoverishment of teachers.

The measures require all staff to reapply for their jobs, allow the hiring of noncertified teachers [previously illegal in the state of Michigan] and tie teacher pay to test scores. They would also impose punitive measuresincluding stripping state certificationon school workers who strike. This measure will now go the state Senate, which has passed a competing, slightly less punitive, version.

The same day, in an email to Detroit teachers, Rhodes launched into a lengthy diatribe, denouncing the two-day sick-out by the teachers as unnecessary and unfortunate. He charged that it puzzled, angered and alienated state legislatorsthreatened the communitys ability to achieve our shared goal and deprived children, children! of a nutritious breakfast and lunch. He went on to warn that the sickout could cost $4 million in state funding for Detroit schools and lead to future job reductions.

Detroit teachers, largely reluctantly, returned to the classroom Wednesday after being instructed to do so by the Detroit Federation of Teachers (DFT) and American Federation of Teachers (AFT) President Randi Weingarten. Two days of sickouts had effectively closed the school district in order to counter the threat by Rhodes that all salaries would end June 30 when, he said, the district would run out of money. This meant that teachers who asked the district to put aside a portion of their salaries during the school year so they could be paid throughout the summer months would lose their own money.

Rhodes dashed off a letter to the DFT asserting that teachers would be paid so Weingarten could read it at a Tuesday evening union meeting.

The unions have thrown their full backing to the Senate bill that has the support of Michigan Republican Governor Rick Snyder and Rhodes. Both versions are reactionary measures that would liquidate the DPS as an education entity and create a new school system. Both plans place control of finances in the hands of an unelected financial review commission.

However, according to the DFT and AFT, the House version would essentially nullify collective bargaining in the newly established school district. The differing proposals reflect tactical differences within the political establishment, with the Snyder-Senate plan looking to maintain the unions in order to suppress opposition to their restructuring plans, while the House version seeks to eliminate the unions altogether.

The DFT and AFT bureaucracies are not opposed to further attacks on teachers and public education. Instead they are collaborating with the Republican governor to impose his plan in order to maintain the legal backing of the state government and guarantee the continued flow of dues income into their bank accounts.

DFT president Ivy Bailey, in her email to teachers, attempted to justify the unions betrayal of the teacher protests, saying the state legislators had used the sickouts as their excuse for the new legislation. Engaging in more sickouts would play into the hands of politicians set on killing our schools and our union, she wrote. Demonstrating the unions corrupt partnership with both Republicans and Democrats, she told teachers, Now is the time to demand Gov. Rick Snyder veto these bills if they come to his desk. Now is the time to contact our legislators  to do the right thing for Detroits kids and schools. Bailey also added, Rest assured that we have a team of lobbyists, etc.

For his part, Rhodes added a not-so-veiled warning directed to the union saying the sickout diminished, on the threshold of collective bargaining, our productive and mutually beneficial relationship with the DFT. At the same time Rhodes acknowledged the internal challenges that DFT leadership faces. That is the mass opposition by teachers to the rotten and corrupt attempt by the union to impose round after round of sacrifices on teachers, students and parents.

Teachers responded angrily both to the threats by Rhodes and the craven capitulation by the DFT. One Detroit teacher posted on Facebook in response to Baileys statement, I read it. Writing to my legislators, in my opinion, would be a great waste of time. They have shown exactly who and what they are. Power is never willingly relinquished. Another said, I just read it and I am sick all over again. A third commented, I want my dues refunded now!

Nowanna, a pre-Kindergarten noon hour aide, told the WSWS Teacher Newsletter, All the teachers at my school are highly upset. They think that Ivy Bailey is not really for us. They felt that they shouldnt have gone back to work yesterday. They were irate, but bit the bullet and returned.

After being out three days, you need a doctors excuse and Rhodes wrote a letter saying teachers would get their pay. But they knew it was wrong to go back. We figure they are going to privatize the schools. I just wonder who the they is ... somebody has a plan. Theyve been working on this plan to privatize for a while now.

They are now offering a group of us to become school service assistants and then, in the fall, to be signed in as associate teachers. There is a shortage of associates because they cant get them. They are not getting paid very much, next to nothing in fact. Thats why theyre now training us lower classification workers. Its actually not fair to the kids because we have much less experience.

New teachers are also being paid much less. Its really bad, theyre stripping benefits. It no longer pays to be a DPS teacher. Young people go into debt, get a masters degree, then theyre asked to make less and less.

Patricia, a recently retired Detroit teacher, said she opposed Rhodes threats. What Rhodes is doing is wrong. I think it is a scare tactic. What the teachers did undermines him. They had threatened them in the past about striking, and they did it anyway.

They are still pushing for charters and privatizing. Everyone has the right to voice their concerns, as a whole or as an individual. I dont think what the teachers did was illegal.

I think this has been planned for decades. They have laid off teachers, reassigned teachers and made cuts. They want to get rid of seniority rights and lay off who they want. Yet the deficit gets bigger and then they want to blame teachers.

But where did the money go? It is like Flint, no one wants to take the blame.

Another teacher, David, said, Letters and appeals to legislators is not making a bit of difference. I wrote a long letter and sent it to all my representatives. Referring to the House bill, which would allow non-certified teachers in a new Detroit Community School District, he said, I explained to the legislators they what they are doing to the DPS is unconstitutional.

Now the union is telling us to go to Ann Arbor and write with chalk on the pavement by Snyders home. This is completely useless. The House bill is completely demeaning to workers. We would have to reapply for our jobs. Im a Step 10, would they start me at Step 2? Experience means nothing any more. There is no loyalty to employees anywhere.

Its a shame what they are doing. They are underfunding education everywhere. My daughters district counts every penny and made every change they could think of and theyre still in crisis. When Snyder came in, eight school districts were in financial crisis, now it is 112.
Turkish prime minister Ahmet Davutoglu suddenly announced on Wednesday his decision to step down as chairman of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and therefore as prime minister. At a press conference, following the meeting of the Central Executive Board of his party, Davutoglu said that the AKP would organise an extraordinary congress to elect his successor.

The resignation is a reflection of deep conflicts within the state, in the midst of Turkish involvement in the Syria civil war and growing tension with Russia, as well as a renewed, bloody civil war with its own Kurdish minority.

Davutoglu resigned after fistfights repeatedly erupted inside the parliament over Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogans moves to crush the pro-Kurdish Peoples Democratic Party (HDP). Last week, and again on Monday, AKP and HDP deputies fought each other in the General Assembly, as the AKP threatens to lift HDP deputies parliamentary immunity to allow their trial on terrorism charges.

A barely veiled conflict between between Davutoglu and Erdogan had been growing in the days before Davutoglus resignation. On April 29, the AKPs central executive committee, stacked with Erdogan loyalists, voted to deprive Davutoglu of his right as AKP chairman to appoint regional party officials. Before an emergency meeting with Davutoglu on Wednesday, Erdogan bluntly and publicly told him, You should not forget how you got your post.

After the April 29 meeting, there was media speculation over Davutoglus political future. Rumours were spread that Erdogan would replace Davutoglu with someone like Transport Minister Binali Yildirim, his close ally, or Energy Minister Berat Albayrak, his son-in-law.

Erdogan blandly dismissed Davutoglus resignation, stating that it is the prime ministers own decision. However, Davutoglu made clear it was his response to deep divisions in the AKP.

I have never negotiated for any post or position over the values and principles I have, he said, stating that he was angered by the decision to strip him of his powers as party chairman. He added, As a result of my own examination and consultations with my friends with political experience, including our president, I have come to the conclusion that instead of changing colleagues, its much better to change the party chair for the unity of the AKP.  [T]he fate of the AKP is the fate of Turkey.

Calling for loyalty to Erdogan, Davutoglu cryptically added, No one should dare to initiate new plots.

With Davutoglus resignation, explosive conflicts inside the Turkish government and bourgeoisie are coming to the surface.

A former foreign minister, Davutoglu is well aware that Turkey has suffered a heavy blow as Erdogans policies have simultaneously undermined Ankaras relations with the United States, the European Union (EU) and Russia. The AKP has also overseen unprecedented social inequality, poverty and unemployment. Nearly half of the Turkish population lives below the poverty line, while a tiny elite appropriates a vast and growing amount of wealth.

Though he was always careful not to criticise Erdogan publicly, Davutoglu has distanced himself from the president on many controversial issues. These include Erdogans attempt to concentrate power in his hands by building a presidential system and repressive measures against the press, such as pre-trial detention of journalists.

The rift between Erdogan and Davutoglu in the Islamist AKP marks a new stage of the AKP regimes disintegration, faced with the political aftershocks of the revolutionary upsurge in Egypt in 2011 and the ongoing war launched by NATO that year in Syria. After some initial hesitation, the AKP joined the NATO war drive. The 2013 coup that toppled an Islamist-led regime in Egypt, led by President Mohamed Mursi, came amid the June 2013 protests in Istanbuls Gezi Parkboth of which threatened the AKP government.

Since then, Erdogan has carried out an ever more bellicose policy, both internationally and inside Turkey. He stoked a civil war against Turkeys Kurdish minority and nearly provoked war with Russia when, with US backing, Turkey shot down a Russian fighter plane over Syria last November. It is increasingly obvious that with his calls for a presidential system, Erdogan is trying to deal with insoluble political contradictions by imposing an authoritarian regime.

The AKP is pushing to remove the immunity of 129 deputies, nearly a quarter of the total number, through a constitutional amendment, as the destruction and loss of life in ethnic Kurdish cities continue to rise.

On Tuesday, May 3, the Turkish parliaments constitutional commission embraced an AKP proposal to add a temporary clause to the Turkish constitution lifting the deputies immunity. The proposal was approved with the support of the Kemalist Republican Peoples Party (CHP) and the far-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), while the HDP voted against it.

During the session of the commission, AKP deputies physically assaulted HDP MPs, who denounced the commissions decision as a coup. After the physical attack against them, the HDP officials decided to withdraw from the commission.

Speaking at his partys weekly group meeting that same day, HDP Co-President Selahattin Demirtas stated that they would discuss other alternatives if HDP parliamentarians were arrested and prosecuted. He said that citizenscould form multiple parliaments if they wanted. He called for support to the HDP and invited the CHP to join them in opposing the AKP.

After supporting the AKPs so-called peace process with the Kurds, the HDP has faced repeated denunciations by Erdogan and Davutoglu for supporting a terrorist organisation, that is, the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). Ankaras attitude to the Kurdish question shifted radically over the course of the Syrian war, as a Russian intervention devastated AKP-backed Islamist forces, and the US and European imperialists embraced Kurdish forces led by the PKKs Syrian offshoot as a new proxy in Iraq and Syria.

Davutoglu has supported the AKPs brutal and aggressive policies both in Syria and inside Turkey. He recently denounced calls for autonomy in the mainly Kurdish-populated southeast of Turkey, saying that deputies cannot be forgiven for hiding behind the shield of [parliamentary] immunity if they support terrorism. He also reportedly played a crucial role in negotiating the filthy deal with the EU in which Turkey agreed to prevent refugees from fleeing Syria to Europe.

It is Erdogan, however, who emerged as the main instigator of attacks on press freedom and of the witch-hunt against the HDP. While he was earlier the initiator of the so-called peace process with the PKK, the Turkish president, in a close alliance with the army and the MHP, frequently accuses HDP deputies of being extensions of the PKK and has demanded that judiciary bodies prosecute them.

Davutoglus departure and the ongoing attacks on Kurdish nationalists plunge not only Turkey into political uncertainty, but also its imperialist patrons, who rely on Turkey as a useful ally for their war plans in the Middle East and for imprisoning millions of refugees trying to flee the region.

Davutoglu has been the cooperative, Western-oriented face of the government, particularly important in pushing through the refugees deal with the EU, foreign policy consultant Ian Bremmer told UK Business Insider. Its going to be a dangerous time to be in the opposition.

Soner Cagaptay of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy said that if Erdogan continued to consolidate his power, it will render the country so brittle politically that when Erdogan leaves office one day, there will be nearly no institutions left standing to keep the country together.
Some 3,000 Verizon strikers and their supporters marched in downtown Manhattan Thursday as the walkout by 39,000 telecom workers in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states entered its fourth week. While striking workers expressed their determination to oppose the last, best and final offer, handed down by Verizon last week, the leaders of the Communications Workers of America and other unions offered no way forward for the struggle.

Top CWA officials, including national president Chris Shelton and vice-president Dennis Trainor, decried corporate greed and continued their nationalist rants against Mexican and Filipino telecom workers. They repeated the empty slogan of One day longer, one day stronger, making it clear that nothing would be done to break the isolation of the struggle despite the massive strikebreaking operation by the Fortune 500 corporation.

Various other union bureaucrats from American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees District Council 37, the Service Employees International Union and the New York Hotel Trades Council added their empty sloganeering even as they do everything to block any unified struggle of New York City workers against the government-backed assault on workers. As usual, they told workers to place their faith in the Democrats, who are no less enemies of workers than the Republicans.

What was billed as a march on Wall Street turned out to be a demonstration through the secluded residential districts of lower Manhattan that explicitly avoided the New York Stock Exchange and finished at the CWA District 1 headquarters.

Among striking workers there is a growing mood of frustration with the endless routine of toothless protests and publicity stunts while they have been kept in the dark about ongoing negotiations. The CWA has already offered millions in concessions.

A Verizon striker who describes herself as a special representative for business customers told the WSWS Verizon Strike Newsletter, We dont know what is going on with the negotiations. The spokesman for the Verizon CEO and the union say one thing and then the CEO says what they said is not accurate.

I have been on strike a number of times, the longest one being in 89, which lasted for four months. It is not a coincidence that the union called the strike to coincide with the Democratic Party primaries. Both Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton came to picket lines that week and got a lot of media coverage. The politicians need the money from the companies and the votes from the workers.

Another Verizon worker said, While the company has been making a lot of money, they dont want to give any decent raises. When they were putting in FiOS (fiber optic system), they asked us to take a cut in pay, and then afterwards we would get a share of the profits.

They want to increase the number of miles away that they want to be able to send us from the current 35 to 80. I remember when I used to work on 38th Street in Manhattan, and the company decided to place us all in Massapequa, Long Island. They not only moved us to Long Island, they also eliminated our travel pay. We not only spent more time traveling back and forth to Long Island, we also lost money, but it saved them money.

A number of workers took an early retirement rather than make that move. Some of them had only worked for 10-15 years so they could not get any money right away. Verizon wants to pressure older people with more benefits to leave. They want to replace them with the younger people with less benefits.

We want to know what the union and management are negotiating. Once you start to pay for health benefits, the company wants more. I now pay $30 a week for health insurance. It is the history of the union to make concessions, thats why were paying for medical care. I voted against the last contract. A lot of people voted for it because they are under pressure to pay bills.

Most of the people I know on this job have been working here for more than 25 years. They have kids that are back home with them because their children cant find jobs.

Expressing the growing anti-capitalist sentiment in the working class, the striker said, People are taught that with socialism, someone like the government takes their money. In reality it is this government that takes our money to pay for bombs and the military. They lie about socialism. The system is run by money so they tell you socialism is bad.

Strikers at the Downtown Brooklyn Verizon Center also spoke with the WSWS Verizon Strike Newsletter. Rose began working for Verizon in 1971, the year 400,000 CWA workers waged a national strike that won cost-of-living protection and other benefits.

I cant retire and afford to live in New York City, in Brooklyn, on a pension until I get Social Security, too. I have had one job but worked through four names of this company: New York Telephone, NYNEX, Bell Atlantic and now Verizon.

I started on a Tuesday and the next Wednesday in 1971 they went on strike. The company was coast to coast. It went on nationally for a month and then seemed to end and we had a big party, not realizing that for New York Telephone the strike would go on another six months

In 1971, working for telephone and the post office, which also went on strike, were the best jobs for pay and benefits but yet they had to have a national strike to get what we deserved. Since then the cost of living kept going up. We have not kept up and we have to strike. Since 1990 I have not seen the unions try to fight and be united.

Asked how she saw the struggle being taken forward, Rose responded, Last August, because the strike was supposed to be last year when the contract ended, a few workers proposed sending people to organize in the Philippines. The union shot down that idea. Then they spent ten months negotiating. Then they told us at the last minute we were going out on strike, when we had not prepared.

As for the political situation workers faced, Rose stated, The Democrats are no different from the Republicans. I used to see Mayor de Blasio around my neighborhood when he was an assemblyman. De Blasio is like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. He became another Bloomberg. Hillary? They are all the same. You cant trust any of them. Trump is a bully. He was just some rich guys kid. Who thought he would get this power? Sanders is like anybody, saying what people want to hear. This election year, no matter who wins, we are going to lose.

Ernestine, who has worked for 35 years at Verizon, said, We are working like in a concentration camp, to be honest. They suspend you for absolutely nothing. They harass you. If you leave three minutes early, you will be suspended for three days. We have one manager who suspended fifteen to twenty people, for nonsense. They are harassing workers, just so then can climb the corporate ladder because Verizon is also getting rid of managers every three months to cut costs. Managers are kept on pins and needles so they come after us.

Gary is a technician testing circuits and has 37 years experience. We have many issues but a major one is job security. Verizon also wants to increase our share for medical. The companies never want to compromise. Meanwhile their CEO salaries keep going up. New workers are not going to get what older workers got. They dont want to give them a pension. The unions say they support each other at rallies. It doesnt seem to be working. Anyway there is always hierarchy and leaders at the top.

Referring to the growing opposition of workers throughout the country another striker, Barbara, said, I support Detroit teachers. How are people expected to work and not get paid? But they are isolated, like we are. It should be workers supporting each other.
6 years, 5 months ago by Scott Hardy

Two wanted on Adams Co. warrants

Three Missourians face charges after their arrest Wednesday night on I-72 in Pike County, Illinois.

The West Central Illinois Task Force Thursday said the three were arrested after the Illinois State Police stopped a vehicle driven by 24 year old Aireyana Gipson of Kirksville. An ISP K-9 found an ounce of heroin in the vehicle, and Gipson was later found to be hiding pot on her person. She's charged with Obstruction of Justice as well as an Adams County warrant. Anthony Swan of Kirksville is also wanted in Adams County. A second passenger, 32 year old Michael Bell of Hannibal, is charged with Criminal Drug Conspiracy. All three are in the Pike County Jail.

Authorities say the investigation continues and additional arrests are possible. The stop was part of an investigation by the Task Force and the Hannibal Police Department's ACES unit into heroin trafficking.
GAINESVILLE, Fla. (AP) - A federal jury has convicted a north Florida doctor of 162 counts of health care fraud.

U.S. Attorney Christopher Canova said in a news release that 59-year-old Dr. Ona Colasante defrauded Medicare, Medicaid and Blue Cross Blue Shield of Florida through false billing schemes at two different businesses. Colasante was convicted Monday.

Canova says Colasante could be sentenced to 10 years on each of the 162 counts. Sentencing is scheduled for July 25.

Prosecutors say Colasante owned and operated the Hawthorne Medical Center from 1998 to 2009, and the Colasante Clinic in Gainesville from 2010 to 2013.

Prosecutors say Colasante billed insurance companies for counseling, treatment and training that never occurred and fraudulently billed for drugs.
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) - A Florida Panhandle grand jury has indicted a charter school management company and three vendors on charges that it fraudulently billed a charter school for supplies, equipment and services.

The charges of grand theft, money laundering and aggravated white collar crime were announced Thursday by State Attorney Bill Eddins and could have ripple effects across the state. No individuals have been charged.

The Tampa Bay Times reports that the company indicted in Escambia County has also been criticized for poor financial management of four schools in Pinellas County.

Assistant State Attorney Russell Edgar says the investigation is continuing, and prosecutors have sought information from other school districts where the companies were doing business.

David McGee, a Pensacola attorney representing the management company Newpoint Education Partners, says the company would plead not guilty. He says the company is confused about the allegations.
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (AP) - St. Pete delays vote on ticketing pot possession violators.

The St. Petersburg City Council has a delayed a vote on decriminalizing small amounts of marijuana until a diversion program is created.

The council voted 8-0 on Thursday to defer the ordinance. St. Petersburg police urged them to wait until the program proposed by Sheriff Bob Gualtieri is ready, which should take about three more months.

The Tampa Bay Times reports the program is expected to be ready in about three months.

The ordinance would allow officers to issued citations for the first three offenses of 20 grams or less of marijuana. It also covers other minor offenses, including trespassing and public intoxication.

Tampa passed a similar ordinance in March, as have many other Florida cities.
TALLAHASSEE, Fl. (WTXL/The Insiders ) -- Life after prison is never easy, even with the help of re-entry programs. The Living Harvest is a facility that opened in 2013 and so far has helped about 30 people get back on their feet.

Leaders of the organization visit various state prisons and court systems in North Florida. They offer help to former inmate transitioning into society into becoming productive members of society as long as they were not violent offenders or sex offenders.

"I got to a point in my life where my life was just a mess, and I was completely broken," said ex-offender Jerry Harris.

Harris got in legal trouble and couldn't stop drinking.

"I went to prison before for a third DUI and a minor wreck, and I got out of there, stayed out a year and I know I needed help so I came to this program."

He's now living in a home on the south side of town run by The Living Harvest called the Serenity House. Leaders of the organization say it's a safe and drug free place that houses six men.

Harris has been at the home for four months, maintaining a sober life with the goal of fully reuniting with his family.

Harris spends his time arranging items for resale in the thrift shop which raises money for program.

"We actually have a place where we provide housing, food, and shelter, and we start a with a process where a lot of them have addiction counseling," said Dick Collins. "They go through recovery programs. They go to church."

Co-founder, Dale White, understands first hand what Harris is going through because at one point in his life, he spent time behind bars.

"My short story is countless detoxes, five treatment centers, four DUI's, six and half years in prison, and I got out of prison and back to doing the same thing," said White.

It's been a long recovery for White, but now he's doing well with a circle of support.

Some of the biggest hurdles the organization faces is finding resources because White says people don't want to donate to someone coming out of prison.

"It's mainly because they feel they still need to be punished. Whatever the case may be, the problem with that is, if we don't help them they come back out and commit more crimes and more victims," said White.

As for Harris, his goals are to move up in the ministry and land a position.

"It's put my life in a new perspective," said Harris. "It's teaching me to live my life without alcohol in my life, and I'm at this point, very happy."

The Living Harvest counts on funds from the thrift store, donations, and grants to keep its doors open. They're also plan to open a second store on West Tharpe Street in June.

Remember if you have a story idea for the Insiders, send us an idea to abc27news@wtxl.tv "attention Insiders."
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WTXL)- The man accused of murdering a 24-year-old Tallahassee woman and dumping her body in the woods near his apartment could face the death penalty.

According to court documents, a notice of intent to seek the death penalty was filed on Wednesday.

Police say Leon Woodberry got into a fight with Shannan Gordon in his Savannah Crossing apartment on April 16 and stabbed her to death.

Gordon's body was discovered the next morning in nearby woods. Investigators say a blood trail led them to Woodberry's apartment.

Woodberry had only been out of prison for about half a year when he was arrested. He previously served time for sexual battery and burglary.
More information

 More information about cougars in Washington state can be found at wdfw.wa.gov/living/cougars.html

 Report a cougar sighting by calling the local office of the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife at 509-575-2740.
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People love to say that Netanya is the "capital of France" in Israel and that Ra'anana has been taken over by English speakers. But do olim (immigrants) from certain places really tend to come together to settle in one specific area? And how many olim live in Israel's cities?

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For the first time, the Ministry of Immigrant Absorption has released data that shows how the new immigrants are dispersed throughout the country, and which city was attractive to olim from specific countries. The numbers don't include returning citizens, nor do they include children born in Israel to new immigrants.

Leading the list of cities preferred by olim is Jerusalem, even though the city itself suffers from negative growth.

Since 2001, 34,000 olim have moved to the capital, with about half coming from the US and France.

Tel Aviv is in second place with 27,000 immigrants, of which 8,800 came from former Soviet Union, 5,200 from France, and 4,400 from the US.

Is Netanya French or Russian?

The city of Netanya absorbed 9,800 French olim in the past 15 years. However, a similar number from the former Soviet Union also immigrated to the city. Olim from other countries are barely represented in this seaside town.

Daniel and Solange Yifrach moved to Israel last December following the wave of terrorism which hit Paris. The couple have two sons in their 20s and a younger daughter. According to Daniel, the decision to move to Netanya was simple.

"I visited Israel many times before we made aliyah (immigrated to Israel)" he said. "In Netanya, we have friends and family, and its a wonderful city in our opinion. There's a beautiful beach and a lot of opportunities for French speakers. We were debating between moving to Netanya, Jerusalem, or Eilat. But we already know Netanya and we know how to get by here, so the clear choice was here."

"We're close to retirement age," he continued, "and we prefer to live in a large seaside town where we already have friends and family. We got exactly what we expected from the city. We feel like we're always on vacation, especially due to the city's touristic nature."

Argentinians favor Be'er Sheva

Farther down the list, one finds Haifa, the city which absorbed the most new olim from the former Soviet Union over the last 15 years. Out of 21,000 new olim to the city, 15,000 are from the former Soviet Union.

Ashdod, Bat Yam, Petah Tikvah, Be'er Sheva, Ashkelon, and Rishon LeZion are cities which also have high percentages of new olim coming from the former USSR. However, there has also been a sharp increase in new olim from France going to Ashdod, almost 1,000 Argentines moving to Be'er Sheva, and a large number of Ethiopians moving to Petah Tikvah and Rishon LeZion.

Ra'anana has turned into a popular city for immigrants from France and the US to settle. According to Rachel Solomon Ringler, who made aliyah with her husband and daughter, they did serious "market research" before they decided to move to Ra'anana.

"My husband checked several cities, including Modi'in, Petah Tikvah, and Hashmonaim. What led us to Ra'anana was the city's character and the quality of its schools. The fact that there are a lot of Americans and South Africans in the city also helped us make the decision," she said.

Ringler continued, "We learned about the city on the internet, and I feel like we have everything we need here. Also, it really helps that almost everyone here speaks English."

Did you get any information on the different cities before you made Aliyah?

"We got here through Nefesh B'Nefesh, and they explained every city to us. But, of course, the final decision should be made by the immigrant after they do a thorough check of their needs and what each city can provide. I think it would be great if there could be someone from the municipality who would be responsible for the new immigrants, and would help us solve the problems we encounter."

Olim love Eilat

A relatively surprising city on the list of cities immigrants flock to is Eilat, which absorbed 3,200 olim in the last several years. The majority of new immigrants coming to this city are French as well.





There's also a sizeable population of people from Argentina and North America who live in the city. One of them is Aviva Vogel from the US, who arrived in the city with a Masa Jewish Agency program.

Masa programs give young people the chance to live and either study or work and intern in Israel for an extended period of time. Many people use this program as a test period to decide whether or not Aliyah is right for them.

Aviva decided to move to Eilat after she got a job offer in the city.

"I love Eilat for what it is," Vogel said. "It's small, but with great views and weather that kind of reminds me of Florida. I think that Eilat is a great place for new olim because it's relatively cheap to live here, and there's everything you need here. I dont know if I'll stay here long term, but as a place to start out as a new immigrant, I think it's great."

Other cities which should be noted for their high levels of olim are Modi'in-Maccabim-Reut which took in 1,300 olim from the US; Kfar Saba, where hundreds have Ethiopians have moved, and Givat Shmuel which also has a high percentage of olim from the US and France.
The Israeli Air Force (IAF) attacked Hamas positions in Gaza Friday morning in retaliation for at least two mortar shells fired at IDF soldiers operating near the border fence. No IDF casualties or damage were reported.

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The IDF Spokesman stated that "the IAF attacked terror infrastructure belonging to the terrorist organization Hamas in the southern Gaza Strip. The attack took place in response to recent days mortar fire used by the terrorist organization Hamas against IDF forces engaged in operations near the border fence."

"The IDF considers terrorist activities committed from underground or above ground as a violation of the State of Israel's sovereignty, and considers Hamas solely responsible for these terrorist acts," he concluded.

IDF forces operating near Gaza border (Photo: AFP)

In the last two days, about 16 mortar shells were fired at the IDF in at least 12 incidents, twice the amount of total mortars and rockets fired at Israel since the beginning of the year.

In light of the escalation Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu decided to convene the security cabinet Friday morning.

Meanwhile, the military wing of Hamas issued an announcement in which it first referred to the discovery of the tunnel in southern Gaza Thursday. According to its military wing, this tunnel is the same one from which the people carried out their first raid into Israel during Operation Protective Edge in July, 2014.

Even before Friday mornings mortar shelling, the IDF was prepared for continued mortar fire at IDF forces over the weekend as well. Heavy engineering forces, along with Golani fighters and 7th armor brigade, will continue to operate from several locations along the border to locate tunnels crossing the fence, with the military working assumption being that there are more tunnels that have crossed Israels border and therefore attempts to discover them are continuing around the clock. have not yet found the experience in spotting continues around the clock. Thursday, the IDF discovered a new offensive terror tunnel, which had crossed the border near the southern Gaza Strip.

Security officials estimate that the Hamas is still not interested in a severe escalation, but nervousness in Gaza raises the chances of a mistake that could lead to more extensive fighting.
State Comptroller Yosef Shapira intends to publish a scathing report about Operation Protective Edge in Gaza in 2014. The expected critique condemns the conduct of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon and former Chief of Staff Benny Gantz, according to television news channels reporting Thursday.

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A draft of the secret report was presented before cabinet members who served during the operation.

According to the news channels, the draft contains a claim that, among other things, Netanyahu and Yaalon did not update the cabinet about Shin Bet warnings of possible military conflicts against Hamas in July 2014 and that Netanyahus government never discussed the tunnel threat until Operation Protective Edge itself. Gantz is expected to be criticised for the military evaluations which he submitted to the cabinet.

During recent weeks Netanyahu has undertaken great efforts to soften the harsh charges leveled in the report. Among other things, Netanyahu met with Shapira and with people from his office in an effort to explain the damage which can be caused by the report if it is published in its current version.

Benjamin Netanyahu (Picture: Emil Salman, Haaretz)

Indeed, officials who read the draft said that we are talking about a report which is a lot worse than the Winograd report which analyzed the failures of the Second Lebanon War (of2006). They also added that the report constitutes a political ticking bomb that will depict Operation Protective Edge as a grave failure exceeding that of the Second Lebanon War. The report, they said, will posit that nothing has changed and that the lessons of the most recent Lebanon war have not been learned.

Netanyahus close circle is already preparing preventative steps and has rebuffed the claims as not being serious. They rejected the findings, claiming that the operation was managed in a transparent manner and concluded successfully. All the rest is slander. Moreover, they insisted that cabinet sessions were convened many times and their meetings included talks of the threat of tunnels.

Officials in Yaalons circle were no less aggressive in their rejections. This is a scandalous draft, with its leak prior to the comptroller's remarks and its content, which is not connected with what is happening. The facts in the draft are inaccurate, and whoever wrote it does not understand the decision making process and how the cabinet works. Regarding the tunnels, the report is also disconnected from reality. The State of Israel deals with the subject of tunnels to which it has dedicated mass resources for many years. Whoever claims that he was unfamiliar with the tunnels and the their handlings is lying to the public. The draft is fraught with inaccuracies and lacks understanding of the operations and the system, it concluded.
A renowned Russian conductor led a triumphant concert Thursday in the ruins of the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra, once terrorized by Islamic State, even as an airstrike on a refugee camp in the north left at least 28 people dead and dozens wounded, including many children.

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The performance in the same ancient amphitheater where ISIS militants carried out widely publicized killings -- and called "A Prayer for Palmyra" -- was intended to send a message that Russia's presence in Syria would bring hope and stability.

Russian concert at Palmyra amphitheater (Photo: Reuters)

But even as strains of Bach and Sergei Prokofiev's First Symphony echoed through the Roman theater packed with an audience that included Russian servicemen, Syrian government ministers and children in colorful native dress, the war raged elsewhere.

Images posted on social media of the aftermath of the airstrike that tore through the Sarmada camp in rebel-held territory close to the border with Turkey showed tents burned to the ground, charred bodies, and bloodied women and children being loaded onto a pickup truck.

It was not immediately clear who carried out the attack on the camp in Idlib province where some 2,000 internally displaced people had taken shelter from the fighting in nearby Aleppo and Hama provinces over the past year. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 28 people were killed while the Local Coordination Committees, another activist group, said more than 30 died.

ISIS carrying out a mass killing at Palmyra

The White House called the strike "indefensible." There was "no justifiable excuse" to target civilians who had already fled their homes from violence, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said, calling the situation "heartbreaking".

Earnest said it was too early to say whether Syrian President Bashar Assad's forces carried out the attack, but he said he had no knowledge of any US or coalition aircraft operating in the area.

UN Humanitarian Chief Stephen O'Brien called for an independent investigation, saying that if the camp was deliberately targeted it "could amount to a war crime."

The footage of charred bodies and desperate men pouring buckets of water to try to douse the flames was in stark contrast to the concert at the UNESCO world heritage site of Palmyra, where renowned conductor Valery Gergiev led a performance by the Mariinsky Symphony Orchestra from St. Petersburg.

The world-famous archaeological site was badly damaged by the ISIS militants who held Palmyra for 10 months before Syrian forces backed by Russian airstrikes retook it in March. During the concert, which was broadcast live on Russian television, images of the military action were shown, as well as footage of the destruction of monuments and IS militants marching residents to their deaths.

Among those in the audience were Russian sappers who have been carrying out demining in the town to remove bombs left by the IS militants.

In opening remarks, Gergiev, a supporter of Russian President Vladimir Putin, said that with the concert, "we protest against the barbarians who destroyed monuments of world culture." In a video linkup, Putin also addressed the audience, saying he regards the concert "as a sign of gratitude, remembrance and hope."

The upbeat tone was at variance with the violence elsewhere in Syria, where a double-suicide bombing in central Homs province killed at least 10 civilians and a fierce rebel assault on a government position in the north overshadowed a shaky cease-fire imposed over the city of Aleppo.

At least 49 people were wounded in the attacks on a village 45 kilometers (28 miles) east of Homs, Syria's third-largest city, according to state media and the regional governor, Talal Barrazi.

A car bomb first exploded in the main square of the village of Mukharam al-Fawkani. As people gathered to help the victims, a suicide bomber riding a motorcycle detonated explosives nearby. Four children and three women were among those killed, according to Syrian state TV.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility but the Islamic State group has carried out several similar deadly attacks in Homs province. The area is close to where Syrian troops and IS gunmen have been fighting for control of the vital Shaer gas field, which fell to the Islamic State on Wednesday after the extremists overran 13 government checkpoints and captured a Syrian soldier. The Observatory said 34 government troops and 16 militants have been killed in three days of fighting there.

Meanwhile, relative calm prevailed in the deeply contested northern city of Aleppo, the center of the worst recent violence, following a truce announced Wednesday by U.S. officials in agreement with Russia. The Syrian military said the truce would last only 48 hours.

But a Lebanese TV station embedded with the Syrian army said Syrian rebels were waging an offensive on a government-held village south of Aleppo.
Deputy Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh gave his first comments on the current escalation of violence between the IDF and Hamas on the Gaza border.

"We are not calling for a new war but we will also not agree to intrusions and imposing facts in the Gaza Strip territory by the Israeli side. We are saying to a buffer zone inside the borders of Gaza and Israel has to understand this." he said.
Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas's deputy leader, spoke publicly on Friday for the first time since the recent escalation in and around the Gaza Strip.

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Speaking at a mosque Friday before prayers, Haniyeh said, "We are not calling for a new war, but we will not allow incursions or imposing facts on the ground by Israel in Gaza."

Haniyeh explained that the Palestinians objected the Israeli prohibition on Palestinian traffic in the "perimeter," a 300-meter buffer zone inside the Strip and bordering the frontier. "We say no to the perimeter inside of Gaza's borders, and Israel must understand this," he stated. "We are in contact with Egypt, Qatar, Turkey and also with the UN's (Special Coordinator for Middle East Peace Process) Nickolay Mladenov to bring an end to the Israeli escalation, and these efforts are continuing."

Ismail Haniyeh leaving the mosque after his speech Friday (Photo: AFP)

leak of a draft of the state comptroller's report on the failures in Operation Protective Edge was not brought up during the meeting.

Despite the recent tensions between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Minster of Education Naftali Bennett, no clash was reported between the two. In opposition to the last meeting , this meeting was to the point.

(Clockwise from top left:) Ministers Deri, Galant, Bennett and Shaked en route to Friday's cabinet meeting (Photo: Gil Yohanan)

Meanwhile, Palestinian sources claimed on Friday afternoon that three IDF engineering vehicles passed through the security fence near Beit Hanoun, covered by two tanks. The IDF is continuing its operation to locate tunnels used in other locations along the Strip's border.

Overnight, Palestinians fired a mortar shell at an area before Beit Lahia, but it exploded in Palestinian territory. On Friday morning, Palestinians fired at least two mortars at IDF forces; there were no injuries. The Israeli Air Force attacked targets in Gaza in response.

Last month, tunnels were discovered that went under the fence into Israel. After that, mortars from Gaza were fired towards engineering vehicles that were working in the field. In the days that followed, the mortar fired continued, targeting IDF forces. Israeli tanks responded by firing at Hamas positions in Sajaya.

IAF attack on Thursday in Gaza (Photo: AFP)

The IDF confirmed this shelling. The Palestinians reported that the Israelis targeted Hamas's military wing. This was an observation post located east of Sajaya, in north-central Gaza. Following the Israeli shelling, the Education Ministry evacuated two schools in Sajaya.

Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza blamed Israeli entirely for the recent escalation in the Gaza Strip. One of the Hamas spokesmen the Strip, Mushir Al Masri, warned Israel not to try the patience of Hamas and the other Palestinian factions. He warned that Israel's escalation is a new development, and the factions are in contact between themselves to decide how to handle it.

Al Masri called on all the international parties that had supported the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas to take responsibility following "Israel's violation of the ceasefire." Islamic Jihad reported that Israel was continuing its incursions into Gazan territory.
A 22-year-old Israeli, Nadav Vinik was killed in Jordan on Wednesday when he fell from a cliff some 30 km south of Petra.

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He was hiking with four friends. Around 5:30 pm, he fell from the cliff and lost consciousness. The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) reported that late Wednesday afternoon, they received a report via the Arava Rescue Unit.

According to this report, the hikers were travelling near Rajaf. One of them had fallen during the hike, and his friends judged his condition to be extremely serious. On receipt of the report, the MFA launched an effort to send rescue forces to the scene.

Nadav Vinik

Representatives from the Israeli embassy to Jordan, including Ambassador Einat Schlein, immediately contacted Jordanian authoritiesboth in the capital via the local foreign ministry and by contact with local police so that they could send rescue teamsfor assistance.

Petra (archive photo from AFP)

Rescue teams reached the scene around 11:30 pm and pronounced Vinik dead. To reach him, rescue teams had to travel five kilometers on foot from the village. Vinik's body was carried out on a stretcher to an accessible area.

The ambassador's deputy, Eitan Sorkis, travelled to the scene. After Vinik's body was recovered, it was brought to a nearby hospital so that Israeli authorities could work to prevent an autopsy, which is forbidden in most cases by Jewish law, and bring the body back to Israel as soon as possible. Vinik's family was notified on Thursday morning.
The prime minister has invited all United Nations staff in Israel to attend a seminar on Jewish history, after a decision by a UN cultural body that failed to acknowledge Jewish ties to Jerusalem's holiest site.

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In the decision last month, UNESCO condemned Israel for security restrictions and other measures at the site, known to Muslims as Haram al-Sharif or the al-Aqsa compound and to Jews as Temple Mount. UNESCO referred to it only by its Arabic name.

"I was shocked to hear that UNESCO adopted a decision denying any Jewish connection to the Temple Mount, our holiest site," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement.

Western Wall and Temple Mount, Jerusalem (Photo: Getty Images)

"It is hard to believe that anyone, let alone an organization tasked with preserving history, could deny this link, which spans thousands of years."

To counter what a member of Netanyahu's staff called "this historical ignorance", the prime minister, who is a keen historian, said he would host a special lecture on Jewish history for all UN personnel in Israel.

It was not immediately clear when the seminar would be held, but staff indicated it could be next week. It was also unclear how many UN staff and diplomats planned to attend. UNESCO had no immediate comment.

UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, based in Paris, frequently issues decisions critical of Israel. Many are sponsored and seconded by Islamic states.

The holy site in the heart of the Old City of Jerusalem, home to the Dome of the Rock and the Aqsa Mosque, has been a source of friction between Israel and the Muslim world for decades.

Israel seized the Old City during the 1967 Middle East war. After its capture, Israel agreed to maintain the status quo at the site, which had effectively been in Islamic hands since the 12th century.

Non-Muslims are allowed to visit the site but are not allowed to pray there. Jews instead pray at the Western Wall, a retaining wall for an ancient Jewish temple that once stood in the area where the Dome of the Rock now sits.

In recent years, ultra-nationalist religious Jews have pushed for more access to the site and even to pray there, causing tension with Muslims, who worry the status quo might change. Netanyahu has repeatedly said it will not.
On Tuesday, after decades, and with the aid of a technological innovation using an old family tree in her home, Nata Gattegno, a Holocaust survivor who has lived for years on her own and was left barren following severe abuse in Auschwitz, discovered many relatives she has never met and never knew of her story. "It's very exciting to discover that I am not alone," she said. "This is a unique surprise; they are welcome to come and visit at any time."

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First impressions can be misleading, and in the case of Gattegno is it very easy to be confused. She is 93 years old, but looks and sounds young for her age. The walls of her living room and her bureau display many photographs of what appears to be family. Old black-and-white photographs of adults and color photographs of smiling children alongside her. The drawer under the television on which she watches soap operas every day contains children's toys and games, for when they will come to visit.

Video: Assaf Kamar (:  , :  , :  )

X

Nothing reveals the fact that she is alone. When MyHeritage, a start-up specializing in family trees, contacted her in the course of research on the Jewish community of Corfu, she showed the photographs of her parents who had perished in the Holocaust, and then silence prevailed for a moment. "And what are the names of your grandchildren?" She responded, "These are not my grandchildren; unfortunately, God didn't grant me the ability to bear children."

Nata Gattegno at her home



Gattegno recorded the difficult story of her life in memoirs that she composed many years ago. "From Corfu to Birkenau and to Jerusalem" is the title of her personal memoirs. She noted, "All the answers to questions about my life are inside." The memoirs describe three locations and three parallel universes: her birthplace, the place where her ability to bear children was taken from her, and the place where she chose to live her life.

"I was offered escape, but I chose to stay with my family"

Gattegno was born in 1922 in a small house adjacent to the Palaiologos Lane in Corfu, the daughter of the tailor Elio Osmo and his wife Esther. Her original name given to her by her parents was Eftyhia (meaning "luck"), but already in her childhood she was referred to by the nickname Nata (nickname of "Fortunata"). When she was 16 years old, her older brother died of an illness. Nata, the next sibling, assumed his position as the eldest. Her new place in the family structure played a central role in the tragedy that befell her family.

She recalls well the moment war broke out. "On one of the days in October 1940, a teacher came into the class and announced, 'War has broken out, studies are ceasing.' From the perspective of the children it was a war between Italy and Greece, no one imagined that this was related to the Jews in any way. We also identified with the Greeks when the war broke out. We were Jews who dreamed of coming to Zion, but also Greeks with a love for our homeland."

Gattegno's parents (photo from Nata Gattegno's private collection)

In September 1943, when the Germans conquered the island from the Italians, the attitude to the Jews in Corfu changed drastically. While Nata's two sisters, Judith and Irena, managed to flee, ultimately marrying the two Christian Greeks who saved them and remained in Greece, Nata, the oldest sibling remained beside her parents. The manager of the municipal library offered to claim she was his daughter, thus securing her release. "I thanked him, but said I would not leave my parents," she said.

The Germans cruelly and violently led the Jews by tunnels to large rafts. Nata, her parents and her youngest sister, Rachelle, boarded the raft knowing that this was likely the last time they would ever see Corfu. "I thought, 'Goodbye Corfu  I will no longer long for you,'" she recalls. And thus began the long journey to Auschwitz.

Nata had further opportunities to escape. At Patras and Haidari, two of the ports on the journey to the railway station, partisans tried to help her escape. However Nata, ever faithful to her parents, chose to decline. "An Italian soldier who guarded us suggested I flee, he said that he will look the other way and I can run to a certain house where the locals will hide me. I asked, 'Is it possible to save three more with me?', but he said no. I politely declined and thanked him. He mumbled, 'Stupida,' turned around and walked away."

Gattegno (no. 5) with her sisters and their husbands (photo from Nata Gattegno's private collection)

"Had you been here a week ago they would have conducted experiments on you"

"When I was in Auschwitz, I regretted not having the courage to try to save myself, but if I would have, my conscience would have haunted me for the rest of my life."

Nata remembers the night the train arrived at Auschwitz in the utmost detail. My father wept a great deal and lost control. We were taken from the train carriages under bright spotlights and barking dogs, men and women were separated. I held the hands of my mother and sister, but a German soldier wrenched me from them and pushed me to the groups of the young women. My parents and Rachelle shouted out in anguish. That was the last time I saw my family. Apparently already that night they were executed together with the majority of the dear Jews of Corfu."





Gattegno and her husband at their wedding (photo from Nata Gattegno's private collection)

A young woman with a shaved head immediately explained to Nata where she was. "You are lucky," she said. "You are pretty, last week they took 100 girls from Greece to Block 10 for experiments; had you been here a week ago they would also have taken you. Say thanks for being saved."

Nata was enlisted to the Hauskommando 555, responsible for cutting trees near the adjacent river. She would often be overcome by complete exhaustion, and when objects would slip from her hands she would be beaten brutally by the German guards. "On one of the days an SS officer approached me and said, 'Are you a Jewess? Come here.' I said, 'I am a Jewess, I am a Jewess!' He instructed me to bend over and he whipped my back. I was whipped 25 times on that horrific day. He kept hitting me, and I said to myself, 'If I die, at least I would die as a courageous Jew.'" As a result of the beating she lost consciousness for a number of days. She woke up in the hospital of Auschwitz-Birkenau with fractures throughout her whole body, including a fractured coccyx. Later it was established that it was this beating that had permanently taken away her ability to bear children.

"You are lucky the Germans did not manage to activate the ovens"

Toward the end of the war she was again sent in freight trains to the Mauthausen Concentration Camp in Austria. The journey lasted 17 days without food or water, and every day the Jews had to empty the boxcars of the corpses of those who did not survive. At the end of the trip she lost consciousness, and when she awoke she found herself in the hands of a soldier. "I thought he was a German soldier, and after recovering from the shock and fear I said, 'Mamma mia, gesund, gesund, arbeit (I am healthy to work).' The soldier asked, 'Do you speak Italian, girl?' I answered that I did. He responded that he is an Austrian soldier and the Germans had fled. It turns out that this soldier found me and took me out of the ovens. 'You are lucky the Germans did not manage to activate the ovens'"





Gattegno and her husband (photo from Nata Gattegno's private collection)

Nata's two sisters who remained in Corfu under false identities waited for her return at the end of the war. Despite the warm embrace she received from her sisters, Gattegno felt that her place was no longer in Corfu; the island was no longer her home. "I must find my happiness in the Land of Israel," she told her sisters, and immigrated to Israel on the illegal immigrant ship Haviva Reik.

In Israel she met Yisrael Gattegno, a Holocaust survivor from Thessaloniki. They married and established a family, however without children. "When I understood that I had no chance of giving birth, I wanted to adopt, but they refused and told me everything was okay with me and that I did not have any medical problems. When I returned at age 40, with a respectable profession as a manager at the bank and the desire to adopt children, the clerk at the municipality told me that at my age they no longer allow adoptions."

An ancient family tree became a technological innovation

Approximately a year and a half ago the story of the saving of a Jewish family from Corfu in the adjacent island of Ereikoussa was revealed. The people of MyHeritage who were involved in bringing this story to light decided to perform more extensive research on the Jewish community of Corfu and reveal additional stories that had never been told. Among all the material was an important and fascinating item that had been common in many of the Corfu Jews' homes: a family tree in the form of a sun; circles within circles. Each circle represented a generation with the internal circle having the founding parents, and the external circles with the living offspring. Each person had his own segment that differed in size in relation to the number of his offspring.

Gattegno with her new family members in her home

This family tree, handwritten and sketched by means of a compass, was identical in structure across all the families. It appears that they all originated from the same source, with minor adjustments. The Corfu community had essentially been one large family where marriages had been kept within the family in order to maintain the Judaism of its members.

When Gattegno invited the people of MyHeritage to observe the memorial room to the Jews of Corfu that she had established, entirely on her own, in her bedroom, they were excited to see the sun family tree on the wall. Her family tree included new information on hundreds of people. The CEO and founder of MyHeritage, Gilad Japhet, who was personally conducting the comprehensive research, took the rich information that was in this unique tree and cross-checked it with other information sources. As a result of this study, which lasted a number of weeks, Gattegno's original family tree was doubled in size, and it now includes approximately 800 people  all of whom are the descendants of one patriarch, Salomon Staraki Levi of Corfu.

Gattegno meeting family members for the first time

After years of specializing in genealogy and the construction of advanced models for representing family trees, Japhet understood that the traditional tree model that had been passed through the generations of the Corfu community had a brilliant internal logic. "The structure of this tree that was probably invented by the Jews of Corfu, or of other Jewish communities in Europe hundreds of years ago, communities that have many older members who possess a family tree like this, proved to be the most spatially efficient," Japhet says. "We had never thought of this before encountering it through the Jews of Corfu. Very quickly we understood that not only does this research enable us to resurrect the history of this community, but also to develop a technological feature that allows presenting family history in the best manner."

Japhet and the company's developers began work, and within two months had developed a technological innovation  a digital sun-like tree chart, including photos, that is based precisely on the old sun family tree design that was hand-drawn by the members of the Corfu Jewish community in past centuries. Now, thanks to this ancient historical model, the chart is automatically generated based on algorithms that calculate the optimal position for each person in the circles, to create the smallest and clearest chart possible.

A new family

Approximately a month ago Nata's sister, Irena, passed away in Corfu. Nata, who observes Jewish traditions, observed the seven day"'shiva" mourning period in her home without a quorum, with only her devoted caregiver, Mauritas Collarine at her side. Nata spent the last Passover night at the home of a friend and her family, who for many years have brought Nata into their lives.

The family tree in Gattegno's apartment

In the process of constructing the family tree, the people of MyHeritage discovered that the rich family tree they had constructed for Nata contained many relatives she had never met and who never knew her story. They contacted these relatives and shared the family details they had uncovered. Last week, they all came to Nata's home, who was astounded to discover relatives she had never met, and those with whom she had lost all contact many years previously.

A Corfu family tree (photo from Nata Gattegno's private collection)

At this reunion the people of MyHeritage revealed an enormous family tree measuring two meters in length, in the form of the new sun chart, on which all the relatives appear together. One after the other the family members leaned over to locate their names on the new sun chart and see their relation to Nata. "It is very exciting to discover I am not alone," Gattegno said. "There are lovely young people here, even a soldier. I am not young anymore, and it is a very unique surprise for a woman of my age."

Nata requested that this not be the last time they all meet. "I am unable to leave my home, but you are always welcome here. On weekends and holidays, come and visit me sometimes. Do not forget me." They all promised to come.
Eldon Leon Tiffany, 96, of Lincoln and formerly of Redondo Beach, Calif. and Loup City died May 4, 2016 at the Gramercy in Lincoln.

He was born March 2, 1920 on a farm near Arcadia to Cyrus and Flora (Steele) Tiffany. He grew up and received his education at the Mixed Grove country school and graduated from Arcadia High School in 1937. He farmed in partnership with his father in Sherman County until 1960.

On June 4, 1939 Eldon was united in marriage to Ava D. Jones at the Arcadia Methodist Church.

They farmed in the Loup City area and in 1960 and moved to Denver, Colo. and later Redondo

Beach, Calif. where they resided for over 24 years. While in Loup City, they were members of the

First Baptist Church. Eldon worked for Continental Airlines as a mechanic of ground equipment and later as the lead mechanic for 24 years and retired in 1987. After they both retired, they returned to Nebraska, and have lived in Lincoln for many years, becoming members of the Indian Hills Community Church and the Prime Time Sunday school class since 1988. For many years, Eldon served as the treasurer of this class.

Eldon L. Tiffany is survived by one son and wife, Marvin and Janalee of York; two granddaughters and husbands, Jana Graham and Kent Moore of Prairie Village, Kan. and Laura Graham and Jeremy Kohn of Lawrence, Kan.; one grandson, Thomas Tiffany of Colorado Springs, Colo. and two great-grandsons. He is further survived by a nephew and other relatives and many friends. In addition to his parents, he was preceded in death by his wife, Ava; one daughter, Janice Graham and a younger sister, Donna (Tiffany) Silver of Loup City,

Funeral services will be Saturday, May 7, 2016 at 10 a.m. at Butherus, Maser & Love Funeral Home, 4040, A Street, Lincoln, Pastor Eddie Masters, will officiate. Interment to follow in Lincoln Memorial Park. Viewing will be from 1  9 p.m. Friday with family present from 5  7 p.m. Friday at Butherus, Maser & Love Funeral Home. Memorials are to the Indian Hills Benevolent Fund, Lincoln or to the family. Condolences may be left at www.bmlfh.com.
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A recent survey of 150 Chinese member agent companies of Australian based business-to-business off the plan marketing firm Investorist has revealed that Chinese demand for residential property across the globe is set to increase in 2016, with Australia identified as the most popular option.

Globally demand is going to increase and the demand in Australia should increase, Investorist founder and chief executive officer Jon Ellis said.

The popularity of Australia as an investment location is strengthening in China and the number of businesses that are making Australian property available to Chinese consumers are growing, Ellis said.

According to the Investorist survey, there are four drivers behind the demand for offshore residential property among Chinese buyers; Investment (41.8%), Education (26.7%), Migration (19.3%) and Lifestyle (12.2%).

Sixty per cent of the respondents identified Australia as the number one market for Chinese residential buyers, though Ellis said recent changes could jeopardise that.

Ellis said a recent crackdown by Australian banks on lending to foreign buyers and the decisions by the Victorian government to hit foreign buyers with higher land tax and stamp duty charges could impact how Chinese buyers view Australia.

We do domestically have some challenges with things like banking and the state government of Victoria making some fairly unfavourable new pieces of legislation, Ellis said.

I still say based on an economics point of view the [Victorian] decision is still not a bucket of cold water. But is a clear message and its a clear message at a time when Australian banks are saying no foreign purchases and then youve got a state government saying were going to penalise you again. I think its crazy.

Ellis said the Victorian decision will likely see Brisbane become the chief target for Chinese buyers in the near future.

I think it will take the focus of Melbourne and certainly put it onto Brisbane. Sydney mechanically doesnt have the market mechanics of Melbourne or Brisbane, the sales focus there are much more locally orientated, so Sydney has to do a bit of pivoting for it to become a global investment hotspot.

I think it will send more focus on to Brisbane, which weve already been seeing over the last six months anyway. This year Brisbanes has really increased it favourability.

Conditions in China could also impact demand, with Ellis saying the Chinese governments efforts to stop capital leaving the country are something that needs to be monitored.

Its increasing. There was a range of banks, depending on who you speak to some people call them illegal banks and others call them private banks, who were helping Chinese people expatriate funds, now there are only two registered financial institutions that are helping Chinese people expatriate funds , which are Standard Chartered and HSBC.

Bank of China and some of the other Chinese banks have got various different schemes to assist people, but its something thats certainly caught the eye of regulators in China and its certainly something that people need to keep an eye on.

According to the Investorist survey, apartments (58%) are the most popular dwelling type among Chines buyers, followed by townhouses (24%), houses (16%) and house and land packages (2%)

While apartments are the popular choice among Chinese buyers, their attention has moved away from micro and one-bedroom apartments as they look to replicate how Australian investors approach property.

Your first time purchaser of property will look very much at price, the first decision you make is around price and dipping your toe in the water. Your second and third time investors that have dipped their toe in the water and have realised that its ok starts to look at fundamentally what makes a good long term investment.

The Australian property market is about capital growth. The mindset of a property investor here is very different to other parts of the world.

In Australia, yields are not as important and yields of 3% or 4% are considered acceptable and anything above that is considered good and Chinese investors here are not playing the yield game, theyre playing the long term buy and hold and capital growth game.
Gandhinagar: Gujarat's ruling BJP on Friday gained control of the Gandhinagar Municipal Corporation (GMC) as two Congress corporators defect to the party, reports Tv9 Gujarati.

Notably, both the BJP and the Congress had won 16 seats each in the 32-member body.

However, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) put up a better showing in rural areas spread across five districts, winning seven of the 10 taluka panchayat seats.

The BJP had 18 seats in the outgoing Gandhinagar body but won two less this time, ensuring a tie.

The Congress had won 18 seats to win the first elections to the Gandhinagar civic corporation five years ago when Narendra Modi was chief minister. The BJP got 15 seats, and the body then had 33 seats.

But the Congress lost power midway when three members defected to the BJP, taking its strength to 18 from 15.

Gandhinagar and Junagadh were the only two corporations out of eight where the Congress had won a majority.

(With IANS inputs)
Ahmedabad: The Patidar Anamat Andolan Samiti on Friday announced to intensify its agitation over the Patel quota issue, adding that it would invite prominent politicians from other states, including Nitish Kumar, Mamata Banerjee, Uddhav Thackeray and Raj Thackeray to address the rallies.

The organisation, which is spearheading the Patel quota movement, said that it would organise several rallies till the end of this year to highlight their demands and the next round of agitation will start from Visnagar in Mehsana district on May 8.

The decision comes in the wake of Gujarat government's recent decision to provide 10 per cent reservation for Economically Backward Classes (EBC).

To chalk out their road map for the agitation, several PAAS leaders, including Akhilesh Katiyar, who is also the national general secretary of Patel Navnirman Sena (PNS), today held a meeting near Gandhinagar.

Talking to reporters before the meet, Katiyar rejected the 10 per cent reservation announced by the Gujarat government.

"We never demanded reservation under EBC quota. Since the beginning of our stir, we have been demanding inclusion of Patels under the OBC quota only. Since our demand is not fulfilled, we will intensify our stir in the coming months by involving national leaders," said Katiyar.

Convener of Saurashtra unit of PAAS, Lalit Vasoya, said, "The next round of agitation will see presence of several national leaders, such as Bihar CM Nitish Kumar, West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee, MNS chief Raj Thackeray and Shiv Sena president Uddhav Thackeray. They will be invited here to address rallies and gatherings in the coming months."

PAAS also plans to invite social activist Anna Hazare, Jat quota leader Yashpal Malik, Gujjar quota leader Colonel KS Bainsla as well as Himmatsinh.

"We will also take the agitation at national level by organizing a huge gathering in Delhi," he added.

After the meeting, PAAS released a list of rallies and gatherings they have planned to hold across Gujarat.

On May 8, Patels will hold a maha-panchayat in Visnagar, followed by foot-marches, rallies and gatherings in parts of the state at regular intervals till the end of December.

Meanwhile, a fresh letter written by the jailed PAAS leader Hardik Patel surfaced today, in which, he has urged his community members not to invite any politician in any of the programmes organised by the Patels.

The letter has been addressed to his Surat-based lawyer Yashwantsinh Vala, who shared it with media today.

In the letter, Hardik, who is lodged in Lajpore jail in Surat, also asked his community not to attend any function of two of their biggest religious bodies - Khodaldham and Umiyadham, as he feels that leaders of these bodies are working against the interests of Patels.

In a veiled attack on the BJP that has been ruling Gujarat since 1995, Hardik alleged that 6.5 crore people of the state have been fooled by politicians since the last 20 years.
Washington D.C: Asthma not only takes its toll on lungs, but can also make it harder for women to get pregnant.

A new study has revealed that asthmatic women may take more time to concieve and have a lower pregnancy rate than those without the lung diseases.

Dr. Archana Dhawan Bajaj, gynaecologist and obstetrician, Nurture IVF Centre, explained that asthma's effect on fertility increases with time and age and so, the female patients should conceive at an early age and step up their asthma treatment before getting pregnant.

Asthma is a chronic respiratory disorder due to inflammation of the airways in our lungs. Some of the common symptoms of asthma include breathlessness, chest tightness, and night cough among many. Often the affected person finds it extremely difficult to breathe.

In early age, boys are twice more likely to suffer from asthma than girls. However, this ratio gets reversed as they grow up. Pre-pubertal girls suffer from severe asthma attacks as the hormones change. The peak is observed at menopause when women are twice likely to suffer from asthma as compared to men of the same age.

What make asthma so severe in women are their reproductive hormones. When it comes to women and asthma, the ability to breathe can be affected by menstrual cycle, pregnancy and eventually menopause.

Creating awareness among patients is as fundamentally significance as adherence to treatment might. It is important that women take utmost care when conceiving, informed Dr. Bajaj.

Dr. Randeep Guleria, Head of Department, Pulmonology and Sleep Disorder at AIIMS says, "Women needs to be very careful of asthma triggers like use of biomass fuels (for cooking), passive smoking, smoking, alcohol consumption and other environmental factors along with their fluctuating hormones, during different time of month."

He added, "To further compound the problem, asthma in women is a much stigmatized condition. Women with asthma are looked upon as people with lifelong compromised health. But asthmatic women can get pregnant and have a normal delivery."

According to Dr. Guleria, inhalation therapy for asthma is recognized as the most preferred form of treatment worldwide, with developed countries like USA and UK adopting inhalers as an integral part of asthma therapy.

"This therapy is so safe and easy to use for expecting mothers and women who are breastfeeding. It is important to note that asthma is not a transmitted disease. As opposed to oral therapy, inhalers are highly effective, safe and cost effective not only for women but any asthmatic patient. In India, however, due to many myths and beliefs about inhalation therapy being common, the use of oral corticosteroids is rampant," he said.
New Delhi: The punitive action taken against JNU students, including JNUSU chief Kanhaiya Kumar that led him to sit on a hunger strike, reached the President's doorstep on Friday with some opposition party MPs seeking his intervention in resolving the crisis and restoring normalcy in the varsity.

A delegation of MPs from various parties including the Left and Congress today met President Pranab Mukherjee and asked him to withdraw forthwith all actions taken against students by JNU authorities pending judicial outcome.

"All actions taken by the VC and the university administration against the students must be withdrawn forthwith. You will agree that all of us will have to wait till the ongoing judicial proceedings are concluded," a memorandum handed over to the President said.

The MPs - Digvijay Singh (Congress), Sitaram Yechury (CPI-M), D Raja (CPI), K C Tyagi and Pawan Kumar Verma (JD-U), KTS Tulsi (nominated), Majid Memon (NCP) and Baishnab Parida (BJD), told Mukherjee that current crisis over disciplinary action by the Vice Chancellor "threatens to engulf the university in a crisis of unprecedented proportions".

They said JNU is considered among the best universities in India which has an unblemished global ranking and standing and the issue has done damage to the varsity.

"Under these circumstances, when the damage to the university is reaching irreparable proportions, we are urging your urgent intervention.

"As Visitor of the university we hope that you would intervene to ensure that justice is done," the MPs told the President.

The MPs also said the stringent punitive action against some students including the elected president of Jawaharlal Nehru Students Union appear to be based on sections of the HLEC report that have been released by the university.

They added that these conclusions are based on "so-called evidence that is currently under dispute in judicial proceedings. Hence the matter is sub-judice. It is unprecedented that the Vice Chancellor should take such strong action on the basis of so-called evidence which is a sub judice matter."

The leaders also said the "so-called" evidence has been contradicted by Delhi government mandated magisterial enquiry, which concluded that the "so-called visual evidence electronically recorded has been doctored".

Despite this, they said, the varsity proceeded on such punishment of students that pushed JNU students and academic community to strong responses culminating in indefinite hunger strike by JNUSU President and some other students.
Mumbai: Nidhi Chaphekar, the 42-year-old Jet Airways crew member whose image sitting bloodied and dazed and her yellow uniform shredded in Brussels airport bombings became an iconic picture of the horror, returned home on Friday to an emotional homecoming.

The mother of two from Mumbai, Nidhi, who has not yet recovered from the injuries suffered in the deadly terror attack on March 22, arrived here at around 7.30 AM on a Paris-Mumbai Jet airways flight and was driven straight to Breach Candy hospital from the airport. She was injured from the force of the first blast of the attack.

Relieved on her return, Nidhi's husband Rupesh Chaphekar said,"we are extremely happy to have Nidhi back home with us in Mumbai after the horrific episode in Brussels."

"Her homecoming is an extremely emotional moment for all of us, especially her two children, who were reunited with her after six weeks as they could not travel to meet with her owing to their studies," he said.

Rupesh said the family has had a harrowing time since news on the brazen strikes trickled in.

On Nidhi's medical condition, he said, "Nidhi has received the best medical care and attention and has now recovered significantly from her injuries."

She will now continue her recovery process at a hospital in Mumbai. The most important thing for us now is that Nidhi makes a full recovery, he said.

Expressing his gratitude to doctors and medical staff in Brussels, Rupesh said, "We would like to thank them for the care they gave Nidhi during her stay in the hospital."

He also thanked Jet Airways Jet management for the support they extended, not just to Nidhi but also to the family.

A Jet statement said Nidhi is in good spirits and is very happy to be back with her family.

Airline officials said Nidhi has low immunity and doctors have advised her to avoid contact with people.

On March 22, three bombs went off - two at the Brussels airport and one at Mallbeek metro station - leaving 35 people dead, including three suicide bombers.

Nidhi was on her way to board a Jet flight for Newark when the explosions took place. She suffered 15 per cent burns and fractured an ankle.

Her colleague, Amit Motwani, was also injured and is still recovering at a Brussels hospital.

Nidhi, who was treated at Grande Hospital de Chaleroi, about 40 km from Brussels, was discharged yesterday afternoon and taken to Paris where she boarded the flight to Mumbai.
New Delhi: Congress in Rajya Sabha on Friday accused the government of "abusing and insulting" the Constitution, on a day its top leadership took to streets to protest the "assaults on democracy".

Raising the issue during Question Hour in Rajya Sabha, Deputy Leader of Congress Anand Sharma said the top leadership of his party is protesting against the "assaults on democracy" by this government.

"This government is abusing and insulting the Constitution. Indian Constitution is being insulted. Democracy is being assaulted," he said.

Sharma said all party leaders including Congress president Sonia Gandhi and vice president Rahul Gandhi have been "arrested".

"We are protesting the assault on democracy by this government," he said.

Under attack over AgustaWestland issue, a combative Sonia Gandhi, while addressing the protest march, hit back at the Modi government saying it should "not try to frighten" Congress and that life has taught her "to fight on".

She, Rahul Gandhi and other top party leaders later courted arrest after they were stopped from marching to Parliament.
New Delhi: Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar on Friday said efforts were made by the previous UPA government to favour AgustaWestland and accused the Congress of creating a single vendor situation in the Rs 3600 crore AgustaWestland VVIP chopper deal.

Speaking in Lok Sabha, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader attacked Congress saying, CBI registered FIR in the alleged VVIP chopper scam in March 2013, but copy of FIR was not forwarded to Enforcement Directorate till December 2013.

Launching a scathing attack on the previous UPA government, the Defence Minister said, UPA did not take any action against the company. It was almost made compulsory by circumstances that it acted.

Parrikar said that former Air chief SP Tyagi and Gautam Khaitan, both accused in the case, are "small people" who "simply washed their hands in a flowing ganga (of corruption)" and that the government will "find out where the river was going".

He said the previous UPA government had "done everything" to help AgustaWestland bag the contract for VVIP helicopters.

The ED took notice of AgustaWestland case only when Union Minister Arun Jaitley became the Defence Minister in July 2014, he said.

Further taking on the grand old party, the UPA government knew about the scam in February 2012 but still three helicopters were delivered in December, 2012.

Speaking on a Calling Attention Motion on the chopper deal, the BJP leader said, "Why are you (Congress) concerned? I have not named anybody. You seem to know where the ganga was going," the Defence Minister said, taking a swipe at Congress.

On January 01, 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.

The issue has become major political affair in the country after a court in Milan, Italy, jailed AgustaWestland's former head Bruno Spagnolini on the charges of false accounting and corruption in the sale of the firm's 12 VVIP choppers to India.

Some documents submitted to the court contain the names of former prime minister Manmohan Singh, Congress president Sonia Gandhi, her political adviser Ahmad Patel and former Indian Air Force chief SP Tyagi.
New Delhi: Congress on Friday sought to put the onus on the ruling NDA government about the irregularities in Agusta Westland helicopter deal and demanded a Supreme Court monitored probe in the issue.

"Do not level baseless allegations. Answer the questions which we are raising. Supreme Court monitored investigation should happen and its reports should be placed in the House every three months," senior Congress leader Jyotiraditya Scindia said in Lok Sabha during debate on a Calling Attention Motion on the issue.

He said it was practice of the BJP members to level wrong and baseless allegations and through that, they want to create an illusion.

"But we too have taken an oath that we will break that 'mayajaal' (illusion) and place the facts in front of the country and this House," Scindia said.

The reality is that this deal was started during the NDA regime in 1999 and the issue they are talking about bringing down the height of the helicopter from 6000 to 4500 metres, it was done by NDA government in 2003 and not the UPA, he said.

In December 2003, a letter was written from the Prime Minister's Office to change the norms and make it 4500 metres, Scindia said.

The moment the issue came ouot in newspapers, he said the UPA government wrote to the embassy in Rome that investigation should be done as early as possible.

In April 2012, it was in fact the UPA government which ordered CBI to investigate the matter, Scindia said, adding that the contract was cancelled on February 15, 2013 and a notice was served on AugustaWestland and on January 1, 2014, the UPA government cancelled that contract.

In February 2013, the UPA government gave the case to the CBI and within 12 days, a preliminary inquiry was lodged, he informed adding Letter Rogatory too was issued to Tunisia, Mauritius and Italy.

"...24 months have passed of your government, what have you done in 720 days of your government? Have you brought in a single penny? Have you even identified a single person who has indulged in corruption," he asked.

"In March 2013, we in the House had proposed to form a JPC (joint parliamentary committee). Why did the NDA oppose that proposal? People of this country should ask why you opposed that proposal in 2013," the Congress leader said.

He said the banning and blacklisting of companies too was started by the UPA government. The then Defence Minister had stated that no deal would happen with AgustaWestland, Scindia said, adding it was UPA government which had brought Rs 2,063 crore.
New Delhi: Amid the storm over the AgustaWestland chopper deal, Congress today raised questions over buying of Rafale fighter aircraft by the Narendra Modi dispensation.

"Which Defence Procurement Procedure permits a Prime Minister to go and buy fighter aircraft from a private company without tendering process on Off-the-Shelf Basis leading to expenditure of Billion Dollars?", party's chief spokesman Randeep Surjewala asked while talking to reporters.

Raising a number of questions over the deal, he wondered whether is it sovereign right of the Prime Minister over exchequer's money?

"If there is no sovereign right that a Prime Minister has, can a Prime Minister tomorrow decide that he will spend 'X' amount of Billion Dollars of exchequer's money on Off-the-Shelf purchase of the Fighter Aircraft, the answer is clearly 'No'.", he said.

So, the Defence Procurement Procedure post independence, if ever has been negated, "thrown in the dust-bin and violated with impunity," it is in case of purchase of Off-the-Shelf Rafele Aircraft by Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi, he claimed.

Besides, he recalled that a global tender was held by Government and two companies had qualified Dassault Aviation of France which manufactures Rafele and the other Company which makes Euro Fighter.

In such a scenario, "if you had to make Off-the-Shelf purchase, should an equivalent offer had not been made to both the companies, so that we could have got the best price possible," he said.
Mumbai: Terming the 'Save Democracy' rally held by the Congress outside the Parliament as "ridiculous", Union minister Venkaiah Naidu on Friday said the opposition party is resorting to such tactics only to divert public attention from the AugustaWestland chopper case.

"Today Congress is demonstrating outside the Parliament and levelling allegations against us. This is ridiculous and they have no moral right to say this (allegation against the NDA Government)," Naidu told reporters on the sidelines of an event here.

The rally saw Rahul Gandhi and Manmohan Singh attacking the Modi dispensation over pulling down of Congress governments in Arunachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand.

"During the Congress regime, they had dismissed almost 100 state governments. President's rule was imposed in two states but the governments (in Uttarkhand and Arunachal Pradesh) were not dismissed as was done by the Congress government in non-Congress states," the Minister said.

He also said it was Congress that clamped the emergency on the country in 1975 and imposed press censorship besides sending opposition leaders to jail.

"They misused the government machinery for their benefit. So their demonstration outside the Parliament is ridiculous and they have no moral right to say this," he said.

Naidu further said the levelling allegations against Prime Minister Narendra Modi is nothing but a move by the Opposition to "defame" him.

"They tried to defame Modi even when he was the Chief Minister of Gujarat. Now with these demonstrations, they want to divert the attention from the serious AgustaWestland scam. But our government is committed to take it to conclusion," Naidu said.
New Delhi: The National Investigating Agency (NIA) has claimed that Dawood Ibrahim, India's most wanted man, plotted social unrest to destablise the Narendra Modi government.

As per a ToI report, the central probe agency claimed that at least 10 chosen members of Dawood's notorious D-Company were assigned the task to "create unrest" and target RSS leaders and churches.

The agency has reportedly mentioned in its chargesheet, which is likely to be filed on Saturday, that the Dawood gang had hatched a plan soon after Narendra Modi-led BJP came to the power in 2014.

As per the plan, the D-Company shooters were assigned the task of targeting senior target RSS leaders and churches in order to spread communal hatred in the country.

Driving its point home, the agency claimed that as part of the "larger conspiracy", D-Company sharpshooters killed two right-wing leaders - Shirish Bangali and Pragnesh Mistry - in Gujarat's Bharuch on November 2, 2015.

After their arrest, shooters claimed that the RSS leaders were killed to avenge the hanging of 1993 Mumbai serial blasts accused Yakub Memon.

During its investigation, the NIA found that two key D-Company members - Pakistan-based Javed Chikna and South Africa-based Zahid Miyan alias 'Jao' - not only masterminded the killing of Hindu leaders but had also planned attacks on religious leaders and churches so that there was "largescale communal tension in the country".

They had even prepared a list of BJP-RSS members to be targeted, the NIA claimed.

The NIA recently approached Interpol to trace Chikna in Pakistan, arrest him and hand him over to India. It also sent Letters Rogatory and MLAT (mutual legal assistance treaty) requests to Pakistan, Nepal, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and the US.

The ToI report claimed that the agency is likely to name 10 D-Company members, including seven arrested last year - Haji Patel, Mohammad Yunus Shaikh, Abdul Samad, Abid Patel, Mohammad Altaf, Mohsin Khan and Nisar Ahmed.

Abid Patel is reportedly Javed Chikna's brother and was paid Rs 50 lakh for killing Mistry and Bangali.

Javed Chikna and Zahid Miyan will also be named in the chargesheet, however, Dawood would mentioned in the supplementary chargesheet if evidence of his role is established.
Mumbai: Jet Airways cabin crew Nidhi Chaphekar, who was grievously injured in the Brussels airport bombing, returned to Mumbai early on Friday. The 40-year-old was shifted to the Breach Candy hospital for further treatment.

Chaphekar had suffered over 15% burn injuries and a fractured foot due to the impact of the blast at Zaventem International Airport.

She had become the face of the Brussels terror attack after she was pictured with her shirt torn to shreds and blood dripping from her face.

She was under treatment at Brussels along with another Jet injured crew member Amit Motwani.

The suicide attacks in Brussels left 31 dead and 300 wounded besides leaving hundreds of flyers stranded due to the closure of the airport immediately after the explosions.
New Delhi: The Indian Air Force gains by participating in international combat exercises, especially when its fighter jets are pitted against US F-16s and F-18s which are used by Pakistan, government said on Saturday.

Without naming Pakistan, Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar said in Lok Sabha that knowledge of close combat ability of F-16s and F-18s was important for the Western front of India.

He said the experience of flying against the F-16s was important for the IAF which has currently deployed its Sukhoi 30s and Jaguars in the ongoing exercise 'Red Flag 16-1' being held at Alaska in the US.

Responding to a supplementary on the benefit of participating in bilateral or multilateral exercises if IAF pilots don't get to fly F-16s, he said the idea is to pit IAF pilots and its machines against F-16 to understand the adversary.

He said most aircraft are lost in the first 10 clashes in a war as pilots are unable to identify the 'signature' of enemy planes. Such exercises help understand other planes better, he added.

To a question on the flaws and shortcomings found following the Alaska exercise, he said when the IAF contingent returns in June, then the work on understanding the achievements and shortfalls will begin.

Pakistan uses the F-16 fighter jets. The US government has made a case to the US Congress to sell eight new F-16s to Pakistan to assist its counter-terror and counter-insurgency operations.
New Delhi: The Council for Indian School Certificate Examinations (CISCE) declared ICSE Class 10th and ISC Class 12th Results 2016 at 3 pm on May 6 (Friday).

ICSE class 10: 1,58,833 students, including 70,624 girls and 88,209 boys, had appeared for examinations held in the months of February and March this year.

ISC Class 12: 71,141 candidates - 38,659 boys and 32,482 girls  took part in the examination held from Feb 8 to April 8, 2016.

CISCE declared ICSE Results 2016 and ISC Results 2016 on its official site www.cisce.org

How to check ICSE/ISC Result 2016 @cisce.org

Steps to follow:

Log on the official website www.cisce.org Click on the link 'Results 2016' For ICSE 2016 Results, candidates need to click on the ICSE tab and for ISC 2016, click on the ISC tab Enter your unique ID and CAPTCHA to access result

ICSE/ISC Result 2016 via SMS

The CISCE board has also made arrangements to make ICSE (Class 10) and ISC (Class 12) Results available via SMS.

SMS format for CISCE Results 2016

ICSE Class 10th Board Results 2016

ICSE -space  seven-dight Unique ID in the message box. For eg. ICSE 1234567 and send it to 09248082883.

ISC Class 12th Board Results 2016

ISC -space- seven-dight Unique ID in the message box. For eg. ISC 1234567 and send it to 09248082883.

The CISCE board is announcing the results 2 weeks earlier than usual due to the use of new Live Ink Character Recognition (LICR) technology.

LICR captures and digitalizes marks entered on the top of answer scripts and instantly transfers and encrypts the captured data to cloud-based servers directly from the evaluation centers, thereby reducing time required for the compilation of results.

Last year's ICSE/ISC Results

In 2015, ICSE class 10th results were declared on 18 May. The pass percentage was 98.49%.

The pass percentage for ISC examination was 96.38%.

About CISCE Board

The council was constituted to secure suitable representation of Government of India, State Governments/Union Territories in which there are Schools affiliated to the Council, the Inter-State Board for Anglo-Indian Education, the Association of Indian Universities, the Association of Heads of Anglo-Indian Schools, the Indian Public Schools' Conference, the Association of Schools for the ISC Examination and members co-opted by the Executive Committee of the Council.

The council conducts three examinations, namely, the Indian Certificate of Secondary Education (ICSE Class X), The Indian School Certificate (ISC - ClassXII) and the Certificate in Vocational Education (CVE - Year 12).

The subject choices and syllabuses prescribed for these examinations are varied and aimed at nurturing the unique gifts of individual pupils.

Zeenews.com wishes all students 'Best of Luck'.
New Delhi: Drought-like conditions prevail in several states across the country with Maharashtra and Odisha being the worst affected, reports from across the indicated on Friday.

People in the parched areas continued to suffer from the scarcity of water even as crops over hundreds of hectares of agricultural land have been severely affected.

The central and state governments have been found wanting, and even lax in responding to, the impending drought in some states.

Besides Maharashtra and Odisha, some parts of states like Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Rajasthan, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh are experiencing severe water scarcity and drought-like conditions.

Over 27,000 of the total 43,000 villages in Maharashtra - or nearly 60 percent - are reeling under a drought of varying severity this year, besides facing serious water shortages in most urban centres across the state, officials said in Mumbai.

"Of these, a majority are located in the North Maharashtra (Khandesh), Marathwada and Vidarbha regions of the state, and virtually nil water availability has resulted in widespread human and cattle migration to nearby urban centres, adding to their woes," a Maharashtra government official told IANS in Mumbai.

In Latur, among the worst-hit along with Beed and Osmanabad districts, the centre had made provisions for carrying water by trains from Sangli district which has brought some relief to the people there.

The Maharashtra government has announced drought relief measures of over Rs.11,000 crore (over $1.5 billion) this year, including provision for supplying drinking water, fodder and water for cattle. Despite all this, over 300 lives have been lost, including farmers and around a dozen related to people searching for water in remote areas.

The state has been under fire from the Bombay High Court, both from its Mumbai and Nagpur bench for its indifferent attitude to the water crises, which led to the cancellation of all IPL matches scheduled in the state this month.

The Shiv Sena ruling ally has criticized the BJP`s failure to tackle the crisis headlong, even as the assembly`s monsoon is some 40 days away. Top leaders of all political parties including the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena, the Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party are currently touring the drought-hit areas.

In Odisha, 27 out of total of 30 districts have been affected by the drought.

"The total crop area affected is 21.6 lakh hectare, out of which at least 14.82 lakh hectare in 233 blocks have suffered losses to the tune of 33 per cent or more," an official of Special Relief Commissioner`s office told IANS in Bhubaneshwar.

The worst affected district is Mayurbhanj, where crops over at least 1.92 lakh hectares have sustained over 33 percent losses followed by 1.45 lakh hectares in Bargarh. Balangir (1.24 lakh hectares), Keonjhar (1.12 lakh hectares) and Nayagarh (88,922 hectares) are next three in terms of crop-losses, the official said.

To mitigate the situation, the Odisha government has submitted a memorandum to the centre pegging the cumulative losses at Rs.2,344.99 crore.

"We have already disbursed Rs.333 crore to 7.87 lakh drought-affected farmers. The disbursement is on," said the official.

Additional relief commissioner Mihir Chand Mallick said the state government is taking all steps to mitigate the situation in the state by providing financial assistance and ensuring irrigation facilities.

He, however, denied that any farmer had committed suicide due to crop losses or loan burden.

Agriculture minister Pradeep Maharathy had recently informed the Odisha assembly that even though 174 farmers in the state had committed suicide since the 2015 kharif season, not a single farmer committed suicide due to crop failure or failure to repay loans.

The minister claimed that the suicides were due to causes like illness, heart attack, mental disturbance, drug addiction or family quarrelles.

In Jharkhand, which is witnessing a heatwave since April 1, most areas are witnessing temperature highs of over 40 degrees Celsius. The mercury touched 46 degrees in some parts of the state.

Water scarcity has compounded the suffering of people across Jharkhand as many water sources have dried up.

According to sources in the state government, around 100 of the 160 water sources like rivers and major ponds have dried up in the state.

In many parts, including capital Ranchi, drinking water is supplied by the municipal bodies through tankers.

Both Telangana and Andhra Pradesh are reeling under second successive drought this year. The harsh summer, alarming fall in water levels in reservoirs and plummeting ground water table has made this as one of the worst droughts in living memory.

The Telugu states have been hit by drinking water shortage as reservoirs across Krishna and Godavari rivers and their tributaries have almost dried out.

The severe drought has triggered migration of farmers and farm labourers from several parts of Telangana and Rayalaseema region of Andhra Pradesh. About 20 lakh people estimated to have migrated from Telangana alone to Mumbai, Bengaluru, Vijayawada and other cities.

Telangana government has declared 231 `mandals` or revenue units out of total 443 in the state as drought-affected. In Andhra Pradesh, 359 mandals out of 670 have been declared drought-hit.

For the first time in three decades, four reservoirs which cater to drinking water supply in Hyderabad have completely dried up. The city of over 1.20 crore population is now banking only on supplies from Krishna and Godavari rivers with the shortfall of about 50 percent.

In other towns in Telangana, people are being supplied drinking water through tankers and that too once in four to five days.

The situation in villages is alarming. Severe scarcity of water and fodder is forcing farmers to sell their cattle for half their price.

The heat wave with mercury rising above 45 degrees in some places, has aggravated the situation. According to disaster management department of Telangana, the heat wave has so far claimed 234 lives. More than 200 people have also died in Andhra Pradesh.

Water level has reached dead storage in majority of the 14 reservoirs, which serve both the states. The two states are now pinning their hopes on early and good monsoon. Officials have warned that even a delay in monsoon could worsen the situation.

In Uttar Pradesh, politics is being played by leaders of various parties even as people continue to suffer drought-like conditions in the Bundelkhand area.

A water-tanker train sent at the behest of the central government was stranded at the Jhansi railway station as the Uttar Pradesh government refused to accept the help, saying that adequate steps were being taken by the state government to mitigate the people`s water woes.
New Delhi: Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Friday alleged that some media houses were asked "not to touch" the controversy over Prime Minister Narendra Modi's degree.

In a series of tweets, Kejriwal also named a few TV news channels and their bosses.

"Some media houses have told their reporters not to touch PM degree issue," Kejriwal tweeted.

On Wednesday, the AAP leaders said Delhi University refused to share the details of Modi's Bachelor of Arts degree and told them to approach the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) instead.

The Central Information Commission (CIC) had on April 29 directed the universities of Delhi and Gujarat to respond to a letter from Kejriwal, which it treated as a Right to Information application on Modi's educational qualifications.

Earlier, Delhi University declined to provide information regarding Modi's BA degree despite several RTI requests.

The university cited its inability to get the information without a roll number as the reason for the denial.
iStock/Thinkstock(NEW YORK) -- The source who leaked confidential information included in the so-called Panama Papers has come forward to explain why the documents were released and that more information could come.

The source used the name John Doe last year when contacting German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung. John Doe's 1,800-word statement was released Friday by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, a worldwide network of reporters who team up on in-depth investigative stories.

"Income inequality is one of the defining issues of our time," the statement begins, asking why its "sudden acceleration" has many people "helpless to stop its steady growth."

"The Panama Papers provide a compelling answer to these questions: massive, pervasive corruption," John Doe writes.

The 11.5 million leaked files exposed the alleged dealings of a law firm in Panama called Mossack Fonseca, according to the journalists group, which published the Panama Papers last month.

The files reportedly show that Mossack Fonseca, which facilitates the incorporation of offshore entities, worked with more than 14,000 banks, law firms and companies from 1977 through 2015 to create tax havens for the rich and powerful. The law firm has denied that it has acted illegally.

The source denies working for any government or intelligence agency, directly or as a contractor and "never have."

"My viewpoint is entirely my own, as was my decision to share the documents with Suddeutsche Zeitung and the [investigative journalists group], not for any specific political purpose, but simply because I understood enough about their contents to realize the scale of the injustices they described," John Doe writes.

"ICIJ and its partner publications have rightly stated that they will not provide them to law enforcement agencies," the source said in the statement. "I, however, would be willing to cooperate with law enforcement to the extent that I am able."

President Obama announced Friday steps to combat money laundering and tax evasion. The U.S. Treasury Department finalized its customer due diligence rule, which requires financial institutions to find out and verify who actually owns the companies that use banking services.

"In recent months, we've seen just how big a problem corruption and tax evasion have become around the globe," Obama said Friday. "We saw what happened with the release of the Panama Papers and we've seen the degree to which both legal practices of tax avoidance that are still unfair and bad for the economy as well as illegal practices that in some cases involve nefarious activities continue to exist and spread."

Offshore bank accounts are not inherently illegal, and they can have many legitimate uses. But they have also been known to be used by both legitimate and criminal enterprises to hide money and avoid paying taxes.

The leaked documents "show that banks, law firms and other offshore players have often failed to follow legal requirements that they make sure their clients are not involved in criminal enterprises, tax dodging or political corruption," according to the investigative journalists group.

As a result of the leak, authorities around the world have launched investigations into possible illegal activity among various companies and public figures. Iceland's Prime Minister Sigmundur Davi Gunnlaugsson resigned last month amid accusations that he and his wife created a shell company in the British Virgin Islands that created a conflict of interest.

Mossack Fonseca did not respond to ABC News requests for comment.

But the Panamanian law firm Thursday said it sent a cease-and-desist letter to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists regarding the groups announcement that it will make public additional information Monday.

"The letter urges the ICIJ to abstain from this action taking into consideration that it is based on the theft of confidential information and is a violation of the confidentiality agreement between attorney and client, which we must protect," Mossack Fonseca said in a statement Thursday.

"It is important for us to make clear that we operate, in all jurisdictions, under strict compliance with the law and regulations of the industry in all services provided, respecting strong client identification norms."

Copyright  2016, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
Kathmandu: Nepal on Friday recalled its Ambassador to India over charges of non-cooperation and indulging in anti-government activities.

Ambassador Deep Kumar Upadhyaya had "confronted" with Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli regarding the cancellation of President Bidya Devi Bhandari's scheduled visit to India, Nepalese Foreign Ministry sources said.

The conversation between Oli and Upadhyaya reportedly took place after the cancellation of the President's trip.

The Nepalese Cabinet had decided to recall Upadhyaya after his brief conversation with the Prime Minister, they said.

Bhandari was scheduled to visit India from May 9 as the state guest at the invitation of President Pranab Mukherjee. She was also scheduled to participate in a 'Shahi Snan' in Ujjain's Simhastha Kumbh on May 14.

Earlier in the day, government sources in New Delhi said, "We have learnt that Nepali President Bidyadevi Bhandari's official visit to India has been postponed by the Nepali side. We understand that this is on account of the political developments in Nepal."

Upadhyaya, a leader of opposition Nepali Congress who was appointed as Nepal's envoy to India in April last year, has been charged with indulging in anti-government activities.

He has also been accused of visiting Madhes districts of southern Nepal along with Indian envoy Ranjit Rae without informing the Foreign ministry, The Kathmandu Post reported.

The Nepalese diplomat has been also charged with involvement in toppling the Oli government, it added.

Prime Minister Oli yesterday survived a threat to his government after a U-turn by Prachanda-led Maoists who decided not to withdraw support to him "for the time being".
Kathmandu: Nepal's first woman President Bidhya Devi Bhandari has cancelled her visit to India, which would have been her first foreign trip after assuming office, in the wake of the political instability in her country.

Bhandari was scheduled to visit from May 9 as the state guest at the invitation of President Pranab Mukherjee. She was also scheduled to participate in a 'Shahi Snan' in Ujjain's Simhastha Kumbh on May 14.

Government sources in New Delhi said, "We have learnt that Nepali President Bidyadevi Bhandari's official visit to India has been postponed by the Nepali side. We understand that this is on account of the political developments in Nepal."

Earlier this week, UCPN-Maoist led by Prachanda triggered political instability by declaring the end of the coalition with the ruling CPN-UML.

The Maoists and the opposition Nepali Congress have accused Prime Minister K P Oli for failing to implement the new Constitution, address problems related to Madhesis, expedite the post-quake reconstruction work, failing to check soaring prices and promoting black marketing and corruption.

However, Oli yesterday survived a threat to his government after a U-turn by Prachanda-led Maoists who decided not to withdraw support to him "for the time being".
Hosur (Tamil Nadu): Addressing a poll rally in Hosur in Tamil Nadu on Friday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi justified his government's actions to unearth the details in the AgustaWestland chopper scam and said that if the Italians are indicting them (senior Congress leaders) in the case what he can do.

I have never been to Italy, I have never met anyone from Italy nor I know anyone in Italy but even then they (Italy court) have held them guilty. What can I do? PM Modi asked.

Tens of thousands of people have attended the rally in Hosur on Friday.

PM Modi has also highlighted various schemes of his government such as Mudra Yojna at the rally.

We have launched the Mudra Yojana so that small traders can avail loans from banks without any guarantee, Modi said.

He also supported his government's actions on various issues such as LPG subsidy. I had appealed people to give up their gas subsidy if they can and I am happy that about 1 crore families gave up their subsidy, he said.

He asked people whether there should be actions against those who steal government funds in the name of purchasing helicopters for VVIPs.

Those who steal money in the name of buying helicopters, shouldnt they be punished, Modi asked.
New Delhi: Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi on Friday attacked Prime Minister Narendra Modi and RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat.

Addressing Congress supporters at Jantar Mantar, where the Congress top leadership was present for 'Save Democracy' march, Rahul said, "These days, who ever speaks against Bhagwat and PM Modi, he/she is targetted with false allegations."

This nation doesn't belongs to a single person. We are fighting for all whether its labour class, farmers, the Gandhi scion asserted.

The Congress leader hot out at the Bharatiya Janata Party led central government over severe drought crisis and farmers suicide cases.

He said, The whole 40 percent of the entire country is reeling under severe drought, but PM Modi has nothing to say.

"Modiji spoke about giving 2 crore jobs every year, we saw 'Make in India' on TV channels and big shows in Mumbai, but the reality is that only 1.3 lakh jobs were given in one year," Rahul exhorted.

Meanwhile, Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi and former prime minister led the 'Save Democracy' march in the national capital. Other top Congress leaders like Ambika Sonia, Mallikarjun Kharge, Ghulam Nabi Azad, Raj Babbar also took part in the protest march.

The rally planned from Jantar Mantar to Parliament is aimed at targetting the Bharatiya Janata Party led central government, which has taken on the Congress over the alleged Rs 3600 crore VVIP chopper scam.

The grand old party's rally is being held in the backdrop of imposition of President's Rule in party-ruled Uttarkhand and Arunachal Pradesh and alleged attempts to destabilise the Congress government in Himachal Pradesh.

Meanwhile, Congress leader Jairam Ramesh accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of "masterminding a conspiracy to implicate" Congress leadership in the AgustaWestland case.

"The cat is out by the manner in which the Prime Minister last night tweeted and hailed Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar's reply in Rajya Sabha on the issue. It shows not only his mindset but his strategy too", Ramesh said.

On January 01, 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.

The central agency has also issued Letters Rogatory (judicial requests) to ten countries in this case.

The issue has become major political affair in the country after a court in Milan, Italy, jailed AgustaWestland's former head Bruno Spagnolini on the charges of false accounting and corruption in the sale of the firm's 12 VVIP choppers to India.

Some documents submitted to the court contain the names of former prime minister Manmohan Singh, Congress president, her political adviser Ahmad Patel and former Indian Air Force chief SP Tyagi.
New Delhi: HRD minister Smriti Irani on Friday rejected a demand for waiving off rustication and other punishments meted out to students in universities, terming it a "Pandora's Box" and saying that these institutions have been granted autonomy to handle administrative matters.

Irani's comments in Rajya Sabha came in the backdrop of recent action by JNU authorities imposing fine on student leader Kanhaiya Kumar and rustication of some other students in connection with the controversial February 9 campus event against Afzal Guru's hanging.

Her reaction came during a debate on the functioning of her ministry when Congress member Ananda Bhaskar Rapolu said the students were looking at Irani's "magnanimity" to waive off punishments and rustication of students in various universities.

In her response, Irani said "this minister is a mere mortal who is tied to this very Parliament and this Parliament does not allow intervention in the administrative matter of any University.

"My request is only this. This is a pandora's box, I am sure you don't want to open that....Let the University be autonomous enough."

Earlier in the day, members in Rajya Sabha had sought the government's intervention in resolving the protests by JNU students by advising the authorities to reconsider their decision to severely penalise some of them.

Deputy Chairman PJ Kurien had also said the government should resolve the issue and had asked Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi to convey the feeling of the House to the concerned Ministers.

Irani, in her 70-minute long reply, also lamented that there appeared to be a "Sanskrit phobia" and said the Government or NCERT have not carried out any change in the curriculum.

Referring to Rapolu who she said had called her 'Sanskrit Irani', she said a recent circular to IITs only asked them to pick up those parts of work in Sanskrit language which contained scientific knowledge.

She said a US university academic came to Tamil Nadu to do research on the oldest treatise in Geometry but not many in India know about the contributions made by the country.

"The challenge is where do you bridge the gap. Where do you introduce the subject or for that matter, give the freedom to academicians to absorb it, without being called communal or saffron," Irani said.
New Delhi: Congress president Sonia Gandhi, Friday, launched a scathing attack on the Bharatiya Janata Party and Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh saying, the grand old party will not buckle under any form of injustice.

Speaking ahead of Congress' 'Save democracy' rally in the national capital, Sonia took pot shots at BJP and RSS saying, the grand old party knows how to fight the anti-national elements.

In an apparent reference to Jawaharlal Nehru University row and Rohith Vemula suicide case, the Congress president said, Students are being harassed, and these days anybody is being labelled as an-anti-national.

While accusing the BJP of murdering democracy, Sonia alleged Congress-led governments in Uttarakhand and Arunachal Pradesh were dislodged by Modi regime by use of money power.

Congress will not buckle under any form of injustice and will take detractors head on, the Congress top leader exhorted.

Former prime minister Manmohan Singh said, Congress is like a flowing river, no matter how many false allegations are levelled, it will not divert from its path.
New Delhi: It seems that AgustaWestland bribery scam allegations have really stung Congress very deep. While defending party president Sonia Gandhi, the leaders o fthe grand old party on Friday had to take a dramatic turn to show that they are not afraid of anything. Rather, the ruling NDA government should beware of a sherni (liones) in the Congress camp.

While calling the AgustaWestland helicopter deal 'baseless allegations', Congress today demanded a Supreme Court monitored probe in the issue.

In an attacking speech in the Lok Sabha today, Congress leader Jyotiraditya Scindia said that the Congress president's name does not appear in any authenticated document related to the Rs 3,600 crore AgustaWestland helicopter deal and pointed to the government benches as he added, "Sonia Gandhi is a sherni who they are afraid of."

Do not level baseless allegations. Answer the questions which we are raising. Supreme Court monitored investigation should happen and its reports should be placed in the House every three months, Scindia added during the debate on a Calling Attention Motion on the issue.

He further said it was practice of the BJP members to level wrong and baseless allegations and through that, they want to create an illusion.

But we too have taken an oath that we will break that mayajaal (illusion) and place the facts in front of the country and this House, Scindia said.

The reality is that this deal was started during the NDA regime in 1999 and the issue they are talking about bringing down the height of the helicopter from 6000 to 4500 metres, it was done by NDA government in 2003 and not the UPA, he said.

"In December 2003, a letter was written from the Prime Ministers Office to change the norms and make it 4500 metres," Scindia said. The moment the issue came out in newspapers, he said the UPA government wrote to the embassy in Rome that investigation should be done as early as possible.

In April 2012, it was in fact the UPA government which ordered CBI to investigate the matter, Scindia said, adding that the contract was cancelled on February 15, 2013 and a notice was served on AugustaWestland and on January 1, 2014, the UPA government cancelled that contract.

In February 2013, the UPA government gave the case to the CBI and within 12 days, a preliminary inquiry was lodged, he informed adding Letter Rogatory too was issued to Tunisia, Mauritius and Italy.

24 months have passed of your government, what have you done in 720 days of your government? Have you brought in a single penny? Have you even identified a single person who has indulged in corruption, he asked.

In March 2013, we in the House had proposed to form a JPC (joint parliamentary committee). Why did the NDA oppose that proposal? People of this country should ask why you opposed that proposal in 2013, the Congress leader said.

The 44-year-old Congress lawmaker referred to a letter from Peter Hullet, an Italian officer in AgustaWestland's India office, and said, "Hullet had written, Mrs Gandhi and her closest set of advisers are the people the high commissioner should value...Does this government imply that high-commissioners and diplomatic heads of different countries wish to meet our leaders in cases of corruption?"

The documents that the BJP has based its accusations against Gandhi on, Scindia said, was "an unverified piece of paper that does not contain anyone's signature."

Last month, an Italian court convicted Agusta officials for paying bribes in India. In his order the judge referred to documents seized from middlemen and Agusta executives which mentioned Sonia Gandhi and other Congress leaders.

The BJP alleges that Congress leaders colluded in corruption with Agusta officials.

Jyotiraditya Scindia quoted the judgement passed by the Milan court where the Judge, Marco Maiga, had said: "We have no evidence against Sonia Gandhi. Only a mention of her in the facts, Mrs Gandhi has only been indicated as someone who will fly in the VVIP helicopters."

He also quoted Agusta middleman Christian Michel as having said, "I have never met one single Gandhi ever in my life. Not a letter, not a message, not a mention (their's) in any memo. I am absolutely sure that no money was ever paid to the Gandhis."

In a counter attack, the Congress MP said, "The BJP must answer why it signed a deal of 36 Rafale aircraft for 9 billion dollars when the UPA had bargained for 125 aircraft for 10 billion dollars."

Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar ripped into the Congress in his reply to the debate, saying, "I had respect for Scindia...while I thought he was a very good orator, he was totally lying, he took total liberties with the truth by saying the Rafal deal was 10 million dollars."

(With Agency inputs)
New Delhi: BJP leader Subramanian Swamy has been asked by Deputy Chairman of Rajya Sabha, of which he is a member, to authenticate all documents he quoted from in his speech during the debate on the AgustaWestland chopper bribery scam earlier this week.

The newly-nominated Rajya Sabha MP has been asked to authenticate all documents by 6 pm today.

As per ANI, if Swamy fails to do so, all the claims he made during the debate while referring to the documents will be deleted from record.

Mr Subramanian Swamy must authenticate all documents he quoted from by 6 pm today, or all of it will be deleted from records, Deputy Chairman PJ Kurien said, as per ANI.

Swamy has said that the "Congress is not able to tolerate facts" which he spoke about in the Rajya Sabha.

Congress leaders, on the other hand, have accused him of lying.

Ever since his debut in the Upper House last week, Swamy has been on the centre stage and made headlines.

His remarks were consecutively struck off the records last week, with the Congress saying: "He does not know the difference between words spoke on the streets and words spoke in Parliament."
New Delhi: With investigators failing to achieve a breakthrough in the mystery-shrouded Sunanda Pushkar death case, the central government has now set up a new panel of doctors to analyse the forensic evidence in the case.

Media reports said on Friday that the panel has been appointed by the Union Health Ministry.

As per reports, the new panel will have four doctors - two from Chandigarh and one each from Puducherry and Lady Hardinge Medical College in Delhi.

These doctors will be responsible for analysing all medical reports including the one from the FBI and help cops move the investigation in the right direction, as per the report.

The moves comes several weeks after the Delhi Police highlighted contradictions in reports given by various agencies pertaining to the mysterious death of Sunanda Pushkar.

Importantly, doctors associated with AIIMS too have failed to reach a conclusion over Sunanda Pushkar's death, two years after she ws found dead under mysterious circumstances.

The move comes in the backdrop of a letter written by Delhi Police to Director General of Health Services (DGHS) for constituting a new board to examine forensic findings of doctors from Delhi's AIIMS and the US Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The 51-year-old businesswoman, who was married to former central minister and UN diplomat Shashi Tharoor, was found dead in a Delhi hotel suite two years ago.

Just before her mysterious death, Pushkar had publicly accused her husband of having an extra-marital affair with a Pakistani journalist.

The Delhi Police later registered a case of murder without naming a suspect and questioned the Congress lawmaker more than once.

Doctors initially said Pushkar's death was unnatural while expressing apprehensions that she may have died due to overdosing on Alprax, an anti-depressant. Later, they said she may have died due to poisoning. Reports of viscera samples sent to an FBI lab showed traces of Alprax and ruling out the role of any radioactive substances.

Delhi Police later said that inconsistency in the medical reports has added to the confusion and a conclusion cannot be reached in such circumstances.

Tharoor and Pushkar tied the knot in 2010, in a third marriage for both.
New Delhi: The Enforcement Directorate is reportedly looking for a London-based Danish woman who is believed to have played a central role in the multi-crore AgustaWestland chopper deal during the UPA government.

Christine Bredo Spliid, who is based in London, had travelled to India during the period when AgustaWestland deal was being finalised.

Records show she lives in 10 Chapstow Road, London.

According to media reports on Friday, Spliid and her associate Christian James Michel have shareholding in a UK-based company named Beetle Nut Home Ltd., which was apparently dissolved in January 2016.

ED officials are now reportedly trying to find out if some part of the kickback money had reached Beetle Nut Home Ltd.

Spliid also holds equity in Croprotein Ltd. and French Crystal, both are UK-based firms, News18.com reported.

Two other individuals, both British nationals of Indian origin, Saahil Parkash Mehra and Sonya Mehra, also have shareholding in the company.

India Today reported that Spliid made several trips to India on Michel's behalf and met several Indians accused of involvement in the deal.

She is also accused of accompanying Indians during their travels to other countries to meet with other co-accused.

On one such visit to Switzerland, she accompanied lawyer Gautam Khaitan, who is believed to be a middleman in the deal.

Khaitan, an ex-board member of Aeromatrix, has reportedly accepted taking payments from Guido Haschke and Carlo Gerosa, also middlemen in the deal.

Meanwhile, the nature of Michel and Spliid's relationship is being scrutinized by the Indian authorities. Citing officials, India Today reported that she may have been used in business meetings as a ruse to meet with accused in the scam.

Spliid is traceless since March, the time when the Italian court gave its verdict in the scam case.
New Delhi: As the country is reeling under a major water crisis situation, compelling many farmers to commit suicide, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has called Chief Ministers of Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra and Karnataka for a detailed discussion over the matter.

The meeting has been called tomorrow, i.e. Saturday, ANI reported on Friday.

Meanwhile, light to moderate rains brought down temperatures at isolated places in Uttar Pradesh, bringing some respite from the scorching heat.

Jhansi recorded the maximum temperature in the state at 41.2 degrees Celsius.

Light to moderate rains and thundershowers occurred at isolated areas. Heavy rains and thundershower also occurred at isolated places in western UP.

The downpour also occurred at many places over Telangana, Kerala, south interior Karnataka and at a few places over Andhra Pradesh and north interior Karnataka. Isolated rainfall occurred over Tamil Nadu. However, dry weather prevailed over Coastal Karnataka and Lakshadweep.

On the contrary, as per the Observer Research Foundation (ORF) Chairman Sudheendra Kulkarni, Maharashtra needs an integrated drought relief policy and a separate department if the state government is serious about tackling the water scarcity issue.

"Maharashtra is reeling under the darkness of drought. This is more specific to Marathwada which has become the hotbed of distressed farmers dealing with the burgeoning water scarcity, unpredictable rains and cyclical crop failures," Kulkarni had told reporters after presenting Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis a report at the Secretariat here yesterday on drought in Marathwada.

"All this has led to the collapse of the existing economic and social structure of the region. Several reasons and corresponding solutions for tackling the drought have been discussed year after year by successive governments, but mostly in isolation," he had said.

The need for this policy and a holistic approach has been brought out in the research report compiled by the Observer Research Foundation (ORF) Mumbai.

(With Agency inputs)
Srinagar: An army jawan was on Friday killed in an exchange of fire with militants near Line of Control (LoC) in Keran sector of north Kashmir's Kupwara district, police said here.

Some militants fired upon an ambush party of the army's 21 Kumaon Regiment in Keran sector during which?Sepoy Ramesh Chand Yadav received bullet injuries on both legs, a police official said.

He said Yadav was airlifted to army's 92 base hospital here for treatment, but the doctors declared him brought dead.
Kochi: The Kerala High Court on Friday observed that no interference is warranted at this stage in the probe by state police's Special Investigation Team into the brutal rape and murder of a Dalit woman, and adjourned till May 30 a PIL seeking CBI investigation.

Considering a PIL filed by Advocate T B Mini, a vacation bench, comprising Justices A M Shaffique and K Ramakrishnan, also observed that the investigators cannot be guided by media reports.

Appearing for the state government, Director General of Prosecutions informed the court that the investigation into the rape and murder of the law student is in progress and is at a crucial stage.

He also said details about the progress made in the SIT investigation can be submitted before the court in a sealed cover.

Following this, the court adjourned the PIL to May 30.

Earlier, Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh, while addressing a BJP election meeting in Kollam district, said the Centre is ready to conduct a CBI probe into the incident. "CBI probe should be held into the murder. As the country's Home Minister, I assure you that as soon as we get a recommendation (in this regard) from the state government, we are prepared to conduct a CBI probe," said Singh, who began electioneering for the May 16 Assembly polls in Kerala.

The Home Minister said the guilty will be brought to book.

The 30-year-old woman, who hailed from a poor family, was raped and brutally assaulted using sharp-edged weapons before being murdered at her house at nearby Perumbavoor in Ernakulam district on April 28.
Justice for Jisha: Centre ready for CBI probe into Kerala student's rape and murder, says Rajnath Singh

Kollam: Amid growing dissent over the alleged rape and murder of a 30-year-old Dalit law student in Kerala's Perumbavoor, the Centre on Friday said that it is ready for a CBI probe into the case.

Centre is ready for CBI probe, Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh was quoted as saying by news agency Press Trust of India.

"CBI probe should be held into the murder. As the country's Home Minister, I assure you that as soon as we get a recommendation (in this regard) from the state government, we are prepared to conduct a CBI probe," Singh, who began electioneering for the May 16 Assembly polls in Kerala, said at a public meeting here, about 16 km from Kollam city.

The Home Minister said the guilty will be brought to book. "I assure you that the guilty shall be punished," he said.

The Home Minister's remarks assume significance with the investigation by Kerala Police not making much headway even several days after the incident.

The brutal rape and murder of the Dalit law students has drawn parallels with the 2012 Nirbhaya gang-rape case of Delhi, triggering severe protests vin poll-bound Kerala.

The victim 'Jisha' was found lying dead in a pool of blood on April 28 at her home near a canal in Perumbavoor in Ernakulam by her mother who works as a casual labourer.

Her body was badly mutilated; there were injuries on her private parts, according to the police. The police later registered a case of rape and murder and detained three people for questioning.

The incident triggered protests and demonstrations in state capital Thiruvananthapuram with many covering their mouths with black handkerchiefs and carrying placards demanding justice for the victim.
Thiruvananthapuram: BJP's mission to open its account in Kerala will get a strong push on Friday with Prime Minister Narendra Modi's election rally in Palakkad.

The Palakkad rally is the first in a series of five lined up the party ahead of May 16 polls. The Prime Minister will arrive at Coimbatore airport in neighbouring Tamil Nadu by 1:15 pm and then hop on into a chopper for the 40 kilometers journey to Palakkad.

On May 8, Modi will address three rallies  Kasaragod, Kuttanad in Alapuzha, and Thiruvananthapuram  and one on May 11 at Tripunithura in Ernakulam district.

The BJP has emerged as a strong third force in Kerala politics that was till now dominated by the Congress-led UDF and CPM-led LDF.

With UDF and LDF targeting the BJP more than each other in their election rallies, it is clear the BJP's rise has discomforted them.

On the other hand, the BJP is more than confident that the party will be able send a legislator to the assembly this time.

Yesterday, BJP president Amit Shah launched his campaign in the state by addressing a series of rallies in Ranni (Pathnamthitta), Manimala (Kottayam) and Paravoor (Ernakulam) districts.

Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh will be in Kerala for a two-day campaign from May 6.

Besides, his cabinet colleagues Venkaiah Naidu and Smriti Irani, would also be in the state with a hectic schedule.

BJP, which has tied up with the BDJS (Bharatiya Dharma Jana Sena), a party floated by the Sree Narayana Dharma Paripalana Yogam (SNDP), an organisation of the Ezhava community, has fielded 97 candidates while BDJS has put up 37 and remaining seats have been allocated to smaller parties.

Enthused by its good showing in the last year's local bodies election, the party is hoping to make it to the state assembly this time.
Thiruvananthapuram: Three persons have been arrested in connection with the gang-rape of a 19-year-old nursing student on the outskirts of state's capital.

The shameful incident happened on Tuesday. The victim has alleged that she was sexually assaulted by three men, including her friend.

The nursing student who is still admitted in the ICU of a private hospital, has identified her attackers as Sujith, 25, and Shyju, 24. The 19-year-old has alleged that she was gang-raped in Sujith's autorickshaw.

Last week, a 30-year-old law student was found dead in her home, her intestines hanging out, inside her home in Perumbavoor, 200 km from the state capital.

Police believe that the lady identified as Jisha, whose mutilated body was found by her mother on April 28, was sexually assaulted as there were injury marks on her private parts.

Even as the rape and murder of a Dalit law student continued to rock the poll-bound state of Kerala, police on Thursday claimed that they are zeroing in on the culprits and the investigation is in its last stage.

A group of 30 police officials have been split into four teams to probe the case from different angles, including for collecting and analysing scientific evidences.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi is likely to visit the mother of the Dalit woman on May 11.
Ujjain: Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan on Friday visited those who were injured after several tents collapsed yesterday due to strong winds and heavy rain at the ongoing Simhastha Kumbh Mela here- one of the largest Hindu religious congregations organised in an interval of every 12 years.

After taking stock of the situation, the Chief Minister said, The tents that fell apart have to be put back up and we will help with that.''

Expressing his condolence to those who were killed in the tragedy, Chouhan said, ''All those injured in the incident are being treated here, four in Indore. The MP government will bear the cost of their treatment.''

Announcing compensation of those killed in the tragedy, Chouhan said, ''An ex-gratia of Rs 5 lakh in cash will be given to kin of five deceased, 2 lakh as insurance.''

Rs. 50,000 will be given to seriously injured and Rs 10,000 to others who were injured, he added.

The casualties happened when some tents and gates erected at the Kumbh area collapsed in the thunderstorm. Among the dead was a woman pilgrim who was struck by lightning in Undasa area.

Police official BS Chauhan said nearly a third of the tents put up by the pilgrims were blown away in the squall and that it would take at least a week to erect them again.

Authorities fear the death toll may rise further, as late into the night rescuers were clearing collapsed tents and pulling out people trapped under them.

The rain made large parts of the Mela ground slushy, making rescue operations difficult. Authorities have cut off electricity supply to the area as a precautionary measure.

Eyewitnesses said a drain was breached at Ramghat on the banks of Kshipra, as a result of which filthy water is gushing into the river.

The state government has spent more than Rs 3,600 crore for developing infrastructure and facilities for the month-long congregation.
Mumbai: The Bombay High Court on Friday ruled that possession of beef slaughtered outside Maharashtra would not be a criminal offence.

However, the SC upheld the Maharashtra government`s decision to ban the slaughter of bullocks in the state.

The ruling by a division bench comprising Justice AS Oka and Justice SC Gupte came on a bunch of petitions challenging the provisions in the Maharashtra Animal Preservation (Amendment) Act which stipulated penal action even for possession of beef brought from outside the state.

Accordingly, while slaughter of bullocks would not be permitted, the court has permitted the import and consumption of beef from other states to Maharashtra.

The President had granted assent to the Maharashtra Animal Preservation (Amendment) Act, which prohibited slaughter of bulls and bullocks as well as possession and consumption of their meat in the state.

The Act stipulated a five-year jail term and Rs 10,000 fine for slaughter of bulls or bullocks and one-year imprisonment and Rs 2,000 fine for possession of its meat.

Arif Kapadia, a city resident, and noted lawyer Harish Jagtiani had challenged the provision which says mere possession of beef anywhere in the state is a crime.

This is arbitrary and undermines the cosmopolitan nature of the city which houses people from all religions and communities, they had contended.

Other petitions had been filed by Vishal Sheth, a lawyer, and Shaina Sen, a student, contending that the ban on beef violates fundamental rights of citizens.

(With Agency inputs)
Mumbai: The Bombay High Court will on Friday pronounce the judgement on a bunch of petitions challenging the constitutional validity of the beef ban in Maharashtra.

A division bench of Justices AS Oka and SC Gupte had reserved the ruling in January after hearing the arguments.

In February 2015, the President granted assent to the Maharashtra Animal Preservation (Amendment) Act. While the original 1976 Act banned slaughter of cows, the amendment prohibited, in addition, slaughter of bulls and bullocks and possession and consumption of their meat.

As per the Act, slaughter attracts a five-year jail-term and Rs 10,000 fine while possession of meat of bull or bullock attracts one-year in jail and Rs 2,000 fine.

During the hearing, the HC had refused to grant interim stay to the provisions penalising the possession of beef.

Arif Kapadia, a city resident, and noted lawyer Harish Jagtiani have challenged the provision which says mere possession of beef anywhere in the state is a crime.

This is arbitrary and undermines the cosmopolitan nature of the city which houses people from all religions and communities, they contend.

Other petitions have been filed by Vishal Sheth, a lawyer, and Shaina Sen, a student, contending that the ban on beef violates fundamental rights of citizens.
New Delhi: Google is celebrating the 160th birth anniversary of Sigmund Freud, an Austrian neurologist and the father of psychoanalysis, with a creative doodle on its homepage on Friday.

Representing one of his most celebrated theories - the iceberg theory  today's doodle features Freud's face as the tip of iceberg floating on waters. The doodle by Kevin Laughlin shows only part of Freuds head - his visage - floating above the surface of the water while the rest of it- the major part- is submerged within water. With a vast hidden base, the iceberg also references the murky depths of the unconscious mind.

Freud, who was born on 6 May 1856, is best known as the father of psychoanalysis, the method of resolving mental illness through a dialogue between a doctor and patient. The idea that dreams "mean" anything or that we have an active subconscious mind, is a concept we owe to Freud.

The Freudian method of interpretation - looking for meaning beyond the surface of things - now extends far beyond the sphere of psychotherapy. Freudian terms like 'narcissism,' 'sibling rivalry,' 'free association,' and 'death wish' are part of our vernacular, and Freud's theories continue to fuel heated debate among academics, wrote Google in a blog post.

Freud died of mouth cancer, in 1939, in London at the age of 83.
New York: Scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have compiled a comprehensive list of potential gases to guide search for life on exoplanets.

Biosignature gases emitted by exoplanetary life forms could be detected remotely by space telescopes but these gases might have quite different compositions from those in the Earth's atmosphere.

This work reminds me of Charles Darwin's voyage aboard 'The Beagle', exploring the vast diversity of life by sailing around the world," said Nancy Y Kiang, scientist at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

In the search for life beyond our planet, we are currently at a similarly exciting, early but rapidly evolving stage of exploration as the discovery of exoplanets accelerates, he added.

Instead of netting strange creatures from the bottom of the sea, the authors searched and found thousands of curious, potentially biogenic gas molecules.

These will inspire a new body of research into identifying also larger molecules, investigating their origin and fate here, and their potential expression on exoplanets as signs of life, Kiang added.

This approach maximises the chances of identifying planets orbiting nearby stars that support life.

According to S Seager, W Bains and J.J. Petkowski from MIT and Rufus Scientific from the University of Cambridge in a paper published in the journal Astrobiology, all stable and potential volatile molecules should be considered as possible biosignature gases.


Beijing: A robot is being designed to compete with grade 12 students during the college entrance examination in 2017 and get a score qualifying it to enter first-class universities in China.

The robot will appear for three exams, math, Chinese language and a comprehensive test of liberal arts, which includes history, politics and geography, said Lin Hui, CEO of an artificial intelligence company in Chengdu.

The company won the bid for the artificial intelligence programme on the robot's math test from the science and technology ministry in 2015, the China Daily reported on Friday.

Like the other examinees, the robot will have to finish the exams during designated periods.

Unlike the usual scene that sees 30 students sit in an exam room, the robot will take its exams in a closed room without anyone else present, except for proctors and a notary.

According to Lin, the robot will be linked to a printer before every exam, and the electronic examination paper will be put into the robot's programme when the examination begins.

The robot will be totally disconnected from the internet and will solve the problems with its artificial intelligence programme. Finally the answers will be outputted through the printer.

The robot is actually a touchstone for artificial intelligence development and the key technology of the robot lies in understanding language and reasoning, according to Fu Hongguang, who is in charge of the research and development of the artificial intelligence program required in the math test.

The robot is reportedly trying to qualify for admission to Peking University and Tsinghua University in 2020, and its counterpart in Japan is eyeing Tokyo University in 2020.

The robot is just one example of the boom in artificial intelligence after Google's AlphaGo beat a world-class player in the ancient board game 'Go' in March.
Kandahar: Afghan special forces, backed by helicopter gunships, freed more than 60 people held captive in a Taliban prison in southern Afghanistan, officials said on Friday, in a major raid against the resurgent Islamist group.

The operation conducted yesterday in Now Zad district in the southern opium-rich province of Helmand comes in the midst of the Taliban's annual spring offensive, expected to be the bloodiest in 15 years.

"Afghan Special Forces liberated over 60 prisoners from an illegally run Taliban prison...During the cover of darkness via helicopter assault," NATO said in a statement.

"The liberated prisoners were safely transported to Kandahar where they were turned over to...Afghan authorities."

NATO, which backed the mission in a "train, advise and assist" role, added that two insurgents were killed during the operation, and many others were wounded and detained.

Afghan forces, backed by US Special Forces, launched a similar raid in Now Zad in December, freeing more than 40 soldiers and police held in a makeshift Taliban prison.

The raids mark a rare success for Afghan forces struggling to beat back the stubborn insurgency.

The Taliban last month announced the start of their annual spring offensive, vowing "large-scale attacks" across Afghanistan.

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani recently threatened diplomatic reprisals against Pakistan if it refuses to take action against insurgent havens on its soil.

His unusually strong remarks were in response to a Taliban assault on a security services office in the heart of Kabul, which left 64 people dead in what appeared to be the deadliest attack on the Afghan capital since 2001.

The carnage on April 19 cast a pall over international efforts in recent months to jumpstart Pakistan-brokered peace talks, which stalled last summer after the Taliban belatedly confirmed the death of long-time leader Mullah Omar.
London: China and Pakistan are wheeling and dealing in a big way to influence the Sri Lankan leadership to buy the highly-flawed JF-17 multi-role fighter jet in a deal which promises at least USD four million per jet as kickbacks to those who are pushing for this sale.

According to a report in the Sri Lanka-based website www.thesundayleader.lk, a former Air Force chief and a big business wheeler-dealer are attempting to influence the Sri Lanka Air Force (SLAF) to acquire the multi-role JF-17 `Fierce Dragon` fighter aircraft that has been jointly developed by both China and Pakistan, at a price said to be higher than what is on offer from other international combat aircraft manufacturers.

According to sources, former Air Force Commander Air Marshal Jayalath Weerakkody had visited Pakistan many times to hold discussions with the Pakistani Air Force Chief for purchasing JF-17 aircraft.

The present Air Force Commander Gagan Bulathsinhala too has made a few visits to Pakistan for the same reason.

It is also being alleged that Air Marshal Weerakkody, who was later posted to Pakistan as Sri Lanka`s High Commissioner, continued to discuss the JF-17 purchase with the Pakistani officials.

Recalled to Sri Lanka after the fall of the Rajapaksa regime, Weerakkody is still a frequent visitor to the SLAF headquarters to get this deal through.

The website quoted an SLAF unnamed source, as saying that the JF-17 will cost the SLAF a staggering USD 29 million, while the same aircraft can be purchased from a reputed Russian manufacturer at a cost ranging between USD 20 and USD 25 million.

The source further alleges that both China and Pakistan are well aware that the JF-17 has no takers in the international air force circuit, but middlemen in these two countries appear determined to promote this aircraft and get a commission of more than USD four million per aircraft.

According to the source, the JF-17 is an indigenous product and a country like Sri Lanka is not in a position to invest such a huge amount on jet fighters whose qualities are largely unknown.

On the other hand, the Sri Lankan government has to take into account the security-related concerns of the Indian government, which is also keen to offer the Hindustan Aeronautics Limited-manufactured multi-role Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) `Tejas` to Colombo.

The source said that there is no doubt that the SLAF is in dire need to purchase combat aircrafts.The Sunday leader web site has quoted SLAF sources, as saying that the air force had failed to get the required sanction for the purchase of the jet fighters during the Mahinda Rajapaksa regime, and added that whatever has been purchased so far has been through shady deals with and from disreputable companies.

The SLAF is keen to purchase eight new fighter aircraft and does want to spend time overhauling its existing fleet of planes at a prohibitive cost of about USD three million per aircraft.

Reports suggest that with pressure mounting on Sri Lanka, incumbent President Maithripala Sirisena has decided to put off the purchase of the JF-17 fighter aircraft from Pakistan and go for a viable deal with Russia instead.

According to media reports, the Cabinet last week took a decision to put off the purchase of the Sino-Pakistan JF-17 fighter jet aircraft indefinitely to prevent possible India`s ill-feelings towards Sri Lanka.Sources said that the present commanders of the three defence services and a representative from Sri Lanka Logistics are currently in Russia to discuss the purchase of the aircraft for the SLAF.

However, SLAF spokesman Group Captain Chandima Alwis has said that the air force is carrying out a due diligence study of potential fighter aircraft suppliers in the event the SLAF need to add to their existing fleet.The Sri Lankan Air Force (SLAF) presently has a fleet of Israeli Kfirs and Russian-made MiG-27s.
Washington: In a shocking report, a daily has suggested that Mark Kelton, the former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) station chief in Pakistan, is believed to have been poisoned by the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).

Notably, Kelton had presided over the May 2011 raid that killed al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad. He was pulled outfrom Islamabad two months after the raid, citing health concerns.

"Mark Kelton retired from the CIA, and his health has recovered after he had abdominal surgery. But agency officials continue to think that it is plausible - if not provable - that Kelton's sudden illness was somehow orchestrated by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency, known as the ISI," The Washington Post said in an exclusive investigative report.

However, a spokesman of the Pakistani embassy here has described the report as fictional.

Obviously the story is fictional, not worthy of comment, said Pakistan embassy spokesman Nadeem Hotiana. We reject the insinuations implied in the allegations.

According to The Post, Kelton, declined multiple requests for an interview, but in a brief exchange by phone he said that the cause of his illness "was never clarified".

He said that he was not the first to suspect that he had been poisoned.

"The genesis for the thoughts about that didn't originate with me," he was quoted as saying.

The Post said such a disclosure is a disturbing postscript to the sequence of events surrounding the bin Laden operation five years ago and adds new intrigue to a counter-terrorism partnership that has often been consumed by conspiracy theories.

"Even if the poisoning suspicion is groundless, the idea that the CIA and its station chief considered the ISI capable of such an act suggests that the breakdown in trust was even worse than widely assumed," The Post said.

According to the daily, current and former US intelligence officials said that the ISI has been linked to numerous plots against journalists, diplomats and other perceived adversaries and that the spy agency's animosity toward Kelton was intense.

Meanwhile, a CIA spokesman said there is no evidence that Pakistani authorities poisoned a US official serving in the country.

(With PTI inputs)
New Delhi: In a latest, new compositional data from NASAs New Horizons spacecraft reveals that the surface of Hydra, Plutos outermost small moon, is dominated by nearly pristine water ice.

According to NASA, the new compositional data, recently received on Earth, was gathered with the Ralph/Linear Etalon Imaging Spectral Array (LEISA) instrument aboard New Horizons spacecraft on July 14, 2015, from a distance of 150,000 miles (240,000 kilometers).

The new data, known as infrared spectra, shows the Hydra spectrum is similar to that of Plutos largest moon, Charon, which is also dominated by crystalline water ice.

But the data indicates that Hydras water-ice absorption bands are even deeper than Charons, suggesting that ice grains on Hydras surface are larger or reflect more light at certain angles than the grains on Charon.

(New compositional data from NASAs New Horizons spacecraft reveal a distinct water-ice signature on the surface of Plutos outermost moon, Hydra. Plutos largest moon Charon measures 752 miles (1,210 kilometers across), while Hydra is approximately 31 miles (50 kilometers) long.) Image credits: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI

Hydra is thought to have formed in an icy debris disk produced when water-rich mantles were stripped from the two bodies that collided to form the Pluto-Charon binary some 4 billion years ago. Hydras deep water bands and high reflectance imply relatively little contamination by darker material that has accumulated on Charon's surface over time.

Mission scientists are investigating why Hydras ice seems to be cleaner than Charons.

"Perhaps micrometeorite impacts continually refresh the surface of Hydra by blasting off contaminants, said Simon Porter, a New Horizons science team member from Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, This process would have been ineffective on the much larger Charon, whose much stronger gravity retains any debris created by these impacts.

Meanwhile, the New Horizons science team is looking forward to obtaining similar spectra of Plutos other small moons, for comparison to Hydra and Charon.

Hydra, was only discovered in 2005, along with Nix - second outermost of Plutos five moons - by scientists using data from the Hubble Space Telescope.

(Source: NASA)
Hyderabad: A 16-year-old girl has alleged that she was impregnated after five persons repeatedly raped her over the past 16 months in Adilabad district of Telangana, police said today.

The victim, a class 10th student, yesterday lodged a complaint with Madamarri police station, alleging that five youths, who are her neighbours, raped and threatened her several times since January, 2015, Police Inspector P Sadaiah said.

The girl has been sent for medical examination, and the report would confirm whether she is pregnant or not, he said.

A case has been registered against the accused under relevant sections of IPC and Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, he said, adding further investigation is on.
New Delhi: Food Minister Ram Vilas Paswan on Friday said a team will be sent to Bundelkhand to look into the alleged death of a dalit due to hunger in Banda district in Uttar Pradesh.

Responding to the issue of the alleged death raised by Prabhat Jha (BJP) during Zero Hour in Rajya Sabha, Paswan said Food Security Act has been implemented in the country, except two poll-bound states of Tamil Nadu and Kerala.

He expressed surprise that when 100 percent foodgrains are lifted for distribution at subsidised rates, how can a person die of hunger.

"We will send a team (Bundelkhand)," he said, adding that earlier a team was also sent to Bihar.

The team, Paswan said, will also find out since when foodgrains were not being given to the affected family.

Earlier, Jha said Kanhaiya, a dalit, had died of hunger in Banda district and police was trying to hush up the case. "Why is no one shedding tears on his death," he said.

Jha said Muni Devi, widow of the victim, has given a statement that her husband died of hunger. She also alleged that there was pressure on the family to complete the last rites of the victim.

Kumari Mayawati (BSP) said Kanhaiya's case was not an isolated incident. According to her, there have been murders in Bundelkhand and several others too have died of hunger. She also demanded that Centre should send a team there.
New Delhi: The Samajwadi Party on Friday raised the issue of an empty water train reaching drought-hit Bundelkhand, even as Rajya Sabha Deputy Chairman PJ Kurien stressed that there should be no politics over water.

Naresh Agrawal, raising the issue in the upper house, said: "The train that arrived was empty... it did not have water. Center can help only when states seek help; we asked for money for making a dam in Bundelkhand."

He called for the resignation of the concerned central minister.

Parliamentary Affairs Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi said the center is ready to extend all help, and the issue should not be politicised.

"If there is drought anywhere in the country, we all should be sensitive towards it. There is no need to do politics about that. There is a special package for Bundelkhand, it should be used properly. Center is ready to provide more help," he said.

Kurien pointed out that no one should play politics over water.

"In the name of water and drought nobody should play politics. I would also request that this point may be talked, and settled," said Kurien.

In his explanation, Railways Minister Suresh Prabhu said that the train was supposed to be filled in Agra.

"We usually fill the tanker in the same state where water has to be supplied. That train was to be filled in Agra," said Prabhu.

He also said he had spoken to Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav on Thursday.

Agrawal however stressed that the state did not ask for a water train, but for tankers and money for digging tanks and constructing dams.

Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) leader Mayawati said that the Center and state should coordinate and help the people of Bundelkhand.

"Nearly 50 districts are facing drought in Uttar Pradesh. In such a situation, the Center and state government should rise above party politics and work together to solve the water crisis," Mayawati said.

"The state government maintains that the train sent was empty... We want to say that the government should have used whatever water was there in the train," she said.
Dehradun: After getting Centre's nod, the Supreme Court, Friday, decided that a floor test in the Uttarakhand Legislative Assembly will be held on May 10.

While ruling that the President's rule will be temporarily lifted for two hours in Uttarakhand when the vote of confidence will take place, the apex court scheduled the floor test for May 10 from 11 am to 1 pm.

The apex court directed that the nine rebel Congress MLAs, who have challenged their disqualification by the Speaker in the High Court, will not participate in the floor test "if they have the same status" at the time of vote of confidence.

The SC said that proceedings for the floor test will videographed under the supervision of the Principal Secretary of the Legislative Assembly.

"Ex-CM Harish Rawat should be allowed to seek vote of confidence on the floor of the Assembly," SC said.

Earlier today, the Centre told the top court that it is ready to hold a floor test in the Uttarakhand Legislative Assembly.

The Additional General appearing on behalf of the central government, requested the apex court to appoint an observer for the floor test.

AG told the SC bench comprising of Justices Justice Dipak Misra and Justice Shiva Kirti Singh that there should be one agenda and observer should be retired chief election commissioner.

The top court had granted Centre time till May 6 to appraise it about the feasibility of holding floor test in the Uttarakhand Assembly to resolve the political crisis in the state.

Uttarakhand was plunged into political uncertainty after nine Congress legislators, including former chief minister Vijay Bahuguna, whom Harish Rawat replaced, revolted and turned to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

The crisis peaked on March 18 when the assembly passed the Appropriation Bill by voice vote even as the opposition sought recorded voting. Speaker Govind Kunjwal declined the request, leading the BJP to cry foul.

Rawat was then asked by Governor KK Paul to prove his majority on March 28 but a day before that the central government ousted his government by imposing President's Rule. Rawat immediately went to court.

The Uttarakhand High Court by its April 21 verdict had quashed the President's rule.
New Delhi: The Centre will on Friday clear its stand on holding a floor test in the Uttarakhand Legislative Assembly as suggested by the Supreme Court in the previous hearing.

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court had granted Centre time till May 6 to appraise it about the feasibility of holding floor test in the Uttarakhand Assembly to resolve the political crisis in the state.

The central government Wednesday informed the Supreme Court that its suggestion to explore feasibility of holding a floor test in Uttarakhand Assembly under the courts supervision was under serious consideration and that a decision will be taken on it by Friday.

A bench of Justices Dipak Misra and and Shiva Kirti Singh accepted the plea of the Centre that two more days be given to it to respond to its suggestion and the bench posted the matter for hearing on May 6.

The Union of India is seriously considering the suggestion given by this court to have a floor test in Assembly to put an end to the controversy that has emerged in this case, said the bench in its order.

The bench observed that if the Centre accepts the suggestion, it would subserve the cause of democracy.

The apex court then ordered Attorney General Mukul Rohtagi to discuss the feasibility of holding a floor test in the crisis-hit Uttarakhand Assembly.

The apex court said this while responding to the Centre's plea challenging the Nainital High Court verdict revoking President's Rule in the state.



The apex court had on March 27 directed to continue the President's Rule for the while. The two- judge division bench had also asked several questions to the Centre asking it to justify imposition of President's rule in Uttarakhand.

The Centre had introduced President's Rule on March 27, a day before former Chief Minister Harish Rawat was to take a trust vote in the assembly.
Kolkata: Rival groups of students on Friday clashed at the Jadavpur University campus here over the screening of Vivek Agnihotri-directed political film 'Buddha in a Traffic Jam' triggering chaos during which some girls were allegedly molested and BJP actor-turned-politician Roopa Ganguly was not allowed to enter its premises.

The fracas began after the film's screening ended late in the evening, and students from ABVP fought with activists of Left-backed student unions in which a few of them received minor injuries, officials said.

Agnihotri faced black flags at the campus gates, sloganeering and placards bearing message that asked him to leave.

The filmmaker claimed he was "manhandled and gheraoed" by some students and even the glass pane of his car was left shattered in the commotion.

The agitating students said they have nothing against the screening of the film, but were protesting against the "divisive content" in it, which also stars Anupam Kher.

"We all know Kher's views in the whole debate on whatever happened in JNU. He is acting in this film which has divisive content. We are protesting against that," Sounak Mukherjee, a first year MA student of English Department, said.

Some girl students were allegedly molested during the melee that ensued after the incident, police said.

"The students had isolated four of them inside the campus following the incident. I have handed them to the police. There were some outsiders also. The students said they molested some girls," University Vice Chancellor Suranjan Das told PTI late tonight.

A senior varsity official said "the four youths were outsider and FIR is being lodged against them".

BJP leader Roopa Ganguly also rushed to the campus but was stopped at the gate by the police.

The state-run varsity's alumni association, which runs the Triguna Sen auditorium, had decided to cancel the booking for a pre-release screening of the film in their hall.

The producers, however, went ahead with the screening at an open-air space in the campus claiming they have support from another group of students.

"The students arranged a bed sheet and turned it into a screen to see my film. Many watched it and realised it's not what they were thinking. It is a realistic film," Agnihotri, the director of "Hate Story" and "Goal" told PTI.

Even as the screening was going on in the evening, after classes were over, the agitators carried on with demonstration near the spot.
Kolkata: It is election season in West Bengal and one thing which is big in demands here is Peto  the hand-made bomb  a cheap and easily available convenient weapon used by political parties to settle scores with each other and threaten the interfering public.

According to a report in the Hindustan Times, Master Rafique is among the top bomb-makers of the state and lives in a village near Rabindranath Tagores Shantiniketan in the Birbhum district.

Rafique, with the help of his two-three confidant, makes around 2,000 bombs a day.

Bragging about his clout, Rafique says he is very well connected and in regular touch of almost all top rung leaders from the Trinamool Congress to CPI-M and the BJP.

The master bomb-maker, who refuses to reveal the name of his guru, boasts that he can make one bomb in just five minutes in case of an emergency.

HT: When did you learn and from whom?

Rafique, who started making bomb at the tender age of 16 says, admits that his profession is too risky but says he has no option as he has to feed a family of six and this work brings him easy money.

Talking about his risky business, he says the demand for bombs boom during the poll season.

The master bomb-maker, who is given a VIP treatment by his high-profile political clients and travels in air-conditioned car, charges about something ranging between Rs 5,000 to Rs 15,000 depending on the number of bombs demanded.

For urgent work, he even charges Rs 10,000 for half a day, he claimed.

When asked how he runs his business when there are no elections, Rafique claimed that thanks to Trinamools faction fights, his business is never dull.

When asked when he plans to retire from this risky job, he claimed that there is no retirement age in this profession. You have to stop only when your eyes fail or your hands shake, he claimed.

My job is a job like any other. We also take precautions, he was quoted as saying.
Paris: French Prime Minister Manuel Valls accused the presumptive US Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump of being a "bad man" on Friday, having previously criticised him over his views on Muslims.

Trump's win in Tuesday's hotly contested Indiana primary, pushing his remaining rivals out of the race and leaving him as the presumptive nominee, has drawn criticism at home and abroad, including from within the Republican party.

"Look at what is happening in the United States, we have great challenges but at the same time...," he said before being interrupted by his interviewer from France's Public Senat channel, who suggested: "Little men?"

"Yes, yes, yes, yes. Little men," said Valls during the interview, seen by AFP ahead of its broadcast this evening.

When asked if Trump was a "little man", Valls said: "Yes, and probably a bad man."

He said that populism had grown as democratic societies struggled to confront the challenges of globalisation and terrorism, hinting at France's own experience with the growth of the far-right National Front (FN).

Valls has previously criticised Trump, accusing him on Twitter of "stoking hatred" in December following the real estate mogul's suggestion that Muslims be banned from entering the USA.

Trump's path to Tuesday's victory was defined by a brutal primary campaign and a string of insulting remarks about other candidates, Muslims, Mexicans, refugees, women and others made by the billionaire businessman.
Aden: Gunmen on Friday killed the chief of the main prison in Yemen's southern port city of Aden where jihadists remain active, a security source said.

Wahab Nejib Ahmed Aoun and a relative were gunned down by two men on a motorbike in the central district of Mansura where the prison is located.

The incident comes a week after a similar attack claimed the life of a police colonel in the city.

This method of attack is often used by al Qaeda, which has operated for years in south and southeast Yemen, and is currently the target of a huge offensive by government forces.

Other security officials in Aden have been targeted by bombings and assassinations -- some of which al Qaeda or the Islamic State group have claimed.

Yemen-based al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) is regarded by Washington as the network's most dangerous branch.

It had taken advantage of the government's war against Shiite rebels to spread its presence in the south.

AQAP was ejected recently from Aden neighbourhoods including Mansura and also from cities in neighbouring provinces -- Huta in Lahj and Mukalla in Hadramawt.

Yesterday, AQAP began withdrawing from Abyan provincial capital Zinjibar and the nearby city of Jaar following tribal mediation to spare them from destruction.

In a statement released on Wednesday, the militants threatened to attack the homes of officials and soldiers who took part in the offensive to drive them out of Mukalla.

Yemen's internationally recognised government has declared Aden the country's temporary capital since Iran-backed Shiite rebels took Sanaa and control much of the north.
Washington: Democratic presidential front- runner Hillary Clinton has denounced Republican presumptive nominee Donald Trump for doubling down on his plans to deport millions of immigrant families, saying his "hateful" language needs to be repudiated.

"Now, every election is a choice, and just yesterday, Donald Trump doubled down on his plan to create a deportation force to round up millions of people. That's actually what he said," she said at a campaign rally in Los Angeles.

"He has pledged in his first days in office to scrap DACA and DAPA and to finalise a design for a giant wall on the border. Well, the best way to prevent that from happening is to make sure he never gets near the White House," she said as the audience booed the Republican leader.

The former secretary of state urged her supporters to recognise that the kind of language coming from Trump is hateful, and needs to be repudiated.

"We not only have to work for comprehensive immigration reform, we have to recognise that the kind of language coming from Donald Trump is hateful, and we need to repudiate it," he said amidst cheers from the audience.

Clinton, currently campaigning in California where the primary is scheduled for June 7, said the next president has to meet three tests: Can he actually help families get ahead and stay ahead? Can he keep Americans safe? And can he bring the country together?

"Well, Donald Trump fails all three of those tests. With all the challenges we face in America and in the world, we can't have a loose cannon in the Oval Office. That is a risk we cannot afford," she said, in a repeat of what she told CNN a day earlier.

As president, creating good jobs and raising incomes will be her number one priority, Clinton said.

"We will follow the lead of California and raise the minimum wage across America. We will guarantee equal pay for women's work. I think that's way overdue.

"I will do everything I can to make the economy work for everybody, to help more people lift themselves out of poverty, lift themselves into the middle class, and go as far as their hard work and talents will take them," she said.
West Virginia: Though dogged by a rebellion within his own party, Donald Trump took aim at Hillary Clinton at his first rally as the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, promising to put miners back to work in a struggling region where coal has always been king.

No sooner had he begun speaking in Charleston, West Virginia late Thursday than he launched into an attack on the presumptive Democratic nominee.

"How about Hillary Clinton?" he asked the crowd of some 15,000 gathered in the Charleston Civic Center, hundreds of them wearing red caps emblazoned with Trump`s slogan: "Make America Great Again!"

"She said, I`m going to put the miners and the mines out of business. Then she comes over and she tried to explain her statement. That`s a tough one to explain, wouldn`t you say?"

The line drew a loud chorus of boos.

During the 45-minute speech, the crowd rose to its feet repeatedly, cheering the New York billionaire on as he hailed the country`s beleaguered coal miners.

"I`m thinking about the miners all over this country. We`re going to put the miners back to work. We`re going to put the miners back to work. We`re going to get those mines open," Trump said.

Trump did not have to make the trip to West Virginia, in the heart of Appalachia, since he is now the sole Republican candidate in Tuesday`s primary in the state.

But visiting coal country allowed him to drive home his message to white working class voters, a shrinking segment of the electorate whose support he is counting on in the general election.The coal mines have been closing one after another, and are further threatened by the move to clean energy and away from fossil fuels.

Nearly everyone here has a father or an uncle who is a miner or former miner, either retired or laid off. Trump blamed their troubles on President Barack Obama and his environmental regulations.

"You made this country great. They did not have ridiculous regulations that put you out of business, they did not have these ridiculous rules and regulations that make it impossible for you to compete.

"So, we are going to take all of that off the table and you had better do well and you had better compete and make me proud of you, OK?"

Trump boasted that by centering his campaign on two themes -- trade and illegal immigration -- he had hit a "pot of gold."

He thinks Clinton is most vulnerable on free trade, associating her with her husband former president Bill Clinton`s North American Free Trade Agreement.

In Trump`s telling, the 1993 trade pact with Mexico and Canada "has single-handedly taken vast amounts of our businesses and in particular of manufacturing business and brought them into Mexico."

In West Virginia, Clinton is an easy target. A gaffe she made in March is still on everyone`s lips: she told a town hall audience in Columbus, Ohio that "we`re going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business."

She apologized for her comment on Monday, but families of miners haven`t forgiven her.

"I watched it all, she meant what she said, but she does not understand the kids that she`s affected," said Josette White, whose father and grandfathers were miners, and Democrats.

White voted for Bill Clinton in the 1990s, but today she admires Trump because he "always tells the American people that he loves them."Trump`s supporters often say the same things about him: "He says what he thinks" or "he`s politically incorrect."

In this region, one of the poorest in the country, they often add that they have regained hope because of him.

"We`re tired of all of this -- poverty, no jobs, people leaving West Virginia," said Catherine Cuppari, holding Trump signs under her arm. "I have grandkids, I want them to have jobs here."

The battles within the Republican party seem distant here.

Mark Burns, a black pastor, draws a loud boo from the crowd when he passes on the news that Paul Ryan, the Republican speaker of the House of Representatives, announced he would not support Trump.

"Who is (that)?" asked a woman in her forties.

While in Washington politicians and pundits debate whether Trump can unify the Republicans, one finds in the crowd supporters of Texas Senator Ted Cruz, Trump`s sworn enemy in the primaries.

Tim Tice, a 46-year-old from Maryland, worries that Trump won`t deliver on his promises.

But he added: "We know what we`re getting with Hillary, and it`s what I don`t want, so I`m going to vote for Donald Trump and hope that he will do what he said he was going to do."
Sochi: Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will meet Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday in the Black Sea resort of Sochi in a bid to bolster ties and seek to resolve a decades-long territorial dispute.

Tokyo-Moscow relations have been hamstrung by the row dating back to the end of World War II when Soviet troops seized the four southernmost islands in the Pacific Kuril chain, known as the Northern Territories in Japan.

Japan and Russia's lingering tensions have prevented them ever signing a peace treaty to formally end World War II hostilities, hindering trade and investment ties.

"This is a complex, multi-faceted issue that can only be resolved in a manner acceptable to both sides through an even deeper partnership between the two countries," Putin's chief foreign policy advisor Yury Ushakov said ahead of the visit.

Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida said in April that Russia and Japan had agreed to start negotiations on signing a peace treaty "as soon as possible" after the meeting.

His Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov on a visit to Tokyo last month said Russia wants to "move forward" in relations, but is not prepared to budge on the "result of World War II".

Putin said during a public phone-in in April that he thinks "a compromise could be found at some point -- and it will be found" on the territorial dispute.

Moscow hopes the meeting will help create a "constructive atmosphere in bilateral relations", but "immediate serious progress" is unlikely, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov warned.

Despite the warmer words from the Kremlin, tensions between the two sides continue to surface and Japan has hit Russia with sanctions over the Ukraine crisis.

Russia has in turn angered Japan recently by building new modern compounds for its troops stationed on two of the disputed islands.

Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev also infuriated Tokyo by visiting one of the islands, home to some 19,000 Russians, last year.

Putin said last month he welcomed Abe's visit as it comes despite "pressure from (Japan's) partners, particularly the United States".

Abe will later this month host a summit of the Group of Seven advanced industrial countries, from which Russia has been excluded over its annexation of Crimea.

"Evidently Japan will try to act as a kind of middleman in the talks process between Russia and the US," Russia's government newspaper the Rossiiskaya Gazeta said yesterday.

US President Barack Obama reportedly asking Abe in February to postpone his trip to Russia, according to sources quoted by Japan's Kyodo news agency.

Writing in pro-Kremlin daily Izvestia yesterday, a former deputy foreign minister and ambassador to Tokyo, Alexander Panov, suggested the meeting could see "Japan drop a number of sanctions" it imposed on Russia over Ukraine.
London: London was poised to become the first EU capital with a Muslim mayor Friday as Sadiq Khan took the lead in elections that saw his opposition Labour party suffer nationwide setbacks.

Khan was well ahead of his main opponent, Conservative Zac Goldsmith, in first preference votes after a bitter campaign during which the Goldsmith camp sought to link Khan to Islamic extremists.

The race to replace Boris Johnson pitched two very different candidates against each other -- Khan, the son of a Pakistani bus driver and a seamstress, against Goldsmith, whose father was a wealthy financier.

A Khan victory would offer some cheer for embattled Labour chief Jeremy Corbyn after local election losses elsewhere in England failed to dispel questions over the veteran socialist`s leadership.

Corbyn, who has faced opposition from centrists in his party since becoming leader last year, insisted his party had "hung on" and surpassed expectations.

"All across England last night we were getting predictions that we were going to lose councils. We didn`t," he said.

"We hung on and we grew support in a lot of places."

With results in from 110 out of 124 councils, Labour had 55, down one, and 1,176 seats, down 25.

Prime Minister David Cameron`s Conservatives had control of an unchanged 30 councils and 650 seats, down 23.

A BBC projection suggested that Labour would win 31 percent of the vote share nationally compared to 30 percent for the Conservatives.

"The Labour Party is in serious trouble, although the likely election of a Labour candidate to be London mayor will distract from that," said Matthew Goodwin, politics professor at Kent University.

"The Labour Party is now third in Scotland for the first time since 1910 and it has failed to make a serious impression in southern England".North of the border, Nicola Sturgeon, head of the Scottish National Party (SNP), will lead the separatist party into its third successive government, with devolved powers over most domestic policy issues.

However, she played down talk of a fresh independence referendum to follow the unsuccessful one in 2014 after the SNP lost its outright majority, which will force it to work with a smaller party like the Greens.

"The SNP will always make our case with passion, with patience and with respect but our aim is to persuade not to divide," Sturgeon said.

Aside from the SNP`s win, the other big story in Scotland was the success of the Scottish Conservatives, who came second with 31 seats.

The party has been deeply unpopular in Scotland since the 1980s premiership of Margaret Thatcher but its fortunes have turned around under current leader Ruth Davidson.

Davidson is a charismatic and openly gay 37-year-old whose cheery, no-nonsense style and proficient use of social media has fuelled her party`s success.The voting day dubbed "Super Thursday" in which 45 million Britons were eligible to vote came after a bitter few weeks of sniping between the Conservatives and Labour.

Corbyn set up an inquiry into anti-Semitism and racism in Labour after former London mayor Ken Livingstone was suspended for claiming Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler supported Zionism.

Several other Labour politicians were also suspended.

Cameron is also grappling with deep splits in his party ahead of the June 23 referendum on Britain`s membership of the European Union.

But the prime minister sounded an optimistic note as he met activists Friday.

He called the results "remarkable" and accused Labour of being "so obsessed with their left-wing causes" that they had "lost touch" with voters.

The mayoral campaign has been especially ugly, with Khan, a former human rights lawyer, strongly denying he misstepped by appearing alongside alleged Islamic extremists.

Goldsmith, meanwhile, was accused of "dog whistle" campaigning, including by some from within his own party.

"He started to equate people of conservative religious views with sympathising with terrorism," Andrew Boff, leader of the Conservative group in the London Assembly, told the BBC.

"That sent a message out to many of the communities in London that`s very difficult to justify."
Pyongyang: North Korea kicked off its first ruling party congress for nearly 40 years today, with state media lauding the isolated country's "prestige" as a nuclear power while maintaining a news blackout on the event itself.

The congress drew thousands of selected delegates from across the country to Pyongyang for what, in theory at least, was a gathering of North Korea's top decision-making body.

It also drew around 130 foreign journalists who were invited to cover the event but not allowed inside the venue, restricted instead to watching from a spot 200 metres (yards) away in the light drizzle falling on the capital.

And state television provided no live coverage, devoting its programming to archive material, films and patriotic concerts.

The top story on the main TV evening news at 8:00pm (1130 GMT) was about a special award given to a well-known patriotic song.

The 33-year-old Kim, who was not even born when the last Workers' Party Congress was held in 1980, was believed to have opened the conclave with a keynote address which, when published, will be scrutinised for any sign of a substantive policy shift, especially on the economic front.

Analysts will also be watching for personnel changes as Kim looks to bring in a younger generation of leaders hand-picked for their loyalty.

State media previewed the event by hailing the North's most recent nuclear test in January as evidence of its "greatness and prestige as a nuclear power state."

And the North's Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea slammed the international community's opposition to Pyongyang's nuclear weapons programme.

"Regardless of whether someone recognises it or not, our status as a nuclear state that is armed with H-bombs cannot change," the committee said in a statement.

There has been widespread speculation about the North preparing another nuclear test to coincide with the congress, as a defiant gesture of strength and future intent.

The 1980 event was staged to crown Kim's father Kim Jong-Il as heir apparent to his own father, the North's founding leader Kim Il-Sung.

The 2016 version was being held inside the imposing April 25 Palace, whose stone facade was adorned with huge portraits of the two late leaders, along with giant red and gold ruling party banners.

While the agenda -- and even the duration -- of the congress remains unknown, its main objective is clearly to confirm Kim Jong-Un's status as legitimate inheritor of the Kim family's dynastic rule which spans almost seven decades.

It may also enshrine as formal party doctrine Kim's "byungjin" policy of pursuing nuclear weapons in tandem with economic development.
Punjab province: A Pakistani sweet shop owner has confessed to fatally poisoning at least 30 people by lacing his goods with pesticide in an attempt to take revenge on his older brother, police told AFP Friday.

Khalid Mehmood confessed in a court in central Punjab province that he had poisoned the sweets after his elder brother Tariq, who owned the sweet shop with him, "insulted and abused" him in a business dispute.

"I wanted to teach him a lesson," police investigator Mohammad Afzal quoted him as saying, with the statement confirmed by another senior police official.

"I was so angry that I mixed the pesticides bottle in the sweets being baked at that time."

The poisoned batch of sweets were bought by a local man who gave them to family and friends celebrating the birth of his grandson.

The baby's father, six of his uncles and one aunt were among the 30 killed.

The dead also included five children. Four victims are still in hospital.

Officials had earlier put the toll at 33, but police confirmed Friday it stood at 30.

Police have told local reporters that 52 people consumed the sweets in total.

Both the Mehmood brothers were arrested along with one of their employees.

Investigators initially suspected the poisoning was an accident as a pesticide shop nearby was being renovated and the owner had left his products at the bakery for safe-keeping.

Pakistan has poor food safety standards and hygiene laws are rarely implemented.

The brothers are due to appear in court again on Saturday, Afzal said.
Vatican City: Pope Francis on Friday urged Europe to "tear down" the walls being built to keep out migrants and to create a radical new "social economy" serving the many not the few.

Invoking the memory of the EU`s founding fathers` pursuit of integration in the aftermath of World War II, the pontiff said they inspired because they had "dared to change radically the models" that had led to war.

Saying he dreamed of a Europe in which "being a migrant is not a crime," Francis said: "Today more than ever, their vision inspires us to build bridges and tear down walls."

The comments came in a speech at the Vatican following the 79-year-old pontiff`s presentation with the EU`s Charlemagne Prize for his contribution to European unification.

Having unexpectedly decided to accept the award, Francis delivered a typically hard-hitting message to an audience including German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the heads of the EU`s main institutions, the Council, the Commission, the Parliament and its central bank.

"What has happened to you, the Europe of humanism, the champion of human rights, democracy and freedom?" he asked. "What has happened to you, Europe, the home of poets, philosophers, artists, musicians, and men and women of letters?"

Borrowing a phrase from writer and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, the Argentinian pontiff said Europe needed a "memory transfusion" to free itself from the temptation of "quick and easy short-term political gains."

And after that reference to the migrant crisis, Francis went on to say Europe had to fundamentally change its economic model.

"If we want to rethink our society, we need to create dignified and well-paying jobs, especially for our young people."
Washington: One person died and three were wounded in a pair of shootings on Friday in the suburbs of Washington, and police are investigating if they are linked.

A person of interest is being sought, police said after the first shooting, outside a mall in Bethesda, Maryland.

Three people were wounded in the incident, Montgomery County police said.

Another shooting shortly thereafter, a few miles away in outside a supermarket, left one woman dead.

Students at all public schools in Montgomery County were ordered to shelter in place, police said.
YEREVAN, MAY 6, ARMENPRESS. Armenpress news agency presents the upcoming news for 06.05.2016.

German Bundestag MP, a member of Christian-Democratic Union party, Chairman of Armenian-German Forum Albert Weiler is in Armenia. He had a huge role in the establishment of the Armenian-German Forum and in the recognition of the Armenian Genocide. Today on May 6, Albert Weiler will meet professors, lecturers and students of Yerevan State Linguistic University. Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Germany to Armenia Matthias Kiesler will also participate in the meeting.

New developments are being raised in the internal political life of Turkey. The recent tense relations between Turkish President Erdogan and Prime Minister Davutoglu resulted in letters resignation. Today chief editor of Istanbuls Zhamanak newspaper Ara Gochunyan will speak about the recent Turkish internal political developments and the issues of the Armenian community in Istanbul.

Doctors, soldiers and veterans are at the center of attention for their committed professional duty during the military operations in early of April. A ceremony will be held in Yerevan State Medical University after Mkhitar Heratsi in honor of doctors, Great Patriotic War veterans, as well as courageous and brave soldiers who carried out their professional and military duties during the April four-day war.

The effectiveness of Family living standards enhancement benefits and Medical services to vulnerable and special groups budget programs is being evaluated. Statistical data will be presented and discussion will be followed with the participation of representatives of NGOs, international organizations and the Government.

Today Armenian Minister of Diaspora Hranush Hakobyan will hold a session related to Come Home (Ari tun) and My Armenia devoted to the 25th anniversary of the independence of Armenia programs. These programs are coordinated by the committee and inter-agency working group.

Ayas Nautical Research Club celebrates its 31st anniversary. In this regard, the club will present collection of historical maps, as well as interesting historical events associated with maps.

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YEREVAN, MAY 6, ARMENPRESS. The Defense Ministry of Armenia reports Azerbaijan opening irregular fire overnight at Armenian positions.

The ministrys announcement reads: Overnight May 5-6 the Azerbaijani forces fired irregular shots at Armenian positions using various caliber weapons in the northeastern part of the Armenian-Azerbaijani state border.

The Armenian Armed Forces are confidently monitoring the border situation and take appropriate actions only in case of targeted violations.

According to information received from the Nagorno Karabakhi Defense Army, overnight the situation remained unchanged in the line of contact of Nagorno Karabakhi-Azerbaijani forces.

Azerbaijan violated the ceasefire by firing various caliber weapons, including 82mm mortars and RPG-7 grenade launchers.

The Nagorno Karabakhi forces continue monitoring the borders and take appropriate measures if necessary.
YEREVAN, MAY 6, ARMENPRESS. On 6 May NKR President Bako Sahakyan met chairman of the National Commission on Television and Radio of the Republic of Armenia Gagik Bouniatyan, Press Service of NKR Presidential Administration told Armenpress.

Issues related to the development of TV and Radio Broadcasting as well as widening cooperation between regulating bodies of NKR and Armenia in this field were discussed during the meeting.

Chairman of the NKR State Commission on regulating public services and economic competition Hakob Ghahramanyan also participated in the meeting.
YEREVAN, MAY 6, ARMENPRESS. German CDU MP Albert Weiler emphasizes Germanys role in the peaceful settlement process of the Nagorno Karabakh conflict.

Weiler is currently in Armenia on an official visit and gave an interview to Armenpress.

-As a bearer of European values, are you going to speak about the Azerbaijani war crimes, which it committees during the attacks and mutilated peaceful civilians and beheaded soldiers?

-I speak of this issue both with my colleagues in the Budestag, and with various factions.There are discussions around this issue. Besides, Germany is the chairing OSCE country, maybe it was Germany and our Foreign Minister Steinmeier who also had a role in balancing Russias and USs interests in this conflict, and it seems like Germany succeeded in contributing to de-escalate the situation. People need to understand that consciousness is more important than strength. Consciousness and mutual understanding can do a lot more.

- People, meaning whom?

- In this case, Azerbaijan of course, the people and the country which start the aggression.

- You spoke about Germany chairing OSCE. Armenia and Minsk Group co-chair Russia consider preferable Germanys participation in creating a mechanism for ceasefire violations investigation. Can you expect any steps in the future?

- This is being discussed, for observing or investigation groups to be established, who will be able to report the situation in the line of contact. However it is not easy to realize this, because there are interests, conflicting interests. We are discussing this; well see what will happen.

- Armenia has numerously announced it is for the implementation of those mechanisms, but Azerbaijan not only refuses, but also does not accept the Minsk Groups authority. Even non-Armenians can see that Azerbaijan tries to wreck the negotiations and take attacking steps. Doesnt Europe see this? Doesnt Europe understand this?

- As I said, we are working in this direction, but it is difficult, as you cannot dictate how the sides will act, how the process will go on. We are also negotiating with Azerbaijan about implementing these mechanisms.

- The verbal ceasefire agreement was reached, but anyway we still get news of killed soldiers, who were protecting their homeland. Is this an acceptable variant for Europe, and isnt this a result of non-addressed assessments?

- I understand what you mean, however Europes mechanisms of pressure are limited. There is a line. In comparison I can say that Russia has bigger tools and mechanisms towards both Armenia and Azerbaijan in the region. I think if Russia and Europe reach an agreement on this issue, the result will be better. If Russia and Europe negotiate around the Nagorno Karabakh issue, it can be a very productive thing. Dialogue should be present with Russia; I think our Chancellor is acting very well in this sense, by having good negotiations with Russia. But I say again, this isnt a matter of a week; this requires a lot of work and patience.

- Mr. Weiler, are you planning to visit Nagorno Karabakh and personally review the situation?

- Unfortunately I cannot visit this time due to my schedule, I would love to, but I have to return to Germany Saturday morning.

- Have you ever been to Nagorno Karabakh?

- Ive been there twice; I got to know a wonderful country and very good people.
YEREVAN, MAY 6, ARMENPRESS. Issues within Turkish ruling Justice and Development party will not have an impact on the Armenian community of Istanbul, chief editor of Istanbul Zhamanak newspaper Ara Gochunyan said this during an interview with journalists in the Armenpress press hall.

Issues and changes within the ruling party cannot have neither positive, nor negative influence on the Armenian community. Today there is no ruling crisis in Turkey, simply the political figures should change, whereas the community issues and their solutions have no direct link with the internal political events, Ara Gochunyan said.

Referring to the issue of recent misunderstandings between Erdogan and Davutoglu, Gochunyan said this is associated with taking some powers from Davutoglu.

The head of the party had the right to appoint party branches leaders. At the party convention everybody already were saying that they are the faithful partners of Erdogan. Even a petition was carried out without informing Prime Minister according to which head of the party did not have the power to appoint leaders of party branches. This power was transferred to the party council. This was the point that tensions arose between Erdogan and Davutoglu, he said. Ara Gochunyan stated that there is little possibility that external political factors were on the basis of this tension.

Prime Minister-President tandem have always existed in the international issues which in many cases showed effective results. European leaders are well aware of Erdogans weight, he said.

In response to questions how it is possible the formation of new opposition or fragmentation of the ruling party after Davutoglu-Erdogan incident, Ara Gochunyan said former high-ranking officials still remain within the ruling party and if they try to move against Erdogan, in this case the fragmentation is theoretically possible. However, Erdogan dominates.

Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davotuglu announced on May 5 that he resigns from the head of Justice and Development partys position.
YEREVAN, MAY 6, ARMENPRESS. NA RPA MP, President of the Standing Committee of Defense, National Security and Internal Affairs Koryun Nahapetyan commenting on the Governments decision to approve the draft law on recognizing Nagorno Karabakh (Artsakh) states that Armenia and Nagorno Karabakh discuss the existing situation since the April four-day war has dramatically changed the situation in terms of military, political and foreign dimensions. In this situation we should assess our interests and decide what steps will be beneficial for our people and for our two states. Armenian President clearly stated if Azerbaijan unleashes new military attack, Armenian authorities will recognize the independence of Nagorno Karabakh Republic, Armenpress reports, Koryun Nahapetyan said this to journalists.

He emphasized that the conclusion of MFA on the draft law clearly states that discussions will continue between the two states, and the next steps should be agreed by these discussion results and external factors. These external factors are related also with the activities of the OSCE Minsk Group Co-chairing countries. And our stance was very clear and we announced that it is meaningless to restart negotiations until international community will give Azerbaijan respective response for its military aggression and until there will be guarantees that a new aggression will not be unleashed against Nagorno Karabakh people, MP said.

MP says there are some expectations on proposals made by the Armenian side. This is mainly due to these expectations that we say Armenia and Nagorno Karabakh are determined to the peaceful solution of Nagorno Karabakh conflict. If we see that there is an opportunity to resolve the conflict with peaceful means, we should take advantage of that opportunity. However, the final solution is connected with the developments. We cannot now make complete predictions, MP concluded.
YEREVAN, MAY 6, ARMENPRESS. President of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan had a meeting with Secretary-General of Socialist International (SI) Luis Ayala on May 6.

SI Vice President Mario Nalbandian and ARF Bureau rep. Armen Rostomyan were also present at the meeting.

The President praised the activities of SI, which is uniting socialist and social-democrat political powers from all over the world. Serzh Sargsyan said the values and goals of SI: freedom, justice, peace, are very timely, and unfortunately their lack can be seen throughout the world today.

L. Ayala expressed concern over the situation in Nagorno Karabakh which arose as a consequence of the ceasefire violations in the beginning of April. Ayala and Sargsyan discussed the current situation in Nagorno Karabakh, and Ayala expressed willingness on behalf of the SI to contribute to dialogue, and the peaceful solution via negotiations.

The Secretary General expressed satisfaction with the cooperation with Armenia through the ARF, which is a member of SI.

Ayala said the cooperation with Armenia is strengthening year by year.

Sargsyan and Ayala also discussed regional issues, Armenia-Turkey relations and the international recognition process of the Armenian Genocide.
YEREVAN, MAY 6, ARMENPRESS. On May 6 newly appointed Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Kazakhstan to the Republic of Armenia Timur Urazayev presented the credentials to the President of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan, Press Service of the Presidential Administration informed Armenpress.

Armenian President congratulated the Ambassador for his new position and wished him success. Serzh Sargsyan expressed hope that Ambassador Urazayev will actively contribute to the strengthening of Armenian-Kazakh inter-state relations and the development of mutually beneficial cooperation in trade, economy, humanitarian and other fields.

The interlocutors agreed that there is a great potential for strengthening bilateral relations and there is a necessity to intensify bilateral efforts for the complete use of that potential.

President Sargsyan stressed the importance of bilateral cooperation within the framework of international organizations, as well as integration associations and highlighted the development of Armenian-Kazakh relations within the framework of CSTO, EAEU and CIS based on the respect of mutual interests and allied solidarity.
YEREVAN, MAY 6, ARMENPRESS. Trade Representative of Russia to Armenia Andrey Babko believes Armenia can become a transit route for trade between Iran and other regional countries and Russia. The Armenian market is not so big, but it can become a transit route for Iran, Georgia and other regional countries, most importantly, of course, Iran, Babko told Ria Novosti.

According to Babko, there is huge interest in using the Armenian territory as a transit route, but there is a problem with difficulties in organizing transport logistics. It is necessary to construct a railroad to Iran and continue the construction of the Abkhazian section of the railroad. There are some political issues and the business is looking forward to their solutions, he said.

Besides, Andrey Babko believes that trade expansion with Armenia has great potentials. It is quite possible to supply Armenia with Russian-made machinery-technical production. There is great demand in Armenia and they value our equipment, Babko mentioned, adding that there is significant interest among Armenians in Russian car industry products.

The Russian trade representative mentioned that the Russian business is involved in almost all industrial spheres of Armenia, including agricultural products. Agriculture is now the sector that we are actively engaged in. Here the Russian business is not so strong. Therefore, we should resume talks over Rosagroleasing. Rosselkhozbank will also have its contribution, Babko added.
YEREVAN, MAY 6, ARMENPRESS. Deputy Minister of Health of Armenia Vahan Poghosyan says Armenia will do everything for the recovery of soldiers wounded as a result of Azerbaijani aggression.

Medical assistance issues of servicemen are at the center of attention of Ministrys daily agenda. Ministry is together with our soldiers. We all both the local and the invited specialists should do everything for soldiers recovery both in Armenia and abroad. We try to solve every issue of the patients with the help of Armenian and foreign specialists, Armenpress reports, Deputy Minister said during the meeting where specialists, professors, doctors of University Medical Center Freiburg were taking part.

Armenian Minister of Health Armen Muradyan invited these specialists to Armenia to get acquainted to details of wounded servicemens recovery and to discuss further recovery strategy.

One of the specialists stated that they visited several medical centers and added that everything has done in Armenia like it would have been in Germany. We understand parents worry. Everything was done in the best way, there is no other option. The doctors here are very professional, the impression is very positive, he said adding that they are in constant communication with Armenian specialists.

German specialists visited Erebuni Central Military Hospital and other specialized medical institutions where the wounded receive treatment suffered from military operations.
YEREVAN, MAY 6, ARMENPRESS. The authorities of Baku are again undertaking an unreasonable and absurd step in attempting to inscribe the traditions of preparing Tolma on the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage List, as an element belonging to the entire Turkic world, Armenpress reports Culture Minister of Armenia issued a statement about this, responding the announcement of Azerbaijans Culture Minister.

While getting acquainted with the recent statement by the Minister of Culture of Azerbaijan, it becomes clear that our neighboring country is once again trying to politicize and transform into a battlefield not only the field of culture, but the UNESCO itself an establishment, the mission of which is to unite and bring together nations.

The attempts by Azerbaijani authorities to engage in unhealthy competition do not foster the intercultural dialogue among the nations, thus exacerbating the already tense situation in the region.

The Armenian people have created a rich culture with its unique manifestations, having enriched it via interactions with the cultures of the neighboring countries, at the same time contributing to the latter as well, while never infringing upon them. On the contrary, our neighboring country which possesses a history of less than a hundred years is making attempts to attribute to itself the traditions, history, cultural heritage and achievements of the peoples bearing histories dating back to centuries. This also refers to the policies Azerbaijan adopts and the measures it undertakes within international organizations.

This is not the first time that Azerbaijan initiates retaliatory measures after the items presented by Armenia for inscription on the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage List are approved. Accordingly, we presented lavash and they suddenly discovered that lavash is their national bread and two years later submitted a nomination of their own. The same case was with the dance of Kochari. Generally speaking, in each element they are looking for their own origins and identity turning everything into a dispute.

The Armenian people have their thorough considerations, observations and historical facts in regard to the matter in question. We have no intention whatsoever to engage in discussions and professional debates over a process aimed at self-assertion by utilising the values of the neighboring peoples, which in its essence is neither a new, nor an effective one to follow.

Now the authorities of Baku are undertaking an unreasonable and absurd step in attempting to inscribe the traditions of preparing Tolma on the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage List, as an element belonging to the entire Turkic world. While not possessing any confidence in their own identity and relying on other nations, before submitting a nomination of an item to UNESCO one should not forget the other peoples that are bearers and practitioners of the given element. We would like to remind that the term Turkic refers to a huge ethno-linguistic family, which includes the Kazakhs, the Tatars, the Kyrgyz people, the Turks, the Turkmens, the Uzbeks, the Uyghurs and other peoples. Even if Tolma is a dish common with these peoples, we should not forget to mention its presence within the Arab world and the Balkan and Slavic peoples, and finally the Armenian traditions.

The Armenian people, possessing an ancient culture, a unique alphabet, the centuries-old epic poems, crosstones and the duduk inscribed on UNESCO Lists and, generally speaking- an enormous cultural heritage, cannot afford themselves to get engaged in the Azerbaijani-initiated debates concerning the dish of Tolma.

Today our neighboring country is politicizing and making a subject of dispute almost every issue, not realizing that culture is generally originated and developed for the sake of civilization and peace, while peace is the most precious.
YEREVAN, MAY 6, ARMENPRESS. A regular session of the National Council for Sustainable Development of the Republic of Armenia took place at the Government chaired by PM Abrahamyan. The concept of the implementation strategy of assignments of UN Rio-20 summit elaborated in the sidelines of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, reports on Sustainable development goals, as well as other issues were discussed at the session.

As Armenpress was informed from the press service of the Government, Karine Danielyan, Head of the Association for Sustainable Human Development NGO, introduced the concept of the implementation strategy of assignments of UN Rio-20 summit elaborated in the sidelines of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development to the Council. Particularly, the concept envisages events and programs aimed at sustainable development in the spheres of sustainable management of alternative energy, energy efficiency, agriculture, tourism, education, environmental protection, water resources, waste and other spheres. It was mentioned that the concept was elaborated considering the assignments of Rio-20 summit, as well as researches for sustainable development done in Armenia, problems and challenges. The concept was approved.

It is mentioned in the statement that Foreign Minister of Armenia Edward Nalbandian delivered a report on Sustainable development goals. According to Nalbandian, the summery of the Millennium Development Goals program showed that the UN member states were unable to fully achieve their goals, and the main obstacle for that was the global economic crisis of 2009. Edward Nalbandian had mentioned that despite the crisis had not bypassed Armenia, but according to the study of the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific, Armenia has been the leader in terms of increasing allocations to social welfare from governmental expenditures during those years among the 22 regional countries, recording 21% rise. In the same list Azerbaijan ranked the last.

Summing up, Prime Minister Hovik Abrahamyan expressed satisfaction over the fact that Armenia exceeds a number of countries.
In light of Donald Trump edging out Republican leadership hopefuls Ted Cruz and John Kasich in Indiana this week, cheeky rhetoric enticing Americans to make the move north of the border has picked up once again.

Last month, music streaming site Spotify jumped on the buzz, using the already popular #movingtoCanada hashtag and offering subscribers a tool to find the Canadian equivalent to their favourite American artists. Travel website Hotels.com built a special page inviting people to be a tourist before becoming a resident.

But the reality  and perhaps more importantly  the costs associated with running from Trump by immigrating to the north isnt as easy as switching to Bryan Adams from Bob Dylan.

It sounds nice in the media: Im going to leave and go to Canada  well you cant, unless youve got some kind of (work or family) sponsorship, says Brian Wruk author of The American in Canada and founder of Transition Financial Advisors Group  which helps both Americans and Canadian navigate cross-border finances and retirement. You are not considered refugees, lets put it that way.

In other words, dont hold out for the Trump card. [Editors note: I am sorry.]



In all sincerity it is difficult, says Wruk. Unless youve got a family member to sponsor you or youve got some unique skills that Canada is looking for and therefore have a company that is willing to sponsor you.

And then there are the costs.

Theyre not exorbitant, says Wruk. But they can still stack up.

Yahoo Canada Finance breaks it down:



Immigration fees

This one may seem like a no-brainer but its the little odds and ends associated with the immigration process that get you. Fees differ between the skilled worker or sponsorship categories. For skilled workers, its $550 for the principal applicant, $550 for the spouse, and $150 per child under 22 years old. On the sponsorship side, the Canadian sponsor pays $75 to apply and the person hoping to be sponsored pays $475. Investors, entrepreneurs or self-employed Americans wishing to immigrate to Canada will be hit with a heftier $1,050 fee plus $550 for a spouse and $150 per child under 22.

Story continues

Lawyer up?

While some skip the lawyers and immigration help in favour of doing their own research, theres something to be said for having the extra support.

Of course, it can come with a heft price tag says Brent Soucie, cross-border tax and financial planning specialist and vice president of T.E. Wealth.

Lawyers quote people anywhere from $5,000 to $15,000 depending on the complexity, says Soucie. If you have an employer sponsoring you, thats one thing, that cost is borne by your employer but if you dont, thats $5,000 to ensure you paperwork is done correctly.

Home woes

Nobody likes packing a house and moving boxes but people also dont think about the cost of housing, particularly if youre moving to Ontario or Toronto, says Soucie. Say youre coming from the U.S. mid-west, a 2,000 square-foot home could sell for $300,000  look at what that gets you in Toronto.

And then there are the fees of selling your home.

If your house is worth $300,000 youre going to be paying $15,000 to someone to sell it, he adds.

Just in time for taxes

And then there are the taxes. Soucie refers to a recent middle-aged couple, clients of his, who candidly hinted that their plan of retiring north of the border might have something to do with the political situation stateside.

They didnt say the name Donald Trump but they certainly said U.S. politics are one of the reasons, says Soucie. Theyve lived in Canada before, the husband was born here, so the have some ties.

One element that stood out in the discussion was the difference in taxes.

This is a middle class couple and its going to be about $10,000 a year extra just in income tax, says Soucie. Its things like the cost of housing, income tax rates that floor people thinking of immigrating to Canada  everyone knows that it costs money to move but its sort of the big life changes you have to make when you cross the border that surprise people.

Wruk agrees, pointing out that all joking aside, fleeing the country because of Trump seems a bit excessive.

Trump wont make all the decisions, he has a congress to report to look at all the executive orders Obama had to sign to get things through congress, says Wruk. There are checks and balances in the system  thats the way the country and the constitution were designed from the very beginning. No one man can exert complete control (and) Canadas parliament (functions) the same.


donald trump

Donald Trump isn't hoping to mend broken relationships with many of his detractors from the Republican Party.

Fresh off his decisive win in Indiana, which made him the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Trump told NBC's "Today" on Wednesday that he didn't want the support of Republican leaders who had vigorously opposed his nomination.

"I am confident I can unite much of it," Trump said. "Some of it I don't want."

He continued: "There were statements made about me, and those people can go away and come back after eight years after we serve two terms. Honestly, there are some people I really don't want."

With the decision of Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas to suspend his campaign on Tuesday, Trump is the all-but-certain Republican presidential nominee, needing fewer than 200 delegates to formally secure the nomination.

Still, Trump's controversial rhetoric on the campaign trail  including personal attacks on rivals and inflammatory statements about minority groups  has jeopardized his relationships with former presidential opponents and Republican Party leaders.

During the "Today" interview on Wednesday, hosts Matt Lauer and Savannah Guthrie pressed the real-estate mogul to answer whether he believed it was possible for Cruz to support him. Over the past few months, Trump has lobbed constant rhetorical and social-media attacks at the senator and several immediate family members  including Cruz's father, Rafael, and his wife, Heidi.

"I really don't know," Trump said. "And that goes for other people, too  I don't know. I hope so. In Ted's case, it'd be nice. In other cases, I don't care."

Guthrie pressed Trump to explain why he publicly suggested Tuesday that Rafael Cruz was somehow involved with President John F. Kennedy's assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, even though there was no evidence of any relationship between the two.

"Why in the world would you do that?" Guthrie asked.

"This was just in response to some very, very nasty remarks made about me," Trump responded, saying he had "no idea" that he would win Indiana by a large margin.

Story continues

A handful of prominent Republicans on Tuesday maintained that they would not support Trump's nomination. A former top aide to Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign tweeted out his reluctant support for Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton. Frequent Trump critic Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina indicated at a conference that Clinton had the presidency all but wrapped up.

Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska, another prominent intraparty Trump critic, asserted that neither Trump nor Clinton deserved the presidency.

Overwhelming majority of Americans think both the D and R frontrunners are dishonest.



The people are right.



It matters.#WeCanDoBetter  Ben Sasse (@BenSasse) May 4, 2016

NOW WATCH: Trump just dropped more hints about a possible running mate





More From Business Insider


TORONTO, ONTARIO--(Marketwired - May 5, 2016) - Dundee Precious Metals Inc. (DPM.TO) (the "Company" or "DPM") held its Annual General Meeting of shareholders in Toronto today and is pleased to announce the results of voting. A total of 100,317,264 shares (approximately 71% of the outstanding common shares) were represented, in person or by proxy, demonstrating strong support for the election of its nominees as directors and for the Company's say on pay advisory vote on its approach to executive compensation.

The shareholders appointed the 10 board members (eight of whom are independent), with shares represented at the meeting voting in favour of the individual directors as follows:

R. Peter Gillin 98.53% Jonathan Goodman 99.69% Richard Howes 99.99% Murray John 99.99% Jeremy Kinsman 98.53% Garth A.C. MacRae 91.75% Peter Nixon 98.52% Marie-Anne Tawil 99.98% Anthony P. Walsh 90.30% Donald Young 99.99%

Advisory Say on Pay Vote

The advisory resolution was passed by 95.18% of the votes cast at the meeting, demonstrating overwhelming shareholder support for the Company's approach to compensation. The primary objective of the Company's compensation program is to attract, motivate and retain qualified employees to achieve its corporate objectives, maintain shareholder value and promote greater alignment of interests between its executive officers and shareholders.

About Dundee Precious Metals

Dundee Precious Metals Inc. is a Canadian based, international gold mining company engaged in the acquisition of mineral properties, exploration, development, mining and processing of precious metals. The Company's continuing operating assets include the Chelopech operation, which produces a copper concentrate containing gold and silver and a pyrite concentrate containing gold, located east of Sofia, Bulgaria; and the Tsumeb smelter, a complex copper concentrate processing facility located in Namibia. DPM also holds interests in a number of developing gold and exploration properties located in Bulgaria, Serbia, and northern Canada, including the Krumovgrad project and its 11.8% interest in Sabina Gold & Silver Corp.
File photo of a sign pictured at the entrance to a Planned Parenthood building in New York August 31, 2015. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson (Reuters)

By Brendan O'Brien

(Reuters) - Planned Parenthood, a U.S. women's healthcare and abortion provider, has filed a federal lawsuit against the state of Kansas over a plan to strip it of government healthcare funding, court records showed.

Planned Parenthood says at least 24 states have cut its clinics of funding since mid-2015, when anti-abortion activists released videos purporting to show group officials negotiating prices for aborted fetal tissue.

The footage gave rise to accusations that Planned Parenthood trafficked in body parts, which the group denies.

Abortion continues to be a highly contentious issue in the United States, where the procedure is legal but can be limited and regulated by individual states.

Abortion laws in Kansas are among the strictest in the United States. Last year, a Kansas judge blocked a law signed by Governor Sam Brownback, a Republican, that would have banned a common second trimester abortion procedure.

The Kansas Department of Health and Environment plans to cut Planned Parenthood off from state Medicaid funds beginning next Tuesday, according to court documents.

Planned Parenthood filed its lawsuit against Kansas on Wednesday, arguing the state will break federal law and violate the U.S. Constitution when it follows Brownback's order to cut funding, the court records showed.

"This action challenges the unlawful, unwarranted and politically motivated decision," the suit said.

Brownback, a Republican, has said he would ensure that no taxpayer money would go to Planned Parenthood.

By cutting funds to the organization, he wanted "to protect the unborn and support a culture of life in Kansas," said Eileen Hawley, the governor's spokeswoman, in an email to the Wichita Eagle newspaper published on Wednesday.

In April, federal Medicaid Director Vikki Wachino sent the letter to Medicaid agencies in all 50 U.S. states, warning them against cutting off funds to Planned Parenthood.

Wachino's letter did not name Planned Parenthood directly, but said state Medicaid funds for healthcare providers may only be restricted if the provider cannot perform covered medical services or bill for services appropriately.

(Reporting by Brendan O'Brien in Milwaukee; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky)
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)
Spain has recorded its first case of the Zika-related microcephaly birth defect in the foetus of a pregnant woman who travelled to South America.

The health department for the northeastern region of Catalonia said the woman travelled to the continent some months ago.

"A pregnant woman was infected by Zika and dengue and the foetus has shown various defects," it said in a statement.

Babies with the defect are born with abnormally small heads and sometimes brain damage.

According to official statistics, 105 people in Spain have been infected with the mosquito-borne virus.

Spanish authorities have said all the infection cases - including 13 pregnant women - are "imported cases" found in people either "from, or who have visited affected countries" in Latin America.

The current Zika outbreak began in early 2015 in Brazil, where around 1.5 million infections have been reported. Since then, the epidemic has spread to several other countries in the Americas.

Scientists believe the virus has been responsible for a surge in Brazilian infants born with microcephaly.

There is no vaccine or treatment for the virus, which in most people causes only mild symptoms, such as a rash, joint pain or fever.

In February, Spain confirmed the first case in Europe of a pregnant woman being diagnosed with the Zika virus.

The health ministry said the woman had recently returned from Colombia, where it is believed she was infected.

The World Health Organisation has declared the microcephaly condition a global public health emergency.

It has advised countries not to accept blood donations from people who have visited Zika-affected regions.
The Florida Supreme Court has heard arguments in a case that could see nearly 400 death-row prisoners having their sentences commuted to life terms.

In January, the US Supreme Court struck down Florida's system of imposing death sentences as unconstitutional, because it let judges rather than juries hand down the sentences.

The state then changed its death penalty law to comply with the ruling, but the fate of the 396 death row inmates sentenced under the now-unconstitutional provision has gone in front of the state's high court.

On Thursday, the Florida Supreme Court heard legal argument over the case of Timothy Hurst, 37, who was convicted of murdering his co-worker in 1998.

According to court records, Cynthia Harrison's body was found bound, gagged and stabbed more than 60 times at a Popeyes restaurant in Pensacola, where she worked with Hurst.

Lawyers for Hurst have said that under the now struck down state law, he must be given a new sentencing hearing and be handed down a life term in prison.

They argue that "persons previously sentenced to death for a capital felony are entitled to have their now-unconstitutional death sentences replaced by sentences of life without parole".

That argument has been backed by three former chief justices of the Florida Supreme Court.

Florida has America's second-largest death row, with 396 people as of 1 January, 2016. California has the most, with 743.

The state legislature rewrote the sentencing procedure after the US Supreme Court overturned Hurst's death sentence. It now requires a unanimous jury finding of at least one aggravating circumstance and at least a 10-2 vote to impose a death sentence.

Robert Dunham, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, told the Washington Post that if all of Florida's death sentences are overturned, it would be the biggest reversal since 1972 when the US Supreme Court struck down the death penalty.

Since the Hurst ruling, Florida has halted several scheduled executions.

The state supreme court is expected to take months to reach a decision.
BERLIN (Reuters) - Politicians from Germany's ruling coalition voiced concern on Thursday over Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu's decision to step down, saying his departure paved the way for President Tayipp Erdogan to rule unchecked. Davutoglu is seen in Europe as the more liberal face of the Turkish government, while Erdogan is heavily focused on creating a powerful executive presidency that critics say will tilt Turkey, an EU candidate, toward authoritarianism. Davutoglu negotiated a deal with Brussels on stemming the flow of illegal migrants to Europe, which German Chancellor Angela Merkel hopes will shore up support for her conservatives ahead of a federal election next year. "Erdogan will be able to push ahead with his plans to change the constitution now without opposition from his own ranks," Niels Annen, spokesman on foreign affairs for the Social Democrats, junior party in Merkel's coalition, told Reuters. "In view of the prevailing climate of repression and the current debate about lifting the immunity of opposition lawmakers this is bad news," he said. Erdogan's ruling AK Party has faced accusations of rowing back on media freedoms and also aims to remove lawmakers' immunity from prosecution, a move widely seen as targeting a pro-Kurdish party in the Turkish parliament. Juergen Hardt, foreign affairs spokesman for Merkel's conservatives, also expressed concern about Davutoglu's departure on Thursday. "Turkey will decide itself whether its future path leads to Europe or towards greater isolation," Hardt said in a statement. German politicians have long followed Turkish affairs closely. Germany is home to around three million people with an ethnic Turkish background and is an important trade partner for Turkey. The EU migrant deal with Turkey has been Davutoglu's project and Erdogan, frequently critical of the 28-nation bloc, has appeared at times to belittle his progress. More than one million migrants arrived in Germany last year, many fleeing wars in the Middle East. Their arrival has put pressure on local authorities and helped fuel support for the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) party. (Reporting by Holger Hansen and Caroline Copley; Editing by Gareth Jones)
By Rosie Scammell ROME (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Metal bars have been installed in the doors of an old newspaper office where scores of squatters - asylum seekers, refugees and a few Italians - fear a confrontation with Rome's riot police. The bars went up after the occupants of the former La Stampa office found out about City Hall's plan to evict them, as part of a drive by the Italian authorities to crack down on the growing number of people taking residence in disused buildings. "We'll run to the roof," said one man by a sign calling for a meeting on how his fellow residents should defend themselves. Across Italy, an estimated 10,000 refugees and asylum seekers are living in makeshift settlements, including shanty towns and tents in the open. Many are in limbo awaiting a decision on their asylum claim. Others have been granted refugee status but say the state has done little to help them access social services. Some had tried to reach other European cities before returning to Italy. In all 40 sites have been mapped by medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), including the old offices of La Stampa which is home to 130 people and Turin's former Olympic village which is housing 1,000 people. In a report on the shortcomings of Italy's asylum system, MSF said it had found an invisible population surviving on the margins of society. 'THROWN OUT LIKE RUBBISH' Those living in abandoned buildings find their way there through an informal network of refugees, often after being granted refugee status and leaving asylum seeker centers. In the old La Stampa offices, people live in rooms built with breezeblocks that have made the former newsroom unrecognizable since it was first occupied in October 2013. A note with "do not touch" scrawled in red ink is taped on to a fuse box, indicating where the residents have wired up their own electricity. The inhabitants have built their own bathrooms, including some toilet stalls which are padlocked for privacy, and added a few personal touches like potted plants and a "welcome" mat. But many still struggle with the living conditions. "It is difficult to tell you how cold it gets," said one Eritrean man, who admits being affected mentally and physically by the precarious situation. The 37-year-old, who declined to give his name, reached the Italian island of Lampedusa five years ago and says he was given no support after being granted asylum. "They threw us on the street after they gave us documents, like rubbish," he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. His arrival came around the same time Italy began setting up emergency reception facilities in hotels, former schools and monasteries, to host some of the 56,000 people who fled to Italy in 2011 following uprisings in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya. But these reception centers, which can host roughly 76,000 people, are ill-equipped for refugees, says MSF researcher Giuseppe De Mola. For example, hoteliers paid by the government to turn their rooms over to asylum seekers are unlikely to also run language courses or give jobs advice for those who given refugee status. "So after a year people leave and they don't find any instruments for integration. Problems begin here," De Mola said. GERMANY DOES BETTER? As Italy struggles to cope with housing and integrating its refugee population, the situation appears markedly different in Germany, Europe's biggest economy. Last year the government also opened emergency shelters to accommodate around 1 million arrivals, but despite the strain the U.N. refugee agency says the system is working well. "With the decreasing numbers (in 2016), those emergency shelters are more or less empty and the government is trying to move people to more permanent shelters," Martin Rentsch from UNHCR Germany told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. Those who gain refugee status are given the same housing benefits as German citizens and can stay in reception facilities if they are unable to find an apartment. "They are not forced out. People are not thrown out, they are not thrown into homelessness," Rentsch said. In Italy there are fears more people could find themselves stranded in the country and living in squats, with 83,000 asylum requests lodged last year out of 150,000 arrivals by boat. So far this year around 28,000 people have reached Italy by sea, a similar number to the same period in 2015. The Italian government has already tightened controls on squats, cracking down the unauthorized use of resources which has left half of the settlements without water and electricity. De Mola said in one squat in Padua, northern Italy, residents are forced to share an outdoor hosepipe to wash. Getting treated by health workers is difficult. Just 13 percent of asylum seekers interviewed by MSF said they accessed state medical facilities, with 21 percent helped by charities and the remaining 66 percent having no treatment. Refugees fared better, with 58 percent of them saying they were treated by the state, while 31 percent said they had no access to healthcare. Italy's interior ministry did not respond to a request for comment, while Rome's prefecture - in charge of the emergency reception centers - said via email it was not responsible for offering assistance to those living outside the official system. Rome's City Hall officials declined to comment ahead of elections in June in the capital, which is currently without a mayor and being served by an emergency administration following a scandal, which saw millions of euros in state funds siphoned off from areas including asylum-seeker facilities. Back in the old La Stampa office, few believe the outcome of the investigation or the mayoral vote will make a difference. "Here they treat you like animals," said the Eritrean resident. "In other places it's not like this. In other countries they give you a home." (Reporting by Rosie Scammell. 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)
By Aidan Lewis and Ayman al-Warfalli TUNIS/BENGHAZI, Libya (Reuters) - By defiantly attempting to export their own oil and dispatching troops towards the centre of the country, Libya's eastern factions may be gambling on force as they bid for a larger stake under a U.N.-backed unity government. It could be a costly bet, one that ignites renewed conflict between east and west over territory, slashes oil production, and pushes Libya closer to a split that has threatened the country since the uprising that ousted Muammar Gaddafi five years ago. The unity deal, signed in December despite opposition from hardliners, was meant to end the divide between rival governments in Tripoli and the east who have vied for control over the country and its oil resources since 2014, backed by competing factions of former anti-Gaddafi rebels. But in an ominous early sign of a possible new showdown, eastern and western factions have sent separate armoured columns towards Gaddafi's home town Sirte, now in the hands of fighters from Islamic State. Western powers see the unity government as the best hope for ending the chaos. The Government of National Accord(GNA) has slowly begun to establish itself in the capital since arriving a month ago. But it has done so with the help of armed factions from the western city of Misrata that backed the previous Tripoli government, hardening suspicions among easterners that they will be sidelined. A claim by the GNA's Presidential Council to leadership over any unified campaign against Sirte drew angry responses from the east, where hardliners already harboured federalist ambitions. "The nation is facing internal and external conspiracies ... to destroy the army and support the militias in Tripoli," said Ali al-Qatrani, an ally of the eastern military and one of two Council members who have suspended their membership. The eastern government's parliament, the House of Representatives, already repeatedly failed to vote to accept the unity government, after rejectionists blocked attempts to even hold a ballot. Last month, a new oil company set up by the eastern government attempted to ship its first exports of oil without permission from Tripoli. The United Nations responded by blacklisting the tanker carrying 650,000 barrels of crude. [nL5N17X0KB] On Tuesday, the east prevented a tanker from loading on behalf of the Tripoli-based National Oil Corporation (NOC), a move that puts production from eastern fields at risk. [nL5N1806LG] Tripoli's NOC has kept the oil industry running since Libya's 2011 uprising, with the income channelled through the Tripoli-based central bank to pay salaries across the country. "If they can show that the east can sell its own oil and earn its own revenue, that is a hugely damaging step which would lead to reinforcing the view in the east that they can go it alone," said a Western diplomat. REGIONAL RIVALRIES After Gaddafi's fall, a gulf between east and west has slowly widened, especially after an alliance of Islamist-leaning Tripoli and Misrata militias took over the capital in 2014 and created their own self-declared government. The government that had been in place before that revolt decamped to the east, and most of the armed groups that prowl Libya's streets ended up siding with one of the two competing alliances. As they vied for control of dwindling oil revenues over the past two years, the eastern government tried to set up parallel branches of the National Oil Corporation and the central bank. It also appointed a former Gaddafi ally, General Khalifa Haftar, as the head of its armed forces, the Libyan National Army (LNA). His role in any national military force as a possible defence minister or army chief has become one of the most divisive problems. For two years Haftar has been waging a campaign, primarily in Benghazi, the biggest city of the east, against Islamist militants and other former rebels who view him as an Egyptian-backed relic of the old regime with presidential ambitions. The military leadership has its own divisions, but after a long deadlock the LNA has made significant gains in parts of Benghazi since February, boosting Haftar's popularity and emboldening his political allies. Residents returning to their homes in areas of Benghazi retaken by the army say they have Haftar and the LNA to thank. Shop assistants offer troops free food and cigarettes, and children pose for photos with soldiers in uniform. No town, prominent tribe or key politician in the east has "publicly and strongly supported" the unity government or the deal that created it, said Mohamed Eljarh, a non-resident fellow at the Atlantic Council who is based in eastern Libya. They are holding out for "a different deal, a better deal, that reflects their strength and the advances that they have been making," he said. After its Benghazi success the LNA says it is getting ready to advance on Sirte from the east, while brigades from Misrata are reportedly preparing to advance from the west. Eyewitnesses told Reuters that more than 100 LNA vehicles, including ambulances, armoured cars and troop carriers were mobilising, and pictures posted on social media showed dozens of military pick-up trucks on the road south from Misrata. That prompted the Presidential Council to warn that without coordination, there could be fresh conflict between the two rival forces, to the benefit of Islamic State. [nL5N17V8AP] On Tuesday officials said there were skirmishes between the LNA and Misrata-affiliated groups about 300 km (185 miles) south of Sirte. Political groups were still attempting to salvage a comprehensive deal, but the situation was in "total turmoil", said eastern parliament member Abubakr Buera. "People in the east are trying to react, they feel like they are being endangered by this political process," he said. "We all agree that Libya needs a single government, but we differ about how to do it." (Additional reporting by Ahmed Elumami in Tripoli; editing by Patrick Markey and Peter Graff)
CBC

Ethan Reilly loved to help people, laugh with his buddies and ride anything with a motor. The first Rufus Run  Ethan was called Rufus around the neighbourhood  had it all on Sunday in West Prince, P.E.I. Though Reilly wasn't there in person, he was on the minds of everyone who was. "He was one that always loved to have fun and a few laughs and I hope that's what everyone here can do, remember Ethan and think of him, his laughs and some experiences they had with him," said his mother, Kim Reill
FRIDAY, May 6, 2016 (HealthDay News) -- Walking the dog may be a health boon for older Americans, new research suggests.

Dog walking helps cut back on excess weight and the overall need to visit a physician while raising overall moderate and vigorous exercise levels among the over-60 set, investigators found.

And the strong emotional bonds formed between owner and pet offer social benefits, encouraging increased contact with other pet owners.

"There is a wealth of evidence that walking is beneficial for people's physical health," said study lead author Angela Curl. She is an assistant professor in the department of family studies and social work at Miami University, in Oxford, Ohio.

"[And] what makes dog walking unique is the relationship between people and their dogs, as well as the ways dogs can motivate walking behavior," she added. "Other studies have shown dogs' needs provide a motivation to get out and walk. Our findings illustrate that the emotional bond people have with their dogs may play an important role in getting out to walk."

Curl and her colleagues discussed their work in a recent issue of The Gerontologist.

The authors noted that in 2014, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended that all adults, regardless of age, rack up a minimum of 150 minutes of moderate activity every week.

Walking happens to be the most frequent exercise activity among adults 60 and up.

To explore the impact of dog ownership on that, the investigating team analyzed data involving a nationally representative sample of 771 men and women (50 years old and up) collected in 2012 by the Health and Retirement Study. That investigation was conducted at the University of Michigan, with funding from the U.S. National Institute on Aging.

Just over a third of the participants (271) owned at least one dog. Pet ownership involving other types of animals was not considered.

A portion of the dog owners group was asked questions to gauge pet "bonding," including whether they considered their dog a friend, and whether they talked about their dog with others.

Frequency and overall time spent walking was also assessed, as were overall walking habits, walking speed and total distance walked per week.

The result: While owning a dog was not directly associated with having better overall health among those 60 and up, it was associated with a lower body mass index (a measure of weight and obesity status); fewer physical limitations; less frequent visits to a doctor; and more routine exercise. The study didn't prove a cause-and-effect relationship, however.

But would owning other types of pets also pay a health dividend?

"Other research studies have found that cats and dogs can help reduce loneliness as well as improve health outcomes such as cortisol [stress hormone] levels, cholesterol, and systolic blood pressure," said Curl. "However, we need a lot more research about the potential health benefits of other species of pets, and who might benefit the most [or] least from pet ownership."

Daniel Promislow, an American Federation for Aging Research (AFAR) spokesperson, and director of the Canine Longevity Consortium at the University of Washington in Seattle, heralded the special benefits of dog ownership.

"On average, dog owners walk more," he said, "and score better on stress tests and other measures of psychological well-being. There is even some suggestion in the scientific literature that owning a dog is associated with a lower risk of various diseases [perhaps from that extra exercise], and faster recovery times when disease does occur.

"So it would seem that for people in their later years, there are a variety of benefits that come from having a companion dog," Promislow said.

Dr. Alice Pomidor, a geriatrics professor at Florida State University College of Medicine in Tallahassee, noted that in general, "pet ownership can lead to increased physical activity, as well as a greater sense of feeling connected to your community and to other pet owners.

"For many older adults, pets are also a great source of comfort after close friends, relatives or partners have passed away," she added. "Hospice and long-term care facilities often have pets for comfort, support and recreation."

More information

There's more on the health benefits of dog ownership at Harvard Medical School.
Hawaii Moves to Ban Endangered Species Products

This past Tuesday, Hawaii's legislature joined states such as New York, New Jersey, California, and Washington in passing a law that restricts the sale of wildlife products made from endangered species. Under the new law, SB 2647, it will be illegal to sell products made from elephants, rhinoceroses, mammoths, hippopotamus, pangolins, tigers, lions, cheetahs, jaguars, leopards, great apes, monk seals, walruses, narwhals and other whales, sea turtles, sharks, and rays.

This was a historic vote for Hawaii, whose unique geographical position makes it a gateway between the United States and Asia, where consumer demand for wildlife products such as ivory has increased in recent years.

The International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) and its partners recently conducted a six-day investigation in Hawaii that found 1,862 advertisements for specific wildlife products, totaling over 4,600 items worth some $1.2 million. With dozens of flights and ships entering its ports and airports daily from across Asia and the Pacific, Hawaii was the biggest remaining market in the U.S. ivory trade, and the pending passage of this law means that the top three U.S. markets (Hawaii, California, and New York) are now crossed off the board.

New Jersey (ivory and rhino) and Washington (a multi-species ban) also have stepped up in recent years.

Hawaii citizens offered unwavering support for this bill with a recent poll revealing that 85 percent of Hawaii residents and voters back legislation to ban sales of products that use endangered wildlife species. Additionally, the bill was supported by well-known celebrity advocates who penned an open letter in the Honolulu Star-Advertiser last week urging its passage.

Animal species around the world are being devastated because of demand for their parts and products. But state laws like Hawaii's are an important piece of the puzzle to end the poaching crisis. We have the responsibility to protect animal life and need to work together on every level to end the trade that is driving elephants, rhinos, and hundreds of other species toward extinction.

Jeff Flocken is a regional director for IFAW.
By Dmitry Zhdannikov and Rania El Gamal LONDON/DUBAI (Reuters) - As OPEC officials gathered this week to formulate a long-term strategy, few in the room expected the discussions would end without a clash. But even the most jaded delegates got more than they had bargained with. "OPEC is dead," declared one frustrated official, according to two sources who were present or briefed about the Vienna meeting. This was far from the first time that OPEC's demise has been proclaimed in its 56-year history, and the oil exporters' group itself may yet enjoy a long life in the era of cheap crude. Saudi Arabia, OPEC's most powerful member, still maintains that collective action by all producers is the best solution for an oil market that has dived since mid-2014. But events at Monday's meeting of OPEC governors suggest that if Saudi Arabia gets its way, then one of the group's central strategies - of managing global oil prices by regulating supply - will indeed go to the grave. In a major shift in thinking, Riyadh now believes that targetting prices has become pointless as the weak global market reflects structural changes rather than any temporary trend, according to sources familiar with its views. OPEC is already split over how to respond to cheap oil. Last month tensions between Saudi Arabia and its arch-rival Iran ruined the first deal in 15 years to freeze crude output and help to lift global prices. These resurfaced at the long-term strategy meeting of the OPEC governors, officials who report to their countries' oil ministers. According to the sources, it was a delegate from a non-Gulf Arab country who pronounced OPEC dead in remarks directed at the Saudi representative as they argued over whether the group should keep targeting prices. Iran, represented by its governor Hossein Kazempour Ardebili, has been arguing that this is precisely what OPEC was created for and hence "effective production management" should be one of its top long-term goals. But Saudi governor Mohammed al-Madi said he believed the world has changed so much in the past few years that it has become a futile exercise to try to do so, sources say. "OPEC should recognise the fact that the market has gone through a structural change, as is evident by the market becoming more competitive rather than monopolistic," al-Madi told his counterparts inside the meeting, according to sources familiar with the discussions. "The market has evolved since the 2010-2014 period of high prices and the challenge for OPEC now, as well as for non-OPEC (producers), is to come to grips with recent market developments," al-Madi said, according to the sources. ORCHESTRATION For decades Saudi Arabia had a preferred oil price target and if it didn't like the prevailing market level, it would try to orchestrate a production cut or increase in OPEC. It would contribute the lion's share of the adjustment and forgive smaller and poorer members if they failed to comply with the group's agreement. Back in 2008, the late King Abdullah named $75 (52 pounds) a barrel as the kingdom's "fair" oil price, most likely after consultations with the long-serving oil minister Ali al-Naimi. When the Saudis orchestrated the last output cut in 2008 - to support prices during the global economic crisis - oil jumped fairly quickly back above $100 from below $40. Later Riyadh again made known its price preference on a few occasions but in recent years it has effectively stopped sending any signals. This follows the fundamental changes on oil markets. In the past five years, the development of unconventional oil production from U.S. shale deposits and other sources such as Canadian oil sands has made redundant the idea that crude is a scarce and finite resource. Russia, which is not an OPEC member, has also contributed to the ample global supply. "NO FREE RIDERS" Dispensing with price targets represents a massive change in Saudi thinking. This is now being driven largely by 31-year-old Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who took over as the ultimate decision maker of the country's energy and economic policies last year. When oil was viewed as scarce, the kingdom thought it had to maximise its long-term revenues even if that meant pumping fewer barrels and yielding market share to rival producers, according to several sources familiar with the Saudi thinking. With the importance of oil declining, Riyadh has decided it is wiser to prioritise market share, the sources say. It believes it will be better off producing more at today's low prices than reducing output, only to sell the oil for even less in the future as global demand ebbs. On top of this, Riyadh has pressing short-term needs including tackling a budget deficit which hit 367 billion riyals (68 billion pounds) or 15 percent of gross domestic product in 2015. "The oil industry is, relatively speaking, not a growth industry any more," said one of the sources familiar with the Saudi views inside the OPEC governors' meeting. In the past, low oil prices used to push global demand much higher but today's rising efficiency of motor vehicles, new technology and environmental policies have put a lid on growth. Despite record low prices in the past year, demand is not expected to grow by more than 1 million barrels per day in 2016, just one percent of global demand. One thing is guaranteed: the kingdom will not go back to the old pattern of cutting output any time soon to support prices for the benefit of all producers, Saudi sources say. "The bottom line is that there will be no free riders any more," al-Madi said at Monday's meeting. "Some OPEC members should 'walk the talk' first," he told his colleagues. Even Riyadh's rivals doubt it will perform any U-turn. "Saudi Arabia doesn't give a damn about OPEC any more. They are after U.S. shale, Canadian oil sands and Russia," a non-Gulf OPEC source said. (Additional reporting by Alex Lawler; writing by Dmitry Zhdannikov; editing by David Stamp)
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Data are Presented at the American Urological Association Annual Meeting,

6-10 May 2016, San Diego

IRVINE, CA, and HERSTAL, BELGIUM - 06 May, 2016 - MDxHealth SA (Euronext: MDXH.BR) is presenting positive data demonstrating the prognostic value of its SelectMDx and ConfirmMDx tests for Prostate Cancer test at the 2016 American Urological Association Annual Meeting hold between 6-10 May 2016 in San Diego, California, USA. These data, which are presented in two separate poster presentations, demonstrate that:

The application of a risk score based on SelectMDx  test results combined with traditional clinical risk factors was shown to be significantly better at stratifying men with aggressive and non-aggressive prostate cancer than current clinical methods.



The use of ConfirmMDx to help physicians decide which men are at lower risk of harboring aggressive prostate cancer resulted in a 65% reduction in the rate of unnecessary repeat biopsies. The study showed that men with high-grade prostate cancer are most likely to be identified through a positive ConfirmMDx test result.

Dr Jan Groen, Chief Executive Officer of MDxHealth, comments: "These data offer further validation of our two flagship tests for prostate cancer and provides additional evidence that our diagnostic assays can add important information to standard clinical practices when identifying men at high risk of the aggressive form of prostate cancer. Therefore reducing the amount of unnecessary invasive biopsy procedures."

Further details of the studies can be found below.

Identification of High-Grade Prostate Cancer using Urine-based Molecular Biomarkers Combined with Clinical Risk Factors

Sunday, May 8, 2016 1:00 PM-3:00 PM

SDCC: Room 24

http://www.aua2016.org/abstracts/files/presenter_VanCriekingeWim-Ghent.cfm

Clinical Utility of an Epigenetic Assay to Reduce Unnecessary Repeat Prostate Biopsies

Sunday, May 8, 2016 8:00 AM-10:00 AM

SDCC: Room 28DE

http://www.aua2016.org/abstracts/files/presenter_HafronJason-RoyalOak-MI.cfm

About SelectMDx for Prostate Cancer

Of the nearly 2 million prostate biopsies performed each year, less than a third find cancer. Most of these men could have avoided a painful and invasive prostate biopsy procedure, with its associated side effects and costs. SelectMDx for Prostate Cancer is a proprietary urine-based, molecular diagnostic test that offers a non-invasive "liquid biopsy" method to identify patients at low risk for prostate cancer, helping to both reduce unnecessary prostate biopsy procedures with their concomitant complications and expense and to identify those men at increased risk of harbouring high-grade disease who may benefit most from earlier detection.

About ConfirmMDx for Prostate Cancer

ConfirmMDx for Prostate Cancer is the first epigenetic, and only tissue-based test in the 2016 NCCN Guidelines for early detection of prostate cancer which addresses false negative biopsy concerns. It is the only molecular diagnostic test that provides a very high negative predictive value (NPV) of 96% for clinically significant prostate cancers, and 90% NPV for all prostate cancers, as well as prostate mapping of the test results to help guide repeat biopsies. Each year, more than 1 million American men undergo an invasive prostate biopsy with a negative result, however approximately 30% of those men actually have prostate cancer. The current standard of care for prostate biopsy procedures samples less than 1% of the prostate, leaving men at risk for undetected cancer and leading to a high rate of repeat biopsies, even on cancer-free men. ConfirmMDx for Prostate Cancer helps urologists identify low-risk men who may forego an unnecessary repeat biopsy and high-risk men who may benefit from intervention. To date nearly 2,800 urologists have ordered ConfirmMDx on more than 40,000 patients. ConfirmMDx has qualified for Medicare reimbursement and is also available to more than 152 million insured lives via private health insurance plans.

About MDxHealth

MDxHealth is a multinational healthcare company that provides actionable molecular diagnostic information to personalize the diagnosis and treatment of cancer. The company's tests are based on proprietary gene methylation (epigenetic) and other molecular technologies and assist physicians with the diagnosis of cancer, prognosis of recurrence risk, and prediction of response to a specific therapy. For more information visit mdxhealth.com and follow us on Twitter at: twitter.com/mdxhealth.

For more information:







Dr. Jan Groen, CEO

MDxHealth

US: +1 949 812 6979

BE: +32 4 364 20 70

info@mdxhealth.com















Amber Fennell, Chris Welsh, Hendrik Thys (PR & IR)

Consilium Strategic Communications

UK: +44 20 3709 5701

Cell: + 44 7739658783

mdxhealth@consilium-comms.com

This press release contains forward-looking statements and estimates with respect to the anticipated future performance of MDxHealth and the market in which it operates. Such statements and estimates are based on assumptions and assessments of known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors, which were deemed reasonable but may not prove to be correct. Actual events are difficult to predict, may depend upon factors that are beyond the company's control, and may turn out to be materially different. MDxHealth expressly disclaims any obligation to update any such forward-looking statements in this release to reflect any change in its expectations with regard thereto or any change in events, conditions or circumstances on which any such statement is based unless required by law or regulation. This press release does not constitute an offer or invitation for the sale or purchase of securities or assets of MDxHealth in any jurisdiction. No securities of MDxHealth may be offered or sold within the United States without registration under the U.S. Securities Act of 1933, as amended, or in compliance with an exemption therefrom, and in accordance with any applicable U.S. securities laws.

NOTE: The MDxHealth logo, MDxHealth, ConfirmMDx, SelectMDx and PredictMDx are trademarks or registered trademarks of MDxHealth SA. All other trademarks and service marks are the property of their respective owners.
LEXINGTON, Ky., May 06, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Rhino Resource Partners LP (OTCQB:RHNOD) (Rhino or the Partnership) announced today its financial and operating results for the quarter ended March 31, 2016. For the quarter, the Partnership reported a net loss of $1.2 million and Adjusted EBITDA of $6.6 million, compared to a net loss of $3.9 million and Adjusted EBITDA of $6.2 million in the first quarter of 2015. Diluted net loss per common unit was $0.33 for the quarter compared to diluted net loss per common unit of $1.29 for the first quarter of 2015. Total revenues for the quarter were $40.4 million, with coal sales generating $36.7 million of the total, compared to total revenues of $56.2 million and coal revenues of $45.6 million in the first quarter of 2015. (Refer to Reconciliations of Adjusted EBITDA included later in this release for reconciliations to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures).



The Partnership continued the suspension of the cash distribution for its common units for the current quarter. No distributions will be paid for common or subordinated units for the quarter ended March 31, 2016.

Joe Funk, President and Chief Executive Officer of Rhinos general partner, stated, We continue to focus on cash generation during these ongoing difficult coal market conditions. We successfully managed our costs during the quarter to offset lower coal revenues, which kept our debt levels relatively flat during the quarter. Our balance sheet remains strong with this relatively low debt level compared to many competitors in the coal industry along with our low level of legacy liabilities. We continue to work with our creditors to extend our credit agreement to December 2017.

As previously announced, we are exploring the development of the Encore Global Commodities LLC (Encore) joint venture with ION Carbon & Minerals, LLC (Ion Carbon), an wholly owned subsidiary of AMCI Holdings, Inc. (collectively referred to as AMCI). We look forward to the opportunity for Encore to become a significant marketing entity for all Rhino coals and we are excited about this opportunity to build a relationship with AMCI and the potential value this joint venture could bring to our unitholders. The introduction of the Encore joint venture opportunity to us by Royal Energy Resources, Inc. (OTCQB:ROYE) (Royal) is an example of the new relationships and business opportunities that Royal can provide as our new general partner. We look forward to further utilizing Royals insight and market strategies that will provide us the opportunity to grow our cash flow in the future.

Safety remains a top priority at all of our operations as we continue to manage through these difficult coal market conditions. Natural gas prices remain at historic lows and have continued to adversely affect the steam coal markets. We have resumed mining operations at a majority of our Central Appalachia operations in 2016 to fulfill customer contracts that we secured for the upcoming year. Future market conditions will determine the duration that our remaining Central Appalachia operations remain idle.

Productivity improvements at Pennyrile have lowered costs and improved the coal recovery rates at this operation. Pennyrile became a positive cash flow producer for Rhino during the first quarter as we have increased production and sales to meet our contracted positions for 2016. We are fully contracted for 2016 at Pennyrile with 1.2 million tons forecast to be produced and sold this year. We believe Pennyrile will be a positive cash flow provider for the Partnership for the remainder of 2016 at these production and sales levels. Pennyrile gives us additional diversification and we expect it to be a significant generator of stable cash flow as it ramps up to its full potential run rate of two million tons per year.

In Northern Appalachia, we experienced delays from customers accepting shipments from Hopedale that adversely affected our Northern Appalachia results in the quarter. We continue to manage our cost structure, which has improved at our Hopedale operation, but we believe the production of low-priced natural gas in this region has continued to reduce the demand for Northern Appalachia steam coals. We have successfully negotiated with our Hopedale customers to ship their 2015 carryover tons in 2016 and we continue to seek acceptable sales contracts for the remainder of Hopedales 2016 open sales position. Our Sands Hill operation in Northern Appalachia continued to produce positive results in the quarter. At Rhino Western, our Castle Valley operation was a positive cash generator during the first quarter. Castle Valley remains fully contracted for 2016 and we expect it to be a positive cash flow producer for the Partnership for the remainder of the year.

Coal Operations Update

Pennyrile

Pennyriles sales are fully contracted through 2016 and 2017 at current production levels.

Productivity improvements at Pennyrile have lowered costs, improved coal recovery rates and turned this operation into a positive cash flow producer during the first quarter of 2016.

Rhinos Pennyrile operations produced approximately 327,000 tons during the first quarter while coal sales were approximately 316,000 tons.

Northern Appalachia

For the first quarter, year-over-year coal revenues per ton decreased $4.31 to $54.29 due to a higher mix of lower priced tons from our Sands Hill operation.

Sales volume was 122,000 tons, versus 251,000 tons in the prior year and 139,000 tons in the prior quarter. Sales were constrained in the quarter due to customers delaying shipments from our Hopedale operation.

Sales at Rhinos Sands Hill operations in Northern Appalachia are fully contracted through 2016.

Rhino Western

Coal revenues per ton in the quarter increased to $38.08 versus $36.90 in the prior year and $36.96 in the prior quarter. Coal revenues per ton increased due to higher contracted prices for coal from Rhinos Castle Valley mine. Sales volume was 252,000 tons versus 229,000 tons in the prior year and 218,000 tons in the prior quarter.

Cost of operations per ton was $32.48 versus $33.70 in the prior year and $34.96 in the prior quarter. Castle Valley had lower maintenance and other expenses in the current quarter, which led to the quarter-to-quarter decrease in cost of operations per ton.

Castle Valleys sales remain fully contracted through 2016.

Central Appalachia

Coal revenues per ton in the quarter was $56.00 versus $64.22 in the prior year and $63.20 in the prior quarter. Metallurgical coal revenue per ton in the quarter was $81.61 versus $77.39 in the prior year and $97.30 in the prior quarter. Steam coal revenue in the quarter was $51.02 per ton versus $57.72 in the prior year and $42.84 in the prior quarter. Sales volume was 100,000 tons in the quarter versus 237,000 in the prior year and 75,000 tons in the prior quarter.

Cost of operations per ton in the quarter was $29.99 versus $54.23 in the prior year and $91.33 in the prior quarter.

Rhinos Central Appalachia mining operations were idle in the fourth quarter to reduce excess inventory stockpiles, which caused the increase in cost of operations per ton in the fourth quarter compared to the current quarter.

Rhino resumed mining operations at a majority of its Central Appalachia operations in 2016 to fulfill customer contracts that were secured for 2016. Future market conditions will determine the duration that the remaining Central Appalachia operations remain idle.

Royal Acquisition and Capital Transaction

On March 17, 2016, Royal completed the acquisition of all of the issued and outstanding membership interests of Rhino GP LLC as well as 9,455,252 issued and outstanding subordinated units from Wexford Capital LP. Royal obtained control of, and a majority limited partner interest, in the Partnership with the completion of this transaction.

On March 21, 2016, the Partnership and Royal entered into a securities purchase agreement (the Securities Purchase Agreement) pursuant to which the Partnership issued 60,000,000 common units in the Partnership to Royal in a private placement at $0.15 per common unit for an aggregate purchase price of $9.0 million. Royal paid the Partnership $2.0 million in cash and delivered a promissory note payable to the Partnership in the amount of $7.0 million. The promissory note is payable in three installments: (i) $3.0 million on July 31, 2016; (ii) $2.0 million on or before September 30, 2016 and (iii) $2.0 million on or before December 31, 2016. In the event the disinterested members of the board of directors of the General Partner determine that the Partnership does not need the capital that would be provided by either or both installments set forth in (ii) and (iii) above, in each case, the Partnership has the option to rescind Royals purchase of 13,333,333 common units and the applicable installment will not be payable (each, a Rescission Right). If the Partnership fails to exercise a Rescission Right, in each case, the Partnership has the option to repurchase 13,333,333 common units at $0.30 per common unit from Royal (each, a Repurchase Option). The Repurchase Options terminate on December 31, 2017. Royals obligation to pay any installment of the promissory note is subject to certain conditions, including that the Operating Company has entered into an agreement to extend the Amended and Restated Credit Agreement, as amended, to a date no sooner than December 31, 2017. In the event such conditions are not satisfied as of the date each installment is due, Royal has the right to cancel the remaining unpaid balance of the promissory note in exchange for the surrender of such number of common units equal to the principal balance of the promissory note divided by $0.15.

Reverse Unit Split

On April 18, 2016, the Partnership completed a 1-for-10 reverse split on its common units and subordinated units. Pursuant to the reverse split, common unitholders received one common unit for every 10 common units owned on April 18, 2016 and subordinated unitholders received one subordinated unit for every 10 subordinated units owned on April 18, 2016. Any fractional units resulting from the reverse unit split were rounded to the nearest whole unit. The reverse unit split was intended to increase the market price per unit of Rhinos common units in order to comply with the New York Stock Exchanges (NYSE) continued listing standards.

Suspension and Delisting of Common Units from the NYSE

As previously reported, on December 17, 2015, the Partnership was notified by the NYSE that the NYSE had determined to commence proceedings to delist its common units representing limited partner interests in the Partnership from the NYSE as a result of the Partnerships failure to comply with the continued listing standard set forth in Section 802.01B of the NYSE Listed Company Manual to maintain an average global market capitalization over a consecutive 30 trading-day period of at least $15 million for its common units. The NYSE also suspended the trading of the Partnerships common units at the close of trading on December 17, 2015. The NYSE also informed the Partnership that it would apply to the SEC to delist its common units upon completion of all applicable procedures, including any appeal by the Partnership of the NYSEs decision. On January 4, 2016, the Partnership filed an appeal with the NYSE to review the suspension and delisting determination of its common units. The NYSE held a hearing regarding the Partnerships appeal on April 20, 2016 and affirmed its prior decision to delist the Partnerships common units. On April 27, 2016, the NYSE filed with the SEC a notification of removal from listing and registration on Form 25 to delist the Partnerships common units and terminate the registration of the Partnerships common units under Section 12(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. The delisting will become effective on May 9, 2016. The Partnerships common units will continue to trade on the OTCQB Marketplace under the ticker symbol RHNOD until May 16, 2016, at which time the OTCQB ticker symbol will revert to RHNO.

Debt Amendment

On March 17, 2016, the Partnership and certain of its subsidiaries, as guarantors, entered into an amendment (the Fourth Amendment) of its amended and restated credit agreement. The Fourth Amendment amends the definition of change of control in the amended and restated credit agreement to permit Royal to purchase the membership interests of the General Partner and sets the expiration date of the facility at July 2016. The Fourth Amendment reduces the borrowing capacity under the credit facility to a maximum of $80 million and reduces the amount available for letters of credit to $30 million. The Fourth Amendment eliminates the option to borrow funds utilizing the LIBOR rate plus an applicable margin and establishes the borrowing rate for all borrowings under the facility to be based upon the current PRIME rate plus an applicable margin of 3.50%. The Fourth Amendment eliminates the capability to make Swing Loans under the facility and eliminates the ability of the Partnership to pay distributions to its common or subordinated unitholders. The Fourth Amendment alters the maximum leverage ratio, calculated as of the end of the most recent month, on a trailing twelve month basis, to 6.75 to 1.00. The leverage ratio shall be reduced by 0.50 to 1.00 for every $10 million of net cash proceeds, in the aggregate, received by the Partnership after the date of the Fourth Amendment from a liquidity event; provided, however, that in no event shall the maximum permitted leverage ratio be reduced below 3.00 to 1.00. A liquidity event is defined in the Fourth Amendment as the issuance of any equity by the Partnership on or after the Fourth Amendment effective date (other than the Royal equity contribution discussed above), or the disposition of any assets by the Partnership. The Fourth Amendment requires the Partnership to maintain minimum liquidity of $5 million and minimum EBITDA, calculated as of the end of the most recent month, on a trailing twelve month basis, of $8 million. The Fourth Amendment limits the amount of the Partnerships capital expenditures to $15 million, calculated as of end of the most recent month, on a trailing twelve month basis. The Fourth Amendment requires the Partnership to provide monthly financial statements and a weekly rolling thirteen week cash flow forecast to the administrative agent.

Capital Expenditures

Maintenance capital expenditures for the first quarter were approximately $0.3 million.

Expansion capital expenditures for the first quarter were approximately $2.2 million, which primarily consisted of expanding the coal processing plant at Pennyrile.

Sales Commitments

The table below displays Rhinos committed coal sales for the periods indicated.

Q2 to Q4 2016 Year 2017 Avg Price Tons Avg Price Tons Northern Appalachia/Illinois Basin $ 51.41 1,456,150 $ 49.08 1,350,000 Rhino Western $ 39.00 789,644 $ 39.00 300,000 Central Appalachia $ 60.67 326,740 $ 54.75 264,000 Total $ 48.78 2,572,534 $ 48.28 1,914,000

Debt Classification

The Partnership evaluated its amended and restated senior secured credit facility at March 31, 2016 to determine whether this debt liability should be classified as a long-term or short-term liability on the Partnerships unaudited condensed consolidated statements of financial position. In April 2015, the Partnership entered into a third amendment to its amended and restated senior secured credit facility. The third amendment extended the expiration date of the amended and restated credit agreement to July 2017. The extension was contingent upon (i) the Partnerships leverage ratio being less than or equal to 2.75 to 1.0 and (ii) the Partnership having liquidity greater than or equal to $15 million, in each case for either the quarter ending December 31, 2015 or March 31, 2016. If both of these conditions were not satisfied for one of such quarters, the expiration date of the amended and restated credit agreement would revert to July 2016. As of December 31, 2015, the conditions for the extension of the credit facility were not met as the Partnerships leverage ratio was 3.2 to 1.0 and liquidity was approximately $1.1 million. In March 2016, the Partnership amended its amended and restated senior secured credit facility where the expiration date was set to July 2016. The Partnership is working with its lenders to extend the amended and restated credit agreement to December 2017. Since the credit facility has an expiration date of July 2016, the Partnership determined that its credit facility debt liability of $43.6 million at March 31, 2016 should be classified as a current liability. The classification of the Partnerships credit facility balance as a current liability raises substantial doubt of the Partnerships ability to continue as a going concern for the next twelve months. The Partnership is also considering alternative financing options that could result in a new long-term credit facility. Since the credit facility has an expiration date of July 2016, the Partnership will have to secure alternative financing to replace its credit facility by the expiration date of July 2016 in order to continue its normal business operations and meet its obligations as they come due.

Evaluating Financial Results

Rhino management uses a variety of financial measurements to analyze the Partnerships performance, including (1) Adjusted EBITDA, (2) coal revenues per ton and (3) cost of operations per ton.

Adjusted EBITDA. Adjusted EBITDA represents net income before deducting interest expense, income taxes and depreciation, depletion and amortization, while also excluding certain non-cash and/or non-recurring items. Adjusted EBITDA is used by management primarily as a measure of the operating performance of the Partnerships segments. Adjusted EBITDA should not be considered an alternative to net income, income from operations, cash flows from operating activities or any other measure of financial performance or liquidity presented in accordance with GAAP. Because not all companies calculate Adjusted EBITDA identically, the Partnerships calculation may not be comparable to similarly titled measures of other companies. (Refer to Reconciliations of Adjusted EBITDA included later in this release for reconciliations of Adjusted EBITDA to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures).

Coal Revenues Per Ton. Coal revenues per ton sold represents coal revenues divided by tons of coal sold. Coal revenues per ton is a key indicator of Rhinos effectiveness in obtaining favorable prices for the Partnerships product.

Cost of Operations Per Ton. Cost of operations per ton sold represents the cost of operations (exclusive of depreciation, depletion and amortization) divided by tons of coal sold. Rhino management uses this measurement as a key indicator of the efficiency of operations.

Overview of Financial Results

Results for the three months ended March 31, 2016 included:

Adjusted EBITDA from continuing operations of $6.6 million and net loss from continuing operations of $1.2 million compared to Adjusted EBITDA from continuing operations of $5.5 million and a net loss from continuing operations of $4.6 million in the first quarter of 2015. Adjusted EBITDA and net loss from continuing operations for the first quarter of 2016 were benefited by approximately $3.9 million from a prior service cost benefit resulting from the cancellation of the postretirement benefit plan at the Partnerships Hopedale operation. Including net income from discontinued operations of approximately $0.7 million, total net loss and Adjusted EBITDA for the three months ended March 31, 2015 were $3.9 million and $6.2 million, respectively. Rhino did not have any income or loss from discontinued operations in the first quarter of 2016.

Basic and diluted net loss per common unit from continuing operations of $0.33 compared to basic and diluted net loss per common unit from continuing operations of $1.53 for the first quarter of 2015.

Coal sales were 0.8 million tons, which was a decrease of 9.5% compared to the first quarter of 2015, primarily due to lower sales from Central Appalachia partially offset by sales from the new Pennyrile operation.

Total revenues and coal revenues of $40.4 million and $36.7 million, respectively, compared to $56.2 million and $45.6 million, respectively, for the same period of 2015.

Coal revenues per ton of $46.42 compared to $52.18 for the first quarter of 2015, a decrease of 11.1%.

Cost of operations from continuing operations of $29.5 million compared to $46.1 million for the same period of 2015.

Cost of operations per ton from continuing operations of $37.27 compared to $52.86 for the first quarter of 2015, a decrease of 29.5%.

Total coal revenues decreased approximately 19.5% primarily due to fewer steam coal tons sold and lower steam coal prices in Central Appalachia, partially offset by sales from the new Pennyrile mine in the Illinois Basin. Coal revenues per ton decreased primarily because of lower prices for steam coal sold in the first quarter of 2016 compared to the same period of 2015, as well as the larger mix of lower priced tons from our Pennyrile mine. Total cost of operations decreased primarily due to lower costs in Central Appalachia and Northern Appalachia as we reduced production in these regions in response to weak market demand, partially offset by increased costs from higher production at our Pennyrile mine in the Illinois Basin. The decrease in the cost of operations on a per ton basis was primarily due to a decrease from our Pennyrile mine in the Illinois Basin as we increased and optimized production during the three months ended March 31, 2016 compared to the same period in 2015, as well as the benefit in Northern Appalachia during the three months ended March 31, 2016 from the prior service cost benefit resulting from the cancellation of the postretirement benefit plan at our Hopedale operation.

Segment Information

The Partnership produces and markets coal from surface and underground mines in Kentucky, West Virginia, Ohio and Utah. Through its Elk Horn subsidiary, the Partnership also leases coal reserves to third parties in exchange for royalty revenues. For the quarter ended March 31, 2016, the Partnership had four reportable business segments: Central Appalachia (including the Elk Horn coal leasing operations), Northern Appalachia, Rhino Western and Illinois Basin. Additionally, the Partnership has an Other category that includes its ancillary businesses.



(In millions, except per ton data and %) First Quarter

2016 First Quarter

2015 %

Change*

1Q16 /

1Q15 Central Appalachia Coal revenues $ 5.6 $ 15.2 (63.2 %) Total revenues $ 6.7 $ 22.2 (69.8 %) Coal revenues per ton* $ 56.00 $ 64.22 (12.8 %) Cost of operations $ 3.0 $ 12.8 (76.7 %) Cost of operations per ton* $ 29.99 $ 54.23 (44.7 %) Tons produced 0.084 0.266 (68.2 %) Tons sold 0.100 0.237 (57.8 %) Northern Appalachia Coal revenues $ 6.7 $ 14.7 (54.8 %) Total revenues $ 9.2 $ 17.3 (47.2 %) Coal revenues per ton* $ 54.29 $ 58.60 (7.4 %) Cost of operations $ 2.9 $ 13.0 (78.1 %) Cost of operations per ton* $ 23.28 $ 51.87 (55.1 %) Tons produced 0.112 0.257 (56.6 %) Tons sold 0.122 0.251 (51.2 %) Rhino Western Coal revenues $ 9.6 $ 8.5 13.5 % Total revenues $ 9.6 $ 8.5 13.4 % Coal revenues per ton* $ 38.08 $ 36.90 3.2 % Cost of operations $ 8.2 $ 7.7 6.0 % Cost of operations per ton* $ 32.48 $ 33.70 (3.6 %) Tons produced 0.238 0.243 (2.3 %) Tons sold 0.252 0.229 9.9 % Illinois Basin Coal revenues $ 14.8 $ 7.2 106.6 % Total revenues $ 14.8 $ 7.2 107.3 % Coal revenues per ton $ 46.98 $ 46.02 2.1 % Cost of operations $ 12.7 $ 9.9 28.7 % Cost of operations per ton $ 40.16 $ 63.17 (36.4 %) Tons produced 0.327 0.161 103.3 % Tons sold 0.316 0.156 102.4 % Other** Coal revenues n/a n/a n/a Total revenues $ 0.1 $ 1.0 (90.7 %) Coal revenues per ton n/a n/a n/a Cost of operations $ 2.7 $ 2.7 1.0 % Cost of operations per ton n/a n/a n/a Total Coal revenues $ 36.7 $ 45.6 (19.5 %) Total revenues $ 40.4 $ 56.2 (28.0 %) Coal revenues per ton* $ 46.42 $ 52.18 (11.1 %) Cost of operations $ 29.5 $ 46.1 (36.2 %) Cost of operations per ton* $ 37.27 $ 52.86 (29.5 %) Tons produced 0.761 0.927 (17.9 %) Tons sold 0.790 0.873 (9.5 %)

* Percentages, totals and per ton amounts are calculated based on actual amounts and not the rounded amounts presented in this table.

** The activities performed by Rhinos ancillary businesses do not directly relate to coal production. As a result, coal revenues per ton and cost of operations per ton are not presented for the Other category.

Additional information for the Central Appalachia segment detailing the types of coal produced and sold, premium high-vol met coal and steam coal, is presented below. Note that the Partnerships Northern Appalachia, Rhino Western and Illinois Basin segments currently produce and sell only steam coal.

(In thousands, except per ton data and %) First

Quarter

2016 First

Quarter

2015 %

Change*

1Q16 /

1Q15 Met coal tons sold 16.3 78.3 (79.2 %) Steam coal tons sold 83.8 158.7 (47.2 %) Total tons sold 100.1 237.0 (57.8 %) Met coal revenue $ 1,329 $ 6,059 (78.1 %) Steam coal revenue $ 4,274 $ 9,159 (53.3 %) Total coal revenue $ 5,603 $ 15,218 (63.2 %) Met coal revenues per ton $ 81.61 $ 77.39 5.5 % Steam coal revenues per ton $ 51.02 $ 57.72 (11.6 %) Total coal revenues per ton $ 56.00 $ 64.22 (12.8 %) Met coal tons produced 15.9 97.5 (83.7 %) Steam coal tons produced 68.5 168.1 (59.3 %) Total tons produced 84.4 265.6 (68.2 %)

* Percentages are calculated based on actual amounts and not the rounded amounts presented in this table.

First Quarter 2016 Financial and Operational Results Conference Call

The Partnership will not host a conference call this quarter. Any inquiries can be made to the Partnerships investor relations department.

About Rhino Resource Partners LP

Rhino Resource Partners LP is a diversified energy limited partnership that is focused on coal and energy related assets and activities, including energy infrastructure investments. Rhino produces metallurgical and steam coal in a variety of basins throughout the United States and it leases coal through its Elk Horn subsidiary. Additional information regarding Rhino is available on its web site  RhinoLP.com.

Forward Looking Statements

Except for historical information, statements made in this press release are forward-looking statements. All statements, other than statements of historical facts, included in this press release that address activities, events or developments that Rhino expects, believes or anticipates will or may occur in the future are forward-looking statements, including the statements and information included under the heading Coal Operations Update. These forward-looking statements are based on Rhinos current expectations and beliefs concerning future developments and their potential effect on Rhinos business, operating results, financial condition and similar matters. While management believes that these forward-looking statements are reasonable as and when made, there can be no assurance that future developments affecting Rhino will turn out as Rhino anticipates. Whether actual results and developments in the future will conform to expectations is subject to significant risks, uncertainties and assumptions, many of which are beyond Rhinos control or ability to predict. Therefore, actual results and developments could materially differ from Rhinos historical experience, present expectations and what is expressed, implied or forecast in these forward-looking statements. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, the following: Rhinos inability to obtain additional financing necessary to fund its capital expenditures, meet working capital needs and maintain and grow its operations or its inability to obtain alternative financing upon the expiration of its credit facility; Rhinos future levels of indebtedness, liquidity and compliance with debt covenants; volatility and recent declines in the price of Rhinos common units; sustained depressed levels of or decline in coal prices, which depend upon several factors such as the supply of domestic and foreign coal, the demand for domestic and foreign coal, governmental regulations, price and availability of alternative fuels for electricity generation and prevailing economic conditions; declines in demand for electricity and coal; current and future environmental laws and regulations, which could materially increase operating costs or limit Rhinos ability to produce and sell coal; extensive government regulation of mine operations, especially with respect to mine safety and health, which imposes significant actual and potential costs; difficulties in obtaining and/or renewing permits necessary for operations; the availability and prices of competing electricity generation fuels; a variety of operating risks, such as unfavorable geologic conditions, adverse weather conditions and natural disasters, mining and processing equipment unavailability, failures and unexpected maintenance problems and accidents, including fire and explosions from methane; poor mining conditions resulting from the effects of prior mining; the availability and costs of key supplies and commodities such as steel, diesel fuel and explosives; fluctuations in transportation costs or disruptions in transportation services, which could increase competition or impair Rhinos ability to supply coal; a shortage of skilled labor, increased labor costs or work stoppages; Rhinos ability to secure or acquire new or replacement high-quality coal reserves that are economically recoverable; material inaccuracies in Rhinos estimates of coal reserves and non-reserve coal deposits; existing and future laws and regulations regulating the emission of sulfur dioxide and other compounds, which could affect coal consumers and reduce demand for coal; federal and state laws restricting the emissions of greenhouse gases; Rhinos ability to acquire or failure to maintain, obtain or renew surety bonds used to secure obligations to reclaim mined property; Rhinos dependence on a few customers and its ability to find and retain customers under favorable supply contracts; changes in consumption patterns by utilities away from the use of coal, such as changes resulting from low natural gas prices; changes in governmental regulation of the electric utility industry; Rhinos ability to successfully diversify its operations into other non-coal natural resources; disruption in supplies of coal produced by contractors operating Rhinos mines; defects in title in properties that Rhino owns or losses of any of its leasehold interests; Rhinos ability to retain and attract senior management and other key personnel; material inaccuracy of assumptions underlying reclamation and mine closure obligations; and weakness in global economic conditions.

Other factors that could cause Rhinos actual results to differ from its projected results are described in its filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including its Annual Report on Form 10-K, Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q and Current Reports on Form 8-K.

Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date hereof. Rhino undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements after the date they are made, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, unless required by law.





RHINO RESOURCE PARTNERS LP UNAUDITED CONDENSED CONSOLIDATED STATEMENTS OF FINANCIAL POSITION AS OF MARCH 31, 2016 AND DECEMBER 31, 2015 (in thousands) March 31, December 31, 2016 2015 ASSETS CURRENT ASSETS: Cash and cash equivalents $ 646 $ 78 Accounts receivable, net of allowance 15,909 14,569 Inventories 6,848 8,570 Prepaid expenses and other 4,899 6,227 Total current assets 28,302 29,444 Net property, plant & equipment, incl coal properties, mine development and construction costs 328,969 333,507 Investment in unconsolidated affiliates 7,499 7,578 Other non-current assets 35,187 34,138 TOTAL $ 399,957 $ 404,667 LIABILITIES AND EQUITY CURRENT LIABILITIES: Accounts payable $ 10,130 $ 9,336 Current portion of long-term debt 43,883 41,479 Accrued expenses and other 12,431 14,914 Total current liabilities 66,444 65,729 NON-CURRENT LIABILITIES: Long-term debt 2,536 2,595 Asset retirement obligations 22,966 22,980 Other non-current liabilities 44,098 45,435 Total non-current liabilities 69,600 71,010 Total liabilities 136,044 136,739 COMMITMENTS AND CONTINGENCIES PARTNERS' CAPITAL: Limited partners 261,116 253,312 Subscription receivable from limited partners (7,000 ) - General partner 9,797 9,821 Accumulated other comprehensive income - 4,795 Total partners' capital 263,913 267,928 TOTAL $ 399,957 $ 404,667

RHINO RESOURCE PARTNERS LP UNAUDITED CONDENSED CONSOLIDATED STATEMENTS OF OPERATIONS (in thousands, except per unit data) Three Months Ended March 31, 2016 2015 REVENUES: Coal sales $ 36,679 $ 45,556 Other revenues 3,750 10,628 Total revenues 40,429 56,184 COSTS AND EXPENSES: Cost of operations (exclusive of depreciation, depletion and amortization) 29,451 46,151 Freight and handling costs 550 535 Depreciation, depletion and amortization 6,247 8,852 Selling, general and administrative (exclusive of depreciation, depletion and amortization) 4,054 4,416 (Gain) on sale/disposal of assetsnet (270 ) (22 ) Total costs and expenses 40,032 59,932 INCOME/(LOSS) FROM OPERATIONS 397 (3,748 ) INTEREST AND OTHER (EXPENSE)/INCOME : Interest expense and other (1,574 ) (957 ) Interest income and other 34 2 Equity in net (loss)/income of unconsolidated affiliate (79 ) 141 Total interest and other (expense) (1,619 ) (814 ) NET (LOSS) BEFORE INCOME TAXES FROM CONTINUING OPERATIONS (1,222 ) (4,562 ) NET (LOSS) FROM CONTINUING OPERATIONS (1,222 ) (4,562 ) DISCONTINUED OPERATIONS Income from discontinued operations - 721 NET (LOSS) $ (1,222 ) $ (3,841 ) General partner's interest in net (loss)/income: Net (loss) from continuing operations $ (24 ) $ (91 ) Net income from discontinued operations - 14 General partner's interest in net income/(loss) $ (24 ) $ (77 ) Common unitholders' interest in net (loss)/income: Net (loss) from continuing operations $ (785 ) $ (2,569 ) Net income from discontinued operations - 402 Common unitholders' interest in net income/(loss) $ (785 ) $ (2,167 ) Subordinated unitholders' interest in net (loss)/income: Net (loss) from continuing operations $ (413 ) $ (1,902 ) Net income from discontinued operations - 305 Subordinated unitholders' interest in net income/(loss) $ (413 ) $ (1,597 ) Net (loss)/income per limited partner unit, basic: Common units: Net (loss) per unit from continuing operations $ (0.33 ) $ (1.53 ) Net income per unit from discontinued operations - 0.24 Net income/(loss) per common unit, basic $ (0.33 ) $ (1.29 ) Subordinated units Net (loss) per unit from continuing operations $ (0.33 ) $ (1.55 ) Net income per unit from discontinued operations - 0.24 Net income/(loss) per subordinated unit, basic $ (0.33 ) $ (1.31 ) Net (loss)/income per limited partner unit, diluted: Common units Net (loss) per unit from continuing operations $ (0.33 ) $ (1.53 ) Net income per unit from discontinued operations - 0.24 Net income/(loss) per common unit, diluted $ (0.33 ) $ (1.29 ) Subordinated units Net (loss) per unit from continuing operations $ (0.33 ) $ (1.55 ) Net income per unit from discontinued operations - 0.24 Net income/(loss) per subordinated unit, diluted $ (0.33 ) $ (1.31 ) Distributions paid per limited partner unit (1) $ - $ 0.05 Weighted average number of limited partner units outstanding, basic: Common units 2,349 1,669 Subordinated units 1,236 1,240 Weighted average number of limited partner units outstanding, diluted: Common units 2,349 1,669 Subordinated units 1,236 1,240 (1) No distributions were paid on the subordinated units for the three months ended March 31, 2016 and 2015.

Reconciliations of Adjusted EBITDA

The following tables present reconciliations of Adjusted EBITDA to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures for each of the periods indicated (note: DD&A refers to depreciation, depletion and amortization).

($ in millions) First Quarter 2016 First Quarter 2015 Net (loss) from continuing operations $ (1.2 ) $ (4.6 ) Plus: Depreciation, depletion and amortization (DD&A) 6.2 8.9 Interest expense 1.6 1.0 EBITDA from continuing operations $ 6.6 $ 5.3 Plus: Provision for doubtful accounts (1) - 0.2 Adjusted EBITDA from continuing operations 6.6 5.5 Net income from discontinued operations - 0.7 Adjusted EBITDA $ 6.6 $ 6.2

(1) During the first quarter of 2015, we recorded a provision for doubtful accounts of approximately $0.2 million related to one of our Elk Horn lessee customers in Central Appalachia that was in bankruptcy proceedings. We believe that the isolation and presentation of this specific item to arrive at Adjusted EBITDA is useful because it enhances investors understanding of how we assess the performance of our business. We believe the adjustment of this item provides investors with additional information that they can utilize in evaluating our performance. Additionally, we believe the isolation of this item provides investors with enhanced comparability to prior and future periods of our operating results.
LIMA, Peru, May 6, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Camposol S.A. (the "Company"), announced today that it will pay to all Eligible Holders that tender their 9.875% Senior Notes due 2017 (the "Existing Notes") and do not validly withdraw their Existing Notes prior to midnight on May 19, 2016 (the "Revised Expiration Date"), in the context of its previously announced offer to exchange Existing Notes for New Notes (the "Exchange Offer"), a participation fee payable in cash at closing (the "Participation Fee") equal to 1.00% of the principal amount of the Existing Notes tendered and accepted for exchange in the Exchange Offer. The Participation Fee will be paid to all Eligible Holders who have previously tendered their Existing Notes and any additional Eligible Holders who tender their Existing Notes prior to the Revised Expiration Date. The Participation Fee will be in addition to the 0.25% processing fee payable to individual Eligible Holders tendering Existing Notes in a principal amount of US$500,000 or less.

Camposol also announced that it has extended the Expiration Date for the Exchange Offer from May 6, 2016 to the Revised Expiration Date. This extension is required by the provisions of Rule 14e-1 of the U.S. Exchange Act which subjects any exchange offer that provides for a change in the offering consideration to be extended by not less than ten business days.

Camposol has prepared a Supplement dated the date hereof (the "Supplement") to the Exchange Offer Memorandum dated April 11, 2016 (the "Exchange Offer Memorandum"). The Supplement, among other things, includes preliminary financial information of the Company for the three months ended March 31, 2016 and 2015, prepared based on internal management accounts, which information has not been audited nor subject to a limited review by Camposol's external auditors.

The Exchange Offer was made pursuant to the terms and remains subject to satisfaction of the conditions set forth in the Exchange Offer Memorandum, as supplemented by the Supplement. As of the date of this press release, a total of 63.07% in principal amount of the Existing Notes outstanding have been tendered by Eligible Holders. The Participation Fee will only be payable by the Company if the conditions to the Exchange Offer set forth in the Exchange Offer Memorandum, as supplemented by the Supplement, are satisfied or if the Company waives such conditions and proceeds to settlement of the Exchange Offer. The Participation Fee will only be paid to Eligible Holders who effectively tender their Eligible Notes in the Exchange Offer.

Except as stated above, all terms and conditions of the Exchange Offer Memorandum as stated in the Exchange Offer Memorandum, as supplemented by the Supplement remain the same.

Consummation of the Exchange Offer is conditioned upon the valid tender, without subsequent withdrawal, of at least 95% of the aggregate principal amount outstanding of the Existing Notes. Subsequent to confirmation of the Exchange Offer, collateral that will secure the Existing Notes that remain outstanding and the New Notes issued in the Exchange Offer, will be perfected pursuant to the terms of a Peruvian Trust Agreement governed by Peruvian law that will be entered into by the Company and the Peruvian Trustee and Collateral Agent for the benefit of all holders of both Existing Notes and New Notes outstanding. The Company will have the right, in its sole discretion, to waive any conditions to the Exchange Offer. The Company will also have the right to terminate or withdraw the Exchange Offer and extend the Expiration Date in its sole discretion, subject to applicable law.

The Exchange Offer and the New Notes have not been and will not be registered under the U.S. Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "Securities Act"). As a result, holders within the United States or who are U.S. persons will be eligible to participate in the Exchange Offer only if they are "qualified institutional buyers" ("QIBs") as defined in Rule 144A under the Securities Act ("Rule 144A"). Offers and issuances of the New Notes to non U.S. persons outside the United States will be made in offshore transactions in reliance on Regulation S under the Securities Act ("Regulation S").

The Company has engaged D.F. King & Co., Inc. to act as Information and Exchange Agent, in connection with the Exchange Offer.

The Exchange Offer is being made only to holders who have properly completed, executed and delivered to the Information and Exchange Agent an eligibility letter or a certification, whereby such holder has represented or will represent to the Company that they are either (i) a "qualified institutional buyer," or "QIB," as defined in Rule 144A under the Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "Securities Act") and under applicable state securities laws; or (ii) a "non-U.S. Person" (as defined in Regulation S under the Securities Act), and if such holder is in any member state of the European Economic Area which has implemented Directive 2003/71/EC (the "Prospectus Directive," which term includes amendments thereto, including Directive 2010/73/EU), a "qualified investor" (as defined in the Prospectus Directive) and, in each case, that it may lawfully participate in the Exchange Offer in accordance with the laws of the jurisdiction in which it is located.

Informational documents relating to the Exchange Offer, including but not limited to the Exchange Offer Memorandum and the Supplement, will only be distributed to eligible investors who submit the eligibility letter or certification described above. If you would like to submit the eligibility letter or certification, please log into the website www.dfking.com/camposol . Alternatively, please contact the Information and Exchange Agent D.F. King & Co., Inc., Attn: Peter Aymar, at 48 Wall Street, 22nd Floor, New York, NY 10005, telephone number: (800) 821-2794 (toll-free), (212) 269-5550 (collect) or email camposol@dfking.com . Requests for documentation should be directed to the Information and Exchange Agent.

Beneficial owners of Existing Notes should carefully read the Exchange Offer Memorandum, as supplemented by the Supplement, regarding the relevant procedures and timing to tender their Existing Notes. This announcement must be read in conjunction with the Exchange Offer Memorandum, as supplemented by the Supplement.

This press release is neither an offer to purchase nor the solicitation of an offer to sell OR EXCHANGE any of the securities described herein in the United States or in any other jurisdiction where such offer is prohibited, and such securities may not be offered, sold OR EXCHANGED in the United States absent registration or an exemption from registration under the Securities Act. THE COMPANY does not intend to register any NEW NOTES in the United States or to conduct a public offering of such securities in any jurisdiction. The exchange offer is made solely pursuant to the EXCHANGE OFFER memorandum dated APRIL 11, 2016, as supplemented by THE SUPPLEMENT DATED MAY 5, 2016.

The Exchange Offer is being made solely pursuant to the Exchange Offer Memorandum, as supplemented by the Supplement, and only to such persons and in such jurisdictions as are permitted under applicable law.

None of the Company, the Dealer Managers or the Information and Exchange Agent makes any recommendation as to whether holders of Existing Notes should tender Existing Notes or participate in the Exchange Offer.

This announcement contains forward-looking statements and information that is necessarily subject to risks, uncertainties and assumptions. No assurance can be given that the transactions described herein will be consummated or as to the terms of any such transactions. The Company assumes no obligation to update or correct the information contained in this announcement.

This communication is only being distributed to and is only directed at (i) persons who are outside the United Kingdom or (ii) investment professionals falling within Article 19(5) of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (Financial Promotion) Order 2005 (the "Order") or (iii) high net worth companies, and other persons to whom it may lawfully be communicated, falling within Article 49(2)(a) to (d) of the Order (all such persons together being referred to as "relevant persons"). The New Notes are only available to, and any invitation, offer or agreement to subscribe, purchase or otherwise acquire such New Notes will be engaged in only with, relevant persons. Any person who is not a relevant person should not act or rely on this document or any of its contents.

About Camposol

Camposol is the leading agro industrial company in Peru, the first producer of avocados and soon the first producer of blueberries in the world. It is involved in the harvest, processing and marketing of high quality agricultural products such as avocadoes, asparagus, blueberries, grapes, mangos, tangerines and shrimp; which are exported to Europe, the United States and Asia. Camposol is a vertically integrated company located in Peru, offering fresh and frozen products. It is the third largest employer of the country, with more than 13,000 workers in high season, and is committed to support sustainable development through social responsibility policies and projects aimed to increase the shared-value for all of its stakeholders. Camposol was the first Peruvian agro industrial company to present annual audited Sustainability Reports and has achieved the following international certifications: BSCI, Global Gap, IFS, HACCP and BRC among others.

HUG#2010355
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In the wake of the public firestorm sparked by the Panama Papers scandal, the Obama administration unveiled a series of new proposals today that would crack down on offshore secrecy and illicit financial transactions.

In a news conference this afternoon, administration officials announced that the U.S. Treasury Department would send proposed legislation to Congress that would require companies set up in the United States to report their real owners to the agencys Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. This would for the first time create a national registry that could be used by law enforcement authorities to ferret out the real people behind anonymous companies used in money laundering and other wrongdoing.

The proposal acknowledges the reality that the U.S. itself is a key player in the system of offshore secrecy, through such states as Delaware, Nevada and Wyoming that allow the creation of shell companies that hide their owners identities and activities.

Wally Adeyemo, the U.S. deputy national security advisor for international economics, said the Obama administration has been working hard for years to address the issue of offshore-fueled misconduct but that the Panama Papers disclosures highlight the fact that more needs to be done to fight money laundering, terrorism financing and tax evasion.

Our financial system should not provide the rich, the powerful and the corrupt with the opportunity to shield their assets and avoid paying their fair share or with the opportunity to hide any illicit activity, Adeyemo said. Nobody should be able to hide in shadows from their legal obligations and nobody should be able to play by a different set of rules.

Adeyemo noted that U.S. investigations have prompted 80 Swiss banks to admit to engaging in tax evasion and related criminal conduct and forced them to pay more than $1.3 billion in penalties. In addition, he said, the U.S. tax amnesty program has prompted more than 54,000 taxpayers to do the right thing and resolve their past non-compliance, and has collected more than $8 billion in the process.

Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew sent a letter today to U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan urging Congress to pass the legislation creating a central ownership registry for shell companies.

Lew also asked Senate leaders to take action to approve eight tax treaties that the U.S. has negotiated with other countries, agreements that would allow better sharing of information with other governments about Americans holding assets overseas. He noted that American tax treaties with two well-known tax havens, Switzerland and Luxembourg, have been waiting for Senate approval for more than five years.

The U.S. Justice Department said in a new release today that it will submit proposals to Congress in an effort to improve enforcement of laws targeting the illegal proceeds of transnational corruption. The proposals would make it easier for U.S. law enforcement authorities to file charges against corrupt foreign officials and subpoena records in money laundering investigations.

In pushing these new measures, U.S. officials are joining others from around the world who have announced investigations and policy reforms in reaction to reporting on the Panama Papers by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung and more than 100 other media partners.

On April 5, two days after the Panama Papers investigation first broke, Germany's justice minister called for the creation of a national transparency register that would document the real owners of shell companies sent up within his country. U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron, meanwhile, is expected to propose a new global anti-corruption agency that would investigative money laundering and tax dodging.
It will also promote innovation, facilitate tourism.

Singapore and Australia have inked a landmark agreement to deepen their ties in a number of areas, including economic integration, defence cooperation, innovation and entrepreneurship, and people-to-people ties, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) said in a release.

A key aspect of the agreement is the third review of the Singapore-Australia Free Trade Agreement (SAFTA). Under the updated SAFTA, both countries will adopt a package of measures to increase trade and investment flows. It will reinforce Singapores position as a trading and investment partner for Australia and nhance Singapores position as a hub for Australian businesses and service providers to access expanding opportunities in Asia.



The deal will also promote innovation and entrepreneurship. It will bring together national research and scientific bodies, in particular the National Research Foundation, the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) and Australias Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), and support their collaboration through matching funding provided by both countries. About S$50 million in funding will be provided over five years.

The deal will also expand Singapores long-standing defence cooperation with Australia. Both countries have agreed to a signature joint bilateral military exercise, and jointly develop more military training areas and facilities in Australia. This will provide Singapore with greater access to military training areas in Australia over a period of 25 years.

"The CSP will draw our two countries closer, economically, politically and at the people-to-people level. Our economies will become more integrated and intertwined. Defence cooperation will be stepped up. The Singapore Armed Forces will be able to do more military training in Australia," Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said,









More From Singapore Business Review


This article was originally on GET.com at: Top 5 Most Fun Pre-schools In Singapore

The little ones these days (and their parents) have a ton of options when it comes to pre-schools. Though pre-school education isnt nationalised in Singapore unlike primary and secondary school education, many parents are willing to splash out big money to send their little ones to the "best" pre-schools out there.

With so many pre-schools out there in Singapore, we at GET.com have rounded up the top 5 most fun pre-schools in Singapore for those whore curious, for those who are keen to let their little ones learn and develop holistically without putting limits on important elements of fun.

Top 5 Most Fun Pre-schools In Singapore

1. Little Village

Image source: Little Village

Housed across 4 pre-war bungalows amidst expansive outdoor spaces that support active, collaborative and discovery learning sits Little Village, a pre-school where childrens ideas and innate sense of wonder are valued and encouraged.

Does harvesting fruits from fruit trees and turning it into jam sound fun to you? Well, it sure does for the little ones at the Little Village. Here, strong emphasis is placed on inquiry, outdoor education where the little ones get to really connect with nature and all it entails, plant and harvest vegetables and fruits, engage in outdoor activities alongside unstructured and free play that help boost their creativity, problem-solving skills, self-awareness, agility, balance, coordination so on and so forth.

Monthly fees: From $800-$1600+

Address: 41 Grange Road, Singapore 239704

2. Dreamkids

Image source: Dreamkids Kindergarten

How old were you when you first laid hands on a mobile phone? I got my first no-colour Nokia mobile phone when I was 10. I digress but the use of technology is encouraged here at Dreamkids.

Afterall, the world is changing and everybody is connected to the Internet with the prevalence of smartphones and digital tablets. Its only fair that kids use technology purposefully, isnt it? Mindless playing of mobile phone games doesnt count, of course! In case you parents start protesting, the use of mobile phones and other digital devices are limited to half an hour weekly.

Story continues

Dreamkids is an unorthodox pre-school that doesnt pry the little ones away from digital devices. In fact, the kids here get to scan QR codes printed on cards for activities in addition to participating actively in the Angry Birds Playground learning concept - a unique conceptualization built on effective and highly reputable Finnish educational expertise.

Daily 3-hour Playgroup Programme (for children aged 18mo to 30mo): $650 a month

Daily 4-hour Nursery to Kindergarten Programme (for children aged 3 to 6 years old): $900 a month

Full Day Programme: $1500 a month (inclusive of 21st century skills enrichment programmes such as speech and drama, STEM, reading and writing programme, in the afternoon)

Address: 46 East Coast Road, #01-03, East Gate, Singapore 428766

3. Play@TP

Image source: Temasek Polytechnic

Play@TP is a laboratory pre-school nestled in Temasek Polytechnic, largely funded by the Ministry of Education. It boasts an inquiry-based approach to teaching that plays up the role of critical thinking in childrens acquisition of knowledge, skills and inculcates notions of lifelong learning in the little ones who attend its pre-school.

To take things up a notch, part of their curriculum involves the use of robotic toys, coding and circuitry. Can these little ones perform, you wonder? Well, they sure can when they challenge themselves to solve problems with tenacity, critical thinking and resourcefulness! These are some of the crucial life skills which educators at Play@TP strive to nurture in inquisitive pre-schoolers.

Expect your little ones to broaden their perspectives and experiences through an enriching curriculum that may very well involve close collaboration with the various schools and departments within Temasek Polytechnic. Keep in mind though, that classes run on weekdays from 8 am to 12 noon for 10 weeks in a term; there are 4 terms in a year here.

Fees per term (10 weeks per term, billed 4 times a year): $690 for Singaporeans; $828 for PRs; $1380 for foreigners

Address: 21 Tampines Avenue 1, Temasek Polytechnic, Singapore 529757 (Play@TP is located at East Wing, Block 1A, Level One, Room 87)

4. The Little Skool-House International

Image source: The Little Skool-House International

If you dont want your little ones to grow up without fully learning and appreciating their mother tongue, The Little Skool-House International is a good place to let your kids start young, literally, since it provides quality, premium pre-school bilingual education filled with a multitude of fun activities from interactive environments, excursions to applications in real life to reinforce what theyve learnt in class.

Through the curriculum here, The Little Skool-House strives to mould children with the various attributes and descriptors of their unique learner profile across categories like inquirers; risk takers; independent thinkers; effective communicators; and creative innovators. After all, learning has to be fun for the children in order to engage the little ones better. And it sure helps to design activities and lessons in ways that best suit the kids, dont you agree?

Address: Multiple branches islandwide. Click here for more information.

5. EtonHouse at Sentosa

EtonHouse at Sentosa is Singapore's first heritage pre-school. Housed in a 3-storey conservation house with pre-war colonial style architecture, this 32,000-square-feet campus is a dream school setting for parents who live nearby and who can afford the hefty school fees.

Nestled in the tranquil, lush greenery of Sentosa, this pre-school features outdoor spaces (in addition to the numerous indoor play areas) that offer an integrated learning environment for young children from 18 months to 6 years of age. Kids get to enjoy outdoor play every morning: riding bikes around, having water play and sand pit fun. They also get to check out peahens and their chicks which roam around Sentosa and into the campus. What fun!

Because of its location, it's not a huge surprise that EtonHouse Sentosa is the most expensive preschool in Singapore, according to GET.com's research.

Now that you have a better idea, which pre-school would you like to send your little ones to when its time for them to leave the safety confines of home?

And for those who are curious about the most expensive pre-schools in Singapore, read this and then let your jaw drop - youll be genuinely amazed at how much affluent parents are willing to shell out for their little ones. With these prices, do you think it's really worth it to give your all to get your child into a top school?

What do you think? Share your comments with us below!

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Air strikes killed at least 28 civilians in a camp for the displaced in northern Syria near the Turkish border as a 48-hour ceasefire took hold in Aleppo. The truce came after fierce violence in and around Aleppo and was made possible as President Bashar al-Assad's regime and rebel forces gave in to mounting diplomatic pressure for a pause. But as relieved civilians went out onto the streets after two weeks of heavy fighting in the divided city, a key battleground in Syria's five-year civil war, others were attacked further west. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said air strikes struck the camp for internally displaced people near Sarmada, in Idlib province, which is controlled by Syria's Al-Qaeda affiliate Al-Nusra Front. Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman said women and children were among 28 civilians killed while 50 others were wounded. Mamun al-Khatib, director of the Aleppo-based pro-rebel Shahba Press news agency, said "regime aircraft" fired missiles on the camp in the village of Al-Kammouna. "Two missiles fell near the camp causing people to panic and two more fell inside where a dozen tents caught fire," he said. Online images showed emergency workers putting out fires among damaged blue and white tents. The US said it has not confirmed if the strikes were carried out by regime forces, but described them "totally in keeping" with its past operations. "There's absolutely no justification for attacks on civilians in Syria, but especially on what appears to have been a refugee camp," said State Department spokesman Mark Toner. The European Union called the bombardment "unacceptable", while the United Nations' top aid official demanded an immediate investigation. "If this obscene attack is found to be a deliberate targeting of a civilian structure, it could amount to a war crime," said Stephen O'Brien, the UN under-secretary general for humanitarian affairs. - US, Russia monitoring - The February 27 ceasefire brokered by the United States and Syrian ally Russia called for an end to fighting between regime forces and rebels nationwide but did not include jihadist-held areas. Fierce violence in and around Aleppo, which has claimed the lives of more than 280 civilians since April 22, sparked an intense diplomatic push by Washington and Moscow to salvage peace efforts. Late Wednesday the Syrian army said it had agreed to calls from Russia and the US for a two-day truce in Aleppo that would begin from 1:00 am on Thursday (2200 GMT Wednesday). An AFP correspondent in Aleppo said Thursday there had been no signs of fresh air raids. Residents who had cowered indoors for days emerged and some set up tables and chairs on the streets to enjoy the sunshine, drink tea and smoke cigarettes, the correspondent said. Shopkeepers also reopened their doors while fruit and vegetable markets -- one of which was struck in an April 24 raid that left 12 dead -- were running again. The local council dispatched bulldozers to remove rubble in stricken areas where water and electrical supplies were also restored, the AFP correspondent said. After a whirlwind of talks involving diplomats from top world powers and the UN, US Secretary of State John Kerry announced the truce had taken effect and that violence had already fallen off. He said US officials in Geneva were coordinating with their Russian colleagues on "enhanced monitoring efforts for this renewed cessation". The Russian defence ministry said its ceasefire monitors had agreed with their US counterparts to oversee this truce until midnight on May 6. In Aleppo, the head of the local branch of the powerful Jaish al-Islam (Army of Islam) rebel force, Ahmad Sanada, told AFP the group would respect the truce. The head of Syria's opposition High Negotiations Committee Riad Hijab meanwhile urged the international community to impose "robust measures" to ensure respect for the ceasefire. - Palmyra concert - Diplomats are hoping a nationwide ceasefire can underpin efforts to resolve Syria's five-year war that has already killed more than 270,000 people and forced millions out of their homes. Mediators hope that UN-backed peace talks could resume later this month in Geneva, although previous rounds have failed to make any major breakthrough with the regime rejecting the opposition's demand that Assad step aside as part of a political transition. On Thursday, a suicide attack and a car bombing in central Homs province killed at least 12 civilians, the Observatory and state television said. The twin bombings came amid recent fighting in the area between Islamic State group fighters and regime troops. IS claimed responsibility for the attacks, according to SITE Intelligence Group. The area is near Palmyra where on Thursday Russian maestro Valery Gergiev led Saint Petersburg's celebrated Mariinsky orchestra in front of a crowd of Russian soldiers, government ministers and journalists. Palmyra, a UNESCO world heritage site, was retaken from IS on March 27 with Russian support.
AFP News

Ukraine on Sunday denounced as dangerous lies suggestions from Russia that it was preparing to use a "dirty bomb". Its western allies also dismissed the allegations from Moscow, just hours after Russia went public with the claims. In conversations with his British, French and Turkish counterparts, Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu conveyed "concerns about possible provocations by Ukraine with the use of a 'dirty bomb'", Moscow said. Russia did not mention the alleged "dirty bomb" allegation in its statement following Shoigu's call with Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin. "If Russia calls and says that Ukraine is allegedly preparing something, it means one thing: Russia has already prepared all this," President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a video address on social media. "I believe that now the world should react as harshly as possible." Earlier Sunday, Ukraine's Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba denounced Moscow's claims as "absurd" and "dangerous". "Russians often accuse others of what they plan themselves," he added. A British defence ministry statement said Defence Secretary Ben Wallace had "refuted these claims and cautioned that such allegations should not be used as a pretext for greater escalation". And in Washington, National Security Council spokeswoman Adrienne Watson dismissed Moscow's "transparently false" claim. "The world would see through any attempt to use this allegation as a pretext for escalation," she added. - 'Vile strikes' - Russia also announced Sunday that it had destroyed a depot in central Ukraine storing over 100,000 tonnes of aviation fuel. Kyiv's energy operator meanwhile said scheduled power cuts had been introduced in the Ukrainian capital due to Russia's repeated strikes on the nation's power network. The blackouts started from 11:13 am (0813 GMT) with consumers in Kyiv divided into three groups "disconnected for a certain period of time", energy company DTEK said. DTEK reiterated calls for residents to use electricity "sparingly" and for businesses to limit their use of external lighting. More than one million Ukrainian households have lost electricity following recent Russian strikes, according to the Ukrainian presidency, at least a third of the country's power stations having been destroyed ahead of winter. Zelensky condemned the "vile strikes" in comments late Saturday, after Russian attacks caused power cuts across the country. - 'Save your strength' - In the southern Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rig, deputy mayor Sergiy Miliutin was dealing with emergencies and power outages from his underground bunker, used as a venue for a children's martial arts competition. "I've reached a point where I just survive on my drive. You have to stay level-headed and save your strength. No one knows how long this will all last," he told AFP. The intensification of Russian strikes on Ukraine, particularly energy facilities, came after the bridge linking the annexed Crimea peninsula to mainland Russia was partially destroyed by an explosion earlier this month. It was another major setback for Moscow's forces, battling to contain a Ukrainian counter-offensive in the south and east of the country. French President Emmanuel Macron said Sunday that it was for Ukrainians to decide when "peace is possible", in comments made in Rome at the start of a peace summit. Ukraine reported three deaths in an overnight Russian artillery strike in the Toretsk area, a governor of the eastern Donetsk region said. Inside Russia, two lines of defence have been built in the border region of Kursk to deal with any possible attack, a local governor said on Sunday. On Saturday Vyacheslav Gladkov, the governor in the neighbouring Russian border region of Belgorod, said the construction of defence structures had begun. Gladkov said two civilians had been killed in strikes there Saturday, and that 15,000 people had been left without electricity. - Kherson evacuations - Meanwhile Ukraine's SBU intelligence service said it had detained two officials of Ukrainian aircraft engine maker Motor Sich on suspicion of working with Russia. The SBU said management at the company's plant in Ukraine's southern Zaporizhzhia region -- partly controlled by Russian forces -- had colluded with Russian state-owned defence conglomerate Rostec. The suspects had supplied Russia with Ukrainian aircraft engines that were used to make and repair attack helicopters, the SBU said. In the southern Ukrainian region of Kherson, which Russia claims to have annexed, pro-Moscow officials on Saturday urged residents to leave "immediately" amid a "tense situation" at the front. Kherson, the region's main city, was the first to fall to Moscow's troops and retaking it would be a major prize in Ukraine's counter-offensive. A Moscow-installed official in Kherson, Kirill Stremousov, told Russian news agency Interfax on Saturday that around 25,000 people had left Kherson city to the left bank of the Dnipro River. Ukraine has denounced the removal of residents from Kherson, describing them as "deportations". bur-imm/raz/jj/lcm
By Drazen Jorgic

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Suzuki plans to invest $460 million into Pakistan if the government provides the right incentives and amends its new auto policy, the company said on Friday.

Pakistan in March announced a new auto policy that favours potential new entrants over existing manufacturers by offering them lower duties, part of a strategy to attract foreign car makers and loosen the dominance of Suzuki, Toyota and Honda.

The Pakistan Suzuki Motor Company, which assembles Suzuki cars for the local market, said it had concerns that the new auto policy may "damage the tremendous investment potential in the Pakistan automobile sector by existing players such as Pak Suzuki Motor Co".

In an emailed statement to Reuters, Karachi-listed Pakistan Suzuki said: "If the incentives and benefits should be given then we are ready for $460 million investment in Pakistan."

The investment would include creation of a state-of-the-art new plant on an "urgent basis" and from this plant Suzuki would introduce four new models within five years, including two new models by 2018.

Plans to introduce new models would go some way towards soothing government anger about lack of competition and choice in Pakistan's car market.

Officials say they want foreign car makers to shake up the Japanese-dominated market because locally assembled cars are sold at relatively high prices but lag behind imported vehicles in terms of quality and specifications.

The existing Japanese manufacturers feel let down by the government's new auto policy because it prefers outside investment to their own, and removes many incentives for them to invest in the country, said two industry participants familiar with the matter.

(Reporting by Drazen Jorgic; Editing by Christian Schmollinger)
HOLLYWOOD, FL--(Marketwired - May 3, 2016) - Telco Cuba, Inc. (OTC PINK: QBAN) -- Telco Cuba, a publicly traded telecommunication provider, today announced it has signed a teaming agreement to offer the US Federal Government telecommunications services under the Network Services 2020 (NS2020) strategy.

In line with CEO, William J. Sanchez's strategy for Telco Cuba, Inc., the company has signed a teaming agreement to offer telecommunication, network and infrastructure services to the US Federal Government under the NS2020 strategy.

"The teaming agreement to offer services under the GSA's NS2020 strategy opens the door to a lucrative, 50 Billion in government contracts over a 15 year period. Telco Cuba has the resources and is highly qualified and poised to take on these opportunities in the highly lucrative federal network and telecommunication space," said Mr. Sanchez.

Network Services 2020 (NS2020) is the US Government's strategy for the next generation of telecommunications and information technology (IT) infrastructure services. It provides a roadmap for the future of the Network Services Programs (NSP), including evolution beyond the regional Local Service Agreements (LSAs), and other current contracts. More information can be found at:

LINK: http://www.gsa.gov/portal/category/106303

Telco Cuba is a cellular service provider currently targeting the Cuban-American demographic in the US. Its plans call for providing international calling at lower rates than competitive landline rates, and bundling digital, cell phone and text messaging services in Cuba as soon as it becomes legally viable to do so.

Safe Harbor Notice

Certain statements contained herein are "forward-looking statements" (as defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995). Telco Cuba cautions that statements made in this news release constitute forward-looking statements and makes no guarantee of future performance. Forward-looking statements are based on estimates and opinions of management at the time statements are made. These statements may address issues that involve significant risks, uncertainties, estimates and assumptions made by management. Actual results could differ materially from current projections or implied results. Telco Cuba undertakes no obligation to revise these statements following the date of this news release. Additional details of the Company's business can be found in its public disclosures as a reporting issuer under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission's ("SEC") EDGAR database.

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This press release is issued on behalf of the Board of Directors by William J Sanchez, CEO and Chairman of the board.

Disclaimer Regarding Forward Looking Statements

Certain statements in this press release, on Telco Cuba's ("QBAN") website and other oral and written statements made by QBAN from time to time are "forward-looking statements", as that term is defined in Section 27A of the United States Securities and Exchange Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the United States Securities and Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, Forward-looking statements include, without limitation, statements regarding beliefs, objectives, intentions, goals, plans, strategies, financial projections, any other statements regarding the future and any statements that are not purely historical. These statements are only predictions and involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors that may cause our actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Given these uncertainties, you should not place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements speak only as of the date on which they are made, and QBAN expressly disclaims any obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances after the date thereof. All forward-looking statements, whether written or oral and whether made by or on behalf of the QBAN, are expressly qualified by these cautionary statements. Forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties which could cause actual results or outcomes to differ materially from those expressed in the forward-looking statements. QBAN's expectations, beliefs and projections are expressed in good faith and are believed by QBAN to have a reasonable basis, but there can be no assurance that management's expectations, beliefs or projections will result or be achieved or accomplished. A variety of factors, many of which are beyond QBAN's control affect QBAN's operations, performance, business strategy and results and could cause the actual results, performance or achievements of QBAN to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements that may be expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. For QBAN, particular uncertainties arise, amongst others but not limited to and not in any order of importance, from (i) focusing on and allocating more resources on certain target markets (ii) the possibility to raise further equity and debt to fund future growth, (iii) changes in demand for QBAN's products, (iv) performance issues with key suppliers, affiliates, agents, advisors or subcontractors, (v) changes in government changes in laws or regulations to which QBAN or its suppliers are subject, including environmental laws and regulations relating to water or water sources and (vi) the inability to complete announced acquisitions, difficulty or unanticipated expenses in connection with integrating acquired businesses and the risk that anticipated synergies and opportunities as a result of acquisitions will not be realized or the risk that acquisitions do not perform as planned, including, for example, the risk that acquired businesses will not achieve revenue projections.

THIS NEWS RELEASE HAS BEEN PREPARED BY QBAN's MANAGEMENT, WHO TAKES FULL RESPONSIBILITY FOR ITS CONTENTS. NO SECURITIES REGULATORY AUTHORITY HAS APPROVED OR DISAPPROVED OF THE CONTENTS OF THIS NEWS RELEASE. THIS NEWS RELEASE SHALL NOT CONSTITUTE AN OFFER TO SELL OR THE SOLICITATION OF AN OFFER TO BUY NOR SHALL THERE BE ANY SALE OF THESE SECURITIES IN ANY JURISDICTION IN WHICH SUCH OFFER, SOLICITATION OR SALE WOULD BE UNLAWFUL PRIOR TO REGISTRATION OR QUALIFICATION UNDER THE SECURITIES LAWS OF ANY SUCH JURISDICTION.
The Government has dropped plans to force all schools across England to become academies.

The controversial policy - which risked a potential revolt from Tory backbenchers - is now an "aspiration" rather than a compulsory change.

Two-thirds of secondary schools have already converted into academies - independent schools funded by central government rather than a local authority.

But 15,000 schools are still in local authority control.

The National Union of Teachers (NUT) described it as a "huge climbdown" and said the Government's education policy is "in tatters".

Announcing the U-turn, Education Secretary Nicky Morgan said No. 10 had "listened" to MPs and the education sector.

"Making every school an academy is the best way to ensure every child, regardless of birth or background, has access to a world-class education," she said.

"I am today reaffirming our determination to see all schools become academies.

"However, having listened to the feedback from Parliamentary colleagues and the education sector we will now change the path to reaching that goal.

"By focusing our efforts on those schools most at risk of failing young people, and encouraging good and outstanding schools to seize the opportunities of conversion, we will ensure the continued growth of the academy programme."

It is the Government's second U-turn this week after it backed down on taking Syrian child refugees from camps in Europe to dodge a backbench rebellion.

:: Major Reversals Show Government's Weakness

It will also leave ministers facing claims of trying to bury bad news as the announcement was made on a day dominated by national election results.

Chancellor George Osborne first announced the policy in March's Budget, saying around 17,000 schools in England would be transformed into academies.

He said all schools would either have to convert by 2020, or be committed to doing so by 2022.

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The idea was reaffirmed when the Government released its five-year education white paper.

Unions had argued strongly against the policy, saying it was a move towards privatisation and would create schools run by "unaccountable" trusts.

With the Government's slender majority in the Commons, there was a chance Ms Morgan could have faced a humiliating defeat if she pushed ahead with the plans.

Tory former leadership contender David Davis said it was an "intelligent concession" by the Government.

"Along with a number of my colleagues, I expressed concerns about aspects of the Government's academisation proposals, and the Government has quite rightly considered our concerns and thought again," he added.

Shadow education secretary Lucy Powell said: "It is frankly a humiliating climbdown for David Cameron and his Education Secretary, who just weeks ago were insisting they would plough on with the policy regardless."
By Natalia Scalzaretto and Caio Saad

SAO PAULO/RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) - Facebook Inc's <FB.O> Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg called on Brazilians to demand his company's WhatsApp messaging service never be blocked again after an appeals court on Tuesday overturned the application's second suspension in five months.

In a post in English on his Facebook page, the U.S. billionaire and Facebook founder urged Brazilians to gather outside Congress in the capital Brasilia at 6 p.m. (1700 EDT) on Wednesday to rally in favor of legislation that would prevent Internet services from being blocked.

WhatsApp was cut off in Brazil at 2 p.m. (1300 EDT) on Monday after a judge in the remote northeastern state of Sergipe ordered Brazil's five main wireless operators to block access to the app for 72 hours. The reason for the order was not made public.

The suspension of WhatsApp's text message and Internet voice telephone service for smartphones was lifted after about 24 hours when an appeals judge on Tuesday ruled in favor of an injunction by the company's lawyers, the court said in a statement. Some 100 million users were affected.

"You and your friends can help make sure this never happens again, and I hope you get involved," Zuckerberg wrote on Facebook. He also posted a link to a petition, calling efforts to block communication "very scary in a democracy."

The suspension highlighted growing international tensions between technology companies' privacy concerns and national authorities' efforts to use social media to gain information on possible criminal activities.

The same judge in Sergipe ordered the imprisonment of a Brazil-based Facebook executive in March in a dispute over demands to access the companys encrypted messaging service as part of a drug trafficking investigation.

California-based WhatsApp had said in a statement on Monday that it was "disappointed" at the judge's decision to suspend its services. It said it had done the utmost to cooperate with Brazilian tribunals, but it did not possess the information the court was requesting.

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Matt Steinfeld, a Facebook spokesman, said WhatsApp executives were meeting this week with law enforcement and judicial officials in Brazil to improve communication and clarify that the company cannot see users' encrypted messages and does not store them after transmission.

BRAZILIANS ANGERED

It was the second time in five months that WhatsApp in Brazil has been suspended. A Sao Paulo state judge ordered it shut down for 48 hours on Dec. 15, after Facebook failed to comply with an order. Another court lifted that suspension shortly afterward.

Monday's suspension angered many in Brazil, where the service is used by individuals, companies and federal and local governments to send messages and share pictures and videos. Cost-conscious Brazilians are avid users of free messaging apps, and WhatsApp is by far the most popular - installed on more than 90 percent of Android devices.

As some Brazilians sought an alternative messaging system, rival Telegram said on Monday that it suffered technical problems under the weight of demand. It said it received more than a million new user requests.

Leticia Mendes, a 20-year-old shop assistant in Rio de Janeiro, said she was frustrated by the suspension because it could force people to use pay services.

"It's really bad," she told Reuters. "It's just a way of getting more money out of us, when we already have to pay for so many things."

The suspension came as a congressional commission on cyber crime in Brazil debated changes to the 2014 legislation governing the use of the Internet.

Lower house deputy Esperidiao Amin, the rapporteur of the commission, said his proposed reform would help avoid shutdowns of this kind by allowing the blocking of specific individuals or IP addresses suspected of illicit activity, rather than the access of all users.

"It's less dramatic than withdrawing the service from the whole of the Brazilian population," he told Reuters by telephone.

(Editing by Daniel Flynn and Cynthia Osterman)
BRASILIA (Reuters) - A Brazilian congressional commission on Wednesday recommended a bill that forbids authorities from blocking popular messaging applications, just two days after a judicial order left 100 million Brazilians without Facebook Inc's WhatsApp. A Brazilian judge on Tuesday overturned a 72-hour suspension of the application used by roughly half the population of the South American country, triggering popular outcry over its second judicial suspension in only five months. The reason for the freeze was not made public due to legal secrecy in an ongoing case in a Sergipe state court, but authorities have in the past demanded data from the Facebook's encrypted messaging service. A congressional commission investigating cyber crimes proposed removing messaging applications, such as WhatsApp, from a bill that regulates the suspension of websites and other applications used for crimes such as drugs and arms trafficking. "This way the legislation makes it very clear that judges cannot block these applications, because those suspensions do not fulfill their objectives," lawmaker Sandro Alex, who helped draft the bill, said in a WhatsApp message. The legislation will now have to pass through several other congressional committees before being put to vote in the floor of the lower and upper house. Critics have said the bill would actually make it easier for judges to shut down websites and applications, hurting the freedom of speech of internet users. The judge who ordered Monday's 72-hour suspension, Marcel Maia Montalvao, in March ordered the imprisonment of a Brazil-based Facebook executive in a dispute over law enforcement demands for data from the companys encrypted messaging service for use in a drug trafficking investigation. The executive was freed after about 24 hours, when an appeals court overturned his arrest. WhatsApp had said in a statement on Monday that it was "disappointed" at the judge's decision to suspend its services, saying it had done its utmost to cooperate with Brazilian tribunals but did not possess the information the court was requesting. The company has said in the past that it does not store encrypted information from WhatsApp messages. Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg had urged Brazilians in a Facebook post to gather outside Congress on Wednesday to demand the messaging service never be blocked again. (Reporting by Alonso Soto; Editing by Daniel Flynn and Marguerita Choy)
captain america civil war iron man

Marvel

Warning: If you haven't seen "Captain America: Civil War," there are huge spoilers ahead.

You know the drill by now Marvel fans! "Captain America: Civil War" is in theaters, and if you head out to see the film this weekend, make sure to stick around after it's over for two extra scenes.

And don't head out after the first one. Stay after all of the credits roll for a second brief scene.

If you missed one or both of them  or were confused by what was going on  we have you covered.

Head back now if you don't want to be spoiled!

The first end-credits sequence

captain america

Marvel

What happens:

Steve Rogers/Captain America and Bucky Barnes/The Winter Soldier are in a high-tech lab. Bucky is seen missing his metal arm, having lost it to Iron Man in the film's final battle.

Rogers and Barnes are having a serious heart-to-heart about Barnes still being affected by the experiments that turned him into The Winter Soldier. As we see throughout "Civil War," he can still be triggered and used by the Avengers' enemies against his own will. Until there's a cure, Bucky doesn't want to put any more innocent lives at risk.

"You sure about this?" Rogers asks him.

"I can't trust my own mind," says Barnes. "I think going back under is the best thing."

We then see T'Challa/Black Panther enter the frame. Though he was at odds with The Winter Soldier throughout the film, he gives him a place of refuge and tells him he was simply a victim.

Barnes heads into a cryo chamber to return to a deep sleep, only to be awoken when Rogers or someone else figures out how to reverse what HYDRA did to him decades ago.

In a rather cryptic line, Captain America tells Black Panther, "You know they'll look for him here." Black Panther challenges them to come and try. As the scene ends we pan over a shot of T'Challa's fictional home country of Wakanda.

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What it means:

black panther

Marvel

This first sequence was pretty straight-forward. Black Panther is going to be housing The Winter Soldier from some unknown forces, maybe HYDRA, who could be looking for him.

The scene may also be setting up some events for Black Panther's solo movie that we'll get February 2018 from director Ryan Coogler ("Creed," "Fruitvale Station"). We don't know much about that movie, but it would be cool to see Bucky Barnes return in that film.

The second end-credits sequence

Captain America Civil War Spider Man Shield Official

Marvel

We're back in Queens with a banged-up Peter Parker fresh from his big airport fight alongside Tony Stark and the Avengers.

His Aunt May (Marisa Tomei) is tending to his black eye asking exactly how he got injured. Parker says it was some guy named Steve from Brooklyn, a nod to Captain America and his hometown. He also says his friend was huge, referring to Ant-Man.

Aunt May then leaves Parker to himself and he checks a gadget on his wrist, undoubtedly from his new best buddy Tony Stark. He hits a button and a hologram appears on the ceiling showing off a Spider-Man logo.

The screen fades to black and says Spider-Man will return.

What it means:

spiderman-civil-war

Marvel

The appearance of the Spidey logo should get fans hyped for a standalone Spider-Man movie. While the idea of a third actor taking on the role of the webslinger may sound exhausting, there's plenty to be excited about.

This time, Sony Pictures, which has the rights to the Spider-Man franchise on film, won't be handling the movie alone. The studio has partnered with Marvel and Disney to bring the next film to screen. Titled "Spider-Man: Homecoming," the film will focus on a younger, teenaged Peter Parker who's trying to juggle school work and learning the basics of being a superhero.

Even better? He'll be joined on screen by Robert Downey Jr.'s Tony Stark/Iron Man, who we expect to be acting as his superhero mentor. If the chemistry the two have in this movie is any indication, then the upcoming standalone movie should be pretty fantastic.

"Spider-Man: Homecoming" will be in theaters July 7, 2017.

NOW WATCH: Heres how Robert Downey Jr. helped find the next Spider-Man
By Ben Blanchard and John Ruwitch BEIJING/SHANGHAI (Reuters) - International criticism of China over the disputed South China Sea will rebound like a coiled spring, a Chinese diplomat said on Friday, as a U.S. warship visited Shanghai against a backdrop of rising tension in the region. China claims almost all of the energy-rich South China Sea, through which more than $5 trillion (3.45 trillion) of trade passes each year. The Philippines, Brunei, Vietnam, Malaysia and Taiwan have overlapping claims. China's increasingly assertive moves in the waters, including building artificial islands and air strips, have rattled nerves, with the Group of Seven (G7) advanced economies warning last month they opposed provocation there. Ouyang Yujing, director-general of Chinese Foreign Ministry's Department of Boundary and Ocean Affairs, said China took note of the criticism. "Of course we're willing to take on board constructive comments and criticism by the relevant countries," Ouyang told a news briefing. "But if they are aimed at putting pressure on China or blackening its name, then you can view it like a spring, which has an applied force and a counterforce. The more the pressure, the greater the reaction." China has been stepping up its rhetoric ahead of a ruling by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague on a case the Philippines has brought against China's claims in the sea. U.S. officials have expressed concern the ruling, expected soon, could prompt China to declare an air defence identification zone, as it did over the East China Sea in 2013. China has neither confirmed nor denied it could do that. The ruling is expected to favour the Philippines and risks raising tension because China rejects the court's authority to hear the case, even though it is a signatory of the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea under which it is being heard. China has been particularly angered by what it sees as interference by the United States, whose military has carried out "freedom of navigation" patrols through the sea. Last Friday, the U.S. Defense Department said China had denied a request for the 7th Fleet's aircraft carrier strike group, to visit Hong Kong. Still, China has allowed the 7th Fleet's command ship, the USS Blue Ridge, to visit Shanghai, where on Friday, Joseph Aucoin, commander of the U.S. 7th Fleet, declined to speculate on the reason for the cancellation of the Hong Kong visit. "I'm not going to let that get in the way of fostering better relations with the country and especially with their navy," he told reporters at Shanghai's dock. (Editing by Paul Tait, Robert Birsel)
By Nick Tattersall and Seda Sezer ISTANBUL (Reuters) - President Tayyip Erdogan told the European Union on Friday that Turkey would not make changes to its terrorism laws required under a deal to curb migration, and declared: "we're going our way, you go yours". His fiery speech will be a blow to any hope in European capitals that it might be business as usual with Turkey after Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, who negotiated the migration deal with Europe and had largely delivered on Turkey's commitments so far, announced he was standing down. The EU asked member states on Wednesday to grant visa-free travel to Turks in return for Ankara stopping migrants reaching Europe, but said Turkey still had to change some legislation, including bringing its terrorism laws in line with EU standards. "When Turkey is under attack from terrorist organisations and the powers that support them directly, or indirectly, the EU is telling us to change the law on terrorism," Erdogan said in a speech at the opening of a local government office in the conservative Istanbul district of Eyup. "They say 'I am going to abolish visas and this is the condition.' I'm sorry, we're going our way, you go yours. Agree with whoever you can agree," he said. Visa-free travel is for many Turks the biggest benefit of Ankara's deal with the EU. Europe, meanwhile, is counting on Turkey to maintain an agreement that has helped stem the flow of refugees and migrants via Turkish shores, which saw more than a million people reach Greece and Italy last year. Davutoglu's departure consolidates the power of Erdogan, who has been highly critical of the EU in the past and who is seen in Brussels as a far tougher negotiating partner less closely wedded in recent years to Turkey's ambition of joining the EU. To win visa-free travel, Turkey must still meet five of 72 criteria the EU imposes on all states exempt from visas, one of which is narrowing its legal definition of terrorism. Rights groups say Turkey has used broad anti-terrorism laws to silence dissent, including detaining journalists and academics critical of the government. But Ankara insists the laws are essential as it battles Kurdish militants at home and the threat from Islamic State in neighbouring Syria and Iraq. Turkey's EU Minister Volkan Bozkir was earlier quoted by the Daily Sabah newspaper as saying Turkey had already made some changes requested by Europe, including reference to "the concept of immediate and obvious danger that threatens public security", but that it "does not have the luxury" of making any more. "NO TURNING BACK" Erdogan said there would be no gap in Turkey's governance after Davutoglu's departure and that the episode demonstrated why the country needs a full presidential system, a matter he said urgently needed to be put to a referendum. Opponents fear an executive presidency will consolidate too much power in the hands of an authoritarian leader, a sentiment shared by some European leaders who fear his ascent will make relations with Turkey more complicated in the years ahead. "A new constitution and presidential system are urgent requirements, not Erdogan's personal agenda ... There is no turning back from this point we reached. Everyone should accept that," he said. Erdogan bristles at suggestions that Turkey uses its anti-terrorism laws indiscriminately. He has repeatedly stressed his determination to crush Kurdish militants fighting an insurgency in Turkey's southeast, and is unlikely to sanction Ankara backing down on the European demands. Much may depend on the ability of whoever replaces Davutoglu, a decision to be made at an extraordinary congress of the ruling AK Party on May 22, to convince European allies that Turkey has already done enough. Transport Minister Binali Yildirim, a close Erdogan ally, appears to be the president's current preference, three senior AKP officials said, although they said that could still change. Government spokesman Numan Kurtulmus and Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag, also Erdogan loyalists, have been touted, as has Energy Minister Berat Albayrak, Erdogan's son-in-law, sources in the party have said. (Additional reporting by Orhan Coskun and Tulay Karadeniz in Ankara, Paul Carrel in Berlin; Writing by Nick Tattersall; editing by Ralph Boulton)
By James Pearson PYONGYANG (Reuters) - Thousands of North Koreans practised dance and parade routines on Thursday as the capital of the isolated nation prepared for a ruling party congress where leader Kim Jong Un is expected to consolidate power. Pyongyang, a city of nearly 3 million, was scrubbed clean ahead of the opening of the meeting on Friday. Teams of elderly workers used shears to carefully cut the grass alongside main thoroughfares, and painted the base of trees a crisp, bright white. Workers were putting finishing touches at the April 25 House of Culture in Pyongyang, a stone structure draped in red party flags and banners named after the founding anniversary of the country's army. A party congress has not been held for 36 years, and the event marks the political high point of Kim's four year-rule. Thousands of delegates from around North Korea will attend, in what is likely to be a highly choreographed show of support for the young leader. Usually suspicious of foreigners, North Korea has invited scores of foreign journalists to cover the congress. "We are very proud to have the respected Marshal Kim Jong Un as our great leader and we are very proud to hold the Seventh Party Congress," said Ji Eun Kyo, who works in a rice factory and was on her way to rehearse for a flower parade that is part of the festivities around the congress. "People are actively participating in the event," said Ji, who was speaking to Reuters in the presence of one of the official guides assigned to manage the movements of foreign journalists. Kim, believed to be 33, is expected to use the congress to formally declare North Korea a nuclear weapons state and adopt his "Byongjin" policy to push simultaneously for nuclear capability and economic development, further consolidating his power. Byongjin follows Kim's father's Songun, or "military first," policy and his grandfather's Juche, the North's home-grown founding ideology that combines Marxism and extreme nationalism. In the capital this week, groups of residents practised loud chanting of patriotic slogans and thousands of school children in red hats and white shirts rehearsed performances for the event, under a constant hum of noise and music. North Koreans have been engaged in a 70-day campaign of intensified work in the run-up to the congress, which has included a tidying up of the capital to welcome delegates. ALL EYES ON YOUNG LEADER Kim has himself kept out of the spotlight so far, last making a public appearance in state media on April 24, when he supervised the test of a submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) a day earlier. The congress is expected to last four or five days, with Kim likely to make an address on the first day to lay out his vision for the country he inherited after the death of his father, Kim Jong Il, in December 2011, said Cho Bong-hyun who heads research on North Korea's economy at IBK Bank in Seoul. The second and third days are likely to be allocated for discussions based on Kim's remarks, with the party's Central Committee meeting to approve organisational and personnel matters, such as new appointments to the powerful Political Bureau, Cho said. The young leader's tenure has been marked by frequent reshuffling within his inner circle, including purges and executions, most notably of his powerful uncle Jang Song Thaek in 2013. Kim has also aggressively pursued nuclear weapons, with rival South Korea warning that it could conduct a fifth nuclear test at any time. Pyongyang was slapped with heavy U.N. sanctions in March following its fourth nuclear test in January. North Korea under Kim has also allowed grey market commerce to play an increasing role in the economy, with rising consumption evident in the capital, where vehicle numbers are on the rise and shops carry a growing array of goods. According to state media, delegates to the congress took in an opera on Wednesday - "Victory of the Revolution is in Sight" - at the Pyongyang Grand Theatre. The last such congress, in 1980, included invited officials from countries with ties to North Korea, but officials in South Korea said they are not aware of similar invitations made to this year's event. (This version of the story was filed to correct name of building in para 3) (Additional reporting by Joseph Campbell; Writing by Jack Kim and Tony Munroe; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)
LONDON (Reuters) - Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said on Thursday he would like Russian President Vladimir Putin to visit Japan to discuss the disputed Kurile Islands and the signing of a formal World War Two peace treaty. "We would like to search for the most appropriate time for Putin to visit Japan," Abe, who is due to meet Putin on Friday, told reporters during a visit to London. "The Northern Territories (Kurile) issue cant be resolved without direct talks between leaders," he added. "We have had more than 70 years of the post war era and still a peace treaty has not been concluded. This is anomalous." He said a treaty was needed to realise the full potential of Japan's relationship with Russia. The dispute over the islands has strained relations since World War Two, when Soviet forces occupied four islands at the southern end of the chain. The Kremlin said on Wednesday that this week's talks was unlikely to result in serious progress. (Reporting by Estelle Shirbon; writing by Stephen Addison; Editing by Michael Holden)
By Tife Owolabi YENAGOA, Nigeria (Reuters) - Militants attacked a Chevron platform in Nigeria's oil-rich Niger Delta region late on Wednesday, the U.S. energy company said on Thursday, amid growing fears of a revived militant campaign in the region. It is the latest in a series of attacks on oil facilities in Africa's top oil exporter. President Muhammadu Buhari has vowed to crack down on "vandals and saboteurs" in the Delta region, which produces most of the country's oil. In a statement, the energy company said Chevron Nigeria Limited, operator of a joint venture with the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), said an attack took place at about 11.15 pm (2215 GMT) on Wednesday. "Its Okan offshore facility in the Western Niger Delta region was breached by unknown persons," said Chevron in the statement. "The facility is currently shut-in and we are assessing the situation, and have deployed resources to respond to a resulting spill." There were no immediate details of any casualties. The company could not be reached for further comment. A group known as the Niger Delta Avengers claimed responsibility for the attack, and in a statement it said it blew up the platform. "This is what we promised the Nigeria government since they refuse to listen to us," the group said. The same group has said it carried out an attack on a Shell oil pipeline in February which shut down the 250,000 barrel-a-day Forcados export terminal. The militants say they want a greater share of oil revenues. Crude sales account for around 70 percent of national income in Africa's biggest economy. Pipeline attacks and violence have risen in Nigeria's southern swampland since authorities issued an arrest warrant in January for a former militant leader on corruption charges. Buhari has extended a multi-million dollar amnesty signed with militants in 2009 but upset them by ending generous pipeline protection contracts. The militancy is a further challenge for a government faced with an insurgency by the Islamist militant Boko Haram group in the northeast and violent clashes between armed nomadic herdsmen and locals over land use in various parts of the country. (Aditional reporting by Alexis Akwagyiram, in Lagos, Anamesere Igboeroteonwu, in Onitsha, and Libby George, in London; editing by Susan Thomas and Alexandra Hudson)
By Timothy Gardner FLINT, Mich. (Reuters) - President Barack Obama sipped filtered water in Flint, Michigan, on Wednesday and assured angry residents that their children would be fine in the long term despite the "complete screw-up" that contaminated their drinking water with lead. Obama made the trip to the mostly African-American community to demonstrate that the water there was safe even as he predicted it would take more than two years to replace the city's aging pipes. Flint, with a population of about 100,000, was under control of a state-appointed emergency manager in 2014 when it switched its water source from Detroit's municipal system to the Flint River to save money. The city switched back in October. The river water was more corrosive than the Detroit system and caused more lead to leach from its aging pipes. Lead can be toxic, and children are especially vulnerable. "This was a man made disaster. This was avoidable. This was preventable," Obama told a crowd at a local high school. "Flint's recovery is everybody's responsibility, and I'm going to make sure that responsibility is met." The president urged parents to ensure their children were tested for lead and said residents should run their taps frequently to flush out remaining pollutants. DRINKS THE WATER After coughing repeatedly during his remarks, he asked for a glass of water, and drank it in front of the crowd. Earlier he sipped from a glass of filtered Flint water during a meeting with regulators. The White House had said that it did not know if the president would drink filtered Flint water. Obama said the crisis had resulted from government officials at all levels not paying attention. Questions linger over whether environmental regulators could have acted more urgently to help the city, where more than 40 percent of its residents live in poverty. Susan Hedman, the EPA's Midwest chief and an Obama appointee, resigned in February amid concern that she had not acted quickly on a June 2015 memo from agency scientist Miguel Del Toral that said tests showed high lead levels in water from Flint homes. Last month, lawyers representing residents of Flint filed a $220.2 million damages claim alleging that negligence on the part of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency had contributed to dangerous lead levels in the city's water. Three Michigan state and local officials were criminally charged in April in an investigation into lead levels in Flint's water, and the state attorney general said there would be more charges. Many residents have blamed Michigan's Republican governor, Rick Snyder, who was greeted by boos from the crowd. "You didn't create this problem, government failed you," Snyder said. Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker and Flint native Michael Moore disputed Obama's assurances about the quality of the water. "A number of experts are still saying this water is not safe. Its still going through the same corroded lead pipes," he said on CNN, describing Obama's visit as "too little, too late." Obama, going off his prepared remarks, told members of the community that their anger was understandable, but he urged them not to let their children believe they would be hurt for life. "You should be angry, but channel that anger. You should be hurt, but don't sink into despair," he said. "Do not somehow communicate to our children here in this city that they're going to be saddled with problems for the rest of their lives. Because they will not. Theyll do just fine." The EPA, whose budget has been squeezed by Congress, acknowledges there are issues with its lead and copper rule that need to be addressed to prevent similar crises in other cities. The agency has said it would propose changes to the rule early next year. (Additional reporting by Jeff Mason and Eric Walsh; Editing by Leslie Adler, Toni Reinhold)
By Ed Stoddard VUWANI, South Africa (Reuters) - Angry residents have torched 19 schools in South Africa's northern Limpopo province, protesting a change in municipal boundaries which they say is a recipe for poor social services, as tensions rise ahead of local polls in August. The skeletal remains of metal desk frames amid ashes and rubble were smouldering testimony to the anger of the arsonists who set the two-room Vhudzani secondary school alight. Vhudzani was one of 19 schools completely gutted by fire this week in this citrus and banana-growing region by residents protesting the boundary modifications they fear will leave them worse off for basic amenities such as roads and water. Students may not be the only ones to suffer. The ruling African National Congress (ANC) government relies heavily on support from rural areas and local elections loom in August. "The services will be much worse," said Tshanduko Mudau, 18, a student studying tourism, as black smoke rose behind him from the Mariadze Inclusive School, set alight on Thursday. "There are shortages of water and you can see the roads," he said, pointing to the rutted gravel track leading to the school. The roads into the area are strewn with rocks, branches and debris by protesters who have been fighting pitched night battles with police. Several arrests have been made. "If they dont respond, there will be no voting here," said Vuledzani Raveley, 28, a local school administrator manning a makeshift roadblock who said his place of work had also gone up in flames. He said he was against the demarcation. The wave of school burnings was sparked by a court ruling that upheld the Demarcation Boards decision to include Vuwani and some districts, currently under the Makhado municipality, into the Malamulele district, leaving residents fuming. Officials said the merging of districts under a bigger municipality was aimed at improving social services. But residents said that the changes mean their districts will be administered from headquarters more than 100 km (60 miles) away, instead of previous centres closer to their homes. The persistence of poverty and joblessness two decades after the end of apartheid is also fuelling the anger, often aimed at the local governments tasked with the provision of services many blacks were deprived of under white rule. Unemployment is around 25 percent and income disparities glaring in an economy that could fall into recession. Outbursts of collective violence over this state of affairs  dubbed "service delivery protests"  have become a common feature of South Africas landscape that bodes ill for the ANC. ELECTION TEST President Jacob Zuma has condemned the burnings, mindful that his party which backed him after a public backlash over a series of recent scandals, faces a tough battle against the official opposition Democratic Alliance party and the ultra-left Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) at local polls on August 3. Analysts say the ANC faces its sternest test at the polling booth since coming to power in 1994  a run up to the next general election in 2019. "It is not good news for the ANC at all in an election year. These are levels of anger seen during the liberation struggle against apartheid," said Gary van Staden, political analyst at NKC African Economics. According to Municipal IQ, a local government research organisation, such protests peaked in 2014 nationwide at 191 and then declined to 164 last year  still over 16 times the 10 recorded in 2004. "It is unlikely that the phenomenon will abate in the near future as South Africans use protest activity to vent unhappiness with a range of state players, including municipalities," Municipal IQ economist Karen Heese said. Complicating the situation in Vuwani is tribalism, which the ANC has been at pains to officially quench, even as it has courted traditional leaders to shore up its rural base. The majority in Vuwani belongs to the Venda ethnic group. Several Vuwani residents said they did not want to be administered by the Shangaan people of Malamulele. "We cannot be ruled by the Shangaans," said Steven Mulaudzi, 28, an assistant driver in the banana industry who comes from the Venda ethnic group. (Editing by James Macharia and Dominic Evans)
By Ian Chua and Aradhana Aravindan SYDNEY/SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Australia and Singapore have agreed to jointly develop military training areas and facilities in Australia in a sign of how China's increasingly assertive military presence in the region is encouraging nations to boost their own defence capabilities. Singapore will fund a A$2.25 billion (1.15 billion) expansion of military training facilities in Australia, a government source told Reuters. Singapore will have enhanced and expanded military training access in Australia over a period of 25 years. The two will strengthen intelligence and information sharing, such as in counter-terrorism, the city-state's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement on Friday. The move to forge closer military ties between Australia and Singapore comes at a time of rising tensions between much of Asia and China, which has been building military and civilian facilities on its artificial islands in the disputed South China Sea. "The kind of military relationships that (Singapore) have and types of military ties that they are developing and deepening, they don't have with China," said Richard Bitzinger, a security expert at the S.Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore. "I am not saying that this is being done overtly to deal with China, but I wouldn't be surprised if that isn't a major driver behind this." The region is also facing rising risks from Islamic extremists. Earlier this week, Singapore said it had detained eight Bangladeshi men who were planning attacks in their homeland. It deported five others who were arrested by police in Dhaka. Land-scarce Singapore has long sent troops to Australia for military exercises. The new deal would allow the Asian nation to increase the number of troops it has on rotation in Australia to 14,000, from 6,000. Under the agreement, Singapore would fund the cost of expanding the Shoalwater Bay Training Area and the Townsville Field Training Area, both in the north of Queensland state. Both bases lie in electorates critical to the government. The timing of the agreement is viewed as a political coup for Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull ahead of an anticipated July federal election. "Under our comprehensive strategic partnership, our aim is to elevate our relationship to a level similar to the one we enjoy with New Zealand," Turnbull told reporters in Canberra. He said the new partnership will also generate a construction boom in North Queensland due to the need for roads, accommodation and facilities for the Singaporean Defence forces. The agreement makes Singapore the only other foreign country to invest in military infrastructure in Australia besides the United States. Earlier this week Reuters reported that Singapore will soon pick the winner of a $1 billion tender for military utility helicopters, as it modernises its air force and navy amid rising tensions in the region. The city-state and Australia also updated a free trade agreement, which includes improved access for businesses to bid for government procurement contracts and allowed for easier movement of people between the two markets. Singapore is Australia's fifth largest trading and investment partner, with bilateral trade of S$20.2 billion (10.27 billion) in 2015. The city-state has investments amounting to A$80.2 billion in Australia. (Reporting by Ian Chua; Additional reporting by Matt Siegel in SYDNEY Aradhana Aravindan in SINGAPORE; Editing by Shri Navaratnam)
By Tiisetso Motsoeneng JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - Barclays Plc said on Wednesday it is selling shares representing 12 percent of Barclays Africa Group and that South Africa's state pension fund would be an anchor investor. Barclays Plc is selling down its 62 percent stake, which is worth some $5 billion, in Barclays Africa Group (BAG) under a plan by new Chief Executive Jes Staley to simplify the bank's structure and generate higher shareholder returns. Barclays said in a statement it would sell 103.6 million shares in BAG, with up to 10.3 million shares going to South African state pension fund Public Investment Corporation (PIC), representing up to 1.2 percent of BAG. "This is an important first step as we seek to reduce our shareholding in Barclays Africa to a level that achieves accounting and regulatory deconsolidation," Staley said in a statement. PIC, Africa's largest fund manager with more than $122 billion (84.23 billion pound) of South African government employee pension assets under its custody, is already the second-biggest shareholder in BAG with a holding of about 6 percent. Earlier on Wednesday, a source with direct knowledge of the matter told Reuters in Johannesburg that talks were taking place between PIC and Barclays about the fund buying some of the Barclays holding. "There are discussions going on about the PIC increasing its stake in Barclays Africa," the source said, declining to be named because the matter is private. "There's no PIC-led consortium. It's just the PIC," The PIC is the second investor to show interest in BAG, which runs South Africa's biggest retail bank, after a source told Reuters last month that Atlas Mara has teamed up with private equity group Carlyle to prepare a bid. However, any deal involving a private equity player could face regulatory opposition from South Africa's central bank. "As a regulator, we would not be comfortable with private equity play for any of the banks," deputy governor Kuben Naidoo said at a press conference in Pretoria on Tuesday. He did not comment on any specific bank. Valued at $330 million, Atlas Mara was set up by former Barclays Chief Executive Bob Diamond, who has confirmed that his firm has already lined up funding for an offer, without elaborating on what form the financing would take. (Additional reporting by Nqobile Dludla and Lawrence White; Editing by Alexander Smith)
By Orhan Coskun and Nick Tattersall ANKARA/ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan's drive to tighten his grip on power has triggered an open rift with Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, raising questions about the premier's future and troubling allies dependent on the NATO member's stability. The political uncertainty comes as Europe looks increasingly to Turkey for help in curbing a migration crisis and as Washington draws on Ankara's support in fighting Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. At home, Turkey itself faces attacks by Kurdish militants and spillover of Syian violence. The feud encompassing issues from relations with Europe to the detention of government critics has already hit investor sentiment, with the stock market weakening further on Wednesday after booking its biggest drop in more than five months the previous day. "Erdogan may be able to continue with Davutoglu but it is clear that there is currently a fracture. If the matter is not resolved quickly, Erdogan could take the path of choosing a new leader," one source close to the presidency told Reuters. "The AKP's stability means Turkey's stability, and this problem needs to be solved urgently to avoid economic and political problems." A spokesman for Erdogan, who has dominated Turkish politics since the AK Party he founded was elected in 2002, declined to comment on what he said was speculation about the future leadership of the party. The relationship between the two has long been uneasy, shaped by personality as well as politics. Erdogan, a political fighter hardened by a childhood in Istanbul's rough Kasimpasa district, wants a robust presidential system as a guarantee against the fractious coalition politics that hampered Turkey in the 1990s. His opponents see a stronger presidency as a vehicle for his own ambition. Such a system would see Davutoglu, a more mild-mannered academic and former diplomat lacking Erdogan's natural appeal to crowds, sidelined. The two have governed in a strained alliance since Erdogan won the presidency in 2014 and Davutoglu replaced him as prime minister. Aides to Davutoglu have so far largely dismissed tensions, arising often from overlapping competences, as matters of style rather than substance. But in the clearest sign yet of a power struggle, authority to appoint provincial AKP officials was taken from Davutoglu this week. The move reduces Davutoglu's hold over the party grass roots and cements Erdogan's influence. In an emotional and uncharacteristically short speech to AKP deputies on Tuesday, Davutoglu said he would rather leave any position than damage the AKP. But he cast suggestions on social media that he was in a battle with Erdogan as the work of "charlatans". "The millions who put their hope in the AK Party should not worry," he said. Secularist opposition newspaper Cumhuriyet cast the speech as a signal he may resign. Pro-government columnist Abdulkadir Selvi wrote in the mainstream Hurriyet newspaper that Davutoglu had told AKP officials he was considering stepping down. Erdogan will meet Davutoglu on Wednesday evening, bringing their usual weekly talk forward by a day. Three senior AKP officials told Reuters the meeting would be crucial for the party and for Davutoglu but they did not expect a resignation. "I would not be surprised if (Erdogan) decided to go on with Davutoglu at least for a little longer and freeze the crisis. But the issue of chairmanship of the party is going to be the main topic," one official told Reuters. "FUNDAMENTAL DILEMMA" The two leaders have appeared at odds over a landmark deal with the European Union to stem the flow of illegal migrants from Turkish shores to the Greek islands, in return for which Ankara has been promised accelerated EU accession talks, visa liberalisation and financial aid. "You can feel a very strong tension between Davutoglu and Erdogan. It will get worse," said a senior European politician who has worked with both men for many years. The deal has been Davutoglu's project. Erdogan, frequently critical of the EU, has at times appeared to belittle his progress, most notably efforts to win visa-free travel to Europe by June, the main prize in the eyes of many Turks. "During my time as prime minister it was announced (this) would come in October 2016," Erdogan said recently. "I don't understand why bringing it forward four months is presented as a win. I'm saddened by the presentation of small things in a bigger light." Aides to the two leaders deny they differ on Europe. But European officials, wary of Erdogan's authoritarian style, see Davutoglu as their main partner and his departure could strain relations. "Davutoglu seems to be really interested in joining the EU. He believes this is in Turkeys security interests. We dont believe Erdogan is as passionate about this," a senior EU official told Reuters. Ruptures are also evident on questions of human rights, a key area of concern for EU leaders. Erdogan has spoken in favour of the jailing, ahead of their trial, of academics and journalists on charges of supporting terrorist groups. Davutoglu is opposed to such pre-trial detention. Four Turkish academics were arrested in March, accused of spreading terrorist propaganda, after publicly reading a declaration urging an end to military operations in the largely Kurdish southeast. They have since been released pending trial. Prominent journalists have been held on similar charges, in what rights groups say is a bid to silence dissent. But such differences are symptoms of what former diplomat and political commentator Sinan Ulgen called a "fundamental dilemma" facing the two. "Erdogan's end goal is to consolidate enough popular support to switch to a presidential system. Davutoglu's end goal is to consolidate his own power and be a successful prime minister," said Ulgen, head of the EDAM think-tank in Istanbul. "The experience so far has been that when people who seemingly had weight in the AKP showed even a soft form of dissent, Erdogan was able to sideline them without significant consequences for the popularity of the party. "There is no reason to think that would be different in relation to Davutoglu." (Additional reporting by Ercan Gurses in Ankara and Asli Kandemir in Istanbul; Writing by Nick Tattersall; editing by Ralph Boulton)
By Phil Stewart STUTTGART, Germany (Reuters) - Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi is in a strong position despite political unrest in Iraq, thanks in part to battlefield successes and his commitment to a multi-sectarian state, U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter said on Monday. "He seems to be in a very strong position. Obviously we support him strongly because of what he stands for," Carter told reporters traveling with him shortly before landing in Germany. Carter's full-throated backing of Abadi, one of his most forceful to date, follows months of intense Iraqi political wrangling that has put the country on edge. Abadi has attempted to replace party-affiliated ministers with technocrats as part of an anti-corruption drive. A divided parliament has failed to approve the proposal amid scuffles and protests. "Prime Minister Abadi stands for and has been a partner in all of the things that are important to Iraq's future, namely a country that holds together and doesn't just spiral off into sectarianism," Carter said. Corruption became a major issue after global oil prices collapsed two years ago, shrinking the state budget at a time when it needed additional income to wage war against Islamic State. "That's why it's so important for the international community to help and support the Iraqi government at this time," Carter said, ahead of talks in Europe this week with allies in the campaign against Islamic State. The militants have been retreating since December, when the Iraqi army recaptured Ramadi, the largest city in the western region. Last month, the army took the nearby region of Hit, pushing them further north along the Euphrates valley. The United States is leading a coalition effort to help Iraq drive back the group. But U.S. officials acknowledge that military gains, including Iraq's recapture of the city of Ramadi and Hit, are not enough. Experts point with anxiety to Iraq's unrelenting political infighting, corruption, a growing fiscal crisis and the Shiite Muslim-led government's fitful efforts to reconcile with aggrieved minority Sunnis, the bedrock of Islamic State support. Three bombs went off in and around Baghdad on Monday, killing at least 14 people. The largest blast, which Islamic State said it was behind, came from a parked car bomb in the Saydiya district of southern Baghdad. (Reporting by Phil Stewart; additional reporting by Stephen Kalin in Baghdad, editing by Larry King and Andrew Hay)
Italian buyout firm Alto Partners has sold its entire 95% stake in BIA, a European producer and distributor of couscous, to B.F. S.p.A., which is the holding company of Bonifiche Ferraresi.
YEREVAN, MAY 6, ARMENPRESS. At least 28 people were killed when warplanes struck a refugee camp Thursday in Syria, the monitoring group Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported, with many of the dead women and children, CNN reports.

Rami Abdul Rahman, director of the London-based group, told CNN it was not immediately clear whether Syrian or Russian planes conducted the airstrike.

The planes attacked the Kamuna camp next to Sarmada village in the northern countryside of Idlib province on the border with Turkey, according to the observatory.

Majd Khalaf, a civil defense officer in Syria, said the number of casualties may go higher because so many people were injured. He said two jet fighters struck the camp, according to eyewitnesses the civil defense team interviewed.

Video showed tents burning while men with firehoses tried to put out blazes. Men covered and carried away bodies, and women and children lying in a truck bed wailed in anguish before a vehicle drove them away.

The bombing was part of heavy fighting that erupted in Syria a day after the United States and Russia brokered a ceasefire for Aleppo, one of the country's most war-torn cities, and surrounding areas.

Syrian government helicopters shelled the southern countryside of Aleppo with rockets and barrel bombs, and Syrian forces targeted the road connecting the city and Damascus, the monitoring group reported. At least two people were killed and a number injured, it said.

ISIS and other militant groups are fighting in different positions in the northern countryside of Aleppo, the observatory said.

Al Qaeda-affiliated al Nusra Front and other armed groups fired rockets on residential neighborhoods in Aleppo, the monitoring group said. Islamist and militant groups shelled regime-held area in the city.
YEREVAN, MAY 6, ARMENPRESS. Azerbaijani media spread information received from the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry which says Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov, in response to the answer by Czech "Days" periodical journalist, spoke about also what happened with Khojali people in Aghdam during the joint press conference of EU Eastern Partnership and Visegrad Four Foreign Ministers.

As Armenpress reports, actually Mammadyarov did not even make a hint on this during his ten-minute speech. The video of Mammadyarovs response proves this fact.

Azerbaijanis were so angered by the questions of Days periodical that the website has undergone a hacker attack and it is only few hours it works.

You can watch the entire video below.
YEREVAN, MAY 6, ARMENPRESS. As the European Union prepares for critical talks on the rules governing applications from people seeking protection in Europe, UNICEF has called for the interests and rights of children to be given greater priority.

In the coming days, 28 EU member states and the European Parliament will begin examining a draft proposal drawn up by the European Commission to reform the so-called Dublin Regulation, Armenpress reports citing UNICEF official website.

The new rules will determine which State is responsible for considering an application for international protection that has been submitted anywhere in the EU.

The debate comes amid a refugee and migration crisis that has overwhelmed Europes existing asylum process, and left in the balance the fate of more than 400,000 children who applied for asylum in Europe between January and November 2015.

These discussions are an opportunity to strengthen vital safeguards to which children seeking asylum in Europe are entitled under international law, said Noala Skinner, Director of the UNICEF Brussels Office. For Europes common asylum system to be humane, fair and efficient, the protection of children must be a central priority".
YEREVAN, MAY 6, ARMENPRESS. House Speaker Paul Ryan said Thursday he cannot yet support presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump's presidential campaign, CNN reports.

"I'm just not ready to do that at this point. I'm not there right now," the Wisconsin Republican told CNN's "The Lead with Jake Tapper" in an interview.

Ryan's position makes him the highest-level GOP official to reject Trump since the real estate mogul became the last candidate standing in the party's nominating contest. His move gives down-ballot Republicans cover to hold off on supporting Trump. It could also keep his agenda in the House from being overtaken by Trump's policy positions.

Ryan said he hopes to eventually back Trump and "to be a part of this unifying process." The first moves, though, must come from Trump, he said.

Ryan said he wants Trump to unify "all wings of the Republican Party and the conservative movement" and then run a campaign that will allow Americans to "have something that they're proud to support and proud to be a part of."

"And we've got a ways to go from here to there," Ryan said.

Asked whether Trump's proposed Muslim ban, his opposition to free trade and his call to deport 12 million undocumented immigrants would preclude him from ever supporting Trump, Ryan said: "We got work to do."

Trump responded to Ryan late Thursday afternoon, saying in a statement that "I am not ready to support Speaker Ryan's agenda. Perhaps in the future we can work together and come to an agreement about what is best for the American people. They have been treated so badly for so long that it is about time for politicians to put them first!"

Trump didn't address Ryan's comments at a campaign event Thursday night in Charleston, West Virginia. But speaking to reporters at the event, Trump's campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, dismissed the idea that the remarks are a slap in the face to the presumptive nominee coming from the leader of the Republican Party.
YEREVAN, MAY 6, ARMENPRESS. President Obama commuted the sentences of 58 inmates Thursday as part of his ongoing initiative to release federal prisoners who have received severe mandatory sentences for non-violent drug offenses, Armenpress reports, citing the Washington Post.

With this latest round of commutations, Obama has granted clemency to a total 306 inmates, 110 of whom were serving life sentences. Obama has said he will continue granting commutations during his final months in office to inmates who meet certain criteria set out by the Justice Department.

Of the inmates granted clemency Thursday, 18 had been sentenced to life without parole. One was Fulton Wash Washington, of Compton, Calif., who was convicted on PCP charges. At his sentencing, the judge lamented that harsh mandatory minimum sentences were not meant for offenders like Washington, but he had no choice. His daughter, who is 31, was 10 years old when Washington was sent to prison for the rest of his life.

I was able to tell both Wash and his daughter today that he is coming home, said attorney James E. Felman. His daughter just broke down and started screaming and crying with hysteria. Its just unbelievable. Im still in tears.

Since the Obama administration launched its high-profile clemency initiative two years ago, thousands of inmates have applied. More than 9,000 petitions are pending.
YEREVAN, MAY 6, ARMENPRESS. Bundestag CDU MP Albert Weiler is confident that the German Bundestag will recognize the 1915 Armenian Genocide on June 2.

In an interview with Armenpress Weiler said the adoption of the bill by Bundestag is a very important issue for him, he makes great efforts that the 1915 crime is properly categorized as Genocide.

We are working for the recognition of the Armenian Genocide by the Bundestag and the adoption of the bill, and I have to note that currently the situation is really good. The bill will be presented during the June 2 plenary session, and we are working so it gets approval by the majority. I am happy that the Bundestag recognizes the Armenian Genocide on June 2, Weiler said.

The MP said the previous decision of the two coalition heads to present a joint bill until summer vacations was very important.

Currently we have the German Social-Democratic Partys approval, and I can announce that we will have a majority on this issue. Weiler said, adding the title of the bill will include the word Genocide, and by this they do not want to blame the current Turkey, but by recognizing they want to reconcile the two countries.

There is no reconciliation without recognition. Germanys guilt will also be part of the bill. After all everyone knows that the Germany of those times could have protected the Armenians, somehow prevent the tragedy, however it didnt. Another important point is that today Germany should contribute and support the reconciliation process of Armenia and Turkey. The reconciliation process is important also considering the economic factor, Weiler said.

Speaking on the Holocaust, Weiler said the German people and the state accepted, recognized its past action, as a result of which Germany and Israel have close relations now. If you visit Israel as a German, you are warmly welcomed. I wish that Armenia and Turkey also reconcile, and every Armenian is warmly welcomed in Turkey and vice versa, he said.
YEREVAN, MAY 6, ARMENPRESS. US Deputy Department Spokesperson Mark Toner says Nagorno Karabakhs final status will only be resolved in the context of a comprehensive settlement, Armenpress reports, Toner said this during the daily briefing with journalists.

The United States, along with the rest of the international community, does not recognize Nagorno Karabakh. Nagorno Karabakhs final status will only be resolved in the context of a comprehensive settlement, so we urge the sides to come to the negotiating table in good faith in order to reach a settlement that achieves those goals, Toner said. He stated that the works should be done within the context of the Minsk Group and urged all sides to return to settlement process.
YEREVAN, MAY 6, ARMENPRESS. Turkey is no longer simply politically polarized. It is now bitterly divided into two planets: those who support and will continue to support the president Recep Tayyip Erdogan and those who are, for a variety of reasons, against him. Erdogan is the most divisive politician in Turkeys modern political history, Armenpress reports, Turkish famous writer Elif Shafak writes in an article published in the Guardian.

She says amid the political turmoil in Turkey this week, culminating in the prime ministers announcement that hell stand down within days, it was Oscar Wilde who became the subject of a heated debate in the Turkish parliament. A member of the pro-Kurdish Peoples Democratic Party (HDP) said he wanted to quote a line from Wilde. A deputy from the ruling AKP party objected to the idea of citing someone who was neither Muslim nor Turkish. Yet another AKP member confused the Irish author with the Oscars.

When they are not debating Wilde, MPs are busy exchanging blows. During a discussion to strip them of their immunity  a deliberate amendment that might lead to the trial and incarceration of Kurdish MPs  Garo Paylan, an Armenian deputy, was kicked, punched and subjected to hate speech by several AKP members. Paylan said: What they cant digest is this: a person of Armenian identity reveals their lies and stands upright.

It is hard to be an Armenian in Turkey. Or a Kurd, or an Alevi, or gay, or a Jew, or a woman, or someone who just doesnt agree with what is happening in the country, Shafak writes. Diversity has been stifled. Freedom of speech has been abandoned. An ideology of sameness dominates the land which is shaped by Turkish nationalism, Islamism and authoritarianism she said.

Referring to Davutoglus resignation Shafak says Erdogan wants to change Turkey into a presidential regime with a monopoly of power. She writes that opposition is fragmented, scattered, and demoralized in the country. Media is too heavily monitored. Turkey tops the countries demanding content removal from Twitter.

Everything is shifting in Turkey  and very fast. We Turks live with a feeling of what now?, knowing that every day something new happens. The central components of democracy  such as separation of powers, rule of law, freedom of speech  are all but broken the writer says.

She identifies three major dangers: an absolutist monopoly of power; the total collapse of the Turkish-Kurdish peace process and the loss of secularism.

In the past we had a solid tradition of black humor. Politics was always rough, but it was OK for the people to laugh at politicians. Not anymore. Recent research shows that only half of Turkeys people think it OK to criticize the government publicly. When Angela Merkel allows German comedians to be sued by Erdogan, it is a clear message to Turkeys democrats: You are all alone, Elif Shafak stated.
YEREVAN, MAY 6, ARMENPRESS. Chairman of the Defense, National Security and Internal Affairs Committee of the Armenian Parliament Koryun Nahapetyan says the process of acquiring armaments from Russia is proceeding as scheduled.

Russia has approved the loan agreement in February. The agreement implies certain processes, which are already being done, he said.

Certain actions and deadlines are inked in the agreement. I cannot give an exact date when the Russian side will supply the armaments, we can be sure that the sides will carry out all works within the deadlines of the agreement, Nahapetyan said.

Speaking on rumors that allegedly Armenia is limiting its possibilities of cooperation only with Russia, Nahapetyan said those rumors are false and Armenia is free to have arms deals with any other country, if the conditions are favorable. According to him, Armenia is acquiring armaments from Russia on privileged conditions, and this is the reason of the Russian-Armenian close cooperation in armaments.
YEREVAN, MAY 6, ARMENPRESS. North Korea is holding its most important political gathering in a generation, where Kim Jong-un will cement his status as leader. The country's first full congress in decades is being closely watched for any shift in policies or changes in political leadership, Armenpress reports citing BBC. Mr Kim is expected to reassert his nuclear ambitions, amid speculation he will soon conduct a fifth nuclear test.

Foreign media have been invited but are not allowed inside the venue. The capital was spruced up ahead of the event and citizens laid flowers in central squares as it got under way. The streets are lined with National and Workers' Party flags with banners that read "Great comrades Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il will always be with us" and "Defend the headquarters of the Korean revolution at the cost of our lives".

It is the seventh meeting of North Korea's Worker's Party and the first since 1980, and is being held inside the April 25 House of Culture, now covered in vast red and gold banners and massive images of the current leader's father and grandfather.

This year's event is shrouded in secrecy. The BBC's Stephen Evans is one of about 100 foreign journalists invited but says reporters are being closely monitored.
YEREVAN, MAY 6, ARMENPRESS. Chairman of the Defense, National Security and Internal Affairs Committee of the Parliament of Armenia Koryun Nahapetyan says mobilizations of Azerbaijani military equipments in the direction of Nakhijevan is observed.

I had a private meeting with the Defense Minister two days ago. We discussed numerous issues. Taking into account the nature of the discussion, we cannot disclose data here, but unfortunately some of the discussed issues were already disclosed. In this regard I cannot understand the behavior of some of my colleagues, who have disclosed information without having the right to do so. During the meeting we have also discussed the mobilization of military hardware. Indeed, in some areas, also in the mentioned area, mobilizations of Azerbaijani military equipment are observed, said Nahapetyan, answering question regarding Azerbaijani mobilizations in Nakhijevan.

He assured that the Defense Ministry and the General Staff of the Armed Forces are in full control of the situation, and that the Armenian forces are always ready to counter any kind of attack.
YEREVAN, MAY 6, ARMENPRESS. Minister of Culture, Youth and Social Development of the United Arab Emirates Sheikh Nahyan bin Mubarak Al Nahyan organized an official reception in his residence in honor of His Holiness Catholicos Aram I of the Great House of Cilicia.

Aram I praised the States caring attitude towards the Armenian community.

The Minister expressed appreciation to the diligence and contribution to the country of the Armenian community.
YEREVAN, MAY 6, ARMENPRESS. Reporters without borders international organization started an ironic campaign entitled Great year for censorship where the names of Presidents of Azerbaijan and Turkey Ilham Aliyev and Recep Tayyip Erdogan are written in the list of leaders of 12 countries who Celebrate their victory over media.

As Armenpress reports citing organizations official website, Reporters without borders states that in Azerbaijan 7 journalists are in jail, and there are no independent TV channels in that country. A number of independent journalists are in exile, attacks are carried out against the remaining journalists in the country. Moreover, not only journalists, but their family members as well are being exposed.

The organization says more than thousand cases are underway in Turkey for insulting the President: more than 100 journalists are in prison, and police campaigns are being held in publication editorials. In addition, journalists are dismissed for Twitter, and some of the foreign journalists are banned to enter the country.

The organization has started a similar ironic campaign against other high-ranking officials of different states.
YEREVAN, MAY 6, ARMENPRESS. Turkey's president has told the EU it will not change its anti-terror laws in return for visa-free travel, Armenpress reports, citing BBC.

"We'll go our way, you go yours," Recep Tayyip Erdogan said.

The EU says Turkey needs to narrow its definition of terrorism to qualify for visa-free travel - which is part of a larger deal between the sides aimed at easing Europe's migration crisis.

Mr Erdogan was speaking a day after PM Ahmet Davutoglu, who largely negotiated the EU deal, said he was stepping down.

The wide-ranging EU-Turkey deal involves the return of migrants, mainly Syrians, from Greece to Turkey, along with increased aid and other measures.

One of these is to allow Turkish citizens visa-free travel for short stays in the Schengen area which comprises 22 EU and four non-EU members.

However, the EU wants Turkey to narrow its broad definition of terrorism to match tighter EU standards. It is one of five EU criteria Turkey still has to agree to in order to meet the visa-free requirements.
YEREVAN, MAY 6, ARMENPRESS. The settlement of Nagorno Karabakh conflict depends on the constructive position of the parties. If Azerbaijan continues to be guided by either everything or nothing, either everything or war approach, of course, it will lose everything, while by the threatening by war, they will only wreck the prospects for a peaceful settlement, Armenpress reports Deputy Foreign Minister of Armenia Shavarsh Kocharyan told Echo of Moscow.

Shavarsh Kocharyan clarified the developments over the legislative initiative to recognize the independence of Nagorno Karabakh Republic. He first of all, expressed surprise over the boom and misunderstanding related to that initiative, saying that this is the 4th time he represents the Government during legislative initiatives of opposition MPs to recognize Nagorno Karabakh Republic. The government gave its approval not to the bill, but to its own opinion. According to that opinion, the Government of the Republic of Armenia conditions the adoption of the submitted bill with the talks between Armenia and Nagorno Karabakh, considering possible developments, including external factors, Kocharyan said.

To the question if the previous opinions were identical to the current one, Shavarsh KOcharyan answered, Yes, yes, they were identical. The matter is that we do not rule out the possibility of recognizing Nagorno Karabakh, something that the President of Armenia clearly stated. During the days when Azerbaijan unleashed a military onslaught against Nagorno Karabakh, the President said that if those operations go on, Armenia will have nothing else to do but recognize Nagorno Karabakh. With all these, we have not changes our stance that the conflict must be settled through exclusively peaceful negotiations, under the mediation of the OSCE Minsk Group Co-chairs.

Referring to the question of one of the Russian reporters why Armenia cannot recognize Nagorno Karabakhs independence in this tense situation, the Deputy Foreign Minister noted that it is possible, but Armenia has adopted another stance. There is a negotiation format based on Madrid Principles, the provisions of which have been proposed by the Presidents of the three Co-chair countries. Those proposals are about mutual concessions, Shavarsh Kocharyan said, adding that Azerbaijan continuously focuses on the points that are only in its interests.
Since Boston College created the BC BIGS program, the University has continued to grow its partnership with Big Brothers Big Sisters of Massachusetts Bay and Big Sister Association of Greater Boston. BC BIGS has enabled hundreds of children to experience the benefits of Big Brothers Big Sisters mentoring, whether on campus, in Littles' schools, during afterschool programs or throughout the Boston community.



BC BIGS also provides many of the "Littles" with their first opportunity to visit a college campus. Through their connections with Boston College mentors, these children, many of whom live in areas that are difficult for Big Brothers Big Sisters Massachusetts Bay to reach through traditional community-based programming, are now pursuing their own plans for collegea concept they never previously considered.



Boston College leaves its largest footprint on male matchesa constant need emphasized by Big Brothers Big Sisters of Massachusetts Bay. Since the first official match in October 2010, BC Male Bigs have spent more than 10,000 hours mentoring in its program, 82 percent of those mentoring relationships lasting until a Big has graduated or beyond. Currently, the BC BIGS program has 127 males placed in more than nine different sites, including Franklin Field.

Following the successful campus-based program model developed with Boston College, Big Brothers Big Sisters of Massachusetts Bay has expanded this model through partnerships with Babson College, Massachusetts Maritime Academy and its recently unveiled partnership with Endicott College.

The Big of the Year annual gala celebrates the spirit of volunteerism and recognizes remarkable community leaders who help brighten the lives of children. Since the first Big of the Year in 1993, Big Brothers Big Sisters of Massachusetts Bay has raised more than $9.5 million, helping support more than 3,500 one-on-one friendships between young people and adult mentors in the Massachusetts Bay area.

About Big Brothers Big Sisters of Massachusetts Bay

Big Brothers Big Sisters of Massachusetts Bay is an innovative, energetic organization that is making a real difference in the lives of over 2,100 youth by providing them with an invested, caring adult mentor. With research and proven outcomes at its core, Big Brothers Big Sisters of Massachusetts Bay is working to ensure every child has the support from caring adults that they need for healthy development and success in life. The organizations vision is to inspire, engage and transform communities in Massachusetts Bay by helping youth achieve their full potential, contributing to healthier families, better schools, brighter futures and stronger communities. To learn more, visit the Big Brothers Big Sisters of Massachusetts Bay website.

News & Public Affairs | Big Brothers Big Sisters of Massachusetts Bay
Research News

UB celebrates inventors and entrepreneurs

By CORY NEALON

UB held its annual Inventors and Entrepreneurs Reception last Thursday, honoring faculty, students and business partners whose are pushing boundaries in medicine, electronics and other industries.

Award recipients included faculty members who have developed a new method to diagnose the autoimmune disorder Sjogrens syndrome, as well as researchers who have created new ways to protect buildings during earthquakes.

Of particular note, President Satish K. Tripathi presented the Technology Innovation Leadership award to Vice Provost Robert J. Genco. Genco, who has overseen the universitys technology transfer efforts as director of the UB Office of Science, Technology Transfer and Economic Outreach (STOR), is stepping down from that role to lead UBs new Center for Microbiome Research.

Dr. Gencos work in developing an exemplary technology transfer operation has had tremendous and lasting impact, Tripathi said. Much of the success were witnessing at the University at Buffalo and throughout the greater Buffalo Niagara region can be traced, in part, to programs that he has guided at UB to foster innovation and entrepreneurship.

Were fortunate to continue to benefit from his outstanding service as leader of UBs new Center for Microbiome Research, and I look forward to seeing him break even more new ground in this important new role, he said.

The event, held at the Saturn Club in Buffalo, also honored:

Researchers who have developed nine technologies licensed to companies. These discoveries include a nanoparticle that can be used to fight hemophilia and other ailments, and technology designed to help doctors assess and treat unruptured brain aneurysms.

Researchers named on six patents. These inventors include Julian L. Ambrus Jr., professor in the Department of Medicine, Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, who developed the diagnosis for Sjogrens, as well as UB engineering researchers Michael Constantinou and Andrei Reinhorn, and industry partner Taylor Devices, who created the earthquake-protection system.

The Entrepreneurial Spirit award will be presented Glenna Bett and Randall Rasmusson. Both are faculty members who co-founded Cytocybernetics, a UB spinoff company that is creating biotechnology that aims to cut in half the time and money needed for preclinical trials of certain medications.

Three companies that graduated from the UB Technology Incubator. These include tech startup Cloud62, which was acquired in October by Illinois-based Huron Consulting Group but remains in Buffalo at the UB Gateway Building downtown.

Six companies that joined the UB Technology Incubator. The list includes Geocove, a Florida-based company founded by UB alumna Karyn Tareen that builds geographic information systems for government agencies and other groups.

A complete list of the companies, as well as new technologies, is available in the reception program.

The event was organized by STOR, which helps UB researchers commercialize their inventions. The office also runs the UB Technology Incubator; the UB Biosciences Incubator in the Clinical and Translational Research Center in downtown Buffalo; Directed Energy, a virtual clean energy incubator; tenX, a co-working space within the UB Technology Incubator; and the Western New York Incubator Network, which provides services to incubated companies across Western New York.

STOR also has partnered with the School of Management to run the universitys Entrepreneurship Lab program, a winter session class offered to students who want to turn their business ideas into reality.

Additional speakers at the reception included Provost Charles F. Zukoski; Venu Govindaraju, vice president for research and economic development; and Genco.
Modified On May 09, 2016 02:19 PM By Akshit for Toyota Innova Crysta 2016-2020

The Innova nameplate is over a decade old in India. It has been the most-selling MPV in the country for all these years and is known for its space, comfort and, above all, the rock-solid and tension-free reliability. Toyota recently brought in its successor, the Innova Crysta, which we drove in Goa a few days ago and came back really impressed, especially with the new powertrains and the interiors.

Space and comfort were commendable attributes of the earlier Innova, but the old-school design and sub-standard quality pulled it down somehow. Now, Toyota has addressed all those issues with the Crysta and taken things a step further.

Toyota Innova vs. Innova Crysta - What's Different? Read here

Get into the comfortable drivers seat and cabin of the Crysta and you will realize how boring the older one was. The dash looks futuristic and the quality of the materials is top notch. Theres a one-piece silver trim element that runs across the dash  something that lends elegance to the cabin.

On the range-topping variant, theres a neatly integrated seven-inch touchscreen infotainment system with navigation, reverse parking camera and all the modern connectivity options. Right below the infotainment system is the aircon controls, with a simple layout of two dials and some buttons. The instrument panel is neat as well. The screen between the tachometer and the speedometer is pretty easy to read and informs you about the fuel consumption, cruising range and average speed. It even has a compass.

One thing that Ive always missed in highway-munchers like these is cruise control. But Toyota seems to have done its homework with quite some dedication since the Cryta gets that as well.

The seats of the Innova were always good but the Crysta takes it to another level. Space has also increased, thanks to the fact that the Crysta is longer, wider and taller than the current Innova by 150mm, 70mm and 35mm, respectively. The wheelbase remains unchanged, though.

According to the carmaker, most Innova cars are chauffeur-driven, so the focus has now shifted to the rear seats. It gets faux wood trims on the door panel to enhance the premium quotient, which missing is on the front doors. The seats feel plush, offering comfort equivalent to a premium sedan. While sitting there, you have access to a foldable table and a button to slide the front seats forward, climate control rear coolers garnished with ambient lighting, and many more such luxuries. So the rear seats are undoubtedly the best ones to be seated in.

To make your buying decision easier, click on the links below:

Innova Crysta vs XUV500 : Which One to Pick?

Innova Crysta Vs. Mahindra XUV 500

Read More on : Innova Crysta
A May 16 photo of Philippines' president-elect Rodrigo Duterte (seated, right) with property magnate and former senator Manny Villar during a press conference in Davao City. Business titans, turncoat politicians, celebrities and rebel leaders have descended on the long-neglected far southern Philippines, hoping to gain favor with the nation's shock new powerbroker.

May 18, 2016: How the Philippines and China could find a common cause

Left turn. Is that like a hard left, a 90-degree pivot, right now? Or a gradual, gently sweeping arc in that direction? Key questions, when you're looking at what shape or form Rodrigo Duterte's new government is going to take in the Philippines, are, What exactly does the "revolutionary government" he's promised actually mean? How "red" is it going to be? Duterte's acknowledged he's going to be his country's first leftist president. But he says he's not a communist, describing himself as left-leaning, rather than card-carrying. Let's say socialist then. What about his government though, when you consider he's promised to bring Jose Maria Sison back from a 30-year exile and install him in the new cabinet? Duterte's planning to go to The Hague for talks with Sison soon. They've already conferenced over Skype. Sison, known colloquially as "Joma," is the founder of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), and Duterte's intellectual inspiration. Sison taught a young Duterte at the Lyceum in Manila in the '70's. Marcos jailed Sison for nearly a decade for subversion. After the dictator fell, Sison was released. Shortly after, while travelling in the Netherlands, the Philippines revoked his passport. He's been stateless since, and continues to live in the Netherlands. He's been seeking asylum there as a political refugee since 1987. The United States has classified him as a terrorist since 2002. Similarly, the EU. But the Philippines dropped subversion charges, so he's not wanted by Manila.

watch now

The CPP distances itself from Sison, claiming he's just an advisor and consultant now. But the Philippine military continues to view him, as well as the CPP's military wing, the New People's Army (NPA), as a threat. Sison was charged with bombing a building in Manila, and suspected of being the mastermind behind several Philippine political assassinations. As well, some 40,000 lives have already been lost on both sides since the Communist insurgency erupted in the 1970s, including more than 10,000 civilians. And those numbers are conservative. What isn't well reported is the fact that Duterte has managed to strike a deal with the Communists to keep them from creating havoc in Davao, which sits smack bang in the middle of Communist territory in the island's south. They operate there, but non-violently. Outside Davao though, the group still operates with impunity. In other words, Duterte's managed to create an island of stability within an ocean of volatility because he's managed to push Communist extremism to the periphery of Davao. This wouldn't be possible on a national scale, simply because the question arises, where would Duterte push the Communists out to? An answer could lie in his suggestion of a ceasefire with them. Bringing Sison back could be part of that plan: cessation of violence in return for political inclusion. Not, if you can't beat them, join them. More, get them to join you, so everybody stops fighting. We know Duterte's earmarked four cabinet portfolios for the CPP: land reform, the environment and natural resources, labor and employment, and social welfare.

Will a political stake be enough, when the CPP's stated aim is to overthrow the Philippine government?

Any ceasefire would also likely mean the release of hundreds of CPP prisoners. This is unlikely to sit well with the military, who've spilled blood capturing these same people, and more blood fighting thousands of others. But this could be the right time, if there is such a thing as a right time to co-opt Communist revolutionaries. The NPA's ranks have shrunk over the years to less than 4,000 now. That's only about half a small army division. Perhaps the NPA is a spent force. This month is also, coincidentally, the 50th anniversary of China's Cultural Revolution - that violent, decade long social spasm that turned China upside down. There are reasons to worry we could be seeing a revival of that ugly '70's show, in China as well as the Philippines. I'm bothered by uncomfortable parallels between Duterte and Chinese leader Xi Jinping. It's not so much the cult of personality that's been allowed to center on both men. On both their parts it's a preference for ideology over institutions and formal systems. In Xi's on-going onslaught against corruption, for example, he's used party spies and goons, as opposed to state prosecutors as his dogs of war. For Duterte, it's the death squads, vigilantes and extra-judicial killings of druglords. Whether they were actually in his employ or on his payroll is beside the point. It's the fact they were literally mercenaries, outside the system. But they were working with him, and used by him. My point is, sometimes you can tell a man by the company he keeps, who his friends are. Duterte hasn't just dealt, done business and negotiated with the Communists. He's supped with them. Sure, the CPP partially funds itself by collecting "revolutionary taxes" from businesses both big and small for the privilege and security of operating in areas it controls. In imperfect democracies, that arrangement is called the monthly neighborhood shake-down. An extortion or protection racket by any other name. But the CPP's primary backer is still, no surprise, China. So watch how Duterte plays the CPP, and China. It could be the difference between finding common cause, and identifying with the Communist cause.



Election tarpaulins featuring Rodrigo Duterte, erected on a street in Davao City. His landslide presidential victory was built on foul-mouthed populist tirades that exposed deep voter anger at the establishment. Noel Celis | AFP | Getty Images

May 16, 2016: Watch out for the '100-day stare'

Ladies and gentleman! In this corner, we have a a Viagra-enhanced 71-year-old, with an 11-0 election record and 30 years' fighting a devil's assortment of reds, greens, and the new black in the god-forsaken furthest point south in the Philippines, the undisputed people's champion, The Punisher, Rooooooooo-dee, Duerte Harry, Rodrigo Duterte!

But wait a minute. Who's the challenger? Who's on the back foot, after Duterte's crushing victory in the presidential elections? It's pretty obvious who Duterte would describe under his breath as "those bums I beat." That would be "the establishment," which is why that's one of the most important things to watch - whether he reaches out, not just across the aisle, but across a huge political gulf. And who he reaches out to, what deals he cuts.

Duterte needs to make up serious legislative ground to get the support he needs to form a coalition and rule effectively - his party is simply too small to stand alone.

This will take all the charm, persuasion, guile and possibly "pork," he can muster. Winning the establishment over, or at least getting them to compromise, isn't going to be easy. It's not just antipathy he's up against, in some cases it's vile dislike. As I've written before, Philippine politics is intensely personal. Whether or not Duterte's got the numbers in the Philippine House and Senate matter a lot for legislation to do with everything from signing off big infrastructure projects left on the table by Aquino to a regional autonomy bill in the hope of quelling southern unrest once and for all. Peace (and law and order) and profits are linked. The more you have of the former, the more likely you are to have of the latter - investments, development aid, etc, which could be a bargaining chip for the incoming president to win over his detractors. Legislative numbers also matter if Duterte wants to push through changes in the constitution, abolish Congress, and turn wholesale towards a parliamentary form of government, which the Philippines experimented with very briefly during the Marcos years.

So, potentially big changes ahead. We know winning an election isn't the same as governing. But Duterte's proven he can run a place even as Hobbesian as Davao, that he can deal muscularly with druglords and militants. But can he translate that management effectiveness on a national scale? We should watch to see if it's going to be a long six years for Duterte. Can Duterte, in sporting parlance, even "go the full twelve"? Watch what kind of shape he's in after the first three months or so, the period journalists conveniently term his "first 100 days."

I'd watch for what I call the 100-day stare. The political equivalent of what military men call the "1,000-yard stare" - the blank, vacant look of a soldier paralysed by the horrors he's seen in battle. At his last campaign rally Duterte implored people, "Give me time," to solve his country's manifold problems. For the pugnacious political fighter from Davao, the clock's running. He's unlikely to be saved by the bell. If Duterte goes down for the count, possibly because he can't get his opponents onside, in politics as team sport, well, there's always the freshly minted Senator Manny Pacquiao, who could use his new, elevated position, to make a run for the presidency in 2022. We'll be keeping score.



Customers sing karaoke at a nighclub in Davao City in Mindanao on May 10 - the city where president-elect Rodrigo Duterte honed his crime-fighting skills. He most recently announced plans to impose a nationwide- curfew for children and may ban the serving of alcohol after midnight. Noel Celis | AFP | Getty Images

May 13, 2016: Time to pull out the old Cold War playbook

It's not so much that I've got a bad feeling about the new, incoming Duterte government in the Philippines. But the situation does make me worry. A lot's been written about nostalgia politics, the yearning in the Philippines (as in America) for a strong, no-nonsense leader. Rodrigo Duterte fits that description to a tee. But, as always, self-styled champions of law and order, and the poor - people's presidents - usually come with compromises, which the U.S. has learned time and again from working with dictators of various stripes during the Cold War. The compromises are usually accommodated amid the greater aim of protecting or furthering U.S. interests. In the case of the Philippines, it's as simple as ABC - allies, bases and crude (oil). And they're all connected, as these factors always tend to be in geopolitics. First, allies. Yes, the Philippines has been a strong and dependable ally of the United States for several decades. It's a nation made in our image, as American journlist and historian Stanley Karnow described it. Sure, they kicked the U.S. out of bases in Subic and Clark in the early '90's. That was then. Now, we've just recently signed a basing deal that gives the U.S. access to five major military installations across the Philippines - some for access to the South China Sea, some to support counter-terror operations in the south of the country.



What did the State Department mean by its congratulatory message to Duterte, in which it said America looked forward to working with his new government on "issues of mutual interest" and "common challenges"? It meant China, and Islamic State. So, tick A and B. What about C, crude oil? Well, that's connected to the first two because it's centered on both the South China Sea and the southern Philippine state of Mindanao. The sea lanes through the South China Sea aren't just about shipping access. They're also about strategic access; for the Seventh Fleet to continue acting as the region's naval regulator, and to check China's push to project its power outside its traditional sphere. Then there's also the issue of access to resources - oil and gas, and fisheries. Similarly for Mindanao. In fact, Mindanao could be a jackpot for resource companies, as well as for resource-hungry nations (read China). U.S. diplomatic cables thrown into the public domain by WikiLeaks show that Washington has been aware for some time of an estimated $1 trillion worth of oil, gas and minerals on and underneath Mindanao and in the waters surrounding it. Whoever manages to tame Mindanao gets access to all that wholesome resource goodness.



If Duterte can settle the south politically, the key will then be balancing the competing interests of U.S. and China.

It's easy to see Duterte as a local politician potentially in over his head on the national stage already, with the potential to be pushed and pulled by two geopolitical giants. But I suspect he's the one who has leverage over both. Firstly, the U.S. will likely continue dealing with Duterte, even if his administration took the gloves off at home. Let's say, if, just if, he manages to change the constitution, abolish Congress, and set himself up as a leftist dictator ... Well, it wouldn't be the first time such a thing's happened in an impoverished country. And the U.S. has a history of working with these types. It's not so much a reversion to form, a continuation. Imagine "The Donald" doing business with "Duterte Harry"? Both know how to get things done. One's a businessman. The other, well, we shall find out. We all should be paying close attention. If it's Hillary who has to deal with Duterte, well, probably not much difference. There's politics, and there're U.S. national interests. As for China, even if you believe it's a hegemon, it's also a country that understands pragmatism. It'll share, even with the U.S., if there's enough to go around. In the Philippines, with the South China Sea and resources, there's a lot at stake. But plenty for everyone. I believe China understands it doesn't have to be a zero-sum game with the U.S. So for all those now-creaky Cold Warriors, its time to push yourselves out of those La-Z-Boys, put on your reading glasses, pop an Advil or three, and dust-off your playbook.



People crowd outside a polling station in Quezon City in Manila on May 9, when more than 80 percent of eligible voters - a record proportion - turned out to cast their votes. Ted Aljibe | AFP | Getty Images

May 11, 2016: Expectations are so high, they're where the air gets thin

Official results of the Philippine elections aren't out yet, but it's clear Rodrigo Duterte is the new president. It's not about the absolute numbers anymore, it's the gulf between Duterte, with most but not all votes counted, and his nearest rival, Mar Roxas. Duterte leads by such a margin that, if it was due to vote-buying or fraud, would be one of the biggest thefts in political history.

Similarly, with most but not all votes counted, it's already clear turnout hit record levels, comfortably above 81 percent. This makes Duterte's victory not just a landslide, but a political earthquake as well.

He's just broken the monopoly on political power that a small handful of powerful and inter-married families have enjoyed pretty much since independence.

So he's a trailblazer. But he's also set himself up, almost certainly, to fail. Having made promises he will clean up corruption within six months of taking office, expectations are so high, they're where the air starts getting thin.

Duterte needs to remember this election was a huge gamble for voters. They're trying something new out of desperation, because the recent history of Philippine presidencies has been one of almost serial failure in terms of the daily lives of the majority of Filipinos.

Perhaps this is a good sign.



Doing the same thing over and over again but expecting a different outcome, Einstein said, is insanity.

And to be fair to the out-going office-bearer, President Benigno Aquino probably made more headway on improving the lot of the average Philippine person than any leader in recent memory. But the strong economic story hasn't trickled down nearly far enough. Not when 1-in-4 poverty, exemplified by Manila's horrific slums, still exists.

It's not so much a widening rich-poor gap (although this is true too); That's in larger part due to the rich getting richer, while the poor seem to be trapped at the same level of poverty the country hasn't been to grow its way out of.

It's more about the quality of growth and, consequently, the quality of life. Some peoples' financial circumstances may have improved but even the rich face the same struggles - traffic, sclerotic infrastructure, a corrupt civil service, and crime. Money just insulates them a little better.

Can Duterte deliver? It's not just the poor who voted for him who're watching whether the back-to-the-future style of government he seems to be pointing to will work. The establishment, whose monopoly on power he broke, are more than ready to gloat if he fails.

If he does, it will be the country's loss. And for more than 100 million Filipinos, who're among the most optimistic people on earth, it'll be just the latest disappointment for a people who deserve better.

Rodrigo Duterte gestures to members of the media at a polling station in Davao, Mindanao, on May 9. Veejay Villafranca | Bloomberg | Getty Images

May 11, 2016: Now's the time to start looking for political ROI

With the almost-shock victory of Roddy Duterte as the new president of the Philippines pretty much in the bag, it's probably a good time to look back. What? Not forward? What about trying to figure out what his policy priorities are, how he's going to govern? We'll get to that. Bear with me, first. Duterte seems to me to be the kind of man who won't forget where he's come from. And won't forget who his friends are either. Which makes me curious who's actually behind him. A politician who reportedly makes $2,000 a month after a 30-year career in local politics probably won't be a man of significant means, right? Yet when confronted with the evidence, Duterte admitted he had $5.7 million in the bank. In one account. From rich friends, he joked. Maybe from savvy investing. But I doubt it. So who is bank-rolling Duterte? Philippine campaign finance laws, such as there are, aren't going to be much help. There're no caps on contributions to politicians and their parties or campaigns. Politicians can pull in as much as individual hearts prefer and corporate balance sheets can bear. Politicians also aren't obliged to go public about who these people and companies are, until one month after the elections. That's right, after. By which time the money's either been spent or skimmed. And the political horse those people and companies backed is already in power. Or not.

Sounds like a job for campaign finance reform. But which politician would support it, when the rules have allowed them to be, shall we say, so light on financial disclosure? Why's this important? Because political financing, like organ transplants, is the gift that keeps on giving. Or at least that's the expectation - that people, and particularly companies, that back politicians with money are going to want a return. Let's not confuse politics, especially in Southeast Asia, with charity. It's the usual cycle of patronage politics - the more you give, the more you expect back. Want an example? The non-profit Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism found a total of just 301 entities - people or companies - who financed the 2010 presidential election. That's more like the number of investors in a hedge fund, or some other type of limited partnership investment vehicle, and it concentrates influence over newly-elected president by putting it in very few hands. We like to say there's no such thing as a free lunch. In the case of politics, it gives a very different meaning to the term "free election," or lack of one. The good news is, the formidable minds at the Financial Times expect that there was a ramp-up in election spending this year (a third more) by politicians as well as the government - enough to bump up Philippiine GDP to between 6.5 percent and 7 percent this year from 5.8 percent in 2015. Talk about fiscal stimulus. But this isn't investment in infrastructure, jobs, healthcare or education. This is money that puts people in power. Leaders come and go. Sometimes people are glad to see the back of them.



People are already focusing on the fact that Duterte's party is small. And how, so far, he doesn't have the kind of personal connections needed to form a legislative coalition. Politics in the Philippines has traditionally been more about personalities and loyalties than parties. Party-jumping is so common it's a veritable workout. Personal chemistry and trust must play a part. But you'd expect that, as concentrated as financing and contributions are on such a small handful of people and companies, money must play a bigger role in policy decisions and governance. The question is what does that money want in return? Call it political return on investment (ROI). Sometimes the return is in the currency of position and power. Sometimes it's in the form of advantageous positioning for investments and contracts. I'd say watch the companies that start doing well, or better, as the Duterte administration gets underway. Newer conglomerates, which tend to be owned by Filipino-Chinese rather than old-line Spanish/mestizo families, could have an advantage. And I wouldn't be surprised to learn that the original currency of their campaign contributions was renminbi.

Women queue to vote at a polling station in manila on May 9, 2016. Lam Yik Fei | Getty Images

May 9, 2016: If you're planning a coup, consult me first

We're more than six hours into voting here in the Philippines. With opinion polls giving a healthy lead to Rodrigo Duterte, here's some of the factors that could sway the outcome. Turnout: Voter turnout expected to be high, about 70 to 75 percent of the Philippines' 54.4 million registered voters. A past peak was 80 percent. It needs to be high for Duterte to win. Getting out to vote is harder in rural and outlying areas, for obvious reasons. But that's Duterte's base, the masses. The recent ''Come-leak'' hacking of data of millions of voters could potentially affect turnout, as well as preferences. Weather: Sunshine, with a few clouds, average temperature of 37 degrees. In urban areas this might affect middle-class voting - a long queue in the heat lacks appeal for many. Swing voters: Unusually, in this election the middle-class is the swing vote - had been leaning towards establishment candidates, as expected, but now split. The inflection point was Grace Poe's endorsement by disgraced former president Joseph Estrada, which turned off middle-class voters. #PhilippineElection2016 #Duterte goes in w/10pt lead, 33%. Most votes wins, no plurality needed

Youth vote: About 40 percent of eligible voters are 18-35 years old. Many will be firs- time voters. Few, if any, have memories of the Marcos years. Political analysts say that's left them particularly impressionable to very savvy nostalgia campaigning, including on social media, by ''strongman'' candidates Duterte, and "Bong Bong" Marcos. Negative campaigns: Campaigning in the Philippines is tame in comparison to the current bare-knuckle bouts happening in the U.S. Whatever the media, there are little to no direct personal attacks. Conversely, both Duterte and Bong Bong Marcos' social media strategy has focused on positioning the candidates in the same league as iconic strongman leaders, and suggesting the need for and benefits of more authoritarian rule. Locals call digital and social media spin operations ''Black Ops." Marcos apparently has a dedicated operations center entirely devoted to it.

#PhilippineElection2016 45min before 6am poll start. Tight 2-horse race. #Trapo's rallying behind #Poe vs #Duterte

Coup: Rumors are flying around that a Duterte win could trigger a coup by establishment parties, or at least recounting of votes and other administrative and procedural, as well as possibly legal, means to stall a power transition. The flip-side risk is Duterte mobilizing supporters in response, for civic action at least. There's also talk paramilitaries could be involved. Some voters are still nervous about Duterte's links with Communist groups. He's denied he's a Communist, says he's left-leaning rather than card-carrying. Former President Fidel Ramos is quoted saying, ''If you're planning a coup, consult me first''. He was only half-joking, which suggests no one's run the idea by him. The political eminence grise still carries weight and influence with many sides. Ramos encouraged Duterte to run, but is confident he'll respect the law. Ramos was key to ousting Marcos, and had a significant hand in both People Power revolutions. As President Cory Aquino's defense minister he also thwarted nine coup attempts. He's 88, but still a game-changer.

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May 8, 2016: The Philippines is suffering growing pains

When you think of animals as people, and start attributing human qualities to them, sociologists call it anthropomorphizing. I like to think of countries and economies in human terms. But I'm still thinking of a new term to coin to describe it.

Basically, I see development in people terms. I ask how a country makes its way in the world, like how someone makes a living. What kind of work they do. I also like to think about what countries want to be, and can be, when they grow up. Similar to wondering whether a kid who's good with animals, say, is necessarily going to end up a vet. When I look at the Philippines, it's a country that looks like it's grown up too fast. The economy is 70 percent consumption. Development economists will tell you that usually happens when a country is mature, and rich. Think the U.S., or Japan, where what people spend and invest accounts for up to two-thirds of the economy. But the Philippines is still a lower middle-income economy. That kind of reliance on consumption in the Philippines isn't bad, or wrong. But it looks like a country trying to run before it's barely learned to walk. Functionally, economies start looking after themselves by farming. Then they go from growing things, to making things: manufacturing. Finally, when they're all grown up, they transact things, provide services. The Philippines, though, is still taking stumbling steps and tying to get its balance with agriculture. But the land is fertile, and its people are originally agrarian. By the 1960s that had helped make the Philippines a significant rice economy, for example. It's one reason why the International Rice Research Institute is based here. But over the last few decades countries like Vietnam have overtaken the Philippines in rice - both growing it and exporting it. The problem lies in land reform, or the lack of it. The Philippines has the dubious distinction of being probably the most prolific in initiating land reform in Asia, but as prolific in its failures to follow through. It's a history of many false starts.

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Filipino farmers now mostly make a living growing things for big companies, rather than for themselves, because they rent rather than own land. It's a squandered opportunity. There's simply not enough incentive to learn and invest to grow more, faster or better. There's also not much manufacturing or industry in the Philippines. Some lower-value-added electronics get made here. There's also ship-building and repair, but those are mainly Japanese and Korean offshore operations. Part of the problem is not enough of a skills base due to underdeveloped vocational education. The recent boom in BPO (business process outsourcing) has been phenomenal. But how many call centers can a country have? To grow BPO, companies will have to move higher and faster up the value ladder of services. Start offering specialized functions like finance and HR, or even full back-office operations - like Indian IT companies have - while making sure Filipino wages stay comparatively competitive. I wrote earlier about how Chinese investment, in everything from highways and power plants to casinos and real estate, could be the Philippines' next big growth driver. The infrastructure would help the economy, structurally. That's good. It stays once it's built, and makes the country more competitive. The other money, though, is cyclical. It could leave as quickly as it came. Which leaves resources, in the ground as well as in the sea (oil and natural gas). But that brings with it worries about the potential historical curse of many resource economies, if not managed carefully. Growing up isn't easy. But it helps if it happens as nature intended. Or in the case of countries, as development economics intended. There're no natural laws, and no plan that works for all. The Philippines, like all economies, will have to find its own way in life.

Workers pack bananas at the Tagum Agricultural Development Co. plant in Davao del Norte on Mindanao in April 2008. Romeo Gacad | AFP | Getty Images

May 8, 2016 : Why heading south could be the way up

I spend much more time listening and observing than I do reporting and writing. In between, I do a whole lot of thinking. Trying to connect dots. Trying to see stories that emerge from them. Here's what I saw today, after listening intently to a trio of people, and what I figured out after my brain cooled down from the processing. First, the listening. It kicked off with the young but very clued-in and connected Philippine expert Richard Javad Heydarian. Then, former President Fidel Ramos, 88 years old but still very much a political heavy, a true eminence grise. Finally, well into last night, Roddy Duterte, the maverick Davao mayor and front-runner who's looks likely to become the next president of the Philippines, when the country votes on Monday. The standout theme in what all of them said today, was Mindanao, the second-largest and southern-most island in the Philippines. Heydarian thinks about how the resource rich and highly cultivatable island province could be the next driver of the Philippine economy. How that can't happen unless and until there's a lasting peace and political accommodation with militant Islamists and Communists in control there. And how China could be the catalyst to make these things happen. Duterte, meanwhile, spent at least half of a three-hour off-the-cuff address at his last rally before campaigning ended midnight Saturday talking about re-starting peace talks with Mindanao militants. Practically, we assume that means leveraging his extensive experience dealing with all the groups in a 30-year political career there in order to revive legislation that stalled at the tail-end of the Aquino administration, which would give Mindanao devolved authority, and disarm at least the Moro militants. Ramos, who admits to having a big hand in in Duterte's decision to run for president, said a political solution to the problem of the south would be key to the Philippine economy's future growth and development. In other words, peace would lead to more prosperity. He also welcomed engagement with China, and Chinese investment in the Philippines.

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Earlier, I wrote about a strong hunch that China could be a new growth driver for the Philippines. The logic went: Cut a deal to compromise on the South China Sea, draw-in Chinese investment in Philippine infrastructure, roll out the red carpet for Chinese high-rollers at Manila's casinos, and let many of the same fellows buy up high-end Manila real estate. Presto - new pillar for the economy, building on BPO and remittances. But after all my recent listening, though, and the thinking that followed, I'm adding Mindanao to the equation. To get engaged and involved in the Philippines, China would likely require a show of good faith from Manila. It could mean the Philippines keeping quiet (or at least not rubbing it in Beijing's face), if United Nations rules in favor of Manila's claim that China doesn't own all of the South China Sea, as is likely to happen when the Hague delivers its decision on Manila's claim in the next month or so. It could also mean revoking a recently inked agreement with the United States to set up new bases in the Philippines - a deal meant to counter China's assertiveness in the South China Sea, as well as support counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency efforts against militants in the south.

Villagers watch a horse fight in November 2015 in the southern Philippine town of Lake Sebu in South Cotabato. Horse fights have been banned since 1998 but are still held by many Mindanao communities. Jeoffrey Maitem | Getty Images

Being discrete on the Hague ruling would be fairly easy for the new president. Aquino filed the case. The new president also has executive authority to renegotiate the U.S. base agreement. Will he? If he can get China on-side, possibly. Once China's satisfied diplomatically, on the South China Seas, and U.S. access to Philippine bases, we get to the roll-up-your-sleeves work. That is, settling the south politically, then developing it, through heavy Chinese investment. And what would China want from all this? For one thing, access to resources in Mindanao, which U.S. and Australian companies have struggled to exploit. China and its companies, on the other hand, aren't as hung up on law and contracts. For another, possibly favorable positioning and access to jointly developing resources in the South China Sea. Is it too far fetched to imagine that China's already kick-started this whole chain of events? Maybe my brain's been in over-drive a bit too long. But something clicked when I started hearing talk - unsubstantiated - that Duterte could be receiving financial support from China, possibly through Filipino-Chinese tycoons.

May 7, 2016: People do what people do everywhere: laundry, loving, fighting

In the first world, we talk about an embarrassment of riches. Which is usually a disingenuous, back-handed conceit. In the Third World, people don't have that luxury.

The Philippines belongs to the much more grey Second World. It hasn't arrived. But it's managed to pull itself out of the anonymity of countries too poor to be gifted with any sort of easily recognizable international identity, other than notoriety. But poverty in the Philippines is still a good story. Is it an accurate one though? Most of us know about Smokey Mountain, where the poor live, parasitically, off the rotting refuse of those richer. We've also heard about Filipinos so poor they're forced to live in cemeteries. 6% growth, but #TrickledownEconomics hasn't trickled down far enough. #PhilippineElections2016 #RichPoorGap

A few afternoons ago, we found ourselves in San Andreas Bukid. Like most slums in Manila, it's a self-contained world of hardship, pocketed in by high-rise office buildings, malls and condos. The juxtaposition is always jarring. The streets and alleys we walked through weren't quite post-apocalyptic. But there was a common disorder and displacement; many things, and people, where they shouldn't usually be. Cars and trucks, abandoned in the middle of the street. Kids running around naked, when they should be in school. Flea-infested mongrels foraging through garbage. A dead four-year old girl, in a baby casket.

Yep, to say there's poverty in the Philippines is still accurate.

What we saw has to be a key question for whoever becomes the next president - should one in four people be living in poverty, in one of Asia's fastest growing economies ?

Yet, beyond the obvious economic modelling that says poverty holds back growth and development, that it encourages crime and corruption, that it keeps people from achieving their full potential, we saw something else. #SanAndreasBukid slum kids. Improving 1-in-4 poverty key priority for new #RP President. #PhilippineElectios2016

We saw life, and death, and such a normalcy to living we could almost imagine the poverty wasn't there. Here, people do what people do everywhere: their laundry, their loving, their fighting. They were just going about their lives. And not just in quiet desperation. It may be too easy to say that poverty doesn't feel so bad when it's all you've ever known. But the residents we saw appeared to be living lives that could be almost "everyday." Just across the street from you and me, with a richness just thanks to being alive.

A Filipino boy runs near puddles along the railroad tracks in Pasay City in Manila in July 2005. The area is now being gentrified but slums remain. Paula Bronstein | Getty Images

May 7, 2016: The 'one-night millionaires' have all grown up

Those of you who've been in the service, or who have family who are, will probably be familiar with Filipinos in the U.S. Navy. It's been a time-honored tradition for thousands of them to sign on, and eventually become U.S. citizens. What a lot of people probably aren't aware of, is how extensively Filipinos are involved in the civilian maritime trade; About 500,000 of them work on commercial vessels around the world. They dominate the industry. That's according to the Philippine Shipowners Association, which coordinates training for seamen, and helps them find work once they're qualified to be at sea. You could argue that Filipinos are culturally predisposed to a life at sea, because theirs is an archipelagic nation, spread out over more than 7,000 islands. But in reality, the big attraction for so many Filipinos of being a seaman (though roughly 5 percent of the Filipinos working at sea are female, usually in higher grades) is simply the money. The lowest rating makes about $12,000 a year, which is comfortably more than average starting pay on land at home. The highest, say a captain on an oil tanker, can make up to $180,000 a year, depending on experience. And it's all tax free. Like OFWs, though, there's the hardship and loneliness of being away from home and family. Stints at sea average about nine months at a time. The profile of Filipino seamen has changed over the years. The association jokes there was a time not so long ago when Filipino seamen were called ''one-night millionaires''. Because after getting paid a lump sum at the end of a contract, seafaring legend has it seamen would blow it all on a night on the town and go home to their families penniless. Fortunately, today's Filipino seaman, the association says, is younger, and more responsible with their hard-earned money.

May 6: Why China will be a game-changer for the Philippines

One of things that gets me up and out of bed every morning is the challenge of figuring out the ''how'', and ''why'' of things I'm reporting on, events I'm covering. There's what makes headlines. There's news. And there's the backstory, and the story itself. All distinctly different. I prefer to try and nail down the story first. Which helps me make sense of the news and headlines. Talking to smart people, to help me understand the ''how'' and ''why'', is my stock in trade. So this morning I had a sit-down with CLSA's Alfred Dy, who made a lightbulb go off inside my otherwise pretty dim head usually. Here's the nut of the Philippine story. A lower-middle -ncome country that got to where it is today on the back of the sweat and labor of Filipinos working overseas. Remittances. More recently, on the less sweaty labor of Filipinos in air-conditioned call centers. The explosion of BPO (business process outsourcing) in the Philippines. Both together account for a fifth of the economy. So far, pretty darn impressive.

The big question hanging over the economy, and the next president, is 'now what?'

The answer seems apocryphal, at first, especially for a country as proud as the Philippines. And as colonized. First by the Spanish. Then, in effect, if not fact, by the United States. China, meanwhile, could help the Philippines write the next chapter in its growth and development.

Counter-intuitive, right, when the Philippines has been openly challenging China's claim to the South China Sea? But imagine a Duterte presidency making good on its promise of engaging China unilaterally. Some sort of compromise that trades China manufacturing new sovereign territory out of sand in the middle of the ocean, in return for China building much needed infrastructure on Philippine soil. Take that a step further (though this could happen pretty much concurrently), and imagine a nascent Philippine gaming sector supercharged by a flood of Chinese high-rollers who bring extra suitcases bulging with cash to buy Philippine real estate. Sound familiar? The same story's played out in Macau/Hong Kong, as well as Singapore. If you build it, they will come; the casinos, and the Chinese, with their money.

Will they? No reason they won't, other than added flight time. But Manila's probably just another hour away. And certainly more exotic than urban, built-up Macau/Hong Kong or skyscrapered Singapore. The Philippines would also be significantly better value for assets like high-end real estate. At the state level, any push by China commercially into the Philippines (or better yet at a G-to-G development level), would be sweet for Beijing. Especially with the U.S. reinserting itself into the Philippines with a new base agreement, which allows access for U.S. men and material to several military bases in the country. That move, of course, is to make sure a worryingly assertive China thinks twice. Even with its history as a key U.S. ally in Asia, it wouldn't be much of a surprise if the Philippines hedges, plays both sides as it were. It wouldn't be about selling out or welcoming new colonizers with open arms. It would simply be smart geopolitics. And good business. Could a Duterte presidency make that happen? Going by his track record running Davao, and turning it over more than 20 years from a crime-ridden, drug-addled haven for criminals, to one of the safest cities in the Philippines, Duterte is a man who can get things done. One of the ways he's rehabilitated Davao, was attracting business and investment.

May 7, 2016: For political bang for the buck, the Philippines are hard to beat

The vast majority of Filipinos are Catholic; in this photo, survivors of super-typhoon Haiyan march during a religious procession in Tolosa on the eastern island of Leyte in November 2013. Philippe Lopez | AFP | Getty Images

In religion, the still staunchly Catholic Philippines is very much pro-life. But politics is another matter. Votes and, more worryingly lives, are still cheap. The stereotype is of Filipinos as a warm, social, fun-loving, live-for-today people, which is largely true. But there's also a culture of violence here that can be easy to underestimate. It goes beyond the old-school macho posturing of what's still a mostly conservative Catholic society. Political violence, with every election cycle, is alive and well. And very real. Maybe it should be no surprise, when you consider handguns are easily available. Owning one is quite common, and very few of them are registered. As expected, in the run-up to this election there's been an upsurge in politically related violence. Let's just say it straight out - shootings and assassination attempts.

Don't think anything as twisted and Machiavellian as 'The Manchurian Candidate.' But still the stuff you only think happens in movies, as a skim through recent local press reports shows.

In April, a candidate running for mayor in a town in Maguindanao (a province in the southern and predominantly Muslim Mindanao autonomous region), barely survived a bomb attack. He'd just been out campaigning. Also in April, a man running for governor got ambushed by gunmen walking out of his hotel. On a Saturday morning.

And these guys are the ones who're still alive. According to government statistics, during the last national elections three years ago, 145 people were killed by politically-related violence.

In execution, the attacks are brazen, very public, and also galling in an apparently Westernized and English-speaking democracy. Even more so, in one of Asia's fastest-growing economies.

This isn't about growing income disparity, and aggrieved people being left behind. This is about power, and what people are willing, and able, to do to achieve it. Mao famously said power grows from the barrel of a gun. It is an operating principle in Philippine politics, especially at the local level. Forget about PAC's and Super PAC's raising money in the millions. For political bang for the buck, it's hard to beat the Philippines. I've been told the going rate for a motorcycle drive-by shooting (here, as in Thailand, the most common and preferred method) is $450. Two guys, one drives, the shooter sits behind him with the gun. It's all over in seconds, both disappearing in a cloud of two-stroke smoke into the country's notoriously snarled urban traffic.

So if Rodrigo Duterte's Dirty Harry-style campaign rhetoric offends your political sensibilities, get real. As far as it's come, the Philippines is still, not so much heavily militarized, as heavily-armed. And not afraid to flex that muscle. At least politically, Manila is still a cowboy town.

A placard in front of the Minor Basilica of the Black Nazarene in Quiapo during a Catholic Church-backed anti-abortion rally in August 2011 in Manila. Dondi Tawatao | Getty Images

May 7, 2016 Life imitating art imitating life

Politics in the Philippines is less about policy, more about personalities and compelling backstories. It's also about life imitating art, or rather, the movies. On Thursday night, we drove out to Tondo (more on that later) in north Manila, and crashed a rally for Joseph Estrada, the disgraced former president who's more than landed on his feet after being booted from office on corruption charges in 2001. He's been the mayor of Manila the last three years, and he's running again. But he was just the opening act, at his own rally. The star was Grace Poe, who's running for president. #CNBC shooter #BraniffWoo, producer #DianeJorolan and I survived #Poe's #Tondo rally. #PhilippineElections2016



How's that work?

Well, Poe's adoptive father is the late Fernando Poe Jr., one of the Philippines' most beloved movie stars. Famous for his hardman, action-hero roles in a slew of movies through the 70's and 80's. And his best buddy on the silver screen, as well as in real life? Joseph Estrada. Ah ... To follow politics in the Philippines, sometimes it's more important to keep up with the entertainment and gossip rags than political journals. But, wait, why's Tondo so important? It's a legendarily tough neighborhood, the home of hard men. It's also home to Smokey Mountain, an entire village built on top of a rubbish dump. And the setting for one of Fernando Poe Jr.'s most famous movies, 1986's "Iyo ang Tondo kanya ang Cavite." Double ah ... To know politics in the Philippines, you gotta know your movies.

Enroute #Poe rally in #Tondo, legendarily tough neighborhood in SE #Manila. #PhilippineElections2016



May 6, 2016: Go tell the world journos know how to die

Straight off the plane in Manila, we headed right to the International Press Center to get officially accredited to cover the Philippine elections. While waiting for our paperwork to be processed, I noticed a marble memorial just as you drive into the IPC. It commemorates the lives of 32 local journos, doing exactly what I do. Except they were killed, brutally, in one of the worst cases of mass murder in modern Philippine history. The memorial, erected by the National Press Club of the Philippines, reads: "Go tell the world journalists know how to die ..." They died in the Maguindanao Massacre and it occurred not that long ago, in November 2009. The journalists were among 58 people killed in an attack orchestrated by the then-provincial governor, to head off an election rival.

A Filipino police officer working on the investigation into the 2009 massacre in Ampatuan, Maguindanao Province, holds a list of the victims' names. Jeoffrey Maitem | Getty Images

The governor's son, Sajid Ampatuan, was among 28 people charged. He spent more than five years in a Manila jail, awaiting trial. Last year, he was released on bail on insufficient evidence.

This year, he's running for mayor of one of the towns in Maguindanao. Sajid isn't the only politician accused or convicted of major crimes who's standing for office in Philippine elections this year. Local press point to two ex-presidents - one convicted of plunder (Joseph Estrada) and one on trial for vote fraud and graft (Gloria Macapagal Arroyo). In previous elections, a convicted pedophile ran for Congress from behind bars. He won.

All of which highlights what Philippine watchers call a culture of impunity.

It's not so much that the rich and powerful (most politicians in the Philippines are both) are above the law. It's more that they're able to make the law work for them. Legally, someone has to be "convicted with finality," and have no avenue left to appeal, to be disqualified from running for office. But money buys high-priced lawyers who're able to stall legal proceedings, which buys politicians time to get elected. Once in power, they use their office and position to influence judges. #WorldPressFreedomDay: A new @RSF report shows journalists are having a tougher time doing their job.

None of this is especially new, or peculiar to the Philippines. What is worrying, is why Filipinos still elect the politicians they do. Filipinos are a generous and accommodating people. You might even go as far as saying they're chronically forgiving. But do they have a more flexible moral and ethical construct, as can be the case in many developing countries? Or is the answer as simple as vote-buying? Well, that still happens in the Philippines. And will, in this election too. In fact, it's become systematic and institutionalized, so much so that politicians no longer have to even do it themselves directly. They simply stump up the money, pass it to ''coordinators'' in barangays (the smallest administrative district or ward), who're supposed to share out the splits with families. The irony is that the people whose votes are bought don't get all of the money. The coordinators often end up skimming a cut, often a big one. So goes money politics. Not so much one man, one vote - more, one family's vote. I've been told the going rate's about $100. If a quarter of the population wasn't in poverty, the political math would be very different.

Filipino protesters at the Chinese embassy in Makati City in July 2007 to coincide with the first day of a hearing at the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague into the two countries' competing territorial claims. J Gerard Seguia | Pacific Press | LightRocket | Getty Images

May 6, 2016: Jet ski diplomacy on the South China Sea

I suppose there's no reason why - weather and waves permitting - a 71-year old man can't hop on a jet ski and zip 125 nautical miles all by himself out to a small pile of rubble in the middle of the South China Sea. That would be to what's known as the Scarborough Shoals, the closest thing to the Philippines that's sticking out of the water in the South China Sea. The question is, why would he ?

Supporters of the man who's promising to do just that - macho, trash-talking Roddy Duterte, front-runner in the Philippine presidential elections - are happy to cheer him on.

watch now

What a photo opp, if he does. Duterte, like McArthur 70-odd years ago, wading ashore and planting a Philippine flag, staking his country's claim. (Cue Ray-Bans. The only thing missing would be Doug's corncob pipe.) Probably even more assertive, physically, than Aquino taking China to court in The Hague, over the South China Sea. Duterte, if elected President, is also promising to go one-on-one with China. Head to head over who owns what in that stretch of water. Which sounds diplomatically virile, but which will cause jaws to drop geopolitically. Why? Because it threatens to scuttle the entire approach woven together so far by the Philippines, the rest of Southeast Asia, and the US to deal collectively with China when it throws its geopolitical weight around in the region. What Duterte wants to do, is go cowboy. Alone.

The worry, and the risk, is he's more likely to cut a deal with China than hold the line. He's already offered to bring China in to help build Philippine infrastructure. And God knows, the Chinese are pretty damn good at heavy engineering. The backdrop to these worries, of course, is Aquino's case pending in the Hague. A ruling's due out sometime in the next month or so, on whether or not China's claim to pretty much all of the South China Sea flouts UN conventions. The Philippines, and four other Asian nations, are adamant their own claims to a similar chunk of the 3.5 million square kilometers (many of the claims overlap), are as legitimate as Beijing's. But only Manila, a minnow in regional (much less international) diplomacy, had the temerity to challenge China directly, when it filed its case against Beijing three years ago. .@MartinSoong tells us the history of the view from the rooftop of this building. #PhilippineElections2016

Just to remind ourselves what all the geopolitical marking of nautical territory is all about, the South China Sea is rich in reserves of undersea oil and gas, plus a whole lotta fish. But it's not just about resources. It's about logistics. More specifically, freedom of navigation. For half the world's commercial shipping fleet, the South China Sea shipping lanes are a superhighway, as well economic lifelines for many of the countries using them. Roddy might cut a pretty good deal with China  for the Philippines. But that could leave the rest of the region, and the US, adrift.

A military checkpoint at Samal Island in the Philippines' south, where John Ridsdel was kidnapped. The Canadian retiree was later beheaded by Abu Sayyaf militants. Herman Lumanog | Pacific Press | Getty Images

May 6, 2016: Is Filipino terror turning non-profit?

One thing I'll be trying to get a better sense of this trip here is, whether or not Islamic State (IS) has really managed to plant its black flag in the Philippines. The secessionist issue in Mindanao looks like it's just gotten a whole lot more complicated, and could be an even bigger challenge for whoever takes over from Noynoy - as President Benigno Aquino's affectionately known - at Malacanang. This has implications for peace and stability, of course. But also for development, the social fabric, and country risk for investors. So far, no Filipino jihadists are reported to have been exported to Syria or Iraq, unlike Indonesia and Australia, the top two terrorist producers in this region. But the brutal beheading mid-April of retired Canadian mining executive John Ridsdel strongly suggests an IS connection. Whether it is real, or apparent (and intended to be) is the question. The Abu Sayyaf militants who carried out the killing placed what looked like black flags with IS symbols behind them in videos.

The events took place in southern Mindanao, which is predominantly Muslim, and an autonomous region which the central government in far-away Manila has struggled for decades to control. So far, nothing new. But the big difference this time is, money wasn't the motivation, as it's usually been for kidnappings in the south. Yes, they demanded a record ransom for Ridsdel, at least at first. But rather than drag out negotiations after the deadline had passed, they killed him. Is it now about ideology, rather than money? Politics over terror-as-business? The politics of IS are about Islamization. Not just of a population, but of a region. That's what their idea of a caliphate is all about, which so far they appear to be picturing as in and around Syria. But a more distant caliphate in Southeast Asia isn't a new idea. Proto-IS terrorist groups like Jamaah Islamiyah (JI) have been focused on achieving this since the late 1960's. JI was purportedly behind the Bali bombings in 2002 and is linked to Al-Qaeda as well as the Moro Islamic Liberation Front in the Philippines. Though Indonesia-based, JI's known to have cells in Thailand and Malaysia. Amidst this potentially heightened threat of a multinational terror group moving in, proposed legislation that would have brought peace in the south - including disbanding Moro and creating an autonomous region with devolved power and administration - has flopped. There was no appetite for it in an election year, either from incumbents, who didn't want to risk political capital by supporting the bill, or from voters; the Philippines is 80 percent Catholic, 5 percent Muslim, after all.

Out-going president Aquino has no authority to bind the incoming administration to the peace process. So for the new president, the Mindanao issue (including as well a separate and equally long-running Communist insurgency, also in the south) will continue to fester. And possibly worsen  on Thursday the Philippines agreed with Indonesia and Malaysia to work together on maritime patrols to beat back Abu Sayyaf militants who've ramped up their ship hijackings in the southern Philippine islands. About $40 billion worth of cargo goes through those waters each year, Reuters reckons  the last thing the Philippines needs is a Somali-style piracy industry. The question is, what's Abu Sayyaf up to? Have they really "gone IS"? Or are they just showing off, as it were, to try and attract the endorsement of IS, as well as its financial backing? Meantime, the folks at Jane's, the security and defense experts, think the failure of peace legislation for the south risks Moro militants losing patience and defecting to even more violent groups, including ones that have pledged support for IS. Jane's also sees an increasing risk of terror attacks in Mindanao. The Ridsdel beheading could just be the beginning.

Supporters of presidential candidate Rodrigo Duterte protest in Manila on May 2 after a rival candidate challenged Duterte to open his bank accounts to public scrutiny. Noel Celis | AFP | Getty Images

- See more election coverage from Martin Soong on Twitter.



May 5, 2016: Holding out for a hero

This election in the Philippines could be a political watershed. Sure, reporters always like to make proclamations like that. But think about this; The front runner, tough-guy Roddy Duterte, isn't exactly from the political establishment, isn't the latest scion from any political family. He's a total outsider to the entrenched system. So we're possibly talking about the end of dynastic politics in the Philippines. And that's saying something for a country that's been run since independence, for better or for worse, by a handful of old-line surnames. And Duterte's not even related by marriage to any of them! Having said that, Duterte's appeal to the masses isn't just because he's anti-establishment (and apparently extra-legal.) It also seems to be because of a worrying sense of nostalgia, part of a trend we've been seeing recently. Sure, you can think Trump's promise of a return to a simpler America. But also remember, not much more than a year ago, Prabowo was astride a stallion, or in a Suharto-like songkok (plus Raybans), roaring into a vintage microphone. That was Indonesia, of course.



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In the Philippines, there seems to be a yearning for a strongman to return, too. Odd, you might think, after the disastrous plundering of the Marcos kleptocracy. But remember, the median age of the Filipino population is just 22, meaning a significant number of Filipinos have no memory of the Marcos years. As well, despite the strides President Aquino has made relieving the Philippines of its burdensome reputation as the "sick man of Asia," much below the surface remains the same: the corruption, the often porous administration of the law, the concentration of influence and money within a handful of families and their cronies. #Philippine politics less about policy than personality, compelling bak stories. #PhilippineElections2016

Add to that, development and prosperity have come with the usual price tag: widening income inequality. For the poor (and about a quarter of the population still lives at or below the poverty line), 6 percent GDP growth means much less than it does for the head of a conglomerate or his children. Development, including much needed infrastructure, has focused primarily on cities, not on less built-up rural areas, including the country's south. That's something that's fueled the ongoing insurgency and unrest in that region.

The point is, the Philippines is looking much better by the numbers. But the system hasn't changed, or at least, not enough to make a difference for millions of Filipinos. As a result, they seem to yearn for a leader who's not so concerned about the process, legal or political. Not so concerned about how things are done. They just want someone who can fix things, as Duterte claims he can. Can he, though? Sometimes you need to be careful what you wish for. A singular political savior versus a system that has prevailed through changes of government and the often naive political whims of a disgruntled, disenfranchised electorate? Filipinos will decide soon. Beating the heat. They're too young to vote. But 18-35 yr olds = 40% of eligible voters. #PhilippineElections2016

- See more election coverage from Martin Soong on Twitter.

May 5, 2016: Filipinos do their home work

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Sometimes reporters like to use random locals they meet to try and tell a story about an entire country they're covering. There's a conceit here. As if they'll always get a direct and accurate extrapolation that way. But it's easy to do, and it instantly personalizes a story. Sometimes, though, the numbers (which can more often than not be dull and gray), and simple economics (the so-called ''dismal science''), tell the story so much better. So this is a story about data, and what it says is this; there's a huge rebalancing underway in the Philippines, which is largely underreported.



Filipina maids carry shopping bags out of a mall in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. They are among the roughly 12 million workers from the Philippines employed outside the country. Fayez Nureldine | AFP | Getty Images

We know how important remittances are. More than 10 percent of Filipinos work overseas. That's about 12 million people. They do it because they can make the kind of money they never could at home. The amount they send home is huge -equivalent to 10 percent of GDP. The impact is direct. Most of it is spent, immediately. And consumption is 70 percent of GDP. This has been happening year in and year out for decades. But something else has been happening more recently. You may have heard how what's known as ''BPO'', or business process outsourcing, is booming in the Philippines. In plain English, that's call centers. You may have also heard that the Philippines has overtaken India as the preferred base for BPO. That's because Filipinos have a greater fluency in, and facility with, English. Because they're more service-oriented, more eager to please, however you want to say it. All true. But did you know that BPO has quietly ramped up to about $20 billion a year in revenues? Nearly as much as remittances. At the current rate, BPO business will overtake remittances within the next few years as a source of income for the Philippines. So far, it's created about a million jobs for Filipinos - at home.


During the past generation, a great myth has swept through America. Like all good myths, the Overconsumption Myth tells a tale to explain a confusing world. Why are so many Americans in financial trouble? Why are credit card debts up and savings down? Why are millions of mothers heading into the labor force and working overtime? The myth is so deeply embedded in our collective understanding that it resists even elementary questioning: Families have spent too much money buying things they dont need. Americans have a new character flawthe urge to splurgeand it is driving them to spend, spend, spend like never before.

The drive for all that spending is almost mystical in origin. John de Graaf and his co-authors explain in Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic, Its as if we Americans, despite our intentions, suffer from some kind of Willpower Deficiency Syndrome, a breakdown in affluenza immunity. Economist Juliet Schor blames the new consumerism, but the results are the same. She points to mass over-spending within the middle class [in which] large numbers of Americans spend more than they say they would like to, and more than they have. That they spend more than they realize they are spending, and more than is fiscally prudent.

Many maladies are explained away by the Overconsumption Myth. Why are Americans in debt? Sociologist Robert Frank claims that Americas newfound Luxury Fever forces middle-class families to finance their consumption increases largely by reduced savings and increased debt. Why are schools failing and streets unsafe? Juliet Schor cites competitive spending as a major contributor to the deterioration of public goods such as education, social services, public safety, recreation, and culture. Why are Americans unhappy? Affluenza sums it up: The dogged pursuit for more accounts for Americans overload, debt, anxiety, and waste. Everywhere we turn, it seems that overconsumption is tearing at the very fabric of society.
Thursdays field hearing in Albuquerque, N.M., illustrated the credit union difference to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), particularly regarding its proposed rule on arbitration clauses, which was released early Thursday.

The proposal would effectively eliminate pre-dispute arbitration and would require financial institutions to insert language into their arbitration agreements reflecting this limitation. (See related story: Arbitration rule should take member-owned CUs into account.)

The field hearing featured representatives from the CFPB, consumers and other stakeholders. Kevin Hammar of Aldridge, Hammar, Wexler & Bradley P.A. testified on behalf of CUNA. During his remarks, Hammar expressed dismay that credit unions continued to be lumped in with entities that prey on consumers.

Our basic concern is the nature of the regulation, the one-size-fits-all approach, he said. In my experience in New Mexico, credit unions have neither used nor relied upon arbitration provisions in consumer credit relationships.
by David A Marcillo | Fri, May 6th 3:13pm EDT

Miami Marlins first baseman Justin Bour is out of the lineup again on Friday, but the Marlins say he should be ready to go some time this weekend.
The number of dairy farmers is falling every week, as the price crisis continues to bite.

Behind those falling producer numbers are tough decisions and for some, the decision is forced.

AHDB Dairy estimates that about half of British dairy farms were financially vulnerable in December 2015. That means they could not cover their cash costs.

Only about 15% were long-term sustainable, making more than their full economic costs. The situation will have worsened over the spring. Earlier this month Rabobank analysts pushed any milk price recovery hopes back to 2017.

Farmers weighing up leaving dairy, or making a dramatic change to their business, have a lot to consider.

See also: Milk price recovery hopes pushed back to 2017

Business planning Know your full production costs, including rent, finance and drawings

Run predictions based on five-year average milk price, current price and future forecasts

Calculate expected losses this year and how much you can or are willing to stand

Changing dairy system is an option, but can be easier with a break from production

Tenants may face restrictions on farm type or holding

Involve everyone in the discussion and decision

Milk prices and production costs

The first question to ask is about the future of the market. People have to take a view on where they think the milk price may be for the next five years, says Rob Hitch, partner at accountant Dodd & Co.

They have to decide whether they are really happy with that. [Some people] could be spending a year at 20p or less, which is very difficult.

But any bets on the future must to be based on data and linked back to the dairy business at home.

Tony Evans, head of farm business consultancy at Andersons, says farmers should look at five-year averages.

The average milk price since 2009 is 26-27p/litre, well below the heights of more than 30p/litre two years ago.

Then, they need to put this against their full costs of production and work out if they need to overhaul their business.

If you have a three at the start of your [cost of production] numbers, you have got a serious problem, Mr Evans says. You are highly unlikely to get over any losses.

That is the longer term, but many now face months in the red.

Producers must decide how big a loss they are willing or able to put up with, Mr Evans says, during the current slump.

If a dairy unit averages full economic costs of 30p/litre over the past three years, the recent slump in feed, fuel and fertiliser prices might drag that down to 28p/litre.

If the farms gross income, including stock sales, is 24p/litre that leaves a 4p/litre gap.

For a herd producing 1.5m litres, that is an annual deficit of 60,000.

If you dont restructure any finances and dont stop spending on drawings, either that has to come from reserves or you need a bigger overdraft, Mr Evans adds.

People have to measure how much money they are prepared to risk.

Once producers have worked out their own dairy data and made forecasts, they can start to make choices.

Finance issues Watch out for tax on machinery and youngstock sales

Sales of land parcels could attract large capital gains tax bill

Longer-serving staff may need redundancy payments

Plan as far ahead as possible, allowing tax considerations to be managed

Sometimes the deciding factor can be the need for investment or to recruit a replacement herdsman.

Any plans might have to factor in the increasing discrimination of processors, who might start charging for pick-ups further away from their core milk fields.

Alternative structures

The choices may not be as simple as stay or go.

A joint venture could be an option, bringing in a partner with expertise and the desire to trade profitably in dairy.

This can suit for those who want to retreat top some extent from day-to-day physical work but who for a variety of reasons want to continue in farming.

Or producers could look at moving into other parts of the industry, such as livestock.

But Nick Holt-Martyn, The Dairy Group principal consultant, says the market slump across all sectors, and the tough economics of beef and sheep, are not especially comforting for dairy farmers.

Restructuring the current dairy business, perhaps switching to a lower-cost system, could be an option, he says.

A sabbatical from milking, where the herd is dispersed and the dairy restarts a few months later with a new model, could stem some immediate losses.

Fixed costs can be very lumpy. It is those that are more difficult to cut, Mr Holt-Martyn says.

If you wanted to restructure your business it is easier to do if you have not got cows there. But there is a risk you might not be able to carry on your milk contract.

Legal issues

Milk contracts need thought. Deals with processors typically have 12-month notice periods for both sides. That means not delivering milk could risk a breach of contract.

Read your contract again, see what the terms are, and seek individual legal advice, says NFU chief legal adviser Nina Winter.

If youre retiring from dairy, talk to your milk buyer about your situation.

Tenants may face restrictions. Many tenancy agreements, especially those under the Agricultural Holdings Act or county council holdings, require the whole farm to be committed to dairying.

There might also be limits on bringing other animals on to the holding, which could stop new enterprises like grazing other farmers stock or rearing heifers.

Landlords and tenants could be tied up in other ways. If a landlord has invested in fixed equipment, like a slurry store, both sides might have entered a memorandum of understanding.

The tenant, who was supposed to pay rent over the time the slurry store was to be paid off, might then be saddled with the cost.

The first thing we say is, What was on your tenancy agreement? says Tenant Farmers Association chief executive George Dunn. If you find yourself restricted you have to start a dialogue with your landlord or your landlords agent.

If farm staff lose their jobs because milking stops, statutory redundancy provisions need to be considered.

Very simply, it is not free to lay someone off, says Dan Knight, director at accounts Old Mill. You have to look at how long they have been there and understand what you have to pay them.

Finance questions Watch out for tax on machinery and youngstock sales

Sales of land parcels could attract large capital gains tax bill

Longer-serving staff may need redundancy payments

Plan as far ahead as possible, allowing tax considerations to be managed

Family considerations

The rest of the farming family might have opinions too. The current dairy slump might accelerate thoughts about succession, says Mr Knight.

Those close to retirement but with no-one to take over might find selling up a better route than stacking up growing losses. But if there are family members, they might want to stick it out in dairy and take a greater role in the business.

If you have got two sons who are as keen as mustard, you might have the ability to withstand being in the red a couple of years, Mr Knight says. Now has never been a better time to consider succession planning.

If a farm gets to the point of planning a sale, and ending dairy trading, there is more to think about still.

Plan carefully to minimise tax

Sales of stock on a herd basis are exempt from tax. But profit from selling machinery or young stock will be taxable. Also, sales of farm kit on which an annual investment allowance was being claimed could be an issue.

That relief would be lost and any income from selling would lead to a tax bill.

The correct timing of stock, machinery or land and property sales, along with advice about how these are structured, can make a huge difference to any tax bill.

Make sure you know exactly what the tax position is before you dispose of things, says Dodd & Cos Mr Hitch. Make sure you work through the implications.

How and stock is sold is also important. Clive Norbury, director at auctioneer Wright Marshall, says the most valuable time to sell cows is when they are fresh calved.

There is good demand for autumn calvers, as long as they are PDd back in calf, he says. Keeping cows in good condition is also vital.

Try and maximise the value of the cattle at that moment in time, Mr Norbury says. The time of year [for a sale] is not particularly relevant, because it depends on when the cows are calving.

Other help The Farming Community Network offers a sounding board and can point farmers in the direction of help. Its helpline number is 03000 111 999

AHDB is putting tools for tough decision-making on its website, dairy.ahdb.org.uk

NFU members seeking legal help with contracts can contact NFU CallFirst on 0370 845 8458

Then what?

Think about what will come after the sale  this is important both for personal and financial reasons.

Booking the sale is potentially the easier decision, says Andersons Mr Evans.

The hard bit comes after, when a farmer is left with a wad of cash and little else.

That makes it a gamble to strip out all the costs, sack all the staff who had been invested in, and sell any kit that could be useful in other operations, he adds.

Be clear about what you are going to do afterwards. A lot of businesses I have seen from a distance spend the next 12 months deciding and burning the cash they have raised from the sale.

These decisions are individual and often complex, so the whole family should be involved in the discussion, as it might open up or close down options for later generations, say advisers.

It is really tough, says Charles Smith, Farm Community Network chief executive. What they do as a dairy farmer defines who they are as people.

Most people are born onto a dairy farm and have never known any other life. The more down you get, the more difficult it is to think logically and rationally.

Case Study: Richard Roberts North Wales dairy farmer Richard Roberts mulled over the stay or go question in the spring of 2007. Since then, hes doubled his herd size and wants to keep making a decent living in the sector, to keep supporting his family. Mr Roberts was days away from his herds dispersal. Nine years ago, his milk price was 15p/litre and the business was bleeding cash. He crunched his data, looked at current and future prices, and discussed with advisers and family. He came to a decision: an auction was booked for Wednesday 7 August. The catalogue was drawn up. The cows were still out and grass covers were running down. Knowing the sale was coming up, no fertiliser had been applied. There was no chance of us getting a new contract somewhere else and we were losing money. So I spoke to the family and made a group decision. That was the hardest one: that we were going to sell up, Mr Roberts says. But the sale was stopped by the foot-and-mouth outbreak at Pirbright, the weekend before the sale. Movement restrictions came in, forcing the Roberts to make new plans. Luckily for them, the milk price began to creep back up. To pay off some debt, they cut cow numbers from 170 to 100. We did the figures and we could manage with the increasing milk price. I love what I do and we do not do it to make millions, but there was light at the end of the tunnel. In the following years, Mr Roberts invested in improving the milking parlour and built new dairy sheds. He says his bank has been supportive in his two decades running the farm. He has been upfront and honest with them during discussions, and never tried to extend his borrowing facilities. The herd was built up to 200 cows by April 2014. Then, he decided to sell the 120-130 young stock, which were a massive drain on the business. He wanted to a run a simplified system with a flying herd. The cash also let him buy another 50 cows. Even in this tough market, Mr Roberts is keeping the business above water. His full costs, including family income, come to about 22p/litre. His milk price is 23p/litre. The farm assets are maximised, with full sheds and as many cows as the 111-ha, rented holding can take.
Farm contractors say they are losing thousands of pounds in income after Defra extended the hedgecutting ban to cover the month of August.

Last year Defra extended the hedgecutting ban by one month to protect late nesting birds. The ban now runs from 1 March to 1 September in the UK.

Northamptonshire hedging contractor Bob Rutt said he lost a potential 6,000-8,000 in revenue in 2015 because the extended ban forced to him to sit out August  normally the busiest period for hedgecutting.

Mr Rutt, who trims about 2,630ha of hedges in the Northamptonshire/Leicestershire/Rutland area, said: The hedgecutting ban in August didnt affect us straightaway, but it is affecting us at the end of the year and now.

See also: Hedgecutting ban  farm contractors demand rule change

We are specialist contractors and we have very little other work apart from a bit of grass-cutting.

We relied on that month to keep us going through the hard times. I have had to sell kit and one of my men has left. Some contractors are having to dip into their savings to keep going through the quiet months  and that cant be right.

Normally, farm contractors would follow the combines round in August and trim the hedges before cultivations.

But after Defra extended the hedgecutting ban, contractors have been forced to wait until 1 September before they can begin cutting hedges.

This policy means some farmers will only cut hedges every three years and they will be cutting about the thickness of your wrist, which makes a right mess Bob Rutt, hedging contractor

Trimming hedges in August allowed us to keep out of the way of the cultivation equipment, said Mr Rutt. The problem now is that 90% of my customers will not allow me on the land once it has been cultivated.

It is different if it is light land and you are on the fens. But on the heavier land it is a lot harder. I imagine hundreds of contractors as far north as Doncaster are faced with this same problem.

Furthermore, many farmers are choosing not to cut hedges to save money amid the cashflow crisis engulfing farming.

MPs Q&A session

In a question and answer session held in the House of Commons on Thursday (5 May), Conservative MP Tom Pursglove (Corby and East Northamptonshire) asked Defra ministers if they had assessed the effect of the changes to hedgecutting regulations on contractors, farms and hedge maintenance.

Mr Pursglove highlighted Mr Rutts case, saying he has no intention of harming wildlife, but the policy is seriously affecting his business.

In reply, Rory Stewart, the parliamentary undersecretary of state at Defra, said: I am happy to engage with farmers on this issue. It is important to understand, however, that certain birds, including blackbirds, turtle doves, goldfinches, bullfinches and whitethroats, have longer breeding and rearing seasons that last through August and into the beginning of September.

Mr Stewart pointed out that two derogations were available to farmers and landowners to allow hedges to be cut in August for people planting oilseed rape and temporary grass.

Defra response disappointing

Mr Rutt told Farmers Weekly he was disappointed by the ministers response and disagreed with his comments.

He said: According to the RSPB website, most of these birds that the minister mentions will no longer be nesting through August and into September.

They are migratrory birds and in July and August they are flying, on their way back to Africa.

He added: Birds do not nest in the outside of the hedge, they go inside it to be safe. Where we flail, we only cut the overgrowth, which is about the thickness of a pencil.

This policy means some farmers will only cut hedges every three years and they will be cutting about the thickness of your wrist, which makes a right mess.

Northamptonshire farm contractor Robert Hawtin, who farms in partnership with his son James, who does the hedgecutting, said the ban extension had been bad news and he lost more between 3,000 to 4,000 in potential income last August.

Weve never really caught up, said Robert Hawtin. By the time we got into September, some of the farmers didnt bother to get their hedges done. They had drilled the winter wheat and they didnt want us in there.

A spokesman for SR Chesters Contractors, based in Staffordshire, said: It would be better to cut a bit earlier, to start cutting before it gets wet. But we cant do that because of this policy.
People are needed to demonstrate against an Alt-Right rally on Berkeley campus.The National Policy Institute is holding a rally on Berkeley campus at Sproul Plaza, 3PM on Friday May 6th. On their Youtube page, the NPI posted a video featuring Richard Spencer, who states the intention of appearing on Sproul to create a "safe space" for the Alt (Alternative) Right. The Alt Right movement is associated with far right politics including white supremacy.Come to Berkeley to demonstrate against a Alt-Right rally on Sproul Plaza at 3PM, tomorrow Friday the 6th of May. Take a stand against the National Policy Institute, which seek to inflate racial divisions. The NPI is a white supremacist organization that supports Donald Trump's candidacy for presidency. Be aware that on their website ( http://www.radixjournal.com/ ), there was an announcement that they intend to live stream their rally, so people might want to mask-up, if they are uncomfortable being filmed.Richard Spencer, the organizer of the rally, has been using social media to gather people who believe in his racially charged philosophy. The National Policy Institute promotes ideas such as intellectual differences between races. Spencer is an ardent support of Donal Trump, who he calls "the Napolean of the Current Year" Spencer calls for white people, particularly white men, to "oppose the system" and to defend the white race against an alleged threat from multiculturalism. Spencer also is a strong promoter of Islamophobia.Take a stand against The National Policy Institute, and against Richard Spencer. Gather in Sproul Plaza at 3PM, and be part of a counter-rally against the Alt-Right and against Trump.
New Leaf Community Markets in Felton, California takes a righteous step in support of the farmworkers who grow our food. In addition to pulling Driscolls berries from their shelves, the market is displaying a letter with an overview of the boycott.

[ New Leaf Community Markets in Felton, CA honors the boycott of Driscoll's berries. Photos by Michael Gasser (@mapinduzi21k). May 3, 2016. Collage by Bradley Allen. ]

New Leaf Community Markets in Felton Honors Driscolls Boycott

New Leaf Community Markets, purchased by New Seasons Market in 2013, is a grocery chain founded in Santa Cruz, California in 1985. The market currently has seven locations, and an Aptos store is expected to open in August 2017.

On May 2, 2016, New Leaf Community Markets in Felton, which operates with a franchise agreement under separate ownership, confirmed that they are not selling Driscoll's berries. New Leaf Community Markets in Boulder Creek operates under separate ownership as well.

This comes as exciting news for the boycott Driscoll's movement. New Leaf Community Markets in Felton is believed to be the first grocery store in Santa Cruz County to remove Driscoll's berries from their shelves in honor of the boycott.

The remaining New Leaf Community Markets locations, including the store on Pacific Avenue in downtown Santa Cruz, continue to sell Driscoll's berries despite requests from their customers to respect the international boycott. On May 1, a large group of demonstrators, many of whom are also customers of the popular market, entered the store with signs and chants calling for the boycott of Driscoll's and "no more blood berries." A letter was given to an employee asking that the store honor the boycott and not sell Driscoll's berries.

New Leaf Community Markets was the first grocer in California, and second in the world, to achieve a B Corporation certification. The website for Certified B Corporations states, "B Corps meet the highest standards of verified social and environmental performance, public transparency, and legal accountability, and aspire to use the power of markets to solve social and environmental problems."

New Leaf Community Markets in Felton has taken a righteous step by demonstrating their respect for the farmworkers who grow our food. In addition to pulling Driscoll's berries from their shelves, the market is displaying a laminated letter in their berry section which provides an overview of the boycott, phone numbers to call in support of farmworkers, and websites for more information.

To thank New Leaf Community Markets in Felton, call (831) 335-7322.

You can also call the six other New Leaf Community Markets to ask them if they are still selling Driscoll's, and if so, politely explain why you feel they should honor the boycott.

Westside Santa Cruz (Flagship Location): (831) 426-1306

Downtown Santa Cruz: (831) 425-1793

Capitola: (831) 479-7987

Boulder Creek: (831) 338-7211

Half Moon Bay: (650) 726-3110

Pleasanton: (925) 621-7660

In honor of the international boycott against Driscoll's, New Leaf Community Markets in Felton, CA has removed Driscoll's berries from their shelves while displaying the following letter in support of Familias Unidas por la Justicia (Families United for Justice):

DON'T BUY DRISCOll'S BERRIES

We are here today in solidarity with farmworker families fighting for a union contract at Sakuma Brothers berry farm, a 1,500 acre industrial agriculture corporation in Burlington, WA, and the 80,000 farmworkers who are fighting for a union contract in San Quintin, Mexico.

Over the summer of 2013, three hundred farmworkers went on strike for their rights at Sakuma Brothers farm. They called for an end to systematic wage theft, particularly from youth workers, substandard housing, racist harassment from their supervisors, and denial of lunch and rest breaks among other demands.

At first, Sakuma negotiated with the workers' elected negotiating committee, but then broke agreements they had reached, including going back on a new pay rate per pound of berries Sakuma and the workers had agreed on. In addition, Sakuma sent private security forces to the workers' camps and the fields, which a Skagit County judge ruled to be a violation of Washington State labor law. After Sakuma broke their side of the agreements, the farmworkers, through their union Familias Unidas por la Justicia (Families United for Justice) asked the public to boycott Sakuma Bros Berry Farm until the labor dispute is resolved and the workers have a contract recognizing their union.

Sakuma responded to the public boycott by moving the majority of their production under the Driscolls label. Driscolls is a multi-national berry selling corporation who sources from farms all over the world including San Quintin, Mexico where 80,000 farmworkers went on strike in March of 2015 to demand an end to being paid 7 dollars a day, widespread sexual abuse of women in the fields, and illegal child labor. They are still fighting for a union contract.

Since Familias Unidas called for a boycott in 2013 they have been successful at fighting Sakumas attempts to crush their union through illegal retaliatory practices. In the summer of 2014 Sakuma sent letters to workers saying that if they had missed 5 days or more (ie: went on strike) they were no longer eligible to work for the company and changed the housing rules to exclude workers with children and spouses who werent working (ie the whole union). Familias Unidas sued Sakuma over these practices and a Skagit County judge found them to be retaliatory and illegal.

In 2014 Sakuma also attempted to replace the entire union workforce with an application for 436 H2A guestworkers, which Familias Unidas members and supporters successfully blocked in an historic effort where they used massive direct actions at the department of labor, and public meetings where Sakuma was present among other tactics that were successful at getting Sakuma to withdraw their application for H-2A guestworkers due to massive public pressure.

This year Sakuma did not apply for H2A workers and has rehired many of the union members, but the new corporate CEO Danny Weeden who was hired this winter is continuing the companys practice of refusing to negotiate a union contract with Familias Unidas por la Justicia and is trying to convince the public that they have met the workers demands.

Now is the time to act in solidarity with farmworker families and Boycott Driscolls berries! Familias Unidass struggle is a historic one that has the potential to transform the deeply exploitative treatment of farmworkers in Washington state where there is only one farm with a union contract in the entire state! Because Driscolls is a global corporation, FUJ and the workers in San Quintin need solidarity from consumers and organizers from beyond Washington state.

Call Sakuma's CEO Danny Weeden and urge him to negotiate with Familias Unidas por la Justicia 360 757 6611

Call Costco Corporate headquarters and urge Jeff Lyons to stop buying Driscolls Berries 425 311 8100

Read more and stay up to date at:

BoycottSakumaBerries.com

facebook.com/familiasunidas

facebook.com/wwustudentsforfarmworkerjustice

If you are interested in forming a boycott committee where you live email BoycottCoordination@gmail.com or call 206 272 0154

Previous coverage of the boycott Driscolls movement:

Bradley Allen is a reporter and photographer in the Monterey Bay area, and part of the Indybay collective. Follow him on Twitter: @BradleySA.
The largest irrigation district in the nation that receives hundreds of millions in taxpayer subsidies, Westlands Water District, wants the nation to not only give them a permanent water contract for free with virtually no strings as to how they will contain their toxic groundwater pollution, but now we find out they have been gaming their responsibility to pay for these expensive tunnels to export even more water to these toxic lands, explained Carolee Krieger, Executive Director of California Water Impact Network. Continuing to send more water to irrigate these toxic soils at taxpayer expense makes no sense.



Map of Westlands Water District on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley

U.S. taxpayers are paying for lion's share of Brown's Delta Tunnelsby Dan BacherHow would you like to pay for a massive government public works project that will drive Sacramento River Chinook salmon, Central Valley steelhead, Delta smelt and other fish species to extinction but won't create one single drop of new water?In fact, you and every other taxpayer in this country are already being billed for this giant boondoggle, Governor Jerry Brown's Delta Tunnels, whether you like it or not.Federal taxpayers, not the federal water contractors, are paying the lions share for Governor Jerry Browns Delta Tunnels, a coalition of environmental and fishing groups revealed on April 28. The water will be exported for use for corporate agribusiness interests, Southern California water agencies and oil companies conducting fracking and extreme oil extraction methods.In response to a January 25, 2016 letter sent by conservation groups, U.S. Bureau of Reclamation Regional Director David G. Murillo has confirmed that over $86.9 million of the costs for the Delta Tunnels have been billed to federal taxpayers to date!The alarming data was revealed in a news release, including a copy of the letter, issued by Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, Restore the Delta; Carolee Krieger, California Water Impact Network; Conner Everts, Southern CA Watershed Alliance & Environmental Water Caucus (EWC); and Tim Sloane, Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermens Associations. ( http://restorethedelta.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Bureau-4-16-16-response-to-NGO-Ltr-Tunnels-Costs-Jan-2016.pdf The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation letter affirmed the tunnels project is not authorized by Congress and they have no plans to conduct the required feasibility study or pay the construction costs which will more than double the current State Water Project debt to be paid by ratepayers and property taxpayers if permitted, according to the groups.In the letter, Murillo wrote:"Due to the State separating the BDCP into two programs and due to the fact that Reclamation does not have construction authority for the new conveyance facilities, Reclamation does not anticipate formally submitting a feasibility report to Congress.Currently, there are no plans for Reclamation to fund the construction of California WaterFix, nor provide financial assistance agreements to provide funding for construction.Murillo also divulged that the federal contractors paid zero money of the $73,733,099 of federal dollars granted to the Department of Water Resources (DWR) for the Delta Tunnels Plan through FAA #1 and #2."The federal CVP contractors contributed $0. The funding source was Federal appropriations," said Murillo.In addition, he said, "Westlands Water District paid $0. The funding source was Federal appropriations."The Environmental Water Caucus, along with several of its member groups who sought answers regarding this gouging of the federal taxpayers, called on the State Auditor to investigate why state laws requiring federal contractors such as Westlands Water District are shirking their responsibilities to pay for the water export tunnels environmental review .In response to our questions, it is clear Congress and the American people are being misled," stated Tim Sloane, PCFFA Executive Director. "While our salmon heritage hangs on the brink of extinction and toxic algae blooms build, funds to protect fish and wildlife and restore the Delta Estuary have been diverted to fund water tunnel export plans to take even more essential fresh water from this critical estuary."As federal investigators probe the California Department of Water Resources overcharges, double billings and $300+ per hour charges to the federal government for the water export tunnels, the Bureau of Reclamation's admission that federal contractors such as Westlands, have not paid their required 50% share of the tunnels in accordance with state law, needs to be investigated," asserted Conner Everts, Executive Director of the Southern California Watershed Alliance and the Environmental Water Caucus."How have the federal contractors been shirking their duties under state law to pay for the CA WaterFix environmental analysis, while the state contractors (ratepayers) are pouring money into the effort (over $60 million from MWD alone, to date)?" he asked.The largest irrigation district in the nation that receives hundreds of millions in taxpayer subsidies, Westlands Water District, wants the nation to not only give them a permanent water contract for free with virtually no strings as to how they will contain their toxic groundwater pollution, but now we find out they have been gaming their responsibility to pay for these expensive tunnels to export even more water to these toxic lands, explained Carolee Krieger, Executive Director of California Water Impact Network. Continuing to send more water to irrigate these toxic soils at taxpayer expense makes no sense.State ratepayers and taxpayers are footing the bills along with folks in New Jersey, while Westlands, the largest irrigation district in the nation, funds phony advertising campaigns hiding behind their hard working farm workers, to solicit even more taxpayer dollars to fund this expensive risky tunneling project, stated Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla of Restore the Delta. We are calling on the State Auditor to investigate.The Department of Interiors Inspector General in April opened an investigation into the possible illegal use of millions of dollars by the California Department of Water Resources (DWR) in preparing the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the Delta Tunnels Plan. ( http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/04/12/feds-to-probe-misuse-of-state-funds-for-jerry-browns-delta-tunnels/ These funds have been spent on the environmental studies NEPA reviewand hired contractors paid by DWR with Federal Grants," the groups stated. "These federal grants are under investigation for a variety of reasonsdouble billing, failing to follow federal procedures such as competitive bidding and questions about reasonable and prudent charges among others."The investigation resulted from a complaint the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) filed on the behalf of a Bureau of Reclamation employee on February 19, 2016.Yes, we have a real "win-win" scenario here, don't we. Salmon, steelhead and Delta smelt will be exterminated, not one drop of new water will be created, and the taxpayers will be hosed! And it's all to create a "legacy project" for Jerry Brown, one of the worst governors for fish, water and the environment in recent California history, at the same time that a federal investigation of illegal use of funds for the Delta Tunnels by the Brown administration moves forward!Questions the State Auditor Should AskThe Reclamation response to the NGO letter raises additional questions, especially for the State Auditor Elaine Howle, according to the groups. For example:How have the federal contractors been shirking their duties under state law to pay for the WaterFix environmental analysis, while the state contractors are pouring money into the effort (over $60 million from MWD alone, to date)?Are Federal CVP Contractors Paying Their 50% for the Tunnels Planning and Environmental Review? The letter confirms federal taxpayers have been billed more than $86.9M for the Delta water export tunnels.It appears State Law, California Water Code Section 85089 is being circumvented by Westlands and other federal contractors, Why?Recall Water Code Section 85089 requires.Construction of a new Delta conveyance facility shall not be initiated until the persons or entities that contract to receive water from the State Water Project and the federal Central Valley Project or a joint powers authority representing those entities have made arrangements or entered into contracts to pay for both of the following: (a) The costs of the environmental review, planning, design,Background: Tunnels Plan Just One of Brown's Terrible Environmental PoliciesWhile the Delta Tunnels plan poses a huge threat to the ecosystems of the Sacramento, San Joaquin, Klamath and Trinity river systems, its not the only environmentally devastating policy promoted by Governor Jerry Brown. Brown is promoting the expansion of fracking and extreme oil extraction methods in California and is overseeing water policies that are driving winter run-Chinook salmon, Delta and longfin smelt and other species closer and closer to extinction.Jerry Brown also oversaw the "completion" of so-called marine protected areas under the privately funded Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative, overseen by a Big Oil lobbyist and other corporate interests, in December 2012. These faux Yosemites of the Sea fail to protect the ocean from oil drilling, fracking, pollution, corporate aquaculture and all human impacts on the ocean other than sustainable fishing and gathering.As if those examples of Browns tainted environmental legacy werent enough, Brown has promoted carbon trading and REDD policies that pose an enormous threat to Indigenous Peoples around the globe; has done nothing to stop clearcutting of forests by Sierra-Pacific and other timber companies; presided over record water exports from the Delta in 2011; and oversaw massive fish kills of Sacramento splittail and other species in 2011.While Brown spouts "green" rhetoric when he flies off to climate conference and and issues proclamations about John Muir Dayand Earth Day, his actions and policies regarding fish, water and the environment are among the worst of any Governor in recent California history.For more information about the real environmental record of Governor JerryBrown, go to: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/3/25/1506146/-Govenor-Jerry-Brown-Celebrates-World-Water-Day-As-He-Promotes-Salmon-Killing-Delta-Tunnels
Supporters of the 40,000 CWA-IBEW Verizon workers spoke out in San Francisco about why they are supporting this strike.

San Francisco workers protested outside the Verizon office near Market & 4th St. on May 5, 2016 to support the 40,000 striking CWA-IBEW workers on the east coast. Strike supporters talked about the issues workers and youth face here including labor struggles at Digital First Media and Le Meridian Hotel which Unite Here Local 2 is trying to organize.Production of Labor Video Project
Slickest con man Tedr77 [at] aol.com) by Ted Rudow III, MA

As Donald Trump virtually clinches the Republican presidential nomination after Senator Ted Cruz suspends his campaign following a devastating defeat in the Indiana primary.

The slickest con man out of New York City, and has just been basically made the Republican nominee. One of the few people who has touched on Trumps amazing history in relationship to organized crime in America, thats gotten virtually no attention. Roy Cohn is a figure in American history who is well known to people at least of our generation, probably not so much to the one thats casting a lot of ballots now. But Roy Cohn was the sidekick and chief witch hunter for Senator Joseph McCarthy, after Roy Cohn had left the Senate, he went into private practice.



The set himself up basically as the house counsel to a couple of the crime bosses in New York Citythe Genovese crime family and the Gambino crime family. The same time, he adopted a young developer from Queens looking to make his first mark as a developer in Manhattan named Donald J. Trumph. He being a developer in New York City, to be fair, you had to, in those daysthis is talking about the late 70s and 1980s, early 90syou had to brush up against the mob. They were a force both on the employer side and particularly on the union side. But despite that problem, Don Trump seemed to keep running into them over and over again. They bought apartments in his Trump Tower, in Trump Plaza. They kept showing up as people that he was carousing with.



Donald Trump met with a couple FBI agents, protesting that he was concerned that in Atlantic City there might be organized crime figures, and what could he do to protect himself from this, which is a little like saying, "Is it true that there was a guy named Al Capone once who didnt pay his taxes?" He did go to Atlantic City. He probably got in bed with half a dozen mobsters who he bought land from down there.



Ted Rudow III, MA


Three Chances for Oaks Lilies for Stonestreet Stables by Jordan Sigmon: Since the turn of the century, Stonestreet Stables, led by Barbara Banke, has become one of the most prominent owners/breeders in the industry. This is why it comes as no surprise that they have three incredibly talented fillies running in this years edition of the Kentucky Oaks. Among their past stars are two-time Horse of the Year Curlin, the super filly Rachel Alexandra, Champion Two-Year-Old Filly My Miss Aurelia, and multiple Grade I-winning mare Ask the Moon. One of the fillies they are running in the Oaks is none other than Rachels Valentina, the second foal from Rachel Alexandra by Preakness/Travers Stakes winner Bernardini. Joining this regally bred filly will be the once-beaten Terra Promessa and rapidly improving Royal Obsession.

Without the presence of Songbird, Rachels Valentina has been installed as the 7/2 morning-line favorite, drawing post 11 in an overflow field of 15 three-year-old fillies. A rather lightly raced filly, Rachels Valentina has only four career starts to her name. She showed flashes of brilliance in winning her debut and had a stellar run in the coveted Grade I Spinaway Stakes, both at Saratoga. The talented young filly was then given nearly two months off as she was a very straight-forward, smart horse, and the connections didnt feel she needed the extra experience she would gain from another race before the Breeders Cup. During that time, she was given a short break at the farm before heading back to the racetrack and on to the pinnacle of racing. Rachels Valentina was the sentimental pick for many, but there was just no stopping Songbird, a filly who herself has drawn comparisons to Stonestreets powerhouse, Rachel Alexandra. With how well their filly ran fresh in the Breeders Cup, Stonestreet elected to use that tactic again and waited until April 9 for her three-year-old debut. That race was Keenelands Grade I Central Bank Ashland Stakes. It was a race that she nearly won, and had she not been so close to the fast pace early on, she probably would have. When drawing comparisons between mother and daughter, Banke describes them both as very classy and competitive, but Rachels Valentina is a very sweet filly, whereas her mother was a bit of a handful on the track. Since the Ashland, Rachels Valentina has worked twice, once at Keeneland and once at Churchill. Both works were sharp four-furlong drills, and each of them earned the breezing rating. All signs certainly seem to be pointing towards a huge effort from this filly, and it surely would be something special to have an Oaks winner out of an Oaks winner.

Though her mother wasnt anything so special, Terra Promessas sire is easily one of the best weve seen in the past decade or so. The Curlin filly is a taller and leaner type. Therefore, she needed more time to mature and did not debut until last October. A bad start cost her the win that day, but she finished only a half-length behind the winner. Her maiden win came in her second start under the Twin Spires at Churchill Downs. It was a rather slow time but a comfortable win regardless. Then came a nine-length walkover in an allowance at Oaklawn, and the chart note reads that she did it as she pleased. The rain proved to be no issue for the budding star in the Grade III Honeybee as it was another romp by 6 lengths. The Fantasy was a rather odd race. Further off the pace than she preferred, Terra Promessa was extremely rank early and all out late to hold off stablemate Taxable. On her ability to handle several different surfaces, Banke explained that she has a phenomenal stride that covers a lot of ground. It doesnt matter if its wet or dry, she gets over the ground well. Since the Fantasy, Terra Promessa has worked three times, all at Churchill Downs. Like her times in races, the times were modest, but that just seems to be how she goes. Terra Promessa will need to show some more patience if she is to find the winners circle, but shes got a big shot.

Royal Obsession is the only one of the three fillies that is not a homebred seeing as she was a $1,150,000 purchase at last years Keeneland November sale. Banke described her as a big pretty filly and mentioned that the fillys stellar pedigree would be a nice addition to the broodmare band in the future. An impressive maiden winner on debut at Churchill, the gray daughter of Tapit rallied from around midpack to win going away over a wet-fast racetrack. Her next two starts came at the Fairgrounds, a game allowance win by a head and a fourth-place finish in the GII Twinspires.com Rachel Alexandra Stakes. The latter of those two results was likely due to a troubled wide trip on a strongly inside-trip biased racetrack. In the Grade II Gazelle, she looked to be putting it all together late, finishing a length and a half behind Lewis Bay and seven lengths in front of the third-place finisher. Royal Obsession is not an early type of filly, and with the distance, her big stride, and the rate at which shes improving, the Oaks could be her best race yet.

Related Links:

Handicapping Kentucky Oaks Day 2016 Picks & Plays

2016 Kentucky Derby Odds and Post Positions
Kentucky Derby 2016 Picks and Odds by Sigi Mendoza: The most anticipated day in U.S. racing has arrived, Kentucky Derby day. Besides the Run for the Roses, there are some interesting stakes races on the card that will make Derby day simply unforgettable. Heres a quick analysis of the Derby day stakes for those who want to enjoy the races and make some economic plays on Saturday, May 7, 2016.

Churchill Distaff Turf Mile Stakes  Grade II

6) 1

Im not wasting too many lines analyzing Tepins chances. She is a superstar, and this race should be a paid workout for her. Tepin is one of the few American horses that can be competitive in Europe in turf races, so against this field, she will offer zero value. I recommend just enjoying Tepins performance.

Churchill Downs Stakes  Grade II

7) 8, 3

Salutos Amigos is in great shape and drew a very good post position for this race. He would appreciate a hot pace, and, indeed, there are a lot of speedy horses in the race. Im probably a bit biased towards this horse since I love his dam, Sarasota, but all signs indicate that he has a great shot to win. Im only adding Calculator because he didnt want to lose in his last race where Salutos Amigos beat him by only a head. The horse is working nicely and just needs a clean break to be a real threat.

Humana Distaff Stakes  Grade I

8) 8

Taris is cutting back to seven furlongs, a distance where she does her best runs. She got a very good post position and looks sharp for this race. It seems she learned to relax early, so shell not necessarily be involved in a pace duel. She is the class of the field and the one to beat.

American Turf Stakes  Grade II

9) 8, 11, 6, 12

It looks like the easy to handicap races are over, so its time to navigate into deeper waters. Shakimat is a son of the Australian stallion Lonhro who has been producing some solid runners in North America. Shakimat started his career at Woodbine in Canada, getting a nice record of 2 wins in 3 starts at two years old with his only defeat in the turf. However, Shakimat dispelled all doubts about his turf skills after he romped in the Transylvania Stakes (GIII) at Keeneland. He has the early speed to try to win gate-to-wire, but it will not be an easy task. Dressed in Hermes tried to get on the Derby Trail, but he is definitely a turf horse since all his best races have been over that surface. If you look back at his past performances, you would notice a huge effort in the Breeders Cup Juvenile Turf (GI). Also, his workouts are really impressive. J Rs Holiday is always in the mix and could take advantage of a hypothetical pace duel. The new sensation rider in Florida, Emisael Jaramillo, stays in the saddle. Surgical Strike could be the longshot everybody is looking for. The switch to a more competitive rider in Luis Saez could be the key of success for this horse.

Pat Day Mile Stakes  Grade III

10) 9, 7, 6, 5

Fellowship was on the bubble waiting for Derby defections. None have occurred yet, so he is entered in the Pat Day Mile instead. He has been working nicely, and honestly I prefer him in one-mile races. Forevamo, another horse who failed to make the Derby, is cutting back to one mile. He has a win and a second place in two starts over the distance. Sharp Azteca is likely to be sent to wire this field. This will be his acid test, but he is improving, and we dont know his limits yet. Imperial Hint is moving up in class, but he looks like the real deal. He was facing weaker fields in Tampa, though.

Woodford Reserve Turf Classic Stakes  Grade I

11) 10

This is a wide open race, but Im choosing just one horse. Tourist is stretching out to 1-1/8 miles, a distance I think he should appreciate because he will be able to relax a bit early, something he wouldnt do in his last races over one mile. There are plenty of tough runners, highlighted by Big Blue Kitten and Slumber, both returning from a six-month layoff. It is a risky single, but Im confident that Tourist will run huge this time.

Kentucky Derby Presented by Yum! Brands -GI

12) 13, 17, 2, 5

This time Im only throwing out some quick thoughts about the 142nd Kentuky Derby. For extended info, read here. Nyquist is the deserving favorite, and it will be very tough to catch him. Nobody knows if he can get the distance, but he is a win machine and is still undefeated. Although Mor Spirit drew the 17-hole, he should love the Derby distance. He lacks acceleration, but his even pace should work over 1 miles. Suddenbreakingnews is a closer, so his inside post probably wont hurt him. If the pace collapses, he will have a shot to win. The traffic could be a problem, but the closers must deal with it. Gun Runners speed figures are a bit slow to win the Derby, but he is training like a big boy at Churchill Downs. He has also shown professionalism in his races and never has trip troubles.

Kentucky Derby 2016 Picks and Odds

Pick 3

7) 8, 3

8) 8

9) 8, 11, 6, 12

Daily Double

10) 9, 7, 6, 5

11) 10

In the Kentucky Derby, Im playing Mor Spirit to win-place-show.

Kentucky Derby Odds and Post Positions 2016

Race 12 6:34 p.m. ET

Horse-Odds-Jockey-Trainer

1 Trojan Nation 50-1 Gryder/Gallagher

2 Suddenbreakingnews 20-1 Quinonez/Von Hemel

3 Creator 10-1 Santana, Jr./Asmussen

4 Mo Tom 20-1 Lanerie/Amoss

5 Gun Runner 10-1 Geroux/Asmussen

6 My Man Sam 20-1 Ortiz, Jr./Brown

7 Oscar Nominated 50-1 Leparoux/Maker

8 Lani 30-1 Take/Matsunaga

9 Destin 15-1 Castellano/Pletcher

10 Whitmore 20-1 Espinoza/Moquett

11 Exaggerator 8-1 Desormeaux/Desormeaux

12 Toms Ready 30-1 Hernandez, Jr./Stewart

13 Nyquist 3-1 Gutierrez/ONeill

14 Mohaymen 10-1 Alvarado/McLaughlin

15 Outwork 15-1 Velazquez/Pletcher

16 Shagaf 20-1 Rosario/Brown

17 Mor Spirit 12-1 Stevens/Baffert

18 Majesto 20-1 Jaramillo/Delgado

19 Brodys Cause 12-1 Saez/Romans

20 Danzing Candy 15-1 Smith/Size, Jr.
Cathryn Sophia Dominates Kentucky Oaks 2016: Just a few weeks ago, Cathryn Sophia made a menacing move in the Ashland Stakes (GI) at Keeneland and ended up hanging in the stretch, while the longshot Weep No More won and Rachels Valentina finished second. Today, she blew those opponents away and the rest of the Kentucky Oaks (GI) field, as she won at 9-2 odds.

Trained by John Servis and ridden by Javier Castellano, Cathryn Sophia improved her record to 6-5-0-1 for Cash is King. Before the Ashland, she had won her previous four starts in dominating fashion, although those races were one-turn events. Once she finished third in the Ashland, doubt crept into many handicappers minds.

The race started out with Terra Promessa setting the pace. Rachels Valentina chased her on the outside, and seemed to be in good position turning for home. As Terra Promessa faded, Lewis Bay moved on the rail and Cathryn Sophia made her move outside of Rachels Valentina.

When the fillies straightened out, it seemed clear Cathryn Sophia was taking control of the race, and she began to draw clear of her opponents. Disappointingly, Rachels Valentina faded and failed to hit the board.

Land Over Sea ran on late and finished second for trainer Doug ONeill and owner Reddam Racing. She now owns five runner-up finishes out of nine lifetime starts.

Lewis Bay hung around and ran third for trainer Chad Brown and Alpha Delta Stables. Two starts earlier, she had lost to Cathryn Sophia by seven lengths.

Go Maggie Go completed the superfecta.

The Kentucky Oaks, worth $1 million in overall purse, is annually one of the top races for 3-year-old fillies. Castellano, despite his numerous achievements, had never won the Oaks before.

Because of top-filly Songbirds recent illness, the race attracted a larger field than originally expected, with many connections wanting to take their shot without the Songbirds presence in the field.

In what will be an anticipated matchup, Cathryn Sophia likely needs to face Songbird down the road, hopefully early than the Breeders Cup Distaff (GI). Whenever it happens, what a race it will be!

Related Links:

Kentucky Oaks Day 2016 Results, Recaps, Photos

Kentucky Derby 2016 Picks and Odds

Kentucky Oaks 2016 Photo Gallery by Caris Photography
Los Angeles, CA A Los Angeles restaurant chain has been ordered to pay $3.2 million in a A Los Angeles restaurant chain has been ordered to pay $3.2 million in a California labor lawsuit filed by a former employee who alleged racial discrimination and wrongful termination. Roscoes House of Chicken and Waffles is reportedly appealing the award and has since filed for bankruptcy.

According to(3/29/16), Daniel Beasley filed the lawsuit against Roscoes Chicken and Waffles, claiming he was discriminated against by Hispanic managers at the restaurants Pico Blvd site. Among Beasleys complaints were allegations that black workers were given worse schedules and shifts than Latino employees. Beasley further alleged he was fired from his job after complaining to management about the issues.A jury agreed with Beasleys allegations and in 2015 awarded him $1.7 million, plus $1.5 million in attorneys fees. Since that award was handed out, the restaurant chain, which has seven locations, has filed for bankruptcy.Meanwhile, a lawsuit has been filed against PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, alleging the company discriminates against older job applicants by hiring mostly people under the age of 40. According to(5/2/16), Steve Rabin filed the lawsuit in San Francisco, alleging he was turned down for a job because he is older than 50.Under federal law, it is illegal for companies to discriminate against job applicants based on their age. Among PricewaterhouseCooperss alleged actions are using a recruitment tool that can only be accessed by current college students and not posting entry-level positions on its website. The lawsuit further alleges the company has a mandatory retirement age of 60 for partners.According to court documents, PricewaterhouseCoopers claimed in its 2011 Corporate Responsibility Summary Report that the average age of its employees was 27 and that two-thirds of employees are under the age of 35. The Labor Departments Bureau of Labor Statistics, however, lists the average age of accountants and auditors as 43.2 and says that only 35 percent of accountants and auditors across the United States are millennials (individuals between the ages of 21 and 36).Rabin reportedly became a certified public accountant after 15 years working in the computer industry. Despite his experience at accounting and audit firms, and as a public company controller, Rabin says he was not hired by PricewaterhouseCoopers for the position of seasonal experienced associate because of his age. The lawsuit also claims that the inability to be hired by PricewaterhouseCoopers has far-reaching effects because many other jobs in the field require applicants to have experience either at PricewaterhouseCoopers or one of the other four main accounting firms.PricewaterhouseCoopers has denied the allegations in the lawsuit, saying it hires individuals at all experience levels and across the age spectrum.The lawsuit iscase number 3:16-cv-02276, US District Court for the Northern District of California. In addition to seeking damages, the proposed class-action lawsuit seeks to end discriminatory practices.
Were excited to announce that metalbulletin.com is now part of fastmarkets.com.

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- Buhari's ex-lawyer is reported to be among those who got from the alleged N23.29 billion election scandal

- The monies were said to have been paid on the orders of the Fidelity Bank MD

The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has reportedly arrested Mike Ahamba (SAN), who was President Muhammadu Buhari's former counsel.

Sahara Reporters reports that the chairman of Cross River state Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Ntufam John Okon was nabbed as alongside Senator Chris Anyanwu, in connection with alleged N23.29 billion poll bribery scandal.

Mike Ahamba is being held by the EFCC.

Reports say the trio got N1.2 billion on the directive of Nnamdi Okonkwo, the embattled former managing director of Fidelity Bank.

It was further gathered that Anyanwu and Ahamba got N700 million each but Okon was picked up for getting N500 million and might be charged to court.

Sahara Reporters stated also that the anti-graft agency also discovered that some of the suspects implicated in the bribery scandal have left Nigeria to live abroad.

To get more details, the EFCC has reportedly invited more people and officials of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), who benefited from the bribery scam, for questioning.

An impeccable source revealed also that Anyanwu and Ahamba were interrogated at the agencys zonal office in Enugu on Wednesday, but were released on administrative bail which will allow them to go to the agency's office on a scheduled date.

Meanwhile, President Buhari has called on the United Nations Office for Drugs and Crime (UNODC) to facilitate the faster recovery of Nigerias stolen wealth stashed abroad.

Buhari made the call on Thursday, May 5, while receiving Yury Fedotov, the executive secretary of UNODC, at the presidential villa in Abuja.

According to a statement made by Garba Shehu, the presidents senior special assistant on media and publicity, Buhari said that the process of recovering the stolen assets had become tedious to the consternation of many Nigerians.

Source: Legit.ng
- Senator Ndoma Egba says people who vandalise pipelines are sabotaging the economy

- He says the government should treat them like terrorists

- He expressed optimism in the better turnaround of the economy

Sen. Victor Ndoma Egba has suggested that President Muhammadu Buhari treat pipeline vandals like terrorists as they are sabotaging the economy of the country.

A group, Niger Delta Avengers has claimed responsibility for series of bombings on gas and oil pipelines leading to problem with distribution and instability of power supply.

In an interview with leadership, Senator Egba said he supports that vandals be treated like terrorists.

They should, anybody who undermines national security infrastructure is a terrorist. Our oil pipelines are critical security infrastructure because the more you sabotage them, then you are sabotaging the economy.

He noted that the judicial system was slow but expressed optimism in things getting better.

READ ALSO: Tompolo received stern warning

Yes our judiciary system is slow. But the criminal justice administration act has just been passed and trial will begin to move faster. Today the judiciary is beginning to appreciate that they have a strong major role to play and they are beginning to respond on the anti-corruption.

On the issue of turning the economy around, the former lawmaker suggested that agriculture be taken seriously.

First of all we have to take agriculture and fortunately peace is returning to the country, I hope and pray that it will be enduring peace. That region and the north central has always been the food basket of Nigeria. You can massively inject funds into agriculture in the region, you can create enough ranches for cattle. This nomadic style of cattle rearing is an uneconomic one, the cattle are subjected to so much stress by moving up and down, that is why you cannot export Nigerian cattle because they dont look healthy and the beef is strong because the cattle are subjected to so much stress, they dont produce the quantity of milk they should. So we are not even deriving the kind of value we should expect form our cattle.

READ ALSO: Niger Delta militants continue attacks on oil facilities

Recently, a prof and former ambassador wrote about a country in South Africa and compared their cattle with ours, so we need enclosures so that the cattle can be as productive as they can be. When we were growing up, we depended on agriculture, my grandfather was a big plantation farmer, he was able to send his children to schools in Europe, and he was driving the best car then. Today, these farms cannot produce what it used to because of our inheritance customs. In my part of the world when a man dies, you share his properties among his children. So when the man died, they shared the farms among his children. The farms have become smaller, his children have died and passed it to their children and so it was shared again and they have become smaller. So those lands have become smaller than they cannot produce in large quantity. So the inheritors of the farm abandoned them and moved to things that bring immediately money.

"So we must review those factors that inhibited our realising our potentials. When we had three regions and I was growing up in our town, the hospital we had was compared with any hospital anywhere in Europe. The same with the secondary schools and when we entered the university, our preference was Nigerian University. You only go abroad then when you didnt get admission to Nigerian University. We were four in a room, you wake up, take your bath, go for lectures, people will come to dress your bed and fix the room. You go to eat, there is a mistress who makes sure you eat the proper meal. Then they started creating states and before you know it, hospitals became consulting clinics. Secondary schools became primaries and universities degenerated to secondary schools. When they say states creation brings development, it is not realistic, we just create a system of inefficiency and social values collapse. When people like us talk, they say we are old school, we are not moving with the trend.

You may read the rest of the interview here.

Source: Legit.ng
Editors note: Many people were feared dead after a bloody clash between armed soldiers and the Islamic Movement of Nigeria in Zaria, Kaduna state on December 12-13, 2015. Johnson Obioha gives fresh details on the incident and shares his views on the development.

Shiites

The narrative of the encounter between the Nigerian Army and Islamic Movement of Nigeria (IMN), popularly referred to as Shiites Islamic Sect, cannot be more intriguing, especially with the startling revelation by Kaduna state government of the existence of a mass grave. It was a revelation that sent shocking waves across Nigeria and beyond.

Not only did the disclosure that 347 Nigerians were killed and casually dumped in a mass grave sent shivers down the spine, it also changed the dynamics of the inquest behind the deadly clash.

According to the director-general of Kaduna state Interfaith Agency, Mr. Namadi Musa, it took the officials about six hours to complete the alleged mass burial of suspected member of the IMN, in a single grave.

There is no doubt Musa's testimony at the public hearing of the Judicial Commission of Inquiry, was quite damning; it is however, rather curious that the disclosure came from the government, which until then, was seen as the bitter enemy of the Shiites.

While the effort of the state government officials to expose what looks like extra-judicial killings seems noble, but a closer look at the emerging narrative will expose the intentions of those orchestrating the plots and sub-plots of the narrative.

The unveiling of the behind the scenes of that fateful night by Musa, seems to be a well-crafted sequence, created to extricate some vested individuals from the mess and with the ultimate aim of elevating the Nigerian Army to the podium of the aggressor.

READ ALSO: Shiites are worse than Boko Haram - El-Zakzaky's brother

Again, the plot seems to have worked as the Amnesty International (AI), which has been critical of the Nigerian military human rights records, have now been given the legitimate weapon with which to clobber the armed services.

Consequently, having fed into their long standing narrative without waiting for the final verdict of the Commission, the AI joined other similar rights groups around the world in demanding investigation into the bloody affair.

They hurriedly latched onto it, stressing that the horrific revelation by the state government that hundreds of Shiites were gunned down and dumped in mass graves is an important first step to bringing all those suspected of criminal responsibility for this atrocity to face trial.

According to the rights group it is now imperative that the mass grave sites are protected in order that a full independent forensic investigation can begin.

Nevertheless, a cursory look into the evolving politics of the Inquiry will expose what looks like a well calculated attempt to put the military on the spot in order to mask the culpability of the other actors in the messy saga. One would have been tempted to predict that the ultimate aim of the unfolding events is to make the Chief of Army Staff (COAS), Lt-Gen. Tukur Buratai, the scapegoat, should those threatening to extend it to the International Criminal Court (ICC), get their wish.

Notwithstanding the motive behind the likely pre-emptive move by the schemers, the timing and manner of the 360-degree turnaround by the state government, has raised a lot of suspicion about their intentions. The testimony has raised a lot of questions that are begging for answers: who were the perpetrators of this evil act? Was the Army solely behind the alleged killings? Were there other interested parties behind the scene? Was there an incitement, a plot and plan by some powerful forces other than the Shiites and Army, who exploited the situation to cause mayhem and exact maximum revenge? How culpable were the IMN leadership in creating the deadly confrontation?

One of the national daily in its recent editorial, "expressed serious misgivings about the manner the Nigerian authorities have handled this tragedy". The popular medium also admonished that while many fine points of the bloody incident were still vague, it was necessary that all sides, especially the federal and Kaduna State governments as well as the Directorate of State Service (DSS), refrained from actions that could only compound the situation.

It went further to pose several questions begging for answers: "Who exactly were these people whose corpses were brought from the army barracks and how did they die, especially in such a large number? Were the identities of the dead bodies ascertained before they were given a mass burial? If they were buried on December 15, as revealed by the Kaduna State officials, and the clash between the Shiites and the army occurred December 12 -13, at what point did these people die? To add, were the alleged mass grave real and secured, as the Army recently debunked the satellite imagery of "mass grave" claimed by AI in its report have been exposed to be fake?

It could therefore, be concluded here that only the untold narrative would shed more light to the sad reality.

How it All Started and Nigerian Army's Restraint

Prior to the deadly confrontation on December 12, in Zaria, most Nigerians including the Governor of Kaduna State, Mallam Nasir El-Rufai, have expressed misgivings about the manner with which the IMN disturb the public peace through their religious processions. At the height of it, El-Rufai was alleged to have been pelted with sachets of water popularly called pure water by the group members during one of his visits to Zaria. Consequently, there was no doubt that many were frustrated including the members of the Nigerian Armed Forces who have had clashes with the Sect in the past.

However, this reached the heights of sheer stupidity and suicidal intent, when the leadership of IMN encouraged their followers to block moving convoy of Buratai for several hours, despite the fact that the entourage were coming from a war-zone and trigger ready for self-defence. It was therefore, to the credit of the Army to have exercised unusual restraint from using maximum force to break the hostile surrounding of their number one officer and symbol of national security. The video showing how some of the Senior Officers, especially the Director of Army Public Relations (DAPR), Col. Sani Usman, came down to appeal to the recalcitrant Shiites, even at the risk of his own life and that of his boss, was evident enough of an armed force cautious to kill innocent citizens.

READ ALSO: Fallen soldiers will be given national honours - Buratai

This commendable but risky approach to save the day was even criticised by many security experts who noted that there is nowhere in the world, even in civilised climes that citizens would hold the convoy of a military chief, hostage for almost an hour.

"It is not done anywhere in the world, particularly during war times. It could have amounted to cowardice and ultimate dismissal or court-martial had the COAS as the head of the Nigerian Army, representative of the President and Commander in Chief, bowed to the intimidation of the group," one of the principal actors explained.

The Deadly Confrontations: Who Ordered What? Who sent the bulldozers? Who armed the Shiites?

It was on record that the Nigerian Army was able to break the Shiites siege and free the COAS convoy with minimal force and collateral damage but what transpired afterwards to trigger the alleged killings and mass burial is still sketchy.

There have also been several conspiracy theories, especially with the one postulating that Kaduna State government being wary of the daring act of the IMN ordered that their headquarters be demolished. It was also disclosed that the Governor had in response to the earlier incident, met with the top security officers in the state to draw up next line of actions with the ultimate aim of disarming the religious sect members who were alleged to have been trained and armed for eventual confrontation with the Nigerian State.

"It was a joint operation of all the security forces in the state and not just the Nigerian Army," said one of the intelligent personnel, adding "even the bulldozers used to demolish the Shiite settlement were supplied by the Kaduna State government".

"But the question members of the public and the media should be asking is who armed the Shiites. Who trained them in warfare? Where did they get their arms and for what purpose," a concerned officer asked.

Nevertheless, the question still remains who carried out the acts; was it the Army, other security agents or outside forces who exploited the situation? Who ordered the later operation that led to the killings and how culpable were the Shiite leaders for resisting arrest and search of their surroundings for the purported stockpile of weapons? Answers to these questions will help outline the truth.

Who's Behind the AI Overbearing Interference

There is no doubt that the AI since the incidence has openly shown its bias against the military, which is becoming legendary. While one who values human lives must commend their efforts to ensure that rights of the citizenry are protected and preserved but such important global agency must not be allowed to be hijacked by some individuals in the country who has personal agenda to project.

Having observed the unfolding dynamics of the tragic event, one cannot help but agree with the Nigerian Army in this instance when it berated AI's recent report on the discovery, for being too hasty, partial, judgemental and subjective.

READ ALSO: Nigerian soldiers burned Shiites alive in Zaria - Amnesty

In deed, the recent AI report created doubt on the level of impartiality and rightly so, accused them of having a premeditated agenda for not waiting for the constituted Judicial Commission of Inquiry set up by the Kaduna State government and National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) to submit its report.

Consequently, the seeming attempt by some forces to make the Army and Buratai, the ultimate scapegoat of this whole saga, is a pointer to a more sinister plot. This raises the questions: were the state government officials under pressure from some vested interests to change the dynamics of the event? And could there be a link between the whole drama and some powerful forces who were not happy at the determination of the Buratai led Army to exterminate Boko Haram from the North-East?

Ultimately, what most Nigerians and the rest of the world would want is for anyone or group found liable for the violence, including the IMN leadership, to be brought to justice. However, care must be taken to ensure that the process will not be 'spinned' to punish the innocent in order to achieve a grand plan of derailing the counter-terrorism efforts and as well as covering the truth behind the death of Nigerian citizens.

This article expresses the authors opinion only. The views and opinions expressed here do not necessarily represent those of Legit.ng or its editors.

Source: Legit.ng
While they make you laugh and entertain you in the comfort of your home, these Yoruba actors also have women who hold forth for them at home. These women are their wives, confidants and mothers of the children. Everybody needs a home to go to after a hard day's job so also these actors. NAIJ.com presents to you 15 popular Yoruba actors wives you hardly see or know.

1. Ruth Adekola

Odunlade Adekola, wife Ruth and their new baby

Ruth is the beautiful wife of the talented Yoruba actor, Odunlade Adekola. She is a committed Christ Apostolic Church member and the prayer warrior of her husband. They have four boys together.

2. Omolara Ademola

Muyiwa Ademola and wife

Omolara Ademola is married to top Yoruba actor Muyiwa Ademola aka Authentic. They have been married for 10 years and have three children together. Muyiwa had a set of twin before his marriage to Omolara and she took them in as her own.

3. Mide Martins

Afeez Owo and wife Mide Martins

The union of star actress Mide Funmi-Martins and Afeez Abiodun popularly known as Afeez Owo is a known secret. The two have been married for a while now and had two beautiful daughters together. Their marriage suffered a hiccup recently but they have since made up.

Afeez was Mide late mother Funmi Martins personal assistant. He married Mide after the death of her mother.

4. Omolara Afonja

Olaniyi Afonja and wife

Though they have been living together as a couple for a very long time but Omolara and Olaniyi Afonja aka Sanyeri were legally joined together on December 1, 2013. They met and fell in love a decade ago at the National Theatre, Iganmu, Lagos

5. Kuburat Adekola

Adekola Tijani and wife Kuburat

Kuburat Temitope Adekola is the beautiful wife of popular comic actor, Kamilu Kompo with real name, Adekola Tijani. She was an actress who trained under the tutelage of star actor Muyiwa Ademola Authentics School of Drama and she stopped acting after she got married to Kamilu Kompo.

6. Olaide Oyetoro

Afeez Oyetoro and wife, Olaide

Olaide Oyetoro is the wife of popular actor, lecturer and MTN ambassadorHafiz Oyetoro aka Simply Saka is Olaide Oyetoro. For Saka and wife, it was a teacher-student relationship turned husband wife.They have been married for 10 years and have three children. They met while Hafiz was a lecturer at the Adeniran Ogunsanya College of Education and Laide was a student at the college.

7. Fran Fabiyi

Yomi Fabiyi and wife Fran

Popular Yoruba actor, Yomi Fabiyi got married to his British lover, Fran at the Apapa Registry, Lagos. Fran is a Human Resource consultant and they both met at Machester United Kingdom when Yomi was on a long.

8. Esther Kalejaye

Eniola Afeez and wife Esther Kalejaye

Esther Kalejaye popularly known as Omo jo Igbo, a name she got from a movie called Omo Ghetto produced by Funke Akindele is married to colleague, Afeez Eniola. Their union is blessed with kids.

READ ALSO: 10 Sexiest Yoruba actors (photos)

9. Bukky Adekongbe Raji

Lukmon Raji and wife Bukky Raji

Bukky Adekongbe better known as Aminatu Papapa is married to Lukman Raji. Bukky delved into acting a couple of years back under Murphy Afolabis caucus and she has featured in several hit movies. Not everyone knows that the Epe, Lagos State-born actress is married to Lukman Raji.

10. Abimbola Omobolanle

Sunkanmi Omobolanle and wife Abimbola

Sexy actor Sunkanmi Omobolanle married his pretty wife Abimbola on June 30, 2011. Sunkanmi is the son of veteran actor Sunday Omobolanle aka Papi Luwe.

11. Victoria Adeolu

Funso Adeolu, Victoria and their children

Victoria Adeolu is the beautiful wife of super actor Funsho Adeolu. The Calabar born lady got married to Funsho on December 13, 2004 in Lagos and their union is blessed with two lovely boys.

12. Ronke Amusan

Mr Latin and wife

Not much was known about top comic actor, Bolaji Amusan fondly called Mr Latins wife Ronke Amusan until he recently celebrated her 40 birthday in 2016. is married to Ronke and Mr Latin have two kids together. Ronke and their children lives in Dublin.

13. Olabimpe Aina

Aina Gold and wife

Aina Olabimpe Olajumoke is wife of top actor Aina Gold. She is owns a private school called B-Gold group of schools. Their union is blessed with beautiful kids.

READ ALSO: Money can separate two lovers - Mide Funmi-Martins

14. Big Val Jokotoye

Big Val and wife

Oreoluwa Jokotoye popularly known as Big Val got married to his US based wife in April 2016. She works with California state government as a nurse

15.Victoria Alore

Yomi Gold and wife

Victoria Alore is married to ebony black actor Yomi Gold. Yomi Alore aka Yomi Golds wife is a US-based Nigerian nurse. They have two children together with the last one coming on 2016 Valentine s Day.

Source: Legit.ng
Avignon Capital has launched a joint-venture with Corinthian Curzon, the development company of Curzon Cinemas. Avignon Capital will look to support Curzon Cinemas expansion and create a portfolio of well-located, long-let cinema led investment opportunities. The joint-venture, between Avignon Capital and Corinthian Curzon has provided investment into six sites, two

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Bridges Ventures has completed the sale of Airedale House, a 41,432 sq. ft. mixed retail and office property in Leeds city centre, to GM Legato Property. The sale price of 8.387 million (6.625 million) reflects a net initial yield of 8%. Bridges bought Airedale House in December 2013, via its

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Data of top 35 exported two-wheelers shows that a total of 2,83,007 units were exported in November 2019, which translates into YoY growth of an impressive 29.18%. Exports in the same period last year stood at 2,19,081 units. Only two out of top 10 and only ten out of top 35 two-wheelers have registered negative YoY growth.

Bajaj Auto continues to be the leader in two-wheeler exports with four of its bikes featured in the top 5 list. The company has aggressively targeted exports over the years and the numbers speak for themselves. It is estimated that the companys exports account for around 40% of its overall two-wheeler sales.

At number one position in the list is Bajaj Boxer with exports of 98,772 units in November 2019. This translates into YoY growth of 18.02%, as against 83,692 units exported in the same period last year. While Bajaj Boxer has been discontinued in India, it is still a popular choice in international markets such as Africa. Boxer happens to be largest selling single brand in Africa.

Next in the list is TVS Star City with exports of 37,403 units in November 2019. The bike has registered impressive gains of 46.08%, as against 25,604 units exported in November last year. At number three is Bajaj Pulsar, a popular choice in both domestic and overseas markets. A total of 25,296 Pulsar motorcycles were exported in November 2019, registering YoY growth of 31.16%. Exports in November last year stood at 19,287 units.

At number four is Bajaj CT with exports of 21,708 units. This translates into YoY growth of 36.50%, as against 15,903 units exported in November last year. Bajaj Discover takes the fifth place with exports of 14,208 units in November 2019. Unlike other Bajaj bikes, Discover has registered de-growth of -3.27%. Exports in same period last year stood at 14,689 units.

Other two-wheelers in the top 10 list include Yamaha FZ that has registered massive YoY growth of 137.99%. Exports are up 5,191 units, from 3,762 units in November 2018 to 8,953 in November 2019. Honda Dio takes seventh place with exports of 8,818 units whereas TVS Apache comes in at eight place with 6,245 units. TVS Apache is the second two-wheeler in the list with negative YoY growth (-26.35%).

At ninth place, Yamaha Saluto has made extraordinary gains of 3384.62%. Total exports are up 5,280 units, from 156 to 5,436 units. At tenth place is TVS Sport with exports of 5,377 units. Exports have more than doubled in comparison to 2,668 units exported in November last year.

There are several other two-wheelers that have registered significant gains, but the one that stands out is RE 650 Twins. These have recorded an astounding 16325.00% rise in exports, up from just 8 units in November last year to 1,314 units in November 2019.
BMW Vision M Next is the future of driving, that is if you like getting behind the wheel yourself. This is an insight into the brands future of electric mobility matched with clever tech.

The BMW Vision M NEXT provides a glimpse into the future of sporty driving, says Adrian van Hooydonk, Senior Vice President BMW Group Design. He adds, Design and technology make the EASE and BOOST experiences more natural and more intense.

Ease relates to all the stuff the vehicle takes on related to driving so the drivers job is easier. Boost relates to ultimate active driving experience. This alongwith Autonomous driving, Connectivity, Electrification and Services (ACES) is the future at BMW Group.

Its all brought together through intelligent and modern Design combined with a treasure trove of tech inputs for immersive engagement. With BMW sports-car DNA, BMW Vision M NEXT hybrid sports car is a powerhouse of performance potential.

BMW Vision M NEXT draws inspiration from BMW Turbo and BMW i8 plug-in hybrid. Design focus lays on its low-slung, wedge-shaped silhouette. This is complemented with gullwing doors, and a striking colour scheme.

Front and rear end is finished in matt-neon shade Thrilling Orange contrasted with silk-matt Cast Silver metallic paintwork.

BMW Vision M NEXT features a Power PHEV drive system with a choice of electric all-wheel drive and pure rear-wheel drive. This is possible through all-electric propulsion or a turbocharged four-cylinder petrol engine. Power output is pegged at 441 kW (600 hp) and top speed is pegged at 300 km/h (186 mph). BMW Vision M NEXT goes from 0 to 100 km/h (62 mph) in three seconds, and BOOST+ mode provides the extra push of power.

In all-electric mode, maximum range is 100 km (62 miles). In essence, BMW Vision M NEXT sports car would be the right choice for a future wherein city centres are zero-emission zones.

The front-end design sports a signature BMW kidney grille with triangular elements in Thrilling Orange on the sides. This accentuates the side air intakes and integrated headlights. A blade-shaped air intake below the kidney grille brings to character racing streaks. Soft outer curves of the kidney grille openings are reminiscent of a turbines air intake.
Sonalika International Tractors Limited (SITL), offers tractors in the range between 20 hp and 110 hp. In the last four years, the company has grown its market share in the segment to 12%, which is an increase of 50%.

Set for even further expansion both in domestic and international markets, the company recently inaugurated a new manufacturing plant in Hoshiarpur, Punjab which will soon be operational.

The plant will have monthly production of 15,000 units which according to company officials will be the worlds largest tractor manufacturing facility. Sonalika Tractors current production capacity stands at 80,000 units per annum which will be augmented to 200,000 units per annum once the new manufacturing plant is operational.

The new Hoshiarpur plant is a world-class unit with all manufacturing facilities, from the engine to assembly. A robotic paint facility is also on the premises for the base and top coat which has been introduced for the first time in the tractor industry in India.

The company is a leading brand in both Haryana and Himachal Pradesh and is among the top 3 in the states of J&K, Punjab, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, West Bengal, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Assam, and Orissa. Exports are conducted to over 100 countries with over 6 lakh clients in these regions while expansion plans to Russia and CIS markets are also on the cards along with European and non-European countries.

Sonalika Tractors has a market share of 12% in the farm equipment market and has over 850 dealerships and over 2,000 customer touch points to be increased to over 2,500 by the end of this fiscal.
A newly discovered pathway leading to neurodegeneration in Alzheimer's disease (AD) may unlock the door to new approaches for treating the disease.

The findings, published in the journal Cell Reports, focuses on the tau protein, whose abnormal aggregation (clumping) has long been known to drive the nerve damage in AD. New research shows that the tau protein directs the formation of stress granules, which are molecular complexes that allow nerve cells to adapt to stresses, such as injury. The tau-stress granule complex is usually short lived, but in the setting of chronic stress, tau persistently forms into a cluster, leading to the degeneration of nerve cells seen in AD.

Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) researcher Benjamin Wolozin, MD, PhD, explains, "Scientists have known for a long time that during disease, tau protein gets modified, changes its location in nerve cells and then aggregates." In healthy nerve cells, tau resides in a part of the nerve cell termed the axon, the long, slender part of the cell that carries electrical impulses away from the neuron's body. Wolozin's group showed that moving tau from the axon to the nerve cell body helps the nerve cells respond to stress (such as injury). "The nerve cells do this in order to stimulate the formation of stress granules, which help the cell to adapt under stressful conditions. Stress granules instruct the cell to divert energy toward making protective proteins and away from making specialized proteins, which are less necessary during stress."

"Surprisingly," says Wolozin, professor of pharmacology and neurology, "the association of tau with stress granules also caused tau to cluster." Most stresses are short term, resolve quickly and are therefore not a problem. "But some stresses are chronic, such as vascular disease or the accumulation of beta-amyloid--a protein that accumulates outside the neuron in Alzheimer's disease." Chronic stress leads to excessive, persistent accumulation of stress granules containing aggregated tau, which ultimately damages nerve cells, causing degeneration.

According to Wolozin with this finding comes hope. His team found that reducing the amount of one of the key stress granule proteins, TIA1, prevented tau aggregation and nerve cell degeneration. "While still in its early stages, this work points to entirely new approaches to treating Alzheimer's disease." Wolozin and his team are now planning to test their research findings in animal models of Alzheimer's disease.
Screening women for osteoporosis is now routine, however, when it comes to men, most are never screened and therefore suffer the consequences of the disease. In the U.S., nearly 1.5 million men over 65 have osteoporosis, and another 3.5 million men are at risk for developing the disease.

"Women have a screening safety net," said Mary Ruppe, M.D., a Houston Methodist endocrinologist. "Between their primary care physician and OB-GYN, women will begin bone density screenings at the appropriate age. Men are less likely to have routine primary care checkups and don't receive preventative care similar to what is provided for women."

The American College of Physicians recommends that men be assessed yearly for osteoporosis risk factors starting at age 50. The primary risk factor for men is family history, such as women in their family with osteoporosis or parents who suffered a hip fracture. Other factors that can raise a man's risk of osteoporosis are prescription steroid use, gastrointestinal disease, use of prostate cancer drugs, and alcohol abuse. At age 70, The Endocrine Society recommends that all men begin routine bone density screenings as the risk for osteoporosis increases at this age.

Ruppe said the osteoporosis treatment options for men are similar to those available for women. There are several approved medications that alter the cycle of bone formation and loss to help preserve bone strength. She said the key is diagnosing the condition so treatment can begin.

"Each year, approximately 80,000 men will suffer a hip fracture, and studies have shown they have a higher mortality rate after a hip fracture than women of the same age," Ruppe said. "Such data underscores the importance of routine osteoporosis screening for men."

Ruppe said that if a man is diagnosed with osteoporosis, his physician can begin treatment and order additional screenings to identify causes of low bone density that can cause other medical issues, such as Vitamin D deficiency or low testosterone levels.
An assessment of rivers in the US suggests that although there is a relationship between increased flood size and erosion, the effect is most pronounced for moderate floods.

Understanding the effects of climate on the geometry and erosion rate of rivers is essential for reconstructing the geologic history of landscapes, as well as for predicting the response of rivers to human-accelerated climate change.

Currently, models predict that climate should play a fundamental role in setting erosion rates, yet a strong correlation has not been verified in studies of bedrock erosion.

To gain more insights into this relationship, Colin Phillips and Douglas Jerolmack first monitored cobble displacement in the Mameyes River in northeastern Puerto Rico, a site that frequently experiences flash floods; based on this data collection, they established the critical threshold for sediment displacement.

Next, the team used this baseline to analyze channel geometry and stream-flow records from 186 coarse-grained rivers across the United States. Their analysis reveals that river channel sculpting does increase as flood size increases, but this effect is most pronounced for moderate floods; river channels actually adjust to the conditions of major floods so that larger floods have very limited additional impact on channel geometry.

This in turn "blunts" the impact of extreme rainfall events on landscape evolution. The results may explain the long-term stability of rivers across long-term shifts in climate.
An unprecedented number of juvenile sea stars have been observed off the Oregon coast over the past several months -- just two years after one of the most severe marine ecosystem epidemics in recorded history nearly wiped the population out.

The appearance of the juveniles does not mean the threat of "sea star wasting disease" is over, researchers caution. A second round of the disease could be disastrous to the purple ochre (Pisaster ochraceus) and other sea stars, some of which are considered "keystone" species in marine habitats because of their influence on the ecosystem.

A team of Oregon State University scientists who have been monitoring the sea stars for years reported on their status this week in the journal PLOS One.

"When we looked at the settlement of the larval sea stars on rocks in 2014 during the epidemic, it was the same or maybe even a bit lower than previous years," said Bruce Menge, the Wayne and Gladys Valley Professor of Marine Biology at Oregon State University and lead author on the study. "But a few months later, the number of juveniles was off the charts -- higher than we'd ever seen -- as much as 300 times normal."

"It wasn't a case of high settlement, or more sea stars being born. They just had an extraordinary survival rate into the juvenile stage. Whether they can make it into adulthood and replenish the population without succumbing to sea star wasting disease is the big question."

Menge and his colleagues believe the reason for the high survival rate is the availability of more food. The young sea stars feed on larval and juvenile mussels and barnacles, competing with adult sea stars for the same food source. The scarcity of adults provided a temporary smorgasbord for the juveniles.

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Sea star wasting disease first appeared in Oregon in the summer of 2014. In rocky intertidal habitats, disease rapidly depleted populations of the dominant sea star, Pisaster ochraceus. The sea stars first developed twisted arms, then showed deflation and lesions, and eventually lost arms and the ability to grip onto the substrate before finally disintegrating completely.

Over a period of about 15 months, the disease reduced the overall sea star population by 63 to 84 percent at different site along the Oregon coast, and reduced the Pisaster ochraceus population by 80 to 99 percent. The epidemic ranged from Alaska to Baja California.

Scientists from Cornell University attributed the epidemic to a Sea Star-associated Densovirus and researchers in Washington say warmer water may have provided the trigger for the disease in that state.

But Menge's research group found no association between water temperature and the disease outbreak in Oregon.

"The sea temperatures were warmer when the outbreak first began," he said, "but Oregon wasn't affected as early as other parts of the West Coast, and the outbreak reached its peak here when the sea temperature plummeted and was actually cooler than normal."

The Cornell researchers found evidence of densovirus in the sea stars, the water column and in sediments. It occurs naturally and can become virulent, possibly as a result of stress.

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"Something triggered that virulence and it happened on a coast-wide basis," said Menge, a distinguished professor in the Department of Integrative Biology in OSU's College of Science. "We don't think it was a result of warming because conditions were different in Oregon than they were, for example, in Washington and likely other parts of the West Coast. Ocean acidification is one possibility and we're looking at that now. Ultimately, the cause seems likely to be multi-faceted."

Menge and his research team have been studying these intertidal rocky zones at different sites for as long as 32 years and analyzing the community structure. Historical research has shown that the ochre star is a "keystone" species because of its influence in these ecosystems, suggesting that the absence of so many adults could have a significant impact.

Ochre sea stars prey on barnacles and mussels and keep their populations under control. When left unchecked, mussel populations can explode, covering up algae and small invertebrates.

"The longer-term ecological consequences of this (disease) event could include wholesale elimination of many low zone species and a complete change in the zonation patterns of rocky intertidal communities along the West Coast of North America," the authors wrote in their study.

Among the other findings the OSU researchers reported in PLOS One:
Heralded a miracle by many infertile couples, in vitro fertilization (IVF) can pack a painful financial punch for those without insurance coverage for the treatment. This prohibitive cost leads many would-be parents who pursue in vitro fertilization to transfer multiple embryos at once to increase their chances of getting a baby - and reduce the need to pay for subsequent attempts.

A new study by University of Vermont (UVM) researchers now suggests that the financial savings from fewer IVF attempts is surpassed by the costs of medical complications from multiple-embryo pregnancies. The rates of cesarean-section deliveries, premature births and low birth weight of babies are greater with two or more embryos transferred into the mother at one time than with a single-embryo pregnancy.

Those are the findings of the team led by Christopher Jones, Ph.D., UVM assistant professor of surgery and director of the Global Health Economics Unit of the Vermont Center for Clinical and Translational Science, and first author Olivia Carpinello, M.D., a UVM College of Medicine 2013 alumna. Co-investigators on the study also included reproductive medicine specialist Peter Casson, M.D., a former UVM professor, and Renju Raj, M.D., UVM instructor in obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive sciences and Women's Reproductive Health Research Scholar.

Published recently in the journal Applied Health Economics and Health Policy, their study may be the first nationwide to calculate the differences in infant hospital costs based on the number of embryos transferred at one time. Jones and his team had access to UVM Medical Center records of 116 patients who conceived through IVF and delivered at least 20 weeks into their pregnancies between 2007 and 2011.

The study compared the incidence and costs of adverse perinatal outcomes - preterm delivery (at less than 37 weeks gestation), low birth weight (less than 2,500 grams) and C-sections - resulting from single-embryo transfers, double-embryo transfers and transfers of three or more embryos. They determined that the costs to care for babies born from double-embryo transfers were more than twice as much as costs for babies from single-embryo transfers, and costs for babies from three or more embryos were 1.7 times as high.

It wasn't only the greater chance of twins or more multiple births with multiple embryo transfers that caused those complications and higher healthcare spending, the authors found. Even when only one baby resulted from a larger number of embryos, the risk of problems increased.

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The study provides data to inform public policy as it relates to the development of "personalized medicine" - treatment targeted to the unique characteristics and needs of each patient, Jones says.

"This is personalized medicine at its heart, at its core," he says, "because nothing is more personal than fertility choices."

Jones performed similar research for his dissertation at the University of Oxford in England, where he received his doctorate in health economics in 2006. His work there helped lead to current U.K. guidelines that direct the transfer of a single embryo during IVF treatment whenever possible, he says.

The new UVM study encourages similar policy in the United States.

"This work supports the position that IVF cycles involving appropriate embryo transfer policies should be covered by insurance companies," state the authors.

Among the 11 states that require insurance coverage for infertility treatment, five explicitly cover IVF. Without financial assistance, most patients who choose IVF pay for it out of pocket, increasing the incentive for them to reduce their costs by limiting the number of embryo-transfer attempts.

If states require coverage for IVF, they can also mandate that insurers pay for only single-embryo transfers. Jones' study concluded that additional IVF attempts wouldn't cost more than the incremental costs per baby that result from a multiple-embryo transfer.
Exchange of immunization data between a centralized city immunization registry and provider electronic health records led to significant improvements in pediatric immunization coverage, a reduction in over-immunization for adolescents, and increased completeness of immunization records, according to a study conducted at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University Medical Center, NewYork-Presbyterian, and the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene's Citywide Immunization Registry. Researchers compared the percent of children who were up-to-date for their age-appropriate immunizations and those who received extra, unnecessary immunizations before and after the implementation of two-way data exchange at point of care.

Up-to-date vaccination rates increased from 75 percent to 82 percent and were significant for all age groups. Findings are published online in the journal Pediatrics.

"Recent outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases underscores the importance that patients are fully immunized by receiving all recommended vaccines," said Melissa Stockwell, MD, MPH, associate professor of Population and Family Health at the Mailman School of Public Health and associate professor of Pediatrics at the Medical Center. "However, only 72 percent of young children in the U.S. have completed their primary immunization series, and evidence suggests that 10 percent to 20 percent of young children receive at least one unnecessary, extra immunization."

Immunization registries, also known as immunization information systems (IIS), collect and centralize immunization data for children and adolescents from immunization providers at the regional or state level. Over 86 percent of all U.S. children younger than 6 years have immunizations recorded in the registry--now implemented in nearly all 50 states, five cities, and the District of Columbia. However, until recently, clinicians wanting to access patient immunization information in the system generally had to manually look up the patient data on a state or local IIS website. The New York Citywide Immunization Registry was one of the first registries in the United States to allow clinicians to download immunization information into their local electronic health record, and NewYork-Presbyterian was the first user of this service.

The Columbia researchers examined data from five practices in the NewYork-Presbyterian Ambulatory Care Network which is integrated with the hospital's local immunization registry, called EzVac. Stockwell's analyses focused on children ages 19 to 35 months, 7 to10 years, and 13 to 17 years, reflecting the target assessment ages for the primary immunization series, school-age boosters, and adolescent immunizations.

With implementation of the IIS-to-EHR, or electronic health record, information exchange--immunizations for the series of vaccines increased significantly for all age groups. (Vaccines included those against diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis; polio; measles, mumps and rubella [MMR]; Haemophilus influenzae type b; hepatitis B; chickenpox; pneumonia, human papilloma virus (HPV), and meningococcus.) Over-immunization decreased significantly for adolescents. HPV was the most common immunization with extra doses.

"One potential explanation as to why immunization data exchange increased coverage is that prior to taking action to address missing immunizations a clinician, who may be unsure if the immunization is really missing, may opt to wait for a family to return with a paper immunization record rather than vaccinate," noted Stockwell, who is also a pediatrician at NewYork-Presbyterian. "While parent-held immunization records are valuable, parents may not always remember to bring them to every care visit, underscoring the importance of having immunization information readily available in the online registry in a way that is easy to access at point of care."

"Our findings demonstrated that data exchange can improve child and adolescent immunization status, allowing scarce resources to be targeted to those who are truly under-immunized," added Stockwell, "It is important to promote further development of the technology to support bidirectional immunization exchange as well as continued focus on local, state, and federal policies to support such exchanges."

"This article demonstrates the powerful impact and importance of immunization registries. CIR and EHR bidirectional information exchange has grown to approximately 600 facilities citywide -- ensuring that providers have patient immunization records when the patient is in the office so that children receive all their recommended vaccines at that visit," said Assistant New York City Health Commissioner Dr. Jane Zucker, Bureau of Immunization.
An international team led by Indiana University researchers has uncovered the regulation of a system that allows a globally abundant bacterium to efficiently capture sunlight and perform photosynthesis.

The study -- led by IU biologist David M. Kehoe and conducted by Joseph E. Sanfilippo, IU Ph.D. student, and Animesh Shukla, former IU Ph.D. student, in collaboration with researchers in the United States and France -- is the first to show how a process that improves light capture in marine cyanobacteria is regulated.

The research also provides insight into how genes can be easily transferred between cells in the marine environment by a process called horizontal gene transfer. This is a common form of DNA movement involving genomic regions called "genome islands" that is important for the evolution of many organisms.

The research is reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The cyanobacterium Synechococcus is the second most common photosynthetic bacterium in Earth's oceans. The IU study focused on how Synechococcus controls its ability to efficiently capture both blue and green light for photosynthesis.

"It's important for us to understand more about marine cyanobacteria because they're a significant part of the base of Earth's food chain," said Kehoe, professor in the IU Bloomington College of Arts and Sciences' Department of Biology. "Our planet essentially runs on power from the sun, and these organisms are important for converting sunlight into the organic compounds that are food for other species. We could not exist without these and other 'primary producers' because we can't create food from sunlight."

In the marine environment, blue and green light penetrates the water column to different depths. In shallow coastal waters, many Synechococcus cells efficiently use green light for photosynthesis, while in deeper ocean waters, the bacteria maximize their capture and use of blue light. About one quarter of all marine Synechococcus examined so far can carry out this process, called "chromatic acclimation."

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Kehoe led an earlier study that provided the first mechanistic insights into this "chameleon-like" ability of many Synechococcus to capture blue and green light.

The current study involved four groups of French and American scientists.

"Our colleagues in France, who are excellent biological oceanographers, were intrigued by the molecular aspects of chromatic acclimation, while the American groups were intrigued by its ecological implications," said Kehoe, a molecular biologist. "We recognized that by combining our efforts, we could examine this process at many scales, from the molecular to the ecological. It's a truly collaborative, multidisciplinary project."

The French group -- led by Frederic Partensky and Laurence Garczarek of the Pierre and Marie Curie University in Paris and CNRS Station Biologique in Roscoff, France -- uncovered a genome island with six genes that correlated with the ability to undergo chromatic acclimation. Professor Wendy Schluchter and Ph.D. student Adam A. Nguyen at the University of New Orleans provided biochemical analyses for the study. Jonathan A. Karty, associate scientist in the IU Bloomington Department of Chemistry, contributed mass spectrometry results that were critical for the group's discoveries.

Together, the group's results indicate that a small genome island confers the ability to undergo chromatic acclimation. If a particular strain of Synechococcus does not have the genome island, it cannot undergo chromatic acclimation. However, if a strain acquires the genome island, as one quarter of strains appear to have done, it will likely undergo chromatic acclimation.

The group discovered that two genes, named fciA and fciB, located on the genome island are required to turn on and off the expression of the other genes on the genome island. As a result, this genome island appears to be self-regulating and able to tune its own response to changes in surrounding light color environment.

The results of this study provide important insight into regulation of horizontally transferred genes. Although the regulation must be correct when such genes enter a new organism, regulatory genes are often not located near the genes they regulate in a genome.

"We found that this genome island includes both types of genes, making it self-contained by allowing the proper regulation of this process to be provided along with the capacity for chromatic acclimation. We predict that this facilitates its spread in the environment," Kehoe said.
A new study reveals children's language development is a learnt skill and is intricately linked to their ability to recognise patterns in their environment.

Conducted by researchers from the University of Sydney and Australian National University, the study found children who were better at identifying patterns in non-verbal tasks also had better knowledge of grammar.

Even when other important factors such as intelligence and memory were taken into consideration, the findings still suggest the skill of pattern learning is strongly associated with language development.

For centuries scientists have grappled with the reason why some children acquire language faster than others, and debated whether language is innate or learnt.

Associate Professor Evan Kidd form the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language said the findings counter traditional theories of language, which argue that grammar cannot be learnt.

"For a long time people thought of grammar as some sort of special cognitive system, like a box in our brain that we are born with, but our study shows that language proficiency is associated with learning -- which helps to explain why some people pick it up faster than others," said Professor Kidd.

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"These findings are exciting because in the long-term they could help us develop strategies to assist children who may not be typically developing for their age."

Published in Child Development, the study assessed 68 children aged six to eight years on two critical yet separate tests -- one on grammatical knowledge and the other a visual pattern learning task including an exposure phase (where children aren't asked to learn anything) and a surprise test phase.

There was a strong connection between those who were able to identify the patterns in a seemingly trivial series of alien cartoon sequences on the computer, and those who performed better on the grammar test.

Psycholinguist Associate Professor Joanne Arciuli from the University of Sydney said the research shows children have a remarkable capacity to learn without conscious awareness.

"The study tells us that we have a whole lot of little statisticians running around," said Associate Professor Arciuli, co-author of the study and an Australian Research Council Future Fellow.

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"Unbeknownst to children themselves their brains are constantly computing these patterns or statistics -- for example which words co-occur regularly, which words follow others, and different contexts in which words are used."

"Their ability to identify patterns is very much related to how they learn to use the conventions of language."

Based on these findings, the researchers have been funded by the Australian Research Council to carry out a three-year study further investigating the underlying cognitive mechanisms of language development in kids.

Currently recruiting five year olds, it is the first longitudinal study to look at how recognition of statistical patterns is related to children's learning of grammar, one of the most important aspects of language acquisition.

"This research is vital as we know that language development and the ability to communicate is strongly linked to positive life outcomes, including academic achievement, employment and mental health," said Associate Professor Arciuli.
Nowhere today is the biodiversity of corals and reef-inhabiting fish higher than in the tropical waters around Indonesia and its neighbouring countries in Southeast Asia. "To understand the reason for this diversity, you have to look back 100 million years -- to a time when present-day South America and Africa still formed a common supercontinent and today's India was an island in Earth's southern hemisphere," says Loic Pellissier, Professor of Landscape Ecology at ETH Zurich and the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research WSL and, up until ten months ago, Lecturer at the University of Fribourg.

For the first time ever, an international research team under his direction studied the geographical pattern by which new species of corals and reef fish evolved over the millions of years of evolutionary history using a computer model. The scientists were able to show that the drift of the continental plates was the likely driving force behind the emergence of new species.

Combination of different models

To arrive at this conclusion, the researchers combined different simulations and data. These included a simulation of geological changes to the seafloor during Earth history as well as information on the earlier expansion of the tropics based on fossil finds of tropical coral species. Thus, the scientists were able to create a dynamic spatial model that indicates where throughout the course of history shallow and warm waters were located, in which corals and other tropical organisms found a habitat.

Into this model, they integrated a well-known evolution mechanism in which two new species are formed out of an existing one. By way of illustration, take any fish species that lived in a tropical reef ecosystem 100 million years ago. If its home reef is divided into two separate reefs due to plate tectonics, for example, the two populations in each patch would continue to evolve independently and eventually, over the following hundreds of thousands of years, become two distinct species.

Hotspot in the prehistoric ocean

Such a fragmentation of tropical reef habitats actually took place, as Pellissier and his colleagues showed in their model calculations. Their simulation begins 140 million years ago, when present-day South America, Africa, India and Australia together formed the supercontinent Gondwana. A huge, contiguous body of shallow water ran along its equatorial coasts. In the millions of years to follow, the supercontinent broke up; there were massive continental drifts and fragmentation of the tropical reefs.

A particularly strong fragmentation took place about 50 to 60 million years ago, as Fabien Leprieur, Professor at the University of Montpellier and the study's first author, explains: "At that time in the western part of Tethys, the prehistoric ocean between Africa and Eurasia, there was a complex seafloor structure with many disconnected reefs -- a bona fide patchwork." The plate tectonic processes at that time separated and merged these waters. It was an extremely dynamic system that strongly favoured the emergence of new species.

It was known from fossil finds that the Western Tethys region was a hotspot of species development back then. Fossil finds have also shown that this hotspot has shifted in the past 60 million years, from the Tethys to today's Southeast Asia. "Now, for the first time, our models provide an explanation for this movement," says Pellissier. "Because of the plate tectonic processes, new habitats emerged in different locations over the course of millions of years, while others merged or disappeared. These dynamic structures encouraged the relocation of the focal point of species diversity," says the landscape ecology professor.

Unification of Australian and Asian fauna

However, today's biodiversity in Southeast Asia cannot be explained solely by this relocation; rather, this was the region where, around 15 million years ago, the marine fauna of Tethys came together with that of Australia. This encounter was also the result of continental drift, in this case the shifting of the Australian continental plate in the direction of the equator, as Pellissier and his colleagues illustrate. "It was already known that this Australasian encounter took place with terrestrial animals and plants. We've now shown that it happened with tropical marine life too."

Coral reef ecosystems, which are the focus of this study, are sensitive to changes in temperature and are in danger worldwide due to global warming: the Great Barrier Reef in Australia is currently experiencing the largest coral bleaching in its history. Pellissier says: "In this context, it's important to understand that today's reef ecosystems have a very long history. It took 100 million years to build this extraordinarily large biodiversity, but it might take less than 100 years to destroy it."
Measuring time using oscillations of atomic nuclei might significantly improve precision beyond that of current atomic clocks. Physicists have now taken an important step toward this goal.

Atomic clocks are currently our most precise timekeepers. The present record is held by a clock that is accurate to within a single second in 20 billion years. Researchers led by Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet (LMU) in Munich physicists Peter Thirolf, Lars von der Wense and Benedict Seiferle have now experimentally identified a long-sought excitation state, a nuclear isomer in an isotope of the element thorium (Th), which could enhance this level of accuracy by a factor of about ten. Their findings are reported in the scientific journal Nature. The team also includes scientists based at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, the Helmholtz Institute Mainz and the GSI Helmholtz Centre for Heavy-Ion Research in Darmstadt, Germany.

The heart of timekeeping

The second is our basic unit for the measurement of time, and is tied to the oscillation period of electrons in the atomic shell of the element cesium (Cs). The best atomic clock currently in use boasts a relative precision of 210-18. "Even greater levels of accuracy could be achieved with the help of a so-called nuclear clock, based on oscillations in the atomic nucleus itself rather than oscillations in the electron shells surrounding the nucleus," says Thirolf. "Furthermore, as atomic nuclei are 100,000 times smaller than whole atoms, such a clock would be much less susceptible to perturbation by external influences."

However, of the more than 3300 known types of atomic nuclei, only one potentially offers a suitable basis for a nuclear clock -- the nucleus of the thorium isotope with atomic mass 229 (Th-229), which, however, does not occur naturally. For over 40 years physicists have suspected this nucleus to exhibit an excited state whose energy lies only very slightly above that of its ground state. The resulting nuclear isomer, Th-229m, possesses the lowest excitation state in any known atomic nucleus. "Th-229m is further expected to show a rather long half-life, between minutes and several hours. It should thus be possible to measure with extremely high precision the frequency of the radiation emitted when the excited nuclear state falls back to the ground state," Thirolf explains.

First direct detection of the transition

However, direct detection of the thorium isomer Th-229m has never been achieved. "Up until now, the evidence for its existence has been purely indirect," says Thirolf. Together with his colleagues, he has now succeeded in detecting the elusive nuclear transition in a complex experiment. They made use of uranium-233 as a source of Th-229m, which is produced in the radioactive alpha decay of uranium-233. In an experimental tour-de-force, the scientists isolated the isomer as an ion beam. "Using a microchannel plate detector, we were then able to measure the decay of the excited isomer back to the ground state of Th-229 as a clear and unambiguous signal. This constitutes direct proof that the excited state really exists," says Thirolf. "This breakthrough is a decisive step toward the realization of a working nuclear clock," he adds. "Our efforts to reach this goal in the framework of the European Research Network nuClock will now be redoubled. The next step is to characterize the properties of the nuclear transition more precisely -- its half-life and, in particular, the energy difference between the two states. These data will allow laser physicists to setting to work on a laser that can be tuned to the transition frequency, which is a prerequisite for an optical control of the transition."
Good morning ladies & gentlemen. Im delighted that Queenstown was chosen as the venue for this years Civil Air Navigation Services Organisation Asia Pacific Conference.

Queenstown is one of New Zealands prime tourist destinations while Queenstown Airport showcases the technological advances rolling out across New Zealands air traffic management.

Last night I was pleased to officially turn on the new lights at Queenstown Airport that will allow long-awaited night flights to commence.

The extended operating hours will offer new job opportunities for residents and increase the number of tourists who come to enjoy what Queenstown offers in the winter months. Trans-Tasman tourists will be able to spend a weekend in Queenstown, arriving on Friday and leaving late on Sunday evening.

In 2012, Queenstown Airport had 1.1 million passenger arrivals and departures. In 2015, the number has grown by 400,000 visitors to 1.5 million. Providing the capacity to handle increased numbers to our prime tourist destination, while managing the environmental impact, underlines how important advances in air traffic management are to New Zealands economic prosperity.

Few countries depend on international air services as much as New Zealand. Aviation facilitates tourism, business connections and trade. Our growing network of air services agreements means most major airlines in the world are able to operate in New Zealand without restriction.

Tourism is one of our largest foreign exchange earners, contributing a total of $11.6 billion a year to New Zealands GDP.

Air transport is a vital engine of our economic growth. The Asia Pacific region in particular is highly significant for the aviation market in terms of international traffic.

Asia and Oceania made up 71.5% of overseas visitor arrivals to NZ in the year ending February 2016. In addition, for New Zealands economy, in 2015 exports to Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) countries accounted for $47.2 billion of our total exports.

The Air Traffic Management industry plays a critical role in making sure aviation is safe, efficient and sustainable.

The level of aviation growth would not be possible without the work of CANSO globally across safety, operations and policy and we value the work they do.

New Southern Sky

As a Government, were supporting airspace and air navigation initiatives through New Southern Sky, which is our 10-year programme to bring New Zealands airspace and air navigation systems in the 21st Century.

New Southern Sky will enable shorter journeys, improved safety and lower carbon emissions for more than 15 million passenger departures every year.

The new technologies enabled by New Southern Sky are expected to contribute nearly $2 billion of benefits to our country over the next 20 years. These benefits will come through fuel savings, lower aircraft operating costs, and efficiencies for airlines.

The programme itself is expected to provide direct benefits of $178 million over the same period.

It means New Zealand can move from ground to satellite-based navigation and surveillance in a safe, cohesive, and resilient way.

Our current focus is on introducing Performance Based Navigation (PBN) and Automatic Dependent Surveillance Broadcast (ADS-B).

New navigation technologies allow aircraft to navigate more precisely and directly, reducing fuel burn.

Queenstown has been a key beneficiary of this modernisation. Those of you who flew into Queenstown on jet aircraft will have flown a path that required the use of modern procedures, advanced aircraft equipment and crew expertise. It has also improved Queenstowns aircraft handling capacity and reduced delays.

We also recognise the benefits of using satellite surveillance technology to replace our ageing radar network. By the end of 2021, all aircraft flying in controlled airspace in New Zealand will be making use of satellite surveillance.

This will see New Zealand right in step with our regional and global aviation partners. Well be working with the sector to make sure the transition is smooth and safe.

Currently, the CAA and the Ministry of Transport are working to produce and update rules, which will support the modernisation of our navigation and surveillance systems. I expect to approve the making of these rules this year.

Commitment to reducing emissions

Another area we are focussed on is reducing emissions.

Transport is obviously a key area to get right because it accounts for almost 17% of New Zealands greenhouse gas emissions.

Globally aviation accounts for around 2% of total CO2 emissions.

Modernising our airspace and air navigation system will help introduce flights that use less fuel. The air traffic management industry is critical to this development.

The Ministry of Transport is developing New Zealands Aviation Emissions Action Plan in collaboration with the aviation industry.

The Ministry expects to submit the Action Plan to the International Civil Aviation Organisation before the 39th (ICAO) Assembly in September this year.

Enabling legislation for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs)

Were also looking at how we can better support innovation and new technologies.

New Zealanders are keen and early adopters of new technological innovation and we have a history of innovation in transport.

Last year we announced enabling and world-leading UAV regulation.

These new rules allow innovation while making sure their use is safe and responsible.

Airways, the CAA, Callaghan Innovation and the UAVNZ industry body, have risen to the challenge of this new industry and sparked a rethink of airspace operations with the launch of Airshare.co.nz.

Airshare is a world-leading online interactive platform helping UAV operators understand their safety responsibilities as they fly their aircraft. The website is widely used by UAV businesses and recreational flyers and growing rapidly.

Space activities

Space activities are another emerging area for New Zealand. We have operators looking to launch into both near and outer space. Uses include high altitude balloons, rockets, and in the future, even space tourism.

Space operators are interested in New Zealands relatively uncongested airspace, our geographic isolation and a national appetite to support emerging technology.

In New Zealand, Airways is at the forefront of this and has the experience, strong systems and procedures required to support R&D balloon and rocket projects.

Already, Airways has helped organisations like Rocket Lab, Google and NASA. NASA launched a super pressure balloon just over the Crown Range in Wanaka last year, and is looking to achieve a longer flight this year.

Asia and the Pacific

As well as supporting New Zealand aviation, we are committed to playing our part in the Asia Pacific region.

New Zealand is Lead Shepherd (Chair) of the APEC Transportation Working Group.

The Group plays a valuable role in helping build capacity and best practice for other APEC members in all transport modes, including aviation.

One recent example was assistance for Mexico and Indonesia to help implement performance-based navigation.

Our neighbours are important to us and Government is providing funding and support for Pacific aviation.

Currently Airways is working with both MFAT and the World Bank funding agencies on a number of initiatives including implementing a satellite communications system, updating the regions charting, airfield lighting, surveillance and other essential infrastructure.

The annual flight inspections programme has been provided to the Pacific Islands for over 50 years. The inspections are conducted in 11 nations including Tonga, Niue, Samoa, Cook Islands and Vanuatu. Airways also manage the upper airspace for Tonga, the Cook Islands and Niue.

This CANSO conference is a good opportunity to explore global trends and challenges and look for opportunities to work individually and collectively in the Asia Pacific region.

Closing

In closing, theres a lot of exciting work happening in this space.

I appreciate the work you do to ensure the safe and sustainable growth of air transport so it continues to be at the heart of economic growth.

I wish you all the best for a good conference.

SOURCE: Office of Simon Bridges
Canada Post spent $76 million last year on its community mailbox conversion program, which was put on hold last October after the Liberals took office.

In 2013, the post office embarked on an ambitious five-point action plan to cut costs that included raising stamp prices, slashing the work force, and eliminating door-to-door home delivery, by replacing the service with central mailboxes.

It had promised to convert about five million addresses to community mailboxes in the coming years, a move Canada Post said would bring $400 million to $500 million in annual savings.

But in the end, only 830,000 addresses out of a planned 5 million were completed, amid stiff public opposition. On Thursday, Judy Foote, the minister responsible for Canada Post, ordered a formal review of Canada Posts operations, including the proposal to end to door-to-door delivery, though the Liberals campaigned to stop the conversions.

Given that so few addresses were switched over, the changes result in an annual cost savings of $80 million. Overall, $390 million in savings are attributed to the plan which includes boosting productivity and using franchise retailers instead of corporate post offices.

The cost of the community mailbox program was buried in Canada Posts annual report which was released Friday. The post office and its affiliated companies including Purolator Courier and a logistics provider reported a $136 million before-tax profit.

For the post office alone, before-tax profit was $63 million, a steep drop from 2014 when it reported $194 million in before-tax profit.

Revenues for Canada Post itself was $6.3 billion, compared with $8 billion when affiliated companies are included.

Its really a breaking-even result, said Canada Post spokesman Jon Hamilton. Its a vivid snapshot of the changing way Canadians are using the postal system.

We are here to serve Canadians, and they are giving us more parcels and less mail. That will continue. We need to adjust to that reality, he said.

Canada Post delivered 234 million fewer letters in 2015 than a year earlier, a 6 per cent drop, while parcel volumes were up almost 10 per cent, with 16 million more items than the year before. The October federal election was a boon, credited with 25 million extra letters and 60 million direct mail items.

Revenues from letter mail was $3.2 billion, thanks to increasing stamp prices, while parcels only generated a little more than $1.6 billion, and direct mail advertising and other revenue represented $1.4 billion.

Mike Palecek, national president of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers, said the profits were in line with expectations, noting they would have been much higher if the corporation didnt embark on its plan to end door-to-door delivery.

We know they have spent tens of millions on the community mailbox program, he said. We would have expected them to post a substantially larger profit.

Canada Post has been in the business of providing information and merchandise, which are letters and parcels, said Palecek. But that landscape is changing. Canada Post has to adapt to meet those challenges. So far they have only been willing to cut the services they provide.

The union wants Canada Post to consider expanding services such as postal banking or creating a public wireless carrier.

Although Canada Post has previously opposed the idea of postal banking, given most communities are well-served by banks, Hamilton is not ruling it out.

The review has just been announced. We are open to that process and see where the process lands, he said. But the post office has to be self-sustaining.

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Canadians always get a big bonjour at the Cannes Film Festival.

Rare is the year without at least one Canuck movie competing for the Palme dOr. In 2014 there were a record three of them vying for the top prize, films by David Cronenberg, Atom Egoyan and Xavier Dolan.

Dolan is the national flag bearer for this years Palme chase, running from May 11-22. His family drama Its Only the End of the World, starring Marion Cotillard, Lea Seydoux and Vincent Cassel, will have its world premiere May 19 at the French fest.

But theres another corner of Cannes where Canadians possibly get an even warmer welcome, a short stroll away from the Palais des Festivals along the Croisette, the Rivieria waterfront promenade.

Its the Directors Fortnight, the concurrent program for newer directors and non-traditional cinema styles that began in 1969 in response to social upheavals of the previous year.

The Fortnight, now based in Theatre Croisette in the JW Marriott, has been the European launch pad for many a great Canadian film and career.

Early works by the likes of Denis Villeneuve (Cosmos), Denys Arcand (Rejeanne Padovani), Alan King (A Married Couple), Don Shebib (Goin Down the Road), Don Owen (The Ernie Game), Michel Brault (Entre la mer et leau douce) and Jean-Francois Pouliot (Seducing Doctor Lewis) played to raves there. More recently the Fortnight feted Stephane Lafleur (Tu dors Nicole) and launched the skyrocket of Xavier Dolan, whose 2009 first film I Killed My Mother premiered to ecstatic applause and multiple awards.

This years Fortnight selection has two Canadian offerings: Torontonian Nathan Morlandos Mean Dreams and Montrealer Kim Nguyens Two Lovers and a Bear, both films concerning romance on the run.

In separate interviews, both directors are ecstatic about their first Cannes film premieres and in awe of the Fortnights Canadian legacy.

Im learning about it pretty fast, Morlando says of the Fortnight. (His feature debut Citizen Gangster won the Best Canadian First Feature prize at TIFF 2011.)

I just finished mixing Mean Dreams yesterday, so its been a really intense ride since our invitation. Everybody around me has been getting excited, but I havent allowed myself to really enjoy it yet because I was just focused on the film. Ive been very nervous about it, because were hand-delivering it to Cannes on May 8.

Premiering May 15, Mean Dreams is a coming-of-age thriller starring Sophie Nelisse (The Book Thief) and Josh Wiggins (Hellion) as teen lovers Casey and Jonas, running for their lives from a corrupt cop (Bill Paxton).

Nguyen has already planned what hes going to do following the May 18 evening premiere of Two Lovers and a Bear, a Far North adventure starring Tatiana Maslany (TVs Orphan Black) and Dane DeHaan (Chronicle) as lost souls attempting to escape lifes cares  and also a hungry polar bear.

One of my big, big, big objectives in Cannes is to wake up with a wrinkled tuxedo, says Nguyen, who was Oscar-nominated for his 2012 drama Rebelle (War Witch). I actually want to watch the sunrise with a wrinkled tuxedo. It will be awesome!

Morlando and Nguyen are proud to be representing Canada at Cannes, although theyre not sure if their films have a distinctive Canadian aspect to them, apart from the remoteness of where they were shot: Sault Ste. Marie for Mean Dreams and Iqaluit for Two Lovers and a Bear. These locations, however, are very important to the mood of both movies.

Its a fantastic place, Morlando says of the Sault.

I shot my first film there as well, Citizen Gangster. I had an amazing experience with the community there. The Mean Dreams script was originally written to take place in a Texas rural environment. But Im very familiar with that landscape, as I think a lot of people are, and we couldnt get to Texas even if it was an interesting choice.

But for me it was more about wanting to explore a landscape that I havent seen enough of, which is the northern North American landscape. I was really inspired by Andrew Wyeth paintings and certainly the Group of Seven did a lot of their work in and around the Sault. So the landscape there was a major, major character in the film.

Nguyen and his cinematographer Nicolas Bolduc wanted to impart an other-worldly aesthetic to Two Lovers and a Bear, which is why they shot it in widescreen in Iqaluits tiny Baffin Island community of Apex.

We wanted to give it this fable-like look, Nguyen says. Its a love story, but I hope it feels like its on another planet, other-worldly. We also wanted to make this film luscious. We put a lot of effort into that.

The Nguyen team had to import their own polar bear, because it needed to be an animal used to working with people.

They found one in Vancouver, of all places, a bear named Agee who turned out to be a pampered beast. Her scenes had to be shot in Timmins, Ont., because it would have been too cold and costly to fly her to Iqaluit.

She actually was cold during the shoot, Nguyen says. She would go in her trailer as soon as we finished a scene, because she was used to swimming in a pool next to the sea in Vancouver. Thats how weird our business is sometimes.

Edouard Waintrop, artistic director of the Directors Fortnight, is understandably too diplomatic to agree to my suggestion that Canadians hold special interest to the Quinzaine, as his program is usually called.

In fact, we are less interested in how special Canadian directors are than in how good each movie is without regard to its origin. Weve chosen these two movies for their own qualities, he says via email.

Mean Dreams because its a wonderful noir story doubled by a very fresh love story. Because the way Nathan Morlando has dealt with these stories made us think of the great titles of the genre . . . and also because Alfred Hitchcock said that when youve succeeded in creating the bad guy, the movie has a chance to be a good one. And we can tell you that Bill Paxton in Mean Dreams makes a wonderful villain.

On the other hand, Two Lovers and a Bear is a wonderful love story located in something which is maybe more Canadian, the great white desert of the North. But what appealed to us were the feelings between the two protagonists and then the desperate run of the couple on the snow. . . . Maybe there in this movie by Kim Nguyen there is something more Canadian, a sense of the big spaces. That is usually missing in the European movies.

Whatever their appeal is, Canadians certainly feel welcome in the Directors Fortnight, especially this year.

Peter Howell is the Stars movie critic. His column appears Friday.

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Some heroes are a little too super. Superman can sense Lois Lane is in trouble and fly from Metropolis to Africa in literally a second? Its enough to make you root for Lex Luthor.

But Captain America, as scripted and shot by brothers Anthony and Joe Russo, isnt the kind of hero who can, say, yank a helicopter out of the sky without breaking a sweat.

If the audience doesnt feel like there are limits that the character can reach both emotionally and physically, then the stakes of the drama fall apart, says Anthony Russo. You see Cap get hurt. Its hard for him to get up sometimes.

Its this sense of superlogic that makes the billed battle between Captain America and Iron Man at the heart of Captain America: Civil War such a satisfying slugfest. The fallout follows United Nations pressure for the Avengers to abide by government sanctions. Iron Man vocally agrees while Captain America hesitates, finding a new bond with Bucky Barnes, the brainwashed Winter Soldier he grew up with.

Over the phone from L.A., Anthony and Joe Russo delved into Caps family feud, reintroducing Spider-Man, and helming the biggest Marvel movie yet: the two-part Avengers: Infinity War.

Being brothers making a film about surrogate brotherhood, did you bring a personal perspective to this project?

Joe Russo: Without question it is something that we related to. In Civil War we felt that we had a really interesting conflict between Caps old family and his new family, the Avengers, that we could mine. The last remaining piece of his past, his best friend and his brother (Bucky Barnes), still exists in a very complicated way.

How much did you worry about easing people back into the series and reintroducing the characters while still telling this giant story?

JR: On one level, you are making the movie for the diehard fan. The other side of the equation is these movies are becoming more and more popular as they go.

What that tells you is there are people coming to the movie who havent seen the ones before. You have to service both audiences.

We will take passes at a script where we are thinking about it only from Caps point of view. Then we will do the same thing for Tony Stark. We will do the same thing for the entire ensemble.

We do it for the diehard fans, and we do it for the complete fresh eyes, as we call them, and we make sure that the storytelling is accessible for them as well. We may not be successful with that but we put a lot of work into trying to achieve that.

It was exciting to see Tom Holland as Spider-Man. He has amazing chemistry with Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man. Why were they put together?

Anthony Russo: We knew that bringing a younger character into the universe would diversify it and give us another tone to play with. It felt like the best person to mentor that character would be Tony. It would be a fun dynamic that we could play on, Tonys crass pragmatism butting up against this wide-eyed kids vulnerability.

Youve said Infinity War will have 67 characters. Is that a real number or a joke number?

JR: It was a bit of a joke, and also real. Its true that we did have that number of characters.

What we do is we sit in a writing room with (screenwriters) Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely and talk about story for months and we do put a lot of stuff on the walls to help us track through different ideas. It is true that we had that number of characters on the wall.

AR: Whether or not that number of characters will work their way into the final project is another question.

What stage is Infinity War at?

JR: We are supposed to get the first draft of Infinity War tomorrow (April 29). Its a little confusing to be honest with you to be in the midst of Civil War and expecting something as enormous as a draft to Infinity War, but were very excited.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

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NEW YORKHe spends his days lampooning Donald Trump and the other U.S. presidential candidates. So what does Daily Show host Trevor Noah think of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau?

You mean other than being completely in love with him?

Noah is speaking to a group of international reporters gathered on the set of his series, seen Monday to Thursday at 11 p.m. on The Comedy Network and repeated at midnight on CTV.

I try to find his flaws daily, says the 32-year-old South African. And then I see him doing a perfect peacock yoga pose on a table, and the next day speaking about quantum physics.

Adds Noah: No person is supposed to be that cool and handsome. Hes a boxer as well. Hes just ridiculous!

The Daily Show is so enamoured with Trudeau they sent comedy correspondent Hasan Minhaj to Ottawa for an interview inside Parliaments historic library. (Look for the report in about a week).

He can do bits, man, says Minhaj, who was as impressed with Trudeaus comedy chops as he is with his embrace of Syrian refugees.

He was at the airport greeting them, says Minhaj, amazed that a country one-tenth the size of the U.S. is taking in ten times the amount of refugees.

Noah is an even bigger fan of the prime minister and says Trudeau has made it harder for the American presidential hopefuls.

Its like living next door to somebody who is married to the perfect spouse and then you look at the person youre with every day and you go, How the hell did this happen?

Nine months into the job, Noah is dealing with his own comparisons. The main one, of course, is with his wildly admired Daily Show predecessor Jon Stewart. Yes, ratings have dipped since Stewarts star-studded exit, Noah concedes.

It makes sense, he argues. If my ratings werent down, Id be offended on behalf of Jon Stewart, because it would make sense that people are going to see out the king.

Sitting before the press, flanked by producers and castmates, Noah makes it clear that he is in this game of late night thrones for the long haul. TV ratings as a whole in North America are down this season, he notes. The Daily Show digital streaming numbers, however, have more than doubled.

Noah sees himself as part of a wave of millennials who are ahead of themselves in creating new metrics. Hes moved The Daily Show into the Snapchat era, scoring millions of hits on social media.

And then theres the international picture. The Daily Show is now in 170 territories worldwide, up 20 from Stewarts prime. Noah jets to Dubai this weekend to promote the show in that region.

Noah says the hardest thing hes had to learn over the first nine months at The Daily Show has been to enjoy himself more.

Thats the one thing no one tells you to do, he says. His goal now is just to hear guests tell him they had a great time, an endorsement he recently got from Ben Stiller.

Echoing Stewart, Noah says the focus is still on the jokes, not the news. He has no agenda to change the world, just to make viewers laugh. Hes proud the show is now riffing on more international headlines, but understands theres still an America First policy in play.

While Stewarts sit-down shtick featured plenty of mugging, restless Noah stands and delivers the opening headlines. Getting physical and striding across stages is a key part of Noahs act, as evidenced last summer in Montreal at the Just for Laughs comedy festival. His standup can be seen on June 4 when JFL: All Access returns for a fourth season on The Comedy Network.

The fit comedian has to keep moving, not just to shake the ghost of Stewart but also the legacies of former Daily Show correspondents such as longtime Canadian contributor Samantha Bee.

Samantha Bee is fierce, he says, praising her new TBS series Full Frontal. John Oliver, he says, is equally incredible on HBO. Noah is also a big fan of Larry Wilmore.

He says all their new shows have a place in late night. Thats what makes it great  multiple voices.

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Whether its a gigantic peony mural or cheeky urban toiles, wallpaper is shouting to be heard, louder than ever. Its an instant way to add impact, notes designer Sarah Hartill. Wallpaper adds a multi-dimensional element to a room which paint cant. And as designer Shirley Meisels points out, it no longer means a huge commitment. The new glues are user friendly, not like the paper of our youth that you had to remove with tweezers. It really adds a lot of personality to a room, so go for it.

Blurred lines

Tie dye, batik, ikats and soft watercolour-patterns have been huge in textiles and are now spilling onto walls. Global boho chic has taken a foothold in design, it lends itself to modern and vintage decor but I am noticing a lot more even in traditional rooms, says Meisels. Marbleizing has been added to the mix for a result thats atmospheric and slightly trippy, and metallic elements are especially hot. It can go a little glammy, but it marries perfectly with mid-century modern furniture, says Hartill.

High-def florals

These arent your mothers florals. Once a staple of English decor, tiny prints have morphed into painterly, Dutch Master still-lifes, thanks to improved printing techniques and inks. Light black inks create a smoother grey-scale gradient for a 3D effect, says Sydney Penner of the B.C. wallpaper firm Anewall, anewall.com. We juxtapose different parts of the image over each other, which makes the flowers look fuller. The effect is luscious and sensory, but Meisels recommends using this paper on a feature wall since it can be overpowering.

Subversive sketches

Toile papers traditionally depict pretty pastoral scenes of French country life, but now they have been co-opted by urban cool firms such as Londons Timorous Beasties, which depicts a gunpoint mugging in a London park. At first the design looks very serious, but then if you look closely its whimsical and fun. I love that mix, notes Hartill. Other papers show a definite narrative scope, Flavor Papers Dia de Dumbo plays off the Mexican Day of the Dead with a scene in Brooklyn with hipster skeletons on cellphones with yoga mats, pushing Croc-wearing children in strollers.

Scenic murals

Historical gems by Zuber and Gracie (Estee Lauder style director Aerin Lauders boudoir is covered in a chic Gracie print that grandmother Estee chose) have spurred a craze for scenic papers that dont require an heiresss trust fund. People who are worried that wallpaper will overwhelm a room can put a mural up on a feature wall, notes Anewalls Penner. The company produces designs based on vintage prints of landscapes, naval battles and cloudy skies. Oversized murals and prints are dramatic: the contrast of historical murals is sharp against spare, modern furnishings. Ive even used grafitti-inspired murals for boys rooms by Are and Be, explains Meisels.

Hand-drawn geos

The graphic look has gone soft. Blame it on Kelly Wearstler, who favours the artisanal look for her own line of wallpapers. I love that painterly stroke, and there is an opaque transparency transition in the pattern, notes Hartill. Her wallpapers seem literally hand-painted even though they are mass produced, they maintain an artisanal quality. They add a hip, irreverent element to spaces with formal architectural elements (think deep crown mouldings and high ceilings) and antiques.

Wallpaper dos and donts

Do try grasscloth if youre wary of patterned papers, it adds texture and lends walls softness.

Do make the wall behind a bed the feature wall to give the bed weight.

Dont use matching borders, they chop up the wall and are dated.

Do frame wallpaper panels like art  they are easy to change and cost less than papering a room.

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Think growing tomatoes on the moon is hard? Try Yellowknife.

Canadian researchers are using space technology to grow crops above the 60th parallel.

Using a hydroponic system designed to feed astronauts, residents can harvest fruits and vegetables year-round in the extreme climate of northern Canada.

The plan ist to send five of the prototypes to Northern Farm Training Institute in Hay River, N.W.T.

Environmental biologist Mike Dixon knows what it takes to grow plants in barren places, both on and off Earth.

The moon or Mars is as equally harsh an environment as the Northwest Territories, where you dont routinely grow food outdoors, says Dixon, a University of Guelph professor and director of the schools Controlled Environment Systems Research Facility.

It is damn hard to eat something fresh in the Canadian North. Employing this technology is sensible.

It takes 12 days for strawberries to travel from Mexico to Yellowknife. Shipped-in food is expensive: Bananas that cost about $1.25 a kilo in Toronto are $4.17 in Nunavut.

Its also hard to come by. One in three people experiences food insecurity each month in Nunavut, says Food Secure Canada.

Some communities have no soil in which to grow their own food, and traditional food is difficult to access for various reasons (high cost of going out on the land, loss of traditional knowledge and more), says the advocacy groups Northern & Remote Food Network.

The northern pilot project will grow six perishable foods  cucumbers, tomatoes, strawberries, bell peppers, lettuce and herbs  otherwise imported.

It isnt a greenhouse, which needs sunlight to grow plants. Picture instead a sealed, stainless steel cube the size of a bakers rack, with shelving and a thick glass roof through which shines cutting-edge LED lighting. This allows 24-hour growth, 12 months a year in a region where the sun barely rises for months on end.

The LEDs are a big factor. Strawberry growers in Japan tripled their yield using supplemental blue LEDs, while in Holland purple LEDs stimulate lettuce growth.

For the prototype, Norwegian lighting firm Intravision customized the spectrum for optimal photosynthesis. Dixons lab is working on the right colour recipe for each plant.

We have to be careful. By adjusting the lighting, we can make the plants taste different. You dont want a strawberry that tastes like a doughnut, he says.

The self-contained, computerized farming system promotes self-sufficiency and good nutrition in remote places. It is now used in the Kuwaiti desert, another hostile environment, to grow cherry tomatoes and cucumbers.

Thirty of these prototypes cost about $2 million to build.

Bringing the space angle down to earth isnt so strange, says another partner on the project.

There are quite a few similarities between Mars and the North. The type of system for both environments has to be resource efficient, contain multiple backups and offer high-nutritional value, said physicist Alan Scott of Com Dev, an Ottawa space-hardware firm that engineered the prototype.

Dixon says extreme terrestrial agriculture is the testing ground for space farming.

The next worst place to grow a plant after a Canadian snow bank has got to be the moon, says Dixon.

Sounds like a challenge.

Correction - May 12, 2016: This article was edited from a previous version that mistakenly said it cost $2 million to build one of the greenhouse prototypes sent to Kuwait. As well, the previous version said five of the units are destined for the Northern Farm Training Institute in Hay River, Northwest Territories. In fact, this plan is still in the proposal stage.



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Set the table for summer with a tribal-inspired print. A 1920s ikat dinner plate from Russia is a collectors item, but the softly blurred pattern of more budget-friendly versions means they can safely be served poolside, no white gloves required.

The Original:M.S. Kuznetsov ceramic ikat plateM.S. Kuznetsov ceramic ikat plate

Source: 1st Dibs

Price: $718.67. 13 diameter. Glazed ceramic. Made in Russia.

This circa-1920 painterly Moscow-made porcelain plate is decorated with a sprayed Uzbek ikat-inspired design, and was designed to appeal to Central Asian and Middle Eastern markets.

Hermes Voyage en Ikat dessert/salad plateHermes Voyage en Ikat dessert/salad plate

Source: William Ashley

Price: $320. 8.8 d. Porcelain. Dishwasher safe. Made in France.

This porcelain plate, inspired by the weaving technique, incorporates 24-karat matte gold detailing and 20 jewel tones for an exceptionally detailed effect.

Rachael Ray 16-piece dinnerware setRachael Ray 16-piece dinnerware set

Source: Amazon.com

Price: $176. Set includes four dinner plates (10.75 d.), salad plates (8.5 d.), bowls and mugs. Oven safe to 250 F for up to 30 minutes and dishwasher safe. Non-porous stoneware. Made in China.

A collection of powder-blue banded ikat dinner plates and bowls are accented by a navy salad plate (shown) for a layered effect on the table. Crafted from non-porous stoneware, the dinnerware retains heat so food stays warmer longer.

Ikat red salad plateIkat red salad plate

Source: Mikasa

Price: $12.60. 8.5 d. Porcelain. Made in China.

The diamond print is intentionally blurred along the edges to replicate the appearance of woven ikat fabric. This plate is microwave and dishwasher safe.

Dena Home Jaida salad platesDena Home Jaida salad plates

Source: Bed, Bath & Beyond

Price: $33.99/set of 4. 8 d. Dishwasher and microwave safe. Imported.

Made from high-fired porcelain, the aquatic colour combination of these quatrefoil salad plates is summery and fresh. Pile them with fresh berries and grab a spot on a Muskoka chair to watch the sun rise.

Andrew Tanner Ikat-Blue dinner plateAndrew Tanner Ikat-Blue dinner plate

Source: Replacements.com

Price: $20.15. 11 d. Made in England.

Large navy ikat diamonds are graphic on a white ground. These plates are striking on a white linen tablecloth, and punch up a bare bistro table.

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OTTAWAThe lead lawyer who won the landmark Carter case at the Supreme Court of Canada has blasted the Liberal governments bill to limit medically assisted suicide as clearly unconstitutional.

As a wrenching and emotional debate over how to legalize medical aid in dying began in earnest Thursday, Vancouver lawyer Joe Arvay, a paraplegic, rolled his wheelchair into the justice committee, shifted his body into a witness chair before microphones, and took aim at Bill C-14 and the minister responsible for it.

He said in the wake of the ruling in Carter v. Canada, Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Rayboulds proposal to limit the legal right to a doctor-assisted death to only those with incurable disease, disability or illness whose natural death is reasonably foreseeable is not Carter compliant.

Parliament cannot now exclude a whole category of such persons  the physically disabled whose natural death is not reasonably foreseeable  from their charter right, Arvay said.

He argued Parliaments response must be must be more procedural rather than substantive, like setting out how many doctors must sign off or other safeguards to ensure a patient gives voluntary, informed consent. He said the government has become captured by the rhetoric of the disabled rights organizations.

At the Senate committee, Arvay went further and criticized the ministers claims the bill passes constitutional muster: To suggest the bill is constitutional because the minister thinks theres some people who believe it should only go this far is, in my respectful submission, is not legal reasoning and has no merit.

The Carter decision is the final word on the minimum rights that Canadian citizens are entitled to and those minimum rights are not limited to illnesses that are terminal. (Wilson-Raybould is) just wrong, Im sorry to say.

The top court declared unanimously in February 2015that the Criminal Codes absolute ban on assisted suicide was unconstitutional, struck it down and gave Ottawa a year to rewrite it

Other witnesses appearing at the committee, such as Catherine Frazee, professor of disability studies at Ryerson University, however, pleaded for amendments to build in greater safeguards to protect the vulnerable.

Witnesses proposed a range of amendments:

Judicial review of every medical-assistance request.

Mandatory palliative care consultations for patients wanting to a doctors help to die.

Restrictions on who can aid a patient to die so as to exclude nurses, pharmacists or family members.

A guaranteed right of physicians to refuse treatment on religious or conscience grounds.

Stricter reporting and data-gathering requirements for greater transparency.

I believe this is the single most important decision you will ever make as senators, said ethicist Margaret Somerville, professor in law and medicine at McGill University. I believe it will be the landmark decision of the 21st century. She urged a conservative, very strict, limiting approach. It must not become the normal way to die.

Psychiatrist Harvey Chochinov, who holds the Canada Research Chair in Palliative Care at the University of Manitoba and was a member of a Conservative government-appointed external review committee in response to the Carter decision, said fears of a slippery slope are justified.

He extrapolated from statistics in Belgium to warn the proposed Canadian regime could lead to 8,000 to 10,000 people a year in Canada dying with medical assistance.

University of Toronto professor Trudo Lemmens, who holds the Scholl Chair in health law and policy, cited an academic article this month that says since Belgium legalized euthanasia in May 2002, there have been 9,400 cases up to 2015; there are now more than 5 reported euthanasia cases per day.

Sen. George Baker pointed to Quebec Health Minister Gaetan Barrettes confirmation that about 50 cases of doctor-assisted death have occurred in Quebec since a provincial law took effect early this year, and said there are not enough court resources to require Superior Court judges to review and decide on every application.

But Arvays criticisms were personal and forceful.

For many disabled people  and Im one of them  weve managed to tolerate and adapt to our suffering and choose life over death. But to suggest that all physically disabled people have to subscribe to that notion is not just patronizing, its infantilizing, he said.

Its treating all physically disabled people as children incapable of agency and autonomy and I just find that incredibly offensive. The trial judge did. The Supreme Court of Canada did. I dont get why this government doesnt understand that.

Asked whether there would be significant gaps if the legislation fails to pass by the high courts June 6 deadline, the Canadian Medical Associations vice president Dr. Jeff Blackmer said it is hard to say.

He said the medical community has passed draft or final regulations in almost all provinces and that by and large wed be ready to go on June 6 with or without the federal bill, although Bellemar acknowledged its hard to say what that would look like province to province.

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As a life-and-death battle raged Thursday for the wildfire-besieged city of Fort McMurray, Alta., the numbers and timelines of the catastrophe grew as gargantuan as the local loss and Canadas national heartache.

Alberta Premier Rachel Notley said the fire that hit the oilsands city had grown to cover 85,000 hectares  expanding tenfold in just 24 hours  to cover an area 25 per cent larger than Edmonton.

Insurance experts mused about losses in the range of $9 billion if the town needs to be rebuilt  an amount almost equal to the annual budget of Nova Scotia.

Already the devastation was such that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told the Commons the rebuild of Fort McMurray will take many years.

For all that, the Stars Michael Robinson reported Thursday evening that some Fort McMurray residents were apparently refusing to leave town.

Vance Mendrikis, a paramedic operations manager and fire chief for Wapose Emergency Services, told Robinson by phone that up to 50 people were staying on their property for reasons all over the map. Some just dont want to leave, others want to take care of their possessions.

RCMP officers were dispatched to roust the stragglers.

Mendrikis said paramedics were trying to help people whod fled without medications. And crews themselves were running out of food and water.

He has been working since the evacuation began and hasnt had time to check his own home. Last he heard, 13 residences were burning on his street. And its a small street, he said.

While what is certain to be the largest natural disaster in Canadian history reached epic scale, those who fled were concerned with the most elemental of needs.

Water. Food. Shelter. Diapers. Toiletries. Cots. Blankets. Clothes. Toiletries. Pet food. And the supply lines to keep it coming.

At the evacuation centre in Lac la Biche, a photo showed Marlee Hildebrandt, with daughter Oakley strapped to her back, cleaning cots  contributing to the mountain of unglamorous but necessary volunteer work.

As often as not, the immensity of the tragedy was conveyed in few words.

Cory Callaghan, a 56-year-old former chef, sat in a wheelchair watching volunteers work outside the evacuation centre.

Last year on my birthday, I had my second leg amputated, he told Robinson. This year for my birthday, there is this big fire in Fort Mac. I dont like my birthday anymore.

The images of devastation and ruin, like something out of Dante, continued to astound and appall the country. The latest eye-popping video was posted on YouTube by Michel Chamberland, capturing his harrowing drive out of the burning city on a dash-camera, orange embers falling on his pickup, towering flames along the roadside.

The 25-year-old oilpatch worker said he had so many hits on the video he licensed it and will donate all proceeds to victims of the fire.

In Ottawa, Trudeau said pictures out of Fort McMurray could be taken in a war-torn corner of the world instead of our own backyard.

In the Commons, partisan divides were bridged in reaction to the crisis, the prime minister and Conservative interim leader Rona Ambrose, who comes from Alberta, embracing in the House. Green Party Leader Elizabeth May called the images from Fort Mac the most dramatic and catastrophic shed seen from anywhere on this planet. It breaks our heart.

On the front lines, people like 21-year-old Jason Munro of Mississauga, who started work with the Fort McMurray Fire Department in April, were among those battling to save the city from a fire that was only expected to grow.

He says its really bad right now, his father, Neil, told the Mississauga News. I mean, there were 80,000 people living there and now its a ghost town.

On Thursday, Alberta Health Services issued boil-water advisory for all customers who draw water from the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo Water Treatment Plant as a precautionary measure.

In Ottawa, Trudeau announced the federal government will match individual donations to the Canadian Red Cross in support of wildlife relief efforts. (Donate at redcross.ca).

Cardinal Thomas Collins, Archbishop of Toronto, who was bishop in Edmonton and St. Paul, Alta., said he knew personally the resolve and generosity of Albertans and was confident all Canadians would support those who are suffering.

May God protect and comfort them, both now and in the difficult days ahead, he said.

Small ironies abounded in a fire that began during federal Emergency Preparedness Week and kept Notley from celebrating her first anniversary in office.

Fahed Labek and his family, who had moved to northern Alberta only months ago as Syrian refugees, were evacuated once again.

Amany Darwish, president of the Canadian True Power organization in Fort Mac, said she believes about six families of Syran refugees fled to safety, but was concerned painful memories would be stirred.

It was not the only story line turned on its head.

In a country where First Nations reserves are too often seem as places of need, indigenous communities in the Fort McMurray area became safe haven for evacuees.

Chief Jim Boucher of the Fort McKay First Nation, about 50 km north of Fort Mac, said many of its members own houses or live in Fort Mac and came home to the reserve to safety.

Their houses burned down, he said. My sister, my uncles, as well as other people, I think they have nothing to go back to.

His community had taken in about 3,000 people, who were living in the band hall, its school, arena and other buildings. The reserve organized meals, gathered diapers and ensured people had medication, but fuel was already in short supply.

Theres a lot of emotions right now, Boucher said.

The Quebec town of Lac-Megantic, where 47 people died in a rail disaster and much of the downtown was wiped out, was raising money for victims in Fort McMurray.

Three years ago, our population was struck down by tragedy and all of Canada helped us, said Conservative MP Luc Berthold. Now its our turn to help.

Acts of courage and selflessness are commonplace. Fort Mac was without a single fire-related fatality  an evacuation that Notley said could hardly have gone better when evacuating 80,000 people from a town that had only two roads out.

About 300 firefighters were on the scene with 100 more expected from Ontario on Friday. A further 300 RCMP officers had been deployed. By Thursday, temperatures had dropped to a more seasonable 16C. But crews continued to work against low humidity and gusting winds.

Chad Morrison, of Alberta Forestry, said air tankers alone are not going to stop this fire. It is going to continue to push through these dry conditions until we actually get some significant rain.

I expect this fire to continue to grow.

MORE AT THESTAR.COM

Alberta issues province-wide fire ban as crews battle flames in Fort McMurray

The Star in Alberta: First Nation members recall frenzied evacuation

Video shows evacuees terrifying wildfire escape

Exhausted Fort McMurray fire chief fights back tears

Photos: Wildfire forces more communities to evacuate

With files from Michael Robinson in Fort McMurray, the Stars Ottawa bureau and The Canadian Press

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OTTAWAJustice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould was telling a Senate committee this week that her governments assisted dying legislation was a transformational shift in this country. But she had to excuse herself.

She was needed down the hall in the House of Commons to explain why debate had to be cut off on this transformational shift.

There is a lot of role-playing in our Parliament. Memories are short and roles can quickly be reversed.

Majority governments are always accused of ramming through legislation and opposition members can reasonably be relied upon to rail about jackboot tactics.

While in opposition, the Liberals reliably joined with the New Democrats to accuse Stephen Harpers government of doing this time and again.

This week, it was the Conservatives who accused the Liberals of doing the same.

But on a matter of life-and-death, the red flags that have been raised about this legislation, and the emotions it engenders among Canadian voters, made shutting down debate precipitously just plain wrong.

The Liberals say they had to cut debate to have it pass second reading and refer it to committee for potential amendments.

This may be procedurally correct, but there can be no higher moral debate than that dealing with life and death.

MPs had been debating Bill C-14 in good faith. They have heard the most personal stories from constituents about deaths of family members. They were opening themselves up in ways rarely  if ever  seen in the House of Commons.

Liberal Arnold Chan (Scarborough-Agincourt) is dealing with cancer, but returned to the Commons to deal with the bill as a Parliamentarian.

I may in fact be someone who may have to, potentially, depending on how treatment goes, avail myself of this option, he said. It is not one I would like to contemplate, not one that I think is a choice I would like to make, but it is a practical reality of something I might have to face.

Quebec New Democrat Robert Aubin spoke of the pain he saw in his parents, both of whom died of cancer. Manitoba Conservative Candice Bergen spoke of losing her sister to cancer nine years ago.

And then along came a government that essentially said, all right, that was fine, but enough of that. Were shutting you down after 2 1/2 days of debate.

Nathan Cullen, the British Columbia New Democrat and former House leader, said there was no reason for the Liberals to shut down debate on such an emotional issue and such a move threatens to unleash a backlash against the government which halted what had been a model show of non-partisanship.

Yes, the government is up against a June 6 deadline for legislation as deemed by the Supreme Court, but the Justin Trudeau government is acting as if the world will fall apart if that deadline lapses.

Would it? Sen. George Baker asked that very question in committee Thursday and was told by witness Dianne Pothier, a law professor emeritus at Dalhousie University, that it would be irresponsible of the government to let the deadline lapse and that all government safeguards would be lost.

Wilson-Raybould agrees that the safeguards the government badly wants would be forfeited if the deadline was not met and there would be a legal vacuum, but it would hardly turn Canada into a wild west on assisted suicide.

The law would be the Supreme Court ruling, not the more restrictive Liberal legislation. Provincial governments and regulatory bodies would fill the vacuum until federal legislation passed.

This was an issue that no legislator wanted to touch, but now that we are on deadline and there is legislation being considered, everyone wants to talk about it.

That we as a country are under such deadlines in the first place is the parliamentary torpor in the wake of the Feb. 6, 2015 court ruling and a subsequent election. Conservatives claiming now they didnt have time to properly contemplate this bill shut down a Trudeau proposal in February 2015 to have the matter sent to committee.

There is a fear Liberals are racing toward passage of a bill that is simply going to be challenged in court, again putting those who are already suffering through further agony.

The Liberals may fear passing legislation after the June 6 deadline opens them up to court challenges. Either way, this mushy-middle bill is vulnerable and two-thirds of opposition MPs have been denied the opportunity to be heard on a historic bill, and that means their constituents have been gagged.

Tim Harper is a national affairs writer. His column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday. tharper@thestar.ca Twitter:@nutgraf1

Correction - May 6, 2016: This article was edited from a previous version to correct the family member to whom MP Candice Bergen referred to during her speech.

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In the near future, the Internet of Things (IoT) will enable billions of smart devices to sense, respond, communicate and share data. Those things will also have the ability to generate, buy and sell their own electricity.

Now imagine if each household that has the ability  and a lot of these things  to generate and store electricity can enter into automated, peer-to-peer transactions with neighbours or sell power back into the grid at the market rate, rather than through a third-party utility.

But first, consider the aging energy grid of today, which is from the industrial age  large central sources broadcasting power to dumb appliances. This will have to change.

We need a power grid that is decentralized, full of smart devices and where everyone can contribute power.

Furthermore, all these devices and the people who use them will need a way of buying and selling power, doing transactions and working together in a collaborative manner. Increasingly, power strategists are turning to a surprising new technology for this: the blockchain  the underlying, peer-to-peer technology that enables, tracks, verifies and records digital transactions and currencies like Bitcoin.

Heres why.

Today, most homeowners, businesses, governments and other organizations in urban North America get their power from regulated utilities at regulated prices. This approach is deeply flawed.

For one, it is inefficient. Large amounts of energy are lost as heat at the plant or in transmission cross long distances, driving up prices and creating an outsized carbon footprint. Second, it is overly centralized, making it prone to failure, an uncomfortable reality familiar to anyone who lived through the Northeast Blackout of 2003 or Hurricane Sandy in New York. Finally, consumers are powerless (no pun intended) because they have no choice, accepting ever-higher rates for power.

While breakthroughs in solar-cell technology and battery storage have led to greater variety in locally generated renewable energy, the underlying model is still broken: the local utility captures excess power in its supply for redistribution at wholesale rates, often with considerable leakage. The consumer, who might have a neighbour with a local power source, must still go through the utility and pay full retail for that renewable energy. Its ridiculous.

Solar technology and battery storage are important. But what has been missing is a technology on which to organize, co-ordinate and secure a true peer-to-peer power grid. Blockchain holds the key.

Millions of homes could become autonomous agents, contracting power automatically with the highest bidder. With potentially millions of distributed power sources, the system needs to continuously track everything, including the ability to authenticate each node in the network  to ensure its reliability, which is why blockchian is critical to all of this.

This is not science fiction. Indeed its already happening today.

Instead of the command-and-control system the utilities have now, where a handful of people are actually running a utility grid, you could design the grid so that it runs itself, says Lawrence Orsini, cofounder and principal at LO3 Energy, a pioneer in the space. The network becomes far more resilient because all of the assets in the grid are helping maintain and run it.

Its a distributed, peer-to-peer, IoT model with smart contracts (which execute and self-enforce using software rather than people) and other controls designed into the assets themselves. This time, when a hurricane destroys transmission towers or fire cripples a transformer substation, the grid can quickly and automatically reroute power to prevent a massive blackout.

Resilience isnt the only benefit. Locally generated power, used locally, is significantly more efficient than the utility-scale model, which relies on transmitting energy across vast distances, where energy is lost.

LO3 Energy recently partnered with Consensus Systems to launch the first ever micro-grid project using blockchain technology, in Park Slope New York. The so-called TransActive Grid matches households who generate electricity with those who need it, executing sales automatically using smart contracts with little-to-no human involvement.

April 11, 2016, could very well go down as one of the seminal moments in the history of electrical innovation, akin to Thomas Edisons first light-bulb tests. It was on that day the Brooklyn Microgrid hosted the first ever peer-to-peer transaction of renewably generated energy on a blockchain in the world. Since that day, LO3 has had more than 130 buildings sign up for participation and that is growing by the day. The support from the city and its key stakeholders has been overwhelming.

So, instead of paying an energy services company thats buying renewable energy credits, you get to pay the people who are actually generating the electricity that is serving your house, says Orsinin. That is local and green and that actually has an environmental impact in your neighbourhood. It seems fairer, right?

Alongside increasing the generation of renewable power at the local level, the Internet of Things is challenging the regulated utility model and not a moment too soon. We need our utility grids and our engines not to leak energy and carbon into our atmosphere. While utilities are looking at IoT benefits to their existing infrastructure (so-called smart grids), connecting blockchain-enabled microgrids could lead to entirely new energy models.

Utility companies, their unions, regulators and policy-makers, should explore these new models for generating, distributing and using electricity. The potential to shift from nationwide-controlled energy companies to locally managed transactive grids offers a major opportunity to change the entire concept of energy consumption. It will be good for our pockets, but most importantly it will be good for our planet, Says Orsini.

Toronto is often described as a city of neighbourhoods. Indeed, Torontos neighbourhoods, with their strong communities, identities and local advocates and organizers, could be the pioneers we need to create the energy grid of tomorrow for a more sustainable, secure and prosperous future. But this will take leadership. Says Orsini, Last week, we took the meter off the wall and put it in peoples hands. Where we go from here is up to you.

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CALGARYAfter being trapped for more than 36 hours in a downtown Fort McMurray apartment, Cuddles the dog was rescued by a good samaritan who hadnt yet evacuated the burning city.

On Wednesday, Allison Wiseman, who had fled town for Red Deer, called for help on social media after she learned her dog, Cuddles, had been left behind as its caretakers were barred from re-entering the city.

Wiseman said people called from coast to coast to offer a hand.

Complete strangers had called from Calgary, Edmonton, Toronto and out east and west, she said. There was just so many people offering rewards.

But, turns out Wisemans old high school classmate  who requested to be anonymous  was still in town when he received a call from her cousin.

He was still in Fort Mac helping as much people as he could, she said.

The two then connected over FaceTime to ensure he was at the right complex.

I said, Break the door down  you got to do what you got to do, Wiseman said. I said Ill pay for it  I dont care.

The samaritan then busted open the entrance, ran to the third floor and then broke down the door leading into her apartment, room 301.

He went in there and grabbed her, she said. She was obviously very thirsty because she didnt have any water.

He then sent a video of Cuddles chasing another dog in his backyard.

(Cuddles) was getting along great with his dog there, she said. Shes safe and shes hungry. She was just excited to get out and run all over the place.

Cuddles was then given to Wisemans cousin, who will then meet with her to deliver the dog on Friday.

Wiseman said she feels extremely sad for all the animals trapped in their homes.

They cant help themselves, she said as her voice began crack. Theyre innocent and they dont know if their owners are coming home. Its super sad.

More on thestar.com:

Fort McMurray pet owners issue desperate pleas for help

Fort McMurray wildfire: How to help

PHOTOS: Fort McMurray wildfire on Friday May 6

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At 2:58 a.m. Wednesday morning, Robin Smith helped save a life.

Friends of mine are stuck in Fort Mac with no vehicle. Called 911 hours ago. Is there any other place to call? tweeted Beverly Myers.

Tell them not to leave, stay in their home and keep the windows closed. What is their address? Smith responded.

Once Smith found out their location, he called the RCMP, and within two hours, Myers friends were rescued and brought to a shelter.

Since about noon on Tuesday, when the fires in Fort McMurray began to run wild, Smith and his colleague Jordan Redshaw had been manning the handle @RMWoodBuffalo, the official Twitter account for the regional municipality.

Over the course of the next 36 hours, the two would survive on little-to-no-sleep as they helped evacuate 88,000 people by providing up-to-date information on the areas affected, where people could stay and how people could get out.

In short, theyre superheroes with smartphones.

A year ago, Smith said he never imagined that hed be saving peoples lives through social media. The Toronto native and Seneca College graduate had been working in corporate branding when his college buddy, Redshaw, convinced him to move out to Fort McMurray to work alongside him as a press secretary at the regional municipality of Wood Buffalo.

I wanted to be able to help people and feel like Im making a difference and not just selling things, Smith told the Star from Edmonton, where he and his girlfriend have been staying with friends since evacuating late Wednesday.

This is what I wanted to do. I just wish it wasnt under these circumstances.

Redshaw stayed behind near the city, working around the clock to get people to safety and making sure that people had the information they needed.

I havent really had a chance to reflect on it, Redshaw told the Star from his outpost in Fire Hall 5, about 5 kilometres outside the Fort McMurray.

Its been, in a word, intense, he said, his voice weary from three days of endless cycles of fear and adrenaline.

This isnt Fort McMurrays first fire. Alberta averages about 1,500 wildfires a year, according to Wildfire Alberta. And Fort McMurray, surrounded by boreal forests and frequented by droughts, is a matchbox ready to be struck.

Megan Langpap, the communications manager for the regional municipality of Wood Buffalo, knows the ins and outs of wildfire safety. Her father spent 30 years working in wildfire operations in Fort Mac, and her husband is a fire investigator for the municipality.

But nothing could prepare any of them for what was to come. On maternity leave since the birth of her son four months ago, she evacuated to Edmonton, where her sister and father live.

Driving on the highway with fires burning on both sides of the car, Langpap said she watched in horror as her friends homes burned.

Im usually very objective with this stuff, but it is so different when it happens to you, she said. Its heartbreak.

I never thought this would happen, her dad told her when she walked through the door of her sisters house, giving her a big hug.

Although no one could predict the extent of the damage the wildfires would wreak on Fort McMurray, the communications team has had lots of opportunities to practice their emergency response. During the devastating floods of 2013, Langpap said the team started using social media such as Twitter and Facebook, to respond in real-time to a crisis that is changing by the minute and respond to questions from residents instantaneously.

In a disaster such as this, correcting misinformation is just as important as getting the right info out in the first place, Smith said.

You would see things come in waves. You would see how a rumour or a question would spread across social media, and wed be able to address it immediately, he said.

But more than just information, the handle has become a source of emotional support to people suddenly thrust into one of the most traumatic situations of their life. Smith and Redshaw have in turn become Fort Mac residents therapists, their saviours, and, if need be, their punching bags.

Social media became not just a place to inform the public, but to offer up compassion to so many people who were fleeing for their lives, Smith said.

Redshaw and Smith are in the same boat as everyone else, unsure of what will become of their own homes or what the future has in store. About 400 km. away in Edmonton, Smith says its been hard to watch his friend have to work alone, but he made the choice to evacuate so he could be with his partner, whom he was separated from Tuesday night during the chaos.

Meanwhile, Redshaw is back to staying at the Fire Hall, after being forced to evacuate to set up shop in Lac La Biche on Wednesday. Last night was the first night he was able to catch a six-hour sleep, a luxury he could only afford because the province had been able to send in reinforcements.

Theyve been unbelievable, he said. Were getting everything we need.

In the wake of any disaster, natural or otherwise, its easy to talk about the resilience of a community. But while its unclear what Fort McMurray will look like when the embers have finally died, what is clear is that the town knows how to take care of its own.

Theyre used to people showing up with nothing, and giving them everything, Smith said.

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MEDICINE HAT, ALTA.A young woman convicted when she was a teen in the horrific murder of her mother, father and 8-year-old brother has finished her sentence and made enough progress that her family would be proud.

The woman, who is now 22 but cant be named under the Youth Criminal Justice Act, had a final review of her 10-year youth sentence Friday.

You have a desire to atone for what you did, Justice Scott Brooker noted in his final sentence review for the woman, known only as J.R.

What you can do is honour their memory . . . You have been doing exactly that and I think your parents and brother would be proud of you.

The woman, who was 12 at the time, was convicted of murder along with her 23-year-old boyfriend, Jeremy Steinke, after her family was stabbed to death in their Medicine Hat home in southern Alberta in April 2006.

Shes believed to be the youngest person convicted of a multiple murder in Canada.

The woman, flanked by two support workers, spoke briefly via closed-circuit TV, thanked the judge and those who have supported her, but made no mention of her past crime.

Her 10-year sentence  the maximum for a youth  included four years in a psychiatric institution and 4 1/2 years under conditional supervision in the community. Steinke is serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole for 25 years.

I think society is likely going to have a mixed memory of the case, said defence lawyer Katherin Beyak.

I would like to think that society of course would remember that it is a tragedy that took place, but ultimately as well that the Criminal justice system in Canada  and in particular as it relates to youth  is very unique in that it does have the ability to rehabilitate young people who made mistakes early on in life.

Crown prosecutor Ramona Robins said she couldnt comment on the rehabilitation, but she believes not everyone is likely to be satisfied with the punishment.

Theres no number, theres no sentence thats going to bring them back, she said. No sentence is satisfactory in a murder case in my opinion.

The Crown argued the girl and Steinke concocted a plan to kill her parents, because they disapproved of the 10-year age gap between the couple.

It was suggested the crime was loosely based on Steinkes favourite movie Natural Born Killers, Oliver Stones twisted love story about a pair of young serial killers who get their start by killing the girls parents.

Steinke said he attacked the mother, who was wearing only a nightgown, after she turned on a light switch and found him huddled in the darkened basement.

She screamed. Her husband came running with a small screwdriver and rushed Steinke. The father died in a fighters stance, his arms still raised above him, of 24 stab wounds.

Steinke steadfastly maintained the boys death came at the hands of the girl.

At trial, police officers and other witnesses became emotional as they recalled finding the small boy on his bed with a deep slash to his throat, his eyes and mouth wide open. Stuffed animals and a toy light sabre spattered with the boys blood were next to his body.

Steinke and the girl were arrested in Leader, Sask., about a 90-minute drive away, the day after the bodies were found.

If the woman keeps the peace over the next five years, her criminal record will be sealed.

Medicine Hat police Insp. Brent Secondiak was involved in the case from the beginning and came to court Friday.

It brought back a lot of the images that we saw on that day about 10 years ago, he said.

Its tough for everyone involved. Its probably a final chapter for me and everyone at the police service . . . can move on.

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OTTAWAPrime Minister Justin Trudeau is pledging to visit Fort McMurray in the coming weeks but says a visit nowwhile firefighters are still battling the devastating fires  would not be helpful.

Instead, Trudeau said Friday that he can be more effective by ensuring that Ottawas response is helping meet the demands of the local communities and the province of Alberta.

I think were all aware that a prime minister showing up in Fort McMurray when firefighters are busy trying to contain a massive, raging wildfire is not a particularly helpful thing, Trudeau said during a Toronto visit.

The best thing I can do right now is make sure that our operations centre and indeed, the liens of communication with the folks on the ground . . . are as robust, as instant and as effective as possible, he said.

But Trudeau said he intends to visit Fort McMurray in the coming weeks to express his support to local politicians and residents and share with Canadians the scale and scope of the devastation of a community he said has contributed much to the Canadian economy over the years.

I know that its going to be extremely important that I get out there, the prime minister said.

Trudeau was in Toronto on Friday morning to announce federal infrastructure funding for transit. He began his comments by providing an update on the situation in Fort McMurray and the federal governments response.

He said his office has been in constant contact with the office of Alberta Premier Rachel Notley to provide any support we can.

He said Ottawa has met all of the demands for assistance made so far, including the provision of military aircraft and cots for evacuees.

We continue to monitor the situation closely. With high temperatures and shifting winds changing rapidly, we continue to urge caution to all evacuees, Trudeau said.

The prime minister also urged Canadians to donate to relief efforts through the Red Cross. The federal government is matching all donations.

Trudeau also conceded that federal funding for past disasters has not flowed as fast as it should have and said that Ottawa is working to ensure that aid earmarked for Fort McMurray gets out the door faster.

We are aware that in the past the federal government hasnt always been as quick to deliver on commitments and funding as they provinces or partners would have liked, the prime minister said.

We know that Canadians are suffering. We are committed to being good partners and to help Fort McMurray and the residents of Fort McMurray, not just in the days and weeks to come but in the months and years to come, he said.

We will ensure thats done as quickly as possible, Trudeau said.

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Q: Blockchain seems to have come out of nowhere to become a hot topic in technology and finance but few people seem to truly understand it. What is blockchain?

A: We have spent two years researching this technology and have concluded, unequivocally, that blockchain technology is the second generation of the digital revolution. The first generation brought us the Internet of Information. The second generation  powered by blockchain  is bringing us the Internet of Value. So what is it? Blockchain is the ingeniously simple, revolutionary protocol that allows transactions to be simultaneously anonymous and secure, peer-to-peer, instant and frictionless. It does this by distributing trust from powerful intermediaries to a large global network, which through mass collaboration, clever code and cryptography, enables a tamper-proof public ledger of every transaction thats ever happened on the network.

And while its the technology that drives Bitcoin and other digital currencies, the underlying framework has the potential to go far beyond these and record virtually everything of value to humankind, from birth and death certificates to insurance claims and even votes.

In short, its a new medium for value.

Q: What does this mean for average people? How will it impact their lives?

A: It will have a profound impact. Maybe youre a music lover who wants artists to make a living off their art. Perhaps youre an immigrant whos sick of paying big fees to send money home to loved ones in your ancestral land. Or a Saudi woman who wants to publish her own fashion magazine. Maybe youre an aid worker who needs to identify land titles of landowners so you can rebuild their homes after an earthquake. Or a citizen fed up with the lack of transparency and accountability of political leaders. Or a user of social media who values your privacy and thinks all the data you generate might be worth something  to you. Or an entrepreneur looking for a new platform to build a business.

Q: What could blockchain mean for the financial services industry?

A: When we started our research a mere two years ago, few if any banks had woken up to this opportunity. Now, virtually every major player in the financial service industry  from banks to insurers to audit and professional service firms  are investing significant resources into this. And for good reason: Blockchain can radically reduce costs for banks, providing a boost to productivity and making it easier to offer products and services to a global clientele. They can also reduce risk in the industry, particularly in wholesale finance. Settlement times for many financial products take days, sometimes weeks, tying up capital and exposing industry participants to huge counterparty risks. Blockchain promises to radically simplify many business processes, reducing risk and boosting transparency. Thats a good thing. And this is really the tip of the iceberg: Personal and commercial lending, risk management, investment banking, treasury services, global markets, insurance, technology, operations and asset management will each feel the effect.

Q: So are you saying this is actually a big opportunity for banks? What about the risks?

A: Well, the flip side of all of this is that blockchain will also radically lower barriers for new-entrants to create alternatives to the conventional banking industry, challenging incumbents in virtually every market where they operate, and so its as much a threat as an opportunity. But its not an existential threat to financial services firms who embrace this new technology paradigm rather than fight it. The question is, who in the financial services industry will lead this revolution in a positive way? These are exciting and perilous times. Throughout history, leaders of the old paradigms have rarely embraced the new. Why didnt AT&T launch Skype, or Visa create Paypal? CNN could have built Twitter, as it is all about the sound bite, no? GM or Hertz could have launched Uber, and Marriott, Airbnb. As with major paradigm shifts which preceded it, blockchain will create winners and losers. Though opportunities abound, the risks of disruption and dislocation must not be ignored. However, occasionally, corporate leaders have the foresight and conviction to see themselves through times of great upheaval and emerge even stronger than before.

Q: What else could be transformed by this technology?

A: Well, perhaps the most enticing for business leaders everywhere is that blockchain could empower us to re-architect the corporation, one of the pillars of modern capitalism. One of the main reasons we have corporations is because of transaction costs: so long as its cheaper to organize capability inside the boundaries of a company rather than contracting on the open market, companies will get bigger. I wish this was an original idea, but it was coined by Ronald Coase, who won a Nobel prize for his pioneering work on the corporation. Henry Ford recognized this principle, which is why the Ford Motor Company had a rubber plantation, timber mill, steel plant and assembly line  it was easier and cheaper to be vertically integrated than contract in an open market. The Internet helped a little bit by dropping the cost of search, communication and coordination, but if you look at the company today, it doesnt look dramatically different from the companies of the past. It still costs a lot to contract, bargain, and enforce and police agreements between counterparties. Blockchain could change all of this. With the rise of a global peer-to-peer platform for identity, trust, reputation and transactions, we will be able to re-engineer deep structures of the firm for innovation and shared value creation. This doesnt mean smaller firms in terms of revenue or impact. To the contrary, were talking about building 21st century companies that look more like networks rather than the vertically integrated hierarchies of the industrial age.

Q: Can you give us an example of how blockchain and The Internet of Things are connected.

A: In the not-too-distant future, billions of smart things in the physical world will be sensing, responding, communicating, sharing important data, and generating, buying and selling their own electricity, doing everything from protecting our environment, charging our homes and managing our health. Cities and regions will be profoundly transformed by this revolution, as everything from public transit systems, healthcare, and power-generation stands to be disrupted. This Internet of Everything Needs a Ledger of Everything, powered by blockchain.

Consider the energy grid. Most homeowners, businesses, governments and other organizations in urban North America get their power from regulated utilities at regulated prices. Currently we have more variety in locally generated renewable energy from, say, solar panels on rooftops. The local utility captures excess power in its supply for redistribution at wholesale rates, often with considerable leakage. The consumer, who may be located across the street from a local power source, still must go through the utility and pay full retail for renewable energy generated by their neighbor. Its ridiculous. Instead, imagine each household that has the ability to generate and store electricity can enter into peer-to-peer transactions with neighbors or sell at market rate back into the grid. Millions of homes could become autonomous agents, contracting power automatically with the highest bidder. Blockchain technology is critical to all of this. With potentially millions of distributed power sources, the system needs to continuously track everything, including the ability to authenticate each node in the network  to ensure its reliability. Power generation is one of dozens of ways cities will be transformed by blockchain technology and the Internet of things.

Q: So, should people be fearful or hopeful about the potential of blockchain.

A: They should be immensely hopeful. There is perhaps nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come and blockchain could not have come sooner. Today we are caught in the grip of a troubling prosperity paradox. The economy is growing but fewer people are benefiting. Youth unemployment is stubbornly high, median incomes are slipping and new business formation is hitting multi-decade lows in the developed world. The rise of the Internet has done little to alleviate the bureaucratic bloat and inefficiencies in the Global South either, stranding trillions of dollars of dead money in the dark economy. With blockchain technology, a world of possibilities has opened to reverse all these trends. We now have a true peer-to-peer platform that enables personal economic empowerment: we can own our identitites and our personal data, we can do transactions, creating and exchanging value without powerful intermediaries acting as the arbiters of money and information. Billions of excluded people an soon enter the global economy. We can protect our privacy and monetize our own information. We can ensure creators are compensated for their IP. Rather than trying to solve the problem of growing social inequality through redistribution alone, we can change the way wealth  and opportunity  is predistributed in the first place, as people everywhere, from farmers to musicians, can share more fully in the wealth they create.

But blockchain is not a panacea for the worlds problems. Technology does not create prosperity, people do. Leadership and stewardship  everyones personal opportunity  will be required to ensure a fair, thriving and prosperous future for all.

Alex Tapscott is the CEO of Northwest Passage Ventures and Co-Author of Blockchain Revolution: How the Technology Behind Bitcoin is Changing Money, Business and the World (Penguin Randomhouse, May 10th)

Saturday in Star Touch: Can Toronto become a centre for startups? Download Star Touch Saturday for more of our Innovation Series. Available for iPad in the iTunes store and Google Play for Android tablets.

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A previously identified 17-year-old alleged to have been involved in a gang-related kidnapping last month was arrested by Toronto police in a North York apartment on Wednesday.

According to police, the kidnapping was retaliation for an ambush carried out by the Queens Drive Crips against the Young Buck Killers on April 19. Both are Toronto-based gangs.

Three adults and a 16-year-old boy were later arrested, and now face a plethora of gun and kidnapping-related charges.

Police issued two Canada-wide warrants for Lincoln Richards, 23, and the 17-year-old male in relation to the kidnapping.

Richards is still wanted by police.

The 17-year-old has been charged with three firearms-related offences, three counts of failing to comply with YCJA recognizance, kidnapping for ransom, failing to comply with a probation order, and possession of cocaine.

He appeared in court Thursday.

With files from Peter Goffin and Stephanie Werner

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Canadian Mental Health Association employees are asking if police did enough to save Andrew Loku in the moments immediately after the father of five was shot by an unnamed officer last July.

Citing surveillance video from inside the apartment complex where Loku lived and died  a building leased by the CMHA to provide affordable housing to people with mental health challenges  CMHA Toronto executive director Steve Lurie says it doesnt appear that police attempted to give Loku CPR until almost 10 minutes after the shooting.

Toronto police, however, say officers immediately began administering life-saving care, and didnt start CPR right away because Loku was still breathing.

The issue is another aspect of the high-profile police shooting death that remains secret. The public cannot know whether the watchdog investigated any concerns about police actions  or what the subject officers and witnesses told the SIU about Lokus treatment in the moments after his death  because the vast majority of the SIU directors report summarizing the watchdogs probe was censored when it was publicly released last week.

The provincial government has suggested its possible that more information could be released in this and other past SIU cases following a new review of police oversight.

Runako Gregg, a lawyer with African Canadian Legal Clinic who is representing Lokus family, said this is another example of how the lack of transparency around Lokus death creates suspicion.

These unresolved questions ultimately affect the confidence and trust in the police, he said. The SIU cannot continue to act in secrecy like this, and neither can the police. These are public bodies.

Its also not known whether Toronto police addressed any concerns about the life-saving action attempted by police following Lokus shooting in a mandatory report to the Toronto Police Services Board.

Chief Mark Saunders must, after every SIU probe involving Toronto police, conduct an internal investigation and present its findings to the board. Last week, the police board refused to release Saunders report, though legally it can be made public. The board is now reconsidering its policy against releasing such reports.

Police spokesperson Mark Pugash said allegations the officers did not do enough to save Lokus life are absolutely not true.

He said the two officers on scene when Loku was shot began caring for him immediately by checking his airway, breathing and circulation, putting him in a recovery position, tending to his wounds and calling an ambulance.

They did not initiate CPR immediately because Loku still had a pulse and was breathing, Pugash said.

He did not die immediately, which is why they did what they did. When he lost a pulse and breath, the officers themselves started CPR, but that was well along in the process, he said.

Lurie and another CMHA employee have both seen the surveillance video from inside the building on the night Loku was killed. The motion-activated security cameras were not properly functioning that night, according to the SIU, but the CMHA employees say one camera captured some of the police activity shortly after the shooting.

They say police can be seen leaning over Lokus body and turning it, but it isnt until nine or 10 minutes after the shooting, just before EMS arrives on scene, that police begin chest compressions.

Lurie says its helpful to know police did not immediately start administering CPR because Loku was still breathing. But he still hopes the issue is explored at an upcoming coroners inquest into Lokus death.

Again, it supports an open inquiry about what happened here, he said.

Jason Gennaro, spokesperson for the SIU, would not comment on whether the SIU examined any issues pertaining to the officers treatment of Loku immediately after the shooting.

The SIU will not be commenting on particular details in order to avoid potentially tainting the inquest process, he said in an email.

Loku, 45, an immigrant originally from South Sudan, was killed in July 2015 by an unnamed Toronto officer. Police arrived at Lokus apartment soon after receiving a 911 call that said Loku was armed with a hammer and threatening to kill a woman inside the building, according to the SIU.

In March, the SIU cleared the unnamed officer who shot Loku, finding he fired his weapon to avoid an imminent hammer attack.

The SIUs decision prompted heated protest by members of Black Lives Matter, who camped outside Toronto police headquarters for two weeks demanding more transparency from the SIU.

Under mounting public pressure, including an ongoing investigation by the Star into SIU secrecy, the Ministry of the Attorney General last week released part of the SIU directors report into Lokus death. Such documents, containing a detailed account of the circumstances around the death and the directors reasons, have always been kept secret, sent only to the Attorney General.

However, the highly censored version of the report  just nine of 34 pages were released  drew heated criticism from critics.

Its not really transparency. They just said, Well, we are going to decide what gets made public, said Gregg, the Loku familys lawyer.

A date has not been set for the coroners inquest into Lokus death. On Thursday, a coalition of community groups and prominent Torontonians released a joint submission to Dr. James Edwards, regional supervising coroner, asking that the inquest consider the role and impact of anti-black racism in Lokus death.

To make meaningful recommendations, it will be important to understand the prevailing police culture, training and how these impact police perceptions of Black persons and people living with mental health concerns, writes the coalition, including former Toronto police board chair Alok Mukherjee, Ontario Human Rights Chief Commissioner Renu Mandhane and others from the law and mental health communities

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A Milton child centre worker facing charges of possessing child pornography is now facing additional charges, including eight counts of sexual assault and making child pornography.

Steven Campbell, 37, who was first arrested on April 25 and charged with possessing and accessing child pornography, was an employee of the Milton Community Resource Centre, which provides a variety of services for children. He had a bail hearing the same day.

Peel Regional Police announced Thursday they had made additional charges in the same investigation: eight counts each of making child pornography, sexual assault and sexual interference. Campbell was re-arrested Thursday and is to appear in court Friday.

The new charges came from the same investigation, but Peel police couldnt confirm whether theyll be tried separately.

I think theyre going to be the same (trial), but I could be wrong. Its up to the courts, Peel Const. George Tudos said.

Campbell was fired by the centre after the first charges were laid. In a statement at the time, the centre confirmed Campbell had worked at Bronte Street School, a daycare in the resource centre building, but would have not supervised or had contact with any children.

The centre released a statement Thursday in light of the new charges.

It is distressing that we find ourselves in this situation despite our highest standards around screening and code of conduct for employees, the centre said in the statement.

The group will be holding a parent support night on May 10, but said it will not be an information night related to the ongoing police criminal investigation.

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Residents of York Region will have to fend for themselves against hordes of skunks and raccoons now that local police have said they will stop shooting injured or sick wild animals.

The practice was such a drain on resources that the York police board decided to stop responding to animal complaints, except those related to vehicle collisions, as of Sept. 1.

York Regional Police put down 80 animals last year  up from 29 in 2014  because they were injured, diseased or posed a risk to public safety, the police board said.

The significant increase is primarily due to the rise in distemper cases in raccoons, Const. Andy Pattenden told the Star.

The York Regional Police Services Board explained the policy change in a letter to the regions municipalities last week.

Police firearms are not meant to be used as primary tools of wildlife management, they wrote. In addition to being an inefficient use of police resources, the routine use of armed police officers to dispatch sick or injured animals may give rise to officer and public safety concerns.

Their decision comes after a 78-year-old man in Thornhill was wounded by a ricochet from a shotgun blast after a York police officer shot an injured deer. The man was treated in hospital and released, according to the Special Investigations Unit, a civilian oversight agency that investigates criminal charges against police. The SIU is still looking into the Nov. 9 incident.

Before killing a sick or wounded animal, York police would call local wildlife control centres to make sure there was no alternative, said Pattenden.

We would try to get (the animal) to as safe a place as possible to dispatch it, he said.

Skunks were often a challenge. Youre not going to kindly escort the skunk, which may spray you, to a safe area, he explained, so officers usually wait for the animal to move.

Once, a pair of York police officers conducted a two-hour skunk stakeout before it finally scampered to an area secluded enough to shoot it, Pattenden said.

The York police decision to stop putting down animals leaves each municipality to deal with their raccoon and skunk problems.

In Toronto, residents can call 311 to have the citys Animal Services mobile response team come to the rescue. City staff picked up about 12,800 wild animals last year. The city transfers animals that can be helped to the Toronto Wildlife Centre. Those beyond saving are euthanized.

In municipalities that don't provide this service, the animals get no response at all, said Mary Lou Leiher, a manager at Toronto Animal Services. Many of them die a more painful, slower death.

Lisa Nackan, an art therapist in Thornhill, says she had to find her own way of dealing with a dying raccoon that crawled onto her driveway last summer. She stuffed it inside a garbage bin and brought it to a vet for disposal. Shooting it would have been inhumane, she said.

I think if there is some sort of animal control that could humanely take the animal and euthanize it, perhaps. But absolutely no shooting.

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Two health workers who snooped into late mayor Rob Fords electronic health records have become the first in Ontario to be convicted under the provinces health privacy law, the Star has learned.

Mohammad Rahman, of Toronto, and Debbie Davison, of Pickering, both pleaded guilty under the Personal Health Information Protection Act (PHIPA) to willfully collecting, using or disclosing personal health information, while working at the University Health Network (UHN) Princess Margaret Cancer Centre in January 2015.

Each was fined $2,505, according to court records.

Multiple attempts by the Star to contact Davison, Rahman and their lawyers by phone, email and social media for comment were unsuccessful.

There is no evidence they used the information for anything or shared it with anyone. But under the act, looking at even a single health-care record of a patient not under ones care is a crime.

Their convictions come as changes to Ontarios health privacy act, passed in the legislature Thursday, make it easier to prosecute these types of cases and mandatory for hospitals to report privacy breaches to the information and privacy commissioner.

The new legislation comes on the heels of a series of Star investigations in 2015 that drew attention to a high number of unreported health privacy breaches and the absence of convictions under the act.

UHN spokesperson Gillian Howard said she could not discuss the individuals in question due to privacy concerns.

Its not clear whether the two are still employed at Princess Margaret or faced internal discipline after the privacy breach, which took place as Ford was being treated for cancer.

In January 2015, a high profile patient was scheduled to begin receiving radiation treatment at Princess Margaret, an agreed statement of facts for Davison obtained by the Star shows.

According to the document, the 57-year-old radiation therapist was curious and wanted to make sure that the patient was cared for and everything was okay, especially given the media storm the patient had provoked when visiting nearby Mount Sinai Hospital.

As a senior member of the unit, she felt responsibility to ensure the patient was being properly cared for. But she was not part of his circle of care when she looked at his electronic chart at two points on Jan. 5, 2015, for less than two minutes in total.

The Star was not able to obtain an agreed statement of facts providing similar details about Rahmans case.

Rahman is named as a co-author on an article in the International Journal of Radiation Oncology, which states that he was affiliated with the radiation medicine program at UHN and holds a bachelor of science degree.

Ann Cavoukian, executive director of the Privacy and Big Data Institute at Ryerson University, called the two convictions long overdue, and said the ruling will act as a warning to other health-care workers.

They broke the law. If there arent consequences, then whats to prevent others from doing it? she said.

People may think looking at private records is just snooping and no big deal, said Cavoukian, Ontarios former information and privacy commissioner.

But it is a big deal when its peoples sensitive health information.

She said she hopes the high-profile nature of the case does not send a message that we only explore these matters legally when it involves VIPs, or high-profile individuals. Everyones privacy matters.

The bill amending PHIPA, which passed Thursday, makes reporting breaches to the information commissioner and regulatory colleges mandatory, increases the range of fines and scraps the six-month time limit for beginning a prosecution.

Cavoukian applauds these changes and said the mandatory notifications will also be a deterrent to hospitals tempted to overlook breaches.

UHN spokesperson Gillian Howard said all employees sign a confidentiality letter when they join the organization and each year they get a refresher course on privacy.

The hospital also does random audits of electronic health record access.

We really raise the issue with the whole organization; its something that everybody needs to be reminded of, said Howard.

A spokesperson for the Information and Privacy Commissioner, whose office was notified of the breach by UHN in February 2015, said the commissioner has referred a total of six people on five occasions to the Ministry of the Attorney General for prosecution under PHIPA.

Caroline Goodridge was also charged under PHIPA in relation to looking at Rob Ford's medical records, but the charges against her were withdrawn in February 2016, when the court was advised "that there was no longer a reasonable prospect of conviction," a spokesperson from the Ministry of Health and Long-Term care said in an email.

Other health-care workers whose professional regulatory body found they had committed professional misconduct by snooping into hundreds and even thousands of patient files have not been convicted under the act.

So far there have been four completed prosecutions under PHIPA, including the two that resulted in convictions and one that was withdrawn, according to an emailed statement by the Ministry of Health and Long Term Care.

The other was North Bay nurse Melissa McLellan, the first person ever charged under the act. Her charges were stayed by a judge in January 2015, effectively dismissing the case, but she was found to have committed professional misconduct by the College of Nurses of Ontario after snooping into nearly 6,000 patient files.

The College of Nurses of Ontarios disciplinary panel also recently found registered nurse Mandy Edgerton had committed professional misconduct by looking at nearly 300 patient records at a Peterborough hospital over two years. Edgerton was not charged.

In an interview, Information and Privacy Commissioner Brian Beamish said snooping is a persistent issue, but changes to the act should be a significant step towards prosecuting the most serious cases.

The electronic files can contain really sensitive information, and I know the people that have had this happen, many of them feel very violated by it, he said, speaking generally.

Its not always just a stranger whos looking in these files; it could be a neighbour, it could be an ex. It could be someone who knows who you are and is looking at your health records.

With files from Olivia Carville

Clarification - May 10, 2016: This article was edited from a previous version to make clear that charges against Caroline Goodridge were withdrawn in February 2016.

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If you plan on marveling at the beautiful High Park cherry blossoms this Mothers Day weekend, prepare to be marvelously disappointed by Mother Nature. According to blossom blogger Steven Joniak, there will be no peak bloom to view this year.

Cue the womp womp womp trombone.

Joniak spearheads an annual Sakura Watch on his websitesakura being the Japanese translation for cherry blossom  and the self-proclaimed blossom enthusiast has become a reliable source in flower forecasting. After my visit to the park Thursday its pretty obvious, short of a spring miracle, there will be no full bloom this year, he said. All the sakura cherry trees seem to be going straight to leaf.

He explained there needs to be several warm days in a row in order for flowers to come out in full force. They seemed to be on track in March, but multiple cold and warm blasts have caused them to go into shock, he said. I only saw one blossom on one tree. He noted a similar scenario happened in 2005, when unseasonably cold weather killed bud growth in the advanced bloom stages.

High Park supervisor Karinthia Battig said she anticipates there will be some flowers, just a less spectacular show than usual.

She said blossoms usually start burgeoning at the end of April or beginning of May and that they will be delayed this year. There will not be a lot, but we think peak bloom will happen next Wednesday or Thursday.

Battig is looking at the situation through rose-coloured glasses. Were still hopeful. Were still waiting, she said. Only nature knows. As a consolation, there will be a native plant sale at High Park this weekend, with goodies grown in the greenhouses on site.

Joniak has been bearing the brunt of wilted hopes since posting his bloom prediction earlier this week. People are upset, he said. Its something people look forward to. Its many peoples first sign of spring.

In 1959, Toru-Hagiwara, Japans ambassador to Canada, presented 2000 Japanese cherry blossoms as a gift to the citizens of Toronto for their support of Japanese-Canadian refugees after the Second World War.

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Breaking her silence on Liberals disciplined for sexual harassment, Premier Kathleen Wynne says that was why former Niagara Falls MPP Kim Craitor suddenly quit in 2013.

When I have been faced with the issue of sexual harassment, I have led by example, Wynne said Friday in Ottawa, refusing to reveal punishment in other cases.

The departure of Craitor, now a city councillor in Niagara Falls, followed an independent investigation that found sufficiently serious misconduct, the premier added.

Craitor could not be reached for comment but was quoted in Fridays Niagara Falls Review as saying he was forced to resign over unfounded and unsubstantiated allegations of sexual harassment.

They were not true, the newspaper said, quoting an email from Craitor. The sexual harassment complaints took me completely by surprise and caught me off guard and shocked me.

Wynne said her partys human resources department received complaints against Craitor and hired an investigation firm with expertise in sexual harassment cases.

When the issues were first brought to Mr. Craitors attention, he indicated his willingness to resign his seat if his conduct was found to have been sufficiently serious, Wynne told reporters at an Ottawa hospital where she was making a funding announcement.

When the results of the independent investigation were received, I determined that action needed to be taken and Kim Craitor was asked to resign.

Craitor told his hometown newspaper in Fridays edition that the party said that it was their job to protect the premier, and that to do that I had to resign. There was never any complaint to the police, just to the party and they took care of it in their own way.

He would not reveal who made the accusations but said I do know the party paid to keep the allegations quiet.

That is false, said Wynne spokeswoman Jennifer Beaudry, adding that if employees do not want to continue in their jobs after being harassed that any severance agreement will reflect those circumstances.

Wynnes announcement capped a week of criticism from opposition parties that accused her of hiding behind a double standard in calling for Progressive Conservative Leader Patrick Brown to kick out one of his MPPs, Jack MacLaren, for vulgar sex jokes about a federal Liberal MP.

At that point, the premier had refused to reveal any details of discipline she had taken in her party, but made a point of stressing Friday that forcing Craitor to resign is how these issues are dealt with under my leadership.

Brown banished MacLaren to his riding with orders to get substantive sensitivity training and stripped him of internal positions in the Tory caucus, but he remains the Conservative MPP for Carleton-Mississippi Mills.

After Craitor was forced out, the Liberals paid an electoral price, losing his riding to New Democrat MPP Wayne Gates, who still holds the seat.

Wynne said her partys policy is to keep details of sexual harassment secret to protect victims, but noted that she decided to name Craitor publicly after a woman identified herself to the media.

The premier did not provide any other information and the Star was unable to find any published accounts of a woman coming forward about Craitor.

Wynne, who also revealed earlier this week there have been a couple of instances of Liberal MPPs taken to task over sexual harassment, said Friday, Im not going to comment on any other situations.

She first mentioned sexual harassment problems in the party in November 2014, but did not specify whether they were MPPs or staff. The admission came after Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau suspended two caucus members accused of sexual harassment.

Craitor, a three-term MPP first elected in the 2003 Liberal sweep that brought Dalton McGuinty to power, was known as a maverick and frequently clashed with his own government, fighting against hospital closures in the riding.

When Wynne announced his resignation in late September of 2013, she made no mention of anything untoward, saying I thank him for his service and wish him good luck in his future endeavours.

Craitor, who had battled cancer during his term at Queens Park, would not comment to reporters at the time but released a statement saying he enjoyed his immensely satisfying job.

That statement did not give a reason for his resignation other than noting he had just celebrated his 67th birthday. Craitor later ran for city council and told the Review he left Queens Park because he was exhausted and mentally tired.

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HELSINKIFinland could expect harsh reactions from Russia if it decided to join NATO, but would be better off doing so together with neighbouring Sweden, an expert panel told the Finnish government on Friday.

Meanwhile in Moscow, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov warned of a military-technical response if its neutral neighbours became members of the alliance, saying that Baltic countries have shown no gratitude to Moscow for letting them go in peace after the Soviet Union collapsed.

NATO supporters in non-aligned Nordic countries Finland and Sweden have been stepping up calls for membership following the Ukraine crisis and increased assertiveness by Russian forces around the Baltic Sea. Both Finland and Sweden have deepened their partnership with the alliance in recent years but have so far not sought membership, partly because of concern over the Russian reaction.

Its one thing to have neutral neighbours in the north and another to have neighbours who are members of the North Atlantic alliance, Lavrov told Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter in an interview published Friday.

Asked how Russia would react if Sweden joined the alliance, Lavrov said Moscow will of course take all necessary military-technical measures at our northern borders, since on the other side of the border there is a military-political bloc that considers Russia as a threat and is trying to contain her in every way.

Lavrov singled out Lithuania as the most aggressive, Russophobic country and said it is pushing NATO in an anti-Russian direction. He defended the actions of Russian warplanes this month as they buzzed a U.S. Navy destroyer in the Baltic Sea, saying they decided to take a look at the ship from a safe distance.

The remarks coincided with the release in Finland of a government-commissioned report on the implications of joining NATO.

Referring to Russias reactions to NATOs enlargement in the past, the report said the political and economic reactions may be strong, even harsh, notably during the transition phase. Even while stopping short of the use of force, specific counter-measures would be difficult to predict.

Both countries are concerned about Russian military activities in the region, underscored by hunts for unidentified foreign submarines in Swedish and Finnish waters, and occasional airspace violations by Russian aircraft.

In a brief conclusion, the 60-page report stresses the importance of mutual co-operation between the Nordic neighbours when decisions are made about joining NATO, saying it would be considerably more benign for Finland if the two countries joined at the same time than if Finland joined alone.

Similarly, a Swedish decision to join NATO and a Finnish decision not to join would leave Finland isolated and exposed, said the report.

The two neighbours have worked with the alliance since the mid-1990s when they joined NATOs Partnership for Peace and have actively contributed forces to NATO-led peacekeeping and monitoring missions. Also, they engage in dozens of exercises annually with alliance members and their militaries weaponry is NATO-compatible.

Visiting Helsinki this week, NATO Gen. Petr Pavel told reporters that should Finland decide to join the Atlantic alliance, its a matter of just technical procedures.

Swedish researchers say it would be even easier for Sweden to integrate.

Sweden is often referred to as the best non-NATO member or partnership country No.1, said Fredrik Doeser, from the Swedish Institute of International Affairs and National Defence University.

Joining might be easy technically, but finding the political will is more difficult.

Polls in Sweden suggest that the country is split on membership, while a majority in Finland continues to oppose membership.

Both countries have a history of neutrality. Sweden became a neutral nation at the end of the Napoleonic wars and stayed out of World Wars I and II. It has deepened its partnership with NATO in recent years, and Swedish fighter jets participated in a NATO-led air campaign in Libya in 2011.

Finland, which gained independence from Russia in 1917 after a century of being part of Czarist Empire, didnt declare itself neutral until the mid-1950s, with the memory of two bitter wars against its huge eastern Soviet neighbour hanging over it.

In Sweden, opponents of NATO membership, especially among the left and the Greens, feel the nation would lose sovereignty and would be only a minor player in the alliance. Others fear NATO might install nuclear weapons on its soil.

Swedens centre-right opposition is positive toward membership and reacted angrily to Lavrovs comments.

Our foreign and security policy is decided by Sweden, not by Russian threats, said Annie Loof, leader of the Center Party.

Karin Enstrom, the foreign policy spokeswoman for the main opposition Moderate Party, urged the Swedish Foreign Ministry to summon the Russian ambassador to explain Lavrovs words.

In Finland, NATO membership is more of a hot potato. Its not much discussed in a country of coalition governments where consensus rules. Generally, politicians talk about the NATO option, meaning that Finland has the possibility of applying for membership  someday.

Its a controversial subject and politicians are reluctant to speculate and disagree because consensus would be impossible, says Mika Aaltola from the Finnish Institute of International Affairs. And Finnish foreign policy is dominated by consensus.

He also points to fears of Moscows reaction.

Finns dont usually speculate about the possibility of war, but in the case of NATO membership they fear Russias reaction could be disastrous, he said.

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A Brazilian Supreme Court justice ruled Thursday that Eduardo Cunha, the powerful lawmaker who orchestrated the effort to impeach https://www.thestar.com/news/world/2016/04/18/brazil-vote-to-impeach-president-throws-political-landscape-into-turmoil.html President Dilma Rousseff END , must step down because he is facing a corruption trial.

The decision added to the political turmoil in Brazil, a country deeply divided over its scandal-plagued leaders. Just this week, Vice-President Michel Temer, the man preparing to take over the presidents office from Rousseff, was ordered to pay a fine for violating campaign financing limits.

The twin decisions are not expected to save Rousseffs presidency. Support for her ouster remains strong in the Senate, which is preparing to vote next week on whether to remove her from office and put her on trial over claims of budgetary manipulation.

But the decisions tarnish the men in line to take over from her. Despite his conviction, Temer is still expected to become president if Rousseff is removed by the Senate. Yet the ruling could make him ineligible to run for elected office for eight years, creating an unusual situation in which a politician who may be barred from campaigning ends up running the country.

On Thursday, the Supreme Court justice ruled against Temers powerful ally, Cunha. As the Speaker of the lower house of Congress who oversaw the vote in April to impeach Rousseff in the Chamber of Deputies, Cunha had adroitly fended off charges of taking as much as $40 million (U.S.) in bribes.

The ruling to remove Cunha, an evangelical Christian radio commentator, sidelines a top political opponent of Rousseff after much of his role in the impeachment process is done. The impeachment decision is now in the hands of the Senate, which is expected to vote against the president on May 11.

Cunha can appeal the ruling against him, and he is expected to do so. A spokesman for Temer said he would not appeal his conviction and would pay a fine of about $23,000. (Temer, 75, has already signalled that if he were to become president, he would not run for re-election.)

In the lower house, attention now shifts to Waldir Maranhao, an obscure ally of Cunha who could take over as Speaker. Like Cunha, Maranhao is under investigation on graft charges, raising the possibility that the Supreme Court could also order him to step down.

The legal clouds around Cunha and Temer raise concerns over the legitimacy of a possible government led by their centrist Brazilian Democratic Movement Party, which recently broke an alliance with Rousseffs leftist Workers Party to seek her impeachment.

The ruling involving Temer was issued Tuesday in a case before an electoral court in Sao Paulo. In that case, prosecutors were trying to increase the fine against him over campaign donations he made in 2014. The court decided against increasing the fine, but it upheld the ruling that Temer had violated campaign finance laws.

While prosecutors have determined that Temer will not face an investigation over testimony implicating him in the colossal graft scandal engulfing Petrobras, the national oil company, various politicians identified as potential ministers in Temers cabinet are battling their own corruption cases.

The figures under investigation include top allies of Temer such as Geddel Vieira Lima, a former executive at one of Brazils largest government-controlled banks; Romero Juca, a senator from Roraima state in the Amazon; and Henrique Alves, a former tourism minister.

Temer said this week that he saw no problem naming politicians who were under investigation to his cabinet, maintaining that they were innocent until proven guilty.

An investigation is just that, only an investigation, Temer said in nationally televised comments.

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NEW DELHI  After a Dhaka University professor asked a woman to remove her veil during his class, Muslim extremists called for his death, posting his personal details online along with tips on how to kill. Today, he remains under constant guard by armed police, stays mostly at home and bars his front door.

Azizur Rahman is among a growing number of political moderates and intellectuals seeking protection in Bangladesh, where at least 15 writers, activists, religious minorities and foreign aid workers have been killed in targeted attacks since the start of 2015. Islamist extremists have claimed responsibility for the killings, which have prompted some Bangladeshis to go into hiding, and others to seek asylum in the United States and Europe.

Some of the violence has taken place at Rahmans university in Dhaka, the Bangladeshi capital. Last year, secular writer and blogger Avijit Roy was hacked to death and his wife was critically injured in a savage attack on campus. In 2004, members of a banned Islamist group stabbed poet and linguist Humayun Azad at a campus book fair. He died months later.

Rahman, a psychology professor, pleaded with the government for 24-hour armed security outside his classes and at the modest campus apartment where he lives with his wife. Plainclothes policemen follow his every move around the sprawling, tree-filled open campus where he teaches five days a week.

Rahman said in an interview that he had asked the student to remove her veil because I should know whom I am teaching. . . . I told her if you show your face in the (student) identity card, you can also do so in class.

As the girl refused, the exchange was captured on a cellphone video by another student in the class. The next day, it had been uploaded onto the Facebook page of an Islamist group called Salauddiner Ghora, or The Horses of Salauddin  along with a clarion call for its followers to murder Rahman, whom they called un-Islamic.

With the video, the group also posted Rahmans photograph, personal phone number and Facebook account. It also posted a link to an online blog detailing strategies for killing someone quietly, and links to two videos on YouTube on how to cut with a knife.

Rahman said he believes extremists have had their eye on him for some time, and are capitalizing on the veil issue.

Militants and persons belonging to religion-based organizations have carried out a hate campaign against me in a planned manner, he said.

Rahman has been critical of those who opposed Bangladeshs independence from Pakistan, won through a brutal war fought in 1971. The issue has exacerbated tensions between Prime Minister Sheikh Hasinas secular government and the countrys Islamist opposition since the government set up special tribunal proceedings to prosecute 1971 war crimes. Though some rights groups and foreign governments have called the proceedings flawed, the trials have continued to convict opposition leaders and sentence them to death.

On Thursday, the Supreme Court rejected a petition from the leader of the Jamaat-e-Islami opposition party, Motiur Rahman Nizami, seeking a review of his war-crimes conviction and death sentence. Amnesty International urged Bangladesh to stay Nizamis execution and avoid stoking tensions, noting the courts decision had already triggered countrywide protests. Taking another life will just perpetuate the cycle of violence, the groups South Asia campaign director, Jameen Kaur, said in a statement.

Rahman is not the only Dhaka University teacher to receive death threats, Vice Chancellor A.A.M.S. Arefin Siddique said.

Threats from unnamed senders are nothing new, but an open declaration to kill the professor is a precise one, Siddique said. He has urged the citys police chief to be proactive in the case by going after those posting threats online.

The persons calling for murder should be arrested, Siddique said. He added that university officials are doing everything to ensure (Rahmans) security and safety.

The Bangladeshi government insists it is working to stop the attacks, but so far it has charged no one in any of the 15 killings since 2015.

Meanwhile, the brutality continues, usually by a handful of young men wielding knives or cleavers to hack their targets to death. On April 30, a Hindu tailor was murdered. The government has advised people at risk to simply lay low and try not to offend anyone.

The government says the political opposition orchestrated the attacks to stir chaos, though the opposition denies it and says it is being scapegoated. The government denies any involvement by transnational jihadist groups, though all 15 attacks have been claimed by the Islamic State group or various al-Qaida affiliates in Bangladesh.

This week Singapore announced that it had detained eight Bangladeshi workers suspected of planning attacks linked to the Islamic State group in their home country, and Bangladesh detained another five who had been deported back from Singapore for suspected IS ties.

Officer Abu Bakar Siddique, who heads the police station that registered Rahmans complaint, said he had no information about the group that had posted the threatening Facebook post, which had also praised the fatal stabbings on April 25 of two gay-rights activists, including an employee of the U.S. Agency for International Development.

This week, the Facebook account appeared to have been blocked or deactivated and was not accessible.

Among those coming to Rahmans defence is the student who refused to remove her veil.

Taposhi Rabeya, a third-year student, said she was surprised by the threats made against her professor, and that the video posted online did not fairly capture the full exchange Rahman had with his students. She said had worked out an understanding with Rahman that allowed her to continue wearing the veil in class.

I hope all will realize the truth and uphold the dignity of the teacher, and refrain from further misinterpreting the issue, she wrote.

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WASHINGTON, D.C.Donald Trump introduced a new catchphrase on Thursday. It may sound familiar to Toronto.

"I'm going to stop the gravy train," the Republican presidential nominee said at a rally in West Virginia.

"Stop the gravy train," of course, was the famously successful campaign slogan of late Toronto mayor Rob Ford, to whom Trump has sometimes been compared.

"Awesome," former Ford chief of staff Mark Towhey said on Twitter.

"OMG," wrote Toronto Councillor Josh Matlow.

"Yup, Groundhog Day," wrote former Ontario premier and MP Bob Rae.

You know when you laugh, but no sound emerges... wrote Jennifer Hollett, who was a senior campaign aide to 2014 Ford competitor Olivia Chow.

Trump used the phrase in criticizing the conservative activists behind the "Never Trump" campaign that tried to thwart him in the primary.

"You know that thing Never Trump? You know why it's Never Trump? Because I'm going to stop the gravy train for all these consultants and all of these people that are ripping off our country. It's called the gravy train," he said.

Ford died of cancer in March. Trump met him at least once, when the billionaire came to Toronto in 2012 to promote the Trump International Hotel & Tower.

Trump said then Ford "truly has a spectacular reputation." In 2013, at the height of Fords drug scandal, Trump said on Twitter, "Who would you rather have negotiating with Iran  President Obama or Toronto Mayor Ford? My money is on Ford."

Their many similarities have not gone unnoticed by Fords brother, who was also fond of the "gravy train" slogan as a councillor and mayoral candidate.

"Donald Trump is borrowing from us," Doug Ford told the National Post last year. "Rob blazed a new trail for politicians like that."

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The Internet age has yet to provide Barb Shantz with the answer she wants most.

There is no Wikipedia entry for why her son, Noah, was born with a small cerebellum. She cant Google why her 7-year-old needs a walker, while his baby brother took his first steps at just 10 months.

That was upsetting to Noah. We actually accessed psychology services, says Shantz, who lives in Ottawa. He got angry and cried and said, Not fair. It makes your heart break in half.

Noah suffers from a disease so rare it has no name. The best hope for solving his medical mystery is to identify the gene mutation responsible  by finding another patient just like him.

This other Noah could be anywhere. To find him, his doctors are searching on a new kind of Internet, the Internet of DNA.

While still embryonic, an Internet of DNA would see networks of databases connecting from around the world  allowing scientists to study massive datasets that could yield medical breakthroughs, novel drugs and new ways of diagnosing and treating patients.

If were looking to 2025, I see a kind of World Wide Web for health, a true Internet for health, which just doesnt exist today, said Dr. Tom Hudson, a leading genomics researcher and president of the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research.

What used to be looking under a microscope and someone saying yes or no is not the way of the future. We are transforming a lot of information into digital bits and that information is huge.

Just as the World Wide Web revolutionized global communications, researchers hope an Internet for sharing genetic information will transform medicine. For researchers mapping diseases, it could mean the difference between wandering through a forest to try understand its size and shape and flying over the treetops to gain a broad view.

An Internet of DNA is also the next logical step in realizing the dream of the Human Genome Project, which required billions of dollars and a decade to complete. Today, sequencing costs have dropped a million-fold and a typical lab can produce hundreds of genomes in a week.

So far, this deluge of global data has been pooling in silos, while legal, technical and cultural barriers prevent scientists from easily sharing their data troves. But the next big discovery in diseases like cancer or schizophrenia is going to stem from a study population of millions, not hundreds or thousands  far more patients than any one scientist or even country can recruit.

The stakes are high  so high that in 2013, Hudson and others formed the Toronto-based Global Alliance for Genomics and Health. The coalition, involving more than 300 institutions, is working to create standards and policies necessary for an Internet of DNA to flourish.

If nothing is done, there is a risk that balkanized systems will soon become established (as happened for electronic medical records in the United States), a significant lost opportunity to make important advances in human health, according to the Global Alliances website.

Successes from small-scale data sharing projects already hint at the thrilling potential of larger genomic networks.

In 2011, Noahs doctor, Kym Boycott of the Childrens Hospital of Eastern Ontario, contacted doctors across Canada and asked them to submit information about patients with rare and unexplained diseases.

The project, dubbed FORGE, received submissions for 371 disorders  a database that enabled Boycotts team to identify the single gene mutations responsible for 146 previously unexplained diseases.

To solve ultra-rare cases like Noahs, however, even bigger datasets are needed  bigger than even Matchmaker Exchange, which will eventually connect a dozen databases and currently represents about 20,000 patients worldwide.

Noahs genetic sequence was uploaded into Matchmaker Exchange nearly two years ago. Boycott estimated 50,000 to 200,000 sequences are needed before she finds another patient like Noah.

In infectious disease, researchers are also realizing the potential of genomic data sharing, particularly during fast-moving epidemics like Ebola or Zika.

Were on the cusp of a sea change, in terms of how quickly data can be generated during outbreaks, said Nathan Yozwiak, an associate director of viral genomics with Harvard University and the Broad Institute. Viruses mutate very quickly but we can use that against them  When you look at the sequences from multiple patients and you compare the mutations over time, you can derive a lot of information from that.

During the Ebola outbreak, Yozwiak and his colleagues sequenced virus samples from 78 patients in Sierra Leone. This confirmed the virus was transmitting person-to-person and had spread there from Guinea. It also showed where and how quickly it was mutating.

They shared their genetic sequences in a public database, even before publishing any papers, a rare move in the competitive world of academic research. The response was a deluge of emails from scientists wanting to collaborate or use the data for treatments or diagnostics they were developing.

Ultimately, the West African outbreak was a missed opportunity to learn from what could have become a massive database of Ebola genomes; in the three months after Yozwiaks group released their data, no other sequences were shared.

With Zika, however, there has been a lot more emphasis on sharing despite political barriers preventing some scientists from accessing virus samples, Yozwiak said. In Wisconsin, researchers experimenting on monkeys are sharing data in real time. And in February, a powerful group of research organizations, non-profits and academic journals announced they would share any data that could help stop the epidemic.

While the promise of genomic data sharing is lofty, many researchers warn against overhyping. More data will likely lead to new drugs and insights eventually, but scientific progress is slow and meticulous. Simply identifying a disease gene doesnt mean a cure is around the corner; the gene for Huntingtons disease, for example, was identified in 1993 but a cure remains elusive.

But Hudson believes data sharing will pave the path towards a future of precision medicine. And revelations gleaned from large data sets have already led to new cancer drugs for treating specific tumour types or mutations, he said.

Were not treating lung cancer anymore or melanoma anymore. Were treating a melanoma patient with a BRAF mutation, or a lung cancer patient with an EGFR or ALK mutation.

For patients like Noah, the databases of today wont lead to a cure or treatment in their lifetime, Boycott admits. But finding that other Noah could finally give his disease a name.

A small step for science, yes. But hugely meaningful for patients and their families.

Itll give us a bit of closure, Shantz says. And it would help the next child diagnosed with the same thing Noah has.

Saturday in Star Touch: How Artificial Intelligence is transforming medicine. Available for iPad in the iTunes store and at Google Play for Android tablets.

The challenges

Creating an Internet of DNA is far trickier than inventing the World Wide Web ever was  the inventor of HTML, for one, never had to worry about protecting patient privacy or ensuring responsible use of the data being shared. Some of the potholes on the genomic information superhighway:

Privacy, privacy, privacy

The more people have access to data, the likelier that a breakthrough will result  and that privacy could be breached. This is a central paradox for genomic data sharing and so far, efforts to ensure privacy protections have been through trial and error. But the stakes are high; your genetic code contains information not just about your health, disease risk, ethnicity and heritage, but that of your relatives, too. And there is no telling how DNA might someday be used by everyone from insurance providers to law enforcement.

But perhaps the unavoidable reality is some privacy risk will always exist. We will use our most modern technologies, well monitor, well encrypt, said Bartha Knoppers, director of McGills Centre of Genomics and Policy, who heads the Global Alliances regulatory and ethics working group. But we can never guarantee that you may not be re-identified one day. I think we just have to say that.

Governing the Internet of DNA

If a patient in Canada shares genomic information and a researcher in Japan misuses it, what are the consequences? What oversight is needed, and who is responsible? What kind of consent forms should be signed by people who volunteer their DNA  and do their relatives also need to sign?

These are among the many complex problems being deliberated by groups like the Global Alliance for Genomics and Health.

I do wake up sometimes, early or in the middle of the night, and wonder: Am I being totally realistic? admits Knoppers. This is so complex and every time you say, Oh good, weve band-aided this part of the problem  something else comes up.

Helping every country plug in

During the first month of Sierra Leones Ebola outbreak, lab workers in the city of Kenema collected blood samples from 78 patients  but it was not until those were shipped to Massachusetts that the viral genomes could finally be sequenced and analyzed.

In many countries, researchers lack the technology and expertise to sequence and analyze genetic data, let alone share it online. To ensure a truly global Internet of DNA, every nation will need the tools to contribute. This requires a democratization of sequencing technology, said Nathan Yozwiak with the Broad Institute. Sequencing should occur as close to the sample collection point as possible; we really want to empower local capacity.

In search of storage space

Its hard to overstate the sheer size of genomic data already being generated around the world. Weve come to the point where its too big to store, said Tom Hudson of the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research. He notes that a single project  the International Cancer Genome Consortium  has 89 types of cancer being sequenced in labs around the world, and that is already adding up to roughly a petabyte of data. I forget how many zeroes that is, but it would take six months for someone to download that data on the fastest university network, Hudson says.

We need to come up with cheaper and cheaper ways of storing the data and exchanging the data. Were facing huge bottlenecks, he continued. The Internet of DNA is not going to happen with todays technology.

Creating a cultural shift

Perhaps the biggest barrier to scientific sharing will prove toughest to change: research culture. In an academic reality where funding is scarce  and professional advancement depends on being the first to publish in prestigious journals  there are few incentives for scientists to share whats in their notebooks. And those who do are often stymied by their own institutions. Professors dont want to share because theyll get scooped, said U of Ts Aled Edwards, founder of the Structural Genomics Consortium. And the institutions been told to protect their intellectual property  that means excluding people from using it.

Such cultural barriers prevent not just data from being shared but everything from patient samples to molecular compounds used in experiments. The reward systems need to change, Hudson says, and the ones to change it are those who hold the power: universities, academic journals, and funders.

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The whistleblower who unleashed the worlds largest ever stash of secret documents, known as the Panama Papers, has finally spoken out.

In a 1,800-word statement titled The Revolution Will Be Digitized, John Doe takes aim at income inequality, offshore money laundering and massive, pervasive corruption.

Doe was behind the leak of 11.5 million documents belonging to Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca.

I decided to expose Mossack Fonseca because I thought its founders, employees and clients should have to answer for their roles in these crimes, only some of which have come to light thus far, Doe writes. It will take years, possibly decades, for the full extent of the firms sordid acts to become known.

In the meantime, he says, there has already been meaningful change: A new global debate has started, which is encouraging.

Unlike the polite rhetoric of yesteryear that carefully omitted any suggestion of wrongdoing by the elite, this debate focuses directly on what matters.

Since their release last month, the Panama Papers have shaken international financial foundations with high-profile political resignations and scandals, police raids and heated debate about the diversion of money from national tax coffers to offshore shell accounts.

Yesterday, U.S. President Barack Obama announced a full frontal attack on international tax evasion, citing the Panama Papers as the trigger.

In recent weeks, the disclosure of the so-called Panama Papers  millions of leaked documents reportedly revealing the use of anonymous offshore shell companies  has brought the issues of illicit financial activity and tax evasion into the spotlight, said a statement from the White House.

The Panama Papers underscore the importance of the efforts the United States has taken domestically, and the efforts we have undertaken with our international partners, to address these shared challenges.

A day before that, the Canada Revenue Agency filed a federal court application seeking an order that would compel the Royal Bank of Canada to reveal details of all clients with a connection to Mossack Fonseca.

Canadas largest bank said it will not oppose the federal court application.

In a candid affidavit filed in the application, a CRA official directly addresses a continuing tension in the debate over offshore movement of money: that the practice is legal and legitimate in many cases, and yet is often used to facilitate illegality.

It is the experience of the CRA that Canadian taxpayers who hold, directly or indirectly or beneficially, property through an offshore entity or who may carry on business through an offshore entity, may not comply with their duties and obligations under the (Income Tax Act) and may not properly report, the affidavit reads.

That grey area is richly detailed in the Panama Papers.

The prevailing media narrative thus far has focused on the scandal of what is legal and allowed in this system, John Doe writes. What is allowed is, indeed, scandalous and must be changed.

But we must not lose sight of another important fact: the law firm, its founders, and employees actually did knowingly violate myriad laws worldwide, repeatedly.

Statement from Panama Papers whistleblower The Revolution Will Be Digitized

In a written statement last month, Mossack Fonseca denied participating in illegal activities, saying that it ceases doing business with any criminals once it becomes aware of it.

The whistleblower provided the document dump to German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung last year following an online conversation that began with this message to a reporter:

Interested in secret data?

The leak includes 11.5 million records including offshore corporate names, banking records, passport copies and emails.

The newspaper shared the material with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) in Washington last year

It, in turn, orchestrated the largest ever journalistic collaboration in history involving nearly 100 media organizations in 83 countries.

The Toronto Star and CBC-Radio Canada are the two Canadian partners in the Panama Papers investigation.

For the record, I do not work for any government or intelligence agency, directly or as a contractor, and I never have, John Doe writes.

My viewpoint is entirely my own, as was my decision to share the documents with Suddeutsche Zeitung and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), not for any specific political purpose, but simply because I understood enough about their contents to realize the scale of the injustices they described.

He says he would be prepared to provide the records to law enforcement around the world, but says he fears the backlash that has befallen other whistleblowers in his position including Edward Snowden, who remains exiled in Moscow because of the Obama administrations threats to prosecute him under the U.S. Espionage Act.

Legitimate whistleblowers who expose unquestionable wrongdoing, whether insiders or outsiders, deserve immunity from government retribution, full stop, he writes.

Until governments codify legal protections for whistleblowers into law, enforcement agencies will simply have to depend on their own resources or on-going global media coverage for documents.

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After 10 years, the long-form Canadian census is back. Young Canadians, primed by a decade of digital media saturation, flocked online in droves so large we took down the website.

It makes sense  and its not just false enthusiasm as we collectively do our duty because its the law. A generation used to sharing its descriptive statistics online (finding friends, networking, dating) would intuitively understand the benefit of the census. Understanding the sociodemographic landscape helps us know and better service ourselves. And after all, thats what millennials want: a fairer and more representative social democracy.

Yet, as Canadians fill out the census, some gawk at the glaring anachronism of the gender binary, the idea that there are two mutually exclusive genders: males and females, who occupy distinct cultural, social, and sexual roles.

But we know this isnt true. The recent media awakening to transgender people (Laverne Cox, Caitlyn Jenner, Jazz Jennings) is evidence that gender variance has gone mainstream.

If we recognize men and women who identify with the genders they were assigned at birth (cisgender) and we recognize men and women who do not identify with their assigned gender (transgender), then surely we agree this difference is worth recording.

As my friend quipped, Well, theyre not asking about gender. Theyre asking about sex! His point reflects the growing awareness about gender as the patterns of behaviour and expression associated with its respective sex categories. This is good. It shows a recognition of people whose self-concepts do not match the gender assigned them at birth.

Yet, even if we set aside the assumption that transgender people identify with one gender but really have a different sex, is Statistics Canada only interested in who has which genitals? I think not. Why then has the cultural recognition of gender-variance not translated into instrumental traction among knowledge producers like Statistics Canada?

A society that recognizes gender-variance while maintaining belief in a sex/gender dichotomy is actually incoherent. Sex is not merely penises and vaginas, and gender is more than relative masculinity or femininity. Though sex continues to be understood as differences in chromosomes, hormones, sex organs, internal reproductive structures, and secondary sexual characteristics between males and females, the variability in nature is far greater than two.

Scientists increasingly accept that nature and nurture are not pitted against one another. Yes, there are some genetic and hormonal differences between boys and girls at birth, but growing XY cells into a man never happens in a vacuum. Neuroscientist Lise Eliot has demonstrated that sex differences in brains are overemphasized. Brains are not sex organs. Epigenetics shows that the environment acts on or through our genes. In short, biology is in constant interaction with the environment.

While some have argued for five sexes, even among cisgender people, sex and gender do not always align. It happens  naturally  that women assigned female at birth can have XY chromosomes or a male hormone profile. Are they not females? And indeed it happens with men. Consider Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome. By some estimates, up to 4 per cent of the population may experience such physiological variation, and a binary gender system wont see that.

Though the binary is an appealing shortcut, we have to stop seeing the type before the individual. In statistical terms, we have to stop seeing the mean before the variance. Sex differences between the average male and average female are far smaller than the variation among each. We must appreciate the unique constellation of biological and sociocultural chemistry that makes up each person.

Why then does the census only recognize two? Being able to accurately assess the size and distribution of the transgender population would allow for better health-care services and also allow us to better address hate crimes, underground economies, and disproportionate rates of incarceration. Yet, this is not an LGBTQI* issue alone. Ongoing belief in only females and males obscures variation among us. It perpetuates delusions about gender that have consequences, including the gender wage gap, unequal parental leave policies, violence towards women, and so forth.

Despite a variety of new ways to capture gender variation in the population, this simple two-step approach takes us miles further than the two-option approach of the 2016 Census:

1. Do you identify with the gender you were assigned at birth? Yes / No / Not sure / Prefer not to say

2. Please indicate your current gender: Male, Female, Non-Binary, Intersex, Other (please describe):

As the 2016 census has done with its categories for race, we must open up how we assess gender. I know it seems hard, but lets no longer pretend we cannot do better.

Spencer Underwood is a PhD student in sociology at the University of Toronto researching at the intersection of gender, family, sexualities, and critical cultural studies.

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Re: Spy agency cagey on privacy breaches, May 3

Spy agency cagey on privacy breaches, May 3

What the rest of the country calls accountability, Canadas electronic spies, the Communications Security Establishment (CSE), paints as a threat to security. Its a tried and true tactic for intelligence agencies here and abroad when public scrutiny begins to stir.

According to the Stars Alex Boutilier, Federal Privacy Commissioner Daniel Therrien is in a protracted battle with the CSE to make them comply with laws mandating the reporting of material privacy breaches by government agencies. Predictably, the CSE has played the national security card: they are above the laws everyone else follows because accountability could betray their methods to the nations adversaries.

The history of organizations in Canada that believe they are above the law is not a happy one for either citizens or the organizations themselves. Just ask the RCMP about its defunct Security Service. They were shut down after being discovered to have perpetrated a string of break-ins, acts of vandalism and other crimes out of fealty to the paranoid mission of the day during the early 1970s: defeating communism and separatism.

Doubtless, the Security Service probably wouldnt have thought too much of meddlesome privacy commissioners either, especially if reporting requirements meant exposing the scale of its nefarious activities.

Indeed, scale has always been a sore point for the CSE, too. Perhaps the number and type of material privacy breaches is a distant but somewhat reasonable proxy for the magnitude of invasive surveillance ordinary Canadians are subjected to every day on the Internet by way of metadata collection programs.

That kind of information would be far more dangerous to the CSE when it is in the hands of parliamentarians and citizens than when it is in the hands of foreign adversaries.

Brian Alexander, Mississauga

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While the Toronto public school board plans to close Sir Robert L. Borden high school this June, this fall it will open a new industrial kitchen, cosmetology lab and greenhouse at two nearby schools.

Education Minister Liz Sandals announced $2.14 million in construction funding while visiting Scarboroughs West Hill Collegiate on Thursday, part of a province-wide $137-million grant to spruce up schools that will take in students from under-enrolled ones that have closed.

Improving learning environments for our students is one of the best infrastructure investments we can make, Sandals said after visiting with Grade 9 students in a technology class alongside Scarborough-Guildwood MPP Mitzie Hunter.

Our government is proud to invest in capital projects that are bringing students and communities together, reducing the cost of underused space, and reinvesting savings back into the classroom.

Area trustee Jerry Chadwick said the renovations will bring new programming opportunities to the two schools, while allowing Borden students to continue in hospitality and cosmetology if they move to West Hill, or green industries if they choose to attend Laurier.

The schools will have 21st century learning equipment for those programs, he said.

Borden, a business and technical institute, will close at the end of the school year because of declining enrolment. Chadwick made note of its place in the community, with students offering their hairdressing and cosmetology services to locals, and how the teacher-chefs butter tarts are a huge hit with parents at ward forums.

The programs that were the most popular, well keep offering, he said.

Most of Bordens 100-plus students will transfer to West Hill or Laurier, while a handful who require extra supports will move to Bendale Business and Technology Institute, another Scarborough high school.

Construction will soon begin on the kitchen and lab at West Hill, and Laurier will be getting a greenhouse  all to be located in unused or existing classroom space.

Meanwhile, the Toronto Catholic board received funding for additions to one elementary school, as well as two brand-new schools.

A new facility will be built for two Etobicoke schools that are being merged, St. Leo and St. Louis, and the province is also opening daycare rooms in the building.

St. Bruno and St. Raymond students will be housed in a new elementary school in Trinity-Spadina, and St. Luke Catholic School will be renovated with almost $10 million in provincial funding.

In total, the government is funding 16 renovation projects and four new schools, as well as 19 new child-care rooms located in schools, which will open up 318 extra daycare spaces.

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WHERE THE MONEYS GOING

School construction and renovation projects announced for Greater Toronto boards:

Toronto District School Board:

Renovations to West Hill Collegiate (industrial kitchen for hospitality program, cosmetology lab)

Sir Wilfrid Laurier (greenhouse for green industries program)

Toronto Catholic District School Board:

Addition to St. Luke

New K-8 school building for St. Raymond, with three child-care rooms creating 50 daycare spaces

New K-8 school building for St. Leo, also with three child-care rooms/50 spaces.

Durham District School Board:

Renovations to Eastdale Collegiate

Renovations to R.S. McLaughlin Collegiate

Four new child-care rooms, creating 73 spaces, at one/both of the schools

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Associate Professor | College of Distance Education

Professor Sexton began teaching at the U.S. Naval War College in 2001 as a military professor in the National Security Decision Making Department. Upon retiring from the military in 2005, she taught as an adjunct professor for the College of Distance Education (CDE) where she taught over 850 students online before returning to campus as a civilian CDE professor in 2014. In 2018, Professor Sexton was named the program manager for online programs and is responsible for the Naval Command and Staff and electives online programs.
This outstanding book of literary history is a fine example of how engaging and trenchant academic criticism, at its best, can be. In Strange Nation, J. Gerald Kennedy constructs an incisive reading of 19th-century literature that profoundly illuminates the dark, troubling underside of American culture.

Kennedy argues that because the United States became a political entity before it had a collective identity, it had to invent its own national literature on the fly. The quest for a unifying iconography that produced the familiar George Washingtons and Star-Spangled Banners was actually a desperate attempt to paper over the paradox  ultimately unsustainable  of a nation founded on an ideal of liberty that it applied only selectively.

By analyzing books published between 1830 and 1850, Kennedy traces a hidden narrative, a subtext of strange, latent fears expressed in the counter-narratives and exposes that unsettled the well-made tales of national virtue. He finds in these tales an alternate history of the broil of suspicion, hostility, and disunity so inimical to the glorious Revolution of national myth.

[Finalists for the National Book Critics Circle award in criticism]

Although the book includes elegant interpretations of such classics as Washington Irvings Rip Van Winkle and James Fenimore Coopers The Last of the Mohicans, much of it is a deep dive into sources that are little read today. In Kennedys words, even unshapely, ill-phrased romances provide important insights into the national imaginary, and he deliberately excludes Hawthorne, Melville and Whitman from his consideration.

(Oxford University Press)

Instead, he makes Edgar Allan Poe the linchpin of his study, a focus that at first seems unlikely: What, after all, had the Europe-besotted chronicler of gothic aristocratic decay to do with the sturdy frontiersmen who defined the American ideal of heroic self-definition? Kennedy shows convincingly, however, that Poe declined to help construct a glorious narrative of the nation, instead bringing a queer eye to the strangeness that jingoistic narratives worked to conceal.

The experience of reading Strange Nation is marvelously tonic, producing that rare, exhilarating feeling of new perspectives. Intrinsically worthwhile on its own scholarly merits, a shock of recognition, of jarring topical relevance, runs through the book like an electric current. Time and time again, we are struck with passages that seem to unlock the inner meanings of our own turbulent times.

To put it bluntly, anyone who is puzzled by the rise of a certain orange-haired politician would find the phenomenon perfectly understandable after reading Kennedys book, with its observation that nationalism excites greatest vehemence when it is most uncertain of itself. Kennedys evocation of those far-off times when murderous passions stirred in hard people and a rough country was only finding its way ends up not seeming so far-off after all. It is still a strange nation.

Michael Lindgren is a writer and musician in New Jersey.
Gyorgy and Marta Kurtag Play Kurtag Budapest Music Center Records

Imagine a simple triad, its three notes sounded in succession, irregular in rhythm, as though their individual sounds were activated by a gentle breeze. Attracted by this sonic electromagnetic plate, other seemingly random pitches begin to agglomerate. At the end of scarcely two and a half minutes of music, you feel that you have experienced something profoundly beautiful, but also that your perceptions have been enhanced through the simple act of listening to it.

The piece is called Fugitive Thoughts About the Alberti Bass, drawn from a series that might best be described as a composers notebook, kept over a period of decades. Collectively titled Games, it is the work of Gyorgy Kurtag, widely considered the most important Hungarian composer since Bela Bartok. Fugitive Thoughts and another 42 pieces for solo piano or piano duet were recorded by Hungarian Radio between 1955 and 2001 and re-engineered and released by Budapest Music Center to mark Kurtags 90th birthday, on Feb. 19.

When I met Kurtag nearly 45 years ago at the Liszt Academy in Budapest, he was a strikingly tall man, his pleasant countenance and easy, deferential manner giving no hint of the passionate intensity that burned within.

The respect of his colleagues was unanimous and his pupils regarded him with a blend of dread, because of the near-impossibility of meeting his lofty standards, and adulation for all he had to impart.

Some YouTube clips convey something of the rare alchemy that results when Kurtag and his brilliantly talented wife of nearly 70 years, Marta Kinsker, play the piano together.

The longest piece recorded here is 3 minutes 19 seconds, but the vast majority last less than a minute.

These highly condensed morsels seem to contain all of music, or perhaps human imagination itself, reduced to some elemental minimum. And within each is the expressive wealth we might expect from an entire symphony or opera.

Listening to them has an uncanny effect. It as though, walking through a forest, you notice a tiny seed pod and pick it up. Suddenly you become aware that what you hold between your thumb and index finger is the genome for expressing lifes experience.

 Patrick Rucker

J.S. Bach: Cantatas for solo soprano Dorothee Mields, Michi Gaigg Carus "J.S. Bach: Cantatas for Solo Soprano" by Dorothee Mields and Michi Gaigg. (Courtesy of Carus)

LOrfeo Baroque Orchestra had not recorded any music by Johann Sebastian Bach before this new release of cantatas for solo soprano.

Under violinist and leader Michi Gaigg, this historically informed performance ensemble has focused on accompanying opera, performing regularly in several theaters in Austria, Germany, and Switzerland.

The lightness and fluidity of these performances, technically impeccable without revealing any of the considerable effort behind that perfection, make one hope that more Bach sacred works will be on the groups studio docket.

Soprano Dorothee Mieldss intonation is impeccable across the flexible range of her voice, and she has the lightness of tone for her limpid sound to hang in the air, almost evanescing into the undulating texture of the instruments on an impossibly long held note in the first aria of Ich bin in mir vergnugt (BWV 204).

While she does not sing in a truly straight tone, which can become grating on the ear, the vibrato is controlled enough so that each pitch of the vocal part is clear, even in the faster runs.

At the same time she has a dramatic ability to surprise, which makes the recitatives of the same cantata full of unexpected detours. Gaigg and her musicians turn on a dime to move with her as Bach paints each little contour of BWV 204s text, a moral cantata about the joys of humble self-contentment.

LOrfeo, which celebrates its 20th anniversary this year, gives a lithe performance of Bachs often florid parts, with a rarefied sound from just 10 string players.

The mellow transverse flute has a beautiful solo outing in BWV 204, and the oboe gives mournful voice to the sighing soul in the first aria of Mein Herze schwimmt im Blut (BWV 199).

The realization of the continuo parts is shared among lute, harpsichord and organ to subtle and varied effect.

An excellent booklet essay by Bach scholar Klaus Hofmann describes the rediscovery, by Bach scholar Michael Maul, of the last piece recorded on this disc, an aria Bach created for the 51st birthday of Duke Wilhelm Ernst von Sachsen-Weimar in 1713.

The music can be used for all 12 verses of the dedicatory poem, each of which begins with a German translation of the Dukes motto, Everything with God and nothing without him. Mields sings just four verses, with slight variations of instrumentation on each one.
Andrew Litton returns every other year to conduct the National Symphony Orchestra, where he once assisted Mstislav Rostropovich. This time it was with a Russian program, one part showy treacle and two parts epic bombast, heard last night in the Kennedy Center Concert Hall.

The last time the NSO played Shostakovichs 11th symphony (The Year 1905), in 2005, it was one of the high-water marks of the tenure of Leonard Slatkin. It is a terrifying ride, a fist-clenching musical description of the Jan. 9, 1905, massacre carried out by the czars troops. In an unannounced lecture by Litton, accompanied by musical examples played by the orchestra, Litton illustrated the Russian songs quoted by Shostakovich. These tunes are as recognizable to most Russian ears as any number of American patriotic songs would be to an American listener.

Where Litton went wrong was to mention widely discredited theories that Shostakovich was not really celebrating this prelude to the Soviet Revolution but making veiled references to the Hungarian uprising in 1956. Although the events in Hungary occurred around the time of the premiere of the 11th symphony, created for the 40th anniversary of the Russian Revolution, scholar Laurel Fay has shown that there is no evidence that Shostakovich had that event in mind at all. If there is any argument about that connection, it is a debate, she said, that was engaged posthumously.

On the contrary, the symphony won Shostakovich the Lenin Prize, and Fay has carefully documented the speeches, articles and testimonials that created the public image of Shostakovich as a sincerely reclaimed loyalist, a cultural pitchman for the causes of the Communist Party and Soviet state by this point in his life. She even refers to the exasperation expressed by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in his book The Gulag Archipelago that Shostakovich had not, like him, heard a prisoner in a Soviet concentration camp sing the revolutionary song Listen! before he had used it in the 11th symphony. Either he wouldnt have touched it at all, Solzhenitsyn writes, or he would have expressed its modern instead of its extinct significance.

Be that as it may, the events of the Bloody Sunday uprising were personally significant for Shostakovich, for his father was apparently among the workers involved in the demonstration in the square that day. Litton and the NSO did the work justice, from the muted tension of the first movement, evoking the frigid winter of that year, to the fast and furious second movement, which grew into an implacable, anxious howl. Special commendation goes to the always polished solos from the muted trumpets, the groans of the contraforte and other low reeds, and the sickening chromatic slides of the trombones.

If the interpretation was not exactly brilliant, it had something to do with a slight slackening of intensity in the funeral march of the third movement. The fourth movement had a keening English horn solo, played with customary beauty by Kathryn Meany Wilson, the last moment of reflection before the works clamorous conclusion.

The debut of Vadim Gluzman came unfortunately in yet another performance of the Tchaikovsky violin concerto, which the Israeli violinist has recorded with Litton and the Bergen Philharmonic. It is a piece all too easy to make no impression in, since it is so often played, last heard from the NSO just last year. Gluzman produced a beefy sound on the G string and tended to slather on the rubato awfully thick. He took the finale with reckless velocity and tended to favor fierce immediacy over technical polish, so that the intonation at the top end of the instrument was not always on the mark and the high flautando notes more razor-sharp than fluty. The audience naturally demanded an encore, the Gavotte en Rondeau from Bachs E major partita.
Dear Amy: I have a beautiful wife and two children who are my everything.

My wife has been dealing with mental illness (depression and anxiety) for almost 10 years.

She is a stunning person inside and out, but for the past two years her illness has affecting the way the rest of us live. Her medication has made her completely numb to the children and to me.

I do the best I can for my kids, as she works, sleeps and goes to her gym.

I am all for her wanting and needing to feel better mentally and physically, but she has totally disconnected with the rest of us, and I am here as a roommate to cook and clean when I get home from work.

I am in this relationship only because of my children, but I struggle with leaving her and worry about what will happen to her.

What will my kids think? Is it wrong to want more for myself and for my children  because I feel guilty about that every day.

Id appreciate your take on this.

Lonely

Lonely: If your wife is able to work, sleep and go to the gym, then she skews toward the functioning part of the spectrum, and thats a good thing.

All the same, some medications do seem to severely dull a persons affect, creating a blurry distance in relationships and a lack of intimacy.

It is hard to tell from your question what, exactly, your intentions are.

You should not leave your children in the custody of someone who cannot take care of them. If you leave the marriage, retain custody of your children, and make it very easy for them to safely spend time their mother, then your children would probably think that you are a dad who is trying very hard to take care of them.

Before choosing to leave your marriage, you should explore every possibility to see what you two could do to change the dynamic, while safeguarding your wifes health. She should invite you to meet with her prescribing doctor (along with her) to discuss her overall treatment, or any options she might have to change medication.

Dear Amy: This is awkward, but I have a friend who I mainly know on social media. He is a very cool person, and his posts are provocative and interesting.

Starting about a year ago I noticed that he seemed to hit some hard times. He was very transparent about his struggles and started crowdsourcing solutions. Mainly, I like it when people do this and, of course, I pitch in with my opinion, ideas or solutions when I can.

He transitioned from asking for ideas to asking for help. Sometimes it was requests such as asking people to come help him cut and stack wood; he also asked for help with some car repairs. His social media friends even helped to find a new and more affordable home for him and his family.

I am genuinely happy for him because he seems to have marshaled the power and collective talent of the crowd to solve problems.

Recently, however, I feel he took things too far when he asked his social media friends for money to purchase a special breed pet. He asked for travel money, money to buy the pet and money for the animals shots and fees.

What do you think of this? I feel this person has finally gone too far, but I dont know how to respond. Should I reach out privately, publicly or not at all?

Socially Awkward

Socially Awkward: If the request is made publicly  to friends, friends of friends and anyone who cares to share this persons post  then the response can also be public.

Given the circumstances you describe, where this persons requests seem to be escalating while at the same time also becoming somewhat more trivial, it would be appropriate for you to respond to the request, Our local shelter can introduce you to a nice animal for adoption, for much less cost.

Dear Amy: I found your advice to Estranged Daughter to be so insightful  it actually brought tears to my eyes. Wanting  but not having  a healthy relationship with a parent is so incredibly painful.

Also Estranged

Also Estranged: My response to this letter might have contained extra depth because, like you, I have been there. Personal growth comes from stating your own needs and expressing your hearts desire, and then accepting the outcome  even when it is disappointing.

Amys column appears seven days a week at washingtonpost.com/advice. Write to Amy Dickinson at askamy@tribpub.com or Ask Amy, Chicago Tribune, TT500, 435 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago, Ill. 60611.
One of President Obamas top national security advisers led journalists to believe a misleading timeline of U.S. negotiations with Iran over a nuclear agreement and relied on inexperienced reporters to create an echo chamber that helped sway public opinion to seal the deal, according to a lengthy magazine profile.

Ben Rhodes, the deputy national security adviser for strategic communications, told the New York Times magazine that he helped promote a narrative that the administration started negotiations with Iran after the supposedly moderate Hassan Rouhani was elected president in 2013. In fact, the administrations negotiations actually began earlier, with the countrys powerful Islamic faction, and the framework for an agreement was hammered out before Rouhanis election.

The distinction is important because of the perception that Rouhani was more favorably disposed toward American interests and more trustworthy than the hard-line faction that holds ultimate power in Iran.

On Friday, White House press secretary Josh Earnest disputed the notion that there was anything misleading about the administrations advocacy of the agreement.

I havent seen anybody produce any evidence that thats the case, he said at his daily briefing. I recognize there might be some people who are disappointed that they did not succeed in killing the Iran deal. Maybe these unfounded claims are the result of sour grapes. The truth is, the administration, under the direction of the president, engaged in an aggressive campaign to make a strong case to the American people that the international agreement to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon enhanced the national security of the United States.

White House press secretary Josh Earnest addressed claims that one of President Obama's top security advisers, Ben Rhodes, promoted misleading information about the Iran deal. I havent seen anybody produce any evidence that thats the case, Earnest said. (White House)

Rhodes, 38, said in the article that it was easy to shape a favorable impression of the proposed agreement because of the inexperience of many of those covering the issue.

All these newspapers used to have foreign bureaus, he said. Now they dont. They call us to explain to them whats happening in Moscow and Cairo. Most of the outlets are reporting on world events from Washington. The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old, and their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns. Thats a sea change. They literally know nothing.

Rhodes set up a team of staffers who were focused on promoting the deal, which apparently included the feeding of talking points at useful times in the news cycle to foreign policy experts who were favorably disposed toward it. We created an echo chamber, he told the magazine. They [the seemingly independent experts] were saying things that validated what we had given them to say.

The manager of the White Houses Twitter feed on Iran, Tanya Somanader, said one reporter, Laura Rozen of the Al-Monitor news site, became my RSS feed. She would just find everything and retweet it.

Rozen, in an email, said she does not know Somanader and that David Samuels, the author of the magazine piece, did not ask her about the staffers claim before publishing his story. As I read it, [Somanader] says my Twitter feed was a source of info for her . . . Samuels seems to mischaracterize that to say the opposite.

She said she has had a long interest in U.S. policy on Iran and covered over 20 rounds of the Iran nuclear deal negotiations over four years. I do retweet lots of info, from lots of sources  including, she noted, the Russian Ministry of Defense, which I hardly expect most to take at face value or as an endorsement. She maintained that her coverage of the Iran nuclear diplomacy was certainly not done as a favor to or in support of any administration.

Rhodess assistant, Ned Price, told the newspaper that the administration would feed color  background details  to their compadres in the press corps, and the next thing I know, lots of these guys are in the dot-com publishing space, and have huge Twitter followings, and theyll be putting this message out on their own.

In the article, Rhodes speaks contemptuously of the Washington policy and media establishment, including The Washington Post and the New York Times, referring to them as the blob that was subject to conventional thinking about foreign policy.

We had test-drives to know who was going to be able to carry our message effectively, and how to use outside groups like [the anti-nuclear group] Ploughshares, the Iran Project and whomever else. So we knew the tactics that worked, Rhodes says. Speaking of Republicans and other opponents, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Rhodes adds that he knew we drove them crazy.

In the piece, he also casts doubt on the moderate nature of Irans regime: I would prefer that it turns out that Rouhani and [Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad] Zarif are real reformers who are going to be steering this country into the direction that I believe it can go in, because their public is educated and, in some respects, pro-American. But we are not betting on that.

Rhodess boss, President Obama, has been a strong and consistent advocate for the agreement with Iran, which requires the country to curtail its nuclear program  notably its ability to produce fissile material that could be used in nuclear bombs  in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions. He reinforced the misleading administration timeline in announcing the agreement last July. Today, after two years of negotiations, the United States, together with our international partners, has achieved something that decades of animosity has not, he said then.

Rhodess freewheeling and cynical comments reminded several White House and national security reporters of an infamous 2010 story in Rolling Stone magazine in which Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, and aides mocked civilian government officials, including Vice President Biden. McChrystal apologized for the comments but later tendered his resignation, which Obama accepted.

The Times article notes that Rhodes is a published short-story writer and aspiring novelist who is a skilled storyteller.

He is adept at constructing overarching plotlines with heroes and villains, their conflicts supported by flurries of carefully chosen adjectives, quotations and leaks from named and unnamed senior officials, Samuels wrote. He is the master shaper and retailer of Obamas foreign-policy narratives.


Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa at the Broadway restaurant Sardis. His new musical American Psycho just opened in New York. (Jessica Antola)

Whats the best way to tell the tale of a D.C. kid who grows up to live his showbiz dreams  TV? Comic book? A splashy musical?

In his multi-platform career, the bicoastal Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa is juggling all three. Most recently, he has been shooting a new pilot based on the Archie comics in Vancouver, B.C., at least during the week. Weekends have been dedicated to shepherding the glossy, bloody new musical version of American Psycho to Broadway, where it opened April 21.

The schedule is intense, Aguirre-Sacasa says over lunch in New York after one of his red-eye flights from Canada.

Even so, the tall, cheerful Aguirre-Sacasa seems to have lost none of the eager edge that marked him as an unusual playwright  genre-oriented and darkly funny  back when he was trying out scripts on his home turf at D.C.s Source Theatre. In 2001, his sci-fi fable The Muckle Man made an unexpected splash, and in 2009, his 1980s-tinged adaptation of The Picture of Dorian Gray premiered at the Round House Theatre.

His writing credits since then have ranged from TVs Glee and Supergirl to the reboot of the calamitous Julie Taymor-U2 musical Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark. Since 2014, Aguirre-Sacasa has also been the chief creative officer of Archie Comics, which explains Riverdale, the pilot he wrote and is executive-producing with Greg Berlanti (Arrow, The Flash, The Mysteries of Laura).

How do the Archies connect to American Psycho, the controversial 1991 Bret Easton Ellis novel about a materialistic Wall Street slasher? For Aguirre-Sacasa, everything is related.

Im all over the map talking about these things, he says. The Archies have moved into the 21st century: Riverdale is conceived with a Twin Peaks tone, and Aguirre-Sacasa has created a zombie/horror series for the gang called Afterlife. The horrific American Psycho came his way because of Dorian Gray; it features a thumping club score by Duncan Sheik and stars Benjamin Walker as the preening murderer Patrick Bateman.

[American Psycho, the musical, has more frills than chills]

Dorian Gray is such a precursor to Patrick Bateman, says Aguirre-Sacasa. He was obsessed with fashion, society, good looks and youth. Hes obsessed with art in the way that Patrick Bateman is obsessed with pop art. And, hes, you know  he flashes a fleeting, sinister smile  a killa.

His wit is really in tune with Brets, says Rupert Goold, who directed the 2013 American Psycho debut in London and now on Broadway (where the reviews have been bloody  Slick and tedious, Peter Marks declared in The Washington Post). Its literary, caustic at times and able to embrace a pulpy kind of camp.



Dave Thomas Brown, Theo Stockman, Benjamin Walker, Drew Moerlein, Jordan Dean and Alex Michael Stoll in the Broadway musical American Pyscho. (Jeremy Daniel)

The widely spaced professional dots connected pretty quickly for Aguirre-Sacasa, 43, even though he wasnt sure what he wanted to do growing up in Washingtons Spring Valley neighborhood. His mother worked in a bank, and his father at the World Bank before becoming Nicaraguas ambassador to the United States. The younger Aguirre-Sacasa went to Georgetown Prep, Georgetown University, then to McGill University in Montreal for a masters degree in English literature.

Back in Washington, Aguirre-Sacasa worked in a law office as a filing clerk, wrote for City Paper and was even the Shakespeare Theatres press rep for a stretch. One of playwright Paula Vogels famous one-day boot camps at Arena Stage persuaded him to get serious about writing, so he signed up for Yales graduate program.

These were life-changing things, he says. Boot camp with Paula. David Carr at City Paper saying, Youll be better at creative writing. I was terrified to tell [Shakespeare artistic director] Michael Kahn I was leaving, and he said, Its time. Even that benediction meant a lot to me.

Aguirre-Sacasa wrote short plays for Source with such punchy titles as Bride of Bigfoot and Say You Love Satan. Before he was finished at Yale, he had an agent and a writing commission from the respected Manhattan Theatre Club.

He moved to New York to start a residency with Manhattans Second Stage Theater, and at the same time, Marvel Comics invited him in. It was 2003, just before Marvel morphed into a movie-making machine.

They were looking to bring new blood into the comic-book- writing ranks, Aguirre-Sacasa says. They were looking for novelists, screenwriters and journalists who were clearly fanboys.

Aguirre-Sacasa got noticed by Marvel thanks in part to the Archies. An assignment during Vogels boot camp was to write about two things that dont go together, so he mashed up the Archies  his favorite as a comics-obsessed kid  with the killers Leopold and Loeb. What if Archie fell in with those young psychos and tried to stop their crime? The resulting play prompted the Archie corporate office to send a cease-and-desist letter; Aguirre-Sacasa took the opportunity to say hed love to work for them.



An Afterlife with Archie comic from Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa and Francesco Francavilla. (Courtesy of Archie Comics)

A Marvel Comics recruiter heard about the Archies kerfuffle, and also liked the genre elements in the Muckle Man script. Soon Aguirre-Sacasa was writing a Fantastic Four comic to support the big new movie.

He kept a foot in Washington as Rorschach Theatre staged his 2007 Tempest riff, Rough Magic, and then television hunted him down. This was when L.A. was really cherry-picking playwrights, Aguirre-Sacasa says. He wasnt interested: I was really snooty about it. But he went to California to interview with the Big Love team, which led to an offer he advised his agent to refuse. Almost instantly it felt like a mistake, and Aguirre-Sacasa begged his agent to somehow allow him to go back and say yes.

I knew you were going to change your mind, she told him.

After three years in Los Angeles with Big Love, Aguirre-Sacasa returned to New York  and the phone rang. The humongous Broadway musical Spider-Man was in trouble. Would he help rewrite it?

While waiting for the contractual dust to settle before starting the Spidey re-weave, he returned to L.A. and took a meeting with Glee creator Ryan Murphy about a top-secret project called American Horror Story. At the end of the meeting, Murphy said, By the way, do you like musicals?

Aguirre-Sacasa replied, I love musicals. In fact, I may or may not be working on Spider-Man. 

A week later the offer came  not for American Horror Story, but for Glee.



Roderick Hill (as Dorian Gray) and Sean Dugan (as Harry Wotton) in Round House Theatres 2009 production of The Picture of Dorian Gray. (Danisha Crosby)

The way one thing leads to another for Aguirre-Sacasa is perpetually strange, though former Round House artistic director Blake Robison says that it all makes sense. (Robison produced Aguirre-Sacasas Abigail 1702  a sequel to Arthur Millers The Crucible  at the Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park.)

A Carrie remake with Julianne Moore? Stephen Kings The Stand as a comic book? Why not? Hes the go-to guy, Robison says of Aguirre-Sacasas shape-shifting, because he holds that idiosyncratic place in the industry.

In Aguirre-Sacasas mind, stories and characters are ripe for adapting and expanding, naturally hopping boundaries. Yet the process is always familiar.

Even though Spider-Man was this $70 million machine, it was the exact same job I had playwriting and on Big Love,  Aguirre-Sacasa says. Rewriting, cutting, punching up jokes, trying to build the connection between characters, trying to land story and dialogue.

Next up is a musical of Magic Mike with composer Tom Kitt and lyricist Brian Yorkey, the team behind Next to Normal and If/Then. (Aguirre-Sacasa says its a prequel of sorts to the first Magic Mike movie.) Hes working on a play titled Press the Flesh, which he describes as a gay Glengarry Glen Ross, dealing with cutthroat Hollywood agents. His fingers are crossed that Riverdale will get picked up as a series.

He follows his passions maybe more than anyone I can think of, Robison says, explaining the rare variety of Aguirre-Sacasas projects.

Yeah, Aguirre-Sacasa says with fanboy enthusiasm about all the doors that keep opening, I hope this is the life!

American Psycho Now playing at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre, 236 W. 45th St. Visit telecharge.com or call 212-239-6200.


Walter E. Fauntroy celebrates 50 years as pastor of Washingtons New Bethel Baptist Church in 2009. Behind him and his wife, Dorothy, are photos from his two decades as the Districts delegate to Congress. (Melina Mara/The Washington Post)

Walter E. Fauntroy was worried about spies. The renowned civil rights figure, who had left the District in 2012 amid mounting financial and legal troubles, was living in the United Arab Emirates and believed that his emails were being wiped out by American intelligence officers assigned to block his outgoing messages, according to dozens of emails obtained by The Washington Post and acknowledged as authentic by his attorney.

So Fauntroy began using an alias email address but still signed his messages with his real name or The Congressman  a reference to his nearly two decades as the Districts delegate to the U.S. House of Representatives.

In December 2014 from the Persian Gulf region, under the email address Shahid Sarkar, Fauntroy wrote to 20 friends and relatives and asked for help: Find wealthy people to lend him $105,000. He needed the money, he said, to stave off foreclosure on his Northwest Washington home and to finance his nascent humanitarian project: establishing emissions-free power plants in poor parts of the world.

You should know that, for me personally, the SAD FACT IS that if we do not launch our Initiative . . . the last financial asset that I own  My Family Home for the past Forty-two Years will be Lost to Foreclosure and my wife, my two children and my infant Grandson will be Homeless on the streets of the District of Columbia, Fauntroy wrote. I am asking you to help find me a Ram in the Thicket of a Spiritually Mature individual or group NOT to GIVE us $105,000 but to simply Provide us a Bridge Loan in that amount.

Fauntroy, now 83, didnt find anyone to lend him the money. But the effort reveals the downward spiral of a respected activist and leader in the nations capital.

Walter Fauntroy on what he learned from his campaign manager during his 1970 campaign for U.S. House delegate from the District. (Christina Lee/The Washington Post)

Fauntroy, a pastor at New Bethel Baptist Church for 50 years before retiring in 2009, helped the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. plan the 1963 March on Washington. Fauntroy was a founding member of the Congressional Black Caucus and served as its chairman in 1980. But his political career came to an end in 1990 when he ran for D.C. mayor after Marion Barry was arrested on drug charges. Fauntroy lost the Democratic primary to Sharon Pratt.

[Walter Fauntroys worrisome absence comes amid legal, financial problems]

Yet in the four years since he departed on a trip overseas and hasnt returned, Fauntroy has struggled to pay off debts, ignored an arrest warrant after being accused of writing a bad check, sought a dubious and unsuccessful business deal with a man who once pleaded guilty to wire fraud, and left his wife of 58 years, Dorothy Fauntroy, in a precarious financial state.

His friends and former colleagues have expressed concern about his mental health.

Im a lawyer, not a mental-health professional, his attorney, Johnny Barnes, said in an interview. But he doesnt seem to be himself.

Barnes and others were dismayed by a 2015 photo of a gaunt, frail Fauntroy taken by someone in the UAE. He clearly has a need for dental work, Barnes said. And he was never one to go without a tie. Hes lost weight.



Fauntroy looks gaunt in this 2015 photograph taken in the United Arab Emirates. (Obtained by The Washington Post)

Fauntroy poses for a portrait in his office in 2011. (Nikki Kahn/The Washington Post)

Fauntroy could not be reached for this article.

Last year, Fauntroys friends mounted an effort to raise money to help Dorothy, now 81, pay the mortgage on their Crestwood home, buy a washing machine and pay for car repairs. And there have been efforts to persuade Fauntroy to come home.

In 2014, Barnes said a mutual friend who was traveling to Dubai planned to meet Fauntroy at the airport, give him some money and urge him to fly home.

He agreed to meet that person, Barnes said, but when she landed, he didnt appear.

Barnes and Fauntroy also emailed about the prospect of former defense secretary William Cohen visiting him at the Dubai airport. The rendezvous didnt happen, and Cohen, through a spokeswoman, said he does not recall being approached about meeting with Fauntroy.

Barnes is no longer sure if Fauntroy is in Dubai or somewhere else. He said that Fauntroy stopped by the U.S. Consulate there three times in 2014 and that officials told him that Fauntroy did not want to return to the United States. When Dorothys attorney checked on his status again more recently, consulate officials reported back in January that they had no information on whether Fauntroy was in the UAE.

The State Department declined to comment for this article, citing Fauntroys privacy.

Fauntroy and Barnes last spoke earlier this year when Barnes told his client that a D.C. judge needed to appoint a conservator who would divvy out cash from his bank account to his wife and sign other legal documents. Fauntroy told his attorney, Do what you have to do, Barnes recalled.

[Walter Fauntroys long, unexplained absence hasnt shaken his wifes faith]

Dorothy Fauntroy has said in interviews with The Post that she knows little about her husbands activities overseas but bears no anger toward him for their financial difficulties. The couples grown children, Marvin and Melissa Alice Fauntroy, did not return calls seeking comment.

Fauntroy moved to the UAE because he believed that his friendship with a local prince could yield the money to finance his humanitarian projects, according to Sanyo Ward, a former employee of Fauntroys nonprofit group who kept in frequent touch with him. But Fauntroy wound up sleeping in a hostel, on a park bench and, at one point, the home of a family whose children he agreed to babysit in exchange for cash, Ward said.

During his years abroad, Fauntroy has repeatedly emailed a dozen-plus friends, colleagues and relatives, seeking money and peddling various conspiracy theories. He sounded alarms about Jews; about what he called the Four Aristocratic Banking Families and their ungodly management of the financial affairs of the world; about alleged payments of $100 billion to U.S. presidents after they complete each term in office.

He said it was Jews who run the world and who run the banking system, Ward said. Hed get so hostile if you challenged his mental abilities. Id say, Walter, are you sure youre okay? Hed say, My dear, thats insulting. 

Beginning to worry

Walter Fauntroys suitcase was packed, and he was hurrying to catch a flight overseas.

It was January 2012, and a bench warrant had just been issued for his arrest in Maryland. He had failed to appear and answer charges that he wrote a bad check for $55,000 to a caterer for an ill-fated inauguration ball he had planned in 2009 for President Obama. He told his wife that he was leaving on a mission to build a school in Africa, court records show.

Ward, who saw him at his home just before he left the country, described him as frantic.

He said they wanted to put him in jail for 12 years, Ward said. He said, They want me to die in prison and that people were trying to kill him. He pretty much dashed out of town.

Ward, now 39, had been working for Fauntroys embattled nonprofit group, Fallen Soldiers, the sponsor of the inaugural ball. But their relationship had grown strained.

Two months before he left the United States, Ward filed assault charges against Fauntroy in Montgomery County, Md., claiming that he tried to run her over in a parking lot across from the DoubleTree hotel in Bethesda. Fauntroy was arrested for failing to show up at a hearing, court records show, but prosecutors dropped the case after Ward decided not to pursue it.

Once he was abroad, Fauntroy wanted to build emissions-free power plants for poor people that would convert waste into electricity in remote parts of Africa and the Middle East, according to interviews with his business partners and emails from Fauntroy that were provided to The Post.

He started a nonprofit that would manage the projects called AA GIFTS: African American Global Initiative Fostering True Sustainability.

But he alarmed his email recipients by often sending manifestoes railing against the 1% Cabal, which he defined as The Rulers of the Darkness of this World, responsible for the assassinations of Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X and his friend Martin Luther King Jr.



Fauntroy speaks with Coretta Scott King at a ceremony in 1988. (Lucian Perkins/The Washington Post)

Fauntroy forwarded lengthy articles headlined Six Jewish Companies Control 96% of the Worlds Media, decrying the number of American Jewish media owners, and another that was titled How BAD the Jewish Stranglehold is now in America.

His attorney was startled to read those messages. All of those statements are inconsistent with his faith and with his interactions with all religions and ethnic groups for as long as Ive known him, Barnes said.

[Timeline: Walter Fauntroys milestones]

Leslie Dean Price, the founder of the technology company Equitech International, which holds the patents for the power plant Fauntroy wanted to finance, said the former congressmans emails concerned him.

Mentally, he was doing things that didnt make sense, said Price, 91, the former university architect at Georgetown. He was trying to get money, but he was running ahead and doing his own thing and not touching base back here. He had his own agenda. We were beginning to worry about his mind  whether he flipped.

My mounting bills

Back home, his familys finances were collapsing.



The Northwest Washington home of Walter and Dorothy Fauntroy. (Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post)

By May 2014, the Bank of New York had filed to foreclose on the Fauntroys longtime home, citing more than $146,000 in mortgage debt. Later that fall, over numerous emails, Fauntroy pleaded with his friends and other contacts to fund AA GIFTS or pay off his debts.

In early December 2014, Fauntroy wrote Ward, asking her to call his daughter every day on his behalf until this crisis is over.

It troubles her deeply when she cant [hear] my voice every day. I have invested so much fatherly love in her over the years that she gets depressed when she doesnt hear a word for weeks from me, Fauntroy wrote.

To avert foreclosure, Fauntroy tried to finesse a deal with a Wyoming-based limited liability company, Sceptre Trust Fund. The fund offered to arrange a $12.5 million private grant to Fauntroys AA GIFTS if his nonprofit wired $55,000 to a Sceptre-controlled U.S. bank account, according to Fauntroys broker, Zach James, who lives in North Carolina.

Sceptres trustee, Alan Irish DArcy, issued a memo Dec. 23, 2014, to James, spelling out the deals details and important instructions: Parties hereto will destroy any and all documents connected with this transaction.

Fauntroy was so excited about his anticipated windfall that the next day, he wrote his daughter a long letter that he emailed only to what he called his team, but not to her.

Dear Melissa, As you know by now, I will have to miss another Christmas and New Years Day Holiday with you, Marvin and Mommy . . . I can say to you for certain that I will be coming home to see you, Mommy and Marvin in mid-January but also hold and kiss my new Prince of a Grandson. . . 

He told his daughter that he had been awarded a $50 million Humanitarian Grant to launch his AA GIFTS initiative and that she would enjoy part of the riches. He promised her a salary of $36,000 that shed earn from managing the delivery of automobiles to the nonprofits staff. Also, AA GIFTS would rent her a three-bedroom townhouse in wealthy Potomac and then purchase an estate.

Let me say this about Potomac, Md. You want to rear [my grandson] and enroll him in the Best Schools that America has to offer, Fauntroy wrote. We are on our way to the Best Years of Our Lives, Darling. Love you, Darling. Keep the Faith!!! Daddy.

Barnes said he did not pass along Fauntroys letter to Melissa, and its unclear if she has read it.

Ultimately, Fauntroy couldnt come up with the money for the grant. Whether he knew it or not, he avoided a deal with a man who had been convicted of a felony. In 2010,DArcy, Sceptres director, pleaded guilty in federal court in South Carolina to two counts of wire fraud after promising undercover FBI agents posing as investors that they would receive $250 million over 10 months if they initially invested $50 million with his company, court records show. DArcy was sentenced to three years of probation.

In an interview, DArcy, 78, denounced his conviction as the result of entrapment.

He said he didnt know or remember Fauntroy because he had dealt with his broker, James. He emphasized that the proposed agreement never came to fruition and that Fauntroys nonprofit wouldnt have received the $12.5 million all at once, but instead over a period of time. Such deals, DArcy said, are regulated very heavily.

But some of Fauntroys friends, aware of his attempted financial deals, were alarmed.

I hope that Walter will find other sources of funding that will not create more troubles for an already almost hopeless situation that surrounds him now, one friend, Antonio Betancourt, wrote in a January 2015 email to a few of Fauntroys colleagues.



Sen. Robert Kennedy and Fauntroy tour an area in Northwest Washington devastated by the 1968 riots after the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. (United Press International)

Not only was Fauntroy failing to woo donors, but later that month, he was struggling to access his bank funds. In an email to James in mid-January 2015, Fauntroy said he wandered the streets of Ajman, just north of Dubai, looking for Citibank offices after an ATM ate his debit card.

For two days, I walked for hours to places people remembered seeing a Citibank location only to return exhausted, having seen no such office at the locations to which I was [directed], Fauntroy wrote. Between my mounting bills at the Internet cafes that I have to use to get access to a computer, paying rent for sleeping place on the floor of this [hostel] and eating on credit at the one restaurant that would feed me on that basis, I had no money to ask a taxi cab to find the place.

Fauntroy said he was later told that he needed to order a new ATM card.

A good man

The next month, two friends in Texas, Jimmy and JoAnne Moriarty, came up with a plan to help Fauntroy. The oil technology executives  who had met Fauntroy in Libya years earlier  would gift him about 40,000 Iraqi dinars. The couple were convinced that the currency would be revalued at a high exchange rate, ultimately netting Fauntroy as much as $80,000.

Hes a good guy, and he was beaten up by the system. He really is a good man, said Jimmy Moriarty, whose business was facing its own financial difficulties. If we could have sent him real money, believe me  we would have done that.

They said they sent the dinars to Ward so she could one day exchange them for U.S. dollars and send the windfall to Fauntroy. But in early March, Jimmy Moriarty emailed Fauntroy, saying that the Obama administration was delaying the revaluation.

The problem is not Iraq, it is the U.S., Jimmy wrote.



Dorothy Fauntroy is photographed at her home in Northwest Washington in 2015. (Nikki Kahn/The Washington Post)

That same day, Walter and Dorothy filed for bankruptcy protection. The couples petition was later dismissed because Walter failed to undergo credit counseling.

Earlier this year, a D.C. judge  acting on Dorothys petition  declared her husband as legally disappeared. The judge granted her a protective order, authorizing a conservator to provide her access to half the funds in their bank account  a mix of his pension and Social Security benefits  and sign documents on his behalf so she can save their home from foreclosure.

[Walter Fauntroys wife seeks control of their money amid his absence]

Meanwhile, Walters precise whereabouts remain a mystery.

Barnes said he was walking into his office last month and heard the phone ringing. Barnes picked it up, but the person on the other end had hung up.

He looked at the caller ID. A Dubai number that Fauntroy had used before to contact him.

I didnt call back, because he always would call me right back on my cell, Barnes said. He was usually persistent to get me. But this time, he wasnt.

Since that missed phone call, Barnes said that he hasnt heard from Fauntroy.
U.S. Army Command Sgt. Maj. Michael Callahan McCann presents a flag to Celia Gray during burial services for her brother, Korean War soldier U.S. Army Cpl. David J. Wishon, Jr. of Baltimore on Friday at Arlington National Cemetery. (Alex Brandon/AP)

The heartbreaking orderliness of Arlington National Cemeterys endless rows of headstones was interrupted Friday with a new grave, for a long-lost soldier killed 65 years ago in bloody and frozen combat overseas.

Army Cpl. David J. Wishon Jr. of Baltimore was laid to rest with full military honors in Section 60, joining more than 800 soldiers, sailors and Marines who have died in this centurys wars.

Wishon was just 18 years old during the harrowing, multi-day battle at Chosin Reservoir in Korea in late November and early December 1950. He had been in the Army for 14 months, a combat medic assigned to the 31st Infantry Regiment, 7th Infantry Division.

It was a cobbled-together force, historians say, joining other units that were trying to push the North Koreans toward the Yalu River.

When Chinese troops swept down from Manchuria, the regiment was surrounded, caught on the east side of the frozen reservoir, while Marines fought on the west side. Snow was falling, and the temperature plunged to 35 degrees below zero.

Army Cpl. David J. Wishon Jr., 18. On Dec. 1, 1950, Wishon, assigned to Medical Company, 31st Infantry Regiment, 7th Infantry Division, was declared missing in action after his unit was heavily attacked by enemy forces in the vicinity of the Chosin Reservoir, North Korea. (Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency)

An estimated 1,500 U.S. servicemen were killed or injured at the Chosin Reservoir out of a force of about 2,500, said Matthew J. Seelinger, chief historian of the Army History Museum. The medical unit to which Wishon belonged was wiped out.

Wishon was classified as missing on Dec. 1, 1950. Three years later, lacking any further information about him, a military review board declared Wishon dead. But the nation had not forgotten him.

In the early 1990s, North Korea returned 208 boxes of commingled human remains to the United States. A separate joint U.S.-North Korea recovery effort added more remains. Together, the remains came from at least 600 American servicemen who fought during the war, the defense department said. About 280 of those veterans have been identified.

Wishons identity was confirmed by circumstantial evidence and two forms of DNA analysis, which matched mitochondrial DNA from two of his sisters, said Air Force Lt. Col. Holly Slaughter of the Defense Departments POW/MIA Accounting Agency. Family members did not return requests for comment.

More than 7,800 U.S. Korean War veterans remain unaccounted for. A joint North Korean-U.S. team recovered additional human remains from a reported burial site in Kujang, North Korea, in October 2000, and efforts to identify missing veterans continue.

So much time has passed that sorting through all the bone chips and other evidence is like a puzzle without a picture, Slaughter said.

On Friday, six horses, three of them riderless, pulled a caisson carrying Wishons casket, which was covered in the American flag and wrapped in plastic as protection from a cold and steady rain.

The flag-draped casket of Army Cpl. David J. Wishon is carried to his final resting place by members of the Army's 3rd Infantry Regiment. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

The Armys Old Guard fired a three-shot rifle volley to honor Wishon. A highly practiced military band and bugler played America the Beautiful and taps as about a dozen of Wishons relatives looked on, including his sister Celia Gray of Essex Md.

A collection of tourists watched from a distance as a military chaplain offered prayers, the acting superintendent of the cemetery paid her respects and a defense attache from the South Korean Army thanked the family members who had gathered to mourn.

Wishons was one of 28 funerals at the cemetery on Friday.

Correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly said that at least 600 U.S. servicemen have been identified from human remains recovered in North Korea. In fact, the remains of at least 600 people were found; of those, about 280 have been identified. The story has been corrected.
This image shows the height of the existing White House fence and a proposal to increase the height. (Mills+Schnoering Architects)

A commission mulling a proposal to double the size of the White House fence met Thursday with government agencies and the architectural firm designing the barrier.

The 12-member National Capital Planning Commission, which includes representatives from Maryland, Virginia and the District, as well as members of Congress and the executive branch, reviewed a presentation that included images of a proposed 14-foot fence.

We at the Secret Service have a dilemma, said Tom Dougherty, chief strategy officer of the Secret Service. The problem: How to build a replacement for a fence thats currently deficient, as Dougherty put it, without turning whats supposed to be a symbol of democracy into something that looks more like a prison.

Its a very difficult problem to solve, said Peter May, the associate regional director of the Department of the Interior. Everyone is doing their best to meet security needs and keep it a good experience for visitors.

A spate of recent fence-

jumping incidents at the White House, including one 2014 incident in which a knife-wielding intruder penetrated the buildings main floor, have demonstrated that the familiar seven-foot fence is not built for modern times.

The White House is seen through two layers of fence. (Carolyn Kaster/AP)

The Secret Service is working with the National Park Service, as well as Mills and Schnoering Architects, to build a fence that they say is taller and stronger  with anti-climb features and intrusion-detection technology  but respects the spirit of the White House.

We escaped royalty, said L. Preston Bryant Jr., the commissions chairman. An overly ornate fence is inconsistent with the simple design of the White House.

Members of the commission said they understood the need to balance aesthetics and safety. After all, the White House, first occupied by President John Adams in 1800, was once open to the public  perhaps too open. In 1829, for example, Andrew Jackson had to flee the residence after thousands stormed the building to celebrate his inauguration.

Democracy is open, and security is not, said Michael J. Mills, a partner of Mills and Schnoering. Thats the art of this project.

The firm said it reviewed examples of similar buildings around the world to come up with the new fence design, including Buckingham Palace, the Palacio Real de Madrid and the Palais de la Nation in Brussels.

The fence is getting taller and stronger, but you can still come up and put your camera through it, said Anne E. Weber of Mills and Schnoering.

But those other edifices were not necessarily built as tributes to liberty.

In the seat of democracy, its always weird to look at Buckingham Palace, said Erik Shaw, director of the D.C. Office of Planning, pointing out that some images look like the White House behind bars. He added: [The White House] is a house, not a palace.

But Mina Wright, director of the Office of Planning and Design Quality for the General Services Administration, said she was reminded of the need for greater security at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. after she recently watched a stupid, scare-you movie where the White House was blown up.

I had a visceral sick-to-my-stomach response, Wright said. We should remember how important the building is to us. Whatever we have to do to protect the building besides putting a bubble over it, we have to do.

The plan will be reviewed this summer by the National Capital Planning Commission and the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, both of which must give their approval before changes are made. Planners expect construction of the fence to begin in 2018.
THE District

Downspouts stolen at NW house in wet week

On one of the quieter of the quiet residential streets in Northwest, crime struck this week, at just the wrong time.

In one of Washingtons wetter weeks, when they might have seen heavy use, downspouts were stolen from a house on woodsy Edmunds Street, between Foxhall Road and Glover-Archbold Park.

The theft occurred, according to police, between 4:40 and 5 a.m. Thursday.

A definite motive could not be learned. However, downspouts are among the items that have attracted thieves in recent years because of the perceived resale or scrap value of their copper content.

 Martin Weil

MARYLAND

Courthouse closed by fire may open soon

The Mitchell Courthouse in Baltimore, closed since April 26 after a basement fire, will remain shut for a time.

Baltimores Department of General Services said it hopes the courthouse will be reopened sometime next week.

 Associated Press

Police seek man in attempted sex assault

Police in Montgomery County said they are looking for a man in connection with the attempted sexual assault of a 16-year-old girl.

The incident occurred about 3 p.m. Wednesday in the 14000 block of Castle Boulevard in the Briggs Chaney area, police said. They said that as the victim entered her apartment building, the man followed her in and up the stairs. He tried to pull her pants down, but she screamed. He fled when someone came out.

Authorities released a composite sketch and described the man as African American and in his early 30s, about 5-foot-9 to 5-foot-10 and about 200 pounds. He has short hair and a beard and wore a teal or dark-blue sweatshirt, blue jeans and black boots.

 Dana Hedgpeth

VIRGINIA

Man fatally stabbed in Alexandria

A man was fatally stabbed Thursday night in Alexandria.

Police said Shakeel Baldon, 43, of Alexandria, was found about 9:30 p.m. in the 6100 block of Lincolnia Road.

 Dana Hedgpeth

Man sets himself afire after driving into diner

A man driving a Hummer set himself on fire after intentionally driving his SUV into a McLean diner this week, striking a 74-year-old man who was entering the business, Fairfax County police said Friday.

Police said they have obtained arrest warrants for Samuel Ovie Abutoh, 59, of Springfield, charging malicious wounding and felony destruction of property.

They said that Abutoh remained under hospital care and that the warrants would be survived on his release.

Video captured the Hummer fully engulfed in flames outside the Silver Diner in McLean on Wednesday.

Fairfax County police did not give a motive in the incident at the restaurant in the 8100 block of Fletcher Street.

Police said the vehicle was driven into the diner repeatedly.

The driver then doused himself with gasoline and set himself ablaze, police said.

The Fairfax County fire department said additional charges also are pending against the driver.

 Justin Jouvenal and Martin Weil
D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser went to the spot where President Abraham Lincoln wrote the Emancipation Proclamation and released a draft constitution for a 51st U.S. state on Friday.

The event was part of Bowsers push for full statehood for the nations capital, which is more populous than Vermont or Wyoming and contributes more in federal taxes than 22 states but lacks voting representation in Congress.

Members of Congress have final say over local D.C. laws and over the spending of local tax revenue, and they routinely intervene in District issues, such as barring public funding of abortions for low-income residents and blocking the full legalization of marijuana.

Sensing growing unrest among her constituents over the Districts second-class status, and convinced that the lack of a vote in Congress makes it harder to resolve the citys major issues, such as fixing Metro, Bowser (D) is making a concerted effort for statehood.

She has called for a constitutional convention in June and a vote by city residents in November to petition the next president and Congress to declare the District the 51st U.S. state, even as Republican leaders in the current Congress have said the issue is a nonstarter.

Supporters of D.C. statehood demonstrate outside the Capitol on April 15. District residents do not have voting representation in Congress, despite paying federal taxes. (Jim Lo Scalzo/European Pressphoto Agency)

At the Lincoln Cottage, where Lincoln spent summers during the Civil War, Bowser laid out the steps to transform Washington from a federal district to a state.

We chose this site because of the significance of Lincoln being here and writing the document that freed people across the United States, Bowser said. Its a fitting reminder that we are not fully free. We dont have full democracy in the District of Columbia.

Under the proposed constitution, Bowser would become governor and the citys 13 council members would become representatives in a new House of Delegates.

The Districts 670,000 residents  who are overwhelmingly registered Democrats  would elect one voting member to the U.S. House of Representatives and two to the Senate, which could tilt the balance of power toward Democrats in the closely divided chamber.

[51st state: D.C. is about to declare its independence  from Congress]

Sweeping change would also come to the Districts criminal-justice system, which is currently a convoluted mix of local police, federal judges, parole officers and prisons in more than a dozen states that mete out punishments and supervise the citys convicts and suspected criminals.

The Districts mayor-turned-governor, not the president, would appoint judges to the bench, and the new state would assume the cost of hundreds of prosecutors and judges under a new D.C. corrections system.

The new state might also get a new name: New Columbia, the moniker selected by D.C. officials the last time they tried to win statehood, in the 1980s.

But Bowser said she was not wedded to that name, and during a question-and-answer session, many residents and activists said they would prefer different names, among the suggestions were Anacostia, Potomac and Douglass Commonwealth, after abolitionist Frederick Douglass. Others said residents should vote on the name.

Bowser said she is partial to the name Washington, D.C., which some on her staff also think might improve odds in Congress by making it easier for businesses, the U.S. Postal Service, shipping companies and the federal government, which would occupy a new, smaller federal district surrounded by the 51st state. That district would encompass only the U.S. Capitol, the Supreme Court, the White House, monuments and a handful of public spaces and military installations near downtown.

Under the draft constitution, just about anyone could become governor in the states first election. Unlike most of the 50 states, which impose lengthy residency and U.S. citizenship requirements, the draft constitution requires only that a candidate for D.C. governor be a qualified voter and a resident for a year. That means even a foreigner with legal permanent residence in the District could run for governor. A bill under consideration by city lawmakers would allow anyone with a green card to vote in the city.

Beverly L. Perry, a senior adviser to the mayor and a member of the legal team that drafted the constitution, said the city will work out those details and might add restrictions used in other states.

Generally, the constitution was drafted to keep as many city functions as possible unaffected by the transition to a new government, should it be allowed to go forward, Perry and others said.

Unlike in the early 1980s, for example, when D.C. residents spent two years drafting a constitution, the District would not create many new positions, such as a lieutenant governor or a 40-member legislature. Rather, it would keep the current city council size of 13 members, elect them in the same fashion but call the body a state legislature.

That means a majority of just seven could create a new state law, nine could overrule the governor and 11 could vote to impeach a fellow member. The constitution spells out no process for how to impeach the governor.

Paul Strauss (D), the Districts shadow senator who lobbies for statehood and serves on the commission hosting the constitutional convention June 17 and 18, said the process is an opportunity to create a government in the digital age.

[D.C. officials commit to constitutional convention, November vote]

We believe this is the first constitutional convention in the 21st century, he said. Its not just the time of quill pens, but even typewriters the last time this was done in the 1980s.

The commission published the constitution on a new website and will allow any resident to annotate it. The commission will also accept testimony by Skype, email and other digital formats.

Every comment will be weighted equally, no matter what digital form it comes in, Strauss said.

Friday offered a preview of the many of the battles to come, with some activists saying the legislature must be bigger, to give residents more direct say, and one resident said the District should more stringently define residents right to bear arms than does the U.S. Constitution.

The commission has set a deadline of July 8 for finalizing and voting on the new constitution, to give the Districts Board of Elections time to certify the measure for the November ballot.

That will allow D.C. to put its bid for statehood on a fast track known as the Tennessee model.

When Tennessee applied to become the 16th state, it was the first federal territory to do so, and Congress allowed for an abbreviated path to statehood. Residents of the would-be state voted to join the union, ratified a constitution and pledged to begin a republican form of government. Congress then admitted Tennessee into the union in 1796 without requiring ratification by the existing states.

The District hopes for the same latitude. But the mayors announcement is likely to increase tension between the Districts Democratic majority and a Republican-controlled Congress.

This year, for the first time, Bowser and the D.C. Council plan to enact a local spending plan  totaling $13 billion  without congressional appropriation of those funds. Instead, the city will begin spending its money unless federal lawmakers act to stop it.

That has caught the attention of House Republicans; the committee with oversight of the District has called a hearing for next week.
Shawn Joseph, deputy superintendent for teaching and learning in Prince Georges County Public Schools, emerged as the top vote-getter for the Nashville position. (Prince Georges County Public Schools)

A high-level leader in the Prince Georges County school system is one of three finalists for the top job in Nashvilles public schools, following a Friday vote by the Tennessee school board.

Shawn Joseph, deputy superintendent for teaching and learning in Prince Georges County, Md., was one of six candidates interviewed Thursday to become director of the 86,000-student Nashville school system. He emerged as the top vote-getter  drawing a vote from all nine board members  during a board session Friday morning.

Another candidate, H. Allen Smith II, chief of schools for the Oakland Unified School District in California, won eight votes, while a third, Jesus Jara, deputy superintendent for Orange County Public Schools in Florida, pulled in five votes.

The three men now move on to the next stage of the selection process, which includes second interviews with the school board, tours of the city and forums with the community, said spokesman Joe Bass. A board decision is slated for May 13.

Joseph has been a deputy superintendent for two years in the 129,000-student Prince Georges school district. He served from 2012 to 2014 as superintendent of the far-smaller Seaford, Del., school system and had a long career as a teacher, principal and administrator in Montgomery Countys public schools.

Kevin Maxwell, chief executive of the Prince Georges school system, described Joseph as instrumental to district efforts to raise expectations and improve achievement.

Over the past two years, we have seen improvement in graduation rates, kindergarten readiness, and literacy performance, he said in a statement. Dr. Joseph is a proven leader, and we support his decision to explore new opportunities to serve children. Any district would be lucky to have him leading their schools.

Joseph, in turn, issued a statement saying that Maxwells tutelage, care, and support have prepared me to lead a complex, large urban school system like Metro Nashville Public Schools.

Joseph also is a candidate for the top job in the school district that includes Greensboro, N.C., according to a report by Nashville Public Radio.

Reached through Prince Georges school officials, Joseph did not comment in detail on the North Carolina possibility, saying in a statement: Right now I am a candidate for Nashville.

In Maryland, Montgomery County recently conducted a superintendent search, and Josephs name was offered by multiple staff and community members as a good fit for the job, according to several close to the process. It is unclear whether he applied.

The Montgomery school board in February chose Jack Smith, who is currently interim state superintendent of schools. He starts in Montgomery on July 1.

[Interim state superintendent Jack Smith to lead Montgomery schools]

Josephs career started in Montgomery County shortly after he earned a degree in 1996 from Lincoln University, according to a resume posted online for the Nashville job.

He was director of school performance from 2009 to 2012 and before that a principal at Roberto Clemente Middle School in Germantown.

Earlier, he was an assistant principal at Redland Middle School in Derwood and worked as an English teacher, reading specialist and team leader at Clemente. He wrote a book guiding principals in their first 100 days of the school year, which Prince Georges officials said is widely used across the country.

The Nashville search process marks that school systems second round looking for a new leader. Last year, the candidate selected by the board pulled out unexpectedly just before he signed a contract, officials said.
THE DISTRICT

Man scales scaffolding on National Cathedral

A man who scaled 200 feet of scaffolding on the Washington National Cathedral was talked down by D.C. police early Thursday and taken to a hospital to be evaluated, according to authorities.

The man was discovered by church security about 11 p.m. Wednesday and came down on his own about 3 a.m. after D.C. police were called to the 300-foot-tall building in the 3100 block of Wisconsin Avenue NW.

A spokesman for the cathedral, Kevin Eckstrom, said the man had come to the church about 9:45 p.m., after its closing, and demanded entry. Security guards turned him away. Eckstrom said the man returned about 11 p.m. and apparently climbed a fence to get on the property.

Eckstrom said the scaffolding had been set up for workers repairing damage from the 2011 earthquake.

 Peter Hermann

MARYLAND

Restaurant customer is fatally shot

A man was shot and killed Wednesday in a Camp Springs restaurant.

The incident happened at about 9:45 p.m. at Americas Best Wings in the 7100 block of Temple Hill Road. Police responding to a report of a shooting said Darryl Hairston, 20, was shot by another customer. Hairston died later at a hospital, police said.

Detectives were working to identify a suspect and motive. The asked anyone with information to call 866-411-TIPS.

 Dana Hedgpeth and Lynh Bui

Bethesda man is sentenced in drug case

A 22-year-old Bethesda man was sentenced Thursday to four months in prison on federal drug charges stemming from overdoses on Wesleyan Universitys campus in Middletown, Conn.

Zachary Kramer, who had been a student at Wesleyan, also was ordered to serve eight months of home confinement and attend outpatient drug treatment.

Kramer pleaded guilty in November to distributing a synthetic drug made by a friend. Eleven people were hospitalized, including one who nearly died in February 2015 after ingesting the drug, purported to be MDMA, commonly known as ecstasy.

 Associated Press

Pedestrian hit in wheelchair identified

Police have identified a homeless pedestrian in a wheelchair who died in a collision in Rockville as Phillip Constantine, 57.

He was hit at about 11:30 p.m. Saturday by a 2011 Toyota Scion xB while trying to cross the 600 block of East Gude Drive, Montgomery County Police said. The crash is under investigation.

Constantine died at a hospital Sunday. He was hit outside one of the shelters run by the Montgomery County Coalition for the Homeless (MCCH), where he was a longtime resident, shelter officials said.

Susie Sinclair-Smith, MCCHs executive director, said the coalition has pushed for a full-service stoplight at the crossing, which has a yellow blinking light that turns into a red blinking light when pedestrians press a button.

--Justin Wm. Moyer
Robert M. Sayre, who served as U.S. ambassador to Uruguay, Panama and Brazil, as well as the State Departments inspector general and its counterterrorism director, died March 31 at a hospital in Fairfax County, Va. He was 91.

The cause was congestive heart failure, said a grandson, Matthew Oreska.

From 1949 until he retired in 1985, Mr. Sayre specialized in Latin American issues and policy for the State Department. He was in Cuba when the U.S. Embassy closed in the aftermath of Fidel Castros revolutionary takeover, and he worked in subsequent years to limit Cubas influence in the hemisphere. He worked on U.S.-Mexican border issues and matters involving the Panama Canal.

As counterterrorism director from 1982 to 1984, he advised U.S. embassies around the world to develop contingency plans. In a 1984 speech to the Foreign Policy Association in New York, he described dealing with terrorism as a long twilight struggle.

Robert Marion Sayre Sr. was born in Hillsboro, Ore., on Aug. 18, 1924. He served in the Army in Europe during World War II and graduated in 1949 from Willamette University in Oregon. In 1956, he received a law degree from George Washington University.

He was ambassador to Uruguay from 1968 to 1969, to Panama from 1969 to 1974, and to Brazil from 1978 to 1981. He was States inspector general from 1974 to 1978.

In retirement, Mr. Sayre was undersecretary for management at the Organization of American States.

He was a resident of Falls Church, Va. His memberships included Diplomatic and Consular Officers Retired, the Cosmos Club and the Falls Church Episcopal.

Survivors include his wife of 64 years, Elora Moynihan Sayre of Falls Church; three children, Marian Sayre-Oreska of Richmond, Robert M. Sayre Jr. of Appomattox, Va., and Daniel Sayre of London; and nine grandchildren.
Police have arrested a 39-year-old man in connection with Thursday afternoons stabbing of a male juvenile outside Union Station in Northeast Washington, according to authorities.

Christopher Nicholson, of Northwest, was charged with assault with a dangerous weapon and could make an initial appearance in D.C. Superior Court later Friday. A D.C. police spokeswoman confirmed the arrest.

The youth was stabbed about 3:10 p.m. on the plaza just outside one of the stations main and busiest entrances, steps from the outdoor Metro entrance. Police did not have an updated condition on the victim, but said he was conscious and breathing when taken to an area hospital.

Police said the suspect was detained a few minutes after the stabbing. Authorities did not disclose a possible motive.
Authorities have charged a man with murder in connection with the shooting death of a 21-year-old in Dumfries, Prince William County police said.

Derick Dwabena Prempeh, 25, was arrested Thursday and also charged with use of a firearm in commission of a felony, according to a department release. Police said Prempeh was involved in the shooting death of 21-year-old Jamal Hakeem Ahmad Joseph Bryant of Woodbridge.

[Man shot and killed in Prince William County]

Investigators believe that Bryant made arrangements to meet with Prempeh in the 3100 block of Chesapeake Drive on Tuesday shortly before 1 a.m., police said. Once there, Prempeh approached Bryant and at some point shot the 21-year-old, according to the release.

Authorities said Bryant was pronounced dead at the scene. A police spokesman added that the pair had been acquaintances.

Prempeh, who has no fixed address, was taken into custody in Maryland by members of the U.S. Marshals Fugitive Task Force. He is waiting extradition back to Virginia, the release said.
A 21-year-old man was beaten at a party by a mob of 10 to 15 people and then stabbed on the night before he was found dead in his familys home in Centreville, Va., according to search warrants filed by Fairfax County police.

Friends drove Hosung Lee, also known as Steven, home early April 24 after the party in Herndon, Va., and placed him in bed, where he was discovered dead by a family member later in the day, according to a search warrant.

Detectives did not detail why the friends apparently did not seek medical care for the man. A neighbor identified Lee as a student at George Mason University.

[Medical examiner: Man died from stab wound]

The party began the evening of April 23 at a home in the 12600 block of Oxon Road and continued into the next morning, according to the search warrant. At some point, a witness told detectives, a mob stomped, kicked and punched Lee while he lay motionless on the kitchen floor. The search warrant does not explain what prompted the attack.

Detectives are asking for the publics assistance in identifying any of the persons depicted. (Fairfax County Police)

The witness also identified one person alleged to have taken part in the beating. Detectives tried to the interview the man at his home in Lorton, Va., on two occasions, but he refused to leave his bedroom and shouted obscenities at them, according to the search warrant.

Police later obtained a warrant to search the mans home for items related to Lees death and other evidence in the case. The Washington Post is not naming the man because he has not been charged.

A second search warrant was executed April 24 at the house where the party occurred. Police seized dozens of items, including cigarette butts, shot glasses, beer cans and other trash.

On Friday, Fairfax police released a photo of people who attended the party and asked for the publics help in identifying them.

The state medical examiner ruled last week that Lees death was a homicide and that he died of a stab wound to the chest.

A Fairfax police spokesman declined to comment on the search warrants and said no one has been arrested in Lees killing. The investigation remains ongoing.

Last week, a woman at the address where Lee was found dead declined to comment, and his family has not returned calls for comment.

The youth group for the Open Door Presbyterian Church in Herndon posted on Facebook that Lee was a member.

It was shocking news for the pastors and to many [youth group] volunteers, the post said. Many of you have known Steven as a friend, older brother and even as a small group leader.

His funeral was held at the church April 28.
Metro announced a plan to fix its infrastructure, which will disrupt service for hundreds of thousands of commuters. This is how the plan will work. (Jenny Starrs,Claritza Jimenez/The Washington Post)

Metro announced a plan to fix its infrastructure, which will disrupt service for hundreds of thousands of commuters. This is how the plan will work. (Jenny Starrs,Claritza Jimenez/The Washington Post)

After decades of maintenance neglect, Metro next month will begin a huge subway rebuilding effort that will inconvenience nearly everyone who uses the system, with stretches of some rail lines closed for days, a reduction in late-night weekend service and a slowdown of trains throughout the year-long project, officials said Friday.

The transit disruptions will have ripple effects across the region as local governments and employers will be asked to make adjustments  whether it be changing HOV-lane restrictions to ease the anticipated increase in road traffic or allowing employees to work from home or modify their schedules.

[The full list of the stations that will be closed or have reduced service ]

Its what needs to be done, General Manager Paul J. Wiedefeld declared in an interview before outlining his aggressive plan at a news conference.

Its going to impact peoples lives; its going to impact businesses, all of that, he said of the infrastructure overhaul, which is expected to cause more commuting headaches for longer periods than any previous track work in the subways 40-year history.

Footage from a security camera at the Federal Center SW Metro station captured a fire that happened on the tracks on May 5, 2016. The fire was caused by an arcing insulator. (WMATA)

With the system addled by long-deferred maintenance  caught in a sometimes-calamitous spiral of breakdowns and other failures  a day of reckoning has arrived, Wiedefeld said.

The longest of five planned shutdowns will start Oct. 9 and last 24 days, involving a Red Line stretch from the NoMa-Gallaudet station to the Fort Totten station. The stations in between  Rhode Island Avenue and Brookland-CUA  will be closed.

Another shutdown, for 16 days beginning Aug. 20, will start at the Eastern Market station, on the Blue, Orange and Silver lines, and reach to the Orange Lines Minnesota Avenue station as well as the Benning Road station on the Blue and Silver lines. Two stations in between  Potomac Avenue and Stadium-Armory  will be shuttered.

[Read General Manager Paul Wiedefelds plan]

A week-long shutdown of the Blue and Yellow lines from Reagan National Airport to the Pentagon, starting July 12, means the Crystal City station will be closed. And an 18-day closure of the Blue Line from the Pentagon to Rosslyn will idle the Arlington Cemetery station for nearly three weeks starting Dec. 6 (except on Dec. 17, when it will open for the Wreaths Across America event at the cemetery).

The remaining closure, lasting a week, will be from the airport to the Braddock Road station, beginning July 5. There are no stations in between.

I totally understand the inconvenience argument, said Wiedefeld, now in his sixth month as Metros chief executive. But he said the work is desperately needed: We cannot keep trying to Band-Aid over these issues. This is tough medicine. But we have to take it. And the sooner we take it, the better were all going to be.

The overhaul, dubbed SafeTrack, includes 15 work projects, each called a safety surge. Starting in June, the surges will be conducted one after another along different stretches of the 118-mile system. Metro intends to replace, repair or refurbish almost every type of infrastructure.

[Heres what people are saying about SafeTrack]

The plan includes a moratorium on extended evening hours, as when the subway stays open after its normal closing time to accommodate late-night crowds leaving sporting events. And starting June 3, the system will shut down at midnight instead of 3 a.m. on Saturdays and Sundays, limiting transportation options for bar patrons and others.

Wiedefeld said that money for the work is already in Metros long-term capital-improvement budget and that the funds will be moved from future years to the current year to pay for the maintenance blitz. As for the cost, he said, I dont have a number on that yet.

In addition to the shutdowns, 10 projects will involve closing one track for periods ranging from one to six weeks. That means trains headed in opposite directions will have to share one track in a work area. As a result of this single-tracking, commuters in an affected area will have to wait much longer for trains.

[How years of maintenance neglect put Metro in a tailspin.]

Much of the maintenance neglect, under previous generations of Metro leadership, resulted from public pressure to keep the subway operating at full capacity, for economic and convenience reasons, and from a push for Metro expansion by the transit agencys directors and political leaders in the Washington area.

President Obama on Friday cited Metro as an example of the nations crumbling infrastructure and called on Republicans to back his proposals to boost spending on public works initiatives.

It is just one more example of the under-investments that have been made, Obama said. The D.C. Metro has historically been a great strength of this region, but over time we have under-invested in maintenance and repairs.

Some straphangers grumbled Friday but said they support Wiedefeld.

The disruption will be a necessary evil, said Augustine Carrillo, 39, a Red Line rider who commutes from NoMa to Metro Center during the week. Its either take the medicine in one big gulp or stretch it out for years.

Dawn Keeler, a nurse from Falls Church, Va., said she favors the plan but hopes Metro will provide adequate bus service as a subway alternative. There has been so much neglect and abandonment of this system for so long, Keeler said. I think this is a great idea. Its necessary. We have to support this guy.

Lauren Stern, 32, a Red Line commuter who works in the public health field, agreed with Keeler. Its going to be awful, she said. But whats the alternative?

Before unveiling the plan publicly, Wiedefeld on Friday briefed officials in Virginia, Maryland and the District on the plan. The three jurisdictions will have a month to come up with ways of coping with heavier road traffic and other impacts of the overhaul.

Officials who spoke publicly Friday were generally supportive of Wiedefelds effort but said they need to examine it closely and possibly suggest time changes for some of the more disruptive work. Wiedefeld said he will consider feedback from the officials over the next 10 days before finalizing the plan.

Tough medicine for tough times, said Montgomery County Council member Roger Berliner (D-Potomac-Bethesda), who is chairman of the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments. The entire region has suffered because of the failure over many, many years to make the hard decisions.

Sharon Bulova (D), chairwoman of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors, also backed Wiedefeld, saying the county will assist in any way that we can. D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) said: Im glad there is a plan. There is no doubt there is a need.

Some D.C. officials, however, expressed concern for the thousands of District students who depend on Metro to get to school. About 75 percent of District schoolchildren attend schools outside of their neighborhoods. D.C. students can ride Metro and Metrobus free.

Im concerned about the timing of the proposed closures at Stadium-Armory and Potomac Avenue stations, D.C. Council member Charles Allen (D-Ward 6) said in a statement. The current draft proposes to close these stations August 20  September 6, 2016. Those dates coincide with the first weeks of the new school year. Both of these stations are highly utilized by students and families travelling to school.

On Capitol Hill, Rep. Gerald E. Connolly (D-Va.) said: This unprecedented action reflects the severe damage wrought from decades of neglect for basic upkeep and safety that cannot be undone overnight.

Continuous single-tracking, as Metro calls it, will occur between these stations: Franconia-Springfield and Van Dorn on the Yellow and Blue lines, June 4 to June 19; College Park and Greenbelt on the Yellow and Green lines, June 20 to July 3 and July 20 to July 31; Takoma and Silver Spring on the Red Line, Aug. 1 to Aug. 8; and Shady Grove and Twinbrook on the Red Line, Aug. 9 to Aug. 19.

Orange Line single-tracking will occur from Vienna to West Falls Church, Sept. 9 to Oct. 21; and West Falls Church to East Falls Church, Nov. 2 to Nov. 12 and March 6 to March 20; and on the Orange and Silver lines from East Falls Church to Ballston, Nov. 12 to Dec. 5.

The last prolonged single-tracking is set for the Yellow and Blue lines, Jan. 2 to Jan. 26, from Braddock Road to Huntington on the Yellow Line and Van Dorn on the Blue. But regular service will resume from Jan. 16 to Jan. 22 for the presidential inauguration.

The disruptions, whether from shutdowns or from single-tracking, will have ripple effects elsewhere in the rail system, slowing train traffic for miles around.

The biggest part of the infrastructure overhaul will be ripping up and replacing close to 50,000 wooden rail ties, Metro said. The ties, which support the metal rails, are used only outdoors. During the prolonged single-tracking, work crews will install thousands of pieces of new infrastructure, including rails, heavy-duty power cables and the connector assemblies used to attach cables to one another.

Faulty cables and connector assemblies have been implicated in several electrical malfunctions that have ignited Metro track fires. In one such incident, on Jan. 12, 2015, when smoke filled a tunnel near the LEnfant Plaza station, the fumes enveloped a stalled train, killing one rider and sickening dozens of others.

The plan also calls for workers to seal about 1,100 water leaks in tunnels, eliminating much of the moisture that contributes to the smoky electrical meltdowns.

By forcing commuters to endure long-term disruptions, Wiedefeld said, Metro maintenance crews  working seven days a week, around the clock  should be able to revitalize the badly deteriorated subway by late next spring.

Its like a military operation, he said. Its going to take a lot of effort and planning to get the labor where it needs to be, and the materials, the equipment  getting all the parts to move the way we want, on a scale that weve never done before.

Overall, Wiedefeld said, the work that Metro hopes to accomplish in one year would take about three years under normal circumstances.

A word of caution, he said. This does not mean that when were done, that the things going to be a like a brand-new system. Rather, he said, it will be like a 40-year-old subway that had been properly maintained over the decades. And keeping it that way will require a much-improved maintenance program in the future.

We cant keep doing it the way weve been doing it, Wiedefeld said. Weve got to break that paradigm.

Aaron C. Davis, Michael Laris, Luz Lazo, David Nakamura and Faiz Siddiqui contributed to this report.
Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) holds up the order he signed to restore rights to felons in Virginia at the Capitol in Richmond on April 22. (Mark Gormus/Associated Press)

Gov. Terry McAuliffes decision to restore the voting rights of more than 200,000 felons has set off a frenzied effort by advocacy groups to register them in the hope they can swing not just the presidential election but also state politics for the next decade.

More than 2,000 ex-offenders have registered to vote in the two weeks since McAuliffe (D) signed his executive order  many helped by the left-leaning New Virginia Majority advocacy group, labor unions and the NAACP, as well as a hodgepodge of local, civic and religious groups.

Neither the major political parties nor the presidential campaigns of Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are directly involved in the effort at this point.

But in the days after McAuliffe signed the order, canvassers from New Virginia Majority were fanning out across Virginias urban crescent, paperwork at the ready, hunting for newly eligible voters.

Because voters in Virginia do not register a party affiliation, its difficult to know with certainty which political party will gain from the registration drive. But most observers expect that ex-offenders will identify with the Democratic agenda of criminal-justice reform, higher wages, access to health care and paid sick leave. Estimates vary, but experts say one quarter to one half of the newly eligible voters are African Americans, who tend to vote for Democrats.

Republicans say McAuliffes move is clearly designed to help Clinton, his close friend, carry Virginia in November.

The singular purpose of Terry McAuliffes governorship is to elect Hillary Clinton President of the United States, House Speaker William J. Howell (R-Stafford) said in a statement last month. The one-time nature of this action is proof positive of the governors political motivations. Instead of adopting a clear policy that can be applied equitably, he is changing the rules in the middle of the 2016 election to ensure Hillary Clintons victory.

McAuliffes policy, which he has to maintain by signing a new order every month, can be reversed for future felons by the next governor.

Tram Nguyen, co-executive director of New Virginia Majority, dismissed Republicans suggestion. People say its political, she said. But for us, this is a moral issue and something thats beyond any election cycle, beyond any candidate. Its about giving a voice to a community that has felt voiceless.

Only a fraction of those eligible are likely to cast ballots on Election Day, but in a state with a recent spate of close elections, even a small number of new voters could affect the outcome.

And a new bloc of voters could decide not only the presidential contest in this swing state but also the winner of the 2017 governors race, who will have influence over the upcoming, once-a-decade round of redistricting for state legislative and congressional districts.

One of those new voters is Phil Thomas.

He got caught with $20 worth of crack in a car almost 20 years ago, and long after he quit drugs, the charge haunted him, he said.

Now I look back on it, its the worst mistake I made, Thomas, 47, said last week while on a break from cutting grass at a public housing development on Richmonds north side. Because Im getting old now, Im realizing how important [voting] is.

Sanders and Clinton are talking about moving the minimum wage to $15, and that would help us, he said. Cruz and Trump, they dont care about us. They just care about the rich, he continued, referring to the 2016 Republican field before Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas dropped out.

Thomas didnt realize McAuliffes order automatically restored his rights until an organizer from New Virginia Majority told him. He signed the registration form on the spot.

The last presidential ballot Thomas cast was for Bill Clinton. He remembered how it stung when George W. Bush won the White House in an election in which he was barred from voting.

Thomas is just the kind of new voter Democrats want.

These Virginians have paid their debt to society and now have the right to vote; of course the DPVA will be working to get them registered and earn their votes, said Emily Bolton, spokeswoman for the Democratic Party of Virginia.

But for now, Democrats say they are relying on third-party groups that specialize in registration.

The strategy allows donors to give to nonprofits without having their contributions count toward federal campaign financing limits the way donations to the Clinton or Sanders campaign would.

Its also relatively easy for a campaign to outsource voter registration, which, unlike media strategy or door-knocking, doesnt require extensive training or a mastery of talking points.

Nguyen of New Virginia Majority said her group has spent years in communities where they sometimes encounter one eligible voter for every one hamstrung by a felony.

A few hours after McAuliffe signed the order, canvassers were at a community center and firehouse in low-income Richmond neighborhoods to tell people that felonies  even for violent crimes  no longer meant permanent disenfranchisement. They collected more than 100 applications. In one hour. In the rain.

Virginia Republicans say they want to win over these voters, too, and regularly add newly registered voters to their outreach lists.

Theres no reason whatsoever to presuppose anyones political affiliation, and this is the field were playing on, state Republican Party spokesman David DOnofrio said.

At the same time, Republicans in the General Assembly are fighting McAuliffes order. They hired Charles J. Cooper, a conservative lawyer who defended Californias same-sex marriage ban before the U.S. Supreme Court, to file a legal challenge.

They accuse McAuliffe of executive overreach and have made statements deriding the subjects of his order.

The governors policy applies to criminals who have committed even the most heinous violent crimes including murder, rape, child rape, and kidnapping, Howell said in the statement last month. The governor is undermining the strength of the criminal justice system and the sanctity of our civil rights.

Virginia was one of four states  with Kentucky, Iowa and Florida  that permanently revoked voting rights for felons, according to the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law. This year, Maryland automatically restored rights after release from prison; in Virginia, a felon must be finished with prison, probation and parole.

Barring felons from voting is no different from a poll tax or literacy test, McAuliffe said during the Richmond announcement on the south portico of the Capitol, where a gospel choir belted out The Lord is Blessing Me Right Now.

Unfortunately, Virginia has had a long and sad history of actively suppressing the voices of thousands of men and women at the ballot box, he said, his voice echoing off the white columns of the Thomas Jefferson-designed building.

Since making the grand gesture, the administration has declined to provide details about the 206,000 felons, including where they live and what crimes they committed.

The Virginia Department of Elections denied a Freedom of Information Act request from The Washington Post for the list of names, saying individual records maintained in the Virginia voter registration system are exempt from FOIA.

Access to voter registration information is restricted under state law to nonprofits set up for outreach and education, political campaigns, candidates and political parties. As of Wednesday, the department said none of those groups had requested the list.

That doesnt matter to Karen Fountain, a New Virginia Majority staff member, who searched last week for eligible voters in a Richmond public housing development. Clipboards in hand, she called out to everyone she saw, Are you registered, baby?

This is my proof right here, she said, unfolding a newspaper with an article about McAuliffes order.

Within minutes, she attracted the interest of Louise Benjamin, 49, a petite woman who said an assault charge and other bad choices kept her from pursuing a career in nursing or child care.

Fighting back tears, she said winning back the right to vote eased the shame she had felt for years. Im emotional, she said. Its a relief.

Asked why, she smiled. Its important because you have a voice, she said.

We dont like the way the world is, we can fix it.
Barbara Comstock (R-Va.) does not plan on going to the Republican National Convention in Cleveland this year. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Rep. Barbara Comstock (R-Va.) said Friday that she was not yet supporting Donald Trumps presidential bid, although the business mogul has cleared a path to the Republican nomination.

I cant support Hillary Clinton, and I wont be, but Donald Trump needs to earn the votes of me and many others, she said between events at George Mason University in Manassas. Her words echo those of House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.), who said Thursday that he is not ready to back Trump.

Comstock represents the increasingly diverse Northern Virginia suburbs and exurbs where Trump is generally not popular. This fall she faces a challenge to her House seat from real estate business owner LuAnn Bennett, a Democrat who hopes to tie the congresswoman to her partys presidential nominee.

The truth is that Barbara Comstock and Donald Trump share an agenda thats out of touch with Northern Virginia and theyll share the Trump/Comstock ticket come November, said Adam Zuckerman, Bennetts campaign manager. Theres no wordsmithing Barbara Comstock can do to get around that.

Comstock said there were clear differences between her and Trump.

I cant defend  I wont defend a lot of the things hes said, she said, referring to Trumps comments about women, prisoners of war and the disabled. She has previously said that Trump doesnt know anything about the economy and called his plan to bar Muslims from the United States idiotic.

But she would not say what in particular Trump needed to do to win her vote, just that shes watching as he transitions from a primary to a general election candidate.

Comstock will not be watching in person as Trump takes that step; she does not plan to attend the Republican National Convention in Cleveland this summer. In 2012, she was a co-chair of the convention that nominated Mitt Romney and gave a speech touting his candidacy.

This year, she said, shes focused on her own reelection to the House.

Friday morning, the Republican Party of Virginia briefly posted a message on Facebook saying it borders on treason to not support Trump over Clinton. The message was later deleted with an apology from Chairman John Whitbeck, who blamed a volunteer.

But Whitbeck himself has encouraged Republicans to fall in line, saying not voting is a vote for Clinton.
A federal judge has approved a settlement between the U.S. government and New Jerseys largest city over the way its police department conducts its business, officials announced Friday.

The Newark department will shift to a more community-

focused approach to policing, add more training and submit to federal monitoring as part of a consent decree resulting from a Justice Department probe that found that officers routinely used excessive force and made street stops that disproportionately affected minorities.

U.S. District Judge Madeline Cox Arleo approved the agreement Thursday, including the installation of former state attorney general Peter Harvey to serve as monitor over the department for the next five years. Harvey was in office when the state police were under a federal consent decree over racial profiling.

This consent decree, now approved by the court, provides a roadmap for reform in Newark and a model for best practices for police departments across the country, U.S. Attorney Paul Fishman said in a statement. Implementing the systemic changes outlined in the consent decree will take time, but this is what the city of Newark and the men and women who serve in the police department want and need, and it is what the people of Newark deserve: a first-class police department that keeps them safe and respects their constitutional rights.

The settlement agreement will require Newark police to revise policies and train on the use of force, stops and searches. Police will also equip all patrol cars with video cameras and require most officers to wear body cameras.

The Justice Departments three-year investigation, released in July 2014, validated many allegations in a 2010 American Civil Liberties Union complaint that accused police of rampant misconduct, use of excessive force and lax internal oversight.

The cost of monitoring will be borne by the city and capped at about $7.5 million over the course of the agreement, Fishman said.
Smoke billows from the Highway 63 area outside Fort McMurray, Alberta, where raging forest fires have forced more than 88,000 people from their homes.

May 7, 2016 Smoke billows from the Highway 63 area outside Fort McMurray, Alberta, where raging forest fires have forced more than 88,000 people from their homes. Cole Burston/Agence France-Presse via Getty Images

About 80,000 residents have been forced to evacuate in Alberta.

Here is what the raging wildfire in Canada looks like

Here is what the raging wildfire in Canada looks like

CANADA

Convoy takes evacuees away from fire zone

A massive convoy was underway Friday to move evacuees stranded at oil-field camps north of fire-ravaged Fort McMurray, Alberta, to safe areas south of the Canadian oil-sands capital.

Police and military were overseeing the procession of an estimated 1,500 vehicles. Meanwhile, a mass airlift of evacuees was expected to resume a day after 8,000 people were flown out.

In all, more than 80,000 people have left Fort McMurray, in the heart of Canadas oil sands, and officials say no deaths or injuries related to the fire have been reported.

The provincial government, which declared a state of emergency, said more than 1,100 firefighters, 145 helicopters, 138 pieces of heavy equipment and 22 air tankers were fighting the fire. But Chad Morrison, Albertas manager of wildfire prevention, said rain is needed.

 Associated Press

Drivers moving through a road in the western Canadian town of Fort McMurray got dangerously close to a huge wildfire that has forced residents to evacuate. Embers fly over the road as drivers attempt to flee to safety. (The Washington Post)

BRAZIL

Senate panel votes to put Rousseff on trial

A Brazilian Senate committee recommended Friday that President Dilma Rousseff be put on trial by the full chamber for allegedly breaking budget laws, moving a step closer to the likely suspension of the leftist leader from office next week.

Despite renewed promises by Rousseff on Friday to resist her removal, her chances of staying in office are dimming. Her departure would come at a time when a majority of Brazilians are opposed to Rousseff because of an economic recession and a massive corruption scandal that has exposed wrongdoing by officials in the ruling party.

The full Senate is expected to vote Wednesday to put her on trial, which would immediately suspend Rousseff for the duration of a trial that could last six months. During that period, Vice President Michel Temer would replace her as acting president.

The charges against Rousseff involve irregularities that critics say masked budget problems while she ran for reelection in 2014, and her opponents are almost certain to muster the simple majority needed to begin

a trial.

I will resist until the last day, Rousseff said Friday. The president called her looming ouster a coup detat.

 Reuters

Colombia

Panamanian accused of money laundering

Colombian authorities have arrested a prominent Panamanian businessman they are calling the worlds most-wanted money launderer, while assets have been frozen belonging to dozens of companies linked to him that were allegedly used to hide illegal drug profits.

The coordinated operation was announced Thursday as the U.S. Treasury Department froze the assets of 68 companies in both Panama and Colombia under a drug kingpin designation.

On Friday, Colombian police showed videos taken during the arrest of Nidal Waked, who the United States has signaled as

the co-leader along with his uncle, Abdul Waked, of a money-laundering network that stretched across an empire of

real estate, financial and retail businesses in Panama and Colombia.

Nidal Waked, 44, was arrested Wednesday night on a U.S. drug warrant upon arriving at Bogotas international airport from Panama City.

 Associated Press

Irish prime minister reelected after weeks of deadlock: Enda Kenny was reelected Irelands prime minister in a Parliament vote that ended 10 weeks of political deadlock and ushered in the countrys first minority government in decades. Kennys center-right Fine Gael Party returned to power with the backing of nine independent lawmakers and facilitated by its main rival, Fianna Fail, which abstained from the vote. Fianna Fail also agreed not to oppose key votes until the end of 2018.

Russian, Syrian ofcials deny airstrike on camp: Russian and Syrian officials denied Friday

that their aircraft struck the Sarmada refugee camp near the Turkish border in an airstrike that killed 28 the previous evening. The dead included women and children, with dozens also wounded. The denials came as activists said a coalition of

rebels and militants, including Syrias al-Qaeda branch,

had seized a strategic village

from pro-government forces

near the contested city of

Aleppo.

 From news services
From the unit block of K Street NW, a construction crane looms over the site of the SeVerna II apartment building. (Jahi Chikwendiu/Washington Post)

Pay for success has gone viral among those seeking to tie government funding to measurable impact.

And its time for the District to consider whether this type of financing could address its affordable-housing crisis.

The premise behind pay for success (also known as social impact bonds) is straightforward: Investors fund a set of interventions to achieve a desired social outcome. If the goals are achieved, the government repays the costs of the program, plus a return for the financial risk the investors bore. If the goals are not achieved, the investors lose their money, and the government owes nothing.

The regions struggles with ensuring an adequate supply of affordable housing are well-documented. The 2014 study Housing Security in the Washington Region examined the areas affordable-housing supply across a range of income levels. This study and others have found that the causes of homelessness run the gamut, from an inadequate supply of affordable options to a lack of well-paying jobs to struggles with mental health.

To address this crisis, D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) has made good on her promise to commit $100 million per budget year to the Housing Production Trust Fund. The fund is the districts main tool for financing housing.

Unfortunately, the yearly politicking necessary to preserve this appropriation leaves the trust fund susceptible to changing political winds. This can discourage investment in long-term solutions.

In 2013, the waiting list for public housing got so long that the D.C. Housing Authority closed it to new applicants. With this level of need, the District needs innovative solutions.

By leveraging private capital in the form of pay-for-success financing, the D.C. government would send a strong signal that it is committed to multiyear, comprehensive solutions. And the pay-for-success structure minimizes the Districts risk because the city is financially liable only if a project meets its targets.

Indeed, policymakers around the country support pay for success. Denver launched a program this year to provide supportive housing to 250 residents . And in February, Connecticut and South Carolina joined a growing collection of states experimenting with this financing model.

Before implementing such a program here, D.C. leaders, investors and service providers should establish a common framework. Their task would be to clearly define the programs goals, outline a repayment structure and specify how the outcomes are to be measured. The more ambitious the goals, the more risk the investors bear, but also the greater the potential return.

Pay for success is clearly not a silver bullet for addressing social issues. If it were, the model already would have been widely adopted. These programs are highly complex, require a strong working relationship among the participants and raise legitimate questions about whether employing profit-making practices is an appropriate way to address social ills.

The District should convene area leaders in supportive housing services and program evaluation as well as potential investors to outline specific opportunities and challenges posed by this financing model.

It is a complex process, to be sure. But it would not be the Districts first foray into the world of pay for success. And the District can benefit from lessons from Denvers supportive-housing program.

Pay for success is a relatively new idea, but it could be an important tool in increasing access to supportive housing for its residents. Though complex, such a program could build cross-sector partnerships among a variety of stakeholders.

With increasingly strained budgets, pay for success could ensure public dollars are spent as effectively as possible.
By questioning the fundamentals of the United States global role, Donald Trump has given Hillary Clinton a chance to lift her game  by explaining why continued international engagement is in Americans interest and the worlds.

If Clinton cant counter Trumps America first rhetoric and make the case that U.S. leadership is still crucial for our security, she wont be a strong president. And she wont have public support for the policies needed to rebuild U.S. credibility.

Trumps critics sometimes argue that his neo-isolationist views are so extreme and dangerous that they shouldnt have a platform. But the polls make clear that many Americans agree with him. The questions hes raising about unsuccessful foreign wars and ungrateful allies deserve good answers.

A real debate about the U.S. role abroad would be one of the benefits of this campaign, lifting it, at least partially, out of the rancorous mudslinging thats ahead. Trump caricatures U.S. alliances in Europe and Asia; Clinton needs to explain why they matter.

We wont know officially until July if Trump and Clinton will be the nominees, but it certainly looks that way now. This matchup gets sneers from many commentators, but it would be a good test for both. Mr. Reality Television will meet reality. The author of Hard Choices will have to show that she can make them, and explain them to the country.

The great election campaigns in American history  think 1860, 1932, 1940  came at inflection points for the country. The nation faced existential crises, and the public was sharply divided. The elections clarified choices and made good leaders better.

Abraham Lincoln won a four-way race in 1860 on an anti-slavery platform that helped trigger secession; Franklin Roosevelt won in 1932 with a mandate for what became the New Deal; his triumph in 1940 over Wendell Willkie was a repudiation of the isolationist movement and moved the nation toward eventual war with Germany and Japan.

The election of 2016 is a similar fork in the road. Trump, the insurgent candidate, is challenging many of the foreign policy assumptions that have prevailed since 1945. He thinks NATO is too expensive and that Japan and South Korea should defend themselves, with nuclear weapons, if necessary.

Trumps venomous rhetoric about Mexicans and Muslims obscures the core of his message  and its appeal for many Americans who are tired of paying the bills for others security. Many commentators savaged Trumps April 27 foreign policy speech, in effect likening it to putting lipstick on a pig, but he made five serious arguments: U.S. resources are overextended; U.S. allies arent paying their fair share for defense; Americas friends think they cant depend on us; rivals no longer respect us; and the country lacks clear foreign policy goals.

Take the question of NATO: Its an unfortunate fact that support for the transatlantic alliance is gradually eroding in the United States. A poll last year by the Pew Research Center showed that just 49 percent of Americans had a favorable view of NATO, compared with 53 percent in 2009. Thats why Trumps diatribes resonate with his neo-isolationist base.

Clinton needs to answer this critique directly. She needs to explain why the United States has a stake in a messy world. She needs to offer a clear explanation of how she would restore the credibility of American power without entangling the country in unwinnable new conflicts. Shes seen as more willing to use military force than President Obama, but what would that mean in Syria, Iraq, Ukraine and the South China Sea?

One reason Clinton should welcome the bruising campaign ahead is that if she can rebut Trump, she has a better chance to be the strong president that the United States and the world need. A Pew Research Center poll in January found that just 35 percent of the public thought Clinton would be a good or great president. Trumps number was worse, but that shouldnt be reassuring. Clinton doesnt just need to win; she needs to learn to be great.

Former defense secretary Robert M. Gates put the matter bluntly in accepting an Atlantic Council award in Washington on Tuesday: Contrary to the views of some politicians, continuing American global leadership is in our own economic, political, and security interest. . . . America turning inward not only will make the world more dangerous for others, but also for us.

Clintons challenge is to convey this message in a way that connects with voters. If she can do that, shell probably win  but, more important, shell be better able to lead the country as president.

Read more from David Ignatiuss archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook.
APOLOGISTS FOR Egyptian strongman Abdel Fatah al-Sissi say the brutal repression he has unleashed since leading a 2013 military coup is necessary to combat domestic terrorists, including a branch of the Islamic State. That does not explain why dozens of secular liberal democrats have been imprisoned, nor why journalists, civil society groups, human rights activists and even an Italian doctoral student have become targets for security forces and prosecutors. It also does not explain an underpublicized but ugly crackdown on a community that has nothing to do with Islamist extremism: gay and transgender people.

Homosexuality is not a criminal offense in Egypt, but according to the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR), nearly 200 people have been arrested under the Sissi regime since late 2013 on charges of debauchery. A number have been sentenced to shockingly long prison terms. On April 24, a court in the Cairo district of Agouza handed down prison terms ranging from three to 12 years to 11 individuals who, according to the EIPR, were variously charged with inciting to and facilitating debauchery, habitual debauchery and the abuse of a communications medium  that is, the Internet.

The gay men being rounded up are hardly flaunting their activity. According to activists, gay men in Egypt are terrified; many have emigrated and those who remain do their best to hide their sexual lives. But the police are hunting them down. According to the EIPR, state agents are using fake websites and social media postings to entrap gays or to harvest their home addresses for raids. Those arrested are subjected to deliberate humiliation: The EIPR reported the men are frequently subjected to rectal exams, even though in most debauchery cases, the results of the tests are not introduced into evidence in court.

Egypts assault on gay men is another example of how much of the world remains hostile to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights, despite the recent progress in the West. As we reported last month, some 75 countries still criminalize same-sex acts; Islamist extremists recently assaulted and killed two gay activists in Bangladesh. Authoritarian regimes in Russia, Uganda and elsewhere deliberately inflame hatred of gay people as a way of distracting attention from their own corruption.

Its hard to know if that is Mr. Sissis intention. Certainly, he has plenty of reason to distract Egyptians, who appear increasingly fed up with the governments failure to revive the economy or defeat the real terrorists based in the Sinai Peninsula. Whats clear is that the campaign against gay people is one of the multiple ways in which repression in Egypt has outstripped that of any regime in modern times. It has nothing to do with combating terrorism or even Islamism  and sooner or later, its sure to backfire.
Marcia Chatelain is associate professor of history and African American studies at Georgetown University. She is the author of South Side Girls: Growing up in the Great Migration.

The statistics are startling: Black girls are disproportionately pushed out of school and into the criminal and juvenile justice system. Although they make up just 16 percent of Americas female student population, black girls account for more than one-third of all female arrests that take place on our school campuses, according to data from the Education Departments office for civil rights. These young students are not only arrested but also frequently suspended or expelled from school, which often discourages them from pursuing a highly coveted tool for survival: an education.

Monique W. Morris, co-founder of the National Black Womens Justice Institute, has spent years listening to the black girls behind the statistics and concludes that the arrests and detentions often worsen the social, educational and economic struggles of an already vulnerable group. Black girls are being criminalized (and physically and mentally harmed) by beliefs, policies, and actions that degrade and marginalize both their learning and their humanity, she writes in her book Pushout.

Schools begin pushing girls out at a young age; Morris documents arrests of girls misbehaving in kindergarten. Consider 6-year-old Salecia Johnson, who was arrested in Georgia in 2012 for a classroom disruption. Or 6-year-old Desree Watson, who was handcuffed and arrested in 2007 at her school in Florida after having a tantrum in class. These incidents and others for girls at older ages, Morris writes, present a comprehensive, national portrait of how school responses to the disruptive behavior of Black girls push out and often render them vulnerable to further victimization and delinquency.

Black girls suffer from a range of stereotyping that underlies officials reactions to their behavior. Racial biases influence school policies and determine the types of punishments inflicted, the book argues. Black women and girls in America are subjected to dormant assumptions about their sexuality, their anger, or their attitude,  Morris observes. They have long understood that their way of engaging with the world  how they talk, how they walk, how they wear their hair or how they hold their bodies  is subject to scrutiny, especially by those in positions of relative power. Researchers have found that black children are often misperceived as older than their actual ages, and the failure to recognize black girls as children has fueled the pushout problem.

"Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools" by Monique W. Morris (New Press)

Once a girl gets pushed out of school and into the criminal justice system, a host of troubles follow. Her educational advancement stumbles because, Morris says, juvenile detention is mostly focused on punishment. Many of the girls already are suffering from trauma, and an increase in surveillance and harsh treatment does not encourage academic performance. Though many [juvenile detention facilities] operate with the intention or stated mission to be rehabilitative, the approach is often one that punishes children who have made mistakes, Morris writes. Today Black girls in juvenile correctional facilities have continued to endure hypersegregated and inferior learning conditions that prevent their full rehabilitation and fail to support their healthy development.

The denigration of black girls in school and in detention is a symptom of a larger social ill that Morris encountered in her conversations with the girls. In one facility, she met a petite girl who introduced herself as Danisha. Im eleven years old, she said. And Im a ho, thats what I do. Morris was saddened to hear her speak this way. Danisha should have been telling us about her teachers or her fifth-grade homework, Morris writes.

Danishas experiences of sexual abuse and exploitation are all too common among the girls Morris interviews at facilities across the country. That exchange still haunts me, Morris recalls, mostly because since that day, I have encountered many more Danishas in and out of detention facilities  girls struggling to overcome the exploitative conditions of poverty and abuse.

Morris proposes practical ways to stop the pushout of black girls. In an appendix titled Alternatives to Punishment, she reviews efforts to keep students in school rather than in institutional confinement. One approach currently implemented in 7,000 schools is called Positive Behavioral Intervention Systems, which aims to promote prosocial behavior as a way to cut down on disciplinary actions. In New Hampshire, Morris writes, the implementation of the large-scale use of PBIS reduced suspensions (in-school and out-of-school), reduced office displine referrals [and] increased instructional time. She observes that PBIS could prove beneficial for black girls who misbehave; the system helps students find ways to adjust their behavior rather than simply removing them from school.

As a survivor of childhood sexual assault, Morris says she is like many of the girls she interviewed and, like them, suffered trauma and participated in violence. In many ways, I empathized with the girls who shared their narratives with me, she writes. What I learned and now know with certainty from this experience is that education of Black girls is a lifesaving act of social justice.

Pushout is for everyone who cares about children, especially teachers, school administrators and policymakers, whose decisions  big and small  shape how black girls learn and live.
My four children were born more than 20 years ago. I had four birth experiences, and I think about those experiences rarely, if ever. In nearly 30 years of motherhood, those acute hours quickly faded into insignificance compared with the reality of my childrens daily lives, their milestones, their achievements, their personalities, their challenges and the growth of our relationship as they changed from infants to school-age children to teenagers to adults.

I gave birth vaginally. But it never occurred to me that this was some kind of achievement, since it had nothing to do with me and everything to do with luck. My children, too, do not much care about the specifics of how they were born. This is, I suspect, typical for women of my generation and the ones that preceded us.

But for todays new mothers, the expectations for childbirth and breast-feeding are higher than ever. Women are supposed to have the most authentic possible experience: They should reject pain relief; eliminate C-sections; embrace midwives, doulas and childbirth educators; and even defy standard obstetric recommendations when they conflict with those goals.

Two powerful forces have arisen to push this dogma. First, the crunchy natural-birth subculture has slowly morphed into an industry, mainly catering to the most privileged women in society. Second, a cabal of natural-birth activists  online, on the air and even inside hospitals  has formed to shame pregnant women who eschew the right-thinking path. For these forces, childbirth has become less about having a baby and more about having an experience. And those who dont have the perfect birth cant possibly be good mothers.

For most of human existence, unmedicated, vaginal childbirth was simply the painful, dangerous, unavoidable way to have a baby. But for the past 50 years, in developed countries, it has no longer been a relief for the mother and the child to survive; its been a given. So people began paying attention to how, not just whether, childbirth unfolded.

The original goals of this movement were conscious deliveries, fathers in the delivery room, childbirth education and research into and abolition of practices such as perineal shaving and enemas that either had no benefit or were harmful. But by the 1980s, all of these shifts in medical practice had taken place, and a new goal took shape among activists: following the proper, naturalistic birth philosophy.

Until the 20th century, American midwifery required no formal education  just a period of apprenticeship. With the rise of modern obstetrics, midwives saw the need to professionalize to compete. Emulating European practitioners, they created the credential of certified nurse-midwife. These are nurses who have undergone additional training in midwifery. The first two schools of nurse-midwifery opened in the 1930s, but the practice truly began to take off in the postwar years. In 1963, there were 275 credentialed nurse-midwives in the United States; by 1995, there were more than 4,000; today there are more than 11,000. The proportion of births attended by midwives has also risen, from 3 percent in 1989 to more than 8 percentin 2013 (12 percent of vaginal births that year).

Doulas and childbirth educators  people who often call themselves birth workers  have proliferated, too, mirroring the increase in midwives. Membership in DONA International, one of the leading doula certification organizations, increased from 750 in 1994 to 6,154 in 2012. There is a considerable body of scientific evidence suggesting that the presence of a doula can improve labor, both physically and psychologically. A doula can rub a womans back, get cool cloths for her head and provide companionship and empathy. The benefits exist whether the doula is a family member, friend or hired support person.

As the demand for alt-births rose, an industry grew to serve it. Although its difficult to determine exactly how much money the natural-birth industry rakes in per year, its clearly a lucrative field. It has several professional organizations, grass-roots activists and lobbyists working in state legislatures. Midwives make, on average, $75,000 to $99,000 per year across most of the country; doulas are paid$1,200 per birth, on average, according to WhattoExpect.com. The Midwives Alliance of North America (MANA), in part a creation of influential natural-childbirth advocate Ina May Gaskin (whose 2003natural-birth handbook remains a reproductive-health bestseller), is a major professional organization for American midwives but requires no educational credentials of its roughly 450 members beyond a high school diploma.

Women interested in birthing naturally can avail themselves of a variety of educational courses. These classes began gaining popularity in the 1960s; by 1975, the New York Times reported that the majority of hospitals had come to sponsor childbirth classes, compared with just 10 percent in 1970. By 2005, about half of expectant mothers had taken a childbirth class that year or during a prior pregnancy, according to a survey by Childbirth Connection, a nonprofit that studies childbirth and pregnancy. In the Washington area, one can attend birth classes costing anywhere from $160at Lamazes local chapter to $375 for a course with an instructor accredited by the childbirth-education group BirthWorks.

Among the more curious practices recommended by natural-childbirthing businesses include using candles to bring a soft glow to the birth environment, per GivingBirthNaturally.com, which offers its own online courses; using audio tracks to re-train the subconscious mind to eliminate the pain of contractions,per Hypnobabies, a company selling real medical hypnosis techniques for natural-birthing moms; and steaming the uterus post-birth per Natural Birth Works, a co-op of midwives, doulas and educators committed to a natural way of life.

Lamaze, perhaps the most famous brand of childbirth classes, serves as a good test case for the industrys shifting interests. In the early 1990s, the organization reinvented itself as the champion of normal birth, Charlotte A. De Vries and Raymond G. De Vries wrote in their 2007 article Childbirth Education in the 21st Century. In a clinical sense, normal birth means no inductions or epidurals that arent medically necessary, and Lamaze says its education aims to give women evidence-based information about those interventions. Seeking relief from labor pain without drugs protects your baby and your body from injury, helps labor progress, and facilitates breastfeeding, bonding, and other postpartum adjustments, Lamazes website states, adding with a note of pity that an epidural still might be needed if a mother cant move beyond [her] fear of labor pain.

Ultimately, the natural-childbirth industry aims to shepherd women toward an ideal birth experience  packed with emotional meaning and marketed as absolutely necessary and life-altering  sometimes at the expense of ideal health care (which is available from doctors at local hospitals). And it shows: A study in Oregon found that the death rate for babies delivered in planned home births with midwives in 2012 was roughly seven times that of hospital-born babies. Data collected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from 2006 to 2009 revealed that babies delivered by midwives had higher death rates than hospital-born babies, whether they were born at home or in birthing centers. While not all natural births take place outside hospitals, home births represent an extreme and troubling iteration of the ideology, where the set-up, process and experience are sometimes valued over the outcome.

The natural-childbirth industry markets births more or less like weddings, suggesting to its targets that they have one chance to purchase the perfect day for themselves and their loved ones, as Markella Rutherford and Selina Gallo-Cruz explain in their 2008 paper Great Expectations: Emotion as Central to the Experiential Consumption of Birth. The idealization of the birth experience offers a legitimate opportunity to orchestrate another emotional consumer experience in which the bride-now-turned-mother produces, directs, and plays the starring role, the authors write. Mothers Naturally, an educational program produced by MANA, invites mothers to create [their] ideal birth environment and be supported physically and emotionally as they discover the safe personal care of a midwife.

But like the perfect wedding, the perfect birth is often a fiction; women who buy into the idealized experience can face enormous disappointment, distress and feelings of failure if they have a Caesarean section, choose an epidural or are unable to breast-feed immediately after delivery, all of which result, at times, from factors outside mothers control. A C-section, for instance, is typically done to save the life of a baby who may not survive without it, or whose risk of dying during a vaginal birth is much higher than usual  such as babies in unfavorable positions or those whose mothers have some obstruction to the birth canal. Yet for mothers in search of the perfect experience, any medical intervention, even a lifesaving one, can become a source of bitter shame. Too often theyre hollowed out, haunted, hurting,a self-declared radical doula wrote recently in New York magazine, referring to mothers whose births didnt pan out as expected. When they talk about giving birth, they sigh or shrug or burst into tears. Whatever, they say, shaking it off. My baby is here. My baby is alive. Thats what matters.

Bulls---!I never dare say. You matter. What happened to you matters.

Reinforcing that guilt isnt helpful or supportive: It piles emotional distress atop an already stressful time. One mother recently reflected at Ravishly, a feminist website, on transferring to a hospital during a difficult home labor, writing that her sons health doesnt negate my feeling of failure. His health doesnt heal what I lost.

I felt inadequate and disappointed after my caesarean, one mother wrote on BabyCentre, a British parenting website. I was made to feel even worse by people constantly harping on about the wonders of natural birth.

This is tragic. Birth is beautiful, no matter the room or the lighting or the drug regimen. A healthy baby and mother  the hardest-won goals of modern obstetrics  matter more than anything else. Mothers already deal with enough judgment from society for their looks, their parenting choices and more. Without adding any benefits, the experience packaged and sold by the natural-childbirth industry only compounds their problems. As a doctor and a mother, I say: Enough is enough.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story stated that Lamaze promotes one particular vision of labor as normal and therefore good. In fact, Lamaze says, the organization provides women with a wide range of evidence-based information about childbirth and labor and does not believe different approaches to birth are good or bad.

Twitter: @ATuteur

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Masrour Barzani is the chancellor of the Kurdistan Region Security Council.

Throughout the modern history of Iraq, we have lived in denial. By we, I mean the Kurdish people, who comprise one-quarter of the country; the Arabs and other nationalities who make up the rest; and our friends around the world, who have been hoping that a functional, pluralistic nation could somehow, someday take hold.

As it was drawn from the ruins of the Ottoman Empire, Iraq is a conceptual failure, compelling peoples with little in common to share an uncertain future. It is time to acknowledge that the experiment has not worked. Iraq is a failed state, and our continued presence within it condemns us all to unending conflict and enmity.

Turmoil surrounds us. In the summer of 2014, the face of the nation was exposed when the Islamic State terrorist group seized a third of the country and a significant part of the border with Syria because the most credible institution in the land, the Iraqi army, failed to defend it. Eleven years after the tyranny of Saddam Hussein ended, Iraq was exposed for what it is: a country that cannot protect its people and can barely define its interests.

Compulsory coexistence has not worked. And that is why the Kurdistan region of Iraq will hold a referendum to establish a sovereign state, which would formalize a divorce from Baghdad and secure the area we now control as a homeland for the Kurdish people.

This move will not only offer hope to the Kurds; it will also bring certainty to a divided region. Since the fall of Hussein, we have proved ourselves to be reliable allies to many of our neighbors. We are a bedrock in the fight against the Islamic State, hosting militaries from at least a dozen nations and making tremendous sacrifices to liberate Arab territories from the juggernaut that imperils us all.

We stand near the gates of Mosul, willing to play a substantial role in ousting the Islamic State from Iraqs second-largest city. We have opened our gates to hundreds of thousands of refugees over the past two years, as well as during the darkest days of the sectarian war that earlier ravaged the center and south. The Kurdistan region is now home to a large, thriving Christian community whose members fled Mosul and Baghdad for a haven the central government could not provide.

In short, we have pulled our weight. We have tried to be inclusive. We have been patient. But economic agreements that had guaranteed us revenue streams have been repeatedly dishonored and now sit discarded. Under successive agreements, we have had duties as a component of the Iraqi state, but they have never translated into rights.

Whoever has held the seat of power in Baghdad has reneged on promises and ignored obligations, many of them constitutional. Even if a leader emerged who was better disposed toward us, his goodwill could never overcome a system geared toward siphoning away our rights. We are subjects, not citizens. There is simply no trust between us and the central government. The relationship is irreconcilable.

The solution begins in Baghdad. We have tried everything possible with the central government, and nothing has worked. A separation is the only option remaining. We want to move ahead with a vote on independence, but we must first work with Baghdad to pave the way for an amicable split that secures our mutual interests. That process has begun. We have broad support among the various Kurdish factions. We will also hold talks with Turkey and Iran to explain that this move will not destabilize their borders. We strongly believe that this effort will serve as a reset for the region, as much for our friends as for us.

We have all done enough pretending  to our peril. An Iraq free from the shackles of what Baghdad describes as the Kurdish issue would be liberating for both sides, disentangling interdependencies that each of us resent and allowing us to secure our economic footing.

Beyond that, though, an independent Kurdistan, with access to the weapons we need to defend ourselves, would secure the interests of our allies and the people of the region. Our relationship with Baghdad has crippled us in this fight. We have no access to battle-changing weapons, which must be funneled through the central government. Independence would allow us to secure long-term loans and bonds in the international market and export oil and gas at competitive prices to alleviate our financial difficulties.

To remain invested in a state that has clearly and repeatedly failed is folly. It is past time to recognize that. With little else but the dedication of its people, the Kurdistan region has already built the foundations of a successful, prosperous state. We have earned the right to self-determination and have shown that, even without statehood, we are a valued component of the international community, the most steadfast of allies in a region short on certainty. We stand ready to join the community of nations.
James Downie is The Posts digital opinions editor.

Father Daniel Berrigan died Saturday at 94. The longtime peace activist gained national attention in 1968 when he and eight others, including his brother Philip (also a priest), burned draft records taken from a Selective Service office in Maryland. Decades later, he remains a powerful example of a man who never wavered in his beliefs, standing up time and again for the poor and oppressed. In his last years, Berrigan no longer had the energy to protest as frequently. But if he had been a few generations younger, can there be any doubt that he would have been at forefront of those protesting the expansion of the drone war under President Obama?

There have long been policy, constitutional and moral questions about the drone program  all made more difficult to answer by the Obama administrations refusal to even acknowledge the program until 2013. As Obamas presidency comes to an end, we have stunning new details about how the program works  first released in October on the Intercept website, now updated and collected in the book The Assassination Complex by Jeremy Scahill and Intercept staffers. The Assassination Complex is in large part built around the revelations of an anonymous whistleblower who leaked documents about U.S. use of drones in Somalia, Libya and Afghanistan from 2011 to 2013. What he or she reveals further confirms the practical, legal and moral failings of Obamas expanded drone war.

For starters, although drones may be quite good at killing people (even if not always the intended targets), its not clear that they are an effective tool in the war on terrorism. Obamas embrace of drones has led to a preference for killing rather than capturing terrorists. The documents include a study from the Defense Departments Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) Task Force, which concluded that kill operations significantly reduce the intelligence available from detainees and captured material. And as retired Gen. Michael Flynn, former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, said last year, When you drop a bomb from a drone . . . you are going to cause more damage than you are going to cause good, including more radicalized terrorists.

Then there are the legal and constitutional questions. The leaked documents show the disturbing ease with which an innocent civilian  American or not  can be added to the U.S. governments main terrorist database, such as on the basis of a single uncorroborated Facebook or Twitter post. In a 2014 court filing, the government admitted that 469,000 people had been nominated in 2013 for inclusion in an additional government database of known or suspected terrorists. Only 4,900 were rejected. Presumption of innocence this is not. And although Osama bin Ladens name was in a terrorist database long before he was killed, so too was the name Abdulrahman al-Awlaki  innocent, 16 years old, an American citizen and killed by a U.S. drone strike.

Furthermore, its clear from the documents that the White House has overstated the prudence with which it undertakes strikes. In May 2013, Obama said that strikes would be conducted only against those who were a continuing and imminent threat to the American people and only if there were near certainty that there would be no civilian casualties. But the documents show that when the president approves a strike on an individual, the Pentagon and CIA (both of which conduct strikes) have a 60-day window to act. You dont need a dictionary to know that 60 days is not imminent. And the ISR study says that the standard for drone strikes is not no civilian casualties, only that it must be a low collateral damage estimate.

Nearly eight years later, Obamas decision to expand the drone war has led to the deaths of hundreds of civilians, according to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, a disturbing expansion of presidential power and harm to the countrys ability to fight terrorism.

What makes Obamas policy even more disappointing is that whoever succeeds him will likely widen the program further. Obama at least gives the impression of taking the constitutional and moral consequences of the drone program seriously, even if this has been only a small restraint on the program. But Hillary Clinton has stoutly defended the drone program inside the White House as secretary of state, afterward in her memoir and on the campaign trail. Given her hawkishness compared with Obama, it seems likely that the program would only grow under her. And Donald Trump? Well, he has already promised to commit war crimes.

I have little doubt that Obama chose to rapidly expand the drone war under the sincere belief that it was legal, moral and good policy. But that belief was mistaken; the drone war is an indelible legacy  and shame  of his presidency.
Queen Rania of Jordan (center,)meets with refugees during her visit to Kara Tepe camp on the Greek island of Lesbos, on April 25. (Associated Press)

Rania Al Abdullah is queen of Jordan.

In his novel Blindness, Jose Saramago asks us to imagine a world where one by one, people lose their sight. The epidemic triggers apocalyptic scenes of panic, cruelty, disorder and, eventually, the breakdown of society. Its fiction, of course. After all, how could the whole world go blind?

Thats what I used to think.

After visiting the Kara Tepe camp in Lesbos, Greece, last week to meet a group of refugees and to support the life-saving work of the International Rescue Committee, I think truth could be stranger than fiction. In fact, Im thinking about writing a sister novel to Saramagos.

Id call it Deafness. Because no ones listening.

No ones listening to the nearly 155,000 refugees who have risked their lives to reach Greece since the start of this year.

No ones listening to Maha, the bright and articulate 24-year-old gynecologist trainee from Raqqa, Syria. For nearly four years, she defied the odds  conflict, threats, danger and deprivation  to study and work in a hospital. What kept her there, she told me, was that the needs were so great, and doctors were in such short supply. But, in March, finally, so scared that Daesh, also known as ISIS, would target her, she succumbed. She made the heart-rending decision to abandon her vocation and fled through 46 checkpoints guarded by all parties to this conflict  each one a frightening ordeal  to get to the Turkish border. If the fighters  on either side  found out she was a doctor, they likely wouldnt let her leave, so she sewed her papers into the lining of her jacket to conceal them.

During parts of her trip, this talented young medic, just one year away from qualifying to be a gynecologist, crawled through mud to avoid being caught. I never felt safe  not for a single minute, she whispered. I still dont.

From death to death to death is how she described the ordeal of those who finally reached the shores of Lesbos. All we want is a new chance at life.

No ones listening to her mother, Sadaa, either. All she wants is to see her sons, who are in Germany. I got as far as Macedonia, she said, but then I came back to get my daughter, and then the borders closed. Now, Im here with her, my sons are in Germany and my husband is in Syria with his sick father. What do I do? Where do I go?

And no ones listening to Fatina, who, just one month ago lost her husband on a boat as they fled Turkey. Eighty refugees were forced at gunpoint onto a dinghy designed for 25. They were crammed in, literally, one on top of the other. Her husband, at the bottom of the pile at the front of the inflatable craft, drowned. The only thought that kept her going on the terrifying sea crossing was that they had escaped Syria and were on their way to start a new life with their four children: 18-month-old twins, a boy and a girl; and two daughters, 4 and 6.

In front of her children, she puts on a brave face. God gives you power, she said. But when her children arent looking, tears tumble down her cheeks. I just dont know what to do, she sobbed, cradling her head in her hands.

Each and every story is harrowing. Exhaustion hangs, thickly, in the air. I wonder how much more these women can endure. Each and every story is different, but they are linked by the threads of helplessness, hopelessness and despair. These are women at their breaking point.

Theres only one thing worse than enduring brutal conflict, escaping your homeland, leaving behind everything you know, abandoning your dreams, risking your life, becoming destitute, being abused, fragmenting your family, watching your children suffer and losing loved ones, and it is this: arriving at a place you think is a haven only to be told you will likely be sent back. No one is sure when. No one is sure where. That is the definition of futility  and its cruel. Because no one chooses to be a refugee. Refugees are refugees because the alternative used to be death. Now, theres a worse option: a living death. That is what I saw on Lesbos.

Once you hear their stories, you cant un-hear them. So, maybe its not that the world cant hear. Maybe its that it wont hear. Maybe its not an epidemic of deafness, but of selective hearing  we hear only what we want to hear and shield ourselves from what we dont want to confront.

Because if the world listened to the stories  in Greece, Lebanon, Jordan (the kingdom estimates that there are 1.3 million Syrians now living there) and beyond  more people would feel compelled to act. And small acts of kindness would give way to bigger and bolder ones  which would give way to humane policies to help refugees.

But, first, we all must listen. To the sighs and the screams and the stifled sobs. To the exhausted exhalations and the broken voices. To the prayers and the wretched memories. To the whispered pleas: All we want is a new chance at life.

Theyre telling us a story  a nonfiction story. Lets dignify them by listening, and by supporting them in practical and lasting ways.
MORE DETAILS about Princes final days are emerging to the effect that the legendary pop star may have been addicted to prescription opioid painkillers at the time of his death in April. Officials have not yet confirmed that such medications caused Princes death; the drugs may have had nothing to do with it. If, however, Prince was killed by an overdose, there would, sadly, be nothing unusual about it. Death from prescription opioids is an everyday occurrence in the United States; as a matter of fact, in 2014 it occurred about 52 times per day, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Belatedly, the federal government has bestirred itself against this epidemic, the origins of which lie in a movement toward more aggressive treatment of chronic pain beginning two decades ago  a movement blessed by various federal authorities, it must be said. Among those agencies was the Food and Drug Administration, which approved every single pill, from Percocet to OxyContin to Vicodin, that caused every single overdose. We hasten to emphasize the obvious: that the FDA approved these drugs for appropriate use, not abuse; and it did so with the best of intentions, to meet what was widely believed to be an unmet medical need. Pain management is a difficult and important medical task. Nevertheless, as evidence of rampant abuse and credible accusations of sloppy prescribing mounted, the FDA came under increasing criticism for its slowness in responding.

Cases in point: In 2012, an FDA advisory panel voted 11 to 2 against approving an opioid, Zohydro, citing addiction risks. The agency greenlighted it anyway. That same year, another advisory panel recommended that all doctors who prescribe powerful opioids should receive mandatory best-practices training. But the American Medical Association fought the rule as overregulation and the FDA opted to continue its voluntary approach  with the result that only about 40,000 doctors got the instruction, as opposed to the 80,000 the FDA anticipated.

Such concerns were behind Senate resistance to the new FDA commissioner, Dr. Robert M. Califf, who nevertheless won confirmation on Feb. 24 after reassuring lawmakers and the public that he would take criticisms of the FDAs past performance to heart. He pledged a change in course on opioids at the FDA, which, as he described it in a Feb. 5 blog post, would include increas[ing] the number of prescribers who receive training on pain management.

Now he has an opportunity to make good on that pledge: A new FDA advisory panel voted Wednesday to make opioid-prescribing training mandatory for physicians. FDA officials have told reporters that Dr. Califf will, indeed, support the recommendation, thus undoing the agencys past error. There are still many difficult questions about how, specifically, to put such a requirement into practice. Doctors, though, need to take the opportunity to help craft a workable system rather than reassert their opposition. This would, in fact, be a very modest step toward combating a horrific public-health problem, part of a broader approach that wont work unless everyone involved, doctors very much included, gets with the program.
Correction: An earlier version of this op-ed included a quotation containing an incorrect word. The Dalai Lama told a group of activists that "external disarmament begins with internal disarmament," not "eternal disarmament begins with internal disarmament." This version has been corrected.

The Dalai Lama, center, can be informal and mischievous, as when he rubbed his head into the beard of a very dignified Muslim cleric. (Tenzin Choejor/Office of His Holiness the Dalai Lama)

When posed a policy question, the Dalai Lama is surprisingly (for a religious leader) un-prone to moralism. What, I asked him, does he think of the European backlash against migration? In the name of sympathy, for the few who are desperate, [resettlement] is worthwhile. But Europeans, he continued, have a right to be concerned for their own prosperity. Better, he said, to help people in their own land. He added: It is really complex.

In conversation, the Dalai Lamas cast of mind is thoroughly empirical. You can see him considering a matter from various angles and revising his views based on new input. He is a Buddhist who recommends analytic meditation instead of employing spiritual exercises as a tranquilizer. Self-reflection, he believes, should be the basis for action in the world. Vague talk of peace, he said, will only disturb some pigeons.

For decades, the Dalai Lama has embodied the Tibetan cause, which was once at the center of Americas Cold War interests. With that cause now something of an international orphan, the Dalai Lama has cultivated a different type of influence  global celebrity based on spiritual charisma.

I saw that charisma up close as the fortunate witness to a singular event. Under the auspices of the United States Institute of Peace, the Dalai Lama spent two days mentoring 28 exceptional youth leaders  men and women doing peacebuilding in conflict zones across Asia and Africa, often at great personal risk.

The Dalai Lama is, despite recent health issues, energetic and apparently (at 80) tireless. He is informal and mischievous (at one point rubbing his bald head into the beard of a very dignified Muslim cleric). He is disarmingly self-effacing: I am not god, quoth the 14th reincarnation of the Lord of Compassion. I dont know is a consistent refrain.

But his view of the world is also highly consistent and occasionally controversial. He argues that ethics are primary and unifying, while religion belongs to a secondary level of difference. What he calls secular ethics can be derived from common experience and common sense, which teaches the sameness of humanity and the universal capacity for, and need for, love and compassion. For evidence, he turns to neuroscience and social scientific research on child development rather than to scripture. (He has mandated a science curriculum for Tibetan monasteries.) Human beings, in his view, are essentially good and responsible for doing good. We promote a more compassionate world, he said, through education, not through prayer.

If this sounds familiar, it is not far from the social ethics  not the theology  of some strains of liberal Protestantism. And the Dalai Lama shares something with Pope Francis: an impatience with institutional religion, which he says is prone to be narrow and rigid.

The Dalai Lama is keen to argue that all religions carry the message of love and compassion. In more careful moments, he says, all religions have the same potential. This is true  from a certain perspective. Each of the worlds major religions has resources of respect for the other that can (and should) be emphasized at the expense of less attractive elements.

Some of the faithful will resist the Dalai Lamas frank insistence that religion be modernized. Some traditions must change. I tell my Hindu friends, they must change their treatment of outcasts. In Islam, the meaning of jihad is not hurting other people. His own tradition he described as too close to the feudal system. This is not a change in religion. It is changing habits due to social tradition.

This religious essentialism  defining a core of humane teaching that stands in judgment of a traditions cultural expressions  is what helps ensure that religion is a positive cultural force. Conservative Protestants in the United States who dispute this idea still demonstrate it. The treatment of women in most evangelical churches is closer to common American practice than to the Apostle Pauls first-century attitudes, and it should be.

The uniqueness of the Dalai Lamas voice in global debates is his emphasis on the inner life. He roots the pursuit of peace in a calm mind  and displays it. External disarmament, he told the gathered young activists, begins with internal disarmament. If you show anger, things get worse. A genuine smile and warmheartedness and a joke are the only way to cool things down.

It is good advice for anyone facing conflict  as well as the only basis for a peace that involves trust, forgiveness and healing.

Read more from Michael Gersons archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook .
In his May 3 op-ed, America, not China, should call the shots on trade, President Obama made an eloquent case for the Trans-Pacific Partnership. We heard similar arguments in favor of the South Korea trade agreement that passed Congress in 2011. Unfortunately, our trade deficit with South Korea doubled as a result of that deal. This means U.S. businesses and workers lost more domestic market share than we gained in South Korea. We also heard this siren song when China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001. It was an attractive but false argument. The result was the worst trade performance between the United States and China in the history of our nation.

The United States has better net trade performance with countries with which we do not have trade agreements. That is because trade agreements, high standards or not, incentivize offshoring that exceeds any export gain.

Michael Stumo, Washington

The writer is chief executive

of the Coalition for a Prosperous America.
At the heart of Donald Trumps appeal is his fame as a successful businessman. Its why most of his supporters dont worry about his political views or his crude rhetoric and behavior. Hes a great chief executive and will get things done. No one believes this more than Trump himself, who argues that his prowess in the commercial world amply prepares him for the presidency. In fact I think in many ways building a great business is actually harder, he told GQ last year.

There is some debate about Trumps record as a businessman. He inherited a considerable fortune from his father and, by some accounts, would be wealthier today if he had simply invested in a stock index fund. His greatest skill has been to play a successful businessman on his television show The Apprentice.

Regardless, it is fair to say that Trump has formidable skills in marketing. He has been able to create a brand around his name like few others. The real problem is that these talents might prove largely irrelevant because commerce is quite different from government. The modern presidents who achieved the most  Franklin Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson and Ronald Reagan  had virtually no commercial background. Some who did, George W. Bush and Herbert Hoover, fared worse in the White House. There is no clear pattern. One of the few successful CEOs who did well in Washington is Robert Rubin. A former head of Goldman Sachs, he served as the chief White House aide on economics and then treasury secretary in Bill Clintons administration. When he left Washington, he reflected in his memoirs that he had developed a deep respect for the differences between the public and private sectors.

In business, the single, overriding purpose is to make a profit, he wrote. Government, on the other hand, deals with a vast number of legitimate and often potentially competing objectives  for example, energy production versus environmental protection, or safety regulations versus productivity. This complexity of goals brings a corresponding complexity of process.

He then noted that a big difference between the two realms is that no political leader, not even the president, has the kind of authority every corporate chief does. CEOs can hire and fire based on performance, pay bonuses to incentivize their subordinates, and promote capable people aggressively. By contrast, Rubin pointed out that he had the authority to hire and fire fewer than 100 of the 160,000 people who worked under him at the Treasury Department. Even the president has limited authority and mostly has to persuade rather than command.

This is a feature, not a flaw, of American democracy. Power is checked, balanced and counterbalanced to ensure that no one branch is too powerful and that individual liberty can flourish. It is no accident that Trump admires Vladimir Putin, who doesnt have to deal with the complications of modern democratic government and can simply get things done.

In interviews with the New York Times, Trump imagined his first 100 days in office: He would summon congressional leaders to lobster dinners at Mar-a-Lago, threaten CEOs in negotiations at the White House (The Oval Office would be an amazing place [from which] to negotiate) and make great deals. When talking about the positions he would fill, Trump explained, I want people in those jobs who care about winning. The U.N. isnt doing anything to end the big conflicts in the world, so you need an ambassador who would win by really shaking up the U.N.

This displays an astonishing lack of understanding about the world. The United Nations cant end conflicts because it has no power. That rests with sovereign governments (unless Trump wants to cede U.S. authority to U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon). The notion that all it would take is a strong U.S. ambassador to shake up the U.N., end conflicts and win is utterly removed from reality. Yet it is a perfect example of business thinking applied in a completely alien context.

Success in business is important, honorable and deeply admirable. But it requires a particular set of skills that are often very different from those that produce success in government. As Walter Lippmann wrote in 1930 about Herbert Hoover, possibly the most admired business leader of his age, It is true, of course, that a politician who is ignorant of business, law, and engineering will move in a closed circle of jobs and unrealities. . . . [But the] popular notion that administering a government is like administering a private corporation, that it is just business, or housekeeping, or engineering, is a misunderstanding. The political art deals with matters peculiar to politics, with a complex of material circumstances, of historic deposit, of human passion, for which the problems of business or engineering as such do not provide an analogy.

Read more from Fareed Zakarias archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook.
The Republican Party this week is like 5th-century Rome must have been after the Visigoths stormed the citys gates. Anarchy and confusion reign, there is the sound of anguished wailing, and political leaders are making an urgent calculation: Resistance or collaboration?

The suddenness of Donald Trumps final victory over the GOP establishment was shocking. On Monday, Pollyannas were still convincing themselves that Trump could be thwarted at a contested convention. Within 48 hours, he had won the Indiana primary in a landslide and his last two opponents, Ted Cruz and John Kasich, had surrendered. Even Trump couldnt have expected it to happen so fast.

But no one should be surprised, at this point, that the result of the Republican primary process is Donald J. Trump as the partys presumptive nominee for president. He has been the clear front-runner for the better part of a year. Too many observers, both inside and outside the party, saw the race as they thought it should be, not as it was. They ignored the obvious fact that Trump was gaining momentum as the primaries went on. They believed it was unthinkable that he would win, so they gave too little weight to clear evidence that he was doing just that.

I mention these issues of perception only because Im now seeing a lot of analysis predicting how easy-peasy it will be for likely Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton to wipe the floor with Trump in the fall. Anyone buying into this story line should first try to ascertain whether its based on reality or wishful thinking. As for me, Ill continue not to take anything for granted.

Republican elected officials and party leaders do not have time for such retrospective contemplation. They have a decision to make. The party belongs to Trump now, just as Rome belonged to the barbarians, and GOP politicians have to decide whether to fall in line or take up arms against the new order.

So far, GOP luminaries are mostly choosing collaboration over resistance  although many have so far declined comment and seem to be still pondering.

The biggest blows to Trumps legitimacy as the standard-bearer of the party of Lincoln were struck by the two most recent Republican presidents. Spokesmen for George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush announced that 41 and 43 have no plans to endorse Trump  an extraordinary rebuke from the family that has defined the party since the era of Ronald Reagan.

House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (Wis.), asked if he was ready to endorse Trump, said that Im not there right now. Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker said he would not vote for Trump  or for Clinton, a spokeswoman added. Sen. Ben Sasse (Neb.), who has vehemently opposed Trump, was unbowed in a lengthy Facebook post that called for a third-party candidate to emerge.

Most of the rest of the party, however, seems to be boarding the Trump train, even if it might be heading over a cliff.

Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus set the tone Tuesday night just minutes after Cruzs withdrawal with a tweet announcing that Trump was the presumptive nominee and that the party should unite behind him.

The most commonly stated position of prominent Republicans who have spoken thus far is that they will support the nominee of the party. For example, this is the view of Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), whom Trump cruelly ridiculed for being shot down and captured during the Vietnam War. According to Politico, McCain said at a fundraiser last month that his reelection bid may be the race of my life because of Trumps vicious rhetoric about Latino immigrants.

Some other senators facing tough battles to hold on to their seats seemed to disappear into witness protection. One who emerged, but probably shouldnt have, was Sen. Kelly Ayotte (N.H.), who tried to stake out the impossible position that she would support Trump but not endorse him. Sorry, senator, but thats not even a distinction, much less a difference. Youre on board.

1 of 14 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad  These 10 Republicans refuse to vote for Donald Trump View Photos And theyll tell you why. Caption And theyll tell you why. Former Secretary of State Colin Powell General Powell said at a meeting of the Long Island Association that he would be voting for Hillary Clinton, a spokeswoman confirmed Oct. 25. Powell added in an interview that he picked Clinton because I think shes qualified, and the other gentleman is not qualified. Nikki Kahn/The Washington Post Wait 1 second to continue.

South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley also said she will support the Republican nominee for president, treating Trumps name like that of Lord Voldemort. Then she hastened to add her name to the growing list of rising GOP stars who say they are not interested in being considered as you-know-whos running mate.

What does I support the nominee buy you? Trumps allegation that Mexican immigrants are rapists. His promise to deport 11 million people living here without papers. His pledge to ban Muslims from entering the country. His misogyny. His bigotry. His willful ignorance of foreign and domestic policy. And much, much more.

The emerging Republican message: Were all Visigoths now.

Read more from Eugene Robinsons archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook. You can also join him Tuesdays at 1 p.m. for a live Q&A.
Traffic on Interstate 66 near the Vienna Metro Station in 2015. (Nikki Kahn/The Washington Post)

Virginia legislators agreed on reforms to the proffer system, which local governments use to negotiate payments from developers to fund public infrastructure. But the debate over infrastructure funding revealed a worrisome fact: Virginians flat-out cant afford the states unsustainable level of population growth.

The population boom is overburdening public infrastructure and resources on which all citizens depend, and it threatens to raise the cost of living to astronomical levels.

To solve this looming crisis, Virginias leaders have to stabilize the states population growth.

Virginias population increased 35 percent from 1990 to 2015, to nearly 8.4 million people. So far, weve been able to accommodate this growth with high-rise apartments and beefed-up mass transit. But what happens by 2040, when Virginias population is expected to grow by an additional 25 percent to more than 10.5 million?

Our state is rapidly reaching a tipping point at which our already-stressed infrastructure collapses and existing resources are woefully insufficient to rebuild it.

The population boom is happening fastest in urban areas. Population growth has led to sprawl that is swallowing many parts of Northern Virginia.

Average families are struggling to afford high housing and transportation costs. A family of four in Northern Virginia, according to a study by the Richmond-based Commonwealth Institute, requires an income of more than $63,000 per year just to meet a minimal standard of living.

Commuter traffic is a nightmare. In 2013, the average Virginia commute was about an hour each day.

Population growth also is degrading our water supply. Back in 2006, a U.S. Geological Survey report highlighted the pressure population growth and urban sprawl were putting on water resources. A 2014 USGS study on the water quality of Fairfax County, the most populous county in Virginia, suggested that more than a decade of population growth had caused streams throughout Fairfax County [to be] . . . generally of poor health, noting that watersheds in intensely developed areas were of the poorest quality.

Fortunately, there is a way to address these alarming trends before its too late  and it doesnt involve politically divisive family planning measures. Merely slowing the pace of immigration would enable Virginia (and the nation) to manage its expanding population.

The Pew Research Center projects that the U.S. population will swell to 441 million by 2065, an increase of 117 million people from today. Immigrants and their children will account for 88 percent of that population boom.

That sort of growth cant be sustained over the long term, particularly in places such as Virginia, where the immigrant population increased at twice the national average between 2000 and 2010.

Virginias foreign-born population has exploded since 1990, growing by more than 200 percent. Immigrants now account for 1 in 9 state residents.

Immigrants have children at a higher rate than people born in the United States, so slowing immigration would have an outsize effect on overall population growth. Immigrants were responsible for 45 percent of Virginias total population growth in recent decades when their U.S.-born children are taken into account.

University of California at San Diego economist Gordon Hanson found that immigration compounds many of the negative effects of population growth and sprawl, particularly by driving up housing costs.

To be clear, changes to immigration policy shouldnt harm current legal immigrants. Rather, the immigration system should be reformed in a way that reduces total immigration from its current unsustainable level of about 1 million new permanent residents per year, the highest influx of any nation in the world.

Limiting immigration would help ensure responsible population growth so that future generations  regardless of their national origin  can enjoy a prosperous and powerful commonwealth for decades to come.

The writer is a member of Virginians for Quality Healthcare.
One recent afternoon, President Obama sat down for lunch with seven former prisoners at the Washington restaurant and bookstore Busboys and Poets. He had just commuted the sentences of 61 inmates and was listening to the stories of other ex-offenders who had been granted clemency.

Obama was clearly moved by what he heard.

It does not make sense for a nonviolent drug offender to be getting 20 years, 30 years, in some cases life, in prison, Obama said at the lunch. Thats not serving anybody.

In the waning months of his presidency, Obama has made commutations for nonviolent drug offenders a centerpiece of his effort to reform the countrys criminal-justice system.

But behind the scenes, the administrations highly touted clemency initiative has been mired in conflict and held up by a bureaucratic process that has been slow to move prisoner petitions to the presidents desk.





Obama has granted 306 commutations to federal prisoners  more than the past six presidents combined. But as of Friday, 9,115 commutation petitions were pending with little time left to review them. Of these, fewer than 2,000 appear to be eligible for the presidents clemency program, according to a Justice Department official. Thousands more are still being reviewed by outside lawyers.

From the beginning, the program was beset by problems, including a lack of resources and a cumbersome, multilevel review system. The U.S. pardon attorney at the Justice Department makes recommendations that move to the deputy attorney general, who reviews the cases and sends them to the White House counsel, who considers them again before choosing which ones go to Obama.

The pardon attorney became so frustrated that she quit earlier this year and wrote a scathing resignation letter to Deputy Attorney General Sally Q. Yates. Deborah Leff said that despite her intense efforts to do her job, the Justice Department had not fulfilled its commitment to provide the resources necessary for my office to make timely and thoughtful recommendations on clemency to the president.

The position in which my office has been placed, asking us to address the petitions of nearly 10,000 individuals with so few attorneys and support staff, means that the requests of thousands of petitioners seeking justice will lie unheard, Leff wrote.

On Thursday, Obama commuted the sentences of 58 prisoners, his second round of clemencies in three months as the program has picked up steam. Administration officials say that they are addressing obstacles that have plagued the clemency initiative. The Justice Department has added lawyers to the pardon office. And White House Counsel Neil Eggleston has promised that many more petitions will be granted in the presidents final eight months.

The President is deeply committed to the clemency initiative. That is evident not only by the historic number of commutations hes granted to date, but by his wholesale approach to revamping the way the government approaches commutations, White House spokeswoman Brandi Hoffine said in a statement. That change helped spark a long overdue conversation about reforming our criminal justice system, which we hope will result in Congressional action so that many more deserving individuals can benefit from a second chance.

Problems from the start

In April 2014, Deputy Attorney General James Cole announced the administrations clemency initiative and a new pardon attorney, Leff, a former civil rights lawyer and acting head of the Justice Departments legal aid program, the Access to Justice initiative.





Cole said he would be personally involved in ensuring the pardon attorneys office has the resources needed to make timely and effective recommendations to the president.

But attorneys who have worked with the Justice Department said there were never enough lawyers and support staffers to make the program work. Leffs office had 10 attorneys fielding thousands of petitions.

Under criteria set out by then-Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., low-level drug offenders are eligible for clemency if they have been in prison for at least 10 years; had no significant criminal history; have no connection to gangs, cartels or organized crime; have demonstrated good conduct in prison; and probably would receive a substantially lower sentence if convicted of the same offense today.

An attorney who worked in the pardon office at the same time as Leff said that with petitions flooding in, it was extremely difficult with so few lawyers to sort out complicated drug cases and figure out whether they met the departments strict criteria.

To get more help, Cole reached out to the private bar to set up another layer of lawyers to read applications.

Outside lawyers formed an organization called Clemency Project 2014, which includes Families Against Mandatory Minimums, the American Civil Liberties Union, the American Bar Association and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.

An army of about 4,000 volunteer lawyers from across the country signed up to help in what has become one of the largest pro bono efforts in the history of the American legal profession. Seventy large law firms, more than 500 small firms and solo practitioners, and 30 law schools are involved, according to Cynthia W. Roseberry, the projects manager.

But it took nearly a year for the group to get organized and recruit and train lawyers, many of whom had no experience in criminal law.

An overwhelming 36,000 inmates  about 17 percent of the federal prison population  filled out surveys asking for help from the Clemency Project.

Even though the Justice Department had its own backlog, officials there privately complained that the outside Clemency Project lawyers, with their multiple levels of review, were taking too long to send more petitions.

That in turn frustrated the Clemency Project attorneys, who said they were working carefully to locate old legal documents, contact prosecutors and judges, look at prison behavior records and try to get pre-sentencing reports and sentencing transcripts. At the same time, they have been weighing risks to public safety.

Its going to be really surprising if none of these people re-offend, and no one wants to be the person who said yes to the one person who re-offends in however many years, said one lawyer reviewing clemency applications who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of case deliberations.

Turnover at Justice Dept.

Meanwhile, Cole and Holder  the two men who had launched the clemency initiative  left the Justice Department in 2015.

Yates, the career prosecutor and former U.S. attorney who became the new deputy attorney general, took over the supervision of clemency petitions.

Over time, pardon attorney Leffs frustrations grew.

Leff said Yates reversed many of her decisions and would not allow her to have any contact with the White House counsel.

After 20 months, Leff abruptly resigned.

I have been deeply troubled by the decision to deny the Pardon Attorney all access to the Office of the White House Counsel, even to share the reasons for our determinations in the increasing number of cases where you have reversed our recommendations, Leff wrote in her resignation letter to Yates, which was first reported by USA Today.

A Justice Department lawyer who worked with Leff said the pardon attorneys in prior administrations talked directly to the White House counsel to explain their recommendations.

When she left, Leff released a statement saying that she has known Obama for more than 20 years: His commitment to reinvigorating the clemency process  and the promise that holds for justice  can change the lives of a great many deserving people.

Leff implied that Obamas clemency program was being thwarted by the Justice Departments process. It is essential that this groundbreaking effort move ahead expeditiously and expand, she said.

When asked by a reporter last month about the roadblocks Leff said she had faced, White House press secretary Josh Earnest replied: I think there were a couple of concerns that she raised, and some of them were not inconsistent with concerns that weve had. The first is, we would like to see that unit of the Department of Justice be given more resources to do their work. And in the presidents latest budget proposal, theres a significant increase proposed for the budget of that office.

Some critics say the White House could have avoided many of these headaches by modeling the process after the way President Gerald Ford handled clemencies for Americans who had deserted the Army or failed to show up for the draft during the Vietnam War. With 600 people working on a special commission to review the cases, Ford granted 14,000 clemencies in one year.

Law professor Mark Osler, co-founder of New York Universitys Clemency Resource Center, said the initiative also might have gone more smoothly if Obama had moved the pardon attorneys office into the White House rather than keeping it under career prosecutors who may find it difficult to reverse other prosecutors decisions.

With Leff gone, in February the Justice Department named a new acting pardon attorney, longtime federal prosecutor Robert A. Zauzmer, who vowed to look at each of the thousands of petitions and make sure an appropriate recommendation is made to the president.

The Justice Department has given Zauzmer more resources  10 additional prosecutors across the country have been detailed to work remotely with his office. Department officials are also allowing Zauzmer to have contact with the White House counsel.

The Justice Department has dedicated the maximum amount of resources allowed by Congress to the Office of the Pardon Attorney, and we have requested additional funds from Congress for each year the initiative has been in place, Justice Department spokeswoman Emily Pierce said in a statement.

Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General Matthew Axelrod said Yates is so passionate about clemency.

She takes a grocery bag of petitions home and spends her weekends reading them, Axelrod said. Theres no one whos more committed.

Yates has put more pressure on the Clemency Project to speed up its work. Last week, she sent a letter to the volunteer attorneys saying, Time is of the essence and the inmates who raised their hands for your assistance still need your help.

James E. Felman, a lawyer and one of the leaders of the Clemency Project who visited prisons to help find inmates who meet the criteria, said the process is more streamlined. The coalition is sending batches of petitions to the pardon attorney twice a week and has sent 950 petitions in all. There are still about 8,000 left to finish reviewing. Time is running out, and if we dont get these petitions filed soon, there is no way that this president is going to ever see them, Felman said.

Obama just commuted the sentences of 58 people. Here are their names.
Some Republicans in Congress could be at risk of losing seats, in part because of the party's controversial presidential candidate Donald Trump. These are some the Republicans who are feeling the "Trump effect" the most. (Deirdra O'Regan/The Washington Post)

Some Republicans in Congress could be at risk of losing seats, in part because of the party's controversial presidential candidate Donald Trump. These are some the Republicans who are feeling the "Trump effect" the most. (Deirdra O'Regan/The Washington Post)

Pass the Prilosec.

Rarely have so many nasty words had to be eaten by so many politicians in such a short time.

Former Texas governor Rick Perry had been early among Republicans in declaring that Donald Trump was unfit to be president, saying last July that his then-rival for the presidential nomination was a barking carnival act and a cancer on conservatism.

That was then.

On Thursday, Perry endorsed the GOPs nominee-apparent  and even suggested he would be willing to be Trumps running mate.

Speaker Paul Ryan has backed away from his pledge to support whoever becomes the nominee, saying he's "not ready" to endorse Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. Other GOP heavyweights, including the Bushes, are also not giving endorsements. (Jenny Starrs/The Washington Post)

He is not a perfect man. But what I do believe is that he loves this country and he will surround himself with capable, experienced people and he will listen to them, Perry said.

He is far from the only one. When former Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal was still in the race last September, he had called Trump dangerous and a narcissist and an egomaniac. Now, Jindal has also endorsed Trump, though he acknowledged: Im not happy about it.

Donald Trump is a delusional narcissist and an orange-faced windbag. A speck of dirt is way more qualified to be president, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) had said of the front-runner in January, during an appearance on Comedy Centrals The Nightly Show With Larry Wilmore.

But in April, after his own presidential hopes had been extinguished, Paul said he would support Trump if he were the partys nominee.

There is one Republican who is thoroughly enjoying the whole awkward spectacle of it all.

People that have said terrible things about me have been on the phone with me over the last two days saying, We want to join the Trump team,  Trump said in an interview Tuesday night, as the returns in Indiana were shutting down any hope his critics had of blocking his nomination.

I actually said to a couple of them: How can you possibly join? What can you say to join, after what you said about me?  he recalled. And they said: Dont even worry about it, Mr. Trump. Ill be able to handle that. 

1 of 14 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad  These Republicans refuse to vote for Donald Trump View Photos And theyll tell you why. Caption And theyll tell you why. Former Secretary of State Colin Powell General Powell said at a meeting of the Long Island Association that he would be voting for Hillary Clinton, a spokeswoman confirmed Oct. 25. Powell added in an interview that he picked Clinton because I think shes qualified, and the other gentleman is not qualified. Nikki Kahn/The Washington Post Wait 1 second to continue.

In other words, Trump added, theyre politicians.

[Donald Trump agrees to meet with Paul Ryan before we go our separate ways]

Backflipping, of course, is a political ritual at the end of pretty much every bitter primary fight, as failed candidates face pressure to regroup to defeat the other partys nominee.

After dropping out of the race, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson moved fairly quickly to support Trump, even before it was entirely clear that he would be the Republican standard-bearer.

For others, it has been more difficult.

Because Trump is so outsized, he generated outsize criticism, said former House speaker Newt Gingrich, who has not been among the celebrity billionaires detractors. So as people get ready to eat crow, the helpings are bigger.

There is also the suddenness of it all. Many Republicans had assumed the fight would go on, right into the party convention in July.

Instead, they are having to deal with what Dick Tuck, a defeated candidate for state senator in California, uttered in a famous line on election night in 1966: The people have spoken  the bastards.

[Trump turns to general election  and away from past positions]

The failed GOP presidential candidates all pledged last fall to support the nominee. At the time, the move was aimed at keeping Trump himself from breaking away and running as an independent if he did not win.

Some are now making an exception to that pledge where Trump is concerned.

Most vocal has been Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), who said in a statement Friday that he cannot in good conscience support Donald Trump because I do not believe he is a reliable Republican conservative nor has he displayed the judgment and temperament to serve as Commander in Chief.

Former Florida governor Jeb Bush came to detest Trump during their primary battle. On Friday, Bush wrote on his Facebook page: Donald Trump has not demonstrated that temperament or strength of character. He has not displayed a respect for the Constitution. And, he is not a consistent conservative. These are all reasons why I cannot support his candidacy.

The final two opponents to give up in the race against Trump, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) and Ohio Gov. John Kasich, have yet to issue statements of whether they will support the nominee.

For Republicans further down the ballot, the balance is a tricky one: How to avoid alienating Trumps supporters, without being tied too closely to him?

Sen. Kelly Ayotte, facing what is expected to be a difficult reelection battle in New Hampshire, has said she would support the nominee, without endorsing him.

Whatever that means.

Other Republicans  including Sens. John McCain (Ariz.), Tom Cotton (Ark.) and Dan Sullivan (Alaska)  have also said they would support the nominee, while avoiding saying his name.

There is also a political calculation to treating Trump as the Harry Potter villain Lord Voldemort  whom the novel series characters refer to as He Who Must Not Be Named.

There are people who dont want to be on videotape at home endorsing Trump,  Gingrich said. But thats fine.
Speaker Paul Ryan has backed away from his pledge to support whoever becomes the nominee, saying he's "not ready" to endorse Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. Other GOP heavyweights, including the Bushes, are also not giving endorsements. (Jenny Starrs/The Washington Post)

Speaker Paul Ryan has backed away from his pledge to support whoever becomes the nominee, saying he's "not ready" to endorse Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. Other GOP heavyweights, including the Bushes, are also not giving endorsements. (Jenny Starrs/The Washington Post)

In an extraordinary rebuke of the Republican Partys presumptive presidential nominee, House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (Wis.), the nations highest-ranking GOP official, said Thursday that he could not support Donald Trump until he changes his tone and demonstrates that he shares the partys values.

While acknowledging that Trump has mobilized a powerful grass-roots movement and earned the nomination, Ryan said that Trump has not shown himself to be a standard-bearer who bears our standard  and he put the onus on the business mogul to recalibrate his campaign and offer a more inclusive vision.

Asked by CNN anchor Jake Tapper whether he backs Trump, Ryan responded: Im just not ready to do that at this point. Im not there right now. And I hope to, though, and I want to. But I think what is required is that we unify the party. And I think the bulk of the burden on unifying the party will have to come from our presumptive nominee.

This is the party of Lincoln, of Reagan, of Jack Kemp. And we dont always nominate a Lincoln and a Reagan every four years, but we hope that our nominee aspires to be Lincoln- and Reagan-esque, Ryan said, adding that he hopes the candidate advances the principles of our party and appeals to a wide, vast majority of Americans.

Ryans comments, which came as a surprise to some close allies, deepened the divide in a party now facing a painful reckoning about Trump. The GOPs only two living presidents  George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush  said they would not endorse him, while its past two nominees  Mitt Romney and John McCain  said they did not plan to attend Trumps nominating convention this summer in Cleveland. McCain, however, said he would support Trump and has offered to counsel him on foreign policy.

1 of 14 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad  These 10 Republicans refuse to vote for Donald Trump View Photos And theyll tell you why. Caption And theyll tell you why. Former Secretary of State Colin Powell General Powell said at a meeting of the Long Island Association that he would be voting for Hillary Clinton, a spokeswoman confirmed Oct. 25. Powell added in an interview that he picked Clinton because I think shes qualified, and the other gentleman is not qualified. Nikki Kahn/The Washington Post Wait 1 second to continue.

[Donald trump takes the reins of a divided Republican Party]

Trump was defiant in his response to Ryan, offering a firm defense of his candidacy and asserting that he has a mandate from Republican voters. In a notable departure from his handling of previous feuds, Trump did not insult Ryan personally.

I am not ready to support Speaker Ryans agenda, Trump said in a statement. Perhaps in the future we can work together and come to an agreement about what is best for the American people. They have been treated so badly for so long that it is about time for politicians to put them first!

Ryans remarks broke a previous pledge to support whoever becomes the GOP nominee. It also puts him at odds with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who offered tempered support for Trump on Wednesday, and Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus, a Ryan friend who has urged Republicans to unite behind Trump.

Priebus is trying to broker a Trump and Ryan meeting next week. Ryan spokesman Brendan Buck tweeted that the speaker would be happy to attend.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R), a Trump supporter and adviser, told reporters in Trenton that he would reach out to Ryan to discuss his concerns.

Other Republicans are swiftly coming around on Trump. Former Texas governor Rick Perry, who delivered the first vicious takedown of Trump last summer, told CNN that he now supports him and is open to being his running mate. Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts, whose family helped bankroll an anti-Trump super PAC, plans to endorse Trump on Friday at a rally in Omaha.

The Republican presidential front-runner reversed course on a whole load of issues  all on May 4. (Peter Stevenson/The Washington Post)

The tensions between Trump and Ryan go beyond temperament. They have philosophical differences about the size and scope of government. Ryan champions free-trade agreements, international military engagement, and sweeping overhauls of Social Security and Medicare, whereas Trump is an avowed opponent of recent trade deals, foreign interventions and proposed changes to entitlement programs.

[Paul Ryan tries to pivot from disheartened state of politics]

Furthermore, Ryan frames his politics in stark moral terms, while Trumps manner was forged by his experiences in the Manhattan business and tabloid wars of the 1980s.

Its time to go from tapping anger to channeling that anger into solutions, Ryan said. Its time to set aside bullying, to set aside belittlement and appeal to higher aspirations, appeal to what is good in us and to lead a country and a party to having a vast majority of Americans enthusiastic about choosing a path.

Ryan said that no Republican should consider supporting likely Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, but he did not spell out what he would do if he could not get around to backing Trump. Ryans indecision comes as some conservatives, including freshman Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.), are trying to draft an independent, third-party candidate.

Its a moment of moral clarity, said Peter Wehner, a center-right commentator and senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. If Trump is smart, hell take this message to heart and figure out that he doesnt have a snowballs chance in hell of winning if he doesnt unify the fractured party.

Trump is expected to visit Washington next week to meet with lawmakers. But there are no plans for Trump to address the full House Republican Conference  a departure from tradition for both parties, in which the presumptive nominees trek to Capitol Hill to meet with their respective caucuses in meetings hosted by the congressional leadership.

Aides to McConnell declined Thursday to say whether any such meeting with Trump would occur among Senate Republicans.

Trumps supporters in Congress shrugged off Ryan. Republicans, we have to listen to the voters voices, said Rep. Lou Barletta (R-Pa.). Everyone will come at their own time. Were not pressuring anyone, just welcoming.

Polling shows Trump is deeply unpopular with wide swaths of the electorate  especially women, young people, Latinos and African Americans  and Republicans are fearful that November could be a bloodbath that jeopardizes their Senate and House majorities.

[Trump would be least popular major party nominee in modern times]

In part because of his role as chairman of the Republican National Convention, Ryan has refrained from criticizing Trump too directly. But he has made no secret of his disdain for him. He has given a series of speeches outlining a distinct policy agenda and message as a sort of road map for embattled GOP lawmakers who may seek to differentiate their candidacies from Trump.

Ryans comments Thursday offer a new way for like-minded Republicans to address Trumps pending nomination.

There has been growing anxiety among members in purple and blue districts, marginal seats, said Rep. Peter T. King (R-N.Y.), a Ryan ally. Paul truly believes what hes saying. . . . Its personal and sincere. But there is a political equation to all this. He knows what the feeling is inside of the House as much as anyone.

Ryan shocked some leading Republicans, who expected he would dutifully line up behind the presumptive nominee. William J. Bennett, a former Reagan administration official and a mentor to Ryan, said he was knocked out of my chair as he watched Ryan on CNN.

This is a slap at the people, Bennett said. He thinks he can nudge Trump in a certain direction, but it doesnt make sense to expect Trump to have some kind of personality transformation. His approach was not conducive to unification, which is what the party needs.

Former House speaker Newt Gingrich, a Trump defender, said the GOP is undergoing a natural process but was critical of Ryan.

Ryan has to bring together a House GOP in which more and more members will support Trump, Gingrich said. McConnell and McCain have been far better leaders in trying to bring the party together.

Ryan made his decision about Trump on Wednesday, according to a senior House leadership aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak freely about Ryans internal deliberations.

Its unclear if the speaker ever will fully embrace Trump, but Ryan still plans to oversee the convention as co-chairman, a largely ceremonial role. He does not plan to deliver a formal speech in Cleveland and expects to focus fully on campaigning for House Republicans, the aide said.

Ryan is a conviction politician, said Wehner, an ally. Hes not a Republican first and foremost and only. Ryan is somebody who has a set of convictions and whose philosophical beliefs transcend even the party beliefs, and thats not true for everybody else.
Donald Trump speaks at a campaign event at Trump Doral golf course in Miami.

Donald Trump speaks at a campaign event at Trump Doral golf course in Miami. Carlo Allegri/Reuters

Businessman Donald Trump officially became the Republican nominee at the partys convention in Cleveland.

Just days into his new role as the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Donald Trump is walking away from key positions that have defined his anti-establishment bid  including his pledge to keep wealthy donors at bay.

The New York real estate tycoon, who frequently boasted throughout the primary race that he was financing his campaign, is setting up a national fundraising operation and taking a hands-off posture toward super PACs.

He is expressing openness to raising the minimum wage, a move he previously opposed, saying on CNN this week, I mean, you have to have something that you can live on.

And Trump is backing away from a tax plan he rolled out last fall that would have given major cuts to the rich. I am not necessarily a huge fan of that, he told CNBC. I am so much more into the middle class, who have just been absolutely forgotten in our country.

The billionaires tendency to change his mind on policy matters is a hallmark of his unconventional campaign  a quality he casts as an asset, saying it shows he is open to new ideas. Even so, his latest reversals are striking, particularly when it comes to the financing of his presidential bid, a central part of his pitch to voters.

The presumptive Republican presidential nominee reversed course on a whole load of issues  all on May 4. (Peter Stevenson/The Washington Post)

They also come amid an escalating battle between Trump and many Republican establishment figures, who blanch at his combative tone and controversial policy positions. House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (Wis.), the countrys highest-ranking elected Republican, said Thursday that he was not ready to endorse Trump as the nominee; Trump responded that he would not endorse Ryans proposed policies.

[Paul Ryan declines to support Donald Trump: Im not there right now]

Throughout the primary contest, the Manhattan mogul bragged that he was the only contender unencumbered by alliances to rich backers. Even though he has been accepting donations ($12 million worth through the end of March), Trumps proclamation of financial independence fed a sense among his supporters that he alone was standing outside a corrupt process.

The candidate furthered that impression by regularly denouncing his opponents for leaning on super PACs, which can take unlimited contributions, and by disavowing groups that cropped up to support him.

But Trump expressed little concern this week that a super PAC called Great America PAC was emerging as the vehicle of choice for wealthy Trump supporters, and he praised one of the groups advisers, longtime Republican consultant Ed Rollins.

I know that people maybe like me and they form a super PAC, but I have nothing to do with it, the candidate said Wednesday on NBC Nightly News, adding, So well see what happens.

He also acknowledged that he cannot personally cover the cost of a general-election campaign for the next six months, unless he is willing to sell a couple of buildings, as he said on MSNBCs Morning Joe.

1 of 14 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad  These 10 Republicans refuse to vote for Donald Trump View Photos And theyll tell you why. Caption And theyll tell you why. Former Secretary of State Colin Powell General Powell said at a meeting of the Long Island Association that he would be voting for Hillary Clinton, a spokeswoman confirmed Oct. 25. Powell added in an interview that he picked Clinton because I think shes qualified, and the other gentleman is not qualified. Nikki Kahn/The Washington Post Wait 1 second to continue.

On Thursday, Trump tapped hedge-fund manager and film investor Steven Mnuchin to assemble a national fundraising operation, tasked with raising at least $1 billion for the general election. That will probably require the creation of a traditional bundling effort, in which rich supporters are offered perks for collecting checks from their friends and family members.

Although the campaign said that Trump still plans to put substantial money into his bid, the first-time candidate will be seeking support from the very donor class he has vilified.

If Trump makes it clear he wants to change the rules but hes stuck playing under them, I dont think there will be a big turn-off, said conservative political consultant John Pudner, whose group Take Back Our Republic seeks to reduce the influence of the wealthy in politics. But if it looks like hes just abandoning the one thing that got him here, I think therell be trouble.

Selecting Mnuchin to lead the effort is a particularly jarring choice for a candidate who has lambasted hedge-fund managers on the trail. The chief executive of Dune Capital spent 17 years at Goldman Sachs, including a stint as head of the banks mortgage department, according to Bloomberg News.

[Trump campaign announces national finance chairman with ties to Wall Street and Democrats]

When asked if Trump was undercutting his pledge to be independent of big donors, spokeswoman Hope Hicks responded in an email: Mr. Trump is not raising money for his own campaign. He is raising money for the party.

She did not respond to an inquiry about whether any of the money Mnuchin will help raise will go into Trumps campaign coffers.

The Republican National Committee has been counting on getting robust fundraising assistance from its nominee to finance its quadrennial get-out-the-vote efforts  massive operations that lift not only the White House nominee but down-ballot candidates across the country.

In 2012, Republican nominee Mitt Romney and the RNC together raised $493 million through a joint committee. The effort was primarily driven by the expansive donor network that the former Massachusetts governor had cultivated over the years  so much so that RNC finance staffers relocated to Romneys Boston headquarters to work with his fundraising team.

It remains to be seen whether the Trump campaigns prospective donor list will prove valuable.

The Trump campaign has made it very clear they intend to do everything they can to help the team, said RNC communications director Sean Spicer, who added that the campaign plans to provide a list of supporters who have been very active in their campaign, and a vast network of business people and others who could be very helpful to us.

Already, some fundraisers who had backed other candidates have signed on. Mica Mosbacher, a former RNC finance co-chairman who helped Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.) tap donors across the country, said she plans to assist the party effort.

I plan to support Donald Trump as our nominee and help the RNC fundraise and am calling on conservatives to unite, she wrote in an email.

[Bushes snub of Trump has roots in Republican base anger]

But even wealthy contributors who said they were supportive of Trump expressed surprise that he was going to begin soliciting donations.

I thought he was self-funding, said Dallas investor Doug Deason, whose father, billionaire technology entrepreneur Darwin Deason, financed super PACs supporting Cruz and former Texas governor Rick Perry.

And there is still substantial resistance to Trump among key segments of the partys major donor base.

Its going to be hard to ask people for money for someone who says hes so rich he doesnt need peoples money, said Republican fundraiser Lisa Spies, who led Romneys finance outreach to women and the Jewish community and helped raise money this cycle for former Florida governor Jeb Bush.

Trumps hiring of a finance chairman was a good first step, she said, but she added that hes going to spend his time mending fences with donors. I think hes got a very tough job in front of him.

The key for many bundlers, said Fred Malek, who served as Sen. John McCains national finance chairman in 2008 and was a major fundraiser for Romney in 2012, will be whether Trump alters his provocative approach.

It really is going to depend on the tone he and his campaign takes, Malek said. If he is able to be more welcoming and inclusive and bring more people in his orbit, that will go a long way.

Jose A. DelReal contributed to this report.
After a bitter and bruising race, the Labour Partys Sadiq Khan won Londons mayoral race early Saturday and made history as the first Muslim elected to lead a major Western capital city.

The outcome is likely to resonate far beyond a change in Londons City Hall, challenging the rise of anti-Islam political rhetoric in the West and giving another powerful voice to Britains large Pakistani community just when the country is facing its own identity crisis.

Khan, who takes over as mayor of a city of 8.6 million that normally votes Labour, hailed his victory as the triumph of hope over fear and unity over division.

At a time when Islam is seen by many in the West as politically toxic, Khan embraced it to winning effect.

Eleven years ago, Pakistanis in Britain faced suspicions and huge public backlash after coordinated terrorist bombings of the London transit system killed 52 people and wounded more than 700.

[Trump-style bombast rocks London mayoral race]

Yet Khan has never tried to hide his faith. He memorably tweeted to his main rival, the Conservatives Partys Zac Goldsmith, at one point: Hey @ZacGoldsmith. Theres no need to keep pointing at me & shouting hes a Muslim. I put it on my own leaflets.

He told The Washington Post on the campaign trail this week: I want to be the British Muslim that defeats the extremists, defeats the radicals. Ive got a plan of how we can keep London safe.

Election officials said Khan defeated Goldsmith by more than 300,000 votes, after first- and second-preference votes were allocated, the AP reported. The result came early Saturday, more than 24 hours after polls closed. Khan will replace Boris Johnson, a Conservative.

The mayoral election took place just six weeks before Britons will vote on whether to stay in the European Union  a question that has raised sharp political divisions on issues that include control over immigration policies.

Londons mayor wields less direct power than big-city counterparts in the United States and elsewhere. But the position has gained a higher profile as a soapbox for various issues  even international affairs  under previous mayors such as the left-

leaning Ken Livingstone and Johnson.

[A guide to Britains scandals]

Sadiq Khan canvasses for supporters at a market in London on Wednesday. (Justin Tallis/AFP/Getty Images)

The two front-runners came from strikingly different backgrounds.

Khan, 45, the son of a Pakistani bus driver and seamstress, trained as a lawyer before becoming a Labour Party member of Parliament for Tooting, a south London constituency. He slept in a bunk bed at his parents home until he was 24.

Goldsmith, 41, is a longtime environmentalist and son of a billionaire financier. He is currently a lawmaker from Richmond in south London. His sister is Jemima Khan, whose ex-husband, Imran Khan, is a former cricket star from Pakistan who has since turned to politics in that country.

Jemima Khan appeared to criticize the campaign of her brother, who repeatedly accused Sadiq Khan of giving oxygen and cover to Islamic extremists.

Sad that Zacs campaign did not reflect who I know him to be  an eco friendly, independent-minded politician with integrity, she tweeted.

The mayoral race was one of a number of local and regional elections across Britain in what were dubbed the Super Thursday contests.

[London mayor to Obama: Stay out of E.U. debate]

Outside London, the Labour Party suffered losses in various parts of the country, suggesting it has a steep hill to climb to win the next general election in 2020.

This weeks votes marked the first big set of elections since Jeremy Corbyn, a politician on Labours far left, won his partys leadership contest last fall with massive grass-roots support.

And the result? A mixed bag.

Opposition parties normally do well in local elections, but Labour did not. However, it did not lose as much ground in England as some pundits had projected, and it remained the dominant party in the Welsh assembly.

But it fell behind the Conservatives to become the third-largest party in Scotland.

The Conservatives have spent decades in the political wilderness in Scotland, but they made gains  long considered unthinkable  under the partys charismatic leader there, Ruth Davidson.

Nicola Sturgeons Scottish National Party was set for a third term in power in the Scottish Parliament  it was just shy of a securing a majority  inevitably raising questions about the possibility of a second independence referendum for that region.

The local elections come at a time when the leaders of the two main parties, the Conservatives and Labour, have been locking horns in increasingly acrimonious exchanges.

[Parting shot from Londons mayor against E.U. membership]

British Prime Minister David Cameron, leader of the Conservatives, accused Corbyns Labour Party this week of having a problem with anti-Semitism, following a scandal that has rocked the party. The Labour Party recently suspended a senior member over controversial remarks.

Cameron also questioned Khans judgment  not for the first time  saying that he had shared platforms with terrorist sympathizers.

For his part, Corbyn accused the Conservatives of smearing Khan in the mayoral race.

The mayoral contest in London, where the citys housing crisis was the main battleground during the campaign, turned increasingly ugly as it neared the finish line.

Khan was forced to deny claims that he supports Islamic extremists (he says he met with unsavory characters as part of his job as a human rights lawyer), and Goldsmith was compelled to reject claims that he is a racist (he says he raised legitimate questions).

When asked whether the Conservatives mayoral campaign had done lasting damage to relations with Londons Muslim community, Andrew Boff, the Conservative leader of the London Assembly, a mayoral watchdog, said: I think it has.

Welcome to politics of ethnicity in a diverse city, said John Curtice, a professor at the University of Strathclyde. We know that Labour Party does relatively well in London amongst ethnic minorities. We also know that we are talking about a society in which there is a fair degree of Islamophobia, and if a party is behind and is playing dog-whistle politics, dont be surprised.

In London, a cosmopolitan city with more than 1 million Muslims, the negative campaigning seemed to leave a bitter taste for some.

Speaking after she voted Thursday at a polling station in Khans Tooting borough, Kate Parry, 50, a market researcher, said the tone of the debate had backfired on the Conservative campaign.


Crowds watch a rehearsal of Moscow's Victory Parade on May 5. (Max Avdeev/For The Washington Post)

To most Americans, the anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany slips by unnoticed. To Pavel Elfimov, its among the biggest holidays of the year.

Ask any Russian about their familys World War II experiences and the answer, almost invariably, is one of suffering and battlefield service. Unlike the United States, which had two oceans that largely insulated it from attack after Pearl Harbor, Russia was besieged, bombed, invaded and re-invaded during World War II. Then the Red Army swept toward Berlin and played a key role in toppling Adolf Hitler.

You have Thanksgiving. We have Victory Day, said Elfimov, 44, who came with his family this week to a nighttime rehearsal for Moscows annual Victory Day Parade. The procession is a bristling display of military might that sweeps down some of the capitals most exclusive streets before rolling through Red Square in front of the Kremlin elite.

Russian President Vladimir Putin revived the Soviet-style tank parade in 2008, seeing the day as a way to rally citizens around the flag. But despite the hundreds of missile launchers, warplanes and antiaircraft guns that roll through Red Square every year, many Russians say that the true meaning of the holiday is more personal, 71 years after the end of the war.

In Russia there are very few families who werent touched by it, said Elfimov, who added that both of his grandfathers fought in the war and that one of them died shortly afterward, his resilience destroyed by combat.



From left to right: Alesya Dorovskikh, 37, her brother and airborne soldier Nikolai Dorovskikh, 22, and Alesya's brother-in-law Pavel Elfimov, 44. (Max Avdeev/For The Washington Post)

Of more than two dozen people approached at the rehearsal, all had a parent, grandparent or great-grandparent who fought in the war. Most said at least one direct ancestor died in the fighting. Soviet losses were immense  most historians estimate the Soviet death toll between 27 million and 28 million people  and the oldest generation of Russians still has aching memories of wartime starvation.

It was impossible, said Irina Kravchenko, 60, who said that 300 of the 500 people living in her small town in the Ural Mountains at the time of the war headed off to combat. Her grandfather never came home from the fighting, she said, a memory she wanted to make sure she passed down to her grandchild, who along with her daughter-in-law was watching soldiers on antiaircraft missile systems prepare for the parade.



Irina Kravchenko, 60. (Max Avdeev/For The Washington Post)

The memory of service was so tough. There was an inner strength, Kravchenko said about the townspeople who returned from war. They didnt like to talk about their experiences.

World War II tends to be remembered in the United States as a victory by Americans, with the Red Army acting more or less as an adjunct. Russian memories are focused on their own sacrifices. As the veterans have died, their children and grandchildren have started to march on Victory Day, holding their photos, separately from the martial parades. That started as a nonpolitical movement in 2012, and has since been embraced by the Kremlin.

[Syria shows that Russia built an effective military. Now how will Putin use it?]

Critics of Putins Victory Day celebrations say that he has turned the anniversary into a politicized event that serves the state more than the memories of the people who suffered in the war. Veterans once gathered to drink on the holiday and remember fallen comrades. Now the main focus is on the military parades, which this year will feature advanced warplanes streaking over the Kremlin as intercontinental ballistic missiles plod through Red Square. Fascism, too, has taken on new meanings, with the term routinely lobbed by the Kremlin at Ukraines new leaders. Commemorating the World War II victory burnishes Putins efforts to garner domestic support for tough policies toward his neighbor.



Crowds watch Moscow's Victory Parade rehearsal. (Max Avdeev/For The Washington Post)

And few history textbooks take a critical view of Stalins performance during the conflict, known here as the Great Patriotic War. Largely forgotten is the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany that allied Joseph Stalin with Hitler before Germany launched a surprise attack in 1941. The suffering Stalin inflicted on his own people, along with the pain the Red Army inflicted on Eastern Europe as it fought its way toward Berlin, goes unmentioned.

But some people who turned to Moscows streets to honor their ancestors sought to distance the martial parade from any modern military meaning.

Its two separate stories, said Nadezhda Sklyar, 27, whose 4-year-old son, Sebastian, was asking soldiers questions about their military equipment as he waited for them to start their rehearsal. My grandfather served. He was gravely wounded in Leningrad. My other grandfather was a Belarusan partisan, she said.



Nadezhda Sklyar, 27, and her son Sebastian, 4. (Max Avdeev/For The Washington Post)

I grew up with this, she said. I hope my son has these memories, too.

To him, its interesting, these tanks, Sklyar said of her son. Thank God theyre not used now. Im worried about war, she said. However, any conflict between Russia and the West would be nuclear, so the hardware in the parade would be of little relevance, she said.

Many soldiers who are on active duty look to their families war histories as inspiration.

Everyone in my family has served, said Ivan Medvedev, 23, an enlisted soldier in an airborne battalion who was drinking a cup of coffee with his fiancee while waiting for the parade rehearsal to start.



Airborne soldier Ivan Medvedev, 23, and his fiancee, Darya, 20. (Max Avdeev/For The Washington Post)

Medvedevs great-grandfather served in the Soviet navy, he said. His great-grandmother was a nurse. His father fought in Afghanistan, and his brother was in Chechnya. Medvedev said that he is posted in Moscow for now  and with his wedding coming up, he didnt seem eager to leave.

Medvedev said he was happy to be able to mark the anniversary on behalf of the members of his family who had fought in war, but he was mindful that World War II was sometimes about sacrifice more than glory.

My great-grandfather served in the fleet, Medvedev said. It was really hard for him to talk about it.

Read more

Russian delegation in Syrias ancient Palmyra marks liberation from Islamic State

U.S.-Russia cooperation frays as Syria truce falls apart

Weeks after pullout from Syria, Russian military is as busy as ever

Today's coverage from Post correspondents around the world
Plainclothes police officers aim their guns at an assailant who attempted to shoot prominent Turkish journalist Can Dundar outside a courthouse in Istanbul on May 6. Dundar was not hurt. (Reuters)

A Turkish court sentenced two prominent journalists to five years in prison for divulging state secrets Friday in a high-profile case that has drawn international scrutiny  just hours after one of the reporters was nearly killed in an assassination attempt outside the courthouse in Istanbul.

Can Dundar, editor in chief of Turkeys daily Cumhuriyet newspaper, escaped the attack by an armed assailant unscathed but was then handed the five-year sentence for publishing a report on the governments alleged smuggling of arms to Syrian rebels.

His colleague, Ankara bureau chief Erdem Gul, was also convicted for his part in publishing the report. Dundar and Gul were acquitted of separate charges of espionage and conspiring to topple the government.

The report, published in May 2015, was based on footage purporting to show Turkish intelligence facilitating weapons transfers to rebels across the border in Syria. The incident, which took place early in 2014, came to light after Turkish paramilitary and police forces halted trucks reportedly transporting the weapons.

Rights groups have condemned the proceedings and urged Turkish authorities to drop the charges. The Turkey researcher for Human Rights Watch, Emma Sinclair-Webb, called the trial monstrous Friday.

Media watchdog Reporters Without Borders blasted the case as autocratic retribution from Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who was named as a complainant in the suit.

Critics say the president has grown increasingly authoritarian, jailing dissidents and pushing for a stronger role for the countrys executive that would neuter the parliament.

On Thursday, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu announced his resignation amid a public rift with Erdogan, who analysts say seeks to replace Davutoglu with a more pliant premier.

The turmoil has raised concerns that a deal between Turkey and the European Union to stem the flow of migrants to Europe will unravel.

Davutoglu spearheaded Turkeys negotiations with Europe over the deal, which calls for the return of migrants to Turkey in exchange for aid and other incentives, including visa-free travel for Turks on the continent and the reopening of E.U. membership talks.

The E.U. has called on Turkey to revise its legal definition of terrorism, which rights advocates say is too broad and has been used by the state to target journalists and other dissidents.

On Friday, the assailant who attacked Dundar called out traitor as he approached the Istanbul courthouse and fired two shots at the journalist.

I am fine, Dundar posted on his Twitter feed after the attack. He said it was those who turned journalists into targets who were responsible.

Read more

Todays coverage from Post correspondents around the world
Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr speaks during a news conference in the holy Shiite city of Najaf on April 30. (Haidar Hamdani/AFP/Getty Images)

When Moqtada al-Sadr called on his followers to fight against the presence of U.S. troops in Iraq following the 2003 invasion, they obliged to devastating effect. His militiamen launched thousands of attacks on U.S. soldiers. Their notorious roadside bombs killed and maimed.

Now, he has turned his sights to Iraqs corrupt halls of power, and the dramatic storming of Baghdads fortified Green Zone last week by his followers has shaken Iraqs political system.

It has dramatically ramped up pressure on Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi to implement reforms he has promised.

But it has also caused a backlash against the rabble-rousing cleric  some politicians accuse him of holding the country to ransom and using his call for reform for the purpose of increasing his personal influence.

It has deepened divides in Iraqs Shiite community, and new blast walls were erected on bridges around the Green Zone on Friday by a premier desperate to prove his mettle after the breach that undermined his credibility.

Iraqi protesters climb a pole with their national flags in Baghdads heavily fortified Green Zone on May 1. (Haidar Mohammed Ali/AFP/Getty Images)

Meanwhile, the cleric has riled Iranian-backed Shiite militias in the country, creating a new level of unpredictability to a country already so fragile.

The big question is the potential for things to get ugly, and weve already seen glimpses of that, said Hayder al-Khoei, an Iraq analyst at the London-based Chatham House think-tank.

Sadr has long been an agitator of the West, but he also has a thorny history with Iran, despite studying there and at points taking its money to fund his militias.

He espouses a strong Arab nationalist platform, and presents himself as a champion of the downtrodden impoverished Shiite masses, from where he draws most support.

Although Iraq is deeply divided along Sunni-Shiite lines, the tension within the Shiite community is driving the current crisis.

Out, out Iran, Sadrs supporters had chanted as they gathered in the Green Zone, after ransacking parliament. They had also turned on Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani, the Iranian commander who has led efforts against the Islamic State, both in Iraq and Syria.

America and Iran have split the cake of Iraq between them, and each is having their share, said Salah Hassan, a 33-year-old fighter with Sadrs militia, the Peace Brigades. People say the Shiites are loyal to Iran, but we are only loyal to Sadr.

As Sadrs followers stormed the Green Zone, his militiamen took position around its perimeter. In response, the Khorasani Brigades, an Iranian proxy militia, and others closer to Tehran, deployed heavily on the streets of Baghdad. Other militias close to Iran pulled fighters back from the countrys conflict zones.

Its not outside the realms of possibility for them to turn their guns on each other, Khoei said.

The Peace Brigades, a reformation of the notorious Mahdi Army that waged war against U.S. soldiers in 2004, is at the heart of Sadrs power. Its members are die-hard and have clashed with the state in the past.

In 2008, then-Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki launched the Charge of the Knights against his Mahdi Army in the city of Basra, in an attempt to wrest control of it from the militia. Then, it was Iran that eventually brokered a cease-fire agreement, and some hope that Iraqs neighbor can step in to rein in Sadr once more.

Iran has the same point of view as America, that Iraq should be stable. Stability is very important now, said Salah Abdul Razzaq, a Shiite politician and former governor of Baghdad. Iran should play a mediation role, he said.

A day after his supporters packed up and left their short-lived sit-in, Sadr got on a plane and left for Iran.

His office said it was a personal trip to visit an Iranian shrine, despite coming at a time when thousands of Shiites stream to a shrine in Baghdad to pay their respects on the anniversary of the death of an 8th-century imam, a pilgrimage he missed.

The Iraqi rumor mill swirled into action, with some politicians speculating he was summoned by a furious Tehran.

I think they are angry, maybe they blame him for what happened, Abdul Razzaq said.

Five days later, he has still not returned, and before his departure, he had announced a two-month spiritual retreat. His supporters have remained stoic.

Everyone should be comforted that even if Sadr stayed in Iran for half a century, he would not be subjected to any pressure or do anything against Iraqs interests, Dia al-Asadi, a politician with Sadrs political bloc, said in a statement last week.

But he distanced Sadr from the anti-Iranian chants, saying the cleric was against them.

There have been other small signs of conciliation from Sadrs camp, most notably on Friday, when a directive from the clerics office ordered protests to be held locally around mosques after prayers, rather than in a mass gathering in Baghdad.

The apparent downscale gives some breathing space for Abadi, who is desperately trying to steer Iraq out of its crisis. At the center of Sadrs demands is a new technocratic government, a policy of Abadi himself. But despite embarking on a radical reform program last summer to cut government waste and corruption, Abadis success has been limited. Change involves upsetting a status quo that Iraqs political elite currently benefits from, and few expect them to let go easily.

Abadi was already seen as a weak leader, and Sadrs actions have undermined him further, with members of parliament incensed by the breach of their fortified inner sanctum.

As he attempts to regain control, and credibility, he has pledged to prevent another breach and fired the head of Green Zone security, who kissed Sadrs hand as the cleric entered the area in March.

New blast walls have been erected on the bridges that cross the Tigris to the Green Zone.

But the Sadrists have promised to escalate and call for the prime ministers resignation if a new technocratic government is not created. With parliament splintered, even getting enough members together to hold a session and vote will be a challenge. The Kurds are refusing to attend, while a group of rebel parliamentarians refuse to recognize the legitimacy of the speaker.

Just how long Sadr will wait before ratcheting up pressure remains to be seen.

Iran will try to rein him in, but just how successful theyll be is anyones guess, Khoei said.

Read more:

Protesters leave Baghdads Green Zone a day after ransacking parliament

Unhappy in Europe, some Iraqis return home

Third U.S. combat death comes as American troops edge closer to the front lines in Iraq

Todays coverage from Post correspondents around the world
An entrance to a tunnel that Israels military said it discovered just outside the southern Gaza Strip. (Amir Cohen/Reuters)

In the worst fighting in almost two years between Israel and Gaza Strip militants, repeated salvos of Palestinian mortar fire were met Friday by Israeli airstrikes deep in the coastal enclave as an escalation between the two sides reached a third worrisome day.

Both Israel and Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist militant movement, have said they want to maintain an Egyptian-brokered truce that ended 50 days of war in the summer of 2014  an inconclusive fight that claimed the lives of 71 Israelis, mostly soldiers, and more than 2,100 Palestinians, including some 500 children and 250 women.

As each day passes, anxieties grow that a deadly rocket from Gaza or a devastating strike by Israel could set the stage for a fourth war between the belligerents.

The current round of fighting in Gaza began this week when Israeli troops entered the enclave and began to destroy offensive tunnels dug by Hamas along the Israeli periphery.

Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh said Friday that his Gaza government does not want war but will fight Israeli incursions into the territory. Haniyeh said the Israeli troops penetrated a few hundred yards into a Gaza buffer zone in multiple locations.

Children sit in a window in the Shejaeiya neighborhood east of Gaza City near the border between the Gaza Strip and Israel on May 5. (Mohammed Saber/European Pressphoto Agency)

[Israel says it discovered new border tunnel]

Using information that Israeli intelligence officers say they gleaned from a Hamas operative arrested last month, Israeli sappers and engineers, protected by ground troops and tanks, have been searching the border perimeter for attack tunnels since Tuesday.

Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon said that his troops will not be deterred by Hamas threats and will continue their search until we find and expose every last tunnel.

The back-and-forth comes as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faces a damning report by the state comptroller over his prosecution of the 2014 war with Hamas. The prime ministers office said the report was political.

While Israeli troops have repeatedly ventured into the Gaza buffer zone over the past two years, their presence now has spurred them to action.

The peace and quiet of the last two years has been a mirage, as both sides have spent the time preparing for the next war, when they should have spent the time securing a more lasting peace, said Daniel Nisman, a security analyst for the Levantine Group.

The Israelis have to destroy tunnels that threaten them, and Hamas must respond when Israeli forces enter the strip, he said. Analysts call the Hamas mortar fire and Israeli airstrikes rocket language  meaning that its how Hamas, branded a terrorist group, and Israel talk to each other.

Hamas cant look gutless, Nisman said. Theyre a resistance movement. Thats their whole point.

[Does Israel occupy the Gaza Strip?]

Over the past three days, Israel says, Hamas has launched 12 salvos of mortar rounds against its forces operating along the perimeter fence. No Israeli soldiers or civilians have been hurt.

Gaza militias allied with Hamas, such as Islamic Jihad, are also alleged to have fired mortars, and their infrastructure  including a watchtower near the Gaza fence  has been hit by Israeli counterattacks.

Israel has responded to the harassing mortar fire with tank fire and F-16 airstrikes against multiple targets.

On Thursday, an Israeli missile killed a 53-year-old woman, Zeina al-Amour, in an attack near Khan Younis, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry. She was working on her farm when the missile struck, the Palestinians said. Israeli military spokesmen had no comment on the death.

The military wing of Hamas said two tunnels that Israeli forces found over the past three weeks were old excavations used during the 2014 war. Hamas said the Israeli government was looking for false victories and spreading lies to improve its image at home and abroad.

The Israel military says the tunnels were newly dug and designed for assault.

Hamass diabolical plan to infiltrate into Israeli communities must be stopped, said Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, an Israeli military spokesman.

Hazem Balousha in Gaza City contributed to this report.

Read more:

Todays coverage from Post correspondents around the world
Black henna tattoos can cause a bad reaction. (Photo: Stocksy)

Doctors are suggesting that everyone consider avoiding black henna tattoos, especially while traveling, after a 10-year-old boy from the United Kingdom had a painful allergic reaction. According to a new paper in BMJ Case Reports, he had just been on a trip to Spain with his family.



The boy visited his doctors office after experiencing an inflammatory outbreak of raised red spots along the outline of the tattoo. The rash began four days after the black henna was applied; the skin lesions were crusted, hot, and painful to the touch. Doctors treated him with antibiotics, along with a topical corticosteroid, a local anesthetic, and moisturizers. After 48 hours, the lesions did improve, although after 10 days there was still hyperpigmentation where the tattoo had been.

Related: Health Vlogger Has Terrifying Reaction to Henna Hair Dye

The reaction was likely caused by textile dye paraphenylenediamine (PPD), according to the studys lead author, Jaya Sujatha Gopal-Kothandapani, PhD, a researcher in pediatric endocrinology in the Department of Oncology & Metabolism at the University of Sheffield.

This dye is a known contact allergen and can cause significant side effects like redness, blistering, itching, and discoloration of the skin, Gopal-Kothandapani told Yahoo Beauty. It can cause a permanent damage to the skin or lead to a life-threatening allergic reaction in some individuals. Exposure to this dye can also increase the risk of developing rapid and severe allergic reaction to hair dye in the future and vice versa.

Related: The Meaning Behind Beyonces Hennaed Hands



And its not just hair dye either, says Gopal-Kothandapani. The PPD dye can sensitize individuals to chemicals in black clothing dye, black rubber, PABA sunscreen, and hair dye, causing a cross-reaction when exposed to these agents in the future.

A 10-year-old boys serious allergic reaction to a black henna tattoo. (Photo courtesy of the University of Sheffield)

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Skin reactions from black henna tattoos are all too common, says Gopal-Kothandapani, and the severity of the reaction is generally based on the concentration of and the length of exposure to the PPD dye. Black henna tattoos often have concentrations of PPD as high as 30 percent, which clocks in way above the regulated levels for the dye in most countries. As a comparison, companies can use only up to 6 percent PPD in hair dye and none in skin products in the United States and Europe.

The FDA has administered warnings in the past about black henna reactions. Many cases of inflammation, like what happened to the 10-year-old boy visiting Spain, arise from application in European countries, but travelers should exercise caution in other locations too. Tourists visiting countries like Indonesia, Morocco, Turkey, Egypt, and [nations in] the Middle East most commonly report reactions to black henna tattoos applied by temporary tattoo artists at holiday resorts and street carnivals, says Gopal-Kothandapani.

Related: The Rare But Scary Dangers of Henna Hair Dye

Not all henna is bad, though. If you want to get one of those intricate tattoos, Gopal-Kothandapani says its important to distinguish between natural henna and black henna  because only natural henna is safe. Natural henna paste is greenish, smells natural, takes six or eight hours to stain, will never burn the skin, and leaves a deep maroon color that can last for up to three weeks, she says. Black henna is dangerous. The paste is jet-black, smells like a chemical, takes less than an hour or two to stain skin, may burn, and will leave a black color for more than three days.

If youre in any way unsure whether the henna is black or natural, skip it. Also of note to parents: The severity of an allergic reaction from the PPD in black henna is usually much higher in children than adults, says Gopal-Kothandapani.

Lets keep in touch! Follow Yahoo Beauty on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest.
Collider recently spoke with Captain America: Civil War directors Anthony and Joe Russo and they chatted about doing a standalone Black Widow film. They both endorse it, with Anthony saying, Its a no-brainer, right? and Joe adding, I dont think [itll take] much. I think its just a function of where on the slate it goes. Shes a badass.

Scarlett Johanssons Black Widow first arrived in theaters in Iron Man 2 and since then has become a mainstay of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Yet, despite other Avengers stars like Captain America, Iron Man, Thor, and even Ant-Man getting time to shine, it appears Black Widow will get a decade of Marvel movies under her belt without ever getting her own spotlight. And shes helped save the world, like, four times.

In Tales From the Script, X-Men writer David Hayter said he was working on a Black Widow movie, set into motion during a successful run of female action flicks like Kill Bill, Tomb Raider, and Resident Evil.

But when the studios followed this trend with a run of awful films, including Aeon Flux, they decided to pull the plug on a Black Widow film. Imagine if they stopped making male action hero films just because of Green Lantern or X-Men Origins: Wolverine?

Besides, Scarlett Johansson is a big moneymaker. Other than Samuel L. Jackson, she has by the far the best box-office totals of any other Avengers star. And she has already proven that she can headline an action film by herself  Lucy opened on the same day in 2014 as Dwayne Johnsons Hercules and earned $15 million more, despite being R-rated. Moviegoers have proven they are happy to see a good action movie with a female lead  Mad Max: Fury Road, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Sicario, and Spy are just a few recent examples. And The Hunger Games franchise has made more than $2 billion.

Putting aside the business of moviemaking, there are artistic reasons to make a Black Widow film, not least of all: Shes an interesting character. There are various origin stories, but basically she was trained to be an assassin and is a villainous character before she finds redemption through the Avengers  a story that would be a nice addition to Marvels slate.

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Were going to have to wait until 2018 to get a movie with a female hero in the title, and even then the Wasp is sharing it with Ant-Man. It wont be until 2019 that we get our first true female lead, Captain Marvel. Yet a character we all know and like played by a huge movie star who has already stated interest in giving it a go, only gets to be a supporting character.

There is a wild gender imbalance in comic book movies, and while one Black Widow movie wont solve this problem, its a step in the right direction.

Chris Evans, Russo Brothers Talk Comic Book Movie Deaths, Hint At Ones To Come in Avengers Sequels:

Tell us what you think! Hit us up on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram or leave your comments below. And check out our host, Khail Anonymous, on Twitter.


On the late-night talk shows Wednesday, it seemed like Donald Trump was all anyone was discussing.

The billionaire businessman turned presidential candidate scored a huge primary victory in Indiana on Tuesday, and with Ted Cruz and John Kasich dropping out in the wake of Trump's win, Trump became the presumptive GOP nominee for the White House.

Some hosts used tongue-in-cheek sketches to poke fun at Trump, while others, such as Seth Meyers, seemed to have a more serious tone.

"How did they get to the point where they're handing their nomination to a race-baiting, xenophobic, serial liar who peddles conspiracy theories and thinks the National Enquirer is a real newspaper? The answer: This is no accident," the Late Night host said. "This is not a fluke. The Republican Party is the party of Donald Trump and has been for years."

Meyers said the GOP better engage in some serious introspection now that Trump is the face of the party.

"At the end of the day, Republicans should do some soul searching about how they turn their party into the party of Donald Trump," Meyers said. "The #StopTrump movement, for all its good intentions, was awkward. It was poorly organized."

Daily Show host Trevor Noah said he did not know how to feel about Trump's Indiana victory. While it did force Ted Cruz to drop out of the race, it also all but guaranteed the billionaire the party's nomination.

"Yea? Is this a yea? I'm so conflicted," Noah said. "I mean, Ted Cruz lost but because Donald Trump won. It's like finding out your herpes is gone, but it's because your dick fell off."

Read more: Trump Clinches Nomination: Who Are the Media Winners and Losers?

Noah tried to put the stunning Trump realization into historical terms.

"The last time either major party nominated a total outsider, someone who had never held elected office, was Dwight D. Eisenhower," he said. "And that only happened because he beat Hitler. So back then, you had to win World War II. Now you just have to win Twitter."

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Jimmy Fallon "celebrated" the Trump victory by doing his best impression of the former Apprentice host pretending to call President Obama after Indiana.

"Come November, I'm going to be voted Captain America," Fallon's Trump said on The Tonight Show.

Read more: Cartoon Donald Trump, Stephen Colbert Deliver 'Hunger Games'-Inspired Farewell to Ted Cruz, John Kasich

Obama, played by Dion Flynn, warned the Trump character to cool his jets after some insults were thrown his way.

"Don't make me go Lemonade on your ass," Flynn's Obama said, a reference to the recently released, much talked about Beyonce album. "'Cause I will."

Fallon's Trump responded: "Watch it, you don't want to mess with Donald with the good hair."

Jimmy Kimmel used Trump's former reality-star status to poke fun at him by means of a different show: Survivor.

Kimmel said that show is how Trump should pick his running mate for the GOP ticket. And of course Gary Busey was part of it.

Conan also had a laugh at the news, but he went about it by making fun of the previous candidates who ran against Trump for the GOP nomination.

"It's been a long race. There were 16 candidates. I think we should take a moment and honor their departures," Conan said.

With an in memoriam, Conan showed pictures of the candidates with funny reasons why they dropped out of the race. For instance, Scott Walker "got lost on his way to a debate" and Chris Christie "drowned in a chocolate river."

Read more: Fran Lebowitz: "Everyone Has to Love" Hillary Clinton to Protect Us From Donald Trump
DreamWorks Animation blew past earnings expectations in the most recent quarter, recording 16 cents in per-share profit on $190.4 million in revenue while analysts were predicting just a penny a share on revenue of $183 million.

All of DWA's various segments showed impressive revenue growth, except for feature films, though Kung Fu Panda 3 in China had an outsized positive impact on the bottom line.

The earnings results, though, are almost besides the point as far as Wall Street is concerned, given DWA has already agreed to be acquired by Comcast's NBCUniversal for $3.8 billion, which amounts to $41 per share.

In regular trading on Thursday, DWA shares closed fractionally lower to $39.78 and after the closing bell they were up by roughly an equal amount.

NBCUniversal CEO Steve Burke told DWA employees this week they'll keep making animated movies at DWA's Glendale campus.

NBCU, through its relationship with Illumination Studios, has been successful with its Despicable Me/Minions franchise, but the DWA purchase gives it properties like Shrek and Kung Fu Panda to integrate into its theme parks and consumer products units.

"I'm excited to be passing the baton to Comcast, as I know they will continue to build on the foundation we've established over the past 22 years," DWA CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg said Thursday in a statement.

Due to the pending merger, DWA didn't even bother with a Q&A session with analysts after reporting earnings Thursday.

The feature films unit posted revenue that declined to $94.3 million compared to $128.7 million the same quarter a year earlier, but TV series and specials recorded $56.9 million (up from $18 million); consumer products posted $21.7 million (up from $15.1 million); and new media was at $15.1 million (up from $4.6 million).

Kung Fu Panda 3 contributed $30.9 million in revenue during the quarter, compared to $18.3 million for Home, $1.9 million for How to Train Your Dragon 2 and $1.6 million for The Penguins of Madagascar.

Library titles contributed $41.6 million in revenue during the quarter.
This Mother's Day don't get lost in the sea of flower petals, spa gift certificates and heart-shaped necklaces. Instead, give the mother in your life something less commercial and more sentimental. After all, that's what the holiday is all about.

In 1908, Anna Jarvis organized the first Mother's Day at a Virginia church and Philadelphia retail store, according to History.com. She began campaigning for the day to become a national holiday, based on the idea that most American holidays celebrated the achievements of only males. In 1914, President Woodrow Wilson signed the holiday into effect.

Mother's Day then fell into the commercialized trap of gift specials and deals right next to Valentine's Day and Christmas. Jarvis would spend the rest of her life denouncing the well-marketed holiday, but it remains well and alive today.

With that in mind, put down the overpriced box of chocolates, and check out these affordable and sweet gifts that mean more than their price tags. Because life isn't actually a Zale's commercial.

Source: Saltopia

Give the gift of flavor with this set of 18 types of artisan salts from Saltopia. The set includes a range of flavors, like STUD (dark brown sugar, garlic and habanero) and Sweet Tart (balsamic and blueberry).

Source: Numi/Amazon

What's both zen and easy on the eyes? This flowering tea set by Numi, which comes with "six bouquets of tea leaves" that beautifully blossom in a see-through pot.

Source: Chemex/Amazon

If the mother who you're shopping for isn't into tea then consider gifting this minimalist but elegant glass drip coffeemaker, which is outfitted with leather and wooden details. The coffeemaker makes three cups.

A photo posted by @irenetaylor16 on May 4, 2016 at 5:29am PDT

Instead of dishing out big bills for a flower bouquet that's going to die and rest in peace in the garbage, DIY some beautiful (and affordable) potpourri, which includes nice-smelling herbs and fruit as well.

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Source: AlmostSundayInc/Etsy

To really make Mother's Day a family affair, gift this custom-made print of your family tree turned into a literal tree.

A video posted by  Harbiyiyorum.com | Yemek (@harbiyiyorum) on May 5, 2016 at 7:32am PDT

Who doesn't want some green life in their own life? A terrarium makes the perfect gift to go on someone's desk, bookshelf or nightstand. It's also incredibly easy and cheap to make, especially compared to bouquets of roses.

Source: Livefashionable

This beautiful scarf is budget friendly and super soft  after all, it's 100% cotton. It's also handmade in Ethiopia, which means each scarf is unique, just like the mother you're giving it to.

A photo posted by Nurture From Nature (@nurturefromnature) on May 3, 2016 at 3:05pm PDT

If you can't afford an expensive spa treatment, consider making a sea salt scrub with ingredients like coconut oil, yummy-smelling essential oils and obviously, love.

Source: MoMA Store

With this beautiful laser-cut tea infuser, making tea will never be a boring task.

Source: MoMA Store

This metal vase is elegant, simple, and perfect for the mother who doesn't want a typical-looking vase.
The posters of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), iconic for their distinct style and direct messages, inspired Americans in the 1930s and 40sand 81 years later, their vintage charm appeals to a new generation of Americans, particularly on Pinterest.

kindbooks400

On May 6, 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed an executive order that created the WPA, a federal assistance program aimed at putting Americans back to work at a time when unemployment was near 20 percent. At its peak, it employed 3.3. million Americans.

The WPAs legacy is everywhereits workers built or worked on hundreds of thousands of infrastructure projects, from roads and bridges to schools, parks, and hospitals.

The WPA also employed artists to create thousands of posters that promoted social ideals of the time as well as federal programs supporting education, culture, health, safety, and tourism.

As described by Posters for the People, a traveling exhibition about WPA posters, Through their distinct imagery and clear and simple messages, the posters of the WPA provide a unique snapshot of an important era in Americas past.

Now, many of those now-iconic posters are online, thanks to the Library of Congress and projects like Posters for the People.

Online today, the messages that tend to resonate are those about travel and reading. Heres a sampling of 10 of the most popular, pinnable posters.

1. See AmericaMontana

montana

2. A trip around the world

storyhour

3. Understanding the arts

understandingarts

4. John is not really dull

[1936 or 1937]. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. Reproduction Number: LC-USZC2-5332.

5. See Americacaverns

see america

6. Be kind to books

kindbooks

7. Spare our trees

sparetrees

8. Read books in March

marchbooks

9. Wild life

wildlife

10. Once upon a time

oncetime

All images courtesy Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. Source links: See AmericaMontana; A trip around the world; Understanding the arts; John is not really dull; See Americacaverns; Be kind to books; Spare our trees; Read books in March; Wild life; Once upon a time.
From ELLE DECOR

Get claustrophobic on planes? Eithad, the United Arab Emirates' national carrier, has just the spot for you  that is, if you're able to pay up $38,000 each way.

The airline's three-room "penthouse in the sky," called The Residence, boasts a private living room, bedroom, and bathroom, and is available only on its Airbus 380-800 fleet, which travels from New York to Mumbai with a stopover in Abu Dhabi, according to The Daily Mail.

Not to be confused with the plane with king-sized beds that is reportedly in the works, this cabin features a 32-inch flat-screen TV, leather double sofa, en-suite shower, and double bed  a first for a commercial plane. A Savoy-trained butler is all yours for the duration of the flight, while a private chef will prepare the meals of your choice. According to a press release, a private concierge can "provide access to a range of services, from a last-minute booking at a top London restaurant, tickets for a Broadway show, to the purchase of a rare blue diamond." Swanky.

If you're anything like us, you're probably thinking, "Who can afford this sh*t?" To which we answer: Enough people to make this a profitable endeavor for Etihad, who first introduced the service on its Abu Dhabi-London Heathrow route in December 2014. $32K tickets have continued to sell since the New York-Abu Dhabi route was introduced in December; daily New York-Mumbai service was added this Sunday.

For now - or rather, for the rest of us - we'll take a vodka, straight, with our economy seats.

Take a peek at the lavish suite below.

[h/t: The Daily Mail]
The search for a young Han Solo is over at last. Alden Ehrenreich is reportedly in final talks to play the infamous space smuggler in an upcoming Star Wars spinoff, according to sources cited by the Hollywood Reporter.

While his work has remained relatively obscure up until now, this casting is sure to make Ehrenreich a household name. So before he steps into one of the most iconic roles of all time, here are five things to know about the 26-year-old actor taking the reins from Harrison Ford.

1. He had some stiff competition

Earning this spot was no easy feat. Rumors that Disney and Lucasfilm had auditioned over 2,500 actors  including names such as Ansel Elgort, Miles Teller and Dave Franco  swirled over the past few months, with Ehrenreich reportedly beating out finalists Taron Egerton and Jack Reynor to win the role.

2. He made his feature film debut in 2009

After a few small parts in television series such as CSI and Supernatural, Ehrenreich got his big break starring in Tetro, a 2009 indie film written, directed and produced by Francis Ford Coppola. He went on to work with the director again, playing Flamingo in his 2011 horror flick Twixt.

3. He was discovered by Steven Spielberg at a bat mitzvah

In 2003, Ehrenreich made a home video for his friends bat mitzvah that was seen  and enjoyed  by none other than Steven Spielberg. This prompted the director to invite him to his studio and get him an agent with DreamWorks. To be honest, you go to a bat mitzvah in Los Angeles and you can count on at least a few industry people to be there, he told New York magazine during a 2009 interview.

Read More: Here Are the 91 Characters Whove Died in Star Wars

4. He had to persuade the Coen brothers to cast him

Ehrenreichs most prominent role to date has been as singing cowboy Hobie Doyle in 2016s Hail, Caesar!, but landing the part was apparently a fight to the finish. The main thing for me when I read the script was, heres the opportunity to play with the Coens, he told Mashable in February. It was something I only couldve dreamt about. When I read the part, I just loved it. When I first auditioned for it I was told I probably wasnt right.

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5. He co-founded a film company in college

Alongside New York University classmate Zoe Worth, Ehrenreich co-founded The Collectin, a group of young actors, writers and directors who meet for weekly workshops to create plays and films. Its always been very important for me to be surrounded by people, Ehrenreich told Interview in 2010. Its never been enough for me to be successful alone. I want to be around people my own age who are also doing things I can learn from.

The Han Solo spinoff is set to hit theaters May 25, 2018.
On Thursday's Scandal, the Olivia Pope battled against a Republican frontrunner that eerily resembled presidential candidate Donald Trump. The loudmouth character, Hollis Doyle, sported a whispy, orange receding hairline much like Donal Trump. The simliarities didn't end there. Hollis Doyle also spoke wildly without regard for who it might offend. He said, while addressing a rape allegation, "Hollis loves him some women and boy do women love them some Hollis. In all my years not one of them phillies ever needed an arm twist to roll in my hay." He also openly talked about the size other's private things. Regarding Fitz he said, "He's welcome on my island any time. So long as he keeps his drawers on. I don't want him waving his tiny flag around scaring all the natives." The character was also slow to disavow endorsements from the KKK. Perhaps the biggest similarity was Hollis Doyle's campaign slogan, "Dare to be great again," which is an amped up version of Trumps "Make America great again."
B hasn't stopped rapper 50 Cent  known for endorsing everything from flavored water to men's underwear  from redeeming himself after the terrible behavior he displayed earlier this week.

T has ponied up $100,000 for Autism Speaks, an advocacy group, as penance for an Instagram video showing him mocking a young man with autism. Jackson explained the donation in a statement reported by the Huffington Post on Thursday:

"I want to turn this misunderstanding into an understanding. There are people that are ignored, mistreated and neglected with disabilities that need our support. I am calling on my fellow musicians, actors, entertainers and all others who may not have fully considered this cause to join together to help in any way they can."

That's nice, considering that it is Mental Health Awareness Month. (He missed Autism Awareness Month by several days.) Those familiar with Jackson's recent money woes, however, might be scratching their heads at the size of the rapper's donation. In March, Jackson reached a deal with creditors to exit bankruptcy and free himself from millions of dollars in debts, according to a New York Daily News report.

50 Cent Makes It Rain for 'Autism Speaks' After Making Fun of Teen With Disabilities

I

Lest we forget, Jackson struck gold after he endorsed Glaceau's grape-flavored line of vitamin water, a venture the rapper also invested money in. Coca-Cola later bought Glaceau in 2007 for $4.1 billion, according to the New York Times.

Several failed (and expensive) business ventures later, and a lawsuit related to his release of a sex tape depicting another famous rapper's girlfriend, resulted in penalties of more than $25 million against Jackson. But he remained defiant, even as he was pursuing bankruptcy protection, posting Instagram images that mocked rumors that he was flat broke.

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A photo posted by 50 Cent (@50cent) on Oct 14, 2015 at 3:17am PDT

Autism Speaks doesn't seem too concerned with whether Jackson's check will clear the bank.

Andrew Farrell, the young man who Jackson ridiculed in the airport earlier this week, and his family asked the rapper to donate just $10,000 to the charity. In a statement, officials at Autism Speaks said the ordeal has become a positive for awareness of its cause:

"50 Cent's apology to Andrew and generous donation to Autism Speaks at the family's request call attention to the deep hurt  intended or not  inflicted by snap judgments and social media bullying. Not every disability is visible, but it is easy to see a person's humanity. This donation will support our mission to increase awareness and foster better understanding of the autism spectrum. Everyone, regardless of differences, deserves acceptance, compassion and respect."

All's well that ends well, right? But take that check to the bank, stat.
On the way to her elementary school, Khloe Thompson marveled at all the grown-ups living in tents in a park and sprawled on the grass in sleeping bags.

"We passed a lot of homeless people," her mother, Alisha, told InsideEdition.com. "She would ask me 'Why are they there? Why are they sleeping on the ground?'''

Read: Cop Drives Disabled Elderly Woman Home After She Struggles to Carry Groceries

Nine-year-old Khloe has always been an inquisitive child, and an outgoing one, who would walk up to total strangers and start a conversation. "She's very personable," her mom said. "She was always friendly to everybody ... It used to scare me to death," she said with a laugh.

"How can I help the homeless people?" Khloe wanted to know. So mom and daughter put their heads together.

What do you think homeless need? Alisha asked her daughter.

"Well," Khloe said, "I guess they can't take showers."

If you think it looks like a lot... It is!!!! #karebags #thekhloemovement #khloekares A photo posted by Khloe (@khloekares) on Apr 27, 2016 at 10:56pm PDT

So they would need soap and washcloths and things like that, her mother suggested. The list grew to deodorant, toothpaste, toothbrushes, hand sanitizer and lotion. Then they needed something to put the items in.

"My grandmother is a seamstress," Alisha said. "She's always had scraps of material lying around. She was already teaching Khloe how to sew."

Thus, the pair began sewing cloth bags - quite nice ones, by the way - in which they deposited the hygiene essentials. For a time, Alisha bought the items herself. Then she and her husband posted to social media about Khloe's care packages for the homeless.

"People started coming to my work and dropping off bags of stuff," Alisha said. "We have huge boxes of stuff donated to our door," she said.

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Sorting things out makes it easier to pack the bags... #khloekares #thekhloemovement #karebags A photo posted by Khloe (@khloekares) on Apr 27, 2016 at 10:57pm PDT

Now they have a GoFundMe page, where people can donate funds toward stuffing the bags, which Khloe delivers on her way to and from school, with her mother a few paces behind, keeping watch.

They live in Placentia, California, just outside Los Angeles County. They've visited downtown L.A.'s Skid Row to distribute bags, and to the L.A. Mission, a large soup kitchen and shelter.

All told, in the year they've been doing this, Alisha estimates they've given away more than 200 bags.

Read: After 87-Year-Old Man Passes Out While Mowing the Lawn, Kind EMT Finishes The Job

Khloe, with a child's enthusiasm, says she will do this forever, or at least until all homeless people "get back on their feet."

Seeing so many on the way to school made her want to help, she said. She began to recognize faces - the same ones, again and again - who never went home because they didn't have one.

So how does she offer one of her bags?

"I introduce myself and I say, 'This is for you,''' she replied.

And then what happens?

"They say 'Thank you,' and 'God bless you' and they give me hugs."

Watch: Man Teaches Homeless Woman How to Read During Weekly Lunch Dates

Related Articles:
Its axiomatic by now that Congress gets little done, even though the nation has a lot of problems that need fixed. At the Milken Institutes latest annual gathering of business and political leaders, we got to ask one senator why.

It starts in the House, where you have gerrymandering, and so the extremes now are very vocal and theyve pulled away from the majority of people in the middle, Republican Sen. David Perdue of Georgia explains in the video above. In the Senate, gridlock is all about getting elected in the next election. This drive to get reelected trumps everything else in Washington.

Perdue is a career businessman rather than politician, whos been CEO of Dollar General (DG) and Reebok. He also helped establish Sara Lees operations in Asia and spent much of his business career overseas. He won election to the Senate in 2014 and has pledged to stay no longer than two terms, should he get reelected in 2020.

That business background makes Perdue a distinct minority in the Senate. We have 64 lawyers but only a handful of people with any experience running a business, he says of the Senates composition. The business acumen [in the Senate] was not where I thought it would be.

That may help explain why Congress has dawdled despite an underperforming economy and pleas for help from CEOs. The biggest business priority is a corporate tax overhaul that would make the U.S. tax code more competitive and kill the incentive for companies to pursue tax inversions and other end-around schemes to lower their tax bills. If Congress could accomplish that overdue job, it might be nice if it also addressed healthcare and Social Security spending thats growing far beyond Uncle Sams ability to pay for it.

Perdue, whos established a reputation as a pragmatic legislator able to make bipartisan agreements, thinks theres a chance Congress will take up tax reform next year, provided the next president, whoever it is, makes it a priority. Donald Trump, the likely Republican presidential nominee, has said lowering the corporate tax rate is an important issue. Democrat Hillary Clinton, his likely opponent, hasnt said much about it.

Of course, the traditional roles of the Republican and Democratic parties is undergoing something of a transformation, with Trump driving some conservatives away, and Clinton possibly benefiting from the support of businesspeople who think shell be friendlier to their interests than Trump. When asked if the Republican party is still the party of business, Perdue says, Thats a great question. I cant tell any more. Sometime I think weve lost sight of the priorities. Next year may bring a chance to rediscover them.

Rick Newmans latest book is Liberty for All: A Manifesto for Reclaiming Financial and Political Freedom. Follow him on Twitter: @rickjnewman.
Two-piece dresses might be one of the most sought-out styles for prom, but theyre not popular with everyone, as one student found out the hard way.

Malika Sneed, a senior at Yazoo City High School in Mississippi, showed up at her schools event in a formal orange ensemble that exposed most of her back and some midriff. A teacher told her the dress was inappropriate and she had to leave. I cried tears because I felt like thats my last year, Malika told WAPT TV news. Thats when my class finally came together so we could have fun.

The principal said that prior to the dance, students had to read and sign a dress-code contract, which Malika was in violation of. I signed it, she said. I can never get that dance, that fun, that laugh again. No, its over with.

Malika is not the only to have had a two-piece look prohibited from the prom. Kara Morris spent $500 on her daughters turquoise crop top and maxi skirt matching set, but the outfit was rejected by school officials when it was reviewed by them prior to the event (a policy required all students to submit their looks for review). Many schools across the country have implemented similar audits to avoid the familiar tale of a teen not getting to experience the prom.

Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest for nonstop inspiration delivered fresh to your feed, every day.
On Wednesday, Alabama lawmakers approved SB 205, a bill that would make it illegal for an abortion clinic to operate near a public elementary or middle school, which could effectively shut down at least one of the state's five remaining clinics. The ban happens to be modeled on the state's restrictions for registered sex offenders, but the reasoning behind it is slightly different: Proponents of the bill are concerned that anti-abortion protestors outside clinics are scaring the children.

Of course, the very same people who got the bill to the statehouse in the first place also happen to be anti-abortion protestors.

The bill is expected to be signed by ultra-conservative moralizer Gov. Robert Bentley  y'know, the guy who was recently enmeshed in a very public sex scandal  as he has expressed support for so-called school zone restrictions for abortion clinics before. If enacted, SB 205 would prohibit the Alabama Department of Public Health from issuing or renewing licenses for abortion clinics within 2,000 feet of a K-8 public school.

An abortion clinic in Montgomery, Al.

A pponents of the measure, it's meant to target one clinic in particular: the Alabama Women's Center for Reproductive Alternatives, in Huntsville, which relocated across the street from a middle school in 2013. the only clinic serving the northern half of the state  decided to .

It would seem, then, that anti-choice lawmakers are actively trying to eliminate as many of Alabama's abortion providers as possible.

According to SB 205 sponsor Sen. Paul Sanford, however, the point of his measure isn't to close clinics; he just doesn't think they should be across the street from a school, because as he told the Times Daily in February, "they do tend to cause a certain amount of commotion on a regular basis."

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"We can put a restriction on whether a liquor store opens up across the street and make sure pedophiles stay away from schools," Sanford said. "I just think having an abortion clinic that close to elementary-age school children that actually have to walk on the sidewalk past it is not the best thing."

It would seem, then, that anti-choice lawmakers are actively trying to eliminate as many of Alabama's abortion providers as possible.

Although lawmakers considered grandfathering in the Huntsville clinic to prevent it from closing, a move to do so failed in committee, according to the Associated Press. So, basically, because anti-choice protesters are wont to picket abortion clinics, displaying massive images of aborted fetuses and calling women murderers, abortion providers (not to mention the patients they serve) will likely be penalized.

I Alabama will become the first state to enforce a prohibition that essentially treats people like sex offenders, but also one of several states that polices providers' association with schools. Other states that have also become increasingly hostile toward reproductive rights in recent years, such as Kansas, have placed limitations on abortion providers' or provide sex education, while places like Oklahoma have tried to bring anti-abortion rhetoric directly into classrooms.

I It's true that witnessing anti-abortion protests can be traumatizing for kids, as well as for patients, providers and clinic staffers' family members, but that hasn't done much to limit protestors' ability to harass people outside clinics.
LONDON  Alicia Vikander, who won an Oscar for The Danish Girl this year, and her London-based agent Charles Collier of Tavistock Wood, have set up production company Vikarious Productions.

The companys first film, Euphoria, a production with Swedens B-Reel Films, will start shooting in the German Alps in early August. The pic is the English-language directorial debut of Swedish writer/director Lisa Langseth, who previously collaborated with Vikander on two Swedish-language titles, Pure and Hotel. Vikander will star opposite Eva Green (Casino Royale, Tim Burtons forthcoming Miss Peregrines Home for Peculiar Children), as sisters in conflict travelling through Europe toward a mystery destination.

Vikander said: It is a profound story about the journey of two estranged sisters, full of suffering but also full of joy, and squaring up to very important subject matter. It also has compelling female voices and is packed to the rafters with female talent both sides of the camera.

Euphoria is a Swedish/U.K./Germany production by B-Reel Films, Vikarious Productions, Dancing Camel (Christine Ruppert), Sveriges Television, Svensk Filmindustri, Reel Ventures and Filmregionen Stockholm-Malardalen. In collaboration with Wild Bunch Germany and in association with Dorian Media Limited. With support from the Swedish Film Institute. Nordic distribution by Svensk Filmindustri.

Vikarious plans to produce a further two titles within the next two years. Collier said: We hope to make good on our intention of bringing together a team of brilliant women to lead the creative process. We are in active discussions already on a number of other projects and have been most grateful for the industry support and encouragement we have been receiving.

In recent years audiences have come to know Alicias performances for their extraordinary emotional nuance, profound sense of understanding, range of light and shade, and reservoirs of compassion. She brings to our work with Vikarious all of these talents together with her exceptional brain for business and for production.

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EXCLUSIVE: Oscar winner Alicia Vikander just added a new hyphen to her considerable list of talents: that of producer. The 27-year-old Swedish actress has launched her own production banner Vikarious Productions along with her London-based agent Charles Collier of Tavistock Wood. The company has set its first feature, Euphoria, with Vikander also set to star alongside Eva Green as sisters in conflict traveling through Europe towards a mystery destination. The project marks the English-language directorial debut of award-winning Swedish writer/director Lisa Langseth, who previously collaborated with Vikander on two Swedish-language pics, Pure and Hotell. Euphoria is a production with Swedens B-Reel Films Patrik Anderson and Frida Bargo, and starts shooting in the German Alps in early August.

Eva Green

Euphoria is Lisas third film as writer and director. I have worked with her on each of them and I jumped at the chance to do so again, said Vikander. Its a uniquely European approach, enabling me to work with a great Swedish team alongside my colleagues in London. It is a profound story about the journey of two estranged sisters, full of suffering but also full of joy, and squaring up to very important subject matter. It also has compelling female voices and is packed to the rafters with female talent both sides of the camera. All these ingredients made this film the obvious choice for our first film at Vikarious. Charles and I will be developing more films in this space over the next 24 months.

The news further cements Vikanders stratospheric rise and is testament to her formidable drive and ambition. Last week, she was confirmed as Lara Croft for MGM, Warner Bros and GK Films in Tomb Raider. The reboot will tell the story of a young and untested Lara Croft fighting to survive her first adventure. Roar Uthaug (The Wave) is directing. MGM and Warner Bros are co-producing the film with MGM overseeing production. They acquired film rights from GK Films, which had previously purchased film rights in 2011 from Square Enix LTD. Graham King is serving as producer.

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The Tomb Raider deal marked the latest plum role for Vikander, and arguably her highest-profile one yet. She next co-stars in Jason Bourne opposite Matt Damon. Her success has continued to rise following a banner 2015 that saw her performance in Tom Hoopers The Danish Girl win an Academy Award for best supporting actress as well as a memorable turn in Ex Machina as possibly the best-looking and ruthless robot in the history of cinema. She also has The Light Between Oceans opposite Michael Fassbender in the pipelines. That film has been generating awards-season buzz even though it will not be released before the end of the year.

It is a great pleasure to be partnering with Alicia Vikander at Vikarious, said Collier. It is the natural extension of our long professional collaboration. Together we have always sought opportunities that explored issues and characters that are important to both of us. We have become well-attuned to what material excites and inspires us both. In particular, with Euphoria, we hope to make good on our intention of bringing together a team of brilliant women to lead the creative process. We are in active discussions already on a number of other projects and have been most grateful for the industry support and encouragement we have been receiving. In recent years audiences have come to know Alicias performances for their extraordinary emotional nuance, profound sense of understanding, range of light and shade, and reservoirs of compassion. She brings to our work with Vikarious all of these talents together with her exceptional brain for business and for production.

The company plans to produce a further two titles at a similar budget to Euphoria within the next two years. The film is a Swedish/UK/Germany production by B-Reel Films, Vikarious Productions, Dancing Camel (Christine Ruppert), Sveriges Television, Svensk Filmindustri, Reel Ventures and Filmregionen Stockholm-Malardalen. It will be produced in collaboration with Wild Bunch Germany, in association with Dorian Media Limited and with support from the Swedish Film Institute. Svensk Filmindustri will handle Nordic distribution.

Director Langseth added: This story and these characters have been a part of me for a long time now and it is wonderful to see it all come to life.

It is such a privilege to be able to continue our collaboration with Swedish auteur Lisa Langseth and together take this huge step into an international film production,said B-Reel Films producers Patrik Anderson and Frida Bargo. The artistic collaboration with Alicia Vikander is invaluable in all aspects in order to let Lisa paint on an even bigger canvas.

Vikander and Green are both repped by Tavistock Wood in the UK. Vikander is also repped by UTA and Actors in Scandinavia. Green is also repped by UTA and Agence Adequat.

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From Esquire

The wigs are off. The truth is out. The Americans has brought us, finally, to a moment four seasons in the making: Martha knows that Clark-who is really Phillip, who is really Mischa-is in the KGB. And last night we saw what could be the end of Martha's journey on the show (though we very much hope not!).

Now, when you ask your husband, who married you in secret and only sleeps at your place three nights a week, to reveal his hidden identity, there's no great answer that he could give you. But when you are a secretary at the FBI and you realize that you have been inadvertently aiding the Russians, the revelation that you have been sleeping with the enemy is particularly-not to mention personally-excruciating on about ten thousand levels. And Alison Wright, who plays Martha, can portray every single one of those levels, sometimes with just a gasp or a glance, at the exact same time.

The actress has taken a role that started as a source of pity and cringe-inducing comedy-the hapless, lovestruck woman who couldn't see through her boyfriend's shady excuses or shoddy toupee-and, slowly, proven her to be the closest thing The Americans has to a moral compass. Martha is who she says she is. She loves whom she says she loves. And so she handles completely life-destroying information with an almost super-human dignity.

Wright spoke with Esquire by phone about the historic Secretary Offensive that inspired Martha's story, how she prepares for all of this season's heart-wrenching scenes, and if she believes Martha and Clark's love is real.

I want to go back to the beginning for a minute. What was the initial character description of Martha? How much did you know about her when you signed on?

I think the description was literally something like, "secretary, in love with Clark, very plain." It might have said "dowdy." And that was really it. My second audition was with Joe Weisberg and Gavin O'Connor [who directed the pilot], and Joe really filled me in quite a lot on that idea that this very much based in the real history, in real people's situations. We played around a bit at the audition with the different levels of how head-over-heels she was about Clark, so it was collaborative from the very beginning.

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I was about to ask about what you learned about these real-life victims, but I'm not sure if I should call them victims. These real secret wives?

"Victims" is fair, really, because they were targeted. There was something called the Secretary Offensive, and that was the plan: to go out and get these secretaries who were in their 30s, who were lonely and emotionally vulnerable, who would be easy targets for emotional manipulation. I read as much as I could. A lot of it is still secret, of course, but I was scavenging for everything I could get.

What was the most surprising thing you learned in that research?

Probably that the majority of them killed themselves within 24 hours of finding out who their husbands really were.

Oh my God, that's horrifying.

The stakes are very, very high very quickly. Most of them were so horrified and destroyed that their life had been a complete lie. They could handle the fact that they had been spying, effectively, and that they had broken the law and would go to jail for it. But finding out that the man that was their husband was never really in love with them, that he was on the clock-that they couldn't bear. And whether they were hanging themselves or throwing themselves out a window, they were just very sad.

Do you think Martha believes that Clark loves her, even knowing, as she now does, that he's a KGB officer?

I think that she thinks that their love is still real. I think she thinks that his job got in the way, and if only he hadn't had that job... At first the job was working for this mystery government agency, and now the job is working for the KGB. It's the same difference to her. I think she hasn't fully realized the extent of what's happened to her now. I don't think that she could have left like she did if she didn't have any hope left at all.

I think people delude themselves every day. I'm surrounded by people that are in complete denial about the state of their relationships.

I was amazed at how calm she was in that scene, when she says goodbye before getting on the plane.

I agree. I mean, I think shock has got a lot to do with it. And she's going to need time to think about all of this and ruminate on it and see how she feels about it. It was a bit much all in one go, I think.

How do you feel about this arc of Martha's and the choices she's made, within her limited ability to make decisions about what she does now?

We see her being pushed to limits that she probably never would have imagined she could never go anywhere near. She tries to survive on her own. She realizes she can't do it, she doesn't know what to do. None of her options are any good. So in the end, she has to go back to Clark, who she does feel is her protector, and he's the only one looking out for her at this point. She has to put her faith in him. If it doesn't work, she had no options anyway. She's all in with Clark, with her trust.

As a viewer I thought, it's probably better for her to get captured by the Americans, because they won't execute her-at least, not right away. But the Russians, from what we've seen on the show so far, just get rid of inconvenient people.

I think there's something incredibly humane about the way the Russians execute somebody.

You mean the surprise, like what happened with Nina?

They said they very much did that on purpose, so the person only had seconds to be in terror and to lose their mind and to think about what's happening. Whereas, we'll let someone rot in jail for years, and let them wonder when they'll die.

How do you prepare for these big reveal scenes, from the first time Martha sees Clark without his wig to these discoveries she's made in the past few episodes?

I'm lucky, really, because I've had a very long prep. You knew, eventually, the pinnacle of the story is that she finds out. So I've been preparing for that [for] four seasons. I've been able to slowly add my layers as I'm going on, knowing that I will have to unpeel them at some point.

I've read that you heavily annotate scripts. What kind of notes do you take? How does that inform your performance?

I do. Ideas come and go, and if you don't write them down, sometimes they're just gone. And your ideas about a scene and storyline will change from the very first time you read it. So it's really helpful for me to remember what I thought, weeks ago, when I was in a different frame of mind, or was influenced by something else that day. You never know how something will influence you. So it's a practical thing, and it helps me.

Of course you're a central part of the creative engine driving this, but is there anything about Martha's evolution that's surprised you?

That's a very interesting question. The ending is, for me. The fact that she seemed to enter this profound state of being sort calm and accepting and getting on that plane and leaving, and not having a breakdown, and not screaming and crying and kicking, which would have been my instinct. It's something I spoke with the Js [showrunners Joe Weisberg and Joel Fields] about, and they were very sure that they wanted it to be Martha's story. That's not what would have expected at all. That wouldn't have been my instinct.

Have any scenes or moments been especially challenging for you?

There comes a responsibility with the scenes where he tells her he's KGB. They have a great responsibility, because you're talking about four seasons of emotional payoff, and you want to make sure that the end result is satisfying. But other than that, no, I don't think so. Anything slightly tricky, we very much enjoy working it out. Noah Emmerich is always really great about it. I like the way he talks through the scenes, because he directed us again this year, and I think I have my favorite time with him. I always learn a new idea about the way he's dissecting the story, because he's involved on a different level. I'm very micro, so it's nice to work things out with him. Some of my favorite scenes are in his episodes.

Is Martha patriotic? She works at the FBI, so I'm curious, on top of the emotional betrayal of Clark lying to her this entire time about his identity, how offensive and troubling it is for her that he is in the KGB, an enemy of her country.

I think for everybody in the country at that time, the KGB was the worst possible thing that there was. You had the president on TV saying as much. So him working for the KGB is the worst possible thing that she could hear. It was the worst answer that he could give. I do think she's patriotic, and I do think she's had to compartmentalize, and she's not giving the full weight of seriousness to what she's actually done. She's separated those two things, because she had to do that for her marriage.

When you think about it, she has been okay with a number of things that the average person would think, "Wait, you want to spend half the nights away from me, and also we can never tell anyone we're married?"

The trick with that is, Clark has added each of those things, one at a time, slowly, over the years. So before you know it, you turn around and go, "Wait a minute, there are ten rules!" And if you always have a good explanation for it, and she wants to believe him, she's not cynical, she's not a liar herself, so she's not out to spot other liars.

It was so interesting to see Stan at the FBI talking about how sneaky they think Martha is, how she was able to lie this entire time. But really, it's because she didn't even know what she was lying about. Her poker face was mostly the real thing.

It's surprising what people can do, right? I'm sure in the FBI they're astounded that she could do this. But those are the people that predators target. They target the weak link.

Have you talked to Matthew Rhys about how real, or not real, the relationship between Clark and Martha is? Do you figure out together how genuine that relationship and that connection is?

It's not something that we've talked about, ever. I do think there are things Clark/Phillip gets out of that relationship with Martha that he can't get out of Elizabeth, just because they are such different people. Martha is a complete font of empathy, she's warm, maternal, forgiving, accepting. She's everything Elizabeth is not. We can be different people with people who think different things.

Has playing Martha changed how you think about relationships in real life?

I think people delude themselves every day. I'm surrounded by people that are in complete denial about the state of their relationships.
Alliance Resource Partners: What Could 1Q16 Bring?

(Continued from Prior Part)

Alliance Resource Partners debt

According to its latest company filing, Alliance Resource Partners (ARLP) has about $819 million of long-term debt as of December 31, 2015. About $239 million of that is due for payment in fiscal 2016. About $435 million is due in fiscal 2017, and the remaining $145 million is due in fiscal 2018.

ARLPs interest expenses decreased in fiscal 2015 compared to fiscal 2014. The decrease is primarily due to repayment of the companys Series A senior notes in June 2015.

As of December 31, 2015, ARLP had a current ratio of about 0.74. This is way ahead of Peabody Energys (BTUUQ) current ratio of 0.18, Arch Coals (ACIIQ) current ratio of 0.12, and Alpha Natural Resources (ANRZQ) current ratio of 0.39. However, the companys current ratio is far below Cloud Peak Energys (CLD) current ratio of 1.5.

Cash flows

As of December 31, 2015, Alliance Resource Partners had about $33.4 million in cash and cash equivalents on its balance sheet. The company anticipates funding its fiscal 2016 capital requirements through existing cash balance, future cash flows from operations, and borrowings under revolving credit and securitization facilities. As of December 31, 2015, the company had $309 million available for borrowing under its revolving credit facility.

Off balance sheet risk

Off balance sheet risks include self-bonds and surety bonds. Recent bankruptcies in the coal (KOL) mining industry heightened regulatory pressure on reclamation bonding and self-bonding in particular. This could require Alliance Resource Partners to maintain sufficient collateral to meet these obligations.

According to company filings, ARLP posted $153.5 million in surety bonds as of December 31, 2015.

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There are changes in front of and behind the camera on American Gods, Starzs upcoming straight-to-series adaptation of Neil Gaimans acclaimed contemporary fantasy novel, which began shooting two weeks ago in Toronto.

One of the main roles, Mad Sweeney, will be recast after British actor Sean Harris had to pull out for personal reasons and return

American Gods Season 1 2017

home. Additionally, original director of photography Brendan Glavin has been replaced with Jo Willems (Hunger Games: Catching Fire, Mockingjay Part 1& Part 2,Limitless feature). I hear that two weeks in, the production was starting to fall behind schedule, and a move was made to try and right the ship early by making a DP change as the delay was attributed, at least in part, to the director, David Slade, and the DP, not being completely in synch. Slade has a long-standing relationship with Willems, whose first feature collaboration with Slade was the Sundance indie Hard Candy. The two also worked together on the film 30 Days of Night and the pilot for NBC series Awake.

As for Harris, I hear he only had worked the past week, filming a couple of scenes, which will be reshot once a new actor is cast.

fremantlemedia-north-america-logo1

Sean Harris had to leave the American Gods production for personal reasons, series producer FreemantleMedia Media North America said in a statement to Deadline. He is a very talented actor and we are sad to see him go, but we wish him well. We are currently recasting the role of Mad Sweeney. Separately, we are thrilled to welcome Jo Willems as our DP. Jo and David Slade have had a long-standing creative partnership and have collaborated on various projects. The chemistry between a director and his DP are vital and when Jo became available to join David on American Gods, we jumped at the opportunity to have him on the team.

The plot of American Gods posits a war brewing between old and new gods: the traditional gods of mythological roots from around the world steadily losing believers to an upstart pantheon of gods reflecting societys modern love of money, technology, media, celebrity and drugs. Its protagonist, Shadow Moon (Ricky Whittle), is an ex-con who becomes bodyguard and traveling partner to Mr. Wednesday (Ian McShane), a conman who in reality is one of the older gods, on a cross-country mission to gather his forces in preparation to battle the new deities.

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Mad Sweeney is a down on his luck leprechaun, who is having a hard time understanding how he lost his charm and way. Always up for a good fight, Sweeney is never deprived while in the employment of Mr. Wednesday.

Bryan Fuller and Michael Green are writers and showrunners. David Slade is directing the pilot and additional episodes. FMNAs Craig Cegielski and Stefanie Berk are executive producing the series along with Fuller, Green, Slade and Gaiman. FremantleMedia is distributing the series worldwide.

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'American Gods': Jonathan Tucker & Crispin Glover Cast In Starz Adaptation

Starz's 'American Gods' Casts Sean Harris As Mad Sweeney, Yetide Badaki As Bilquis & Bruce Langley As Technical Boy
(Rickey Smith with Paula Abdul in 2003. Photo courtesy of Us Weekly)

Rickey Smith, a contestant from American Idol Season 2, has tragically died in a multi-car highway accident. The talented eighth-place finalist was only 36 years old.

According to TMZ, another man was driving the wrong way Thursday night, just outside Oklahoma City on Interstate 240, when he slammed head-on into Smiths automobile. The driver was hospitalized and has been booked for DUI.

Smith was a fan favorite in his Idol season, thanks to his Hercules, Hercules! catchphrase, soulful gospel-tinged vocals, and unflappably jolly demeanor  as evidenced by his famous Disco Night number, when he performed Earth, Wind & Fires Lets Groove in a fluffy Afro wig. Eerily, though, one of his standout Idol performances, on Country Night, was a serious cover of Larry Gatlins Ive Done Enough Dyin Today.

Various American Idol alumni, including Smiths occasional duet partner Melinda Doolittle and his Season 2 castmates Ruben Studdard, Clay Aiken, and Kimberly Caldwell, took to social media Friday morning to express their grief.

Suffice it to say my heart is truly breaking today.  Heavens choir has a new beautiful voice. I love you and will miss you, Rickey.   Clay Aiken (@clayaiken) May 6, 2016

My heart is broken that we lost my dear angel Rickey. He was one-of-kind. I have never met anyone that could brighten your world like he did. I was so fortunate to share the time we had together on Idol and on tour. I will cherish those memories. He made everyone around him feel so special and loved and my heart sincerely goes out to his family. He was a shining light and he will be missed tremendously. #season2 A photo posted by Kimberly Caldwell-Harvey (@_kimcaldwell) on May 6, 2016 at 10:46am PDT

Smith is the second American Idol top 10 finalist to pass away. Season 7s Michael Johns shockingly died in August 2014 of dilated cardiomyopathy.
By Terry Wade and Henning Gloystein

HOUSTON/SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Wildfires in Canada. Instability in Venezuela. Stalling U.S. frackers. Drops in oil output are happening so fast that it looks as if the Americas alone could resolve global oversupply.

The 70 percent oil price slide (LCOc1) (CLc1) between 2014 and early 2016 has been pegged to one problem: production exceeding demand by as much as 2 million barrels per day (bpd).

But oversupply is evaporating quickly due to output cuts in the Americas - including the United States, Canada and Latin America - and also increasingly in Asia.

"Unplanned oil supply disruptions have been a key element so far this year that have contributed to a tighter oil market than was otherwise expected," said analyst Guy Baber of Simmons & Co.

If the disruptions last, there will be limited spare capacity to meet demand, Baber cautioned.

Output from the Americas dropped over 1.5 million bpd last quarter, while producers in Asia and Australia cut some 250,000 bpd, eating away large chunks of the world's oversupply, government, industry and consultancy data shows.

This comes at a time when members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), led by Saudi Arabia, have refused to curb output in order to retain market share and squeeze out higher-cost competitors.

"The Saudis have achieved what they want in that the market is re-balancing through price," said senior oil analyst Neil Beveridge of Sanford C. Bernstein.

"Over the past 12 months Saudi has raised production, putting downward pressure on price to bring back discipline among the producers. This is now playing out."

In fact, with so much non-OPEC output now off the market, producers like Saudi Arabia and Qatar have been able to raise supplies and prices for shipments to Asia, the world's top oil consuming region.

Outages in Canada are also helping speed up the re-balancing, Beveridge added.

CUTS GALORE

A raging wildfire in Fort McMurray, at the heart of Canada's oil sands region, has forced more than 690,000 bpd out of production, according to Reuters estimates, with more disruptions possible.

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"In the last two years, outages have not been the focus because of the imbalance in the market, but that changes now that the market is tightening," said Richard Gorry, director of JBC Energy Asia.

U.S. output, down by 410,000 bpd this year and 800,000 bpd since mid-2015, is expected to slide another 800,000 bpd in the next five months, according to the Energy Information Administration.

Latin America's crude oil production, suffering from under-investment, fell 4.6 percent in the first quarter to 9.13 million bpd, a loss of 441,000 bpd from the same period a year ago, according to data from individual countries and OPEC.

The largest decline was in Venezuela, which lost 188,000 bpd in the first quarter as President Nicolas Maduro's government wrestles a deep economic crisis.

Production is also on the wane across Asia Pacific.

China, the region's biggest producer and consumer of oil, is expected to see a 6 percent drop in crude output in 2016 due to ageing fields and poor economics, Standard Chartered bank said.

Signs of tighter supply helped lift oil prices to more than five-month highs last week. U.S. WTI crude hit an intraday high above $46 a barrel on Thursday, within striking distance of recent peaks. [O/R]

Nonetheless, with rising Middle Eastern output, near-record Russian production and brimming storage tanks, the global glut is set to stay for some time.

Brent futures for delivery five years out are only at a small $10-per-barrel premium to one-month contracts, an indication the "lower for longer" price scenario may linger.

(Additional reporting by Amanda Cooper in LONDON, Marianna Parraga in HOUSTON, and Liz Hampton in EDMONTON; Editing by Andrew Hay and Himani Sarkar)
The New Mexico community where a man abducted an 11-year-old Navajo girl earlier on Monday is reeling after learning how long it took for people outside of a tribal community to learn of Ashlynne Mike's kidnapping. Use of the Amber Alert system has often been credited with stopping abductors before they've committed heinous crimes against victims, but it has impacted communities of color differently.

National data show that children of color are disproportionately the subjects of Amber Alerts, which were created in 1996 to notify regional residents and motorists of reported child abductions. In the 2010 census, 36% of residents in the country were nonwhite,

Source: Susan Montoya Bryan/AP

Amid that disparity, Native American reservations appear to be at a disadvantage. The Navajo Nation, the country's largest American Indian reservation, does not have a system to issue its own child abduction alerts, the Associated Press reported.

A fraction of the 566 federally recognized tribes have the system and, in many cases, they rely on state authorities to work with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children to issue the alerts.

Source: Mic/Missing Kids

Despite a 2007 pilot project, spearheaded by the U.S. Department of Justice to expand the Amber Alert system to Indian reservations, the Navajo Nation still didn't have a system in place when Ashlynne and her 9-year-old brother were abducted Monday.

Cell phones outside of the Navajo Nation blared with an Amber Alert at 2:30 a.m. Tuesday, although Ashlynne and her brother had been reported missing late Monday. Tribal officials told the AP that they didn't know anyone had been kidnapped until Ashlynne's brother escaped to a police station in Shiprock, New Mexico. The boy told police that their abductor took his sister into the nearby hills.

Police discovered Ashlynne's body Tuesday morning, hours after the alert and nearly a day after her brother informed police. The timeline had drawn sharp criticism from regional residents over local authorities' use of the Amber Alert system.

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Source: Susan Montoya Bryan/AP

Some said they believed more could have been done to find Ashlynne alive, while others believe it would not have made much of a difference. But what's clear is that more resources from outside of the reservation would not have hurt.

Funeral services for Ashlynne were held Friday in Farmington, New Mexico. Her alleged abductor, Tom Begaye Jr., was scheduled to appear in a federal court in Albuquerque. Begaye was charged with kidnapping and murder in the girl's death, the AP reported.
RATINGS CHANGES

Advance Auto Parts was upgraded to buy from neutral at Goldman Sachs. $181 price target. The company can expand margins and expand cash flow, Goldman said.

Ansys was downgraded to neutral from outperform at Wedbush. $86 price target. The company's growth prospects appear diminished, Wedbush said.

BankUnited was downgraded to market perform at BMO Capital. $35 price target. The company is likely to see lower loan growth, BMO said.

Bloomin' Brands was upgraded to buy at TheStreet Ratings. You can view the full analysis from the report here: BLMN.

Comerica was upgraded to buy at TheStreet Ratings. You can view the full analysis from the report here: CMA.

Endo was downgraded to sector perform from outperform at RBC Capital. $26 price target. Turnaround is going to take longer than expected, RBC said.

Epam Systems was upgraded to overweight at Barclays. $85 price target. The company is seeing higher organic sales growth, Barclays said.

General Motors was upgraded to equal weight from underweight at Morgan Stanley. $29 price target. The company can unlock value with the Cadillac brand, Morgan Stanley said.

Michaels was downgraded to neutral from buy at Goldman Sachs. $30 price target. The valuation is less attractive, with shares up 31% since January, Goldman said.

Papa John's was downgraded to hold at TheStreet Ratings. You can view the full analysis from the report here: PZZA.

Ormat was downgraded to neutral from overweight at JPMorgan. The valuation is less attractive, based on a $43 price target, JPMorgan said.

Ubiquiti was upgraded to market perform from underperform at BMO Capital. $37 price target. The company is seeing higher enterprise demand, BMO said.

EXCLUSIVE OFFER: See inside Jim Cramers multi-million dollar charitable trust portfolio to see the stocks he thinks could be potentially HUGE winners. Click here to see his holdings for FREE.
How Did Whitings Stock Perform after Its 1Q16 Earnings?

(Continued from Prior Part)

Analysts recommendations

After Whiting Petroleums (WLL) 1Q16 earnings, Wall Street analysts updated their target prices for the company for the next 12 months.

Consensus ratings for Whiting Petroleum

Approximately 46% of the analysts rated Whiting Petroleum a buy, ~46% rated it a hold, and ~8% rated it a sell. The average broker target price of $12.21 for Whiting Petroleum implies a return of around -0.16% over the next 12 months.

Whiting Petroleums upstream peers PDC Energy (PDCE), Rice Energy (RICE), and Oasis Petroleum (OAS) have average broker target prices of $70.04, $18.98, and $9.08, respectively. These figures imply approximate returns of 7%, 8.6%, and -13%, respectively, in the next 12 months.

The high, low, and median analyst target prices for Whiting Petroleum are $36, $4, and $12, respectively.

Whiting Petroleum is part of the Vanguard Energy ETF (VDE). VDE invests ~0.24% of its portfolio in the company.

Analysts target prices

Barclays (BCS) gave Whiting Petroleum one of the most optimistic target prices of $13. This implies returns of ~6.3% in the next 12 months.

Capital One Securities and RBC Capital Markets gave Whiting Petroleum target prices of $12 each. This implies returns of about -2% in the next 12 months.

Evercore ISI gave Whiting Petroleum an even lower target price of $11. This implies returns of -10% in the next 12 months.

Morgan Stanley (MS) gave the lowest targets. It gave Whiting Petroleum a target price of $4. This implies returns of about -39% over the next year.

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Rovio Animations The Angry Birds Movie is set to get a theatrical release in China on May 20. The slot gives it a day-and-date outing with the North American release, while several other international territories release it on May 12.

The May 20 date is also shared by the China releases of The Divergent Series: Allegiant and Southpaw, which was co-produced by Chinas Wanda Pictures.

Angry Birds is considered as a quota import movie and will be released by state-owned distributors. It will be marketed and brought to the cinemas throughout China by 1905 Pictures, the movie offshoot of China Central Television, which previously was involved with the China release of Transformers 4.

It will have a premiere at the Beijing National Stadium Birds Nest, which hosted the 2008 Summer Olympics.

The Chinese government manages the number of international releases in the market and there is a rigorous process to get a movie approved for release. We are very pleased to have secured a release slot and a great date for May 20th, said Tommy Korpinen, president, Rovio Animation, in a statement.

The Columbia Pictures/Rovio Animation film is directed by Fergal Reilly and Clay Kaytis and produced by John Cohen and Catherine Winder. The screenplay is by Jon Vitti, and executive produced by Mikael Hed and David Maisel. The English-language voice cast includes: Jason Sudeikis, Josh Gad, Danny McBride, and Game of Thrones star Peter Dinklage.

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3ps_720

Forget the days of old-fashioned meet-cutes or looking for love on popular dating apps like Tinder  the new place to find romance seems to be on college Snapchat stories.

The world first learned of Snap Story love stories after two University of Wisconsin students, Reed Bjork and Abby Diamond, captivated the student body with their tale of immediate attraction and journey to find each other...on Snapchat.

Now, the social media world is gushing over a similar romantic saga that took place on the Utah State Snapchat story.

SEE ALSO: Meet the IRL Romeo and Juliet who met via Snapchat Story

The "Epic Night Utah State" Snapchat Story began with a girl spoiling movies and developed into a suspenseful love story between two students, Trevor and Madison.

This is Spoiler Girl:

Image: snapchat

Image: snapchat

After she outraged students by spoiling classic films like Shrek, students added their reaction snaps to the Campus Story.

She then challenged her "haters" to meet her at the library and one student (pictured below) suggested settling the issue with an "epic silent dance battle in the library."

Image: snapchat





The Snapchat Story then jumped to a student named Trevor who claimed to be "studying" for his Investment Banking final  though we all know he was busy procrastinating.





Image: snapchat





After a few more comments for Spoiler Girl, a mystery girl in a car responded to Trevor's snap, wishing him good luck on his final. Her friend and wing-woman in the back seat ended the snap by exclaiming, "You're hot!"





Image: snapchat





One very intelligent and romantic boy then suggested that Trevor and the mystery car girl should date. He proposed that the two should meet up at the library at the established time and deemed their exchange "the cutest thing he's heard."

On the way to his Investment Banking final, Trevor gave the "mystery car girls" a shoutout and invited her to meet up for ice cream afterwards to celebrate.

Story continues

Image: snapchat





"Mystery car girl" revealed herself as Madison and invited Trevor to meet her at the library for the dance battle. Naturally this excited all the romantics on campus.

After some pondering, Trevor decided there was no reason for the two lovebirds to wait until the dance battle and suggested they meet earlier for ice cream. Madison excitedly agreed.

Image: snapchat

Image: snapchat

The campus was so excited that they began to search for the Snapchat lovers, and much to everyone's delight, Trevor and Madison's meeting was captured on the Campus Story.

Image: snapchat

Image: snapchat

As promised, the dance battle took place at the library, and Trevor and Madison were given the honor of judging. The two shared their fist kiss at the battle as the campus cheered them on.

Image: snapchat

Image: snapchat

And thus concluded another beautiful Snapchat love story.

You know what they say, "A couple who meets on Snapchat and judges a silent dance battle in the library together, stays together."

To check out the entire Utah State Snapchat love saga, watch the video below.
By Eric Auchard

FRANKFURT (Reuters) - A free smartphone app that will pay people to be physically active launches on Wednesday in Britain, with users given digital "sweatcoins" depending on how many steps they take that can be exchanged for rewards or traded like money.

It's the latest initiative in an emerging fitness economy that includes all manner of monitoring devices, apps that reward activity with vouchers and even experiments in offering cheap insurance to people who can demonstrate they exercise.

Sweatcoin aims to differentiate itself by using complex software to measure movement and location to prevent cheating, and by using the technology behind virtual currency bitcoin to manage transactions.

Retailers, health insurers and corporate wellness managers are taking notice, according to Oleg Fomenko, one of the serial, London-based Russian entrepreneurs who founded Sweatcoin.

"This whole business is pegged to making movement valuable," he told Reuters. "Eventually, sweatcoin is going to have a rate of exchange tied to the British pound."

Sweatcoin, available in Britain in Apple's app store with an Android app to follow in months, offers one coin for every 1,000 steps. Within weeks users can have enough to exchange for fitness products or services in its marketplace.

Rewards include Vivobarefoot running shoes, Kymira infra-red clothing and fitness classes from Wonderush or BOOMCycle.

The company has signed up four London start-ups to offer Sweatcoin as part of an employee rewards programme that will offer extra days off, subsidised healthy meals or free massages for sweatcoins they accumulate through activity.

Fomenko said his company had talked to all the major health insurers but must prove it can attract users before it can hope to sign commercial deals to use Sweatcoin metrics as a way of calculating health risks and potentially lowering policy premiums for verified physical activity.

If Sweatcoin succeeds, the long-term idea is that insurers or employers might pay to take sweatcoins off the market as a reward to users for their physical activity.

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"Right now, movement is valued at zero," Fomenko said. "How much value a sweatcoin will have will be a market decision but we know it's not zero."

There will be competition. Another British start-up, Bitwalking, is also seeking to launch its own digital currency.

But Sweatcoin is confident in its software, which is carefully calibrated to prevent slouchers from faking activity by cross-checking data on activity and location to verify steps. Most rival apps rely simply on user-reported information.

The company is also developing a proprietary version of blockchain anti-tampering technology to manage the distribution of its currency, akin to how bitcoin transactions work.

It's an elaborate second act for Fomenko, whose last start-up, Bloom.fm, a UK music app launched in 2013, drew 1.3 million downloads before imploding when its sole investor, a unit of Gazprom Media, pulled out after Russia's invasion of Crimea and he failed to find fresh funding.

Depressed by his failure, Fomenko said he started studying blockchain technology. Meanwhile, his friend and fellow Sweatcoin founder, Anton Derlyatka, was getting going on a fitness start-up.

The epiphany came when the two went for a run. "I got my buzz back," Fomenko said. The question they asked themselves was what could motivate them to sustain that feeling.

This time round, Fomenko is taking money from a diverse set of London start-up investors and undisclosed music industry heavyweights. Sweatcoin has raised 610,000 pounds ($890,000).

It has also landed a small grant and promotional support from London Sport, an arm of the Greater London Authority that outgoing Mayor Boris Johnson has pushed to encourage Londoners to become more active.

Its two other co-founders are Egor Khmelev and Danil Perushev. Each previously sold their firms to Dream Industries, a Moscow-based start-up technology holding company.

Perushev has moved to San Francisco with the aim of expanding Sweatcoin into the United States in the coming year.

(Editing by Mark Potter)
Tim Cook

As sales of the iPhone start to flatten out, Apple is working around the clock to push a new narrative for the company as a services business.

It's a good idea  on paper: If you can't sell more iPhones and iPads, then the logical next step is trying to make more money off the customers you already have.

Hence, a renewed push for premium subscription services like iCloud and Apple Music, where Apple makes a little bit of money from customers over a long period of time.

This can be a lucrative approach. Amid its own shift to subscription-based businesses, Microsoft has projected that it can generate 80% more revenue per customer than it could when it was just selling boxed software.

And those subscriptions are for cloud-based services, where the margins are relatively high seeing as how you're just selling software hosted out of a data center somewhere. It can be a much better business than complex factory-line devices like the iPhone.

But most of Microsoft's revenue comes from the enterprise, where companies are willing to open their wallets and pay millions of dollars in exchange for the promise of a discount and customer support.

Apple is selling the bulk of its services to consumers. It's hard to make money that way, even when the service is popular. Dropbox, the $10 billion file storage and sync company, has 500 million users  but industry observers have long fretted about its ability to get its users to pay for additional storage space or business-focused features.

If Apple is serious about being a services business, then it might want to start selling services directly to businesses, too.

There's just one problem: In its current form, Apple is in no way equipped to get in the notoriously tricky enterprise-services game.

The German connection

All of Apple's enterprise partnerships, including those with IBM, Cisco, and Thursday's just-inked deal with German database company SAP, are to help the company sell more iPhones and iPads.

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On the Apple-SAP partnership, Business Insider's Julie Bort writes:

In return, Apple gets access to SAP's enormous worldwide salesforce to help it sell devices to SAP's roughly 310,000 worldwide customers, most of whom are large enterprise businesses with thousands of employees.

That's a good idea. Enterprises like to buy from vendors they trust. And even if big businesses think of Apple as a consumer company, which it is, then they very often have a deep relationship with SAP.

IBM programmer ipad

The problem here is that Apple may have outsmarted itself.

Over the last several years, Apple has pushed companies to adopt a "Bring Your Own Device," or "BYOD," policy that lets people activate their own iPhones on the corporate network. With those policies in place at lots of customers and Apple's phone sales flattening, everyone who wants to use an iPhone at work is probably already doing so.

The whole reason Apple is getting into services in the first place is because there are fewer new potential iPhone customers, especially in developed economies. Eventually, this channel will start to run dry.

The reseller's dilemma

Further, Apple has essentially outsourced all of its enterprise services to companies like IBM, Box, and now SAP. Under these partnerships, Apple provides the hardware and those partners provide the software and services.

If your goal is to only sell devices, then it's an excellent arrangement, since Apple has no particular expertise in the kind of enterprise-grade collaboration or accounting databases provided by Box or SAP. Apple provides the hardware and partners provide the high-margin cloud services.

But it's also a rare loss of control for Apple, with those partners owning a big part of the customer relationship, and thus the profits. The specifics of those deals aren't available, but it seems fair to assume that Apple takes at least a chunk of the partners' service revenue.

Drew Houston

And Apple hasn't really demonstrated much ability to build that enterprise functionality itself. Most of the company's services, as they exist today, are kind of lackluster. In terms of features and functionality, companies like Google, Microsoft, and even Dropbox are innovating circles around Apple and its default apps.

Even if Apple wants the higher margins of a cloud service  if Apple can't seem to nail down a Mail app that people actually like  then it's going to be hard to build something that meets an enterprise's exacting requirements.

So to sum up, Apple is running out of people to sell iPhones to, and it's handed over control of what could be an incredibly lucrative business to partners, who are doing a better job than Apple could ever do, anyway.

Apple has been in tougher spots before. And besides, it's still the most valuable company in the world. This is not an impossible situation, just a difficult one. Maybe, as some industry watchers have suggested, it should simply buy Dropbox, which would give it a head-start on solving these challenges.

And as Apple found out with the iPhone, sometimes all it takes is one big breakthrough product that nobody saw coming. Perhaps it just hasn't arrived yet.

NOW WATCH: The FBI says it now has the ability to unlock iPhone 5C models





More From Business Insider


By Robert-Jan Bartunek

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - ArcelorMittal (ISPA.AS), the world's largest steelmaker, said on Friday it was slightly more positive about the steel market, helped by a modest improvement in prospects for China, though it kept its forecast for 2016 earnings unchanged.

Steelmakers worldwide have been battered by a plunge in prices due to overcapacity and a slowdown in economic growth in China, the world's largest consumer and producer of steel.

ArcelorMittal said it still expected global apparent steel consumption, which includes changes to inventories, to be flat to up 0.5 percent this year compared to last.

But for China, it nudged up its forecast to between flat and down 1 percent from a previous drop of 0.5 to 1.5 percent.

Chief Executive Lakshmi Mittal said the very tough operating conditions of the second half of 2015 had continued into the first quarter.

"Since that time we have seen a recovery in spreads in our core markets to more sustainable levels, which is expected to result in improved results in the coming quarters," he said, referring to the difference between iron ore and steel prices.

He added, though, that the market needed to be cautious given the threat of cheap imports flooding in from China.

Finance chief Aditya Mittal told a conference call that in January and February Chinese steel exports were up 8 percent.

ArcelorMittal repeated its 2016 guidance for core profit of above $4.5 billion (3 billion pounds). The group said an improved steel market would mean it needed more working capital, but it would still have a positive cash flow at the end of the year.

Its shares were down 3.1 percent in early trade as analysts said the group's unchanged guidance appeared conservative. The stock is up more than 50 percent this year.

"We believe the fact that the company is unwilling to raise the bottom of its guidance range implies either a lack of confidence ... or that cost savings are not coming through as quickly as we had envisaged," JP Morgan analysts wrote in a note to clients. They have an "underweight" rating on the stock.

Story continues

ArcelorMittal joined the ranks of international companies sounding more downbeat about the Brazilian economy, expecting steel demand there to decline by as much as 12 percent, from an expected fall of 6-7 percent previously.

For the group as a whole, core profit (EBITDA) fell by about a third in the first quarter to $927 million, just above the $919 million expected in a Reuters poll of 11 analysts.

(Editing by Philip Blenkinsop and Mark Potter)
Paris (AFP) - Top global steelmaker ArcelorMittal said Friday it had narrowed its first-quarter losses and saw a more upbeat period ahead but warned the market remained "fragile" due to excess capacity in China.

The company, which like other steelmakers has been hit by falling iron ore prices and cheap Chinese steel imports, said it was sticking to its full-year target for core profit.

Lakshmi Mittal, ArcelorMittal chairman and chief executive, said the results for January to March "reflect the very tough operating conditions in the second half of 2015".

"Since that time we have seen a recovery in spreads in our core markets to more sustainable levels, which is expected to result in improved results in the coming quarters.

"This is a welcome development, although given the levels of excess capacity in China the market remains fragile and we must continue to be vigilant and active against the threat of unfair trade," he said in a statement.

European steelmakers have long been battling overcapacity and cheap prices from Chinese rivals, spurring a number of national governments to press Brussels to erect barriers against Chinese steel imports.

The company reduced its net losses in the first quarter to $416 milllion (364.3 million euros ) compared to $728 million in the same period a year earlier, it said.

However it confirmed that it expected core profits, as measured by EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation), for 2016 to exceed $4.5 billion.

First-quarter EBITDA fell, as expected, to $927 million compared to the last three months of 2015 "primarily reflecting the lagged effect of weak steel pricing, offset in part by higher steel shipments".

Sales in the quarter dropped nearly 22 percent from a year earlier, to $13.4 billion, it said.

Steel shipments reached 21.5 million tonnes in the first quarter, an 8.8-percent increase compared to the previous quarter in 2015.
Arsenio Hall is suing Sinead OConnor over her claims that Hall supplied drugs to Prince, whose death is under a DEA investigation. The suit, filed today in Los Angeles County Superior Court, accuses OConnor of defaming Hall and seeks $5 million in damages.

On Monday, OConnor wrote on her Facebook page that the former talk show host had supplied drugs to Prince over the decades.

Anyone imagining prince was not a long time hard drug user is living in cloud cuckoo land, OConnor wrote. Arsenio Ive reported you to the Carver County Sherrifs office. Expect their call.

Halls attorneys accuse OConnor of making up lies about him in a bid for attention. According to the suit, Hall has had minimal contact with OConnor and has not seen her in 25 years. The lawsuit notes that the Facebook post was picked up by gossip sites and racked up more than 5,000 likes, 3,000 shares and 2,400 comments.

This is extraordinarily damaging to Halls reputation, the suit states.

In the suit, Halls attorneys also denied OConnors claim that he spiked her years ago.

Related stories

Prince Music Piracy Jumps More Than Tenfold After Artist's Death

Prince: Prescription Painkillers Reportedly Found in His Possession

Prince's Sister Says Musician Had No Will
DailyFX.com -

Daily

AUD/USD is Heavy While Below Trendline

Chart Prepared by Jamie Saettele, CMT

DailyFX Trading Guides and Forecasts

-Recent comments regarding AUD/USD noted that important resistance is around .78. Pronounced divergence with RSI also warns that the Aussie run may be nearing completionthe outside day bearish reversal on 4/21 is a good way to make at least a short term top. Weakness below .7500 (trendline) would bolster bearish prospects. AUD/USD broke .7500. Focus is lower although former resistance at .7382 may provide interim support.

For more analysis and trade setups (exact entry and exit), visit SB Trade Desk



original source

DailyFX provides forex news and technical analysis on the trends that influence the global currency markets.

Learn forex trading with a free practice account and trading charts from FXCM.
WYNNEWOOD, PA / ACCESSWIRE / May 6, 2016 / Since 2009, Audi Wynnewood has helped thousands of Pennsylvania drivers get the keys to beautiful, luxurious Audi models that upgrade their everyday commutes and weekend adventures. On May 4, 2016, Audi Wynnewood will be better prepared than ever to serve new clients and old friends alike, as the dealership is celebrating the grand opening of a brandnew, state-of-the-art facility on Lancaster Avenue, right on the Philadelphia Main Line.

Located at 311 Lancaster Avenue in Wynnewood, PA, Audi Wynnewood's new dealership boasts a two-story 22,000-square-foot showroom that allows up to 12 stunning new Audi models to be displayed at a time. A curving back wall pays homage to the high-speed turns of the racetracks Audi has dominated for so many years, while echoes of the "terminal" concept created by the Munich firm of Allmann Sattler Wappner ring throughout. For the grand opening on May 4, Audi Wynnewood will feature live music and delicious food and drinks from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. Executives from Audi of America, including Scott Keogh, President of Audi of America, will be in attendance.

"Audi Wynnewoods new dealership reflects what the Audi brand is all about; precision, comfort and a strikingly modern feel," said Rob Nourie, general manager of Audi Wynnewood. "As the only Audi dealership in the immediate area, we bring an inviting atmosphere and expansive Audi inventory to Greater Philadelphia drivers who demand the best from their vehicles. Our state-of-the art facility will enhance the Audi Wynnewood experience, and we can't wait to see our customers' reactions."

The new Audi Wynnewood facility is as much about comfort as it is style and convenience. A black, grey and white palette creates a soothing atmosphere and covers everything from floor tiles to cabinetry to leather seating. Upscale customer lounges invite guests to relax as they shop or wait for their vehicle to be serviced, while gourmet coffee machines on each floor help our customers feel at home. Additionally, the new Audi Wynnewood is located in close proximity to many fine restaurants, shops and markets, granting our guests easy access to the best that Pennsylvania has to offer.

Audi Wynnewood serves as one of three Audi dealerships in the MMCO Auto family, joining Audi West Chester and Audi Reading. Additional MMCO businesses include Porsche of Conshohocken, Volkswagen Reading, MMCO Auto Body, Audi Service Conshohocken and The Warehouse locations in Reading, Wynnewood and Conshohocken.

About Audi Wynnewood:

Part of the MMCO Auto family of dealerships, Audi Wynnewood provides Greater Philadelphia drivers with the very best in Audi sales and service. Featuring knowledgeable Audi Brand Specialists who do not work on commission, the Pennsylvania Audi dealership offers honest purchasing advice in a no-pressure environment. Browse Audi Wynnewood's entire inventory at www.audiwynnewood.com, contact their sales team at 610-649-3200 or visit the dealership at 311 Lancaster Ave. in Wynnewood for a test-drive. They can also be found on Facebook at www.facebook.com/AudiWynnewood.

SOURCE: Audi Wynnewood
Singapore will invest up to US$1.67 billion in Australia's defence infrastructure and hike troop numbers it sends for training, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said Friday.

The new agreement also includes commitments to open markets and trade and increase collaboration in science and research, he said, adding it would create thousands of jobs in northern Australia.

"We will jointly develop military training facilities in northern Queensland which will be fully funded by Singapore," the prime minister told reporters.

"Singapore will invest up to two-and-a-quarter billion dollars (US$1.67 billion) in the expansion of two of our most important military training facilities," he said, naming Shoalwater Bay and Townsville.

Turnbull said upgrading the Free Trade Agreement between the countries would make it much easier for Australians to live and work in Singapore.

"This is a great day for the Australian Singapore relationship," he said, dismissing concerns that deeper ties between Canberra and Singapore could rankle China.

Some 6,600 Singaporean troops already train each year in northern Australia. Under the new deal this will climb to 14,000, staying for 18 weeks instead of the current six, trade envoy Andrew Robb said.

Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership (CSP) signed with Canberra last year was "an ambitious package covering many aspects of our relationship".

"Our two countries are politically like-minded, strategically aligned and economically complementary. We have much to gain by working closely together," he said in a statement.

Singapore is Australia's fifth-largest trading partner, with gold and crude petroleum key exports.

As it looks to Asian markets for growth, Australia will encourage greater collaboration in research with Singapore and locate one of its five start-up "landing pads" in the city state to promote innovation and entrepreneurship.
"I think the second season is way better than the first," says Jane Fonda, the legendary actress of Grace and Frankie, the Netflix comedy series in which she stars opposite Lily Tomlin, as we sit down to record an episode of the 'Awards Chatter' podcast on the Paramount lot in Hollywood.

The 78-year-old has just participated in a read-through of the first episode of the show's recently announced third season, and she thinks the show - the co-creator and showrunner of which is Marta Kaufman (Friends) - is only getting better. Though always in-demand, Fonda says she intends to stay with Grace and Frankie for "as long as it'll take us."

(Click above to listen to this episode now or click here to access all of our episodes via iTunes. Past guests include Steven Spielberg, Amy Schumer, Harvey Weinstein, Lady Gaga, Will Smith, Kristen Stewart, Samuel L. Jackson, Brie Larson, J.J. Abrams, Kate Winslet, Ridley Scott, Jane Fonda, Michael Moore and Sarah Silverman.)

Over the course of our conversation, Fonda engages on a wide range of topics about the past, present and future. She speaks candidly about growing up as the daughter of a famous father (Golden Age actor Henry Fonda) and a mentally unstable mother (who committed suicide when Jane was just 12). She recalls the debilitating lack of confidence that nearly kept her from pursuing acting ("I couldn't stand up for myself because I didn't know who 'myself' was"). And she explains how she only found real meaning in her life and work after becoming an activist, which accounts for her onscreen evolution from "girl next-door kind of characters" to "being a kind of sexy person" (see: Barbarella) to someone who told stories "that had something to say about the times we were living in" - from They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1969), for which she garnered her first Oscar nom, to Klute (1971) and Coming Home (1978), both of which brought her best actress Oscars, to Fun with Dick and Jane (1977), The China Syndrome (1979) and Nine to Five (1980).

Fonda also ventures into a number of topics she doesn't often discuss, including "what really happened in Hanoi" in the summer of 1972 when she was photographed atop an anti-aircraft gun, and the "myths" and "ignorance" that have bubbled up since. She discusses how she and her father found a measure of peace and understanding through their collaboration on On Golden Pond (1981) and why, back in 1984, she disregarded the "rule" that movie stars don't work on TV and made The Dollmaker as a TV movie. She also reveals the real reason why, following the release of 1990's Stanley and Iris, she retired from acting for 15 years only to return again at age 65 in 2005's Monster-in-Law.

Read More: 'Awards Chatter' Podcast  Lily Tomlin ('Grandma')

Now in her third act, Fonda says she has fallen in love with acting all over again and feels Grace and Frankie is the perfect vehicle for her.

"Hollywood is not particularly kind to older actresses," she notes. "I wanted to give a cultural face to older women." She does that on Grace and Frankie - and, she says with a smile, she'll do it again next fall with Redford when they make their fourth film together, a romance called Our Souls at Night.
Embraer Kyoto Airship 2

Let's be honest. Flying  for most people  means being crammed into a pressurized metal tube with small portholes.

Even large business jets with eight-figure price tags offer very little in terms of natural sunlight.

Now Embraer has come up with a revolutionary interior that's straight out of a sci-fi flick.

With an interior-design concept called the Kyoto Airship, Embraer has proposed to outfit its Lineage 1000 business jets with large vertical windows and skylights.



The interior is currently available for those who are interested in ordering the company's $55 million Lineage 1000.

Skylights aren't new to private aviation. There are 30-year-old Cessnas flying around with skylights. But this is the first time we've seen this on large jet with a pressurized cabin that cruises at 35,000 feet.

For this new concept, the Embraer executive-jet team drew on the technical specs of an ERJ145 regional jet, which has large observer windows the company designed for use by the Brazilian government, Embraer's vice president of interior design, Jay Beever, told Business Insider.

According to Beever, the Embraer design team imagined a hypothetical Japanese customer who may want to sit on the floor of the aircraft instead of a traditional seat. The Kyoto Airship interior features lower windowsills that allow the customer to do so without feeling like they are sitting in a tub.

Embraer Kyoto Airship 1

Although the large vertical windows bathe the cabin in sunlight, the production version of the interior will have to address the fact that all that sun  you're flying above the clouds after all  could make the cabin very hot.

The company is awaiting the first intrepid customer who's in the mood for something we've never seen before in a business jet.

"We've proven to ourselves that we can make this," Beever said. "And when a Lineage customer is ready to order this airplane, we will make it."

Embraer Kyoto Airship

NOW WATCH: Take a tour of the $66.5 million private jet that has a waitlist stretching into 2018





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READING, Penn.For many people living in Americas poorest cities, success is elusive. Gone are the days when families in the Rust Belt could count on a manufacturing job out of high school to provide a decent standard of living. Here in Reading, 40 percent of the population lives in poverty and unemployment is more than 7 percent. Despite these difficult circumstances, some entrepreneurs have flourished. The Reading area is headquarters to a handful of homegrown, multimillion-dollar companieseven three on the Fortune 500 list.

Weidenhammer Systems Corporation started off in a rented room in a Reading home 40 years ago. Now, the information technology company has more than 200 employees in seven cities across the country, with clients spanning the globe. Last year the company made $42 million. During my recent visit to Reading, the companys CEO, John Weidenhammer, talked about how he was able to build his company at a time when his hometown was falling into decline.

Recommended: The Secret Shame of Middle-Class Americans Living Paycheck to Paycheck

Back in 1978, Weidenhammer was working as an information-technology consultant and wanted to start his own company, but didnt have the capital. Here, he ran into a bit of luck: A large brass hardware factory in town had just lost its IT manager. Weidenhammer seized the opportunity. When the owner offered him the position, he instead negotiated for something else: The company became the first client of his fledgling IT company. The factory owner agreed to the arrangement because he trusted Weidenhammer and they had a good working relationship.

Thats probably the most poignant example of how a door opened up for me, says Weidenhammer, who was one of the first in his family to go to college.

Later, again, Weidenhammer found that he was able to leverage a little bit of luck into big gains for his company: His brother worked for IBM in the late 70s, and Weidenhammer often played softball with him and his boss. One day, after a softball game, an IBM sales manager told Weidenhammer to come to his office to let him in on a secret. It turns out, in a few months the company was going to release the System/34, a computer that would allow businesses to automate much of their paperwork.

Story continues

He said, I think its going to be very special. If I were you I would learn everything about it that you can, Weidenhammer says. The manager gave him a stack of instruction manuals and Weidenhammer put them next to his bed. It was very difficult. I proceeded to read those manuals and highlight them and dog-ear them.

Recommended: The Circles of American Financial Hell

The early exposure to IBMs new computer gave Weidenhammer a competitive edge. His employees started developing software for what would become a mainstay in the business world. He says it laid the foundation for the work his employees would do for years to come, helping other businesses streamline their operations with computers. The advantage he got from that tip gave him a huge head start. It was the whole introduction to the ecosystem, he said. Others didnt have the same exposure. I guess it was a lucky break.

By contrast, the city of Reading, as well as other Rust Belt cities, have recently been down on their luck. There was a time when Reading was among the most prosperous towns in America, thanks to the onset of the Industrial Revolution. Steel and textile mills set up shop here and ushered in a prosperous era for the city. The famous Philadelphia & Reading Railroad Company would become one of the largest corporations in the country in the 1870s. During Readings peak in the 1930s, more than 110,000 people lived there.

In the following decades, Reading would lose nearly half its population as factories moved away and demand for coal subsided. By 1971, the Reading Railroad company was bankrupt. At first, local manufacturing companies made up most of Weidenhammers client base. But as factories shut down or moved away, he had to adapt. So he started providing IT to clients across the country in a variety of industries, including a European pest-control company. There were times I considered moving, but I always thought I could just diversify geographically instead of getting up and leaving, says Weidenhammer.

Recommended: Why So Many Smart People Arent Happy

The rise of the Internet has made many businesses geographic location almost irrelevant, except when it comes to attracting talent. High-skilled employees are more likely to gravitate to big tech hubsnot small-town Pennsylvania. To find high-skilled employees, Weidenhammer had to expand his search beyond Reading, where only eight percent of adults older than 25 have college degrees. Thats one reason he opened offices in Philadelphia, Michigan, Colorado, and Arizona. Its hard to imagine getting lucky in Reading these days.

Read more from The Atlantic:

This article was originally published on The Atlantic.
Bill Ackman CNBC

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The US economy added 160,000 jobs in April, fewer than expected, as the unemployment rate held steady at 5.0%.

The good news is that more people are quitting their jobs, and that this is the jobs report we've been waiting to see.

There is a lot going on in markets Friday morning. Here are the highlights:

In other news, hedge funds are facing their own Uber moment, and the business dragging Wall Street down may finally have hit a bottom.

Donald Trump is floating an insane idea that would tank the American economy.

The steroid era of startups is over  here's what eight top VCs think will happen next.

And a report that analyzed every minimum-wage hike since 1938 should put a bunch of nonsense ideas to rest.

Here are the top Wall Street headlines at midday:

Wall Streets money machine is spluttering back to life - The good times are rolling again.

Goldman Sachs is firing traders again - Goldman Sachs on Thursday made job cuts in its securities business, according to people familiar with the matter.

Heres how China managed to lose $500 billion in reserves in one year - China lost $500 billion in foreign-exchange reserves in 2015. $500 billion!

A new wave of 'tourists' is terrible for the market - Investors are turning into tourists, and just like the worst of tourists, they're stomping over the locals.

Something odd is happening in China, and it echoes major financial crises of the last 20 years - It's no secret that the Chinese economy has been slowing down.

Africa's largest oil producer just took another huge blow to its battered economy - The flow of foreign capital into Nigeria is drying up  and it's a huge blow to its economy.

Story continues

Deutsche Bank is being investigated for suspected market manipulation - Deutsche Bank is under investigation in Italy for suspected market manipulation relating to the sale of Italian government bonds in 2011.

This beautiful new plane has a feature that's unlike anything we've ever seen - Let's be honest. Flying  for most people  means being crammed into a pressurized metal tube with small port holes.





More From Business Insider


bill ackman

Bill Ackman probably did not have a happy end to his work week.

Two of his biggest trades  Herbalife and Valeant Pharmaceuticals  headed in the opposite directions of his positions on Friday.

Herbalife, a long-time Ackman short, ended the day up exactly 9% at $63.57 a share while Valeant was down 13.4% at $29.86 a share.

Herbalife

Shares of Herbalife soared to their highest level in a year after the company hinted at a possible resolution to its case with the Federal Trade Commission.

Herbalife CEO Michael Johnson said that the investigation by the FTC was close to ending and estimated possible financial hits to the company.

"We have updated our disclosures to report that while there are a number of open issues, those discussions have progressed to an advanced stage, and the range of outcomes now include litigation or settlement," Johnson said in the company's quarterly earnings call.

"We also announced that if a settlement is reached with the FTC, it would likely include injunctive and other relates  as well as a monetary payment with our best estimate of that payment being $200 million," he continued.

The nutritional-supplement company has been under investigation for some time now after concerns were raised that it was operating a pyramid scheme. The company's best-known detractor is hedge fund billionaire Ackman, whose Pershing Square fund has a short position on Herbalife.

Ackman accused the company of using a pyramid structure to prey on low-income people, and he was featured in a documentary on the company.

Valeant

Despite taking it on the chin for months now, Ackman has recently deepened his commitment to the troubled pharmaceutical business with a seat on the board of directors.

For his trouble, Ackman has had to endure a grilling from the US Senate, a stock price collapse of 88%, and barbs from Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger.

Story continues

Shares again tumbled after the company announced that it would form a committee to evaluate how the firm determines drug prices. One of the problems over the past year has been Valeant's practice of purchasing a drug and raising the price.

And so Ackman got punished on both of his most well-known trades on Friday. Here's a chart that is sure to make the hedge funder cringe:

Screen Shot 2016 05 06 at 4.34.11 PM

NOW WATCH: Watch Hillary Clinton threaten to 'go after' one of the most controversial drug companies in America





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Former President Bill Clinton was joined by several Hollywood A-listers Wednesday to celebrate what he called one of his proudest moments in office  signing the gun-regulating Brady Bill.



In doing so, the former chief executive, whose wife Hillary Clinton is currently the Democratic frontrunner in the presidential election, delivered a reminder to current proponents of improved weapons laws never to stop reaching across dividing political and cultural lines and take stands in the name of public safety.



aWe have got to get to the point in America where we donat have to have a mass killing to do something decent,a Clinton, 69, told the crowd at the Brady Center Bear Awards Gala at the Four Seasons Hotel in Los Angeles, where he was one of the recipients of an honor for his gun violence prevention actions.



Clinton was lauded for signing the Brady Handgun Prevention Act, which introduced background checks and other cautionary provisions in the weapons-purchase process, into law in 1993. The act was named for the late former White House press secretary James aBeara Brady, who was wounded and permanently disabled by gunfire in the 1981 assassination attempt on then-president Ronald Reagan by John Hinckley, Jr. and who subsequently became the guiding light of the Brady Centeras national efforts to quell gun violence until his death in 2014.







aOne of the great honors of my life was signing the Brady law, and then a year later in the crime bill the assault weapons ban and the ammunition clip ban,a said Clinton in an impromptu 30-minute speech at an event chaired by aThe Big Shorta filmmaker Adam McKay and attended by celebrities including Will Ferrell, Jenna Fischer, Sarah Silverman, Michael Sheen, Rainn Wilson, Clark Gregg, Jennifer Grey and emcee Rich Eisen.



aIt shows how important this subject is,a McKay told PEOPLE. aI mean, if heas here, given whatas going on in his life with his wife, you know itas important.a



Clinton also praised President Obama for his ongoing efforts to address the epidemic of gun violence the nation has experienced in recent years in the wake of an even more polarized political climate, including trying to extend controls to close sales loopholes at gun shows and online. aHe has done every thing you can do, and Iam grateful, because you have to keep pushing this rock up the hill.a



Clinton also recalled visiting areas in the United States where mass shootings have occurred and attending events with Gabrielle Giffords, the Arizona congresswoman who was herself wounded in an assassination attempt on her life in 2011, and he shared personal memories of growing up amid an enthusiast gun culture himself in rural Arkansas.



aWhen I was ten years old, I was given a .22 to shoot cans off the fence post,a he recalled. aWhen I was 14 I was given a .410. But I never really enjoyed hunting very muchaI never shot a deer in my life but we had to close high school on the first day of deer season because half the people werenat going to show up anyway.a



But throughout his life and political career, Clinton added, he never gave up on the concept of reasonable gun control measures and ultimately had the opportunity to champion regulation during his presidency. The key, he urged the crowd, was not to be frustrated by the rigidly opposed political and corporate organizational efforts and reach out directly to the everyday people who may at first feel opposed but are ultimately open to reasonable, sensible measures.



aDonat be afraid to talk to people who are skeptical, who live in different cultures and have different options,a said Clinton. aYou're trying to ask them to create a little space in their mind and heart for the people who are innocent victims you are trying to save. And to do that, you have to look them in the eye, figuratively or literally.a



aI want you to redeem the loss, and the meaning of the lives [lost],a said Clinton, who warmly recalled the tenacious will of Brady and his late wife Sarah as they championed the cause against gun violence. aI want you to prove that Jim Brady did the right thing. Getting up every day and forcing himself to get dressed and dragging himself around with his severe wounds.a



aWe have to be a humane society,a he concluded. aThere have to be some things we can agree on that are the basic parameters of any democracy.a
Its nearing the closing bell of the first-quarter 2016 earnings season with almost 75% of the S&P 500 members having already reported results. With 71.4% of these members beating bottom-line estimates and 56.4% surpassing top-line expectations, the first-quarter earnings season has been A Case of Low Expectations.



Notably, the Medical sector is anticipated to be one of the seven sectors to record earnings growth in the first quarter of 2016, as per our Earnings Trends. Our Q1 scorecard shows that 75.5% of the Medical sector has reported results with a blended beat of 67.5% (the percentage of companies that have beaten both EPS as well as revenue estimates).

Particularly, the earnings picture for the biotech sector looks quite mixed. By now, several biotech companies have reported first-quarter results.

Companies like Amgen Inc. AMGN and Regeneron have topped first-quarter earnings and revenues. While Amgen raised the outlook for the year, Regeneron upped the 2016 view for its key eye drug, Eylea. However, heavyweight biotech stock Gilead lagged both earnings and revenue estimates even though it reiterated its outlook for the year. As far as the other biotech stocks are concerned, including the likes of Biogen, Celgene, Alexion, and AbbVie, while some managed to post mixed results, others came up with disappointing performances and outlooks for the year.



Still, several medium and small-sized biotech companies are yet to report first-quarter results. Lets see what awaits these six biotech stocks when they report their first-quarter 2016 results on May 9.



Can these Biotech Stocks Pull a Surprise?



Horizon Pharma plc HZNP has already provided weaker-than-expected net sales and adjusted EBITDA expectations for the first quarter of 2016 last month. The company expects a major part of its sales and EBITDA to come in the second half of the year. Focus will be on the results of the companys business units as well as the performance of key products including Actimmune. Horizon Pharmas Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) and an Earnings ESP of -13.16% do not conclusively show that the company is likely to beat earnings estimates this quarter (read more: What's in Store for Horizon This Earnings Season?).

Story continues





Oncology focused Incyte Corporations INCY Zacks Rank #3 increases the predictive power of the ESP but its ESP of -46.67% makes a surprise prediction difficult this quarter. Incytes track record has however been pretty good with the company surpassing expectations in three of the last four quarters with an average positive surprise of 85.99%.



Juno Therapeutics Inc. JUNO is among the major players in the field of T-cell-based immunotherapy and has pipeline candidates like JCAR015, JCAR017 and JCAR014 which use CAR T cell technology to target CD19. It has collaborations with companies like Celgene for the global development and commercialization of immunotherapies. With no approved products in its portfolio and not generating any product revenues as yet, focus will be on the companys cash burn and pipeline updates.



Juno has a Zacks Rank #3 which when combined with an ESP 0.00% makes a surprise prediction difficult (read more: Juno Q1 Earnings: What's in Store for the Stock?).



San Diego, CA-based HalozymeTherapeutics, Inc. HALO, focused on the development and commercialization of oncology therapies, has an impressive track record. The company has beaten estimates in three of the trailing four quarters with an average positive surprise of 60.41%. Our model does not show that Halozyme is likely to beat estimates this quarter. Though the companys Zacks Rank #3 enhances the predictive power of the ESP, its 0.00% ESP makes a surprise prediction difficult.



Kite Pharma, Inc.s KITE performance over the last four quarters is mostly disappointing with the company surpassing expectations in just one quarter. Moreover, Kite Pharmas Zacks Rank #4 (Sell) which when combined with an ESP -11.48% does not conclusively show that Kite Pharma is likely to beat estimates this quarter as well.



This development-stage company is looking to transform the paradigm of treating cancer which involves using the bodys immune system to recognize and destroy cancer cells. Focus will be on updates on the companys progress with its lead pipeline candidate KTE-C19 as well as on collaboration agreements with several companies including Amgen (read more: Kite to Report Q1 Earnings: Will the Stock Disappoint?).



Parsippany, NJ-based The Medicines Company MDCO has a portfolio of offerings targeting unmet medical needs in the acute intensive care hospital segment. Its track record has been pretty good with the company beating estimates in three of the last four reported quarters. Overall, the company has delivered a positive surprise of 31.34%. Although the companys Zacks Rank #3 enhances the predictive power of the ESP, its 0.00% ESP makes a surprise prediction difficult.

Stay tuned! Check later on our full write-up on earnings releases of these stocks.

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Zacks Investment Research
By Jemima Kelly

LONDON (Reuters) - As one would-be father of bitcoin falls by the wayside, squabbling among the web-based currency's lead developers is exposing a fundamental flaw: it must evolve to meet growing demand, but may lack a governance structure to achieve this.

The latest bickering erupted after Australian entrepreneur Craig Wright promised to prove he was the mysterious creator of bitcoin - which allows users to move money across the world quickly and anonymously - but then said on Thursday he could not provide further evidence to back this up.

Wright stopped short of reneging on his claim to be Satoshi Nakamoto, assumed to be a pseudonym for the person or people who launched the digital cryptocurrency in 2009. However, he apologised for damaging the reputations of bitcoin experts who had believed him.

Many members of the bitcoin community reckon this is all a distraction and agree with Wright when he said that the identity of Nakamoto "doesn't, and shouldn't, matter".

"Satoshi's biggest achievement was to create a system that doesn't require his participation to run," said Peter Todd, one of bitcoin's core software developers. "That's what makes all this stuff kind of funny. It's like searching for the creator of a system that's designed not to require a creator."

While grey-suited central bankers print conventional currencies and commercial banks control transactions in them, no one person or entity is in charge of bitcoin. Instead it runs on a decentralised system of shared trust without any third-party verification of transactions - one reason why many people are attracted to it.

Critics, however, say it needs a "benevolent dictator" or at least some "adults" to manage the expansion that it needs to cope with the increasing number of transactions. Someone, or some group, must decide how to meet users' requirements, they say.

Trades are handled by thousands of "mining" computers around the world which validate blocks of transactions by competing to solve mathematical puzzles every 10 minutes.

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The first computer to solve the puzzle clears the transaction and is currently rewarded with 25 new bitcoins, now worth around $11,250.. This is how the computers' owners cover their costs - largely power bills - and make a profit. The system also ensures there is no single point in the system that might fail.

CIVIL WAR

In practice, there do appear to be people who can make decisions, but it is also possible to be excluded from this magic circle.

One of the bitcoin experts who initially believed Wright's claim is Gavin Andresen. Nakamoto handed control of bitcoin's software to Andresen when he stepped aside in 2011, a transfer that kept the creator's identity a mystery as it was conducted in cyberspace without human contact.

Andresen later shared that control with others. But when he stated publicly he believed Wright, sceptical developers responded by revoking his "commit access" to a shared repository of bitcoin rules.

Initially, these developers justified their move on security grounds, saying his computer must have been hacked - something Andresen denied. When Reuters asked Todd whether Andresen's access would be reinstated, he responded: "Heck no", saying a belief in Wright amounted to "inexcusable incompetence".

Andresen admitted to bewilderment over whether he still believed Wright's claims. "Ask me in six months; I don't trust my own judgement right now after all the drama," he said on Twitter.

The squabbling is not new. One of the lead developers, Mike Hearn, stood down from bitcoin in January because of a power struggle nicknamed the "bitcoin civil war".

Hearn and Andresen had proposed increasing the size of the blocks in which transactions are processed but the other developers opposed this. In quitting, Hearn said that "what was meant to be a new, decentralised form of money that lacked systemically important institutions" had now become "a system completely controlled by just a handful of people".

Many investors and start-up firms remain optimistic about bitcoin and are making money from it. But Emin Gun Sirer, a computer science professor at Cornell University, said the appearance of internal conflict was undermining it.

"For bitcoin to retain its value, it's important to have hope that there's good management in charge, that there are adults in charge," Sirer said. "When we see opportunistic moves, that's a problem."

BENEVOLENT DICTATORS

But Sirer also said that any open-source project such as bitcoin, which runs using software that anyone can access, change, and distribute, faces the challenge of governance.

"Is it a pipe dream to expect to be able to build a currency system that is completely decentralized and free of any control whatsoever? The short answer to that is yes, but that's not what anyone should have expected anyway," he said.

Sirer added that he was concerned that his brightest young students at Cornell were being deterred from getting involved with bitcoin because of the in-fighting and the appearance that developers were unable to agree on change.

One other digital currency system which is attracting bright young minds is Ethereum, created in 2013 by Russian-Canadian Vitalik Buterin when he was just 19. It works with the "benevolent dictator model", as Sirer calls it, with Buterin holding the decision-making power.

"Over the last couple of years it's become apparent that having a static protocol is just not a viable approach," Buterin told the Consensus bitcoin conference in New York earlier in the week. "Software has to evolve ... and there has to be some mechanism for agreeing on how software is going to upgrade."

Most, however, reckon that even if Nakamoto were to be found, the other developers - many of whom have written more code than he ever did in the seven years since bitcoin was launched - would not accept his having ultimate power.

"(Nakamoto) would be thanked for creating this amazing thing, but if there comes a time when there's a technical debate over whether we should go one way or the other, his opinions would only be persuasive, not controlling," said Jerry Brito, executive director of bitcoin advocacy group Coin Center.

(Additional reporting by Toby Sterling in Amsterdam; editing by David Stamp)
By Allison Lampert and Siva Govindasamy

MONTREAL/SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Boosted by a pivotal CSeries deal with Delta Air Lines <DAL.N>, Canada's Bombardier Inc <BBDb.TO> is rekindling sales talks with several U.S. and European carriers, even as it eyes China, the world's fastest-growing aviation nation.

Montreal-based Bombardier is leveraging last week's order for 75 of the 110-seater CSeries narrowbodies to renew contact with established Western carriers, while harboring mid-term plans to win a breakthrough order from Chinese airlines, company executives said.

The Delta deal, along with an expected firm order for 45 planes from Air Canada, give Montreal-based Bombardier the North American "anchor" it needs to bolster efforts globally, the company's chief executive said in an interview with Reuters.

"I would say the focus (on China) has to increase," Chief Executive Alain Bellemare said. "Clearly, this is a target market for us."

The momentum has helped the company to "advance" its conversations with Chinese carriers, say company executives.

Chinese passenger traffic has grown by double digits over the last decade, and industry observers expect the country's air travel market to remain buoyant despite any economic slowdown.

Airbus Group SE <AIR.PA> predicts the Chinese domestic market will leapfrog the United States as the world's largest within 10 years.

Rising passenger traffic in cities away from the main hubs of Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou can help convince airlines to opt for the 110-150 seat CSeries planes, said Andy Solem, who oversees commercial aircraft sales in China.

"Trunk growth is slowing down, but we don't play in those markets given the slot constraints in these hubs. There is growth outside these cities," said Solem.

Boeing <BA.N> projects demand for 4,630 new single-aisle airplanes worth $490 billion in China over the next 20 years.

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Smaller regional jets, however, are not as widely used in China as in North America, where they account for 20-25 percent of aircraft fleets.

Chinese airlines like Air China <601111.SS> , China Southern Airlines <600029.SS>, China Eastern Airlines <600115.SS> and Hainan Airlines <600221.SS> also have hundreds of Airbus A320s and Boeing Co's 737s on order.

Solem, however, points out that Chinese carriers also operate "several hundred" smaller A319s and 737-700s variants, and these are unlikely to be replaced by the larger variants of the Airbus and Boeing planes that have been ordered.

The CSeries will help the airlines to "right-size their fleets" with a more cost-efficient product, he added.

In China, Bombardier has not yet firmed up a 2014 letter of intent from Chinas Zhejiang Loong Airlines Co Ltd to acquire 20 CS100 aircraft. CDB Leasing, a unit of the China Development Bank, also has a conditional purchase agreement for 15 planes.

The manufacturer is in talks with other Chinese airlines and leasing companies, which are becoming an important source of aircraft globally, and hopes to finalize orders "sooner rather than later", said Solem.

He added that the CSeries' imminent entry into service with launch customer Swiss International Air Lines will help, with airlines saying they want to look at its operating data and performance before making a commitment.

Airbus and Boeing have also increased their presence in China to get more sales. Airbus, for example, assembles A320s in Tianjin and both companies have plans to open cabin completion facilities in the country.

Bombardier manufactures some CSeries components in China, and Bellemare does not expect any imminent changes to the level of the company's presence in the country.

"It's critical for cost and it's critical for market access," Bellemare said. "When you work in China you develop relationships with Chinese leaders and that has tremendous benefits when you look at getting orders from local Chinese airlines."

(Reporting by Allison Lampert in Montreal and Siva Govindasamy in Singapore. Additional reporting by Tim Hepher in Paris; Editing by Stephen Coates)
By Tom Bergin, Simon Jessop and Sinead Cruise

LONDON (Reuters) - Chief executives at Britain's largest companies had a pay cut last year. But profits fell further, ensuring a decade-long trend of bosses taking a rising share of corporate profits continued.

The average pay for chief executives of a company in the blue chip FTSE 100 index was 5.23 million pounds ($7.6 million)last year, down from 5.36 million in 2014, a Reuters examination of corporate filings shows.

However, FTSE 100 profits fell over 40 percent, helping to lift CEOs' earnings to the equivalent of 0.58 percent of their companies' total profits for the year, from 0.32 percent in 2014.

This represents a leap over the past decade. In 2005, CEO compensation, including pensions and share awards, was just 0.1 percent of pre-tax earnings, the Reuters analysis of annual reports over the period shows.

Rapid growth in executive pay has long drawn criticism from some politicians and media headlines denouncing corporate "fat cats". Now shareholders are increasingly raising their concerns, notably over a bumper deal for BP Plc's (BP.L) boss Bob Dudley as the oil giant reported its biggest ever annual loss.

Measured against share prices, the balance of gains and losses has also tipped in CEOs' favour.

The FTSE 100 index dropped around five percent last year but CEO pay at the component stocks fell only 2 percent. Between 2005 and the end of 2015, the index gained almost 30 percent, while CEO pay doubled at the 87 current FTSE companies where comparable data is available.

Executive pay consultants say UK packages are well above continental European levels but fall short of those in the United States.

Most companies deny there is a problem with pay. They say they have responded to investors' demands to link packages to performance, limiting fixed payouts including pension contributions. Any apparent lack of correlation with profits or share price is often due to market spikes, broader economic trends or one-off events, they say.

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INVESTOR ANGER

In recent weeks, investors have expressed their anger at annual general meetings.

Over half of BP shareholders voted against Dudley's $20 million pay deal for 2015, a year when the company lost $6.5 billion. The vote was not binding but the company said it will consult investors on future pay deals.

BP said Dudley's pay partly reflected the fact that he hit targets including safety goals, while the loss reflected low oil prices and legal settlements related to the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill, which occurred before he became CEO.

Pay campaigners and governance groups have also criticised a 70 million pound package for WPP chief Martin Sorrell before the world's biggest advertising company holds its AGM next month.

WPP said the payout was linked to a share plan which required Sorrell to agree not to sell some of his shares in the company for five years. This exposed him to considerable financial risk, a spokesman said.

Some pay experts say the Reuters data shows a fundamental shift in value from investors to bosses.

"Shareholders really need to be concerned," said David Pitt-Watson, Executive Fellow of Finance at the London Business School and an adviser to insurer Aviva.

"If you're getting statistics where you're seeing a hugely greater proportion of the profits of a company going out to one individual ... then that's something that needs to give you a greater worry," added Pitt-Watson, who was previously a board member of Hermes Fund Managers.

NO BACK-SCRATCHING

The recent voting against pay plans is not new. During the "shareholder spring" of 2012, investors - who had historically used their advisory votes to back management overwhelmingly on the issue - voted in large numbers against remuneration schemes. This prompted some companies to amend their policies.

CEO pay is usually set by a company's remuneration committee, which typically comprises three non-executive directors.

Critics say such "remcos" are often made up of people with links to the CEO, sitting or former CEOs of other companies, or others who are predisposed to pay bosses a lot of money.

Louise Patten, head of the remuneration committee at FTSE 100-listed shopping centre operator Intu Properties (INTUP.L), denied she and her peers were "old chums, back-scratching" the CEO.

"There are some outliers but I think, generally speaking, the system works. Remcos think about remuneration a lot and whether we have the right strategic drivers," she told Reuters on the sidelines of Intu's AGM.

Patten said the aim was to ensure alignment between remuneration and shareholder returns so that bosses had a strong incentive to do their job well. The proportion of profits that went to the CEO wasn't usually a focus for remuneration committees, with other measures such as relative performance against peers or share price being more important.

But even some company insiders question whether the split of rewards is fair.

"A lot of shareholders have got concerns about the direction of travel of executive pay. I share those concerns in some measure," Philip Hampton, chairman of GlaxoSmithKline (GSK.L), told the drugmaker's AGM this week.

"Sometimes, maybe even frequently, it is not easy to see the linkage between the shareholder experience and the executive remuneration," said Hampton, a past chairman of the Royal Bank of Scotland and retailer J Sainsbury Plc.

SHARE AWARDS

Not every element of remuneration has risen over the years. While seven figure pension contributions were common in 2005, the abolition of defined benefit plans and the introduction of caps has reduced the cost to shareholders of executive pensions.

Yet the expansion of share-based rewards has more than made up for this and largely explained the doubling of pay in a decade.

Some corporate leaders say CEOs may also be effectively charging more for their services because shareholders have been given a greater ability to get rid of them.

But some politicians and campaigners say shareholders are to blame for failing to hold companies to account.

Fund managers say it is hard to assess whether shareholders are getting value for money from a CEO. Profits can be erratic and executive windfalls can be generated by actions taken a few years earlier.

"To analyse it is very, very difficult and has so many elements and legs to it that it's not straight-forward," said Aidan Farrell, small-cap equities fund manager at Eaton Vance.

Last year was the first year for which companies were obliged to publish a single figure for total CEO pay. Previously, companies reported pension contributions and share awards separately and in their annual reports discouraged investors from including the value of pensions in CEO remuneration calculations.

Current reporting rules force companies to include pension and share payments.

(This story has been refiled to correct dateline)

(Additional reporting by Ben Hirschler in London; editing by David Stamp)
(Adds BHP, Standard & Poor's comments)

By Stephen Eisenhammer and Marta Nogueira

RIO DE JANEIRO, May 5 (Reuters) - A Brazilian judge on Thursday ratified the settlement Samarco and its owners, BHP Billiton and Vale SA, signed with Brazil's government in March to cover damages for a deadly dam spill last year, Vale said in a statement.

The move potentially saps some of the energy from a separate $44 billion lawsuit filed by federal prosecutors on Tuesday who criticized the settlement as insufficient.

The agreement will see Samarco, BHP and Vale pay a government-estimated 20 billion reais ($5.6 billion) over 15 years to cover and repair damages. Vale, however, has outlined it expects to pay less than that due to the way the deal is structured, calculating future payments depending on how much work remains to be done.

"It's a very important step because you remove any uncertainty about the agreement's validity," said Marilene Ramos, President of Brazil's federal environment agency Ibama which formed part of the settlement.

"The programs outlined in the agreement can now be implemented by the companies," Ramos added, referring to the environmental reparation plan which includes work on sewage, landfill, reforestation and water treatment.

The settlement has been strongly criticized by federal prosecutors who called it little more than a "letter of intent" in their lawsuit. "It is absolutely insufficient," said Jorge Munhos de Souza, one of the prosecutors working on the case.

Samarco Chief Executive Roberto Carvalho told Reuters the settlement and the lawsuit filed by prosecutors covers the same ground.

"The agreement ratified today already carries all the socio-economic and environmental reparations which this other lawsuit proposes," Carvalho said.

He reiterated that he expects the Samarco mine, closed after the disaster, to restart later this year, and that a return to production is vital for the company to afford the terms of the agreement. The settlement specifies that if Samarco cannot meet its obligations, the cost of doing so falls to Vale and BHP.

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BHP said on Friday progress was being made to rebuild the communities worst-hit by the massive spill, and more than 5,2000 people affected in Mariana, Barra Longa and Rio Doce had received emergency support cards.

The people of Bento Rodrigues, the village most devastated by the mudslides, are set to vote on where to rebuild their town, BHP said.

"While we cannot bring back the lives that were lost, we continue to focus on ensuring that the families and communities impacted by this tragedy are supported," Dean Dalla Valle, BHP's senior executive in Brazil dealing with the disaster, said in a statement.

Standard & Poor's said on Friday its credit ratings on BHP, Vale and Samarco had not been affected by the $44 billion lawsuit by Brazil's public prosecutors, as it was too early to say what financial impact it would have.

It said the same court that approved the March settlement would decide on whether the prosecutors' lawsuit would proceed. "The decision will also likely take into account the identified damages and restoration costs that were covered by the agreement," S&P said.

BHP's shares, which have been pounded this week partly due to the lawsuit, rose 1.7 percent on Friday in a weaker broader market.

($1 = 3.55 reais) (Reporting by Stephen Eisenhammer and Marta Nogueira; Additional reporting by Sonali Paul in Melbourne; Editing by Chris Reese, Bernard Orr and Ryan Woo)
Brasilia (AFP) - A special committee in Brazil's Senate was to vote Friday on whether to recommend starting an impeachment trial against President Dilma Rousseff who faces being suspended from office in less than a week.

The committee's decision is non-binding but marks the last formal stage before the full Senate votes Wednesday on whether to put the leftist leader on trial.

With a 'yes' almost certain, Rousseff is preparing to step aside for up to six months while her trial takes place, plunging Brazil into ever deeper political infighting.

As soon as Rousseff is suspended Vice President Michel Temer, a center-right politician whose party recently broke off its shaky alliance with Rousseff's Workers' Party, would become interim president.

The impeachment battle, a crumbling economy, and corruption probes against dozens of leading politicians and business executives have left Latin America's biggest country in turmoil ahead of the Rio Olympics this August.

The impeachment is based on accusations that Rousseff made illegal accounting maneuvers to mask the depth of Brazil's economic troubles during her tight 2014 reelection victory.

- Corruption whirlpool -

The country's first female president says the charges are trumped up to turn the impeachment process into a coup d'etat and that she will not give in.

"I have the nature of someone who resists and I will resist to the last day," she said Friday at a ceremony where she handed over housing to the poor, one of the Workers' Party's signature policies -- and one she claimed would be threatened by her departure.

The Senate vote and debate next week is expected to take more than 20 hours, likely stretching into Thursday, Brazilian media reports said. Rousseff's suspension would take effect by Friday, according to current estimates.

She would be allowed to remain in her presidential residence but will lose access to the executive offices and will be on half pay. There are still questions over her exact status, including whether she will be able to use Air Force planes for travel.

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While Rousseff fights for her political survival, both her closest allies and some of her most bitter enemies are being sucked into an ever deepening corruption scandal centered on state oil company Petrobras.

On Thursday, the architect of the impeachment drive, lawmaker Eduardo Cunha, was suspended by the Supreme Court from his post as speaker of the lower house on grounds that he was obstructing a Petrobras-related corruption probe against him.

Cunha was one of Brazil's most powerful political operators and allied to Temer. His probable replacement in the speaker's post is another lawmaker accused of participating in the Petrobras embezzlement ring.

Temer himself is not being probed in the Petrobras affair, the chief prosecutor said this week, despite allegations made against him by a key witness in the government's case.

- Paralysis -

However, in yet another twist Thursday it emerged that Temer could be barred from participating in any elections for eight years because he has been found guilty of violating campaign finance rules. The ban would not affect Temer's ability to take the presidency next week since no election is involved.

Meanwhile, the government and Congress have all but come to a standstill, with measures to try to drag the economy out of its worst recession in decades abandoned.

On Thursday, Fitch followed other rating agencies in downgrading Brazil's credit score.

It was already classed as speculative or "junk" grade and on Thursday Fitch shifted the rating down to BB from BB+.

The downgrade "reflects the deeper-than-anticipated economic contraction, failure of the government to stabilize the outlook for public finances and the sustained legislative gridlock and elevated political uncertainty," Fitch said.

The economy shrank 3.8 percent last year and is forecast to wither away at the same rate this year before flattening out with zero growth in 2017. That's a huge drop from the 7.5 percent growth Rousseff inherited when she first took office in 2010, although a big reason for the decline was the end of high commodity prices around the world.

Markets are betting on a Temer presidency breaking the deadlock in Congress and ushering Brazil back out of the red.
(Updates throughout with vote)

By Maria Carolina Marcello and Anthony Boadle

BRASILIA, May 6 (Reuters) - A Senate committee recommended on Friday that Brazil's President Dilma Rousseff be put on trial by the full chamber for breaking budget laws, moving a step closer to the likely suspension of the leftist leader from office next week.

Despite renewed promised by Rousseff on Friday to resist her removal, her chances for staying in office are dimming. Her departure would come at a time when a majority of Brazilians are against Rousseff because of an economic recession and a massive corruption scandal that has exposed wrongdoing by ruling party officials.

The full Senate is expected to vote to put her on trial on Wednesday, which would immediately suspend Rousseff for the duration of a trial that could last six months. During that period, Vice President Michel Temer would replace her as acting president.

The upper house committee voted 15-5 to accept the charges against Rousseff, which involve budget irregularities that critics say masked budget problems while she ran for re-election in 2014, and her opponents are certain to muster the simple majority needed to begin a trial.

"I will resist until the last day," Rousseff said at an event where she announced the delivery of low-cost housing. The president said she would not resign because she committed no crime, and called her looming ouster a "coup d'etat."

If the Senate convicts Rousseff, by a two-thirds majority vote to oust her, Temer would serve out the remainder of Rousseff's second term through 2018.

Local newspaper surveys say the opposition has 50 of the 54 votes needed, with many of the 10 undecided senators likely to favor her ouster.

Rousseff has struggled to survive politically in the face of Brazil's biggest ever corruption scandal and its worst recession since the 1930s. Her removal would mark an end to 13 years of leftist rule by the Workers Party that began in 2003 under her mentor, former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

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While Rousseff is not directly accused of corruption, Brazil's top prosecutor has asked for her to be investigated for obstructing justice in the kickback scandal that has engulfed state-run oil company Petroleo Brasileiro SA and fueled Brazil's political crisis.

In a separate initiative launched by the opposition, Rousseff's 2014 re-election campaign is being investigated by an electoral court for alleged funding with bribe money.

At Rousseff's presidential palace Friday, officials had glum faces and appeared resigned to the end of her administration.

One aide denied they were packing up already, but added: "No doubt, we have to start organizing things."

Echoing the sense of an administration that has run out of time, no reporters showed up for a news conference called by Women Affairs Secretary Eleonora Menicucci, a close Rousseff aide. She ended up speaking only to a government television camera.

Rousseff's supporters on the Senate committee have called for annulment of the impeachment proceedings because the man who launched them last year, lower house speaker Eduardo Cunha, was himself removed from office on Thursday by the Supreme Court for obstructing the investigation of corruption accusations against him.

The top court has so far dismissed all government requests to halt the impeachment proceedings.

Workers Party Senator Lindbergh Farias said the ouster of Rousseff was aimed at undoing Lula's work to help the poor, and at rolling back workers' benefits, privatizing state companies and aligning Brazil's foreign policy closer to the United States.

(Reporting by Anthony Boadle and Maria Carolina Marcello; Editing by Daniel Flynn and Frances Kerry)
London (AFP) - London's new Muslim mayor Sadiq Khan accused Prime Minister David Cameron on Sunday of using "Donald Trump playbook" tactics to try to divide communities in a bid to prevent his election.

The day after being sworn in with a promise to be "mayor for all Londoners", the Labour lawmaker condemned Cameron's Conservatives for trying to link him to Islamic extremists during the election campaign.

"They used fear and innuendo to try to turn different ethnic and religious groups against each other -- something straight out of the Donald Trump playbook," Khan wrote in The Observer newspaper.

"Londoners deserved better and I hope it's something the Conservative party will never try to repeat."

Khan won 57 percent of the vote in Thursday's mayoral election, securing 1.3 million votes to see off multimillionaire Tory Zac Goldsmith and making history as the first Muslim mayor of a major Western capital.

The 45-year-old, the son of a Pakistani immigrant bus driver, hailed his victory as a triumph of "unity over division" after weeks of Tory criticism over his past appearances at public events alongside radical Muslims.

A number of Conservative politicians criticised the tone of the campaign, but Defence Secretary Michael Fallon said the questions raised had been legitimate.

Khan had admitted representing some "pretty unsavoury characters" during his previous job as a human rights lawyer but said their views were "abhorrent".

"Both candidates were asked questions about their backgrounds, their personalities, their judgment, the people they associate with," Fallon told BBC radio.

"That's the nature of our democracy and the rough-and-tumble of politics."

- Clinton sends congratulations -

Khan broke from convention by taking his oath of office in a multi-faith ceremony at Southwark Cathedral, promising to represent "every single community, and every single part of our city, as mayor for all Londoners".

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Hillary Clinton, who as the likely Democratic nominee will face presumptive Republican nominee Trump in the race for the US presidency, led international congratulations.

"Son of a Pakistani bus driver, champion of workers' rights and human rights, and now Mayor of London. Congrats, @SadiqKhan. -H" she tweeted.

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said he was looking forward to working with his "fellow affordable-housing advocate" while Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo tweeted that Khan's "humanity (and) progressivism will benefit Londoners".

In Pakistan, Bilawal Bhutto, leader of the opposition Pakistan People's Party and son of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, and rival opposition leader Imran Khan also tweeted their congratulations.

Former Conservative minister Sayeeda Warsi, herself a daughter of a Pakistani bus driver, hailed Khan's victory and condemned her party's attacks against him.

"Our appalling dog-whistle campaign lost us the election, our reputation and credibility on issues of race and religion," she said.

Cameron's former adviser, Steve Hilton, said Goldsmith had brought back the Conservatives' "nasty party label".

- Labour losses elsewhere -

Khan broke the eight-year hold of the Conservatives on City Hall and succeeds the charismatic Boris Johnson in a prestigious post that has responsibility for transport, housing, policing and promoting economic development.

His success is a boost for Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, a veteran socialist who has been battling a row over anti-Semitism and growing criticism from the moderate wing of his party since his election in September.

But Corbyn was conspicuously absent from Khan's signing-in ceremony and in his article, the new mayor appeared to criticise the way Labour was being run.

The party "only wins when we face outwards... and engage with all voters", Khan wrote, adding: "It's crucial for the whole country that the Labour party becomes a credible government-in-waiting."

Labour fared less well in other elections held Thursday.

The party was beaten into third place in Scotland, once a Labour stronghold, as the Conservatives became the official opposition to the Scottish National Party (SNP), which won a third term in office.

Labour maintained control of the Welsh assembly and lost only a handful of local council seats in England.

But critics said it should have done better against a government that has lost support over welfare reforms and is deeply divided ahead of the referendum on Britain's membership of the EU on June 23.
Brody Jenner put a ring on it!

The 32-year-old Hills alum announced on Friday that he proposed to his girlfriend, Kaitlynn Carter, earlier this week and posted a cute picture of a bikini-clad Carter giving him a sweet smooch.

"On May 4th 2016 I got engaged to my lover and my best friend @kaitlynn_carter," Jenner wrote. "I couldn't be more in love with this woman and I can't wait to spend the rest of my life with her."

WATCH: Brody Jenner Reveals He Never Hooked Up With Lauren Conrad on 'The Hills'

"This trip has been memorable for many reasons... happiest girl in the world!!" Carter posted on her own Instagram account about the happy news, sporting her new ring.

Jenner proposed while the two were on a vacay to Sumba island in Indonesia, celebrating her parents' 30th anniversary. His mom, Linda Thompson, also flew in for the special occasion.

Jenner has been dating the beautiful blogger since 2014.

Although, judging from Brody's interview last July with Sway Calloway on his SiriusXM radio show Sway In The Morning, we probably won't see any Kardashians at the wedding.

"Kris [Jenner] and I... honestly, we never talk," Jenner revealed about his former stepmom, who was married to his dad, Caitlyn Jenner. "There's just been a lot of family drama that doesn't even involve me. It involves my parents, it involves the divorce that happened way back when."

"I do like her," he continued. "I think that Kris is a very smart woman and I think she's an incredible mother to her children. To HER children."

WATCH: Brody Jenner Reacts to Kourtney Kardashian and Scott Disick's 'Unfortunate' Breakup: He's Had 'Some Issues'

And though Jenner occasionally appears on Keeping Up With the Kardashians, he apparently isn't all that close to his famous step-siblings either.

"We grew up in a completely different household," he explained. "Kris is the Kardashians' mother, and I have a wonderful mother, Linda Thompson, who I love, and I'll keep it at that."

Story continues

Watch below:

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A brush fire along the freeway in San Dimas, California, tied up traffic on Friday, May 6. The California Highway Patrol shut down two lanes of Highway 57 as firefighters battled the fire that grew to 2.4 acres. The fire was contained in time for the evening commute.

California firefighters kicked off wildfire awareness week on Friday by warning people that it could be another bad year for fires. California firefighters responded to more than 6,000 fires in 2015, which burned more than 300,000 acres. Credit: Instagram/Rito Rodriguez
Seven people were injured on an Allegiant Air flight to Pittsburgh Thursday after severe turbulence sent them flying out of their seats.

The flight was diverted to Florida on its way to Pittsburgh from Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic to send passengers to the hospital. In total, three passengers and four flight attendants were hospitalized because of the ordeal, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports. Two of the passengers suffered head injuries.

Initial reports from our crew indicate that it was unreported moderate clear air turbulence that caused the injuries and subsequent diversion, Allegiant Air said in a statement.

Passenger accounts detail the frightening scene onboard the plane. We were flying normal, I was actually sleeping and I heard a little jolt and then all of a sudden a big jolt and I looked over at my mom and she was like flying up in the air, passenger Heather Osborne told WTAE. Osborne was wearing her seatbelt; her mother was not.

I have peoples blood on my feet, said fellow passenger Amanda Kuhn.

My first thought was, This is it, said Heather Osborne, another one of the passengers, according to the Post-Gazette. I never experienced this before, this type of turbulence before. It was really, really scary.

I thought, the planes going down, and Im going to die. It was like the planes falling out of the sky, passenger Malachi Witt told the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.
From Popular Mechanics

A Russian hacker who bragged online about stealing data from quarter-billion email accounts, including tens of millions from Gmail, Yahoo Mail, and Hotmail, is just one part of a dark-web bazaar of data sales, Reuters is reporting.

The source on the report is Alex Holden, the founder of Hold Security, whose researchers found the hacker flaunting a dataset from 272.3 million stolen accounts in exchange for 50 roubles. That's about 75 cents north of free. Hold's people wound up getting the dataset in exchange for talking up the thief in hacker forums.

The good news is, some of your personal data clearly isn't worth a hell of a lot. The bad news is, pretty much anyone with an aim to buy it could.

Most of the address are from the popular Russian portal Mail.ru, but in any case it amounts to one of the biggest proofs of a data breach in recent years. Holden told Reuters that 40 million Yahoo accounts were among those stolen, along with 33 million Hotmail accounts and 24 million Gmail accounts.

A Google representative told Tech Insider to remember that many data breaches are engineered from multiple sources, and don't necessarily reflect a breach to Google or Microsoft per se. So it's a good day to change your passwords-and not recycle old ones.

Source: Reuters via Tech Insider.
Montreal (AFP) - The Alberta forest fire has forced Canadian oil producers to slash output by one million barrels a day, dealing a fresh blow to the oil-dependent economy, analysts said Friday.

The immense fire ravaging the area around Fort McMurray, the center of the country's massive oil sands deposits, has sent tens of thousands of workers and their families fleeing and compelled the producers in the region to shut down operations.

The production cuts correspond to about a quarter of the country's entire production, and a third of Alberta's, and mean a loss of tens of millions of dollars per day in income.

The fire disaster adds another blow to the economy after the crash in the price of oil, Canada's principal export.

"It is now estimated that up to one million barrels a day of Canadian production has been taken offline," said oil analyst Matt Smith of ClipperData.

An estimated 100,000 people have been evacuated from Fort McMurray, a city built up on the oil sands mining industry.

Suncor, which produces more than 400,000 barrels a day in the area, has closed its principal operations north of Fort McMurray.

Shell Canada, with 250,000 barrels a day of production in Albian, 95 kilometers (55 miles) north of Fort McMurray, has also shut production.

Mark Ward, the chief executive of Syncrude, said that the group had completely shut down operations north of the city.

"The safety of our people and facilities is our greatest priority as we deal with the devastating effects of the forest fires," he said in a statement.

"That's why Syncrude and all the oil sands operators in northern Alberta are safely reducing operations and staffing to minimum levels."

The forest fires have spread since the beginning of the week to surround the oil operations and Fort McMurray, a city of 100,000.

Rachel Notley, the Alberta premier, said Thursday that the infrastructure for the industry had not been destroyed. The industry will be well-positioned to restore production once the fire has been brought under control, she said.

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Jackie Forrest, vice president of energy research at Arc Financial, told CBC television that she expected that production could be ramped up "fairly quickly."

"You have the facility and there's a lot of incentive to get the production back online," she said.

But the fire has destroyed office buildings and homes in and around the city, so many support businesses and services for the oil industry could be lost.

"Many people will not have jobs to go back to," said Forrest.
By Leah Schnurr

OTTAWA, May 6 (Reuters) - The Canadian labor market stalled in April, leaving the unemployment rate unchanged at 7.1 percent, while job losses in Alberta showed the province was continuing to struggle with the fallout of cheaper oil.

Canada lost 2,100 jobs last month, Statistics Canada said on Friday, below economists' forecasts that the labor force would be unchanged.

Alberta fared the worst, losing 20,800 jobs, including 8,400 in the natural resource sector. The province's unemployment rate edged up above the national average to 7.2 percent, even as Albertans dropped out of the labor force.

The province, where the country's vast oil sands are located, has suffered because of lower resource prices. The city of Fort McMurray, at the centre of the industry, has been battling a massive wildfire this week.

Canada's manufacturing sector lost 16,500 positions, leading April losses. Since December, the industry has lost 52,000 jobs, about half of which were in Alberta, the statistics agency said.

The decline in manufacturing jobs was disappointing given economists have been expecting the sector to be boosted by a weaker Canadian dollar and improving U.S. economy, said Nick Exarhos, economist at CIBC.

Overall, economists said the small decline for the country as a whole was to be expected after March's strong jobs gain. The report can be volatile month to month.

"It could be forgiven for being sort of lackluster after the big jobs gain," Exarhos said. "The labor market has really outperformed what we would have expected given the more or less anemic pace of the Canadian economy in the back half of 2015."

Canada was in a mild recession last year. While growth was stronger at the start of 2016, it is seen cooling in the second quarter.

Natural resource jobs were down by 7,800 in April. Since its peak in April 2014, the sector has lost 50,000 positions, with most of the declines in Alberta.

But the services sector fared better, with a 26,800 increase in retail and wholesale trade jobs, and a 21,900 gain in he accommodation and food services sector.

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The report did not alter expectations the Bank of Canada will leave rates where they are when it meets later this month after cutting rates twice in 2015.

The Canadian dollar strengthened against the greenback immediately after the data, although traders also were taking in a jobs report south of the border that showed fewer jobs than expected created last month.

(Additional reporting by Fergal Smith in Toronto; Editing by Bill Trott)
TORONTO (Reuters) - Canada's biggest bank is handing over to the government names of clients with relationships or connections to a Panamanian law firm at the center of a massive leak of offshore financial data, the lender confirmed on Thursday. The Toronto Star and CBC, citing legal documents filed on Wednesday, reported that the Canada Revenue Agency had sought a court order against the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) to compel disclosure and that the bank would not be challenging it. Royal Bank confirmed the story. "We respect the confidentiality of our clients within the bounds of the law, and we cooperate with all of our regulators," RBC spokeswoman Tanis Feasby said in an email. The tax agency's action came about one month after the Star and CBC, in partnership with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, published their investigations on the law firm, Mossack Fonseca. Leaks from the Panama-based law firm, dubbed the "Panama Papers," have embarrassed several world leaders and shone a spotlight on the shadowy world of offshore companies. Governments across the world have begun investigating possible financial wrongdoing by the rich and powerful after the leak. The Canada Revenue Agency on Thursday said that based on its own sources of information, it had already initiated 40 audits related to Mossack Fonseca prior to the Panama Papers release. "Through more recent efforts, the CRA now has tens of thousands of records from multiple sources," CRA spokesman Philippe Brideau said in an email. "The agency will use this and any other data collected from its various sources to ensure that all Canadian taxpayers identified from the Panama Papers are pursued." RBC last month said it was reviewing its records after being named in leaked documents and told Reuters that it had controls in place to prevent illegal activities and it would not do business with those who evaded tax. Canada last month said it was closely watching the cases of citizens found to have set up offshore companies in Panama and elsewhere and would refer cases to prosecutors if necessary. (Reporting by Ethan Lou and Jeffrey Hodgson in Toronto; Editing by Andrew Hay)
Key Takeaways from Canadian National Railway's 1Q16 Results

(Continued from Prior Part)

Canadian Nationals Intermodal segment

Canadian Nationals (CNI) Intermodal segment accounted for nearly 25% of the total freight revenues in 1Q16. CNIs overall Intermodal revenues rose by 1% to $693.0 million Canadian in 1Q16, against $689.0 million Canadian in 1Q15.

Intermodal volumes

In 1Q16, the intermodal carloads were almost at the same levels compared with the same period last year. For CNI, Intermodal offered a mixed bag, with Domestic revenue up and International Intermodal revenues down in the reported quarter.

The overall increase of 1% in the Intermodal revenues was mainly due to a favorable translation impact of a weaker Canadian dollar. It was also due to higher domestic retail volumes in the Industrial and Consumer products segments and higher International volumes through the Port of Halifax.

However, these were partly offset by declining International volumes through the ports of Vancouver and Prince Rupert. The Domestic Intermodal revenues and volumes rose by 4% and 7%, respectively, in 1Q16. This was mainly due to higher volumes in CNIs Canadian door-to-door retail service.

The International revenues and volumes were down by 1% and up by 1%, respectively. The decline in the West Coast business of Canada and the US led to the decline in International Intermodal revenues in 1Q16.

Management outlook

CNI expects considerable potential in the intermodal space from the mid-2017 expansion from its West Coast port terminal partners. The company anticipates readiness of rail operations in the Port of Mobile.

CNI notes that Maersk and COSCO have announced new Panama Canal all-water service that is expected to start in Mobile in June. However, the company also anticipates weak volumes in Canada and the West Coast. CNI has renewed its large intermodal accounts and doesnt expect more large contracts until 2017.

The export volumes at the Port of Prince Rupert, Canada, have slowed down in the recent past. This was due to a strong US dollar since the merchandise to be exported from Prince Rupert was coming from the US Midwest markets. CNI stated that its closely working with its old customers like COSCO and new ones like Maersk to grow the business at the Port of Prince Rupert.

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Peer group intermodal

All the Class I railroads are trying to bank on the growth in intermodal business to offset shrinking coal business. However, the intermodal business is suffering headwinds in recent times due to various factors, including higher retail inventory and competition from trucking.

Many railroads posted negative intermodal growth in 2015 compared with its previous year. Surprisingly, Canadian Nationals intermodal revenues were up by 5% in 2015. Well go through the change in intermodal revenues for CNIs peer group in the same period:

Norfolk Southern (NSC): declined by 6%

CSX Corp. (CSX): declined by 2%

Canadian National Railway (CNI): rose by 5%

Canadian Pacific (CP): fell by 2%

Kansas City Southern (KSU): fell by 4%

Union Pacific (UNP): declined by 9.2%

Investors who want broad-based exposure to the transportation and logistics sector can opt for the iShares US Industrials ETF (IYJ). This ETF holds 5% in major US railroads.

In the next article, well consider CNIs second largest business, Petroleum and Chemicals.

Continue to Next Part

Browse this series on Market Realist:
The Canadian Wildfires have expanded and now cover an area larger than New York City. Dry weather is expected, which would make the conditions worse. The wildfires and their impact on the oil sands region of Alberta could erase second quarter growth in Canada entirely. The Labor Department will issues it non-farm payroll report for April today. Economist forecast 200,000 new jobs last month and the unemployment rate to hold steady at 5%. The numbers could impact the Federal Reserve decision on monetary policy. The monthly reports could also begin to impact the November general elections. GoPro says its drone will remain grounded for now. It delayed the launch of its first drone till the winter holidays instead of June as originally scheduled. CEO Nick Woodman mentioned the delay during a conference call but didn't elaborate on the cause. GoPro said revenue was down 50%, which was a smaller drop than expected.
"My big question is: Are the hotels going to step up security?" says Sony Pictures Classics co-president Tom Bernard, who admits he's skittish about the threat of a terrorist attack during the festival. "I'd be happy to see dogs roaming the lobby of the Carlton."

A simulated terrorist attack April 21 in Cannes - followed by the wide circulation of a video of the exercise - has left some festivalgoers feeling more vulnerable, especially in light of reports that the Islamic State has set its sights on European beach destinations. But Palais president Claire-Anne Reix dismissed concerns over the video that showed faux terrorists detonating car bombs and masked gunmen storming the Palais steps. "If people see that we are training, that we are preparing and that we are ready, that should make them feel more secure," she tells THR. The Palais itself will have added security as well as metal detectors for every entrant.

Read More: The Other Side of Cannes: Muslim Community Fights Prejudice as Jihadi Cell Linked to City

But the exercise, which also had simulated car bombs explode in various locations, was geared toward the city itself, preparing Cannes for a "multi-terror event" that could hit multiple targets around town over several hours and not necessarily be centered on the Palais. Adds counterterrorism expert Nitzan Nuriel: "The line has shifted. Things that we used to do in the previous festivals are probably no longer relevant." Nuriel, a former military commander and director at the Israeli National Security council, was brought in by new mayor David Lisnard to overhaul security protocol.

The exercise, spearheaded by Lisnard, has led to increased coordination for city, regional and national police, as well as prepping Palais security, local firefighters and medical services to act as first-responder teams.

And as if to calm any of Bernard's jitters, Nitzan noted that hotels have been active in the discussions and planning.

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"The festival is always a challenge for logistics and security, this year even more so," Lisnard tells THR. "We are very accustomed to threats."

Read More: Cannes Faces Backlash Over Chilling Terrorist Simulation Video

Cannes has upward of 200 armed police officers - a number Nuriel calls "enough" to protect the 200,000 people that descend on the city for the festival - and will bring in hundreds of National Police and Gendarmerie for the festival. Undercover cops and more than 500 security cameras will survey the crowds. There also will be an increased number of security guards as well as additional stationary and handheld metal detectors at festival entrances.

Cannes already had stepped up security following a series of high-profile heists in 2014 and the Charlie Hebdo terror attacks in 2015. Since attacks in November that killed 130 people throughout Paris, France has been operating under a state of emergency that significantly increased police powers nationwide and made armed soldiers a routine sight at landmarks around the country. That law will last until May 26, just a few days after the Palme d'Or is handed out.

Added Nuriel: "Security is not only a slogan, it's something you can feel."

Additional reporting by Tatiana Siegel.

This story first appeared in the May 13 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.
A year after Mad Max: Fury Road's rousing reception at the Cannes Film Festival, Charlize Theron is returning to the Croisette with Palme d'Or contender The Last Face, directed by Sean Penn. The film, set in a war-torn country and shot on location in South Africa, follows the director of an international aid agency (Theron) as she embarks on a conflicting love affair with a relief-aid doctor (Javier Bardem). The project made use of South Africa's versatile locales (the country stood in for both Western Africa and Zurich) as well as its various movie production incentives, including a 20 percent rebate for foreign works with budgets of at least 12 million rand (about $845,000). Ahead of The Last Face's premiere at the festival, THR spoke with producer Bill Gerber about spending three months (and braving the winter) along the South African coast.

When did you decide to shoot the film in South Africa, and why?

The story is a Western African story, so it was always our intention to shoot in Africa. The original scout that Sean Penn and [cinematographer] Barry Ackroyd did was in March 2014 - they went to Liberia and Moravia. It was hairy. It was right around the time the Ebola epidemic started, so they were very brave to go.

How long was the shoot?

We started shooting in August 2014, and we finished the movie in early November. At that point, we had been in South Africa and in Switzerland. We went back in July 2015 and did five days of additional photography.

How many locations did you use? How versatile were the locales?

What we did was Sean basically scouted Western Africa so we could find what we needed in Southern Africa, and after going to Southern Africa and looking at locations, everyone was satisfied that we could double the landscape accurately and that it would make for great filming. We shot in Cape Town, Port Edward, Upington and Pella, Northern Cape [where cave dwellings were filmed]. In Cape Town, we were able to double places as far as Zurich, whereas in Port Edward, that was all jungle exteriors.

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Read More: Sean Penn Wins Apology from Lee Daniels in Defamation Settlement

Did you utilize South Africa's tax rebates and incentives or use a local facilitator for hiring crew and renting equipment? What was that process like?

We did. The incentives [South Africa offers] are enticing - it's very provocative. And we also got lucky in that the exchange rates kept improving in our favor the longer we stayed down there. We had a spectacular local production company called Moonlighting; we dealt with a woman named Genevieve Hofmeyr [who also helped with on-location shooting for Mad Max: Fury Road], and she just did an extraordinary job of lining up crew in all the departments, other than the key [crewmembers] whom we brought with us. They're very prolific down there and just great.

Did you do any local casting?

A gigantic amount of local casting. We had Sudanese characters, [and] we had all kinds of Western African parts in the movie. Our crew was spectacular. In the credits, Sean calls them his "kick-ass South African crew."

Were there any memorable moments shooting on location?

Working on the Wild Coast in Port Edward, you saw people's lifestyles that were kind of extraordinary - you know, people that would be fishing every day for their livelihood. It was a very peaceful place up there and very, very beautiful. For me, personally, I took several really long soft-sand runs on the coast, and I would maybe see one person the entire time. But it was really the people. I would say the most extraordinary takeaway was just how great the people were to work with - the local crew and actors.

Read More: Sean Penn Joins Cast of 'Angry Birds'

***

Hollywood Descends on Cape Town Studio

A steady stream of big-budget location shoots keeps Africa's largest filming facility expanding

By: George Szalai

Cape Town film studios has attracted a slew of big movie projects starring the likes of Charlize Theron, Tom Hardy, Naomie Harris, Denzel Washington and Ryan Reynolds since opening its doors in late 2010.

Starz's Black Sails has taken up much of the facility's space In recent years, but an expansion during the past year allowed the studio operator to add The Dark Tower with Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey to its list of big-name gets.

"We are extremely busy but happy about it," Cape Town Film Studios CEO Nico Dekker tells THR. "The fifth soundstage and an additional workshop were completed by the end of January. International productions of note immediately started queueing up to book it."

Dekker says he currently can't fit any more projects at the country's first custom-built Gerber studio hub, located only 25 minutes from Cape Town's city center and 10 minutes from Cape Town International Airport. "We are too full - we haven't got a single millimeter," he quips. "We are in a good space. We have almost all the jobs at the moment that we can handle."

Upgrades to the studio, which offers 75,000-square-feet of production space, include a concrete roof and a sliding wall to enhance soundproofing.

This story first appeared in the May 13 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.
Easy Payments for Storage Units

JACKSONVILLE, AR / ACCESSWIRE / May 6, 2016 / When you plan to move or go out of town for a while, it is not possible to sell or give away all your things. Storage units help to stow away your precious furniture and other goods for a period of your choice, however paying for them has always been a hassle until now.

Capital Holdings Storage and Mini Warehouses, a storage unit based in Jacksonville, Arkansas offers the most affordable storage option in all of Jacksonville and now provides the option of easy online payments through your credit card. The facility has over 100 storage units. These storage units are available in three sizes, 7.510 at only $25 a month, 1015 at only $45 a month and 1030 at a special savings price of $75 a month. Customization of the adjoining units can create larger storage needs. Capital Holdings Storage is offering these prices for a limited time only under the Spring Savings campaign.

The payment process is really simply. Users can simply go on the website, select the type of storage they wish to have and pay through an easy-to-use payment portal. The entire process is as simple as shopping from any e-commerce website. Capital Holdings Self Storage uses Payline Data, a secure PCI compliant site, for credit card processing. Thus, customers can use any type of credit card to make the payment without having to worry about security or compromised information. The entire process takes less than a few minutes, and can be done from anywhere at one's own comfort. Users can also schedule their payments on monthly reoccurring billing for simplicity and convenience.

Capital Holdings Storage also offers the best military storage discounts in Jacksonville. It offers a safe, secure place to store belongings for all active duty armed forces members, those stationed at Little Rock Air Force Base or deployed. Be it a short-term month-to-month rental or long-term storage units, Capital Holdings can meet all military needs. All active military members also receive a 15% discount on self-storage. This is in addition to any other monthly move-in specials or promotions available on their storage space. By simply presenting their valid military ID at the time of signing a lease, customers can avail these benefits. Inactive military personnel and reserve members are also eligible to receive military discounts and can inquire with management about all their military storage options and offers.

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About Capital Holdings Self Storage

Capital Holdings Self-Storage is conveniently located off Highwat 67 at 100 Goodsell Drive; however their off-site rental office is at 8105 Old Tom Box Road Jacksonville, Arkansas. It offers the most affordable storage options with quick and easy online payment. Their office hours are from Monday to Friday 8:30 am to 7:00 pm and on weekends from 11 am to 6pm. They offer Military and senior rental discounts and are currently running their Springs Savings Campaign. For obtaining more information, or to enquire about storage availability, interested individuals can contact Capital Holdings Self Storage at 501-533-4567 or can also log-on to www.67storage.com.

SOURCE: Capital Holdings Self Storage
(Adds company criticism on CDC, share history)

By Tom Polansek

CHICAGO, May 6 (Reuters) - The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has pushed back against complaints from Chipotle Mexican Grill that the health agency misinformed the public with its reporting of certain E. coli cases linked to the burrito chain.

The federal regulators' defense of its actions comes as the burrito chain has revamped its food safety strategy to recover from a string of 2015 food safety lapses that have scared away customers and battered the company's formerly high-flying shares.

The CDC, in a letter to a lawyer representing Chipotle, said it believes its website updates on the outbreaks served to protect and inform the public.

The CDC's response, which was posted online this week and dated April 15, said its updates provided people who may have become sick after eating at Chipotle restaurants with information they might have needed to be diagnosed and treated for E. coli 026, a potentially serious illness.

In a letter to the CDC dated Dec. 21, Chipotle attorney Bryant Messner said that some of the agency's updates were confusing and unclear and that their release "only acts to create public panic."

That letter followed Chipotle official Mark Crumpacker's description of the CDC's handling of the information as "unusual and even unorthodox" at an investor conference on Dec. 8.

Crumpacker, the company's chief creative and development officer, told attendees at that event that the CDC's updates on the O26 investigation led to a drumbeat of news stories that made it appear illness was spreading when it was not.

The CDC said on Feb. 1 that two E.coli outbreaks linked to Chipotle, which affected 60 people across 14 states, appeared to be over.

Chipotle, which is revamping its food safety procedures and giving away millions of free burritos in an effort to win back diners, last month posted the first quarterly loss in its history. Its stock, which hit an all-time high of almost $750 in August, was trading at around $434 on Friday.

The CDC estimates foodborne illnesses kill 3,000 people and sicken 48 million each year in the United States.

(Additional reporting by Lisa Baertlein in Los Angeles; Editing by Marguerita Choy and Frances Kerry)
By Ginger Gibson and Jonathan Allen

WASHINGTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) - Now that Donald Trump is the last man standing in the Republican presidential race, his critics in the party are intensifying their search for a candidate they could back as a serious third-party alternative.

Political operatives are courting donors, calling potential candidates and developing legal contingency plans for overcoming onerous ballot qualification laws.

"This is as much as anything a battle for the future of American party politics," said Republican strategist Joel Searby, who is working with conservative writer Bill Kristol, among others, to identify a third-party candidate for the Nov. 8 presidential election.

The group Conservatives Against Trump, which includes blogger Erick Erickson, has been holding calls and meetings to discuss third-party candidates as well as other options to stop the New York billionaire from winning the White House.

The hurdles for a third-party candidacy are high. No independent candidate has ever won a presidential election, although some have played spoilers. But the efforts by the Republican groups underscore the unusual divisiveness of Trump's candidacy within Republican ranks ahead of a likely general election fight with Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton.

Trump's opposition to free trade is at odds with the views of many Republicans, especially in the party's business wing. Many of Trump's critics also find his rhetoric offensive, including his call to temporarily bar Muslims from entering the country and his comment describing Mexican immigrants to the United States as rapists and drug dealers.

Some Republicans say they worry that any third-party candidate would only siphon votes away from Trump and help Clinton win the election.

Ralph Nader's run as the Green Party candidate in the 2000 presidential election has been blamed by some Democrats for the razor-thin loss of Democratic nominee Al Gore to George W. Bush. Ross Perot's independent candidacy in 1992 was seen by some Republicans as contributing to President George H.W. Bush's loss to Democrat Bill Clinton.

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One outcome, although rare, may be that no candidate crosses the necessary threshold of 270 votes in the U.S. Electoral College. In that case, the vote for the next president would pass to the U.S. House of Representatives, currently controlled by Republicans.

Deborah DeMoss Fonseca, who recruited donors for former Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush and is working with Conservatives Against Trump, said her group was trying to find a candidate who would be high-profile enough to compete with Trump and Clinton.

NO EASY TASK

But finding a candidate of that caliber who would be willing to run is no easy feat. Searby's group has reached out to former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and James Mattis, a retired U.S. Marine Corps general, among others, but both declined after discussions.

Republican U.S. Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska has emerged as a favorite of the Republicans seeking a third-party candidate. Kristol has had warm words for him.

Sasse, a freshman lawmaker and former Bush administration official, is a strong critic of Trump and has called for an alternative candidate to him. But he says that person should be someone other than him.

On Wednesday, the morning after Trump emerged as the presumptive presidential nominee, phones at the office of Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson were ringing off the hook with calls from small-government Republicans who feel they cannot get behind Trump.

But as a Libertarian, Johnson holds views on some issues, such as the legalization of marijuana, that are antithetical to the views of some Republicans.

In March, former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, an independent, said he had considered jumping into the race as a third-party candidate but opted against it, saying he feared it would only serve to help get Trump elected.

The possibility for a third party to succeed are slim to none," said Julian Zelizer, a presidential historian at Princeton University. "The structure of American politics have consistently made it impossible for third parties to gain ground.

One of the biggest obstacles to a third-party run is simply getting on the ballot in enough states to mount a viable campaign.

Texas requires more than 79,000 signatures from voters who did not participate in either primary. Its deadline is Monday. Among other states, North Carolina's deadline is the end of May, and Illinois and Florida in mid-July.

"A third-party candidate is a pipe dream," said Republican strategist Tony Fratto, who worked in Bush's administration and strongly opposes Trump. "What's going to happen is Hillary Clinton is going to win big. It won't be close."

(Additional reporting by Emily Stephenson in Washington; Editing by Peter Cooney and Bill Trott)
By Karen Pierog and Dave McKinney

CHICAGO, May 6 (Reuters) - Chicago's cash-strapped public school district is not in bad enough financial shape to warrant a state takeover, according to an Illinois State Board of Education staff report.

Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner launched a probe of the nation's third-largest school system in February, contending it could lead to state oversight and a suspension of borrowing at debt-dependent Chicago Public Schools (CPS).

However the report, posted on the board's website ahead of a monthly meeting scheduled for Wednesday, said CPS does not meet "any of the criteria" to be certified in financial difficulty.

"The district has not realized two consecutive years of negative operating fund balances nor is it forecasted in this model," the report stated.

It noted that negative operating balances are possible in fiscal 2018 and 2019.

CPS is struggling with a $1 billion structural budget deficit, caused largely by escalating annual pension payments that will reach $676 million this fiscal year, which ends June 30. The district's efforts to gain an additional $480 million in state dollars to pay its pension bill became entangled in an ongoing impasse between the Republican governor and Democrats who control the legislature.

CPS officials, who have maintained the district is exempt under Illinois law from state oversight, are calling for a revamp of the state school funding formula to ensure poor children are not short-changed.

The decision comes as Rauner is trying to broker a budget deal with Democrats controlling the General Assembly by an end-of-month legislative deadline and as a push to recalibrate the state's school-funding formula is languishing at the statehouse.

It also follows an April opinion by Democratic Attorney General Lisa Madigan that the state lacks authority, despite a concerted Republican stance to the contrary, to take control of the school system's finances, including its ability to borrow to help fund operational costs.

Representatives of Rauner, the education board and CPS did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

(Editing by Matthew Lewis)
China has sent a new wave of inspectors into its military to crack down on corruption, state media said Friday, as Communist chief Xi Jinping seeks to impose his authority on the People's Liberation Army.

Ten teams of inspectors newly appointed by the Central Military Commission (CMC) will work among its 15 departments and the PLA's five regional headquarters, the China Daily reported.

It is the first time the supreme military command has established a standing anti-corruption force directly under its control in its units, the newspaper said, and comes as Xi -- who is also CMC chairman -- seeks to increase his control over the PLA, a significant power centre in China.

The move is aimed at "purifying" the PLA, the paper cited an unnamed source as saying.

Since Xi took office in 2012, the Communist party has waged a much-publicised anti-corruption campaign that vows to target both powerful "tigers" and low-level "flies". The drive has ensnared a long list of officials including former security czar Zhou Yongkang.

Xi vowed at a November military meeting to give more independence and authority to disciplinary inspectors and auditors, the newspaper said.

Previously anti-graft inspectors were chosen by local military commands and their lack of independence had undermined their efficiency, said Song Zhongping, a Beijing-based military expert, according to the Global Times, which is close to the Communist Party.

But the new inspectors will make sure CMC orders are "faithfully carried out", he said.

They are also likely to be reassigned every few years to "prevent collusion and bias", the Global Times added.

The teams were sent by the CMC's Discipline Inspection Commission, which was set up in January with a mission to "bust senior military officials", it added.

Nealy 50 senior officers in the PLA and the armed police, including Guo Boxiong and Xu Caihou, the previous number two and three figures in the military after the Chinese president, have been convicted or investigated on corruption allegations over the past three years, the China Daily said.

China's military has significant business interests in sectors ranging from property and logistics to telecommunications and healthcare, which have become a hotbed for corruption.

In March authorities ordered them to stop providing "paid services", or commercial activities, in around three years.
SHANGHAI (Reuters) - China has begun a trial run of its first magnetic levitation train, completely designed and built by local firms, marking a major leap in the technological capability of the country's rail transport sector, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

The so-called maglev, with a maximum speed of 100 kilometres per hour, began ferrying passengers on the 18.5-kilometre-long line in the southern city of Changsha on Friday, Xinhua said, adding that the project cost 4.29 billion yuan ($659.59 million).

The train works by floating on a magnetic field along a guideway, which allows for higher speeds and reduces friction. "China has become one of the few nations to have mastered this technology," Xinhua said.

China is pushing its high-tech equipment firms to create home-grown brands as part of its "Made in China 2025" national plan, to move the economy away from the low-value manufacturing model, that fuelled its economy's meteoric rise.

The country already has the only commercial maglev in operation in the world, which was developed and built by the government, and a German consortium, including industrial giant Siemens in Shanghai in 2003.

The Changsha maglev was designed by a group of Chinese universities with CRRC Zhuzhou Locomotive, a unit of CRRC Corp, which was created by a government-driven merger last year to export China's rail technology.

($1 = 6.5040 Chinese yuan renminbi)

(Reporting by Brenda Goh; Editing by Sherry Jacob-Phillips)
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - China's failure to address overcapacity of its steel industry means risks remain for the global sector, ArcelorMittal (ISPA.AS) chief financial officer Aditya Mittal said on Friday.

ArcelorMittal said on Friday that its was slightly more upbeat on the steel sector and raised its forecast for steel consumption in China this year, although also expressed caution.

"Risks remain in China as China has not yet addressed its structural overcapacity issue. You can't remove overcapacity in an industry in three months. That will take time," Mittal told a conference call following the publication of ArcelorMittal's first-quarter results.

Mittal said that in January and February Chinese steel exports were up 8 percent.

Seven countries or blocs, including the United States and the European Union, called last month for urgent action to address global steel overcapacity, but have failed to agree common measures with China. Beijing has said it has taken the toughest action to cut production and that the issue is a global one.

(Reporting by Robert-Jan Bartunek; editing by Philip Blenkinsop)
SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Chinese conglomerate HNA Group, which has been aggressively snapping up global assets, is in talks buy a controlling stake in Singapore-listed logistics firm CWT Ltd in a deal worth around $1 billion, two people familiar with the deal said.

A deal could be announced as early as next week, one of the sources said on Friday. The sources did not want to be identified as the information was not public.

CWT did not immediately respond to a Reuters query while a spokeswoman at HNA Group declined to comment.

CWT's controlling shareholder flagged a potential sale of the business last year. It had attracted interest from major private equity firms, Reuters reported in August, quoting sources.

Under the stewardship of co-founder and Chairman Chen Feng, HNA has grown into a group with nearly $100 billion in assets. It operates more than a dozen airlines including flagship Hainan Airlines Co and has launched at least $8 billion of overseas M&As so far this year.

CWT insiders, including the chairman and his family, own nearly 65 percent of the company, Thomson Reuters data shows. Shares in CWT rose 5 percent on Friday. The Singapore Exchange issued a trading query to the firm.

CWT has expanded over the past decade by growing its logistics business globally and snapping up a metals trading unit set up by Glencore's founder Marc Rich in 2011.

Last month, a division of HNA agreed to buy the owner of the Radisson hotel chain.

Chinese companies have been splurging on foreign acquisitions to sidestep slowing domestic growth. The total value of Chinese outbound acquisitions topped $100 billion for the first time last year.

(Reporting by Anshuman Daga and Saeed Azhar; Additional reporting by Mattew Miller; Editing by Stephen Coates and Ryan Woo)
Christian Louboutin is known for his trademark blood red stiletto soles, and the luxury shoe designer is once again channeling the color -- this time via a new trio of nail polishes.

The designer has unveiled three new red-inspired summer nail color shades, designed for high octane glamorous occasions, named The Neo-Reds'.

The range comprises the shimmering Jazzy Doll', a subtly-sparkly peony red named after one of the brand's leather sandals, and the deep raspberry Lady Peep', a sophisticated and seductive hue named after the label's popular peep-toe stiletto. The preppy EdgyPopi', a punchy and flirty orange-red, rounds off the collection.

The high-shine polishes feature a highly pigmented formula designed to provide glossy color in just one coat. Long-wearing and chip-resistant, the varnishes are formulated without Toluene, Formaldehyde, or DBP. Each new polish is enclosed in a nude-colored soft touch box with a reveal to match the cap from each color family.

Christian Louboutin first broke into the beauty industry in 2014 with a nail polish collection, but cemented his influence on the market last September when he released a lipstick line that riffed on his iconic red shade. The line's star piece, "The Rouge Louboutin" lipstick, packaged in luxurious black, silver and gold casing, was accompanied by a further 35 hues, packaged in gold casing and priced at $90.

The Jazzy Doll, Lady Peep & EdgyPopi shades will be available from June 2016 in selected stores and on www.christianlouboutin.com, priced at $50.
Drivers of vehicles caught up in the massive Takata air bag recall should not disconnect the devices while they're waiting for replacement parts, warned AutoNation (AN) Chairman and CEO Mike Jackson on Friday.



The defective air bags from the Japanese supplier, which can explode and release sharp metal objects throughout the vehicle, have been linked to at least 11 deaths worldwide and more than 100 injuries.

"There has been a debate whether to disconnect the devices in the meantime. But quite frankly, air bags, even Takata air bags, are saving more lives" than the injuries or deaths they're causing, Jackson told CNBC's " Squawk Box ."

"It's a pretty cold-blooded calculation, but it's just the truth," he added.



Jackson's advice is consistent with government recommendations. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates that front air bags saved 2,400 lives in 2014 alone.

On Wednesday, as many as 40 million more Takata air bags were added to the already 28.8 million under recall.

Takata's CEO, Shigehisa Takada, said in a statement: "This agreement with NHTSA is consistent with our desire to work with regulators and our automaker customers to develop long-term, orderly solutions to these important safety issues, and we are gratified that the NHTSA Administrator has recognized the company's cooperation."

Dealers are scrambling to get the replacement parts, with nearly 1 in 4 cars in America being affected.

But in many cases, it's going to be a while before the repairs can be made to all those vehicles. So far, only about 8 million of the original 28.8 million air bags on recall have been replaced.

Jackson said he expects the challenge surrounding the Takata recall to be "almost overwhelming for dealers over the next several years." The government estimates it could take until the end of 2019 to finish the recalls.

Until recently, "we've been replacing these air bags with just knowing there was a problem, but without a definitive answer to what's wrong," he said.

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But three independent reports concluded the chemical Takata uses to deploy its air bags, ammonium nitrate, can degrade after long-term exposure to environmental moisture and high temperatures.

In the air bags being recalled, Takata didn't use a chemical drying agent that can counteract the effects of moisture.

"The decision of Takata ... the only device maker ... to use ammonium nitrate as the propellant, which has proven to be unstable in humidity, was a fatally flawed decision," Jackson said.

With the first recall of Takata air bags dating back to 2008, Jackson said: "For the industry now to be sitting here having finally determined what's wrong and not have sufficient devices or a plan to get sufficient devices into the repair is not good."

The Takata situation has been "disruptive to the business" of selling vehicles, he added, considering AutoNation's policy of not selling any vehicles with open recalls on them.

The government said the inflators have to be replaced before they reach 6 years old, when the risk of rupture increases.

 The Associated Press contributed to this report.
BOGOTA (Reuters) - Colombia's armed forces will launch air raids on crime gangs involved in drug trafficking and illegal mining, the defense minister said on Friday, as the government steps up its offensive against what it considers the biggest threat to national security. President Juan Manuel Santos authorized bombing raids on the gangs, which formed after a 2006 peace accord with right-wing paramilitary fighters failed to absorb many into society. There are about 3,000 members spread across three groups earning millions of dollars from illegal drugs and mining. "This will allow the application of the entire force of the state, without exception, against organized armed groups, against powerful mafias, against those that launch hostile actions against institutions and the population, against those that have camps, long-range weapons, and uniforms," Defense Minister Luis Carlos Villegas said during a military event. The government was previously prevented from taking such action against crime gangs because it was not proven that they used automatic weapons. Air raids have been the most powerful offensive against insurgent groups like the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the National Liberation Army, leading to the deaths of many of their most feared commanders. Air attacks against the FARC are currently suspended while the government conducts talks with the rebel leadership to end five decades of war. More than 220,000 people have been killed and millions displaced since the conflict began. Santos said earlier this week that the United States will provide intelligence support to help battle crime gangs. (Reporting by Luis Jaime Acosta; Writing by Helen Murphy; Editing by Alistair Bell)
Bogota (AFP) - Colombia will extradite a leader of a prominent Panamanian business family to the United States, where he is charged with laundering money for ruthless drug gangs, authorities said Friday.

Police branded the suspect, Nidal Ahmed Waked Hatum, the most-wanted money launderer in the world.

They arrested the 44-year-old at Bogota's airport upon arrival from Panama on Wednesday, Colombian officials said, after US authorities blacklisted him and seven associates.

"Procedures have been launched via the state prosecution service to carry out the protocol to extradite him to the United States," the vice head of the Colombian police's drug squad, Ricardo Alarcon, told a news conference.

A court in Florida has charged Waked on money laundering and bank fraud charges.

His family runs at least 68 companies with activities including luxury goods and duty-free shops, real estate and newspapers.

The US Treasury Department said it had put the family's Grupo Wisa on a sanctions list, classing it as a major drug money laundering organization.

Wisa includes companies such as the La Riviera luxury goods chain, the Balboa Bank and Trust and two top newspapers. It reportedly employs thousands of people.

The Treasury said the co-leaders of the laundering operations were Waked Hatum and a man identified by Panamanian media as his uncle, Abdul Mohamed Waked Fares, 66.

It said they used "false commercial invoicing, bulk cash smuggling and other money laundering methods to launder drug proceeds on behalf of multiple international drug traffickers."

Waked Fares said the accusations against him and his company were "false and unfounded."

"We have instructed our lawyers to cooperate fully with the state prosecutors so that this regrettable confusion can be cleared up as soon as possible," a statement read.

In separate comments quoted by one of the Panamanian newspapers his company owns, La Estrella, Waked Fares distanced himself from his nephew, saying Waked Hatum was not involved in the business.

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- Pressure on Panama -

According to the US Treasury, Waked Fares is a national of Panama, Colombia and Lebanon. His nephew is a national of Spain, Colombia and Panama.

Panama has been in the spotlight over suspect finance operations since the Panama Papers tax evasion scandal that broke last month.

Leaked documents revealed how a Panamanian law firm helped the wealthy stash their assets in offshore firms.

Panama's President Juan Carlos Varela moved to calm concerns about the impact of the Waked affair on the country's finance sector, after authorities seized control of Balboa Bank.

He said the country's state prosecutors were investigating.

"Our banking and stock regulators have taken immediate measures to protect the integrity of our stock market and of account holders," Varela said in a statement.

- Duty-free shops -

The United States named six other suspects accused of participating in the money laundering operations, including three brothers of Waked Hatum and a son of Waked Fares.

The Waked family is well-known across Latin America for its airport duty-free shops.

It also operates boutiques for top European brands such as Mango, Burberry and YSL.

It has developed a new $350 million luxury shopping, residential and hotel complex, Soho Panama, in downtown Panama City, which was to include a Ritz Carlton hotel.

Colombian police said Waked Hatum was accused of laundering drug money by investing it in his shops in duty-free zones.

Waked Hatum "has a long history of money laundering on behalf of some of the world's most ruthless and sophisticated drug trafficking and criminal networks," US Drug Enforcement Administration Deputy Administrator Jack Riley said.

The arrest and sanctions were "a crippling blow to his criminal regime," Riley added.
By Keith Coffman

DENVER (Reuters) - The city of Colorado Springs has agreed to provide restitution to dozens of poor people wrongfully jailed because they could not afford to pay fines they incurred for petty infractions such as loitering or panhandling, attorneys said on Thursday.

The settlement calls for the city to pay each of some 60 named individuals $125 for every day they spent locked up under a since-repealed ordinance that allowed incarceration of offenders who failed to pay fines for otherwise non-jailable offenses.

The deal, providing for an estimated total payout of about $100,000, was announced in separate statements by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and Colorado's second-largest city.

The case grew out of an ACLU study last year finding that despite the outlawing of so-called debtor prisons, judges in the city of 440,000 routinely converted fines into jail sentences, said Mark Silverstein, legal director of the group's Colorado chapter.

"We hope today's settlement sends a loud and clear message to municipal courts throughout the state to stop using jail or the threat of jail to collect debts from persons who are too poor to pay," Silverstein said in a statement.

The settlement heads off a potential lawsuit against the city over so-called pay-or-serve sentences that have been the source of litigation in other states.

In October, the ACLU sued the city of Biloxi, Mississippi, in federal court over the issue, accusing the city of employing debtors prisons as an illegal revenue generation scheme that targeted the poor.

Last March, the U.S. Justice Department said it would issue federal guidelines for municipalities on the issue after finding the city of Ferguson, Missouri - the St. Louis suburb convulsed in 2014 by a white policeman's fatal shooting of an unarmed black teen - made widespread use of the practice.

One of the indigent Colorado Springs offenders, Shawn Hardman, was sentenced to jail on four occasions after he was unable to pay fines for panhandling citations.

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I was trapped in a cell that it seemed like I could never get out of, Hardman said in an ACLU statement. I was told over and over that I either had to pay or go back to jail. I was homeless and jobless, so the cycle kept repeating.

Colorado Springs Mayor John Suthers, the states former attorney general, said the city halted the practice last year after reviewing results of the ACLU study and will work to educate prosecutors and judges about the policy.

(Editing by Steve Gorman)
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Colton Haynes calls me at 1:30 in the afternoon, and it sounds like hes just woken up, which apparently he has. I havent had any coffee, he says, apologizing for the gravel in his voice. One can only imagine how Haynes, the breakout star of the CWs Arrow and the new face of Diesel, spends a rare night off in Manhattan. I check his Instagram for clues and am surprised to find a time-stamped photo of his smiling face that he sent out to his 1.6 million followers late last night with the caption: Best night ever at Maries Crisis NYC.

To be clear: Maries Crisis is a subterranean piano bar in the West Village, a dive where youre more likely to spot the 1987 cast of A Chorus Line enjoying a drunken sing-a-long than the 26-year-old actor with Hollywoods most talked about chin. Ive never even heard of a place like that, Haynes says of Maries Crisis. A few of my friends were like, Lets go! I said, Sweet.

Do you know any show tunes?

I know all of them. But I let my friends take the wheel. I just kind of hung back and watched everyone else. They were having too much fun.

When you think about it, it makes sense that Haynes would be up for anything. Theres nothing about this kids gosh-wow rise in Hollywood that seems planned out. He may play a superhero on TV, but his own origin story is just as compelling. Haynes was raised on a farm in Kansas. I grew up in a town of 650 people, he says. There was a bar, a liquor store, a breakfast place. That was it. We didnt have a gas station. In eighth or ninth grade, Haynes got a job washing dishes at the town bar, where his mom waited tables.

The town was conservative, small, and perhaps small-minded. Hayness acting opportunities consisted of playing Snoopy in the school production of Youre a Good Man, Charlie Brown. His parents, both hippies, had long since split up. Desperate to stretch his legs, Haynes moved to Florida to live with his sister (who was in the military). I wanted to see a different side of the world, he explains. I dont know. I was a mature kid. We all kind of did our own thing. A few months later, a friend snapped some shots of Haynes on the beach and sent them to modeling agencies in New York. A year later his chiseled jaw was splashed across shopping bags at Abercrombie Kids.

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The transition was awkward to say the least. The first time I went to the agency  it sounds ridiculous, but they said, Go into the bathroom and work on your faces. I didnt understand what that meant. Haynes may have been green, but he wasnt stupid. Noticing he wasnt the tallest dude in the room, he went the full MacGyver. I would wrap socks and underwear in duct tape and put it in the back of my boots before casting. Then I was six-foot-one. No one knew the difference. He settled into one of those crappy model apartments with bunk beds in downtown Manhattan.

Like in Zoolander?

Wasnt Zoolander a little classier? he says with a laugh. They were driving around in Mercedes and having gasoline fights. We were starving and trying to find our way around the city. He moved to L.A. after just seven months.

Haynes has what can only be described as beginners luck. His very first go-see had been for Abercrombie (nailed it); his first TV audition was for CSI: Miami (boom). He played a kid whod tried to commit a double suicide with his girlfriend. I didnt know what the hell I was doing, admits Haynes, who had never appeared onscreen before. He didnt work for the next year save for an appearance on an episode of The Hills.

Fast forward to now. Haynes is everywhere. On billboards for Nicola Formichettis revamped Diesel (shot by Nick Knight). In Abercrombies Making of a Star campaign shot by Bruce Weber. In the upcoming disaster flick San Andreas opposite Dwayne the Rock Johnson. And yet its important to remember: The thing that got everyone talking about him? The CWs Arrow? Haynes isnt the star. Hes the stars sidekick, a petty thief named Roy Harper, who in the last year has acquired superhuman strength (dont ask), a snug red leather costume, and a badass new nickname, Arsenal. When Arrow appeared to die in Decembers midseason finale, more than one fan site gleefully wondered (hoped?) if the show would be renamed Arsenal. I guess well see when the title card hits in January Haynes teases.

How does Arsenals costume compare to clothes you wore in your modeling career? I never wore a lot of clothes in my modeling career, he says with a laugh. Its nice to actually wear clothes.

Its highly doubtful a network would relaunch a show midstream. But Haynes is smart to capitalize on the heat, using social media to build his brand  not by fronting but by being himself, which is an unabashed goofball. Hes one of those absurdly handsome actors who refers to himself as a big nerd, but he actually has the photos to back it up. When Jennifer Lawrence drew flak for wearing a puffy white Dior gown to the Golden Globes last year, Haynes didnt miss a beat, wrapping himself in a comforter, snapping a selfie, and tweeting, #GoldenGlobes were a blast. For Halloween last year, he dressed as Princess Fiona from Shrek  with a giant prosthetic nose and a full face of green makeup.

Shrek is one of the greatest movies, he says with a laugh, adding, I like to transform and do things that are fun. It was the coolest costume Ive ever done. I just like not doing what people say I should do.

After spending the holidays in New York, Haynes is due back in Vancouver to finish Season 3 of Arrow, where  he tells me  he leaves most of the stunts to the professionals. When it comes to trying to jump out of windows and doing all the crazy stuff, I dont want to be the person that steps in and tries to make everyones job more difficult. I just do the dialogue. He thinks on this, then goes for the self-deprecating joke: Im my stunt doubles dialogue double.
Con Man, the sci-fi web series from Alan Tudyk, Nathan Fillion and PJ Haarsma, will stream exclusively this summer on the soon-to-launch Comic-Con HQ, the ad-free subscription streaming VOD platform from Lionsgate and Comic-Con International.

The web series, created by Tudyk (Firefly, Frozen) and exec produced by Tudyk, Fillion (Castle, Firefly) and author Haarsma, is loosely based on Tudyks and Fillions experiences with Firefly, and follows Wray Nerely (Tudyk), co-star of the fictional Spectrum, a beloved sci-fi TV series canceled before its time. Wrays friend and Spectrum co-star Jack Moore (Fillion) has since become a major celebrity, while Wray is still looking for success, reluctantly making the rounds of sci-fi conventions and comic book store appearances. The series takes a behind-the-scenes look at fandom.

With the launch this summer of Comic-Con HQ, the web series first season, which debuted last September, will move exclusively to that platform. A second season will premiere in late 2016, and will follow Wrays crossover attempts from the world of B-movie sci-fi to mainstream success, all without alienating his old fans and former co-stars.

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Con Man was created with a record-breaking $3.2 million fundraising effort via 46,000 fans on Indiegogo, one of the largest crowdfunding campaigns ever, according to producers. Guest stars on the first season included Tricia Helfer, Amy Acker, Gina Torres, Sean Maher, Felicia Day, Seth Green, Mindy Sterling, Jewel Staite, Summer Glau, Sean Astin and filmmakers James Gunn (Guardians Of The Galaxy) and Joss Whedon (Avengers). Season 2 guest stars have yet to be announced.

Comic-Con HQ is all about capturing the spirit of the fan community, and in its own way, so is Con Man. Alan uniquely understands all sides of the fan experience and hes captured it in such a farcical way that its as much parody as it is commentary around the power of fandom, said Seth Laderman, EVP and General Manager, Comic-Con HQ.

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We are thrilled to be a part of the Comic-Con HQ family, said Tudyk. For a series that was born out of a passion for the genre and support from the fans, we couldnt think of a better way to connect with our community.

Season 1 will be available via Comic-Con HQ next month, following the platforms May 7 beta launch on Free Comic Book Day. Subscribers who join Comic-Con HQ during the first two weeks of the beta launch will be entered to win a trip to San Diego Comic-Con 2016. Officially launching this summer, the paid subscription service will roll out to Roku, AppleTV and Xbox One, with additional distribution platforms available throughout the year.

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By Kenny Katombe LUBUMBASHI, Democratic Republic of Congo (Reuters) - Democratic Republic of Congo opposition leader Moise Katumbi on Thursday denied an accusation by the government that he hired foreign mercenaries, and said he had nothing to fear from an investigation into his conduct or from reports that he might be arrested. His comments come a day after he announced he would run for president of Congo in November, at an election to choose a successor to incumbent Joseph Kabila who is due to step down at the end of his two-term mandate. Tensions are high ahead of the election in part because Kabila has not declared his intentions. Critics say he intends to remain in power after his mandate ends, leading a country that has not had a peaceful transition of power since independence. Justice Minister Alexis Thambwe Mwamba said authorities had proof Katumbi was involved in recruiting mercenaries including several retired American soldiers. A government spokesman said four of Katumbi's bodyguards were arrested because they were not authorized to work in the country. "I have nothing to fear because I have no mercenaries with me at the house, nor have I recruited any. It's just rumours ... Investigators said they were going to come to my house to search and arrest me. Let them come," Katumbi said. "I maintain my candidacy (for the presidency) and will stay true to my peaceful struggle for the state and the law," he told Reuters. The U.S. Embassy in the capital Kinshasa said on its Facebook page it was deeply concerned about Mwamba's accusations and believed them to be false. It said a U.S. citizen working in Katanga province as a security advisor for a private U.S. company that consults around the world was arrested on April 24, but was unarmed and that allegations he was involved in mercenary activity are false. Katumbi governed Katanga, Congo's southeastern copper-mining heartland, from 2007 until last September when he quit Kabila's ruling party, accusing it of plotting to keep the president in power beyond the two-term limit. More than 40 people were killed in protests in January 2015 over the issue of whether Kabila might try to stay in power beyond his term. Since then, authorities have arrested dozens of critics of Kabila on what the United Nations and human rights groups say are trumped-up charges. (Additional reporting by Aaron Ross, writing by Matthew Mpoke Bigg, editing by G Crosse)
Congress needs to restructure Puerto Rico's debt, otherwise the U.S. territory will need a bailout, Puerto Rico governor Alejandro Garcia Padilla said Friday.

The island's government announced earlier this week it would skip a $422 million debt payment. It owes another $1.9 billion on July 1.

"It's not an issue of politics. It's not even an issue of policy. It's a mathematical issue. We do not have the money. It's as simple as that," Padilla said in an interview with CNBC's " Power Lunch ."

The government is $72 billion in debt and has a staggering 45-percent poverty rate. Legislation that would restructure the debt is currently in a congressional committee.

"If Congress acts today it will cost $0 to U.S. taxpayers. If Congress does not act, then we will need a bailout," Padilla said. "It will be very expensive to U.S. taxpayers."

The governor defended himself against critics who believe Puerto Rico should do more to fix its fiscal problems, noting that he has reduced the government by 24 percent and has taken expenditures back to where Puerto Rico was 11 years ago. He said he has also reduced the number of public employees from 105,000 to 89,000.

"Anyone that claimed that we haven't been able to reduce government size is just wrong," he insisted.

However, "If I stop providing essential services on the island, then the economy will go further, deeper into the hole where I found it and I will have less to pay after."

 Reuters contributed to this report.





More From CNBC


Controversial documentary Vaxxed is poised to get a release in China, a territory which has recently undergone a massive public health scandal relating to vaccinations.

Cinema Libre Studio has entered into a partnership with Chinas Gaia Studio for a significant expansion of the films U.S. theatrical release. Gaia Studio also expects to distribute the film in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan as soon as possible,

Cinema Libre said. No import license, distributor or release date have yet been firmed up for China.

The film is currently playing at some 20 theaters in the U.S., an accelerated release which Cinema Libre says was a reaction to being selected and then deselected from playing at the Tribeca Film Festival, and an effort to dispel misconceptions that the film was anti-vaccine.

Tribeca co-founder Robert De Niro later went on NBC to state his regret for the film being pulled from the festival. He urged the public to go see the film.

The subtleties of the North American festival scene may be lost on Chinese audiences. But there is plenty of reasons for them to relate to the movie.

Chinese authorities arrested or demoted some 350 officials and made over 200 arrests in connection with a vaccine scandal in Shandong Province. A 47-year old woman was revealed to have traded over $100 million vaccines through an unlicensed company which had a network of 300 sub-dealers across the country. While the vaccines were produced by licensed companies, many were at or close to expiry, and many had not been stored or transported under the correct conditions, likely rendering them useless. While the scandal was known to the authorities in early 2015, officials had covered it up until February this year.

This is a topic in the news, and we feel this movie gives a moving account and record of actual events and trends occurring. This is knowledge and information that can help people, said A.L Yang, chairman and founder of Gaia Studio.

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The film will also be screened at the Cannes Film Market.

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An Amber Alert has been issued for a nine-year-old Tennessee girl picked up from school by her uncle, who said her father had been badly injured in a car accident, according to police.

Carlie Trent, who has blond hair and blue eyes, was last seen Wednesday afternoon leaving with Gary Simpson, 57, who had signed parental permission to collect the child at her elementary school, said a spokesperson for the Rogersville Police Department.

Read: Police Determined to Find Killer of Child Whose Murder 20 Years Ago Inspired Amber Alerts

The pair have not been seen since then. The Amber Alert was issued Thursday, as was a warrant for Simpson's arrest on suspicion of kidnapping.

The uncle had previously picked up the child from school, and officials said employees followed proper procedure Wednesday in allowing Simpson to fetch Carlie because written permission was on file allowing him to do so.

NEW PICTURES: #AmberAlert suspect Gary Simpson at Walmart in Rogersville yesterday PM. Spot him? 1-800-TBI-FIND! pic.twitter.com/KB5k5KY2M3  Josh DeVine (@TBIJoshDeVine) May 5, 2016

In a statement, Tennessee Bureau of Investigation spokesman Josh DeVine said the child had been picked up "under false pretenses." Simpson "has no custodial rights to Carlie. Currently, their whereabouts are unknown," he said.

Simpson is the girl's uncle by marriage, authorities said.

Read: Cops: A Schoolgirl Escapes After College Student Holds Her Captive For 2 Years

He was seen on surveillance video Wednesday evening outside a Walmart in Rogersville, authorities said.

The two left Carlie's school in a white 2002 Dodge Conversion van with Tennessee plates 173GPS.

NEW PICTURE: This is the van believed to be driven by Gary Simpson, suspect in our #AMBERAlert. TN TAG: 173GPS. pic.twitter.com/1bROPsSd46  Josh DeVine (@TBIJoshDeVine) May 5, 2016

Watch: Student Escapes Kidnapper After He Hopped In Her Car

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Related Articles:
Grammy winner Corinne Bailey Rae may be known for her easy-on-the-ears sound, but the British R&B songstress hasn't experienced a perpetually sunny life.

Following her self-titled debut album in 2006 - which included the U.K. chart-topping single "Put Your Records On" - Bailey Rae's 2010 studio album The Sea was clouded by the death of her husband and collaborator Jason Rae. Six years from her last full album and three years into marriage with second husband Steve Brown, Leeds native Bailey Rae is back on the scene with her third LP The Heart Speaks In Whispers, set to drop on May 13.

Bailey Rae sat down to chat with Billboard about natural hair, taking style cues from the church she grew up in, and the role she plays in broadening media representations of black women.

How long have you been wearing your hair natural?

Before university, I got a crazy dye job and had to cut it all off. So I first went to university with my hair seven centimeters long and totally natural. That was challenging, because I'd never had my hair that way. But after it grew out, I never looked back.

I'm not some kind of preacher saying "You have to have natural hair," but for me it's easier. When I was getting it relaxed, I almost wished my hair didn't grow, because it was so expensive and broke easily. Now it's simple to care for. I just wash my hair with Rahua shampoo and Liz Earle conditioner, use Olio Lusso oil by Rodin, put it in plaits and then take the plaits out.

Beyonce Proteges Chloe x Halle on What to Wear to the White House, Natural Beauty and Being in 'Lemonade' (Exclusive)

@corinnebaileyrae is back on our radar with her new release 'Stop Where You Are' from her new album. Listen & review on #starvedsa. Link in bio. #music #newmusic #creatives #film #musicvideo #corinnebaileyrae

A photo posted by STARVED MAGAZINE (@starved_magazine) on Apr 18, 2016 at 2:58am PDT

Is buying ethically important to you?

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It really is. We live in a capitalist society, so our power as people who consume is significant. I boycott unethical companies and avoid buying stuff made in sweatshops and stuff that will end up in landfills. I don't buy loads of clothing. But I do have a lot of vintage dresses and '80s one-pieces, which are quite fun.

Shamir Talks Nail Polish, Androgyny & 'Life-Changing' Thrift Shopping: Exclusive

Does your penchant for vintage mean you borrowed from your mom growing up?

I did; my mum is really stylish. She had this very happening sort of '70s window in her wardrobe from before she had kids.

I think a lot of style is about attitude -- posture, deportment, gaze, and confidence. I saw that in my mum. She was a cleaner when we were growing up, but she had this stylish presence I admired.

How did growing up singing in church affect your style?

My church wasn't a "Sunday best" sort. People didn't spend a lot on clothes, because it meant that money wasn't going to refugees or orphans. There were a lot of Christian hippies who were into the indie thing because it was an alternative to getting the "right" trainers for hundreds of dollars. It was like, you had Doc Martens, that was your one pair of shoes, and you wore them till they wore out.

Who were your black style icons growing up?

I loved Denise Huxtable from The Cosby Show. I really like Alice Walker's writing, and I like that collegiate hippie thing she put across in her look.

Me . On garancedore.fr now ! Such a beautiful piece . Thanks @garancedore @studiodore xxx

A photo posted by corinne bailey rae (@corinnebaileyrae) on Dec 8, 2014 at 9:12pm PST

Does feminism intersect with clothing for you?

Not dressing for the male gaze is something I got into really early. I was in an all-female rock band in my teens. We were too young for Riot Grrrl, but we admired that scene. We wore secondhand stuff and intentionally messed up our eye makeup. Courtney Love was the height of style for me. I loved Patti Smith and Justine Frischmann's looks, as well.

It'd be weird growing up now and thinking, "I can't be a pop star because I haven't done my bikini line." The level of flesh exposure now is so massive and so presumed. One thing is what models do, the other is what musicians do -- they were never put together in the indie scene.

Corinne Bailey Rae on Her New Sound and Feeling 'Joy Again' After Heartbreak

Have you felt pressured to show more skin than you're comfortable with?

I haven't been under that much pressure, maybe because my body doesn't fit the "sexy type." It might have been different if I fit those beauty standards and said, "I've got this amazing rack but you'll never see it."

But if I was in some kind of wig and high-cut thing with crazy heels, I wouldn't feel like myself. So many people are doing that, and it's like, cool, you do that -- but we need a spectrum. Women of all types should be represented.

"There are a lot of images of spring and green and new things coming through" - @CorrineBaileyRae on her new music | Photo: @ryanpfluger

A photo posted by Billboard (@billboard) on May 1, 2016 at 1:47pm PDT

How do you think about your own clothing and hair as a woman of color in the spotlight?

Being mixed race in Britain in the '80s and '90s, there weren't loads of people who looked like me. I was also really skinny and self-conscious about that - I wore three pairs of tights at a time to hide it. Not having a lot of money made me feel like an outsider, too.

I think it's good to keep the spectrum as broad as possible in terms of representation. Oftentimes when black faces are shown, it's in a gritty, urban context. Black models pop up in Vogue with graffiti in London rather than in a stately home or on a white horse. I like to be part of making the spectrum broader, representing a sort of romantic bohemianism. The world is a huge place for black women, and you can be in any arena - including gentler ones.
Screen_shot_2016-05-06_at_3.10.18_pm

Like many seniors at Michigan State University, Kaila Davidson decorated her graduation cap with the iconic Spartan "S."

One small difference: her "S" was made entirely from her own parking tickets.

Davidson tweeted a photo of her DIY cap on Monday with a fond message for the campus police: "I'll never forget you."

SEE ALSO: Theater major takes dramatic, debt-themed graduation photos

Davidson received 10 parking tickets during her time at MSU  which is, coincidentally, just enough to make a large block letter.

"I was going to throw them away," she told the Lansing State Journal, "but I figured, why not do something fun with them?"

And what's more fun than a police citation?

Luckily, said police seem to be fans of Davidson's stunt.

Oh, and breathe easy, Kaila's parents. All the tickets have already been paid off.
TORONTO, ON / ACCESSWIRE / May 6, 2016 / Crown Mining Corporation (CWM.V) ("Crown" or the "Company") announces a proposed non-brokered private placement for aggregate gross proceeds of up to $250,000 comprised of up to 2,500,000 units at a price of $0.10 per unit (each such unit being comprised of one common share and one warrant) (the "Offering"). Each whole warrant will entitle the holder to purchase one common share for $0.20 at any time within 2 years after closing subject to an acceleration clause. All securities issued pursuant to this private placement will be subject to a four (4) month hold period. The Company proposes to pay to eligible finders a finder's fee equal to 10% of the gross proceeds raised. The Company also reserves the right to increase or decrease the size of the Offering.

Completion of the Offering is subject to receipt of all required regulatory and TSX Venture Exchange approvals. The Company will use the proceeds of the Private Placement for exploration and development work at its Lights Creek Copper Project and for general working capital purposes.

Crown is focused on advancing its 100% controlled Lights Creek Copper Project in Northeast California. There are four known copper deposits on the 18 square kilometer property with over 2 billion pounds of contained copper as reported in our two Technical Reports available on Sedar.

The Moonlight deposit hosts a current National Instrument 43-101 ("NI 43-101") compliant indicated resource of approximately 161 million tons (146.5 million tonnes) averaging 0.324% copper, 0.003 ounces of gold and 0.112 ounces of silver per ton, and an inferred resource of 88 million tons (80 million tonnes) averaging 0.282% copper per ton. Further details of this resource can be found in the Technical Report on the Moonlight Copper Property dated April 12, 2007 at Sedar.com. The Superior and Engels deposits have a current NI 43-101 inferred mineral resource of 57 million metric tonnes at an average copper grade of 0.43%. Further details of this resource can be found in the Technical Report on the Superior Project dated November 7, 2014 filed on Sedar. The fourth deposit has a historical resource that is not compliant with NI 43-101.

Mr. George Cole is the Qualified Person pursuant to NI 43-101 responsible for the technical information contained in this news release, and he has reviewed and approved this news release.

For more information please see the Crown website at www.crowngoldcorp.com.

For Further Information Contact:

Mr. Stephen Dunn, President, CEO and Director, Crown Mining Corporation (416) 361-2827 or email info@crowngoldcorp.com.

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 press release.

This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of applicable Canadian and U.S. securities laws and regulations, including statements regarding the future activities of the Company. Forward-looking statements reflect the current beliefs and expectations of management and are identified by the use of words including "will", "anticipates", "expected to", "plans", "planned" and other similar words. Actual results may differ significantly. The achievement of the results expressed in forward-looking statements is subject to a number of risks, including those described in the Company's management discussion and analysis as filed with the Canadian securities regulatory authorities which are available at www.sedar.com. Investors are cautioned not to place undue reliance upon forward-looking statements.

This news release shall not constitute an offer to sell or solicitation of an offer to buy the securities in any jurisdiction. The flow-through common shares will not be and have not been registered under the United States Securities Act of 1933 and may not be offered or sold in the United States absent registration or applicable exemption from the registration requirements.

SOURCE: Crown Mining Corporation
The Congressional Research Service has offered its insight to Congress about how Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland might influence rulings differently than the late Antonin Scalia, if Garland is confirmed.

Merrick_Garland 535

The three authors of a report called Judge Merrick Garland: His Jurisprudence and Potential Impact on the Supreme Court see some differences between Scalia, the originalist, and Garland, currently the chief judge of the District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals. But with a lack of a record on Garlands part on some key constitutional issues, the report says that any Scalia versus Garland comparisons were inconclusive at best.

Link: Read The Report

The three legislative attorneys looked at 14 areas of law where Justice Scalia can be seen to have influenced the High Courts approach to certain issues, or served as a fifth and deciding vote on the Court, with a view toward how Judge Garland might approach those same issues if he were to be confirmed.

In the role of the judiciary, Scalia openly supported two related concepts, originalism and textualism, which endorsed the idea that the Courts decisions needed to accommodate ideas from legal texts in accordance with their ordinary meaning at the time of their drafting.

The CRS says that Garland isnt the bold spokesman that Scalia was on constitutional theories. Judge Garland has not articulated any overarching legal philosophy in a manner akin to Justice Scalia, the report says, pointing to Garlands minimalist approach to judging. The hallmarks of Garlands opinions were a desire to build consensus.

On the issue of the Eighth Amendment and capital punishment, Scalia believed the full use of the death penalty was consistent with the Constitution. The CRS points out that Garland had no judicial record interpreting the Eighth Amendment generally since these types of cases werent handled by the D.C. Circuit Appeals Court. Likewise, Garland didnt have much of a record on civil liability cases, which also mostly were outside of his D.C. court, or in related cases, where he took part in unanimous decisions.

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And the CRS points out that in cases related to the Constitution and civil rights, Judge Garlands views on constitutional civil rights questions are generally unknown because he has not had occasion to address such questions directly in the cases before the D.C. Circuit. Scalia was at the center of several big cases about gay rights and affirmative action.

On Free Speech, Garland did write for a unanimous appeals court in a ruling that said government contractors couldnt make certain types of campaign contributions, rejecting a claim that the Supreme Courts Citizens United decision permitted that. Garland also offered opinions that stressed the rights of journalists to protect their information and sources.

And on the issue of the Second Amendment and the right to bear arms, Scalias views were well-known. Garland didnt author any opinions on the right to bear arms, but he did vote for his full appeals court to reconsider a decision that confirmed gun ownership rights in the District of Columbia. But Garland, the CRS says, wasnt involved in a lot of Second Amendment cases. These few cases would seem a tenuous basis for any firm conclusions as to Judge Garlands approach to the Second Amendment and firearms restrictions if he were to be confirmed to the Supreme Court, it says.

Garland also wasnt involved in Fifth Amendment Takings cases, another area where Scalia played a prominent role.

In all, the CRS says, Garland is notable for the lack of Supreme Court review of his own written opinions. Perhaps surprisingly for a jurist who has served on an important federal appellate court for nearly two decades, none of Judge Garlands written opinions have even been reviewed in a formal opinion by the Supreme Court.

Of the nine opinions that reached the Supreme Court in which Garland took part, five of the cases were affirmed or supported by the nine Justices. This is a notably high affirmance rategiven that the Court in recent years has, on average, reversed the lower court in over 70% of all cases it heardand perhaps indicates the cautious nature of Judge Garlands jurisprudence.

Recent Stories on Constitution Daily

Podcast: Debating the laws regulating bathroom use and gender

Updated Supreme Court Scorecard: May 2016 Edition

Constitution Check: Is an old anti-New Deal precedent getting new life  again?
And heres the deal on the slash in condo prices.

Singapore is no longer just a stop-over point for tourists catching connecting flights to beaches in Thailand and Bali. More travelers are making the city state their final destination, in large part after ending a decades-old ban on casinos thats helped to double the number of Chinese visitors to the country. Read more here.

Singapore recorded the eighth largest growth in luxury home prices in Knight Franks latest Prime Global Cities Index, with values rising 5.4 percent in Q1 2016 from a year ago. The annual price increase signals green shoots of recovery for the ultra-luxury segment, as high-net worth individuals see rising value proposition for Singapore luxury homes after a prolonged two-year period of price declines, said Alice Tan, Research Head at Knight Frank Singapore. Find out more here.

Certain condo developers have reduced the prices of their unsold projects in Singapore to boost sales, garnering some 20 units each within a month of their relaunch. Some of these projects are within the prime districts of Orchard and Cairnhill. For example, prices at Ardmore Three in Ardmore Park and Starlight Suites in River Valley Close have been reduced since they first launched. Read more here.





More From Singapore Business Review


COLOMBO (Reuters) - Sri Lanka's junior finance minister has asked President Maithripala Sirisene to stop officials flying business class as part of government efforts to reduce the country's ballooning budget deficit.

Lakshman Yapa Abhayawardene also asked Sirisena to direct ministers and government officials to monitor the financial management of all ministries.

"I expect your personal and dedicated intervention to implement a strong fiscal management system," Abhayawardene wrote in a letter to the president.

The request comes as the government takes steps to raise revenue by 100 billion rupees in 2016, in response to repeated requests from the IMF, by increasing value added tax (VAT).[nL3N17Y08Y]

Sri Lanka is heavily indebted, partly due to borrowing by the previous government during its nine-year tenure that ended in January 2015, and faces a balance of payments crisis with around $2 billion foreign outflows from government securities.

The government last week reached an agreement with IMF for a $1.5 billion bailout to help Sri Lanka avert a balance of payments crisis. [nL3N17W1PT]

(Reporting by Ranga Sirilal and Shihar Aneez; Editing by Dominic Evans)
The Chicago franchise isn't showing any signs of slowing down.

The flagship NBC drama, Chicago Fire, launched two spinoffs in its first three years on the air: Chicago P.D. in 2013, followed by Chicago Med last spring. And now the franchise is preparing for another possible growth spurt with Wednesday's backdoor pilot for Chicago Justice.

Although it's a rapid expansion rate for a TV series without source material, the executive producers behind the Windy City-set series say it was only natural.

"It is literally the fourth leg of the table," executive producer Dick Wolf told The Hollywood Reporter at a March PaleyFest event.

The characters of Chicago Justice will be introduced in Wednesday's episode of Chicago P.D. when Officer Burgess (Marina Squerciati) shoots an unarmed teenager after her partner, Roman (Brian Geraghty), is shot and seriously injured in their police car.

Watch The Hollywood Reporter's exclusive video from the tense crime scene below:

Assistant State Attorney Peter Stone (Strike Back's Philip Winchester) then steps in to defend Burgess and conduct his own investigation. However, Stone has some surprising, and complicating, ties to Sgt. Voight (Jason Beghe).

Read More: 'Chicago P.D.' Star on Burgess' "Test of Faith," Roman Romance and "Terrifying" Season Finale

"He's the one that put Voight away in prison. So Voight is at once respectful and yet there's clearly a little bit of ire there," Chicago P.D. showrunner Matt Olmstead told THR last month. "He knows the guy means business because to not be afraid to go toe-to-toe with Voight and win, ultimately you're going to get his respect. There's a nice backstory there."

The episode marks just the second time Chicago P.D. has tackled a legal case - the first being a three-show January crossover where the doctor who helped treat Voight's now-late wife stood trial. However, the legal jargon is old hand for Wolf, who launched the Law & Order franchise in 1990.

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"Courtroom machinations are gladiatorial combat in suits and that's endlessly fascinating to me," Wolf said.

Wolf helped craft the story and was on set for the filming of the backdoor pilot. "This was his baby all the way," Olmstead said.

The prolific producer even went so far as to write a Law & Order character into the "Justice" episode. Lorraine Toussaint (Orange Is the New Black) reprises the role of defense attorney Shambala Green which she originated in the first season of Law & Order 26 years ago and played several more times over a 13-year period.

Wolf is open to other possible Law & Order franchise character crossovers should Justice be picked up to series.

"Anybody who has been on Law and Order, SVU, Criminal Intent, is eligible, certainly, to be in Justice because they could have been cops, felons, major case investigators," Wolf said. "There are DA conventions."

Read More: 'Chicago Law': Biggest Burning Questions About NBC's Latest Potential Spinoff

Despite their shared DNA, Wolf stressed that the "storytelling is totally different" on Chicago Justice. "It's a legal show, but its not Law & Order."

In particular, Olmstead points to the Chicago Justice characters, many of which have yet to be developed. The guest cast for the episode will include several other potential series regulars for the spinoff, including Carl Weathers, Nazneen Contractor, Joelle Carter and Ryan-James Hatanaka.

"There's a big growth spurt to speak because whoever the showrunner is or showrunners are come in help define it," Olmstead said, pointing to Chicago Med bosses Diane Frolov and Andrew Schneider, who came onboard several months after the backdoor pilot had already aired during an April episode of Chicago Fire. "We've got the right actors, we hopefully gave them the right material."

However, the biggest question on many viewers' minds is whether the courtroom will be the final frontier for the Chicago franchise. After all, most tables only have four legs. But Wolf confirms he already has an idea for a fifth series.

"Yes," he said as a smile splashes across his face. "But I'm not going to tell you what it is."

Viewers will just have to wait and see.

Chicago P.D.'s "Justice" episode airs Wednesday at 10 p.m. on NBC.
PureWow

It looks like Prince Harry and Meghan Markle thought their Archewell website needed a little bit of a facelift. The Duke and Duchess of Sussex have been keeping quite busy these days, what with a Netflix docuseries, podcasts, oh, and two young kids to take care of. However, we just noticed that the couple changed the photo on the homepage of their website, trading out the old pic for a brand-new portrait courtesy of Misan Harriman. Archewell Foundation/Misan Harriman The pic was snapped during t
From Popular Mechanics

The history of mankind has been defined, in large part, by its seafaring breakthroughs. The voyaging canoe. The stern-mounted steering rudder. Viking longships. The galleon. Steam power. The U-boat. The $25 DIY hydroplane. The damming of the Colorado to give us Lake Havasu and a subsequent party-barge boom. RSS Boaty McBoatface. And now-this thing. Just look at it.

This outfit Hammocraft in the burgeoning maritime state of Wyoming has launched the next great breakthrough in floating. Is it a hammock? Is it a raft? It's a craft of some kind, one that you assemble yourself (and probably with at least three friends, and likely a 12-pack). The aluminum frame sits atop whatever configurations of rafts and paddleboards you care to strap underneath it. Then you and your buds climb into your hammocks and bob over the waves like you just won the Nobel Prize of laziness.

The kit retails for about $1,000, though surely you can get more elaborate as you tap into your few remaining slivers of ambition. The company recommends floating this rig on "lakes and slow moving rivers where you can nap and fall asleep!" So what if it ain't exactly the Kon-Tiki. Just imagine all the nothing you'll get up to in it.

Source: Hammocraft via Gizmodo.
Presumptive Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and House Speaker Paul Ryan will meet next week to clear the air and possibly unify the divided party.

Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus told Fox News Sean Hannity about the scheduled meeting just hours after Ryan  the nations highest-ranking Republican  revealed Thursday that he was not ready to endorse Trumps White House run at this time.

Both Donald Trump and Paul Ryan are meeting next week to talk about these things, Priebus said to the Fox News host. I think its going to work out, but you know in some cases people are not going to be instantly on board. And I know that can be frustrating for some people.

Priebus said that the contentious GOP primary might delay the unification process, but added that he thinks Republicans will ultimately come together and fall in line.

I dont think anybody expected this to come to an end on Tuesday, he said. I think its going to take some time for some people to come to grips and to get to know Donald Trump.

An incredulous Hannity fired back that the Republican primary has been going on a year and said that conservatives should be well acquainted with Trump at this point.

Well, an endorsement is a full embrace so for some people it takes a little bit of time, Priebus said.

On Thursday, Ryan told CNNs Jake Tapper that he was not yet ready to support Trump, despite having said for months that he would back the eventual nominee.

Ryan said Trump should be congratulated for his success so far, but the House speaker is not fully convinced the real estate magnate and reality TV star will advance the principles of the GOP.

House Speaker Paul Ryan and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump are not yet on the same page. (Photos: Richard Drew/AP, Eduardo Munoz/Reuters)



He needs to be congratulated for a enormous accomplishment, for winning now a plurality of delegates, and now hes on his way to winning a majority of delegates, Ryan said. He also inherited something very special  thats very special to a lot of us.

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Trump took issue with Ryans choice of the word inherited.

Paul Ryan said that I inherited something very special, the Republican Party. Wrong, I didnt inherit it, I won it with millions of voters! he fired back on Twitter.

The Trump campaign also released a statement saying he is not ready to support Speaker Ryans agenda.

Perhaps in the future we can work together and come to an agreement about what is best for the American people, it reads. They have been treated so badly for so long that it is about time for politicians to put them first!

Trump campaign sources told Politico that they were shocked by Ryans interview  in part because they had invited the speaker to meet Trump to discuss the upcoming general election and the partys agenda, but they never heard back.

The brash billionaire also made headlines on Thursday for tweeting a photo of himself preparing to eat a taco bowl. Happy #CincoDeMayo! The best taco bowls are made in Trump Tower Grill. I love Hispanics! the caption reads.

Priebus was asked to respond to the tweet Friday morning during Politicos Playbook Breakfast. As some in the crowd laughed, he looked down at the floor and said, Hes trying. Honestly, hes trying and Ill tell you what. I honestly think he understands that building and unifying and growing the party is the only way were going to win.

On Friday afternoon, a Ryan spokesman confirmed that the House speaker plans to meet Trump next Thursday.

The speaker will meet with Donald Trump next Thursday morning at the RNC, Chief Communications Advisor Brendan Buck tweeted.



See the graphic: Where the Republican Party stands on Trump >>>
Donald Trump

Donald Trump didn't pull any punches while attacking Lindsey Graham in a lengthy statement Friday, after the South Carolina senator and former 2016 GOP presidential hopeful announced that he wouldn't be supporting his party's presumptive nominee.

"I fully understand why Lindsey Graham cannot support me," Trump wrote. "If I got beaten as badly as I beat him, and all the other candidates he endorsed, I would not be able to give my support either."

Graham tweeted on Friday that it's "hard to believe" the choice for president will be between Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton and Trump. He said that, although he would not support Clinton, he could not "in good conscience support" Trump "because I do not believe he is a reliable conservative." He added that he doesn't trust Trump's judgment or temperament.

Trump's statement read, in part: "Every time I see Lindsey Graham spew hate during interviews I ask why the media never questions how I single-handily destroyed his hapless run for President. As a candidate who did not receive 1% in his own state - compared to my victory at nearly 40% with many others in the race - he has zero credibility."

Trump also called Graham a "poor representative" and an "embarrassment" to South Carolina.

"Judging by the incompetent way he ran his campaign, it is easy to see why his military strategies have failed so badly --- we can't even beat ISIS!" Trump continued. "While I will unify the party, Lindsey Graham has shown himself to be beyond rehabilitation. And like the voters who rejected him, so will I!"

Trump saw another round of defections from Republican leaders on Friday, the day after House Speaker Paul Ryan said that he was "not ready" to support him. Other big-name Republicans, such as former 2016 contender and ex-Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, joined Graham in saying they would not be voting for Trump.

"I won't talk about Jeb Bush. I will not say he's low energy," Trump said later at a rally in Nebraska.

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Graham said Trump lost him when he ridiculed Sen. John McCain for being captured during the Vietnam War and for accusing President George W. Bush of lying about the Iraq War.

"I just can't go there," he said during a CNN interview on Friday. "I respect people who can. And to Donald Trump, congratulations, you did a hell of a thing. You beat me and everybody else. I just really believe that the Republican Party has been conned here."

The South Carolina senator added that Trump's propping up of fringe theories  such as his prominent role in questioning President Barack Obama's birthplace in 2011  played a part in why he won't support the presumptive nominee.

"I've got a hard time supporting somebody for president who spent thousands of dollars of their own money trying to find out if President Obama was born in Kenya vs. Hawaii," he said. "I think that's crazy."

"I'm just glad we're having the convention in Cleveland, not Area 51," he continued. "I think Donald Trump is going to places where very few people have gone, and I'm not going with him."

NOW WATCH: Hillary Clinton just released a Trump attack ad that uses the GOPs words against him





More From Business Insider


Donald Trump has pledged to build relationships with world leaders  and he appears to have made limited progress with the former Mexican president who has been one of his fiercest critics.

Former Mexican President Vicente Fox apologized to Trump on Wednesday for lashing out at him earlier this year about the border wall. I apologize, Fox said in an interview with Breitbart News. Forgiveness is one of the greatest qualities that human beings have, is the quality of a compassionate leader. You have to be humble. You have to be compassionate. You have to love thy neighbor.

If I offended you, Im sorry, Fox continued about Trump. But what about the other way around? He then invited Trump to come visit Mexico.

At a rally in West Virginia Thursday evening, Trump, now the presumptive Republican nominee for president, responded to Foxs apology amid chants from his crowd about building the wall.

After saying that there is not even a doubt that Mexico will pay for the wall, Trump said, Vicente Fox was on television last night and he apologized, and I accept his apology. I tell you I thought it was very nice Honestly, I thought it was very, very nice, because I was giving him a little hard time about something, and he apologized.

The feud between Trump and Fox began in February, when Fox declared, Im not going to pay for that fking wall. He should pay for it. Hes got the money. (A centerpiece of Trumps presidential campaign has been a vow to build a wall along the United States southern border with Mexico, and a claim that Mexico will pay for construction. He has angered many Mexicans since the moment he launched his campaign last June, when he said many undocumented Mexican immigrants are rapists.)

Trump then demanded an apology from Fox, tweeting, Vicente Fox horribly used the F word when discussing the wall. He must apologize! If I did that there would be a uproar!

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Since that incident, Fox has periodically trolled Trump on Twitter, including one memorable rampage from his wifes birthday celebration in April, when he said that Trump does not understand love:

He has also referred to Trump as a false prophet:

The two seemed to broker a peace this week with Foxs apology and Trumps response, and Trump may have even taken a piece of advice from Fox. On Cinco de Mayo, Fox tweeted that Trump should use the holiday as a chance to apologize and reach out to Mexicans. Which Trump did, in his own way, by posting a picture of himself eating a taco bowl.

The truce is tenuous, however. Earlier in the same day that Trump apologized, Fox tweeted, I maintain my position against the policies of @realDonaldTrump, we continue pushing to prevent this nightmare from becoming reality.
Paris (AFP) - French Prime Minister Manuel Valls accused the presumptive US Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump of being a "bad man" Friday, having previously criticised him over his views on Muslims.

Trump's win in Tuesday's hotly contested Indiana primary, pushing his remaining rivals out of the race and leaving him as the presumptive nominee, has drawn criticism at home and abroad, including from within the Republican party.

"Look at what is happening in the United States, we have great challenges but at the same time...," he said before being interrupted by his interviewer from France's Public Senat channel, who suggested: "Little men?"

"Yes, yes, yes, yes. Little men," said Valls during the interview, seen by AFP ahead of its broadcast on Friday evening.

When asked if Trump was a "little man", Valls said: "Yes, and probably a bad man."

He said that populism had grown as democratic societies struggled to confront the challenges of globalisation and terrorism, hinting at France's own experience with the growth of the far-right National Front (FN).

Valls has previously criticised Trump, accusing him on Twitter of "stoking hatred" in December following the real estate mogul's suggestion that Muslims be banned from entering the USA.

Trump's path to Tuesday's victory was defined by a brutal primary campaign and a string of insulting remarks about other candidates, Muslims, Mexicans, refugees, women and others made by the billionaire businessman.
From Esquire

The president went to Flint on Wednesday. He should have gone there long before this, and there was something unsettling about his conspicuously taking a drink of water, although I don't think it was as bad as Michael Moore does. But what may have gone unnoticed-especially by Ron Fournier, who went to Flint and filtered what he learned through his special Both Sides Do It filtering mechanism-is that the president took a big old sledgehammer to the philosophical foundation of 40 years of conservative political vandalism. From his remarks:

And it's a mindset that believes that less government is the highest good no matter what. It's a mindset that says environmental rules designed to keep your water clean or your air clean are optional, or not that important, or unnecessarily burden businesses or taxpayers. It's an ideology that undervalues the common good, says we're all on our own and what's in it for me, and how do I do well, but I'm not going to invest in what we need as a community. And, as a consequence, you end up seeing an underinvestment in the things that we all share that make us safe, that make us whole, that give us the ability to pursue our own individual dreams. So we underinvest in pipes underground. We underinvest in bridges that we drive on, and the roads that connect us, and the schools that move us forward. And this is part of the attitude, this is part of the mindset.

We especially underinvest when the communities that are put at risk are poor, or don't have a lot of political clout and so are not as often heard in the corridors of power. And this kind of thinking-this myth that government is always the enemy; that forgets that our government is us-it's us; that it's an extension of us, ourselves-that attitude is as corrosive to our democracy as the stuff that resulted in lead in your water. Because what happens is it leads to systematic neglect. It leads to carelessness and callousness. It leads to a lot of hidden disasters that you don't always read about and aren't as flashy, but that over time diminish the life of a community and make it harder for our young people to succeed.

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So it doesn't matter how hard you work, how responsible you are, or how well you raise your kids-you can't set up a whole water system for a city. That's not something you do by yourself. You do it with other people. You can't hire your own fire department, or your own police force, or your own army. There are things we have to do together-basic things that we all benefit from. And that's how we invested in a rail system and a highway system. That's how we invested in public schools. That's how we invested in science and research. These how we invested in community colleges and land grant colleges like Michigan State.

But volunteers don't build county water systems and keep lead from leaching into our drinking glasses. We can't rely on faith groups to reinforce bridges and repave runways at the airport. We can't ask second-graders, even ones as patriotic as Isiah Britt who raised all that money, to raise enough money to keep our kids healthy. You hear a lot about government overreach, how Obama-he's for big government. Listen, it's not government overreach to say that our government is responsible for making sure you can wash your hands in your own sink, or shower in your own home, or cook for your family. These are the most basic services. There is no more basic element sustaining human life than water. It's not too much to expect for all Americans that their water is going to be safe.

You may notice that these remarks owe their source to one of the first important things that Senator Professor Warren said when she first was running for Senate. The president first picked up this theme in the immediate aftermath of what SPW said and carried it through his 2012 re-election campaign. It was so prominent in the campaign dialogue that year that the Republicans devoted an entire evening of their convention in Tampa to an ensemble rebuttal of nearly epic proportions.

But this was the clearest and most effective statement of the argument that this president yet has produced, and there is no little connective tissue between what he said in Flint and what he was trying to say back in 2004 when he came to national attention with his speech in Boston. That speech was an overly rosy assessment of how Americans could come together simply because they're all Americans. This speech had a sharper edge-this is what we have done together as Americans, and we should be ashamed that we're even arguing about it any more. The speech in Boston was a pillow. This was a brick through a window.

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The Dow declined over the week following disappointing domestic and foreign economic data and a decline in oil prices. The index increased on Monday following gains in consumer discretionary, consumer staples and financials stocks. The index declined on Tuesday following lower-than-expected manufacturing data from China and disappointing economic data from Europe. The index moved lower on Wednesday following continuing decline in energy stocks and mixed economic data. The index gained marginally on Thursday as gains led by a rally in oil prices were offset by discouraging economic data and lackluster earnings reports. The Dow has lost 0.3% over the first four trading days of the week.

Last Weeks Performance

The index decreased 0.3% last Friday following dismal earnings results, which had a negative impact on biotech stocks. Shares of Gilead Sciences, Inc. GILD fell 9.1% after reporting first quarter earnings per share (EPS) of $2.98, missing the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $3.03.

Also, continuing decline in shares of tech giants weighed on the tech sector. Moreover, lower-than-expected earnings results from tech giants continued to weigh on the sector.

Personal consumption expenditure price index (PCE) rose 0.1% in March, lower than Februarys increase of 0.2%. Core PCE increased 0.1%, in line with the consensus estimate. However, this was lower than Februarys increase of 0.2%.

For the week, the index declined 1.3% following losses in tech and healthcare stocks. Apple Inc.s AAPL lackluster quarterly performance weighed on key U.S. indexes. However, gain in oil prices had a positive impact on investor sentiment. This was the Dows highest weekly decline since Feb 12

The index advanced 0.3% over April marking its first three-month winning stretch since Jan 2014. Energy stocks were the biggest gainer during the month, while tech stocks were biggest laggards. Meanwhile, mixed first quarter earnings results also had a negative impact on the markets.

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Oil prices posted monthly gains due to a weaker dollar, fall in the U.S rig count, rise in gasoline consumption and worldwide outages. However, disappointing earnings results dragged tech stocks downward for the month.

Further, the minutes on Federal Reserves March two-day policy meeting indicated that the Fed officials shared diverse views regarding rate hike chances which also raised concerns over the rate hike course.

The Dow This Week

The index increased 0.7% on Monday following gains in consumer discretionary, consumer staples and financials stocks. Rise in shares of Wynn Resorts Ltd. WYNN and Amazon.com, Inc AMZN boosted consumer discretionary sector. Meanwhile, gains in Sysco Corporations SYY shares helped the consumer staples sector to finish in the green.

Gains in Berkshire Hathaway Inc. BRK.B had a positive impact on broader financial sector. However, Apple dropped 0.1% and posted an eight consecutive trading day decline for the first time since July 28, 1998. Separately, U.S. dollar index declined following lower-than-expected factory activity and construction spending data which raised worries over slow economic expansion.

The ISM manufacturing index decreased from 51.8% in March to 50.8% in April, lower than the consensus estimate of 51.3%. Also, construction spending increased 0.3% from February to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $1,137.5 billion in March.

The index declined 0.8% on Tuesday following lower-than-expected manufacturing data from China and disappointing economic data from Europe. Markit and Caixin Media jointly reported that Chinas manufacturing PMI fell from 49.7 in March to 49.4 in April. Further, the official manufacturing PMI fell from 50.2 in March to 50.1 in April.

Moreover, the European Commission reduced its economic growth forecast for both the eurozone and the European Union (EU). Disappointing economic news from China and Europe raised global growth worries and weighed on Fed rate hike chances, which in turn resulted in a sell-off in financial stocks.

Additionally, oil prices declined following Chinas growth worries, concerns over global crude supply glut and stronger dollar. Iraq reported an increase in crude supply from southern fields. Moreover, crude production from OPEC members like Saudi Arabia and Iran also increased.

In economic news, Autodata reported that domestic vehicle sales in April came in at 13.8 million, which was more than the consensus estimate of 13.5 million and Marchs reading of 13.3 million.

The index lost 0.6% on Wednesday following continuing decline in energy stocks and mixed economic data. The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) reported yesterday that the U.S. commercial crude oil inventories rose 2.8 million barrels to 543.4 million for the week ended April 29. It was nearly 1 million barrels higher than analysts expectations.

Further, this was more than the increase of 1.3 million barrels reported by the American Petroleum Institute (API) a day earlier. Moreover, total motor gasoline inventories rose by 0.5 million barrels last week. Rise in crude oil and gasoline inventories had a negative impact on oil prices.

A report from Automatic Data Processing, Inc. revealed that private sector employers added 153,000 jobs in April, lower than analysts expectations of 193,000. However, the ISM Services Index increased from 54.5% in March to 55.7% in April. Trade deficit fell to the lowest settlement in more than a year after imports slumped to its lowest level in last five years. New orders for manufactured goods increased 1.1% in March.

The index gained marginally on Thursday as gains led by a rally in oil prices were offset by discouraging economic data and lackluster earnings reports. Oil prices increased after a wildfire hit Fort McMurray, the oil city of Canada, which in turn affected crude production.

Following this fire, Canada lost 690,000 bpd of its total oil production of 2.2 million barrels per day (bpd). Moreover, International Energy Agency (IEA) reported that recent unrest in Libya has curbed the countrys oil production by 1 million bpd, higher than IEAs previous forecast of 750,000 bpd.

Initial claims increased 17,000 to 274,000 for the week ending Apr 30, reaching its highest level in the last five weeks. Initial claims were more than the consensus estimate of 262,500. It was also the biggest increase in more than a year.

Components Moving the Index

Chevron Corp. CVX reported a first quarter loss per share of 39 cents, wider than the Zacks Consensus Estimate of a loss of 18 cents. Last year, Chevron earned $1.37 per share during the period. Quarterly revenue fell 32% year over year to $23,553 million but was able to beat the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $23,547 million on stable production.

At 2,666 thousand oil-equivalent barrels per day (MBOE/d), Chevrons total production of crude oil and natural gas remained essentially unchanged from the year-earlier level. The U.S. output came in at 701 MBOE/d, while the companys international operations (accounting for 74% of the total) produced 1,965 MBOE/d.

Chevrons downstream segment achieved earnings of $735 million, almost 50% lower than the profit of $1,423 million last year. The results were dragged down by lower margins on refined product sales.

ExxonMobil Corporation XOM posted first-quarter 2016 earnings of 43 cents per share that beat the Zacks Consensus Estimate of 31 cents. The bottom line, however, deteriorated from $1.17 per share in the year-ago quarter.

Total revenue in the quarter decreased to $48,707 million from $67,618 million in the year-ago quarter. The top line, however, was ahead of the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $48,137 million.

The upstream segment incurred a loss of $76 million in the reported quarter, a sharp decline from earnings of $2.9 billion in the first quarter of 2015. Lower liquids and gas realizations hurt earnings by $2.6 billion. The effect of sales mix lowered earnings by $100 million.

The downstream segment recorded profits of $906 million, down $761 million from the first quarter of 2015. Weaker margins affected earnings by $860 million. Volume and mix effects increased earnings by $10 million.

The chemical unit contributed approximately $1.4 billion which was $373 million higher than the first quarter of 2015.

Pfizer Inc.s PFE first quarter earnings per share of 67 cents were well above the Zacks Consensus Estimate of 55 cents. Revenues of $13 billion breezed past the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $11.9 billion.

The company recorded earnings growth of 32% and revenue growth of 20% from the year-ago period. While currency movement cut Pfizers first quarter revenues by 7% ($729 million), operational growth was 26% ($2.9 billion). International revenues declined 1% to $6.4 billion. Meanwhile, U.S. revenues grew 49% to $6.6 billion.

Pfizer now expects to earn $2.38$2.48 per share on revenues of $51 billion$53 billion. The company had previously guided toward earnings of $2.20$2.30 per share on revenues of $49$51 billion in 2016. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for earnings and revenues are currently $2.29 per share and $51.3 billion, respectively.

Merck & Co. MRK reported first quarter 2016 earnings of 89 cents per share, surpassing the Zacks Consensus Estimate of 85 cents and increasing 4.7% from the year-ago period. Revenues for the quarter declined 1.2% to $9.3 billion, missing the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $9.5 billion. Currency movement negatively impacted revenues by 4%.

Mercks Pharmaceutical segment posted revenues of $8.1 billion, down 2%. Currency movement negatively impacted revenues by 4%. Reduced operations in Venezuela also impacted sales. Mercks animal health segment posted revenues of $829 million, unchanged from the year-ago quarter.

Merck narrowed and raised its 2016 earnings guidance to $3.65$3.77 per share. Revenues are now expected in the range of $39.0 billion to $40.2 billion. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for earnings and revenues is currently $3.71 per share and $40.1 billion, respectively.

The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc.s GS $272 million mortgage settlement received approval of the U.S. District Judge, Loretta Preska in Manhattan on Monday. The settlement puts an end to a prolonged legal battle stemming from the financial crisis.

According to the released court order, the settlement is in all respects, fair, reasonable and adequate and in the best interest of the settlement class members. Goldman, however, did not admit any wrongdoing.

Notably, last year Goldman agreed to settle the concerned lawsuit that accused it of misrepresenting facts pertaining to nearly $6 billion of residential mortgage-backed securities (RMBS).

Performance of the Top 10 Dow Companies

The table given below shows the price movements of the 10 largest components of the Dow, which is a price weighted index, over the last five days and during the last six months. Over the last five trading days, the Dow has declined by 0.7%.

Ticker Last 5 Days Performance 6-Month Performance MMM +0.5% +5.3% GS -3.3% -19.9% IBM -0.5% +4.9% HD +1% +6.9% BA -2% -10.7% UNH -0.3% +15.2% MCD +1.6% +14.1% TRV +2.7% -2.1% JNJ +0% +10.8% AAPL -0.8% -23%

Next Weeks Outlook

The Dow suffered losses this week, weighed down by weak economic data from abroad and the familiar specter of falling crude prices. Economic indicators on the domestic front were mixed in nature, leading to questions about the path of Fed rate hikes this year once again. A data dependent Fed will continue to watch economic indicators in order to gauge when it would be prudent to raise rates.

In such a scenario, domestic economic indicators assume even greater importance. Prominent among these is todays employment data, which is particularly significant given the disappointing reading from the ADP report. The direction of crude prices will also continue to determine market direction to a significant extent.

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Jerusalem (AFP) - In conservative Jerusalem, the last thing you might expect to find in the cramped back of a bar is a clutch of amateur drag queens railing against political and religious taboos.

But there they are, balancing on needle-like high heels and heavily made up, spouting unholy views in the holiest of cities, a place revered by three of the world's major religions.

Anything goes with "Allah Nash", a group whose name plays upon the Hebrew for cross-dressing and the Arabic for God.

Fair game abounds, from laughing at the Israeli army and the Palestinians, mocking Jewish prayers and the sexual practices of the ultra-Orthodox, even impersonating Jewish American gay icon Barbra Streisand but with a yellow star pinned on her dress, recalling the evils of Nazism.

Yossale is our hostess for the evening. The young man in blonde wig, short sparkly dress and legs that go on forever singles out a member of the audience.

"He's cute enough to be introduced to the rabbi!"

The "Video" is now the only gay bar in town, just a few hundred metres (yards) from the walls of the Old City that shelter Christianity's Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Islam's Al-Aqsa Mosque compound and Judaism's Western Wall.

Some 30 people, both local and just passing through, are in the audience this night for the musical show that Allah Nash has put on for two years now.

The regularity of their performances depends on both availability and motivation of the artists in a city where religious and social inhibitions are widespread.

- Band of sisters -

Tonight's threesome is Yossale, Fatma and Supernova, each in turn playing the role of bad girl as they swear, spit, knock back the booze and tease members of the audience.

At a previous show, two high-kicking drag queens in uniform hosed spectators with plastic machineguns as martial music played in the background.

"I love very black humour and seeing the appalled looks on people's faces as they wonder how far we will go," says Fatma, who is actually a curvaceous 23-year-old apprentice comedian called Michael.

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"I love to generate political and religious tension on stage. We have to do something funny, we have no choice -- either we laugh or we cry."

"I'm also an extremist in a city that's full of them. Above all else, I adore toying with people's moral boundaries."

He grew up in Jerusalem in one of the strictest of Jewish religious backgrounds -- the Lithuanian branch of the Ashkenazi ultra-Orthodox, who wear long kaftans and fur hats -- but never felt religious.

Yossale was also raised in an Orthodox Jewish household, but after coming out the two young men cut ties with both their religion and relatives.

As for the third member of this band of sisters, taking such a step would be unthinkable.

Supernova is an Arab Israeli currently doing his national service at a base near the Palestinian political capital of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank.

A clinging ballgown shows off his muscular physique to perfection.

- Haunted by tradition -

But the mere thought of a family member or military commander finding out that he's a homosexual haunts Supernova.

Under one satin glove lurks an engagement ring, a constant reminder that he will soon be married off to a young Muslim woman from the same community.

Israel is considered to be a pioneer in both promoting and respecting gay rights, including adoption for same-sex couples and preventing discrimination.

Its commercial capital Tel Aviv hosts a flourishing gay scene, a fact the government never misses a chance to point out.

But just 40 kilometres (25 miles) away in Jerusalem, homosexuals live another life altogether.

Cross-dressers in the ancient city used to have another hangout in the early 2000s in the form of the Shushan, another magnet for gays.

However, it was burned down in an arson attack in 2005 and is now no more.

And in July last year, ultra-Orthodox Jew Yishai Schlissel waded into a Gay Pride parade in Jerusalem with a knife and stabbed a 16-year-old girl to death.

Last month he was convicted of murder and six counts of attempted murder.

Despite the threats a drag queen may expect to face on the streets of Jerusalem, Yossi is undeterred as he leaves the bar with Yossale after the show.

He's wearing a faux leopard-skin coat above his mini-skirt.

"So what's the worst that can happen? The taxi driver makes a pass at me?" Yossi laughs.
Firefighters evacuated a Houston school after a 4-alarm fire erupted at a warehouse in the Spring Branch neighborhood on Thursday. Houston Fire Department warned nearby residents to shelter in place and avoid runoff after the fire swept through a unit storing chemicals, according to KHOU.

This drone video shows an aerial view of the huge fire on the 1700 Laverne Street block. Credit: Instagram/goodchilddrone
Manila (AFP) - Philippine leader Benigno Aquino called Friday on the trailing presidential candidates to unite against frontrunner Rodrigo Duterte, in a sensational finale to one of the nation's most divisive election campaigns.

Aquino has repeatedly warned Duterte is a dictator-in-the-making, and made the plea after polling showed the favourite had kept a huge lead ahead of Monday's elections despite allegations he has overseen vigilante death squads and a spate of controversies over vulgar campaign speeches.

Aquino told CNN Philippines in an exclusive interview that he was trying to get the other four presidential candidates to unite to defeat Duterte, who he said was likely to get 30 percent of the vote.

"The whole point is to get even two of them to unite... then we have more than 40 percent," Aquino said.

In the Philippines, a president is elected simply by who gets the most votes.

Duterte has 33 percent support, with Senator Grace Poe next at 22 percent and administration pick Mar Roxas at 20 percent, according to the latest poll released on Friday by Social Weather Stations.

Aquino said he had talked to Roxas, his longtime friend and fellow Liberal Party stalwart, and sent a text message to Poe to try and get them to forge an eleventh-hour partnership.

This would mean one of the candidates withdrawing. If one did, they would ask Filipinos to instead vote for the other, but there are no guarantees the public would do so.

- 'Unity, decency' -

Roxas gave a short speech on Friday night saying he was ready for talks with Poe.

"I call for unity, I call for decency, I call for democracy," Roxas said, without saying whether he would be prepared to back out.

Poe, the adopted daughter of a dead movie star who owes her popularity to her father, said she would not pull out of the race, seemingly leaving a Roxas withdrawal the option for a unity ticket.

"We can talk anytime. But I will say this now... if they are thinking that someone among us will withdraw, I won't withdraw," Poe told reporters.

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Duterte, 71, has gained support across all sectors of society by fashioning himself as an anti-establishment politician who can achieve quick fixes to deep-rooted problems, particularly crime.

The mayor of the southern city of Davao has vowed to end crime within six months of his presidency by ordering security forces to go on a killing spree.

He has said he would kill tens of thousands of criminals, then pardon himself if he was found guilty of mass murder.

Duterte has been accused of running vigilante squads in Davao that have killed more than 1,000 suspected criminals. At times he has boasted about his involvement but on other occasions denied any links to the vigilantes.

A self-confessed serial adulterer, he also generated outrage last month when he joked at a campaign rally that he had wanted to rape a "beautiful" Australian missionary who was sexually assaulted and murdered in a 1989 Philippine prison riot.

He has faced a barrage of last-minute attacks in recent days over allegations he hid millions of dollars in undisclosed bank accounts.

Duterte has also infuriated his opponents by warning he is prepared to shut down Congress if lawmakers disagree with him, and establish a revolutionary government that could rewrite the constitution.

Upending conventional political wisdom, the controversies appeared to have fuelled his popularity.

Aquino, whose mother led the 1986 "People Power" revolution that toppled dictator Ferdinand Marcos, said Thursday the Philippines was in danger of repeating history if Duterte was elected.

"We won't be able to run if we make a U-turn back to a martial-law style," Aquino said at Roxas campaign rally.

"We will go back to a Marcos-style martial law where he will monopolise the decision making."

Duterte's campaign manager on Friday described the election as a "war of the classes".

"All the innuendos, attacks, and mud thrown at us and our candidate, are acts of desperation, of panic and of cowardice," Leoncio Evasco said in a statement.
Rodrigo Duterte launched his profanity-laced campaign to become president of the mainly Catholic Philippines with a tirade against the pope that included branding the revered figure's mother a prostitute.

On the hustings since, the 71-year-old has joked about wanting to rape a murdered Australian missionary, and vowed to kill tens of thousands of criminals then pardon himself for mass murder.

Duterte has also bragged about his Viagra-fuelled serial adultery, called his daughter a "drama queen" for talking about being sexually abused, and told lawmakers he would shut down Congress if they did not follow his orders.

Using such tactics -- which have drawn comparisons with US Republican Donald Trump and similarly upended conventional political wisdom -- Duterte has become the shock favourite to win Monday's election.

While it is easy to be fooled by Duterte's controversial comments, analysts say he has shrewdly created an image as an anti-establishment figure capable of providing quick solutions to deep-rooted problems such as crime and poverty.

"He has become the symbol of frustration, maybe even desperation, of those who have put their trust and hope in the elite in this country," Manila-based political analyst Ramon Casiple told AFP.

Since the fall of dictator Ferdinand Marcos in 1986, the Philippines has been mostly ruled at local and national levels by a small group of families backed by powerful businessmen -- a system that has helped entrench one of Asia's biggest rich-poor divides.

The current president, Benigno Aquino, belongs to such a clan and has in the final stages of his rule been fiercely criticised for what many voters regard as perpetuating an economic model that favours the wealthy.

Aquino has overseen an economy that has grown by an average of six percent a year since assuming the presidency in 2010, and won international plaudits for trying to tame crippling corruption.

But roughly one quarter of the nation's 100 million people still live below the poverty line, barely changed from six years ago.

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- Targeting the elite, criminals -

Duterte, a lawyer who has ruled the major southern city of Davao for most of the past two decades, has on the campaign trail repeatedly criticised the elite and the national power structure.

"When I become president, by the grace of God, I serve the people, not you," he told reporters this week, referring to the elite.

"Shit. My problem is the people at the bottom of society... my problem is how to place food on the table."

Duterte says the key to eradicating poverty is to end crime, and he is offering a brutal solution that bypasses a notoriously corrupt and inefficient judicial system -- ordering security forces to kill criminals.

He promises to end crime within six months of his presidency, a seemingly impossible goal that nevertheless millions of Filipinos are embracing.

A rank outsider in the presidential race a few months ago, Duterte is now front-runner with a double-digit lead over his rivals in surveys.

Aquino's preferred successor, Mar Roxas, a US-educated scion of a powerful political family, is in equal second, struggling to overcome perceptions he has no empathy for the poor.

- Death squad fears -

To prove that he can end crime, Duterte has regularly pointed to his record in Davao, which he says he has turned into one of the Philippines' safest cities.

Human rights groups allege Duterte's zero-tolerance approach to crime has included running vigilante squads that have killed more than 1,000 people.

Duterte bragged in a recent television interview about running the squads, saying 1,700 people had actually been killed, and at other times denied any knowledge of them.

But he has been unequivocal about his vows to unleash hell on criminals, making those plans a central feature of every campaign speech.

In one address to a crowd in a small town in the northern Philippines attended by AFP, Duterte smiled as he gave business advice to those in the crowd to start up funeral parlours in preparation of him winning the election.

"The funeral parlours will be packed... I'll supply the dead bodies," he said, to huge cheers and laughter.

His aides regularly brief journalists that Duterte's outrageous language is part of an act, and that he will be far more moderate once he is ensconced in the presidential palace.

Aquino, whose mother led a "people power" revolution that overthrew strongman Ferdinand Marcos in 1986, thinks otherwise.

The president, who is limited by the constitution to a single term, has repeatedly warned voters they risk another dictatorship if they elect Duterte.

For Clarita Alia, a 62-year-old slum dweller in Davao, the fears are a lot more personal.

Alia lost four sons, the youngest aged 14, to what she and rights groups believe were the death squads.

"He has no morals," Alia told AFP at her shanty home this week.

"God help us if they win... parents look after your children."
By Marc Jones LONDON (Reuters) - The early signs coming from Ukraine's new government are "very encouraging" one of the International Monetary Fund's top officials said on Friday. Mahmood Pradhan, deputy head of the IMF's European department delivered the Fund's first public thumbs up to the new-look set up in Kiev following the departure of a number of key Western-backed reformers last month. "We think the signs of the new government's willingness to adhere to the program, to stay with the program and their own adjustment efforts are very encouraging," Pradhan told a news conference. "We hope the program will be on track and most importantly, the adjustment policies already implemented which are paying dividends and are working, will continue." The IMF is due in Ukraine next week to formally review whether progress has been made with its $17.5 billion aid-for-reforms program. Pradhan said it was too early to say how long the process would take. (Reporting by Marc Jones; Editing by Sandra Maler)
When my wife and I built an addition on our home about 30 miles north of New York City in 2006, we had what at the time was considered a state-of-the-art Wi-Fi system. Now, a decade later, our Wi-Fi wasn't the envy of anyone, and lately our wireless Internet router had been earning the outright enmity of our game-playing, 11-year-old son. Clearly it was time for us to upgrade.

While having an older router was one issue, its distance from some of the rooms in our house was another. When we wired the new rooms, the router was installed in the old basement, next to the fairly complicated audio/video and broadband distribution system where the Verizon FiOS network terminal was also located. Even though the Internet router was a top-performing model at the time, we found that we had lousy wireless speeds in some of the more distant rooms in the addition, such as our upstairs master bedroom.

While the details might vary, these are all problems that many homeowners face. Like others in our situation, we had a few options. One was buying a new, faster wireless router and placing it in a central location. But most routers are pretty ugly, and we didn't really want one prominently located in our main living space. Another was buying a Wi-Fi extender, but since most extenders have a single radio for sending and receiving data, we'd lose half our broadband speed.

That's why I was excited when I heard about Eero, which promises a simple-to-install Wi-Fi system that eliminates dead spaces, even in a sprawling house.

Consumer Reports bought a set of Eero routers, and like other models in our wireless router Ratings program, testers put it through a rigorous set of lab tests. But to fully evaluate its claims, our engineers also wanted to install the Eero in a typical home.

I was happy to raise my hand as a volunteer.



What the Heck is Eero?

Perhaps the easiest way to describe Eero, at least to music fans, is that it's the Sonos of routers. Like the Sonos wireless speaker system, multiple Eero units in your home communicate with each other, forming what's called a mesh network, except this one is for Wi-Fi rather than music.

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One of the main benefits is that your deviceslaptops, phones, smart TVs, and so oncan simply connect to the nearest Eero, and benefit from the full speed that the network can handle.

Given that they take their name from Finnish-American architect Eero Saarinen, it's not surprising that the Eero units are sleekly styled; each is a palm-size square with curved edges and a glossy white finish. (They remind me a bit of Apple's Airport Express Internet router.) Beneath each unit's stylish exterior is the technology you'd expect from a top-end home router, including support for the latest (802.11ac) Wi-Fi standard. (Specs are at our Eero model page.)

For the test in my house, we used an Eero three-pack, which costs $499; individual Eero units cost $199. Included in the package were the routers, AC adapters for each, and a fairly thick Ethernet cable that connects to your modem.

Simple Setup

I found one of Eero's most appealing features to be ease of set-up. While I know a lot about TVs, streaming media, and audio, I'm still a neophyte when it comes to networking.

Most wireless routers require you to use a computer and browser to configure the system. With Eero, I simply downloaded a free app to my Android phonean iOS version is also availableand followed the on-screen prompts. Your phone connects to Eero via Bluetooth for the initial setup.

You do have to register your device, entering your name, email address, and even your cellphone number to receive a text with a passcode. That's a lot of information to give to the company, but it's required for the system to work. After that, all you really need to do is connect the power cord to an AC wall outlet, plug one Eero unit directly into your router, and wait for the blinking blue light.

I connected the first Eero to a wired Ethernet jack in my kitchen, which is more centrally located than the basement and connected to my modem. Once the Eero was connected, I created a network name and password, plus a name for the Eero (I used the location). Then I was asked whether I wanted to set up additional Eero units.



Eero says that its routers have about a 40-foot range, and can operate through doors and walls. To provide full coverage in my homeabout 2,600 square feet across three levelswe set up two additional Eeros, one in the living room on the main floor, and one in an upstairs room adjacent to my wife's home office. Once powered up, they connected to the other Eero units in my house wirelessly, but I also could have connected these units through wired connections.

Using the Eero app, you can see if your network is online, check upload and download speeds you're getting from your ISP, and see how many devices are connected to the network. In all it took less than 15 minutes to set up the three-Eero system in my home. To me, that was a really big win.

Eero in Operation

Once the Eero system was set up, it provided full coverage throughout my home, even in the master bedroom where Wi-Fi had been so spotty that we'd given up on using a streaming media player to watch Netflix.

Since my old Wi-Fi network was still operational, I used a Wi-Fi analyzer to compare the two, and found that the Eero signal strength was about double what I was getting from the old network. But the difference in speeds was even greater, averaging about 58Mbps (megabits-per-second) compared to 2 to 3Mbps on the old network.

According to my son, who regularly plays "Minecraft" on a PC in his bedroom, coverage there was also much better, with fewer lags in onscreen action. Speeds in his room averaged between 55Mbps to 60Mbps on the Eero network, compared to 10Mbps or less on the old network.

One of the best features of our home is that it's located on the Hudson River, but our Wi-Fi had never been strong enough to let us sit out on our deck and go online. With Eero, the signal was strong enough for me to stream music and videos on my iPad out to the edges of the deck. And I was also able to stream movies in HD quality in the dedicated theater in the basement of our addition.

One other benefit worth noting, especially for families like mine with kids who invite their friends over to play videogames or watch YouTube videos, is that Eero lets you quickly set up a guest network with a separate password, and invite them to join it right from the app.

Regarding security, the company says it uses WPA2 encryption, which is also used by other top-rated routers. One unusual element of Eero is that the system is constantly communicating with the company's servers, so it can regularly push out bug fixes and security updates or patches.



The Bottom Line

Based on both our in-lab testing and what I experienced in my own home, Eero delivers on its promise of being an easy-to-assemble Wi-Fi system that eliminates dead spots. Setup really couldn't be much easier. I found the mobile app to be well thought out and it worked without any hiccups during our trials.

The big question is whether Eero is worth the price. At $499 for a three-pack or $199 for a single unit it's expensive, especially considering that several standalone routers in our Ratings performed just as well, or better by some measures, and cost less. In fact, if you get great Wi-Fi coverage from a single router, there's little reason to move to Eero. It's also probably not the best option for tech-savvy homeowners who want more configuration options during setup.

Eero, of course, will be even more compelling if the price drops once other mesh-style Wi-Fi systems became available. Luma, for example, is promising to launch a very similar Wi-Fi system next month, with a few more features, such as parental controls.

But if you need any further evidence that I think that Eero is a product worth owning, here it is: Right after the test was finished and the Eero system went back to our labs, I went out and bought an Eero three-pack for myself.

And so far, everyone in my family has been happy that I did.







More from Consumer Reports:

8 Ways to Boost Your Home Value

Why your cable TV bill is going up

Get the Best Cell Phone Plan for Your Familyand Save up to $1,000 a Year





Consumer Reports has no relationship with any advertisers on this website. Copyright  2006-2016 Consumers Union of U.S.
ROME (Reuters) - Egypt has handed over the mobile phone records of the head of a street vendors union to Italian investigators who are looking into the killing in Cairo of student Giulio Regeni, a legal source said on Friday. Regeni, who was doing postgraduate research into the union, was last seen by his friends on Jan. 25. His body, which showed extensive signs of torture, was found in a roadside ditch on the outskirts of the Egyptian capital on Feb. 3. Italy, which has repeatedly complained that it has not received full cooperation from Egypt over the killing, has asked for the phone records of 13 individuals as well as a mass of other information, including video from surveillance cameras. Earlier this week, the Egyptian authorities sent to Rome the records of five people, including Mohammed Abdullah, the head of the street vendors union, said the legal source, who has direct knowledge of the probe but declined to be named. The identities of the other four people whose phone data was handed over were not revealed. Italy has not said why it was seeking information about Abdullah. In the aftermath of the 2011 uprising, vendors were often used by police to attack protesters or acted as informers. Some vendors were also targeted by the police for blocking roads. Reuters was not able to contact Abdullah or the Interior Ministry on Friday, a weekend day in Egypt. A Foreign Ministry spokesman declined to comment. The legal source said Italy was also requesting help from Google about Regeni's email account. An email was sent from the account on March 23 and investigators are trying to find out who hacked into it, and why. Italy last month recalled its ambassador to Egypt for consultations to protest what it said was the slow pace of the investigation and the perceived lack of cooperation. Italian investigators are due to fly to Cairo on Sunday for talks with their Egyptian counterparts. Human rights groups have said the torture indicated Regeni, 28, died at the hands of the security forces, an allegation Cairo denies. Three Egyptian intelligence officials and three police sources told Reuters that Regeni was detained by police and then transferred to a compound run by Homeland Security on the day his friends say he disappeared. The Interior Ministry and Homeland Security department denied this, saying Regeni was not held by police or Homeland Security. Following the report, local media reported that two individuals filed criminal complaints asking police to investigate Reuters and its Cairo bureau chief. (Reporting by Crispian Balmer; Editing by Dominic Evans)
What Drove Eli Lilly's 1Q16 Revenue Growth?

(Continued from Prior Part)

Cardiovascular franchise

Eli Lillys (LLY) cardiovascular franchise contributed ~15.5% of the companys total revenues in 1Q16. Key drugs in this segment include Cialis and Effient.

Cialis

Cialis is a drug for the treatment of erectile dysfunction and benign prostatic hyperplasia. Cialis sales increased by over 7% to $576.7 million during 1Q16, as compared to $538.3 million for 1Q15. This included an increase of 31% in the US markets and a decrease of ~13% in international sales. Sales in US markets were driven by higher realized prices while the sales in international markets decreased due to lower volumes and the negative impact of foreign exchange. Cialis competes with Pfizers (PFE) Viagra, Auxiliums (AUXL) Stendra, and GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) and Bayers Levitra.

Effient

Effient is antiplatelet used with aspirin for prevention of blood clots in arteries and stents, thereby reducing the chances of heart-related events for patients with an acute coronary syndrome. Effient sales increased by nearly 8% to $131.5 million in 1Q16, as compared to ~$121.8 million in 1Q15. This included an increase of 16% in the US markets and a decrease of ~20% in international sales.

Other drugs in the cardiovascular franchise

Other drugs in the cardiovascular franchise include Adcirca and Reopro. Adcirca is the same as Cialis but used for pulmonary arterial hypertension. Adcirca reported a 6% growth in revenues at $20 million for 1Q16. Reopro is a glycoprotein inhibitor injection used to prevent blood clots in arteries for patients with an acute coronary syndrome. Reopro is manufactured by Janssen Biologics, a Johnson & Johnson Company (JNJ), but its marketed by Eli Lilly. Reopro reported a decrease in revenues to $17.8 million in 1Q16.

Investors can consider ETFs like the SPDR S&P Pharmaceuticals ETF (XPH), which invests 3.9% of its portfolio in Eli Lilly, or the iShares US Healthcare ETF (IYH), which holds ~2.9% of its total assets in Eli Lilly.

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Original Ghostbusters actor Ernie Hudson has responded to the heavy criticism Paul Feigs upcoming reboot has drawn - and predicts this will change once fans see the film.

Speaking to Iowa radio host Tony Loconsole (quotes via ComicBook.com), the 70-year old actor confirmed he will make a cameo appearance in the new movie, along with all the surviving stars of the 1984 original: Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Sigourney Weaver and Annie Potts (Rick Moranis being the only absentee).

Hudson also spoke highly of director Feigs work with co-writer Kate Dippold, and the new Ghostbusters line-up Kristen Wiig, Melissa McCarthy, Leslie Jones and Kate McKinnon:

Its a great script, the girls are really funny, they have a great camaraderie and chemistry that I think is going to come through on screen.

And I think a lot of the criticism will go away once they see the movie because I think the movie is going to be pretty extraordinary.



The decision to cancel the long-in development Ghostbusters 3 in favour of a reboot was immediately greeted with contempt by a vocal contingent of fans - and (regardless of what some commentators insist) this is at least in part down to sexism, owing to Feigs decision to cast an all-female quartet.

Its worth noting that Hudson himself felt similarly early in the day. Back when the reboot was first announced in October 2014, the actor spoke out against the idea:

All-female I think would be a bad idea. I dont think the fans want to see that I think it would be wrong to do another movie that didnt include the guys. And that didnt include me!

This having been said, Hudson had also admitted elsewhere he didnt think the original cast could do another Ghostbusters without the late Harold Ramis.

It would be easy to accuse Hudson of now supporting the reboot simply because hes on its payroll - but if he tells us its going to great, who are we to disagree?

Doubtless we can anticipate many more words on the subject from all corners before the new Ghostbusters arrives in cinemas on 15 July.

Picture Credit: WENN, Sony

Read More:

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By Gina Cherelus

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The manhunt for an inmate who escaped from the prison wing of a New Jersey psychiatric hospital entered its fourth day on Friday, but officials say the convict is no longer in the town where he was spotted earlier in the week.

The state Department of Corrections has taken over the investigation into the escape of Arthur Buckel, 38, but would not comment on his suspected whereabouts, said spokesman Matthew Schuman.

"We dont want the inmate, or anybody contemplating contacting the inmate, to know where were going to be searching," Schuman said, declining to say whether officials think Buckel had left Barnegat Township.

Barnegat Mayor John Novak on Thursday said at a press conference that investigators believed Buckel was longer in the shore town, where he had been caught on surveillance video shopping at a CVS drugstore.

"There is information developed that Mr Buckel is no longer in the Barnegat area," Novak said.

The inmate, who was two weeks away from parole when he escaped, disappeared on Tuesday from a minimum security unit at Ancora Psychiatric Hospital in Hammonton, about 40 miles west of Barnegat.

Buckel was serving a three-year sentence for aggravated assault, drug possession and burglary. He previously served a 25-year sentence for manslaughter in the killing of a 10-month-old baby.

Dozens of law enforcement officers from surrounding towns were searching for Buckel, said Captain Jack Sramaty, spokesman for the Ocean County prosecutor's office on Thursday. Residents were warned to keep their doors locked and vehicles secured.

Schools in Barnegat were expected to be under heightened security again on Friday.

"He wasn't armed on Tuesday morning when he left the prison, but who knows what he's found," Sramaty said.

The department's canine and fugitive units were part of the search effort, along with numerous law enforcement agencies, he said.

Buckel, who would have reached parole eligibility on May 21, Schuman said, could now face an additional three to five years in prison for escaping.

(Additional reporting by Barbara Goldberg; and Joseph Ax in New York; Editing by Alistair Bell and Steve Orlofsky)
Berlin (AFP) - The EU won't sacrifice its high food safety standards for better US auto market access in a transatlantic trade deal being negotiated, a German minister said Friday.

The comments by Agriculture Minister Christian Schmidt were the latest criticism of the thorny negotiations toward sealing a wide-ranging pact that would create a free-trade zone covering 850 million people.

Washington and Brussels want the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) completed this year before US President Barack Obama leaves office, but it has faced mounting opposition on both sides of the Atlantic.

Schmidt told the German news weekly Der Spiegel that it was time for the United States to "at last make a move" if it wants the agreement.

"So far at least they have hardly made any serious concessions," the minister was quoted as saying in an early excerpt of the interview in Saturday's edition of Der Spiegel magazine.

US policymakers are wrong if it thought "they can lure us Germans with concessions in the automotive sector", he said.

"We won't sacrifice our high food safety standards in a barter trade for approval of European car blinkers," he said, in reference to industry standards on car parts.

"One has nothing to do with the other," he said. "There won't be any such horse-trading."

Environmental group Greenpeace on Monday released a trove of leaked documents about the closed-door negotiations, claiming that a deal would inflict a dangerous lack of standards on US and European consumers.

To some observers, the draft text suggested that the US side is trying to use the carrot of easing restrictions on auto imports from Europe for concessions on its agricultural exports, perhaps including genetically modified foods.

Germans are growing increasingly wary of the proposed pact, an opinion poll showed Thursday.

Some 70 percent of Germans polled by the dimap institute for broadcaster ARD said it would bring "mostly disadvantages", up from 55 percent in a similar poll in June 2014.

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Chancellor Angela Merkel, meanwhile, this week reiterated her government's official position, saying that she would "do everything to conclude the negotiations", preferably by the end of 2016.

But German Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel, a Social Democrat, warned last month that negotiations on the free trade deal "will fail" if the US refuses to make concessions.

"The Americans want to hold fast to their 'Buy American' idea. We can't accept that," he said.

France has also hit out at the pact, with President Francois Hollande saying this week that Paris would reject it "at this stage" because his country opposes "unregulated free trade".
BERLIN (Reuters) - Europe's migrant crisis is at a "turning point" thanks to a deal with Turkey to stem the number of new arrivals which is showing its first successes, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said in comments published on Saturday. Under an accord struck with the European Union, Turkey has agreed to help stop illegal migrants reaching the continent in return for accelerated EU accession talks, visa liberalization, and financial aid. Juncker told the Funke Media Group that the deal, which came into force last month, was already enabling Europe to better manage the flow of migrants. "We at a turning point," he said. "The deal with Turkey is having an effect and the number of migrants is sinking significantly." He added there still needed to be a sustainable drop in the numbers before the "all-clear" could be sounded, but said the deal had given the 28-member bloc room for maneuver to create a fair and efficient asylum system in the medium term. Europe is grappling with its largest migration wave since World War Two, as a traditional flow of migrants from Africa is compounded by refugees fleeing wars and poverty in the Middle East and South Asia. The deal sealed off the main route by which a million migrants crossed the Aegean into Greece last year, but some believe new routes will develop through Bulgaria or Albania as Mediterranean crossings to Italy from Libya resume. Juncker criticized the decision to build a fence between Greece and Macedonia. "I don't share the view of some that this fence - or building fences in Europe in general - can contribute anything to the long-term solution of the refugee crisis," he said. "Fences may prevent refugees form moving on, but no fence and no wall is high enough to deter these people from coming to Europe when they are fleeing war and violence in their home countries." (Reporting by Caroline Copley)
Embrace dramatic landscapes and unique creatures on a trip to remember.

With awe-inspiring landscapes and a captivating collection of some the world's most fascinating wildlife -- from giant tortoises to penguins and sea lions -- there's a good reason the Galapagos Islands have been a bucket-list destination for decades. This breathtaking archipelago off the coast of Ecuador features pristine isles (along with a marine reserve), which double as World Heritage sites and protected wildlife refuges. And with few people inhabitants, the islands' very fragile ecosystem is one of the few places in the world where the human impact is minimal. And unlike other tropical locales, you can't simply pack your bags and visit the archipelago's isolated islands, but that's part of the appeal of making the trek. To get the most of out of your Galapagos vacation, here are 10 tips for planning an unforgettable trip.

Invest in the right camera.

Few places offer the unique blend of diverse landscapes and close-range wildlife-watching options of the Galapagos, and you'd be doing yourself a disservice by neglecting to bring a camera that can capture the fearless and beautiful creatures you will encounter during your trip. If you're willing to splurge, pick a camera that allows for exchanging lenses, so you can swap from a macro lens to shoot the turtles up close and a telephoto lens for when you're capturing a flock of birds flying into the distance. It's also a wise idea to invest in an underwater camera (think: a GoPro) or a waterproof case for your smartphone, so you can capture the incredible underwater creatures such as stingrays, sea lions and sea turtles.

Understand the costs.

A trip to the Galapagos Islands isn't cheap, but there are ways to be more frugal and get the most bang for your buck. For starters, book your flights, hotels, tours and cruises as early as possible to ensure you get the best rates. Cruise costs range and vary based on luxury. The higher-end charters with private cabins, gourmet fare and National Geographic-level guides can cost anywhere from $750 to more than $1,000 per day, while more modest cruises with standard staterooms and limited amenities can cost around $100 to $300 per day. Keep in mind, the cost to enter the Galapagos is $100 in cash, though sometimes the admission fee is included in cruise and tour prices.

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Decide whether you want to explore on land or by boat.

Whether you're on a tight budget or looking to splurge, there are a variety of ways to discover the islands at a wide range of price points. Land tours, for example, are a cost-effective option and charter you to and from your hotel in Ecuador to the islands daily. However, there is a caveat: While the price tag is lower, you won't get as much time on each island -- and the transfer time takes away from your ability to soak in the sights. Alternatively, if you choose to take a cruise, you'll pay a higher premium, but you'll get more time on each island and have the chance to explore smaller, less-visited places only accessible by water. Plus, with many smaller expedition cruise ships accommodating no more than 100 passengers per trip, the onboard vibe is intimate. What's more, smaller cruise ships allow for up-close wildlife encounters.

Know when to go.

The Galapagos Islands experience a rainy and a dry season. While the rainy season, which runs from January to May, brings daily scattered rain showers, it also ushers in the calmest seas, making cruises more enjoyable for visitors who are prone to sea sickness. What's more, calm seas make for optimal chances for animal sightings and brighter, more abundant flora and fauna. The high season, which runs from June to August and December to January, aligns with the dry season. Keep in mind this season also brings in higher price tags for tours, hotels, flights and cruises due to demand.

Don't go without a guide.

More than 95 percent of the land area in the Galapagos Islands is protected and listed as a national park, which means you can't visit without a certified park guide to lead you. Knowledgeable guides will show you the 60-plus iconic and protected sights, like Isabela Island, which is home to the largest seabird and the giant tortoise breeding center, and point out notable wildlife species as you go. Plus, guides offer insight on the Galapagos' history and the isles' ecological future.

Give yourself at least seven days to explore.

If you want to immerse yourself in the Galapagos, plan to stay longer than just a few days. Most cruises vary in length, from five to 14 days, but expert tour guides recommend planning a weeklong trip to enjoy the main islands and experience the archipelago's top wildlife refuges. Carving out seven days and six nights to explore in and around the islands, along with a day for travel time, is an ideal time frame. And since Galapagos National Park limits the number of cruise ships and visitors each day, it's best to plan far in advance and consider visiting during the low seasons to ensure entry.

Plan to snorkel or dive.

One of the best ways to take in the islands' diverse creatures is by swimming and snorkeling alongside them in beautiful, unspoiled waters. If you're a certified diver, head to the Wolf and Darwin islands, where there are an abundance of hammerhead sharks, large schools of multicolored fish, eagle rays and more. And if you would rather swim or snorkel around the islands, you'll have the chance to glide right next to the isles' famous sea turtles and sea lions. For the best snorkeling, head to Lobos Island or Kicker Rock.

Get ready to hike.

A scenic hike through the Galapagos' volcanic landscape will give you the chance to experience diverse and inspiring views. Some of the best sights come around the Sierra Negra volcano, which is the world's second-largest crater. Another can't-miss area is Isabela Island, which is home to six volcanoes and plenty of moon-like crater rocks. A hike will also give you a chance to uncover the island's flora and fauna, as well as the many mammals and birds who inhabit the islands, including marine iguanas.

Pack smart.

Because the islands are coastal, the weather across the archipelago can vary drastically, transitioning from pleasant, sunny days with light showers to chillier evenings. To ensure you're covered, pack layers, including long-sleeve shirts, tank tops, shorts and pants. And if you want to save space, consider packing air-dry or sweat-resistant clothing. Also, make sure to bring a swimsuit. Even if you don't want dive or snorkel, the beautiful waters beckon visitors to take a dip. A hat, sunglasses, sunscreen, bug spray, sturdy walking and hiking shoes are other essentials to battle the heat, along with motion sickness medicine, especially if you travel when the waters are a little choppier. If you love birds, also make sure to bring along some binoculars.

Don't miss the penguins.

The Galapagos' penguins -- one of the star species of the islands -- are not to be missed. The largest population of the island's penguins can be found near Tagus Cove, which is also where you'll find over 30 percent of the island's giant tortoises. Since most cruise itineraries only hit the southern and central islands, you may have to make your own plans to visit the small Galapagos penguins on this western island, but the trek will be worthwhile.
As of last month, all signs suggested that Alden Ehrenreich had become the frontrunner to play a young Han Solo in the upcoming, Solo-focused Star Wars anthology movie. Now, it appears that hes won the role.



Multiple media outlets, including the Hollywood Reporter, Variety, and Deadline, are reporting that Ehrenreich, 26, is in the process of closing the deal to take over as pilot of the Millennium Falcon, a job originally held rather famously by Harrison Ford. All of the reports cite unnamed sources confirming the news, but reps for Disney, Lucasfilm, and Ehrenreich have not officially gone on the record.

Assuming those unnamed sources are correct, this is a huge moment for Ehrenreich, who until just a few months ago, was essentially an unknown entity. His performance earlier this year in the Coen brothers Hail, Caesar!  in which he played a stalwart, but simple-minded cowboy-actor in the 1940s  captured the attention of many critics and film writers, including those of us at Yahoo, and has now catapulted him into the most successful franchise in film history. Apparently, hell go from Would that it were so simple to Laugh it up, fuzzball, or at least its young Han Solo equivalent.

Watch a featurette about Ehrenreichs role in Hail, Caesar!:

Plot details for the Han Solo movie remain under wraps. We know that it will be directed by Chris Miller and Phil Lord of 21 Jump Street and The Lego Movie and that its being scripted by Lawrence Kasdan and Jon Kasdan. Production is due to begin in January, with 2018 set as the target release date.

As for what we know about Ehrenreich, here are a few things:

 He got his start as an actor after Steven Spielberg happened to see his performance in a bat mitzvah video. I made a short film with a friend of mine when I was 14 that played at a friend of ours bat mitzvah, the actor told Vulture back in 2009. In it, I ran around as a skinny little punk, trying on girls clothes and eating dirt  To be honest, you go to a bat mitzvah in Los Angeles and you can count on at least a few industry people to be there. But it wasnt like we thought of that. Well, Steven Spielberg was there. I got a call afterwards from these girls from school who told me that he had really liked the movie. Pretty soon, the DreamWorks people had gotten me an agent, and by now Ive gone on hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of auditions.

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 All those auditions led to some decent work for Ehrenreich, even if  until now  none of it made him a household name. He worked with Francis Ford Coppola twice, in a pair of experimental films called Twixt and Tetro. He also played Danny, the estranged stepson of Cate Blanchett, in Woody Allens Blue Jasmine, and the lead in 2013s Beautiful Creatures, based on the young adult novel.

 Before his Han Solo work gets seen by the masses, hell appear in a couple of additional movies that already wrapped production: an Iraq War drama called The Yellow Birds, which co-stars Tye Sheriden and Jennifer Aniston, and a film directed by Warren Beatty and loosely based on the latter years of Howard Hughess life. (Beatty reportedly plays Hughes.) That second project still doesnt have a title, but both it and The Yellow Birds are expected to be released later this year.

 And finally, as he proves in Hail, Caesar!, this guy is ready for his close-up.
By Steve Gorman

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A former sanitation worker was convicted on Thursday of murdering nine women and a teenage girl as the "Grim Sleeper," a Los Angeles serial killer who preyed on prostitutes and drugs addicts in a crime spree dating back 30 years.

The Superior Court jury reached its verdict on all 10 counts of first-degree murder against Lonnie David Franklin Jr., 63, after deliberating a day and a half, capping a trial that ran more than 11 weeks.

Franklin, who could face the death penalty, was also convicted of attempted murder for an attack on an 11th victim, Enierta Washington, who survived being shot in the chest, raped, pushed out of a car and left for dead in 1988.

Washington took the witness stand during the trial to identify Franklin as the man who attacked her.

Judge Kathleen Kennedy instructed jurors to return to the courtroom on May 12 for the start of the trial's penalty phase.

Franklin was convicted of shooting seven women to death between August 1985 and September 1988, then strangling a 15-year-old girl and strangling or shooting two other women in a second round of killings between March 2002 and January 2007.

The 13-year interval between the two spates of murders earned the killer the "Grim Sleeper" moniker. Since his 2011 indictment, police said they had gathered evidence tying Franklin to at least six more unsolved slayings, some of which occurred during the previously presumed lapse in killings.

Detectives said those came to light from reviewing old case files and seeking the public's help in identifying women and girls pictured among 180 photos found in Franklin's possession.

Franklin, who did not testify in his own defense and sat impassively in court as the verdicts were read, has been in custody since his arrest in July 2010.

During the trial, his attorney sought to raise questions about DNA evidence presented by prosecutors and suggested a "mystery man" was behind the killings.

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Los Angeles County Deputy District Attorney Beth Silverman told jurors that DNA collected from victims' bodies showed all 10 had sexual contact with Franklin just before they died. Prosecutors said they had been sexually assaulted.

Their nude or partially clothed bodies were found dumped in alleys and trash bins in South Los Angeles, an area gripped by rampant drug abuse, prostitution and other crime at the height of a crack cocaine epidemic there during the 1980s.

In closing arguments, Silverman described Franklin, a former mechanic and trash collector, as "a serial killer who was basically hiding in plain sight."

In court on Wednesday after deliberations began, Silverman disclosed Franklin also was convicted in Germany for his role in a gang rape while he was in the Army in the 1970s.

Victims' relatives said Thursday's verdict gave them a sense of closure.

"It's been 30 years, and we need this," said Irene Ephriam, whose niece, Henrietta Wright, 34, a mother of five, was found slain in 1986.

Wright said she would pray for Franklin, adding, "but he didn't give them [his victims] the chance to do that."

(Reporting by Steve Gorman; Editing by David Gregorio and Andrew Hay)
By Veronica Brown and Pratima Desai

LONDON (Reuters) - Excalibur Steel, the management buyout group interested in purchasing Tata Steel's (TISC.NS) assets in Britain, will meet bankers on Friday to seek financing for the deal.

Tata UK executive Stuart Wilkie, who leads the group, said that it will hold talks with one British and three international banks to present its proposal to save the loss-making business from the threat of closure.

"Ideally, by the end of next week we will have secured necessary lines of finance," Wilkie told Reuters.

Excalibur and Indian-born Sanjeev Gupta's metals group Liberty House both submitted letters of intent to buy Tata's UK operations this week.

The two groups have emerged as potential bidders after India's Tata Group announced plans in March to sell its entire UK steel operation, which had been hit by cheap Chinese imports, soaring costs and weak demand.

Keen to avoid the loss of 10,000 jobs, the Conservative government has offered hundreds of millions of pounds in support to potential buyers and said it could take a 25 percent stake in the firm.

However, Excalibur expects to shed about 1,000 jobs from Tata's UK workforce.

Wilkie, based in south Wales as head of Tata's UK strip steel business, expects the British government to back its statement on funding.

"All the discussions we've had with government are in line with that."

Wilkie added that efficiencies achieved since last year, when the company was losing about 1 million pounds a day had now reduced losses to a quarter of those levels.

"Thats significantly better than what was in the (turnaround) plan," added Wilkie, who has decades of experience in the industry after started his career in the giant Ravenscraig steel mill in the Scottish town of Motherwell.

CAR INDUSTRY APPEAL

Liberty House has outlined a plan to replace the giant blast furnaces with facilities to process imported slab steel instead.

Wilkie said however that such steel would not be suitable for Tata UK's current customers in the motor industry.

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"Over 60 percent of what we make goes to downstream business and key within that are the automotive and packaging industry. To the best of my knowledge nobody at this moment is using electric arc furnaces to make steel (for those sectors) on a mass production basis."

He said the advantage of Excalibur's plan was that it would use the two existing blast furnaces. "We have to work with the equipment we have, on an ongoing basis, to keep employment going."

The group confirmed that it wants 10 percent of its funding to come from employees, including those in the management buyout team.

Tata's sizeable pension obligations would be a sticking point for anyone wanting to take on the business.

The retirement fund is estimated to be in deficit by around half a billion pounds.

"We would expect the government in conjunction with the pension regulator, the company and trustees of the pension would close the pension scheme and make it secure," Wilkie said, adding that Excalibur would start a new pension scheme.

"If the liability for the pension was on the table, then everybody would walk away," he said.

(Additional reporting by Clara Denina in London; Editing by David Goodman and Keith Weir)
Former Homeland star Damian Lewis is once again captivating audiences on Showtime, this time through a ruthless one-percenter on the drama, Billions. The character displays a level of confidence not unlike presidential candidate Donald Trump, who Lewis admits might share similar political views with his celebrated role.

In an exclusive interview with emmy magazine, Lewis speculates on whether Bobby Axelrod, his hedge-fund billionaire character on Billions, would vote for the former Apprentice star.

READ: Donald Trump Ate a Taco Bowl to Show He 'Loves Hispanics' on Top of a Bikini Pic of His Ex-Wife

"He might," Lewis says with a chuckle.

Axelrod matches wits against Paul Giamatti's U.S. Attorney Chuck Rhoades on the series. Convinced that Axelrod is making his fortune through insider trading, Rhoades leads a crusade to take him down.

Emmy Magazine

The dueling characters are complex, showing both honorable and devious attributes, and Lewis points out what he feels are Axelrod's most likable qualities.

"His confidence, I think, is appealing," he shares. "I think his blue-collar roots and the way in which he epitomizes the rise of the working man and I suppose subscribes in some way to the idea of the American dream -- that any man can make something of himself. I think that's attractive to people."

MORE: Five Things You Don't Know About Damian Lewis

Lewis also notes that Axelrod's devotion to his wife might make audiences sympathetic to the character as well.

"I think it's appealing that he's married to a woman of his own background," he says. "Malin Ackerman, who plays my wife, is staggeringly beautiful, but she is not a trophy wife. She's someone that he has known most of his life and is from the same sort of neighborhood."

Despite winning a Golden Globe and an Emmy for playing Nicholas Brody on Homeland, Lewis' biggest role has been that of family man, and one in which he is extremely likable.

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WATCH: 'Homeland' Cast on Season's Explosive Finale

The 45-year-old British actor has a 9-year-old daughter, Manon, and an 8-year-old son, Gulliver, with his wife, actress Helen McCrory. While it's hard for Lewis to leave his family for stretches of time to film, sometimes there are perks to the job the whole family can enjoy, like meeting Metallica.

Emmy Magazine

"Metallica showed up in the first season," Lewis recalls. "I had met Lars Ulrich a couple of times previously and he was kind enough to give a pair of his drumsticks to my son, who is a drummer, so that's pretty cool."

Lewis' interview with emmy hits newsstands on May 17.

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By Dmitry Zhdannikov and Rania El Gamal

LONDON/DUBAI (Reuters) - As OPEC officials gathered this week to formulate a long-term strategy, few in the room expected the discussions would end without a clash. But even the most jaded delegates got more than they had bargained with.

"OPEC is dead," declared one frustrated official, according to two sources who were present or briefed about the Vienna meeting.

This was far from the first time that OPEC's demise has been proclaimed in its 56-year history, and the oil exporters' group itself may yet enjoy a long life in the era of cheap crude.

Saudi Arabia, OPEC's most powerful member, still maintains that collective action by all producers is the best solution for an oil market that has dived since mid-2014.

But events at Monday's meeting of OPEC governors suggest that if Saudi Arabia gets its way, then one of the group's central strategies - of managing global oil prices by regulating supply - will indeed go to the grave.

In a major shift in thinking, Riyadh now believes that targetting prices has become pointless as the weak global market reflects structural changes rather than any temporary trend, according to sources familiar with its views.

OPEC is already split over how to respond to cheap oil. Last month tensions between Saudi Arabia and its arch-rival Iran ruined the first deal in 15 years to freeze crude output and help to lift global prices.

These resurfaced at the long-term strategy meeting of the OPEC governors, officials who report to their countries' oil ministers.

According to the sources, it was a delegate from a non-Gulf Arab country who pronounced OPEC dead in remarks directed at the Saudi representative as they argued over whether the group should keep targeting prices.

Iran, represented by its governor Hossein Kazempour Ardebili, has been arguing that this is precisely what OPEC was created for and hence "effective production management" should be one of its top long-term goals.

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But Saudi governor Mohammed al-Madi said he believed the world has changed so much in the past few years that it has become a futile exercise to try to do so, sources say.

"OPEC should recognise the fact that the market has gone through a structural change, as is evident by the market becoming more competitive rather than monopolistic," al-Madi told his counterparts inside the meeting, according to sources familiar with the discussions.

"The market has evolved since the 2010-2014 period of high prices and the challenge for OPEC now, as well as for non-OPEC (producers), is to come to grips with recent market developments," al-Madi said, according to the sources.

ORCHESTRATION

For decades Saudi Arabia had a preferred oil price target and if it didn't like the prevailing market level, it would try to orchestrate a production cut or increase in OPEC. It would contribute the lion's share of the adjustment and forgive smaller and poorer members if they failed to comply with the group's agreement.

Back in 2008, the late King Abdullah named $75 (52 pounds) a barrel as the kingdom's "fair" oil price, most likely after consultations with the long-serving oil minister Ali al-Naimi.

When the Saudis orchestrated the last output cut in 2008 - to support prices during the global economic crisis - oil jumped fairly quickly back above $100 from below $40. Later Riyadh again made known its price preference on a few occasions but in recent years it has effectively stopped sending any signals.

This follows the fundamental changes on oil markets. In the past five years, the development of unconventional oil production from U.S. shale deposits and other sources such as Canadian oil sands has made redundant the idea that crude is a scarce and finite resource. Russia, which is not an OPEC member, has also contributed to the ample global supply.

"NO FREE RIDERS"

Dispensing with price targets represents a massive change in Saudi thinking. This is now being driven largely by 31-year-old Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who took over as the ultimate decision maker of the country's energy and economic policies last year.

When oil was viewed as scarce, the kingdom thought it had to maximise its long-term revenues even if that meant pumping fewer barrels and yielding market share to rival producers, according to several sources familiar with the Saudi thinking.

With the importance of oil declining, Riyadh has decided it is wiser to prioritise market share, the sources say. It believes it will be better off producing more at today's low prices than reducing output, only to sell the oil for even less in the future as global demand ebbs.

On top of this, Riyadh has pressing short-term needs including tackling a budget deficit which hit 367 billion riyals (68 billion pounds) or 15 percent of gross domestic product in 2015.

"The oil industry is, relatively speaking, not a growth industry any more," said one of the sources familiar with the Saudi views inside the OPEC governors' meeting.

In the past, low oil prices used to push global demand much higher but today's rising efficiency of motor vehicles, new technology and environmental policies have put a lid on growth.

Despite record low prices in the past year, demand is not expected to grow by more than 1 million barrels per day in 2016, just one percent of global demand.

One thing is guaranteed: the kingdom will not go back to the old pattern of cutting output any time soon to support prices for the benefit of all producers, Saudi sources say.

"The bottom line is that there will be no free riders any more," al-Madi said at Monday's meeting. "Some OPEC members should 'walk the talk' first," he told his colleagues.

Even Riyadh's rivals doubt it will perform any U-turn. "Saudi Arabia doesn't give a damn about OPEC any more. They are after U.S. shale, Canadian oil sands and Russia," a non-Gulf OPEC source said.

(Additional reporting by Alex Lawler; writing by Dmitry Zhdannikov; editing by David Stamp)
By Chris Kahn

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The U.S. presidential election may turn out to be one of the world's biggest un-popularity contests.

Nearly half of American voters who support either Democrat Hillary Clinton or Republican Donald Trump for the White House said they will mainly be trying to block the other side from winning, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released Thursday.

The results reflect a deepening ideological divide in the United States, where people are becoming increasingly fearful of the opposing party, a feeling worsened by the likely matchup between the New York real estate tycoon and the former first lady, said Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginias Center for Politics.

"This phenomenon is called negative partisanship," Sabato said. "If we were trying to maximize the effect, we couldn't have found better nominees than Trump and Clinton."

Trump has won passionate supporters and vitriolic detractors for his blunt talk and hardline proposals, including his call for a ban on Muslims entering the United States, his vow to force Mexico to pay for a border wall, and his promise to renegotiate international trade deals.

Former Secretary of State Clinton's appeal to voters seeking continuity with President Barack Obama's policies, has won her a decisive lead in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, but finds strong opponents among those disillusioned by what they see as lack of progress during Obama's tenure.

The poll asked likely voters about the primary motivation driving their support of either Trump or Clinton heading into the general election on Nov. 8.

About 47 percent of Trump supporters said they backed him primarily because they don't want Clinton to win. Another 43 percent said their primary motivation was a liking for Trump's political positions, while 6 percent said they liked him personally.

Similar responses prevailed among Clinton supporters.

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About 46 percent said they would vote for her mostly because they dont want to see a Trump presidency, while 40 percent said they agreed with her political positions, and 11 percent said they liked her personally.

The April 29-May 5 poll included 469 likely Trump voters and 599 likely Clinton voters. It has a credibility interval of 5 percentage points. (For results, click http://tmsnrt.rs/1TLCbqX)

To be sure, voters opinions could change over the next several months. Candidates will be feted at party conventions, will square off in a series of national debates, and will be targeted by millions of dollars worth of advertisements.

But the negative atmosphere is likely to reign, says Alan Abramowitz, an Emory University professor who has studied the rise of negative partisanship in America.

Both campaigns probably will decide their best strategy is to work even harder to vilify each other, he said.

"Its going to get very, very negative," he added.

That would play into a longer-term trend.

A 2014 study by Pew Research Center found that Democrats and Republicans have shown increasingly negative views toward each other over the past few decades. In 2014 more than a quarter of Democrats, and more than a third of Republicans, viewed the opposition as "a threat to the nations well-being."

Barbara Monson, 59, a Republican from Murray, Utah, is among them. "No matter who the Republican (nominee) is, I would have voted for him," poll respondent Monson said of her support for Trump. "Its never going to be Clinton. Never."

Jo-Anne Michaud, 69, an independent voter from Abingdon, Maryland, told Reuters she would try to keep an open mind. Although she has voted for both Republicans and Democrats in the past, she feels repelled by Trump.

"I used to like the guy when I watched his show," Michaud said. "But I just hate the way he talks now. I dont think hes a nice person deep down inside."

(Editing by Richard Valdmanis and Clarence Fernandez)
Exploring the Scout Sixty's Irish Heritage

When, recently, several weeks of gentle pleading finally resulted in Indian Motorcycle handing me the keys to a Scout Sixty, I knew exactly where I wanted to go: Ireland.

That's probably not what you were thinking. After all, the Sixty is a motorcycle imbued with more than a century of American heritage, seemingly designed first and foremost for the American road. But, as with so many American things, if you trace its history back far enough you'll find an Irish beginning.

In this case, that beginning is Charles B. Franklin, an engineer and motorcycle racer born in Dublin in 1880. There's a plaque commemorating Franklin's achievements outside the house where he was born. And, because among those achievements are the designs of both the original Indian Scout and Scout 101, it made sense to ride the Sixty there.

READ MORE: 2016 Indian Springfield  Vintage Look, Modern Ride! | RideApart

Ireland

My adventure starts, though, in Cardiff, Wales  separated from Dublin by about 300 miles, roughly 80 of which are across the Irish Sea. I schedule a night ferry and set out to cross the breadth of Wales, which you probably didn't know is the birthplace of St. Patrick (yes, that St. Patrick).

For me, the whole trip will be like this: tiny connections within tiny connections. I learn of Prince's death just as I'm putting on my jacket to leave. Pointing the Sixty westward, I take certain pride in the fact that its modern liquid-cooled V-twin engine was designed in Minnesota.

Ireland

The roads are empty; the best time to travel across Wales, it seems, is after 9pm on a Thursday. This means I can relax and keep the bike below 65 mph -- with no screen, that's where I'm happiest. The engine is capable of more (on another day I'll hit 105 mph) but going slow means not having to lean hard into the wind, not having to fight to hold on.

I've strapped a Kriega US10 bag to the triple tree and managed to secure an Oxford T50 Aqua rollbag to the fender, despite the lack of any bungee points. It's back-to-basics traveling. You know those hipster videos where some sexy tattooed person in a shirt that costs more than your monthly income straps a rolled Mexican blanket to the 'bars of a Sportster and takes six days to ride from San Diego to San Luis Obispo? That's how I feel: like someone cool.

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No, that's not quite right. I feel legitimately cool. I like this vision of me. Everything feels right. The Sixty's engine is smooth and drones into the darkness. To my surprise, despite the fact I am 6'1 and the Sixty is mega-low, I am happy-comfortable.

Indian Scout Sixty

I arrive at the port too early, pull a Thermos of tea from my bag and wait. After a while another motorcyclist shows up. He's just bought a BMW K1600GT in England and is taking it back to Ireland. Apparently he's saved a lot of money by buying it in the UK. We pass the time together trying to figure out what all the buttons and wheels and switches on his bike do. He delights in playing with the electronic suspension.

"Watch this, Chris," he says, making the bike go up and down. "Watch what she does."

I'm a big fan of techno whizzbangery, but the excessive amount of it on the K1600GT makes me appreciate the relative simplicity of the Sixty. Just turn the key and go.

Ireland

Eventually, the handful of overnight travelers are allowed to board just before 2am. Four and a half hours later I roll off the boat at Rosslare with a lot more time to kill. Dublin is less than 100 miles away and the friend I'm staying with won't get home from work until 5 that evening.

The best course of action is to try to get lost. I adopt a tactic of approaching people and saying: "I'm trying to get to Dublin, but want to go by a really scenic route."

The Irish, though, know their country  no wildly inaccurate suggestions are made. Not only do people give good directions, but offer suggestions of interesting things to see along the way. Even with tourist stops, though, I'm within The Pale by lunchtime, so I divert down into the Wicklow Mountains, the area that provides water for the Guinness brewery.

READ MORE: Riding On the Wrong Side: Living the Dream | RideApart

Bumpy roads result in constantly readjusting my luggage.

The narrow mountain roads here are of abysmal quality and too much for the Sixty's suspension. Fortunately, no one else is around. I slow to 10 mph and bounce along imagining I'm crossing the Himalayas. Every few miles I have to stop to re-secure the Oxford bag. There's something strangely fun about all this, but in hindsight I probably should have asked Indian to equip the bike with a rack.

This road was built by British soldiers in the early 1800s to allow them to hunt down Irish rebels. These days it connects a handful of charming towns, dotted by the odd pub or cafe in between. I stop to have tea and cake, and find myself in conversation with a 90-year-old woman who is baffled by Donald Trump. The Irish love to talk politics but her issue with him is a little less ideological.

"I can't understand how the hell any woman could go to bed with him," she says.

I found a town twinned with one from my home state. I can't imagine how that pairing ever took place.

A little more than a century ago, the British would have still been patrolling these mountains. Charles Franklin would have been selling Indian motorcycles in Dublin and racing the bikes at the Isle of Man. He competed in the famous road race every year from 1908 to 1914.

When World War I hit, a 33.3-percent tax on foreign luxury goods (such as motorcycles from America), designed to raise money for the British war effort, put him out of work. Franklin landed on his feet, though, earning a position within Indian's design team and setting sail for Massachusetts in late 1916.

On my second morning, I have a severe hangover and have lost my voice from shout-talking with friends in the pub. This happens every time I come to Dublin, but today it's a little worse because I hadn't realized that the lager of which I consumed seven pints was 7 percent. I'm less resilient than I used to be...

Indian Scout Sixty

I don't get moving until mid-afternoon. Eventually, though, I am steady enough to ride into the heart of Dublin. Almost exactly 100 years after Franklin left the city I find his house and park the Sixty in front of it to take pictures. Perhaps things were quieter when he lived here, but these days the road is busy, so I'm drawing a crowd.

"Jaysus! I never knew," exclaims one man after I explain what I'm doing. "I walk by this house every day, an' I never knew dat. She's a beautiful machine, man. An' yer man who's responsible was from right here. Dat's amazin'!"

As I take pictures he takes it upon himself to tell every passerby the story of Charles Franklin, which grows more elaborate with each telling. At one point, an open-top tourist bus is stopped in traffic and he's shouts up at them: "Do ye see diss gorgeous machine here? Diss amazin' American motorcycle here? It's the best motorcycle in the world, and the man who designed it was born an' raised right here in diss house!"

READ MORE: 5 Great Cruiser Motorcycles For New Riders | RideApart

Charles Franklin plaque

Franklin never returned to the house after 1916. He brought his family to Springfield, Massachusetts, in 1920  the same year he designed the first Scout. Two years later, he was responsible for the first Indian Chief. Then the lesser-known single-cylinder Prince in 1924, and the Scout 101 in 1928. The latter, of course, is the bike everyone remembers, the bike still favored by Wall of Death riders.

On this weekend the country is commemorating 100 years since the Easter Rising. Irish history is anything but clear cut, yet many see that event as the beginning of the Irish revolutionary period  the spark that helped lead to a free Ireland. Riding around on these streets, I wonder what Franklin must have thought about all that.

Of course, you can get too lost in thinking about these things. That night, my friend and I go to see an independent wrestling show and one of the bad guys is from Northern Ireland. The crowd chants "Sitch-yee ay-shun" ("situation" in a Northern Ireland accent) and he eggs them on in faux protest.

Killarney National Park

On my final day in Dublin, I pack up the bike under weak spring sunshine as my friend bounces his son on the Sixty's seat.

"Where to now?" he asks.

"I'm going to wander for a few days before catching the ferry back," I say. "I'm aiming for Tipperary today, then west to follow the coast."

"It's a long way to Tipperary," he says.

"So I've heard."

Indian Scout Sixty

Sticking to smaller roads, I make leisurely progress south. The secondary roads, known as N roads, are gentle and undulating. The speed limit on them is 100 kph (62 mph), and Irish drivers are surprisingly respectful of the law. It all makes for an environment that leaves me imagining something more than looks has been carried forward from the Scout models of yore.

The Irish spirit is in there, too. The Sixty fits this place well. And the country's citizens somehow sense the connection. When I'm stopped, or even just moving slowly through villages, people walk out into the road to talk to me about the bike. Parents ask to have their children be photographed on it.

With the exception of mountain passes, most of the roads are good and I manage to avoid heavy rain. Even going slow, though, the smallness of Ireland reveals itself. I get from point A to point B far too quickly, so I loop back and ride the same roads again. In this way I suppose the bike reveals its American nature; it makes me long for roads that never end.

Learn more about Chris and the rest of RideApart's excellent staff here: The RideApart Team

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The eyes, long described as the windows to the soul, appear to be windows to the brain, as well: Scientists have developed an eye-scan technique that may detect Alzheimer's disease at its earliest stage, before major symptoms appear.

With early detection, a person could seek treatment for Alzheimer's at a time when therapies would be most effective at slowing the progression of the memory-robbing disease, the researchers said.

The research was presented today (May 5) at the annual meeting of the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology (ARVO) in Seattle.

Alzheimer's disease, the most common form of dementia, is an epidemic that shows no signs of abating, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Death rates for Alzheimer's disease are increasing: More than 5 million Americans live with the disease, and by 2050, this number is projected to rise to 14 million, according to CDC statistics.

There is no cure for Alzheimer's, but medicines can slow the development of many of the classic symptoms, such as loss of memory and communication skills, mood swings and depression. [7 Ways the Mind and Body Change With Age]

The cause of Alzheimer's is unknown. The disease appears to be associated with the accumulation of misfolded proteins in the brain called beta-amyloid and tau. The misfolded proteins can form tangles in the neural network of the brain, disrupting normal communication between neurons.

Doctors can only be sure that a patient had Alzheimer's after he or she dies, because an autopsy is needed to provide definitive proof of the presence of these microscopic brain tangles. PET scans of the brains of living people can provide doctors with evidence that amyloid and tau are accumulating, but these scans are expensive and invasive, requiring the patient to be injected with radioactive tracers that bind with these proteins and glow during the scan.

In the new report, researchers in New England devised a different, noninvasive approach to finding Alzheimer's early, using optical coherence tomography (OCT), an established medical imaging technique used to observe microscopic details. The OCT machine can be configured to painlessly scan a patient's retina, the tissue in the back of the eye, to look for abnormalities.

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The researchers recruited 63 study participants who were at high risk for Alzheimer's disease, based on emerging symptoms and family history. The researchers first conducted PET scans to establish the extent of the participants' beta-amyloid accumulation. Then, they performed OCT scans and compared the results. [6 Foods That Are Good For Your Brain]

The researchers used a technique called blue laser autofluorescence in conjunction with the OCT, which causes certain cellular components to glow without requiring the injection of any dye or chemical tracer.

The OCT scan could not directly detect beta-amyloid proteins, but it did reveal shadow-like inclusion bodies  aggregates of cellular material, likely proteins  that correlated well with the level of beta-amyloid close to the retina revealed by the PET scan, according to Claudia Santos, a graduate student at the University of Rhode Island who led the study.

"There is no treatment for Alzheimer's, [but] it may be because we are trying to intervene too late in the disease [process] and can't reverse the dementia," Santos told Live Science. This OCT technique "might be a good screening tool for preclinical Alzheimer's, since the OCT can be performed at any ophthalmologist clinic."

Santos said the OCT technique, once perfected, could be a first step in assessing the development of Alzheimer's disease. Should the OCT scan reveal evidence of beta-amyloid, doctors could then perform PET scans for a more thorough diagnosis and then prescribe medicines.

"Our study is longitudinal [conducted over time], so we will perform the OCT and PET scan again in about 20 months after these baseline results  to see [if] the level of amyloid-beta is increasing," Santos said. "We hope this study can be replicated with different subjects."

The research was conducted at Lifespan-Rhode Island Hospital in Providence and was co-led by Peter Snyder, a professor of neurology at Brown University, also in Providence.

Follow Christopher Wanjek @wanjek for daily tweets on health and science with a humorous edge. Wanjek is the author of "Food at Work" and "Bad Medicine." His column, Bad Medicine, appears regularly on Live Science.

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(Reuters) - Facebook Inc (FB.O) lost the first round in a court fight against some of its users who sued the social networking company, alleging it "unlawfully" collected and stored users' biometric data derived from their faces in photographs.

The judge presiding over the case in a California federal court on Thursday turned down Facebook's motion seeking dismissal of the suit.

Facebook filed the motion arguing that the users could not file a complaint under Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA) as they had agreed in their user agreement that California law would govern their disputes with the company, and that BIPA does not apply to "tag suggestions."

The court found that Illinois law applies and that the plaintiffs have stated a claim under BIPA.

The complainants had alleged that Facebook's face recognition feature that suggests "tags" on photos unlawfully collected and stored biometric data, in violation of the Illinois BIPA.

The case was filed by some Illinois residents under Illinois law, but the parties agreed to transfer the case to the California court, the court order showed.

Facebook was also hit with a lawsuit over its plan to issue new stock last month.

The company said in April it will create a new class of non-voting shares in a move aimed at letting Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg give away his wealth without relinquishing control of the social media juggernaut he founded.

Facebook was not immediately available for comment.

(Reporting by Sruthi Shankar and Parikshit Mishra in Bengaluru; Editing by Gopakumar Warrier)
Fashion and fast food might not be obviously connected, but that hasn't stopped several restaurant chains from flexing their style muscles over the past year.

This week KFC hit the headlines with the announcement that the US restaurant is introducing edible nail polishes to its Hong Kong clientele. Exploiting the brand's famous slogan "Finger Lickin' Good," the polishes, which come in two different flavors, are designed to taste like the KFC chicken recipes for "Original" and "Hot and Spicy." According to Racked, the beauty items will be fabricated from natural ingredients, with the most popular flavor being put to the public vote with a view to it being mass produced.

In April 2015 Burger King made a surprise assault on the perfume market in Japan with the launch of its "Flame-Grilled Fragrance." Designed to imitate the meaty aroma of the chain's Whopper Burger, the limited-edition product enabled wearers to carry a constant reminder of the fast food outlet.

Last Spring also saw fast food giant McDonald's team up with Parisian fashion concept store Colette on a limited-edition clothing and accessories collection featuring the fast food chain's most iconic products. The Big Mac, the Happy Meal and the Sundae formed the basis of the capsule collection, which comprised tees, bags, scarves, phone cases and notebooks bearing pixelated designs.
Forget the tired stereotype of the Tiger Mom who demands As and perfect violin performances from her Asian American childrenor else. A new project from the U.S. Department of Education aims to dispel the model minority myth and turn the spotlight on the real academic struggles of Asian American and Pacific Islander students in the nations public schools.

The data disaggregation effort will give states $1 million in federal grants to collect accurate school performance information on K12 kids from various Asian American and Pacific Islander backgrounds, Secretary of Education John King announced in a video message released Wednesday. The program is part of the White House Initiative on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, which since 2009 has sought to improve the quality of life of people from those backgrounds. The information from this latest data disaggregation effort could give educators insightssuch as how Japanese Americans do in comparison with Cambodian Americans or other minority groupsinstead of lumping everyone under one Asian American umbrella.

RELATED: Asian American Activists Are Refusing to Join the Fight Against Affirmative Action

King noted that Asian Americans and Pacific Islanderscommonly referred to as AAPIsmake up the fastest-growing demographic group in the nation. Theyre likely to be disenfranchised by the model minority myth, the notion that virtually all AAPIs have access to a quality education and are affluent, which has prevented AAPI communities from fully benefiting from federal programs and resources that can support vulnerable and underserved people, said King.

Robert Teranishi, a professor of education at UCLA, told TakePart that the need for this data is one of the most important civil rights issues for the AAPI community. Teranishi, who is also the Morgan and Helen Chu Endowed Chair in Asian American Studies at the UCLA Asian American Studies Center, said the problem is that all data being bunched together provides a misleading statistical portrait of what is happening for various subgroups that comprise the population.

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When educational attainment data on Asian Americans is grouped into a single category, it presents a fairly rosy picture: Just under 54 percent of Asian Americans have a bachelors degree, roughly 21 percent more than the nearly 33 percent of whites who have earned one, according to U.S. Census Bureau data from 2015. But when the numbers on AAPI students are disaggregated, the differences are stark.

Although students from Chinese, Indian, Japanese, and Korean backgrounds have significantly higher bachelors degree attainment levelssome 72 percent of Indian American adults have a college degreedisaggregating data reveals that their peers from Cambodian, Laotian, and Vietnamese backgrounds, as well as kids from Samoan and Native Hawaiian cultures, have markedly lower college-graduation rates. But because Indian Americans outnumber people from smaller AAPI minority backgrounds, they skew educational attainment stats to appear better than they are.

RELATED: Will Americas Promise Mean College Is Only for White Kids?



The Golden State has the largest AAPI population in the nation, which makes addressing the needs of AAPI students a priority for the California-based Campaign for College Opportunity. Last fall the nonprofit, which seeks to ensure that all state residents have an equal opportunity to go to collegeand graduatereleased a first-of-its-kind report that disaggregated data on higher education attainment among 48 ethnicities in Californias AAPI and Native Hawaiian community.

We specifically knew that there were wide differences among different ethnic groups that really get lost, Michele Siqueiros, president of the Campaign for College Opportunity, told TakePart. Part of why we think disaggregating data is so critical is that unless you know the differences in terms of students college preparation, their ability to succeed and get to graduation, theres no way that an institutionboth high schools, in terms of addressing and improving college preparation, or colleges, in terms of really supporting students to get to a degreecan target interventions.

RELATED: Whats Behind Americas Widening College Graduation Gap?

Another striking gap the Campaign for College Opportunity report revealed is between the college graduation rates of Chinese American students in California73 percentand Samoan students, 29 percent. Similar gaps could be found in the data on Native Hawaiian, Cambodian American, and Laotian American students. We found that, depending on the different ethnic groups, there was just a huge variance around issues of poverty, whether or not they were of limited English proficiencyall things that obviously affect students ability to be prepared for college, explained Siqueiros.

A notable example is seen in populations of Hmong, an ethnic group that is spread across several countries in East and Southeast Asia, including China, Laos, and Thailand. According to U.S. Census Bureau data, the groups largest representation can be found in the heartland, in Minnesota and Wisconsin. The group is the largest racial minority around Eau Claire, Wisconsin, and David Shih, an English professor at the University of WisconsinEau Claire, told TakePart that he feels encouraged by the federal push to disaggregate data because it can help both K12 schools and universities better serve them.

Hmong people tend to have high poverty and low college attainment rates, but because of a lack of disaggregated data, the extent of their challenges across various regions isnt known. Students from those backgrounds likely have parents who are refugees, which really does separate the Hmong community from Chinese, Japanese, and Korean Americans. I understand the challenges that they face in the educational system because of their unique history in this country, said Shih. I myself am Chinese American, and my history and experiences are quite different from most of the Hmong American students that Im serving.

Shih also expressed concern that data collection efforts might rely too heavily on standardized testing or other assessments of students English-language proficiency. Ive had a number of Hmong students who have been tracked into remedial tracks or lower tracks within high schools based on perceptions of their proficiency in English, he said. Ive had students who are AP English students but are also asked to prove their English-language proficiency on tracking tests. Sometimes theyre diagnosed as needing English-language-learner services when they dont need them.

Shih also stressed the importance of educators analyzing disaggregated data on AAPIs according to gender. In Eau Claire, Hmong American girls and women are more likely to be treated as model minorities than are boys and men, who are often treated similar to the way black and Latino males are treated, said Shih. One of the things Ive heard over and over again is how often theyre discouraged from going to four-year universities, like the one where I teach. Instead theyre tracked into technical colleges or two-year colleges.

RELATED: Why Community Colleges Cant Solve Americas Higher Ed Woes

Skeptics that might think that allocating $1 million toward data disaggregation efforts isnt enough, but Siqueiros remains optimistic. Certainly the federal government isnt going to solve the problem alone, but I think it starts to indicate to institutions that they should be using and looking at data in a disaggregated fashion, she said. Teranishi echoed that sentiment, noting, Eventually, states that collect and utilize disaggregated data can be a model of best practices for other states to emulate.

As for whether more data will squash stereotypes about AAPI students once and for all, disaggregating Californias data has served as a challenge to the oft-repeated claim that Asian American students are taking all the spots at elite universities. There is that perception, but the reality is that over half of all Asian Americans start at a community college in California, said Siqueiros. Theyre not all at the University of California. Its a very narrow conversation when youre not looking at the data as a whole, and there are very real barriers and challenges that AAPI students face.

Shih cautions that we shouldnt forget how the model minority myth developed in the first place. The stereotype gained a lot of traction not to praise or elevate Asian AmericansChinese and Japanese Americansbut to shame black Americans and build up public support against black Americans and their calls for racial justice, he said. More data will help reveal underserved AAPI groups and show the experiences they have with systemic racism, he said.

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By Bernie Woodall

WINDSOR, Ont. (Reuters) - Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCHA.MI) (FCAU.N) and Alphabet Inc's (GOOGL.O) Google have yet to determine who would own data collected in their collaboration on self-driving vehicles, FCA Chief Executive Sergio Marchionne said Friday.

"That's exactly what has to be determined," Marchionne said in response to a reporter's question on data ownership. "We need to get to a stage where the car is viable so we can discuss the spoils of that work. We're not there."

Earlier this week, FCA and Google announced they agreed to fit Google's self-driving technology into 100 Chrysler Pacifica minivans, marking the first time a Silicon Valley firm has teamed up with a traditional carmaker to develop an autonomous vehicle.

Marchionne said there are many aspects of the project with Google that have yet to be determined, such as whether the two will develop an open-source software platform that could be shared with others.

Marchionne said what has been agreed so far with Google is limited, but he suggested that the alliance could evolve.

"The objective of this first phase of our collaboration is very targeted," Marchionne said at a news conference at FCA's Windsor plant. "It's designed to take Google technology into the minivan. It's very, very focused. It has a very clear objective and a very clear timeline. What develops from here, we'll see."

Google declined to comment.

Marchionne said FCA has been purposely restrained in comparison with other automakers that have bought Silicon Valley companies to speed development of self-driving vehicles.

Lack of clarity over the question of who owns data in a collaboration with Google is one of the reasons most big automakers have refrained from tying up with the Silicon Valley giant.

"It's too early in this process to try and make the call about who is going to end up with sort of the winning solution," Marchionne said.

Marchionne said he has noticed "efforts by others to pre-empt what I consider to be a natural evolution of choices and so making unequivocal bets with companies who are in that space today, and effectively precluding the development with others is a very dangerous bet."

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Marchionne did not name those companies.

In March, General Motors Co (GM.N) agreed to acquire San Francisco self-driving car startup Cruise Automation. Daimler AG (DAIGn.DE), BMW (BMWG.DE) and Volkswagen AG (VOWG_p.DE) last year bought digital mapping company HERE to accelerate their autonomous driving development.

This week, Ford Motor Co (F.N) said it would invest $182 million in San Francisco-based Pivotal Software, to boost Ford's software capabilities.

(Reporting by Bernie Woodall; Editing by Nick Zieminski and Richard Chang)
By Bernie Woodall WINDSOR, Ont. (Reuters) - Fiat Chrysler Automobiles and Alphabet Inc's Google have yet to determine who would own data collected in their collaboration on self-driving vehicles, FCA Chief Executive Sergio Marchionne said Friday. "That's exactly what has to be determined," Marchionne said in response to a reporter's question on data ownership. "We need to get to a stage where the car is viable so we can discuss the spoils of that work. We're not there." Earlier this week, FCA and Google announced they agreed to fit Google's self-driving technology into 100 Chrysler Pacifica minivans, marking the first time a Silicon Valley firm has teamed up with a traditional carmaker to develop an autonomous vehicle. Marchionne said there are many aspects of the project with Google that have yet to be determined, such as whether the two will develop an open-source software platform that could be shared with others. Marchionne said what has been agreed so far with Google is limited, but he suggested that the alliance could evolve. "The objective of this first phase of our collaboration is very targeted," Marchionne said at a news conference at FCA's Windsor plant. "It's designed to take Google technology into the minivan. It's very, very focused. It has a very clear objective and a very clear timeline. What develops from here, we'll see." Google declined to comment. Marchionne said FCA has been purposely restrained in comparison with other automakers that have bought Silicon Valley companies to speed development of self-driving vehicles. Lack of clarity over the question of who owns data in a collaboration with Google is one of the reasons most big automakers have refrained from tying up with the Silicon Valley giant. "It's too early in this process to try and make the call about who is going to end up with sort of the winning solution," Marchionne said. Marchionne said he has noticed "efforts by others to pre-empt what I consider to be a natural evolution of choices and so making unequivocal bets with companies who are in that space today, and effectively precluding the development with others is a very dangerous bet." Marchionne did not name those companies. In March, General Motors Co agreed to acquire San Francisco self-driving car startup Cruise Automation. Daimler AG , BMW and Volkswagen AG last year bought digital mapping company HERE to accelerate their autonomous driving development. This week, Ford Motor Co said it would invest $182 million in San Francisco-based Pivotal Software, to boost Ford's software capabilities. (Reporting by Bernie Woodall; Editing by Nick Zieminski and Richard Chang)
Enchanting is indeed the operative word for Kaisas Enchanted Forest. This documentary about a foreign visitors lifelong fascination with an isolated Laplander race, their mythologies and one storytelling matriarch in particular feels itself like an artifact from some remote, slightly fantastical culture. The result is as much like a Guy Maddin movie as an anthropological dig, with a goldmine of archival materials complemented by beautiful animated sequences illustrating Skolt legends. While the subject matter may be esoteric, Katja Guriloffs debut feature is easily delightful and distinctive enough to attract specialized exposure beyond the fest circuit.

Robert Crottet had already had a somewhat stormy life  his mother died giving birth to him, he was raised by a grandmother after clashing with his new stepmum, then had to flee the Russian Revolution  when he was stricken with tuberculosis as a young man in the 1930s. His condition forced him to pause a successful playwriting career for a long-term sanitarium stay. There, with little hope of recovery, he experienced vivid dreams of a remote people whom he decided (after consulting an Arctic explorer) might well be the real-life Skolt Sami, an indigenous ethnic group whose lifestyle had scarcely changed over centuries.

Far from assimilating with the Finnish, Russian or Norwegian societies whose borders they lived near, they maintained their own language, and a semi-nomadic seasonal existence. They only truly lived together in a winter village during the harshest part of the year; the rest of the calendar the 30 or so families dwelt on their separate land plots, fishing and herding reindeer.

Crottet found himself instantly welcomed by the community and was especially taken by a woman named Kaisa, whod learned Russian while working for a monastery in her youth. After he had a curious, friendly encounter by a purported king of the reindeer, she announced hed been chosen by the forest, and could now be told all the stories and legends of her people. He found her a hypnotic storyteller who played the roles of animals even better than humans. He later compiled much of this material into a book called The Enchanted Forest, published when he found himself stranded in London during WWII. He also used the connections hed made there to help the Skolts get back on their feet after the war robbed them of ancestral land and homes. (Sadly, however, their resettled postwar life ended many age-old traditions.)

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Kaisas peculiar, whimsical, richly metaphorical way of speaking (her actual voice is heard here in recordings made during the 1950s) and Crottets sense that you are in a sort of lost world with the Skolts shapes the tenor of whats largely a collage documentary, composed of various archival materials plus some discreetly slipped-in reenactment bits. The meandering, sometimes macabre story she tells thats woven throughout the narrative (and which ultimately turns out to explain how the northern lights came to exist) is charmingly animated by Veronika Bessedina in a manner suggestive of lush vintage childrens book illustrations.

Crottet remained in touch with Kaisa to the end of her life in 1980 (he died a few years later). The photographs he shot, and film shot by his life partner/collaborator Enrique Mendez, show a woman with an impish humor and childlike nature (he called her the happiest, sweetest and most beautiful child Ive ever known) despite a life whose many hardships included the premature deaths of nearly all her children.

Theres a willfully anachronistic, out-of-time flavor to Kaisas Enchanted Forest that lends a beguiling message-in-a-bottle feel. That very much extends to its finely tuned packaging elements, including a gradual late shift to color after primarily B&W content. The only false note is sounded briefly by some hammy voice actor contributions in a sequence about the British publics debate over whether to help the Skolt Sami when theyd suffered so much loss themselves; however, principal voice actors (David Mauffret reading Crottets writings, Sirkka Sanila occasionally filling in for Kaisa) are fine.

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As any experienced movie buff can tell you, its never a good idea to shoot a horror film on a location thats said to be haunted. But director Raymond Yip (credited as Yip Wai Man) has appreciably better luck than his on-screen counterpart in making the most of the situation during Phantom of the Theatre, a spooky and stylish thriller that sustains interest even after it veers from the flamboyantly fantastical to the relatively realistic. Opening in North American multiplexes one week after its Asian premiere, this over-extended yet entertaining tale of fear, loathing and ghastly mayhem in an opulent 1930s Shanghai picture palace could scare up respectable grosses before passing on to the netherworld of small-screen platforms.

Gu Weibang (Yo Yang), an ambitious first-time filmmaker long estranged from his warlord father (Simon Yan), is mysteriously intent on shooting his debut effort, a supernatural romantic melodrama, in a restored movie theater rumored to be infested with restless (and, occasionally, homicidal) ghosts 13 years after a deadly fire in the building. Just as mysteriously, Meng Si Fen (Ruby Lin), a beautiful movie star on the rise, readily agrees to play the female lead, and sticks with the project despite production delays due to gruesome deaths in the theater.

Things get progressively less mysterious  and the movie itself gradually calms down after early outbursts of nightmarish fantasy  as Yip (The House That Never Dies) and screenwriter Manfred Wong slowly reveal the leading ladys ulterior motives and the directors unhappy childhood memories. As for the aforementioned violent demises: The hideously scarred title character (Jing Gang Shan), not to be confused with a similarly notorious denizen of the Paris Opera House, usually relies on chemistry, not chandeliers, to uptick the body count during most of the movie. But as a kinda-sorta homage to Phantom of the Opera, a wayward lighting device is allowed to do at least minor damage in a key scene.

Romance blooms between Gu and Meng  much to the exasperation of Gus girlfriend (Huang Huan), a pathologist who just happens to be in charge of examining corpses culled from the theater  as the director is forced to take over the lead male role in his own film. The blurring of boundaries between actors and their roles, real life and movie fantasy, is a theme repeatedly and not always subtly sounded throughout Phantom of the Theatre. Genre fans may be disappointed as the tone shifts from supernatural to Pirandellian to bittersweetly romantic. But the carefully stylized performances by Lin and Yang go a long way toward making the transitions smooth and, in the final scenes, surprisingly satisfying.

Production values are appropriately lush.
The Q1 earnings season for the finance sector is almost wrapping up with most of its companies having released results. Performance of the companies largely reflected the impact of the several challenges in the quarter in which the market sentiments were weighed down by a number of issues including the slowdown of the Chinese economy, a continued volatility in commodity prices and global growth uncertainties.



Per our latest Earnings Outlook article, about 87.5% of the S&P 500 companies in the finance sector have already reported their results. Total earnings for these companies decreased 7.6% year over year on revenue improvement of 0.5%. However, the beat ratio seems strong with 61.0% surpassing bottom-line expectations and 51.9% beating on top line. Interestingly, given the downward trend in earnings estimate revisions prior to the earnings release, companies pulling an earnings surprise should not sound unusual.



With several other index members set to release results, lets have a look at whats in store for the following companies, releasing results on May 9.



PRA Group, Inc. PRAA: This Virginia-based company is engaged in acquisition and collection of nonperforming consumer loans from credit originators. While the companys escalating operating expenses as well as interest expenses owing to its higher debt levels remain concerns, both cash collections and collector productivity has witnessed record highs in the past several quarters.



Notably, the company has a decent earnings surprise history, as indicated in the following chart.









However, our quantitative model doesnt call for an earnings beat this time. This is because a stock needs to have the right combination of the two key criteria  a positive Earnings ESP and a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) or at least 2 (Buy) or 3 (Hold)  for greater chances of an earnings surprise. Though PRA Group has an Earnings ESP of 4.21%, a Zacks Rank #4 (Sell) lowers the predictive power of ESP. As it is, we caution investors against stocks with a Zacks Rank #4 and #5 (Sell-rated stocks) going into the earnings announcement.



Further, estimate revisions have been on a downward trend over the last 30 days. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for the quarter is pegged at 95 cents, reflecting a decline of 20.17% year over year.



LendingClub Corporation LC: The California based company in the credit service space, expects operating revenues in a range of $147$149 million for the upcoming release. Also, adjusted earnings before Interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) are anticipated within $25$27 million.



Overall expenses are likely to increase due to the marketing expenditures as well as origination and servicing costs, triggered by a rise in loan originations.



The earnings surprise history for the company looks decent.

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However, with an Earnings ESP of 0.00% and Zacks Rank #3, it is difficult to predict earnings beat for LendingClub in the upcoming release. Though Zacks Rank #3 increases the predictive power of earnings beat, we also need a positive Earnings ESP to be sure of the same.



The Zacks Consensus Estimate stands at 1 cent for the first quarter, as against a loss in the prior-year quarter.



FS Investment Corporation FSIC: This Philadelphia-based business development company (BDC) primarily invests in senior secured debt and to some extent the subordinated debt of private middle market companies in the U.S.



Market volatility witnessed in the quarter is likely to keep asset values under pressure. Further a depressed energy sector may affect the asset quality of the companys debt and equity investments in energy and power and related companies.



The company doesnt have a decent earnings history as evident from the chart below.









The Zacks Consensus Estimate of 22 cents for the company for the upcoming release reflects year-over-year decline of about 4.00%. Our quantitative model does not predict an earnings beat. The company has a Zacks Rank #3 with an Earnings ESP of 0.00%.



Stay tuned! Check back on our full write-up on earnings releases of these stocks.



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A 7-year-old girl from Virginia, who was born without hands, has won first place in a penmanship competition.

Read: Meet Mahe, The Service Dog That Soothed Boy with Autism During Hospital Visit

Anaya Ellick, a first grader from Chesapeake, grips a pencil between her two forearms and stands up to get the right angle. She does not use prosthetics, WTKR reported.

Greenbrier Christian Academy principal Tracy Cox told InsideEdition.com that every year, she enrolls her students in the National Handwriting Competition, run by Zaner-Bloser.

When she came across the paperwork for the Nicholas Maxim award that's restricted to students with "a cognitive delay, or an intellectual, physical, or developmental disability," according to the school, she immediately thought of Anaya and knew she would succeed.

Representatives from Zaner-Bloser arrived to Anaya's school earlier this week and presented her with a trophy and a cash award for being named the national winner of the penmanship contest.

Anaya's mom, Bianca Middleton, told InsideEdition.com that she would have never expected this day when she was born. Doctors are still unsure why Anaya was born without hands, she said.

"I want her to always push herself," she said. "I don't want her feeling bad for herself. Nope, that's not happening at this home."

Just like other kids, Middleton said Anaya grew up drawing in coloring books and painting on walls.

Middleton said that even though she and her mom, a special education teacher, first tried different techniques to accomodate Anaya, "she kind of got the technique on her own. No one taught her how to hold a pencil, and she made it work."

From just 3 years old, Anaya started practicing her letters with the help of her grandmother. So it was no surprise that Anaya was practically an expert when she arrived at the Greenbrier Christian Academy School.

When Anaya first applied to the school, Cox said the administration was concerned about whether they would be successful in giving her the best schooling possible.

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"[We] said, 'Alright, are we going to be able to meet her needs?'" Cox said. But once the school year started, they quickly realized that the student was equally as capable as her other first-grade classmates.

The school's superintendent Dr. Ron White, said, "Unless you went in and knew she did not have hands, you would think she's like every other kid in that classroom."

Read: Girl With Autism, 6, Comes Out Of Her Shell With The Help of Her Loyal Companion Cat

In the year she has been at the Greenbrier Christian Academy, Cox said she practices writing every day as a part of normal school curriculum, although attributes much of her success to her support at home.

"It's easy to look at someone and make assumptions based on appearances," the school's principal said. "Anaya destroyed that perception."

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By Letitia Stein

TAMPA, Fla. (Reuters) - A Florida mother agreed to store her gun more safely and take other steps to avoid criminal charges after her four-year-old son picked up the gun she kept in her car and accidentally shot her in the back, state prosecutors said on Friday.

Jamie Lynn Gilt, 31, has entered a deferred prosecution agreement on a charge of unsafe storage of a firearm, Spencer Hathaway, a spokesman for State Attorney's Office in Florida's Seventh Judicial Circuit, said in a statement.

She is required to complete a gun safety course and install a mounted holster in her vehicle, and show proof that firearms in her home are safely stored, the statement said.

Gilt must also give 10 speeches about the March 8 incident, which drew wide attention after local media reported she was a staunch advocate for the right to carry guns, citing her apparent comments on social media.

Gilt was struck in the back, while the child was unharmed. Prosecutors agreed to dismiss the charge recommended by a local sheriff if she meets the safety conditions in their agreement.

"Jamie is happy to be able to share Mothers Day with her family and put this unfortunate incident behind her, her attorney, Bryan DeMaggio, said in a phone interview.

Authorities said Gilt was licensed to carry the weapon that she had placed under the edge of the driver's seat. It slid to the back floor, where her child picked it up.

(Reporting by Letitia Stein; Editing by David Gregorio)
Months after the United States Supreme Court ruled Florida's death-sentencing process unconstitutional, the state's judges are evaluating what the decision means for the hundreds of inmates who remain on death row.

According to the Washington Post, Florida's highest court has been hearing arguments for the case of convicted felon Timothy Lee Hurst, who received the death penalty for the 1998 murder of his coworker Cynthia Harrison. Hurt's criminal case was central to SCOTUS' January ruling, when Justice Sonia Sotomayor said the judge's power to veto the jury's sentencing made it a violation of the Sixth Amendment.

On these grounds, Hurst's lawyers argued on Thursday for their client's death sentence to be reduced to life in prison. Should Florida's Supreme Court justices rule in favor of Hurst, nearly 400 other prisoners could have their sentences overturned as well.

A 2015 protest outside the U.S. Supreme Court against the death penalty

"We're looking at potentially the largest number of death sentences being vacated at a single time," the Death Penalty Information Center's executive director Robert Dunham told the Post.

Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi clarified that though the protocol for issuing a death sentence has been deemed unconstitutional, it is not to say the state's entire death penalty is unconstitutional.

The state doesn't intend to reduce an inmate's sentence, Bondi said, "any time any aspect of the statute is held to be unconstitutional." And it's still up for debate whether the ruling would retroactively clear all current death row inmates.

Former Florida judge O.H. Eaton Jr. said it's difficult to foresee how the pending ruling on Hurst's case would impact other death row inmates, telling the Post, "It could be anything from a minor effect all the way to clearing out death row."
Value investing is always a very popular strategy, and for good reason. After all, who doesnt want to find stocks that have low PEs, solid outlooks, and decent dividends?

Fortunately for investors looking for this combination, we have identified a strong candidate which may be an impressive value; Ford Motor Co. F.

Ford Motor in Focus

F may be an interesting play thanks to its forward PE of 6.46, its P/S ratio of 0.35, and its decent dividend yield of 4.51%. These factors suggest that Ford Motor is a pretty good value pick, as investors have to pay a relatively low level for each dollar of earnings, and that F has decent revenue metrics to back up its earnings.

But before you think that Ford Motor is just a pure value play, it is important to note that it has been seeing solid activity on the earnings estimate front as well. For current year earnings, the consensus has gone up by 5.64% in the past 30 days, thanks to 8 upward revisions in the past one/two months compared to none lower.

This estimate strength is actually enough to push F to a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy), suggesting it is poised to outperform. So really, Ford Motor is looking great from a number of angles thanks to its PE below 20, a P/S ratio below one, and a strong Zacks Rank, meaning that this company could be a great choice for value investors at this time.

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FORD MOTOR CO (F): Free Stock Analysis Report



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By Alisa Tang SINGAPORE (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - When Longdy Chhap was five, polio consumed his body, leaving him confined to a wheelchair and rolling around to play outside in his village near the seedy Cambodian border town of Poipet. By his own telling, his family became poor because of him, so when a broker came to his neighbourhood and offered wayward or disabled children easy money begging across the border in Thailand, the choice was easy for Longdy, who guesses he was about eight at the time. Holding his hand to one ear, he said one voice told him "a disability kid makes a family poor". In the other, he heard the broker's voice: "You will have good money to help your family." So Longdy became one of hundreds of children trafficked from Cambodia to beg on Thailand's streets. There are at least 1,000 trafficked child beggars in Thailand, most of them from Cambodia, according to the Mirror Foundation, a Thai charity that spreads awareness about child trafficking and rescues about 50 children each year. Children like Longdy beg on pedestrian overpasses and busy shopping streets in the Thai capital Bangkok and other cities. Longdy spent years sitting on sidewalks and streets as a child beggar, learning to navigate the police system so well he later could plan to get arrested when he missed his family and wanted to be deported back home. Now 27, he told his story after speaking on a panel at Trust Forum Asia, an event in Singapore last week on trafficking and slavery hosted by the Thomson Reuters Foundation. "NOT MY WORLD" As a child in Poipet, Longdy helped with his parents' noodle and spring roll shop, waking at 3 a.m. to chop vegetables and meat with his four siblings as their mother cooked. When seasonal rains poured down on the dusty neighbourhood roads, his wheels got stuck, caked in mud, stranding him at home where he watched as other children headed to school. His father once asked him if he wanted to enrol. "I really wanted to, but I saw them all play with their two legs, and I thought no, it's not my world," Longdy said, sitting in a hotel lobby in Singapore, his crutches at his side. When the broker came to his home, she was full of promises. "You just sit and ask, and Thais give you money," he recalled her telling him. So one day, he was loaded into a car with other children, covered with a tarp and smuggled into Thailand. As the smugglers neared checkpoints, the children would get out of the car and walk through the jungle, someone pushing Longdy in his wheelchair. When they passed the checkpoint, they would meet up with the car and get in again. The first few weeks the children were well fed and free to watch TV - a treat for Longdy considering there was only one TV in his village, which he could watch by paying the owner shots of cheap local brew. But then the children began long days begging, dropped off at 5 a.m., picked up at 6 p.m., and warned not to move. If Longdy did not collect enough money, he would not be fed. The broker said she would send all his wages to his family, but Longdy's mother received only about a third of his earnings. "FROM ZERO TO 10" The last time he was pulled off the streets, Longdy was referred to a shelter run by the International Organization for Migration in Battambang, a Cambodian city southeast of Poipet that was far away enough to keep him off the streets. After three years there he moved at the age of 13 to a shelter run by the aid organisation Hagar International in the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh. He described hitting other children and flying into a rage, breaking the television, electric fan or chairs. "Some staff really hated me because of my behaviour. Even now, the staff that hated me say, 'Unbelievable that you changed,'" Longdy said in his gentle voice, crediting them for turning his life around. "Hagar changed me from zero to 10." At first he did not want to meet with the counsellor, but the counsellor lured him with candy, cake and Coca-Cola. As their relationship warmed, he opened up, and life got better. He helped Hagar staff in the office, and later became a mentor for the boys programme. When he finished 12th grade at age 23, he decided to never give up on his studies. He is halfway through a bachelor's degree programme in psychology, studying on a scholarship at the Royal University of Phnom Penh. He is also learning English. In his spare time, he volunteers as a counsellor for Flame, a local organisation helping children from slums. He hopes to get a master's degree, or even a doctorate, and to help children like himself who have suffered traumas. "I want to share my expertise, experience," he said. "I don't look down on myself anymore. Some people may look at me and laugh, but I don't care. I know what I have to do. I know my background: I was a beggar. But now I'm a counsellor." (Reporting by Alisa Tang, editing by Katie Nguyen. 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)
The wildfires in Alberta, Canada that forced more than 80,000 people from their homes continue to rage, keeping residents evacuated and prompting more emergency plans to be put in place.

At least 1,600 homes in Fort McMurray have burned to the ground, officials have said, with photos showing parts of the city in ashes. The full extent of the devastation may not be known for some time as fires continue to burn uncontrollably in the area.

According to NPR, 49 wildfires are now burning in Alberta, seven of which are classified as out of control. More than 1,110 firefighters are now working to quell the flames, which have swallowed more than 210,000 acres (85,000 hectares).

Alberta Premier Rachel Notley said Thursday that it could take some time before the displaced residents can return to their homes. Unfortunately, we do know that it will not be a matter of days, she said. NPR reports that the Alberta government is working on a transitional housing plan.

When you leave, one evacuating resident told the AP, its an overwhelming feeling to think that youll never see your house again.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau tweeted Thursday that the government would match individual donations to wildfire relief efforts.

The Associated Press reports that unseasonably hot temperatures combined with dry conditions have transformed the boreal forest in much of Alberta into a tinder box. Fort McMurray lies in the worlds third largest reserves of oil, so the fires have caused world oil prices to spike.
PARIS (Reuters) - France on Friday condemned air strikes on a refugee camp in Syria and demanded an investigation into what it said was a "revolting and unacceptable act that could amount to a war crime or crime against humanity". Thursday's air strikes hit Syrians uprooted by war living in a camp near the Turkish border, a monitoring group said. "This new attack, which deliberately targeted civilians, killed some 30 people, including women and children," France's foreign ministry spokesman said. "Those who are responsible will have to be brought to justice." Next Monday France will host a meeting of ministers from countries that support Syrian opposition groups, together with Syrian opposition figure Riad Hijab, to seek ways to break the political and military deadlock in the country. (Reporting by Ingrid Melander; Editing by Andrew Callus and Gareth Jones)
Amanda Sharp and Matthew Slotover are considered true rock stars in the art world, though they are not even known as session players to most people in Hollywood.

But that began to change April 14 when WME-IMG announced that their company, Frieze, would be the portal for its first foray into the art world. The deal is being trumpeted as a partnership though all parties are keeping mum about the details of WME-IMG's stake in Frieze.

To get some insight into that partnership, and to understand the draw of Frieze for the super agency, The Hollywood Reporter walked this year's Frieze New York (through May 8) with Sharp and Slotover during the special VIP preview, with gallerists, collectors and curators frequently approaching to greet and glad-hand. If there's one thing the worlds of art and Hollywood have in common, it's an appreciation for the letters V, I and P (though in this context the VIPs are art collectors - both private and institutional.)

Sharp and Slotover, both 47 and both Brits, met cute: at a Bar Mitzvah when they were 12. But their long-standing friendship blossomed when they re-connected their first day at Oxford University, where each studied humanities. Soon after, they created the magazine "frieze" (all lower case), the original platform of "the media and events company" - as they put it - that they have built together over the last 25 years.

This new phase for Frieze began when Slotover received an email last winter from "a fixer" he didn't know with an invitation to have dinner with WME-IMG co-CEO Ari Emanuel at a private club in London. When Slotover replied to explain that he didn't know Emanuel, he soon learned that the agent "is a fan of Frieze."

Read More: WME-IMG Partnership With Frieze Puts Top 3 Hollywood Agencies in Fine Art Fray

Sharp recalls: "Matthew emailed me and I said, 'Of course you should have dinner with him, it's f---ing Ari Gold!'"

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There were 14 people at the dinner, but, Slotover recalls, "I sat next to Ari and he said, 'Is there anything we can do together?'" In short order, Emanuel met Sharp in New York, where she was living, as well. "He is very entrepreneurial, which we like," she said. "That resonated with us."

Frieze New York takes place in a big white tent, and ad-hoc shelter for more than 200 galleries from more than 30 countries (this year) in Randalls Island Park on the East River.

The fair is a big tent metaphorically too; the diversity of galleries and the diversity of programs - lectures, public and outdoor art and so on - make Frieze a favorite for gallerists and fairgoers alike. Also a draw: Fare from such restaurants as Cosme, whose chef won a James Beard Award last week; Roberta's; Marlow & Sons (where Sharp and Slotover shared a plate of oysters as the conversation went on) and others. Fairgoers tend to linger and dine and make a day of it; as Sharp puts is, Frieze is about creating a community and "an exciting place where things happen."

In an illustration of the kind of playfulness Sharp and Slotover encourage, this year, the artist David Horvitz has engaged in what Cecilia Alemani, curator of public projects for Frieze (and for New York's popular Highline park), described as "a clandestine action": A professional pickpocket is dropping small sculptures by Horvitz into the pockets, purses and backpacks of unsuspecting fairgoers. Alemani described it as "the first time you will walk away from an art fair with a free artwork."

"As thousands of people will experience this week in New York, Frieze is unlike any other art fair," Emanuel told THR. "Matthew, Amanda and their teams have developed and curated an incredible cross-section of art, media, food and compelling conversations that are leading the industry forward."

Of his agency's investment in Frieze, Emanuel added, "When you think about our network across media, events, digital and brand partnerships and their expertise in the art world, this partnership is a force multiplier for our respective businesses."

Yet the shorthand buzz about the WME-IMG deal boils down to something like: Ari Emanuel bought an art fair.

And that's a mistake, according to Sharp. "If you see Frieze exclusively as an art fair and not that it comes out of being a media company, then you may not see the potential for all the stories and storytelling, and how many stories there can be or what you can do with those stories," she says. And storytelling is Hollywood's business.

Read More: Ari Emanuel and Patrick Whitesell Unleashed: WME-IMG's Strategy, IPO Plans, China and the Doubters

Today, Frieze comprises four publications, including the acclaimed original one that Sharp, Slotover and artist Tom Gidley founded in 1991. The publications - all variations on the name Frieze - are inextricably linked to what's on the docket for the international art fairs that now form the events part of the business.

"We saw all these art fairs all over the world, apart from London" Slotover said. "It took us 12 years," he added, but in 2003, they first established Frieze London, the contemporary art fair that now takes place each October in The Regent's Park. Last year, the 164 galleries at Frieze London attracted 55,000 visitors.

Then, in 2012 there were two new ventures. The first was Frieze New York, also a contemporary fair held each May. Then came Frieze Masters, which coincides with Frieze London in October and features art from the ancient to the modern (typically the 1960s). This year, Frieze launched Frieze Academy, a year-round program of talks and courses.

Apparently, everyone - including THR and the artists and curators queried at the fair - wants to know whether bringing the Hollywood model of talent representation to the world of visual artists is part of the founders' plans for the partnership.

They demur, defending the gallery model in which, in Hollywood terms, the gallerist serves as both agent and manager for an artist. "But there are definitely lots of conversations about new models in the art world, like there are in every industry," Sharp said, adding, "And it is an industry."

Slotover chimed in that "initially it's more the IMG side of the business that will be helpful to us," and proceeded to tick off what he calls "unglamorous things like tent rental and construction, event insurance, sponsorship." The latter is an area where they said WME-IMG has already proven to be supportive over the last five months, even before the deal was cemented - along with helping Frieze to create an impressive sizzle reel.

It's the first time that Frieze, a private company jointly owned by Sharp and Slotover, has accepted an outside investor. "We've never borrowed money," Slotover shared. "There are certainly some projects that might require it, as well as certain expertise. And now we have that."

Sharp segued immediately from that comment into the TV success of Made to Measure, the digital fashion network that WME-IMG launched in October. "We're impressed with the success of Made to Measure and what they did with that," Slotover added.

It's not hard to imagine that Frieze TV may be in the cards. However, "there's not a very detailed business plan for the next five years where we know what's going to happen and that we're all signed up," Slotover continued.

Instead, the new partners have had big-picture conversations and shared hopes, dreams and wishes since those first meetings in London and New York.

"We just have this really unequivocal belief in everything follows the art, and that might be where there's a sort of commonality with where our new partners came from as well," said Sharp. "They believe in talent."

Noted Slotover, "We've had a lot of approaches in the past. We didn't see the value of what they would add. With these guys it was really the first time where it felt like they could help us in so many different ways, not like they were out to exploit us for short term financial gain." He added, "It was about: We continue to run it but we get resources, expertise and investment."

The other offers had all been from been companies or people who did either live events or publishing or digital content or sponsorships, Sharp and Slotover said. WME-IMG was the first suitor that did it all.

It didn't hurt that Sharp and Slotover were invited to the most recent WME-IMG retreat near San Diego, where Larry David did a Bernie Sanders imitation that roasted the leadership at the agency. Sharp and Slotover liked the vibe.

"I actually love the Ari Gold character and I've watched every episode of Entourage." Slotover confessed. "And the movie."

Sharp (left) and Slotover at Frieze New York's preview May 4. Courtesy of Laura van Straaten
Gannett Co. renewed its push Friday to acquire Tribune Publishing  owner of the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune  and gained an important ally when the second-largest holder of Tribune stock called for Chicago-based company to reverse its decision rejecting the deal.

In a new salvo at weeks end, McLean-Va.-based Gannett, the largest newspaper publisher in America, unleashed a salvo on Tribune chairman Michael Ferro, suggesting that the entrepreneur has gotten out-sized control of Tribune, via his minority investment.

Tribune Publishing on Wednesday formally rejected Gannetts unsolicted $815 million buyout offer for the company that owns the papers in Los Angeles and Chicago, along with the Baltimore Sun, Orlando Sentinel, Hartford Courant and four other daily papers. Tribune characterized the offer as too low, with Ferro accusing Gannett of trying to steal the company.

Gannett responded Friday by detailing the transactions by Ferro during the past few years that allowed him to take assume control of the company  moves that have raised eyebrows among observers given his lack of experience in publishing and journalism. Earlier this week, Gannett said it would push Tribune shareholders to withhold votes for Ferro and other board members at Tribunes annual meeting on June 2.

Gannett in its statement zeroed in on the deals that allowed Ferro to scoop up Tribune shares at a below-market price and the boards decision to appoint a former Ferro business associate, Justin Dearborn, as CEO despite his lack of publishing experience.

Tribune shareholders need to consider whether they are willing to entrust their investment to a Chairman who: bought his own shares at $8.50 per share; acknowledged he knows nothing about newspapers; said the Company is not for sale; and supported the nomination of a slate of directors that includes four nominees who are long-time business associates of or have significant ties to him, Gannett said.

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Meanwhile Southern California-based Oaktree said in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing that it believes Tribune should not sumarrily reject the offer from Tribune and others that might come forward.

Oaktree said it would be in the best interests of (Tribune) and its stockholders for (Tribune) to pursue discussions with Gannett to see if an acceptable agreement can be reached for Gannett to acquire (Tribune).

In this weeks SEC filing, Oaktree also called on Tribune in the event one or more other parties express an interest in acquiring the Issuer, be open to discussions with such parties regarding such an acquisition.

Oaktree signalled that it is ready to apply pressure to try to get the Tribune board to be more open to a sale. The investment fund said it would contact other Tribune shareholders about their views on a Gannett buyout. The SEC filing suggests that other shareholders could join Oaktree in voting to alter membership in the Tribune board or come together to influence future business and buyout attempts.

Related stories

Los Angeles Times Owner Rejects Takeover Offer From Gannett

Gannett Bid for L.A. Times, Rest of Tribune Publishing, May Be Hard to Reject (Analysis)

Gannett Makes $815 Million Bid for LA Times Owner Tribune
Berlin (AFP) - Germany insisted Friday it expects Turkey to stick to a deal Berlin helped broker to limit refugee flows to the EU even after the announced resignation of its prime minister.

"The chancellor (Angela Merkel) has worked very well until now with Turkish Prime Minister (Ahmet) Davutoglu and all Turkish representatives and we assume that this good and constructive cooperation will continue with the new Turkish prime minister," German government spokesman Georg Streiter told reporters.

"The EU and Germany will continue to fulfil all their obligations under the agreement and we expect this from the Turkish side as well."

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier later told news website Spiegel Online that the EU pact "must be decisively implemented regardless of the people in office -- by Turkey as well as in Europe".

Davutoglu on Thursday announced he would step down in two weeks as ruling party chief and premier, in a shock departure expected to further tighten President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's grip on power.

The premier championed a March deal with the EU to stem the flow of refugees across the Aegean Sea -- an accord in which the president has shown little interest despite Turkey being on the verge of winning visa-free travel to Europe for its citizens.

EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said it was too soon to tell what "implications" the switch would have.

"We will obviously discuss this, first of all, with the Turkish authorities and define together how to move forward," she said Thursday on a visit to Kosovo.

European Parliament President Martin Schulz said the EU was counting on continuity despite the shake-up in Ankara.

"I hope that a future Turkish government, whoever will be the next prime minister, will continue on the line, that constructive line of cooperation for which Ahmet Davutoglu was very representative," he told reporters in Rome.

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However Davutoglu's impending departure sparked fears for the pact in Germany, which saw the biggest influx of asylum seekers in the EU in 2015 with more than one million people seeking refuge from war, persecution and poverty.

A senior member of Merkel's Christian Democratic Union party, Norbert Roettgen, called the reshuffle "bad news for Europe and Turkey".

"Davutoglu wanted to move Turkey toward Europe on all issues that are important for Europe," he told German public radio. "Erdogan is dead-set against that."

German refugee rights group Pro Asyl said it feared for asylum seekers in Turkey after Erdogan consolidated his power.

"The forced resignation of Davutoglu shows that Turkey is still miles away from being a country under the rule of law," its managing director Guenter Burkhardt told AFP.
BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany plans to give Tunisia and Jordan funds to buy armoured vehicles to help defend their frontiers against Islamic State, Der Spiegel magazine reported on Friday. Berlin will give Amman 25 million euros ($28 million) to buy "Marder" armoured personnel carriers, Spiegel said without giving sources. Tunisia would get a double-digit million sum. Jordan neighbours Syria where Islamic State has taken large portions of territory, while the militant group has also doubled its fighters in Libya which borders Tunisia. Tunisia saw two major attacks by islamist militants last year. Thirty-eight tourists were killed in an assault on a hotel, three months after 21 were killed by gunmen attacking the Bardo National Museum in the capital Tunis. The German money comes from a 100 million euro fund to strengthen partner states south of the European Union with crisis prevention, Der Spiegel said. A spokeswoman for the Defence Ministry declined to comment on the report. She added, however, that a programme to help partner states ensure their security had been in place for years and said countries, including Iraq, Tunisia and Jordan were currently in focus. (Reporting by Andreas Rinke; Writing by Caroline Copley; editing by Ralph Boulton)
FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Shareholder advisory firm Glass Lewis has recommended that investors at Deutsche Bank's shareholder meeting on May 19 do not vote in favor of the 2015 performance of outgoing co-CEO Juergen Fitschen and some former executive board members.

The non-binding vote is a standard agenda item at annual general meetings in Germany, where shareholders are asked to approve executives' performance the previous year.

Citing oversight concerns, Glass Lewis said shareholders should not approve of Fitschen or of former executives Anshu Jain, Stefan Krause, Stephan Leithner, Henry Ritchotte and Stuart Lewis, who have all left since Chief Executive John Cryan took the helm in July.

British shareholder advisory group Pirc also recommended this week not endorsing Deutsche Bank's board members.

Glass Lewis said shareholders should vote for a special audit into whether management at the lender breached obligations on various legal and regulatory matters, in line with similar demands made by shareholder advisory group ISS.

ISS, however, recommended shareholders approve of the management board.

(Reporting by Arno Schuetze; editing by Adrian Croft)
The Republican Party is not Donald Trumps party and its policies and platform will continue to be much the same as they are right now, Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said Friday morning.

Priebus sat down with Politicos Mike Allen just three days after the New York billionaires remaining rivals dropped out of the race for the GOP presidential nomination, leaving him a clear field to secure the partys presidential nomination.

Related: Hillary Clinton Is the GOPs Dream Opponent, But Trump Is Its Nightmare

Is the GOP now Donald Trumps party? Allen asked.

No. Its the partys party, Priebus said. The party is, was, and will remain the Republican Party of the open door, freedom of opportunity and equality, and I believe our platform will remain much the same as it is right now.

Priebuss declaration that the GOP will, in term of its policies and positions, remain the same would appear to fly in the face of much of what Trump has said on the campaign trail. Among other things, his proposals to demand that U.S. creditors accept less than full payment for the countrys debts, to ban Muslims from entering the country and to scrap free trade deals simply do not square with Republican orthodoxy on these issues.

Allen pressed Priebus on the Muslim ban, and the RNC chair indicated that he believes Trump can be persuaded to change his mind on some of his more controversial stances.

Related: Trumps America First Crusade Is A Win With Voters

On the Muslim ban, he said, I put a statement out already that it is not something I believe in or our party believes in. Our party is the party of the open door  So there are some things I dont agree with.

Does he hope to persuade Trump that the GOP is the party of the open door?

Yeah, and I think he believes that, Priebus said. I am going to work very hard at making sure that some of these issues are discussed, talked about, understood, and Im confident given my experience so far with him that he is going to have an open mind to some of these issues.

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He said that in person, Trump is far more gracious and personable than I think you see in rallies and that he will be able to shift his tone into general election mode soon.

Related: The Battle Between Donald Trump and Paul Ryan Was Inevitable

He also conceded that Trump will have to dramatically change the way he talks about minority groups and other segments of the population that his harsh language has alienated. After the partys loss in 2012, the RNC commissioned a much-discussed autopsy of the race that determined, among other things, that minority groups -- particularly Hispanics -- simply feel that the GOP actively dislikes them.

You also need the tone at the top to be the kind of tone where, obviously, people think you like them, he said. If people dont think you like them, then they are not going to vote for you.

Asked about Trumps language toward minorities -- for instance, he has called Mexican immigrants rapists and murderers -- he said, I think there is work to do. I think there is work on tone to do. Ive been clear about that. Ive said that recently.

Has he said it to Trump directly?

I have. And he understands it. I think he gets it. I think youre going to see it. I think you are going to see the change in tone.

Then Allen brought up a tweet that Trump sent out on Thursday. It showed him about to eat a taco salad out of a burrito bowl.

Happy #CincoDeMayo!, it said. The best taco bowls are made in Trump Tower Grill. I love Hispanics!

Priebus looked down for moment and nodded his head slightly. Hes trying, he said to immediate laughter from the crowd. Honestly, hes trying. And Ill tell you what. I honestly think he understands that building and unifying and growing the party is the only way were going to win.

Related: Veteran GOP Pollster Predicts Clinton Over Trump in November

Priebus is acutely aware of his candidates shortcomings, but he also took pains to point out that Trumps willingness to say anything can also be seen as an advantage.

Sometimes in our party we get criticized because we dont hit hard enough ... I dont think that Donald Trump is going to have a hard time bringing out some of the things that are going to be very not good for Hillary Clinton.

He said, If there is one person that knows how to bring all of that out in a way that people can understand, its Donald Trump. And hes going to do it, too. Hes going to bring it out and unfortunately for Hillary Clinton its not going to be very comfortable because she has a lot to answer for.

Priebus also addressed the dustup caused Thursday by House Speaker Paul Ryans statement that he is not yet ready to endorse Trump as the partys nominee.

Trump called him immediately after Ryan made his statement on CNN, Priebus said, asking What do I need to do?

Related: Trump -- Yellen Is Out as Fed Chair If Im Elected

Priebus said his response was, Just relax and be gracious and Ill talk to Paul and well try to work on this.

He said that he believes part of the problem is that few people expected Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Ohio Gov. John Kasich to drop out of the race this week, leaving them little time to prepare for Trump being the presumptive nominee.

Of Ryan, he said, I think he thought he had 30 more days.

I think Paul is being honest, he added. I think he is going to get there. He wants to get there.

The two men will meet in Washington next week, he said, but cautioned, Its going to take some time ... for people to work through differences.

Top Reads from The Fiscal Times:
Photo credit: Getty

From Esquire

(Permanent Musical Accompaniment To This Post)

Being our semi-regular weekly survey of what's goin' down in the several states where, as we know, the real work of governmentin' gets done, and where, if he needs a third eye, he just grows one.

We begin in the now consistently insane state of North Carolina, and there's so much going on that we never may get out of there. First, the Department of Justice has explained to Governor Pat McCrory and his pet legislature (Art Pope, prop.) that the Urinal Cooties Protection Act of 2016 is going to be costing them even more money. According to The Charlotte Observer:

The letter says HB2, which pre-empted Charlotte's anti-discrimination ordinance, violates Title IX, which bars discrimination in education based on sex, and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which bans employment discrimination. If the finding is upheld, North Carolina could lose federal education funding. During the current school year, state public schools received $861 million. In 2014-2015, the University of North Carolina system got $1.4 billion.

Of course, the usual suspects are howling and trying to raise the ghost of Albert Sidney Johnson.

Speaking to business leaders Wednesday night, McCrory called the letter "something we've never seen regarding Washington overreach in my lifetime." "This is no longer just a N.C. issue. This impacts every state, every university and almost every employee in the United States of America," he said. "All those will have to comply with new definitions of requirements by the federal government regarding restrooms, locker rooms and shower facilities in both the private and public sector." GOP lawmakers also criticized the Justice Department-and President Barack Obama. House Speaker Tim Moore, who said the GOP leaders are consulting attorneys about a response, called the letter "a huge overreach (by) the federal government." "It looks an awful lot like politics to me," Moore, a Kings Mountain Republican, told reporters. "I guess President Obama, in his final months in office, has decided to take up this ultra-liberal agenda." Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger called the ruling "a gross overreach." And Lt. Gov. Dan Forest blasted the Obama administration. "To use our children and their educational futures as pawns to advance an agenda that will ultimately open those same children up to exploitation at the hands of sexual predators is, by far, the sickest example of the depths the  administration will stoop to (to) 'fundamentally transform our nation,'" he said.

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If you're keeping score at home, you will note that all this howling has been prompted by the denial to North Carolina of some of those sweet big-government dollars about which most of these people ordinarily would be railing. Nobody's talking about a federal veto of this state law. (James Madison would be in favor of that, but he's dead.) The government is simply saying, if you choose to discriminate, you can't make the rest of the country pay for your bigotry. Get rid of the UCPA '16 and the federal dollars begin to flow again.

Oh, what's that? You might be in political trouble back home if the federal spigot gets shut off? Sorry. Liberty is a tough room.

Elsewhere, somebody has tossed the pension fund for North Carolina state employees onto the no-limit table of the Wall Street casino and a guy named Edward Tower at Duke has caught them. From HuffPost:

A recent study by Edward Tower, a professor of economics at Duke University, addressed the issue of whether the stocks in the North Carolina State Employees' Pension Fund should be actively or passively managed. This has become a political issue in the race for Treasurer of North Carolina. One candidate, R. Ron Elmer, has pledged to replace the active management of stock mutual funds, private equity, real estate funds, real estate partnerships, hedge funds and commodity funds with an index fund-based investment strategy, managed in-house. Professor Tower looked at how an indexing strategy would have impacted the state pension fund's past returns. His conclusion was staggering: "Our various calculations ... indicate indexing the equity part of the NC Pension fund would have increased returns by approximately $781 million per year (in the 3 years ending mid-2015), $2.492 billion per year (last 5 years to mid-2015), and $969 million per year (last 10 years to mid-2015). This is an increase in the return by between 0.87 percentage points/year and 2.78 percentage points/year."

Meanwhile, as Bloomberg News informs us, Janet Cowell, the state's treasurer, and the person who's been plunking down the pension money in the big casino, has found a way to augment her income in such a way that almost nobody can anticipate any problems at all.

The treasurer, Janet Cowell, was elected to the board of James River Group Holdings, a Bermuda-based insurance company, after a vote by its shareholders on Tuesday. In late February, Cowell was voted onto the board of ChannelAdvisor Corp., an e-commerce company headquartered in Morrisville, N.C. Cowell, a former Lehman Brothers banker, was first elected treasurer in 2008 and has eight months left on her term. She is the sole overseer of North Carolina's $90 billion pension fund. She also administers the State Health Plan for public employees and chairs the State Banking Commission. The state fund doesn't hold investments in James River Group Holdings or ChannelAdvisor, according to a State Ethics Commission review.

So the person whose investment strategy for public pensions is under fire for being unusually risky is now on the board of a couple of financial services companies. Usually, to get a golden parachute, you have to jump-or get pushed, aka The Full Fiorina-out of the airplane first.

We escape under cover of dark money and find ourselves in Missouri, where the state government can't keep itself from meddling with ladyparts and the ladies who own them. From The St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

Under the measure, voters would be asked if the state constitution should be amended to "protect pregnant women and unborn children by recognizing that an unborn child is a person with a right to life which cannot be deprived by state or private action without due process and equal protection of law."

What if the unborn child wants to exercise its Second Amendment rights? Does mom have to swallow a pistol? That sounds awful. Unintended consequences, people!

We scoot west and end up in Colorado, where there is an interesting ballot question looming in which private prisons are equated at law with slavery. Per RawStory:

Article 2 of the state constitution says that "there shall never be in this state either slavery or involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted." And this clause is still used today to justify prisons run by corporations, according to representatives of the No Slavery, No Excuses campaign and the social justice group Together Colorado. "I think it is a travesty that there are corporations that are being allowed to prosper because of the punishment of an individual. That's out of sorts. That's out of balance," said Pastor Del Phillips of the Greater Denver Ministerial Alliance, at a January gathering of clergy trying to strike slavery from state law.

If they remove that clause, it is thought, the state's privatized prisons would lose the constitutional fig leaf behind which they can turn a buck on the labor of the incarcerated. I am going to be intrigued to see what sort of arguments are mustered in opposition. I'm sure that someone will come up with a horrible cannibal murderer who needs to be indentured to Giganto Prison Manufacturing, LLC. Punish them with capitalism so the rest of us can have inexpensive lawn furniture and leather goods.

And we conclude, as is our custom, in the great state of Oklahoma, where peripatetic Blog Official Culvert Spelunker Friedman of the Plains reports that Governor Mary Fallin has clambered aboard the Trump Train because why the hell not, she's the governor of Oklahoma. From The Tulsa World:

Her announcement came after Trump emerged as the presumptive Republican nominee. His victory in the Indiana primary on Tuesday led U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and Ohio Gov. John Kasich to drop out of the race. Unlike Fallin, several Republican officials took the unusual step of criticizing their own party's likely nominee, some saying they'd never vote for a man known for insulting other candidates, reporters, illegal immigrants, women and Muslims while calling for a huge wall to be built on the southern border at Mexico's expense. "I'm behind Donald Trump 100 percent," Fallin said. "Our first and foremost goal is to elect a conservative president who will promote a pro-business climate to create good jobs and is strong on national defense.

Fallin is "rumored to be" on Trump's short bus for vice president. Why the hell not? She's governor of Oklahoma, which was built by Oklahomans, and not by the federal government, unless you count the Homestead Act, the oil-depletion allowance, and the United States cavalry.

This is your democracy, America. Cherish it.

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* Policy reforms required to meet bailout terms

* Parliament expected to vote on measures May 8

* Greek PM says reform is needed, with or without bailout

* Strike disrupts football cup final (Adds postponement of soccer final, edits)

By Renee Maltezou and George Georgiopoulos

ATHENS, May 6 (Reuters) - Greeks went on a 48-hour nationwide strike on Friday to protest against tax and pension reforms, as Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras appealed to fractious lawmakers to approve the overhaul as part of a multi-billion euro bailout.

Lowering its annual pension bill, one of the most expensive in the euro zone, is a condition for Athens to qualify for a fresh installment of the latest international bailout, worth up to 86 billion euros ($98.3 billion), which it agreed a year ago with its EU partners.

The strike left ships docked at port, disrupted public transport and kept civil servants and journalists off the job.

Thousands of protesters with the Communist-affiliated group PAME marched before parliament holding banners that read: "Rise up now!" and "Resist".

Saturday's Greek Cup final between league champions Olympiakos Piraeus and AEK Athens was postponed at the request of police, who did not have resources to oversee the game. No new date was announced..

Major labour unions plan protests outside parliament on Sunday, when the reforms are due to be put to the vote.

Tsipras, who is clinging to a slim majority of three seats in the 300-member assembly, appealed to members of his Syriza party to approve the package. Whether Greece signed up to a bailout or not, he said, reform of the pension system was still needed.

"It was a necessity born from the need to make it viable. Without this intervention, the pensions system would collapse," he said.

In the meantime, the head of the International Monetary Fund, Christine Lagarde, urged euro zone finance ministers to start talks on Greek debt relief together with discussions on reforms, according to a letter published by the Financial Times.

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Tsipras has called for debt relief of some form to help Greece as it introduces the reforms.

'NAIL IN THE COFFIN'

Athens hopes the measures will help persuade creditors to approve the release of bailout cash. A tranche of more than 5 billion euros is overdue, after talks faltered over the pace of reforms.

The Eurogroup of finance ministers is due to meet on Monday to discuss the stalemate and the Greek debt relief call.

Greece's largest labour union, the private sector GSEE, said the reforms going before parliament were the "last nail in the coffin" for workers and pensioners who had sacrificed enough after six years of austerity.

"They are trying to prove to the Eurogroup that they are good students but they are destroying Greece's social security system," a GSEE official said.

Greece needs the bailout funds to pay IMF loans, ECB bonds maturing in July and growing state arrears, subject to lenders signing off on a review of its reform progress that includes changes to its tax and pension laws.

The proposed legislation would raise social security contributions, increase income tax for high earners and introduce a new national pension. It would also gradually phase out a top-up pension for low earners.

Worn out by years of austerity, some Greeks fear that the new reforms will push the country further towards the brink.

"We don't have food to eat and nobody asks us how we are," said shopkeeper Anna Papadopoulou, 74, who wept as she spoke.

Asked what she wanted to tell the Greek government, she said: "Wake up. We are dying." ($1 = 0.8754 euros) (Writing by Michele Kambas; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)
In this weeks Greys Anatomy, Callie and Arizona had their day in court. And, as we knew that it would have to be, it was hard. As in emotionally draining, tearing-your-guts-out, excuse-me-while-I-go-cry-in-the-corner hard. And yet there was something even rougher than the proceedings: the verdict. Who wound up with custody of Sofia? Read on and find out.

RELATEDGreys Anatomy: Hurt Feelings, Callie and Arizonas Future and Upcoming Fun (Yes, Fun!)

WORST CASE SCENARIO | Early on in Mama Tried, Callie and Arizona  and their lawyers  attempted to arrive at a compromise that would keep Sofias fate out of a judges hands. But, failing that  epically  the exes were left saying literally, See you in court. (Through their attorneys, of course.) Before the hearing got underway, Her Honor offered Calzona the same out that she offered every couple fighting for sole custody of a child: Are you both sure you want to proceed? Alas, they both did.

After Owen testified on Callies behalf, nailing it, and Andrew described how happy Sofia was with Arizona, Penny took the stand. At first, she did really well for Torres. But then oy, then. Not only was Blake unable to remember what shed last seen the little girl wearing, she incorrectly guessed the grade Sofia was in. As a result, it didnt appear to the court that Penny knew her lovers daughter very well. (Which, hello! How could she? She only met Sofia half a dozen episodes ago!)

RELATEDGreys Anatomy: Did Sara Ramirez Just Announce Her Departure?

Later, Callies lawyer got Bailey to reluctantly admit that Arizonas schedule was unpredictable. The following day, Robbins attorney trickily got Meredith to imply that, were Sofia to go East with Callie, shed be losing the village that it takes to raise a child. Next, Torres lawyer used Arizonas (many) nights out with Richard against her. All told, it was starting to look pretty grim for Robbins.

When Callie took the stand, she tearfully recalled the traumatic day that Sofia was born. In fact, being a mother is the reason Im still alive today, she said. During Arizonas turn, as she was passionately arguing that she was every bit as much Sofias mother as Callie, her phone kept ringing  it was Alex calling her to Grey Sloan to save the baby of a newly readmitted Jenny, the teenager wed met in I Wear the Face. Knowing what leaving now would cost her, Robbins still excused herself to go to work. Sofia would be okay one way or another. But, without Arizonas help, Jennys baby wouldnt make it.

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The following day, to Calzonas mutual surprise, the judge awarded Arizona sole physical custody of Sofia. To put it mildly, the outcome wrecked Torres. How did this happen? Callie cried, clinging to Meredith rather than Penny.

RELATEDGreys Anatomy Cast Hints at Potential Disaster in Season Finale

IN THE PLUS COLUMN | If there was one positive side effect of Calzonas custody battle, it was that it seemed to inspire Jackson and April to want to work out an arrangement well ahead of their childs arrival, lest they ever find themselves putting up their dukes in court. (God knows were well aware of how ready Catherine always is to lawyer up!) Miraculously, the exes discussion started out civilly and remained that way, even as they divvied up his and hers holidays with Baby Avery. (Hell, it went so well, it was practically a love scene!)

LAST CALL | At the bar with Jo and Ben, Stephanie  feeling guilty about the way that she broke up with Kyle and sorry that she did it all  was tipsy enough to want to drunk dial him. It wasnt such a hot idea, though. When her ex was readmitted to Grey Sloan with possible meningitis, he made it clear that he didnt want anything more to do with Edwards  personally or professionally.

So, do you think Calzonas judge got it right? And how impressed were you by Japril, once again adulting so beautifully? Hit the comments!

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Gaza City (Palestinian Territories) (AFP) - Hamas's leader in Gaza said Friday his Islamist movement did not seek war with Israel but would resist incursions into the Palestinian enclave, following the worst cross-border violence since 2014.

Three days of mortar and tank fire between Israel and Palestinian militants, as well as Israeli air strikes, have raised concerns of a new war in the Hamas-run territory.

Ismail Haniya accused Israeli forces of intruding nearly 200 metres (yards) into Gazan territory.

"We are not calling for a new war, but we will not under any circumstances accept these incursions," he said in a Friday prayer sermon in the Gaza Strip.

Earlier, Israeli aircraft carried out their fourth air raid on the enclave since Wednesday, attacking sites at Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza and near Khan Yunis in the south, witnesses said.

There were no reports of any casualties.

The Israeli army confirmed just one strike, saying aircraft targeted "a Hamas terror infrastructure" in response to cross-border mortar fire.

Since Wednesday, Hamas and other militant groups have fired at least 12 mortar rounds across the frontier, and Israeli tanks have fired repeatedly at what the army said were Hamas targets.

The Palestinian fire targeted Israeli forces searching along the border, and short distances inside Gaza, for infiltration tunnels leading into southern Israel -- among the most feared weapons of Hamas fighters during the 2014 summer war.

On Thursday, Zeina Al-Amour, a 54-year-old Palestinian woman, became the first fatality of the flare-up after Israeli tank fire hit her home, medics said.

The violence has raised concerns for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, the Islamist rulers of Gaza, that has held since the 50-day war in 2014 left 2,251 Palestinians and 73 Israelis dead.

- Living in fear -

On both sides of the border, residents said they were living in fear of a wider conflict.

"In the night there is the sound of mortars, bombs, planes," said Jehan Berman, a resident of kibbutz Kerem Shalom which is just 40 metres from the border.

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"We're tired. We're still recovering from the last war and the next one is already at our door," he told AFP.

Kerem Shalom is close to where the army has uncovered two Hamas tunnels, reportedly stretching into Israeli territory, in recent weeks, with the most recent discovery on Thursday.

Destruction of such tunnels became one of Israel's primary goals during the 2014 war, with more than 30 eliminated, according to the army.

Since the conflict, Hamas has continued to build what it calls "resistance tunnels".

Citing Hamas activities, Israel maintains a tight blockade on Gaza in what human rights groups say is collective punishment against its more than 1.8 million residents.

Ali al-Moghrabi, 40, a tailor from Gaza City's Al-Hanan Zeitun neighbourhood which was bombed on Thursday, said he still had not recovered from the last conflict.

"We do not want war, but the occupier (Israel) never stops," he said.

Hamas has accused Israeli soldiers of incursions into Gazan territory in recent days, saying that this constitutes a violation of the 2014 truce.

The Israeli army admits it has operated inside Palestinian territory but said it was within 100 metres of the border, where it says it has operated since the 2014 war.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu convened his security cabinet on Friday to discuss the latest developments, with his spokesman saying ministers were updated by security officials on the "activities of the past few days and the exposure of the tunnel".

Hamas's armed wing, the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, said on Friday that Israeli forces withdrew from positions inside the border east of Khan Yunis.

A senior Israeli official told AFP he was not aware of any understandings with Hamas regarding ending the exchanges of fire.
The pioneers of rock and hip-hop are having a bit of a moment in courtrooms across the nation. Led Zeppelin is set to stand trial next week over "Stairway to Heaven" while Flo & Eddie of the Turtles are leading putative class actions over the broadcasting of their music on platforms like SiriusXM and Pandora. Now, with HBO reviving the early '70s music industry for the series Vinyl, DJ Kool Herc is agitating for some respect.

One of the pioneers of hip-hop, the New Yorker born Clive Campbell has filed a lawsuit against HBO over the use of his identity, name and voice in the show produced by Martin Scorsese, Mick Jagger and others. In one of the episodes in its premiere season, the show's main character visits the Bronx and is captivated by DJ Kool Herc scratching and mixing records.

For this, DJ Kool Herc claims a violation of a New York civil rights law guarding against likeness misappropriation as well as his common law trademark rights. (Read the complaint here.)

"It's beyond us why HBO and the producers of Vinyl, a successful show about artists and music, would hurt an artist like Herc who has contributed so much to the music industry," says Taso Pardalis, the attorney representing the hip-hop progenitor.

A spokesperson for HBO responds, "We are confident there is no validity to the claims."

HBO has good reason to feel confidence in defeating a lawsuit that demands an unspecified damages amount. New York's likeness law is a fairly limited one that pertains to uses in advertising and trade. In times that it's been tested - like when a guy named Michael Constanza sued over Seinfeld, like when Lindsay Lohan sued over a Pitbull song that mentioned her, or like when an artist with a telephoto lens spied on his neighbor - judges have generally elected to protect creative works. Of course, there's always slight openings as evidenced by Lohan's focus on how Grand Theft Auto V was advertised. A judge recently let that one move forward.

The trademark claim raises a different issue, and probably a strong defense there too, but putting that aside, the most revealing aspect of DJ Kool Herc's lawsuit may be the lengths that producers were willing to go to either engender goodwill or avoid nuisance from '70s musicians who would be presented in Vinyl. According to the complaint, DJ Kool Herc was presented with a $10,000 offer and consulting contract before the show aired to waive all rights. Whether or not this was a smart move can be debated. In this instance, it appears to have alerted the plaintiff to potential claims. DJ Kool Herc obviously felt he deserved more.
By Subrat Patnaik (Reuters) - Herbalife Ltd, which has been accused by billionaire investor William Ackman of being a fraud, said it was in advanced talks with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission to settle a probe into whether it runs a pyramid scheme. But the company said that "a number of material open issues" could still prevent a settlement. The health supplements maker also reported its first sales rise in six quarters. The company estimated that a fine could be $200 million, which helped the company's shares rise 14.5 percent in extended trading on Thursday. (http://bit.ly/1TLHfvr) In its quarterly regulatory filing, the company said there could be a range of outcomes including "the filing by the FTC of a contested civil complaint and further discussions leading to a settlement which would likely include a monetary payment and injunctive and other relief." The FTC said a possible settlement could also require Herbalife to change certain business practices. Injunctive relief, a spokesman said, could be "just as significant as the money obtained for consumers and even more influential on a company's future operations." Ackman unveiled a $1 billion short bet against Herbalife in 2012 accusing the company of running a pyramid scheme which pays members more for recruiting new members than for selling its products. The company has repeatedly denied the allegations and Ackman has so far lost money on his position. In March the company said a database error caused it to overstate new member growth. Active new members worldwide, excluding China, grew 3.4 percent during 2015, not 8.3 percent as it said originally. In the first quarter of 2016, active new members, excluding China, grew 5.4 compared to the first quarter of 2015. SALES RECOVER Demand for Herbalife products climbed in North America, its biggest market, with sales rising 8.5 percent in the quarter. Sales in China, which has been the only bright spot for the company in the past few quarters, increased by nearly a third. Herbalife also raised its adjusted profit forecast for 2016 to $5.10-$5.45 per share from $4.85-$5.30. Its net income rose 22.5 percent to $95.8 million, or $1.12 per share, in the quarter ended March 31. Excluding items, the company earned $1.36 per share, beating the average analyst estimate of $1.09, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. (Reporting by Subrat Patnaik in Bengaluru and Diane Bartz in Washington and Svea Herbst-Bayliss in New York; Editing by Kirti Pandey and Cynthia Osterman)
Its hard to imagine how fate could have been crueler to the Republican Party this election cycle. For years, GOP operatives have been salivating over the opportunity to go after Hillary Clinton in a presidential contest, and so far, with respect to Clinton at least, things couldnt be going much better if Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus had scripted it personally.

On Thursday, it was revealed that Clintons senior aides from her time as secretary of state have been interviewed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in connection with her decision to use a personal email account, operating on a private server, for sensitive State Department business.

Related: 5 Worlds Rocked by Donald trumps Primary Victory

The fact that senior aides are now sitting down with federal agents suggests to many that the FBI is nearing the end of the process of investigating whether Clinton willfully violated the law by failing to keep classified government information secure. (For her part, Clinton has consistently argued that the private email system was never used for data that was classified at the time, though some material has been retroactively classified since.)

For Republicans, the timing could not be better. If the case wraps up in the next few months, regardless of whether Clinton is charged with wrongdoing -- and there is apparently very little evidence that she will -- it will be a great talking point for the GOP. Obviously, an indictment would be a political windfall. But even a decision not to recommend that the Department of Justice pursue a case against Clinton will bring the issue of Clintons judgment on the email issue back into the public discussion at a time when the Democrats are trying to increase the number of voters who have a favorable opinion of her.

This comes after a primary election in which Clinton faced unexpectedly tough opposition from Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who ran consistently to the left of his former Senate colleague, forcing her to sound more liberal than she probably preferred on issues like trade and the minimum wage.

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The Republican Party was always going to try to characterize Clinton as a wild-eyed leftist, but they probably didnt count on a self-proclaimed Democratic Socialist from Vermont forcing her to take positions that would make doing so much easier.

Related: Veteran GOP Pollster Predicts Clinton Over Trump in November

There is also, lest anyone forget, the House Select Committee looking into the attacks on the U.S. State Department compound in Benghazi, Libya, in 2012, when Clinton was running the State Department. The committee has been flying well under the radar for months now, but it doesnt seem like much of a stretch to assume that a final report will be issued sometime in the next three or four months, creating more awkward news cycles for Clinton.

All this, of course, is on top of the fact that Clinton is really pretty unpopular among the voting public. Even before the ugliness of a general election brings tens of millions of attack ads to the airwaves, she is already underwater in her approval/disapproval ratings.

In the end, given the demographic problems that the GOP faces in presidential elections, things couldnt really look much better for a Republicans chances to take the White House in November 2016.

But now, Donald Trump is the partys de facto nominee. This isnt the way it was supposed to be for the Republican Party in 2016.

Related: Trumps Strange Choice to Lead His Fundraising Operation

Trump actively negates many of the advantages a Clinton candidacy confers on a Republican presidential nominee. For example, he is even less popular than she is among the voting public. And his long history of making public statements that are wildly offensive to women and ethnic and religious minorities, as well as people who can do basic mathematics, has presented opposition researchers and Democratic ad makers with an unprecedented treasure trove of source material.

The GOP, after its loss to Barack Obama in 2012, commissioned an autopsy of the partys approach to the election, which determined that there were big demographic groups -- women, Hispanics, young people -- that the party needed to court if it wants to retake the White House. Trump has systematically alienated all of them.

It will also be difficult for a candidate who thought it would be a good idea to post a picture of himself about to eat a taco bowl to social media on May 5 -- Mexicos Cinco de Mayo holiday -- with the message I love Hispanics to attack Clinton on her judgment.

Trump has also managed to contradict himself so completely on key economic and social policy issues that he has effectively blurred the distinction that the GOP would dearly like to make between its policies and Clintons. Just this week, Trump appeared to support a minimum wage increase, which most Republican lawmakers oppose and Clinton supports. His attitude toward international trade deals is more in line with Bernie Sanders than with the Republican mainstream.

The experience for GOP insiders must be something close to a waking nightmare. The 2016 presidential election is like a big, fat hanging curveball sitting right over the plate. And the party is standing in the box with a wiffle bat.

Top Reads from The Fiscal Times:
History professor Paul Sonnino at the University of California, Santa Barbara, says he's solved the centuries-old mystery of the Man in the Iron Mask.

In Search for the Man in the Iron Mask: A Historical Detective Story, published in January, Sonnino details decades of research into the enigma of the French prisoner who was from 1669 until his death in 1703, during which he concealed his identity with a mask. Sonnino argues the prisoner had been the valet of a very rich, very corrupt Cardinal  and knew one too many secrets.

The legend was popularized in recent history with the 1998 film of the same name, starring Leonardo DiCaprio. But the story has captivated the imaginations of many for hundreds of years, including those of French philosopher Voltaire and French writer Alexandre Dumas.

Source: YouTube

Sonnino discredits the two Frenchmen's theory of who the man in the mask was  Louis XIV's twin brother  a theory largely disregarded amongst modern-day historians, he told the UCSB Current. While there is now historical consensus that the Man in the Iron Mask was a valet named Eustache Dauger, much else has remained unknown, leaving a number of burning questions like who he worked for and the circumstances behind his jailing.

Sonnino contends that Dauger was the valet for Cardinal Mazarin, a treasurer and principle minister of France in the early years of Louis XIV's reign.

A statue of Louis XIV at the Palace of Versailles in France.

"What I was able to determine was that Mazarin had ripped off some of his huge fortune from the previous king and queen of England, and that Eustache was arrested years later just as Louis XIV was trying to con their son, the present king of England, into joining him in a war," Sonnino told the Current. "Dauger must have blabbed at the wrong time. He was informed when arrested that if he revealed his identity to anyone he would immediately be killed."

This revisionist history certainly makes a compelling case for keeping your mouth shut.
Paris (AFP) - French President Francois Hollande will visit the restive Central African Republic on May 13 to pledge France's support for peace efforts before going on to Nigeria, his office said Friday.

In Nigeria, Hollande will attend a regional summit on May 14 focused on fighting the jihadist group Boko Haram, the presidency said.
Superhero movies long have taken a chance on unproven actors in their 30s and 40s for lead roles. Marvel's Captain America star Chris Evans is 34; Batman v. Superman's Henry Cavill is 32; Iron Man's Robert Downey Jr. was 41 when he first donned the suit.

But now there's a new class of more pedigreed actors reaping the rewards of the superhero craze - and many of them get the senior discount. Michael Douglas was 69 when he joined Marvel's Ant-Man; Robert Redford, the patriarch of indie film, took a supporting role in Captain America: The Winter Soldier at 76; and Glenn Close was 66 when she signed on to Guardians of the Galaxy. Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice featured Laurence Fishburne, 54, Kevin Costner, 61, and Jeremy Irons, 67. Marvel's new release, Captain America: Civil War (May 6), includes William Hurt, 66, as a character he first played in 2008's The Incredible Hulk. And Warner Bros. has assembled its upcoming Justice League with J.K. Simmons, 61, and Willem Dafoe, 60. All of the above have won or been nominated for an Oscar.

Read More: The R-Rated Superhero Movie: An Evolution for the Genre?

What's behind the surge of A-list AARP members in comics films? Bringing a master thespian into a superhero universe is a strategy that dates to Marlon Brando playing Jor-El in 1978's Superman. But it's become more prevalent as superheroes have come to dominate studio slates over the past decade. With more than 20 hero pics set to hit theaters in the next three years alone, there's a growing need for actors with the experience and esteem to bring gravitas.

It's a win-win situation, says one agent who represents a veteran star. Actors typically transition to smaller movies late in their careers (especially these days, as studios have trimmed non-tentpole projects), so a superhero film can represent a guaranteed worldwide vehicle that will be seen by millions. "It's great to have a massive hit once in a while to inject energy into their own personal projects," says the agent. Plus, the actors are paid well (sources say between $1 million and $4 million on average) for what usually is only a few weeks of work. "These films are scheduled in a way that's very user-friendly toward doing other movies in the same time period," adds Circle of Confusion manager Frank Frattaroli, who represents Dafoe.

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Frattaroli says Dafoe had passed on offers for other superhero movies because he already played the villain Green Goblin in Sam Raimi's Spider-Man films. But the actor sparked to Justice League because he would be playing a good guy - although Warner Bros. hasn't revealed whom, exactly.

"There's all this speculation on the internet about the mystery of who he's playing - it just helps build up the movie," adds Frattaroli.

And the trend is likely to continue for years to come.

The Russo brothers tapped into the vault to bring back Hurt for Civil War eight years after his first Marvel experience. "The Marvel universe is unprecedented," says Joe Russo. "We have a ton of characters at our disposal and a lot of great actors. We knew we needed a voice for the government for this film - and how can you pass up putting in William Hurt?"

This story first appeared in the May 13 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.
May 6 (Reuters) - The Kentucky Derby is the oldest, continuously held major sporting event in the United States, happening every year since 1875 at Churchill Downs in Louisville. When the 142nd Kentucky Derby is run Saturday, it will showcase top three-year-old thoroughbreds, as well as the traditions that are part of the race's pageantry. Here's a breakdown of "the fastest two minutes in sports" according to Kentucky Derby representatives: - - Horses have one chance to win the Kentucky Derby In horseracing, a "derby" is a race for horses who are three-years-old, meaning they only can compete in the event once in their lives. And getting there is not easy. Of the more than 22,000 registered thoroughbreds that are born each year in North America, only 20 horses can secure a coveted spot in the Kentucky Derby. To get there, horses compete in a series of qualifying races around the world in the months leading up to the Derby. Because these occur through part of April, the field of competitors in the Derby is not known until a few days before the race. - - It's the "fastest two minutes in sports" Secretariat (1973) holds the record for the mile-and-a-quarter distance at 1:59 2/5. He went on to win the Triple Crown that year, a series that includes the Belmont Stakes and the Preakness Stakes. American Pharoah (2015) became only the 12th horse to win the Triple Crown, also achieving a new milestone by winning the Breeders' Cup Classic, now known as the "Grand Slam" of racing. - - Longshots can win, but so do favorites Fifty-four favorites have won the Kentucky Derby, including the past three years with Orb (2013), California Chrome (2014) and American Pharoah (2015). However, when longshots win, the payoff can be big. $184.90 is the record $2 win payoff for a Kentucky Derby winner with Donerail (1913). The record low $2 win payoff was with Triple Crown winners Count Fleet (1943) and Citation at $2.80 (1948). - - It's lilies for the fillies Throughout the years, 40 fillies (female horses) have competed in the Derby - three have won: Regret (1915), Genuine Risk (1980) and Winning Colors (1988). While the fillies are eligible to be entered in the Derby, most compete in the Kentucky Oaks on Friday. Oaks Day at Churchill Downs has its own traditions, including wearing pink, a winner's garland of lilies, and a new signature drink called the Oaks Lily, comprised of vodka, cranberry juice, triple sec and sweet and sour. The Kentucky Derby's signature drink is the Mint Julep, made with Kentucky bourbon, simple syrup, crushed ice, powered sugar and mint. - - "My Old Kentucky Home" When the song is sung beneath the Twin Spires as the horses enter the track, consider this - 107 of the 141 Kentucky Derby winners were born in Kentucky. According to The Jockey Club, Kentucky produces more thoroughbreds than any other state. - - Making the "Run for the Roses" on the first Saturday in May The Kentucky Derby has been run on the first Saturday in May every year since 1946. When the winning horse enters the winner's circle, a garland comprised of 400 "Freedom" roses will be draped over the horse. - - Lucky number five Of the 141 winners, 13 started the race from post position number five, including California Chrome (2014). None have won coming from No. 17. (Compiled by Lindsey Buhrmann. Editing by Steve Keating and Larry Fine)
The endangered Whio Duck (Rex)

A Danish man who travelled all the way to New Zealand on a hunting trip has been fined almost 5,000 for gunning down the wrong kind of duck.

Rasmus Bjerre Zetner Nielson shot an endangered Whio Duck without a licence and was promptly fined.



The Dane, on a three-month trip down under, admitted afterwards it was a brain dead decision to shoot the duck.

There are only up top 3,000 Whio Ducks left in New Zealand.

The bird is well-known nationally as it appears on a $10 New Zealand note.

Nielson had only been in the country a week, when in early March he went hunting with a rifle.

The 24-year-old did not have a licence, despite them being available online for free.

He shot other birds but then aimed his gun at the Whio, killing it instantly with one shot through the ducks chest.

Two nearby hunters heard the shooting, investigated and found that Nielson had killed an endangered bird.

They informed the authorities and when Neilson was questioned he admitted that he shot the Whio because I was a big idiot, brain dead.

He was subsequently charged and this week pleaded guilty to charges of hunting and killing protected wildlife, as well as using a hunting weapon without a permit.

His fine included an order to pay costs for conservation officers who brought the prosecution.
LONDON  IFC Films has acquired North American rights to Oscar-winner Asif Kapadias Ali & Nino from worldwide sales agent IM Global and CAA, following the movies premiere at the Sundance Film Festival. Kapadia won an Academy Award this year for his documentary feature Amy.

Ali & Nino, a feature-film adaptation of the novel by Kurban Said, stars Maria Valverde (Ridley Scotts Exodus: Gods and Kings), Adam Bakri (Omar), Mandy Patinkin (Homeland) and Connie Nielsen (Gladiator, Wonder Woman). The screenplay is by Christopher Hampton, who won an Oscar with Dangerous Liaisons, and the film is produced by Kris Thykier (Trash, Woman in Gold) and executive produced by Leyla Aliyeva.

The film centers on Ali Khan and Nino Kipiani, who live in Baku, the cosmopolitan, oil-rich capital of Azerbaijan, which, at the beginning of the 20th century, is a melting pot of different cultures. Ali is a Muslim, with his warrior ancestors passion for the desert; Nino is a Christian Georgian girl with sophisticated European ways. The two have loved each other since childhood, and Ali is determined that they marry.

But overcoming cultural and religious differences and winning parental consent are not their only obstacles. World War I breaks out, and Bakus oil becomes the focus of Russias quest for power. As the war plays out and control of the Caucasus changes hands, the young lovers find themselves swept up in Azerbaijans fight for independence.

Jonathan Sehring, president of Sundance Selects/IFC Films, said: IFC Films is very excited to be working with Asif Kapadia who, throughout his career, has shown a unique capacity for making films that are not only visually compelling but emotionally honest as well.

Thykier commented: We are delighted to be working with IFC Films. Their passion for the film and commitment to giving it the best possible platform in North America is thrilling. We look forward to bringing this timeless love story to American audiences and then on to the rest of the world.

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BRUSSELS, May 6 (Reuters) - The head of the International Monetary Fund urged euro zone finance ministers to start talks on Greece's debt relief together with discussions on Athens' reform programme, according to a letter published by the Financial Times on Friday.

The finance ministers of the euro zone's 19 countries will gather on May 9 in Brussels for an extraordinary meeting on Greece. They are meant to discuss Greece's reform programme and a new set of contingency measures that Athens should adopt to ensure it will achieve agreed fiscal targets in 2018.

Successful reforms implementation in Athens would unlock bailout funds under a financial programme agreed by Greece and euro zone countries in July and would pave the way for talks on Greece's debt relief.

"We believe that specific measures, debt restructuring, and financing must now be discussed simultaneously," IMF's Christine Lagarde wrote to euro zone ministers ahead of their meeting next week.

Lagarde insisted that the IMF considered the bailout programme's target of a Greek primary surplus of 3.5 percent of gross domestic product in 2018 as very difficult to reach and "possibly counterproductive".

Euro zone ministers, led by Germany, have requested this target. The IMF would be satisfied with a 1.5 percent primary surplus, which means a budget surplus before debt payments.

The IMF would not join the Greek bailout programme if fiscal targets were not realistic and without a debt relief, Lagarde said.

To bridge the gap between the IMF and euro zone ministers, lenders agreed in April to ask Greece a set of contingency measures that would apply only if Athens failed to reach a 3.5 percent primary surplus in 2018.

Lagarde insisted that these measures should be legislated upfront and include further reforms of the Greek pension and tax system. "Unfortunately, the contingency mechanism that Greece is proposing does not include such reforms," Lagarde wrote in her letter.

(Reporting by Francesco Guarascio; Editing by Alison Williams)
Http%3a%2f%2fi.blueprint.mashable.com%2fbkkwhshd2jr5prj7oodlgilobgo%3d%2fblueprint-api-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2fuploads%2fcard%2fimage%2f82261%2fb7b5d0c6e04b4bfdbb694fac75661047

It's bound to make a surfer looking for the perfect wave wince, but for an Australian photographer the violent chaos of the ocean's waves is the ultimate discovery.

Maelstrom, a project and exhibition by Luke Shadbolt, 31, captures the surf at its most turbulent and dramatic in a set of awe-inspiring photographs.

SEE ALSO: 5 Australian artists whose work will improve your Instagram feed

An appetite for the surf is an innate part of Shadbolt's life, as he grew up surrounded by beach culture on the relatively sleepy, yet open surrounds of the Central Coast in New South Wales.

Shadbolt was a surf photographer for five years, but during that time he became bored of the faultless waves he was capturing. It was this that led to the concept for Maelstrom.

"I had been travelling all around, searching for perfect waves," Shadbolt told Mashable Australia. "But I guess it was getting a little monotonous, in a sense. So I wanted to turn against that and find the craziest, most chaotic waves that I could find  that's where the motivation for [Maelstrom] came from."

Shadbolt also found inspiration in one particular photo he snapped two years ago, which won him the Nikon Surf Photo of the Year. "It was showing this surfer throwing his arms up in front of this big whitewash explosion," he said.

The photo has dual interpretations: It can be seen as an appreciation of the ocean by the surfer, or a mocking attempt to control it, Shadbolt explained. This photograph led him to explore the wild side of the ocean.

Within his work, Shadbolt said he has tried to capture the duality of waves  creative and destructive in a single act, something that he believes is representative of human nature.

The photographs in this project were captured over six months, with Shadbolt planning the shooting locations in advance and waiting for the right moment. As for exactly where the images were taken, it'll continue to remain a secret. "I can't actually say where, just out of respect to the local guys," he said.

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Shadbolt will still continue to photograph works that are inspired by nature and the water, although some of these will take place away from the ocean. Even though there are more places with crazy waves that he's just waiting to discover.

"There are other areas I'd like to explore that are in similar style to [Maelstrom], it's just a matter of waiting for the right conditions. It's just a matter of monitoring it and waiting for it happen," he said.

As these stunning works prove, it is definitely worth the wait.

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Image: luke shadbolt

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By Nidhi Verma and Douglas Busvine

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India plans to shift to a gas-based economy by boosting domestic production and buying cheap liquefied natural gas (LNG) as the world's third-biggest oil importer seeks to curb its greenhouse emissions, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan said.

New Delhi has promised to shave a third off its emissions rate by 2030, partly by boosting the use of cleaner burning fuels.

"Gradually we are shifting towards a sustainable gas economy," Pradhan told Reuters in an interview.

Gas accounts for about 8 percent of India's energy mix, while oil accounts for more than a quarter.

India's gas supply deficit is expected to widen from 78 million cubic metres a day (mscmd) this fiscal year to 117 mscmd in 2021-22, according to a government estimate.

India recently negotiated better terms for a long-term LNG deal with Qatar and importer Petronet LNG (PLNG.NS) is in talks with Exxon (XOM.N) to renegotiate pricing for gas from Australia's Gorgon project.

"The price should be affordable to us. We respect long-term contracts but everybody has to appreciate the changing scenario," said Pradhan. "In a bigger canvas ... India has the potential of a huge market base".

Pradhan last month visited Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Iran to deepen ties with its main oil suppliers.

"We want to move beyond a buyer-seller relationship," he said, adding that India was offering them stakes in its pipelines, petrochemical complexes and refineries.

India is also in talks with Abu Dhabi National Oil Co and Saudi Aramco to lease strategic oil storage.

GAS GIANT

Pradhan said Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Iran later this month would "certainly" deliver concrete results.

Iran has set aside its Farzad B gas field for development by Indian firms, a move that could result in the building of an LNG plant as India consumes or markets its production share, he said.

Over two years Asian LNG prices have slumped by three quarters to $4.65 per million British thermal units (mmBtu).

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Pradhan expects hefty LNG investments worldwide to ensure affordable long-term prices, a trend that "will suit India as a consuming country."

GAS CONNECTIVITY

India is building import terminals on its eastern and western coasts and pipelines to boost industrial use of gas.

In the fiscal year to March, India's gas production declined by about 4.2 percent, while imports rose around 15 percent.

India recently offered better gas pricing to boost domestic output, but its most recent investment in an LNG terminal in Kerala has been underutilised since it lacks pipelines to connect to demand centres after farmer opposition caused land acquisition problems.

Pradhan said the government was talking to the states and hoped obstacles to a pipeline connecting Kochi to Mangalore would be resolved after state elections in Kerala.

(Writing by Nidhi Verma; Editing by Ed Davies)
By Nidhi Verma and Douglas Busvine

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - The central banks of India and Iran have reached an arrangement to use European banks to process pending oil payments to Tehran, India's Oil Minister Dharmendra Pradhan told Reuters, unlocking $6.4 billion in stalled funds.

Buyers of Iranian oil were prevented from using global banking channels to clear their transactions after sanctions were imposed on Iran in 2011 over its nuclear programme. With the end of those sanctions in January, after an agreement to curb the programme, Iran is finally gaining needed access to the funds.

Iran hopes the money will revive its moribund economy and raise Iranian living standards as well as help to integrate the country into the global economic system.

Indian refiners have been holding 55 percent of its oil payments to Iran after a route to make payments through Turkey's Halkbank was stopped in 2013, although payment of some of those funds was allowed after an initial temporary deal to lift the sanctions.

"There is an agreement between (India and Iran's) central banks. European banks will be the clearing agent. They will be dealing with Iranian banks and we have to pay those European banks," Pradhan told Reuters in an interview.

He did not elaborate further, saying the finance ministry was dealing with the issue.

Also because of the previous sanctions, Indian refiners have been depositing 45 percent of their oil payments to Iran in rupees with India's UCO Bank.

Tehran has been using the funds, currently about 130 billion rupees ($1.95 billion) to import non-sanctioned goods from India.

Indian government sources said during Pradhan's visit to Tehran last month Iran had asked India to consider clearing the oil payments through Europaeisch-Iranische Handelsbank (EIH) of Germany, Central Bank of Italy and Halkbank of Turkey.

One of the sources said the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has ruled out channelling funds through Halkbank.

"Halkbank's Iran-related foreign trade activities with Iran have been carried out since 2004 ... Halkbank will continue its operations in accordance with international law," a senior Halkbank official told Reuters.

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No immediate comment was available from EIH and Central Bank of Italy.

The government sources said Indian refiners will remit funds to Iran through state-owned UCO Bank.

UCO Bank's chairman did not respond to calls from Reuters to his mobile phone.

Reserve Bank of India Governor Raghuram Rajan said on April 5 India will make payments to Iran in a staggered manner.

"Oil companies are working out the banking arrangements in coordination with Iranian counterparts and payments will be made by them presumably over time with minimal impact on the market," an RBI spokesperson said on Thursday.

Despite the sanctions, India continued its engagement with Iran and was among a handful of countries that sourced oil from Tehran.

Iran was India's second-biggest oil supplier before the sanctions hampered its trade relations. The country is set to import at least 400,000 barrels per day of Iranian oil in the year from April 1.

($1 = 66.5330 Indian rupees)

(Additional Reporting by Suvashree D Choudhury in MUMBAI, Nevzat Devranoglu in ANKARA; Editing by Christian Schmollinger)
By Nidhi Verma and Douglas Busvine

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - The central banks of India and Iran have reached an arrangement to use European banks to process pending oil payments to Tehran, India's Oil Minister Dharmendra Pradhan told Reuters, unlocking $6.4 billion (4.4 billion pounds) in stalled funds.

Buyers of Iranian oil were prevented from using global banking channels to clear their transactions after sanctions were imposed on Iran in 2011 over its nuclear programme. With the end of those sanctions in January, after an agreement to curb the programme, Iran is finally gaining needed access to the funds.

Iran hopes the money will revive its moribund economy and raise Iranian living standards as well as help to integrate the country into the global economic system.

Indian refiners have been holding 55 percent of its oil payments to Iran after a route to make payments through Turkey's Halkbank (HALK.IS) was stopped in 2013, although payment of some of those funds was allowed after an initial temporary deal to lift the sanctions.

"There is an agreement between (India and Iran's) central banks. European banks will be the clearing agent. They will be dealing with Iranian banks and we have to pay those European banks," Pradhan told Reuters in an interview.

He did not elaborate further, saying the finance ministry was dealing with the issue.

Also because of the previous sanctions, Indian refiners have been depositing 45 percent of their oil payments to Iran in rupees with India's UCO Bank (UCBK.NS).

Tehran has been using the funds, currently about 130 billion rupees (1.4 billion pounds) to import non-sanctioned goods from India.

Indian government sources said during Pradhan's visit to Tehran last month Iran had asked India to consider clearing the oil payments through Europaeisch-Iranische Handelsbank (EIH) of Germany, Central Bank of Italy and Halkbank of Turkey.

One of the sources said the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has ruled out channelling funds through Halkbank.

Story continues

"Halkbank's Iran-related foreign trade activities with Iran have been carried out since 2004 ... Halkbank will continue its operations in accordance with international law," a senior Halkbank official told Reuters.

No immediate comment was available from EIH and Central Bank of Italy.

The government sources said Indian refiners will remit funds to Iran through state-owned UCO Bank.

UCO Bank's chairman did not respond to calls from Reuters to his mobile phone.

Reserve Bank of India Governor Raghuram Rajan said on April 5 India will make payments to Iran in a staggered manner.

"Oil companies are working out the banking arrangements in coordination with Iranian counterparts and payments will be made by them presumably over time with minimal impact on the market," an RBI spokesperson said on Thursday.

Despite the sanctions, India continued its engagement with Iran and was among a handful of countries that sourced oil from Tehran.

Iran was India's second-biggest oil supplier before the sanctions hampered its trade relations. The country is set to import at least 400,000 barrels per day of Iranian oil in the year from April 1.

(Additional Reporting by Suvashree D Choudhury in MUMBAI, Nevzat Devranoglu in ANKARA; Editing by Christian Schmollinger)
The central Indian state of Maharashtra on Friday upheld a controversial ban on cow slaughter that became part of a major national debate on religious tolerance last year, after a court in Mumbai ruled to retain the existing law with certain amendments.

The Bombay High Court struck down sections of the law that criminalized the possession of beef, the Indian Express reported. As such, consuming meat from animals slaughtered outside the state will no longer be deemed illegal.

These sections infringe on a persons right to privacy, the court said in its decision.

The ban on beef in Indias richest state became a hot-button issue for several months last year amid a spate of nationwide lynchings for alleged possession and consumption of the meat  cows are sacred to the countrys Hindu majority population  and prompted accusations of intolerance against the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

[Indian Express]
Anyone distributing a map the Indian government deems to be "wrong" could be liable for a billion-rupee ($15 million) fine and jail time under a new draft bill published this week.

Maps are a highly sensitive issue in India, which has long-running border disputes with several of its neighbours, most famously over the divided Himalayan region of Kashmir.

The bill, which is up for public consultation, was published on the home ministry's website on Wednesday and lists penalties, including a prison term of up to seven years and a fine of one billion rupees.

"No person shall depict, disseminate, publish or distribute any wrong or false topographic information of India including international boundaries through Internet platforms or online services or in any electronic or physical form," the draft Geospatial Information Regulation Bill says.

New Delhi already imposes tight restrictions on maps but if it becomes law, the bill would impose specific penalties for the first time.

Last year, the government took the Al Jazeera news channel off air for nearly a week, saying it had repeatedly shown incorrect maps of Kashmir.

The region is divided between India and Pakistan but both countries claim it in full and they have gone to war twice over its control since partition in 1947.

In 2011 it ordered The Economist magazine to cover up a map of disputed borders in Kashmir. The news weekly placed white stickers over a diagram of the borders in 28,000 copies on sale in India.

Google has also run into problems with Indian authorities over maps.

In 2014, the national surveying agency filed a complaint against the company for displaying varying maps of India on its different country webpages.

The new bill also states that a licence will be needed to "acquire, disseminate, publish or distribute" maps, meaning services like Google Maps and Apple Maps could have to apply for permits.

Anyone wanting to use India's geospatial image outside the country will also have to secure permission.

The government has invited comments and suggestions from the public on the new draft, which will likely be tabled in the next session of parliament in July.
[Warning: This story contains spoilers from Thursday's episode of Inside Amy Schumer.]

It took less than three minutes for Amy Schumer and a few of her famous friends to accomplish a Hollywood takedown.

Kicking off Thursday's episode of Inside Amy Schumer was Steve Buscemi, presenting live from the famed Dolby Theatre. "Women ... am I right?" he asks to laughs inside the Hollywood home of the Academy Awards before introducing the nominees for best actress.

Cue movie parody clips featuring Schumer and actresses Julianne Moore, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Jennifer Hudson and Laura Linney all playing the same big-screen role: wife waits at home for husband to call.

"I know what you're doin' over there is important, but when you comin' home, baby?" asks Schumer's character in a film titled The Clumsy Coal Miner - while some are loosely based on real movie titles, all portray the familiar plot of a man going off to adventure while the worried woman takes care of things at home.

In Canadian Sniper - a clear riff on American Sniper - Linney screams her husband's name to the sounds of gun shots ricocheting on the other end of the line.

Borrowing a title from the Rachel McAdams-Eric Bana-starrer, Moore rubs her pregnant belly in The Time Traveler's Wife's Husband.

Gyllenhaal cradles two babies while doing laundry in The Wallaby Whisperer.

And Hudson runs toward the ringing in The Phone Rings Eternal.

When the Oscar is awarded to Schumer's character, she thanks the writers for coming up with such "dynamic roles" for women. "Without you, we wouldn't be able to answer the phone," she says. "Thank you, heroes."

When asked how they pulled off such a star-powered short, Schumer co-creator and executive producer Dan Powell told The Hollywood Reporter that each of the actress' clips were shot on different days.

"Each time we got to shoot one of those snippets it was a real honor," he said. "It took a lot of working around these incredible actresses' schedules, but fortunately each of them had one shot. They came on set and we had them done in 15 minutes. Maggie Gyllenhaal was like, 'That's it? Is there more I can do?'"

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Read More: 'Inside Amy Schumer' EP on Season 4 Surprises, Celebrity Cameos and Schumer's Massive Fame

Whether an Oscar, Emmy or a Golden Globe, all four stars have statues to their name, giving them clout to poke fun at the lack of female leads and types of roles available to women. "We wanted women who are esteemed actress who have either been nominated or are always in play to give it that realism and gravitas," Powell said.

Schumer's show is known for its takes on sexism and ageism and this year, when diversity chatter has bubbled up over #OscarsSoWhite and pay equality, this is just her latest swipe at Hollywood gender bias (a conversation widely launched by close pal Jennifer Lawrence last year).

"I'm labeled a sex comic," Schumer said in her HBO special Amy Schumer: Live at the Apollo. "I think it's just 'cause I'm a girl. I feel like a guy could get up here and literally pull his dick out, and everyone would be like, 'He's a thinker.'"

Inside Amy Schumer airs Thursdays at 10 p.m. on Comedy Central. Watch the full "Best Actress" sketch here.

Read More: Jennifer Lawrence, Cate Blanchett and Six More Top Actresses on Pay Gap, Sex Scenes and the Price of Speaking Frankly: "There Is Always a Backlash"

Photo credit: Comedy Central
Tamera Madden escaped Fort McMurray Tuesday in a slow bumper-to-bumper evacuation as flames consumed homes and buildings and clouds of black smoke hung forebodingly over the scorched oilsands city.

The Fort McMurray health and safety manager drove seven hours to Lac La Biche where she sought refuge with family. Madden, her husband and parents left behind a $710,000 three-bedroom home in Timberlea, an as-yet untouched neighbourhood north of Fort McMurrays downtown.

It was extraordinarily terrifying, says Madden. All of this is very scary. Theres a lot of fear about what could happen. The wind could change direction and we could be like the people who have already lost their homes.

Madden is depending on social media for word from home and admits the uncertainty is frustrating. She and her husband have spent the last few days accounting for their co-workers at Laird Electric and Fort McKay Group of Companies. Madden expects it will be at least 10 days until she can return home.

We feel exactly how a Syrian refugee would feel, she says. Its surreal, like a movie. But we have to put this into perspective  we have everything we need. We have each other and our cat and my family and no one has been injured or killed. Its just stuff.

Strong winds and warm, dry weather have intensified the wildfire, which by Friday morning grew to more than ten times its original size or an area of about 100,000 hectares, which is 1,000 square kilometres, larger than the city of Calgary, according to CBC. Weather experts predict the fire will continue to grow until the city receives significant rainfall. While a cold front may help, it is feared the shift in weather could cause lightening which may prompt more fires.

Mandatory evacuation orders were issued in and around Fort McMurray prompting the exodus of 80,000 people over the past few days. Reports peg the property damage so far at 1,600 homes and buildings. The financial burden is expected to be a big one.

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The fierce wildfires have destroyed millions in real estate that could cost the insurance industry a record-setting payout estimated at as high as $9 billion, according to what BMO analyst Tom MacKinnon told CBC.

MacKinnon said the insurance sector could face a payout that high if the city has to completely rebuild. He is basing his figures on lessons learned in the 2011 fires in Slave Lake, Alta. in which insurance claims totaled about $700 million. MacKinnon added that if only 25 to 50 per cent of Fort McMurrays real estate is destroyed the damage would come in at $2.6 to $4.7 billion.

But a spokesperson with the Insurance Bureau of Canada (IBC) says its too early to begin speculating about the extent of the damage, though she suspects it wont be small.

Its looking to be quite devastating [compared to Slave Lake], says Celyeste Power. I believe 400 homes had been damaged there and were seeing speculation of that being in the thousands in Fort McMurray. So while its too early to be definitive about it, I think, unfortunately and especially since the fire is still going, were looking at a very devastating situation.

The bit of bright news is that if Fort McMurray residents have home and tenant insurance they are covered in the event of a fire.

Its important to keep receipts and if theyve been evacuated under a mandatory evacuation additional living expenses are generally covered as well, says Power. Every policy is different so if you need to know what youre entitled to under additional living expenses covered get in touch with your insurance rep.

The IBC, in the meantime, is ramping up its efforts to help with the disaster by upping the number of bodies who can take calls from disaster victims. The bureau has also signed an order that will allow additional adjusters from the U.S. to help out should the need arise. Temporary claim hubs have been set up at evacuation centres in Lac La Biche, Edmonton and Calgary, where insurers are also providing those in need with emergency cash.

Some left their homes with just the clothes on their back, says Rosa Nelson of Intact Insurance, Albertas biggest insurance company. Theyre calling us and saying theyve been evacuated and they dont know if their house is completely destroyed or partly destroyed and all of that uncertainty is hard. It is heartbreaking when you have these big catastrophes.

The Insurance Brokers Association of Alberta (IBAA) is busy recruiting volunteers and fielding phone calls from Fort McMurray residents, many of whom arent clear about what exactly their insurance covers, says Janis Losie, director of communications with the IBAA.

This is not the type of thing that hits them every day, Losie says. A lot of people are in a state of shock and they dont know if their property has been damaged. They need to take a deep breath and they need to talk to their insurance company and feel reassured. Youd be surprised how well received it is when they hear that fire is covered.

In an industry that is fiercely competitive, Power says its uplifting to see competing insurance companies and brokers pull together for the greater good.

When it comes to crisis its all hands on deck, she says. That is so very heartwarming to see.
By Aastha Agnihotri

(Reuters) - InterContinental Hotels Group Plc (IHG.L) on Friday posted a 1.5 percent rise in first-quarter global room revenue, missing analysts' estimates but said it was confident for the rest of the year, citing current trading trends and brand momentum.

Shares in IHG fell as much as 2.5 percent in early trading, making the stock one of the top losers on Britain's FTSE 100 index (.FTSE).

"I think RevPAR was a bit below our expectations of about 2 percent and we expect shares to be a touch weaker," Berenberg analyst Stuart Gordon told Reuters.

IHG, which runs over 5,000 hotels under brands such as Crowne Plaza, Holiday Inn and InterContinental, said weak oil markets and the earlier timing of Easter, affected several of its markets.

However, it added that despite both economic and political uncertainty in some markets, current trends and "the momentum behind our brands give us confidence for the rest of the year".

The hotelier has a high concentration of rooms in oil producing markets, where RevPAR - revenue per available room (RevPAR), a key industry measure - was down 10.4 percent compared to a 1.9 percent rise in the Americas.

Growth in Europe was driven by higher revenue in Germany and Russia, two of its priority markets, while RevPAR in France was down 2.3 percent, hurt by declines in Paris.

Its Asia, Middle East and Africa region posted a 1.1 percent drop in RevPAR, while in Greater China it grew 2.2 percent.

IHG added that, as announced in February, it would return $1.5 billion to shareholders through a special dividend on May 23.

Shares in IHG recovered after their initial fall and were trading down 0.52 percent to 2,682 pence at 0734 GMT on the London Stock Exchange.

(Reporting by Aastha Agnihotri in Bengaluru; Editing by Sunil Nair)
TORONTO, ON / ACCESSWIRE / May 6, 2016 / Profound Medical Corp. (PRN.V) will host a conference call to discuss the results of the first quarter 2016, to be held Monday May 9, 2016 at 8:30 AM Eastern Time.

To participate in this event, dial 877-407-9210 domestically, or 201-689-8049 internationally, approximately 5 to 10 minutes before the beginning of the call. Additionally, you can listen to the event online at www.investorcalendar.com/IC/CEPage.asp?ID=174898.

If you are unable to participate during the live webcast, the event archive will be available at www.investorcalendar.com.You may access the teleconference replay by dialing 877-660-6853 domestically or 201-612-7415 internationally, referencing conference ID # 13634945. The replay will be available beginning approximately 2 hours after the completion of the live event, ending at midnight Eastern on June 9, 2016.

About Profound Medical Corp.

Profound Medical is a Canadian medical device company that has developed a unique MR guided ablation procedure for prostate care. Profound's novel technology combines real-time MR imaging with transurethral, robotically-driven therapeutic ultrasound and closed-loop thermal feedback control. It provides a highly precise treatment tailored to patient-specific anatomy and pathology. This method of prostate ablation offers short treatment times and low morbidity, allowing for fast patient recovery. For more information, visit profoundmedical.com.

SOURCE: Investor Calendar
uber driver car

Hedge funds are getting hit by a double whammy of declining performance and fed-up investors pulling their money.

While the first problem may be a function of short-term market troubles, the second problem may be the result of a structural shift, according to some investors.

"You've seem some of the California pensions, some New York pensions, and even today MetLife said they are walking out of a $1.8 billion hedge fund allocation," Michael Gregory, chief investment officer at Highland Alternative Investors, a division of the firm Highland Capital Management, told Business Insider on Thursday.

Part of this is related to the fact that funds are losing money, but Gregory and Mark Okada, Highland's cofounder and chief investment officer, say a shift is taking place that is about more than just performance.

It comes down to two things: fees and flexibility.

Gregory highlighted the impact of fees on investors' decisions.

"If you're a [low volatility] equity fund and you're generating mid- to high-single digits but charging 2% base fee and 20% carry, for a pension that's not very attractive," Gregory said.

Instead of paying high fees for a hedge fund, some individual and institutional investors are turning to liquid alternatives funds.

Liquid alt funds are similar to hedge funds in the sense that they try to outperform the broader market using strategies such as shorting and leverage, but they charge much lower fees and allow investors to move money in and out of the fund on a daily basis.

Screen Shot 2016 05 06 at 8.13.26 AM

Traditional hedge funds usually have so-called lock-up periods that force investors to wait before withdrawing money.

Combine the lower fees with this flexibility, and liquid alts can look like an enticing option.

"I see liquid alts disrupting the hedge fund industry over the next 15 years," Okada said.

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These strategies doubled assets from 2010 to 2014 but faced some outflows last year. Still, liquid alt funds outperformed hedge funds in 2015, according to Goldman Sachs.

"We've been slowly spending a lot of time in this area," Okada said, "and it's a lot of hard work to educate investors, to have the right products, to get the risk management right, to get the distribution right, but you can have a transparent, low fee, daily liquidity mousetrap.

"If you can do that, and there are a lot of ifs, why you would ever go into a hedge fund vehicle?"

Gregory did suggest that there was a time and a place for hedge funds, saying that sometimes a fund with a longer time horizon can work.

"We think that extrapolation of short periods and indicting the whole hedge fund industry is a bad move," Gregory said.

Okada, however, summed up the shift using a comparison to another high-profile, and successful, disrupter.

"I think this is disruptive, just like Uber is disruptive to cab drivers," he said. "I think it is very disruptive, and the establishment is pushing back."

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Traders apparently believe that a decline may be coming in Suncor Energy.



optionMONSTER's monitoring system detected the purchase of more than 8,000 May 25.50 puts for $0.69 to $0.81 yesterday. There was no open interest at the strike before the trades appeared, showing that these are new positions.



Long puts lock in the price where a stock can be sold, so they make money if shares decline. Investors use them to hedge long positions or to speculate on a drop. (See our Education section)



SU fell 2.9 percent to $25.78 yesterday. The energy producer, which completed its acquisition of Canadian Oil Sands in March, missed quarterly earnings expectations on April 28.



Overall option volume in SU was 8 times greater than average yesterday. Puts outnumbered calls by a narrow margin.





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Paris (AFP) - An Iranian director sentenced to 223 lashes for making a film that has never been officially shown in his homeland said Friday he just wanted to be left alone to work rather than "be turned into a hero".

Keywan Karimi ran into trouble with Iran's powerful Revolutionary Guards over a documentary he shot called "Writing on the City" about graffiti in the capital Tehran.

He spent 15 days in solitary confinement in 2013 and was accused of making "propaganda against the regime" and "insulting religious values".

But since then, the young avant-garde filmmaker told AFP, several other "ridiculous" charges have been added including drinking alcohol, having extramarital affairs and making pornography.

"All I was doing was filming what was being written on the walls of Tehran," said the 33-year-old, who comes from the country's Kurdish minority.

Karimi was sentenced to six years in prison in 2015 but after an international outcry in which acclaimed Iranian directors including Jafar Panahi and Mohsen Makhmalbaf rallied to his support, five years of the term was suspended.

The threat of the 233 lashes has not however been lifted, and the prison authorities are now demanding that the punishment be carried out.

- The right to think -

"I am not a political activist," Karimi told AFP in a telephone interview. "I am not being sent to prison because I oppose the regime but because I am a filmmaker."

The police have contacted him several times but have not yet arrested him to bring him to prison to be whipped and serve his sentence, he said.

"Writing on the City" has since been shown at film festivals in France, Spain and Switzerland and in the meantime Karimi has continued working on another film project.

"I am waiting for them to come for me. The support I have received helps break the solitude and solidarity from the film world also warms my heart," he added.

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Karimi said that he could have immigrated "quite easily but I want to remain to defend my right to live my life.

"The fact that my artistic activity is seen as an act of political opposition says a lot about the situation in Iran," he added.

"When the (Turkish Kurdish director) Yilmaz Guney won the Palme d'Or at Cannes for his film 'Yol' (in 1982), he said that cinema was a part of his political activism.

"He was an activist who was part of a political organisation. But what I draw from his experience is that making films is also a kind of struggle, a struggle in defence of the courage to think," Karimi insisted.

"I do not want to be turned into a hero. Whether my films are seen and I become well-known is really secondary. Cinema is what gives sense to my life."
The author, deputy director and acting director of the CIA from 2000 to 2004, teaches at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

Theres a sliver of good news about the Islamic State. That may come as a surprise, given its recent killing sprees in Brussels and Paris, and its claimed attacks in California. Yet, the anti-IS coalition has finally begun to dent the groups capabilities, including its territory, resources and recruits.

Ive consistently argued that the IS is strong, growing and poses a greater threat than al-Qaida ever did in at least five ways, from the size of its coffers to its social media savvy. Its fair to say that in some areas, the IS is starting to hurt; in others, its menace is not much reduced. And we must be clear: The brutal, would-be caliphate is far from defeated, and theres no question that it can still cause enormous harm, exploit the continuing turmoil in Iraq and Syria, and strike targets in the region and beyond.

1. TERRITORY

At its zenith in 201415, the IS held more territory than al-Qaida ever did; it controlled or influenced about one-third of Iraq and Syria. Since then, Iraqi Army and Syrian rebel counterattacks have enjoyed more success, helped by the odd combination of American, Russian and Iranian assistance. Territorial estimates seesaw, but the IS today appears to have lost close to 40 percent of its land in Iraq and about 20 percent in Syria.

Before rejoicing, lets not forget that the IS is still deeply embedded in the two major cities of Raqqa, Syria (its nominal capital), and Mosul in Iraq. The long-promised liberation of the latter is likely to be further postponed by the political paralysis afflicting Baghdad.

2. NARRATIVE

The IS has fielded a glossy narrative that sucked in legions of disaffected youth, but with a diminished caliphate it appears to have lost some of its pull. During much of 2014 and 2015, when the IS conquests were coming fast and furious, about 1,000 recruits were reportedly pouring into its ranks every month. The organization was plausibly able to claim that it was building a real state, and its slick propaganda painted life there as welcoming and full of opportunities.

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But new 2016 public opinion surveys of Arab youth show that narrative is starting to go stale. About 80 percent of Arab youth reject the IS, compared with 60 percent in earlier surveys, and an overwhelming majority see the IS as the principal cause of trouble in the Middle East. Meanwhile, recruitment rates may be starting to sputter, down to as few as 200 per month, according to the Pentagon.

3. MONEY

Unlike al-Qaida, which was often scrounging for money, the IS became the richest terrorist group in history. It did so by nabbing oil refineries and approximately 80 bank branches in its conquered territory, by ransomed kidnappings and through taxes extracted from its subjects.

Compared with its predecessors, the IS is still wealthy. But one estimate suggests that its income has fallen by about a third  from around $80 million per month to just over $50 million  thanks to coalition bombing of oil facilities and money storage sites and the declining price of oil. Fifty million dollars may sound like a lot, but the new governing responsibilities of the IS require more. One former member reports that the group has had to cut salaries for its troops by half.

4. ACCESS

Various studies show that the IS has recruited as many as 4,500 Westerners, and on this score it is as dangerous as ever  perhaps even more so, because its strains elsewhere could spur more external attacks such as the ones in Paris, Brussels and San Bernardino. No previous terrorist group has had such ease of access to Western targets and with such a fixation on soft targets  theaters, markets, offices. Count on the IS, wounded and on the defensive, to lash out even more violently.

5. SOCIAL MEDIA

Here too the IS retains an enormous advantage, especially compared with what the VHS-era al-Qaida had to work with. Whereas al-Qaida resorted to smuggling out the occasional videotape, the IS moves with agility  and deep encryption on the Internet  to reach potential recruits and to plan attacks.

White House officials and the Pentagon say that the U.S. is starting to deploy cyberweapons against the IS, but this appears to be only a beginning. So while the IS can be squeezed on the ground it physically occupies, the Internet remains a virtual environment in which it can hope to endure and continue launching operations  yet another reason why this is certain to be a long and difficult fight.

The IS retains at least two other closely related advantages.

First, its strategy has long envisioned operating in three concentrically expanding arenas: the Syria-Iraq nexus, the broader Middle EastNorth Africa complex and globally beyond that. It is acting on that strategy, pushing many of its operatives out to its North Africa hub in Libya, where its estimated 4,000 to 6,000 fighters are double what it had there last year. More broadly, the IS now has branches or loose affiliates in more than 40 countries, giving it defense in depth.

Second, by virtue of the chaos and ungoverned space in Libya, parts of North Africa and much of the Middle East, the IS has the largest safe haven that any terrorist group has ever had. Safe haven is the key element for plotting, training and launching terrorist operations.

In some respects, the IS is back on its heels. But blunting its murderous campaigns will require relentless offensive action across a broad front by the anti-IS coalition.

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Gaza City (Palestinian Territories) (AFP) - Israeli warplanes launched new strikes against Hamas in the Gaza Strip on Friday in response to mortar fire, as the worst cross-border violence since a 2014 war entered a third day.

The Palestinian fire targeted Israeli forces searching along the border, and short distances inside Gaza, for infiltration tunnels leading into southern Israel -- among the most feared weapons of Hamas fighters during the 2014 conflict.

Israeli aircraft attacked sites at Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza and near Khan Yunis in the south of the territory, witnesses said.

There were no reports of any casualties.

The Israeli army confirmed only one strike, saying it was a reaction to cross-border mortar fire.

"In response to the ongoing attacks against Israeli forces, Israel Air Force aircraft targeted a Hamas terror infrastructure," an army statement said.

It was the fourth air raid on the blockaded Palestinian enclave since Wednesday, when direct clashes between Hamas and Israeli forces broke out for the first time since 2014.

Since then, Hamas and other militant groups have fired at least 10 mortar rounds across the frontier, while Israeli tanks stationed on the border have fired repeatedly at what the army said were Hamas targets.

On Thursday, Zeina Al-Amour, a 54-year-old Palestinian woman, became the first fatality of the flare-up after Israeli tank fire hit her home, medics said.

The violence has raised concerns for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, the Islamist rulers of Gaza, that has held since the 50-day war left 2,251 Palestinians and 73 Israelis dead.

- Living in fear -

On both sides of the border, residents said they were living in fear of a wider conflict.

"In the night there is the sound of mortars, bombs, planes," said Jehan Berman, a resident of kibbutz Kerem Shalom which is only 40 metres (yards) from the border with Gaza.

"We're tired. We're still recovering from the last war and the next one is already at our door," he told AFP, citing the arrival in the area of a new army brigade and families planning to seek refuge elsewhere.

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Kerem Shalom is close to where the army has uncovered two Hamas tunnels, allegedly stretching into Israeli territory, in recent weeks, the most recent discovery coming on Thursday.

Destruction of the tunnels became one of Israel's primary goals during the 2014 war, with more than 30 destroyed, according to the army.

Since the conflict, Hamas has continued to build what it calls "resistance tunnels."

Citing Hamas activities, Israel maintains a tight blockade on Gaza which human rights groups say is collective punishment against its more than 1.8 million residents.

Ali al-Moghrabi, 40, a tailor from Gaza City's Al-Hanan Zeitun neighbourhood which was bombed on Thursday, said he still hadn't recovered from the last conflict.

"We do not want war, but the occupier (Israel) never stops," he said. "People are already suffering from the blockade, unemployment and poverty."

Hanane Akkaoui, a 53-year-old mother said she was scared for her children.

"Bombs don't differentiate between civilians and resistance (fighters)," she said.

Hamas's armed wing, the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, has accused Israeli soldiers of incursions into Gazan territory in recent days by between 150-200 metres (yards), saying this constitutes a violation of the 2014 truce.

The Israeli army admits it has operated inside Palestinian territory but said it was within 100 metres of the border, where it says it has operated since the 2014 war.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu convened his security cabinet on Friday morning to discuss the latest developments, public radio reported.

There were no immediate official statements from the session, whose closed-door deliberations are classified.

Army spokesman Peter Lerner said on Thursday that Israel had "no interest whatsoever" in a military escalation but added that it would continue to act against Hamas as "it continues to breach Israeli sovereignty and build tunnels."

Israeli media reported on Friday that a pending report on the conduct of the 2014 war is set to be highly critical of Netanyahu, Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon and others.

Yediot Aharonot newspaper said the state comptrollers report would conclude that during the conflict "the security establishment did not have a comprehensive plan for dealing with Hamas's offensive tunnels."
According to Judaeo-Christian teachings, God is all-knowing, all-powerful and all-good. But for at least one man, that's only two-thirds true.

On Tuesday, David Shoshan, an Israeli man with a plethora of time on his hands, appeared in a magistrates' court in Haifa, Israel, to file a restraining order against God. The charge? Shoshan accused the Lord of "serious and unattractive behavior" against him, according to Israeli news site NRG.

Read more: Young South Carolinians Reveal Just How Much Religion Matters in Determining Their Vote

According to the Times of Israel, Shoshan has called for legal action against God several times over the course of the last three years. Police have sent patrol cars to his home 10 times.

At Shoshan's latest court hearing  for which God failed to appear (unless you buy the whole omnipresence thing)  the presiding judge threw out his appeal, suggesting Shoshan suffered not from actionable legal woes against the Lord but from a different kind of trouble, for which, the judge said, Shoshan should seek help from "other sources."

Source: Michelangelo /Wikipedia

This isn't the only time God made headlines this week for ruining the days of mere mortals. When a woman with a disability got in a car accident in the U.S. on Thursday, Shupee Max Used Cars & Towing sent Ken Shupe to help her out.

But after driving nearly an hour to assist her, Shupe said God told him he should abandon her on the side of the interstate because of her Bernie Sanders bumper sticker. "I think the Lord came to me and he just said, 'Get in the truck and leave,'" Shupe told a local news station.

Had Shoshan successfully issued a restraining order against God, the woman might have had the legal precedent she needed to have her day in court.

h/t Huffington Post
(Adds Deutsche Bank saying no case to answer, acted appropriately, cooperating with Italian authorities)

By Vincenzo Damiani

BARI, Italy, May 6 (Reuters) - An Italian prosecutor is investigating Deutsche Bank over its sale of 7 billion euros ($8 billion) of Italian government bonds five years ago, an investigative source told Reuters.

A prosecutor in Trani, a town in southern Italy, is investigating because Deutsche Bank allegedly told clients in a research note in early 2011 that Italy's public debt was no cause for concern, and then sold almost 90 percent of its own holding of the country's bonds, the source said on Friday.

"We do not believe there is a case to answer here and are confident that we acted appropriately," a spokesman for Deutsche Bank said in an email to Reuters, adding the German lender was cooperating with Italian authorities.

Deutsche Bank sold the bonds in the first half of 2011 as Italy slid towards a debt crisis that eventually brought down the government of former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.

Italy's economy ministry said in August 2011 that Deutsche Bank had explained the sale by saying it needed to balance out its exposure to Italian debt after taking on more when it bought out Deutsche Postbank in 2010.

Five former Deutsche Bank managers as well as the bank itself are under investigation in Trani, the source added.

The same prosecutor has, in recent years, also opened investigations into ratings agencies Moody's, Standard & Poor's and Fitch, saying their reports on Italy and its banks during the crisis were mismanaged and provoked sharp losses on the Milan stock market.

The case against Moody's was dropped before a trial began in Trani last year. The case against Fitch Italia and its country head was moved to Milan, where a judge threw it out on Friday.

However David Riley, Fitch's former head of sovereign ratings, remains on trial in Trani, along with five S&P officials. The ratings agencies have denied wrongdoing.

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The U.S. ambassador to Italy, John Phillips, mentioned the ratings agency probe in a speech in Milan last month in which he said Italy's justice system was deterring investors.

In the United States it was "highly unlikely that such a case would be brought outside the major financial centers, where prosecutors have both jurisdiction and expertise in securities fraud prosecutions," Phillips said.

($1 = 0.8742 euros) (Additional reporting by Arno Schuetze; Writing by Isla Binnie; Editing by Mark Potter and Alexander Smith)
Kicking off the National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA) Convention, this full-day event features a select group of speakers and panelists to provide attendees with new insights into emerging trends in automotive retail. The summit offers the opportunity to meet and network with key leaders who are shaping the future in this rapidly changing sector of the industry. More than 600 industry professionals attended the 2016 event, including dealers, OEMs, agencies, and suppliers. This event is the exclusive setting of J.D. Powers U.S. Automotive Franchise Assessment results, providing attendees with a comprehensive overview of how each of the 32 franchises are performing in the U.S. market. The summit is the only public setting where these Franchise Assessment results are revealed in their entirety. This information is unique and invaluable to anyone interested in the relative health and prospects for all of the new-vehicle franchises in the U.S. market.





J.D. Power Automotive Summit photo

The next Automotive Summit is scheduled for January 26, 2017, in New Orleans, LA. For more information, or to register for the event, visit www.jdpower.com/resource/2016-automotive-summit-home.

Abstract:

The J.D. Power Automotive Summit is the exclusive setting of the company's U.S. Automotive Franchise Assessment results, providing attendees with a comprehensive overview of how each of the 32 franchises are performing in the U.S. market. The summit is the only public setting where these Franchise Assessment results are revealed in their entirety.

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Rising British star Jack O'Connell has been on a roll lately, landing lead roles in high-profile dramas directed by Angelina Jolie (Unbroken) and Jodie Foster (Money Monster).

He didnt have as much luck going out for the role of a young Han Solo in Disney/Lucasfilms upcoming Star Wars anthology story, and he expressed some clear discontent about the experience yesterday while promoting Money Monster in Los Angeles.

I love the process of auditioning, even the rejections, O'Connell, 25, told Yahoo Movies a couple hours before it was announced that Hail, Caesar! breakout Alden Ehrenreich had been cast to play the iconic antihero. It will refine you and make you stronger as an actor. Or sometimes it can be so tediously frustrating that it exhausts you as an actor. I think that applied throughout this process.

"It didnt go my way. I wish them all the best of luck. But I dont know I necessarily agree with the reasons given.

Related: Everything You Need to Know About the New Han Solo, Alden Ehrenreich

It was first reported in January that there were about a dozen young actors in the running for the highly sought-after gig, with the shortlist including names like Miles Teller, Dave Franco, Taron Egerton, Ansel Elgort, Jack Reynor, and Logan Lerman. In March that list was reportedly whittled to three  Reynor, Egerton, and Ehrenreich, though Variety reporter Justin Kroll tweeted that O'Connell and Blake Jenner were also still in contention to land the lead in the 2018 film, about the early days of the scoundrel made famous by Harrison Ford in 1977s Star Wars and helmed by 21 Jump Street and The Lego Movie co-directors Phil Lord and Chris Miler.

OConnell with George Clooney in Money Monster (Sony)

O'Connell confirmed to us that he auditioned  once  and that was part of the problem in his eyes. The most frustrating thing is when you feel like your full potential hasnt been recognized, he said. Or, the imagination required for your potential to be recognized, isnt necessarily there. And its very hard to convey all these things in one audition. But thats the process, and I dont think one individual will change that.

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Related: Harrison Ford Nominates Himself to Play Young Han Solo

It was only one audition, but the experience was nonetheless grueling, O'Connell explained. That process kind of contributes to the overall exhaustion that you have to face as an actor. Its part and parcel of the job, and the roles that are worth getting are the ones that youve got to fight for. As the way I see it, its only so often that youre given a role that youve always wanted to play.

As O'Connell admitted even before the Ehrenreich news was announced, That ship sailed. But the actor probably wont have to worry about too much more disappointment along the way. After two highly acclaimed performances in the war films 71 and Unbroken, O'Connell will undoubtedly earn more praise and attention for his role in Money Monster. The Brit nails the outer-boroughs New York accent as Kyle Budwell, a blue-collar man who takes a financial talk show host (George Clooney) hostage after a bad stock tip decimates his life savings. And in a raw and intense performance, he pretty much steals the movie from not his Oscar-winning co-stars Clooney and Julia Roberts.

Money Monster opens May 13. Look for our full Q&A with Jack OConnell next week.
By David Brunnstrom WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Japan's ambassador to the United States weighed in on the U.S. presidential election debate on Friday by arguing against the "America first" stance of Republican candidate Donald Trump and stressing the importance of the U.S.-Japan alliance. Without mentioning Trump by name, the envoy, Kenichiro Sasae, told a Washington forum Japan had come up unexpectedly in the election debate, showing that nothing could be taken for granted in terms of the long-standing alliance. "In the presidential elections, there are arguments whether the United States is going for the isolationist stance," Sasae said. "I don't want to see that kind of United States. "I want to see the United States to be strong and come with a strong robust position, not really thinking of the United States only," he said. Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for the Nov. 8 presidential election, has portrayed Japan, a long-time treaty ally of the United States, as a free-rider on security. He has suggested Tokyo might need nuclear weapons to ease U.S. financial commitment to its defense, anathema to the only country ever attacked by atomic bombs. Japan's Minister for Regional Revitalization, Shigeru Ishiba, said comments by one candidate, who he said he would not name, were causing "a lot of concern in Japan." Ishiba told the forum that if Japan or South Korea chose to develop nuclear weapons regional stability would suffer, and added: "I dont think it will add to the U.S. interest." "No matter who becomes the president, understanding the essence of the alliance, accurately grasping the international environment we have been placed in would lead, I am sure, to proper policies being implemented," he added. Sasae said he understood there was a debate about how to make America strong, but added "the question is whether you could be strong without a proper role around the world." "It is important not to undermine ... one, the value of the U.S.-Japan alliance; two, the geopolitical implications of emerging or resurgent powers in the world; three, the capability and strength of the United States." Trump outlined a clear "America First" policy in a speech late last month, vowing that if he were elected president, U.S. allies in Europe and Asia would have to fend for themselves if they did not pay more for the U.S. defense umbrella. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said on Thursday Japan's U.S. alliance was the foundation of Asian peace and prosperity and Tokyo hoped to be able to work with whoever becomes U.S. president. (Reporting by David Brunnstrom; Editing by Bill Trott and James Dalgleish)
Japanese schools are filled with "hateful" comments about gay and transgender people, including remarks by teachers that can aggravate bullying and push some students into depression, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a report Friday.

The study was based on interviews with dozens of LGBT students at schools across the country, and also teachers, who the rights group said were often a key part of the problem.

"Hateful anti-LGBT rhetoric is nearly ubiquitous in Japanese schools, driving LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) students into silence, self-loathing, and in some cases, self-harm," the group said.

Nearly every interviewee "said that they heard anti-LGBT rhetoric in school, including LGBT people called 'disgusting,' the use of slur words such as 'homo,' and declarations that 'these creatures should never have been born'".

While HRW noted that such discrimination is not just an issue in Japan, the country does lag behind the United States and many other Western nations in terms of gay rights and same-sex marriage.

Historically, Japan has been broadly tolerant of homosexuality, with documented cases of samurai warriors during feudal times having male lovers, while same-sex relationships have been depicted in traditional art, such as ukiyoe, or wood block prints.

As Japan industrialised and modernised, however, from the late 19th century, Western prejudices against homosexuality were increasingly adopted.

Sachi N., a 20-year-old lesbian interviewed for the HRW report, said she learned in class that homosexual relations were the main cause of AIDS and were a "very weird thing to do".

"Everything I heard and was taught (about LGBT people) was bad," she was quoted as saying.

"Even though now I am a lesbian and I know it, I still have a bad concept of it. I still think it's my fault."

HRW researcher Kyle Knight said working with teachers and making LGBT issues part of the curriculum was crucial to fixing the problem.

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"The most important thing to combat this... is to arm the teachers with appropriate information to have LGBT topics included in the curriculum," he told reporters Friday.

Bullying is widespread -- and sometimes brutal -- in Japanese schools, but government policies aimed at fixing the problem do not specifically address LGBT students, who are among the most vulnerable, the rights group said.

There are signs of a growing public acceptance, however.

Tokyo's bustling Shibuya entertainment district has started issuing symbolic "partnership certificates" to same-sex couples, in what was a landmark advance for Japan's gay rights movement.

Some other municipal governments have also followed suit, while corporate Japan is also showing signs of moving toward recognising same-sex couples.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Friday hailed a potential breakthrough in a decades-long territorial dispute with Russia, after talks with President Vladimir Putin, Japan's foreign ministry spokesman told AFP.

"The prime minister said that today he could feel a breakthrough, he could make a breakthrough in the currently stagnated negotiation," Japanese foreign ministry press secretary Yasuhisa Kawamura said.

Tokyo-Moscow relations are hamstrung by a row dating back to the end of World War II when Soviet troops seized the four southernmost islands in the Pacific Kuril chain, known as the Northern Territories in Japan.

Japan and Russia's lingering tensions have prevented them ever signing a peace treaty to formally end World War II hostilities, hindering trade and investment ties.

Abe, in a rare visit by a G7 leader to Russia, met Putin for talks at his holiday residence in the Black Sea resort of Sochi with their talks focusing on the dispute.

"The prime minister said that Mr Putin also shared ... the same feeling" and the leaders "agreed today that they themselves directly get involved in the negotiation," Kawamura said.

Putin and Abe agreed to "promote negotiations by employing a new approach without being bothered by the old previous thinking," Kawamura said.

"This is literally a new element," he said, without giving more detail.

"Japan is not just our neighbour, it is a very important partner for us in the Asian-Pacific region," Putin told Abe at the start of the meeting.

"We have certain questions that demand special attention, maybe for this reason we must devote special attention to building relationships," the Russian leader added.

- Symbol of warming ties -

The Kremlin had dismissed hopes of any major breakthrough towards resolving the dispute at Friday's meeting, while playing up Abe's visit as a symbol of warming ties despite Western attempts to isolate Putin.

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The leaders held talks lasting more than three hours, including a tete-a-tete section, in what Abe called "an extensive, frank and candid exchange of views," Kawamura said.

Both sides had earlier mooted the possibility of starting negotiations on signing a peace treaty, with Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida saying in April that they could begin "as soon as possible" after the leaders met.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said briefly after the talks Friday that the sides "discussed the problem of the peace treaty," giving few details but announcing another round of foreign ministry consultations in June.

While in Tokyo last month, Lavrov said Russia wants to "move forward" but is not prepared to budge on the "result of World War II".

Russia has angered Japan recently by building new modern compounds for its troops stationed on two of the disputed islands.

Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev also infuriated Tokyo last year by visiting one of the islands, home to some 19,000 Russians.

The two leaders on Friday discussed a long-planned visit by Putin to Japan this year, but did not announce a date.

"we agreed in principle that Mr Putin will visit Japan. We will continue to discuss this," Kawamura said.

- Lingering tensions -

Despite the warmer words from both sides, tensions between the two sides continue to surface and Japan has hit Russia with sanctions over the Ukraine crisis.

Though the situation in Ukraine was raised, Lavrov said Putin and Abe did not discuss a potential lifting of sanctions by Tokyo, imposed over Russia's support for separatists there.

Putin said last month he welcomed Abe's visit as it comes despite "pressure from (Japan's) partners, particularly the United States".

Abe will later this month host a summit of the Group of Seven advanced industrial countries, from which Russia has been excluded over its annexation of Crimea from Ukraine.

"Evidently Japan will try to act as a kind of middleman in the talks process between Russia and the US," Russia's government newspaper the Rossiiskaya Gazeta said Thursday.

US President Barack Obama reportedly asked Abe in February to postpone his trip to Russia, according to sources quoted by Japan's Kyodo news agency.

Japanese foreign ministry spokesman Kawamura insisted Friday that Abe's visit "has been well explained to the United States side."
No. 2! Jenni JWoww Farley welcomed her second child with husband Roger Mathews on Thursday, May 5, her rep confirms to Us Weekly.

PHOTOS: Cutest Celebrity Baby Announcements

Baby Mathews made an early appearance today at 6:03 p.m. weighing 7 pounds and 2 ounces, her rep tells Us in a statement. He is healthy and Roger and Jenni couldnt be happier.



E! News was first to break the news.

The happy couple are already parents to 21-month-old daughter Meilani.

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Farley returned to Seaside Heights, New Jersey, in March to celebrate her baby shower at Savor Lounge. I love celebrating big milestones on the Jersey Shore even though the show is no longer, she told Us of the Bloom + Kind Co. sponsored bash that was attended by 50 guests, including her former MTV costar and BFF Nicole Snooki Polizzi.

PHOTOS: Stars Who Got Their Start on Reality TV

The Jersey Shore alum, 30, revealed that she was expecting her second child during her October 2015 wedding reception.



Baby No. 2 is official!! We are expecting and couldnt be more excited, Farley and Mathews later gushed exclusively to Us. A wedding that was beyond a dream come true and baby No. 2 on the way, we couldnt ask for more. We are on cloud nine!

PHOTOS: Top 10 Wildest Jersey Shore Moments

Farley teased on Twitter she plans on sharing the first photo of her little guy via her new app.



Mathews proposed to the MTV star with a massive 5-carat pink and white diamond in September 2012.

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Netflixs and Marvels Jessica Jones has already won critical acclaim  and a Peabody Award  for its nuanced portrayal of female characters in its freshman season, but showrunner Melissa Rosenberg doesnt intend to rest on her laurels when it comes to empowering women, both in front of the camera and behind it.

Four out of 13 of our episodes are directed by women  its still not enough, Rosenberg admitted during a recent For Your Consideration panel for the superhero hit, moderated by Varietys Debra Birnbaum. The our goal is half and half; our goal is diversity behind the camera as well as in front of it.

The statistics on female directors in the industry remain damning  on the studio side and in independent projects  and Rosenberg cites stagnation in the business as a possible cause.

I think the challenge that we face in terms of diversifying the writing room or the directors chair is that there hasnt been a lot of movement over the last 20 years, so there arent a lot of people far enough up the chain to have the credits that get you on a Netflix show, she explained to a full house at Paramount Studios theater. Thats so much of the work that we as a community are doing and have to do, and [are] certainly not doing a good enough job of yet  trying to find more women. If you have a list of credits that gets you on a Netflix show, youre working  youre one of 10 women or 20 women  so the challenge is to give breaks to more people, to bring them up, to keep them in the world and in our business, and that is the work that we have to do. Were incredibly committed to it, and Netflix is as well, Im proud to say.

The series has been embraced by fans and critics in part because it makes a space for womens stories that often still go unexplored in mainstream television, positioning Krysten Ritters titular heroine as a self-sufficient survivor, not a victim  while still allowing Jessica to be fully realized instead of a stock Strong Female Character.

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Rachael Taylor, who plays Jessicas best friend Trish Walker, said that she was attracted to the role because she relished the depth and complexity between these two women on the page, and its so rare. Weve all read and tested for and auditioned for a bunch of pilots, and this is the first one that really jumped off the page with its understanding of female friendship and the female condition. Its a really nuanced, complex portrayal of what its like between two women that have the history that Jessica and Trish have.

Likewise, the shows dedication to exploring the aftermath of rape and abusive relationships without being exploitative has struck a chord with viewers, which Rosenberg attributes to their character-centric approach.

One of the things the comic book gave to us was the history between Kilgrave (David Tennant) and Jessica; it was altered slightly  in the book she hadnt actually been raped. We just felt like that was a much more immediate experience and also felt more grounded in some ways, she said. We didnt walk into the room going were going to tackle the issues of rape or abortion or any of the other issues that came up in our storytelling. It was, here is a human being who has gone through this experience. What would her choices be, what kind of decisions would she make? Who would she be now? Shes a survivor, and thats so much of her driving life force and so much of what we love about her as well. It came out and we started getting all these incredible responses  beautiful thinkpieces written about it; social media, people talking about how they were victims of abuse and assault and they felt empowered by this representation, and it was absolutely mindblowing and humbling and gratifying to be able to contribute to that conversation in any way, and so surprising that we were able to do it in the context of a superhero story. This is a character-driven story, its that first and foremost, and it just has this wonderful milieu of being genre.

Season 1 of Marvels Jessica Jones is currently streaming on Netflix. The show was renewed for Season 2 in January.

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Ankara (AFP) - By letting go of his prime minister after just 20 months in the post, Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has shown his iron will to create a presidential system where one man has total authority.

Ahmet Davutoglu, who served as premier since Erdogan became president in August 2014, in his farewell statement vowed undying loyalty to the Turkish strongman and never to utter a "single word" of criticism against him.

But he made clear the untimely end of his mandate, usually four years, was "not my choice but a result of necessity," in a veiled sign of bitterness.

Davutoglu, foreign minister from 2009 to 2014, is a heavyweight within the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and observers say isolated but serious policy disputes proved too much for Erdogan.

Seeking to leave a historic mark on Turkey after a decade as premier, Erdogan has already transformed the role of president that was largely ceremonial since the 1980 military coup.

His main ambition is now to change the Turkish constitution, possibly through a referendum, to formally enshrine his status as the number one within a presidential rather than parliamentary system.

"President Erdogan has delivered a 'nobody can stop me' message," said Faruk Logoglu, Turkey's former ambassador to Washington and ex-MP for the Republican People's Party (CHP).

"He will not hesitate to take steps to change the constitution to bring in a full executive presidential system," he told AFP.

- '100 percent loyal PM' -

The new prime minister, set to be named at an AKP congress on May 22, is expected to be a far less authoritative figure than Davutoglu who negotiated a historic deal with the EU in March to stem the flow of refugees to Europe.

The Hurriyet daily Friday listed 20 disputes that had created a rift between Davutoglu and Erdogan, beginning with arguments over whether former ministers should stand trial for corruption and the future of powerful spy chief Hakan Fidan.

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The names being floated as the possible new premier include the so-called "three Bs" -- Erdogan's veteran ally Transport Minister Binali Yildirim, his own son-in-law Energy Minister Berat Albayrak and the uber-loyal Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag.

"Whoever gets appointed ... his paramount task will be to ensure that a new constitution legalises Erdogan's 'one-man' rule and is supported through a referendum," said Kemal Kirisci of the Brookings Institution.

Opposition media blasted what they termed a civilian "coup", saying Erdogan had effectively dismissed a premier who secured 49.5 percent of the vote in November elections and 317 seats in the 550-seat parliament.

"There is nothing here to take lightly. It is a 'palace coup'. Can there be any other explanation?" Nuray Mert of the opposition Cumhuriyet daily wrote in her column.

"A prime minister is not mysteriously unseated in a normal country such a short time after the elections," she added.

Aykan Erdemir, senior fellow at the Foundation for Defence of Democracies, told AFP that Erdogan wants a prime minister "who will follow his orders 100 percent of the time" especially on the presidential system which was not a priority for Davutoglu.

"With the appointment of a new prime minister to Erdogan's liking, there will be a stronger commitment for a presidential system."

- 'Model didn't work' -

To make the consitutional changes, parliament needs to agree the holding of a referendum with a three-fifths majority, or parliament can make them directly with a two-thirds majority.

The 330 votes needed for the referendum are 13 more than the AKP's current number of seats while the two-thirds majority equates to 367 seats.

Thus Erdogan will have either to seek new elections or win over opposition deputies, possibly from the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), currently in the throes of a leadership crisis.

But conservative commentators and MPs argued the conflict that emerged between Erdogan and Davutoglu -- who share views on the need for a strong Turkey and the importance of Islam -- showed the need for a presidential system where there is no ambiguity on decision-making.

Senior AKP lawmaker Aydin Unal acknowledged that the model of a "strong president and strong prime minister" had not worked effectively.

"The profile of the prime minister is going to be lower," he told Haber Turk television.
The Panama Papers story has gained fresh impetus with a remarkable manifesto from the person who leaked the information, explaining the motives behind the worlds largest leak and the reasons it was given to German newspapers Suddeutsche Zeitung and our own International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ).

In an eloquent statement given to and verified by the German newspaper, the leaker  identified only as John Doe as he or she has been throughout a year-long relationship with journalists at Suddeutsche Zeitung  blames politicians, lawyers, academics and the news media for failing to address the metastasizing tax havens spotting Earths surface and contributing to inequality.

Doe" directly praises the work of the ICIJ  the international arm of the Center for Public Integrity  in taking on a leak other media organizations rejected and notes "serious investigative journalists lack funding. It may seem self-serving but this note is not the news report of Does statement, rather it is a personal note to readers from me and of course the ICIJ is part of a non-profit reliant on the donations of philanthropists and individuals.

The full statement from Doe is published on the ICIJ site dedicated to the Panama Papers.

Tackling conspiracy theories that an intelligence agency was behind the leak of 11.5 million documents from Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca, Doe" writes: "For the record, I do not work for any government or intelligence agency, directly or as a contractor, and I never have. My viewpoint is entirely my own, as was my decision to share the documents with Suddeutsche Zeitung and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), not for any specific political purpose, but simply because I understood enough about their contents to realize the scale of the injustices they described.

Doe accuses Mossack Fonseca of exploiting a global system of tax havens which permits massive, pervasive corruption and of using its influence to write and bend laws worldwide to favour the interests of criminals The leaker welcomes the new global debate that the Panama Papers (a term coined by the ICIJ and SZ, not the leaker) has generated. Doe" offers to cooperate with authorities but condemns the prosecution or harassing whistleblowers, including Edward Snowden and those involved in what became the base for another ICIJ investigation Lux Leaks.

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"Legitimate whistleblowers who expose unquestionable wrongdoing, whether insiders or outsiders, deserve immunity from government retribution, full stop, Does manifesto says, adding that in the absence of that protection whistleblowers have to rely on the reach of media organizations like the ICIJ.

In a swipe at the money-in-politics circuit in the United States which led to the establishment of the Center for Public Integrity 27 years ago, Doe condemns the collusion between U.S politicians and their paymasters: "Tax evasion cannot possibly be fixed while elected officials are pleading for money from the very elites who have the strongest incentives to avoid taxes relative to any other segment of the population.

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Yet it is a politician from a much less powerful country  my own home country  who is singled out. John Doe accuses New Zealand Prime Minister John Key, embroiled in a controversy over the Panama Papers revelations at home already, of enabling a financial fraud Mecca in the nearby Cook Islands.

The whole affair has been rendered even more extraordinary by Doe intervention.

On Monday, the ICIJ will take the story a step further with the scheduled publication of a searchable database through which all the companies and all the individual officers identified in the Mossack Fonseca records can be seen as a spider-web which stretches across the world.

The entire effort is a huge credit to the work and staff of the ICIJ, led by Director Gerard Ryle and Deputy Director Marina Guevara Walker. They have harnessed the work of a tiny ICIJ staff team and combined it with more than 370 reporters from more than 100 organizations worldwide to coordinate the analysis and release of these documents.

Doe makes clear the story was offered to other media organizations and to Wikileaks before Suddeutsche Zeitung and the ICIJ recognized the value of what was offered. Doe takes a swipe at the rest of the media: "Many news networks are cartoonish parodies of their former selves, individual billionaires appear to have taken up newspaper ownership as a hobby, limiting coverage of serious matters concerning the wealthy, and serious investigative journalists lack funding.

And, ending the note, Doe says: "the next revolution will be digitizedOr perhaps it has already begun.

Peter Bale

CEO, The Center for Public Integrity

@peterbale

This story is part of Politics. Campaign donations, lobbying and influence in government and reports on the special interests that are funding elections and buying power. Click here to read more stories in this topic.

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Copyright 2016 The Center for Public Integrity. This story was published by The Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit, nonpartisan investigative news organization in Washington, D.C.
Even the Biebs seemed to celebrate Justin Timberlake releasing new music for the first time in years.

Justin Bieber paid tribute to the former boy bander by covering his hit, "Cry Me a River," at Brooklyn's Barclays Center on Thursday, just ahead of the Timberlake dropping his new catchy tune "Can't Stop the Feeling."

WATCH: Justin Timberlake Debuts Catchy New Song 'Can't Stop the Feeling,' His First in Years

The venue took to Twitter to share a video of the special moment during the show.

"JB covering JT," it captioned the brief clip where the 22-year-old pop star can be seen sitting down with his guitar really getting into the music.

This isn't the first time Bieber has covered "Cry Me a River" during his Purpose World Tour. He also treated fans to the acoustic song during a Louisville, Kentucky show in late April.

WATCH: Justin Bieber Dethrones Kendall Jenner as the Queen of Instagram-- With Some Help From Selena Gomez

Also, let's not forget when Bieber's ex Selena Gomez belted out the heartfelt ballad back in 2013 amid the young couple's infamous on-again, off-again relationship.

Shortly after Thursday's concert, Bieber shared with his fans how "lucky" he is to share these moments with them.

"I am so glad God is able to move even when people are blind to it.. I am the one on that stage but I am nothing without a light shining through," he wrote.

"I'm such an average, ordinary person that doesn't deserve the praise. I believe it belongs to my God! Thank you God for showing up when we need you the most!"

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For more on Bieber, watch below:

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I was lucky enough to hear Justin Timberlakes Cant Stop the Feeling from the upcoming DreamWorks Animation release Trolls earlier this week at a visit to the studios Glendale campus, which included an early peek at some sections of the film. My head started bobbing, my foot began tapping  it was obvious: this was an earworm sure to take off this summer.

As the closing credits track on the film, however, it could also take off on a level similar to Pharrell Williams Happy from Despicable Me 2 in 2013. Early on in the awards season that year, it was clear Williams jam was a catchy pop culture hit. But when Universal began pitching it for Oscar consideration, mailing 45s out to press and setting up live events, I admit I sort of scoffed.

Boy was I wrong. (Happy may have even given eventual winner Let It Go a run for its money.)

Its notable that Timberlake doesnt only offer this peppy tune and a lead voice performance on Trolls. He also serves as the Executive Music Producer, contributing another three original songs to the album and working closely with the rest of the actors on performances. He has cast his producing magic on most of the tracks, producer Gina Shay says.

Covers of songs like Simon & Garfunkels Sounds of Silence and Cyndi Laupers True Colors are also featured (the latter a duet between Timberlake and co-star Anna Kendrick).

The version of Cant Stop the Feeling in the film will feature all of the characters singing along with him.

So this could be an original song Oscar player in the making. And make no mistake, whoever is tapped to produce the 89th Academy Awards would be thrilled at the prospect of Timberlake performing on the show. The promotion of popular acts can be a ratings boost for a telecast that is constantly craving more viewership.

Whether the film itself can crack what already appears to be a very tight animated feature race remains to be seen, but the technology used to create the look and textures of the film  as evidenced already by footage screened at CinemaCon in April  yields a vibrant and unique aesthetic that is sure to impress animators.

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You can bob your head to Cant Stop the Feeling, which dropped at midnight ET, via the music video above. It features other cast members such as Kendrick, James Corden, Kunal Nayyar, Gwen Stefani and Ron Funches.

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As Kaskade prepares for one of the biggest concerts of his career this weekend in Los Angeles, the American DJ and music producer spoke to Reuters about the appeal of electronic dance music (EDM) and why people want to experience it live. Kaskade will be playing a sold-out show at Los Angeles Convention Center, which accommodates more than 20,000 people, on May 7. "This is why live music has become such a big deal. The shows are so important because you can tell 27,000 people are coming to see me this weekend. It's working, they're listening so I think that's why it's so gratifying to come back here to Los Angeles and do such a big show," he said. While EDM has risen in popularity in the past five years and catapulted the careers of DJs such as Calvin Harris, David Guetta, Tiesto and Zedd, Kaskade said the genre still faced some obstacles in pop music. "Radio still has a hard time with dance music and that's really the crossover medium," he said. "That's how people still digest music even with all these streaming services and downloading services out there, people still listen to radio.
Dublin (AFP) - Ireland's parliament re-elected Enda Kenny as prime minister at the head of a minority government on Friday following a deal aimed at a slight easing of austerity after more than two months of impasse.

Kenny won the vote by 59 in favour and 49 against, in the fourth attempt to appoint a prime minister since an inconclusive general election in February, thanks to the support of independent lawmakers and the consent of the main opposition Fianna Fail party.

"This government has much to do. Our country faces many challenges - that was the message that the people gave during the election and has been repeated by so many of you," Kenny said in his acceptance speech.

"The new government has listened to that message and we will act on that message."

Kenny's Fine Gael party last week secured a deal that arch-rivals Fianna Fail would abstain on the vote, allowing him to form a minority government.

The agreement between the parties means that Fianna Fail will back Fine Gael and independents on key confidence votes in return for having a number of its policies implemented from the opposition benches.

Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin said the deal would remain in place at least until the end of 2018.

The draft plan for government includes a commitment to 6.75 billion euros ($7.71 billion) in additional public spending over the next five years and the suspension of controversial water charges.

However, the new government is widely viewed as offering more of the same when it comes to the economy.

Fine Gael and Fianna Fail have historic differences but both are essentially centre-right and few commentators believe the composition of the new government will herald a radical change in direction.

"It will be largely business as usual," political analyst Johnny Fallon told AFP.

"There will be some tweaks around the edges to accommodate the demands of the independents but these will be relatively minor in the grand scheme of things."

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- 'Masterclass in waffle' -

Welcoming Kenny's re-election, Ireland's main business lobby group, Ibec, warned in a statement that "a minority government will undoubtedly face greater challenges in securing the necessary support for key initiatives".

In a two-hour void before the vote in parliament as deputies waited for the independents to hammer out a last-minute deal to support Kenny, opposition speakers took the opportunity to demand an end to the austerity measures deployed by Kenny's last government.

Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams said the measures outlined in the draft programme for government would fail to alleviate the crises in housing and the health services or to deliver a blueprint for a fairer Ireland.

"This arrangement is a masterclass in waffle and bluster; no real ambition, no big ideas," he said.

"Never was so much negotiated for so long for so little."

Fine Gael, which won 50 seats at the election as against 44 for Fianna Fail in the 158-seat Dail, or lower house of parliament.
Time to throw on your seersucker suit or most stylish sundress and slurp up your mint julep. The 142nd Kentucky Derby will be run Saturday at Churchill Downs Louisville. Last year, attendance at the race was a record 170,513 people and nearly 18 million people watched on television as American Pharoah won en route to becoming the first Triple Crown winner in 37 years.

But if you still think Pharoahs are only Egyptian or that a mint julep sounds like a kind of candy, brush up on your knowledge of the historic race by reading on:

Related: Kentucky Derby: The Value of a 2-Minute Horserace

What is the Kentucky Derby?

Topping off the two-week Kentucky Derby Festival, the Derby is the most popular annual horse race in the U.S. and is known as the most exciting two minutes in sports.

Its also the oldest continuously running sporting event in the U.S., as it hasnt missed a year since first being run in 1875. The race always takes place on the first Saturday in May.

Why is it a big deal?

Besides the longstanding tradition, the race also makes up the Triple Crown of American horse racing, along with the Preakness Stakes and the Belmont Stakes. Winning the Triple Crown is often thought of as the greatest accomplishment possible for a thoroughbred racehorse.

Oh, and theres big money involved.

How much money is at stake?

People bet a record $194.3 million on the Derby last year, with $154.3 million being paid on winning tickets.

The prize money isnt bad, either. The winning owner receives $1.4 million in prize money. Second place receives $400,000, third place receives $200,000, fourth place receives $100,000 and fifth place receives $60,000.

Related: A Bettors Guide to the Kentucky Derby

The winner also receives a trophy that is made of 14 karat gold, is 22 inches tall, stands on a jade base and weighs 3.5 pounds. On top of that, the winning horse wears a hand-sewn garland of 400 roses that weighs more than 40 pounds.

Six other big races will also be taking place at Churchill Downs on Sunday, which will dish out another $2.15 million to winners.

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How do the Kentucky Derby horses get chosen?

The race is limited to 20 three-year-old thoroughbreds who are eligible for the race based on their performance in 36 other stakes races, making it a very exclusive event. Owners pay at least $50,600 to enter their horse in the field. In 2013, around 21,275 thoroughbred foals were born in the U.S. That means less than one-tenth of one percent of them will make it to the Derby. And if they do somehow make it, they only have one shot at the winning roses.

Whos this years favorite?

Nyquist, the winner of the Florida Derby, is the betting favorite for this years race. A couple other horses are also worth a look. Santa Anita Derby victor Exaggerator and Fountain of Youth winner Mohaymen are other top choices on the betting lines.

Related: Kentucky Derby: Big-Time Economic Win

What are some of the traditions behind the Derby?

Hats are a big one. Women wear big, ridiculous, flamboyant hats. Almost all of the hats worn come with a lavish assortment of flowers, ribbon and feathers. The tradition of the big hat dates back to the races founder, Col. Meriwether Lewis Clark, who wanted to make the event appeal to the upper class and pushed people attending the race to wear their nicest clothes. Back then, that included a hat. Although headwear hasnt remained an American tradition, it certainly has at the Derby.

The Derby also has its own drink, the mint julep. Fans consume an estimated 127,000 juleps on Derby day and Kentucky Oaks day the Friday before. A mixture that consists of sugar, fresh mint and whiskey, the mint julep has been the traditional cocktail of the Derby since they were first served at the event in 1938.

A thick, meaty stew called Burgoo is the traditional food of the Derby. Although there are many recipes for the dish, the most typical one contains three types of meat along with corn, butter beans and okra.

Top Reads from The Fiscal Times:
Nairobi (AFP) - Refugees from Somalia will no longer be accepted in Kenya, the government said Friday, citing security fears.

"The Government of the Republic of Kenya, having taken into consideration its national security interests, has decided that hosting of refugees has to come to an end," said a statement signed by interior ministry official Karanja Kibicho.

Under the directive, newly-arrived asylum seekers will not automatically receive refugee status, and the government will step up efforts to have those already living in the country removed.

Kenya hosts around 550,000 refugees in two camps at Kakuma and Dadaab, the world's largest, many of whom have fled decades of war in neighbouring Somalia.

"The message is clear, we are closing the camps and we will not accept more refugees in the country," said Mwenda Njoka, interior ministry spokesman.

Njoka added that the new regulations were aimed at refugees from Somalia but those from other countries may also be affected. "The problematic ones are the Somalis. They're the ones we're starting with," he said.

In 2013 the governments of Kenya and Somalia together with the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) signed a so-called tripartite agreement aimed at encouraging Somali refugees to return home voluntarily.

Only a few thousand have taken up the offer, however, leaving Kenya frustrated at the slowness.

"Kenya has been forced by circumstances to reconsider the whole issue of hosting refugees and the process of repatriation," Kibicho said, adding that the Department of Refugee Affairs (DRA) responsible for refugee registration and management had been "disbanded".

- Refugees fled Shebab -

A DRA employee reached by phone at work on Friday afternoon expressed surprise, saying he knew nothing of the directive.

Government and security officials regularly assert that Islamic militants from the Shebab group hide, thrive and recruit among Somali refugees, claims denied by independent observers and by refugees themselves who point out many of them have fled Shebab's depredations.

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Following deadly Shebab assaults on Nairobi's Westgate mall and Garissa university senior officials threatened to close Dadaab and kick out the refugees.

In April 2015, days after the Garissa attack, Deputy President William Ruto promised to close Dadaab "in three months", but that deadline -- like previous ones -- passed.

Friday's statement again conflated refugees and terrorists emphasising, "the immense security challenges such as threat of the Shebab and other related terror groups that hosting of refugees has continued to pose to Kenya."

New arrivals from Somalia will no longer receive 'prima facie' refugee status but will have to argue their cases individually, however the agency tasked with processing those applications, the DRA, is to be shut down.
His relationship with Keppel is still on hold.

Brazilian prosecutors have not filed charges Zwi Skornicki, Keppels local agent, for conducting illegal cartel activities and fraud against competitive bidding.

Keppel said in a statement that although the Brazilian Public Prosecutors Office has found evidence of bidding fraud, it has not charged Skornicki for possible offences at this point in time.

Skornicki was was arrested early this year on back of allegations that he bribed Sete Brasil officials to award certain contracts to Keppel. He has been charged with corruption, criminal conspiracy, and money laundering.

The agency relationship between Keppels entities and Mr Skornicki had been put on hold pending determination by the relevant authorities into the allegations made on the matter. Keppel reiterates its zero-tolerance stance against any form of illegal activity, including bribery and corruption, involving its employees or associates, and will take all necessary steps to eradicate such conduct if discovered. We are unable to comment further in view of the ongoing investigations, Keppel said.







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BOSTON/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry criticized presumptive Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on Friday, warning that isolationist policies would take a toll on the country's well-being. "You are the most diverse class in Northeastern history. In other words, you are Donald Trump's worst nightmare," he jokingly told the 2016 graduates of Northeastern University in Boston. While he did not mention the billionaire businessman's name again, Kerry alluded to one of Trump's signature proposals - his call to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. "We will never come out on top if we accept advice from soundbite salesmen and carnival barkers who pretend the most powerful country on Earth can remain great by looking inward and hiding behind walls at a time when technology has made that impossible to do and unwise to even attempt," said the former U.S. Senator from Massachusetts, who was the Democratic nominee for president in 2004. Kerry has generally declined to comment on the race leading up to the Nov. 8 presidential election, though he has noted that foreign leaders have raised concerns about statements made by candidates, particularly Trump. A spokesman told reporters on Friday that Kerry's remarks in Boston were intended to be lighthearted. "He is not living in a bubble. He is obviously concerned about some of the tone and the effect that is having on foreign leaders," department spokesman John Kirby told a press briefing. "If you're asking me because he enjoyed a light-hearted moment with students today has he changed his calculus to more aggressively jumping into active debates ... the answer is no." (Reporting by Scott Malone in Boston and Lesley Wroughton in Washington, editing by G Crosse and Chizu Nomiyama)
Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige with Robert Downey Jr., Chadwick Boseman, and Chris Evans at 2014 Marvel Studios fan event in Los Angeles (Photo: Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images)



By Mike Fleming Jr., Deadline Hollywood

EXCLUSIVE: As Captain America: Civil War becomes the latest in a remarkably consistent string of global juggernauts, Marvel Studios maestro Kevin Feige and the superhero mojo he has injected has positioned the company to continue a performance run that one day will be looked upon as nothing short of historic. Civil War grossed $291 million overseas in some territories, with more bowing this weekend as the film opens stateside (the film grossed $25 million Thursday night, just shy of The Avengers: Age of Ultron). The film sets the stage for back-to-back sequels to The Avengers, which Civil War helmers Joseph and Anthony Russo begin shooting this fall. It means Feige will have held serve in the increasingly difficult intramural can-you-top-this competition going on between Disneys film silo system members Pixar (most recently the Oscar-winning Inside Out), Lucasfilm (Star Wars: The Force Awakens), and Disneys family film division (The Jungle Book). Here, Feige discusses the balancing act that goes into administering the Marvel universe, the pseudo controversy on casting Tilda Swinton in Doctor Strange, and bringing Spider-Man under Marvel quality control.

Related: Captain America: Civil War Directors Joe & Anthony Russo On Their Strange Road To Marvel Mavens - Deadline Q&A

DEADLINE: It feels like the only real question with Captain America: Civil War is, how high? But there have been questions on Doctor Strange and the casting of Tilda Swinton as The Ancient One, the mentor to the title character played by Benedict Cumberbatch. Fanboys noted the character was Tibetan in the comics, and The New York Times reported the suspicion of an ulterior motive to not offend China. Can you clear this up?

FEIGE: We make all of our decisions on all of our films, and certainly on Doctor Strange, for creative reasons and not political reasons. Thats just always been the case. Ive always believed that it is the films themselves that will cross all borders and really get people to identify with these heroes, and that always comes down to creative and not political reasons. The casting of The Ancient One was a major topic of conversation in the development and the creative process of the story. We didnt want to play into any of the stereotypes found in the comic books, some of which go back as far as 50 years or more. We felt the idea of gender swapping the role of The Ancient One was exciting. It opened up possibilities, it was a fresh way into this old and very typical story line. Why not make the wisest bestower of knowledge in the universe to our heroes in the particular film a woman instead of a man? We made changes to some of the other key character in the comic for similar reasons. Specifically, casting Chiwetel Ejiofor as Mordo and theres a character named Wong, who is a very big part of the comics, and we cast this amazing Asian actor [Benedict Wong] and modernized that role and his talents people will begin to see as materials on the film begin to come out.

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DEADLINE: As an Irishman myself, having the smartest person in the world be Irish seems okay.

FEIGE: The truth is, the conversation thats taking place around this is super-important. Its something we are incredibly mindful of. We cast Tilda out of a desire to subvert stereotypes, not feed into them. I dont know if you saw [Doctor Strange director] Scott Derricksons tweet the other day. He said were listening and were learning, every day. That really is true. As long as were starting on this topic, it means so much to us that people know that. We also know that people expect actions and not words in a Q&A, and Im hopeful that some of our upcoming announcements are going to show that weve been listening.

DEADLINE: It sounds like you deny any suggestion that Marvel or Disney didnt want to offend China?

FEIGE: That story was completely erroneous.



Doctor Strange: Watch the trailer:



DEADLINE: These are pretend stories, with superheroes. Theyre not real. How sensitive do you feel that you have to be in terms of ethnicity or sticking to or hiring actors or directors of a certain color or gender?

FEIGE: Well, I think its incredibly important. I think when we adapt any of these stories we dont gowhich I know is not really what you meant but we dont go oh, look its just a cartoon. Its the funny pages, we can do whatever we want. We, of course, treat them very seriously, like theyre sacred texts from which to pull stories and adapt and modernize. But we want people to watch our films and see themselves reflected in the heroes, in the villains, in the story lines. That means being as diverse as our world is. Im a giant Star Trek fan. You know what IDIC means? It was Gene Roddenberrys mantra, infinite diversity in infinite combinations. I think thats just the facts of our world right now.

DEADLINE: Marvel has shown diversity by making Thor a female character in the comics. You mentioned Chiwetel Ejiofor, playing a character who was white in the comics; Nick Fury, played by Samuel L. Jackson, and Thors gatekeeper Heimdall, played by Idris Elba, were white in the comics; and Marvel cast an Hispanic actor, Maximiliano Hernandez in the TV series Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Now, youre mobilizing Captain Marvel as a female-driven hero tale, and several agents have told me that theyve been told only a woman will be considered to direct this. Why lay down an edict like that? Was there a similar one when Ryan Coogler was hired for Black Panther?

FEIGE: Thats not true. We didnt lay down any edict like that. When it came to Ryan Coogler, we loved both of his films and in particular, most recently, Creed. It coincided exactly with the start of our director search for Black Panther. Luckily for us, he was very interested and pursued it and we signed him up relatively quickly. There was not a particularly large search. We got very lucky. In terms of Captain Marvel, we dont send out edicts. That being said, we are meeting with many, many immensely talented directors, the majority of whom are female. I do hope they will have announcements certainly by the summer, before the summers end, on a director for that.

Related: Marvel Sets Scribes for Captain Marvel

DEADLINE: I didnt mean to be insensitive with Coogler, whose first two films were inclusive and full of heart. But you think about what it might mean for a child of color, to feel a stake in a movie like that, with a black actor and director. It seems important. We havent really seen a superhero of color carry a movie since Wesley Snipes was doing the Blade movies.

FEIGE: Well, youve seen a lot but you mean in title roles.

DEADLINE: Im talking about a freestanding film like Coogler is making. Are you thinking of the cultural impact that might have?

FEIGE: I think that would be nice. We always set out to just make a great movie. I know thats what Ryan is setting out to do but even the introduction that the characters had in Civil War and the reactions to that charactermy daughter, a little red head, seven-year-old girl was running around all weekend wearing the Black Panther mask. I love that and I think well see much more of that when that movie comes out I think even this Halloween. But certainly the Halloween following the release of Ryans film I think youre going to see lots of kids, of many ethnicities, dressing up as that character because hes unbelievably awesome. The fact that he will be an African American actor portraying an African hero up on that screen, and a target of wish fulfillment for the audience? I think it is great.

Chadwick Boseman on his Black Panther character in Captain America: Civil War:

DEADLINE: Take us behind the scenes a little with your involvement in this refreshing new iteration of Spider-Man who feels like a glove fit in the Marvel Universe. I always heard that Sony rushed films to battle this ticking clock where the rights might revert if one wasnt made every few years. What can you say about the dynamic of you and Marvel getting directly involved as a producer, and road testing Tom Holland in Civil War?

FEIGE: It came down to an initial lunch between myself and Amy Pascal and then many subsequent phone calls and meetings where I basically suggested that they should allow us to creatively produce the film for them. I dont know how serious any of those ticking clocks ever were. On some characters, that was the case, with Spider-Man there were many years in between those films and I dont think that was ever the case. They had all the time in the world to keep making those movies. It became a question ofwe are not good at helping, just occasionally giving input or occasional feedback or comments in a screening or on a script. I had done that a little bit on the earlier Amazing Spider-Man films. It doesnt really work because you become one voice among many. I said the only way, the best way that we could help is if you let us do it for you. It stays a Sony character and Sony pays for it and Sony makes the profits from the film and it is marketed and distributed by the entire Sony team. That deal was agreed to, over many discussions. Thankfully, its now been well over a year and step one in our two-step plan is unveiled this weekend. So far, the response has been a dream come true in introducing him. Instead of it being the third reboot of the Spider-Man character, it becomes the first version of the Spider-Man character that we reveal has been inside the MCU. To Amys credit and to Tom Rothman, who now has been at the helm at Sony as weve been actively putting it all together, their support has been spectacular in allowing us to bring him into this world.

The biggest challenge of course was finding a Spider-Man. Our angle on the character was to make him younger because in our favorite comics, he is young. He is not graduating, he is just starting high school. He is young. Thats what makes him interesting as a superhero, particularly in the MCU. Its what makes him so different than all the other heroes. So we really wanted him to be an amazing counterpoint to the other Avengers, which of course is what he was and why he pops so much when he was introduced in the comics in the early-60s.

Related: Tom Holland Is the New Spider-Man, Jon Watts to Helm Sony/Marvel Pic

DEADLINE: I read those comics in 60s and you captured what I remembered, this young, spunky kid who had a tragedy with his murdered Uncle Ben but was not defined and burdened by it. There was more of the wide-eyed wonder. He seems to be having a pretty damn good time. What about this Spider-Man most excited you?

FEIGE: Well, you nailed it. His presence in Civil War was meant to be the counterpoint. The other heroes have a lot of history together. They have a lot of angst, they have a lot of geopolitical issues that theyre dealing with, and its heavy. This kid basically feels like he hit the jackpot. The most famous man in the world, Tony Stark, asks him to go to Germany and participate with the Avengers and he loves every minute of it. Thats fun. Thats who Spider-Man is, and we can and will do much more of this in Spider-Man: Homecoming. You saw it in the comics; he constantly talks. In Civil War he goes up against Falcon and at one point Falcon says, I dont know if youve been in a fight before, but theres usually not this much talking. Thats Spider-Man to us. Thats what we love. Tom Holland, God bless him, is that in real life. This amazing young English actor who was brought over here, got into our audition process and suddenly found himself in a room, doing a scene with Robert Downey. I swear it, the exact dynamic that we wanted between Peter Parker and Tony Stark, we had between Tom Holland and Robert Downey Jr.

DEADLINE: There is a style signature in all these movies: big action and doomsday stakes, mixed with witty rapport and humor that dissipates tension. How do you make sure youve achieved that and how hands-on are you in establishing the tone?

FEIGE: Its all about the filmmakers that we hire, the screenwriters that we hire. I think in the case of Civil War, you also had an executive producer, Nate Moore, in the case of The Avengers, Jeremy Latcham, in the case of Doctor Strange, Stephen Broussard, we all have our own tastes and we all like to be entertained by going to movies. Were all very nervous about becoming too serious and pompous as the cinematic universe continues to grow. I think thats something were always on alert for as we work with our filmmakers. That said, Chris Markus and Stephen McFeely, and Joe and Anthony Russo understand that tone and had helped define it going back to Captain America: The Winter Soldier. We have an amazing partnership now with a creative cabal that understands where you need to have fun. The entire purpose of that airport action scene in the film was to deliver on the promise of the conceit of civil war, but also to have a tremendous amount of fun so that the movie could then take you to a surprising place later.

Related: Captain America: Civil War Review: Its Chris Evans vs. Robert Downey Jr. as Avengers Take Sides

DEADLINE: Which Marvel movie made you feel this style really fell into place and felt right?

FEIGE: The first Iron Man, for sure. Our first self-produced Marvel Studios film. At the point we started prepping that film, I had been part of a lot of Marvel films over six or seven years, as part of a handful of people on the producing team. But never the one that had the final say. We learned a lot of good lessons from those other projects and we learned things that we thought could be done better on those projects. We put all of that into Iron Man. Thankfully, the audience responded to it. It boosted our confidence that maybe they do like the way were telling these stories.

Iron Man: Watch the U.K. trailer:



DEADLINE: Is there a way for you to describe what Robert Downey Jr. has meant to your run and the success of Marvel since Iron Man?

FEIGE: Whatever I say probably cant do the truth justice. Were built on his shoulders of that performance of Tony Stark, humanizing the hero outside of the costume, outside of the suit, outside of the superhero name. I love that people use Iron Man and Tony Stark interchangeably. We said, as we were developing Iron Man 1, and working on these films, that our characters need to be as interesting out of their costumes as they are inside their costumes, fighting and flying around. Robert embodied that and became this icon, as Tony Stark. In a way that, with every casting decision since then, at some point we go, you know, this persons going to have to do scenes with Robert so weve got to make sure theyre great. We really did that with every role that we cast since then. One thing that brings me great, great joy is reading the reviews of Civil War and seeing the much deserved credit that Chris Evans is getting for his performance as Captain America. He gets better and better; I think both Chris and Robert give their best performance as these characters in Civil War. Thats saying a lot considering how many times theyve done it.

DEADLINE: Back at the very beginning, Robert was overcoming personal stuff, and he had baggage and was considered maybe a long shot. He told me that he came in for an audition determined to leave Marvel no choice but to decide no one else could be Tony Stark. How did you see it from your vantage point? How did you and your team feel after he auditioned and left the room?

FEIGE: His name had come up on a list of many names. His was the one that Jon Favreau stepped at and said, this could be really amazing. I thought, wow, this could be like Johnny Depp as Jack Sparrow, that level of an interesting choice. I remember saying, because I always caveat everything because I dont believe in counting chicks before they hatch, so I said, Im not saying this will be that big but it could be that interesting. Thats all we were trying to do at that point and what we still do. Just make interesting casting choices, interesting story choices that can lead to interesting, unexpected films. There was debate about Robert; are we going to build the entire future of this studio on somebody who at that point had baggage? It had been many years since that specific baggage but he still had it. That is why we did an audition, to say, we know hes great but lets put it on film so nobody can say otherwise. He came to win. It was an amazing day.

DEADLINE: So what impression did he leave you with that day?

FEIGE: It was that the role was his destiny. And that he had a supreme confidence in the way he ad-libbed. It has become a tradition on all of the movies, but that was the first time that he went off book, went off the pages. And every time he said something that was not on the sides for the audition, it was a million times funnier and better than what had been in those pages. I had never heard that exactly, him saying he came to win, but everything he did, every aspect of his mannerisms that day certainly proved it.

DEADLINE: You keep trotting out these new superhero franchises and everyone wonders when youll hit the wall. On paper, Guardians of the Galaxy had the heavyset guy from Parks & Rec, the star of Fast and Furious, as a tree; the blue-skinned actress from Avatar painted green and Bradley Cooper as a talking squirrel. It almost seemed like a drunken bar bet you took to see if you could create a hit despite seemingly impossible pieces. Then you had Ant-Man, Edgar Wright stepped out as director and you cast Paul Rudd, known as a rom com guy. Which of those two big bets made you most nervous?

FEIGE: Ant-Man, I think, but only because of the troubled production history. That probably made us more nervous because wed had that huge change at the top just a few months before filming. Guardians of the Galaxy was, as Ant-Man was, just fun, in terms of expanding this universe. We always say, how can we keep audiences surprise at what an MCU film can be? The comic books have a tremendous amount of depth and a tremendous amount of range in the kind of stories that they tell, and the characters we introduce. So wouldnt it be fun if were not just Iron Man 1, Iron Man 2, Iron Man 3, Iron Man 4, Iron Man 5, Iron Man 6? I love that were not, and a lot of the reason for that is because we will try to bring other more unexpected heroes or storylines into the theaters.

Related: Is Chris Pratt Psychic? Jurassic World Star Predicted His Role in 2010



In the case of Guardians, frankly, we just wanted to do an outer space film. Were all film nerds here. We all grew up on space epics and we wanted to do something like that but in a way that was particularly Marvel. One that had a tone unique to any space epic before it or space opera, as James Gunn puts it, before it. The comic book run of Guardians of the Galaxy that Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning had done in the years prior to us putting the movie together formulated that great theme. Drax and Gamora and Peter Quill and Rocket and Groot. It just seemed like an amazing silhouette, seeing those five characters walk towards you in an The Right Stuff style, in a spaceship hallway. Nicole Perlman, who was part of our writers program at the time, did some early drafts of Guardians, where we were having debates like, should we put the talking raccoon in? Everybody was like, of course we put the talking raccoon in. Thats the reason to make it. Put it in! Then the whole thing came to life and got a soul and got a heart when James Gunn took over.

DEADLINE: How does the nervousness of launching a new one of these with such high expectations manifest itself in you?

FEIGE: The majority of my hair is falling out. Im a stress eater. No, the truth is, the position were in right now with Civil War, thats more stressful to me, when the expectations are so huge. That makes me nervous. On Ultron last year, and The Avengers two years before that. When the expectations are so ginormous that the odds of hitting them are like, who knows, and its out of our hands It is a comfort zone for all of us at Marvel Studios to be working on a project where people go, What is that now? How is that going to work? Thats exactly how everybody reacted to A; the idea of us becoming our own studio, B; the first Iron Man film, the first Cap film, the first Thor film, and the first Avengers film, and Guardians and Ant-Man. So we now find that a very comfortable place to be, when people are curious about a decision weve made or doubting a decision that weve made. That is a comfort zone for us. Because, and maybe this best answers your original question, that nervousness about those issues manifests itself in a creative focus.

DEADLINE: Youve got a bunch of characters in this movie from Falcon and War Machine and Black Widow and Hawkeye, who have so far guest starred in movies with another characters title above the fold. Is there one destined to get a solo movie down the line?

FEIGE: Weve announced the next nine movies, ten counting Civil War, through the end of 2019. Where we go beyond that are ongoing discussions that well focus on in the next few years because we have a lot to do before then. Of the characters that youve just mentioned I would say certainly the one creatively and emotionally that we are most committing to doing is Black Widow.

Captain America: Civil War Directors Say a Black Widow Movie Is a No-Brainer and Theyre Absolutely Right:

DEADLINE: Why?

FEIGE: We think shes an amazing character. We think Scarlett Johanssons portrayal of her is amazing. Shes a lead Avenger and has amazing stories in her own right to tell that we think would be fun to turn into a standalone franchise.

DEADLINE: Mark Ruffalo brightens up the Avengers. What has to happen for us to get a standalone, Mark Ruffalo Hulk film?

FEIGE: Well, those are contractual things that Im not entirely attuned to. Disney and Universal would need to come to an agreement to allow Marvel to do a standalone Hulk film for Disney. Whats so great, and as you just said, Ruffalo lights up any room hes in, any Twitter feed hes engaged in and any movie that hes in. Its just a great pleasure to have him in The Avengers films and as you know his next appearance will be in Thor: Ragnarok, which is a whole other type of fun Hulk adventure for him that we cant wait to get started on.

DEADLINE: This Disney silo system that youre a big part of and your cross pollination of characters to break then in future movies, all these are being emulated around Hollywood in the Universal Monster Universe, in the DC ones, in Transformers. What innovation that doesnt belong to Marvel or Disney most impresses you as a film fan?

FEIGE: What of the other cinematic universes that are under way impresses me? This might not obey the rules of your question, but Star Wars. Of course, Star Wars, because of everything it was when I was growing up, which largely informed my taste as a filmmaker and the kind of movies I wanted to watch, which became the kind of movies I wanted to make. The notion of the first movie was Episode IV. What does that mean? There must be a bigger story. This is all connected. That was seminal and certainly now what Kathy Kennedy is doing and what JJ Abrams did and what Rian Johnson is now doing, not that I have any privy to that. I saw some of what Gareth Edwards is doing through that Rogue One trailer, and it is astounding and most closely akin to what we have done, because they already have such a tremendous amount of mythology just from those six, now seven other films. That is supremely impressive. And yes, they both are silos within Disney which is just even more impressive.

DEADLINE: You can pay compliments to people as you pass them in the hallway.

FEIGE: We dont see them much. We stick to ourselves. We have a little floor here and we just do our movies. Wouldnt it be great if there was commissary that had superheroes in it and Storm Troopers and princesses? They should do that. That would be cool.

Related: Star Wars and Other Disney Properties Propelled Hasbros Strong Q1 Results

DEADLINE: Back when these movies took off, I recall some dealmakers grousing that their clients had to sign for modest salaries to play superheroes and commit to as many as nine options. These movies have grossed so much, showing up in them has proven to be like Viagra to performers careers. When did that stop becoming a hard sell?

FEIGE: I dont know. I feel like every deal always has its issues and its sticking points even to this day, so I dont know that any of it has become easier. I will say the number of options got blown out of proportion. There were only a handful early on that got to as many as nine, and even then they were only three or six primary star roles and then another three cameos. Weve changed that structure for pragmatic reasons now, in terms of how those deals are put together. But its never easy. Finding the right person for the right part is never easy and its daunting to try to match that up. But yes, I do think over the years there has been much more incoming interesting in what we are doing, with people saying to us, so and so would love to become part of your universe. So that certainly has changed.

DEADLINE: There isnt really anything on the resume of Civil War directors Joe and Anthony Russo that would have predicted what they accomplished with two Captain America sequels before they make two Avengers sequels. What made you feel they had it in them?

FEIGE: I thought they had done incredibly clever, difficult to pull off, innovative work on television with Arrested Development and particularly Community. Whenever I see something and go, Thats really cool. Thats really interesting, and suddenly the same names start to pop up at the end of whatever I thought was cool and interesting you go, wouldnt it be interesting to meet those people and see if they would ever be interested in our world. We do that a lot and sometimes people are interested and sometimes theyre not. But with the case of Joe and Anthony, they clearly were ready to hit that starting line and just go off to the races. They said as much in our meetings; they came up with some great scenes for Winter Soldier, which is what we were meeting on at the time, which ended up in the movie. They really embraced what we wanted to do with that particular movie, which was take Captain America out of his World War II homage of a film, out of the big group disaster film model of The Avengers and put him into a 70s political thriller idea. Boy, did they just inherently get that and understand it and then run with it and improve it in ways that even I hadnt imagined and made it what it is today. They really are amazing filmmakers who have the boundless energy which is required for these productions, certainly for what were going into by doing two of them back to back. I have no doubt that they could do it.

DEADLINE: We look at those guys or James Gunn, Scott Derrickson or Jon Watts, who you hired off of the Sundance movie Cop Car, is there kind of a common thread with these filmmakers? Ang Lee did Hulk and there you had a master final cut filmmaker who delivers his vision, but you seem to hire directors now wholl be more collaborative. They arent obvious choices, but it has been one hit after another.

FEIGE: The commonality is we met with a lot of people and determined that these would have the best chance of doing something different, of taking whatever the kernel of the idea was that we knew we wanted to head towards and expand it and improve it. The requirement has never been for us somebody who has achieved a giant blockbuster before or commanded a crew of thousands for a $100 million budget film. Because weve done all that and we have the best in the business support base for that. It gives us the confidence to say, lets find somebody who can work with those artisans and technicians and us as producers, and help elevate the material to unexpected places. Thats really what it comes down to for us. You dont have to have made a great film, but we have to believe that you are about to make a great film and wouldnt it be nice if it was for us. Now, Ryan Coogler is an exception because he has made great films and some of the others did too, before working with us.

DEADLINE: You mention Phase Two, and having a slate set through 2019. The Broccoli family every few years faces the certainty that the actor playing James Bond is going to pass the torch to someone else. When is that going to start becoming an issue for you?

FEIGE: Not for a very long time, certainly not through the next nine, ten movies that were working on, which is great. If we had to deal with that, movie to movie we wouldnt have been able to build the cinematic universe the way we have. The short, easy answer is Im not thinking about that right now because Im thinking about how to complete and surprise these upcoming incarnations. Past that? I dont know. I greatly admire what the Broccolis have done with James Bond, how could you not? Fifty years and going strong, with a character that will outlive any particular actor, director, producer, studio executive. That will continue. If you look at how all of our characters have been revamped from decade to decade in the comics, with new artists and new writers and new incarnations, and I think its destined to happen in our cinematic universe as well. But, I dont have to worry about that right now.

DEADLINE: Deadpool was just such a lightning bolt, an R rated movie Marvel Comics character that shows there is room for racy superheroes. You are at family friendly Disney. Any thought to getting into the R rated superhero game?

FEIGE: No, weve not had any specific conversations about that. And that is only part of the takeaway from Deadpool. The thing that Deadpool shows is, when you present something unique to an audience, they will respond to it. When you present something as popular as a superhero character, in a different and unique and crazy way as they did in Deadpool, it demands attention and audiences went to it. They pulled it off. Tim Miller did a tremendous job. The other secret, and why its still a secret, I dont know, but they just took what Deadpool is in the comics. He breaks the fourth wall. He talks into the camera. He doesnt give a s about any of the other heroes. He doesnt take anything seriously. All of that is what made Deadpool so popular in the comics. Tim and his writers and Ryan Reynolds were able to get that and even magnify that up on the big screen. Weve always said if theres any secret its respect the source material, understand the source material and then, any adaptation you make from the source material should be done only to enhance whatever the original pure spirit of the source material was. Deadpool hit on all cylinders with that.

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Deadpool: Watch the announcement trailer:


Could 2016 Be a Turnaround Year for IAMGOLD?

(Continued from Prior Part)

Drop in production

IAMGOLD (IAG) produced 191,000 ounces of gold in 1Q16, a fall of 8.2% year-over-year (or YoY). As well discuss later in this series, this fall was mainly due to lower grades at its Rosebel, Essakane, and Westwood mines.

IAGs attributable gold sales were similar to its production for 1Q16. The companys revenue amounted to 220 million Canadian dollars in 1Q16. Lower gold sales and lower gold prices compared to the same period in 2015 led to the fall in revenue.

Outlook remains unchanged

The company expects its production to be slightly lower in 2Q16 compared to 1Q16 due to seasonal factors. However, it expects production to take off in the second half of 2016 to reach its unchanged guidance of 770,000800,000 ounces at all-in sustaining costs of $1,000$1,100 per ounce.

Financial highlights

IAMGOLD also reported a rise of 90% YoY in net cash from operating activities in 1Q16 to 51 million Canadian dollars.

During 1Q16, the company sold 135,000 ounces of gold bullion for proceeds of $170 million, a 75% return on investment. During the same period, IAMGOLD also issued flow-through shares, which helped it to realize $30 million. These funds will be used to fund about half of the companys 2016 capital expenditure at its Westwood mine.

New Gold (NGD) released its 1Q16 results on April 27, 2016. Its results were in line with market expectations. Kinross Gold (KGC) and Eldorado Gold (EGO) are expected to release their results on May 11, 2016.

The Sprott Gold Miners ETF (SGDM) invests in US-listed gold miners. Kinross Gold forms 14% of SGDMs holdings. Investors can also get exposure to gold by investing in the iShares Gold Trust ETF (IAU) and the SPDR Gold Shares ETF (GLD), which both track gold prices.

In the next few parts of this series, well discuss IAMGOLDs mines performances.

Continue to Next Part

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Kim and Kourtney Kardashian have taken their curves to Cuba!

The reality TV stars landed in Havana on Wednesday, just months after a travel ban to the country was lifted, and have been flaunting their slimmer figures ever since. On Thursday, the sisters naturally turned a playground into a sexy photoshoot while posing for photographers in a park.

WATCH: The Kardashians Unite for a Getaway in Cuba

Kim stepped out in an all-white ensemble, while Kourtney played up her look with an oversized statement necklace, edgy leather shorts and a white tank top.

Splash News

The girls continued their adventures by hopping into a bright pink, vintage convertible as they cruised around Cuba with Kim's husband, Kanye West.

INFphoto.com

Kim, who has been very vocal about her weight loss journey since giving birth to her and Kanye's second child, Saint, in December, rocked a skintight little black dress that perfectly showed off her fit post-baby body while heading to dinner. She accessorized with black heels and a chunky choker that was given to her mom, Kris Jenner, by the late Nicole Brown Simpson. In typical Kim fashion, she took to Snapchat to give her fans a close-up look of the jewelry, which featured a stunning cross pendant.

WATCH: Kim Kardashian Wears a Necklace From Nicole Brown Simpson in Cuba

INFphoto.com

Kourtney looked equally as fabulous for dinner, sporting a chic camel-colored suede dress with matching wedges and a ruby red pout. Like her sister, she accessorized with a choker, opting for a smaller, gold piece.

INFphoto.com

During another outing, Kim pulled out all the stops in a body-hugging skirt, which she styled with an off-the shoulder ruffled top and strappy heels. Her hubby kept it cool and casual in a simple gray T-shirt, distressed denim jeans and, of course, a pair of Yeezys.

INFphoto.com

WATCH: Khloe Kardashian Says She's 'Blessed' Amid Controversial 'Fidel' Pic in Cuba

The Kardashian crew is rumored to be filming scenes in the country for the 13th season of their hit reality show, Keeping Up With the Kardashians. Khloe made the trip, too, but caused quite a stir over social media on Thursday when she posted a snap of herself posing near a wall that read "Fidel," appearing to reference Cuba's former dictator, Fidel Castro.

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From Esquire

Towards the end of Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele's future stoner movie night staple Keanu-in which the ascending comedy geniuses endeavor to retrieve their kidnapped kitten from Method Man and a few other associated gangsters-our heroes are about to be shuffled off the mortal coil by two entirely separate gangs of killers, simply because all parties involved insist that they have primary ownership of the titular beast.

This is the most truthful and important scene in Keanu, and perhaps in all of 2016 cinema. Any person of sound mind and functioning heart who found themselves in their position would also be willing to die for the mere chance to feel Keanu purr on them once more. There would be no other reasonable option, honestly. Keanu is just too fucking cute. To die for him is the least you could do, really.

Cats and movies are two of the most important, life-affirming joys in this pitiless thing we call a world, so when they are combined it is a cause for celebration indeed.

Cats and movies are two of the most important, life-affirming joys in this pitiless thing we call a world, so when they are combined it is a cause for celebration indeed. While the whole of the internet is a testament to the incontestable fact that all we need in life to be happy is for a functioning video camera to be pointed at a cat doing literally any fucking thing at all, real magic occurs when filmmakers dedicate themselves to the important task of examining the true nature of the feline. After all, what is a cat? Why do we need them so? Why must they shed all over the damn place?

To celebrate Key and Peele's contribution to the cat canon, we've assembled this list of the five greatest felis catus in cinema history. To qualify for this list, the precious purr machines had to not only had to be the cutest goddamn fluff muffins you've ever laid eyes on, but they also had to have had a reason to be there, cinematically speaking. Even though no one could possibly care about some dumb human being's internal struggle or whatever while there's a cat in the shot, we still thought we should go ahead and pontificate what the cat symbolized about the greater story. This was a hard list to cut down, so fans of The Godfather, Alien, and La Dolce Vita:please detract your claws and forgive us in advance. (And in case you're curious about why there are so many orange tabbies on this list, it's because they are one of the most common cats around, and directors usually need multiple cats to play one character.)

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1. Keanu, Keanu

Key and Peele's comedy often drills hard into the idea of performed identity; they love to lampoon the exaggerated swagger and masculinity that popular culture uses to both define and limit black men. Though Keanu is a little tame compared to some of the wildest sketches from their Comedy Central show (we see you, Little' Homie), it's still more insightful about masculinity than is strictly necessary for a film where a guy smokes super-crack and imagines he's in a George Michael video.

Keanu is a kitten that miraculously survives a Tarantino-worthy cartel shoot-out, only to arrive at the door of Rell (Peele) a recently dumped film nerd. Rell falls in love immediately, as does his cousin Clarence (Key) a man preoccupied with the idea that his wife thinks he's a pushover. Hijinks, as is their wont, ensue.

But What Does The Cat Mean? Keanu is filled with purposefully cartoonish black gangsters that drive the film's catnapping plot (including two silent-but-deadly super-assassins played by Key and Peele). Against this backdrop, Rell and Clarence's devotion to Keanu at all costs serves as a contrast, symbolizing the nurturing, gentle, and empathic sides that men of all races are often taught to suppress. Many of the best scenes involve Rell obsessing over his cat ("Without you, I'm nothing") and the hen-pecked Clarence attempting to combat his inherent beta-ness and act tough, only to instantly revert back to an ultra-caring friend and family man. That nearly ever major male character, including all the violent heavies, goes to great lengths to retrieve or hold onto the kitty is a testament not only to Keanu's weapons-grade adorability; it also shows that, on some level, they all know that his little face will allow them to access feelings of affection that they otherwise would never let themselves be vulnerable enough to admit to needing in order to feel whole.

2. Unnamed Orange House Cat, The Long Goodbye

The genius of director Robert Altman and screenwriter Leigh Brackett's 1973 adaptation of Raymond Chandler's 1953 novel was to update (and streamline) everything about the plot and setting to the freewheeling weed-soaked 1970s California while keeping Chandler's iconic hero pulp hero Philip Marlowe (played by Elliott Gould, at the time one of the coolest motherfuckers on the planet) exactly the same: a tough-nosed detective both too cynical and too sweet for the modern Los Angeles he finds himself in. A chain smoker in a town where everyone is getting into yoga and health food, he just wasn't made for these times.

But What Does The Cat Mean? The Long Goodbye has one of the most memorable opening scenes of the 1970s. Marlowe's spectacularly fussy orange tabby (unnamed, unless his moniker really is "Son of a Bitch," which is possible) wakes him up at 3:00 in the morning and will only accept Curry brand food. He will not be denied his Curry. (Fuck outta here with that cottage cheese, Marlowe.) When his human returns from the store with some inferior bullshit brand, the cat flees for good. This was famously one of Altman's additions to the script, meant to foreshadow the tumultuous relationship Marlowe will have with his best friend Terry Lennox, whose disappearance and possible involvement in a murder drive what amounts to the plot of this righteously rambling film, which is discursive even by '70s Altman standards. (Which is to say, rather so. It's practically a tone poem, in the best possible sense.) At the risk of spoiling a film that came out 43 years ago: By the end, Marlowe has lost both his cat and his best friend, the only two things he thought he could still trust in this anything-goes world.

3. Tonto, Harry and Tonto

The Citizen Cane of Adorable Cat Movies, Art Carney beat Dustin Hoffman, Al Pacino, and Jack Nicholson to win an Oscar for his performance in this 1974 film as Harry, a retired teacher and devoted cat dad who heads out on a road trip to reconnect with his family and himself after he's forced out of his New York apartment. In one of the most egregious snubs in the history of the Academy Awards, closed-minded, human-first Oscar voters failed to nominate Tonto for a richly deserved Best Supporting Actor Oscar.

Carney and the various cats that played Tonto are one of cinema's great comedic duos. Cats are infamously difficult to control, in real life and on a movie set, but Carney was prepared for anything his finicky co-star could throw at him. Never has an actor brought more dignity to the art of having a conversation with an unimpressed meow machine because no one else will put up with you anymore.

But What Does The Cat Mean? If you want to be a film historian about it, you could correctly call Paul Mazursky's Harry and Tonto a humanist masterpiece in the vein of Hal Ashby, or an impressionistic look at defying and accepting mortality. But even that sells it a bit short. Harry might be retired, but he's exactly like his best friend, too restless to settle into a routine and anxious to stretch his legs while he still can; Tonto is the living embodiment of the curiosity and energy that Harry's elderly frame can barely constrain. Harry is an idealist and intellectual, eager to discover and devour the world. As such, he can't help but sometimes be disappointed be the compromised lives his children lead, but when they let him down, his orange tabby friend remains true to himself, a born wanderer eager to see as much as possible before the passage of time does what it inevitably must.

4. Ulysses and an Unnamed Orange Tabby, Inside Llewyn Davis

The film that confirmed that Oscar Isaac is a star, Joel and Ethan Coen loosely based this exploration of the pre-Dylan Greenwich Village folk scene around pioneering songwriters Dave Van Ronk and Ramblin' Jack Elliott and the competitive songwriter scene of early '60s New York. The film is a character study as a folk song, more concerned with rhythm and feel than conventional narrative. It also has the cutest fucking furball you've seen in forever. Joel Coen told The Telegraph that "the film doesn't really have a plot. That concerned us at one point; that's why we threw the cat in." As ever, cats fix everything.

But What Does The Cat Mean? Inside Llewyn Davis is both a treat for music fans and a trial for cat fans. As charming and talented as Davis is, he's also a selfish asshole who betrayed his best friend and possibly drove him to his death. He also has no idea how to properly care for a cat, taking the frightened Ulysses on a subway after accidently locking them both out of the apartment he's crashing at, losing him, and then rescuing the wrong cat (possibly) and then abandoning him or another cat (it's never entirely clear) on the highway on some worst person in the world ever shit. But as harrowing as it is to watch, the Coens know what they're doing. Davis' relationship to the cats is a perfect rhyme to his relationship to success: he keeps almost grasping it before it runs away from him, breaking free the second he has it in his hands, and in the end, he has no choice but to give up on it. Though hope may not be entirely lost, depending on how you interpret the ending and Ulysses' miraculous return at the end. At least some good comes of it all, as Davis' negligent cat parenting skills sets up one of the funniest lines in the Coen catalog.

5. Gadzookey, Listen Up Philip

Alex Ross Perry's breakthrough film Listen Up Philip is a bit of a switcheroo. The film starts off following the titular adventures of Philip (Jason Schwartzman), the prototypical Young Asshole Writer Who Believes His Hype in the grand tradition of, well, hopefully no one you've ever had in your social circle. Perry's pitch-black barbs and insightful writing and Schwartzman's charm can only do so much to make him tolerable, so it's a relief when the movie pivots to follow the adventures of his long-suffering ex-girlfriend Ashley (Elizabeth Moss) who adopts Gadzookey, the most amazing gigantic Oreo you've ever seen in your whole damn life, after breaking things off. Gadzookey is played by Perry's real-life feline companion Fluffy, who had a health scare recently but is now thankfully doing much better. Your urge to reach through the screen and pet this guy cannot possibly be measured.

But What Does The Cat Mean? Philip might roll his eyes and think Gadzookey is too obviously a stand-in for the love and affection that his ex-girlfriend needed and he couldn't provide, but it's effective nonetheless. Watching Ashley go from pensive and drained to content and playful in Gadzookery's presence is a joy to behold and a testament to the healing power of a pet's unconditional love. A cat dad of the highest order, Perry can't help but have Gadzookey, with a little bit of help from Ashley, deliver the kiss off the audience has been waiting for: "Goodbye Philip, I don't like you," proving once again that cats know everything.
By Matthew Ponsford LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - The lack of tenure over ancestral lands lies at the root of violent clashes on land leased to foreign palm oil producers in Liberia, a leading researcher said. The eruption of rioting on April 4 on a plantation in northeastern Liberia is the most recent case in more than a decade of conflict over land, with Liberians protesting against big palm oil developments operated by foreign producers. Ali Kaba, senior researcher at the Sustainable Development Institute in Monrovia, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation that residents of areas leased as concessions to foreign investors are often evicted without rights to compensation. "If you remove their ownership, you're making them strangers in their own country," Kaba said. "They have no other avenues of survival... you are making refugees of citizens." According to research by the United States Agency for International Development, in Liberia, more than half the population lives on land held under customary tenure. This provides traditional rights to land but is not secured or recognized by legal title. But Liberian government policy which would recognize customary tenure has yet to be passed into law. The arrival of foreign investors has fragmented communities that have lived off their lands for generations, said Kaba. Following the West Africa nation's bloody civil war, which ended in 2003, the government accelerated long-standing policies which granted natural resource concessions to foreign companies. Foreign concessions for palm oil production were at the center of reforms which the World Bank has credited for transforming Liberia into a promising place for agricultural producers to invest. But the land concessions - which now cover more than 45 percent of Liberian territory - have provoked conflict, said Kaba. In a 2008 report, the Liberia Truth and Reconciliation Commission called land disputes a threat to national peace. An estimated 90 percent of Liberia's civil court cases are related to land and as many as 63 percent of violent conflicts in Liberia have their root in land rights issues. Kaba says conflict between Liberians for the remaining land threatens reconciliation in a country where 70 percent depend on agriculture. Liberia's government under Nobel Peace Prize winner, President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, is credited with helping the country recover from its civil war. The draft Land Authority Act, which would acknowledge customary rights to land, was submitted to Liberia's Senate in September 2014 but NGOs have criticized its slow progress since. On April 13, the Senate passed the act, which is now awaiting ratification. CALL FOR ACTION Representatives of indigenous groups from Indonesia, Peru, and Colombia joined Kaba at a conference in London on Wednesday to call for action by the European Union, the third largest import market for palm oil, against "deadly trade" in the oil. Half of all packaged food products in supermarkets today contain palm oil, according to the World Wildlife Fund, but only 20 percent of oil is certified as sustainable. Agus Sutomo, director of Indonesian NGO Link-AR Borneo, said European consumers should be aware that - when ethical standards are not upheld - "what they are consuming is our blood." Kaba said that he is not an opponent of development and that cultivation of palm oil - which is native to Liberia - could benefit local communities. "Palm oil is not the problem," he said. "Land rights is the problem." (Reporting by Matthew Ponsford, Editing by Paola Totaro.; Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women's rights, traficking, property rights and climate change. Visit http://news.trust.org)
The weaker-than-expected jobs report this morning didn't help Wall Street shake off its recent slump. Stocks are on track for their worst week since mid February.

All three major indexes (^DJI, ^GSPC, ^IXIC) are lower in early trading after the latest government employment report showed hiring slowed last month.

The Labor Department reported that the economy added 160,000 jobs last month. That was weaker than the 200,000 analysts were expecting. Meanwhile, the unemployment rate stayed steady at 5%.

John Lonski, managing director and chief economist at Moody's Capital Markets explains to Yahoo Finance's Alexis Christoforous why this jobs report rules out a rate hike for June.

Stocks on the move

GoPro (GPRO) shares sank in early trading. The wearable camera maker delivered a wider-than-expected loss for the first quarter and even though revenue topped expectations, sales fell 49% from a year ago to $183.5 million. The sales decline prompted the company to delay the release of its much-anticipated Karma drone until the holiday season.

Square (SQ) shares were sharply lower after the payment processing firm reported a steeper-than-expected loss for the first three months of the year due to higher operating costs, but revenue beat analysts' estimates with sales up 51% from a year ago to $379 million. And the company's CEO Jack Dorsey says "the core business is really strong," and the company raised its outlook for the year.

Herbalife (HLF) rolled out a double dose of good news late yesterday. It reported better-than-expected results, and the company also said it's close to a settlement with the Federal Trade Commission regarding an investigation into the company's business practices and whether it's a pyramid scheme. This is another blow to activist investor Bill Ackman, who has been shorting the company since 2012.

Meanwhile, an Ackman favoriteValeant (VRX)fell in early trading after the embattled Canadian drug company admitted that it has made mistakes in the past with how it priced its drugs and is now forming a committee aimed at preventing a repeat of the same errors under new CEO John Papa.

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Apple CEO visits China

Apple (AAPL) CEO is planning a trip to China at the end of the month, according to Reuters. The company has hit major roadblocks in the companys second-biggest market. Meanwhile, the tech giant is teaming up with SAP to bring new apps into the workplace.

NYC plastic bag charge

Starting in October, shoppers will have to pay a fee of $0.05 for every plastic bag they take at checkout. Some fear itll hurt the local economy, and others think the fee will spread across the country.
Panama City (AFP) - The law firm at the heart of the Panama Papers scandal said Friday it has issued a cease-and-desist letter to a journalists' collective urging it not to release online a trove of documents plundered from its computer servers.

Mossack Fonseca issued the letter to the US-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists stressing the information was stolen and its release would breach attorney-client privilege.

The ICIJ has announced it will next Monday put online many -- but not all -- of the 11.5 million documents it obtained from a German newspaper, Sueddeutsche Zeitung, which received them from an anonymous source.

Reports done on the records since early April have revealed how the world's wealthy, many politicians, and a few criminals used Mossack Fonseca to set up offshore entities to stash their assets.

The scandal put pressure on some politicians, notably forcing Iceland's prime minister to resign, and prompted Europe and the United States to look at ways to crack down on offshore tax havens. Several countries have started probes into possible tax evasion or money laundering.

Mossack Fonseca says it committed no crimes, and states that the data were illegally obtained through a hack perpetrated using foreign servers.

- 'Stolen' information -

"Due to the way in which the media has fed from the information stolen from our system in order to disseminate out of context news and affect our reputation, we have been forced to take stronger actions," it said in a statement.

It said it sent its cease-and-desist letter to the ICIJ on Thursday urging the collective "to abstain" from releasing the records, "taking into consideration that it is based on the stealing of confidential information and a violation to the confidentiality agreement between lawyer and client."

The law firm based in Panama, one of whose founders is a friend and former adviser to the country's president, said it was in favor of freedom of the press.

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"But we consider that practices like the one taken by ICIJ do not align with the right to communicate the truth" while taking into account "the rights of all other parties involved."

The ICIJ said its release will take the form of a searchable database containing information on more than 200,000 offshore entities created or run by Mossack Fonseca.

"The application will not be a 'data dump' of the original documents," it said.

"It will be a careful release of basic corporate information" and will not include "personal data en masse," it said.
The Leftovers is headed Down Under in Season 3  and theyre not traveling light.

Amid reports that Damon Lindelofs acclaimed HBO drama will shoot its third and final season in Australia, TVLine has learned exclusively that nearly the entire ensemble is returning  with one notable exception.

RELATEDThe Leftovers EP Damon Lindelof Answers Burning Finale Questions, Drops Big Season 3 Clue

First, lets address whos back. Returning cast members include leads Justin Theroux and Carrie Coon, as well as supporting players Amy Brenneman, Christopher Eccleston, Liv Tyler, Margaret Qualley, Chris Zylka and Janel Moloney. Additionally, Season 2s entire Murphy clan  i.e. Regina King, Kevin Carroll, Jovan Adepo and Jasmin Savoy-Brown  is set for Season 3. Also back in a big way: Scott Glenn, who has been bumped up to series regular. Glenn recurred in Seasons 1 and 2 as the father of Therouxs Kevin Garvey. (Savoy-Brown has also been upped to a regular after guest-starring in Season 2.)

And now for the decidedly smaller list of who wont be returning. TVLine has learned that Ann Dowd, whose Patti Levin played a major role in Season 2 despite being killed off in Season 1, will not be back as a regular. Of course, its entirely possible Patti (who was successfully exorcised from Kevins psyche in Season 2) could return to haunt our tortured antihero as a guest star.

RELATEDThe Leftovers, Mr. Robot and black-ish Among 2016 Peabody Award Winners

Glenns promotion, meanwhile, hardly comes as a surprise. Shortly after HBO renewed The Leftovers this past December, Lindelof told TVLine that he had big plans for the actor in Season 3. Scott is a starting pitcher that we have used as a relieving pitcher, he said at the time. I would really like to see some more of Kevin Sr.  and not just in the present, but in the past.

Little else is known about Season 3  which TVLine hears will consist of eight episodes  although Lindelof previously (and half-jokingly?) said that he intends to bring the show to a wildly ambiguous but hopefully mega-emotional conclusion.

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Thoughts? Happy to see so many of your favorites are on board for Season 3? And what do you make of the Aussie locale? Hit the comments!

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Tripoli (AFP) - Neighbours Libya and Tunisia, which have been hit by a string of jihadist attacks, pledged on Friday to cooperate in the fight against terrorism.

"We will conquer terrorism but it will take time and cooperation," Tunisian Prime Minister Habib Essid told a joint news conference in Tripoli hours after his arrival in the Libyan capital.

The head of Libya's new unity government, Fayez al-Sarraj, agreed on the need to bolster bilateral cooperation against jihadists active in both countries.

"We spoke about security coordination for the battle against terrorism," Sarraj told reporters.

"What happened yesterday in the Abu Grein area... was very close," he added.

On Thursday jihadists from the Islamic State group advanced on the town of Abu Grein east of Tripoli and overran a key crossroads in an assault during which a suicide bomber killed two policemen.

The crossroads spills onto the coastal highway that stretches further east to the border with Tunisia.

IS launched the assault from their stronghold in Sirte, which they captured last June and where they have set up a training camp for Libyan and foreign militants.

The Libyan news agency LANA said Tunisia and Libya are expected to set up a joint committee tasked with controlling the main Ras Jedir border crossing between the two.

Last year a string of deadly attacks claimed by IS killed dozens of holidaymakers in Tunisia and dealt a devastating blow to its tourism industry.

Officials have said the attacks were planned in Libya.

Tunisia has built a 200-kilometre (125-mile) barrier stretching about half the length of its border with Libya in an attempt to prevent militants from infiltrating.

In March, Tunisia closed two border crossings with Libya for two weeks in response to a deadly jihadist attack on a town near the frontier.

Thousands of Tunisians are believed to have gone abroad to join jihadist groups, many to Libya which plunged into chaos after the 2011 uprising that toppled and killed dictator Moamer Kadhafi.

IS has exploited this chaos and established a stronghold in Libya, where it has claimed bombings and executions.
North West wearing a tiara and green dress after getting a princess makeover. Theyre the three best friends (read: princesses) that anyone could have! North West, Ryan Romulus, and Penelope Disick had a ball on Thursday. The girls got princess make overs at the Bibbity Bobbity Botique! Ive never seen anything sweeter! Thank you @Disneyland for the magical memories! Kim Kardashian-West posted on Instagram.



North West has already solidified herself as the trendiest tot to have ever existedand for good reason. Shes rocked Givenchy lace and Alexander Wang leather, fox furs and Doc Martens. Like the most seasoned fashion folk, she already has a signature look: all black everything paired with Docs or Timberlands, and a statement coat. And while Kim Kardashian once told Lucky magazine that North doesnt like pink or purple. She likes greysand black, the two-year-old has revealedtime and time againa softer (and smilier!) side, wearing knitted white, pink dresses, denim cutoffs, headbands, and other too-cute-for-words pieces.



Frankly, a day doesnt go by where the Yahoo Style office isnt giggling like teenage girls, ooo-ing and ahhh-ing over Noris inimitable style, so heres a running list of the kids best looks.



Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest for nonstop inspiration delivered fresh to your feed, every day.
South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham said Friday that he will not support Donald Trump as the Republican nominee for president.

I cannot in good conscience support Donald Trump because I do not believe he is a reliable Republican conservative nor has he displayed the judgment and temperament to serve as Commander in Chief, Graham said in a statement. (After Graham ended his own run for president, which never gained any traction, he endorsed former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush in January.)

But that does not meet the Republican senator will be casting his vote for likely Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, either; he said he absolutely will not support her.

Its hard to believe that in a nation of more than 300 million Americans Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump will be our choices for President, he said.

Graham also stated that he would not be attending the Republican convention in Cleveland, Ohio this summer. His statement comes just one day after House Speaker Paul Ryan said he also is not yet prepared to support Trump.

Read More: Some Local Republican Officials Say Never Donald Trump, Never Hillary Clinton

Trump fired back in remarks later on Friday.

I fully understand why Lindsey Graham cannot support me, he said. If I got beaten as badly as I beat him, and all the other candidates he endorsed, I would not be able to give my support either.
The Sun Finally Sets on SunEdisons Business: Why Did It Happen?

(Continued from Prior Part)

SunEdisons liquidity position

The upstream solar (TAN) sector is a capital-intensive sector. Solar companies such as SunEdison (SUNEQ), First Solar (FSLR), Canadian Solar (CSIQ), and SunPower Corporation (SPWR) are required to maintain liquidity positions to fund their projects and raise capital at a low cost.

As we have seen earlier in this series, SunEdison went on an acquisition spree to diversify and grow its business. However, there was a time gap between these acquisitions and the integration of its acquired assets with its existing business. As a result, the company has to fund its acquisitions by raising additional capital in the form of debt rather than cash generated from its operations.

SunEdisons debt has been consistently increasing over the years. As of September 30, 2015, SunEdisons consolidated debt on its books stood at ~$11.7 billion.

The increase in debt resulted in an increase in interest expenses, which further deteriorated the companys cash position.

As of September 30, 2015, on a consolidated basis, SunEdison had $2.4 billion of cash and cash equivalents. Of this, $1.1 billion was held by TerraForm Global (GLBL), $636 million was held by TerraForm Power (TERP), and $207 million was held by foreign subsidiaries not part of TERP and GLBL. Most of the available cash is held by SunEdisons yieldcos, which are not a part of the Chapter 11 filing.

Impact on SunEdison

The liquidity crunch impacted SunEdisons ongoing operations and led to missing certain project deadlines. For instance, on February 12, 2016, Hawaiian Electric Company terminated the PPA (power purchase agreement) with SunEdison for missing project deadlines.

Moreover, the liquidity crisis also impacted the companys previously announced acquisitions. On December 2, 2015, SunEdison terminated its proposed acquisition of a 16% stake in Renova Energia.

Also, on March 4, 2016, SunEdison settled the dispute regarding the termination of acquisition of Latin America Power for a payment of $28.5 million. The outcome termination deal with Vivint Solar is yet to be known.

Story continues

Continue to Next Part

Browse this series on Market Realist:
(LONDON) Labour Party politician Sadiq Khan, the son of a bus driver from Pakistan, led Londons mayoral race Friday, opening a lead over Conservative rival Zac Goldsmith that left him poised to be the citys first Muslim mayor.

Labour was trounced in Scotland but lost fewer seats than many had expected elsewhere in local and regional elections that underscored Britains political divisions.

Khan won 44 percent of first-preference votes, compared to 35 percent for Goldsmith. Voters second preferences were being factored in to take one candidate over the 50 percent mark, and Khans victory was a strong statistical probability.

Election officials said the announcement of the result, expected Friday evening, would not come before midnight because of some small discrepancies in the figures.

Even before the result was declared, Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn and New York Mayor Bill de Blasio tweeted congratulations to Khan on his apparent victory.

The race to replace Conservative Mayor Boris Johnson was marred by American-style negative campaigning and allegations of extremism and fear-mongering.

Goldsmith, a wealthy environmentalist, described Khan as dangerous and accused his opponent of giving platforms, oxygen and even cover to Islamic extremists  a charge repeated by Prime Minister David Cameron and other senior Conservatives.

Khan, who calls himself the British Muslim who will take the fight to the extremists, accused Goldsmith of trying to scare and divide voters in a proudly multicultural city of 8.6 million people  more than 1 million of them Muslims.

Labour was pushed to third place in Scotland  where it was once dominant.

The Conservatives under popular Scottish leader Ruth Davidson became the main opposition in Scotlands Edinburgh-based parliament  an unprecedented situation in a region that had shunned the party for decades after the governments of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, whose policies cost thousands of jobs in mining and heavy industries.

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The pro-independence Scottish National Party secured a third term in government in the countys parliamentary elections, but failed by two seats to retain a majority.

SNP Leader Nicola Sturgeon said the party had won a clear and unequivocal mandate and would form a minority government rather than seek a coalition.

The party remains a dominant force in Scottish politics, but Matthew Ashton, a politics expert at Nottingham Trent University, said the result was evidence that their hold on power is beginning to slip.

Thursdays elections for local authorities and regional assemblies demonstrated the complexity of British politics in the final weeks before Britons vote on June 23 on whether the country should remain in the European Union.

The strength of Labour leader Corbyn is under particular scrutiny in this first nationwide poll since he became leader last year.

While Labours losses in Scotland were humiliating, the party fared less badly overall than many had predicted. It lost only a handful of council seats and held on to control of major English cities including Birmingham, Newcastle-upon-Tyne and Sunderland.

Corbyn said the party had a lot of building to do in Scotland, but said he was pleased with results in England.

We hung on and we grew support in a lot of places, he said.

The results will do little to soothe restive Labour lawmakers who think Corbyns left-wing policies are a turn-off for many voters.

Ashton said that critics who want to use the results as leverage to call for a leadership challenge are likely to be disappointed.

Their argument that Labour should be doing better, though, especially considering Conservative divisions over Europe in recent weeks, will continue to resonate, he said.

In Wales, which has traditionally been pro-Europe, the anti-immigrant UK Independence Party gained seven seats in the Welsh Assembly, winning about 13 percent of the vote.

Andrew Blick, a constitutional expert at Kings College London, said the results underscore how difficult the referendum campaign will be  as attitudes nationally seem to be so complex.

We dont know where the mood is, he said. There are lots of different moods. What message do you push ahead with in the campaign when you have so many different opinions?
Jannet Castanon and her mother Rosario Vargas Flores live only a few miles apart, but have been separated by the U.S.-Mexico Border for nine years. Castanon left Tijuana to move to San Diego with her husband where she is a legal U.S. resident awaiting a greencard, and she hasn't seen her mother since she left. Mother and daughter finally had the opportunity to embrace for a few precious moments when the U.S. Border Patrol opened the border's steel fence for the third time in its history.
Moon caves could provide shelter for astronauts exploring Earth's nearest neighbor, researchers say.

A new analysis of data gathered by NASA's twin Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) spacecraft, which mapped the moon's gravitational field in unprecedented detail, turned up a number of new candidates for lava tubes  cave-like structures that could be large enough to house supplies and astronauts.

Space is a harsh environment. Radiation from the sun, galactic cosmic rays and constantly falling micrometeorites all present a threat to human explorers. [Home on the Moon: How to Build a Lunar Colony (Infographic)]

"A lava tube provides a safe haven from all these hazardous environmental conditions," study team member Rohan Sood, a graduate student at Purdue University in Indiana, told Space.com.

Sood presented more than a dozen potential lava tubes at the 47th Lunar and Planetary Science Conferencein The Woodlands, Texas, in March.

Hunting moon caves

Lava flowing across the moon's surface can harden into a protective shell. When the interior of the shell collapses but the hollowed-out shell remains, a lava tube is created. Skylights, which are formed from the partial collapse of a tube, should also be larger under the moon's lower gravity, enabling an easier exploration of lava tubes, researchers said.

The two GRAIL probes precisely mapped out the moon's gravitational field from orbit from March 2012 through December 2012. Because gravitational pull is related to mass, a hollowed-out region such as a lava tube tugged at the spacecraft slightly less than did solid ground. In the new study, Sood and his colleagues studied GRAIL data to search for small differences that could indicate the presence of lava tubes on the lava plains, or mare, of the moon.

First, the team targeted previously identified pits on the near side of the moonthat could double as skylights. Observations from GRAIL suggested that two of these pits could be connected to lava tubes. The new research revealed that the skylight in the Marius Hills regionis probably connected to a lava tube beneath.

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Next, the scientists searched the lunar mare for signs of lava tubes with no visible surface features. They found at least 10 large candidates, some nearly 1 mile (1.6 kilometers) wide and stretching over 60 miles (100 km) in length.

But even more tubes that are too small to be picked up by GRAIL could exist as well, Sood noted.

"We are really pushing GRAIL data to see anything at all," said co-author and planetary scientist Jay Melosh, also of Purdue, regarding the smallest features. "We only see them on the passes of the GRAIL spacecraft when they went quite low over the surface. But we are able to see the big ones." [The Moon: 10 Surprising Lunar Facts]

That means that lava tubes smaller than about 0.5 miles (1 km) wide could easily escape detection.

Large channels, known as rills, fed the large lava fields on the lunar surface. Stretching as much as 2.5 to 3 miles (4 to 5 km) wide and measuring up to 0.33 miles (0.5 km) deep, the features are enormous, compared to terrestrial standards.

"We find nothing of comparable size on the Earth," Melosh told Space.com.

The enormous rills suggest that lava flow rates on the moon were higher than those of Earth, and that lava tubes should therefore be more plentiful. The lower lunar gravity also means that large lava tubes should be more stable than those found on Earth less likely to collapse. This could explain why so few skylights have been detected, researchers said.

"An analysis of the stability of lava tubes finds that lava tubes 5 kilometers wide on the moon and 3 kilometers high are perfectly stable," Melosh said. He described how the author of that research, David Blair of Purdue, showed that a lava tube big enough to contain the city of Philadelphia would be stable on the moon.

"That's a little bit of a surprise," Melosh said.

Spelunking on the moon

Human explorers haven't set foot on the moon since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972. When astronauts return, lava tubes may help them settle in comfortably. But such sites should be studied and vetted by robotic spacecraft before humans are sent there, Sood and Melosh said.

"We would like to send a radar-based mission," Sood said. "That will give us the possibility to recognize those lava tubes with much more clarity, and potentially find lava tubes that are smaller, that are beyond the resolution of GRAIL."

Hunting for more skylights on the moon would also help, as these features make it easier to explore lava tubes.

"If we already have an access point, that gives you a better chance of going into [a lava tube] than excavating," Sood said.

The lava tube associated with the skylight found in the Marius Hills region of the moon is large, Melosh said. That doesn't mean it's completely empty. A radar search could not only verify how far lava tubes stretch but also determine if cave-ins have blocked them off. Rovers could then explore a candidate lava tube.

All of these steps are necessary before humans are sent on a lunar camping trip.

"You don't want to set a bunch of astronauts down with a drill and have them drill into something and find it clogged with rubble," Melosh said.

Lunar lava tubes also provide an excellent opportunity for scientists to learn about off-planet living before astronauts are sent to Mars. Skylights have also been identified on the Red Planet and could help astronauts settle in for long-term missions.

The moon "will give us an opportunity to learn about lava tubes before we try to do anything on Mars," Sood said.

Follow Nola Taylor Redd on Twitter @NolaTReddor Google+. Follow us at @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.

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Copyright 2016 SPACE.com, a Purch company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
prescription, medication, pharmaceuticals, pills, medicine

Endo Internationals' stock is tanking after the company cautioned investors about a tough year ahead.

The generics drugmaker of such pharmaceuticals as Percocet painkillers, is facing a drop in pricing power and scrutiny over its business model, sending the stock sliding.

The company has drawn comparisons to troubled pharma company Valeant, which has caused its shares to already dive from $84.64 a share on May 6, 2015 to $26.59 as of Thursday's close.

This was driven by continued pricing and competitive pressures on our commoditized and pain products.

"To begin, I will provide a snapshot of our first quarter financial results, which despite some headwinds were largely in line with our expectations," said Endo CEO Rajiv De Silva on the company's quarterly earnings call. "However, these headwinds have created substantial challenges to overcome in the remainder of the year."

The biggest headwind that the company continually cited was pricing. Essentially, the company is having to lower prices on its generic drugs made by new acquits and special ity pharmaceutical firm Par Pharmaceuticals, causing profits to sink.

"There are rapidly changing market conditions that have affected both the broader generics sector and Par," said Par CEO Paul V. Campanelli during the earnings call.

"First, we have seen a steep and rapid price erosion caused by payor consolidation that has been more even profound than anticipated. Its effect has exceeded what might have been expected from an ordinary downturn in the industry's traditional pricing cycle."

The challenges led the company to report dismal guidance of earnings per share between $4.50 and $4.80 a share for the full year 2016 versus estimates of $5.69 per share. The company did beat on both first quarter earnings per share, ($1.08 a share against $1.05 a share expected.

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The move Friday has dropped the stock by nearly 40% at $16.50 a share as of 11:03 a.m. ET.

Screen Shot 2016 05 06 at 11.03.51 AM

NOW WATCH: FORMER GREEK FINANCE MINISTER: The single largest threat to the global economy





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Rapist Lim Choon Beng has pleaded guilty in the High Court and is awaiting sentence.

The man who raped a performing artist from China thrice in 20 minutes in 2013 claimed that he had amnesia caused by overdrinking when he committed the offences.



Lim Choon Beng, 30, pleaded guilty to two counts of rape, and one count each of outraging the womans modesty and sexually penetrating her without her consent on Wednesday (4 May) before Justice Foo Chee Hock.



In the High Court on Friday (6 May), Anand Nalachandran, Lims lawyer, argued that his client has issues with alcohol abuse and had consumed a lot of alcohol prior to raping the woman.



Media reports indicated that Lim had raped the woman at around 3 am on 9 February 2013 after he went drinking with his friends at a bar in Robertson Quay.



Lim raped the woman at three different locations at Rodyk Street and River Valley Close. The then 24-year-old victim had pleaded with Lim to stop and told him that she was having her period but he ignored her and forced himself on her.



His recollection of the incident was holding on to a shot of alcohol before the incident and being approached by the police at the side of the road after the incident, said Anand.



In mitigation, Anand cited a report by a medical expert who said that alcohol has taken a firm grip on Lims life and that Lim has a pattern of drinking with no limit.



Calling for a sentence of between 13 and 15 years and caning, Anand that his client was suffering from an alcohol blackout when the rape took place. Lim was remorseful for causing hurt to his victim, Anand added.



However, Deputy Public Prosecutor Zhuo Wenzhao highlighted the seriousness of the offences, saying that Lim had repeatedly raped and sexually assaulted his victim at three different locations.



Zhuo called for a strong deterrent sentence and said that Lim should be jailed at least 17 years and given 24 strokes of the cane. He added that Lim had raped a woman who was a stranger to him in a public place.



The attacks left the victim traumatised and she had already left Singapore for China. The incidents left her afraid to face male strangers alone, said Zhuo.



The case was adjourned and Justice Foo will deliver his sentence on 10 May.


- By Kyle Ferguson





Bronx native Mario Gabelli (Trades, Portfolio) is a dedicated long-time contrarian investor who was in attendance at the Berkshire Hathaway (BRK-A) (BRK-B) annual shareholders meeting last weekend in Omaha. During the first quarter, Gabelli purchased 479, shares of The Valspar Corp. (VAL).





Valspar is based in Minnesota and is one of the largest global coatings manufacturers in the world, providing coatings and coating intermediates to a wide variety of customers. The company produces paints, varnishes, coatings for rigid packaging, automotive refinish and specialty coatings, as well as primers and varnishes for industrial coils on steel. Valspar was founded in 86 and currently employs , employees in over 5 countries and has built the market cap to $8.45 billion.

Gabelli said the following about Valspar in the quarterly commentary.

"The Valspar Corporation is engaged in developing, manufacturing and distributing a range of coatings, paints and related products. The company operates through two business segments: Coatings and Paints. On March , 6 Valspar announced an agreement with competitor Sherwin-Williams to be acquired in a transaction with an estimated value of $8.9 billion. The deal specifies that shareholders of VAL will receive $ cash per share, and requires a shareholder vote along with regulatory approval. However, should the company need to make divestitures exceeding a specified threshold, then the consideration would be revised down to $5. We expect the deal to close in the early part of 7."

There are multiple good signs that may have influenced Gabelli to take a stake in Valspar. According to GuruFocus, Valspar has an 8/ financial strength rating and a 8/ profitability and growth ranking. The company has increased its revenue per share at an average rate of 7.5% over the previous  years, while also increasing gross profit by an average of 7% annually during the same time period. The announcement of the acquisition of Sherwin-Williams also likely influenced Gabelli's decision to purchase shares of the company because it further improves the competitive advantage within the industry, and allows for more opportunity to increase revenues and expand operations in the future.

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Below is a Peter Lynch Chart for Valspar.

Cheers to your investment success.

This article first appeared on GuruFocus.






EXCLUSIVE: A legendary wise-guy reunion is in the offing and it could become the hottest international sales title at Cannes if a deal makes in time. Martin Scorseses long-gestating The Irishman  which may bring together Robert De Niro, Al Pacino and Joe Pesci (among others) in one film  is coming together very quickly and could be made available to international buyers if Paramount, which currently controls the project, finishes a deal to sell international rights off to Fabrica de Cine in time before the Cannes market kicks off May 11. Fabrica is the production banner of deep-pocketed Mexican financier Gaston Pavlovich, who also financed Scorseses passion project Silence.

Sources tell Deadline that Paramount is in final negotiations to sell the rights to Fabrica in a similar deal structure that was put in place for Silence. In that scenario, Fabrica sold the rights to AI Film which then employed IM Global to handle international sales at Cannes. However, its still very much up in the air as to who may be the international agent on The Irishman.

Fabrica will most likely offer those rights to either a sales agent or direct to international distributors. It wont come cheap, though: The Irishman has a budget believed to be in the $100M range. Thats a big ask, even with a heavy-hitting talent lineup said to include De Niro, Pacino and Pesci, although were told no deals are yet done. Chances of a deal getting done in time to have the project available for Cannes are currently pegged at 50-50 according to sources Deadline has spoken to with knowledge of the negotiations.

There will be no shortage of suitors for Fabrica to speak to once they close the Paramount deal, but they will need to be made an offer they cant refuse if theyre going to hit the numbers they need to make this a reality. There are believed to be a number of heavy-hitter international sales companies in the mix salivating for the opportunity to sell this. It is possible, we understand, that the final outcome could mean a major title is in the offing for buyers in Cannes, regardless of when it comes available.

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Paramount is handling domestic distribution (Scorseses Sikelia Productions about a year ago extended its overall feature deal with the studio).

The Irishman is based on the Charles Brandt book I Heard You Paint Houses which is the deathbed story from mob hitman Frank The Irishman Sheeran about the disappearance and death of Jimmy Hoffa. Steve Zailian adapted the book for the screen.

Sheeran was a member of the Bufalino crime family out of Pennsylvania and became a confidante of Hoffa. According to Sheerans story, Hoffa was driven to a house near the Red Fox restaurant (where he was last seen) and shot twice in the back of the head in the hallway, then cremated in a mob-connected funeral home. Floor planks where Hoffa would have hit the floor were pulled up and tested for DNA more than 10 years ago. Of the two good samples, the FBI could confirm nothing solid: one was inconclusive and the other only could reveal that it was a male. The rest is lore.

The name of the book comes from the first thing Hoffa reportedly said to Sheeran: I heard you paint houses, which means when blood is splattered all over the floor and walls (painting the house) after a hit.

Scorseses next film is Silence which stars Liam Neeson, Adam Driver and Andrew Garfield and is based on a novel of the same name by Shusaku Endo. The drama is about 17th Century Jesuit priests who are persecuted when they travel to Japan and try to teach their faith.

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Police in Maryland are looking into whether a Federal Protective Service employee wanted in the death of his wife on Thursday is responsible for Fridays shootings in the parking lots of a nearby mall and grocery store.

The Prince George's County Police Department and the Montgomery County Police Department both confirmed that they are investigating a possible link between the shooting at High Point High School in Prince George's County and the two shootings Friday in Montgomery County.

Authorities identified the suspect as 62-year-old Eulalio Tordil and announced around 3 p.m. that he had been taken into custody.

Montgomery County Police Chief J. Thomas Manger said officers found a silver vehicle outside a Dunkin Donuts that matched the description of one linked to Thursdays homicide.

They had this individual under surveillance, and when the individual walked back to his car, the plain-clothes officers were able to take him into custody without incident, Manger said at a 4 p.m. press conference.

Prince George's County police chief Hank Stawinski said at the press conference that his investigators had been working diligently since Thursday night. His department provided the vehicle description that helped locate Tordil.

Its tragic that we were not able to intervene prior to additional victims being harmed, he said, but I am pleased with the fact that this individual has been apprehended, and now we can restore a degree of peace.

According to Montgomery County state attorney John McCarthy, formal charges are expected in the next few hours and his arraignment will likely be on Monday.

"The events today unfolded very, very rapidly. He is in police headquarters here in Montgomery County," McCarthy said.

Slideshow: Shootings in Maryland

Police said two men and one woman were shot before 11 a.m. Friday at the Westfield Montgomery Mall in Bethesda, Md. Montgomery County police said one was killed and the other is in critical condition. The woman suffered injuries that were thought to be not life-threatening.

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About half an hour after the mall shooting, a woman was killed at the Aspen Hill Shopping Center in Silver Spring, Md., according to police.

Prince George's County Police Department identified 62-year-old Eulalio Tordil as a suspect in the murder of his wife. (Photo: Prince George's County Police Department)

As a precaution, more than a dozen Bethesda area schools and some government building had been put on lockdown temporarily, officials said.

Police said they dont yet know if Fridays shootings are connected to a Thursday incident where a man fatally shot his estranged wife outside a Baltimore area high school.

In that earlier incident, police said Tordil confronted and shot Gladys Tordil, 44, inside her SUV in the parking lot of High Point High School in Beltsville, 15 miles northeast of Fridays shooting in the mall parking lot.

According to multiple media reports, Tordil was recently ordered by a Maryland court to stay away from his wife as part of a custody case.

A Prince Georges public school website lists Gladys Tordil as an employee at Parkdale High School.

Tordil is employed as a law enforcement officer with the FPS, a U.S. agency that protects government facilities.

According to WTOP-TV, the federal police agency put Eulalio Tordil on administrative duty and confiscated his badge and gun following the courts March 3 order. Tordil turned over six more weapons in mid-March, authorities told the television station.

For some in the area, the shootings brought back memories of the infamous DC snipers. While conducting surveillance, authorities saw Tordil eat at the same Boston Market where one of the infamous D.C. snipers ate after one of his attacks, according to McCarthy. He said that connection was no more than a coincidence.

In October 2002, John John Allen Muhammad and Lee Malvo killed 10 people and wounded three others during a spate of coordinated shootings known as the Beltway Sniper Attacks. The pair was captured at a rest area in Montgomery County, Md.
By Jonathan Spicer and Jim Finkle

May 6 (Reuters) - In the years before hackers stole $81 million from a Bangladesh central bank account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, senior Fed security officials examined the risk of such an attack - but judged the prospect unlikely, bank sources told Reuters.

The Fed managers worried that lax security procedures and outdated technology at some foreign central banks could allow cyber-criminals to commandeer local computers and breach foreign accounts at the U.S. central bank, according to interviews with seven current and former New York Fed officials and a former U.S. government official familiar with the discussions.

Over several years, New York Fed and Federal Bureau of Investigation officials discussed the risk of an attack made using the banking system's communications network, known as SWIFT, according to Fed and government officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

"The New York Fed was concerned with lots of vulnerabilities," said the former government official. "SWIFT was one of them."

But the Fed focused security resources on other priorities, such as preventing money-laundering and enforcing U.S. economic sanctions, officials with knowledge of the bank's security operations told Reuters. Fed officials took some comfort in the fact that SWIFT's security software had never been cracked, the officials said.

The immediate result of the breach for the New York Fed is a claim from the Bangladesh Bank for payment of lost funds and a potential lawsuit. Beyond that, the heist showed that the U.S. central bank long understood a potentially systemic risk to a vital global finance network, but was unable or unwilling to address it.

The New York Fed declined to comment on past security priorities or on whether it had made changes since the heist. SWIFT declined to comment.

Before the heist, some New York Fed officials considered the threat of fraudulent transfers ordered through SWIFT a "fat tail risk" - a statistical term for events with low probability but dire consequences, said one well-placed official with knowledge of the discussions. February's theft from the Bangladesh Bank fit that definition - a bold cyber heist in which thieves attempted to withdraw nearly $1 billion in dozens of requests.

Story continues

The crime rattled the banking industry because the conduit for the theft was the SWIFT network, an acronym for the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication. A cooperative overseen by 20 of the world's largest central banks, SWIFT connects about 11,000 financial institutions globally that use it to order money transfers.

"What everyone is realizing right now is that no one has ever really appreciated the risk," said the person with direct knowledge of the New York Fed's deliberations.

SWIFT has said that the scheme involved altering SWIFT software on Bangladesh Bank computers to hide evidence of fraudulent transfers. Last week, SWIFT acknowledged that the Bangladesh Bank attack was not an isolated incident but one of a number of recent criminal schemes aimed at its messaging platform. SWIFT has declined to elaborate further.

Two Bangladesh Bank officials have told Reuters they believe both the New York Fed and SWIFT bear some responsibility for the failure to prevent the attack. The officials previously told Reuters that SWIFT gave Bangladesh Bank no prior warning about vulnerabilities, and the New York Fed failed to stop fraudulent orders when they reached New York.

The head of Bangladesh Bank is scheduled to meet next week with New York Fed president William Dudley and a senior executive from SWIFT to discuss the matter. SWIFT has said the attack was related to an internal operating issue at Bangladesh Bank, and the New York Fed has said it has no evidence that its systems were compromised.

Richard Dzina, head of the New York Fed's wholesale product office, in remarks at a banking conference Tuesday said bank workers "acted properly" in releasing the funds. The system was penetrated, he said, because the hackers had acquired valid credentials to order the transfers.

$80 BILLION A DAY

The New York Fed holds trillions of dollars in funds for central banks worldwide. It processes about $80 billion in fund transfers in and out of their accounts each day, according to a New York Fed official.

Security is handled by the New York Fed's Central Bank and International Account Services (CBIAS) division, a closely-guarded operation inside its fortress in lower Manhattan. CBIAS assigns risk profiles to individual countries and regions, assessing government stability, terrorism threats, and organized crime activity when deciding how to dispense cash to central banks and other official institutions, current and former Fed officials said.

In the months before the attack, the security unit was focused on bulking up its anti-money laundering protections, an initiative driven by the Board of Governors at the Fed's Washington, D.C. headquarters, according to two people familiar with the plan. Another priority was protecting the Fed's own Fedwire payments system from cyber attacks, several current and former Fed officials said.

Most transfer requests are approved automatically after computer screening. Only a few of about 2,000 daily transactions are flagged for review by employees, according to a New York Fed official.

One of the officials said automated scanners used for SWIFT payments were effective for preventing money laundering and enforcing economic sanctions - but would not defend the bank against fraudulent money transfers.

"There is a balance here that has to be struck between allowing customers to make new payments and to conduct their business in a timely manner, and also to prevent really obnoxious or obvious cases of fraud," said Shehriyar Antia, a former senior New York Fed policy advisor and analyst in the CBIAS unit.

The CBIAS system specifically checks for typographical errors - and it was a thief's typo, along with an unusually high number of requests for payments to private entities, that alerted the Fed to February's cyber attack, banking sources have told Reuters. Once alerted, the Fed suspended payments on most of the requests coming from the Bangladesh Bank, but not before the thieves extracted $81 million.

The Bangladesh Bank, Bangladesh police and the FBI are investigating the attack.

A Bangladesh police official who heads the department's forensic training institute previously told Reuters that SWIFT servers at Bangladesh's central bank were vulnerable to hackers because of the absence of a firewall and a lack of basic security protocols.

LOOSE CONTROLS

Three former officials said that the New York Fed had recently focused on loose controls over terminals and other access points to the SWIFT network at foreign central banks, where bankers often order withdrawals for hundreds of millions of dollars.

The concerns focused on the possibility that banks would purchase computers implanted with malicious software or that attackers could steal or buy legitimate credentials from employees, said the former U.S. government official. An additional worry, according to two former Fed officials, was the possibility that a corrupt insider - possibly a bank employee - might have access to the SWIFT network and submit a fraudulent payment request.

Years of managing foreign central bank accounts gave some Fed officials concern that certain banks were ill-equipped to handle local security because of a lack of infrastructure investment and other procedural problems. But the Fed does not have the ability to audit the security protocols at correspondent central banks.

"The vulnerability is that central banks, even in developing countries, have a lot of money relative to their level of sophistication," said the official with knowledge of the security concerns. "It's not just Bangladesh."

(Writing by David Greising; editing by Brian Thevenot and Edward Tobin)
By Jonathan Spicer and Jim Finkle

(Reuters) - In the years before hackers stole $81 million from a Bangladesh central bank account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, senior Fed security officials examined the risk of such an attack - but judged the prospect unlikely, bank sources told Reuters.

The Fed managers worried that lax security procedures and outdated technology at some foreign central banks could allow cyber-criminals to commandeer local computers and breach foreign accounts at the U.S. central bank, according to interviews with seven current and former New York Fed officials and a former U.S. government official familiar with the discussions.

Over several years, New York Fed and Federal Bureau of Investigation officials discussed the risk of an attack made using the banking systems communications network, known as SWIFT, according to Fed and government officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The New York Fed was concerned with lots of vulnerabilities, said the former government official. SWIFT was one of them.

But the Fed focused security resources on other priorities, such as preventing money-laundering and enforcing U.S. economic sanctions, officials with knowledge of the banks security operations told Reuters. Fed officials took some comfort in the fact that SWIFTs security software had never been cracked, the officials said.

The immediate result of the breach for the New York Fed is a claim from the Bangladesh Bank for payment of lost funds and a potential lawsuit. Beyond that, the heist showed that the U.S. central bank long understood a potentially systemic risk to a vital global finance network, but was unable or unwilling to address it.

The New York Fed declined to comment on past security priorities or on whether it had made changes since the heist. SWIFT declined to comment.

Before the heist, some New York Fed officials considered the threat of fraudulent transfers ordered through SWIFT a fat tail risk  a statistical term for events with low probability but dire consequences, said one well-placed official with knowledge of the discussions. Februarys theft from the Bangladesh Bank fit that definition - a bold cyber heist in which thieves attempted to withdraw nearly $1 billion in dozens of requests.

Story continues

The crime rattled the banking industry because the conduit for the theft was the SWIFT network, an acronym for the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication. A cooperative overseen by 20 of the worlds largest central banks, SWIFT connects about 11,000 financial institutions globally that use it to order money transfers.

What everyone is realizing right now is that no one has ever really appreciated the risk, said the person with direct knowledge of the New York Feds deliberations.

SWIFT has said that the scheme involved altering SWIFT software on Bangladesh Bank computers to hide evidence of fraudulent transfers. Last week, SWIFT acknowledged that the Bangladesh Bank attack was not an isolated incident but one of a number of recent criminal schemes aimed at its messaging platform. SWIFT has declined to elaborate further.

Two Bangladesh Bank officials have told Reuters they believe both the New York Fed and SWIFT bear some responsibility for the failure to prevent the attack. The officials previously told Reuters that SWIFT gave Bangladesh Bank no prior warning about vulnerabilities, and the New York Fed failed to stop fraudulent orders when they reached New York.

The head of Bangladesh Bank is scheduled to meet next week with New York Fed president William Dudley and a senior executive from SWIFT to discuss the matter. SWIFT has said the attack was related to an internal operating issue at Bangladesh Bank, and the New York Fed has said it has no evidence that its systems were compromised.

Richard Dzina, head of the New York Feds wholesale product office, in remarks at a banking conference Tuesday said bank workers acted properly in releasing the funds. The system was penetrated, he said, because the hackers had acquired valid credentials to order the transfers.

$80 BILLION A DAY

The New York Fed holds trillions of dollars in funds for central banks worldwide. It processes about $80 billion in fund transfers in and out of their accounts each day, according to a New York Fed official.

Security is handled by the New York Feds Central Bank and International Account Services (CBIAS) division, a closely-guarded operation inside its fortress in lower Manhattan. CBIAS assigns risk profiles to individual countries and regions, assessing government stability, terrorism threats, and organized crime activity when deciding how to dispense cash to central banks and other official institutions, current and former Fed officials said.

In the months before the attack, the security unit was focused on bulking up its anti-money laundering protections, an initiative driven by the Board of Governors at the Feds Washington, D.C. headquarters, according to two people familiar with the plan. Another priority was protecting the Feds own Fedwire payments system from cyber attacks, several current and former Fed officials said.

Most transfer requests are approved automatically after computer screening. Only a few of about 2,000 daily transactions are flagged for review by employees, according to a New York Fed official.

One of the officials said automated scanners used for SWIFT payments were effective for preventing money laundering and enforcing economic sanctions - but would not defend the bank against fraudulent money transfers.

There is a balance here that has to be struck between allowing customers to make new payments and to conduct their business in a timely manner, and also to prevent really obnoxious or obvious cases of fraud, said Shehriyar Antia, a former senior New York Fed policy advisor and analyst in the CBIAS unit.

The CBIAS system specifically checks for typographical errors - and it was a thiefs typo, along with an unusually high number of requests for payments to private entities, that alerted the Fed to Februarys cyber attack, banking sources have told Reuters. Once alerted, the Fed suspended payments on most of the requests coming from the Bangladesh Bank, but not before the thieves extracted $81 million.

The Bangladesh Bank, Bangladesh police and the FBI are investigating the attack.

A Bangladesh police official who heads the departments forensic training institute previously told Reuters that SWIFT servers at Bangladesh's central bank were vulnerable to hackers because of the absence of a firewall and a lack of basic security protocols.

LOOSE CONTROLS

Three former officials said that the New York Fed had recently focused on loose controls over terminals and other access points to the SWIFT network at foreign central banks, where bankers often order withdrawals for hundreds of millions of dollars.

The concerns focused on the possibility that banks would purchase computers implanted with malicious software or that attackers could steal or buy legitimate credentials from employees, said the former U.S. government official. An additional worry, according to two former Fed officials, was the possibility that a corrupt insider  possibly a bank employee  might have access to the SWIFT network and submit a fraudulent payment request.

Years of managing foreign central bank accounts gave some Fed officials concern that certain banks were ill-equipped to handle local security because of a lack of infrastructure investment and other procedural problems. But the Fed does not have the ability to audit the security protocols at correspondent central banks.

The vulnerability is that central banks, even in developing countries, have a lot of money relative to their level of sophistication, said the official with knowledge of the security concerns. Its not just Bangladesh.

(Writing by David Greising; editing by Brian Thevenot and Edward Tobin)
The Weinstein Company acquired most worldwide rights China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Macau are excluded  to The Guardian Brothers, an animated feature that will feature the voices of Mel Brooks, Nicole Kidman, and Zendaya. The film, which was released in China by Alibaba Pictures on January 1 under the title The Little Door Gods, is directed by Gary Wang and produced by Zhou Yu and Light Chaser Animation Studios. TWC will sell the film at Cannes. This follows TWCs revelation it also bought international rights to The Nut Job 2, also on the sales block at Cannes.

Said TWC co-chairman Harvey Weinstein: Ive loved working with our Beijing partners Light Chaser Animation. Im determined to build our animation division for film and television. This is going to be a huge area for our company and The Guardian Brothers is just the beginning of our plan to bring the caliber of film associated with TWC to animation.

Pic follows a Chinese family in danger of losing its family owned business  a wonton soup shop thats been passed down generation after generation for hundreds of years. When the familys grandmother passes away, the restaurant is left in the hands of a little girl named Raindrop (Zendaya) and her mother (Kidman). Millions of miles away in the Spirit World, we meet The Guardians  who have watched over and protected the humans on Earth for centuries. Times are tough up in the Spirit World and two brother Guardians are forced to retire from the business theyve loved since the beginning of time. Back down on Earth, Raindrop and her mom are fending off a rival soup shop owners attempt to sabotage the family restaurant. When the retired Guardian brothers find out, they spring into action. Deal was brokered by TWCs Michael Lappin, Michal Steinberg and Talia Houminer with Zhou Yu and Gary Wang on behalf of Light Chaser Animation Studios.

Said director Gary Wang: We are thrilled that Harvey and the Weinstein team share our enthusiasm for this very Chinese film. It has been amazing working with them. I feel that our story has found a perfect home, and hope that the families around the world will enjoy the film.

Story continues

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By Svea Herbst-Bayliss

NEW YORK, May 6 (Reuters) - New Mexico's public employees are taking their final chunk of money out of billionaire investor William Ackman's hedge fund Pershing Square Capital Management, the pension fund's chief investment officer said on Friday.

The $14 billion pension is asking the $12 billion hedge fund to return $13 million, the last remaining bit of a once larger investment, Jonathan Grabel, chief investment officer for the Public Employees Retirement Association of New Mexico told Reuters in a telephone interview.

Pershing Square was a top industry performer in 2014, when it delivered a 40 percent return. But more recently it has been close to the bottom, losing 20 percent last year.

Through April its Pershing Square International fund has lost nearly 15 percent while the average hedge fund is up 0.8 percent, according to eVestment. As one of the industry's biggest activist hedge funds with bets on Canadian Pacific Railway Ltd, Mondelez International Inc and Valeant Pharmaceuticals International Inc, it features prominently in many pension funds.

But Pershing Square locks its investors' money up for a long time -- it takes them two full years to exit completely -- and so Grabel said his pension fund had to move now or risk being stuck for a while longer.

"We didn't have a meaningful allocation anymore and so the redemption is more related to our asset allocation not their performance," Grabel said. The pension is overhauling its manager lineup and cutting its allocation to global stocks, which make up the bulk of Pershing Square's portfolio.

"I have to give Bill Ackman and his team credit. They are true to their mandate and they believe in it with conviction," he said, adding that the pension fund realized a profit of roughly $10 million from its investment with Ackman.

A Pershing Square spokesman was not immediately available to comment.

Over the last year, Pershing Square's fortunes have come under pressure as a bet on Valeant Pharmaceuticals tumbled 85 percent amid greater scrutiny of the company's accounting and business practices, including sharp drug price hikes.

Story continues

A new CEO started at Valeant on Monday. Ackman and Pershing Square's vice chairman are now directors on its board, which is expected to be significantly reshaped at the next annual meeting.

Despite the heavy losses in his portfolio late last year and early this year, investors have been largely loyal to Ackman, taking out only about 2 percent of the fund's assets in the first quarter.

(Reporting by Svea Herbst-Bayliss; Editing by Tom Brown)
Michael Moore Kevin Winter Getty

Michael Moore has always been known as the face of his own movies.

For his popular documentaries Fahrenheit 9/11 and Bowling for Columbine, which won him an Oscar, he traveled the country plugging his work in countless media outlets.

But for his latest movie, Where to Invade Next, the face of the movie has hardly been seen.

Moore was taken to the intensive care unit at a hospital in New York City after coming down with pneumonia on February 5, a week before the film hit theaters, and was unable to tour with the film after that.

Though the movie is the highest-grossing documentary of the year so far in the US, with close to $4 million earned to date, its not taking in the kind of money that his previous hits have.

Moore sold the film at the Toronto International Film Festival last September to a startup distributor run by Tom Quinn and Jason Janego, who had left The Weinstein Company's VOD arm, Radius, to go out on their own.

The yet-unnamed company, which is also run by Alamo Drafthouses Tim League, has only bought Where to Invade Next to date. It's been mum to the press on its plans going forward.

I spoke with Moore on Thursday in promotion of the Blu-ray release of Where to Invade Next (available May 10), and asked the filmmaker about his thoughts on the company that released the film.

Do you know the name of the company? Moore said.

When I said that I didn't know if it had one yet, he responded, Hm, so maybe youve answered your question. There is no phone number for this unnamed company. Theres no address. I dont think there was even a payroll. I think everything was contracted out to freelancers, he said.

Michael Moore Tom Quinn Jason Janego Getty Kevin Winter

When asked if he felt Quinn and Janego overpromised what they could do for the film, Moore said, I'm not prepared to talk about this right now. I think it needs some time and some investigation and when I have it all before me I'll have something.

Story continues

"I will say this, Tom Quinn and Jason Janego seem to be good and decent people," Moore continued. "I didn't know them before this transpired. But they certainly have a good track record, but honest to God I can't answer your question because I honestly don't know if there is a company, was a company, what they're doing now. And that's a different story for a different day.

Quinn, however, told Business Insider that he loves the movie and is proud of the work he and his company did to make it the top-grossing documnetary of the year so far.

There is no smoking gun, its an issue-driven movie, and I think Micheal Moore doing that kind of movie was interesting, Quinn said. Thats why I bought it.

Moore has been known throughout his career to be tough on his distributors. He even sued the head of the distribution company behind the release of Fahrenheit 9/11, Harvey Weinstein, over profits for the movie.

The company releasing Where to Invade Next certainly seemed to be planning a signature Michael Moore release, including a 50-state bus tour.

But while pictures of the bus surfaced on social media, the tour never happened. When asked why, Moore told BI, Like I said before, I'm not ready to talk about this right now. I saw the same picture and it looks like a nice bus.

Quinn said of the canceled tour, He got sick. We had two buses. Unfortunately he couldn't do it, because of his health issues.

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michael moore donald trump

Filmmaker Michael Moore has not taken Donald Trump's candidacy for president of the US lightly.

In December, leading up to the release of his latest movie, "Where to Invade Next," he told Business Insider that Trump was "absolutely going to be the Republican candidate" at a time when many in politics were still dubious about the businessman's staying power.

Now the Oscar winner behind "Bowling for Columbine" and "Fahrenheit 9/11" says that everyone needs to be "deadly serious" about his run for the White House.

"I know that they [the Trump campaign] are planning to focus on Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. That's how he can win the election," he told Business Insider on Thursday. "If he can get those upper kind of Midwestern-type states, then he can pull it off."

But being the staunch liberal that he is, Moore said that he's also optimistic that whoever wins the Democratic nomination between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders will defeat Trump.

"I know the statistics," Moore said. "I know that 81% of the country is either female, people of color, or young adults from 18 to 35, and [Trump] has significantly offended all three of those groups and they aren't going to vote for him."

Moore made these comments just hours before Trump tweeted this picture in celebration of Cinco de Mayo that was widely seen as offensive to Hispanics:

Happy #CincoDeMayo! The best taco bowls are made in Trump Tower Grill. I love Hispanics! https://t.co/ufoTeQd8yA pic.twitter.com/k01Mc6CuDI  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 5, 2016

So with the bizarre happenings of this political season, does Moore have any interest in doing a movie about the 2016 election?

Story continues

"There's no satirical film that I could make that would be more entertaining than the actual thing you're witnessing in real time," Moore said. "It wouldn't live up to the material they're supplying on a daily basis on TV."

"Where to Invade Next" is currently available on iTunes and will be on Blu-ray on May 10.

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MIAMI, FL / ACCESSWIRE / May 6, 2016 / ML Capital Group Inc. (OTC PINK: MLCG) is pleased to announce that the Company has successfully reduced its authorized capital share limit to 5.01 Billion shares, and confirms that the current 1,216,297,221 issued and outstanding share number on the OTC Markets profile is correct.

"This is an additional step towards preventing unnecessary dilution, and affirms our commitment to protecting shareholder value," says CEO Kevin Bobryk. "There is still however ample room within the authorized share structure to perform acquisitions that we have identified. We believe this can put the Company on target to meet our revenue goals."

We have retained Cox CPA Services to help bring the Company's accounting and financial statements up to date. Our negotiations to acquire the Hawaiian tour and transportation company are continuing, and updates on our progress will be posted to our Twitter feed at https://twitter.com/mlcginc.

Safe Harbor : This release includes forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 27E of the Securities Act of 1934. Statements contained in this release that are not historical facts may be deemed to be forward-looking statements. Investors are cautioned that forward-looking statements are inherently uncertain. Actual performance and results may differ materially from that projected or suggested herein due to certain risks and uncertainties including, without limitation, ability to obtain financing and regulatory and shareholder approval for anticipated actions.

ML Capital Group Inc .

Contact: Kevin Bobryk

Email: info@mlcginc.com

SOURCE: ML Capital Group Inc.
Digging into Mosaic's 1Q16 Earnings

(Continued from Prior Part)

Phosphate shipments

Mosaic (MOS) earns about 48% of its revenue and 37% of its gross margin from its Phosphate segment. Revenue for fertilizer companies is a function of shipment volumes and average realized prices for those shipments.

In this part of the series, well look at how Mosaics phosphate shipments have evolved. Overall, shipments for the Phosphate segment declined by 4% to ~2.2 million tons from ~2.3 million tons in 1Q15. This stood against the managements guidance of 1.8 million2.2 million tons.

North American shipments increase

North America contributed about 43% toward the Phosphate segments shipments. North American shipments were flat at 951,000 tons in 1Q16 compared to 1Q15.

International shipments and others

The International Distribution segment accounts for 30% of Mosaics Phosphate segments shipments. Shipments in 1Q16 for this segment declined by 13% to 656,000 tons from 754,000 tons in 1Q15.

However, Microessentials shipments grew by 6% to 468,000 tons from 440,000 tons. The Microessentials segment accounts for ~21% of the Phosphate segments shipments and commands a premium over standard phosphate fertilizers such as DAP (diammonium phosphate).

The feed shipments also declined over the same period by as much as 14% to 131,000 tons from 152,000 tons. Feed accounted for 6% of the Phosphate segments shipments.

Outlook

Mosaics (MOS) management has guided the Phosphate segments shipments for 2Q16 in the range of 2.3 million2.6 million tons. The 2Q16 expectations are lower compared to shipments of 2.7 million tons in 2Q15, which highlights the continuing weakness in the Phosphate segment in the upcoming quarter.

For fiscal 2016, management expects the sales volume to be about 9 million9.75 million tons. The upper bound was lowered from the earlier estimate of 10 million tons. The global shipment for 2016 is expected to be in the range of 65 million66 million tons.

Story continues

PotashCorp (POT), Mosaic (MOS), CF Industries Holdings (CF), and Agrium (AGU) form about 14% of the Market Vectors Agribusiness ETF (MOO) portfolio.

Continue to Next Part

Browse this series on Market Realist:
An Indian court on Friday struck down a tough law that had banned the consumption of beef in the western state of Maharashtra, dealing a blow to right-wing Hindu groups.

Last year the government of Maharashtra, home to India's commercial centre Mumbai, made the sale or possession of beef an offence punishable by a five-year jail term or a 10,000-rupee ($150) fine.

It was one of the strictest such laws in India, where several states ban the slaughter of cows, considered sacred by the Hindu majority.

However the Bombay High Court, Mumbai's top court, ruled Friday that it was no longer illegal to possess or eat beef, as long as it had been brought into Maharashtra from outside the state.

But it upheld the part of the law, introduced in March 2015, that had extended a 1976 ban on slaughtering cows to cover bulls and bullocks, according to the ruling published on the court's website.

"The court has struck down that provision which says that the consumption of beef is illegal in Maharashtra," Harish Jagtiani, a prominent lawyer told AFP.

Jagtiani, was one of several petitioners who had asked the court to overturn the ban on consumption, saying that it infringed upon their right to privacy as protected in Indias constitution.

"They've struck down the provision that bans the import of beef into Maharashtra for the purpose of consumption and trade. Those bans have been declared to be unconstitutional," he added.

Restaurants will now be allowed to sell imported beef again, Jagtiani said, adding that the court had ruled in favour of people's right to eat the food they want, "wherever they want".

"We're thrilled. It's a total vindication," he said.

Right-wing Hindu groups in India have long demanded a complete ban on the slaughter of all cattle, citing religious scriptures.

They celebrated last year when Maharashtra, governed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party in alliance with the far-right Shiv Sena party, toughened its laws.

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Maharashtra's chief minister Devendra Fadnavis tweeted at the time that "our dream of ban on cow slaughter becomes a reality now".

Muslims, the country's largest religious minority and the main players in India's beef industry, claimed the law unfairly targeted them.

While the slaughter of cows, bulls and bullocks remains illegal in Maharashtra, the slaughtering of water buffalo remains permissible.

Friday's ruling, which came after the court heard a number of petitions against the legal amendment, made no concessions to those in the slaughter trade.

The decision caught the attention of social media with opinion predictably divided on Twitter.

"Best news I've heard in a while -- #beef partially back in Bombay," wrote Nakalu Naneeto.

"So you can't slaughter a cow in Maharashtra, but you can do it outside and eat it here? And no one finds this hypocritical or absurd?" posted Lindsay Pereira.
MADRID (Reuters) - Andy Murray and 14 times grand slam winner Rafael Nadal will meet in the last four of the Madrid Open on Saturday in a repeat of last year's final won by the Scot. World number two Murray blasted past eighth seeded Czech Tomas Berdych 6-3 6-2 in their quarter-final while Nadal had a harder task on home clay in seeing off Portugal's Joao Sousa 6-0 4-6 6-3. The roof had to be closed on both matches at the 'Caja Magica' due to rain. "We know each other very well," said Nadal, who has won his last two meetings with Murray with the most recent victory coming in the Monte Carlo semis three weeks ago. "It's a question of playing my best, and if I am playing my best I hope to have my chances. If not, it will be almost impossible." Murray took 76 minutes to beat Berdych, winning 92 percent of his first service points and with no break points against him. "It was different conditions playing under the roof," he said. "I've only played maybe three or four indoor clay matches in my life." Nadal dominated the first set, with Sousa taking 37 minutes to win a game when he made it 1-1 in the second before a 10-minute rain delay as the roof was closed. With Real Madrid's Portuguese striker Cristiano Ronaldo watching, Sousa saved three break points in the sixth game and then broke Nadal in the 10th to take the set. "The ball was a little bit heavier," said Nadal. "I missed a few good opportunities. I had to suffer. I had to fight back and look for a solution. I managed to find a solution and solve it." (Reporting by Alan Baldwin, editing by Toby Davis)
London (AFP) - At the Lahore Karahi restaurant in south London, customers and staff celebrated Friday as it became clear the capital was to have its first Muslim mayor, shouting out in Urdu, "Sadiq Khan Zinda Baad!" (Sadiq Khan well done!)

A favourite haunt of the Khan family, the restaurant in the south London district of Tooting -- where the 45-year-old son of a Pakistani immigrant bus driver is the local MP -- buzzed with excitement.

"We are happy now but he has to fulfil the promises he made," said waiter Shehzad Azhar, 30. "The housing crisis and the transportation come first."

"He will do good things," added fellow employee Malik Ahmed, 32.

Khan's victory came after a straight fight with his conservative opponent, ecologist Zac Goldsmith, son of the late tycoon financier James Goldsmith and a scion of one of Britain's wealthiest families

The lack of affordable housing and the overcrowded transport system were key concerns for many Londoners, but Khan's faith also became an issue in an unusually negative campaign, with Goldsmith seeking to establish links between Khan and Muslim extremists.

Outside Khan's mosque, 50-year-old Asim said: "He is above the polemics. He ran a very clean campaign, very honest, and that's what Londoners liked."

Khan, a former human rights lawyer and Labour government minister, was attacked by both Goldsmith and Prime Minister David Cameron for allegedly voicing support for Muslim extremists in past.

Tooting-born Khan. who grew up in public housing in south London, dismissed the claims as "desperate", insisting he did not have extremist views.

Some Conservatives voiced concern that the attacks on him could hurt Muslim community relations.

Businessman Shahzad Saddiqui said Khan's background would help him to bring Londoners together.

"Sadiq Khan will have a unifying factor because he is Muslim, an immigrant, he is from the working class, so he understands the working-class people and he can associate with them," he said.

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"He knows also how the Muslim community is constantly bashed in the media and he will address that."

- 'From our culture' -

The latest census showed that 12.4 percent of Londoners are Muslim, 48.4 percent Christian, 1.8 percent Jewish and 20.7 percent have no faith.

The Muslim community is hugely varied, covering multiple ethnic and social backgrounds as well as a variety of moderate and traditionalist views.

In the East End, which has a large Muslim minority, voters said they had cast their ballots for Khan because of his policies rather than his religion.

Fahim Ahmed, a 35-year-old stallholder of Bangladeshi origin selling Islamic dresses at Whitechapel street market, said he was voting for the centre-left Labour party as much as for the individual.

But he welcomed the election of a candidate whose parents emigrated from Pakistan to Britain in the 1960s, saying: "He's from our culture."

At a nearby stall, Sabiha Choudhary was shopping for vegetables dressed in a black robe and green headscarf.

"It will not help only the Muslims, it will make a difference for all communities," she said. "Things will be better for people with not much money like us."
Yangon (AFP) - Myanmar's president has urged the creation of a new ministry for Aung San Suu Kyi's state advisor position, official media reported on Friday, a move that will deepen her influence and likely rile the powerful army.

Suu Kyi is barred from the presidency by the military-drafted constitution despite having led her pro-democracy party to a landslide victory in November.

She has instead hoovered up a slew of other senior positions, including foreign minister, president's officer minister, and the specially-devised role of state counsellor, which gives her vaguely-defined powers to guide parliamentary affairs.

The broad array of powers across government has helped the veteran activist fulfil a pledge to rule "above" her presidential proxy and close ally Htin Kyaw.

Shortly after taking office she used her role as state counsellor to announce a major political prisoner release in April.

She has also met with a host of foreign dignitaries and on Friday accompanied Htin Kyaw on a trip to Laos, his first international visit as president.

The proposal for a ministry to support her role "is intended to speed up the government's efforts at national reconciliation, internal peace, national development and the rule of law", the English language state newspaper Global New Light of Myanmar reported Friday.

Parliamentary debate on the proposal is set to take place next week.

That discussion will likely feature objections from military MPs who registered strong opposition when the state counsellor position was created specifically for Suu Kyi.

Other MPs expressed bemusement at the plans.

"A new ministry is not really needed for the national reconciliation and peace process. But I won't stand against the proposal," said Ba Sein from the Arakan National Party.

Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy can comfortably pass most of its bills because of its hefty majority.

Myanmar's first civilian government in generations faces formidable challenges in a nation wracked with poverty, corruption and conflict after decades of military domination.

Few concrete policy details have emerged in the administration's initial weeks in power, although it has vowed to streamline the bureaucracy by combining ministries and cutting the number of cabinet posts.

The government also freed scores of political prisoners and those facing controversial trials for rallies against the previous quasi-civilian leadership.
Categories Nails

When it comes to something we use as often as nail polish (you can definitely find us at our mani appointments weekly), we should probably know a thing or two about where it comes from. Even if youve never given it a second thought before now, we can bet your interest has been piqued. We visited SpaRitualvegan nail polish and body care brand, founded by Shel Pinkat their factory in Van Nuys, California to get a behind-the-scenes look at how nail polish is made. Follow us as we take an inside look.
Moscow (AFP) - Russian foreign ministry on Friday accused NATO of seeking to destabilise the Caucasus region with upcoming joint exercises in Georgia, where US soldiers will train together with Georgian forces this month.

"We view this consistent 'development' of Georgian territory by NATO soldiers as a provocative move, aiming to deliberately destabilise the military-political situation in the Caucasus region," it said in a statement.

Moscow and Tbilisi fought a brief war in 2008 due to a dispute regarding South Ossetia, a separatist region of Georgia which is funded and backed by Russia.

After the war, Russia recognised South Ossetia and Abkhazia, another breakaway Georgian territory, as independent states and stationed permanent military bases there.

Georgia regards these regions as under occupation and accuses Russia of continuing to take over more area by moving South Ossetia fenceposts deeper into its territory.

The Russian foreign ministry accused Washington of "indulging Tbilisi's revanchist drive."

Moscow has accused NATO of seeking to counter it militarily in Eastern Europe with increased forces and drills, but the alliance argues it is responding to Russia's annexation of Crimea from Ukraine.

The exercise in Georgia, called Noble Partner, will involve about 1,300 participants from US, Britain and Georgia and take place at the Vaziani base outside Tbilisi for two weeks this month, starting on May 11.

It involved the US shipping its M1A2 main battle tanks across the Black Sea to Georgia for the first time this week.

Georgia, an ex-Soviet mountainous country, has bid to join the alliance, infuriating its former imperial master Russia, which bitterly opposes NATO's expansion into former Soviet republics.

The country is not however on a formal path to eventual membership.
When Keith Morrison appears on NBC this Sunday, he will be talking about the stuff viewers have come to expect of him  matters of life and death. But he wont be chasing the perpetrator in a whodunnit, as he has while examining stories of murder and true crime on the networks venerable Dateline.

NBC News is hoping the familiarity its audience has with its correspondents will allow the network to launch something very different: On Assignment, a six-episode newsmagazine that relies more heavily on stories of adventure and innovation than the so-called murder porn that viewers have come to expect from Dateline, 48 Hours and other broadcast-network newsmagazines these days. Its the news units first attempt at a newsmagazine since the demise of an effort with similar goals: Rock Center, anchored by Brian Williams. On Assignment is also the latest programming salvo from NBC News, which recently launched a new edition of Today on Sunday and is in the midst of preparing a revamped third hour of its morning mainstay.

The aim of the new show is to hook viewers with shoe-leather tales that show off hard-to-reach places or unique access and details. The emphasis is on the reporter being in the field, not the studio, explained David Corvo, senior executive producer of Dateline, in an interview. Its about getting the viewer to the correspondent quickly  and with some energy.

When On Assignment debuts this Sunday at 7 p.m. (viewers will be told the program is powered by Dateline), it will show Cynthia McFadden nabbing the first U.S. television interview with Guccifer, the hacker who discovered Hillary Clintons private email account. Keith Morrison will investigate how people recover from traumatic brain injuries. Richard Engel, the storied NBC News foreign correspondent, even rescues a chimpanzee, all part of a search deep in the Congo for giant chimpanzees threatened by poachers.

Reporters will bring more of their own voice to each piece, in contrast with how they might file a story to NBC Nightly News or Today. These are correspondents who know how to bring their own approach to a story, Corvo said, adding: These correspondents are not show-offs. They know when it helps the piece and when its going the wrong way.

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On Assignment launches as news aficionados  particularly those in the rising group of millennials and the generation behind them  have grown accustomed to more immediacy in the reporting they consume. Vice Media has seen a veritable cult of young consumers grow around it by wielding a brand of immersionist, or you are there video reportage that takes viewers on the scene, no matter how far-flung the location or how daunting the logistics are to reach it.

Corvo does not dismiss the popularity of the approach. My feeling is this is the contemporary style. People are used to it, he said. It just brings an intimacy to a piece that you cannot provide with the traditional voice-over and B-roll. We are breaking that all down a little bit, he noted, adding, There are some conventions in broadcast you have to push against a little bit.

Lester Holt will anchor the series, but from the NBC News newsroom, not the traditional anchor chair. Graphics that help to introduce each story will feature maps that invite the viewer to come along with the correspondent on the journey.

Dateline producers have mulled testing new ideas for the program for some time. In September, Corvo and Liz Cole, executive producer of Dateline publicly mulled the idea of using Sundays to move beyond the law-and-order cases for which the series is best known. You still hanker to do the kind of reporting we got into television to do in the first place, which is stories about things that matter to the wider society, Morrison said in an interview last fall. So, yes, we are going to get a chance to do more of those things.

Producers had begun to notice they were letting certain stories go, said Corvo, sometimes because they wouldnt fill an hour. And yet, the pieces were really good, he added. We kind of came to the conclusion we were trapped by the hour format, he noted. In addition to Engel, McFadden and Morrison, Josh Mankiewicz, Matt Lauer, Harry Smith and Kate Snow will also contribute to the series. For one report in development, Smith has journeyed to a Pacific island so pristine visitors must freeze their clothes so as not to introduce bacteria to the environment.

NBC is putting On Assignment up against heady competition. The series will air in the same time slot as CBS 60 Minutes. NBC once aired Dateline in that slot, so Corvo is accustomed to the competition. The CBS newsmagazine has thrived in that time period for all those years, he said. We are not expecting that we are going to change that dynamic.

But NBC can use the program to burnish its reporting and entice a new crowd to sample its work. Corvo hopes people see it and come away eager to see additional episodes. Im telling everyone were doing this, and Im leaving it that, he said. I want everyone in the news division to see, and I want them to like it so we can do more.

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Nearly half of all supporters of GOP presidential frontrunner Donald Trump reported that they are only supporting the brash New York billionaire in the presidential race because they "don't want Hillary Clinton to win," according to the results of a Reuters/Ipsos poll released Thursday.

The findings found that a a desire to keep Clinton out of the White House accounted for a full 47% of Trump's support. Another 43% said they agreed with his political positions; only "personally" liked the guy.

Read more: 2 Moments Show Exactly Why Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders Voters Are So Far Apart

O t agreed with her policy positions and another 11% said they liked her.

Source: DON EMMERT/Getty Images

"This phenomenon is called negative partisanship," Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia's Center for Politics, told Reuters. "If we were trying to maximize the effect, we couldn't have found better nominees than Trump and Clinton."

With Trump now his party's presumptive nominee and Clinton's march in the same direction increasingly inevitable, the contours of the race have already begun to take shape. On Wednesday, team Hillary released a blistering ad against Trump almost entirely made up of negative comments from Trump's defeated rivals and other GOP luminaries.

Trump, meanwhile, has openly warned to make both Hillary and former president Bill Clinton's past transgressions an election issue, tweeting out an ominous message of what's in store.

Crooked Hillary Clinton, perhaps the most dishonest person to have ever run for the presidency, is also one of the all time great enablers!

So buckle your seat belts  the next few months are going to be ugly.
Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts is expected to endorse Donald Trump, after his family helped fund a group that attempted to stop the New York businessman from becoming the Republican presidential nominee.

Taylor Gage, a spokesman for Ricketts, said that the governor will appear with Trump at an Omaha rally Friday, according to the Wall Street Journal. The governor has always said he will support the GOP nominee to retake the White House, Gage said. The governor is supporting Donald Trump as the presumptive GOP nominee.

The Ricketts endorsement comes as a surprise as Trump warned in February that his family should be careful, they have a lot to hide after it funded Our Principles PAC, a group aimed at stopping him.

The Ricketts family is said to have spent some $5.5 million trying to stop Trump, according to the Wall Street Journal. The governor was expected to endorse Texas Sen. Ted Cruz before he ended his campaign after a defeat in the Indiana primary, effectively making Trump the presumptive Republican nominee.
By Luke Baker JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel's prime minister has invited all United Nations staff in Israel to attend a seminar on Jewish history, after a decision by a U.N. cultural body that failed to acknowledge Jewish ties to Jerusalem's holiest site. In the decision last month, UNESCO condemned Israel for security restrictions and other measures at the site, known to Muslims as Haram al-Sharif or the al-Aqsa compound and to Jews as Temple Mount. UNESCO referred to it only by its Arabic name. "I was shocked to hear that UNESCO adopted a decision denying any Jewish connection to the Temple Mount, our holiest site," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement. "It is hard to believe that anyone, let alone an organization tasked with preserving history, could deny this link, which spans thousands of years." To counter what a member of Netanyahu's staff called "this historical ignorance", the prime minister, who is a keen historian, said he would host a special lecture on Jewish history for all UN personnel in Israel. It was not immediately clear when the seminar would be held, but staff indicated it could be next week. It was also unclear how many UN staff and diplomats planned to attend. UNESCO had no immediate comment. UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, based in Paris, frequently issues decisions critical of Israel. Many are sponsored and seconded by Islamic states. The holy site in the heart of the Old City of Jerusalem, home to the Dome of the Rock and the Aqsa Mosque, has been a source of friction between Israel and the Muslim world for decades. Israel seized the Old City during the 1967 Middle East war. After its capture, Israel agreed to maintain the status quo at the site, which had effectively been in Islamic hands since the 12th century. Non-Muslims are allowed to visit the site but are not allowed to pray there. Jews instead pray at the Western Wall, a retaining wall for an ancient Jewish temple that once stood in the area where the Dome of the Rock now sits. In recent years, ultra-nationalist religious Jews have pushed for more access to the site and even to pray there, causing tension with Muslims, who worry the status quo might change. Netanyahu has repeatedly said it will not. (Editing by Larry King)
Rupert Murdoch-controlled News Corporation NWSA continued with its dismal performance for the third straight quarter in fiscal 2016. After posting negative earnings surprises of 28.6% and 4.8% in the first and second quarters, the companys third-quarter earnings fell short of the Zacks Consensus Estimate by 20%. Foreign currency headwinds, soft advertising demand and lower revenues at its Book Publishing and Cable Network Programming divisions weighed upon the companys performance in the quarter. However, expanded digital offerings, along with greater emphasis on real estate businesses, provided some cushion to the stock.

The company recorded adjusted earnings of 4 cents a share that missed the Zacks Consensus Estimate by a penny and declined substantially from 9 cents earned in the year-ago quarter. Including pre-tax charge of $280 million related to the lawsuit and discontinued operations, the publisher of The Wall Street Journal and New York Post reported quarterly loss of 26 cents a share as against earnings of 4 cents delivered in the year-ago period.

News Corporation, which split from Twenty-First Century Fox, Inc. FOXA, stated that its total revenue for the reported quarter was $1,891 million, down 7% from the year-ago quarter and below the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $1,942 million. Adverse foreign currency fluctuations hurt total revenue by $72 million.

Adjusted revenues (excluding the impact of acquisitions, divestitures and foreign currency fluctuations) dropped 5% year over year to $1,942 million.

Total advertising revenues for this Zacks Rank #4 (Sell) company declined 10% year over year to $816 million, while circulation and subscription revenues dropped 4% to $615 million. Consumer revenues fell 11% to $343 million.

News Corporation is in a transitional phase, looking to diversify its revenue streams, along with expanding its digital properties via product launches and accretive acquisitions. Management expects performance to improve in the final quarter of fiscal 2016 on the back of digital real estate business, easing of foreign currency headwinds and cost containment efforts.

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News Corporation, which has a 61.6% stake in the digital real estate services company, REA, recently acquired the remaining stake in iProperty Group Limited, which has online property advertising operations in Malaysia, Indonesia, Hong Kong, Macau and Singapore, together with investments in the Philippines and India.

The company also acquired video advertisement technology company, Unruly Holdings Ltd. The buyout of Unruly offers News Corporation significant opportunity to expand in the online video advertising market by using its skills in identifying the social and viral penetration of advertisements.

News Corporation, which offers e-books for devices sold by Amazon.com Inc. AMZN and Apple Inc. AAPL, had earlier raised its stake in APN News and Media Limited, an Australian media company, to 14.99%; acquired BigDecisions.Com, the provider of financial decision-making tools; and invested in PropTiger.com, to tap the burgeoning residential real estate market in India.

Segmental Performance

Revenues from the News and Information Services segment fell 9% year over year to $1,231 million, primarily due to a 15% decline in advertising revenues and a 4% decrease in circulation and subscription revenues. The segments results were hurt by the adverse impact of foreign currency fluctuations, softness in the print advertising market, and a fall in free standing insert revenues at News America Marketing, partly offset by growth registered across digital advertising revenues. Adjusted segment EBITDA declined 11% to $101 million.

The Book Publishing segment, which consists of HarperCollins Publishers, reported revenues of $358 million, down 11% from the prior-year period on account of a fall in e-book sales, foreign currency headwinds, and a decline in revenues from American Sniper and the Divergent series. Digital sales constituted 21% of consumer revenues. Adjusted EBITDA for News Corporations book publishing business came in at $36 million, down 36% year over year.

Revenues at the Digital Real Estate Services segment went up 14% year over year to $194 million on the back of sustained growth witnessed across REA Group Limited and Move, whereas adjusted EBITDA increased 23% to $53 million.

The Cable Network Programming segments revenues came in at $107 million, down 8% from the year-ago quarter. Adjusted EBITDA was $36 million, up 33% year over year. Management highlighted that foreign currency headwinds hurt revenues by $9 million.

Other Financial Aspects

News Corporation ended the quarter with cash and cash equivalents of $1,972 million, borrowings of $369 million, and shareholders equity of $11,646 million, excluding non-controlling interest of $199 million.

Capital expenditures of $180 million were incurred during the first nine months of fiscal 2016, while the company generated free cash flow of $362 million.

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Warning: Mild spoilers for Captain America: Civil War ahead.

Marvel likely has one of the biggest blockbusters in history on its hands with Captain America: Civil War. But theres still plenty more Marvel superheroes to come: the company has at least nine more films planned between now and 2019.

Doctor Strange, Spider-Man, Black Panther and Captain Marvel will all get their own films along with more installments to the Thor, Guardians of the Galaxy and Ant-Man franchises. Then all the heroes will come together in a couple of films called The Avengers: Infinity Wars. Overwhelmed? Here are the answers to all your questions about Civil War and the greater Marvel Cinematic Universe.

What are the next Marvel Cinematic Universe Movies?

Doctor Strange (2016); Guardians of the Galaxy 2 (2017); Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017); Thor: Ragnarok (2017); Black Panther (2018); Avengers: Infinity WarsPart 1 (2018); Ant-Man and the Wasp (2018); Captain Marvel (2019); Avengers: Infinity WarsPart 2 (2019). For an illustrated look at how these movies connect, go here.

Why are Thor and Hulk missing from Civil War?

Civil War brings together almost the entire Avengers team. Thor (Chris Hemsworth) and Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) are conspicuously missing. Both characters will appear in Thor: Ragnarok, out next year. Ruffalo has described it as a buddy movie, and its safe to assume the two travel into space together to try to save Thors homeland from a threat.

Why is it important that Black Panther and Spider-Man showed up?

Civil War marks the first silver screen appearance for Black Panther (played by Chadwick Boseman). Hell get his own movie in 2018, the first Marvel Studios movie with a black superhero as its central character.

This is also the first Marvel Studios movie* that Spider-Man has appeared in. Hell get his own spinoff, Spider-Man: Homecoming, in 2017. Marvel announced that Robert Downey Jr. will star alongside Tom Holland in that film, which is great news since the Tony Stark-Peter Parker banter is a highlight of Civil War.

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*Yes, there have been five Spider-Man moviesthree with Tobey Maguire and two with Andrew Garfield. But those were all made by Sony, who owns the rights to the Spider-Man character. Last year, Sony and Marvel Studios decided to join forces on future Spidey films, which means he can finally join the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

What about Captain Marvel and Wasp?

Were making some progress when it comes to representing women in the Marvel films: Black Widow and Scarlet Witch are both part of the Avengers team now. But two super-powered ladies were missing. Lets start with Wasp. Ant-Man teased that Evangeline Lillys character hope would suit up as the superhero in a future Marvel movie. But fans will have to wait until Ant-Man and the Wasp in 2018.

Captain Marvel, who will be the first female superhero to get her own solo Marvel Studios movie, did not show up in Civil War. (She plays a leading role in the Civil War II plot line in the 2016 comic books.) Her movie is set to hit the big screen in 2019, but we could meet her first in The Avengers: Infinity WarPart Imore on that in a bit.

How does this movie relate to Doctor Strange?

On its face Civil War has nothing to do with the Benedict Cumberbatch film arriving in theaters in November. Not only does Cumberbatch not appear in Civil War, the movie doesnt drop any hints about the world of Doctor Strange.

That said, everything in the Marvel universe is related. Doctor Strange could help build toward the Infinity War plot.

What is Infinity War and what does it have to do with Civil War or Doctor Strange?

Get ready to greek out. Ever since 2011s Thor, these things called Infinity Stones keep popping up in the Marvel Universe. Weve encountered four of the six stones so far:

The Tesseract or Space Stone: Red Skull stole it from a Church in Norway in Captain America: The First Avenger. Then Loki tried to steal it from S.H.I.E.L.D. in The Avengers. Thor took it back to Asgard at the end of that film.

The Mind Stone: Thanos gave this stone to Loki to lead the invasion of Earth in Avengers. (Loki used it to hypnotize people.) In a credit sequence after Captain America: The Winter Soldier it was revealed that the stone was used to give Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver their powers. Then Tony Stark uses it in The Avengers: Age of Ultron to create the first artificial intelligence, Ultron. Its now safely stored in the forehead of Vision.

The Reality Stone: The villain from Thor: The Dark World, Malekith, tries to use this stone to return the universe to eternal darkness. Thor stops him, and the Asgardians entrust the stone to the Collector (Benicio del Toro), who also shows up in Guardians of the Galaxy.

The Power Stone: Star-Lord (Chris Pratt) finds the power stone in Guardians of the Galaxy. Unfortunately for the Guardians, Thanos and his henchman, Ronan the Accuser, are after the stone as well. The Guardians hand the stone over to the Nova Corps, a sort of space police.

We have yet to see the Soul Stone or the Time Stone. There has been speculation that Doctor Strange will introduce another Infinity Stone into the Marvel Universe.

Thanos (the big purple guy played by Josh Brolin) is trying to gather all these stones to make something called the Infinity Guantlet, which he can use to destroy the universeunless the Avengers stop him.

Captain America: Civil War tears the Avengers team apart. Only a truly horrible threat (like, you know, Thanos killing everyone in the galaxy) could reunite them. Oh, and theyll probably need to join forces with the Guardians of the Galaxy as well since Thanos is so powerful and operates in space. I told you it was all connected.
LINTHICUM, MD / ACCESSWIRE / May 6, 2016 / NFM Lending is pleased to honor Lt. Col. Beth Ann Lumpkin as the NFM Salute for May 2016.

Lt. Col. Beth Ann Lumpkin received a direct commission into the United States Air Force in 1990. Her military assignments included the following: Andrews Air Force Base, MD; Kunsan Air Base, Republic of Korea; Ramstein Air Base, Germany; Scott Air Force Base, IL; Brooks Air Force Base, TX; Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, OH and Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, NJ. A majority of her career was in flight nursing and aeromedical evacuation. In June 1996, she worked in the Aeromedical Staging Facility at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center. She then flew as a flight nurse on the C-9 Nightingale while stationed at Scott AFB, IL from 1996-1999. Lt. Col. Lumpkin then taught the Flight Nursing and Critical Care Air Transport Team Courses at Brooks City Base, San Antonio, TX to active duty, guard, reserve and international students. She deployed in summer of 2007 to Al Udeid Air Base, Qatar and was responsible for getting the aeromedical evacuation airlift for the wounded in Iraq, Afghanistan and Horn of Africa. While deployed, her sister and brother-in law, Joanne and Francis West, had custody of her children, then ages 4, 3 and 1. Upon her military retirement in 2012, Lt. Col. Lumpkin started her second career as a Junior Air Force Reserve Officer Training Corp (JROTC) Instructor at Washington Township High School in Sewell, NJ.

Lumpkin was nominated as the NFM Salute for May by her brother-in-law, Francis West.

"We are so proud of Beth Ann's service to our Country and her family," said West. "Her dream was to travel the world and she did, all while serving in the US Air Force. She is the mother of three great kids and involved in their activities as well as teaching ROTC. She has a strong bond with her sister, Joanne, and I am proud to be her brother-in-law."

NFM Salutes is an initiative in which one military member or veteran is chosen each month to be honored as the "Salute of the Month." Salutes will be chosen from nominations on the NFM Salute website, www.nfmsalute.com. The "Salute of the Month" will be featured on the website with a brief biography and information about his or her service, and NFM Lending will make a $2,500 donation to a military or Veteran non-profit in the Salute's name. Lumpkin chose Soldier's Wish to receive this month's donation.

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Selected NFM Salutes may choose from one of several non-profits that support active military members and veterans, including Platoon 22, AnySoldier, Soldier's Wish, and the Gary Sinise Foundation. NFM looks forward to the opportunity to continue to honor military and Veterans through the NFM Salute initiative.

For more information please contact:

NFM Lending

Toll Free: 1-888-233-0092

pr@nfmlending.com

www.nfmlending.com

Twitter: @nfm_lending

About NFM Lending

NFM Lending is a mortgage lending company currently licensed in 27 states in the U.S. The company was founded in Baltimore, Maryland in 1998. They attribute their success in the mortgage industry to their steadfast commitment to customers and the community. NFM Lending has firmly planted itself in the home loan marketplace as "America's Common Sense Residential Mortgage Lender."

SOURCE: NFM Lending
The idea of the Jewish mensch is so firmly ensconced in the collective media mind that, well, one might just assume.

But Harvey Chris Rosenberg, tearing through 1970s pre-hipster Brooklyn and suspected of involvement in more than 200 murders, was no mensch. What he was, all extremely touchy 5-foot-5 of him, far outpaced whatever his parents  straight-up working-class Jews who dutifully dragged their son to the Catskills every summer  might have planned for him. Starting with dealing weed in his Canarsie neighborhood in 1963 at age 13, and graduating quite nicely to stealing cars when he was 20, Rosenberg had a regular hard-on for crime.

They were such nice-looking men. But they were stone-cold killers. Maria Melendez

In 1970, New York City was about to be hit hard by drugs and drug-related crime. Rosenberg cut his teeth in a heavily Italian, mob-connected neighborhood, which eventually found him drawn into an orbit that had him arrested for dealing hashish, beating the rap, and getting caught up in a frenzy of felony that, at its most random, included trying to steal a snowplow. All out of a shop he had stolen enough scratch to open called, curiously enough, Car Phobia Repairs.

Falling in with Roy DeMeo, a made man in the Gambino crime family, Rosenberg sometimes rocked DeMeos last name to put some distance between him and his Hebraic background  he felt Jews in general to be weak, according to mob chronicler Jerry Capeci. Rosenberg started getting ideas, the most significant being the notion that hed eventually be extended an invitation to join the Italian mob on account of what was now a thriving car theft and drug-dealing business. That, and the fact that he and the notorious Gemini Twins hed brought in were breaking wild over Brooklyn, stealing everything that moved and selling everything that didnt.

Harveyrosenberg

Harvey Chris Rosenberg

Source: Public Domain

They were wild men, says retired New York undercover organized-crime cop Fred Santoro about Rosenbergs murderous crew, the nexus of DeMeos crime klatch. Invitations to the Gemini Lounge off of Flatbush Avenue often ended with towels draped around the soon-to-be-perforated heads of unsuspecting business partners right before they were chopped and dropped into waterways or car trunks.

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The fearless Rosenberg became a favorite of DeMeos, who was loathed by his higher-ups. Not for not being an earner, because Roy was that, but for his dabbling in porn  specifically, child porn  as a sideline. Despite this, young Rosenberg and the older DeMeo became fast friends. By way of dealing coke and quaaludes, alongside stealing cars, Rosenberg rocked the typical criminal spoils: nice pad, flash car and flashier clothes. And, of course, the less desirable risks: In the winter of 1974, Rosenberg opened his garage door and was shot three times  in the jaw, right arm and chest.

He lived, which led, immediately after he got out of the hospital, to the first of many murders. A murder noteworthy here because it involved the death of another Jewish gangster, Andrei Katz, the guy most widely assumed to have shot Rosenberg. But you need to understand something, Santoro says, these guys killed in the furtherance of their criminal enterprises. Meaning, they presumably didnt do it for fun, even though, as the numbers climbed, youd be hard-pressed to think they werent enjoying themselves just a little. Rosenberg developed a bit of a system, Santoro says, frequently opting to murder in his underwear so as not to stain the nice clothes he had grown fond of wearing.

But because all good things, or very, very bad ones, must end, in 1979, at age 29, Rosenberg was shot in the head and stabbed in the heart before being dismembered and trunked. By? DeMeo and his, or rather their, crew. A Colombian crime lord had threatened a gang war if Rosenberg, who had killed a coke connection, wasnt taken out. The cocaine killing had at first appeared to be a random murder, but the Colombians managed to trace it back to Rosenberg because he had dropped a name before the deal went down: Chris DeMeo.

In a final twist, a church now stands where the Gemini Lounge once was. They were such nice-looking men, says former NYPD officer Maria Melendez. But they were stone-cold killers.

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By Mark Lamport-Stokes (Reuters) - Four years after celebrating his first Kentucky Derby triumph, trainer Doug O'Neill is in prime position to toast another after his bay colt Nyquist was installed as the pre-race favorite for Saturday's 142nd edition. In 2012, Mario Gutierrez piloted the O'Neill-trained I'll Have Another to Derby glory and the same jockey will be back in the saddle on Saturday when the unbeaten Nyquist breaks from the 13th post in a 20-runner field at Churchill Downs. "It has allowed me to not be overwhelmed this time," O'Neill said about the benefit of previous success at Churchill Downs in Louisville. "We found out that time that we had success doing what we'd been doing all along. It worked. "So we're just doing that again - same patterns, same style. We just want to stay on course. That's what's going to work. We know that now." Nyquist, who has won seven times at four different tracks, was rated the 3-1 early favorite and his connections were delighted with his 13th gate draw after winning the Breeders' Cup Juvenile in October the last time he carried that number. "It's good, lucky 13," said Nyquist's owner, Canadian businessman J. Paul Reddam. "It's been our lucky number." Second choice in the first leg of U.S. thoroughbred racing's Triple Crown is Exaggerator, an 8-1 shot starting from the 11th post position, with Creator, Gun Runner and Mohaymen joint third picks at 10-1. CHANGED STRATEGY However, the strategy for Saturday's 1-1/4 mile race could change markedly after Danzing Candy, winner of the San Felipe at Santa Anita, was drawn in the 20th gate. Danzing Candy and Outwork, who will start from the 15th hole, were widely considered to be the likely pacesetters in Saturday's opening leg of the Triple Crown for three year olds, but they will now need to come from wide out to get the lead. O'Neill had initially been hoping that Nyquist would start outside Danzing Candy and Outwork so that jockey Gutierrez could closely monitor the early going, but he may now want Nyquist to set the pace. "I wouldn't mind that at all," said the 47-year-old O'Neill. "I think Nyquist has shown the versatility to win on the lead and from off the pace, so we've got options, I think." Second choice Exaggerator, coming off an impressive win over a sloppy track in last month's Santa Anita Derby, will have Kent Desormeaux on board and the colt's connections were on cloud nine. "You dream about this," said Matt Bryan, one of Exaggerator's owners. "It is a blessing. If you're in the horse business, this is where you want to be. "Just to be in the Derby is great, and then to have a horse that has a real chance to win, that is so special." Though conditions at Churchill Downs were wet and cold earlier this week, temperatures are forecast to be in the low 80s (28 Celsius) under sunny skies for the 142nd Derby. (Reporting by Mark Lamport-Stokes in Los Angeles; Editing by Larry Fine)
US President Barack Obama said a few words in Spanish as he welcomed guests to the White Houses Cinco de Mayo reception on Thursday, May 5. Obama promised to continue fighting for a fairer, smarter and more just immigration system after he leaves office in January 2017.

The guests chanted Four more years! as Obama walked into his final Cinco de Mayo reception, but the outgoing president jokingly said his wife Michelle would not allow another term in addition to constitutional constraints.

Mexican communities around the world celebrated the anniversary of the Battle of Puebla on May 5. Credit: YouTube/The White House
Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton has been steadfast in her support of the Affordable Care Act and has dismissed Sen. Bernie Sanderss call for a new national program that would guarantee all Americans health care.

However, Clinton is beginning to feel pressure on health care reform not only from Sanders, her long-shot rival for the nomination, but also from some Democratic lawmakers, rank and file Democrats and health care professionals who say she should be more open to changes to address major shortcomings in Obamacare.

Related: Get Ready for Huge Obamacare Premium Hikes in 2017

The latest Kaiser Health Tracking poll shows growing disapproval of the Affordable Care Act, with 49 percent of adults having an unfavorable view and only 38 percent showing support. The share of Democrats voicing unfavorable opinions increased by six percentage points over the past month.

This week more than 2,000 physicians announced their support for a single-payer national health care system similar to Sanders call for Medicare for all  one that is styled after government health insurance programs in Canada and Europe.

Those doctors complained in an editorial and paper published in the American Journal of Public Health about persistent shortcomings in the current health insurance system. The large group of physicians  many of them Sanders supporters -- warned about the risks of continuing with a system that will leave millions uninsured indefinitely while saddling more than 12 million insured Americans with rising premiums.

Related: More Bad News for the Remaining Obamacare Co-ops

The Washington Post, which first reported the editorial, said the idea grew out of discussions in late 2014 involving a smaller group of physicians assessing the impact of Obamacare. The doctors found the program sorely lacking due to the millions of Americans who were still uninsured.

Meanwhile, the Associated Press is reporting that more Democrats are having doubts about Obamacare, especially in the wake of disappointing enrollment figures and complaints about soaring premiums and out-of-pocket costs. Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash), one of the most liberal members of the House and a Sanders supporter, told the AP that the healthcare law was a good start "but it doesn't do all the things we need to have done.

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"I think frankly Bernie's campaign has stirred it up," he added.

Related: Administration Officials Knew Obamacare Co-ops Were Failing in 2012

The growing Democratic unease with Obamacare comes at a time when some major insurers are reassessing their commitment to the program or have begun to bail out. Nearly half of the roughly two-dozen non-profit Obamacare insurance co-ops have closed their doors in the past year.

UnitedHealth, the nations largest health insurance company, recently revealed that it will withdraw from Obamacare insurance exchanges in at least 26 of 34 states where it is currently operating. This week, Humana announced that it will no longer sell insurance on the exchanges in Alabama and Virginia beginning in 2017.

While the Obama administration insists that the federally subsidized health insurance program remains sound, some Democrats are concerned that a new round of premium increases for 2017 will be announced close to the November presidential and congressional election.

Growing Democratic disenchantment with President Obamas signature health care plan could pose some problems for Clinton, who has been one of the programs leading champions in the face of Republican calls for repealing and replacing it.

Clinton said she was open to changes and improvements in the law even before she formally announced for president last summer. However, she has been highly critical of Sanderss call for a multi-trillion-dollar national health care plan funded by major tax hikes. The more pragmatic Clinton has dismissed Sanders plan as wishful thinking and a threat to the existing health insurance.

Related: UnitedHealth Makes Good on Threat to Pull Out of Obamacare

I dont want to rip away the security that people finally have, she has said. There are plenty of things that could be done to strengthen Obamacare and expand coverage beyond the 90 percent of Americans who are currently insured, Clinton says. But attempting to reopen the health care debate and promote a whole new system of government-provided health insurance would provide GOP lawmakers with an opening to undermine the existing program, she argues.

I believe that she has been in this lane for as long as the Affordable Care Act has been there and continues to emphasize what needs to be done, with that same commitment to get everybody covered and getting costs under control, Judith M. Feder, a health care expert and professor with the Georgetown University Public Policy Institute, said in an interview on Friday. She has been on top of the need to strengthen the Affordable Care Act for some time.

Related: UnitedHealth CEO: Joining Obamacare Was a Bad Decision

Recently Clinton has begun to do more to highlight changes she would make in ACA coverage if she were elected president, in order to expand coverage, control costs of premiums and prescription drugs, and encourage states to experiment with government-sponsored alternatives to private health insurance, according to media reports.

In building on the ACA, her campaign states, Clinton will make premiums more affordable, reduce out-of-pocket expenses for consumers purchasing private insurance on the exchanges, and provide more in federal tax credits to lessen costs. She also would support new incentives to encourage all states to expand Medicaid coverage to low income families.

And she would fix the so-called family glitch so that families can obtain Obamacare coverage when their employers family premium is too expensive.

Top Reads from The Fiscal Times:
A federal law enforcement officer suspected in three separate Maryland shootings over the past two days is in police custody, PEOPLE confirms.



Police have not released the name of the name of the person arrested, but prior to the arrest, they identified Eulalio Tordil, 62, as a suspect. Two of the shootings occurred Friday and occurred Thursday; three people were killed and two were injured.



According to the "Wanted" poster sent by the Prince George's County Police, Tordil is currently an officer for the Federal Protective Service for Homeland Security. The poster states that he has previously threatened to commit suicide by cop.



 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.



On Friday, at about 11:30 a.m., three people were shot in the parking lot of the Westfield Montgomery Mall in Bethesda, Maryland, a Montgomery County Police spokeswoman confirms.



One male victim later died at the hospital, say police. Another man remains in critical condition. A female victim sustained non-life threatening injuries.



Twenty minutes later, police responded to a second shooting outside the Giant Food supermarket  about eight miles away from the mall in Silver Spring  which left one woman dead.



Tordil allegedly opened fire on school grounds at High Point High School in Beltsville, Maryland, Thursday evening, shooting and killing his estranged wife Gladys Tordil, 44, police confirmed to PEOPLE.



Students and staff at all Montgomery County schools were put on lockdown Friday as police searched for the suspect.
By Jessica Resnick-Ault

NEW YORK (Reuters) - For the past year and a half, a chart of the number of U.S. oil rigs in operation has resembled a death-defying ski slope - but soon it may be time to get back on the chair lift.

The U.S. rig count may finally be bottoming out as U.S. oil companies look for oil prices to rally just a bit more, a signal that the time has come to deploy more capital and get production moving again, analysts say.

The number of active oil rigs in the United States has fallen for seven consecutive weeks, as of data released Friday. Some believe the rig count will start to rise, as drillers plan to ramp up production if benchmark U.S. crude reaches the trigger level of $50 a barrel. U.S. crude prices hit a year-to-date high of $46.78 last week.

In the past two weeks, oil producers including Anadarko Petroleum Corp and Pioneer Natural Resources have cited an improving outlook for oil prices, executives said on calls discussing earnings. Dave Lesar, chief executive of oilfield services provider Halliburton Co, said he believes the rig count has hit a bottom and likely will rise this year.

The U.S. rig count generally reacts to prices with a three or four-month lag, so following the nadir for crude in February, it should bottom in the next month, Morgan Stanley's head of energy commodity research Adam Longson said in a report this week.

"The same analysis also suggests a notable increase in rig activity may be ahead  potentially reversing much of the decline over the past several months," he wrote.

Some companies are already resuming drilling on wells that had been put on hold, known as drilled-uncompleted projects, and planning to drill new wells.

"Our estimates are that at $45-$50 WTI some of the light tight oil goes into production," said Mark Routt, Chief economist in the Americas for KBC Advanced Technologies, referring to a technical name for the type of oil in shale formations. "When you have the front of the market lift, as it has done, it makes it that much easier to justify coming back on."

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U.S. crude prices, after hitting their year-to-date high on April 29, have gained support from output disruptions in Canada during the past week, indicating that the market is becoming more responsive to fundamental supply concerns that have often failed to elicit a price response during the rout.

Companies are expected to be cautious as they redeploy rigs, so the count will not rapidly accelerate and blunt the impact of the increase in crude prices.

The current count of 332 rigs is unlikely to surge back to the 668 seen a year ago, to say nothing of 2014's peak north of 1,600 rigs.

Exploration and production companies have planned for capital expenditures at about half of last-year's levels. If companies stay consistent with this guidance, the rig count should remain fairly flat, said Bob Brackett, a senior research analyst at Sanford Bernstein in New York.

Brackett cited an analysis of drilling data from Texas showing a six-month lag between the time when rigs are deployed and when the well pad hits peak production. So even as rig counts increase slightly, "we still see a six-month lag with supply response," Brackett said.

Companies also are likely to be highly selective in which rigs they deploy as they increase drilling operations, said Fadel Gheit, senior energy strategist at Oppenheimer & Co. Companies are likely to only drill top wells as they will be wary that prices could decline again, he said.

"It's easier to cut than to redeploy," said Gheit. "The companies have very little wiggle room, there is no room for error. You miss you're dead."

(Reporting By Jessica Resnick-Ault; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and David Gregorio)
Understanding the Silver Linings in Emerson's 2Q16 Earnings

(Continued from Prior Part)

Emerson revenues slide on weak industry fundamentals

Emersons (EMR) consolidated revenues fell 8.7% year-over-year to $4.9 billion in 2Q16. This decline was driven by an organic decline of 5% and a 4% combined impact of divestitures and currency translations.

The companys revenue declines were led by the Process Management and Industrial Automation units, which lean heavily on the fortunes of the US and Canadian oil and gas industries (XOP).

Process Management revenues fell by 11% to $1.8 billion as oil and gas (VDE) headwinds offset growth in the power and chemical end markets, resulting in an organic decline of 9%.

In the Industrial Automation business, overall revenues fell by 10% year-over-year to $870 million. These results were dented by a soft industrial environment as many manufacturers continue to cut spending year-over-year.

Emerson sales performance in the US

Among Emersons regional markets, organic declines were seen in every market except Europe, where sales were flat year-over-year. Organic declines in the US were held at 3% as a slump in sales from oil and gas customers were partially offset by favorable conditions in the construction and air conditioning businesses. This led to an organic sales growth of 2% in both the Climate Technologies and Residential and Commercial Solutions units.

Sales performance in other regional markets

In China, sales were down by 12% organically as Emersons core customers in the region continue to grapple with excess inventory. David Farr, the CEO of Emerson, maintained his mid-single-digit decline outlook for the region while calling a downturn there a sucker for the business. Among the oil and gas markets, Canada was down by 18%, and the Middle-East and Africa region posted a year-over-year organic decline of 12%.

In terms of percentage holdings, the PowerShares WilderHill Progressive Energy Portfolio ETF (PUW) had the highest holding for Emerson Electric (EMR) at ~2.4% compared to other ETFs.

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The ProShares S&P 500 Dividend Aristocrats ETF (NOBL) had the second-highest Emerson holding at ~2.3%. Other major holdings in NOBL are Nucor (NUE) at 2.5%, Dover (DOV) at ~2.2%, and Illinois Tool Works (ITW) at ~2.3%.

Continue to Next Part

Browse this series on Market Realist:
Lagos (AFP) - Militants have blown an offshore oil facility operated by US oil group Chevron in southern Nigeria, the navy said on Friday, in renewed violence that could hit exports in Africa's largest oil producer.

"There was an attack on a Chevron facility near Escravos on Wednesday night. The incident happened about four nautical miles from Escravos, near Warri, in Delta state," spokesman Chris Ezekobe told AFP.

Ezekobe said "militants using explosives blew up the Okan platform, a collection facility for offshore oil and gas that feeds the Escravos terminal".

The navy was working with other security agents to track down the culprits, he added.

"A previously unknown group called the Niger Delta Avengers has claimed responsibility for the incident," the spokesman said, confirming a statement on the group's website.

"But we are not ruling out the involvement of former Niger delta militant leaders, particularly Tompolo, who is wanted on fraud charges."

A Chevron official, who asked not to be identified, confirmed the attack and said the facility had been shut down to contain spills.

There was no immediate indication of the volume of crude affected but the official said the attack would affect gas supply to power plants already hit with almost daily outages.

Attacks on oil and gas facilities have increased since January when Tompolo -- whose real name is Government Ekpemupolo -- was declared wanted on multi-million-dollar corruption charges.

The former leader of militants who wreaked havoc in the creeks and rivers of the delta in the 2000s is accused of defrauding the government of more than $175 million (161 million euros).

The offences linked to government maritime security contracts are alleged to have taken place between 2012 and last year, a court in Lagos has been told.

The upsurge in attacks is another security headache for President Muhammadu Buhari, who is battling Boko Haram Islamists in the northeast and an increase in violence between nomadic herdsman and farmers in central and southeast Nigeria.

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Tompolo, an ally of former president Goodluck Jonathan, was a prominent leader of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), which demanded a fairer share of oil revenue for local people, most of whom still live in poverty.

The Niger Delta Avengers group is thought to involve Tompolo's supporters unhappy about the charges against him and the winding down of a government amnesty programme that ended the unrest in 2009.

But Tompolo has previously said he is not part of the group.
By Barani Krishnan

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Oil prices edged up on Friday, supported by an early dip in the dollar and a wildfire that has shrunk Canadian oil sands crude output by a third, but Brent still ended with its sharpest weekly drop in four months as investors cashed out of April's big rally.

Reports of a militant attack on a Chevron platform in Nigeria's oil-rich Niger Delta region and a drop in the number of U.S. oil drilling rigs also helped lift prices on the day.

The dollar, which has a huge impact on greenback-denominated commodities such as oil, was down most of the day before recovering in late trade. The dollar dipped after the U.S. government reported that the economy added the fewest number of jobs in seven months in April, raising doubts about whether the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates before the end of the year.

Brent crude futures settled up 36 cents, or 0.8 percent, at $45.37 a barrel.

West Texas Intermediate (WTI) futures finished up 53 cents, or about 0.8 percent too, at $44.66.

For the week, Brent slid 6 percent for its biggest weekly decline since January. WTI fell 3 percent. The drops came after profit-taking by investors early in the week on April's gain of 20 percent or more in the two crude benchmarks.

"The global surplus still exists and there is still a possibility that oil prices could retrace further," said Dominick Chirichella, senior partner at the Energy Management Institute.

"However, the market is trading more and more in sync with the forward-looking or perception view, with the current bearish fundamentals mostly priced into the market."

At least 720,000 barrels per day (bpd) of Canada's crude production capacity remained offline as the wildfires ravaged the oil town of Fort McMurray in Alberta and forced evacuation of workers and precautionary production cuts or shutdowns at about a dozen major facilities.

While most of the oil sands are to the north of the city, CNOOC Nexen's Long Lake facility and Athabasca Oil's Hangingstone project are south of Fort McMurray and were in danger, according to emergency officials. Both facilities have been evacuated.

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The U.S. oil rig count, compiled by oilfield services provider Baker Hughes fell by four this week, extending a decline to a seventh week and the lowest level since October 2009.

Some analysts said oil output in the Americas is declining so fast that it looks like the region alone could resolve the global oversupply.

"Unplanned oil supply disruptions have been a key element so far this year that have contributed to a tighter oil market than was otherwise expected," said analyst Guy Baber of Simmons & Co.

(Additional reporting by Karolin Schaps in London; Editing by Marguerita Choy and Steve Orlofsky)
By Heide Brandes OKLAHOMA CITY (Reuters) - Oklahoma's legislature has passed a bill aimed at reducing the state's bulging population of feral hogs, blamed for spreading disease and wiping out crops, that would let people kill them without a hunting license. A study by an agricultural research organization found that the animals are running wild in all of Oklahoma's 77 counties and could number as high as 1.6 million, which would be one of the highest feral hog populations of any state. The measure, passed on Thursday by the Republican-led legislature, would permit hunters to kill hogs without a hunting permit on their property or on someone else's property with the landowner's permission. It also would allow use of night-vision equipment to hunt them. Republican Governor Mary Fallin's office has not said whether she will sign it into law. "This legislation gives Oklahomans more options to combat the rapidly growing feral hog population," said Republican state Representative Sean Robert, a bill co-sponsor. The most effective method of eradicating the wild hogs currently is aerial shooting from helicopters, state officials said. "Feral hogs wreak havoc on Oklahoma's farms, ranches and ecosystems, and cost farmers, ranchers and landowners," said Tom Buchanan, president of the Oklahoma Farm Bureau, an agricultural industry group that supports the legislation. Bill opponents said it could prompt some people to bring even more feral hogs into Oklahoma to be shot by hunters. The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service said damage caused by feral swine across the United States could top $2 billion. "If you are a farmer, they can clean out your crops overnight," Dale Nolte, the inspection service's program manager, said in an interview. "We have farmers tell us they have given up on planting high-dollar crops because of the feral hog problem." Texas, Oklahoma and California have the highest numbers of feral swine in the country, Nolte said. The inspection service has operations to remove them in 38 states, Nolte added. "The problem is that feral hogs are so prolific that we have to trap 70 percent of the pig population every year just to maintain the population level we have right now," said Kevin Grant, Oklahoma Wildlife Services state director for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. "Out in the wild, feral hogs are an ecological nightmare. There is very little that is beneficial to native wildlife that come from feral swine," Grant said. (Reporting by Heide Brandes; Writing by Jon Herskovitz and Will Dunham)
By Larry Fine NEW YORK, May 6 (Reuters) - Swimmer Dana Vollmer has beaten the odds before and the American is displaying her inspiring heart again in a comeback quest for more Olympics hardware at this year's Rio Summer Games. Vollmer, who overcame heart surgery as a teenager to win gold at the 2004 Olympics, and set a world record on the way to winning the 100m butterfly at the 2012 Games, aims to show she still has what it takes after giving birth last year. "It's been a whirlwind, it's been crazy and it's also been the most rewarding time of my life and I wouldn't have it any other way," Vollmer told Reuters after launching a commercial for sponsor Procter & Gamble's "Thank You, Mom" campaign. "It is challenging to decide to want to come back and to try and make an Olympics and be a new mom." Her first child, son Arlen, was born in March 2015 and the tall, lanky Vollmer said she is coping well with help from husband and ex-Stanford swimmer Andy Grant. Vollmer, with a vital assist from her mother, answered a massive challenge after she was diagnosed with a heart condition at age 14. "Any injury is scary," the 28-year-old Vollmer said. "A heart illness especially. "I had an extra electrical pathway in my heart that made my heart rate skyrocket randomly when I was training. And so they went in through my femoral artery and cauterized it and I actually competed in nationals a week later. "My mom's been there through all of it. She's been my biggest supporter." Vollmer said there were concerns along the way. "We did have a scare. They saw patterns of Long QT syndrome, which is the resting interval that the heartbeat takes and it can take too long and the fear is that your heart stops. "So my mom carried a defibrilator unit to every workout, every practice with the fear that my heart might stop," she said. "She sat there with her defibrilating unit from when I was first diagnosed at 14 until I left for college." BABY STEPS Vollmer, who at age 12 was the youngest swimmer at the U.S. Olympic trials in 2000, made the Olympic team four years later and in Athens was a member of the gold medal winning, world record-setting U.S. 4x200m freestyle relay team. In 2012, Vollmer also claimed golds in the 4x100m medley and the 4x200m freestyle relay. After a couple months of bed rest with her newborn son. Vollmer was too antsy to lay around and decided she wanted to focus on getting back in the pool. "I listened to my doctors and waited until six weeks after the birth. It was very small, just working on my exhales and pulling my stomach in." Vollmer then progressed to working in the pool. "I was just very gentle with myself in my comeback and took it really slow ... we just took it day by day and looked at health and getting myself stronger and more fit while also trying to be the best mom that I could be," she said. The former University of California swimmer said she vowed never to put swimming above time with her son. "When I get up and leave at 4:30 in the morning for my swim workouts, (my husband's) there with Arlen and gets his Dad time with breakfast and getting him ready for the day. Then I'm home and get the rest of the day with him. "I'm happier in my personal life than I think I've ever been. We worked really hard to be as efficient as we can and to really maximize the workouts that I have." Vollmer is aiming to qualify for both the butterfly and freestyle at the U.S. Olympic trials in Nebraska in early July. "Hopefully when I get to Rio, it's a good fight for a medal." (Editing by Frank Pingue)
Speculation has been rife with EastEnders fans since it was revealed that Kat Moon (nee Slater) actually gave birth to TWINS when she had baby Zoe way back in the 1980s.

Fame/Flynet

It was revealed that Kat, who fell pregnant at 13 after being abused by her uncle, had a son she didnt know about, as well as daughter Zoe. She was told the news by Sister Ruth, a nun played by June Whitfield, who helped her give birth to Zoe.

Since then fans have held onto the theory that Kats secret son is actually Sean Slater. Sean (played by Rob Kazinsky) is Staceys brother. Or is he? This is Walford were talking about. Anything could happen.

Geoff Moore/Rex/Shutterstock

Their hopes appeared to be dashed however when Sister Ruth made an appearance in the Square and told Kat that her son was living in Ireland.

Kat, Alfie and their three children quit the Square for Redwater in Ireland, in the hope of finding her long lost boy. Their adventures are being filmed as part of a spin-off show called, yep, Redwater.

And if these scenes from Redwaters filming are anything to go by, fans will have to let the Sean Slater theory go once and for all.

Fame/Flynet

New pictures show an emotional-looking Kat (Jessie Wallace) deep in conversation with a mystery male character, who looks about the right age to play her secret son.



Shes also spotted on a boat with the mystery man. What DOES IT ALL MEAN??

Fame/Flynet

The actor is Oisin Stack, and he plays a character called Dermot. We know that Kats son was named Luke at birth, but obviously this means nothing.

So could this mystery man be Luke? Or is it another red herring being thrown to us by producers? Only time will tell.

Redwater is scheduled to air in 2017.
Plus-size model Iskra Lawrence posted an Instagram photo with two different poses to show what it really takes to achieve the coveted thigh gap: good lighting and the right angles.

A photo posted by iskra (@iamiskra) on Apr 29, 2016 at 9:44am PDT

In the image on the left, Lawrence is seen standing tall with her thighs pressed together. On the right, she foils the illusion of the gap by leaning forward and standing with her legs slightly apart.

"No thigh gap or thigh gap who cares," she captioned the photo. "There's no wrong way just be the healthiest & happiest for you..."

I'll be the first one to tell you pics are all about good and angles. Always remember social medias not real life never let anyone else's pics make you feel insecure about yourself. If you don't look like her and she doesn't look like you that's how it's meant to be.



You are meant to be YOU no one else, your body is your home so love and respect it. When you look after it beautiful things happens."

This isn't the first time Lawrence has spoken out.

From her #AerieReal campaigns to managing the curvy women website Runway Riot, Lawrence is known for issuing body positive messages. Just last month, the British model clapped back at a commenter who called her a fat cow by taking a photo in her bra and panties surrounded by bags of chips.

In 2015, she helped create the National Eating Disorders Association's "NEDA Inspires Seal of Approval" to honor companies that were featuring models sans retouching.

And she's not the only one doing so.

In Feb. 2016, Instagram user @plankingforpizza showed a "before and after" photo that was taken in 30 seconds to show how fake transformation photos on the social platform can be. And who can forget Essena O'Neill, the Australian lifestyle blogger who went viral in November 2015 for deleting a large portion of her Instagram photos and re-captioning some to prove that "nothing you see is real."

Although Instagram is filled with more-than-likely altered bikini selfies, at least there are influencers like Lawrence speaking out about the reality of the perfect snap, reminding us of the importance of loving your body  without or without a thigh gap.
A Pakistani sweetshop owner has confessed to fatally poisoning at least 30 people by lacing his goods with pesticide in an attempt to take revenge on his older brother, police told AFP Friday.

Khalid Mehmood confessed in a court in central Punjab province that he had poisoned the sweets after his elder brother Tariq, who owned the sweetshop with him, "insulted and abused" him in a business dispute.

"I wanted to teach him a lesson," police investigator Mohammad Afzal quoted him as saying, with the statement confirmed by another senior police official.

"I was so angry that I mixed the pesticides bottle in the sweets being baked at that time."

The poisoned batch of sweets were bought by a local man who gave them to family and friends celebrating the birth of his grandson.

The baby's father, six of his uncles and one aunt were among the 30 killed. The dead also included five children. Four victims are still in hospital.

Officials had earlier put the toll at 33, but police confirmed Friday it stood at 30.

Police have told local reporters that 52 people consumed the sweets in total.

Both the Mehmood brothers were arrested along with one of their employees.

Investigators initially suspected the poisoning was an accident as a pesticide shop nearby was being renovated and the owner had left his products at the bakery for safe-keeping.

Pakistan has poor food safety standards and hygiene laws are rarely implemented.

The brothers are due to appear in court again on Saturday, Afzal said.
BERLIN (Reuters) - Sueddeutsche Zeitung said on Friday that the source of millions of documents leaked to the German newspaper from Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca had sent them a manifesto, saying his motivation was the "scale of injustices" the papers revealed. The source had never before publicly stated why he leaked the documents, now known as the Panama Papers, said Sueddeutsche Zeitung (SZ), one of Germany's most reputable newspapers. In an 1,800 word manifesto published on the SZ website on Friday, the source, calling himself "John Doe", praised others who have leaked secret and sensitive documents, such as Edward Snowden, who revealed details of the U.S. government's mass surveillance programme. "For his revelations about the National Security Agency (NSA), he deserves a hero's welcome and a substantial prize, not banishment," the source wrote. He also said he would be willing to co-operate with law enforcement agencies. He called on the European Commission, Britain, the United States and other nations to take steps to protect people who reveal private information about such sensitive issues rather than punishing them. "Legitimate whistleblowers who expose unquestionable wrongdoing, whether insiders or outsiders, deserve immunity from government retribution, full stop," he said. The source, who contacted the paper a year ago with an offer of encrypted internal documents from Mossack Fonseca, denied being a spy but said he had recognised the "scale of injustices" described in their contents. The documents cover a period over almost 40 years, from 1977 until last December, and purport to show that some companies domiciled in tax havens were being used for suspected money laundering, arms and drug deals and tax evasion. Reuters could not independently verify whether the source was the same person who leaked the original documents. The source's identity and gender is not known. Sueddeutsche Zeitung spent more than a year, along with other media outlets and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, analysing the huge cache of documents. On Friday, Sueddeutsche Zeitung introduced the manifesto by saying: "Now 'John Doe', the anonymous source, has sent the SZ a manifesto, which can be read as an explanation of his actions  and as a call to action." The source welcomed the fact that the leak had triggered a debate on "wrongdoing by the elite" but said not enough action had been taken. "For the record, I do not work for any government or intelligence agency, directly or as a contractor, and I never have," he said. The source was critical of banks, financial regulators, tax authorities, the courts, and the legal profession, as well as the media, saying he had offered the documents to several major media outlets that had chosen not to cover them. "The collective impact of these failures has been a complete erosion of ethical standards, ultimately leading to a novel system we still call Capitalism, but which is tantamount to economic slavery." The source ended the manifesto by saying "inexpensive, limitless digital storage and fast internet connections" should help digitise the revolution against income inequality. (Writing by Caroline Copley; Editing by Louise Ireland)
A doesn't care if you're out having a good time with your friends, or whether it's a really inconvenient time to start hyperventilating. A is , and can creep up out of nowhere. Before you know it, you're in the midst of a debilitating and terrifying hysteria.

A panic attack is far different from the general stress you might feel about work or school, and distinguishes itself from the general existential dread most of us feel when, say, waking up on a Monday morning facing a week of work.

Instead, panic attacks include overwhelming feelings of that can't necessarily be traced to any one trigger, according to the Anxiety and Depression Association of America.

Read more: How to Deal With Anxiety in the Words of People Who Have Battled and Studied It for Years

What does a panic attack feel like?

Though she wasn't referring to a panic attack, author Jenny Offill might have best described the single thought that often plays on repeat when experiencing one in this section of her book D

Source: Marie Solis/Mic

But it's not all in your head  attacks can also come with a medley of super fun physical symptoms like a

Bottom line: It feels like

Photographer Katie Joy Crawford shot a series of self-portraits transforming her experience with anxiety into into a body of artwork. The series, called My Anxious Heart, explores the different symptoms of anxiety, showing Crawford submerged in a bathtub, trapped in an hourglass and lying next to a looming, amorphous figure.

In her blog, Crawford described her body going into "fight or flight mode" and her mind sending her the message, "GET OUT NOW." In another post Crawford talked about how anxiety can sneak up on you at unexpected moments. "It finds you when you're in the midst of joy, or alone in your own mind," she wrote. "It is quiet and steady, reminding you of your past failures, and fabricating your future outcomes."

Story continues

What causes a panic attack?

According to Medical Daily, panic

Paul Li  a cognitive science lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley  explained in Sthat the sympathetic nervous system "revs up" during panic attacks, as it's meant to in situations that demand a fight-or-flight response. But when the parasympathetic nervous system intervenes to calm you down, if it's "somehow unable to do its job," Li wrote, "a person will remain fired up and may experience the heightened arousal characteristic of a panic attack."

Reassuring, we know.

Anxiety attacks can be a one-time-only thing, but if they happen recurrently or are accompanied by persistent feelings of anxiety that take a toll on everyday life, attacks could be a signal of an anxiety disorder.

The good news is if you experience either, you're not alone. The National Institute of Mental Health reported 18.1% of the U.S. population has an anxiety disorder, making it one of the most pervasive mental illnesses in the country. The ADAA reported General Anxiety Disorder affects 3.1% of the population.

How do you treat an anxiety attack?

There are a number of ways to manage ongoing anxiety. Experts recommend limiting alcohol and caffeine, trying downward dog or even just hugging a dog (even though the dog may hate it). But in the throes of a full-blown panic attack, you may want to say "fuck you" to even the cutest of puppies.

While it may be instinctive to immediately try to talk yourself down from a panic attack, Everyday Health emphasized the first step is actually recognizing your symptoms and accepting the attack. Even if, at first, it feels like this:

And, in the name of validating your feelings of impending doom, writing down the thoughts and sensations you're experiencing can help them feel less catastrophic, according to Everyday Health.

"Grounding" strategies can also be key in coping with a panic attack, and go hand-in-hand with paying attention to your body's sensations. "Feeling your feet on the ground, or your hands on the steering wheel, or bracing yourself against a wall" can keep you present since panic attacks are responses to "a past action or to a future event," Linda Esposito, a psychotherapist, wrote for

It can also help just to get moving. Panic attacks can feel like having uncontainable energy, so doing some jumping jacks or taking a walk can help rid yourself of it, according to the Psychology Today column.

No matter what methods you choose, breathing is crucial. Take slow, deep breaths while relaxing your muscles. While you do, the Psychology Today column has some real talk to keep in mind. "As scary as panic attacks are," Esposito wrote, "your track record for overcoming panic is 100%. There's always an end in sight, and you will reach the calm side eventually."
So, two days after Donald Trump effectively secured the Republican presidential nomination, how's he doing rallying party leaders behind his candidacy? In short, not good.

House Speaker Paul Ryan dropped a bombshell Thursday afternoon by announcing he is not yet willing to support Trump. "I am not there right now," Ryan told CNN's Jake Tapper, adding that the presumptive nominee still needs to prove his conservative bona fides and work to bring the party's disparate wings aboard. "Conservatives want to know, does he share our values and our principles on limited government, the proper role of the executive, adherence to the Constitution? There are lots of questions that conservatives, I think, are going to want answers to, myself included."

That after 10 months, and no shortage of interviews and widely covered appearances, Trump hasn't satisfied his party's highest-ranking elected officer on such basic points speaks volumes about the crisis of leadership facing the GOP right now. And Ryan isn't alone. The last two Republican presidents -- George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush -- as well as the last two Republican presidential nominees -- Arizona Sen. John McCain and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney -- all plan to skip the GOP's national convention in July, rather than turn up to lend Trump an image of the party uniting around him.

Romney, the 2012 nominee, has been particularly sharp in his public critique of the presumptive Republican standard-bearer, calling him "a phony, a fraud" who has "neither the temperament nor the judgment to be president" in a March speech. And while McCain, the 2008 nominee, has said he'll support his party's candidate, he told donors at a fundraiser last month that the antagonism Trump is stirring among Hispanics in his home state is imperiling his own reelection bid there.

Trump hasn't come up empty with the entirety of the GOP brass: Ryan's partner across the Capitol, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, on Wednesday offered a decidedly unenthusiastic statement of support. "I have committed to supporting the nominee chosen by Republican voters, and Donald Trump, the presumptive nominee, is now on the verge of clinching the nomination," the Kentucky Republican said in a statement, adding Trump now has "the opportunity and the obligation to unite our party around our goals."

Story continues

But Ryan's jaw-dropping rebuke carries immediate consequences for Trump's campaign. It potentially freezes two key camps that the gatecrashing nominee needs to recruit to his cause: down-ballot Republicans and the donor class. In his CNN interview, Ryan explicitly pointed to the imperative of preserving the House Republican majority, the party's biggest in that chamber since 1928. Some political handicappers believe Trump's candidacy could prove toxic enough to put that control at risk, and House Republicans facing competitive races have been slow to endorse him. Ryan's move offers cover to those in his ranks anxious for more time before announcing themselves.

Perhaps of more immediate concern to Trump, the stiff-arm from Ryan signals to deep-pocketed conservative moneymen that they can continue hugging the sidelines. It's not yet clear how Trump plans to finance his general election bid -- and what role he intends to carve out, if any, for donors who can cut massive checks, say, to a super PAC supporting his run. But as long as Republican leaders remain in such open disarray, it could prove difficult for Trump to forge inroads with traditional GOP funders.

See original article on Fortune.com

More from Fortune.com
So, you think you can "adult."

As 20-somethings tackle what for some may be the unfamiliar terrain of a 9-to-5 job, paying bills (including tens of thousands of dollars in student debt) and struggling to have a social life in the midst of it all, it's inevitable that something will fall through the cracks. And, more often than not, the first thing millennials will neglect is their physical and mental health.

Here are a few of our most egregious offenses:

Skipping regular check-ups

As children, it was standard procedure to get an annual physical at the doctor's. If you dragged your feet all the way to the office as a kid, it's likely you're not going at all as an adult. According to a survey conducted by Zocdoc, 93% of millennials don't schedule doctor visits, with 43% of respondents of all ages saying they instead opt to self diagnose using the internet.

A number of factors can affect these findings, including the increase in work hours for the millennial generation making it difficult to find time for a doctor's appointment and the sheer price alone of health care.

Not getting enough sleep

As a society, we're getting less sleep now than ever, with an average sleep time of just 6.1 hours. Millennials suffer the worst of this pattern, with only 29% of the demographic reporting that they get adequate rest on a daily basis, according to Newsweek.

A 2010 Pew study suggested one possible cause for the discrepancy: Over 80% of millennials sleep beside their phones, which can glow and vibrate to life at all hours of the night, which can disturb sleep cycles.

Ignoring mental health issues

I And psychologists say most mental health conditions typically arise between the ages of 18 and 25, with disorders like depression, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia cropping up in young people ages 18 to 20.

Story continues

While mental health issues are getting more attention than ever with celebrities speaking out about their own experiences and an entire month dedicate to increasing awareness, there are still some pervasive stigmas that prevent people from reaching out for help.

New York City designer Jessica Walsh combats these stigmas on her Instagram account Let's Talk Mental Health, where she and co-designer Timothy Goodman post illustrations tackling stereotypes surrounding mental illness.

On her website, Walsh writes, "I hope in our generation we can move towards ending the stigma and shame around mental health issues, and I hope to contribute to this movement even if it's in a small way."
PerkinElmer Inc PKI reported first-quarter 2016 earnings of 56 cents per share, which beat the Zacks Consensus Estimate by a nickel. Earnings also increased 12% year over year driven by modest top-line growth and margin expansion.



Perkinelmer Inc. - Earnings Surprise | FindTheBest

Revenues increased 3.4% on a year-over-year basis to $538.9 million, surpassing the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $533 million. The year-over-year upside was primarily attributed to growth across both the segments. Organically, revenues grew 4% in the quarter.



In terms of end-market, revenues from industrial markets declined low single digits due to tough year-ago comparisons and weak customer demand. This was fully offset by better-than-expected performance in the food market, particularly in China and a number of emerging markets.



However, Brazil, Japan and Russia remained challenging markets, although they represented less than 5% of the companys total revenues. In the BRIC economies, organic revenues increased high single digits driven by the strong China results (up double-digits).



Nevertheless, PerkinElmer witnessed healthy demand from pharma and biotech, stable academic and government spending, as well as strong demand for food and environmental applications during the quarter.



Region-wise, PerkinElmer achieved high single-digit organic revenue growth in Asia, mid-single digit growth in Europe, and low-single digit growth in the Americas.



Segment Details



Human Health (61.7% of total revenues) segment revenues increased 1.9% year over year to $332.6 million, while Environmental health (38.3% of total revenues) revenues increased 2.7% year over year to $206.2 million in the quarter. Environmental Health organic revenues advanced 5% in the quarter, while Human health increased 3%.



On an organic basis, diagnostics business (29% of Human Health revenues) increased mid-single digits, partially offset by mid-single digit decline in medical imaging.



Life Science Solutions (33% of Human Health revenues) organic revenues increased in low single-digits, while core research grew mid single digits. Pharma and biotech continue to be key contributors, both growing high single digits.



Product/Clinical/Partnership Updates



During the first quarter, PerkinElmer launched Operetta CLS cell imaging system. The company announced that its cell imaging systems have been recently selected by the University College of London, Cambridge University, and Oxford University in connection with a collaborative study to better understand the molecular and genetic mechanisms of dementia.



PerkinElmer also recently introduced the Phenoptics quantitative pathology system which allows quantitative and spatial imaging analysis.



The company opened a new laboratory in Chennai, India, which broadened its offerings to meet the countrys growing demand for diagnosing prenatal and neonatal conditions.



Acquisitions/Divestitures



Most recently, PerkinElmer divested its U.S. prenatal laboratory screening service business  NTD  to European Scientific. This will help the company focus on its diagnostic efforts to develop innovative maternal fetal health technologies and solutions for the U.S.



During the quarter, the company acquired Netherlands-based Delta Instruments, a manufacturer of infrared analyzers and flow cytometers for dairy products.



Guidance



Management at PerkinElmer expects challenging global economic conditions to persist, with no immediate relief at sight. However, the company is well poised to continue investments in growth areas like pharma and biotech services and solutions, reproductive health, emerging market diagnostics, food quality and safety, and laboratory services throughout 2016.



For the second quarter of 2016, revenues are forecasted to grow organically by almost 4%. The current revenue guidance is pegged at the range of $570 million to $575 million. Adjusted earnings are expected in the range of 65 cents to 66 cents per share.



For full-year 2016, PerkinElmer expects organic revenue growth of 4% to $2.32 billion.

Adjusted gross margin is expected to expand 70--80 basis points (bps) in full-year 2016. Research & Development expenses are forecasted to increase 40 bps owing to continuing investments. As a result, operating margin is likely to increase in the range of 60-80 bps in full-year 2016.



Adjusted earnings are now projected in the band of $2.75 to $2.85, up from the earlier guided range of $2.65 to $2.75 per share.



Zacks Rank & Other Stocks to Consider



Currently, PerkinElmer has a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy).



Other stocks in the broader medical sector carrying the same rank are Bruker Corp BRKR, Waters Corp WAT and Mettler-Toledo MTD.

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By Karen Lema MANILA (Reuters) - A court in the Philippines on Friday ordered a major television network to stop airing an attack advertisement that featured small children questioning the morals of presidential frontrunner Rodrigo Duterte, three days before an election. Though negative political advertisements are common in many countries, they are a rare in the Philippines and unseen in a presidential election. The 30-second clip on top broadcaster ABS-CBN showed children questioning Duterte's suitability as a president, spliced with video clips of him cursing the Pope, vowing to kill people and joking about rape. "These advertisements do manifestly oppose a candidate and thus the court cannot allow minor children to be used in such black propaganda," said the ruling by the court in Taguig, southeast of Manila. It was aired just as the final major opinion poll ahead of Monday's vote was published and showed Duterte, a maverick southern mayor, widening his lead, with 33 percent of respondents in the Social Weather Station survey backing him. Grace Poe was second with 22 percent. "On the presidential level this is unprecedented," Bong Osorio an academic and public relations expert, said of the commercial. "More than desperation, this speaks of a very close contest." "There are still undecided, so there are still people who can be swayed," Osorio said. ABS-CBN, the country's biggest broadcaster, said the advertisement was "legitimate". The network has links to President Benigno Aquino, who is backing the candidacy of his interior minister, Manuel Roxas. Aquino's sister until March had a regular show on the network, while Roxas's wife has a weekly program. Two rival networks issued statements saying they declined to show the commercial because it did not meet their requirements. It was paid for by Senator Antonio Trillanes, a candidate for the vice presidency. Vice presidents are elected separately from presidents. He started attacking Duterte a week ago, calling near-daily news conferences alleging he had hid 211 million pesos ($4.47 million) in assets, created fictitious jobs and has ties with Marxist radicals, all of which Duterte denies. Trillanes says it is his mission to stop him. Ramon Casiple, head of the Institute for Political and Electoral Reforms, said it was unlikely the advertisement would have an impact on the vote. "It will not affect his campaign. Too late," he said. Peter Lavina, a spokesman for Duterte, said vicious attacks were expected, but added "the use of children was foul". (Reporting by Karen Lema; Editing by Martin Petty, Robert Birsel)
By Roli Ng and Manuel Mogato MASINLOC/MANILA, Philippines (Reuters) - A 30-foot trawler named "Marvin" lies beached on a grass bank overlooking the South China Sea, idle since China's coastguard began driving away Philippine fishermen after a fierce standoff four years ago. Its 10-man crew once made their living off the abundant fish stocks of the disputed Scarborough Shoal some 124 nautical miles away. But since Beijing's patrol boats moved in, the fishermen of the west coast town of Masinloc said they had been forced to do odd jobs ashore, or become motorcycle taxi drivers. The crews yearn to get back into their boats and hope that the Philippine election on May 9 will bring a new president bold enough to stand up to China's assertiveness in the disputed waters of the South China Sea. It is something they say incumbent Benigno Aquino was hesitant to do, while the frontrunner to succeed him, the hard-talking mayor of Davao city, Rodrigo Duterte, has indicated he may take a tougher line with Beijing. "We want a tougher president who would make China leave the Philippine Sea," said the Marvin's shirtless captain, Biany Mula, referring to the waters by their Philippine name. "That area is not their property." The sentiment is shared by fishermen from Vietnam and Malaysia, as China's fishing fleet and accompanying coastguard armada have expanded within a nine-dash line that denotes Beijing's claims to nine-tenths of the world's most contested waterway. With a relatively small and under-equipped military, the Philippines wants no confrontation with China, but it has been vocal in asserting its claims to the Spratly islands and its rights to exploit its coastal waters. It has also angered China by indirectly challenging its claims at the Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Hague. China has refused to recognise the court's authority or abide by the ruling, which is expected soon. Some Filipino fishermen are optimistic a new leader can find a solution. "I'll vote because somebody will resolve the issue in the Scarborough Shoal," said Alexander Manzano, fixing a boat moored on a makeshift dock. "I believe someone will be able to do it. That's why I'll vote." TOUGH TALK, MIXED MESSAGES That someone could be Duterte, who is roaring ahead in opinion polls with talk of employing deadly methods to eradicate crime and corruption. His position on the South China Sea is vague, however, in what has largely been a single-issue campaign. When the topic came up in debates, Duterte promised not to put the Philippine navy in harm's way, but said he would personally challenge China by riding a jet-ski to the Spratlys to plant a Philippine flag. For key ally the United States, a Duterte presidency brings much uncertainty. A Washington-based official closely following the election said Duterte's stance on the South China Sea appeared "contradictory", mixing both bellicose and conciliatory messages about dealing with Beijing. Murray Hiebert, a Southeast Asia specialist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said Duterte's comments did not seem well thought out, including pledging to negotiate with China but only after it agrees the Spratlys belong to the Philippines. "That's not an opening position that will entice China to the negotiating table," Hiebert said. Like Washington, Beijing has given no indication who it would prefer as Philippine president. Its foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei said ties between the two countries were "extremely difficult", but China hoped the next leadership "takes actual steps to improve relations." The Philippine military is prohibited from discussing the election, but some senior officers privately say they are warming to the idea of Duterte as their commander-in-chief. His talk of crushing Islamist insurgents behind a lucrative piracy and kidnap business has appeal, they say, as does his promise to take better care of troops and make national security a priority. Others hope Duterte will pursue a more independent foreign policy through broader diplomatic alliances and new sources of defence hardware to avoid being over-dependent on Washington. "We're no longer in the Cold War period. We could build our own capability with the help of many allies, not only the U.S." said one officer. For Joy Topaz, a fish vendor in a Masinloc shanty town, the most pressing issue is to negotiate a deal to get Filipino fishermen back to the Scarborough Shoal. "There has been talk here about war, but we are afraid of fighting," she said. "Let us just fish. Let everyone be allowed to fish." (Additional reporting by David Brunnstrom in WASHINGTON and Ben Blanchard in BEIJING; Writing by Martin Petty; Editing by Mike Collett-White)
Police have more and more been utilizing mobile technology to track down and listen in on terrorists plans. Specifically, the newest controversial technology is known as Stingray and it can be used to locate terrorists by collecting data from nearby cell users. Its supposed to only be used to track dangerous criminals and terrorists, but according to Capital News Service, Annapolis, Maryland, police used Stingray to track down a pizzeria robber.

The 9 Most Memorable Crimes That Went Down at Fast Food Restaurants

Thats right, a hardened criminal who stole $56 worth of wings and subs from a Baltimore pizza delivery guy. Police actually could not find their target and had to get a court order to use the Stingray technology.

Hes not a terrorist, hes just a kid from the neighborhood, Assistant Public Defender Ricke said about his client Stephon Summers, who was accused of stealing the wings and sandwiches.

Baltimore police have confirmed that although the Stingray technology has been used 129 times in the past five years, leading to 27 arrests and zero terrorists caught.
stingray

A Stingray is a "

suitcase-size" device that US law enforcement, both state and federal, have used to hunt suspects by tracking their cellphones.

A Stingray works by mimicking a cellphone tower. Authorities drive around with the device sending out signals, and all mobile devices in the vicinity are forced to connect to it. This means the police could have access to phone calls, text messages, and other private data.

The device is controversial because of the scattershot way it operates  it often captures data from nearby devices, not just the intended target.

But the tool, which was originally created for overseas warfare, is powerful. And if it is used to prevent terrorism, for example, there is certainly an argument that its use is justified. Less easy to defend is the Stingray's use in minor incidents of local crime.

But it is certainly being used in that manner by law enforcement.

An article from Capital News shed light on the extent of its use by local law enforcement in Maryland, and some of the uses are surprising. One in particular jumps out.

Capital News points to one instance in which a pizza shop's employee in Annapolis was robbed of 15 chicken wings and three sub sandwiches while on a delivery run. The value of the stolen items was $56.77. The police got a court order to use a Stingray, but they didn't end up catching the robber.

"It's supposed to be used for terrorism," Janine Meckler, the Baltimore public defender, told Capital News. "It's not being used for the purpose for which it's being designed." And Meckler should know. Stingrays have been used to surveil Baltimore residents more than 4,300 times since 2007, according to a report last year by The Baltimore Sun.

Additional reporting by Cale Guthrie Weissman.

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Vatican City (AFP) - Pope Francis said Friday he dreamed of a Europe in which "being a migrant is not a crime", as he urged EU leaders to "tear down the walls" and build a fairer society.

Invoking the memory of the EU founding fathers' pursuit of integration in the aftermath of World War II, the pontiff said they inspired because they had "dared to change radically the models" that had led to war.

"Today more than ever, their vision inspires us to build bridges and tear down walls," he told a Vatican audience including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who has been at the centre of the EU's attempts to resolve its biggest refugee crisis since the war ended in 1945.

And in a rhetorical flourish with echoes of Martin Luther-King's legendary 'I have a dream' speech, the pope said he dreamed of a new European humanism that embraced the poor, the elderly, the young and the sick.

"I dream of a Europe where being a migrant is not a crime but a summons to greater commitment on behalf of the dignity of every human being," he said.

Francis's comments came in a speech as the 79-year-old pontiff was presented with the EU's Charlemagne Prize for his contribution to European unification.

Having unexpectedly decided to accept the award, Francis delivered a typically hard-hitting message to listeners that also included the heads of the EU's main institutions, the Council, the Commission, the Parliament and its central bank.

"What has happened to you, the Europe of humanism, the champion of human rights, democracy and freedom?" he asked. "What has happened to you, Europe, the home of poets, philosophers, artists, musicians, and men and women of letters?"

Francis has made the cause of migrants trying to reach Europe one of the defining themes of his papacy.

He has regularly railed against the "indifference" of western societies to their plight and last month he made a high-profile visit to Lesbos, the Greek island on the frontline of the crisis, returning to the Vatican with three Syrian families seeking asylum from the civil war ravaging their homeland.

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- A memory transfusion needed -

He has also attacked what he says is an arbitrary division being made between asylum seekers and so-called economic migrants -- a distinction at the heart of Merkel and other EU leaders' vision of how to resolve the crisis.

Borrowing a phrase from writer and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, the Argentinian pontiff said Friday that Europe needed a "memory transfusion" to free itself from the temptation of "quick and easy short-term political gains."

And after that reference to the migrant crisis, Francis went on to say Europe had to fundamentally change its economic model to give the continent's youth the security they needed to build a new world.

"If we want to rethink our society, we need to create dignified and well-paying jobs, especially for our young people," he said.

"To do so requires coming up with new, more inclusive and equitable economic models, aimed not at serving the few, but at benefiting ordinary people and society as a whole.

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and European Parliament President Martin Schulz explained the decision to give the award to such a regular and prominent critic of the EU in a column for France's Le Monde.

"Some will joke that the European Union must be in a bad way if it is in need of papal assistance," they wrote.

"We are convinced that Pope Francis deserves this prize, however, simply because he has sent Europe a message of hope.

"Perhaps we needed an Argentinian to turn his outsider's gaze on the innermost values which bind us Europeans together, to remind us of our strengths.

"After all, at times when the words 'Europe' and 'crisis' are often uttered in the same breath it is easy to forget what Europe has achieved and what it is capable of."
While receiving the prestigious Charlemagne prize Friday for European unification at the Vatican's Sala Regia, Pope Francis criticized European leaders in attendance for how their continent has fallen short on providing a meaningful humanitarian response to the refugee crisis.

In his acceptance speech, the pope accused Europe of being "tempted to yield to [y]our own selfish interests," Associated Press reported, and a place where "being a migrant" is a "crime," according to Agence France-Presse. In 2015 alone, Europe absorbed more than 1 million refugees.

Read more: Pope Francis Just Invited 12 Syrian Refugees to Live in the Vatican

Francis is the first pontiff to receive the award, which honors "valuable contribution to West European understanding" and has been given to names that run the gamut from Angela Merkel to Richard Nixon, and used the opportunity  in the presence of European Central Bank President Mario Draghi, Merkel and European Parliament President Martin Schulz, among many other continental leaders  to censure the European Union for its inadequacies in dealing with the migrant and refugee crisis, encouraging it to do better.

Pope Francis delivers his speech at the Vatican on Friday.

"What has happened to you, the Europe of humanism, the champion of human rights, democracy and freedom?" Francis said, according to Reuters. "What has happened to you, Europe, the home of poets, philosophers, artists, musicians and men and women of letters?"

"What has happened to you, Europe, the mother of peoples and nations, the mother of great men and women who upheld, and even sacrificed their lives for, the dignity of their brothers and sisters?" he said.

"What has happened to you, the Europe of humanism, the champion of human rights, democracy and freedom?"

Francis also mentioned the need to engage and create opportunity for a neglected youth and to amend public policy in order to make "more inclusive and equitable economic models, aimed not at serving the few, but at benefiting ordinary people and society as a whole," the New York Times reported.

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His comments echoed his unwavering commitment humanitarianism, which included inviting 12 Muslim refugees to return with him to the Vatican on April 16 after his visit to the Greek Isle of Lesbos, a major port of call for refugees fleeing to Europe.

Pope Francis with the president of the European parliament, Martin Schulz, on May 6.

Leaders appeared publicly receptive to Francis' message. "When you take in 12 refugees  in proportion to the population of the Vatican, that is more than any EU member state  you fill our hearts with new courage," European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said, according to Reuters.

Time will tell if the receptivity of those present for the speech is lip service or will produce an ideological paradigm shift for the region.
President Obama and Vice President Biden spent at least part of Cinco de Mayo celebrating with Sophie Cruz, who might be one of the youngest activists ever to swing by a White House reception.

Cruz, 6, is the child of undocumented immigrants. But her parents' immigration status meant that they were not allowed to attend the celebration in the White House along with their daughter, ABC News reported Friday.

Today, @POTUS and @VP met young activist Sophie Cruz at the White House #CincoDeMayo reception. Photo by @petesouza.pic.twitter.com/DOWbrsZ30M https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ChvHc7LXIAIEzmA.jpg:large

The White House's official Spanish-language Twitter account shared a photo of Cruz meeting with both the president and the vice president before the official reception on Thursday.

Cruz has made headlines before: Back in September, during Pope Francis' visit to the U.S., she ran up to his motorcade and hugged the pope, then handed him a T-shirt that said, in Spanish, "Pope: rescue DAPA, so the legalization would be your blessing."

Source: Alex Brandon/AP

Cruz and her sister are American citizens, but her parents are not  and their undocumented status means that they could be deported and their family could easily be split apart.

In an interview with the Washington Post in September, Cruz said that her goal was "To speak with the president and Congress, for they can give 'la reforma migratoria' for all the immigrants." This week, she got her chance to meet with the President  and perhaps got the opportunity to urge him to pass the kind of comprehensive immigration reform that could make families like hers more secure in their future in the U.S.
President Obama took the press to task Friday over Donald Trump, warning that the campaign is no joke  and reporters shouldn't cover it as a sport without substance.

"This is not a reality show. This is a contest for the presidency of the United States  and what that means is that every candidate, every nominee needs to be subject to exacting standards and genuine scrutiny," Obama said after speaking on the economy.

"What I'm concerned about is the degree to which reporting and information starts emphasizing the spectacle and the circus, because that's not something we can afford," the president said.

Specifically, Obama  who's long insisted Trump would never replace him and has not endorsed in the Democratic primary fight between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders  told the press to drill down on the candidates.

"If they say they've got an answer to a problem, that it is actually plausible and that they have details for how it would work," he said, "and if it's completely implausible and would not work, that needs to be reported."

Source: Mark Lyons/Getty Images

Given even House Speaker Paul Ryan's hesitance to cast his lot with Trump, Obama said the GOP faces a "debate" about "who they are and what they represent"  and who represents them.

"I think not just Republican officials but more importantly, Republican voters are going to have to make a decision as to whether this is the guy who speaks for them and represents their values," he said of Trump.

"I think Republican women, voters, are going to have to decide, 'Is that the guy I feel comfortable with in representing me and what I care about?'"

Paul Ryan said that I inherited something very special, the Republican Party. Wrong, I didn't inherit it, I won it with millions of voters!

Obama, himself long the target of Trump's ire, said he doesn't stay up nights worrying about Trump tweetstorms.

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""I don't pay attention to Mr. Trump's tweets," President Obama says during a briefing."

Compared to the GOP, which produced Trump as its presumptive nominee after a bitter, personal and graphic primary season, Obama said his own party seems more consensus-driven right now.

Without personally taking sides, he pointed to Clinton's advantage in the delegate race to the nomination.

"I think everybody knows what that math is," he said, giving Sanders a nod for pushing "a whole range of issues that are important to Democratic voters as well as the American people generally."
May 6 (Reuters) - The following are the top stories in the Financial Times. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.

Headlines

* Philip Green calls on MP to resign from BHS inquiry

(http://bit.ly/24vJQlA)

* Sanofi threatens to go hostile in $9.3bn pursuit of Medivation (http://bit.ly/1rvgS3l)

* Burberry considers creating new senior management role

(http://bit.ly/1SQlP1k)

* Monte dei Paschi Q1 profits decline

(http://bit.ly/1rxbGMT)

Overview

* British retail tycoon Philip Green on Thursday hit out at UK lawmakers for leading what he called a "trial by media" in relation to last week's fall into administration of department store BHS.

* France's Sanofi has threatened to oust the board of Medivation if the U.S. cancer drugmaker continues to resist its $9.3 billion takeover offer. The company also indicated prospect of a higher bid if its target agreed to enter talks.

* Burberry is evaluating the appointment of a senior manager to support its chief executive, Christopher Bailey, amid concerns from investors after the company's share price saw a sharp fall.

* Italy's third-largest lender by assets, Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena said its first-quarter profits fell by more than a third, highlighting concerns about its pile of bad loans and collapsing share price.

(Compiled by Shivam Srivastava in Bengaluru; Editing by Sandra Maler)
May 6 (Reuters) - The following are the top stories in the Wall Street Journal. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.

- U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan said Donald Trump had "work to do" to unify the Republican Party and demonstrate his commitment to conservative principle. (http://on.wsj.com/1UDAiyM)

- General Motors Co and Lyft will begin testing a fleet of self-driving Chevrolet Bolt electric taxis on public roads within a year, as the companies seek to fight off Silicon Valley giants amid a reshaping auto industry. (http://on.wsj.com/1UDAfTy)

- Sanofi sent a letter to Medivation saying it would try to remove and replace members of the U.S. biotech firm's board if it didn't engage in takeover talks. (http://on.wsj.com/1UDAbmT)

- Apple Inc and SAP SE said they would cooperate to help developers create iPad and iPhone apps tapping the German software giant's database services and analytics. (http://on.wsj.com/1UDAcHx) (Compiled by Parikshit Mishra in Bengaluru)
By Jonathan Saul and Nina Chestney LONDON (Reuters) - Disagreement among nations means no carbon emissions targets have been set for international shipping, but voices from within the industry are calling for global curbs to be set soon, before countries or regional blocs take matters into their own hands. The shipping sector, like aviation, was excluded from any target cuts under last year's Paris climate deal, which set a goal of restricting the rise in global average temperature to less than 2 degrees Celsius. Shipping now makes up around 2.2 percent of world emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2), the main greenhouse gas responsible for global warming, and that share is forecast to rise dramatically if nothing is done to slow it. The International Maritime Organization, the U.N. agency responsible for regulating pollution from ships, forecasts CO2 emissions from vessels rising anywhere between 50 percent and 250 percent by 2050 in its "business as usual" case, as economies grow and trade increases. So far, specific targets to curb emissions growth have been blocked by emerging countries like India and Brazil, which expect their shipping volumes to increase over the next decades. But some shipping companies, especially ones that have invested in newer, more fuel-efficient ships, say the IMO should take action to limit emissions, before regulation is imposed by regional blocs like the European Union or individual states. A session in late April of the IMO's Maritime Environment Protection Committee agreed only to defer further discussion on emissions to its next session in October. That will be the last chance to come up with targets before the next round of global climate talks, COP-22, the following month in Marakesh. "The failure to agree a process for emissions reduction puts significant pressure on generating a positive outcome," said Alastair Fischbacher, head of the Sustainable Shipping Initiative, an industry association that promotes efficiency standards and includes the world's largest container shipping company Maersk Line and huge agricultural shipper Cargill. "The shipping industry cannot go to COP-22 in Morocco without this. Not only will it damage the industrys reputation, it also runs the risk of external regulators taking the matter into their own hands and circumnavigating the IMO, which no-one in the industry wants to see." Peter Hinchliffe, secretary general of the International Chamber of Shipping, which represents more than 80 percent of the world's merchant fleet, predicted the IMO would deliver a framework for CO2 cuts; the question is when. "It is the nature of international debate that sometimes it takes longer than some would wish," he said. SPIRIT OF PARIS According to scenarios drawn up by the IMO, one of the most effective ways to slow the growth of emissions from shipping would be to take other steps across the wider economy to fight climate change, reducing demand for fossil fuel shipments. Oil, gas and coal now make up more than a third of tonnage shipped by sea, and IMO forecasts predict those volumes either to surge or shrink, depending on future action to achieve climate targets. But the IMO also says steps taken by the shipping industry with the encouragement of regulation, such as improving the efficiency of ships and changing engines to burn lower carbon-emitting fuels such as natural gas, can have a big impact. Its better-case scenarios include improvements that would see ships become 60 percent more efficient and a quarter of them shift to natural gas by 2050. Even under those optimistic conditions only one of its 16 scenarios forecasts total maritime emissions to fall by then. The European Commission estimates that air and marine transport, which now jointly account for 5 percent of global emissions, could contribute as much as a third of all emissions by 2050. Last month a group of European lawmakers urged the European Union to take tougher action on the two sectors. "There is no reasonable excuse to continue exempting aviation and shipping from the international and EU climate policies," the lawmakers wrote. "Such growth (in emissions) will undermine reduction efforts by all countries and other sectors to limit warming to the 1.5/2C agreed in Paris." Those in favor of stronger targets say firm proposals are likely to be slow-moving through the IMO, given opposition from countries including India and Brazil. IMO Secretary-General Kitack Lim said it had reached approval for mandatory data collection of fuel consumption by ships, which would "provide a solid basis on which to consider ... whether further measures may be required in future to mitigate GHG (greenhouse gas) emissions from shipping". "It has been very encouraging to see states which had previously found it difficult to reach binding agreement on climate change measures bring the spirit of the Paris Agreement to IMO," Lim said. Nevertheless, campaigners want quicker action. Bill Hemmings, of green group Transport & Environment, said the data collection initiative's incremental approach was "a code word for 'do nothing'". Hemmings said some European lawmakers were likely to propose shipping be included in tougher EU targets. "That will focus IMO minds if it happens." In October last year the European Commission called on the IMO to present measures to cut emissions by the end of 2016, which the shipping industry at the time said was "unrealistic". An EU source said that although the Paris Agreement did not set a specific deadline, it was built on the basis that all sectors would have to contribute to nationally determined emissions targets from 2020. Therefore, the sooner the aviation and shipping sectors could act the better, the source said. Hinchliffe, of the International Chamber of Shipping, said the industry would support global action from the IMO but oppose unilateral steps by a regional bloc. "A regional mechanism would be inefficient and would likely inhibit shipping flagged in the region and would stand the risk of destabilizing the trading balance that shipping provides." (Editing by Peter Graff)
Addiction to opioid pain medicine can be insidious, happening so gradually that you and those closest to you may not recognize the warning signs.

The latest high-profile example of this is the sudden death of Prince. The musical legend was found dead April 21 at the age of 57, and autopsy results released from the Midwest Medical Examiner's Office confirm Prince died of an overdose of the opioid pain medication fentanyl.

The New York Times had previously reported that he might have had a long-term addiction to Percocet or a similar opioid pain drug and was on the verge of getting treatment right before his death.

Jamie Lee Curtis has also revealed that nearly two decades ago she battled pain pill addiction.

"I too, waited anxiously for a prescription to be filled for the opiate I was secretly addicted to," she wrote in the Huffington Post. "I too, took too many at once. I too, sought to kill emotional and physical pain with pain killers. Kill it. Make it stop."

Celebrities, of course, are not the only ones who can become addicted or experience serious side effects from taking prescription opioids. The drugs are among the most commonly prescribed medications in America and were responsible for the deaths of more than 28,000 people in 2014, more than any other year on record according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. At least half of those deaths were attributed to use of commonly prescribed painkillers as OxyContin, Percocet, and Vicodin.

In fact, 44 percent of Americans say that they personally know someone who has been addicted to prescription painkillers, according to an April 2016 poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonprofit organization focused on health research.

Prescription opioids are just as addictive as street drugs like heroin, says Andrew Kolodny, M.D., a senior scientist at Brandeis University and chief medical officer at Phoenix House, a national nonprofit center for addiction treatment. Anyone can get hooked, " he says, "even those using the drug legitimately to combat pain.

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The drugs dont differentiate based on your station in life or why youre using them, adds Kolodny. The effect on the brain is the same.

In fact, as many as one out of four taking a prescribed opioid for several months or longer becomes addicted, according to the CDC.

Consumer Reports' new guide to pain relief explains how prescription pain drugs and other addictive substances affect your brain and how to protect yourself.

Recognizing Addiction

Addiction's biggest red flag is a loss of control. If you find that pain pills are taking over your lifefor example, you crave them between doses, are taking more than what was prescribed, or are taking them to sleep or relieve anxiety rather than to treat pain talk to your doctor immediately. He or she can help you regain control or refer you to a physician who specializes in substance abuse disorders.

Even people who are not addicted can become physically dependent on the drugs if they're taken continuously for more than two weeks. In that case, stopping abruptly can lead to withdrawal symptoms, including worsened pain, severe stomach upset, muscle aches, flu-like symptoms, anxiety, depression, and sleeplessness.

If youve been prescribed an opioid and are still taking it daily after two weeks, dont even try to stop cold turkey. Instead, work with your doctor to gradually reduce your dosage and give your body time to adjust. In Consumer Reports' recent report, we provide expert advice on how to stop taking a prescription painkiller without suffering with withdrawal symptoms

Safer Ways to Relieve Chronic Pain

The changes that opioids cause in your brain and body make them a poor solution for many types of chronic pain, says Consumer Reports medical director, Orly Avitzur, M.D.

The drugs may relieve pain initially, but most people quickly develop a tolerance to them, meaning it takes progressively higher doses to get the same effect, she says. Eventually, very high doses may not work well.

And the longer you take prescription pain drugs, especially at high doses, the greater the risks of serious side effects, including addiction, overdose, and deatheven if you've been taking the pills as directed by your doctor to treat pain.

For persistent pain, talk to your doctor about other types of pain medication and nondrug measures. Our report, "Pain Relief: What You Need to Know," details a variety of approaches, such as biofeedback, cognitive behavioral therapy, and exercise that, in some cases, can provide just as much or more relief than an opioid, with far less risk.

And if you do wind up taking an opioid for chronic pain, the CDC advises starting at the lowest effective dose and checking in with your doctor at least every three months to make sure that the drug is helping and that you are able to take it safely. Read our experts take on the latest advice from the CDC on using opioids to treat chronic pain.

Update: This article was changed to reflect Prince's autopsy results, which were released June 2.

Editor's Note: This article and related materials are made possible by a grant from the state Attorney General Consumer and Prescriber Education Grant Program, which is funded by the multistate settlement of consumer-fraud claims regarding the marketing of the prescription drug Neurontin (gabapentin).





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By Madeline Kennedy (Reuters Health) - Binge drinking and alcoholism is a big issue in the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps, and the problem may begin even before sailors and marines deploy, a recent study suggests. More than a quarter of sailors and marines who were anonymously surveyed within two weeks before their deployment admitted to binge drinking regularly, and nearly 40 percent reported dangerous drinking. A small but significant number also reported that they had been drugged against their will. Previous research has focused on the drinking habits of military personnel while deployed or after returning home. Little is known about drinking in the period before reporting for duty, the researchers write in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. That period could be a time of higher stress and people may drink more because they will not be able to drink while aboard ship, the researchers write. This is a time of major transition away from family, friends and important social support networks, said coauthor Dr. Braden Hale, program manager at the Department of Defenses HIV/AIDS Prevention Program. Hale told Reuters Health by email that screening for alcohol abuse before deployment could allow people to be identified and helped earlier. The study team used data on 2,351 male and female shipboard personnel collected between 2012 and 2014. Participants gave anonymous reports about hazardous drinking, including how often they drank and how often they had more than six drinks at a time. They also answered questions about alcohol dependency, including physical cravings for it, and binge drinking, defined as having more than four drinks for women and more than five for men during a typical day of drinking. The researchers also asked if participants had ever been roofied, or had their drinks spiked. Overall, 79 percent of the subjects were men and around 85 percent were in the Navy. Just over 12 percent were under the age of 21. Just under 39 percent of the sailors and marines reported hazardous drinking before deployment. This was significantly higher for men, at 40 percent, than for women, at 34 percent. Thirty-six percent of those under age 21 had engaged in hazardous drinking. Twenty-seven percent reported binge drinking. This too was more common for men, at nearly 30 percent, than for women, at 20 percent. Overall, close to 15 percent were dependent on alcohol: nearly 17 percent of men and 7 percent of women. Personnel between the ages of 17 and 20 were more likely to report being dependent on alcohol. Few of the sailors and marines reported taking recreational drugs, but 7 percent had been given a drug against their will. The percentages were about equal between men and women. These findings confirm there is a culture of drinking, including underage drinking, among Marines and Navy members that needs to be addressed, said Mary Jo Larson, a senior scientist at Brandeis Universitys Institute for Behavioral Health who studies military drinking. The consequences include injuries, fights, car crashes and unwanted sexual contact, including rape, said Larson, who was not involved in the study. Larson noted that commanding officers are notified when service members seek treatment for drinking, which may discourage people who need help from seeking it. The take away is that the Navy and Marines must establish additional effective prevention programs, which send a strong message that those that need medical help can receive it confidentially, she said by email. In order to prevent short- and long-term harms from alcohol abuse, Hale calls for screening, intervention and care before deployment for shipboard personnel who may be engaging in hazardous or dependent alcohol use. SOURCE: http://bit.ly/1WdtM30 American Journal of Preventive Medicine, online April 7, 2016.
A Russian orchestra performed a concert Thursday in a 2,000-year-old amphitheater in Syria where Islamic State militants shot and killed 25 Syrian soldiers last summer.

The famed Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra, one of Russias oldest music institutions, performed for just over 30 minutes at the Roman amphitheater in the ancient city of Palmyra. Syrian government forces, backed by Russian warplanes, wrested control of the city from ISIS in late March. After the capture, the Russian military found and dismantled hundreds of bombs and other explosive devices the Islamist militant group had planted across the city. ISIS took over Palmyra in May 2015, and spent the summer blowing up the historic citys antiquities, including centuries-old temples and shrines the group believed to be idolatrous.

The orchestra, led by conductor Valery Gergiev, played pieces by Johann Sebastian Bach, Sergei Prokofiev, and Rodion Shchedrin, AFP reported. Russian state media released a video of the performance:

Recommended: Trump: A Taste of Middle Eastern Democracy, in America

The audience included dozens of Russian soldiers, Russian and Syrian dignitaries, and Syrias antiques and culture ministers, according to CNN.

The Russian and Syrian governments hailed Palmyras recapture as proof of the success of their coalition against extremism. Thursdays performance was an apparent victory lap for Russia, whose president, Vladimir Putin, dedicated the concert to victims of the terror group and the armed forces fighting it.

A second concert at the amphitheater is scheduled for Friday. The Syrian National Symphony Orchestra, Syrian National Orchestra for Arab Music, Orchestra Mary, and al-Farah Choir will perform, according to SANA, the state-run Syrian news agency.

Palmyra is a UNESCO World Heritage site. UNESCO, the United Nations organization that documents the worlds historic and cultural sites, called the destruction of its ruins by ISIS a war crime.

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Read more from The Atlantic:

This article was originally published on The Atlantic.
Parents can prevent unsafe sleep deaths.

When you put your baby down for a nap, you never expect a tragedy to occur -- but it can. Sometimes the cause is unknown, as with sudden infant death syndrome, but in other cases, the cause is clear. "SIDS deaths are deaths where we have no explanation for why this previously healthy baby died," says Dr. Elizabeth Murray, a spokesperson for the American Academy of Pediatrics. "Unsafe sleep death is completely preventable." As a parent, you have power to help keep your sleeping baby safe. Here's what you need to know.

'Boring' is best for cribs and bassinets.

Bumpers, blankets, stuffed animals and toys -- however cute -- do not belong in cribs or bassinets, says Murray, a pediatrician with University of Rochester--Golisano Children's Hospital. "I like to say boring is best," she says. Babies should sleep alone in a crib that meets safety standards, says Marian Willinger, special assistant for SIDS for the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. Besides lowering the risk of SIDS, Willinger says, "following safe sleep also reduces the risk of a baby dying from suffocating, entrapment and injury from falling out of the bed."

Infants should sleep on their backs.

Back sleep is safest for newborns and infants, research shows. "A big misconception I hear is when parents are concerned that if babies sleep on their back and throw up in their sleep, they will choke," Murray says. "That is not true." The body is designed to prevent that, she explains. A baby's windpipe, or trachea, is separate from his or her food tube, or esophagus. In a back-lying position, formula or spit-up in a baby's mouth will go back into the esophagus. "It will not affect their airway at all," she says.

You can keep babies both warm and safe.

Infants don't need loose covers for comfort. Instead, Murray recommends the HALO SleepSack or other types of approved sleeping blankets. These are almost like tiny sleeping bags with arm openings, and babies can safely snuggle inside. "What's so important is that it's designed in a way that babies can't accidentally cover their face," she says. Adult-type bedding is a major sleep-environment hazard for babies less than 4 months old, she says: "Blankets, pillows, comforters and soft bedding put them at the greatest risk." Firm, flat mattresses are safest for babies.

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Cribs need narrow slats and stable sides.

Cribs made more than 10 years ago should not be used, according to the Consumer Product Safety Commission. Broken or modified cribs are also dangerous. "Infants can strangle to death if their bodies pass through gaps between loose components or broken slats while their heads remained entrapped," the CPSC website says. Drop-side rail cribs do not meet federal safety standards, the American Academy of Pediatrics tells parents.

Babies sleep safer alone.

Share your bedroom with newborns, but not your bed. Co-sleeping is hazardous, according to the Baby Safe Sleep Coalition. "Your baby should never sleep with a parent or a sibling," the website says. "They could roll over on the baby in their sleep, killing the baby. Many moms think they won't roll over on their baby, but it does happen." Instead, place the crib or bassinet near your bed within arm's reach.

Breast-feeding is best while you're alert.

Having the bassinet nearby also allows parents to hear babies' cues and breast-feed more easily, Murray says. "Breast-feeding can be very well-maintained by still having a safe sleep environment," she says. "We want to make sure when moms are breast-feeding that they're awake and aware of what's going on. So this concept of lying down and almost sleeping while you're breast-feeding is just not safe." After breast-feeding, she advises, "Go ahead and put your baby down in their own sleep environment."

Nursery room placement matters.

When decorating the nursery, some parents hang pictures on the wall to make the room feel warm and comforting. That's fine, Murray says, as long as the baby's crib is not positioned against that wall. Once the child becomes a toddler, he or she could reach up and pull a picture down on himself or herself. "Either have the crib in the middle of the room, or just don't put anything on the wall," she says. "The same thing, of course, goes for curtains and drawstrings. You don't want anything like that near the child."

Tummy time takes supervision.

It's good for babies to spend time on their tummies -- as long as they're supervised. "There's nothing wrong if you're observing the baby to put a blanket on the floor, when they're awake, and put them on it for tummy time," Willinger says. But don't let a newborn fall asleep on his or her belly, she warns. "It's not until they're much older that [babies] can flip from their stomach to their back," Willinger says. "So once they get in that [tummy] position, it's hard to get out."

Use (and give) baby gifts wisely.

While that handmade blanket from your baby shower can't go in the crib, it needn't go to waste. "What we've suggested is if you do get some really pretty quilts as a gift, that you hang them on the wall," Willinger says. Mobiles should be out of reach, the CPSC says, and removed from the crib once your baby is 5 months old or beginning to push up on hands and knees. For safe baby gifts, Murray says, her go-to present is a sleep sack.

Car seats are not sleep devices.

"Sleep devices are sleep devices; car seats are car seats; cribs are cribs," Murray says. "So when left unattended, a baby should be in an approved sleep device." If your baby falls asleep in the car seat while you're there, that's fine, she says. But it's unsafe to leave babies sleeping alone in car seats or infant seats, for example. Smaller babies can "kind of scooch themselves down," she says, and compromise their airways.

Day care providers must be on board.

If your infant is in day care, it's essential that providers follow safe-sleep practices. "As a parent, it's important that you advocate and say, 'These are our beliefs with regards to safe sleep -- you need to follow the same things here,'" Murray says. Set ground rules and make expectations clear, she advises: "Make sure your day care provider does know that a baby needs to be on her back, alone, with nothing else in her crib or bassinet, while she sleeps."

Lisa Esposito is a Patient Advice reporter at U.S. News. You can follow her on Twitter, connect with her on LinkedIn or email her at lesposito@usnews.com.
Washington (AFP) - Strangled by debt and a decade of recession, US territory Puerto Rico is pleading for help from Congress.

But ironically the Congress is partly to blame for the Caribbean island's woes, having helped devise its failed economic strategy of becoming a corporate tax haven, and then allowing that attraction to expire.

The island, which defaulted on a huge bond payment on Monday, is grappling with a massive $70 billion debt and a decade of recession after pursuing for years a growth strategy based on offering tax breaks to investors.

Between 1976 and 2006, Section 936 of the US tax code provided US companies operating in Puerto Rico tax-free income from those operations.

US giants like software maker Microsoft and drug makers Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson were among the companies rushing into Puerto Rico to offset the 35 percent US corporate tax rate, the highest among advanced economies.

The surge in investment boosted Puerto Rican growth, with the expansion hitting a robust 9.8 percent annual rate in 2001.

- Burst bubble -

But when the tax break ended after 30 years, little by little companies deserted the island, draining revenues, shedding jobs, and pushing the economy into recession.

"It created a kind of bubble that burst when the mechanism expired in 2006," said Scott Greenberg, an analyst with the Tax Foundation, an independent tax policy research group, in an interview.

"It didn't create a sustainable growth model for Puerto Rico, because the companies were only investing there because of the tax benefits, and because Puerto Rico failed to capitalize on the business activity to develop its economy," Greenberg said.

The island's government, which had a decade to prepare for the end of the tax benefit, did nothing, said Argeo Quinones-Perez, an economics professor at the University of Puerto Rico.

"No effort was made, no industrial policy was decided, no plans were made," he told AFP.

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He said that the island had gotten little in return to support growth for various tax advantages offered to companies since the middle of the 20th century.

"We should have obtained more benefits by requiring job creation or direct investment on the island," he said.

- Tax-free bonds -

Another tax break has aggravated the economic woes of Puerto Rico.

Under a 1917 law that gave Puerto Ricans US citizenship -- but not the right to vote in US presidential elections -- the interest earned on bonds issued by Puerto Rico is exempt from taxes, unlike that for other US states and cities.

That advantage enabled the island to issue huge amounts of debt to hungry US buyers, even as the island's finances and economy deteriorated.

"If their bonds wouldn't have been subsidized by the US tax code, the investors may have stopped buying bonds earlier because their concerns about Puerto Rico's fiscal situation would have outweighed the potential gains from the bond income," Greenberg said.

Bleeding financially, the government of the island of 3.5 million people has recently warned that it can no longer reimburse its creditors, and is hoping that Congress will give it the legal right to restructure the crushing debt.

However, despite the crisis and plunge in revenues, Puerto Rico continues to offer tax incentives, now to lure mega-rich individual investors.

The territory approved a law in 2012 that allows Americans who become tax-domicile residents of Puerto Rico a 100 percent exemption on all capital gains, dividend and interest income.

The governor of Puerto Rico, Alejandro Garcia Padilla, defends the incentive, which has lured managers of investment funds like billionaire John Paulson to the island.

"We need to share wealth, not poverty," he has said.

"These people are bringing wealth to Puerto Rico, that's good for everybody here."

Quinones-Perez criticized the tax-based strategies, saying they were an "exhausted model" that was depriving the island of crucial resources amid its economic crisis.

"The cost of keeping that model running became higher and higher and higher," he said.
Will the Reversal in Emerging Markets Provide Yields?

(Continued from Prior Part)

Brazils performance

The recent performance of the Brazilian index has outperformed other emerging markets (EEM) (VWO) and developed markets (EFA). The iShares MSCI Brazil Capped ETF (EWZ) tracks the performance of Brazils economy. The ETF has risen 60% from its low of $17.33 on January 21, 2016, as of May 3, 2016.

EWZ has outperformed all major country- and region-specific ETFs, including those of the United States (SPY), Europe (FEZ) (EZU), China (FXI), and Japan (EWJ). The reversal in commodity prices from their multiyear lows and the expectation of a transition in Brazils political environment drove this performance.

What valuations indicate for Brazil

Brazils valuations look cheaper compared to those of other Latin American (ILF) economies. Brazils price-to-earnings (or PE) multiple stands at 13x, cheaper compared to Chile (ECH), Mexico (EWW), and Argentina (ARGT).

However, the future movement of Brazils economy depends on the stabilization of its political environment and the upward movement of commodity prices. Recently, Brazils main problem has been corruption. Most of its public organizations are facing corruption charges and are inefficient in delivering their work.

A stable government with a clear economic vision could minimize risk in the countrys economy. Banks should be controlled by the central bank, not by the government. Both monetary policy and fiscal policy should act together to provide sustainable growth in the economy.

These are the important factors that can drive real economic growth in the country, in addition to the rise in commodity prices. If the above changes dont happen, then Brazilian indexs recent performance may reverse its trend. For more on this topic, you can read Potential Outcomes for the Geopolitical Situation in Brazil.

In the next part, well analyze Indias performance, and how it could provide long-term growth.

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Continue to Next Part

Browse this series on Market Realist:
Its officialRadiohead is releasing a new album. The still-unnamed release is out digitally on Sunday, May 8, but (sorry record stores!) wont be available for physical distribution until June 17.

In advance of the new album, the band released a new single, Daydreaming, along with a video directed by Academy Award-nominated director Paul Thomas Anderson.

Daydreaming is the second single to be released by Radiohead in advance of its new record. Burn the Witch was released earlier this week, after the band scrubbed its presence from the Internet, only to rebuild it with tiny teasers on social media. The teasers and the new singles were tantalizing for fans eager for new music from Radiohead, who hasnt released a studio album since 2011s King of Limbs.

To support the release of its ninth album, the band has a slew of festival dates coming up, including Spains Primavera Sound Festival, Chicagos Lollapalooza, and Austin City Limits.
New York (AFP) - After months of cryptic signals, Radiohead has finally announced a Sunday release for the band's long-awaited ninth album.

The British experimental rockers on Friday released a dark second single, entitled "Daydreaming," with a message on their website: "Taken from our album released digitally Sunday" at 1800 GMT.

Radiohead revealed little else, including the title, but the band was expected to unveil an album shortly as the rockers open a tour of select cities on May 20.

In one shift for Radiohead, the band released "Daydreaming" as well as the first single, "Burn the Witch," on streaming services including Spotify despite frontman Thom Yorke's long vehement criticism of the companies' compensation to artists.

It remains to be seen if the entire album will be available through streaming. Radiohead has experimented widely on how to release albums. In 2007, they allowed listeners to pay whatever they chose to download "In Rainbows."

Sunday's album will be Radiohead's first since 2011's "The King of the Limbs," which played with traditional song structure by using as a base a loop of previously recorded music.

On "Daydreaming," Radiohead put electronic elements largely in the background with the song building on morose piano chords and culminating in strings.

"Beyond the point of no return / Of no return / Of no return / It's too late / The damage is done," Yorke sings in his characteristic falsetto.

An accompanying video follows Yorke on a walk through stages of life, including a hospital delivery room, a school and a well-stocked Western grocery store.

He finally emerges in snow-covered mountains, with the six-and-a-half-minute song climaxing in Yorke mumbling an indecipherable, digitally altered message.

The ending quickly fascinated fans who isolated the section. Played backward, it sounds as if Yorke is saying, "Every minute / Every minute / Half of my love."

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Fans have been waiting for months for signs of the new album.

Next month's Primavera Sound festival in Barcelona had said in January that Radiohead would be presenting a new album, but the wording was changed shortly afterward.

Earlier this week Radiohead's social media accounts briefly went blank, also raising speculation that news was coming.

Radiohead has sold more than 30 million albums since emerging in the heyday of alternative rock in the early 1990s.

But the band soon swapped guitar rock for more electronic and experimental sounds starting with 1997's influential album "OK Computer."
Mindy Kaling claims the back 13 episodes of the current season of Hulu's The Mindy Project are "the funniest we've ever done." The streaming service must've agreed because Hulu just announced a deal to pickup the former Fox comedy and critical darling from Universal Television for a fifth season.

But her work on the series isn't the only funny thing she's done recently. Kaling sat down with her fellow executive producer Matt Warburton for Rambling Reporter's random interrogation. Here's how it went 

Last night I 

Mindy: Watched a cut of one of our episodes and sent Matt a couple of emails.

Matt: Ate way too much Chinese food.

The show I can't wait to binge watch is 

Mindy: The Americans.

Matt: Game of Thrones.

Read More: Rambling Reporter Gets Random With ... Juliette Lewis

The role I most wish I'd played is 

Mindy: Cleopatra

Matt: Mindy Lahiri [Kaling's character on The Mindy Project, for those who didn't get the reference.]

I can't wait to work with 

Mindy: Irrfan Khan

Matt: My hands, as a carpenter.

The best vacation I've ever taken was to 

Mindy: Montana. I'm a real outdoorsy, hiker, ATVs kind of person. I'm a cowgirl essentially. A person of the West. My favorite author is Cormac McCarthy, which makes sense. I love the country of our great nation.

Matt: Switzerland. I went snow-shoeing.

The most days I've worked in a row is 

Mindy: 365, right? With our job, you work a lot.

Matt: If you do what you love, you never work a day in your life.

The last phone call I returned was to ..

Mindy: My line producer to talk about some financial logistical issues on our show. I'm being very honest and boring actually saying what it's like having our jobs as showrunners. I wish I could be like, 'I called Reese Witherspoon to talk about this sexy vacation we're taking.' But that's not the case. I should've lied.

Matt: My mom to make our Mother's Day plans.

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The last time I cried was because 

Mindy: I saw an ad during the Today show for the American Cancer Society about a girl with cancer being taken to prom and she had a shaved head. And I cried. It was very moving.

Matt: Something I watched on Frontline about Syria.

Mindy: We also cried this afternoon when our lunch order got messed up.

Matt: I'm crying right now.

Read More: Rambling Reporter Gets Random With ... Rob Lowe

The item in my home or closet that I can't live without is 

Mindy: My alarm clock.

Matt: My hoodie. My Hulu hoodie.

Mindy: It's true, he wears it all the time.

I'm consistently amazed by 

Mindy: My writers' ability to write me amazing, funny stuff.

Matt: The constant positive attitude of our cast and crew.

I'm consistently repulsed by .

Mindy: Sexism.

Matt: Our writers' eating habits.

What I love about Hollywood is 

Mindy: There's a nice forgiveness that Hollywood has, when people make missteps, and a rejoice in people's redemption.

Matt: I love that I get to work with my friends.

What I loathe about Hollywood is 

Mindy: I'm not crazy about the pay inequity between women and men. I have a secret solution to that problem that I have been quiet about. I'm just kidding. I've been here 10 years and I think things can move actually pretty quickly in Hollywood and I think we'll see some major changes soon, in the imminent future.

Matt: It's easy to say that everyone wants to fix the diversity problem in TV writing and so forth and it's frustrating how a difficult the problem is to fix.

The question I wish someone would ask me is 

Mindy: What shows do you wish you could write on?

Matt: How do you always look so pretty?

So, let me ask you that: What shows would you like to write for?

Mindy: Thank you! So many! I would love to have written on The X-Files in the early '90s. I would love to have written for Saturday Night Live in my early 20s. It would be fun to write or direct an episode of Silicon Valley, I love that show. The actors are super funny and the writing is nuts.

Matt: Can I answer hers? I would say Twin Peaks, Northern Exposure, Seinfeld, Letterman right when he went to CBS.

The question I wish people would stop asking me is 

Mindy: How am I so brave to wear the outfits I wear? Where do I get my bravery in fashion? Anything about bravery or courage when it comes to fashion and the way I look, I would love to not have to deal with.

Matt: I feel very brave day to day, but nobody ever asks me where I get that from. A question people ask TV writers from people who don't know how TV writing works that is really annoying is, 'Which character do you write for?'

My alter ego is 

Mindy: I sometimes feel like my alter ego is like an 11-year-old girl who sits in front of the television all day doing her homework. I don't know if that's an alter ego, or my inner real self.

Matt: I don't think I would be a superhero, but I would be the guy that sits in the bat cave and talks to Batman. Batman's butler, basically.

Matt Warburton and Mindy Kaling attend "The Mindy Project" FYC event at NeueHouse Los Angeles on April 12, 2016. (Photo by Randy Shropshire/Getty Images for Hulu)
DANA BASH, CNNS CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Senator Graham, youre announcing here that you wont vote for either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump. You are a dyed in the wool Republican. Why cant you get on board with your partys nominee?

GRAHAM: Well its pretty easy to say no to Hillary because I think shes a third term of Barack Obama. I just dont believe Donald Trump is a reliable conservative Republican. Good luck with Paul Ryan trying to find a conservative agenda with this guy. And I dont think he has the temperament or judgment to be commander in chief. A lot of my colleagues will vote for him enthusiastically, some will hold their nose, I just cant go there with Donald.

BASH: But senator, Republican voters chose Donald Trump over you and 15 other Republican candidates for president. So are you the one out of step here with your party?

GRAHAM: Could be. I would have supported all 16 except for the Donald. Rand Paul and I are on opposite poles when it comes to foreign policy. Id have supported Rand Paul because I think hes a conservative. Ted Cruz and I have monumental differences at times. I was going to support Ted. I just dont think Donald is a reliable conservative Republican and quite frankly, he lost me when he said my friend John McCain was a loser because he was captured as a POW. He lost me when he accused George W. Bush of lying to the American people about the Iraq War, and he thinks Putins a good guy, so, I just cant go there. I respect people who cant, and to Donald Trump, congratulations. You did a hell of a thing. You beat me and everybody else and I just really believe that the Republican Party has been conned here and this guy is not a reliable conservative Republican.

BASH: Another one of Donald Trumps opponents who was quite critical of Trump was former Texas Governor Rick Perry. He told me yesterday, senator, that he believes in the process and he said, the process has said Donald Trump will be our nominee and Im going to support him and help him and do what I can. Why is he wrong?

GRAHAM: I dont think hes wrong. I think thats what Rick Perry feels like he should do. Im just doing what Lindsey Graham feels like he should do. I like Rick Perry. I think Rick Perrys been a great governor. Ive just got a hard time supporting somebody who claims that Ted Cruzs dad was associated with Lee Harvey Oswald and involved in the Kennedy assassination. Ive got a hard time supporting somebody for president who spent thousands of dollars of their own money trying to find out if President Obama was born in Kenya versus Hawaii. I think thats crazy. Im just glad were having the convention in Cleveland, not Area 51. I think Donald Trump has gone to places where very few people have gone, and Im not going with him.

BASH: Now, House Speaker Paul Ryan told CNN yesterday, as I know youve heard, that he is withholding support for Trump, but not ruling it out. Why are you flatly ruling it out and do you actually think  sort of take a step back. Do you think theres no way that Donald Trump could change and in any way that would get your support or unify the Republican Party?

GRAHAM: Well, if he said tomorrow that hes now convinced that Ted Cruzs dad had nothing to do with killing President Kennedy, and that President Obama was born in Hawaii, thatd be a step in the right direction. I just believe his temperament and judgment is not sufficient to be commander in chief of the finest fighting force in the world. I think his foreign policy is gibberish.

BASH: And do you think he has any ability to prove you wrong?

GRAHAM: Yes, he could win. Maybe he wins, and I promise you this, if he becomes president of the United States, I will do everything I can to help President Trump or President Clinton. Unfortunately, this is a race to the bottom in 2016, the two most unpopular people in modern history, and I think weve just got a slightly faster car, and were going to win the race to the bottom, but when its over, clearly, I ran and I lost  when its over, I will help President Trump or President Clinton because theyre going to need all the help they can get, but Im not going where Donald Trump is taking the party. I dont believe that Trumpism is conservatism. I just cant go there and I respect people who will go there. Some of my best friends will go there.

BASH: OK, so what will you do? You go into the voting booth, the first Tuesday in November, are you even going to go vote?

GRAHAM: Ill take a strong drink  oh, Im definitely voting. Im all in for Tim Scott. Heres the one thing Donald Trump has done. Hes united the party around the idea that we need to all vote to protect our Republican majorities in the house and the senate. If there was ever a time for the country to have conservative leadership in the house and the senate, it will be in 2017, because no matter who wins the president, whether its Clinton or Trump, were going to need some rational people up there putting the brakes on some of these very bad ideas.

BASH: So what box will you check for the presidency, or will you write somebody in? What do you plan to do? Obviously youve thought this through. Theres no none-of-the-above on the ballot.

GRAHAM: Right. I may just pass, I may just write somebody in, I dont know, but Im going to be enthusiastically behind the South Carolina Republican team. Ill go all over the country helping people if theyd like to try to hold the house and the senate, but I just really do not believe that Donald Trump has the temperament and judgment to be commander in chief. I dont think hes a reliable Republican conservative. Thats just my opinion. I lost to him. Congratulations to Donald. I hope he and Paul can find a common agenda, but what I hear from Donald Trump is the furthest thing from Republican conservatism, domestically and on foreign policy, Ive ever heard. So well see what happens.

BASH: Dick Cheney is apparently now going to endorse Donald Trump. Does that surprise you?

GRAHAM: A little bit, but thats great. Dick Cheneys a great man. We see the world a lot alike when it comes to foreign policy. I can understand why people want to support the nominee of the Republican Party. I would like to be able to do that but I just cant. And maybe Im the outlier here, probably am. There will be Democrats who cant support Hillary Clinton, and some of them will hold their nose and vote for her, some of them will do it enthusiastically.

BASH: Senator, one of your heroes, Teddy Roosevelt, just about 100 years ago, left the Republican Party and ran as a Bull-Moose candidate. Is that a path that you or somebody else should take now?

GRAHAM: Absolutely not.

BASH: No third party?

GRAHAM: Im going to have my say  no way, and I would advise people not to go down that road. Heres what Im going to do. Im going to support the Republican team at every level except for president, and when this elections over, Im going to help the next president, whoever he or she may be, and Im going to try to rebuild a Republican Party that can actually win the white house. Eating a taco is probably not going to fix the problems that we have with Hispanics. I think embracing Donald Trump is embracing demographic death.
JAKE TAPPER, HOST: And joining me now, the speaker of the House of Representatives, former Republican Vice Presidential nominee Paul Ryan.

Speaker Ryan, thanks so much for joining us.

RYAN: Thanks for having me, Jake. How are you doing today?

TAPPER: So, Mr. Speaker, you have said throughout this process that you will support the Republican presidential nominee. Now you have a presumptive nominee, Donald Trump. Will you support him?

RYAN: Well, to be perfectly candid with you, Jake, Im just not ready to do that at this point. Im not there right now. And I hope to, though, and I want to. But I think what is required is that we unify the party. And I think The bulk of the burden on unifying the party will have to come from our presumptive nominee.

I dont want to under play what he accomplished. He needs to be congratulated for an enormous accomplishment. For winning now a plurality of delegates, and hes on his way to winning a majority of delegates, but he also inherited something very special. Thats very special to a lot of us. This is the party of Lincoln, of Reagan, of Jack Kemp. And we dont always nominate a Lincoln and a Reagan every four years, but we hope that our nominee aspires to be Lincoln and Reagan-esque, but that person advances the principals of our party and appeals to a wide, vast majority of Americans. And so I think what is necessary to make this work, for this to unify, is to actually take up principles and advance them. And thats what we want to see.

Saying were unified doesnt in and of itself, unify us, but actually taking the principles that we all believe in, showing that theres a dedication to those, and running a principles campaign that Republicans can be proud about, and that can actually appeal to a majority of Americans, that to me is what it takes to unify this party.

TAPPER: So youre saying you cant support or endorse him right now?

RYAN: Yes, I am basically saying that. Look, Im  you know, I thought about this two days ago. I thought actually this this was going to go to June 7th at the very least, probably to a convention. And so this is all pretty new for us. But at this point, I think that he needs do more to unify this party to bring all wings of the Republican Party together, and then to go forward and to appeal to all Americans and every walk of life, every background, a majority of independents and discerning (ph) Democrats. And so, you know, I think conservatives want to know, does he share our values and our principles on limited government, the proper role of the executive, adherence to the Constitution. There are a lot of questions that conservatives, I think, are going to want answers to, myself included. And I want to be a part of this unifying process. I want to help unify this party. But we have to unify it, I think, for us to be successful.

For us to have a campaign that Republicans are proud of going forward that is unifiable, and that actually can go and appeal to a vast majority of Americans.

TAPPER: Well, Mr. Speaker youre casting this in characteristically optimistic and positive terms, and I would expect no less from you, but youre saying is a fairly dramatic announcement that the speaker of the House cannot, as of now, support his partys nominee for president. Is there something that he has done or said thats brought you to this moment?

RYAN: Well, like I said, I hope to support our nominee. I hope to support him candidacy fully. And I want to do that, but right now, and Ive got to tell you, Jake, just being candid with you, at this point, I am just not there right now. And its because I think of part of the last campaign. I dont want to go back and roll the tape. Look, I was pretty clear, and I was outspoken on a number of occasions, where I think that he did the wrong thing or said the wrong thing. And Ill do that in the future if need be. I hope its not necessary.

But I think what a lot of Republicans want to see is that we have a standard bearer that bears our standards, and that unifies all of the wings of the Republican Party, which we all come from different wings of our party, but we all agree on a common platform of conservative principals. We want somebody who takes these conservative principles, applies them to the problems and offers solutions to the country that a vast majority of Americans can vote for, that they want to be enthusiastic about. That is what I think it takes to unify the party. That  I think theres work that needs to be done in order to unify the party. I think our nominee  our presumptive nominee  needs to do that. I want to be part of helping him do that.

But right now, no. I think that, you know, theres some work to do the. Let me say it this way. Republicans have been watching each other go after each other for six months. Democrats are doing the same thing, because weve had a primary, a bitter primary process. And I think we sometimes forget just how successful weve been. We had the biggest House majority since 1928. We have 54 Republican Senate Seats. We have state legislative majorities and governorships that we havent seen in years, in decades. And so we have done extremely well. Our party is having  enjoying success, because we have unified around common conservative principles, and then we have one hill to climb, one more mountaintop  thats the presidency. So please know that we think the stakes are extremely high. Theyre the highest theyve been. The Supreme Court, Congress, the future of America is on the line.

And no Republican should ever think about supporting Hillary Clinton. Lets make that clear. But for us to be a successful party, to climb that final hill and win the presidency, we will need a standard-bearer that can unify all Republicans, all conservatives, all wings of our party, and then go to the country with an appealing agenda that can be appealing to independents and disaffected Democrats. And we have work to do on this front. And I think our nominee has to lead in that effort.

TAPPER: As you know, Mitt Romney, John McCain, George W. Bush, George H.W. Bush, all of them Republican presidential nominees or presidents, have said theyre not going to go to the convention in Cleveland.

In fact, I want to get your view. Watch this clip of your former runningmate, Mitt Romney, talking about Donald Trump earlier this year.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

FORMER GOV. MITT ROMNEY, R-MASS. Think of Donald Trumps personal qualities  the bullying, the greed, the showing off, the misogyny, the absurd third-grade theatrics. Donald Trump is a phony, a fraud. His promises are as worthless as a degree from Trump University. Hes playing the members of American public for suckers. He gets a free ride to the White House, and all we get is a lousy hat.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: Do you Governor Romneys views? Trumps a phony, a bully and a fraud?

RYAN: Look, heres what I think, Jake. And I think youre going to see tapes like that running all fall. The question is, can our presumptive nominee turn things around, unify and have a different kind of cadence going forward?

The way I look at this, Jake, is its time to go to from tapping anger to channeling that anger into solutions. Its time to set aside bullying, to set aside belittlement and appeal to higher aspirations, appeal to what is good in us and to lead a country and a party to having a vast majority of Americans enthusiastic about choosing a path. Thats why I just feel so strongly about the chance and the choice and the opportunity that we have in front of us. But for this to work, our presumptive nominee, I believe, needs to unify the party for the party to be unified. And I want to help him do that.

TAPPER: Do you think thats even possible? Do you think thats possible?

(CROSSTALK)

RYAN: Just so you know, Jake, were not there right now. Were not there right now.

Yes, I think its possible. But were not there right now. And I think it is possible, and we better get on with it.

But I think we just need to be honest with each other about these things, and look, I think, yes, I think we can beat Hillary Clinton. Are you kidding me? So yes, I think its possible. And it needs to be possible because so much is at stake.

TAPPER: So you dont think the damage has been done?

RYAN: Work needs to be done, and I think our presumptive has a bit of work to be done.

TAPPER: You dont think that so much damage has been done that its almost as if its a lost cause, because it seems to me from hearing people like Mitt Romney, hearing Ted Cruz the other day call Donald Trump a pathological liar on the ewe of Donald Trump winning it all. Donald Trump was attacking his father and suggesting that Raphael Cruz might have played a role in the Kennedy assassination. It doesnt seem like there are going to be  its going to be possible to build that many bridges. Do you disagree?

RYAN: Im familiar with the points youre making. That is why among other reasons  basically as a conservative I want to see a verification that our conservative principles will be championed, will be run on, will be represented, and will be brought to the public and the country in a way thats appealing for us to be successful.

So like I said, were not there yet.

But yet, I mean, look, this man is going get the nomination because he earned it, he deserved it. He won the vote. And more importantly, I think those of us need to learn a few lessons here. I think theres a bit of humility that each of us needs, especially leaders in Congress, which is, he tapped into something in this country that was very powerful, and people are sending a message to Washington that we need to learn from and listen to, but at the same time, now that we have a presumptive nominee, he was going to be our standard-bearer, I think its very important that theres a demonstration that our standards will be beared. I mean, that he will advance our appreciation for limited government, for the Constitution, for the proper role of the executive, for the principles that not built on our party, but built this country, and how were going to apply those principles to offer solutions and run Republicans can be proud of, and run a campaign that Americans can be proud of.

And yes, looking back on the primary campaign, I think theyre are instances and episodes that question that. Thats why I, at this point, am not ready to jump in. But I hope we can get there, and thats my goal.

TAPPER: You will be gavelling in the convention as the speaker of the House. If he hasnt been the Reagan-esque, Lincoln-esqe. Jack Kemp-esque nominee that you need him to be, that you want him to be in order for you to say that you support him, what are you going to do? Can you manage the convention if you havent yet decided that you can supported him?

RYAN: Look, I am just a guy giving you my peace of mind. I am a lifelong conservative, who feels passionate about these principals and how theyre necessary to save our country and get us on the right track. We are on the wrong track as a country, and we stayed on this road much further with Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders, its going to be ugly for this country. And so I desperately want to see us unify on principles, and ideas and policies, and on an agenda, and win the hearts and the minds of the vast majority of Americans and speak to everybody, and I am hoping thats where this goes. But I dont know that thats where thats going to go. As the chair of a convention, which is something as part of my duty as speaker of House, I will be the chair of the convention. Ill gavel the convention in, and Im hoping by then that this will be a unified party. But I think a lot of the burden is on the presumptive nominee to do that. And so well see. Thats all that I got for you.

TAPPER: But doesnt he have to completely revoke in order to become the man that can unite behind the principles and the polices that you support? Doesnt he completely have to say that he doesnt support the deportation of 12 million undocumented immigrants because you disagree with that? That he doesnt support

RYAN: No, no, Im not saying that at all.

TAPPER: He doesnt support banning all Muslims from entering the United States, because you dont support that?

RYAN: Look, who am I?

TAPPER: Youre the speaker of the house.

RYAN: Look, Im not saying hes got to support my policies.

TAPPER: Youre the speaker of the House.

RYAN: He won fair and square on his policies. And yes, he comes from a different wing of the party than the one I do.

But Ive got to tell you one thing, Jake, if we dont unify all wings of the party, were not going win the election.

So the question is, what can you do to unify all wings of the party to go forward?

And yes, were going to have policy disagreements. And on the Muslim ban I spoke out very forcefully on that, and if things like that continue and I feel the need out of conscious to speak out, Ill do that. I hope it doesnt come to that.

But the point Im trying to make here, Jake, is you know, you have to unify all wings of the Republican Party in a conservative movement, and then take it to the country so that America, the vast majority of Americans, non-Republicans also, have something that theyre proud to support and that were proud to be a part of. And weve got a ways to go from here to there. And thats the point Im trying to make.

So of course youre going to have policy disagreements. You always have policy disagreements. Heck, Mitt Romney and I had policy disagreements. So thats just natural, and its too much to ask someone to change their policy views that they were duly elected on, on some policy dispute. But are we putting our policies based upon the principles that all conservative and all Republicans share? You know, limited government, the Constitution, the right role for the executive?

(CROSSTALK)

TAPPER: Well, thats what I meant. I wasnt just citing those areas

RYAN: Those are the things that we all believe in, and we want to make sure our standard-bearer bears those standards, that our standard-bearer champions those, if you want to see a unified party, and thats the point Im trying to make, which is, I think for this to be successful, the party needs to be unified, and I think hes got some work to do, and Im happy to help him do that.

TAPPER: I cited those two things, not because I didnt think that you had rebuked him on the Muslim ban, the temporary ban, he proposed, but because they seem to go against, in your the view, the principles of the Republican Party in terms of religious liberty, in terms of free trade, in terms of deporting 12 million undocumented workers, but thats what I meant. Like, those are principles. Its not just policy agreements. Those are principal disagreements you have with them.

RYAN: Weve got work to do.

TAPPER: David Broke wrote this in the New York Times of a Trump nomination. Quote, This is a Joe McCarthy moment. People will be judged by where they stood at this time. Those who walk with Trump will be tainted forever after for the degradation of standards and the general election slaughter, unquote. Do you see it that way?

RYAN: I am not looking at it like that. I dont think its right to think about 2017 and beyond. Im focused on 2016, because I want 2016 in Congress to be successful, and where we actually tackle the countrys big challenges and get our country back on track.

I am focused on the here and now, and not the tomorrow. And just quite frankly, as a conservative, as a lifelong conservative, whos shared these values all of my life, I want to see our party unify, and Id love to see our standard-bearer celebrate the principles of our party, apply them to the problems. appeal to all Americans and run a principled, solutions-based campaign that we can all be proud of. And I do believe theres work that needs to be done for that to happen. Thats the point Im trying to make. And Im not worried whats after this election. This election right now is the one we need to focus on.

TAPPER: And just to be clear, sir  and I hate to be that guy  I know you hate it when we ask that question, youre still ruling out

RYAN: You asked it, like, three times.

TAPPER: No, this one. Just to be clear, youre still ruling out in any way you accepting any nomination of your party?

RYAN: Oh, yes, yes.

TAPPER: Okay. Just wanted to make sure of that. And then lastly, sir, just I guess the question is, what are the odds that he is going to be able to become the candidate you want him to be. You have a lot of work to be done. But quite frankly, Ive been covering him. Ive covered you. Is this chasm bridgeable?

RYAN: I think its possible. But this isnt  look, dont say this is about me. This is about we, the Republican Party, we the conservatives, who want a standard-bearer whos going to represent all of the full spectrum of conservatism and unify all factions of the party, but not just that Republicans can be proud of, that Americans can be part of, that can compete for the vast majority of Americans so that you can the election.

Like I said, weve been very successful as Republicans. One more big job ahead of us. And no less than the Supreme Court, Congress, and the future of America is at stake, and so for this to be successful, the party needs to be unified, and then we have to go out and win converts, and we have to do it in a way that appeals, thats enthusiastic. I believe that that can be done, but right now thats not where we are, and thats where we need to get to.

TAPPER: How worried are you of losing the Senate and possibly even the House?

RYAN: Say it again?

TAPPER: How worried are you of about Trump dragging down Republicans running for election in the Senate and the House?

RYAN: I just dont know that  one thing I think you can predict of this year, it is going to be unpredictable. So I just dont think you can draw parallels or make projections at this point. So I just think you always run like everything is on the line.

My focus this fall is, has been and will be the House majority. That is primarily my responsibility and what Im focused on. But I also really love this country and I want to see us win this election so that we can fix this countrys problems.

TAPPER: And lastly, sir. Mr. Trump said back in March that if you he was talking about you dont get along with him  youll  quote  have to pay a big price. Are you worried at all?

RYAN: No, Im not worried about that.

TAPPER: All right, House Speaker Paul Ryan. Thank you so much for your time, sir. Its always a pleasure to see you.

RYAN: You bet, Jake. Have a good one. Take care.
From ELLE

The issue of working motherhood has always been political, but in few workplaces is it more so than in the White House.

Since taking office, President Obama has supported more comprehensive paid leave policies and applauded those few states and companies that have passed them. He has tried to narrow the wage gap and has made it a point to at least bring the obstacles that encumber women at work to national attention.

Leading by example, he has reformed White House policies to make it an environment that welcomes working parents. Employees are granted up to 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave. Several new lactation rooms have been installed on the White House campus. And a premium has been placed on allowing the White House staff to be more mobile by introducing portable secure mobile workstations so that employees can work from home.

Between them, Cecilia Munoz , Jen Psaki, Amy Pope, Valerie Jarrett, and Paulette Aniskoff have seven children and some of the most essential responsibilities in the administration. Just before Mother's Day, here's what they had to say about workingand parentingin the White House.

Getting the offer...

Cecilia Munoz, director of the White House Domestic Policy Council, mother of two: "To be honest, I was reluctant to take the job. In fact, I turned the job down initially, because my daughters were teenagers and my mother had recently passed away. I was very, very focused on being the best mother I could be and was not sure that that was compatible with taking a White House job. So, I expressed how honored I was to be asked and politely said no. And the President-who was still the President elect, at the time-actually called me on my cellphone to convince me that I could do this and still be a good mom."

Jen Psaki, director of the White House Communications, mother of one: "When I came back to the White House, I was six months pregnant. And when Denis McDonough, the White House Chief of Staff, called me about coming back to the White House, I was about 4 months pregnant. It was a Saturday afternoon and I had just come back from running errands with my husband. My phone rings and [McDonough] says to me, 'We need you to come back and do this job.' In the 10 or 15 seconds it took me to respond, I remember thinking to myself, 'Well he clearly doesn't know I'm pregnant, and I'm going to tell him, and he'll wish me good luck and I'll be on my merry way.' And so I said, 'Well I'm so honored, but I'm expecting a baby in July and, you know" And he said, 'That's great! Congratulations! Well, we'll work it out.'"

Story continues

"I remember thinking to myself, 'Well he clearly doesn't know I'm pregnant.' And he said, 'That's great! Congratulations! Well, we'll work it out.'"

Amy Pope, Deputy Homeland Security Advisor and Deputy Assistant to the President at the National Security Council, mother of two: "The first time someone approached me about the job was when I was pregnant with my second child. At that point, there was just no way that I was willing to consider coming over here, especially to join in the National Security Council, where the reputation is that people work around the clock. And because so much of our work is done on classified systems, people work around the clock in the office. You cannot just take the work home. And so, I just flat-out rejected it."

...And deciding to take it

Cecilia Munoz: "We had family meetings about it because I wanted to make sure my girls understood that they were going to need to be more self-reliant, that I was going to be driving fewer carpools, making fewer meals."

"I just realized that personally my capacity and my ambition were greater than I had imagined them to be."

Valerie Jarrett, Senior Advisor to the President of the United States and Assistant to the President for Public Engagement and Intergovernmental Affairs, mother of one: "I really did talk to [my daughter] a lot about the position. At the time, she was in law school. And I was trying to decide whether it made sense to come to the White House or to make a run at being the President's replacement in the Senate. We talked it through in a very analytical and emotional conversation, and we concluded that this was the right spot for me."

Amy Pope: "When, Ali, my second, was a year old, a few things happened. First, I just realized that personally my capacity and my ambition were greater than I had imagined them to be. Second, my husband had started to work from home at that point, and he really enjoyed it and was really fulfilled in that. And then we hired an au pair, which gave us a lot more flexibility in terms of childcare. At that point, when the offer came, I was ready to take it."

Early words of encouragement

Cecilia Munoz: "When I came in, I was working under Valerie Jarrett who reassured me, being a single mom herself. And what she said to me, which I will never forget, is 'We're going to work really hard, but I promise you won't miss anything important.' And, you know, she was as good as her word."

Paulette Aniskoff, Deputy Assistant to the President and Director of the Office of Public Engagement, mother of one: "I actually had a pretty serious discussion with my boss before I got pregnant. She is a great boss. I work for Valerie Jarrett. I had sort of made the assumption that I might not be able to do my job with a kid and that was my own head-not anything that had been said to me or told to me-but I was very worried. I think the hours and the stress and sort of the lack of flexibility on a lot of days made me very worried. So before I even got pregnant, I had a conversation with my boss and said, 'I really want to start a family, and I just don't know how to do it with this job, so I wanted to talk to you about it before we got started.' I have a very close personal relationship with Valerie, so it didn't seem too weird. She said, 'I was a single mom. I had a huge amount of challenges. We are gonna make this work, if you want to stay.' We obviously followed up with some details after that, but her utter confidence and the fact that we could make it work and that she wanted me to stay completely changed my thought on whether or not I could do it."

Making demands

Jen Psaki: "I had the conversations early one-before I accepted the position. I knew I wanted 12 weeks of maternity leave, which worked out because [the White House was] about to change the policy, so that was great. But I also knew that I wanted to be able to pick up my daughter from daycare every day, if possible. Now, I don't always pick her up, but most days I do. I wanted to preserve that time between 5:45 and 7 p.m. when she went to sleep as time with her. That was incredibly important to me and I said so."

Valerie Jarrett: "When my child was about six, I adopted the policy that on Sundays I would only work if I was attending children-friendly events where she would be welcome, and that would be an enriching experience for her. Before that, I was working oftentimes seven days a week and it was [former Chicago Mayor Richard] Daley's wife who said to me, 'You need to make sure you set aside a day that is just for your daughter.' So, Mayor Daley didn't work on Sundays and that was because his wife had kind of laid down the law. So my modified version of that was to take Laura around with me, if I thought it'd be a great experience for her."

"I wanted to preserve that time between 5:45 and 7 p.m. when she went to sleep as time with her. That was incredibly important to me and I said so."

Getting over guilt

Cecilia Munoz: "My younger daughter was in middle school when I started. And when she was 16 I said to her one day, you know, 'How is this going? Are you really feeling okay with not getting as much of me as you used to?' And she looked at me and said, 'Mom, I'm 16. I'm not sure I really want you around that much.'"

"I think many women don't give themselves license to value their career or their job and while also recognizing they can be great mothers."

Jen Psaki: "The first week I was back was maybe one of the first times, having spent 15 years in Washington in campaigns and the government, that it really hit me that I enjoy working and that I am passionate about what I do and that I had chosen to do this even after having a child because this was important to me being the best woman and the best mom I could be. I think many women don't give themselves license to value their career or their job and while also recognizing they can be great mothers."

Paulette Aniskoff: "It was, on the emotional side, really tough to come back from leave. At my daycare, the first week of daycare is sort of a warm-up where you drop your kids off for just two hours and run an errand. It sort of warms you up to the concept of leaving your child somewhere. I did a lot of crying. And certainly the Friday before my first week of daycare when my child was eleven weeks old, I remember I was just very emotional and thinking what a special time it was to have my child. It was a very tough transition, emotionally. Then once I sort of got comfortable with my daycare after a few days, I actually felt that Philip, my son, was in great hands and really loved and would be fine no matter what. That said, it took me over a month to really get back into the rhythm of my job. ... There are just things that happen at the speed of light here and jumping back into the stream tends to be very difficult."

Letting it impact the work

Cecilia Munoz: "I cover education policy. And I have kids who came up through our neighborhood schools. When I was making policy decisions on driving the cost of higher education down, making college more affordable, I was paying two tuitions. I work on food and nutrition policy in support of the First Lady's extraordinary efforts. And my experiences of making nutritious meals that my kids would eat without very much time to make them has shaped a lot about what I think about both food and nutrition policy overall and the particular programs that provide resources to low-income families so they can put nutritious food on the table for their kids. I mean, my momhood informs my policymaking every day."

Amy Pope: "National security impacts mothers, children, families, everyone. But we haven't always approached the problems that way. We haven't always had a comprehensive or nuanced understanding of what's causing the problem and what the solution's going to be and who it's going to impact. And the way you get at that is by having a diverse representation of people solving the problem, which includes moms. Our decision-making community needs to be more reflective of our real communities."

Small strides

Cecilia Munoz: "I was one of the first people here to get a laptop. We had regular computers, but no laptops. And I believe it was the First Lady who played a significant role in encouraging that the working parents get laptops and that we get them first. And that made a difference in my ability to get home at the end of the day and still get my job done."

"I believe it was the First Lady who played a significant role in encouraging that the working parents get laptops and that we get them first."

Amy Pope: "Having Susan Rice come in as our National Security Advisor has been really important. First, she's a mom. And, second, she deliberately makes a point of talking to people as if they're people, acknowledging the whole person and realizing what they need. She started to look at how could we reform the National Security Council, because it's a brutal place to work sometimes. So, a group of moms and a group of dads, too, actually, put together a list of policy proposals that we presented to her. She was very open and responsive to it. When I first joined the NSC, the national security advisor was a man, the homeland and counterterrorism advisor, was a man. The person in this job before me was a man. We had very few women, much less moms, in these key leadership roles. That has changed tremendously over the past three years. And with that change, there's been a lot more positive acknowledgement of what it means to be a parent and have a life outside of this place."

And setbacks

Jen Psaki: "When I was about 8 and a half months pregnant, there was a television correspondent who came in to meet with [White House Press Secretary] Josh Earnest and me. I was extremely pregnant. During the entire meeting, this person did not really look at me or address questions to me at all. Josh, who is also a father, kept saying, 'Well, Jen might be the right person to talk about that, you should ask Jen about that.' At the end of the meeting, I said to this television correspondent, 'You know, I'm happy to talk to you any time you need help or answer any questions you have.' And he responded, 'Well, I just don't know if I'll ever see you again.'"

Valerie Jarrett: "From day one, I always said, 'If my daughter calls me during my work hours, no matter what, I was to be interrupted so I could take the call.' My mother was a working mom and she had that policy. It always put me at ease as a kid, knowing that I could reach her. I remember I parted ways with an assistant once who didn't put my daughter through because she said, 'Well your daughter said it wasn't important.' And I said, 'It's not up to a five-year-old to decide if it's important. If she picked up the phone and called me, it's important.' I can tell within the first 30 seconds whether it's really important or whether I can call her back, but I wanted to be the one to make that decision."

"I parted ways with an assistant once who didn't put my daughter through because she said, 'Well your daughter said it wasn't important.' And I said, 'It's not up to a five-year-old to decide if it's important.'"

Amy Pope: "When I was pregnant the first time, I was up on the Hill. And I was really struggling. There are some jobs on the Hill that are terrific to work in and have children. My job was not one of those. And as I started to get closer to the birth of my first child, I started to worry. How am I going to do this? Who's going to take care of my kid? My husband wasn't working at home at the time. How are we going to manage this? And there were no other moms working for this senator. I just decided to leave. So, I left the Hill shortly after Charlotte was born, and I went into a policy job at the Justice Department in the criminal division. My boss was someone I had known for a long time. I knew he would give me a lot of flexibility. I knew he would value the work and give me lots of opportunities to work from home or otherwise manage my schedule. That was how I made it through my first year."

Making it work

Cecilia Munoz: "My husband and I approached this from the very beginning as something we were doing together. There was no such thing as a 'mommy job' or a 'daddy job,' except for nursing; I was the only one who could do that."

Jen Psaki: "A couple weeks ago, my daughter had a low-grade fever of maybe 100 degrees. I picked her up from daycare, but I had to go to two meetings at the White House. So, I took her to the White House and I had never done that before. I just felt I couldn't miss the meetings. So, Denis [McDonough] changed her diaper and took her outside on the lawn and on the swing. She played in the outer Oval Office with the President's assistant and some of his personal staff for a while. I got out of the meetings and there she was, just spending time with my colleagues. That's obviously not an everyday occurrence at all, but I've been really touched by the support network that I have found over the last 9 or 10 months here."

Valerie Jarrett: "I'm a single mom and I just couldn't have done it without my parents. My father took Laura to school and picked her up almost every day, starting in nursery school and continuing until she graduated from high school. Because she didn't have a father in her life, he really stepped in. And Laura's caregiver, who began working with us at the time she was three months old and who I think in 18 years maybe missed two days of work, was also really important. That love and support from my parents and that continuity of care really enabled me to be able to go to work and be productive. I've heard it often said by the First Lady, and it's so true: If you are worried about your children, you physically cannot breathe. And unfortunately too many moms and dads are concerned about the quality of their childcare and it has a definite impact on their productivity at work."

Paulette Aniskoff: "I am incredibly lucky that I have a door that actually closes, so I have this pumping station set up on top of a mini fridge that I brought in just for my milk. We do have two really great facilities here for pumping, but because I have a closed door and my computer can be in front of me, it's just me with a breast pump usually three times a day. I was joking with Jen Psaki that my outfit behind closed doors is a breast pump with a statement necklace. It's very chic."

"My outfit behind closed doors is like a breast pump with a statement necklace. It's very chic."

Amy Pope: "When I joined the National Security Council, I created a group called NSC Moms. I just needed to identify other women who were in the same position that I was in and to try to create a community of support. There were about a dozen of us. And the initial meetings were just lunchtime meetings where we'd talk about what it's like to be a mom, how you find your caregiver, what do you do about finding some place to get dinner. All that. And after I was promoted, I kept that going. It's very selfish, really. It's as much about finding a network of support for myself as it is for providing a network of support for other moms. In the past few months we've expanded to become [Executive Office of the President] Moms. We've asked people like Valerie Jarrett and Cecilia Munoz and Tina Tchen and other moms who are in senior leadership positions to come and speak to the group and talk about how they've done it and how they've balanced it. For me, that's very sustaining. My number one goal is to keep moms at the table, especially at the National Security table, where I feel like the voice is often missing, but very valuable.

Dispelling the myth

Cecilia Munoz: "There's a lot of additional activities like getting face time in the office or going to events in the evening that I kind of stopped doing when my kids were born because it was important that I pick them up at daycare and also because it is important to have family time. The conventional wisdom is that really hurts your career, if you do that. But I've found in this tough and competitive town that I work in that my career turned out to be fine."

"I don't think there is balance. I think you just have to pick your priorities and try to stick to them and not feel bad about it."

Amy Pope: "I grew up in a very conservative, Christian community. I was one of 5 children and the oldest of 4 girls. My father's perspective was, well, women can be leaders of other women. I always chafed at that. The idea that was put out for me of, 'Well, someday you'll get married and have kids.' That was what I was supposed to do, and that was going to be the end of the story. But it just made me more determined to do it than ever before. For me, the biggest incentive to do more work is when somebody tells me I can't do it. It has always been very important to me to disprove the notion that you can't do both."

Paulette Aniskoff: "Ninety percent of moms or non-moms ask me or give me advice about balance, and I don't think there is balance. I think you just have to pick your priorities and try to stick to them and not feel bad about it. I don't think I'm going to be in the best shape of my life or feel like my house is super clean all the time or get all my reading done. I mean, I'm just never going to have the balance where I'm getting everything done and feeling very good about it, and I don't care! You have to pick what's important to you. We are way behind on our errands and we are way behind on our house being clean and we are not getting done all the things that would be on our to-do list and we frankly don't see as many of our friends all the time. That's okay. You just have to reshuffle and do what's most important to you and your family."

Paying it forward

Cecilia Munoz: "Men and women-take all of your leave. And don't let anyone make you feel bad at daycare. Your children are going to be wonderful. My kids were in a daycare, too, and now they're just fine."

"The fact that we've had a number of moms, women, get pregnant and the come back into still powerful, influential roles, and stay in those jobs, is huge. That's what I'd like to see across America."

Amy Pope: "When I was looking at the primaries eight years ago between Senator Clinton and then-Senator Obama, it would not have occurred to me then that Senator Obama would be so good to moms and women. It was not an obvious attribute of his campaign. But in real life, he has done so much to advance women and put women in positions of leadership and empower women's voices. Frankly, the fact that we've had a number of moms, women, get pregnant and the come back into still powerful, influential roles, and stay in those jobs, is huge. That's what I'd like to see across America."

These interviews have been lightly edited and condensed.
Washington (AFP) - The Pentagon acknowledged for the first time Friday it has deployed US troops to Yemen since the country's collapse last year to bolster government and Arab coalition forces battling Al-Qaeda.

Spokesman Navy Captain Jeff Davis said the US military has also stepped up air strikes against fighters with Yemen-based Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP).

A "very small number" of American military personnel has been working from a "fixed location" with Yemeni and Arab coalition forces -- especially the Emiratis -- in recent weeks around Mukalla, a port city seized by AQAP a year ago, Davis said.

"This is of great interest to us. It does not serve our interests to have a terrorist organization in charge of a port city, and so we are assisting in that," the spokesman added.

He said the troops were helping the Emiratis with "intelligence support," but declined to say if they are special operations forces.

AQAP fighters have now fled Mukalla and other coastal areas, due to the government offensive.

While the number of US personnel on the ground is limited, the United States is also offering an array of assistance to partners in Yemen, including air-to-air refueling capabilities, surveillance, planning, maritime security and medical help.

The Pentagon previously had more than 100 special operations forces advising the army in Yemen, but pulled them out early last year as the country collapsed.

The US Navy also has several ships nearby, including an amphibious assault ship called the USS Boxer and two destroyers.

AQAP took advantage of the chaos of fighting between pro-government forces and Iran-backed Huthi rebels to expand its control in southern Yemen, including the seizure of Mukalla.

The Huthis denounced the return of the US military "with their weapons in southern Yemen and Al-Anad airbase," the largest in the country.

American personnel had been deployed at the base gathering intelligence for drone strikes on Al-Qaeda until they pulled out in March last year, shortly before the Huthis overran the area.

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In a statement posted online, the Huthis threatened to "fight with all our means" the US and UAE presence in southern Yemen.

Pro-government forces backed by the Saudi-led coalition recaptured Al-Anad and other southern areas from the Huthis last year, but the rebels still control large parts of the country, including the capital Sanaa.

The Pentagon announced it has carried out a string of strikes on Al-Qaeda in recent weeks, outside of Mukalla.

"We have conducted four counterterrorism strikes against AQAP since April 23, killing 10 Al-Qaeda operatives and injuring another," Davis said.

As pro-government forces have battled the Huthis, there has been no let-up in the US air war against AQAP, which Washington regards as the network's most dangerous branch.

A March strike on an AQAP training camp west of Mukalla killed more than 70 fighters.

The group, which has long been entrenched in Yemen, claimed responsibility for last year's deadly attack in Paris on the staff of satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, and has been linked to more than one attempt to blow up aircraft bound for the United States.

The Yemen conflict has killed more than 6,400 people and displaced 2.8 million since March last year.
From Seventeen

I spent the majority of my high school years convinced that failing to get into an Ivy league school meant spending the rest of my days living in a cardboard box. Part of that idea came from growing up in an immigrant community where the predominant attitude toward college was that if they hadn't heard of it, then it didn't exist. And the other part of it was because every teen movie I watched made it seem like if you had any chance of success in life, you had your pick of prestigious colleges to choose from.

So, I lived in pursuit of the goal to get into an elite university. I spent my days feverishly taking notes and my nights cramming for tests. I took on a variety of random extracurricular activities, like babysitting blind children and making food for the homeless (honorable pursuits, for sure, but ones that said nothing about who I was as a person). "I'm going to live in a box!" I wailed in the hallway, when I got an 88 in a chemistry class that ruined my pristine 96.5 average.

Our college guidance office was rubbish, because rather than talking through our interests and options they simply pointed to a heavy, super boring tome of every college's statistics that looked like it belonged in Lord of the Rings. So, naturally, I made my choices based on movies and television shows.

When I got rejected from Yale (the only Ivy I applied to, thanks to Rory Gilmore), I ultimately picked Sarah Lawrence and told people it was because it had a great writing program when really it was because it had been attended by both Kat in 10 Things I Hate About You and Allie from The Notebook. As far as I was concerned, I was set; I was living the dream.

I got rejected from Yale (the only Ivy I applied to, thanks to Rory Gilmore)

Ten years later, when I look back on my college years, I am filled with fond memories but also cheek-burning regret. Regret over choosing such a fancy school in spite of the financial strain, regret over how I approached the experience, and, most of all perhaps, regret over not taking time off before heading to college.

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Now I firmly believe that people go to college too early in the States, because at 18 years old you can't possibly know what you want in life, nor can you truly comprehend the monetary value of the experience. It's becoming increasingly popular in America for people to take a "gap year" after their senior year of high school. But in my school during the early '00s, no kids even considered doing a gap year, for fear of becoming a "college dropout."

"If you don't go to college now, you'll never go," I remember a teacher cautioning a friend of mine who spoke of traveling around Europe for a year (which ultimately he decided not to do, for just that reason).

I'd always dreamed of living in England, so I decided to study abroad at Oxford during my junior year, which was when I realized how ridiculous that teacher's advice about dropping out really was. In Europe and Australia, it's customary for people to take a "gap year" before college, and my British peers had spent those months having incredible adventures, like backpacking through China and working with elephants in India and volunteering at hospitals in Romania.

In Europe and Australia, it's customary for people to take a "gap year" before college

The year off had imbued them with a certain degree of confidence and a better understanding of what they wanted from life, and had given them enough freedom to crave the structure of academia once more. But most importantly, their stint in the "real world" enabled them to view going to college as a choice, as something that they needed to get something out of because they or their parents were paying money for it.

When I went to Sarah Lawrence I, like my peers, saw college as something that merely happened to you. It was not a decision, it was just the natural procession of life. And even though I did well because I inherently enjoy learning, I made a lot of the same mistakes that my friends made, mistakes that television shows and movies made out to be normal. I cut class to sleep in, I showed up to seminars in my pajamas, I pulled all-nighters, I neglected to read books and then just BS'ed my way through class. I did all of this because I thought of college as an experience - something to get through as opposed to an economic investment.

Even though I didn't grow up in a rich family and spent every summer working, I had never budgeted anything or had to fend for myself, so money was still an abstract notion to me. My father had to take out $200,000 worth of loans to pay for Sarah Lawrence, which, incidentally, he's still bitter about. Still, when I cut class, I saw it as being part of the "college experience," when I should have seen it as throwing $1,000 of my father's hard-earned dollars down the drain.

When I cut class, I saw it as being part of the "college experience"

I felt like I had learned so much during my year abroad at Oxford that when I finished my senior year, I couldn't wait to go abroad again. I spent a year teaching English in the Czech Republic and Russia before going back to Oxford to do a Masters in Comparative Literature. I applied for the Masters program because the insecurity of not getting into Yale in high school stupidly lingered with me even as a 21-year-old, and I wanted to prove to myself that I could get into such a fancy school as a proper student and not just a transfer.

I applied for the Masters program because the insecurity of not getting into Yale in high school stupidly lingered with me even as a 21-year-old

Looking back, I wish I had spent a few more years teaching English around the world, but instead I headed back to Oxford. I claimed I went back so quickly because I wanted to jumpstart my career as an academic, but really I was just still madly in love with the guy I left there.

But this time around, having spent a year in the labor force, I was actually aware of the monetary value of my education. I took out a student loan for $27,000 to cover my one-year graduate degree and went into the program with the intention of making the investment worthwhile (which I did, earned a coveted First Class Degree).

Unfortunately, I fell into the trap of yet another collegiate myth. This one is called "I'm going to a super prestigious university so my loans don't matter because I will be super successful right after graduating." It's a myth that Oxford cultivates, even if you're doing a degree in Comp Lit, because everyone around you acts as though you will walk right out of the academic gates to a throng of hiring managers offering six-figure salaries on silver platters.

Everyone around you acts as though you will walk right out of the academic gates to a throng of hiring managers offering six-figure salaries

I had been weaned on English literature and had dreamed of going to Oxford my whole life, so I cannot say I regret going there for either my year abroad or my Masters; my social and intellectual experience was everything I'd fantasized about and more. I sipped champagne and ate strawberries while punting down a river with friends wearing pocket watches and cravats on a languorous summer day. I engaged in uproarious intellectual banter over the etymology of various words, and spent entire days lost in literature and entire nights rapturously typing essays at my laptop. I fell in love, and have never been and never will be as happy as I was riding my bicycle from his enchanted dorm room to the library, under the sun and the shade of those dreaming spires. I feel that way even now, long after the relationship is over.

But, career-wise, it's a very different story. Upon graduating in 2012, I moved back to New York and found myself getting rejected from every job imaginable, the low point being not ever hearing back from a remote, part-time gig as a copywriter for a website in India. I quickly found that the only place where my Masters degree from Oxford was valuable was my online dating profile.

I quickly found that the only place where my Masters degree from Oxford was valuable was my online dating profile.

At the time, I was furious and flabbergasted. I had a first class degree from Oxford. How could this be. My friends were all having the same problem, and we commiserated over Skype while sitting in our parents' basements, reminiscing over those days long ago (aka six weeks) when we had been filled with such hopeful, naive promise.

I felt deceived and cheated by my teachers, by my parents, by pop culture itself. All of those years I had spent with my head buried in a book, all of that money my parents and I had poured into my education, it all felt like a complete waste. When my student loan payments kicked in and I realized that the interest would basically mean I was paying them until the day I died, I wanted to throw my computer out of a window.

"This whole school system is just a Ponzi scheme," I complained, my friends sadly nodding their heads in agreement.

The thing that no one ever tells you is that nobody cares about what you did; people only care about what you can do. Professionally, this is the most important realization I have ever made. I still have friends who can't find jobs in the magazine industry because they are still allured by the myth of prestige. They still spend all of their time interning and applying for graduate programs in theater criticism at Columbia, but they come out from it with nothing but an intimate knowledge of corporate filing cabinets and a greater ability to speak confidently about Samual Beckett. There's a big difference between wanting to be a writer and wanting to write, and I had to decide for myself if I was the former or the latter: I was the latter.

Nobody cares about what you did; people only care about what you can do.

When I came to the realization that I could no longer use prestige as a crutch, and that what I needed to succeed in life was to actually prove what I was capable of, it was terrifying, because hiding behind fancy schools and programs was all I'd ever known. But I pushed through and spent years producing and publishing essays anywhere and everywhere I could. And, ultimately, my dream job at Hearst found me. After two years of empty job applications, one of the best roles in the industry sought me out, because the hiring managers were familiar with my work.



I do not, in any way, want to discourage people from attending an Ivy League school or its international equivalent. I just want to express, to all the little Dianas out there, that you don't NEED to go to one.

If I could go back in time, I would still choose to attend Sarah Lawrence and Oxford, but I would give myself the following advice: Take a gap year. Apply for financial aid, and if you don't get it at your version of Sarah Lawrence, choose a school that will give it to you and then rock your socks off there. Focus on what you're getting out of it, as opposed to what you're doing. Make sure that you're getting your degree for the right reasons. Go to class. And, for god's sake, take off your pajamas and put on some actual pants.
By Emily Stephenson and Susan Cornwell

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The top elected Republican, Paul Ryan, said on Thursday he was not ready to endorse Donald Trump, a sign of the challenges the party's presumptive presidential nominee faces rallying the Republican establishment behind his White House bid.

Ryan, the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, said conservatives wanted to know if Trump shares their values.

"I hope to support our nominee, I hope to support his candidacy fully," Ryan said on CNN. "At this point, I'm just not there right now."

Trump, who has built a huge following with an anti-establishment message, shot back at Ryan in a statement.

"I am not ready to support Speaker Ryan's agenda. Perhaps in the future we can work together and come to an agreement about what is best for the American people," he said.

The Republican National Committee, under pressure to unify the party or face an electoral rout in the Nov. 8 election, said Ryan and Trump were expected to meet soon. It added that "only a united Republican Party will be able to beat Hillary Clinton."

"We respect Speaker Ryans opinion and believe that since the primary ended early we will have time to unify. We anticipate the two meeting soon to begin to help unite the party," said RNC spokeswoman Lindsay Walters.

Trump's last remaining rivals in the Republican race, U.S. Senator Ted Cruz and Ohio Governor John Kasich, dropped out this week, clearing the New York billionaire's path to be picked as the presidential nominee. He will likely face Clinton, the Democratic front-runner, in the Nov. 8 general election.

Many Republicans have grappled this week with whether to support Trump, who has deviated from the party line on trade and upset the party establishment with offensive comments about women and immigrants. Trump on Thursday announced a new campaign finance chairman in response to questions about his readiness for a general election race.

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TAKING ON CLINTON

Trump, speaking to thousands at a rally in Charleston, West Virginia, on Thursday night, sharpened his criticism of Clinton, the kind of tactic that some Republican strategists believe will help unify the party.

He blasted Clinton for saying recently she would impose clean-energy policies that would put coal miners out of business. He put on a hard hat presented to him by the state's coal miners' association and made a shoveling motion.

"And for those miners, get ready: You're going to be working your asses off," he said.

In a sign some Republicans are rallying around Trump, Nebraska Governor Pete Ricketts, whose family has helped bankroll the anti-Trump group Our Principles, is set to endorse Trump on Friday when the candidate visits Omaha.

Former Texas Governor Rick Perry, who ran unsuccessfully for the 2016 nomination, told CNN he now supported Trump as well.

Ryan criticized Trump in December for proposing to temporarily ban all Muslims from entering the United States and knocked him in March for failing to denounce white supremacist groups during a television interview.

The House speaker, who was the running mate of Republican 2012 presidential nominee Mitt Romney, a harsh Trump critic, said he hoped the party would be unified by this summer but that the pressure was on Trump to do that.

He won fair and square," Ryan said of Trump, acknowledging his own policy differences with the New York billionaire businessman. He added: "If we dont unify all wings of the party, were not going to win this election."

Ryan repeatedly denied interest in running for president this year despite attempts to draft him by some in his party. He has been putting together a policy plan for House Republicans to campaign on, which he says will be released before the convention in July.

CAMPAIGN FUNDRAISING

Trump on Thursday began shifting focus from the bruising primary campaign to the general election. He has largely used his own money for his primary fight but plans to follow the more typical path of raising money from outside sources for the general election to succeed Democratic President Barack Obama.

He named his campaign finance chief on Thursday - Steven Mnuchin, a former Goldman Sachs partner who is chief executive of private investment firm Dune Capital Management and with whom Trump worked in a business capacity in the past.

Mnuchin has a long history of political donations, including to Clinton. Since 1998, Mnuchin has given about $71,000 to Democrats, compared with about $37,000 to Republicans. Republicans have questioned Trump's loyalty to the party because he also donated to Democratic candidates in the past.

U.S. Representative Renee Ellmers, a Republican from North Carolina who has endorsed Trump, told Reuters the campaign would begin raising money for the party.

"They are going to start understanding and realizing that in order to grow this operation, they will need to grow funds, not only for him and for the campaign to beat Hillary Clinton, but for the Republican Party itself," Ellmers said.

Historically, political parties have depended on their nominees to raise money in order to fund their other operations, including working to elect members of the House of Representatives and Senate.

One key worry for Republicans has been that their candidates for Congress and other elective positions could suffer with the divisive figure of Trump at the top of the ticket.

Ron Bonjean, a Republican strategist, said Ryan gave lawmakers in his party cover to steer clear of Trump in their re-election campaigns.

"He is positioning the Republican conference and giving Republicans a message they can hold onto," Bonjean said.

(Additional reporting by Steve Holland in Charleston, W.V., Doina Chiacu, Megan Cassella, Jason Lange, Ginger Gibson and Richard Cowan in Washington, and Richard Leong in New York; Writing by Emily Stephenson; Editing by Peter Cooney)
National political conventions, by their very nature, set the stage for shenanigans that elevate security concerns.

For example, nearly 2,000 protestors, bystanders, legal observers and journalists were arrested when New York City hosted the Republican National Convention in 2004. Then in 2008, police fired tear gas during clashes with protestors at the RNC in St. Paul, Minn.

As the election cycle funnels toward the Republican National Convention to be held in Cleveland in July, consider the following factors that have some fearing a summer pressure-cooker scenario.

Citing security concerns, city officials have been pretty tight-lipped about their plans to keep order when an estimated 50,000 conventioneers and demonstrators descend on downtown Cleveland between July 18 and 21.

But public records and other documents reveal the city is stockpiling supplies to prepare for the rowdiest possible scenarios, amassing thousands of riot suits and miles of barricades.

Heres our breakdown by the numbers:

4,000-plus officers

About 600 of the Cleveland Division of Polices 1,600 officers will be assigned to the convention, with another 3,500 officers on loan from agencies across the country. One solicitation requested 240 tactical officers and three armored S.W.A.T. vehicles. They want Mobile Field Force officers so they have the option of deploying them if events get out of hand, an official with an Illinois law enforcement consortium wrote in August.

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2,000 riot-gear suits

Cleveland will spend $565,440 on an estimated 2,000 police riot suits. A city invitation for bids requested the suits be as good or better than the latest design from HWI Gear, Inc., a top manufacturer. The Elite Defender riot suit is built with a special suspension hard shell design which maximizes shock absorption and protection, the maker says in promotional materials.

$10 million for protest insurance

In late March, Cleveland approved paying $1.5 million for an insurance broker to assess the citys risks and help it obtain a law enforcement liability insurance policy. A contract seeking police reinforcements says the coverage limit is $10 million. New York City paid nearly $18 million to settle hundreds of federal civil lawsuits brought by people who said they were unfairly arrested during the 2004 RNC. Since then, other host cities  like St. Paul, Tampa and Charlotte  have invested in protest insurance.



100 bulletproof vests for firefighters

Cleveland firefighters want protection too. Officials plan to buy them 100 vests to guard against ballistic threats. The model requested offers the highest blunt trauma protection rating in soft body armor, according to Bullet Proof Me. The best for very high-risk situations to cover more of the uncommon or unusual threats.

3.7 miles of steel barricades

According to a solicitation for bids, the host city wants nearly 4 miles of interlocking barriers to be set up in and around Quicken Loans Arena, home of the NBAs Cleveland Cavaliers.



2,000 tactical batons

More than $283,000 will go towards acquiring 2,000 police batons that extend to 26 inches. With this expandable baton, you can feel the kinetic surge as this baton snaps to attention, according to a CopsPlus.com review. Even the sound of opening it commands attention.

300 police bicycles

Clevelands plan calls for $386,800 to purchase 300 new police bicycles and armored riding jackets like those made for competitive off-road cyclists. One reviewer called it the ultimate battle suit.

24 ballistic helmets, vest shields and other gear

Nearly $107,000 is being spent for two dozen ballistic helmets, vest shields and related accessories. The desired helmet offers the same level of protection as the U.S. Army enhanced combat helmet, according to the manufacturer.





Who pays for all this? We all do. Since 2000, the federal government has deemed presidential nominating conventions to be potential targets for terrorism or other criminal activity. Calling the conventions National Special Security Events, Congress approved $50 million to fund each the 2016 host cities, Cleveland and Philadelphia. Cleveland officials have said their federal funds includes $20 million for food, housing, material and equipment, and $30 million for travel, salaries and overtime for the personnel.



We are confident that the Cleveland Police Department will ensure that everyone is safe and free to exercise their constitutional rights of free speech, Cleveland City Council President Kevin J. Kelley recently said.



Jason Sickles is a national reporter for Yahoo News. Follow him on Twitter (@jasonsickles).


From Esquire

I think it's not necessarily a bad thing if the Democrats offer a ratty blanket and a bowl of hot graywater soup to any Republican who wants to escape the clammy embrace of their presumptive presidential nominee. This is fine as long as they speak in their low inside voices and don't get in the way of the party's real job of using He, Trump to hand the Republicans a defeat that crushes them back to sanity. For example, New Hampshire Republicans are welcome, as long as they don't interfere with the happy work of turning Senator Kelly Ayotte into a pretzel. The folks at WMUR in Manchester have been tracking the contortions.

The morning after Donald Trump became the presumptive presidential nominee of the Republican Party, U.S. Sen. Kelly Ayotte, through a spokeswoman, made it official that she plans to support him. But in an updated statement, the spokeswoman said that "as a candidate herself," Ayotte is not planning to endorse Trump. Ayotte, who will likely run on the same ticket in New Hampshire as the New York businessman, has been regularly asked by the media and Democrats to say if she will back him given his string of controversial comments. In March and again as recently as last week, Ayotte spokeswoman Liz Johnson told WMUR.com that Ayotte "intends to support the Republican nominee. However, she would like to see how the process plays out." Now that the process has virtually played out, and the Republican National Committee has recognized Trump as the presumptive nominee, Johnson told WMUR.com on Wednesday morning in a brief statement: "As she's said from the beginning, Kelly plans to support the nominee." Later Wednesday morning, however, spokeswoman Johnson added: "As a candidate herself, she hasn't and isn't planning to endorse anyone in this cycle."

If the Democratic Party has the brains god gave a duck, it will hang He, Trump around Ayotte's neck like a dead raccoon. It will do the same thing to Rob Portman in Ohio and Pat Toomey in Pennsylvania and Ron (Shreds of Freedom) Johnson in Wisconsin. (Ayotte's running pals, Lindsey Graham and John McCain, are studies in abject terror on the subject.) He, Trump is not only the Republican party's presumptive presidential nominee, he has won that distinction in an overwhelming fashion. He won the most votes. He won all over the country. He defeated 17 other candidates, some of them the most ballyhooed rising stars of the GOP. Beyond question, he is the person that the majority of Republican voters want to run for president. At the very least, making the Talleyrand Of Tuftenboro do this support-but-not-endorse Ayotte gavotte for the next seven months will be damned entertaining.

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From Esquire

Just when you thought it was over, and the Republican Party was riding to its doom over a cliff of its own devising, there comes a voice from the west, a young man of strong convictions and principles as hard as the sod busted by the people who first settled the great state of Nebraska, a mighty wind blowing clear and strong and fearless against the foul gusts of Trumpian triumph that have enveloped entire cable television networks in their cyclonic embrace. Will a grateful nation raise its eyes to him and, girding its loins once again, follow into battle this gleaming paladin of the Plains

Ben Sasse.

(Most Of The American People: "Who the fck is Ben Sasse when he's at home?")

Shuddup, ya heathen bastids.

We in the shebeen have encountered young Sasse before. He was responsible for one of the creepiest campaign advertisements ever:

He was the Tea Party darling elected to the Senate from Nebraska. His faith in the Constitution handed down to the Founders by Jesus His Own Self is firm and unshakable. Most recently, he showed up in Iowa prior to the caucuses in February and pronounced himself willing to campaign for any of the 16 other candidates against He, Trump. I have to admit, I rather liked that idea, although, in retrospect, it pretty much didn't work, as the last two weeks have shown.

Now, though, young Ben has mounted the parapets of Facebook to defend America against the onslaught of drunken bros in fake Oakleys and the vulgar talking yam who leads them-oh, and also against Hillary Rodham Clinton, who scares all the moms at Walmart. From Young Ben's Facebook page:

If you are one of those rare souls who genuinely believe Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are honorable people-if they are the role models you want for your kids-then this letter is not for you. Instead, this letter is for the majority of Americans who wonder why the nation that put a man on the moon can't find a healthy leader who can take us forward together. I want to tell you about four unsolicited conversations from the Fremont Wal-Mart this morning:

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**Retired union Democrat meat-packer:

"What the heck is wrong with that city where you work? Why can't they give us a normal person? Is it really so hard?"

Me: "Actually, it is for them-because most people in DC buy the nonsense that DC is the center of the world. You and I, despite our party differences, both agree that Fremont is the center."

Union Democrat (interrupting): "Because this is where my grandkids are."

**Young evangelical mom:

"I want to cry. I disagree with Hillary Clinton on almost every single thing  but I will vote for her before Trump. I could never tell my kids later that I voted for that man."

**Middle-aged Republican male (more political than the other folks):

"It feels like the train-car to hell is accelerating. Why is DC more filled with weirdos and yet more powerful at the same time? How do we slow this down long enough to have a conversation about actually fixing our country?"

**Trump supporter (again, unsolicited):

"Please understand: I'm going to vote for him, but I don't like him. And I don't trust him-I mean, I'm not stupid. But how else can I send a signal to Washington?!"

Ben, you want to know how he, Trump became your party's presumptive presidential nominee? It's because there are people in this country who believe Fremont is the center of the world. That seems to include you. I am stipulating, for the moment, that these good folks actually exist.

Of course, young Ben also has some policy prescriptions to share-if the country would be so kind as to look to the Fremont Wal Mart for its handsome, youthful savior. (He came to these conclusions "while sitting down by the river." Barefoot and brandishing a cane pole, and chewing on a long weed between his teeth, no doubt.) Lo and behold, young Ben's prescription for a new and more United States pretty much depends on getting everyone to agree that the extremist form of conservatism that elected him to the Senate is the way to go.

So...let's have a thought experiment for a few weeks: Why shouldn't America draft an honest leader who will focus on 70% solutions for the next four years? You know...an adult?

Things that already are at least 70% solutions: background checks on gun purchases and expanding Social Security benefits. Let's get going, America!

No, wait.

(Two notes for reporters: Such a leader should be able to campaign 24/7 for the next six months. Therefore he/she likely can't be an engaged parent with little kids. Although I'm one of the most conservative members of the Senate, I'm not interested in an ideological purity test, because even a genuine consensus candidate would almost certainly be more conservative than either of the two dishonest liberals now leading the two national parties.)

Objection, Your Honor. Assumes facts not in evidence.

Imagine if we had a candidate:

...who hadn't spent his/her life in politics either buying politicians or being boughtwho didn't want to stitch together a coalition based on anger but wanted to take a whole nation forwardwho pledged to serve for only one term, as a care-taker problem-solver for this messy momentwho knew that Washington isn't competent to micromanage the lives of free people, but instead wanted to SERVE by focusing on 3 or 4 big national problems, such as:

Background checks? Expanding Social Security? Oh, heck fire, no.

A national security strategy for the age of cyber and jihad; B. Honest budgeting/entitlement reform so that we stop stealing from future generations; C. Empowering states and local governments to improve K-12 education, and letting Washington figure out how to update federal programs to adjust to now needing lifelong learners in an age where folks are obviously not going to work at a single job for a lifetime anymore; and D. Retiring career politicians by ending all the incumbency protections, special rules, and revolving door opportunities for folks who should be public "servants," not masters.

In other words, elect John Kasich!

Sasse's bold call to arms has won him at least one important fan: Butcher's Bill Kristol went on CNN and pronounced himself intrigued. If the ace political scout who brought us the titans that are Dan Quayle and Sarah Palin decided I was the next dark horse he'd back, I'd get out of the business. But that's just me.

I'm not with Trump, but I'm not with her, so I'm looking for an independent candidate. I think there-Ben Sasse, Senator from Nebraska, very bright, young, promising senator has said he can't support Donald Trump and he doesn't want to support Hillary Clinton. Let Ben Sasse run, he can take Nikki Haley, the governor of South Carolina, who would not accept being Trump's vice-presidential candidate. Maybe she would like to run with Sasse, they can argue about which order to have the ticket in. So, I'm saying right here on CNN, Sasse, Haley, Haley, Sasse, they're both fine with me.

So, in brief, the principled conservative alternative to He, Trump is a Harvard undergrad, Yale grad kabuki hick, and a pious one-term wonder whose basic policy prescriptions are No Labels gruel laced with Heritage Foundation hot sauce. I do so despair of the rebranding.

Go grab some bench, rook.

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It took Madison Bumgarner a little while to get going last year after turning in a magical 2014 postseason performance, but he figured it out by the beginning of May.

He's on the same track this season with an identical ERA entering his second start of the month, which comes Friday night as the San Francisco Giants try to even their home series with the Colorado Rockies.

Bumgarner (3-2, 3.03 ERA) was 3-1 with a 3.03 mark through six starts last season after seeing his ERA go as high as 5.40 in April, which is what it was after one start this year. After giving up six hits in six scoreless innings of a 6-1 win at the New York Mets on Saturday, the left-hander has won consecutive starts and given up two runs and 12 hits in 12 2/3 innings with 16 strikeouts.

He said he's nearing midseason form.

"It didn't feel like I was 100 percent where I'd like to be, but it was really close," Bumgarner said.

Bumgarner has won his last three starts against the Rockies with a 2.38 ERA, as well as 6-1 with a 2.14 mark in 10 career starts against them at AT&T Park.

Gerardo Parra (2 for 16 with six strikeouts), DJ LeMahieu (3 for 22) and Nolan Arenado (5 for 25) have all struggled against him, but Carlos Gonzalez is 16 for 46 with five home runs and four doubles.

Counterpart Chad Bettis has settled in nicely since giving up five runs in 5 1/3 innings of his first outing, going 3-1 with a 3.13 ERA in five starts since. He was more hittable in Saturday's 6-3 win in Arizona, surrendering three runs and nine hits in six innings, though he came away with the decision.

"He was pounding the strike zone all day," manager Walt Weiss told MLB's official website. "He did an outstanding job. He's done that pretty much every time out."

Bettis (3-1, 3.89) is 2-3 with a 5.16 ERA in four starts and four relief appearances against the Giants with Brandon Belt going 7 for 12. Matt Duffy is 4 for 9, but Brandon Crawford (1 for 12) and Gregor Blanco (1 for 10) have struggled.

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The Rockies (14-14) opened the four-game series with Thursday's 17-7 win, which included a 13-run top of the fifth inning. Over a 5-3 span, they've averaged 6.37 runs per game and are hitting .300.

Parra went 3 for 5 with three RBIs and is batting .367 with 13 RBIs in his last 11 games, while Arenado homered and is batting .378 with five homers and 11 RBIs in his last nine. The third baseman is batting .435 with 12 home runs and 33 RBIs in his last 15 against the Giants.

Colorado is attempting to win its third straight series over the Giants and is 14-9 against them since the start of last year.

San Francisco (15-15) wasn't short on offense, either - the teams totaled 33 hits - but it's split its last eight because of a 7.80 ERA out of the rotation. In the last four, the Giants are batting .329.

They could have Joe Panik back Friday, a week after tweaking his groin. Hunter Pence was held out of the lineup with tightness in his back and should return Friday.
Thanks in large part to rising Brent crude prices, the VanEck Vectors Russia ETF (RSX) and the iShares MSCI Russia Capped Index Fund (ERUS) are among the best-performing single-country emerging markets exchange traded funds (ETFs) this year.

However, where there are winners, there are often losers and in this case, resurgent Russian stocks and exchange traded funds are proving punitive to a predictable candidate: The Direxion Daily Russia Bear 3x Shares (RUSS) has plunged 56% year-to-date.

Related: Emerging Markets ETFs Keep Bleeding Assets

Impressive still is the fact that Russian stocks and exchange traded funds such as RSX and ERUS are rallying despite the lack of significant production cuts from the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) are major oil-producing countries that are not OPEC members, such as Russia.

With the oil factor in mind and the energy sectors overweight position in ETFs like RSX and ERUS, it might be logical to think that boosting output at a time of still low oil prices is not something Russia would do. However, that is exactly what the country is considering doing. In fact, Russian oil output is expected to climb this year.

It is those themes and others that have sent RSX, ERUS and RUSSs bullish equivalent, the Direxion Daily Russia Bull 3x Shares (RUSL) , soaring. RUSL, which attempts to deliver triple the daily returns of the index tracked by RSX, is higher by nearly 65% over the past 90 days. Things have not been nearly as good for RUSS.

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Betting against Russian stocks this year was a bad idea, so tripling down was even worse. Direxion Daily Russia Bear 3x Shares  an exchange-traded fund which makes leveraged investments against Russian equities that essentially triple the wager  fell 61 percent through Friday in the third-worst performance among almost 1,000 U.S.-domiciled funds. Among the top performers as recently as January, the $53 million fund now trades near a record low as Brent crudes slump and rebound whipsawed investors in the worlds largest energy producer, reports Elena Popina for Bloomberg.

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Recent price action in RSX is encouraging, particularly when considering market observers widely expect Russias worst post-Soviet era recession to extend throughout this year.

Related: Russia ETFs Reward, but Caution is Required

Onlookers remain cautious over the market outlook. While President Vladimir Putin and other Russian politicians argue that the worst is over, the economy is expected to remain in a recession for the year. Russias GDP is expected to contract again this year, extending what is becoming a lengthy recession.

I nvestors could also be lured back to RSX and Russian stocks due to some of the emerging worlds cheapest valuations. RSX is home to some of the emerging worlds least expensive stocks. The largest Russia ETF trading in the ETF allocates over 37% of its weight to energy stocks, by far its biggest sector weight.

Visit ETFtrends.com for more ETF news, strategy and commentary.

Direxion Daily Russia Bull 3x Shares

russ

The opinions and forecasts expressed herein are solely those of Tom Lydon, and may not actually come to pass. Information on this site should not be used or construed as an offer to sell, a solicitation of an offer to buy, or a recommendation for any product.
Moscow (AFP) - Russia's military on Friday insisted no aircraft flew over a Syrian refugee camp the day it was hit by deadly strikes, suggesting Al-Qaeda-linked Al-Nusra Front could have shelled the location.

"We have attentively studied the information from the air space monitoring data in this area for May 4 and 5, 2016. There were no flights by Russian or any other aircraft," spokesman Igor Konashenkov told Russian news agencies.

"Judging by the damage shown in photographs and video, the camp may have been shelled either on purpose or by mistake by multiple rocket launchers which are currently being used very actively in this area by terrorists from Al-Nusra," Konashenkov said.

Syria's military has denied any involvement in the Thursday raids that killed at least 28 civilians in territory controlled by Syria's Al-Qaeda affiliate Al-Nusra and rebel allies.

The United Nations' rights chief said Friday that air strikes on a camp for displaced people in Syria's Idlib province were almost certainly not accidental and likely amounted to a war crime.

Rights chief Zeid Raad Al Hussein said responsibility for the strikes remained unverified but cited "initial reports" indicating that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's forces were to blame.

Women and children were reported to be among the civilians killed in the strikes close to the Turkish border, which left 50 others wounded.
Aleppo (Syria) (AFP) - Displaced families returned home and schools reopened in rebel-held districts of Syria's Aleppo on Saturday after a truce was extended for 72 hours in the battleground northern city.

More than 300 civilians were killed in two weeks of fighting in the divided city before the truce took hold on Thursday, with regime air strikes on the opposition-held east and rebel shelling of its regime-controlled west.

Residents trickled back into eastern areas of Aleppo, encouraged by a halt in the deadly violence, an AFP reporter said.

"I decided to come home after relatives told me it was calm," father-of-six Abu Mohammed said.

"We left because it was carnage here. The air strikes were incredible," said the resident of the rebel-held Kalasseh district.

The international community hopes that a drop in fighting can revive faltering peace talks to end a five-year war that has killed more than 270,000 people and displaced millions.

Schools in Aleppo's east reopened Saturday after staying closed for more than two weeks.

"There were many bombings so our parents got scared and stopped sending us to school," one schoolboy told AFP.

A monitor reported rebel shelling of areas in western Aleppo but said there were no casualties.

Russia's defence ministry said the truce had been extended "in order to prevent the situation from worsening" just minutes before an initial 48-hour truce was due to expire.

"The regime of silence in the province of Latakia and in the city of Aleppo has been extended from 00:01 (local time) on May 7 (2101 GMT Friday) for 72 hours," a ministry statement said.

- Night raids -

Violence in Aleppo last month severely threatened a nationwide ceasefire between President Bashar al-Assad's regime and non-jihadist rebels.

Washington has been working with Moscow to pressure the regime to stop the violence and revive the February 27 truce.

"While we welcome this recent extension, our goal is to get to a point where we no longer have to count the hours and that the cessation of hostilities is fully respected across Syria," US State Department spokesman John Kirby said.

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But fighting raged elsewhere, said the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Apparent US-led air raids overnight on Islamic State group strongholds in northern Aleppo killed six people, including women and children, as well as four IS leaders, it said.

In the central city of Hama, a raid by Syrian security forces on a prison failed to end a mutiny involving around 800 mostly political detainees sparked by an attempt to transfer inmates to another jail near Damascus where executions have been reported.

The head of Syria's main opposition group, Riad Hijab, on Saturday called for "intervention from the UN Security Council to guarantee the safety of detainees in the Hama prison".

IS and regime forces clashed near the divided eastern city of Deir Ezzor on Friday, the Observatory said, adding that five jihadists and 10 pro-regime fighters were killed.

- Iranian casualties -

Thirteen Iranian Revolutionary Guards advisers have been killed in Syria in recent days and 21 wounded, Iranian media reported on Saturday.

The deaths and injuries occurred in Khan Tuman village southwest of Aleppo which was overrun this week by Al-Nusra front, Al-Qaeda's Syria affiliate.

Syrian troops and allied forces have been battling the jihadists to recapture the village, the Observatory said, adding that since Thursday night 119 fighters have been killed there.

Iranian deputy foreign minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian late Saturday called Khan Tuman's capture a breach of the ceasefire that proves "terrorists and irresponsible armed groups called moderates... have no belief in a political solution".

An international outcry has grown over air strikes Thursday on a camp for the displaced near the closed Turkish border that killed at least 28 people including women and children.

Anti-regime activists have blamed the regime, but the Syrian military has denied the accusation.

Russia suggested Syria's Al-Qaeda affiliate Al-Nusra Front could have shelled it, while the United States said that the circumstances are unclear.

In Madrid, meanwhile, the Spanish Press Federation (FAPE) announced late Saturday that three Spanish journalists kidnapped in Syria about 10 months ago had been freed.

FAPE's president Elsa Gonzalez told AFP the journalists were "in a safe place" and would be landing at an air base on the outskirts of Madrid on Sunday.

Antonio Pampliega, Jose Manuel Lopez and Angel Sastre had last been seen in July 2015 in Aleppo, where they were reporting on fighting.
Kinshasa (AFP) - The deputy leader of Rwandan rebels blamed for atrocities in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo has been brought to the capital following his arrest, a Congolese minister said Friday.

Leopold Mujyambere, deputy chief of the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), was brought to Kinshasa three or four days after being detained in Goma, the main city in North Kivu province, Minister for the Media Lambert Mende told AFP.

Mende gave no details of the arrest, which follows the detention in March of Ladislas Ntaganzwa, another leader of the FDLR, an ethnic Hutu force including veteran fighters wanted for their suspected role in the Rwandan genocide of 1994.

Congolese authorities handed Ntaganzwa to staff of a United Nations "residual mechanism" set up in December 2010 to complete the tasks of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, which passed him on to Rwanda itself.

The FDLR established itself in eastern DRC after fleeing across the border when a rebel army led by Rwanda's current President Paul Kagame in July 1994 put an end to three months of massacres, estimated to have claimed 800,000 lives.

The killers are accused of targeting moderate Hutus as well as people from the Tutsi minority and are regularly blamed for serious human rights violations against civilians in eastern DRC.

Rwanda's Justice Minister Johnston Busingye called the arrest of Mujyambere "a step in the right direction" and asked that he be "transferred" to Rwanda to face justice there.

The DRC minister in charge of media relations, Lambert Mende, told AFP that Mujyambere's case would go before a Congolese court "to begin the process of transferring him to Rwanda".

The Congolese army last February announced a broad offensive against the FDLR, not just in North Kivu, but in South Kivu and the northern part of Katanga province in a bid to sweep them clear of national territory.

The Rwandan government, however, charges that DRC authorities are doing nothing to tackle the rebels, whom Kigali presents as a major strategic threat even though the FDLR has not launched a big offensive on Rwandan soil in years.

Kigali has meanwhile backed a succession of ethnic Tutsi uprisings, leading the Congolese government to accuse the Rwandans of seeking to destabilise eastern territory.
Ryan Murphy just wont quit! The Executive Producer of American Crime Story and American Horror Story just announced ANOTHER anthology series. Feud will explore famous battles royale, Hollywood-style.

The first season tells the story of Bette Davis and Joan Crawford as they duked it out on the set of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? Susan Sarandon plays Davis, and American Horror Story alum Jessica Lange plays Crawford.

Murphys no stranger to feuds himself, and when Kings of Leon refused to allow their song to be featured in Glee, Ryan Murphy said, F*** you, Kings of Leon. Theyre self-centered a**holes and they missed the bigger picture.

Since that spat was quickly patched up, we want to suggest a few other famous squabbles for Season Two of Feud

William Shatner and George Takei

A feud thats lasted forty years and running. According to Takei, relations between the actors broke down on the set of the original Star Trek series, because Shatner was self-centered and would pretend like he didnt know Takei.

Over the years, theyve taken pot-shots at each other every chance they get, but this 2008 interview in which Shatner addressed his hurt feelings over not being invited to Takeis wedding may take the cake

David O. Russell and Everybody

The five-time Oscar nominee doesnt have a great track record with the actors he directs. Russell managed to tick off James Caan so badly over how to choke on a cookie that the screen veteran quit the movie and was replaced by James Brolin.

After the director headbutted George Clooney on the set of Three Kings, the crew had to pull them off each other. Clooney later said in an interview, Quite honestly, if [Russell] comes near me, Ill sock him right in the f***ing mouth.

But this footage of this freakout between Russell and Lily Tomlin on the set of I Heart Huckabees would make TV gold

Klaus Kinski & Werner Herzog

This one is so juicy theres a documentary about it. The actor and director team made five films together despite a working relationship that often looked like this

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On the set of Aguirre, the Wrath of God, Kinski threatened to abandon the film, so Herzog fired back that hed kill Kinski and then himself. Kinski claimed that Herzog carried around a pistol to show he wasnt joking, but Herzog has denied it.

And check out SuperFan TVs ideas for more seasons of Ryan Murphys American Crime Story anthology series

So, who do you want to see duke it out on Season Two of Feud? Do you have a favorite celebrity throw down? Hit us up on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram or leave your comments below. And check out our host, Khail Anonymous, on Twitter.
The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society concluded its Operation Milagro II, which was launched to protect the critically endangered vaquita porpoise, and other marine mammals, from the use of gillnets in the Gulf of California. Two Sea Shepherd vessels took part in patrols for poachers and fishermen using gillnets, and removed illegal fishing gear in the area.

The operation succeeded in saving a number of marine animals from dying of entanglement, while the conservationists also witnessed the death of humpback whales, dolphins, hammerhead sharks, great white sharks, and vaquitas due to gillnets.

The marine conservation NGO said that were fewer than of the 100 vaquitas remaining in the wild. Credit: YouTube/Sea Shepherd Conservation Society
By Ben Hirschler LONDON (Reuters) - A second baby with aggressive leukaemia has been treated in London with "designer immune cells" developed by Cellectis and, six months after treatment, remains in remission, the French biotech firm said. Cellectis shares jumped 14 percent following Friday's news. The first human use of the company's cell therapy made headlines worldwide in November when one-year-old Layla was cleared of previously incurable leukaemia at Britain's Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH). Details of the latest compassionate care case, also treated at GOSH, were presented at the American Society of Gene & Cell Therapy annual meeting in Washington. The so-called UCART19 injection works by adding new genes to healthy donated immune cells known as T-cells, which arm them against leukaemia. More time is needed to see whether the therapy has cured the disease, or simply slowed its progression. But the fact that Layla is still doing well 11 months after her injection and the second case has so far been successful is encouraging. "This is not yet statistical proof but we do now have two cases," said Cellectis Chief Executive Andre Choulika. "It shows that the therapy has some potential." The second baby was diagnosed with leukaemia at four weeks old and she was treated with UCART19 in December aged 16 months, after failing to respond to other treatments. Other drugmakers including Novartis, Juno Therapeutics and Kite Pharma have tested genetically modified T-cells extracted from an individual patient. The Cellectis approach, however, uses cells from a healthy donor in a process that could lead to a ready "off-the-shelf" supply for use in multiple patients. The biotech company, working with U.S. giant Pfizer and French drugmaker Servier, believes its method is faster and cheaper than creating single patient-specific gene therapies. Clinical trials of UCART19 are due to start this year. Cellectis has been viewed in the past as a potential takeover target for Pfizer or another large pharmaceutical company, but Choulika said it was not his aim to sell up. "My game plan is not to be acquired. The company is very well financed and we can go with a very aggressive business plan up to the end of 2018," he told Reuters. (Editing by Susan Thomas and Alexander Smith)
William Tiep takes numerous medications for several chronic conditions, including diabetes, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol. Come August, the 75-year-old from Toledo, Ohio, will reach the donut hole, the point at which he and his Medicare Part D prescription drug plan together have spent $3,310 on medications, and he will have to pay a larger share of the drug costs. Thats when I start to shop around for discounts, says Tiep.

Many drugstores offer savings programs for people who pay for prescription medications out of pocket; in some cases, the pharmacy discount price is cheaper than the insurance co-pay. Several of the medications Tiep takes are older generic medications, which discount programs price at $4 for a months worth or $10 for a 90-day supplyand sometimes even less. For example, Kmarts Pharmacy Savings Plus program sells several commonly prescribed generics for $3 per month, while Sams Club offers a few prescription medications free to members of the Sams Plus program if you pay cash.

I worked it out, says Tiep. Once I hit the donut hole, for most of the drugs I take, its cheaper not to go through insurance and just find a good discount.

But that can get confusing. In fact, when we contacted several retail drugstore chains, we found if you get your health insurance through Medicare, some chains wont tell you about the pharmacy discountor wont let you use them at all. (That's sometimes also the case with Medicaid and Tricare insurance as well.)



Accessing 'Secret' Discounts

Why exclude seniors with Medicare from drugstore discounts for their medications? One issue is a broadly worded Social Security statute that prohibits physicians, pharmacies, and healthcare providers from offering valuable giveaways to entice Medicare and Medicaid patients. The agencys reasoning is that those promotions could possibly give unfair advantage to large providers over those with fewer resources, as well as encourage bait-and-switch tactics, where providers offset the costs of freebies with unnecessary or lower-quality goods and services.

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To Walgreens, that law means it cant offer discounts for people with Medicare. A spokesperson for Walgreens told Consumer Reports that customers with Medicare are ineligible to participate in the companys Prescription Savings Club because of lack of clear guidance from the federal government about the application of federal laws prohibiting healthcare providers (including Walgreens) from offering items of value, which could include discounts, to Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries.

Yet, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) says if you have Part D, you still have a choice. A CMS spokesperson told us that a Medicare beneficiary does have a right to purchase a drug outside of a prescription drug plan at his or her discretion.

What could be confusing to a consumer with Medicare is that, CMS rules require a pharmacist to automatically use your drug Part D insurance unless you specifically say not to.



Bottom line: We found that, with the exception of Walgreens, most drugstores will let people with Medicare use their discount program, but you'll have to ask.

When to Shop for a Pharmacy Discount

The advice to shop for discounts comes with two important caveats.

CMS told us that the agency encourages people with Part D prescription drug benefit to use their insurance for three, practical reasons. First, it provides a more complete record of all the medications you take that can easily be checked for potentially dangerous drug interactions.

Second, the amount you spend is only applied toward your deductible and out of pocket costs if you go through your insurance. Thats especially important if you expect to reach the other side of the donut hole by spending a total $4,850 for the year. At that point catastrophic coverage kicks in and your costs go way down.

In addition, insurance companies negotiate cheaper prices for their customers. So most of the time, using your insurance is likely to net you the lowest price. But if you find yourself in one of the following situations, it makes sense to check costs through a pharmacy discount program:

You are unlikely to meet your annual deductible. For example, if you take three older generic medications that you can purchase through a pharmacy discount program for $10 each for a 90-day supply, your total cost for the year would be about $120 for all three drugs. If your plan deductible is more than that, it may make sense to skip insurance and pay out of pocket.

You hit the donut hole. If you reach the gap and are unlikely to spend enough for catastrophic coverage to kick in, consider following Tieps example and shop for discounts. (There will be less need to do that in coming years as the portion patients are required to pay in the donut hole will shrink every year until the gap closes in 2020.)

Your drug coverage changes. If your insurance plan reduces coverage for a medication you takeor drops it altogetherand theres not a good alternative, a pharmacy discount can make the drug more affordable.

When comparing costs, remember to factor in any fees associated with joining a discount program. For example, Kmart charges an annual fee of $10 per person, or $15 for a household, to join their Savings Plus program.

Other Ways to Save On Medicare Drug Costs

If you have Medicare and are unable to afford your medications, there are several options to help lower your prescription drug costs.

See whether you qualify for the governments Extra Help program. If you meet income or other requirements, your plan premiums and deductibles will be reduced and youll pay no more than $2.95 for each generic and $7.40 for each name-brand covered drug.

If you dont qualify for the Extra Help program your state may have programs that can help. Find your state health insurance assistance program (SHIP) through the SHIP National Technical Assistance Center at www.shiptacenter.org.

Talk to your doctor. If you are taking a name-brand medication, ask whether theres a generic version, which could save you up to 90 percent on the cost of the drug. If theres no generic, ask if theres an alternative from the same class of drugs that costs less.

Shop by mail. Many prescription drug plans offer discounts for customers who fill prescriptions through specified mail-order pharmacies. But be sure to check prices because ordering by mail doesnt always save money.

Apply for a price break. Some pharmaceutical companies offer assistance programs for the drugs they sell. For example, if you are enrolled in a Medicare Part D plan, have spent at least $600 on your medications this year, and meet income eligibility requirements, you might qualify to get certain GlaxoSmithKline medications at no charge. Check http://www.medicare.gov for a list of pharmaceutical assistance plans or contact the company that makes your medication.

Find a better drug plan. Use the Medicare Plan Finder to compare the costs of your medications on different Part D and Medicare Advantage Plans. If you find a plan with lower costs, you can switch during open enrollment, which starts on October 15, 2016.

Editor's Note: This article and related materials are made possible by a grant from the state Attorney General Consumer and Prescriber Education Grant Program, which is funded by the multistate settlement of consumer-fraud claims regarding the marketing of the prescription drug Neurontin (gabapentin).





More from Consumer Reports:

8 Ways to Boost Your Home Value

Why your cable TV bill is going up

Get the Best Cell Phone Plan for Your Familyand Save up to $1,000 a Year





Consumer Reports has no relationship with any advertisers on this website. Copyright  2006-2016 Consumers Union of U.S.
In the words of a porn star and alleged rapist: Its basic reality, refracted through a mirror, heightened for drama.

That was James Deens take, according to writer Stephen Rodrick, on the story Rodrick did about the making of erotic thriller-drama The Canyons, co-starring Deen and Lindsay Lohan. (A spokesperson for Deen confirmed the quote is close enough.) And although Deen was commenting on a particular  peculiar  situation, his quip isnt a half-bad assessment of the practice of journalism. Record the real and amplify, within ethical parameters, the story.

Stories about stories about stories. If thats your thing, Im about to hook you up with roughly 190 hours of it.

In August 2012, Aaron Lammer, Evan Ratliff and Max Linsky (in a curious twist of small-world media history, Linsky helped come up with OZYs Good Sh*t section in a pre-OZY era) set out to create a podcast they themselves wanted to hear: discussions with writers about how stories get made, particularly those, as the name indicates, that are hefty in length, and about how storytellers make a living. Guests of the weekly Longform podcast have included Lena Dunham and Ta-Nehisi Coates (three times, in fact), and well over 175 others.

For writers and journalists, its a master class. And possibly free therapy. Impostor syndrome has emerged as a major theme throughout the show, says Ratliff, whos also editor-in-chief of the Atavist Magazine. Writers worrying, even incredibly successful ones, both that the work theyve done is terrible and also that theyll never work again, he says. That feeling is lodged so deeply. What comes across is that nobody has the capital-S Storytelling answers, that there isnt some underground vault to which only Columbia grads have the key. In fact, Ratliff says, everybody also cops to some version of outsider syndrome. Its rare that we get someone who says, I went to Harvard, graduated, got a job at the New Yorker and now I do features, and Im good at it!  but even those people, he says, manufacture an outsider story for themselves.

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[Linsky] dove right into the most complicated part of any answer and then asked a question about that. Heather Havrilesky

These shows stick with me; I tell stories from them again and again to anyone wholl listen. In #184, Daniel Alarcon talks about a bank robber he met in Peru who was writing a novel from prison. Hed just been moved, had no bunk, was sleeping on the floor of his cell. A pipe bursts. His pages are soaked. So what does he do? Oh, takes over the prison yard, aka the heart/lungs/vitals of prison life, and spreads out his manuscript page by page, pinning down each one with a rock. And whenever he got a complaint, hed bellow, Mess with my book and you mess with me! Alarcon wonders, Would I be willing to defend my book in a Peruvian prison? Wry, glorious Brooke Gladstone, host of my other favorite podcast, On the Media, comments in #175 that at this phase of her career, Im not going to get any richer or more famous than I am right now.  The beautiful thing is that I just dont have any more fucks to give. Im evangelizing even when Im playing a colleague the bit of audio in #185 when Linsky reads BuzzFeeds definition of diversity aloud to its editor-in-chief, Ben Smith. (After a reverent beat, white guy No. 1 says to white guy No. 2, Thats a pretty good definition.)

Heather Havrilesky writes New York magazines Ask Polly advice column. Her interview, #182, is about as much fun as you can have without liquor, sex or Santa Claus. Just as luscious: She slings the kind of real talk  salary figures and pay rates  for which people thirst. Linsky, she says, dove right into the most complicated part of any answer and then asked a question about that. She cites a palpable curiosity that can change even the most mundane subject into something that feels odd and unexpected and electric. Artist and writer Molly Crabapple tells OZY that whiskey and a brilliant, challenging host made her interview one of the most enjoyable shes ever done.

The term longform got some stinkeye in the media back in February, when SB Nation ran 12,000 words about convicted rapist and former Oklahoma City cop Daniel Holtzclaw in its Longform section. A disaster in almost every imaginable sense, it was deleted five hours after publication. Greg Howard wrote on Deadspin, There is no such thing as longform writing.  Longform is a variant of feature writing  a branding strategy, really  that confuses a secondary indicator (length) for the thing itself (quality).

I could give a shit what its called, says Ratliff, adding that there have been terrible pieces of journalism that are long and terrible pieces of journalism that are short. Its a nothing controversy.

My only beef with Longform is the bro factor. In the intro of #132, Lammer says, Im tempted to go fart in Evans chair while hes gone. (Dude  thats gross.) Generally, the intros stretch into three-minute sprawls of chuckles and joking. Which, yes, you might also call simple friendly banter, and they are trying to introduce the sponsors and guests in a way thats not a snooze. But the fratty chatter of the male literary elite can be a little hard to take at times. Ratliff says if theyd known the pod would go for three years, they might have designed it differently and chosen different hosts. As for my internal shorthand  lit bro  Ratliff says, It has that vaguely pejorative feel that anyone can get behind, myself included. But he adds that a person would be hard-pressed to listen to, say, Maxs interview with Cheryl Strayed or mine with Margo Jefferson and then say, God, these lit bros and their bro talk. Listen to that frat-house vibe!

Ultimately the goal is connecting people with interesting guests. At the beginning, they were worried theyd run out of guests within a year. Now they could book the next five years solid. And unless it gets boring? Well be listening.

An earlier version of this story misstated which host made the fart joke and interviewed Ben Smith.

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WASHINGTON, May 6 (Reuters) - The United States is behind the technology curve when it comes to publicly traded companies' financial disclosures and lagging in how it gets relevant information to investors, a top securities regulator said on Friday.

In prepared remarks to a conference in Denver, Kara Stein, a Democrat member of the Securities and Exchange Commission, spoke to the heartburn many U.S. regulators are experiencing as digital tools evolve at a whiplash pace.

"It's time to usher in a new disclosure paradigm for the future - one that will benefit both investors and companies for the decades to come," said Stein in calling for the creation of a digital disclosure task force made up of investors, analysts, academics, companies, and technology experts.

The SEC, the main regulator of all publicly traded stock and securities, has been plugging away at bringing its website for disclosures known as EDGAR up to date and it has launched an initiative to improve both the form and substance of various disclosures.

But Stein said that initiative, which asks hundreds of questions about needed improvements in a special public posting, "falls short."

"There are important questions that were not asked," she said, naming corporate governance as one area ignored.

"It's important to note that studies indicate investors are looking for better, not less, disclosure," she also said. "This is not a question of 'overload,' it is a question of quality. If companies want investors' money, they need to be nimble and responsive."

She added that the methods of delivering information to investors may need to change too, noting that reading a lengthy disclosure on the small screen of a mobile phone could be difficult.

"Companies could provide this information once, and then not have to repeat it over and over again across numerous filings. The beauty of this approach is that it completely separates how the company submits the data - the reporting format - from how investors access the data - the viewing and processing format," she said.

(Reporting by Lisa Lambert; Editing by Andrea Ricci)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States is behind the technology curve when it comes to publicly traded companies' financial disclosures and lagging in how it gets relevant information to investors, a top securities regulator said on Friday.

In prepared remarks to a conference in Denver, Kara Stein, a Democrat member of the Securities and Exchange Commission, spoke to the heartburn many U.S. regulators are experiencing as digital tools evolve at a whiplash pace.

"Its time to usher in a new disclosure paradigm for the future  one that will benefit both investors and companies for the decades to come," said Stein in calling for the creation of a digital disclosure task force made up of investors, analysts, academics, companies, and technology experts.

The SEC, the main regulator of all publicly traded stock and securities, has been plugging away at bringing its website for disclosures known as EDGAR up to date and it has launched an initiative to improve both the form and substance of various disclosures.

But Stein said that initiative, which asks hundreds of questions about needed improvements in a special public posting, "falls short."

"There are important questions that were not asked," she said, naming corporate governance as one area ignored.

"Its important to note that studies indicate investors are looking for better, not less, disclosure," she also said. "This is not a question of 'overload,' it is a question of quality. If companies want investors money, they need to be nimble and responsive."

She added that the methods of delivering information to investors may need to change too, noting that reading a lengthy disclosure on the small screen of a mobile phone could be difficult.

"Companies could provide this information once, and then not have to repeat it over and over again across numerous filings. The beauty of this approach is that it completely separates how the company submits the data - the reporting format - from how investors access the data - the viewing and processing format," she said.

(Reporting by Lisa Lambert; Editing by Andrea Ricci)
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraqi security forces ramped up their presence across Baghdad on Friday, blocking most major roads and bridges to keep followers of Shi'ite Muslim cleric Moqtada al-Sadr from reaching the government district they stormed a week earlier. A Sadr representative meanwhile called on supporters to rally outside local mosques following afternoon prayers, rather than gathering near the heavily fortified Green Zone, a move which could reduce the risk of clashes. The demonstrations are aimed at pressuring Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi to follow through on months-old promises to replace party-affiliated ministers with independent technocrats as part of an anti-corruption drive. Iraq has endured months of wrangling over the proposal, with a divided parliament withholding approval amid scuffles and protests. Deep frustration among Iraqis over the deadlock culminated on Sunday in the unprecedented breach of the Green Zone, which houses parliament, government offices and many foreign embassies. United Nations envoy to Iraq Jan Kubis told the U.N. Security Council on Friday that the situation remains unpredictable and could unfold in many different directions. "A business-as-usual approach simply will not be enough for the people. They want genuine change that will improve their lives," Kubis told the Security Council. In his prepared remarks, seen by Reuters, Kubis also said that solutions being discussed to end the political crisis would not meet the demands of the people and therefore demonstrations were likely to continue. Security officials said on Friday three regiments from an elite police division that has battled Islamic State militants were deployed in and around the Green Zone. On one bridge stretching over the Tigris River, dozens of counter-terrorism forces manned Humvees mounted with machine guns. They stood behind two consecutive barriers made of 12-foot (3.6 meter) blast walls spanning the bridge. The head of Sadr's political office said large-scale demonstrations had been postponed until Tuesday, when tens of thousands of protesters would be mobilized to rally outside an expected parliament session. At least four soldiers were killed and seven others wounded on Friday when a suicide car bomber attacked an army checkpoint in the western part of the capital, police sources said. Two bombs in nearby Abu Ghraib killed three people and wounded 13. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the blasts. (Reporting by Ahmed Rasheed and Kareem Raheem in Baghadad and Michelle Nichols at the United Nations; Writing by Stephen Kalin; Editing by James Dalgleish)
NEW YORK, NY / ACCESSWIRE / May 6, 2016 / Levi & Korsinsky announces it has commenced an investigation of Globus Medical, Inc. (GMED) concerning possible breaches of fiduciary duty by the Board of Directors.

The investigation concerns the April 22, 2015 announcement that the Company's auditors, KPMG LLP, have declined to stand for reelection as auditor of the Company's financial statements. To obtain additional information, GO TO: http://zlk.9nl.com/globus-medical or contact Joseph E. Levi, Esq. either via email at jlevi@zlk.com or by telephone at (212) 363-7500, toll-free: (877) 363-5972.

Levi & Korsinsky is a national firm with offices in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Washington D.C. The firm's attorneys have extensive expertise in prosecuting securities litigation involving financial fraud, representing investors throughout the nation in securities and shareholder lawsuits. Attorney advertising. Prior results do not guarantee similar outcomes.

CONTACT:

Levi & Korsinsky, LLP

Eduard Korsinsky, Esq.

30 Broad Street - 24th Floor

New York, NY 10004

Tel: (212) 363-7500

Toll Free: (877) 363-5972

Fax: (212) 363-7171

www.zlk.com

SOURCE: Levi & Korsinsky, LLP
NEW YORK, NY / ACCESSWIRE / December 4, 2019 / Pomerantz LLP is investigating claims on behalf of investors of Pareteum Corporation ("Pareteum" or the "Company") (TEUM). Such investors are advised to contact Robert S. Willoughby at rswilloughby@pomlaw.com or 888-476-6529, ext. 9980.

The investigation concerns whether Pareteum and certain of its officers and/or directors have engaged in securities fraud or other unlawful business practices.

[Click here for information about joining the class action]

On June 7, 2019, Marcus Aurelius Value ("Aurelius Value") published a report questioning Pareteum's accounting regarding backlog, backlog conversion rates, and receivables. On this news, the Company's stock price fell $0.83 per share, or over 24%, to close at $2.58 per share on June 7, 2019.

Then, on June 25, 2019, Viceroy Research Group ("Viceroy") published a report that alleged further accounting discrepancies related to several sources of "uncollectable" revenue, concluding that Pareteum's "total revenue is overstated by 42%." On this news, Pareteum's stock price fell $0.51 per share, or over 20%, to close at $2.00 per share on June 26, 2019.

On October 15, 2019, Pareteum announced that Chief Operating Officer Denis McCarthy was leaving the Company. McCarthy had maintained the Company's 36-month contractual revenue backlog spreadsheets and analysis that were scrutinized by the Aurelius Value and Viceroy reports. On this news, Pareteum's stock price fell $0.36 per share over three consecutive trading sessions to close at $0.83 per share on October 17, 2019.

Finally, on October 21, 2019, after the market closed, Pareteum disclosed that certain revenues recognized during 2018 and 2019 should not have been recorded during that period and that, as a result, the Company would restate its previously issued consolidated financial statements as of and for the full year ended December 31, 2018, and interim periods ended March 31, 2019, and June 30, 2019. On this news, Pareteum's stock price fell $0.44 per share, or nearly 60%, to close at $0.30 per share on October 22, 2019.

Story continues

The Pomerantz Firm, with offices in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Paris 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.

SOURCE: Pomerantz LLP





View source version on accesswire.com:

https://www.accesswire.com/569146/SHAREHOLDER-ALERT-Pomerantz-Law-Firm-Investigates-Claims-On-Behalf-of-Investors-of-Pareteum-Corporation--TEUM




BENGHAZI, Libya (Reuters) - At least four people were killed and more than 20 wounded in the Libyan city of Benghazi on Friday when shells were fired at a rally in support of forces allied with the country's eastern government, a medical source said. Women and children were among the wounded when the shells hit Al-Keesh square. Demonstrators had gathered in support of the Libyan National Army, whose leader General Khalifa Haftar is spearheading a campaign against Islamist militants. A U.N.-backed unity government in Tripoli is trying to end a conflict between rival factions, one of which took over the capital in 2014 and forced the other to rebase in the east of the country. The conflict led to a chaotic security vacuum, in which Islamist militants have gained ground. It was not clear who had fired the shells at the rally. Benghazi has been one frontline in Libya's multi-sided war, with Haftar managing this year to drive Islamist militants and other rival armed factions out of the city. But fighting continues on the city outskirts. (Reporting by Ayman El-Warfalli; writing by Patrick Markey; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)
By Ian Chua and Aradhana Aravindan SYDNEY/SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Australia and Singapore have agreed to jointly develop military training areas and facilities in Australia in a sign of how China's increasingly assertive military presence in the region is encouraging nations to boost their own defense capabilities. Singapore will fund a A$2.25 billion (US$1.7 billion) expansion of military training facilities in Australia, a government source told Reuters. Singapore will have enhanced and expanded military training access in Australia over a period of 25 years. The two will strengthen intelligence and information sharing, such as in counter-terrorism, the city-state's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement on Friday. The move to forge closer military ties between Australia and Singapore comes at a time of rising tensions between much of Asia and China, which has been building military and civilian facilities on its artificial islands in the disputed South China Sea. "The kind of military relationships that (Singapore) have and types of military ties that they are developing and deepening, they don't have with China," said Richard Bitzinger, a security expert at the S.Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore. "I am not saying that this is being done overtly to deal with China, but I wouldn't be surprised if that isn't a major driver behind this." The region is also facing rising risks from Islamic extremists. Earlier this week, Singapore said it had detained eight Bangladeshi men who were planning attacks in their homeland. It deported five others who were arrested by police in Dhaka. Land-scarce Singapore has long sent troops to Australia for military exercises. The new deal would allow the Asian nation to increase the number of troops it has on rotation in Australia to 14,000, from 6,000. Under the agreement, Singapore would fund the cost of expanding the Shoalwater Bay Training Area and the Townsville Field Training Area, both in the north of Queensland state. Both bases lie in electorates critical to the government. The timing of the agreement is viewed as a political coup for Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull ahead of an anticipated July federal election. "Under our comprehensive strategic partnership, our aim is to elevate our relationship to a level similar to the one we enjoy with New Zealand," Turnbull told reporters in Canberra. He said the new partnership will also generate a construction boom in North Queensland due to the need for roads, accommodation and facilities for the Singaporean Defence forces. The agreement makes Singapore the only other foreign country to invest in military infrastructure in Australia besides the United States. Earlier this week Reuters reported that Singapore will soon pick the winner of a $1 billion tender for military utility helicopters, as it modernizes its air force and navy amid rising tensions in the region. The city-state and Australia also updated a free trade agreement, which includes improved access for businesses to bid for government procurement contracts and allowed for easier movement of people between the two markets. Singapore is Australia's fifth largest trading and investment partner, with bilateral trade of S$20.2 billion ($14.86 billion) in 2015. The city-state has investments amounting to A$80.2 billion in Australia. (Reporting by Ian Chua; Additional reporting by Matt Siegel in SYDNEY Aradhana Aravindan in SINGAPORE; Editing by Shri Navaratnam)
A leopard at a South African game reserve snatched a six-year-old boy and ran off with him.

Little Kellan Denny was attacked and dragged away by the big cat at Kruger National Park.

As the male leopard ran off with the youngster, his father Justin chased the big cat and screamed out: No! No! No! This cant be happening.

Kellan was dragged 30 metres by the leopard who had sunk his teeth into the boys shoulder before he was recovered.

Justin was able to retrieve his son after the leopard dropped the boy from his jaws. Kellan, who is said to be quite traumatised is now recovering at home.

He had been playing with his eight-year-old brother near a wall when he was attacked and dragged off by the big cat.

Officials at Kruger think the leopard was hunting at the time which is why he attacked the youngster.

A leopard at Kruger (Rex)

Kellan was running along the wall when he was called back for lunch, Justin told the local Cape Argus newspaper. But Kellan ran along the wall one more time which is when he was attacked.

His father said: By the grace of God, it dropped him.

I picked him up and rushed him back to the rondavel (African-style hut). A neighbour arrived with his wife who is a nurse.

The leopard attacked as the boy played with his brother (Rex)

The boy was eventually taken to hospital and received stitches as well as a tetanus injection.

He has now been dubbed leopard boy by his family.

Officials at the park, which is north-eastern South Africa, said nothing like this had happened before in more than 40 years.
By Phil Stewart WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. military said on Friday it had deployed a very small number of forces to Yemen to offer intelligence support for the United Arab Emirate's so far successful push on the ground against al Qaeda's most dangerous affiliate. Around 2,000 Yemeni and Emirati troops advanced into the seaport of Mukalla late last month, taking control of its port and airport and meeting little resistance in what had been a stronghold of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). Reuters was first to report UAE's planning for the offensive and its far-reaching request for U.S. assistance. Pentagon spokesman Captain Jeff Davis told a news briefing the U.S. military had so far provided everything from intelligence support and advice and assistance with operational planning to medical support and aerial refueling. It was also dedicating airborne intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance assets to support the Gulf ally's push. "AQAP remains a significant security threat to the United States and to our regional partners and we welcome this effort to specifically remove AQAP from Mukalla and to degrade, disrupt and destroy AQAP in Yemen," Davis said. Davis declined to say how many U.S. forces were in Yemen but said it was a "very small number." They arrived within the past two weeks and were operating from a fixed location to provide intelligence support, he said.The amphibious assault ship USS Boxer was also off the coast of Yemen to provide medical facilities if needed. NEW U.S. STRIKES U.S. intelligence and military officials view AQAP as a threat to the United States. The group has plotted to down U.S. airliners and claimed responsibility for last year's attacks on the office of Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris. The Pentagon also disclosed on Friday four new counter-terrorism strikes against AQAP since April 23, killing 10 al Qaeda operatives and injuring another. Davis said the operations were independent of the UAE's Mukalla push. Despite significant U.S. strikes, including one that killed AQAP's leader last year, U.S. counter-terrorism efforts have been undermined by Yemen's civil war. Prior to the Mukalla offensive, AQAP was estimated to have become more powerful than at any time in its history. Officials say the U.S. support is a reflection of the U.S. view of the Emirates' capabilities, including its well-trained and resourced special operations forces on the ground. The conflict forced the evacuation in early 2015 of U.S. military personnel who had orchestrated an anti-AQAP campaign involving Yemeni special forces raids backed by U.S. air power. The deployment of American personnel to support UAE in this limited operation could show increasing U.S. willingness to re-engage on the ground. (Reporting by Phil Stewart; Editing by James Dalgleish)
(Refiles to fix formatting)

HONG KONG, May 6 (Reuters) - Handset manufacturer FIH Mobile Ltd's shares fell more than 20 percent to a three-year low on Friday, following a profit warning and stock rating downgrade amid a slowdown in the smartphone market.

FIH Mobile, a unit of Taiwan's Foxconn, the trading name of Hon Hai Precision Industry Co, was on track for its biggest one-day fall since 2008 in a move that wiped nearly HK$5 billion off its market value ($644 million).

The company, which analysts said was hit by weaker-than-expected demand from major clients Xiaomi Inc , Sony Corp and Motorola, said on Thursday it expected to post a drop of up to 92 percent in first-half profit.

Brokerage Jefferies downgraded FIH's stock rating to "hold" from "buy", citing weaker demand in smartphone shipments and lower gross margins.

"We believe FIH also suffers as Xiaomi sees a mild year-on-year decline in smartphone shipments," Jefferies analyst Ken Hui wrote in a note.

Hui added that parent company Hon Hai may also reduce handset outsourcing to FIH due to weak demand for Apple Inc's iPhones.

The downgrade came at a time when smartphone makers are facing intense competition in an increasingly saturated market as China's economic growth slows.

Xiaomi, one of China's most valuable tech startups with a $45 billion price tag, missed targets for handset sales in 2015.

Apple's revenue from Greater China, which includes Hong Kong and Taiwan, fell 26 percent in the March quarter, making it the company's weakest region.

Research firm IDC predicted that China's smartphone market will grow at just 1-2 percent this year, having on average more than doubled in size each year from 2011 to 2013.

FIH Mobile shares were trading down 20.4 percent at HK$2.54 at 0430 GMT, giving it a market capitalization of HK$20 billion. ($1 = 7.7610 Hong Kong dollars) (Reporting by Yimou Lee and Donny Kwok; Editing by Richard Pullin)
Dunkirk (France) (AFP) - A court in northern France sentenced on Friday five people smugglers to prison terms of up to six years for helping migrants reach Britain from northern France.

The ring, which included three Kurds and two Frenchmen, charged 8,000 ($10,100; 11,500 euros) for "guaranteed" passage across the Channel.

Thousands of migrants desperate to reach Britain, where many have family or community ties and see better hopes for work, have massed along the northern French coast in makeshift camps.

All of the defendants were charged with belonging to an organised gang that helped with the illegal entry of migrants between August 2015 and this February.

The ring's leader, an Iranian Kurd known as "Kapa" who is still on the run, got the heaviest sentence at six years and a 50,000-euro fine in the Dunkirk court. Authorities have issued an international warrant for his arrest.

Two other Kurds -- an Iranian and an Iraqi -- were jailed for two years each. They were responsible for finding migrants and bringing them to an assigned highway rest area in Dunkirk for transport.

Two Frenchmen who ran a cafe in Dunkirk and provided logistic support to the ring were also sentenced. One given a year behind bars and the other two years, while a cab driver accused of transporting migrants was acquitted.

The ring, which operated around the Grande-Synthe camp near Dunkirk, was broken up in mid-February by border police. At the start of March the squalid camp was home to close to 1,500 people, many of whom were Kurds.

Last month authorities reported a sharp increase in migrant attempts to stow away in the back of lorries which then board ferries or shuttle trains to England.

French police unions said they feared the rise heralds a difficult summer as the flow of migrants into Europe begins to pick up again.
A remodeled version of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on the launchers first mission since a June failure in Cape Canaveral, Florida, December 21, 2015. REUTERS/Joe Skipper

SpaceX has been pulling in the wins these past few months. After sticking the landing of an orbital rocket for the first time in December, they stepped it up a notch in April and completed another successful landing, this time on a drone ship in the middle of the ocean.

Now, SpaceX is preparing for another launch. It'll be their fourth launch this year and they'll be finishing it off with another barge landing attempt.

The launch is scheduled to take place in the early morning hours of Friday out of SpaceX's launch site at Cape Canaveral, Florida at 1:21 a.m. EDT. Yes, 1:21 a.m. For those of you eager enough to watch live, you can do so below.

SpaceX initially had the launch scheduled for Thursday at the same time, but they pushed it back a day due to concerns about the weather.

The company's main mission is to deliver JCSAT-14, a Japanese telecommunications satellite, to a Geostationary Transfer Orbit (GTO) extremely high above Earths surface  a feat that requires more fuel and makes the rocket significantly harder to land.

The satellite will be launched aboard the famed Falcon 9 and join satellite operator Sky Perfect JSATs existing fleet of satellites. The satellite will deliver TV programming, high-speed Internet access and cell phone service to customers in the Asia-Pacific region.

SpaceX will once again attempt to salvage the first stage of the Falcon 9 by landing it on the Of Course I Still Love You droneship, named after a fictional starship envisioned by legendary sci-fi writer Iain M. Banks.

If they succeed, it'll be the third time in history that they successfully land one of their rockets and the second time they land successfully on their ocean platform.

But because of the high orbit the rocket is aiming for, SpaceX isnt optimistic about recreating the magic of its last ocean landing.

Story continues

"The first-stage will be subject to extreme velocities and re-entry heating, making a successful landing unlikely," the company said in a statement.

The launch will also require higher speeds and huge amounts of fuel, significantly more than was needed for the lower Earth orbit the Falcon 9 reached before its first successful barge landing. The leftover fuel might not be enough to get the rocket to safely back to Earth.

Musk has said that Space X has "well over a dozen" other launches queued up for this year, including the long-awaited Falcon Heavy in November, which is the rocket the company hopes to use to launch to Mars in 2018.

Live coverage of Friday's launch will take place shortly before 1:21 a.m. EDT, and you can watch it on YouTube or below:

NOW WATCH: A SpaceX rocket just did something not even its engineers thought was possible





More From Business Insider


Barcelona (AFP) - Spanish health authorities say they have detected the country's first known case of the microcephaly birth defect in the foetus of a pregnant woman infected with the Zika virus.

"A pregnant woman was infected by Zika and dengue and the foetus has shown various defects," the health authority of the Catalonia region said in a statement late Thursday.

This was Spain's first case of Zika-related microcephaly, a severe form of brain damage where babies are born with abnormally small heads.

It is the second known case of its kind in Europe, after traces of Zika were found in the brain of an aborted foetus in Slovenia that had severe microcephaly.

"The anomalies were identified between the 19th and 20th weeks of pregnancy," a Catalonia health official told reporters Friday, confirming that the foetus had shown "several anomalies, including microcephaly".

Authorities declined to identify the woman in order to protect her privacy, but local media said she had decided against an abortion.

"These symptoms cause serious difficulties, but do not usually lead to the death of the foetus," said gynaecologist Elena Carreras.

A total of 105 people in Spain have been infected with the mosquito-borne Zika virus, according to official statistics from May 3.

Spanish authorities have said all the infection cases -- including 13 pregnant women -- are "imported cases" found in people either "from, or who have visited affected countries" in Latin America.

More than a fifth of foreign residents in Spain are of Latin American or Caribbean origin, the area hit by the epidemic.

The current Zika outbreak began in early 2015 in Brazil, where some 1.5 million infections have been reported. Since then, the epidemic has spread to several other countries in the Americas.

Scientists believe the virus to be responsible for a surge in Brazilian infants born with microcephaly.

There is no vaccine or treatment for the virus, which in most people causes only mild symptoms -- a rash, joint pain or fever.

Despite a flurry of research, very little is known about Zika, including the full list of diseases and disorders it may cause.

Recent scientific consensus is that the virus causes microcephaly in babies and adult-onset neurological problems such as Guillain-Barre Syndrome, which can cause paralysis and death.
San Francisco (AFP) - Shares in online payments firm Square took a pounding Friday after the group led by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey reported earnings that fell short of investor expectations.

At the close on Wall Street, Square slid 21.7 percent to $10.22.

The San Francisco-based firm, which produces hardware and software for merchant and person-to-person payments, on Thursday reported a loss for the first quarter of $96.8 million, more than double the deficit from a year ago.

Revenues rose to $380 million from $251 million in the same period last year.

Mark Mahaney at RBC Capital Markets said the results were "above expectations on a revenue basis" and roughly in line in terms of operating income, but "may not have met heightened investor expectations going into the quarter."

Mark Palmer at BTIG Research said a concern was the looming expiration of the "lock-up" period after which insiders can sell their shares.

"Square arguably needed to post a strong first quarter report to convince the soon-to-be unlocked investors to hold on to their shares," Palmer said.

"While we continue to believe the company is well positioned to enjoy sustained growth and profitability through both its core mobile payments business and its array of value-added functionality for small businesses, the uncertainty associated with the lock-up expiration... keeps us on the sidelines for now."

Square made its stock market debut last November at $9 a share, amid concerns about how Dorsey could manage his roles of chief executive at both Twitter and Square.
Stephanie Davis has accused Jeremy McConnell of faking screen grabs which he says proves she was unfaithful to him.

Copyright: [Twitter]



The former Hollyoaks actress split up with Jeremy yet again this week after which he posted alleged proof that she had been messaging another man.

Hitting out at the claims, Steph wrote: Meteor is an Irish phone please drop me out Ive been 100% faithful unlike some, now, time to get ready for mr manchester.

Followers were quick to lend their support  agreeing that the pictures were FAKE after noting the mobile phone network.

One user quickly commented: Meteor is an Irish network wen I go 2 London its EE so fake message ppl pls like haha (sic).

Copyright: [Twitter]



While another added: Hahaha did they not think you would pick up on that, have a fab day Steph (sic).

Stephanie maintains that she was always faithful during their tumultuous four month relationship.

Earlier this week the Celebrity Big Brother star posted proof that Jeremy had approached Geordie Shore star Vicky Pattinson for a date while they were still together.

Copyright: [Instagram]



A private message from a follower reads: You might feel like your whole world has crashed but really it hasnt! Its a wake up call.. Thinking of you girl!x

"Oh and he tweeted vicky pattison asking when she was taking him out, then deleted it! W*****, along with an angry face and punch emojis.

Obviously having second thoughts, Jeremy quickly deleted the tweet shortly after sending it.
From Esquire

The cold opens for Stephen Colbert's Late Show are much improved in recent weeks, and last night's was no exception. Granted, he had a lot to work withnamely, the formal coronation of Presumptive Republican Nominee Donald Trump. But he absolutely nailed the stages of Trump acceptance here, from amusement to nervousness to horror to slow-creeping insanity, and in the process fashioned a tighter, smoother opening sequence to his slightly-new-look program.

It wasn't the only time he dealt with the Apricot Demagogue's interminable rise. After the opening credits, Colbert jumped right back into it in his opening monologue. He recounted the time his team rushed a video online last summer, before his stint on The Late Show began, because they thought Trump's candidacy would be so temporary. It's a common refrain among denizens of The Media reflecting on how they first covered the Orange One, and it's a phenomenon that, by some accounts, helped fuel his rise. After all, it's easier to pull off absurdity when nobody holds you to a reasonable standard.

Having answered the question, "Why would God let Trump happen?" (the Carlinite answer: Maybe, just maybe, he doesn't give a shit), it was time to deal with The Fallen. Colbert's "Hungry for Power Games" candidate send-off segment has never quite come together, but it's goofy and semi-current. Plus, everybody likes laughing at Ted Cruz, the mendacious eel who has finally departed the presidential race. So it worked this time:

"Half-Kissed Frog Prince" is amazing, and so, still, was Cruz elbowing his wife in the face. But the best was the collection of kind words the Texas senator's putative allies have had for him this cycle. John Boehner called him the Devil incarnate. His college roommate called him a humanoid night terror. And Lindsey Graham fantasized about his murder on the Senate floor.

It's a welcome reminder, in these trying times, that while Trump might be here to stay, at least Ted Cruz is gone.
[Strathcona Fire take a rest after fighting the Fort McMurray wildfire for 30 straight hours/Twitter]



Theres plenty of bad news from Alberta this week: 1,600 buildings destroyed, over 80,000 people forced to flee Fort McMurray and the surrounding area and 100,000 hectares burned by an uncontrollable wildfire.

But amidst the heavy losses in northern Alberta there have been stories of not just community support, but heroism. Some of those heroic efforts have saved lives and homes in Fort McMurray, the centre of the provinces oilsands industry.

Here are a few of the most striking examples of the heroism seen among the destruction in Alberta this week.

Firefighters: The stories of heroism from those fighting the fire firsthand probably wont fully be known until their work is done. But a photo posted on Twitter by the Strathcona County fire department, which is working in Fort McMurray, provided some idea of what they are working through. The firefighters in the photo, taking a short break on a lawn, had been working for about 30 hours straight at that point, their deputy chief of operations told CBC News.



Animal rescuers: Many who had to leave Fort McMurray had no chance to return home to get their pets, resulting in many left behind in many neighbourhoods. Animal rescue operations, like everyone else, are unable to return to Fort McMurray yet in order to help pets that were left behind. But organizations across the country are working together to help those animals that did make it out of the city. The Alberta Animal Rescue Crew Society and the Calgary Humane Society received more than 900 crates, which were sent out to evacuees in various locations who had pets with them. And Suncor  its camp hosted McMurrayites north of the city during evacuations  has flown people and their pets south.

Refugees: Some of the evacuees from Fort McMurray unfortunately have experience fleeing circumstances even more frightening. Refugees who arrived in Fort McMurray after leaving Syria during its ongoing civil war now in its sixth year found themselves on the run again, this time from the wildfire. Others in the city were once refugees from other countries like Somalia, and are now sheltered at mosques, evacuation centres and private homes elsewhere in Alberta.

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But many people who have already had to exhibit their own heroism in leaving their homes and building a life in a new country are now mustering up more in order to help those displaced because of the fire. Refugee communities across the province have mobilized not just to help their own community but to collect supplies for anyone in northern Alberta in need of items like diapers, food and hygiene items.

The whole newsroom has pitched in to cover #ymmfire, but the @FortMacToday folks have been reporting while leaving their own homes behind.  Paige Parsons (@paigeeparsons) May 4, 2016

Reporters: When the situation in Fort McMurray changed suddenly on Tuesday, it was imperative that information could reach tens of thousands of people quickly in order to ensure everyone knew about voluntary and mandatory evacuation orders. The work of local media in the city was a key part of making sure that could happen, even as reporters had to ensure they and their own family members could get out.

A Facebook post by Harry Budgell credited Pete Potipcoe of Country 93.3 with providing breaking updates that helped evacuees leave the city safely. Others called out the work of local reporters at Fort McMurray Today in keeping the public informed both while the evacuation was underway and since having to leave the city themselves.

Rescue convoys: Ordinary citizens in Alberta are also working to help in Fort McMurray, from offering space in private homes and rentals to boarding pets and collecting supplies and donations for the displaced. Rescue convoys filled with essential items like gasoline, diapers, baby formula and food have been deploying since the evacuations began, reaching people stranded on highways and staying at evacuation centres, oilsands worker camps and First Nation reserves. Many have driven for a full day without rest, going back and forth to restock with supplies that have been donated and purchased by people in communities across the province.

Hospital workers: When the citywide mandatory evacuation order came on Tuesday, that included the patients and staff of the Northern Lights Regional Health Centre. Staff at the hospital managed to remove all 105 patients, including long-term care patients and nine newborns with their mothers, in about two hours. Theyve continued working since the evacuation itself, caring for those patients who needed it in evacuation centres and helping to triage them for ground or air transport to other facilities.

RCMP: Mounties are among the first responders working in Fort McMurray, first to help citizens leave and now to find those who still refuse to  or are unable to  leave. Others are currently working to marshal a convoy of people travelling south from where they first evacuated north of the city. The RCMP hopes to move thousands south through the evacuated city along Highway 63, 50 cars at a time.

Some of those people still working in the city are unsure of the state of their own homes, and others know theirs are gone. It makes a tough job harder, Cpl. George Cameron, who is unsure if his home is intact, told the National Post.

Fort McMurrayites: And there has been plenty of heroism found among the citys residents themselves, who left by the tens of thousands and almost completely avoided injury or loss of life. Lisa Hilsenteger is just one example, though perhaps the most striking to come out of the evacuation stories so far. The principal of Father Turcotte School in downtown Fort McMurray got students and staff in a school bus, first from her school to Timberlea High School in the citys north. Then, picking up stragglers along the way the bus left the city and headed north to a camp hosting evacuees, then south again to her fathers home in Athabasca. All of the bus passengers were reunited with their families, either along the way or in Athabasca, as was Hilsenteger with her own husband and son.
British street artist Pegasus is six months out from his Los Angeles gallery show  and that planned display is already getting him death threats.

One of the pieces shows presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump dressed in a Nazi uniform in a pose evocative of Adolf Hitler, with the George Santayana aphorism "Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it," stenciled over it.

Pegasus debuted a version of the image on the wall outside a U.K. pub in February, and tweeted it with the caption "History always repeats! Don't make America Shit again! #dumptrump now before it's too late!"

History always repeats! Don't make America Shit again! #dumptrump now before it's too late!pic.twitter.com/93H951MDic https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cbg2iymWEAECfpQ.jpg:large

In an interview with Mashable published Friday, Pegasus' manager, Leonard Villa, said both he and Pegasus have received 28 threatening phone calls from Trump supporters.

"They say they know what day the show's going to be ... and they're going to come and sabotage it," Villa said. "It's quite frightening really. I think people must be really obsessed with Donald."

at the show, but it sounds like he would be seeing his plans through either way.

"I will not be defeated by fear mongering," Pegasus told Mashable, "and I will not be censored."

Read more: Christians Fire Back at Trump Fan Who Says God Made Him Desert Stranded Woman by Highway
A new study conducted by Portland State University (PSU) researchers, the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, the U.S. Geological Survey, and the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality found that native oysters in Oregons Netarts and Coos bays contain a cocktail of pharmaceuticals, carcinogenic compounds, and chemicals, which include pain relievers, antibiotics, mercury, and pesticides. Yum.

These bays are protected and harvesting the native oysters is illegal because of a project to restore the species. Though the individual concentrations of chemicals found in the oysters are below what state health officials deem to be safe, the ecological effects and potential human risks are unknown, reports Oregon Live.

These Sustainable, Organic Fish Are Better for You  and the Planet slideshow

Elise Granek, an associate professor of environmental sciences at PSU, said in a statement, In addition to potential human health risks, the pollutants may affect the growth and reproduction of the oysters themselves, which could have widespread repercussions since oysters play important ecological roles of filtering water and providing habitat for other estuarine and marine species like juvenile salmon.

The state does not seem too concerned about these findings. A joint statement from the state health authority, DEQ, ODFW and Oregon Department of Agriculture said that they appreciate the work the researchers did to document the low concentrations of environmental contaminants, in the native coastal species.

Granek wants to further examine whether eating contaminated seafood could lead to measurable levels of the same contaminants in the human bloodstream, and has applied for more grant money for this effort.

Click here to read about how one toxin put a hold to the dungeness crab fishing season for months.
When the son of a California addiction specialist flew to Paisley Park to meet with Prince, he also brought with him a small dosage of Suboxone, which he was transporting to a Minnesota physician, according to the family's attorney William Mauzy.



"That's very unorthodox," Peter Grinspoon, M.D., a Massachusetts-based physician and is a recovering opiate addict who is nine years sober, tells PEOPLE. "They should have had the Minnesota doctor prescribe it."



He added, "The minute they heard Prince was having trouble with prescription drugs they should've gotten him into treatment right away."



Dr. Howard Kornfeld, the medical director of Recovery Without Walls outpatient addiction clinic, arranged for his son Andrew to meet with Prince to discuss treatment for an addiction to painkiller at Paisley Park. Unfortunately, Prince passed away on April 21, the day he was supposed to meet with Andrew.







In a recent statement, Recovery Without Wings defended its medical practices and treatment methods saying that Dr. Kornfeld "is a nationally recognized expert in the use buprenorphine," which is the active ingredient in Suboxone, the drug that Andrew was carrying.





What is Suboxone? Addiction Expert Explains This New Treatment for Opiate Addiction That Might Have Saved Prince| Music News, Prince





Suboxone, a combination of buprenorphine and the opiate blocker naloxone, is a drug that's used to treat opiate addiction.



"We use it to transition people who are on heroin or prescription opiates off of them in a very safe way," says Grinspoon, adding that it's a form a replacement therapy. "We replace heroinwhich is on the street and you don't really know what you're takingwith Suboxone, which is something that is still an opiate, but is something that we prescribe and that's a lot safer and that we have control over and know isn't adulterated or tampered with."



"Essentially, they're addicted to Suboxone," he says. "It's substituting something less bad for something more bad."



Suboxone is preferred over Methadone because it doesnat have nearly as many side effects and is harder to overdose on because it contains an opiate blocker. Furthermore, you can take Suboxone at home, whereas you must go to a dispensary for methadone. Grinspoon says doctors "love" Suboxone.



"It's really life saving," he says. "It's an incredibly positive addition our armamentarium to treat addiction."





What is Suboxone? Addiction Expert Explains This New Treatment for Opiate Addiction That Might Have Saved Prince| Music News, Prince





Unfortunately, "there's a big shortage in Suboxone providers," says Grinspoon, because of government restrictions on the drug since there is a black market for it. In order to prescribe it, doctors must go through eight hours of training and receive an extra license from the Drug Enforcement Agency. Grinspoon was recently authorized to prescribe the medicine; however he's limited to only 30 patients.



"A lot of people are advocating that the government lighten up in their control of the Suboxone providers because, sure it can get diverted, sure there can be a black market, but that's kind of small potatoes compared to this incredible epidemic we have of overdoses," he says.
The real-life soap opera surrounding media mogul Sumner Redstone and his mental competency is about is about to see a very public plot development.

In a packed courtroom in Los Angeles Superior Court loaded with journalists, Judge David Cowan began hearing arguments on Friday from two sides in the fight to control the healthcare and estate decisions for the 93-year-0ld CBS and Viacom chairman.

The prolonged legal fight pits Redstones family members against his long-time caregiver and former girlfriend.

Manuela Herzer, a companion of the media mogul of nearly 20 years, was ejected from Redstones home and life in the fall of 2015. Herzer has claimed Redstone was swayed by his daughter Shari Redstone to boot her  and that he was not of sound mind at the time.

Also Read: Sumner Redstone Will Testify in Mental Competency Trial

Among those expected to testify in the trial are expert neurologists, nurses, Sharis daughter Keryn (a surprise ally of Herzer, defying her mother) and Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman, who served as Redstones health care agent from October 2015 until last month.

Redstones physical presence in court wasnt mandatory, but he sat for a pre-taped interview earlier this week in his Los Angeles home.

It is essential that the court see and hear from Redstone himself to make a fully informed decision, Cowan ruled on Monday.

Related stories from TheWrap:

Sumner Redstone Will Testify in Mental Competency Trial

Sumner Redstone's Granddaughter Can't Join Legal Battle Over Health Care, But Will Testify

Sumner Redstone Granddaughter Emerges as Surprise Ally in Ex-Girlfriend's Lawsuit
UPDATED: The testimony was halting, sometimes off point and lasted less than half an hour, but Sumner Redstone told a Los Angeles court via videotape Friday that he wants his one-time true love, Manuela Herzer, out of his life, and for his daughter, Shari Redstone, to oversee decisions about his health care, if he is not able.

Redstone punctuated his disdain for Herzer during the session with lawyers by five times calling her a fing bitch, the transcript showed. She lied to me, Redstone said, when asked why he had forced Herzer out of his home last October. Those lies involved Herzer misleading him about two of his other some-time paramours, Terry Holbrook and Sydney Holland, Redstone suggested.

Redstones videotaped deposition was played in a downtown Los Angeles courtroom at the start of a trial delving into whether the chairman emeritus of CBS and Viacom should continue to control his own affairs, particularly his medical care. A 21-page summary of his half-hour session with lawyers was released to the media, which was barred from the courtroom while the video played.

The mogul directed his fury at Herzer, 52, more than five months after she first went to court to try to get herself re-instated as his health care agent  the person empowered to make decisions about his care, should he become incapacitated. Redstones staff and one of his lawyers had thrown her out of his Beverly Park mansion on Oct. 12, accusing her of lying in an attempt to control the nonagenarian.

The transcript paints a picture of a frail man, who has trouble hearing questions and answering them, but occasionally erupts with the kind of temper for which he became famous as he built a media empire. The testimony was difficult, pausing once while the nonagenarians dentures were adjusted. He spoke with the prompting of a speech therapist and also had printed letters available to help him spell out answers  though it appeared he did not avail himself of that aid.

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Redstones longest answers under direct examination were a handful of words. Queried whether he had once called Herzer the love of his life, he responded Yes. Asked by Herzer attorney Pierce ODonnell if he still loved Herzer, Redstone again answered with one word: No. The attorney also asked the frail 92-year-old businessman whether Herzer stole money from him. He answered Yes, but when pressed to disclose how much she stole, he could not say. When the speech therapist encouraged him to use a chart to specify a number, Redstone still did not respond.

ODonnell asked repeatedly for details about how Herzer cared for him during the years she lived at his mansion. But Redstone responded only with the vulgarity. When asked a more basic question  what his birth name was before the family changed it to Redstone  the magnate also did not answer. Queried by ODonnell about when a photo of him and Herzer was taken, he again became combative, snapping Who cares?

Redstone did not waste any time during his Friday morning session at his Beverly Park estate in striking a combative tone. Who is Manuela Herzer? asked ODonnell in the first question of the morning. She is  Manuela is  a fing bitch, the billionaire retorted. He gave a similar response when asked to specify exactly what Herzer did to care for him and, again, when asked why he had never explained to her why she was being thrown out of his home.

A lawyer for the magnate said in an opening statement to the court that Redstones behavior today reflects who he has always been  a strong-willed man, who will not stand for lies and who is fully capable of making decisions for himself. Attorney Robert Klieger said Redstone clearly understood what he was doing when he ejected Herzer from his home last October and his comments on it since then.

In his brief testimony, Redstone also acknowledged that he had been seeing his family lately (after a period of estrangement, which he was not asked about.) Asked how he felt about having his relatives back in his life, he responded: I feel good about it.

The testimony from Redstone marked his first public declaration on the furor over his status, which has swept waves of controversy over his family members, former lovers and top corporate associates, particularly Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman. Each side has accused the other of manipulating the man who built a media empire valued at more than $5 billion from his familys Boston theater chain.

In his own opening remarks, ODonnell offered an alternative explanation for Redstones sharp rebuke of the woman he once asked to marry him. The lawyer suggested his outbursts were further evidence of his declining mental state. Herzers expert psychiatrist said the harsh words showed that Redstone suffered from stereotypical, impulsive utterances and intrusive thoughts.

Herzers version of her falling out with Redstone wreaks of novelistic flair. She claims she was the victim of a vast conspiracy by Shari Redstone, the billionaires household staff, his attorneys and others. ODonnell described a ring of spies that engaged in a plot not unlike a palace intrigue. The conspiracy was led by Shari, who established a broad intelligence gathering operation inside her fathers home, ODonnell claimed  all with the purpose of controlling the elder Redstone.

They were relentless, cunning, unethical and immoral in their campaign against Redstone and the two women who largely oversaw his care in recent years  Herzer and girlfriend Sydney Holland. Holland was thrown out of the mansion just five weeks before Herzer, when Redstone learned she was having an affair.

What motivated the younger Redstone to lead such a plot? ODonnell said it centered on her desire to take over her fathers business empire. Shari needed to get rid of Manuela by any means because she was a formidable barrier to taking control of her father and his media empire and his money, ODonnell claimed.

ODonnell argued in a 21-minute opening statement to Judge David J. Cowan that Redstone suffered a huge decline in mental function because of organic brain damage. Redstone scored just 17 of 28 on one test of his brain function  the Folstein mini-mental exam, according to ODonnell.

Herzer demanded in her November lawsuit that she be reinstated as the person named in Redstones Advance Health Care Directive, saying he either did not understand what he was doing when he excluded her or that he had been brainwashed into making the change by unscrupulous nurses, lawyers and others.

After having Herzer thrown out of his home, the billionaire also removed the socialite from his estate plan, a move that cost her a $50 million bequest and future title to the Beverly Park mansion, valued at another $20 million. Lawyers for Herzer, who was in court Friday, have said that the mogul considered her the love of his life and only forced her out after conniving staff members made false accusations against her.

Lawyers for Redstone have said it was Herzer who was guilty of manipulation and motivated by greed. They said the Argentinian-born socialite attempted to shut Redstone off from his family and friends, including his daughter Shari, who was also in court Friday for the start of the trial.

Redstones daughter and his one-time lover, Herzer, sat just five yards apart in the crammed downtown courtroom. Herzer wore a plain black suit and simple pearl earrings, while Redstones daughter wore a gray suit. Each of the women has accused the other of engineering a conspiracy to exert control over the billionaire Redstone, to have more power in his life and access to his wealth or corporate legacy. On Friday, at least, the two did not acknowledge each other during the opening session of what is expected to be a five-day trial.

They let their lawyers do the talking in a session that is expected to continue throughout the day. After the playing of the Redstone videotape, Herzers lawyers were expected to call Dr. Stephen Read, a geriatric psychiatrist. Next up, after that, is expected to be Redstones granddaughter Keryn. The day is expected to end with videotaped testmony from Dauman.

Related stories

Sumner Redstone Mental Status 'Severely Compromised,' Mogul Suffers From Dementia, Doctor Tells Court

'Criminal Minds' Renewed for Season 12 at CBS

Sumner Redstone's Ex-Girlfriend Will Face Scrutiny in Case, Judge Rules
4TH UPDATE, 3:39 PM: The trial over who controls Sumner Redstones health care could be over on Monday, according to the L.A. Superior Court judge in charge.

This afternoon, lawyers for Redstone said they want the trial tossed out on the first day. Everyone agrees that Manuela Herzer should not be Mr. Redstones health care agent, said Loeb & Loeb attorney Gabrielle Vidal. We ask this court to put his protection first and dismiss this now, she added. The trial is scheduled to run until May 16.

While not ruling on the motion, Judge David Cowan on Friday asked lawyers for Herzer and Redstone to present evidence based on the strong statements made by Redstone in videotaped testimony played in closed court earlier today and the testimony of Dr. Stephen Read after that. (Read the deposition transcript here.)

How can I sit here after listening to that video and say you cant have what you want? Cowan said, noting Redstones statement that he wanted Herzer out of his life and his daughter Shari Redstone to take over as his health care agent. What evidence do I have that Mr. Redstone continues to be, if he ever was, unduly influenced? asked the judge, who seemed from earlier today to be leaning towards pulling the plug on the matter.

The lawyers for both sides have been asked to give briefs to the judge over the weekend showing that Redstone does not know what he is saying.

Then again, Cowan has worries about the state of mind of the ex-Viacom boss, with concerns as to whether Mr. Redstone appreciates what he is saying. Cowan told the assembled lawyers that when someone has dementia they forget what has happened to them.

This court does not want to drag out something unnecessarily but at the same time it does not want to deny people their day in court.

Further testimony from Read continued today.

If the relationship were to be severed, it would be rational for her not to be the health care agent, the geriatric psychiatrist told the courtroom earlier this afternoon of Herzer and Redstones affiliation. The admission came during a sometimes contentious cross-examination of Read by Redstone attorney Robert Klieger this afternoon.

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In my opinion it would be hard, Read later also admitted of Herzer being able to serve as Redstones health care agent again after all the bad blood that has emerged since last fall and the moguls vehement denunciation of her in his deposition of May 5.

(UPDATE 4:31 PM: The later part of the afternoon saw Joseph Octaviano taking the stand and admitting how back in 2104 and 2015 he secretly provided emails and other correspondence to Shari Redstone about her fathers care and his relationships with his then companions Sydney Holland and Manuela Herzer. Octaviano served as a vocational nurse for Redstone and was employed by him not his daughter.

One of your jobs is not to eavesdrop on your employer and his live-in girlfriend right? asked Herzer co-counsel Ronald Richards rhetorically. As various salacious details were inferred in the questioning, Octaviano responded that it in fact was his duty and allowed under the regulations to pass along information is there is an abuse. When asked why he clandestinely choose to send information to the younger Redstone, Octaviano said, she is the daughter, she is family.

The younger Redstone was allegedly seeking information against Holland and Herzer to potentially pursue legal action against the duo. Octaviano agreed that a large portion of his correspondence with her was about her fathers relationships and not his medical care.

The trial will continue on May 9  or not if Judge Cowan decides to agree with Redstones lawyers motion to dismiss.)

3RD UPDATE, 11:51 AM: Testimony by a doctor who examined Sumner Redstone ahead of the moguls health care trial seemingly revealed that the 92-year-old is suffering from dementia. He does have major neurological problems, said Dr. Stephen Read on Friday in a downtown courtroom after a videotape deposition of Redstone was played in a closed court.

He did not have the requisite mental capacity to understand the changing of his health care directive of October 16, 2015, Read testified as the second witness of the trial, which began today in L.A. County Superior Court. Early on he said it was painful to see what a very thin shadow of his former self Redstone now is. The geriatric psychiatrist also said that based on his examination of the media mogul on January 29 of this year, he believes the severely impaired billionaire is suffering from features of moderate to high dementia. Read also said that Redstone has short circuited and impaired reasoning skills and suffers from delusions.

Less than a week after Reads examination, Redstone resigned from his position as executive chairman at CBS, and dropped his executive chairman title at Viacom the day after that.

As a day-to-day example, Read described in his testimony how Redstone doesnt actually know what teams are playing in the sports he watches on TV. The games are actually pre-recorded and the bets the elder Redstone makes with others are set up so that he always wins. According to Read, Redstone has no idea this set-up is occurring or that the games arent live.

Read is an expert for Redstones ex-companion and former health care agent Manuela Herzer. She brought the court challenge to being removed from Redstones health care directive in November of last year after being kicked out of the moguls home and life the month before.

Viacom Logo

Evicting and taking Ms. Herzer out of the picture had potentially terrible effects on Mr. Redstone, Read told the packed court. He added that, in his opinion, the ex-Viacom chief has little sense of the consequences of the actions against Herzer. His memory was thrown out the widow, he summarized, noting that Redstone has significant short-term and long-term memory issues.

Read described during his examination of Redstone that the mogul repeatedly accused Herzer of stealing $40 million dollars from him and that everybody knows that. The doctor also noted that in the January 29 session he often found Redstone hard to understand and that speech therapist Anne Lefton had to provide the equivalent of translation. According to Read, Redstone also insisted that he left Herzer $15 million in his trust, not the $50 million that was stated in documents.

Responding to questioning from attorney Pierce ODonnell and with various charts on the screen behind him at times, Read additionally noted that the often quick-to-anger and porous Redstone is unduly under the influence of those around him. He offered that the severely disabled Redstone is suffering from a severe form of palsy, speech impairment and a throat disorder among other ailments. The uncontrollable outbursts of anger display an unstable emotional state, Read concluded.

With that said, if tales of Redstone over the decades are anywhere near accurate, outbursts of anger and making strong demands upon others have been a pattern for the former Viacom and CBS boss for a long time.

The trial is set to run until May 16.

2ND UPDATE, 10:14: AM: The transcript (read it here) of Sumner Redstones videotaped deposition in his health care trial was made available after the tape was shown in a closed courtroom this morning. In a 15-minute sit-down with lawyers from both sides of the health care trial underway beginning today in L.A. Superior Court, Redstone, with the help of an interpreter, answered questions about his relationship with Herzer and who should be his health care representative, matters at the heart of the trial.

Redstone, in response to questions from Herzer lawyer Pierce ODonnell, called Herzer a f**king bitch several times throughout the deposition, taken Thursday morning at his Beverly Hills home. He also was asked by his own attorney, Gabrielle Vidal, who should be his health care representative. Redstone responded, Shari  referring to his sometimes-estranged daughter Shari Redstone. He also said he was satisfied with the health care he has been receiving.

After the video was shown and the court was re-opened, Judge David Cowan said Redstone has given some strong testimony. He added your burden now is a hard one to lawyers for Herzer and then grilled ODonnell: I want to know why that testimony shouldnt be respected at the end of the day.

UPDATE, 9:31 AM: Lost to us is the titan of the media world, attorney Pierce ODonnell said today in the opening arguments of the Sumner Redstone health care trial. He was unable to answer even the simplest questions, the Greenberg Glusker Fields Claman & Machtinge lawyer said of his 15-minutes deposition of Redstone at his home on Thursday. Saying Redstone repeatedly called his ex-companion and plaintiff Manuela Herzer an offensive name, ODonnell said, I left his home profoundly disturbed.

In his remarks in L.A. Superior Court this morning, ODonnell said evidence will show Redstone has a major neurological impairment that effects memory, creates delusions and more. His mind feeble and his body ravaged by age, the attorney said in summary of the state of the 92-year-old.

Citing unethical and immoral actions by Redstones family and staff, a circle of deceit and sabotaged love, the lead lawyer for Redstones ex-health care agent Herzer added, My client has come to this court to protect Redstone as the sole cause of this case. Sumner as recently as yesterday called Manuela the love of his life, ODonnell added, alluding to the videotaped deposition scheduled to be played in private in court today.

The motive was to get rid of Manuala by any means because she was a barrier to [daughter] Sheri [Redstone] taking control of his health and his media empire, ODonnell said of the coup that resulted in Herzer being kicked out of Redstones home last October, soon after she was removed as his health care agent and removed from receiving nearly $70 million in money and real estate in his will. The evidence will show Sumner asked Manuela to protect him. Added ODonnell, one person is unfit to be the health care agent, and that is Sheri Redstone.

ODonnell predicted that Redstones lawyers will try to drag my client through the mud because of millions the mogul gave her and his other companion Sydney Holland over the years. Yes, he gave her money, he gave lots of women money, thats what Sumner Redstone did.

Mr. Redstone does not tolerate lies, said the mogul lawyers Robert Klieger in his opening statement. Klieger made clear that his side will argue that Sumner Redstone knew exactly he was doing when he changed his health care directive last October and made Viacom CEO and Chair Philippe Dauman in charge of his health matters if he was unable to do so himself. We intend to be focused on that document and that document alone in this trial, the attorney said.

Ms. Herzer also tricked Mr. Redstone, Klieger said over and over his argument, going into detail about jostling among the moguls intimates for influence and access to his affections.

Everything in this case is a soap opera, he said almost off the cuff about the factions in Redstones life. The lawyer then noted that the video from Redstones deposition will show that while the speech-impaired mogul has profound difficultly communicating, he does not have a problem comprehending.

PREVIOUS, 8:15 AM: With no last-minute settlement materializing, the trial over who controls Sumner Redstones health care and the state of the media moguls mental capacity begins today in downtown L.A. More than six months after Redstones former companion Manuela Herzer dragged the issue into the courts, this mornings proceedings will include 15- to 30-minute video testimony from the ex-Viacom boss himself.

If at the end of the weeklong non-jury trial L.A. County Superior Court Judge David Cowan finds the 92-year-old Redstone lacked the competency to change his health care arrangements last fall, a cascade of corporate consequences could ensue. Even though he resigned from ostensibly running Viacom and CBS earlier this year, the ailing Redstone still controls 80% of the voting shares at the media giants and hence an estimated $40 billion in media assets.

Philippe Dauman Shari Redstone

Todays video testimony, taken from the long-fought-over deposition Redstone was ordered to give in his home Thursday to Herzers lead attorney Pierce ODonnell, will only be seen be a select few. On May 2, when ordering the deposition, Cowan also ruled that the court shall be closed for the playing of the video showing the 92-year billionaire. Only Cowan, ODonnell, Bert Fields and others from Herzers Greenberg Glusker Fields Claman & Machtinge legal team, Redstones attorneys Gabrielle Vidal and Robert Klieger and others from Loeb & Loeb, and sometimes-estranged daughter Shari Redstone are allowed in the courtroom. A transcript of the testimony is expected to be provided immediately afterward when the trial is re-opened to the public.

Herzer is among those that arrived in court this morning.

The mental state of the elder Redstone and his competency has been at the heart of the matter ever since Herzer first filed suit last November. That move came after she was booted out of Redstones Beverly Hills home, dropped from a $70 million payout of cash and real estate in his will, and replaced by Viacom chairman and CEO Philippe Dauman as the person who is enabled to make medical decisions for the mogul if he cant for himself. Calling Redstone a living ghost, Herzer has alleged that the billionaire didnt want the changes made and may not have even independently signed the required documents.

Before the playing of the taped Redstone testimony this morning, opening arguments from both sides will be heard. Other witnesses expected today include Redstones granddaughter Keryn Redstone, who earlier in the case unsuccessfully tried to formally join Herzers side; and Dr. Stephen Read, a psychiatrist on Herzers side who examined Redstone in late January. Today could also see testimony from Dauman via video from a deposition he gave last month in New York to Greenberg Gluskers Fields.

The trial is set to run until May 16 with Herzer, Redstones other former companion Sydney Holland, various medical professionals and household staff, and Shari Redstone also scheduled to be called as witnesses.

This trial deal with issues that all of us, regardless of our fame or fortune, will face someday, ODonnell told Deadline before the start of trial today. The evidence will show that in ousting his longtime friend and confidante Manuela as his health care agent, Sumner was mentally incapacitated and manipulated and deceived by his nursing staff in concert with his conniving daughter. The lawyer added: Manuela is the genuine advocate for Sumners welfare.

Ironically, this spectacle, which both Hollywood and Wall Street are watching carefully, almost didnt happen. In settlement talks between the two sides last month, Herzer was to receive around $30 million to end the case and Shari Redstone was set to take over from Dauman as her fathers health care agent. That all came crashing down when things hit an impasse, in the words of ODonnell, and fell apart in mid-April. The younger Redstone was a big proponent of an agreement with Herzer and paying her out the lump sum, sources told Deadline at the time. Since those talks collapsed, it has been one hearing after another in Cowans downtown courtroom as both sides seemed set on a trial.

Redstones Loeb & Loeb lawyers have argued from the beginning that the mogul knew exactly what he was doing, and signing, when he booted out Herzer last October and removed her as his health care agent soon afterward. They have added weight to that of late by claiming, among other monetary allegations, that Herzer expressed no concerns about the neurological state of Redstone in September 2015 when he made her his solo health care agent after the end of his relationship with Holland.

As they reinforced in filings Thursday that claimed Herzer and Holland received around $150 million from the mogul over the last five years, Team Redstone has held to the line that Herzer is only really after money. Wanting to investigate those motivations in this trial, and granted by Cowan on May 5, they contend that if Herzer cared for Redstone as much as she claims, she would not be submitting him and his private affairs to such a public spotlight.

Still, concerns about Redstones capacity were seeming expressed in an email from an estate planning attorney for the mogul back in April 2015 as Herzer and Holland were part of a Vanity Fair article about them and Redstone.

RelatedViacom CEO Says Talks To Sell Paramount Stake On Track To Wrap In June

Also, more recently, a timeline seemed to suggest Redstone and/or his teams concerns about his personal health and his corporate standing. After submitting to a court-ordered medical examination by Read in January, the National Amusements Inc. owner resigned from his position as executive chairman at CBS on February 3, with Les Moonves replacing him soon afterward, in a clear attempt to avoid further corporate controversy. The next day, Redstone dropped his executive chairman title at Viacom with Dauman voted in to the job by the board over the objections of Shari Redstone.

Cowan has said previously that he does not want this trial to turn into a history of Redstone family feuding. However, with the participants and stakes in play, expect some of exactly that to happen over the next week.

Related stories

Sumner Redstone Trial: Judge Rules To Dismiss Health Care Dispute

Sumner Redstone Will Testify In Health Care Trial After All

Viacom CEO Says Talks To Sell Paramount Stake "On Track" To Wrap In June
Not a seat is left empty in the 6th floor courtroom where judge David J. Cowan will decide if media mogul Sumner Redstone had the capacity necessary to kick longtime companion Manuela Herzer out of his home in October and strip her control of his healthcare directive, and if he has been unduly influenced by his inner circle.

Herzer and Redstone's daughter Shari sit on opposite sides of the courtroom, in the first row behind their respective armies of attorneys.

Courthouse staff is running a tight ship. A dozen black, red and white signs with bold fonts decorate the packed room, warning those in the audience of the consequences of violating electronics rules.

No photography, no cell phones and no audio recording is allowed.

Members of the media are allowed to use computers for note-taking only, but no outside transmission is allowed. The penalty? The signs warn a violation will result in immediate removal from the room and further legal proceedings could also ensue.

There's a tangible sense of urgency in the room.

Cowan opens by telling counsel they have performed commendably to this point and he expects that will continue, that they'll keep the big picture in mind during their arguments.

"That picture is of an elderly man," Cowan says. "The protection of his welfare is the only function of this case."

Herzer's attorney Pierce O'Donnell kicks off opening arguments by describing her relationship with Redstone as a modern day love story.

"There's nothing he wouldn't do for her, and she for him," he says, adding that they were close "in a way that transcended intimacy."

But 17 years of friendship "evaporated" without warning on October 12, and she felt compelled to launch this legal battle to spare him from the "virtual prison" of his Beverly Park mansion.

O'Donnell says the Redstone he saw this week during deposition was a "shell" of the man he used to be. He describes the mogul as having a haunting look and painful stare and says he was unable to answer even the simplest questions, which was "anguishing to watch and painful to hear."

Story continues

He says Redstone repeatedly called Herzer an expletive, which he didn't say in court but shortened as "F.B."

Herzer will be dragged though the mud in this trial, O'Donnell says, but her motives are pure. Yes, Herzer received money from Redstone. So what? So did dozens of women," he says. "That was what Mr. Redstone did."

Then Robert Klieger took the podium on behalf of Redstone's camp, describing the mogul as someone who is universally feared, loved by some and reviled by others.

"Mr. Redstone does not tolerate lies," Klieger says, and that's why Redstone severed his relationship with Herzer.

He argues that it only makes sense if she's not going to be in Redstone's life, she shouldn't be in control of his healthcare.

When Redstone learned his ex-girlfriend Sydney Holland had been cheating on him earlier last fall, he kicked her out and removed her from his directive.

"Nobody questions that decision," Klieger says, but for some reason when he did the same to Herzer five weeks later, his capacity is being questioned. "Mr. Redstone knew exactly what he was doing."

He argues that Herzer lied to Redstone to keep him from being close to his family and to other women in an effort to remain in control of his life.

While there is a history of family drama, Klieger says it's a sideshow and he wants to limit discussion of most events prior to last fall.

"Everything in this case is a soap opera," he says.

More to come from the trial.
(Note language in second paragraph some readers may find offensive. Rewrites with Redstone comments from deposition)

By Dan Levine and Lisa Richwine

SAN FRANCISCO/LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Sumner Redstone's much-discussed mental state will be dissected in public during a trial set to start on Friday, as an ex-girlfriend tries to convince a Los Angeles judge that the 92-year-old media mogul is incompetent in the culmination of a salacious, months-long legal drama.

If the former girlfriend, Manuela Herzer, succeeds, the outcome could set off a chain of events taking majority control of Viacom Inc (VIAB.O) and CBS Corp (CBS.N) out of Redstone's hands, which could alter the course of the two media giants.

The law requires the court to presume Redstone is competent, putting the burden on Herzer, 51, to prove the multi-billionaire lacked mental capacity in October when he removed her as his health care agent. The trial is scheduled to run through May 16.

In court papers, Herzer portrays Redstone as a "living ghost" who communicates in grunts and is obsessed with having sex and with eating steak, even though he is on a feeding tube and no longer able to chew or swallow.

Redstone's attorneys say he has a severe speech impairment but knew exactly what he was doing in October.

In a surprise order on Monday, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge David Cowan - who will preside over the trial - allowed Herzer's team to interview Redstone at home for 15 minutes.

A video of that deposition will be played for the judge Friday, and a written transcript will be made public. "He could be your best witness," Cowan said to Redstone's attorneys.

The mogul controls about 80 percent of the voting shares of Viacom and CBS through his National Amusements movie theatre company. If Herzer wins at the trial, a seven-person trust might then assess Redstone's mental capacity to vote his shares, according to a person familiar with the situation.

The starkly different pictures of Redstone's health are just one strand of a knot that Cowan must untangle to decide who has Redstone's best interests at heart.

Story continues

Last year, local authorities tasked with protecting the elderly visited Redstone's mansion in Beverly Park, a neighbourhood of Los Angeles, sources familiar with the case said. The episode is likely to be raised in the trial.

The visit from an Adult Protective Services unit, previously unreported, occurred in February 2015, eight months before Herzer was ejected from Redstone's home. She played a large role in directing Redstone's care as his health deteriorated through 2014.

A complaint from one of Redstone's nurses sparked the visit, one of the sources said. The complaint is not a public record, and Los Angeles County's Adult Protective Services unit did not immediately respond to questions about the visit. A social worker interviewed Redstone, and no subsequent actions were taken, two sources said.

The two sides are likely to interpret the visit very differently. Redstone's lawyers could argue it bolsters their case that his care was inadequate under Herzer's supervision. Herzer's team could focus on the fact that authorities took no action, suggesting that Redstone received adequate care.

Whether the government visit becomes an issue at trial could depend on how relevant Cowan believes it is to decide Redstone's capacity last October.

"The court intends for this trial to certainly be dignified and to focus on the legal issues that need to be decided," Cowan said last month.

In a trial brief filed on Thursday, Redstones attorneys indicated they will attempt to cast doubt on Herzers credibility by showing that she did not seem to have concerns about his mental state prior to being ousted from his house.

In the days and weeks before she was ejected, the document notes, Herzer made hundreds of thousands of dollars of purchases on Redstones credit card and "executed a $5 million grant agreement with Mr. Redstone for the benefit of her foundation," actions suggesting she thought Redstone was mentally able to approve the expenditures.

A week before Herzers ouster, according to the brief, she arranged for Mr. Redstone to sign documents before a notary.

Herzer's attorneys have said she is concerned only about Redstone's health. In a separate brief on Thursday, they proposed that evidence "be streamlined to concentrate on Redstone" and asked the judge to prevent the trial from becoming "an attack on Herzer."

Other key witnesses will be two doctors with opposing views of Redstone's mental capacity last October.

Redstone's daughter Shari and Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman also could take the stand.
The man thought to be responsible for a fatal shooting at a Maryland high school on Thursday and two more shootings that have yielded at least two fatalities on Friday is now in custody, according to the Montgomery County Police Department's Twitter account.

Shootings UPDATE: Suspect IN CUSTODY in Aspen Hill area: Eulalio Tordil, 62. Press Conference to be held. Time: TBDpic.twitter.com/cHQJRPa9uP https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Chy3TXxW0AEqeh_.jpg:large

In a Facebook post, Montgomery County Police Department officials identified the man as 62-year-old Eulalio Tordil. The New York Daily News reported officials said Tordil fatally shot his estranged wife and wounded a bystander at High Point High School on Thursday.

BREAKING VIDEO: Montgomery County shooting suspect Eulalio Tordil,62, being taken into police custody.pic.twitter.com/2I7iyUbdbN

On Friday, three people were injured in a shooting outside the Westfield Montgomery mall in Bethesda, Maryland, police and witnesses told NBC Washington. The victims, two men and one woman, were rushed to Suburban Hospital for treatment, according to a hospital representative.

Reuters reported one of the male victims later died from his injuries.

LIVE: One male victim of Westfield Montgomery mall shooting has died.http://reut.rs/1T2Md78

In a press briefing, Montgomery County Police Assistant Chief Darryl McSwain said the mall shooting followed a confrontation in the parking lot between the shooter and one victim. He said the two other victims possibly sustained their injuries after rushing to the victim's aid.

A second shooting also occurred on Friday at a Giant grocery store in an Aspen Hill shopping center, just 8 miles down the road from Westfield Montgomery, WUSA reported.

Story continues

Reuters reported a female victim there died from her injuries.

UPDATE: Female victim of Aspen Hill shopping center shooting has died: police

McSwain said at the briefing the suspect is not believed to have any connection to the Westfield Montgomery mall or Aspen Hill shopping center victims.

May 6, 2016, 3:08 p.m. Eastern: This story has been updated.

Correction: May 6, 2016

A previous version of this story misstated reporting done by the New York Daily News and misattributed reporting done by NBC Washington and ABC 7. The information has been corrected.
BEIRUT/GENEVA (Reuters) - The Syrian military denied on Friday it had conducted air strikes on a camp near the Turkish border that killed at least 28 people, but a top U.N. official said initial reports suggested a government plane was responsible for the "murderous attacks". U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad al Hussein said Thursday's attacks were almost certainly a deliberate war crime. France called them a "revolting and unacceptable act that could amount to a war crime or crime against humanity". The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said women and children were among those killed in the attack on the camp near the town of Sarmada, which sheltered people fleeing the five-year civil war. The monitoring group said the death toll could rise further because many people were seriously wounded. In a statement published by state media, the Syrian military said: "There is no truth to reports ... about the Syrian air force targeting a camp for the displaced in the Idlib countryside." Syria's ally Russia said none of its aircraft had flown over the camp. It said militants from the al Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front might have deliberately or accidentally fired on it. U.N. rights chief Zeid said in a statement: "Given these tent settlements have been in these locations for several weeks, and can be clearly viewed from the air, it is extremely unlikely that these murderous attacks were an accident." He said his organization and others would "leave no stone unturned in their efforts to research and record evidence of what appears to be a particularly despicable and calculated crime against an extremely vulnerable group of people." Initial reports suggested the attacks were carried out by Syrian government aircraft, but this remained to be verified, he added. He urged governments on the United Nations Security Council to refer Syria to the International Criminal Court so that there would be "a clear path to punishment for those who commit crimes like these". CHARRED TENTS Footage shared on social media showed rescue workers putting out fires which still burned among charred tent frames, pitched in a muddy field. White smoke billowed from smoldering ashes, and a burned and bloodied torso could be seen. Sarmada lies about 30 km (20 miles) west of Aleppo, where a cessation of hostilities brokered by Russia and the United States had brought a measure of relief on Thursday. Zeid said most of the people in the camps had been forced to flee their homes in Aleppo in February because of sustained aerial attacks there. He said he was also alarmed about the situation in Syria's Hama central prison, where detainees had taken control of a section of the prison and were holding some guards hostage. "Heavily armed security forces are surrounding the prison and we fear that a possibly lethal assault is imminent. Hundreds of lives are at stake, and I call on the authorities to resort to mediation, or other alternatives to force," Zeid said. (Reporting by John Davison in Beirut, Tom Miles in Geneva and Alexander Winning in Moscow; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)
Beirut (AFP) - Syrian security forces on Friday began an assault on a prison in the central city of Hama to end a mutiny estimated to involve 800 inmates, a monitoring group said.

"They fired tear gas grenades inside the prison after arresting the families of prisoners gathered outside the building concerned about their fate," the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Video footage posted on social networks showed a corridor filled with flames and smoke as a voice is heard giving the date as May 6 and the location as the central prison in Hama.

The sound of bursting tear gas grenades can be heard as inmates chant "Allahu Akbar!" (God is greatest) while others are heard coughing.

"There are reports of people becoming unconscious and cases of suffocation", said Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman.

Earlier, he said security reinforcements had been sent to the jail "with a view to storming it in case negotiations fail".

The mutiny began on Monday, with some guards taken hostage after an attempt to transfer detainees to the military-run Saydnaya prison near Damascus.

Syrian activist group the Local Coordination Committees said security forces had been surrounding Hama prison for several days, and that 800 prisoners were involved.

It said they were protesting against dozens of prisoners being sentenced to death and also against conditions inside the jail.

Syria's main opposition group in a statement earlier Friday called on international organisations "to intervene to prevent an imminent massacre" of prisoners.

The High Negotiations Committee urged the international community to "shoulder its responsibilities" and stop the regime from carrying out "reprisals against the detainees".

Abdel Rahman said the inmates were demanding trials and that they not be transferred to Saydnaya.

Authorities have released 46 prisoners since the protest began, the Observatory said earlier, but said Friday water and power supplies to the jail remained cut off.

Story continues

France on Friday warned of "deadly reprisals from the regime" to end the mutiny and urged Damascus's allies to exert pressure "to avoid another massacre in Syria".

More than 200,000 people have spent time in regime prisons since 2011, according to the Britain-based Observatory, which relies on a network of sources inside Syria for its information.

Tens of thousands of political detainees are reported to have died of torture, of which the Observatory says it has verified 14,000 cases.

More than 270,000 people have died in the Syrian conflict since in started with the brutal repression of anti-government protests in 2011.
Aleppo (Syria) (AFP) - Condemnation mounted Friday over deadly air strikes on a camp for displaced people in northern Syria as the regime and its Russian ally denied involvement amid a fragile truce in Aleppo city.

Women and children were reported to be among 28 civilians killed in Thursday's raids near the Turkish border, which also wounded 50.

The strikes in Idlib province, which is controlled by Syria's Al-Qaeda affiliate Al-Nusra Front and rebel allies, came as a 48-hour ceasefire took hold in the battleground city of Aleppo to the east.

That truce was due to end early Saturday (2201 GMT Friday) after giving residents some respite from two weeks of fighting that killed more than 280 civilians, even as clashes raged south of the city.

The Aleppo halt in fighting is part of international efforts to revive a landmark February ceasefire and galvanise peace talks to end a five-year war that has killed more than 270,000 people and displaced millions.

Mamun al-Khatib, director of the Aleppo-based pro-rebel Shahba Press news agency, accused "regime aircraft" of firing missiles at the camp in Al-Kammouna village Thursday -- an accusation Damascus denied.

"There is no truth in the information in some media that the Syrian air force targeted the displaced camp in Idlib province," the official SANA news agency quoted the military as saying.

Russia's military insisted no aircraft flew over the camp on Thursday, suggesting Al-Nusra could have shelled it.

"There were no flights by Russian or any other aircraft," spokesman Igor Konashenkov told Russian news agencies.

- UN's Ban 'outraged' -

"The camp may have been shelled either on purpose or by mistake by multiple rocket launchers which are currently being used very actively in this area by terrorists from Al-Nusra," Konashenkov said.

The February 27 ceasefire between the regime and non-jihadist rebels does not include areas where the Islamic State group and Al-Nusra are present.

Story continues

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said he was "outraged" by the attack on the camp and said those responsible must face justice.

A video posted online showed emergency workers covering charred victims with blankets and carrying them away.

Ban demanded once again that the UN Security Council refer Syria to the International Criminal Court so that the tribunal based in The Hague can open up investigations of possible war crimes.

The six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council called on the UN to quickly investigate "this heinous crime".

The United States earlier described the raids as "totally in keeping" with the regime's past operations.

"There's absolutely no justification for attacks on civilians in Syria, but especially on what appears to have been a refugee camp," State Department spokesman Mark Toner said.

UN rights chief Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein said the camp's tents could clearly be seen from the air so it was "extremely unlikely" to have been an accident.

"It is far more likely they were deliberate and amount to a war crime," he said.

Regime aircraft have previously targeted rebels other than Al-Nusra Front and IS.

- Prison assault -

Russia also launched air raids in support of Damascus in September, and a US-led coalition has conducted air strikes against IS in Syria since 2014.

Qatar's Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani met Russian President Vladimir Putin in the Black Sea resort of Sochi "to discuss possible ways to save the political process, to save the civilian population", he told reporters.

South of Aleppo city, clashes between regime forces and jihadists and their allies have killed more than 70 on both sides, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Friday.

Al-Nusra and allied Islamists seized Khan Tuman and surrounding villages in less than 24 hours, according to the Britain-based monitor.

Pro-regime troops had driven the jihadists out of Khan Tuman in December.

In central Syria, regime forces launched an assault against a prison in the central city of Hama aimed at ending a mutiny, the Observatory said.

The mutiny began on Monday after an attempt to transfer inmates to the military-run Saydnaya prison near Damascus.

Human Rights Watch said it had received WhatsApp messages from inmates inside the prison saying that security forces "were attempting to storm their prison block, using tear gas and rubber bullets."

It said the assault "raises major concerns about possible excessive use of force".

As warplanes hit the Idlib camp on Thursday, Syria's regime celebrated its recapture of the ancient city of Palmyra with a concert in its amphitheatre.

A second concert conducted by Valery Gergiev was being staged in the floodlit amphitheatre late Friday.

Before regime troops backed by Russian warplanes retook Palmyra in late March, the theatre was a backdrop for IS executions.
BEIRUT (Reuters) - Syrian government forces fired tear gas and live ammunition into Hama prison on Friday as they tried to put down a revolt by its inmates, a monitoring group said, and an opposition source said some prisoners had choked from the fumes. The prison has been surrounded by government forces since hundreds of prisoners rioted and seized several guards on Monday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. Friday's fighting was the second attempt to storm the prison in the western part of the country, the Britain-based group reported. A Syrian opposition official in contact with prisoners said security forces had fired an unidentified gas into the facility, causing 25 cases of suffocation but no deaths. The official said Syria's main opposition body, the High Negotiations Committee, had informed the United States and the U.N.'s Syria envoy about the situation. The HNC earlier said it held the international community responsible for a "massacre" of inmates it expected government forces to carry out. The Syrian interior ministry has denied "reports ... about Hama central prison", but has not elaborated on the issue since Monday. Syrian insurgent groups, including the powerful Islamist Ahrar al-Sham, threatened to shell all the bases of government forces in Hama province if Damascus did not meet the demands of the inmates. The prisoners rioted to protest the attempted transfer of some of them to Sednaya military prison, north of Damascus, and because trials had been postponed, the Observatory said. The HNC said they wanted better conditions in jail. Earlier on Friday, the Observatory said, negotiations had led to the release of dozens of prisoners. Those held in the jail include political and Islamist prisoners. International rights groups say thousands of detainees are held in Syrian government prisons without charge and many of them are subjected to torture, a claim denied by the authorities. The Syrian conflict began in 2011 with popular protests against President Bashar al-Assad, and spiraled into civil war after a crackdown by security forces. (Reporting by John Davison and Tom Perry; Editing by Larry King)
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AT&T Beats Estimates in 1Q16: Where Does It Stand among Peers?

(Continued from Prior Part)

AT&Ts scale in the telecom space

Earlier in this series, we learned about some aspects of AT&Ts (T) performance in 1Q16. The carrier reported these results on April 26, 2016. Now, well look at the value proposition of the telecom player among select global telecommunication titans.

As of April 27, 2016, AT&T was the second-largest global telecom player by market capitalization. China Mobile (CHL) was the largest, and the third-largest by market capitalization was Verizon (VZ).

AT&Ts dividend proposition

The telecom companys forward dividend yield was ~5% as of April 27, 2016, higher than Verizons yield of ~4.4%. International peers Telefonica (TEF), Vodafone (VOD), Deutsche Telekom (DTEGY), and America Movil (AMX) had yields of ~7.5%, ~5%, ~3.9%, and ~2.1% as of April 27, 2016.

Enterprise value multiples of AT&T

Now lets look at the enterprise values of AT&T and peers. The integrated telecom company was trading at a current EV-to-EBITDA ( enterprise value to earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortization ) multiple of ~6.6x on April 27, 2016. Verizons EV-to-EBITDA multiple was ~6.9x. In the global telecom space, Vodafone, Deutsche Telekom, Telefonica, and America Movil had multiples of ~7.9x, ~6.4x, ~7.5x, and ~5.7x, respectively, as of April 27, 2016.

For diversified exposure to telecom players in the United States, you could consider investing in the iShares Russell 1000 Value ETF (IWD). AT&T, Verizon, CenturyLink (CTL), Level 3 Communications (LVLT), and T-Mobile (TMUS) made up ~2.7% of the ETF at the end of March 2016.

Continue to Next Part

Browse this series on Market Realist:
DUSHANBE (Reuters) - Two Tajiks recruited by the militant group Islamic State planned to assassinate President Imomali Rakhmon last year, a court in the capital Dushanbe said on Friday. The Dushanbe district court said it had sentenced the two, a man and a woman, last December to 10 and eight-and-a-half years in prison respectively. It said they were both residents of the capital. The case and the sentence were not made public at the time. Rakhmon faced an attempted coup last September led by a deputy defense minister who then died fighting government troops. Rakhmon, who has run the landlocked central Asian republic since 1992 and used Russian support to crush Islamist guerrillas in a 1992-1997 civil war, blamed that coup attempt on the opposition Islamic Renaissance Party, which was then banned. The Dushanbe government says more than 1,000 Tajiks have joined Islamic State, the most high-profile case being former colonel Gulmurod Khalimov, the U.S.-trained commander of Tajikistan's elite police force. (Reporting by Nazarali Pirnazarov; Writing by Olzhas Auyezov; editing by Gareth Jones)
Image: Parco Singapore

By Hong Xinying



The bustling Tanjong Pagar district may be better known to foodies for its rows of Korean restaurants. Now, a new Japanese dining concept looks set to expand these foodie finds from the land of the rising sun.

In the last quarter of this year, a cluster of Japanese restaurants is expected to open at 100 AM mall under Itadakimasu by Parco, a new dining concept. The 14,000 square feet restaurant zone will be located at level three and will feature between five to 10 restaurants.

100 AM is a strategic choice for our new itadakimasu by PARCO concept in Singapore as it is located within the Central Business District, said Shigeyoshi Sato, CEO of Parco Singapore, in a recent press statement (25 Apr). Our restaurant mix will be a boost to the large working population and residents in the vicinity.

Its not the first time that Parco has introduced such a dining concept to Singapore.

The first Itadakimasu operated at Parco Marina Bay in the Millenia Walk mall from 2010 to 2014. The dining area had featured Japanese restaurant franchises such as Monster Curry, Saboten and Ma Maison.

While the restaurant line-up has not been confirmed, Yahoo Singapore understands that the Parco Singapore is currently in talks with some new-to-Singapore brands.

We feel that there is still a wider variety of dining options that can be catered to match the needs of the area, said a spokesperson to Yahoo Singapore.

Existing restaurants in Tanjong Pagar offer options such as ramen, gyoza (pan fried dumplings), omakase (Japanese multi course meal) and izakaya-style (Japanese bar) dining.

Psyched for more Japanese cuisine in Tanjong Pagar? Head down to these foodie favourites for your dose for Japanese-style eats.

Ramen Keisuke Tonkotsu King

Where: 1 Tras Link, #01-19, Orchid Hotel Singapore 078867, Tel: 6636 0855

Image: Ramen Keisuke

This restaurant specialises in tonkotsu ramen: noodles served in a pork bone broth and topped with tender slices of pork. You can choose to add on other toppings such as seaweed and what the restaurant calls flavoured eggs: soft boiled marinated eggs, with a runny centre. The restaurant also provides complimentary servings of spicy beansprouts, pickled cabbage as well as soft boiled eggs. Prices start from $10.80 for the Tonkotsu ramen, without any extra toppings.

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Other notable tonkotsu ramen restaurants in the area include Ikkousha Hakata Ramen and Menya Sanji.

Gyoza King

Where: 1 Tras Link, #01-15, Orchid Hotel Singapore 078867, Tel: 6604 6674

Image: Ramen Keisuke

Also opened by the Ramen Keisuke restaurant group, this foodie stop may be another no-frills, counter seat eatery, but it does its specialty well, to keep drawing the crowds in. Its gyoza set meal ($13.90) features the said pan-fried dumplings, where youll get to choose between the pork, chicken or prawn fillings. These are paired with side dishes that include deep fried tofu, stir fried egg with tomatoes, along with a bowl each of rice and miso soup.

Hokkaido Izakaya

Where: 95 Tanjong Pagar Road, Singapore 088516, Tel: 6221 7118

Image: Hokkaido Izakaya

The seating may be cramped and the service brisk. But that doesnt matter so much when the food is what youre here for. Its also the newest restaurant on this list; it opened in late February this year. True to its name, this casual restaurant-bar specialises in dishes prepared with Hokkaido-imported produce. Besides the fresh sashimi and sushi, the hot soba ($14) is another popular dish: the handmade buckwheat noodles come served with a hot broth and topped with a chunky vegetables and prawn tempura.

Other notable izakayas in the area include The Public Izakaya, which has two outlets at Tras Street and Enggor Street.

Tendon Ginza Itsuki

Where: 101 Tanjong Pagar Road Singapore 088522, Tel: 6221 6678

Image: Ramen Keisuke

Its the Singapore outpost of the Ginza Itsuki Sushi restaurant from Tokyo. brought in by the Ramen Keisuke group. The restaurant specialises in the tendon (short for tempura donburi): a bowl of battered seafood and vegetables, nestled on a bed of rice. Topped with soy sauce, the fried batter is light, crispy without being too greasy. The dish comes accompanied with wobbly chawanmushi (savoury egg custard) and miso soup. Do order the Special Tendon ($13.90), which includes an oozy half-boiled egg hidden under the stack of fried tempura.

Teppei Japanese Restaurant

Where: #01-18, Orchid Hotel, 1 Tras Link, Singapore 078867, Tel :6222 7363

Image: Teppei Restaurant/ Facebook

Opened by Japanese chef Yamashita Teppei, this 22-seater restaurant is so popular that reservations only open once every few months; youre lucky to even get your booking within that day. The restaurant serves multi-course meals made with seasonal produce, starting with light appetisers before moving onto slices of sashimi and other heavier dishes such as the bara chirashi donburi (rice bowl with diced sashimi).

While prices have gone up from $50 to $60 for the basic multi-course set ($80 for the set with more premium dishes), the meals are still comparatively affordable, given the quality ingredients used. Keep an eye out for last-minute cancellations on its Facebook page, if youve missed reservations day.

Hanare Japanese Cafe and Restaurant

Where: 99B Tanjong Pagar Road, Singapore 088520, Tel: 6222 1976

Image: Teppei

Opened by the same folks behind Teppei, this no-frills restaurant specialises in the barachirashi. Depending on how greedy you feel, you can choose between the set that includes up to four all-you-can-eat sides or the set that includes a free flow of all the sides available to go with your main dish. Prices range from $17.60 and up, depending on the donburi set meals available.

Hana Hana

Where: 1 Tras Link, #01-17, Orchid Hotel, Singapore 078867, Tel: 6222 7363

This offshoot of Teppei specialises in yakitori (Japanese-style skewered meats). You can opt to have individual skewers of grilled meats or go for broke with a multi-course omakase meal featuring the menu highlights. It also serves the popular barachirashi don ($17.60 for the set) that can be found at all Teppei restaurants.

Yayoiken Japanese Restaurant

Where: 100 Tras Street, #03-12, Singapore 079027, Tel :6694 8809

Image: Yayoiken

This Japanese restaurant chain has a store within 100AM too. It specialises in Teishoku, which is a set meal of steamed rice, miso soup and a Japanese-style meat or fish main dish, served with side dishes of vegetables and pickles. It also does donburis, which are rice bowls topped with a choice of fish or meats, plus vegetables. A perk for the hungry: you can eat as much of the Japanese white rice as you want, as its served free flow with any Teishoku set. Prices start from $9.90 for the set meal.

Tsujiri

Where: 100 Tras Street, #01-14, 100AM, Singapore 079027, Tel: 6543 6110

Image: Tsujiri Singapore/ Facebook

Love all things green tea flavoured? Try the desserts and drinks made with matcha (finely ground powder from green tea leaves) at the first Singapore outlet of the dessert chain from Kyoto. Top picks include its signature O-matcha float (soft serve on top of its green tea drink) which goes for $6.50 each and green tea flavoured parfaits, which start from $7.20. The small sweet stop may only have a few seats within its dining area but it suits the lunch crowds just fine; most of them will just grab their order and go.

Patisserie Glace

Where: 12 Gopeng Street, #01-31/32, Icon Village, Singapore 078877, Tel: 6400 0247

Hankering for Japanese-style sweets? This is your go-to destination. Opened by pastry chef Tomoko Yamashita, this patisseries specialises in light, Japanese-style pastries. Among the must-tries: the Strawberry shortcake ($5.40) and its Rin rin ice cheese tart ($3.50 each). The patisserie also conducts bakery classes from time to time, for those who are keen to pick up baking skills.
Immigration has become a key political issue in the current campaign.

Brian Goldsmith, political consultant for Yahoo News, explained why it matters and the differences between the leading candidates campaigns.

Why immigration issues matter more than ever before

The electorate has become two full points less white in every presidential election, according to Goldsmith. The voters were 74% white in 2008, 72% in 2012 and are on track to be just 70% white in 2016.

Its more important than ever for presidential candidates to appeal to voters who are closer to the immigrant experience and for whom this is a threshold issue-- that is Latino voters and Asian Americans.

Additionally, Goldsmith emphasized that were a nation of immigrants. One recent study showed that over half the startups worth more than $1 billion--including Uber, Palantir, and SpaceX--were founded by immigrants. Meanwhile, there there are 11 million illegal or undocumented immigrants in the US, which makes up about 5% of the labor force. This affects every corner of the economy and our culture, Goldsmith said.

Donald Trump

Trump describes his position on immigration as hardline. And indeed it is the most restrictive position of any major presidential candidate in recent history, according to Goldsmith.

First, theres Trumps proposal for the 35-40 foot high wall that would cover 1,000 of the 2,000-mile southern border. (The US has already fenced about one-third of the border.) Trump says it would cost $8 billion; others have estimated that it could cost three times that much.

Second, he says he would round up and deport the approximately 11 million illegal immigrants in the US. The good ones" will be brought back after they are deported, he has said. Trump has added that hes going to keep families together, but Goldsmith notes that there are approximately 5 million U.S. citizen children with at least one undocumented parent.

Third, Trump has taken a variety of positions on guest workers and highly skilled immigrants. He has criticized the H1B program for costing Americans jobs but hes also embraced it as a way of keeping brain power in this country. Hes criticized guest workers but also uses them in his club, Mar a Lago, in Florida.

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Hillary Clinton

Theres a Rio Grande sized gap between Clinton and Trump on immigration issues, Goldsmith said. In the first 100 days of Trumps administration, he says hes going to have the wall designed. In the first 100 days of Hillary Clintons administration, she says she is going to submit a plan to Congress for comprehensive immigration reform.



Comprehensive reform essentially means that undocumented workers have a path to citizenship so long as they pay back taxes, pay a fine, pass a background check, and get to the back of the line behind those who have done the process legally, according to Goldsmith. It would also expand the number of foreign students, educated in the US, who are allowed to stay.

Both President George W. Bush and President Barack Obama failed to get comprehensive immigration reform through in 2007 and 2013, respectively. Both failed at the hands of anti-trade Republicans and pro-labor Democrats, Goldsmith said.

But Clinton plans for forge forward. And if the plan fails, Clinton plans to take executive action to protect illegal immigrants.

When Obama failed to get comprehensive reform through Congress, he implemented executive action to shield 5 million undocumented immigrants from the threat of deportation--these are the so called dreamers that were brought here when they were very little and also parents of US citizens. Clinton has said if Congress doesnt act on comprehensive reform, she would look at shielding the parents of the dreamers as well.






Its the Constitution.



Three times, House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., explained Thursday on CNN why he cannot support the Republican Partys presumptive nominee, Donald Trump. It came down to Trumps expansive views of presidential power.

Seen in light of previous statements by Ryan, its clear that the speakers biggest concern is that Trump does not share his belief that the presidency has become too powerful and needs to be reined in by Congress.

But there were also hints in Ryans comments to Jake Tapper that he suspects Trump may not understand or appreciate the balance of power between the president and Congress as set forth in the U.S. Constitution.

I think conservatives want to know, does he share our values and our principles on limited government, the proper role of the executive, adherence to the Constitution? Ryan said. There are a lot of questions that conservatives, I think, are going to want answers to, myself included.

Democrats accused George W. Bush of expanding the powers of the presidency to a dangerous degree, and Republicans like Ryan have said the same about President Obama. But, lately, Ryan has also blamed Republican presidents who preceded Obama for replacing the lawmaking authority of Congress with executive orders and federal agency rule making.

While Ryan also said that he wants to see Trump adopt a more hopeful, positive message that can attract a broader set of voters, he insisted that he was not calling on Trump to renounce any of his policy positions. Ryan, however, has forcefully criticized Trump over his proposal to ban Muslims from entering the country, for his slowness to repudiate the support of white supremacists, for inciting violence against protesters at Trump rallies, and for his plan to deport all undocumented immigrants.

Doesnt he completely have to say that he doesnt support the deportation of 12 million undocumented immigrants because you disagree with that? Tapper asked Ryan.

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No, no, Im not saying that at all, Ryan said. Im not saying hes got to support my policies  He won fair and square on his policies. And, yes, he comes from a different wing of the party than the one I do.

(Photos: Reuters)

Ryan made clear that while he disagrees with Trump on many things, these are not the issues that make him unable to support Trump.

Of course, youre going to have policy disagreements. You always have policy disagreements. Heck, Mitt Romney and I had policy disagreements. So thats just natural, and its too much to ask someone to change their policy views that they were duly elected on, on some policy dispute, Ryan said. But are we putting our policies based upon the principles that all conservative and all Republicans share? You know, limited government, the Constitution, the right role for the executive?

Ryan said he wants to know whether Trump will advance our appreciation for limited government, for the Constitution, for the proper role of the executive, for the principles that not only built our party, but built this country.

And, yes, looking back on the primary campaign, I think there are instances and episodes that question that, Ryan said.

In fact, Trumps conduct over the past year has raised questions about his understanding of and commitment to basic constitutional bedrock principles, such as freedom of the press, freedom of speech, and the checks and balances at the heart of Americas democratic republic. He has promised to change the law to make it easier to sue journalists who say things he doesnt like, publicly threatened retaliation against political opponents  including Ryan himself  and railed against the Republican nominating rules, which like the American constitutional system combine direct and indirect forms of democracy (and which, in fact, have helped him ).

Trump has vowed to penalize businesses that make decisions he doesnt like, such as moving jobs to other countries. Carrying out his deportation proposal would dramatically increase the size of government and involve a major expansion of its police powers.

Ryan, meanwhile, has been foreshadowing a five-point agenda he plans to unveil before the Republican convention in July as a platform for Republican candidates for the House and Senate to run on. One of the five planks, he said recently, is to restore the Constitution and Article 1 in the Constitution.

What that means is the laws we live under should be written by we, through our elected representatives. Right now we dont really have that, Ryan said. Weve got this fourth branch of government  unelected bureaucrats  writing our rules, writing our regulations that govern our society, that determine how our businesses run, how our schools work. It determines almost everything we do.

Ryan blames both Democratic and Republican presidents for expanding the unchecked power of the executive branch and said he has lots of ideas for how to reverse that trend. He has not yet set out specific proposals, though his current showdown with Trump may force him to do so sooner than he planned.

Ryan had already spoken with Trump to brief him on his five-point platform and has said publicly that Trump was amenable to it.

I said, here is what were doing, heres where were going. Heres why were doing it. We decided this last year before the presidential election even got started. And, yes, we had a pleasant conversation, Ryan said on April 27 on CNN.

But after Ryans CNN interview, Trump specifically said he did not support Ryans agenda.

I am not ready to support Speaker Ryans agenda. Perhaps in the future we can work together and come to an agreement, Trump said.
Its fair to say that Vladimir Putin is a bit of a divisive chap - much loved by many in Russia but reviled by much of the world for his stance on issues like gay rights and the war in Syria.

But along with all the criticisms and devotion hurled at the Russian President, there are rumours about him that, frankly, are downright bizarre.

Whether you choose to believe any or all of them depends on your belief in the stranger things in life - but who knows, maybe some are actually real? (They probably arent.)

Vladimir Putin is being advised by aliens

Conspiracy: Former councillor Simon Parkes believes Putin is getting help from aliens (Rex)



According to ardent believer in life on other planets Simon Parkes - a former Labour councillor in Whitby, Yorkshire - Putins recent hostilities in Ukraine are all down to the help he receives from a group of alien reptiles he calls the Nordics.

Parkes, who himself claims to have been visited by extraterrestrials, claimed in a Q&A session: Putin had been part of a group advised by reptiles. Nordics made the counter offer to Putin.

The technology the Nordics are giving to Putin is on par with America.

He added: The Nordics have told Putin he no longer has to toe the American line, hence his resistance.

Parkes also said his real mother was a 9ft green alien, so, make of that what you will.

Vladimir Putin is immortal

Immortal: Do these pictures prove that the Russian President has been around for a long time? (Twitter)



Not content with being in charge of Russia, Putin has also been around for a long time - a VERY long time.

According to conspiracy theorists, pictures from 1920 and 1941 show someone who looks extremely similar to Putin dressed up as a soldier and a Russian airman.

The logical explanation to come from this is that that the Russian President is the person in the photos and is therefore immortal, rather than the two people in the photos coincidentally look a bit like him.



Vladimir Putin is Count Dracula

Vampire: Some believe Putin was Vlad the Impaler - who is also known as Count Dracula (Rex)



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This is connected to the whole immortal theory but needs singling out on its own. While many are now convinced that Putin doesnt age, their theory behind this is that he is actually a vampire. More specifically, some people think that he is the most famous vampire of all - Vlad the Impaler, otherwise known as Count Dracula.

There isnt too much evidence behind this other than a couple of pictures of people that look like him and the fact they have the same first name but it would explain how he is immortal. Its just a shame that he has definitely been seen during the day - then again, maybe he has some major sun cream action going on.



Vladimir Putin was neutralised by a stealthy coup



Back in 2015, when Putin was not seen in public for ten days, bizarre claims emerged that shadowy security chiefs had neutralised the Russian leader.



The claims came from chairman of the pro-Kremlin national Islamic Committee, Geydar Dzhemal, who blamed former FSB chief Nikolai Patrushev for the plot.

I think that Putin is neutralised at the moment, but of course, he is alive, said Dzhemal. He is under the control of the power-wielding agencies, who have, in my opinion, organised a coup d'etat.

Sinister stuff until Putin showed up a few days later looking as healthy as ever. He said: It would be boring without gossip.

Vladimir Putin is the Mona Lisa

The Mona Lisa is one of the most-viewed and most famous pieces of art in human history - but only recently did we find out that the woman with the odd pose is none other than the 2016 Russian President.

Famous: Could there be more to the Mona Lisa than meets the eye? (Wikipedia)

Work of art: The morphing from Mona Lisa to Vladimir Putin is strangely easy (Twitter)

A bit of a close up shows just how similar the two are, meaning that Putin is/was Lisa Gherardini - wife of Florintine noble Francesco del Giocondo or he simply wore a wig for the painting for Leonardo da Vinci in the early 1500s. Hes packed a lot in, hasnt he?

Vladimir Putin is the richest man in the world

According to some reports, Vladimir Putin is hiding a fortune of 140 BILLION - which would make him by far the richest man in the world.

The claims came from Bill Browder, a former fund manager in Russia who is now one of Putins harshest critics.

I believe that [Putin is worth] $200 billion, Browder said. "After 14 years in power of Russia, and the amount of money that the country has made, and the amount of money that hasnt been spent on schools and roads and hospitals and so on, all that money is in property, bank, Swiss bank accounts, shares, hedge funds, managed for Putin and his cronies.

The CIA think Putin is worth a mere 28 billion, but the Russian President himself gives a much more modest account of his wealth, declaring his income at just 3.6 million rubles (around 68,000) in 2013.

Vladamir Putin is dating Rupert Murdochs ex-wife

According to US Weekly, Putin is dating Wendi Deng, the ex-wife of billionaire media tycoon Rupert Murdoch.

Putin, who is notoriously private about his love life, was married for 30 years to Lyudmila Putina, but they divorced in 2014. Hes also been rumoured to have had a relationship with Olympic rhythmic gymnast and Russian MP Alina Kabaeva, which he denied.

News organisations have been skeptical about the Deng story but it definitely wasnt, as some people suggested, an April Fools prank.



Read more:

10 Embarrassing Politician pop Culture Fails

Whats It Like To Live Near Chernobyl Today?

13 Things Your Husband Isnt Telling You



Top pic: Wikipedia
Toby Little - Writing to the world (Facebook)

An eight-year-old boy is writing to every country in the world as part of a school project.

The idea has proved such a hit for eight-year-old Toby Little that it has spawned its own Facebook page and a book deal.

In an era where most people no longer write letters by hand, Toby has, so far, written 880 letters and got 367 replies.

Letters will soon be sent to Belgium, Poland and Spain.

The countries he has written to already include New Zealand, Singapore and India.

Toby with his book (Facebook)

It all started when Toby was just five.

He was given a reading assignment at school which included a section explaining how long it took to send a letter to New Zealand.

Toby was hooked and decided there and then to send a letter to every country in the world.

He wrote his first letter in the summer of 2013 to an acquaintance in Hawaii.

The Yorkshire youngster tracks down someone in every country and then writes to them.

Some countries he is still waiting for replies from include Lesotho, Cuba and Egypt.



He has even written to the president of Kiribati in the Pacific.
If time travel is possible, where are the tourists from the future? Stephen Hawking asked in A Brief History Of Time.

But one scientist believes that time travel is possible - and he has the design for a working time telephone, which he believes will receive messages from the future.

Ronald Mallett, 69, is a respected theoretical physicist at the University of Connecticut, and the subject of a new documentary, How To Build a Time Machine.

He believes that a tunnel of laser light can send messages through time - and that a time machine will be built this century.

He also thinks he has the answer to Stephen Hawkings question about why we have never seen a time traveller.

Malletts quest to build a time machine has been a lifelong one - inspired by the death of his father, when he was aged 10.

The young Mallett - who read a comic book version of H.G. Wells The Time Machine - vowed to build a machine which would let him travel back and warn his father of the heart attack which would kill him on his 11th wedding anniversary.

Ronald Mallett says, in How To Build A Time Machine, I would say it was fair to call what I was doing an obsession. I was obsessed with wanting to see my father again.

I was obsessed with trying to find out how one could control time.

Everything that I became, the whole of my personality, everything about being a physicist, was based on my love for my father, and my desire to see him again.

I had a mission. My goal was to figure out how to build the time machine.

He has designed a machine which can twist time using lasers - allowing signals to travel into the past - and now hopes to build it.

The idea is based on Einsteins theories - and the current prototype version of the machine is a series of stacked ring lasers, glowing green, which circle a glass tube.

Malletts machine is based on Einsteins General Theory of Relativity, and the fact that light can create gravitational fields.

In a scientific paper, Mallett wrote, For the strong gravitational field of a circulating cylinder of light, I have found new exact solutions of the Einstein field equations for the exterior and interior gravitational fields of the light cylinder.

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The presence of closed timelike lines indicates the possibility of time travel into the past. This creates the foundation for a time machine based on a circulating cylinder of light.

Mallett believes physical time travel is impossible, but he thinks that messages could be sent through time - in the form of neutrons sent through a tunnel of light.

Mallet says, By assigning a 1 to the spin up direction and a 0 to the 'spin down direction then [we] could send a binary code with a stream of neutron spins.

For example, neutrons with 'spin up, 'spin down, 'spin down would represent a binary code100 which is the number 4.

But the one thing Malletts machine will not be able to do is communicate with his father - or anyone else in the past.

If the machine works as expected, it will only be able to send and receive messages from the moment it is turned on - or the future - and no earlier point.

Mallett says, When the first time machine is turned on it will be possible for our descendants to contact us - but we will not be able to contact our ancestors.

In theory, at least, this solves Stephen Hawkings problem with time travel.

The reason we have not heard from or seen time travellers is that it only becomes possible to communicate across time once the time machine is built.

Other physicists are less sure that a time machine is possible - and even Mallett says that the process of building one may be long and expensive.

Mallett has worked for decades to get to this point, publishing multiple papers on the subject - and writing an autobiography, Time Traveler, which has been optioned as a film by Spike Lee.

Mallett says, When I first got inspired to study time travel, I had to be very secretive. As a young physicist, you dont broadcast widely that your research is fueled by your passion to go back in time to see your father.

Instead, I cloaked my urge to understand time travel by studying black holes. But in fact, black holes and time travel are related.

I knew from my studies of Einsteins theories that the strong gravity of rotating black holes could affect time. And I wondered if the gravity of circulating light, such as that created by very strong lasers, could mimic the conditions in a rotating black hole and send information into the past and future.

My whole existence, who I am, is due to the death of my father, and my promise to myself to figure out how to affect time with Einsteins work as a foundation.

'Im the theoretical guy. The experimental physicists will have to take on the daunting  and very expensive  role of testing my theory.
DAKAR (Reuters) - Three Red Cross staff members kidnapped three days ago in eastern Congo in an attack blamed by a rights group on Rwandan rebels, have been released, the Geneva-based organization said on Friday. "They are free, they were handed over to the local authorities and they will be back in Goma tomorrow," an International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) spokeswoman told Reuters, giving no further details. The Congo-based Centre of Studies for the Promotion of Peace, Democracy and Human Rights blamed the kidnapping on the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, a grouping of former soldiers and Hutu fighters behind Rwanda's 1994 genocide. Aid workers are frequently abducted in the Democratic Republic of Congo and in January the United Nations said a spike in the number of kidnappings and insecurity had made it difficult to provide humanitarian aid. (Reporting by Marine Pennetier; Editing by Louise Ireland)
Tim Matheson has been cast as President Ronald Reagan and Cynthia Nixon as First Lady Nancy Reagan in the adaptation of Bill OReillys book Killing Reagan, for National Geographic Channel. And, in a Hitchockian move, OReilly will have a small role in the project, which he declined to name except to say it was a pretty fun role.

We wanted to get somebody in both roles who, No. 1 had a lot of experience, because these arent easy roles. They arent caricature roles. Matheson and Nixon are accomplished, and theyve played a lot of roles, but theyre also not strongly identified with any one role, OReilly told Deadline. Some actors considered to play Ronald Reagan, were closely identified with previous roles, which is not the case here, the Fox News Channel primetime star said.

Matheson previously played Vice President John Hoynes in Aaron Sorkins NBC political drama The West Wing. Nixon, of course, is best known for her role as Miranda Hobbs in HBOs long-running Sex and the City TV and movie franchise.

(In other casting, Dexter alum Geoff Pierson will portray James Baker, Regans senior advisor on the campaign trail and eventual Chief of Staff.)

National Geographic Channel

Killing Reagan book cover

said last September it was continuing its successful partnership with Scott Free Productions to produce and premiere this adaptation of the latest book in the Killing series from OReilly and Martin Dugard. Their Killing Lincoln, Killing Kennedy and Killing Jesus are the most-watched programs in NatGeo Channel history (Kennedy and Jesus also were Emmy nominated in 2014 and 2015, respectively).

Rod Lurie (The Contender, Commander in Chief) is directing the script by Eric Simonon. Shooting in Atlanta, the project is scheduled to air in late October, so as to debut right before the presidential election, in which another outsider, Donald Trump, is the presumptive GOP nominee. (Unlike actor-turned-SAG-president-turned-California-governor Reagan, however, Trump never has held elected office before running for the White House.) Killing Reagan scheduled to premiere on National Geographic Channel in the U.S. and in 171 countries in 45 languages, including Nat Geo Mundo.

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Killing Reagan is a slight departure in the book franchise, in that the 1981 attempt on Reagans life was unsuccessful. The book explores the assassination attempt by John Hinckley on the newly elected president, and how it impacted Reagans time in office.

Reagan Riding

Tackling biopics about the Reagans has proven to be fraught with peril.

More than a decade ago, CBS wound up not airing its much ballyhooed Reagan miniseries after the project raised eyebrows in various quarters for various elements, including the casting of Barbara Streisands husband James Brolin as Ronald Reagan (Judy Davis played Nancy Reagan). Portions of the script that were deemed unflattering to the First Couple in some quarters.

More recently, this past April the hue and cry went up when reports surfaced that Will Ferrell, who played George W. Bush on Saturday Night Live and on Broadway, might be playing Ronald Reagan on the big screen in an adaptation of The Black List Reagan script from Mike Rosolio. The 40th Presidents son Michael Reagan and daughter Patti Davis both expressed outrage over the project. Announced in December in the 11th edition of the most-liked unproduced screenplays, Rosolios Reagan is set at the end of 1984 when Reagan had just been re-elected in a landslide. In the script, he is suffering from dementia, and an intern, whos hoping to move up, is tasked with trying to convince the former SAG leader he is in a movie in which he is playing the President.

Michael Reagan tweeted, #Alzheimers is not a comedy to the 5 million people who are suffering with the decease,it first robs you of your mind and then it kills you

Some of these same concerns may come up with the Nat Geo project, having already been raised in some reviews of the book. USA Today called it a misfire in that it deals more with Reagans gradual descent into dementia, the result of his fight with Alzheimers disease and asserts Reagan exhibited signs of the illness during his presidency. The book also delves into Reagans extramarital affairs in Hollywood, indifferent parenting, disputes with his second wife Nancy, and the multiple instances in which Reagan appeared to be not quite there, the book says.

For Scott Free, Ridley Scott, David W. Zucker and Mary Lisio are exec producers of the National Geographic Channel adaptation, and Clayton Krueger is co-EP. OReilly also is EP on the project. For national Geo Channels, Carolyn G. Bernsteain is EP. Matheson is repped by Gersh and Generate; Pierson by Stone Manners Salners Agency.

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By Makiko Yamazaki

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan's Toshiba Corp said it had nominated Satoshi Tsunakawa, a former head of its medical equipment division, to be its next chief executive officer - a move that it hopes will draw a line under a damaging accounting scandal.

Sixty-year-old Tsunakawa, who was not embroiled in the scandal, is credited with having grown the medical equipment unit into a major profit driver. He is currently a senior executive vice president.

"My biggest task would be to rebuild trust from stakeholders and transform the company under our new action plans," Tsunakawa told a press conference. "I would place the most immediate priority on beefing up the capital base."

A $1.3 billion (896 million pounds) book-keeping scandal last year has pushed Toshiba to streamline its businesses, announce plans for 14,000 job cuts and the sale of the medical unit to Canon Inc (7751.T) for $5.9 billion.

SHAREHOLDERS MEET IN JUNE

Last month, it also took a $2.3 billion writedown on U.S. nuclear unit Westinghouse in a much-anticipated move to address lingering doubts over its accounting practices.

Tsunakawa's appointment is expected to be confirmed at a shareholders' meeting in late June.

Current CEO Masashi Muromachi took the helm last July when his predecessor and a slew of other senior executives resigned for their roles in the scandal, but had not planned on doing the job long term. He will become a special adviser.

Also on Friday, Senior Executive Vice President Shigenori Shiga was nominated to become chairman.

Shiga was chairman of Westinghouse when the unit booked charges of $930 million in fiscal 2012 and $390 million in fiscal 2013, which Toshiba failed to flag at the time in violation of the Tokyo bourse's disclosure rules.

When asked about Shiga's responsibility, the chief of Toshiba's nomination committee, an outside board director, said his experience at the nuclear power business would be indispensable as the chairman's roles include negotiations with the government and utility firms.

(Reporting by Makiko Yamazaki; Editing by Edwina Gibbs)
An Indiana man offered up his own finger to complete his wife's primped and polished manicure after the woman lost her pinky in an amputation.

Read: Touching From A Distance: Widow Receives 'Secret' Love Letter Left By Her Late Husband

Mom of five Libby Sanders shared a picture of her husband's hand, with only the pinky nail painted green. Beside it was a picture of her own hand on top of his.

Because she only had four fingers on her left hand, her husband's painted nail underneath her fingers appears to complete her manicure, the photo that has since gone viral shows.

Even as the Jasper couple spoke to InsideEdition.com, Matt Sanders proudly displayed his pinky nail, which was painted burgundy to match hers.

Matt Sanders laughed to IE.com that he preferred the green nail polish, adding, "burgundy looks like I smashed my nail."

Libby Sanders said that just six weeks ago, she had to have her pinky amputated. She was shutting the screen door when a piece of the handle broke off, and her finger snagged onto the raw edge.

"It looked like she bruised it," Matt Sanders said to IE.com.

"Then it just kept getting worse and worse," Libby Sanders said. "I ended up having to get it amputated."

Even though she might drop her phone or have a hard time putting her hair into a ponytail, Sanders said she was more or less adjusting to life with 9 fingers.

But when it comes to painting her nails, "I still reflexively go to paint the pinky nail that's not there.

She said she didn't realize she looked sad, until her husband reached his own pinky out and said: "You can paint my pinky, and I can be your surrogate pinky for the rest of our lives."

Read: Mom Says Playing With a Pink Toy Stroller Will Not Make Her Son 'Any Less of a Boy'

Matt Sanders said that he intends to keep his pinky promise, saying he fully expects to be "the 60-year-old man with a hot pink nail."

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And even though he often forgets he has a painted nail, he said, "every time I see it, it reminds me of my wife. How cool to see a reminder of her every time."

Watch: Working Mom Distressed After Airport Security Confiscates 2 Weeks' Worth of Breast Milk

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As they continue to size up billionaire Donald Trump and former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, American voters appear highly conflicted on questions of national defense and foreign policy.

A new study by the Pew Research Center released Thursday highlighted deep partisan and ideological divisions about U.S. foreign policy and defense  including differences over the extent of U.S. involvement overseas, both militarily and economically; the size of the defense budget; the management of the war against ISIS and views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The conflict makes odd political alliances

Related: Trump Wants to Add to the War on Terrors $4 Trillion Price Tag

While many believe that Trump will be weakest in debating Clinton on foreign policy matters this fall, there appears to be substantial public agreement for Trumps America First. The idea of putting U.S. interests above all others and for using renewed military prowess and tough bargaining tactics with allies to restore U.S. prestige around the globe sits well with many Americans.

Our foreign policy is a complete and total disaster, Trump said during his first foreign policy address in Washington late last month. No vision. No purpose. No direction.

Nearly half of all Americans, Democrats and Republicans alike, told Pew that the U.S. is less powerful and important today than it was 10 years ago. Only 21 percent say the country has grown more powerful during the nearly eight years of President Obamas rule.

While there remains a smattering of sympathy for global engagement, 57 percent of Americans want the U.S. to deal with its own problems, while letting other countries get along as best they can, according to the Pew surveys findings.

Related: Transcript of Donald Trumps Foreign Policy Speech, April 27, 2016

In terms of trying to solve the worlds problems, Americans believe (41 percent to 27 percent) that the U.S. already does too much. By a 49 percent to 44 percent margin, Americans also believe that its a bad thing for the U.S. to get involved in international trade deals, which they believe often times lower wages at home and cost American jobs.

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Trump has made trade a centerpiece of his appeal to white, working class voters  especially in rust belt states like Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania -- who believe they were shafted by misguided trade agreement. And Trump has vowed to tear up NAFTA, the Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership Agreement and other pacts and start over.

Yet large numbers of Americans disagree strongly with Trump on other key issues. While support has risen substantially for more defense spending in recent years, only 35 percent of those surveyed say the Pentagons budget should be increased. Twenty-four percent believe the defense budget should be cut and the remainder said it should stay the same.

There is also widespread rejection of Trumps criticism of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the post-World War II alliance of western powers. Trump has dismissed NATO as obsolete and overly dependent on U.S. financing. Seventy-seven percent of those surveyed by Pew said that NATO is a good thing to preserve.

Related: The Cost of the War Against ISIS: $7 Billion and Counting

Clinton is a strong advocate of international alliances, and said that turning our back on NATO "would reverse decades of bipartisan of American leadership and send a dangerous signal to friend and foe alike.

Despite Trumps criticism of Obamas handling of the war against ISIS, public support for the president has remained steadfast since 2014 when Obama first announced plans for stepped up allied airstrikes against the terrorists in Iraq and Syria. At present, 62 percent approve of Obamas handling of the war, while 33 percent disapprove.

The new survey was conducted April 12 to 19 among 2,008 adults

William Galston, a political expert with the Brookings Institution, wrote of the Pew findings yesterday that they revealed important areas of continuity, some dramatic changes, and deep divisions between and even within the political parties.

For example, Pew found that while there is broad support for the military campaign against ISIS, there are sharp differences over how far the U.S. should go in committing troops and resources to the fight in Iraq and Syria. Democrats fear well go too far while Republicans fear we wont go far enough.

Related: US Says Momentum Has Shifted in the War Against ISIS

As for defense spending, Republicans support increasing the defense budget more than Democrats. And Republicans are more skeptical of U.S. engagement overseas than Democrats.

More than 60 percent of Republicans say the U.S. should mind its own business and focus mainly on its own problems, while only 47 percent of Democrats feel that way. And 55 percent of GOP respondents view U.S. economic engagement overseas negatively, compared to 44 percent of Democrats who feel that way.

Finally, as has been true for nearly 40 years, Americans are far more sympathetic to Israel than to the Palestinians  54 percent to 19 percent. However, Republicans are more adamant in their support for Israel than are Democrats. And Democrats  especially those supporting Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont for president  are far more likely to express sympathy for the plight of the Palestinians.

Top Reads from The Fiscal Times:
The Uncertain Road ahead for Alcoa and Arconic in 2Q16

(Continued from Prior Part)

Arconics 1Q16 financial performance

Alcoas downstream business, Arconic, consists of three segments:

EPS (Engineered Products and Solutions)

TCS (Transportation & Construction Solutions)

GRP (Global Rolled Products)

Arconic had revenues of $3.3 billion in 1Q16, which is similar to its 4Q15 revenues. But revenues declined by 3.3% YoY (year-over-year). The GRP segments 1Q16 revenues fell by 16% YoY in 1Q16.

Alcoa attributed lower revenues to lower volumes and pricing pressure from the packaging sector, alongside lower aerospace demand. However, strong auto sheet demand helped offset some of the negative impacts from the packaging sector. Alcoas auto sheet shipments increased by 38% YoY in 1Q16. Constellium (CSTM) and Allegheny Technology (ATI) also supply sheet products to automotive companies.

The slowdown in the heavy truck market took a toll on the TCS segments financial performance, with revenues falling by 9% YoY. The slowdown in Brazil also negatively impacted the TCS segments 1Q16 financial performance.

EPS segment

The EPS segment posted revenues of ~$1.4 billion in 1Q16, a YoY increase of 15%. On a sequential quarterly basis, only the EPS segment reported an increase in revenues. This offset lower revenues from the TCS and the GRP segments.

Growth was largely led by the acquisitions made by Alcoa (AA) in the aerospace component space over the past few quarters. Alcoa has also been aggressively signing new contracts with aerospace companies (ITA) like Boeing (BA).

Alcoa has lowered the guidance for its EPS segment, however. Well explore this further in the next part of our series.

Continue to Next Part

Browse this series on Market Realist:
The European Central Bank is discontinuing the 500 euro bank note, making the 200 note the euros highest denomination.



The ECB will phase out the note by 2018, but for now, its still considered legal tender and can be used as a means of payment (there are currently 18.6 billion euro banknotes in circulation). One of the main reasons for its dissolution: Its a large denomination thats compact, easily convertible and widely accepted, and leaves no paper trail, making it a go-to currency for illegal transactions. In fact, criminals refer to the 500 euro bill as the Bin Laden banknote because their presence and appearance are well-known but the notes themselves are hard to find.



The 500 note, in particular, has faced scrutiny for its role in criminal transactions. It accounts for 1% of all euro notes in circulation, but since a fifth of all euro notes are not held in Europe, some are being used by foreign criminals, according to Europol, the EUs law enforcement agency.



After the November terror attacks in Paris, the 28 finance ministers of the EU called for an investigation into the controversial 500 euro note (about $575) at a meeting in Brussels in February. After the Brussels attacks in March, the EU commission pledged to investigate the high number of notes in circulation, noting that the 500 euro is in high demand among criminal elements due to their high value and low volume.



Larger implications of a 500-less world

Since the euro was officially introduced on Jan. 1, 1999, its topped the list of most-traded currencies, alongside the U.S. dollar and the Japanese yen.



Michael McDonald & Associates is a consulting firm that specializes in international money laundering since 1998. Founder Michael McDonald says the $100 bill is widely used by drug cartels, and those who had previously used the 500 euro will just use the highest denominations of euros (200) or dollars ($100). The U.S. circulated $500, $1,000, $5,000 and $10,000 bills until the Federal Reserve discontinued them in 1969 due to lack of use. It doesnt matter to criminals if theyre doing illegal activities in dollars or euros; they just stick to those two because they dont want to get caught in currencies that could devalue overnight, McDonald says.



When it comes to funding terrorist activity, specifically, McDonald says that individuals also trade commodities like opium or gold. If I had a lot of money to launder, I would choose gold. There really isnt anything else like it out there, John Cassara, a former U.S. Treasury special agent told Bloomberg.



Getting rid of the 500 euro note may set a precedent. Despite larger U.S. bills being eliminated, now the $100 is in focus. Switzerland has a 1,000 franc note in limited circulation, but is not nearly as widespread or available.



As the rest of the world goes cashless, drug cartels, money launderers and other criminal enterprises will inevitably remain dependent on physical currency. As long as theres illegal activity, there will always be ways to transmit illegal money, whether through smaller bills or bitcoin, says McDonald.
Istanbul (AFP) - Turkish opposition journalist Can Dundar escaped an apparent attempt on his life by a gunman Friday outside the courthouse in Istanbul where he was standing trial on hugely controversial charges of revealing state secrets, an AFP reporter said.

Brandishing a pistol, the attacker fired several times before being detained by police. Dundar, the editor-in-chief of leading Turkish opposition daily Cumhuriyet, was unharmed.

Dundar was outside the courthouse during a break as the court prepared to deliver its verdict in his trial for allegedly revealing state secrets in a newspaper story.

The assailant fired twice or three times in front of the cameras of journalists who had crowded outside Istanbul's main courthouse during the closed door trial.

Television footage showed Dundar's wife Dilek holding the attacker by his collar and surrendering him to the police, with bloggers on social media saluting her bravery.

"You are (a) traitor. You will pay a price," the attacker shouted at Dundar according to CNN-Turk.

NTV television reported that its reporter Yagiz Senkal was lightly injured because of the ricocheting bullets.

- 'I know who's to blame' -

"I am okay ... The court was in a break to deliver a verdict. The attack occurred after we went out to wait for the ruling," Dundar said.

"I don't know who or what it is. I only saw the gun had been pointed at me," he added.

Special plain clothes police agents turned their weapons on the man, ordering him to lie chest down on the ground before detaining him without problem.

CNN-Turk television identified the attacker as a man named Murat Sahin, born in 1976, who has an unspecified previous criminal history. He is from the central Anatolian city of Sivas but lives in Istanbul.

Dundar and Erdem Gul, his Ankara bureau chief, are charged with revealing state secrets over a story accusing the government of seeking to illicitly deliver arms bound for Syria.

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Cumhuriyet's report on a shipment of arms intercepted at the Syrian border in January 2014 sparked a furore when it was published last May, fuelling speculation about Turkey's role in the Syrian conflict and its alleged ties to Islamist groups in the country.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan reacted furiously to the allegations, personally warning Dundar he would "pay a heavy price".

Accusing Erdogan and pro-government media of whipping up a climate of hatred against him, Dundar said: "We know very well who showed me as a target."

Kemal Kilidaroglu, head of the opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) tweeted: "Those who make journalists who are doing their jobs a target with hate speech are responsible for the attack against Can Dundar."

The case against Dundar and Gul has been a lightning rod for concerns about eroding freedoms of the press since Erdogan became president in August 2014.

Last week an Istanbul court sentenced two prominent Turkish journalists from Cumhuriyet to two years behind bars for illustrating their columns with a cartoon of the Prophet Mohammed published by French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo.

Some 2,000 people, including many journalists, are also facing charges of insulting Erdogan.

There also remain huge concerns about the security of journalists in Turkey, particularly after the 2007 murder of the Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink.

Dink, 52, was shot dead with two bullets to the head in broad daylight outside the offices of his Turkish-Armenian newspaper Agos in central Istanbul.

A 17-year-old dropout was convicted of the murder but dozens of former police chiefs went on trial last month on negligence charges for failing to prevent the murder plot.
By Nick Tattersall and Seda Sezer ISTANBUL (Reuters) - President Tayyip Erdogan told the European Union on Friday that Turkey would not make changes to its terrorism laws required under a deal to curb migration, and declared: "we're going our way, you go yours". His fiery speech will be a blow to any hope in European capitals that it might be business as usual with Turkey after Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, who negotiated the migration deal with Europe and had largely delivered on Turkey's commitments so far, announced he was standing down. The EU asked member states on Wednesday to grant visa-free travel to Turks in return for Ankara stopping migrants reaching Europe, but said Turkey still had to change some legislation, including bringing its terrorism laws in line with EU standards. "When Turkey is under attack from terrorist organizations and the powers that support them directly, or indirectly, the EU is telling us to change the law on terrorism," Erdogan said in a speech at the opening of a local government office in the conservative Istanbul district of Eyup. "They say 'I am going to abolish visas and this is the condition.' I'm sorry, we're going our way, you go yours. Agree with whoever you can agree," he said. Visa-free travel is for many Turks the biggest benefit of Ankara's deal with the EU. Europe, meanwhile, is counting on Turkey to maintain an agreement that has helped stem the flow of refugees and migrants via Turkish shores, which saw more than a million people reach Greece and Italy last year. Davutoglu's departure consolidates the power of Erdogan, who has been highly critical of the EU in the past and who is seen in Brussels as a far tougher negotiating partner less closely wedded in recent years to Turkey's ambition of joining the EU. To win visa-free travel, Turkey must still meet five of 72 criteria the EU imposes on all states exempt from visas, one of which is narrowing its legal definition of terrorism. Rights groups say Turkey has used broad anti-terrorism laws to silence dissent, including detaining journalists and academics critical of the government. But Ankara insists the laws are essential as it battles Kurdish militants at home and the threat from Islamic State in neighboring Syria and Iraq. Turkey's EU Minister Volkan Bozkir was earlier quoted by the Daily Sabah newspaper as saying Turkey had already made some changes requested by Europe, including reference to "the concept of immediate and obvious danger that threatens public security", but that it "does not have the luxury" of making any more. "NO TURNING BACK" Erdogan said there would be no gap in Turkey's governance after Davutoglu's departure and that the episode demonstrated why the country needs a full presidential system, a matter he said urgently needed to be put to a referendum. Opponents fear an executive presidency will consolidate too much power in the hands of an authoritarian leader, a sentiment shared by some European leaders who fear his ascent will make relations with Turkey more complicated in the years ahead. "A new constitution and presidential system are urgent requirements, not Erdogan's personal agenda ... There is no turning back from this point we reached. Everyone should accept that," he said. Erdogan bristles at suggestions that Turkey uses its anti-terrorism laws indiscriminately. He has repeatedly stressed his determination to crush Kurdish militants fighting an insurgency in Turkey's southeast, and is unlikely to sanction Ankara backing down on the European demands. Much may depend on the ability of whoever replaces Davutoglu, a decision to be made at an extraordinary congress of the ruling AK Party on May 22, to convince European allies that Turkey has already done enough. Transport Minister Binali Yildirim, a close Erdogan ally, appears to be the president's current preference, three senior AKP officials said, although they said that could still change. Government spokesman Numan Kurtulmus and Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag, also Erdogan loyalists, have been touted, as has Energy Minister Berat Albayrak, Erdogan's son-in-law, sources in the party have said. (Additional reporting by Orhan Coskun and Tulay Karadeniz in Ankara, Paul Carrel in Berlin; Writing by Nick Tattersall; editing by Ralph Boulton)
By Gina Cherelus

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Two New Jersey men were charged on Friday in the murder of a college student who was fatally shot this week at a Newark fraternity house, prosecutors said.

One suspect was under arrest and a second was still at large, they said.

Authorities said that Taquan Harris of Newark and Nafee Cotman of Irvington, New Jersey, have been charged with murder, felony murder, robbery, and burglary and weapons offenses.

Cotman, 18, was arrested in Irvington and bail was set at $1 million. Harris, 22, is still at large.

Joseph Micalizzi, 23, of Freehold, New Jersey, was shot shortly early on Tuesday morning during a burglary at New Jersey Institute of Technology's Tau Kappa Epsilon off-campus fraternity house.

The door of the TKE fraternity house was unlocked on the night of the break-in, according to NJIT officials.

The junior mechanical engineering student was confirmed dead at University Hospital in Newark two hours later, prosecutors said.

Micalizzi was in his second year at NJIT after transferring from Brookdale Community College in Lincroft, New Jersey. He made the dean's list last year.

Prosecutors said in a statement that the investigation is active while Harris remains missing.

The Essex County Sheriff Department is offering up to $10,000 for information on this case, and NJIT is also offering $10,000 for tips.

After the shooting, NJIT said law enforcement officials from the city of Newark, NJIT and Rutgers University's Newark campus were working together to heighten security in high-crime neighborhoods of Newark surrounding the schools.

NJIT has a total enrollment of 11,300, and only 1,800 students live on campus, raising risks for the majority of students who commute from home or off-campus residences, the school said.

(Reporting by Gina Cherelus; Editing by Sandra Maler)
Istanbul (AFP) - An Istanbul court on Friday jailed two opposition journalists on charges of revealing state secrets, in a trial that has become a lightning rod for concerns about the erosion of press freedom in Turkey.

Can Dundar, editor-in-chief of leading opposition daily Cumhuriyet, was sentenced to five years and 10 months at the closed-door trial, while his Ankara bureau chief Erdem Gul was handed five years in prison, television stations said.

The sentencing came hours after Dundar escaped an apparent attempt on his life by a gunman outside the courthouse.

The two men were acquitted of espionage but were found guilty of revealing state secrets over a story accusing the government of seeking to illicitly deliver arms bound for Syria.

They will not immediately be placed in detention as the court of appeal has yet to rule on the case.

"We will continue to do our job as journalists, despite all these attempts to silence us," Dundar told reporters after the verdict. "We have to preserve courage in our country."

- 'You will pay' -

Media identified the gunman who attacked Dundar outside the courthouse as 40-year-old Murat Sahin.

Brandishing a pistol, the attacker had fired at Dundar as he stood outside during a break as the court prepared to deliver its verdict.

Dundar was unharmed and the gunman, who fired two or three times in front of TV cameras assembled for the trial, was detained by police. NTV television reported that its reporter Yagiz Senkal was lightly injured by a ricocheting bullet.

"You are (a) traitor. You will pay a price," the attacker shouted at Dundar, according to CNN-Turk television.

Television footage showed Dundar's wife Dilek holding the attacker by his collar and handing him to the police, with bloggers on social media saluting her bravery.

Sahin was reportedly a former factory worker who had long been unemployed and had an unspecified criminal past. An Istanbul resident, he hailed from the central Anatolian city of Sivas.

Story continues

CNN-Turk reported him as saying he had wanted to teach Dundar "a lesson" and that he had acted alone. "I did not want to kill him, but I could have done it," he was quoted as saying.

Special plain clothes police agents turned their weapons on the gunman, ordering him to lie chest down on the ground before detaining him.

"We know very well who showed me as a target," Dundar said after the attack, accusing President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and pro-government media of whipping up a climate of hatred against him.

- Press freedom fears -

Fears over press freedoms have steadily grown since Erdogan became president in August 2014, with around 2,000 people, including many journalists, facing charges of insulting the president.

Secular newspaper Cumhuriyet is staunchly opposed to the Erdogan government.

Its report on a shipment of arms intercepted at the Syrian border in January 2014 sparked a furore when it was published last May, fuelling speculation about Turkey's role in the Syrian conflict and its alleged ties to Islamist groups in the country.

Erdogan had reacted furiously to the allegations, personally warning Dundar he would "pay a heavy price".

Dundar and Gul spent three months in Silivri jail in the Istanbul suburbs, before being freed on February 26 by a constitutional court ruling that Erdogan had publicly condemned.

The state has also accused them of being manipulated by US-based Muslim preacher Fethullah Gulen -- Erdogan's arch foe -- but the court has yet to rule on these allegations.

Tweeting after Friday's gun attack, Kemal Kilidaroglu, head of the opposition Republican People's Party (CHP), wrote: "Those who make journalists who are doing their jobs a target with hate speech are responsible for the attack against Can Dundar."

Last week an Istanbul court sentenced two prominent Cumhuriyet journalists to two years behind bars for illustrating their columns with a cartoon of the Prophet Mohammed published by French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo.

There are also concerns about the security of journalists in Turkey, particularly after the 2007 murder of the Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink.

Dink, 52, was shot dead in broad daylight outside the offices of his Turkish-Armenian newspaper Agos in central Istanbul.

A 17-year-old dropout was convicted of the murder but dozens of former police chiefs went on trial last month on negligence charges for failing to prevent the murder plot.
In a graphic Facebook post on Friday, an Austrian mosque, Islamisches Kulturzentrum Graz, reported finding two severed pigs' heads on their grounds earlier that morning.

According to the post, the intruder left the pigs' heads around the mosque's minaret, which is a tower from which a prayer leader called a muezzin calls Muslims to prayer.

As the Quran forbids Muslims from handling pork, the pig heads' presence deterred Muslims from praying. People nearby alerted police to the intruder, who was then arrested.

This attack resembles other incidents worldwide at mosques in the past few months. In December, mosque staff found severed pigs heads on mosque grounds in both Philadelphia and at the University of Western Australia in Perth. On Christmas Day, a Houston mosque was the victim of an arson attack and on Dec. 30, a Las Vegas mosque discovered bacon wrapped around the mosque's front doors, barring Muslims from entering.

A Pig's head was found in UWA #Mosque today. I hope the perpetrator gets caught. @IslamophobiaReg @islamophobiaAUSpic.twitter.com/UikGG73R36 https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CVicv40VEAAM6l0.jpg:large

The Council on American-Islamic Relations reported the highest number of mosque attacks ever in 2015.

With tensions high by December, one Alabama mosque staff member hesitated to open a tin of Christmas cookies left on the mosque's steps. However, some people like Massachusetts resident Mona Haydar, who created a "Talk to a Muslim" stand have stepped forward to try to bridge relations between the Islamic community and those who may not understand it.
Washington (AFP) - A federal police office was taken into custody Friday after shootings in suburban Washington shopping centers that left two people dead and two others wounded.

Authorities said they had taken into custody Eulalio Tordil, a 62-year-old officer in the Department of Homeland Security's Federal Protective Service, which protects US government facilities.

Police in Montgomery County, Maryland, outside the US capital, made the announcement on Twitter without offering further details after a manhunt that lasted several hours.

In the morning hours, gunfire broke out at the Westfield Montgomery mall in Bethesda, with one man killed and two people wounded.

A second shooting later at a supermarket in nearby Aspen Hill, Maryland left one woman dead.

Tordil had also been sought in Thursday's shooting death of his wife at a school in Prince George's County, Maryland, on the eve of the two incidents in adjacent Montgomery County.

"This continues to be a very active investigation," Montgomery County Police Captain Paul Starks told reporters before Tordil's capture.

"We're still looking at the possibility that these shootings here (in Bethesda) and the shooting in Aspen Hill are related (and) were committed by the same suspect."

Schools in the vicinity were briefly asked to keep children in place "out of an abundance of caution," the official said. The schools later decided to proceed with normal dismissal.

The incidents occurred in some of the same areas hit by the so-called "Beltway Sniper" in 2002 that prompted a lengthy manhunt and resulted in 17 deaths before a suspect was caught.
Photo: Thinkstock



Two Vietnamese women were arrested and jailed for arranging a sham marriage between a Singaporean man and Vietnamese woman.

In February 2013, 31-year-old Le Thi Tra My suggested to a Vietnamese woman that she enter an arranged marriage with a Singaporean man. Le then introduced the bride to her accomplice, 41-year-old Ngyuen Thi Yen, who then helped the bride to find a potential groom.

The Singaporean groom was offered $7,500, which would be split between him and the two middlemen - Le and Ngyuen - for engaging in the marriage.



In return, he would have to sponsor his brides Long Term Visit Pass application so that she could extend her stay in Singapore. He agreed to the deal.

The marriage was solemnised on 18 March 2013 at a restaurant in Peninsula Plaza.

Both the Singaporean man and Vietnamese woman were arrested and subsequently jailed for six months each soon after the marriage.

Following their conviction, the two Vietnamese middlemen were arrested. Le was sentenced to seven months imprisonment on 5 April 2016 for arranging the marriage. Nguyen, was sentenced to nine months imprisonment and fined $3,000 on Thursday (5 May).



According to the Immigration and Checkpoints Authority, people who engage in or help to arrange a sham marriage can be fined up to $10,000 or jailed for up to 10 years, or both.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States and its allies conducted 24 strikes against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria on Thursday in its latest round of daily strikes against the militant group, according to the coalition leading the operations. In Iraq, 22 strikes hit near twelve cities hit multiple targets, including nine units of militant fighters as well as weapons caches, vehicles and other targets, the Combined Joint Task Force said in a statement on Friday. Four of the strikes hit near Mosul, where the coalition is working with Iraqi forces to retake the key city from Islamic State control. One strike near Bashir was inconclusive. Two strikes near Al Shadaddi and Manbij in Syria hit one unit of Islamic State fighters and a vehicle used by the militant group. (Reporting by Washington newsroom)
ABC/Randy HolmesSlightly Stoopid will return to Mexico this year for their annual Closer to the Sun concert vacation. The third edition of the event will be held December 14-18 at the Now Sapphire in Puerto Morelos, Mexico.

In addition to Slightly Stoopid, who will be playing three full concerts during the excursion, the Closer to the Sun lineup also includes Dirty Heads and Matisyahu, among others.

"There is nothing better than being able to jam with your friends in paradise on the beach," says Slightly Stoopid's Miles Doughty in a statement. "Come spend the holidays with the Stoopid family!"

For ticket information, visit ClosertotheSun.com.

Copyright  2016, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
By Sebastien Malo

NEW YORK (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Full-page advertisements are popping up in major U.S. newspapers offering to pick up Americans' dinner leftovers and deliver them to the needy, a farcical campaign designed to raise awareness of hunger, its organizers say.

"Our drivers deliver your leftovers to hungry Americans," the ads read, directing the curious to the Scraped Plate website that admits the offer is in jest.

But millions of people have taken the bait, visited the website and are learning about hunger in the process, said Melanie Kahn, national campaign director with Share Our Strength, the advocacy organization behind the campaign.

"The goal of the campaign was to make people think just a little bit harder about how much food they are throwing out on a daily basis," Kahn told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates 14 percent of Americans, or more than 17 million people, are what is called food insecure, meaning at times of the year, they are uncertain of being able to acquire enough food for their household, according to its website.

Ads for Scraped Plate have appeared in USA Today and The New York Times Magazine, eliciting some fans.

"I think it's a good idea being we don't eat leftovers in my house why throw it away," wrote one visitor on Scraped Plate's Facebook.

But not everyone is amused. One visitor left a comment that the idea was "gross," and another asked: "How can you run a FAKE FOOD BANK?"

The campaign encourages visitors to ask U.S. presidential candidates through social media what they will do to combat hunger.

Kahn said the purported offer to deliver leftovers to the hungry would obviously be untenable.

"It's not just not feasible to pack up in a doggy-bag what I don't eat and deliver it to someone else," 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)
(Adds Breakingviews link)

By Lisa Lambert

WASHINGTON, May 5 (Reuters) - New rules proposed on Thursday by a U.S. consumer watchdog would block credit card companies, banks and other firms from forcing customers to waive their rights to join class action lawsuits and settle disputes only through arbitration.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau said financial firms should be barred from using fine print in contracts that mandates arbitration instead of a group lawsuit in the event of a dispute over products ranging from checking accounts to credit cards. The agency said the clauses prevent consumers who have been wronged from receiving justice and compensation through the courts.

U.S. businesses are expected to oppose the proposal and sue if it becomes final. They say arbitration is more efficient and helps avoid costly litigation that rarely benefits the people filing suit.

"Companies simply insert these clauses into their contracts for consumer financial products or services and literally 'with the stroke of a pen' are able to block any group of consumers from filing joint lawsuits known as class actions," CFPB Director Richard Cordray said in prepared remarks.

"That is so even though class actions are widely recognized to be valid avenues to secure legal relief under federal and state law."

In class actions, people band together to sue over the same alleged wrongdoing to make the lawsuit more affordable. A 2015 study by the CFPB found individuals rarely sue on their own because it is too expensive and that about 6.8 million consumers receive $220 million in payments from class action settlements each year.

In arbitration, a private individual settles a conflict. Frequently, companies select the arbitrators, the proceedings are confidential and decisions are hard to appeal.

Under the proposal, companies could still use arbitration clauses, but would have to state explicitly that consumers can sign onto class actions. They would also have to give the bureau information on claims filed and awards issued in the arbitrations, as well as correspondence from arbitrators regarding unpaid fees and failure to follow standards of conduct.

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Requiring customers to agree to "mandatory arbitration clauses" when they sign up for a product has become nearly universal since a 2011 U.S. Supreme Court decision known as AT&T Mobility vs. Concepcion validated the practice. It has also become a flashpoint for both political parties.

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton on Thursday supported the proposal, saying "mandatory arbitration clauses buried deep in contracts for credit cards, student loans, and more prevent American consumers from having their day in court when they've been harmed."

U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown, an Ohio Democrat sometimes mentioned as a possible vice presidential candidate in November's election, pledged to push the CFPB to "finalize the rule as soon as possible."

The private sector and conservative political leaders quickly criticized the proposal, saying it only helps attorneys who file class actions and reap fees and shares of settlements.

The chairman of the House of Representatives Financial Services Committee, Republican Jeb Hensarling of Texas, called it a "big, wet kiss to trial attorneys" and cast Cordray as a "de facto dictator."

"This move - which will apply to some of the most common financial contracts including credit cards, checking accounts, and even cell phones - essentially hands over the keys of the CFPB's luxury office building to the wealthy, powerful, and politically well-connected trial lawyer lobby," he said.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, representing the business sector, said that "in the 50 years since the advent of modern day class action lawsuits, plaintiffs' lawyers have made millions of dollars in fees from these suits while consumers often receive little benefit."

The CFPB said the proposal would give consumers "a day in court." It also aims to create a deterrent effect through the threat of group lawsuits and increased transparency, the agency said.

"Forced arbitration and class action bans force consumers into a biased, secretive, and lawless forum, preventing either a court or an arbitrator from ordering a lawbreaker to repay all of its victims," Lauren Saunders, associate director of the National Consumer Law Center, said in a statement.

(Reporting by Lisa Lambert; Editing by Andrew Hay and Dan Grebler)
By Yeganeh Torbati and Elizabeth Dilts

WASHINGTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) - The Obama administration is issuing a long-delayed rule requiring the financial industry to identify the real owners of companies and proposing a bill that would require companies to report the identities of their owners to the federal government, U.S. officials said on Thursday.

The Customer Due Diligence (CDD) rule, in the works since 2012, and the proposed legislation are meant to hinder criminals from using shell companies to hide ownership and launder money, finance terror, and commit other threats to the global financial system.

The use of shell companies to hide assets and avoid taxes is in the spotlight following a massive leak of data from the Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca, which embarrassed several world leaders and sparked government investigations around the globe into possible financial wrongdoing by the wealthy elite. The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists said it will release a searchable database of more than 200,000 offshore entities next week.

"Fundamentally our financial system should not provide the rich, the powerful, and the corrupt with the opportunity to shield their assets," said Wally Adeyemo, the U.S. deputy national security advisor for international economics, in a call with reporters on Thursday. "Nobody should be able to hide in the shadows from their legal obligations."

The final CDD rule will require banks, brokers, mutual funds and other financial institutions to collect and verify the identities of the real people, or "beneficial owners," who own and control companies when those companies open accounts.

Financial institutions will have to verify the identity of any person or company who owns more than 25 percent of the company, and one live person who controls the company even if that person owns less than 25 percent.

Banks will have two years to get their systems into compliance, said Jennifer Fowler, the U.S. Treasury deputy assistant secretary for terrorist financing.

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The U.S. Treasury said in 2012 it planned to propose a rule that would clarify and standardize financial institutions' obligations to know the identities of their customers.

But the proposal generated opposition from the financial industry, which argued it would be costly, ineffective, and difficult to implement because the United States lacks a national database of corporate information.

To address one of those industry concerns, Treasury will propose legislation requiring companies to report to the Treasury the identity of beneficial owners when a company is incorporated. The legislation would create a central registry of beneficial ownership, something the U.S. currently does not have, Fowler said.

U.S. secretaries of state have lobbied against similar legislative action in the past, arguing that the Internal Revenue Service already has corporate ownership records that it could make available to law enforcement.

Adeyemo said the Obama administration had been "consulting actively" with secretaries of state. "This is a place where we need Congress to act," he said.

Taken together, the measures would make the financial system more transparent and close loopholes that allow for abuse or illegal activity, officials said.

More than 1,000 prosecutions are brought each year in the United States for money laundering, Fowler said. "This is a record that no one in the world can match."

But, she added, "there are vulnerabilities that we need to address in order to maintain an effective regime."

The Treasury is also proposing a regulation that would increase requirements for some foreign-owned companies operating in the United States to report information to the government, which officials said would prevent the use of those companies for tax avoidance purposes.

In addition, the Justice Department is proposing amendments that would strengthen its ability to pursue foreign corruption cases, including issuing subpoenas for records in money laundering investigations, obtaining overseas records, and using classified information in civil cases.

(Reporting by Yeganeh Torbati and Elizabeth Dilts; Editing by Bernard Orr)
Update, 4:47 p.m., May 6, 2016: A day after the White House announced new proposals to crack down on tax evasion, President Obama himself addressed the Panama Papers during a press conference on Friday.

While speaking to reporters about the economy, Obama said the investigations by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists bring renewed attention to the issue of financial transparency.

We saw what happened with the release of the Panama Papers, Obama said. And weve seen the degree to which both legal practices of tax avoidance that are still unfair and bad for the economy, as well as illegal practices that, in some cases, involve nefarious activities continue to exist and to spread.

In the wake of the public firestorm sparked by the Panama Papers scandal, the Obama administration unveiled a series of new proposals today that would crack down on offshore secrecy and illicit financial transactions.

In a news conference this afternoon, administration officials announced that the U.S. Treasury Department would send proposed legislation to Congress that would require companies set up in the United States to report their real owners to the agencys Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. This would for the first time create a national registry that could be used by law enforcement authorities to ferret out the real people behind anonymous companies used in money laundering and other wrongdoing.

The proposal acknowledges the reality that the U.S. itself is a key player in the system of offshore secrecy, through such states as Delaware, Nevada and Wyoming that allow the creation of shell companies that hide their owners identities and activities.

Wally Adeyemo, the U.S. deputy national security advisor for international economics, said the Obama administration has been working hard for years to address the issue of offshore-fueled misconduct but that the Panama Papers disclosures highlight the fact that more needs to be done to fight money laundering, terrorism financing and tax evasion.

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Our financial system should not provide the rich, the powerful and the corrupt with the opportunity to shield their assets and avoid paying their fair share or with the opportunity to hide any illicit activity, Adeyemo said. Nobody should be able to hide in shadows from their legal obligations and nobody should be able to play by a different set of rules.

Adeyemo noted that U.S. investigations have prompted 80 Swiss banks to admit to engaging in tax evasion and related criminal conduct and forced them to pay more than $1.3 billion in penalties. In addition, he said, the U.S. tax amnesty program has prompted more than 54,000 taxpayers to do the right thing and resolve their past non-compliance, and has collected more than more than $8 billion in the process.

Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew sent a letter today to U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan urging Congress to pass the legislation creating a central ownership registry for shell companies.

Lew also asked Senate leaders to take action to approve eight tax treaties that the U.S. has negotiated with other countries, agreements that would allow better sharing of information with other governments about Americans holding assets overseas. He noted that American tax treaties with two well-known tax havens, Switzerland and Luxembourg, have been waiting for Senate approval for more than five years.

This story is part of The Panama Papers. Click here to read more stories in this series.

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The U.S. Justice Department said in a new release today that it will submit proposals to Congress in an effort to improve enforcement of laws targeting the illegal proceeds of transnational corruption. The proposals would make it easier for U.S. law enforcement authorities to file charges against corrupt foreign officials and subpoena records in money laundering investigations.

In pushing these new measures, U.S. officials are joining others from around the world who have announced investigations and policy reforms in reaction to reporting on the Panama Papers by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung and more than 100 other media partners.

On April 5, two days after the Panama Papers investigation first broke, Germany's justice minister called for the creation of a national transparency register that would document the real owners of shell companies sent up within his country. U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron, meanwhile, is expected to propose a new global anti-corruption agency that would investigative money laundering and tax dodging.

This story is part of The Panama Papers. Click here to read more stories in this series.

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Copyright 2016 The Center for Public Integrity. This story was published by The Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit, nonpartisan investigative news organization in Washington, D.C.
(Adds comments from Trump rally in West Virginia, endorsements by Rick Perry, Nebraska governor)

By Emily Stephenson and Susan Cornwell

WASHINGTON, May 5 (Reuters) - The top elected U.S. Republican, Paul Ryan, said on Thursday he was not ready to endorse Donald Trump, a sign of the challenges the party's presumptive presidential nominee faces rallying the Republican establishment behind his White House bid.

Ryan, the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, said conservatives wanted to know if Trump shares their values.

"I hope to support our nominee, I hope to support his candidacy fully," Ryan said on CNN. "At this point, I'm just not there right now."

Trump, who has built a huge following with an anti-establishment message, shot back at Ryan in a statement.

"I am not ready to support Speaker Ryan's agenda. Perhaps in the future we can work together and come to an agreement about what is best for the American people," he said.

The Republican National Committee, under pressure to unify the party or face an electoral rout in the Nov. 8 election, said Ryan and Trump were expected to meet soon. It added that "only a united Republican Party will be able to beat Hillary Clinton."

"We respect Speaker Ryan's opinion and believe that since the primary ended early we will have time to unify. We anticipate the two meeting soon to begin to help unite the party," said RNC spokeswoman Lindsay Walters.

Trump's last remaining rivals in the Republican race, U.S. Senator Ted Cruz and Ohio Governor John Kasich, dropped out this week, clearing the New York billionaire's path to be picked as the presidential nominee. He will likely face Clinton, the Democratic front-runner, in the Nov. 8 general election.

Many Republicans have grappled this week with whether to support Trump, who has deviated from the party line on trade and upset the party establishment with offensive comments about women and immigrants. Trump on Thursday announced a new campaign finance chairman in response to questions about his readiness for a general election race.

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TAKING ON CLINTON

Trump, speaking to thousands at a rally in Charleston, West Virginia, on Thursday night, sharpened his criticism of Clinton, the kind of tactic that some Republican strategists believe will help unify the party.

He blasted Clinton for saying recently she would impose clean-energy policies that would put coal miners out of business. He put on a hard hat presented to him by the state's coal miners' association and made a shoveling motion.

"And for those miners, get ready: You're going to be working your asses off," he said.

In a sign some Republicans are rallying around Trump, Nebraska Governor Pete Ricketts, whose family has helped bankroll the anti-Trump group Our Principles, is set to endorse Trump on Friday when the candidate visits Omaha.

Former Texas Governor Rick Perry, who ran unsuccessfully for the 2016 nomination, told CNN he now supported Trump as well.

Ryan criticized Trump in December for proposing to temporarily ban all Muslims from entering the United States and knocked him in March for failing to denounce white supremacist groups during a television interview.

The House speaker, who was the running mate of Republican 2012 presidential nominee Mitt Romney, a harsh Trump critic, said he hoped the party would be unified by this summer but that the pressure was on Trump to do that.

"He won fair and square," Ryan said of Trump, acknowledging his own policy differences with the New York billionaire businessman. He added: "If we don't unify all wings of the party, we're not going to win this election."

Ryan repeatedly denied interest in running for president this year despite attempts to draft him by some in his party. He has been putting together a policy plan for House Republicans to campaign on, which he says will be released before the convention in July.

CAMPAIGN FUNDRAISING

Trump on Thursday began shifting focus from the bruising primary campaign to the general election. He has largely used his own money for his primary fight but plans to follow the more typical path of raising money from outside sources for the general election to succeed Democratic President Barack Obama.

He named his campaign finance chief on Thursday - Steven Mnuchin, a former Goldman Sachs partner who is chief executive of private investment firm Dune Capital Management and with whom Trump worked in a business capacity in the past.

Mnuchin has a long history of political donations, including to Clinton. Since 1998, Mnuchin has given about $71,000 to Democrats, compared with about $37,000 to Republicans. Republicans have questioned Trump's loyalty to the party because he also donated to Democratic candidates in the past.

U.S. Representative Renee Ellmers, a Republican from North Carolina who has endorsed Trump, told Reuters the campaign would begin raising money for the party.

"They are going to start understanding and realizing that in order to grow this operation, they will need to grow funds, not only for him and for the campaign to beat Hillary Clinton, but for the Republican Party itself," Ellmers said.

Historically, political parties have depended on their nominees to raise money in order to fund their other operations, including working to elect members of the House of Representatives and Senate.

One key worry for Republicans has been that their candidates for Congress and other elective positions could suffer with the divisive figure of Trump at the top of the ticket.

Ron Bonjean, a Republican strategist, said Ryan gave lawmakers in his party cover to steer clear of Trump in their re-election campaigns.

"He is positioning the Republican conference and giving Republicans a message they can hold onto," Bonjean said.

(Additional reporting by Steve Holland in Charleston, W.V., Doina Chiacu, Megan Cassella, Jason Lange, Ginger Gibson and Richard Cowan in Washington, and Richard Leong in New York; Writing by Emily Stephenson; Editing by Peter Cooney)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The State Department's most senior human rights diplomat, Tom Malinowski, will visit Vietnam next week to urge it to make more progress on human rights, the department said on Friday. Meetings by Malinowski, assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor, on May 9 and 10 will pave the way for a visit to Vietnam by President Barack Obama later this month, the third U.S. president to travel to the southeast Asian nation since Bill Clinton in 2000. "Among other things, he will urge Vietnam to release political prisoners without condition and encourage further reforms that will help to make Vietnam's laws consistent with its international human rights obligations," the State Department said in announcing Malinowski's visit. The U.S. eased an arms embargo against its former enemy in 2014 amid a warming of relations saying human rights conditions had improved somewhat. But concerns remain over the communist government's heavy-handedness toward political opponents and treatment of workers. The country has jailed dissidents, bloggers and religious leaders in recent years, holding them for long periods without access to family or legal counsel and often subject to torture or other mistreatment, according to Human Rights Watch. Relations, however, have improved over maritime security and Vietnam is a member of the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact that includes countries such as Japan and Australia. (Reporting by Lesley Wroughton; Editing by James Dalgleish)
HONG KONG (Reuters) - The U.S. International Trade Commission (USITC) is launching an investigation into mobile devices made by eight smartphone vendors including Samsung Electronics Co over an alleged patent violation, the trade panel said on its website.

The probe follows a complaint filed by Singapore-based Creative Technology Ltd and U.S.-based Creative Labs Inc that several handset makers have infringed on their patent, the ITC said in a statement.

The accused vendors are ZTE Corp, Sony Corp, Samsung, LG Electronics Inc, Lenovo Group Ltd, Motorola Mobility, HTC Corp and Blackberry Ltd.

"The products at issue in the investigation are portable electronic devices, such as smartphones, with the capability of playing stored media files selected by a user from a hierarchical display," ITC wrote.

The trade panel said it has not yet made any decision on the merits of the case, and will decide a target date for completing investigation within 45 days after the institution of the investigation.

Creative Technology was not immediately available for comment. HTC said it cannot comment as the case has entered the court process.

Samsung and LG said they are looking into the case and didn't have any other immediate comment. Sony declined to comment. ZTE, Lenovo and other vendors were not immediately available.

"It's rare to see so many vendors involved in one patent infringement case," said research firm Canalys analyst Nicole Peng.

While the share price reaction of most Asia-based companies was muted, Hong Kong-listed shares of ZTE tumbled 11 percent on Friday to their lowest since July 2013. The Shenzhen-based company faced export restrictions imposed by the U.S. Commerce Department in March for allegedly violating sanctions against Iran.

(Reporting By Yimou Lee; Additional reporting by J.R. Wu in TAIPEI and Jee Heun Kahng in SEOUL, Makiko Yamazaki in TOKYO; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman)
By Tom Polansek and Karl Plume

May 6 (Reuters) - Across the U.S. Farm Belt, top grain handlers have banned genetically modified crops that are not approved in all major overseas markets, shaking up a decades-old system that used the world's biggest exporting country as a launchpad for new seeds from companies like Monsanto Co.

Bold yellow signs from global trader Bunge Ltd are posted at U.S. grain elevators barring 19 varieties of GMO corn and soybeans that lack approval in important markets.

CHS Inc, the country's largest farm cooperative, wants companies to keep seeds with new biotech traits off the market until they have full approval from major foreign buyers, Gary Anderson, a senior vice president for CHS, told Reuters.

"I think that would be the safest thing for the supply chain," he said. CHS implemented a policy last year under which it will not sell seeds or buy grain that contains traits lacking approvals needed for export.

The U.S. farm sector is trying to avoid a repeat of the turmoil that occurred in 2013 and 2014, when China turned away boatloads of U.S. corn containing a Syngenta AG trait called Viptera that it had not approved. Viptera corn was engineered to control insects.

Cargill Inc and Archer Daniels Midland Co each said the rejections cost them millions of dollars, and both companies have sued Syngenta for damages. ADM is refusing GMO crops that lack global approval. Cargill did not respond to requests for comment.

The United States is the biggest producer of GMO crops and has long been at the forefront of technology aiming to protect crops against insects or allow them to resist herbicides.

That innovation is now seen as a risk to trade because it is hard to segregate crops containing unapproved traits from the billions of identical-looking bushels exported every year.

Soren Schroder, chief executive officer for Bunge, said the practice of launching GMO seeds without full approval is "very risky."

"It's an uncomfortable position for the industry when there are traits out there that haven't had major market approval," he said in an interview.

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The latest crop being banned is Monsanto's Roundup Ready 2 Xtend soybean, whose seeds are genetically engineered to resist the herbicides glyphosate and dicamba. It is being sold for the first time in the United States and Canada this year despite lacking clearance from the European Union, an important export market for North American soybeans.

Monsanto said it expects EU approval soon. It initially projected farmers would plant the seed on 3 million acres in the United States, roughly 4 percent of overall plantings, and 420,000 acres in Canada.

Plantings have already begun in North America, and Monsanto spokeswoman Trish Jordan said that each passing week without EU authorization lowers the forecast for acreage in Canada.

The company is allowing growers to switch to another variety and has not yet shipped Xtend seeds to farmers who have ordered it in Canada. Monsanto has not publicly lowered its U.S. forecast.

ADM, Bunge and CHS have said they will not accept Xtend soybeans until the trait is fully approved by major markets. Bunge also declined to accept Viptera corn before China cleared it in December 2014.

The company's list of banned traits on its yellow posters contains products from Monsanto, Syngenta, Dow AgroSciences, Stine Seeds, DuPont Pioneer and Bayer, many of which are not commercially available to farmers yet.

CHS has its own list of restricted traits that includes products from Monsanto, Syngenta and DuPont Pioneer.

Seed companies, including Syngenta and Dow, are addressing industry concerns by selling biotech products under programs that restrict where growers can deliver their harvests to keep crops out of unapproved markets.

Farmers also produce crops containing biotech traits from Monsanto and DuPont Pioneer under contracts with end users that designate approved locations where they can be delivered.

However, such approaches are not fool-proof methods of protecting the supply chain, Anderson said.

Stine Seed and Bayer said they have policies against selling seed traits that lack approvals in major export markets.

Bayer this week seized on concerns about Monsanto's launch of Xtend soybeans to promote its own brand, LibertyLink.

"Soybeans, once considered such a simple crop to grow and market, is becoming more complicated," Bayer said. It called the situation faced by growers "downright confusing."

(Additional reporting by Rod Nickel in Winnipeg; Editing by David Gregorio)
Aleppo (Syria) (AFP) - A 48-hour ceasefire took hold Thursday in Syria's battered second city of Aleppo after President Bashar al-Assad's regime and rebel forces gave in to mounting diplomatic pressure.

Relieved residents returned to the streets after two weeks of heavy fighting in the divided metropolis, a key battleground in Syria's five-year civil war.

The Syrian army said late on Wednesday that it had agreed to calls from Russia and the United States for a two-day truce in Aleppo that would begin from 1:00 am on Thursday.

The agreement followed an intense diplomatic push by Moscow and Washington -- the co-sponsors of a February 27 ceasefire agreement that had begun to fall apart -- to salvage peace efforts.

Renewed fighting in recent days, especially in and around Aleppo, had threatened the full collapse of the ceasefire, a landmark in attempts to finally resolve a conflict that has left more than 270,000 dead.

More than 280 civilians were reported killed since April 22 in the clashes in Aleppo, with regime air strikes pounding the opposition-held east while rebels fired a barrage of rockets into the government-controlled west.

Early on Thursday, an AFP correspondent in the city said there had been no signs of fresh air raids since the ceasefire took effect.

As residents emerged, shopkeepers were reopening their doors while fruit and vegetable markets -- one of which was struck in an April 24 raid that left 12 dead -- were again up and running.

- US, Russia monitoring -

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a monitoring group, confirmed there had been no bombing in the city, though it said a civilian had died in a western district from rebel shelling that came minutes after the ceasefire took effect.

After a whirlwind of talks involving diplomats from top world powers and the United Nations, US Secretary of State John Kerry announced the truce had taken effect and that violence had already fallen off.

"We've seen an overall decrease in violence in those areas even though there are some reports of continued fighting in some locations," Kerry said.

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Kerry said US officials in Geneva were coordinating with their Russian colleagues on "enhanced monitoring efforts for this renewed cessation".

The Russian defence ministry said its ceasefire monitors had agreed with their US counterparts to oversee this truce until midnight on May 6.

In Aleppo, the head of the local branch of the powerful Jaish al-Islam (Army of Islam) rebel force, Ahmad Sanada, said the group would respect the ceasefire.

"We are in favour of any initiative that relieves the suffering of civilians and avoids bloodshed and we will respect" the ceasefire, he told AFP.

Diplomats are hoping a nationwide ceasefire can underpin efforts to resolve Syria's war, which evolved from a crackdown on anti-government protests into a devastating multi-front conflict.

UN-backed peace talks in Geneva, which mediators hope can resume later this month, have so far made little headway, with the regime rejecting the opposition's demand that Assad step aside as part of a political transition.

The conflict led in part to the emergence of the jihadist Islamic State group, which has seized control of large areas of Syria and neighbouring Iraq.

- Twin bombings kill 10 -

On Thursday, twin bombings in central Syria killed at least 10 civilians and wounded 40 more, the Observatory said, amid recent fighting in the area between IS fighters and regime troops.

State television reported that at least six people were killed and 28 seriously wounded in the suicide attack and car bombing in a square in Mukharram al-Fawqani in Homs province.

The area, controlled by the regime, is located between the cities of Homs and Palmyra, which was recaptured by the Syrian army from jihadists last month.

The blasts came just days after IS seized the nearby Shaer gas field, one of the biggest in Homs, in an attack that killed at least 16 regime troops.

There was no immediate claim of responsiblity for Thursday's attacks but suicide and car bombings are a favourite tactic of IS jihadists.

Western powers are hoping that ending the fighting in other parts of Syria will help focus efforts against IS, which a US-led coalition has been targeting with air strikes in Syria and Iraq since mid-2014.

Syrian officials have insisted they are targeting jihadists in Aleppo not covered by the ceasefire, in particular members of the Al-Qaeda affiliated Al-Nusra Front, which is fighting in the city alongside other rebel groups.

At an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council on Aleppo Wednesday, Syria's Deputy UN Ambassador Mounzer Mounzer defended the regime's actions in the city.

"What the Syrian government has been doing in the city of Aleppo is merely the fulfilment of its obligations to protect its citizens from terrorism," he told the council.
PARIS (Reuters) - BNP Paribas's (BNPP.PA) plan to cut over 10 percent of its investment banking jobs in France will affect IT and operations staff along with corporate trade and treasury, financing, advisory and global markets, among others, the CGT union said.

BNP Paribas announced earlier in April a voluntary redundancy plan that calls for up to 675 job cuts at its corporate and institutional bank (CIB) in France which employs 6,000 staff.

The bank said in February it planned to save more than 1 billion euros by 2019 to boost profitability and help to mitigate the impact of rising regulatory and compliance costs in its corporate and institutional banking division.

"The employees affected by the plan would be faced with the choice to either leave the company or to accept 'mobility' with a potential cut in remuneration," the CGT union said on its website following a meeting with the bank's management on May 3.

BNP Paribas' investment bank, like many of its rivals, showed the impact of weak investor demand in the first quarter, with pretax income down 54.5 percent and revenue down 18.9 percent.

Barclays analysts said BNP Paribas had suffered more than most from the slowdown in capital markets activity.

They said BNP's first quarter revenue in equities and advisory was down 41 percent, compared to a 20 percent fall among global peers.

CGT union provided a breakdown of 602 jobs affected by the plan. BNP Paribas declined to comment on the breakdown.

(Reporting by Maya Nikolaeva; Editing by Andrew Callus and Elaine Hardcastle)
Kabul (AFP) - The United States has warned citizens in Afghanistan of a "very high" kidnapping risk after an American citizen narrowly escaped abduction in the heart of Kabul, and an Australian aid worker was taken last week.

Katherine Jane Wilson, a well-known Australian NGO worker, was kidnapped April 28 in the city of Jalalabad, close to the border with Pakistan.

"The US Embassy Kabul reminds US citizens that the threat of kidnapping and hostage taking continues to be very high," the diplomatic mission said in a statement Thursday.

"The US Embassy continues to take this threat seriously and advises... US citizens to take appropriate security precautions and to avoid predictable travel patterns within Afghanistan."

The statement added that an attempted kidnapping last Monday targeted several expatriates, including a US citizen. It offered no further details.

Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop has said that Canberra is working to secure the release of Wilson, but insisted Australia does not pay ransoms for hostages.

Wilson, said to be aged 60, ran an organisation known as Zardozi, which promotes the work of Afghan artisans, particularly women.

The abduction has set off alarm bells among foreign residents in Afghanistan.

Aid workers in particular have increasingly been casualties of a surge in militant violence in recent years.

In April last year the bullet-riddled bodies of five Afghan workers for Save the Children were found after they were abducted by gunmen in the strife-torn southern province of Uruzgan.
Former Mexican President Vicente Fox apologized to Donald Trump for his comments earlier this year, where he adamantly stated Mexico would not pay for a wall on its border with the United States.

Fox, who served as Mexicos 55th president, explained the motivation for his apology comes from his belief that quality leaders know how to admit when they've been wrong or wronged someone.

Weve been working peacefully in very strong partnership with the United States, with United States citizens, with the United States corporate world, he told the FOX Business Networks Deirdre Bolton. Fortunately, weve been creating the jobs in Mexico and fortunately now the trend of migration has reversed.

The former president of Mexico said he still thinks Trump is a racist, and that the world doesnt need leaders with that type of belief.

The United States and the whole world needs compassionate leaders, Fox said. Leaders that really worry about your neighbor; leaders that really work for improving the situation.

Fox also shared a warning about what could happen if the U.S. cedes its leadership role in the world.

Very bad things are going to happen. We need that leadership not only in security; we need it in the economy. But, also U.S. citizens are going to be paying for the mistakes and the errors that hes [Trump] proposing.

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Viking Ocean Cruises has officially welcomed its second ship, Viking Sea, during a celebration on the Thames River in Greenwich.

Viking Sea's debut follows the launch of the cruise company's first ship Viking Star, less than a year ago and signals the growth of Viking Ocean Cruises, which last year became the travel industry's first entirely new cruise line in a decade.

Able to accommodate up to 930 guests and weighing 47,800-tons, the Viking Sea is officially the largest ship ever launched in London, but only the second of six ocean cruise ships currently planned for the fleet. The third and fourth ships, Viking Sky and Viking Sun are under construction and will be delivered in early 2017 and late 2017, respectively. The two remaining yet-to-be-named ships will be delivered in 2018 and 2020.

Commenting on the launch, Torstein Hagen, Chairman of Viking Cruises said the company looks forward to bringing more guests to London this spring and in future years, via the launches of both ships.

"Our ships are built for exploration; they are vessels that help our guests spend more time immersed in and surrounded by their destination. With the arrival of our second ship -- and with four more sister ships on the way -- we are focused on introducing travelers to the Viking way of destination-centered cruising, a unique style that was inspired by our success on the rivers."
C W. Kamau Bell is hosting a new series on CNN, United Shades of America, in which he explores various subcultures in the country, or, as in their interview on The Late Show, it's where "a black guy goes where he shouldn't."

This is exemplified in Bell's first episode of the series, which premiered April 23, when he meets with members of the Ku Klux Klan to talk about the group's ideology.

While their racism is, to put it bluntly, quite apparent, Bell explains to Colbert in the Late Show interview how white people can act racist in their everyday lives without noticing it.

"I think the most racist thing people do without thinking it's racist is the following: starting a sentence like this, 'I'm not racist, but...'" the comedian says. "I think the minute you try to pretend, especially as a white person in this country, you try to pretend like you're not actually benefitting from racism and white supremacy, the minute you try to except yourself from that, you're leaning into racism."

As a counterpoint, Colbert asks if black people can engage in racist behavior, to which Bell notes an important distinction: Yes, black people and people of color can be prejudiced, but that is different from racism.

"When you say the word 'racism,' a lot of people who are way smarter than me ... academics, they don't believe you can be racist if you're a person of color, if you're a black person," Bell explains. "We can be prejudiced, but racism implies power and institutions behind it. I can be prejudiced, I can be like, 'I don't like white people,' but I can't, like, not hire them or not give them their voting rights  you know what I'm saying? So it's a very different thing."

Check out the full interview between Bell and Colbert  where they also discuss Larry Wilmore's White House Correspondents' Dinner speech  below:
A waitress proved that a little kindness can go a long way after she footed the bill for two customers who were directly affected by the wildfires that have devastated northeastern Alberta, Canada.

Jonathon Pickford and his wife were two of the 80,000 people evacuated from the area.

Read: Family Flees Fast-Moving Wildfire in National Park: 'We Didn't Have Time to Think'

When they stopped for lunch at an Original Joe's restaurant in Edmonton, about a four-and-a-half hour drive from the fires, their waitress said she immediately noticed they were in "a bit of a daze."

Brittany Reynolds, 20, told InsideEdition.com that she remembered asking how their day was, and was thrown off guard when Pickford's wife responded, "It's been a rough day."

"I assumed it had something to do with the evacuation," Reynolds said. "All she had to say to me was 'Fort Mac' and I just knew."

"The wife and I lost almost everything except what she could fit in her car in 5 Mins so today we needed to revamp and try and figure out our next moves," Pickford later posted on Facebook.

Reynolds overheard the couple as they tried to decide what to do next and watched as Pickford excused himself from the table multiple times during their lunch to make phone calls, she said.



"I remember her mentioning 'We're waiting to have the call to go back in, but what is there to go back to? We have nothing, it's all gone,'" she told IE.com.



Heartbroken by the couple's situation, Reynolds immediately brought the situation to the attention of her manager.

"We're such a family there, and everyone has such big hearts. I didn't have to ask (my manager) Tania to cover it -- she had already taken care of it," she said.



Read: Heroic Family Dog Leads Firefighters to Children Trapped in Police Officer's Burning Home



When Reynolds brought over the bill at the end of their lunch, she said Pickford's jaw dropped when he saw the restaurant compensated their entire $87.50 bill.



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"You could just see the shock on their face," the waitress said. "The wife started to cry, and I gave her a huge hug and said, 'It's the least we could do.'"



"People are amazing," Pickford wrote in the Facebook post that has since gone viral.



Read: Bartender Grandma Raising Triplet Grandsons Gets Big Tip From Out-of-Town Customers



"It's amazing how much a small gesture can mean to someone. I'm so thankful I had the opportunity to brighten their day despite what they are going through," Reynolds told IE.com. "It reminds everyone that it doesn't take much to make someone's day."



The kindness has proved to be contagious. Reynolds said that during another shift that week, she watched as a table picked up the bill for two women sitting nearby.



Watch: Servers Open Up About the Most Heartwarming Notes and Generous Tips They've Ever Received



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By Alexandria Sage

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Technology entrepreneur Elon Musk gave a public shout-out to the sharpest minds in manufacturing this week, calling on them to come help Tesla Motors Inc (TSLA.O) build a million all-electric cars a year by 2020.

Musk says he is "hell-bent" on making the Silicon Valley automotive upstart a manufacturing powerhouse, but his vision relies on finding veteran auto engineers to ramp up volume ten-fold in four years - a challenge even for established carmakers.

Tesla on Wednesday said it would build 500,000 cars in 2018, two years ahead of schedule, and close to 1 million by 2020. The same day Tesla said its vice presidents in charge of production and manufacturing were leaving.

"You're looking at a company with significant levels of management turnover at the highest ends, people without experience in the planning, design or build of vehicles, and you expect to crank it up at those kinds of volumes?" asked Michigan-based auto manufacturing consultant Michael Tracy.

Putting aside the issue of capital requirements, auto experts point to a shortage of manufacturing engineers, whose ranks were thinning out even before the U.S. auto crisis hit in 2008.

"Its a constant issue we have in this country," said Garth Motschenbacher, director of employer relations at Michigan State University's College of Engineering.

"For the longest time manufacturing was seen as the dirty end of engineering," he said.

At the same time, Alphabet's Google (GOOGL.O) and Apple (AAPL.O) are working on car programs and courting the same potential employees. So are established auto names like Ford Motor Co (F.N), General Motors Co (GM.N) and Toyota Motor Corp .

A 2015 Deloitte report found it takes three months to hire skilled engineers, and the shortage is crimping manufacturers.

Robust early reservations for the upcoming Model 3 mass-market car may have assured Musk of demand, but now comes the execution, said automotive recruiter Stephen Parkford.

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"It's like reservations for a restaurant that's not open yet. You got the menu, but you don't have a chef!" he said.

Hiring a highly proven production engineer from a traditional carmaker who arrived with his entire team could speed the process, Parkford said.

But while young engineers will jump at the chance to work for Tesla, the "by-the-numbers, disciplined manufacturing guys" with 15-20 years experience will be harder to nab, said Cuneyt Oge, president of the Society of Automotive Engineers. One key obstacle is the high price of living in Silicon Valley.

Musk needs a visionary auto industry veteran, Oge said. "But anyone with that kind of experience is going to say, 'Hey, Elon, you can't do this in two years.'"

Tesla is known for pushing the envelope on design and technology but has stumbled in manufacturing, with prior launches marked by delays and quality issues.

Traditional automakers have more human and financial resources than cash-burning Tesla: Tracy pointed to Nissan Motor Co Ltd's ability in 2004 to bring in 200 engineers from Japan to help fix quality issues at its recently opened assembly plant in Canton, Mississippi.

"Greybeards" are crucial to build and run factory systems, said Oge. "You can't just defy the laws of business physics which require you to go down a learning curve collectively to build that systems know-how," he said.

While Tesla employees may cite Musk's tirelessness and attention to detail, even bedding down inside his Fremont, California factory, others like consultant Tracy see a worrying sign.

"If Elon is sleeping in a sleeping bag in a conference room off of the final assembly line, then there's an awful lot happening in that factory that's wrong," Tracy said.

(Reporting By Alexandria Sage; Editing by Tom Brown)
Adele is a full-service pop star. She not only gives her audiences the vocal goods ever night, she also helps them take care of personal business on her time. Like, for instance, at her show in Copenhagen, Denmark, on Tuesday when she invited fans Andre Soderberg and Simon Carlsson onto the stage and looked on in glee as Soderberg got down on one knee and proposed to Carlsson.

Taylor Swift and Adele Are 2015's Queens of Music Publishing

A fan caught the exchange on video, showing Adele holding the microphone for Soderberg and then hugging the couple and saying, "I'm going to cry!"

this is cute but Adele's reaction is even cuter please send helphttps://t.co/xAMFqwK4CL

- ALBA (@AdeleMyOnlyOne) May 4, 2016

"Should I be your surrogate if you have children? I'd love to have a baby with someone Swedish," she told the couple, according to People magazine. Adele reportedly pulled them out of the crowd because she liked their glasses and Soderberg told the Evening Standard that the proposal was spur of the moment.

Adele Invites Look-Alike Superfan on Stage

"I had been thinking about asking him to marry me but when Adele invited us to the stage, it just happened," said Soderberg. "I had a plastic ring on which we had bought earlier in the day when we were buying costumes, so I took that ring and put it on his finger. What can I say -- I just love him so much!"
From Popular Mechanics

Here's a new video of a Maine Air National Guard KC-135 Stratotanker refueling a U.S. Navy fighter over Southwest Asia-think Syria and Iraq. The tanker is part of the 101st Air Refueling Wing, also known as the "MAINEiacs."

The KC-135 has a crew of three, the pilot, co-pilot, and boom operator, and can carry up to 200,000 gallons of jet fuel. It was originally equipped with a stick-like refueling boom to refuel U.S. Air Force aircraft, which almost all use the boom method. The U.S. Navy, Marine Corps, and many U.S. allies however use the "probe and drogue" method, so the KC-135 in the video has been fitted with a probe adapter, which can be seen dangling from the boom. The KC-135 must land to fit the adapter, a process that takes less than an hour.

The cockpit switches and dials, as one might notice, are almost all faded and worn. That's because the KC-135 Stratotanker has been in service since 1956, with 414 aircraft still operated by the Air Force, Air National Guard, and Air Force Reserve. The KC-135 Stratotanker will be replaced by the KC-46 Pegasus tanker, currently in development.

The fighter is a U.S. Navy F/A-18F Super Hornet strike fighter part of VFA-103, the "Jolly Rogers". VFA-103 is currently embarked on the carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, which is scheduled to take over from the USS Truman as U.S. Naval Aviation's contribution to the war against the Islamic State.
Analyzing Weatherford International's Fiscal 1Q16 Earnings

(Continued from Prior Part)

Weatherford Internationals share price reaction

Weatherford International released its financial results for fiscal 1Q16 on May 4, 2016. On that day, its stock price reacted negatively. It fell ~9.3% to $7.25 from the previous days close. Since the beginning of this year, its share price is down ~16%.

Schlumberger (SLB) released its financial information for fiscal 1Q16 on April 21. Its share price fell ~2% on the day of the earnings release.

Weatherfords share price returns compared to the industry

In the past year, Weatherford Internationals stock has returned -48% (net of dividends) until May 4. In the past year, it underperformed the Market Vectors Oil Services ETF (OIH). OIH has returned approximately -26%. The Energy Select Sector SPDR ETF (XLE) is the broader energy industry ETF. It had a -18% return. Weatherford International underperformed the SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY). SPY produced ~1% returns during the same period. Weatherford International did outperform the US rig count. The rig count returned -54% in the past year.

Will cost reduction efforts be beneficial?

Weatherford International plans to reduce the headcount by 2,000 and close five additional manufacturing and services facilities in the near term. In fiscal 2016, it plans to close another 30 operating and other facilities. The companys CEO commented in the fiscal 1Q16 press release that We believe these deliberate actions will best allow Weatherford to balance the demands of the short-term market against the gains of an eventual recovery. Read Will Weatherfords Leverage Improve after Its Share Issue? to learn about Weatherford Internationals latest financial structure.

Next, well discuss Wall Street analysts targets for Weatherford International.

Continue to Next Part

Browse this series on Market Realist:
The Weeknd and Alessia Cara made a splash today (May 6) at the 19th annual Canadian Radio Music Awards (CRMAs) in Toronto.

The Toronto native earned SOCAN Song of the Year honors for "Can't Feel My Face," as well as the Fans Choice Award, beating out stiff competition from the likes of Justin Bieber and Shawn Mendes. Alessia Cara also took home the award for Best New Artist: CHR.

Billboard Cover: The Weeknd on Why 'Nobody Can Stop Me But Myself'

CRMA nominees recognize up-and-comers who charted in Canada for the first time, as well as established artists who earned top airplay in different formats, as recorded by Nielsen Broadcast Data Systems (BDS) in 2015.

Held at the Sheraton Centre Toronto Hotel in conjunction with Canadian Music Week, the annual awards show and industry luncheon featured performances from The Strumbellas and nominees Coleman Hell, Ria Mae, Cold Creek County, Scott Helman, and Jocelyn Alice.

Alessia Cara's 'Here' Hits No. 1 on Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs

In the non-voting award categories, Leah Daniels won The FACTOR Breakthrough Award for top airplay for new eligible artists, Mendes earned the Sennheiser Chart Topper Award for hit single "Stitches," and The Strumbellas took home the Heatseeker award.

See the full list of winners and nominees below.

Canadian Radio Music Awards 2016 Winners and Nominees

BEST NEW GROUP OR SOLO ARTIST: AC

COLEMAN HELL - 2 HEADS

FRANCESCO YATES - BETTER TO BE LOVED

JOCELYN ALICE - JACKPOT

RIA MAE - CLOTHES OFF

SCOTT HELMAN - BUNGALOW

BEST NEW GROUP OR SOLO ARTIST: CHR

ALESSIA CARA - HERE

COLEMAN HELL - 2 HEADS

DAN TALEVSKI - GUILTY AS SIN

FRANCESCO YATES - BETTER TO BE LOVED

JOCELYN ALICE - JACKPOT

BEST NEW GROUP OR SOLO ARTIST: MAINSTREAM ROCK

SAINT ASONIA - BETTER PLACE

STANDSTILLS - ORLEANS

THE WILD! - SLOW BURN

BEST NEW GROUP OR SOLO ARTIST: MODERN ROCK

BRAVE SHORES - NEVER COME DOWN

COLEMAN HELL - 2 HEADS

ELWINS - SO DOWN LO

WHITEHORSE - DOWNTOWN

BEST NEW GROUP OR SOLO ARTIST: COUNTRY

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COLD CREEK COUNTY - OUR TOWN

DAVID JAMES - WHAT WE WEREN'T LOOKING FOR

JOJO MASON - IT'S ALL GOOD - PIC REC'D

LEAH DANIELS - GO BACK

PETRIC - HERE GOES EVERYTHING

SOCAN SONG OF THE YEAR

CAN'T FEEL MY FACE - THE WEEKND

EARNED IT - THE WEEKND

SOMETHING BIG - SHAWN MENDES

SOUND OF YOUR HEART - SHAWN HOOK

STITCHES - SHAWN MENDES

FANS CHOICE

JUSTIN BIEBER

MAGIC!

SHAWN HOOK

SHAWN MENDES

THE WEEKND

TREVOR GUTHRIE
By David Ingram

(Reuters) - A former employee accused Wells Fargo & Co of instructing workers at a call center to refrain from telling customers about lost deeds or other missing documents, and of firing the worker who called the policy unethical, according to a lawsuit made public this week.

Duke Tran, who was a customer service specialist at the bank, says that his supervisor berated him for telling a husband and wife that their loan contract was missing from an internal system.

Tran and others later received an email instructing them not to tell customers about situations "where we have a lost contract, deed, any type of document, really, but especially when it relates to securing a property," according to a copy of the email filed with the lawsuit.

The email told the employees "to say that we need to do further research or something similar" and then to escalate the phone call to a boss.

Representatives for Wells Fargo, the largest U.S. mortgage lender, declined to comment on Friday.

Like other major lenders, Wells Fargo has been battered by lawsuits over its conduct before and after the 2008 financial crisis. Last month, it admitted to deceiving the U.S. government into insuring thousands of risky mortgages and agreed to pay $1.2 billion.

The U.S. Department of Justice had an option to join Tran in his case because his suit alleges fraud on the government. It has declined to do so. That is typically a sign the department thinks a lawsuit is unlikely to succeed.

Tran filed his lawsuit in June 2015 under court seal, which is common for suits alleging fraud on the government. U.S. District Judge Anna Brown in Portland, Oregon, ordered the papers unsealed on Thursday.

The lawsuit seeks damages and an injunction.

Tran's trouble began around December 2013 when he took a call from a husband and wife about an upcoming balloon payment on a mortgage, according to the lawsuit.

Tran told them the bank's copy of the loan contract was missing, and when he reported the issue to a supervisor, he was told his job was in jeopardy, the suit says.

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Other customers also had loan documents missing, and many of their loans had been acquired by Wells Fargo from First Union or SunTrust Bank, according to the lawsuit.

Tran was fired in November 2014 after more than 10 years with the bank, the lawsuit said.

(Reporting by David Ingram in New York; Additional reporting by Dan Levine in San Francisco; Editing by Matthew Lewis)
Western Australia has launched a US$12 million (A$16 million) film fund intended to attract and increase inbound production from Australia and the rest of the world.

The Western Australian Regional Film Fund, which becomes operational from July 1, draws its funding from the states Royalties for Regions cash pool. It will be administered by regional agency ScreenWest.

Productions applying for funding must meet several quality criteria including minimum production spend in the state, and likely audience reach. They are also expected to use a completion bond. Productions can combine the finance with other state or federal incentives.

The fund will attract key national and international players to make content in the regions whilst utilizing local crews and creating great opportunities for local talent, ScreenWest chief executive, Ian Booth said.

ScreenWest will market the great locations of Western Australia nationally and overseas to encourage film, TV and documentary producers to bring their projects here. In turn, we will be promoting local infrastructure capabilities, services and co-production opportunities. Western Australia is Australias largest state, but has a population of only 2.6 million, accounting for 11% of the Australian population.

The Royalties for Regions program recently supported the production of films including Jasper Jones, Red Dog: True Blue and Simon Bakers directorial debut Breath. All are due for release over the next 12 months.

In 2014-2015 ScreenWest invested US$3.82 million (A$5.11 million) in 40 projects. That in turn leveraged production with a total value of US$30 million (A$40.4 million.)

The opportunity to realize Tim Wintons iconic novel in its own rugged and pristine environment has been a filmmakers dream. We are grateful for the communitys support and embrace of our cast and crew, it has helped our production immensely, said The Mentalist star Baker, who acts as director and producer on Breath.

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Jasper Jones, a coming of age mystery based on the novel by Fremantle writer Craig Silvey, recently finished shooting in the state. The film is directed by Rachel Perkins and produced by Vincent Sheehan and David Jowsey.

Red Dog  True Blue, is a follow on from the runaway hit Red Dog and was again directed by Kriv Stenders with production by Nelson Woss, working alongside the Pilbara Development Commission.

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Film Review: 'Kill Me Three Times'

'Red Dog' to Ride Again as 'Blue' Movie Follow-up
Theres never been more LGBT characters on network television, and according to a panel discussion tonight at the Writers Guild, theres never been a better time to write about LGBT characters. The old stereotypes are out, and the new openness is in. Six of the seven panelists are writers and showrunners on network shows that feature LGBT characters, and when asked, none could recall a single horror story of network interference or censorship.

Weve never gotten notes, said Peter Nowalk, showrunner on ABCs How to Get Away with Murder. Even a scene involving a particularly risque sex act  a first for network television  got on the air. Sure, broadcast standards wanted it to be handled tastefully, so to speak, but pushing the sexual envelope is now almost required. People get used to it, he said.

The landscape has changed, said Aline Brosh McKenna, co-creator of the CWs Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. The networks want to raise the bar. Cable and streaming are out-pacing the networks, so they want to remain relevant.

The networks want to go for it and to be edgy, said Becky Mann, a writer on ABCs The Real ONeals, which features a 16-year-old gay character named Kenny.

The The Real ONeals has been criticized  it has a PG rating, but the conservative Parents Television Council believes that it typifies everything thats wrong with television, accusing it of making jokes about child molestation and pedophilia. Earlier in the day, organization called on the FCC to reign in the networks, citing a study from March of what it considers to be a high amount of adult content on the show and in a press release called for the FCC and Congress to overhaul the TV Content Ratings System.

Mann acknowledged that the show has received blowback from some viewers, but said that it was mostly from viewers who had not seen the show, which, in fact, does not make light of child molestation or pedophilia.

Moderated by Gregg Hernandez, panelists included Rachel Bloom, star and co-creator of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend; Dan Goor, executive producer of Brooklyn Nine-Nine; Sonay Hoffman, a writer on American Crime; Jennie Snyder Urman, executive producer of Jane the Virgin, and Carter Covington, who developed and serves as showrunner of MTVs Faking It.

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The panelists all agreed that LGBT characters have become the new norm on television; that stereotypes are disappearing, and that television has, as Hernandez put it, contributed to more and more people realizing that LGBTs are just like everyone else.

This article was updated for clarity.

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(Credit: ABC)



Warning: This story contains major spoilers for Captain America: Civil War.



When Captain America: Civil War launched in theaters last week, fans of Marvels ABC series, Agent Carter, were still waiting to find out whether consummate espionage-fighter, Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell), would be assigned a Season 3 mission to serve and protect the post-World War II Marvel Cinematic Universe. The shows fate has now been decided: ABC has cancelled Agent Carter along with a slew of other shows, including Castle, The Muppets and Nashville. The millions of Marvel fans who saw Civil War last week probably had an inkling that Peggys career was drawing to a close. As revealed in the studios latest blockbuster, the founding S.H.I.E.L.D. agent  and former flame of Steve Rogers, aka Captain America  passed away quietly in her sleep in at the age of 95.

Related: Before They Were Superheroes: A Look Back on the Stars Before They Donned Their Capes

Born in 1921, Carter lived and fought through World War II, and continued to battle nefarious foes (and workplace sexism) in the ensuing years and decades. Seasons 1 and 2 of Agent Carter chronicled Peggys post-war career in New York and Los Angeles respectively. Viewers also caught a glimpse of her later in life in the opening sequence of Ant-Man, which found her still working for S.H.I.E.L.D. alongside her regular sparring partner, Howard Stark, as late as 1989. Flash-forward to 2014 and the events of Captain America: The Winter Soldier, though, and Steve is seen visiting an Alzheimers afflicted Peggy in a Washington D.C. nursing home.

Agent Carter in her twilight years in Captain America: The Winter Soldier (Credit: Marvel)

Steve is informed of Peggys passing early on in Civil War via a text message from Peggys niece, Sharon (Emily VanCamp), who has kept the Carter name alive within S.H.I.E.L.D. by becoming an agent herself. (Sharon upholds Carter tradition in other ways as well; after an extended flirtation with Cap, she and Steve finally lock lips in Civil War.) After receiving Sharons message, Steve flies to London for Peggys funeral and sits stoically through the service. Atwell herself doesnt appear in this scene, but she is memorialized in a picture that depicts Peggy in the prime of her life. And Cap feels her loss throughout the rest of the movie. At one point, he turns to his former friend-turned-international assassin-turned-tentative friend again, Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), and speaks about Peggys outsized importance in his life, both in the past and when he reawakened in the present.

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Related: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Recap: Return of the Kree

Its a fine eulogy for Peggy Carter but did it mean that ABC had to bury Agent Carter? Since the show  unlike most of the Marvel movies  takes place entirely in the past, there were still plenty of stories left to tell. In fact, its mentioned in Civil War that Peggy once met John F. Kennedy, which would have given the writers a great excuse to jump ahead to her adventures in the swinging 60s.

(Credit: ABC)



On the other hand, Agent Carters ratings never equaled its critical acclaim, and the fact that Atwell booked a major role on the pilot for the ABC procedural, Conviction, always seemed to lessen the chance of her extending her stay in the Marvel universe. (Although in the Conviction casting announcement, ABC stressed that they would find a way for the actress to shoot both shows should Agent Carter have been renewed.) Fortunately, Marvel has a long memory when it comes to the characters who populate its universe, so Its likely that Peggy will continue to appear in future movies when there are flashbacks to the pre-Iron Man past. In the meantime, kudos to Civil War for giving us the chance to mourn the passing of Peggy Carter and Agent Carter: a heroine and a show ahead of their time.

Both seasons of Agent Carter can be purchased on Amazon Prime.
By Jeb Blount

LAGARTO, Brazil (Reuters) - Judge Marcel Montalvao joined some of Brazil's top politicians as one of the country's most-hated public figures when he ordered a 72-hour shutdown of WhatsApp this week, abruptly cutting off the messaging service for some 100 million users.

But none of the young women staring at their cell phones and tapping away on the now-restored WhatsApp in a patch of shade outside Montalvao's courthouse in the small city of Lagarto were among the haters.

Even as the judge prepared to rule on cases involving their loved ones in a courthouse compound that is heavily guarded and sits behind a high, electrified fence, the women expressed understanding for a man known locally as fiercely dedicated to fighting crime.

"It was a pain at first. We use zap-zap all the time," said Marcielle Santana, 26, using the universal slang term in Brazil for Facebook (FB.O)-owned WhatsApp.

"But you have to respect him. He's going after drug gangs, pedophiles. That's more important than a little time without zap-zap."

Montalvao ordered Brazil's main telecom operators to block WhatsApp on Monday for 72 hours after it failed to produce for the court messages supposedly traded between members of Brazil's most powerful drug gang.

In March, he ordered the imprisonment of a Brazil-based Facebook executive for failing to comply with a previously attempted block on WhatsApp. The executive was jailed and freed after a day.

This week, Montalvao's order was lifted by a higher court about 24 hours after it went into effect. A similar temporary block of the messaging service occurred last December after a judge in Sao Paulo state ordered it shut for failing to share information in a criminal case.

WhatsApp officials have repeatedly argued they cannot turn over to judges material that they do not possess. Their encrypted messaging service does not store user-generated content on any servers, they say.

The block of WhatsApp ignited such an outcry in Brazil that a congressional commission on Wednesday recommended a bill that would bar authorities from blocking popular messaging applications.

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Facebook Inc's Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg also weighed in, calling on Brazilians to demand that WhatsApp never be blocked again.

Nancy Andrighi, a minister at Brazil's National Council of Justice, a federal watchdog over judges, on Tuesday gave Montalvao two weeks to explain his decision to block WhatsApp. If the council finds the judge abused his power, it could take disciplinary action against him.

Despite all that, Montalvao's reputation in Lagarto and the surrounding area remains positive even after his nearly year-long battle with WhatsApp and Facebook - principally because of his hard-line stance against surging crime, often linked to drug gangs, in the city.

FROM CLASSROOM TO POLICE PROTECTION

Montalvao, the son of shoe shiner, spent 20 years as a schoolteacher in the Sergipe state capital Aracaju, Montalvao. He told a Lagarto radio station last year that he became a judge in 2004 after deciding that teaching was not doing enough to help young people.

Montalvao declined on Thursday to give an interview to Reuters about the WhatsApp case, citing judicial secrecy and the delicate security situation surrounding the arrival that day of eight gang suspects to his court.

The area, part of Brazil's impoverished Northeast, grew rapidly during the two terms of former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, thanks to a commodities boom and surging government spending during his eight years in office that began in 2003.

But crime grew along with the population, as the rural poor flocked to jobs at expanding food processing plants and with the opening of a large medical faculty of the Federal University of Sergipe. Lagarto is now home to 103,000 people, a jump of 25 percent over the 2000 Census.

Not all has changed, though.

Despite the glittering medical campus and neat downtown shops, churches and government buildings, horses graze on roads near the courthouse, which sits beside manioc and coconut fields and overgrown empty lots. Vultures circle overhead in the strong tropical sun.

"We're still in the country, but we aren't the little, dusty northeastern town that everybody has in their mind," said Rilley Guimaraes, Lagarto's municipal secretary of Industry, Commerce and Tourism. "The attacks on Lagarto have been offensive."

Montalvao's willingness to take on criminals, including the PCC, the notorious Sao Paulo-based drugs, guns and extortion cartel, has earned him death threats.

He lives under 24-hour police protection and spends much of his time wearing a bullet-resistant vest, said Eduardo Maia, president of the Lagarto chapter of Brazil's bar association, the OAB.

Maia was partly supportive of Montalvao, saying that the judge was facing the same challenge raised by Apple (AAPL.O) Corp's refusal to help the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation access encrypted messages on an iPhone used by one of the shooters in an attack in San Bernardino, California.

"Under Brazilian law, Montalvao's order was perfectly legal," Maia said. "WhatsApp and Facebook weren't providing or storing information that our Internet laws require them to keep, and for them to criticise the judge for that is rather arrogant."

The problem, Maia said, is whether that law can be "met by any company, and was the order proportional to the problem the judge was trying to solve?"

"I don't think so," he said. "But that debate is going on everywhere."

(Reporting by Jeb Blount; Additional reporting by Brad Brooks in Rio de Janeiro; Editing by Brad Brooks and Frances Kerry)
Shes the boss  but does she have to be so sexist? (Photo: 20th Century Fox)

When Lisa, a New Yorkbased editor, was starting out in her career many years ago, she got a rude awakening in the form of gender discrimination  doled out by another woman.

I was told by my very first boss, a female, to wear lipstick, the editor, who does not want her real name printed, tells Yahoo Beauty. She pulled me aside after working there for a bit and said that I wore lipstick on the interview and then never again  and said, without saying it, that I should wear lipstick all the time. I didnt mind because I was 23 and looked 15, and I was clueless and wanted to seem more professional, and it was 1998. But I cannot imagine the fallout if this happened today.

Related: Hillary Clinton on Beauty Double Standards for Working Women

But apparently, its still happening  at least according to a striking new advice column in the Washington Post Magazine. I am a female researcher in a fairly conservative industry. My female boss has told me I should wear makeup and high-heeled shoes when I present to clients, began a question from a reader published on May 5 in Karla Millers @WorkAdvice column. Is this illegal, since my male colleagues do not have to do so? If not, how should I raise my concerns with my boss? I was hired for my research and presentation skills, but the makeup/heels requirement makes me feel like I was hired to look pretty.

Related: How Trumps Sexist Comments About Beauty Hurt Women Everywhere

Miller gives a thorough response, telling her, basically, that its complicated and that employers have the right to impose dress codes and set standards of formality. But a dress code cant impose an unequal burden on workers because of their sex, faith, race or other protected status under Title VII. Whats more, the U.S. Supreme Court in 1989 interpreted Title VII to prevent sex stereotyping after a company refused to promote a woman to partner because she didnt act or look feminine enough.

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(Photo: ChinaFotoPress/Getty Images)

On the other hand, Miller adds, in 2006 a federal appeals court upheld a casino dress code that required female employees to wear makeup and styled hair. That court said dress codes can allow for reasonable gender-based distinctions and said the plaintiff had failed to prove the makeup mandate imposed an unequal burden on female employees, she writes. Thus, gendered dress codes arent necessarily considered discriminatory in and of themselves; such a ruling depends on the facts, the evidence and the court involved.

In a court with a jury of our peers, at least, this kind of messaging from a female boss is insulting and scarring, no matter how long ago it was conveyed. I had one that told me I needed to get my bangs cut because the look of them growing out was terrible  and that my pants were wrinkled, which was unacceptable, said one respondent to our recent Facebook query on the topic. Keep in mind that I was a mountain guide leading day hikes in the Tetons in Wyoming Its a shame women cant see through the nastiness and support one another.

Another woman, now a retail executive who identifies with a more masculine end of the gender spectrum when it comes to style, was still a salesgirl when she was told to wear more womens clothing  like skirts and lipstick, she says. I was told I would never get promoted until I did. However, she adds, Shes no longer with the company, and Im the head of global visual merchandising. Last laugh: mine.

Another woman, in the insurance field, had a similar experience. I was told that I should start wearing makeup and get a hairstyle, and that my hippie-bohemian vibe didnt work in the office, she says. This was 10 years ago. Guess whos still here and who isnt?

Finally, there was this story from an L.A.-based writer wishing to remain anonymous because of the small world of her business. When I worked at a certain magazine, my boss  lets call her Susan  dressed to the nines: fashionable dresses, stilettos, perfectly styled hair, and loads of makeup. This had a trickle-down effect on the staff, who all looked TV-ready on a daily basis, she tells Yahoo Beauty. Fashion isnt really my thing, but I tried with cute tops, skinny jeans, diamond earrings, and high heels. One day, during a positive performance review, my manager ended our meeting with a little tip: Oh, one more thing: Susan likes your vintage handbag and she favors your cropped jacket over the longer one. I was taken aback. No, I wouldnt win best-dressed at the office, but I absolutely looked professional. My co-worker wore a bathrobe to the office once and was praised by Susan because it was a designer brand.

Related: Science Says Sarcasm at Work Is a Useful Tool (Really)

The effects of those comments stayed with her for quite a while. The remark made me paranoid that I was being judged for my looks, not my talent, she says. This began to affect my performance and confidence level, and it wasnt long before I quit my job to work for someone who truly appreciated me.

Thats not an uncommon reaction to female bosses who impose sexist standards on female employees, according to Connecticut-based psychologist Barbara Greenberg. It can make [the employee] insecure and focus on the wrong thing, and her performance will probably deteriorate because in the face of anxiety, everything deteriorates, she tells Yahoo Beauty. Its a good way for women to lose their sure footing.

As for responding to a female boss who makes these requests, Miller suggests to the woman who wrote in for advice to skip the legal action for now and instead have an honest conversation  after making certain that shes already within the bounds of whats required in writing. Then, she says, you can ask  as neutrally as possible  why she thinks makeup and heels are necessary for you. (I for one would love to hear how a dewy complexion, moist lips, shapely calves and uplifted buttocks are essential to your job.) Finally, you can explain that you find makeup and high heels so uncomfortable and distracting that wearing them will hinder your performance.

Greenberg adds that, whatever the motivation is in these instances, its very sexist, and it serves to disempower women. She notes, however, that it may not be terribly surprising when you consider that 80 percent of workplace bullying is of women by women. In the workplace, women are very hard on each other and tend to be very competitive. But women who have the power to empower other women really should take another look at these types of requests, because its a shame, and it really disempowers them.

Lets keep in touch! Follow Yahoo Beauty on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest.
Key Takeaways from Canadian National Railway's 1Q16 Results

(Continued from Prior Part)

Canadian Nationals Grain and Fertilizer segments

Previously, we reviewed Canadian Nationals (CNI) Petrochemicals business and its prospects going forward. Here, we will discuss CNIs Grain and Fertilizer revenues. Its Freight Shipment revenues rank third in terms of contribution to overall revenues.

In 1Q16, the Grain and Fertilizer revenues were down 2%, at $522.0 million Canadian against $535.0 million Canadian in 1Q15.

1Q16 Grain and Fertilizer volumes

Canadian Nationals (CNI) grain and fertilizers carloads fell by 5% in 1Q16 compared with 1Q15. The decline was primarily due to reduced volumes of Canadian wheat and oats to North American markets. In addition, reduced exports of US corn, soybean, and soybean meal exports through the Gulf of Mexico were responsible for the lower volumes and revenues.

However, these negative factors were partially compensated by the favorable conversion impact of a weaker Canadian dollar. Plus, higher offshore exports of Canadian canola and soybeans and better pricing compensated the fall in volumes and revenues of Grain and Fertilizer in 1Q16.

The companys Canadian grain revenues were almost flat in 1Q16 compared with the first quarter of last year. This was a mix of higher carloads offset by lower regulated pricing. CNIs US grain revenues were affected by strength in the US dollar, which lowered the US grain volumes by 13% in 1Q16.

Management outlook

Canadian National (CNI) expects low shipments of Canadian grain until the next harvest in September 2016. The company anticipates a tough comparison for the second and third quarters of 2016 compared with 2015. CNI believes that both US and the Canadian 2016 and 2017 grain crops will be in line with their respective five-year averages.

The company foresees a negative impact of revenue cap pricing due to lower fuel prices. However, CNI believes that opportunities can come from potash, although the competitive environment may restrict them. The company expects flat US grain exports due to a strong US dollar and an abundant supply in markets abroad.

Story continues

Peer group agriculture business revenues

In the wake of a strong dollar and competition from global players, agricultural revenue growth has been a concern area for CNIs peers also. However, CNI surprised its peers by posting a growth of 4% in the Canadian Grain and Fertilizers business in 2015.

Well go through the growth in agricultural revenues for its peers in the same year compared with 2014.

Union Pacific (UNP): declined by 5%.

Norfolk Southern (NSC): rose by 1.2%

CSX Corp. (CSX): fell by 5%

Kansas City Southern (KSU): declined by 4%

Canadian National Railway (CNI): rose by 4%

Canadian Pacific Railway (CP): rose by 6.7%

Investors who want to invest in the transportation and logistics sector can consider the iShares US Industrials ETF (IYJ). This ETF holds 5% in major US railroads.

In the next part, we will consider CNIs Forest Products revenues and the managements outlook.

Continue to Next Part

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Can Texas Roadhouse Maintain Its Strong 1Q16 Performance?

(Continued from Prior Part)

EBIT margins

In 1Q16, Texas Roadhouse (TXRH) posted EBIT (earnings before interest and tax) of $52.8 million. This represents EBIT margins of 10.2%compared to 10.6% in 1Q15. The decline in the EBIT margins was due to the rise in G&A (general and administrative) expenses. It was also due to depreciation and amortization expenses.

Factors impacting EBIT margins

Due to sales leverage from positive same-store sales growth and a decline in commodity prices, led by beef prices, the cost of sales declined to 33.9% of the total revenuecompared to 35.1% in 1Q15. However, the increase in labor wages increased labor and benefit expenses from 28.8% of the total revenue to 28.9%. While other operating costs and rent expenses remained constant, the depreciation and amortization expenses increased from 3.5% of the revenue to 3.8% due to increased investments in company-owned restaurants.

The major factor that led to a decline in EBIT margins was increased G&A expenses from 4.7% of the revenue to 5.8%. The increase in G&A expenses was due to $5.5 million settlement charges on a wage-per-hour demand with the Delaware Department of Labor. Excluding that, G&A expenses were flat. Texas Roadhouse forms 0.64% of the holdings of the iShares S&P Small-Cap 600 Growth ETF (IJT).

Peer comparison

In 1Q16, Texas Roadhouses peers Bloomin Brands (BLMN), Buffalo Wild Wings (BWLD), and Brinker International (EAT) posted EBIT margins of 7.8%, 9.4%, and 10.9%, respectivelycompared to 8.2%, 10%, and 12.1% in the same quarter last year.

Outlook

With commodity deflation expected to be 1%2% and sales leverage from positive same-store sales growth, analysts are expecting the EBIT margins to be 8.8%, 8.2%, and 7.8% in 2Q16, 3Q16, and 4Q16compared to 7%, 7%, and 7.6% in 2Q15, 3Q15, and 4Q15, respectively. For 2016, analysts expect the EBIT margins to be 8.8%compared to 8.1% in 2015.

Story continues

Continue to Next Part

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Investors are always looking for stocks that are poised to beat at earnings season and Ritchie Bros. Auctioneers Incorporated RBA may be one such company. The firm has earnings coming up pretty soon, and events are shaping up quite nicely for their report.

That is because Ritchie Bros. Auctioneers is seeing favorable earnings estimate revision activity as of late, which is generally a precursor to an earnings beat. After all, analysts raising estimates right before earningswith the most up-to-date information possibleis a pretty good indicator of some favorable trends underneath the surface for RBA in this report.

In fact, the Most Accurate Estimate for the current quarter is currently at 22 cents per share for RBA, compared to a broader Zacks Consensus Estimate of 21 cents per share. This suggests that analysts have very recently bumped up their estimates for RBA, giving the stock a Zacks Earnings ESP of 4.76% heading into earnings season.

Why is this Important?

A positive reading for the Zacks Earnings ESP has proven to be very powerful in producing both positive surprises, and outperforming the market. Our recent 10 year backtest shows that stocks that have a positive Earnings ESP and a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) or better show a positive surprise nearly 70% of the time, and have returned over 28% on average in annual returns (see more Top Earnings ESP stocks here).

Given that RBA has a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) and an ESP in positive territory, investors might want to consider this stock ahead of earnings. Clearly, recent earnings estimate revisions suggest that good things are ahead for Ritchie Bros. Auctioneers, and that a beat might be in the cards for the upcoming report.

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An Illinois woman is currently in the process of suing Starbucks for $5 million over a problem many coffee drinkers face: too much ice combined with too little coffee. Stacy Pincus claims that the company falsely advertises the sizes of its iced drinks, and shes not alone in feeling ripped off for a cold beverage.

But according to Fast Company, theres a reason customers are paying more money for sometimes less liquid. Companies likely have to make up for the fact that iced coffee supplies are more expensive, since they require plastic containers and an energy-consuming ice machine, says Lofted Coffees Aric Carroll.

Theres also the issue of how the coffee is made. While some shops will make a normal brew and then cool it down, a lot of places offer cold brew coffee, brewed without hot water. According to a Starbucks barista, cold brew requires that ground coffee beans be steeped for 12-24 hours, making them much more labor-intensive and space-consuming than an average cup of joe.

Regardless of the method, though, Carroll admits that there might not be a good answer for charging so much more. As long as people are willing to pay upwards of $6 per cup, the trend is likely to continue.
SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australia's antitrust regulator on Thursday cleared beer giant Anheuser Busch Inbev SA's (ABI.BR) planned $100 billion (68.9 billion pounds) takeover of rival SABMiller Plc (SAB.L), saying the deal would not adversely affect the domestic market.

"The ACCC considers that the proposed acquisition is unlikely to result in higher beer prices for consumers," Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) Chairman Rod Sims said in a statement.

The deal would not hurt competition in Australia because AB Inbev sold its beers in Australia only via distributors, "has only a limited direct company presence in Australia and does not brew beer here," the ACCC said.

The green light from Australia removes another potential antitrust obstacle to the world's No. 1 beer company's deal to buy its nearest rival, one of the biggest corporate takeovers on record. AB Inbev has said it expects to complete the purchase by the end of 2016, but still has to secure antitrust clearance in Europe, where both it and its target are headquartered.

AB Inbev is the No. 2 beer supplier in Australia, behind Lion Nathan, owned by Japan's Kirin Holdings Co Ltd .

The ACCC said AB Inbev has until now had its beers, which include Corona, distributed in Australia by Lion Nathan. It has agreed to distribute the product itself to ease regulatory concerns that the companies may coordinate market activity, the ACCC said.

The European Commission has said it will give its verdict on the deal on May 24. AB Inbev has already offered to sell SABMiller's Grolsch and Peroni brands to address its potential concerns.

In April, AB Inbev agreed to delay any layoffs by five years and invest 1 billion rand ($67 million) to support South African farmers to secure regulatory approval for the deal in South Africa.

($1 = 14.9378 rand)

(Reporting by Byron Kaye; Editing by Stephen Coates and Kenneth Maxwell)
His path to Republican presidential nomination all but assured, Donald Trump will soon enjoy one of the benefits of being a presumptive nominee for the Oval Office: meeting with U.S. intelligence officials for classified briefings on the nation's secrets.

Presidential standard-bearers have received classified intelligence briefings since 1952 when President Truman authorized the Central Intelligence Agency to share information with White House hopefuls Dwight Eisenhower and Adlai Stevenson.

Related: GOP Chief: This Isnt Donald Trumps Party

The idea behind the tradition was that the winner of the election wouldnt be caught flat-footed about emerging and ongoing global threats the first day s/he walks into the Oval Office. Truman, who became commander-in-chief after the death of FDR, had no idea the Manhattan Project -- the effort that birthed the atomic bomb -- even existed.

The briefings traditionally start immediately after the party conventions, and while they may not contain top-secret sources, they could include some of the same information President Obama receives in what is known inside the Beltway as the Presidents Daily Brief.

The prospect that Trump, known for his off-the-cuff, often random speaking style might receive even a glimpse of the countrys secrets has some people concerned that he will say something on the campaign trail about China or the anti-ISIS fight that was never supposed to be revealed. After all, this is a man who this week pointed to a National Enquirer story that claimed Ted Cruzs father was somehow connected to JFKs assassination.

Related: The Battle Between Donald Trump and Paul Ryan Was Inevitable

"It beggars the imagination," former CIA director Michael Hayden, who briefed Obama following the 2008 election, told The Washington Post. "Given that [Trump's] public persona seems to reflect a lack of understanding or care about global issues, how do you arrange these presentations to learn what are the true depths of his understanding?"

Story continues

My concern with Trump will be that he inadvertently leaks, because as he speaks extemporaneously, hell pull something out of his hat that he heard in a briefing and say it, said a former senior U.S. intelligence official told The Daily Beast.

Its not an unreasonable concern that hell talk publicly about whats supposed to stay in that room, according to another former senior intelligence official.

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told reporters last week that U.S. spy agencies have already begun planning briefings for Trump and his presumed Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton.

On Thursday, the White House couldnt help but stoke the worries that Trump might be unfit to receive the closed-door updates while expressing confidence that Clinton was up to the challenge.

Related: From 'Hell No' to 'Tepid Yes,' Heres Where Top Republicans Stand on Trump

Yes, we do, press secretary Josh Earnest told reporters during a briefing. Secretary Clinton has obviously served this administration with distinction, and shes got a lot of experience in understanding the need to protect classified information.

His remarks come as Clinton herself is part of an FBI investigation into whether the homebrew email server she used as Secretary of State threatened national security.

Still, when it came to the former reality TV star, Earnest couldnt help but play coy. We'll have to see what decision the Director of National Intelligence makes. I guess I can't offer my own assessment, he said.

The White House will not be interfering in the decisions that are made by the intelligence community to provide information to the presidential candidates, Earnest added.

Aki Pertiz*, a former CIA analyst who has contributed to the PDB, told The Post that Trump will undoubtedly present unique challenges to the intelligence professionals tasked with giving him the classified updates.

"He has all kinds of relationships with Chinese investors and Russian investors. He's spoken very highly of our adversaries. And he's talked about using torture and waterboarding and attacking people's families. All these things are going through the analysts' minds, he said.

*Correction: This story initially attributed this quote to David Preiss. We regret the error.

Top Reads from The Fiscal Times:
Anarchy in the UK: Will UK Voters Favor a 'Brexit'?

(Continued from Prior Part)

Our view on a Brexit

Many BlackRock clients are concerned about the possibility of a Brexit and have been asking for our view on the implications. To that end, The BlackRock Investment Institute recently published Brexit: Big Risk, Little Reward | The UK Referendum on Europe, a report that collates our thoughts on the matter.

We believe its a good idea that the U.K. stay in the EU. The economic and financial costs of a Brexit are material for the U.K., in our final analysis, both in the near and long term. And its not just the U.K. economy that would feel the effects of Brexit: The EU would lose a world-class financial center, a major budget contributor, a defense pillar and a leading voice for free markets.

Market Realist  A Brexit would be a lose-lose situation

It would be prudent for the United Kingdom (EWU)(EWUS) to continue with the European Union. Exiting the EU and pursuing an unpredictable model would entail significant economic and political risk. The long transition process and heightened uncertainty over the United Kingdoms economic and political relationships with the European Union (IEV) would damage investors confidence and result in fewer investments. For example, the UK automotive and financial services industry is largely built on the European Unions market size. The EU (IEUR)(EZU) accounts for 41% of the United Kingdoms exports of financial services, which a Brexit would affect.

The EU would also face a lot of pain after a Brexit. The most important effect would be the loss of the worlds premier financial center. According to an index published by Z/Yen Group, London moved ahead of New York as the worlds top financial center. Zurich, which was ranked seventh, is the only other European city to make the top 10. Many European businesses access global markets through London.

Plus, Britain is the third-largest net contributor to the EU budget. As the chart above shows, its average annual contribution is likely to exceed 9 billion pounds sterling over the next five years. Plus, the United Kingdoms role in the EU supports Europes security.

Story continues

The United Kingdom is one of the strongest proponents of a free market in the European Union. It has lent a strong voice to EU trade negotiations with other countries. Without the United Kingdom, the European Union would be a less attractive trading partner for many countries.

Continue to Next Part

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The China oilseeds market has improved dramatically.

Its high time investors took another look at Wilmar International (Wilmar), as changing market tides and Wilmars underappreciated distribution capability signal strong margins for the company in FY16.

According to a report by RHB, the oilseeds crushing market has displayed structural improvements. More than three years of oilseed price disruptions have ended thanks to tightened banking regulations eradicating shady commodity financing deals in China. Currently, overcapacity has become a smaller issue on back of improving utilisation rate.

In addition, Wilmar has the ability to tap on Chinese consumers desire for foreign goods. The companys Arawana brand, bolstered by its Singapore branding, is currently the leading edible oil brand in China.

In line with this, RHB anticipates higher margins from Wilmars consumer pack division as its rice and flour, marketed under the same brand, generate improved profitability. Further, the acquisition of Goodman Fielder would provide it with a new range of products to leverage on the climbing Western influence on Chinese consumption habits.

Moreover, RHB believes that the market is overlooking Wilmars distributing prowess. Its network covers more than 50 countries including emerging markets like Africa, China, and India.

We believe the value of the distribution chain can be further harnessed by injecting complementary products into it. Increased partnerships and joint ventures (JVs) would allow Wilmar to monetise its extensive distribution efficiently, RHB notes.

Furthermore, Wilmars share price has rallied recently thanks to raised CPO prices, which are seen to stay robust till 1H17. This, with increased biodiesel mandates in Malaysia and Indonesia, could boost tropical oils margins. Additionally, El Nino has led to a robust supply of soybeans this year.

We expect Wilmars oilseeds business to deliver strong margins in FY16F followed by lower but more stable margins in subsequent years, states RHB.





More From Singapore Business Review


Australian police have charged a 21-year-old woman with fraud after she allegedly spent US$3.4 million that her bank mistakenly gave her, with much of the money reportedly lavished on handbags.

The woman, named in Sydney media as Malaysian chemical engineering student Christine Jiaxin Lee, reportedly splashed out on luxury apartment rentals, designer bags and other high-end items after her Australian bank gave her an unlimited overdraft on her savings account.

"That's a lot of handbags," magistrate Lisa Stapleton said Thursday, according to Sydney's Daily Telegraph.

Police arrested the woman as she attempted to board a flight to Malaysia on Wednesday night.

They said she had been charged with dishonestly obtaining a financial advantage by deception and knowingly dealing with the proceeds of crime.

"Police will allege the woman obtained an illegal financial advantage when she overdrew her account by Aus$4.6 million (US$3.4 million)," they said in a statement.

Reports said that Lee, who has been released on bail, allegedly spent the money between July 2014 and April 2015, and that some Aus$3.3 million had not been recovered.

Stapleton questioned whether the cash could be considered a "proceed of crime", saying "it's money we all dream about".

The case has been adjourned until June 21.
Phil Lord and Chris Miller have found their Han Solo.

Alden Ehrenreich is in final negotiations to don the vest and pick up the blaster for the Star Wars standalone, according to sources, which centers on a younger version of the franchise favorite.

Following an exhaustive search, where 2,500 young men met for the project, a trio of Han hopefuls ended up on the finalist list, including Hail, Caesar!'s Ehrenreich, Kingsman actor Taron Egerton and Transformers: Age of Extinction's Jack Reynor. Miles Teller, Ansel Elgort and Brooklyn breakout Emory Cohen were among those on the shortlist in earlier rounds.

Ehrenreich will be taking over the Han Solo mantle from Harrison Ford, who first appeared as the solar-system-hopping, swashbuckling smuggler with swagger and captain of Millennium Falcon in 1977's Star Wars: A New Hope, as well as The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. Ford and the character made a triumphant return in 2015's The Force Awakens, the movie that rebooted the George Lucas-created sci-fi franchise and set in motion standalone and spinoff movies.

For the Disney and Lucasfilm production, Lord and Miller, of 21 Jump Street and Lego Movie fame, will direct from a script from father-son writing duo, Lawrence and Jon Kasdan.

Read more: Alden Ehrenreich: Meet the New Han Solo

The Han Solo spinoff is scheduled for release in 2018.

Just as Ford has his own starting-out legend (he was cast as Solo after doing line readings with the actors who were actually auditioning for the movie and his sarcasm due to not being considered for the part seeped through, winning over Lucas), Ehrenreich too has a colorful discovery tale: Steven Spielberg saw the boy in a bat mitzvah video. His antics impressed the filmmaker, which led to open doors. After a couple of television appearances, he made his feature debut with Francis Ford Coppola's 2009 film, Tetro.

More recently, the actor wowed critics by stealing scenes away from A-listers such as George Clooney and Josh Brolin in the Coen Bros.'s Hail, Caesar! in which he played a warbling, lasso-ing cowboy-turned-silent actor.

Story continues

Ehrenreich has wrapped filming Iraq War drama The Yellow Birds with Tye Sheridan and Jennifer Aniston, and will next star in an untitled drama written and directed by Warren Beatty.

He is repped by CAA. Disney and CAA declined to comment.

Read more: Discovered by Spielberg: How a Lucky Encounter With the Director Launched These 6 Stars
Today in research that will fuel your paranoia, according to a new study, if your loved one is emailing you more than usual, they may be harboring a deep dark secret.

Researchers at the University of Maryland combed through 61 secret-keeping participants' emails to analyze how people communicate when they are hiding something major.

In return for their intimate digital correspondence, researchers gave each participant $100. I hope they used that crisp Benjamin Franklin to take their unsuspecting loved ones out to a nice meal.

Source: Damian Dovarganes/AP

We aren't talking low-key "I forgot to take out the trash" or "I got high and ate all of your ravioli" secrets  this was more "I cheated on you with your sister" kind of stuff. The study describes the benchmark for these secrets as needing to be "potentially devastating to the participant or to the lives of others if the secret got out (e.g. 'I would be completely disowned and alienated from my family and some of my friends.' 'Arrest. jail. maybe prison.')."

Researchers analyzed thousands of emails, all of which were sent starting a month before the secret incident occurred and ended a year later.

The study found that if you are the one in the dark about this devastating secret, you will receive "significantly more" emails with words focusing on the present tense and using second person pronouns. The secret-keeper is shifting the conversation away from themselves and keeping the past in the damn past where it belongs.

As for the confidants, or the people who do know what you did last summer, they also were receiving more emails than before the secret existed  and the emails got longer too. Secret-keepers also use "more distress," "negative emotion words," first person singular pronouns, past tense verbs, insight words and causal words. Hey confidant, you've got bleak mail!

Rather than supporting the social withdrawal hypothesis, indicating that secret-keeping results in more distant behavior, the findings supported the hypervigilance hypothesis  you're going to hit that send button a whole lot more when you have your shame face on.
Zac Posen is sharing the secrets behind the dress that lit up the Met Gala on Monday night.

The designer spoke to INSIDE EDITION about Claire Danes Cinderella-like gown, which was illuminated by LED lights.

Read: Amy Schumer Reveals Her Trick For Staying Cool on The Red Carpet

Each panel of fabric, the yarns are connected to a small little battery and thats what charges it, he explained.

The 30 separate light panels had to be manually switched on to create the electrifying look, he said. The result was breathtaking.

Read: See The Most Eye-Catching Looks From the Met Gala

It just worked, he said. It was a magic moment.

Posen was thrilled with the result.

"When a piece of fashion becomes something cultural and a dialogue  thats why I do what I do," he said.

Watch: 25 Electric Fashions From the Met Gala

Related Articles:
For Immediate Release

Chicago, IL  May 06, 2016  Zacks.com announces the list of stocks featured in the Analyst Blog. Every day the Zacks Equity Research analysts discuss the latest news and events impacting stocks and the financial markets. Stocks recently featured in the blog include the Skechers U.S.A., Inc. (SKX), Cash America International, Inc. (CSH), Universal Forest Products Inc. (UFPI), Comfort Systems USA Inc. (FIX) and CONE Midstream Partners LP (CNNX)

Today, Zacks is promoting its ''Buy'' stock recommendations. Get #1Stock of the Day pick for free.

Here are highlights from Thursdays Analyst Blog:

5 Low Leverage Stocks to Hedge Your Portfolio

Leverage is great when it works, and when it doesnt work, it creates a lot of issues  Marc Lasry.

The term leverage is common in the business world. But when it comes to investment, this term holds the key to the treasures hidden in a stock. Although debt financing is nothing new for big corporations to fund their operations, the degree of financial leverage that a business bears always catches the attention of credit analysts.

This is because in the uncertain world of investments, it is difficult to predict macroeconomic and competitive changes that often lead markets to significant downturns. Companies with a higher degree of financial leverage are more prone to incur significant losses during such downturns, and even bankruptcy in the worst case scenario.

In order to avoid such risks, there are varied leverage ratios that an investor can use to understand a companys capital structure before investing in its stock. The most popular among these is debt-to-equity ratio.

This metric is a basically a solvency ratio that measures the extent of financial leverage that a company is bearing. A lower debt-to-equity ratio greatly contributes to an investors confidence in a companys financial stability.

Story continues

Understanding the Formula

Debt-to-Equity Ratio = Total Liabilities/Shareholders Equity

A higher debt-to-equity ratio implies a more risky business and what better time to remind investors of this than the peak first-quarter earnings season when they must be flocking to high earnings-yielding companies. However, blindly pursuing such a stock might drain all your money before you know if it bears a high debt-to-equity ratio.

This is because a high debt-to-equity ratio indicates more leverage which always tends to increase the volatility of a companys earnings and cash flows; thereby raising the variability of return on its equity.

The Winning Strategy

It is not wise to choose an investment strategy based solely on the debt-to-equity ratio. To choose stocks that also have the potential to give you steady returns, we have expanded our screening procedure to include some other criteria.

Here is the final screen:

Debt/Equity less than X-Industry Median: Thestocks are less leveragedcompared to their industry peers.

Current Price greater than or equal to 10: The stocks must be trading at a minimum of $10 or above.

Average 20-day Volume greater than or equal to 50000: Asubstantial trading volume ensures that the stock is easily tradable.

Percentage Change in EPS F(0)/F(-1) greater than X-Industry Median: Earnings growth add to optimism, leading to a stocks price appreciation.

Estimated One-Year EPS Growth F(1)/F(0) greater than 10: This shows earnings growth expectation.

Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) or #2 (Buy): No matter whether market conditions are good or bad, stocks with a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) or 2 (Buy) have a proven history of success.

VGM Score of A or B: Our research shows that stocks with a VGM Score of A or B when combined with a Zacks Rank #1 or 2 offer the best upside potential.

Although 31 stocks passed the screen, we have eliminated those that had a negative or a zero debt-to-equity ratio.

Here are five stocks from the final 18 that have a favorable debt-to-equity ratio:

Skechers U.S.A., Inc. ( SKX )

Cash America International, Inc. ( CSH )

Universal Forest Products Inc. ( UFPI )

Comfort Systems USA Inc. ( FIX )

CONE Midstream Partners LP (CNNX)

Get the rest of the stocks on the list and start putting this and other ideas to the test. It can all be done with the Research Wizard stock picking and back testing software.

The Research Wizard is a great place to begin. It's easy to use. Everything is in plain language. And it's very intuitive. Start your Research Wizard trial today. And the next time you read an economic report, open up the Research Wizard, plug your finds in, and see what gems come out.

Click here to sign up for a free trial to the Research Wizard today .

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Given all of the bizarre advice that analysts and pundits seem to be throwing at Apple these days, you might be forgiven for thinking that the company was in dire straits. From calls to acquire Netflix to pleas to snatch up Tesla and bring Elon Musk on board, the level of panic surrounding Apple's future might have you believe that the company is losing money and, in the span of just one quarter, has lost its ability to innovate.

That sentiment, however, couldn't be farther from the truth. Apple's most recent quarter admittedly didn't measure up to last year's earnings report, but the company still managed to post $50 billion in revenue and $10 billion in profits, more than Google, Facebook and Microsoft combined. Furthermore, with the iPhone 7 release looming, we'd all be well advised to perhaps be patient, at least for a few months, and see what type of innovations Apple has in store for us when it releases its next-gen iPhone.

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But because the fast-moving tech world has never been a realm one associates with patience, the chorus of industry analysts arguing that Apple needs to shake things up only continues to grow louder with each passing day.

Most recently, Farhad Manjoo of The New York Times published a piece arguing that Apple should try more moonshots. Moonshots, in case you're unfamiliar, is a term popularized by Google that refers to bold and brazen initiatives that almost seem too crazy, outlandish and too risky to actually pay off. Google of course prides itself on its penchant for moonshots, whether it's the work it's doing on advanced robotics, self driving cars, or the healthcare and disease prevention research it conducts via its Verily subsidiary.

With that as a backdrop, Manjoo effectively argues that Apple should take a page out of Google's playbook and perhaps dream a bit bigger than it has been in recent years.

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To thrive in the next era of tech, Apple needs to take a series of bigger, bolder risks. Apples last decade and a half, mostly under Mr. Jobs, has been defined by perfectionist focus... That attitude was perfectly suited to a particular era in tech... But the next moment in tech is likely to be dominated by data-driven online services  more products like Siri and Apple Pay, fewer stand-alone hardware innovations like the iPhone. In that environment, the slow search for precision and perfection might no longer be in Apples best interest. Mr. Cooks goal, now, should be to alter Apples governing ethos to induce a small measure of chaos into his company. It is likely that Apple is already working on some bold plans in secret (a car and a pay TV service are among several that have long been reported). The shift Im calling for would not be radical, just evolutionary. It should be more nimble and slightly more public with its experiments, and push more of them out sooner. When it releases stuff, it should move faster to fix and improve what is wrong. Above all, it should take more risks; it should say yes more often.

Manjoo's position is interesting and fair, but there are a few points worth noting.

One of the first things Steve Jobs did upon returning to Apple in 1997 was completely decimate a product line that had grown unwieldy. With Jobs at the helm, Apple focused on releasing far fewer products while ensuring that the products they did release were incredibly polished. That being the case, imploring Apple to completely turn around a business structure that helped them become one of the most valuable companies on the planet might reasonably be viewed with a fair share of skepticism.

Second, I'm all for crazy and bold ideas (or moonshots if you will) but if we look at Google, for example, it's plainly evident that none of their moonshots have paid off from a profit perspective. Not only does the company still make the vast majority of their money from advertising, but they've recently started to scale back some of their more ambitious projects because of monetization concerns.

Third, and Manjoo addresses this issue as well, is the fact that Apple is seemingly held to a double standard as far as their products go, which is to say they're not really afforded any room for failure. Even the Apple Watch, a product that outsold the iPhone in its first year, has largely been derided as a flop. Apple just sold 50.1 million iPhones last quarter and people have already been calling the iPhone 6s a dud.

That being the case, big and bold bets from Apple also run the risk of tarnishing the company's pristine brand. Nonetheless, Manjoo speculates that the risk might be well worth it.

Were in an odd time in tech. There are lots of new technologies pegged as potential next big things  artificial intelligence, virtual reality, drones, wearables, the Internet of Things  but figuring out how all these pieces should fit together to create experiences people love necessarily involves experimentation. In this environment, the best new products are not likely to be obvious. They will most likely be ridiculed at first and they may actually be kind of useless in early versions. But over time, with brainstorming and updates based on consumer feedback, you might discover something precious.

Again, these are fair and well-reasoned points. But Apple almost seems programmed to avoid this type of strategy at all costs. The company routinely works on projects and products that never see the light of day. And even products that function well are scrapped if they're not sufficiently unique. To wit, Apple for years researched an HDTV but ultimately abandoned plans to release such a product because they couldn't figure out how to sufficiently differentiate it in an already crowded marketplace. Similarly, if Apple ever does release a car - something I'm skeptical of - it stands to reason it will be completely unique and will stand apart from anything else on the market, Tesla included.

All that said, the technological landscape is never stagnant, and the business principles that governed the world of tech in 2003 are markedly different from the ones in play in 2016. Consequently, perhaps it's not entirely outlandish to expect Apple to adjust to the changing times and, maybe, heed some of Manjoo's advice.

Manjoo also clarifies that Apple's new strategy doesn't necessarily need to involve radical new products like a car; even evolutionary ideas would be a welcome change of pace.

What it doesnt have quite yet is enough of an appetite for the speed and risks that come with creating and maintaining new services. Some of its sins here have been unforgivable. Siri was one of the earliest voice-recognition technologies released to the public. It wasnt perfect when it came out and Apple has made slow improvements over time. Todays Siri is vastly more powerful than yesterdays. But it still feels like a missed opportunity. There is so much Siri should be able to do that it cannot. Why cant Siri plug into more parts of my phone? Why cant it tap into the Uber app to call a car for me, or start up HBO Now when I say, Hey, show me last weeks Game of Thrones?

I'm certainly inclined to agree. Siri is much better than it was even 2 years ago, but it still seems like there is a boatload of untapped potential lurking beneath its surface.

And perhaps that sentiment, in a broad sense, lies at the heart of Manjoo's piece; Apple, with a tremendous ecosystem bolstered by untold millions of loyal users and billions in cash, appears to be moving much more slowly than rival companies with far fewer resources at their disposal.

Make sure to hit the source link below for Manjoo's full take on the state of Apple innovation. In a time where ridiculous ideas reign supreme, it's refreshing to see a well thought out take on what Apple can do to take its business and technologies to the next level.

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Virtual reality startup 8i has hired Big Frame founder and former CEO Steve Raymond as its new president of studios. In his new role, he will help the company grow its presence in Los Angeles and sign up customers and production partners for the companys volumetric virtual reality (VR) capture technology.

I looked at several different industries, but this industry really pulled at me to the point where I felt like I had no choice, Raymond said in a blog post Friday.

8i hails from New Zealand, and has developed a kind of capture technology that allows the company to record 3D holograms of persons or artifacts, and then recreate them in a VR environment. In many ways, 8is approach is the exact opposite the way most VR video is being shot. 360-degree videos are usually being recorded with a multi-camera rig capable of capturing everything around it. The result is a video in which the viewer can look into every direction, but not easily change position or interact with its environment.

8i on the other hand records people in a green-screen studio, with 40 cameras strategically placed around them to get as much footage from every angle as possible. The recorded footage is rendered to fill in any blind spots, and the resulting holographic asset can then be imported into a computer-generated 3D scene. This makes it possible for users of higher-end VR headsets like the HTC Vive or Oculus Rift to actually walk around these actors and look at them from every angle, leading to a much higher level of immersion.

8is technology is not perfect; during a demonstration for Variety earlier this year, the outlines of these 3D holograms still at times looked a bit fuzzy at times, and some of the blind spots that had been filled in through rendering didnt seem quite natural. However, the effect of being able to walk around the actor in a movie was profound, and made it easy to overlook some of those imperfections.

Thats apparently also what some of 8is first partners thought. The company also announced Friday that it will produce a VR experience for LOreal Studio, and also help River Studios and the Emblemartic Group to enhance their VR experiences with volumetric capture. Finally, 8is technology is being used by a Realtra, a new production company that will specialize in volumetric capture for VR.

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As for 8i, the startup is getting ready to launch a bigger production facility in Culver City, California this summer. We need to put the gear for capturing volumetric video into the hands of thousands of creators  first professionals, then everyone else, said Raymond.

8i raised a $13.5 million Series A round of funding from RRE Ventures, Horizons Ventures, Samsung Ventures, Bertelsmann Digital Media Investments and Dolby Family Ventures and others last October.

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From Popular Mechanics

China just revealed details of its CH-901 tube-launched loitering munition, a portable killer drone that a soldier can carry and then launch from the field to track down and attack opponents. The Chinese are not the first in this area-the U.S. unveiled the Switchblade in 2011 and has used it in Afghanistan. But this is a big move for the Chinese military.

Chinese forces fly a bewildering variety of drones, from small hand-launched systems to the giant Divine Eagle, a twin-fuselage aircraft designed to detect stealth aircraft at long range. Some are copies of Western models: After shooting down U.S. Firebee drones over their territory in the 1960's, the Chinese reverse-engineered them to create the Chang Hong 1 drone in 1972. In addition, China has a vast number of civil companies in the drone business. Most celebrated is DJI, which has about a 70 percent share of the consumer drone market.

But the CH-901, shown off at the Defence Services Asia expo, is China's first tactical attack drone. It has two configurations, carrying either an explosive warhead or additional cameras and a recovery parachute. This is an approach apparently copied from Israeli drones like uVision's Hero-30. The CH-901's takeoff weight is 20 lbs, compared to less than 6 lbs. for the U.S. Switchblade.

The reason for the size is the payload, which can be more than 6 lbs. While Switchblade's sub-one-pound warhead is useful against personnel and light vehicles, the CL-901 will be able to take out a wider variety of targets. In this respect it is similar to the Polish Warmate loitering munition, which can be armed with a fragmentation charge or a shaped charge warhead capable of penetrating four inches of armor and destroying tanks and light armoured vehicles. China's drone, is almost twice the size of Warmate, though. A six-pound warhead might not be able to go through the front armor of a main battle tank like the M1 Abrams, but it could breach the thin top armor in an attack from above. Lighter vehicles like the M2 Bradley would be easy game.



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The standard CH-901 configuration is a group of three drones, one launch tube and a controller, with a total weight of a hundred pounds. China calls this "man portable" (presumably the load can be split between two or more soldiers), or it can be fitted to a light vehicle like an SUV. According to the makers, the drone cruises at 40 to 75 mph with an endurance of two hours in the reconnaissance configuration or one hour as an attack drone, with a range of about ten miles. The reconnaissance version has an estimated lifespan of 20 missions.

The CH-901 is sold by China Poly Defense, which claims to be one of the country's top three defense companies. In February 2013, China Poly Technologies (of which Poly Defense is a part), was sanctioned by the US Department of State for breaching the "Iran, North Korea and Syria Nonproliferation Act." The company denies any breach occurred. The CH-designation suggests that the drone was designed by China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation, responsible for unmanned military aircraft from the CH-1 in 2000 to the recent CH-803.

The CH-901 is said to be able to detect targets at a range of more than a mile from an altitude of 1,500 feet, but this would depend very much on the nature of the target. A sniper hiding in rocks is not so easy to spot as a convoy of trucks on a road.

While some metrics of the new drone have been revealed, on the battlefield there are other important factors to consider. One of these is the guidance system. The Switchblade operator acquires a target using the on-board camera (visible light or thermal imaging) and then locks on for the attack phase. Once locked on, it can follow even a fast-maneuvering target trying to escape. How precisely it can track a target, and how precisely it can be guided to hit a target, moving or stationary, are key factors in its effectiveness. The CH-901 was reportedly in development for several years. They may indicate an advanced and highly-developed guidance system-or just that developers ran into delays.

A drone is useless if its communications can easily be jammed. We will not know how vulnerable the CH-901 is to jamming until it comes up against an advanced opponent. Even then both sides are liable to stay quiet about what they discover.

Despite these uncertainties, the CH-901 matters. While the Chinese are hardly leaders in military aircraft (or armaments generally), they do have a major presence in the field of small electronics. This includes a formidable capacity to churn out vast quantities of sophisticated material at very low cost. This includes small drones, as DJI alone will sell more than million this year. Chinese jets like the new J-20 fighter may never be common or be widely exported, but the CH-901 might be the equivalent of the Vietnam-era Chinese rocket-propelled grenade launchers. These soon appeared in arms bazaars all over the world at bargain prices and were copied by others.

The Chinese military have already bought both versions of the CH-901. Meanwhile the U.S. continues to progress the LMAMS program for portable lethal drones. The Switchblade is one contender, but the program will not select and field a final version until 2017-18 at least. That's a long time in the fast-moving world of small drones.

David Hambling's book Swarm Troopers: How small drones will conquer the world is out now.
8b18c20bdc9c4f079424a6ebb0241196

If you are on the hunt for property in Australia, Messenger Bots may help make the process easier.

Property website Domain has launched the first Messenger Bot in Australia for property searches. It allows you to drop a location pin into Messenger to find houses for sale in the vicinity or get the buying guide for any property.

SEE ALSO: Here's how bots work on Facebook Messenger

To use the bot, you first get in contact with Domain through its Facebook page or directly through Messenger by typing the company name in the search bar. Then click the location pin button to drop your current location or type in an address. The bot will send back properties around this location including a price guide and the ability to click through for more information.

It also allows you to type in a house address and get a buyer's price guide on the property, whether it is for sale or not. This functionality taps into Domain's Home Price Guide, which lets you check out the sale history, rental yield, photos and a price estimate. You access this by clicking through the information the bot provides.

Consolidating property search into one of the most popular consumer apps creates a whole new experience for Domains audience, Damon Pezaro, chief product officer at Domain, said in an emailed statement. "Creating a Domain bot for Messenger allows a more natural communication interaction and saves consumers time flipping between apps and websites.

Although Domain's Messenger bot is simplistic, it is a great example of what we can expect from brands pushing into this space. You can not yet refine your search, ask any extra questions or view rental properties with the Messenger bot.

A spokesperson for the company told Mashable Australia there will be further commands developed in the future and that this was just the first iteration of Domain's push into the bot space.

domain

Image: Domain

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In April, Facebook launched Messenger Bots at its annual developer conference, F8. The main purpose of this new tool is to allow businesses and developers to take advantage of Messenger's technology to interact with users.

Using a software development kit, the tool allows companies to build bots and get their messaging in front of the 900 million users of Messenger. Domain is no doubt one of the first in a long line of Australian tech companies that will experiment with this new platform.

In the U.S., bots launched with partner companies including CNN, Bank of America and Burger King. Each delivers its products  news, banking information and food  to customers in an innovative way. These bots also have a long way to go to make them highly useful and intuitive for users.
By Stephen Eisenhammer and Marta Nogueira

RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) - A Brazilian judge on Thursday ratified the settlement Samarco and its owners, BHP Billiton (BLT.L) and Vale SA (VALE5.SA), signed with Brazil's government in March to cover damages for a deadly dam spill last year, Vale said in a statement.

The move potentially saps some of the energy from a separate $44 billion lawsuit filed by federal prosecutors on Tuesday who criticized the settlement as insufficient.

The agreement will see Samarco, BHP and Vale pay a government-estimated 20 billion reais (4 billion pounds) over 15 years to cover and repair damages. Vale, however, has outlined it expects to pay less than that due to the way the deal is structured, calculating future payments depending on how much work remains to be done.

"It's a very important step because you remove any uncertainty about the agreement's validity," said Marilene Ramos, President of Brazil's federal environment agency Ibama which formed part of the settlement.

"The programs outlined in the agreement can now be implemented by the companies," Ramos added, referring to the environmental reparation plan which includes work on sewage, landfill, reforestation and water treatment.

The settlement has been strongly criticized by federal prosecutors who called it little more than a "letter of intent" in their lawsuit. "It is absolutely insufficient," said Jorge Munhos de Souza, one of the prosecutors working on the case.

Samarco Chief Executive Roberto Carvalho told Reuters the settlement and the lawsuit filed by prosecutors covers the same ground.

"The agreement ratified today already carries all the socio-economic and environmental reparations which this other lawsuit proposes," Carvalho said.

He reiterated that he expects the Samarco mine, closed after the disaster, to restart later this year, and that a return to production is vital for the company to afford the terms of the agreement. The settlement specifies that if Samarco cannot meet its obligations, the cost of doing so falls to Vale and BHP.

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BHP said on Friday progress was being made to rebuild the communities worst-hit by the massive spill, and more than 5,2000 people affected in Mariana, Barra Longa and Rio Doce had received emergency support cards.

The people of Bento Rodrigues, the village most devastated by the mudslides, are set to vote on where to rebuild their town, BHP said.

"While we cannot bring back the lives that were lost, we continue to focus on ensuring that the families and communities impacted by this tragedy are supported," Dean Dalla Valle, BHP's senior executive in Brazil dealing with the disaster, said in a statement.

Standard & Poor's said on Friday its credit ratings on BHP, Vale and Samarco had not been affected by the $44 billion lawsuit by Brazil's public prosecutors, as it was too early to say what financial impact it would have.

It said the same court that approved the March settlement would decide on whether the prosecutors' lawsuit would proceed. "The decision will also likely take into account the identified damages and restoration costs that were covered by the agreement," S&P said.

BHP's shares, which have been pounded this week partly due to the lawsuit, rose 1.7 percent on Friday in a weaker broader market.

(Reporting by Stephen Eisenhammer and Marta Nogueira; Additional reporting by Sonali Paul in Melbourne; Editing by Chris Reese, Bernard Orr and Ryan Woo)
By Neil Jerome Morales MANILA (Reuters) - The Philippines' Rizal Commercial Banking Corp said it has accepted the resignation of its president, Lorenzo Tan, even as it cleared the official of any wrongdoing in connection with a $81 million money laundering scandal. The resignation, which was submitted last week, took effect on Friday. RCBC is at the center of a Senate investigation into a cyber heist in which $81 million was stolen from the Bangladesh central bank's account at the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank of New York and allegedly deposited in one of its branches. "I take full moral responsibility for this sad incident in the history of the bank," Tan said in a statement. Bank chairwoman Helen Dee will oversee operations as president and CEO until a new president is appointed. RCBC, partly owned by a unit of Cathay Financial Holding Co Ltd, is the country's ninth largest lender in asset terms. "An internal investigation into the alleged $81 million money laundering had cleared Tan of any breach of bank rules and policies," RCBC said in a statement. The Philippine Senate on May 17 resumes its probe into how the stolen money ended up with casinos and gambling operators in Manila. The investigation has led to the recovery of around $15 million from a Chinese casino boss and junket operator. The probe has been hamstrung by strict banking secrecy laws and anti-money laundering legislation that does not cover casinos and cannot compel them to disclose information. (Editing by Tom Hogue and Nick Macfie)
Next week at Disrupt NY 2016, Dag Kittlaus, a former Apple employee and one of the co-founders of Siri, will take the stage to discuss the future of artificial intelligence. Kittlaus' appearance, however, will be notable for another reason: the world will finally get a glimpse at a new and potentially revolutionary AI system that Kittlaus and his team at Viv Labs have been working over the past few years.

The forthcoming AI system is called Viv and it is already touted as being more advanced than Siri or any other intelligent assistant out on the market. Whereas a service like Siri can handle simple queries like What's the weather like in Miami or What year was Michael Jordan born in?, Viv can process and answer multi-layered questions. As a quick example, Kittlaus a few weeks ago explained that Viv can handle a more complex query like, Find me a flight to Dallas with a seat that Shaq could fit in" or "Whats the weather near the Super Bowl?"

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So while Siri can only handle requests it's specifically programmed to understand and process, Viv's technological breakthrough is that has apparently managed to remove this limiting factor. In other words, Viv is a piece of software that will be able to teach itself over time to handle queries it wasn't initially programmed to understand.

The more you ask of Viv, the more it will get to know you, Kittlaus said a few weeks ago. Siri was chapter one, and now its almost like a new Internet age is coming. Viv will be a giant brain in the sky.

TechCrunch adds:

Where Siri was an application that was made a service, Dag and the Viv team want to manufacture an underlying infrastructure that allows AI to be poured into apps, systems and experiences. Viv is counting on this broad application of AI to be as ubiquitous as a search button, and theyve created some very real apps that utilize the system.

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Intriguing, but we'll obviously have to withhold judgement until we see the demo in full effect next week.

Disrupt NY is set to take place next week from May 9 through May 11 in Red Hook, Brooklyn. If you happen to be in the area, tickets can be purchased here.

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Cash-strapped students can now sign up to the Apple Music streaming service at half the price.

Apple users simply need to prove that theyre studying at an eligible college or university to take up the offer.

UK students will be able to sign up for Apple Music for just 4.99 a month, rather than the full price of 9.99.

Students in the U.S., Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, Germany and Denmark will also be able to get a half-price deal.

The student subscription will be available for at least four years after users sign up, allowing for four-year courses and study breaks.

Whats more, the discounts are available to existing subscribers, not just new sign-ups.

Apple Music is clearly targeting younger users, trying to move them over from rival services like Spotify.

The news follows reports that the Cupertino tech brand is a major overhaul of the Apple Music interface which will also add iTunes downloads to the service.

Image credit: Apple
HONG KONG (Reuters) - The U.S. International Trade Commission (USITC) is launching an investigation into mobile devices made by eight smartphone vendors including Samsung Electronics Co <005930.KS> over an alleged patent violation, the trade panel said on its website. The probe follows a complaint filed by Singapore-based Creative Technology Ltd and U.S.-based Creative Labs Inc that several handset makers have infringed on their patent, the ITC said in a statement. The accused vendors are ZTE Corp <000063.SZ> <0763.HK>, Sony Corp <6758.T>, Samsung, LG Electronics Inc <066570.KS>, Lenovo Group Ltd <0992.HK>, Motorola Mobility, HTC Corp <2498.TW> and Blackberry Ltd . "The products at issue in the investigation are portable electronic devices, such as smartphones, with the capability of playing stored media files selected by a user from a hierarchical display," ITC wrote. The trade panel said it has not yet made any decision on the merits of the case, and will decide a target date for completing investigation within 45 days after the institution of the investigation. Creative Technology was not immediately available for comment. HTC said it cannot comment as the case has entered the court process. Samsung and LG said they are looking into the case and didn't have any other immediate comment. Sony declined to comment. ZTE, Lenovo and other vendors were not immediately available. "It's rare to see so many vendors involved in one patent infringement case," said research firm Canalys analyst Nicole Peng. While the share price reaction of most Asia-based companies was muted, Hong Kong-listed shares of ZTE tumbled 11 percent on Friday to their lowest since July 2013. The Shenzhen-based company faced export restrictions imposed by the U.S. Commerce Department in March for allegedly violating sanctions against Iran. (Reporting By Yimou Lee; Additional reporting by J.R. Wu in TAIPEI and Jee Heun Kahng in SEOUL, Makiko Yamazaki in TOKYO; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman)
TORONTO (Reuters) - Canada's biggest bank is handing over to the government names of clients with relationships or connections to a Panamanian law firm at the centre of a massive leak of offshore financial data, national media reported on Thursday. The Toronto Star and CBC, citing legal documents filed on Wednesday, reported that the Canada Revenue Agency had sought a court order against the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) to compel disclosure and that the bank would not be challenging it. The bank and the Canada Revenue Agency did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The tax agency's action came about one month after the Star and CBC, in partnership with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, published their investigations on the law firm, Mossack Fonseca. Leaks from the Panama-based law firm, dubbed the "Panama Papers," have embarrassed several world leaders and shone a spotlight on the shadowy world of offshore companies. Governments across the world have begun investigating possible financial wrongdoing by the rich and powerful after the leak. RBC last month said it was reviewing its records after being named in leaked documents and told Reuters that it had controls in place to prevent illegal activities and it would not do business with those who evaded tax. Canada last month said it was closely watching the cases of citizens found to have set up offshore companies in Panama and elsewhere and would refer cases to prosecutors if necessary. (Reporting by Ethan Lou in Toronto)
This May 3, 2016 NASA satellite image shows the Fort McMurray wildfire in Alberta, Canada (AFP Photo/)

Edmonton (Canada) (AFP) - Raging wildfires pressed in on the Canadian oil city of Fort McMurray Thursday after more than 80,000 people were forced to flee, abandoning fire-gutted neighborhoods in a chaotic evacuation.

No casualties have been reported from the monster blaze, which swept across Alberta's oil sands region driven by strong winds and hot, dry weather.

But authorities warned that the next 24 hours would be critical for the city's survival.

Meanwhile mandatory evacuation orders were issued for two other Alberta towns -- High Level, home to 4,000 people about 350 kilometers (220 miles) northwest of Fort McMurray, and Lac Ste Anne, a community of several hundred people about 100 kilometers (60 miles) east of Edmonton, the provincial capital. The alert was later lifted in Lac Ste Anne.

In Fort McMurray, the fires late Wednesday forced the evacuation of Saprae Creek, a neighborhood east of the city's airport that until now had been out of danger. Even its fire station was pulled out.

"This fire is absolutely devastating," said Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. "It's a loss on a scale that is hard for many of us to imagine."

The flight from Fort McMurray began in earnest shortly before midnight Tuesday when the Alberta emergency services placed the city of 100,000 under a mandatory evacuation order.

Footage showed trees ablaze near highways crowded with bumper-to-bumper traffic, while black smoke billowed as the flames ate away at buildings.

Mayor Melissa Blake said predictions of what would happen not only came true but were worse than imagined.

"This is a very explosive situation," warned Bernie Schmitte of Alberta's agriculture and forestry ministry. "These are catastrophic wildfires."

The fire has destroyed some 2,000 residences in the city's most outlying districts and ravaged 10,000 hectares (25,000 acres), he said.

More than 80,000 have fled the city, located 400 kilometers north (250 miles) of the provincial capital Edmonton, according to Scott Long of Alberta's emergency management agency. The area around the airport is the only one not under an evacuation order.

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Warning that the next 24 hours were critical, Schmitte launched an urgent appeal to the population as firefighters noted that winds were fanning the flames in various parts of the city.

"We are going to ask you to stay where you are so that we can utilize all roads," he said.

Nine air tankers, a dozen helicopters and some 250 firefighters were battling the flames, and the military was put on alert.

"Obviously, Fort McMurray being evacuated has been extremely difficult, not just for the province and officials, but for the folks who live there," Trudeau said.

The prime minister added he had spoken with Alberta Premier Rachel Notley and offered her "our total support as a government to anything needed in the short-term but obviously anything in the long-term."

Notley said that no casualties had been reported, noting that everything possible was being done to ensure the population's safety.

"I believe at this point we have the resources that we need and we are continuing to work very hard to get the fire under control," Notley told a news conference, adding that "the view from the air is heartbreaking."

Since 8:00 am (1400 GMT) Wednesday, flights to the city have been suspended.

- Wind fans flames -

Oil companies crucial to the region such as Suncor, Syncrude and Shell reduced operations to facilitate the evacuation of non-essential employees.

Public Security Minister Ralph Goodale, working in connection with the armed forces, said "a number of federal air assets are now positioned in the neighborhood" to help with evacuation.

The fire, which had been contained until Monday south of Fort McMurray, was pushed toward the city by winds of 50 kilometers per hour and quickly reached homes, helped by a drought in Alberta.

The province saw record temperatures of nearly 30 degrees Celsius (86 Fahrenheit).

The evacuation has caused huge traffic jams, especially around gas stations where some drivers waited hours to fill their tanks. With some pumps in the 400 kilometers between Edmonton and Fort McMurray to the north empty, the Alberta government has said it sent a tanker under guard to help rescue stranded vehicles.

- Charred cars -

The authorities said the inferno had reached the neighborhood of Beacon Hill, only five kilometers from downtown Fort McMurray.

Seventy percent of homes there had been destroyed, they said.

In the Waterways neighborhood, 90 percent homes have been lost.

Firefighters said houses had been damaged in all Fort McMurray neighborhoods and that numerous empty vehicles near wooded areas had gone up in flames.

A large motor home park had also been destroyed, leaving charred and smoldering remains, according to TV footage.

Oil companies had set up emergency shelters in their huge bungalow communities for Canadian and foreign workers.

These camps have been partially deserted for the past two years due to the drop in oil prices and the thousands of layoffs that followed.
China lost $500 billion in foreign-exchange reserves in 2015.

$500 billion!

If that sounds like a lot of money to you (it is!), here is a helpful explainer from Macquarie Research on how that money left the country.

china reserves

Chinese pay down foreign debt: This was the main driver and accounted for one-third of total outflows. Chinese firms wanted to get rid of their foreign debt as the US dollar became stronger. (The currency move made the debt more expensive to service.) The yuan's deep dive last August accelerated that.

Error and omission: This covers everything that isn't classified in other items in the balance of payments, and includes things like underground capital flows and trade misreporting. That added up to $188 billion.

Chinese ramp up foreign assets: Chinese residents rushed to boost their foreign holdings in 2015 as the value of the yuan fell.

Foreigners withdraw money from Chinese banks: Foreign residents took out $123 billion from local banks in China last year, driven by the yuan depreciation. This also reflects the broader trend of capital flowing from emerging markets to developed markets.

Securities investment: There are two things going on here. First, Chinese residents invested more abroad over the year to diversify their portfolios and hedge against further yuan depreciation. Second, foreign investors started to pull money out after the market crashed in the third quarter of 2015.

Direct investment: Chinese companies started gobbling up foreign companies, bumping up the nation's capital outflows.

The outflows have slowed through the early stages of 2016. Chinese officials have cracked down on underground banking and asked banks to clamp down on those who tried to get around a cash withdrawal limit of $50,000 a year through "smurfing," or asking friends or family members to move money in small amounts.

Here is Macquarie:

On balance, we believe the risk of capital flight is low in the near term. On one hand, more than half of the carry trade position has left. On the other hand, the government could still use capital controls to limit Chinese residents to move money out of China. Of course, money could still leave under direct investment (ODI) and security investment (using the existing QDII quota) or even misreporting of exports/imports. But these channels are still small and they are under the scrutiny of regulators as well.

Story continues

NOW WATCH: British entrepreneurs are bottling fresh air and selling it to China for $115 a pop





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FREMONT, CA--(Marketwired - May 06, 2016) - SynGlyphX, the leading provider of interactive data visualization and discovery technology, announced today that Government CIO Outlook has ranked SynGlyphX among the Top 10 Big Data Solution Providers 2016.

Government CIO Outlook evaluated leading companies on a wide range of parameters including execution, technology and market reach capabilities to rate the maturity, experience and expertise. The positioning is based on an evaluation of SynGlyphX's specialties in Interactive Data Visualization, Perceptual Engineering and Actionable Insight. SynGlyphX's software helps teams to visualize, interact with, and most importantly -- discover insights in -- complex datasets. SynGlyphX's software is designed to help users quickly understand, synthesize, and take informed action.

"SynGlyphX, selected for our Top 10 Big Data Solution Providers list, has demonstrated a commitment to excellence and gained strong industry credibility," said Becky Graham, Managing Editor of Government CIO Outlook."I congratulate SynGlyphX and look forward to its continued success."

"We are honored to have been selected to the Top 10 Big Data Solution Providers 2016," said Mark Sloan, CEO of SynGlyphX. "Our selection to this list validates what we have been communicating to the market for the past 3 years: interactive 3D data visualization allows both data scientists and non-data scientists alike to quickly benefit from the vast amounts of data available -- in order to make the world a better place."

SynGlyphX understands how the mind assimilates and processes complex data. Its unique approach to interactive visualization technology is enhanced by Perceptual Engineering -- the optimal design of a visual environment to enable the user to more efficiently interact with and synthesize complex data sets. This approach is supported by decades of academic and government-funded research on how the mind best understands and processes complex data.

Story continues

Read about SynGlyphX here: http://www.govciooutlook.com/vendor/article3/synglyphx

About SynGlyphX

Headquartered in VA, U.S., SynGlyphX is transforming the way the world interacts with data for discovery and insight. With superior technology, perceptual engineering and knowledgeable staff, it offers its customers the ability to assimilate massive amounts of data in a single computer screen, allowing user to identify patterns, trends, and anomalies and ultimately transform data to knowledge faster. For more info: http://www.synglyphx.com/

About Government CIO Outlook

Published from Fremont, California, Government CIO Outlook is a print magazine that focuses on the trends, challenges and opportunities for CIOs to deliver an efficient technology-driven services and operations in enabling smart governance. Through nominations and consultations with industry leaders, its editors choose the best in different domains. For more info: http://www.govciooutlook.com/

Image Available: http://www.marketwire.com/library/MwGo/2016/5/3/11G096497/Images/GlyphIT_logo-791a3aa0af4e825ebcaaed859e08752f.jpg


By Jonathan Spicer and Jim Finkle

(Reuters) - In the years before hackers stole $81 million from a Bangladesh central bank account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, senior Fed security officials examined the risk of such an attack - but judged the prospect unlikely, bank sources told Reuters.

The Fed managers worried that lax security procedures and outdated technology at some foreign central banks could allow cyber-criminals to commandeer local computers and breach foreign accounts at the U.S. central bank, according to interviews with seven current and former New York Fed officials and a former U.S. government official familiar with the discussions.

Over several years, New York Fed and Federal Bureau of Investigation officials discussed the risk of an attack made using the banking systems communications network, known as SWIFT, according to Fed and government officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The New York Fed was concerned with lots of vulnerabilities, said the former government official. SWIFT was one of them.

But the Fed focussed security resources on other priorities, such as preventing money-laundering and enforcing U.S. economic sanctions, officials with knowledge of the banks security operations told Reuters. Fed officials took some comfort in the fact that SWIFTs security software had never been cracked, the officials said.

The immediate result of the breach for the New York Fed is a claim from the Bangladesh Bank for payment of lost funds and a potential lawsuit. Beyond that, the heist showed that the U.S. central bank long understood a potentially systemic risk to a vital global finance network, but was unable or unwilling to address it.

The New York Fed declined to comment on past security priorities or on whether it had made changes since the heist. SWIFT declined to comment.

Before the heist, some New York Fed officials considered the threat of fraudulent transfers ordered through SWIFT a fat tail risk  a statistical term for events with low probability but dire consequences, said one well-placed official with knowledge of the discussions. Februarys theft from the Bangladesh Bank fit that definition - a bold cyber heist in which thieves attempted to withdraw nearly $1 billion in dozens of requests.

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The crime rattled the banking industry because the conduit for the theft was the SWIFT network, an acronym for the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication. A cooperative overseen by 20 of the worlds largest central banks, SWIFT connects about 11,000 financial institutions globally that use it to order money transfers.

What everyone is realizing right now is that no one has ever really appreciated the risk, said the person with direct knowledge of the New York Feds deliberations.

SWIFT has said that the scheme involved altering SWIFT software on Bangladesh Bank computers to hide evidence of fraudulent transfers. Last week, SWIFT acknowledged that the Bangladesh Bank attack was not an isolated incident but one of a number of recent criminal schemes aimed at its messaging platform. SWIFT has declined to elaborate further.

Two Bangladesh Bank officials have told Reuters they believe both the New York Fed and SWIFT bear some responsibility for the failure to prevent the attack. The officials previously told Reuters that SWIFT gave Bangladesh Bank no prior warning about vulnerabilities, and the New York Fed failed to stop fraudulent orders when they reached New York.

The head of Bangladesh Bank is scheduled to meet next week with New York Fed president William Dudley and a senior executive from SWIFT to discuss the matter. SWIFT has said the attack was related to an internal operating issue at Bangladesh Bank, and the New York Fed has said it has no evidence that its systems were compromised.

Richard Dzina, head of the New York Feds wholesale product office, in remarks at a banking conference Tuesday said bank workers acted properly in releasing the funds. The system was penetrated, he said, because the hackers had acquired valid credentials to order the transfers.

$80 BILLION A DAY

The New York Fed holds trillions of dollars in funds for central banks worldwide. It processes about $80 billion in fund transfers in and out of their accounts each day, according to a New York Fed official.

Security is handled by the New York Feds Central Bank and International Account Services (CBIAS) division, a closely-guarded operation inside its fortress in lower Manhattan. CBIAS assigns risk profiles to individual countries and regions, assessing government stability, terrorism threats, and organised crime activity when deciding how to dispense cash to central banks and other official institutions, current and former Fed officials said.

In the months before the attack, the security unit was focussed on bulking up its anti-money laundering protections, an initiative driven by the Board of Governors at the Feds Washington, D.C. headquarters, according to two people familiar with the plan. Another priority was protecting the Feds own Fedwire payments system from cyber attacks, several current and former Fed officials said.

Most transfer requests are approved automatically after computer screening. Only a few of about 2,000 daily transactions are flagged for review by employees, according to a New York Fed official.

One of the officials said automated scanners used for SWIFT payments were effective for preventing money laundering and enforcing economic sanctions - but would not defend the bank against fraudulent money transfers.

There is a balance here that has to be struck between allowing customers to make new payments and to conduct their business in a timely manner, and also to prevent really obnoxious or obvious cases of fraud, said Shehriyar Antia, a former senior New York Fed policy advisor and analyst in the CBIAS unit.

The CBIAS system specifically checks for typographical errors - and it was a thiefs typo, along with an unusually high number of requests for payments to private entities, that alerted the Fed to Februarys cyber attack, banking sources have told Reuters. Once alerted, the Fed suspended payments on most of the requests coming from the Bangladesh Bank, but not before the thieves extracted $81 million.

The Bangladesh Bank, Bangladesh police and the FBI are investigating the attack.

A Bangladesh police official who heads the departments forensic training institute previously told Reuters that SWIFT servers at Bangladesh's central bank were vulnerable to hackers because of the absence of a firewall and a lack of basic security protocols.

LOOSE CONTROLS

Three former officials said that the New York Fed had recently focussed on loose controls over terminals and other access points to the SWIFT network at foreign central banks, where bankers often order withdrawals for hundreds of millions of dollars.

The concerns focussed on the possibility that banks would purchase computers implanted with malicious software or that attackers could steal or buy legitimate credentials from employees, said the former U.S. government official. An additional worry, according to two former Fed officials, was the possibility that a corrupt insider  possibly a bank employee  might have access to the SWIFT network and submit a fraudulent payment request.

Years of managing foreign central bank accounts gave some Fed officials concern that certain banks were ill-equipped to handle local security because of a lack of infrastructure investment and other procedural problems. But the Fed does not have the ability to audit the security protocols at correspondent central banks.

The vulnerability is that central banks, even in developing countries, have a lot of money relative to their level of sophistication, said the official with knowledge of the security concerns. Its not just Bangladesh.

(Writing by David Greising; editing by Brian Thevenot and Edward Tobin)
Vicente Fox George Bush Mexico US

Former Mexican President Vicente Fox appears to be contrite about his previous forceful condemnation of Donald Trump's proposed border wall.

In an interview with Breitbart News, the former president apologized for saying he would not pay for Trump's "f------ wall" during an interview with Fusion in February.

I apologize. Forgiveness is one of the greatest qualities that human beings have, is the quality of a compassionate leader," Fox said on Wednesday.

"You have to be humble. You have to be compassionate. You have to love thy neighbor," he added. "Yes, Im humble enough as leadership be  compassionate leader. If I offended you, Im sorry. But what about the other way around?

Fox also said that he didn't think Trump should continue attacking and antagonizing others as a political strategy, but he invited the Republican frontrunner to visit his country and "see what Mexico is all about."

Though Fox's condemnation was among the most strident, Trump's proposed wall has been roundly criticized. Many have noted not only the logistical and financial difficulties of building it, but also the possibility that it would embolden the very people it is meant to stop.

Even if Fox has warmed up to the idea of a Trump presidency, he might still not be as enthusiastic about it as Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa seems to be.

Correa said earlier this year that while a Trump presidency would be bad for the US, it could be just the thing Latin America's political left needs to regain its momentum at the ballot box.

NOW WATCH: EX-DEA AGENT: Trumps border wall would 'serve no purpose in the war on drugs





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Former Maldives president Mohamed Nasheed was sentenced to prison in March 2015 (AFP Photo/Ben Stansall) (AFP/File)

The Maldives on Tuesday cancelled the prison leave granted to jailed former president Mohamed Nasheed to undergo medical treatment in London and said it expected him to return "expediently".

The 48-year-old former leader was jailed last year on controversial terrorism charges, but was allowed to travel to Britain in January for treatment after he fell ill in jail.

The government initially extended Nasheed's prison leave to allow him to undergo surgery, but revoked the extension almost immediately, although it has not given him a deadline to return.

"The former president was given an extension to undergo surgery. As his lawyers have confirmed that there is no surgery scheduled, the extension was cancelled," it said in a statement.

"The government expects he will return expediently."

Nasheed became the first democratically elected president of the Maldives in 2008 and served for four years before he was toppled in what he called a coup backed by the military and police.

He was jailed on terrorism charges relating to the arrest of an allegedly corrupt judge in 2012, when he was still in power.

The Maldives has suffered prolonged political unrest in recent years, seriously denting its reputation as an upmarket tourist destination.

Nasheed's lawyer Hassan Latheef said his client's situation had been made clear to the authorities, accusing them of breaching Nasheed's right to privacy.

Nasheed, whose legal team includes the high-profile human rights lawyer Amal Clooney, told reporters in January that he had not yet decided whether to return to the Maldives to resume his 13-year jail sentence.

He was accorded a red carpet welcome and received by Prime Minister David Cameron after arriving in Britain in January in a deal brokered by the former colonial power along with Sri Lanka and India.
The iShares MSCI Spain Capped ETF (NYSE: EWP), the largest exchange-traded fund tracking stocks in the eurozone's fourth-largest economy is off 2.9 percent year-to-date. That does not sound too shabby, but it lags the year-to-date showings by the Vanguard FTSE Europe ETF (NYSE: VGK) and the iShares MSCI EMU Index (ETF) (NYSE: EZU) by a decent margin.

Spanish Stocks Lag Thanks To Political Instability

Political instability is a big reason why Spanish stocks and EWP are lagging broader European benchmarks and diversified Europe ETFs. Political uncertainty, a problem that can plague stocks in any developed or emerging market, is seen as derailing Spain's long, tenuous economic recovery.

Related Link: Banking On Good News For The Spain ETF

EWP's struggles and those of Spanish stocks could be signs that interested investors should approach the largest Spain ETF and its rivals with caution. Late last year, as stocks on Spain's benchmark IBEX Index became heavily shorted, Spain ETFs became popular with global investors. However, the eurozone's fourth-largest economy faces renewed headwinds.

Spain is set for a further period of political uncertainty as the deadline passed for the countrys political parties to come to an agreement on the formation of a government following the December 20th election. A new vote has been called for June 26th, with parliament likely to meet again towards the end of July. If, as seems likely, the result of the new election is similar to that of the first, it could be late into the third quarter of the year before Spain has a permanent government in place, said Markit in a new research note.

Investor Concerns And Reactions

Investors are already displaying concerns about Spanish stocks. Year-to-date, EWP has bled more than $375 million in assets, total that is about $165 million more than has been lost by the iShares MSCI Italy Index (ETF) (NYSE: EWI). EWI, the largest Italy ETF, has performed more than four times more poorly than EWP this year.

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During the worst days of the eurozone crisis, Spanish banks offered investors scrip dividends as a means of preserving cash. As Markit noted, scrip dividends do not really help or harm investors, but they do help the banks using that option because it helps avoid dividend cuts, a message that is rarely warmly received by financial markets.

However, the outlook for Spanish dividends is improving, which is notable when considering EWP yields nearly 3.9 percent on a trailing 12-month basis.

The European Commission has already increased the length of time Spain has to bring its government deficit within the 3.0 percent of GDP target in the past, and another extension seems likely as a result of there being a lack of government in place to enact reforms needed in order to redress the missed target of 2015. This situation is unlikely to entice investors to increase their exposure to Spain, despite GDP rising solidly, added Markit.

See more from Benzinga

 2016 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.
Istanbul (AFP) - President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Friday warned the EU that Turkey would not change an anti-terror law for the sake of a deal on visa-free travel and migrant flows, throwing up a major potential stumbling block a day after his prime minister said he was stepping down.

In a typically combative speech just 24 hours after Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said he would surrender his positions of premier and ruling party chief, Erdogan vowed to put to a referendum his controversial plan of a presidential system in Turkey as "quickly as possible".

Davutoglu had championed the landmark March deal with the European Union under which Turkey would help reduce the flow of migrants to the bloc in exchange for incentives including the promise of visa-free travel for Turks to the passport-free Schengen Area.

The European Commission this week recommended that Turks enjoy visa-free travel but Turkey must complete five more benchmarks by the end of next month to complete the EU's list of 72 criteria.

Crucial among these are changes to anti-terror law as well as protection of personal data. But Erdogan signalled Ankara had no intention of changing its anti-terror legislation to placate Brussels.

"The EU says: you will change the anti-terror law for visas," Erdogan said in a televised speech in Istanbul.

"Pardon me but we are going our way and you can go yours."

Amanda Paul, senior policy analyst for the independent thinktank European Policy Centre told AFP there "is a huge risk, very big risk now, that the migration deal will collapse" after Erdogans warning.

"If Turkey doesn't change the anti-terror legislation in line with what's being demanded by the EU, it's difficult to see how the EU can justifiably go ahead with the visa liberalisation," she added.

- 'EU watching closely' -

The departure of Davutoglu, who had cut the migrant deal after months of tough negotiation with EU leaders including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, has already sent ripples of concern through European capitals.

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Erdogan kept his distance from the talks and an anonymous online blog that surfaced earlier in the week claimed he had been furious at being sidelined over the accord and not being fully informed.

Merkel expects Turkey to stick to the deal having "worked very well until now" with Davutoglu, German government spokesman Georg Streiter told reporters in Berlin.

"The EU and Germany will continue to fulfil all their obligations under the agreement and we expect this from the Turkish side as well," he added.

EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said Brussels was closely following the developments. "We will obviously discuss this, first of all, with the Turkish authorities and define together how to move forward," she said on a visit to Kosovo.

Erdogan has previously warned Brussels that Ankara would stop fulfilling its side of the migrant deal -- which has seen the numbers making dangerous crossings across the Aegean fall sharply -- if promises like visa-free travel were not kept.

Turkey's EU Affairs Minister Volkan Bozkir said earlier that Turkey did not "have the luxury" to change its anti-terror laws for the sake of the visa deal while the government was fighting the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).

In another swipe at Brussels, Erdogan said: "Why aren't you changing your mindset when you allowed terrorists who put up tents close to the EU Parliament?" in apparent reference to tents set up by Kurdish activists near the EU Council building in Brussels in March.

- 'Referendum as soon as possible' -

Tensions had already been surging between Erdogan and the West over accusations the president was imposing a creeping authoritarianism over the country he has ruled as premier from 2003 and as president from 2014.

After the departure of Davutoglu, Erdogan is determined to realise his dream of creating a presidential system in Turkey that would cement his status as number one, a plan for which the outgoing premier had only shown lukewarm enthusiasm.

Erdogan needs parliament to approve the holding of a referendum that could agree the constitutional changes. But the AKP is short of the three-fifths majority needed, raising the prospect of early elections.

Without mentioning early elections, he said in the Istanbul speech that the idea would be put to a referendum "as soon as possible".

Despite being supposed to remain politically neutral as president, Erdogan defended his involvement in party politics which led to the departure of Davutoglu.

"Some are disturbed by me monitoring closely the developments related to the party... What can be more natural than this?" said the president.
* Fire shifts aggressively on Tuesday to breach city limits

* Authorities issue mandatory evacuation order for Fort McMurray

* Suncor says cutting output to allow employees to get to safety (Adds Suncor production impact, Shell and Nexen statements)

By Nia Williams

CALGARY, Alberta, May 3 (Reuters) - Alberta is racing to evacuate thousands of people as an uncontrolled wildfire burns near Fort McMurray, in the heart of Canada's oil sands region, forcing residents to flee north to safety on Tuesday.

Alberta appealed for help from other provinces and Ottawa to help fight the fire and airlift people from the city. Authorities issued a mandatory evacuation order for all of Fort McMurray, which affects the city's 80,000 residents.

The 2,650-hectare (6,540-acre) fire, which was discovered on May 1, shifted aggressively with the wind on Tuesday afternoon to breach city limits. The blaze closed off the main southern exit from the city, prompting residents to head north towards the oil sands camps.

"This is the biggest evacuation we have seen in the history of the province," Alberta Premier Rachel Notley said at a news conference, adding that there were no casualties in the fire.

"We need to find more camps, we have secured spaces for about 6,000 people, we know we need to find more and that work is underway," Notley said.

Alberta is much drier than normal for this time of year, strengthening prospects for a long and expensive wildfire season, in the wake of a mild winter with lower-than-average snowfall and a warm spring.

Suncor Energy, whose oil sands operations are closest to the city, said its main plant, 25 km (16 miles) north of Fort McMurray, was safe, but it was reducing crude production in the region to allow employees and families to get to safety.

Suncor said evacuees were welcome at its Firebag oil sands facility, while Canadian Natural Resources Ltd said it was working to ensure any affected CNRL workers and their families could use its camps.

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Shell Canada also said it would open its oil sands camp to evacuees and was looking to use its airstrip to fly out non-essential staff and accommodate displaced residents.

A number of flights from Fort McMurray airport were cancelled and the airport advised passengers to check with their airlines for updates.

The blaze started southwest of Fort McMurray and spread rapidly to the outskirts of the city. Radio stations were forced off the air as staff left the downtown core.

"There's lots of smoke, it's quite bad and hanging over the city," one resident, Nick Sanders, told Reuters as he packed up to leave downtown. "Where there are trees in the distance you can see the fire."

Television footage and photographs on Twitter earlier showed flames and smoke billowing over the city and traffic heading north on the highway to safety, while CTV News reported a trailer park had been destroyed.

"My thoughts are with people affected by the fire in Fort McMurray tonight," Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau tweeted. "Stay safe and remember to follow evacuation orders."

By late afternoon, the fire had blocked off one major route out of town, closing Highway 63 south of downtown.

"Tomorrow is expected to be a more intense burning day," said Bruce Mayer, assistant deputy minister of Alberta's Forestry Division.

Nine air tankers, more than a dozen helicopters and more than 100 firefighters were battling the fire, he added.

Authorities on Tuesday said the wildfire jumped the Athabasca river and breached Highway 63, the main artery south from the isolated city, located about 430 km (267 miles) northeast of Alberta's capital, Edmonton.

Authorities now expect a cold front to reach Fort McMurray by Wednesday afternoon, bringing increased winds that will make it harder to fight the fire.

Most oil sands facilities are to the north and east of the city. Representatives of Syncrude, CNOOC subsidiary Nexen Energy and pipeline company Enbridge all said their operations were unaffected.

The fire is the second major one in the oil sands region in less than a year. Last May, wildfires led to the evacuation of hundreds of workers from the region, and a 9 percent cut in Alberta's oil sands output.

Last year's evacuations led to shutdowns by Cenovus Energy and Canadian Natural Resources Ltd at some of their projects.

(Additional reporting by Euan Rocha and Allison Martell in Toronto; Writing by Amran Abocar; Editing by Bernard Orr and Clarence Fernandez)
TORONTO, ONTARIO--(Marketwired - May 6, 2016) - ZoomerMedia Limited (TSX VENTURE:ZUM) ("Zoomer") announces that Moses Znaimer, President and Chief Executive Officer of Zoomer, established an automatic share purchase plan (the "ASPP") with his broker to acquire common shares of Zoomer in the open market commencing May 9, 2016.

Mr. Znaimer's decision to participate in the ASPP is a personal decision based on his own investment objectives. Under the ASPP, Mr. Znaimer is not permitted to exercise any further discretion or influence over how, when or whether the purchase of common shares of Zoomer will occur. An ASPP can only be established when the insider participating in the plan is not in possession of material non-public information.

Transactions under the ASPP will be reported on SEDI in accordance with applicable Canadian securities laws.

About ZoomerMedia Limited

ZoomerMedia is a multimedia company that serves the 45plus "Zoomer" demographic through television, radio, magazine, internet and trade shows. ZoomerMedia's television properties include; Vision TV, Canada's only multi-faith specialty television service; ONE: Body Mind Spirit Love Channel, offering programs on exercise, meditation, yoga, natural health and living a planet-friendly lifestyle; JoyTV in Vancouver, Victoria, Surrey and the Fraser Valley, and the newly rebranded HOPETV (formerly JoyTV11), a lifestyle television service out of Winnipeg devoted to broadcasting Christian programming and is available in approximately 6 million Canadian homes. ZoomerMedia's radio properties include CFMZ-FM Toronto - The New Classical 96.3FM, CFMX-FM Cobourg - The New Classical 103.1FM, CFMO-FM Collingwood - The New Classical 102.9FM, Canada's only commercial classical music radio stations serving the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), eastern Ontario and Collingwood, CFZM-AM 740 Toronto and CFZM-FM 96.7FM Toronto - Zoomer Radio, Toronto's "Timeless Hits" Station. ZoomerMedia also publishes ZOOMER magazine, the largest paid circulation magazine in Canada for the mature market. ZoomerMedia is Canada's leading provider of online content targeting the 45plus age group through many properties, the key one being www.EverythingZoomer.com. ZoomerMedia also has trade show and conference divisions that produce the ZoomerShows, annual consumer shows directed to the Zoomer demographic and ideaCity, an annual Canadian conference also known as "Canada's Premiere Meeting of the Minds."
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How Canada became the worlds economic Rorschach testWhat are friends for if you cant count on them in your time of need? So take heart, you slumping, sputtering, sluggish worldCanada has your back.At least thats the prevailing narrative everywhere you turn right now. From digital news site Quartz, which declared Justin Trudeau to be the best hope for the global economy, to the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times with their slightly more restrained analysis, the media has credited the Trudeau government for leading an economically challenged world away from austerity and into the sunny ways of fiscal stimulus.If that sounds like a message crafted by the governments own PR squad, it more or less is. Since Finance Minister Bill Morneau released the Liberals first post-election budget last monthwhich repeatedly stated his government was answering the stimulus call of the IMF, the OECD and the G20the minister and his boss have keenly cast themselves in the role of deficit-spending crusaders.That the theme has been taken up with such gusto internationally, though, marks only the latest star turn for Canadas economy in the eyes of the world. Whether Canada was being feted for escaping the worst of the financial crisis, or for its fiscal prudence during the European debt crisis and the squabbles over Americas debt ceiling that followed, the idea Canada has the fix for what ails the world has proven enduringly enticingeven if the analysis behind those belief is built on a dubious reading of history.Canada, it seems, is the worlds economic Rorschach test.
But where will get our plastic and computer parts?Wave of Fossil Fuel Project Cancellations Follow Keystone XL RejectionSix months after the Obama administration rejected the Keystone XL pipeline, at least 20 other proposed energy projectsmines, pipelines, plants, related rail projects and export terminalshave been canceled, rejected or delayed, according to research compiled and mapped by InsideClimate News.Sustained grassroots resistance and public opposition have played a role in at least some of these decisions; other influential factors include unfavorable economic conditions such as low oil prices, as well as governments' environmental concerns and project siting issues.Proposed in 2008, the Keystone XL was originally slated to transport Canadian oil sands crude to Gulf Coast refineries. Federal regulators rejected the project for its potential climate impact and minimal economic benefitsand activists hailed the decision as a victory for their years of action against the project.Since then, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission rejected two project applicationsfor the Oregon-based Jordan Cove LNG project and Pacific Connector Pipelineand delayed the decisions on two other facilities. For five of the projects, the bids or key permits were rejected by either a federal panel or state or local officials. Companies chose to cancel five other projects, including Arch Coal's abandoning its planned Otter Creek coal mine in Montana and Kinder Morgan's pulling the plug on its Northeast Energy Direct pipeline. The remaining facilities are delayed.According to Tom Sanzillo, director of finance for the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA), what's driving the coal decisions is straightforward: No one is willing to financially support these projects anymore.So far this year, the nation's two top coal companies, Peabody Coal and Arch Coal, announced bankruptcy. "The bankruptcies have just rocked the industry," said Sanzillo, who cited a roster of investors who are "walking away" from coal: bankers, equity markets, venture capitalists and hedge funds.For the oil and gas industries, it's more complicated. According to Sanzillo, "there should be a concern that the utilities are building too many pipelines and the [regulators] should be concerned about how consumers pay for it." Sanzillo co-authored a recent report detailing the risks of overbuilding pipelines in Appalachia.Energy companies themselves are often blaming the economy when they pause or cancel projects. In a few cases, however, companies will acknowledge local resistance. One recent example was Kinder Morgan's decision last month to suspend construction on the Palmetto Pipeline in the Southeast. In that case, the company cited the Georgia legislature's passage of new restrictions on pipeline permitting and eminent domain; these limits on industry were strongly supported by landowners in the state.Over the last six months, multiple natural gas pipelines have also been approved, including two such projects in New Jersey, and the Sunbury Pipeline project in Pennsylvania. The federal government also approved the extension of Enbridge's Alberta Clipper oil sands pipeline.Fossil fuel companies generally blame market forces, not public opposition, on the project setbacks, Bold Nebraska founder Jane Kleeb told InsideClimate News. "Everything they say is about demoralizing what we do at the local level and not giving any credit to the people power of this fight," she said. "In reality, I think it has a lot to do with the people power on the ground."
A concern of mine is the slowing rate of not only overall economic growth, but more importantly the stagnation of real GDP per capita (as RGDP per capita is the primary measure of economic well-being). However, another concern of mine was how the future demographics of the US will affect economic growth, because, frankly immigrants and minorities are not as productive as whites or Asians. You may not like this fact, and you may chalk it up to racism, bigotry, or whatever else academia, the media, and politicians tell you, but in the end whites and Asians earn/produce more when measured by economics for whatever reasons may be.Unfortunately, the larger of the two groups (whites) are projected to decline relative to the rest of the population while pretty much every other group grows . And because of this decline relative to other populations I wanted to estimate what would happen to economic growth, and thus, standards of living (measured by RGDP per capita).moSome of this can certainly be blamed on the Great Recession. However, how much of it is also the average American white male going from this:to this:Not only are white's numbers going to decline, their quality and caliber has already gone to pot.The day will come minorities will be on their own. Prepare accordingly.
TERYY SYNOVEC

What do you see as important aspects of leadership in Fremont city and/or Dodge County?

I believe that transparency is vital. Leaders must lead but must also listen. City, county and state officials must work together. I also believe that leaders must move the county forward by creating growth opportunities and new business opportunities by making educated choices.

What do see for Fremont and/or Dodge Countys future?

I see a community on the rise. With west Omaha inching closer, with our business park, with our tremendous agriculture community, with our residents possessing that tremendous Midwest work ethic and low unemployment, our future here in Dodge County is bright.

How would you get to that future?

With both Highways 30 and 275 completions coming, I am certain Fremont and Dodge County will be an important transportation hub in eastern Nebraska. By creating a tax climate that welcomes new business and construction, along with leadership and guidance, Dodge County will see opportunities increase.

Official Stance on the proposed poultry operation coming to Fremont/Dodge County area?

As we all do, I see positives and negatives. There are plenty of possible benefits of the proposed project. However, there are still questions that need to be addressed. I am generally in favor of projects with the potential to bring exciting opportunities to the county. As with any potential project, I want to ensure it is well executed with proper oversight.

Additional: I have enjoyed being your Dodge County Supervisor for these past three years and look forward to representing you in the most honest way possible. I believe my experience on the Finance, Road and Bridge, Security, Technology, Zoning and Extension Committees will enable Dodge County to achieve benefits for all of our residents. Please visit www.TerrySynovec.com for more information or contact information.

DAVID SAALFELD

What do you see as important aspects of leadership in Fremont city and/or Dodge County?

My aspects of leadership are simply to analyze all parts or elements of a situation. To analyze each segment that has worth that can benefit not only the county but also its citizens, businesses and communities.

What do see for Fremont and/or Dodge Countys future?

Dodge County has a bright future, because of the people and their work ethic. Many areas of our county demonstrate this each and every day and it is because of this, many more people and businesses will want to share this experience.

How would you get to that future?

Getting to that future it is imperative to stay focused on the opportunities that exist and to develop those that are in our own backyard. Only after careful thought and observation, one can continue the process and achieve their goals. For a goal not seen, is a goal worth having.

Official Stance on the proposed poultry operation coming to Fremont/Dodge County area?

I think that a business of that sort would be a great fit to the county in regards to opportunity and growth to the area. When an opportunity arises, its best to take advantage of it. You never know when, or if, the next one will come along. This project presents far too many opportunities to ignore.

Nebraskas economy is founded in agriculture and Dodge County is a major player  Its what we do best  and nothing would further that cause more than area farmers having the opportunity to partner with Lincoln Premium Poultry in raising chickens. Its of particular interest to area farm families looking for another way to bring their children back into the farming operation.

Additional: Married to wife Beverly; six adult children; lived in the North Bend area most of his life; North Bend Central graduate in 1969; University of Nebraska-Kearney graduate; Leadership Education Action Development (LEAD) fellow; Director for Lower Platte North Natural Resource District Board, past chairmen of Dodge County Farm Bureau; graduate of Water Leaders Academy in 2013.
Vertical Integration.

It surrounds us, and penetrates us. It binds the galaxy together.

Obi-Wan Kenobi, the fictitious Jedi master spoke those words to his young apprentice Luke Skywalker in the 1977 iconic fantasy film, Star Wars; he was, of course, speaking of the fictional energy field known as the Force.

In many ways, it serves as an analogy to the very real concept of vertical integration, the energy that powers the business and economic models of many firms. Within vertical integration  like the Force  there endures a good side and a dark side. Whether it falls to the light side or the dark depends on many interacting components of economy, society and importantly, a firms business practices.

Its everywhere. Maybe this article is being read on a smart phone with an ultrafast processor built by Apple, and with a sleek Apple design, running a news application coded by Apple programmers. Thats vertical integration. At the same time, you might be eating a chicken sandwich made with genetically selected chickens hatched by Tyson; raised by farmers contracted with Tyson; processed in a Tyson plant and delivered to the grocery store in a big, refrigerated Tyson Foods distribution truck. That too, is vertical integration.

It permeates our world through the commodities we consume.

It must be kept in mind that inherently, vertical integration  whether in agriculture, technology or some other business  is never bad or good. It is just one way of doing business: sometimes it creates adverse effects on farmers and sometimes it serves a boon to farmers.

I think the biggest issue is how the (farmer) contracts are going to be set up, said Dr. Kate Brooks of the department of agricultural economics at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Brooks was referring to the details of the contracts that farmers sign with the corporations.

She added the contracts guarantee the farmer will have a steady market buyer that can reduce some of the market fluctuation risk.

Tim Mueller, a farmer in Columbus, expounded on the risk of selling to a fluctuating market.

Marketing your grain and your livestock: Thats number one; thats the hard part, Mueller stated. The market can swing up and down so rapidly that any little decision you make can cost you money.

When it comes to poultry, the contract under a vertically integrated system can eliminate some of that insecurity, said Willow Holoubek, executive director of the Alliance for the Future of Agriculture in Nebraska, who is not employed by Costco or Lincoln Premium Poultry. She coordinates closely with the companies and explained that the growers network contracts will not be tournament style. This means that farmers will not be competing against each other.

Instead, each farmer, despite the weight of the poultry they deliver for processing once about every 45 days, will be guaranteed at a floor rate, an equal portion of the market value of the entire flock delivered by all the farmers. Tournament style contracts do not guarantee a floor rate.

Additionally, some of the information released in a FAQ by the Greater Fremont Development Council states that the company intends to purchase 300,000 bushels of corn and 3,000 tons of soybean feed (about 140,000 bushels) required per week from local providers. Theoretically, if corn averages $3.50 per bushel and soybean averages $9.50 per bushel, that works out to $2.8 million of corn and soybeans from local farmers per week.

But Ernie Goss, a professor of economics at Creighton University, warns that vertical integration in poultry carries the potential for volatility from the environment. Drought, pathogens and violent weather can reduce or decimate a livestock population. What happens then? What does the contract say?

It really comes down to what is in the contract  and how it is written, Brooks echoed.

By signing a contract with a large firm, farmers can also reap the benefits of a firms enormous wealth. The firm can help the farmer reduce costs of veterinary services, provide free technical assistance, encourage the adoption of state-of-the-art technologies allowing the farmer to increase output and also maintain good stewardship to the environment.

Historically, production contracts between poultry growers and feed suppliers has encouraged rapid adoption of new technology that creates economies of size and lower production costs, said Lee Schultz, an agricultural economist at Iowa State University.

Contracts are something farmers need to review with diligence.

One major disadvantage is the loss of control farmers might experience with those contracts. The firm will own the birds, control the supply and regulate the way in which they will be raised. A 2005 journal article published in the California Law Review, by Susan M. Brehm, a University of California-Berkeley School of Law alumnus, was critical of vertical integration in agriculture. Historically, in some contracts, the farmers agreed to indemnify (reimburse) the firm for any claim filed against it, including attorneys fees; an example might be the accidental environmental contamination of chemicals or other pollutants from the growers farm, Brehm said it served as a way for corporations to shift environmental costs to the farmers, creating an unbalanced production contract.

Finally, farmers in the growers network will have to come up with the money for the four-barn facility complexes in which the birds will be raised. If, as stated by information released by the Greater Fremont Development Council, each barn costs $375,000, the entire complex will cost $1.5 million, representing some risk for the farmer who will likely need to obtain it as a loan.

On the other hand, farming today  whether under contract or not  requires farmers to take out loans for many reasons. Scott Wagner, a farmer near Hooper said, 160 acres of land might even require a $1.5 million loan.

This type of loan is nothing new for a farmer. This is not a shock, Wagner said. He explained investors usually only require about a 3.5 percent return on land loans, but with the barns they are expecting 7.5 percent return, enough to make anyone happy. Additionally, because the contract is 15 years and backed by a firm like Costco, banks will require less collateral from the farmer: all definite benefits.

In the end, in determination of the advantages and disadvantages, it is up to each farmer to decide if the fit is right, Wagner emphasized.

... the dark side or the light.
DONALD FRANCIS HUFFMAN

1925-2016

Don was born in Lincoln, Nebraska, and moved at the age of 11 to Louisville, Nebraska, a small town about 45 minutes away, when his father purchased the local newspaper, the Louisville Weekly Courier. Don graduated from Louisville High School in 1943, and then entered the University of Nebraska, graduating with B.S. in Business Administration in 1948. He often told stories about living in the Brown Palace boarding room home for men, and particularly enjoyed playing clarinet in the University of Nebraska Band. Don was active in the Alpha Kappa Psi business fraternity.

During the WWII years, because of a medical deferment, he worked in the Omaha Martin Aircraft Plant producing B-29 planes. He also worked for the Ash Grove Lime, Portland Cement and Western Paper companies and at his fathers newspaper in his early employment. After University, Don began a 38-year career with the Security Mutual Life Insurance Company of Nebraska until his retirement in 1985 as Corporate Secretary. Don was active in professional organizations and earned the designation of Fellow in the Life Management Institute and was Charter President of the Nebraska Life Management Institute and President of the Nebraska Insurance Institute.

Don was a member in the 32nd Degree Masonic Lodge, and volunteered for the Salvation Army for 40 years. Don was very active in several churches and choirs including Fair Hill United Presbyterian Church in Lincoln and Desert Palms Presbyterian Church in Sun City West.

After college, Don married Janet Dalrymple. They lived in Lincoln and later moved to Surprise, Arizona in 1997. Don and Janets love grew for 57 years, until Janet passed in 2005. He met Mildred Cryer at Sierra Winds and they were in a committed relationship for 6 years until her passing. Donald is survived by twin sons, John D. and David W. Huffman and granddaughters, Lauren Huffman and Carley Huffman.

Don made friends easily and always put others first. He was quick to give a complement and offer a funny story. Many refer to Don as the nicest guy on the Planet. Don and Janet liked to travel, and we have fond memories of packing up the family for annual vacations to California, Black Hills and the East Coast. For work and later in retirement, Don and Janet traveled to Hawaii, Alaska and the United Kingdom. Don enjoyed researching family history and created a very complete genealogy. Don was an accomplished writer and photographer and put his skills to use in his work and for church and other volunteering.

The family asks that in lieu of flowers donations be made to the Salvation Army.

Please join Dons family in sharing memories, pictures or videos on his tribute wall at www.caminodelsol.com
When an opportunity arises, its best to take advantage of it. You never know when, or if, the next one will come along. Thats why the Dodge County Farm Bureau has adopted a resolution supporting the concepts and economic development opportunities presented by the Lincoln Premium Poultry/Costco Project. This project presents far too many opportunities to ignore.

We talk about wanting to bring more job opportunities with better pay and about giving kids an opportunity to come back home. We talk about wanting to lower our individual tax burdens and the importance of broadening our tax base. This project represents opportunities to do all of these things.

It also makes sense. Nebraskas economy is founded in agriculture and Dodge County is a major player. According to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) 2012 Census, Dodge County ranks 25 out of the 93 Nebraska counties in terms of the market value of agriculture products sold. Roughly 92 percent of the land in our county is used for farming. Building on our agriculture base plays to our strengths. Its what we do best.

Dodge County leaders actively sought and obtained the Livestock Friendly County endorsement from the Nebraska Department of Agriculture to publicly recognize the importance of livestock to our county. Nothing would further that cause more than area farmers having the opportunity to partner with Lincoln Premium Poultry in raising chickens, something that likely wouldnt happen without this project. Its of particular interest to area farm families looking for another way to bring their children back into the farming operation.

For all these reasons we believe Dodge County will be much better off in the long-run with the Lincoln Premium Poultry/Costco Project, than without. One thing is certain, if we dont take advantage of this opportunity, some other community will.

Dave Saalfeld

Dodge County Farm Bureau President
Many objections to chicken operation

As a homeowner and retired health professional, my objections to the proposed chicken processing operation are many.

Fremont is the home of Midland University, excellent public and parochial schools, a first-rate hospital and library and, most especially clean air and high quality water.

Historically, we have incrementally welcomed and accommodated two major meat packing companies and provided services, housing and schools for their employees and families. Hormel opened operations locally in 1947 with 50 workers, gradually increasing to the current 1,400 employees.

Fremont Beef has workforce of 110 full-time employees.

In contrast, the scope and impact of the proposed chicken plant will dwarf these enterprises. The impact of an influx of 1,400 workers and their families on our schools, housing and infrastructure would be catastrophic. Furthermore, we have an obligation to all future citizens to provide good jobs to provide for their families and in an healthy environment.

To quote a recent CDC report: Individuals involved in poultry farming face a number of health hazards such as chemicals and dust. Infections may occur due exposure to viruses such as avian flu, West Nile virus, and bacteria such as E.Coli, salmonella and histoplasmosis.

Poultry facilities are a source of odor and attract flies and rodents. Conditions for the animals is inhumane and can be readily viewed on YouTube and PBS Frontline.

There is no doubt that all entities involved feel justified, but an industry of good repute brings an issue before a community with town hall meetings and establishing a dialogue.

Many of us would welcome an enterprise and more citizens in more jobs which can be enhanced and sustained by our local infrastructure. A $1.3 billion chicken farm is hazardous to our health and that of potential employees. The presence of a plant which produces 1,200 tons of manure yearly above the Ogallalla Aquifer is unthinkable.

I urge all to research these issues available online from the CDC, the EPA, USDA and others with expertise.

Linda Williams Fremont
Bringing a chicken plant to Fremont is a bad idea.

I recently retired and have been looking at property to buy and move to in southern Missouri and northern Arkansas. There are many chicken plants, especially in northern Arkansas, and I have noticed that homes for sale close to these plants have been for sale for over a year and are priced way below market value. Many are even setting empty.

Even several realtors we have had show us homes do not recommend purchasing property in the vicinity of these chicken plants because it is almost impossible to resell your property.

Another question is where are all of these chickens going to come from. 350,000 chickens a day is a lot of chickens. Seems to me they will also have to be raised in the area causing more devaluation to property in the vicinity.

I don't see that this would benefit Fremont at all. Looks like it would do more harm than good. People living close to where these facilities will be built should think twice before you let it happen.

Randy Showman

Fremont
Win McNamee/Getty Images(WASHINGTON) -- House Speaker Paul Ryan has invited Republican presumptive presidential nominee Donald Trump to meet with the House Republican leadership next Thursday morning, Ryan tweeted Friday.

In a separate gathering, Trump is also expected to meet with Ryan and Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus, according to Ryan's political office.

I've invited @realDonaldTrump for a meeting with GOP leaders next week, and I look forward to the discussion.  Paul Ryan (@PRyan) May 6, 2016

The scheduled meetings represent a stark transformation in tone after Trump and Ryan sparred publicly the past 24 hours.

"I hope to support our nominee, I hope to support his candidacy going forward," Ryan said in an interview with CNN on Thursday. "I'm just not ready to do that at this point. I'm not there right now."

A short time later, the presumptive Republican nominee responded with his own dig at the most powerful elected Republican in the country.

"I am not ready to support Speaker Ryan's agenda," Trump wrote in a statement Thursday. "Perhaps in the future we can work together and come to an agreement about what is best for the American people. They have been treated so badly for so long that it is about time for politicians to put them first!"

The leadership meeting next week will include Ryan, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, Majority Whip Steve Scalise and Conference Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers, according to Ryan's political office and House Republican leadership sources.

The meeting is set to be held at the RNC's headquarters on Capitol Hill.

Copyright  2016, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
CIENFUEGOS, Cuba  Passengers were bused back to the Adonia about noon Thursday after a tour of Cienfuegos that included a stroll through a bustling outdoor market packed with Cubans buying gifts for Mothers Day, a drive past grand seafront houses built in the French-influenced Neoclassical style and a concert at the Teatro Tomas Terry on the central square.

There, the Cantores de Cienfuegos performed several a cappella numbers, including the folk song Shenandoah in English. The 950-seat, four-tiered auditorium was built in the late 19th century to honor a Venezuelan industrialist for whom it is named.

Skies were overcast, with only sprinkles of rain, keeping temperatures relatively comfortable. And although the visit to Cienfuegos was brief  about four hours on the ground  many passengers were only too happy to climb back on the air conditioned Chinese-made tour buses for the short ride back to the ship.

On at least one bus, guides offered passengers bottles of water. An absence of water on some buses during two days of touring in Havana drew many complaints.

There was a rumba group playing as passengers filed off the ship just after 8 a.m., but there was no throng of flag-waving Cubans shouting hello and high-fiving the arrivals, as there was in Havana on Monday.

But a sampling of public opinion indicated that residents of Cienfuegos  a quiet, south-coast city of about 170,000  were happy the American ship would now be calling there regularly.

It can only help bring better relations and peace, said taxi driver Ricardo Quintero Garcia, 68. We dont have any problems with the American people. We just dont agree with the blockade.

El bloqueo, the Cuban word for the U.S. trade embargo, is often cited by the Castro government as one of the reasons the islands economy has been sputtering for years. Despite the new accords between the U.S. and Cuba, which have opened the door to more tourism, the embargo remains in place.

Adonia Capt. David Box told passengers via the PA system Thursday afternoon that the ship was ready to head to Santiago de Cuba, on the eastern end of the island, 320 miles away  quite a long way so we will be traveling at full speed for a 9 a.m. Friday arrival.

The British mariner urged passengers to take note of the ships exit from the harbor through a narrow, quite scenic passage called Pasacaballos.

The locals were certainly pleased to see us, said Box. Do enjoy the sailaway.

And he warned, he would sound the ships loud whistle to say goodbye to the people of Cienfuegos.

Mind your ears, said Box.
CEDAR FALLS  U.S. Rep. Rod Blum, R-1st District, acknowledged some mixed feelings about his partys presumptive nominee Donald Trump.

But he says now is a time for Republicans, particularly those who subscribe to the so-called Never Trump movement, to coalesce around the candidate.

Its binary now. Theres two people now, so everythings changed, Blum said, referring to Trump and likely Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. When they start thinking about four years or eight years of Hillary Clinton, I think theyre starting to warm up to Trump, but it does concern me, this Never Trump or whatever its called.

He likened the current situation the Republicans find themselves in to that of the Founding Fathers at the signing of the Declaration of Independence. He paraphrased a quote attributed to Ben Franklin, saying, If we dont hang together  most assuredly well hang separately.

So, we need all Republicans on board, for sure, Blum said.

He acknowledged some positives and negatives about the business mogul and reality TV star who is now leading the Republican Party. He praised Trumps ability to bring in disaffected voters, like Reagan Democrats and working-class families, particularly with his make America great again slogan.

I think it resonates with a lot of people that feel that in the world stage were getting pushed around, so they want us to project our greatness again, Blum said.

Blum said when the cameras werent rolling, he found Trump to be very cordial and very normal in the two times hes met him.

Away from the camera, I think, I hope, from what Ive seen, hes a little more thoughtful, Blum said.

But without naming specifics, Blum said he doesnt like some of the things Trump does and says.

I cant control Trump. I cant control the voters. All I can control is what we do here in the district, and in Washington (D.C.), so we just worry about what we can control, Blum said.

That sentiment, however, has not stopped Democratic groups from tying Blum to Trumps more controversial statements.

After failing to disavow Donald Trumps disturbing attacks on war heroes, women, minorities and the disabled, Congressman Blum will have to face the consequences of sharing a ballot with Trump, Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee spokesman Tyler Law said in a statement.

Blum, however, sees Trump as a good opportunity to take on the likely nominee from the Democratic party.

I dont think Hillary Clinton has ever gone up against, or the Clinton machine has never gone up against somebody like Donald Trump, so its going to be quite interesting, Blum said.

Christinia Crippes is a reporter for the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier, another Lee Enterprises newspaper.
MASON CITY  Patty Judge, former lieutenant governor and state secretary of agriculture, faces a tough challenge as she seeks the Democratic nomination in a field vying to unseat longtime Republican U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley.

Since she threw her hat into the ring in March, Judge has faced criticism from opponents that she is a Washington, D.C.-backed candidate with a record of coziness with state agriculture interests.

She faces state legislator Rob Hogg and former state legislators Tom Fiegen and Bob Krause in the Democratic primary on June 7. The winner takes on Grassley in the general election in November.

Judge stopped by the Globe Gazette Thursday for an editorial meeting. Her answers have been edited for brevity.

Q: Besides Grassleys refusal to hold hearings to confirm Obamas Supreme Court nominee, what other issues will you run on during the campaign?

A: Well, I think voters in this election are going to be talking about bread and butter issues, Judge said.

They are going to be talking about the fact that their wages are stagnant, that they dont have the buying power that they had a few years ago. I think there will be a lot of discussion on raising the minimum wage, which I believe should be raised.

There is a mood among people in the United States today ... that our federal government is not working, that it is not listening to people and is not responsive to people, Judge said.

That is what I believe, for lack of a better word, the anger is about. In that, we find that in both sides of the political aisle.

Chuck Grassley has been in the United States Senate for 36 years. There isnt anymore much more establishment or much more a part of the federal government than the chairman of the Judiciary Committee.

Q: If elected, how would you take action to bridge partisanship in Washington?

A: One of the things that I did before I was elected was I worked as a mediator during the farm crisis to help farms and their creditors restructure debt and find some solutions to the problems that were going on at that time.

I also did family mediation, and let me tell you, that can be tough business, Judge said.

Ive done this successfully in the past and I know how to do this, she said.

Q: A majority of Democratic state legislators have endorsed your opponent Rob Hogg. How to you respond to criticism that you are a Washington, D.C.-backed candidate?

A: Chuck Grassley has talked about being a farmer for as long as I can remember. The truth of the matter is that man has lived in Washington for over 40 years. So, whenever they talk about me ... that doesnt hold much water.

The leadership in the Democratic caucus believes I am the one that can win this race and they have wholeheartedly endorsed me, she said. I have to kind of look at that as a badge of honor.

Q: Now that youre campaigning, is it a scary or exciting time to be back in politics?

A: I think its exciting and scary, she said. Its certainly different. I made my first run for political office in 1992. That was another tough time, scary time. It was not the just animosity that you see in political campaigns now. It really kind of makes me shudder, the name-calling, the baiting. I think that needs to end.
OSAGE  An Osage teen convicted of second-degree murder in the 2012 death of his mother has been sentenced to up to 50 years in prison.

Noah Crooks, 17, was sentenced Friday during a hearing in Mitchell County District Court. He was also ordered to pay $150,000 in restitution to his father.

Crooks was 13 in March 2012 when he shot his mother, Gretchen, multiple times with a .22-caliber rifle in their rural Mitchell County home. Since being convicted he has been at the State Training School in Eldora.

Under Iowa law, those who receive a youthful offender deferred sentence as Crooks did, must have a hearing in district court before their 18th birthday so a judge can rule on their fate as an adult.

Crooks turns 18 in July.

Walk: Osage teen who killed mom could get no prison, 50 years OSAGE | An Osage teen convicted of murder could be sentenced to no time in prison or ordered

District Judge James Drews sentencing options ranged from release with probation to up to 50 years in prison.

During the sentencing hearing, Drew said he was denying probation because, I am concerned with your lack of apparent empathy until recently. It causes me to wonder if you are truly remorseful.

Crooks will be held at the Mitchell County Jail until it is determined whether he will return to Eldora or be transferred to the North Iowa Detention Center until his 18th birthday.

Crooks attorney, William Kutmus, said he would appeal the sentence and anticipates it could go to the Iowa Supreme Court.

He said he thought his client should be released with one year probation.

Before Drew announced his decision, the prosecution and defense offered starkly different opinions on where Crooks is at in his life.

County Attorney Mark Walk said the psychologist at the training school wrote in his report, I see a developing antisocial personality disorder, with several psychopathic characteristics and the prospect of rehabilitation is nil.

Osage teen convicted of murder has hearing set to determine fate OSAGE  A sentencing to determine the adult fate of an Osage juvenile found guilty of second

Kutmus countered by saying the psychologist at the training school was not a trained child psychologist and his report was outdated and irrelevant.

Our own expert said the exact opposite, said Kutmus. Nobody can predict the future.

Prior to the sentencing, Crooks, who was shackled and dressed in a striped jail uniform, read a letter to the court.

Over the last six to eight months, I have begun to show remorse for what I did. I am not the person I was then. I learned to show empathy.

I regret taking my moms life. I understand there are consequences. I have turned my life over to God and I want a relationship with my family again.

Following Crooks comments, several impact statementss were read by family members, with the most powerful coming from his father and grandmother.

Crooks father, William, said Something told me to stay home that night. If I hadnt stayed I dont think I would be here today. She didnt deserve to be shot 22 times. She deserved so much more than that.

William Crooks said he visited his son several times at Eldora, pushing him to talk about his mother. In the past four years, you have never once spoken about your mother. You have shown no remorse.

Four years is not enough to pay for taking your mothers life. Im sorry; I love you, Noah, but to let you out would ruin so many more lives.

Crooks grandmother, Beverly Brahm, said, I love Noah with all my heart. He has grown while at the school, but I have never seen any empathy this entire time. He never showed any empathy growing up. I used to keep my dog and the other grandchildren away from him.

I want him safe and I want society safe from him. Releasing him is not an option.

In his sentencing, Drew said, Noah, you have done some good things at the state training school. As an aside, I am glad to hear you got a relationship with Jesus Christ. I hope you are sincere. It will help you a great deal.

However, in the proceedings today, there has been a common theme  your lack of emotional response of remorse or empathy. I recognize you are a young person. You just havent been willing to deal with what you have done, Drew said.

Crooks to spend years at state training school OSAGE  Noah Crooks will live at the State Training School in Eldora until his 18th birthday

Im hopeful but not convinced you are yet rehabilitated. Maybe you dont care, but to release you on probation at this time would not be appropriate.
In something of a surprising move, the Mason City Council said no to a $250 million pork processing plant and at least 1,700 jobs by failing to approve a development agreement with Prestage Farms Wednesday morning.

Proponents of the plant argued it would have provided a much-needed infusion of jobs, money and residents to an area that is slowly depopulating due to an aging population and a perception of limited opportunity.

Many opponents were convinced it would have been an environmental disaster, threatening air and water quality while bringing odor, noise and flies, among other problems.

Others were more worried about the potential cultural fallout.

Minimally skilled and poorly paid workers, mostly immigrants and many unable to speak English, would have challenged area school systems while straining local social and medical services, the argument went.

Traffic and crime would likely have increased, others noted, while property values would have fallen.

These and other challenges, opponents argued, would have more than negated any potential economic benefits derived from the jobs created.

Although some environmental concerns were directed at the slaughterhouse itself, many opponents were more distressed by the confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs)  i.e. hog confinements  they assumed would have proliferated in the area to supply the plant.

(Opponents) really showed Iowa that people power can win over corporate ag, said Erica Blair, a community organizer with the Des Moines-based activist group Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement. People dont want factory farms.

Worries about environmental impact from the plant itself were, in my view, overblown.

Both the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Iowa Department of Natural Resources (DNR) have regulations regarding the location of industrial sites and the types and amounts of pollutants they are able to discharge.

Inspections and monitoring are, for the most part, adequate and enforcement is meaningful. Violations are publicly reported.

As such, it is in a companys best interests both economically and from a public relations perspective to run a clean plant. If it doesnt it will be fined initially and shut down eventually.

CAFOs are another matter.

Rules regarding the location and regulation of hog confinements have been set by the Iowa Legislature.

While the DNR reviews plans for the construction of larger operations, this is only to see they conform to those rules. The agency has no discretion to deny permits despite potential environmental concerns.

The authority of local governments is similarly limited.

Due to inadequate staff and funding (again by design of the Iowa Legislature), monitoring and enforcement of environmental regulations regarding CAFOs is at best marginal.

In most cases violations are discovered after the fact, if at all, and penalties arent sufficient to provide much of a deterrent.

While most operators sincerely try to do the right thing, some fail and a few dont bother. This gives the industry collectively a somewhat deserved bad reputation.

In the development agreement, Prestage had promised to donate $1.4 million to the Mason City School District over a 10-year period and to not build or purchase hogs from any CAFO within 2.5 miles of Mason City or the Clear Lake watershed.

With that agreement now rejected, what happens next?

Perhaps detractors believed Prestage officials would tuck their collective tails between their legs and return to North Carolina.

This doesnt seem to be the case.

We are considering other locations in Iowa, said Prestage Spokeswoman Summer Lanier. We are willing to revisit places that we have already considered.

Prestage is looking to build here because the company sees economic opportunity.

There is an unmet demand for pork worldwide and an inadequate slaughterhouse capacity to meet that demand.

Iowa produces an abundance (sometimes overabundance) of corn and soybeans, providing accessible and affordable feed for livestock.

Our roadway and rail infrastructure make it relatively easy to move live animals in and processed meat out.

The state already raises a lot of hogs and has a rural landscape that could theoretically accommodate many more CAFOs. Its current regulatory environment is favorable to such accommodation.

Rather than attacking Prestage for attempting to profit from that regulatory environment, opponents of CAFOs would have been better served by working to alter it.

Chances are the company will eventually find a receptive community, and it could well be located between Interstate 90 in southern Minnesota and Highway 20 in north central Iowa.

If thats the case, North Iowa will be a prime target for any new CAFOs needed to supply the plant, and without the benefit of the 2.5-mile buffer zone around the Mason City-Clear Lake corridor that had been offered.

Unless laws change, theres nothing local officials or activists can do about it.

Should the facility be built within commuting distance of Mason City, the area may still experience an influx of migrant workers along with the educational and social challenges they present.

If so, those expenses would be borne without the benefit of the $1.4 million gift to the Mason City school system or the significant increase in the local tax base.

North Iowa might well end up getting the worst of this deal without receiving the best.

Opponents of corporate agriculture won this battle by preventing Prestage Farms from building its slaughterhouse at the desired location.

Lets hope Mason City doesnt become collateral damage in future battles that are certain to come.
If you think of the presidential primaries as a hiring process for nominees, the Republican Party is about to offer the job to Donald Trump. As they say in the executive suite when a personnel crisis arises: Alert the folks in human resources.

While there was plenty of interest in the presidential position, the interviewers  the voters  have settled on a candidate with neither appropriate experience nor a coherent governing philosophy.

Instead, he brims with outrageous promises and makes statements that sound at times like hes ignorant of the law (killing the families of terrorists), disconnected from economic reality (demanding that American companies open factories at home) and callous to women and minorities (his sexist put-downs and proposed ban on allowing Muslims into the country).

Sigh. Is HR on the phone yet?

Maybe Trumps tantalizing vow to make America great again and his ability to connect with angry, disenfranchised Republicans (and, yes, even some Democrats) qualifies him for a position as a marketing whiz. Trump these days is the most famous name in real estate, steaks and narcissism.

But hire a businessman and reality TV star as CEO of our multitrillion-dollar government? No thanks. We do not want to see Trump become president of the United States of America, nor even the Republican nominee. As an apprentice, he doesnt have sufficient potential to grow into the job.

Yet on Tuesday night, Trump cleared a major hurdle to securing the nomination with his convincing victory in Indiana over Sen. Ted Cruz, who immediately quit the race. Gov. John Kasich, Trumps only remaining rival, dropped out Wednesday. There is now a direct path for Trump to reach the threshold of 1,237 delegates before Julys Republican convention in Cleveland and to win the nomination on the first ballot.

Trump got this far through vigorous showmanship and a focused message to dyspeptic voters, blasting some surprisingly ineffective competitors out of his way. His appeal among disaffected Republican primary voters is intensely visceral: Hed arrive in Washington a billionaire businessman in a hurry and get things done. After years of gridlock in Washington, who doesnt find the idea of an outsider appealing? The Democrats have their own in Sen. Bernie Sanders.

But once nominated, the numbers would start to work against Trump. He would be the most divisive presidential nominee of our time. Against even a flawed Democratic challenger, Hillary Clinton, Trump is a significant underdog. His core constituency of white, socially conservative, working-class voters isnt big enough to get him to victory Nov. 8. About two-thirds of voters view him unfavorably, according to the RealClearPolitics average of opinion polls.

Through the primary season, a majority of Republicans and many conservatives rejected him. Stuart Stevens, a former Mitt Romney strategist, says Trump is unbalanced. Wall Street Journal columnist Bret Stephens uses a literary reference about upchucking to describe his feelings about a Trump candidacy.

They see what we see: Trump is an undisciplined political neophyte who loves the limelight and promises big changes, most of which appear either implausible or too vague to take seriously.

What would a Trump loss to Hillary Clinton mean for the fractured GOP? Maybe not so much. Both parties have been shellacked in presidential elections and bounced back.

There is no incumbent this year, so you have to go back to 1928 to find a closer potential comparison: Republican Herbert Hoover in a landslide over Democrat Al Smith. More recently, things looked bleak for the Republicans after Barack Obamas 2008 victory, but then came their 2010 congressional victories.

Analysis has failed everyone this election cycle. All you can say for certain is that Trump is a unique character whose success or failure isnt a true reflection of the Republican Party. At this point, the GOPs energy might be best directed at figuring out what it wants to look like after Trump leaves the stage.

Were still holding out hope that Republicans will find the will, and a way, to replace Trump at the convention. Maybe like this: Dear Mr. Trump: Thank you for your interest in the position. Unfortunately, your qualifications do not meet our needs at this time.

 By the Chicago Tribune
NEW YORK, May 05, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Stull, Stull & Brody ("SS&B") announces that a class action lawsuit was commenced in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida on behalf of persons who purchased or acquired the securities of Platform Specialty Products (Platform or the Company) (NYSE:PAH) between February 17, 2015 and March 14, 2016 (the "Class Period").



If you purchased Platform securities during the Class Period you may move the Court to serve as lead plaintiff by no later than June 1, 2016. A lead plaintiff is a representative party that acts on behalf of other class members in directing the litigation.

SS&B is also investigating whether allegations in the class action were breaches of fiduciary duties by the officers and directors of Platform. An action for breaches of fiduciary duty can be brought derivatively by a shareholder who held Company stock at the start of the Class Period and who continues to hold Company stock until the derivative action has concluded.

The lawsuit alleges Platform and others, in violation of federal securities laws, made false and/or misleading statements and/or failed to disclose: (1) Arysta LifeScience Limited (Arysta) violated the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) and, as a result, Platforms public statements were materially false and misleading. On March 11, 2016, Platform disclosed it discovered that Arysta made improper third-party payments in West Africa that may have been illegal. On this news, share price fell $0.28 per share the following trading day to close at $8.57 per share, a ~3.16% drop.

In addition, the lawsuit alleges that on March 14, 2016, the Wall Street Journal published a story entitled Chemical Company Notifies U.S. of West Africa FCPA Probe that addressed the aforementioned allegations. On this news, share price fell $0.62 per share the next day to close at $7.95 per share, a ~7.23% drop.

If you wish to discuss this action or have any questions concerning this notice or your rights or interests with respect to these matters, please contact Michael J. Klein, Esq. at Stull, Stull & Brody by e-mail at PAH@ssbny.com, by calling toll-free 1-800-337-4983 x147, or by fax at 212-490-2022, or by writing to Stull, Stull & Brody, 6 East 45th Street, New York, NY 10017. You can also visit our website at www.ssbny.com.

Stull, Stull & Brody has litigated many class actions for violations of securities laws and breaches of fiduciary duty on behalf of defrauded investors over the past 40 years and has obtained court approval of substantial settlements on numerous occasions. Stull, Stull & Brody has offices in New York and Beverly Hills. The Stull, Stull & Brody website (www.ssbny.com) has additional information about the firm.

Attorney advertising. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. This press release may be considered Attorney Advertising in some jurisdictions under applicable laws and ethical rules.
MIAMI, May 05, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Sonn and Erez, PLC is investigating potential claims against Aequitas Management, LLC ("Aequitas") promissory notes or Aequitas-affiliated invested funds through other Aequitas related companies between January 2014 and January 2016. If you are an investor in any promissory notes or securities issued by Aequitas or its related companies, you may contact Jeff Sonn or Jeff Erez at 1-305-428-8530 or 954-763-4700.



This investigation focuses on whether certain financial advisors or promoters misrepresented the safety of investments in Aequitas promissory notes and funds, whether there was adequate due diligence into Aequitas promissory notes prior to sale, and whether there were violations of securities laws or regulations, including Financial Regulatory Authority rules of conduct, by Aequitas, their counsel, accounting firm, financial advisors, or others.

According to the SEC and a pending class action, Aequitas, of Lake Oswego, Oregon, offered alternative financing to companies in certain industries. Aequitas, and its affiliates, Aequitas Holdings, LLC ("AH"), Aequitas Commercial Finance, LLC ("ACF"), Aequitas Capital Management, Inc., Aequitas Investment Management, LLC raised money from investors in a Private Note Program and through various investment funds they created.

This investigation also focuses on allegations that investors were lead to believe that they were investing in a portfolio of good trade receivables in the healthcare, education, transportation, or consumer credit sectors. However, Aequitas allegedly did not reveal that: (1) ACF and AH were effectively bankrupt; (2) not all investor funds were not used to purchase trade receivables but instead to paid redemptions and interest to prior investors and to pay operating expenses; and (3) only some of the notes issued by ACF and the Aequitas Funds were supported by trade receivables. By the end of 2015, Aequitas owed about 1500 investors $312 million and had virtually no operating income to repay them.

If you are aware of any facts relating to this investigation, or if you invested in any Aequitas related promissory notes or Aequitas-affiliated investment funds, you can assist this investigation by contacting Sonn and Erez at 305-428-8530.

Sonn and Erez PLC focuses its practices on representing investors nationwide who are the victims of Ponzi schemes, fraud, negligence or other misconduct of financial advisors, brokers, brokerage firms or companies that promote investments. Sonn and Erez has obtained verdicts and recoveries totaling hundreds of millions of dollars for investors in securities arbitration and litigation.
WASHINGTON, D.C., May 6, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Campaign to Change Direction is proud to announce that Prince Harry of Wales and acclaimed actor Richard Gere will be featured in a public service announcement (PSA) running on a Times Square (New York) jumbotron for three months, beginning today, May 6, 2016.

Prince Harry has been a steadfast supporter of members of the military, both in the United Kingdom and around the world, and an advocate for the physical and mental well-being of those who serve and their families. The campaign applauds his efforts and is pleased to have his help in encouraging everyone to recognize the Five Signs of emotional suffering and the importance of caring for one's emotional well-being.

Richard Gere has been an active spokesperson for combating the problem of homelessness in the United States and abroad. The campaign welcomes Mr. Gere's contribution and the engagement of organizations working to prevent and ultimately end homelessness, which is in many cases related to emotional suffering and mental health.

Prince Harry and Mr. Gere join First Lady Michelle Obama and Dr. Jill Biden in the campaign's new video PSA. The First Lady and Dr. Biden have been longstanding supporters of our nation's military families, through their Joining Forces initiative, as well as of the Campaign to Change Direction.

Dr. Barbara Van Dahlen, Founder and President of Give an Hour, the backbone organization behind the Campaign to Change Direction, said, "Changing the culture is difficult and requires many voices. We are proud and honored that so many impressive leaders are standing with us to meet this challenge, and we are pleased to welcome two new supporters to this vital cause."

The Campaign to Change Direction warmly thanks United Health Foundation for its ongoing support of our critical work and for helping to make this new PSA possible. The campaign also thanks Edelman, our communications partner, for creating this wonderful new video.

About Change Direction

The Campaign to Change Direction, a national initiative to change the culture of mental health in America, encourages Americans to care for their mental well-being just as they do their physical well-being. The campaign is led by Give an Hour, a national nonprofit organization providing free mental health services to the military and veteran community. Change Direction addresses common barriers to understanding mental health and raises awareness about Five Signs that may indicate someone is suffering emotionally and needs help: change in personality, agitation, withdrawal, decline in personal care, and hopelessness. Over 180 partner organizations are using their unique skills and opportunities to spread awareness. Organizations and individuals who are interested in learning more or making a pledge can visit www.changedirection.org.

About Give an Hour

Give an Hour, a nonprofit 501(c)(3) providing free mental health services to military members, veterans, and their families, was founded in September 2005 by Dr. Barbara Van Dahlen, a psychologist in the Washington, D.C., area. Give an Hour has been instrumental in the development of the community-based approach to addressing the challenges that face our nation's military community, having created a successful model for harnessing skill-based volunteers eager to offer their services. Thus far, the network of nearly 7,000 licensed mental health professionals has provided more than 184,000 hours of care and support to those in need. To learn more, visit www.giveanhour.org or https://connected.giveanhour.org.

MEDIA CONTACTS:

Sally Charney, Give an Hour

scharney@giveanhour.org

703-582-6672
DENVER, May 06, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- CannaSys, Inc. (OTC:MJTK)

The leader in vapor technology, O.penVAPE, in association with Mile High Brands, is announcing a collaboration with seven-time GRAMMY winner and Reggae icon Ziggy Marley. O.penVAPE will design, distribute, manufacture and market a new line of branded vaporizers, for both oil and dry herb.



The Ziggy Marley Conscious Party Dry Herb Vaporizer has variable temperature settings and corresponding LED lights. Other features include a tactile wood grain design and pocket-sized portability. The Ziggy Marley go.penplus is a load-your-own concentrate portable vaporizer. It offers the ability to vape a wide variety of concentrates, including oil.

Marley said "I am thrilled to collaborate with O.penVAPE as they are leaders in their field. For me, the greatest piece of this partnership is that we are collectively giving back to the community; to benefit those who are less fortunate. I look forward to a positive and conscious relationship."

"We are excited about the potential opportunities that this partnership possesses," states Ralph Morgan, CEO of O.penVAPE. "We believe that it's a good fit for both brands and something that our fans will get excited about."

Fans can expect additional products to be released with sustainability in mind, forward thinking design and Ziggy Marley's signature influence. A portion of proceeds from both pens will go to U.R.G.E (Unlimited Resources Giving Enlightenment), his nonprofit organization that focuses on uplifting children's lives through education around the world.

About O.PenVape

Denver-based O.penVAPE is the leader in vapor technology and is currently operating in nine states. O.penVAPE distributes products through a network of affiliates licensed to sell O.penVAPE vaporizer devices and related products. Visit O.penVAPE's website for more information.

About CannaSys, Inc.

CannaSys is a leading technology solutions, marketing, and branding company in the regulated cannabis industry. Its core products are delivered "software as a service" to facilitate point-of-purchase transactions, customer relationship marketing solutions, and regulated cannabis laboratory information management systems. CannaSys plans to develop, acquire, and build strategic relationships with other businesses in order to bring additional solutions to market in both established and developing medical and recreational cannabis states. For more information, please visit www.cannasys.com

About Mile High Brands

Mile High Brands is not a traditional talent management company. Mile High Brands services focus on licensing, celebrity endorsements, brand development, advertising, product placement, sales, marketing in traditional retail outlets and social media. Mile High Brands prides itself on having strong relationships with its celebrities, manufacturing companies, distribution and retail companies. Mile High Brands has distribution and retail worldwide.

FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS

This release includes forward-looking statements. Investors are cautioned that such forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, including without limitation, continued acceptance of CannaSyss products, increased levels of competition for CannaSys, new products and technological changes, CannaSys's dependence on third-party suppliers, and other risks detailed from time to time in CannaSys's periodic reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.




CEDARVILLE, Ohio, May 6, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- According to a 2015 study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, electronic cigarettes have surpassed traditional cigarettes as the most commonly used tobacco product among high school students.



A group of four students at Cedarville University began researching the chemical compounds in two brands of e-cigarette flavoring in January to see if they contain harmful ingredients. A previous study at Marquette University found that e-cigarette flavorings, commonly called "juice," contain harmful ingredients such as diacetyl and 2,3-pentanedioneboth have been linked to lung disease.



Seniors Stephen Carnegis (Beavercreek, Ohio), Kevin Haffey (Walkersville, Maryland), Alison Hunter (Auburn, New York) and Logan Mauk (Bellbrook, Ohio), conducted the research. Their project was coordinated by Nathan Hnatiuk, Ph.D., associate professor of chemistry.



The group studied four samples of flavorings, three from the NicQuid brand and one from Ruthless E-Juice. When testing the samples, the group found propylene glycol, used as a base for the flavorings, nicotine and a variety of different esters and aromatics used for flavoring.



"Other than nicotine, the students found ingredients that are pretty common in a lot of things we might eat or drink," said Hnatiuk. "Ingesting a lot of these ingredients is totally safe, but inhaling them is really an unknown at this point."



Hnatiuk also says that because the U.S. Food and Drug Administration didn't regulate the production and sale of e-cigarette flavorings until just recently, there's no telling what could be in products that are already on the market.



It wasn't until May 5, 2016, that the FDA announced it would begin to regulate e-cigarettes, a decision that had been pending for more than a year.

"We didn't find the harmful ingredients that some other studies have, but we also tested different brands than those studies, and each brand can be created with entirely different things," said Hnatiuk.



One interesting discovery was that one flavor of NicQuid, called "Daybreak," contained less nicotine than was advertised. According to the label, the flavoring contained six milligrams per milliliter, but students found the actual number was just 4.6 mg/ml.



"That's the real danger to the consumer. Because there's product out there that came before regulations were in place, it's really impossible to tell what chemicals might be in those bottle."



In addition to finding out more about e-cigarettes, students were also able to gain valuable experience with state-of-the-art equipment in Cedarville's newly renovated lab space.



"This study gave me great experience using lab equipment that was very new to me," said Carnegis. "I hadn't ever worked with equipment that used a computer to identify chemical compounds, so this was a great learning experience."



Located in southwest Ohio, Cedarville University is an accredited, Christ-centered, Baptist institution with an enrollment of 3,711 undergraduate, graduate and online students in more than 100 areas of study. Founded in 1887, Cedarville is recognized nationally for its authentic Christian community, rigorous academic programs, strong graduation and retention rates, accredited professional and health science offerings and leading student satisfaction ratings. For more information about the University, visit www.cedarville.edu.

Photos accompanying this release are available at:

http://www.globenewswire.com/newsroom/prs/?pkgid=40162

http://www.globenewswire.com/newsroom/prs/?pkgid=40163
DENVER, May 06, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- General Cannabis Corporation (OTCQB:CANN), the all-in-one resource to the regulated cannabis Industry, today announced its financial results for the first quarter ended March 31, 2016. We intend to file our 10-Q on Monday, May 9, 2016.



Financial and Operational Highlights

First Quarter 2016 compared to 2015

Total Revenues increased 1,117% to $692,112

Net loss per share increased 33% to ($0.08) per share

Overview

General Cannabis again had record financial performance in the first quarter of fiscal 2016 with the company showing revenue growth over Q4 2015.

Each of our divisions delivered impressive performance this quarter.

IPG experienced a small decrease in revenues due to seasonal growing patterns with outdoor cultivation sites, but continues to gain market share in Colorado.

Next Big Crop and Chiefton experienced revenue growth in excess of 70% when compared to Q4 2015.

We continue to operate at a stable revenue run rate and are raising our 2016 revenue projections to $3.0 million based on current trends. This does not give account to any potential acquisitions.

Service Revenues, Tenant Revenues, and Product Sales each showed excellent financial performance. Our teams at Iron Protection Group, Next Big Crop and Chiefton have established themselves as industry leaders in their respective categories. They all employ best practices to this evolving industry. The ability to provide multiple services to individual clients is now well established and gaining momentum.

Our integrated platform of services is described on our website at www.generalcann.com.

Commenting on the financial results, Robert Frichtel, CEO noted, General Cannabis continues to show revenue growth and quality management leadership. Our first quarter results in our Marketing, Consulting and Advisory revenues were the most dramatic, with an increase of over 100% compared to Q4 2015. Mr. Frichtel continued, With the launch of Chieftons Spring Line and our strategic partnership for merchandise design and distribution with The Denver Posts Cannabist (http://www.thecannabist.co), we expect to continue to see aggressive revenue increases throughout 2016 from our apparel offerings.

Operating Developments

General Cannabis announced the launch of Chiefton Design, GC Supply and GC Equity Research

Chiefton Design is a full-service, multidisciplinary design, communications and branding agency in Denver Colorado. We help transform organizations, re-invigorate brands and grow businesses in many different sectors within the cannabis industry and beyond.

GC Supply is re-launching and will supply cannabis cultivators and retail operators with the materials they require to efficiently and profitability run their businesses.

GC Equity Research will provide investment research on publicly traded cannabis related companies and will be a great source of industry knowledge.

Dixie Brands Arizona- Update & Option Extension

As previously reported, on March 29, 2016, Infinity Capital West, LLC agreed to grant us an extension of the option exercise term to complete the purchase of Infinitys secured loan and ownership interest in DB Products Arizona, the Arizona licensee for Dixie Elixir branded products. The option has been extended through November 2016.

Dixie Brands Arizona has begun marketing products in Arizona. DB is currently completing construction on its production facility in Phoenix and plans to launch the full line of Dixie edible products in mid 2016.

Corporate Debt Maturity Extensions

As previously reported, on April 14, we announced that the maturity dates of all of our 2016 debt obligations were extended to at least January 31, 2017 on substantially the same terms and conditions as the previous debt arrangements.

Acquisition Platform

We believe General Cannabis is one of the most active investors in the cannabis industry. Our unique employee base and business breadth, gives us insight into national, regional, and local trends. We believe our acquisition program forms the base to build the most powerful company in this new industry. We have been and will continue to be aggressive in executing acquisitions and other opportunities that we believe will benefit our shareholders in the long-term. General Cannabis has proven its ability to successfully integrate acquisitions in the cannabis industry over the past year and will continue to do so.

Outlook for 2016

As discussed above, we are comfortable with our leadership position in the regulated cannabis industry and the visible pipeline of current business opportunities. We believe General Cannabis is alone with a strong platform to acquire growing businesses in this rapidly growing industry. Utilizing our balance sheet, executive team, and intellectual capital, we are able to create synergies unlike any other company in the industry.



With the high-visibility of certain state initiatives, regulated cannabis is growing at a staggering pace. Each of our operating divisions should continue to have strong growth in our existing markets, with material opportunities as new states adopt and implement cannabis regulations.

About

General Cannabis Corporation is the all-in-one resource for the highest quality service providers available to the regulated Cannabis Industry. We are a trusted partner to the cultivation, production and retail side of the cannabis business. We do this through a combination of strong operating divisions such as real estate, consulting, security, financing and the distribution of important infrastructure products to grow facilities and dispensaries. As a synergistic holding company, our subsidiaries are able to leverage the strengths of each other, as well as a larger balance sheet, to succeed.

Safe Harbor



This presentation contains forward-looking statements which relate to future events or General Cannabis future performance or financial condition. Any statements that are not statements of historical fact (including statements containing the words believes, should, plans, anticipates, expects, estimates and similar expressions) should also be considered to be forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance, condition or results and involve a number of risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from those in the forward looking statements as result of a number of factors, including those described from time to time in General Cannabis filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. General Cannabis undertakes no duty to update any forward-looking statements made herein.




lina87 wrote:

Hello,



I have just passed the exam today and scored 700 (Q47, V39, IR8). This is my second attempt, I got 670 at my first attempt a month ago (Q44, V39, IR5). However I cancelled my first score of 670, so the adcom will only see 700 as a first attempt. My question is: is this score enough for INSEAD?



INSEAD is my first choice and I really want to show my profile as strong as possible. 700 is in their target range, but Q47 is only 67 percentile. While INSEAD mentions they want to see a balance score of 70 percentile in both quant and verbal, should I retake the GMAT? (considering that this 8 in IR is a miracle, as I always had 5 in mocks, approximately between Q47 and Q49 in quant, and between V37/39 in verbal). I am targeting to apply for first round in september so I do have some time ahead, but I still have the toefl, essays etc to do.



My profile is:

French, female, 29 years, 5.5 years of work experience (4 years in London in finance in a big US company and 1.5 year in consulting in Paris, big US company as well, and various internships between France, London, US and Germany).

Education: Master in Management from a French b-school and 2 year preparatory classes to present the national exam to enter b-school in France.

GPA: good but nothing exceptional, I don't have a transcript of my notes in GPA format yet, as b-school in France don't use GPA (at least mine).

Extra: fund-raising activities for humanitarian project in Ecuador, music player in orchestra, Vice-president of international student Council, while at b-school and many backpacking travels.



I would like to have your opinion if my GMAT score of 700 (all the most the Q47) is good enough or if I should retake?



Many thanks for your advice !



mbaMission Senior Admissions Consultant

Chicago Booth Alum, over 70 5-star reviews on GMAT Club

Sign up for a free 30-minute consultation at https://www.mbamission.com/consult/mba-admissions/

Read our Insider's Guides to the top b-schools: http://www.mbamission.com/guides.php?category=insiders



Kate RichardsonmbaMission Senior Admissions ConsultantChicago Booth Alum, over 70 5-star reviews on GMAT ClubSign up for a free 30-minute consultation at https://www.mbamission.com/consult/mba-admissions/Read our Insider's Guides to the top b-schools: http://www.mbamission.com/guides.php?category=insiders Signature Read More

Hi! First of all the 670 to 700 improvement is great - well done! INSEAD has expressed a very strong preference for balanced quant and verbal scores that are both in the 70-75% range. You are just below that. If you want to do everything you can to show a strong application and since you do have a bit of time still then yes, I would give it one more shot and see if you can inch up that quant score to the 70th percentile. Even if the IR score has to suffer a bit (by the way, that is awesome you got the 8).Your work experience and extracurriculars both seem really strong so not really much to improve upon there!Good luck, and keep us posted on how it goes.Kate_________________
maroliv12 wrote:

I can't comment on the international student stuff but:



2) Although this is very subjective , yet am throwing it for discussion - is queens worth spending 100k ? i discussed with a few and they said that Queens / Sauder and HEC are almost in the same league as far as reputation is concerned, but the difference in cost is huge - queens (100k), HEC (50k), Sauder (70k)



I'd say that person is close to being right. Queens has the best reputation for undergrad commerce amongst the three by far. Sauder is regionally focussed, you're not going to get many Toronto offers, but if you were in Vancouver, I'm sure Sauder is better than Queens. What are you going for? If it's banking, Rotman or Ivey, if it's consulting Ivey. That's for placements, Schulich and Queens are a distant third and fourth.





3) Queens vs mcgill vs schullich vs rotman --- in terms of reputation

Rotman is the best commerce program amongst the three. Not even really close.



4) Any other points on Queens MBA that can help

None, really. I'm guessing you have your reasons for excluding Ivey, which is also a one year program, so I'm not going to dwell on that. The only other program I would've considered in Canada is Rotman. As of the past 5 years, Rotman is doing very well in finance placements and that was what I was going for. I got Ivey, so I didn't bother applying anywhere else in Canada, but I might have taken Rotman if I got it.

Thanks very much for your insights, they are really valuableI applied to Ivey and I have been dinged, so Ivey is out for me as of now, but i have submitted my app to Rotman. Rotman will be my first choice if i get an admit, but my GMAT is on lower side and i am not sure if i would get an admit.If you have to rank these schools- queens, schulich, HEC, McGill and Sauder- in terms of reputation of MBA programs especially from financial services placements point of view, how will you rank them ?I am not too worried about settling anywhere in Canada, but am looking at the same from long term point of viewThanks again for your reply
The city Board of Elections has suspended a second administrator at its Brooklyn office in connection with the widespread voter registration irregularities that surfaced on Primary Day last month. Brooklyn deputy clerk Betty Ann Canizio, hired by county Democratic boss Frank Seddio, joined her Republican counterpart on unpaid suspension pending an internal investigation. BOE director Michael Ryan announced the move at a meeting of the agency's commissioners late on Thursday afternoon.

Canizio got a $17,000 raise last year, and was making $120,000 at the time of her suspension. The city Conflict of Interest Board scolded her in late April for making a subordinate drive her to and from work, but declined to fine her because it hadn't publicly stated the rule before. The board previously fined her employee-chauffeur, David Annarummo, $500 for parking illegally in Downtown Brooklyn with a forged BOE placard in his car window.

BOE commissioners suspended the Brooklyn BOE office's Republican clerk Diane Haslett-Rudiano two weeks ago following the glut of polling-place problems and the revelation that 126,000 voters had been purged or rendered inactive in the borough in the six months leading up to the presidential primary. Many of those deactivations appear to have been made in error, as there were widespread reports of voters who had lived and voted in the same place for decades missing from voter lists at polling sites, as well as newly registered voters who met cutoff deadlines, not just in Brooklyn, but citywide.

In addition to the suspensions, Ryan has said the board is investigating how the irregularities came about in the Brooklyn voter rolls. Also, because voters whose names poll workers couldn't find on voter lists cast 121,000 provisional ballots, nearly five times as many as in the 2008 presidential primary, board workers counting the affidavit ballots looked through each person's database entry for signs of irregularity before discounting any ballot, Ryan said. At a meeting on Tuesday, a commissioner said that the "affidavit ballots have been counted and we have an accurate number."

Long Island attorney Jonathan Clarke, who is suing the state and county election boards as part of the group Election Justice USA, said that the lawsuit and a state attorney general investigation seem to have motivated Ryan to go the extra mile in making sure votes are counted and registrations accounted for.

"There's a lot of oversight, and I don't think he wants to run afoul of any of that," Clarke told The Young Turks.

Clarke said he talked over the affidavit review process with Ryan, and though it's unclear exactly how the board decided whether or not to count affidavit ballots, voters can challenge the outcome in court. Voters whose affidavit ballots were rejected are supposed to receive mailed notices explaining the decision, but because the notices may be backed up and the challenge has a 20-day time limit, Clarke encouraged voters to check with their local BOE offices as soon as the votes are certified to find out if their votes had been counted, and said Ryan promised a full accounting to anyone in the city who inquired about his or her affidavit vote. Clarke's group is hoping to assemble a network of lawyers to shepherd voters through the challenge process.



Board of Elections director Michael Ryan, center rear, at a BOE commissioners meeting. (Nathan Tempey/Gothamist)

On Thursday afternoon, administrators from the county offices appeared before the board's commissioners, also appointees of the county political party bosses, to certify the election results. Clarke noted in his interview that the certification process is somewhat ceremonial, and affidavit ballots have been added to the total after the fact in past elections. Still, the ceremony was not without hiccups.

Bronx administrators reported that at PS 1 in the South Bronx, a poll worker's error led to voters in one election district being given ballots for another. Other than that, however, when asked the boilerplate question, "Are there any discrepancies to report to the board," all administrators present answered no, including the two fill-ins sent from the Brooklyn office.

The meeting adjourned twice for long stretches, but for reasons unclear Manhattan's BOE representatives failed to show up, so the votes weren't certified, and the meeting was adjourned till today at 1:30 p.m.

At another recent meeting, Ryan said that affidavit ballots examined so far had shown a "healthy mix of potential real problems as well as, we're finding a chunk of voters that did not necessarily understand the closed primary process in New York." Among the "real problems" we've encountered so far, people's party affiliations seem to have been changed without their input, their registration rendered inactive despite regular voting, their names, addresses, and birth dates typed in incorrectly, and their new voter registration not processed.

The meetings, usually lightly attended, have become tense affairs since the primary, with news photographers taking flash photos, and concerned voters, largely Bernie Sanders supporters, expressing their displeasure with the handling of the election, sometimes dramatically.

In Brooklyn, some of the irregularities seem to trace to a series of errors during database maintenance last year, maintenance that ironically is one of the only known efforts taken by the board to reform itself after a scathing 2013 Department of Investigation report exposed poor training, widespread nepotism, and woefully ill-kept databases. A series of mailers meant to identify dead, moved, or otherwise ineligible voters was supposed to first assess whether someone lived at an address, then if no response was received, to let the occupants at that address know of the board's intent to cancel the registration. Ryan said one of the series of mailers may not have gone out before cancellation.

Had the notices gone out, address spelled out with apartment number and all, their purpose wouldn't necessarily have been readily obvious to their intended recipients. The Campaign Finance Board Voter Assistance annual report explains:

A review of the voter rolls by NYC Votes shows that a large number of voters were changed from active to inactive status on a single day in January 2016, roughly three months before the first federal election on the calendar.

Each of those voters should have received notification from BOE, and been provided with the opportunity to respond and keep their voter record active. [...]It seems obvious that much of the confusion on the day of the primary could have been eliminated with simpler, clearer communications before the election from BOE to voters.

The number of voters made inactive was 88,658, all made inactive on January 13th, which was apparently a recurring date in the temporary voter court set up in the Brooklyn office on Primary Day. The notices look like this:



(Campaign Finance Board)

The Campaign Finance Board again:

The notice sent to newly-inactive voters is printed on plain white paper, with the words CONFIRMATION NOTICE on the front. It is easy to overlook, and does not clearly indicate that a response is required.

The first page of the multi-page mailing fails to clearly explain that a voter received the notice because their registration was marked inactive, while the following page is written in legal language that is inaccessible to the average voter. There is also no deadline provided for when the voter needs to respond.

These mailings should be redesigned so that they stand out to voters and make clear at a glance that action is required.

Also on Thursday afternoon, the City Council voted unanimously to approve three measures to increase access to the polls. One calls for creating a web portal for voters to look up the status of their absentee ballots, registration status, and voting history. Another would require the BOE to send email and text message notifications to voters who supplied their information, including election times, polling locations, deadlines, and links to more information. A third would require the BOE to post signs at former polling places that were used in the last four years, indicating where the new poll sites are.

The BOE's function as a dumping ground for party players rather than computer science majors and logistics professionals is cemented in state law, but Councilman James Vacca, author of the email and text notification bill, said these three bills do a good job of working around the edges.

"The Board of Elections has to be reformed, has to be really, really reformed," he said at the Council hearing. "It needs help. It needs a miracle. But so much of what has to be done has to be done on a state level."

"Were in a technology age," he added. "The Board of Elections has got to get with it."

We couldn't reach Canizio, but she told Brooklyn Daily, "I didn't sign off on anything."

A spokesman for her sponsor Frank Seddio declined to discuss her qualifications.

The BOE did not respond to questions.


Half and Full. (Photos via mrgeneko's flickr and michaelnyc's flickr)

Every year the sun aligns perfectly with the city's grid on four separate occasions, an event first named and noticed by super intelligent human Neil deGrasse Tyson. It is nature's gift to New York City, a testament to our smart grid system, and an obsession of Instagrammers (nee photographers). The few harmonious moments that the Manhattanhenge sunset lasts for really connects our urban terrain to something bigger, and if you can find an intersection to appreciate it in that isn't overrun by people holding up their iPhones, it's beautiful. In fact, deGrasse Tyson has declared it to be "a unique urban phenomenon in the world, if not the universe."

Manhattanhenge really snuck up on us this yearwe hadn't seen any new dates on the AMNH's website, so we reached out to them to make sure it was still happening? That we didn't kill Manhattanhenge with global warming or overdevelopment or something? We have been reassured by the Museum that it is still on, and this morning they gave us the dates and (military) times:

Half Sun

May 29 20:12

July 12 20:20

Full Sun

May 30 20:12

July 11 20:20

As an encore, there will be a Manhattanhenge talk with astrophysicist Jackie Faherty on the 12th, with a special presentation at the Hayden Planetarium.
After months of speculation and little-to-no word from the MTA, top officials finally discussed the details of the forthcoming L train shutdown at the first public meeting on the matter last night. The meeting, held at the Marcy Avenue Armory nearly a mile from the nearest L train station, did not reveal anything that hasn't already been reported about the shutdown: the MTA is now considering two optionsan 18-month, total shutdown, or a three-year partial shutdownand is hoping to come to a decision within the next few months. Neither option would commence until 2019, though the MTA would have to do some nights and weekend work in the run-up to prepare.

As became rapidly apparent throughout last night's meeting, MTA Chairman Tom Prendergast and New York City Transit President Veronique Hakim are leaning heavily toward the 18-month complete shutdown, arguing that it's far more efficient. Doing so would impact 80 percent fewer riders than the three-year option, and the MTA believes that with this option, it could offer incentives to contractors to complete the work in even less time. Under this plan, L service would continue as normal in Brooklyn, but would not run between Bedford Avenue and Manhattan, or at all in Manhattan.

Under the three-year plan, trains would single-track between Brooklyn and Manhattan, stopping every 12-15 minutes at stations between 8th Avenue and Bedford Avenue. There would be no trains between Bedford Avenue and Lorimer Street, but service in Brooklyn past Lorimer Street would remain relatively normal. But under this option, according to Hakim, just one out of every five riders would be able to take the shuttle from Brooklyn into Manhattan. 225,000 people travel between the two boroughs on the L train each day.

"It's crowded now," Hakim pointed. "We are concerned about crowding and how constrained that service would be."

Many of those in attendance wanted to know why, under this three-year option, trains wouldn't run between Bedford Avenue and Lorimer Street. MTA Chief of Operations Planning Peter Cafiero said that's because the shuttles leaving Bedford Avenue would be able to accommodate such a small fraction of those hoping to go into Manhattan, and if passengers were transferring between the L coming from Brooklyn and the Manhattan-bound shuttle, the Bedford Avenue platform would be dangerously overcrowded.

The MTA has officially ruled out what was previously a third optionshutting down service on nights and weekends for up to seven yearsbecause it says that the work that needs to be done would be too disruptive to have L train service up and running in time for rush hour. If trains were shut down for weekends, they wouldn't be ready to go again until the following Tuesday or Wednesday. The Authority is also not considering the construction of a new tunnel, which some in the neighborhood were suggesting, as it says it would simply be too costly and take too much time.

Whichever option the MTA chooses, it says that it will increase capacity on the G, J, and M lines, lengthening G trains in the process. In addition to increasing service on the B39 bus, which goes across the Williamsburg Bridge, it would also like to introduce a new Select Bus Service, which would run across 14th Street in Manhattan and then up to 23rd Street, where the MTA envisions a ferry station that could transport commuters across the East River to and from Williamsburg.

Though last night's meeting was said to begin at 6 p.m., things didn't really get going until 7 p.m.in the interim, attendees were encouraged to look at the Hurricane Sandy-damaged equipment that the MTA brought in to demonstrate the extent of the work that needs to be done.

The first hour of the meeting consisted of presentations from the MTA and speeches from seven elected officialsthe question and answer portion did not commence until past 8 p.m., at which point many of the hundreds of people gathered had left. Attendees were encouraged to write down questions upon their arrival and give them to MTA staff, who in turn passed them to Chief of Staff Donna Evans, who read select questions to Prendergast, Hakim, and the other MTA officials present. By the time the meeting concluded, just past 9 p.m., there were just a handful of people remaining.

"Some of our constituents may or may not yet be convinced, like we were, of the formidable damage that was done to these tubes," said Assemblyman Joseph Lentol. "But let me just say that having been convinced, I am now more than ever convincedthat we have to have a different kind of meeting next time, where not only I get to speak and the other elected officials get to speak, but the community gets to speak."

David Dobosz, who lives near the Graham Avenue station and commutes to Manhattan, was similarly dissatisfied with how the meeting went: he wished that the MTA would have come with more explicit plans for alternate transportation, rather than hypothetical suggestions.

"They're showing us all this rusted stuff like we're supposed to be impressed with their expertise," he said. "But the bottom line is, if they don't provide alternate transportation that can handle the same volume as the L train, all of this is bullshit, one hundred percent. You can't be having 50 buses pile up at the corner of Metropolitan and Union and then trickle through with people being pushed together and crushed. It's insidious."

Dobosz's concern was echoed by many of those who submitted questions read onstage: they wanted to know how a shuttle bus service would accommodate the 225,000 riders who travel between Brooklyn and Manhattan on the L; whether the ferry service the MTA is suggesting could be taken using one's Metrocard; and how increased traffic across the Williamsburg and 59th Street bridges would be handled.

The MTA didn't have any clear answers to any of those questions: it said repeatedly that all shuttle bus and ferry propositions are still hypothetical, and it will need to work with the city to figure out how those would work best.

Prendergast and Hakim also emphasized that the Canarsie tunnel is not in imminent danger of collapse, and that the MTA will meet with every Community Board along the L line in the months leading up to its decision.

For the L Train Coalition, which had been pushing for this public meeting for months, it was a good beginningbut the coalition still wants the MTA to seriously weigh community input in choosing between the 18-month or three-year option. The Coalition is conducting an economic impact survey among residents in North Brooklyn, and would like the MTA to consider that, along with a survey being conducted by the Rider's Alliance, in making its decision.

"Now we move onto the next round, which is really weighing the cost-benefit of transportation alternatives, shutdown alternative planning, and also identifying additional resources that could be brought to the table," said Felice Kirby, one of the Coalition's key organizers. "So many of the other options that could be discussed, like ramping up ferry service, is a different set of infrastructure than what the MTA controls."

Kirby was also heartened by the myriad improvements to other transportation options in North Brooklyn that could come out of this shutdown: increased bus service; the re-opening of previously shuttered subway entrances; ferry service; and increased capacity on the G, M, and J trains, among others.

"I think the big takeaway is, North Brooklyn is not dead, and we may come out of this disaster with some improved transportation that long-time advocates have been fighting for for years," she said.



(Miranda Katz / Gothamist)

Though the MTA says it won't make its decision for another few months after more consultation with the community, it certainly appeared to be heavily pushing the 18-month plan last nightand indeed, may of those who submitted questions and comments that were read onstage seemed in favor of that option as well. Charles, who grew up in Canarsie and currently works as a conductor for the MTA on the A and C lines, said that from a conductor's perspective, the total shutdown is far preferable: single-tracking is a slow and stressful process, he said, and service between Brooklyn and Manhattan would be heavily crowded.

"If they do the 18-month, they can actually do the work that they want to do, without customers being in the way," he said, adding, "I don't envy conductors on the L train right now."

The second public meeting on the L train shutdown will take place next Thursday, May 12th at 5:30 p.m. at the Salvation Army Theatre, at 120 West 14th Street in Manhattan.
If it were possible to go back in time I wouldnt be confident enough to try to change history, but Id sure try to do a better job of recording it.

You may recognize the accompanying photo. It has been around for years, and is one of the most persistent hoaxes in Montana history. I was given a copy in 1990, and at the bottom were the purported names of the individuals in the picture: Wyatt and Morgan Earp, Judge Roy Bean, the Sundance Kid, Theodore Roosevelt and others -- several of them misspelled. Quite a gathering, except it wasnt true.

On the back the sender had written: Copyright 1990, All Rights Reserved, in the hopes of reproducing and selling copies of his amazing discovery.

I figured it would be easy to expose the fake. Although it was obviously not the assemblage of famous or notorious characters in the caption, it was a real photo of a group of men on the porch of Doctor A. J. Hunters Hot Springs Hotel, in Gallatin County.

That photo was dated 1883. Evidently over the years as unwelcome facts eliminated some of the characters, other names and dates were substituted. Ben Greenough was substituted for Alan Pinkerton, founder of the Pinkerton Detective Agency, but Greenough would have been 13 and didnt arrive in Montana until 1886. Butch Cassidy would have been 16. One version of the photo identifies a figure as the Sundance Kid while another identifies him as Bat Masterson.

Should I go on, or are you convinced yet? I wrote to a Theodore Roosevelt historic site in New York. They didnt positively say he couldnt have been at the hot springs, but noted that he did not move West until 1884. He did visit North Dakota for three weeks in September, 1883, coming directly from New York and returning directly there. Also, the photo identifies him as Teddy Roosevelt, but he wasnt called that until the 1890s, so the caption would have been written well after the event.

I also contacted the Judge Roy Bean Visitor Center in Langtry, Texas. The manager replied that they had no information concerning the judges whereabouts in 1883. All the records indicated that he probably did not leave Texas during that year and it was extremely doubtful that he could have been the man in the photo. Perhaps to make up for the loss of Judge Bean, someone had substituted Texas John Slaughter.

The amazing -- and frustrating -- discovery I made was that no matter how many inconsistencies I found, no matter how many figures had to be eliminated by being absent, too young or (even more convincingly) dead, people kept defending the photo and finding excuses. For whatever reason, they really wanted to believe it!

Maybe the date is just wrong, theyd say. Maybe the names got mixed up. Maybe thats not Morgan Earp, but that doesnt mean its not Teddy Roosevelt. Maybe you cant prove Roosevelt and Bean were there, but you cant prove they werent.

Other researchers have worked on the same photo, but every few years it rises from the mists of time, like a zombie, and the discrediting has to begin again.

Perhaps you are wondering why I didnt provide the captions? Every time Ive considered doing this story Ive chickened out, because I didnt want to start another round of Maybes.

After all, it may be my fault: In February, 1990, I got a lead. I called a man in Sugar City, Idaho, who told me that hed learned of the photo from a woman in her late 80s who brought it to the place where he works. Her tale was that her son acquired it from a man who got it around 1925. This man, Jack Teaghman, bought several resort properties in Montana. The photo was in a resort. Teaghman paid someone $100 to come up with some colorful names. Teaghman had since died.

My contact was going to call me after checking on the story with a woman in Pocatello who he believed owned the original.

Why is it my fault? He didnt call and I didnt follow up. Twenty-six years have passed. I found the notes I took during our phone call recently. But it is just possible that all is not lost. Ill call the number on that old note. He may still be there. He may have the whole story.

Maybe!

Lyndel Meikle lives in the Deer Lodge area.
The first wolverine confirmed in North Dakota in nearly 150 years may be the same animal seen near Havre in March, a state wildlife biologist said.

The 30-pound adult male wolverine was shot and killed near Alexander, North Dakota, a town located about 33 miles east of Sidney, Montana, and about 100 miles north west of Dickinson, North Dakota. A ranch hand, Jared Hatter, posted photos to Facebook in late April of the wolverine, saying it was harassing livestock when he shot it.

Hatter did not respond to an interview request.

North Dakota lists wolverines, the largest member of the weasel family, as furbearers with a closed season. But an overriding state law allows ranchers to kill furbearers considered a direct threat to livestock, said state furbearer biologist Stephanie Tucker.

(Hatter) came out to a calving pasture and the cows had surrounded the wolverine and he felt it was a threat, she said.

North Dakota has no breeding population of wolverines, which in the lower 48 typically occupy remote mountainous regions of the Northern Rockies and Cascades. Because wolverines are known to travel long distances and with populations in Montana and Canada, North Dakota maintains the furbearer status and closed season, Tucker said.

Tucker speculated that the wolverine may have come from Montana, and noted a March report from a Hingham-area rancher of a wolverine traveling across a stubble field.

It could be the same individual -- its not often for these things to take off across the prairie. The fact one was seen in northeast Montana before one turned up here, the odds are greater its the same individual than two individuals at the same time, Tucker said.

If it is the same animal, it traveled more than 350 miles in a little fewer than two months, but wolverines are no stranger to long-distance journeys.

Researchers tracked a lone male in 2009 as it traveled more than 500 miles from northwest Wyoming to Colorado, making it the first wolverine documented in that state in nearly a century.

In another well publicized case, a wolverine detected in 2008 on a motion activated camera in California was the first documented since 1922. DNA analysis linked the animal to a source population in Idaho, about 500 miles away.

Biologists plan to take a DNA sample from the North Dakota wolverine with the goal of determining its source population, but no DNA was gathered from the Havre-area animal to compare.

If the pelt is of taxidermy quality, the state will mount the wolverine for educational purposes, Tucker said.

Although the state receives sporadic reports of wolverine sightings, the last verified North Dakota wolverine dates back to fur trading records circa 1870. The wolverines smaller cousin, the fisher, which has expanded its range in recent years, may account for some false identifications, Tucker said.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service declined in 2014 to list wolverines under the Endangered Species Act citing a lack of data on how predicted climate-driven loss of spring snowpack will impact the weasel. A federal judge recently ruled in favor of environmental groups who sued, ordering the agency to re-evaluate its decision.
BILLINGS -- If grizzly bears are delisted and hunting is authorized, Montanas season will be so restrictive that the state will not allow the shooting of any bear traveling with another bear to avoid killing a female.

The take-home for the hunting season is that it would be very conservative and designed to limit the harvest of females, said John Vore, Fish, Wildlife and Parks Game Management Bureau chief.

To that end, season dates would also be designed to protect females. Since sows with cubs emerge from dens later in the spring and go into hibernation earlier in the fall than males, Montana is proposing its spring season to run between March 15 and April 20 and the fall season between Nov. 10 and Dec. 15.

The rough outline of the proposed season, mandated by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, is contained in an agenda item for next Thursdays Fish and Wildlife Commission meeting, which will start at 8 a.m. in FWPs Helena headquarters.

Montanans have not hunted grizzly bears since 1991. The animals were listed as a threatened species in 1975 and were protected under the Endangered Species Act.

Who hunts

Whether to even hold a grizzly hunting season will be decided at the end of each year. At that time wildlife officials from Montana, Wyoming and Idaho will review all grizzly bear mortalities, from natural deaths to collisions with cars and bears removed for killing livestock. If the mortalities exceed certain preset limits, no season will be held.

If there is an allowed harvest it would be split among the three states, likely with Wyoming having a larger take because it contains more Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem grizzly bear habitat, Vore explained. Montana contains 27 percent of the GYEs grizzly habitat.

The tristate harvest limits would be hammered out each year by wildlife officials from the states.

Vore said there would be no attempt in Montana to allow hunters to remove whats known as management bears, those that are causing problems. That was tried in the past and met criticism for not being a fair-chase hunt and therefore unsportsmanlike.

Opposition

Jane Goodall, the noted African chimpanzee researcher, is the latest to add her voice to a chorus of opponents to a GYE grizzly bear hunt.

Their future isnt secure yet, because they face so many threats to their survival, she said in an email released by the Humane Society.

Goodall is among 58 scientists who submitted a letter to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Thursday objecting to the agencys proposal to remove protection for GYE grizzlies. Public comment is being taken on the USFWS proposal until May 10. Critics have said the agencys 60-day comment period is too brief to review all of the voluminous documents.

Hunt units

Montana would carve its portion of the Greater Yellowstone grizzly bear habitat into seven management units that would range east from the Montana-Idaho border to Butte, and then south to the Wyoming border and include the Beartooth Mountains. Each unit will have its own harvest quota. If the quota is reached the unit would be closed.

We dont want a whole bunch of bears coming out of any one place, Vore explained.

Other restrictions Montana has proposed include: Making it illegal to take a bear in its den; a mandatory hunter orientation course for license holders; a 12-hour reporting period for harvests and mandatory check within two days; and the closure of a season would occur within 24 hours of reaching either the female quota or the male quota.

Licenses

A Montana grizzly bear license would cost $150, $1,000 for nonresidents. But in most years it would be unlikely that any nonresident licenses would be issued since they are only given out at a rate of 10 percent of the resident licenses issued.

The licenses would be issued through a drawing. Anyone drawing a grizzly license would have to wait another seven years to apply again. If a hunter shot a grizzly it is a once-in-a-lifetime trophy, the hunter would not be allowed to apply for a license in Montana again.

These are very conservative regulations with a capital V, Vore said.

Any hunting season is also reliant on the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services pending decision, which is likely to be challenged in court by wildlife advocates. So Montanas first grizzly bear hunting season in decades could still be a long ways off, if ever.

Public comment on FWPs proposed season will be taken at the Thursday commission meeting and remain open through 5 p.m. on June 17. The commission will take final action on the grizzly bear hunting proposals at its July meeting.
DECATUR  Archer Daniels Midland Co. is moving into position for future success despite challenges facing the agriculture industry in the past year.

A leading part of its focus going forward is developing its specialty food ingredients business as it attempts to deliver nutrition to a growing and changing world, ADM Chairman, President and CEO Juan Luciano said Thursday during the company's annual shareholder meeting at the James Randall Research Center in Decatur.

As we continue to evolve, we are remaining true to our heritage, Luciano said. We are proud of our history of innovation and growth.

ADM now has one of the broadest product portfolios in the $50 billion food ingredients industry, Luciano said. Goals from its purchase in 2014 of the Wild Flavors business are being met, he said.

Luciano said ADM is increasingly building its natural ingredients portfolio while remaining profitable. Wild Flavors recorded its most profitable year ever in 2015, Luciano said.

It was the most significant portfolio transformation in company history, Luciano said. We want to become an innovation partner of choice for the food and beverage industry. Consumer trends change fast and we must adjust our portfolio to remain relevant to customers.

Luciano sees Decatur being at the center of innovation in the food industry. He said ADM is supporting the development of National Foodworks Services as it transform the nearby former Brush College School building into a food business incubator with state of the art equipment to support product development and packaging.

ADM's board of directors met in the National Foodworks Services building prior to the meeting with shareholders. The two businesses are partnering to sponsor the Food Innovation Challenge, with proposals from food entrepreneurs in Illinois, Iowa, Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri, Michigan and Wisconsin due May 16.

ADM is further supporting Decatur with $2 million of a total $10 million pledged to organizations from ADM Cares going to projects in the local community, Luciano said.

The company is moving ahead with its transformation efforts focused on optimizing its existing business, driving operational efficiencies and looking for cost savings, he said. Luciano said it has identified $1 billion in potential cost savings opportunities.

We are now working to implement those and identify others, Luciano said.

ADM spent $1.1 billion on projects in 2015 to create value for the company while returning $2.7 billion to shareholders, he said.

The board has now declared a cash dividend in 338 consecutive quarters spanning 84 years.

During the meeting, Debra Sandler was elected to the board, joining its 11 incumbent members. Sandler most recently served as chief health and wellbeing officer at Mars, after working as chief consumer officer and president of Mars Chocolate North America. She previously held senior leadership positions at Johnson & Johnson and PepsiCo.
DECATUR  The onetime face of Archer Daniels Midland Co. in the community who died earlier this week is being praised for what he did to benefit the agriculture industry.

Martin L. Andreas, known as Marty to most, retired in 2005 as senior adviser to the chief executive after nearly 35 years with the company. Andreas was never the official leader of the agribusiness giant, but his role was seen as instrumental to gathering support for ADM's interests around the world.

Andreas, 77, died Monday at the Dennis and Donna Oldorf Hospice House of Mercy in Hiawatha, Iowa, which is near Cedar Rapids.

Andreas moved to Solon, another small town in the Cedar Rapids area, after retiring from ADM. He was a member of the Andreas family, which left a legacy leading the company with a number of family members in executive roles.

Notably, Marty Andreas was the nephew of longtime CEO Dwayne Andreas and cousin to onetime Chairman and CEO G. Allen Andreas.

Current Chairman, President and CEO Juan Luciano acknowledged Andreas' death in remarks Thursday during the company's annual meeting at the James Randall Research Center in Decatur.

Marty's tireless advocacy on behalf of ADM and American agriculture was without equal, Luciano said. ADM and our industry are tremendously grateful for his service. On behalf of all of us at ADM, I want to extend condolences to his family, friends and many former colleagues here today.

During his career working for ADM, Andreas was a founding member in 1981 of the Renewable Fuels Association. He served on the trade group's board of directors for more than 25 years as it represented the ethanol industry.

We remember him as a visionary leader, an unabashed optimist and a generous soul who cared deeply about value-added agriculture generally and ethanol specifically, RFA President and CEO Bob Dinneen said. Marty Andreas was one of the giants of the U.S. ethanol industry. It is without hyperbole or exaggeration that I say the industry would not be the success it is today without Marty's vision, commitment and advocacy.

Andreas' involvement started when President Jimmy Carter gathered agribusiness together to challenge them to produce a domestic renewable fuel in the midst of the oil crisis in the 1970s, Dinneen said. He said ADM accepted the challenge, relying on Andreas to build a market from nothing.

Andreas' involvement continued into the early 2000's to challenge the industry to strive for a much larger share of the U.S. motor fuel market, which Dinneen said helped to create the political momentum for the Renewable Fuel Standard.

Marty Andreas will be missed, Dinneen said. But his legacy remains with each gallon of ethanol produced to enhance U.S. energy, economic and environmental security.

Andreas' career started in 1970 as Executive Vice President of Corn Sweeteners, a business in Cedar Rapids he started with his father, Albert, that would be sold to ADM 3 years later.

He was there later in that decade when ADM embraced the high fructose corn syrup industry and the product became an integral ingredient for American soft drinks.

Andreas later worked as president of ADM's Corn Division and held several executive positions, including director of corporate marketing. He was seen as the public face of ADM, helping to orchestrate the Million Flower Project community beautification project in Decatur and attending events to mingle with local business people.

Andreas was noted for sending out photocopies of company news to colleagues all over the country.

After retiring, Andreas spent another year as a consultant to the company in the areas of energy and government affairs. He worked as president of his family's stock investment business and was involved with civic and business projects while serving on the boards of Mount Mercy College in Cedar Rapids and Trees Forever in Marion.
DECATUR -- The Decatur Civic Center was a sea of blue Thursday.

More specifically, a sea of blue buckets from Lowes that seemed to be attached to every arm of those attending the annual Greater Decatur Chamber of Commerces Business Expo and Taste of Decatur.

More than 400 buckets were given out at the Lowes booth, said Lennie Lourash, an project specialist-interiors at the Forsyth location. As for why they decided on buckets, ProServices Associate Sandy Carver said its an item that people can remember to use after the expo ends.

With a bag, theyll be put away in a drawer and no one is going to see or remember them, she said.

Buckets were just one of the ways that the more than 100 vendors and exhibitors at the center hoped to endear themselves to those who came to the annual small business showcase. This year's event coincided with Small Business Week.

Land of Lincoln Credit Union decided to toy around visitors.

As people walked into the Expo, one of the first sights was the potential trip down nostalgia road: a row of Legos and the encouragement to create their own "mini version" of themselves out of the available pieces.

Though toys and banking may not seem to go hand-in-hand, marketing and culture manager Brandy Bockewitz said there was a connection.

Were here to help them build business. So building business, building Legos, it just made sense, she said.

Chamber President Mirinda Rothrock was excited to see the mix of businesses participating in the Expo, which sold out its various events including the Taste, State of the City Breakfast and Preview Party.

The Taste was once again a highlight of the day, attracting the usual crowd of hungry visitors anxious to try a mix of new and familiar food offerings.

The owners of Just Wingin' It didn't have high expectations going into the Taste other than providing samples of its jumbo chicken wings and creating more awareness about its carry out and delivery business, which Mikal Ritchey started along with Elizabeth Batchelor in January.

Mikal Ritchey ended up coming away very excited about the result as a panel of judges selected Just Wingin' It as the winner of the Taste.

The food offered Thursday was no different than what customers will get if they visit the restaurant at 1510 E. Pershing Road, manager Brittiny Ritchey said.

We winged it, Brittiny Ritchey said. That is exactly what we did. This was a big step for us. We reached out to a lot of people.

Among the guests to celebrate the day was Gov. Bruce Rauner, who walked through the exhibit floor to shake hands and make small talk with various vendors.

Small business success is the key to high quality of life for all the people of Illinois, he said.

Rothrock said having Rauner interested in attending the event was a great opportunity to celebrate Small Business Week.

Where better than to do that than the Business Expo surrounded by so many hard working small business people, Rothrock said. We have over 100 businesses here, over half of which are locally owned.

Rothrock said having the governor's attention can benefit the businesses as the Chamber tries to advocate on their behalf and, in turn, make the community stronger.

Rauner didn't leave empty-handed, as a man draped in a Lowe's vest made sure the governor left Decatur with a Lowe's bucket.

Maybe I can put my coffee in this, Rauner said.
DECATUR  In her first State of the City address, Mayor Julie Moore Wolfe declared that Decatur is stronger today than ever.

But the mayor also said her glasses were not so rose-colored as to ignore its challenges.

Speaking at the breakfast that traditionally opens the Greater Decatur Chamber of Commerce Business Expo, Moore Wolfe said recent announcements, though painful, should not overshadow Decatur's strong recovery and recent period of growth.

Her remarks came two days after the news that Kmart will close its Decatur location, and Caterpillar Inc.'s plans to consolidate its mining and technology division in Arizona will result in the loss of jobs in Decatur.

I believe in Decatur, she said. I believe in the business community. I believe in the workers. I believe in you, the people of this community. I believe  I know Decatur is great, and we are only going to get greater together.

Moore Wolfe highlighted investments in the community over the past 15 months, from Millikin University's $27 million University Commons project to several restaurants that will open this summer, including Sonic.

City and Macon County leaders pledged earlier this year to work together on lobbying for two large transportation-related projects: an overpass at Brush College Road and the Macon County beltway.

Moore Wolfe said cooperation between the city, county, the Economic Development Corporation of Decatur and Macon County and the Chamber to identify and advocate for the same projects is crucial.

We're not asking for a handout. We're not asking for a bailout. We are asking for the tools to be an economic success, she said.

City Manager Tim Gleason reiterated the importance of bolstering the city's aging infrastructure. The Decatur City Council approved a local motor fuel tax earlier this year, and in prior years has supported measures to pay for sewer and storm water improvements, as well as the $91 million Lake Decatur dredging project.

One of the biggest complaints we hear is about the condition of our streets, that we haven't been able to fund any real street repair work in years because of finances.  You're going to start to see real results soon, Gleason said.

In a panel discussion led by radio personality Brian Byers, community leaders emphasized their optimism about the city's direction and steps already taken toward future success.

Ryan McCrady, president of the EDC, compared the city's progress over several years to building a house, something he used to do with his father.

They'd work all day on the foundation, but the progress was not always visible. His mother would show up with dinner and ask what they had been doing.

The foundation in this case is infrastructure. Sewer and road projects may not be glamorous or exciting, but they are necessary to attract new businesses and promote growth for those that are here, he said.

These are the foundation builders, and they need your encouragement, McCrady said of the city leaders.

The breakfast also marked the launch of a new group for young professionals that will operate through the Chamber.

Paula Heinkel, community relations coordinator for Ameren Illinois, announced that Decatur Emerging Leaders would seek to provide social networking, professional development and community service opportunities.

Heinkel was part of a group through the Decatur Leadership Institute that worked on developing the concept last year.

The whole idea is to give somebody a well-rounded view of Decatur and a well-rounded offering of activities, she said.

The target age range is 20 to 40, but there is no age cutoff, Heinkel said, nor any requirements about what type of job makes someone a professional.

Those who are interested can visit the Chamber's website, www.decaturchamber.com, or contact decaturemergingleaders@gmail.com.
Holy comic books, Batman! This could be your chance to find out what you've been missing.

A new Decatur business, Geeking Out Comics, is celebrating the national Free Comic Book Day promotion Saturday designed to introduce audiences to the joys of comic book reading.

Geeking Out will have a range of free contemporary comic books available at its business, located at 2924 N. Martin Luther King Jr. Drive, which is just across the road from the Jackson Ford dealership. The store will be open from noon to 8 p.m and customers can choose up to five comics per person, while supplies last.

Geeking Out owner, John Wise, said he carries everything from valuable vintage comics dating back to the 1960s to modern issues and his customers include many collectors. But Wise is also keen to support the aims of Free Comic Book Day and draw in new readers and future collectors.

I'll get parents in here who have never had their kid in a comic book store but they want them to pick up a book and read something, said Wise, who said comics were a traditional on-ramp to the world of literature.

His store, open for eight months, also sells vintage action figures and toys and hosts regular game sessions: Dungeons & Dragons on Friday nights and random board game nights on Thursdays. Geeking Out Comics is open noon until 7 p.m. Tuesday through Friday, noon to 8 p.m Saturday and noon to 5 p.m. Sunday.

Call (217) 848-6448 or go to www.geekingoutcomics.com.

***

Dollar General will celebrate the recent opening of its new store at 780 N. Sunnyside Road with prizes and special deals starting at 8 a.m. Saturday, May 7.

Hours are 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily. For more, visit www.dollargeneral.com or call (217) 615-0874.

***

Consolidated Communications Holdings, Inc. has entered into an agreement to acquire Champaign Telephone Co. and its sister company, Big Broadband Services, a private business communications provider in the Champaign-Urbana area.

Consolidated President and Chief Executive Officer Bob Udell said the acquisition will add 275 fiber route miles and 310 fiber-lit buildings to the Mattoon-based company's fiber network, which extends to Champaign.

Udell said this acquisition is a great fit for Consolidated's focus on expanding its fiber network and commercial services.

Champaign Telephone Co. began in 1984 as a small PBX provider and has grown into a regional provider of internet, voice, metro ethernet, and hosted VoIP services.

Consolidated also has entered into an agreement with Mutual Telephone Co. of Sioux Center, Iowa, and Winnebago Cooperative Telecom Association to divest its Heartland Telecommunications Co. of Iowa in order for Consolidated to focus on its core regions.
OMAHA, Neb. (AP) -- Skyler Slaven grabbed granola bars and fruit cups from a small closet in an auditorium room at Ralston High School and tossed them into a plastic grocery bag.

Omaha World-Herald reports that five long shelves that used to hold homecoming decorations are now fully stocked with hundreds of nonperishable items and toiletries such as canned vegetables, toiletries, breakfast cereals, boxed pasta dinners and dessert mixes, and they're all free for students.

Skyler's single mom works as a nurse and has three teenage kids who are constantly devouring food.

"It helps a little bit," said Skyler, 14, a freshman. Her mother "thought it was cool. She told me to get healthy food."

The "R Pantry" opened in mid-January and is available to all students, who can shop after school on Fridays. Though the idea was sparked by one Ralston student, teens in three school clubs banded together to fill shelves, spread the word and request donations to help their fellow classmates.

Schools often hold canned food drives or collect money to donate to organizations and help needy families. Ralston's pantry, however, is one of the few in the Omaha metro area that coordinate efforts within the school to provide aid to the district's own students.

Nearly 45 percent of Ralston High students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch; that's the biggest percentage in the metro area after Omaha Public Schools high schools.

"If you're hungry, you're focusing on being hungry, not learning, which is what we're at school to do," said organizer Nate Johnson, 18. "If we can reduce that for a lot of people, that's a good thing."

The idea arose in December, and students from three clubs -- National Honor Society, Student Council and FAIR: Fairness, Acceptance, Identity and Respect -- asked for donations from fellow students, teachers, staff, parents and alumni.

One administrator brings 12 half-gallon jugs of milk every week. Hy-Vee Supermarket in Ralston gives six boxes of various food items each week. An alum in the Kansas City area sent a check to the school.

"I've had people tell me that it's really heartwarming to see that their community is coming together to do something like this," said sophomore and FAIR member Amarra Rysedorph, 16.

About 40 kids shopped on the first Friday the pantry was open, and 40 on the second Friday. Teachers monitor the store and help students locate food or gather items into plastic bags, along with recommending that students take at least one healthful meal.

"They were kind of, like, 'Is this real? I don't have to pay for this?'?" said secondary French teacher DenA Oglesby. "It's good for them to see that there's some parts of reality that might not always be so harsh."

Deodorant, bread, pasta, spaghetti sauce, peanut butter and cereal were popular choices.

Toiletries were a surprising need, teachers said. One student took a toothbrush -- the first new one in three years. Another grabbed a jar of peanut butter and a loaf of bread and excitedly told teachers the plan was to eat all weekend.

Ralston is not alone in helping to provide groceries to students.

Lincoln North Star High School holds an open market in the hallways once a month.

In a partnership with the Lincoln Food Bank, students, families and teachers can choose fruits, vegetables and canned food. The market is in its fifth year and helps about 130 people per month, representing anywhere from 500 to 700 family members, Principal Vann Price said.

"There's no stigma. I haven't noticed that students are making fun of anyone," Price said. "It's my hope that it will continue for as long as it possibly can, because it's been a very positive thing in our building."

Westside Community Schools have had a food and toiletry pantry for more than 20 years and it is open to any family in the district. The 300-square-foot pantry is located near Westside High School and each month serves about 50 families, which typically shop every two weeks.

Students hold food drives to collect items for the pantry while teachers and administrators can give a few dollars on certain days to wear jeans.

Within OPS, schools work with outside organizations to provide services to kids.

The Food Bank for the Heartland helps 42 OPS schools, nearly half the district -- by giving students backpacks full of food for the weekend.

At Field Club Elementary, nonprofit Completely Kids and the food bank help 188 kids with meals.

"It's about networking, being connected to where we can find the most appropriate help based on the needs," said Principal Barbara Wild.

The Ralston pantry could extend hours or offer clothing in the future, and students might make reusable bags out of T-shirts that R Pantry shoppers can use.
DECATUR  After a witness saw the driver of a green Ford Taurus drive away after colliding with another vehicle, he called 911, followed the car and stayed on the phone until that car stopped running as a result of the crash.

Cortez L. Cook, 25, of Decatur, who was on probation for driving with a revoked licence, was arrested a few minutes later and booked into the Macon County Jail. He is being held on $30,000 bond on charges that include leaving the scene of an accident/injuries and possession of cannabis.

At 3:40 p.m. Wednesday, Cook was driving north on 32nd Street, when he entered the intersection of East Faries Parkway, coming from a stop sign onto the road with the right of way.

The car collided with a westbound vehicle on Faries Parkway.

The other driver suffered injuries and was transported to Decatur Memorial Hospital via Decatur Ambulance Service, said a probable cause affidavit by Decatur patrol officer Eric Havens. Cortez left the scene of the accident without stopping to check on the other vehicle or give any contact or insurance information.

The witness followed Cook as he fled from the scene.

Cortez's vehicle finally quit running due to extensive front end damage at the intersection of 24th and Logan Street, Havens wrote.

Officers arrested Cook at 3:48 p.m.

A search of the car turned up a plastic baggie containing less than 2.5 grams of cannabis.

It had to be mine but I haven't smoked for a week, Cook told police, the officer's statement noted.

Cook was convicted July 9 of felony driving while his license was revoked or suspended with a prior conviction of driving while his license was revoked or suspended. He was sentenced to 24 months of probation.

He was convicted of two other felonies since 2011, including a 2012 conviction for driving under the influence of a drug, for which he was sentenced to three years in the Illinois Department of Corrections.

Cook is due in court for his arraignment by Thursday.
The tweets and emails started immediately after Donald Trump's victory Tuesday night:

"You've got a promise to keep, bub."

"Get ready to eat it."

"EAT IT!!!"

To them, I say: Con gusto.

Seven months ago I said I would eat an entire column, newsprint and ink, if Trump won the nomination, calculating that Republican voters were better than Trump. The Republican voters let me down: Though a majority didn't support him, enough did, and no viable alternative arose.

But you, the reader, have revived my faith in America. I put out a call for recipes and you responded, via Twitter, Facebook, email and the comments section. Through the magic of crowdsourcing, I have discovered that eating newspaper can be downright mouth-watering. This is going to be huge! We are going to build a big, beautiful meal  and Mexico is going to pay for it.

On Thursday, May 12, after readers have voted for their favorite newspaper cuisine, acclaimed chef Victor Albisu of Washington's Del Campo restaurant will select and prepare a wide variety of newsprint-based dishes. Tom Sietsema, The Washington Post's James Beard Award-winning food critic, will be on hand to taste and judge the dishes, and I will eat them; streamed live on the Post's Facebook page.

I've dispensed with the unhelpful suggestions from readers that I consume my column with hemlock, cyanide or excrement. And though I appreciate all the Hannibal Lecter references, I won't be eating the column with fava beans and a nice Chianti, nor will I be eating it with crow (it's out of season), although Robert Howland, a psychiatry professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, suggested a crow-free crow pie that sounds tasty.

Many readers proposed ways to get the paper down painlessly: Blended in smoothies. Folded into bearnaise, marinara or jerk sauce. Wrapped in bacon. Topped with Sriracha, mustard or ketchup. Or shredded and mixed with Parmesan cheese.

Reader "Mhitchons" posited that "newsprint dissolves well in scotch, bourbon, whiskey or any other potent alcohol." Mary Ann Liebert suggested "mustard or vodka. Maybe both."

"NotDeadYet" suggested jalapeno-infused tequila blanco, and Nathan A. Wallace thought a Grand Marnier, flambe style. But the many suggestions that I pair the meal with Trump wine give me indigestion.

A large number of readers said eating the newspaper in any form but raw would be cheating. "Man up! No sneaky dodging!" argued Jeffrey Drummond.

I disagree. There's no reason why a newspaper shouldn't go down easily. In addition to Albisu's original suggestion -- newspaper chilaquiles in tomatillo-jalapeno sauce, crispy newspaper dumplings, saffron rice and newspaper-smoked lamb, newspaper-lined tacos, ground newspaper falafel, newspaper Wagyu steak, candied-newspaper waffles and newspaper-stuffed churros -- there are many other promising dishes to consider for this feast.

Joe Yonan, the Post's food editor, suggests a "cold minty pea-and-newspaper soup" with Greek yogurt, feta and chives.

Bonnie Benwick, the deputy food editor, proposes "op-ed spring rolls" with dipping sauce.

John Bussey, my old editor at the Wall Street Journal, suggests a "fresh vegetable soup, generously seasoned with garlic and herbs and reduced on a low flame for one news cycle."

Sara Polon, otherwise known as "Soupergirl," a Washington soupmaker, submits an "Indian-style mulligatawny with toasted newspaper."

Probably the most creative recipe came from Shava Nerad via Twitter -- ersatzbrot, a bread made with sawdust fed to German soldiers in World War I.

Several readers -- "JC," "CalithDem" and Roy Wakefield among them -- went with the British classic of fish and chips, while many others -- including Emmanuel Touhey, Becky Timmons and Dan Grosz -- thought meatloaf would be the right choice.

Linda Garceau sent me a recipe, in French, for fish cooked in newspaper, but it appears the removal instructions -- "degager le papier" -- disqualify the dish. And Douglas Peterson took great care in emailing a highly detailed recipe for Trump steaks (18 column inches Washington Post shredded in 3-inch strips, 1/2 -inch wide).

Nearly every world cuisine was represented: German beef and newspaper cabbage rolls (Mark Gibson), a Louisville newspaper Hot Brown (Mark Linton), blueberry newspaper pancakes (David Umansky), newspaper matzo brei (Adam Wizon), newspaper lasagna (Andrea Stone), newspaper spanakopita (William Hamby) and Trumpkin pie with newspaper and yams ("MArlington Thomas").

Among the most popular comments was from "ACounter," who suggested soaking the newspaper in water first "to get as many of the chemicals out as possible. And before you eat the soaked paper, don't forget to soak yourself -- in your favorite alcoholic beverage."

Unnecessary. These newsprint dishes will be delectable. But another six months of Trump? That will require a stiff drink.
New Braunfels, TX (78130)

Today

Overcast. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. High near 90F. Winds S at 15 to 25 mph..

Tonight

Thunderstorms early, then becoming mostly clear after midnight. Potential for severe thunderstorms. Low 56F. SSW winds shifting to NW at 15 to 25 mph. Chance of rain 70%.
A UW-Madison student nicknamed "Vikings Fan" was part of a Snapchat courtship that has been getting national attention.
Share your opinion on this topic by sending a letter to the editor to tctvoice@madison.com. Include your full name, hometown and phone number. Your name and town will be published. The phone number is for verification purposes only. Please keep your letter to 250 words or less.
Ald. Mark Clear, left, helped defeat a resolution authored by Mayor Paul Soglin, right, calling on the U.S. Senate to act on the nomination of Merrick Garland to the U.S. Supreme Court, which is an issue in the race between Republican Sen. Ron Johnson and Russ Feingold. Soglin is supporting Feingold. Also shown is Ald. David Ahrens.
Amy Goodman and Denis Moynihan: Rest in peace, Dan Berrigan  just as you lived
When her doctor told her the cancer was leaving her about eight months to live in January, Joy Pecha was understandably devastated. There were so many things she still wanted to do.

Pecha, a resident of Aggies Country Living in Eagleton, and Aggies director Sheena Fransway discussed how to make the most of her time.

The two things closest to Pechas heart were simple: Spend time with her daughter, Anna Seyller, and go fishing.

On Friday, Pecha heads to Key West, Fla., for a four-day weekend with her daughter and their friend Emilee Beaudette thanks to the Dream Foundation. It is a nationwide organization based in Santa Barbara, California, that delivers dreams to terminally ill adults.

Its so special, Pecha said. My daughter and I can spend maybe some last quality time together because when she visits its usually just for a day. I hope we can laugh and make memories.

On April 27, a Dream Foundation volunteer from their corporate partnership, Genetec, delivered a package and cake to Pecha at Aggies. They had a small celebration with the eight other residents and staff.

While Pecha knew Fransway applied for the dream  there was a lot of paperwork involved and they needed Pechas consent  Fransway kept it a secret she had been accepted until the foundation arrived at their doorstep.

It was such a surprise, Pecha said. I mean, the dream was, but for them to take the time to send someone here with a cake and all these goodies for the trip, it was amazing.

The dream basket included sunscreen, chocolate, a shell necklace, beach blanket and other goodies to use while in Key West as well as an ocean-themed cake that read Have a great trip, Joy! The Dream Foundation paid for the hotel, a non-stop flight for her and Seyller and even gave Pecha spending money to use while shes there.

Though she doesnt have the strength she used to, and shell be traveling in her wheelchair, she still hopes to get in some fishing time off the pier. Its been at least five years since shes reeled one in, and she looks forward to having the opportunity again.

Beaudette, a close family friend and currently in the medical field, and Seyller will serve as her caregivers if anything should happen.

Fransway said she really wanted to give Pecha everything she could in these last few months, and the look on her face when she saw the dream package made it completely worth it.

Even the residents had tears in their eyes, we were all just so happy for her, Fransway said. I just knew I had to do something special for her, and this was the big thing she wanted to do.

She knows having those quality moments with friends and family are extra important right now, and shes thrilled to lift Pechas spirits in a sometimes difficult time.

Fransway opened the assisted living home in honor of her grandmother, who was also a cancer patient and passed away in February. Its her goal to give all her residents the extra-special care she would have wanted her grandmother to have.

Its kind of like we have a little family here because we are smaller and we all connect so well, Fransway said. Joys brought a lot of positive energy. Shes very optimistic, especially given her situation.

The Dream Foundation has provided dreams to nearly 25,000 dreamers, Dani Cordaro, Dream Foundations PR coordinator, said the organization hasnt turned away a single qualified resident in the almost 25 years of its existence.

Dreamers have to be 18 years old and been given a life expectancy of 12 months or less to qualify. Like Pecha, the foundation always puts together a small package to deliver.

Its just a celebration to really get our dreamers excited about it and to involve community and volunteers, Cordaro said. It provides inspiration, comfort and closure for these adults and their families at the end of their life, and we feel thats really important.

That couldnt be more true for Pecha, who gets to spend quality time with her daughter and enjoy a hobby shes always loved under the warm Florida sunshine this weekend.
A Baraboo man is facing child porn charges following a raid on his home by state investigators Tuesday.

The criminal complaint against 27-year-old Jermayne S. Webley says agents with the Wisconsin Department of Justices Division of Criminal Investigation entered his Grand Canyon Drive apartment near Lake Delton and confiscated several hard drives and a computer.

Investigators allege that they found videos and images that depicted young boys engaged in sexual acts on the devices.

When interviewed by a DCI agent, Webley allegedly said he downloads pornography through a file sharing system called Bearshare, and that his mass downloads often contain child pornography.

Webley reported viewing child pornography depicting children in their teens, the complaint states. He described child pornography as being taboo, but believes it was acceptable for him to possess because he is not a child molester and because he does not share it with others.

Webley has been charged with four felony counts of child pornography possession, a charge that carries a maximum penalty of 25 years in prison and $100,000 in fines. He has been jailed on a $5,000 cash bond and is due to appear in Sauk County Circuit Court on June 10.
In a unanimous vote Thursday evening, the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse Faculty Senate supported a resolution of no-confidence in the UW System Board of Regents and the systems president, Ray Cross.

The UW-L Faculty Senate joins UW-Madisons Faculty Senate, which voted no-confidence in the board and Cross at their meeting on Monday. UW-L is basing its resolution on one passed by UW-River Falls. The senates executive committee will write the resolution, which will replace references of UW-RF with UW-L, and will also include a copy of the UW-Madison resolution, releasing the final version sometime today.

UW-Milwaukee is expected to discuss a similar resolution at a faculty senate meeting on Tuesday.

During discussion of the no-confidence vote, UW-L faculty senate member Adrienne Loh said she supported the resolution, even though she felt it will probably be ignored by those in power at the Capitol. The resolution is about the process, she said, and raising voices in solidarity across the UW System.

There is a lot that we disagree with what is going on, she said. There is strength in numbers. There is power in saying as a system we disagree with the process.

Faculty member Joseph Anderson said the state disinvestment in higher education over the past several years has been atrocious. Legislators and other leaders are not listening to the most important voices in the system on topics such as tenure and shared governance.

These are things we hold near and dear, he said. The state should also hold them near and dear.

Other senate faculty members voiced their own concerns about tenure and faculty governance, citing fears that anything they decide to do at the campus level will be overwritten by those in power in Madison.

After the resolution passed at UW-Madison, Cross released a statement disagreeing with the facultys actions. Assembly Majority Leader Jim Steineke, R-Kaukauna, has defended Cross and the Regents and criticized faculty in Madison for bringing the no confidence vote.

This action ... shows an arrogance that doesnt serve the university or its students well, he told reporters at the Wisconsin State Journal. Its a clear example of the complete disconnect between UW-Madison faculty who seem to expect their job to come with a forever guarantee and the average Wisconsin family struggling just to make ends meet.

UW-L Chancellor Joe Gow said after the vote the resolution was quite a surprise. He hadnt known about the vote and was unable to attend the faculty senate meeting.

No-confidence votes are usually taken in order to change leadership in an organization, he said, and he didnt believe these efforts would do anything to remove Cross or any of the current members of the Board of Regents.

I am not sure what these resolutions are seeking to have happen, he said, later adding, I would have preferred our faculty pass a resolution calling for stronger budget advocacy. I think that is a constructive direction and something we need to do.

Next year is a budget year for the Legislature, and Gow has not been optimistic in his predictions of the sessions outcome. Last year, the UW System was cut $250 million, which resulted in staffing cuts and expense reductions at UW-L.

Gow said he felt that the changes made to tenure and shared governance would not make a huge difference at UW-L, and said he has committed to continue collaborating with faculty, students and staff after last years changes.

That is what makes this university successful, he said.
Columnists often play recurring melodies. Just following up on a few of my own tunes

On solar energy in Wisconsin: I wrote recently about solar energys growth in Wisconsin, where 2015 investments in solar projects were 70 percent higher than the previous year.

Were not alone under the sun. The U.S. Department of Energy reported this week that wind turbines and solar panels accounted for more than two-thirds of all electric generation capacity added to the nations grid in 2015. The remaining third was largely power plants fueled by natural gas, which has become cheap and plentiful as a result of hydraulic fracturing.

It was the second straight year U.S. investment in renewable energy projects has outpaced that of fossil fuels. The energy agency predicts robust renewables growth in 2016, as well.

On WARFs new director: A column in late March introduced Erik Iverson, the Moorhead, Minnesota, native who will become managing director of the prestigious Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation in July.

Iverson will speak June 8 at the Wisconsin Entrepreneurs Conference in Madison. Best known by its acronym, WARF is the patent and licensing arm for UW-Madison and much of the UW System through one of its subsidiaries. Returning about $100 million a year to the university, WARF is a major cog in Wisconsins research and development machine.

Look for Iverson to talk about his experiences at the Infectious Disease Research Institute and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, where he played a major role in building its global health program and its venture capital arm.

On the economic impact of R&D in Wisconsin: Speaking of academic research, a February column described the growth in campus-based inventions and other idea disclosures on campuses outside Madison. Because R&D apples often fall close to the tree, such activity can produce economic benefits and company creation in communities near academic institutions.

It also builds supply chains. An April report by the Institute for Research on Innovation and Science, which is based at the University of Michigan, took a look at 2014 R&D spending by 14 universities  including UW-Madison. It concluded those 14 universities collectively purchased $2.68 billion in goods and services in 1,600 U.S. counties.

A map produced for the report showed Wisconsin as a high-density state for R&D vendors, not only for UW-Madison, but for other universities that know they can find skilled suppliers and partners here.

One of the things that makes Wisconsin attractive to researchers elsewhere is its infrastructure of research-oriented firms in the private sector, said Jason Owen-Smith, executive director of the Institute for Research on Innovation & Science.

Owen-Smith was coauthor of a related report in 2014 that also showed Wisconsin as a state with a knowledge-based supply chain. It looked at nine major R&D campuses, including UW-Madison, and concluded they spent $1 billion on subcontractors and vendors in 2012.

Of those expenditures, more than 16 percent went to vendors in the universitys home county, over 16 percent more in the rest of the home state, and the balance to vendors across the United States, concluded the report published in Science magazine.

As state policymakers consider next steps in public support for higher education in Wisconsin, they may want to bear in mind that R&D dollars attracted to Wisconsin  usually from federal or private sources  usually get recirculated broadly in Wisconsin.

On the Governors Business Plan Contest: I wrote in April about the 27 finalists in the Wisconsin Governors Business Plan Contest, a group that reflects the states startup diversity. The top 12  The Diligent Dozen  will present June 7 on the opening day of the Entrepreneurs Conference in Madison and be scored by independent judges. The winners will be announced the following day.

Ten of the 27 ideas hail from Madison, which is Wisconsins tech startup hub, but 17 other finalists show tech-based business ideas are born in many communities across the state. The growth of Milwaukees water cluster is reflected in the finalist round; the rise of software solutions in traditional industries is represented in entries from Delavan, Elkhorn, Pittsville, Oshkosh, Pewaukee and beyond.

Its also a young group, with at least a half-dozen finalists attending college or recently graduated. That may be a sign that entrepreneurial programs on campuses statewide, including the technical colleges, are yielding results.
The brother of the man who allegedly shot and killed an Illinois woman during an Interstate drive-by shooting incident Sunday remained in custody Friday after bail was set at $10,000 following his arrest on a tentative charge of being a felon in possession of a handgun.

Cash bail was necessary for Jeremy Hays, 30, of West Allis, because a 2006 felony conviction for escape makes him a flight risk, Dane County Court Commissioner Rhoda Ricciardi said. That (conviction) means he hasnt always followed court orders, Ricciardi said.

Hays owned the Chevrolet Blazer driven by Zachary T. Hays, 20, of West Allis, who police say fired three rounds into another vehicle on Interstate 90-94 near Lake Delton, killing Tracy Czaczkowski, 44, of Buffalo Grove, Illinois. Czaczkowski, who died at UW Hospital Monday, had been visiting Wisconsin Dells with her husband and two children, who were not injured in the shooting.

Zachary Hays has been charged in Sauk County with first-degree intentional homicide and three counts of first-degree recklessly endangering safety in connection with the shooting. He was shot by police and taken into custody on Interstate 39-90-94 near DeForest shortly after he allegedly shot Czaczkowski.

He is expected to remain at UW Hospital with non-life-threatening injuries for several more days, according to Dane County Sheriffs Office spokeswoman Elise Schaffer. The Sheriffs Office is providing no other information, such as how many times Zachary Hays was shot, because the incident is under investigation as an officer-involved shooting, she added.

Charges against Jeremy Hays are expected to be filed next week. His attorney, assistant public defender Dorothea Watson, asked for a signature bond because she said Hays has been cooperative with police and made several attempts to get the gun away from his brother prior to the shooting. Zachary Hays also was driving the vehicle too fast for Jeremy Hays to flee the vehicle, she said.

Assistant District Attorney Robert Jambois argued for cash bail after he questioned a police report that said Hays older brother, Jeff, supplied Zachary Hays with the guns. He said that was unlikely because Jeff is cognitively disabled. He said one of the guns found in the Blazer belonged to Jeremy Hays but didnt say if it was the one Zachary used to shoot Czaczkowski.

Hes deflecting blame to his brothers, Jambois said.

Jambois also mentioned Jeremy Hays past criminal behavior that included a one-year jail sentence in 2006 in Milwaukee for burglary of a building or dwelling. He received an additional 30 days for an escape charge, which was made after he didnt return to jail from a work-release appointment. He also was sentenced to a year in prison in 2009 after violating the terms of his extended court supervision following the burglary conviction, court records show.

Ricciardi initially set bail at $25,000 because she thought the police report said Jeremy Hays supplied his younger brother with the guns. She dropped it to $10,000 after Watson corrected her.

Bail conditions include no contact with brothers Zachary and Jeff and to stay away from the 2300 block of 92nd Street in West Allis where Zachary Hays lived in an apartment and is suspected by police in the fatal shooting of his downstairs neighbor, Gabriel Sanchez, 42, earlier Sunday. No charges have been filed in that incident.
A Janesville man who crashed his vehicle into a house was arrested for alleged drunken driving Thursday night.

James Connelly, 23, was taken to the Rock County Jail for the first offense OWI as well as other tentative charges including a second or more offense of possession of marijuana, resisting and a probation violation, Janesville police said.

Officers were sent to the 400 block of East Centerway Street shortly before midnight for a report of a vehicle leaving the road and striking a house and parked car.

The driver fled on foot, but the house resident gave police a description of the driver.

A few minutes later, the Rock County 911 Center got a call from a man saying his vehicle had been stolen.

"Police had contact with him near the police station, and he matched the original suspect description," said Sgt. Joshua Norem. "He denied reporting the vehicle being stolen, and became resistive and combative when detained."

Connelly was taken into custody but refused to do sobriety tests, police said, resulting in his arrest for operating while intoxicated.
A Maryland man was sentenced to three years, 10 months in prison on Thursday for his role in a tax fraud scheme that also sent a Madison man to prison.

Mohammed Lawal, 34, of Columbia Maryland was sentenced by U.S. District Judge James Peterson in federal court in Madison. He pleaded guilty to charges of defrauding the Internal Revenue Service and aggravated identity theft.

His co-conspirator, Haroun Omar of Madison, was sentenced to five years, six months in prison in August, the U.S. Attorney's Office said.

The two men collected over $1.3 million in IRS tax return refunds from 2010 to 2014 by using stolen identities and addresses.

The refunds were then put on pre-paid debit cards so Lawal and Omar could get cash and make purchases.
A town of Cottage Grove man was sentenced Friday to five years of probation for setting the fire that burned a home where a sexual offender, released from a state treatment facility, was supposed to live.

Russell A. Speigle, 51, who will also serve three months of jail time, apologized for the ordeal he put his family through by setting the fire to the home at 4721 Gaston Circle on Feb. 22, 2015, and to his neighbors for the worry he put them through. He said he takes full responsibility for the fire.

I acted alone, without cooperation or encouragement from anyone, Speigle said. My motive was not revenge or retaliation. There was no profit motive. I took no pride in destroying someones private property. At the time, I saw it as a desperate last resort to circumstances with no good options.

That circumstance was the decision by state authorities to house released sexual predator Howard Nyberg at the house, a decision that Speigle and his neighbors fought by various measures, including trying to buy the house from its owner and also by convincing the town of Cottage Grove board to create an ordinance banning sexual offenders from being settled in its borders.

Speigles lawyer, Bruce Rosen, also said it was a personal situation for Speigle, who had told nearly nobody that as a youngster, he had been the victim of another sexual offender who was eventually brought to justice. Rosen said that man kept a log of all of his victims, and Speigle was one of 35 names on the list.

Speigle initially denied setting the fire, despite burns that police saw on his face soon after the fire and other evidence that showed he had purchased gasoline cans prior to the fire just like the ones seen on motion-activated cameras that were placed at the home by the Dane County Sheriffs Office after an earlier suspicious fire there in December 2014.

Last month, however, Speigle pleaded guilty to the arson charge.

Nobody was ever arrested for the December 2014 fire, and Deputy District Attorney Corey Stephan said Friday that there is no evidence that Speigle was involved in setting it.

The house has been repaired, but Nyberg lives elsewhere.

Stephan, calling Speigles actions simply an act of vigilante justice, asked for eight years of probation with a year in the Dane County Jail as a condition of probation. Rosen asked for five years of probation with no jail.

Dane County Circuit Judge Josann Reynolds said that while it was appropriate that Speigle receive no time in prison, she said not sending him to jail for at least part of his sentence would send the wrong message, and signal to others that vigilante justice is OK in Dane County.

Lets state the obvious, Reynolds said. As parents and law-abiding citizens, no one wants his next-door neighbor to be a sexual predator.

She said she understands why the neighbors would fight the move so vigorously. However, theres not a place in society for vigilante justice, she said.

Reynolds sentenced Speigle to nine months in jail, but stayed the first six months of it, leaving him with three months to serve. He will be allowed to report to jail to start his sentence at a later date.

Reynolds said that by being charged in the case Speigle and his family were subjected to very real consequences, including public humiliation.

Speigle will also now carry a felony conviction, she said, and with it, he wont be able to show his children how to hunt, which he had wanted to do, because he will no longer be able to own or possess a firearm.
A man described to police by a 15-year-old girl as her Snapchat pimp was charged Friday in federal court with creating child pornography.

Jacob F. Medina, 31, of Cottage Grove, who was previously charged in state court with second-degree sexual assault of a child and sexual exploitation of a child, now faces a possible mandatory minimum prison sentence of 15 years after federal prosecutors charged him for videos he took of the girl while having sex with her, according to a complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Madison.

According to a complaint filed in the state court case, the girl told police that Medina helped her set up and sell subscriptions to her Snapchat account that allowed subscribers to see nude photos of the girl.

Medina is the second man in two days charged in federal court with taking pictures or video of the same girl. On Thursday, John L. Gilbert, 46, of Fitchburg, was also charged in federal court with creating child pornography.

Five men, including Medina and Gilbert, so far have been charged with sexual assault of a child for alleged sexual encounters with the girl.

According to an affidavit by Madison Police Det. Matthew Nordquist filed with the federal complaint against Medina:

The girl told police that she met Medina through Craigslist, the Internet classified advertising website, and that they had a sexual relationship that began in December.

In an interview with police last month, Medina admitted that he had taken video of some of their sexual encounters with his cellphone, and gave police written permission to search the phone. Police found about 10 pictures and videos depicting the girl and Medina in sexual situations.

Medina will be back in court on Tuesday for a hearing to determine whether he will remain in custody while his federal case is pending. Assistant U.S. Attorney Elizabeth Altman said in court Friday that the government is seeking to keep Medina locked up.

In his state case, Medina had been released last month after posting $3,000 bail. He was re-arrested by Madison police on Thursday night, Altman said.
Jim Villa, a longtime ally of Gov. Scott Walker who has led the University of Wisconsin Systems communications and lobbying efforts for the past two years, will leave UW later this month to lead a real estate organization.

Villa will become the CEO of NAIOP Wisconsin, the state chapter of the Commercial Real Estate Development Association, which is based in Milwaukee. He said in an interview that his decision to leave the UW System was motivated by a desire to return to real estate, the industry he left to join UW, and to take a job closer to his home in West Allis.

UW System President Ray Cross wrote in an email that Villa has been a tremendous advocate for the UW System in his work as vice president of university relations.

He has helped strengthen our relationships with the state Legislature while building new partnerships with leaders and stakeholders throughout Wisconsin, Cross said.

Villa said he believes the UW Systems relationships with state lawmakers are in a better place than they were when he joined the administration in 2014.

People are at the table and having conversations, Villa said, though he acknowledged there are still challenges for UW.

Legislators cut the Systems funding by $250 million in the 2015-17 state budget  a smaller reduction in funding than the $300 million cut Walker proposed  and made changes to tenure and shared governance policies that infuriated faculty members.

Its unclear whether lawmakers, who will soon consider the UW Systems next budget, will restore funding or cut it further.

Once chief of staff in Walkers Milwaukee County executive office, Villa was also an aide to the governors campaign. Villa listed Walker as his top reference when he applied for the UW System job.

Democrats and some UW faculty members blasted the decision to hire Villa, criticizing his ties to Walker; he has frequently been cited as an example of what they consider Republican lawmakers growing influence over UW administration.

Villa defended his ties to the governor, saying they have benefited the UW System.

I tried to use those to open doors and conversations that I thought would help the university, he said.

Villa said he is leaving his job with a much deeper appreciation for the university system.

I have a new and even better respect for the president, the Regents, chancellors and certainly faculty, Villa said. Its been educational.

In 2011, authorities in a John Doe investigation into Walkers Milwaukee County executive office searched Villas home on suspicion that he was involved in an alleged bid-rigging scheme and work for a political action committee on county time. Villa was never charged in the now-closed investigation.

Villas last day will be May 13.

His position will be filled on an interim basis by Jessica Tormey, Cross chief of staff and a UW administrator who also has ties to a Republican lawmaker. Tormey was chief of staff to state Sen. Alberta Darling, R-River Hills, for 10 years before joining UW in 2007.
A test period that allowed dogs on leashes in more Madison parks ended last month, but city officials are looking to renew it and add more parks to the list of canine-friendly public spaces.

The pilot program, which ran from Aug. 1 to April 16, was approved by the City Council last summer. It added 13 additional parks to the list of on-leash parks: Acewood, Baxter, Blackhawk, Door Creek, Garner, Greentree, High Point, James Madison, Norman Clayton, North Star, Richmond Hill, Walnut Grove and Wingra parks.

But with the pilot parks no longer dog-friendly, city officials are mulling over feedback and data to decide if and how to continue the program. City Council members on Tuesday introduced a proposal to reauthorize and potentially expand the pilot program.

Madison park rangers collected data on the pilot by monitoring authorized on-leash parks, the pilot parks and parks where dogs remained banned.

Between Aug. 1 and Dec. 9, rangers observed about 77 percent of owners complying with on-leash ordinances in the pilot parks, with only around 13 percent of people following leash laws in parks that have on-leash allowances or in ones in which dogs are banned, according to a January report.

Data suggests that there is greater compliance with the pilot program than with parks that allow on leash prior to enactment of the pilot program, the report said.

But with the expanded options for dog owners came increased enforcement.

Rangers issued more citations and received more calls about dogs involving all types of parks during the pilot period, compared with the number of tickets and calls in a seven-month period before the program, according to the report.

Ald. Mark Clear, 19th District, a sponsor of the measure reauthorizing the program, said the majority of council members thought the pilot was successful and they will most likely continue the program as well as expand it to additional parks.

In an email sent to council members and park commissioners on Monday, Parks Superintendent Eric Knepp said the program could expand to five additional parks if it is reauthorized. Central Park and Lisa Link Peace Park are two suggestions Knepp received.

Knepp would like to see the pilot approved by the City Council on May 17, potentially extending the program through the end of the year.

As most of you are aware, it is my opinion that the current dog policy is antiquated and does not serve the City of Madison well, Knepp wrote in the email. The current ordinance generally prohibits dogs in parks except for where very specifically authorized.

Said Clear: For years, people have been lobbying the city to relax some of the regulations about dogs in parks. Madison has a rather restrictive policy that by default does not allow dogs at all in parks, and that has been extremely difficult to enforce and mainly not what the citizens want either.

UW-Madison graduate student Fikriye Ozmeral noted that even the relaxed rules required dogs to remain within 6 feet of paved trails, meaning she still cant let her Boston terrier, Franklin, play in the grass or bring him along on a picnic with friends or other activities in the park.

You cant take your pet anywhere in Madison, Ozmeral said. Its a part of your family.  I would love (Madison) to consider creating a little more leniency.

Public opinion on the pilot program is still being sought with a short survey available until May 24 at www.surveymonkey.com/r/2016dogsinparksreview.

The 12 on-leash parks are: Brittingham, Burr Jones, Demetral, Elver, Glen Oak Hills, Hoyt, Law, Marlborough, Spring Harbor, Warner and Yahara River Parkway, all of which have designated on-leash areas except Law Park, which is entirely open to dogs on leashes. The following six parks allow dogs off-leash in specified areas: Brittingham, Demetral, McCormick, Odana School, Quann, Sycamore, Walnut Grove and Warner parks.

To bring a dog to either on- or off-leash parks, a person must license their pet with the city and purchase either an annual or daily permit.

Letting a dog loose in an on-leash or dog-prohibited park carries a $124 fine, while leaving behind dog droppings could cost you $187.

Contact Logan Wroge at lwroge@madison.com or 608-252-6136. Contact Cadence Bambenek at cbambenek@madison.com or 608-252-6143.
MILWAUKEE  U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson on Friday likened his business background to that of presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump, while affirming his support in the general election for the controversial businessman and reality TV star.

I fully intend to support our nominee, Johnson told reporters before a school-choice event in Milwaukee.

Trump  by winning the Indiana primary and driving his two Republican rivals, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Ohio Gov. John Kasich, out of the race  emerged this week as the presumptive GOP White House nominee.

It capped a remarkable Republican primary in which Trump, not long ago dismissed by many in the media and in the Republican Party, now is positioning himself for a likely November matchup with Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton.

Johnson, R-Oshkosh, told reporters Friday that voters are hungry for candidates like him and Trump, who arent career politicians.

People with a different perspective, from the business sector, from the private sector  we know how to solve problems, Johnson said. I think the American public is saying: Give these folks a chance. 

But Johnson also acknowledged the challenges presented by Trumps lack of experience in public service. He said he wants to give Trump, a businessman who has not held elected office, a little space to learn about issues facing the country.

Lets give the presumptive nominee the opportunity to get the briefings, Johnson said. Ive gone through that process. It takes quite a while to get up to speed.

Like Trump, Johnson not long ago was a business executive without a background in politics. He had never held office before he defeated Democrat Russ Feingold in the 2010 election. Feingold, D-Middleton, is challenging Johnson again in this years election.

Feingold, speaking with reporters after meeting with a group of seniors in Madison, said embracing Trump at this point is irresponsible.

As I go around this state, what I hear is that middle income and working families are worried about how to pay the bills, Feingold said. Nobody has said to me they miss the good old days when you could punch somebody in the face at a rally.

But Feingold also said it would be foolish to underestimate Trump because people are frustrated.

People are having a hard time paying their bills, Feingold said. Anybody who looks at that and thinks that the election is in the bag is making a terrible mistake.

Many Republicans and conservatives view Trump, who has bucked the party line on issues such as trade and Social Security reform, with wariness or outright hostility.

Johnson hedged Friday when asked if Trump is a principled conservative.

In some areas, absolutely, Johnson said. In others, I wont agree with him.

In a move unprecedented in the history of modern presidential campaigns, U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan, the highest-ranking Republican elected official in the country, said Thursday that he cant yet back Trump. Ryan previously had said he would support whoever is the GOP nominee.

Feingold, a Janesville native, called Ryans statement a little bit of Janesville common sense from our hometown.

While ending Fridays press conference, Johnson  asked if Trump can win a general election in Wisconsin  described the question as hypothetical.

A reporter pointed out that, with Trump as the presumptive nominee, its no longer hypothetical.

By then, Johnson had ended the press conference and was leaving the room.
A longtime Oshkosh financial adviser for Thrivent Financial for Lutherans stole cash by the buckets-full from one of her elderly clients, according to the findings of an administrative law judge.

Jean Walsh-Josephson was ordered to pay more than $1,500,000 in civil fines and restitution at the start of numerous legal actions based on accusations she stole $4 million from elderly clients over the past 10 years.

Walsh-Josephson, who faces more than 20 criminal charges of forgery, theft and resisting an officer in Winnebago and Outagamie counties, also had her insurance license revoked in the state civil action dated April 21 by an administrative law judge for the Office of the Commissioner of Insurance. The order can be appealed.

The judge, Rachel Pings, called the victimization abhorrent, with no mitigating circumstances whatsoever.

In one case, a 70-year-old widower in September 2010 walked into Walsh-Josephsons business, 44 Financial, with two five-gallon buckets of cash. They counted $302,399, with which he wanted to buy an annuity, live off the interest, and donate the principal to charity. Instead of investing the money, Walsh-Josephson gave him a phony receipt, kept the money and sent him checks from a bank with the word Thrivent in its name, of $974.76 monthly for 49 months. She also sold him a phony funeral policy for $5,000, according to the final order and decisions findings.

From that victim and two others detailed in the order, Walsh-Josephson took $508,203.09 in savings, inheritances and insurance policy cash-outs, but did not invest it in Thrivent products as promised, the order notes. She had one client cash in her existing, legitimate policies in favor of the phony investments.

She was accused by OCI of 37 instances of misrepresentations to her customers and 26 falsifications of one clients signature.

For those civil violations she faced fines of twice the amount gained, and $1,000 per misrepresentation, totaling $1,053,406.18 She was ordered to make restitution of $508,203.09.

Pings order notes Walsh-Josephson is facing criminal charges for allegedly stealing $3.5 million from 16 elderly customers over the past 10 years.

Police believe she targeted elderly customers who were either unmarried or widowed and groomed them to trust her with their finances ... providing them with dinner or taking candy to nursing homes, the order states.

She would get the clients to write checks to her business account instead of to Thrivent, transfer the money to a personal account, and spend it on a lifestyle more extravagant than she would otherwise been able to afford. That included, Pings wrote, lavish decor, expensive furnishings, high-end appliances, enormous amounts of clothing, a Cadillac SUV and Harley-Davidson motorcycle and plastic surgery.

She was caught by Oshkosh police when she skimmed $400 from a $1,500 customer transaction, Pings wrote.

The judges order can be appealed. Walsh-Josephsons lawyer, Kevin Musolf, of Appleton, was not available for comment.

Thrivent Financial said in a statement, The trust of our members is foundational to Thrivents mission, and the individual in question is no longer with the organization. We take these allegations seriously and have contacted clients of the former financial representative. We continue to fully cooperate with appropriate authorities.

Pings wrote in her opinion that the financial adviser offered virtually no defense.

The Department of Financial Institutions suspended her securities agent registration in August when the first criminal charges were filed. That was terminated in January.
WASHINGTON  As in any U.S. national election without an incumbent president, this races candidates are painting an ugly picture: The country is going to hell, bluntly asserts now-presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump.

One of his remaining Democratic challengers, Sen. Bernie Sanders, isnt much kinder, and even Hillary Clinton is starting to focus more on challenges than successes.

To many voters the message is: The economy is terrible, the social fabric is disintegrating and America is losing respect around the world.

Certainly, problems abound. The recovery from the recession has been uneven and is characterized by widening income inequality. Wages for the average working family have stagnated for decades. Racial tensions in some places have worsened. Suicide rates are up. Terrorism is on the rise. Russia and China are threatening, and the political system is dysfunctional.

But that is hardly the whole or even the dominant story. Politics aside, there is more good news than bad.

For all the inequities, no Western economy has recovered from the recession as well as the U.S. The unemployment rate has been cut in half, with 14 million jobs added over the past six years.

Most other indices are encouraging: Consumer confidence has risen and the housing market has basically recovered. Budget deficits have plummeted, theres less reliance on foreign oil than any time in almost three decades, and the health care overhaul has had more positive consequences than negative ones.

Still, wages are only starting to creep up. While the federal government is frozen, more than one-third of states have boosted their minimum wage. Wages should be a focus of the presidential campaign, and vows such as breaking up the banks or slapping big tariffs on Chinese imports are distractions.

There is progress on the cultural and social fronts, too. Bitter divides remain, but Americans have become more tolerant. Though some politicians still pander to racial prejudices, young people are more open.

The same is true of sexual orientation. Ten years ago, same-sex marriage, even some basic gay rights, was an explosive issue. Today, there is wide and growing acceptance.

There are encouraging developments on issues emphasized by conservatives. There are only about half as many abortions as 30 years ago. Teenage pregnancies have plummeted. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported last week that the birthrate among American teenagers has fallen to a historic low. This continues a quarter-century of improvement. Especially important to experts is that the sharpest drops have been among Hispanic and black teenagers.

And there is good news on crime. Both the murder rate and overall violent crime rate have been cut almost in half since the 1980s.

Theres bipartisan consensus to try to do something about the outrageously high incarceration levels, particularly for blacks. There is a chance that even this do-nothing Congress might pass measures.

The world is a dangerous place, but its not as threatening to the U.S. as it was 10 years ago when two wars raged. There is slow progress in the fight against the Islamic State, though future terrorist acts are inevitable and the danger will remain for years.

Critics claim President Vladimir Putin of Russia has consistently outmaneuvered President Barack Obama. Yet Russia is more isolated today and subject to economic sanctions. China is more important and has been more aggressive in Asia, but its internal political and economic problems dwarf those of the U.S.

To be sure, many of the problems articulated in the campaign are real. The next president faces a host of economic, national security and social challenges.

But pessimists still should answer two questions: If the goal is to make America great again, what era should we aspire to return to? And is there any country whose hand you would rather have?
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CCH UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE  5/6/16

Pennsylvania court holds voluntary quit existed when claimants refused to sign nondisclosure agreement

The court reversed an order that awarded benefits to two claimants who had refused to sign their employers nondisclosure agreement. The claimants refused because they were involved in a private business venture and were concerned about the employers potential ownership of their personal intellectual property. On review, the court agreed with the employer that the claimants engaged in conduct that was tantamount to voluntary resignation without a compelling reason. Neither a belief that the agreement did not contain an agreeable definition of work, nor confusion regarding what the employers anticipated research and development entailed established unilateral changes in their employment that were so substantial that they had good cause to voluntarily quit their jobs. Moreover, a person with ordinary common sense would not believe the agreements language would cause him to turn over any personal intellectual property that was not created in connection with the employer (Greenray Industries v. UCBR, Pa. Cmwlth. Ct., No. 1895 C.D. 2014, March 17, 2016).
Shortly after leaving office he was asked to speak at an ABA conference and was given a warm welcome.

Then Bill Clinton left office after the federal judge overseeing the Paula Jones sexual harassment lawsuit found he had committed perjury in his deposition while in office. She recommended to the Arkansas state bar authorities that he be disciplined. The ABA said nothing. Arkansas suspended Clintons law license, finding he lied under oath. He has never practiced law since.

Nixon was basically a sociopath and should have gone to prison rather than being pardoned.

I used to be a member of the American Bar Association, the largest group of lawyers in the country. Among other things, it rates the qualifications of judicial nominees and otherwise tries to police the legal profession. It denounced Richard Nixon after his resignation and encouraged New York authorities to disbar him. He was disbarred though technically he had not been convicted of a crime. That makes sense to me.

(I tend to believe the allegations of Juanita Brodderick that he raped her while Attorney General of Arkansas and then threatened to destroy her life if she reported it. His other crimes and misdeeds spanning his entire adult life are well known and need not be repeated here.)

The ABA never so much as rebuked Bill Clinton. I dropped my membership in protest for its double standard. My point is that the public perception of our Presidents is distorted by elite opinion. Clinton was actually impeached. Nixon was not. But history regards Nixon as a sociopath and Clinton as a fairly successful president. I think they should both be regarded as despicable human beings. But despicable people, even sociopaths, can do some good things as president, and both did.

Donald Trump is probably a sociopath, though Im no psychiatrist. He repeatedly breaks the rules the vast majority of people live by, and mostly gets away with it. The media spend most of their time reporting his outbursts and lies. So most of the country believes he is unfit to be president.

Plus he is a Republican, which as the ABA example illustrates, subjects him to the double standard. The antisocial behavior of his opponent, Hillary Clinton, is suppressed. We know about her email scandal. In the coming days the media may or may not report that her private email account was hacked when she was secretary of state, establishing he behavior was worse than reckless. She compromised national security.

Which is worse? The politically correct sociopathic Clinton, repeatedly violating federal laws she finds inconvenient, even if it puts the nation at risk, or the crude, politically incorrect Trump violating standards of social conduct?

Trump, to my knowledge, is not a criminal. Hes just grotesque at times. Hillary, like her husband, has a long history of destroying evidence, perjury, and other crimes undertaken to attain and hold onto power.

If Trump has any chance of winning this election, he must portray her as the sociopath she is. Most of the country believes he is one and will not elect him. There is a remote chance the F.B.I. will do this for Trump by recommending her indictment for endangering the nations security. She probably cannot survive being outed in that manner.

Short of that happening, Trump and his surrogates will need to spend most of the next six months as a sort of shadow grand jury, indicting her conduct as reckless and criminal. This is a very unattractive way of campaigning. Im not sure it has ever been done successfully.

But Trump supporters have brought us to this point. They have been willing to overlook his antisocial behavior. The rest of us cannot.

Howard Foster is an immigration attorney in Chicago.
WASHINGTON - Donald Trump at the top of the Republican ticket will be insignificant to the incumbent Republican's bid to return to the U.S. Senate next November, U.S. Senator Mark Kirk told CNN this week.

Why? Because Kirk has consistently supported gay rights, Planned Parenthood and opposed gun rights, he said. His Democrat opponent Tammy Duckworth and he agree on all those issues.
Joining Rep. Wehrli in a press conference at the Capitol Thursday were Sen. Kyle McCarter, State Rep. Mark Batinick, Sen. Dan McConchie, Sen. Jim Oberweis, St. Rep. Margo McDermed, and St. Rep. Keith Wheeler, all Republican lawmakers.

"I'm sorry, but if our Auditor General cannot be forthright with his own expenses, and auditing practices, then I place a high level of scrutiny on anything, any work product coming out of his office under his leadership," said State Rep. Grant Wehrli.

SPRINGFIELD - It has been 100 days since a group of Illinois lawmakers called for newly-appointed Auditor General Frank Mautino to explain suspect expenditures listed on his now-closed campaign war chest.

State Senator Jim Oberweis (R-Sugar Grove) had raised concerns about Mautino's filings in February when the Ottawa Times and the Arlington Heights Daily Herald newspapers wrote about questions surrounding campaign account transactions when Mautino served as a State Representative.

For some reason over 10 years, Auditor General Frank Mautino spent $213,000 on car repairs at this local auto shop. Lawmakers want to why.





The Times reported that the State Board of Elections was seeking clarification from then-Representative Frank Mautino about $259,000 he paid to a Spring Valley bank since 1999. A Daily Herald editorial was also calling for some answers. A letter was sent to Auditor General Mautino asking for timely answers to the questions that were raised, Oberweis said.

I was the only member of the Legislative Audit Commission to vote against recommending then-Representative Mautinos appointment to the Auditor General position, even though we all knew the Illinois fix was in for Madigan's guy. We had interviewed another very highly qualified candidate for the position who I believed should have been recommended as well.

A group of twelve legislators from the House sent the initial request to Auditor General Mautino on February 1st asking for a written reply within 10 days. Mautino replied on February 9th, that he needed more time to properly address the request. To accommodate the Auditor General, the lawmakers on February 11th extended their request deadline to February 25th.

Mautino replied that he had retained a legal firm to assist him and would be working during the next few weeks in order to respond to your letter.

The lawmakers released the correspondence today, stressing their growing frustration with the continued delays.

Now that its been more than three months since our first official request for information was sent to Auditor General Mautino concerning the irregularities in his campaign records, I think its reasonable he provide some answers. After this much time and multiple requests, he owes it to the residents of Illinois, said Representative Sheri Jesiel (R-Winthrop Harbor).

Lawmakers today also sent Auditor General Mautino a third letter requesting an immediate resolution to the issue.

The Auditor Generals office is vital to the review of all state spending and is essential in protecting the taxpayers money from waste and abuse, Rep. Wehrli said. Until Auditor General Mautino provides answers to questions about highly questionable spending and accounting that continue to surround him, I will have no confidence in any audit conducted under his leadership.

More on this story in Illinois Review's January 23, 2016 story, "Illinois Auditor General doled out 213k to Happy's Super Service"
The Celerio was the first in Maruti Suzuki's stable to get an automated manual and that proved to be a sales success. We test the company's fourth model with an AGS and see how it gets along.

AGS is available on top-of-the-line Zdi trim, that means features are on par with the convenience factor.

By Karan Mathur: In India, car buying trends have now shifted to bigger cars, more features and better convenience. On top of which, buyers demand to get all of this at more affordable costs. This has fueled the rise of compact sedans and automatics as well. But what if one wanted a combination of both?

ALSO READ: Ducati Multistrada 1200S get you lots of attention wherever you take it

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Say hello to the Auto Gear Shift (AGS) technology, the system is basically the same as the standard single clutch transmission but adds a hydraulic actuator to operate the clutch and gear shifts. The gearbox is sourced from Magneti Marelli and while the Celerio was the first model to feature the gearbox, the Dzire becomes the fourth model in Maruti-Suzuki's stable to get the same gearbox.

Interior design and features remain the same as the standard Dzire.

From the outside, no visuals changes differ the AGS variant to its manual counterpart. The only way to let a person know is a small 'Auto Gear Shift' badge which can be found at the rear, placed under the single strip chrome garnish. Even after you get inside, the cabin will make those Dzire enthusiasts feel right at home.

ALSO READ: All new 2016 BMW X1: The One Redux

Bluetooth controls are placed on the steering wheel.

The AGS is only available on the top-of-the-line ZDi trim and that means features are on par with the convenience factor it offers. The model gets keyless entry, engine start/stop button, automatic air-conditioning, Bluetooth connectivity, steering mounted controls and auto-folding ORVMs.

Safety has not been overlooked either. Maruti-Suzuki offers the Dzire AGS with driver and co-driver airbags, ABS, EBD and reverse parking sensors.

The new gearbox is coupled to the same 1.3-litre DDiS diesel engine, sourced from Fiat and putting out 75bhp and 190Nm of torque. The company also claims that the fuel-efficiency for the new transmission is 26.6kmpl, exactly the same as the manual transmission variant.

The gearbox can be the most convenient feature most of the times, just as long as youre not in a hurry.

ALSO READ: Highlights from 21 Gun Salute International Vintage Car Rally

After slipping into the driver's seat, step on the brake pedal and shift the gearbox into D, the car charges forward and changes gears with a noticeable jerk and even coming to a standstill is not the smoothest of affairs. As the speeds keep climbing, however, the gearbox becomes better behaved and far more responsive. For some extra bit of fun on the move, there is a manual mode feature, where pushing the lever shifts up a gear and pulling back shifts down.

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The manual mode will even hold the revs up all the way till the redline mark, helping the car get from zero to 100kmph in 15.9 seconds and go on to a top whack of 155kmph.

AGS is a boon for metropolitan cities, tried and tested reliability, manual mode allows spirited driving.

ALSO READ: How fuel efficient is the Baleno?

Maruti-Suzuki has had a long-standing winner on their hands for a while now. With AGS technology, the deal has just been sweetened and with prices for the Swift Dzire AGS pegged quite close to its manual counterpart, those wanted these exact specifications from a car will get more than what they had initially bargained.

The Dzire AGS will have prices starting at Rs 8.39 lakh (ex-showroom, New Delhi). Convenience, practicality and affordability now have a new moniker and it's called a Dzire!

ALSO READ: The Mahindra Mojo is a hoot to ride in the city

Verdict

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When the Swift Dzire was launched in 2008, customers got exactly what they were demanding. With the Dzire AGS, Maruti-Suzuki now brings an extra bit of convenience for those looking for an automatic, with the fuel efficiency of a manual and affordability at the same time.

Having been priced at just over Rs 50,000 more than its manual counterpart, we feel that the AGS technology in the Dzire will find quite a few fans.

But whether it can replicate the kind of success the Celerio AGS has been enjoying remains to be seen.

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In a bid to spread awareness regarding maintaining a healthy mind and body, the centre has asked the state governments include yoga in their school syllabus.

By India Today Web Desk, Press Trust of India: In a bid to spread awareness regarding maintaining a healthy mind and body, the centre has asked the state governments to include yoga in their school syllabus, so that interested students can take it as a subject.

According to PTI, Minister of State for AYUSH (Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homoeopathy), Shripad Yesso Naik said in Lok Sabha, that the HRD ministry has sent a letter to the states favouring adoption of yoga as part of the school syllabus so that those students, who wished to enroll themselves could take it. However, it will not be a compulsory subject.

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During the question hour, Naik said "We hope that Yoga will be a part of the school curriculum from the next academic session''. He added that Yoga has been made compulsory for police personnel and plans are afoot to make it compulsory also for defence personnel. "A scheme titled 'Yoga Training for Police Personnel' has been initiated by the ministry," he said.

He also said that the government has succeeded in adoption of June 21 as the International Day of Yoga. The first International Day of Yoga was celebrated in the country in a grand manner on June 21, 2015, which was celebrated across the globe involving 192 countries. "Arrangements for celebrating second International Day of Yoga on June 21, 2016 has also been started," Naik informed.

Read: NEET, MHT CET 2016: Check out the paper analysis here



Read: UP mid-day meals to now include fruits: Aim to boost attendance, provide nutrition



For information on more latest news and updates, click here.

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More than 100 parents staged a silent protest outside the premises of Delhi Public school, Mathura road over the schools refusal to roll back the fee hike, in accordance with Delhi government's directive.

By India Today Web Desk: Delhi Public school, Mathura road witnessed a protest by over 100 parents over the school's refusal to roll back the fee hike, in accordance with Delhi government's directive.

The parents staged a silent protest outside the school premises on May 5, 2016, according to PTI.

What the school authorities say?



According to the school authorities, the Mathura road branch has a different land deal and only those private schools came under the scanner of the recent Delhi government's order which are built on land alloted by DDA/other government agencies on concessional rates

The authorities allege that the schools, which have received land on concessional rates were only supposed to take prior permission from the state government before increasing the fees

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Last month, the Aam Aadmi Party led government had ordered DPS Mathura road and Rohini branch to roll back the hiked fee and refund the increased fees collected by the schools in the academic year 2016-17.(Read: Parents and private schools clash on fee hike issue: Hundreds of parents protest outside schools)



Why did the government order the fee hike roll back?



The roll back was ordered after Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia received complaints from over 400 parents from both the DPS branches of arbitrary increase in the fees

Although, the DPS Rohini has rolled back the fee hike, the Mathura road branch refuses to do so on a technical basis.



What do the parents claim?



The Mathura Road branch has refused to do so claiming they have communicated their response to DoE and are waiting to hear from them

"Despite government order, the school has not rolled back the hiked fee. They claim that they have replied to the DOE order on fee roll back and are waiting for a response," said one of the parents

The parents also claimed that the fee has been hiked by 17 to 20 percent this year amounting to annual fees of Rs 1,25,000 to Rs 140,000 per annum per student

"There has been a systematic fee hike which comes to over 200 percent during last six years. Many parents are struggling to pay the increased fee while no additional facilities are being provided in the school," another parent said.

According to school Principal Manohar Lal, the land deed of the school does not have the clause to take permission from government before fee hike

"The allotment letter given to us based on the land deed in 70s does not require us to take prior permission. We have replied to the notice from DOE and are awaiting their response," he said.

The government has asked private schools to seek prior sanction from DoE before increasing student fee and submit detailed proposals in this regard latest by May 31.

Key documents including details of receipts and payment account, income and expenditure account, balance sheet for the years 2013-14, 2014-15 and 2015-16 along with budget estimates for the ensuing year, statement of salary disbursed to staff, and detail of all funds-- reserve, general and gratuity, also need to be submitted by the schools.

Click here for more education news.



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Read on to know which are the 10 most popular books by Freud, 'father of psychoanalysis'.

By India Today Web Desk: 'Dreams are the most profound when they seem the most crazy', is one of the famous quotes by the renowned neurologist Sigmund Freud (May 6, 1856-September 23, 1939). He is regarded as the 'Father of Psychoanalysis'.

What is psychoanalysis?

Psychoanalysis is a study of the systematic structure of the theories of the conscious and unconscious psychological process. He was one of the most influential and controversial figures of his time. Born to Jewish parents in the Austrian town of Freiberg (now in Czech Republic), his full name is Sigismund Schlomo Freud.

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He was known for his obsession with smoking and was a cigar connoisseur. He gave theories of the unconscious state of mind, existence of libido and later gave interpretations and critiques of religion. Freud was also known for his association with Carl Jung, another great psychiatrist, who became a follower of the former. Both have been the subject of David Cronenberg's 2011 drama film, A Dangerous Method.

Freud died of cancer on September 23, 1939. He was a dynamic writer and had a robust style of writing.

Here's a list of his 10 most popular books:

1. On Aphasia (1891)

This contained Freud's earliest thoughts on psychology. He discussed Aphasia, a nervous disorder caused in the brain which ceases the person's ability to remember words, speak or write. He criticised earlier surgeons for their methods and their process of treating the disease.

2. Studies on Hysteria (1895)

Co-authored by Josef Breuer, this book dealt with five individuals who suffered from hysteria including Breuer's famous case of Anna O. The book received polarising reviews from readers.

3. The Interpretation of Dreams (1900)

This book is one of the most discussed writings by Freud. In this book, he interprets dreams as a representation of unconscious wishes disguised by symbolism, which would later on become the Oedipus complex. He went on to revise it eight times.

4. Psychopathology of Everyday Life (1901)

The book that became a scientific classic of the 20th century, deals with common symptoms of daily life like switching words, slip of tongues and errors in speech. The book is a handful guide to semantics, linguistics and philosophy.

5. Jokes and Their Relation to Unconscious (1905)

The book is divided into three segments viz. Analytical, Synthetic and Theoretical. Freud explains the psychological process related to jokes, which is also the unconscious state of mind similar to dreams that helps to overcome self-consciousness.

6. Leonardo da Vinci and A Memory of His Childhood (1910)

This is a psychoanalytic study of da Vinci's life based on his paintings and who other than Freud himself could have done that? He also explains his experiences as a child with a vulture, his mother and 'him being adopted'.

7. Totem and Taboo: Resemblances Between the Mental Lives of Savages and Neurotics (1913)

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The book is a collection of essays and application of psychoanalysis in archaeology, anthropology and the study of religion.

8. Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis (1917)

The book contains 28 essays by Freud who discussed the nitty-gritty of the application of psychoanalysis, the unconscious mind, theories of neurons and dreams.

9. Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920)

The book comprises theories of libido, life and death instincts. He explains the theories of instincts with greater intensity.

10. Future of an Illusion (1927)

It contains his interpretation of religion via psychoanalysis. He believed religion as a false belief system. He explains in his own words, "...certain dogmas, assertions about facts and conditions of external and internal reality which tell one something that one has not oneself discovered, and which claim that one should give them credence."

Interested in General Knowledge and Current Affairs? Click here to stay informed and know what is happening around the world with our G.K. and Current Affairs section.

To get more updates on Current Affairs, send in your query by mail toeducation.intoday@gmail.com.

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By PTI: 28

New Delhi, May 5 (PTI) As many as 112 pilots of various airlines tested positive for alcohol prior to the commencement of their flights from January 2013 till April 28, Lok Sabha was informed today.

As per the data available with DGCA, 112 pilots tested positive for alcohol during the pre-flight medical examination from January 2013 till April 28, Minister of State for Civil Aviation Mahesh Sharma said in a written reply in Lok Sabha.

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Of these, a maximum number of 33 pilots were from full service carrier Jet Airways, while 25 belonged to budget airline IndiGo, he said.

Nineteen pilots of national carrier Air India were found positive in the breath analyser test during this period, he added.

A total of 30 pilots tested positive for alcohol during the pre-flight medical test in 2013. The number came down to 26 in 2014, he said.

In 2015, 43 pilots tested positive for alcohol. Till April this year, the number stood at 13, he said.

Rule 24 of the Aircraft Rules prohibits crew members from taking alcoholic drinks 12 hours prior to the commencement of a flight.

As per rules, the flying licence of a crew member found drunk on duty would be suspended for three months. The licence should be suspended for two years for a second offence and five years if the person is caught a third time.

"Action other than suspension is taken for the violation of Rule 24 of the Aircraft Rules 1937," the minister said.

"However, no case of violation of Rule 24 in respect of pilot has come to the notice of DGCA during the last three years and current year," he said. PTI IAS GVS SK GVS

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Aged nine and 13, the boys are normal active children during the day. But once the sun goes down, they both lapse into a vegetative state - unable to move or talk. Javed Akram, a professor of medicine at the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences, told AP on Thursday that he had no idea what was causing the symptoms.

By AP: In a bizarre case that has mystified doctors in Pakistan, two brothers have been named the "solar kids" for a mysterious ailment.

Aged nine and 13, the boys are normal active children during the day. But once the sun goes down, they both lapse into a vegetative state - unable to move or talk. Javed Akram, a professor of medicine at the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences, told AP on Thursday that he had no idea what was causing the symptoms.

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"We took this case as a challenge. Our doctors are doing medical tests to determine why these kids remain active in the day but cannot open their eyes, why they cannot talk or eat when the sun goes down," he said, as he visited the pair at his hospital.

Akram said the government was providing free medical care to the siblings, who come from an impoverished family.

The brothers are undergoing extensive medical testing in Islamabad and samples of their blood have been sent to overseas specialists for further examination, he said. Researchers are also collecting soil and air samples from the family's home village.

Mohammad Hashim, the father of the two brothers, comes from a village near Quetta, the capital of southwestern Baluchistan province. He and his wife are first cousins and two of their six children died at an early age. Their other two children have not displayed any unusual symptoms.

His simple theory: "I think my sons get energy from sun."

But doctors have already dismissed the idea that sunlight plays a role, noting that the boys can move during the day even when kept in a dark room or during a rainstorm.

During the day, 13-year old Shoaib Ahmed and his brother Abdul Rasheed did indeed seem normally active, energetic and cheerful as they emerged from their hospital room on Friday and walked to a nearby canteen to have tea.

"I will become a teacher," Shoaib Ahmed told the AP, while his younger brother said he wants to be an Islamic scholar.

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While Pakistan has always denied playing a role in the attacks, a report in the Washington Post says that by 2009, US intelligence agencies had gathered enough proof about ISI's complicity in the devastating terror strikes.

By India Today Web Desk: US intelligence agencies had evidence about Pakistan spy agency ISI's involvement in the November 26, 2008 Mumbai terror attacks in which 166 people were killed and over 300 injured, a Washington Post report has revealed.

While Pakistan has always denied playing a role in the attacks, The Washington Post said that by 2009, US intelligence agencies had gathered enough proof about ISI's complicity in the devastating terror strikes. | Never seen photos of Mumbai attacks

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This is not for the first time that US intelligence agencies have pointed towards ISI's involvement in the Mumbai attacks. Former CIA analyst and a leading counter-terrorism expert Bruce Riedel had also claimed that the ISI provided tactical and logistical support to the Mumbai attackers.

Riedel had said that that 26/11 attacks were aimed at triggering a war between the two nuclear-capable nations. | Read: Why India didn't strike Pakistan after 26/11



"The Pakistani mastermind of the Mumbai plot, LeT leader Hafiz Saeed, remains free in Pakistan, where he continues to be a darling of the ISI and regularly calls for more attacks on India and America," Riedel had said.





'Mumbai attacks planned a year in advance'

Lashkar terrorist-turned-approver David Coleman Headley had recently revealed that the 26/11 attacks were planned out over a year in advance by various groups and agencies of Pakistan.

Deposing before a Mumbai court from an undiclosed location in US in February, Headley had said that ISI official Major Pasha and LeT functionary Sajid Mir and others met in 2007 to discuss plans to set up a business for (him) Headley in Mumbai.

Later, in November 2007, he met top Lashkar leaders when the proposed terror attacks on Mumbai were planned in Muzaffarabad in Pakistan-Occupied-Kashmir.

Pakistani authorities have arrested seven LeT members involved with the planning of the 2008 Mumbai attack till date. However, the trial in the case is moving at a snail's pace in that country.

The mastermind of the attacks, Lashkar's operations commander Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi was also arrested but was released on bail in December 2015.

In March, the Pakistan government asked India to send all the 24 witnesses of the Mumbai 26/11 attacks to Pakistan to record their statements in the Anti-Terrorism Court in Islamabad.

Also Read:

Pakistan's Dirty War



India to confront Pakistan on 26/11 with new dossier



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The entire top brass of the party is slated to attend the event to express solidarity with the Gandhis.

Workers prepare the ground for the Congress rally to be held on Friday at Jantar Mantar.

By Amit Agnihotri: Congress chief Sonia Gandhi and party vice-president Rahul Gandhi are likely to hit back at the BJP over the AgustaWestland deal at a 'save democracy' protest outside Parliament but is not sure if any of them will speak during a debate in the issue in the Lok Sabha.

According to sources, the Congress has submitted the names of chief whip Jyotiraditya Scindia, senior leader M Veerappa Moily and first time lawmaker Gaurav Gogoi as its likely speakers when the Lower House debates the copter deal.

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However, sources said the Congress can submit fresh names of speakers on Friday morning if needed, leaving the field open for Sonia or Rahul.

Two days after the BJP and the Congress targeted each other over the controversial chopper deal in a debate in the Rajya Sabha, both Sonia and Rahul are expected to hit back at the Centre over the issue when the Grand Old Party will stage a show of strength at Delhi's iconic Jantar Mantar to protest against Agusta and address a host of other issues.

The entire top brass of the party is slated to attend the event to express solidarity with the Gandhis.

Sources acknowledged there is a concern in sections of the Congress that the negative propaganda of the BJP over the alleged corruption in the chopper deal and its insinuations at the Gandhi family may dent the party as far as public perception is concerned.

"It seems our people are thinking that this issue would also fade from public memory over time," a party lawmaker said on condition of anonymity.

Sources said the previous UPA was voted out of power majorly over the slew of corruption charges it faced and the Congress managers have not been effectively able to tilt the balance in the party's favour.

The 'save democracy' protest rally on Friday is primarily an attempt by the Congress to do some damage control over the Agusta issue.

Though the Congress was supported by parties like SP, BSP, Left and JD(U) during the Agusta debate in the Upper House, the protest rally at Jantar Mantar is going to be a solo show of the Grand Old Party, aimed mainly at sending the right signals to the voters as well as their rank and file.

Congress leader Jairam Ramesh said the protest rally will also focus on issues like President's Rule in Uttarakhand, the Ishrat Jahan fake encounter case, Agusta deal and the communal politics of the BJP.

Ramesh squarely blamed PM Modi of trying to manage the Agusta probe to indict Sonia and Rahul.

Also Read

Sonia is a suspect, should be quizzed: Swamy's latest 10 salvos in Agusta case

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The explosive middleman letter Congress will use to defend the Gandhis in Parliament



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On a hot May morning, with the temperature touching 40 degrees in Lutyens' Delhi, the Congress party's communications chief Randeep Surjewala fights sleep and a barrage of phone calls from Congress bigwigs and the media as he crafts a counterattack strategy for the next day's Parliament session. It has been like this for nearly a week now since a political war of words broke out, with the BJP directly targeting Congress president Sonia Gandhi and her close advisors in Parliament and outside, hurling a fusillade of bribery accusations in the Rs 3,600 crore VVIP helicopter deal signed with Italian firm AgustaWestland by the UPA in 2010. Surjewala's late-night discussions over the scam with Sonia Gandhi's political secretary Ahmed Patel stretch into the wee hours. He now steels Jyotiraditya Scindia, his party's chief whip in the Lok Sabha, to tackle queries on the helicopter bribery scandal.

The immediate impetus for the BJP's broadside against the Gandhis was the April 7 judgement of a court in Milan, convicting two executives-former CEO Giuseppe Orsi and head of the helicopter division, Bruno Spagnolini-of Italian helicopter maker Finmeccanica, for bribery. They were sentenced to four-and-a-half and four years in prison respectively for paying out bribes to the tune of 30 million Euros (in a variety of deals involving various countries).

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The parallels with the 1987 Bofors scandal are unmistakable: both are defence bribery scandals which surfaced overseas but which had the potential of inflicting grievous domestic political harm. The Milan court's 225-page judgement painstakingly documented how a ring of middlemen had allegedly bribed family members of the then air force chief SP Tyagi and possibly, bureaucrats and politicians, to change tender specifications and knock a rival helicopter firm out of contention.

At the BJP party headquarters on 11, Ashoka Road, a short distance away from Surjewala's war room, BJP president Amit Shah revels at the Congress's discomfiture. For his party, even a link as tenuous as a mention of party president Sonia Gandhi in the court judgement is a godsend to remind the electorate just why they had voted the UPA out. In this case, it was a scam that descended from the skies. "We came to power on a promise to strike at corruption and we are committed to fulfill it by taking it in the right direction," Shah told India Today.

The BJP's carefully calibrated plan sees Shah and a string of BJP heavyweights, including Arun Jaitley, Subramanian Swamy, Ravi Shankar Prasad and Manohar Parrikar sniping at the Congress first family. The party line against the Gandhis swings between a moderate Jaitley saying that the available evidence puts Sonia under suspicion but there is no watertight case and the radical Swamy insisting the evidence is strong enough to send the Congress president to prison. "The CBI has full right to interrogate the 'driving force' behind the VVIP chopper deal, as mentioned in accused Michel's letter," he said in a raging Parliament session.

The party leadership is going by the instincts of the rank and file that Sonia should not be let off if there is evidence. As one partyman puts it: "Vajpayeeji paid a heavy price for being soft on the Nehru-Gandhi family by looking the other way when the family could have been brought to account for its misdemeanours. Modi can ill-afford to do so or else he will lose his USP."

Sonia Gandhi's only response so far has been measured. "I have done nothing wrong," she told media in the capital on April 28. "The (NDA) government is there for two years; an inquiry is there. Why don't they complete it as early as possible and impartially?"

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On May 4, Union defence minister Manohar Parrikar listed the various loopholes in the VVIP chopper deal , mentioning how the maximum altitude of the choppers in the contract was reduced to favour the AgustaWestland machine. "A situation was created in which the EC-225 was eliminated." The Italian firm did not field a VVIP variant of the chopper for the trials which American firm Sikorsky did. "The country wants to know who benefitted from the corruption."

"We are committed to taking the case to its logical end," said parliamentary affairs minister Venkaiah Naidu, "but we are not trying to fix Sonia Gandhi. It is the Italian court that named her. A red corner notice stands issued to middleman Christian Michel. Once he comes?he will reveal. And logical action will follow."

The BJP's outrage revolves around a letter, allegedly sent by Christian James Michel, a British middleman reportedly hired by one of the Finmeccanica executives, to Peter Hulet, then India region sales and liaison head of AW, on March 15, 2008. In this letter, Michel advises Hulet that "Sonia is the main driving force behind this deal and she will no longer fly in the existing Mi-8 choppers". It also names Manmohan Singh, Pranab Mukherjee, Patel, Veerappa Moily, Oscar Fernandes, M.K. Narayanan and Vinay Singh as Sonia's "closest advisors that "the British high commissioner should target", a possible reference to the lobbying done by foreign missions for their products (AW choppers were built in the UK).

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Shah, credited with converting the JNU controversy and the Bharat Mata slogan into rallying points for the BJP, hopes to do the same with AgustaWestland. He is now exhorting state BJP presidents across the country to extract maximum political mileage out of the scam. The party's slogan writers have been entrusted with coining slogans lampooning the Congress. Shah's plan is simple. Keep the scam alive till the crucial Uttar Pradesh assembly elections next year, and, if possible, beyond, to the 2019 general elections. At the BJP parliamentary party meeting on May 2, Naidu asked party MPs to collect all AW papers, to explain the scam to their constituents.

So far, the BJP's sound-and-fury strategy is working. It threw the Congress off-guard just as it had planned to target the government over a botched attempt to impose President's rule in Uttarakhand and the drought in several regions of the country. They now have to close ranks to shield the party president from attack.

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The AW note also targeted Sonia Gandhi's closest political aides, particularly her political advisor Ahmed Patel. His initials 'AP' figure in a bribe menu of bureaucrats, politicians and air force officials. The hand-written note, which records how the total commission of 30 million Euros was divided among the alleged beneficiaries, is purported to have been written by Italian middleman Guido Ralph Haschke and dictated by Michel.

The BJP strategy of acrimony seems to have paid off in Parliament at least. Congress sources concede that the ruling party has managed to divert attention away from GST, Uttarakhand and the drought. The Congress has been reeling under a welter of charges of late: from Rahul Gandhi's citizenship controversy (Swamy alleged he had declared himself to be a British citizen), the then home minister P. Chidambaram changing the affidavit in the Ishrat Jahan case and the alleged disproportionate assets case against his son Karti. AgustaWestland allows the Modi government, it would seem, to finally respond to Rahul Gandhi's devastating suit-boot sarkar salvo that tagged the Modi government as anti-poor.

"The Modi government is all about catchy slogans, and Prime Minister Modi knows his government has done little to translate these slogans into action. So to divert public scrutiny, the government is busy levelling false allegations against the Congress," says Congress Lok Sabha MP Kamal Nath.

Subramanian Swamy holds forth in Parliament

The BJP's strategy has been extended to try and drag even Rahul Gandhi into the helicopter deal. In letters to the CBI and ED, which have been investigating the Agusta scandal since 2013, BJP MP Kirit Somaiya said that the Emaar MGF Group appointed two of the accused middlemen in this scam-Haschke, who has been arrested by Italian authorities, and Delhi-based lawyer Gautam Khaitan as directors. According to Somaiya, Kanishka Singh, Rahul's aide till 2014, is a close relative of Shravan Gupta, MD of Emaar MGF. "It's a BJP speciality to throw mud at people and level atrocious allegations," says a close Rahul aide. "Rahul Gandhi has no connection with Emaar MGF. We will counter such allegations at an appropriate forum but we are not and will never practise the BJP tricks of character assassination without any proof." Singh claims he has been on estranged terms with the Gupta family following a court case over a will. "I have absolutely nothing to do with this matter," he told India Today.

Surjewala's team has marshaled his own set of counter-allegations questioning, among other things, the two-year delay in not taking action against AgustaWestland. "Viewed in light of no action against Agusta for two years, the real intrigue and conspiracy lies at the doorstep of the Modi government," he alleges. The Congress has questioned the presence of air chief Tyagi on the advisory board of the Vivekananda Foundation founded by NSA Ajit Doval, and why they should have allowed the company to participate in defence contracts in partnerships, particularly an FIPB permission last October and CAG raps for two BJP governments-Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan-over the purchase of helicopters from AW resulting in losses of Rs 65 lakh and Rs 1.14 crore respectively to the public exchequer.

Will the charges stick?

The BJP claimed victory in the National Herald case where Subramanian Swamy alleged criminal misappropriation by both Sonia Gandhi and her son. They had to personally appear in court last December to get bail. Will the charges in the helicopter bribery case stick? Going by the evidence so far, it seems extremely unlikely. The Italian court verdict does not indict Sonia Gandhi, it merely mentions her name four times, twice each on page 193 and 204 of the judgement.

The links between the payoffs and beneficiaries are as tenuous as the alleged ledger entries of cash payments to 27 Indian politicians from L.K. Advani to V.C. Shukla in the Jain Hawala diary case which shook New Delhi in 1996. The Delhi High Court acquitted all politicians in that case ruling that the diary entries were inadmissible as evidence. "The hand-written note listing alleged bribe recipients in the AgustaWestland case has persuasive, not evidentiary value. Without corroborative evidence, it is useless,"says Deepak Jena, a New Delhi-based Supreme Court lawyer.

A crucial lifeline for the Congress president appeared from an unexpected quarter-a May 3 interview to an Indian TV channel NewsX by Judge Marco Maiga who delivered the April 7 verdict in the Milan court. "We have no evidence against Sonia Gandhi," the judge said, "only a mention of her in a fax...the translation of the fax was sent to Michel. In the fax, Gandhi has been indicated as someone who will fly in the VVIP helicopters. (In reality, the choppers were for the head of state and government). Maiga admits that AP in the note could stand for Ahmed Patel, but calls it only a hypothesis.

"Let the CBI and ED collect evidence against me and arrest me if I'm found guilty," Patel told India Today. "Nowhere does the Italian court verdict mention I was paid any money by anyone," he says, dismissing the note as fake.

"It's strange that the government is throwing mud at the Opposition when it has all the investigative agencies at its disposal. Find the culprits and punish them," says K. Raju, Rahul Gandhi's political advisor and head of the SC cell of the party.

An indication of the BJP's hardening stand on the issue is the privilege motion it has moved in Parliament against Ghulam Nabi Azad for alleging that PM Modi pressed his Italian counterpart for evidence implicating Sonia Gandhi in the AgustaWestland case in exchange for freeing the Italian marines. However, a small section of the BJP leadership is wary of doing anything to arrest Sonia Gandhi because that could trigger a sympathy wave like the one that swept Indira Gandhi back to power in 1980.

Enter the flying Ferraris

That bribes were paid so that the firm could bag the Rs 3,600 crore helicopter contract in 2010 is now beyond doubt. Investigations by the Italian prosecutors in 2013 detailed a sum of 30 million Euros which the middlemen skimmed off the deal and split between Italian executives and Indian officials. The furious war of words in Parliament masks a fitful investigation by the CBI and the ED that has been under way for nearly three years into what Orsi called the case of the 'Flying Ferraris' in a 2010 interview to an Indian newspaper. Orsi was referring to the AW-101's luxe appeal, but it was a case of misplaced priorities when it came to the armed forces who struggled with vintage helicopters, particularly the army whose ageing Cheetah choppers maintained an air bridge to Siachen and the navy whose dwindling fleet of 1980s-era Sea King helicopters seriously impaired its ability to hunt enemy submarines at sea.

Finmeccanica, the world's ninth largest arms firm with a turnover of 13 billion Euros, wanted to break into the Indian military helicopter market.

AW did not even make the cut when the IAF proposed to replace its ageing VVIP fleet in 1999. France's Eurocopter (now Airbus helicopters) EC-225 met all the requirements for the initial tender, which was cancelled in 2002 because it was the sole contender.

In a revised Request for Proposals (RFP) in 2006, the altitude requirement of the helicopter was reduced from 6,000 metres to 4,500 metres and introduced a mandatory cabin height requirement of 1.8 metres and a new drift-down parameter.

The CBI believes it was a decision taken in a March 2005 meeting (see box) where air chief Tyagi, former SPG chief B.V. Wanchoo and former NSA M.K. Narayanan were all present, that instantly tipped the scales in favour of the AW-101. This is the 'criminal conspiracy' angle mentioned in its FIR, and has questioned all those present in the 2005 meeting, .

A March 2013 report of the Comptroller and Auditor General highlighted egregious lapses in the contract and concluded that the process of acquiring the helicopters "from framing of quality requirements to the conclusion of the contract differed from established procurement procedures". The report said that "lowering of the altitude requirement was against the operational requirement of the helicopters, especially in many areas of the north and northeast of India". The revised requirements in 2006 made the competition more restrictive instead of broad-based. The fresh RFP went to six vendors instead of 11 in 2002.

The Congress quotes a Press Information Bureau release of 2013 which says the mandatory operational altitude was changed in 2003 by the Vajpayee government so that more choppers could enter the contest.

The CAG report notes a second departure from rules-the 2008 Field Evaluation Trial of the EH-101 was not conducted on the actual helicopter. Though the 2006 RFP had mandated the trials be conducted in India, they were carried out abroad.

UPA-era defence minister A.K. Antony denies any wrongdoing and says it was his government that started the CBI inquiry. "The UPA government handed over the investigation to CBI on February 12, 2013, and cancelled the deal with Agusta on January 1, 2014. We confiscated three helicopters and recovered Rs 2,062 crore by confiscating bank guarantees as against the total payment of Rs 1,620 crore made to Agusta. In addition, we filed Rs 3,000 crore in arbitration against Agusta for violating the integrity clause."

Antony says the UPA government had even proposed to set up a Joint Parliamentary Committee on the Agusta deal in March 2013, but the BJP refused to participate in it.

Italian authorities, however, say that the UPA government was reluctant to cooperate in the AW probe. The only evidence they supplied Italian prosecutors, Judge Maiga told an Indian news channel, were publicly available documents. These included a copy of the MoD's RFP in the helicopter tender and the CAG report which spoke of anomalies in the deal.

The April 7 verdict passed by an appellate court in Milan had followed Orsi and Spagnolini's appeal. The duo had been arrested and probed by the Italian police in 2013 but were acquitted of corruption charges by a lower court in October 2014. It was their appeal against the false invoicing charges that unravelled the case.

The task before the CBI, which registered an FIR on March 14, 2013, is now to conclusively link the money to the 'criminal conspiracy' that it says favoured AgustaWestland.

This task is going to be Herculean. For several years now, payoffs for arms deals have been routed through multiple countries and tax havens that are tight-lipped about such transactions-precisely why they are chosen.

Wiretaps of middlemen Haschke and Carlo Gerosa by Italian police in 2013 revealed the circuitous route the bribe money took to reach beneficiaries in India. "Don't worry," goes Haschke's much-publicised assurance to Gerosa, "we have built such a complex maze of companies to route bribes to India that even after the probe, no one would be caught. Even if investigations find the companies, it would take agencies 10 years to reach Mauritius."

The CBI sent letters rogatory to a total of eight countries-Italy, Tunisia, Mauritius in 2013 and the UAE, UK, Switzerland, Singapore and British Virgin Islands in 2014-asking for details of the bank transactions, but is yet to get replies to any of them.

The CBI's 2014 FIR names a dozen individuals. These include Sanjeev, Rajeev and Sandeep Tyagi, cousins of ex-air chief Tyagi; Finmeccanica officials Orsi and Spagnolini, alleged middlemen Haschke, Gerosa and Michel, lawyer Gautam Khaitan and Praveen Bakshi, CEO of the Chandigarh-based firm Aeromatrix. Last year, the ED registered cases against 21 individuals under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act and confiscated Michel's property in Delhi worth Rs 11 crore.

Michel told India Today television that he was ready to submit documents related to the case through the Indian embassy, adding he would hire a lawyer to move India courts very soon. He claimed never to have met the Gandhi family ever. He dismissed the letter he sent to Hulet as a forgery for which he had sued Haschke.

The Bofors shadow

The Italian connection in this growing scandal inevitably recalls the spectre of the infamous Bofors deal that has haunted Rajiv Gandhi's legacy. The AW case shot to prominence in 2013, in the same city where Bofors middleman, Italian businessman Ottavio Quattrocchi, breathed his last in 2013. The Bofors scandal began with an April 1987 broadcast on Swedish radio and followed up by an Indian newspaper, triggering off a political backlash against the Rajiv government. AgustaWestland was a year-long investigation by Italian prosecutors which culminated in the 2016 convictions by the Italian appellate court.

Choppergate's 'Quattrocchi', investigating officials say, is Christian James Michel, 55, a UK national who jets between offices in London, Dubai and New Delhi. An established arms dealer, Michel had successfully sued French warplane manufacturer Dassault over a 2000 contract for the sale of 10 Mirage 2000 jets worth 346 million Euros to the IAF. Dassault had to pay Michel an unspecified sum in an out-of-court settlement.

Union telecom minister Ravi Shankar Prasad alleges the Congress let Michel flee India in February 2013. Last year, the CBI issued a non-bailable warrant against him. Michel breathed easy after the 2014 verdict by the Italian lower court absolved the Finmeccanica executives of corruption. The court also suspended the warrant Indian authorities had issued. Michel now holds the key to the payoffs made to Indian officials in the helicopter scam.

"The sad thing in India is that investigations start, there is a media frenzy and nothing comes of it," says London-based solicitor Sarosh Zaiwalla. who specialises in international litigation. "If there is political will, there will be a way, because today with the low tolerance for corruption and money laundering, countries can be persuaded to act on defaulters."

Former CBI director R.K. Raghavan says a combination of legal and diplomatic pressure will be needed if the bribery investigation is to reach a conclusion. "It could take months or years for the money trail to be clearly established and the accused brought to book," he says. Until then, it will remain a Bofors-like political spectre hovering over the Congress. Which suits the BJP.

Follow the writer on Twitter @sandeepunnithan

Also read:

In the eye of the storm: How ex-IAF chief SP Tyagi landed in Agusta bribery case

Blacklist blues

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On May 2, Air Chief Marshal Shashindra Pal Tyagi (retired) became one of the first former service chiefs to be summoned in a graft investigation. CBI officials say Tyagi made several crucial revelations to them on the AgustaWestland bribery case, among them the fact that he met middlemen Haschke and Gerosa several times between 2004 and 2007 when he was vice-chief of the air force and, later, air chief. The CBI believes Tyagi was the man who changed the specifications of the machines in the helicopter contract, the most important of which was lowering the maximum height from 6,000 metres to 4,500 metres.

This important change, the CBI says, allowed the entry of the AW-101 into the bidding. Tyagi, who was air chief between December 31, 2004, and March 31, 2007, says a collegium took this decision. The meeting which froze the helicopter specifications was held first on March 1, 2005. Convened by then NSA, M.K. Narayanan, it was attended by then SPG chief B.V. Wanchoo, defence secretary Ajai Vikram Singh, cabinet secretary B.K. Chaturvedi, air chief Tyagi and deputy chief of air staff, Marshal J.S. Gujral.

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A second meeting on May 30 that year was attended by Air Marshal Gujral where the operational requirements of the ceiling were finalised.

The CBI alleges Haschke and Gerosa paid the Tyagi brothers Sandeep, Sanjeev and Rajeev, 400,000 euros to facilitate this decision. Of this, 100,000 euros was paid in cash. "There is really no connection, because it was paid in cash," one of the middlemen Haschke gloated in a conversation wiretapped by Italian police.

Charges of corruption against the Tyagi family were first made in 2013 by Italian prosecutors who investigated the case. The 225-page judgement of the Milan appellate court is peppered with references to 'Marshal Tyagi', the air chief and to the 'Family Tyagi', his three cousins, and to 'the team'-code for middlemen Haschke, Gerosa and Michel.

The modus operandi, according to the Italian investigators, was to show these as payments for engineering services rendered by Chandigarh-based firm Aeromatrix Info Solutions, owned by Praveen Bakshi. The money was routed through front companies in various countries-Tunisia, Mauritius and finally Chandigarh.

In his interview to an Indian news channel, Judge Marco Maiga, who passed the April 7 conviction order in Milan, explains how the Tyagis became involved in the scam. The story, he says, began when Sanjeev 'Julie' Tyagi contacted Haschke, an arms agentin India, around 2004, and asked him if he had any contacts with helicopter manufacturers. Haschke introduced him to AgustaWestland executives, kickstarting what would become the infamous case.

CBI officials say they are reluctant to arrest the former air chief just yet. They want to proceed cautiously on the investigation by slowly building up the case and gathering evidence against the family. If they are right, another dubious milestone for the armed services will soon be crossed.

Also read:

Shadow of a scam

Blacklist blues





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Determined to meet his neighbours, Mr Alligator was caught on camera trying to reach for the doorbell at a house in a subdivision near Charleston, South Carolina.

By India Today Web Desk: Ding-dong! Who's there?

Alligator.

Alligator who?

Alligator, your buddy. Here to eat your face.

Uh-oh! See you later, alligator.

Okay, let's be honest, Mr Alligator was only being nice.

Probably out on a stroll (or should we say crawl?), Mr Alligator was determined to meet the neighbours. So, he wandered into a subdivision near Charleston, South Carolina, and walked (crawled) onto the front porch of a house.

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But note here, how well-mannered Mr Alligator is. He pawed up the front door and reached for the doorbell.

However, there are no reports confirming if he was successful in ringing the bell, or if he was carrying any house-warming pie for his neighbours.

Also read: This crocodile was just taking a dip...in a swimming pool!



This neighbourly Monday visit was captured on video by Gary Rogers, whose daughter Danielle Barkley lives nearby in the Moncks Corner subdivision.

Barkley told the local media that alligators visits the neighborhood often. Last year, she saw one strolling on the front porch of her neighbour's house.

But she added that none of the alligators before have been courteous enough to try and ring the doorbell.

Also read: This Mrs Shark was so angry that she ate Mr Shark for lunch



It is said that Mr Alligator, who was several feet long, hung around for about an hour to be welcomed into the house for some tea (and snacks). But when no one obliged, wandered back into the woods, heart-broken.

You think we're making this up. Well, AP has a video of this unusual visit. See for yourself how he attempts to ring the doorbell!







What would you do if Mr Alligator came knocking at your door?

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By PTI: From Anisur Rahman

Dhaka, May 5 (PTI) Bangladeshs High Court today declared void a constitutional amendment empowering parliament to impeach Supreme Court judges for misconduct and incapacity, sparking a row between the legislature and judiciary.

A three-member special bench led by Justice Moyeenul Islam Chowdhury by majority view declared the September, 2014 amendment to the Constitution "illegal and unconstitutional", a year after a writ petition was filed by a lawyer challenging the amendment.

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The verdict called the provision empowering lawmakers with authorities to impeach Supreme Court judges as an "accident of history" expressing fear parliamentary power would be misused by majority strength of the party in power since the Constitution does not allow an MP to defy the party decision.

The verdict came as the parliament is in session where the opposition Jatiya Party lawmakers walked out of the house protesting the judgment.

Law minister Anisul Huq called the verdict "unconstitutional illegal and a conspiracy against democracy".

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasinas cabinet earlier in August, 2014 approved a proposal to restore parliaments authority in impeaching Supreme Court judges that revived an old constitutional provision stipulated in the original constitution of post-independent Bangladesh.

The 1972 constitution had given parliament the authority to remove SC judges, but the subsequent regime of military ruler Ziaur Rahman had scrapped the provision and replaced it with the Supreme Judicial Council system.

According to the previous constitutional provision, the Supreme Judicial Council, comprising the chief justice and two other senior most judges of the Appellate division of the apex court, investigates allegations of misconduct against any SC judge and makes necessary recommendations to the president.

The president would then take steps as per the suggestions while he could also impeach a judge on grounds of physical and mental incapacity.

The law minister earlier said nations considered "most civilised and with parliamentary system" like the UK, India, Australia and New Zealand have this constitutional provision giving parliament the power to impeach Supreme Court judges. PTI AR KUN

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The Bombay High Court today upheld the state government's decision to ban the slaughter of bullocks.

As per the Act, slaughter attracts a five-year jail and Rs 10,000 fine, while possession of meat of bull or bullock attracts one-year jail and Rs 2,000 fine.

By India Today Web Desk: The ban on beef will continue in Maharashtra after the Bombay High Court today upheld the state government's decision to ban the slaughter of bullocks.

The court, however, struck down a section in the Maharashtra Animal Preservation (Amendment) Act, which criminalises the possession of beef brought from outside Maharashtra.

The High Court was hearing a bunch of petitions challenging the constitutional validity of the ban imposed last year soon after the BJP government took over.

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In February 2015, President of India had granted assent to the Maharashtra Animal Preservation (Amendment) Act. While the original 1976 Act banned slaughter of cows, the amendment prohibited, in addition, the slaughter of bulls and bullocks and possession and consumption of their meat.

As per the Act, slaughter attracts a five-year jail and Rs 10,000 fine, while possession of meat of bull or bullock attracts one-year jail and Rs 2,000 fine.

During the hearing, the High Court had refused to grant interim stay to the provisions penalising the possession of beef.

Mumbai resident Arif Kapadia and noted lawyer Harish Jagtiani had challenged the provision which says mere possession of beef anywhere in the state is a crime. "This is arbitrary and undermines the cosmopolitan nature of the city which houses people from all religions and communities," they contended.

Other petitions were filed by lawyer Vishal Sheth and Shaina Sen, a student, contending that the ban on beef violates the fundamental rights of the citizens.

ALSO READ | Protests in Agra after photos of beef party in Central Hindi Institute go viral



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A writer with All India Bakchod, and a Bengaluru resident for over 27 years, Devaiah Bopanna pens and emotional Facebook post after he came across reports saying his city will be dead in another five years. He agrees, but only because he thinks Bengaluru is a friendly, naive, nice guy!

By India Today Web Desk: It all started when Deccan Herald published a story titled 'Bengaluru will be an unliveable, dead city in 5 years' stating facts from a study conducted by the Indian Institute of Science (IISc). It talked about how the 'exponential', 'unbridled' and 'senseless' growth in real estate in the city will have direct and drastic effects on the environment and human health.

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TV Ramachandra, IISc's Centre for Ecological Sciences Professor, was quoted in the story saying "What's the point earning better when the food that you eat is adulterated? As a result of unplanned urbanisation, Bengaluru is going to be an un-liveable and a dead city in the next five years," and he suggested decongestion as a necessary solution.

What followed was the obvious! Bengalurians who love the city went berserk on social media saying how untrue this news is, and Bengalurians who are fed up already shared their plans to leave the city. Amidst this, the Delhi-Mumbai-Chennai lovers made it a point to point out how they were always right about their city being better than Bengaluru.

Meanwhile, all leading dailies carried the news. But The News Minute had something different to say. Their headline said "No, Bengaluru won't be 'dead' in 5 years, but things are pretty messed up for the city" and pointed how Deccan Herald had published a story with a similar headline "City may become unliveable in 5 years" in 2010. They also shared a happy news that TV Ramachandra clarified that few statistics mentioned in latest DH report were wrong and the 5 year deadline was from the previous report, published in 2010.

On May 4, Devaiah Bopanna, a writer with All India Bakchod, wrote an emotional post on Facebook saying how Bengaluru will indeed be dead in 5 years since all these years it behaved like a typical Bengalurian, friendly, naive and nice. He says nice things never happen to nice guys.

A resident of Bengaluru for over 27 years, Devaiah then lists how the city took to its heart the resident's complaints and cry of discomfort and gave away all it had to make people happier. See what all he thinks Bengaluru did for Bengalurians and why he thinks the city will be dead -

When modern working class whined about the 23 degree Celsius temperature in the city, "it allowed people to build massive tech parks on its lakes" where the temparature was maintained at 22.5 degree Celsius.

When politicians complained they can't make money in the 'annoying' city, Bengaluru felt bad and gave away all its green cover for throwaway prices. Politicians inturn sold it to real estate mafia, who then, of course, sold it further for 100 times the price to Bengalurians itself!

When tech giant Infosys co-founder Narayana Murthy couldn't sleep at peace worrying about the productivity of his employees and how he could make them get to the slog-hole on time, Bengaluru gave away a road to Murthy to build a massive fly over resulting in traffic jams for a few years.

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When Bengalurians cribbed they have no place to chill, Bengaluru took it on itself and "gave away a few more of its trees and lakes and modesty for malls and McDonald's."

But when these folks continued to whine they couldn't party the night out beyond 11.30 pm, Bengaluru listened and replied "shut the **** up".

Devaiah says even nice guys lose it sometimes.

He ends his note saying Bengaluru is now weeping hearing his people say "Man, this city is going to be unlivable in the next 5 years" and not because he's upset they are thankless but because he feels he hasn't done enough yet - trees, lakes - he feels maybe his sacrifices weren't good enough.

Bengaluru feels he's let others down. He feels he is to be blamed.

Why?

"Because nice guys are like that. Nice guys don't always finish last, sometimes they are just finished."

Devaiah's rant, as he calls it, has by now gone viral with over 2,200 shares and nearly 5k likes. You can check out the whole post here:

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From Sa Re Ga Ma Pa, India's Got Talent to The Kapil Sharma Show, here's what lies in store for you this weekend.

Here are the shows you can watch this weekend

By India Today Web Desk: Weekends are all about spending time with your family and watching TV. If this is what you are planning to do this time around, here are the highlights of the weekend shows, just for you.

1. Aishwarya Rai Bachchan will naturally be the highlight of this weekend's Sa Re Ga Ma Pa, as she will appear on the show to promote her upcoming film Sarbjit. The actress will not only impress with her dancing skills, but will also mesmerise the audience with her golden voice. Watch these video clips.

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Watch Aishwarya Rai Bachchan gyrating to Dhoom Machale in the upcoming episode of Sa Re Ga Ma Pa.

A beautiful lady with an equally beautiful voice, #AishwaryaRaiBachchan winning hearts with #DiyeJalteHain. pic.twitter.com/p3ltSErWZX Sarbjit Movie (@SarbjitMovie) May 5, 2016



2. If Ash is the performer in Sa Re Ga Ma Pa, she will turn a muse in The Kapil Sharma Show. Comedian Sunil Grover will try to woo her ala Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam this weekend. The comedian attempts to re-create the magic of his Gerua performance on Comedy Nights With Kapil, where he painted himself in red colour, while performing in front of Shah Rukh Khan and Kajol. Sunil will smear a cake on his face in this one and try some magicians' tricks to impress the former Miss World and Bollywood actress.

3. This weekend, Tabu and Juhi Chawla will grace Krushna Abhishek's Comedy Nights Live. The actresses display a great camaraderie on the show except that they know nothing about each other. Want proof? Check out this clip:



4. What will happen when a fake dinosaur will walk into the sets of India's Got Talent? The judges will not believe that it isn't real and their reactions will be priceless. Here check it out.

Malaika Arora Khan & @KirronKherBJP were too scared for this one! Stay tuned for more on #IGT7 @karanjohar https://t.co/rfUc2LMRWv India's Got Talent (@IGTonColors) May 3, 2016



5. Also watch out for this performance that will give a modern interpretation to a classical dance number on So You Think You Can Dance. Even judge Madhuri Dixit absolutely adored this one. Check out.

Get ready to see another epic battle between #Stage & #Street! So You Think You Can Dance. Sat-Sun, 8.30 pm #SYTYCD pic.twitter.com/fG2NYRrrGV &TV (@AndTVOfficial) May 4, 2016

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Black Panther, created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, is Marvel's first black superhero and now, he gets his own standalone movie.

By Kirubhakar Purushothaman : It's not just Spider-man's cameo in Captain America Civil War that has piqued the interest of audiences. Marvel fans are equally intrigued by the new addition to Marvel's Cinematic Universe too - Black Panther. The superhero is playing an important role in Captain America Civil War, which hit the screens on Friday (May 6).

The character was created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, and he made his first appearance in Fantastic Four comics in 1966.

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Some background check on this MCU debutant:

Whereabouts of Black Panther:

Black Panther is from a fictional country called Wankada in Africa, and his real name is T'Challa. He is the son of T'Chaka, the king of the nation Wankada. Interestingly, the name 'Black Panther' is the hereditary name of the clan. Still, one must fight to win the title.

First Black Superhero to a have a standalone movie:

Black Panther is the first black superhero of Marvel who is getting his own standalone movie. And he has come right on time. Many are protesting against the casting of Tilda Swinton as the Ancient One in Doctor Strange, another Marvel superhero movie with Benedict Cumberbatch in the lead. Black Panther is also the first Marvel superhero to make his debut in another superhero film.

Superpowers:

Like Iron Man, Black Widow and Hawkeye, Black Panther doesn't have any distinct superhuman abilities, but he is, of course, fast and strong. But according to Marvel Wikia, T'Challa consumes a heart-shaped herb to enhance his abilities.

Black Panther - the movie:

Black Panther is currently in the making and is slated to hit the screens in 2018. The superhero will be played by Chadwick Boseman, who essays the role in Captain America Civil War too. Directed by Ryan Coogler, the film will reportedly follow the story of Black Panther's rise after the murder of his father T'Chaka, the king of Wankada.

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The Supreme Court said the floor test to prove whether or not Congress leader Harish Rawat has the majority in the House should be videotaped.

Uttarakhand was plunged into political uncertainty after the nine Congress legislators, including former Chief Minister Vijay Bahuguna, whom Harish Rawat replaced, revolted and turned to the BJP.

By India Today Web Desk: After dragging its feet for nearly two weeks, the Centre today finally accepted the Supreme Court's proposal to conduct a floor test in the Uttarakhand Assembly on May 10.



Informing the apex court of the government's position, Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi said the modalities to conduct the floor test will be worked out in the next couple of days.

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The Supreme Court said the floor test to prove whether or not Congress leader Harish Rawat has the majority in the House should be videotaped. The court also barred the nine Congress legislators, who had rebelled against the party and later disqualified by the Speaker, from voting in the motion of confidence during the floor test.

Earlier this week, the government had said it is exploring the feasibility of holding the floor test under the supervision of the Supreme Court. The decision is in contrast to the government's position last month when it was resisting a floor test in the state.

Uttarakhand was plunged into political uncertainty after the nine Congress legislators, including former Chief Minister Vijay Bahuguna, whom Harish Rawat replaced, revolted and turned to the BJP.

The crisis peaked on March 18 when the Assembly passed the Appropriation Bill by voice vote even as the opposition sought recorded voting. Speaker Govind Kunjwal declined the request, leading the BJP to cry foul.

Rawat was then asked by Governor KK Paul to prove his majority on March 28, but a day before that, the Centre ousted his government by imposing the President's Rule. Rawat immediately moved to court.

The Uttarakhand High Court on April 21 quashed the President's rule, forcing the Centre to move the Supreme Court, which favoured a floor test.



ALSO READ | Uttarakhand crisis: Supreme Court wants government to consider trust vote

Government continues to face Uttarakhand heat in Rajya Sabha



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Were India and China tantalisingly close to resolving the vexed boundary dispute when Atal Behari Vajpayee was prime minister, only for the unexpected 2004 electoral defeat to thwart plans? So suggests a new book by Dai Bingguo, China's Special Representative (SR) in the over 15 rounds of boundary talks between 2003 and his retirement in 2013.

In these 10 years, Dai negotiated with four different Indian SRs. He has never publicly spoken about the talks, but his book Strategic Dialogues, published in Beijing in late April (in Mandarin), for the first time lifts the veil on how Beijing has viewed the secretive negotiations. Dai reveals:

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Vajpayee and his National Security Advisor (NSA) Brajesh Mishra were in 2003 keen for "an early settlement" and believed it possible after the 2004 elections, but the NDA lost;

China saw the prospects of a solution recede sharply in 2004 with a "weak" UPA government at the Centre. Achieving a solution with a Congress government is, in China's eyes, less likely because of its 'historical baggage' over the boundary dispute;

A status quo solution was ruled out by both sides. A final resolution will involve both India and China making "mutual adjustments"-China giving up some territory in Aksai Chin and India in Arunachal Pradesh in the east.



Missed opportunity?

Dai, who was appointed SR by then premier Wen Jiabao in 2003, credits Vajpayee for breathing life into talks that had meandered for years aimlessly. At a dinner with Wen during his 2003 China visit, Vajpayee suggested the setting up of the SR mechanism, encouraging representatives "to detach themselves from the current boundary negotiations", "directly report to their prime ministers" and find a solution "from a political level".

As the Chinese saw it, Vajpayee was "the first Indian prime minister who publicly showed that some adjustments need to be made" by both sides, which, Dai says, "led to a new hope emerging in the dull boundary talks". India's first NSA and SR Brajesh Mishra, who passed away in 2012, left a deep impression on the Chinese SR. Dai describes Mishra as "a sharp contrast to other Indian diplomats". When Dai suggested at the first SRs' meeting that both sides could aim to make headway "in three to five years", Mishra, 75 years old at the time, retorted: "If it takes so many years...I won't be around to see it!"

After the second round of talks ended, Mishra quietly took Dai aside and told him to convey a message to the Chinese leadership. "He said," Dai recalls, "Prime Minister Vajpayee is 79 years old, and very concerned about the boundary question. Mishra was himself 75, and said he hopes to settle it as early as possible." As the BJP headed into elections in mid-2004, Mishra told Dai the plan was "to speed up the progress of the SRs' meetings" and to push for an early settlement after the elections. For his part, Dai believed these were not mere words and that an early settlement was indeed possible. "I had hopes [at the time] that the SRs meeting would achieve results as early as possible," he writes.

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Turning point

But it was not to be. The 2004 elections were a turning point, says Dai. The Congress-led UPA was "a weak government with coalition partners", the Chinese felt, and was "restrained by many factors and had a limited capability to make decisions". Mishra stepped down as SR, and the focus shifted away from a solution. The government, the Chinese felt, was focused on domestic issues and "trying to maintain stability at the Centre". "It lacked the sense of urgency in solving the boundary question," Dai says, leaving undone the process pushed by Mishra.

Hopes were briefly revived when the UPA was re-elected in 2009 in a stronger position, by when M.K. Narayanan succeeded J.N. Dixit as SR. Dai says Narayanan "conveyed a message to me from the Indian government saying that India hopes to solve all problems between India and China in three to four years". Dai told Narayanan, with whom he had eight meetings, that he "hoped we would not continue negotiating till the 99th meeting". Dai carried on the talks with Shivshankar Menon, who was India's NSA and SR until May 2014, with their last round in 2012, before Dai stepped down as a new leadership took charge in Beijing.

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Following his last round as SR, Dai recalls a last informal meeting he had with Menon where both sides summed up the progress made over 15 rounds.

Pushing for a solution

By 2012, says Dai, both sides had "created a good condition for finally solving the boundary question" and taken forward the three-stage plan, of which the first, which involved agreeing on political parameters, was completed in 2005. The ongoing second stage of negotiating a framework is the most difficult; the last involves delineating the border in maps and on the ground. Dai says both sides agreed they "have no intention to solve the boundary question talis qualis [as is]" and both "will make meaningful and mutually acceptable adjustments" in the west and east. In the west, India sees China as occupying at least 38,000 sq km in the Aksai Chin region, while China claims as much as 90,000 sq km in Arunachal Pradesh in the east.

In December 2014, Dai and Menon-who had by then stepped down as NSA and SR following the May elections-shared a platform at a rare event, interacting with students from Peking University. Six months into the new government in Delhi-and a year-and-a-half into Xi Jinping's new rule in Beijing-the two former SRs expressed confidence that a solution was possible today with "governments in both countries who have strong mandates". Menon suggested that the technical work had mostly been done, and all that was needed now was political will. He elaborated on this in a 2015 interview, saying that "we have done whatever technical work had to be done" and that by 2012, he and Dai had brought the talks "to the point where it can be done by an act of political will on both sides". "It is a big thing to do because it means we have to change the way we learnt to draw the map of India in our schools because you will never get 100 per cent of what you want from a settlement," he told Rediff. "The Chinese also have to learn to change the way they learnt to draw the map of China in their schools. A settlement will mean give and take. It will mean adjustments."

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Both sides, writes Dai, "need to have a sense of urgency". He suggests the present moment might well represent "advantageous timing" for progress on the boundary question. He left unsaid whether that was because a non-Congress government with a strong mandate was in power in India, and Xi has far greater authority, especially over the military, than his predecessor. The biggest barrier, Dai suggests, is handling public opinion, since the idea of ceding any territory remains an extremely sensitive issue in both countries. But whether that hurdle can ever be crossed, even 13 years on, is perhaps the most difficult question to answer.

Follow the writer on Twitter @ananthkrishnan

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The protest march, which began at Jantar Mantar, is being attended by Congress president Sonia Gandhi, vice-president Rahul Gandhi, former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, among others.

By India Today Web Desk: Senior Congress leaders today lashed out at the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) over the AgustaWestland scam at a 'save democracy' protest outside Parliament.

The protest march, which began at Jantar Mantar, is being attended by Congress president Sonia Gandhi, vice-president Rahul Gandhi, former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, among others. Watch live



Here are the updates:

Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi, Manmohan Singh, AK Antony and GN Azad released by police.



Congress leaders and party workers protest outside Parliament Street police station after party leadership detained during protest march.



Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi, Manmohan Singh, AK Antony and GN Azad detained by the police. Delhi: Congress's 'Save democracy' protest march against BJP Govt pic.twitter.com/jrxwSKgMDi&; ANI (@ANI_news) May 6, 2016



Congress begins its 'Loktantra Bachaao' (save democracy) march from Jantar Mantar to Parliament.



Uttarakhand's forests are burning. Nothing is being done because the state lacks a government: Sonia Gandhi

We are the people who have given their blood and laid down their lives to protect the basic principles of humanity: Sonia Gandhi

Life has taught me to struggle. We have faced a lot of challenges. They don't know what we are made of: Sonia Gandhi



No matter how much they (BJP) to fight democracy, we will not let you succeed: Sonia Gandhi Life has taught me to struggle, we have faced a lot of challenges. They dont know what we are made of: Sonia Gandhi pic.twitter.com/kOS3545G2Z ANI (@ANI_news) May 6, 2016

By destabilising Congress governments in Uttarakhand, Arunachal Pradesh, PM Modi has attacked democracy. Now they are eyeing other Congress governments: Manmohan Singh



Congress is like a flowing river. No matter how many false allegations you level against it, the party will not divert from its path: Manmohan Singh



False accusations are made against any person who talks against PM Modi or BJP: Rahul Gandhi



They destabilised Congress government in Arunachal, removed elected leaders and broke all laws: Rahul Gandhi Aaj hindustan mein sirf do logon ki baat chalti hai, Narendra Modi ji aur Mohan Bhagwat ji: Rahul Gandhi pic.twitter.com/DPvIqbBoVz ANI (@ANI_news) May 6, 2016



PM Modi spoke about 'achhe din' when he came to power. Almost 40 per cent of nation is affected by drought today and he has nothing to say: Rahul Gandhi



To all who are assembled here. Thank you for walking with us today, even in this heat: Rahul Gandhi



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ALSO READ

Sonia is a suspect, should be quizzed: Swamy's latest 10 salvos in Agusta case



Target Modi: Stung by Agusta, Congress finalises plan to fight BJP

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By PTI: Mumbai, May 4 (PTI) National award winning filmmaker Nagraj Manjule has alleged that a copy of his recent Marathi blockbuster Sairat has been leaked and is being circulated through pirated CDs and other mediums, police said today.

Manjule and the films producer Nikhil Sane yesterday met Maharashtra Director General of Police Praveen Dixit and complained about the issue, a police official said.

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The duo had also met Mumbai Police Commissioner Dattatray Padsalgikar and Joint CP (Crime) Atul Kulkarni in this regard, police said.

Following this, Maharashtra police has instructed all police commissionarates in the state and the Railway Police to conduct raids and seize CDs and other mediums through which the film is being illegally sold or shown.

Also, the Mumbais polices cyber cell is probing the case, the officer said.

Sairat, featuring Rinku Rajguru and Akash Thosar, released on April 29. PTI NS NRB RCJ

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The investigator said, Mohammed Sajid, Sameer Ahmad and Shakir Ansari were influenced by Sami and had planned to meet him in December 2015 but failed.

By Shashank Shekhar, Arvind Ojha: Security agencies are closely monitoring speeches of Abdul Sami Qasmi on the web. Sami was arrested earlier this year by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) and charged with conspiracy to form a terror organisation and launch terror attacks in the country. The police said the youths arrested by the special cell on Tuesday night were radicalised by showing speeches of Sami, a cleric from Delhi.

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The investigator said, Mohammed Sajid, Sameer Ahmad and Shakir Ansari were influenced by Sami and had planned to meet him in December 2015 but failed. They came in contact through a social networking site where they initially communicated but soon they shifted to secured chat rooms. They had a WhatsApp group of their own and all 13 persons, of which three have been arrested and 10 detained for questioning.

Police also found books like Urdu and Hindi titles Mujahid ki Lalkar, Duniyabhar mein Musalmano ka Katle aam, Tareekh-e-Hind, Jihad ki Sabililah, Apka Mustakbil and hand-writted notes on verses from the Holy Quran in their possession, the official said.

Senior officers said the group was motivated by Sami's speeches. He has been travelling to states like UP, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Rajasthan and Punjab, delivering 'taqreer' and 'bayaan' in support of violent extremism and motivating youth for anti-national activities. Sami, in some of his speeches, made a direct reference to Islamic State, the officer said.

Sami is known for his fiery speeches and was instigating youth for anti-national activities. These speeches were later uploaded on his called www.abdussamiqazmi.in. The website stopped functioning after his arrest.

Also Read

JeM terrorists arrested: Mohammed Sajid is falsely implicated in the case, says family

Delhi Police arrests 12 Jaish terrorists, who were planning major attack on city



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Mark Kelton was removed from Islamabad two months after the raid on bin Laden's compound in the garrison city of Abbottabad, citing health concerns.

By Press Trust of India: A former CIA station chief in Pakistan, who presided over the May 2011 raid that killed al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden at his hideout in Abbottabad, is believed to have been poisoned by the powerful ISI, a media report said today.

Mark Kelton was removed from Islamabad two months after the raid on bin Laden's compound in the garrison city of Abbottabad, citing health concerns.

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"Mark Kelton retired from the CIA, and his health has recovered after he had abdominal surgery. But agency officials continue to think that it is plausible if not provable -that Kelton's sudden illness was somehow orchestrated by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency, the ISI," The Washington Post said in an exclusive investigative report.

A spokesman of the Pakistani Embassy here, however,described the report as fictional.

According to The Post, Kelton, declined multiple requests for an interview, but in a brief exchange by phone he said that the cause of his illness "was never clarified".

He said that he was not the first to suspect that he had been poisoned.

"The genesis for the thoughts about that didn't originate with me," he was quoted as saying.

The Post said such a disclosure is a disturbing post script to the sequence of events surrounding the bin Laden operation five years ago and adds new intrigue to a counter terrorism partnership that has often been consumed by conspiracy theories.

"Even if the poisoning suspicion is groundless, the idea that the CIA and its station chief considered the ISI capable of such an act suggests that the breakdown in trust was even worse than widely assumed," The Post said.

According to the daily, current and former US intelligence officials said that the ISI has been linked to numerous plots against journalists, diplomats and other perceived adversaries and that the spy agency's animosity toward Kelton was intense.

Meanwhile, A CIA spokesman said there is no evidence that Pakistani authorities poisoned a US official serving in the country

ALSO READ

CIA mocked for 'live tweeting' Osama bin Laden killing after 5 years

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Dr Farooq Abdullah said the extension of NEET to the state would also rob the female students of the 50% reservation that was put in place by his Government.

Abdullah said the extension of NEET to the state would also rob the female students of the 50% reservation that was put in place by his Government.

By Naseer Ganai: With the state government invoking special status of J&K to seek exemption from application of the mandatory National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET) for medical courses, National Conference President Dr Farooq Abdullah Thursday said the extension of NEET to J&K would be detrimental to the interests of the students of the State and would put their future in peril.

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Abdullah said the extension of NEET to the state would also rob the female students of the 50% reservation that was put in place by his Government.



Also Read

NEET 2016: Matter to be further discussed in the SC tomorrow, regulation submitted by MCI on entrance tests

After NIT, NEET is Mehbooba's next student test



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Our cover package looks at the AgustaWestland saga and the political story behind it. We piece together the deal, the modifications made to help the Italian firm win the Rs 3,600 crore contract, and look at the alleged cosy club at the heart of India's defence procurement process.

In 1999, over a decade after the Bofors scandal first broke, I'd written that "never has one gun deal so vexed an entire nation". Bofors was like an unending soap opera, holding the public, journalists, politicians and the courts in its thrall. Though reams have been written about it over the years, confusion still abounds. Who were the middlemen? How were they paid? Was the then prime minister Rajiv Gandhi involved? Another 17 years have gone by, we are still no closer to the truth, and suddenly, the object of our attention is now a helicopter. That's why I say that nothing changes in India, and new chapters keep opening even while we wait for closure on old ones.

Our May 1987 cover

The latest controversy is about a 2010 contract for purchasing 12 VVIP helicopters from AgustaWestland, whose parent company is the Italian arms firm, Finmeccanica. On April 9, a Milan court convicted former Finmeccanica CEO Giuseppe Orsi and the head of its helicopter division, Bruno Spagnolini, for bribery and false accounting. Though the court did not name any Indians, papers recovered from one of the Italian middlemen mention a "Signora Gandhi" and "secretary Ahmed Patel", along with hand-scribbled references to some Indian bureaucrats, politicians, and then chief of air staff, S.P. Tyagi. It is the reference to 'Signora Gandhi' that has fuelled the BJP's scathing attacks on the Congress, and its president Sonia Gandhi.

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The similarities between the AgustaWestland and Bofors deals are unmistakable. The helicopter case shot to prominence in the same city where Bofors middleman, Italian businessman Ottavio Quattrocchi, breathed his last in 2013. Choppergate's Quattrocchi is Christian James Michel, a 55-year-old UK national. Telecom minister Ravi Shankar Prasad has alleged that the Congress allowed Michel to flee India in February 2013, just as Quattrocchi had been allowed to flee the country when the Bofors scandal had erupted.

Along with the investigation into an alleged corruption scandal, there is a riveting political story surrounding the AgustaWestland deal. The Narendra Modi government, two years in office and being questioned on why it hasn't fulfilled some of its lofty promises, is seeing the scandal as a way to cut the Opposition to size. India Today surveys in recent months have shown that the government's popularity is slowly shrinking, and that Rahul Gandhi is gaining ground. This scandal is an opportunity for the government to turn the tables once again, by reminding people about the corruption scandals that had rocked the UPA regime and to target the Gandhi family directly. After the recent National Herald case, the AgustaWestland deal, with its Bofors whiff, offers greater ammunition. The BJP, which often speaks of a 'Congress-mukt Bharat', is now gunning for a 'Gandhi-mukt Congress'.

Going after Sonia, however, could be a double-edged sword. The NDA government and the BJP will have to follow through on the allegations. If they are unable to decisively prove a link, the perception battle could be lost. It could even backfire, with the Congress leadership emerging as victims.

Our cover package looks at the AgustaWestland saga and the political story behind it. We piece together the deal, the modifications made to help the Italian firm win the Rs 3,600 crore contract, and look at the alleged cosy club at the heart of India's defence procurement process. The evidence seems to suggest that money did exchange hands between bureaucrats, agents and middlemen, leading to the obvious assumption that some politicians would have benefitted as well. The truth must come out.

For years, our defence establishment has been complaining about the delays in getting proper equipment. A scandal such as this rattles the cage and slows down procurement further. In the end, as with Bofors, it is the nation that ends up suffering and the guilty don't get caught. Deja vu.

--- ENDS ---
The girl suffered 50 per cent burns and is now battling for her life at VIMS hospital in Bellary. The shocking incident took place on April 15.

By Pratiba Raman: An 18-year-old girl who worked as a domsetic help, set herself ablaze after her employer forced her to strip to prove her innocence in a gold theft at a house in Bellary, 310 km from Bengaluru.

The girl suffered 50 per cent burns and is now battling for her life at VIMS hospital in Bellary. The shocking incident took place on April 15.

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The accused, Mehul Kantilal alias Chintu, has questioned the girl about some missing gold rings at his home. When she denied knowledge about the rings, the accused reportedly abused her and asked her to strip to prove her innocence.

Kantilal even threatened to use his influence to have the girl jailed. Unable to deal with the humiliation, the girl tried to commit suicide by immolating herself, suffering burn injuries in the process.

The girl's family lodged an FIR against Kantilal after the incident. The accused in out on bail.

Also read:

Andhra Pradesh: Minor accused of theft kept chained in police station





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This day marks the 160th birth anniversary of one of the most influential figures in the history of psychiatry and psychology, Sigmund Freud.

By India Today Web Desk: Google paid a tribute to the Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud on his 160th birth anniversary.

No, Freud was not a seafarer, as the doodle might suggest.

Neither does it have anything to do with the iconic couch where help-seekers would pour their heart out to Freud.

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The doodle stays true to Sigmund Freud's habit of delving into minute details.



It is a visual depiction of his most popular iceberg theory and his novel method of curing mental illness through a conversation between a doctor and patient.

The Freudian method of interpretation always delved on exploring the meaning, beyond the surface of things. Therefore, doodler Kevin Laughlin portrayed Freud's visage at the interface between the surface and underworld.

The art work shows three important parts of an individual's thought process - the conscious, preconscious and the unconscious states.

The tip of the iceberg in the doodle shows the conscious mind comprising attention and thoughts, while the hidden base of the iceberg represents the mysterious depths of the unconscious mind.

Freud had a profound influence on contemporary culture. We still use the terms he coined back in the day like narcissism, denial, masochism, paranoia, sibling rivalry to state a few. His work spanned everything from mechanisms of consumerism to notions about the self.

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A hippopotamus was found wandering the streets of a Spanish city after escaping from a nearby circus. Watch how he enjoyed his 15 minutes of fame.

By India Today Web Desk: Remember when four friends - a lion, a zebra, a giraffe and a hippopotamus - escaped into New York City in the animated movie Madagascar? Turns out such things happen for real.

In Spain's southwestern town of Palos de la Frontera, a hippopotamus escaped from a visiting circus on Wednesday. Apart from causing some traffic chaos, the animal led to almost no diversion as he sauntered along a street.



LO QUE PASA EN PALOS NO PASA EN NING?N SITIO DE VERDAD JAJA SE HA ESCAPADO UN PUTO HIPOP?TAMO DEL CIRCO. QUE CIRCO ??? pic.twitter.com/cpBY1x8Wb6 LOLA M?RQUEZ. (@lolamarquez12) May 4, 2016

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A town spokesperson said the hippo escaped late Wednesday while being transferred from one pen to another, from where he wandered out onto a town road.

Also read: When Mr Alligator dropped by and tried to ring the door bell



The hippopotamus' time on the loose has not led to anyone being injured. Videos posted on social media show the animal walking around in the middle of the street, blocking traffic and being photographed.

The spokesperson said town residents enjoyed the incident, which lasted some 15 minutes before circus workers coaxed the hippo back to a pen.

Take a look at how the animal, being dubbed as "Hippo Houdini", enjoyed his free time:







Hope you had a good time, Mr Hippo.

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This 31-year-old is an Instagram sensation with over 1.78 lakh fans and followers gaping at her every minute.

By India Today Web Desk: A 31-year-old has German police commissioner is now a rage on social media, thanks to her fit body posts and innumerable fans who double tap each time she uploads a rather sassy, toned picture of herself. Adrienne Koleszar has been a bikini bodybuilding competitor in the past and is currently garnering all the attention she deserves for being a sexy, ripped girl (contrary to the stereotypical tough-girl-cop-image).

This German cop is dropping jaws one Insta fan at a time.

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Her massive fan following is proof enough (read: almost 2 million). What's interesting is that her fans (mostly millions of gawking men begging for her attention) claim to willingly drive into a speed trap so she can stop and even arrest them.

Also read: From railway tracks to busy markets, this insanely talented woman from Mumbai breaks into unbelievable yoga poses wherever she is!



After her hectic shift as an officer, the enviable hottie lands up straight at the gym practicing on a 170kg hip-thrust device that keeps her fit.

When asked about how her senior police officials react to her insane fan-base, she says, "I don't foresee problems with my bosses as long as the snaps are not too revealing."

She also adds, "I am mainly aiming my photographs at women, not men."

Well, this clearly is not the case when it comes to her followers.

Either way, she's a treat for any eyes:

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Speaking at an election rally in Hosur, Tamil Nadu, PM Modi stopped short of naming Congress chief Sonia Gandhi and said those behind the VVIP chopper deal must be punished.

By India Today Web Desk: Friday morning witnessed the Congress mounting a massive offensive against the BJP in the AgustaWestland controversy by holding a 'March for Democracy" in Delhi. In the evening, it was BJP's turn to hit back and Prime Minister Narendra Modi took it upon himself to launch the attack.

Speaking at an election rally in Hosur, Tamil Nadu, PM Modi stopped short of naming Congress chief Sonia Gandhi and said those behind the VVIP chopper deal must be punished.

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"Shouldn't those involved in the scam be punished? Legal action should be taken against them or not?" Modi exhorted the crowd.

Pointing towards the Italy connect in the chopper deal scandal, Modi said, "Humne toh Italy dekha nahi hai... hum toh Italy mein kisiko jante nhi... hum kabhi Italy ke logo ko mile nahi... lekin phir bhi Italy ke logo ne unhe guneghar bana diya, hum kya kare? (I have never been to Italy, never met anyone from Italy...but those from Italy have made them a culprit...what can I do?"

Prior to the Hosur rally, Modi addressed a rally in Palakkad in Kerala.

'UPA did everything to help AgustaWestland'

Earlier, speaking in Lok Sabha, Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar said the previous Congress-led UPA government had "done everything" to help AgustaWestland bag the contract for VVIP helicopters.

Parrikar said in the Lok Sabha that former Air chief S P Tyagi and Gautam Khaitan, both accused in the case, are "small people" who "simply washed their hands in a flowing Ganga (of corruption)" and that the government will "find out where the river was going".

Congress MPs walked out of the Lok Sabah in protest against Parrikar's allegations.

"Why are you (Congress) concerned? I have not named anybody. You seem to know where the ganga was going," the defence minister added, taking a swipe at Congress.

Shadow of a scam: Will BJP strategy to pin Agusta blame on Sonia work?

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The Delhi HC on Thursday directed the Delhi government to submit a report indicating total forest area left in the national Capital in last twenty years.

The HC directed the Delhi government to submit a forest cover report of the last twenty years.

By Mail Today: The Delhi High Court has asked the Delhi government to prepare a comparative report on the forest cover in Delhi and ridge areas of 1996 and the current status. The court passed this direction after it was told that encroachment has increased in the forest area, a factor for the rising pollution.

Senior advocate Kailash Vasudev, who has been appointed as amicus curie in the matter taken as suo moto by the court on air pollution, told the court that in 1996, data was furnished by the Delhi government in the Supreme Court on total forest year. "Ask the government to furnish recent data on forest land left in the Capital now."

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The Delhi HC on Thursday directed the Delhi government to submit a report indicating total forest area left in the national Capital in last twenty years.

A division bench of justice BD Ahmed and justice Sanjeev Sachdeva asked the Delhi government to submit a report on total forest and ridge area in comparison to data furnished in the SC in this regard in 1996 and now. The court asked the government to file the report within six weeks along with the copy of reports given to the SC by the government in 1996.

During the hearing, the court expressed displeasure on "very fast" disappearing forest areas due to rampant encroachment.

"Increase the tree cover area. Show what you (Delhi government) have done since last year. It has to be tangible. "Show us with maps, photographs and the comparative study. We want action now," the bench said.

The bench also directed the city traffic police to come up with a plan and a timeline to utilise the unused funds given to it to improve the traffic management system in the Capital.

The court's order came after Delhi Traffic Police said it has utilised only RS 100.67 crore of the Rs 275.08 crore given to it under the 12th Plan in 2012 for modernisation of the traffic and communication network.

The court asked the Delhi Traffic police to respond on how it was going to utilise the remaining Rs175 crore and a timeline for the implementation of an intelligent traffic management system (ITMS), use of helicopters for traffic management and in emergencies and acquisition of modern equipment.

The court before taking up the matter of saturated landfill sites in the Capital suggested if the waste segregation method adopted in Japan, which has helped in handling the garbage problem, could be replicated here.

The court posted the matter for May 19 on a PIL initiated by it on the issue of increasing air pollution in national Capital.

Also Read

We are not fighting for environment but for human race: HC



--- ENDS ---
Shikhar Dhawan anchored the modest chase of 127 with an unbeaten 47 as Sunrisers Hyderabad beat Gujarat Lions by five wickets.

By India Today Web Desk: Shikhar Dhawan anchored the modest chase of 127 with an unbeaten 47 as Sunrisers Hyderabad beat Gujarat Lions by five wickets in their IPL match today.

Dhawan carried his bat through the innings as Hyderabad chased down the target with six balls to spare at the Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium. Batting on a difficult wicket, Dhawan decided to play the waiting game and hit six boundaries in his solid 40-ball knock.

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Mustafizur Rahman (2/17) and Bhuvneshwar Kumar (2/28) led an impressive bowling show while Barinder Sran and Moises Henriques took a wicket apiece as the Hyderabad bowlers bowled a disciplined line and length. Senior pacer Ashish Nehra (0/23) and Bhuvneshwar bowled a maiden over each as the Gujarat took 14 balls to score their first run, the most in IPL history. (Full IPL 2016 coverage )



Hyderabad though made a heavy weather of a small chase as they lost wickets in regular intervals but Dhawan ensured that the home side notched up their fifth win in eight matches and jumped to the fourth spot in the league table with 10 points.

Gujarat suffered their third loss on the trot - and fourth so far overall - and they remained on the second spot with 12 points from 10 matches. The Sunrisers had beaten the Lions in the first leg also.

Captain and opener David Warner (24) gave the Sunrisers a rollicking start as he took 16 runs from the second over bowled by Pradeep Sangwan, hitting the bowler for two sixes. (This is how Dhawan steered Sunrisers to fifth win )



But Warner, who hit a magnificent 92 off 50 balls in Sunrisers' 15-run win over RCB in their last match, did not last long today as he was out in the fourth over off the bowling of Dhawal Kulkarni. Warner mistimed his hit and Praveen Kumar took an easy catch at mid-on. The Sunrisers captain hit one four and two sixes in his 17-ball knock.

Kane Williamson (6) hit a four off Kulkarni as soon as he came in but fell to Praveen Kumar in the fifth over. The home side reached 38 for 2 after the powerplay overs and Moises Henriques (14) fell in the 10th over with Bravo getting the wicket with his second ball.

Yuvraj Singh came out to play his first match this season but disappointed as he could score just five runs off 14 balls. He fell to Kulkarni with Sangwan taking the catch.

Meanwhile, Dhawan was getting stronger after keeping quiet initially. He began to open up and took his side's score nearer to the target. Deepak Hooda was out in the 18th over but Dhawan remained till the end to take his side home.

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(with PTI inputs)



--- ENDS ---
Sunrisers Hyderabad, boosted by the availability of star all-rounder Yuvraj Singh, take on a struggling Gujarat Lions unit at the Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium in Hyderabad today.

By Indo-Asian News Service: All eyes will be on star all-rounder Yuvraj Singh when Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) take on struggling Gujarat Lions in an Indian Premier League (IPL) encounter at the Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium here on Friday.



After losing two consecutive games to laggards Kings XI Punjab and Delhi Daredevils respectively, the Suresh Raina-led Gujarat franchise, which made a promising debut in the cash-rich tournament, would aim for a turnaround in fortunes. (IPL Full Coverage|Points Table)

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On the other hand, the home crowd will be eager to see Yuvraj in the playing XI. The Punjab southpaw is yet to feature in this year's IPL, being ruled out after suffering an injury in the World Twenty20 match against Australia.

The hosts are coming off a 15-run win over Royal Challengers Bangalore. However, despite losses in the last two games, the Lions are placed second in the points table with six wins from nine outings, while the David Warner-led side are at the fifth spot with four victories. (Team in right frame of mind, says SRH skipper David Warner)

SRH also enjoy a psychological advantage as they won against Gujarat Lions by a comprehensive 10 wickets in their previous meeting on April 21. (Also read: Kohli-Tendulkar comparison unfair: Yuvraj)

Going into Friday's encounter, the home side will bank on yet another start from their skipper Warner, who has been prolific with the bat at the top. His opening partner Shikhar Dhawan also came up with substantial scores after being out of form initially.

New Zealand skipper Kane Williamson, who came back to the side after recovering from an injury, was also amongst runs, scoring a valuable 50 off 38 balls in the match against RCB.

The inclusion of Yuvraj will only bolster the impressive middle order comprising Moises Henriques, Naman Ojha and Deepak Hooda.

In the bowling department, Sunrisers can boast of seasoned Ashish Nehra, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Mustafizur Rahman and Henriques in their ranks.

On the other hand, the visitors will largely depend on the opening combo of Brendon McCullum and Dwayne Smith. Skipper Raina and keeper-batsman Dinesh Karthik have also been in good nick but their main concern will be the batting form of all-rounders Ravindra Jadeja and Dwayne Bravo.

Bravo is likely to return to the side after missing the last encounter due to an injury with Aaron Finch making way.

On the bowling front, the Lions would hope their chinaman bowler Shivil Kaushik will retain his impressive run while pacers seamers Dhawal Kulkarni and Praveen Kumar get the initial breakthroughs.

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Kalki Koechlin was supposedly groped outside the National Awards venue in the capital on Tuesday (May 3).

By India Today Web Desk: Kalki Koechlin, who was in the capital on Tuesday (May 3) to receive the National Award, was apparently groped outside the venue.

ALSO READ: Amitabh Bachchan receives the Best Actor National Award for Piku

ALSO SEE: Kangana Ranaut receives the Best Actress National Award for Tanu Weds Manu Returns

The 63rd National Awards were held at the Vigyan Bhavan in Delhi, and Kalki was honoured with the Special Jury Award for her performance in Margarita With A Straw. However, an occasion that was supposed to have left Kalki ecstatic, soon took an ugly turn once the actor left the venue.

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A report in Spotboye says that Kalki was on her way out after collecting her award, when the security personnel assigned to her moved forward to where Amitabh Bachchan and Kangana Ranaut were. Kalki was left without an escort. Soon, the actor realised that the mob was closing in on her, and before long, she was groped too, says the report.

Kalki managed to extricate herself from the mob and rushed inside to complain to the organisers of the event. She is said to have contemplated filing a police complaint too, but later changed her mind.

While several questions have been raised about the security arrangements at the National Awards venue this year, Kalki is yet to officially confirm the incident.

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Kanhaiya, along with other JNU students, was on a hunger strike against the punishment issued by the university in connection with the February 9 event.

By Mail Today: JNU students union president Kanhaiya Kumar's condition deteriorated as his indefinite fast entered the eighth day.

On Thursday, he was admitted to the university's health centre in a semi-conscious state, where he was being treated for low blood pressure (BP).

Kanhaiya, along with other JNU students, was on a hunger strike against the punishment issued by the university in connection with the February 9 event. While he was rushed to hospital, five students withdrew from the protest citing deteriorating health conditions. The ketone levels and BP of other protesting students were also reported to be low, according to the test reports from the health centre. Kanhaiya's BP dropped to 56 and his glucose levels also dipped drastically.

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"He has been vomitting since last night. He was taken to the health centre in a semi-conscious state and the doctor warned him of chances of internal bleeding if he continues with the fast," a statement by JNU students union said. "Since he has refused to call off the fast, he has been administered with the saline drip. The health condition of others is also deteriorating. The ketone levels are low. Many have lost five to six kilos of weight but the spirit to fight is still on," it added.

A total of 25 students were on a hunger strike that began last Thursday. Five members of the ABVP called off their fast on Wednesday, claiming they have an assurance from JNU administration about consideration of their demands. Five members of the Left-affiliated groups withdrew from the hunger strike due to health condition. Terming the hunger strike as an unlawful activity, JNU V-C Jagadesh Kumar has appealed students to put forward their demands using constitutional means and called them for a dialogue to resolve the matter.

Also Read

Now, JNU students go on hunger strike

JNU row: Kanhaiya Kumar burns inquiry committee report, students to go on indefinite strike



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If the past few election results are anything to go by, Malappuram, Kerala's most populous district, holds the key to deciding who will rule the state. This time around, though, the hectic poll campaign does not seem to have had the same effect on the ground in this Muslim heartland (the community makes up for 70 per cent of the population here). The voters seem least anxious about who is going to win, being more worried about the scorching heat, which is fast drying up the wells. The summer has been worse than usual and the tank water lobby that supplies drinking water has been doing brisk business (so have the ubiquitous milk shake stalls).

The Indian Union Muslim League (IUML), the political outfit of the Sunnis and an ally of the Congress-led United Democratic Front for 40 years, isn't worried, though. It's contesting 12 of the 16 seats in the district (in 2011, the IUML had won all 12 here). "We are contesting in 24 seats in Kerala. We will repeat our 2011 performance," says IUML national treasurer P.K. Kunhalikutty.

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The 65-year-old, contesting from Vengara for the second time, is considered the "political brain" of the party. The fortunes of the serving industries and IT minister in the Oommen Chandy government have been intimately linked with the IUML's own in the past two decades. Kunhalikutty figured in the 'ice-cream parlour' sex scandal and resigned from the Chandy cabinet in 2005 after a victim claimed she was sexually exploited by the minister in 1996. He lost from Kuttipuram in the 2006 assembly polls with the League also suffering its most humiliating defeat-only seven legislators made it out of the 22 seats it contested.

But now, a decade later, Kunhalikutty has emerged as the sole leader in the party, or at least the only one who matters. He says he's older and wiser today. "Of course, age and experience have something to do with your attitudes. I know I've changed for the better and now I listen more before taking decisions," Kunhalikutty told india today on his campaign trail in Vengara. It is his home constituency, and the people and their issues are all familiar terrain.

Kunhalikutty's political stock went up after the 2011 elections in which he led the party to a big win and consolidated the Muslim vote bank as well. "In fact, the IUML was primarily responsible for blocking the LDF's return to power in 2011. If the Muslims had not voted for the Congress in other constituencies, the party would have lost badly," says M.I. Thangal, a veteran politician and former district secretary of the IUML in Malappuram. Indeed, in a state where the community constitutes 26.6 per cent of its 33 million population, it would be remiss not to say that the consolidated Muslim vote is what took the UDF across the line in an extremely tight contest in 2011.

According to Thangal, the Muslims of Kerala are by and large secular, citing the large numbers that participated in the freedom struggle to illustrate his point. "All the historic symbols in Malappuram talk about how we fought against the British and how we supported the freedom struggle. Our traditions are not communal, our passions are deep-rooted in Indian culture," says a bed-ridden Thangal, who left active politics five years ago.

Those are great traditions to set store by. And yet, it's a story of the past. The IUML's adherence to the middle path in politics has driven many away. The party never took an aggressive political line even after the Babri Masjid demolition in 1992, leading to the emergence of splinter groups advocating a different, more aggressive tack. Abdul Nasar Madani and his People's Democratic Party (PDP) were at its forefront in the '90s, but have been marginalised since (he's currently lodged in a Bengaluru jail, after being charged variously in the 1998 Coimbatore and 2008 Bengaluru blasts cases). Of late, offshoots like the Popular Front of India have arrived on the scene but are yet to get wider acceptability.

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"By and large, the Muslims in Kerala are worried more about the emergence of the BJP in national politics. They have a feeling the Congress is playing the role of a spectator and is not able to protect their interests. It may harm the IUML politically in the longer run," says eminent historian Dr K.V. Kunhikrishnan.

Meanwhile, the CPI(M) is testing a few new political tools of its own in the district. Numerically, Left strongholds are restricted to two constituencies, Ponnani and Thavanur. But A. Vijayaraghavan, CPI(M) central committee member, who is monitoring the Left campaign in Malappuram district, says the LDF has a "clear roadmap to defeat the IUML in their fortresses. We have been working on the strategy since the 2014 LS polls." The party has fielded some influential local businessmen and ex-Congress leaders as LDF candidates.

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So far, the Left hasn't been able to make much of a dent because the IUML is backed by Sunni Muslims headed by E.K. Aboobacker Musaliyar, who controls 8,500 of the 12,000 madrassas in the state. Another 2,000 madrassas are controlled by the AP faction of Sunnis (headed by Kanthapuram A.P. Abubacker Musaliyar), who have sometimes sided with the Left. The rest are controlled by the Mujahideen and Jamaat factions. The AP and EK factions clash over the control of madrassas every now and then, and Kanthapuram has publicly come out against some IUML candidates.

But the IUML leadership is least bothered what the "sickle Sunnis" (alluding to the AP faction's ties with the Left) get up to. "It's not a matter of concern for us," says Jelseemiya Hussain, an IUML women's wing leader in Nilambur. "We are more worried about the BJP's emergence in Kerala. The BJP is trying to divide people over trivial issues. Now they are telling us what to eat, how to dress and how to salute our national flag."

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Veteran CPI(M) leader and former minister Paloli Mohammed Kutty, though, says all is not well in the IUML citadel. "There is certainly an undercurrent helping the Left in the district. Apart from the anti-incumbency factor, the Muslim youth are worried over the slowdown in the Gulf states. They are a lot more realistic. They follow a different politics, not one dictated by the madrassas or the Panakad family, who head the IUML," Paloli says.

The Marxists have formed women squads to visit homes to canvass votes for them, targeting mainly families and the youth who are disillusioned with the power politics inside the IUML. The logic is that any gains from the Muslim vote bank should make the Left's overall tally more comfortable in the Kerala assembly.



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Watching this man build a sturdy four-walled house to weaving fibre from scratch will take you back to primitive times. The next time you get stranded in a jungle you'll know how to survive after watching his videos.

By India Today Web Desk: This is probably one of the most captivating YouTube channels on survivalism and bushcraft called Primitive Technology and the ingenuity of this man is simply inspiring.



The video series follows an Australian survivalist creating everything required to sustain life in the jungles of Far North Queensland, Australia.

The highlight of his tutorials is the video of building a tiled roof hut, which went viral last year. The most amazing part was that he used no prefabricated tool of any kind.

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He literally builds everything from scratch, from carving an axe using a stone to digging for clay from the ground for making mud tiles.

In the course of the series, he managed to built a whole range of things like a sling shot, baskets, bow and arrow. Ever since his debut with the house building video, this mysterious 21st century bushman has become widely popular on social media with his silent and intriguing how-to videos.

The Primitive Technology blog explains the laborious process that goes into making each and everything.

His latest video shows him weaving a rough type of textile using bark fiber. In his blog, he says that the torrential rains in the jungle caused a few trees to fall and he used one of them to extract fibre. He writes, "I stripped the bark from it and divided it into thinner strips back at the hut. I spun the fiber strips into a rough yarn using a drop spindle."

"Collecting, stripping and drying the fiber took a few days to do. Spinning and weaving took just over a day per 70 cm square. The result was a rough material about as stiff as a welcome mat. So at this stage I'm using them as mats. In future I will investigate finer fibers, such as those from banana tree stalks, as a possible material for cloth."



Watch the video below:



Thanks to this man, the next time you get stranded in a jungle you'll know how to survive. He also brings to life that popular The Jungle Book track sung by Baloo:

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Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi today launched a fiery attack on the government at a 'save democracy' march organised by his party in New Delhi.

By India Today Web Desk: Accusing Prime Minister Narendra Modi of remaining silent even as 13 states are hit by India's worst drought in decades, Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi today launched a fiery attack on the government at a 'save democracy' march organised by his party in New Delhi.



Addressing hundreds of party workers, the 45-year-old leader said, "40 per cent of India is facing a severe drought. Fifty farmers are committing suicide every day. Where are the achche din (good days) that Modi talked about?" "Latur, Vidarbha and Bundelkhand are burning, but he has no time for this," he said.

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Here are the top quotes:

"Power-hungry BJP killing democracy"

Destabilising elected governments in states with a motive to capture power all over, the BJP is "killing democracy", Congress president Sonia Gandhi said. She said BJP was not concerned about the democracy as their only motive "is to capture power everywhere", adding that Congress was a party that had "given their blood and laid down lives to protect the basic principles of humanity".

"Only Narendra Modi, Mohan Bhagwat leading India"

Rahul Gandhi launched a scathing attack on the Narendra Modi government: "Today in India, the voice of only two people are heard, Narendra Modiji and Mohan Bhagwatji."

"Congress is like a flowing river"

Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh too lashed out at the BJP, saying PM Modi has attacked democracy by destabilising elected governments in Uttarakhand and Arunachal Pradesh. Singh said, "Congress is like a flowing river. No matter how many false allegations you level against it, the party will not divert from its path."

"They don't know what we are made of"

Congress president Sonia Gandhi said that the party will not allow the Modi government to intimidate them. "Life has taught me to struggle, we have faced a lot of challenges. They don't know what we are made of," she said.

"PM Modi had talked about 'achche din'. Everyday 50 farmers are committing suicide"

Rahul Gandhi said, "Modi government had talked about 'achche din'. There is severe drought in the country. Everyday 50 farmers are committing suicide." The Congress vice-president questioned the government's promise of employment to 2 crore people, claiming only 1.3 lakh had received employment by now.

ALSO READ

Robert Vadra debuts in Congress poster, wife Priyanka also appears with Sonia, Rahul

Target Modi: Stung by Agusta, Congress finalises plan to fight BJP



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In an exclusive interview with India Today's Karan Thapar, former Union Minister Arun Shourie said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi is running a one-man "Presidential government" at the Centre.

By India Today Web Desk: Former Union minister Arun Shourie is upset with the performance of the Narendra Modi government which will complete two years in office next week. Shourie said PM Modi is running a one-man "Presidential government".



While accepting that under Modi, corruption at the Centre had diminished or disappeared, Shourie stressed that nothing was 'deliberately' done in the states, citing Vyapam scandal in Madhya Pradesh, Lalit Modi episode and Saradha scam.

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He compared Modi's two years as prime minister "as a boxing match with everybody". "This was a great opportunity completely missed", Shourie said.

In an exclusive interview with India Today TV's Karan Thapar, Shourie, who was Minister for Telecommunication and Information Technology in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee cabinet, criticised the Modi government's handling of some of the raging controversies like the Agusta deal.

Shourie criticised the present BJP-led NDA regime for not appealing against the acquittal by the Italian trial court of Agusta's two former chiefs Giuseppe Orsi and Bruno Spagnolini. | Arun Shourie: PM Modi's silence deliberate



"It was like digging a mountain to find a mouse. But and invisible chuha (mouse)," the former minister said.

In the 40-minute interview, said that over the next three years he expected "a more systematic attempt to curb civil liberties" and an increase in "decentralised intimidation" besides "choking" of "inconvenient voices".

Here's what Shourie said: This government is a Presidential government without checks and balances. Modi's two years as Prime Minister has been a boxing match with everybody. A great opportunity completely missed. Imposition of President's Rule in the two Congress-ruled states Arunachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand was unconstitutional. The "deliberate" BJP policy of attracting and inviting defectors would "undermine" the party. There is no consistency or logic to Modi's Pakistan policy. The PM's Pakistan policy has confused India. "We have made fools of ourselves in the eyes of Pakistan". Where is good governance? Don't think individually, think of civilian, military relations in armed forces. Think of the way these paramilitary forces are trained. Agree there is no corruption at the Centre but Modi government has failed to curb graft in states. What happened in Vyapam, PDS scam in Chhattisgarh? What happened to Lalit Modi? Nothing. What happened to the Commonwealth Games loot? Is the government pursuing the case? Why did the Modi government decide not to appeal against the acquittal by the Italian trial court of Agusta's two former chiefs Giuseppe Orsi and Bruno Spagnolini? Modi government had two years to find new details in Agusta, but what it do? Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar has not stated any new fact (in Agusta deal) which was not in public domain earlier. Comparing Modi's China policy to Jawaharlal Nehru's, Shourie said," Both men believed they could charm the dragon and both men turned out to be wrong." Modi is getting inputs from very few people and they are, additionally, the people he has chosen.

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Also Read:

Shourie slams Narendra Modi: 10 things he said in May 2015



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By PTI: From Lalit K Jha

Washington, May 5 (PTI) Prime Minister Narendra Modi will address the annual gala of US-India Business Council next month during his visit here, the advocacy group said today.

Modis address to the USIBC before whos who of American corporate sector would be on June 7. He will also participate in a roundtable with leading global CEOs, USIBC said.

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"Its a privilege for USIBC to welcome Prime Minister Modi on his fourth visit to the US, particularly in light of the advancement of our countries relationship over the past two years," USIBC president Mukesh Aghi said.

"India became the top global FDI destination in 2015 ? attracting USD 63 billion ? fuelled by Modis ability to attract foreign investors and to build a globally competitive environment in India," Aghi said.

The bilateral relationship has matured significantly over the past a few years, and extends beyond the leadership of the two countries, he said in a statement.

Though there has been no official confirmation of Modis visit either from the Prime Ministers Office or the White House, he is expected to visit the US at the invitation of President Barack Obama, who is likely to host him for a State dinner.

US House of Representative Speaker Paul Ryan has already invited him to address a joint meeting of the Congress on June 8.

During the annual gala, USIBC will present its Global Leadership Award to the Amazon Founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, and founder and MD of Sun Pharmaceuticals Dilip Shanghvi.

"Jeff and Dilip are two leaders that are shaping the US-India trade ties with their incredible business acumen and have made a lasting impression in integrating India into the global economy," Aghi said.

"We couldnt think of more qualified icons that are emblematic of the immense potential of our trade relationship. We are honoured to be presenting the 2016 Global Leadership Award to them," he said. PTI LKJ ABH

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Sushant Singh Rajput is currently shooting in Budapest with Kriti Sanon for his next film Raabta. In an interview with a leading daily, Sushant opened up on his experience of working with Kriti.

By India Today Web Desk: Sushant Singh Rajput is currently shooting in Budapest with Kriti Sanon for his next film Raabta. The film is set to release in the Valentine's week next year. In an interview with DNA, Sushant Singh Rajput opened up on his experience of working with Kriti Sanon.

"Kriti and I instantly bonded with each other. She's an engineer and I was also on that same track. The first time we met and did that scene together, I liked doing it. Dinu (Dinesh Vijan, director of Raabta) loved that scene. There was an instant chemistry. I always found her very promising although she's only two films old now. I think nobody has actually put her in a position for her to perform. She has a very good screen presence. Right from the very first film, although I haven't seen Heropanti from the first scene to the end credits, but we watched Dilwale together. So I am very confident about Raabta," Sushant told the leading daily.

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Earlier, there were rumours that Kriti Sanon is the reason behind Sushant and Ankita Lokhande's break-up. According to a report in Bollywoodlife.com, a source said, "Not only do Kriti and Sushant hang out together in between shots but Kriti has also been going around telling her close friends on how she is in her happiest phase right now."

However, Sushant has denied all such rumours related to his break-up with Ankita and took to Twitter and wrote, "Neither she was an alcoholic nor I am a womaniser . People do Grow apart & its unfortunate . Period!! (sic)"

Neither she was an alcoholic nor I am a womaniser . People do Grow apart & its unfortunate . Period!! Sushant S Rajput (@itsSSR) May 4, 2016

On the work front, Sushant Singh Rajput and Kriti Sanon will be sharing screen space for the first time together in the romantic flick.

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Most of these phone calls were made in 2010 just before the UPA government signed a deal with AgustaWestland to buy 12 AW-101 helicopters. The deal was signed on February 8, 2010.

Former IAF chief SP Tyagi and his cousins have so far denied all allegations of receiving kickbacks in the AgustaWestland deal. India Today now has evidence that proves the Tyagi cousins - Sandeep, Sanjeev, Rajeev - were in constant touch with a handful of AgustaWestland's Italian middlemen - namely Guido Haschke and Carlo Gerosa - and accused Gautam Khaitan's law firm in between 2010-12.

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Most of these phone calls were made in 2010 just before the UPA government signed a deal with AgustaWestland to buy 12 AW-101 helicopters. The deal was signed on February 8, 2010.

Call records of mobile phone number 981009**** registered in the name of Rajiv Tyagi, the cousin of former Air chief SP Tyagi revealed that he made eight phone calls to a number 4179620**** in Switzerland belonging to Carlo Gerosa between October 2010 and January 2012.

Rajiv Tyagi also made nine phone calls to Guido Haschke's number 4176377**** between October 2010 and April 2011. Further, call records show that five phone calls were made from Tyagi's number to 981817****, a number registered in the name of OP Khaitan & Co, which happens to be the law firm of another accused in AgustaWestland scam - Gautam Khaitan.

India Today also has the call records of Sanjeev 'Julie' Tyagi, another cousin of the former air chief, who appeared on television last week and declared that he had no connection with Finmeccanica, AgustaWestland's mother company.

Call records interestingly show that it was Julie Tyagi who made the maximum number of phone calls to Carlo Gerosa in the period leading up to the Agusta deal. He made 1,114 calls from his number 981003**** to Gerosa between January 2010 and April 2012, and to Guido Hashcke 244 times between January 8, 2010 to February 17, 2012

Further, Sanjeev was also in touch with Kummoun Heidi, the head to IDS Tunisia. He made 79 phone calls between Feb 2010 and Oct 2011 to OP Khaitan & Co. The two, Sanjeev and Gautam Khaitan, spoke 141 times on the phone between January 9, 2010 and Oct 2012.

The third Tyagi cousin Sandeep was also in constant touch with Italian middlemen Carlo Gerosa and Guido Hashcke. Separate call details revealed that Sandeep made 24 calls from his number 981042*** to Carlo Gerosa between February 2010 and April 2013. He made seven phone calls to Hashcke between February-April 2010. Sandeep was also in touch with Guido Hashcke's secretary Nadia, to whom he spoke to 60 times between January 15, 2010 and October 2012.

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Gautam Khaitan has already admitted to have received kickbacks from Agusta middlemen, but his phone call records reveal that he was in touch with Gerosa and Haschke for a long time. He used two mobile phones to communicate with the middlemen.

Khaitan made six phone calls from his number 981106*** Gerosa between February 2010 and March 2012. Like Sanjeev, Khaitan was also in touch with Kummoun Heidi. He also spoke to Haschke's secretary Nadia using another 981817****. The same number was also used to call Gerosa 10 times between February 2010 and February 2011.

Gautam Khaitan used the same number to make four calls to British national Christian Michel between February and june 2010.

Tyagi cousins, Khaitan grilled by CBI

Meanwhile, on Thursday, the Enforcement Directorate quizzed former IAF chief SP Tyagi in connection with the AgustaWestland helicopter deal.

The CBI, which also is investigating the corruption angle in the deal, claimed that former board member of Aeromatrix, Gautam Khaitan has accepted that he took payments from Guido Haschke and Carlo Gerosa, middlemen in the chopper deal, but rejected allegations that it was part of any kickbacks.

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"He has agreed taking payment from European middlemen Guido Haschke and Carlo Gerosa. However, we do not agree with the purpose behind the payment which has been cited by him," the CBI sources said.

Khaitan and former deputy Air Chief NV Tyagi were examined by the CBI in connection with AgustaWestland deal on Thursday.

While the questioning of Khaitan continued for about 10 hours, Tyagi left within four hours after recording his statement before the investigators. The Tyagi cousins and Khaitan were grilled by the CBI today. The three brothers are named in the FIR filed by the CBI.

Tyagi brothers admit to dealings with Haschke: 10 developments in Agusta probe



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Robert Downey also said that he has a free pass with Gwyneth Paltrow, and his wife Susan doesn't care.

By India Today Web Desk: Robert Downey Jr, known for his sarcasm, said that he wants to get actor Gwyneth Paltrow back into Iron Man films so that he can make out with her.

ALSO READ: Captain America Civil War: I thought Robert Downey Jr was terrifying, says Tom Holland

The 51-year-old claimed that he has a 'free pass with Gwyneth Paltrow' on Wednesday's Howard Stern Show, reports Daily Mail Online.

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He also mentioned that reason why Paltrow is his free pass. It is because his wife Susan Downey and Paltrow are good friends. He said: "My free pass - because she and Susan are such good friends - is Paltrow."

The Sherlock Holmes actor said that the cameras have to be 'rolling on a take' for them to legally lock lips. "I got to get her back in these movies so I can make out with her onscreen again," he said.

The 43-year-old actor plays Pepper Potts in all three Iron Man movies but does not appear in the Captain America: Civil war. The film will release in India and US on May 6.



But he also said that she will be making a return to the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

"She's coming back. We need her," he said.



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The beleaguered businessman has been in New Delhi's Tihar jail since March 4, 2014 on the orders of the apex court in connection with a long-running dispute with the market regulator, SEBI (or Securities and Exchange Board of India).

By India Today Web Desk: The Supreme Court today ordered the release of jailed Sahara chief Subrata Roy on parole for four weeks to perform the last rites of his mother following her death early this morning.

The beleaguered businessman has been in New Delhi's Tihar jail since March 4, 2014 on the orders of the apex court in connection with a long-running dispute with the market regulator, SEBI (or Securities and Exchange Board of India).

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Roy's mother Chhabi Roy, 95, passed away in Lucknow today after a prolonged illness. A Sahara group spokesperson said in a statement that Chhabi Roy had been the "guiding light of the Sahara India Pariwar and departed for her heavenly abode at 1.34 am today".





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Gene Goodenough made his first public appearance with wife Preity Zinta in India. The two were spotted at the Mumbai Airport.

By India Today Web Desk: It's been two months since Preity Zinta tied the knot with Gene Goodenough. While the Veer-Zaara actor has been in India for the last one month to attend the IPL, her husband Gene decided to pay a surprise visit to his wife in Mumbai. The Los Angeles-based consultant recently flew to Mumbai to be with his wife. In fact, the couple was recently spotted at the Mumbai Airport along with Gene's parents.

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ALSO READ: Preity Zinta confirms her marriage with Gene Goodenough

ALSO READ: Preity Zinta celebrates India's victory over Pakistan with husband Gene Goodenough



This is the couple's first public appearance in India post their wedding.

According to a report in Spotboye.com, the couple boarded the 9.35 am flight to Chandigarh today. Preity's IPL team Kings XI Punjab is set to play against Delhi Daredevils in Mohali tomorrow (May 7). And her husband decided to accompany her for the match.

Even Preity's parents-in-law were spotted at the Mumbai Airport along with them.

Preity kept her relationship with Gene under the wraps for a very long time. It was only after the lovebirds tied the knot in February this year that Preity took to Twitter to confirm that she has given up her 'Miss' tag by marrying her American beau Gene Goodenough.

(Photos: Milind Shelte, India Today)



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The hospital is a treatment centre, not a rehabilitation home. Looking for the families of abandoned patients isn't part of their official assignment either. But these doctors are going out of their way to help these helpless patients reach their homes.

By Shuja-ul-Haq : From treating patients to rejoining them with their families, young doctors in a government psychiatric hospital have emerged as messiahs for non-Kashmiri patients abandoned in the Valley.

Recently, these doctors successfully traced the family of Mathur Bhai Padhiyar, a schizophrenia patient found abandoned in Srinagar nine years, all the way to Gujarat. This group of enthusiastic doctors is now searching for families of three abandoned girls.

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"One we now know is from Kupwara. The others are not local. They may have come here for work. They aren't exactly able to tell us exactly where they're from. But we are trying", says Dr Mansoor Ahmad Dar, the registrar.

One of the girls was brought to the hospital two years ago suffering from leg injury along with mental illness. "She was brought to the hospital late at night and I was on duty. I clearly remember her condition. One would have thought she won't survive", says a nurse.

While all three girls have been treated and are ready to be sent home, the challenge is to actually find their home.

In such cases these doctors follow a hit-and-trial method. They keenly watch and note down each word these girls utter, use the Internet, then make random phone calls. Young Dr Mansoor is trying the same trick that worked last time when he was successful in tracing a patient's family to Uttarakhand. The family of a 60-year-old patient K D Tripathi came all the way from Uttarakhand and took him home in 2013. "It was the day Afzal Guru was hanged. As a result, most shops and establishments were shut, so we took care of the family. The entire staff came to see off Tripathi," says a ward boy.

"Tripathi's case was miraculous. Once we tried a new drug with him. He showed good results and started talking. He was speaking in bits and pieces. I noted them down and started googling the names of places he had mentioned. I made scores of phone calls all over and eventually found out he was from Uttarakhand. Soon we managed to trace his family. It was technology and hard work put together", says Dr Mansoor.

The hospital is a treatment centre and not a rehabilitation home. The primary task of these medical professionals is to provide medical help. The rehabilitation part ideally should have been taken care by other agencies. Looking for the families of those abandoned isn't part of their official assignment either. But these doctors are going out of their way to help these helpless patients reach their homes.





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On May 1, at her 10th election rally in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu chief minister J. Jayalalithaa shifted the campaign into top gear. She tore into arch-rival and DMK chief M. Karunanidhi, accusing him of launching schemes that benefit only his party leaders, read, his family. "In 2006, the DMK gave television sets worth Rs 2,000 each but collected Rs 3,000 for a cable connection from each household,"she said at a massive rally at the Codissia grounds. "With this itself, the DMK leaders have made Rs 25,000 crore. They may make promises to gain power but will implement them only if Karunanidhi or his family benefit from it." She offers nothing, of course, to back her claims.

Also read:

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10 things Jayalalithaa promises in her manifesto

It's the first time since 1967 that a leader of the AIADMK or DMK is going it alone in almost all 234 constituencies (it had 150 MLAs in the outgoing assembly), having given away just seven seats to allies, who will also contest on the AIADMK's 'Two Leaves' symbol. It is a most widely recognised symbol, associated with party founder M.G. Ramachandran and his legacy. "This symbol is the lifeline of her electoral strategy and fortune without which, even the AIADMK, including Jayalalithaa, would be uncertain of victory in tens of constituencies," says Ramu Manivannan, professor, department of political science and public administration, Madras University.

The AIADMK supremo does not miss any opportunity to taunt her rivals. Countering Karunanidhi's charge that industry is stagnating in the state, she says, "He may be referring to the lack of industrial growth in his own family. Tamil Nadu is number one in number of industries, labour strength and setting up of new SMEs, second after Maharashtra in GDP, and third in exports. It leads in foreign direct investment." The AIADMK also believes it has solved the power crisis by buying power to bridge the deficit. "Tamil Nadu, which was facing power cuts for up to 10 hours, has been made a power surplus state in the last five years." The impending increase in tariffs, though, haunts industries and domestic consumers alike.

Her confidence also springs from the DMK's inability to form a strong alliance, particularly as even some critics are calling the third front-the Captain Vijayakanth-led six-party alliance-the B-team of the AIADMK which will split the anti-incumbency vote. Jayalalithaa is harping on what her government has promised and implemented during her current tenure, the rural outreach with freebies, the cheap access to simple food in the Amma canteens and other sops. She's also fielding newcomers in two out of three constituencies. But most of all, she's hoping the people have not forgotten the corruption charges against the DMK leadership. In effect, she wants to present a picture of confidence to the cadre and scotch all speculation about her health. "The unspoken message is that by sweeping the state for a second time in two years, the cadre can expect to project her as a prime ministerial candidate in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls," says analyst N. Sathiya Moorthy.

AIADMK party workers wait to greet Jayalalithaa as her chopper arrives at a campaign rally AIADMK party workers wait to greet Jayalalithaa as her chopper arrives at a campaign rally

After Karunanidhi released the DMK manifesto with the slogan, 'Solvathai seivum, seivathai solvum (we do what we say, we say what we do)', she began deriding it with an equally terse riposte, 'Sonnadai seiythaen, Sollathahiyum seiythaen (I did what I promised, I also did what I had not promised)'. Significantly, Jayalalithaa is yet to say anything substantive about her plans for the next five years if elected. The only promise of sorts, made at the first rally and repeated elsewhere, is about a phased closure of liquor shops (which is more a half-hearted reaction to the DMK's promise of a blanket ban).

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"Our performance in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, winning 37 of the 39 seats, fulfilling all 54 promises made in the 2011 polls manifesto and the saturated coverage with welfare schemes covering all families with three or more benefits is our greatest strength," says R. Nataraj, retired DGP and AIADMK contestant from Chennai's Mylapore constituency. He says while Tamil Nadu's population is 7.28 crore, there are 55 crore beneficiaries of different welfare and subsidy schemes, suggesting that Amma has touched more lives than understood or imagined.

As a key element of her poll strategy, Jayalalithaa has focused on one or the other region-specific scheme at her rallies. At the Coimbatore rally, she assures that the Avinashi-Athikadavu flood canal scheme, a long-standing demand of farmers in western Tamil Nadu, would be implemented when the party returns to power, adding that the government has already sanctioned the hiring of a consultant. Earlier, at a rally in Dharmapuri, on April 13, she promised to urge the Centre to direct the Gas Authority of India Limited not to lay its 310-km long pipeline through the land of farmers in seven districts and to instead, lay the pipes along highways. At the same rally, she also claimed credit for the Hogenakkal scheme-a drinking water project to benefit the drought-prone northwestern districts.

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Both Jayalalithaa and Karunanidhi have avoided reacting to the criticism by the Vijayakanth-led front and other parties. Instead, the guns are trained on each other, making it clear that this is still a battle between the two big Dravidian parties. She even takes a dig at Karunanidhi on the prohibition issue, calling it a case of the devil citing the scriptures (it was MK who first scrapped prohibition).

Jayalalithaa is also signalling she is in command by changing a large number of contestants. This is perhaps to reiterate that for the AIADMK it is Amma who either wins or loses elections, the candidates don't really matter. She's dropped nearly half the sitting MLAs and about a third of her ministerial colleagues. But by replacing some of those who were at first named as candidates with others who can fetch votes does raise apprehensions-about victory on her own in the absence of a strong ally, as in 2001 (G.K. Moopanar's TMC and Congress among others) and 2011 (DMDK et al).

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There are other advantages by default. "A divided opposition, the poor and disoriented Third Front, public suspicion about the DMK and the supreme confidence of her election managers over pulling the vote with money power are also factors contributing to a positive outlook for Jayalalithaa," explains Ramu Manivannan. The last could be a major influencing factor-an unusually large amount of cash, over Rs 69 crore, has been seized so far. On the downside, he feels she appears listless when compared to her 2011 campaign, seemingly "out of touch with her own evocative style of communication with the audience, always advocating and promoting herself on government schemes".

But despite the criticism, Amma continues to be admired for being a tough woman, not just among the urban middle class but also among rural voters. "Even my poor patients approve of the ministers grovelling at her feet," says a popular physician in Madurai on condition of anonymity. Despite the rising caste violence, agrarian crisis and stagnant industry, anti-incumbency is largely absent in the villages, particularly in southern Tamil Nadu. That is a gain for Amma.

Follow the writer on Twitter @AmarnathKMenon

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By Suhani Singh: Direction: Late Rajesh Pillai

Cast: Manoj Bajpayee, Divya Dutta, Parambrata Chatterjee, Prosenjit Chatterjee, Jimmy Shergill

Ratings: (1.5/5)



In 2008, a constable in Chennai was recognised for his efforts to transport the heart of a young man in record time to save the life of a nine-year-old girl. But in the Hindi remake of this 2011 Malayalam film, which was inspired by the above mentioned incident, an interesting idea is turned into a mawkish drama and stretched thriller.

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ALSO READ: Manoj Bajpayee turns traffic cop for a day

It is June 2008 long before Google Maps became popular in India. A young, promising journalist's life is cut short in a hit-and-run attack. After much deliberation, tears and a phone call from a distressed mother, his parents (Sachin Khedekar and Kitu Gidwani) finally let go of their brain-dead son so that his heart can save the life of a popular actor's 12-year-old daughter. Trouble is that it has to be transported from Mumbai to Pune in two and a half hours. Actor Dev Kapoor (Prosenjit Chatterjee) despite all his wealth and political clout cannot arrange for an aeroplane, a helicopter or a personal aircraft last minute. And so he has to rely on traffic police commissioner Gurbir Singh (Jimmy Shergill) who is convinced it is mission impossible until he is told that he can make headlines and history. After all greed more than charity works.

Enter traffic police constable Ramdas Godbole (Manoj Bajpayee) who takes on the responsibility in the hopes he can redeem himself in the eyes of his own teenage daughter. He is accompanied by the deceased man's best friend and a doctor (Parambrata Chatterjee) who holds the frozen container dearly.

There is good reason too for Speed would have been a more appropriate title for this film in which the driving is so fast and reckless, often while it is pouring, that viewers will be concerned about the condition of the heart. In fact traffic, which is all controlled by Singh and his team, is the least of Godbole's worries. Instead it is hurdles such as driving through a communally sensitive area, calming an emotionally disturbed doctor with a dark secret, handling innumerable calls from his excited superior and dealing with poor mobile network.

For a film which largely unfolds in real time, Traffic lacks direction and pace. That's because too much time is spent in establishing the back stories and motivations of the ensemble cast and then resolving their many issues. It comes to at the cost of deviating from the significant mission itself. The twist that arrives in second half is hardly a surprise. Only Bajpayee performs his part well, with the rest not having much to do.

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But Traffic does raise pertinent questions. Why a police car is taken instead of an ambulance? Why is the police force so bad at tracking its own vehicle? Why do we have such poor connectivity? But more realistically would all this effort be taken if the patient in need of a transplant wasn't from as privileged a background?



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Speaking at an event, Trivedi had said that had he been the party chief he would have asked all the MPs who appeared in the sting to sit at home till their names are cleared. He had even asked his party colleagues who had figured in the sting to demand a probe "if they had done nothing wrong".

By Javed M. Ansari : Soon after the counting of votes for the West Bengal Assembly elections is over, the Trinamool Congress plans to take disciplinary action against its Lok Sabha MP Dinesh Trivedi for his remarks.

Trinamool MP Trivedi has also appeared to have incurred the displeasure of party supremo Mamata Banerjee for his comments at a panel discussion organised by the CII in the capital last year. Speaking at an event, Trivedi had said that had he been the party chief he would have asked all the MPs who appeared in the sting to sit at home till their names are cleared. He had even asked his party colleagues who had figured in the sting to demand a probe "if they had done nothing wrong".

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The former railway minister has had a love hate relationship with party chief Mamata Banerjee. As railway minister in the UPA-II, he was forced by Mamata to quit within days of presenting the Railway Budget, following his proposal to raise passenger fares. He was rehabilitated ahead of the Lok Sabha polls 2014.

Though, Dinesh Trivedi is a party MP from Barrackpore in West Bengal he has been absent from the party's campaign during the recent Assembly elections in West Bengal. The Trinamool MP was reportedly asked by his party leadership to stay away from the campaign and so he has spent all his time in Capital, while all the other party MPs have been actively campaigning for the party.

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee is known to have little patience for dissidence in her party and Trivedi's statement at the CII function appeared to have irked her even further.

However, Trivedi on his part appears unfazed at the prospect of disciplinary action against him. "I was asked to stay, while those who figured in the sting were in the forefront of the campaign, that speaks for itself", says Trivedi.

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By India Today Web Desk: All's not well between telly world's favourite jodi Karishma Tanna and Upen Patel. The couple who fell in love on the sets of Bigg Boss 8, and got engaged on Nach Baliye, aren't seeing eye to eye these days, according to reports.

The lovebirds who often vacationed together in the past have not been posting pictures and making public appearances together of late, which makes one wonder if they have really parted ways.

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Also read: How romantic! Do you know the nickname Upen Patel has given to girlfriend Karishma?



If reports are to be trusted, the couple have been fighting over professional issues. While Karishma has been bagging projects, Upen is yet to sign a deal. This has led to constant arguments between the two.

When contacted, Karishma told TellyChakkar: "Every couple has issues and fights and they do overcome it. No relationship is perfect and I do not even want one, as then it would be too boring. We are pretty much together and I don't think anyone has the right to comment on our career matters."

So, Karishma hasn't denied that there are issues between the couple. Hope the couple sort out their differences soon.

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According to sources, Himanshu Ranjan had taken loan of Rs 4 lakh for setting up his studio from a local moneylender, Sagar Kumar, four years ago. When he was unable to pay back the loan Ranjan offered to trade his wife and children against the loan amount.

A young man, who was unable to repay the loan, reportedly handed over his wife and children to a local moneylender in Norajpur village of Nalanda district.

According to sources, Himanshu Ranjan had taken loan of Rs 4 lakh for setting up his studio from a local moneylender, Sagar Kumar, four years ago. When he was unable to pay back the loan Ranjan offered to trade his wife and children against the loan amount.Kumar, who reportedly had an illicit affair with Ranjan's wife, accepted the offer.

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Ranjan married off his wife to Kumar without divorcing her. While this could land both Ranjan and Kumar in legal trouble, there are no substantial evidences of his incident. On one hand villagers refuse to speak over this issue,

Police has also claimed that they are unaware of any such incident.

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People wear Samsung Gear VR devices as they attend the launching ceremony of the new Samsung S7 and S7 edge smartphones during the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, February 21, 2016. [Photo/Agencies]

One after another company has been going to the virtual reality, or VR, business. Search VR on any domestic e-commerce platform and up to 1,000 devices will pop up, their prices ranging from 299 yuan ($46) to 30,000 yuan. Enter any shopping center and you will find many stalls offering VR experience.

But do not try the low-cost devices, because VR requires high-end software as well as hardware. If either is not good enough, you will have a bad experience.

Although it gained popularity recently, VR is an old concept. Pioneered by US computer "philosopher" Jaron Lanier in the 1980s, it gives you some virtual experience with visions. The trick is to deceive your eyes into believing what is displayed is true.

Most VR equipment for individuals use headsets, which display images inside a small, closed space. To cheat our eyes, the image on display must be clear enough and pixel density high enough to truly imitate the real world.

For that, the VR equipment software must be powerful enough to produce high-resolution and high-quality images, while the display hardware should be of high quality to support the high-quality images. If the equipment doesn't meet the requirements, the image quality will be damaged and the experience ruined.

On Apple's official Chinese website, the cheapest model of new iPad pro, with a resolution ratio of 27322048 and storage capacity of 32 gigabytes, is available for 5,888 yuan. Although its display accounts for a quite high percentage of the price, iPad pro is not the best in market and professional models may cost much more. To produce images on the display, you need software. The software that produces images almost like the real world is no less expensive. Since often it's several gigabytes in size, it takes hundreds of programmers more than one year to draft such a program, and several more months to test them. Intellectual property, too, is part of the VR cost. At present, there are several main tools for VR development, such as Virtools, Nibiru and Quest 3D, and the virtual worlds they make are rather expensive.

Moreover, high-resolution images, as well as the software, take up huge storage space; VR service providers need bigger hard disks to store, and wider bandwidth to transmit them. All these increase the cost, so you should not expect to meet all the demands for a few hundred yuan.

Actually, if the budget allows, you can enjoy VR experience without wearing headsets. Aviation companies and militaries sometimes use another kind of VR in their trainingcovering the walls and the roof with high-quality, high-density displays so that trainees feel as if they are in a new world.

That technology is open for civil use, too. Increasingly many parks now have virtual roller coasters: the user sits in a car that vibrates while images are displayed to make him/her feel the thrills of a real roller-coaster ride. But such devices are rather expensive, and individual use of VR is not yet that popular.

The author is a writer with China Daily. zhangzhouxiang@chinadaily.com.cn
"Humare paas bahut pani hai? Hume kisi ki madad ki awashykta nahi hai (We have sufficient supply of water ? We do not need any kind of help from any one (Centre)," Shivpal Yadav, senior cabinet minister of the Uttar Pradesh government said.

By Rajat Rai: Uttar Pradesh government on Thursday turned down central government's offer to send a water-train to the drought-hit Bundelkhand region.

"Humare paas bahut pani hai? Hume kisi ki madad ki awashykta nahi hai (We have sufficient supply of water ? We do not need any kind of help from any one (Centre)," Shivpal Yadav, senior cabinet minister of the Uttar Pradesh government said.

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A 10-wagon water-train has already arrived in Jhansi, where it is has been kept in the railway yard. It will reach Mahoba on Friday.

"The wagons are ready to be filled with water from a nearby reservoir and be dispatched to destinations as and when needed," Commercial Officer, Jhansi Railway Division, Girish Kanchan said.



It is to be mentioned that the state government on Thursday turned down the Centre's offer to send a water-train to the state's drought-hit Bundelkhand region, saying the water crisis situation there was not as serious as in Maharashtra's Latur.

The state government, however, requested the Centre to provide it 10,000 water tankers for distributing water in the region.

"We do not have any requirement to bring water by train...We have made arrangements for providing water... Wherever tankers are required, an assessment has been made and tankers have been bought," Chief Secretary Alok Ranjan said.

Also Read

Exposed: Water tankers meant for thirsty being sold to rich businessmen in parched Marathwada

Who will rescue drought-hit Bundelkhand's starving farmers?

Centre will send water to drought-hit Bundelkhand via special train



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By India Today Web Desk: People in France were left seething after a video surfaced showing an amputee stripped of his pants and his prosthetic legs removed after being searched by the French Police.

The video shot at Paris Gare de Lyon railway station and posted on Facebook by user Jean-Didier Bakekolo, starts with police officers walking away from the scene. Bakekolo is then heard screaming (in French) "Officer, officer, we need you. Officer, turn back please. This is humiliation, it is not normal," but to no avail.

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The victim of the alleged harassment was later identified as Francois Bayga. In an interview with French media, Bayga said he was travelling from the Gare de Lyon station to the Gare du Nord when the three officers assaulted him.

"They accused me of stealing a phone. I started to get angry. I didn't know what they wanted. I was pushed against wall and one of the policemen pulled at my leg. I explained several times that it was prosthetic...They insisted on searching me. I felt completely humiliated," he said.

The video, watched more than 2,00,000 times has left people fuming. Shame on the police," read one comment on the video. "Really ashamed of getting worse and worse cops," read another.

French politician Jacques Toubon has, meanwhile, announced on Twitter there would be an inquiry into the incident.

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As the state enters the last phase of this assembly election, Didi is finding herself on unsure ground. She can no longer dismiss the 'jote' offhand.

April is the cruellest month. Mamata Banerjee may be in no mood for poetry as Bengal enters the last leg of the assembly election, but nothing nails it better then T.S. Eliot's immortal line. It has been a month of whirlwind chopper-hopping for her, and Mamata, chief of the Trinamool Congress, was wishing this weren't her home state.

It isn't Bengal per se she's miffed with, though. "It pains when some people insult Bengal," the West Bengal chief minister told the crowd at a political rally in North Kolkata. "What is going on here and what I get to hear...sometimes I feel I was not born here at all." Didi was referring to the Opposition's campaign against the alleged involvement of her party leaders in the Narada and Saradha scams.

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In the sixth and concluding phase of the election, Mamata is a bundle of nerves, swinging from a "don't care, don't give a damn" attitude to wallowing in abject self-pity. She also seems to be suffering from what many people are calling PMS (please-mistake-sorry) blues, begging people to give her another chance and not turn away from her.

"If I have done anything wrong, give me two tight slaps," she pleads with the voters in Behala constituency. "If you tell me, I will go and clean your utensils. But if you call me a thief, if you insult Bengal, it hurts." Three hours later, at a meeting in Sreerampore in Hooghly, she is raising her forefinger and warning the Opposition, the Election Commission and even the voters, who she feels are shifting their allegiance. "Ekta ekta kore hisheb nebo," she tells them. "Every one will be held to account, one by one. The people of Bengal will not spare you. I will not spare you."

The worry lines that crease her forehead underscore the simple arithmetic of the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. The Left and Congress polled 39.64 per cent of the votes as against the Trinamool's 39.9 per cent. There were at least 126 assembly segments out of the total of 294 where the Congress and Left candidates were leading in their individual capacities. In 38 seats, they were trailing behind the TMC by less than 5,000 votes.

The jote, the alliance that she prefers calling the ghot (gang up) is getting her goat. The 17.02 per cent growth in the BJP's vote share influenced by the Modi wave, which was mostly the anti-incumbency vote against the three-year-old Trinamool rule, is likely to return to the Opposition fold, now that the BJP is not being considered a serious player in the 2016 election.

Voter turnout in the preceding five phases of elections should also worry Didi: it has averaged 80 per cent, the highest being in the first phase at 83.7 per cent. Though psephologist and poll analyst Biswanath Chakrabarty does not think much of the conventional logic that higher voter turnout signals an anti-incumbency vote. "West Bengal is the only state where the high turnout of voters does not mean it will go against the incumbent," he says. "In the 2006 assembly polls, when the polling percentage was 81 per cent, the ruling Left returned with a landslide win. In West Bengal, parties play a big role in the mass mobilisation of voters to polling booths."

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Even so, the jote, which seemed wobbly in the initial stages, now seems to have found a firm footing. Congress president Sonia Gandhi and AICC vice president Rahul Gandhi have thrown their weight behind the alliance by highlighting the "Modibhai-Didibhai" camaraderie in the Rajya Sabha. "Modiji aur Mamataji ladte hain ek doosre se. Mamata ji ne kaha hai interview mein natural alliance hai BJP ke saath. Saajano gussa, saajano ladai hai (Modiji and Mamataji fight with each other. It's fabricated anger, a fabricated fight)," Rahul said at a rally on April 27 while sharing the podium for the first time with Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, the former chief minister of the Left Front government, at the Park Circus Maidan in Kolkata.

The jote also seems to have hijacked the Manush in Mamata's catchy Ma, Maati, Manush slogan, portraying itself as a Manusher jote, an alliance of the people. CPI(M) candidate Surjya Kanta Mishra does not tire of saying, in rally after rally, that it's the people who make history.

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Political rivals apart, Mamata seems to have a new enemy in the Election Commission as well. Its strict vigilance, clamping of section 144 in several sensitive booths, and the deployment of central forces have created a curfew-like situation. Mamata's trusted 'Kesto' Anubrata Mondal, and others like him, adept at mobilising cadres and manipulating the state machinery to rig polls in favour of the ruling party have either been kept under house arrest or picked up by the state police.

MLAs like Sujit Bose or Sabyasachi Dutta, who were allegedly responsible for the mayhem in the Salt Lake municipality polls in 2015, have gone on record accusing the police of acting tough with them. "Kichhu police CPMer dalaal hoye geche (some policemen have become CPI-M pimps), Bose grumbled. Sabyasachi fumed at police officers for cordoning off his men several hundred metres away from the polling booths-"Uni urdi pore achhen boley ja khushi korben naki (do they think they can do anything because they are in uniform)?"

Mamata is also hurling the choicest invectives at the Modi government for unleashing central forces, accusing it of curbing people's democratic rights: "CPI(M)-Congress-BJP santraash chalache. Manush ke vote dite debe na. Shob dhuye debo (they have unleashed terror and are stopping people from casting votes. I will thrash them)." For the 1,092 booths in south Kolkata, which includes Mamata's Bhowanipore constituency as well, the EC has deployed 11,300 central security personnel, or roughly 10 armed guards per booth.

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It's a fight to the finish, no doubt. And Didi is a gritty fighter. Down perhaps she is, but Mamata is certainly not going out without a fight.

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Motherland was not quite as well known in the past as it is today. It signifies, above all else, the nationalist desire for a peaceful home that one can call one's own.

Just think this through. While nationalists may rally around Bharat Mata (Mother India), most battle cries in the Indian army are clearly masculine. There is, of course, the near ubiquitous and utterly macho 'Har Har Mahadev', but that is not all. We have other battle cries too that strongly plump for the male symbol. Take, for example, 'Jai Bajrang Bali' or 'Raja Ramchandra ki Jai', or 'Badri Vishal ki Jai'. They are all robustly muscle and tone. There are, however, a few instances in the Indian Army that have 'mata' or 'maa' in their battle cries, but the majority opinion is on the other side.

Dipankar Gupta

Quite clearly in times of war, it is the father figure or the male principle that is dominant. This is probably why 'pitrabhumi' and not 'matrabhumi' is a common feature in Hindu traditional texts. After all, Ashvamedha, or the horse sacrifice, as we all know, had to do with grabbing territory, what with Avanti, Vaishali, Magadha and Vatsa, among many other kingdoms, coveting each other's domains.

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Motherland was not quite as well known in the past as it is today. It signifies, above all else, the nationalist desire for a peaceful home that one can call one's own. Consequently, in the 1880s, on the back of growing anti-colonial sentiments, 'Bharat Mata', or 'matrabhumi', became popular in India. In the beginning, the 'Mata' was shown as a gentle, even frail, figure, but in a few decades she morphed into a 'Super-Mom'. This is a worldwide phenomenon and not limited to India alone. Just think of Goya's famous 1865 painting, They are Fierce, which has a woman with a baby in her arms plunging a lance into an enemy's entrails.

A quiet woman turns ferocious, not when annexing alien lands, but when her children are threatened. At times like these, she would circle around her cubs just as a mother bear would. Even today, nearly every European country is symbolised by the feminine principle, but in the 'Shakti' mode. In the United Kingdom, it is Mother Britannica, often wearing a helmet and carrying a shield and a trident. Delacroix's 1830 painting, Liberty Leading the People, depicts a woman with the French flag, a bayonet and a motherly breast fully exposed. Then there is Svea, or Mother Sweden, appearing as a steel maiden, or as a female Valkyrie warrior.

These "motherly" nationalist symbols signify nature, homeland and the hearth. The "father" image takes over when conquest is in the air and lands have to be won. This is illustrated not just with Indian Army battle cries, but also in the way Germany switched symbols, post-Hitler. Till the mid-19th century, Germany was immortalised by Philip Veit's image of Germania, or Mother Germany. She is shown carrying a sword, a flag and wearing a crested armour. But Adolf Hitler, with his Nazi ambitions, changed all that. He junked Mother Germany in favour of the term "fatherland" and all Europe trembled. Why, when America needs soldiers, a hairy Uncle Sam is pointing a finger at you. Clearly, home is where the mother is and capturing alien territory is the father's day-time job.

Therefore, while Mother is all nature, the Father is primarily culture. This is further bolstered by contemporary anthropological studies. Once again, exceptions exist, but the rule is too strong to be ignored. Unlike the question mark that hangs over the father's head, the fact of motherhood is hard to dispute. It is the woman who gives birth to a child and the whole affair is completely natural, and no questions asked. Hence, in Christianity, Jesus was born of his mother's womb; but the father? Indian myths too give many such examples of gods coming in at the dead of night, fertilising women and then taking off.

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Among some matrilineal societies, where women were allowed several husbands (and men several wives), a child's legitimacy only required that one of her many husbands should formally say: "I did." Quite in character with this, mother and child paintings are in their thousands, but rarely one of a father and son. Even in depictions of Jesus's birth, or "nativity", Mother Mary and her infant are seen in a close huddle; often the baby suckling as the mother looks down fondly. Joseph is often absent in such portraits, and when present, is in the back row, third from left, but without a clear purpose.

Yet, men should accept 'Bharat Mata ki Jai' because 'Bharat Pita ki Jai' demands a lot of hard work. To keep up with the masculinity it calls for, they would have to shape up and make Akhand Bharat a reality; perhaps, even reclaim the Mauryan Empire that stretched all the way to parts of Southern Iran.

This would have made Veer Savarkar happy, but what would China say?

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Sociologist Dipankar Gupta is aformer professor of the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi

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Google took in $75 billion in revenue in 2015, so even a large verdict for Oracle would have little impact on investors because it would be a one-time charge.

By Reuters: Even if a jury orders Alphabet Inc's Google to pay the full $8.8 billion sought by Oracle Corp in an upcoming San Francisco copyright trial over the Android operating system, shareholders and analysts say it will likely have little impact on the search giant's bottom line.

Oracle claims Google's Android violated its copyright on parts of the Java programming language, while Google says it should be able to use Java without paying a fee under the fair-use provision of copyright law.

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The case previously went to trial in 2012, but a jury deadlocked. If the new jury, in the trial starting on Monday, rules against Google on fair use, then it will consider damages.

Google took in $75 billion in revenue in 2015, so even a large verdict for Oracle would have little impact on investors because it would be a one-time charge, said Mike Bailey, director of research at FBB Capital Partners, which holds shares in Alphabet, Google's parent company.

Oracle is also seeking an injunction against Google's future use of Java in Android, which would give Oracle more leverage to negotiate an ongoing royalty. However, such an injunction would have to be issued by a judge, not a jury, and legal experts believe that is a remote possibility.

After the first trial, U.S. District Judge William Alsup ruled that the material at issue in the case should not be subject to copyright at all. A federal appeals court reversed that ruling, however, saying that the structure of the computer language that connects programs can be protected.

An Oracle representative did not respond to a request for comment, and a Google spokesman declined to comment.

A damages expert hired by Oracle estimated that Google has taken in $29 billion in gross advertising and search revenue from Android devices since their inception, according to court documents, plus an additional $11.6 billion in sales of apps and Android phones.

Oracle's expert then calculated Android profits at $11.4 billion, of which he concluded Oracle is entitled to $8.8 billion.

However, Google says Oracle has vastly overstated Java's role in the success of Android.

In a ruling this week, Alsup said Oracle's damages expert will be allowed to testify about the $8.8 billion figure but cannot tell jurors they should award the entire amount.



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The phone is said to boast of a similar 3D glass and metal design as the flagship Mi 5.

By Saurabh Singh: Xiaomi CEO Jun Lei has taken to Weibo to tease the company's upcoming 6.44-inch Mi Max, highlighting the phone's slim frame. The Mi Max as per earlier leaks is said to look much like the Mi 5. The phone is said to boast of a similar 3D glass and metal design as the flagship Mi 5.

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The Mi Max was recently spotted on benchmark website TENAA giving away its design as well as features set. The phone although looked more like the Mi 5, bits and pieces of the Redmi Note 3 were also observed. For one, the Mi Max is said to hone a rear-mounted circular fingerprint scanner much like in the case of the Redmi Note 3. The front of the Mi Max phone has physical capacitive keys.

The Mi Max as per rumours will be powered by Qualcomm's Snapdragon 650 processor and will reportedly come in two variants: 2GB RAM and 16GB memory, and another with 3GB RAM and 32GB memory. It will reportedly sport a 16-megapixel camera on the rear and a 5-megapixel camera on the front.

Also Read: Xiaomi's 6.4-inch Max phone looks identical to Mi 5: Report

Xiaomi will officially launch the Mi Max phone and the next iteration of MIUI operating system aka MIUI 8 on May 10. It was also expected to launch the second-generation Mi Band at the event, but production issues have apparently delayed the launch. It is now said that the Mi Band 2 will launch one month later, sometime in June.

The Mi Band 2 is said to be a stark departure from the original Mi Band from a design (and functionality) point of view, in that it would feature an actual display and a physical button.

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By Javed Anwer: When Microsoft launched the Windows 10 last year, it made a historic decision to give it away as a free upgrade. The offer was for one year and that is (most likely) ending on July 29.

"The free upgrade offer to Windows 10 was a first for Microsoft, helping people upgrade faster than ever before. And time is running out. The free upgrade offer will end on July 29... After July 29th, you'll be able to continue to get Windows 10 on a new device, or purchase a full version of Windows 10 Home for $119," Yusuf Mehdi, who is corporate vice president of Microsoft Windows, wrote on the company blog.

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In the same blog post, Mehdi also dubbed the Windows 10 a big success. Although for something as significant as "free Windows", the new OS seems to be a mixed bag from an outsider's point of view. Mehdi said that the Windows 10 is now running on over 300 million devices. These probably include the mobiles that run Windows 10 Mobile.

Also read: Windows 10 walkthrough: Best and surest way to install new Windows

Apart from the big number, Mehdi also shared a few other facts related to Windows 10. He noted:

-- Over 63 billion minutes were spent on Microsoft Edge in March, with 50 per cent growth in minutes since the last quarter. Microsoft had launched the Edge browser along with the Windows 10. It replaces the much-used but not-similarly-loved Internet Explorer.

-- Cortana, the personal assistant that is part of Windows 10, has answered over 6 billion questions so far.

-- There has been a talk that Windows 10 is not great for gamers. But Mehdi says numbers tell a different story. He writes, " People are playing games on Windows 10 more than ever before, with over 9 billion hours of gameplay on Windows 10 since launch."

For Microsoft Windows 10 is a new beginning. The new operating system has been the company's attempt to turn Windows into a kind of platform that can be called service. Under the leadership of Satya Nadella, Microsoft is trying to re-invent itself into a company that provides services like Office 365, which are updated regularly and which earn the company a steady stream of income through subscriptions. Microsoft has not yet moved the Windows to subscription model but there are hints that in future -- 1 or 2 odd years -- this could be the point where it is headed.

Also, with Windows 10 Microsoft was attempting to woo back desktop users who were miffed at the company due to Windows 8, which tried to foist a new user interface on traditional computers. This interface was more suitable for mobiles and tablets or for the devices with the touchscreen. But Windows 10 brings back some of the features, such as the Start Menu and virtual desktops, that are relevant to traditional computer users.



Also read: 10 reasons why Windows 10 is better than Windows 8

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* PermaKat Eleonora Rosati received the 2022 Adepi Award

* PermaKat Eleonora Rosati listed as one of the World Intellectual Property Review's "Influential Women in IP" of 2020.

* PermaKat Eleonora Rosati listed as one of the Managing Intellectual Property magazine's "Fifty Most Influential People" of 2018.

* IPKat founder and Blogmeister Emeritus Jeremy Phillips listed as one of the Managing Intellectual Property magazine's "Fifty Most Influential People" of 2005, 2011, 2013, and 2014.

* Recommended by the European Patent Office as reading material for candidates for the European Qualifying Examinations, 2013.

* Listed as "Top Legal Blog" in The Times Online, March 2011.

2010 ABA Journal 100. * One of the only two non-US blogs listed in the Blawg100.

* Court Reporter Top Copyright Blog award winner, November 2010.

* Number 1 in the 2010 Top Copyright Blog list compiled by the Copyright Litigation Blog, July 2010.

* Selected by the United States Library of Congress for inclusion in its historic collections of Internet materials related to Legal Blawgs as of 2010.

* Top Patent Blog poll 2009: 3rd out of 50 in the "Favourite Patent Blog" poll and 2nd out of 50 in the "Most-read" poll.

Blog of the Year, 20 August 2008. * ComputerWeekly IT Law and Governance, 20 August 2008.
Anti-American rhetoric from such figures as Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has actually increased in both frequency and intensity since the conclusion of nuclear negotiations between the two countries in July. This has generally been understood as push-back against the perception that broad-based rapprochement between Iran and the West would be possible in the wake of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, which lifted many economic sanctions on Iran in exchange for certain limits on the Iranian nuclear program.

Indeed, some of that rhetoric has served not only to discourage political reconciliation with the US, but also to discourage commerce. In a message on the occasion of the Iranian New Year in March, Khamenei declared the year ahead to be the Year of the Resistance Economy, referring to economic policies that had promoted domestic development in order to weather the storm of US-led sanctions without compromising on the issues that brought those sanctions about.

More recently, officials loyal to Khamenei announced that Iranian businesses would not be permitted to import vehicles from American carmaker Chevrolet. This is apparently part of a broader effort to obstruct or limit American imports. So it remains to be seen whether the Oil Ministrys open-ended invitation for investors will be carried out in practice. Most analysts seem to agree that there are factions of the Iranian government that see greater benefit from exploiting the full measure of economic sanctions and others who see greater benefit from holding onto the perception of the US as an adversary and persecutor.

The persecution narrative has been particularly evident in recent weeks, with Khamenei and many of his subordinates blaming the US for preventing European companies from reengaging with Iran economically. Khamenei has specifically said that the US is abiding by the nuclear deal only on paper, and that its restrictions are making international banks nervous about reclaiming access to the Iranian financial system and potentially making themselves subject to ongoing sanctions enforcement.

But Iran News Update previously linked to a Breaking Energy News article which pointed out that the banking restrictions that Khamenei has been criticizing are unrelated to the nuclear deal, are not specific to Iran, and are primarily a function of the Iranian government and central bank failing to take appropriate measures to guarantee that the country would not expose international banks to increased danger of money-laundering, tax avoidance, and other problems.

This fact was further emphasized by the Gatestone Institute on Thursday, in an article that reported upon corroborating comments from officials with the Central Bank of Iran. These banks acknowledged that especially in the wake of the presidency of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, transparency, money laundering, and undue influence by hardline government agencies are all persistent problems in the Iranian banking system.

The central banks governor, Seif Valiollah even went so far as to contradict the supreme leaders criticisms by praising the US for its efforts to encourage European investment and to make it clear that Iran is not the target of any additional banking restrictions over and above those that are imposed upon all countrys financial systems. Valiollah and some of his colleagues reportedly acknowledged that the lack of access to international transactions is primarily the fault of Iran itself, in part because it has not acquired software or adopted relevant practices that would allow for such access.

What is not clear from their comments is whether this ongoing non-participation is a result of bureaucracy and ordinary obstacles, or whether it represents a policy originating at high levels of the Iranian government. In any event, the comments do make it clear that there are factors constraining Irans recovery which are not related to the supposed persecution repeatedly highlighted by Khamenei in recent weeks.

The announcement of forthcoming oil contracts serves the same purpose, in that it reminds readers that the lack of such contracts had previously been highlighted by foreign entities as a source of anxiety about the security of their potential investments in Iran. While the Oil Ministrys commentary suggests favorable terms in those contracts, it will not be known until July whether they will truly end a 20 year-old buy-back system under which foreign firms have been banned from booking reserves or taking equity stakes in Iranian companies, according to Trade Arabia.

At the same time that Khamenei and his followers are apparently opposed to this reversal, it also appears to be the case that advocates of engagement are not interested in waiting for it to go into effect before trying to entice foreign businesses to invest in Iran. Toward that end, oil industry officials have frequently boasted of the speed of recovery in the months since the January implementation of the nuclear agreement. And more such boasting was delivered on Thursday by Rokneddin Javadi, the managing director of the National Iranian Oil Company, according to Bloomberg.

Interestingly, that commentary not only pointed out that Iran expected to reclaim pre-sanctions output levels within another one or two months, it also suggested that the country would be willing to reverse its current policy of non-cooperation with OPEC output limits once that benchmark is achieved. This arguably serves to provide foreign companies with the impression that Iran will become more cooperative around the time that the new contracts are released, without requiring that the Oil Ministry release those contracts first to prove it.

But even if this is an accurate description of Irans emerging economic policies, it does not answer all of the concerns that foreign companies have about investing in the countrys oil and import markets. Many other concerns are geopolitical in nature. That is, Iran remains a risky investment as long as there is a danger that its relations with the West will deteriorate again, possibly leading to the cancellation of the nuclear agreement.

Iranian officials have made some effort to dispel these concerns by downplaying their intrusions into regional conflicts on sides opposite to those supported by the US and its allies. For instance, Rudaw reported on Thursday that Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian had once again denied that Iran has combat troops in Iran. We used to send military advisers from the Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) there, upon the Syrian governments request; those are our military advisors, our specialists who are experts in fight against terrorism, he said in an interview with Russias Sputnik News.

But these denials have been consistently undermined, and in fact Amir-Abdollahians comments went on to acknowledge the presence of Shiite militias fighting along the Syrian army, albeit without acknowledging that the membership of those militias is largely the product of Iranian recruitment, and even includes members of the Iranian military. These factors continue to threaten the political environment among Iran, the US, and allies on both sides. Thus, it also poses a lingering threat to the economic environment within Iran, as well.
During this ceremony, Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo expressed her support for all those who work for freedom of expression. She presented City of Paris medals to the chosen journalists and praised their endeavors, saying that the gates of the French capital will always be open to them.

Mohammadi has been arrested many times for her human rights activities. She was last arrested on 5 May 2015 at her home by judicial security agents without prior notice and was transferred to the notorious Evin Prison in northern Tehran. The arrest initiated a six-year prison sentence that had already been handed down in March 2011.

In a message sent to Reporters Without Borders on the occasion of its ceremony, Ms. Mohammadi referred to the difficult work of reporting in Iran and wrote that domestic media are unable to publish reports or opinions of freedom and rights activists because of the risks involved. She added that when the words of these activists appear in the foreign media, the Iranian government finds various pretexts upon which to prosecute them.

Ms. Mohammadi suffers from acute lung disease and muscular paralysis. Physicians have stated that her diseases are aggravated by prison conditions or in tense environments and may threaten her life. Iranian authorities routinely deny essential medical care to prisoners, especially political prisoners, as a means of exerting political pressure or imposing extra-judicial punishment.

In a statement on April 5, 2016, Amnesty International called for Mohammadis unconditional release. It emphasized that this political prisoner has had no contact with her children for over eight months and is seriously ill.

Likewise, Reporters Without Borders published a statement on January 21, 2016 in which it condemned the ill treatment of imprisoned journalists by the Iranian regime. The organization made reference to the denial of medical treatment and noted that Mohammadi is among the political prisoners who have been subject to this and other pressures.
Melat Website, affiliated with the Iranian parliament, quoted Tabatabai Naini, deputy chair of the Committee on Judiciary and Legal Affairs as saying, Regrettably, the number of prisoners in the country is over 200,000 and for serious support and programming we need to form The Organization to Support Prisoners Families. He went on to criticize Iranian authorities for failing to take any steps toward reducing the prison population.

This representative of the 9th parliament noted that many families of prisoners are at risk of falling victim to criminal acts themselves. He also complained that Iran lacks proper standards for detaining people and that the country suffers from a cultural problem because from the very first stage, the arrestee is assumed to be guilty.

Naini said that this practice has been in place since the time of the Pahlavi monarchy and that its persistence is a major contributor to prison overcrowding. Presently, 60% of the prisoners are detained for drug-related charges and the many executions and long-term imprisonments have only scarred the society and led to narcotics traffickers increasingly using firearms.

Naini stated that executions have failed to achieve the expected results and that the judiciary alone cannot decrease the overcrowding of the prisons.

Previously, Hossein Mir-Mohammad Sadeqi, legal deputy of the Strategic Research Center, had remarked that years of implementing executions has not succeeded in diminishing drug related crimes in Iran.

In presenting his latest report to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, Ahmed Shaheed, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Iran, said: Irans regime executed at least 966 prisoners in 2015, the highest such rate in 10 years.

Mr. Shaheed highlighted reports that individuals accused of national security and drug crimes are often deprived of the most basic due process and fair trial rights such as proper access to lawyers, and are subject to long periods of incommunicado detention, torture, ill-treatment, and forced confessions used in court to secure convictions.
[May 05, 2016] Correction: Fitch Rates Garland ISD TX's ULT Rfdg Bonds 'AAA' PSF/'AA+' Underlying; Outlook Stable

(This is an amendment of a press release originally published May 4, 2016, updated to include the district's Issuer Default Rating.) Fitch Ratings has assigned an 'AAA' rating to the following Garland Independent School District, TX bonds: --$41 million unlimited tax (ULT) refunding bonds, series 2016. The 'AAA' rating reflects the guarantee provided by the Texas Permanent School Fund (PSF), whose bond guarantee program is rated 'AAA' by Fitch. Additional information on the Texas PSF is available in Fitch's Aug. 5, 2015 press release, 'Fitch Affirms Texas Permanent School Fund at 'AAA'; Outlook Stable', available at 'www.fitchratings.com'. The bonds are scheduled for negotiated sale May 10. Proceeds from the sale will be used to refund a portion of the district's outstanding bonds for debt service savings. In addition, Fitch assigns an 'AA+' underlying rating to the bonds and affirms the following ratings at 'AA+': --The district's Issuer Default Rating; --$463.5 million in outstanding ULT bonds. The Rating Outlook is Stable. SECURITY The bonds are payable from an unlimited ad valorem tax levied against all taxable property within the district. KEY RATING DRIVERS The 'AA+' rating reflects Fitch's expectation that the district will maintain healthy financial flexibility throughout the economic cycle due to its solid expenditure flexibility and robust reserves. Although the district's revenue raising ability is very limited, Fitch expects the state funding formula to provide protection from potential shifts in the local economy. Economic Resource Base This relatively mature district experiences stable enrollment and is part of the broad Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW) metropolitan statistical area economy, serving an estimated population of over 300,000 in the cities of Garland, Rowlett, and Sachse. Residents have access to a diverse employment market that continues to outperform the U.S. in terms of population, employment, and income growth. Statewide economic trends are positive. Revenue Framework: 'a' factor assessment The state aid and property taxes that support district operations typically yield moderate revenue growth in line with the U.S. economy, based on the state's per-student funding formula. The district's independent legal ability to raise revenue is limited by state law. Expenditure Framework: 'aa' factor assessment The district is relatively mature and retains solid expenditure flexibility given a lack of enrollment pressure. Fitch expects growth in spending to trend with revenue growth. The low fixed-cost burden reflects state support for debt service and employee benefits. Long-Term Liability Burden: 'aaa' factor assessment Debt and pension liabilities are low relative to personal income. Fitch anticipates the district's long-term liabilities will rise but remain manageable as the remaining bond authorization is issued over the next three years. Operating Performance: 'aaa' factor assessment The district's expenditure-cutting flexibility and solid reserve funding leave it well positioned to address cyclical downturns. Conservative budget practices and revenue stability further support Fitch's expectation of continued financial flexibility. RATING SENSITIVITIES Manageable Long-Term Liabilities: A material increase in long-term liabilities beyond current plans could result in a rating downgrade. CREDIT PROFILE Revenue Framework The district's operating revenues are derived from a mix of state funding (66%) and property taxes (31%). Revenue growth is primarily a function of enrollment as the state seeks to ensure a certain level of per-pupil spending for all state school districts. The district's general fund revenues have grown at a rate above U.S. CPI and U.S. GDP over the past 10 years, despite state budget cuts in the 2012 - 2013 biennium. This strong trend is due in part to higher state funding for new educational programs; Fitch anticipates that enrollment stability will yield revenue growth in line with U.S. economic prformance, absent policy action.



The district's tax rate for operations is at the legal limit of $1.04 per $100 of taxable assessed valuation (TAV). The district would need voter authorization to raise the rate and there are no current plans to do so. The district levies a separate, unlimited debt service tax rate of $0.31 for fiscal 2016. Management anticipates an additional rate increase of up to $0.07 through 2021 for planned bond issuance, remaining comfortably below the $0.50 statutory cap for new debt issuance. Expenditure Framework

The district's main expenditure item is instruction at 66% of general fund spending. The district also funds some capital outlay from the general fund for facility maintenance and repairs, but Fitch expects this will subside somewhat with recent and planned bond issuances. Fitch expects expenditure growth to align with revenue growth absent policy action, based on the current trend of relatively flat enrollment. Management indicates that the operating costs of a planned career and technology facility will be offset by higher state funding for student participation in the program. The district's fixed-cost burden is affordable, with carrying costs for debt, pensions, and other postemployment benefits equaling 9.4% of fiscal 2015 governmental expenditures. That figure falls to 6.6% when state support for debt service is netted out. Debt service costs are expected to increase with planned debt issuance through 2018, but this is offset somewhat by spending flexibility in staffing given modest enrollment growth prospects and strong control over wages and benefits. Long-Term Liability Burden The district received strong voter support in 2014 (62%) for its $455 million bond program for a combination of new facilities and improvements to existing facilities. Management plans to issue the remaining $259 million of ULT authorization within the next three years, compared with amortization of $109 million within that same period. The long-term liability burden is currently affordable at 9% of personal income, and is expected to remain manageable with planned issuance. The district participates in the Teacher Retirement System of Texas (TRS), a cost-sharing multiple employer pension system. Under GASB 67 and 68, TRS's assets cover 83.3% of liabilities as of fiscal 2015, a ratio that falls to 75% using a more conservative 7% return assumption. The proportionate share of the system's net pension liability paid by the district is minimal, representing less than 1% of personal income. The district's contributions are currently limited by state law (total contribution of $9.9 million in fiscal 2015). Operating Performance The district has maintained a solid fiscal cushion despite recessionary pressures and state funding cuts, and retains expenditure flexibility to manage well through economic downturns. General fund operations have generated surplus results in each of the past six fiscal years, enabling the district to address various capital needs while still adding to reserves; unrestricted general fund balance at fiscal 2015 year-end was 35.5% of spending. Management has demonstrated a strong commitment to maintaining operational balance and outperforming conservative budget assumptions. Fitch expects the district's conservative financial management practices to support financial flexibility throughout the economic cycle. Texas School Funding Litigation A Texas district judge ruled in August 2014 that the state's school finance system is unconstitutional. The ruling, which was in response to a consolidation of six lawsuits representing 75% of Texas school children and was the second such ruling in the past two years, found the system inefficient, inequitable, and underfunded. The judge also ruled that local school property taxes are effectively a statewide property tax due to lack of local discretion, and therefore, are unconstitutional. The Texas attorney general has appealed the judge's latest ruling to the state supreme court. If the state school finance system is ultimately found unconstitutional, the legislature would likely follow with changes intended to restore its constitutionality. Fitch would consider any changes that include additional funding for schools and more local discretion over tax rates to be a credit positive. Additional information is available at 'www.fitchratings.com'. In addition to the sources of information identified in the applicable criteria specified below, this action was informed by information from Lumesis and the Municipal Advisory Council of Texas. Applicable Criteria U.S. Tax-Supported Rating Criteria (pub. 18 Apr 2016)

https://www.fitchratings.com/creditdesk/reports/report_frame.cfm?rpt_id=879478 Additional Disclosures Dodd-Frank Rating Information Disclosure Form

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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/20160505006708/en/

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[May 06, 2016] Clarity Medical Systems, Inc. Announces Significant Update to HOLOS IntraOp System

Clarity (News - Alert) Medical Systems, Inc., a medical device company focused on the manufacture of integrated optical systems for the diagnosis and management of eye disorders, announces the pending release of the HOLOS Barrett Intraocular Lens Formula, which will be available exclusively on the HOLOS IntraOp Wavefront Aberrometer mid-year. Developed by Graham Barrett, MD; Douglas D. Koch, MD; and Warren Hill, MD, the new IOL predictor formula incorporates elements from validated formulae used to calculate IOL power and adds aphakic data taken at the time of surgery to provide additional accuracy of a patient's refractive needs. Clarity will unveil the HOLOS Barrett IOL Formula and additional product updates to HOLOS at the upcoming American Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgery (ASCRS) meeting, being held May 6 to 10 in New Orleans, Louisiana at Booth #2537. The HOLOS Barrett IOL Formula will be released as part of a comprehensive software update that will also include enhancements to the graphical user interface, as well as other functionalities of the system. "The HOLOS Barrett IOL Formula is the result of industry-leading research and development which provides anterior segment surgeons a valuable resource to assist physicians in achieving their desired refractive outcome with precision," said Barry J. Linder, MD and Clarity Medical's Chief Medical Officer. "The HOLOS IntraOp Wavefront Aberrometer is specifically designed for cataract surgery and supplies real-time, dynamic aphakic measurements during cataract surgery. Adding this data to proven and validated formulae will increase confidence in a physician's ability to reach the refractive target consistently and accurately." The HOLOS Barrett IOL Formula is based on the Barrett Universal II and Barrett Rx formulae. The rigorously tested and widely used Barrett Universal II formula provides surgeons a recommended IOL power for desired spherical equivalent refraction using preoperative biometry measurements. The Barrett Rx formula incorporates data from the Barrett II, as well as the calculated effective lens position and refractive outcome to provide IOL power for postoperative corrections, including piggy back IOL, lens exchange, and determining the optimum angle to rotate a toric IOL to minimize astigmatism. The addition of aphakic measurements acquired using the HOLOS IntraOp Wavefront Aberrometer provides unique data to further refine IOL power calculation with the existing formulae. Clarity Medical ASCRS Onsite Activities







Educational Session Saturday, May 7, 8:00am -9:30am Central Time Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, Room 252 Intraoperative Aberrometry: Giving Insight Into Your Surgery  Moderator: Robert Osher, MD  Faculty: Kerry Assil, MD William Christian, MD Keith Liang, MD Jay Lippman, MD Jonathan Solomon, MD

About HOLOS Wavefront Aberrometry HOLOS Wavefront Aberrometry provides cataract surgeons critical surgical information in real time, generating clear, continuous refractive data and assisting in the insertion and rotation of IOLs, titration of limbal relaxing incisions and opening of arcuate incisions. The system displays detailed refractive data as it changes during the phakic, aphakic, and pseudophakic phases of procedures, helping surgeons proceed with confidence at all stages of cataract removal and lens insertion. About Clarity Medical Systems, Inc. Clarity Medical Systems, Inc., develops, manufactures and markets advanced newborn and pediatric ophthalmic imaging systems, guidance and informatics tools that enhance the clinician's ability to diagnose, manage, and treat eye disorders. Clarity's HOLOS IntraOp, is a continuous real-time intraoperative aberrometer for refractive cataract surgery. HOLOS IntraOp is designed to provide real-time, intraoperative refractive guidance and data throughout all phases of surgery to assist physicians in better achievement of their patients' refractive goals. The company's RetCam product line is helping to improve the quality of eye healthcare in the pediatric populations worldwide and is sold to leading Neonatal Intensive Care Units on a global basis. To date, over 1,800 RetCam systems have been installed and the eyes of more than one million children have been imaged in over 85 countries. (www.claritymsi.com) View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160506005096/en/

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Itongadol.- Every child gets a vision and hearing check in school on a regular basis. Dr. Moshe Fried, an Israeli plastic surgeon, believes an annual skin check is necessary as well, starting in the teens.

This is why he agreed to be the medical consultant for Emerald Medical Applications DermaCompare, a free smartphone app that uses image processing and predictive analytics to detect changes in marks and moles over time. The app alerts the user to changes that ought to be screened for cancer.

The skin is the biggest organ in the body, says Fried. The need for this comparative system came from the concept that as dermatologists and plastic surgeons we have to check everyone throughout life to look for changes in moles  the medical term is nevi  for signs of skin cancer. This is quite difficult to do. We think that together with this application we can accomplish this goal.

The public company, founded in Petah Tikva in 2013, has distribution agreements in Israel, Sweden, United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, Brazil, New Zealand and Australia (in Australia, one out of seven people get skin cancer). In April, the Brazil Chamber of Commerce selected DermaCompare as the Israeli technology most likely to succeed in Brazil.

A Spanish version of the app was recently launched for Puerto Rico, Mexico and Argentina, with more South American locations to come.

There is no other product like ours, Emerald founder and CEO Lior Wayn tells ISRAEL21c. Our competitors use manual diagnostics and dont use algorithms to compare images.

This is a proprietary technology that we adapted from the Israeli Air Force, using aerial photos to track enemy moves. Our enemy is moles and we know how to track them.

Last year, Wayn gave a TEDx Talk in Berlin about how he decided to adapt Israeli military technology into a lifesaving medical solution after his own father was diagnosed with melanoma, the most deadly form of skin cancer.

To use the free iOS or Android app, you strip down to your underwear and have someone take smartphone or digital camera photos of your moles and lesions according to instructions explained by a friendly avatar.

DermaCompares algorithm then analyzes the photos. If any suspicious moles or changes are found, the app recommends contacting a doctor for evaluation, and can automatically link you to a dermatologist near your location.

The system knows how to distinguish between benign and malignant and tells us if there is a change that could be malignant, says Fried. The aim is to find melanoma in the earliest stages. This offers great advantages in terms of saving money and treatment time.

Approximately 420 million people worldwide have a high risk of getting melanoma, particularly those with fair skin. Annual treatment expenditures for melanoma in the US alone total $8 billion.

The DermaCompare system identifies and classifies moles and lesions. Image courtesy of Emerald Medical ApplicationsThe DermaCompare system identifies and classifies moles and lesions. Image courtesy of Emerald Medical Applications

Fried says that thousands of pictures of volunteers taken for the development of the DermaCompare app demonstrated that changes in moles could clearly be detected over the course of the three-year trial period.

He envisions everyone, starting in their teens, using the app at regular intervals to build a cloud-based medical file providing physicians with real-time data on skin history and changes. If a user is concerned about a particular spot, a photo can be transmitted directly to his or her dermatologist.

DermaCompare can also be used as a follow-up at home to professional total body photography, which more and more people are using for early detection of skin cancer.

The app harnesses the power of the crowd, Wayn explains. As users upload photos of their skin to the cloud, they are building a database toward more accurate identification and comparison of moles and lesions.

Machine learning and artificial intelligence can use this crowdsourced data to predict which kinds of moles are most likely to become cancerous, and by using that we can prevent melanoma in advance, says Wayn.

Emerald Medical, a 16-employee company that has raised about $2 million and now seeks another $2.5 million in a Series B round, intends DermaCompare as a tool to document changes in many skin conditions beyond moles and cancer.

This is a screening device for anything on the body that you can track with images, such as acne, bedsores and psoriasis, says Wayn.

The business model is a fee charged to the participating physician based on the particular countrys insurance scheme.
ARTICLE IN BRIEF

THE ERYTHEMA MIGRANS RASH seen in 80 percent of cases of proven Lyme disease. Multiple studies have shown that long-term antibiotics use is ineffective for treatment, but experts say there remains a misperception that continued long-term antibiotics are needed.

Investigators reported that longer treatment with antibiotics proved ineffective in Lyme disease patients who complained of ongoing symptoms after an initial course of treatment treatment.

Longer treatment with antibiotics proved ineffective in Lyme disease patients who complained of ongoing symptoms after an initial course of treatment treatment, according to the largest clinical trial to address the issue.

The study, published in the March 31 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, included patients with persistent symptoms using a single antibiotic or a combination.

The Persistent Lyme Empiric Antibiotic Study Europe (PLEASE), a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial included 280 subjects with proven disease or positive antibodies for Borrelia burgdorferi, the bacteria that causes Lyme.

Patients first received an open-label intravenous course of 2000 mg of ceftriaxone each day for two weeks before being randomized. A total of 86 patients received a 12-week oral course of doxycycline (100 mg twice daily combined with placebo twice daily), clarithromycin plus hydroxychloroquine (500 mg clarithromycin twice daily combined with 200 mg hydroxychloroquine twice daily), or placebo.

DR. BART JAN KULLBERG: This is the largest trial ever done on patients with persistent musculoskeletal pain, fatigue and cognitive symptoms. But we found that scores did not differ significantly among the three study groups.

The primary outcome was health-related quality of life (HRQL) assessed using the physical summary score of the RAND Health Status Inventory (RAND SF-36), which ranges from 15 to 61 (highest). Patients' scores were taken before randomization and again at 26, 40 and 52 weeks.

Most patients are cured after initial antibiotic therapy but as many as 20 percent report persistent symptoms, said principal investigator Bart Jan Kullberg, MD, PhD, professor of medicine at Radboud University's Center for Infectious Diseases in Nijmegen. But we found that scores did not differ significantly among the three study groups.

This is the largest trial ever done on patients with persistent musculoskeletal pain, fatigue and cognitive symptoms, Dr. Kullberg told Neurology Today. It is important to note however that the results are not applicable to patients with other manifestations of Lyme disease, such as active meningoradiculitis or arthritis.

The mean score was 35.0 percent in the doxycycline group, 35.6 percent in the combination group, and 34.8 percent in patients who received placebo. The scores did not differ at subsequent time points but increased significantly in each group from baseline throughout the study. Adverse events were similar in all groups, with four serious events thought to be drug-related during the two-week open-label ceftriaxone phase. No serious events occurred during the 12-week randomized phase.

A number of patients complained of symptoms after initial therapy, a condition known as persistent post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome, or PTLDS, including fatigue, arthralgia, myalgia, or impaired cognition, and they were often severe. Yet, there are little data to support additional antibiotic treatment, and most professional guidelines do not recommend such an approach. Nonetheless, the issue remains controversial, and some physicians continue to prescribe additional regimens when patients continue to experience physical problems.

Guidelines for Lyme disease have been published by a number of independent US and European medical societies. The Infectious Disease Society of America (IDSA) recommends only initial treatment for two to four weeks, as does the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, but the International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society (ILADS) leaves such decisions to the discretion of individual physicians, based on patient symptoms.

ARE THE FINDINGS APPLICABLE?

In an accompanying editorial, two infectious disease experts at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine's division of infectious diseases in Baltimore made several observations about the trial.

Paul G. Auwaerter, MD, clinical director of the division, and Michael T. Melia, MD, assistant professor of medicine, first noted that the species of B. burgdorferi bacteria found in Europe are different from those that circulate in North America, including a longer initial duration of illness, they wrote.

They also said that only 96 of 280 participants, or 34 percent, had objective evidence of Lyme disease. This means that nearly two thirds of their study population had nonspecific symptoms that were attributed to Lyme disease solely on the basis of positive IgM or IgG (or both) immunoblot assays for B. burgdorferi, they wrote.

Such laboratory findings do not necessarily imply causation and could represent either false positive results or remote infection, since antibody titers can remain elevated for decades, according to the authors.

[This] means that there was no true placebo component [and] the two active oral study regimens ... are both known to produce anti-inflammatory effects in addition to their antimicrobial properties.

Dr. Kullberg said the editorial provided additional perspective. The authors are correct that the patients' symptoms were not necessarily causally related to their prior Lyme disease, however all of them had a B. burgdorferi infection in their past.

He emphasized that the main conclusion of the study was that long-term antibiotic treatment had no additional beneficial effects on health-related quality of life.

The strength of the study is that the patients themselves have reported multiple aspects of their health status, including physical and mental health, daily activities, pain, and fatigue, over a one-year follow-up period, and consistently reported that they did not experience any benefit from prolonged therapy compared to controls.

EXPERTS COMMENT

Commenting on the paper, Andrew R. Pachner, MD, the Murray B. Bornstein professor of neurology at Dartmouth University Geisel School of Medicine, in Lebanon, NH, said the study confirms a large body of evidence against prolonged treatment with antibiotics. But, he added, it may not change how some practitioners approach persistent symptoms.

There continues to be the perception, among a small number of practitioners, and certainly some patients, that these symptoms are being caused by persistent infection. But the data against it [are] quite strong, he told Neurology Today.

This study is helpful and hopefully will change the practice of prescribing long-term antibiotics for patients who have been initially treated for Lyme disease by a small number of physicians.

He added that it is possible that some patients with symptoms have in fact become infected again. A number of persons who are bitten by ticks and become infected undergo initial treatment and their symptoms are resolved, but then work or live in areas where reinfection can occur.

Many patients may also be misdiagnosed, he added. Although the ILADS guidelines allow physicians to continue treating patients if they continue to have symptoms, European doctors tend to be conservative in treatment.

They tend to not be very aggressive, in general, Dr. Pachner said, adding that strains of Lyme disease in Europe are more toxic and neurotropic than those in the US.

The standard of care in Europe is two weeks of antibiotics, and most patients who continue to have symptoms get better over time, Dr. Pachner noted. Nonetheless, the ongoing debate over treatment is unlikely to be resolved any time soon, he told Neurology Today. As long as there are people out there fanning the flames this is going to continue, but I believe that it will change in time.

Lauren Krupp, MD, professor of neurology at New York University Langone Medical Center, said that in addition to being perhaps the largest study of its kind, it reflects what most physicians encounter in their practice, where Lyme disease may not always manifest as typical symptoms, such as erythema migrans rash.

Even if patients did not meet the CDC's definition of Lyme disease this is a good study, and the researchers did some interesting things by also including patients with probable disease based on antibodies and chronic symptoms, she told Neurology Today.

The results were very clear. There was no group difference with treatment or placebo, and I think this sends a clear message.

All of the subjects were initially in the low range for QOL, yet all of them improved. In the community this is what happens  people tend to get better with any intervention, so the placebo effect is possible, she said. I think this will change the practice for most physicians, but not all. People like an explanation for why they feel symptoms, even if the data does not support longer treatment.

EXPERTS: ON LONG-TERM ANTIBIOTICS FOR LYME DISEASE TREATMENT

DR. ANDREW R. PACHNER: There continues to be the perception, among a small number of practitioners, and certainly some patients, that these symptoms are being caused by persistent infection. But the data against it [are] quite strong. This study is helpful and hopefully will change the practice of prescribing long-term antibiotics for patients who have been initially treated for Lyme disease by a small number of physicians.
Federal officials accepted 76,575 acres of Nebraska land into the Conservation Reserve Program, which pays farmers to take environmentally sensitive land out of crop production to improve water quality, prevent soil erosion and strengthen wildlife habitat.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture on Thursday announced plans to enroll 800,000 acres nationally into its CRP programs. Nebraska had the third most acres accepted behind Iowa, which got 128,212 acres, and Washington at 120,530 acres.

The U.S. has about 23.4 million acres in CRP, a voluntary program that pays landowners annual rent over 10 to 15 years and includes cost-share assistance to plant grasses, shrubs and trees in fields and along streams or rivers. About 1.7 million of current acres are set to expire.

U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said competition for the acres was heavy this year. The USDA offers three programs for CRP called continuous signup, general signup and the grassland program.

Of the 1.8 million acres farmers put applications in for the general signup, 410,000 acres were accepted.

The total of grassland program acres accepted was 101,000 acres and continuous program acres was 330,000, which is three times the rate farmers signed up acres for the continuous program last year, Vilsack said.

He called on Congress to revisit the caps it set in the 2014 Farm Bill as it begins to look to the 2018 Farm Bill. He said Congress set the caps at a time when commodity prices were at an all-time high and interest in CRP was waning as farmers planted every available acre.

You cant start with an arbitrary savings number and fit all the needs of rural America and the farming community into the arbitrary number," Vilsack said. "You really should let the needs dictate the amount.

With commodity prices and farm income significantly lower, farmers dont have as much financial incentive to plant marginal ground and CRP begins to look more attractive.

In fiscal year 2015, CRP paid out $1.7 billion nationally; of that, $61 million went to Nebraska. Projections for this fiscal year were not available.

Farmers are interested in being good stewards of the land but they also have to make sure their operations are economically sustainable," said Vilsack. "That is why we worked with the farming community to adjust rental rates when cash rent land rentals were going up. With lower commodity prices CRP becomes an attractive alternative for less productive land.

In Nebraska, the breakdown for the new acres being signed up is 20,462 acres continuous, 25,024 acres general and 31,089 acres grassland.

At its peak in 1993, Nebraska boasted 1.4 million acres of CRP. In February, the Nebraska Farm Service Agency listed CRP acres in the state at 763,000, of which 63,000 acres are set to expire Sept. 30.

In addition to preventing soil erosion and improving water and air quality, CRP acres create wildlife habitat popular with hunters and other outdoor enthusiasts, which can have a significant economic impact for rural areas.

By improving habitat obviously we improve opportunities for hunting, fishing, biking and hiking that bring people into rural areas. They spend money, they stay. They visit. They need shotgun shells. They need equipment. And to the extent that you improve hunting opportunities, you increase tourism opportunity, Vilsack said.
A central Nebraska rancher will be the first chairman of a new National Agricultural Advisory Council to the Humane Society of the United States.

Kevin Fulton, who raises thousands of cattle, sheep and goats in Sherman County, said the council builds on the success 11 state agriculture advisory councils have had in the past four years.

The national advisory council will work closely with members of the Humane Society, an animal welfare group.

Fulton said the new council is committed to working with the society to improve the welfare of farm animals, family farmers, consumer and the environment.

We are against animal cruelty and particularly against extreme confinement of farm animals. Thats congruent with the top animal welfare experts in the country, its congruent with the feelings of the American consumer, said Fulton, who is a full-time farmer and rancher and third-generation Nebraskan.

The Humane Society held a news conference Friday at the Capitol to announce the formation of the new council. Other members include Chris Petersen of Iowa, Mike Callicrate of Colorado, Pete Eshelman of Indiana, Paul Muegge of Oklahoma, Carrie Balkcom of Colorado, Will Harris of Georgia and Joe Logan of Ohio.
Business expectations and consumer confidence held steady in Nebraska during April, according to the latest monthly surveys conducted by the Bureau of Business Research at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Strong business expectations reported in the April Survey of Nebraska Business are consistent with results from the March survey. In April, 32 percent of businesses said they expected sales to grow over the next six months, compared with 15 percent that thought sales would decline. Businesses also remain optimistic about job growth.

Nebraskas Consumer Confidence Index was 92.2 in April, up slightly from a March value of 91. This value, while steady, is below the neutral baseline value of 100. The Consumer Confidence Index  Nebraska is estimated based on responses to the Survey of Nebraska Households.

A strong economy is key to improving consumer confidence, said bureau director Eric Thompson, a UNL economist.

Thompson added that strong business expectations suggest the economy will strengthen later in the year.

For more information, go to www.bbr.unl.edu.
Charter Communications' purchase of Time Warner Cable cleared one of its last major hurdles Friday.

The Federal Communications Commission announced that it has approved the deal with certain conditions.

The FCC did not say what the conditions were, nor did it say how the five-person panel voted.

The agency said in a news release that an order detailing its reasoning and the conditions of the sale will be issued "in the coming days."

The only remaining impediment to the deal is approval by regulators in California, who are expected to OK the deal. They are scheduled to vote on Thursday.

Charter Chief Executive Officer Tom Rutledge told investors last week that the deal could close within days of the California vote.

The $55 billion merger would make Charter the second-largest cable company in the U.S behind Comcast, with 24 million subscribers in 41 states, including Nebraska.

Both Time Warner and Charter currently operate in Nebraska.

Time Warner has more than 100,000 subscribers in Lincoln and southeast Nebraska, while Charter serves customers in 68 communities in the state stretching from Beatrice to Scottsbluff, including Grand Island, Kearney and Hastings.

Charter has not disclosed its customer numbers in Nebraska, but it's likely well into the tens of thousands.

The Lincoln City Council gave its blessing to the merger last year.
State and national government agencies have teamed up to offer five free workshops across the state to educate small businesses about available grants for clean-energy technology.

The workshops, which are jointly sponsored by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Nebraska Energy Office and Nebraska Business Development Center, will explain the Small Business Voucher program administered by the U.S. Department of Energys Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy.

The program vouchers, valued between $50,000 and $300,000, can be used at a national laboratory for technical assistance to help bring the next generation of clean technologies to market. The vouchers are available to businesses with 500 or fewer employees.

The workshops are being offered Monday in Kearney, Tuesday in Scottsbluff, May 31 in Omaha, June 1 in Norfolk and June 2 in Lincoln.

Registration information is available at http://bit.ly/26aANou.
Every summer, a Marvel superhero film sweeps into theaters like a breath of fresh air, a standard-bearer. This May, thats Captain America: Civil War, directed by Joe and Anthony Russo. Theres political commentary, emotional stakes and plenty of action, but with a lighthearted quality, zingers and jokes littered throughout to brighten up the atmosphere. Theres a hopefulness that maybe some enhanced individuals do the right thing because they still believe in that.

Thats not the only way to do a superhero comic book movie, but its dependable, reliable, comforting  like ordering at a chain restaurant. You know what kind of meal youre going to get every time, and youll most likely enjoy it.

Civil War centers around the ramifications of the events from Avengers: Age of Ultron, wherein the fictional nation of Sokovia was leveled, as well as a mishap in Lagos during an Avengers mission early in the film, which results in the loss of many lives. Its almost as if there needs to be some regulation on a band of superheroes romping about the globe, intervening in international affairs willy nilly.

Thats what Secretary of State Ross (William Hurt) believes, and Iron Man/Tony Stark (Robert Downey, Jr.) is inclined to agree with him, taking a more liberal, pro-government stance. Not quite in agreement is Steve Rogers/Captain America (Chris Evans), the libertarian type who is resistant to government intervention, and remains staunch in his beliefs that he knows whats right and wrong. His stance is exacerbated when his old buddy Bucky/The Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan) is framed for a bombing during a U.N. meeting to ratify the Sokovia accords.

The film is refreshingly open to debate on this topic. Rather than pushing an oppressive or undisputed ideology, theres discussion about the nuances of the right way to do the right thing, that maybe there are many different ways to be right  you can follow the rules, or follow your beliefs.

The action here is refreshingly human-scaled, rather than the skyscraper-obliterating disasters of other films. Were introduced to TChalla Wakanda/Black Panther (Chadwick Bozeman), and his muscly feline prowess is a welcome addition to the team. As is the chipper teen enthusiasm of Peter Parker/Spiderman (Tom Holland). Though much of it can seem like crashing action figures together, the match-ups between the heroes of different powers are thrilling, and executed with humor and smarts. However, as the film crosses the two-hour mark, the endless punching becomes relentlessly dull.

Marvels marketing campaign has exhorted fans to choose #TeamCap or #TeamIronMan. Within the movie, this question becomes a debate between science and emotion, protocol and friendship. Neither is the wrong way, necessarily. The Avengers have always been powered by their shared collective power, so the friendship theme is important, but hammered home again and again in Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeelys screenplay.

This is a Captain America movie, so the choice would seem clear  why then does the #TeamIronMan choice seem more sensible? Americas brawny sweetheart puts on the nice guy airs, but hes loathe to see outside of his perspective, change his ways, or compromise. His old-fashioned, Greatest Generation schtick isnt quite as charming (or effective) this time around. As an Avengers movie, Civil War is a cut above the rest, but unfortunately, our relationship to the titular hero is tarnished in the process.
The Family Fang is, to say the least, an unusual bunch -- avant garde performance artists Caleb and Camille and the two children they incorporate into the pop-up confrontational art, identified only as Child A and Child B.

Or at least that was what they were called when they were kids. Grown up, the pair are screwed-up adults, erratic actress Annie and semi-successful writer Baxter, who is two years late with his third novel.

Pressed for money, Baxter takes a freelance assignment, heading to upstate New York to do a magazine piece on potato guns. When one of the gun enthusiasts plunks Baxter in the head with a spud, he winds up with a perforated eardrum -- and the hospital calls his parents to come get him.

Panicked by having to deal with them alone, Baxter convinces Annie to fly to New York, creating an impromptu, awkward family reunion thats going badly when Caleb and Camille suddenly pack up and leave, then, a few hours later, disappear from a rest area.

Are they victims of a roadside serial killer or have they staged their greatest, most outrageous performance piece yet?

Thats the question at the center of Jason Batemans offbeat picture thats got some laughs and heartfelt drama. But its also plenty weird -- you certainly have never seen this dysfunctional family on screen before.

Bateman directs and co-stars for the second time. He follows 2013's Bad Words with another solid piece of work.

Hes Baxter, whos wary and more than a little disillusioned by his parents, who are well played by Christopher Walken, arrogant, flinty and really strange, and Maryann Plunkett, who after decades together is so in love with Caleb that she does anything for him.

The final member of the quartet is Nicole Kidman. Playing Annie as an unstable, drunken wreck who wants to somehow have a normal family, Kidman gives an unsettling intense performance, a reminder of how great an actress she is.

The Family Fang doesnt just look at the grown family. It cleverly flashes back via videotape to the familys early performances, including a fake bank robbery -- for lollipops -- that opens the picture, and shows scenes from what appears to be a documentary about Caleb and Camille that is both a pivotal piece in the plot and raises real questions about the performance art and life.

The latter makes the film resonate with those of us who are familiar with Chris Burden, who gets name-dropped as being fake compared to the Fangs. But theres no need to know performance art history to get the weirdness of the family and its twisted, entertaining story.
A Lancaster County jury found a young Lincoln man guilty of sexual assault and other charges Thursday for having sex with a 14-year-old girl in a van at Holmes Lake in 2014.

The state says that Tariq Hamed, now 25, was 22 at the time. But Hamed, who is Sudanese, disputed his age, saying he was born in 1997, not 1991 as the state believes, but his age was wrong on documents after he came to the U.S.

At trial, Lincoln Police Officer Tu Tran testified that about 11:30 p.m. March 20, 2014, he saw people moving inside the 2004 Honda Odyssey parked on the south shore of the lake and ended up arresting Hamed after finding him in the back seat with a girl naked from the waist down.

The girl told officers she was 14 and said she thought Hamed was 18 or 19.

In court records, Tran said Hamed told him he was 19 and thought the girl, who he knew from school, was 18. He told police they only talked.

At trial, Hameds attorney offered a document that Hamed went to Sudan to get paperwork that said he was born in 1997, which would have made him 17 at the time.

In December 2014, federal authorities detained Hamed at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City and Lancaster County Sheriffs deputies went there to bring him back to face the charges.

He went to trial this week. The jury got the case Wednesday after 4 p.m. and returned with a verdict Thursday about 2 p.m., finding Hamed guilty of first-degree sexual assault, third-degree sexual assault of a child and misdemeanor child abuse.
Former Irving Middle School teacher Jackson Hedrick, who is serving a 20- to 30-year sentence for sexually assaulting a student, officially will never teach in Nebraska again.

The state Board of Education on Friday permanently revoked his teaching certificate.

In March 2015, the middle school's principal contacted police with concerns that Hedrick was having an inappropriate relationship with a 14-year-old student.

Hedrick, 23, admitted to sending lewd texts to the girl, having sexual contact with her and providing alcohol to her and a friend.

He was fired, charged and later pleaded guilty to first-degree sexual assault.

If he loses no credit for good time, he'll be eligible for parole in 10 years but could serve as many as 15. When he gets out, hell have to register as a sex offender.

Hedrick is appealing the sentence as excessive, but regardless of what happens with his court case, he wont be able to get his teaching certificate back.
LA VISTA  A Vietnam veteran with a terminal brain tumor was given an Honor Flight salute at his home in a suburb of Omaha this week.

Local criminal defense attorney James Martin Davis knew 65-year-old Walter Roberts wouldn't be able to go to Washington, D.C., next month as part of an honor flight for Vietnam veterans, so he helped Patriotic Productions take the honor to him.

Patriotic Productions sponsors the flights and has taken World War II and Korean war veterans to see memorials and other sites in D.C. in recent years.

On Wednesday, they went to Roberts' home in La Vista and presented him with a red Nebraska Vietnam Flight polo shirt, a ball cap and pin, an Army branch insignia sign and a combat engineer pin.

Roberts joined the Army in 1967 when he was 17 and served two combat tours in Vietnam.

During his time there, he suffered four bullet wounds in his legs, a bayonet in his left wrist and 168 pieces of shrapnel in his back. He was also soaked three times with Agent Orange, the toxic chemical U.S. warplanes dropped as part of a campaign to kill jungle foliage that hid the enemy.

Despite his wounds, Roberts said his Vietnam memories are of his buddies who didn't come home.

"All the rest, it doesn't matter to me," he said.

Eve Roberts said her husband was troubled by PTSD for many years.

"He was in and out of work and in and out of rehab," she said. "He did a lot of drinking, had a lot of DUIs. He went to a lot of counseling and finally got cleaned up and his life on track."

Eve Roberts and two dozen other friends and family members are planning to keep their banquet reservations for Honor Flight participants on the eve of the trip to Washington, no matter what the future holds.

"Everybody loves him," she said.
I am writing to contrast George Wills column in the April 25, 2016 Lincoln Journal Star with the way Nebraska scientists and policy-makers are addressing climate change.

Wills column contains numerous factual errors. The most egregious is its premise, which implies that the scientific consensus (more than 97% of peer-reviewed articles) on the causes and impacts of climate change is political correctness.

Rather than engage in intellectual debate about climate change and its impacts, Will resorts to name-calling, using terms like gangster government and grandstanding. Without any evidence to support his claims, he also uses over-broad generalizations, including the implication that people who support well-established scientific theories are authoritarian.

One of Wills most serious factual errors is his statement that climate change models are being refuted by events. In fact, one of the most alarming aspects of climate change is that the models are not only being confirmed but are repeatedly exceeded by events, including new records for the hottest year and hottest month on record that are being set and smashed with frightening frequency.

He quotes a 15-year-old study referring to the need for adjustments to climate models based on future events as an indicator of the uncertainty of climate science. Indeed, climate models are refined as new evidence comes in, but this new information has only strengthened the scientific consensus around anthropogenic (originating in human activities) climate change.

Will states that prosecuting Exxon Mobil for their role in creating a campaign to deny the causes and impacts of climate change when they understood fossil fuels role is a limitation on freedom of speech. This conclusion is deceptive and without merit. Should Volkswagen or Mitsubishi be allowed to get away with providing willfully misleading information to the public in order to sell cars? Absolutely not. Similarly, fossil fuel corporations who misled the public about climate change in order to fatten their bottom line should be held liable for their actions.

Instead of engaging in demagoguery around climate change like Will has done in his column, Nebraska scientists and policy makers are taking steps to address climate change. This session I introduced LR455, which created a special legislative committee to address both the risks and the opportunities from climate change for Nebraskas people. This committee is composed of seven members from all across the state representing a wide spectrum of political views. The committee will create the framework for a Nebraska Climate Action Plan based on a consensus of scientific evidence, including input from nationally recognized experts from UNL who assembled the 2014 report on the impacts of climate change in Nebraska (Climate Change Implications for Nebraska).

Planning to address risks is just smart policy, like mapping the route before beginning a road trip. The UNL report details numerous risks from climate change, including the likelihood of increased incidence and intensity of droughts, more extreme weather events like floods and tornadoes, more forest fire risks and a wide range of increased health risks - more heat stroke, disease from vectors like ticks and mosquitos and additional particulate matter in the air.

The committee will provide direction on how the state and its communities can address these issues. For example, recommendations for additional measures to capture water from extreme rain events could help prevent floods and address water needs in times of drought. Education of both health officials and the public are needed to address public health impacts of climate change.

In addition to the risks and challenges of climate change, there are great opportunities. Nebraska has the 3rd best wind potential in the US, yet we have lagged behind our neighboring states in wind development. Hopefully, passage of legislation this session (LB824) removing some of the regulatory barriers to wind development will spur more wind development. Nebraska also has great solar resources that we are only beginning to develop.

Other areas of great potential for Nebraska include development of smart technology to monitor and control agricultural inputs like water and fertilizer, development of drought and heat resistant crops and increasing the use of high value agricultural products like fruits and vegetables. We need effective research and educational outreach programs to bring these ideas to fruition.

We look forward to developing the framework of a plan that addresses both the challenges and the opportunities of climate change for the benefit of the people of Nebraska.
Jims success as an attorney and even more as a mediator in family law cases demonstrates Jims ability to listen closely to what is important to different people and help them find common ground so that they may move forward in a constructive manner. The Nebraska Legislature needs senators with Jims open-minded, problem solving skills.
OMAHA -- Donald Trump swooped into Nebraska on Friday, tailoring his familiar campaign message to include a promise to clear the path for beef exports while urging Nebraskans to put an exclamation point on his march to the GOP presidential nomination.

"We gotta win Nebraska," Trump shouted, pointing ahead to Tuesday's Republican presidential primary election.

The fact is that Trump essentially has wrapped up his party's presidential nod, but he flew Friday to Nebraska and then on to Oregon to build momentum for the general election campaign.

Several thousand supporters gathered in the Werner Enterprises corporate hangar adjacent to Eppley Airfield to greet Trump on a warm spring afternoon. Police estimated the crowd in the open hangar at 3,000; Trump suggested it was 10,000 or 11,000.

Gov. Pete Ricketts introduced Trump as the presumptive GOP nominee and as a president who would "chart a new course for our country" after eight years of the Obama administration.

"We know we need to take back our country," the governor said.

Trump welcomed Ricketts' late endorsement, suggesting that "I'm starting to like the Chicago Cubs again." The extended Ricketts family owns the Cubs, and had funded some anti-Trump TV advertising.

In remarks directed at Nebraska and its beef export market, Trump said: "I will get rid of those tariffs in Japan (and) make sure China buys your product."

The rally was interrupted several times by the shouts of a few protesters who were escorted out of the hangar by police. The first young protester who was ejected left to a chorus of boos with a middle finger extended in the air.

The crowd included a large number of young Trump supporters along with a number of state senators who are Republicans.

Trump's 40-minute speech included the familiar litany of promises to "make America great again," build a wall to to keep immigrants from crossing the border with Mexico illegally, and "knock the hell out of ISIS."

Looking ahead to his anticipated general election struggle with Hillary Clinton, Trump noted that "when Bernie (Sanders) said Hillary suffers from bad judgment, I wrote that down."

Trump referred to "crooked Hillary" a number of times.

"We'll be back," he promised. "And we're going to make America great again."

Trump made no mention of Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse, who has urged Americans to draft a presidential candidate who would provide a third choice between Clinton and him.

Earlier, former Gov. Dave Heineman, honorary chairman of Trump's Nebraska campaign, suggested that "Americans want change and I feel the same way."

"A political elite establishment in Washington is the problem and both parties are at fault," Heineman said during an interview prior to Trump's arrival.

Trump is going to win the Republican nomination "because he touched a nerve," he said.

"No question Donald is going to say some controversial things that make us uncomfortable," Heineman said, "but it's a choice election," with the alternative being Hillary Clinton.

None of the leading Nebraska Republicans supported Trump prior to his surge toward the nomination this week, but there has been a rush to the side of the presumptive GOP nominee since Texas Sen. Ted Cruz withdrew from the race.

Blown out by Trump in Indiana earlier this week, Cruz canceled a scheduled rally in Lincoln on Wednesday where Ricketts may have been prepared to endorse him.

Nebraska Republicans will vote Tuesday in a presidential primary election that was designed to bind the state's 36 delegates to the GOP national convention to vote for the primary winner on the first two ballots.
This is a recipe for success.

It wont make you rich. But it could boost the fortunes of hundreds of children and youth and bring you a wealth of fuzzy, warm-all-over feelings of satisfaction.

Its a recipe for a large, fund-raising pancake feed, as tested and proven for about 25 years by the men and women of Cornhusker Kiwanis, and the hundreds of guests who show up annually on a spring Saturday for a scrumptious breakfast and a plateful of good causes.

This recipe comes with a Kiwanis challenge  to improve the world, one child and one community at a time.

The key ingredient  like Grandmas love in sugar cookies  is dedication. Without dedication, your results will be flatter than, well, a pancake. Dedication is what brings out 40 or so volunteers, working 3- to 4-hour shifts, beginning at 5:30 a.m. Some of those folks, in club shirts and tan and red caps, will stay busy from before dawn until late in the afternoon, when the rented grills have cooled, been scrubbed and loaded onto the truck, the last of the 20 round dining tables have been wiped clean and put away and the Kiwanis feather flag has been furled and put away for another year.

Youll find no magic in this recipe -- no open the carton, toss into the microwave, push the start button and voila! It takes hours of mixing, stirring, pouring, dipping, browning, grilling, carrying, serving, clearing, cleaning, greeting, thanking, and just standing around  waiting for the hot grills to slowly revolve and the pancake bubbles to pop so you can resume flipping.

(W.C. Fields said the laziest man he ever knew put popcorn in his pancake batter so the pancakes would flip themselves. Rest assured, there is no popcorn in this recipe!)

By days end, you will have dished up about 2,500 pancakes to anywhere from 700 to 1,000 guests. This years batter is coming courtesy of Lincolns IHOP restaurant.

And while the event is still called Pancakes in the Park (its held at Auld Pavilion and Recreation Center in Antelope Park), this fundraiser for several years has also offered French toast. On average: 1,800 pieces of Texas toast. Thats 105 loaves, guaranteed not fresh  because fresh bread dipped in a cinnamon custard mixture with eggs, milk and vanilla will go limp. Thick, vintage bread is preferable.

For best results, swath the pancakes and French toast with butter and smother your whole stack with syrup. To complement the entrees, brown and serve an average of 2,300 links of zesty, sizzling sausage.

Cornhusker Kiwanis sponsors student leadership and service groups in six schools, from elementary to high school. So, along with members of Aktion Club (sponsored by Kiwanis for adults with disabilities), K-Kids and Builders may be clearing your tables and setting out fresh napkins and plasticware. Key Club members may be pouring your milk, orange juice and coffee.

It takes a small dairy  producing 448 cups of milk, and a small orchard  filling 672 cups of orange juice, to quench the thirst of hungry guests. And the coffee spigot gets turned on somewhere high in the Andes and the brew flows for hours directly to the pavilion.

Near the stage, Aktion Club always offers up honey-bear bottles of locally produced honey for sale. This years sales goal: 84 12-ounce honey-bears.

For all the work a successful pancake (and French toast) feed entails, its success may also be best told by numbers, such as:

 885  the number of new books Cornhusker Kiwanis sent home with preschoolers this year after reading three times to 16 classes  about 300 children  at six schools. K-Kids actually do the reading at Holmes Elementary  kids helping other kids.

 480  the number of apples and oranges club members added each month to Food Bank backpacks for about 120 Belmont Elementary students. The club also donates $1,000 to the Food Bank backpack program and another $500 to the Summer Lunch program.

 $4,500  the total value of three $1,500 college scholarships Cornhusker Kiwanis awards each year. The club also conducts bicycle safety rodeos at several elementary and preschools, sponsors Boys State and Girls State participants, and sponsors or supports several other programs.

 $41,000  the total donated so far by Cornhusker Kiwanis members to Project Eliminate, a multi-year effort by Kiwanis International and UNICEF to eradicate maternal and neonatal tetanus, which kills nearly 50,000 babies in developing countries every year. Worldwide, Kiwanis is donating $110 million toward the effort; $48,000 will come from Cornhusker Kiwanis.

 100  the number of pairs of sweatpants the clubs annual donation of $500 can buy for Willies Underwear Project, an effort by former Lincoln teacher Willie Schafer to provide school nurses with new underwear and sweatpants for children who have an accident at school.

To top off your recipe, you might choose to offer a variety of toppings. Pancake veterans at Cornhusker Kiwanis say maple syrup always works. Or as one sage is said to have said, My favorite pancake topping? Two more pancakes!
MOUNT PLEASANT  CNH Industrial and the United Auto Workers have reached a tentative new six-year contract agreement, both sides said Friday.

The proposed agreement will go to UAW members on May 16 for a ratification vote. CNH said in a written statement the proposal affects a total of about 860 UAW hourly workers at the Mount Pleasant, Burr Ridge, Ill., and Burlington, Iowa, locations.

That includes slightly more than 400 active workers at the Mount Pleasant tractor plant at Durand Avenue and Oakes Road, said Local 180 President Jeff Vassh.

The current six-year contract expired April 30, and Vassh said the new tentative agreement was reached at about 2 a.m. Sunday  just two hours after the old contract expired.

The negotiations had been conducted daily since early March, but there were months of preparation leading up to that, Vassh said. The actual negotiations were held daily.

I think that reflects the intensity of the discussions, he remarked.

The negotiations included both the local and central agreements and were held in Kenosha, Vassh said.

He declined to make any comment about the tentative agreement or even how he felt about reaching it. I dont want to influence them, Vassh said. I want them to make this decision on their own.

Union leaders are putting together the information workers will need to understand the proposed agreement, Vassh said. It will be presented to them May 15, the day before the ratification voting, and Vassh said that meeting will go as long as it takes, so no question goes unanswered.

The Mount Pleasant tractor plant, 7000 Durand Ave., manufactures Case IH Magnum and New Holland T8 tractors.

In addition to the more than 400 active workers at the plant, more than 200 others are currently laid off because of the slowness of agricultural equipment sales worldwide and across the industry. The last layoff came in January and affected about 105 local employees.
RACINE  A Racine man didnt visibly react in the hushed courtroom on Friday as the judge read aloud a jurys verdict that could send him to prison for the rest of his life.

Jurors deliberated for more than 2 hours over Thursday and Friday before convicting Robert S. Scott Swanton of fatally stabbing a woman  whom he called his best friend  last spring in her Racine apartment.

The six-man, six-woman jury declared Swanton guilty of first-degree intentional homicide in the stabbing death of Melissa Hansen, 42. Swanton allegedly stabbed the mother of three more than a dozen times on March 7, 2015.

As the verdict was read aloud in the courtroom Friday morning, Hansens sister, Amy Govednik, pressed her hands to her face, quietly weeping, as their mother, Irene Schweitzer, brushed tears from her eyes.

He got what he deserved, Govednik, of Racine, said after the verdict was read. To be honest with you, I wish Wisconsin had the death penalty.

Swantons family declined to comment as they left the courtroom. Swantons defense attorney, Michael B. Plaisted, left the courtroom without comment.

Swanton, 32, was charged last year with first-degree intentional homicide. Swanton faces a term of life behind bars, although there are several options for his possible release after first serving a period of time. Jurors also were to consider the lesser-included offenses of second-degree intentional homicide and first-degree reckless homicide, which do not carry mandatory terms of life in prison.

Another of Hansens sisters, Katie Schweitzer, of Racine, said the jury deliberated so quickly, and convicted on the stiffest charge, because the evidence was all there. There was nothing to prove him innocent.

Mental health issues alleged

Swantons defense attorney never disputed that Swanton killed Hansen, but argued that his altered mental state  after becoming increasingly paranoid and using crack cocaine with Hansen  led Swanton to stab his friend. But Plaisted told jurors repeatedly that Swanton never intended to kill Hansen.

Hansen picked up Swanton at his home during the late-evening hours of March 6, 2015, and investigators believe Swanton stabbed her in Hansens apartment in the 4000 block of Erie Street. Hansens sister and mother discovered her body the next day.

Racine County Assistant District Attorney Dirk Jensen told jurors during closing arguments on Thursday that when Swanton inflicted the first wound, Hansen reportedly asked, what are you doing? Swanton then stabbed Hansen more than a dozen times, Jensen said.

Hansen died from multiple sharp-force injuries, including three wounds that, alone, could have been fatal, an assistant Milwaukee County medical examiner testified Thursday.

Swanton, who previously spent time in the Winnebago Mental Health Institute, felt threatened and thought Hansen was involved with people outside who were intent on doing him harm, Plaisted told jurors during closing arguments Thursday. Swanton took action to protect himself, Plaisted added, saying Swanton might have meant to hurt Hansen, but not to kill her.

Swantons contention that he acted in self-defense was kind of humorous, actually, considering his weight and her weight, Schweitzer, of Waukesha, said after the verdict.

Hansens son, Ronald Hansen, 20, of Racine, said he was glad justice was served. He said his 4-month-old daughter, Nicole Melissa Marie Hansen, is named after my mom.

Swantons sentencing is set for July 18; he remains in the Racine County Jail awaiting sentencing. After the conviction, Circuit Judge John Jude revoked Swantons $500,000 cash bond.
BRIGHTON  Metropolitan Iakovos of Chicago, spiritual leader of all Greek Orthodox parishioners within Wisconsin, Illinois, Iowa and Minnesota, will visit the St. Iakovos Retreat Center in Brighton at 9 a.m. Friday, May 6, at the St. Iakovos Retreat Center, 920 224th Ave.

The visit of the Metropolitan to this part of Wisconsin will be to officiate the service of the Feast Day of the St. Iakovos Retreat Center Chapel; the Chapel of the Life-giving Spring, the opening of the centers annual open house festivities.

The day will begin at 9 a.m. with Hierarchical Divine Liturgy officiated by Metropolitan Iakovos. Following this service, lunch will be served, hosted by the St. Iakovos Retreat Center Board and Metropolis of Chicago Philoptochos (Friends of the Poor), a womens philanthropic auxiliary. Guests and visitors will have the opportunity to tour the grounds and new facilities as well as visit the farm animals. The event is free and open to the public.

Metropolitan Iakovos has served as the spiritual leader of the Greek Orthodox Metropolis of Chicago since May 1979. Under his leadership the Metropolis has increased its efforts to assist the homeless and those in need. He has founded new youth programs, established various local dialogues with other faith communities and continues to work with area religious leaders in promoting justice and truth in our society.

The establishment of the St. Iakovos Retreat Center, which serves as the site of the Summer FANARI Youth Camp, is an accomplishment of the Metropolitans years of organizing and fundraising. The St. Iakovos Retreat Center is a 137-acre facility featuring the 11-acre Friendship Lake with more than 50 acres of pinewood forest. The center offers a setting for overnight retreats and camps, as well as an environment for celebrations.
A downward trend

People like you and me who try to ape the lifestyle of developed countries are also to blame for the present economic situation
Betrayed by Maoists, Congress to turn up heat on government

Feeling betrayed by UCPN (Maoist) Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal in its bid to topple the government, the main opposition Nepali Congress will continue to oppose the acts of the government in and outside Parliament.
Canada wildfire evacuees airlift starts

Canadian officials are airlifting some 8,000 people who fled north of Fort McMurray - the city which has been devastated by a massive wildfire.
Commitments of New Force Nepal

Its a political movement that will build on the latest achievements in the realms of knowledge and science
Fire destroys property of Rs 700,000

Property worth Rs 700,000 was tuend into ashes when fire engulfed two shops at Matihani VDC of Mahottari district on Thursday night.
Govt recalls Nepals Ambassador to India Upadhyay

In what looks a bizarre turn of events after the government change fiasco, the incumbent government has decided to recall Nepali Ambassador to India, Deep Kumar Upadhyay.
Health Ministry set to build two specialty cancer care centres

The Ministry of Health (MoH) is planning to establish two specialty cancer care centres in the eastern and mid-western regions in a bid to provide better care to patients suffering from the killer disease.
Italy rescues nearly 1,800 migrants in Mediterranean

Italian vessels have helped rescue nearly 1,800 migrants from boats trying to reach Italy from north Africa in the last 24 hours, the navy said on Friday, indicating that numbers are rising as the weather warms up.
LA's 'Grim Sleeper' serial killer convicted after 20 years

A former Los Angeles rubbish collector has been found guilty of the "Grim Sleeper" serial murders that spanned more than 20 years and left 10 dead.
Madhesi Morcha boycotts parliament meeting

Seeking time at the outset in the Legislature-Parliament meeting today, lawmaker Ashok Rai, on behalf the United Alliance, announced that the parties in the alliance have boycotted the meeting, alleging the government's apathy towards the demands raise by the agitating Madhesi Morcha.
MJF-L elects 42-strong central committee

The first national convention of the Madhesi Janadhikar Forum Nepal-Loktantrik concluded in Biratnagar on Thursday, with the revision of the party statute.
MPs share views on reconstruction

Lawmakers completed putting forward their views on post-earthquake reconstruction at the Legislature-Parliament on Thursday.
Nepal urged to act speedily on Tarai abuses

Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Thursday called on Nepal to ensure that investigations into all deaths and injuries during the protests in the Tarai region are fast and transparent.
NOC mulls allowing gas sellers to swap any brand of cylinders

Nepal Oil Corporation (NOC) is considering allowing cooking gas sellers to exchange any brand of cylinders for the time being.
PM calls on NC, Madhesis to join dialogue panel

Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli has requested the opposition parties to join the political committee led by Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Foreign Affairs Kamal Thapa that was formed to address the demands of the Madhes-based parties to redraw the federal boundaries.
Prez Bhandaris India visit cancelled

President Bidhya Devi Bhandaris proposed visit to India has been cancelled on Friday. She was supposed to leave for Indian Capital on May 9. This would have been her maiden official foreign trip after assuming the office of the head of state in October last year.
Promise me you'll give me 'kandha' when I die: Dalbir to Randeep

Dalbir Kaur wants actor Randeep Hooda, who portrays her brother Sarabjit Singh in the film "Sarbjit", to offer his shoulder to carry her body when she dies.
Rebuilding works begin at Patan Durbar Square

Works are in full swing at Patan Durbar Square to rebuild monuments damaged by last years earthquake with foreign assistance.
Rolling Stones ask Donald Trump to stop using their songs

English rock band the Rolling Stones have asked US presidential hopeful Donald Trump to stop playing their songs during his rallies.
Save Democracy March: Sonia, Rahul, Manmohan detained, released

Members of the Congress party, including Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi, party president Sonia Gandhi and former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, were detained by the police on Friday.
Surveillance making conflict victims wary

Though the transitional justice bodies have been taking complaints from conflict victims across the country, it has not been easy for those who want to register their complaints. Some are finding complaint registration a difficult process, as they are being watched by security personnel while filling the forms.
Syria conflict: Air strike on refugee camp 'could be war crime'

An air strike on a Syrian refugee camp that reportedly killed at least 28 people could amount to a war crime, a senior UN official has told the BBC.
Teenage girl found dead in Bhaktapur

A teenage girl was found dead in her rented room in Bhaktapur on Thursday.
Two new conveyor belts installed at TIA

Two newly installed luggage conveyor belts have come into operation at the Tribhuvan International Airport (TIA) in Kathmandu.
CPN-UML manages to keep coalition intact

The ruling CPN-UML, which was staring at crisis on Wednesday after its key coalition partner, the UCPN (Maoist), caught it unawares by hinting at withdrawing support, on Thursday managed to keep the Maoists adhered to the coalition.
US House Speaker Paul Ryan 'can't back Trump'

US House Speaker Paul Ryan has said he cannot currently support Donald Trump as Republican presidential nominee.
What forced UCPN (Maoist) to backtrack on its earlier decision?

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Where are the rights?

Representatives from the marginalised communities are under pressure to conform to the norms
Yes, its hard to to tell when one enters the city limits

Yes, they will make the city more inviting

Maybe ... does it really matter?

No, the signs in place are fine

No, it would be a waste of taxpayer dollars

Vote

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Chinese Premier Li Keqiang meets with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in Seoul, Nov 1, 2015. [Photo/chinadaily.com.cn]

Learning from Japan was trendy in China in the late 1970s and 1980s when the country started its reform and opening-up drive. As one of the top industrialized nations in the world, Japan had a lot to offer China, everything from management to technology to education. The Japanese economic miracle was also the envy of many Chinese.

In those days, the Japanese economy was several times larger than that of China, and Japanese tour groups were obvious on Shanghai's streets.

However, China overtook Japan as the world's second-largest economy in 2010 and is on way to surpass the United States, if it has not done so already. In contrast, the Japanese economy has stagnated over the last two decades.

Learning from Japan is no longer in vogue in China despite the fact that Chinese tourists to Japan love buying Japanese products, such as electronic toilet seats and cosmetics.

The latest media reports about Japan in China have largely been about the public protests against Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's government's bid to revise the Japanese Constitution, the disputes over the sovereignty of the Diaoyu Islands in the East China Sea, Japan's attempts to meddle in the South China Sea disputes between China and some Southeast Asian nations and the Japan-US alliance that is increasingly aimed at containing China.

So it was a bit surprising to see the Chinese version of Harvard University Professor Ezra Vogel's 1979 book Japan as No 1: Lessons for America among the bestsellers in Shanghai's bookstores.

Vogel was insightful. He wrote the book in 1979, more than a decade before Japan became the world's second-largest economy.

Vogel became a Japan hand before becoming a well-known China hand. He firmly believed the US, despite being the world's largest economy and dominant power, had a lot to learn from Japan.

That was also the message he has today for China. In the preface for the new Chinese edition, Vogel expresses concern that some of his Chinese friends feel that China has nothing more to learn from Japan now that their economy has eclipsed that of Japan.
Government continues to come under attack following its decision to ban live media coverage of all opposition-led defiance campaign activities.

According to the ban announced yesterday by the information minister Jim Muhwezi, also banned are all talk shows on matters relating to the defiance campaign and that news stories relating to the same shall be run at the risk of the individual journalist and the media organization.

However, retired Bishop and civil society activist Dr.Zac Niringiye says the move is illegal and must be condemned in the strongest terms.

Bishop Niringiye says it is neither the opposition nor the media to blame but the high-handedness of the incumbent regime, calling on the media not to heed to the directive.

While for Margaret Sentamu the Executive director for Uganda Media Women Association, besides limiting the free flow of information, the decision is likely to drive the opposition into erroneous activity since they will be out of the glare of the media; something she says endangers national security.

Meanwhile government has scoffed at critics insisting that the defiance campaign is illegal and must not be covered by the media.

Col. Shaban Bantariza, the deputy executive director Uganda Media Center says the decision stands and whoever disagrees with it should go to court.

Bantariza warns that the opposition should only challenge the legitimacy of the ruling National Resistance Movement, if ready to face the repercussions.

The opposition Forum for Democratic Change has since February called for a defiance campaign against President Musevenis regime, claiming that the incumbent rigged its way into another term.

Meanwhile, the FDC leadership meets today to review all the decisions that have been made by the government regarding their defiance campaign.

Yesterdays ban slapped on live media coverage of defiance campaign activities follows a court order that labeled all such party activities illegal like Black Tuesdays Prayers , 1 million Match demonstrations and Stay Home Friday among others.

The party Spokesperson, Ibrahim Ssemujju Nganda says they are meeting today to forge a way forward.

Story By KFM reporters
Members of the DeKalb FFA Livestock Judging Team receive a grant from the Agricultural Education Endowment Fund for DeKalb County to help them attend and compete at the Royal Highlands International Livestock Show Judging Contest. From left are Ally Laker, Caitie Taylor, Matt Bechdol of the Community Foundation of DeKalb County, Josie Rinehold, FFA adviser Matthew Dice, Ayshia Houser and Brooke Evans.
ANGOLA  Students in first-year Spanish at Angola High School are learning about the Central American country of Costa Rica and making personal connections by communicating with students learning English.

Spanish students have been emailing with their counterparts at the Instituto Nacional de Aprendizaje  The National Institute for Learning  in Palmares, Costa Rica. The Costa Rican students are being instructed by a Hamilton High School graduate, Haley Naus.

My students and I have greatly enjoyed the opportunity to partner up with the Spanish classes at Angola High School. The language and cultural exchange has been a great learning experience for all of my students, said Naus, who will graduate from Indiana University this spring with a bachelors degree in secondary English and a license in English as a new language.

The Angola students sent letters and pictures introducing themselves and telling them about Angola. Students there commented about the sports, band, choir, theater and extracurricular activities, which are not a part of their school system, said AHS Spanish teacher Clara Boyles.

Students are now working on creating videos about their schools to exchange electronically.

It is much more interesting to use the Spanish theyve learned to reach out to real Spanish speakers in another country, said Boyles. Costa Rican students recommended things to see and do in their country, which features volcanoes, beaches on two coasts, tropical forests, remarkable biological diversity and a plethora of outdoor activities.

They enjoyed hearing about our seasons, said Boyles. They have two seasons: rainy and dry.

The project started with Naus, a 2012 graduate of Hamilton Community Schools. She student taught in James Birkenbuels English class at Angola High School this year. When she was preparing to leave, Naus invited the Spanish teachers to look at a letter to her host family.

Naus is in the IU Global Gateways for Teachers Program, which allows education students to complete eight weeks of their student teaching in Costa Rica. She is currently teaching basic and intermediate English.
One of the English languages most overused words  literally  faces a fight for its life. Literally.

Everywhere you turn, someone is throwing the term around. Take, for example, this coffee shop patron: That mocha latte was so hot, my tongue literally burned off. Athletes are fond of misusing the term, too: After scoring that goal, I am literally on Cloud Nine. And dont get me started on teenagers: That chick is like, um, so ugly she like totally makes babies cry. Literally.

The problem, of course, is that none of these things literally is true. The latte drinker wouldnt be able to speak (If only!) without a tongue. Goal scorers dont actually ascend to the heavens after a game-winner, nor do even totally ugly chicks make babies cry at the mere sight of their homely mugs.

Worse, this use is the exact opposite of the words definition. Literally means in a strict sense. Suddenly its being used as a synonym for figuratively, which until recently was its antonym. In other words, the word is being turned inside-out. This is literally turning into the biggest disaster since Crystal Pepsi.

Bryan Garner, author of Garners Modern American Usage, has developed a scale for the five stages of word misuse. Stage one is when mistakes crop up, but are widely rejected. By the time a word reaches stage five  thats when sirens start going off at Merriam-Webster headquarters, as if it were DEFCON 1 at NORAD  the incorrect definition is truly universal, and the only people who reject it are eccentrics.

Garner has slotted literally at stage three, defined as being used by a majority of the language community. However, some linguists feel literally already has slipped dangerously close to stage four, meaning only a few diehards reject the new meaning.

Clearly it is time for my Word Crimes Tribunal to get involved. For years this assemblage of learned sages has strived to root out the use of non-words like irregardless and crack down on offenders who substitute your for youre. Such abuses are what prompt the worlds word nerds to forsake Facebook. Reading comments such as Your invited 4 drinx 2nite is figuratively  not literally  torture.

Literally has been misused for centuries, even by famed authors who, unlike youngsters posting duckface photos of themselves shot in their bathroom mirrors (Your 2 sexy!), had a good handle on the language. Misuse began gathering legitimacy by 1839, when Charles Dickens wrote in Nicholas Nickleby that a character had literally feasted his eyes in silence on his culprit. Before you knew it, Tom Sawyer was literally rolling in wealth, and Jay Gatsby literally glowed. Come on, the guy grew up in New York lake country, not a New Jersey toxic waste dump.

Perhaps its a combination of forces  the prevalence of modern misuse and the gravitas of famed offenders like Dickens, Twain and Fitzgerald  that led dictionaries to add new entries under literally. Merriam-Webster added a second usage of the word to mean virtually, but added the disclaimer that Since some people take sense 2 to be the opposite of sense 1, it has been frequently criticized as a misuse. The Cambridge and Oxford dictionaries now begrudgingly note that informal use of literally is used for emphasis, but add that this can result in unintentionally humorous effects.

Dictionary editors may be yukking it up, but rest assured the Word Crimes Tribunal sees nothing funny about the demise of our language. Granted, dual  and opposing  definitions for the same word arent new to English. Others include dust, which can mean to remove dust from and to sprinkle dust upon. But theres something about the misuse of literally that literally makes me twitch.

I dont know whether well find a solution here. But I can tell you that if people continue misusing literally unchecked, it will figuratively leave a sour taste in my mouth. Just like Crystal Pepsi.
MADISON  A Wisconsin group that advocates for the separation of church and state sued Congress on Thursday after its co-president was barred from giving an opening invocation before the U.S. House.

The lawsuit alleges that House Chaplain Patrick Conroy rejected an application from Dan Barker, co-president of the Madison-based Freedom From Religion Foundation, to deliver a secular guest invocation in January. The foundation says Conroy wrote that Barker, an atheist and former Christian pastor, wasnt a true minister of the gospel.

The suit argues that Conroy violated Barkers constitutional rights and the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act, and that Conroys requirements disparately burden nonreligious and minority groups. The suit notes that nearly 97 percent of invocations given to the House over the past 15 years were delivered by a Christian chaplain or guest Christian chaplain.

The U.S. House Chaplains office directed inquiries about the lawsuit to U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryans office, where a spokesman didnt immediately respond to a call and email seeking comment. Barker had secured sponsorship to deliver an invocation from Democratic Rep. Mark Pocan of Wisconsin.

The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court in Washington on the National Day of Prayer, an annual day of observance initiated in 1952 that the foundation unsuccessfully tried to strike down in a 2008 lawsuit.

The foundations co-president, Annie Laurie Gaylor, acknowledged the new case will be an uphill fight.

This is a hard case to take and win  we know that, Gaylor said. She said Conroys action was really very insulting.

According to the complaint, less than 3 percent of House invocations have been delivered by Jews in the last 15 years, and less than half of a percent by Muslims or Hindus. No atheist or agnostic invocations have been given, according to the complaint.

In comparison, more than a fifth of Americans are religiously unaffiliated, according to the Pew Research Center.

There is nothing inherent in atheism, Jainism, Rastafarianism, Buddhism, or any minority religion known to the plaintiffs that would prohibit their leaders from performing the duties of the guest chaplain, the lawsuits states.
SHAWANO, Wis.  A decision by several Wisconsin communities to fine parents whose children repeatedly bully classmates is an idea that's generating some buzz across the globe.

Since enacting their ordinances, police chiefs in Shawano, Plover and Monona have fielded calls from news organizations from Canada to Australia, the Star Tribune reported. They've also received thank-you emails from victims who still struggle with the effects of bullying.

Shawano, located about 40 miles northwest of Green Bay, is the latest Wisconsin municipality to pass an ordinance that holds parents of bullies accountable.

"The threat of a fine is a necessary evil," Shawano Police Chief Mark Kohl said Thursday, adding that it's a consequence for parents who don't want to help fix the problem.

But before parents in all three communities are fined, they're given a warning that's meant to inform them about the bullying and get them help if they have a difficult time controlling their child's behavior, he said.

"We can't ticket our way out of bullying," Kohl said.

Kohl said the point of the ordinance isn't the fine, but rather "getting people to work together" and "getting some parents to act more like parents." Monona Chief Walter Ostrenga said it shows that not only is bullying wrong, it's against the law.

Although some critics have complained that the ordinances create a "nanny state" and government overreach, the police chiefs argue that it's no different than holding a parent accountable for paying for something broken by their child in a store.

"Holding parents accountable is just common sense," said Plover Police Chief Dan Ault.

Polver enacted the fines last fall after Ault was spurred to action because of the correlation between bullying and teen suicides, truancy and school violence.

"If I can stop one school shooting from happening, that's pretty successful," he said. "If I can keep one kid from killing themselves, that has a profound impact."

Ault said he would love to see other cities in the state and across the country adopt such an ordinance.

In Minnesota, Dakota County Sheriff Tim Leslie said he's unaware of any cities that are considering similar measures, but he can see the reasoning behind them.

"If parents aren't coming to the table, you might have to do something like this," he said.
University of Wisconsin-La Crosse students will join in a campus-wide scream to celebrate the end of the semester and the start of finals.

UW-L students, faculty and staff will join for a campus-wide scream as a part of the Wellness Resource Centers Spring Spectacular. Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs Paula Knudson along with Student Association leadership will lead the fourth campus-wide Finals Scream at 1 p.m. today at the south side the Recreational Eagle Center entrance. The public is invited to watch and participate.

The Finals Scream kicks off the Spring Spectacular, an all-afternoon student party that includes food and drinks, games, sports, contests, prizes and more. Our students are here to shout out their relief and excitement for finishing another successful year of classes before they buckle down to finish the semester during finals week, says Kate Noelke, UWL Wellness Coordinator. The Campus Scream is a great, loud exhale for UWL.

Librarians at UWLs Murphy Library started the Finals Scream four years ago. A listing of events taking place during the end of the semester and finals week can be found at www.uwlax.edu/Wellness.
Ted Cruz got at least one thing right in naming Carly Fiorina as his running mate in his futile bid to win the Republican nomination: the proper attributes for a vice presidential candidate.

Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump could do worse than to base their choices on the Cruz parameters for prospective running mates: knowledge and experience, judgment and character.

Vice presidential choices are always important; one out of three has become president, including four of the last nine. But the choice has become more important in an age in which candidates must pass intensive media scrutiny and perform before millions in a single vice presidential debate. An added factor this year is that Trump will be 70 next month, and Clinton 69 in October.

Since Jimmy Carter made Walter Mondale the first significant vice presidential partner, most nominees have wisely picked someone qualified to play a significant governmental role, rather than serve primarily as political attack dog, ticket balancer or traveling envoy. That could be especially important for Trump, given his lack of governmental experience.

Trumps unpredictability makes assessing possible GOP choices hard. But it would seem sensible for him to pick someone with the Washington experience he lacks, like Mitt Romney selected Rep. Paul Ryan and George W. Bush picked Dick Cheney.

His top Washington ally has been Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, a former federal judge. A small group of GOP lawmakers that met in March with Trump included another prospect, Sen. Tom Cotton, an ambitious young Arkansan and Iraq War veteran.

Another possibility is a former GOP foe like New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who enthusiastically endorsed him and could complement his blue-collar appeal. But the blunt Christie may be too similar to Trump and, besides, has very low approval ratings in his home state. Another Trump endorser, Ben Carson, is popular with GOP conservatives but also has no governmental experience.

On paper, Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida seems a natural fit. Though Trump denigrated him as little Marco and lured him into the political gutter, the young Cuban-American senator and former state legislator would provide generational, ethnic, geographic and experience balance.

Thanks to Tuesdays victory in Indiana, Trump wont need to make a deal to reach the required 1,237 delegates. And his repeated denunciations of Cruz as lying Ted and their continuing enmity make the Texas senator an unlikely vice presidential choice. That leaves Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who would bring both state and federal experience, though he has adamantly rejected the idea. He wouldnt be the first to change his mind.

Three women who have been suggested, if Trump wants to counter likely rival Clinton, are Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa, Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina and Gov. Susanna Martinez of New Mexico. All three backed Rubio, and Haley was particularly critical of Trump.

Agreeing to be Trumps vice president might involve a gigantic leap of faith, both in terms of what life would be like and politically. History says being on a losing ticket doesnt benefit future ambitions.

As for Clinton, the Democratic front-runners campaign did something unusual recently in providing a list of people under consideration that looked very much like a real list, not one leaked for political purposes.

Two names stood out, by virtue of experience and background: Sens. Tim Kaine of Virginia and Sherrod Brown of Ohio. Kaine, a former mayor and governor, is a Spanish-speaking Roman Catholic designated to speak for Clinton on foreign policy issues. Brown is a populist with positions similar to those of Bernie Sanders, like requiring banks to down size. Both have won several state-wide elections in major swing states.

The other three were former Gov. Deval Patrick of Massachusetts, an African-American who was assistant attorney general under Bill Clinton; Virginias other senator, Mark Warner, also a former governor; and Tom Perez, the secretary of labor. Another Hispanic sometimes mentioned is Julian Castro, the secretary of housing and urban development and former San Antonio mayor. So is Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

But given how Trump has disparaged minorities and women, the likely first major party female nominee might prefer a qualified white male like Kaine or Brown, rather than a minority or a woman.

As for Fiorina, her tenure as a vice presidential candidate was one of the shortest in history, though she showed she definitely fit two traditional vice presidential roles, political soul mate and attack dog.
When announcing his run for state Senate, Dan Kapanke said Wisconsin has experienced a reversal since Republicans took control of the government in 2010 and that there is more work to do. I find that frightening.

With GOP domination of the Assembly, Senate and governors office  and a conservative majority on the state Supreme Court, Republicans have been able to concentrate power and eliminate the checks that were in place to ensure honest and open government. Examples include:

 The nonpartisan Government Accountability Board has been replaced with a partisan board with few funds to function.

 John Doe procedures to investigate ethics violations of government officials have been terminated.

 Changes made to the civil service system mean Gov. Scott Walker has the power to hire or fire most government employees.

 Attempts to change open records requirements were almost swept through.

 Public schools and our higher education system have had severe cuts in state support, and half of the Wisconsin University Extension staff positions have been cut.

 Research positions in the Department of Natural Resources have been cut, wetland and environmental protections systematically weakened.

 Campaign donation limits were raised and disclosures reduced.
An anticipated wave of no confidence resolutions against University of Wisconsin System officials, in the wake of a similar measure passing at UW-Madison, has begun.

Faculty at UW-River Falls and UW-La Crosse approved no confidence resolutions this week and others will be up for votes Tuesday by the Faculty Senate at UW-Eau Claire and at an unprecedented meeting of the full faculty at UW-Milwaukee.

The UW-Madison Faculty Senate on Monday overwhelmingly declared no confidence in UW System President Ray Cross and the Board of Regents, despite cautions from Chancellor Rebecca Blank that it would reduce support for us at a time we need to communicate our value to the citizens of Wisconsin as strongly as possible.

The resolution focuses on changes made by UW System officials, without input from faculty, to a UW-Madison tenure policy that make it easier to lay off tenured faculty, critics say. The Board of Regents approved the policy last month.

The resolution was amended from the floor Monday to broaden its scope to declare that the erosion of shared governance coupled with budget cuts diminishes access, affordability, and educational resources for our students, as well as support for scholarship and its associated economic benefits, as well as outreach and services to the State of Wisconsin, and harms the quality of our university.

Sociology professor Chad Goldberg, an author of the no confidence resolution, said after the UW-Madison vote that organizers expected a wave of such measures to follow on campuses across the state.

The UW-River Falls Faculty Senate also took action Monday, passing a measure based on the original UW-Madison resolution. UW-River Falls faculty explicitly echoed provisions calling on UW System officials to support the Wisconsin Idea.

UW-La Crosse's Faculty Senate on Thursday unanimously approved a measure based on UW-River Falls, the La Crosse Tribune reported.

Faculty called on Cross and regents to recommit themselves to the Wisconsin Idea by carrying out their responsibilities and working with us to strengthen the quality of our state universities, in particular by working with the state legislature to make a positive case for improved access, affordability, and educational resources for our students; for additional support for scholarship and its associated economic benefits; for greater resources for outreach and services to citizens of the State; and by truly respecting, advancing and participating in shared governance at the UW System.

A similar resolution on the agenda in Eau Claire is titled A resolution in support of the Wisconsin Idea.

At UW-Milwaukee, the proposed resolution notes the significant achievement of the campus being named a Research 1 institution in the Carnegie Classifications for the first time in February.

That achievement was possible, the resolution says, because of academic freedom, shared governance and state fiscal support for the dual campus missions of access and research.

Program changes based on non-educational considerations, the erosion of academic due process, and the circumventing of shared governance jeopardize the quality of students education and imperil the dual mission of UW-Milwaukee and its R1 and community engagement status, reads the resolution.

After Mondays vote at UW-Madison, Cross said in a statement that he disagreed with the facultys action but would continue to work with them.

This state and its people are counting on us, working together, to help improve and expand quality of life and economic prosperity, he said.

Board of Regents president Regina Millner said the board has total confidence in Cross.

Most Regents will be disappointed by this overreaction to the Boards decision to put in place very reasonable and fair tenure and layoff policies  something the legislature directed us to do as part of the state budget," she said.

Assembly Majority Leader Jim Steineke, R-Kaukauna, called the vote counterproductive.

"The Legislature's goal is to continue to keep UW-Madison as a premier higher education institution while responding to the requests of our constituencies who cannot afford ever-increasing tuition costs," Steineke said in a statement.

This post was updated to add action at UW-La Crosse.
A state drinking water study has found signs of new contaminants that threaten human health in a Wisconsin county where a large number of wells were already tainted by pollutants linked to manure from large dairy farms.

Signs of salmonella and rotavirus were found in 11 of 30 private wells tested recently in Kewaunee County, the state Department of Health Services and Department of Natural Resources said.

No illnesses had been reported but property owners were told to stop using the water for drinking or bathing and have their wells chlorinated.

The tests were part of a DNR-funded study launched after years of protests against the growth of concentrated animal feeding operations that generate large quantities of manure.

Conservationists pointed to the findings as further evidence that state and federal regulators are moving too slowly.

Midwest Environmental Advocates, a Madison-based law firm, has challenged the DNR on its permitting of large dairy operations and was among six groups that petitioned the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 2014 for emergency action to ensure safe drinking water for Kewaunee County.

The primary intent of the (petition) was to get impacted Kewaunee County residents immediate access to clean, safe water, Tressie Kamp, an MEA attorney said Thursday. Recent well tests show that the DNRs work is not done and that their efforts must, if anything, ramp up to address this ongoing public health crisis.

Last year, MEA, along with conservationists and retired DNR scientists, called on the EPA to strip the state of its authority to regulate water quality if it didnt pass laws and provide enough staffing to keep pollutants out of lakes, streams and groundwater.

EPA and DNR representatives didnt respond to requests for comment. The EPA has said it is still evaluating the DNRs response to a 2011 letter on 75 state water quality deficiencies, which the petition cites.

Don Niles, who operates a 2,850-cow farm near Casco in the northern part of the county, said the new well tests concerned him.

I care any time we have any indication there is impacted water in our area, said Niles, who is president of Peninsula Pride Farms, an association of 40 farmers formed in January to seek voluntary ways to improve environmental practices, including hiring a consultant to review manure handling.

Cow manure has been linked to bacterial contamination of surface and ground water, unnatural weed and algae growth in lakes and streams, and widespread nitrate pollution in state drinking water.

As dairy production intensified over the last decade, Kewaunee County became a flashpoint with its 15 industrial-scale dairies.

Lynn Utesch, a Kewaunee County activist who operates a small farm, said the new test results were no surprise, just the latest indication of a critical need for federal intervention, funding, education and research.

It is time for Gov. (Scott) Walker, the U.S. EPA, local officials, and our state and local health departments to declare a state of emergency for Kewaunee Countys ongoing health and water crisis, Utesch said.

Voluntary water testing dating back to 2004 found about 30 percent of wells with unsafe drinking water but farmers questioned if the tests were representative and if cows were the source. In November, tests of 320 randomly selected wells found 110 exceeded standards for total coliform or nitrate, both of which can come from manure or other sources, such as faulty septic systems.

From those tainted wells, 30 were selected at random for further analysis last month, said Mark Borchardt, a U.S. Department of Agriculture microbiologist who is helping lead the current study.

Scientists are examining genetic material from contaminants to determine if they came from human or animal waste. Previous tests havent had that capability. When the analysis is done, the results will be delivered to the DNR, Borchardt said.

Genetic signs of salmonella could possibly be from dead bacteria, but there were other indications it came from live bacteria, Borchardt said.

He said he told the DNR on Monday that well owners must be contacted, and the next afternoon the agency posted a release on its website and allowed Borchardt to call owners.

Much of Kewaunee County has less than 5 feet of topsoil over shallow, porous bedrock. When pollutants are deposited on the soil, rain can wash them quickly into groundwater tapped by drinking water wells, said Maureen Muldoon, a UW-Oshkosh hydrologist leading the study with Borchardt.

The DNR said it would cover the cost of testing wells within a half-mile of those identified in the study.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control says the vast majority of salmonella infections cause diarrhea, fever, and abdominal cramps that pass within a week. But salmonella causes 9,000 hospitalizations and 380 deaths a year nationally, the agency said.

Early indications from the researchers suggest the rotavirus may be bovine, the DNR said in a statement. However additional analysis is needed to confirm. According to DHS, bovine rotavirus is typically not transmissible to humans. Salmonella is a bacterial illness with symptoms that range in severity.
Bill Paris will step aside as Tomah High School principal effective June 30.

In a two-sentence letter to Tomah Area School District superintendent Cindy Zahrte, Paris said he plans to pursue other educational and career opportunities.

An attempt to reach Paris Friday was unsuccessful.

Paris has served as principal since the start of 2014-15 school year, when he replaced David Haye. He was principal at Menominee, Michigan, before moving to Tomah and has worked in education for 23 years.

Zahrte said Paris has brought a positive work ethic to the job.

I think his greatest contribution is being visible in the community and being at events, Zahrte said. Hes very positive with students and our high school staff.

Zahrte said Paris advance notice gives the district sufficient time to hire a replacement.

I do believe we have some internal candidates who would do a good job for us, Zahrte said.
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L.A. City Councilmember Joe Buscaino is moving forward with his quest to establish Los Angeles' first off-leash dog-friendly beach, reports the Daily Breeze.

A previous attempt to declare the city controlled inner Cabrillo Beach, in San Pedro, as L.A.'s first official off-leash dog-friendly beach failed last year after dissenters protested heavily about pollution concerns. But Buscaino is attempting the process again, instead focusing on Cabrillo's outer beach as a sanctioned space for pooches and their humans to take some long walks leash-free.

Right now, there is exactly one off-leash dog-friendly beach in all of Los Angeles County. Rosie's Beach, in Long Beach, allows dogs to roam around on the beach without leashes. Other beaches throughout Los Angeles county allow dogs to visit, but require dogs to be leashed at all times.

Buscaino, however, isn't alone in his attempts to get Angelenos and their dogs to run free in the sand. A proposed voter initiative currently circulating around for signatures to put a off-leash dog beach measure on the ballot this November, also according to the Daily Breeze. The initiative, launched by Jeff Douek, the co-owner of the WeHo Bistro in West Hollywood, would require L.A. County to work with cities and establish three to five off-leash dog beaches along L.A. County coastline.

The dog beaches under Douek's initiative would be 'not narrower' than a quarter-mile wide nor more than 10 miles away from the next off-leash beach.

"I'm a person who enjoys going to the beach with my dog," Douek said to the Daily Breeze. "A county ballot initiative is an extremely high hurdle, but there's been so much support for the idea."

Douek says he's received about 100,000 signatures supporting his measure, not too far away from the 146,000 needed to qualify for placement on the November ballot. Check out the initiative's website for more information on how to sign.
On 5 May Ecuadors newly appointed foreign trade minister, Juan Carlos Cassinelli, denied that the Ecuadorean governments decision to extend import tariffs until June 2017 would prevent the pending signature of a trade deal with the European Union (EU).

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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.


American businessman Donald Trump and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton are likely to face each other in the U.S. presidential election this year.

Both candidates call New York State their home. But that might be the only thing they have in common.

Donald Trump came from a wealthy family. He is known for building hotels and casinos around the world.

The businessman says that the U.S. political system is broken and it will take a non-politician like himself to fix it. Trump has never held political office. He is known for his promise to make America great again.

Trump is the likely presidential candidate of the Republican Party. But he has had difficulty getting the support of the partys conservatives.

On Thursday, Paul Ryan, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, said he is not ready to support Trump as the nominee. Ryan was the partys choice for vice president four years ago.

Hillary Clinton grew up in a middle class family near Chicago. She has a lot of experience in politics. She has been a lawyer, a professor, activist, former First Lady, former U.S. Senator and former Secretary of State. Clinton now is campaigning to become the first woman president in U.S. history.

Her last remaining opponent for the Democratic Party nomination, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, continues his campaign against her. He has gained surprisingly strong support from young Democratic voters.

On National Security

The experiences of Clinton and Trump have shaped their ideas about Americas place in the world.

After the San Bernardino, California terror attacks of December 2015, Trump suggested banning all Muslims from entering the United States. Trump has said he supports the use of waterboarding when U.S. agents question suspected terrorists. He also supports the bulk collection of information on Americans' telephone data.

Recently, Trump questioned whether the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is obsolete. And, he has said he wanted American allies like Japan and South Korea to pay more for their share of defense costs.

Clinton said the United States should accept 65,000 refugees from Syria. But, she wants more careful screenings of travelers from countries where terrorists are active.

She supports the closing of the Guantanamo Bay detention center in Cuba and the banning of interrogation methods like waterboarding. She also has called for strengthening existing ties with American allies in Europe and Asia to contain Russian and Chinese influence.

On Diplomacy

Both Clinton and Trump support a stronger U.S. military presence in East and Southeast Asia to answer Chinas influence. At the same time, both candidates want China to use its influence in dealing with nuclear-armed North Korea.

As for Russia, Trump said that he would probably get along with (Russian President Vladimir Putin) very well." Putin, in return, praised Trump as a bright and talented person.

The two candidates have different ideas about the nuclear arms agreement with Iran. Trump calls it a terrible deal. He says it threatens Israel, an American ally, and opposes the lifting of sanctions against Iran.

Clinton supports the Iran nuclear agreement, but says she will punish Iran for any violations.

On Immigration

Stopping illegal immigration is a central issue in Trumps campaign. The businessman wants to build a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico to keep out illegal immigrants. As for illegal immigrants already in the U.S., Trump wants to expel them. He also is calling for limits on the guest workers visa program and ending birthright citizenship.

Clinton says immigration is an economic and a family issue. She supports new legislation to provide a path to U.S. citizenship for more than 11 million undocumented immigrants.

On Trade Partnerships

As Obamas secretary of state, Clinton supported the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement. She considered it an important part of the administrations pivot to Asia policy. However, as a candidate, Clinton opposes the trade deal and says it will not create jobs for Americans.

Trump says he supports free trade, but has opposed several free-trade agreements. He called the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) a disaster. He says the TPP helps China, Japan and big businesses, but not American workers. Trump wants to punish China for unfair trade actions. He calls China a currency manipulator and wants to tighten rules on theft of intellectual property.

On Energy and Environment

Trump says climate change is not a problem and wants to reduce the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. He says the Obama administration has wasted billions of dollars on green energy programs.

Trump calls for removing carbon emission limits in the U.S. He also supports expanding hydro-fracking oil drilling methods to increase oil production and reduce U.S. dependence on oil imports.

Clinton says she wants to make the U.S. the worlds clean energy superpower. She says she will honor the Paris agreement to limit global carbon gas emissions and expand U.S. investment in green energy. Clinton opposes oil drilling in the Arctic areas of Alaska and the building of the Keystone pipeline across the U.S. Midwest.

Im Christopher Jones-Cruise.

Hai Do wrote this story based on information from VOA news and the Council of Foreign Relations. The editors were Mario Ritter and George Grow.

We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments Section.

______________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

screening  n. the act of examining people or things in order to decide if they are suitable for a particular purpose

pivot  n. the act of changing the direction of a policy and moving in a different direction

manipulator  n. a person who uses or controls other people in a clever and often unfair or selfish way; a manipulative person

hydro-fracking  n. a method of drawing oil from the Earth using high-pressure water
Vietnamese officials have banned the processing or selling of dead seafood washed ashore or caught in an area along the countrys central coast.

The ban relates to fish and other sea creatures caught within 20 nautical miles of a mysterious fish kill.

Vietnams agriculture and rural development agency announced the measure earlier this week. The agency also set guidelines for destroying possibly bad seafood. But officials did not expand on measures to deal with violations.

The Vietnamese government has been investigating the fish kill. Large numbers of fish began dying nearly a month ago at fish farms and in waters along four central provinces.

At first, the government said the cause of the fish kill could be a red tide. Red tides happen naturally when algae become so numerous that they discolor the water. The government also said that harmful chemicals from human activities could have been responsible for the deaths.

State media have tied the event to what were said to be the release of toxic materials from a steel factory built by Taiwan's Formosa Plastics (TFP). Last month, the company said there is no evidence that wastewater from its steel plant was to blame.

Vietnamese officials have said that establishing the exact cause of the toxins will take time.

The new ban was announced a day after the environmental and health ministries said seawater and seafood in the four affected provinces met safety rules.

Many people are afraid bad fish collected from the coastal waters have entered Vietnams food supply. That fueled anger on social media. Rare public demonstrations have taken place across the country and in other Southeast Asian nations.

"The governments responses and acts are inappropriate since the people want to know what caused these mass fish deaths," Hanoi resident La Viet Dung told VOA's Vietnamese Service. "Its been a month now, but they havent provided us with ananswer which makes us doubtful. This is either due to their weak governance, or they are trying to hide something.

This week, nearly 140,000 Vietnamese nationals signed a petition urging the United States to launch an independent investigation of the disaster. The call came just weeks before U.S. President Barack Obama makes his first visit to Vietnam.

Im Marsh James.

Tra Mi reported this story for VOANews.com. Jim Dresbach adapted the report for Learning English. George Grow was the editor.

We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments Section or visit our Facebook page.

_______________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

ashore  adv. on or to the shore of an ocean, sea, lake or river

fish kill  n. a mass death among the fish population of a given area caused by pollution or other contaminants

red tide  n. a discoloration of seawater caused by a bloom of toxic red organisms

algae  n. simple plants that have no leaves or stems and that grow in or near water

petition  n. a written document that people sign to show that they want a person or organization to do or change something
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi (L) and his Italian counterpart Paolo Gentiloni attend a joint press conference after their meeting in Rome, Italy, on May 5, 2016. [Photo/Xinhua]

ROME - Wide-ranging bilateral cooperation was at the center of the seventh plenary session of the Italy-China Government Committee which was held on Thursday in the presence of Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and his Italian counterpart Paolo Gentiloni.

The plenary session involved public administration representatives of both countries who gathered to seek new cooperation opportunities in agriculture, food security, science, sustainable development, tourism and many other sectors.

Gentiloni said after holding talks with Wang that Italy is determined to attract an increasing flow of investments and also promote its know-how in the transport and infrastructure sector, particularly in relation to the Chinese plan to build a new Silk Road through the other transit countries of Europe and Asia.

"We will work towards reinforcing our economic relations and our capacities to export towards the big Chinese market, and to increase Chinese direct investments in Italy, also to raise employment levels in our country," Gentiloni said.

"Now Italy is China's fourth largest trading partner in the European Union (EU), we want to conquest at least the third position," he said. Last year bilateral trade reached around 39 billion euros ($44.5 billion), the Italian foreign minister added.

Wang underlined that China and Italy also are two cultural powers in the world. The Chinese foreign minister called for more student and tourist exchanges between the two countries, and for strengthened collaboration on key issues such as security and sustainable development.

Wang welcomed Italy's participation in the China-proposed Belt and Road initiative, which comprises the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road with the aim of building a trade and infrastructure network connecting Asia with Europe and Africa along the ancient Silk Road routes.

"We have to work together to bring our people closer," Wang said.
Its impossible to talk about Captain America Civil War without first talking about last months Batman v Superman.

Both the films are similar on so many levels, yet cannot be more different from each other as a whole. While the DC movie was a sad reminder that superhero films can be a dull, depressing and a horrible disappointment, Captain America Civil War is a bright, energetic and often hilarious celebration of the genre, and a reassurance that superheroes, despite their over-saturation in cinema screens, can still be fun.

Directed by the Russo brothers who also made the previous Captain America movie, Civil War is a sassy demonstration of Marvel being at the very top of their game.

This is pretty much Avengers 2.5 because almost everyone is in attendance, and is way better than Age of Ultron and also more fun that the first Avengers film in some ways. If youve been following the Marvel movies over the past few years you dont need the plot to be explained to you.

Iron Man (Downey Jr) and Captain America (Evans) have a disagreement  while the former wants the Avengers to be regulated by a higher authority, the latter doesnt believe in that because their mission is to simply save people and not indulge in bureaucracy.

But heres the thing  unlike in Batman vs Superman, the conflict here is actually believable. There is some genuine debate between Iron Man and Captain America on the issue at hand, and a fairly credible escalation of events that leads to a full on battle between the two.

Most other Marvel films are basically the same movie, but this one is so different because it is bold enough to tread into bolder and intelligent themes. The audience is presented with the interesting fact that the Avengers should be answerable to someone, and they should take responsibility for their actions.

All the pretty explosions you have been seeing are not just for show, but they affect people in the movie universe. Houses are destroyed and people are killed. There needs to be someone to watch the Watchmen.

Yes, the problem that Iron Man and Captain America have could be sorted if one of them simply told the other some vital information (that someone is manipulating events), but its easy to forget this contrivance when the pyrotechnics on screen are so damn good. Seriously, Civil War has some of the most amazing action sequences ever put on screen. Theres an insane scene at an airport that will leave your tongues wagging and dribble dropping on the floor.

The Russos continue to incorporate the awesome tag team fight choreography where one superhero initiates his move on the bad guy, and another superhero finishes off the baddie with his own move. The best part of all this is that all the action takes place in broad daylight, making the stuff happening on screen coherent.

Whats more, the movie has a whole bunch of laugh out loud moments. A moment where Captain scores a date and two of his friends nod in appreciation gets the whole theater roaring in laughter.

After watching the hilariously subversive Deadpool, I was convinced that I could never again take a straightforward superhero movie seriously. Captain America Civil War undid my thought process just two months later. The biggest takeaway from this film was that Black Panther looks sleek as hell, and one just cant wait for the next slew of Marvel superhero films like Doctor Strange.

So its not a question of whether you should see this movie, its of which the biggest cinema screen in your city is and when the earliest show is.
Actress Preeti Zinta and her husband Gene Goodenough were spotted at the Mumbai International Airport on Friday morning. The couple was flying to Chandigarh along with Gene's parents.

Gene  who is based in the US  flew down to India along with his parents, ahead of the glitzy reception he has planned with Preity here. The reception has reportedly been planned for 13 May, Friday.

Preity tied the knot with her businessman beau in a very private ceremony in Los Angeles on 29 February. The news came as a big surprise to fans back home, although Preity has been close friends with Gene for a while now.

The bride has been busy with her IPL commitments but is taking a little time off for her long-delayed wedding celebrations.
New Delhi: Banks in India are expected to cut lending rates by up to 50 basis points by September as there is sufficient liquidity in the system, says a Bank of America Merrill Lynch report.

According to the global financial services major, sufficient liquidity should generate excess supply in the loan market and lead to reduction in lending rates.

"We continue to expect banks to cut lending rates by September atop 50 bps last fiscal," the BofA-ML report said.

It noted that the Reserve Bank is expected to ease liquidity to support recovery. "We estimate that the RBI will need to inject USD 50 billion of reserve money (including Rs 500 billion towards neutral liquidity) in FY17," it added.

"The loan market will likely see potential excess supply for the first time since 2013. This could lead to lending rate cuts of 50 bps by September," the report said.

Regarding the Central Bank's policy stance, the report said that the RBI is expected to cut rates 25 bps on August 9.

In April, RBI reduced policy rate by 0.25 per cent to 6.5 per cent -- lowest level in more than 5 years. While this was the first rate cut after a gap of six months, RBI has lowered the repo rate by 1.5 per cent since January 2015.

However, the industry still wants further rate cuts to boost investments.
In the World Banks pecking order of ease of doing business India ranks 130th among 189 nations. And on the vexed parameter of closing down of business, even further down--136th. It takes on an average 4 years to wind up and liquidate a business. It is hoped that this would be drastically reduced to just one year once the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code 2016 kicks in.

The National Company law tribunal (NCLT) would be the arbiter of the fortunes of sick companies which turn away their creditors and who thereafter knock at the doors of the Tribunal which would within 90 days find modus vivendi for revival failing which assets would be sold, period. And during this cooling off period, no coercive proceedings can be launched against the company in any other forum or under any other law.

The joint committee of the Parliament which spent agonizing months over the nitty-gritty of the law-in-the-making has done something for the workers---24 months wages due to them would rank ahead of even secured creditors. This is indeed a good augury given the travails of workers and staff, poignantly brought out by the staff of grounded Kingfisher Airlines. But then it must be noted only workers would get this protection and not all employees. One wishes this protection was given to all non-director employees. Be that as it may. All these years, we have been shedding tears for banks saddled with NPAs. It is good that thought has been spared for employees as well.

Cross border insolvency needed to be taken cognizance of, and it is good the new law does so. Many company promoters siphon off funds to secretive foreign destinations. The insolvency code empowers the government to enter into bilateral agreements with other nations for this purpose. One once again hopes that the government takes a comprehensive view of the larger issue of illicit foreign money instead of taking a piecemeal approach just for the purpose of enforcing the code. Foreign assets genuine as well as illicit would inevitably delay the winding up proceedings.

A curious thing that has gone unnoticed is the act of self-abnegation done by the tax authorities---tax and other dues would defer to the dues of secured creditors and 24 month salary of workers. Earlier, taxes jostled with secured creditors and workers dues. This once again is a good augury because there is always an element of exaggeration in tax claims thanks to high-pitched assessments.

There is an anomaly insofar as secured creditors are concerned. By definition, a creditor is secured only to the extent the mortgage assets are sufficient to clear his dues whereas the code talks of paying him off fully. This needs to be corrected so that the unsecured portion is relegated down in the pecking order.

Moving away from corporates, politicians and bureaucrats would be debarred from holding public office once they are declared insolvent. This is as it should be given the fact the Companies Act, 2013 bars insolvents from holding the office of a director.

All in all the code is good because it addresses the concerns of all the stakeholders. Banks, the most vocal of them, have all along constituted themselves as a silo by entering corporate debt restructuring scheme and strategic debt restructuring scheme that did not address the concerns of other stakeholders chiefly employees. That slant now stands corrected.

Public sector banks in the wake of the new law cannot dither nor enter into such deals but immediately seek the sanctuary of the NCLT. In other words it would be the dispassionate and neutral NCLT that would be the arbiter of sick companies and not banks themselves. Once again this is as it should be.
Finally, the Narendra Modi-government is on the verge of making the Bankruptcy Code a reality. The Lok Sabha has cleared the Bill and it now has to go through the Upper House. Given that there is already a consensus on the proposed Law, there shouldnt be any problems in Rajya Sabha too.

What it is all about: Its a law that would enable banks to push for resolution/recovery of the money from a troubled company within a period of 180 days, with a grace period of another 90 days if majority (75 per cent) of creditors agrees. If the recovery doesnt happen even then, the company will be liquidated automatically.

Presently, recovering money from a defaulted corporate borrower is a nightmare for bankers since it takes years for the Debt Recovery Tribunals (DRTs) to finish the litigation. Promoters typically drag banks to various other courts to delay their payments. By the time, the whole process gets over, there will be nothing left for banks to recover. The underlying value of the assets would have eroded sharply by then. It is not clear whether the new bankruptcy law allows a defaulted debtor to move to a higher court against the lenders. If yes, things arent going to be different.

No dearth of good laws

But, the key point here is that in this country there has been no dearth of good laws. As Munesh Khanna, Partner  PwC India, says in this article, the proof of the pudding would lie I its execution. India has the strongest laws on environment, road safety and others, but it's also important how we implement them," Khanna says.

That precisely summarizes the problem. Remember, even the existing DRT mechanism was brought in to make possible faster resolution of banker-borrower disputes since the general judicial platforms lacked the infrastructure and expertise to deal with complex financial litigations between a lender and borrower. But, the DRT has clearly failed to do what it was supposed to do on account of its slow-paced approach.

The point here is that even though the new law is in place, its success depends on how conducive is our legal system to support the execution of the Law and how fast banks can exercise their rights. Look at the Vijay Mallya-Kingfisher case. Banks have been fighting this case with the liquor baron in different courts (DRTs, High Courts and Supreme Courts), but even after 4 years of default, there has been no meaningful progress on recovery.

Quicker judicial resolution

The expert panel, headed by former law secretary, T K Vishwanathan, has highlighted the inefficacies of the existing mechanism when it said the loan recovery rates obtained in India are among the lowest in the world. When default takes place, broadly speaking, lenders seem to recover 20 percent of the value of debt.

The proposed bankruptcy law, which will replace The Presidency Towns Insolvency Act, 1909, when enacted, would come handy for banks to deal with future cases. However, a big question remains with respect to the existing stock of bad loans, where recovery from corporations pending for several years. Its not clear whether the new code can apply to existing cases, which are currently in DRTs.

A major challenge faced by the banks at this stage is how to repair their cracked balance sheets (About 11per cent of bank loans are in the stressed category). Also, speeding up the process of liquidation in a few months too would be a task for banks since lenders typically find it difficult to sell the assets quickly and recover their dues, simply because there arent many takers for distressed assets.

The Vishwanathan panel, in its report, has observed the challenges judicial intervention poses to the recovery process. The current state of the bankruptcy process for firms is a highly fragmented framework... In a situation where one forum decides on matters relating to the rights of the creditor, while another decides on those relating to the rights of the debtor, the decisions are readily appealed against and either stayed or overturned in a higher court. Ideally, if economic value is indeed to be preserved, there must be a single forum that hears both sides of the case and make a judgement based on both.

Further, the panel also questions the business and financial expertise of the judicial forum that decides on the insolvency process. The fora entrusted with adjudicating on matters relating to insolvency and bankruptcy may not have the business or financial expertise, information or bandwidth to decide on such matters. This leads to delays and extensions in arriving at an outcome, and increases the vulnerability to appeals of the outcome, the panel observed.

Speedy judicial resolution in insolvency cases is crucial since a companys cash flows are already hit when it negotiates with banks on insolvency process. According to a 2014 World Bank report, the average time to resolve insolvency is four years in India, compared with 0.8 in Singapore and one year in London.

The bottomline is this: Bankruptcy Code can certainly help banks not to repeat episodes such as Kingfisher and Winsome Diamonds. But, does we have the infrastructure to execute the new Bankruptcy Law is the big question.
EduAce Services, a co-scholastic learning partner for schools, headquartered in Lucknow, has secured its first round of seed funding valued at 1 Million USD from MoMagic, a New Delhi-based mobile internet market and app ecosystem major.

Founded in 2012, the start-up works with schools and students on their co-scholastic learning needs. It has operations in Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Madhya Pradesh and covers over 2500 schools. The company focuses on its IP brand(Quiz Show) School Quiz League- Pratibha Ki Khoj, for school students.

It aims to create various such strategic IP products aimed at the vast schooling community across India, said company sources.

Talking about the announcement, Gaurava Yadav, Founder and CEO, said that the funds would be utilized towards school learning programmes and expanding operations pan-India. EduAce Mission plans to take its knowledge network to 5K schools by 2017.

Arun Gupta, Founder and CEO of MoMagic, said that the mutual strengths of this association would greatly benefit the overall school learning in India at large, enabling the future generation of India to be future ready.

MoMagic Technologies Pvt. Ltd. is a Delhi-based technology company operating across five major markets in South East Asia.
New Delhi: The Centre has released Rs 9,367 crore to drought-hit states under MGNREGA in 2016-17, Parliament was informed today.

The government has also relaxed norms under MGNREGA to provide additional employment of 50 days per household over and above the 100 days in areas affected by natural calamities during 2015-16, Agriculture Minister Radha Mohan Singh said in a written reply in the Rajya Sabha.

"During 2015-16 and 2016-17 (so far), Rs 18,715.01 crore and Rs 9,367.19 crore have been released, respectively, to the drought-hit states under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA)," Singh said.

The minister added that the state government is primarily responsible for taking necessary relief measures in the event of natural calamities.

Funds are available with the state government in the form of state disaster response fund (SDRF) and additional financial assistance is considered from the national disaster response fund (NDRF) for natural calamities of severe nature, Singh said.

The government has released in advance the first instalment of SDRF for 2016-17 amounting Rs 2,551.9 crore to the drought-affected states.

Karnataka, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha, Telangana, Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Jharkhand, Bihar, Haryana and Rajasthan are reeling under drought.
Mumbai: Akshaya Tritiya, which is considered an auspicious day to buy gold, is likely to be lacklustre this time as jewellers are expecting negative to marginal growth compared to last year, on the back of rising gold prices, which is ruling at over Rs 30,000 per 10 grams.

Gold is currently ruling at Rs 30,050 per 10 grams in domestic market. In February first week it was at Rs 26,930.

"During Akshaya Tritiya (which falls on May 9) we are expecting marginal growth in sales compared to last year as the prices are ruling very high and due to the present dry weather conditions in the country," All India Gems and Jewellery Trade Federation (GJF) Chairman Sreedhar G V told PTI.

Even as the overall market sentiment is positive, the surge in gold prices is likely to put a halt on consumer demand for heavy jewellery and people might go for small ticket size items, chains and bangles, Sreedhar added.

Echoing a similar view, former GJF Chairman Bachhraj Bamalwa said in terms of volume, the consumer demand might witness a negative growth of about 10 per cent, but in value terms it is likely to be at par with last year's sales. "There will be buying as people will purchase a token small ticket size jewellery or coin for the festival and they will hesitate to go for heavy pieces due to high prices," he said.

As for wedding jewellery, he said, usually consumers book for bridal jewelleries before one month for which most of the bookings were already done just after the strike ended.

"Bridal and wedding jewellery takes time so we usually get most of the bookings before one month. We got most of the wedding jewellery bookings just as the strike ended," he said.

However, World Gold Council (WGC) MD Somasundaram PR felt that there will be sharp hike in demand during Akshaya Tritiya, where wedding jewellery as well as investment-related items like coins, bars will also move fast. The industry has been facing a challenging time as people were waiting for the Budget expecting a cut in import duty."However, the jewellers went on strike after the announcement of excise levy. The industry is gearing up to meet the pent-up demand which will be witnessed during this Akshaya Tritiya," Somasundaram said.

However, he cautioned that there are restrictions in Tamil Nadu and Kerala, the two big markets, due to elections. Also the artisans, who had ventured into other professions during the strike, are coming back slowly and cannot meet the demand in such a short time.

"We don't expect the price to deter demand. However, we feel that it will be difficult for the industry to increase supply in such a short time," he added.

Ishu Datwani, founder of Anmol Jewellers, said there is likely to be 20-25 per cent rise in demand, mainly ruled by wedding jewellery. "Whatever demand was there during the strike we cannot regain it. But we are trying to make up for the lost business through many offers to attract consumers. Wedding jewellery will dominate the demand during Akshaya Tritiya as the bookings look good" he said.

P N Gadgil Jewellers Chairman and Managing Director Saurabh Gadgil opined this is the first major festival after the strike and there is a positive sentiment all around."Expectations of good monsoon and wedding season will also help boost demand, which is likely to go up by 15 percent compared to last year," he said.

Gadgil added that this will mainly be aided by the weekend preceding Akshaya Tritiya, which falls on the coming Monday, so people will get three days to shop.
New Delhi: Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) inflows stood at USD 40.82 billion till December in the fiscal 2015-16, Parliament was informed today.

For 2014-15, FDI inflows were USD 44.29 billion, up 23 per cent as compared to the previous fiscal.

Giving details in Parliament about FDI investment in the last six years, Minister of State for Finance Jayant Sinha said foreign investment in most of the sectors is already under automatic route.

In 2013-14, FDI inflows were up 5 per cent at USD 36.05 billion. However, inflows dropped by 26 per cent in 2012-13 to USD 34.30 billion, after having grown by 34 per cent in 2011-12 to USD 46.56 billion.

But in 2010-11, the FDI inflows were down 8 per cent to USD 34.85 billion.

"Government approval is required for only few sectors which are listed in the consolidated FDI policy," Sinha said in a written reply to Lok Sabha.

The minister said the government has put in place a policy framework on FDI, which is transparent, predictable and easily comprehensible.

FDI data is compiled by the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP).

To a query on allowing full fungibility in foreign investments, he said: "In order to provide simplicity to FDI policy and bring clarity on application of conditionalities and approval requirement across various sectors, different kinds of foreign investments have been made fungible under one composite cap."

Sinha said the government has also introduced full fungibility of foreign investment in banking-private sector. "Accordingly, different categories of institutional investors can now invest in private sector banks up to the sectoral limit of 74 per cent, provided that there is no change of control and management", Sinha said.
Bank licensing will no longer be a once-in-a-decade affair with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) now gearing up to make on-tap licensing a reality. The central bank, under Raghuram Rajan, kicked off the differentiated banking regime (banks dedicated to cater to different category customers) when he paved the way for payments banks and small finance banks in 2015.

Now, with universal bank licences (full service commercial banks) too proposed to be on-tap, the Indian baking sector has initiated the third leg of structural reforms in the banking sector after the nationalisation era and later letting entry to the private sector banks in the early 90s.

But, the big highlight of the draft paper, for which comments have been sought until 30 June, is that big corporations are out of the race.

The RBI clearly spells out this in the draft paper. Large industrial/business houses are excluded as eligible entities but permitted to invest in the banks to the extent of less than 10 per cent, the RBI says. This pours cold water on the plans of corporate tycoons, who wants their own bank.

The central banks move is understandable since it has never favoured big corporations setting up banks and has sought since banks primarily deal with public money. Hence, the RBI doesnt want to take chances of private corporations misusing that money for related party lending. But, the central bank is okay with business houses investing up to 10 per cent in the new banks. The question here is can RBI ensure a few corporations do not act in concert to take indirect control of a bank.

The RBI is okay with the existing non-banking financial companies (NBFCs) that are controlled by residents and have a successful track record for at least 10 years applying for a licence. So are individuals / professionals who are residents and have 10 years of experience in banking and finance.

Also, private groups that are owned and controlled by residents and have a successful track record for at least 10 years. Such entities, if they have total assets of Rs 5,000 crore or more, the non-financial business of the group does not account for 40 per cent or more in terms of total income, the RBI has said in the draft. The minimum entry capital set is Rs 500 crore.

In short, the RBI primarily wants good NBFCs convert to full-service banks. A private group can apply if it is primarily into financial services business with good track record of a decade. The stringent norms would mean that only very few eligible candidates can throw their hat in the ring. Not surprising since the central bank always had an aversion to corporations setting up banks.

In the last round, from the 25 candidates applied for full service bank licences, only two got the final permit  IDFC and Bandhan. The others too can try their luck once the new regulation comes into place.

For the yet-to-be banked in the hinterland of the country, this is good news since more banks would mean more competition, more reach that would lower the cost of services. The RBI has made it clear that new banks under the on-tap licensing mode cannot ignore the rural areas of the country by stipulating that at least 25 per cent of their branches should be in unbanked rural centres (population up to 9,999 as per the latest census) and they shall comply with the priority sector lending targets and sub-targets as applicable to the existing domestic scheduled commercial banks.

Under the priority sector lending rules, a bank needs to lend at least 40 per cent of their loans to economically weaker sections. Financial inclusion has been a big challenge for Indian banking sector even after decades of bank nationalization. The new set of universal banks and the small finance, payments banks will change this scene. But, all depends on how many licences the central bank chooses to give. But, as mentioned earlier, the big takeaway is that corporate biggies should no longer dream of owning a full service commercial bank.
Mumbai - The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has issued proposals for the relaxation of requirements for banking licences in the latest effort to boost a sector struggling with $100 billion of stressed debt that is choking the financial system and hitting economic growth.

With only about half of India's population having access to financial services, particularly in rural areas, the RBI is keen to extend the sector's reach and the new proposals aim to encourage investment in new lenders.

The draft guidelines announced on Thursday include a move to allow large industrial companies to buy up to 10 percent stakes in new lenders. The proposal may upset the plans of several business houses who had lost out in the last round of distribution of universal bank licences and were eagerly waiting for on-tap regime to set up their own banks.

The central bank also proposed a lowering of the minimum ownership level for companies or people setting up lenders under a financial holding structure to 51 percent from 100 percent.

The RBI emphasised, however, that it would remain cautious when granting licences.

"Banking being a highly leveraged business, licences shall be issued on a very selective basis to those who conform to the above requirements, who have an impeccable track record and who are likely to conform to the best international and domestic standards of customer service and efficiency," the RBI said.

In a departure from the earlier norms on universal banks, the draft guidelines have made resident individuals and professionals having 10 years of experience in banking and finance as eligible for promoting universal banks.

"The initial minimum paid-up voting equity capital for a new bank shall be Rs 500 crore and thereafter, the bank shall have a minimum net worth of Rs 500 crore at all times," the central bank said.

While assuming charge on 4 September, 2013, Governor Raghuram Rajan had said one of his key reform measures would to put bank licensing on-tap. He fulfilled a part of it in April 2014 by issuing in-principal approvals to two-infra lender IDFC and microfinancier Bandhan, out of 25 applicants.

Both of them are operational since last year. These banks came in after a gap of over a decade.

Rajan took the second step by announcing in-principle nod to 10 payments banks and 11 small finance banks last year.

At the last monetary policy in April, Rajan had said he would look at more differentiated banks like custodian banks and wholesale banks.

The RBI said interested parties will have to float a non-operative financial holding company (NOFHC), which has now been made non-mandatory in case of promoters being individuals or standalone promoting/ converting entities who/ which do not have other group entities.

The NOFHC is now required to be owned by the promoter or promoter group to the extent of at least 51 percent of the total paid-up equity capital of the NOFHC, instead being wholly-owned by the promoter group, which was a necessity in the previous guidelines.

Existing non-banking financial companies (NBFCs) that are 'controlled by residents' and have a successful track record for at least 10 years will be eligible for the licence.

"Entities or groups in the private sector that are 'owned and controlled by residents' and have a successful track record for at least 10 years, provided that if such entity or group has total assets of Rs 5,000 crore or more, the non-financial business of the group does not account for 40 per cent or more in terms of total assets or in terms of gross income," the guidelines said.

The foreign shareholding will be as per the existing foreign direct investment (FDI) policy, which is currently at 74 percent.

The RBI has invited suggestions and comments on the draft guidelines by June 30.

"The final guidelines will be issued and the process of inviting applications for setting up of new universal banks in the private sector will be initiated after receiving feedback, comments and suggestions on draft guidelines," the central bank said.

The applications will be referred to a standing external advisory committee to be set up by the Reserve Bank.

The committee will submit its recommendations to the apex bank for consideration and the decision to issue an in-principle approval for setting up of a bank will be taken by the RBI. Those winning applicants will have 18 months to operationalise the new banks.
Lucknow: The Supreme Court on Friday released beleaguered businessman Subrata Roy on parole for four weeks after Roy's mother Chhabi Roy passed away early in the day following prolonged illness.

She was 95 and has been critically ill for over two years.

Subrata Roy has been in Tihar Jail for more than two years in relation with a long running dispute with markets regulator Sebi.

A bench comprising Chief Justice T S Thakur, Justices A R Dave and A K Sikri allowed the plea of Roy seeking permission to attend cremation rites of his mother.

"An application has been filed by Subrata Roy seeking provisional release as his mother passed away early this morning at Lucknow... We direct that Roy shall be released on parole for four weeks," the bench said.

The court, however, said that Roy would be under the protective custody of the police with an assurance from his counsel Kapil Sibal that his client would not try to escape or run away.

A Sahara group spokesperson said in a statement that Chhabi Roy has been the "guiding light of Sahara India Pariwar and departed for her heavenly abode at 1.34 am today". "She has been critically ailing for last two years and was at a makeshift hospital at Sahara Shaher, Lucknow," the statement said.

She was born in Araria district of Bihar.

With inputs from PTI
In the years before hackers stole $81 million from a Bangladesh central bank account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, senior Fed security officials examined the risk of such an attack - but judged the prospect unlikely, bank sources told Reuters.

The Fed managers worried that lax security procedures and outdated technology at some foreign central banks could allow cyber-criminals to commandeer local computers and breach foreign accounts at the U.S. central bank, according to interviews with seven current and former New York Fed officials and a former U.S. government official familiar with the discussions.

Over several years, New York Fed and Federal Bureau of Investigation officials discussed the risk of an attack made using the banking systems communications network, known as SWIFT, according to Fed and government officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The New York Fed was concerned with lots of vulnerabilities, said the former government official. SWIFT was one of them.

But the Fed focussed security resources on other priorities, such as preventing money-laundering and enforcing U.S. economic sanctions, officials with knowledge of the banks security operations told Reuters. Fed officials took some comfort in the fact that SWIFTs security software had never been cracked, the officials said.

The immediate result of the breach for the New York Fed is a claim from the Bangladesh Bank for payment of lost funds and a potential lawsuit. Beyond that, the heist showed that the U.S. central bank long understood a potentially systemic risk to a vital global finance network, but was unable or unwilling to address it.

The New York Fed declined to comment on past security priorities or on whether it had made changes since the heist. SWIFT declined to comment.

Before the heist, some New York Fed officials considered the threat of fraudulent transfers ordered through SWIFT a fat tail risk  a statistical term for events with low probability but dire consequences, said one well-placed official with knowledge of the discussions. Februarys theft from the Bangladesh Bank fit that definition - a bold cyber heist in which thieves attempted to withdraw nearly $1 billion in dozens of requests.

The crime rattled the banking industry because the conduit for the theft was the SWIFT network, an acronym for the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication. A cooperative overseen by 20 of the worlds largest central banks, SWIFT connects about 11,000 financial institutions globally that use it to order money transfers.

What everyone is realizing right now is that no one has ever really appreciated the risk, said the person with direct knowledge of the New York Feds deliberations.

SWIFT has said that the scheme involved altering SWIFT software on Bangladesh Bank computers to hide evidence of fraudulent transfers. Last week, SWIFT acknowledged that the Bangladesh Bank attack was not an isolated incident but one of a number of recent criminal schemes aimed at its messaging platform. SWIFT has declined to elaborate further.

Two Bangladesh Bank officials have told Reuters they believe both the New York Fed and SWIFT bear some responsibility for the failure to prevent the attack. The officials previously told Reuters that SWIFT gave Bangladesh Bank no prior warning about vulnerabilities, and the New York Fed failed to stop fraudulent orders when they reached New York.

The head of Bangladesh Bank is scheduled to meet next week with New York Fed president William Dudley and a senior executive from SWIFT to discuss the matter. SWIFT has said the attack was related to an internal operating issue at Bangladesh Bank, and the New York Fed has said it has no evidence that its systems were compromised.

Richard Dzina, head of the New York Feds wholesale product office, in remarks at a banking conference Tuesday said bank workers acted properly in releasing the funds. The system was penetrated, he said, because the hackers had acquired valid credentials to order the transfers.

$80 BILLION A DAY

The New York Fed holds trillions of dollars in funds for central banks worldwide. It processes about $80 billion in fund transfers in and out of their accounts each day, according to a New York Fed official.

Security is handled by the New York Feds Central Bank and International Account Services (CBIAS) division, a closely-guarded operation inside its fortress in lower Manhattan. CBIAS assigns risk profiles to individual countries and regions, assessing government stability, terrorism threats, and organised crime activity when deciding how to dispense cash to central banks and other official institutions, current and former Fed officials said.

In the months before the attack, the security unit was focussed on bulking up its anti-money laundering protections, an initiative driven by the Board of Governors at the Feds Washington, D.C. headquarters, according to two people familiar with the plan. Another priority was protecting the Feds own Fedwire payments system from cyber attacks, several current and former Fed officials said.

Most transfer requests are approved automatically after computer screening. Only a few of about 2,000 daily transactions are flagged for review by employees, according to a New York Fed official.

One of the officials said automated scanners used for SWIFT payments were effective for preventing money laundering and enforcing economic sanctions - but would not defend the bank against fraudulent money transfers.

There is a balance here that has to be struck between allowing customers to make new payments and to conduct their business in a timely manner, and also to prevent really obnoxious or obvious cases of fraud, said Shehriyar Antia, a former senior New York Fed policy advisor and analyst in the CBIAS unit.

The CBIAS system specifically checks for typographical errors - and it was a thiefs typo, along with an unusually high number of requests for payments to private entities, that alerted the Fed to Februarys cyber attack, banking sources have told Reuters. Once alerted, the Fed suspended payments on most of the requests coming from the Bangladesh Bank, but not before the thieves extracted $81 million.

The Bangladesh Bank, Bangladesh police and the FBI are investigating the attack.

A Bangladesh police official who heads the departments forensic training institute previously told Reuters that SWIFT servers at Bangladesh's central bank were vulnerable to hackers because of the absence of a firewall and a lack of basic security protocols.

LOOSE CONTROLS

Three former officials said that the New York Fed had recently focussed on loose controls over terminals and other access points to the SWIFT network at foreign central banks, where bankers often order withdrawals for hundreds of millions of dollars.

The concerns focussed on the possibility that banks would purchase computers implanted with malicious software or that attackers could steal or buy legitimate credentials from employees, said the former U.S. government official. An additional worry, according to two former Fed officials, was the possibility that a corrupt insider  possibly a bank employee  might have access to the SWIFT network and submit a fraudulent payment request.

Years of managing foreign central bank accounts gave some Fed officials concern that certain banks were ill-equipped to handle local security because of a lack of infrastructure investment and other procedural problems. But the Fed does not have the ability to audit the security protocols at correspondent central banks.

The vulnerability is that central banks, even in developing countries, have a lot of money relative to their level of sophistication, said the official with knowledge of the security concerns. Its not just Bangladesh.

(Writing by David Greising; editing by Brian Thevenot and Edward Tobin)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
MAKOL, Pakistan Shock across Pakistan at the murder of a 16-year-old girl accused of helping a young couple run away and elope has turned to anger over the role played by a "jirga", or tribal council, which police say ordered the punishment.

Jirgas are often convened, particularly in conservative rural areas, to settle local disputes especially between poor families, and although they operate outside the law, their decisions are often honoured and ignored by authorities.

In the case of Ambreen Riasat, who was drugged, killed and burned by a group of men in a so-called "honour killing" in the village of Makol, just 50 km from the capital Islamabad, the mayor questioned whether the jirga was even genuine.

"This barbarity has never happened before," Makol mayor Zardad Khan told Reuters.

Other residents confirmed the village of around 5,000 people had no history of "honour killings", and said in other elopement cases the punishments meted out were relatively minor.

"Everyone in the village is just confused and stunned," said Sardar Naseer Ahmed, 33, a businessman. "There is a sort of fear that I have never seen before."

Whoever made up the group that ordered Ambreen's death, the case has underlined how weak the tentacles of formal Pakistani justice are even close to the centre of government.

Tribal councils, called jirgas in ethnic Pashtun areas and "panchayat" across Punjab and elsewhere, can act to fill that vacuum, and their decisions are usually without controversy.

But events in Makol just over a week ago have highlighted the risks they pose.

Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, chairman of the opposition PPP party and son of Pakistan's only female prime minister, the late Benazir Bhutto, called for a "revolt" against the jirga system after Ambreen's death.

Rights groups say men who run jirgas often barter women and hand down punishments that have included rape and forced marriage of young girls.

FATHER SEEKS REVENGE

More than 500 people are killed in Pakistan each year in so-called "honour killings", usually carried out by members of the victim's family meting out punishment for bringing "shame" on the community.

The fact that the area of Makol had no known history of such abuses, and was so close to the leafy, sophisticated capital, has added to the sense of revulsion.

Most Pakistani newspapers reported Ambreen's death on their front pages, and Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif called for her killers to be swiftly prosecuted.

"Such a barbaric act is not only un-Islamic but also inhuman," he said. "It is not honour killing, its just plain murder."

Ambreen's father called for the culprits to suffer the same gruesome fate as her.

"We want the culprits to be burned alive at the local chowk [village square]," Riasat, a 52-year-old labourer, told a gathering of about 100 village elders held in a local mosque.

Initial reports said that Ambreen was burned alive, but police now believe she was drugged and suffocated before her body was placed in a van and set alight.

The murder took place on April 29, but has only come to light after investigators pieced together what happened.

Riasat said Ambreen had no link to Saima, the young woman who had eloped with another man from Makol.

"If they had to kill someone, why didn't they kill (Saima)? Why my daughter?" he asked, welling up with anger.

The police have arrested 13 of 15 members of the alleged jirga, and paraded them blindfolded and shackled before the media. They also arrested Ambreen's mother, saying she was connected to the jirga.

"How can a mother hurt her daughter? It's a lie," Riasat shouted before the elders, who gathered after Friday prayers to discuss the community's response to the killing.

VICTIM'S BELONGINGS PACKED AWAY

Many Pakistanis are calling again for the passage of an anti-"honour killing" law, which closes a loophole that allows family members to forgive the killers of their daughter. Men are seldom convicted for their role in such murders.

Sharif has promised to speed up the passage of the proposed law after Pakistani director Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy won an Oscar in 2016 for a documentary film about "honour killings", but the law is being opposed by religious parties in parliament.

Obaid-Chinoy told Reuters the intense media coverage of Ambreen's murder "shows that the country is thinking about honour killings and realising that it is a stain on our society".

In Ambreen's modest mud-and-bricks home, her aunt Shehreen struggled to comprehend the murder.

She described her niece as a "quiet girl", as she showed shoes, school books and colourful clothes now stored away in a small trunk.

(Additional reporting and writing by Drazen Jorgic; Editing by Mike Collett-White)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
BERLIN Sueddeutsche Zeitung said on Friday that the source of millions of documents leaked to the German newspaper from Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca had sent them a manifesto, saying his motivation was the "scale of injustices" the papers revealed.

The source had never before publicly stated why he leaked the documents, now known as the Panama Papers, said Sueddeutsche Zeitung (SZ), one of Germany's most reputable newspapers.

In an 1,800 word manifesto published on the SZ website on Friday, the source, calling himself "John Doe", praised others who have leaked secret and sensitive documents, such as Edward Snowden, who revealed details of the U.S. government's mass surveillance programme.

"For his revelations about the National Security Agency (NSA), he deserves a hero's welcome and a substantial prize, not banishment," the source wrote.

He also said he would be willing to co-operate with law enforcement agencies.

He called on the European Commission, Britain, the United States and other nations to take steps to protect people who reveal private information about such sensitive issues rather than punishing them.

"Legitimate whistleblowers who expose unquestionable wrongdoing, whether insiders or outsiders, deserve immunity from government retribution, full stop," he said.

The source, who contacted the paper a year ago with an offer of encrypted internal documents from Mossack Fonseca, denied being a spy but said he had recognised the "scale of injustices" described in their contents.

The documents cover a period over almost 40 years, from 1977 until last December, and purport to show that some companies domiciled in tax havens were being used for suspected money laundering, arms and drug deals and tax evasion.

Reuters could not independently verify whether the source was the same person who leaked the original documents. The source's identity and gender is not known.

Sueddeutsche Zeitung spent more than a year, along with other media outlets and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, analysing the huge cache of documents.

On Friday, Sueddeutsche Zeitung introduced the manifesto by saying: "Now 'John Doe', the anonymous source, has sent the SZ a manifesto, which can be read as an explanation of his actions  and as a call to action."

The source welcomed the fact that the leak had triggered a debate on "wrongdoing by the elite" but said not enough action had been taken.

"For the record, I do not work for any government or intelligence agency, directly or as a contractor, and I never have," he said.

The source was critical of banks, financial regulators, tax authorities, the courts, and the legal profession, as well as the media, saying he had offered the documents to several major media outlets that had chosen not to cover them.

"The collective impact of these failures has been a complete erosion of ethical standards, ultimately leading to a novel system we still call Capitalism, but which is tantamount to economic slavery."

The source ended the manifesto by saying "inexpensive, limitless digital storage and fast internet connections" should help digitise the revolution against income inequality.

(Writing by Caroline Copley; Editing by Louise Ireland)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
Mullenkolly, Wayanad - As you travel through Wayanad in Kerala, you would wonder whether there is indeed a drought at all. The region is all green and temperature is comparatively lower too.

But that is only until you reach Kolavally, in Mullenkolly Gram Panchayat, near the Karnataka border, where villagers are reeling under a severe water crisis and the Kabani river, their life-line, is fast drying.

There is no water. Neither for us nor for our cattle. Our cattle have nothing to eat, just the mud, says Sarasu, a resident of the Ambedkar colony, about 30 km from Mullenkolly.

The residents here were primarily pepper and coffee farmers. But with the crisis in the agriculture sector deepening, most of them have taken to cattle rearing. Now with the drought, even that is under threat.

The Kabani river originates in the Wayanad district and flows to the east through Karnataka.

The remote colony, from where residents walk around three kilometres to catch a bus, was fully dependent on the muddied, almost stagnant, untidy water in the river for nearly one-and-half months as the street-side taps that provide Clean drinking water dried up.

The crisis came to light when a few officials from the Kerala Forest Research Institute visited the area and brought their plight to the authorities attention. Now two tankers come to the area once in a week or two and the taps too have water intermittently.

To be sure, the situation in Wayand is much better than regions like Marathwada in Maharashtra. But what makes the drought here particularly scary is that the region has always been green and water has never been a problem. This is the first time something like this is happening here. The villagers are shocked to see the change. They never expected their fields would ever dry up and develop cracks, that their river which always flowed in abundance would ever be so thin.

Wayanad has always been a resource-rich area, covered with forest and thousands of streams and springs. The weather and the soil of the region were totally different from the rest of Kerala and conducive for cultivation of paddy and spices such as pepper. While agriculture has been the mainstay of the indigenous tribes, tourism has flourished in the recent years.

It was climate that made Wayanad. There was a time when it rained always. But it is not so now, says Klapetta Narayanan, a political thinker and poet, who was born in the region and has seen the region deteriorating slowly.

The disaster has been in the making for the last many years, say activists and experts.

TV Sajeev, scientist, Kerala Forest Research Institute, terms the drought in Wayanad a man-made disaster and does not link it to the global warming.

According to PU Das, district soil conservation officer, it all started with the large-scale migration into the region from south Kerala towards the end of 1940s which resulted in a change in cropping pattern and encroachments into the forest. The forest cover in the district has been fast depleting.

A study titled Geospatial assessment and monitoring of historical forest cover changes (19202012) in Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve that assessed forest depletion in seven protected areas, Wayanad-I Wildlife Sanctuary experienced the most forest cover loss.

The study conducted by Forestry & Ecology Group of the National Remote Sensing Centre with ISRO, and Department of Environmental Sciences of the Andhra University found that in 1920 the forest cover of the Wayanad Wildlife Sanctuary was 318.3 sq km. In 1973, this had declined to 172.6 sq km, that is a decrease of 54 percent.

Leneesh K, who works with Thanal, an NGO engaged in the area of agriculture and sustainable living, says the destruction of forest has in turn resulted in a decline in the canopy. So once the rain stops, the top soil doesnt have the ability to retain the moisture, he says.

According to Das, earlier the rainfall in the region used to be 3000 mm. Of this 60 percent or 96 tmc of water flowed out of the Kabani river. The balance 40 percent used to get retained in water bodies and infiltrated in the soil. But now it is estimated that 145 tmc of water flows out.

That means 90 percent of the rain that we get flows out. Only 10 percent gets absorbed in the soil, Das says. What this also means is that soil erosion is at an alarming 20 tonnes per hectare per year. The various factors that impact soil erosion is water run-off, slope, canopy coverage, land use, agriculture pattern, soil texture and top soil depth.

The settlers who came from other regions, changed the cropping pattern and methods of cultivation in the region. There has been a major shift to cash crops and mono crops, which are not suitable for the environmental and soil health of Wayanad. From paddy that started in the 1950s to pepper and coffee towards the 80s and then to rubber and plantain towards 90s, there has been major shift in the agriculture patterns.

Other than paddy whatever else you plant in the field will have a negative impact on the ground water recharging. With the cropping pattern change this recharging is not taking place now, says Leneesh.

Apart from this, the boom in construction and tourism has given rise to large-scale quarrying in the area. Most of the quarries go deeper than the ground water level. This results in flooding of the quarry where water from nearby springs get accumulated. What this means is less water in the adjoining areas, says Sajeev of KFRI.

As election draws near, there is a scramble to address the situation and find solutions. But, the ignorance of most of the political parties about the root cause of the crisis is palpable.

At a water conservation workshop conducted by the press club at Pulpally (Mullenkolly is about 4 km away from here), as expert Sajeev started his speech, UDF MLA IC Balakrishnan, who is a candidate from the Sulthan Bathery constituency this time too, left the stage. Probably, he is tied up with election work. But that he left the dais before the workshop began was ominous.

It is the political class who should be made aware of the situation because the solutions being suggested now are short sighted.

The solutions that are being proposed now, like constructing check dams etc, will only deepen the crisis, Sajeev reminded at the workshop. Such short-term solutions will boomerang. They are sure to backfire, he said.

The root cause for the depletion in water resources is never addressed, concurs Leneesh (not at the workshop).

As a first step, according to Sajeev, restrictions should be put in place on quarrying. It is ironical that whatever money being earmarked to address environmental damage is channelled into construction work, like that of tanks or pipelines, he notes. The reason, according to him, is that construction is a sector where corruption is standardised. It is easy for the political class and construction lobby to engage each other.

Secondly, the plantations of teak wood, acacia etc should be turned into natural forest to increase the canopy.

CK Janu, a tribal leader who has lead the Adivasi struggle for land and now an NDA candidate from the Sulthan Bathery constituency, seeks a Wayanad package from the government for the farmers in the region. She says the only way out is to reverse the cropping pattern and methods of cultivation to the traditional system.

The Wayanad package should address the financial difficulties of the farmers who are still struggling to retain the traditional methods of cultivation, she says.

True. The story of Cheruvayal Raman (fondly called Ramettan), who is engaged in cultivation for the last 56 years and incurs huge losses only to preserve the traditional seeds and methods of cultivation, stands testimony to this.

As one speaks to experts, one thing becomes clearer  it is the change in land use pattern that has resulted in the degeneration of the region. Closely linked to this issue is the alienation of the Adivasi land, their culture and their knowledge about the soil and climate of Wayanad.

It is high time various political parties, who have for years conspired to keep the Adivasis out of the mainstream political discourse, recognised their struggle for land, self-rule and political representation. That will be the first step towards Wayanad getting its abundance back. Remember, climate change has only begun to bite.

On Monday, interview with Cheruvayal Raman, a farmer who preserves 40 indigenous paddy seed verities.
Mumbai: The Maharashtra government, if required, will approach the Supreme Court against the Bombay High Court's decision of striking down of "unconstitutional sections" of Maharashtra Animals Preservation (Amendment) Act, Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis said today.

The high court on Friday struck down two sections of the Maharashtra Animal Preservation (Amendment) Act which criminalised possession of beef of animals slaughtered outside the state, while upholding the ban on slaughter of bulls and bullocks in the state.

"The HC has affirmed that our law is constitutional and it has not targeted any religion, caste or creed. I am happy that our stand is vindicated by the court," Fadnavis told reporters here.

"However, there are two provisions of the law that have been struck down by the High Court. We will consult our lawyers and, if necessary, will approach the Supreme Court against this. Other than these two provisions, the court has found no fault with the law," he added.

A division bench of Justices AS Oka and SC Gupte struck down Sections 5(d) and 9 (b) of the Act, which criminalised and imposed punishment on persons found in possession of beef of animals, slaughtered in the state or outside, saying it infringes upon a person's Right to Privacy.

Under the Act of 1976, there was ban on cow slaughter and possession and consumption of their meat. However, in 2015, the ban on slaughter of bulls and bullocks was also included in the Act by an amendment.
Mumbai: The Bombay High Court will pronounce the judgment on a bunch of petitions challenging the constitutional validity of the beef ban in Maharashtra on Friday.

A division bench of Justices AS Oka and SC Gupte had reserved the ruling in January after hearing the arguments.

In February 2015, the President granted assent to the Maharashtra Animal Preservation (Amendment) Act. While the original 1976 Act banned slaughter of cows, the amendment prohibited, in addition, slaughter of bulls and bullocks and possession and consumption of their meat.

As per the Act, slaughter attracts a five-year jail-term and Rs 10,000 fine while possession of meat of bull or bullock attracts one-year in jail and Rs 2,000 fine.

During the hearing, the HC had refused to grant interim stay to the provisions penalising the possession of beef.

Arif Kapadia, a city resident, and noted lawyer Harish Jagtiani have challenged the provision which says mere possession of beef anywhere in the state is a crime.

This is arbitrary and undermines the cosmopolitan nature of the city which houses people from all religions and communities, they contend.

Other petitions have been filed by Vishal Sheth, a lawyer, and Shaina Sen, a student, contending that the ban on beef violates fundamental rights of citizens.
Allahabad: A group of BJP leaders on Thursday charged the Vice Chancellor of Allahabad University with "mishandling" the ongoing agitation by office-bearers of the students' union, who have been opposing the varsity administration's decision to conduct entrance tests for post-graduate courses through the online mode.

"We are of the view that the crisis at AU is to be squarely blamed on the mishandling by the Vice Chancellor who could have prevented things from going out of hand by simply giving a patient hearing to the students' union leaders," the group comprising Lok Sabha members Vijay Sonkar and Mahendra Nath Pandey, MLAs Suresh Kumar Khanna and Krishna Paswan, MLC Laxman Acharya and city unit president Shashi Varshney told reporters.

They said, "While the decision to conduct entrance tests online, in the light of the Digital India initiative, has to be appreciated, the VC failed to understand that the students' union leaders were never opposed to the same. They were merely demanding that the offline option also be kept open since many aspirants come from backward regions where there is not sufficient internet connectivity."

"One cannot find fault with such a demand. In fact, it would have been wise to keep both online and offline options open for a few years before switching over completely to computerised system. "The VC also compounded the problem by calling the police which led to the unfortunate instance of lathi charge on protesting students. He may have intended to maintain order on the campus but has ended up disrupting the same," the leaders said.

"We hope good sense prevails over the varsity administration and the reasonable demands of the students are accepted and the police complaints against them withdrawn. We will also be raising the issue in the Parliament and the UP Assembly. Besides, a report containing our findings will be placed before the party high command," they added.

Incidentally, the BJP leaders swung into action on a day when the issue of lathi charge on agitating students here was raised in the Rajya Sabha where CPM member Tapan Kumar Sen condemned the police action on agitating students and received support from a number of fellow MPs.

Trouble has been brewing on the campus since Saturday when AU students' union president Richa Singh, vice-president Vikrant Singh and general secretary Siddharth Singh "Golu" and their supporters were stopped from entering the VC's office before whom they wished to submit a memorandum.

A police complaint was also lodged against the students' union leaders by the varsity administration and though there has been no FIR or arrests so far, a police party lathi charged the agitators when they resumed their stir on Monday.

Again, on Tuesday, when the protesters began a hunger-strike in front of the VC's office, they were dragged outside by the police. Interestingly, Richa, who fought and won the union polls last year as an Independent and joined the Samajwadi Party recently, has been otherwise at loggerheads with other union office-bearers all of whom belong to the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP).

Recently, she had even accused the varsity administration of victimisation on the basis of complaints by her opponents in the ABVP. However, attempts by the varsity administration to crush the agitation with an iron fist appears to have compelled the students' union leaders to bury their ideological differences and put up a joint fight.
Dawood Ibrahim led D-Company, as claimed by the National Investigative Agency, has 'wanted to spread communal tension in the country by attacking religious leaders, Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) leaders and churches', reported The Times of India. This plan was hatched soon after the Narendra Modi government came to power.

The NIA has decided to file a chargesheet on Saturday against 10 members of Ibrahim-led D-Company, who were assigned to 'create unrest'.

The TOI report also adds that two D-Company shooters, who had killed two right-wing leaders, revealed a much larger conspiracy  Pakistan-based Javed Chikna and South Africa-based Zahid Miyan alias 'Jao' had not only masterminded the attack on the right-wing leaders but had attacks planned on various religious institutions. They also had a number of people they had planned to assassinate. It also says that the chargesheet will go on to name 10 D-Company members, including Javed Chikna and Zahid Miyan, but will not name Dawood Ibrahim.

A few months ago, the Supreme Court had refused to entertain the plea of former Home Secretary and BJP Lok Sabha MP RK Singh seeking a probe into the reported claim that various Mumbai police personnel were on the payroll of Dawood Ibrahim, which was undermining the law and order of the country. The MP had claimed that many policemen were getting money from Dawood and in the process, were undermining the law and order of the country, he said. The CJI, however, dismissed the case.

In April this year, a report by the The Times of India had quoted former RAW secretary V Balachandran as saying, "If we have such a system, I am not sure that Dawood will be convicted here in India. He will be acquitted by Indian courts or by the Indian police. Case papers against him, perhaps, will go missing."

Earlier, there were rumours that Dawood Ibrahim might have been dying of gangrene but these rumours were dismissed by Chhota Shakeel, who said he was fit. If Dawood did have gangrene, it would have undermined India's case further.
Panaji: A day after former minister Atanasio Monserratte was arrested for allegedly raping a minor girl after "buying" her from her mother for Rs 50 lakh, the Goa Police Crime Branch has launched a search for another woman who is accused of being involved in human trafficking.

The 16-year-old girl's mother was arrested on Thursday on the charge of human trafficking.

"We have launched search to arrest the third accused, Rosy Ferros. She is wanted in connection with the offence of human trafficking," Superintendent of Police (Crime Branch) Karthik Kashyap told PTI on Friday.

Monserratte, an expelled Congress MLA, appeared before the crime branch officials at 3.10 PM on Thursday, and was placed under arrest at 8.30 PM.

He has been booked under IPC sections 376 (rape), 328 (poisoning), 342 (wrongful confinement), 370 (A) (trafficking), the provisions of Goa Children Act and the Protection of Children From Sexual Offences Act.

The girl's mother is accused of "selling" the victim to the legislator for Rs 50 lakh.

During police investigation, the role of the third woman, who is absconding, also came to light.

Meanwhile, Monserratte was taken for a medical examination to Goa Medical College at around midnight.

Police sources said that the MLA and the girl's mother were kept in different lock-ups in the Crime Branch headquarters located at Ribander, near Panaji.

Monserratte's wife Jeniffer, who is an MLA from Taleigao constituency, met him in the lock up at night.

The police would seek his remand in a court on Friday.

A senior police official on Thursday said that police had examined ten witnesses and also recorded the girl's statement before a magistrate.

According to the girl's complaint, her mother and another woman hatched a conspiracy and sold her for Rs 50 lakh to Monserratte in March this year for sexual exploitation.

"Monserratte kept her in confinement, administered some stupefying substance and had sexual intercourse with her several times without her consent," it alleged.

However, the legislator denied the allegations.

"I have not done anything wrong. The complaint is totally false and bogus. This is just to frame me," he had told reporters on Thursday before entering the Crime Branch office.
An incorrect depiction of the map of India could land the violators in jail with a maximum term of seven years and fine upto Rs 100 crore.

Yes, seven years and Rs 100 crore.

The measure has been envisaged by the government against the backdrop of instances where certain social networking sites showed Jammu and Kashmir and Arunachal Pradesh as part of Pakistan and China respectively.

According to the draft 'The Geospatial Information Regulation Bill 2016', it will be mandatory to take permission from a government authority before acquiring, disseminating, publishing or distributing any geospatial information of India.

"Whoever acquired any geospatial information of India in contravention of the law shall be punished with a fine ranging from Rs 1 crore to Rs 100 crore and/or imprisonment for a period upto seven years," according to the draft bill.

Recently, Twitter had shown the geographical location of Kashmir in China and Jammu in Pakistan triggering protests from the Indian government after which it was corrected.

The draft bill will ensure that online platforms like Google will have to apply for a license to run Google Maps or Google Earth in India.

Uninitiated with the Indian Penal Code, if you are wondering if the said fine is excessive or not, here are some other offences  of which there are many  that will see you imprisoned for seven years:

Section 308: Attempt to commit culpable homicide

Whoever does any act with such intention or knowledge and under such circumstances that, if he by that act caused death, he would be guilty of culpable homicide... if hurt is caused to any person by such act, shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to seven year.

Section 325: Punishment for voluntarily causing grievous hurt

Whoever voluntarily causes grievous hurt, shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to seven years.

Section 420: Cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property

Whoever cheats and thereby dishonestly induces the person deceived to deliver any property to any person, or to make, alter or destroy the whole or any part of a valuable security, or anything which is signed or sealed, and which is capable of being converted into a valuable security, shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to seven years.

Section 506: Punishment for criminal intimidation

If the threat be to cause death or grievous hurt, or to cause the destruction of any property by fire, or to cause an offence punishable with death or (imprisonment for life), or with imprisonment for a term which may extend to seven years, or to impute, unchastity to a woman, shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to seven years.

Section 468: Forgery for purpose of cheating

Whoever commits forgery, intending that the (document or electronic record forged) shall be used for the purpose of cheating, shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to seven years, and shall also be liable to fine.

Section 27 in Arms Act

Whoever uses any arms or ammunition in contravention of section 5 shall be punishable with imprisonment for a term which shall not be less than three years but which may extend to seven years.

Section 304B: Dowry death

Whoever commits dowry death shall be punished with imprisonment for a term which shall not be less than seven years but which may extend to imprisonment for life.

363: Punishment for kidnapping

Whoever kidnaps any person from (India) or from lawful guardianship, shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to seven years.

452: House-trespass after preparation for hurt, assault or wrongful restraint

Whoever commits house-trespass, having made preparation for causing hurt to any person or for assaulting any person, or for wrongfully restraining any person, or for putting any person in fear of hurt, or of assault, or of wrongful restraint, shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to seven years.

397: Robbery, or dacoity, with attempt to cause death or grievous hurt

If, at the time of committing robbery or dacoity, the offender uses any deadly weapon, or causes grievous hurt to any person, or attempts to cause death or grievous hurt to any person, the imprisonment with which such offender shall be punished shall not be less than seven years.

Being lumped with people booked under these charges will teach you not to mess with the map!

With inputs from PTI
2 May: The rape and murder of law student Jisha is reported from Iringol, a village in Keralas Ernakulam district. Immediate suspicion falls on migrant labourers.

4 May: Kailas Jyothy Behra, a migrant worker from Assam, is beaten to death at Chiravamuttam village in the neighbouring Kottayam district. Local media says anger over the possible involvement of migrants in Jishas rape may have provoked the lynching.

Police have indeed rounded up a few migrant labourers for questioning in the Jisha case, and their involvement in the ghastly rape and murder may or may not be conclusively proved. Even if the police finally find a migrant link to the rape, it should surprise nobody, because only five kilometres from Jishas village is Perumbavoor, a town known as mini north India. It has nearly a lakh of migrants, thrice as much as the local population.

But what the Malayalee intelligentsia and social activists find repugnant is that, each time a burglary or a murder is reported anywhere in Kerala, the police look for a migrant worker angle and sections of people convince themselves that its an outside jobtill a local is caught.

The baiscorrupted form of bhais or brothersas the migrants are called, have been indeed involved in a few gruesome crimes in the past. The latest was the brutal triple murder of an elderly couple and their son allegedly by a worker from Uttar Pradesh on 16 May last year at Mooleparambu in Kottayam district. The couple had hired him to work in their dry cleaning centre. The police said he had stabbed and electrocuted the victims before pouring acid on them.

Kerala has an estimated 30 lakh workers from West Bengal, Bihar, Chhatisgarh, Assam, Uttar Pradesh, Odisha and other north-eastern states. Their number is the equivalent of almost 10 percent of the states population.

Expecting each one of this vast chunk of people to be an embodiment of flawless morality is as absurd as lumping the entire lot of them as hardened criminals, just because of a few rotten apples.

Nor is it out of the ordinary that there have been crimes against migrants. Only four months ago, in a murder that nearly turned into an inter-state issue, a worker from a village near Bissam Cuttack in Odishas Rayagada district was killed by a bakery owner in the Kerala capital Thiruvananthapuram. And there have been migrants perpetrating crimes against fellow migrants.

Tension between locals and migrants is not uncommon anywhere in the world. In most cases, the friction is caused by the fear that migrants steal jobs from locals.

But in Keralas case, the state needs them as much as they need the jobs. They have not come to steal jobs: they have arrived to fill a vacuum caused by the exodus of Malayalee workers to the Gulf countries. The migrants get jobs in Kerala, either because locals are not available or are unwilling to do the work. And in Kerala, they get more money: upwards of Rs 500 a day, compared with less than Rs 100 a day back home. Initially, the outsiders took up jobs only in construction and plantations, but now there is no sector in Kerala without migrant workers.

As the irony goes, the number of Malayalees working in the Gulf is roughly the same as the number of migrants coming to Kerala from other states. The outsiders who work in Kerala are estimated to send home nearly Rs 20,000 crore, while Malayalees employed in the Gulf remit about Rs 1 lakh crore.

According to the Kerala Development Report, put together by the Centre for Development Studies (CDS), migrants flood the state not only because they get higher wages here and locals are unavailable, but also because locals, even if available, are reluctant to do hard, physical work. Some, it said, are supported by remittances from abroad and can stay without work for long periods.

Says the report: ...all these have engendered the era of replacement migration in Kerala. For the in-migrant workers, Kerala is, for all practical purposes their promised land, the Gulf. Are they to blame for this intrusion? Nor is it an unwelcome development in our federal economy.

There is no doubt that if the three million migrant workers desert Kerala, hundreds or thousands of businesses would have to shut shop or curtail operations.

Its a question of attitude, said Fr PA Chacko of the Jesuits in Social Action, who has been working for the welfare of migrants in Kerala. He said in a 2014 article, If one or two labourers are caught for some alleged criminal acts, we tend to put blanket blame on all by broadcasting that all these migrant workers are criminal elements. We forget that this Gods own country has thousands of local people incarcerated for alleged crimes. That does not mean all Malayalees are criminals. We extract the energy of these Bais as our pound of flesh. But when it comes to treating them as human persons, who contribute to our wealth creation, should we not honestly acknowledge their contribution and treat them with fair mindedness and human respect?

Instead of keeping the migrants under the scanner each time a rape is committed, Keralas government and society must find ways to make the state a safer place for women to live in. The statistics being bandied about in the media amount to this: In 2015, every 43 minutes saw a new crime against a woman in the state. And, on average, a woman was raped almost every six hours. Few migrants, if any, have anything to do with this astounding crime rate.

The assembly election is ten days away, and political parties, instead of accusing the Oommen Chandy government and the police of inaction in the Jisha case, must come forward with ideas on how to make things better.

Divya P, a young journalist working for Malayala Manoramas English news portal, writes, Anyone walking with their eyes and ears open in Kerala and not awed by the natural beauty around, would easily witness the daily abuse and humiliation women suffer on the streets and roads in Gods Own Country."
New Delhi: The indefinite hunger strike by JNU students entered ninth day on Friday, even as the health condition of the student's union president Kanhaiya Kumar, who was admitted to AIIMS, has improved.

While five students yesterday withdrew from the hunger strike against the punishment by the university in connection with the 9 February event during which anti-national slogans were allegedly raised, 15 others continued with their fast.

Kanhaiya, who is out on bail after his arrest in a sedition case, was yesterday admitted to AIIMS in a semi-conscious state. He was treated for mild dehydration and ketosis.

"Doctors have advised that Kanhaiya be kept under observation. His health is better," a statement from the JNU Students Union said.

"Kanhaiya has appealed to the students to continue with the agitation in his absence from the campus," it said.

On day nine of the hunger strike, the students called for a protest against the JNU administration which has termed the fast as "unlawful" activity.

The keytone level of the fasting students is high and the BP is low, according to the test reports from the health centre.

25 students had gone on hunger strike last week. While five members of ABVP called off their fast on Wednesday claiming they have an assurance from the JNU administration that their demands will be considered, five members of the Left-affiliated groups withdrew from the stir yesterday citing deteriorating health.

JNU VC Jagadesh Kumar had appealed to students to put forward their demands using "constitutional" means and asked them to come for a "dialogue" to resolve the matter.

Two other students  Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya  were arrested along with Kanhaiya in the sedition case.

While Kanhaiya has been slapped with a penalty of Rs 10,000 on grounds of "indiscipline and misconduct", Umar, Anirban and a Kashmiri student, Mujeeb Gatoo have been rusticated for varying durations.

Financial penalty has been imposed on 14 students. Hostel facilities of two students have been withdrawn and the

university has declared the campus out of bounds for two former students.

Saurabh, who is the lone ABVP member in JNU Students Union, has also been slapped with a fine of Rs 10,000 for blocking traffic.
New Delhi: JNU students union president Kanhaiya Kumar, who is on a hunger strike, was discharged from AIIMS after his health improved on Friday even as the varsity administration asked students to not invite outsiders saying it might vitiate the academic atmosphere and peace on campus.

While five students on Thursday withdrew their fast against the punishment by the university in connection with the 9 February event during which anti-national slogans were allegedly raised, 15 others continued with the hunger strike which entered ninth day on Friday.

Kanhaiya, who is out on bail after his arrest in a sedition case, was on Thursday admitted to AIIMS in a semi-conscious state. He was discharged on Friday after treatment for mild dehydration and ketosis.

"Kanhaiya has been discharged from AIIMS. He has been advised bed rest for few days. He has to undergo some medical tests too but he will continue with the strike," a JNUSU statement said.

The ketone level of the fasting students is high and the BP is low, according to the test reports from the health centre.

On the other hand, JNU issued fresh advisory for the students and teachers to avoid inviting outsiders to the campus. The administration also asked the students to refrain from using "direct or indirect coercive measures and come forward for dialogue and discussion".

"The administration requests all the teachers and students to avoid inviting people from outside the campus for any gathering or activity to press their demands, which could undermine peace and security in the campus," JNU Registrar Pramod Kumar said in an appeal.

"Thousands of students on the campus are busy preparing for or writing their end semester examinations and also writing their dissertations. Continuing hunger strikes and escalation of it through involvement of outsiders may further enhance the stress level in the campus and affect the career of those students," he added.

While members from civil society joined the protests on Friday, alumni of the university will gather tomorrow to express solidarity by fasting for a day.

In a separate notice, the Registrar asked the students to not use the Public Address System without permission and around the administration block, which has been the venue of protest ever since the sedition row broke out.
Kochi: With Kerala Police yet to find any success in nabbing the accused in the brutal rape and murder of a Dalit woman a week ago, its chief TP Senkumar has rejected suggestions that there were any major lapses by the force initially which have impacted the probe.

After holding meeting with the top cops supervising the case at nearby Perumbavoor late evening on Thursday, Senkumar said "a scientific, professional investigation" is progressing in the case but admitted that they could not reach a "sudden detection."

"We are doing a professional work. Many experts in the police team have been called in to assist the probe. We are taking all types of inputs. Scientific, professional investigation is on. We have not reached a sudden detection but the probe is in progress," he told reporters.

The top police officer said there were "not much lapses" from the local police in the initial stage of the investigation.

"If there is any minor lapses, we don't need to examine that at this stage. Nothing impacting the investigation has happened. Investigation team is doing a very good professional work. I am sure that it will succeed," he said.

Senkumar said many personnel in state police, who are experts in investigating the crime, have joined the special investigation team to assist them in the probe.

On Thursday, Chief Investigating officer DySP Anil Kumar was removed and A B Jijimon appointed to head the team probing the rape and murder of the 30-year-old law student at her home at Perumbavoor in Ernakulam district on 28 April.

State Home Minister has said the shake-up was done as Jijimon has a better understanding of Perumbavoor area.

Meanwhile, police have continued questioning people, including some neighbours, to get a lead in the case, police sources said. Over 125 people have been questioned in connection with the case.

The incident has become a major issue for the May 16 assembly polls with both ruling UDF and rival LDF trading charges.
Thiruvananthapuram: Three persons were arrested on Friday in connection with the gang rape of a 19-year-old Dalit nursing student in Varkala, Kerala.

Those arrested are in the age group of 20-25 years, police said.

The victim, a second year BSc nursing student, was raped allegedly by an autorickshaw driver and two of his friends near Ayanthi bridge in Varkala, about 50 km from here, on 3 May.

A case under IPC 376 (2) (g) (gang rape) was registered against them.

The medical examination of the victim had confirmed that she had been gang raped.

The victim had gone with the autorickshaw driver, who was known to her, in his vehicle on the day of the incident. Two of his friends got into the vehicle later. They took the autorickshaw to a deserted spot and allegedly raped her, police said.

The incident comes days after a 30-year-old Dalit law student was raped and murdered at Perumbavoor in Ernakulam district.
New Delhi: Home Minister Rajnath Singh on Thursday night spoke to Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan and expressed his "deep sadness" over the killing of six persons in a thunderstorm at Simhastha Mahakumbh in Ujjain.

During the telephonic conversation, the Chief Minister told the Home Minister that normalcy will be restored in the temple town by Friday morning.

"Shivraj Chouhan himself is monitoring the situation at Ujjain. He is leaving no stone unturned to improve the situation on the ground," Singh tweeted.

Shri Shivraj Chouhan is himself monitoring the situation at Ujjain. He is leaving no stone unturned to improve the situation on the ground  Rajnath Singh (@BJPRajnathSingh) May 5, 2016

Six persons were killed and around 40 injured on Thursday evening when heavy rain accompanied by lightning and squall wreaked havoc at the site of the ongoing Simhatha Kumbh Mela in New Delhi, flattening and uprooting pilgrims' tents.
Congress and BJP Ministers Manohar Parrikar and Jyotiraditya Scindia had a heated round of talks in the Lok Sabha on Friday, with each side accusing and mudslinging each other ov

er their involvement in the AgustaWestland scam. The Defence Minister Parrikar accused the UPA government of corruption, and this time he was not mincing words. He suggested that the government could now do, what they couldn't do during Bofors scam.

Rallying from the Congress party, Lok Sabha member Jyotiraditya Scindia called for a Supreme Court supervised investigation into the scam and called on the government's inaction in bringing the corrupt people in the black money scams to justice.

On the subject of the AgustaWestland scam, on the Calling Attention Motion in the Upper House, Scindia said "Do not level baseless allegations. Answer the questions which we are raising. Supreme Court monitored investigation should happen and its reports should be placed in the House every three months."

He defended the UPA government alleging that the reality of the deal was that it started during the NDA regime in 1999, and the accusation of bringing down the height of helicopter from 6000 to 4500 metres was done by NDA government in 2003 and not the UPA. In December 2003, a letter was written from the Prime Minister's Office to change the norms and make it 4500 metres, he added.

Scindia, stoutly defending his party President, saying that the name of Sonia Gandhi wasn't mentioned in any of the documents related to the scam. "Whenever the name of Sonia Gandhi comes, they start feeling irritated and they are afraid also from her because she is a 'lioness' that is why they (BJP) are afraid of her," he said, adding that the mention about the "family" was of Tyagi's family and not the Gandhi family.

"In February 2013, the UPA government gave the case to the CBI and within 12 days, a preliminary inquiry was lodged, he informed adding Letter Rogatory too was issued to Tunisia, Mauritius and Italy," he said.

"...24 months have passed of your government, what have you done in 720 days of your government? Have you brought in a single penny? Have you even identified a single person who has indulged in corruption," he asked.

"In March 2013, we in the House had proposed to form a JPC (joint parliamentary committee). Why did the NDA oppose that proposal? People of this country should ask why you opposed that proposal in 2013," the Congress leader said. He said the banning and blacklisting of companies too was started by the UPA government. The then Defence Minister had stated that no deal would happen with AgustaWestland, Scindia explained, adding it was UPA government which had brought Rs 2,063 crore.

"Why in the FIPB meeting on 8 October, 2015, permission was given to AgustaWestland which was a blacklisted company? Answer this ... why Finmeccanica was invited to participate in a Make in India programme," he alleged.

BJP strikes back; Parrikar mounts an offensive

Mounting an attack on Congress, Parrikar said the previous UPA government had "done everything" to help AgustaWestland bag the chopper deal and asserted that the main beneficiaries of the kickbacks will be tracked so that "may be we can do" what "we could not do in Bofors".

Replying to the debate on the Calling Attention Motion, Parrikar said "I hope members are satisfied and members will support government in finding the truth. The truth may lead to many unwanted realism. What we could not do in Bofors, may be we will do it in AgustaWestland, continuously targeted the Congress but deliberately refrained from naming anybody.

He said the UPA government had "done everything" to help AgustaWestland bag the Rs 3600 crore deal for purchase of 12 VVIP helicopters and that its action against the company following the disclosure of corruption was not pro-active but "forced by circumstances".

Finding loopholes in the deal, the Defence Minister said the tender was submitted by Italy-based AgustaWestland but the contract was given to the UK-based Agusta Westland International Ltd (AWIL), which was not Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM).

When Congress created an uproar and tried to disrupt his speech when he took a dig at them, he remarked, "Why are you (Congress) concerned? I have not named anybody. You seem to know where the Ganga was going."

Parrikar continued his barrage of comments against the Congress govt, saying an investigation is underway with regard to those who washed hands in the flowing Ganga. Those who wash hands in the Ganga have an idea about temperature of the water, how fast the water is flowing. Based on that, we are assessing whether water was cold or hot, whether the water had Hindi, English, Italian or German and what was the issue," Parrikar said.

While giving details of the case, Parrikar continued that the decision to prescribe higher cabin height of 1.8 metres of the helicopter was taken by the UPA government on May 9, 2005 and to buttress his point, he placed on the table of the House the minutes of the meeting that was chaired by the then NSA M K Narayanan.

Noting that the scam surfaced in 2012, the Defence Minister Parrikar said nothing was done by the then UPA government till January 2014.

Responding to Congress contention that the Italian judge had said that there was no evidence against Sonia Gandhi, Parrikar said it was half-truth as the judge had said that it was for India to investigate and for its investigating agencies to "prove the guilt of people who are suspected".

With regard to the Congress charge that the Modi government had allowed an AgustaWestland affiliate to participate in another tender despite the company being blacklisted, the Defence Minister said the firm had only put on website its Request for Information (RFI) which anybody can do in a digital world.

"Any person who wants can put his own information there. Now it is on open internet and if anyone wants to put information, whether it is (Congress leader) Jyotiraditya Scindia, or Christian Michel or Agusta Westland, we cannot stop him," he said.

With inputs from PTI
New Delhi: Alleging that BJP and AAP have "stalled" development in Delhi, Delhi Congress president Ajay Maken on Thursday claimed that they will be "taught a lesson" by the people in the upcoming bypolls to the 13 wards of the municipal corporations.

Addressing a local gathering at Nawada at a 'Smarathan Rally' in support of Congress candidate Satpal Sethi, Maken said his party will "show its strength" in the elections due on 15 May.

"BJP is in power in the MCD and at Centre, and the AAP is ruling in Delhi, but for the past 25 months, all the development works in Delhi have come to a total halt, as they are clashing with one another," he alleged.

Former MLA and senior party leader Mukesh Sharma claimed the local people had "pledged" their support to the Congress and its candidate.

"Satpal Sethi will win the MCD bye-election with a huge margin, and resume the stalled developments works in the area," he asserted.
A 31-year-old Danish woman living in London has become the newest person of interest in the AgustaWestland helicopter scam probe with officials investigating her role in the chopper deal.

Christine Bredo Spliid, the woman who was recently brought under the scanner, only came to picture after the ongoing interrogation of the accused persons.

According to CNN-News 18, Christine and Christian Michel, an alleged middleman, have shareholding in a United Kingdom-based company named Beetle Nut Home Ltd. Documents show Michels Dubai-based Global Services FZE has the shareholding in the company.

Spliids presence have been found in India and Dubai between 2010 and 2012, The New Indian Express reported, when the deal was signed with Agustawestland and alleged kickbacks were divided between Guido Haschke, another middleman, and Michel.

With Spliid's footprints traced in the two countries, CBI and ED are now finding if her visits had to do something with the scam.

"Christine, then in her 20s, was Michel's front as she met government officials and even political leaders. She appears to have travelled to Dubai and Zurich in connection with the Agusta deal. We are checking all her records with immigration," a CBI official was quoted as saying by The Economic Times.

The chopper deal resurfaced after an Italian court in April referred to Congress president Sonia Gandhi and former prime minister Manmohan Singh among others in connection with the chopper deal but gave no details of any wrongdoing by the two leaders.

The Milan court has given details of how alleged bribes were paid by AgustaWestland's parent company Finmeccanica as well as AgustaWestland to Indian officials through middlemen to clinch the deal.

Firms Finmeccanica, AgustaWestland, IDS Infotech Ltd (India) and Aeromatrix India were found to be allegedly involved in the scam.

With inputs from PTI
For once, the top Congress brass  Sonia Gandhi, Manmohan Singh and Rahul Gandhi  courted arrest together, that too in close vicinity of the Parliament. The stated purpose of doing so was to save the democracy in India.

Right around the time the entire Congress leadership walked inside the Parliament Street Police station in New Delhi on Friday  to make a symbolic surrender before the police, apparently for defying a prohibitory section 144 order that is generally enforced whenever the Parliament is in session, senior Congress leader Renuka Chowdhury asserted that, we will march to Parliament till we drop dead.

The whole process of the symbolic arrest before the police, however, was over in about 10 minutes.

Sonia, Rahul and Manmohan walked out under the protective cover of the Special Protection Group (SPG) and proceeded in their respective vehicles to go to Parliament or elsewhere to attend to scheduled their programs.

The police maintained total restraint, nobody suffered any injury. The few Congressmen whose clothes were torn or dusted during the ordeal were responsible for it themselves as they tried too hard, with all the force in their command to make their presence felt to Sonia and Rahul, but were pushed away by the SPG and rest of the security personnel.

For a while, there was a great deal of chaos outside the police station. Some climbed over the barricades but the Congress bosses took a small detour to sneak inside the police station.

Renuka Chowdhury placed herself in a picture perfect situation  she climbed onto the boundary wall of the police station, holding the iron grills. That way, she couldnt have been hurt yet be noticed for her 'save democracy' valor.

Another thing worth noticing was that in the small walk from Jantar Mantar to the Parliament street police station, Sonia Gandhi placed her protective arms around Manmohan Singh. The latter after all had never been a part of agitation politics.

That way, Congress workers were reminded of Singhs continuing position in the organisational hierarchy. At Jantar Mantar, the former prime minister spoke after Rahul Gandhi and before Sonia Gandhi.

Whenever Singhs position has becomes critical, Sonia has given him protective cover  be it when UPA was in power or in March 2015 when he was issued summons by a lower court in the Coalgate scam, when Sonia marched to his residence to assure him that she (meaning entire Congress) stood behind him.

Today again, Singhs position has become critical in the AgustaWestland scam or Choppergate. Even if he is not being directly targeted by the BJP, the statements made by Ahmed Patel on news channels saying that he was there to protect himself, his leader (Sonia Gandhi) and his party (not the government headed by Manmohan Singh) has raised eye brows both within and outside of Congress.

Addressing a modest crowd of MPs, MLAs and other leaders gathered at Jantar Mantar, Singh said Congress bahti Ganga hai, chahe jo ilzam lagaiye, chalti rahegi (Congress is like holi Ganges, howsoever you may try to pollute it, river will keep flowing on course) .

In saying so, Singh perhaps would have realised that this Behti Ganga idiom has a different connotation  effortlessly subsume all negatives.

The rally also sent out a clear message to those concerned that if Congresss first family is targeted then the entire Congress will stand up to rally around them. After all, the Congresss structure has evolved this was over the years  Congress means Nehru-Gandhi family and Nehru-Gandhi family means Congress.

The 'Loktantra Bachao' banners seen at Jantar Mantar had pictures of Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi, Robert Vadra and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra. Sonia and Rahul featured in all the banners whereas Robert and Priyanka appeared alternately in banners towards the middle. Priyanka and her husband Robert though, were not there. But as members of first family, they could not have been left out and thus the Congress workers made their presence felt, pictorially.

Though none of the speakers spoke on the AgustaWestland VVIP chopper scam directly, it could be made out from the highly aggressive combative pitch of Sonia Gandhi that she was referring to her being targeted in Choppergate and prior to that in the National Herald case.

She thundered, Hume darane ki, badnam karne ki koshish ki ja rahi hai...hm jhukne wale nahi, hume jiwan ne sangharsh karna sikhaya hai...unhe maloon nahi Congress jan kis mitti ke bane hai (Attempts are being made to scare us, demean us...we will not bow down, we have been taught to struggle in life...they don't know what Congress people are made of). 

She charged that the Modi government was dancing to the tunes of RSS in Nagpur, and that in the two years (in power) it has destroyed everything that Congress had built over the years.

"Sab pareshan, sab chehre udas (all are hassled, all faces look saddened)," she said. She then warned that nobody should make the mistake of underestimating Congress. Ending her speech, she appealed to Congress workers to go to the remote corners of the country and expose the Modi government.

Following her speech, she marched on to 'save democracy', which the Congress leaders repeatedly said had been murdered by the Modi government.

In a brief speech of about five minutes Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi targeted Narendra Modi and RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat directly:

"These days voices of only two persons, Modi and Bhagwat, are heard. Whosoever speaks against him is targeted with false allegations, Gandhi said. He then touched upon Arunachal, Uttarakhand, and the drought.

What should worry Congress is that even the high pitched aggression against a vindictive Modi government and the 'save democracy' slogans by the top leaders couldnt energise the ebbed moral among the Congress rank and file.

Weeks of meticulous preparation  with senior leaders from all states  couldnt charge up the atmosphere at Jantar Mantar. The turnout of Congress men and women was just above modest.

The Congress leadership clearly needs to do a lot more than just playing nationalist songs like Lata Mangeshkar's Vande Matram and Mohammed Rafis watan ki raah mein naujawan shaheed ho. They need to move beyond just routine speeches in order to rejuvenate its cadre and challenge the Modi government.
Facing a lot of flak over the AgustaWestland scam, Congress president Sonia Gandhi, vice-president Rahul Gandhi and former prime minister Manmohan Singh on Friday launched a scathing attack on the Narendra Modi government, alleging that the Centre was making false allegations against Congress leaders to divert attention from their failures in the last two years. They were subsequently detained by the police for violating prohibitory orders, according to reports.

The Congress leaders were addressing a rally at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi. Scores of Congress leaders took to the streets of national capital to protest against the Centre. The 'Save Democracy' protest march was organised amid a face-off between Congress and the Modi government at the Centre over a host of issues, including the AgustaWestland scandal.

"The Modi government said it has have come to save democracy," Rahul Gandhi said.

"When the Modi government came to power, they promised acche din. Today, there is a drought in the entire country. There is a drought in 40 percent of the country's regions. Everyday, 50 farmers are committing suidice. Latur, Vidarbha and Bundelkhand are burning. And Modiji does not have anything to say about this," he said.

"Modiji talked about employment to the youth and 'Make in India' programme. Last year, how many people got employment? Modiji had said he will give employment to 2 crore youth last year. Only 1.3 lakh youth got employment," said the Congress vice-president.

"In Uttarakhand and in Arunachal Pradesh, they tried to bring down the Congress government and they broke the law...Dalits are not being allowed to participate in democracy," he said.

"Today, people are supposed to praise only two people: Mohan Bhagwat and Narendra Modi. False allegations are made against whoever talks against these two," Rahul said.

"I want to tell the BJP: This is a country of democracy. It belongs to everyone, not a single person. We will fight for the farmers and people of this country," he said, as he finished his speech.

Rahul Gandhi's speech was followed by Manmohan Singh's speech, in which he called Congress "India's soul".

"The BJP government has only one objective: To move towards a Congress-mukt India," he said. "I want to tell Modiji and his government that Congress is India's soul. Since 1850, a lot of people have attacked the Congress. But they were unsuccessful," he added.

"Congress is like a flowing Ganga. It cannot be moved. Congress has been providing all the efforts and sacrifices to save the country's democracy," he said.

Manmohan Singh, like Rahul Gandhi, also criticised the Modi government over the political crises in Uttarakhand and Arunachal Pradesh and said that they were trying to attack democracy by bringing down the Congress state governments.

"Now, they are targeting Manipur government, Meghalaya government, Virbhadra Singh's government," he said.

"It is important that Congress workers tell the people how the Modi government is attacking democracy. We will not let this go forward," said the former prime minister.

After Manmohan Singh, it was Sonia Gandhi's turn to attack the government.

"Today, we are here to give a message, a message so strong that it reaches even Nagpur, on whose directions the Modi government is running," said the Congress president, taking a dig at the RSS, whose headquarters is in Nagpur.

"No matter how much you try to destroy democracy, we will not let this happen. No matter how much they try to scare and humilitate us, we will not stop. Life has taught me to struggle," she said.

"If some people think that Congress can be distracted from its path of saving democracy, they don't know what Congress is made of. We are those people who have given their life and blood for the protection of humanity and freedom," she said.

"In the past 60 to 70 years, Congress has created those institutions which protect democracy. We ensured the welfare of farmers, brought about women empowerment. But in just two years, the Modi government has started ruining everything. Whether they are farmers or the youth, everyone is stressed under the Modi government," she said.

"Prices have risen so much that families are finding it diffcult to provide for their children. But what do they (Modi government) think of this? They just wanted to show false dreams and grab power. This greed for power is growing," Sonia Gandhi said.

"They used 'dhan, bal aur bahubal' to try to bring down the Uttarakhand, Arunchal Pradesh governments. Today, the jungles of Uttarakhand are burning and nothing is happening because there is no government," she added.

"They have just one objective: To get everything under their control. Congress strengthened panchayat raj in the country. But they are bringing such changes in the law that women, adivasis, Dalits are not able to fight in the panchayat polls," she said.

"They are using 'dhan, bhasha, khan-pan' to divide the people. Students are being oppressed," she added.

"To divert attention from their failures in the last two years, BJP has started a game of making false allegations against the other leaders. This is a very old game," Sonia said, referring to the allegations made against Congress over the AgustaWestland scam.

"I want to warn them: Do not think that Congress is weak. Congress will never surrender to injustice. We will strongly protest this injustice both inside and outside the Parliament. I appeal to everyone to go to all corners of the nation and expose the true face of the Modi government," she said.

"We will not let anyone destroy the democratic traditions of this nation," Sonia Gandhi added.
Chennai: DMK patriarch M Karunanidhi on Thursday termed his party's relation with Congress as long-standing, deep and strong and said the working of both the parties is "proof" of a spirit of give and take and reciprocation.

"The ties between DMK and Congress is deep and strong," he said and recalled how both parties had fought the polls together as far as back as the Parliamentary election in 1980.

The two parties have entered into a poll alliance for the 16 May assembly elections in the state.

Karunanidhi cited his famous 1980-phrase of "Nehruvin Magale Varuga, nilayana aatchi tharuga ("welcome daughter of Pandit Nehru, give a stable regime") to buttress how long-standing the tie-up between the two parties was.

The phrase was used by DMK's rivals to corner it for joining hands with Congress after a bitter episode of confrontation with that party during Emergency of 1975-77.

He said the working of both DMK and Congress is "proof" of a spirit of give and take and reciprocation.

His comment assumes significance as senior Congress leader and former Finance Minister P Chidambaram had said that DMK had given seats which were not sought by Congress.

Congress sources said Chidambaram was busy in campaign in Alangudi and hence could not attend the election rally in Chennai on Thursday at Island Grounds.

Karunanidhi recalled how former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi had praised him for remaining firm in his stance, irrespective of whether it was to oppose or support a party.

He also implied he had the same spirit of camaraderie when he welcomed Sonia Gandhi as daughter-in-law of Indira Gandhi. Addressing her as his "dear sister," he said she had captured the situation in the State in her address.

He listed out projects of UPA regime for Tamil Nadu,which include roads, bridges, port projects, Metro Rail, drinking water initiatives including desalinations plants for Chennai, and a Central University in his home town of Tiruvarur.

The DMK chief sarcastically said he searched for the statue of mother Tamil in Madurai as promised by Jayalalithaa in 2013 at a cost of Rs 100 crore on the lines of Statue of Liberty in USA, but in vain.

Accusing Jayalalithaa of trying to hoodwink the people,he said law and order had deteriorated and the state was ruined ruined during the present AIADMK regime and urged the people to vote for DMK, which will be a democratic regime.
Mounting a counter strike after Congress president Sonia Gandhi and her deputy Rahul Gandhi led the 'Save Democracy' rally outside Parliament on Friday, the BJP called it a gimmick to divert public attention from the much controversial AgustaWestland VVIP chopper case.

The rally came amid a face off between the Congress and the BJP led-coalition government at the Centre over a host of issues, including the AgustaWestland scandal.

The rally also saw Rahul and former prime minister Manmohan Singh attacking the Modi dispensation over pulling down of Congress governments in Arunachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand.

Here is how political leaders reacted to the rally:

Union Minister Venkaiah Naidu: Comparing Congress' talks over 'save democracy' to devil quoting scriptures, the minister said: "Today Congress is demonstrating outside the Parliament and levelling allegations against us. This is ridiculous and they have no moral right to say this (allegation against the NDA government).

"During the Congress regime, they had dismissed almost 100 state governments. President's Rule was imposed in two states but the governments (in Uttarkhand and Arunachal Pradesh) were not dismissed as was done by the Congress government in non-Congress states." He also said it was Congress that clamped the emergency on the country in 1975 and imposed press censorship besides sending opposition leaders to jail.

Congress talking about 'save democracy' is like devil quoting scriptures. They have dismissed more than 100 elected governments 1/  M Venkaiah Naidu (@MVenkaiahNaidu) May 6, 2016

Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad: According to the minister the 'Save Democracy' rally was more of a 'Save Gandhi family' rally.

Mujhe aisa lagta hai ki aaj ka ye pradarshan 'Sonia-Rahul parivar bachao abhiyaan' tha: Ravi Shankar Prasad pic.twitter.com/HuEFltGcMy

BJP leader Rajiv Pratap Rudy: The Congress should change the name of the rally from 'Save Democracy' to 'Save Democracy from Congress'. It is very unique that Robert Vadra's face is featuring in one of the posters, the minister told Times Now.

BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra: "It is ridiculous to learn, that leaders like Sonia and Rahul who are out on bail on the National Herald case are marching in the 'Save Democracy' march. Since they have been cornered in the AgustaWestland case, the ones who have tried to destroy the democracy by means of corruption are now trying to find an escape route."

Suggesting that the Congress should hold a surrender march rather than holding a farcical 'Save Democracy' rally, the spokesperson said that they should walk up to the police admitting their corruption and surrender.

With inputs from Agencies
The ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Jammu and Kashmir on Friday said that it would oppose any initiative to set up a Sainik colony for serving and retired servicemen in the Valley even as the state government sent a fresh reminder to deputy commissioners of Srinagar and Budgam. This has raked up a fresh controversy in the state.

Dr Mehboob Beg, the chief spokesperson of PDP, told Firstpost on Friday that his party would stick to its earlier stand of not allowing Sanik colony in the Valley, which would allow the non-state soldiers, who have served in Kashmir, and their families, to settle in the Valley.

Beg said allowing a Sainik colony in Srinagar for the non-state subjects would be a clear violation of the state's Constitution.

Only yesterday, CM Mehbooba Mufti told people in Anantnag that when we swear by the Constitution of the state, we also respect and work for strengthening the Indian Constitution. Respecting Indian Constitution also means opposing any move to settle any non-state subject trooper or ex-servicemen in Jammu and Kashmir. That would be a clear violation of the special status of Jammu and Kashmir (under Article 370 of Indian Constitution, Beg told Firstpost.

The Rajya Sainik Board (RSB) in 2012 had floated a proposal of setting up a residential cluster for serving and ex-servicemen in one of its meetings. Governor N N Vohra, who heads the board, approved the proposal and when the state came under his rule, he expedited the process of setting up of the Sainik colony, early this year.

The states home department, headed by the late Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, last year had identified a plot of 173 kanals near Humhama for the 'Sainik Colony' in Humhama area, on the outskirts of Srinagar.

My party (PDP) stands clear on this issue, any move by anyone to settle the non-resident soldiers, even if they have served here for 26 years, would be opposed by us. I dont want to comment on the Governor's decision and why he wanted to expedited the matter, when he ruled the state, Beg added.

The move to settle the soldiers in Kashmir was vehemently opposed by the National Conference and Hurriyat leaders.

But a senior official in the state home department said on Friday that the Government of India was committed to building the cluster of colonies for the soldiers, who has served in the state during the worst years of insurgency. He, however, did not specify if it was meant for state or non-state subjects.

The Centre is serious about this proposal. The land is a state subject that is the reason there has been a delay. It wont be a challenge to the states special statues because this would be undertaken under a lease agreement, the officer, who did not wish to be named, told Firstpost.

According to the proposal cleared by Governor Vohra, a commissioned officer would be allotted 11 marlas of land, a junior commissioned officer 8 marlas and a soldier of the subordinate rank 5 marlas of land. Initially, almost 40 retired Kashmiri Pandit officers, who had served in the state and outside along with 300 soldiers, had applied for the plots.

BJP Parliamentarian and RSS man, Tarun Vijay, had submitted a proposal to the Narendra Modi-led government, demanding settlement rights for soldiers in the Valley, who have served a minimum of three years. Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar had said the matter had been forwarded to the state government since land was a state subject.

Now, the Mehbooba Mufti-led PDP-BJP government has sent a fresh reminder to the deputy commissioners, seeking their response at the earliest.

Sources said that almost 7,000 serving and retired soldiers have applied for the plots in the colony.

BJP spokesperson Khalid Jehangir told Firstpost that his party's stand is clear  the colony should be developed for the soldiers and their families.

There is a misunderstanding that this colony is meant for soldiers from outside the state, but it is not. In fact, the state government should expedite the matter and allow the board to come up with the colony soon, said Jehangir.

On 15 April, 2016 in a meeting in Raj Bhavan, Jammu, secretary of the board, Brig RS Langeh, according to sources, had apprised the members that the number of soldiers  both serving and retired  who have applied for the plots, have increased and thus the land requirement should be increased to 350 kanals. Subsequently, a fresh proposal was sent to the state government headed by Sayeed for the allotment of 350 kanals of state land.

After obtaining written commitment from the beneficiaries, the number of aspirants increased to 26 officers, 125 JCOs and 900 others, requiring a total of 350 kanals (44 acres) of land, the RSB wrote to the state home department.

The previous government led by Mufti Mohammad Sayeed had dismissed the reports as baseless. Deputy Chief Minister Nirmal Singh had told Firstpost last year, there was no need to build the Sainik colony in Srinagar, as one such colony already existed in Jammu.

Despite repeated attempts, government spokesperson, Nayeem Akhtar, could not be reached. However, Hurriyat Conference led by Sayed Ali Shah Geelani threatened to launch an agitation if the proposed move for settling or allotting of land "to any Army personal or any citizen of India was given a go-ahead."
Congress did an inadvertent favour to the ruling BJP and damaged its own cause by walking out of Parliament on a flimsy pretext minutes after Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar had begun responding to a short duration discussion on VVIP chopper scam in Lok Sabha.

The main opposition party thus gave a complete freehand to the government to respond the way it liked on such a politically sensitive issue where public perception mattered much more than the legalities.

Parrikar concluded his 50-minute long speech by making a tall assertion -- "the truth (of bribery) may lead to very unwanted realism (to Congress leadership). What we could not do in Bofors, maybe, we will do it in AgustaWestland."

If there are any doubts which way investigations are heading take it directly from the Defence Minister: "On one thing I was very comfortable and very happy that time and again the then defence minister, and now everyone agreed that corruption happened. And it happened during UPA time thereby it's clear and is basically logical that money has been paid to someone from the other side (Congress), not from this side BJP).

"Actually, there are so many irregularities. I am shocked and this is the biggest shock for me. How could you have given an order and accepted tender of a company to whom you have not given the tender? They had lost sense of proportion. They thought that they will be permanently in the ruling. The smell of money or the sight of euro

probably was so attractive or intoxicating that they forgot to cover small details... We will now get the documents very fast."

Unlike Rajya Sabha where Parrikar had read out his speech in English from a written text, in Lok Sabha he spoke extempore in Hindi, also responding to individual queries and using English only when he had to refer from official documents to substantiate his point. Also he had larger numbers on his side in Lower House.

While AgustaWestland is proving to be Bofors 2.0 for the Congress but there has been an all round scepticism that the investigations in the choppergate too in the end could go Bofors way -- not to its logical conclusion after years of sound and fury against those perceived to be accused in the case, or those actually named. Politically and

administratively, it was important for someone at the top in Modi government to clarify on that aspect. Parrikar has, for now, fired that punch, he and his government now has to prove that on issues of heightened public sensitivities they are true to their words.

The Defence Minister made another announcement, which may have interesting bearing on course of investigations in the case. The government will ask for CBI inquiry in incidence of fire on 3 July 2014 at Air Force Two offices. From what he said it was clear that he suspected that the someone with intentions to burn all the records pertaining to AgustaWestland helicopter AW 101 had put the building on fire but didn't fully succeed in his intentions because three key files relating to the field testing of the VVIP chopper was saved. These files were kept in drawer of officer concerned.

It would be interesting to see what those files said, giving a complete negative certificate to these high cost Agusta Westland chopper intended to fly the VVIP, President, PM and such other dignitaries:

"Effective pay load capacity at MSL in OGE configuration is nil above 30 degree centigrade...meaning that if the temperature is above 30 degree C then it would be able to lift any load. With day time temperature usually above 10 degree in most of the plains of North India, pay load capacity in OGE configuration is limited to 300 kg reducing with every degree rise in temperature above 10 degree. Effective pay load capacity at 3,500 feet, AMSL in OGE configuration is nil above minus five degree. At Srinagar, 5,450 feet AMSL, effective pay load is nil in OGE configuration at all ranges of temperature. Even in IGE configuration, a reduced pay load is to be accepted. The common VVIP sorties to Nehru Helipad cannot be undertaken. Similar in the case of Gulmarg and Pahalgam, where VVIP sorties have been flown in the past using Mi-17 4 helicopters."

Way back in 1985 Panwan Hans was given 21 Westland choppers under British grants as the British Government wanted to save this company.

Of these two-three helicopters crashed and then it was realised, that there were technical faults with these choppers. In the year 2000, Agusta acquired Westland. None knows, not even incumbent defence minister whether the matter was checked by Air Force when they recommended AgustaWestland (AW).

Parrikar had said in Rajya Sabha that the government had agreed to buy these choppers six times more than the initial base price fixed by the Air Force, field trials were conducted abroad in contravention to the original agreement that had said that too on some other representative chopper, not on AW 101 which were to be acquired.

The CAG report had highlighted that the Field Evaluation Trial of AW101 of AgustaWestland. It was conducted on representative helicopters Merlin MK-3A and CIV01 and mock-up of the passenger cabin and not on the actual helicopter.

In effect, by changing the SQRs (service quality requirements) and making 1.85 meters cabin height mandatory, a situation was created in which EC-225 helicopter, which had met all Operational Requirements earlier. It facilitated emergence of AW-101 as a single vendor.

In the process he painted then defence minister AK Antony, the so-called Mr Clean as Mr Bechara (helpless). "Bechara Antony ke haat band kar rakha....The day Giuseppe Orsi (CEO of Agusta Westland) was arrested Antony thought my sainthood robes would be derobed and in panic and sent files to CBI in three hours. What I realise from the officers is that he was in panic virtually. He sent it because he wanted to protect his image. I agree up to an extent bechara."

His argument was the former Air Force Chief who retired in 2007 was a minor player who perhaps collected only the chillars (small change). He couldn't have taken decision when the agreement was inked in 2010. The present government's task is to unearth the big players who influenced the decision.

He also had suggested that there was a connection between Michel Christian and Congress. "Michel is a fugitive. Therefore, they should not treat him as if he is telling gospel truth. You don't know that they can get any document from Michel very fast and within no time. They are lucky, I said because they have support from all these people including Italian translation into English. We will definitely recover bribe - we will recover something like 398 million, which is the damage that we are claiming. This process will start now."

Taking charge from the Congress side, Jyotiraditya Scindia termed said Sonia Gandhi as fearless lioness who could take on all kinds attacks targeted against her. "She is a sherni (lioness)...they are scared of her", he said.

Just that the lioness did not roar in Parliament, nor did Rahul Gandhi.
New Delhi: Congress on Friday accused the government of "abusing and insulting" the Constitution, on a day its top leadership took to streets to protest the "assaults on democracy".

Raising the issue during Question Hour in Rajya Sabha, Deputy Leader of Congress Anand Sharma said that the top leadership of his party is protesting against the "assaults on democracy" by this government.

"This government is abusing and insulting the Constitution. Indian Constitution is being insulted. Democracy is being assaulted," he said.

Sharma said all party leaders including Congress President Sonia Gandhi and Vice President Rahul Gandhi have been "arrested".

"We are protesting the assault on democracy by this government," he said.

Under attack over AgustaWestland issue, a combative Sonia Gandhi, while addressing the protest march, hit back at the Modi government saying it should "not try to frighten" Congress and that life has taught her "to fight on".

She, Rahul Gandhi and other top party leaders later courted arrest after they were stopped from marching to Parliament.
Andrew Brietbart, noted American conservative commentator and editor who died in 2012, had once this to say about media manipulation: "Feeding the media is like training a dog. You can't throw an entire steak at a dog to train it to sit. You have to give it little bits of steak over and over again until it learns."

Why start with an anecdote about media manipulation in an article about Arvind Kejriwal? Because, as I hope to show, the AAP supremo is currently the only politician in India who understands new media (keeping Narendra Modi in mind) and uses it admirably to his advantage.

Though the media's primary objective is to remain as hunter-gatherer of facts, one of its major roles now is to shape narratives  partly a result of evolution and largely driven by technological advancement. And how is the narrative shaped? Not always, but it is frequently done by exaggeration, distortion, fabrication and oversimplification. Media manipulation has become the new normal where news cycles are decided by not what is important but what readers are clicking on.

The circumstances present a unique challenge to politicians. More so in a heterogeneous, multilingual, gigantic democracy like India which is on the cusp of a huge socio-economic upheaval. Right now, if one aims to become a pan-Indian leader, there are only just two ways of doing it.

One, the leader must harness an ideological concept that transcends the barriers of state, language, culture and makes him instantly recognizable. Or two, the leader must tirelessly manipulate the media to stay relevant.

Narendra Modi crossed the boundaries of Gujarat by proposing "acche din" for supporters. Whether or not he has succeeded so far is a separate question but rivals (within and without) failed to stop him because he sprang an idea whose time had come.

His challengers, therefore, must also spring an equally acceptable axis around which a narrative can be spun. It could be reservations because the fragile post-Mandal equilibrium seems to have run its course. From Patidars to Patels, 'reservation' issue cuts across all divides. Or it could even be about prohibition, as Pratap Bhanu Mehta pointed out in a recent column.

Nitish Kumar, who has of late been touted as Modi's challenger in 2019, has already jumped onto the prohibition bandwagon. Bihar is now a dry state. Clearly, he has chosen the first option.

Equally clearly, Kejriwal seems to have chosen the second. The Delhi chief minister is a master at staying on top of news cycle. How does he do that? By running frequent campaigns in media, both old and new. And most of these are relentless, virulent, venomous harangues against the prime minister. He sees Modi's invisible hand in every ticking of clock.

DU refuses to show records of PM's degree. Why? My info- he did not do BA from DU. No records in DU. Degree published by some papers forged  Arvind Kejriwal (@ArvindKejriwal) May 4, 2016

The Prime Minister still enjoys high approval ratings. A 16 March, 2016 poll shows 74 percent people still approve of Modis performance as PM, unchanged from the finding of an end-November survey.

Making Modi the target of his diatribes, therefore, serves two crucial purpose for Kejriwal: One, it gives him free publicity and ensures his relevance in national media and two, makes him a de facto challenger for the Prime Minister's post in 2019.

Consider the brilliance of the tactic. Aam Admi Party lacks a national presence. Kejriwal has little influence outside the borders of Delhi's middle-middle-class. Recent bumblings over odd-even 2 which left even some of his staunch supporters disgruntled has added to his challenge. The Delhi chief minister, ever wary of changing mood, has already suggested that it can't be a permanent solution.

Punjab is an important test but he cannot keep all his eggs in one basket. There are other mass leaders in India who also aspire for the 7 RCR chair. Congress is vastly weakened and Rahul Gandhi is a meme of a challenger for the prime minister's post but ruling out a party that has ruled India for six decades since Independence is a folly. This clever media manipulation, however, has ensured that Kejriwal's name is always in the mix when mention is made of Modi's successor.

Kejriwal had been smarting after having to expel Jitendra Tomar, a minister in his cabinet, over a fake-degree row. His targeting of Modi is a smart move. After all, the prime minister has provided no documents to prove that he did complete his BA from DU and PMO has so far stonewalled all queries. Smelling blood, the Delhi CM is firing several tweets per day and is even trying to put pressure on media by suggesting that they are "ignoring this raging controversy".

Some media houses have told their reporters not to touch PM degree issue. Other than known Modi-channels, list includes ABP n NDTV(1/2)  Arvind Kejriwal (@ArvindKejriwal) May 6, 2016

Mr Aveek Sircar? Busy wid Mamta bashing? Dr Pranoy Roy? Sir, didn't expect this from u (2/2)  Arvind Kejriwal (@ArvindKejriwal) May 6, 2016

An RTI query has been raised and PMO is expected to come up with a response but for now, even if we take it for granted that Modi has no BA degree to show, it is hazardous for any Indian politician to hijack a seat on moral high horse over fake degrees. And for Kejriwal, even more so.

The 'corruption crusader' did expel Tomar under pressure but at least two other AAP MLAs, Bhavna Gaur and Surender Singh, have been accused of furnishing fake degrees or incorrect information about their educational qualification.

A complaint was filed against Gaur for "forging educational certificates" and misrepresenting facts in election affidavits. Singh, while admitting that he made a mistake in affidavit, has failed to produce a degree.

There have been similar accusations against members of all parties. Congress president Sonia Gandhi allegedly faked her degree of studying English in the University of Cambridge. Subramaniam Swamy, who even took the matter to the Supreme Court, has said he has letter from Cambridge proving that Ms Gandhi never studied there and that she didn't study beyond fifth standard.

Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi has also faced accusations of "exaggerating his qualifications". Fingers were also raised against Union HRD minister Smriti Irani for "furnishing false information".

These are just some names among many more. Point is, though furnishing fake degree is reprehensible and wrong, it seems to have little effect on a politician's career prospects. And it is plain rich when somebody like Kejriwal whose own party has been embroiled in similar controversies, raises finger at others.

As a political ploy, Kejriwal's tactic is bang on. He is continuing a strategy of media manipulation which has so far given him rich dividends and holds the promise of serving him even in the future. Problem arises when the AAP chief tries to project himself as the sole custodian of honesty in Indian politics. The slip is showing.
New Delhi: Having run out of almost all possible options to defend itself in the AgustaWestland case  with its demand for a Supreme Court monitored probe rejected in the Parliament on Wednesday  the Congress has decided to hit the streets on 6 May to present its argument in front of the public.

A major show of strength is being organised by Congress president Sonia Gandhi and vice president Rahul Gandhi on the streets of the national capital, where the party's top leadership including its MPs will gherao the Parliament by conducting a march from Jantar Mantar.

The idea is to counter the Modi government's onslaught on the Congress party, which the latter is calling a campaign of "deceit and deliberate lies against the Opposition".

Calling it a Save democracy (Prajatantra Bachao) march, Randeep Surjewala, in-charge of communications, All India Congress Committee, said, A march will be taken out by the Congress party led by its president Sonia Gandhi and vice president Rahul Gandhi from Jantar Mantar to the Parliament on 6 May. This 'save democracy' march will be taken out in protest of Modi governments failure to do anything about the issues of concern.

He added, BJP president Amit Shah and the party leaders have become masters in pursuing politics of deceit and deliberate lies. They seriously need to introspect on whether mudslinging and muck-raking can ever replace the truth? Can smear campaigns and hatchet jobs of BJP's 'Dirty Tricks department' defend the 'Operation Cover-up' of BJP government in helping Agusta Westland?

Already on the back-foot due to a fierce attack from the BJP on the AgustaWestland issue, the Congress has been trying desperately to change the public perception towards the party and its top leadership.

The Congress had walked out of the Upper House on Wednesday, after its demand for a Supreme Court-monitored probe of the issue was turned down.

Its very unfortunate that not much of our side of the story on AgustaWestland is being carried in the media. Even our demand for a Supreme Court-monitored fair probe was turned down. The Modi government, through malicious campaign, has been trying to portray Congress as a villain in this case, which is false. Through this march we want to tell public the truth, a senior Congress party leader remarked.

It is an unlikely event when the top brass of the Congress party hits the streets to make their voice heard; but in the recent past, whenever it has done so, it had been related to corruption charges against the first family of the Congress.

Past incidents

After the NDA came to power in 2014, on three occasions Sonia Gandhi led protest marches along with other party leaders as a show of strength to communicate the party's message to public:

12 March, 2015: In a rare gesture, the Congress president had led a march to the residence of former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to express the partys solidarity with him a day after Special Court summoned Singh over irregularities in coal mine allocations. The march took place in the absence of Rahul Gandhi, who was on a sabbatical.

17 March 2015: In a big show of opposition unity, Sonia Gandhi led a march of over 100 lawmakers from 14 parties to the Rashtrapati Bhawan in protest against land reforms crucial to the government's economic agenda and submitted a memorandum to President Pranab Mukherjee.

3 November 2015: Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi led the party's leaders and parliamentarians in a march from Parliament House to Rashtrapati Bhavan protesting against the Modi government on rising intolerance and communalism.

December 2015: prior to the Gandhis appearing before the court in the National Herald case, the top Congress leaders hit the street with a rally.

It has been seen that whenever the Congress party has faced heat due to charges of corruption against it, like in the case of coal scam, National Herald case or Agusta Westland, either the party president Sonia Gandhi or the top leaders have rallied on the streets to mobilize public opinion in its favour. Somewhere, the Congress is fearing that its losing trust amongst public due to allegations of corruption and scams against it, a senior journalist in the know of things said.

This time too, the entire Congress leadership has come together as a show of strength, as they feel that the BJP has been selectively attacking their top leadership. The Friday rally at Jantar Mantar will be a test of the party's ability to mobilise public opinion in its favour.
In a country where theres no accountability on poll-promises, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithas jumbo manifesto hasnt surprised many. Some called it freebies and patronage, while some, welfare. Either way, its an overkill; but it might end up strengthening Jayas chances because her list ups the offers made by the DMK.

The manifesto also alters the propaganda discourse. In the last few days left for the campaigns, both the Dravidian parties will now stop slug-fests and compete on who promised more. It will be a real manifesto-war.

Till a couple of days back, Jayas adversaries, some even derisively, had been asking her about her manifesto because even the DMDK had one. Their efforts now will be to prove how hard it is to keep the promises and how badly it will drain the states precarious resources. The lone ranger PMK has said that her promises will drag the state, which is already burdened by two lakh crore rupees debt, into further financial mess. Most of the economists are likely to agree.

Patronage politics, in which parties and leaders dole out materials and popular schemes targeting the poor, with an aim to attract their loyalty has been part of Dravidian politics in the state. The AIADMK founder and former chief minister MG Ramachandran (MGR) was a pioneer of this strategy and the DMK followed suit. Since then, both the parties that alternated in power, thrived on their list of free supplies.

During the DMKs last government, the highlight of Karunanidhis freebies were 1.67 crore free TV sets, which Jayalalithaa had alleged was to promote his familys satellite TV and cable business. In the 2011 elections, Jaya trumped Karuna with a promise of laptops, wet grinders, electric fans and more. This time, she is upping the ante again.

Interestingly, many of the AIADMK offers are an improved version of the items on the DMK manifesto that came a bit earlier. DMK had offered to cut the price of milk (produced by the public sector outfit Aavin), waive off education loans and farm loans of small and medium farmers, make electricity billing on a monthly basis and provide maternity leave for nine months. Jaya too has these items, but in more liberal terms - her price cut on milk is better, waiver of farm loans is for all (but from cooperative banks), electricity is free up to 100 units and for pregnant women, there is cash assistance in addition to nine month maternity leave. In addition, she also guarantees jobs to one person in every household.

Graduating from TV, the DMK offers free laptops/tablets and internet for students and mobile phones at subsidised prices while Jaya make them a bit more attractive by making cellphones free for all ration-card holders. The only area in which the DMK looks more drastic is prohibition  the new catchword in Tamil Nadu politics. The DMK offers it instantly, while the AIADMK promises to do it only in phases.

The lists by both parties certainly show that at least half of them are items to please the poor, but a part of the other half denotes some welfare. Free or subsidised power, free internet, medical screening programmes, longer maternity leave and cash assistance, jobs and loan waivers will help people while the household items will be a one-time bonanza and a waste of money in many cases. There will be a lot of redundant supply and misuse because the beneficiary-records are not foolproof. The same household might collect the same items twice or more.

The real pitfall, however, is that none of these are part of a comprehensive social welfare or social protection policy. Some of the schemes might stay on and will change the lives of people forever, however, had all this been part of a welfare plan, it would have done a lot better in improving the lives of people. For instance, the noon-meal scheme in the state, although originally viewed as a political sop, went on to change the nutritional and educational landscape of the state and even found takers in the rest of the country. The same is applicable to subsidised food items.

Another drawback is that most of these schemes are about procuring and delivering household items which will be beset with corruption and compromise on quality. There were allegations about poor quality of appliances delivered, and lack of transparency in procurement during the present AIADMK government. In an investigation, NDTV found that procurement contracts for most of these items were bagged by trading companies, and not original manufacturers, and in many households, the appliances were falling apart. They will also cost several thousand crores.

Although her manifesto came late, Jaya had told the people in her campaign rallies that she knew what the people in the state wanted and she would give them more if she was elected to power again. In her speeches, she appears benevolent and tells people that she is like their mother who has no other purpose in life, but their welfare. And now she has verbalised it with specifics in the manifesto.

Is it excessive? Will it deliver? We have to wait for a few more days because in Tamil Nadu, political undercurrents are hard to read and the trends, even if unseen, are usually uniform across the state.

Either way, patronage politics and not welfare politics, will ultimately win.
Changing its earlier stand, the Centre on Friday agreed to the Supreme Courts suggestion for a floor test in the Uttarakhand Assembly on 10 May between 11 am and 1 pm.

The revelation came after the apex court had granted Centre time till 6 May to apprise it about their decision on holding the floor test, resolving the political crisis in the state.

Floor test in Uttarakhand Assembly will be held on 10 May from 11 am to 1 pm.

The apex court ruled that the President's rule will be temporarily lifted for 2 hours in the state when the vote of confidence will take place.

Special session of U'khand assembly will be summoned for 10 May to conduct singular agenda of vote of confidence motion sought by Harish Rawat.

The Supreme court has ruled that nothing else shall be discussed in the Assembly on that day and the proceedings there shall be absolutely peaceful and without any disturbance.

The SC said, "We direct Chief Secretary, state DGP to see that all qualified members participate, attend the proceedings in the Assembly, without any hindrance caused to anyone by anybody. During the trust vote, those in favour of motion will sit on one side of the House and those against on other side"

The Principal Secretary of the Legislative Assembly has been tasked to oversee that the voting is peaceful and recorded.

The top court also directed him to place before it on 11 May in a sealed cover all the documents including the result and video of the entire proceedings.

The court decided that ex-CM Harish Rawat should be allowed to seek vote of confidence on the floor of the Assembly.

The court banned the nine disqualified Congress MLAs from voting in the vote of confidence motion.

According to a Zee News report, the Attorney General Mukul Rohtagi told the SC bench comprising of Justices Dipak Misra and Justice Shiva Kirti that the former chief election commissioner should oversee the voting procedure.

The political crisis in Uttarakhand emerged after nine rebel MLAs from Congress defected to BJP during a debate over the state budget in March. They were later disqualified.

Following the disqualification, Governor KK Paul asked deposed Chief Minister Rawat to prove his majority in the assembly.

In a stunning verdict on 21 April, the Uttarakhand High Court quashed the President's rule imposed by the Centre which restored the dismissed Congress government and castigated the Centre for uprooting a democratically-elected government.

The Supreme Court delivered a major blow to the former Congress government on 23 April by staying the Uttarakhand High Court's verdict setting aside President's Rule in the state.

The verdict effectively re-imposed President's Rule in the state. On 27 March, the BJP-led government at the Centre had imposed President's Rule in Uttarakhand, leading the Congress, which was in power, to term it as a 'murder of democracy.' The judgment gave a new turn to the continuing political drama in the state.
Nainital: The Uttarakhand High Court will hear on Saturday a petition filed by rebel Congress MLAs challenging their disqualification under the anti-defection law by the Speaker.

Justice UC Dhyani of the high court had on Thursday posted an urgent application moved by rebel MLAs Umesh Sharma Cow, Subodh Uniyal and Shailarani Rawat for hearing on Saturday .

The nine rebel Congress MLAs, who were disqualified by Speaker Govind Singh Kunjwal on 27 March, have filed two separate petitions in the court challenging the Speaker's action against them.

While senior Supreme Court lawyer Kapil Sibal and Amit Sibal have represented the Speaker before the single bench, CA Sundaram, L Nageshwar Rao, Dinesh Dwivedi and Rajeshwar Singh are arguing on behalf of the rebel MLAs.

The status of the MLAs will be crucial in case the high court's order asking former chief minister Harish Rawat to go for a floor test in the state Assembly is endorsed by the Supreme Court.

These MLAs had sided with BJP to demand a division of votes on the Appropriation Bill in the state Assembly.

If the Speaker's action is upheld and they remain disqualified, the effective strength of the House will be reduced from 70 to 61 in which any party mustering the support of 31 MLAs will have the majority.

Both Congress and BJP have 27 MLAs of their own.

While BJP claims the support of the nine Congress rebels who stand disqualified on date, Congress has the support of the six-member People's Democratic Front, a combine of BSP and Independent MLAs.
New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Friday sought responses from the Centre and the CBI on a plea seeking registration of an FIR against some political leaders and others whose names have allegedly been referred to in an Italian court's verdict in AgustaWestland chopper case.

A bench comprising Justices Dipak Misra and Shiva Kirti Singh issued notice on the PIL filed by advocate M L Sharma in which he has also sought a court-monitored probe in the case.

The PIL, which was filed last week had sought lodging of FIR against political leaders, including UPA Chairperson Sonia Gandhi and former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, whose names have allegedly been referred to in the Italian court's judgement.

CBI had in 2013 registered a case in connection with alleged bribes paid by the firm to Indians to clinch the deal for 12 helicopters to ferry VVIPs including the President and Prime Minister.

The plea, which has made Ministry of Defence and CBI as parties, has sought registration the FIR against persons whose names have figured in the judgement delivered by the Italian court in Milan on 7 April, 2016.

It has sought a court-monitored SIT or CVC probe and has also raised legal questions including as to whether decision of the Italian court is "not enough" to prosecute.

The plea said the probe began in Italy in 2011 into the allegation that AgustaWestland paid a commission of Euro 51 million (over Rs 350 crore) to Switzerland-based consultant Guido Ralph Haschke to facilitate the deal.

"The scope of the Italian probe will end at the point where the alleged commission money reaches India. The probe will not go into who was paid the money in the Indian establishment or how the funds were worked around within the power circles of New Delhi," it said.

"That action has been taken in Italy on the VVIP helicopter scam. The CEO of the company has been arrested. But no action has been taken here. The country which would have benefited from the deal has taken action while the country which lost money has not done anything," it said, adding that the petitioner is apprehending that the case may meet the fate of Bofors scandal.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday said that West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee is not fighting elections against oppositions but with the Election Commission. Addressing a rally at Krishnanagar in poll-bound West Bengal, PM Modi said the Trinamool Congress has already accepted its defeat in the upcoming elections and as a result they are now fighting against the Election Commission.

At the election rally in Krishnanagar on Sunday, Modi accused Banerjee of misusing the state machinery by asking the state's chief secretary to reply to the EC's showcause notice on her behalf.

"Polls will come and go, but if these institutions are destroyed, the country will not be able to be run. The EC gave notice to you and it was your responsibility to put forth your stand, your views but instead you are saying, you will see the EC after 19 May (day of counting)," he said

Modi was referring to Banerjee's 14 April outburst against the poll panel after getting a show-cause notice for violation of the model code of conduct.

Meanwhile, the Election Commission (EC) will examine the CD of Modi's speech, an official said.

With inputs from agencies
Algiers(Algeria): Algeria is building one of the world's largest mosques which officials say will serve as a buffer against radical Islam and crown the legacy of President Abdelaziz Bouteflika.

The Djamaa El Djazair mosque is being built facing the picturesque bay of Algiers as part of a complex that will include a one-million book library, a Koranic school and a museum of Islamic art and history.

It will also have a 265-metre high minaret (874 feet)  the world's tallest  as well as a 20,000 square metres prayer hall capable of accommodating up to 120,000 worshippers.

The complex will be located between a future tourist hotspot and working class districts that were once a bastion for Islamist extremists.

The North African country was battered by a civil war in the 1990s between the government and Islamists that killed some 200,000 people.

More than two decades later, armed groups remain active in parts of Algeria and the country has been hit by several devastating attacks claimed by Al Qaeda in recent years.

"Some have accused us of building a temple for the extremists," said Ahmed Madani, an adviser to the minister of housing responsible for the construction, which is being carried out by a Chinese firm.

"On the contrary, it will be a heavy blow for the extremists. They are the ones hostile to this project," said Madani.

The new mosque  due to be completed in 2017  will be "an emblem of moderate Islam in Algeria and a shield against all forms of extremism," said Madani, who hopes it will draw Muslims away from Islamist-run houses of worship.

'Faith and culture'

According to Madani, Algerian officials have been mulling the idea of building a mega-mosque since 1962, the year Algeria gained its independence from France.

"The dream started becoming a reality" after the election of Bouteflika, a man known for his piety and devotion to Muslim art and culture, Madani said.

The 79-year-old president has been in power since 1999. He is respected by many for his role in ending the civil war but his opponents and rights groups accuse him of having an authoritarian streak.

The new mosque "will not only serve as a house of worship. It will be a place where links between faith and culture will be reinforced thanks to its ultra-modern library and the Koranic school which will be open to some 300 students," said Madani.

Oil-rich Algeria is already home to more than 30,000 mosques.

The construction of Djamaa El Djazair -- dubbed "Bouteflika Mosque" by some -- was launched in 2012, when oil prices were high, said Housing Minister Abdeladjid Tebboune.

Four years later, Algeria is facing revenue shortages due to weaker oil prices and its foreign exchange reserves have fallen.

The new mosque complex has a price tag of 1.2 billion euros ($1.4 billion), with online critics saying the cost is "mind-boggling" and that the money should have been used to build hospitals and improve health care.

Risk of earthquakes?

Experts questioned by AFP have bemoaned what many have described as an "unsound" project, and warned that the cost of this mammoth construction could further grow if deadlines are not met.

"Most of the work is far from over and it will take a lot of time to finish everything," said an architect, referring to technical installations as well mural decorations including calligraphy that is still unfinished.

The mosque will be equipped with solar panels and a sophisticated system to retain rain water which will then be recycled for other uses.

Experts have also warned against the risks of the mosque being destroyed in an earthquake.

Algeria sits astride two major plates and is regularly hit by earthquakes, especially along the Mediterranean coast.

A 2003 earthquake that hit the coastal town of Boumerdes to the east of Algiers killed nearly 3,000 people and injured 10,000.

Earthquake expert Abdelakrim Chelghoum has told authorities that a seismic study conducted by a German firm underestimated the risk of an earthquake damaging the mosque.

But Madani has dismissed the concern.

He said a mechanism capable of absorbing earth movements has been put into place and could decrease the effect of a magnitude 9 quake to that of a 3.5 tremor.
OTTAWA Canada's government and army have largely been invisible as huge fires rip through the economically critical oil sands region of Alberta, a reflection of a constitution that curbs Ottawa's power.

The federal government has so far provided four Griffin helicopters, one Hercules transport plane and 7,000 cots to help Alberta cope with a fire that forced the evacuation of around 90,000 people from Fort McMurray.

This limited response reflects the limitations of Canada's constitutional make-up. The 10 provinces have broad jurisdictional powers, which means Ottawa can only intervene if formally asked to do so.

"Emergency management is a shared responsibility between all levels of government in Canada," said Dan Brien, chief spokesman for Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale, who is coordinating the federal effort.

If a community needs help it first turns to the provincial government, he said. If that government cannot cope, it then approaches Ottawa.

"Nobody works in isolation. There is engagement at all levels during a crisis," Brien said by telephone.

Alberta Premier Rachel Notley told the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. on Friday that it was too early to say what kind of an effort would be needed to deal with the crisis. "We haven't had a chance to get in to do a thorough assessment ... Generally speaking there's a long road ahead," she said

The federal government is offering other kinds of help, such as satellite information, matching funds donated to the Red Cross as well as promising emergency support for the victims and long-term assistance to help Alberta recover.

But precious few of the 70,000-strong armed forces are anywhere near the disaster region. A group of 350 soldiers are on standby in the province to act as emergency firefighters.

Ottawa has in the past deployed significant numbers of troops to help deal with natural disasters, most notably in January 1998, when an ice storm crippled parts of Quebec, Ontario and Quebec.

After the three provinces asked for help, Ottawa provided more than 15,000 troops.

The provinces guard their powers carefully and Ned Franks, a political professor at Queen's University in Kingston, said Ottawa would wait for a request before acting.

"Without the support of the provincial government it would certainly cause far more outrage than useful results," he said in a phone interview.

(Reporting by David Ljunggren; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
Washington: A former CIA station chief in Pakistan, who presided over the May 2011 raid that killed Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden, is believed to have been poisoned by the ISI, a media report said on Friday. Mark Kelton was removed from Islamabad two months after the raid on bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad, citing health concerns.

"Mark Kelton retired from the CIA, and his health has recovered after he had abdominal surgery. But agency officials continue to think that it is plausible  if not provable  that Kelton's sudden illness was somehow orchestrated by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency, known as the ISI," The Washington Post said in an exclusive investigative report.

A spokesman of the Pakistani Embassy here, however, described the report as fictional.

According to The Washington Post, Kelton, declined multiple requests for an interview, but in a brief exchange by phone he said that the cause of his illness "was never clarified".

He said that he was not the first to suspect that he had been poisoned.

"The genesis for the thoughts about that didn't originate with me," he was quoted as saying.

The Washington Post said such a disclosure is a disturbing postscript to the sequence of events surrounding the bin Laden operation five years ago and adds new intrigue to a counterterrorism partnership that has often been consumed by conspiracy theories.

"Even if the poisoning suspicion is groundless, the idea that the CIA and its station chief considered the ISI capable of such an act suggests that the breakdown in trust was even worse than widely assumed," the report said. According to the daily, current and former US intelligence officials said that the ISI has been linked to numerous plots against journalists, diplomats and other

perceived adversaries and that the spy agency's animosity toward Kelton was intense.

Meanwhile, A CIA spokesman said there is no evidence that Pakistani authorities poisoned a US official serving in the country.
PINGTUNG, Taiwan Tsai Ing-wen becomes Taiwan's first woman president this month when her mission will be to convince giant neighbour China her Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) is not seeking independence, any hint of which could lead to war.

Communist Party leaders in Beijing regard fiercely democratic, self-ruled Taiwan as a breakaway province and have not ruled out using force to bring it under China's control.

A 591-word clause in the DPP's charter begs to differ.

"Based on the principle of national sovereignty, (we) advocate establishing a sovereign and independent 'Republic of Taiwan' and a new constitution that should be decided on by all residents of Taiwan in a referendum," the clause says.

DPP seniors say the clause, written in 1991, is defunct - but to delete it would rupture the party and bring out the "splittist", or separatist, forces that China constantly warns against. Tsai's juggling trick is to convince China the DPP is not seeking independence and to keep the party intact.

"China's attitude on opposing independence is out of touch with the real situation," said independence advocate Koo Kwang-ming. "They really have no way (how to deal) with Taiwan, so they take what has been stated in the past and repeat, repeat and repeat it."

Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalists fled to Taiwan after losing the civil war to the Communists in China in 1949. China, formally known as the People's Republic of China, has pressured the new Taiwan government to stick to the "one-China" policy agreed upon with the outgoing China-friendly Nationalist government.

The policy allows each side to respectively interpret what it means. The Communists say they rule all of China including Taiwan, while the Nationalists maintain the "Republic of China", Taiwan's formal name, is the ruler.

Tsai has said she will maintain the status quo with China under the constitutional order of the "Republic of China". Last month she reiterated her position, saying her policy will be based on democratic principles and transcend party politics.

MOVING ON FROM MARTIAL LAW

China's top Communist Party newspaper said on Thursday that Taiwan stands at a critical juncture of either accepting Beijing's "one China" principle or taking an unclear stance and refusing to abandon support for Taiwan independence.

"The so-called 'maintenance of the status quo' promised by Taiwan's newly elected leader is only empty talk," the People's Daily said. "The responsibility for the consequences caused can only be accepted by the DPP authorities."

The independence clause served a purpose in 1991, DPP seniors say. The island had emerged from martial law only in 1987. It was undergoing major governmental reform and its first direct presidential election was still five years away.

The DPP tried to freeze the clause in 2014, but no decision was made.

"Our goal is not to establish a Republic of Taiwan. It is to be the ruling party," said Ker Chien-ming, one of the first members of the 30-year-old party and its legislative leader. "But to abolish it will cause another dispute. The independence faction will give the party a huge amount of pressure."

Activist Lai Chung-chiang said the clause shouldn't be deleted.

"It would limit our space in deciding our future," he said at a protest with leaders of the 2014 demonstrations that stalled a trade pact with China and were key in toppling the Nationalists from power.

In southern Taiwan's Pingtung County, where Tsai's father was born, it is less about splitting from Communist China than about maintaining a democratic way of life.

"Our expectations are for this Taiwan leader who hails from Pingtung to pay more attention to this relatively remote area and prevent the urban-rural imbalances from widening," Pingtung County magistrate Pan Men-an told Reuters.

Chinese President Xi Jinping said in March China would never allow the historical tragedy of Taiwan being split from the rest of the country to happen again.

Japan ruled Taiwan as a colony for about five decades until the end of World War Two. China's last dynasty, the Qing, had ceded Taiwan to Japan in 1895 after losing the first Sino-Japanese war.

Shirley Kan, a retired congressional researcher and long-time Taiwan watcher, said the DPP now had a record to back its case to maintain the status quo, whereas there was no such record in 1991.

"The facts are that Taiwan is much more entwined with the People's Republic of China and Taiwan cannot avoid cross-Strait engagement," she said, referring to the stretch of water dividing the two sides.

"It is no longer a question of whether to have a cross-Strait relationship, but how to conduct it."

(Additional reporting by Ben Blanchard in BEIJING; Editing by Nick Macfie)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
For millions of years the human brain has adapted to the challenge of writing, reading and more recently digital communication.

Today this adaptation is all about speed. Our actions are governed by the premotor and motor cortex areas of the brain. Children whove grown up in the digital age are exceptionally apt and quick in their actions, thanks to the effects of reward-based video games theyre accustomed to.

This basic, motivating, principle of gratification releases dopamine  a natural stimulant found in the brains prefrontal cortex and limbic system  which influences their behaviour.

As multi-taskers, so-called digital natives tend to store links rather than content, sometimes without reasoning or taking a step back. And yet they need perspective in some combat games, when the brains natural instinct is driving them to commit an act of violence.

Digital natives gain superficial memory as opposed to the deeper memory bank of their literary counterparts, whose linear approach helps retain information through a cognitive process performed by the prefrontal cortex.

By taking cognitive control of this area of the brain, digital natives must resist the automatic instincts and reflexes triggered by computer screens.

Because resisting these impulses in turn means taking full control of their thoughts, beliefs and reasoning...

And thanks to education and learning it is possible to nurture a way of thought to encourage creativity.

AFP
Washington: Despite activist groups mounting anti-Donald Trump pressure, social networking giant Facebook and micro-blogging website Twitter will support the Republican National Convention in July where Trump is expected to be announced the partys presidential nominee.

According to media reports, while Cupertino-based Facebook will provide financial and other support  including a lounge  Twitter is yet to come up with a detailed plan.

Facebook will support both the Republican and Democratic conventions in a similar manner and without endorsing any one candidate, issue or political party," The Hill reported, quoting Erin Egan, Facebook's vice-president of Public Policy.

Twitter works with both major political parties and we will support both national conventions, in order to promote civic engagement and democratic participation," Twitter spokesperson Nu Wexler said in a statement.

The news comes at a time when activist groups have increased pressure on companies to refrain from supporting the Republican National Convention in Cleveland from 18-21 July.

According to Facebook, its support is similar to what it has provided earlier in the election cycle. "This support allows Facebook to facilitate an open dialogue among voters, candidates and elected officials during the conventions just as it has during other critical moments in the US elections and in elections around the world," Egan was quoted as saying.

In the recently-conclude F8 developers' conference, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg had indirectly criticised immigration policies of Republican front-runner Trump.

Throwing a jab at Trump, he said: "I hear fearful voices calling for building walls. It takes courage to choose hope over fear. "Instead of building walls, we can build bridges."

Zuckerberg was referring to Trump's call for a giant wall to be built along the southern US border with Mexico.

Our lives are connected. Whether we're welcoming a refugee fleeing war or an immigrant seeking new opportuity. Whether we're coming together to fight global diseases like Ebola or to fight climate change, we have the courage to see that the path forward is to bring people together, not push people apart, Zuckerberg had told the gathering.

Google and Microsoft will also have a visible presence at both conventions in July.

According to a recode.net report, activists held a #DumpTrump protest outside Google last week. They have also launched a Facebook ad campaign not to livestream the GOP convention.
North West province (South Africa): The world's largest rhino farm looks like a vast fortress and is guarded by a private army.

At night a helicopter fitted with an infrared camera circles over the 8,000 hectare (nearly 20,000 acre) electric-fenced ranch in South Africa, and by day armed men in military fatigues are on patrol.

Their sole mission: to protect 1,200 rhinos from poachers, who killed 1,175 of the horned beasts across the country last year.

Rhinos are being slaughtered in record numbers to meet the insatiable demand for their horns in countries such as China and Vietnam, where they are mistakenly believed to have medicinal properties.

The horn is mainly hard keratin, the same substance found in human nails, but on the black market where it is sold in powdered form it is believed to cure cancer and other diseases.

It can fetch as much as $60,000 (55,000 euros) per kilogramme, more than gold or cocaine.

Clad in khaki shorts, blue shirt and sandals, wealthy South African businessman and rhino farmer John Hume says he has bred 600 rhino since 2008, but his target is to breed 200 each year.

Legalise trade?

"The way we are going to save the rhino from extinction is to breed more and protect them, and that is what I am trying to do here," said Hume.

His next battle is to secure the legalisation of international trade in horns, which has been outlawed since 1977.

Horns peddled on the black market are from dead rhinos but, if trade is allowed, demand would be fed from live ones. Just like nails, cut horns will regrow.

Screengrab from the AFP video.

"We can supply horns from live rhinos, while now every single horn that you are supplying to the demand is coming from a dead rhino. Surely that is stupid. It absolutely flummoxes me," said Hume.

Plans to legalise the trade are controversial, however, and are fiercely debated by conservationists. Hume opened the farm in 2008 after selling hotels he owned.

Today he employs around 60 full-time staffers plus his "army", whose strength he refuses to divulge on the grounds that it is "too sensitive."

Even the exact location of the farm  where he spends some $170,000 (156,000 euros) a month in security costs  is kept secret, to protect it from poachers ravaging game parks elsewhere across the country.

Harvesting horn

On the plains of South Africa's North West province where the farm is located, a dozen rhinos were due for dehorning when AFP visited.

Standing at the back of a pick-up truck, Menard Mathe used a pair of binoculars to identify the animals earmarked for dehorning.

In front of the vehicle, veterinarian Michelle Otto drew her gun and darted one animal with a powerful anaesthetic. A few minutes later, the gigantic animal began to stagger.

Otto cautiously walked towards it, and another worker secured its hind legs with a rope, forcing it to fall limply to the ground. Quickly the rhino's eyes were covered with a piece of mutton cloth and old socks used for makeshift earplugs.

The horns are measured and a line is marked precisely where it will be cut, making sure blood vessels are not touched. Then a handheld power saw cuts through the horn. The procedure is painless for the animal.

"We trim their horns for their safety and to deter poaching," said Otto.

Despite the dehorning and the massive security cordon around the ranch, 39 rhinos have been poached there since 2008.

Back at the farm building, the horns are weighed. A total of 23 kilogrammes (51 pounds) have been harvested on this day, said farm general manager Johnny Hennop.

Each horn is then numbered and they are stored in metal trunks where they are wrapped in baby diapers to protect them from moisture while mothballs are strewn around the containers to keep bugs away.

The boxes are then sealed and are ready to be moved to a safe location. Hume has a stockpile of five tonnes in banks and with private security companies.

It is potentially worth a fortune, but is worthless as long as the ban in international trade in rhino horn remains in place.

The ranch's security chief, Stefran Broekman, who previously worked at private game reserves, says he is "frustrated" that even when poachers are arrested in South Africa, some of them get away with a "small fine".

At the turn of a muddy track, Broekman's face lights up on seeing a newborn calf suckling his mother under a tree. It was born overnight.

AFP
Washington: The US has said that it wants increased dialogue between India and Pakistan on counter terrorism co-operation.

"We have said many times that there is a level of counterterrorism cooperation between India and Pakistan. There is some dialogue there," State Department Deputy Spokesman,

Mark Toner told reporters at his daily news conference. "We want to see that kind of discussion or dialogue augmented or increased," he added.

"This is something that's in both Pakistan and India's interest to pursue a closer counterterrorism cooperation for the region. It's good for the region," Toner said in response to a question.
SUFA, Israel Israel's military said it had discovered a cross-border tunnel on Thursday built by the Islamist group Hamas from the Gaza Strip during a rare flare-up of violence along a border that has been largely quiet since a 2014 war.

Gaza hospital officials said a 54-year-old woman had been killed and a man wounded by fragments of an Israeli tank shell fired near Rafah during the violence, which erupted on Wednesday.

Israel's Shin Bet undercover intelligence agency said a Hamas operative arrested last month had provided useful information about the tunnel networks in the area, though it did not explicitly attribute Thursday's discovery to his data.

Gaza analysts said the flare-up of violence, the most intense since the 2014 war, threatened the truce that has largely held in the area for nearly two years.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was set to convene senior ministers on Friday to discuss the situation. Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon said after touring the area that Israel would not be deterred by Hamas's threats and would continue to search "until all the tunnels are found."

A senior Hamas official, Khalil al-Hayya, said efforts by Qatar and Egypt were ongoing to try to restore calm, but he warned that "Israeli incursions into Gaza would not be tolerated."

Militants fired mortar shells at Israeli forces working to unearth the tunnel and Israel responded with tank fire and air strikes, an army spokeswoman said. The violence had subsided by late Thursday night and there was a period of calm towards midnight.

Israeli aircraft earlier targeted four Hamas positions in the vicinity of the tunnel, the military said. During Wednesday and Thursday, there were 10 instances of Hamas fire against Israeli forces operating in the area, it added.

Hamas, Gaza's de facto ruler, has not confirmed responsibility for the shelling and did not comment on the announcement of the tunnel's discovery.

TUNNEL SEARCH

Lieutenant-Colonel Peter Lerner, an Israeli military spokesman, said the tunnel unearthed on Thursday was situated 28 meters (31 yards) below the surface and that an investigation was under way to determine whether it was dug before or after the war.

Lerner said the militants may have started firing mortars at the Israeli forces to prevent them discovering the tunnel. Last month a first tunnel was unearthed without incident.

But the armed wing of Hamas said the tunnel was not new and had been in use in the early part of the war in 2014.

Israel has been wary about discussing what means it has employed to uncover the tunnels but the arrest of Mahmoud Atouna, 29, from Jabalya in the northern Gaza Strip early last month may have helped.

"Atouna provided his interrogators much information about the tunnel routes in the northern Gaza Strip, its tunnel-digging methods, the use of private homes and public buildings to bore tunnels and materials used," Shin Bet said in a statement on Thursday.

More than 2,100 Palestinians, mostly civilians, were killed during the 2014 Gaza conflict. Sixty-seven Israeli soldiers and six civilians in Israel were killed by rockets and attacks by Hamas and other militant groups.

(Additional reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza, Writing by Dan Williams and Ori Lewis; editing by Gareth Jones, G Crosse)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
Sochi (Russia): Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will meet Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday in the Black Sea resort of Sochi in a bid to bolster ties and seek to resolve a decades-long territorial dispute.

Tokyo-Moscow relations have been hamstrung by the row dating back to the end of World War II when Soviet troops seized the four southernmost islands in the Pacific Kuril chain, known as the Northern Territories in Japan.

Japan and Russia's lingering tensions have prevented them ever signing a peace treaty to formally end World War II hostilities, hindering trade and investment ties.

"This is a complex, multi-faceted issue that can only be resolved in a manner acceptable to both sides through an even deeper partnership between the two countries," Putin's chief foreign policy advisor Yury Ushakov said ahead of the visit.

Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida said in April that Russia and Japan had agreed to start negotiations on signing a peace treaty "as soon as possible" after the meeting.

His Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov on a visit to Tokyo last month said Russia wants to "move forward" in relations, but is not prepared to budge on the "result of World War II".

Putin said during a public phone-in in April that he thinks "a compromise could be found at some point  and it will be found" on the territorial dispute.

Moscow hopes the meeting will help create a "constructive atmosphere in bilateral relations", but "immediate serious progress" is unlikely, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov warned.

Despite the warmer words from the Kremlin, tensions between the two sides continue to surface and Japan has hit Russia with sanctions over the Ukraine crisis.

Russia has in turn angered Japan recently by building new modern compounds for its troops stationed on two of the disputed islands.

Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev also infuriated Tokyo by visiting one of the islands, home to some 19,000 Russians, last year.

Putin said last month he welcomed Abe's visit as it comes despite "pressure from (Japan's) partners, particularly the United States".

Abe will later this month host a summit of the Group of Seven advanced industrial countries, from which Russia has been excluded over its annexation of Crimea.

"Evidently Japan will try to act as a kind of middleman in the talks process between Russia and the US," Russia's government newspaper the Rossiiskaya Gazeta said on Thursday.

US President Barack Obama reportedly asking Abe in February to postpone his trip to Russia, according to sources quoted by Japan's Kyodo news agency.

Writing in pro-Kremlin daily Izvestia on Thursday, a former deputy foreign minister and ambassador to Tokyo, Alexander Panov, suggested the meeting could see "Japan drop a number of sanctions" it imposed on Russia over Ukraine.
Mumbai: Jet Airways crew member Nidhi Chaphekar, who was injured in the Brussels airport bombings in March and her picture became the face of the terror attack, returned to Mumbai on Friday morning.

42-year-old Nidhi, who has not yet recovered from the injuries suffered in the terrorist attack, arrived at around 7.30 am on Friday on a Paris-Mumbai Jet airways flight and was driven to Breach Candy hospital from the airport.

Airline officials said Nidhi has low immunity and doctors have advised her to avoid contact with people.

On 22 March, three bombs went off - two at the Brussels airport and one at Mallbeek metro station - leaving

35 people dead, including three suicide bombers.

Nidhi was on her way to board a Jet flight for Newark when the explosions took place. She suffered 15 per cent burns and fractured an ankle.

Her colleague, Amit Motwani, was also injured and is still recovering at a Brussels hospital.

Nidhi, who was treated at Grande Hospital de Chaleroi, about 40 kms from Brussels, was discharged on Thursday afternoon and taken to Paris where she boarded the flight to Mumbai.

She spent about 25 days in medically induced coma at the Chaleroi hospital and underwent extensive skin grafting.

Nidhi, who is still wheelchair-bound, was accompanied by her husband Rupesh Chaphekar, and brother-in-law Nilesh Chaphekar, besides the airline's support staff and its chief medical officer.

She has been with Jet Airways since August 1996.
Pyongyang: North Korea slowly lifted the curtain Friday on the first full congress of its ruling party since 1980, bringing foreign journalists to the venue without immediately letting them in, or revealing just how leader Kim Jong Un will make use of possibly his greatest spotlight yet.

North Korea's information committee said the congress began Friday morning, though more than 100 foreign journalists were not immediately allowed inside the April 25 House of Culture, draped in red party banners and flags. Instead, they waited outside for more than an hour before they were taken back to their hotels.

The congress promises to be the country's biggest political show in years, if not decades. Pyongyang, the capital, has been spruced up, and the masses are prepped for rallies. Many North Koreans gathered at Kim Il Sung Square to lay flowers.

Kim Jong Un, national founder Kim Il Sung's grandson, appears to be set to take center stage Friday, though North Korea has announced little more than the start date. One thing is for sure: the congress is shaping up to be a major opportunity for North Korea's young and still largely enigmatic leader to step out of the shadows of his father and grandfather and move more toward setting his own personal tone of leadership.

North Korea has allowed in droves of foreign media to make sure it gets a global audience for what the government clearly intends to be a showcase of national unity and stability under Kim, despite the increased criticism and tough new sanctions it is facing over its nuclear and missile programs.

To put its best face in front of the cameras, residents of the capital, Pyongyang, have been busy for months painting walls, fixing roads and rehearsing for mass rallies in mandatory demonstrations of loyalty. The last congress was used primarily as the stage to formally announce that Kim Il Sung's son, Kim Jong Il, would be his successor, but this congress is not expected to produce such dramatic news.

"After the Sixth congress where we held Kim Jong Il as leader, now we are greeting the new era of Marshal Kim Jong Un," said Choe Un Su, a 75-year-old retiree. "... We should make the American soldiers get out of South Korea and under the leadership of our marshal we can open up the path of reunification."

"We are proud of our strong Korean nation," said Choe Jin A, a 22-year-old worker at a vegetable processing factory, "so we want everyone to know that we happy, and have launched satellites and have nuclear weapons, so we have nothing to worry about."

Hours before the ruling party's congress, the North's state-run Korean Central News Agency touted the country's military achievements that followed its nuclear test and long-range rocket launch earlier this year, including claimed advancements in developing nuclear warheads, missile re-entry vehicles and long-range rocket engines.

The KCNA said that the congress would be a historic celebration because the guidance of Kim Jong Un has elevated the country into a "nuclear, space power" and pushed into the "absolute prime" of its efforts to build a "thriving nation."

On paper, the congress is the party's highest-level decision-making body, though the real decisions are made by Kim and his inner circle. The delegates at the congress  who will probably number in the thousands  will be there more to endorse than debate.

But along with a heavy dose of North Korean-style pomp and theater, the gathering is likely to provide some insights into what Kim's priorities are and who he wants to promote into the positions he needs to carry them out.

"The significance of the Seventh Congress of the Workers' Party of Korea is that it will be a turning point in our revolution," Professor Song Dong Won of North Korea's Academy of Social Sciences told an Associated Press television crew in Pyongyang. He said the congress would present "the successes of the last 30 years" and a "brilliant plan for the ultimate success of our revolution."

The last time North Korea's ruling party held a full congress was in 1980. It has held other big meetings since  notably in 2010 and 2012. All six previous congresses came under Kim Il Sung, the late grandfather of Kim Jong Un and North Korea's founder who died in 1994.

The decision to hold a congress itself is telling  Kim Jong Un has patterned himself more closely after his charismatic grandfather than Kim Jong Il, his notoriously reticent father, who almost never spoke in public.

In content, the congress is likely to be filled with praises of Kim Jong Un and his dual policy of developing North Korea's nuclear weapons while also building its domestic economy, a sort of guns-and-butter strategy he has championed but many outside economists believe is untenable because of the heavy price the nuclear program brings in international sanctions.

The country is now facing the toughest UN sanctions in 20 years, imposed after its fourth nuclear test, in January, and a rocket launch that followed soon after.

Another important feature of the congress may be who is appointed to, or dismissed from, key positions.

Many analysts expect Kim to replace the party's old guard with younger elites loyal to him. He may also formally elevate his younger sister, Kim Yo Jong, to a position that would essentially make her his second-in-command. Believed to be in her late twenties, she is currently a vice department director at the party's Central Committee and frequently appears at her brother's public events, standing out amid elderly male officials.

There is also speculation that Kim Yong Nam, an 88-year-old member of the party's powerful five-man politburo Presidium, may be dismissed because of his age.

If so, he could also later lose his position as president of the Presidium of North Korea's parliament, which makes him the country's nominal head of state.
WASHINGTON Police on Friday arrested a federal officer suspected in a two-day shooting rampage in the Washington suburbs that killed his wife and two apparent strangers and revived memories of the "Beltway sniper" attacks of 2002.

Three others were wounded in the three separate attacks.

Eulalio Sevilla Tordil, 62, a police officer with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's Federal Protective Service, was arrested in a doughnut shop near the site of the second of Friday's two shootings, police said.

He had been suspected of killing his wife and shooting a bystander on Thursday in Prince George's County, Maryland.

When two more shootings broke out in neighbouring Montgomery County on Friday, investigators turned their attention to Tordil, who had threatened to commit "suicide by cop," police said. A plainclothes officer spotted Tordil in a Dunkin' Donuts. Police kept him under watch as he walked in and out of stores, but waited until he returned to his car before arresting him, Montgomery County Police Chief Thomas Manger told a news conference.

"We did not want to have a shootout when he was taken into custody," Manger said.

Surrounded by officers with their weapons drawn, Tordil surrendered without a fight after about five minutes, police said.

Charges should be filed on Friday and Tordil will make a court appearance on Monday, Montgomery County prosecutor John McCarthy said.

The first of Friday's incidents began with a confrontation in a parking lot at Westfield Montgomery Mall in affluent Bethesda, Maryland, where two men and a woman were shot, police said.

One of the men died, the other was in critical condition, and the woman's life was not considered in danger, police said.

The second shooting took place about half an hour later, killing a woman at the Aspen Hill Shopping Center in Silver Spring, some 8 miles (13 km) away.

The victim of Thursday's shooting was Tordil's estranged wife, Gladys, a high school chemistry teacher who was shot as she went to pick up their two daughters from another school.

Tordil was on leave, having surrendered his gun and badge after his wife obtained a protective order to keep him away, an official with the Federal Protective Service said.

The three-week Beltway sniper ordeal in 2002 rattled Washington and its suburbs until John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo, who was 17 at the time, were captured. Malvo was sentenced to life and Muhammad, a Gulf War veteran, was executed in 2009.

(Reporting by Ian Simpson, Suzannah Gonzales, Barbara Goldberg, Joseph Ax and Gina Cherelus; Writing by Daniel Trotta; Editing by Bill Trott and James Dalgleish)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
WASHINGTON U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan, who said on Thursday he was not ready to support Donald Trump for president, has invited the presumptive Republican presidential nominee to meet with House Republican leaders next week, Ryan's office said on Friday.

"Having both said we need to unify the party, Speaker Ryan has invited Donald Trump to meet with members of the House Republican leadership in Washington on Thursday morning to begin a discussion about the kind of Republican principles and ideas that can win the support of the American people this November," the office said in a statement.

It added that Ryan would also meet separately with Trump, along with Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus.

(Reporting by Richard Cowan; Writing by Tim Ahmann; Editing by Eric Walsh)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
Hamburg: Talking weakly into a microphone last week, a 94-year-old man told a court in Detmold, Germany, that he was sorry. This man, Reinhold Hanning, a former SS guard who worked at Auschwitz  a Nazi concentration camp in Poland which saw more than one million deaths  was before the court as part of his ongoing trial for crimes committed during the Nazi period. It is expected that the court will deliver its verdict by July this year.

Not far from here, two other such matters of former concentration camp staffers are in the pre-trial stage. Last month, Ernst Tremmel, one of the defendants in another trial died. Last July, Oskar Groening  referred to as the bookkeeper of Auschwitz  was convicted and sentenced to four years imprisonment after being found guilty of being an accessory to murder of more than 3,00,000 people. More than 70 years after World War II ended, why are people, now in their nineties, still being tried for war crimes in Germany?

Much of it can be traced back to one pivotal moment of jurisprudence. In 2011, a German court ruled that John Demjanjuk, a former guard at Sobibor  a concentration camp in Poland  was guilty of being an accessory to the murders of 28,000 people even though he had himself not killed anyone.

Earlier Nazi war crime trials in the immediate decades after the war ended had seen a slew of convictions and sentences, but had been broadly restricted to upper and mid-level officials, implying that the others who served had merely been following orders.

But in 2011, the judge found that simply being there meant Demjanjuk had been part of the Nazi machinery and that every guard knew he was part of an organisation with no other purpose but mass murder.

[The earlier] jurisprudence viewed the Nazi Holocausts main circle of authorities as a very restrictive group, said Daniel Bonnard, a Phd scholar at the University of Marburg working on allied prosecution of Nazi crimes in the post-war occupation of Germany (1945-1949). Even though, the largest majority of staff members at concentration camps, as well as state officers, were responsible for implementing the politics of extermination, they were viewed as merely followers, without a personal intent or a will to kill on their own volition. That jurisprudence was an apologetic one and actually led to the exculpation of a high number of perpetrators from middle to lower ranks.

A lack of political will is another reason experts have pointed to for the delays in trying people. Further, in the immediate post-War years, as the West got into confrontational mode with the Cold War building, it became expedient to work with those in the political system, even if they had at one time been Nazis. Many people were simply reabsorbed into society.

Theoretically these trials could have happened in the past, said Andrej Umansky, a lawyer and war crimes research scholar at the University of Cologne. But justice failed and everybody failed. German society didn't want these trials  people wanted to rebuild and forget. But today society has changed. People think justice wasn't done.

Some of this possible simply stemmed from administrative burdens and the sheer amount of work to be done in a fractured post-war society: files being lost, not enough specialists, technical loopholes.

But this revised reading of the law in the Demjanjuk case means that even low level officials can be brought to book  setting German prosecutors on the task of scanning old files and reopening shelved cases.

The Central Office of the Judicial Authorities for the Investigation of National Socialist Crimes, the nodal body for such work, is currently carrying out numerous such preliminary investigations for the whereabouts of several hundred former guards, said Thomas Will, a public prosecutor and deputy head of the Central Office. He said 30 cases were being looked at more closely by local prosecution authorities.

There is no statute of limitations in Germany when it comes to murder, so such cases can still be brought to trial. If convicted for abetting murder, a person can be sentenced to between three and 15 years.

There are several compelling and much-debated questions contained in these long-delayed trials. How far does culpability extend if you were not a direct killer but merely worked within the system? What purpose does it serve to convict someone who is very old and has already lived out his life as a reformed member of society? Are such trials more about healing for the victims rather than punishment for the perpetrators? Is there a purpose served in trying lower officials, so late in the day?

Just the fact that "guiltier" perpetrators have already died, cannot be a cause to not prosecute offenders, said Will.

And simply because the matters were not tried before doesnt mean they cant be now; the law is the law. It's still highly significant, said Efraim Zuroff, a Holocaust historian and Nazi hunter. Just because some top Nazis escaped justice doesn't turn all their accomplices into innocent persons. We owe it to the victims to seek out their killers, who victimised millions of innocent people, just because they were classified unjustly as "enemies of the Reich."

Understandably, there are difficulties in prosecuting such cases. First the potential accused persons have to be located. They would be very old, as would the survivors, many of whom left Germany a long time ago and might have to be brought here to give their statements.

In some cases because of the inability of the accused to understand the proceedings or their lack of fitness, such matters cannot be further pursued. Then there is the tricky issue of memories: how reliable are they given the length of time that has elapsed?

But age alone cannot be an issue, its also a question of mental and physical health, pointed out Zuroff. If they're healthy, there's no reason to ignore them, he said. Four and a half years ago, I found a man who helped deport 15,700 Jews to Auschwitz from Kosice. He was 96 and still driving his car.

Such trials have in the past involved historians appearing as expert witnesses to testify to the extent and historical import of such crimes. But, as with Groening, who conceded early on that he had been involved, this might not bring new facts to light. What it does instead is allow survivors to be heard and perhaps offer some sort of closure.

The mere conviction of the perpetrators is of the utmost importance for many victims and their descendants, said Will.

At the trial of Groening last year for instance, some survivors said they were satisfied that the trial was taking place and were less focused on punishment.

It is not mainly about punishing the offenders but bringing closure to victims, said Umansky. It's more symbolic. It's not a show trial but not a normal criminal trial either.

And then there is another, more diffused purpose such trials serve: that of remembering, recounting and evaluating the dangers of the past at a time when the horrors of the mid-20th century are quickly fading. I hope that such trials can offer a didactic barrage against the new awaking of antisemitism and racism, said Bonnard. There is still some ignorance and sometimes a disturbing indifference concerning the mass crimes of the Nazi regime, despite real efforts in education and public history.

About 11 million people died during the Nazi regime (1933-1945), including about 6 million Jews, many of whom were exterminated as part of a racial cleansing endeavor.

The West German penal system failed to deal adequately with the Nazi crimes, he continued. In order to deal with what is sometimes called a second guilt, it is necessary to look beyond the criminal courts and to bring this topic to the forefront of education and public exhibitions.
Some 2,000 refugees and social workers gathered in Berlin's prestigious Philharmoniker concert hall for a special concert featuring classical directors Simon Rattle, Daniel Barenboim and Ivan Fischer.

Maysara, a refugee from Syria, says: "Some people they don't speak English, some people don't speak Arabic, some people don't speak Deutsch, but now they are all communicating with one language, this is the music."

It was a life time experience for another refugee Maurice, who hails from Cameroon. "For me it's the first time, I never attended a concert, and also never entered such a big concert hall" he sums up.

Ivan Fischer, conductor of the Konzerthaus of Berlin wondered: "If we really want to come back to the old Europe? Where nations turn against nations, religions against religions, and where colonies were exploited?"

"No, we don't want that. What we see is a beautiful transformation. A new, tolerant Europe is being born."

AFP
WASHINGTON A possible suspect was arrested on Friday in the shooting deaths of two people and wounding of two others at shopping centres in the suburbs of Washington, D.C.

Eulalio Sevilla Tordil, 62, an officer with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, was suspected of killing his wife and shooting a bystander on Thursday in Beltsville, Maryland, in Prince George's County.

When a pair of shootings broke out in neighbouring Montgomery County, investigators turned their attention to Tordil, who had threatened to commit "suicide by cop," police said.

Montgomery County Police announced his arrest on Twitter.

Authorities had temporarily locked down 14 schools near Friday's shooting sites and all of the county's recreational facilities as a precaution.

The shootings revived memories of the "Beltway sniper" attacks of 2002, when 10 people were killed and three seriously injured during a three-week spree in Washington, Virginia and Maryland.

(Reporting by Suzannah Gonzales, Ian Simpson, Barbara Goldberg and Gina Cherelus; Editing by Daniel Trotta and Bill Trott)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
WASHINGTON Paul Ryan and Donald Trump, the top Republicans in the United States, plan to meet next week to try to unite their party, with both men focussed on the Nov. 8 presidential election, but the Wisconsin congressman also perhaps looking further ahead.

Speaker of the House of Representatives Ryan has invited Trump, this year's likely Republican presidential nominee, to meet on Thursday with Ryan and other congressional leaders on Capitol Hill, Ryan's office said in a statement on Friday.

A key part of the conversation is likely to be Trump's combative, in-your-face campaign persona and Republican leaders' requests for him to tone it down, but political analysts said Ryan will have other considerations in mind, as well.

One issue is sure to be his own future, said Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginias Center for Politics.

Ryan, 46, lost his 2012 campaign for vice president as Mitt Romney's running mate. Like Romney, Ryan probably has serious doubts that Trump, 69, can win this year, Sabato said.

If so, Ryan will want to find a balance between accepting Trump as the nominee and keeping some distance from him, just in case the real estate mogul's campaign ends in disaster.

"Suppose Trump loses overwhelmingly. Would you want to have been siding with the captain of the Titanic, or maybe seen as someone who was begging the captain to watch out for icebergs?" Sabato said, adding that a Trump defeat could push the party in a different direction in 2020, maybe towards Ryan as the nominee.

As chairman of the Republican Party convention in Cleveland in July, Ryan's political tightrope will be especially perilous.

One of his objectives will be to provide political cover for his 246 House Republicans so they can choose to embrace or run away from Trump, depending on their home districts' politics, with the goal of preserving control of the House, analysts said.

As speaker, Ryan has struggled with his deeply divided colleagues over budget issues, funding the battle against the Zika virus, rescuing Puerto Rico from a debt crisis, and helping Flint, Michigan, deal with their contaminated water system.

Ryan dropped a bombshell on Thursday when he said he was not ready to endorse Trump until he shows he can unify the party, still reeling from a bitter primary campaign that left many establishment Republicans stunned at Trump's victory.

Ryan said in a speech on Thursday that conservatives want to know whether Trump shares their values and principles.

Ryan is trying to jawbone Trump into adjusting his positions" to line up better with the party establishment, said Norm Ornstein, a resident scholar and political analyst at the conservative American Enterprise Institute.

The "unprecedented" move by a congressional leader to distance himself from his party's expected nominee, Ornstein added, showed Ryan trying to mould a "less confrontational and divisive approach to minorities and a less isolationist and combative approach to our allies.

In a swipe at Trump on Friday, President Barack Obama warned that occupying the Oval Office "is not a reality show."

(Editing by Kevin Drawbaugh and Alistair Bell)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
WASHINGTON Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump said on Thursday that before the party's convention in July, he would put out names of possible candidates he might nominate to the Supreme Court if he is elected president.

In an interview with Fox News, Trump said would consider "wonderful, conservative, good, solid, brilliant judges in the form of" the late Justice Antonin Scalia. "I'm going to actually lay them out. I'm going to discuss people ... I think before the convention. I want to put 10, 12, 15 names of the type of people that we'd like," he said.

"From that list, I would choose."

(Reporting by Tim Ahmann and Mohammad Zargham; Editing by Eric Walsh)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
WASHINGTON The top elected U.S. Republican, Paul Ryan, said on Thursday he was not ready to endorse Donald Trump, a sign of the challenges the party's presumptive presidential nominee faces rallying the Republican establishment behind his White House bid.

Ryan, the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, said conservatives wanted to know if Trump shares their values.

"I hope to support our nominee, I hope to support his candidacy fully," Ryan said on CNN. "At this point, I'm just not there right now."

Trump, who has built a huge following with an anti-establishment message, shot back at Ryan in a statement.

"I am not ready to support Speaker Ryan's agenda. Perhaps in the future we can work together and come to an agreement about what is best for the American people," he said.

The Republican National Committee, under pressure to unify the party or face an electoral rout in the Nov. 8 election, said Ryan and Trump were expected to meet soon. It added that "only a united Republican Party will be able to beat Hillary Clinton."

"We respect Speaker Ryans opinion and believe that since the primary ended early we will have time to unify. We anticipate the two meeting soon to begin to help unite the party," said RNC spokeswoman Lindsay Walters.

Trump's last remaining rivals in the Republican race, U.S. Senator Ted Cruz and Ohio Governor John Kasich, dropped out this week, clearing the New York billionaire's path to be picked as the presidential nominee. He will likely face Clinton, the Democratic front-runner, in the Nov. 8 general election.

Many Republicans have grappled this week with whether to support Trump, who has deviated from the party line on trade and upset the party establishment with offensive comments about women and immigrants. Trump on Thursday announced a new campaign finance chairman in response to questions about his readiness for a general election race.

TAKING ON CLINTON

Trump, speaking to thousands at a rally in Charleston, West Virginia, on Thursday night, sharpened his criticism of Clinton, the kind of tactic that some Republican strategists believe will help unify the party.

He blasted Clinton for saying recently she would impose clean-energy policies that would put coal miners out of business. He put on a hard hat presented to him by the state's coal miners' association and made a shovelling motion.

"And for those miners, get ready: You're going to be working your asses off," he said.

In a sign some Republicans are rallying around Trump, Nebraska Governor Pete Ricketts, whose family has helped bankroll the anti-Trump group Our Principles, is set to endorse Trump on Friday when the candidate visits Omaha.

Former Texas Governor Rick Perry, who ran unsuccessfully for the 2016 nomination, told CNN he now supported Trump as well.

Ryan criticized Trump in December for proposing to temporarily ban all Muslims from entering the United States and knocked him in March for failing to denounce white supremacist groups during a television interview.

The House speaker, who was the running mate of Republican 2012 presidential nominee Mitt Romney, a harsh Trump critic, said he hoped the party would be unified by this summer but that the pressure was on Trump to do that.

He won fair and square," Ryan said of Trump, acknowledging his own policy differences with the New York billionaire businessman. He added: "If we dont unify all wings of the party, were not going to win this election."

Ryan repeatedly denied interest in running for president this year despite attempts to draft him by some in his party. He has been putting together a policy plan for House Republicans to campaign on, which he says will be released before the convention in July.

CAMPAIGN FUNDRAISING

Trump on Thursday began shifting focus from the bruising primary campaign to the general election. He has largely used his own money for his primary fight but plans to follow the more typical path of raising money from outside sources for the general election to succeed Democratic President Barack Obama.

He named his campaign finance chief on Thursday - Steven Mnuchin, a former Goldman Sachs partner who is chief executive of private investment firm Dune Capital Management and with whom Trump worked in a business capacity in the past.

Mnuchin has a long history of political donations, including to Clinton. Since 1998, Mnuchin has given about $71,000 to Democrats, compared with about $37,000 to Republicans. Republicans have questioned Trump's loyalty to the party because he also donated to Democratic candidates in the past.

U.S. Representative Renee Ellmers, a Republican from North Carolina who has endorsed Trump, told Reuters the campaign would begin raising money for the party.

"They are going to start understanding and realizing that in order to grow this operation, they will need to grow funds, not only for him and for the campaign to beat Hillary Clinton, but for the Republican Party itself," Ellmers said.

Historically, political parties have depended on their nominees to raise money in order to fund their other operations, including working to elect members of the House of Representatives and Senate.

One key worry for Republicans has been that their candidates for Congress and other elective positions could suffer with the divisive figure of Trump at the top of the ticket.

Ron Bonjean, a Republican strategist, said Ryan gave lawmakers in his party cover to steer clear of Trump in their re-election campaigns.

"He is positioning the Republican conference and giving Republicans a message they can hold onto," Bonjean said.

(Additional reporting by Steve Holland in Charleston, W.V., Doina Chiacu, Megan Cassella, Jason Lange, Ginger Gibson and Richard Cowan in Washington, and Richard Leong in New York; Writing by Emily Stephenson; Editing by Peter Cooney)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
Washington: US Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, the nation's top Republican, said Thursday he was not yet prepared to support Donald Trump as the party's presumptive presidential nominee, signalling a deep rift within the GOP.

"To be perfectly candid... I'm just not ready to do that at this point," Ryan told CNN.

"I hope to though, and I want to. But I think what is required is that we unify this party."

It was a stunning declaration expected to reverberate throughout the party's establishment and its rank and file, amid swirling concerns over whether conservatives will rally around Trump in his expected election matchup against Democrat Hillary Clinton.

Ryan, who repeated he would not accept the nomination in case of a contested convention, was the Republican vice presidential nominee in 2012 and is currently second in line to the presidency.

While his role as House Speaker makes him a quintessential symbol of the Washington establishment that Trump supporters loathe, his public doubts about the standardbearer could filter down to millions of voters.

"He's got some work to do," Ryan said, noting that "the bulk and the burden" was on Trump to begin the healing after a brutal primary campaign and the brash billionaire's string of insulting remarks about other candidates, Muslims, Mexicans, refugees, women and others.

"It's time to set aside bullying. It's time to set aside belittlement," Ryan said.

Thursday's comments were all the more startling because Trump has now emerged as the party's standardbearer and Ryan will be co-chairman of the Republican presidential nominating convention in July.

Work together?

Trump shot back within minutes.

"I am not ready to support Speaker Ryan's agenda," he said in a statement.

"Perhaps in the future we can work together and come to an agreement about what is best for the American people."

Trump won Tuesday's hotly contested Indiana primary, pushing Ted Cruz and John Kasich out of the race and leaving him as the presumptive nominee.

Democrats seized on the Trump-Ryan clash to highlight the divisions and turmoil within the GOP.

"Well, that was awkward," Democratic National Committee spokesman Mark Paustenbach said in a statement.

"Bring a hazmat suit if you're one of the remaining Republican leaders still planning to stand with your nominee," Paustenbach added. "Trump has gone radioactive."

Ryan insisted that despite his misgivings about Trump, no Republicans should support Clinton  as several have threatened to do.

"We need a standardbearer that can unify all  all conservatives and the wings of the party  and then go to the country with an appealing agenda," he said.

Ryan is the latest in a string of party grandees who have declined to back Trump.

Presidents George HW Bush and his son George W Bush have signalled they will not endorse, while Mitt Romney, the 2012 nominee, is reportedly declining to attend the Republican convention.

Some conservatives, including freshman Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska, argue that a third candidate should challenge Trump and Clinton.

"Why are we confined to these two terrible options?" Sasse asked in an open letter to US Republicans. "If both choices stink, we reject them and go bigger."

Ryan put himself at odds with Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, who publicly endorsed Trump's candidacy "to prevent what would be a third term of Barack Obama."

"As the presumptive nominee, (Trump) now has the opportunity and the obligation to unite our party around our goals," McConnell said in a statement Wednesday.

Trump, 69, has said Republicans would unite to support him.

"Now we'll unify the party," Trump told Fox News on Wednesday. "We're going to get people together."

But with sky-high unfavorability ratings, and concern within his own party about his temperament, the real estate mogul sought to assuage concerns about how a President Trump would govern.

"Things will be fine," he told The New York Times. "I'm not running for president to make things unstable for the country."

As Trump seized the GOP mantle, a CNN poll highlighted the formidable challenge facing him.

It found Clinton, hoping at 68 to become America's first female commander-in-chief, leading the tycoon 54 percent to 41 percent.

Nevertheless, the former secretary of state suffered a shock loss in Indiana to Bernie Sanders, who has pledged to remain in the race until the end despite the delegate math overwhelmingly favoring Clinton.

Clinton has already pivoted to Trump and their general election matchup.

"He is a loose cannon, and loose cannons tend to misfire," she said.

Trump, appearing in West Virginia coal country late Thursday for his first rally since becoming the inevitable nominee, hammered Clinton on trade, the Clinton Foundation, and her vow to kill coal jobs  comments for which she has apologized.

Standing in front of miners holding signs reading "Trump Digs Coal," he pledged to re-open mines and put people back to work.

"Miners, get ready because you're going to be working your asses off," he said.

He made no mention of Ryan at the rally.
Wisconsin has widest score gap between Black and white students

The 2022 NAEP test scores are the first nationwide results since the pandemic.
Employers that "churn" through subsidised interns under the Turnbull government's plan to get young Australians off the dole queue will be identified and weeded out of the system, officials insist.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull was forced on Friday to defend the $840 million internship program, which will pay businesses $1000 to take on young jobseekers for as little as four weeks at part-time hours.

Unions are warning of a "perverse incentive" for employers to keep turning over interns rather than putting on paid workers and on Friday the nation's peak welfare group, the Australian Council of Social Services, pulled back from its initial full support, saying people should be paid an additional $68 a week to participate.

The estimated 100,000 young Australians who have never done a day's paid work will be offered up to $100 a week on top of their Newstart allowance to work 15 to 25 hours in the "PaTH" program - an acronym for Prepare, Trial, Hire.
While Facebook and Instagram make their stances on naked flesh relatively clear, where and when they enact their nipple and nudity censorship have become infamously arbitrary.

Facebook claims to rely on human eyes only when it comes to deciding which images get past its decency standards.

Instagram has a similar protocol, although an unfortunate incident of a "suggestive" Easter simnel cake (more below) left many suspecting the use of nipple detecting software by the social media giant, owned by Facebook.

So, what does and doesn't pique the interests of our all-powerful social media moderators?

CENSORED: The Little Mermaid by Edvard Eriksen, 1913. Inspired by the father of fairytales Hans Christian Andersen.
The expanding number of Asian-American voters in the United States doesnt necessarily translate into political clout in U.S. elections, even though Asian-Americans represent the fastest-growing immigrant population in the United States.

Many who are eligible to vote sit on the sidelines. The members of one organization want to remove some barriers they say are in the way of getting Asian-Americans to vote, hoping to reverse low voter turnout.

Burmese refugee Ma Zin settled in the town of Ft. Wayne, Indiana, in 2004, after years fleeing from Myanmars oppressive ruling military junta. Twelve years later shes still working on her English skills, though that hasnt stopped her from becoming a U.S. citizen, a responsibility she cherishes.

Because weve become a citizen of America, it is important that we select a president, because as a citizen we would like to know what a president can do for us, she said.

The 2016 U.S. presidential election is Ma Zins first experience participating in a democratic process to choose a leader, a path she is on at the same time democratic reforms are taking hold in her home country of Myanmar.

Hillary Clinton and Daw Aung San Suu Kyi both have a relationship for changing and bringing Burmas democratization. That is one of the reasons why I would like to see Hillary become president, said Ma Zin.

Overcoming hurdles

While she waits to cast her first ballot, this isnt her first opportunity to participate in a U.S. election. Although eligible since 2008, she did not register to vote in the last two presidential elections, overwhelmed by the language barrier and the process.

Theres not enough information out there that people dont know how to navigate that system, said Kristina Tendilla, who is a community organizer for Asian-Americans Advancing Justice, a non-profit group committed to empowering Asian-Americans.

She says one way to help new potential voters, particularly in the neighboring state of Illinois, is automatic voter registration when a person applies for a drivers license or ID card.

Tendilla is calling for a system that would automatically register people who are eligible to vote when they interact with the state, or the Department of Motor Vehicles.

In the last 10 years our communities have gone up more than 40 percent and have reached numbers that can increasingly the outcome of not just national, but local elections, too. said Tendilla. These elections could be won on 100 or 200 votes, which is really incredible and an opportunity for our community to make a difference.

Taking part

Meanwhile, Ma Zin still needs to register to vote for this years election in November. In the large Burmese community in Fort Wayne where she lives, there is widespread support for Burmese leader Aung San Suu Kyi. Zin is proud that a woman has such a prominent leadership role in her home country, and wants to be a part of such a moment in her new country.

We are so proud of it. Now America will hopefully have a woman president, she said.

Hillary Clinton is on track to make history as the first female presidential candidate of a major party, and if voters like Ma Zin make their voices heard, also could be on her way to an historic election night this November.
The Kenyan government says it plans to close the country's two main refugee camps, a move that would impact some 400,000 refugees.

The government said in a statement Friday that due to national security interests, it "has decided the hosting of refugees has to come to an end."

The two-page statement stopped short of saying refugees will be expelled. However, it said the government has disbanded its Department of Refugee Affairs as a first step, and is working on a mechanism to close the Dadaab and Kakuma camps "within the shortest time possible."

Dadaab, in northeast Kenya, is considered the world's largest refugee camp and currently houses nearly 330,000 people, mostly Somalis. Kakuma, in northwestern Kenya, is home to another 55,000.

Amnesty International called the decision "reckless" and said it would put thousands of innocent lives at risk.

"It could lead to the involuntary return of thousands of refugees to Somalia and other countries of origin, where their lives may still be in danger," said Muthoni Wanyeki, Amnesty International's Regional Director for East Africa. He said the decision by the Kenyan government is "an abdication of its duty to protect the vulnerable."

Kenya's government Friday acknowledged its decision will cause harm to the refugees and said the international community must take steps to minimize their pain and suffering.

It said it was forced to act because of the security challenge posed by militant groups like Somalia's al-Shabab and the slow process of repatriation.

Kenya hosts about 600,000 refugees in all. About three-fourths are from Somalia, with most of the others coming from South Sudan.

Kenya has threatened to close the refugee camps in the past, but never followed through. The U.N. refugee agency warned last year that closing Dadaab and forcing Somali refugees back home would have "extreme humanitarian consequences."

Al-Shabab has carried out several major attacks on Kenyan territory, most notably the 2013 attack on Nairobi's Westgate Mall that killed 67 people and the 2015 attack on a college in the town of Garissa that killed 148.

Shabab began launching attacks in Kenya after Kenyan troops entered Somalia to fight the militant group in 2011.
North Korea's 7th Workers' Party Congress

What it is: Meeting of the party's highest-level decision-making body. Leaders will determine key state policies, review past projects, reshuffle top officials and revise party regulations. Thousands of delegates from across the country are attending.

When did it start: Friday morning local time; it is expected to last several days.

Where is it being held: The April 25 House of Culture in Pyongyang, North Korea. The last congress in 1980 was held in the ornate February 8 House of Culture, which is now called the April 25 House of Culture. Both dates refer to North Korean military anniversaries.

Last congress: The sixth congress was held for five days in 1980; delegations from 118 countries, including China, the Soviet Union, Zimbabwe, Guinea and Romania, attended. The fifth congress, in 1970, lasted for 12 days.

First congress: The first meeting was held in August 1946, and was notable because the Communist Party of North Korea merged with the New Peoples Party to form the Workers Party of North Korea, The Guardian reported.

Why a 36-year gap? The Workers' Party is supposed to hold a congress every five years.

However, after the last party congress in 1980, the country has been dealing with a series of crises -- the breakup of the former Soviet Union, natural disasters such as a series of droughts and floods, as well as a devastating famine in the 1990s in which more than 2 million people were estimated to have died. Since then, Pyongyang has struggled with widespread poverty, malnutrition and a mismanaged economy.

Some analysts also blame Kim Jong Il, the late father of the current leader, whose "military-first"' policy diminished the party's authority. He never convened a party congress during his 17-year rule.

Why a party congress now? Kim Jong Un has a more party-oriented style of governing, similar to that of his grandfather.

Also, North Korea has seemed to dodge massive natural disasters and widespread starvation seen in previous years, while the country's economic situation has slightly improved.

Taken together, experts said Kim Jong Un is restarting the party congresses as a way to show the world that he rules a more stable country.

What to expect: Kim Jong Un, 33, is expected to deliver a keynote address.

Experts said he is also likely to use the meeting to push his simultaneous pursuit of nuclear weapons and economic growth, referred to his byungjin policy. The country's economy has been weakened by several rounds of U.N. sanctions over its nuclear program.

He is expected to replace some of the party's old guard with younger elites, who are loyal to him yet little known to outsiders.

And the event will also be used to praise Kim Jong Un and his leadership.

North Korea leaders:

 Kim Il Sung, considered the eternal leader of North Korea, is treated like a deity in the isolated country, which he ruled for 46 years, from its establishment in 1948 until his death in 1994.

 Kim Jong Il, son of Kim Il Sung and father of Kim Jong Un, ruled for 17 years, from 1994 to 2011.

 Kim Jong Un has been supreme leader since 2011.

Population: About 25 million

Foreign media: North Korea has invited foreign journalists to cover the event, but their movements, and whom they can speak with, are severely restricted.

Recent nuclear activity: The congress comes after months of animosity and threats following Pyongyang's fourth nuclear test explosion, in January, and a long-range rocket launch in February.
It has been a tumultuous week for politics in South Africa as challenges to President Jacob Zuma and the ruling African National Congress party continue.

Political chaos, violence and destruction - this is how many have described this past week in South Africa.



In parliament, opposition parties kept their promise to defy President Jacob Zuma wherever they meet him. MPs from the Economic Freedom Fighters party disrupted the presidents budget speech Wednesday, demanding he leave office.



However, they were violently removed by security officers.



And the following day, all opposition parties except one boycotted a question and answer session with Zuma on the budget.



Zuma blamed the speaker of parliament, Baleka Mbete.



I go around Africa and people ask me very embarrassing questions about this parliament. I think it will be very important that you seriously bring this house into some orde," said Zuma.



But tensions were also brewing outside parliament.



Residents of Vuwani in the northern part of the country burned 19 schools to the ground using homemade petrol bombs.



They were protesting the governments decision to place their area under a new municipality, believed by some to be a ploy to increase the ruling ANC partys votes in the coming local elections.



The government sent specialized law enforcement units to the area.



You have to bring them so that you can be able to surround this area, bring this area under stability as quickly as possible, so that those who are responsible, we should be able to bring them to book as a matter of urgency ," said David Mahlobo, the minister of state security.



The ANC has monopolized South African politics since the end of apartheid in 1994. But Zuma has been losing support within his own party amid a barrage of corruption scandals this year.



Opposition MPs tried to impeach President Zuma in April after judges ruled he had violated the constitution. This week, the High Court ordered prosecutors to revisit nearly 800 corruption-related charges against him that were dropped several years ago.



The extent to which those court rulings have hurt the ANC will be revealed at the polls August 3.



Gideon Chitanga is a researcher at the Centre for Study of Democracy at the University of Johannesburg.



It does not at all mark the end of the ANC, at least in the short term," said Chitanga. "So I think its a critical indication that going forward the ANC has to reform if it has to retain its social base.



Analysts warn of more instability to come but say it is unlikely that Zuma will step down.
The New York-based Human Rights Foundation has awarded its 2016 Vaclav Havel Prize for Creative Dissent to an Iranian cartoonist, a Russian performance artist and an Uzbek photojournalist.

"The prize celebrates those who, with bravery and ingenuity, unmask the lie of dictatorship by living the truth," the foundation said in a release Thursday.

The committee described Atena Farghadani as "a prisoner of conscience of the Iranian regime." Farghadani was sentenced to 12 years in prison for a cartoon she posted on social media depicting parliamentarians with animal heads to criticize a draft law restricting contraception and criminalizing voluntary sterilization.

The second laureate, Petr Pavlensky, is a Russian artist best known for a series of performances in which he used self-mutilation to protest the government's political crackdown. He is facing up to three years in jail for setting fire to the main entrance to the headquarters of the FSB security service in a performance meant to draw attention to what he called the terror tactics used by the agency.

"A lone artist standing up against the most powerful institution of Vladimir Putin's Russia is an important symbol  both politically and artistically," said HRF Chairman Garry Kasparov.

The third laureate is Umida Akhmedova, a Uzbekistan photojournalist and the country's first female documentary filmmaker. She has been accused of slander and "damaging the country's image" for publishing a series of photos about life in rural parts of Uzbekistan.

"Despite the government's attempts to manufacture a polished, happy image of the country, she exposes the reality of life in one of the world's most closed societies," said John Egenaes, secretary general of Amnesty International Norway.

The three laureates will be honored at a ceremony during the Oslo Freedom Forum this month. They will also share a $43,000 prize.

The prize is named in honor of Vaclav Havel, the dissident Czech poet, playwright and statesman whose activism against oppression and on behalf of human rights and democracy helped topple communism in the former Czechoslovakia.
A top U.S. official says Washington still hopes to hold a dialogue with Beijing on the possible deployment of an advanced missile defense system, known as THAAD, in South Korea.

At an Air Force Association policy seminar Thursday in Washington's Capitol Hill neighborhood, Assistant Secretary of State Frank Rose reiterated the assertion that THAAD would be deployed solely to defend against growing nuclear and missile threats from North Korea.

"As long as North Korea continues to develop, test and deploy ballistic missiles, we will work with allies and friends in the region to defend against that threat, including through the deployment of an effective missile defense," he said.

U.S. officials say the anti-missile system manufactured by Lockheed Martin is equipped with a radar that can track targets some 2,000 kilometers away. The system's ability to intercept enemy missiles fills a gap in the current missile defense system deployed on the Korean Peninsula.

Chinese opposition

The deployment, however, has encountered strong opposition from China, which is concerned that THAAD will undermine the strategic deterrence of China's long- and mid-range missiles, as well as the regional military balance.

Rose also said the United States understands China's concerns, and has always hoped to explain that the deployment will not affect China's strategic deterrent.

"THAAD's single-stage interceptors deployed in [South Korea] would not have the range or capability to intercept Chinese ICBMs headed to the United States," he said. "It is pure physics."

According to some Chinese security experts, Beijing is more concerned about THAAD's X-band radar system, which they believe will cover a large area of China and hurt China's strategic ability to fight back.

Rose said the new missile defense system will not affect the U.S. ability to detect Chinese strategic nuclear missiles, since "the United States already has two similar radars in Japan, and we have a number of other sensor capabilities in the region, including the sea-based X-Band Radar, and the Cobra Dane radar in the Aleutian Islands."

Rose also says the U.S. has been seeking dialogue on the issues with China, but China has continued to decline the offer.

China, Russia cooperation

Meanwhile, Beijing and Moscow announced a joint missile exercise this month, a move widely viewed to be their response to the possible THAAD deployment in South Korea.

"The possibility of Chinese and Russian strategic force cooperation against the United States is a real possibility, and the United States needs to start preparing for such possibility," said Richard Fisher, an Asian military affairs expert at Washington-based International Assessment and Strategy Center.

U.S. officials said that, at present, the United States missile defense system is mainly directed against missile threats from rogue states such as Iran and North Korea, and its size and capabilities are not sufficient to resist the strategic missile threats from China and Russia.
ROME - China and Italy held a bilateral business forum here on Thursday to explore cooperation opportunities in the technical and commercial industries of two countries.

The forum, in its third year, mainly focused on finance, infrastructure construction and healthcare sectors. Representatives from leading Italian and Chinese companies also exchanged views over environmental protection and sustainable development.

The business forum is an important platform that helps companies from the two countries to better know each other and take advantage of collaboration opportunities, Italian Ambassador to China Ettore Francesco Sequi said.

On the sidelines of a gala dinner organized by the Italy-China Foundation earlier this week, Sequi also told Xinhua that China's Belt and Road Initiative has acquired more importance in Italy, where various events are being organized to present the many opportunities offered by the initiative, most notably for port infrastructures on the Mediterranean peninsulas.
Paula Woody

September 24, 1965 - April 30, 2016

FILER | Our special angel Paula was welcomed into heaven on Saturday April 30. Paula was born September 24, 1965 in Decatur IL. She moved to Jerome ID in 1973 and graduated from Jerome High School. She was a member and Queen of Job's Daughters and attended CSI.

She married Jeff Woody in March 1987. They were blessed with two amazing sons, Kyle and Cameron. Later divorced, they remained friends and Paula continued to be a special part of the Woody family.

Paula worked hard, but always made time for family and friends. She made many lasting friends and brightened many lives with her beautiful smile and sparkling blue eyes through her various jobs, from waitressing, working at car dealerships, to her last job at Everton Mattress in Twin Falls, where she helped many with their home furniture and sleep needs. She volunteered at the Olive Branch Food Pantry at the River Christian Fellowship, where she was baptized and attended church for many years. Recently she was attending the Filer Methodist Church with Marjie where she made new friends and acquired dedicated prayer warriors. Paula loved the Lord dearly.

She was a cruise expert! Playing with the dolphins with her boys on one of those trips was a special memory. Paula, Kyle, and Cameron also made many trips to Illinois to visit family. She was an exercise buff, so working out at the gym was a disciplined joy for her. Paula loved her "doggie children" and was deeply saddened when Tucker, as well as Kyle's dog Drake, had to leave this Earth. She bought a scooter several years ago to save on travel expense and rode to work from her home south of Filer. An adventurous and determined lady, she was. A special time for Paula was attending Mom's Day with Cameron at the University of Idaho. She was Kyle's greatest cheerleader at all his sporting and rodeo events. Besides her boys, her great-nephew Roman and great-niece Presley shared many fun and wild times, including making cookies and having their photo in the Times News. Paula spent many hours turning her hope chest into a "Bronco" hope chest for niece Kandi. She loved going shopping and to movies with niece Madi and playing games, and sharing her support, including T-ball and horse shows, with nephews Klayton and Kaleb. With joy, she helped the family's latest additions, Ryder and Liam, to find their Easter eggs. And speaking of eggs, she was our deviled egg lady, surprising us one year by accidentally putting in HOT mustard!

Paula was proceeded in death by her beloved brother Glenn Eckles, her Grandma and Grandpa Eckles, her adopted dad, Peter Gregory and her Grandma and Grandpa Smith. She will be greatly missed by her sons Kyle and Cameron; sister Teresa and Curtiss Cicco (Anna Marie and Elizabeth); sisters-in-law Andrea Eckles and Shirley Eckles (Kara Lynn, Cassidy, Kirstyn and Lilly Ann); her special adopted family: Mom, Sam Blake; sister Amy and Gary Lillard (Preston); sister Jennifer and Kyle Mueller (Alex and Kylee); sister Emily and Kelly Chatterton; the Woody family: Jeff and Mindi; Brent and Judy (Kandi, Mike, Matt, Maudi, Roman, and Presley); Kevin and Andrea, (Madi, Klayton, Kaleb, Trevor, Jordan, Ryder, and Liam); John and Judy (Tara and John); Cheryl and Dave and family; Nikki and family; her special "extra" mom and loving supporter Marjie and friend Charles; loving Aunt Barbara and Uncle Jim (Karrie and Dave); long time, dear friend Robin Hazen; special caring friends Joe, Jeannie and Colton Baratti; Bonnie and Shadow Seamon; along with other family and friends too numerous to mention, but you know who you are and that Paula loves you deeply.

A Celebration of Paula's Life will be held on Tuesday, May 10, 11 AM at Amazing Grace Fellowship (1061 Eastland Dr. North). A meal and time to visit with family and friends will follow. The family would like to thank all who loved, prayed, and worked for Paula's healing.

In lieu of flowers, a contribution may be made at any DL Evans Bank in Paula Woody's name, or to a family member, for a park bench and a rose in her memory to be placed at the Twin Falls County Fairgrounds. Family and friends are encouraged to share their memories at www.rosenaufuneralhome.com
TWIN FALLS  The attorney running against Grant Loebs for Twin Falls County prosecutor has filed a tort claim against Loebs and the county, part of which cites a federal law that doesnt apply to Loebs as an elected state official.

Mark Guerry is threatening to sue Loebs, Twin Falls County and the state of Idaho for $10 million, 20 times the amount allowed by law. Idaho code limits tort claims to $500,000.

This is exactly the sort of reckless incompetence that makes this man unqualified to serve as Twin Falls Countys Prosecuting Attorney, Loebs said in a statement.

The tort claim is just the latest twist in an increasingly bizarre campaign by the Republican challenger. Guerry has accused Loebs and a district judge of misconduct. Those accusations resulted in a bar complaint against Guerry that could see him stripped of his license to practice law.

In the tort claim, Guerry says Loebs has violated his First and 14th Amendment rights and accuses him of violating the Hatch Act, a federal law that restricts the political activity of certain government employees.

Because Loebs is an elected state official, the prosecutor is not restricted by the Hatch Act.

Until now I have refrained from any comment about the bizarre rantings of my opponent, Loebs said Friday.

Today, however, he filed an utterly frivolous and incompetent Notice of Tort Claim against Twin Falls County.

Loebs called it ironic that Guerry is suing the county he hopes to represent as prosecutor.

Hes also suing for punitive damages, which are not allowed in Idaho law against government entities, Loebs said. Any competent attorney would know all of this.

As for alleged violations of the Hatch Act, Loebs pointed out that its a federal law barring certain federal employees from engaging in federal campaigns.

It has no effect in Idaho, Loebs said. And, even if it did, would not by its very nature apply to elected officials.

In his claim, Guerry said Loebs has used media to incite bias, public derision, public criticism, and distrust, of Guerry.

His third claim is, more than anything, just laughable: that I have manipulated and exploited the media to be biased against his campaign, Loebs said. I think its clear that he has done that himself.

Guerry did not answer a call for comment Friday afternoon. He has previously said he would not speak to media, but he appeared for a TV interview Friday.

Guerry, a Castleford resident who has spent the bulk of his career in private practice, announced his candidacy for county prosecuting attorney in March.

Last month he announced he was withdrawing from the race to focus on the bar complaint against him, which he said was made by District Judge Richard Bevan. Guerry accused Bevan of misconduct in a Facebook post but later told the Times-News editorial board he had no proof the accusations were true.

Its probably not a wise thing to do, Guerry told the newspaper board. Its probably not a fair thing to do.

Guerry later announced he was back in the race based on significant, unsolicited input from his supporters.

As for the tort claim, the county now has 180 days to respond, either by settling or denying the claim. If the county denies the claim or does not respond, Guerry can file a lawsuit.
CASTLEFORD | A Buhl woman threatened a man with a gun, rammed his car and hit him in the back with her mirror, police said.

Destinee Rae Adams, 37, of Buhl was arraigned Thursday in Twin Falls County Magistrate Court on felony counts of aggravated assault and aggravated battery. Both counts carry enhanced penalties for the use of deadly weapons  her vehicle on the assault charge and a .40-caliber pistol on the battery charge.

A man told deputies he was arguing with Adams on Wednesday when she tried to jump out the passenger door of the moving car he was driving, court documents said. He told deputies he grabbed her by her shirt to keep her from jumping out.

Thats when Adams pulled a .40-caliber handgun from the center console, the man told deputies.

He stated he was scared of what she was going to do with it until he noticed she wasnt able to get the magazine out of it, a deputy wrote in a sworn probable cause affidavit.

The man said he and Adams were later in separate cars when Adams rammed his several times, court documents said. He got out and called 911 using a borrowed cellphone, just as Adams drove back toward him.

When she drove by (the man) she swerved toward him and hit him with her mirror, the deputy wrote.

Adams was out of custody after posting $10,000 bond and a preliminary hearing is scheduled for May 13.
TWIN FALLS  Three students are in custody after one fired a handgun inside a Robert Stuart Middle School classroom Friday afternoon. No one was injured and police are calling the incident an accidental discharge.

A 14-year-old boy had two guns inside his bag, said Joshua Palmer, spokesman for the Twin Falls Police Department. One gun was reported stolen and the other had an altered serial number.

After questioning the 14-year-old and others, two more students were arrested, Palmer said.

All three face juvenile charges of unlawful possession of a firearm, altering the serial number on a firearm, possessing a firearm on school property and unlawful discharge of a firearm. They are being held at the Snake River Juvenile Detention Center.

Palmer said its possible an adult could be charged if one gave the guns to the students or knew they would be brought to the school.

The student was in an advisory class when the gun fired into a table leg at approximately 12:45 p.m., Twin Falls School District spokeswoman Eva Craner said in a statement. The teacher in the classroom immediately called the principal and school resource officer who reported to the classroom within seconds of the incident. The student immediately turned the gun over to the principal, and other law enforcement officials reported to the building.

It was unclear how the gun was fired. Palmer said the student was either setting the bag down or reaching into the bag when it fired. The gun was not pointed at anyone and the student was not displaying it, Palmer said.

The school immediately called the parents of students who were in the class when the gun fired, Craner said. Other parents were notified about 2 p.m. by an automated phone message from Superintendent Wiley Dobbs.

The area of the school where the gun was fired was evacuated, but police directed the school not to lock down, Craner said.

(Police) determined that the situation had been contained and there was no continuing threat to students, she said.

Many of the schools 1,000 students were off campus participating in a community clean-up project. Others who were at the school had no idea anything was awry.

Parents may have known before some students, Craner said in a phone interview. We do have a safety protocol and it was followed. All of the safety procedures worked very well.

Its the first time a gun has been fired in an Idaho school since 2013 when an Idaho State University professor in Pocatello accidentally shot himself in the foot during a lecture, according to Everytown for Gun Safety, a gun research group.

The after-school routine at Robert Stuart seemed uninterrupted about 3:15 p.m. as parents lined the roadway and parking lot to pick up students. But parents expressed concern about what happened even after receiving the message that the situation was under control.

Youre just never sure and youre worried, Arturo Rodriguez said.

Rodriguez left work early Friday to pick up his daughter, who typically takes the bus home from school.

The first thoughts that went through Martha Olszynskis mind were Columbine and Sandy Hook, said the mother of an eighth-grade daughter. Olszynski always picks up her daughter after school, but she went to the school earlier than normal Friday immediately after receiving the automated message.

You just have a million questions, she said.

The district has a strict no-gun policy and only school resource officers are allowed to carry guns, Craner said.

While we regret that one of our students chose this action, we are relieved and heartened that our staff and law enforcement worked together to a safe conclusion, Craner said in the statement.

No one with institutional knowledge can remember a gun being fired at a Twin Falls school, Palmer said. He said there have been instances of a student bringing a gun to school in the past, but officials couldnt recall one ever firing in a Twin Falls school.

Police did not release the names of the arrested students.

Twin Falls County Prosecutor Grant Loebs said he cannot comment on juvenile cases, but said nothing will happen before Monday and that they will not be arraigned in adult court.
KIMBERLY  The Rock Creek Rural Fire Protection District is again trying to get voters to approve an increase in the districts tax levy that, district officials said, are needed to hire more firefighters to keep up with the growing number of calls and homes in the district.

The levy would increase from .00115 to .002, which works out to another $5 per month on a $150,000 home, the district said in a letter sent out to residents of the fire district, which spans from North 3300 East, just east of Chobani, to North 5000 East, between Murtaugh and Milner, and from the Snake River to Magic Mountain north to south.

Why are they seeking the extra money, which works out to about $512,000 a year?

Our call volumes going up, our volunteer pools going down, firefighter Taylor Hunsaker said.

The measure needs two-thirds of the vote to pass, and a proposal to boost the levy to .002 failed 611-634 in November.

Hunsaker said the fire districts call volume has been going up by 70 to 100 calls a year, as the economy grows in the city of Twin Falls and more people, drawn by the jobs, buy homes in smaller communities to the east. There were almost 800 calls in 2015, and they expect to hit 900 this year. The levy, he said, has been the same since the district was formed in 1992. Idaho caps fire district levies at .0024.

Currently, Hunsaker said, there are four full-time firefighters/EMTs plus the chief and 22 volunteers, of whom, he said, maybe 10 or 12 are active. Hunsaker said the goal is to first hire a few more firefighters to staff the Kimberly station, then to staff the Rock Creek station full-time in four or five years. Over time, the plan is to hire 21 firefighters total, which would let them cover the district full-time in three shifts.

The Insurance Services Office could decide to adjust the districts rating, potentially lowering insurance premiums for homeowners.

Hunsaker stressed that he cant be certain peoples insurance would drop, were the levy to pass.

Its completely up to the insurance company, he said.

But, he said, there is a chance the ISO rating could drop a point, and savings from a decrease could be more than what people would pay in increased taxes. The rating for people who live in the city limits of Kimberly, Hansen and Murtaugh is 4 on a 1-10 scale. Homes more than 1,000 feet from a fire hydrant and outside city limits, the rating is 8.
TWIN FALLS  Mike Simpson plans to vote for Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton, although he disagrees with many of the billionaires central policy platforms.

Ill support the Republican nominee, and presumably its Donald Trump now, U.S. Rep. Simpson told the Times-News editorial board Thursday.

Simpson, who represents the Magic Valley and southeastern Idaho in Congress, had not been a Trump backer before. Trump is the only Republican in the race after his main rival, Ted Cruz, and then John Kasich dropped out after Trumps win Tuesday in Indiana.

Simpson said the choice now is between Trump, Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, and voting for neither of them, which Simpson views as effectively supporting Clinton.

I happen to be in the Never Hillary camp, Simpson said.

U.S. Rep. Raul Labrador, who represents the rest of the state, has also said he will back Trump despite reservations about the candidate.

While Simpson says he will support Trump if hes the nominee, he said he disagrees with Trump on many issues he has made centerpieces of his campaign. Simpson doesnt view building a very tall wall along the entire U.S.-Mexican border  one of Trumps most often-repeated campaign promises  as the answer to illegal immigration.

In areas that need a wall, fine, Simpson said. Is that the whole answer? No.

Simpson repeated his long-held view that deporting all of the millions of undocumented immigrants who live here is unrealistic, and that the answer is to give them legal status but not citizenship. If they want to apply for citizenship, Simpson said, they should be allowed to but shouldnt be allowed to jump ahead of people who came here legally.

Simpson also said he is against Trumps call for banning non-citizen Muslims from entering the country. Simpson said he supports looking at the vetting process for refugees entering the U.S., especially refugees coming from hotspots of conflict and terrorism such as Syria, and making improvements where needed, but that he would oppose a religious test for entry.

You dont ban a religion from coming here, Simpson said. Thats crazy.

Simpson interprets the results of the primaries as a sign voters are frustrated, pointing to exit polls that have said Republican voters feel betrayed by their party, which hasnt delivered on promises to repeal Obamacare or block President Barack Obamas executive actions on immigration. Congress tried to do those things, Simpson said, but there arent enough Republicans to override a presidential veto.

Theyre frustrated at us for not delivering on those things, even though our system doesnt allow us to just impose that, Simpson said.

Democrats are on to something when it comes to the gap between the rich and everyone else and the shrinking middle class, Simpson said, even though, in his view, Democratic policies are a big part of the reason for slow economic growth and the lack of upward mobility.

People dont resent rich people as long as they have the hope of one day getting there too, he said.

Trump has called for protectionist trade policies to stop the outsourcing of jobs. Simpson said he is more in favor of free trade than Trump, and thinks a better approach would be to look at federal policies such as tax rates that encourage outsourcing.

Weve got to look at whats driving them overseas, he said.
HEYBURN  Kae Cameron announced to the Chambers Board of Directors on Thursday that she will step down as the executive director on May 31.

Leaving the chamber will give her a chance to spend time with her family, but it wont be an easy job to walk away from.

I love what I do, Cameron said. I love this community. Grand openings for new businesses are always exciting. I really enjoyed the committees I worked with.

Since becoming the director in 2008, Cameron has also been a member of the Snake River Development Commission, Southern Idaho Tourism and the Idaho Chamber Alliance. Shes also been a liaison for the Local Emergency Preparedness Committee.

But Cameron, who has two children in elementary school and owns an electrical contractor business with her husband, said now is the right time for her to step down. Its time to spend time with the family and expand business, she said.

It is an interesting time in Mini-Cassia. Rupert and Burley have drawn in agricultural and retail jobs, and the communities are trying to work out details on a possible new airport. Cameron is part of the airport task force, and though she wont continue as the chambers executive director, she hopes to stay on the airport committee.

Its something I feel is important so Im happy to see that project come through, she said.

The search for her replacement is on. The Board of Directors will begin advertising the executive director position immediately. Board Director Chet Jeppesen expects Cameron to be replaced by the time she officially steps down at the end of the month.

Youre talking eight years of knowledge of understanding networks, understandings of legislative happenings and the community, Jeppesen said. Its a big loss. Were going to miss Kae.
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Charlie Howell has been chairman of the Jerome County commissioners for nine of his 12 years on the board. If Howell is the voice of reason for Jerome County, as some residents call him, then his challenger, Mike Dahmer, is the voice of suspicion.

Dahmer has a laundry list of misdeeds and malfeasance committed by the board, but he cant produce any hard evidence to bolster his accusations. Were not saying his claims arent true  but if youre running for public office, youd better be prepared to show proof.

Dahmer rightly points out that Jerome County is the second-highest taxed county in Idaho with the second-lowest income. While Dahmer raises serious concerns, his solutions hinge on winning the election first and establishing a governing platform later.

Howell, on the other hand, already has a list of goals he wants to tackle in his next term. At the top of that list is finally making progress on a long-talked-about north-side canyon rim park. The county has set aside $20,000 in its budget  much less than what it will take to establish a recreation area but enough to let stakeholders know the county is serious about the project.

Howells biggest accomplishment in his most recent term is the new county jail and continuing economic development projects, namely the Hilex Poly expansion.

Challenges for either candidate will include trying to balance agriculture interests with growing urban development, and helping to foster the assimilation of a Latino community that shows no signs of slowing. The countys first question in job interviews now, Howell says, is whether the candidate is bilingual.

You do wear out your welcome, sooner or later, Howell told our editorial board. But neither he nor we think that time has come for Howell. His even-handedness is a tremendous boon to the county, and we believe Howell deserves another term.

Same goes for Roger Morley. The incumbent faces a much tougher challenge from B. Roy Prescott, a former county commissioner seeking to rejoin the board.

Prescotts top issue is economic development. He says theres still too much competition between communities and economic development groups. And Twin Falls, he says, is clearly outcompeting Jerome.

Were impressed with Prescotts regional outlook, especially on finding ways for cities and counties to collaborate. Those relationships now are in dire straits, he says.

Ill wager that you have county commissioners who cant tell you the name of the mayor of Hazelton, he said.

Morley, too, is focused on economic development. But he worries the countys business sector may be outpacing the workforce. Jerome County doesnt necessarily need more businesses, he says  it needs more people.

He ran on a progressive platform in the last election, but this time, hes more focused on fine-tuning the progress the county has already made.

For this election, his platform centers on plans to recruit more residents to Jerome County, especially millennials. The unemployment rate in Jerome, he points out, dropped to 2.9 percent during his term. He anticipates growth in Jerome County to trend toward high-tech, higher-paying jobs, and the county will need young, highly trained professionals to fill those jobs.

To balance a growing workforce, the county has completed a massive zoning overhaul to reduce conflicts between suburbanites and agriculture operations, which he calls the foundation of Jerome County.

Morley is an optimist. Jeromes a good old girl, he said. She just needs a new dress.

We agree.

While Prescott is certainly a qualified candidate with good ideas, we see nothing to warrant booting Morley from office. The county is headed in the right direction; Morley deserves another term to keep that progress rolling.
Sheriff Doug McFall has overseen every detail of the new county jail. And we mean every detail. Late last month, he was working with contractors to move a couple of light switches he thought could have been better placed.

McFall brings that attention to detail to his police work, too. Hes earned another term as sheriff.

The jail, of course, is the crowning achievement of his current term. Its so well planned, he said, the American Civil Liberties Union has a standing invitation to tour the facility. The new hoosegow has erased the overcrowding problems that were putting the county at risk of lawsuits, he said.

His challenger, Jon Lenker, also supports the new jail. A Navy veteran with law enforcement experience in Florida and Idaho, Lenker says hes running because the community asked him to.

But he simply cant present enough reasons to oust McFall from office. His major criticism is that McFalls office is run like the Idaho State Police and is too rigid and hierarchical for a small county sheriffs department. He also says McFall is too focused on administrative tasks and not out in the field frequently enough.

We disagree. In fact, McFall is almost always the point of contact for the media when crime happens in Jerome County, and hes usually answering reporters questions from the scene.

When it comes to fighting crime, McFall says drugs and alcohol  particularly alcohol  contribute to most of the crime in the county. Recidivism  when a criminal is released only to commit more crimes  is a serious problem in the county, he said.

Seventy-five percent of the inmates are on a first-name basis with the deputies, he said.

To stem that tide, McFall supports work-release and monitoring programs that will allow inmates to access support systems rather than sitting in jail.

He touts his close relationships with other law enforcement agencies that help his department collaborate with other agencies on larger investigations.

McFall hopes to work with federal agencies to house their inmates under contract with the new jail, which could drive revenue for the county. If its enough, hed like to hire at least four more deputies to patrol the county.

Lenker also wants more deputies as the county grows but says a restructure within the department could serve the current needs of the county.

We have no doubt Lenker could be a good sheriff. But he hasnt shown proof hed do it better than McFall. For that reason alone, McFall deserves another term.
Mr. Loebs has been county prosecutor for nearly two decades; prior to that, he was an assistant prosecutor in the same office, so he is well versed indeed in the many aspects of Twin Falls County crime and in bringing appropriate charges to keep our community safe and secure. There have been many changes in the criminal law in recent years, and Mr. Loebs has kept up with them all. He is the "go to" source for many of us legislators when we need to know how a proposed legal change will impact our citizenry.
The delegation of the Yemeni government to peace talks, led by Foreign Minister Abdulmalek al-Mikhlafi, said they asked UN mediators on Thursday to insist on the respect of the cessation of hostilities as attacks on civilians in Taez continue.

The delegation had pulled out of the Yemeni peace talks in Kuwait on Sunday due to ceasefire violations by the Houthi Movement before returning to the talks on Wednesday.

Updating reporters on the ongoing talks, UN special envoy for Yemen Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed said the De-escalation and Coordination Committee (DCC) would investigate clashes on the ground and provide reports to protect the peace talks while hoping that the positive atmosphere in the talks will also be reflected in the security situation.

He admitted that there has been a number of breaches and it is worrying, underlining that the only way to resolve the conflict in Yemen is through the conclusion of a political settlement. The UN envoy said they are determined to reach an agreement and this commitment will not wane over time.

The war in Yemen has been going on for more than a year and both sides seem to be struggling to gain the upper hand while extremist groups such as Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and the Islamic State gain grounds.

AQAP militants however retreated from the towns of Zinjibar and Jaar, southwestern Abyan province, after tribesmen urged them to leave rather than resist an offensive of pro-Hadi forces backed by the Saudi-led coalition forces.
The desert country of the United Arab Emirates, known for developing unprecedented, ambitious projects, is planning to build an artificial mountain to increase its rainfall as the country registers around 3 inches of rainfall per annum.

The UAE tasked the US National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) with conducting the feasibility study of the project.

According to the Dubai-based Arabian Business news website, the UAE paid $400,000 for the study and the project is currently at its detailed modeling study.

Building a man-made mountain would be a technical and geographical challenge. NCAR researcher Roelof Bruintjes said the project would involve evaluating the effects on weather through the type of mountain, how high it should be and how the slopes should be.

The technique is based on the meteorological orographic precipitation concept explaining that moist air rises on one side of the mountain before cooling and forming clouds on the other side facing the wind and falling as rain. The report of the first phase is expected in summer.

UAE has used cloud seeding in the past and a meteorologist with the UAE claimed that it contributed to the record rainfall of 11 inches on a single day in March. The country invested almost $56,000 in cloud seeding last year.

UAE is heavily dependent on desalination costing around $60 per cubic meter compared to $1 through cloud seeding though it is much more unreliable.

The man-made mountain project could be the cheapest without any visible further cost but Bruintjes warned that if the project is too expensive for the government, they would have had an idea of what kind of alternatives there are for the long-term future and could possibly seek funding from private engineering firms.

Raymond Pierrehumbert, a professor of physics at the University of Oxford, said the best possible result is having a tiny amount of rainfall in a small area close to the mountain.

UAEs lack of rainfall coupled with high water consumption and temperatures reaching above 37C signal that groundwater reserves could be depleted within the next 50years. The government has embarked on introducing water conservation policies but they are yet to be effective.

In a country where rain rarely falls and clouds insufficiently formed, emulating the natural meteorological orographic precipitation concept could be a long trial and error process before satisfactory results are obtained.
Former President of Burundi Jean Baptist Bagaza died in Belgium at the age of 70.

He passed away Wednesday morning in Brussels where he was hospitalized for treatment, the government said.

The nation has lost a great figure and tireless worker, Philippe Nzobonariba, the government spokesman said on Wednesday. He said flags will fly at half-mast for three days to mourn Bagaza.

President Pierre Nkurunziza tweeted his condolences to the family and all Burundians hours after the announcement.

The deceased served as the troubled countrys leader from 1976 to 1987 after seizing power by force.

Much of the countrys infrastructure and industry was built up during his term in office, considered as one of the most stable periods in the countrys post-independence history.

His investments contributed to the development of the countrys economy that remains largely reliant on its exports of coffee, tea and sugar.

Bagaza was credited with land reforms, the abolition of a hated poll tax and the promulgation of a new Constitution in 1981, but his human rights record was poor. He was deposed in a bloodless coup.

Since 1994, Bagaza led the Party for National Recovery (PARENA). He was a Senator for life as a former head of state.
Papa Wemba, the king of rumba has finally been buried on Wednesday at a cemetery in the capital of his native Democratic Republic of Congo at funerals attended by thousands of Congolese from all walks of life.

Local media has reported that over 15,000 people gathered outside, and 2,000 inside the Notre Dame Cathedral in Kinshasa for the funeral service.

Today, I saw the population of Congo mobilize themselves to come and mourn Papa Wemba. We were all here for him, and together, we are grateful for what he did for us. I personally worked with him for 18 years, and he appointed me his personal spokesperson. I often spoke on TV on his behalf. He was fair and honest, a simple person who never wanted to hurt anyone, said Jean Gomair who has been Papa Wembas spokesperson.

Congolese president conferred posthumously the highest national honor of the country on Papa Wemba on Monday after he took part in the two-day tribute service for the musician at the seat of parliament where thousands of people came to pay their last respects.

The 66-year-old musician collapsed on stage during a performance in Cote dIvoire and died some minutes later two weeks ago.

A memorial service was held in his honor in Cote dIvoire three days after his death before his body was flown to the Democratic Republic of Congo. His wife Mama-Marie Lozolo Amazone, whom he married in 1970, was present for the memorial in Abidjan and Kinshasa. They had six children.
World-renowned musician Angelique Kidjo has been declared winner of Amnesty Internationals prestigious Ambassador of Conscience Award for 2016 for her active role in advocating for human rights.

The Grammy-winning musician shares the prize with three African youth activist movements, which show exceptional courage standing up to injustice.

Benin-born Kidjo and groups Yen a Marre from Senegal, Le Balai Citoyen from Burkina Faso and Lutte pour le Changement (LUCHA) from the Democratic Republic of Congo have shown exceptional courage, Amnesty said.

[They] have all proved themselves to be bold advocates for human rights, using their talents to inspire others, Salil Shetty, Amnestys secretary general, said.

The honor known as the Ambassador of Conscience Award has previously gone to world leaders such as Vaclav Havel, Nelson Mandela, and Aung San Suu Kyi, as well as artists Bono, Joan Baez, and Ai Wei Wei.

Grammy-winning artist Angelique Kidjo fled her homeland in the 1980s after being pressured to perform for the countrys repressive regime.

In a 30-year-career spawning 12 albums, she has been a prominent campaigner for freedom of expression and for the education of girls in Africa, as well as against female genital mutilation.

I have always tried to use my voice -singing and speaking- to fight injustice and inequality. Amnesty Internationals work throughout the years has been so courageous and extraordinary that receiving the Ambassador of Conscience award is intimidating to me! The award will energize me to stay outspoken about the crucial human rights issues of our time, said Kidjo.
Kenyas election commission on Thursday rejected opposition calls to resign, saying it was reforming the way it handles technology to avoid repeating the failures of the 2013 vote.

The countrys opposition has called for the electoral commission to disband before next years presidential vote.

On April 25, some 500 of their supporters marched on the commissions offices in Nairobi. They say they have no confidence in the commission after it dismissed complaints of voting irregularities following the 2013 election.

On Thursday, the commission, formally known as the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC,) rejected the accusations saying it is taking other steps to ensure next years polls unfold smoothly.

We are committed to fulfil our constitutional mandate and give this country a flawless, free and credible election in 2017, the IEBC said in a statement released at a news conference. The Commissioners are not resigning.

In March 2013, the opposition rejected the outcome of the presidential election and petitioned the Supreme Court to overturn the results, but the court upheld them.

The presidential and parliamentary elections are more than a year away, but politicians are already lining up for what could be a bruising battle in a nation in which violence erupted after the 2007 vote and the result of the 2013 poll was disputed.

The Roman Catholic and Protestant clerics, the Law Society of Kenya and the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights had in the past three weeks separately issued hard hitting statements, saying IEBC had to be reconstituted.
The government of Benin on Thursday announced the release of 5.2 billion FCFA supply fuel for power generators rented from two suppliers to ease the countrys power crisis.

This will be one of the major steps taken by the government to address the crisis, Savoir news agency reported, quoting Secretary-General of the Presidency, Pascal Irenee Koupaki.

The West-African nation has been in an unprecedented energy crisis in recent years, despite its large hydroelectricity potential. 85% of its electricity needs are answered by imports from Ghana, Cote dIvoire and Nigeria, according to official data.

Benins president Patrice Talon, who succeeded Thomas Yayi Boni has recently promised to miraculously turn around the countrys economy in his first and only term in office.

Talon, a 57-year-old entrepreneur who made his money in cotton and running Cotonous port, now has the task of diversifying Benins economy which relies mainly on agriculture, trade and exports and uplifting it from poverty.

Addressing high youth unemployment rate, fighting corruption and improving health and education in the country of 10.6 million people are also among his major challenges.

According to press reports, Talon is advocating for political reforms to modify the operation of certain institutions of the State.
A Malian court has sentenced two men to five years in jail for a coup attempt in 2014 against Malian President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, the Justice Minister said on Thursday.

The Court of Assizes of Bamako, in its hearing on Wednesday, May 4, condemned Lieutenant Mohamed Ouattara and Sergeant Amara Sylla to five years in prison for the attempted coup, said a statement released by the court.

According to the order for reference, Lieutenant Mohamed Ouattara and Sergeant Amara Sylla had hatched a military coup against the regime of President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita.

The same document stated that, soldiers who testified at the trial had claimed during the investigation that Lieutenant Ouattara had approached them to attack the Presidents home and to capture or kill him.

On Tuesday, the court has also sentenced two men to five years in jail for beating up Malis former interim president, Dioncounda Traore, during the occupation of his palace in May 2012 by protesters demanding his resignation.

The two men were convicted of charges including criminal conspiracy and attempted assassination.
Entercom Acquires Podcorn Platform matches brands with the most relevant podcast creators to scale native branded content and drive higher ROI for advertisers. Read more David Field Joins Cheddar Entercom Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer discusses interest in audio from consumers and advertisers, and the rise of social audio platforms. Read more Entercom Launches BetQL Audio Network Network to Serve as Home of Companys Sports-gambling Content, Will Launch Companion Broadcast Distribution Channels in Denver and Los Angeles. Learn more Power, People and Politics Jake Sherman and Anna Palmer bring listeners inside Washington for an unfiltered, non-partisan look at every major issue of the day. Learn more RADIO.COM The Long Shot A new Cadence13 and ThreeFourTwo Productions podcast with Miami Heat Forward Duncan Robinson. Learn more Entercom Teams up with the Ad Council on Coping-19 Mental Health Campaign Providing bilingual audio assets with resources to help Americans address mental health challenges. Learn more INSIGHTS Industry Trends In Streaming Audio & Podcast Performance Learn more about setting goals, measuring success with data and benchmarking KPIs across multiple industries. Download eBook OUR PLATFORM 24/7 sports conversation from coast to coast As the nations #1 local sports platform, we give fans access to teams they cant get anywhere else. Visit our stations

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Parliament speaker fears visa-free travel for Georgians may be delayed

The EUs plans to allow visa-free travel for citizens of Georgia may be postponed, the Georgian Speaker of Parliament said Monday.Davit Usupashvili blamed members of the party of former President Mikheil Saakashvili for lobbying against visa liberalization out of petty party political interests.He claimed that former government officials, together with some members of European Peoples Party (EPP), are trying to connect visa liberalization to the UNM.Often particular partial or personal interests are in the foreground rather than the interest of the state, but this problem can be solved too, Usupashvili assured.The speaker also thinks other factors may delay the introduction of visa-free travel for Georgians: there are certain geopolitical circumstances in the region and in Europe which may cause the plan for visa-free travel to be postponed, a situation which was not brought about by Georgia.This may delay the process, but not essentially affect it, he told journalists in Brussels.Another problem, he said, is statements made by certain members of the GD coalition who glorify the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin.Some of the not-so-young Leninists and Stalinists creates problems for us, because many of their statements are perceived here [in Brussels] as statements by the government. Our goal is to deal with these three small problems properly, he added.The Parliament Speaker was referring to Gogi Topadze, the leader of the Industrialists Party, who last year said that there should be a portrait of Stalin on the walls of every office, because everyone will acknowledge that Stalin had the personality of a genius and did great things. Topadze has also criticized the current Georgian Defence Minister, who is Usupashvilis wife.Usupashvili visited Brussels on Tuesday and met with the president of the European Parliament, as well as the head of the foreign affairs committee and other politicians.
Urban vs rural

By Messenger Staff

The National Statistics Office of Georgia (Geostat) has published its 2014 General Census data, which covered various aspects, the situation in urban and rural areas among them.The data showed that 2,122,623 people live in urban parts of Georgia while 1,591,181 people live in rural areas.Taking into account the fact that the population decreased mainly in rural areas, the urban/rural pattern of population changed significantly since the last census. The latest data showed the number of people living in urban areas increased by 4.9 percent and equalled 57.2 percent of the national population.The 2014 General Census data showed Georgias capital had significantly grown over the past 12 years.Now, 1,108,717 people live in Tbilisi. This was a 2.5 percent increase since the previous survey in 2002.In the other regions of Georgia, the most significant decrease in population occurred in Racha-Lechkhumi and Kvemo Svaneti (37.4 percent) and Samegrelo-Zemo Svaneti (29 percent), while the smallest population decline was recorded in the Autonomous Republic of Adjara (10.6 percent).As it appears, people are mostly leaving Georgia's mountainous regions.In many cases there is no education or healthcare available in mountainous areas, which prompts people to move elsewhere.However, it should also be taken into account that Georgia has a fixed border only with Turkey, and there have been many cases recently when several villages devoid of a Georgian population have been claimed by a neighbouring power.It is welcome that the Government has elaborated a special law for mountainous areas and benefits for the people living there. However, the issue requires a complex approach and a practical undertaking of what is written on the paper.The fact that the number of residents in towns has increased is not good; Tbilisi is already overcrowded, roads are jammed with vehicles and pollution is high.In case the situation does not improve in Georgia's regions and people do not stop moving to big towns, the situation could become unbearable in Tbilisi very soon.
@NewsbySmiley

Miami Commissioner Francis Suarez has new digs.

Suarez is moving Monday to GrayRobinson's Miami headquarters, where he will join the firm as of counsel, GrayRobinson announced Friday. He is currently of counsel at Alvarez Barbera LLP, where according to the firm "he practices general commercial litigation, with a particular focus on real estate related matters, including real estate transactions, corporate transactions and closings."

GrayRobinson is a full-service law firm that sometimes lobbies Miami City Hall.

Here's the press release:

GrayRobinson Welcomes Commissioner Francis X. Suarez to its Miami Office

MIAMI, Fla.  May 6, 2016 -- GrayRobinson, P.A., announced today that Francis X. Suarez, a practicing attorney in Miami and a City of Miami commissioner, will join the firm on May 9 as of counsel.

He will work out of GrayRobinsons Miami office.

Suarez comes to GrayRobinson from the firm of Alvarez & Barbara LLP, where he focused on corporate and real estate transactions.

He has served as a City of Miami Commissioner for the past six years, having been elected to the position in the fall of 2009. Before that, he served in a number of civic capacities, including the Orange Bowl Restoration Committee, the Coral Gate Home Owners Association, the Miami Behavioral Center, Inc. and Spectrum Programs Inc., an organization that counsels troubled young people. He currently also serves as Vice-Chair of the Miami-Dade Metropolitan Planning Organization, tasked with approving federally required plans and transportation policies, and as President of the Miami-Dade County League of Cities.

Suarez first practiced law at the firm of Haley Sinagra Paul and Toland, PA., a Miami law firm. In that position, he specialized in commercial litigation and general transactional matters. Later, he served as general counsel to Doctors Management Group, a consulting firm that served the medical field.

A Miami native, Suarez attended La Salle High School, where he participated in student government and served on the Student Council. Later, he majored in finance at Florida International University, where he graduated in the top 10 percent of his class. He then graduated cum laude from Frederic G. Levin College of Law at the University of Florida.

Suarez is a member of the Florida and Federal Bar Associations.

About GrayRobinson, P.A.

Founded in 1970, GrayRobinson is a full-service law firm providing legal assistance across the state of Florida. With nearly 300 attorneys and 12 offices throughout Florida, GrayRobinson proudly provides legal assistance for Fortune 500 companies, emerging businesses, lending institutions, local and state governments, developers, entrepreneurs and individuals. GrayRobinson has continued to stay ahead of the curve with a firm commitment to creativity and innovation. For more information, visit www.gray-robinson.com.
@PatriciaMazzei

Miami Republican Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen confirmed to the Miami Herald on Friday that she won't back either presumptive presidential nominee.

"I will work with whomever is chosen by the American people to serve as president, because I deeply respect the American constitutional system," the congresswoman said in a statement. "In this election, I do not support either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton."

Ros-Lehtinen did not respond in time for our story earlier this week about where Miami Republican members of Congress -- all previous Jeb Bush and then Marco Rubio backers -- stood on Trump as their de facto nominee. We cited her telling a Spanish-language network two weeks ago that she didn't think she could cast a ballot for Trump. "I don't feel in my heart that I could support him," she said at the time.

Fue un honor darle el premio International Leadership Award CHLI a Lilian: congresista Ros-Lehtinen a NTN24 https://t.co/jrZz4xSgnm  NTN24 Espana (@NTN24_espana) April 21, 2016

The only local congressman who says -- albeit indirectly -- that he'll vote for Trump is Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, who in his statement to the Herald referred to the Republican nominee but not Trump by name. Rep. Carlos Curbelo said he won't vote for Trump or Clinton.

On Thursday, House Speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin said he couldn't back Trump yet. On Friday, Ryan's office said the speaker will meet with Trump and Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus next week. Trump will also meet with other House leaders.

Photo credit: Hector Gabino, el Nuevo Herald
@JeremySWallace

Florida Gov. Rick Scott continues to pile up the donations in a political action committee he controls even though he is term limited and cannot seek re-election.

Next week, Scott is expected to report collecting another $259,150 in April for his Lets Get to Work political committee, which he has used to run television and internet ads and pay for political consultants. Since the start of 2016, Scott has raised more than $1.3 million in that committee. And since the beginning of 2015, Lets Get to Work has raised more than $5.8 million.

Scotts biggest donors in April were real estate development company,The Villages, and FCCI Services Inc, an insurance company based in Lakewood Ranch in Sarasota County. Both gave Scotts political committee $50,000 each.

Scott has not said if he is running for another office and has refused to comment directly on whether he has interest in running for the U.S. Senate in 2018, potentially taking on U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, a Democrat who would be seeking his third term in office.

Theres no questioning who Scotts biggest supporter has been for his political committee. The Florida Chamber of Commerce has donated more than $790,000 to Lets Get to Work since the start of 2015. And another political committee affiliated with the Chamber, called Florida Jobs PAC, has chipped in another $135,000 during that period.

Another pro-business group, Associated Industries of Florida and political committees it has ties to called the Voice of Florida Business and Floridians for a Stronger Democracy, have combined to give Scott $540,500 since the start of 2015.

Heres the a list of donors to Lets Get to Work who have given at least $100,000 since the start of 2015:
HELENA  As far back as last May, Montana's former lieutenant governor believed she was being pushed off the 2016 ticket.

An email sent from the personal accounts of former Lt. Gov. Angela McLean to Gov. Steve Bullock on May 20, 2015, says Chief of Staff Tracy Stone-Manning told the lieutenant governor Bullock was considering a different running mate.

The message was made public Friday as the governor's office released three years' worth of emails sent from Bullock's personal account.

Similar requests for the emails were made by three news organizations  the Gazette State Bureau, the Associated Press and Montana Television Network  in December. The organizations received the same set of documents.

It first appeared the governor and other staff members were using personal email accounts to conduct state business after a batch of emails released last December included messages McLean sent from her personal email account to Bullock's personal account.

Friday's release included about 350 pages of emails. For the most part the emails are typical of what elected and appointed officials and state employees send, the only thing exceptional about them is they were sent from private accounts and therefore not likely to show up in standard requests for public documents.

In one email, McLean wrote: "Tracy confirmed for me this morning that you are indeed considering a different running mate. In fact she indicated you have instructed her to be proactive with two paths: one that includes me and one that does not.

"I guess I am learning ambition is a funny thing and realizing the full consequences of standing up for what you believe is right. It really is the hardest thing."

A day later McLean wrote that she believed there was a "short list" of replacements developed by Bullock, Stone-Manning and others. She wrote to the governor "make sure if you are visiting with folks they know that I will not be leaving the post until the term is up."

McLean quit in November to work for the Commissioner of Higher Education.

The emails give insight into how McLean thought the governor viewed her.

"Not sure how or if we will ever get there on the Governor valuing me, the job I do or even the Constitutional post of LG but I do know you and (Senior Adviser) Adam (Schafer) are working on it," McLean wrote in an email to Stone-Manning on July 2 at 4:15 a.m. She copied the governor.

She also wrote "Finally, when you get a chance we should visit about how word has gotten and is continuing to get downtown about our office politics."

Later that morning, Bullock forwarded the message to deputy chief of staff Ali Bovingdon's personal email account, saying: "Wow." Bovingdon replied with the same: "Wow."

McLean had a meeting in September 2015 with the governor's budget director Dan Villa that she wrote "concerns me very much." She said the two talked about how Villa had "distanced himself" and she said she asked about how they could work together going forward. Villa said the two had different portfolios and that the two "did not cross."

"He further said, 'either you are on the team or you are not.'"

She said she was "deeply troubled by the message and tenor."

McLean forwarded an email to Bullock's personal account after the meeting, saying "Just FYI. I am deeply concerned about the environment in which I am expected to work."

Things seemed more amicable in 2014.

In April of that year, McLean was sending Bullock emails about now-candidate-for-governor Greg Gianforte speaking at Montana Techs commencement ceremony. She asked Bullock about groundwork for the 2016 election.

In May 2014, Bullock called McLean "LG Extraordinaire" in an email to an employee with the Helena school district. That November in an email about education issues, she called Bullock: the greatest Governor Ever in the Milk Way!

McLean wrote in October It seems conversations are key for us moving forward as a team.  This partnership is important and I am willing to do whatever it takes to make it work and to give you the support you need. Im counting on six years of it.

McLean and Bullock discussed staffing moves in November 2014, and it appeared he trusted her with information he hadn't shared with others yet.

On Nov. 18, 2014 at 2:38 a.m., she wrote: This is an exciting time and I can appreciate the angst that comes with it. Thinking about the changes the next few days  wondering if you might be too. As you move forward with each step let me know if I can help, if you need an ear or a BEER (we havent done that!)

Remember what I said about looking over your shoulder and who would be there  in a good way!

Robert Saldin, a political science professor at the University of Montana, said the emails reinforce the governor's explanation of how events unfolded.

"Maybe now we have a few more of the blanks filled in regarding the timing and whatnot," he said.

***

The first message produced in the request was sent two days before Bullock took office, with the governor reaching out to key staff members about a speech to the Montana Chamber of Commerce.

Early emails discuss lighting the Capitol dome at night, Otter Creek environmental impact statements and how the move to the governor's mansion went. The governor and Commissioner of Higher Education Clayton Christian email frequently using private addresses over the three years of requests.

In one message from 2015, Bullock forwarded an email sent by a constituent to his state account about Medicaid expansion to his personal account, then forwarded it to his policy adviser for health and families with the comment The haters gonna hate hate hate hate ., which is a lyric from a Taylor Swift song.

When unapproved genetically modified wheat was found in a Montana State University research facility in 2014, former Bullock Chief of Staff Kevin O'Brien sent an email about the issue from his personal account to the personal accounts of Bovingdon and Bullock, talking about when the incident was detected, who was involved, what would happen if a reporter were to call and that eight Japanese wheat companies were coming to Montana that month.

Some emails were were sent exclusively between personal addresses, while some had a mix of personal and state accounts, meaning the content of the emails would appear in public records requests. Some were forwarded from state email to personal accounts, then onto other private accounts. About three-quarters of the emails Bullock sent from his private account went only to private addresses of staff members. Additionally, public employees used private accounts to send more than 150 emails to Bullocks private account.

Some emails were were sent exclusively between personal addresses, while some had a mix of personal and state accounts, meaning the content of the emails would appear in public records requests. Some were forwarded from state email to personal accounts, then onto other private accounts.

Bovingdon said it's a "matter of logistics" and that it might be easier to reach the governor on his personal email account when he's traveling or on the weekend. Nearly two-thirds of the emails sent or received by Bullocks private accounts were sent between 8 a.m. and 6 p.m.

The governor uses a personal cellphone that has access to both his work and personal email accounts.

Huff said he had no idea about how secure the emails sent through private accounts are. He also said he hasn't heard about any policy changes as a result of the request.

It took five months to produce the emails. The governor voluntarily allowed access to his email account, said Andy Huff, Bullocks chief legal counsel, who said he'd never seen a similar request and called it unprecedented.

The request took so long, Huff said, because legal research had to be done to see if Montanas public records laws allowed for accessing the private email accounts of public officials. That question is still unanswered, Huff said, because Bullock volunteered access to his account.

Huff didnt review emails that had been deleted or where in the accounts trash, and he also didnt review a Gmail account sometimes used by the governor. Huff said the governor told him he doesnt use that account often.

Saldin said for the most part Montanans don't believe the use of personal email accounts by the governor and his staff is a big deal. "I just think to the average voter out there this is probably something that's not going to be perceived as a big deal," he said. "To the extent any of this is going to be of interest is the issue with McLean."
The Missoula Historic Preservation Commission on Thursday night decided to not vote on a demolition permit application submitted by a Bozeman developer, Andy Holloran of HomeBase Montana, who is proposing to deconstruct the Missoula Mercantile building and replace it with a $30-million hotel.

Eight members were present Thursday night, and four members voted yes to Delia Hagen's motion to delay the vote, while two members  Julia McCarthy-McLaverty and Scott Loken  voted no. Two other members, Solomon Martin and chairman Steve Adler, abstained.

The HPC has until June 7 to either approve or deny the permit. If it denies the permit, the developer can appeal to the city council. The HPC's next regularly scheduled meeting is June 2, but Adler indicated that the board will most likely move that meeting up a week.

At the beginning of the meeting, Hagen said that Andy Holloran's remarks to the board last week  when Hagen wasn't present  were condescending. Holloran had questioned why only four of the commission's 10 members showed up to that April 26 meeting.

"Every member of this commission has devoted countless hours of their time," she said. "They've been subjected to legal harassment and all sorts of slights, both major and minor, and it would be disrespectful to this process to rush us through this and not take all the time that we are granted."

The question before the board was whether it had any new information to discuss and therefore reopen public comment, or to close public comment.

Commission member Scott Loken, who has missed most of the meetings since the proposal came before the board because he was working out of state, repeatedly asked if the price for the building had changed. Loken, who made it clear that he advocates for historic preservation, wasn't sure if it was new information. He also said he believed the developers had come up with higher costs for saving the facade of the Merc because they used a Seattle firm for engineering estimates rather than a local firm.

"I don't want to be the old gray-hair obstructionist, but I think with some engineering changes you can get your hotel and we can keep our Merc," he said.

Jed Dennison, the broker for the Merc property, told the board the asking price for the building has been $4.5 million for the last six years and has not changed. Loken wanted to know whether other negotiations for a different price had been held between the building's owner and potential buyers, and Dennison said he was bound by confidentiality agreements.

Loken also seemed to be eager to ask the same questions the board has been debating for several months while he was absent. That's when Mike Haynes, the city's director of development services, stepped in.

"The fact that a commission member has missed the last six or seven meetings, we can't start over and ask the same questions over and over again," Haynes said.

He told Adler that the board could only reopen public comment if it was discussing new information that had been given to both the applicant and the other board members before the meeting.

"There's no point in going over the information that has been discussed at great lengths over a number of meetings," he said.

When the conversation turned to whether an email Loken received was new information, Haynes again interjected about the sender of the email.

"(The sender of the email) has given testimony before the commission a number of times and you missed those meetings," Haynes told Loken.

Loken then asked whether there are new market tax credits available in Missoula that could be used for preserving the building, an issue that has also been discussed during previous meetings.

"Right now there is no allocation available in Missoula for new market tax credits," said city historic preservation officer Leslie Schwab. "There is a local nonprofit called the Montana Community Development Corporation that is the recipient of those funds, and they have not been allocated anything. It's gone."

Schwab said the federal government would likely approve a new round of new market tax credits in October.

***

During the public comment period, several members of the public got up to speak up in opposition to demolishing the Mercantile.

Carl Davis, a retired Forest Service archeologist, told the commission that he doesn't expect anything less from the HPC than to deny the permit and then let the city council "take the fall" if it is eventually approved.

"The (Missoula Area Chamber of Commerce) voting to (support the construction of a new hotel at the site) is a little bit like asking the Taliban if they could use a few extra rocket launchers," Davis said. "In other words, it was a foregone conclusion. I've been around some world-class bullies. But we've saved hundreds of places."

Bjorn Johnson said he's lived here 21 years and he feels like HomeBase has a great plan.

"As far as I'm concerned I think we all ought to roll out the red carpet for them," Johnson said. "It's also private property. We can say that it's 'our building.' But you're not paying the bank note on it, you're not paying the taxes on it. So it's his building. And another thing, if there was an opportunity to save the building and put businesses in it, why haven't you done it? I'll tell you why, because it's not economically feasible."

Johnson was the only member of the public to speak in support of HomeBase's plan.

The commission did not ask any questions of Holloran, although Holloran offered at the beginning of the meeting to answer any that were asked.

When Hagen made her motion to delay voting on HomeBase's permit, she said there was a "lot of information" the members needed time to review.
Two women who prosecutors say took a circular saw and a box of metal piping from a nonprofit tool library made their initial appearances in Missoula County Justice Court on Thursday.

Hope Katrina Kickingwoman, 23, and Miryhia Leandra Shamseldin, 31, were booked into jail around 10 p.m. on May 3, each facing a charge of felony burglary.

According to court affidavits filed in their cases, an officer with the Missoula Police Department responded to a theft called in by an off-duty Montana Highway Patrol trooper shortly after 8:30 p.m. Tuesday. The trooper said he saw two women take some items from the nursery at the Missoula Urban Demonstration Project next to Westside Lanes and then run into the Juniper Trailer Court across the street.

The trooper said the items had been covered in blankets, and that the women had run into one of the mobile home when they saw him. The responding policeman made contact with a male resident of the residence, who said there were three women also inside. Two of them, including Shamseldin, came outside, while Kickingwoman allegedly had to be woken up.

According to the affidavit, when she came outside she said she was Katrina Hope, but a second officer was able to identify her actual name. Police reported that Kickingwoman appeared very nervous. The highway patrolman positively identified Kickingwoman and Shamseldin as the people he had seen taking items across the street.

Shamseldin allegedly showed law enforcement a circular saw and a box of copper pipes and valves, and said she had taken them from a storage bin at MUD. She also showed the officer an unopened box of laminate flooring near the trailer, which she said she took out of a dumpster in another area of town, according to the affidavit.

Kickingwoman allegedly said she had helped Shamseldin carry the box of pipes across the street, and was angry with her for involving Kickingwoman in the incident, saying I was stupid for having helped her.

During a search at the jail, a baggie of a crystalline substance was found on Kickingwoman, which tested a presumptive positive for methamphetamine, according to the affidavit. During her court appearance, Kickingwoman told Justice of the Peace Marie Andersen that the alleged drugs were fake.

Deputy County Attorney Brittany Santorno said Shamseldin has two prior felony burglary convictions from Washington, both from 2007.

Andersen set both Shamseldin and Kickingwomans bail at $5,000. If released, they are not to have contact with each other or return to the Missoula Urban Development Project, and Kickingwoman must be monitored for methamphetamine.
Over the last several weeks, Montana newspapers have featured countless articles and guest columns on Colstrip, its mines and climate change. Too often, these pieces have ignored the scientific communitys consensus on climate change or overlooked the difficulty of reinventing a coal-based town.

When it comes to the science of climate change, it no longer matters if you are a believer or a skeptic. Our economy is transitioning to clean energy. On April 22 (Earth Day), the U.S. and more than 155 other nations signed the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. This United Nations agreement aims to hold the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2.6 degrees C above pre-industrial levels  recognizing that this would significantly reduce the risks and impacts of climate change. With coal being the fossil fuel that puts out the most carbon dioxide per unit of energy, thus contributing most to temperature increase, mines like Colstrips face a bleak future.

So, can coal-dependent communities reinvent themselves? Somewhat. The best example is Centralia, Washington, which lost 550 coal jobs when its plant closed. Through support from the government and the mines owner, Centralia has been relatively effective in retraining its workforce. Importantly, however, Centralia was a far more economically diverse community than Colstrip. Thus far, the U.S. has not seen a town as economically undiverse as Colstrip successfully transition away from coal jobs.

Coal mines often shut down with little warning. On Dec. 28, 2014, Patriot Coal in Kentucky announced the elimination of 670 jobs effective Dec. 29, 2014. There is reason to believe a similar day might come soon in Colstrip. Of its four coal-fired generating units, Unit 1 and Unit 2 are both in over their 40th year of 30-year predicted life spans. If a sudden layoff occurs that leads Colstrip to become a ghost town, we will have failed our neighbors.

Do I know a solution for Colstrip? No. Is there a perfect solution that is ready for implementation tomorrow? I doubt it. What I do know is that by accepting either an unscientific or an unrealistic framing of this debate, we are simultaneously accepting a tremendous loss. Perhaps a better starting point is to ask, How can Colstrip achieve a reinvention that is economically fair and environmentally responsible?

I acknowledge, there is a reason we are not currently asking this question. A successful, sustainable reinvention of a coal town the size of Colstrip would be unprecedented. Choosing to aim for this never before accomplished economic and environmental win-win would surely entail the possibility of failure. But this is not Colstrip nor Montanas job alone.

In his 2016 State of the Union address, President Obama stated that part of our nations climate change responsibility involves investing especially in communities that rely on fossil fuels. I would like to know why our states leaders have not garnered the resources President Obama implied are Colstrips due. Other states are doing so. Through the Obama Administrations POWER Initiative, organizations in Kentucky have received $6 million to help revitalize economies in decline due to lost coal jobs. Kentucky is not stopping there. Rep. Hal Rogers (R-Ky.) has introduced the RECLAIM Act, which, if passed, would make $1 billion available for already-closed mines, primarily in Appalachia.

We should treat Colstrip as an innovation laboratory for how a coal town can reinvent itself. If we succeed, Montana will bear the distinction of solving one of climate changes thorniest problems  how does a community dependent on the energy sources of yesterday reinvent itself? By solving this problem, Colstrips story could become a blueprint for similar fossil fuel communities in Montana and across the world.
With the news of Conrad Burns passing late last week, Montanans lost a member of the family. From across the state, prayers were offered for Phyllis and the Burns family and fond memories were shared.

Conrad was a dedicated husband to Phyllis and father to Garrett and Keely, he was an auctioneer, a high school referee, an agriculture broadcaster and founder of Northern Ag Network, a county commissioner, a U.S. senator and always a U.S. Marine  he loved his family, he loved Montana and he loved his country. And on Thursday, Conrad passed away with his boots on  active and engaged with his family and community until the very end.

Conrad was a fierce fighter for Montana and rural America. He appreciated that folks in states like Montana dont always have a loud voice in Washington, D.C., and he always put MT before the R or the D as he served our state in the U.S. Senate. We see the impact of his commitment and leadership in telecommunications and his key role in authoring and passing legislation to improve broadband connectivity and connecting Montana to the rest of the world. As a U.S. senator, Conrad was truly a pioneer, he could see to the future for Montana and knew the importance of telecommunications for rural Montana.

When I worked in the software business at RightNow Technologies, headquartered in Bozeman, one of our early meetings was a global tele-meeting with our offices in Tokyo, Sydney, London and across the U.S. We held it at the Conrad Burns Telecommunications Center at Montana State University. We used the technology there to have a global meeting, and we can thank Conrad for his vision and leadership in making that happen.

This is very much a lasting legacy. We are currently seeing, through the growing high-tech economy in Montana, the fruit of Conrads labor paying off in Montana.

A Montanan to the core, Conrad was committed to agriculture and natural resources and understood like most Montanans that true wealth is created from the ground. He also knew we must work to conserve Montanas beauty and outdoors heritage for future generations.

Montanas longest-serving Republican senator, Conrad brought his great wit and his humility to Washington and was able to forge friendships and alliances across the aisle. The last time I saw Conrad was a month ago in Billings over a cup of coffee and, as was normal with Conrad, his cheery demeanor and thoughtful questions made for a very memorable conversation.

Montanans who didnt know Conrad personally can be grateful for his legacy of moving Montana forward through broadband connectivity and global communication, for his commitment to our men and women in uniform, and his great personal service to our state and our nation.
Oh, my! I read every review my books get, and on Amazon my latest, Endangered Edens, is doing great. Until recently it had a rating so high, it was almost unbelievable. Of the 40 reviews, 37 were 5-star, and none were lower than 4-star. Then some right-wingers found my book.

For some reason the right-wingers were shocked that a book called Endangered Edens would actually implicate the Republican Party for the damage they are doing to our planet. One reviewer called my book A political far left book masquerading as a travel book and said I was unable to differentiate fact from fiction. Another reviewer wrote, People can watch Fox News or be a Republican and still be concerned about our environment.

In response to the second reviewer: No, you cant be a Republican and still be concerned about the environment. Nationally, the Republican Party is the anti-environment party, as during the past 15 years they have voted against the environment more than 90 percent of the time. In Montana, Republican Sen. Steve Daines votes against the environment 99 percent of the time and Republican Congressman Ryan Zinke votes against the environment 97 percent of the time.

Being concerned about the environment and voting Republican is the equivalent of supporting womens rights while being a member of ISIS!

That Republican reviewers got their panties in a twist about my book was not surprising, as theyve done the same for Naomi Klein and other authors who have used their books to speak out for protecting our planet. And actually a few negative right-wing reviews are goodas they tell those on the left to buy now.

Nevertheless, I continue to be amazed by the sheer willful ignorance of Republicans when it comes to the environment. They are the only major political party remaining in the free world that thinks global warming is a hoax. And though I had hoped that the photographic evidence I presented in Endangered Edensof Republican and oil company-backed environmental damagemight sway a few right wing minds, that, apparently, was just wishful thinking.

The GOP has created an ingrained value system, were insatiable greed is more important than our childrens future. This was reinforced for me recently at a Barnes and Noble book signing in New York. A right-wing customer came up to me and argued that he lived on this planet and it was here to serve him. When I responded by saying, Other peopleand animalswill follow us, and we must think of them too, it didnt even register to the man as a valid point. All he cared about was himself.

Thats Republicanism in a nutshell. Appeals to logic, reality or morality are largely ineffective. The best thing anyone can do for our countryand our planetis to come out in force on Election Day and let the GOP know that such self-centeredness is not acceptable in the modern world.
Now that Muslim appreciation week is over, I have a few questions.

When can we expect a Muslim cleric to accept responsibility for three Syrian Christian families, just as the Pope has assumed responsibility for three Syrian families?

When will a Sunni mosque take in three Shiah families and support them?

When will a Shiah mosque take in three Sunni families and support them?

When will Muslims stop blowing up and killing their Muslims?

When will Muslim countries like Saudi Arabia and Pakistan actually go and fight and eradicate the Muslim extremists that are destroying their faith?

When will the religion of peace start displaying some peace?

Norm Meyers,

Florence
One of the fastest-growing areas in Montana, Missoula County has developed a lot in recent decades. And, our community is projected to continue to expand by leaps and bounds in the years ahead. To shepherd us into the future, we need leaders on the Board of Missoula County Commissioners who are visionary, practical and collaborative. We need leaders who will bridge the urban-rural dividea chasm that plagues local government and community discussions. We need Dave Strohmaier.

Land use decisions are among the most important ones commissioners make. One by one, these decisions shape the character of this place, and determine what our lives are like everyday. Our quality of life fuels community development, but left unchecked the very things we value could be lost. Dave Strohmaier knows we need to maintain a vibrant agriculture here, to keep the public in control of public lands, to provide affordable housing, to ensure civil rights, and to build a resilient economy in the face of climate change. He knows we dont need to sacrifice one goal for the others.

A sharp problem-solver, Dave Strohmaier will craft policies and processes that balance competing interests. He will dig deep to understand and address the complex challenges we face as a community. Strohmaier will build consensus around thorny topics, such as agricultural land protection, transportation and environmental review. When it comes to our land, air and water, he will work for the good of current and future generations.

Dave Strohmaiers outstanding track record reflects his strong conservation ethic, developed over years of working in the woods as a firefighter, and enjoying hunting and fishing with his family. Please join me in voting for Dave Strohmaier in the upcoming Democratic primary for Missoula County Commissioner.

Neva Hassanein,

Missoula
BILLINGS - A motorcyclist speeding in excess of 130 mph avoided arrest Thursday night after a high-speed pursuit from the Montana Highway Patrol.

It was the second time Thursday an MHP trooper encountered the male motorcyclist.

MHP Trooper Eli Wolfe spotted the man, described as wearing a green shirt, red gloves and a black helmet and riding a black motorcycle, sometime after 8 p.m. Thursday.

Wolfe began a pursuit after the motorcyclist passed him going in excess of 120 mph heading eastbound on I-90 near mile-marker 452. He ended the pursuit after the motorcyclist took Exit 455 onto Johnson Lane.

Wolfe spotted the motorcyclist again, parked at the Johnson Lane underpass. The motorcyclist gave Wolfe the middle finger before heading beneath the underpass, at which point Wolfe began pursuit again.

Heading eastbound on Johnson Lane, Wolfe said the motorcyclist made several illegal passes of vehicles, including a semi-truck, before guardrail-passing vehicles along Exit 452.

Wolfe lost sight of the motorcyclist as he was headed west on US Highway 87 North toward the Dick Johnson Bridge.

Earlier Thursday, MHP Trooper Michelle Frost saw a man matching the motorcyclists description about 6 p.m. as she approached the North 27th Street eastbound off-ramp. The motorcyclist gave Frost the middle finger.

"I knew what he was doing, taunting me, Frost said. I didnt have any other reason to stop him besides he was flipping me off.

Wolfe said the motorcycle didn't appear to have tags. Neither trooper was able to make out the model of the vehicle, but Frost said it might have been a sport bike.

Over the course of his pursuit, Wolfe said his vehicle reached 125 mph. He said though MHP wants motorists to obey the law, catching someone during a high speed chase isnt always a good thing. Catching them usually means that theyve crashed, Wolfe said. If someone crashes at that speed, they arent going to have a second chance.
WEST GLACIER  Every watercraft that enters Glacier National Park must be inspected before it touches water  even ones that have been through an inspection station outside the park.

The consequences of aquatic invasive species becoming established in park waters at the headwaters for the Columbia, Missouri and Hudson Bay watersheds are dire for aquatic ecosystems, recreational opportunities, and economic concerns downstream, says Brian McKeon, supervisor of the parks AIS Inspection Program.

Boats that pass a park inspection are issued a free permit to launch. Any boat that leaves the park and returns must be re-inspected, and receive a new permit, but inspected boats that remain inside the parks borders can be launched multiple times.

Glacier officials say the continued westward expansion of zebra and quagga mussels present greater threats to park waters each year.

***

The inspections can take up to 30 minutes, depending on the complexity of the boat, and boats must be clean, drained and thoroughly dry, including bilge areas and livewells, when inspected.

Boats with internal ballast tanks or other enclosed compartments that exchange water with the environment, and that cannot be readily cleaned, dried and accessed for inspection, are prohibited from launching in the park.

Starting on Memorial Day, inspections and permits will be available at park headquarters in West Glacier from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m., and between 8 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. at the St. Mary Visitor Center, Two Medicine Ranger Station and the Many Glacier Ranger Station.

Until then, the hours are from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., and boaters may have to wait longer in the off-season. Those who know the approximate time they will be arriving are encouraged to call 888-7800 and let park officials know.

Boaters who want to launch on Bowman Lake must obtain a permit at park headquarters, and then proceed directly to the lake after the inspection.

***

Hand-propelled watercraft such as canoes, kayaks, rowboats, rafts and catarafts that do not enter the park on trailers must get a free self-certification permit.

Those require owners to perform their own inspection. Self-certification permits can be downloaded prior to entering the park at nps.gov/glac/planyourvisit/boating.htm, or picked up at all park visitor centers, backcountry permit offices, park headquarters and maintained boat launches.

In addition to the mussels, aquatic invasive species can come in the form of plants such as Eurasian watermilfoil, and pathogens such as whirling disease. The species can hitch rides on boats, trailers, float tubes and even waders that have been exposed to them in waters where they have already established.

Once quagga or zebra mussels are introduced to a body of water, they rapidly multiply and blanket all hard surfaces, from shorelines to man-made infrastructure, and foul beaches and clog boat motors.

And once theyve established colonies, theyre virtually impossible to eliminate.
WEST GLACIER  A 26-year-old man died in Glacier National Park Wednesday after intentionally jumping from a 40-foot waterfall, according to park officials.

The incident occurred at Running Eagle Falls, located near the Two Medicine entrance station on the parks east side.

The victims name has not been released.

Glacier spokeswoman Margie Steigerwald said rangers were on the scene minutes after park dispatch received a report at approximately 3:45 p.m. that a person had jumped into a shallow pool below the falls.

The rangers performed CPR while several other agencies responded, including the ALERT helicopter from Kalispell Regional Medical Center, Glacier Emergency Services, Blackfeet Emergency Medical Services, Blackfeet Tribal Law Enforcement and the Glacier County Sheriffs Office.

The man was pronounced dead at the scene at about 4:30 p.m. by advanced life services medical personnel who responded, according to Steigerwald.

Initial investigation indicates the 26-year-old male jumped from the waterfall on his own accord and no suspicious circumstances were noted, Steigerwald said. The investigation is ongoing. No foul play is suspected.

***

Running Eagle Falls is also known as Trick Falls because, during spring runoff, it is two different waterfalls.

A sink hole located in the stream that runs between Two Medicine Lake and Lower Two Medicine Lake cant swallow up all the water when water levels are high. Some water in the stream continues past the sink hole to the 40-foot ledge, and the water that flows over the ledge mostly obscures a shorter, wider waterfall behind it where water that goes into the sink hole exits from an opening in the cliff face.

As water levels drop, both waterfalls can be clearly distinguished until the upper falls eventually dry up completely, and all water in the stream enters the sink hole and flows out of the opening in the cliff face.

Runnning Eagle Falls was named for Pitamakan, the only woman in the Blackfeet Indian tribe to lead war parties on successful raids, and the only one to be given a mans name  Running Eagle  after she experienced a four-day vision quest in the mountains above the waterfalls.

Steigerwald reminds Glacier visitors to use caution around all water features. The water is cold, fast and high in most places at this time of year, and rocks can be extremely slippery, she said.
A 3-in-1 Captive Webinar





Date: Thursday, May 12

Time: 2:00 p.m. ET

Duration: 60 minutes



Captives come in all shapes and sizes and cover almost everything ... almost. Even with the pending regulations for small insurance companies making the 831(b) tax election, small insurance companies continue to be a growth area for captives.

In this webinar, we will cover topics such as:

Cyber risk coverage

831(b) qualifications and requirements

Captive benefits

Regulations that have yet to be written

Speakers:













Jeffrey S. Kenneson

Senior Vice President, Business Development

R&Q Quest Captive Management LLC

Debbie Liebeskind

Senior Consultant, Health & Group Benefits

Willis Towers Watson

















Steve Kinion

Director of the Bureau of Captive

and Financial Insurance Products

Delaware Insurance Department







Joanne Wojcik

Moderator

Director of Conference Programming

Business Insurance







This webinar is part of the Business Insurance 2016 World Captive Forum, that was held Jan. 31-Feb. 3 in Boca Raton, Florida.
The Tree City USA award Butte received Friday is in keeping with the city's tree-planting tradition, said officials at the Arbor Day ceremony at Emma Park.

Efforts to "green" Butte have gone on for decades, said Charlie O'Leary, chairman of the Friends of the Urban Forest. Trees along Rowe Road, for example, were planted in 1928, he said.

But it took women's clubs to really get things started. They were the first in Butte at the turn of the century "to straighten these guys out," to understand the importance of urban trees in Butte, said John Tubbs, director of the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation.

O'Leary cited challenges to planting trees in a town with more than 100 years of mining activity. The high elevation  a mile above sea level  and poor soil can make it hard for trees to survive. Much of the soil is contaminated with mining waste.

To win the Tree City USA award, Butte had to meet certain criteria, including a tree ordinance in place, establishment of a tree board, spending $2 per person from the general fund, and celebrating Arbor Day. Butte has 4,400 trees planted in public spaces.

"It takes a lot of work to get this recognition," said Paula Short, forestry assistant bureau chief with the DNRC.

The award came with a $10,000 grant, which will go toward planting shrubs and seven trees  including a 6- to 7-foot blue spruce  around a neglected corner five blocks from the Berkeley Pit. The site, at Park and Arizona, will now be known as Victory Circle.

The Butte Developmental Disabilities Council will maintain the new green space  a responsibility that is expected to provide job skills to the disabled.

As part of Friday's celebration, dignitaries planted a mountain frost pear tree in Emma Park, Silver and Dakota. Extension agent Kellee Anderson said the tree came from a local nursery and that it is the hardiest pear tree species.

"It will wake up (with white flowers) for years and years and years to come," Anderson said.

Tubbs read the Arbor Day proclamation on behalf of Gov. Steve Bullock, who couldn't attend the event due to former U.S. Sen. Conrad Burns' funeral in Billings. Others who spoke included Leanne Marten, Forest Service Northern Region forester, and Chief Executive Matt Vincent.
HELENA  As far back as last May, Montana's former lieutenant governor believed she was being pushed off the 2016 ticket.

An email sent from the personal accounts of former Lt. Gov. Angela McLean to Gov. Steve Bullock on May 20, 2015, says Chief of Staff Tracy Stone-Manning told the lieutenant governor Bullock was considering a different running mate.

The message was made public Friday as the governor's office released three years' worth of emails sent from Bullock's personal account.

Similar requests for the emails were made by three news organizations  the Lee State Bureau, the Associated Press and Montana Television Network  in December. The organizations received the same set of documents.

It first appeared the governor and other staff members were using personal email accounts to conduct state business after a batch of emails released last December included messages McLean sent from her personal email account to Bullock's personal account.

Friday's release included about 350 pages of emails. For the most part the emails are typical of what elected and appointed officials and state employees send  the only thing exceptional about them is they were sent from private accounts and therefore not likely to show up in standard requests for public documents.

In one email, McLean wrote: "Tracy confirmed for me this morning that you are indeed considering a different running mate. In fact she indicated you have instructed her to be proactive with two paths: one that includes me and one that does not.

"I guess I am learning ambition is a funny thing and realizing the full consequences of standing up for what you believe is right. It really is the hardest thing."

A day later McLean wrote that she believed there was a "short list" of replacements developed by Bullock, Stone-Manning and others. She wrote to the governor, "make sure if you are visiting with folks they know that I will not be leaving the post until the term is up."

McLean quit in November to work for the Commissioner of Higher Education.

The emails give insight into how McLean thought the governor viewed her.

"Not sure how or if we will ever get there on the Governor valuing me, the job I do or even the Constitutional post of LG but I do know you and (Senior Adviser) Adam (Schafer) are working on it," McLean wrote in an email to Stone-Manning on July 2 at 4:15 a.m. She copied the governor.

She also wrote, "Finally, when you get a chance we should visit about how word has gotten and is continuing to get downtown about our office politics."

Later that morning, Bullock forwarded the message to deputy chief of staff Ali Bovingdon's personal email account, saying: "Wow." Bovingdon replied with the same: "Wow."

McLean had a meeting in September 2015 with the governor's budget director Dan Villa that she wrote "concerns me very much." She said the two talked about how Villa had "distanced himself," and she said she asked about how they could work together going forward. Villa said the two had different portfolios and that the two "did not cross."

"He further said, 'either you are on the team or you are not.'"

She said she was "deeply troubled by the message and tenor."

McLean forwarded an email to Bullock's personal account after the meeting, saying "Just FYI. I am deeply concerned about the environment in which I am expected to work."

Things seemed more amicable in 2014.

In April of that year, McLean was sending Bullock emails about now-candidate-for-governor Greg Gianforte speaking at Montana Tech's commencement ceremony. She asked Bullock about groundwork for the 2016 election.

In May 2014, Bullock called McLean "LG Extraordinaire" in an email to an employee with the Helena school district. That Novemeber in an email about education issues, she called Bullock "the greatest Governor Ever in the Milk Way!"

McLean wrote in October "It seems conversations are key for us moving forward as a team.  This partnership is important and I am willing to do whatever it takes to make it work and to give you the support you need. I'm counting on six years of it."

McLean and Bullock discussed staffing moves in November 2014, and it appeared he trusted her with information he hadn't shared with others yet.

On Nov. 18, 2014, at 2:38 a.m., she wrote: "This is an exciting time and I can appreciate the angst that comes with it. Thinking about the changes the next few days  wondering if you might be too. As you move forward with each step let me know if I can help, if you need an ear or a BEER (we haven't done that!)

"Remember what I said about looking over your shoulder and who would be there  in a good way!"

Robert Saldin, a political science professor at the University of Montana, said the emails reinforce the governor's explanation of how events unfolded.

"Maybe now we have a few more of the blanks filled in regarding the timing and whatnot," he said.

The first message produced in the request was sent two days before Bullock took office, with the governor reaching out to key staff about a speech to the Montana Chamber of Commerce.

Early emails discuss lighting the capitol dome at night, Otter Creek environmental impact statements, and how the move to the governor's mansion went. The governor and Commissioner of Higher Education Clayton Christian emailed frequently using private addresses over the three years of requests.

In one message from 2015, Bullock forwarded an email about Medicaid expansion sent by a constituent to his state account to his personal account then forwarded it to his policy adviser for health and families with the comment "The haters gonna hate hate hate hate .," which is a lyric from a Taylor Swift song.

When unapproved genetically modified wheat was found at a Montana State University research facility in 2014, former Bullock Chief of Staff Kevin O'Brien sent an email about the issue from his personal account to the personal accounts of Bovingdon and Bullock talking about when the incident was detected, who was involved, what would happen if a reporter were to call, and that eight Japanese wheat companies were coming to Montana that month.

Some emails were were sent exclusively between personal addresses while some had a mix of personal and state accounts, meaning the content of the emails would appear in public records requests. Some were forwarded from state email to personal accounts then onto other private accounts. About three-quarters of the emails Bullock sent from his private account went only to private addresses of staffers. Additionally, public employees used private accounts to send more than 150 emails to Bullock's private account.

Bovingdon said it's a "matter of logistics" and that it might be easier to reach the governor on his personal email account when he's traveling or on the weekend. Nearly two-thirds of the emails sent or received by Bullock's private accounts were sent between 8 a.m. and 6 p.m.

The governor uses a personal cellphone that has access to both his work and personal email accounts.

Huff said he had no idea about how secure the emails sent through private accounts are. He also said he hasn't heard about any policy changes as a result of the request.

It took five months to produce the emails. The governor voluntarily allowed access to his email account, said Andy Huff, Bullock's chief legal counsel, who said he'd never seen a similar request and called it unprecedented.

The request took so long, Huff said, because legal research had to be done to see if Montana's public records laws allowed for accessing the private email accounts of public officials. That question is still unanswered, Huff said, because Bullock volunteered access to his account.

Huff didn't review emails that had been deleted or were in the account's trash, and he also didn't review a Gmail account sometimes used by the governor. Huff said the governor told him he doesn't use that account often.

Saldin said for the most part Montanans don't believe the use of personal email accounts by the governor and his staff is a big deal. "I just think to the average voter out there this is probably something that's not going to be perceived as a big deal," he said. "To the extent any of this is going to be of interest is the issue with McLean."
All six candidates for Butte-Silver Bow chief executive are expected to attend a forum Thursday sponsored by The Montana Standard.

The forum starts 7 p.m. Thursday in the Copper Auditorium of the Mining City Center, 400 W. Park St., Butte.

The candidates will each get time to give statements and all will be asked a series of questions.

The candidates are Chief Executive Matt Vincent, who is seeking a second four-year term; Butte-Silver Bow Commissioners Jim Fisher, Cindy Perdue-Dolan and Dave Palmer; Public Works Laborer Ron Sarge Rowling; and Butte architect Mark Reavis.

The two who get the most votes during the June 7 primary will advance to the Nov. 8 general election.

Vincent won a narrow victory against two-term incumbent Paul Babb in the 2012 election for chief executive.
Arguments over traffic signals at an Uptown intersection led to one of the most spirited debates among Butte-Silver Bow commissioners this year  as well as a procedural cluster still unsettled the next day.

In the end, a tie vote broken by the chief executive was set aside after Commissioner Cindy Perdue-Dolan said she misunderstood what she was voting on.

Commissioners at first deadlocked 6-6 Wednesday night on a proposal by the Public Works Department to replace signals at Wyoming and Broadway streets with stop signs on Wyoming and nothing on Broadway. That would create a through street for traffic.

Public Works says traffic studies show no signals are warranted at the intersection. Their removal is part of an overall desire by Chief Executive Matt Vincent and department heads to remove unneeded signals to improve traffic flow and make Uptown a more pleasant place to visit.

With commissioners deadlocked, Vincent got a rare chance to break a tie, and he backed his road staff's recommendation to remove the signals, saying they were old and would soon need costly upgrades. He also noted there had been no accidents during a recent 90-day trial period in which flashing red lights above Wyoming Street directed vehicles to stop and flashing yellows on Broadway made it a through street.

But just after Vincent broke the tie, Perdue-Dolan said she mistakenly thought she was voting for a previous motion by Council Chairwoman Cindi Shaw to make the intersection a four-way stop with stop signs on each corner.

What she actually had done was vote for the Public Works plan, making it a 6-6 tie that Vincent broke. So she asked for the vote to be reconsidered, Vincent allowed it, and the plan this time only got five votes, so it was defeated.

Commissioners then took up Shaw's original motion to make the intersection a four-way stop, and it passed 9-3. Lawmakers often go along with a proposal when the original one they supported is defeated.

The only commissioners voting against Shaw's proposal in the end were Bud Walker, John Morgan and Dan Foley.

Shaw says the intersection is used heavily by pedestrians walking to and from the Thornton Building, the Finlen Hotel and its bar, the Acoma Lounge & Bar and condos above it, the Butte 4-C's social services organization, Hennessy Market, and a bus stop.

She also said the plan to only put stop signs at Wyoming would allow traffic to travel three blocks of Broadway without any signals or stop signs. That likely would lead many motorists to exceed the 25 mph speed limit, she said.

She is not an engineer or traffic expert, she said, but studies should only be one factor when considering signal changes.

The intersection is in Shaw's district, one she has represented for 10 years. She said she had talked to many people who own or frequent buildings and businesses near the Wyoming-Broadway intersection and their concerns should also carry weight.

"They are all very upset about not having at least a four-way stop at the corner," she said.

Public Works engineer Nick Sandford said a traffic study done in 2012 showed signals were not warranted and staff believed that only stop signs on Wyoming were needed.

There had been no accidents during the 90-day trial period with flashing lights, he said, and signals or too many stop signs could irk both drivers and pedestrians and make the intersection more dangerous.

Some commissioners backed him, saying the council should defer to experts when it comes to traffic matters, especially when supported by studies and data. But others sided with Shaw, saying the concerns of people in the area should carry equal or more weight.

Commissioner Morgan was on the losing side of the argument in the end, but he sent an email to county officials and commissioners after the meeting questioning procedures used to have the 6-6 vote  and hence Vincent's subsequent tie-breaking vote  reconsidered.

He said Thursday he was OK with the plan that was ultimately approved but said only those on the prevailing side of a vote can ask for a re-vote. A tie vote made it unclear if a second vote was even allowed, he said.

He also noted that although Perdue-Dolan was raising her hand after Vincent broke the tie vote  which she says she did to let Vincent know she had voted for the wrong motion  she should have spoken up and asked for that clarification before the first 6-6 tally was even taken.

"This is not her first time doing this, and she has been on the council for a year and a half," Morgan said.

Perdue-Dolan, who is among five people challenging Vincent for chief executive this year, said it was an honest mistake and one easy to make. That's because Shaw made her original motion, someone else made a later motion, and there was lots of discussion in between.

Usually in those cases, the person chairing the meeting  in this case Vincent  reminds commissioners precisely which motion they are voting on, she said.

"Usually there is clarification," she said.

The county attorney's office said late Thursday afternoon it was still reviewing procedural rules to determine how requests for reconsideration should be handled with tie votes.
Big Ags control of the non-refundable, federally chartered Research & Promotion programs  more commonly known as commodity checkoffs  reached new heights April 19 when the House Appropriations Committee approved the U.S. Department of Agricultures $21.3 billion 2017 budget.

Tucked 34 pages into the pending bills 217 pages of bureaucratic thatch was this thorn: Since commodity Research and Promotion boards USDA-appointed checkoff boards  "are not agencies of the federal government, nor funded with federal funds the Committee urges USDA to recognize that such boards are not subject to the provisions of 5 U.S.C. Section 552.

Section 552 of 5 U.S.C. is the Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, the rules of how each [federal] agency shall make available to the public information on how government works.

In short, the USDA funding bill, approved by a voice vote, will prevent any farmer, rancher or taxpayer from filing a Freedom of Information request on any aspect of how the 22 federally mandated checkoffs collect and spend more than $500 million a year.

This move to darkness arrived April 11, when, according to the Capital Press, a Salem, Oregon, weekly ag newspaper, 14 commodity organizations requested the change in FOIA policy on behalf of their related checkoff fee-funded boards in a letter to the Appropriations subcommittee that deals with USDA funding.

Not surprising, several of the groups that signed the letter have been reprimanded by USDA for illegal use of checkoff money. For example, a May 1993 column (just the second Farm and Food File I wrote) explained how a USDA audit of the relatively new, non-refundable soybean checkoff uncovered $405,219 of questioned costs by the checkoffs key contractor, the American Soybean Association.

How did a freelance journalist like me working alone in the middle of an Illinois cornfield get the audit results?

I filed a Freedom of Information Act request with USDAs Agricultural Marketing Service, the overlord of all federal checkoffs.

Later, a February 1997 column exposed how the National Pork Producers Council, the chief contractor for the pork checkoff, had hired a Washington, D.C., consulting firm to spy on activist groups whose philosophies, it explained, might have an effect on the pork industry.

Unbelievably, the activist groups NPPC was monitoring as part of an ongoing $100,000 checkoff-sponsored effort  illegal under checkoff law  included the National Farmers Union and Nebraskas Center for Rural Affairs.

Checkoff rule-bending continues. A partial, 2013 USDA audit of the beef checkoff showed that $216,000 had been spent on non-checkoff activities. One was an international airline ticket for an officials spouse.

In 2015, a FOIA request compelled the American Egg Board, the egg checkoff, to turn over documents that exposed how its leader illegally tried to organize a public relations campaign against a vegan competitor because  Im not kidding  the competitors mayonnaise recipe did not include eggs.

Last August, the U.S. District Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., ruled that a federal lawsuit filed by the Humane Society of the U.S. and others against the pork checkoff could go forward.

The suit, based on information obtained through a FOIA request, alleges the checkoffs $60 million purchase of a marketing slogan from the NPPC, its former contractor, now funds NPPC programs to influence legislation and government policy, all illegal under checkoff rules.

Given this checkered past, little wonder big commodity groups are now pushing Congress to declare federal checkoffs off-limits to the FOIA: nearly every time anyone looks, mistakes  often whoppers  are found.

But saying federal checkoffs arent federal doesnt mean theyre not. In fact, all were established by a federal body, Congress; all are managed by boards appointed by a federal official, the secretary of agriculture; and all are overseen by an agency within a federal department, USDA.

Moreover, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia declared checkoffs to be government speech in a 2005 beef checkoff case, a phrase most checkoffs cheered at the time.

For Big Ag now to push the House  without one public hearing  to declare otherwise is hypocritical, anti-democratic and shameful.

But we already know that, dont we? After all, with more than 20 years of checkoff violations to their credit, most commodity groups that serve as checkoff contractors have little credibility left.
MUSCATINE, Iowa  The first reading of an ordinance to amend city code to to allow for drivers traveling between six and 10 mph over the speed limit in school and construction zones to face fines.

Drivers currently clocked under 11 mph over the speed limit face no fines.

The revision is intended to remove any doubt as to whether the city ordinance allows mobile speed enforcement and also to include a speed category in the six -10 mph range to be used while conducting speed enforcement in school and construction zones, the memorandum from the Police Department stated.

The recommended revisions would include adding a $70 fine for traveling six through 10 mph over the speed limit, while previously there was no fine. Councilman Allen Harvey asked that the language be clarified to ensure this revision would only affect speeding in school and construction zones.

Code would also be revised to allow the Muscatine Police Department to use mobile units for speed enforcement as part of the Automated Traffic Enforcement System.

Two public hearings were set for 7 p.m., Thursday, May 19, at City Hall. One hearing will be for the 2016 Asphalt Overlay Project, for which the city solicits bids yearly, and the other for Amendment #2 for the 2016/16 city budget. The proposed amendment would increase total budgeted expenditures by $791,200, and transfers out by $144,900. Included in the amendments would be $211,000 requested for the replacement of the track loader at the Muscatine Transfer Station, which is proposed to be financed with an internal loan from other city funds.

Two No Parking signs at Sixth Street and Mulberry Avenue were approved for removal, which Councilman Harvey said will be positive for the block because of the parking spaces that will be lost due to the pizza business currently under construction at the intersection.

In other business:

Paul Oehrlein, Iowa District Optimist with Optimist International, said that Optimist plans to begin a new club in Muscatine, which he said will begin at the end of May, and any questions or concerns can be directed to Oehrlein at 563-320-1682.

Purchase orders for an automated garbage packer body and a truck chassis for refuse collection were approved.

Adam Thompson said the runway project at the airport is well underway, and is scheduled to be completed by August.

Resolutions declaring 303 and 307 Brook Street as surplus property and authorizing the disposal were tabled. Resolution Declaring 303 Brook Street as Surplus Property and Authorizing Its Disposal.
MUSCATINE, Iowa  Early voting is underway for the June 7 Iowa primary election, though interest has been relatively slow, likely due to the lack of many contested races.

Early voting began on April 28.

Muscatine County Auditor Leslie Soule said Friday there have been about 120 requests for absentee ballots to date.

"It's early yet," she said.

In Muscatine County, most interest would come on the Democratic side, where four candidates are vying to face off against U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley in November. They are Thomas Fiegen, Robert Hogg, Patty Judge and Bob Krause.

Other Democrat contests for Muscatine County voters are:

 Iowa District 91, where Jessica Brackett and Phil Wiese are seeking the nomination to oppose Republican incumbent Rep. Gary Carlson in November. He is unopposed in the primary.

 There is also a primary contest in the race for Muscatine County sheriff, where Michael Channon and David Lerch are seeking the Democratic nomination to run against incumbent Republican Sheriff C.J. Ryan in the fall.

Soule said Muscatine County residents who want to vote early can request an absentee ballot to be mailed to them, or can vote in person at the Auditor's Office Monday through Friday during normal business hours. A request for an absentee ballot can be downloaded from the county's website at www.co.muscatine.ia.us.

The Auditor's Office will be open on June 4, the Saturday before the primary election, from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. to accommodate early voters.

Similar procedures are in place in Louisa County, where the Auditor's Office also will be open on the Saturday before the primary election, from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., according to Katie Walker, third deputy auditor.

Walker said interest in early voting there has been light as well, with a lack of many contested races.

A request for an absentee ballot can be downloaded from that county's website at louisacountyiowa.org.

Sample ballots are available to view on the websites of both counties.
MUSCATINE, Iowa The Muscatine Fire Department and the Muscatine Art Center are combining collections to show the rich history of the Muscatine Fire Department.

The exhibit, to be on view beginning May 21, will celebrate 100 years of service from the department, which became a paid department in 1916. The volunteers who served before the department transitioned to fully paid staff will not be forgotten, as the exhibit begins in 1875, when the first fire company was formed in Muscatine.

Virginia Cooper, the registrar at the Muscatine Art Center and curator for the exhibit, said Muscatines collection of historical fire department pieces can rival others around the U.S., with the speaking trumpet trophies, photographs and other artifacts.

Between the two departments of the city, we have a really spectacular fire collection. There are fire collections held in many museums across the United States and some of them are held in fire museums, so were lucky to have the amount of things that we have. We have a little bit of everything, Cooper said.

The combination of pieces from the fire department, the art center, and private collections will be gathered for the first time, and Fire Chief Jerry Ewers said he hopes the exhibit will provide Muscatine citizens with a more in-depth look at the daily lives of firefighters.

They are caregivers, and they respond when theyre needed, 24/7-365. They they spend a third of their lives in the firehouse away from their families, and so it becomes their extended family. I think the profession itself is probably a one of a kind when you look at other professions. Sure theyre not in harms way 24 hours a day, but whenever that alarm goes off, they dont know what theyre going to go on, so I think its a neat profession. It's an honorable one, and so wed like to share that with folks, Ewers said.

Cooper said she hopes the exhibit will allow citizens of Muscatine to connect with the fire department's history.

From the history aspect, everything that he says that applies today also applied in 1875 for the volunteers. Most of them lived close to the house or some lived in the houses. It's changed over time as far as the pay goes, but I think that drive, the passion to be a firefighter, every little boy at some point says I want to be a fireman when I grow up. At some point that changes, but its still a strong passion that everyone can connect with, she said.

Ewers said one aspect of the exhibit that connected with him was to see the progression of firefighting and ambulances. He said he looks forward to seeing more progression during his career at the fire department.

To see all the changes that have occurred is really neat, he said.

Mike Hartman, assistant chief and fire marshal, said that he looks forward to the local connection the exhibit will provide.

What I really like about this exhibit is that it highlights Muscatine, and so many times when we think of history we dont always think of Muscatine. We think of East Coast or other things, but Muscatine is very unique we have a really rich and beautiful history here, he said.

Cooper and Hartman agreed that Muscatine is unique because rather than following a typical progression with firefighting equipment, they moved directly from using hand carts to being motorized, without ever using horses, because of P.M. Musser.

After the Roach and Musser warehouse burned and he watched the firemen struggle with such a devastating, horrible fire and he watched them physically dragging the hose carts by hand, thats what motivated him to buy Muscatine its first truck. To stand there and watch your building burn but to feel sympathy for the men trying to save it, thats pretty strong, Cooper said.

The exhibit will include the original city charter of Muscatine from the 1860s, types of ladders, uniforms, art, and many other items. Children will have the opportunity to try on various aspects of a firefighters gear as well, which Cooper said will provide them with the opportunity to see how heavy it is and feel connected to the exhibit.

Hartman said the exhibit allows the observer to see elements of what firefighters lives were like, and what they are like today.

What really speaks to me is not so much the things, but the people that used the things. That's what the fire department is to me  its a group of individuals; being able to see things like the hose cart, who was it that pulled the hose cart, what was their life like and what were their thoughts. They were there to help the community the same way we are today. Being able to look at the pieces and think back to how that connects us as part of that brotherhood, todays firefighters, to our predecessors, and the ones that kind of paved the way for us, thats really special to me, Hartman said.
MUSCATINE, Iowa  Five-year-old Chloe Hendriks of Muscatine proudly displayed a certificate recognizing her completion of kindergarten during a ceremony for homeschool students at First Baptist Church Friday morning.

Chloe and her sisters Hope, 9, and Kadynce, 10, are homeschooled by their parents, Ally and Nic Hendriks. Nic is the pastor of youth and praise at Mulford Evangelical Free Church in Muscatine.

"I like to read," said the little girl in a red dress with a white lace yoke. She especially enjoys books by Dr. Seuss and the Berenstain Bears.

Friday's program sponsored by the Muscatine Homeschool Assistance Program featured a performance by a band made up of homeschooled students, a recognition ceremony and brunch.

"We homeschool so that we can give the best education that we can for them," Chloe's mother said, "And we teach them about the word of God at the same time. It allows us to have more family time and have more flexibility."

Gail Chesling is the homeschool coordinator for the Muscatine Community School District.

"It is a program that the school district offers. It offers enrichment classes and support to homeschool families in our community," Chesling said.

"We have a library that the families can use. We have the classes that we offer. First Baptist (Church) has been gracious to let us use the building this year while the district got a place ready for us."

The MHAP will have space at the board office on Mulberry Avenue in the future.

Friday's program included recognition of students completing eighth grade and going onto the high school as well as other students graduating and entering college.

"We just wanted to recognize the kids and their accomplishments," Chesling said. "We really have some wonderful kids that have done extraordinary things. We have kids that have been great in volunteering in their community and working on really awesome programs. They just have a desire to learn and it's been great because their parents have been there to support them."
ATALISSA, Iowa  Authorities are continuing their investigation into a train collision Thursday night at a crossing in Atalissa which sent a Muscatine man to the hospital.

According to the Muscatine County Sheriff's Department, Matthew J. Carlson, 40, was driving a John Deere fertilizer sprayer and crossed the railroad intersection where he was struck by an eastbound Iowa Interstate Railroad train. The collision occurred at the Oak Street crossing.

Highway 6 was blocked to traffic until midnight, according to authorities.

The accident was reported about 7:20 p.m. Thursday. The Iowa Interstate train had two engines with 107 cars.

Muscatine County Sheriff C.J. Ryan said the crossing was equipped with red warning lights but no crossing arms.

Carlson was taken by AirCare to an Iowa City hospital for treatment. No word on his condition was available Friday.

Assisting at the scene were Atalissa Fire Department, West Liberty Fire Department, West Liberty Police Department, Atalissa Police Department, Iowa Department of Transportation and the Muscatine County Sheriff's Patrol.
MUSCATINE, Iowa  There are things parents can do to help prevent summer learning loss, according to Iowa State Extension Service specialists.

While some children are able to maintain school learning during the summer, time away from the classroom can have a negative impact on childrens academic progress, says Barb Dunn Swanson, Iowa State Universtity Extension and Outreach Family Life Specialist.

Learning loss is most common in math, language and spelling. Some children can take weeks or even months to recover from summer learning loss when they return to school in the fall, says Dunn Swanson.

Intelligence does not influence childrens loss of already learned information, Dunn Swanson says. Learning loss is natural. Parents, however, can limit summer learning loss.

Tips to prevent summer learning loss.

Encourage your children to read for fun. Sign up for a library summer reading program.

Read to and with your children. Show by example that reading is important.

Involve children in summer programs that combine academic activities, outdoor recreation, crafts, and field trips. Help children apply math skills to daily life. Show them how to compare grocery prices, calculate gas mileage, or follow a recipe.

ISU Extension and Outreach Muscatine County will be offereing summer STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering & Match) day camps in Muscatine, West Liberty and Wilton this summer. Click here to find out more.

Learn more tips to prevent summer learning loss and some fun summer activities in the May issue of the Dare to Excel newsletter.
MUSCATINE, Iowa  Muscatine High School students spent the day Friday teaching local preschool and kindergarten students about agriculture and the Muscatine Agricultural Learning Center.

Kiddie Barnyard, an event that is held annually, offered everything from dogs on agility courses to sheep-shearing and pony rides. High school students taught the preschoolers and kindergarteners about each animal as they moved to various stations inside and outside the learning center.

Adam Crews, who teaches at MHS, said that the high school students who run the event benefit as well.

The school district brings kids over; all the high school ag students organize the stations, and line up all the animals, so its a good project for the high school kids, Crews said.

Alyssa Scholz, a junior at MHS and one of the leaders of the student groups, said she hopes the program will expose the world of agriculture to children who may not have had that opportunity.

Ag and all these animals and all this stuff is basically the backbone of our country, so we need to introduce the city kids to animals, livestock and crops at a young age so we can start an interest in this so we can feed our country and our world, Scholz said.

Kole Beik took the students for hay rides, where they learned about bees.

"We go out around the sweet corn field and then we stop and talk to the kids about beekeeping, so they get to learn all about the honey bees and pollination, they get to see that the bees aren't that scary. It's fun watching the kids," Beik said.

Sholz said she also enjoyed seeing the reactions from young students as she led them to different stations.

"Talking with the kids, seeing them have an interest in animals, lots of them haven't seen sheep, cattle or pigs before, so just getting to be the ones who introduce them to it to make sure it's a good first impression, and just seeing them interact with all these animals is a pretty cool experience for me," she said.

Eli Joslyn, a graduate of Muscatine High School, participated in the event when he was in kindergarten and when he was attending MHS, and said he was happy to return and pass on the knowledge that he gained.

"One of our ag instructors here, when I was about 14 years old, taught me how to shear sheep, and I started my own business after that and he's been a large contributor to where I am today," Joslyn said.

He said that he returned to the event to help continue a program that had a large effect on him while growing up in Muscatine.

"I just came to help out the program, and I like seeing the new kids and talking to everybody, seeing how the program's doing," Joslyn said.

Jazzlyn Curtis, a preschooler at Jefferson Elementary, said the pony rides were her favorite.

"They're cute. Horses are my favorite," she said.

Christian Byers, also a preschool student, agreed, and said Kiddie Barnyard was the first time he had a chance to ride a horse.

"I really like them, and the sheep, the sheep are calm," he said.

Preschooler Alexa Kautz said that she preferred meeting the cows.

"Because they have milk," she said.

Ana Lake-Rosales said that she and her 3-year-old daughter Aurora love the Kiddie Barnyard program.

"I came to Kiddie Barnyard when I was a kid and I helped out for two years when I was in high school. It's a really good program, I love it, it's good for kids of all ages," she said.
URBANDALE, Iowa  Living History Farms opensa traveling exhibit "Apron Strings: Ties to the Past" explores the changing role of domesticity and women's work over time.

Living History Farms is located at 11121 Hickman Road, Urbandale.

Although taken for granted by many social and art historians, the apron is the subject of a fascinating reevaluation in this exhibition. Apron Strings: Ties to the Past, opening on June 16 at Living History Farms, features fifty-one vintage and contemporary examples that review the apron's role as an emotionally charged vehicle for expression with a rich and varied craft history that is still viable today.

Using aprons dating from the late 1930s through the present, the exhibition chronicles changing attitudes toward women and domestic work. It also surveys the wide range of design and craft techniques apron-makers have used to express themselves, while still working within creative venues traditionally available to women. Today, artists continue using aprons to explore cultural myths and realities as well as their individual experiences with American domesticity.

Apron Strings is organized into several thematic groups addressing design, historical context, use, and cultural message. The exhibition serves as an excellent tool to bring together diverse parts of the community through shared experiences with, and memories of, a common, everyday textile.

The traveling exhibit is included with regular admission to Living History Farms and will remain open until August 11, 2016. Visit www.LHF.org/ApronStrings for more details.

Apron Strings: Ties to the Past reevaluates the apron's varying roles over time in an artistic and cultural manner. The exhibition is toured by ExhibitsUSA, a national program of Mid-America Arts Alliance. ExhibitsUSA sends more than 25 exhibitions on tour to more than 100 small- and mid-sized communities every year. More information is available at www.maaa.org and www.eusa.org.
MUSCATINE, Iowa  Local pastors, elected officials, and residents gathered outside of City Hall Thursday to pray over topics in Muscatine and the nation in observance of the National Day of Prayer.

Around 20 residents attended, and they prayed together for guidance in government, education, media and other topics.

Mark Lofgren said that through his experiences in government, he found prayer to be an important influence.

"There's more than just voting; you can pray for your elected representatives, too, and there's a lot of praying that happens in Des Moines at the Iowa Capitol," Lofgren said.

Pastor Ray Oehme of Vineyard Church told the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, and said that although he would in no way compare Muscatine to those cities, it was an example of the influence prayer can have.

"I am referencing the ability of a few people to influence the hand of God, and it's within the will and mind of God today to withhold judgment on our nation, states and cities," he said.

Mayor Diana Broderson prayed for Muscatine and for all levels of government.

"Please give us unity, one heart. Help us to do the things you would have us to do, help us to be kind and loving and forgiving to one another, and help this our great city, Muscatine, to do your will," she said.

Pastor Jamie Oehme, Pastor Ty Thomas, Judy Noble, Pat Bellinger, Tim Sulzberger, and Larry Ribbink also said prayers for education, churches, family, media, the military, and business.

"I think we are at our best as citizens when we are most Christ and God-filled," Thomas said.

For more information about National Day of Prayer, visit www.nationaldayofprayer.org.
MUSCATINE, Iowa  Muscatine County Soil and Water Conservation District, along with Jean Scott, would like to congratulate Andrew Reynolds for being selected as the 2016 Diane Scott Memorial $1,000 Scholarship recipient. The scholarship was established in memory of Diane Scott, who had a love for nature and enjoyed the outdoors.

Reynolds was selected from a number of applicants in the Muscatine County area. He plans on attending Muscatine Community College and majoring in agricultural business.

The requirements for the applicants were: Applicant must live in Muscatine County; emphasis will be given to students who are pursuing natural resource or agriculture careers; and applicant will be expected to volunteer 30 hours at SWCD office to be eligible for receiving scholarship funding.
Les emplois a Rennes sont abondants et varies. Il y a quelque chose pour tout le monde. Que vous soyez a la recherche dun emploi []
Les blattes ou cafards (Blatta orientalis) sont des insectes qui appartiennent a la famille des Blattoptera. Ils se caracterisent par leur forme allongee, leurs ailes []
Who is the biggest Internet service provider in South Africa?

That was the question former ICASA councillor and regulatory advisor William Stucke asked at a recent telecoms event.

Telkom Internet or MWEB may seem like the top contenders, but Stucke said the clear leader is Vodacom.

With 19.1 million active data customers at the end of December 2015, Vodacom data clients dwarf Telkoms ADSL client base of just over 1 million.

Vodacom doesnt seem to have realised that it is an Internet service provider (ISP), though, said Stucke, noting that the mobile carrier is not a member of the Internet Service Providers Association of South Africa.

The lack of understanding that it, and other mobile operators, are ISPs means that operators are speaking dishonestly about net neutrality matters  such as the regulation of over-the-top services like WhatsApp.

Everyone pays for data

As an ISP, subscribers pay Vodacom for the data they use to access WhatsApp. In fact, each party in a WhatsApp chat must pay their own ISP for the data of every message they receive and send.

WhatsApp, in turn, pays an ISP for the bandwidth it needs to transmit messages and calls between its users.

Clients pay their ISPs for transmitting and receiving data over their network. If the sender and recipient are both on the same ISP, then it is effectively getting paid twice for sending the same data.

Stucke said any suggestion that WhatsApp has been getting a free ride on the infrastructure investment of mobile operators is therefore unfounded.

People pay for the data they use for WhatsApp, and as the largest Internet service providers in the country, Vodacom and MTN would have received a sizeable chunk of that data revenue.

This is demonstrated in the infographic below.

More on WhatsApp

WhatsApp regulation in SA  what Vodacom and MTN really want

WhatsApp doesnt owe you a damn thing, Vodacom and MTN

Why MTN hates WhatsApp

WhatsApp must be investigated  MTN
The Communication Workers Union (CWU) has agreed to suspend its two-day strike action against the South African Post Office (Sapo).

CWU launched a nationwide strike on Thursday to demand higher annual pay increases for workers and the conversion of casual Sapo workers to permanent employees.

But the strike has now come an abrupt end after Sapo said that less than 1% of its approximately 22 000 employees were involved in this latest industrial action.

In a joint statement from Sapo and the CWU on Friday, the two parties said they have agreed on a process to resolve the outstanding labour issues.

Sapo chief executive officer Mark Barnes told Fin24 on Friday that after hours of consultation, CWU has agreed to suspend its industrial action for a month.

The suspended strike action comes as the Post Office  which recorded a R1.5bn loss for 2015  awaits key capital injections from banks to help with its turnaround.

Its great news and to be honest its a victory for common sense. Its a victory for all of the people of the Post Office, Barnes told Fin24 by phone.

I think its evidence of a change of approach and a change of the relationship between management and labour or business and labour at large.

Its a move away from conflict economic resolution to sitting around a table and finding an answer, Barnes said.

Last week, Barnes told Fin24 that Sapo first needs funding to address the concerns of its employees.

Barnes further told Fin24 last week that Sapo has so far raised R1.8bn from the likes of banks, while government earlier this year gave the company a R650m cash injection.

Sapo is also about six weeks away from receiving another key captial injection, Barnes told Fin24 last week. Sapo has set a target of raising R2.7bn in capital.CWU president Clyde Mervin could not be reached for comment at the time of writing.

Fin24

More on the Post Office

SA Post Office will address employee concerns

SA Post Office workers gatvol of fixing own bicycles, no toilet paper
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Citing declining numbers of patients and the increased use of specialty pediatric hospitals, Queen of the Valley Medical Center is considering ending inpatient pediatric care services.

That would mean that Napa County children who need to be hospitalized would most likely be sent to Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital. Patients could also be sent to childrens hospitals in Oakland, Davis or elsewhere.

We are reviewing the scope of inpatient pediatric care and the validity of sustaining or suspending this service, said Queen CEO Walt Mickens in an email to staff. There has been a steady decline in volume over the past several years.

Michens cited a variety of factors, including industry trends toward increased outpatient pediatric services, the use of specialty pediatric hospitals that are better equipped and the demographic make-up of Napa, which is generally older and has fewer births than surrounding towns.

Any determination regarding this service will occur after we have all the information we need and have received feedback from all stakeholders, he added. We also are not ready to make any determination regarding inpatient pediatric care until after we finalize our partnership with Providence Health & Services.

The Queens parent company, St. Joseph Health System, has been in talks to merge with the larger Providence Health.

The possible change isnt a surprise to Dr. Dan Rauch, a New York physician who serves on the American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Hospital Care.

This is a national trend, said Rauch. Its consistent with whats going on all over the country. There is a shift in pediatric hospitalizations from community hospitals to childrens hospitals.

Rauch explained that hospital pediatric units are usually a loss leader. The amount the government or insurers pay for that care has declined, leaving the hospital to cover the difference. Also, a pediatric patient theoretically takes a bed from an adult patient, who has a better reimbursement rate.

However, pediatric units do help hospitals to establish connections with families. If a parent is happy with their childs care, they are more likely to bring other family members to that hospital.

Mickens announced the plan to review pediatric inpatient admissions on April 29, just days after another email was sent to employees that said the Queen had already decided to stop offering inpatient pediatric care.

On April 25, Armilla Henry, director of maternal child health at the Queen, wrote that inpatient care would stop at the end of the 2016 fiscal year. According to Henry, in 2013 the Queen admitted 130 pediatric patients. In 2014, the number dropped to 84 and in 2015 it dropped again to 54.

To compare, in 2015 the Queens emergency department had more than 2,174 pediatric outpatient visits.

Henry cited challenges with securing a stable workforce as another issue for the reported change. Henry wrote that four employees would be affected.

Reached by phone on Wednesday, Henry declined to comment.

Henrys announcement was premature and a miscommunication, said Mickens.

Mickens was careful to note that the hospital has no plans to review or change the scope of care regarding outpatient pediatric care or pediatric emergency services.

Queen spokeswoman Vanessa deGier said that the Queen hasnt had a dedicated inpatient pediatric unit for approximately eight years. Young patients that are admitted are cared for in regular hospital rooms in a unit appropriate for their required level of care.

We are not a pediatric specialty hospital. We do not have the capabilities to provide this level of care for children, said deGier. Its most appropriate for a hospital that specializes in pediatrics and that has a much larger volume than a community hospital such as Queen. Critically ill children have always been stabilized in our ER and transferred to a hospital with a higher level of critical care and more appropriate level of care for children, such as UCSF Benioff Childrens Hospital.

According to deGier, Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital, a sister St. Joseph facility, operates an 8-bed dedicated unit with 24-hour pediatric hospitalists and intensivists.

If the Queen only admitted 54 pediatric inpatients in 2015, sending pediatric inpatients to other hospital makes sense, said Rauch. As frustrating as that is, you have to accept the reality, he said.

Napa Countys other general hospital, St. Helena Hospital, does not have an inpatient pediatric unit, said Joshua Cowan, hospital spokesman.

Our community is not of sufficient size to support advanced pediatric programs, he said. The best care for children is provided when we provide appropriate outpatient services locally and, in serious cases, transfer pediatric patients to tertiary centers, which have the specialists and the equipment to support the unique needs of children.

Kaiser Permanente pediatric patients are usually admitted to the Kaiser hospital in Vallejo or other Kaiser hospitals in the Bay Area.

If the Queen does decide to eliminate such inpatient care, that doesnt mean some pediatric patients wouldnt stay overnight at the Queen, said deGier. For example, an older youth recovering from a tonsillectomy or mild asthma or perhaps a leg fracture, might become an inpatient.

It depends on the level of care the child requires, she said.

DeGier said that Bay Area childrens hospitals accepting Napa pediatric inpatients offer quite a few resources for parents, including special houses where parents can stay free of charge, transportation and other benefits.

Depending on the situation, patients would be transported from the Queen by ambulance or helicopter.
Richard and Carolyn Czapleski plan to build a small winery so they can produce their Canard Vineyard wines on the 25-acre property theyve farmed near Calistoga since 1983.

The heart and soul of Napa Valley is small farmers, Richard Czapleski told the Napa County Planning Commission on Wednesday.

They won approval to build a 10,000-gallons-a-year winery at 1016 Dunaweal Lane with up to 70 visitors a week and eight marketing events with up to 30 guests apiece. The approval came by a 2-1 vote, with two commissioners absent.

In many ways, this is a model application, Commissioner Heather Phillips said.

But she saw a flaw. The proposal includes taking the lower story of a two-story building with a den and garage built in 2013 and converting it into an office, barrel storage area, tasting area and restroom.

Napa County has a policy to discourage people from building homes and barns with the purpose of turning them into wineries. It says the county does not generally support such conversions if the building has been built or substantially modified within five to seven years.

Phillips expressed concern that approving this project would set a precedent. She wondered what legal argument the county could then make to turn down someone who came in tomorrow seeking conversion of a one-year-old building.

This application seems to me at cross-policy, with no truly compelling reason to justify an overruling, Phillips said.

While that proposed conversion prompted a no vote from Phillips for the project, it didnt bother Commissioners Terry Scott and Michael Basayne.

The county needs to keep focused on the ball, Scott said. The ball is encouraging more small wineries.

Otherwise, were going to end up with a totally corporate or venture capitalist environment, which is the owners of most large wineries we have in the valley now, Scott said.

Basayne said the county shouldnt be so hung up on preventing a conversion for this type of small winery that he agreed is the heart and soul of Napa Valley.

I feel this is, indeed, a very modest project  were not looking at something that is a mega event-center, Basayne said.

A county staff report recommended approval. While noting the building conversion issue, it said most of the wine production will take place elsewhere on the property on new covered pads.

St. Helena resident Geoff Ellsworth said the commission for the present time should turn down proposals for all new wineries on agricultural land. He called on the county to study the cumulative impacts new wineries and winery expansions are having on traffic, water, noise and other factors.

Gary Margadant of Vision 2050 wanted assurance that the Czapleskis will follow the conditions of approval. He pointed to a recently resolved county code compliance case dating to 2012 in which the county said the Czapleskis had held wine tastings and wine events on their property without a permit.

A judgement stipulation endorsed April 8 in Napa County Superior Court calls for the Czapleskis to pay a $56,000 fine, of which $20,000 is stayed unless they have another violation.

They made some errors in the past which they have admitted and have paid for it, Scott said. And they have resolved to do the right thing and go through the process to obtain a use permit for a small winery.

Canard Vineyard makes and stores its wine at another location. A minimum of 90 percent of the grapes for their new winery will come from their property, a county report said.

Commissioners Anne Cottrell and Jeri Gill werent at the meeting.
For the first time in its 27-year history, Napa Valley Wine Train is planning a service that will deposit tourists at a string of Upvalley wineries for tours and tastings.

Participants say this elegant service, called Quattro Vino, is a way for wineries to host visitors without further congesting Highway 29.

Wine Trains new owners, Noble House Hotels & Resorts and partner Brooks Street, said the new excursion train will stop at four Napa Valley wineries.

For $249 per person, riders will board a new one-car train  a second car will be added shortly  for a six-hour, 36-mile tour up and down the valley.

The train will stop at the Robert Mondavi, Charles Krug, Merryvale and V. Sattui wineries in Oakville and St. Helena where guests will enjoy tours and tastings. On board theyll choose from a small bites menu. The new excursion is set to launch on June 1.

We are incredibly excited to launch the Quattro Vino Tour as a new Napa Valley Wine Train offering, said Pat Colee, chairman and founder of Noble House.

Before Noble House and partners bought the train, the only winery tours offered were mostly one-way train excursions and the winery was reached via bus or shuttle. Those tours will continue. The traditional Wine Train lunch and dinner trains will continue as well.

However, passengers taking the Quattro Vino tours will simply hop off the train and walk to the wineries, each located adjacent to the tracks.

Tom Davies, president at V. Sattui, said he was really excited to participate after being approached about the Quattro Vino tour.

We need to find ways to get visitors out of their cars, especially with the gridlock weve been having lately and the construction on Highway 29, Davies said.

Anything we can do to get guests out of their cars and visit the winery is a win for the community, he said.

Since purchasing the Napa Valley Wine Train in September 2015, Noble House has been making small enhancements to the Wine Train, including buying the first 36-seat 1920s Pullman rail car that will be the home of Quattro Vino. A second 1920s Pullman open car will also be added to the Quattro Vino tour.

The new Pullmans and current Wine Train cars are undergoing an interior makeover to feature a hip and contemporary vibe while preserving the classic elegance and charm of the cars, Colee said.

The cars will have a lot of character, reminiscent of the eras in which they were built, said Colee.

There will only be one Quattro Vino train per day, said Colee. Using sections of parallel tracks along the route, there is room for a train to pull over so another can pass, he said.

We dont want to make it too commercial. We want it to be a very special experience, said Colee. There are only four stops because there has to be enough time for riders to get off the train, tour and taste at each winery and then get back on in six hours, he noted.

The idea of tourists getting on and off the train was once a hot button issue for locals. When the Wine Train opened for business in 1989, some residents protested any stops at all, saying the train would disgorge hordes of people at one time and ruin the quality of life for locals.

Colee said he hasnt heard about any such controversy today.

I think that issue is over with, and weve had nothing but enthusiasm about what we are planning, said Colee.

The train is regulated by the Public Utilities Commission, and the new ownership has received permission to stop on the tracks, said Jake Donoghue, chief executive officer of Noble House Hotels & Resorts.

No other train uses the tracks, which are owned by Noble House and partner Brooks Street.

As for other changes planned for the Wine Train, Colee said we have a lot of ideas, including doing something special to the station itself, but nothing they could discuss yet.

The railroad line was originally built and operated by Samuel Brannan in 1864 as a tourist railroad to take visiting San Franciscans as they arrived by ferry in south Napa to Calistoga. In the 1980s, it was purchased by Vince DeDomenico, the man behind the Rice-a-Roni brand of products, the San Francisco treat made famous by television ads featuring San Francisco cable cars and a memorable jingle.

Before the purchase by Noble House and partners in late 2015, the Wine Train was embroiled in a lawsuit when a group of mostly black women was asked to leave the train for reportedly being too boisterous. They filed a lawsuit that was recently settled.
Theres nothing like a nice fantasy to keep a person feeling warm at night, and a fantasy is what comforts Vermonts Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders this month, as he insists it will make a big difference if he somehow ekes out a June 7 California primary win over former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

But reality is that California win or not, Sanders has no chance for the Democratic presidential nomination, chiefly because of a party rule demanding proportional distribution of any states delegates to its nominating convention. Sanders says hes good at math. If so he knows that even though he narrowly won Indiana and even if he takes 60 percent of the California vote (highly unlikely, say all the polls), Clintons effort here will still net more than the 150-odd delegates she still needs to clinch the nomination.

This doesnt even include delegates shell pick up in places like New Jersey, Oregon and West Virginia, which vote the same day or earlier.

For a while, it appeared there would be meaningful, fiery action here on the Republican side, where California has a mere 172 convention delegates, compared with the 546 going to the Democratic gathering. It only takes 1,237 GOP delegates to get nominated, while a Democrat needs 2,383. This could have made California far more important to the GOP.

But then came Indiana and a clear Donald Trump win that all but clinched the GOP nomination for him and forced his last remaining serious rival, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, to drop out.

There will still be plenty of rallies and loud talk in California, but not nearly as much emotion or spending as the state would have seen if Indiana had gone for Cruz and given him all 57 of its Republican delegates.

In that case, it wouldnt matter that no one in either party seriously believes any Republican can win this states 55 electoral votes in November. Thats about one-fifth what it takes to get elected, just from one state, something that long gave a political foundation to Ronald Reagan, who never lost an election in California  before it became solidly Democratic.

Another result of the Cruz dropout is that Reagan can now stop spinning in his hilltop grave above Simi Valley where he may somehow have heard one Republican after another violate his 11th Commandment: Thou shalt not speak ill of another Republican.

Intramural insults became major sport among Republicans as they began some preliminary stumping in the Golden State before Cruz departed. There was former House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio opining at Stanford University that Cruz is Lucifer in the flesh, and a miserable son of a bitch. That amplified a bit on Trumps seemingly constant hurling of the epithet lyin Ted at Cruz and his remark that Cruz is a nasty guy and people dont like him.

Cruz, son of a pastor, had jabbed back more subtly, claiming I have never insulted Donald personally. But he became more direct on his campaigns last day, calling Trump a serial philanderer and a pathological liar and more, all during just one rant.

So much for the 11th Commandment.

This all set up the most entertaining state convention in many years for beleaguered California Republicans, who have won no statewide elections in 10 years and finally got to see their first full-fledged cattle call in more than 20 years, as all national candidates remaining at the time made the scene.

Cruz somehow hoped naming failed California Senate candidate Carly Fiorina (a million-vote loser to Barbara Boxer in 2010) as his vice presidential choice could help him enough here to force a multi-ballot national convention. Anyone who remembers Fiorinas hapless campaign had to chuckle over that.

The bottom line: Californias primary is no longer even symbolically important, not even for Democrats who still say otherwise. Its even less vital for the GOP.

Which means that the political tail has wagged the dog once again, the decisive state this time being Indiana, with less than one-third the political convention delegates California has.

It also means its high time for state legislators to make a permanent date change and give up on their 44-year-old fantasy that a June presidential primary will ever again mean much.
It seems that we are always hearing about small wineries being bought by larger wineries or companies. Whether it be the financial challenges to run a small business or the American dream to make a profit, many family wineries cease to be family-owned when they are acquired.

Rarely do we hear the converse but Jamieson Ranch is a story of locals taking back the winery from a private equity firm and putting it back in family hands.

Located at the southernmost point in Napa Valley, Jamieson Ranch sits on 300 acres. The land was first developed by the Kirkland family, cattle ranchers, in 1998. In 2009, the ranch was taken over by a private equity firm when the Kirkland business went bankrupt. The property was renamed Valley Gate Vineyards and operated as a custom-crush facility. As the company shifted to making their own wines, it was named Reata, which was the name of the ranch in the movie Giant.

In 2013, Bill Leigon joined Reata. Originally from Houston, Texas, Leigon has a degree in acting and singing and went to New York to study with Lee Strasburg.

While performing, he also began selling wine, first at a retail store and then on the wholesale side for a Loire Valley importer. That job brought him to Los Angeles, California and in 1988 he moved to Napa.

Leigon first worked at J .Lohr where he co-founded The Wine Trust, a wine marketing company, and Ariel Vineyards, the first premium non-alcoholic wine. He was also president of sales and marketing for Associate Vintage Group and later spent 12 years as president of Hahn Estates in Monterey. Here, he created the popular brands Rex Goliath and Cycles Gladiator.

He joined Reata in February 2013 to create brands under the label. In September 2015, Ken Laird, one of the largest landowners in the valley, purchased the property and subsequently leased the winery to Leigon, who owns the Jamieson Ranch Vineyards brand, and manages operations and inventory.

Jamieson Ranch Vineyards currently has 10 acres planted out of their 300. The property also houses a 57,000 square foot winery that looks like a western mountain lodge. There is a wraparound veranda where guests can enjoy their wine tasting with views of the Napa Valley and San Pablo Bay. Inside, there are high ceilings and warm and inviting areas to sit, whether in front of a cozy fireplace or in an observation gallery overlooking the barrel room and production area.

Under the Jamieson Ranch name, there are four different labels. The wines from two labels, Jamieson Ranch Vineyards and Reata, fall between $26 and $85. The Jamieson Ranch Vineyard represents the Napa wines, including cabernet, zinfandel and merlot, whereas the pinot noirs from Sonoma and the chardonnays from Monterey are under the Reata label.

The everyday affordable wines for $15 are the Whiplash and Light Horse wines. Whiplash, named after a racehorse, includes a red blend, zinfandel and malbec. Light Horse, named for the saddled horses, includes pinot noir, chardonnay and cabernet sauvignon.

Continuing the equestrian theme, on a visit to Jamieson Ranch Vineyards, you will likely see miniature horses walking around. These horses, Winnie the Pooh, Sweet Jane and Molly, are certified therapy animals and are used as service animals. These horses bring light into peoples lives, giving another meaning to the term light horse. Three days a week they are at the winery and other days they visit hospitals and schools in the area.

At Jamieson Ranch Vineyards, Leigon explains that it is about creating moments that last for a lifetime. When you come here, you are our guests.

Bill Leigon and his wife, Anna Carminito-Leigon, who met while performing on stage in Napa, created the Light Horse Foundation, dedicated to helping at-risk people, particularly those with autism, as well as helping other important humanitarian causes. A percentage of sales of the Light Horse wines help fund the foundation.

As part of the foundation, each year they host Fresh Coat at the winery where 13 urban artists come to the winery to paint installations of graffiti art along the perimeter walls of the building. They also partner with Aldea Children & Family Services in Napa and bring at-risk youth to work alongside these urban artists.

Jamieson Ranch Vineyards offers winery tours, wine and cheese and wine and food pairings or one can just enjoy an afternoon on the veranda sipping wine. It is nice to know that this Napa winery is back in the hands of locals who will make you feel like you have been welcomed into their home. And that is what makes a memorable wine experience.
Becoming the 29th member of NATO will ensure Montenegros long-term stability, sovereignty and security, NATO Deputy Secretary General Ambassador Alexander Vershbow said during a visit to Montenegro on Friday (6 May).

Delivering a keynote speech at the To Be Secure Conference, Ambassador Vershbow stressed that NATO membership has enabled countries to overcome historic rivalries and work together to reach common goals, Membership in NATO has enabled countries to pool their resources, to greatly enhance the defence bang that they receive for their tax-payers buck. It allows members to join up their forces, intelligence and expertise, making everyone safer, Ambassador Vershbow said. He added that NATO membership gives Montenegro a seat at the table and the ability to shape NATO policy.

Addressing global security challenges, Vershbow stressed that NATO is responding to challenges on its southern and eastern flank by helping to tackle the root causes of instability in the Middle East and North Africa and by implementing the biggest reinforcement of NATOs collective defence in two decades. The Ambassador said that NATOs most significant role in the south is to build up the capacity of partner countries. I hope that, at the upcoming NATO Summit in Warsaw, the Alliance will commit to an even more ambitious Defence Capacity Building program for our southern neighborhood, the Ambassador said. By projecting stability in this way, we can prevent conflict and avoid the need to deploy military forces, he added. Turning to the east, the Deputy Secretary General stressed that Russia had violated international law by illegally annexing Crimea and through its subsequent military actions in eastern Ukraine. In response, NATO has increased the defence of its members in the East while remaining committed to dialogue with Russia.

Later this month, NATO Foreign Ministers are due to sign Montenegros Accession Protocol. Montenegro will then become an invitee and will be able to attend almost all NATO meetings, including the Warsaw Summit, as an observer. Every NATO Ally must then ratify the Protocol in their national parliaments in order for it to become a full member.

During his visit, Ambassador Vershbow will also meet with the Minister of Defence of Montenegro, Prof. Milica Pejanovic urisic.
On Monday 9 May 2016, the NATO Deputy Secretary General, Ambassador Alexander Vershbow will attend the Annual NATO Conference on Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) Arms Control, Disarmament and Proliferation, taking place in Ljubljana. Ambassador Vershbow will open the conference together with Ms. Darja Bavdaz Kuret, State Secretary at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Slovenia.

More details about the event here.

During his visit to Slovenia, Ambassador Vershbow will also meet with the President of the Republic of Slovenia, Mr. Borut Pahor and the State Secretary, Ms. Darja Bavdaz Kuret.

Follow us on Twitter (@NATOPress and @NATOdsg).
Jazz Appreciation Month ends this weekend, and there has been plenty to appreciate in the Twin Cities, culminating this weekend with the state's only registered International Jazz Day" event, a fundraising mini-festival sponsored by Jazz Central Studios on Saturday. But there are more jazz events on Jazz Day as well as throughout the coming week, including a rare appearance by dazzling pianist Abdullah Ibrahim at the Dakota and the return from exile" of jazz at Reverie, now on Thursdays.



Jazz This Week



Saturday, April 30.



It's the 5th annual International Jazz Day sponsored by UNESCO and the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz, and the gala concert this year is at the White House, broadcast live on ABC this evening. There's registered events all around the globe, including one in Minnesota! Jazz Central Studios is holding a mini-fest running all afternoon (1-6 pm), held at the A-Mill Artists Lofts in the old Pillsbury Mill complex on SE Main Street, along the river. For one ticket, hear the Doug Haining/Dave Graf Quintet, Javi Santiago Trio, Vinson Velaga Group, and the Twin Cities Latin Jazz Orchestrafeaturing special guests, trumpeter Brian Lynch and visiting Peruvian guitarist Andres Prado. Lynch is a Grammy winner with a special fondness for Latin; Prado lived here for a while and taught at McNally Smith, and has been performing around the Twin Cities for the past two weeks. All proceeds go to supporting the nonprofit Jazz Central Studios.



Another big evenvocalist Dennis Spears celebrates the big 6-0 with a party at the Dakota. Not only is that a big exciting voice to enjoy, but we can also anticipate that Dennis has some special attire for the evening and a lot of cool friends coming on stage.



Saturday Night Jazz at the Black Dog features one of the too-rare appearances of the long-running quartet, How Birds Work, with Dean Granros, Peter Schimke and Kenny Horst joined by young lion bassist Ted Olsen. The early show presents a relatively new trio of veterans with two guitars Joel Shapira and David Martin join up with drummer Pete Hennig to form The Growlers. Sophia Shorai serenades at Hell's Kitchen, Bryan Nichols and Brandon Wozniak duke it out at the Icehouse (dinner sets), and there's one more month of Saturdays in the Lobby Bar with JoAnn Funk and Jeff Brueske, before their annual summer break.



Sunday, May 1. In their monthly afternoon slot at the Icehouse, Charanga Tropical is at it again, still celebrating their CD release and summer 2015 trip to Havana.Start a new month with the Birthday ClubDan Chouinard hosts vocalist Jennifer Grimm in the Dunsmore Room at Crooners, with songs associated with musicians and songwriters with May birthdays.



Monday , May 2.



In addition to another round of the Growlers at Jazz Central, there's more guitar as hot club magician Sam Miltichjoins forces with Dutch violinist Tim Kliphuis at the Dakota same duo that dazzled at the 2015 jazz festival. At Crooners Lounge, the Acme Jazz Company holds their monthly big band night. Also in the lounge, pianist/vocalist Lori Dokken starts her week of Happy Hour gigs.



And for night owls, three major forces on the local jazz scene get together as the Regional Jazz TrioAnthony Cox, Mike Lewis and JT Bates burn the stage at the Icehouse for JT's Jazz Implosion. And this one will surely implode.



Tuesday, May 3. Big Band Tuesday at Jazz Central features the Bill Simenson Orchestra, while First Tuesday at the Black Dog brings together Dean Magraw and Davu Seru for some guitar/percussion hijinks.



At Vieux Carre, Chris Lomheim opens the night on solo piano, followed by Fuzzy Math, that quartet dubbed the best jazz band for people who don't like jazz."



In the Dunsmore Room, it's another solo soiree with trad and stride pianist Butch Thompson, covering the full range of the Bosendorfer, probably offering a little clarinet as well, and of course his always entertaining commentary.



And at the Dakota, another opportunity to hear Andres Prado, tonight reunited with his Minnesota cohorts (Pete Whitman, Peter Schimke, Jeff Bailey, Kevin Washington) as Mississippi. This ensemble was a marvel two weeks ago in the Dunsmore Room, and likely will really cut loose in the larger club space.



Wednesday, May 4.



It's been at least a decade since South African piano master Abdullah Ibrahim has been in Minnesota. Tonight he brings his septet, Ekayah, to the Dakota for what will be an unforgettable evening of sublime piano and South African rhythms.



At Hell's Kitchen, you can enjoy the Wolverines Trio.



Thursday, May 5.



After a month in exile, Friday Night Jazz at Reverie returns on Thursdays! (At least for one night, returning for the grand opening on May 19.) The soft opening" of the series features a formidable trio of Davu Seru, Chris Bates and Brandon Wozniak. At Vieux Carre, Joel Shapira opens on solo guitar, followed by the intriguing ensemble, Rare Medium. And on Vocal Jazz Night at Jazz Central, Dorothy Doring will present what will surely be an eclectic set from her wide repertoire, from Ellington to pop favorites.



There's a special event at the Walker Art Center. Renowned saxophonist Steve Lehman is in town with his octet, performing in the McGuire Theater on Saturday, but tonight join the award-winning composer and electronics wizard High Priest (aka HPrizm) on a walking tour of their favorite pieces in the Walker galleries, followed by a free live performance.

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Iranian president congratulates Xi Jinping: Tehran is determined to expand comprehensive relations with Beijing

Russian MOD: Work on Ukraine's 'dirty bomb' comes to end

Dollar drops, euro goes up in Armenia

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Two quakes hit near Tbilisi

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Over 1.5 million light bulbs lit simultaneously in India: New Guinness World Record

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Head of the Japanese company Toshiba Masashi Muromachi will leave the company under its restructuring program, Toshiba reported in the statement.

The release said that the decision was made based on the fact that a number of business restructuring initiatives are already underway and that the company should move forward and focus on the growth of a new management team, RIA Novosti reported.

Executive vice president of the company Satoshi Tsunakawa will replace Muromachi in this position starting from June of this year. Muromachi will become the executive adviser of Toshiba.

Toshiba was previously involved in a scandal related to the fact that the company overstated data on income in the financial statements and deducted money from bank accounts within six years.

In the case of error finding the company postponed the publication of the financial report several times for the 2014-15 fiscal year, and finally published it on September 7. It was recorded a net loss of 37.8 billion yen (318 million dollars) against a net profit of 60.2 billion yen (505.7 million dollars) a year earlier.

Scandal also led to a change of the three presidents in the company. As a result, Muromachi who was chairman of the board of directors was appointed the head of the company. He undertook a number of measures for restructuring of the company. So, Toshiba has already reduced thousands of workplaces and sold part of its semiconductor unit of Sony Corp., the entire medical business of Canon Inc. and most of its consumer department of the Chinese Midea Group Co.

Toshiba Corporation is the Japan's largest producer of schemes of random access memory of the computer. The company, founded in 1875 in Tokyo, is specialized in the production of ultraprecise electronics and electrical equipment  integrated circuits, industrial computers, cell phones, LCD TVs, elevators.
YEREVAN.  While getting acquainted with the recent statement by the Minister of Culture of Azerbaijan, it becomes clear that our neighboring country is once again trying to politicize and transform into a battlefield not only the field of culture, but UNESCO itself an establishment, the mission of which is to unite and bring together nations, Armenian Culture Minister Hasmik Poghosyan said in a statement.

The attempts by Azerbaijani authorities to engage in unhealthy competition do not foster the intercultural dialogue among the nations, thus exacerbating the already tense situation in the region.

The Armenian people have created a rich culture with its unique manifestations, having enriched it via interactions with the cultures of the neighboring countries, at the same time contributing to the latter as well, while never infringing upon them. On the contrary, our neighboring country which possesses a history of less than a hundred years is making attempts to attribute to itself the traditions, history, cultural heritage and achievements of the peoples bearing histories dating back to centuries. This also refers to the policies Azerbaijan adopts and the measures it undertakes within international organizations.

This is not the first time that Azerbaijan initiates retaliatory measures after the items presented by Armenia for inscription on the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage List are approved. Accordingly, we presented lavash and they suddenly discovered that lavash is their national bread and two years later submitted a nomination of their own. The same case was with the dance of Kochari. Generally speaking, in each element they are looking for their own origins and identity turning everything into a dispute.

The Armenian people have their thorough considerations, observations and historical facts in regard to the matter in question. We have no intention whatsoever to engage in discussions and professional debates over a process aimed at self-assertion by utilising the values of the neighboring peoples, which in its essence is neither a new, nor an effective one to follow.

Now the authorities of Baku are undertaking an unreasonable and absurd step in attempting to inscribe the traditions of preparing Tolma on the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage List, as an element belonging to the entire Turkic world. While not possessing any confidence in their own identity and relying on other nations, before submitting a nomination of an item to UNESCO one should not forget the other peoples that are bearers and practitioners of the given element. We would like to remind that the term Turkic refers to a huge ethno-linguistic family, which includes the Kazakhs, the Tatars, the Kyrgyz people, the Turks, the Turkmens, the Uzbeks, the Uyghurs and other peoples. Even if Tolma is a dish common with these peoples, we should not forget to mention its presence within the Arab world and the Balkan and Slavic peoples, and finally the Armenian traditions.
The International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) published a review of armed conflicts for 2016 and devoted one of the chapters to the conflict in Nagorno Karabakh. The article in particular describes the diplomatic efforts of 2015 to resolve the Karabakh conflict as active, but mostly ineffective against the background of the escalating violence and militant rhetoric of both sides.

Although the security in the conflict zone has clearly deteriorated, the political positions of Armenia and Azerbaijan, as well as the dynamics of their interaction have not changed. "The countries began once again to accuse each other of spreading disinformation, making it difficult for outside observers to analyse the scope of violent incidents and their impact on civilians," says the article. In addition, as authors of the report emphasize, several disturbing trends have been observed. In particular, the parties of the conflict have become more reliant on heavy weapons, and there took place incidents in areas near the Armenian-Azerbaijani border.

According to the article the parties made controversy statements about several large-scale battles.The Azerbaijani Defense Ministry announced that about 20 Karabakhi soldiers were killed after they had attacked the Azerbaijani Forces at the line of contact. At the same time, the Karabakh Defense Ministry announced that it was Azerbaijani Forces who had attacked their units. According to the Nagorno-Karabakh authorities, three Nagorno-Karabakh soldiers had been killed and four others wounded, while between seven and 14 Azerbaijani soldiers had been killed. Shortly afterwards, the Azerbaijani Ministry of Defense claimed that its Armenian counterpart had covered up the deaths of five Nagorno-Karabakh fighters in a separate incident. In response, the spokesperson for the Armenian Ministry of Defence said that both it and the Nagorno-Karabakh Defense Army were fully transparent, and called on Armenian media outlets to refrain from repeating anti-Armenian propaganda, writes the article.




The life in Martuni city of Karabakhs Martuni regions continues in its usual way. All the schools, kindergartens, state institutions and service centers are operating in the city.

The yards are also full of life: children are playing, while women and elderly gather to talk. Of course, the topic of the talk is mainly the situation on the Line of Contact, but they also dont forget the household issues.

Three servicemen from Martuni died during the days of April war. The Azerbaijani side fired in the direction of this city on the first days of April. One of the shells hit the city cemetery, while the other fell in the direction of one of the residents house. No firing in the direction of the city followed afterwards.

Martuni residents proudly note that their region was among the most protected ones in the 90s. And today they are sure that it will again be inaccessible thanks to their sons and husbands.

According to them, they didnt leave the city in the 1990s, and are not going to do that now.

The fighting soldier should know someone's waiting for him. Why should I escape? Ill stay at this house,  one of the female residents told Armenian News  NEWS.am.

Martuni people, who have lived side by side with Azeris for many years, say the latter are cowards.

The Turks wont enter our city. They didnt enter that time and will not do that now, they said.
YEREVAN. - Armenian ex-president Levon Ter-Petrosyan has published an article on iLur.am website. The article reads, in part:

Its beyond doubt that the international community will one day recognize the independence of Karabakh. This contention is based on the fact that the world, on behalf of the Minsk Group Co-Chairmanship and personally Russian, U.S. and French Presidents, has already recognized the Nagorno-Karabakh peoples right to self-determination through referendum. In this connection, I would like to draw attention to the statement of the Deputy Spokesperson for the U.S. Department of State, Mark Toner, made on May 5: The United States, along with the rest of the international community, does not recognize Nagorno-Karabakh. Nagorno-Karabakhs final status will only be resolved in the context of a comprehensive settlement. And the comprehensive settlement is nothing but the plan drawn out by the Minsk Group Co-Chairmen on the basis of Madrid principles, which enshrines the right of Karabakh people to self-determination through referendum, that is, the right to establish an independent state.

Therefore, through its actions, Armenia must not deviate from the common logic of the conflict settlement (specifically the idea of unilateral recognition of Karabakh), but, on the contrary, get fully involved in the Minsk Group negotiation process and constructively strive for its goals, since, as mentioned earlier, the document discussed in the agenda of that process contains necessary legal grounds for the acquisition of Karabakhs independence.

To achieve success in the conflict settlement process, the Armenian diplomacy must not only follow the idea of self-determination enshrined in Madrid principles but also use another very important argument for justifying the necessity of Karabakh independence. The latter has to do with the remedial secession doctrine, actively developed in the international law during the last decades. Under that doctrine, if a state systematically violates the civil rights of its ethno-territorial minority citizens on the governmental level and on racial, national, religious and xenohphobia grounds, committing violence and threatening to eliminate them or deport, the international community is obliged to secede the territory occupied by that minority from the state, for the sake of the minoritys survival.

The importance of applying the remedial succession doctrine is so great that the Armenian diplomacy has no right to ignore it.
YEREVAN. - If Azerbaijan starts a new round of military aggression, this will inevitably lead to the inclusion of the of Nagorno-Karabakh Republic (NKR/Asrtakh) recognition issue on the agenda, Armenian Deputy FM Shavarsh Kocharyan told Echo of Moscow.

When on April 2 Azerbaijan unleashed an aggression against Nagorno-Karabakh, Armenian President said that if these military actions continue, Armenia will have nothing to do but recognize the NKR, the Deputy FM said.

But together with all this, we always used to and continue to stay committed to the exclusively peaceful settlement of the conflict through peaceful talks by the mediation of the OSCE Minsk Group. Moreover, the subject of these talks is disclosed by the statements of three presidents, which unequivocally mention that the future status of Nagorno-Karabakh is determined by the expression of its peoples will, which is of a legally binding nature, Kocharyan stressed.

According to him, the Armenian sides consider that there is a negotiation format, based on the Madrid document, whose essence is publicized by the presidents of three co-chairing countries. The document mentions what mutual concessions they propose. On the one hand, it includes the issue on the final status of Nagorno-Karabakh, which is decided by the legally binding referendum. This means that the referendum results should be recognized by all the sides, including Azerbaijan. The document also touches on the corridor linking Armenia with Karabakh; that is, Karabakh cannot be an enclave. On the other hand, it includes issues that are of interest to Azerbaijan. This has to do with ascertaining the borders and territories, and the refugees right to return to the places of their permanent residence. This is the essence of the document lying on the negotiation table, and the Armenian sides have always been committed to it, unlike Azerbaijan who lays stress only on the points which satisfy it. Moreover, the latter doesnt withdraw from power politics, something that we saw from April 2 to 5,

Kocharyan said.

O May 5, the Government approved the conclusion on the bill introduced by two MPs On the Recognition of Artsakh. According to the document, The Government of Armenia will decide on the adoption of the bill based on the results of discussions between Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh and considering the further processes, including external factors. The aforementioned bill must be discussed at the NA Standing Committee on Foreign Relations during 30 days after its introduction (the term expires on May 19).
As an expected 15,000 attendees gather on the Quad on May 9 for Emory's 171st Commencement, the University will confer honorary degrees on a Nobel laureate, an international autism advocate and the person who gave Emory one of its major literary jewels, the Raymond Danowski Poetry Library.

Honorary degrees are presented to those who have achieved "the highest distinction in a field of learning, the arts, the professions, or public service, especially those achievements that contribute to the life of the mind and human spirit," according to the degree criteria.

This year, Emory will recognize Raymond Danowski, Temple Grandin and Amartya Sen with honorary degrees. Commencement speaker William Foege, who already holds an honorary degree from Emory, will receive the Emory Presidents Medal, one of the highest honors granted by the University.

Foege is the epidemiologist credited with devising the strategy to eradicate smallpox. He was also on the faculty of Emory, where he was the Presidential Distinguished Professor of International Health at the Rollins School of Public Health.

He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012 by President Barack Obama.

Bill Foege combines greatness of heart with a first-rate mind and a commitment to improve the well being of humanity, Emory President James Wagner noted when announcing Foege as the 2015 Commencement speaker.

Preserving poetry

Raymond Danowski, who set out to gather every book of poetry published in English in the 20th century and then donated his library to Emory, will receive the honorary doctor of humane letters degree. Photo courtesy Emory Libraries.

Raymond Danowski will receive the honorary doctor of humane letters degree, presented by Emory College Dean Robin Forman.

Danowski, an American-born fine arts dealer who now lives in South Africa, had the desire to gather every book of poetry published in English in the 20th century. Over 30 years, he largely accomplished his goal, and in 2004, he placed the materials in Emory's Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives and Rare Book Library.

Danowski said he made the decision, in part, because of Emorys emphasis on student scholarship and community access. In a series of videos on the Danowski Poetry Library scholarblog, he reflects on what motivated him to start collecting poetry and why he chose Emory to place his collection.

Now, the Raymond Danowski Poetry Library continues to expand and connect with modern-day works via new acquisitions, an ongoing reading series and other initiatives.

Raymond Danowski is a person of great breadth of knowledge, steadfast generosity and enormous powers of persistence, says Rosemary Magee, director of the Rose Library, home to the Raymond Danowski Poetry Library.

We are honored to be associated with him through his vast poetry collection, which is integral to the Rose Library and which influences students as well as scholars every day, she continues. We are thrilled to see Raymond and his contributions to our shared mission celebrated with an honorary degree."

Understanding autism and animals

Temple Grandin, a leading advocate for the autism community and well-known researcher in the field of animal science, will receive the honorary doctor of letters degree. Photo by Colorado State University Photography.

Temple Grandin will receive the honorary doctor of letters degree, presented by Emory School of Medicine Dean Christian Larsen.

Grandin is a leading advocate for the autism community and internationally known autism spokesperson who has shared her own life story through speaking engagements, books and the film Temple Grandin.

She is also a well-known researcher in the field of animal science, professor of animal science at Colorado State University and a consultant to the livestock industry on animal behavior.

In the 2010 Time 100, an annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world, she was named in the "Heroes" category.

Dr. Grandin is an inspiration as a leader in the field of animal science and as an adult with autism living a very full life, says Catherine Rice, director of Emory Autism Center.

She is a shining example of what can happen when a person who thinks and acts differently finds a niche for their interests and a voice," says Rice, who is a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences in the School of Medicine. "Unfortunately, that is not the reality for many with an autism spectrum disorder. Dr. Grandin inspires us all to find ways to change that.

Grandin will give a special lecture on Sunday, May 8, in the Emerson Concert Hall at the Schwartz Center for Performing Arts. Her talk, Helping Different Kinds of Minds Solve Problems, is sold out.

Researching the impact of economic policies

Amartya Sen, awarded the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences in 1998 in recognition of his groundbreaking research into welfare economics, will receive the honorary doctor of letters degree. Photo by Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard Staff Photographer.

Amartya Sen will receive an honorary doctor of letters degree, presented by Laney Graduate School Dean Lisa Tedesco.

Sen was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences in 1998 in recognition of his groundbreaking research into welfare economics and the understanding of how economic policies affect nations and communities.

Currently the Thomas W. Lamont University Professor and Professor of Economics and Philosophy at Harvard University, Sen has made contributions to welfare economics, social choice theory, economic and social justice, economic theories of famines, and indexes of the measure of well-being of citizens of developing countries.

He will also deliver the inaugural Milton Kafoglis lecture at Emory on Sunday, May 8; his topic will be global security.

As a University that prides itself on serving humanity through research and teaching and application of knowledge, the awarding of an Emory honorary degree to Dr. Amartya Sen is both a visible and symbolic affirmation of our commitment to  and responsibility for  the global good, Tedesco says.

The development of our understanding of how economic policies affect global security, development, health, social justice and community-building is of monumental importance in an increasingly interconnected world," she continues. "Dr. Amartya Sens research and scholarship continue to chart the path forward to that understanding."
Ask Oxford College biology professor Eloise Carter how she was drawn to study the natural world and she pauses, as if both considering her answer and savoring the thought of this, her life's work.

"I often wonder that myself," Carter acknowledges with a soft laugh.

In truth, the rolling, wooded hills of northwestern Georgia were her first classroom. With a mother who frequently sent her outside to play, "everyday life was spent climbing a tree or roaming about the woods," she recalls. "At the time, I didn't know that it was unusual."

For more than 30 years, Carter has taken her love of experiential learning with her into both conventional classrooms and the fields and mountains of Georgia  her other classrooms  as a biologist, botanist, ecologist and educator.

In recognition of her longstanding leadership and contributions to Emory's Atlanta and Oxford College campuses, as well as her impassioned commitment to undergraduate education, Carter received the 2016 Thomas Jefferson Award.

The annual award, which was named and endowed by the Robert Earl McConnell Foundation, honors a member of the faculty or staff who has significantly enriched the intellectual and civic life of the Emory community. It was presented May 9 at the University-wide Commencement ceremony.

A teacher of teachers

Letters nominating Carter for the award enumerate many examples of how she has served both of Emory's campuses, including co-authoring a landmark report that would become the foundation of Emory's forest protection plan, launching a summer program to help K-12 teachers improve science education, and shepherding the planning and construction of a new state-of-the-art science building at Oxford College, which opened earlier this year.

Yet it is her exemplary strength as a teacher that is cited time and again, earning praise from former students, faculty peers and administrators, who describe her as "a teacher of teachers."

"Eloise is one of the absolutely best teachers I have ever seen in my own 27 years of university and college teaching," writes David Gowler, Oxford College Pierce Professor of Religion, in his letter of recommendation.

"Students are always first and foremost in Eloise's mind and work," he writes. "They gravitate to her dynamic and inquiry-driven courses, and her enthusiasm for learning and knowledge is contagious."

Hematology and oncology professor J. William Eley, executive associate dean of medical education and student affairs and graduate education for the Emory School of Medicine, recalls being taught by Carter when she was an Emory doctoral student and teaching assistant in the 1970s.

"Dr. Carter, albeit a graduate student at the time, was already a fantastic teacher," he recalls. "She remains a great leader in science education at Emory; her students who join us at the School of Medicine hold her in the greatest esteem."

Her gifts as a teacher have won her many honors. In 2004, Carter received the Emory Williams Teaching Award, the University's highest recognition for excellence in teaching. She has also received both of Oxford's teaching awards  the Fleming Award in 1997 and the Mizell Award in 2008.

"I am constantly stunned by the level of energy that Eloise brings to her teaching, research and service," writes Margaret McGehee, associate professor of American Studies at Oxford College, "energy that is contagious among her colleagues who, after spending just a little time with her, want to be better teachers, servants and stewards of the environment."

Helping students "see the world differently"

Carter first came to Emory after graduating from Wesleyan College in Macon, Georgia, to work as a research technician with the National Pituitary Agency studying pituitary hormones. Using Emory's courtesy scholarship, she earned a master's degree in biology in 1978.

She went on to earn her PhD in biology in 1983. While pursuing doctoral studies, she also taught biology at Agnes Scott College.

From 1984 through 1988, Carter was an assistant professor of biology at Emory, transferring to Oxford College in 1988, where she's taught popular classes  most have a waiting list  in biology and field botany, ecology and evolution for 28 years.

Despite a long-held fascination with the natural world, Carter didn't intend to become a biologist and never imagined becoming a professor. But an innate skill with engaging students in the world around them made teaching a natural fit.

To this day, her greatest satisfaction is found in helping students "to see the world differently."

"Students first come to my field botany class and they don't even see the plants in their world. By the end of the semester they are obsessed with seeing and identifying every woody plant on campus, which no doubt drives their roommates crazy," Carter says, laughing.

Watching student conceptions of the natural world evolve through study and hands-on learning into something expansive and complex "is very exciting to me," she explains.

"I'm always trying to figure out what question, what piece of information you can put in front of a student so they can learn things a little more deeply."

Driven by curiosity, commitment

John Wegner, a senior lecturer in Emory's Department of Environmental Sciences, witnessed those talents first-hand when he took Carter's field botany course about 15 years ago.

"She opened my eyes to a different way of teaching," says Wegner, who has since borrowed from it. "The idea of teaching students to become sharp-eyed observers is something I've been using for over 10 years with my own classes."

Wegner also came to know Carter through their work together on the University Senate's Committee on the Environment, where she was one of the group's most outspoken members, never shying away from asking "the really tough questions."

In fact, her work with former Oxford College Dean William "Bill" Murdy led to what would become known as the Murdy-Carter Report, which documented the rich diversity of vegetation and hardwood forests at Emory, leading to both the University's first forest protection plan and the foundation of today's campus land-use plan.

Reflecting upon what drives Carter as a passionate advocate for both students and the natural world, Wegner says, "It's her curiosity, her stewardship, her commitment."

"In the classroom, I was impressed by both her vast knowledge and also her ability to say, 'I don't know,' which is refreshing in an instructor," he says.
Fast Facts Davie Zolowere School: Rollins School of Public Health Department/degree program: MPH in global health Research/dissertation topic: "Community Perceptions of Unintended Pregnancies in Rural Malawi" Other degrees and schools: Bachelor of Medicine and Surgery, University of Malawi, College of Medicine Plans after graduation: Return to Malawi to work in either program management or research in the field of reproductive health Meet the Class of 2016 Read more profiles of students in Emory's Class of 2016, including graduating students from each of the nine schools that make up the University.

Davie Zolowere was working as a physician in the obstetrics ward of a hospital in Malawi when a young HIV-positive woman came in suffering from obstructed labor.

Surgeons at the resource-strapped facility could not maintain a sterile operating room, so after the baby was delivered by cesarean, the woman developed peritonitis.

Over the course of three weeks, Zolowere watched his young patient deteriorate and die. Thats when he decided to cross from the treatment side to the prevention side of the health care equation.

If you want to make a difference, the hospital is a good place to deal with a problem that has already happened, says Zolowere, who has worked as district health officer for the Malawi Ministry of Health in addition to his clinical duties. I have done that for a long time. But I would like to be able to prevent the problem from happening in the first place.

With that goal in mind, Zolowere came to the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory on a USAID scholarship. He will graduate May 9 with an MPH in global health.

Determined to make the most of what he considered an extraordinary opportunity, Zolowere threw himself into his studies with characteristic fervor. A degree in global health requires 42 credit hours. He took 63.

He met frequently with professors and teaching assistants (TAs) after hours to dig deeper into issues that were broached in class. He was offered two highly competitive slots as a TA. Upon discovering his USAID scholarship prohibited accepting payment, Zolowere promptly offered to do them for free.

It is so exciting to have students like Davie at Rollins, says Roger Rochat, professor of global health and epidemiology. He brings such enthusiasm and works so tirelessly. Everyone here just bent over backwards for him because they recognized how outstanding he is.

Zolowere also has been an asset to fellow students, bringing a perspective gained from working for six years as a clinician and a health official in a resource poor country. He happily mentored fellow students even before he became a TA.

Whenever he spoke, everyone around him shut up and listened, because they knew whatever he said would be thoughtful and worth hearing, says Juan Leon, assistant professor of global health, epidemiology and environmental health.

Returning home to advocate for reproductive justice

Armed with his new degree, Zolowere will return to a country that is making significant strides in public health but is still in need of his type of expertise.

Malawi is known for having one of the most innovative and efficient HIV programs in the world, but one in 10 adults has HIV. Since 1990, the African country has reduced its child mortality rates by 72 percent, but maternal mortality is high. And there is just one doctor for every 40,000 people.

Zolowere is too familiar with the faces and lives behind the statistics. Before coming to Rollins, he treated  and sometimes lost  women suffering from complications of illegal abortions or home births. He worked to get an unending tide of HIV positive patients on antiretroviral therapy. He tried to bring back children wasting away from diarrheal diseases. And many times he was working without water, drugs or sutures.

He plans to use the program management and research skills he gained at Rollins to champion reproductive justice, his true passion. Sex education, access to condoms and other forms of birth control, and freedom for women to make their own reproductive choices top his list of priorities.

The main thing I take away from my time at Rollins can be summed up from a quote by Dr. William Foege," says Zolowere, citing the renowned epidemiologist who is Presidential Distinguished Professor of Global Health emeritus at Rollins and will give the keynote address at Emory's 171st Commencement.

He said, The philosophy behind science is to discover the truth. The philosophy behind medicine is to use that truth for the benefit of your patient. The philosophy behind public health is social justice. That's the important point. Public health programs are attempts at social justice,'" Zolowere notes. "I hope to be able to improve social justice in Malawi.
Their final exams, research papers, and senior class projects were completed within the past few days, but now the nearly 800 University of Miami students who assembled in the BankUnited Center Friday morning for the first of three commencement ceremonies faced a more daunting challenge: solving the planets most pressing problems.

Oscar Arias, the former two-time president of Costa Rica and a Nobel laureate who received an honorary degree and gave advice to graduates at the ceremony, wasted little time in making sure UMs newest daughters and sons were aware of the task at hand.

This planet needs you to achieve the greatest impact you possibly can, he told the students, all of them graduates of the College of Arts and Sciences. It is no exaggeration to say the world is depending on you.

And it is a world in crisis, he said, reeling off some grim statistics: 664 million people without access to safe drinking water, more than 800 million living in substandard housing, 17,000 children dying each day from hunger-related causes, 2.8 billion people surviving on less than $2 a day, and prejudice reaching the mainstream of political discourse in the United States.

You are the leaders who will determine whether little by little we change our course and find a better way, he said.

If anyone is familiar with finding a better way, it is Arias. When he took office in 1986 as Costa Ricas president, Central America was rife with civil unrest. From the outset, he met with the presidents of nine Latin American countries and proposed an alliance to defend democracy and liberty and promote free and fair elections. His Arias Peace Plan led to the Esquipulas II Accords, signed by five Central American presidents on August 7, 1987. That same year he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

During his commencement address on Friday, Arias, who used the monetary award from his Nobel Peace Prize to establish the Arias Foundation for Peace and Human Progress, urged students to make a difference in the world.

It requires not more money or more time, he explained, but leaders willing to consider a new way of doing things.

He reminded them of the powerful words spoken by John F. Kennedy in his stirring presidential inaugural address some 55 years agothat Man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty and all forms of human life.

If that was true in 1961, it is true today, said Arias, adding that the world possesses the resources to put an end to pressing problems such as hunger and disease.

From investing too much on military might and not enough in schools to expending too many words on racism instead of on reason and understanding, Were simply making bad choices, he said.

He told students to be creative, to be innovators, and to think before they act, and act with tireless energy.

Stand up against those who say it is unrealistic to resist poverty, inequality, and illiteracy, he said. You will reach the end of your days knowing you have truly lived.

Ashley Dixon, who earned her Bachelor of Science in biology, called her graduation a major accomplishment.

It feels like the beginning of the rest of my life, she said. Its exciting but at the same time scary and daunting because theres that feeling of the baby bird flying out of the nest.

She plans to take a gap year, working as a scribe at a hospital. Inspired by her father, who is a physician, Dixon plans to go to medical school.

Mandory Exume is off to Japan, where he will teach English in a Japanese school. I have a passion for languages, said the English major, who visited Japan last year through UMs Study Abroad program.

For Barbara Soto, her general studies degree with a concentration in business management has been a journey.

Im the first of four children in my family to earn a college degree, said Soto, 48, shedding tears as she lined up with other students in the UM Field House prior to commencement. I started a family right after I graduated from high school. College was a priority for me, but I thought it was more important to be with my kids.

On Friday, her daughter, Jessica, and son, Daniel, were inside the BankUnited Center to see their mother accept her degree.

Said Soto, Today, Im an inspiration for them.

At the Friday midday commencement ceremony for the School of Architecture, School of Communication, School of Education and Human Development, Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science, Frost School of Music, and School of Nursing and Health Studies, Stephen Lewis, the Canadian co-founder of AIDS-Free World who served the United Nations for two decades, urged students to see the constant panorama of injustice and struggle and create a more decent, civilized, and humane international society.

It is a wonderful thing to immerse yourself in social change and to feel the sense of accomplishment of improving the human condition, said Lewis, who knows that feeling from decades of experience.

Before co-founding AIDS-Free World to expose the social illsinjustice, abuse, and inequalitythat underpin and sustain HIV, he served as UN Secretary General Kofi Annans special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa, deputy executive director of UNICEF at the organizations global headquarters in New York, and Canadas ambassador to the United Nations. In that capacity, he chaired the first International Conference on Climate Change.

Gillian Tett, an award-winning British author and the U.S. managing editor at the Financial Times who is widely credited with being the first mainstream journalist to issue public warnings about the bubbling financial crisis that exploded into the headlines in 2008, addressed more than 600 graduates of the School of Business Administration and the College of Engineering at the evening ceremony.

A graduate of Cambridge University, where she earned her Ph.D. in social anthropology, Tett has reported on an eclectic range of financial topics from around the world. She speaks multiple languages and is the author of several books, including The New York Times best seller, Fools Gold: The Inside Story of J.P. Morgan and How Wall St. Greed Corrupted Its Bold Dream and Created a Financial Catastrophe.

The School of Law and the Miller School of Medicine were set to hold their commencement exercises on Saturday, May 7.
Deadly fungus threatens African frogs

Misty mountains, glistening forests and blue-green lakes make Cameroon, the wettest part of Africa, a tropical wonderland for amphibians. The country holds more than half the species living on the continent, including dozens of endemic frogs  an animal that has been under attack across the world by the pervasive chytrid fungus (Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis). Africa has been mostly spared from the deadly and rampant pathogen that wiped out entire species in Australia, Madagascar and Panama  until now.

University of Florida herpetologist David Blackburn and colleagues at the Museum fur Naturkunde in Berlin have documented declines in frog species on Cameroons Mount Oku and Mount Manengouba over a span of more than 12 years. The scientists link the decline of at least five species of frogs found only in these mountains to chytrid, which may have been exacerbated by habitat destruction, pollution and climate change resulting in weaker and more susceptible frogs, said Blackburn, an associate curator of herpetology at the Florida Museum of Natural History on the UF campus.

Theres been this perception that frogs in Africa are not affected by chytrid at all, but we have evidence of the disease in some animals, said Blackburn, co-author of a new study appearing online this week in PLOS ONE. This is the first real case of a decline across multiple amphibian species in Africa.

The road up Mount Oku, the second highest mountain in Cameroon and an important center of amphibian diversity in Central Africa. Photo by David BlackburnStudy scientists collected and documented abundance and diversity of frog species living on the two mountains before and after the immergence of chytrid in the area between 2008-2010. The persistent pestilence latches onto the frog's skin, affecting the function of internal organs and quickly leading to death.

Blackburn said many of the once common species, like the bright red Cardioglossa manengouba, a frog he discovered and named during graduate fieldwork in the early 2000s, are now scarce and nearly impossible to find.

Its looking like some of these frogs may not be around by the time my kids are old enough for me to take them to Cameroon to see them, he said.

While chytrid is to blame for most of the patterns of decline in frogs worldwide, Blackburn said scientists have linked the fungus to climate change, which may drive the emergence of chytrid in some places.

In studies exploring declines of amphibians in Latin America, University of South Florida herpetologist Jason Rohr has shown that unpredictable climate fluctuations associated with climate change can increase chytrid-related die-offs.

"Our research has shown there may be an underappreciated link between climate change, disease and biodiversity losses," Rohr said. Global warming and the severity of unpredictable variations in temperature increase chytrid growth on amphibians.

Blackburn said extreme temperature changes may affect the biology of the frogs by making them more, or less, susceptible to pathogens. He said this could easily be a factor in Cameroon, though he and colleagues have not yet collected enough data to make that call.

A view of the forests on Mount Oku where some frog populations now experiencing declines once flourished. Photo by David BlackburnIn captivity, frogs with chytrid are treated with an effective fungicide bath. In the Sierra Mountains of California, scientists have successfully released frogs inoculated with bacteria that make them less vulnerable to chytrid. But these methods are less practical in the mountains of Cameroon.

Even if a cure was found, it would be hard to inoculate all of the individual frogs out there, Backburn said. Promoting a healthier environment in general for Africas amphibians in terms of water quality and habitat protection is our best shot for keeping these species around.
The police has so far arrested about a dozen people in connection with the murder last week of Dalit law student Jisha here in Ernakulam district, a case that has become a cause clbre in the noisy election season in the state. The latest two suspects to be nabbed includes a neighbour of the victim's family, a police official said on Friday. Among others taken into custody are two migrant labourers, the official said, suggesting that the investigation was progressing well. In a review meeting with the 30-member probe team late on Thursday night, Director General of Police T.P. Senkumar also expressed satisfaction over the progress of the investigation. The official said that the police has ascertained that the murder took place around 5.45 p.m on April 28 when Jisha's mutilated body was found by her mother Rajeshwari. The police believe that the 27-year-old Dalit woman was sexually assaulted before being killed. Meanwhile, the case continues to be a subject of political theatre in Kerala where voting for the assembly election is scheduled on May 16. State Congress president V.M. Sudheeran was the first high profile visitor on Friday to visit Jisha's mother Rajeshwari at a hospital where she has been admitted following the trauma caused by her daughter's murder. "This should never ever happen to any mother. The need of the hour is that as and when the police track down the person responsible for this heinous crime, maximum punishment should be handed out to the accused," said Sudheeran after meeting Rajeshwari. "What I could find out from her was that this situation could have been avoided had the people's representatives at all levels discharged their responsibility. The only way Kerala can get away from these sorts of incidents is handing out maximum punishments at a quick pace to people who do such things," added Sudheeran. --Indo Asian News Service sg/kb/sac ( 325 Words) 2016-05-06-11:58:28 (IANS)
Going on the offensive after ruling BJP's attempt to corner the top Congress leadership on the AgustWestalknd deal, party President Sonia Gandhi and party Vice President Rahul Gandhi today launched an allout attack on the Modi government accusing it of destabilizing democractic institutions and its ''failure'' on all fronts despite tall promises of ushering in "Achhe Din"(good times). Addressing party workers before the 'Save Democracy March to Parliament', Ms Gandhi and Mr Rahul Gandhi also slammed the Modi Government for "killing" dissent and democracy both by branding everyone not falling in line as 'anti-national'. Former Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh who also addressed the rally made specific mention of the Uttarakhand and Arunachal Pradesh issues to accuse the Modi government of working against the very roots of democracy. Later, the three leaders along with other party workers courted arrest while proceeding towards Parliament. The Congress president said the days of the Modi Government were numbered as it had failed to fulfill the mandate of the people. More UNI RG NAZ SHS ADG 1140 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0091-718087.Xml
The Rajya Sabha today witnessed uproarious scenes by Congress Members over the arrest of top party leaders-- Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi and former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh-- during the march to protest what they called 'Murder of Democracy' by the Narendra Modi government. Just ten minutes before the Zero Hour was to end, Mr Pramod Tiwari of the Congress stood up on his seat to say that several leaders of the party had been detained by police during the peaceful protest march at Jantar Mantar. Soon after, the Congress Members rushed to the Well, raising slogans against the Government.Amid din, Deputy Chairman P J Kurien asked Mr Vijay Goel of the BJP, who had started raising his Zero Hour mention, to continue with his submission. However, as nothing could be heard in the confusion, Mr Goel said he could not make his statement in the noise. With the slogan shouting by the Congress continuing, the Deputy Chairman adjourned the House for five minutes, till 1200 hrs. The Congress today carried out a protest march from Parliament to Jantar Mantar to protest what it called a 'murder of Democracy by the NDA Government. Several top leaders of the party, including party president Sonia Gandhi, vice-president Rahul Gandhi, senior leader and former prime minister Manmohan Singh, were briefly detained by the police during the march. UNI AR SB 1241 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0092-718183.Xml
Buoyed by the success of International Yoga Day celebrated in 191 countries last year, the Government today told Lok Sabha that it intends to harness the global yoga market to the tune of 4 billions dollars by turning the country into a top Yoga tourism destination."The celebration of International Yoga Day on 21 June last year was a spectacular success as the event was celebrated in 191 countries simultaneously. Our Government is planning that India will take lead in Yoga and transform the country into a most preferred Yoga tourism destination," Shripad Yesso Naik, the Minster for Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homoeopathy(AYUSH), said during Question Hour.Mr Naik also informed that an advisory has been sent to schools to include Yoga in curriculum but it not being made compulsory."We have advised schools to incorporate Yoga in the curriculum, but it is optional. Alternately they can make it a part of Physical Education," the Minister said.Observing that the most diseases had psychosomatic origin(mental state triggering disease in body) a Member wanted to know whether the Government planned to open a "Yoga Institute of Mind." To this the Minister quipped,"Bada achcha sawaal hai. Aap pehle Yoga kijeye, Yoga karne ke baad aap mehsoos karenge ki aisi institute ki koi zaroorat nahi(Very good question! You do Yoga first. After doing Yoga, you will feel that there is no need of such institute."UNI PRA SB 1331 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0384-718267.Xml
With an expectation to rise with government's focus on 'Smart City Project', the fast moving electrical goods firm Havells India today forayed into 'Integrated Automation and Control Solutions' with a global automation company, HDL. The segment is launched under its premium brand 'Crabtree', the company said in a filing to BSE.Speaking on the launch, Vivek Yadav, Vice President, Havells India said, "The launch of crabtree integrated automation and control solutions comes at an opportune time when India is expected to witness rapid upgrade of urban infrastructure enabled by widespread use of Information Technology. With improved market sentiments we expect demand from both developers and commercial users as well as individual home owners growing rapidly."The domestic market size of automation solutions industry is expected to be Rs 500 crore, which is growing at 20-25 per cent, annually. UNI ASH SHS 1307 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0388-718213.Xml
Chief Justice of High Court of Tripura Deepak Gupta today urged the legal fraternity to make people aware of their Constitutional rights. While addressing a gathering of Tripura High Court Bar Association, organised in honour of the Chief Justice who has already completed his tenure in Tripura and waiting for his transfer, Justice Gupta requested the lawyers and advocates to take the initiative of making people aware of the rights as mentioned in the constitution. On the last working day of the High Court as summer vacation starts from May 9 next, the High Court Bar Association made formal interaction with Justice Gupta.According to report, Justice Gupta is expected to be joining in Chhattisgarh High Court during the summer vacation though formal transfer order has not reached to him. While addressing the gathering Justice Gupta said, "Tripura was almost unknown to me when I was made the first Chief Justice of High Court. But things kept changing as soon as I landed here with new assignment. Besides, environment and people, I am stunned by quality demonstrating by the lawyers here, which indeed at par with the national standard."He reiterated when he joined as the Chief Justice, the number of pending cases was a whopping figure 6700 in March 2013. And now it has gone down substantially because of all-out efforts by lawyers, bench, staff of registry of the High Court and others."In my three years of tenure as the Chief Justice, I will never forget the love and affection that were showed on me. I have got support from all corners", he said, adding that junior lawyers here were also found doing well.However, besides visiting chambers of senior lawyers, they must witness the case proceedings in the court room to make them equipped further, he said. Further, emphasised on filing more number of Public Interest Litigation (PIL), he stated PIL involves some amount of money but it ultimately appears beneficial for the society."Lawyers should lend their helping hand to the poorer section of people so that they could get justice. Also to devote time to educate people about their rights laid down in the constitution for better human society," he added.Meanwhile, applauding the contribution of Justice Gupta, President, Bar Council of Tripura P K Biswas stated besides, disposal of long pending cases, the high court of Tripura during his tenure made some remarkable judgments that had to make change in the governance."Because of the judgment of the High Court, the Tripura government has changed 40 years old employment policy, rationalising the reservation policy in government job, brought little transparency in appointment process in government sector, regulation brought for health professionals and hospital services, strengthening public transport system and contain corruption in development scams and many more," Mr Biswas recalled, adding that the glory of the high court will continue in coming days.Official sources said Justice Tinlianthang Vaiphei of Gauhati High Court has been selected as next Chief Justice of High Court of Tripura and he will be assuming charge after Justice Gupta.UNI BB AD SHS PM1240 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0108-718148.Xml
Panic struck inmates, mostly women and children, when smoke enveloped the maternity ward of government owned Burdwan Medical College and Hospital here today following a fire at the meter box.However, there was no casualty in the fire which was brought under control by the Fire Brigade personnel.As smoke covered the entire maternity ward on the third floor,civic police personnel, hospital authorities and relatives of the patients evacuated everyone to safety on the ground floor.The deputy super of the hospital said they were now shifting the patients to a different ward and appealed to the relatives to stay calm. Chaos prevailed for more than two hours as the smoke was strong enough to makehealthy people sick. Fire brigade officer Tapan Chatterjee said the blaze sparked off fromthe meter box. Power was disconnected for safety in the ward.UNI XC-PC PL SHS VN1354 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0211-718278.Xml
Godrej Industries Limited has appointed AvaniDavda as the Managing Director for its gourmet retail business,Godrej Nature's Basket. Avani will take over as the MD of Godrej Nature's Basket from MohitKhattar, who moves into a new group level role.Avani Davda in her last assignment was the Chief Executive Officerof Tata Starbucks Private Limited. She comes with the rich experience of working across consumer facingsectors of the Tata Group viz. Tata Global Beverages, Taj Hotels,Infiniti Retail, Tata Housing and Tata Infrastructure & Realty.UNI JS SM1430 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0169-718414.Xml
Income Tax Department has processed record number of ITRs filed online in the financial year 2015-16. The department processed 94% of income tax returns filed online. For the first time, record number of 4.14 crore returns were processed without any human intervention. This was made possible with the optimum Use of Technology for Expeditious Disposal of Assessment and Refunds.According to a Finance Ministry release, more than 2.10 crore refunds, amounting to Rs.1,22,425 crore were paid in FY 2015-16 as compared to Rs. 1,12,188 crore in the FY 2014-15 and Rs. 89,664 crore in the FY 2013-14. E-payment of Central Excise and Service Tax refunds and rebates through RTEGS/NIFT were implemented; 80% of the refund amount granted within 5 days for service exporters.Both the Central Board of Director Taxes (CBDT) and Central Board of Excise and Customs (CBEC) are making optimum use of technology for expeditious disposal of assessment and refunds as well as for addressing the issues relating to custom clearance and facilitating trade among others.Indirect tax collections have also shown turn around during the Financial Year 2015-16. With growth in indirect tax collections, the indirect tax : GDP ratio for FY 2015-16 is about 5.17 per cent as compared to 4.36 per cent for FY 2014-15. Indirect tax: GDP ratio for the current Financial Year 2016-17 is estimated to be 5.20 per cent.E-payment of Central Excise and Service Tax refunds and rebates through RTEGS/NEFT has been implemented. 80% of the refund amount granted within 5 days for service exporters. Single Window Interface for Facilitating Trade (SWIFT) acts as a single point interface for over 50 offices of six Government agencies for clearance of Exim Goods and reduces documentation and costs, thereby benefiting over 97% of India's imports.UNI ADP AE/SB 1613 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0429-718564.Xml
Both Small grade and Medium grade sugar rose by Rs 10 nad Rs 2 per quintal on Improved demand from stockists, traders said

In ex-mill grade both Small and Medium grade sugarremained unchanged per quintal on moderate demand, they added.

Sugar rates per quintalSmall grade sugar Rs 3562/3666Medium grade sugar Rs 3642/3772Ex-mill grade: Small grade sugar Rs 3540/3600Medium grade sugar

Rs 3600/3700UNI JS SM1607

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Enraged over the death of two people in an accident,locals lynched the truck driver near Daniyavan Bazar under Daniyavan police station area in Patna district today. Police said here that the speeding truck knocked down two motorcyclists near Daniyavan Bazar, killing them on the spot. Local sturned violent soon after and caught hold of the truck driver. They beat up the driver mercilessly, leading to his deathon the spot, police said adding that the bodies had been sent for post-mortem. A case had been registered at Daniyavan police station, police said and added that raids were being on to nab the culprits. UNI KKS PL SW GC1543 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0211-718519.Xml
Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar on Friday said the available strength of pilots in the Indian Air Force (IAF) is sufficient to meet the current operational requirements. Parrikar said the overall shortage of pilots in the IAF has been reduced to 164 as on February 1 this year, adding this shortage of 164 pilots is likely to be made good in the next two years at the current induction rate. The Defence Minister, who was replying to questions in the Lok Sabha, said all pilots of the IAF undergo basic survival training, which is conducted periodically. Parrikar said the government has accorded approval for women to join as Short Service Commission officers in the fighter stream of the IAF on an experimental basis for a period of five years. He said as per the scheme, women trainees undergoing stage one training at the Air Force academy are required to be assessed for their suitability for entry into fighter stream. Parrikar said three women trainees have been selected for stage two training based on the suitability and willingness. The Defence Minister said the IAF derives numerous operational lessons by participating in exercises with friendly foreign countries, including the US. Replying to a question in the Lok Sabha, he said the IAF is participating in Ex Red Flag 16-1 at Alaska, USA, from April 30. Parrikar said four Sukhoi-30MKI, four jaguars, two XIL18 aircraft and two c-17 aircraft are participating in this exercise, which will be over on May 13. The Defence Minister further said the objectives of the exercise are to evaluate capabilities of platforms in a multi sensor environment and gain experience in complex mission planning and execution. He said the IAF has earlier conducted five joint air exercises with the US Air force. Parrikar said these exercises have provided exposure to the IAF personnel to realistic, combined and composite training in mission planning and execution in a high threat combat environment. (ANI)
Eight out of ten doctors polled have said that the medical education system in India needs to become more professional and less fraudulent. Out of a total of 1760 doctors polled, a whopping 84.6 percent of them agreed that the current system of medical education is flawed and discourages young minds. Only 13.6 percent described it as encouraging, while 1.7 percent stood divided. Dr. Sumer Sethi, Director, DAMS, said, "You cannot keep training younger generation using training methodology made decades before they were born. World has changed in the internet era and our medical schools still are following the classical approach and are not utilizing the connectivity or technology available. Promoting inquisitiveness and research is another area where the medical educators should take the lead." The results clearly point out that there is a huge dissatisfaction amongst the medical community regarding the current education system that needs radical changes. Safdarjung Hospital Professor, Dr. Chintamani, said the current medical education system can be described in two phrases, i.e confusing and sans vision. "Since the time students starts preparing for PMT till they becomes a specialist or a super specialist they are in a blind rat race. And it doesn't matter who the winner or loser is because everyone ends up being a rat. The whole system is exam oriented, either at the exit or at the entry. Where is the joy of studying medicine in that? Moreover this does not prepare the students to face the real world. The whole system is flawed from the beginning and needs to be changed," he added. Commenting on this, Nipun Goyal, Co-founder Curofy said, "Indian Medical Education System is disfunctioning and that's an open secret. The poll results showed us the growing discontent in medical community regarding it. Radical overhauling of the system is the need of the hour." (ANI)
Kolkata continues to brave hot and humid weather conditions today though the regional met department predicted isolated thunderstorm this evening. Heavy rain is likely to occur at isolated places over Sikkim and Darjeeling, Jalpaiguri, Coochbehar, Alipurduar districts , a senior official of regional meteorological department here today said.Thundersquall with wind speed between 50 and 60 km/hour is likely to occur at isolated places over Bankura, Birbhum, Burdwan, Nadia, Murshidabad districts of West Bengal & Bihar. Heat wave is likely to occur at isolated places over Odisha, he said."Conditions are now favourable for thunderstorms in Kolkata. So far, we have had three moderate-intensity ones. But if the existing conditions prevail, we might have a high-intensity thundershower soon. More could strike in the course of the month," said deputy director general of the department. Today, Kolkata saw a maximum temperature of 36.9 degrees Celsius, two degree above normal and minimum temperature recorded at 25.5 degree, one degree above normal.According to the department here, light rain and thundershower were witnessed over many places and few places recorded good shower for a short duration during last two days.UNI BM KK SW SB1735 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0212-718797.Xml
Roy, who was in Tihar Jail in Delhi since March 2014, has been allowed to leave prison for the funeral of his mother Chhabi Roy, who died this morning.

A three-member apex court bench headed by Chief Justice T.S. Thakur granted parole to Roy on humanitarian grounds, saying "a mother's love is such that it helps even in death".

Roy, 67, was arrested after the group failed to comply with a court order to refund money raised from millions of small investors by selling them bonds later ruled to be illegal. His bail had been set at Rs. 10,000 crores by the Supreme Court in earlier hearings. The Sahara group has failed to raise that money.

The court said plainclothesmen would be with Roy while he is out on parole. (ANI)
On the occasion of World Red Cross Day, Governor P B Acharya has appealed to each and everyone, particularly the stakeholders, to renew their commitments to the fundamental principles of impartiality, neutrality, independence, universality and unity in achieving the very objective of the Red Cross. In a release here, Mr Acharya expressed happiness that the World Red Cross Day will be observed all over the world on May 8, the birth anniversary of Jean Henry Dunant, founder of Red Cross crescent movement, who was born on the day in 1828. "It is indeed befitting to the occasion that the theme for this year is 'everywhere for everyone' which will inspire all the various organisations, societies, NGOs and individuals in promoting all the humanitarians activities carried out by the International committee of the Red Cross, so the message of the Red Cross society to treat people with all hospitality, dignity and humanity will be reached even in the most remotest places," he added. The Governor further wished the World Red Cross movement and the celebration a grand success. Meanwhile, the Indian Red Cross Society of Nagaland State Branch (IRCSN) will observe the Day on May 8 under the theme "everywhere for everyone". UNI AS AKM SW AN1802 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0213-718902.Xml
Police said here that locals spotted some bomb like objects roadside near Amwakuan village and informed the police. When a police team arrived on the spot, the mysterious objects turned out to be bombs and four powerful live bombs were recovered during the strict checking of the area.

"All the bombs were defused by bomb disposal squad", police said adding that the case was being investigated to ascertain who were responsible for dumping the bombs roadside.UNI XC-KKS AKM SW AN1836

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Police said Yogesh Chouhan (23) was out on morning when the miscreants fired upon him near Sinidih Kanta Ghar. He died on the spot.

Later, a police team reached the spot and sent the body for a post-mortem to PMCH.

Police said the youth was killed as result of a love affair. Further probe was on.UNI XC-AK AKM SW 1858

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:Police last night arrested two persons for indulging in ATM looting, using skimming machines. Police said today, when Reddiyarpalayam police were on a night beat last night ,they found a car parked in front of an ATM Centre in the area with two occupants. Since, there were cases of ATM looting in December, last year, 2015, using skimming machines and cases are pending, police got suspicious and interrogated the two. It came to know that they were from Dindigul in Tamil Nadu and identified as Saravanan (37) and Veeramani (33). Saravanan an electrician was working in Malaysia and Veeramani was doing cloth business in Sri Lanka. On searching the car, police found more than three driving licences in the same name, and more than 30 ATM cards, besides skimming machines.Following this,they were taken to Reddiyarpalaym police station and interrogated when it came to know that they used to prepare fake ATM cards, using skimming machines and withdrew money from ATM centres, using fake cards.They also revealed that they are residing at Pammal near Chennai. Police team which rushed to Pammal searched their house and seized another car and a television set .It came to know that one Prasanna from Sri Lanka is involved in these crimes and it is suspected that a few from Malaysia were also involved.They withdrew money from ATM Centres in Puducherry and in several parts of Tamil Nadu, including Villippuram. Police from Villippuram came to Reddiyarpalayam police station and interrogated the arrested. Police are taking steps to assess the quantum of money looted by the gang.UNI PAB KVV AK 1950 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0414-719339.Xml
Two country-made pistols, five live cartridges, Rs 20,000 in cash, four mobile phones and a motorcycle have been also recovered from their possession.

Addressing a press conference here, trainee IPS officer Aman Kumar said that acting swiftly, police managed to solve the case in 48 hours and arrested four out of the five criminals who were involved in the act.

He said among the arrested also included a bar worker Sumant Kumar while others are Tunu Mehta, Raja Kumar Paswan and Sonu Kumar Pal. UNI XC-AK AKM SW 1921

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: The round-table meet, convened by CPI district unit here today, flayed both the state and central governments for refusal of special status to Andhra Pradesh and resolved to chalk out an action plan to achieve justice to the state. It also resolved to strive for fulfillment of all the assurances given in the State Reorganisation Act, while continuing its fight against the central government. All opposition parties, including BJP, Congress, YSRCP, CPI, CPI(M), CPI(ML) New Democracy and BSP participated in the round-table meeting and deplored the injustice meted out to the residual state of Andhra Pradesh. Kurasala Kannababu YSRCP district president alleged that successive governments at the Centre were meting out step-motherly treatment towards Telugu people and Andhra MPs were being used as vote bank, resulting in injustice to the state unabashedly. Kandula Durgesh District congress president expressed his party's solidarity to the agitation for special status to AP and questioned the propriety of the BJP government in dodging the issue under the pretext of non-inclusion in Reorganisation Act. Y.Malakondaiah BJP district-president differed with others on the issue of taking-up agitation path . Mr Malakondaiah said the BJP was ready to join an all party delegation to New Delhi to prevail over the centre on the need for according special status to the state. NGOs association district-president Buriga Aseervadam, Cocanada Chamber President Dantu Suryarao, BSP leader Chollangi Venugopal, CPI district secretary Thatipaka Madhu, CPI(M) city-secretary P.Virababu, Journalists union leaders Swati Prasad and Anjibabu, were among those, who took part in the two-hour long deliberations.UNI XR-DP KVV AK 2030 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0414-719510.Xml
Mr Kumar, while inaugurating the regional consultation meeting of Task Force on Elimination of Poverty in India here, demanded for the constitution of BPL commission on the pattern of Election Commission to assess the poverty in India.

"Identification of BPL families is most important component of any drive to be successful in alleviation of poverty," the Chief Minister said, adding that there had been differences between the Centre and states on number of BPL families in a particular state.

Mr Kumar said how could a concrete programme for alleviation of poverty be rolled out without having clear picture on number of BPL families in a particular region or state.

The time had come to promote innovative ideas for poverty alleviation, he suggested.

Representatives of seven states-- Bihar, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Uttar Pradesh, Odisha and West Bengal participated in the meeting.UNI KKS IS BM RSA AN2224

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Uttar Pradesh Governor Ram Naik has sent another bill passed by the state legislature for the consent of President saying the proposed bill was against the spirit of Constitution. The Bill which has been sent to the President is Uttar Pradesh Lokayukta and Deputy Lok Ayukta (amendment) Bill 2015 which talks about keeping the Chief Justice of High Court out of the selection panel for Lokayukta. Government said here today that the proposed bill has abolished the role of Chief Justice in selection of Lokayukta and deputy Lokayukta which is in contravention of the spirit of Constitution. "As Government's proposed bill has created a constitutional impasse President's consent is mandatory in this case," Governor said in a written statement here. The UP Assembly had passed the Uttar Pradesh Lokayukta and Up-Lokayukta (Amendment) Bill, 2015, to amend Lokayukta Act, dropping the Allahabad High Court Chief Justice from the selection committee. The Bill proposed that the selection committee be made a four-member body comprising the chief minister, Leader of Opposition, Speaker and a retired judge who would be selected in consultation by the chief minister and the Speaker. The same bill was passed by the State council without any change in August 2015. The Government had made these amendments after Chief Justice had objected to some names proposed by Chief Minister as new Lokayukta. The then Chief Justice DY Chandrachud had questioned the validity of the procedure adopted by the government for selection of Lokayukta following Lokayukta Amendment Bill passed by the state government in both Houses of state legislature. However, new Lokayukta in UP Justice Sanjay Mishra was appointed by Supreme Court after the proposed committee failed to come to a conclusion on one name. Governor said he has informed Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav about this development. Earlier Government had sent two Bills for President's assent drawing ire from Urban Development Minister Md Azam Khan who said Raj Bhawan was trying to downplay constitutional propriety of State legislature.UNI MB CJ RSA 2326 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0400-719494.Xml
To complete the ground level review to find the reason for continuous poor show of the Congress as well as to invite suggestions that how the aura of the oldest political outfit could be reinstated, poll strategist Prashant Kishor has now pushed his entire team to task in Uttar Pradesh. Kishor has chalked out a tour of all the remaining districts of the State except for Rae Bareli and Amethi, his team members would cover the entire state between May 8 to May 22 this month. Sources said soon after this, Kishor would draft a report and submit it to Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi with suggestions as to how the Congress should select their candidates and that how should they campaign to regain power in this biggest state Kishor is already in touch with at least a dozen smaller parties of Uttar Pradesh along with Janata Dal (United) and Rashtriya Janta Dal, AITC and is planning for another `Mahaghatbandhan' (grand alliance) just on the lines of Bihar, after projecting Bharatiya Janta Party as the main opposition. Kishor wanted that both Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party should be kept away from the campaign to send a message that these two regional parties are already out of contest and that the real fight is just between Congress and BJP.Vice-Chairman of the Uttar Pradesh Congress Committee (UPCC) Media Cell, Virendra Madan today said that PK has planned an hectic tour for his over half a dozen teams that will cover all the districts of state except the ones coming under Varanasi, Gorakhpur and Allahabad divisions where a review has already been completed by team members. Kishore will himself a holding a meeting with all the presidents of the Block Development Committee (BDC) of the Congress on May 10 here at Lucknow in which State president Nirmal Khatri and AICC general secretary Madhusudan Mistri will also remain present.Later PK will hold meeting with senior leaders of Varanasi division on May 11, Allahabad division on May 12 and Gorakhpur division on May 13 here at Lucknow to cross-verify the report submitted by his team members after visiting the districts covered under the above three divisions of Eastern UP. Mr Madan said that from May 8 till May 22, PK's teams will make a two days visit each in Bahraich, Balrampur, Gonda, and Shrawasti districts at Devipatan division, Azamgarh, Balia, Mau, and Kansganj districts in Azamgarh division, Mirjapur, Santravidasnagar, and Sonebhadra districts in Mirjapur division, Jhansi, Jalaun, Lalitpur in Jhansi division, Saharanpur, Muzaffarnaagr, Shamli districts in Saharanpur division, Aliagrh, Etah and Hathras in Aligarh division, Bijnore, Rampur, Moradabad and Amroha in Moradabad division. Similarly the teams will visit, Kanpur, Kanpur Dehat, Farukkabad, Etawah, Kannauj, Auriya in Kanpur division, Meerut, Bulundshahr, Hapur, Ghaziabad, Gautambudhnagar, Bagpat in Meerut division, Basti, Santkabirnagar, Siddharthnagar in Basti division, Sultanpur, Faizabad, Ambedkarnagar, Barabanki in Faizabad division, Banda, Chitrakut, Hamirpur, Mahoba in Chitrakut division, Agra, Mathura, Mainpuri, Ferojabad in Agra Division, Bareilly, Philibhit, Badaun, Shahjahenpur in Bareilly division. Meanwhile alleging that benefits of government relief measures and funds were not reaching the needy in drought-hit areas of the State, Congress said itsleaders will tour all water-scarce districts to review implementation of the state and central schemes in UP. "Party legislators have been instructed to visit the drought-hit districts between May 9 and May 22 along with city and district unit presidents and former peoples' representatives to find out the reality of various schemes of the state and central governments being run there to deal with the situation," Congress Legislature Party leader Pradip Mathur said. The decision has been taken on the directives of AICC general secretary and in charge of party affairs in UP Madhusudan Mistri, he said. The visiting teams will check the reality of schemes like MGNREGA, food security, waiver of farmers' loans, among others, and submit their reports by May 31, Mathur said. Alleging that the benefit of the relief funds and schemes. was not reaching the needy, he said in the absence of a proper monitoring system, funds were being misused and its utilisation shown only on papers. He alleged that at a time of a famine-like situation in the state, the central government was merely indulging in "gags", while the state government's schemes were not benefiting the people. With Bundelkhand region facing severe heat wave and drought, the State government has announced a special package for the parched area, while the Centre has chalked out a multi- pronged strategy to mitigate the woes of distressed farmers, several of whom have committed suicide. UNI MB CJ RSA 2304 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0400-719564.Xml
The five-day drive from May 1, named as 'Dirty Dozen' by Uttar Pradesh police, had yielded results with the local officials identifying 974 goons and initiated proceedings under the UP Gonda Act against 729 of them. The action was taken under Section 151/107/116 of Cr PC by bounding down criminals with heavy security amount. Giving details, Director General of Police Javed Ahmed and IG (public grievances) Ashok Mutha Jain claimed that top cop of the State had given direction to all zonal IGs, range DIGs and district police chiefs that they should identify hardened criminals of the district, and initiate proceedings against them under Goonda's Act so that they could not create law and order situation and that public could live in a peaceful atmosphere. In his circular sent in the last week of April, Ahmed directed to first make a list by identifying the criminals and later between May 1 till May 5, proceedings should be made against those criminals. Mr Jain claimed that now after competition of the above drive, report has been send to DGP office pointing that the drive was a big success. He said that amongst 974 criminals identified across the State, action has been initiated against 729 criminals. However, the districts coming under Lucknow Zone are the worst performer by taking action against just 58 of the 132 identified criminals. Similarly Meerut and Gorakhpur Zone also identified 132 criminals each and action has been initiated against 93 and 121 criminals respectively.In Agra zone, action has been initiated against 90 of 96 criminal identified while in Allahabad zone, action was taken against 84 of the 96 identified criminals.He said that in Bareilly zone, 108 criminals have been identified and action was taken against 84 while in Varanasi Zone, 170 criminals have been identified and action was taken against 125 criminals. Lastly in Kanpur Zone, action was taken against 74 of the 108 identified criminals. Jain said that now instructions have been issued to take action against the remaining 245 criminals at earliest.UNI MB CJ RSA 2316 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0400-719594.Xml
BJP today said that the party ministers will hold public darbars in the Kashmir Valley to address issues if common man. ''The party has decided to depute BJP Ministers to hold public darbar in all the districts of Kashmir on May 11 for direct interaction with the people in their respective districts with an objective of taking stock of their day to day problems and get the same resolved on the spot,'' Avinash Rai Khanna, BJP National Vice President and J&K Prabhari said while addressing the meeting here this evening. He said, ''the 10-month tenure of previous BJP-PDP coalition government had been splendid as an era of development got started with party ministers, MLAs and MLCs working to fulfil the poll promises,'' adding, ''they have to continue their work with same zeal''.''For the convenience of the people of Jammu, one minister will be available at party office every week,'' he added.Mr Khanna further said that during these days of summers, the people need regular supply of electricity and water and the ministers, MLAs, MLCs should ensure that no one is made to suffer.BJP State president Sat Sharma said that the party has decided to convey to all MLAs and MLCs to raise the burning issues related to their respective areas in the coming session of State Assembly.''Every elected representative has to get well prepared to highlight such issues which need immediate attention and redressal,'' said Mr Sharma. Senior leader and Deputy chief minister Dr Nirmal Singh in his address said that the BJP as coalition partner in the previous and present governments, have worked towards providing good and corruption free government and there has been wide spread appreciation in all the three regions of the State. He said that various welfare schemes and developmental activities have been launched in the State at the behest of BJP and number of prestigious projects too stands sanctioned for J&K with the efforts of the BJP Ministers in the coalition government. UNI VBH CJ RSA 2310 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0400-719599.Xml
Acting on a tip off, a team of Nashik police, CBI and Airport officers laid a trap at Chhatrapati International Airport, Mumbai and arrested the Chavan couple on their arrival from Singapore today, police said.

Bhausaheb Chavan had allegedly duped hundreds of investors of thousands of crores of rupees with the promise of attractive returns of about three-times on their investments made in KBC Multitrade, a private limited company, floated by him.

Six people have so far been arrested, while two others had committed suicide in this connection.

In August 2014, the district and sessions court had issued an arrest warrant against the main suspects, Bhausaheb Chavan and his wife Aarti, in connection with the KBC multi-crore scam.

As the husband-wife duo had fled to Singapore, the city police had appealed the district court to issue an international red-corner notice against them.

The police had also sought for the court's permission for conducting search operations of the bank lockers of the suspects.

The KBC directors had duped hundreds of investors of crores of rupees in the state. On July 11, 2014, the Adgaon police had registered the offence against the mastermind and founder of the company Bhausaheb Chabu Chavan and Bapusaheb Chabu Chavan along with other directors of the company.UNI RDS SS CJ RSA RAI2331

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Brazil's Supreme Court has suspend President of the Chamber of Deputies Eduardo Cunha for obstructing corruption investigations against him. In a unanimous vote, 11 Supreme Court judges made the decision on an injunction filed by prosecutor general Rodrigo Janot to suspend Cunha's office, Xinhua news agency reported. The vote was a confirmation of a preliminary decision by Justice Teori Zavaski, who ruled early in the day that Cunha should be suspended. Given Cunha's capacity as the house speaker, the issue had to be voted on by all Supreme Court judges as well. The judges agreed that Cunha had been using his power to obstruct probe against him. A massive investigation into a major corruption scheme at state-controlled oil and gas giant Petrobras was underway. Alleged bribery and fraudulent contracts have led to the arrests of a number of politicians, Petrobras directors and high executives from Brazil's major construction companies. Cunha was being investigated by the Chamber's ethics committee for taking millions of dollars for favouring specific companies in Petrobras contracts. In a statement issued after the decision was announced, Cunha complained that the judiciary was trying to interfere with Congress and that he would appeal. In his injunction, Janot said removing Cunha from his position was essential for investigations to continue without interference and warned about the possibility that the lawmaker would commit more wrongdoings. However, for Cunha to be removed, the Chamber itself must vote in favour. Until that time, he will maintain his salary and benefits. Such a vote is seen as very unlikely since his successor, Waldir Maranhao, is a close ally of his. Cunha is regarded as one of the major agents of President Dilma Rousseff's impeachment process. As president of the chamber, he refused to accept any impeachment requests against her for most of 2015. However, when Rousseff's Workers' Party suggested it would back his removal after documents revealed Cunha had millions of dollars stashed away in Swiss bank accounts, he started the impeachment process. Rousseff calls the impeachment against her "a soft coup" and regards Cunha and her Vice President Michel Temer as its masterminds. Rousseff said the removal of Cunha occurred "better late than never". "I heard the court had suspended Cunha. Better late than never. I regret that he succeeded in presiding over the regrettable impeachment process in the house," she said. --IANS py/ ( 402 Words) 2016-05-06-10:18:10 (IANS)
A 30-foot trawler named "Marvin" lies beached on a grass bank overlooking the South China Sea, idle since China's coastguard began driving away Philippine fishermen after a fierce standoff four years ago.Its 10-man crew once made their living off the abundant fish stocks of the disputed Scarborough Shoal some 124 nautical miles away. But since Beijing's patrol boats moved in, the fishermen of the west coast town of Masinloc said they had been forced to do odd jobs ashore, or become motorcycle taxi drivers.The crews yearn to get back into their boats and hope that the Philippine election on May 9 will bring a new president bold enough to stand up to China's assertiveness in the disputed waters of the South China Sea.It is something they say incumbent Benigno Aquino was hesitant to do, while the frontrunner to succeed him, the hard-talking mayor of Davao city, Rodrigo Duterte, has indicated he may take a tougher line with Beijing."We want a tougher president who would make China leave the Philippine Sea," said the Marvin's shirtless captain, Biany Mula, referring to the waters by their Philippine name."That area is not their property."The sentiment is shared by fishermen from Vietnam and Malaysia, as China's fishing fleet and accompanying coastguard armada have expanded within a nine-dash line that denotes Beijing's claims to nine-tenths of the world's most contested waterway.With a relatively small and under-equipped military, the Philippines wants no confrontation with China, but it has been vocal in asserting its claims to the Spratly islands and its rights to exploit its coastal waters.It has also angered China by indirectly challenging its claims at the Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Hague. China has refused to recognise the court's authority or abide by the ruling, which is expected soon.Some Filipino fishermen are optimistic a new leader can find a solution."I'll vote because somebody will resolve the issue in the Scarborough Shoal," said Alexander Manzano, fixing a boat moored on a makeshift dock."I believe someone will be able to do it. That's why I'll vote."TOUGH TALK, MIXED MESSAGESThat someone could be Duterte, who is roaring ahead in opinion polls with talk of employing deadly methods to eradicate crime and corruption.His position on the South China Sea is vague, however, in what has largely been a single-issue campaign.When the topic came up in debates, Duterte promised not to put the Philippine navy in harm's way, but said he would personally challenge China by riding a jet-ski to the Spratlys to plant a Philippine flag.For key ally the United States, a Duterte presidency brings much uncertainty. A Washington-based official closely following the election said Duterte's stance on the South China Sea appeared "contradictory", mixing both bellicose and conciliatory messages about dealing with Beijing.Murray Hiebert, a Southeast Asia specialist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said Duterte's comments did not seem well thought out, including pledging to negotiate with China but only after it agrees the Spratlys belong to the Philippines."That's not an opening position that will entice China to the negotiating table," Hiebert said.Like Washington, Beijing has given no indication who it would prefer as Philippine president.Its foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei said ties between the two countries were "extremely difficult", but China hoped the next leadership "takes actual steps to improve relations."The Philippine military is prohibited from discussing the election, but some senior officers privately say they are warming to the idea of Duterte as their commander-in-chief.His talk of crushing Islamist insurgents behind a lucrative piracy and kidnap business has appeal, they say, as does his promise to take better care of troops and make national security a priority.Others hope Duterte will pursue a more independent foreign policy through broader diplomatic alliances and new sources of defence hardware to avoid being over-dependent on Washington."We're no longer in the Cold War period. We could build our own capability with the help of many allies, not only the US" said one officer.For Joy Topaz, a fish vendor in a Masinloc shanty town, the most pressing issue is to negotiate a deal to get Filipino fishermen back to the Scarborough Shoal."There has been talk here about war, but we are afraid of fighting," she said."Let us just fish. Let everyone be allowed to fish."REUTERS SDR PM0917 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0329-717952.Xml
US Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump celebrated Cinco de Mayo by tweeting a photo of himself with a taco bowl and the caption: "I love Hispanics," but the gesture was not to everyone's taste."Happy #CincoDeMayo!" tweeted Trump (@realDonaldTrump). "The best taco bowls are made in Trump Tower Grill. I love Hispanics!"Cinco de Mayo commemorates the Mexican defeat of the French during the Battle of Puebla in 1862.The posting angered, baffled or amused some social media users, including Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton, Trump's likely opponent in the November 8 election."'I love Hispanics!' -Trump, 52 minutes ago," Clinton (@HillaryClinton) tweeted. "'They're gonna be deported.' -Trump, yesterday."Trump has struggled to gain the support of Latino voters since launching his presidential campaign last year with comments accusing Mexico of sending rapists and drug runners across the US border.He has also vowed to deport all the illegal immigrants living in the United States and build a wall along the border with Mexico and have that country pay for it."Trump Tower Grill" began trending on the microblogging platform after Trump's tweet, as social media users weighed in on the post."Trump sources confirm that in fact, Mexico paid for the taco salad," tweeted Tom Watson (@tomwatson).Others found the tweet offensive and argued it relied heavily on crude stereotyping."Now officially waiting for a photo of Trump eating some Church's Chicken (or Bojangles) with a thumbs up and a 'I love the blacks!' " tweeted Slate chief political correspondent Jamelle Bouie (@jbouie)."Trump and matzah ball soup on Jewish New Year... You can count on it," tweeted Harry Enten (@ForecasterEnten).REUTERS JW0500 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0364-717901.Xml
The top elected US Republican, Paul Ryan, said he was not ready to endorse Donald Trump, a sign of the challenges the party's presumptive presidential nominee faces rallying the Republican establishment behind his White House bid.Ryan, the speaker of the US House of Representatives, said conservatives wanted to know if Trump shares their values."I hope to support our nominee, I hope to support his candidacy fully," Ryan said on CNN. "At this point, I'm just not there right now."Other Republicans grappled this week with whether to support Trump, who has shunned the party line on trade and upset the party establishment with offensive comments about women and immigrants. Trump on Thursday announced a new campaign finance chairman in response to questions about his readiness for a general election race.Trump's remaining rivals in the Republican race dropped out this week, clearing his path to be picked as the presidential nominee. He will likely face Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton in the November 8 general election."Suppose Trump loses overwhelmingly. Would you want to have been siding with the captain of the Titanic, or maybe seen as someone who was begging the captain to watch out for icebergs?" said Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia's Center for Politics.Ryan criticized Trump in December for proposing to temporarily ban all Muslims from entering the United States and knocked him in March for failing to denounce white supremacist groups during a television interview.The House speaker, who was the running mate of Republican 2012 presidential nominee Mitt Romney, a harsh Trump critic, said he hoped the party would be unified by this summer but that the pressure was on Trump to do that."He won fair and square," Ryan said of Trump, acknowledging his own policy differences with the New York billionaire businessman. He added: "If we don't unify all wings of the party, we're not going to win this election."CAMPAIGN FUNDRAISINGTrump largely used his own money for his primary fight but plans to follow the more typical path of raising money from outside sources for the general election to succeed Democratic President Barack Obama.He named his campaign finance chief on Thursday - Steven Mnuchin, a former Goldman Sachs partner who is chief executive of private investment firm Dune Capital Management and with whom Trump worked in a business capacity in the past.Mnuchin has a long history of political donations, including to Clinton. Since 1998, Mnuchin has given about 71,000 dollars to Democrats, compared with about 37,000 dollars to Republicans. Republicans have questioned Trump's loyalty to the party because he also donated to Democratic candidates in the past.Trump is hiring staff to equip his campaign for the months ahead and making contact with lawmakers. A Republican congressional aide said there had been discussions about Trump visiting Capitol Hill soon.US Representative Renee Ellmers, a Republican from North Carolina who has endorsed Trump, told Reuters the campaign would begin raising money for the party."They are going to start understanding and realizing that in order to grow this operation, they will need to grow funds, not only for him and for the campaign to beat Hillary Clinton, but for the Republican Party itself," Ellmers said.Historically, political parties have depended on their nominees to raise money in order to fund their other operations, including working to elect members of the House of Representatives and Senate.One key worry for Republicans has been that their candidates for Congress and other elective positions could suffer with the divisive figure of Trump at the top of the ticket.Ron Bonjean, a Republican strategist, said Ryan gave lawmakers in his party cover to steer clear of Trump in their re-election campaigns."He is positioning the Republican conference and giving Republicans a message they can hold onto," Bonjean said.REUTERS JW PR0553 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0364-717903.Xml
A Brazilian judge ratified the settlement Samarco and its owners, BHP Billiton and Vale SA, signed with the Brazilian government in March to cover damages for a deadly dam spill last year, Vale said in a statement.The move potentially saps some of the energy from a separate 44 billion dollars lawsuit filed by federal prosecutors on Tuesday who criticized the settlement as insufficient.The agreement will see Samarco, BHP and Vale pay a government-estimated 20 billion reais ( 5.6 billion dollars) over 15 years to cover and repair damages. Vale, however, has outlined it expects to pay less than that due to the way the deal is structured, calculating future payments depending on how much work remains to be done."It's a very important step because you remove any uncertainty about the agreement's validity," said Marilene Ramos, President of Brazil's federal environment agency Ibama which formed part of the settlement."The programs outlined in the agreement can now be implemented by the companies," Ramos added, referring to the environmental reparation plan which includes work on sewage, landfill, reforestation and water treatment.The settlement has been strongly criticized by federal prosecutors who called it little more than a "letter of intent" in their lawsuit. "It is absolutely insufficient," said Jorge Munhs de Souza, one of the prosecutors working on the case.Samarco Chief Executive Roberto Carvalho told Reuters the settlement and the lawsuit filed by prosecutors covers the same ground."The agreement ratified today already carries all the socio-economic and environmental reparations which this other lawsuit proposes," Carvalho said.He reiterated that he expects the Samarco mine, closed after the disaster, to restart later this year and that a return to production is vital for the company to afford the terms of the agreement. The settlement specifies that if Samarco cannot meet its obligations, the cost of doing so falls to Vale and BHP.( 1 DOLLAR = 3.55 reais)REUTERS JW PR0602 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0364-717904.Xml
Maybe only in the Washington area could you find the US counterintelligence chief handcuffing a suspect after his lunch is interrupted by a car ramming into his restaurant and bursting into flames.National Counterintelligence Executive Bill Evanina was eating in the Silver Diner in McLean, Virginia, on Wednesday when a Hummer crashed into the building and caught fire, said a US intelligence official, who described the incident on condition of anonymity.A video posted to YouTube shows a suited Evanina and his two luncheon companions dragging the driver away from the Hummer.The man is flipped over and Evanina, a former Federal Bureau of Investigation agent, kneels on his back and handcuffs him as sirens wail and flames leap from the car.The intelligence official said yesterday that Evanina's two companions were a former FBI agent and an ex-CIA officer.A spokesman for Evanina had no comment. FBI Director James Comey called Evanina to congratulate him, a source familiar with the matter said.Fairfax County police said four people were injured, including the driver. A police spokeswoman said the man was in the hospital and no charges had been filed.A spokesman for Silver Diner said in a statement the driver was a former employee. McLean, the site of the incident, is home to the Central Intelligence Agency headquarters.As the National Counterintelligence Executive, Evanina is the head of counterintelligence for the US government and chief counterintelligence adviser to the director of National Intelligence. (REUTERS JW PR0726 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0364-717918.Xml
The chairman of the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China Ltd (ICBC), Jiang Jianqing, is poised to retire and will help set up a Chinese government fund aimed at promoting investment in Central and Eastern Europe, two sources with direct knowledge of the matter told Reuters.Jiang, 63, has led China's biggest bank for 16 years, overcoming an insolvency crisis when its non-performing loan ratio was more than 20 per cent in 2004, and orchestrating a 19.1 billion dollars dual listing in 2006 - the world's biggest initial public offering at that time.The move was revealed at an internal meeting on Wednesday, the sources said, adding that Jiang will still be involved in ICBC's globalisation strategy after his retirement.The exact timing of Jiang's departure and his successor are unclear.The new fund was floated by China's Premier Li Keqiang last November during a summit with leaders from 16 Central and Eastern European countries. It will play a key part of China's modern Silk Road strategy to expand the country's economic and political influence in a region seen as a gateway to the European Union.The "16+1 multilateral finance company", as Li proposed, will finance trade and investment, reducing financing costs and removing the need for governments to provide guarantees."ICBC is taking a leading role in setting up the new Central and Eastern Europe fund and Chairman Jiang is working on that," said a source. The sources, who were not authorised to speak to the media, declined to be identified.A Beijing-based spokesman for ICBC declined to comment.China Business News first reported Jiang's imminent retirement yesterday.ICBC reported flat earnings for the first quarter this year. Like other major Chinese banks, it is seeing margins squeezed by the central bank's successive rate cuts and profitability and capital buffers eroded by rising bad debt.REUTERS SDR SHS PM1020 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0431-717983.Xml
The US administration is seeking to approve a sale of as many as 12 A-29 Super Tucano light attack aircraft to Nigeria to aid its battle against the extremist group Boko Haram, US officials say, in a vote of confidence in President Muhammadu Buhari's drive to reform the country's corruption-tainted military.Washington also is dedicating more intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance assets to the campaign against the Islamist militants in the region and plans to provide additional training to Nigerian infantry forces, the officials told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the administration's plans.The possible sale -- which the officials said was favored within the US administration but is subject to review by Congress -- underscores the deepening US involvement in helping governments in north and west Africa fight extremist groups.US Navy Vice Admiral Michael Franken, a deputy commander of the Pentagon's Africa Command, told a Washington forum last week that there now are 6,200 US troops - most of them Special Operations Forces - operating from 26 locations on the continent.The widening US military cooperation is a political victory for Buhari, who took office last year pledging to crack down on the rampant corruption that has undermined the armed forces in Africa's most populous country."The Buhari administration I think has really re energized the bilateral relationship in a fundamental way," one US official said.The previous Nigerian government of Goodluck Jonathan had scorned the United States for blocking arms sales partly because of human rights concerns. It also criticized Washington for failing to speed the sharing of intelligence.The souring relations hit a low at the end of 2014 when US military training of Nigerian forces was abruptly halted.That is changing under Buhari, whose crackdown on corruption has led to a raft of charges against top national security officials in the previous government."Buhari made clear from the get-go that his number one priority was reforming the military to defeat Boko Haram ... And he sees us as part of that solution," a second US official said.Still, serious human rights abuses committed by security forces, which include police, increased in 2015, according to the US State Department's annual human rights report.Many of the funds alleged to have been misused and siphoned off by corrupt Nigerian officials under Jonathan's government were earmarked for the fight against Boko Haram, which has killed thousands in northeast Nigeria and neighboring countries in the last seven years. Last year, the group pledged loyalty to Islamic State."No wonder they weren't doing well with respect to Boko Haram. (They) didn't have the ammunition," the first official said.The accused officials include Nigeria's former chief of defense staff, who last month pleaded not guilty to using money allocated for Nigeria's air force to buy a mansion and a commercial plot of land and build a shopping mall.ARMED AIRCRAFTCongress has not yet been formally notified of the possible US approval of the sale of Embraer's A29 Super Tucano turboprop aircraft to Nigeria.The Tucanos can be used for training, surveillance or attack. They can be armed with two wing-mounted machine guns and can carry up to 1,550 Kg (3,417 pounds) of weapons. One production line for the Super Tucano is in Florida, where it is built with US firm Sierra Nevada Corp. The aircraft that would be sold to Nigeria come with a "very basic armed configuration," one of the US officials said.The sale could offer Nigeria a more maneuverable aircraft that can stay aloft for extended periods to target Boko Haram formations. Officials did not disclose the cost of the planes to be sold to Nigeria.However, a contract for 20 similar aircraft sold to Afghanistan was valued at about 428 million dollar at the time it was announced in 2013.J. Peter Pham, director of the Africa Center at the Atlantic Council think tank, said any sale of Super Tucano aircraft would demonstrate improving ties, but cautioned that their ability to counter Boko Haram could be limited."When you're fighting a group that's no longer holding towns and villages, that's no longer massing forces in a conventional way, the aircraft - attack aircraft - have a much more limited role in that kind of fight," Pham said.African armies routed the militant group from much of its self-proclaimed caliphate in northeastern Nigeria last year.Its fighters have since regrouped and intensified their attacks in the Lake Chad Basin, threatening regional security, despite the creation of a 9,000-strong African multinational force to counter it.The US military expects to train a second Nigerian infantry battalion once the current group completes its training later this year, the first official said.The officials did not specify what type of additional intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance assets would be provided to bolster the regional fight against Boko Haram.They acknowledge that they have a tough task combating the group, which is sending women and children strapped with explosives to blow up civilian targets such as marketplaces."Boko Haram has morphed back in to what it had earlier been, not a holder of large amounts of territory, but rather a generator of asymmetric attacks," the second official said. REUTERS SDR SHS PM1110 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0431-718044.Xml
The images on social media showed tents destroyed at the Kamouna camp near Sarmada in Idlib province, close to the Turkish border, reports Guardian.

The strike comes a day after the extension of a truce was confirmed.

The Syrian military and non-jihadist rebel forces had agreed to a temporary truce around the city of Aleppo, following pressure from the US and Russia.

A nationwide cessation of hostilities has been in place since February, but it has come under severe pressure recently, particularly around Aleppo, where some 300 people have died in clashes over the past two weeks.

The UN has warned that if the nationwide cessation fails, it will be 'catastrophic' and could send 4, 00,000 more people heading for refuge at the border with Turkey.(ANI)
Identified as Abu Sa'ad al-Sudani, a Sudanese national, and his wife, Australian Shadi Jabar Khalil Mohammad, died in manned airstrike on April 22 near Al Bab, Syria.

"Both al-Sudani and his wife were active in recruiting foreign fighters and efforts to inspire attacks against western interests," CNN quoted Peter Cook, Pentagon Press Secretary, as saying.

The couple sought to target the United States, Canada and the UK, according to the Pentagon.

"The deaths of al Sudani and Shadi remove influential ISIL recruiters and extremists who actively sought to harm Western interests and further disrupts and degrades ISIL's ability to plot external attacks," Cook said. (ANI)
It will be up to British voters on June 23 to decide whether the country stays in the European Union, but international bodies and foreign leaders have joined the debate, mostly to urge the country not to the leave the bloc.Below is a summary of comments ranging from institutions such as the International Monetary Fund to China's premier.US PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMAObama told Britain on April 22 that it would go to "the back of the queue" for trade talks with Washington if it left the EU. He combined the blunt warning with praise for Britain's influence within the 28-nation bloc, something Washington considered important to its own interests.US Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton also wants Britain to stay in the EU.US REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE DONALD TRUMPTrump said on May 5 that Britain would be better off outside the EU because of high levels of migration. "I think the migration has been a horrible thing for Europe. A lot of that was pushed by the EU. I would say that they're better off without it personally, but I'm not making that as a recommendation - just my feeling," he told Fox News.JAPANESE PRIME MINISTER SHINZO ABEAbe used a visit to London on May 5 to warn Britain that a vote to leave the EU would make Britain less attractive for Japanese investors. "Japan very clearly would prefer Britain to remain within the EU," he said "Many Japanese companies set up their operations in the UK precisely because the UK is a gateway to the EU ... A vote to leave would make the UK less attractive as a destination for Japanese investment."GERMAN FINANCE MINISTER WOLFGANG SCHAEUBLESchaeuble said on March 3 it would be extremely difficult or even impossible for Britain to negotiate a "special deal" on trade with the EU if it left the bloc. "Imagine the negotiations that would have to take place after a Brexit decision. For the years to come all this bureaucratic stuff. Good luck!" he said.FRENCH ECONOMY MINISTER EMMANUEL MACRONMacron said on April 15 that Britain would need to continue to pay into the EU budget if it wished to continue with tariff-free access to the bloc's single market after a Brexit."Those who pretend that passporting will be preserved exactly following the same rules without any contribution to the budget, are making a big, a big mistake," Macron added.INTERNATIONAL MONETARY FUNDThe global economy watchdog made an unusual incursion into a national political issue on April 12 when it said a Brexit could "do severe regional and global damage by disrupting established trading relationships."ORGANISATION FOR ECONOMIC CO-OPERATION AND DEVELOPMENTThe OECD said Britons would face a "Brexit tax" if they left the EU, equivalent to a month's salary by 2020, given the likely hit to the economy. Its secretary general urged Britons to think carefully about how they would fare outside the 28-country bloc. "Britain, look at yourself in the mirror, naked. Do you like what you see? Mostly I hope you come out saying: not too much," Angel Gurria said.CHINESE PREMIER XI JINPINGChina, which is sensitive to comments from abroad and usually does not talk about other countries' domestic affairs, issued a veiled call on Britain to stay in the EU when its leader Xi Jinping visited the country in October. "China hopes to see a prosperous Europe and a united EU, and hopes Britain, as an important member of the EU, can play an even more positive and constructive role in promoting the deepening development of China-EU ties," he said.DALLAS FEDERAL RESERVE PRESIDENT ROBERT KAPLANKaplan told reporters in London that uncertainty about Brexit could affect whether the Fed raised rates for the first time since December at its June 15 meeting.He said: "There is no question that if it were to occur, it would open up potential tail risk, including the sudden or rapid depreciation of the currency which might in fact have ripple effects in other countries."GROUP OF 20 ECONOMIESFinance ministers and central bank governors from 20 of the world's leading economies put Brexit on their list of dangers to the world economy when they met in February. G20 officials said Brexit was added on the insistence of Britain.SILENT SO FARSupporters of Britain remaining in the EU have said that a decision to split the bloc would be welcomed by Russian President Vladimir Putin as a weakening of the West. So far, Putin has not commented on the Brexit debate."Russia is being dragged into the domestic debate on Brexit," the Russian embassy in London said in a statement in March. "Why is the 'wicked Russia' thesis used to explain a government policy?"In Brussels, European Commission economists have been banned from researching the impact of Britain leaving the bloc, or even talking about it publicly, for fear of getting embroiled in the debate, officials have said. REUTERS AKC AS1506 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0432-718476.Xml
Turkish warplanes attacked and destroyed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militant targets in northern Iraq early today, including shelters and gun positions, military sources said.Turkey has been carrying out regular attacks on PKK camps and related targets in the mountainous region of northern Iraq near the Turkish border since a ceasefire with the PKK collapsed in July last year.REUTERS AKC AS1532 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0432-718497.Xml
Metal bars have been installed in the doors of an old newspaper office where scores of squatters - asylum seekers, refugees and a few Italians - fear a confrontation with Rome's riot police.The bars went up after the occupants of the former La Stampa office found out about City Hall's plan to evict them, as part of a drive by the Italian authorities to crack down on the growing number of people taking residence in disused buildings."We'll run to the roof," said one man by a sign calling for a meeting on how his fellow residents should defend themselves.Across Italy, an estimated 10,000 refugees and asylum seekers are living in makeshift settlements, including shanty towns and tents in the open.Many are in limbo awaiting a decision on their asylum claim. Others have been granted refugee status but say the state has done little to help them access social services. Some had tried to reach other European cities before returning to Italy.In all 40 sites have been mapped by medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), including the old offices of La Stampa which is home to 130 people and Turin's former Olympic village which is housing 1,000 people.In a report on the shortcomings of Italy's asylum system, MSF said it had found an invisible population surviving on the margins of society.'THROWN OUT LIKE RUBBISH'Those living in abandoned buildings find their way there through an informal network of refugees, often after being granted refugee status and leaving asylum seeker centres.In the old La Stampa offices, people live in rooms built with breezeblocks that have made the former newsroom unrecognisable since it was first occupied in October 2013.A note with "do not touch" scrawled in red ink is taped on to a fuse box, indicating where the residents have wired up their own electricity.The inhabitants have built their own bathrooms, including some toilet stalls which are padlocked for privacy, and added a few personal touches like potted plants and a "welcome" mat.But many still struggle with the living conditions."It is difficult to tell you how cold it gets," said one Eritrean man, who admits being affected mentally and physically by the precarious situation.The 37-year-old, who declined to give his name, reached the Italian island of Lampedusa five years ago and says he was given no support after being granted asylum."They threw us on the street after they gave us documents, like rubbish," he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.His arrival came around the same time Italy began setting up emergency reception facilities in hotels, former schools and monasteries, to host some of the 56,000 people who fled to Italy in 2011 following uprisings in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya.But these reception centres, which can host roughly 76,000 people, are ill-equipped for refugees, says MSF researcher Giuseppe De Mola.For example, hoteliers paid by the government to turn their rooms over to asylum seekers are unlikely to also run language courses or give jobs advice for those who given refugee status."So after a year people leave and they don't find any instruments for integration. Problems begin here," De Mola said.GERMANY DOES BETTER?As Italy struggles to cope with housing and integrating its refugee population, the situation appears markedly different in Germany, Europe's biggest economy.Last year the government also opened emergency shelters to accommodate around 1 million arrivals, but despite the strain the UN refugee agency says the system is working well."With the decreasing numbers (in 2016), those emergency shelters are more or less empty and the government is trying to move people to more permanent shelters," Martin Rentsch from UNHCR Germany told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.Those who gain refugee status are given the same housing benefits as German citizens and can stay in reception facilities if they are unable to find an apartment."They are not forced out. People are not thrown out, they are not thrown into homelessness," Rentsch said.In Italy there are fears more people could find themselves stranded in the country and living in squats, with 83,000 asylum requests lodged last year out of 150,000 arrivals by boat.So far this year around 28,000 people have reached Italy by sea, a similar number to the same period in 2015.The Italian government has already tightened controls on squats, cracking down the unauthorised use of resources which has left half of the settlements without water and electricity.De Mola said in one squat in Padua, northern Italy, residents are forced to share an outdoor hosepipe to wash.Getting treated by health workers is difficult.Just 13 percent of asylum seekers interviewed by MSF said they accessed state medical facilities, with 21 percent helped by charities and the remaining 66 percent having no treatment.Refugees fared better, with 58 percent of them saying they were treated by the state, while 31 percent said they had no access to healthcare.Italy's interior ministry did not respond to a request for comment, while Rome's prefecture - in charge of the emergency reception centres - said via email it was not responsible for offering assistance to those living outside the official system.Rome's City Hall officials declined to comment ahead of elections in June in the capital, which is currently without a mayor and being served by an emergency administration following a scandal, which saw millions of euros in state funds siphoned off from areas including asylum-seeker facilities.Back in the old La Stampa office, few believe the outcome of the investigation or the mayoral vote will make a difference."Here they treat you like animals," said the Eritrean resident. "In other places it's not like this. In other countries they give you a home." REUTERS AKC BL1616 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0432-718601.Xml
The proposed visit of Nepal President Bidhya Devi Bhandari to India was cancelled, sources said today.Ms Bhandari was supposed to leave for New Delhi on May 9 for her maiden official foreign trip after assuming the office of the head of state in October last year.Earlier, President Bhandari had informed reporters that the Cabinet is yet to endorse the schedule of her visit. According to her personal aide Bheshraj Adhikari, the tour had to be cancelled as the Cabinet could not make decision in time.The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has corresponded to Nepali Ambassador to India Deep Kumar Upadhyay about the cancellation of the President's tour, sources said.UNI XC DJK RP1829 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0107-719097.Xml
Now that Donald Trump is the last man standing in the Republican presidential race, his critics in the party are intensifying their search for a candidate they could back as a serious third-party alternative.Political operatives are courting donors, calling potential candidates and developing legal contingency plans for overcoming onerous ballot qualification laws."This is as much as anything a battle for the future of American party politics," said Republican strategist Joel Searby, who is working with conservative writer Bill Kristol, among others, to identify a third-party candidate for the Nov. 8 presidential election.The group Conservatives Against Trump, which includes blogger Erick Erickson, has been holding calls and meetings to discuss third-party candidates as well as other options to stop the New York billionaire from winning the White House.The hurdles for a third-party candidacy are high. No independent candidate has ever won a presidential election, although some have played spoilers. But the efforts by the Republican groups underscore the unusual divisiveness of Trump's candidacy within Republican ranks ahead of a likely general election fight with Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton.Trump's opposition to free trade is at odds with the views of many Republicans, especially in the party's business wing. Many of Trump's critics also find his rhetoric offensive, including his call to temporarily bar Muslims from entering the country and his comment describing Mexican immigrants to the United States as rapists and drug dealers.Some Republicans say they worry that any third-party candidate would only siphon votes away from Trump and help Clinton win the election.Ralph Nader's run as the Green Party candidate in the 2000 presidential election has been blamed by some Democrats for the razor-thin loss of Democratic nominee Al Gore to George W. Bush. Ross Perot's independent candidacy in 1992 was seen by some Republicans as contributing to President George H.W. Bush's loss to Democrat Bill Clinton.One outcome, although rare, may be that no candidate crosses the necessary threshold of 270 votes in the U.S. Electoral College. In that case, the vote for the next president would pass to the U.S. House of Representatives, currently controlled by Republicans.Deborah DeMoss Fonseca, who recruited donors for former Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush and is working with Conservatives Against Trump, said her group was trying to find a candidate who would be high-profile enough to compete with Trump and Clinton.NO EASY TASKBut finding a candidate of that caliber who would be willing to run is no easy feat. Searby's group has reached out to former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and James Mattis, a retired U.S. Marine Corps general, among others, but both declined after discussions.Republican U.S. Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska has emerged as a favorite of the Republicans seeking a third-party candidate. Kristol has had warm words for him.Sasse, a freshman lawmaker and former Bush administration official, is a strong critic of Trump and has called for an alternative candidate to him. But he says that person should be someone other than him.On Wednesday, the morning after Trump emerged as the presumptive presidential nominee, phones at the office of Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson were ringing off the hook with calls from small-government Republicans who feel they cannot get behind Trump.But as a Libertarian, Johnson holds views on some issues, such as the legalization of marijuana, that are antithetical to the views of some Republicans.In March, former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, an independent, said he had considered jumping into the race as a third-party candidate but opted against it, saying he feared it would only serve to help get Trump elected."The possibility for a third party to succeed are slim to none," said Julian Zelizer, a presidential historian at Princeton University. "The structure of American politics have consistently made it impossible for third parties to gain ground."One of the biggest obstacles to a third-party run is simply getting on the ballot in enough states to mount a viable campaign.Texas requires more than 79,000 signatures from voters who did not participate in either primary. Its deadline is Monday. Among other states, North Carolina's deadline is the end of May, and Illinois and Florida in mid-July."A third-party candidate is a pipe dream," said Republican strategist Tony Fratto, who worked in Bush's administration and strongly opposes Trump. "What's going to happen is Hillary Clinton is going to win big. It won't be close." Reuters CJ AS1835 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0400-719124.Xml
-The Syrian military denied it had conducted air strikes on camps near the Turkish border yesterday which killed at least 28 people, but the UN human rights chief said initial reports suggested a government plane was responsible.The death toll from attack on the camp for internally displaced people near the town of Sarmada included women and children, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, and could rise further because many people were seriously wounded."There is no truth to reports ... about the Syrian air force targeting a camp for the displaced in the Idlib countryside", the Syrian military said in a statement on Friday carried by state media.UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad al Hussein said the attacks were almost certainly a deliberate war crime."Given these tent settlements have been in these locations for several weeks, and can be clearly viewed from the air, it is extremely unlikely that these murderous attacks were an accident," Zeid said in a statement."My staff, along with other organizations, will leave no stone unturned in their efforts to research and record evidence of what appears to be a particularly despicable and calculated crime against an extremely vulnerable group of people," he said."Initial reports suggest the attacks were carried out by Syrian Government aircraft, but this remains to be verified."Footage shared on social media showed rescue workers putting out fires which still burned among charred tent frames, pitched in a muddy field. White smoke billowed from smouldering ashes, and a burned and bloodied torso could be seen.Sarmada lies about 30 km (20 miles) west of Aleppo, where a cessation of hostilities brokered by Russia and the United States had brought a measure of relief on Thursday.Zeid said most of the people in the camps had been forced to flee their homes in Aleppo in February because of sustained aerial attacks there.He said he was also alarmed about the situation in Syria's Hama central prison, where detainees had taken control of a section of the prison and were holding some guards hostage."Heavily armed security forces are surrounding the prison and we fear that a possibly lethal assault is imminent. Hundreds of lives are at stake, and I call on the authorities to resort to mediation, or other alternatives to force," Zeid said.He urged governments on the UN Security Council to refer Syria to the International Criminal Court so that there is "a clear path to punishment for those who commit crimes like these". REUTERS AKC BL1743 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0432-718920.Xml
European demands that Turkey bring broad anti-terrorism laws in line with tighter EU standards risk undermining their agreement to curb illegal migration, a deal made more fragile by the Prime Minister's departure.The European Union asked member states on Wednesday to grant visa-free travel to Turks in return for Ankara stopping migrants reaching Europe, but said Turkey still had to change some laws first.Yesterday, PM Ahmet Davutoglu, who negotiated the deal for Ankara and has largely delivered Turkish compliance with its conditions so far, announced he was stepping down, throwing the agreement into uncertainty.His departure consolidates the power of President Tayyip Erdogan, who has been highly critical of the EU in the past and who is seen in Brussels as a far tougher negotiating partner.To win visa-free travel, Turkey must still meet five of 72 criteria the EU imposes on all states exempt from visas, one of which is narrowing its legal definition of terrorism.In a speech on Friday, Erdogan indicated that would not happen.Referring to the EU demand to change the law at a time when Turkey was under threat, he said: "We will go our way, you go yours."Rights groups say Turkey has used broad anti-terror laws to silence dissent, including detaining journalists and academics critical of the government. But Ankara insists the laws are essential as it battles Kurdish militants at home and the threat from Islamic State in neighbouring Syria and Iraq."It's not possible to make any revision to the legislation and practices on terrorism while our country continues its intense fight against various terrorist organisations," EU Minister Volkan Bozkir was earlier quoted saying by the Daily Sabah on Thursday.He said Turkey had already made some changes requested by Europe, including reference to "the concept of immediate and obvious danger that threatens public security"."However, we don't have the luxury of making (further) changes," he was quoted as telling local reporters in Ankara.Germany said it expects Turkey to uphold the deal, which was pushed by Chancellor Angela Merkel and which she hopes will shore up support for her conservatives ahead of a federal election next year.HARD ACT TO FOLLOW?Erdogan is aware that visa-free travel is for many Turks the biggest benefit of Ankara's deal with the EU, and is unlikely to want to be seen as scuppering a deal which appeared, at least until Thursday, to have largely been secured.But he bristles at suggestions that Turkey uses its anti-terror laws indiscriminately. He has repeatedly stressed his determination to crush Kurdish militants fighting an insurgency in Turkey's southeast, and is unlikely to sanction Ankara backing down on the European demands.Much may depend on the ability of whoever replaces Davutoglu, a decision to be made at an extraordinary congress of the ruling AK Party on May 22, to convince European allies that Turkey has already done enough.Transport Minister Binali Yildirim, a close Erdogan ally, appears to be the president's current preference, according to three senior AKP officials, although they said that could still change.Government spokesman Numan Kurtulmus and Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag, also Erdogan loyalists, have also been touted, as has Energy Minister Berat Albayrak, Erdogan's son-in-law, sources in the party have said.The head of the European Commission delegation in Ankara, Hansjorg Haber, also said he expected cooperation to seal the migration agreement whatever the shape of the new government."To finish the deal we need continuity... We expect that from any subsequent government," he told reporters.REUTERS AKC RAI1901 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0432-719221.Xml
Shock across Pakistan at the murder of a 16-year-old girl accused of helping a young couple run away and elope has turned to anger over the role played by a "jirga", or tribal council, which police say ordered the punishment.Jirgas are often convened, particularly in conservative rural areas, to settle local disputes especially between poor families, and although they operate outside the law, their decisions are often honoured and ignored by authorities.In the case of Ambreen Riasat, who was drugged, killed and burned by a group of men in a so-called "honour killing" in the village of Makol, just 50 km from the capital Islamabad, the mayor questioned whether the jirga was even genuine."This barbarity has never happened before," Makol mayor Zardad Khan told Reuters.Other residents confirmed the village of around 5,000 people had no history of "honour killings", and said in other elopement cases the punishments meted out were relatively minor."Everyone in the village is just confused and stunned," said Sardar Naseer Ahmed, 33, a businessman. "There is a sort of fear that I have never seen before."Whoever made up the group that ordered Ambreen's death, the case has underlined how weak the tentacles of formal Pakistani justice are even close to the centre of government.Tribal councils, called jirgas in ethnic Pashtun areas and "panchayat" across Punjab and elsewhere, can act to fill that vacuum, and their decisions are usually without controversy.But events in Makol just over a week ago have highlighted the risks they pose.Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, chairman of the opposition PPP party and son of Pakistan's only female prime minister, the late Benazir Bhutto, called for a "revolt" against the jirga system after Ambreen's death.Rights groups say men who run jirgas often barter women and hand down punishments that have included rape and forced marriage of young girls.FATHER SEEKS REVENGEMore than 500 people are killed in Pakistan each year in so-called "honour killings", usually carried out by members of the victim's family meting out punishment for bringing "shame" on the community.The fact that the area of Makol had no known history of such abuses, and was so close to the leafy, sophisticated capital, has added to the sense of revulsion.Most Pakistani newspapers reported Ambreen's death on their front pages, and Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif called for her killers to be swiftly prosecuted."Such a barbaric act is not only un-Islamic but also inhuman," he said. "It is not honour killing, its just plain murder."Ambreen's father called for the culprits to suffer the same gruesome fate as her."We want the culprits to be burned alive at the local chowk [village square]," Riasat, a 52-year-old labourer, told a gathering of about 100 village elders held in a local mosque.Initial reports said that Ambreen was burned alive, but police now believe she was drugged and suffocated before her body was placed in a van and set alight.The murder took place on April 29, but has only come to light after investigators pieced together what happened.Riasat said Ambreen had no link to Saima, the young woman who had eloped with another man from Makol."If they had to kill someone, why didn't they kill (Saima)? Why my daughter?" he asked, welling up with anger.The police have arrested 13 of 15 members of the alleged jirga, and paraded them blindfolded and shackled before the media. They also arrested Ambreen's mother, saying she was connected to the jirga."How can a mother hurt her daughter? It's a lie," Riasat shouted before the elders, who gathered after Friday prayers to discuss the community's response to the killing.VICTIM'S BELONGINGS PACKED AWAYMany Pakistanis are calling again for the passage of an anti-"honour killing" law, which closes a loophole that allows family members to forgive the killers of their daughter. Men are seldom convicted for their role in such murders.Sharif has promised to speed up the passage of the proposed law after Pakistani director Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy won an Oscar in 2016 for a documentary film about "honour killings", but the law is being opposed by religious parties in parliament.Obaid-Chinoy told Reuters the intense media coverage of Ambreen's murder "shows that the country is thinking about honour killings and realising that it is a stain on our society".In Ambreen's modest mud-and-bricks home, her aunt Shehreen struggled to comprehend the murder.She described her niece as a "quiet girl", as she showed shoes, school books and colourful clothes now stored away in a small trunk. REUTERS CJ RAI2315 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0400-719640.Xml
New online footage shows a Tunisian woman who was kidnapped in Yemen in December appealing to her Red Cross employers and governments to help free her, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said todayThe 39-second video, shared on Yemeni news sites on Friday, shows Nourane Hawas pleading in French for Yemen's exiled President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi and France's President Francois Hollande to assist her.Hawas, wearing a black veil, does not indicate her location or the identity and demands of her kidnappers.The ICRC confirmed her identity and appealed for her to be freed."Since our colleague's abduction, we mobilized all channels possible to secure her release," Rima Kamal, the ICRC's Yemen spokeswoman, told Reuters."Over the past five months, we have certainly had some leads. We are however unable to share or elaborate on these leads publically due to the sensitivity of any abduction case. What matters now is Nourane's safe return to her family as soon as possible," she added."We would like to request the media and public to refrain from sharing the video further out of respect and consideration for Nourane's family and loved ones."Unidentified gunmen kidnapped Hawas on Dec. 1 as she was leaving home for work in the capital Sanaa, the ICRC said at the time. A Yemeni man who had been with her was later released.Sanaa is controlled by the Houthi militia, an Iran-allied group which has seized control of much of wartorn Yemen.Last September, two Yemeni ICRC employees were shot dead in the northern province of Amran by an unknown attacker and in August gunmen raided the ICRC office in the port city of Aden, forcing the agency to temporarily suspend its activities there.The capture of Sanaa by the Houthis provoked armed intervention by a Saudi-led Arab alliance, which has been waging an air strike campaign against the Houthis and allied soldiers loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh.REUTERS CJ RAI2316 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0400-719660.Xml
Family wants justice for Narissa

Goora, an employee of the Sangre Grande Health Centre, was walking along a lonely area leading to her home at about 2.45 pm on Wednesday when she was attacked by a man armed with a knife. She was stabbed once in the abdomen.

Goora was able to struggle with her attacker before running toward her home where she informed her father Ignatius Goora, that she was stabbed.

She was rushed to the Sangre Grande hospital where she died while being attended to by Dr Lakhai. Yesterday, Ignatius said he was leaving the matter in the hands of the police and is hoping the killer is arrested and brought to justice.

At the familys home yesterday, relatives, friends and neighbours gathered to lend support and offer words of comfort. Ignatius remained inconsolable insisting that his daughter did not deserve to die at such a young age and pointed out that his daughter did not have any enemies and never troubled anyone.

Yesterday, his wife Nalini Boodoo was at the Forensic Science Centre awaiting the autopsy findings.

She too struggled to keep calm at the centre telling relatives this was all a bad dream and just now she would awaken and her daughter would be still alive. Yesterday, Senior Superintendent Simboonath Rajkumar, Head of the Northern Division as well as other police officers, went to the victims home with hampers consisting of foodstuff, water, soft drink and Gatorade which they presented to Ignatius.

Snr Supt Rajkumar offered condolences to relatives and promised the family that officers of the Northern Division working alongside their colleagues at the Homicide Bureau will work around the clock to bring the perpetrator of the vicious attack to justice.

Police believe Goora paid with her life when she fought off the man, said to be of African descent, when he made sexual advances to her along the lonely track
Murder accused attacks photographer

The photographer was kicked in the face and he fell backwards from the front stairs of the court. The blow was so severe that Ragoonath sustained cuts to the upper right cheek bone and near his right eye.

Ragoonaths glasses were broken in the process and the strap on his camera snapped. Police officers restrained the prisoner, who is facing several murder charges and who has been in custody for the past five years.

The incident happened at about 6 pm while media photographers Lincoln Holder (Newsdays South Bureau Chief Photographer), Ragoonath and Trevor Watson of the Trinidad Express, were standing outside the courthouse to capture photographs after a verdict of two police officers who were on trial for assaulting a man and stealing $700 from him.

Police officers, at about 5.30 pm, began to escort prisoners from the Holding Bay in the High Court, who had attended their Cause List hearing before High Court judges.

When several prisoners were escorted by just three police officers along the courts wheelchair ramp, Ragoonath attempted to record images with his camera. The multiple- murder accused prisoner, with chains circling his waist and feet and who was handcuffed, walked past Ragoonath before turning around and lunging a kick at the unsuspecting photographer, sending him sprawling.

The other photographers rushed to Ragoonaths assistance as police officers pulled at the murder accuseds chains. As he was led away, the murder accused shouted, I will kill you! I will kill you! A bleeding Ragoonath later made a report to police and sought medical attention at the nearby San Fernando General Hospital. The attack came three days after World Press Freedom day.
Judge to advise Vindra jury

We are at the final...penultimate stage of the trial, he told the members of the jury following the end of the prosecutions closing address to them.

In his final statements, co-lead prosecutor Gilbert Peterson,SC, advised the jury that when they look at the totality of the evidence led in the case, and after they apply the principles of law when directed by the judge, they will find it cogently, compellingly and convincingly led them to convict the ten accused charged with Naipaul-Coolmans murder.

It is the contention of the defence that the case against the ten men was concocted by the police, who also were accused of planting evidence to incriminate the men. Peterson said the defence had failed to dispute the evidence led by the prosecution. Dont be distracted by the contentions of the defence, Peterson said.

The trial in the Second Criminal Court at the Port-of-Spain Assizes began in June 2013 when the jurors were empanelled.

Originally, 12 men were accused of Naipaul-Coolmans murder and they were put in the jurys charge in October 2013.

The prosecution began leading evidence in the case in March of 2014.
Man in court for stabbing murder

According to police reports, Joseph of Mohammed Street off Green Street, Tunapuna got into an altercation with the suspect.

During the struggle, Joseph fell to the ground holding on to his chest.

As the suspect walked off, Joseph staggered to his feet and walked several feet along the road before he fell face forward onto the road and died.

Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) Roger Gaspard SC, gave instructions to charge Pooran Lalla of Diamond Avenue, Macoya with the murder late Wednesday. The charge was laid by PC Mahon of the Tunapuna Police Station. Lalla was yesterday remanded into custody as murder is a non-bailable offence.
DR woman, Trini man held

The suspects girlfriend, who is from the Dominican Republic was arrested. Other persons including two fishermen were arrested in unrelated raids yesterday.

The 28-year-old suspect has several matters before the court for firearms and narcotics. Police say he is expected to be charged with several firearms offences. Once charged he will appear before a Siparia magistrate. According to police reports at midday officers led by Sgt Victor along with members of the Task Force, Penal CID and Homicide went to an apartment building at Rochard Road in Penal with a search warrant.

During a search of the apartment, police found an AR 15 Assault Rifle, an AK-47 Rifle and a Glock pistol along with over one hundred rounds of assorted ammunition.

The officers also seized three pots with cocaine which were being cooked on a stove inside the apartment. Cocaine totalling one kilogramme was seized from the apartment.

And at 10 pm on Wednesday night officers from the SWD and Task Force were on surveillance duties at Quinam Beach near Siparia when they observed a dark-coloured vehicle parked on the beach.

Upon searching they found 28 kgs of marijuana valued over $250,000.

A 24-year-old fisherman from Morne Diablo was arrested.

And at 4 am yesterday officers executed a search warrant at the Morne Diablo home of a 31-year old fisherman and seized four kilos of marijuana. The fisherman and his 24-year-old common-law wife were both taken into custody. They are expected to appear before a Siparia magistrate today. Cpl Harripersad, along with PCs Ramdath and Bhagwandeen are continuing investigations into the three matters.

Head of South-Western Division Snr Supt Nazrool Hosein said the operations were part of the Police Commissioners mandate to increase the detection and seizure of firearms and narcotics along the south western coastline. Hosein highly commended the officers from the Task Force, CID, Homicide for their dedication to duty.

The exercise was co-ordinated by Insp Ramphal and included Sgts Ali, Ramsingh and Victor of South Western Division.
After 15 years - policeman freed

It took two years for police to investigate the allegation before the slapped charges against Ramsumair and Sahadeo, for assault occasioning actual bodily harm and larceny of the money. Both officers had been on suspension and waited for their trial for the past 15 years and two weeks ago, it began before Justice Maria Wilson in the San Fernando High Court.

Attorneys Prakash Ramadhar and Michael Rooplal defended Ramsumair. Attorneys Rajiv Persad and Chris Ramlal defended Sahadeo. Yesterday, Justice Wilson summed up the case and the nine-member jury deliberated for three hours. They found Ramsumair not guilty of both charges, Sahadeo guilty of assaulting Jandoonanan, but not guilty of larceny of the money.

State Attorney Hema Soondarsingh prosecuted. The judge remanded Sahadeo into custody until May 25 when by then, it is expected that she would obtain a Probation Officers report on Sahadeo.

Outside the court, Ramsumair bemoan the fact that 15 years of what could have been a rewarding professional life in the police servie, had gone down the drain.

He said that it was inexplainable that a charge of assault and larceny, could take so many years to come up for trial. Attorney Ramadhar also commented that the 15-year-old delay, and even more troubling, the two years in took for the charges to be laid against the police officers, reinforces his belief that if the jury system is the saviour for innocent citizens, especially police officers, against the forces that the seem to conspire against them.

Ramadhar had requested Justice Wilson after she had summed up the case, to put forward to the jury in a more elaborate manner, issues that were raised that supported the innocence of the accused cops. The judge obliged, but even as she had done so, she told Ramadhar after the verdict, that she expected respect from him.

The attorney told the judge that she ought not to take his remarks personal.
PERVERTS AT LARGE

I was reading one of the horrific stories. Sometimes I just ask, Give me five horrific stories, because I cant deal with more than five at one time. There was one with an eighty-something year old grandfather who sexually- abused three step-grandchildren, aged nine, ten and eleven, in some very severe ways. She said he violated the Childrens Acts prohibition of sexual penetration of minors.

Using instruments, using his person and having instruments placed in various orifices. And that person is still at large, she related. So we have the three children receiving care but the alleged perpetrator is still out there...and there is evidence. We have many, many cases such as these. Therefore we need to expedite our systems. We need to be able to have more convictions. Likewise, child-rights advocate, attorney Hazel Thompson-Ahye, recalled a most horrendous case of gross child-abuse, with dire consequences for each, but in which the police had allegedly failed to properly act. She said a man had sexually assaulted his daughters, aged four and 12 with dire consequences for each victim.

The four-year-old was found with VD (venereal disease or sexually- transmitted disease). The 12-year-old was impregnated...

twice! And the judge ordered the file to the Commissioner of Police.

About five years after, I saw a story in the newspaper that made me go to Legal Aid and ask to see that file, only to see it was the same people because the area was the same. It was the same man! Nothing had been done about him! And here was a lawyer saying, well dont send him to prison, because he is fifty-something years old and might die in prison.

This man was now abusing the sons. So the daughters were taken away, and the sons were being sexually abused. The police had not done anything. If they had done something about it before then Im sure hed now be somewhere safe where he couldnt hurt people.

CHILDREN SUFFER Ali-Abdullah lamented the plight of children in protective custody. When we remove these children - and we have removed 120 children - we are merely re-traumatising these children.

These children are the ones who are suffering. They are away from their families. Weve had to remove children who are doing SEA, she related.

We are removing children while the alleged perpetrators are still living free, and these children are almost in a prison-like situation, because their right to freedom is curtailed and the length of criminal investigations and taking the process through the system is really protracted. He urged the media to probe the minds of sex offenders, and to ask why such acts continue widespread in this society.

I thought this was particularly disturbing - amongst the 1,000 cases of sexual abuse that we have recorded is 142 children who are having sexual relationships with adult men. Illegal, according to our Act, but it is condoned and accepted. Some of them have children. What is pretty disconcerting is that of these children, about 50 of them are pregnant at this time. Saying the Authority received 5,000 complaints during its first year of existence, she said the extent of abuse of children in TT is far worse than initially expected.

She said the Authoritys remit is on the childs welfare, not on pursuit of an offender which is the job of the police. Ali-Abdullah advised reporters that stories worth reporting were the high correlation between abuse and social issues such as crime and poverty, why is sex abuse so rampant, whats the state of the perpetrator and is there a vicious cycle of abuse? SEX ABUSE, NEGLECT At the workshop, reporters received the Children Authority Annual Report 2015 which showed most complaints about abused children were of sexual abuse (22 percent), neglect (19 percent), lacking care and guardianship (15 percent) and being beyond control (eight percent).

Disaggregated for gender, the report stated, One third of all reports concerning female clients were of sexual abuse, compared to 6.6 percent of all reports concerning male clients. By age, children most at risk of sexual abuse were aged 10 to 15 years, although youngsters both younger and older were also abused.

The 10 to 13 year old and 14 to 15 year old groups appear to be the most vulnerable to sexual abuse, with 24.4 percent and 29.6 percent of all children sexually abused belonging to those age ranges respectively. The report showed that some 18 percent of child sex abuse victims are age 16 to 17 years, 11 percent are aged seven to nine years, 9.6 percent are age four to six, and 6.9 percent are age zero to three years old. Authority chairman, attorney Stephanie Daly confirmed the police must treat with such perpetrators, as it is not within the Authoritys remit.

Media consultant, Sunity Maharaj, warned parents to not post inappropriate photos of their youngsters online, that she said may be lapped up by perverts.

She alleged an increasingly sexualised relationship between people and their cameras, saying even youngsters strike provocative poses, likely inspired by raunchy pop music videos.

She warned against the online posting of any sexualised pictures of their youngsters. The workshop panellists urged media houses to report responsibly on matters affecting children, saying that even a casual photograph taken in a public place could expose a child to danger by revealing their whereabouts.

Daly called for media houses to adopt protocols and a common position on the reporting of child issues.
Govt stands firm on SSA Bill

Notwithstanding objections raised by four Independent Senators as well as the Opposition, in the Senate on Tuesday, Government yesterday stood its ground on the Strategic Services Agency (Amendment) Bill 2016.

Five Cabinet ministers, including Acting Prime Minister Colm Imbert, came out fighting.

They attended the Cabinet media briefing for the purpose of defending the legislation.

At various points, the Ministers dismissed objections raised to the legislation as, extremely ridiculous; obstructionist; misleading misinformation; fearmongering; blatantly hypocritical and surprising.

First off the bat was National Security Minister Edmund Dillon who said the legislation which would widen the remit of the SSA to include any matters related to the detection of serious crimes  was meant to give the National Operations Centre (NOC) and the National Secu- rity Training Academy a legal structure. He noted the murder rate and also stated, We have in fact even included the prisons which we feel is an important source of intelligence in the fight against crime. Next was Attorney General Faris Al-Rawi who said while the SSA was initially meant to pursue drug offences, it is doing otherwise.

The SSA, currently, on the basis of that authority has been engaged in activities of a fairly wide range of surveillance, Al-Rawi said. That is to be found in terms of the evidence of what that actually do in the annual reports of the SSA. He said there was a problem related to information silos.

The left hand seemed not to talk to the right hand, the Attorney General said. Al-Rawi said opponents of the Bill have an, extremely ridiculous position in relation to warnings about State spying.

Next up was Minister in the Office of the Attorney General and Legal Affairs Stuart Young who said, I think it is important when considering the proposed SAS bill that the public is made aware that...the SSA Bill sorry, that the public is made aware of the misleading misinformation being put into the public domain.

The Bill is a simple one, it has five clauses. Young said two Parliament committees would have oversight.

Fitzgerald Hinds, chairman of the Joint Select Committee on National Security, said of opposition to the Bill: It is not simply surprising for me, it is blatantly hypocritical! In the UK their intelligence gathering agency reports directly to the Prime Minister of that country.

This is not unique to Trinidad and Tobago.

I cannot understand.

All this bill is doing is widening the remit...

the definition. Nothing new, nothing strange.

What they afraid of? For his part, Acting PM Imbert said objections to how the Director of the SSA is applied were odd given the age of the current provisions.

For it to come up now 21 years later as an issue is a bit surprising, said the Acting Prime Minister.

It is not new its been there for 21 years and nobody complained about it before.

(See Page 9A)
Relief, joy among south students

At San Fernando Girls Govt primary, PTA president Ian Brown, whose daughter Janae Stephenson Brown, wrote the exam, said parents were anticipating good results from this school which has been ranked the number one government primary in the country and 12th school overall, nationally.

He said his daughter worked hard for this exam and is confident she passes for her first choice - St Joseph Convent, San Fernando.

Jeuen Bunting, 13, described the exam as good although she noted there were certain questions in math which proved challenging.

Bunting said she was confident of passing for her first choice school  ASJA Girls College, San Fernando.

Another student, Aiesha Blaize, 13, said she is confident of passing for Naparima Girls High in San Fernando.

I gave up TV, internet and WhatsApp. The exam was okay, Blaize said.

Asked what she intended to do during the vacation period, she said, go to the beach and the mall. At St Pauls Anglican, Derrel Fredricks, 12, described the exams as good but felt section three of Math was difficult while the poetry in Language Arts was, challenging. Malik Irving said he was happy the exams was over and extremely optimistic of passing to Naparima Boys College.

It was challenging but I think I did ok and I think that I will pass for Naparima, he said.

Irving said he could not wait to go home to watch TV and also that there was a bake and shark, with my name on it, waiting for me..
Final rites for Centrin worker...at last

I still have love for you, always.

I dont know how I will live without you. How would I cope without you, Nandlal asked between sobs. The funeral took place at the house in Perseverance Village, Couva which Nandlal and Francis shared with their children. Final rite came two weeks after Nandlal, the common-law wife of Francis for the past 19 years, found his body hanging from a rafter at their home.

The initial funeral service was cancelled as Francis wife Donna Francis, filed an injunction which barred Nandlal from holding the service pending the outcome of a second autopsy. On Monday last, attorney Gerald Ramdeen, who acted on behalf of Donna, withdrew the injunction before San Fernando judge, Justice Ronnie Boodoosingh. Both autopsies concluded no foul play was involved and that the hanging was consistent with a suicide.

Yesterday, Pundit Rajesh Maharaj encouraged the small group of mourners not to judge the deceased.

Some of us might have hated him, some would have liked him.

But who are we to judge anyone? We are not God and therefore what ever is his Karma, he will face that.

We have to think about ours, not anybody elses. When you look to criticise and condemn others, look at yourself in the mirror first, said Pundit Maharaj.

The pundit charged that humans lack the intellect to follow the scriptures and therefore we make mistakes in life.

The pundit encouraged Francis children to enjoy their lives and suggested that whatever they do, always to remember their father and to try their best to excel in every aspect of life.

Francis was laid off in December together with about 200 other persons and relatives attributed his suicide to depression caused by his worsening financial situation.
Govt mixing religion with policy

They mix religious conviction into public policy, Hodge yesterday told a symposium themed, Abortion: Her body, her choice at the UWI St Augustine Campus.

Child marriage in the countrys legal framework can be seen as a legalised sexual offence, because it involves legal intercourse with under- aged girls, which is in conflict with our laws otherwise, and the legalisation of abortion, she said, was not one of those interventions for change that require asking people to give up deeply held opinions.

If someone was against abortion, she said, their values should not overrule the right of another person to access this procedure legally and safely if their conscience allows it. Noting Health Minister Terrence Deyalsinghs comments that Governments stance on abortion was reflective of the Peoples National Movement (PNM), Hodge said, That is a kind of frightening assertion. Questioning whether a catechist was now dictating values to the intimate lives of PNM people and their stance against abortion, she advised Deyalsingh to take a tour of Your slip and side slide ward. Take your tamarind whip with you because you will find some PNM women among the patients there. Every political party in the country, she said, is represented in the statistics of desperate women accessing abortion however they can. They do it, she said, whether it was by do-it-yourself methods, going to the backstreet abortionist or going to a doctor who was willing to put a humane interpretation on that part of the law that does allow abortion or going to a jurisdiction that has reformed abortion law.

Deyalsinghs protestations that abortion was the law, she said, might have been because he was not be aware that the law, and a call for a change in that law was precisely what the conversation was about.

In TT, she said that women will not march against the abortion law, but they negate that law by procuring abortions often in life threatening conditions.

On Deyalsinghs position that Governments stance on abortion reflects the opinion of the vast but silent majority, she said, The truth is more complex than this sweeping statement suggests. In 2006, a national opinion survey commissioned by Advocates for Safe Parenthood Equity, she said, revealed that more then half of the respondents were in favour of broadening the existing choice for abortion or leaving the choice for the woman
Hinds: speed guns for Tobago too

Certainly not, Hinds said when asked if the new measures  implemented last Friday  will only apply to Trinidad. This law is not ad hominem to Trinidad, it is applicable to all of Trinidad and Tobago. However, the Minister also made clear that, As to the use of resources and the allocation of resources, that is a matter for the Commissioner of Police. Hinds expressed satisfaction with the deterrent effect of the new measures.

The deterrent effect seems to have come into play, the Minister said. It is observed that people have slowed down on the nations roads and that is a good thing worthy of celebration. Hinds said efforts to procure more speed guns would come upon any request from Acting Commissioner of Police Stephen Williams. The Minister said two previous attempts to procure guns occurred.

There were two efforts to procure, those collapsed, Hinds said. He did not give details, but assured future efforts would be subject to open, competitive tender. The Minister disclosed that responsibility for the procurement of these items had been shifted to his ministry.
Government plot to undermine agriculture?

He called on Agriculture, Land and Fisheries Minister Clarence Rambharat and by extension the Government to clear the air as well as address issues facing workers at both institutions. This union is very concerned about this. The government cannot operate in a unilateral manner without first consulting with the trade union. It is alleged, I am not saying it is right or wrong, that certain private persons are interested in purchasing and taking over these farms. We are calling on government to clarify this, Maharaj said during a press conference held at the unions office at Rienzi Complex, Mc Bean in Couva.

Maharaj, an attorney, said the union has written many letters since 2012 , to the Permanent Secretary and the Agriculture Minister - first under the previous Peoples Partnership administration and now to the ruling PNM administration.

But Maharaj added that the union is yet to receive any favourable responses on the issues.

Under the previous government, we had several meetings which seemed to come to nought because it seems as though there is a policy under both governments...they meet with persons and three months later they just kill the issue, Maharaj said.

The union leader alleged a communication gap between the Permanent Secretary and the Minister.

If there is a communication gap, then the Minister needs to solve that because it cannot be that a legitimate union is representing workers, who are operating under very adverse conditions, writing letters and nothing is being done. We are calling on the minister to bridge that communication gap and become aware of the issues and treat with them, Maharaj said. A combined 70-plus workers from both the Sugarcane Feed Centre at Longdenville, Chaguanas and the Mora Valley farm, located at Guayaguayare Road, Rio Claro, respectively, are affected.

Some of the issues they are complaining about include late payment of wages and salaries, health and safety woes, lack of proper security, lack of food for animals (at the Mora Valley) as well as outstanding gratuity payment for workers.

Both institutions fall under the remit of the Agriculture, Land and Fisheries Minister Ministry.

Maharaj reminded government that the affected workers are part of this countrys working class and so they too contribute to society. Right now there is a decline in the energy sector. It is a time when we are supposed to be looking at diversification and looking at the agricultural sector to assist us yet we have a situation where it is being neglected .

Branch president of Mora Valley farm Lalchan Sookoo said that the farm, in which workers rear buffalypso, was formerly owned by the now defunct Caroni 1975 limited. In 2006, the Agriculture Minister took over project. We have about 1,000 buffalypsoes at the farm with 1,600 acres of land on which the animals graze on.

Only ten workers to handle these animals, he explained.
Richards defends TV interview on SSA

However, Attorney Gregory Delzin, in the same CNC3 feature, said questions could be raised as to whether Richards was an non-objective participant in next weeks debate as he engaged an Opposition Senator.

Contacted by Newsday last night, Richards said all sides were invited to appear on the show to discuss the matter.

I dont think its a conflict of interest, the Independent Senator told Newsday. I interviewed Ms Ameen. We offered invitations to the Attorney General.

They got no response.

We sought to to add balance. It was fair questioning. Of his own position on the bill, Richards said, That I cannot say.

Debate continues and I will come to a position in the best interest of Trinidad and Tobago.
UNC: Senate is final guard

Against this background, Lee said, The Senate remains the final guard for our citizens. The SSA Bill, which requires a simple majority for passage, was passed in the House of Representatives on April 15. The Government, which has 15 senators in the Upper House of Parliament, needs the vote of at least one of the nine Independent senators to pass the Bill.

The Opposition has called for the Bill to be withdrawn, be sent to a joint select committee (JSC) and has proposed several amendments to the legislation. One of them calls for the establishment of an intelligence review committee to provide oversight of the SSA.

In his statement, Lee said the Government should replicate an international oversight system over the SSA similar to what is used in the United Kingdom.

Lee explained that system includes a committee of independent commissioners from judicial backgrounds to monitor and prevent the misuse of information; a tribunal of legal professionals to investigate complaints brought by the public as well as safeguard against activities of the SSA.
Belgium and the Netherlands are stocking up on Iodine to combat nuclear radiation from power plants should U.S. residents be stocking up too?

(Be prepared and get your emergency Iodine from the Natural News Store by clicking here while supplies last)

Nuclear accidents are no longer considered a slight possibility, but an imminent threat due to aging reactors and the sites being increasingly targeted by terror groups, such as ISIS. The Dutch government is the latest to take precautionary measures in the event of nuclear fallout. Last month the government announced it was ordering 15 million iodine pills to protect people living near power plants.

The move was echoed by authorities in Belgium, who said they too are considering passing out iodine tablets to its citizens in the event of a nuclear disaster. The pills contain potassium iodine, which shields the thyroid from the harmful effects of radiation.

If the proper dose is administered, potassium iodine effectively reduces the risk for thyroid cancer in those exposed to radioiodines via inhalation or ingestion, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Authorities in the Netherlands and Belgium said the pills would be given to people under the age of 18 and pregnant women living within 60 miles of an affected nuclear plant  a distance determined based on what happened in Fukushima, Japan. Any pills left over would be given to the general population, reports Politico. The pills work best if taken within 3-4 hours of exposure.

Spokeswoman for the Federal Authority for Nuclear Control, Nele Scheerlinck said every five years Belgium revises its nuclear emergency plans. Though the idea of handing out iodine pills in Belgium is not new, giving them to the entire country is, she said, adding that, current guidelines recommend people living within only 12 miles of an affected nuclear plant take the pills.

We are a very small and densely populated country surrounded by nuclear power plants both in our country and neighboring countries, said Scheerlinck, adding the iodine pills are cheap and efficient.

Belgium increased security at its most high-risk nuclear facilities last month when police discovered video footage filmed by terrorists of the daily routine of a nuclear program chief. Jihadi brothers Khalid and Ibrahim El Bakraoui made the secret footage before blowing themselves up on a metro train at Brussels airport.

Authorities suspect the brothers were planning to kidnap the chief in order to access one of Belgiums two atomic facilities, according to the Daily Mail. Terrorists goal is to cause a nuclear meltdown in Belgium, killing hundreds of thousands of people in a massive radiation catastrophe, essentially turning the nuclear plants into a large-scale dirty bomb.

In March, authorities revoked the access badges of 11 workers at Belgiums Tihange nuclear power plant, located 40 miles southeast of Brussels, due to their potential involvement with ISIS. It was later learned that two people working for Belgiums other large nuclear plant, Doel, fled to Syria and joined ISIS. One was killed in Syria in 2014, and the other served just two years in jail.

A successful attack at either plant would be hugely catastrophic. Tihange is located in a heavily populated region less than 50 miles from each of Belgiums borders with Germany, the Netherlands, France and Luxembourg.

Europe is having a particularly difficult time protecting itself from terrorism due to its open border policies, which permit relatively easy travel for terrorists. Nearly the same open border policy exists in the U.S., so could we be in danger too?

Currently, there are a total of 61 commercially operating nuclear plants in the U.S., with 99 nuclear reactors in 30 states, according to U.S. Energy Information Administration, leaving the nation vulnerable to accidents, as well as deliberate attacks by terror groups.

Despite the risk, the FDA does not encourage citizens to have iodine on hand; however, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission does purchase potassium iodine for states with nuclear reactors and places with a population living within 10-miles of the emergency planning zone.

Notice the buffer is much smaller than the 60 plus miles recommended by Belgium authorities; remember, that distance is based off of what happened in Fukushima.

Dont wait for the FDA to protect you, pick up a bottle of the Health Rangers laboratory-verified iodine today. (Be prepared and get your emergency Iodine from the Natural News Store by clicking here while supplies last).

Sources:

Politico.eu

Politico.eu

DailyMail.co.uk

DailyMail.co.uk

EIA.gov

FDA.gov

FDA.gov

Science.NaturalNews.com

Submit a correction >>
Closure of Indiana manufacturing plants blamed on too many regulations but the move to Mexico will save only a fraction  whos right?

(BigGovernment.news) State officials in Indiana were told the closure of two heating and air conditioning plants, with the jobs being shipped to Mexico, will save the company $65 million a year, or just over 0.1 percent of annual revenues.

The announced closure of the two United Technologies Corps. plants, in Indianapolis and Huntington, has become a central part of political stump speeches ahead of Tuesdays presidential primaries, with all candidates weighing in, for different reasons, to condemn their shuttering.

At the same time, it emerged that the head of the states main economic development agency expressed surprise at how little savings the company was making by relocating its operations to Monterrey in Mexico, which will lead to the loss of 2,100 jobs in Indiana.

Theyre going to move and take the hit theyre taking and do what theyre doing to Americans because of $65 million, Indiana Economic Development Corporation president Jim Schellinger told the Indianapolis Business Journal in an interview published at the end of March, but behind an Internet firewall and not circulated widely.

It doesnt seem like a logical step  I was kind of taken aback by those numbers.

The $65 million is less than 1 percent of the companys total annual revenue in the heating and air conditioning section of its business, which is about $18 billion, the development corporation told the magazine. Total annual revenue in 2015 for the entire company was $56 billion.

But executives told Schellinger that 53 federal regulations affecting the heating and air conditioning business factored into their decision to leave.

Schellinger said the company mentioned new energy efficiency rules, but didnt specify other regulations they were unhappy with.

United Technologies Wednesday announced its first-quarter results, including sales of $13.3 billion.

We are off to a solid start in 2016, said chief executive Gregory Hayes in a statement. UTC delivered strong operational performance in the first quarter with organic sales growth of 2 percent. We are also making progress on our strategic priorities, particularly our ability to invest in innovation as we continue to focus on structural cost reduction.

The closure of the two factories, Carrier and United Technologies Electronic Controls, is part of what chief executive Hayes described in December as a $1.5-billion multi-year restructuring plan focused on structural cost reductions in high-cost locations.

The stock market has reacted favorably, with the companys share price rising by over 20 percent in the past three months.

Presidential candidate Donald Trump has hammered away at the company since the announced closure of the Carrier plant in February. He continued to do so Wednesday, pledging to impose a 35-percent tariff on products the company makes in Mexico.

Theyre going to call me and say, Mr. President, Carrier has decided to stay in Indiana,  he told a crowd gathered 20 minutes away from the factory gates.

This is nothing new, this political campaign and this kind of populist rhetoric, Hayes told the Wall Street Journal in response.

Hayes added that some employees were given as much as three years notice before losing their jobs, and would be eligible for college-tuition assistance and severance pay.

But the protests at the shuttering of the plants continued Friday, with a rally outside the Indiana Statehouse in downtown Indianapolis.

And the keynote speaker was Bernie Sanders, who found the perfect stage for the message he has been delivering for months.

This is not acceptable. This is the kind of corporate behavior that is destroying the middle class of this country  and it has got to end, he said. The greed of United Technologies is almost unbelievable. You cant make this stuff up. They have no shame.

Ted Cruz also described the closures as a bad thing, but blamed Democrats for heavy and expensive regulations placed on this company and others.

It is responding to the disaster that is the Obama-Clinton economy, Cruz said. It is the federal government that has driven Carrier out of Indiana and is driving jobs away from America all across the country.

Bill Clinton, stumping for candidate Hillary Clinton, joined the chorus, claiming the problem is that too many corporations, like Carrier, are motivated by giving money back to shareholders and executives, and not to workers.

Abby Gras, communications director for the states economic development corporation, said Friday the closures are disappointing.

But she added: Its important to remember this is one corporation. The economy and manufacturing in Indiana are continuing to do well. We are confident theres going to be plenty of jobs  for those folks.

(c) 2016 American Media Institute.

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Clarification regarding website of IRCTC Which sells E-Ticket of Indian Railways

New Delhi, Fri, 06 May 2016 NI Wire

News Reports have appeared in some Electronic and Print media regarding alleged leakage of email and mobile numbers from user profile data of IRCTC E-ticketing system. Indian Railway Catering and Tourism corporation (IRCTC) is a PSU of Indian Railways. Its website irctc.co.in is used for purchasing Railway E-Tickets.

Firstly, Indian Railways would like to clarify that there has been no hacking of the IRCTC website. The E-ticketing website has been working normally thereby eliminating any chances of unauthorized interference. As soon as the matter came to notice of Railways on 02/05/2016, thorough investigations were conducted to detect veracity of the news, however, no such incident has been detected. The Ministry would like to assure that all necessary Safeguards and security checks are in place for this website. There is a system of regular security audits by concerned departments of government of India. All the components of the system are functioning normal and no unusual activity has been discovered. All sensitive data like passwords etc are stored in encrypted form. In addition to this, 24x7 monitoring of the system is done throughout the year by technical team of experts. Hence there is no cause for any panic or concern. A Railway committee set up couple of days back, in its preliminary report has not found any indication of breach of security in any of the databases of the Eticketing system.

The complete facts about the matter is given below:-

The News Reports have appeared in some Electronic and Print media regarding alleged leakage of email and mobile numbers from user profile data of IRCTC E-ticketing system. Indian Railway Catering and Tourism corporation (IRCTC) is a PSU of Indian Railways. Its website irctc.co.in is used for purchasing Railway E-Tickets-ticketing system is managed in-house by CRIS, the IT arm of Indian Railways. The Data centre is in the premises of CRIS. As soon as the matter came to notice of Railways on 02/05/2016, thorough investigations were conducted to detect veracity of the news, however, no such incident has been detected by the technical teams of Centre for Railway Information Systems (CRIS) and Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC).

No Denial of Service attack (DoS/DDoS) has been successful and the E-ticketing website has been working normally thereby eliminating any chances of unauthorized interference. About 5.48 lakh tickets were booked in a single day in April 2016 with 2.66 lakh peak concurrent users. About 13,600 tickets per minute were booked.

The E-ticketing system has several components viz., internet gateway, network security devices such as gateway router and Firewall, Application Delivery Controller, Security Information Event Management System (SIEM) web server and database server access logs. Each of the components has been checked and none of the components has been found to have unusual activity. Technical investigations have also not indicated any unusual activity with respect to various system components.

The IT security of E-ticketing system is ensured through regular security audits by Standardization Testing Quality Certification (STQC) directorate of Department of Electronics and IT, Government of India. The entire traffic flowing on E-ticketing system internet gateway is also forwarded to CERT-In in real-time for monitoring and alerting. The gaps reported by STQC in their penetration testing have been addressed. However, auditing is an ongoing process and security audit of E-ticketing system is undertaken biannually.

Audit trails are maintained for access to the system and all sensitive data like passwords etc are stored in encrypted form. In addition to this, 24x7 monitoring of the system is done throughout the year by technical team of experts. Strict physical checks are already in place in the Data centre like restricted access to Data centre, CCTV cameras at entry and exit points of Data centre.

The data of E-ticketing system can be broadly categorized into two categories viz., sensitive information like Debit/Credit Card details, Login ID, Passwords, which could cause potential financial risk. PAN card detail is not required for booking E-ticket. No sensitive data has been alleged to have been leaked.

It is clarified that other data like mobile number and email ids is available with a large number of electronic service providing entities viz., E-commerce firms, telemarketers etc. Email and mobile numbers have to be shared with service providers for providing catering services, cab services, hotel bookings, SMS services, etc. Till now, leakage of data through none of the service providers of IRCTC has been established.

A joint committee comprising of officers from both CRIS and IRCTC has been set up. The committee in their preliminary report has not found any indication of breach of security in any of the databases of the Eticketing system. Further investigations by this committee is in progress and once the purported leaked data is made available, further checks will be conducted.
LeEco Le 1s Eco vs Le 1s: Which One Should Be Your Ideal Buy?

New Delhi, Fri, 06 May 2016 NI Wire

Every time there is a new smartphone which hits the market  it not just draws in a competition among the makers but even creates doubts in the minds of the ends users. With so many choices available around, it really becomes difficult to pick the one that fits your bill perfectly, both monetary as well as usability wise.

And this time, the tussle is between LeEco Le 1s Eco and Le 1. It is to note that LeEco came up with its latest budget smartphone Le 1s Eco in India on 3 May, 2016. Interestingly, LeEco Le 1s Eco has the same specifications and design as that of Le 1s, which has created bewilderment in the users. Given the identical features these two smartphones share, people are now confuses which one should they apparently choose.

It is noteworthy that launch of Le 1s Eco was part of company's LeEco Membership Programme, which was announced at Mumbai event as an addition of its satisfied ecosystem in Indian market.

Although LeEco's vision for Le 1s Eco appears to be distinct but if we consider it from viewpoint of the end-user, the specifications will surely be scrutinized so that he or she can make the better buy.

Well, to make life a bit easier for you, here we've got the detailed comparison of LeEco Le 1s Eco and Le 1  which would surely help you settle on the better option amongst the two. So, let's check the details out:

Look & Feel

To start with, let's discuss the look and feel of thee two smartphones. LeEco Le 1s and Le 1s Eco come with the similar metallic unibody formation with a screw-less design. The two even have the identical measurements (151.1 x 74.2 x 7.6mm) and weigh around 169 gram. Talking of the display, both LeEco Le 1s and Le 1s have 5.5-inch IPS screen with 1920 x 1080 pixel resolution. So if we compare the design and display of the two then there's nothing new precisely. The two models are offering nearly the same thing  so no matter whichever they choose, look and feel is going to remain the same.

Camera

Next in line comes the camera, which indeed plays a significant role when deciding upon a smartphone as most users look for quality camera that can allow them to enjoy good photo capturing experience. At the camera front, again the two models share a great deal of similarities. There is a 13-megapixel rear-facing camera backed with ISOCELL sensor and LED flash along with a 5MP front-camera.

Processor, RAM and storage

Thankfully, users will have something new to experience in this category. LeEco provided 2.2GHz MediaTek Helio X10 octa-core SoC processor in the Le 1s while Le 1s Eco has 1.85GHz octa-core MediaTek Helio X10 octa-core processor. However, both share the same RAM and storage capacity: Both have 3GB RAM and storage capacity of 32GB. As for the processor, it's similar in the two but Le 1 has one with a lower speed.

Battery and Other Specifications

The two have a 3,000mAh battery outfitted with quick-charging technology. Both of them have dual SIM, fingerprint scanner, scratch-free metallic body and a USB Type-C port.

Price

Finally coming to the price part, LeEco Le 1s costs Rs. 10,999, which is identical as Le 1s Eco. However, as an introductory offer, Le 1s Eco is available at a cut-rate price of Rs. 9,999. Moreover, you can even enjoy a one year free subscription of LeEco Membership.

Verdict: If we talk of specifications and features then the two models are almost identical with very slight difference to spot here and there. It's just the price which brings in a mere difference  which means Le 1s can be a better buy if the discount is to be taken into consideration.
Bollywood: Team CapAm Vs Team Ironman

Bollywood and Hollywood, Fri, 06 May 2016 NI Wire

Captain America Civil War is all set to be the biggest superhero action extravaganza of the year, and the studio and Varun Dhawan have collaborated for the Hindi language version. For this year's most-anticipated and eagerly awaited superhero film, the Studio has got on board versatile actor and youth icon Varun Dhawan to lend his voice for Steve Rogers AKA Cap Am in the Hindi version of the colossal superhero action flick.

Captain America: Civil War is the year's most-anticipated and eagerly awaited superhero film. Hindi audience for Marvel's movies has been growing rapidly over the years.

Well the movie will showcase an epic superhero battle between Captain America and Ironman, with superheroes each taking a side to fight!! With Varun Dhawan being the voice of Captain America, he's clearly on

TeamCap!! Here's who we think would be TeamCap and TeamIronman from Bollywood!!

TEAM CAPTAIN AMERICA

CAPTAIN AMERICA: VARUN DHAWAN

SCARLETT WITCH: ALIA BHATT

She isn't 100% loyal to neither Tony nor Captain. So she may side with anyone but Tony made weapons that had killed her parents so chances are that she may side with Captain. and we all know the close friendship between Alia and Varun, so Alia Bhatt is the perfect choice here!!

THE WINTER SOLDIER: SIDDHARTH MALHOTRA

We come to know at the end of second Captain America movie that Sebastian Stan's Winter Soldier remembers that he was once Bucky Barnes who was Captain America's best friend. In Ant Man it is revealed that the Winter Soldier has been found. The presence of Bucky on Captain America's team creates sharp negative feelings from Iron Man's team.

Siddharth shared a fun but frictional friendship with Varun Dhawan in Student of The Year. so the two friends can reunite again as superheroes!!!

FALCON: IRRFAN KHAN

In the film, Captain America: The winter soldier, Anthony Mackie's Sam Wilson was shown to form a friendship and also a partnership with Captain even before he became Falcon and a member of Avengers in the Age of Ultron. Falcon will soar high with 'Redwing' which will be seen as a drone in this movie instead of the actual falcon. He will naturally side with Captain America. Known to be extremely intelligent, we feel Irrfan Khan is most suited for this superhero, and the international actor is alreayd sued to doing voiceovers for Hollywood films!!!

HAWKEYE: RANVEER SINGH

Jeremy Renner's Clint Barton was shown retiring from action but he answers call to Captain America and sides with him, but he goes against Black Widow his closest friend. to expected the unexpected, who else but Ranveer Singh who would look quite dashing with a bow and arrow (Given his last Bajirao avatar)

ANT-MAN: AYUSHMAN KHURANA

Falcon happens to know a guy who isn't a part of Avengers and can help Captain. Barely after a year of debut in MCU, Ant-Man will be played in this film by Paul Rudd. An affable, likeable and funny superhero, we feel Ayushman Khurana seems to the best choice for the pint sized but strong superhero!!

TEAM IRONMAN

IRON MAN: SHAH RUKH KHAN

Iron Man/ Tony Stark is played by Robert Downey Jr. for the 6th time in Captain America- The Civil War. According to the trailers, Iron Man feels betrayed by Captain America's actions. The Government wants to take control over the major decisions of the Avengers and Iron Man is willing to allow that. There's likely to be a fight between Captain America and Iron Man in this movie and they won't be backing out from this fight.

Tony Stark is cool, witty, charming and and yet grounded (considering he doesn't have any superpower per se...), qualities you will also find in wittiest Khan of the industry! Also Shah Rukh Khan and Robert Downey Jr are nearly the same age, so even that matches as well!

THE BLACK WIDOW: SONAKSHI SINHA

Scarlett Johansson has been seen in both Captain America and Iron Man movies and she has always been more close to Captain than Tony. However it surprises everyone that she sides with Iron Man in Civil war. But have her loyalties been distinct before? We will see her caught up and conflicting with her actions.

The gorgeous Sonakshi Sinha has often showed her love for Ironman through her social media handles, wearing the masks as well. Since shes clearly an Ironman fan, this is the best superhero avatar for her!!

SPIDER-MAN: TIGER SHROFF

For the very first time Spider-Man will be shown joining the other Marvel Heroes on the screen. His part will also be more than it was actually visualized. Tom Holland's Peter Parker may or may not appreciate Tony's nickname for his alter-ego but we will see what happens.

Tiger Shroff's flexibility and his huge fan following amongst the young ones, makes him a perfect spidey!!

The most epic superhero battle is all set to unleash in theaters on 6th May as Captain America: Civil War is upon us!! New recruits such as Spider-Man (Tom Holland) and Black Panther (Chadwick Boseman) join the familiar faces of Chris Evans as the Cap and Robert Downey Jr as Iron Man. Marvel's Captain America: Civil War stars Chris Evans, Robert Downey Jr., Scarlett Johansson, Sebastian Stan, Anthony Mackie, Don Cheadle, Jeremy Renner, Chadwick Boseman, Paul Bettany, Elizabeth Olsen, Paul Rudd, Emily VanCamp, Frank Grillo and Martin Freeman, with William Hurt and Daniel Bruhl.
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For anyone in the information and communications technology (ICT) industries, if you were not aware and you really need to be, we all owe an enormous debt of gratitude to Claude Shannon. For those not familiar, Shannon is appropriately acknowledged as, The Father of Information Theory. April 30, 2016 marked the 100th birthday of this truly remarkable man (see IEEEs excellent bio), whose groundbreaking work on computing, cryptography, and communications literally laid the theoretical foundation for modern communications, computing and cryptology by explaining how the world could be use binary coding to capture and communicate information.





Shannon, worked at Bell Labs from 1941 until 1956. He later became a distinguished professor at MIT (News - Alert) and died in 2001. It is thus fitting that NOKIA Bell Labs, in commemoration of his 100th birth held, The Future of the information age: Claude Shannon Centennial Conference. I was honored to have been invited to attend and remain overwhelmed by what I heard and saw.

It was a two-day affair featuring a retrospective and reflection from those Shannon worked with and mentored. This included featured speeches by such luminaries as Eric Schmidt (CEO of Google (News - Alert) and now chairman of Alphabet), Bob Metcalfe (inventor of Ethernet and formulator of Metcalfes Law on the value of networks, and Dr. Irwin Jacobs (co-founder of Qualcomm), just to name a few. It also included personal stories from colleagues, and the dedication of monument is an outdoor amphitheater, where various multi and multiple media events will take place, along with tours of Bell Labs (News - Alert) projects in the works, and presentations by the three finalists in the Shannon Centennial student prize competition.

In addition, in Shannons honor as part of the festivities there was the premiere presentation of The Human Digital OrchestraTMa collaboration with Bell Labs Experiment in the Art and Technology (EAT) an Stevens Institute of Technologyis an artistic performance that premiered at the celebration and is a re-start of the EAT tradition that dates back to Shannons time at Bell Labs.

As noted, it was intimidating to be surrounded by so much brain power, including Noble Prize winners and those with recognition pedigrees that take up pages and represent a whos who of popular computing and communications science. That said, the dedication on the plaque in the amphitheater may sum it up best.

The mathematical principles of Information Theory, laid down by Claude Elwood Shannon during the period 1939-1967, set in motion a

Source (News - Alert): Peter Bernstein

revolution in communication systems engineering. They quantified the concept of information, established fundamental limits for the representation and reliable transmission of information, and revealed the architecture of systems for approaching them. Today, Information Theory, continues to provide the foundation for advances in information collection, storage, distribution, and processing.

In short, where would we be without you? was a common refrain.

Looking ahead

What was also on display and the subject of lively discussion was what lies ahead. There were intriguing demonstrations in the Labs relating to what users will no doubt will believe are titillating. They included:

Understanding everything Future thought-the creation of augmented intelligence Future communication, contextual search, content and control-in one app

Controlling everything Future wireless-enabling robotic automation & collaboration Future of cloud control- creating zero-touch clouds Future core-operating optical systems at the Shannon limit

Accessing everything-creating the digital fabric for a smart world

Future wireless- enabling autonomous vehicles

Future sense-deep learning in wearables, phone and things

I did have a chance to have brief chats with Marcus Weldon, president of Bell Labs and chief technology officer of Nokia (News - Alert), Metcalfe and Dr. Jacobs. Without going into the details, what fascinated me was the absolute consensus of all of them about how optimistic they are about the future. Indeed, as the list above highlights we are moving to an Everything, ubiquitously accessible, agile and controllable world.

How we are going to get there is by leveraging the brain power of the start-ups Metcalfe is mentoring in Austin, TX, the breakthroughs in the applicability of advanced wireless technologies that are enabling IoT that has Dr. Jacobs jazzed to say the least, and what Eric Schmidt discussed about the possibilities of not just imagining but realizing all kinds of things that enhance the human condition because of artificial intelligence/augmented intelligence.

As Bell Labs Weldon said, Were going to build a brand new network over the next 10 years. The reason is simple. It is not just about the fact that we are creating information that needs to be computed, stored, integrated, analyzed and communicated. That is the cause for the tsunami of major proportions we have already experience alone and they are only getting bigger alone. It is that experiences will become more immersive as all of that smarts get disseminated and used, and that creates the need not just for more feeds and speeds, but for more scalability, elasticity and quality of service management.

In short, in communications industry terms, the time must be short to change-out what I have called the Infostructure to be ready for what we all know is heading our way. It is the reason why, as the world becomes more digital, connected, interactive and smarter, the PSTN is being retired globally and the first generations of IP and wireless networks need to be replaced in lifecycles that make typical ones look glacial. It is also why new business models for paying for this, and new public policies to be future-friendly rather than obstacles must be in place. It is also why security as design criteria along with advanced detection and real-time protection are going to have a major role to play.

The ultimate goal is a transformation where the network is the cloud and vice versa and it is embedded physically and virtually in Everything we do. Weldon, whom I spoke with first, asked me to ask Metcalfe and Jacobs if they concurred about the need, outlined in a recent Nokia study, Who will satisfy the desire to consume?, that todays networks cant meet the digital future foreseen by 2020. I can relate here and to Marcus they whole-heartedly agreed and amplified why the transformed network really has to be the core of the engine driving and accelerating the pace of innovation.

Who knows, like Shannon and Metcalfe, maybe there is going to be a law about the correlation between availability of scalable, agile and high performance and speed networks, and the speed of not just innovation but product and service adoption based on it. We all owe just the ability to contemplate all of this to Claude Shannon which is why, for example, on April 30th Googles home page had a tribute and why the celebration of his 100th birthday by Bell Labs was so important and such a treat.

Edited by Maurice Nagle
Tunisian former Foreign Minister became Thursday Secretary General of the Arab Maghreb Union (AMU.)

The 72-year-old former diplomat was appointed by the AMU Foreign Ministers Council at the 33rd session held in Tunis. Bacchoube will replace country-man Habib Ben Yahia, outgoing Secretary General of the AMU.

Bacchoube was Tunisias Foreign Minister from February 2015 to January 2016 before being replaced by Jhinaoui.

Bacchoube, former Secretary General of ruling Nidaa Tounes which he co-founded, is a linguistics University Professor. He authored several books on geopolitics, sociology and Arab Linguistics.

Bacchoube is also reckoned for his activism. He headed from 1981 to 1984 the Tunisian workers union (UGTT) and presided over the Arab Institute of Human Rights from 1998 to 2015.

Great hopes were pinned on AMU, created in 1989, to promote integration between the five founding Maghreb members (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Mauritania) but inter-state tensions have jeopardized the organizations plans.

The Morocco-Algeria antagonism over the Sahara territory has plagued the functioning of the union. The Arab Spring of 2011 further fueled divisions.

The latest AMU summit dates back to 1994.
France-based BFM TV Friday announced it is ceasing cooperation with its Jihadism Expert, Romain Caillet now exposed for having ties with jihadists.

The new channel has decided to stop interviewing Romain Caillet after revelations that the expert had had links with jihadists and terrorist groups.

During his exchanges with BFMTV, Romain Caillet deemed useless to emphasize a number of important elements of his past, directly linked to questions he should tackle on air, BFMTV said.

The channels suspension of collaboration with the 39-year-old expert, who embraced Islam at the age of 20, came after another French media, LOBS, revealed on Wednesday that the one who calls himself jihadism expert had been involved in jihadism in the years 2000. He is said to have attended the Qortoba Institute in Egypt, closed in 2005 after being accused of breeding jihadists.

LObs furthermore revealed that Caillet was very active on Islamist forums in 2000s with the nickname Colonel Salafi.

Caillet is also accused of having ties with Fabien Clain who had claimed, in a video, IS responsibility for the Paris attacks. Clain is also known as member of a terrorist group.

Caillet would later reveal that he has repented from jihadism since 2007 because he is now opposed to the training of young people to scarify themselves without having Islam pre-requisites.
Islamist militant Abu Walid Al-Sahrawi, a member of the so-called Peoples Army of Sahrawi Liberation (military branch of the polisario secessionist movement) who joined the terror organization ISIS, has threatened to attack MINURSO and foreign tourists in Sahara.

In an audio recording aired by Al Jazeera, Abu Walid Al-Sahrawi has, for the first time, threatened overtly to attack members of the UN peacekeeping mission MINURSO.

The MINURSO currently maintains a limited presence in the Sahara after Moroccan government drastically reduced its civilian personnel in retaliation for comments made by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

The polisario extremist has also threatened Moroccan security forces, popular tourist destinations and foreign targets in the region. In the audio, Abu Walid Al-Sahrawi also called on Muslims living in Morocco to support the Islamic Caliphate.

A confidential leaked e-mail sent to former US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton in January 2013 has exposed the secret deal the Algerian government reached with Algerian terrorist Mokhtar Belmokhtar to attack Moroccan interests in the Sahara

According to sources with access to the Algerian intelligence agency DGSE, the Bouteflika government reached a highly secret understanding with Belmokhtar after the kidnapping in April 2012 of the Algerian consul in GAO (Mali), reveals the e-mail.

Under this agreement, Belmokhtar concentrated his operations in Mali, and occasionally, with the encouragement of DGSE, attack Moroccan interests in Western Sahara, where the Algerians have territorial claims, stresses the message made public by Wikileaks.

In 2011, an Italian and two Spanish aid workers were abducted from Tindouf camps, wherein Sahrawis are sequestered in Southern Algeria, and over the following years several polisario fighters were reported to have taken part in the militant Islamist advances in Mali. Top security experts have warned against the threat and collusion of the polisario fighters with Islamist extremist groups operating in the Sahel.

According to J. Peter Pham, director of the Washingtonbased think tank Atlantic Councils Africa Center, the polisario should accept the Moroccan offer of autonomy, because an independent state would not be viable. The last thing Africa needs is another failed state, and thats exactly what Western Sahara would become if Morocco left, he says.

There are no real natural resources which can be commercially exploited, it would never be viable by itself. An independent Western Sahara would be an even bigger breeding ground for terrorists.

Moroccos counter-terrorism has proven its efficiency in thwarting terror threats at home and overseas. It is based on a global approach including prevention, anticipation, education, rehabilitation, eradication of terrorism roots and international cooperation.

Moroccan intelligence services have been guarding against terrorist attacks since 2011, when 15 people were killed in a bombing targeting a cafe in Marrakesh, one of the worlds popular tourist destinations.

The Moroccans are waging tireless war against Islamic extremists and fanatics as shown by the numerous ISIS cells disrupted in the country.

According to newly set up Central Bureau of Judicial Investigation (BCIJ), dubbed Moroccos FBI, 35 deadly terror plots were foiled last year and 155 terror cells were dismantled since 2002. But BCIJ cautions that there is no zero risk in the field as the terror threat is still hovering.

Moroccos counter-terrorism strategy has so far yielded positive results recognized worldwide. Intelligence sharing combined with regional and international cooperation are the key of success in the field.

At a time a growing number of European and African countries are reaching out to Moroccans to benefit from their security experience, their Algerian neighbors are unfortunately still refusing to join in to round up regional common security threats.

Sadly, they are also rebuffing calls to open up their land borders with Morocco, a move which encourages illegal traffickers to flourish while home-grown terrorists are thriving in Tindouf camps, posing great risk for the stability of the region. So when will the Algerians listen to the voice of reason?
Sheldon Adelson. Photo: Ethan Miller/Getty Images

Donald Trump has landed his first megadonor. To this point, the presumptive nominee has had trouble winning over his fellow subscribers to Better Yachts and Private Islands magazine. The Koch brothers have decided theyve got better elections to buy. Most of the Bush-family money lenders are still recovering from what the Donald did to their poor Jeb. But Sheldon G. Adelson  who spent $150 million helping Mitt Romney lose in 2012  told the New York Times Thursday night that he wants to make America great again.

Yes, Im a Republican, hes a Republican, the casino magnate said when asked if he intended to support Trump this fall. Hes our nominee. Whoever the nominee would turn out to be, any one of the 17  he was one of the 17. He won fair and square.

Trump began courting Adelson last October, when he accused the Jewish billionaire of trying to mold Marco Rubio into his perfect little puppet.

Sheldon Adelson is looking to give big dollars to Rubio because he feels he can mold him into his perfect little puppet. I agree!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 13, 2015

Two months later, Trump addressed the Adelson-bankrolled Republican Jewish Coalition, and informed the gathered Jewry that he admired their negotiating skills but wished they would stop trying to control Americas politicians.

The RJC says it will focus on retaining the Senate this fall.

But the Times reports that Trump and Adelson met in person over the winter, and the magnate decided that the mogul was charming and good for Israel. (Adelsons main political concerns are securing Americas unflinching support for right-wing Zionism and defeating the scourge of online gambling, which he opposes for 100 percent ethical reasons and not because he wants to eliminate a form of competition to his casinos.)

On Thursday, Trump received the endorsement of another wealthy Republican hed previously disparaged on Twitter. Nebraska governor Pete Ricketts, whose family funded a super-pac devoted to defeating Trump in the primary, signaled that he will back the Donald at a rally in Omaha on Friday.

Maybe the Ricketts really do have something to hide.

I hear the Rickets family, who own the Chicago Cubs, are secretly spending $'s against me. They better be careful, they have a lot to hide!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 22, 2016

Meanwhile, Politico reports that Team Clinton is calling up all of the Bush familys favorite Wall Street moneymen and saying how theyd love to chat about what a disaster Trump is. This wooing operation isnt official and may consist largely of Wall Street Democrats nudging their conservative friends at cocktail parties.

According to Politico, even those Republican donors who prefer Clinton to Trump arent ready to give the Democrat their hard-earned capital gains. After all, shes probably going to win in a landslide without their help.

Im not worried about it at all, one CEO told the news site. [Trump] is going to lose and we will all wake up after election day and things will be just like theyve been the last eight years with a Democrat in the White House and Republicans controlling Congress.

If you want a vision of the future, imagine a Republican Congress stamping on the Democrats agenda  forever.
Photo: Courtesy of Brooklyn Strand

If youre not quite clear on what it means to optimize a city for drivers and neglect everybody else, consider this: Thousands walk or bike across the Brooklyn Bridge each day, spilling into a frightening snarl of highway-gauge streets and emission-hazed traffic. Or this: Just try strolling from LIU to Brooklyn Bridge Park without taking any of several potentially lethal arteries. Any half-mile stretch from Downtown Brooklyn to the waters edge feels like a trek if youre on foot, and a steeplechase if youre on a bike. What greenery there is has the quality of an improbable relic. Few people even know that the scruffy patch of foliage beneath the BQEs crisscrossing ramps is called Trinity Park.

But what if you could undo at least some of that misery? The BQEs not going anywhere, but say you called in earthmovers, shoved a couple of highway exits this way or that, tore down fences, and put in bike lanes and pavers and benches and food stalls and lights? Could you cure the area of its automobilitis? Now the de Blasio administration and the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership finally have a plan  or at least the beginnings of a plan  to do just that.

Years of public kvetching and suggestions, multilateral negotiations among various city agencies, and patient design work by Claire Weisz, a partner at the civic-minded architecture firm WXY, have yielded a project called the Brooklyn Strand. Its a constellation of projects, actually, with fixes ranging from tiny to blue-sky. A handful of workers could pull out the fences enclosing a pocket park and repaint the crosswalk in a day or two, at little cost. Constructing a landscaped sky plaza with elevator access to the Brooklyn Bridge  thats a different story.

The Brooklyn Strand plan envisions opening up Columbus Park by removing fences, cutting a new diagonal path, and enclosing the judges parking lot beneath a raised lawn and public bleachers. Photo: Courtesy of Brooklyn Strand

Cadman Plaza Park would be re-landscaped to extend over the Brooklyn Bridge exit ramp and lead to a new elevated pedestrian gateway to the bridge. Photo: Courtesy of Brooklyn Strand

Skeptics will note that the Brooklyn Strand report says nothing about how long it would take to execute or how much it might cost. They might point out that in spring and summer Columbus Park, in front of Borough Hall, is not actually the sad, vacant space that the wintry before photo makes it out to be  or that covering the judges parking lot with a sleek glass-walled pavilion might actually do little to improve the park experience. Those same jaundiced observers might point out that officials faced with moving a highway ramp typically spend a couple of decades analyzing the idea, before forgetting about it completely. A true cynic could even conclude that the plans real aim is to uncover a few city-owned parcels that can be tossed to land-hungry developers.

But mixed in with all of these doubts lurks a genuinely exciting prospect of returning public space to the public. The plan stitches together a whole range of hyperlocal desires (my kids cant cross the street here!) with large-scale civic interests. It can be carried out piecemeal, but its effects will multiply over time. If walking from one place to the other suddenly seemed like a sensible thing to do, companies confined to Dumbo could expand into Downtown Brooklyn, the border between affluent and low-income areas would grow more permeable, and navigating great floods of traffic would become a less necessary evil of Brooklyn life. New York is a city of interlocking property lines and minute jurisdictions, where one department doesnt always know what another is doing on adjacent squares of asphalt. Thats exactly why we need the rare kind of linked thinking that the Brooklyn Strand represents. In real life, we move in seconds from park bench to sidewalk to skyscraper, and our quality of life depends on them all.
A rendering of 220 Central Park South, where one apartment is selling for a quarter-billion dollars. Photo: Vornado Realty Trust

The most expensive apartment ever sold in New York is the penthouse at One57, which went for $100.5 million last year. But a new condo in the under-construction 220 Central Park South could shatter that mark: Taking up two entire floors and parts of two others, the 23,000-square foot apartment is priced at $250 million. According to floor plans, it has 16 bedrooms, two kitchens, and five balconies (in addition to an enormous terrace, of course).

To create an apartment worthy of such an extreme price tag, developer Vornado Realty Trust combined a duplex on the 50th and 51st floors with three apartments on the two floors directly above it. The duplex alone was being offered for $150 million, but combined with a pair of apartments on the 52nd floor and another on the 53rd, it may now challenge the sale price of an apartment in Londons One Hyde Park that went for $237 million in 2014. This all despite a recent real-estate trend of breaking up apartments into smaller units.

The developer boasts that because of its generous height and precise location, the 66-floor, Robert A.M. Sterndesigned building is one of only a few to offer views of Central Parks entire length.

The details about the pricey megaapartment come from an amended offering plan filed with the state attorney general, and reviewed by The Real Deal. Last year, the magazine reported that a Qatari buyer was looking to combine multiple units into a single, $250 million apartment. And last fall, multiple outlets reported that hedge-fund mogul Ken Griffin was buying a triplex in the building for around $200 million. Hope you really enjoy that view, guys.
A Parks Department contract for trash bags has come under the scrutiny of the FBI. Photo: Photocheaper

Part of the ever-widening investigation into Mayor de Blasios fundraising activities concerns whether favors were traded for donations to either his campaign or to a nonprofit that supported his causes. And as part of that probe, NBC New York reports that the FBI showed up unannounced last week at Parks Department headquarters, where they sought answers about a contract given to a company that makes rat-proof trash bags, and whose owner gave $100,000 to the mayors Campaign for One New York.

The station reports that, according to sources familiar with the investigation, the feds wanted to know whether de Blasio himself had called Parks workers and asked them to meet with officials from the company that produced the Mint-X trash bags. Company officials had previously complained that theyd had trouble getting a meeting to pitch their mint-scented garbage bags designed to repel rodents.

The Wall Street Journal reports that the Joseph Dussich, the companys owner, donated $50,000 in both 2014 and 2015 to the Campaign for One New York, and that he met with de Blasio at City Hall ten days after the second donation. The paper reports that Dussichs company, the JAD Corporation of America, received a contract with the city soon after that meeting, in early 2015.

According to the NBC New York report, as FBI agents were questioning workers at Parks headquarters in hopes of getting candid, unrehearsed answers, city lawyers stepped in and told them to leave. The city Corporation Councils office told the station that investigators could speak with any city employee, as long as it was done in an orderly way, and that the FBI should contact them in advance, rather than just show up.

Said a spokesperson in a statement: We are working cooperatively with the FBI to enable them to interview city employees to ensure they have access to attorneys. Indeed, two days later, the FBI was invited back to interview Parks workers. The Journal reports that the FBI also sought documents related to the contract, and that they specifically were looking to speak with a top official in the Parks budget office.

The companys owner didnt comment to the station, and the mayors office has repeatedly said its done nothing wrong and would cooperate with investigators.
Making Jeb Bush sad again. Photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Jeb Bush will not be voting for the man who taunted him on national television, tarring him with humiliating nicknames and baseless insults, until his political career was over. Two days after his father and brother said that they wouldnt be making to the GOP convention this summer, Jeb announced his intention to vote for neither major-party presidential candidate, in a Facebook post that can only be described as low-energy. After congratulating Trump on his primary win, and acknowledging the legitimate anger that the Donald gave voice to, Bush writes:

The American Presidency is an office that goes beyond just politics. It requires of its occupant great fortitude and humility and the temperament and strong character to deal with the unexpected challenges that will inevitably impact our nation in the next four years. Donald Trump has not demonstrated that temperament or strength of character. He has not displayed a respect for the Constitution. And, he is not a consistent conservative. These are all reasons why I cannot support his candidacy.

Bush goes on to say he cant support Hillary Clinton because of her dishonesty and liberalism, but that he will support principled conservatives at the state and federal level.

Bush joins former Republican nominee Mitt Romney, South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham, and Nebraska senator Ben Sasse among prominent GOP politicians who have sworn not to support their partys presumptive nominee.

Trump responded to Grahams rebuke with a gracious note, observing that if he were in the senators shoes, hed probably make the same decision.

Just in: Trump issues personal response to Lindsey Graham not backing him - is this "general election Trump mode"? pic.twitter.com/5sA16g4EbI  Ari Melber MSNBC (@AriMelber) May 6, 2016

As of this writing, Trump has yet to issue a reply to Bushs Facebook post, but it seems safe to assume it will be similarly classy.

House Speaker Paul Ryan said that he was not ready to support Trumps presidential bid on Thursday, saying that he would need the standard-bearer to prove that he truly bears our standards. Since then, the leaders have agreed to meet in Washington next week, to discuss the kind of Republican principles and ideas that can win the support of the American people this November.

If they cannot come to an agreement on those principles, the convention in Cleveland figures to be extraordinarily awkward: As the conventions chairman, Ryan is slated to be, in Politicos writing, the emcee of the Trump coronation.
London mayor Sadiq Khan. Photo: Bloomberg/Bloomberg Finance LP/Getty Images

London is not a conservative city. For the past eight years, the Tories managed to hold on to Londons mayoralty in spite of ideological headwinds, thanks to Boris Johnsons (alleged) charisma. But in 2016, Conservative standard-bearer Zac Goldsmith didnt quite offer that same posh charm. So his party decided to emphasize a different non-ideological advantage he had over his opponent: the fact that Goldsmith is not a Muslim.

The son of a Pakistani bus driver, Labours Sadiq Khan shares a skin tone and religious background with some of the people who have recently perpetrated mass-casualty terror attacks in continental Europe. He also once worked as a human-rights lawyer, a vocation that occasionally put him in the position of defending controversial individuals, including the Nation of Islams Louis Farrakhan.

Goldsmith tried to milk these facts for all they were worth, which, as it happens, turned out to be very little.

The primary smear involved Khans alleged ties to South London cleric Suliman Gani, whom David Cameron has accused of supporting the Islamic State. When The Guardian asked the administration to corroborate that claim, a spokesperson told the paper, There is evidence of this individual making this remark, but also said that they could not provide that evidence themselves.

Nonetheless, Gani is by all accounts an extremist cleric who opposes homosexuality and believes that women should be subservient to men. The Tories claimed that Khan shared a platform with Gani on nine separate occasions. Considering the fact that Gani was a prominent cleric within the constituency that Khan represented in parliament, that figure doesnt seem especially scandalous. In fact, Khans campaign eventually discovered that Goldsmith himself had once invited Gani to a campaign event, and that the Conservative MP for Battersea appeared alongside Gani at least five times. Although, in Goldsmiths defense, when he invited Gani to appear at an event with him, he made a point of being a white, non-Muslim while doing so.

Sadiq engaged with [Gani] as a local MP would engage with any religious figure, Khans campaign spokesperson told The Guardian. They had a big falling out over Ganis attitude to same-sex marriage. Sadiq was involved in having Gani removed from the local mosque because of his clearly radical views.

Gani left the Tooting Islamic Centre in 2013.

Anyhow, Goldsmith failed to convince Londoners that Khan is an ISIS sympathizer (he had better luck with the editors of the Drudge Report). Instead, the dog-whistle attacks seem to have backfired, spurring a significant increase in voter turnout and a landslide victory Thursday for Londons first Muslim mayor, on a night when the Labour Party underperformed expectations in other regions. Khan initially took 45 percent of the vote to Goldsmiths 36, and is projected to finish with 57 percent, once the second preferences of the Greens and Liberal Democrats are counted.

In the wake of Thursdays vote, many Conservative leaders have condemned the Goldsmith campaigns tactics. Im concerned that the campaign weve run is going to leave a negative legacy which we in London are going to have to clear up long after the the people who ran Zac Goldsmiths campaign have gone on their way, outgoing Conservative deputy mayor Roger Evans told BuzzFeed News.

One-eighth of Londons population is Muslim, and 35 percent of its residents are foreign born. Only 45 percent of the city is classified as white British.

Former Conservative Party candidate Shazia Awan told the Daily Beast that David Camerons and Zac Goldsmiths vile racially charged rhetoric forced her to cast the first Labour vote of her life.

Some Conservative commentators echoed those sentiments, with Daily Mail columnist Peter Oborne calling for three cheers for Sadiq Khan, the first Muslim London mayor, and describing his election as a victory for decency.

New York mayor Bill de Blasio offered Khan his congratulations on Friday.
The former Speaker could be the nerdy sidekick to the big man on campus. Photo: Getty Images

To political observers of a certain age, the news that Newt Gingrich was on Donald Trumps short list for the vice-presidential nomination was both startling and predictable. Gingrich has been buried politically so many times  as a Rockefeller Republican in the 1970s, as an annoying gadfly House member in the 1980s, as a national pariah in the 1990s, and as a failed presidential candidate in 2012  that yet another resurrection at the age of 73 seems preposterous yet at the same time fitting in such a preposterous political year.

Its possible Gingrichs name is being whispered aloud by Trump intimates like Roger Stone as a matter of simple gratitude: For months the former Speaker has defended the mogul like few other respectable voices in the GOP. But there is undeniably a certain congruence to the idea of Trump-Gingrich: A presidential candidate with no coherent worldview could use a front man who cannot go five minutes without articulating some sort of historical or metaphysical perspective on the most banal of subjects.

Indeed, despite the crackpot nature of many of Gingrichs many policy enthusiasms (his obsession with colonizing Mars is emblematic), his is what passes for a Big Brain in American politics, and as a veep prospect would happily occupy political media in babbling defense of Trump, leaving the Big Guy to wage more strategic battles. His resume is long enough to cover Trumps lack of political experience many times over (Newts first congressional campaign was on the cusp between the Nixon and Ford administrations), yet his reputation as a bomb-throwing revolutionary is as fully developed as Trumps own. And at a time when Trump is looking for deep pockets to help finance a general-election contest, Newts ability to shake money trees could be helpful as well. Just as his name has surfaced as a potential veep, his 2012 sugar daddy Sheldon Adelson has announced hes one billionaire Trump can count on to write some checks.

You could even make the argument that Newts failed 2012 campaign paved the way for Trumps unlikely candidacy in this cycle. Gingrich made Islamophobia a central part of his presidential bid, constantly citing the phantom menace of Sharia law in his pandering appeals to Christian-right and nativist audiences. He also anticipated some of Trumps economic-policy heresies, getting into very hot water by disrespecting one of Paul Ryans budgets and then going crudely populist in attacks on Mitt Romneys career as a corporate downsizing consultant.

But Gingrichs compatibility with Trump has its downside, and choosing him might represent a doubling-down on some less-than-savory aspects of the moguls record and personality. Like Trump, Gingrich has been known to flip-flop and backtrack; I once wrote a profile of my fellow Georgian based on decades of close observation that stressed his chameleon-like ability to change with the times (most famously by becoming the epitome of True Conservatism after an early career as a very nearly liberal Republican running to the right of a Georgia Dixiecrat). While he would superficially help repair Trumps relationships with Republican regulars and movement conservatives, none of them have much reason to trust Gingrich, either.

And then theres the personal stuff. Between them, Trump and Gingrich have six marriages and enough admitted adultery to turn the average politician into a pillar of salt. Perhaps not coincidentally, Gingrich struggled as much with the hostility of women voters in 2012 as Trump has in the current cycle. As Republican nominee Trump seeks to reverse historically poor numbers among women, does he really want to invite fresh recital of the story of his running mates alleged presentation of divorce papers to his first wife (who was, in an added creepy-sounding note, his former high-school math teacher) while she was in a hospital battling cancer? Everything else being equal, probably not.

Trumps done pretty well, however, defying political logic, and perhaps Newt is just too complementary to him  the nerdy sidekick to the big man on campus  to pass up. If it happens, the happiest man on Earth would be Bill Clinton, who turned Gingrich into his punching bag and perfect foil in the mid-1990s and would probably enjoy beating him up all over again on his wifes behalf. And for all I know, Trumps just cruel enough to make someone his running mate solely to provide an even more tempting target than himself.
Turn out for what? Photo: John Lamparski/WireImage

Donald Trump isnt quite nailing this whole standard-bearer thing. On Thursday, the presumptive GOP nominee held a rally in West Virginia, drawing 13,000 riled-up Republicans, all eager to cast their ballots in next Tuesdays primary. The Donald looked out into this crowd of energized conservatives and told them just how unimportant it was for them to make their voices heard.

What I want you to do is save your vote  you know, you dont have to vote anymore. Save your vote for the general election, okay? Forget this one. The primary is gone, Trump told the crowd, five days before West Virginia holds a series of contested down-ballot elections, including judicial races that the local GOP is deeply invested in.

Trump then reiterated that every little vote doesnt really count.

Save your vote for the general election in November, and were going to show you something, and then youre going to show me something, okay?

And then, just to make sure that he was doing everything he could to not help the local party, Trump instructed the thousands of Republicans gathered in front of him, for the third time, that they shouldnt bother leaving their houses next Tuesday night.

In November, youre going to go out, and youre going to vote and thats going to be the greatest vote you ever cast, okay? The vote was supposed to be on Tuesday, but now I can say: Stay home but get twice as many people in November, right?

West Virginia Republican Party chairman Conrad Lucas confirmed to the Washington Post that this was not, in fact, the message they were looking to promote.

Were hoping for a very large Republican turnout on Tuesday, Lucas told the paper. High Republican turnout is essential for our judicial races and to send a message where West Virginia stands.

Trump called off his keep out the vote effort late Thursday night.

Thank you West Virginia. Let's keep it going. Go out and vote on Tuesday - we will win big. #Trump2016  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 6, 2016

Surely, this will be the last time Trump undermines the electoral fortunes of down-ballot Republicans.
Photo: H. Armstrong Roberts/ClassicStock/Getty Images

Imagine that someone calls you a worthless nobody, begins a paper recently published in Social Neuroscience. I would rather not, but, fine, if you insist. Now imagine, continue the scientists, who are from the U.K. and the Netherlands, that a number of people witness the situation and laugh at you. What happens in the brain, these researchers wanted to know, when you are not only insulted  but when a laughing crowd is there to see it all happen?

Over at BPS Research Digest this week, psychologist and writer Christian Jarrett explains the way the scientists set up their study:

Marte Otten and her colleagues asked 46 participants to read 60 insults and 60 compliments presented on-screen one word at a time. Half these insults (e.g. You are antisocial and annoying) and compliments (e.g. You are strong and independent) featured the silhouette of a crowd of people at the bottom of each screen, and the end of the insult or compliment was followed immediately by a final screen showing the phrase and they feel the same way together with the sound of laughter lasting two seconds. Throughout this entire process, the researchers recorded the participants brainwaves using EEG .

After hearing the insults, participants brains showed greater signs of emotional processing than they did after hearing the compliments. (More specifically, the researchers were looking for evidence of something known as late positive potential, or LPP, which Jarrett describes as a positive spike of brain activity that can occur 300ms to 1 second after a stimulus.) And when the insult was paired with a guffawing crowd of jerks, that emotional processing activity was stronger, and lasted longer, than when the participants heard the insult on its own.

You hear a compliment, and you move on. But an insult lodges itself in your brain, and you mull the meaning over for longer than you would a kind word; this study suggests that this effect is made even stronger when youre feeling laughed at. (I know. Shocking.) You could think of this as a neurological example of the negativity bias, the notion that negativity tends to register more strongly than positivity. If youve ever gotten a mostly positive performance review, but found yourself fixated later on the few criticisms your boss had for you  youve experienced a version of the negativity bias.

Your brain works harder to process insults than it does compliments, in other words. Your poor brain. Youre always embarrassing it.
Earlier this week, a Snapchat-birthed relationship between two students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison took over the internets collective mind. (You can read our interview with the couple here.)

Now, its allegedly happening again with the Utah State Snapchat campus story (a public aggregation of snaps from students). Only this time, the whole thing ends with a dance battle and several hundred students singing the campus fight song.

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

Snapchat stories are usually geofenced, meaning you can only see them from a specific area, like a college campus. But the Utah State story is currently visible under Snapchats Live stories, so those of us who arent students there can see it for the 24 hours itll be live on the app. (Again, hmmmmm.)

First, we meet a blonde female student, dubbed Spoiler Girl, who ruins everyones day by posting videos explaining the endings of famous movies. In this case, she details the ending of 2001s Shrek.

Next up, a student enraged by Spoiler Girls actions decides that the campus needs to stage some kind of intervention to keep her from spoiling again. Another student chimes in and proposes the intervention be a silent dance battle between students who are for and against the spoiler snaps. (More on this later. For now, just: Hmmmm.)

Meanwhile, somewhere else on the Snapchat-filtered hellscape I am envisioning as the Utah State campus, an unsuspecting guy named Trevor sends a snap about studying for his investment banking final to the campus story. Another female student sends him a good luck snap, while her friend, Madison, shouts youre hot from the backseat of a car.

Of course, Trevor doesnt know Madison is Madison (Does anybody in college use Facebook anymore?). Instead he calls her Mystery Car Girl and the two coordinate a date for the evening, meeting up for ice cream before the dance battle.

Ah yes, young love. Just look at those faces.

From there, the happy couple heads to the library for the dance battle. (Which, in case youve forgotten, concerns the ending of a 15-year-old childrens movie). Based on the snaps, it appears easily 100 students showed up to dance and cheer on their classmates. Trevor and Madison deem themselves the unofficial judges of the event, ruling in favor of Team Spoiler after several minutes of painful gyrating. Then they kiss while their classmates hoot, holler, and round out the evening with a rousing chorus of the school song, like the sequel to the sequel to High School Musical.

Now, were not saying the stunt was orchestrated by Snapchat (weve reached out to the company and will update this story if we hear back). Were not even saying that its fake. Were just saying, you know: One week after a mega-viral Snapchat romance, another one, involving a dance-off, appears?

Look, that now-viral Snapchat story from the University of Wisconsin, was sentimental pap, yes. But it was charmingly sloppy sentimental pap. It was authentic sentimental pap. Also, it was first. If you want to go viral with your romance, try a different app. (Down to Lunch?)
Hillary Clinton. Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Last week, Pearl Love was reading a book on a New York subway when a passenger noticed she was transgender and started yelling a tirade of racist, nauseating insults. Everyone on the train stayed silent. Love filmed the upsetting incident and posted it to Facebook, and it quickly went viral.

I started recording because I was scared, Love, who was commuting to a new job as an outreach social worker for Translatina Network, told ABC News. The woman stands up and lunges at Love before the video cuts out. She chased Love around the subway car, hit her, and emptied her purse before leaving the train, Love said. One person helped pick up her belongings.

More than 240,000 people have now seen Loves Facebook video. On Thursday night, Hillary Clinton watched and commented on the post, showing her support:

Pearl, Im so sorry that you experienced this. The all-too-high prevalence of violence and hatred faced by the transgender community  in 2016! is a rebuke to all of us. Every single person deserves to be safe and live free from discrimination and cruelty, period. And transgender people need to hear from every one of us that you are loved, respected, and deserving of equality under the law. Know that you have my support, and Im on your side.

Clinton is right: Transgender women of color like Love, who is Taiwanese, represented half of all victims of anti-LGBTQ killings in 2014. Anti-transgender hate crimes hit a record high in 2015. This year (so far) ten transgender people have been murdered.

This kind of thing actually happens to me all the time to the point where I start thinking OK, this is normal, its OK, Love told ABC. But then I was talking to my friends and fellow sisters about it, and I realized this is not right. I want to help educate people and have people understand what we go through every day as trans people.
Photo: Mike Harrington/Getty Images

For as long as dating has been around, so, too, has the question of how to elegantly get out of a bad date. Do you have a friend call halfway through with a feigned emergency? Go to the bathroom and never come back?

While some may be more cavalier about letting their true feelings be known instead of suffering through another beer and mansplaination of the intricacies of modern jazz, one womans tale highlights the burden of emotional labor (and is also hilarious).

Greatest crime blotter item or greatest crime blotter item? pic.twitter.com/cXsUHtBnjd  Alexander Chee (@alexanderchee) May 5, 2016

5:47 p.m.  Police responded to an Amherst site where a man and woman were hiking, and the woman became ill. Police determined the woman was just trying to get out of a date set up using the WeChat app and feigned illness instead of being more forthcoming about why she wanted to end the hike.

Reminder: Its easier for everyone if you just say, Im just not that into you from the start. But if youre not going to do that, absolutely do make it as dramatic as possible.
i think it's just a promotional song for some Etude product

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lets not talk about Hara's chocochip cookies that was a hot ass mess.

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My best bet is that it's originally from the defunct Jung sister project

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i love her demos sfm, i have more than 100 saved lol

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yeah I loved run devil run and boots and boys back in the day

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ooh, thanks for this list. i live for her gaga, and sia's unreleased tracks

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Run Devil Run is probably one of the most perfect pop songs I've ever heard. I really want to do a rock cover of it.

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run devil run, boots and boys, radio radio radio and friday night bitch fight were my faves

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run devil run was also sold to SM and it's a girls generation song now

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she has SO many good demos. my faves include Woo, Red Lipstick, Booty Call, Baby It's You, Disgusting, Mr. Watson, Get In Line, Paper Airplane, Suicide (A Little Sad), Shots on the Hood of My Car & 31 Seconds Alone

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Those Demos were brilliant; I still have all of them on my laptop right now.





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Where can I obtain these demos? I NEED them!

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Disgusting wass my favooooriteeeeeeeeeeee demo

and it went to freaking Miranda Cosgrove



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!!! makes me want to listen to rdr





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i love listening to this and the kesha vers. back to back

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I love both Girls Generations and Kesha's versions of this song. Seriously one of my favorite pop songs ever.

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this song (even kesha's version) sounds like it was made for k-pop. it's uncanny really

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damn this still slays

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I loved the way they looked during this, but they sounded so nasally in this song.

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this is such a perfect pop song. kesha really knows how to do her shit.

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pretty sure she only recorded this song and didn't actually write it

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Lol I remember when this came out I stopped listening to them for awhile since I loved Oh! and I was upset they were doing a ~dark~ concept. Now I look back and this video isn't really dark at all lol, it's really not bad and my younger self was being so dramatic.

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i would kill to see them release something like rdr again

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it always amazes me how GG is one of the most popular kpop groups yet their MVs are cheap as fuck

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i looooooooove etude house and kesha. f(x) is ok lol

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With this post I have finally solved the mystery of who's lifeless voice in f(x) I can't stand.



I also have this fun Kesha song to listen to now. It's a good day (now watch it go to shit after this lol).

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lmao i miss sulli she couldn't sing but she had a cute voice. imo her voice has the same emotionless tone of her sister's.

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Krystal's voice is def.... an acquired taste but if SM puts the right team around her (like they just did with Tiffany) she could maybe do something interesting, a little off beat (maybe along the lines of Pink Tape's Shadow b/c she does sound beautiful of that track)



Anyway, this is cute, I love all her Etude House CF's, esp the one with Beenzino~

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lmao i wld love to see all the songs sm has secretly bought. they probably have thousands that will most likely never see the light of day.

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truly terrible



i hope kesha is getting paid tho

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this so surreal, I've loved this song for years

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Fuck Him, He's a DJ was on repeat for a long time. Boom Boom Bang is so good too

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I want those lipsticks

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Me too lol

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Same. I'm excited for them to come out!

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I have an Etude House lipstick and it melted so easily :\ They're super cute and I love the packaging though.

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I hope Dr. Luke isn't getting any money from this.

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one of my favorite Kesha tracks! I still wish this was officially released, if only to have a non watermarked version -







Edited at 2016-05-06 12:45 am (UTC)

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Oh, I already watched that cm because I'm looking forward to the new lipstick formula and I found the song in it to be reallllly annoying. I'm surprised it's Kesha's.

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That's sad. I love both of them and I'm glad Daisy is getting to work on other things but I'd like for John to be successful too, he's really great.

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http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2016/may/04/john-boyega-stage-old-vic-woyzeck-buchner-glenda-jackson

He's going for acting prestige not just movie roles but I'm sure he has lots of stuff he is in talks for. Don't be sad, he's just been announced as the lead of a major theatre revival in London.He's going for acting prestige not just movie roles but I'm sure he has lots of stuff he is in talks for.

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Oh that's better then lol.



Idk if I really like the sound of that play/its plot but if it's not too expensive I might get tickets to go and support him.

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http://www.lennyletter.com/work/a361/why-i-chose-a-small-play-over-the-big-screen/



also I had to look it up but I guess Imperial Dreams came out before TFA. Did anyone see it?

semi-related but Lupita wrote about why she chose to do a play instead of another movie for Lenny:also I had to look it up but I guess Imperial Dreams came out before TFA. Did anyone see it?

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Wow he looks so much like Denzel Washington

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mte! they should be related in a movie or he plays a younger version of him in flashbacks. too good to pass up, imo.

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he rly does! my mom said he did and i was like "ok girl" but he does. so dreamy.

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i would love love love if john were cast in the "fences" movie denzel and viola davis are making soon. not sure if DW's character even has a son in the play version, but the film could take artistic license, LOL

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I usually don't think so, but that still is uncanny

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this was made years ago and i believe still doesn't have a distributor? no clue why, everything i've heard about it has been amazing. SMH.

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It hasn't really come out.

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ontd photographers, how is that image above achieved in terms of lighting, post etc? It has such rich colour and John's skin looks amazing, how is it done?

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It looks like a ring flash was used! They're amazing at illuminating faces. They even sell ring flash attachments for phones that actually do a pretty decent job.

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Neat! I'm going to look into them, thank you :)

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selective touch-up in Lightroom (+Photoshop) imo

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john boyega



sometimes i catch myself wondering how sitting on his face feels

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like sunning your vagina after gathering water from a remote mountain spring, sis.

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quinoa queen

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sounds like you speak from experience

I totally believe this though

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as i read this i rly wanted to comment with, "i cna offer him the role of me sitting on his face" and then i shook my head

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this also reminds me of bend it like beckham with keira and parminder



mte op :/

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Still makes me so fucking mad.

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It's why i could never jump the keira knightley bandwagon. She is such a terrible, basic actress and really shouldn't be as famous as she is. Parminder nagra deserved so much better

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i eventually got over my saltiness but for a while it was upsetting to see the less talented and less charismatic actress getting everything and she was so overexposed for a while too.. i can see daisy being turned into kiera 2.0 so i hope she has more talent so it's not as annoying. it's hard to tell what she can really do from tfa because of the type of character she played.

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She basically plays the same role over and over again. I liked her and Bennyboy in the intimitation game which surprised me as I don't tend to like either of them but I think that had to do more with the way they bounced off each other and how much I already knew about the whole enigma history and how important it was to the war. I'd like to see her try to change her accent for a film. Let's her acting chops for that.

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i LOVED that movie. it's such a shame she never got a bigger career. she was amazing.

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Yeah, other than ER I haven't seen her in anything and that makes me sad. I love that movie so much. But glad to see Archie Panjabi's success, I hope she gets good things post-Good Wife!

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Also the girl from Kingsman (a woc) is in Star Trek and she's in heavy makeup.

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yeah pocs aren't even allowed to be pocs it's tragic tbh

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She just got the lead in The Mummy reboot. Considering she a 35 year old professional dancer by training, I think she's doing very well for herself.

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WHAT SHE'S 35

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ugh now I feel bad for rooting for this movie to fail

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Wait, I thought that movie was unrelated to the Mummy franchise?!?

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she's only listed as "Mummy" though in The Mummy reboot tho. they have that other white blonde blue eyed woman as the lead.

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Sofia Boutella is my everything tbh.

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"The difference is reminiscent of Margot Robbie vs. Lupita Nyongo who broke out as Best Picture contenders in the same year but one is being offered more projects than the other.'



idg why people keep saying this. Lupita turned down a bunch of stuff.

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Right? Like it would be a good comparison if she wasn't actively choosing to go for smaller roles. There are plenty of other good examples.

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Yeah she did, but COME ON. We all know damn well she wasn't getting offered the same roles Margot has been offered. Plus, a few of the roles she turned down were supporting roles that Gugu Mbatha-Raw ended up taking: Free States of Jones and The Whole Truth. She also turned down Naomie Harris' role in SouthPaw.

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This.



Now that we're seeing the movies she was offered it's not like those were great roles to begin with.

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Did you not read her essay on this subject? She turned down everything offered.

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i just came in here to say this. she literally just wrote an essay about it.

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Well, that sucks. I was under the impression John had more :/



Daisy hate in 3, 2,... "she's wooden (tm)"!

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yeah i'm hoping ppl move beyond pitting them against each other

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i read a comment here that Daisy was planning on going to uni so i guess that changed? either way i'm excited for her future. and john's too, he has a lot of charisma and i hope he finds the right roles

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He got the emma watson movie before tfa so it doesn't really count vs daisy's list to make matters worse... he's doing a play as well so i guess that's something.

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Yeah, that part confused me because I thought he was listed as the second male lead when The Circle's cast was first announced

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I saw a screening of the film and I'll just say that his role was no where near as important as it should've been.

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yeah, i'm really hoping john starts to get the offers he deserves. he's a fantastic actor and so charismatic, i can't stand it.

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as someone's boyfriend in an Emma Watson movie.



he's playing emma's boyfriend in 'the circle' coming out sometime this year (also starring tom hanks)



i really thought john had more projects lined up. i also did notice the number of voiceover roles idris elba had this year and was like 'umm is he going to get to be on screen and look like himself (obviously not star trek)?'

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i was so excited when i heard he was cast in that netflix thing and then i realized he's just gonna do voice work and was like "oh anyway"



smh

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She is such a bland and lifeless actress

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Agreed, it's almost unbelievable. She's like the new Keira.

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idk if she's bland and lifeless in real life, but she's great in her movies I've seen so far

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i thought the same before i saw the man from U.N.C.L.E. she was really good in it despite, of course, having the least screen time out of her, henry, and armie

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I didn't care for her in that at all, she was so flat to me

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Love your av

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Sometimes I see her as a HW PR experiment.

Still not convinced of any solid foundation and depth to her. Just a flavor of the month that is sticking for the moment

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Here for Eva, no doubt, but still on the fence about Alicia

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I've watched everything eva's ever done and I like alicia so I'm hft

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all i can say is i'm jealous of swedish people

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MTE, between her and Pewdiepie, they're blessed!

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why are they all so beautiful? Even the unattractive people are great looking in their own way. It's unfair.

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lmao no they're not. i remember i used to think that about norwegians when i moved here but the novelty wears off eventually, and you start seeing that like in every other country there's as many non-attractive people as there is attractive people.

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they arent, look up swedish festivals, i mean im not gonna pretend that swedish people are all ugly, but they are average like everyone else

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that's how i feel about australians

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i wonder how amanda peet feels about this

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'everyone is taking away all the production companies'

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Yeah, she's going to become overexposed so fast

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good more women run production companies employing more female directors

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Alicia, Eva, female led film, new female led production company.

Yes please

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And a female director!

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Mte. The name is cute too imo. Lol

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Exactly.



She's doing what Reese has been doing. They both may be insufferable individuals but they are working hard to create opportunities for women.



Now they just need to include more woc.

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I bet her films won't have any people of color in it.

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Yup

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For sure.

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Lol of course not.

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all this lady did was breathe and this comment reaches "look at this bitch eating crackers" territory

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is it not a genuine critique, tho

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LMFAO for real

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my first thought.

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exactly lmao. like good for you for starting this but if you're not going to include woc then miss me on that shit

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Considering the amount of self tanner she uses, I'm surprised she doesn't count as biracial.

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she is fake tanned enough to represent multiple people of colour.

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It would be really great if she kept these as female productions and helped offer more opportunities to women who would be overlooked for a white man usually.

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I'm borderline stanning this bland ambitious woman. I made fun of her whole "I'll have so many films competing at the Oscars!" thing, but then she went and won one, so like I can't talk shit anymore, she hustles.

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lmao right I feel like the only way she got away with that is because she actually won, like good for you girl



she was also in at least two oscar nominated movies that year (maybe more but I can only think of two) so again her little "the oscars will be very interesting next year" line was warranted

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Lmao same. I'm not particularly enamored of her as an actress but I like her ambition tbh.

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I'd 100% thirst for an Oscar if I was an actor, so I can't bitch and moan when someones honest about their goals to get one - I'd just occasionally make jokes about her thirst, but I don't think she deserved the kind of vitriol that she got on various sites.

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She's an ambitious women, anytime a woman shows ambition people turn on her

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Lol ontd will hate any woman who's nominated for an Oscar and makes it known she wants to win. Cause it's a crime to really want to win a coveted award in your field of work.

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they talked shit about brie larson's oscar hustle too

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ONTD hates inoffensive white actresses for a lack of reasons and then turn around and thirst over the blandest of bland white guys like Chris Evans

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Right? She backed that shit up and I can respect that.

And I found her met gala dance cute

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her and eva don't even look like cousins, much less sisters

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lol mte. They're both beautiful but they couldn't look less alike.

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Maybe they'll be half-sisters?

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What!? To me they look as alike as two totally unrelated women are gonna get. There are few Rooney Mara/ Tom Hiddelston level lookalikes out there.

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Hopefully she also gives women of color the same opportunities.

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she is so cute.

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That clip was so rage-inducing. Anyone could see there was something up with the kid. He has social anxiety disorder and its probably even worse now because of this douche canoe.

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Autism Speaks is infamously terrible, yes? So he did zero research and just threw money at the first Google result and made this situation worse?? y i k e s

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My understanding is that it is the charity the family requested he donate to



ETA: Yes, it's a terrible charity though



Edited at 2016-05-06 08:26 pm (UTC)

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lots of people think it's a good charity because it's the only one they know of and dont bother looking into it

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yes! awful

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Is it one of those organizations that uses all of the money to "raise awareness" and nothing else?

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It's pretty high up there with Susan G. Komen as far as being the worst.

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they frame autism as a burden for the parent and never work on actually helping the children deal with it (as in, helping to socialize them, as this would greatly help them), they work to find a 'cure' (spoiler alert: there is none), which leaves families waiting for something to 'fix' their child, which keeps the stigma alive that autistic children/adults are flawed. i hate them.

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Very terrible. Entire masterpost of all of their shit over at https://thecaffeinatedautistic.wordpress.com/so-what-is-the-problem-with-autism-speaks/

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The family requested that he make a donation to them I believe

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BAD MOVE

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ugh .autism speaks is literally the worst organization to donate to for autism awareness and advocacy :(

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The media in Cincinnati is going nuts with this story (Andrew is an employee at Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport). It's all I've heard about on the radio and news all week.



I think it's pretty clear that 50 Cent is shit. His apology is insincere though I'm glad he donated to Andrew's chosen charity. I wish Andrew had chosen a better charity though

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kids are the worst. i'm so sorry your brother was made fun of.

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my brother is the same and he got a job all on his own but they switched bosses and the new one is an utter cunt and doesn't understand mental illness. he does retail but for a while he was demoted to cleaning toilets luckily he has us and we called labor laws and who knows what to get that sorted but still people take advantage of him and he suffers so much. he wants to get another job but people when they see him instantly discriminate against him. so much for equal opportunity bullshit.



the world needs to get educated and because haute all dumbfucks many people like my brother continue to suffer in his mid 20s and will continue to suffer.

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my brother has autism too and I spent the majority of my childhood protecting him from assholes like 50 cent. it's impossible not to worry but im sure your brother will do great <3

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Ok but i kind of have no idea what he did? Can someone fill me in? I'm scared to find out..

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My older sister is also mentally disabled and do this humming thing too. I don't really know what her her school experience was like because we have a 12 years age difference, but she told me that some kids used to make fun of her, which breaks my heart. She also did kick a couple of bullies' asses though (with our mother low key applauding her), which makes me really proud.

I'm extremely sensitive when it comes to my sister. I would have hunt 50 Cent down.



Edited at 2016-05-06 10:23 pm (UTC)

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Same w/my brother. The thing is he's 6'5" and he's been challenged to fights a lot because he looks like a big tough guy, when the reality is he's the opposite.

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Good for him

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I don't really know what happened with all of this, but a girl i work with used to casually date him. her 14 year old daughter was murdered a few years ago and he paid for a lot of the funeral and a horse drawn carriage to carry the coffin. it made me think he was a pretty good person. I'm afraid to hear what he's apologizing for :\

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he's proven himself to be a huuuuuge asshole recently, with a lawsuit he's in as well as this incident. basically, he filmed an employee of CVG airport who he was making fun of for being high at work, but the kid is actually autistic and has severe social anxiety. also recently he included footage from the leaked sextape of his rival's ex in one of his music videos. she sued him for using the footage, and he declared bankruptcy to avoid paying her.



everyone is capable of good and bad. it's nice to hear that he helped his ex during such a hard time.

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What he did was distressing to watch. It was unforgivably inhuman. Made me quite upset tbh.

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Damn what he did back then was amazing....

Idk what to think of him

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That's really nice.



He's like any other person then - neither good nor bad just a shade of gray. What he did for that woman was amazing; what he did to this guy in the article was disgusting.

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I remember that because it was near where I lived in Queens. She was killed by a stray bullet iirc

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that was great of him but it seems to be the exception

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Doesn't he claim to be broke? Where'd he get $100,000 from?

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didn't he file for bankruptcy or am i thinking of someone else?

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No, he definitely was in hot water for that because he posed with a bunch of money and then cried to the judge that it was all fake or something.

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LOL this liar

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Isn't he broke?

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mte I was like wasn't he just in court over money problems??

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Yeah, I don't know how he became broke though, he was one of the first founders of vitamin water and then sold his share for 100s of millions iirc

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LOL he's sf ugly i stg

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I thought he was claiming to be broke?



I would honestly have preferred he kept the money (or actually paid the woman he owes the money to from that lawsuit) instead of donating it to a shitty organization like Autism Speaks.

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at least he made a donation? he's still a massive asshole for what he did.



one of my friends has tourettes and i hate how people act sometimes when we hang out. when we were in college some of our classmates would bully him or make fun of him for it like his tics were the funniest things ever. we had a four hour class once and during the break i ended up snapping at a few of them when he was in the washroom because i had had enough, i didn't even care the professor was in the room.



people are stupid.

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good for you for sticking up for your friend! people are so insensitive and straight up rude

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isn't it the one the family wanted?

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I'm glad you stood up for your friend. Why don't teachers/professors put a stop to the bullying and teasing in their classrooms? Esp. the university professors, they should have the courage to stop it.

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Wasn't he just in the middle of bankruptcy hearings like two months ago?

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I love Kathleen. I don't buy everything she gives great reviews for, cause I'm poor, but I did recently buy Colourpop lippies and a makeup brush cleaning tool she suggested. X] When I have more money to spare on beauty products I'll probably spend it on more things she recommends...fml

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I wore one of ColourPop's Ultra Satin's last night and after 6 hours + drinking a margarita + eating frozen yogurt, the lipstick hadn't faded at all.

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you mean to tell me kylie had absolutely no say in the creation of this line and she just put her name on an already-existing brand that approached her???? i'm shocked.

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yes! stephanie nicole is my favorite youtuber and this video was AMAZING.

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Yeah I love her too. I love her no nonsense, calm approach towards reviews of products. That's what I like not Omgggg you guys have to try this!!!!

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mte! loved her review on morphe

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I own one of Kyie's mattes, True Brown(it was gift) and one of the metallics, Reign and metallics>>>>>mattes. True brown starting flaking after 20 mins yet Reign stayed on for hours with no flaking/fading. That being said, they hype is real, none of Kylie's colors are that unique that they are selling out in like 5 mins.

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I love Stephanie Nicole, she seems to really know what she's talking about.





Anyone have recs for foundation or primers for super oily skin? I've tried Estee Lauders Double Wear and Revlon Colorstay and I still get oily. Also the MUFE HD foundation.

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Try the Becca Ever Matte, I heard it can even be drying because of how matte it is.

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It's not too drying, but it didn't work for my t-zone and if you don't rub it in all the way it can leave an ashy residue?

Everyone should get a free sample at Sephora, but at least for my skin type it didn't work.

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your icon is beautiful and mesmerizing

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Ive heard really good things about UD mattifying powder to set your makeup



Also cliniques stay matte line

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i like the MUFE primer

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Try the Tarte primer (matte) and then use a setting spray (MUFE or UD de-slick).

IF you have specific oily areas, try a mattifiying pressed powder (same color as your foundation) and with a sponge lightly put that over the finished look, spray and then put it over again.



Depending what you eat, your cycle, and other factors, you may be able to stay matte-to-dewy after 4-5 hours, but if it's a summer day, that'll be less.

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Benefit has a really great mattefying primer

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I like the cover fx one a lot

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I've been using a combo of the Tarte Rainforest of the Sea Foundation and the Smashbox Primer Water and my skin hasn't gotten greasy like it usually does (but to be fair, it hasn't gotten crazy hot and humid in Florida yet idk if it's hold up when it gets to that point).

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Lancome Teinte Idole Ultra 24h

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MUFE Mat Velvet + is way better for oily skin. A MUA told me the HD would slide off my face because I'm oily. I also like the Tarte Amazonian clay foundation.



Truth be told, I don't believe there is a product on the market to completely stop oil breakthroughs.

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if i use hourglass mineral veil primer and then urban decay setting spray at the end my face doesn't get oily and i have pretty oily skin. also rcma colorless powder to set.

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rimmel stay matte primer

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NARS has a brand new heavily tinted matte primer/spf that's amazing

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I have oily skin and also use the Double Wear. Took me some time but my primer rn is the Marc Jacobs one. I like it and it doesn't leave me oily, I went thru a whole bottle. I also tried the Black Radiance primer (it's like $8 at drugstore.com) and it actually made me look too dry/powdery lol. Idk how oily you really are but maybe give the Black Radiance a go? It has clay in it which is why it's great for oily skin but I think with the BHAs I've been using it was too much for my skin. I also use Make Up Forever matte foundation powder as my setting powder tho so I might just have too much matte going on

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MUFE primer, MUFE Mat Velvet + and Loreal Infallible for foundations

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Blac Chyna is pregnant, where is the post?????????????

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literally, you dumb scallywag couldnt scroll down more??????

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lmao

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lmaooo

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lmao

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scallywag il it

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lmao I cackled

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Also I don't really care for colourpop i mean the price point is great but the quality is trash. I got a few of their liquid lipsticks and they peel and smudge like crazy. Not worth it at all

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Not all their products are like that. I don't care for their ultra mattes, but their ultra satins are good, as are their blushes and highlighters. I also like a good chunk of their eyeshadow range (their mattes are harder to work with though imo).

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I don't like any of their lip products tbh but I love their eye shadows (well the metallics at least).

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ultra mattes are the fucking worst, apparently you can make them work with a lip primer but fuck that

eyeshadows are okay, bitch to store and to use though

lipsticks and lip liners are nice quality but nothing to write home about

i can't even try their liners because they dried out on me super quickly despite opening them only once and tightly closing them for weeks until i wanted to use them

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I had a feeling about the eyeliners. They seemed too good to be true.

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Their eye liners are the one product from them I hate. I've gotten ok results from the white and I'll use the metallic on my water line, but when I use any of the dark colors on my eyelid they instantly transfer like crazy. I don't have nearly as much problem with other gel pencil eyeliners.



Plus they break on me constantly. The brown I can't even use because because any pressure causes it to break.

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their eyeliners are so frustrating! i got one and it was broken when it arrived so they sent me another, and in a matter of days it broke again lol

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I got some ultra mattes and one ultra satin and long story short...those ultra mattes are about to go in the trash. I only used one and I've only had them a week but my god the formula...yuck

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Anyone have any info on ordering from Colourpop and getting your money drained from your account? I thought about ordering from them till I saw a post on tumblr.

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they've been having stuff like that happen since they launched, nobody noticed it then cause the hype was way too high



stephanie mentioned that the same shit has been happening at kylie's website. i don't buy anything from brand's websites anymore, i stick to amazon/etsy/beautylish/etc when i can.

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Yeah, I do too. I thought it was disturbing that even people went through PayPal they still got targeted. I didn't realize they'd always had problems.

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your icon is flawless bb! i adore lisa sfm 

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I've ordered a lot from them and haven't had that happen to me. I hadn't heard anything about that happening, actually. NOW I'M GONNA BE PARANOID.

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Not the same I guess but they did charge me twice and it's taking forever to resolve it and I'm kinda pressed about it.

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i've read and heard that a lot. every time i've shopped on colourpop i've checked out using paypal and had no problems. i think if you use paypal you would be safer

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damn I never knew about this. thankfully i've stopped ordering from them.

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well, shit. I'm glad I never ordered from them

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I've ordered from ColourPop 5-6 times and have never had an issue, but I try to use PayPal for all my online shopping.

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idk who Kathleen is but bravo to her. Now if only I can get people to stop posing with Mao and Ho Chi Minh name signs/images like it's out of reverence or something. People are so ignorant and it's sad.

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You seem mad lol

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10 seconds in and the flickering focus is incredibly distracting. use manual focus, girl! and go up (down? i always get confused lol) a few f-stops



Edited at 2016-05-06 09:29 pm (UTC)

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I'm Canadian so I don't fuck with colourpop for the shipping prices alone, but apparently a bunch of people also got their CC information stolen after buying from them after their sale

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I've heard wild stats that like 60% of Amazon reviews/etc. are paid reviews. It's kind of amazing how corporations have pretty much invaded the Internet with their marketing, which was supposed to be some beacon of an open/democratic system.



her grandfather was probably jailed because he was a rich bourgeois trying to run off with his exploited wealth. so go Khloe, exploit the masses with your knockoff crap and take pictures under comrade Fidel.

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This is why when I order something online I always look for the negative reviews. I know there will be trolling bad reviews but I look for the more lengthy ones that explain pros and cons. If there aren't any of those then I'll a read a few reviews across the board and compare them. But yeah, always check out the bad reviews!

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this why i got trust issues

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i bought one health food item on amazon and the company emailed me and said they would mail me a full size product for free to try and then leave a review (tbf they did say leave an honest review). so why not i did it and becuase i left an in depth review they emailed me to ask if they could send another product. its continued to the point i kid you not i have about 30 things in my pantry right now from one company becuase they are so desperate for reviews.

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damn, what company?

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I would also love to know the company if you are up for sharing.

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that's why on amazon you should only pay attention to "verified reviews" because they're the people who actually bought the product from amazon.

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i've only bought one thing because a youtuber used it and that was the dilo oil by kate sommerville. i just thought it looked interesting and cool. sigh...



i've bought other things because i've been influenced by the general hype, not just by youtubers but on social media and all. when everyone starts acting like this new thing is the best thing that's ever been created.

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omg same lmao xD

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I thought you said "dildo oil" omg...I just got out of a 4 hour final so please excuse me lmao

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Sixty-two years after Roger Bannister broke the four-minute mile, and we are sprinting towards the end of another crazy week. The craziness continues today, for not only is it Kentucky Derby Eve, but it is also Nonfarm Friday, which means we get official monthly U.S. unemployment data. Hark, here are five things to consider on this sixth day of May.

1) Data has been light elsewhere, leaving the spotlight to shine on todays Nonfarm payrolls report. Job creation last month was considerably lower than expectations, coming in at 160,000 compared to the consensus of 202,000. The unemployment rate remained at 5 percent. Average hourly earnings rose 0.3 percent YoY (good), while the participation rate dropped to 62.8 percent (bad).

2) The fire in Fort McMurray, Canada rages on. It is now estimated that up to 1 million barrels per day of Canadian production has been taken offline. To put the situation in context, Canada produces ~4 million bpd of crude oil, nigh on 80 percent of which is produced in Alberta. Oil sands production accounts for ~80 percent of Albertas oil output. Related: Why Gazproms Monopoly in Europe is Far from Over

Canada is the largest supplier of crude oil to the U.S. sending approx.3million bpd  the vast majority of which moves by pipeline. While infrastructure is yet to be damaged, the evacuation of staff in combination with the precautionary closure of pipelines is what is driving the drop in production.

3) This piece today highlights how the U.S. Gulf is congested due to rising crude imports; we were quoted in the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday highlighting how there are over 28 million barrels of crude waiting to be discharged due to strong arrivals and weather delays.

While weve been highlighting of late how Saudi imports have climbed to their highest level in nearly a year, it would be remiss not to shine a light on Iraqi flows, which have reached their highest level since September 2014. Imports reached nearly 280,000 bpd in April, heading to various destinations on the East, West and Gulf Coasts:

(Click to enlarge) Related: Is This The Biggest Red Herring In Oil Markets?

4) This chart below is from EIAs today in energy, highlighting the breakdown of U.S. crude production and imports by API gravity for 2015. More than 70 percent of domestic production last year is of light crude  oil with an API gravity of over 35:

(Click to enlarge)

Given Gulf Coast refineries are geared towards refining medium to heavy crude, it should come as no surprise that according to the EIA, 90 percent of U.S. crude imports last year had an API gravity below 35. We can see from our ClipperData that 74 percent of U.S. waterborne crude imports last year had an API of 31 or lower, as heavier foreign crude arrived on U.S. shores. Related: The Shale Sector Just Got Two Critical Wins  In Two Different States

5) Finally, there has been a militant attack on a Chevron platform off the coast of Nigeria, which has forced the closure of a Chevron oil facility. The militant group, the Niger Delta Avengers, have claimed responsibility for bombing Chevrons Okan platform in what is being viewed as one of the most serious attacks since 2009.

This is hot on the heels of a force majeure on Nigerias Forcados blend due to pipeline sabotage in late February, which has dropped Nigerian crude exports to 1.7 million bpd, the lowest since late 2013, according to our ClipperData.

By Matt Smith

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
Human trafficking experts who spoke at a recent panel discussion agree that people from any socioeconomic, racial, ethnic or geographic background can be trafficking victims. Nevertheless, in Milwaukee, the vast majority of victims are female and African-American.

Leading local experts participated in the panel at the YWCA of Southeastern Wisconsin to kick off the groups annual Stand Against Racism campaign.

"Its all about  the intersection of the politics of oppression, forces like racism, sexism, classism and homophobia all coming together," said Jeanne Geraci, executive director of the Benedict Center, which offers services to women who have previously been incarcerated or have engaged in the commercial sex trade.

Speaking to a room full of local nonprofit workers and community advocates, the panelists made it clear that many different kinds of people are affected by human trafficking in Wisconsin. Dana World-Patterson, chair of the Human Trafficking Task Force of Greater Milwaukee, said that it is dangerous to stereotype victims because that limits understanding of the true scope of the problem.

Throughout their time addressing trafficking, all the panelists have had experience with cases involving victims from a variety of backgrounds. They agreed that those who solicit commercial sex look for all types of girls, and the most prominent risk factor among victims is vulnerability in any form.

However, the panelists also discussed why it was appropriate to talk about trafficking at an event about racism.

According to Unlucky Thirteen, an initiative of the Human Trafficking Task Force of Greater Milwaukee, 78 percent of youth trafficked in Milwaukee are African American and 92 percent are female. Seventy-nine percent of human trafficking cases in Wisconsin occur in the city of Milwaukee.

"Its somewhat of a double-edged sword in that you want people to realize that it can happen anywhere, but you also want to make sure those groups that are being disproportionately impacted are able to receive the assistance and the services that they need in order to get out of the situation," said Tracy Johnson, an assistant U.S. attorney who has been a leader in the states human trafficking task force since 2006.

"We need to think about the intersection of race, poverty, gender and sex trafficking," Johnson said. "You cant disconnect them. We need to look at root causes and the systemic reasons this is occurring."

Geraci and World-Patterson agreed that acknowledging who is being most affected can ensure that the limited resources available are allocated where they are most needed.

The Benedict Center is advocating to better allocate resources to support victim rehabilitation and to decriminalize prostitution in the city. The panelists said that the criminal justice system affects African-American victims of trafficking disproportionately. They recommend that prosecutors shift their emphasis from those selling themselves for sex to those purchasing sex and those trafficking the victims.

"The negative impact of criminalizing is disproportionately impacting women of color," Geraci said. "Whether an individual is (selling sex) because they have a pimp or theyre doing it for economic survival, criminalizing that act doesnt help anybody."

She acknowledged that law enforcement is punishing women for prostitution less than in the past, but said that sex workers can still be arrested and criminalized or written a municipal ticket. A member of the audience pointed out that the $698 municipal ticket for prostitution is more than the benefits a low-income woman receives from the states W-2 program each month.

"Its frustrating, and its costly, but it also has collateral damage for the person thats being arrested," Geraci said. "Its re-traumatizing them. (A criminal record) creates barriers for employment and for housing, and it breaks apart families."

Geraci said she hopes to see a citywide municipal diversion program similar to the pilot program that Milwaukee Police Department District Three uses, which refers women to the Sisters Diversion Program at the Benedict Center to receive support services if arrested.

Panelists also suggested that resources could be shifted by looking at trafficking not just as a criminal justice issue, but as a public health issue. By not doing this, authorities are in effect ignoring "social determinants of health like class and race," Geraci said. She emphasized the need to promote healthy relationships and healthy sexuality in the community.

"We talked about the intersection in the politics of oppression, and sexism is at the heart of this," Geraci said. "When it comes to sexism, men are also done a great disservice in our society. They have these extreme ideas of what men are supposed to be and what women are supposed to be."

World-Patterson suggested a way to tackle this as a city would be to focus more on working with and educating young women and men.

"We need to get girls to love themselves," to protect against the vulnerabilities that make them susceptible to trafficking, she said. "And we need to have more conversations about what healthy masculinity looks like."

"This city is like fertile ground, and people are plucking young children out of this fertile ground," Johnson said. "We have to make it be not fertile ground."
The Kimpton Journeyman Hotel, along with its Tre Rivali restaurant and the Outsider rooftop bar and lounge, is set to open at 310 E. Chicago St., in the Third Ward, this June.

The company, which has been ranked No. 11 on Fortune magazines "100 Best Companies to Work For" list, will host a job fair for hotel and restaurant staff on Monday, May 9 from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Italian Community Center located at 631 E. Chicago St.

The Kimpton seeks employees for the following positions:



housekeeping staff

guest services agents

night audit

bell/door staff

bussers/server assistants

servers

bartenders/bar-backs

dishwashers

banquet staff (servers and set up)

engineers

cooks (prep, pastry and banquet)

baristas

To learn more visit companybonline. com/journeyman.
Is our nation the democracy/republic we were taught it is in school?



Or is what we have actually a government influenced, controlled by a privileged few, a clique perhaps?

Consider: Would George W. Bush with his blemished military record and unremarkable intellect ever have been governor of Texas, then president of the world's most powerful nation -- red phone by his bedside and all -- had his father not preceded him as a president?

Would Donald Trump -- of the managed hairdo and challenged rhetoric -- ever have managed to be presidential timbre had he not been born rich and raised in economic and social privilege?

And had Hillary Clinton not been the wife of a previous president, would she ever have been a senator, then secretary of state -- of questionable statesmanship and very likely illegal security management -- then the presidential candidate of the Democratic Party?

I would personally suppose not, or at best say unclear.

What do you think?


Hillary Clinton

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Buy One, Get one Free

For House of Cards 'tragics' who can't get enough of fictional President Frank Underwood and his estimable First Lady Clare, it must be tempting to view Bill and Hillary Clinton as their real-life political doppelgangers. Certainly there's fertile territory for those seeking common ground between the two main protagonists of this quintessential political soap opera, and our more flesh and blood 'heroes'. For starters, like their fictional foils, the Clintons inhabit a moral universe at the centre of which sits a massive, all consuming black hole.

To be sure, any critical assessment of Mrs Clinton's fitness for the Oval Office can't be undertaken absent some reference to the respective roles she and her husband have played in each other's professional lives. Many folks will recall their most indelible campaign slogan from Bill Clinton's successful tilt at the top job in 1992, where the pitch to voters was [you can have], "Two for the price of one". Again, not unlike the mantra the Underwoods might invent to offer their own 'constituents'. One wonders why the Clintons have not come up with a similar refrain in 2016, and here I'm thinking, "Buy one, get one free" would no doubt fit the (ahem) bill.

The Clintons then (cue Frank and Clare again) are the consummate political chancers, all the while style overwhelming substance, ruthlessness eclipsing truthfulness, and political expediency supplanting policy integrity. Occupying their own 'house of cards' is a long, yet not so illustrious history of deception, corruption, duplicity, careerist opportunism, avarice, malice, war-mongering, hubris, incompetence, arrogance, media manipulation, venality, hypocrisy, influence touting, and everything in between that the ugly, sleazy side of politics has on offer.

For those looking this reality was underscored most notably when -- in what must be the modern American narrative's most memorable "stand by your man" moment -- the then "Tammy Wynette" of U.S. politics vigorously defended her husband against allegations of unbridled lechery and sexual predation. These allegations in her view were concocted by what she later defined as a "vast right wing conspiracy", one that was trying to take them down and out before they even got halfway up the national political ladder.

But irrespective of whether this "conspiracy" was actually a reality, or a product of Mrs Clinton's penchant for delusional fantasising, or simply dirty politics (the perfect tautology if there is one), it is now safe to say it was going to take much more than a "vast right-wing conspiracy" to stop the Clinton juggernaut in its tracks. That this "juggernaut" shows few signs even after all these years of losing steam is evident; at the same time it continues to showcase all that's wrong about Establishment politics -- whether Republican or Democrat.

And whilst we might say now the accusations against her husband contained more than a grain of truth -- an understatement of heroic proportions -- either way, both were in for the long haul .



To be sure, the Clintons themselves are no slouches when it comes to playing "dirty politics", for whom we might imagine all's fair in love, war and their chosen vocation. Moreover, they embody raw political ambition at its hard-core finest, steeled by narcissistic megalomania, all of it unencumbered by accountability, integrity, transparency, humility, morality, ethics, honesty, scruples or altruism. Her seemingly inevitable selection as the 2016 Democratic flag-bearer -- and from there most likely the presidency -- is ample indication of that "long haul" ambition.

As dubious as it might be, to their credit they've been effectively dodging the slings and arrows of outrageous political snipers ever since they parachuted into public consciousness during the 1992 campaign. And if the current contest is any indication, the Clintons have not lost their innate talent in this regard.

As for Hillary, one suspects even her most zealous detractors could not help but admire -- if begrudgingly -- the mix of chutzpah and resilience that amongst other qualities have been key to her longevity, "longevity" of course being at least one of the candidate's 'trump' cards. "It's my turn" anyone? Even without playing the "elect me as your first woman president" card, the palpable sense of entitlement becomes 'icing on the Clinton cake'!

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Bernie Sanders has put new life into a concept long consigned to the past and to Europe--socialism. Many young Bernardites use the word liberally and even affectionately, though how well they understand it is questionable. All the more questionable because mature adults who should know better have also flunked the test. To wit, Chris Matthews recently repeatedly asked Debbie Wasserman-Schultz what is the difference between socialism and liberalism, and the poor benighted woman was unable to give an answer. This reaction from the chairwoman of the DNC, no less, to a question out of Political Science 101 is not only shocking but plays right into the hands of conservatives who say there is no difference between socialism and liberalism. Hillary Clinton likewise evaded the question, though probably out of political coyness rather than sheer ignorance.

Just to clear the record for anyone who forgot the answer, socialism means that the central government controls all the stages in the production of goods, as well as all property--at the behest of the voters, hence "democratic socialism"--whereas liberalism accepts capitalism but wants it to function a lot better than it does currently. That is quite a big difference. One can indeed argue that liberals are better stewards of capitalism than are conservatives because the latter, whatever their protestations, continually vote for political custodians of crony capitalism, monopolies, predatory banking, etc., while liberals say that, like Christianity, capitalism is a great idea that has not yet been tried.

If, at one end of the spectrum, ignorance about liberalism versus socialism is a problem, at the other end of the spectrum is ignorance about socialism versus communism. D. J. Trump every once in a while uses the words interchangeably about Bernie, while his bosom buddy, Bill O'Reilly, does something similar albeit pretending, wink wink, to be only joking. Some joke! Again for those who forgot their college courses, communism is socialism imposed through tyranny and not to be confused with the democratic variant, which is freely chosen socialism. If you think, like Trump and O'Reilly, that socialism and communism are too much alike, then you must also be having trouble separating the Sermon on the Mount from the Inquisition. It is a rule of thumb that the nobler a cause is, the more likely will it be kidnapped and perverted by vultures or crazies. Just as what passes for capitalism nowadays is deeply corrupt, so is socialism in the form of communism, which Susan Sontag aptly called Left Fascism.

Yet the curious thing is that on one important point libertarian conservatism is actually indistinguishable from communism. The establishment of the Soviet Union was carried out from the top down, and the regime was maintained by oppression and terror. American communists, swathed in naivete by living far from the Soviet Union, rationalized events there, especially the purges of 1936-37, by asserting that the carnage was merely a necessary stage in the formation of a worker's paradise. In the words of a character in Karel Capek's play R. U. R., "Of course, terrible things may happen at first, but that simply can't be avoided." The consolation is that this is merely a phase to be gone through.

Now it so happens that the libertarian conservatives are guilty of the same moral irresponsibility. They want to do away with virtually all regulations. When asked how that will prevent misbehavior by manufacturers, their reply is that the sacrosanct marketplace will take care of all such matters. In other words, if I sell food with poison in it, and my customers fall ill or drop dead, my customers will stop showing up, and I will condignly be driven out of business. Or, as happened just the other day, a coal-mine manager, who was allowed to cut back on safety measures, was finally found guilty and sentenced to jail. See--the marketplace works beautifully!

Or does it? Before the market correction takes place, dozens, hundreds, even thousands (think Bhopal in India) of people die. They had to die in order to keep the market uncontaminated by any regulations (or regulations with teeth). So in other words, just as communists dismiss the victims of the regime as necessary sacrificial lambs in the cause of utopia, so do the libertarians accept our poisoned or killed victims as sacrifices necessary for the pure version of untrammelled capitalism. And the common slogan used by the communists in the 1930s, "You can't make omelets without breaking eggs," is echoed by our latter-day purists--just in order to fend off some common-sense regulations.

Of course, the list of victims under communism was vastly larger than the one under the malfunctions of capitalism, but it ill behooves libertarians mouthing off about liberty, the sanctity of life, and individualism to be so dismissive of any avoidable deaths. And holding ourselves superior to communism in the number of corpses is keeping the bar very low.
(This article is part of a series on labyrinths. Additional information, especially about the history of labyrinths, is available in many of the previous articles listed below. Author, Meryl Ann Butler, is a founding member of The Labyrinth Society and has been building labyrinths since 1992.)

Sat., May 7 is the eighth annual World Labyrinth Day (WLD) and you can celebrate with thousands of your closest friends around the world!

The Labyrinth Society (TLS) invites you to 'Walk as One at 1"(pm), joining other participants around the globe in creating a wave of peaceful energy washing across the time zones. Individuals or groups can get involved in private or public walks on a full-sized labyrinth, or let their fingers do the walking on a finger labyrinth.

"What do you call the journey of a thousand footsteps that winds up exactly where it began? The answer lies in the labyrinth: an ancient archetype recently rediscovered as a path of prayer and walking meditation." -The Labyrinth Society

Walking a labyrinth can have measurable health benefits. WLD Co-ordinator, Lars Howlett notes, "As mindfulness and meditation have gone mainstream, people around the world have been turning to labyrinths as a spiritual exercise or for stress relief. Based on an informal event survey in 2014, over 5,000 people participated in WLD from more than 44 states and 23 countries."



Lars Howlett and labyrinth

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Howlett said that there are WLD 2016 events planned in at least 35 states in the US so far, as well as in Australia, Canada, Denmark, England, Italy, Lithuania, Netherlands, Norway and South Africa. New venues are being added to the list daily.

A maze offers several paths to choose from, and making one's way through a maze therefore engages logic and analytical processes, and is focused on achieving a particular outcome. Mazes often have walls designed to obscure the view of the correct path. A labyrinth has only one path. Therefore, there is no need for walls or hedges to obscure the view, and most labyrinths, unlike mazes, are flat, or relatively so. Walking the labyrinth is not done to achieve a goal, but in order to experience the journey. Most people report experiencing a feeling of peace, joy, or wellbeing as a result of walking the labyrinth's unicursal path.

Medieval (left) and Classical (right) labyrinths

(Image by Meryl Ann Butler) Details DMCA

Two of the primary labyrinth patterns include Chartres and Classical (sometimes called "Cretan") styles. Labyrinths may be temporary or permanent, round or square, indoor or outdoor, and those made for walking may be made of a wide variety of materials from canvas or carpet to rocks, sand, paving stones or even masking tape.

TLS notes, "Labyrinths are also found in diverse environments, from schools, parks and prisons to corporate campuses in Silicon Valley (Google offers two for employees in Mountain View and a golden snail greets visitors at the center of the walking path at Electronic Arts in Redwood City). Churches are also building labyrinths as an alternative way to engage their community and facilitate spiritual practice. Celebrations of World Labyrinth Day can be posted and found via the events calendar of the Labyrinth Society. The World Wide Labyrinth Locator is another resource for finding labyrinths in your local community or while traveling throughout the world."



Rev. Dr. Lauren Artress, author/labyrinth educator, and Lars Howlett at Grace Cathedral labyrinth in San Francisco, WLD 2015

(Image by Lars Howlett) Details DMCA



Howlett continues, "While many use labyrinths for personal reflection, WLD is an opportunity to 'Walk as One at 1' in the afternoon (local time) in solidarity with others around the world to promote peace. It's heartwarming to think of hundreds of people walking in Australia, Poland, Scotland, and Colombia, among other countries where participants organized local events last year."

He also suggests that participants can share their photos and stories on the Labyrinth Society's Events Facebook page. "As governments and armies seem to further polarize world peoples, the labyrinth has been a bridge between cultures throughout history," notes Howlett. "World Labyrinth Day is for everyone and, like the labyrinth itself, is an opportunity to develop tolerance and compassion for others from different walks of life." Get more information and view photos here.

Many public spaces such as schools, churches and museums have labyrinths open for walking, and these can be found on the World-Wide Labyrinth Locator.

I unexpectedly discovered one recently on a visit to the Delaware Art Museum in Wilmington. That labyrinth was built in a former reservoir by volunteers ages 2-72 who positioned hundreds of Delaware River stones to form the design. The museum is hosting a free labyrinth walk on World Labyrinth Day from 1-2 pm. (And you can see some GREAT art in the museum before or after your walk!)

On the plaque: This circular space, once a reservoir, now contains a labyrinth, an ancient one-way path that invites contemplative walking. You follow the path's twists and turns into the center and then retrace your steps to exit. Slow, intentional walking has a calming effect, while brisker walking concentrates the mind. The labyrinth was constructed by volunteers, age 2 to 72, who laid out the path with Delaware River stones.

Many artists have been intrigued with the labyrinthine form. Oscar-winning actor Jeff Bridges shared his interest in labyrinths on the Martha Stewart show on August 8, 2006. He demonstrated how to draw the symbol on paper, and showed examples of his own pottery with the labyrinth designs he'd inscribed on them.



Genesa Labyrinth at night

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Ansula Press of Portland, OR, built her Genesa Labyrinth for the Burning Man festival in 2003. She has since installed it at music festivals, World Labyrinth Day events, two international labyrinth gatherings, and several Earth Day events.

The 39-foot diameter labyrinth features a 7-foot diameter Genesa Crystal structure in the center which is lit with electroluminescent wire that glows blue. The labyrinth is lit with 70 solar lights for walking at night.



Labyrinth builder and founder of Eighth Street Center for Peace, Kathy Ruyts, walks the Genesa Labyrinth

(Image by Meryl Ann Butler) Details DMCA



Ansula notes, "The Genesa is a cuboctahedron which is considered to be a geometric shape that can amplify the intentions of those near it by attracting, cleansing, balancing, and finally releasing the amplified energies. The Genesa Crystal was developed by Dr. Derald Langham, an agricultural geneticist. He designed the Crystal to mirror the cellular pattern of an embryonic living organism after the third cell division. At this eight-cell stage the cellular structure of all life forms is identical. From this point, life can expand in any direction. Langham believed that the Crystal holds infinite potentiality because of its perfect balance with nature. Labyrinth walkers are invited into the Crystal with an intention and open to see what unfolds."

I've personally walked it, and I concur that it feels pretty magical!

Austin TX, artist Marcia Raff celebrated WLD last year with an exhibit of her labyrinth-themed artwork in Malaga, Spain, which was held in one of the oldest buildings in Consititution Square.



Exhibition visitors. c. Marcia Raff

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A young exhibition visitor walks the Dreidel Labyrinth. c. Marcia Raff

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Exhibition visitors walk the Dog Labyrinth. c. Marcia Raff

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Marcia's daughter, photographer Cathy Raff, finger walks a wall labyrinth at the exhibit. c. Marcia Raff

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This year, WLD is the opening day for her exhibit at the Performing Arts Center in Modiin, Israel, in a dual-exhibition with her daughter, photographer Cathy Raff. The opening reception is May 7, 20:00. The exhibit will be held from May 7 - June 6, 2016 in the Art Gallery at the Heichel HaTarbute in Modiin Maccabim Reut, Rechov Emek Dotan 49, Modiin (free.)



The Spanish Guitar Labyrinth (plexiglas wall labyrinth), c. Marcia Raff

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Marcia will exhibit seven labyrinths including a new piece, The Mandela Lion Labyrinth, in addition to canvas labyrinths and plexiglass wall labyrinths for people to walk with their fingers. Her work will also be on exhibit from July 3-9 in Chartres, France.



The Mandala Lion Labyrinth, c. Marcia Raff

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Walking a labyrinth in the Bahamas with Elizabeth (BJ) Mosher

(Image by Elizabeth (BJ) Mosher) Details DMCA



Artist and labyrinth builder Elizabeth (BJ) Mosher of Alexandra Bay, NY, will facilitate a "Walk as One at 1" WLD event at Ten Bay Beach, Eleuthera, Bahamas on Saturday.

Mosher created a mosaic featuring two labyrinths which can be "walked" with the fingers - use both hands and walk both at the same time!

If you'd like to try this yourself, you can use a printed paper labyrinth. To enhance brain integration, l use mirror images of three-circuit labyrinths, as shown below. You can download the printable pdf , "Fingerwalking Dual Labyrinths Pattern and Instructions," here.

Everyone is invited to participate in the waves of energy rolling around the planet on World Labyrinth Day. Even if you cannot locate an actual World Labyrinth Day event close by, you can still participate by walking at a local labyrinth, by using an online, virtual labyrinth or by letting your fingers do the walking on a printed paper labyrinth.



Walking a labyrinth at New Smyrna Beach FL with Elizabeth (BJ) Mosher

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TLS: 10 Ways to Celebrate World Labyrinth Day * Walk as One at 1 (or as time permits) * Trace or draw a finger labyrinth on paper or using a smartphone or tablet app * Facilitate or join a group walk * Host or join a lecture, workshop, art exhibition or tour * Build a temporary or permanent labyrinth * Find a new labyrinth or submit an unlisted site to the Labyrinth Locator * Write a blog post, newsletter submission, letter to the editor, or article for print or the internet * Share and view WLD stories, photos, videos on Social Media using the hashtag #LabyrinthDay * Read labyrinth books, watch movies, or sing songs (for instance, the lyrics to Enya's "Anywhere Is" are perfect! ) * Create a labyrinth art project, exhibition, or drawing class

For more information on World Labyrinth Day see previous articles in this series listed below, and the TLS info page.

If you participate, you can be counted (anonymously is ok!) by filling out the WLD Google Form.

Resources and additional info:

Rev. Dr. Lauren Artress is an author, labyrinth builder. founder of Veriditas and a Canon of Grace Cathedral in San Francisco.

Kathy Ruyts is the founder of the Eighth Street Center for Peace, Buhl, ID.

Author Meryl Ann Butler is a founding member of The Labyrinth Society and has been building labyrinths since 1992.

Delaware Art Museum in Wilmington, DE, houses 12000 works of art and focuses on American Art of the 19th through the 21st centuries, including Brandywine school illustrators (featuring Howard Pyle, NC Wyeth and others) and English Pre-Raphaelite art of the mid-19th century.
Congress Switchboard: 202-224-3121

"In Bottom-Up, Rob Kall offers important insights on why our society is in such disarray and what we must do to change it. He demonstrates how "top down" thinking is what has produced our current mess, and how bottom up thinking is much more efficient for solving problems and producing change. Rob shows how lasting change must come from the people themselves and not from the leaders. This was as true in the days of the Magna Carta as it was for the Bill of Rights as it was for the Union movement that first gave workers' rights and protection in this country, as it is today. Indigenous elders have told me, "if you want to change the world, start talking and keep talking." Rob is doing this with this book and with his OpEdNews, and he is making a difference. I recommend this book to all who wish to see lasting, human-friendly, compassionate change that will sustain humanity is this crazy world of today."



Lewis Mehl-Madrona, MD, author of the Coyote trilogy that discusses healing practices from Lakota, Cherokee, and Cree traditions and how they intersect with conventional medicine
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Scott Nearing on earlier Hoover enemies list FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover's plan to round up and imprison thousands of "disloyal" American citizens, details of which were revealed in a New York Times article last Sunday, Dec. 23, 2007, goes back many years further than the 1950 letter Hoover sent to President Truman. Wednesday, December 26, 2007FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover's plan to round up and imprison thousands of "disloyal" American citizens, details of which were revealed in a New York Times article last Sunday, Dec. 23, 2007, goes back many years further than the 1950 letter Hoover sent to President Truman.

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When a life sustaining resource is in short supply, conflicting claims over it are bound to arise. Water conflicts span the gamut of fights, from neighbours in water starved colonies to those between states over river waters. But perhaps the most vital current conflict over water is that between agriculture and industry.

"Around 70 per cent of the cases before the National Green Tribunal relate to water," says Rahul Choudhury of Legal Initiative for Forest and Environment (LIFE), a group of advocates involved in environmental issues. They usually remain localised, but occasionally do hit the headlines - such as the protest in Tirunelveli district, Tamil Nadu, where locals, supported by a number of opposition parties, are opposing the setting up of a PepsiCo bottling plant that will draw water from the nearby Thamirabarani River. They have held demonstrations - including one last October that turned violent - circulated an online petition that has drawn 65,000 supporters, and filed a public interest litigation (PIL) in the Madras High Court last December.

The bottling plant is in Gangaikondan village on land owned by the State Industries Promotion Corporation of Tamil Nadu (SIPCOT) which, the protesters maintain, has already given the plant permission to draw vast quantities of water daily. (SIPCOT provides water to water intensive industries such as this bottling plant at Rs 37.5 per 1,000 litre and at Rs 25 to other industries.) There is also a Coca-Cola bottling plant in the SIPCOT industrial area taking water from the same river, against which, too, protests had been held when it was started in 2006, though to no avail. The protesters allege that in practice, the bottling plants will draw much more than the 500,000 litres permitted for beverage units, and that water guzzlers like Coke and now Pepsi will ruin the local ecosystem.

"It's the Ganga of South. The Thamirabarani River has a special connect with us," says Usman Khan, District Secretary of one of the local opposition parties, the Social Democratic Party of India (SDPI). "It is our lifeline. It is okay to take water from the river for domestic consumption or to operate other industries. But reselling that water for huge profits, as the aerated drinks industry does, is neither ethical nor feasible for our area. Water is not a commodity. It is a precious resource of the community."

PepsiCo India refuses to be drawn into the controversy, noting that the bottling unit is an independent company. "The land in question belongs to Prathishta Business Solutions Pvt Ltd with whom we have a co-pack arrangement," says its spokesperson. "The plant will use surface water supplied by SIPCOT, from a river that is a perennial water source, as it is fed by both pre- and post-monsoon."

Those supporting the protests say the Thamirabarani will not remain a perennial river if it is indiscriminately exploited. "Thamirabarani has a small basin that irrigates 200,000 hectares of land directly and another 100,000 indirectly," says M. Arunachalam, former Professor, Sri Paramakalyani Centre for Environmental Sciences (SPCES). "If industry takes away 1 million cubic metres a day, how much will be left for irrigation? The economy of the entire district is dependent on paddy and banana cultivation. Already, the vegetation along the river has begun disappearing, which is affecting the ecosystem. Groundwater recharge has reduced and in the dry season, there is less water available than before." Srijlangan, a paddy farmer from the district's Marudhur village, says the river's water has indeed shrunk since SIPCOT built a check dam on it two years ago. "We had two cropping seasons earlier, which has reduced to one due to lack of water," he says. "My income is down 40 per cent."

There have been other protests that received national attention - around the Bisalpur dam in Rajasthan's Tonk district in 2005, when five farmers were killed in police firing while demonstrating against diversion of water to Jaipur city; around the Hirakud dam in Orissa's Sambalpur district in 2007 when farmers sought more water from the dam for their lands. As industry grows, such competition with agriculture is likely to multiply. Around 2 billion cubic metres (BCM) of water annually have already been transferred from agriculture to industry in the past decade, according to a study by Pune-based NGO, Prayas. "That quantity of water could have irrigated over 300,000 hectare," says K.J Joy, Secretary, Society for Promoting Participative Ecosystem Management.

Industry also claims substantial portions of dam stored water. Shripad Dharmadhikarya, who runs the NGO Manthan Adhyayan Kendra, which researches water and energy related issues, informs that a white paper released by the Water Resources Department in Maharashtra in November 2012 notes that of the 8,450 million cubic metre (MCM) of water made available by large and medium irrigation projects in the state annually, 1,146 MCM goes to the Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation (MIDC), 1,455 MCM to thermal power stations, 497 MCM to Maharashtra State Power Generation Co (MAHAGENCO) and 3,050 MCM to various municipal corporations.

Yet, in a growing economy, can the needs of industry be denied? Overall, 80 per cent of water is still used by agriculture. "We should look at the complete picture instead of engaging in a blame game," says K.B. Biswas, Chairman, CGWA. "Agriculture is the single largest water consumer and will always remain so. But the impact of consumption by industry is more visible because the usage is concentrated in certain areas. Still, it is possible to monitor industry's water use, impose checks and insist on compliance. What about farming practices where water intensive crops are being grown in water-stressed areas, such as paddy in Punjab and Haryana?"

Dharmadhikarya also points to Western Maharashtra, where widespread cultivation of sugarcane has contributed considerably to the prevailing water stress. Pradeep Purandare, former Associate Professor at Water and Land Management Institute (WALMI), blames Maharashtra's sugar lobby. "Only 5 per cent of the total cultivated area in Maharashtra is under sugarcane, and barely 6 per cent of its farmers cultivate the crop. But almost 70 per cent of water is hijacked by sugarcane because of this lobby." Sugarcane needs 1,500-2,500 million cu m. of water during a total growing period of 270-365 days.

And these conflicts may well be just the beginning. "Climate change will give rise to extreme events and there will be long, dry spells impacting agriculture-based livelihoods," says Joy. "Evaporation and transpiration rates will increase, which means we will need more water for the same amount of agricultural production, leading to more demand and more conflicts."


Subversion of East Bengal

06 May, 2016

By Asif Haroon Raja

Once the Army of British East India Company under Lord Clive defeated Siraj ud Daula in the battle of Plassey in 1757 with the help of infamous Mir Jaffar, the British in collusion with the Hindus oppressed the Muslim Bengalis and in a matter of 50 years they converted the entire class of their nobility into serfs and upgraded the Hindus from serfs to masters. Bengal which was the richest province of united India under the Mughals was plundered with both hands.



After the 1757 war of independence, the British declared the Bengalis as a non-martial race and undependable and banned Bengal Army. It was owing to the extreme oppression of the British-Hindu combine that the Muslim Bengalis were in the forefront in the Pakistan movement. By the time Pakistan came into being in 1947, East Bengal had become the poorest of all particularly when Calcutta, which was the capital and lifeline of united Bengal became part of West Bengal.



India worked upon people of East Bengal since 1948 with the aim of poisoning the minds of Bengalis against people of West Pakistan through a coordinated subversion plan. Well knowing the geographic vulnerability of East Pakistan which was surrounded by India from three sides and sea on the 4th side, deprived of land contiguity with western wing of Pakistan, and above all customs and traditions of people of East Bengal being similar to Hindu dominated West Bengal, India marked it as the first target of subversion. It took the Indian psychological operators 23 years to completely alienate the Bengalis from the concept of united Pakistan and inculcate the idea of independent Bangladesh.



In this regard. The Hindu teachers and professors who were in great majority (90%), as well as the prosperous and influential Bengali Hindu



community (23% of total population) played a key role in subverting the minds of the Bengali youth and the seculars. Bengali intellectuals and Awami League under Sheikh Mujibur Rahman did the rest to make the Bengalis hate West Pakistan, particularly Punjab, Army and bureacracy. Major plank of the psychological war revolved around socio-politico-economic grievances and that West Pakistan was prospering at the cost of East Pakistan by making use of foreign exchange earned through export of jute.



Mujibur Rahman was cultivated by Indian intelligence agencies in early 1950s and was instigated to spearhead the 1953 language controversy. He took the road towards secession after his meeting with Indian officials at Agartala in 1963, from where he was flown to New Delhi to hold a meeting with Nehru and he agreed to become a pawn of India.



Mujib came into prominence in 1964 after the death of Suhrawardy particularly after his blistering complaints that East Pakistan had been left defenseless in 1965 war. He then started propagating his six-point plan that was crafted by India and resorted to politics of violence and hatred. Red Mulla Bhashani also pursued similar politics of agitation. Indian media glamorized Mujib and his six points and painted Pakistan in black.



RAW was established in 1968 to launch the final phase with the help of Mukti Bahini (Bengali rebels). Calling off the treason case initiated against Mujib and his henchmen in 1968 was the first victory of the secessionists. Their second success was when Ayub Khan was forced to resign and hand over power to Gen Yahya Khan in March 1969. The situation arose because of ZA Bhuttos uncompromising attitude in the Round Table Conference even after Ayub Khan agreed to all the demands of the opposition. Chaos created by Bhutto and Mujib in both the provinces was foreign funded and inspired to get rid of Ayub Khan.



Gen Yahya Khan was neither professionally weak nor corrupt but had the weakness of wine and women and was politically immature. He kept appeasing Mujib and naively thought that Bhutto was his friend. Yahya Khan strengthened the position of Mujib by abrogating the 1962 Constitution and running the country on Legal Framework Order (LFO), dissolving One Unit, and doing away with parity formula. For elections, he allowed joint electorate and one-man-one vote. These conciliatory concessions ensured Awami Leagues grand electoral victory at the outset.



During the yearlong election campaign, Mujib was allowed to run his election campaign on his six-points, which was a certificate to secession and contrary to LFO. It enabled Mujib to fan Bengali nationalism as well as terrorise those Bengalis not subscribing to his policies. These factors together with massive pre-poll and during polls rigging enabled Awami League to win 98% seats in East Pakistan. PPP under Bhutto gained majority in West Pakistan. Hungering for power, Mujib wanted the whole cake while Bhutto craved for half of it. Extreme intransigence of the two belligerents brought Pakistan to an impasse and made Yahya helpless. At the urging of Bhutto, Yahya postponed the session of Constituent Assembly due on 01 March 1971.



All hell broke out in East Pakistan after this announcement. Under the guidance of RAW, the Awami League goons massacred 150,000 Non-Bengalis and pro-Pakistan Bengalis, raped non-Bengali girls/women, and burnt their property within three weeks. The victims were killed in most cruel and horrifying manner. Wide scale massacre occurred since the troops had been interned in the barracks on night of 2/3 March on the express wish made by Mujib to the Governor. Savageries were purposely committed to draw a permanent cleavage between Bengalis and non-Bengalis. Another reason of inhuman brutality was to provoke Yahya



Khan and force him to use force so that it could be exploited to win the sympathies of the world.



While air service between the two wings had already been dislocated by India in January 1971, postal/telephone/telegraph services were also cut and TV/radio stations taken over. East Pakistanis stopped paying taxes. A state within state was created and all orders of the state were defied. Pak media and politicians led by Bhutto kept prodding and ridiculing Yahya to respond and save Pakistan. Ironically, own media maintained silence over the barbarities of Awami League thugs on the thoughtless plea that it would evoke a reaction against Bengalis in West Pakistan, as had happened in 1947. International media teams based in Dacca also remained mum.



Yahya Khan with his team sat with Mujib and his team for two weeks and agreed to all his demands but the other side had made up their mind to break away from Pakistan and refused to reconcile. Left with no choice, Yahya was compelled to order a military operation on the night of 25 March to save non-Bengalis/pro-Pakistan Bengalis from getting butchered and to put sense into the minds of secessionists. Had the operation not been launched the Bengali rebels aided by nine East Bengal Regiments, East Pakistan Rifles and Police under the guidance of retired Col Osmani would have launched their made-in-India battle plan on the morning of 26 March against the lone infantry division, locked up in barracks in various garrisons, and massacred the whole lot. Bhutto stated while leaving Dacca, Thank God, Pakistan has been saved.



Indian media spread so much of fear into the minds of Bengalis that a very large number ran helter-skelter to India where they were welcomed in already prepared refugee camps. Majority were Hindu Bengalis who should have logically shifted in 1947. Indian Army/BSF/RAW trained and equipped Mukti Bahini and several other Bahinis from within the



refugees in 59 training camps in Assam, Tripura, Mizoram, Meghalaya and West Bengal in India and triggered a province wide insurgency. Often, Indian soldiers dressed in civvies accompanied the rebels.



Indo-Western-Israeli media jointly demonized Pak Army and glamorised the Bengali rebels. Pak soldiers were portrayed as blood sucking monsters and rapists and concocted stories were circulated under a well calculated propaganda plan. Refugee issue was also blown up.



All reconciliatory attempts made by Pakistan were rejected by India and neither the refugees nor the Awami League leaders in exile were allowed to return. Indira Gandhi and her ministers visited world capitals to convince the world leaders that Pakistan was entirely to be blamed for not handing over power to Mujib who had won landslide victory in elections. Pak military was blamed for committing a genocide against Bengalis fighting a liberation war. Indian leaders cried that the refugee burden was unbearable for India. Main purpose of propaganda war was to justify military action of India.



In the meanwhile, Gen SAM Manekshaw was given a go-ahead by Indira Gandhi in April 1971 to launch an offensive and annex East Pakistan. He wanted six months preparation time which was granted. Indo-Soviet Friendship Treaty inked in August sealed the fate of Pakistan. USSR fulfilled all the defence needs of Indian military. On the request of Maj Gen Jacob, a Jew, Israeli military fine-tuned the three directional operational plan of Indias Eastern Command.



After nine months insurgency, Indian military jumped in to deliver the sledge hammer. Aided with preponderance of manpower, weaponry air and naval power as well as full support of former USSR, Indian Army launched a preliminary offensive on 21 November and made bridgeheads at 23 places along northern, western and eastern border. Notwithstanding that the penetrations were contained, for unexplained



reasons Pakistan didnt take up the matter with the UN to declare India as an aggressor.



On 3 December, when PAF undertook air raids against Indian airbases, India declared Pakistan as an aggressor and launched an all-out offensive from three directions against East Pakistan with 10 divisions supported by armour, air power and 150,000 Mukti Bahini against overly fatigued and marooned 45000 regular/paramilitary forces spread thinly in penny packets to defend 2545 miles long border and cut off from the world. Bengalis provided intelligence of each and every trench/minefield, gaps and helped in disrupting rear areas/supply lines to allow the pincers to rush forward towards Dacca with ease. The Mukti Bahini once again unleashed their atrocities against pro-Pakistan elements in the captured towns.



Despite extreme odds the soldiers kept fighting with whatever means they had and so did the Razaqars (pro-Pakistan Bengalis, Biharis) till the very end. Except for Jessore and Mymensingh, all other cities that had been converted into fortresses were intact and the defenders had the will to carry on fighting. My unit 4FF of which I was a part, had made history at Hilli by repulsing repeated attacks of 2 Mountain Division aided by preponderance of armour, artillery and air support and not losing an inch of territory in the 19 days grilling battle. Ultimately the enemy had to give up and change their direction.



On the morning of 16 December, units in the field were initially told that ceasefire had come into effect but later on they learnt the shattering news that the Eastern Command had agreed to surrender and were told to lay down arms. Gen AAK Niazi who had sent a request for ceasefire agreed to surrender only when Gen Manekshaw assured that safety of Pak military and paramilitary forces would be assured.



The writer is a war veteran, retired Brig, defence analyst, columnist, author of five books, director Measac Research Centre, Director Board of Governors Thinkers Forum Pakistan. He delivers lectures and participates in TV talk shows. asifharoonraja@gmail.com












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Significance mosaic maps around the supernova remnant Cassiopeia A in Equatorial J2000 coordinates as seen (panels from left to right) with INTEGRAL/JEMX in the range of 3  10 keV and INTEGRAL/IBIS in three energy bands: 20  60 keV, 60  90 keV and 90  200 keV. Credit: Wei Wang, Zhuo Li, 2016.

(Phys.org)A nearby young supernova remnant named Cassiopeia A is an excellent candidate for astrophysical observations regarding supernova explosion processes. One of the recent studies focuses on hard X-ray emissions from this source, describing a non-thermal continuum emission for the first time. A paper detailing the findings appeared online on May 2 on the arXiv pre-print server.

Located about 11,000 light years away, Cassiopeia A is the brightest extrasolar radio source in the sky at frequencies above 1 GHz. It is bright in the electromagnetic spectrum, which makes it a unique laboratory for studying high-energy phenomena in supernova remnants.

To peek inside these phenomena, two Chinese astronomers have recently studied a 10-year dataset of Cassiopeia A observations provided by ESA's INTErnational Gamma-Ray Astrophysics Laboratory (INTEGRAL) spacecraft. By using these data, Wei Wang of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Zhuo Li of the Peking University detected an X-ray emission from this source above 100 keV for the first time.

"We first detected the emission from Cassiopeia A above 100 keV, and found the spectrum has a power-law feature up to 220 keV without cutoff," Wang told Phys.org.

Cassiopeia A has a thermal emission in soft X-ray bands 0.1-10 keV, but in hard X-ray bands above 10 keV, it shows a non-thermal emission. Hard X-ray observations on this supernova remnant can also study the hard X-ray lines at 67.9 and 78.4 keV coming from the decays of radioactive 44Titanium (Ti)  a short-lived radioactive isotope with a half-life of 59 years.

"Two 44Ti emission lines at 68 and 78 keV were detected in Cassiopeia A," Wang said.

The scientists took measures to explain the physical origin of the non-thermal emission above 100 keV from the studied supernova remnant. One of the most plausible explanations offered by them is that there may exist a higher magnetic field in some small region in the remnant or the magnetic field might increase downstream with the distance away from the shock front.

"The magnetic field increases downstream with the distance away from the shock front, so that electrons may produce higher energy photons when flowing downstream. But so far there is no support from theory and observation for magnetic field increasing downstream," the paper reads.

Other hypotheses include synchrotron radiation of the secondary relativistic electrons that originate in the hadronic process and the radiation from the asymmetrical supernova explosion.

According to the research, recent direct imaging observations of the 44Ti emission in Cassiopeia A could confirm the asymmetrical explosion theory. The studies suggested an intermediate asymmetry in this core-collapse supernova as the 44Ti is extended along the jet axis seen in X-rays. Thus, Cassiopeia A may be a very special case of supernova explosions in our galaxy, and produced by an asymmetric or a relatively more energetic explosion.

The researchers underlined how much complex and time-consuming is their study. They also revealed plans for future observations.

"The data analysis is complicated and needs much time. It took about two years to finish the data analysis work. Some theoretical work will go on and new observations by the future Hard X-ray Modulation Telescope (HXMT) will be carried out," Wang said.

HXMT, scheduled for launch this year, is a Chinese astronomy spacecraft. It is designed to scan the galactic plane to find new transient sources and to monitor the known variable sources, and also to observe X-ray binaries to study the dynamics and emission mechanism in strong gravitational or magnetic fields.

Explore further A new view of the X-ray sky

More information: Hard X-ray emissions from Cassiopeia A observed by INTEGRAL, arXiv:1605.00360 [astro-ph.HE], Hard X-ray emissions from Cassiopeia A observed by INTEGRAL, arXiv:1605.00360 [astro-ph.HE], arxiv.org/abs/1605.00360 Abstract

Cassiopeia A (Cas A) as the nearby young remnant of a core-collapse supernova is the best candidate for astrophysical studies in supernova explosion and its environment. We studied hard X-ray emissions from Cas A using the ten-year data of INTEGRAL observations, and first detected non-thermal continuum emission from the source up to 220 keV. The 44Ti line emissions at 68 and 78 keV are confirmed by our observations with a mean flux of (2.20.4)105 ph cm2 s1, corresponding to a 44Ti yield in Cas A of (1.30.4)104 ms. The continuum emission from 3500 keV can be fitted with a thermal bremsstrahlung of kT0.790.08 keV plus a power-law model of 3.130.03. The non-thermal emission from Cas A is well fitted with a power-law model without a cutoff up to 220 keV. This radiation characteristic is inconsistent with the diffusive shock acceleration models with the remnant shock velocity of only 5000km s1. The central compact object in Cas A cannot contribute to the emission above 80 keV significantly. Some possible physical origins of the non-thermal emission above 80 keV from the remnant shock are discussed. We deduce that the asymmetrical supernova explosion scenario of Cas A is a promising scenario to produce high energy synchrotron radiation photons, where a part of ejecta with the velocity of 0.1c and opening angle of 10 can account for the 100-keV emission, consistent with the "jet" observed in Cas A.

 2016 Phys.org
In this Feb. 1, 2016 FILE photo, a technician from the British biotec company Oxitec, inspects the pupae of genetically modified Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, a vector for transmitting the Zika virus, in Campinas, Brazil. Oxitec says it plans to start releasing hundreds of thousands of modified mosquitoes per week in June 2016 on Grand Cayman Island. (AP Photo/Andre Penner, File)

British biotech company Oxitec and the Cayman Islands government announced plans Thursday to release millions of genetically modified mosquitoes in the fight against a species that spreads Zika and other diseases.

Deployment of the mosquitoes against the Aedes aegypti species in the Cayman Islands is a major advance for Oxitec, which has promoted the method heavily as an environmentally safe way to combat the vectors of mosquito-borne illnesses while confronting public concerns about the technology.

The company has deployed its mosquitoes to fight Zika in Brazil following initial trials there and previously conducted tests in the Cayman Islands and Panama. Oxitec and officials in the Florida Keys have proposed testing there as well and are awaiting U.S. regulatory approval.

The Cayman government approved the full deployment after what they called a successful, peer-reviewed trial in 2010, Bill Petrie, the director of the British territory's Mosquito Research and Control Unit, said in a statement.

"We have wanted to remove this invasive pest for a long time but this has proven very difficult using currently available tools on an island the size of Grand Cayman, so we have been looking for new approaches," Petrie said.

Male mosquitoes don't bite. The company says its modified males will mate with females and produce offspring that will not survive to adulthood, which should dramatically reduce the population of the non-native, disease-spreading Aedes aegypti species in the territory.

Oxitec will begin releasing hundreds of thousands of modified mosquitoes per week on the island of Grand Cayman, home to about 50,000 people, starting in June and continue for at least nine months, said Glen Slade, the company's head of business development.

The mosquitoes will not be used on the two smaller islands of the British territory, Little Cayman and Cayman Brac, which do not have the Aedes aegypti. The company insists it's not possible for the mosquitoes to fly to other islands or to survive long in the environment if they were to be inadvertently transferred elsewhere. They predict a massive drop in the number of the targeted species on Grand Cayman.

"It's not unreasonable to think we might achieve elimination," Slade said.

The company has started outreach on Grand Cayman to address any public concerns. In Key West, Florida, public meetings about Oxitec's proposed trial there became so contentious that mosquito control officials requested law enforcement protection at an April meeting to discuss the issue.

Phil Goodman, chairman of the five-member Florida Keys Mosquito Control District board of commissioners, said the decision to use Oxitec's mosquitoes on Grand Cayman was good news for the prospects of a similar trial in Florida if it is approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

"If everything continues to look good with this and we do get approval and the citizens agree to this, it's what would work here in the Keys," he said.

In February, the World Health Organization said it is encouraging countries to conduct further trials of genetically modified mosquitoes to help tackle emerging illnesses such as Zika. The virus has been linked to the birth defect microcephaly and to a temporary paralysis condition known as Guillain-Barre.

Explore further Cayman Islands to deploy genetically modified mosquitoes

 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
Coral reefs such as the Great Barrier Reef (shown here) are extremely species-rich habitats. Credit: Simon Gingins

Nowhere today is the biodiversity of corals and reef-inhabiting fish higher than in the tropical waters around Indonesia and its neighbouring countries in Southeast Asia. "To understand the reason for this diversity, you have to look back 100 million years - to a time when present-day South America and Africa still formed a common supercontinent and today's India was an island in the Earth's southern hemisphere," says Loic Pellissier, Professor of Landscape Ecology at ETH Zurich and the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research WSL and, up until ten months ago, Lecturer at the University of Fribourg.

For the first time ever, an international research team under his direction studied the geographical pattern by which new species of corals and reef fish evolved over the millions of years of evolutionary history using a computer model. The scientists were able to show that the drift of the continental plates was the likely driving force behind the emergence of new species.

Combination of different models

To arrive at this conclusion, the researchers combined different simulations and data. These included a simulation of geological changes to the seafloor during Earth history as well as information on the earlier expansion of the tropics based on fossil finds of tropical coral species. Thus, the scientists were able to create a dynamic spatial model that indicates where throughout the course of history shallow and warm waters were located, in which corals and other tropical organisms found a habitat.

Into this model, they integrated a well-known evolution mechanism in which two new species are formed out of an existing one. By way of illustration, take any fish species that lived in a tropical reef ecosystem 100 million years ago. If its home reef is divided into two separate reefs due to plate tectonics, for example, the two populations in each patch would continue to evolve independently and eventually, over the following hundreds of thousands of years, become two distinct species.

Hotspot in the prehistoric ocean

Such a fragmentation of tropical reef habitats actually took place, as Pellissier and his colleagues showed in their model calculations. Their simulation begins 140 million years ago, when present-day South America, Africa, India and Australia together formed the supercontinent Gondwana. A huge, contiguous body of shallow water ran along its equatorial coasts. In the millions of years to follow, the supercontinent broke up; there were massive continental drifts and fragmentation of the tropical reefs.

A particularly strong fragmentation took place about 50 to 60 million years ago, as Fabien Leprieur, Professor at the University of Montpellier and the study's first author, explains: "At that time in the western part of Tethys, the prehistoric ocean between Africa and Eurasia, there was a complex seafloor structure with many disconnected reefs - a bona fide patchwork." The plate tectonic processes at that time separated and merged these waters. It was an extremely dynamic system that strongly favoured the emergence of new species.

It was known from fossil finds that the Western Tethys region was a hotspot of species development back then. Fossil finds have also shown that this hotspot has shifted in the past 60 million years, from the Tethys to today's Southeast Asia. "Now, for the first time, our models provide an explanation for this movement," says Pellissier. "Because of the plate tectonic processes, new habitats emerged in different locations over the course of millions of years, while others merged or disappeared. These dynamic structures encouraged the relocation of the focal point of species diversity," says the landscape ecology professor.

Unification of Australian and Asian fauna

However, today's biodiversity in Southeast Asia cannot be explained solely by this relocation; rather, this was the region where, around 15 million years ago, the marine fauna of Tethys came together with that of Australia. This encounter was also the result of continental drift, in this case the shifting of the Australian continental plate in the direction of the equator, as Pellissier and his colleagues illustrate. "It was already known that this Australasian encounter took place with terrestrial animals and plants. We've now shown that it happened with tropical marine life too."

Coral reef ecosystems, which are the focus of this study, are sensitive to changes in temperature and are in danger worldwide due to global warming: the Great Barrier Reef in Australia is currently experiencing the largest coral bleaching in its history. Pellissier says: "In this context, it's important to understand that today's reef ecosystems have a very long history. It took 100 million years to build this extraordinarily large biodiversity, but it might take less than 100 years to destroy it."

Explore further Corals most important for building reefs are now in sharp decline

More information: Leprieur F et al.: Plate tectonics drive tropical reef biodiversity dynamics. Nature Communications, 6 May 2016, Journal information: Nature Communications Leprieur F et al.: Plate tectonics drive tropical reef biodiversity dynamics., 6 May 2016, DOI: 10.1038/ncomms11461
Credit: MARK-OLIVER RODEL

Misty mountains, glistening forests and blue-green lakes make Cameroon, the wettest part of Africa, a tropical wonderland for amphibians.

The country holds more than half the species living on the continent, including dozens of endemic frogsan animal that has been under attack across the world by the pervasive chytrid fungus (Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis). Africa has been mostly spared from the deadly and rampant pathogen that wiped out entire species in Australia, Madagascar and Panama, until now.

University of Florida herpetologist David Blackburn and colleagues at the Museum fur Naturkunde in Berlin have documented declines in frog species on Cameroon's Mount Oku and Mount Manengouba over a span of more than 12 years. The scientists link the decline of at least five species of frogs found only in these mountains to chytrid, which may have been exacerbated by habitat destruction, pollution and climate change resulting in weaker and more susceptible frogs, said Blackburn, an associate curator of herpetology at the Florida Museum of Natural History on the UF campus.

"There's been this perception that frogs in Africa are not affected by chytrid at all, but we have evidence of the disease in some animals," said Blackburn, co-author of a new study appearing online this week in PLOS ONE. "This is the first real case of a decline across multiple amphibian species in Africa."

Study scientists collected and documented abundance and diversity of frog species living on the two mountains before and after the immergence of chytrid in the area between 2008-2010. The persistent pestilence latches onto the frog's skin and can spread internally to the animal's organs, quickly leading to death.

A view of the forests on Mount Oku where some frog populations now experiencing declines once flourished. Florida Museum of Natural History photo by David Blackburn

Blackburn said many of the once common species, like the bright red Cardioglossa manengouba, a frog he discovered and named during graduate fieldwork in the early 2000s, are now scarce and nearly impossible to find.

"It's looking like some of these frogs may not be around by the time my kids are old enough for me to take them to Cameroon to see them," he said.

While chytrid is to blame for most of the patterns of decline in frogs worldwide, Blackburn said scientists have linked the fungus to climate change, which may drive the emergence of chytrid in some places.

In studies exploring declines of amphibians in Latin America, University of South Florida herpetologist Jason Rohr has shown that unpredictable climate fluctuations associated with climate change can increase chytrid-related die-offs.

"Our research has shown there may be an underappreciated link between climate change, disease and biodiversity losses," Rohr said. "Global warming and the severity of unpredictable variations in temperature increase chytrid growth on amphibians."

Blackburn said extreme temperature changes may affect the biology of the frogs by making them more, or less, susceptible to pathogens. He said this could easily be a factor in Cameroon, though he and colleagues have not yet collected enough data to make that call.

In captivity, frogs with chytrid are treated with an effective fungicide bath. In the Sierra Mountains of California, scientists have successfully released frogs inoculated with bacteria that make them less vulnerable to chytrid. But these methods are less practical in the mountains of Cameroon.

"Even if a cure was found, it would be hard to inoculate all of the individual frogs out there," Backburn said. "Promoting a healthier environment in general for Africa's amphibians in terms of water quality and habitat protection is our best shot for keeping these species around."

Explore further Deadly amphibian fungus may decline, study says

More information: Mareike Hirschfeld et al, Dramatic Declines of Montane Frogs in a Central African Biodiversity Hotspot, PLOS ONE (2016). Journal information: PLoS ONE Mareike Hirschfeld et al, Dramatic Declines of Montane Frogs in a Central African Biodiversity Hotspot,(2016). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0155129
Scientific illustration of a harmless mimic (Pliocercus elapoides, left) and venomous coral snake (Micrurus nigrocinctus, right) drawn from preserved specimens caught at the same field site in 1940 on a U-M Museum of Zoology expedition to Guatemala. Credit: John Megahan

For more than a century, brightly banded and sometimes deadly coral snakes have been held up as textbook examples of a mimicry system shaped by evolution, in which a harmless species deters predators by imitating a harmful one.

More than 150 species of coral snake mimics have been identified, each bearing the distinctive red-and-black banding of its venomous counterpart. Even so, coral snake mimicry remains controversial among some biologists because of perceived conflicts between theory and observation.

Now, by combining genetic data and information from 300,000 snake specimens housed at natural history museums around the world, a University of Michigan-led research team says it has resolved part of the century-old conflict known as the coral snake mimicry problem.

U-M evolutionary biologist Alison Davis Rabosky and her colleagues showed that much of the apparent conflict between theory and observation disappeared when the global distribution of all snake species was taken into account.

In a paper scheduled for online publication May 5 in Nature Communications, they present the first definitive evidence that the spread of coral snakes throughout the Western Hemisphere over the last 40 million years drove the distribution of the mimics.

During that time, the distinctive coloration of the coral snake mimics evolved independently at least 19 times in the New World, according to the researchers. And in all instances, red-and-black-banded mimics arose only after coexisting with coral snakes, as predicted by mimicry theory.

"By using pioneering, global-scale tests only possible with the 'big data' from natural history museums, we show how coral snake mimicry can persist, despite breaking all the rules," said Davis Rabosky, an assistant research scientist in the U-M Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and an assistant curator of herpetology at the Museum of Zoology.

"We also identify profound gaps in mimicry theory and thereby provide new insights into the best targets for future research," she said.

Highly venomous South American coral snake, Micrurus lemniscatus. Credit: Pascal Title

In March, Davis Rabosky and six colleagues spent three weeks in the Peruvian Amazon on a collection trip organized by the Division of Amphibians and Reptiles at the Museum of Zoology. She collected coral snakes and their mimics for a follow-up study to test possible explanations for findings presented in the Nature Communications paper.

The group included two U-M faculty members, a postdoctoral researcher and four graduate students, as well as eight Peruvian students. They conducted most of their work at the Los Amigos Biological Station in southeastern Peru.

A surprise: Mimics outnumber the deadly species

Digital color and pattern quantification of a coral snake mimic, Oxyrhopus formosus. Credit: Alison Davis Rabosky

According to the coral snake mimicry problem, the brightly banded neotropical snakes violate two major theoretical predictions: that mimics should not occur outside the geographical range of the venomous species and that harmful species should be more abundant than mimics.

Davis Rabosky and her colleagues used data from more than 1,000 New World snake species to test for a positive spatial correlation between coral snakes and their presumed mimics. The researchers found a striking predictive relationship between the number of coral snakes in a particular region and the number of mimics.

And contrary to previous reports, they found that coral snakes and their mimics actually do occur together in both space and time.

Digital color and pattern quantification of a coral snake mimic, Oxyrhopus petolarius. Credit: Alison Davis Rabosky

Previous mimicry studies failed to take into account global geographic patterns of species richness in all snakes. Once those patterns were included, the previously reported conflict between theory and field observation disappeared, she said.

The most surprising result was evidence for widespread evolutionary losses of mimetic coloration, a finding that strongly rejects the longstanding idea that mimicry is an irreversible processan evolutionary one-way street.

Many previous studies of insects such as butterflies suggested that mimicry is a stable evolutionary endpoint. Once the mimic acquires a coloration that protects against predation, that color pattern is retained indefinitely, the insect studies suggested.

A harmless coral snake mimic, Drepanoides anomalus. Credit: Pascal Title

But Davis Rabosky and her colleagues found something quite different with coral snakes and their mimics: evidence for both rapid gains and losses of the conspicuous red-and-black banded color pattern through evolutionary time. The majority of those gains and losses occurred in the tropics over the last 15 million years.

"Here, we not only found the first irrefutable evidence of mimicry loss in any system, we found lots of losses, scattered across many groups of snakes and many geographic areas," Davis Rabosky said.

"We're taught in school that mimicry is a very static system. You have a mimic and a model. Once they look the same, that doesn't change over time," she said. "But our results encourage a new view of mimicry: that it's dynamic and constantly in flux."

A harmless coral snake mimic, Oxyrhopus formosus. Credit: Pascal Title

Another major prediction of mimicry theory is that the harmful models should outnumber the harmless mimics. But Davis Rabosky and her colleagues found that the number of mimetic species at a given location was two to six times higher than theory would predict.

"The problem is not about whether coral snake mimicry exists at all. The problem is about what factors are responsible for the very fast and unexpected dynamics of snake coloration over time and space."

"We found that a coral snake mimic problem does, in fact, remain," said study co-author Daniel Rabosky, an assistant professor in the U-M Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and a curator of herpetology at the Museum of Zoology.

U-M researcher Alison Davis Rabosky shows the coloration on a harmless coral snake mimic, Atractus elaps. Credit: Dan Rabosky

"However, the problem is not about whether coral snake mimicry exists at allas originally describedthe problem is about what factors are responsible for the very fast and unexpected dynamics of snake coloration over time and space," he said.

Coral snakes produce a potent neurotoxin, and bites to humans can be fatal if left untreated. Coral snake bites are extremely rare in the United States, and patients who receive prompt medical care usually recover.

Explore further Mimicking venomous snakes: Untangling the history of deceptive coloration

More information: Alison R. Davis Rabosky et al. Coral snakes predict the evolution of mimicry across New World snakes, Nature Communications (2016). Journal information: Nature Communications Alison R. Davis Rabosky et al. Coral snakes predict the evolution of mimicry across New World snakes,(2016). DOI: 10.1038/ncomms11484
A view of Mercurys northern volcanic plains from the new map released today, shown in enhanced color to emphasize different types of rocks on Mercurys surface. In the bottom right portion of the image, the 291-kilometer-diameter (181-mile-diameter) Mendelssohn impact basin, named after the German composer, may be seen to have been once nearly filled with lava. Toward the bottom left portion of the image, large wrinkle ridges, formed during lava cooling, are visible. Also in this region, the circular rims of impact craters buried by the lava can be identified. Near the top of the image, the bright orange region shows the location of a volcanic vent, newly identified because of this map and the source of one of the largest pyroclastic deposits on the planet. This view is shown in a polar stereographic map projection, and the north pole is toward the bottom left corner. Enhanced colors are created by placing the second principal component, the first principal component, and the ratio of images from the 430 nanometer and 1000 nanometer filters in the red, green, and blue channels, respectively. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington

The MESSENGER mission has released the first global digital elevation model (DEM) of Mercury, revealing in stunning detail the topography across the entire innermost planet and paving the way for scientists to characterize fully the planet's geologic history.

The global topographic model was among three new products released today by the Planetary Data System (PDS), an organization that archives and distributes all of NASA's planetary mission data. With this 15th and last major data release, the MESSENGER mission has shared more than 10 terabytes of Mercury science data, including nearly 300,000 images, millions of spectra, and numerous map products, along with interactive tools that allow the public to explore those data, notes Susan Ensor, who for the last nine years has managed the MESSENGER Science Operations Center, which oversees the collection of these data.

"The wealth of these data, greatly enhanced by the extension of MESSENGER's primary one-year orbital mission to more than four years, has already enabled and will continue to enable exciting scientific discoveries about Mercury for decades to come," said Ensor, a software engineer at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), in Laurel, Maryland.

The First Global Topography of the Innermost Planet

The new global DEM complements an earlier product released by MESSENGER, the topography map derived from measurements by the Mercury Laser Altimeter. Because of the spacecraft's highly eccentric orbit, the laser altimeter was able to make measurements only in Mercury's northern hemisphere and near-equatorial region, leaving the topography of most of the southern hemisphere largely unknown, until now.

The new product reveals a variety of interesting topographic features, as shown in the accompanying animation, including the highest and lowest points on the planet. The highest elevation on Mercury is at 4.48 kilometers above Mercury's average elevation, located just south of the equator in some of Mercury's oldest terrain. The lowest elevation, at 5.38 kilometers below Mercury's average, is found on the floor of Rachmaninoff basin, a basin suspected to host some of the most recent volcanic deposits on the planet.

More than 100,000 images were used to create the new model. During the orbital phase of the MESSENGER mission, images were acquired with a large range of viewing geometries and illumination conditions, which enabled the topography across Mercury's surface to be determined.

"This is the largest control network ever processed using the Integrated Software for Imagers and Spectrometers of the U. S. Geological Survey (USGS)," explained MESSENGER team member and USGS computer scientist Kris Becker. The control network refers to the effort to register all of the images to each other, a step necessary to create the DEM.

"This DEM complements many of the other MESSENGER products and enhances the cartographic maps, and collectively they provide a wealth of new information about Mercury for further study," he added.

Revealing the Colors of Mercury's Northern Volcanic Plains

Also released today is a new map that provides an unprecedented view of the region near Mercury's north pole.

"MESSENGER had previously discovered that past volcanic activity buried this portion of the planet beneath extensive lavas, more than a mile deep in some areas and covering a vast area equivalent to approximately 60% of the continental United States," said APL's Nancy Chabot, the Instrument Scientist for the Mercury Dual Imaging System (MDIS).

However, because this region is near Mercury's north pole, the Sun is always low on the horizon, casting many long shadows across the scene that can obscure the color characteristics of the rocks. Consequently, MDIS carefully captured images of this portion of the planet when the shadows were minimized through five different narrow-band color filters. In the map released today, Mercury's northern volcanic plains are revealed in striking color, as shown in the accompanying image.

"This has become one of my favorite maps of Mercury," Chabot added. "Now that it is available, I'm looking forward to it being used to investigate this epic volcanic event that shaped Mercury's surface."

Improved Products and MESSENGER's Legacy

Today's release also includes a new global low-incidence-angle monochrome map, as well as advanced products included in earlier PDS releases that have been regenerated from data acquired over MESSENGER's entire period of orbital operations and with other improvements. Included among those are improved element concentration maps, derived from data collected by the spacecraft's X-Ray Spectrometer (XRS).

"The global XRS elemental composition maps are the culmination of a tremendous amount of effort on the part of the MESSENGER team and represent the first such global maps of any planetary body derived from X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy," said MESSENGER Deputy Principal Investigator Larry Nittler of the Carnegie Institution for Science. "They reveal a remarkable range of chemical heterogeneity on the planet's surface, in some places correlated with other mapped quantities such as topography or color and in some places not. As such, they provide a unique dimension to teasing out Mercury's origin and geological history."

Though MESSENGER's orbital operations ended about one year ago, today's data release is one of the most important milestones for the project. Archiving the extensive MESSENGER data sets in NASA's PDS is a lasting legacy of the mission.

"During its four years of orbital observations, MESSENGER revealed the global characteristics of one of our closest planetary neighbors for the first time," offered MESSENGER Principal Investigator Sean Solomon, Director of Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. "MESSENGER's scientists and engineers hope that data from the mission will continue to be utilized by the planetary science community for years to come, not only to study the nature of the innermost planet, but to address broader questions about the formation and evolution of the inner solar system more generally."

Explore further Image: Sunlit side of the planet Mercury

More information: All data sets in this MESSENGER release can be accessed from All data sets in this MESSENGER release can be accessed from pds.nasa.gov/subscription_service/SS-20160506.html All of the MESSENGER data archived at the PDS are available at pds.nasa.gov The ACT-REACT QuickMap interactive web interface to MESSENGER data has been updated to incorporate the global Mercury DEM and other revised products for this release. QuickMap can be accessed via links on the MESSENGER websites (messenger.jhuapl.edu, www.nasa.gov/messenger).
While the phrase "close reading" may not resonate for someone outside of an English department, Stanford literary scholar Paula Moya wants to reclaim the useful literary tool, especially when it comes to multicultural writers.

She defends close reading, a method of examining literature by paying heightened attention to the language, form, and details of a novel, story or poem.

By carefully examining the work of writers like Toni Morrison, Junot Diaz, and Helena Maria Viramontes, Moya builds a case that literature, when read closely, can help us better understand the multiracial world we live in and the interactions of race and ethnicity.

"Race is a complex, multivalent, and persistent social phenomenon. It's not going away and we need to do a better job of understanding and talking about it," Moya said in a recent interview.

Portrayals of race

One way to find out more about how race operates as a phenomenon is to read multicultural works with careful attentiveness. When it comes to minority fiction, how we read is as important as what we read.

Moya draws from her years of working with social psychologists and reading their research to better understand literature. But instead of conducting surveys or lab experiments herself, or turning to historical archives, Moya turns to readings of literature to present her findings about the ways in which race, ethnicity, gender and sexuality matter to people's lives.

Professor of English Paula Moya describes how reading multicultural literature can teach us how our world is shaped by race.

Having written and edited numerous books on minority writers and the knowledge-generating significance of identity, Moya is deeply interested in the ways these writers grapple with race and ethnicity in their novels.

Her latest book, The Social Imperative: Race, Close Reading, and Contemporary Literary Criticism, highlights the diverse range of multicultural writing by bringing together writers of color who might not appear, on the surface, to be compatible.

For instance, Moya examines the work of Audre Lorde, a lesbian, feminist, black poet from the 1970s alongside Junot Diaz, a contemporary, male writer of Dominican Republic heritage whose fiction has sometimes been criticized for being sexist.

Through a close reading of Diaz's short story "How to Date a Browngirl, Blackgirl, Whitegirl or Halfie," Moya is able to bring into discussion the narrator's attitudes toward women of different races. And by reading Diaz alongside women of color writers like Lorde, Moya discovers that Diaz is thinking in a "complex materialist way about the dynamics of racial identity."

Attention to context

Moya argues that effective close reading should also rely on understanding the social, historical, political and cultural contexts from which a text emerges. Historically, the kind of literary criticism that championed close reading gained a reputation of being too focused on the formal features while disregarding the social context in which a book was written, she added.

Literature by people of color is still generally "under-read," and this is another reason for championing close reading, Moya said.

Unlike the long tradition we have of writing about white authors, "we have a less historically deep tradition writing about writers of color. I want to give these writers the quality of attention that their work deserves," she said.

Moya focuses on minority writers like Diaz and Morrison, whom she describes as "wise writers" who think deeply and complexly about race, gender, sexuality and class.

"In their fiction, they take a question and then explore every angle of it. They are neither seeking an easy answer nor writing to soothe themselves. They are writing to understand weighty social issues and work them out in fictional forms," she said.

In addition, Moya sees herself as a literary critic who is developing deep friendships with these books and, by extension, with the authors.

"In order to do that, I need to sit with them, live with them, even develop a friendship with the work they have put out there. I need, in other words, to do the kind of intensive reading and re-reading that involves a heightened attention to literary language and form, considering them as semantic structures that mediate authors' as well as readers' perceptions of their social worlds," Moya said.

While her book primarily engages in a conversation with literary critics and the work they do, she does believe that a general reader can benefit tremendously from learning how to do close reading.

She would love it, for instance, if a book club reading Toni Morrison's Sula were to read her chapter on the ethical relationship of the self to others in Sula  "not to govern their understanding of the book but to help enrich it," Moya said.

Interdisciplinary literature

Moya has worked across disciplines, with scientists and social scientists, to examine race. For many years she has taught the introductory course for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity with Hazel Markus from the Psychology Department. They invite a range of faculty members from other disciplines like history, sociology and biology to discuss race. Teaching that course influenced her approach to literature because she witnessed how scholars in other disciplines used multiple methods to understand something.

According to Moya, literary critics often make the mistake of defending one particular method of looking at literature at the expense of another. She sees the role of the literary critic as that of a pluralist, one who can and should apply multiple methods to better understand literature.

"You can't understand (race or literature) through any one discipline," she said, also adding, "If you are really interested in learning more about something you are going to look at it by using various methodologies."
The poor voter turnout of young Brits can be explained by the delayed transition to adulthood, says new research from Royal Holloway, University of London. And as early voting behaviour trends set the pattern for life-long voting, it is not likely that current low levels of participation will see an improvement.

Dr Kaat Smets of Royal Holloway's Department of Politics and International Relations analysed British Election Studies from 1964 to 2010 and found that late maturation, which is common in in Europe, has a negative effect on voter turnout of young people. Her research shows that if today's young adults were as 'mature' as young people from the pre-war generation, voter turnout among young people in the UK these days would be 12 percentage points higher.

At the beginning of the week in which the UK goes to the polls, Dr Smets was interviewed by Justin Webb on BBC Radio 4's The Today Programme and by Vanessa Feltz on BBC Radio London.

She says: 'Young people are in school longer, start their first job later, buy their first house later, get married and have children later. But all these life-cycle events are positively related to whether people vote. Willingly or unwillingly, delaying the transition to adulthood implies that most young adults these days have not experienced life-cycle events that are important for participation in democratic life.'

The ndings of this research have potential policy implications. Dr Smets says while it is difcult for governments to inuence the pace of maturation in broad terms, assisting young citizens to become stable and independent earlier in life would have a positive impact on young adults' turnout levels. Tackling youth unemployment, assistance for rst-time home buyers, and sufcient childcare facilities are examples of measures that would facilitate the transition to adulthood for young citizens and increase their levels of political engagement. In this sense, the current economic crisis, which puts young Europeans in an exceptionally precarious situation, does not bode well for future levels of voter turnout.

Dr Smets research on the effects of later maturation on voter turnout among young adults is published in the May issue of European Political Science Review.

Explore further Economic and social disadvantage can affect young citizens' voter turnout

More information: Kaat Smets. Revisiting the political life-cycle model: later maturation and turnout decline among young adults, European Political Science Review (2015). Kaat Smets. Revisiting the political life-cycle model: later maturation and turnout decline among young adults,(2015). DOI: 10.1017/S1755773914000460
When Grace Hui moved to Los Angeles from China in 2014 and Googled the Chinese characters for "Los Angeles immigrant," the first result was Chineseinla.com.

The Chino Hills-based website, a disorganized Yelp-meets-Craigslist hybrid, was a throwback, and Hui, 29, thought some of the posts were phishing scams.

But with more than 680,000 listings, more than 350,000 registered users, 2 million monthly visits and sister sites in 15 cities, Chineseinla.com has become a teeming virtual portal to Chinese life in America. It's one of the only ways that Hui could connect to a country she couldn't understand.

"American Internet is useless to me," said Hui, who used Chineseinla.com to look for a job. "My English isn't good enough to get the information I need."

In the San Gabriel Valley and in Chinese enclaves across the nation, a new wave of Chinese immigrants - many of them affluent students with poor English skills and a smartphone habit - are tapping into a parallel system of Chinese-language apps and websites geared toward helping them navigate life in America.

For restaurant recommendations, there's Chihuo, a Chinese food-centric Yelp or Zagat. 2RedBeans, the Chinese OkCupid, helps Chinese speakers find love. They travel with ETAcar, a Chinese version of Uber, and order food with ToGo626.com, a delivery app that works with about 400 restaurants, most of which are in the Chinese neighborhoods of the San Gabriel Valley.

The growth of these websites are a side effect of a stubborn reality: The language and cultural barriers that new immigrants face extend onto the Internet.

As unprecedented numbers of Chinese people arrive in Los Angeles searching for prosperity and an escape from China's problems, they find themselves in an alternate version of the city - a Los Angeles where the best restaurants are in San Gabriel, the most capable doctors are in Monterey Park, and Arcadia is the hottest real estate destination in California.

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Chineseinla.com, launched in 2006, is one of the oldest parts of the Chinese-language Internet, according to founder Zach Song. It began as a Wikipedia-style collection of knowledge that Song hoped would help new immigrants combat the feeling of helplessness he and his wife felt when they first came from Shanghai in 2003.

"We wanted to this to be a community," Song said in Mandarin.

The website's users eventually grew more interested in selling things, so he redesigned the website to function like Craigslist and include business listings and reviews like Yelp. As online advertising became their main source of revenue, he incorporated Chinese-language news posts and discussion forums to draw traffic.

Nowadays, the website looks like an exploded phone book. Information must be extracted Jenga-style from a colorful blinking tower of dozens of different ads for things such as luxury car rentals, travel agencies, tutoring services and birth hotels.

Song acknowledged that the design is chaotic. But the site is profitable, he said. Traffic has grown steadily as the county's Chinese population and tourism levels rise.

More than half of Los Angeles County's Chinese population speaks limited English, according to the American Community Survey, and a larger, temporary population of Chinese students, tourists, and travelers has even fewer English skills.

For companies such as ETAcar, the language barrier means profits. The Chinese-language ride-hailing app, largely similar to services like Uber and Lyft, launched in 2014 and now has about 400 drivers throughout North America, with about 300 in Los Angeles, mainly serving the San Gabriel Valley.

Co-founder Xiaotian Liu said he and his investors launched the company after bad experiences with American ride-hailing services on a recent trip.

Uber and Lyft drivers failed to locate Chinese restaurants squirreled away in massive strip malls whose signage was primarily in Chinese, and oftentimes they couldn't communicate with the driver.

The language barrier that Chinese immigrants face also prevents American businesses from reaching them. For example, ToGo626.com offers delivery from about 400 mostly Chinese restaurants - fewer than 10 of which are listed on American food delivery apps such as Postmates and Eat24, said co-founder Mac Xu. The app has been downloaded 20,000 times since it was created last year and the company processes about 200 orders every day with a staff of about 40 drivers, he says.

For those with no English skills at all, one Chinese-language app, Shenma, promises to handle virtually all details of life in Los Angeles.

Shenma Life, Chinese for "magic horse," is a personal assistant located inside Wechat, a messaging-based Chinese social media app. Subscribe to their account on Wechat or text them requests, and a staff of about eight people in Chino Hills and 10 others in China will handle traffic tickets, hotel bookings, car rentals, class enrollment and anything else a Chinese-speaking student could need.

For 24-hour VIP service, users can pay $299 a month or $999 a year. Lu Zhang, director of North American operations for the company, said it has about 3,000 users.

"We can't do your homework for you, but we can hire you a tutor and give you some studying tips," Zhang said.

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One of the biggest shortcomings of the English-language Internet, many say, is how sites evaluate Chinese food.

Dai Ho, a noodle restaurant in Temple City, has 3.5 stars on review site Yelp, typical for a cash-only Chinese restaurant in the San Gabriel Valley that lacks service, variety or amenities. But the noodles, hand-pulled and made fresh in limited quantities each day, are revelatory, said Amy Duan, the founder of Chihuo, a Chinese food community. Her app lists it as one of the best Chinese restaurants in Los Angeles.

"We always saw five-star rated restaurants that aren't very good, and three-star restaurants where the food is fantastic," Duan said.

At Chihuo.com's offices in El Monte, an illustrated map displays a distorted projection of Los Angeles based on Chinese food preferences. The San Gabriel Valley takes up two-thirds of the map, Torrance is featured more prominently than Long Beach, and South and East Los Angeles aren't depicted at all.

About 10 employees lean over laptops and smartphones in a small office strewn with jars of hot sauce, a large plush broccoli stalk and a half-eaten Hong Kong waffle in a paper boat. A Chinese adage adorns a break room wall: hao hao chi fan, ya dao yi qie, or "Eat well, overcome anything."

Duan and a group of Chinese students at USC launched Chihuo four years ago after their dining club's social media posts became popular. Today their account has more 400,000 combined followers on Wechat and Weibo, a Chinese Twitter service (on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter combined, they have fewer than 5,000.) Their Web traffic doubled last year.

Their audience, Duan said, is Chinese people who are intensely specific about Chinese food. They want to know if a spicy dish has ma la (numbing heat), xin la (pungent heat) or suan la (sour heat), and whether the noodles are hand-pulled or knife-shaved.

"We needed a platform or a place where people could discuss food in Chinese," Duan said. "We provide a perspective based on Chinese people's tastes."

Specific Chinese tastes also spurred the creation of dating website 2RedBeans, said founder Qing Hua Zhao.

The site, named for the red bean that symbolizes love in Chinese culture, has more than 690,000 users across the U.S. and in China, and about 70,000 of them are in Los Angeles.

Zhao founded the site in 2011 after years of bad experiences with eHarmony, OkCupid and Match.com.

She speaks perfect English and she's open to dating someone who isn't Chinese, but finding someone who wanted a serious relationship and shared her values was like "finding a needle in a haystack."

It's not just a language barrier fueling the Chinese-centric sites' popularity, Zhao said. Newer singles sites such as Tinder and Bumble, swipe-style dating apps, are often too forward and casual for Chinese users, she says.

Chinese singles tend to be shy, Zhao said. 2RedBeans caters to that with several nonverbal ways to interact. Users can wink at, favorite or secretly admire other users. If both people admire each other secretly, the app matches you. 2RedBeans also regularly hosts dating events where staffers help Chinese singles socialize.

Last Saturday, about 30 Chinese men and women gathered at Lin's Wonderland Tearoom in the City of Industry for three hours of guided interaction and finger food. They answered open-ended questions ("Would you prefer to live in the mountains or by the ocean?) and formed teams to answer trivia questions. Successful connections snapped photos of each other's Wechat QR codes to add them on the social media app.

Tim Zhou, 33, an electrical engineer in Fontana, said he has struggled to find a Chinese girl to date. Part of the problem is money, Zhou said.

"You can't drive a Japanese car to pick up a Chinese girl for a date," said Zhou, the rueful owner of a Honda accord.

Still, he's looking for someone to marry, who can please his parents, help out with house payments and build equity. To him, that typically means a Chinese girl.

"You can pick up someone from a bar, but you can't see their education or income or immigration status. These are critical things for us," Zhou said.

But Zooey Zu, a third-year psychobiology major at UCLA, said that she and her friends came to the United States to experience and understand American life.

Chinese apps and websites - and the Chinese neighborhoods that they lead students to - help Chinese students feel a sense of belonging in a strange country, Zu said. But she and her friends are always working on their English.

"We go abroad to experience a different perspective," Zu said. "As long as we keep learning, the barrier will be decreased."

The Chinese-language Internet is starting to reflect that. Chihuo now lists a few American restaurants such as Cut in Beverly Hills, Joan's on Third, and Taylor's Steakhouse in Koreatown, and a recent Chihuo pamphlet included recommendations from Los Angeles Times food critic Jonathan Gold. Togo626 is attracting more non-Chinese customers.

And some of the apps serving Chinese immigrants have started to incorporate a new feature.

With a single tap, all of the text in the apps can be translated back into English.

Explore further Uber partners with major Chinese auto maker

2016 Los Angeles Times

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
SEM images show the tapered holes the researchers etched into silica. The holes ease the escape of thermal radiation. Credit: Linxiao Zhu/Stanford

Solar cells turn sunlight into electricity, but they're only about 20 percent efficient. Much of the leftover energy turns into heat, which actually harms the solar cell.

Now researchers from Stanford University, Palo Alto, California, USA, have developed and tested a new material that can cool a solar cell by up to 13 Celsius (C) under the California winter sun. Because heat makes solar cells less efficient, the researchers predict their cooling layer could help solar cells turn approximately 1 percent more sunlight into electricity, a big boost from a relatively simple add-on. The cooler temperatures also mean the solar cells will likely last longer due to greatly reduced efficiency degradation rates.

The researchers will present their results at the Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics (CLEO), which is held 5-10 June in San Jose, California.

One way to keep objects cool in the sun is to reflect the light back into the atmosphere. This approach works for white cars and mirrored rooftops, but it wouldn't work for solar cells, which need to absorb as much light as possible to generate electricity. An alternative is to make it easier for heat to escapean approach called radiative cooling.

"What's unique about our work is that we demonstrate radiative cooling while preserving the amount of solar absorption," said Linxiao Zhu, a graduate student in the research group of electrical engineering professor Shanhui Fan. In other words, the new material keeps the solar cell cooler even as the solar cell absorbs the same amount of sunlight.

The researchers achieved the combination of cooling plus maintaining sunlight absorption with a wafer made of silica, a colorless mineral found naturally as quartz. The researchers etched tapered holes, about 6 micrometers across and 10 micrometers deep, in the wafer. The holes are designed to smooth the path the thermal radiation takes to escape.

The Stanford logo is clearly visible under the etched silica layer, demonstrating its transparency. Credit: Linxiao Zhu/Stanford

The team tested the silica layer by placing it on top of a solar cell mimica polished silicon wafer with an antireflection surface and aluminum back that has similar absorption characteristics to standard solar cells, but wasn't actually wired to produce electricity.

The testing verified that because the silica layer is transparent, approximately the same amount of sunlight still reaches the solar cell mimic. In fact, there was a slight increase in absorption because of anti-reflection and light trapping effects of the etched silica.

The researchers also found that the etched silica layer lowered the temperature 13 C compared to the bare solar cell mimic.

Cold solar cells function better than hot ones, so the cooler the better, Zhu said. The researchers estimate that the 13 degrees cooling would result in an absolute efficiency improvement of more than 1 percent. Aaswath Raman, a co-author of the study, also noted that heat can speed up the degradation of solar cell parts, so cooling could lengthen their lifespan and likely save costs.

Ultimately, radiative cooling relies on the coldness of the universe, which is a mostly untapped thermodynamic resource, Zhu said. And solar cells aren't the only applications that could benefit from this cooling approach, especially since the new research shows it can work without significantly altering the sunlight absorption characteristics of an underlying material, Zhu said. Cooling cars, clothing, and outdoor equipment are all possible applications, he said.

The next step for Zhu and his colleagues is to test the etched silica layer with a real solar cell to demonstrate the predicted efficiency improvements. The team is also talking to industry partners who could be interested in commercializing the approach.

Explore further Engineers invent transparent coating that cools solar cells to boost efficiency
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Despite being given tacit permission to not back Donald Trump by her own party leader, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, our Republican congressional representative, Elise Stefanik, recently told a northern New York newspaper that she would back Trump as her party's nominee. Stefanik didn't issue a rousing, or even specific, endorsement. But now that Trump is the presumptive nominee, she was asked whether she would support the Republican Party nominee, and she said yes. So hurrah! Stefanik for Trump, and who knows what other reality TV stars, liars, panderers, flip-floppers, ignoramuses and bigots. (Those last two often go together. The rest of the appalling brew is Trump's own unique mix.)
GLENS FALLS | A Glens Falls man was charged Thursday with illegally selling prescription medications during a police investigation, authorities said.

Edward T. Condon, 53, of Harrison Avenue, was charged with two felony counts of fourth-degree criminal sale of a controlled substance, Glens Falls Police Detective Lt. Peter Casertino said.

He allegedly sold the drug Focalin, a stimulant used to treat conditions such as attention deficit disorder, on two occasions earlier this year, police said.

Condon was arraigned and sent to Warren County Jail for lack of bail.

Glens Falls Police were assisted by State Police and the Washington County Sheriff's Office.
The Big Cross elementary school district where I live is one of the few areas in the city of Glens Falls where new construction of single-family homes has taken place in the past decade.

About 12 years ago, a cul de sac was put in off Bush Street, on the way down to Haviland Cove, and about 40 houses were built inside it, and they quickly filled up with people.

Other houses were shoehorned in on patches of grass between homes along other neighborhood streets and on corners.

The school district had to add a third Big Cross kindergarten section for this fall, because so many new kids are entering the school.

I like the city life, with neighbors on every side, and Im glad more people are moving into our neighborhood, and that more people  lots more people  are moving into the city. Just look at all the apartments being developed downtown  thats a great thing for the city, culturally and financially.

People in the Queensbury suburbs dont necessarily feel the way I do about gaining new neighbors. More than 100 town residents signed a petition against a developers plans to put up 20 new houses in a cul de sac he would build at the end of John Clendon Road, which turns off Mountain View Lane about two blocks from Aviation Road.

John Clendon Road is residential now, with houses lining both sides of the street, but the neighborhood ends at a gate, behind which the paved road turns to dirt, running through woods.

The woods were cool and wet and still on Monday, the rain slapping onto leaves on the ground. The woods are posted No Trespassing, but if I lived on John Clendon Road, Id be tempted to wander into them with my dog once in a while. I can see why people who do live there dont want the bulldozers to move in.

But what grounds do they have for objecting? This is a residential neighborhood. Thousands of cars a day drive along Aviation Road, passing the mobile home park that sits at the corner of Aviation Road and Mountain View Lane.

More houses will mean more traffic, but that was true when the houses now on John Clendon Road were being built. The presence of human beings inevitably means the presence of cars. Also pets. Why arent the John Clendon residents complaining about the new dogs and cats that will soon be roaming their neighborhood?

Objecting to people building houses and moving into them in a neighborhood where someone built a house that you moved into demands an explanation. Has some tipping point been reached?

Should Queensbury put a cap on its population or is it just this neighborhood that is now at full capacity?

If youre looking for quiet, I know of places in the northern Adirondacks with a limitless supply. But three blocks off a busy road in a growing suburban town replete with big box stores, car dealerships and fast food franchises is not the place to stake your claim to solitude.

I do understand why people who have established a nice little nest want to stop others from doing the same thing next door. What I dont understand is why the town Planning Board listens to them.

Regardless, if Queensbury doesnt want new houses with new residents in them, Glens Falls does. Come on down to the Big Cross neighborhood, where development is still going on, and well have a block party.
As 270,000 students graduate from Ghanas second cycle institutions later this month, one suggestion that they could take up is joining the young Obama by taking a gap year.

There are a number of reasons why students take a gap year. According to the American Gap Association (yes there is an organisation such as that), a gap is taken in order to deepen practical, professional, and personal awareness.

If you look around Ghana and notice young Americans or Europeans either travelling or doing volunteer work, chances are they are on their gap year.

For them, it may seem like a luxurious option, some of the activities done include travelling, gaining work experience, volunteering for personal growth or quite simply to take a break from teachers. After at least 12 years of continuous academic work, not wanting to jump back immediately can be totally justified.

In Ghana, a lot of students take gaps; however not for the reasons stated above. The main reasons are because of financial constraints or to rewrite examinations. So they spend the year off working to gather more money or in remedial schools. However many students are being encouraged to take the gap year voluntarily.

As the median age for high school graduates continues to drop, university tutors in Ghana complain about first year students being childish. In the past, freshmen at Ghanas universities tended to be much older than they are today. A general late start of education and a longer secondary school system ensured that apart from a few whiz kids, freshmen were well into their twenties when they got to university campuses. This is no longer the case as children start school very early and graduate while they are still teens.

While there has been no research to back the claim of childishness, it is easy to see how the depth of understanding, experience and behaviour will differ in comparison. For many of these students, it will be their first time away from parental or teacher control. They can wear anything they want, sleep at pleasure, go to classes when they want, party all night, experiment with alcohol and sex.So is taking a gap year beneficial? I posed this question to some of my friends who unlike me, delayed university enrollment. Those who were in favour believed it could make one mature, gain experience of how the real world works and generally provided renewed vigour and focus for academic work. However those in opposition, said taking time off could lead to long time derailment and a difficulty adjusting to academic life again.

The research conducted in the area appears to be in favour of those who take it. For example, studies conducted at Middlebury College in Vermont and the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, found that undergraduates who had taken a gap year before enrolling in university had, on average, a GPA of 0.1-0.4 higher than would have been expected based on their high school scores.

It is no wonder that Harvard has seen a 33 percent increase in the number of students who take time off after it begun encouraging the practice explicitly in its admission letters while at Massachusetts Institute of Technology; their number of deferments doubled from 2009 to 2010 according to the Council on International Educational Exchange.

For a gap year to truly have its intended effects, Jeffrey Selingo, renowned author on higher education says; it needs to be a transformative event, quite distinct from anything that students have experienced before."

Selingo suggests meaningful work that encapsulates ones interests such as interning in the field you have chosen to study, volunteering; traveling with the aim of broadening ones scope; or a combination of all.
Brazil Meets Africa is the brainchild of Claudio Kron, a celebrated Brazilian percussionist and veteran of festivals worldwide known for his charismatic stage performances.

Sources report the two musicians are making magic in rehearsals with a powerful fusion combining Claudios Brazilian beats and rhythms with Wiyaalas West African musical folk traditions.

We are not in the UK to take prisoners. I will get Wiyaala to perform at every opportunity available. I believe she will become one of the biggest artistes ever to emerge from Africa. Ghanaians should be proud of their girl, manager of Wiyaala, John Sherren, has said.
The ruling follows a suit filed by a private lawyer, Martin Kpebu on 16 February 2015, where he asked the apex court to declare that Section 96(7) of the Criminal Procedure and Juvenile Justice Act is unconstitutional.

Explaining the implications of the supreme court ruling, Lawyer Sosu told Pulse.com.gh that the ruling is "going to advance that constitutional guarantee for the liberty of every citizen so that when you are on bail and eventually you are found guilty of the offence, you are simply convicted to go and serve the sentence. It is far better than you, whiles you have not been pronounced guilty, yet you will be serving jail terms."
Speaking at the Cape Coast university in the Central region as part of his Accounting to the People tour, President Mahama said Ghana under his tenure is almost through with difficult times and is set on the path of prosperity and growth.

"Our country Ghana is changing, and the change is occurring in the right direction because it is backed by the implementation of prudent, sound and deliberate policies and programmes which I pledge I will continue to lead as President," he added.

The President further advised the students to desire to be entrepreneurs in order to take advantage of the opportunities being created by government and the private sector."I see many entrepreneurs amongst you who will grow small businesses into multi-million dollar business conglomerate in the future and employ people far beyond the expectation of government. I see a nation filled with an energetic, innovating and promising youth ready to take advantage of the rising opportunities that government is generating together with the private sector."
Narrating the incident to Accra based Kasapa FM, Stephen Nani, Special aide to the NPP Parliamentary Candidate said that he and the rest of their campaign team had visited the said registration centre to monitor the progress of the exercise only for Hon. Akandohs alleged thugs to attack them unprovoked and beat them mercilessly.By the time we realized, the macho men who came out of Hon. Akandohs car started slapping us and hitting us with plastic chairs they picked at the centre while he (Akandoh) sat in his car and gave instructions. After the assault on us, he gave orders for the macho men to board his car and they left.
One characteristic of BB Frederick, admired by many of his followers is his down to earth approach on life, for a man who commands so much respect and influence in this nation. One could rightly say, he is a true replica of the Arch Bishop Nicholas Duncan Williams in his style and voice.

This year, from the 11th to the 15th of May, he hosts Bishop Salifu Amoako and Prophet Eric Osei Frimpong for the major annual STAMP Conference. STAMP is the acronym for Solution To All My Problems.

Morning sessions will run from 9am -12pm , evening sessions 5pm-9pm led by Apostle BB Frederick.

Participants will enjoy music from the Finger of God Choir and Minister Josei.

The church is located along the Kwabenya atomic down roundabout, Musuku road.

This promises to be a life changing event which should not be missed!

Follow Wonder City Chapel on the following social media platforms below.

Facebook
The picture was tweeted by a user on Twitter under the username, @Ghana_Matters.

The user captioned the photo, "John Dumelo donates six maths set, chalk and pens as part of his Volta region tour. ".

Initially I was a bit skeptic about whether the renowned actor, businessman and philanthropist (in his own words) had actually donated 6 sets of mathematical instruments to the school.

John Dumelo has since tried to clear the air. According to the actor he had donated over "100 math sets". He tweeted:

And I wasn't the only one who didn't understand what was going on in the picture. Many people couldn't work out why an actor of John Dumelo's calibre could donate only 6 sets to the school.

These ladies couldn't believe Dumelo would go all the way to donate just six sets.

Even we can't.

This particular guy couldn't have put it any better.

And this guy!

But it was this user who raised an important point about how no one was smiling in the pictures.

So we sought out some smiles.

This guy is probably thinking "What manner of rubbish is this?

No smiles there.

None here too.

And no smiles from this guy trying to see if this was some loaves and fish Biblical-like moment.
Welcome to the Pulse Community! We will now be sending you a daily newsletter on news, entertainment and more. Also join us across all of our other channels - we love to be connected! Welcome to the Pulse Community! We will now be sending you a daily newsletter on news, entertainment and more. Also join us across all of our other channels - we love to be connected!
He did his debut concert in Unilag back in 2002 with alot of stars in attendance including the likes of late Baracko grin also Dagrin , Jesse Jagz, M.I, Dj Jimmy Jatt and Wizkid.

CDQ released his debut single at General records titled SUALA just few days after being signed to the label . The Song was also produced by his mentor Masterkraft and it was massively accepted while it also enjoyed constant airplay on radio and tv stations.

Daddy Freeze as he is fondly called is an ace broadcaster and On Air Personality with many years of experience.

Real name, Ifedayo Olarinde is currently the host of the Road show Cool fm's evening Drive show which holds between 4pm - 9pm.

An indigene of Osun state, Freeze spent most of his growing years in Ibadan, schooled at the University of Ibadan where he graduated with a degree in Sociology.

His first radio gig was a brief stint with Radio Galaxia in Romania while on holiday in 1996.

He came back to Nigeria and auditioned for a job at BCOS Ibadan. He went on to work there for five years.
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!
ALSO READ: Actress announces shocking pregnancy news

The actress who had filed for divorce in August, 2015, from her actor hubby, 42, has indicated that they might be rethinking their split.

A source reveals to Us Weekly that the couple are still trying to sort things out, saying, They are still figuring things out."

The pair who are expecting a child together, had enjoyed a Hawaiian vacation at the site of their 2010 wedding, last month.

The reports reveal that Green had set up the trip in a bid to convince Fox to have a rethink, as the pair were spotted having what is described as a "serious talk", where "Green seemed to be mostly listening while she spoke.

As far as speculations go, only time will tell where the pair are headed.
Commenting on the ICTEL Expo, Chief Dr. Mrs Nike Akande, CON, President, Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said; "The staging of this year's exhibition is a manifestation of the promise made by the Chamber during the maiden edition held in 2015, that the ICTEL expo would be an annual event. I am therefore proud to say that the LCCI, as usual, has kept its promise to the business community to continue to provide platforms for trade promotion and development. This ICTEL Expo is therefore one of the chamber's intervention in starting relevant conversations and providing a platform for the ICT and Telecommunications sector." She further added that "I therefore join the Chairman of the Trade promotion Board and partners to invite you all to take advantage of this opportunity and participate in the 2016 ICTEL Expo. It is therefore my greatest pleasure and honour to unveil to the business community and other public sector institutions, the 2016 Information Communication Technology and Telecommunications Expo (ICTEL Expo 2016)"
ALSO READ: Female bank manager docked for N8m fraud by the EFCC

The suspect, Christine Jiaxin Lee, had reportedly been arrested at the Sydney Airport while trying to flee the country after allegedly spending the millions which had been mistakenly transferred into her Westpac bank account four years ago.

Lee who has lived in Australia for five years, reportedly lives with her boyfriend at Rhodes in Sydney's North-West.

Daily Mail reports that the then 17-yr-old had splurged on handbags and luxury goods after she had discovered the money in her account.

Lee who is a chemical engineering student, had been trying to flee the country for Malaysia, when she had been nabbed by the Federal Police at Sydney Airport on Wednesday night, May 4, 2016, and reportedly owes $3.3million to her bank.

Court documents reveal that Lee had allegedly committed the crime on more than one occasion between July 2014 and March 2015, and failed to notify the bank to the fact that she was not the owner of the money.

ALSO READ: Internet fraudster arraigned by EFCC
The photo shows the toddler called, Mladen, looking straight at the camera, with rolled up paper between his nose and the powdery white substance in front of him, as if ready to take a sniff.

Daily Record reports that the family of the little boy, from the small village of Sindel in eastern Bulgarias Varna Province, have come out to assure social media users that the photo had been some twisted, unintentional joke.

Nadezhda Nuri, the mother of the child revealed to local media that the white, powdery substance had not been cocaine, but simply flour.

Nuri claims that the image had been taken as a joke but then uploaded onto social media by her 13-year-old daughter, explaining:

"My mother first saw the picture of the children and called me. I couldnt have done such a thing, I dont even know how to write. My daughter must have taken the photo and uploaded it online. I can't do it because I can't even read or write, never mind use a computer."

Nuri's daughter who had allegedly uploaded the photo, adds that the family jokes around by takin g such controversial photos.

"I was only joking, I got the idea from Facebook. I have never seen real drugs. I once saw a woman on Facebook making lines with flour and then snorting it."
According to Billy, the police, numbering about 30, with some thugs also known as 'Area Boys', stormed their house without prior notice nor orders from a court of law, to start throwing their property outside, purporting the order came from an High Court.

But the problem with the forceful eviction, according to Billy, was that the police came to the wrong house as the house they should have gone to was not their own.

After throwing them out, it was discovered that the police had gone to the wrong house but instead of apologizing and allowing them to take back their things, the police officers refused to open the gate and insisted that they must pay some certain amount of money before they are allowed to move their things back.

This is what Billy wrote on her Facebook wall where she is seeking justice:

"There is no law in this country anymore. Some men came from the Lagos High Court to our house to evacaute all our things without a day's quit notice, not even a month's notice.

I was telling them to call the but they insisted that the order was from the High Court of Lagos. The policemen that came were up to 30 and the agbero that came with them were up to 40.

I was explaining to them they came to the wrong house because we have two 21s in our street but they didn't listen. They were throwing all my property like ball, damaging my AC and other things.

I said to myself where is the law in this country because police that were meant to support and protect the citizens of this country, were the same police pointing guns at their citizens just because they have guns.

After throwing all our property outside, they locked gate. They later realised that they had come to the wrong house. They locked the gate and asked us to pay them money to take the property back to our apartment."
If the security forces do not step into full gear, there could be chaos in Abia State after it was alleged that an Hausa man murdered an Igbo man during an argument between them, leading to serious disturbance in the Ogbor Hill area of Aba, the most popular commercial center in the state.
It was gathered that the guardian of the young girl and Ezeigbo are neigbours on Olatunde Close in the area, and is seen as a family friend.

The incident, according to reports, happened on April 26 at about 9pm, when the aunt the girl lives with, sent her on an errand and on her return, Ezeigbo, a father of two, waylaid her and offered her money to have sex with him but when she refused, he forcefully dragged her into a tricycle parked by the roadside, covered her mouth and and raped her.

It was when the girl got home that she informed her aunt of the assault and the aunt reported the incident at the Area G Command in Ogba, and Ezeigbo was arrested.

Initially, Ezeigbo denied raping the girl and was arraigned at the Ogba Magistrates' Court by a police prosecutor, Inspector Benedict Aigbokhan, on two counts of rape.

Also Read:

When the charges were read to Ezeigbo, he pleaded not guilty and elected summary trial.
Okeoha, who is the Customer Service Manager in the branch, is said to have defrauded the bank of the sum in February of this year.

The charge by the anti-graft agency reads:

That you, Mrs. Irene Okeoha, on or about 17th February, 2016 at Hotel Presidential, Port Harcourt, within the Port Harcourt Division of this Honorable Court, did fraudulently steal the sum of Eight Million Naira (N8, 000, 000. 00) only, property of Ecobank Plc and thereby committed an offence contrary to Section 390 (9) of the Criminal Code CAP 37 Vol. 11 Laws of Rivers State of Nigeria 1999.

When the charge was read to Okeoha, she pleaded not guilty, prompting the prosecution counsel, Ben Ubi, to urge the court to fix a date for the commencement of trial and to remand the defendant in prison custody.

But her defence counsel, B. Igeongei, prayed the court to grant his client bail as the accused was already on administrative bail by the EFCC.

Justice Amadi duly granted Okeoha bail in the sum of N20 million and one surety in like sum, while ordering that she be remanded in prison custody pending the perfection of her bail condition.
It reads:

To put the records straight, we want to categorically state that a concerned and patriotic Nigerian, who felt troubled with what was happening then, gave a copy of the Sanusis letter to Amaechi in Amaechis capacity as the Chairman of the Nigerian Governors Forum. Like Amaechi, we should appreciate that concerned Nigerians patriotism.

When Amaechi got the letter, he spoke to Sanusi who was still the CBN governor to confirm the authenticity of the letter. Sanusi confirmed to Amaechi that he wrote the letter.

During their conversation, Amaechi made it abundantly clear to the then CBN governor that the looting of the nation had to be stopped and that all non-remitted funds should be remitted and that he (Amaechi) was going to use the letter to do whatever was in the best interest of the nation and Nigerians.

This was the stoppage of the non-remittance and the recovery of all the non-remitted funds from oil sales. The CBN governor didnt agree with Amaechi on the way forward.

Around that period, a delegation from the United States government, specifically from the offices of the secretaries of state and defence visited Amaechi in Port Harcourt to discuss the issue of oil theft in Nigeria.

From their records, they gave Amaechi figures of billions of dollars (about $7bn annually) that was being lost to oil theft in Nigeria. They were discussing the issue and the figures of oil theft, and that was how the CBN governors letter to former President Jonathan came up.

In the presence of journalists covering the visit, Amaechi brought out the Sanusis letter and showed the visiting American delegation to buttress the point that Nigeria was losing far more money to the non-remittance of proceeds from oil sales into the Federation Account.

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This was disclosed by Acting Director, Army Public Relations, Colonel Sani Usman in a statement released on Thursday, May 5, 2016.

It reads:

The patrol team laid an ambush for the suspected cattle rustlers and armed bandits who came en masse on motorcycles fully armed.

It was gathered that they were on the way to Ruwan Tofa and Babban Doka villages in the Dansadau district of Maru Local Government Area, Zamfara State, to wreak havoc on the innocent people of those communities.

According to the statement, the troops also recovered 11 AK-47 rifles, one G3 rifle, one locally-made pistol, 11 AK-47 magazines, a magazine of a G3 rifle and 161 rounds of 7.62mm (special) ammunition during the operation.

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He stated this shortly before signing the 2016 budget into law.

To illustrate our renewed commitment to infrastructural development, the 2016 budget allocates over N200 billion to road construction as against a paltry N18 billion allocated for same purpose in the 2015 budget, Buhari said.

The signing of the budget today will trigger concerted efforts to reflate the Nigerian economy, a key element of which is an immediate injection of N350bn into the economy by way of capital projects, he said.

Following months of accusations and counter-accusation between the executive and the National Assembly over figures and projects proposed in the document, Buhari signed the budget on Friday afternoon.

It gives me great pleasure today to sign the first full-year budget of this administration into law. I thank the leadership of the National Assembly, in particular, the Senate President and the Speaker of the House of Representatives, and indeed all members of the National Assembly for their cooperation in making this a reality, Buhari said.

The president assured that 2017 budget would be free of controversy and smoother.

The budget is intended to signpost a renewal of our commitment to restoring the budget as a serious article of faith with the Nigerian people. This Administration is committed to ensuring that henceforth the annual appropriation bill is presented to the National Assembly in time for the passage of the Act before the beginning of the fiscal year, he said.

He said details of the budget will be made available by the Minister of Budget and National Planning, Udo Udoma.

Through the 2016 budget, aptly titled Budget of Change, the government seeks to fulfil its own side of the social contract. The Budget I have signed into law provides for aggregate expenditures of N6.06trn. Further details of the approved budget, as well as our Strategic Implementation Plan for the 2016 budget, will be provided by the Honourable Minister of Budget and National Planning.

I shall be speaking in more details about the Budget, its implementation and the over-all national economic and social policies of the Government in my address on May 29th, God willing, Buhari said.
The Presidents plane was said to have arrived the Katsina airport at about 4.25 p.m.

Before he was flown in a chopper to Daura, he received at the airport by the State Governor, Alhaji Aminu Masari, and top federal and state government functionaries.

He is scheduled to declare open and participate in the Katsina State Economic and Investment Summit, aimed at diversifying the states ailing economy.
Fani-Kayode, who is also a Chieftain of the opposition, People's Democratic Party (PDP), was invited by the EFCC to appear next Monday, May 9, for questioning over allegations of corruption.

But shortly after, the former minister raised alarm in another statement over the presence of EFCC operatives at his home.

Today the EFCC invited me to come their office on Monday. I have their letter. I agreed to be there. Now they have surrounded my house, Fani-Kayode wrote.

The letter of invitation was served this morning and it was dated 6th May. They said I should report on the 9th.

Can someone please tell me why they are at my gate? They cant even wait because they want to detain me so badly and keep me away for the weekend.

I never refused their invitation. Why all this? I leave them to God, hesaid.

According to Premium Times, the spokesman of the EFCC, Wilson Uwujaren, confirmed the development.

It was reported that when Uwujaren was asked via the telephone why Fani-Kayode's home is surrounded ahead of Monday that the anti-graft asked him to appear before it, the EFCC spokesman was said to have disconnected the call.
Speaking on Friday, May 6, 2016 in Kaduna, Pastor Buru said as a result of preparation for decent burial, some tribes and cultures contribute in keeping corpses for long time before burial which according has a devastating effect.

The Cleric appealed to all Nigerians to redouble efforts in sanitizing the environment of grave-yard that is becoming too bad and disastrous.

He said in other to make grave yard look clean and beautiful, indescribable dumping of refuse and transporting of animal in the premises must be avoided.

Pastor Buru called on both state and Federal government, civil society, non-governmental organization and environmental officer to immediately extend humanitarian services toward sanitizing cemeteries.

The cleric also said that use of insecticide, pesticide and other dangerous chemicals at cemeteries has devastating effect.
It is the latest in a series of attacks on oil facilities in Africa's top oil exporter. President Muhammadu Buhari has vowed to crack down on "vandals and saboteurs" in the Delta region, which produces most of the country's oil.

In a statement, the energy company said Chevron Nigeria Limited, operator of a joint venture with the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), said an attack took place at about 11.15 pm (2215 GMT) on Wednesday.

"Its Okan offshore facility in the Western Niger Delta region was breached by unknown persons," said Chevron in the statement. "The facility is currently shut-in and we are assessing the situation, and have deployed resources to respond to a resulting spill."

There were no immediate details of any casualties. The company could not be reached for further comment.

A group known as the Niger Delta Avengers claimed responsibility for the attack, and in a statement it said it blew up the platform.

"This is what we promised the Nigeria government since they refuse to listen to us," the group said.

The same group has said it carried out an attack on a Shell oil pipeline in February which shut down the 250,000 barrel-a-day Forcados export terminal.

The militants say they want a greater share of oil revenues. Crude sales account for around 70 percent of national income in Africa's biggest economy.

Pipeline attacks and violence have risen in Nigeria's southern swampland since authorities issued an arrest warrant in January for a former militant leader on corruption charges.

Buhari has extended a multi-million dollar amnesty signed with militants in 2009 but upset them by ending generous pipeline protection contracts.
Mr Dominic Jato, the father of the abducted teenager said even though the police in Sokoto are aware of the situation with full knowledge of the culprits, nothing has been done to secure his daughter release despite complains at the Divisional Police Office in Sokoto and the office of the DIG in charge of Zone 10.

"I have been following every legal means to secure the release of my daughter for about two years now. This is just because we are in Sokoto to serve our nation. For two years, my Daughter has been taken away from me. What my colleagues did to me in Sokoto I am still in shock," Jato said.

Even though the police spokesman in Sokoto, Al-mustpaha Sani, told Pulse that he was not aware of the issue, it was reliably gathered that the man who abducted the 14 year-old teenager is a relation to a senior officer in the Sokoto State Police Command.

Mr Dominic Jato, who told Pulse that he had earlier lodged a complaint at both the Divisional Level, Sokoto State Police Command and at the office of the AIG Zone 10, keeps seeing the people who abducted his daughter moving freely in Sokoto.

"Do we have some persons that are above the law in Nigeria? Jato asked.

Mr Jatau, in the complaint letter he submitted at the office of the AIG Zone 10, said, his daughter was kidnapped when she was 14 years and eight days old.

"I am writing this letter in order to complain against Ismail Mohammed and Mallam Adamu Kasarawa for kidnapping my daughter, named Halita Dominic Jato. She was born on 1st, July 1999 and was kidnapped and abducted on the 9th, July 2014."

"I conducted a search for her whereabouts among her friends, neighbours and the entire neighbourhood and I found out that she was kidnapped and abducted by Ismail Mohammed in Gidan Igwai area of Sokoto."

The letter added: "I reported the case to the Police Divisional Head Quarters, Kwanni and the said Ismail Mohammed was invited by the police for questioning. He confessed that the girl Halita Dominic Jato was kidnapped and abducted by him."

"He confessed that, he has moved the girl to the house of to be converted to Islam. And he was mandated to bring the girl back to the Police Station to be handed over to me but up till now, the girl has not been handed over to me nor the police," Jato said.

He said that when he lodged another complaint to the office of the Police Commissioner in Sokoto, the suspect were invited for questioning, "and I was asked again to wait for the outcome of the investigation but up till now, no clear clue of what the police have done tentatively concerning the case."

Jato who said the issue linger for about two years now because he followed due process, added that he has explored every possible means within his power but could not secure the release of his 14- Year old daughter.

"Secondly, there was threat to my life and that of my entire family" Jato added.

Sokoto State Police spokesperson, Al-mustpaha Sani who said he was not aware of the incident, asked whether the abducted teenager is a daughter of a policeman.

"I don't know anything about it. You know I am the PRO but I may not know everything that happens. If I get to the office, I will check the files. Is the girl a policemans daughter? Sani asked.
Since taking office last May, after winning an election largely on his vow to crackdown on corruption, Buhari has sought help from several nations including the United States and Switzerland to recover money he said was stolen by public officials.

Despite the oil wealth of Africa's top crude exporter, which has the continent's biggest economy, 70 percent of Nigerians live on $1 a day or less while endemic corruption over decades has enriched a small elite.

"We are looking for more cooperation from the EU, United States, other countries and international institutions to recover the nation's stolen assets, particularly proceeds from the stolen crude oil," said Buhari.

Buhari made the comments to the executive secretary of the United Nations Office for Drugs and Crime (UNODC), who was visiting the president. He also urged UNODC to help speed up the recovery of stolen money.

Nigeria is going through its worst economic crisis in decades and Buhari's critics have said the focus on corruption has distracted his administration from dealing with the impact of low oil prices which have cut much needed revenues from crude sales.

Last week Buhari urged the World Bank to assist in the repatriation of $320 million stolen by former military leader Sani Abacha, which is being held by authorities in Switzerland.

The 73-year-old former military ruler has said his government will recover "mind-boggling" sums of money stolen from the oil sector and that public coffers were "virtually empty" when he took over from his predecessor Goodluck Jonathan.
Special Adviser to the President on Niger Delta and coordinator of the presidential amnesty programme, Paul Boroh stated this on Friday, May 6, while addressing newsmen in Abuja.

The recent attack was claimed by the Niger Delta Avengers (NDA), a militant group which threatened to cripple the nations economy if the government does not respond to its demand.

Pipeline vandalism is an avoidable self-inflicted agony. It is unreasonable to engage in such criminal activity not only because of the resultant economic effect on the country but particularly as it also negatively affects the Niger Delta environment, he said.

The act of vandalising pipelines is counter-productive apart from it being a crime against the state. Those involved in this nefarious activity are economic and environmental saboteurs. It will do well for them to refrain from it, as my office is always open to dialogue regardless of their grievances.

The federal government already has in place a well-structured reintegration programme for youths of the region, which has helped in maintaining the peace and stabilising security of the region. The Amnesty Programme has made militancy unattractive in the region mainly because of the governments sincerity and commitment to the programme. The proper thing is for those behind such activity to embrace dialogue.
For today, May 6 2016:

VANGUARD NEWSPAPER

EFCC quizzes ex-ministers, Anyanwu, SAN, party chair over campaign fundsA former senator, Chris Anyanwu and a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), Michael Ahamba, have been interrogated by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) over their alleged involvement in the disbursement of $115 million by Fidelity Bank on the instruction of erstwhile Minister of Petroleum Resources, Mrs. Diezani Alison-Madueke. READ MORE

Militants blow up Chevron oil facility, vow more attacksMilitants in the Niger Delta yesterday blew up the Chevron Valve Platform located on the high sea near Escravos in Warri, Delta State in a renewed attack on oil installations in the country. READ MORE

How I got involved in Sanusis letter to Jonathan, by AmaechiThe Minister of Transportation, Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi yesterday disclosed his involvement in the leaked secret letter written by former Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and now Emir of Kano, Sanusi Muhammad II to former President Goodluck Jonathan on the non-remittance of $49.8 billion from oil sale to the federation account. READ MORE_______________________________________

VANGUARD NEWSPAPER

NASS hands over 2016 budget to PresidencyABUJAFINALLY, the corrected version of the 2016 budget was, yesterday, handed over to the Presidency through the Special Assistant to the President on National Assembly Matters Senate (Senator), Ita Enang. READ MORE

Alleged $49.8bn oil theft: My role in Sanusis letter to Jonathan AmaechiMinister of Transportation, Mr Chibuike Amaechi, yesterday, denied media reports that he surreptitiously and clandestinely leaked a letter written by former Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, governor and now Emir of Kano, Sanusi Muhammad II, to then President Goodluck Jonathan on the non-remittance of $49.8 billion from oil sale to the Federation Account. READ MORE

How Kingmakers, Governor clashed over emergence of 10th Alake  BankoleThough, the incident occurred in 2005 few days after the late Alake of Egbaland, Oba Oyebade Lipede joined his ancestors, the memory remains fresh in the minds of many people in Ogun State. Revelations about how the remains of late Oba Oyebade Lipede disappeared few hours after the monarch passed on was made by Chief Alani Bankole, father of former speaker of the House of Representatives, Dimeji Bankole, at the launch of his book titled Alake of Egbaland: The Succession Dynamics. READ MORE_______________________________________

BUSINESSDAY NEWSPAPER

Oil majors, others unbundle privately managed pension schemes for CPSMajor oil companies including the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Shell, Chevron, Total and AGIP are unbundling their pension management companies (Closed PFAs) for Contributory Pension Schemes (CPS) managed by Pension Fund Administrators (PFAs), BusinessDay findings reveal. Consequently, the oil companies are directing their new employees to choose PFAs and open Retirement Savings Accounts(RSA) for READ MORE

Tomato Ebola disease spikes price, forces sellers to importConsumers of fresh tomatoes in Nigeria are gradually switching to pastes, on account of a ravaging insect pest known as Tuta Absoluta which has destroyed an estimated 40 percent of anticipated harvest, causing prices to shoot up by 105 percent, from N17,000 to N35,000 per basket. Many fresh tomato sellers have also resorted to purchasing READ MORE

Fashola unveils FGs road map for solving Nigerias power crisesBabatunde Fashola, Minster for Power, Works and Housing, says the Federal Governments road map for solving the countrys power crises is to attain incremental power wherever it can be found, thus achieving steady power and ensuring uninterrupted power supply. Fashola stated this while delivering a lecture titled: Nigerias electricity challenges, a road map for change,  READ MORE_______________________________________

THE PUNCH NEWSPAPER

Buhari receives budget, awaits ministers advice before signingThere were indications on Thursday that President Muhammadu Buhari would not immediately proceed to sign the corrected version of the 2016 Budget, transmitted to him by the National Assembly, as being expected in some quarters. READ MORE

No more bailout for states, says finance ministerThe Federal Government on Thursday ruled out the possibility of providing bailout funds for state governments to meet their financial obligations, including the payment of salaries of workers, due to declining allocation from the Federation Account. READ MORE
I hear the World Bank says Nigeria is now the worst place to do business in the entire world.

 I dont believe it.

I also hear that of the 15 fastest growing economies in Africa, Nigeria is no longer on the list.

 I say I dont believe that. And stop hearing bad things.

We are not even in the top 10 of the World Top 10 oil producers anymore. Yet, we used to be No. 6.

 I still dont believe that.

Inflation is now 13.2%, or well may be 12.8%.

Story

If you go to the market with N400 to buy pepper, that amount cant get you enough pepper to fry two eggs.

Stop eating eggs. Too much cholesterol is bad for your health.

Moodys has also just downgraded Nigeria in its ratings for end of March 2016.

Moodys?

Yes. It is a credit and investment ratings corporation.

It is called Moody? What do you expect, then, other than a moody report?

Our rating by Standard and Poors is also negative.

I see. Standard and Poors giving a poor rating. So?

We are talking serious economics, not word play

I hear you

Even Fitch says our economy is in the negative.

Let them all keep fishing for negative information, I say I dont believe it

And as it is, it looks like Nigerians have adjusted themselves to the reality of paying as much as N200 per litre for fuel?

In your village? In our own town, fuel is just N140 per litre.

And you think that is okay? At a time the spot price of crude oil is dropping internationally?

Stop reading those foreign reports. Stop feeding into the Afro-pessimism narrative.

You dont believe this. You dont believe that. Everybody is saying a hell-hole has appeared, and you are insisting you dont believe it.

Sorry.

The Nigerian Bureau of Statistics has also reported that foreign investments inflow into Nigeria is down by73.79%, the least in 9 years, and total capital importation has fallen by 89.13%. GDP growth is the lowest in 9 years.

Hold on, one second Now listen to me in Minister Kemi Adeosuns voice: we are implementing a planned economy here, dum-b-hea-d

The kind of phone calls I receive these days. All artisans that I know have been calling me to ask if I have a job for them. The electrician called yesterday to ask if my air conditioners were not giving problems. I said No. He said what of the television sets? I said they were all working. He even asked whether Madam has not complained about any appliance in the kitchen.

That is a potential burglar, staking out territory.

Shortly after he dropped the phone, the mechanic also called to ask if the car was alright. I said yes. He asked if I was not hearing any unusual sound. I said No.

Your mechanic is stalking your car. What is that? Call the police.

But dont you understand? There are no jobs in town.

Who is saying so?

I am, based on the evidence of my eyes and what I have been hearing.

And you have not heard that the Federal Government has launched a plan to create 1, 000 jobs per week by getting people to become masquerade dressers?

Masquerades?

Yes. Those masquerades that need 100 people to dress them; and another 100 to undress them. If every Nigerian community organizes a masquerade festival every week, all this nonsense about people not having jobs will end. It is the most profound official contribution to this unemployment narrative so far.

You just like to trivialize things.

How, it is simple economics. Imagine the number of tailors that will also be engaged.

You cant be serious.

I am. Your electrician and mechanic will be better off joining the masquerade gang of Nigeria.

Who is proposing this?

 I dont mention names, please. It is the idea that matters.

But come to think of it, I see some sense. We are actually a nation of masquerades. Masquerades in high and low places; masquerades behaving like ancestors when they are actually mere mortals.

It is the day motor jam masquerade that you will know he is a human being. Even the whole economy has become a masquerade.

But this thing about festivals.

It happened in ancient Rome. The Romans had over 170 festivals in a year. They were a source of unity for the Empire.

I dont think Nigerians are asking for festivals, and an opportunity to dance, they want jobs and money in their pockets.

But you know the truth and why I dont believe all these tales? Foreign investors will never give up on Nigeria. We have the biggest market in the whole of Africa. It is the source of our strength. If you like let a thousand kidnappers strike per day, all the airplanes on the Nigerian route will still be fully booked all year round. At the height of the Boko Haram and the Niger Delta crises, investors still rushed into Nigeria to look for opportunities. What they may be doing now is a kind of siddon look. It will pass.

If we sort out the economy.

What I know is that we are better than Venezuela.

So, Venezuela is now the standard?

They have oil, we have oil.

But Venezuela is now a failed state, for failing to manage its oil wealth very well. You need like a bag load of money to buy any essential commodity in that country. Is that what you want in Nigeria?

God forbid bad thing!

God?

I say God forbid bad thing!

This is about God?

Everything in this country is about God. That is why I agree with people who are now saying that the way forward is to approach God for help. Even the masquerades will offer prayers and speak to God through the ancestors.

Well, some people are not going to God. One man in Lekki yesterday, decided to climb an electric pole. He threatened to hug the electric wires and die. He said he would only change his mind if he was given N5 million.

Only N5 million, not N45 million?

The people called the Fire Service. Fire Service said they should call PHCN. They called PHCN; those ones said call the police. The police came, the Fire Service too, after about six hours. They begged the man but when he didnt listen, they just went away.

The officials left the scene?

Yes. Everybody tried to talk to the man. He insisted on N5 million or nothing.

Dont worry, it is the Tee Billz spirit in every Nigerian. So what happened in the end?

 I dont know.

The man was not ready to die. He should have jumped straight into the Lagoon instead of climbing an electric pole. And did he tweet and instagram his drama like Tee Billz?

Well, I think government should just make it clear that anybody who wants to die should not disturb public peace, they should just go ahead.

Thats cruel. I expected the Lagos State government to be pro-active and offer that man some money. May be N1 million, and then rehabilitate him.

One ginni? If anybody gave that man money, youd be surprised by tomorrow morning, you will find half of Lagos on top of electric poles, asking for money. Even me sef, I fit climb pole or hug transformer, but my own no be to die oh, na to collect money.

That is it the strongest sign of the state of the nation. People are just going crazy. That was how one guy went to a fuel station in Lagos, stark naked, saying he would not dress up unless he was allowed to buy fuel. Nobody listened to him.

Dont worry, they will all get used to it. It is a matter of time. Or it may just be that Nigerians love drama. Everybody has become a Nollywood artist; there is more drama outside Nollywood today.

What I dont even understand is why people use the social media these days to kill people. Youd just wake up one morning and read a fabulous story about someone dying when they are actually alive. It must be only in Nigeria that death is used as an instrument of blackmail.

They did it to Chief Tony Anenih. He has had to announce that his traducers will be the ones to die before him.

They also did it to King Sunny Ade, IBB, Desmond Elliot

I blame the media. It is called irresponsible journalism.

No, blame the bloggers. Using the social media to announce a death that has not happened should be taken as a crime: a clear case of attempted homicide.

Ha, wait oh

What?

I just remembered something.

What?

I hear Baba OBJ has just donated a chimpanzee to an animal centre. Do you want to know what the Chimpanzee is called, named by the Baba himself?

Just shut up that your mouth!

Hear me first now. Try and exercise some Patience.

I say keep the name to yourself.

This is your problem. You dont believe things you should believe and yet you dont have the Patience to learn about things you dont know.

Thank you. So, what are you, yourself donating to the animal centre? How about you donating a cow?

Cow ke? I dont want any problems, please. I may donate one of my dogs.

Hen, dont try that! Ill send you one article I have just read. It says dog meat is medicinal and that it can cure malaria. It is also fortifies the human spirit and when you eat the testes, it is like taking Viagra. Current research findings!

Nonsense, I cant eat dog meat. A dog is a mans best friend.

The article says it contains energy, fat, protein, Vitamin A, Vitamin C, calcium, iron, thiamine, niacin.

You are salivating! If any of my dogs should disappear, Ill bring the police to your doorstep.

Which ones? The same police who cannot rescue a man who wants to commit suicide. They will rescue a dog?

Just dont go about telling civilized people that here, in Nigeria, we eat dog meat to cure malaria and impotence. Argggh!

You think Oyinbo people dont know? Sit down there.

I hear

You and the things you hear

I hear the Senate is recommending death sentence for kidnappers

Kidnappers. How about rapists? Look, what we need, to save Nigeria, most urgently, is a National Depression Initiative. People are depressed. It is why they say and do stupid things. 

I also hear.

Ok. Enough of these things you hear. I have heard enough today.

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Saraki said the next line of action is the implementation of the document, which he assured will be monitored by the National Assembly.

Controversy and bickering had trailed the 2016 Budget since it was submitted to the National Assembly by the Presidency in December 2015. From allegations of padding, faking, omissions to dodging its passage.

After Buhari signed the budget, Saraki thanked those who worked to make the budget a reality, adding that some the officials lost some weight in the process.

In the process, on a lighter side, I think a lot of officials on the sides of the executive and legislature lost some weight", Saraki said.

Though it was not planned but I think it was a good thing as well because we have officials who are more fit here.

On a serious note, I think we have shown again that despite the challenges, we can work together as a government that has the interest of the people that have put us here at heart.

We should look at the good side more and forge ahead.

The most important part after the signing, of course, is the implementation, to ensure that the benefits of Nigerians who waited are met.

Just yesterday, a man in quarry business told me that just because of the information that the president might sign, there has been activity.

They dont know what is in the budget but activity has picked up, so you can see the interest of our people.

So it is the responsibility of all of us to ensure implementation. It is our role to ensure that we follow the money and ensure that the document signed is fully implemented and Nigerians can benefit.

He assured that the national assembly will monitor the implementation of the budget.

I want to assure Nigerians that from the comment from the mouth of the president our commitment is to see that the budget is implemented, is not just the assent is now the implementation, that is when Nigerians will begin to see the benefits, he said.

Like I said lets focus on the good part and play less on the controversy, that is behind us now and I want to assure Nigerians that the benefit expected from this budget is implemented.
Like most of his movies, Good Home focuses on one of the vices of the society, which has been ignored by a lot of people - Human Trafficking.

The filmmaker drives his message from the point of the role of the supposed entrepreneurs in this societal ill.

The plot of Good Home focuses on the CEO of a trucking company, who is acquitted during a high profile human trafficking case, but when he wants to go legitimate, his dodgy business partner does everything in his power to keep their arrangement going.

The movie which was directed by Edward Uka and produced by Nelson Jombo under the Nelson Jombo Production, stars Seun Akindele, Okey Uzoeshi, Vincent Opurum, Maureen Okpoko, Eric Obinna, Nkechinyere Urum Jombo, Ejike Ibedilo and Laurel JE.

ALSO READ: undefined

Having worked as a co-producer with his award winning sister, Uche Jombo, Nelson Jombo released hi first movieundefinedin 2015, which also touched on some of the vices that pervades the society. Directed by Emmanuel Mang Eme the movie stars Alexx Ekubo, Eddie Watson, Belinda Effah, Daniella Okeke, Laurel JE, Nkechinyere Urom Jombo and others.

Following that, Nelson Jombo, moved on to produce Espionage, which had its plot revolving around the issues of cyber crime, money laundering and murder, which has, overtime, been a major issue in Nigeria, and by extension the world at large.

"Good Home" would be showing exclusively on Iroko TV, Irokoworld, Channel 23, and Channel 211 on Star Times.
You would actually think even every aspiring filmmaker would consider it an important issue, and ensure that the bill never becomes a law, especially, when they have been given an opportunity to part of a review committee.

The Motion Picture Practitioners Council of Nigeria (MOPICON) billwas created over 10 years ago after a group of industry practitioners sat to draft it.

Recently, the Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, announced the inauguration of a Ministerial Committee aimed at fast-tracking the passage into law of the MOPICON Bill.

It trended on Twitter, Facebook and on every social media platform you can think of, but I discovered three group of people involved in the MOPICON drama.

Here we go:

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1. Filmmakers who do not know about MOPICON

My conversation with a filmmaker whose name I won't mention:

Me: What are your thoughts on the controversial MOPICON bill?

Renowned filmmaker: What is that one again?

Me: It's a 49 page document aimed at regulating Nollywood. According to the bill, a person not registered as a member is prohibited from making a movie. Also, as a director and actor, you can not be on two different projects at the same time.

Renowned filmmaker: I am just hearing about it. I will do my homework.

There are without doubt, a huge number of filmmakers like my interviewee, who do not know the meaning of MOPICON - no, they do not even know about the word MOPICON.

I was embarrassed that a filmmaker, who has won reputable awards, didn't know about the controversial bill, which almost every Nollywood practitioner had something to say about on social media.

While MOPICON was trending everywhere, I said to a colleague, "you can bet that some people do not know or understand this thing called MOPICON bill. They just want to be a part of a trending topic, which seemed important."

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2. The 'young' generation of filmmakers who are not exactly interested in this thing called MOPICON.

I have come to see most Nollywood actors as social media activist, who think every problem must be solved via Twitter and Facebook - reminds me of the 2015 and 2016 #OscarsSoWhite trend.

It is one thing to start a campaign via social media, it's another to be more than a social media activist. On April 12, 2016, draft document, and as expected, some 'young filmmakers' were announced.

I personally saw that as the perfect opportunity for any filmmaker to create the change they want, to represent himself and every other person who shares same thought as regards the controversial bill.

I was disappointed when another filmmaker took to his social media page to disassociate himself from the committee. It seemed like someone didn't want to be a part of the end result, 'they' didn't want their name associated with whatever negativity that would come with the bill. The irony is that this filmmaker was one of the numerous protesters who signed the 'stop the MOPICON BILL' petition.

The young generation were given a chance to be represented, to speak and fight for themselves, but no, this talented and smart filmmaker chose his hobby over something as 'serious' as MOPICON.

Most of the other young filmmakers tweeting per second and signing petitions everywhere, would also have turned down the opportunity to be a part of the committee.

The minister asked for a review so the industry can be regulated. I'm not going to talk about how necessary or unnecessary it is, but if you failed to represent people with whom you share same views, if you failed to be part of the change you scream about, then you have no right to complain or flood social media with #NotoMopicon.

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3. The old filmmakers who think it's a battle.

Most people think it's not a battle between the old and young, I think so too, but then, the 'old' filmmakers have made it seem like a battle.

With comments like "All these new upstarts and up and comers in Nollywood; the propagators of the so-called 'New Nollywood," one can conclude that it's a young versus old battle.

I also heard the bill was initially drafted to prevent the Asaba marketers from joining Nollywood. So it might as well be a battle between Nollywood versus Asaba Marketers.

In a recent interview with Hip TV, Yoruba actor Yomi Fash Lanso, saidhe is yet to decide what Nollywood stands for in Nigeria. He further stated that he doesn't see himself as a Nollywood actor, but as a Nigerian actor.

There are lots of Nigerians who feature in Nollywood films, but do not consider themselves Nollywood actors. There are those who think they have been in the industry for two decades and should have an edge or certain control over the young filmmakers. There are also those who tweeted about the MOPICON bill everyday, but know nothing about it - it's a show business, and you have to act like you know.

During his inauguration speech, Lai Mohammed said the 'level of disunity in the industry has not allowed the industry to speak with one voice, and I totally agree with him.

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Maybe Nollywood doesn't need MOPICON, but it needs a high level of organisation.
The APC National Chairman, John Odigie-Oyegun, who spoke to newsmen after a meeting, said that the party has made progress in the reconciliation of the two politicians.

Gentlemen of the press, we have been holding a meeting, dealing with the crisis we have in our party in Kano State and this is not the first meeting we are holding in respect of that, Odigie-Oyegun said.

We discussed the issue of the crisis we have in Kano and so far, I can say we have made a tremendous progress.

From the conclusion of todays interaction with both the governor and the former governor, they both have agreed to work together in the interest of the people and their party.

Theyll put behind whatever differences that might have opened the window for discord and I can assure that for the party in Kano.

We have better days now that the two leaders have agreed to embrace peace and that is all we have to tell you now, the chairman said.

He said the settlement of the discord between both leaders would trickle down to the people at the state level until peace is achieved all over the state.
The group, called "Northern Elders Forum," also called for the postponement of the partys national convention scheduled to hold Port Harcourt, Rivers State.

At meeting a meeting of the group, led by former Minister of Information, Prof. Jerry Gana, in Abuja on Wednesday, May 4, it said the postponement is necessary in order to carry our reconciliation among aggrieved members.

Earlier, PDP Leaders led by a former Niger State governor, Dr. Muazu Babangida Aliyu had called for the postponement of the convention due to observed flaws in the ongoing congresses across the states.

Gana condemned what he described as the level of impunity and imposition in the party, noting that for the PDP to return to the vision of its original founders it must purge itself of these vices.

The Elders also faulted the proposed constitutional amendment, noting that it violated the PDP constitution.

The PDP National Executive Committee is meeting next Wednesday to debate on the proposed constitutional amendment, report said.

Since assuming office as chairman, Sheriff had proposed various amendment into the partys constitution, including a clause into the activities of the Board of Trustees of the party which forbids its members from meeting without the knowledge of the national chairman.
Anyanwu also said that a bullet should be put in her head if shes found guilty of taking the money, according to Vanguard.

I had just joined the PDP and those who re-joined were not seen as the mainstream PDP and they had this thing about me being a journalist and whenever I came, they just shrunk. They just pulled away, she said.

I was not part of them and I was not assigned to share money and I was not there when they took their money and I did not go where they took their money and I did not get any money and that is the truth.

It is nonsense to be associating me with this. I wont shut up and allow people damage my reputation. Nobody is going to tell me that I ate what I didnt see or saw what I didnt see or touched what I didnt touch. I wont accept that nonsense.

I believe that Udenwa and their major players who were in charge of those things had their answers. If anybody claims that he saw me where they were distributing their money and saw me touch their money, let him look me in the eye and say so.

If they are able to prove that I was part of the whole thing or touched their money, that I was part of sharing the money or spending their money, put a bullet on my head. It is ridiculous, she added.

Anyanwu was alleged to have received N700 million out of the funds taken by Diezani.

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Shettima is said to have made the statement on Wednesday, May 4, 2016, during the distribution of relief materials in Maiduguri, the state capital, ThisDay reports.

The politicians who left us to our troubles in the last five years only to come back when peace has returned to the state to tell us that Jonathans administration was better than the present should be stoned just like the Satan is stoned at the Kaaba, the governor said.

Shettima had earlier said that Jonathan treated residents of Borno state like distant cousins during his tenure.

I dont really know what would have happened to us if President Buhari did not come on board. The previous administration branded us as distant cousins. We were left to our fate, he said at the 1st Annual Dialogue on Rebuilding Borno held on Tuesday, April 19, 2016 in Abuja.

He also said that Jonathan did not call him to discuss the 2014 Chibok abductionuntil 19 days after the girls had been taken.

In our own case, Your Excellency, after the Chibok abduction of over 200 schoolgirls in April, 2014, it took 19 days for me to receive a call from the Presidency, Shettima said while receiving former president, Olusegun Obasanjo at the Government House in Maiduguri.

Obasanjo had earlier criticized Jonathan for failing to act immediately the girls were kidnapped.

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1. When you ask your mum where you should put an item.

2. When your mum calls you from outside to pick her phone that is next to her leg.

3. When you mum tells you not to disgrace the family name

4. When you pronounce 'respect' as 'respekk'

5. When there is a kissing scene, you know you got to change the station.

6. When service is over, but your mum keeps greeting everyone

7. Your mom always keeps the tips.

8. When they ask you to bring a spoon but you bring a fork

9. Your parents want you to study all year long

10. Your only career choice

11. This quote goes with you forever

12. When they obtain a uniform your children's children can wear
The legislative process doesnt work where a response can be given by just a few days, he said, so were going to move at the speed that were going to move at to look at what our options are at this point.
Ahmet Davutoglu announced on Thursday he was stepping down as leader of Turkey's ruling AK Party and therefore as prime minister, raising questions about the migrant deal with the EU.

"The chancellor (Angela Merkel) has worked very well with Turkish Prime Minister Davutoglu and all Turkish officials, and we expect this good and constructive cooperation to continue with a new Turkish prime minister," deputy German government spokesman Georg Streiter said.
His comments come a day after he announced he would run for president of Congo in November, at an election to choose a successor to incumbent Joseph Kabila who is due to step down at the end of his two-term mandate.

Tensions are high ahead of the election in part because Kabila has not declared his intentions. Critics say he intends to remain in power after his mandate ends, leading a country that has not had a peaceful transition of power since independence.

Justice Minister Alexis Thambwe Mwamba said authorities had proof Katumbi was involved in recruiting mercenaries including several retired American soldiers. A government spokesman said four of Katumbi's bodyguards were arrested because they were not authorized to work in the country.

"I maintain my candidacy (for the presidency) and will stay true to my peaceful struggle for the state and the law," he told Reuters.

The U.S. Embassy in the capital Kinshasa said on its Facebook page it was deeply concerned about Mwamba's accusations and believed them to be false.

It said a U.S. citizen working in Katanga province as a security advisor for a private U.S. company that consults around the world was arrested on April 24, but was unarmed and that allegations he was involved in mercenary activity are false.

Katumbi governed Katanga, Congo's southeastern copper-mining heartland, from 2007 until last September when he quit Kabila's ruling party, accusing it of plotting to keep the president in power beyond the two-term limit.
"The Northern Territories (Kurile) issue can't be resolved without direct talks between leaders," he added. "We have had more than 70 years of the post war era and still a peace treaty has not been concluded. This is anomalous."

He said a treaty was needed to realize the full potential of Japan's relationship with Russia.
Finding Peace of Mind: Discover These Five Places in Europe to Unwind
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.
By popular demand, Congressman Cresent Hardy returns to Pahrump today for a community barbecue consisting of chicken and a special Dutch oven preparation.

By popular demand, Congressman Cresent Hardy returns to Pahrump today for a community barbecue consisting of chicken and a special Dutch oven preparation.

The congressman is setting up shop at the Pahrump Senior Center today at 11:30 a.m.

Hardy campaign manager Ross Hemminger said Hardy wants to make good on a promise he made last year when he prepared his first community barbecue at the senior center.

He had promised the folks at the senior center he would come back if they wanted him to do another barbecue for them, which he is doing today, he said. It was very well received and well-liked by all of the attendees. So we decided to do it again.

Hardy is known for his Dutch oven preparations as well as his barbecued chicken recipe.

Hemminger said the entire community is welcome to attend the free event.

Its an event that is generally for the seniors and veterans, but anyone is absolutely welcome to come by, he said. We want everyone to bring their appetite as well as any questions for the congressman because he will be happy to discuss their concerns.

As the 2016 general election approaches, Hemminger said the congressman is focused on several important issues relating to residents in the Pahrump Valley.

I think everybody knows about the new Veterans Administration facility, and if he had to name one of the best moments during his time in Congress, I think he would probably tell you that its the Veterans Administration facility. I dont want to speak for him, but thats the impression that I have gotten.

Additionally, Hemminger said the congressman has a special affinity to rural communities such as Pahrump.

Congressman Hardy really enjoys visiting the community of Pahrump and he loves Nye County, he said. It has a special place in his heart and he is very proud of the work that he has done as a congressman.

The Pahrump Senior Center is located at 1370 W. Basin Ave.
The State Route 160 widening project is set to have the first portion of extended lanes open up next month.

The State Route 160 widening project is set to have the first portion of extended lanes open up next month.

An area at the start on the Las Vegas side of the project where homes are present will have its current two lanes expanded to four lanes open to motorists in June.

The department, in order to minimize commuter inconvenience, is prioritizing completion of the projects first mile west from the Red Rock Canyon Road junction due to the numerous homes and driveways tying into State Route 160, said Tony Illia, NDOT spokesperson. Paving work consequently is occurring on one half of the road while traffic is being shifted to the other side. As a result, the first mile of the fully-widened four-lane highway will open to the public during the first week of June.

The portion of the highway will be the only one opened by itself, as the rest of the five-mile project will be opened after the entire project is complete.

The remaining four miles will be built and widened together, Illia said.

Improvements in the $16.5 million project, which runs from mile marker 10.89 (just past the Red Rock Canyon Road junction) and mile marker 16.63, include flattening side slope shoulders for safer vehicle turnouts, while installing new drainage pipe and tortoise fencing. Other work consists of placing barriers and guardrails as well as hydro-seeding 38 acres.

The construction process will involve moving enough dirt to fill 1,800 average-sized swimming pools and enough asphalt to pave 8,000 driveways.

The stretch of road has seen its share of vehicle crashes, with many of those resulting in fatalities.

Just last month 77-year-old Richard Caffejian, Pahrump, died after his pickup truck crossed over into oncoming lanes on SR-160 in Mountain Springs, colliding head-on with a Hyundai SUV. Two women in the SUV were also injured as result of the crash.

The entire project is scheduled for completion in early 2017.
TONOPAH  Health care services are set to return to the part of the former Nye Regional Medical Center campus on June 1, nine months after the Tonopah hospital shut its doors.

TONOPAH  Health care services are set to return to the part of the former Nye Regional Medical Center campus on June 1, nine months after the Tonopah hospital shut its doors.

Renown Medical Group of Reno plans to open a telemedicine clinic on part of the former hospital campus that formerly housed a clinic.

This means that we can now start beginning to re-establish health care services here in Tonopah, Rich Conley of Renown Health said Tuesday in presenting a signed lease agreement to the Nye County Commission.

To start, well be operating four days a week, Monday through Thursday, he told the commission. Well be offering access to primary care and specialty care through telehealth technology.

The nearest hospital to Tonopah is more than 100 miles away in Hawthorne or Bishop, California. The clinic at 825 S. Main St. will not have an emergency room. For emergency services or any serious injuries, residents are encouraged to call 911, Conley said.

As the clinic prepares for its June opening, an open house is planned there from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. on May 20.

Tonopah native Jessica Thompson, who worked in a number of roles at Nye Regional, has been named director of group practice operations, Conley said.

She will be helping to review any symptoms and connect you with a primary care, specialty care provider from Reno, using secure videoconferencing technology, he said. That provider can see and hear everything Jessica sees and hears whether its heart sounds, lung sounds or visualizing a cut on your own arm. A variety of services will be offered.

A closer look

What will this mean for Tonopah residents? asked Conley, Renowns director of outpatient radiology.

Using this technology means you can receive care here in Tonopah with less stress and few travel costs, he said. You can visit the medical group for both primary care, as well as more than 30 specialities, including neurology, gastroenterology, endocrinology, behavioral health. There will be a large list of services that will be available right here.

In addition to telemedicine in Tonopah, Renown plans to work to provide on-site lab testing. These include strep, flu and pregnancy tests. Well also have X-ray services on site, and well look to expand our imaging capabilities in the very near future.

We also hope to expand our lab services, hopefully within the next 45 to 60 days, Conley added. Were working with the state of Nevada to get proper licensing in place.

Renown will continue to search and recruit for on-site medical providers, such as a physician or nurse practioner, he said. We really wanted to get the services up and running and get a foundation for a sustainable model of care here in Tonopah, he said.

Insurance and open house

Any insurance accepted by Renown in Reno would be accepted by its Tonopah clinic, officials said in an interview.

Renown has a list of contracted providers, Conley said.

If people have other types of insurance products, we recommend them contacting their insurance company directly to see what type of coverage they could receive here in Tonopah, he said.

The plans vary widely by coverages and contracts, Conley said. We wont turn anyone away. Well see all patients regardless of insurance product, but we would encourage them (patients) to work with their individual carriers.

The May 20 open house is a chance to get an in-person look at whats planned in the clinic.

This will give everybody a chance to kind of learn more about telehealth, how it works, as well as giving an opportunity to meet your care team, Conley told commissioners. Basically, we look forward to working with the residents of Tonopah and the community here and truly appreciate the partnership that we have created here.

In her public comments, Commissioner Lorinda Wichman, who has worked to secure medical services for Tonopah, thanked Renown.

She said she looked forward to it being a long constant in the Tonopah community, her comments shortened by applause about the agreement.

Contact reporter David Jacobs at djacobs@tonopahtimes.com
A road that was badly damaged by last falls record rainfall in Death Valley is set to be repaired.

A road that was badly damaged by last falls record rainfall in Death Valley is set to be repaired.

Construction on Badwater Road, the route from southern Death Valley to Shoshone, California will begin Monday, but will remain closed until the construction is complete, which is tentatively set for July 14.

Storms in October resulted in severe flash flooding in Death Valley National Park. Road crews have cleared debris off roads and reopened hundreds of miles of roads since the rain event.

Badwater Road is currently open for 47 miles from CA-190 past Badwater to the unpaved Harry Wade Road.

The Jubilee Pass section of Badwater Road is closed from Harry Wade Road, milepost 47, to milepost 56. Through traffic is not possible from Shoshone, California to southern Death Valley during the closure.

This section of road has been closed since the storms in October and will remain closed during the construction phase due to safety concerns.

With the extreme summer heat the area sees, some construction work may take place at night. Due to the possibility of nighttime work, residents of Shoshone could see and hear construction trucks at any hour of the day.

Octobers storms caused extensive damage to the Jubilee Pass section of Badwater Road and washed away extensive sections of the roadway. The Federal Highway Administration is funding the repairs and William Kanayan Construction is the general contractor performing the repairs.

Scottys Castle was the other area of the park that was most affected by the fall storms. A contract to connect a temporary water line from the spring to the structures fire suppression system is in the works.

Southern California Edison has replaced power poles, while repairs to the electrical distribution system at Scottys Castle are scheduled to begin soon.

Other work that needs to be done includes redesigning and reconstructing eight miles of road, replacing portions of the sewer system, permanent water line replacement and repairs to multiple historic structures.

Water entered the annex wing of Scottys Castle and two other historic structures again during a storm on April 27, displaying the importance of the repairs.

Park officials hope to have Scottys Castle fully repaired and reopened by 2019.

Contact reporter Mick Akers at makers@pvtimes.com. Follow @mickakers on Twitter.
Im absolutely lovin all the head-scratchin, navel-gazin angst the expert political pundits, professional inside-the-beltway consultants, and the media talking heads are suffering over Donald Trump winning the Republican nomination for president.

Im absolutely lovin all the head-scratchin, navel-gazin angst the expert political pundits, professional inside-the-beltway consultants, and the media talking heads are suffering over Donald Trump winning the Republican nomination for president.

Who could possibly have seen this coming? they ask with deer-in-the-headlights incredulity.

Actually, many of us down at ground zero in the grassroots saw it coming a mile away. In fact, heres what I wrote way back on July 28th of last year

Folks, a political campaign is a sales and marketing campaign. And no matter what else you think about Donald Trump, he is a MASTER at sales and marketing. And hes getting better on the stump everysingleday. Write him off as the GOP nominee at your peril.

I havent voted *for* a Republican presidential candidate since Ronald Reagan in 1984.

Instead, Ive been forced to hold my nose and vote against the Democrats nominees thanks to the Republican Party establishment shoving, in succession, George Read My Lips Bush, Bob Dole, George Compassionate Conservative Bush, John McCain and Mitt Romney down our throats.

But this time the foots on the other shoe.

This time the establishment lost. As such, tis they who will swallow the bitter taste of the lesser-of-two-evils choice grassroots conservatives have had to make for the last 32 years.

But make no mistake. The problem grassroots conservatives have with the establishment GOP hasnt been limited to the partys presidential nominees.

At the congressional level you can go all the way back to 1995 when Newt Gingrich and the new Republican House majority RIGHTLY shut down the bloated federal government only to see Bob Dole and the Senate moderates open it back up. Its been downhill ever since.

Indeed, the main roadblock to true conservative reform and governance has been establishment GOP leaders more often than Democrats. Proof positive was the failure to advance a bold conservative agenda after the 2004 elections in which Republicans won the White House as well as full control of the House and Senate.

And what did the GOP establishment give us? A bridge to nowhere in Alaska!

Bringing this point closer to home here in Nevada, in 2014 voters elected a Republican governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, secretary of state, treasurer and controller, as well as a Republican majority in both the Senate and Assembly.

And what did the GOP establishment give us? The largest tax hike in state history!

Indeed, the true enemy of conservative governance has been weak-kneed, go-along-to-get-along moderate Republicans in Name Only (RINOs). And twenty years of their sell-outs, betrayals and obstruction are why so many conservatives in 2016 are hitching their wagon to a man everyone knows isnt a movement conservative, but who they believe will smash the stranglehold the establishmentarians have on the party.

The Trump Train is leaving the station. All, aboarrrrd!

Chuck Muth is president of Citizen Outreach and publisher of NevadaNewsandViews.com. You can reach Chuck at ChuckMuth.com
Dev Bastola has dropped plans to bring a Taco John's to his new Riverview Plaza strip mall and replaced them with a local flavor  La Flama.

The Moline-based La Flama will expand to the west Davenport retail center developed by Bastola, owner of the Sara Mini Mart and Shell Station across the street.

"I had three other Mexican restaurants looking at it; they all liked it," he said.

La Flama will take over its location in June and hopefully finish its buildout by July, Bastola added. The restaurant will have a drive-thru that already was built into the north side of the building at 114 Myrtle St.

The latest tenant leaves Riverview Plaza with two vacant storefronts. "I don't want it to be all food, or I'll have a parking problem," said Bastola, who invested $2 million into redeveloping the site of the former Davenport Ice House.

Bastola, who has owned the gas station since 1999 when he arrived from Nepal, said he hopes his project attracts others to downtown's west side. "When people see the success, other businesses will follow," he said.

La Flama opened in January 2004 in downtown Moline and also operates La Flama on Wheels.

Bastola also is building a new Sara Mini Mart and Shell Station on downtown Bettendorf's State Street. He hopes it can open in about three months.

Boetje's earns mustard crown

Speaking of spicy, the Quad-Cities' own Boetje's mustard was again a standout in the World-Wide Mustard Competition.

Boetje's "Dutch" Stone Ground Mustard, produced in a small plant in west Rock Island, was named the Grand Champion in the 2016 contest. In addition, Boetje's won the Gold Medal in the whole grain category becoming the first whole-grain Gold Medalist to win the Grand Champion award, said Barry Levenson, curator of the National Mustard Museum, which has coordinated the competition since 1995.

Boetje's is now owned by Will Kropp, who continues to make the mustard just as founder Fred Boetje did. Originated in 1889, the concoction of mustard seed, water, vinegar, sugar and salt has been a Quad-City favorite for generations.

"Texture was obviously key to Boetje's success," Levenson said. "But what impressed the judges most was the bold bright flavor of the mustard, often lacking in the whole grain mustards."

The competition drew 300 entries in 18 flavor categories with contestants around the globe. The nonprofit National Mustard Museum is home of the world's largest collection of mustards (more than 5,800). It is located in Middleton, Wis.

Iowa's Best Burger is in Adair

From the follow-up file, it turns out that Iowa's Best Burger is at The Chuckwagon Restaurant in Adair, or so say the Iowa Cattlemen's Association and Iowa Beef Industry Council.

Hopefully, Quad-Citians were rooting for PerXactly Bar & Grill in Maquoketa, which represented our region as one of the final Top Ten in the 2016 competition.

The Chuckwagon is owned by lifelong Adair resident Kim Reha, who purchased the restaurant eight years ago at age 22. Its burgers are 6-ounce, hand-pattied certified angus beef and grilled on a flat-top grill using Reha's own house seasoning.

Crowning the 2016 winner, Katie Olthoff, the beef council's communications director, said "They do an outstanding job of showcasing the great beef product with each of their great-tasting burgers on behalf of Iowa's beef farmers.''

This year, Iowans submitted more than 6,000 votes to nominate 311 restaurants in February and March. The Top Ten were then independently visited and judged by a panel, who based their votes on the hamburgers taste, appearance, and proper serving temperature (160 degrees).
The co-owner and manager of a Bettendorf jewelry store have been arrested on charges that they possessed jewelry that they knew was stolen.

Jeffrey Taylor Hughes, 45, of Long Grove, and Shane Michael Tague, 40, of Davenport, each face one charge of first-degree theft, a Class C felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison.

Both were booked into the Scott County Jail on Wednesday and were released a short time later after posting $2,000. They will be back in court Tuesday.

Hughes is the co-owner and Tague is the store manager of Premier Jewelry & Loan, 875 Middle Road, according to arrest affidavits filed by the Bettendorf Police Department.

According to the affidavits:

In February, the two purchased stolen jewelry, valued at approximately $16,000, from Trevor Scott Moss, 21, who had brought it to the store to pawn. They claimed all the jewelry, except a large carat diamond, had been destroyed as scrap gold.

Despite numerous requests from the victim and police, Tague and Hughes refused to say where the diamond had gone. They eventually told police that it had been recut and sold to a diamond wholesaler, but they refused to say which one and who bought it.

Police obtained a search warrant for the Premier and Revell Jewelers, which also is co-owned by Hughes, to search for the stolen jewelry and records relating the jewelry.

Records show that the diamond was sent by Hughes from Revell Jewelers to Hamburg, N.Y., to be recut. It was then shipped back to Hughes.

The recut diamond was then shipped by Hughes to a New York City company for grading. The diamond was still at the company at the time police executed the search warrant.

Hughes admitted that the recut diamond still belonged to Revell Jewelers and himself even though it was in New York for grading. Hughes turned the diamond over to police when it arrived back at Revell Jewelers.

Tague and Hughes maintained that the rest of the stolen jewelry already had been scrapped.

Records show that the recut diamond was received back at Revell Jewelers on Feb. 13 and was shipped for grading three days later.

Police learned the recut diamond had been at Revell Jewelers when the victim went to Premier to try to recover her stolen jewelry and was told that the diamond was no longer in their possession.

Moss was charged earlier this year with first-degree theft and two counts of second-degree theft. He will be back in court Aug. 24 for a pretrial conference.
The Scott County Board of Supervisors on Thursday unanimously approved the appointment of Mahesh C. Sharma as the countys new administrator.

Sharma, city administrator in Raytown, Mo., is expected to take over for County Administrator Dee Bruemmer on July 5. Bruemmer will retire on June 3.

Supervisors praised Sharmas passion for public service.

He comes to us from the Kansas City suburbs, so he understands the multi-state metropolitan concept, Supervisor Carol Earnhardt said. Hes demonstrated his ability to work with state and federal legislators, and this will be beneficial in promoting our region.

Supervisor Brinson Kinzer noted the new county administrators background in public works, a city department that Sharma led prior to his appointment as Raytown city administrator.

His problem-solving skills and education are impressive, Kinzer said. He can take on the responsibilities.

Sharma holds undergraduate and graduate level degrees in civil engineering and a masters degree in public administration. He currently manages a staff of 224 and an annual budget of $30 million.

In other business, supervisors approved on third and final reading an ordinance allowing for the creation of industrial floating zone districts in rural Scott County on a 3-2 vote.

Wold Architects and Engineers were awarded the contract to relocate the department of Planning & Development to the county administration building and expand the Juvenile Detention Center.
MUSCATINE, Iowa  Colorado Elementary School students traded in their classrooms for the blue skies, sunshine and expansive greenspace of Discovery Park on Thursday.

But make no mistake about it. There was plenty of learning going on.

From hands-on lessons on the water cycle and mammals native to Iowa to making pinecone bird feeders for the winged creatures who visit the park, some 275 students from preschool through fifth grade enjoyed the opportunity to get an education in the great outdoors.

Even the littlest students were involved, making "butterflies" from bow-tie pasta that they colored and pasted onto paper.

Small groups of students moved from one learning station to another, some outdoors and some inside the Environmental Learning Center.

Outside, naturalist Michelle Berns taught students the art of throwing an atlatl (pronounced attel-attel), a primitive weapon that predated the bow and arrow and was used for hunting and fighting. The atlatls used by the children had no points on the end, and there were "oohs" and "aahs" for the ones that sailed farther.

"It's really fun to do these," said fifth-grader Kyle Stoltenberg.

Just a short walk away, retired Colorado teacher Pat Downey led an interactive demonstration on the water cycle. Children went from station to station picking up beads whose colors represented clouds, plants, mountains and the ocean, among other elements in the continuous movement of water. The beads they collected were strung into a bracelet that they could take home.

Downey has been participating in the annual trek to Discovery Park since her retirement.

"I feel we don't think of Muscatine as an urban district," she said. "It's so important for the kids to get outside. They're moving and they're learning."

Fifth-grader Heath Halling said he enjoyed being with his friends for the "fun activities."

Colorado science teacher Karen Hartman said she is a big proponent of teaching students to take care of the environment.

"That starts with loving the environment," she said. "A lot of children just spend too much time inside."

While Hartman is credited with a lead role in organizing the outdoors day for Colorado schoolchildren, she is quick to credit other teachers and students who volunteer to help and make the day a success.

Assisting on Thursday were students from the Freshman Academy and East Campus. They helped develop lessons for the day and supervised at several of the stations.

Bret Woodward, a math teacher at East Campus, said the younger students look up to their teen "teachers."

"They can be such good influences," he said.

Inside the Environmental Learning Center, Abby Steele, a park ranger for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, led a spirited lesson in identifying mammals native to Iowa by looking just at their footprints, their skulls and their scat. Well, a rubber facsimile of scat.

"What's scat?" Steele asked.

"Animal poop!" several students shouted back.

When she brought out actual pelts from the animals, the students' guesses of squirrel and raccoon were confirmed.
Now that the contours of the general election are reasonably predictable, it is time to start thinking about the tripartite institutional reckoning that should come in November's aftermath -- for the media, Republicans and Democrats.

For the media, the assessment is simple, and unsparing: We underperformed our constitutionally protected role. Sure, every campaign cycle features hand-wringing over the primacy of horse race over substance.

This one feels demonstrably worse. Mesmerized by the bright, shiny object that is Donald Trump, we collectively failed to plumb his gaping lack of policy knowledge and proposals. Not completely, just not enough, and way too late. And not just his: Distracted by Trump, we let the whole field off the hook.

The purely commercial explanation for this dereliction would be that the media, television in particular, didn't want to kill the golden goose of traffic. That's too simplistic -- and too sinister.

I think we also believed that exposing Trump's outrage du jour was doing our job, and would, eventually, sink him. Trump's bombastic imperviousness to serious questioning -- television hosts and debate questioners gamely tried, only to see him talk out the clock -- contributed as well.

The resulting paradox was that, until recently, Trump was a candidate who made himself more constantly available than any in modern memory, yet evaded serious questioning.

Would voters have cared, particularly those tempted by Trump? Perhaps not -- they aren't supporting him for his tax plan. But that isn't the test. Our role is, or should be, to provide the information essential for voters to make an informed decision. We fell short.

Republicans' November reckoning could be even uglier. The party has lost the popular vote in five of the last six presidential elections. Given Democrats' inherent Electoral College advantage and Trump's unpopularity, Republicans appear headed to lose the White House again, along, perhaps, with control of the Senate. The party faces fundamental, interconnected decisions about what ideological path to embrace, how to attract voters in a changing America, and how to manage the angry, populist, anti-establishment forces unleashed by Trump.

To look back at the GOP's post-2012 autopsy report is to conclude that Democrats read the document and sent Trump as a Manchurian candidate to further alienate voters.

"Public perception of the party is at record lows," the report concluded. "Young voters are increasingly rolling their eyes at what the party represents, and many minorities wrongly think that Republicans do not like them or want them in the country."

Trump makes that bad situation worse, but he is not a cause of the party's problems; he is a symptom of them. The risk embedded in a Trump nomination -- assuming a Trump loss -- is that Republicans will derive the wrong lesson. The party's most conservative members will argue that Trump's failure was a matter of insufficient orthodoxy, and that the one true path to electoral success would have been to nominate a Ted Cruz-like true believer.

If Republicans were doomed -- or, more accurately, doomed themselves -- to lose in 2016, it would have been better for them to lose with Cruz. That would at least have had the cleansing, Goldwateresque effect of proving the conservative argument wrong and returning power to the suppressed voices of reason within the party. Now, that fight seems destined to be rerun in 2020.

Democrats have their own rethinking to do, even if they retain the White House.

Beneath the presidential level, it is in dire shape. Since 2008, Democrats have lost 69 House seats, 13 Senate seats, 12 governorships and 900-plus seats in state legislatures. That drains the party of legislative power and empties its bench.

Meantime, Clinton would take office with historically high negative ratings and be the first Democrat since Grover Cleveland in 1885 to be elected to a first term without the partys complete control of Congress. Perhaps chastened Republicans will feel a new urge to conciliation and productivity, but the experience of the Obama presidency suggests a rockier path.

Finally, mirroring the Republicans with Trump, Democrats need to grapple with their ideological future and the restive forces of economic anxiety and anti-establishment anger given voice by Bernie Sanders. His presence in the race has been no boon to Clinton, but it did jump-start a necessary, unfinished debate over the party's path ahead, and what will be the contours of a post-Bill Clinton, post-Obama Democratic party.

November is not the conclusion of an argument. It is, or should be, the beginning of a self-examination by all the players in this dispiriting campaign.
SPRINGFIELD  Democrats and Republicans in the Illinois Senate think they have found a successful formula for ending nearly yearlong partisan standoffs over state spending.

For the second time in as many weeks, senators from both sides of the aisle came together Thursday to approve funding for public universities, community colleges and grants to low-income students, all of which had been deprived of state money since the fiscal year began July 1 without a budget in place.

The winning formula: spending bills that aren't tied to items on Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner's pro-business, union-weakening "turnaround agenda" but are tied to specific revenue sources.

"It's worked in the Senate, and I strongly encourage the House to do the same as we have done," said Sen. Pat McGuire, D-Joliet, chairman of the Senate Higher Education Committee, "because it's the best thing to do  the best way to move forward, obviously, in a bipartisan manner  for all the people of Illinois."

The measure approved Thursday would spend $454 million to bring eight state university systems up to 60 percent funding, the same level that Chicago State University received in a measure Rauner signed into law last week. That part of the plan was approved on a 55-2 vote.

The spending would be covered by letting the state off the hook for repaying money borrowed from special funds to plug holes in last year's budget. That portion passed on a 54-3 vote.

McGuire's comments came at a news conference shortly after the votes. He was joined by a fellow Democrat, Sen. Gary Forby of Benton, and Republican Sens. Jason Barickman of Bloomington, Chapin Rose of Mahomet, Dave Luechtefeld of Okawville and Karen McConnaughay of St. Charles.

Barickman, who represents Illinois State University, called the legislation "yet another small step forward, but an important one."

"We're demonstrating an ability to work together in a bipartisan manner," he said. "I think there's a blueprint here for how we can continue to work together on all the various things that are important to our state and ultimately get a budget passed for this next fiscal year."

Forby, whose district includes a portion of Southern Illinois University's Carbondale campus, acknowledged that this could be the last state funding universities see for the current year.

"But we're not going to give up on it," he said.

Approval of the measure came a day after Eastern Illinois University President David Glassman told a House committee that the $12.5 million his school is receiving from the $600 million stopgap measure Rauner signed last week won't be enough to get the school through the summer.

Glassman told committee members that he'll likely have to cut more positions on top of the 363 jobs that have been eliminated since last summer.

The initial stopgap measure funded Eastern Illinois and seven other state universities, aside from Chicago State, at 31 percent of last year's levels. If the House approves the new Senate measure and Rauner signs it, Eastern Illinois would receive an additional $11.7 million. Southern Illinois would receive $53.8 million, and Illinois State would receive $19.6 million. Community colleges, which received 27 percent of their funding in the previous bill, would also be brought up to 60 percent funding.

The Senate also is waiting for the House to take action on a measure it approved two weeks ago on 55-0 vote that would authorize spending $441 million on social service programs that have been deprived of funding amid the budget impasse. Like the money in the earlier higher education stopgap plan, the social services money would come from a dedicated state fund.

The Senate's newfound bipartisan spirit hasn't extended to a Democratic proposal to overhaul the way the state distributes money to local school districts.

Sen. Andy Manar, D-Bunker Hill, didn't call his measure for a vote Thursday following strong criticism from Republicans a day earlier upon the release of the Illinois State Board of Education's district-by-district analysis of the plan.

John Patterson, a spokesman for Senate President John Cullerton, D-Chicago, said leadership wanted to give members more time to review what it would mean for the school districts they represent.
SPRINGFIELD  Voters may get the chance to have their say on two proposed changes to the Illinois Constitution when they head to the polls in November.

Supporters of a citizen-driven initiative that would take the power to draw legislative district boundaries out of the hands of the General Assembly on Friday delivered petitions with more than 570,000 signatures to the Illinois State Board of Elections. A day earlier, the Illinois Senate followed the House's lead in approving a proposed amendment that would protect state transportation funds from being spent on other expenses.

The nonpartisan group Independent Maps has been working for the past two years to win support for an amendment that would allow an independent commission to redraw the state's legislative map once a decade following the U.S. census. A previous attempt was blocked from the ballot in 2014 after a judge ruled that the proposal went beyond the scope allowed for a petition-driven amendment.

Denis FitzSimons, chairman of Independent Maps, said the number of signatures supporters collected is "totally indicative of how much Illinois voters want reform, how much they want their votes to count."

The current system allows the party that controls the Legislature at the time of redistricting to carve up the state to its own political benefit and discourages challengers from taking on incumbents, FitzSimons said, noting that 60 percent of seats in the General Assembly went uncontested in 2014 and 67 percent are uncontested so far in 2016.

"The maps are drawn by politicians for politicians," he said.

While redistricting reform is a major component of Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner's "turnaround agenda," FitzSimons pointed out that the Independent Maps organization includes prominent Democrats, including former Lt. Gov. Sheila Simon and William Daley, former chief of staff to President Barack Obama, as well as Republicans.

Critics of the proposal say it won't do enough to protect the voting power of minority communities.

In response to those concerns and others, each chamber of the General Assembly attempted to advance its own redistricting amendment.

Rep. Jack Franks, D-Marengo, introduced a plan that also would have put the remapping process in the hands of an independent commission. It also would have prevented members of the commission from serving in the Legislature for 10 years. The citizen group tried that in its 2014 proposal, which is what the judge ruled went beyond the allowed scope.

The House approved Franks' proposal on a 98-4 vote, well above the three-fifths majority needed for a constitutional amendment. However, a Senate subcommittee killed the plan Wednesday, with Democratic Sens. Toi Hutchinson of Olympia Fields and Kwame Raoul of Chicago, both members of the black caucus, voting against it. Sen. Jason Barickman, R-Bloomington, cast the lone vote in favor.

The Senate had earlier approved a redistricting proposal, sponsored by Raoul, that would have left the process in the hands of the Legislature. The House never took action on it.

FitzSimons said his group's plan includes strong protections for minority voters, and he noted that its board has numerous black and Latino members.

The elections board will soon begin reviewing a random sample of the petitions, which the group wheeled into the board's office in a 36-foot-long, 1,800-pound box, to make sure they have enough valid signatures. At least 290,216 registered Illinois voters must have signed in order for the question to appear on the ballot.

Steve Sandvoss, the board's executive director, said the review should take about two weeks.

Members of the public also have the right to challenge the validity of the signatures as well as the constitutionality of the proposal itself, which, based on past attempts, is highly likely.

Barring successful challenges, voters will get to weigh in on that issue and on the amendment creating a so-called "lockbox" for state transportation funds. That proposal passed both chambers of the General Assembly with overwhelming bipartisan support.

Supporters say Illinois residents should have confidence that the taxes and fees they pay for things such as gasoline and license plates will be used to maintain the state's transportation infrastructure.

To take effect, each proposed amendment will require the support of either a majority of those casting ballots in the election or 60 percent of those voting on that specific question.
JOHNSTON  Embracing his role as Iowas highest-ranked elected Democrat, U.S. Rep. Dave Loebsack said Friday he will do what he can to help fellow Democrats win elections in this falls congressional and Statehouse races.

Loebsack, who has represented portions of eastern Iowa in Congress since 2007, also declined to rule out a run for governor in 2018.

Loebsack made the comments Friday during taping of an episode of Iowa Press that will air next weekend on Iowa Public Television.

The 2014 elections rendered Loebsack the last Democrat standing in Iowas six-member congressional delegation. He said Friday that in addition to focusing on his own re-election, he will attempt to help Democrats win what are projected to be competitive races in the two congressional districts neighboring his and in competitive races for state Capitol seats as well.

And although he said hes not considering it, he also declined to rule out running for governor in 2018 when asked.

Thats pretty far off, Loebsack said. Im not really thinking about that.

Loebsack added, however, that he thinks its important Democrats are active and do well in 2016 in order to set the stage for the gubernatorial race in 2018, because longtime Gov. Terry Branstad may retire at the end of this term.

When pressed that he did not rule out a run for governor, Loebsack said, Im not considering it, for sure. Im just running for re-election. Thats my job.

Showing a focus on the state Capitol, Loebsack said he also plans to help Statehouse candidates, including one in his district who will face one of the states most critical re-election campaigns.

Both parties likely will focus resources on the state Senate district in Scott and Muscatine counties, where Democratic incumbent Chris Brase of Muscatine will face Republican challenger and former state legislator Mark Lofgren.

That race in a politically balanced district will go a long way toward deciding party control of the Iowa Senate; Democrats go into the election with a razor-thin 26-24 advantage in the Senate.

Im looking at state House and state Senate seats. Ive been somewhat active helping some of those folks, doing what I can to attend fundraisers so they can have folks come in and try to raise money, Loebsack said. Chris Brase is one of our incumbent senators over in Muscatine and Scott counties, a really great state senator, and hes going to be in a tough race, so Im doing some things for him.

Thats what I think I can do.

Loebsack said he cannot predict how the impact of Donald Trump, with his high unfavorable ratings with voters, as the Republican presidential nominee will affect down-ballot races, including his congressional race. But Loebsack said he will not take any race or any opponent for granted.

Loebsack will face Republican challenger Christopher Peters, a Coralville surgeon, this fall.

I think its hard to say at this point. I always assume things are going to be competitive. I think thats the best approach to any election, Loebsack said. Theres no question, certain parts of my district (Trump) is going to have a significant appeal. I have no doubt about that at all. In the end, well see.

I just dont know at this point. As I said, I dont want to make predictions because Ive been wrong throughout this cycle. Just about everybody has been.
The rumble of motorcycles reverberated in Custer on Thursday, and American and POW flags flapped behind many of the bikes.

Moments later, military veterans and their families and friends filled the flag-studded sidewalk and balcony of the old Custer County Courthouse as the American Legion Riders delivered the American flag to the honor guard waiting on the steps.

The whole procession was observed by about 100 people who attended the 50th Anniversary of the Vietnam War exhibit dedication in Custer on Thursday. The event was sponsored by the Harney Peak and Black Hills chapters of the National Society of Daughters of the American Revolution in partnership with the Veterans of Foreign Wars and American Legion Posts of Custer and Fall River Counties.

The event honored the 207 South Dakotan military personal killed during the Vietnam War. National DAR members recited a roll call where each name, rank, hometown and date of death of the 207 individuals was read aloud in the packed room.

Kathy Cathy Rosane, chaplain for the DAR Harney Peak Chapter, attended high school in Batesland during the war and remembered when SP4 Edwin Case, of Batesland, was killed in action. Growing up then in high school, it deeply affected all our lives, said Rosane.

The organizations will host two remaining events for the 50th anniversary on June 14 starting at 9:30 a.m. at the Custer high school, and also at the State Veterans Home in Hot Springs at 1:30 p.m. that day.
Newell's Austin Post served in the U.S. Navy during the dark times of the Korean War.

He recently was among the Butte County veterans who received an "Ambassador for Peace" medal recently during a Butte County Commission meeting.

Post's service represents the American war effort on the sea surrounding the Korean Peninsula during the time period from Jun. 25, 1950 through Oct. 25, 1954.

He was in the U.S. Navy serving on a destroyer fulfilling a number of roles during the complex conflict.

The South Dakota Department of Veterans Affairs (SDDVA), in collaboration with the Republic of Korea is seeing that veterans from what often is called "The Forgotten War" are not forgotten.

The Ambassador for Peace medal is bestowed in an expression of appreciation from the people of the Republic of Korea.

Larry Zimmerman, Secretary of the South Dakota Department of Veterans Affairs, said in an earlier news release on the medals, They recognize what these heroes have given and as a token of their sincerest appreciation for their service and sacrifice.
Flags in Belle Fourche and all across South Dakota flew at half mast Friday in honor of the late Terry Redlin.

There are dozens of Redlin prints in Belle Fourche homes and businesses today. Many, if not most, came from Redlin's involvement in Ducks Unlimited, the international conservation group dedicated to wildlife and waterfowl habitat in ways that benefit both private and public landowners as well as sportsmen who enjoy hunting.

National "news" called him an "outdoor artist." To me, that's a huge understatement of Terry the artist and more, Terry the person.

Terry died at age 78 after a long bout of dementia. Call it dementia or Alzheimer's disease; it's a sad close to any active and creative life.

But Terry's best example to the rest of us on the Northern Plains is what I'm writing about this time around.

Our "favorite" Redlin print at home is one that the art experts say is "damaged goods" because it doesn't quite have Terry's normal signature.

It's instead a "thank you" for a long piece I did about him when I was outdoor editor and reporter at the Watertown Public Opinion daily newspaper.

Needless to say, we value it far more than several other Redlin prints.

I got to know Terry before that long story and photos I did in his studio on the shore of Lake Kampeska.

Gov. Dennis Daugaard ordered the flags flown Friday at half mast, and noted Terry's contributions to the state's outdoor heritage especially through his art.

I saw another side.

Perhaps it's a side that's a bit more important for all of us.

Friends all knew Terry lost a lower leg as a child who'd ride his bike to go fishing.

Most others didn't.

It changed the young man's vision of his possible future. He had some state support on attending an art school in Minnesota that led to a commercial art career. He even did architectural pieces to show the proposed appearance of a building.

His "pure" art career got a kick start with a painting on a magazine cover.

Redlin's wife soon began her career on the sales side of what became a full-fledged art business.

He won wildlife print competitions and was recognized by Ducks Unlimited.

His art, as we would put it today, "went viral."

U.S. Art Magazine basically quit doing its annual "most popular artist" survey at one point because it was always Terry. Ducks Unlimited notes that his art donations raised more than $28 million for wetlands projects.

But...

Folks forget the impact of Terry as a businessman, and his example to, and for, other South Dakotans.

He moved his art business back to South Dakota as he became increasingly successful.

His Redlin Art Center in Watertown was intended as a South Dakota business as well as tourism draw.

Terry wanted to bring some of his success home to South Dakota. In part it was, he said, to repay what the people of South Dakota had given him, even as he wondered about a future for a kid with a store-bought lower leg.

A few other South Dakotans have followed a similar path, but Terry made sure it would work.

Another little-known Redlin activity was support of young South Dakota artists.

That wasn't about painting better pictures, but rather how to take their talent into an art business exporting their products nation- and world-wide.

In fact, he and another Watertown artist, John Wilson, were instrumental for years in helping young artists become business people with art as an "export product" for South Dakota. Wilson, by the way, not only is a federal duck stamp winner but also did a number of commissions for Cabelas.

Nowadays there's a lot of talk about "value added" for agriculture.

Our open skies and prairie, reed-lined lakes, pine forests and hidden creeks are often uniquely seen by folks outside our state.

Belle Fourche has at least two folks who have worked along the same lines of creating their own "business" in art.

More than that, they're also guys who know the lives they portray in art.

Belle Fourche is a great environment for such folks.

Mick B. Harrison has his paintings all over the country. I met Mick, by the way, at what amounted to a Redlin-inspired Western and Wildlife Art show in Watertown.

And Tony Chytka?

His bronzes not only grace Belle Fourche street corners, but are treasures found all across the continent. I sent a photo or two of Tony's work to a university prof friend in Australia who proclaimed that Frederick Remington had nothing on Tony's work.

Tony grew up around rodeo  I knew his dad fairly well. It's not just my opinion that in piece after piece, he does a better job of portraying a three-dimension image of an instant in rodeo and cowboy life in bronze than anyone else. And some others also do excellent work.

Redlin set the standard, in a way, of converting South Dakota talent into a successful national and international business.

Terry used his art, but exporting the fruits of high plains talent could be almost anything in today's world.

Flags flew Friday at half mast for Terry Redlin.

Here's a hope that lessons from his example won't be forgotten.
Baptiste Bat Pourier and his wife, Patty, like to say theyre semi-retired, but they are plenty active doing business, and keeping things local, this time in the reservation town of Pine Ridge.

I dont think a person should retire. Ive seen a lot of people do that, and they just get old, Bat Pourier said Thursday, as he wound down from a grand re-opening celebration at Pine Ridge Oil, and the launch of their latest business venture, Pine Ridge Trading Co. in downtown Pine Ridge.

The new general store will add a much-needed retail boost to Pine Ridge, a town at the heart of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, where economic growth has come slowly.

Bat and Patty purchased Pine Ridge Oil from the daughter of its founder Al Hemingway in 2007.

The service station offers mechanic services, oil changes and tire repairs along with bulk fuel deliveries. But about a year ago, the Pouriers decided to add on the Pine Ridge Trading Co., featuring gift and souvenir items, jewelry, scarves, hats, original artwork, purses, blankets and drums, Black Hills gold and Black Hills silver.

We wanted to make it a nice place where people could come and get a good gift right here in Pine Ridge, without having to go out of town, Patty said. And one of the other things we like is the sales tax goes back to the tribe, so it continues to help the community.

Staying local was also the emphasis in choosing Medicine Root Construction from Kyle and Murdock Electric of Pine Ridge for renovation of the interior and exterior of the building in a rustic trading post motif, she said.

Thursdays grand reopening included a proclamation from Oglala Sioux Tribe President John Yellow Bird Steele, who honored longtime Pine Ridge Oil employee Marsha Lehman for her 34 years with the business.

The president recognized her for her dedicated service and for treating people with dignity and respect. She worked with the previous owner and now shes working for us, Patty said.

The Pouriers have deep business ties to Pine Ridge and surrounding communities in southwestern South Dakota and the Nebraska Panhandle.

They founded the first of a chain of Big Bats gas and convenience stores in Pine Ridge in 1989, expanding with two locations in Hot Springs and single stores in Chadron, Neb., and Scottsbluff, Neb.

They operated another fuel transport business, were partners in a propane company and helped re-establish the Lakota Country Times newspaper.

Bat and Patty sold the five Big Bats convenience stores to their sons, Tye and Corey Pourier, in 2007 and also sold the newspaper to current owner, editor and publisher Connie Louise Smith.

They also currently operate an automatic teller machine installation and service business, along with the trading post and service station, and maintain a small cattle ranch near Chadron.

Being in business gets in your system and you cant get it out, Bat said.
The next president of South Dakota State University will bring with him a rare perspective for the leader of a state institution.

Barry Dunn, 62, is an enrolled member of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe and spent more than a quarter of his life living on the reservation.

It's unclear whether Dunn will be the first South Dakota college president with a tribal affiliation, but his status is still noteworthy in a state where educators struggle to close Native American achievement gaps and tribal members are underrepresented in leadership roles.

"Many of our institutional presidents have certainly reached out to the Native American population and the tribal colleges and tried to establish good working relationships ... but there's something to be said about having one of your own in those positions," said Mike Rush, executive director of the South Dakota Board of Regents.

Dunn's mother, Sarah Lamoureaux Dunn, was born on the Rosebud Indian Reservation and moved as a child to Iowa. From there, she went to Iowa State University before returning to South Dakota.

"My mother got access to higher education through the land grant university system," Dunn told the Argus Leader (http://argusne.ws/1OgKFSy ). "And that elevated our family life and challenged me. Her experience there would not have been possible at other universities and colleges in the U.S. It's very poignant to me, a very important story to me."

Dunn and his family returned to the Rosebud reservation after graduating from SDSU in 1975. He and his wife lived there for 17 years, and Dunn maintains relationships with the Rosebud community.

As president of South Dakota's largest university, Dunn said he will be committed to addressing achievement gaps in higher education. He said he is proud of his Lakota roots and wants to strengthen SDSU's relationships with tribal colleges without trying to lure students away from those institutions.

"I feel very committed to using that time wisely and in an impactful manner, really in honor of my mother, to do everything I can," Dunn said.

Richie Meyers, director of tribal outreach for SDSU and an enrolled member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, said Dunn will need to balance tribal loyalty with dedication to the state's public universities. Striking that complicated balance will help Dunn as he takes the helm, Meyers said.

"Dean Dunn truly does understand this complexity, and that's why it is a very positive and exciting time to see him as president," Meyers said.

Frank Pommersheim, who teaches Indian law at the University of South Dakota, said it's important that state institutions reflect the diversity of the state, and that Native Americans are underrepresented in leadership roles, especially at higher levels.

"This is just an indication of a step forward, to have diversity and reflection of the state's makeup at a very, very high level," Pommersheim said.

For Rush, Dunn's leadership will be an asset for reaching out to Native Americans to ensure they are given opportunities to succeed in higher education.

Said Rush: "Part of that success is having role models and people that students can look to and say, 'Yes, I could become president of SDSU, and I can see the value of participating in higher education at all levels.'"
Last week, Republicans and Democrats on the Senate Veterans Committee gathered to announce their support for bipartisan legislation designed to fix multiple problems in the Veterans Affairs Health system. Surprisingly, the senators are hopeful the Senate will pass that bill this month.

U.S. Sens. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., and Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., chairman and ranking member of the Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs, emphasized that the bill will "will give the VA the tools to fire bad actors, will prohibit bonuses for employees accused of wrongdoing, and will institute protections for whistleblowers."

The Veterans First Act is about accountability, agreed Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., a member of the committee. But Tester emphasized what the legislation aims to do to directly improve veterans care. The bipartisan bill includes his proposed remedies for the Veterans Choice program.

In August 2014, Congress and President Barack Obama created the Veterans' Choice program to reduce the waiting time for veterans to see a doctor. The Veterans Choice program, which must contract with a private gatekeeping company, has actually slowed down the process for getting veterans into care.

"Choice is broken and is not working the way it was intended," said Tester.

One big problem with Veterans Choice is that the money goes with the program, not the veteran. The new bill would change that.

Montana is one of five sites selected to pilot a partial remedy while Congress works on a comprehensive fix. VA Montana has been authorized to use Veterans Choice funding to contract directly with community clinics when that is the quickest way to have a veteran seen by a physician. Previously, VA Montana had to tap a separate community care fund and wasn't allowed to use Veterans Choice funds.

This is only a partial fix because the Veterans Choice contract still requires referrals to go to the private gatekeeper (Health Net) and VA Montana must wait for Health Net to send the case back, which can take a week or more.

The pilot has been successful in getting veterans in to see physicians in Montana communities faster than they could be seen through Health Net or within the VA, said Johnny Ginnity, VA Montana director. The pilot is expected to go nationwide soon.

The Senate reform bill aims for other improvements, including:

Increasing physician residency positions in the VA;

Boosting efforts to recruit more licensed mental health counselors and marriage and family therapists;

Improving the process for filling leadership vacancies.

A VA reform bill can and should pass the Senate before Congress recesses for Memorial Day week vacation. We call on Montana's delegation to be leaders in getting veterans' health-care legislation to President Barack Obama's desk early this summer.
Russian convict Yaroshenko gives up appealing with U.S. courts - report

MOSCOW, May 6 (RAPSI)  Russian pilot Konstantin Yaroshenko, who is serving a 20-year sentence in the U.S. for conspiracy to smuggle cocaine, is not going to continue appealing with American courts, Izvestia newspaper reported on Friday.

According to Yaroshenkos statement that was published in the newspaper, I [Yaroshenko ed.] dont believe in the integrity and legitimacy of American justice anymore. Thats why I give up on the idea of further litigation and appeals ... Despite exhaustive evidence of my innocence, torture and kidnapping, the court decided to sentence me to 20 years It is useless to hope that the Supreme Court will make a legitimate decision in my case."

Konstantin Yaroshenko was arrested in Liberia on May 28, 2010 and flown to the United States soon afterwards. On September 7, 2011, he was sentenced to 20 years in prison for colluding to smuggle cocaine into the United States. He was caught after replying to an advertisement posted by US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agents who claimed they were selling a cargo plane for $1.

He is serving time in the Federal Correctional Institution in Fort Dix, New Jersey.

In late May, a US court rejected his appeal for a retrial. The Russian Foreign Ministry said this is evidence that Yaroshenkos conviction was politically influenced.

It was reported in February 2014 that Yaroshenko experienced strong migraine headaches and heart pain, which could be symptoms of a possible heart attack. Moscow has repeatedly expressed concern over the pilots health and pledged to continue working to ensure respect of his rights in the United States.
Social network user to spend more than two years in penal colony for reposting

Context Russian pensioner charged with extremism for repost on social media

MOSCOW, May 6 (RAPSI, Diana Gutsul)  The Zavolzhsky District Court in the town of Tver has sentenced Andrey Bubeyev, a user of VKontakte social network, to 2 years and 3 months in penal settlement for reposting a message on the Crimea, lawyer Svetlana Sidorkina told RAPSI on Thursday.

Mechanical engineer Bubeyev was found guilty of making public calls for undertaking extremist activity and public calls for undertaking activities aimed at infringement on the territorial integrity of the Russian Federation, both actions punishable under respective articles of the Russias Criminal Code. The criminal proceedings against Bubeyev had been initiated after he made one repost of an open letter by publicist Boris Stomakhin and posted a picture illustrating the letters contents on his VKontakte page.

Today, in the course of debates, the prosecutor requested to sentence Bubeyev to 3 years and 6 months in confinement. In his turn, Bubeyev insisted he was persecuted for his beliefs. He pleaded not guilty,  Sidorkina said.

According to the lawyer, last August Bubeyev was convicted of making reposts of similar materials and sentenced to 10 months in penal colony for instigating hatred or enmity.
Suspect in high-profile murder of journalist detained by Moscow court

MOSCOW, May 6 (RAPSI)  The Kuntsevsky District Court of Moscow has detained a suspect in a high-profile murder of the National News Services editor Alexander Rubtsov, the courts press-secretary Tatyana Danshova told RAPSI on Friday.

A motion, filed by an investigator, on detention of Dmitry Ludvig, born in 1986, was granted, the suspect will stay in detention for two months till July 5,  RAPSI learned in the court.

According to Danshova, Dmitry Ludvig was charged with murder, robbery and stealing/destruction of documents.

Earlier, Russian media reported that the body of the victim was found in his apartment by his mother. According to investigators, Rubtsov received chest, neck and limb wounds. He died on the spot.

Allegedly the suspect received keys to Rubtsovs apartment from the victim himself.

According to the information published on the National News Service website, murder was not connected to professional activity of Rubtsov. The journalists funeral will take place at his hometown of Kaluga.
Court lets stand attachment of property owned by Sakhalin ex-governors spouse and son

MOSCOW, May 6 (RAPSI, Oleg Sivozhelezov)  The Moscow City Court has ruled that extension till June 27 of the attachment of property belonging to Irina and Ilya Khoroshavin, the spouse and son of Alexander Khoroshavin, who stands charged with large-scale embezzlement, was lawful, a RAPSI correspondent reports from the courtroom on Friday.

Thus, the Moscow City Court has dismissed a complaint against the decision of the Moscow Basmanny Court lodged by the Khoroshavins lawyers.

The lawyer of ex-governors spouse maintained that investigators had missed the deadline for petitioning the extension of attachment and stressed that some part of the seized property had been acquired yet in 2009, whereas, according to investigators, Khoroshavin started to commit crimes in 2011.

Investigators failed to present convincing evidence that the sized property of third parties had been purchased at the expense of funds Khoroshavin obtained by crime,  the lawyer said.

In the respective complaint, Ilya Khoroshavins lawyer noted that when his client had been questioned as a witness he stated that he had own sources of income and was not dependent on his father.

In the course of the debate, the prosecutor insisted that the circumstances the investigator in the case described in the petition requesting to extend the attachment of property were correct and standing, and therefore the ruling of the Moscow Basmanny Court was not subject to reversal.

The Prosecutor Generals Office has filed a lawsuit with the Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk Court to take over the entire property registered to the former governor, his wife and son, which is estimated at 1.1 billion rubles ($16.4mn).

Last September, Irina Khoroshavina filed for divorce and division of property.

Investigators announced in March 2015 that Khoroshavin and several other officials were arrested for allegedly taking a $5.6 million bribe to secure a contract to build a power unit for the Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk thermal plant.

Last April, Khoroshavin was charged in another criminal case with taking a bribe of at least 15 million rubles ($194,500) for providing credits on advantageous terms to one of the local businessmen. He pleaded not guilty.

In January, the third criminal case was opened against Khoroshavin. According to investigators, he took 27 million rubles ($350,000) in bribes from candidates for the positions in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk City Duma in 2014.

President Vladimir Putin dismissed Khoroshavin from his post due to loss of trust in March 2015.
Russias Supreme Court to examine lawfulness of The Russians movement liquidation

MOSCOW, May 6 (RAPSI, Oleg Sivozhelezov)  The Russias Supreme Court will examine the lawfulness of the Moscow City Court ruling to liquidate nationalist movement Russkiye (The Russians) on May 11, a court representative told RAPSI on Friday.

The Court has set the review of an appeal submitted by representatives of The Russians movement requesting to reverse the judgement defining it as an extremist movement and banning its activities in the territory of Russia,  the RAPSI informant said.

The Moscow City Court reviewed a claim lodged by the Prosecutors Office, supported by the Justice Ministry and the Federal Security Service (FSB), and banned The Russians from carrying out their activities in the territory of the Russian Federation. Later, Dmitry Demushkin, the movements leader, announced its dissolution.

Nationalists could appeal against the ruling liquidating the movement only on the third try, as the Moscow City Court had twice turned down the complaints submitted by The Russians. As a result, already after the judgement on the liquidation of the movement had been given, The Russians had to hold a congress, elect a representative, and invest this representative with power of attorney to defend the movements interests.
Russian investigators arrest suspect in high-profile murder of journalist

MOSCOW, May 6 (RAPSI, Diana Gutsul)  Officers of the Moscow Main Investigative Directorate of the Russias Investigative Committee have arrested a man who is suspected of murdering editor of the National News Service Alexander Rubtsov, RAPSI learned from the investigators on Friday.

Earlier, Russian media reported that the body of the victim was found in his apartment by his mother. According to investigators, Rubtsov received chest, neck and limb wounds. He died on the spot.

The suspect in the murder is a man born in 1986 who allegedly received keys to Rubtsovs apartment from the victim himself.

According to the information published on the National News Service website, murder was not connected to professional activity of Rubtsov. The journalists funeral will take place at his hometown of Kaluga.
Zip, whoosh, pop!

The hands-on learning about the motion of physics is underway in Florence.

Florence-Carlton school district hosted a spectrUM exhibit on Motion for students, May 2-4, with a family night, May 3.

Florence-Carlton Middle School 8th grade science teacher Jacki Riffey coordinated the event for the district.

This teaches the science concepts of motion, Riffey said. The exhibit goes all the way from beginning understanding of motion for kindergartners all the way up to high school physics.

Riffey said the best part is student exploration where they can see the science concept, touch it and enjoy an interaction that changes the way the activity works.

SpectrUM provides equipment that we are not able to have, normally, at our school because of the complexity and size of it, Riffey said.

The exhibit includes eight stations that each present a science concept: a gravity well, a lazy Susan spin station, a flight simulator, a tops table, flying cups, a turntable, a Bernoulli blower and radar magnets.

SpectrUM science educators Ally Mueller and Michael Jahnke explained the display stations to the kindergarten students.

Mueller, a physicist from the University of Montana, said she has been interested in science and math since grade school.

I didnt get quite enough of science and math during the day so it was also an at-home curiosity, she said. My dad is a scientist too. He is a fish biologist so he introduced me to the natural world and was always into math too. I pursued it in college and really liked it. It ended up being a good fit.

Mueller said she enjoys presenting the exhibits to students.

Offering something I didnt have in school is really exciting for me, she said. We never got anything like this in school. I think math can be really dry for kids when they are in grade school. This is a nice way to talk about it without an assignment. They just see how things work and, hopefully, it sparks a curiosity for their future learning.

Michael Jahnke is from Missouri. His undergraduate degree is in geology. He is in the graduate program at the University of Montana working toward a degree in education.

My mom is a chemist so I was exposed to science as a kid, Jahnke said. My mom was the one who came into my classroom and did big demonstrations. I found that really important and my friends loved having more hands-on learning that was extra to classroom learning.

Jahnke said he enjoys presenting the information to grade school students.

The best part is seeing their excitement at being able to touch and try everything, he said. It is great seeing them figure out how an exhibit works without us explaining all of the science to them. You can see the gears turning and you see them learning just by playing.

The Bernoulli Blower brought a big surprise to Jamie Bierles kindergarten class on Wednesday. It creates fast moving air with lower pressure that causes a ball to float in the air, seemingly like magic. The children focused their attention on the display and were obviously amazed. They were thrilled when the blower was angled and the balls shot up with a variety of results.

The radar magnets were also a big thrill. Children built bridges and towers on two large magnets using about a hundred washers and bolts.

The giant rotating turntable disk was another source of wonder. Students learned about centrifugal force as they tried to get disks, rings and balls to stay on the edge of the large spinning disk.

Mueller said the Jane S. Heman Foundation has been funding the traveling motion show to schools in the Bitterroot Valley.

SpectrUM will present a summer of science with Science Tuesday Activities at the Darby Community Public Library from 1 to 2 p.m. every Tuesday, May 31 to Aug. 2. Last summer spectrUM presented Nano: The Science of Small at the Ravalli County Museum.
Commemorative Partners are a hometown effort to honor Vietnam veterans and express the nations thanks for their service and sacrifice in a more personal manner.

The Vietnam Veterans of America Bitterroot Chapter 938 became an official Commemorative Partner because of the work of member Jim Hamilton.

On Wednesday, Hamilton presented the group with a flag, plaque and pins commemorating the beginning of the Vietnam War.

Tonight we commemorate the 50-year anniversary of the beginning of the Vietnam War, Hamilton said. Until recently it was the longest conflict in American history. Over three and a half million soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines served in that war and unfortunately returning service men and women were not honored by the American public as has been the case in previous wars.

Hamilton said that Americans have slowly realized that whether or not they agreed with the war it is important to honor those who served.

The veterans that we honor here tonight would tell you that we are the fortunate ones who came home to our family and friends, he said. Wed also be the first to tell you that we must never forget those who did not return.

Hamilton said he completed the lengthy process of making the chapter a Commemorative Partner in the Department of Defense program that will honor veterans through 2025.

The other commemorative partners in our area are the Museum of Military History in Missoula, the ROTC Department in Missoula, the Western Montana Military Officers Association in Missoula. I believe the sister groups in Kalispell and Miles City are also partners.

In 2008, the National Defense Authorization Act authorized the Secretary of Defense to develop a commemorative program with activities and ceremonies meeting five objectives.

The first objective is To thank and honor veterans of the Vietnam War, including personnel who were held as prisoners of war or listed as missing in action, for their service and sacrifice on behalf of the United States and to thank and honor the families of these veterans.

Other objectives are to: highlight the services of the Armed Forces during the war along with the federal agencies, governmental and nongovernmental organizations that worked with and supported the armed forces; pay tribute to the families on the home front; highlight the advances in technology, science and medicine made during and for the war; and to acknowledge the contributions and sacrifices made by allies of the United States during the war.

Again, it is not honoring the war, Hamilton said. It is commemorating those of us who served.

Hamilton displayed the items he received from the DOD as a commemorative partner. He said the war did not start in 1965 but that there were activities going on earlier.

The military set on a date of 1965 as the alleged beginning, Hamilton said.

Members at the meeting discussed this start date stating the memorial wall in Washington, D.C. says the Vietnam War was from 1959 to 1975. They agreed that there were activities going on before the 1965 commemorative date.

Corvallis resident Army First Sgt. Allen Sperry said he believes the war dates are from 1961 to 1975.

In 1961 we officially had troops on the ground, he said. Before that, we had people over there as advisors.

Sperry said he thinks the commemoration is a little late.

I think they are trying to make up for the way they treated us when we returned. Thats my philosophy, Sperry said. Me, personally, I didnt get any of that because I stayed in the military after my war service and that made a difference with me. But I know people that when they got out just kept it hid that they were even in Vietnam.

According to the Department of Veterans Affairs, 9 million Americans served on active duty during the Vietnam War and 7 million of those are still living. The commemoration created Commemorative Partner organizations to work at local, state and national levels to thank and honor Vietnam veterans and their families.

For more information on the commemoration of the Vietnam War, visit online, vietnamwar50th.com.
Nepali ambassador to India Deep Kumar Upadhya



Kathmandu, Nepal: Its looks like humorous but a cabinet meeting has on Friday made a decision that an ambassador has been punished on the charge of involving in the activities of dissolving the government.



The Nepal government has decided to recall the Nepali ambassador to India Deep Kumar Upadhya on the charge of playing a role to dissolve the government in Nepal.



According to the sources close to the Prime Minister Oli, an emergency cabinet meeting held on Friday evening decided to recall the Nepali ambassador Upadhya on the charge of involving in various activities to topple the present government.



However, the reason behind the recall of the ambassador is claimed of leaving his work stations without prior notice to the foreign ministry as recalling any ambassador on the charge of involving in the activities to dissolve the government is itself a humorous matter.



He is alleged that Nepali ambassador to India had accompanied Indian Ambassador Ranjit Rae during the latter's visit to various Tarai districts without informing the ministry.



As Upadhyay is former minister and lawmaker from the Nepali Congress, the government decision to take action would invite further antagonism among the major political parties.






Kathmandu, Nepal: A cabinet meeting on Friday evening decided to recommend Sarmila Parajuli Dhakal as the Nepali ambassador to Oman.



The government had already recommended ambassadors to 21 different countries though the hearing in the parliamentary committee is not initiated yet.



The cabinet meeting has also decided to promote joint secretary of the Reconstruction Authority Madhu Sudan Adhikari on the post of secretary.






President Bidhya Devi Bhandrai



Kathmandu, Nepal: President Bidhya Devi Bhandrai is leaving for India on May 9. The scheduled visit to India is the first official foreign visit for the president Bhandari.



President Bhandari is leaving for India in the invitation of her Indian counterpart Pranab Mukherjee.



The proposed visit of president Bhandari is conformed though the Nepal government has not announced officially. President Bhandari has conformed about her India trip through a selective group of journalists.



According to President Bhandari, her visit to India would be a goodwill visit and no understanding or agreements will be signed during the visit.



It is said that about two dozen members of the Nepali delegates will accompany the President Bhandari during the visit.



According to the source, Foreign Secretary Shankar Das Bairagi, Chief of Protocol Ramesh Khanal, President Bhandaris Foreign Affairs Expert Madan Kumar Bhattarai, officials from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, security personal and some media persons are included in the team.



The visit of the president Bhandari is taken importantly as it is scheduled in the mean time when there is a speculations that incumbent KP Sharma Oli led government would be toppled as per the wish of the neighboring India.



However, neither the President Bhandari nor others in Nepal and the Indian authorities are in position to accept that India has the role to change the government in Nepal.



Responding to the concerns of the media persons, resident Bhandari said just that the purpose to visit India is to strengthen the good ties between Nepal and India.



During the visit to India, President Bhandari is scheduled to meet with her Indian counterpart Mukherjee, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other several political leaders.



Likewise, President Bhandari is also scheduled to visit Simhastha Kumbh Mela in Ujjain, Madhya Pradesh.


President Bidya Devi Bhandari



Kathmandu, Nepal: President Bidya Devi Bhandari's planned India visit has been cancelled.



Though the visit was not announced officially, President Bhandari was scheduled to embark on a five-day India visit this Monday.



Though the exact reason behind the cancelation is not made public, the office bearers of the President office have confirmed about the cancelation of the visit.



According to the source close to the Foreign Ministry, recently emerged political development in the country particularly the dissatisfaction of the India over the incumbent government was the reason behind the cancelation.



However, Nepali side have a claim that the visit has been cancelled as it was not endorsed by the Cabinet.



President Bhandari was scheduled to visit India at the invitation of Indian President Pranab Mukherjee. During her visit to India, she was scheduled to visit various Indian leaders including Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.




BHIMDUTTANAGAR, May 6: Two workers of the Sangam Hotel at Kanchanpur district headquarters Bhimduttanagar were killed and another one injured on Thursday night.



The deceased are identified as Bhim Rokaya, 20, of Bajura and Krishna Bista, 45, of Bedkot municipality of Kanchanpur, said In-charge of Ward Police Office Inspector Karna Chand.



Both Rokaya and Bista were working at the Hotel till 12 last night, police confirmed.



Likewise, Padma Raj Joshi, 42, of Dodhara Chadani, who is an employee of the Hotel, has also sustained critical injuries. He was taken to Kohalpur for treatment last night.



Police shared that a sharp-edged weapon was used in the killing of hotel workers.



Deceased Rokaya has been working in the Hotel since six months while Bista was there for the past one year.



Police have started investigation into the murder incident. A team headed by DSP of Kanchanpur District Police Office Kedar Khanal and Police Inspector Chand is investigating the incident.



At least four murder incidents had taken place in the area during past four months. RSS


The Caravan

For over five decades, the historian Romila Thapar has been at the vanguard of research and writing about ancient India. The author of 20 books including seminal titles such as A History of India and Asoka and the Decline of the Mauryas, Thapar is also the author of history textbooks for the National Council for Research and Education (NCERT), used widely in schools across the nation. She is an honorary fellow at Lady Margaret Hall at the University of Oxford, and professor emerita at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi, with which she has been involved since its inception, and where, from 1971 to 1990, she was professor of ancient Indian history. She has been a visiting professor at Cornell University, and holds honorary degrees from institutions such as the University of Chicago, Oxford University, Edinburgh University and the Universities of Calcutta and of Hyderabad. In 2008, she was awarded the Kluge Prize for Lifetime Achievement in the Study of the Humanities.

Throughout her academic career, Thaparas focus has been on understanding history not as mere factual inquiry but as questioning a cultural and ideological phenomenon. Her oeuvre has transformed the understanding of the Indian subcontinent globally. Thapar has also been a consistent and vocal advocate for education through rational, evidence-based inquiry and research-oriented approaches.

In February 2016, soon after students from JNU were arrested and charged with sedition, The Caravan met with Thapar. They discussed the historical evolution of sedition, the significance of secularism and approaches to higher education in India. Published below is an excerpt from the interview.

This conversation is a part of aNotes on Nationalism,a a series being published by The Caravan that considers various aspects of the public discourse around sedition, nationalism, and Indian identity. You can read other pieces in the series are here, here and here.

The Caravan: Where has the notion of sedition come from?

Romila Thapar: Itas a notion that came with the colonial government. In the pre-modern period, there were no references to sedition. There were no nations in those days, so opposition would only be to the ruling authority. But once the idea of the nation came to be established, then the question of making comments hostile to the nation or to the colonial government became a reality, especially with the growth of nationalist sentiment. Sedition was brought in by the British Indian government and made into a law for governing India. The dictionary meaning of sedition draws a distinction between advocating the overthrow of the government or violence, and inciting the overthrow of the government or violence. It is the inciting which is seditious, not just talking about it. This is a differentiation that is extremely important. Unfortunately, it is a distinction that people have forgotten because of the way in which the word has been tossed around these days. Most people donat realise that the emphasis really is on inciting violence and inciting people against the state.

The British used it against most of the major nationalist leaders, preeminently [the social reformer Bal Gangadhar] Tilak. Whenever they felt that someone was making a statement that was somehow injurious to British colonial rule, they would invoke the law of sedition. Secondly, the historical situation has changed. Sedition was introduced at a time when India was a colony and was governed by an alien power. Now we are an independent nation with an elected government. Itas a democratic parliament. So, the situation is entirely different. Is it, then, legitimate to have sedition as a punishable offence?

TC: You have said that for India, sedition is akin to blasphemy in Europeasince India doesnat quite have the concept of blasphemy that religious or political powers can invoke easily, sedition became our blasphemy.

RT: The thought that crossed my mind was that what theyare trying to suggest about sedition vis-A -vis the nation in India, is becoming somewhat like blasphemy in the context of religion. As far as the Hindu religion goes, there cannot be anything really close to blasphemy because there isnat a regular creed and a regular belief system that every Hindu has to conform to. There are all kinds of Hindus, who have all kinds of beliefs, and they are counted as Hindus under this umbrella term. Therefore, blasphemy is very difficult to define in a religion of this kind.

On the other hand, if you want to attack certain people, then you can accuse them of being hostile to the nation. The nation then takes the place of religion and criticism is seen as a kind of blasphemy against the nation. This is just an idea that I had, I havenat thought about it very much.

In recent times there has been much talk about people being anti-national. Those who make these complaints often donat work out what is national, and what is anti-national. They turn to slogans and insist that articulating slogans is the test of being nationalist. An example of this is the recent discussion of whether saying aBharat Mata ki Jaia is a test of loyalty to the nation. This has no special sanctity as it is a slogan invented a century or so ago. In any case, is sloganeering a test of anything? Surely, nationalism requires a serious commitment to a nation, defined as every citizen having access to human rights, and recognised not just by territory but also by reliable and just governance. Nationalism is not expressed merely by raising a flag or shouting a slogan, but by safe-guarding rights and ensuring good governance. Questioning or criticising the government is not anti-national. This is quite normal. Political parties when in opposition routinely do this, as do the [Bharatiya Janata Party] and the Congress when not in power. In every society there are people who criticise or complain against various activities within that society. To dub such criticism anti-national means that there is something more at stake in the mind of the accuser. The accusation of being anti-national then becomes one of the mechanisms by which an attempt is made to try and imprison or silence people.

TC: Does this mean that, as a people, we are too fragile or too sensitive to criticism? Are we politically insecure as a democracy?

RT: I wouldnat say that as a people we are politically insecure. I think weave certainly proved ourselves to be a viable democracy in times of crisis. The relative smoothness with which we have changed governments is really, very impressive. But what it does suggest is that those politicians who almost routinely accuse particular persons of being anti-national, they are the ones who are insecure and lack self-confidenceaor at any rate, the confidence to rule.

TC: In this context, would you say that this approach, this labeling of people as anti-national, would always be a systemic part of any ruling dispensation in which the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) has a major say?

RT: Well, you said that, I didnat say it! Yes, I think there is an ideological, historical background to this that we have to understand. The ideology of the party in power today is that of the RSS. What is the RSS ideology? There are two things that I think they regard as central. One is to convert India into a Hindu rashtra [nation]. This goes back to our experience of the varieties of nationalisms that we have had. Our major nationalism was anti-colonial nationalism, which was an inclusive nationalism. Everybody was brought in and the intention was to throw out the colonial power and to be an independent nation. But in addition to that, in a relatively lesser role at that time, in the early twentieth century, there were organisations such as the Muslim League that was arguing for an Islamic state, and the Hindu Mahasabha that was arguing for a Hindu equivalent. Some label these two as religious nationalisms, some call them communalism, and some describe them as being influenced by fascism. Whereas the anti-colonial nationalism had a nationalist agenda in that it was opposed to colonial rule, and worked towards a secular democracy, the other two communal organisations were not essentially anti-colonial, and their aim was to inherit a Muslim and a Hindu oriented state, after the departure of the British. Their role in the anti-colonial movement was therefore minimal. Secular democracy was not how they envisaged the future.

There can be a debate about these two communal movements since these are really movements pertaining to religious communitiesatheyare not national movements. They donat involve people across the religious spectrum, and each is concerned only with a particular community, with a particular religious identity. Now, Islamic extremism, Islamic nationalismacall it what you willasucceeded in establishing a stateaPakistan. Therefore, the Hindu version of that ideology is still anxious to have a Hindu rashtra, and is anxious to convert the Indian state into a Hindu rashtra.

Therefore, the ideological battle today is at two fronts. One is to establish a Hindu rashtra irrespective of the aggression between religious communities needed to do so. There are incidents of aggression involving what is described as amajority communalism and minority communalism,a especially in the predictable rise of riots prior to elections. The needling of the latter by the former, sometimes followed by a retort, is a common occurrence both in speeches and actions, as we have experienced in recent times. The second is the confrontation between communalism and secularismaspecifically a choice between a Hindu rashtra or a secular democracy. To support the former, communalism is being revived, presumably as a strategy. The attempt is to change the mindset of Indians to support that ideology. Intolerance of the views of others and anti-intellectualism are on the rise. In this confrontation, universities and the educational system are, and will continue to be, obvious targets. Education can easily be converted into indoctrination.

It is also important to remember in relation to the RSS ideology that it works with a distinct definition of the Hindu. If itas going to be a Hindu rashtra, then the Hindu has to be defined. Based on the colonial idea of majority communities and minority communities, the Hindu forms the majority community. The Hindu has to be the primary citizen as far as citizenship goes. He is the primary citizen because the territory of British Indiaawhich is the territory that the RSS holds to be the territory of Indiaathis territory is his pitribhumi, the land of his ancestors, and his punyabhumi, the land in which his religion originated. The Muslims and the Christians, and to a lesser extent, the Parsis, are said to have come from outside this territory and their religions originated outside this territory, so they donat have primacy. There is a sense in this ideology, of the coming together of territory, religion, and language that makes the Hindu more easily identifiable as national, as it were, than the others. Needless to say, in actual fact, the vast majority of Muslims and Christians can certainly claim India as their pitribhumi, but this was not conceded.

The debate on anti-nationalism routinely recurs each time there is an RSS-linked party in power, but it recurs in different forms. For instance, in the 1960s and 70s, some of us historians wrote textbooks for the NCERT [National Council of Education Research and Training] that were used in state schools. But, when the Morarji [Desai] government came to power in a coalition with the Bharatiya Jana Sangh [in 1977], an anonymous letter to the prime minister stated that these textbooks were anti-national and anti-Indian, and therefore, they should be banned. The debate about whether these books were anti-national or not went on back and forth in the newspapers. Then, in about three years, the government fell and the textbooks stayed in place.

This is the story of textbooks as far as the NCERT is concerned. Each time the government changes; attempts are made to change the textbooks. Then, the government falls and the old textbooks come back. Governments make a joke of education. Then again, when the first National Democratic Alliance government came to power in 1999, Murli Manohar Joshi, as the education minister, conducted a heavy attack on the textbooks from 2000 onwards. He referred to us, the authors, as anti-Indian and anti-national, which meant anti-Hindu, and all this resulted in a demand that aacademic terrorists like us, worse than the cross-border varietya should be immediately arrested.

This makes their concept of nationalism very clear. It involves an unquestioned adherence to a certain territory. However, Pakistan and Bangladesh broke away, so itas no longer the original territory of British India. It is important to maintain the notion that the nation is a Hindu nation, that it is a Hindu rashtra in which inevitably the Hindu will have a primary position. That is a major component of the idea as far as its origin is concerned, irrespective of after-thoughts, if any. Many of us object to this. What we think of as the nation is a secular nation with multiple religions, where the primary identity is not of any religious, caste or language group, it is of the Indian citizen. What we want is the recognition of the rights of the Indian citizen.

TC: This belief in the primacy of the Hindu in the RSS ideology. Is this belief reconcilable with the Constitution of India?

RT: I think the Constitution is quite clear about the fact that whatever constitutes the Hindu is something apart and is not a priority for being the Indian citizen. The Indian citizen draws on many more identities.

TC: So if thatas the case, why are those who believe in secularism called apseudo-secularistsa ? For close to 20 or 30 years now, there has been a consistent attack on journalists, lawyers, academics and public intellectuals. Political parties such as the Congress are supposed to be carrying the historical burden of bringing in secularism to the Indian polity, but are putting out a poor intellectual defense for it. As a nation, is there some kind of conceding of ground?

RT: I would like to make two points. Pseudo-secularism, as far as I remember, started with [LK] Advani saying that the so-called secularists are bending over backwards to appease the minorities and that that was their definition of secularism. So it was not genuine secularism that requires all religions to be treated equally. This is what they meant by a pseudo-secularist. This was really to try and undermine any kind of concession that some may have wanted to make to the minorities, not realising that the critical issue is that if you are a true secularistaas some of us think we areayou really have to be absolutely even-handed towards every religious group. You cannot make concessions. This is where one runs into problems.

What is sometimes referred to as the Indian definition of secularismathat all religions should have equal statusais actually a partial definition. Secularism means a distancing of the functioning of the state from seeking religious endorsements, or even disallowing religious organisations from controlling the social functioning of the state, especially in matters of education and civil laws.

For example, if you say that there should be a uniform civil code, applicable to all Indians, itas not the same as simply saying that we should disallow Muslim men from having four wives, as is popularly projected. A secular understanding of a civil code would require asking, aWhat should be the ideal civil code in a secular society?a This would mean removing all religious and caste codes and codes specific to any community, and working out a new code as the one that would apply, and that the application would be universally observed. This becomes a matter of tremendous debate and discussion in a society where many codes are observed and customary law still holds among many communities. What stand should civil law take on local practices, as for example, those of the khap panchayats? If we had been serious about a secular civil code then we should by now have been in deep discussion on its formulation. It is an issue on which there are diverse opinions, apart from those who want a Hindu rashtra, and these opinions have to be discussed. But of course, there is none of this. Instead, what they understand by a uniform civil code is that the Hindu code should remain and presumably other religious codes should be removed. Theyare not willing to go through the exercise of saying all codes should be removed and a new uniform, secular civil code should be established. There are, of course, political reasons for why every political partyato a greater or lesser degreeahas distanced itself from implementing secular laws, and a major reason is that it would lead to a shift in vote banks.

TC: There is also an additional element, quite apart from the true secularist, which is inherent in our Constitution or in any democracy. Minorities do need special protection and there are certain rights that are specific to minorities, which the Constitution actually does lay out.

RT: There is some of that, yes. But I think that this is partly because when anti-colonial nationalism succeeded and we became independent, there had been much concern for minority rights and the fear of the majority community taking over. But if you look at your society only in terms of majority and minority communities, then naturally, you have to say that there are certain minority rights that have to be safeguarded. Ideally, there can be complete freedom of religion and worship, but as far as the civil law goes, because it is concerned with institutions of societyawhether it is registering birth, marriage, divorce, occupational employment or inheritanceathere should be uniform laws for every citizen. That is one way in which the possibility of minorities being underprivileged or attacked can at least be decreased, if not eliminated. It is also a question of giving every citizen the same entitlements with basic human rightsafood, education, health and social justiceaand this being ensured.

At this moment we have got our priorities hopelessly wrong, and human rights do not seem to matter in our way of seeing the priorities of governance. Nor do we give pride of place to citizenship and the protection of human rights that go with it. We see human beings as numbers and speak only of majority and minority. We need to stop seeing people as numbers and start seeing them as human beings. Perhaps then, those who are supposed to ensure the welfare of citizens will become less callous towards the underprivileged.

One of the ways in which we have tried to equalise opportunities is through reservations, and these seem to be running into problems. Many people have debated this issue in terms of assessing its success, the length of its continuing, and how to handle the many new groups demanding what are being seen incorrectly not as equalising processes but as advantages for some. Erstwhile higher castes in Rajasthan and Gujarat and other places are now claiming to be OBCs [Other Backward Castes]. This demand can go on expanding. How do you cope with it? You donat cope with it by merely expanding the system to accommodate more and more castes. Perhaps the qualifier for reservation needs to be changed and reformulated. Possibly a reservation which is not based on religion, caste or language and instead is based on income might be more effective. Those below the poverty line should automatically be entitled to reservation advantages, at least in education. If carried out with any degree of efficiency, even quality education may gradually become available to many. This cannot be done in an automatic fashion but has to be carefully thought out. This is far from being the case as of now.

Iall give you a simple example. When the government decides to set up a new school, where do they locate it in a village? They locate it in the upper-caste area. When the Dalit students come there, theyare booed away and if they do stand their ground, they are shunned. Now, if your policy mandates that all your state-run quality education schools will be located in areas that are largely inhabited by people of low income, you force a change in social attitudes and upper castes have to come to terms with having to sit next to Dalits in school. This is the kind of careful thinking that is necessary. If the schooling system can be expanded and improved, to the extent where everybody has a secondary education that is worth having, then some of the demand for reservation will decrease. The two things have to go together. You protect the minorities, but you do it keeping in mind that you actually want to change your educational, healthcare and welfare systems so that communities that have been underprivileged will no longer be so, and communities that have treated the underprivileged with contempt can also no longer do so. That is the social welfare scheme to which we are not paying serious attention. We think we can get by with reservations alone, and weare just making more and more problems for ourselves.

Of course, this does mean a change in the economic system as well, so as to encourage production and employment. Since the present system seems to be at a standstill, perhaps we need to think of an alternative.

TC: Given that the current debate on sedition actually began with a protest in Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), the other side of the coin is the freedom of speech and its place in a university. How important is the freedom of speech in higher education, or at any level of education for that matter?

RT: I think itas absolutely fundamental. A university is the space in which every student or teacher has the right to express his or her opinions and to argue about issues, and also to invite people from outside the university to debate their ideas. The problem comes when you hold an opinion but disallow others from theirs, and in fact beat up the person with a contrary opinion in order to make sure that your opinion has muscle power behind it. The best universities of the world are places for free opinionaexcept of course under dictatorial systems. In the best universities of the world, there are formal debates where even anti-national subjects are debated in order to make young people think about various perspectives of a subject. This is exactly the kind of function that a university has to perform. It opens up the possibility of thinking beyond the confines within which youave been socialised, and expands your way of thinking. That has to be a given. Otherwise, we shall never reach any level of efficiency as far as the purpose of universities is concerned.

We have, goodness knows how many universitiesa700 or more? Not one reaches a level of all-round excellence on a global standard and only a handful can claim to have a good department in a discipline. Excellence remains an individual enterprise that happens here and there, almost despite the university system as practiced in most universities in India. JNU was the only university that was beginning to approach that level of excellence. But of course, for a government and a party that believes in controlling thought, places such as JNU are dangerous because they encourage questioning existing systems and existing knowledge. They do what a university is expected to do.

TC: Chandan Mitra, the BJP parliamentarian and the editor of The Pioneer, wrote in this context that JNU should be shut down and the Mussoorie Civil Service academy should be shifted to the JNU campus. According to him, the campus was originally meant for training civil servants. You are one of the founding faculty members of JNU. What was its dream?

RT: The dream was precisely to have a university of excellence, yes. I am glad to see that the National Institutions Ranking Framework under the HRD [Human Resource Development] Ministry has given JNU the first rank among universitiesathis despite the Chandan Mitras of this world!

As regards the JNU campus, he of course has got the facts wrong. The old campus, from where we first functioned, now accommodates all kinds of other institutions that have completely taken over the area that was originally meant for the Mussoorie Civil Service Academy. When in 1970 the campus was ready, the Civil Service Academy decided that it did not wish to shift from Mussoorie, so the buildings lay vacant. The JNU was located there temporarily until the permanent campus was ready. The latter is the campus that we inhabit today.

This kind of remark is so typical of people who cannot accept the fact that there can be an institution in this country where students are encouraged to debate issues, to explore ideas and express themselves. What such people want is rote education and a system of memorising given questions and given answers, the kind of education that is characteristic of shishu mandirs, or many madrasas. This is the kind of education that is parallel to the catechism or question-answer indoctrination required in some religions. A set of questions is given together with their answers, and these you learn by heart, and you cannot change either. This is only a form of literacy and is not what is meant by education. It is certainly not what a university is intended for.

My problem with the education system ever since I came into the fieldawhich was 50 years agoahas been precisely this. Starting from the school-level, we have not done what education is supposed to do. It is supposed to teach the student to think independently and question existing knowledge; to teach the student to understand causal relationships in the pursuit of knowledge; and to teach a student how to examine why things happen. These questionsaof why, how, where, when, whichaare fundamental questions. We donat impart this education to students. Instead, we give them ready-made statements that they cannot question, and often do not understand.

TC: Another criticism is that Indira Gandhi [the former prime minister of India] set JNU up because she wanted a generation of socialists in the country.

RT: This is such nonsense. Why would she want a generation of socialists since she herself was no socialist, irrespective of the rhetoric? Again, a little reliable enquiring and thinking would eliminate such statements. We now have a dozen universities that have been established in Delhi without people making these silly remarks about why they were required. Given the population expansion, there will be more to come.

JNU was established as additional to Delhi University, when another university was needed. Since Delhi University has colleges affiliated to it for undergraduate work, it has to handle a huge number of undergraduate students in addition to graduates. The Jamia Millia [Islamia] at that time was not teaching the full range of courses as it is now doing. So, it was decided in parliament after a long debate, that there would be another university. Initially the name suggested was Raisina University, because Raisina was the village on the site of which New Delhi was built. Later it was decided to name it in memory of the first prime minister. So, the name was changed.

In the beginning, when it started functioning from 1970, the question that was raised was: what kind of university would it be and where would its specialisations lie? There was general agreement that it should be a postgraduate university. There was much discussion over whether it should repeat the curriculum of existing universities or break fresh ground and be inter-disciplinary. The latter was decided upon, and the next step was to determine as to how interdisciplinary it should be and in what way. Every other university in those days tended to confine courses strictly to one disciplineato history, sociology, economics, anthropology, literature, or whatever. Remember that in the 1960s, interdisciplinary studies were known to a small section of academia but were new to many universities and unknown to most. These studies were something that the general public was relatively unaware of. Not that there is a much greater familiarity with this kind of knowledge in these times, judging by the recent pronouncements on JNU.

Fifty years ago, the emergence and establishing of the social sciences was almost a global movement creating a new kind of disciplinary approach. This was the same in America, Europe, and Asia. France, in particular, was one of the more intellectually stimulating places. Philosophers were arguing with archeologists about the meaning of civilisation, and anthropologists were in dialogue with linguists on the terms used for kinship relations in practice and in texts, and interdisciplinarity was growing. In India it had roots initially in the work of cultural historians, sociologists and economists, but the orientation changed when it became interdisciplinary. Those among us who read beyond Indian history were aware of these changes, and felt that they should be reflected in the courses taught at JNU. It was particularly important at that time when, in many disciplines, the theories expounded by colonial scholarship in many parts of the world were beginning to be questioned and discarded.

In 1971 when we started functioning as a University, G Parthasarathy was the first vice chancellor. Some of us wondered whether an ex-diplomat would be suitable as a vice chancellor. As it turned out, he was excellent because he had the required intellectual flexibility, which most vice chancellors lack. The initial faculty appointed was told that our courses were to be interdisciplinary and reflective of the methodologies and new ways of thinking in the social sciences, wherever they were relevant. There was no need to repeat what was being taught in existing universities. This is why we donat have the kind of departments that exist in most other universities. We have centres, which are broadly discipline-based but with courses that emerge out of interdisciplinary studies. The Centre for Historical Studies had two scholars from other disciplines who worked with historians, both in teaching specially designed courses and guiding research. We had a sociologist, Satish Sabharwal, and we had a scholar of linguistics, K Meenakshi, who was well versed in Tamil and Sanskrit linguistics, both of which are extremely useful for ancient history. This brought in one aspect of interdisciplinary studies.

The most positive aspect of the new courses was the student reaction. They were intellectually stimulated and took an almost inspired interest in reading around the subject. Our student body was more mixed than that of other metropolitan universities. Well before the reservation quotas we had worked out our own system of admitting a percentage of students from economically disadvantaged groups. The resulting interface between students from different backgrounds and between faculty and students, gave JNU a special character.

It was also in the 60saand more so perhaps in the 70sathat there was a considerable interest among many universities across the world in the study of Marxism. There was a presence of Marxism in the social sciences because of the kind of questions that social scientists were asking at that time. What is the nature of society? What is the structure of society? How did it come about? When did the state emerge and what was its form and how did this form change over the centuries? Who controlled the resources and who provided labour? What kind of role did religion play? Was it purely a matter of belief and worship or were religious organisations also controlling social institutions? What kind of role did kinship play? Why were there different kinds of kinship rulesanot everybody married according to the same rules, not everybody inherited property according to the same rules. All these questions were being discussed. Many theories involved in answering these questionsaother than Marxistawere also brought into the discussion. It was important to understand theories of explanation and this was a new aspect in the study of social sciences. These were not the questions that were asked in most history departments at the time, but they are now more regular in the better departments. There were some centres of research in the social sciences such as the Delhi School of Economics that were active in such studies. However, these are still new to the general public whose understanding of the disciplines that are now included in the social sciences remain as conventionally taught.

Because we encouraged discussion, there was much of it. Students were reading theories of explanation of every kind and arguing about them. That was when it began to be said that we were all Marxists. To which I would always reply that if a head count was to be taken of which academics at JNU were Marxists, their number would be a small fraction of the faculty. The accusation that JNU was a Marxist university was made more frequently by those who did not know about the courses taught, nor their intellectual content, nor why they were taught the way they were. There is still little understanding among most people as to why history is part of the social sciences and how the questions that historians now ask have changed from those asked 50 years ago.

We were also concerned about relating these questions to the understanding of Indian society. Obviously, in such enquiries, conventional views would have to be examined afresh. Conventional understanding can become out-of-date in the light of contemporary research. Understanding a society means comprehending it from as many perspectives as the evidence allows. Explanations again depend on how the evidence is analysed. An approach that tries to co-relate multiple evidences is obviously different from one that focuses just on one perspective.

TC: A more sophisticated version of Chandan Mitraas charge is that JNU was a aclosed institutiona and that certain teachers favoured certain students, there were coteries involved, and that it was impossible for outsidersaespecially for the right wingato break in.

RT: This has now become a kind of chorus. One keeps hearing about how the left-wing intellectuals hogged all the institutions and kept out the right-wing intellectuals. I donat know why that is said because I donat see a regiment of right-wing intellectuals all waiting at the gates of JNU and other institutions, unable to enter. This is factually not so. In the centres that I got to know, there was a greater presence of non-Marxists. But Marxism was not a taboo word as was the case in many other universities. In the social sciences, there were open differences that were discussed and written about between Marxists and others, and among Marxists of different hues, as for example, the debate on feudalism in medieval Indian history, which had its genesis in the JNU.

There is of course the perennial problem with those who have not studied Marxism and cannot therefore differentiate between liberal thinking and Marxist thinking. Even academics sometimes confuse the two. I have had problems with historians who regard any reference to economic factors in historical explanation as Marxist history. They donat recognise that Marxism implies a specific method of using economic evidence, so anyone who refers to economic factors cannot automatically be called a Marxist. Some non-Marxists have been among the more renowned economic historians of Europe and other parts of the world.

There is one thing that must be recognised that ties up with what I was saying earlier. The emergence of the social sciences was virtually an international movement in the latter half of the twentieth century. It introduced new kinds of thinking into conventional disciplines, and this change has taken place internationally. It just so happened that, at that time, students and faculty members were also interested in new and challenging ideas often expressed in different varieties of neo-Marxism, structural Marxism and so on, as much as in a variety of non-Marxist theories. The classical theories were being developed in various ways, leading to some impressive intellectual debates. A range of translations became available. The works of Antonio Gramsci [the Italian Neo-Marxist theorist and politician], Georg Lukacs [the Hungarian Marxist philosopher] and others, that would in earlier times have been inaccessible, were now accessible through translations and widely read and debated.

Many in JNU were attracted by this array of ideas. They were different from what had been written by both the Indian left and the Indian right in the past. In fact they were helpful in understanding both these categories. A couple of decades later the interest in some historical circles was shifting to [the historian] Hayden White, [Michel] Foucault [the French philosopher and historian], and [Jacques] Derrida [the French philosopher], who by no stretch of the imagination can be called Marxists, or to quite unconventional Marxists such as Slavoj Zizek. They were required reading.

The right wing in India has yet to produce an impressive body of intellectuals. Liberals there are, but it is hard to name academically renowned historians, for instance, as distinctively from the right. The point is that, as it happened, at that time, many bright people were of the left, or were left liberalsathey were not of the right. We have many respected liberals but they can hardly be called right-wing.

Before calling JNU a aclosed shop,a it might be worth doing a checklist of faculty appointments in terms of appointing products of the JNU, and compare it with a similar list for example, from Delhi University. It is unlikely that there would be much difference.

Let me also add that I donat understand the hysteria about JNU. It is one university out of a few hundred. Surely there are enough right-wing academics in all these universities to hold their own against the single JNU. It might be more to the point to analyse why the quality of right-wing thinking and writing, with a few exceptions, is not taken more seriously.

TC: The recent activism around nationalism seems to ignore entirely, the tradition of debate in ancient India.

RT: The tradition of debate in the Indian past was impressive. The opponentas view had to be known and represented in detail. This was followed by the presentation of the proponentas view. Subsequent to this there was a debate and perhaps a solution. Leave aside following these principles; we have not even learnt to argue with those of an opposite point of view. Those with the most vehement and extreme views often resort to abuse. This is a sign both of not being educated and of being arrogantly ill mannered.

There is also a widely held belief that the tradition of Indian thought was conservative and idealist. In fact we have inherited a range of philosophical schools from materialist to idealist philosophy, and yet there is a popular tendency to treat Indian philosophy as idealist rather than investigating the reasons for divergence. I grew up on the cusp of Independence and went to college in 1948. In college, courses in philosophy essentially meant repeating what had been said by [the Sanskrit scholar] Surendranath Dasgupta and [the philosopher and statesman] Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan. Idealist philosophy was what was mainly taught. So it was a revelation later, to read other books with different ideas, to discover that there were scholars that questioned conventional ideas.

I recently developed a marginal interest in a couple of texts written in medieval times, more specifically in the fourteenth century. This was the time during the last thousand years when, according to the theory being popularised, all Hindus were slaves, and were oppressed by the Muslims. One of the texts was a commentary on the Rigveda written by a medieval commentator and scholar called Sayana. Itas a fascinating commentary because some of it is a reasoned explanation of the meaning of the verses and some of it is a resort to the imaginary. I wonder why there is this mix from someone who was clearly a scholar. Till date, I have been waiting for a good Sanskrit scholar in India to do an analytical commentary on Sayanaas commentary. Imagine a twenty-first century scholar commenting on a fourteenth century scholar commenting on a text of the second millennium BC. What an intriguing lineage. We keep talking about these texts, but few take the next stepathat is, to analyse the text and attempt to place it in the context of its culture and history.

The non-Indian Sanskrit scholars in universities abroad, who work on such texts, do attempt this, but have now to be careful not to be critical for fear, not of the quality of their work being questioned, but of being abused for even daring to try a reasoned analysis. The recent petition against Sheldon Pollock [a scholar of Sanskrit philology, Indian intellectual and literary history], put together by what would in todayas terms qualify as intellectuals of the right, demands his removal as editor of the Murthy Classical Library of India because he is not an Indian and because he signed a petition in support of JNU. The attack is not on the quality of his scholarly work, which is generally rated as among the best.

The other fourteenth-century text that interested me is the Sarva-darsana-sangraha, which is a compendium of philosophical schools. The opening chapter is on the Charvaka [the ancient school of Indian materialism]. The author does not endorse Charvaka philosophy and states that it does not have the same status as some of the other schools, but it is one that has had some influence, thereby warranting a discussion at some length. He proceeds to discuss it after this qualifier. To me, this kind of thinking is symptomatic of two things. Firstly, that you express yourself in the accepted format of debate and discussion as I described it earlier. Secondly, that when you are putting together the schools of philosophy, you do include the school that you may disagree with, but which nevertheless, for some others has philosophical integrity and an identity. This, to me, is the essence of philosophy.

What is current today is the complete opposite, in the kind of attitude that says, aShut it [JNU] down.a

People like myself are abused daily on the social media, on e-mail and elsewhere, by those for whom abuse is the only language that they seem to know. I am of course not the only one, as many of us believed to be Marxistsaor acommiesa to use their favourite expressionaare abused. We are called the filthiest, dirtiest names. The abuse of these people follows whatever one says in public. They get rattled because we donat give in and keep silent. So, some have been silenced by a bullet. It does make one wonder what is being planned next.

Part of the problem with those who attack us for being critical of some aspects of ancient Indian history, is that they do not read what we write and build attitudes towards us through hearsay and the political opinions of the extreme religious right. If they read even an iota of comparative history for instance, they would know that building extravagant theories about the golden ages of the past, has now, more often than not, been discarded. Every major culture has its points of high achievement as also its manifestations of degradation. If we speak in praise, rightly and justifiably so, of the Sanchi stupa, the Brihadishvara temple at Tanjore and the Taj Mahal, we cannot ignore the fact that they represent a civilisation in which a large category of humans were treated as polluting and were discriminated against. They provided the labour required by these signatures of high culture.

The Greeks were hardly better, for they too built some of their high culture on the backs of slaves. Two-thirds of the population of Athens were slaves and excluded from claiming any rights. Yet, we maintain that Athens laid the foundation of democracy. Every society manifests different qualities at different stages and at different levels. We have to try and understand this and explain it, instead of nurturing our make-believe vision of everything being unblemished in the earlier past. The latter comes in the way of the debate on how complex cultures were formed and about what societies inherit from the past, on which inheritance we create the present. There can be no dialogue with those who have closed their minds.

TC: This strain of nationalists also become nearly hysterical as soon as somebody who is living outside this country approaches ancient texts. What the person says does not matter. How damaging is it in the long run, to have this attitude towards scholarship? Are we going to have two parallel streams?

RT: We already have two parallel streams. There is scholarship on India carried out in India and there is scholarship on India carried out outside India. New ideas or departures from the old can become controversial. These are discussed in centres of scholarly research. But there is a large body of people, most with little or no claim to scholarship, that constitute the more vocal NRI and Hindutva groups. These are opposed to anyone who may be even slightly critical of Hinduism and what they regard as ancient Indian culture. They object to using the methodology of current scholarship, which they regard as awestern.a They have yet to find an indigenous methodology.

There is a history of fine scholarship in India on which we build, and we try and maintain a dialogue with scholarship on India that is taking place abroad. It becomes difficult when any kind of critique is pounced upon without being understood, and its author abused. Those in dialogue with scholars abroad, through publications, lectures and conferences at non-Indian universities, are dismissed as merely repeating western views on India. They would prefer that Indian scholarship remain completely isolated and single-minded.

Mind you, their own understandingathe Hindutva understanding of Indiaais rooted in colonial theories which they try and project as the aindigenous understandinga of the Indian past. Among these are the theories that Indian civilisation originated with the Vedas, that of Hindus and Muslims having been antagonistic towards each other, and that Hindus were victimised under Muslim rule. Given these beliefs, the observances of the Vedic Aryan model of society are advocated, even for contemporary timesaor at least what they think was such a model. And revenge must be sought for the tyranny of Muslim rule. These are ideas that come from nineteenth-century colonial writing and have little to do with indigenous views. The colonial writers who authored these ideas are well known in historical scholarship.

The discovery of the Indus civilisation, because it predates the Vedic period, became problematic for those arguing that Indian civilisation originated with the Vedic Aryans. So either the Vedic Aryans have to be taken back to the time of the pre-Indus civilisation, or else the Harappans have to be called Aryans. But there is considerable diversity between the two cultures and the diversity cannot be brushed aside. Many scholars have in any case stopped bothering about the origin of the Aryans and are now pursuing more interesting aspects of the early cultural scene. But for the more vocal it is a political idiom that has to be established, so they continue to hold to these theories. Those that disagree are abused as ignoramuses, and we in turn merely switch off from their abuse. The difference in historical interpretation and areas of research as of now, from that of 50 years ago, is quite remarkable. Ancient history has become even more of an intellectually challenging subjectain the best sense.

TC: It is not just the religious right that is attacking the idea of India. There are also members of corporate India, such as Mohandas Pai, who are saying that, aWe can support your education, but not your politics.a How do you see these attacks?

RT: How does one separate education, and higher education especially, from politics? Any study of the environment, of the constitution and democracy, of modern sociology, modern and contemporary history, economics, demography, hydrology, geneticsaall these have a political edge and some are tied into politics in the broader sense, since that plays a role in how they are viewed and questioned in the course of study. There is some degree of politics in the understanding of knowledge that has to be recognised. Those who object to politics, object to only some kinds of politics and not to all. Then, there are political interventions at all levels in every institution. Administrative appointments in educational institutions, such as vice chancellors and registrars, are not devoid of political patronage. How is this intervention to be controlled? One way is to give the institution autonomy in making such appointments, but this no government is willing to do. And letas face it: the corporate sector, in its own way, is just like the government, and would like to have pliant students, because the pliant student will then become a pliant member of the corporate sector.

Itas a question of whether we want thinking people who will question and critique our institutions in order to improve them, or do we want those who will go on perpetuating the institutions that exist and allow them to back-slide into virtual non-existence. I donat see much contradiction between the government wishing to control universities and corporates wishing to do so. The private universities established by the corporates arenat exactly islands of freethinking. Itas also a question of the mindset. There is a mindset that says we will support education, provided the politics that goes with it is also what we want. Is that what is meant by education without politics?

If there are going to be students who are, for example, active in saying you canat start a mining industry in this area because itas not feasible environmentally, then obviously those wanting to establish a mining industry there are going to object to that student and to the university that is producing such a student. This is then called politics, whereas in fact it comes from being educated to understand the different perspectives of the environment. This comes from an awareness of the world around us. Learning is not limited to using teachersa notes and made-easy guides for passing exams. Learning means being able to look at the world with an intelligent understanding of what the world is about and how it works. This approach towards learning fosters the kind of student who will question all varieties of ideasanot just those of the corporates and those of religious enterprises, but others as well.

The question is asked about how much money is being spent on our students and what is the result. Could we please divide it up into categories of expenditure? What I mean by this is that the most expensive items in any university are the laboratories for teaching and research in the sciences, and libraries that are up-to-date with books and journals. The latter are more often than not neglected, but labs are taken more seriously. You cannot say that educating every student costs Rs 3 lakh each. You have to make a distinction between the language student, the social science student, the science student, the amount of money being spent on the books in different fields in the library, and the amount being spent on the laboratories for the science student. Thereas a striking difference. Laboratories donat come cheap. If you are trying to keep up with the sciences, you will have to spend an absolute fortune. Why donat we compare it with what is being spent in the various advanced institutes of the sciences and technologiesathe IITs [Indian Institutes of Technology] and the Institutes of Science. That would not be just Rs 3 lakh for every student but much more. This kind of arithmetic doesnat make too much sense.

TC: How worried are you about what is happening?

RT: I am extremely worried. Iam extremely worried because I have not seen a situation with this potential for authorities and what we euphemistically call afringe elementsa to clamp down on, or terrorise, people and institutions. It is happening repeatedly and it worries me enormously. In the past, we have had the Emergency and it is mentioned fairly often these days. The present time is not like the Emergency but is seems to be carrying shades of that time. An academic from JNU was invited to give a talk at another University but was debarred from entering the University and the person who invited him was, I am told, suspended.. I went to give a talk in the premises of a college affiliated to Bombay University and had to have a police escort since the police feared that I might be physically attacked, as had happened to a speaker a few weeks before. People have been picked up by the police for making critical comments on Facebook about the actions of those governing us. Then, in the course of a teach-in at a University, a statement is made concerning the matter under discussion, and the next thing one knows is that the person who made the statement is declared to be anti-national and accused of sedition. People who express a critical opinion can be taken for questioning and accused of anti-nationalism and sedition, but some politicians and their associates, can make horrific hate-mongering statements about lesser communities or persons, with absolute impunity. There is the constant fear that all this will lead to the mind just closing. At the best of times the mind should not be closed but at this stage, for our society to develop a closed mind would be a disaster.

TC: The aFa word of fascism often comes into this discussion. Even the social science community is quite divided on this. You have on one hand, people such as Ashis Nandy, who once interviewed the current prime minister in his youth in the 1980s and called him a aclassic, clinical case of a fascist.a On the other hand, historians such Ramachandra Guha would say that the BJP is clearly not a fascist party, because it doesnat fit in the standard definition.

RT: Fascism does not arrive suddenly as fully-grown and ready to take over governance. There can be fascistic trends that either weaken or else become stronger. Letas not forget that the initial organisers of the RSS were most impressed with the Italian fascists. BS Moonje [a leader of the Hindu Mahasabha] spent time with [Benito] Mussolini and the Italian fascists and the RSS was modeled on the Italian Facsist organisation. There must have been similarities of thinking among both.

What is called ahistorya is of course, central to their thinking as it is for all varieties of nationalism or near-nationalism. History for them consists of the glorification and success of Hindu culture in the ancient period, the victimisatiuon of the Hindu by the Muslim in the medieval period, and the hope of creating a Hindu rastra in modern times. The obsession with victimization persists even though those that propagate this version of history know that some of the finest developments in the Hindu religion took place precisely in this period and occasionally in association with people of other religions. Indoctrination is a method of teaching people to think in a confined way. The certainties that are projected when there is an easy answer for every question would appeal to a generation coming into adulthood, but unemployed and insecure.

In a sense, what has been happening in recent times could well develop into fascism unless it is controlled and a new way of envisioning the Indian future is worked out. I am extremely worried when I see the police pick up a student and put him in jail, despite his stating that he did not utter the anti-national slogans he is accused of having shouted, and the recorded evidence confirms this. It is frightening, and oneas doubts about the police being there to protect the citizen, increase.

To have the police stand by and watch students and teachers being beaten up by a group of lawyers in the premises of the law court is shocking. Neither of these actions create confidence either in the governmentas control over those supposedly maintaining law and order, or in the custodians of law. It does create a sense of fear.

What also worries me is the systematic way in which attempts are made to dismantle institutions. Universities have come under attack and doubtless there will be more such incidents, and each time some people will again shout, aShut it down.a There is now a discernable pattern that is becoming predictable. For those of us who are old enough to remember, anti-intellectualism carries whiffs of McCarthyism, and is not too distant from [the English novelist] George Orwellas image of the future in his book entitled, 1984.

Among the major promises that were made two years ago was that there would be development of the economy that would provide jobs for many if not for all, and that the extensive corruption that prevails would be brought to an end. Neither of these has begun to happen on any effective scale. The resulting disillusionment may be difficult to stem.

TC: What do you think would be the end goal of this ideology? When would they be finally happy?

RT : I think their basic aim is to bring in a new constitutionaenabling the establishment of a Hindu rashtra. If they can do that, then they will have gone far in their ambition.
Seguin, TX (78155)

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 More evidence of a failed drug war: foot soldier always high while fighting | Main | Commissioner of U.S. Commission on Civil Rights expresses concerns to Senator Grassley about efforts to reduce federal prison sentences 

May 6, 2016

"Gutting Habeas Corpus: The Inside Story of How Bill Clinton Sacrificed Prisoners Rights for Political Gain"

The title of this post is the headline of this notable new Intercept piece, which gets started this way:

On the eve of the New York state primary last month, as Hillary Clinton came closer to the Democratic nomination, Vice President Joe Biden went on TV and defended her husbands 1994 crime bill. Asked in an interview if he felt shame for his role passing a law that has been the subject of so much recent criticism, Biden answered, Not at all, and boasted of its successes  among them putting 100,000 cops on the street. His remarks sparked a new round of debate over the legacy of the crime bill, which has haunted Clinton ever since she hit the campaign trail with a vow to end the era of mass incarceration. A few days later, on April 24, a lesser-known crime law quietly turned 20. The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996  or AEDPA  was signed by Bill Clinton in the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing. While it has been mostly absent from the recent debates over the crime policies of the 90s, its impact has been no less profound, particularly when it comes to a bedrock constitutional principle: habeas corpus, or the right of people in prison to challenge their detention. For 20 years, AEDPA has shut the courthouse door on prisoners trying to prove they were wrongfully convicted. Americans are mostly unaware of this legacy, even as we know more than ever about wrongful convictions. Barry Scheck, co-founder and head of the Innocence Project, calls AEDPA a disaster and a major roadblock since its passage. Many would like to see it repealed. If the Clintons have not been forced to defend AEDPA, its partly because neither the law nor its shared history with the crime bill is well understood. AEDPAs dizzying provisions  from harsh immigration policies to toughened federal sentencing  were certainly a hasty response to terrorism. But the law was also the product of an administration that long before the Oklahoma attack had abandoned its partys core principles on criminal justice, deciding instead to wield crime policy as political weapon. After the Republicans seized control of Congress in the historic 1994 midterm elections, the Clinton White House sought to double down on its law-and-order image in advance of the 1996 presidential race. In the short term, it was a winning political strategy for Clinton. In the long term, it would help pave the way to one of the worst laws of his presidency.

May 6, 2016 at 08:52 AM | Permalink

Comments

Good reason to vote against Hillary. But who we gonna vote FOR?

Posted by: BarkinDog | May 6, 2016 10:12:44 AM

"For 20 years, AEDPA has shut the courthouse door on prisoners trying to prove they were wrongfully convicted."

Very true. I've had lots of clients wrongfully convicted in state court who languish in prison because under AEDPA the federal courts have to defer to the state court decisions unless the decisions are off-the-wall wrong.

Posted by: Michael R. Levine | May 6, 2016 10:38:18 AM

Easy to do a rant for or against AEDPA (as the article does against AEDPA). AEDPA does not involve the constitutional writ of habeas corpus but rather the collateral review authorized by federal law. Given that the norm in civil cases is that lower federal courts do not review state court decisions, one can debate how much collateral review we want in criminal cases. For every colorable case that fails due to AEDPA, there are a large number of frivolous state habeas petitions filed in federal court. The lines drawn in AEDPA are, of course, debatable. Given the length of state review processes (in my state at least three years for direct and collateral review), most inmates have more than enough time to develop any meritorious claims before the AEDPA time limits expire. Particularly, as the passage of time makes the accuracy of additional review dubious at best (as memories fade) plus increases the hardship on victims and witnesses, it makes sense to adopt rules that fit the typical case while leaving some exceptions for the rare case. AEDPA does that.

Currently, conservatives see lots of loopholes in AEDPA that they would like to close even more -- federal courts taking too long to resolve habeas petitions and some judges just not following AEDPA on cases that would be close calls even with purely de novo review. Liberals want to roll back the clock on AEDPA. From a centrist position, AEDPA probably needs some tweaks, but is not the disaster that articles like this want to make it out to be.

Posted by: tmm | May 6, 2016 11:10:18 AM

I'm with TMM on this issue.

Posted by: Daniel | May 6, 2016 11:32:41 AM

"Good reason to vote against Hillary."

Because twenty years ago her husband signed this into law?

I'm wary about the law but understand tmm's comment ... it's net results from my vantage point don't warrant the apocalyptic tones sometimes used. This doesn't mean it is necessarily a good thing -- I have read those who do habeas work for a living explain the result is something of a mess -- but "gutting" etc? eh.

Posted by: Joe | May 6, 2016 11:44:06 AM

Of course, all the libs cheerlead when AEDPA is blown off by 'rat judges.

Posted by: federalist | May 6, 2016 6:55:56 PM

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 First they came for the sex offenders, then for the abortion providers... | Main | "Gutting Habeas Corpus: The Inside Story of How Bill Clinton Sacrificed Prisoners Rights for Political Gain" 

This recent AP article, headlined "Reports: Chemist Who Worked on Drug Cases Was Usually High," provides yet another reason why I see the so-called war on drugs to be an abject failure. Here are the details:

Investigators say a former chemist who tested drugs for Massachusetts police departments was high almost every day she went to work for eight years, potentially putting thousands of criminal convictions in jeopardy.

Sonja Farak, who worked for an Amherst lab that tested drug samples for police, was high on methamphetamines, ketamine, cocaine, LSD and other drugs during most of her time there, even when she testified in court, according to a state investigative report released Tuesday. Farak worked at the lab between 2005 and 2013.

Cyndi Roy Gonzalez, a spokeswoman for Attorney General Maura Healey, said the information gathered about Farak "will no doubt have implications for many cases," but it is unclear just how many. She said it will be up to prosecutors, defense attorneys and the courts to determine the full scope of cases affected by Farak's misconduct. "We are deeply concerned whenever the integrity of the justice system is called into question or compromised," she said.

One defense attorney told the Boston Herald that Farak handled about 30,000 cases during her career. "This is a statewide scandal, and I think it's going to take an enormous toll on the system," attorney Luke Ryan said.

Farak's case is unrelated to the case of Annie Dookhan, who worked at a state drug lab in Boston. Dookhan was sentenced in November 2013 to at least three years in prison after pleading guilty to faking test results in criminal cases that jeopardized thousands of convictions.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts said the number of criminal cases affected by Farak's misconduct could rival the approximately 40,000 cases thrown into question by Dookhan's actions. "It's now beyond doubt that the drug war in Massachusetts during the Dookhan-Farak era was built on a foundation of falsified evidence," said Matthew Segal, the ACLU's legal director.

Segal said he doesn't have an estimate of how many cases could be challenged, but said prosecutors who got convictions using drug samples she tested "have an obligation to identify and notify everyone who might have been denied due process" as a result of Farak's actions. Segal said that because Farak admitted ingesting lab "standards"  drug samples used as benchmarks to test against substances submitted by police for testing  all cases that went through the lab should be re-examined.

Last year, the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts ordered an investigation into the timing and scope of Farak's misconduct. Healey's office conducted the investigation. Many of the shocking details came from Farak's own grand jury testimony, including that she once smoked crack before a 2012 state police accreditation inspection of the now-closed lab. Farak also testified that she manufactured crack cocaine for her personal use in the lab.

Farak, 37, of Northampton, pleaded guilty to tampering with evidence, stealing cocaine from the lab and unlawful possession in January 2014 and was sentenced to 18 months behind bars and five years of probation. She served her sentence and has been released from prison....

Gov. Charlie Baker said the state will likely have to allocate more money to deal with the Farak scandal. In the Dookhan case, the state Legislature authorized up to $30 million to cover costs incurred by the court system, prosecutors, public defenders and other state agencies. "We certainly believe we are going to have a big responsibility to work with the courts and with others to make sure that people who are affected by this have the appropriate opportunity to engage in that conversation," Baker said. "And we fully expect we will be doing that for the next several months."
Cupertino, California: Pop, 58,302 Souls, plus 1 Gigantic Company.

That, of course, would be Apple, and in an interview highlighting the seemingly frayed town-gown relations, so to speak, between the company and the city, particularly its mayor Barry Chang, Chang tells the Guardian that when he was a city council member he was actually kicked out of Apple's current headquarters.

Barry Chang barely made it into the lobby when Apples security team surrounded and escorted him off the property... They said you cannot come in, youre not invited. After that I left and have not gone back, said an exasperated Chang, whos been mayor since December 2015 and had approached the computing firm when he was serving on the city council three years ago.

While the company says they have no record of the incident, Chang nevertheless has a bone to pick with Apple, who pay a measly 2.3 percent effective tax rate per Citizens for Tax Justice. [Apple is] not willing to pay a dime. Theyre making a profit, and they should share the responsibility for our city, but they wont, Chang said to the Guardian. They abuse us.

Speaking of: For his part, Mayor Chang is being threatened by a recall attempt according to the Mercury News. That's due to "abusive and dishonest behavior toward the public and other council members [and] personal attacks against residents in council meetings and in the State of the City address," in the words of the recall notice.

But if Chang isn't intimidated by a $500 billion company, well then, you know..."I'm not afraid of it," he told the Merc."I try to do the right thing for the people of Cupertino. It's a small group of people; it's radical."

Returning to the tiff with Apple, while terming company's treatment of Cupertino as "abuse" has got to be hyperbolic, the general sentiment is shared by many. As Ron Eckstein of Americans for Tax Fairness, an advocacy group, put it to the Guardian. Theyre all just as good at engineering their own tax rates as they are at engineering new technology, Ron Eckstein of Americans for Tax Fairness, an advocacy group, put it to the Guardian.

Steve Wozniak recently told BBC radio that the company he founded with Steve Jobs ought to pay far more in taxes: as the Guardian quotes him, I dont like the idea that Apple might be unfair  not paying taxes the way I do as a person. I do a lot of work, I do a lot of travel and I pay over 50% of anything I make in taxes and I believe thats part of life and you should do it.

Perhaps someday they will, perhaps they won't, but with their new "spaceship campus" plowing ahead, Apple looks as if it could blast off from Cupertino  and the planet, with its burdensome tax obligations  altogether.
Ahead of California's June 7 primary, Hillary Clinton arrives in the Bay Area today, campaigning in Oakland this afternoon and fundraising in San Francisco this evening.

KRON 4 and the AP report that the Democratic candidate will appear the bilingual La Escuelita Elementary School at 2 p.m.

Later, ABC 7 writes, a fundraising event will be held in San Francisco, likely at the Masonic atop Nob Hill and, according to rumor, with appearances from both California senators and actor Elizabeth Banks. The venue, whose calendar for the evening is blank, is at least where protestors say Clinton will be. They plan to demonstrate outside.

Protests, often by supporters of rival Bernie Sanders, are a recurring theme at Clinton events. Those tonight could resemble the ones held against her in Los Angeles yesterday, where she faced criticism from Latino groups according to LAist. Or perhaps they could look like those held outside the candidate's last San Francisco fundraising effort, a dinner with George and Amal Clooney at $353,0000 a head.

While Clooney has since called that price ridiculous to NBC's Meet the Press, according to analysis in the New Yorker, the actor "straightforwardly defended the fund-raising as a corrosive but necessary means to counterattack the Republicans, at least until a better system is in place for all."

To date, Clinton holds 92 percent of the contested delegates in delegates needed to win her party's primary. In California, she leads by a slimmer margin of six points, per an independent Field Poll released last month.

Related: 1600 Sanders Supporters To Bang Pots Outside George Clooney's SF Fundraiser For Hillary Clinton
A man is fighting for his life this morning, after he was found bleeding out last night on a Mission District sidewalk.

It was 11:16 Thursday evening when the resident at a home on the 1000 block of Hampshire Street, which is between 22nd and 23rd Streets near San Francisco General Hospital called 911 to report that a man was "laying on the sidewalk bleeding," police say.

When officers from the San Francisco Police Department arrived, they found a 21-year-old man suffering from "stab wounds to torso."

He was transported to SF General for treatment of his injuries, which the SFPD describes as "life-threatening."

As of Friday morning, police say, they do not have any information on the circumstances behind the stabbing, nor do they have any details on possible suspects in the attack.
San Francisco mayor speaks with hunger strikers by phone, stands by police chief and reform efforts https://t.co/4rP71mkCcM  KRON 4 News (@kron4news) May 5, 2016

Following on the political theater of this week in which Mayor Ed Lee and the hunger strikers now being called the Frisco Five failed twice to have an in-person meeting, the mayor has finally spoken with one of the strike leaders, Ilyich Sato, a.k.a. Equipto, by phone. As KRON 4 and others are reporting, the mayor reiterated that reforms were underway in the SFPD with regard to de-escalation and their use of weapons, and that firing Chief Suhr  which is the strikers' primary demand  would only slow the process of implementing these reforms. He also said that he has asked U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch to investigate the Mario Woods shooting, but has not heard back from her. Hearing only that Lee "stands with Suhr," the strikers vowed to continue their demonstration, in which they're now in their 16th day without solid food.

As CBS 5 notes, the mayor's call came a day after one of the strikers, Selassie Blackwell, fainted and was briefly taken to the hospital for examination. He was released and returned to the campsite on Wednesday evening.

In follow-up statements after the phone call, the mayor's spokesperson Christine Falvey said, "Mayor Lee contacted the group today to let them know that he respects their right to protest, but hopes they will do so in a way that doesnt harm themselves." As the Chronicle reports, she says that he called to ask about the strikers' health, to express his continued support for Chief Suhr, and to explain about the reforms that are underway. "He was trying to explain that firing the chief does not advance the reforms and probably would slow them down, because you would have to do a national search for a new police chief," Falvey told the paper.

The phone call followed a bit of a farce in which the hunger strikers first demanded the mayor meet with them at Mission Station, then such a meeting was allegedly brokered by Supervisor John Avalos, but by then the strikers had decided they would march to City Hall themselves, and refused to meet with the mayor a day ahead of that, when he showed up. When they arrived at City Hall on Tuesday, the mayor was away in the Bayview.

The Frisco Five responded in a statement on Indybay saying that "blood would be on his hands." And:

The Mayor tried to defend himself by saying that he was working on reforms that are being implemented and he is trying to make progress with SFPD. His reactionary reforms for a department led by his scandal plagued appointee have come too late. They should have been implemented when his officers killed Kenneth Harding five years ago.

One of the strikers, Edwin Lindo, who is also a candidate for District 9 Supervisor, summed up the mayor's call thusly, on Facebook:



Mayor Lee finally called us directly and defended Chief Suhr ... saying hes a good chief. He made clear that he stands with Suhr and will not fire him. He didnt even ask about our health!! This man will really leave us in these streets to die. Sad. We will make sure the world puts its weight of justice on Ed Lee and San Francisco. We will win.

It's unclear what happens next, with both sides digging in their heels and one side very, very hungry. Lindo tells KRON 4 "Ive lost 20 pounds already and I didnt have 20 pounds to lose in the first place."

But if firing Suhr is something they refuse to compromise on, we can expect more hospitalizations soon.

Previously: Hunger Strikers March To City Hall, In Wheelchairs, Interrupt Board Of Supervisors' Meeting

Hunger Strike Grows Outside Mission Police Station Calling For Chief Suhr's Resignation
SCREENINGS

Elk Point blood Drive, 1-6 p.m. Tuesday at St. Jospeh's Catholic Church, 605 E. Main St. Schedule an appointment online at lifeservebloodcenter.org or call 800-287-4903.

Sloan Community Blood Drive, 3:30- 6:30 p.m. May 18 at Community Hall, 423 Evans St. Schedule an appointment online at lifeservebloodcenter.org or call 800-287-4903.

Free blood pressure screenings, 9:30 to 11 a.m. Wednesdays at Countryside Senior Living, front lobby. No appointment necessary.

PROGRAMS/SELF-HELP GROUPS

Al-Anon Information Center, call 255-6724.

Al-Anon and Alateen, meetings locally. For times, dates and locations of area meetings, call 255-6724.

Alcoholics Anonymous, beginners information, call 252-1333.

Arc of Woodbury County, serving the mentally challenged, 5:15 p.m. meeting, second Monday of the month at Mid-Step Services, 4303 Stone Ave. For families and interested persons.

Child Care Resource and Referral, provides resources, education and advocacy for children, parents, and child care providers. Assists in child care needs. For more information, call 712-277-1180.

Co-dependence Anonymous, 7 p.m. Mondays and Thursdays at First Lutheran Church, Fireside Room.

Co-Dependents Anonymous (CODA), 10 a.m. Saturdays at Hawkeye Club, 420 Jones St.

Compassionate Friends, 7 p.m. fourth Wednesday of each month (third Thursday in November and second Sunday December) in Mercy Medical Center's Leiter Room. For families who have lost children. Contact Nancy Webb 712-212-4032 or Don Mulder 712-541-5512.

Children of Divorce, to help children cope with the challenges of parental separation or divorce. Call 712-279-2373 for more information.

CLINICS

Siouxland District Health immunization clinics, call for appointment, 712-279-6119 or 1-800-587-3005.

INFORMATION

Family and Addictive Illness series, for more information, call 234-2300.

Iowa Fathers, 6 to 8 p.m. fourth Tuesday of each month at Hope Lutheran Church, Education Building, 218 W. 18th St., South Sioux City, Neb. Support group to help single, divorcing and divorced parents residing in the state of Iowa.

Mercy Pathways Outpatient Program, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, on the third floor, Mercy's Central Medical Building, 801 Fifth St., Suite 360. Provides hope, help, opportunity to connect through group therapy for individuals experiencing personal, relationship, psychiatric issues. For more information, call 712-279-5991.

Narcotics Anonymous, meetings daily, various times, dates and locations. For more information, call 712-279-0733.

Overeaters Anonymous, 7 p.m. Mondays at Floyd Valley Hospital, Lower Level, 714 Lincoln St. NE, Le Mars, Iowa; 1 p.m. Tuesdays at Wesley United Methodist Church, 3700 Indian Hills Drive; 6 p.m. Tuesdays at St. John's Lutheran Church, 402 Lane Ave., Storm Lake; 7 p.m. Tuesdays at Church of the Nazarene, 226 N. Main St., Viborg, S.D.; 5:30 p.m. Thursdays and 9 a.m. Saturdays at Newman Center, 320 E. Cherry St., Vermillion, S.D.; 10:30 a.m. Saturdays at Hawkeye Club, 420 Jones St. A 12-step recovery program for people who have problems with food and weight. No fees.

St. Lukes Outpatient Behavioral Health Program, 9 a.m. to noon Monday, Tuesday and Thursday on fifth floor of St. Luke's, located at 2720 Stone Park Blvd. Offers several levels of outpatient care including partial hospitalization, intensive outpatient, and group therapy. This program provides support and integrated treatment to individuals experiencing personal or relationship issues as a result of their mental illness. For more information and admission criteria, call 712-279-3906.

Sobriety By Faith, 8:30 a.m. Saturdays at Mt. Zion Missionary Baptist Church, 1421 Geneva St. For more information, call James Mothershead at 712-577-9715.

The Link-Recovery and Freedom, at PMA Building, 6000 Gordon Drive; 9:30 to 10:30 a.m. Saturday workshop, and Christian 12-step meeting 7 to 8 p.m. Tuesday. For all ages. Call Dee at 389-7432.

Women in Recovery, meets monthly at Mt. Zion Missionary Baptist Church, 1421 Geneva St. For details, call 712-255-4623.

Tarahouse Meditation Center, 8 a.m. Mondays through Thursdays; 6:30 p.m. Fridays; 10 a.m. Saturdays and Sundays, all at 3112 Rebecca St. Three easy 10-minute sessions in small group; beginners welcome. For more information, call 490-6410.

Blood pressure and blood sugar screening, 9 to 11 a.m. Wednesdays in the lobby at Westwood Nursing and Rehabilitation Center. Free to public.

SUPPORT GROUPS

Food Addicts in Recovery Anonymous, 7-8:30 p.m. Wednesdays at Hawkeye Club basement, 420 Jones St. For more information, call 277-5935.

Celebrate Recovery, Bible-based 12-step recovery group. Thursdays at 6:30 at Sunnybrook Community Church, 5601 Sunnybrook Drive. Daycare provided. 712-490-3343.

PFLAG of Siouxland, (Parents & Friends of Lesbians and Gays), 7 p.m., fourth Monday of January, March, May, July, September and November. St. Mark ELCA Church, 5200 Glenn Ave., in the upstairs meeting area. 712-258-3116.

Singles widowed and divorced, all ages, 4 p.m., Sundays. McDonald's at Sixth Street and Lewis Boulevard. 712-252-2675.

HIV/AIDS Support Group, meets weekly. For more information, call Darla or Teri at Siouxland Community Health Center, 712-252-2477 or 888-371-1965.

La Leche League of Siouxland, breastfeeding support group meets every third Thursday at 11 a.m. at Morningside Lutheran Church. Children are welcome. For more information, call Mary at 712-546-7280 or Jacquie at 712-255-2998.

Living Each Day Cancer Support Group, 7-8 p.m. second Thursday of the month, Floyd Valley Hospital, Conference Center Room 2, Le Mars, Iowa. Open to all cancer patients, cancer survivors and family members. No charge. Pre-register by calling 712-546-3441 or 800-642-6074, ext. 441.

Mom and Baby Support Group, 10-11 a.m. last Monday of the month at the Orange City (Iowa) Hospital, lower level. For new moms and babies. 712-737-5260.

Tri-State Sober Project, 12-step meeting, 7:30-8:30 p.m., Tuesdays, Friendship Community Church, 305 Sergeant Square Drive, Sergeant Bluff. 6-7 p.m., Thursdays, Transitional Services of Iowa, 1221 Pierce St., Sioux City.

Doug's Donors Support Group, information for organ donors and recipients, 12:30-1:30 p.m. Wednesdays, 5:15-6:30 p.m. second and fourth Thursdays of the month at Mercy Cafeteria Woodbury Room. 712-277-1050.

Divorce Care, noon Sundays starting Jan. 10; GriefShare, 6:30 p.m. Tuesdays starting Jan. 12; Single & Parenting, 6:30 p.m. Thursdays starting Jan. 14; all at Sunnybrook Community Church, 5601 Sunnybrook Drive, Sioux City. 712-276-5814.

Multiple Sclerosis Support Group, 1:30-3:30 p.m. first Saturday of the month at the CNOS, Dakota Dunes. For anyone with MS and/or their families. Call Janet Limoges at 605-217-2726 prior to attending.

NAMI Siouxland (National Alliance on Mental Illness) Support Group meets 6:30 p.m., second Tuesday of the month at Friendship House, 1101 Court St. For individuals and family members dealing with mental illness. 712-255-4209.

New Life Life Support Group, 3:30 p.m. every Saturday at 2929 W. Fourth St. Spiritual 12-step program. For more information, call Donald at 712-574-1744 or James at 712-255-7624.

Post Polio Support Group, 11 a.m. first Thursday of the month at Perkins Restaurant by Menards. 712-490-8213.

Relationship Support Group, 7 p.m. Fridays at Marketplace Mall. For more information, call 239-3129.

Sexual Assault and Domestic Violence, Individual and Support Groups. For more information, call CSADV in Sioux City at 712-258-7233; Plymouth County at 712-546-6764; Monona County at 712-423-3443. Advocacy and support available 24 hours a day at 1-800-982-7233. All services free of charge and confidential.

Sickle Cell Disease Support Group, 11 a.m. third Saturday of each month at St. Luke's Hospital, meeting room 1. For patients, their family and any concerned member. Call La'Keshia Rainey at 712-203-2019 for more information.

Sioux City Association of the Deaf, 7 p.m. third Saturday of the month at Morningside Church of Christ, 5015 Garretson Ave. Regular meeting, September-May; no meeting, June, July, August and December.

Siouxland Autism Support Group, second Thursday of the month at Northwest Area Education Agency, 1520 Morningside Ave. For more information, call Julie Case at 712-490-8939.

Siouxland Epilepsy Support Group, 5 p.m. third Tuesday of the month at Prestwick Apartment Clubhouse, 4230 Hickory Lane. For anyone diagnosed with seizures or epilepsy and family or friends. For more information, call Steve at 274-6927.

Siouxland IC support group, meets quarterly in Sioux City. For patients struggling with interstital cystitis. For more information, call Jacque Dundas 316-641-9766.

Siouxland Informational Group for the Blind, 2-5 p.m. second Tuesday of the month at Northern Hills Retirement Community, 4002 Teton Trace. For more information, call 712-266-8926 or 258-8151.

Grief support group, 5:30-7:30 p.m., beginning Oct. 5 for 13 weeks (may join at any time), Crescent Park United Methodist Church, 2826 Myrtle St., Sioux City. Scott, 712-899-6315.

Siouxland Ostomy Association, 2 p.m. first Sunday of each month (except September, which will be second Sunday; and no meetings June, July, August), in Room 300 at Mercy Medical Center, 801 Fifth St. For more information, call Dick Lindblom at 251-2453.

Siouxland Parkinson Disease Support Group, 1 p.m. fourth Monday of the month at Siouxland Center for Active Generations, 313 Cook St. For more information, call at Jack Scherrman at 712-277-9337.

Sojourners, support group for families of persons with life-threatening illness, 7:30 p.m. Tuesdays at St. Luke's Regional Medical Center, Room 416. For more information, call Marjorie Jarvill at 402-241-8637.

South Sioux City Weight Support Group, 8:30 a.m. Wednesdays at St. Paul United Methodist Church, South Sioux City. For more information, call 494-1401 or 494-2133.

Support groups at Disabilities Resource Center of Siouxland, 520 Nebraska St., Suite 101: Women's Support Group, 1:30 p.m. first Wednesday of the month; LGBT Support Group, 1:30 p.m. first Friday of the month; Adult ADHD, 6 p.m. second Tuesday of the month; Advocacy Group, 1:30 p.m. third Tuesday of the month. For more information, call (712) 255-1065.

Take Off Pounds Sensibly, group meetings various times, days and locations in Siouxland. For information on the chapter in your area, call 1-800-932-TOPS.

Voice Disorder Support Group, meets as needed at Mercy Medical Center, Buena Vista Room. 712-279-2686.

Women's Peer Support Group, in Wayne and South Sioux City, Neb., for those who have experienced domestic abuse. For more information, call the Wayne office at 402-375-4633 or 1-800-440-4633; in South Sioux City, call 402-494-7592. Help and support available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Services free and confidential.

Woodbury County D.M.D.A., noon-2 p.m. first Saturday of the month at Country Friendship Acres, 4501 West St.; 7-8 p.m. first Tuesday of the month at 515 Court St. in the Community Room; 7-8 p.m. second Tuesday of the month at 441 W. Third St. in the Community Room; 7-8 p.m. third Tuesday of the month at 409 W. Third St. in the Community Room. Support group for people with disabilities and mental disorders.

Natural Mamas in Siouxland, 1 p.m., third Tuesday of each month in the Garretson room of the Morningside Public Library. All ages of children are welcome to come with moms. For sharing natural living tips, recipes, natural remedies and health, homemaking, mothering, etc. For more information, call 402-913-0038 or visit their Facebook page.

A Step Beyond support group, 3:30 p.m. second Tuesday of the month, except for August, November and December when it meets at 5:30 p.m. (no meeting in January) at the Christy-Smith Resource Center, 1819 Morningside Ave. For more information, call 712-276-7319.

Divorce care, 5 p.m., Sundays. Fireside room, Morningside Lutheran Church, 700 South Martha St.

Gamblers Anonymous meetings, 4 p.m. Thursdays at Immanuel Lutheran Church, 315 Hamilton Blvd.; 7 p.m. Wednesdays, Morningside Presbyterian Church, 4327 Morningside Ave.; 7 p.m. Tuesdays, St. John Lutheran Church. 712-277-2901.

Art therapy support group, 5:30 p.m. second Thursday of the month at the June E. Nylen Cancer Center. Registration required, call 252-9387.

After Breast Cancer Support Group, 5:30 p.m. third Tuesday of the month at the June E. Nylen Cancer Center. For more information, call Brenda, 252-9370.

After Prostate Cancer Support Group, 5:15 p.m. first Tuesday of the month at the June E. Nylen Cancer Center. For more information, call 252-9426.

Alzheimer's Association Big Sioux Chapter Support Group, 2 p.m. second Tuesday of the month; 4 p.m. third Tuesday of the month (under age 65) at 201 Pierce St., Suite 110 (Famous Dave's building); and 6 p.m. first Tuesday of the month at the Barnes and Noble Cafe. For more information, call Emily Lord at 712-279-5802.

Christy-Smith Funeral Homes of Sioux City, extensive grief library at the Morningside location. Open to the public during weekday hours. For more information, call 276-7319.

Chronic Pain/Chronic Illness Support Group, 7:30 p.m. fourth Wednesday of the month in the lower level of the Orange City Hospital. For more information, call 712-737-5260.

Connections Area Agency on Aging, and Mercy Medical Centers Older Adult Services Welcome to Medicare, 1:30-4 p.m., the first Friday of every month at Connections Area Agency on Aging, 2301 Pierce Street. To pre-register, or for more information, contact Connections Area Agency on Aging at 712-279-6900.
SIOUX CITY | Growing up in Le Mars, Morgan Rolfes was bullied in elementary and middle school.

She desperately wanted to fit in. "I did everything I could to have friends," said Rolfes. That sometimes involved acting out and getting into trouble.

Once in high school, she was introduced to the drinking scene as a way to connect with her peers. "I quickly grasped onto that and I was quickly consumed," she said.

When she went on to study pre-med at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, she hoped to leave all that behind.

"Every weekend I was partying," said Rolfes. "I thought, 'there has to be more than this. There's no happiness here. This is not fulfilling at all.'"

There was a void in her heart.

Rolfes, who turns 26 on Saturday, has since filled that emptiness as a missionary for Focus (Fellowship Of Catholic University Students), a campus outreach program based in Denver, Colorado, that ministers to students on more than 100 college campuses across the U.S.

According to the Focus website, missionaries are trained in church teaching, sacred Scripture, evangelization and discipleship. They go out to campuses to meet students where they are, inviting them into a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and encouraging them to pursue lives of virtue and excellence.

Rolfes had grown up in the Catholic church, attending St. Joseph in Le Mars with her parents, Mark and Sandy, and her younger siblings, Parker and Kennedy.

She occasionally attended church services during her early college years, and partied on the weekends. "I was living a double life," she said. "I went to Mass but I was still a party girl."

HOW IT ALL CHANGED

In her junior year, her life took a sudden turn.

After finding out she had failed her Medical College Admission Test (MCAT) for the second time, she thought her future was ruined. While running to the bathroom to cry, she bumped into Kay Stewart, a Focus missionary who was serving on the UNL campus.

Following her into the bathroom, Stewart ignored the blubbering tears of the college student and wrapped her arms around Rolfes.

"This hug was so precious," Rolfes said. "I just knew it was Jesus hugging me through her."

Stewart later told her the Holy Spirit was speaking to her in the hallway. "It was saying, 'follow her, follow her,'" Rofles recalled.

The pair soon started meeting one-on-one and Rolfes attended Stewart's regular Bible study. It was the latter who convinced her to go to confession for the first time in six years.

Waiting in line at the Newman Center was a harrowing experience. "I started to pace, sweat and shake," Rolfes said.

Soon it was her turn.

"I knelt down and then all of a sudden the waterworks start pouring down," Rolfes said. She told the priest everything, she said. "I laid it out there."

From behind the partition, she heard the words: "Welcome home, daughter."

"This big weight just lifted off my chest," Rolfes said. "This is what it means to totally give your heart and your sins to the Lord, to feel his merciful love, and how much he actually loves each and every one of us."

After completing her penance, she called Stewart. "That was the best experience of my life! I know who Jesus Christ is!" she told her.

Three months later, Rolfes went on a Focus mission trip to the Dominican Republic.

"When I came back, I was just ready to run," she said. By the time she was in her senior year at UNL, she asked God for guidance. "OK, Lord, I'm not getting into medical school, so what do you want from me now?" she asked.

The answer came: "I want you to be my missionary."

Rolfes said she was apprehensive at first, knowing that missionaries have to survive on only the money they raise themselves; there is no salary or stipend.

After saying, "OK, here we go," the rest was history. After graduation, she served at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, then at Texas State University in San Marcos. She currently serves at Drake University in Des Moines and Loras College in Dubuque.

Now entering her fourth year, she has been promoted to program director for 24 campuses in the Southern Plains Region, which includes Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Kansas and Missouri.

Focus missionaries usually sign up for a two-year commitment. "But the Lord has morphed my heart and I'm happy," Rolfes said. "This is my career."

Acknowledging that the college years can be some of the darkest and loneliest, Rolfes says there is hope.

"You don't have to be like everyone else," she said. "It's absolutely courageous and against the grain to live your life for Christ. It may be a cross to bear at first because you have no friends. But the Lord doesn't want you to be alone so he will give you companions to run that race with you."
SIOUX CITY | Before Fred Roling had a defibrillator surgically implanted in his chest, he was frequently short of breath and felt sluggish.

"Whenever I did anything I'd have to stop and catch my breath," the 70-year-old Remsen, Iowa, man recalled.

Doctors discovered Roling's heart muscle was weak and wasn't pumping enough blood to meet his body's needs. He tried taking medication to correct his condition, but the pills didn't work well. He was hesitant to have a biventricular implantable cardioverter-defibrillator (ICD), which is about the size of a stopwatch.

The battery-powered device detects abnormal heart rhythm and delivers an electric shock when the heart is beating too fast to restore a normal heartbeat. Each month, some 10,000 Americans have an ICD implanted, according to the American Heart Association.

"I was not going to do it at first, but then I happened to think about all my grandkids, and I've got a lot of fishing and camping to do yet," Roling said. "We decided to go this route."

Less than two months after the procedure, Roling said he feels comfortable with the decision. He was one of the first patients in the state of Iowa to receive a biventricular ICD designed to be used safely in patients who undergo MRI.

Before MRI-compatible ICDs came along, Roque Arteaga, a cardiologist who practices with Cardiovascular Associates, said patients with defibrillators couldn't receive MRI, a very important tool used to diagnose a variety of medical conditions including stroke, cancer and joint diseases and disorders. MRI could stop the metal leads in the device from working properly; and the device in turn could interfere with the magnetic field used to create an MRI image.

"One of the issues with devices like defibrillators is that they are not compatible because they have metal that contains iron in it. This device does not contain iron material," Arteaga said of the MRI-compatible ICD. "(Roling) can have any type of MRI scan that he wants."

Clinical guidelines advise that MRI-compatible ICDs typically be used in patients under 70 years of age. Arteaga said cardiologists might recommend implanting an MRI-compatible defibrillator in a patient over age 70 if they have a condition or chronic illness that requires them to receive MRIs from time to time. Roling was 69 when he received his defibrillator.

"We try to see the patient as a whole from head to toe and decide what would be the best device," Arteaga said.

Doctors don't know exactly what caused Roling's heart to weaken. Arteaga said viral infection is the most commonly accepted explanation.

"The heart scarred from that, the muscle got weaker and then after months or sometimes years, patients present with congestive heart failure," he said.

Congestive heart failure (CHF) is a chronic condition in which the heart doesn't pump blood as it should. Nearly 6 million people in the United States have CHF, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It's one of the most common reasons patients over age 65 are hospitalized. Roling's pulse was also slow, which Arteaga attributed to his weak heart muscle.

Medication alone, Arteaga said, wasn't enough to treat Roling's condition. Taking his age into consideration, Arteaga recommended an MRI-compatible biventricular ICD.

"He's relatively young. It's hard to predict the future, but statistically speaking the younger we are the more likely we are to require an MRI in the future," he said. "I think a non-MRI-compatible device would've worked just was well as the one that he has."

On March 10, using X-ray and ultrasound technology and a catheter, Arteaga installed wires or leads through blood vessels into the right bottom and left bottom chambers of Roling's heart. The purpose of the wires, Arteaga said, is to re-synchronize the pumping chambers. The battery-powered pulse generator was implanted under the skin of Roling's chest during the two-hour procedure. He was released from UnityPoint Health-St. Luke's the same day.

"Patients that have congestive heart failure are at risk to develop other arrhythmias in the future like atrial fibrillation or cardiac arrest. The device prevents and treats all of those conditions," Arteaga said. "Through the leads or wires that go in the vein into the heart, the device can sense and see what the heart is doing and can pace the heart."

Today, Roling said he feels good.

While Arteaga said MRI-compatibility is definitely a technological breakthrough for defibrillators, he stressed the important role the devices play in improving the quality and length of life for congestive heart failure patients.

"Patients that have a cardiomyopathy or congestive heart failure have a significantly shorter lifespan compared to the general public," he said. "With good medications, treatment and this type of device, that lifespan gets very close to what a normal lifespan is these days."
WINNEBAGO, Nebraska | The Indian Health Service is taking bids for telehealth services at seven Native American hospitals in the Great Plains Area.

According to the proposal released Thursday, IHS is offering one- to four-year contracts to cover emergency services, specialty referrals and provider-to-provider consults.

The Great Plains Area includes the tribal hospital in Winnebago, which serves members of the Winnebago and Omaha tribes. IHS has 19 total health facilities in the region, which covers IHS facilities in Iowa, Nebraska and the Dakotas.

In its request, IHS has asked for telehealth services for numerous fields such as behavioral health, cardiology, maternal and child health and several others. The deadline for submissions is June 6.

In April, IHS accepted bids for a contract to run the ER for the Northeast Nebraska hospital, as well as tribal hospitals on the Pine Ridge and Rosebud reservations in South Dakota. Under federal policy, all information during the process is protected until an award is made.

On July 23, the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services terminated its contract with the Winnebago hospital. That resulted in the loss of federal government reimbursed for patients covered by the insurance programs for the elderly and disabled.

The CMS took the action after finding serious deficiencies at the hospital that caused endangered patients.
SIOUX CITY | Jody Baxter Watson flew to Sioux City on Thursday to spend Mother's Day weekend with her 89-year-old mother, Alta.

Watson, 65, of Lincoln, California, landed at Sioux Gateway Airport on American Airlines' inaugural flight from Dallas to Sioux City.

One of eight children, Watson left Sioux City in 1969, but makes regular trips to visit her family in Siouxland. Her father, Merl, is 92.

Watson said her trip to Sioux City was more convenient this time.

"Normally, I fly Southwest into Omaha, but I took this flight because it was directly to Sioux City," she said. "It was easy. It was on time."

Local leaders praised the the new connection to a westward hub during a ceremony and ribbon cutting at the Sioux Gateway airport terminal.

City Councilman Dan Moore said the flights -- one arriving from Dallas at around 2:40 p.m. and another leaving Sioux City around 3:25 p.m. -- will increase local tourism and enhance economic development in Siouxland.

"It's going to have more than 200 markets in 24 countries," Moore said. "That is really opening up the world to the Siouxland region."

Natalie Rosenboom, 28, of Sioux Center, Iowa, took the first flight to Dallas Thursday with her children, Ainsley, 4, and Connor, 1, to visit family in Corpus Christi, Texas.

Typically, she flies out of Omaha or Sioux Falls, but with two young children, Rosenboom said Sioux Gateway was an easy choice.

"Its convenient from Sioux Center," Rosenboom said. "It's less hassle with the kids, and they get cranky on long car drives so it makes it a lot easier when it's only 45 minutes away from Sioux City."

Bill Glunz, American's regional director of state and local affairs, said the new routes are the result of the support tri-state travelers have given to American's two daily flights between Sioux City and Chicago's O'Hare International Airport. American is the lone commercial carrier at Sioux Gateway.

"We're excited today, and I want to thank everyone on the first inaugural flight," Glunz said to the bustling crowd in the Sioux Gateway terminal.

Barbara Sloniker, executive vice president of the Siouxland Chamber, said the Dallas flights give travelers another option of hubs.

"It's another non-stop flight. It's a great destination," she said.

Sioux City's last west connection came to an abrupt end in October 2014 when Frontier Airlines ceased flights to Denver and relocated planes to other cities.

Darrell Jesse, president of the Airport Board of Trustees, said the success of Sioux City's Dallas flight will depend on the community.

"Without people supporting this flight to Dallas/Fort Worth, it won't last," Jesse said. "Fly SUX because if you go to Omaha, we won't keep the flights."
SIOUX CITY | A bus driver with the Sioux City Community School District was cited for failure to yield after a two-vehicle accident that sent one person to the hospital Friday morning.

Lt. Kevin Heineman with the Sioux City Police Department said the school bus was heading west on 38th Street when it pulled out from behind a stop sign in front of a 2008 Ford Taurus headed north on Cheyenne Boulevard. The car struck the school bus.

Officers were dispatched to the scene around 7:53 Friday morning. Heineman said the driver of the car was transported to Mercy Medical Center -- Sioux City. No one on the bus was injured, he said.

Heineman said the driver of the bus received a citation for failing to yield the right of way.
Were looking for local musicians who want to showcase their sound as part of the On Iowa Politics podcast. We mostly talk politics, but were interested in a lot more, especially music, and have carved out some time to feature the best Iowa has to offer. Solo act or band, orchestra or troupe, rock, hip-hop, bebop, country, jazz, techno or something that doesnt yet have a name, we want to hear it.

Send a sound file to the podcast oniowapolitics@gmail.com with your name (or group name).
SIOUX CITY | Iowa 4th District Republican candidate Rick Bertrand envisions presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump not only capturing the White House, but scoring a "historic landslide" victory over Hillary Clinton.

"He's up against a flawed candidate," Bertrand said of Trump. "He'll put states in play that haven't been in play for Republicans in years."

Bertrand, a state senator from Sioux City who is challenging 14-year incumbent U.S. Rep. Steve King, assessed the presidential race during a wide-ranging interview Thursday with the Journal editorial board.

Bertrand initially supported Florida Sen. Marco Rubio in the GOP race. Bertrand said the atmosphere is still "raw," with some healing to do after Trump's last two GOP opponents, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Ohio Gov. John Kasich, dropped out after Trump easily won the Indiana primary and virtually wrapped up the nomination.

Most polls shows Trump with high unfavorable ratings with minorities and women and trailing in a likely general election match up with Clinton, a former Secretary of State who holds a dominating delegate lead over Sen. Bernie Sanders in the race for the Democratic nomination.

Many Republican voters also are reluctant to embrace Trump and some GOP elected office holders like U.S. Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., have gone so far to say they would support a third-party candidate rather than Trump.

Bertrand, who said he doesn't support everything Trump says, said he believes the billionaire businessman will get a flood of Republican support once he starts to hammer Clinton about her use of a private email server when serving as the U.S. Secretary of State.

"I'm an Anybody But Hillary right now. That's just the reality. I'm a conservative. I'm going to support the top of the ticket," Bertrand said.

Bertrand said that's why he's not worried that Republican down-ticket candidates could get swamped by anti-Trump sentiment.

"(Trump) is up against a flawed candidate that has almost as many negatives on her side,'' he said.

Trump, he said, has a chance to win the key states of New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Florida and California, which could deliver large numbers of electoral votes toward a "historic landslide."

In Thursday's meeting with the Journal editorial board, Bertrand said he remains upbeat about his chances to upset King in the June 7 primary, citing growing support from voters in Republican-rich counties in the sprawling 4th District.

King has picked up endorsements from nearly all of Iowa's top elected officials. Lt. Gov. Kim Reynolds was the latest to voice her support Wednesday, joining U.S. Sens. Charles Grassley and Joni Ernst and Iowa Agriculture Secretary Bill Northey.

Bertrand dismissed the impact of the endorsements.

"This is called politicians protecting politicians. You are going to see this coming over the next 35 days. I'm very comfortable with that, guys, I knew that was coming. You know that when you challenge an incumbent, they protect themselves," he told the editorial board.
VERMILLION, South Dakota | The University of South Dakota is expecting more than 1,000 graduates to walk across the stage during its 129th spring commencement Saturday morning in the DakotaDome.

The university has listed approximately 1,450 candidates for graduation this year, with 1,075 planning to attend the ceremony.

The ceremony will begin at 9:30 a.m. at the DakotaDome, 1101 N. Dakota St., in Vermillion.

Jan Neuharth, a lawyer, author, community leader and daughter of USD alumnus Allen Neuharth, will give the keynote address during the ceremony. She will also receive an honorary doctorate degree.

More information about the commencement ceremony is available on the USD website.
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
PRINCE FREDERICK, Md.

Disclaimer: In the U.S.A., all persons accused of a crime by the State are presumed to be innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. See: http://so.md/presumed-innocence. Additionally, all of the information provided above is solely from the perspective of the respective law enforcement agency and does not provide any direct input from the accused or persons otherwise mentioned. You can find additional information about the case by searching the Maryland Judiciary Case Search Database using the accused's name and date of birth. The database is online at http://so.md/mdcasesearch . Persons named who have been found innocent or not guilty of all charges in the respective case, and/or have had the case ordered expunged by the court can have their name, age, and city redacted by following the process defined at http://so.md/expungeme.

(May 5, 2016)The Calvert County Sheriff's Office today released the following incident and arrest reports.WEEKLY SUMMARY: During the week of May 2 through May 5, deputies responded to 612 calls for service throughout the community.CDS VIOLATION CASE #16-25130: On May 2, Deputy G. Gott conducted a traffic stop on Rt. 2 and Old Solomons Rd. in Owings. The driver,, was charged with CDS possession-not marijuana (oxycodone) in sufficient quantity to indicate an intent to distribute and CDS paraphernalia (straw). The passenger,, was charged with CDS possession-not marijuana (oxycodone) and CDS paraphernalia (straw).CDS VIOLATION CASE #16-25200: On May 2, Corporal R. Wilson responded to the 7-11 store located on Hallowing Point Rd. in Prince Frederick, for a report of a possible drug transaction., was arrested for driving on a suspended license, CDS possession-not marijuana (Xanax), (oxycodone) and (methadone) in sufficient quantity to indicate an intent to distribute.CDS VIOLATION CASE #16-25295: On May 3, DFC. R. Cress was on routine patrol in Chesapeake Beach when he observed a vehicle which appeared to be traveling at a high rate of speed. DFC. Cress was unable to make an immediate U-turn so he radioed DFC. Fox. DFC. Fox located the vehicle on Bayside Road to the area of the entrance to the Navy Research Laboratory and conducted the traffic stop. DFC. Cress arrived and identified the driver as. While DFC. Cress was issuing the appropriate warning citation, DFC Jacobs conducted a canine scan of the exterior of the vehicle with his canine partner and a positive alert to the vehicle was indicated. Mr. Ramey was charged with CDS possession-not marijuana (oxycodone) and CDS paraphernalia (paper).SUSPICIOUS VEHICLE CASE #16-25590: On May 4, DFC. D. Gatton responded to 27th St., in Chesapeake Beach, for a suspicious vehicle complaint with possible drug activity. When DFC. Gatton approached the vehicle, a strong smell of marijuana was present and the driver, later identified as, was observed to be shoving something into his pants. Mr. Rawlings was placed under arrest, charged with CDS possession-not marijuana (cocaine), and transported to the Calvert County Detention Center.THEFT CASE #16-25243: On May 3, DFC. S. Esposito met with a victim at the Calvert County Sheriff's office for a report of a theft. Sometime between May 1 10:00 p.m. and May 2 7:00 a.m., an unknown suspect(s) stole the rear license plate off of the victim's vehicle on Claggett Road, in Sunderland.THEFT INCIDENT #16-25111: On May 2, a victim reported to the Calvert County Sheriff's Office that an unknown suspect(s) stole their front license plate on W. Chesapeake Beach Road, in Owings.THEFT INCIDENT #16-25135: On May 2, a victim reported to the Calvert County Sheriff's Office that an unknown suspect(s) stole their rear license plate on Berry Drive, in Lusby.
Palm Beach County has now realized the power of the pink dollar.

Discover The Palm Beaches  the travel planning resource for visitors both domestic and abroad in Palm Beach County  has officially launched an LGBT subcommittee on tourism this year. The committee is made up of local LGBT people. The goal is to push and promote Palm Beach County as a welcoming tourist destination to increase the influx of LGBT travelers.

By aligning ourselves with advocates in the LGBT community, we can properly connect our message to all visitors of The Palm Beaches as a welcoming, inclusive destination, Ashley Svarney, director of public relations and communications for DTPB, said in a press release. This press trip and our new subcommittee will help us to increase awareness among LGBT tourists, and the county businesses that support them in their travels here. Our goal is to become a top destination for all travelers.

According to DTPB, research suggests that over the last five years LGBT visitors to The Palm Beaches were 58 percent gay men and 32 percent lesbian women, nine percent of which have children. These LGBT visitors are more likely to participate in cultural tourism such as live theater  and are on average more wealthy  compared to visitors to other Florida locations.

As Discover The Palm Beaches works to reach the LGBT traveler, we believe the most efficient way we can properly connect with this important market is with a plan that incorporates the personal insight from those within our community who understand the market best, Svarney told SFGN.

The subcommittee plans to meet quarterly will focus on opportunities to engage the LGBT community through marketing.

Our brand promise in The Palm Beaches is that genuine hospitality is a way of life, and thats more than just a catch phrase for us, DTPB president and CEO Jorge Pesquera said in a press release. Every guest, regardless of lifestyle, race or origin, is valued and respected.

This isnt the first of DTPBs involvement in the LGBT community  in 2015, a DTPB Public Relations representative team participated in the Charlotte Mason Institute Conference on LGBT Tourism and Hospitality to learn more about engaging this specific market from a travel perspective.

More recently, the group was a sponsor of the 7th Annual International Gay Polo Tournament that took place last month in Wellington. DTPB also organized a press trip for LGBT travel writers, which included SFGNs executive editor Jason Parsley. They hosted the writers on a five-day tour to further promote the county to LGBT travelers.

They visited the Gay Polo Tournament, The Wick Theatre and Costume Museum, took a food tour of downtown West Palm Beach, visited several local hotels and more. Although DTPB has been involved in the LGBT community for years through marketing, this year they will be increasing their presence and efforts.

One of DTPBs goals over the last year has been to diversify its marketing within Palm Beach, targeting LGBT people, African-Americans, families and others. They have also invested in assets for LGBT advertisements for this fiscal year.

I think the most important message were working to communicate is that The Palm Beaches are a safe, welcoming destination where genuine hospitality is a way of life  no matter your sexual orientation. People are people love is love, Svarney told SFGN. Were working to attract visitors near and far looking to enjoy the time of their life in the best place to experience Florida.
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Coffee Design is proudly sponsored by Savor Brands , your boost in coffeedence through maximizing designs in packaging, sustainability and tech.

Who doesnt love sitting at the kitchen table with a bowl of cereal, soaking in the back-of-the-cereal-box copy? Who hasnt spent ten extra minutes in the shower to pore over the teeny-print Dr. Bronners manifesto that circumnavigates their bottle of peppermint soap? ALL-OR-ONE OR NONE! Thats distinctly the feeling I had when Oskar Garberg handed me a box of Johan & Nystrom Kenya Ruiruiru at the London Coffee Festival.

The coffee itself is wrapped in a glorious package crafted by a European perfume box company. Lines and lines of names and facts and copy parade down the box, printed on lovely textured linen. We brewed a Chemex of the Ruiruiru and sat with our mugs of coffee and read it as though it were a box of Corn Pops.

As told to Sprudge by Oskar Garberg.

Tell us a bit about Johan & Nystrom!

Johan & Nystrom was the first specialty roasters in Sweden, founded 2004 by a group of coffee-loving friends with the vision to make the Nordic people drink better coffee. Our mission was, and still is, to promote the craft by transparent sourcing, roasting tastier, more fun and more sustainable coffee. We started a movement here and the people who are the ones we value most, sees this more like a lifestyle than a job. We try to innovate, improve and challenge the coffee industrys misconceptions about quality.

When did this new coffee package design debut?

We launched the product just a few weeks ago with a small 30-kg lot coffee from Nicaragua that our green buyer Lars Pilengrim carried personally on the plane straight from harvest. To showcase the bonds from producer to customer, consumer and the challenge to try to get 30 kgs of fresh greens through customs

The JN Box has been a ongoing project for the last year and we are extremely happy and proud of the final product.

Who designed the package?

We are a bunch of artists and writers working at the roastery. Half of the production was made in-house and the other half with help from our friends at Garbergs Project who also created our tea brand TT. Great bureau with a minimalistic, Nordic design style in everything they do. They also have patience with our crazy detailed focused ideas.

Please describe the look in your own words!

The devil is in the details.

From the beginning, we wanted to create a box made of recycled textile but couldnt get the texture and feeling right. Design for us is both the looks and the feeling to hold it. Function goes hand in hand with design. So the quest for the perfect material continued.

The final product was the result after a fika with our co-founder Johan Damgaard and Ben Gorham, known as the founder of the perfume brand Byredo. Johan was helping Bens friend Waris Ahluwalia at the House of Waris, with a new concept and Johan got the idea to switch the textile idea to the structured material you find on perfume boxes. What can we say. We put a lot of effort focusing on the details. Normally we always have our customer in mind when we create something but this time we wanted it to be a bit more narrow since its a special, narrow and important product. Focus on the coffee and the people. The text is the design element so we wanted to keep it subtle in the background. The colored stripe will then switch depending on origin and style and makes the box Pop!.

We also like the unexpected. Everything doesnt have to be obvious. Inside the box, you will find more surprises that will impress and increase the interest of specialty coffee. (Mission complete)

What coffee information do you share on the package? Whats the motivation behind that?

We celebrated 10 years last year, sourcing and roasting coffee. We wanted to give something back to the people we work with. From farmers to customers and our own people. So we wanted to create a product, this box of coffee, unlike anything we had seen before. The best of what we could find and the essence of everything we learnt during our 10 years working with specialty coffee. We realized that we had too much to say and too less space to write on, so the text became the design. You can read about our vision and what we do, all the steps from seed to cup to explain the complexity and how much effort it takes to serve that perfect cup of coffee. Then we wanted to add all the people. The 147 names on the box are the farmers and the people that has been around us over the years. People, all with a small part, and the reason why where we are here today.

On top of all that, the box contains a card stating all yummy details about the actual coffee. Everything from soil to roasting details

Where is the bag manufactured?

Its produced in Europe, made by a perfume box company. We promised Byredo Ben not to reveal our source.

What *type of package* is it?

The amazing material of the box is a pressed paper process that allows us to produce the exact shape that we want. Inside the box, we use a solid bag in plastic without metal with a one-way valve. We spent a lot of hours finding the stripe with a glue that doesnt stick on the box. You can open and reseal around 7 times before the sticker is starting to look bad. But then, hopefully, you have finished the coffee inside the box.

Is the package recyclable? Any other pro-environment info about the package you want to share?

The bag is recycled as plastics and the box as carton. But since its a beauty, we recommend everyone to keep the box for candy or pens on the shelf. One of our colleagues is planting coffee seeds in the box and believes that it will degrade after some months.

Coffee Design is a feature series by Zachary Carlsen on Sprudge. Read more Coffee Design here.
The awarding ceremony was broadcasted live by 50 TV channels. RS FM radio was awarded with the prize "For Contribution to Strengthening Peoples Friendship."

"Since our first day on air, we have paid special attention to sensitive problems in Turkish society. We have professional editors and prominent authors and hosts. Our goal is to show the importance of radio as media," Sputnik Turkey Chief Editor Mahir Boztepe said.

"The award we received today is very important to us. It proves that programs of Sputnik Radio comply with international standards. We hope that soon Sputnik will be unblocked in Turkey. Political tensions should not interfere in journalists work," he added.

RS FM started broadcasting on April 1, 2012. It operates in Istanbul, Bursa and Kocaeli. Earlier, the radio station received the award for the "Best information program" from the Union of Turkish journalists and the Society of Modern Journalists. On April 12, 2016, the RS FM evening show "Bide Bunu Dinle" ("Listen to this too") was awarded with a prize "For success in journalism" from the Union of Turkish Journalists.
Campaigning throughout the day, Trump focused on his two key issues, illegal immigration and unfair trade, while his nearest rival, Cruz, used his public appearances to rail against transgender men-turned women using ladies restrooms.

Although Trump stayed on message most of the day, at one point he appeared to lose control, claiming that Cruzs father was somehow connected to the 1963 assassination of President John Kennedy.

The Kennedy remarks prompted Centerville University Director of Political Studies Mark Smith to question whether Trump is capable of controlling himself.

If he could turn this on and turn it off, why would he have ever launched into that ridiculous attack on Ted Cruzs father. It makes no sense at all, Smith told Sputnik. If he really is unable to control himself then I cant imagine he could win a general election unless Mrs. Clinton gets indicted or something else happens.

We should at least consider one other possibility, Smith suggested. That there are enough angry people in the country who dont care what he says about anything, but think that he is the solution to their problems, and their anger is going to drive them to vote for him no matter what.

That is possible, he added, and Indiana might suggest that that is the case.

Indiana represented Cruzs last chance to stop Trump. To do so, Cruz would have needed a victory to execute his strategy of forcing Republicans into a so-called open convention, in which delegates are not bound to any candidate and are free to vote for anyone.

Trump defeated Cruz by a margin of 53.3 percent to 36.7 percent.
However, "It seems unlikely to me that he will succeed in this," she commented.

Even the US State Department admitted that the al-Nusra Front and its parent organization al- Qaeda had infiltrated their forces with the so-called "moderate" rebels, New York-based foreign affairs analyst Joe Lauria said.

"The State Department admits that many of its so-called moderate rebels fight side-by-side with al-Qaeda  intermingled is the word the State Department uses. They say they are trying to separate them, but no one believes it's really possible," he said.

The opposition groups fighting in Syria were chaotic and intermingled with each other, Lauria pointed out.

"The jihadist insurgency in Syria is a cesspool. There are about 1,500 different rebel groups, and only about 100 agreed to the ceasefire. Fighters regularly change sides. Many are foreign mercenaries who will fight for the highest pay," he observed.

US policy on Syria with its obsession about overthrowing President Bashar Assad was based on assumptions five years out of date, Lauria said.

"It's a policy on Syria that is stuck in 2011. It's not the same country anymore. And its not the same war," he added.

The conflict in Syria had long ceased to be a popular uprising and instead is a war of foreign Islamists backed by the Gulf states, Turkey and the United States, Lauria concluded.
When police officers showed up at 11:30 PM local time to the Victor Hugo Street in Montpellier, they found a big line of people waiting to use a DAB Bank ATM which had been faulty for several hours, giving out 40 instead of 20 requested.

"A friend sent me an SMS in the evening, telling me that we won the jackpot in this ATM. I hoped on my scooter and went to the ATM myself. There was a long line, but it was worth the wait. I used it and got a lot of cash," a young resident of Montpellier said, as cited by Infos H24.

After people discovered the "magic" ATM, they started telling their friends who then showed up as well. Then someone called the police and a dispatch car was sent to take care of the situation.
He placed the public refrigerator near coffee shop Na pul cesty in Prague's Pankrac district.

People can leave products that they do not use. For example, before going for a vacation or after the holidays, or just when there is extra food left. If someone wants to help they can also participate in filling the refrigerator with food, the organizer said.

Food left in the refrigerator should not be opened, soiled or defaced, however, expired food may be left. Organizer of the project specified that the refrigerator should be kept in order. Anyone using the fridge should also add to the record describing what they left or took.

This concept is called food sharing, and similar projects have long been gaining popularity in the US and Europe.

In Germany, the first public refrigerator was set up in Munster and soon after in other German and Austrian cities. Restaurants and coffee shops may also leave food, it is not just open to individuals.

Prague is not the only city in the Czech Republic with public refrigerators. Such refrigerators have already been seen in Pilsen, Ceske Budejovice, and Litomerice.
Polish border guards refused to let some members of the Russian motor club into Poland, forcing the bikers to fly into the Czech Republic and continue their ride from there to Berlin, where they would commemorate the 71st anniversary of the Victory Day in the Great Patriotic War.

On May 9, the bikers, together with their German counterparts, employees of the Consulate General and representatives of veterans' organizations, plan on taking part in commemorative celebrations in Berlin's Treptow Park, at a memorial at Pankow, and at the Brandenburg Gate.

Along the way, bikers from other countries and motor clubs joined the Night Wolves' rally. After landing in the Czech Republic, the group crossed into Slovakia and laid wreaths at a monument to Soviet soldiers in Bratislava on May 4 before continuing their ride to Berlin.
During a Friday press conference, Zakharova said she'd make a "lyrical diversion" and read her own adaptation of "My Heart's in the Highlands" by Robert Burns.

"His heart is in Moscow, his heart is not there, his heart is in Moscow, chasing a bear. Chasing not grizzly, but Kremlinese. His heart is in Moscow, wherever John is," Zakharova said.

On a more serious note, Zakharova said the frequent phone calls and visits between Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov show that problems in international relations cannot be solved without Russia's participation.
BEIJING (Sputnik)  Chinas first hybrid-power train will be tested next month, project officials said.

"The design team has already tackled technical issues such as weight control, noise and vibration," Li Xuefei, the project's chief engineer at CRRC Changchun Railway Vehicles Co, a subsidiary of China Railway Rolling Stock Corp, said on Thursday, as quoted by China Daily.

The technical debugging phase will be completed by the end of May, while the trains tests will start at the China Academy of Railway Sciences in June.
Foreign media representatives were not allowed into the April 25 House of Culture building where the meeting is being held on Friday, the correspondent said.

A source in North Koreas Foreign Ministry told RIA Novosti on Thursday that about 180 foreign journalists had arrived in Pyongyang. However, they were only allowed to make reports and talk to passers-by across the street from the April 25 House of Culture on Friday.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  The special forces carried out the operation on Thursday night, the ministry said, as cited by Afghanistans Khaama Press news service. At least two militants were killed and three injured during the raid.

The army confiscated ten motorcycles and a large amount of explosives at the site.

Afghanistan is in a state of political and social turmoil, fighting the continuing Taliban insurgency, while other extremist groups have expanded their activities in the country.
Shoaib Ahmed, 13, and Abdul Rashid, 9, have come to be known as the "solar kids" because of their mysterious disease that has confused Pakistani doctors. The boys are normal active children during the day but once the sun goes down, they both lapse into a vegetative state, unable to move, talk and even open their eyes; their brain stops working. Mohammad Hashim, the father of the two brothers, told AP he has his own simple theory on his sons' case: "I think my sons get energy from the sun."

Both siblings were transferred to the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS) for treatment. According to Dr. Javed Akram, a professor of medicine at PIMS, the government was providing free medical care to the boys, who come from a poor family. At PIMS a team of 32 medical experts started their efforts to find out the real cause of this odd syndrome. The doctors at Lahore and Islamabad have completed the series of almost 450 clinical tests on the two "solar kids" and have succeeded in locating the cause of the disease from which the two children are suffering, Dr. Akram told Daily Times. The experts diagnosed boys with muscular fatigue.
The new draft bill, Geopolitical Information Regulation Bill 2016, has been set to be tabled before parliament in the coming days. If pass it would make illegal the dissemination of incorrect information about the country's borders on either social media or websites themselves.

Those found in violation of the law will face a maximum punishment of of seven years in jail and 1 billion Indian Rupees ($15 million).
The newborn arrived at 6:06am local time (GMT+8) at Chengdu Giant Panda Breeding Research Center in Chengdu, the capital of southwest China's Sichuan Province. The panda baby, which weighs 145 grams, has not yet been named.

The giant panda, also known as bamboo bear, is native to south central China. The giant panda is a conservation-reliant endangered species and is under special state protection in China.
The 7th Congress of Workers Party, which is the first such meeting since 1980, started earlier on Friday at the April 25 House of Culture in the countrys capital Pyongyang.

Tensions on the Korean Peninsula escalated after North Korea carried out a nuclear test  allegedly a hydrogen bomb test  in early January and put a satellite into orbit a month later which violated UN Security Council resolutions and triggered condemnation from the international community.

In March, the UN Security Council unanimously adopted Resolution 2270, which severely restricted Pyongyang from engaging in commercial activities that could benefit its nuclear or missile programs.
MOSCOW, May 6 (Sputnik)  Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov are scheduled to meet with Qatars Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al-Thani in the Russian resort city of Sochi later in the day.

"Any agreements on this matter [oil output] are unlikely, as Russia and Qatar alone cannot reach such agreements. We know that this is a very complex collective process. And after the recent failure in the process we surely have to start a lot all over again," Peskov said.

In April, major oil-producing countries, including both members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and states outside the organization failed to reach an agreement in the Qatari capital of Doha to freeze output at January levels. Riyadh, which had previously said that it would freeze output only if Iran followed suit, cited Tehrans absence from the talks as reason for not supporting an output freeze.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  Rosneft signed a framework LNG delivery agreement with EGAS in July 2015, then a Master LNG Supply and Purchase Agreement the following month.

"Rosneft Trading SA, a company of Rosneft Group, delivered its first LNG shipment as part of its contract with Egyptian Natural Gas Holding Company [EGAS]," the firm said.
MONTEVIDEO (Sputnik)  On June 2, OPEC members are expected to address oil production freeze at a session in the Austrian capital, having failed to agree on the issue in April in Doha, Qatar.

"I believe that the OPEC position, which would be maintaining production volumes at the levels registered in months of January and February this year, will be ratified at the next meeting in Vienna," Oswaldo Erazo said.

According to Erazo, non-OPEC members will be looking to take similar measures.
courtesy of sabakucon.com

The operators of Saboten Con, Con-Nichiwa, Kikori Con and the Arizona Fur Con return to Albuquerque with the annual anime fan convention known as Sabaku Con. The event runs all weekend long with panel discussions, anime screenings, game rooms and, of course, an epic masquerade contest. Whether you're into Japanese animation, comics, music or culture, Sabaku Con has got you covered. Cosplay stars Cara Nicole, Poison Sugar and Kovuu will be there with dress-up tips. Artists Susan Lake and professional panelists Kidd Bowyer and Pathos Prime will be showing off their work. J-pop musicians Hollow Mellow and Kazha will be performing live on stage. Among the voice actors attending this year's con are Brittney Karbowski ("Soul Eater," "Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood," "Attack on Titan"), Kyle Hebert ("Bleach, "Naruto", "Dragonball Z") and Maile Flanagan ("Naruto", "Lab Rats," "Jakers! The Adventures of Piggley Winks"). Marriott Pyramid  Fri May 6  11am-6pm  $25-$250  View on Alibi calendar
If the fear campaign does not succeed and the British vote to exit the EU, the open question is whether Washington will permit the British government to accept the democratic outcome.

Alternatively, the British government will deceive the British people, as it routinely does, and declare that Britain has negotiated concessions from Brussels that dispose of the problems that concern the British people.

Washingtons position shows that Washington is a firm believer that only Washingtons interests are important. If other peoples wish to retain national sovereignty, they are simply being selfish. Moreover, they are out of compliance with Washington, which means they can be declared a threat to American national security. The British people are not to be permitted to make decisions that do not comply with Washingtons interest.

My prediction is that the British people will either be deceived or overridden.

It is Washingtons self-centeredness, the self-absorption, the extraordinary hubris and arrogance, that explains the orchestrated Russian threat. Russia has not presented herself to the West as a military threat. Yet, Washington is confronting Russia with a US/NATO naval buildup in the Black Sea, a naval, troop and tank buildup in the Baltics and Poland, missile bases on Russias borders, and plans to incorporate the former Russian provinces of Georgia and Ukraine in US defense pacts against Russia.

When Washington, its generals and European vassals declare Russia to be a threat, they mean that Russia has an independent foreign policy and acts in her own interest rather than in Washingtons interest. Russia is a threat, because Russia demonstrated the capability of blocking Washingtons intended invasion of Syria and bombing of Iran. Russia blunted one purpose of Washingtons coup in the Ukraine by peacefully and democratically reuniting with Crimera, the site of Russias Black Sea naval base and a Russian province for several centuries.
Reality occurs beyond NATOs looking glass. Russia is way ahead of the Pentagon/NATO in A2AD  anti-access/area denial; Russian missiles and submarines may easily prevent NATO fighter jets from flying in Central Europe and NATO ships from patrolling the Baltic Sea. For the indispensable nation, that hurts  so bad.

Relentless rhetorical hysteria masks the real high-stakes game in play. And thats where US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton fits in. Throughout her campaign, Clinton has extolled a major strategic objective of our transatlantic alliance. The major strategic objective is none other than the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP)  a NATO-on-trade complementing political and military NATO.

The fact that TTIP, after the latest Dutch leaks, now runs the risk of being mired in Walking Dead territory may be a temporary setback. The imperial project is clear; to configure NATO, which already mutated into a global Robocop (Afghanistan, Libya, Syria), into an integrated political-economic-commercial-military alliance. Always under Washingtons command, of course. And including key peripheral vassals/contributors, such as the Gulf petromonarchies and Israel.

The imperial enemy, of course, would have to be the only authentic project available for the 21st century: Eurasia integration  which ranges from the Chinese-led New Silk Roads to the Russia-led Eurasia Economic Union; BRICS integration, which includes their New Development Bank (NDB), in tandem with the Chinese Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB); a resurgent, still independent Iran  Eurasia-connected; and all other independent poles among Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) nations.
The actor posted a picture of the lake and wrote the following under it on his Instagram page.

A dilapidated ship dock remains on dried up Lake Urmia in northwestern Iran. It used to be the biggest salt lake in the Middle East, but it now contains five percent of the amount of water it did two decades ago due to climate change, dam construction and decrease in precipitation.

  Leonardo DiCaprio (@leonardodicaprio)  4 2016  5:58 PDT

The post received a huge response from Iranian users with more than 76,000 comments. Some of the most popular responses were:

We thank you for your attention and invite you to see the lake with your own eyes to understand the scale of the problem! No matter how much the media may say about the problem of the Lake Urmia, it has not received such an effect, as the attention of Leonardo DiCaprio to this problem. And we must appreciate it! hamidreza2507 wrote in a comment.

Irans Natural beauty is not its own but also the wealth of the world! _motii97 said.
The spokesman noted that the Canadian government has a mechanism in place for mutual firefighting support with other nations, including some specific agreements.

Canada does not have a formal arrangement with Russia for this purpose, Croteau added. This international assistance is managed by the Government Operations Centre in partnership with a number of Departments and Agencies, and working with Provinces and Territories that need the assistance.

A wildfire near Fort McMurray, a city located in Canada's oil-rich western province of Alberta, was discovered late on Sunday before spreading into the city on Tuesday. On Wednesday, Alberta declared a state of emergency as the number of evacuees surpassed 80,000. At least 1,600 buildings have been affected by the fire.

According to the authorities, over 1,110 firefighters, 145 helicopters and 138 pieces of heavy equipment are fighting the fires.

The latest media reports suggest that the fires in the province have spread over an area of 328.2 square miles.
Labour's candidate Sadiq Khan was elected as the new London Mayor, taking over from the Conservative Party's infamous incumbent Boris Johnson with 44 percent of the vote.

The new Mayor @SadiqKhan has a tough challenge ahead, he'll inherit serious problems left by @MayorofLondon #mayoralelections  Mr Lee Jasper (@LeeJasper) May 6, 2016

If Sadiq Khan doesn't drive a London Bus to his acceptance speech then a great opportunity will have been lost #LondonMayor2016  Sarah Melv (@sarah_eyebrows) 6 May 2016

As Labour's former Transport Minister, and one-time human rights lawyer, settles in for 5 years at city hall, you might be wondering just who Sadiq Khan is, and what are some of his key policies for London?

Congratulations @SadiqKhan on becoming the first muslim Mayor of London. A historical Day #LondonMayor2016  Awais Satti (@awasssatti) May 6, 2016

Thankfully, Sputnik is on hand to help  here are five things Sadiq Khan has said he wants to introduce as London Mayor:
Along with his guides, the author penned a series of ten novels revolving around the Christian idea of an apocalypse, which includes titles such as Necroneropolis and Decalogia or Saga of the Apocalypse: Ciclus Apocalypticus.

The college is funded in part by Spains Defence Ministry, and its student body consists entirely of members of military families.

The course has reportedly caused outrage and facetious behavior among some students, but none of the privileged scions of powerful families have have complained formally, according to El DIario.
The full amount would not be given to every citizen. If an individual makes $2,000 per month, for instance, they would be given $600 more by the government to ensure that basic income needs are met. Those who earn more than the basic sum would not receive a government stipend, but $2,600 of their salary would not be taxed.

The proposal has its critics.

"[This would] put at risk a system that motivates people to work and get training," parliamentarian Raymond Clottu told the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation. "So we should try to improve it, not bring in basic income which would destroy the motivation to work."

The Swiss government has warned of tax increases necessary to implemented to cover the $200 billion a year program.
On Tuesday, the Bank of Greece underwent a DDoS attack , during which it was unresponsive for several hours. Anonymous took credit for the incident in a statement.

The #OpIcarus aims at powers that, like the ancient mythological Greek hero, have flown too close to the sun, and it has begun exposing their overreaching criminal behavior, the group statement says.

We must strike at the heart of their empire by once again throwing a wrench into the machine, but this time we face a much bigger target  the global financial system. This time our target is the Global Banking Cartel.
Despite pledging loyalty to President Erdogan, Davutoglus decision was widely anticipated after reports of a rift between the two men over plans to move the country to a more presidential system of government.

Davutoglu was appointed Prime Minister in 2014 but he has recently been at loggerheads with President Erdogan over ways to settle the Kurdish problem and the detention of journalists and public figures critical of the president.

His resignation comes at a time of growing insecurity in Turkey. The war in Syria and threat posed from Daesh, as well as an the escalating conflict with Kurdish PKK fighters, has resulted in several major attacks on Turkish soil.

Yelena Suponina, a senior expert at the Russian Institute of Strategic Studies in Moscow, explained Ahmet Davutoglus departure from the post of party leader by President Erdogans desire to cling to power.

Davutoglu has recently been gaining popularity among AK party members. He is not as charismatic as Erdogan but he is decisive and responsive.

Erdogan is getting old and Davutoglu is seen by many as potential successor, Suponina told RIA Novosti.

She added that Erdogan, who considers himself indispensable, would obviously try to sideline his Prime Minister and would redouble his effort to make Turkey a presidential republic.

Turkish political scientist Hakan Aksai said that even though Ahmet Davutoglu tried to toe the Presidents line, the two still differed over the arrest of journalists and scholars critical of Ankaras ongoing military operation against the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party in the countrys southeast.

Davutoglu was holding out for a negotiated solution to the problem if PKK agreed to end its armed struggle. Erdogan disagreed, saying that the doors for talks are now shut, Aksai told RIA.

He added that no matter who is going to become the next Turkish Prime Minister, he will stick firmly to the Presidents line.

This means that Turkey is already a presidential republic where the Prime Minister wields no real power. Erdogan has shown that he will tolerate no dissent whatsoever, Hakan Aksai emphasized.
According to the Norwegian Intelligence Service, the two radar systems will operate together and provide increased capacity, whereas the existing Globus II radar is to be upgraded for the cost of 1 billion kroner (roughly 120 million dollars). However, the joint radar plans have been stirring strong reactions on both sides of the Atlantic.

American professor Theodore Postol of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Boston, USA, believes it is only a matter of time before the new military radar will cause a press between Russia and China on one side and the US and NATO on the other.

The very timing of establishing the new US radar Globus III on the border with Russia is very unfortunate, the professor claimed in an interview with Norwegian broadcaster NRK.
Eighteen months after his return to France, Serge published a book, titled From One Desert to Another, where he described his ordeal at the hands of his captors from the Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) group.

Im not outraged, I just dont understand. Im talking about all those victims of terrorism, people who were taken hostage. No one takes care of you when you get back, there is no methodology of helping us, you are left to your devices. The media are all over you when they bring you back home, but this is not for long, Serge told Radio Sputnik.

First they gave me a red-carpet welcome, President Francois Hollande and his defense minister came to greet me. But then it was a complete desert: no support whatsoever, no rehabilitative methodology, nothing at all They tortured me, maimed me, did strange things to me, the journalists presented me as a war criminal, he complained.
ANKARA (Sputnik)  On Thursday, it was reported in the Turkish media that state-appointed trustees had ruled to shut down Zaman and the Cihan news service, effective from May 15. Both outlets are part of the Feza Yayin Grubu media conglomerate.

Ceasing the newspapers operations requires prior preparatory measures and legal procedures, including the consent of the general prosecutor, none of which has happened, according to Zaman.

The outlet contended that it would do its utmost to continue remain open, adding that it had no plans to cease its operations.
It was the Europe-friendly Davutoglu who brokered the deal with the EU so that "irregular migrants" from Greece would be relocated back to Turkey in returns  on a one-for-one basis  for Syrian refugees being sent from Turkey to EU member states. Critics  including the UN refugee agency UNHCR  say the deal is either immoral or illegal as the 'hotspots' have become detention centers. They also say Turkey is not a 'safe country' for migrants to be returned to, under the Geneva Convention.

As part of the deal, Turkey demanded visa-free access for its citizens to the Schengen zone area, as well as an acceleration of its accession into the EU. This was all on the condition that it made reforms, particularly in the areas of document security, migration management, public order and security, fundamental rights and readmission of irregular migrants.

However, with Davutoglu gone and Erdogan having a firm grip on power, critics say Turkey will never meet the conditions of the deal  pointing out Erdogan's record of brutal suppression of the Kurds and opposition activists, his clampdown on free speech and the fee press as well as his government's brutal treatment of refugees.
WASHINGTON (Sputnik)  The fund also named volatile global financial conditions, structurally weak growth in the euro area, significant slowdown in China and rising political risks as other main threats to economic stability in the region.

"Sharp rise in migrant flows and related instabilities due to security dislocations in the Middle East: While this risk may be non-trivial, the impact is likely to be limited to a few countries, particularly with the closure of the Balkan migrant route. The risk is non-negligible for Turkey, where refugee flows may increase in the near term. With the Balkan route now closed, migrants may try to search for alternative routes," the IMF predicted in its list of the main sources of downside risks for the economies of the CESEE states.

Europe has been beset by a massive refugee crisis, with hundreds of thousands of undocumented migrants fleeing crisis-torn countries in the Middle East and North Africa, trying to escape violence and poverty. The majority of them cross the Mediterranean Sea and arrive in the European Union using southern EU nations as transit points.
The exhibition, "War, Capitalism & Liberty" is the first time so many of Banksy's stencils and paintings will be displayed together  and the first introduction to other street artists for the Rome Foundation Museum.

According to Italian newspaper, La Repubblica, the artwork will go on display on May 24 until September 9 at the Fondazione Rome Arte-Musei gallery in Palazzo Cipolla. All of Banksy's work has been certified as originals and have been sent to the museum on loan from private collectors from around the world.

"War, Capitalism & Liberty" has been curated by Stefano Antonelli and Francesca Mezzano and rumors are already rife that Banksy  who has never revealed his identity  will pay the exhibition a visit.
MOSCOW (Sputnik), Alexander Mosesov  On Wednesday, the European Commission tabled a proposal under which a reluctant EU country will face a 250,000-euro ($287,000) charge for each refused EU-approved refugee.

"New proposals of legal acts of the European Commission will be now analyzed and then our position will be formed," the spokesperson said answering a question on Slovenia's reaction to the "solidarity contribution" proposal.

The spokesperson added that Slovenia supported amending the EU legal bases which form the basis of the Common European Asylum System, including the Dublin Regulation as "the migratory crisis showed that those rules do not always allow adequate response of the EU member states."
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  Londoners went to the polls on Thursday to elect a successor to Conservative Mayor Boris Johnson. The final results are expected in the evening.

Khan, a lawyer and former state minister for transport in Prime Minister Gordon Browns government, is leading with 45 percent of first preference votes against Zac Goldsmiths 35 percent, according to The Telegraph newspaper.

A mayoral hopeful needs over 50 percent of first preference votes to win outright, else two top candidates will be picked and second preference votes added to their respective vote totals will determine the winner.
.@JunckerEU "We have full time Europeans when it comes to taking and part time Europeans when it comes to giving." #Rome #CharlemagnePrize  Jurek Kuczkiewicz (@jujikucz) May 5, 2016

Juncker said: "It was never easy. But what has changed is the general atmosphere and the personal beliefs and convictions of those being in charge of the European projects. In former times, we were working together, I remember the highly exciting period when we were preparing the Maastricht Treaty and when, step by step, we were moving into the direction of the single currency.

"Of course we had our debates. But nevertheless, there was this shared sentiment among the Finance Ministers  and later on the Prime Ministers  that we were in charge of a big piece of History. This has totally gone.

"The other day I was saying that we have full-time Europeans when it comes to taking, and we have part-time Europeans when it comes to giving. In former times, all those implied in the project were full-time Europeans. Now we have too many part-time Europeans," said Juncker.

Dysfunction

The EU is in deadlock over the migrant crisis, with many border controls being a breach of the Schengen zone and a fundamental principle of the EU  the free movement of people. There is deep division over the EU-Turkey migrant deal for the relocation of "irregular" migrants from Greece back to Turkey, which could pave the way for visa-free access for Turks into the EU.

The Eurozone is facing its own crisis, with Greece struggling to meet its bailout conditions and worries over the economies of some of the southern zone members. Many say the single currency will never work without a common fiscal and taxation policy, which is why the euro is seen as a dysfunctional currency.

Tusk  who was prime minister of Poland, which is now at odds with Brussels over controversial reforms brought in by the Law and Justice Party (PiS  led the talks to accommodate UK Prime Minister David Cameron's proposed reforms to the EU to prevent a Brexit.

"The idea of one EU state, one vision was an illusion," Tusk said.

Schultz added: "The European Union was a promise of more opportunity, more chances, but the promise has not been kept."
The General Confederation of Employees of Greece (GSEE)  the largest trade union body representing 83 unions  and the civil servants' union federation ADEDY accused the government of a carrying out a "parliamentary coup" by speeding up the controversial legislation, demanded of it as part of the Greek bailout scheme.

"They will not take us by surprise. The government attempts like a criminal to finish the 'dirty work' quickly and has decided to bring the bill for a vote in parliament over the weekend," the strike committee said.

As part of its third bailout agreement with its creditors  the European Commission, the European Central Bank, (ECB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), known collectively as the 'Troika'  Greece has been forced to raise taxes, improve tax collection, cut state spending and impose severe changes to its state benefit system, in return for bailout money.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  Greece's international lenders must focus on debt relief for the indebted country instead of simply pushing ahead with contingency budget cuts and structural reforms, International Monetary Fund (IMF) Managing Director Christine Lagarde said on Friday.

"I think it is time for me to clarify our position, and to explain the reasons why we believe that specific measures, debt restructuring, and financing must now be discussed simultaneously It is essential that the financing and debt relief from Greeces European partners are based on fiscal targets that are realistic because they are supported by credible measures to reach them," Lagarde said in a letter, obtained and published by the Financial Times newspaper, which was addressed to the finance ministers of Eurozone countries.
Last year, investments into Sweden's wind power fell by a dramatic 40 percent, compared to the year before. Nevertheless, the total amount of investment over the next four years is estimated at approximately 21 billion krona (2.6 billion dollars), CEO of the wind power company Svensk Vindenergi Charlotte Unger told Swedish Radio . She also pointed out that the number of foreign investors is growing in comparison to local Swedes.

However, the overall outlook for wind energy remains rather dismal. Slumping electricity prices have forced individual owners to dismantle and sell older wind turbines, whereas the removal of state support may turn out to be a final blow to the industry.

According to an estimate by Erik Josefsson of the ES Power company, about 50 wind turbines were dismantled in Sweden and sold to other countries last year alone, Goteborgs-Posten reported. Josefsson noted that the opportunity to ease the financial burden was first seized by small-time players, such as individual farmers and small businesses.
LONDON (Sputnik)  A UK exit from the European Union has been identified as a risk factor for the EU economy and would disrupt trade and financial services, International Monetary Fund (IMF) European Department Deputy Director Mahmood Pradhan said Friday.

"For the euro area, it's really uncertain about what the cost of it might be, what the impact might be. The disruption of trade or financial services will undoubtedly have some impact," Pradhan told reporters while presenting the May 2016 Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe Regional Economic Issue (REI) report.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  Suspended David Watson, the fundraising co-ordinator for the North East London's Walthamstow Labour Party, is pending an investigation, the Jewish Community online newspaper said, citing the party's spokesperson.

According to the newspaper, Watson shared articles on social media alleging that Daesh, a terrorist group outlawed in a number of countries worldwide including Russia, has used weapons made in Israel, as well as comparing Mossad with the Nazis and accusing Israel of genocide against the Palestinians.

Last month, Labour parliament member Naz Shah was suspended over allegedly anti-Semitic social media posts. Former London mayor Ken Livingstone defended her and was subsequently suspended from Labour.
Yesterday I had an opportunity to attend a papal audience on St. Peters Square in the Vatican, Pavel Dorokhin told RIA.

They put me in the front row in the VIP box. I told the Pope that with Victory Day now five days away I wanted to present him with a medal commemorating the 70th anniversary of our great victory over Nazi Germany. I told him about the 26 million lives our people sacrificed during WW2 and asked him to put on a St. George ribbon in a sign of solidarity with our people. The Pope attached it to his robe and we talked on, Dorokhin added.

The deputy said that when he came up to the Pontiff, His Holiness greeted him a Russian Khristos Voskrese! (Christ Is Risen!)
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  The European Commission has been piling pressure on EU states to take in their fair share of refugees or pay a fine of 250,000 euros ($287,000) per person for their resettlement elsewhere.

"No one will be held in Poland by force. Poland will never agree to forcible relocations, forcible transfers of people just because they are refugees," Szczerski told local news agency PAP. "People wont be put in camps against their will or kept there by force because its against human rights."

Under the Commissions new plan, a country that is receiving disproportionate numbers of asylum applications would have refugees shared out across the European Union until the number of applications is back at the acceptable level.
On November 13 2015, 130 people were killed in simultaneous terrorist attacks in Paris, France.

On June 26 2015, 38 people were shot dead by a gunman who attacked a hotel beach with European tourists sunbathing on it in Tunisia.

On 7 January 2015, a series of five attacks occurred in and around Paris, killing 17 people and wounding 22 others.

The vote by MEPs favor of enhancing Europol's mandate is hoped to counter the increase in cross-border crimes and terrorist threats.

What it means is that the EU's law enforcement agency will be able to set up specialized units to respond to emerging terrorist threats and organized crime.

#Europol welcomes the decision of the @ecb to stop printing EUR 500 note. Read more about it: https://t.co/WfJd2QKhEF  Europol (@Europol) May 5, 2016

It will also be able to exchange information directly with firms and NGOs faster; including contacting Facebook directly to ask it to delete a web page run by Daesh to prevent the spread of terrorist propaganda.

Yet the reality is that atrocities have already been carried out by Daesh attacking Europeans at home  and abroad since the establishment of Europol in 1995.
Lionel Liron, a teacher of history and geography at a local high school in Embrun, organized a 24-hour-long trip during which students experience conditions very similar to those faced by refugees.

Seventy-three high school students took part in the refugee experience. The objective of the project was to teach students about the hardships and constant difficulties refugees face in Europe on a daily basis, the journal said.

"The goal is to highlight difficulties and all the obstacles that these people [refugees] face and we're doing maximum to understand human, psychological, economic and physical difficulties that they [refugees] feel," Liron said, as cited by Mediapart.
EDINBURGH (Sputnik)  The SNP won the largest number of seats in the Scottish parliament in the legislative election on Thursday, results have shown. It managed to win 63 seats, falling two seats short of a majority, and is now expected to negotiate a coalition deal. The Conservative party came second, taking 27 seats.

"The Unionist vote is now polarising. This is an automatic response to last years nationalist swing during the Westminster election when the SNP won all but 3 of Scotlands MP seats in the House of Commons," Gordon Wilson said.

The Tory success came in spite of Prime Minister David Cameron decision not to campaign north of the England-Scotland border.
The meeting between Angela Merkel and US President Barack Obama in Hanover was held in a very warm atmosphere, Haderer wrote. The transatlantic agreement on free trade zone, which is aimed at enhancing trade relations between the two countries, was at the top of the agenda.

However, the TTIP deal has drawn severe criticism for the lack of transparency in the negotiations as well as for the tremendous power it would potentially give to international corporations. The German population is becoming more and more opposed to the deal and fears that it would negatively affect the interests of their country.

"What for Obama in Hanover was a key objective and for Merkel  a praised "ambitious agreement", for the critics of this document is nothing but a complete abandoning of national sovereignty and self-determination on economic and socio-political issues  starting from admission of genetically-modified imports to availability of personal data," Haderer wrote for Sputnik.
The tumult created by the mass migration led to a resurgence of the countrys far-right Freedom Party (FPOe) in the April 24 elections. FPOe candidate Norbert Hofer trounced the opposition in the first round of presidential elections, with 35% of the vote. Oddsmakers expect him to win the May 22 runoff election in a landslide.

The predecessors to the Freedom Party, pan-German and national liberal camp, were both affiliates of Nazi Germany during World War II.

The Graz Islamic Center released a statement regarding the hate crime on Facebook stating, "This attack is not only an attack against our mosque more than that is an attack on an entire religious community, its followers and freedom of religion."
David Coburn counter-argued this by saying that trying to change the EU is almost impossible, that David Cameron had a very difficult time trying to get a deal out of them, to which Colin Fox mentioned that the EU has changed and changed again. It used to be called the European Economic Community, then it was called the Common Market we have had the Maastricht Treaty, the Lisbon Treaty, the Dublin Treaty, you have treaties all the time. I would be the first to accept as a socialist that the EU has not changed progressively, they havent changed to the left, they have changed to the right. But it can be changed to the left, by mobilising the right forces.

Colin Fox grounded the debate by talking about his home town, Motherwell in Scotland. As a Motherwell boy now living in Edinburgh, what we should be looking at is the poverty ratings The Tatu steelworks is being sold, many hundreds of jobs are being lost However it is not only the EU that is the problem. Motherwell, for example, has suffered more cuts from Westminster than it ever has from the EU Together with all the other peoples of Europe, we have to say that it is time to put peoples interests first, before the interests of the corporations. It is time to democratise the EU. David Coburn replied to this argument that the problem with the Tatu steelworks is due to the EUs rules on energy.

On health and TTIP, Colin Fox said that the NHS is the best in the world, it is one of the few things that we should be proud about. It could be better, but not by importing an American style of health insurance, which is what TTIP is about. People say that you have to leave the EU, because if you dont, the UK will not be able to fight TTIP alone. But people dont realise that if we leave the EU it is very likely that Westminster will try to do a TTIP deal with the Americans, and try to privatise the NHS. David Coburn replied: TTIP is lodged firmly within the EU, its a way of stripping our assets in the NHS.

On the cost of living, David Coburn said that:

The EU are sure to bring in VAT on food, and they are going to bring it in on all sorts of the things which will automatically put the cost of living up. You will be worse off under the EU.

Colin Foxs argument on this score is that it wont make a blind bit of difference.

What do you think? Add a comment below.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  Cunha, who launched impeachment proceedings against Rousseff on December 2, has been accused of obstructing corruption investigations against him and attempting to intimidate lawmakers.

"The decision by the Supreme Court is very important proof confirming [Cunhas] abuse of office to reach his own goals going against the interests of society as with the case of impeachment," Cardozo said.

On April 17, two-thirds of Brazil's Chamber of Deputies lawmakers voted in favor of impeaching Rousseff, sending the vote to the Federal Senate, the upper chamber. The senate is due to vote on holding an impeachment trial on May 11, which if held would trigger Rousseff's suspension for up to 180 days.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  According to the D24am portal, the Senate is now expected to vote on the issue on May 11. Should the upper house of the parliament vote in favor of impeaching her, Rousseff will be suspended for up to 180 days.

Brazils leader has been facing rising discontent over the country's struggling economy and a major corruption scandal in the state-owned energy corporation Petrobras. She headed the company between 2003 and 2010, the period during which most of the corruption reportedly took place.

Rousseff's impeachment process has been characterized by her supporters as a political witch-hunt and the Brazilian head of state vowed to fight the campaign against her.
Moscow and Beijing submitted a draft resolution aiming to prevent radicals from using chemical weapons in Syria on April 13. Russia's Envoy to the United Nations Vitaly Churkin expressed regret on Wednesday over counteraction by some Western states to the Russian-Chinese draft.

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. A US-Russia-brokered ceasefire came into force across Syria on February 27, but it does not apply to terrorist organizations such as Daesh.

Chemical weapons had reportedly been previously deployed by rebels groups in Syrias Aleppo. In early March, the Kurdish Peoples Protection Units (YPG) stated that the Ahrar ash-Sham Islamist group shelled the Sheikh Maqsood neighbourhood using white or yellow phosphorus munitions.
The overwhelming balance of forces on the opposition side is dominated by Islamic fundamentalist groups, Paul explained.

"The most important are Daesh [Islamic State] and the Nusra Front, a branch of al-Qaeda. Additionally, there are smaller jihadi groups that are powerful in certain regions such as Jaish al-Islam and Ahrar al-Sham," he noted.

The Islamist groups are supposed to be excluded from the cease-fire, which means that Syrian government forces and their allies can continue to engage militarily with them, Paul pointed out.

"The problem is that in some areas, particularly in Aleppo, the moderate opposition has a small role intermixed with the Islamists, particularly with the Nusra Front. Shelling and air strikes on the Nusra Front can hit the moderates, leading to complaints that the cease-fire has been broken," he noted.

Paul agreed with Lavrov that the United States complains loudly about these attacks, while saying nothing about the Islamic forces, Paul also said.

"Washington has been providing military assistance not only to the moderates but also to the Islamists, both directly and indirectly through its regional allies, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar in particular supporting Islamist forces, seen as the only viable military force to overthrow the Assad regime," he maintained.

Russia has tried to curb foreign support to the Islamist groups through direct talks with the United States and through initiatives with the United Nations. However, the US government uses vague language when discussing the conflict to avoid admitting it is giving support to Islamists, Paul maintained.
The statement was in response to a large-scale US-led maritime exercise, involving 30 nations from six continents. It took place at such major strategic choke points as the Suez Canal, the Strait of Bab Al-Mandeb and the Strait of Hormuz.

"We have to counter any harmful and ill-intended passage through Strait of Hormuz. We warn the US and its allies against any threatening passage through Hormuz, for if it ever happens, we will have no other choice but act according to the 1982 Convention [of the United Nations on Law of the Sea]," Brigadier General Hossein Salami, deputy commander of Iran's Islamic Revolution Guards Corps, said.

Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei also condemned the drills demanding from Washington to leave the region.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  Russia is taking a very cautious approach to ensure that the tentative ceasefire in Syria holds and urges all sides to follow suit, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Friday.

"You know that Russia and the Russian Aerospace Forces in Syria have assumed a very responsible position in this regards, so as not to damage to the fragile atmosphere of the ceasefire. Russia has repeatedly demonstrated, it and also calls on the other sides, to share this responsible and careful approach," Peskov told reporters, answering a question about media reports of a Russian air strike in Syria.

On Thursday, a refugee camp in Syria's Idlib near the Turkish border was hit by an airstrike, leaving at least 28 people dead, including women and children. Both the United States and the Syrian army have denied carrying out the strike.
On Thursday, a refugee camp in Syria's Idlib near Turkey's border was reportedly hit by an airstrike, leaving at least 28 people, including women and children dead.

The Russian Defense Ministry spokesman said that Western media cited the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights based in the UK, however, there was no information on the attack on a refugee camp in Idlib on the SOHR's site. A statement about the strike on the camp was posted only on the SOHR's Facebook account without mentioning the date of the attack.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest also said on Thursday at a briefing that no US or coalition aircraft were operating in the area at the time of the airstrike.

A Syrian military source told RIA Novosti earlier in the day that the Syrian Army did not strike the refugee camp in the province of Idlib as well.
PARIS (Sputnik)  On Thursday, a refugee camp in Syria's Idlib near the Turkish border was hit by an airstrike, leaving at least 28 people dead, including women and children. The Syrian army as well as the United States, which stated it did not have aircraft in the area, have denied carrying out the strike.

"This outrageous and unacceptable act may constitute a war crime and a crime against humanity. The perpetrators must be brought to justice. France is calling for an impartial and independent investigation into the incident to bring light to this heinous incident," the ministry said in a statement.

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. A US-Russia-brokered ceasefire came into force across Syria on February 27, but it does not apply to terrorist organizations.
TEL AVIV (Sputnik)  Israeli forces carried out airstrikes on suspected Hamas targets in Gaza after continued cross-border fire, the Israeli military said Friday.

Earlier today, IAF targeted Hamas terror site in Gaza in response to mortar attacks against IDF on Gaza border. 12th incident in past 3 days  IDF (@IDFSpokesperson) 6  2016 .

On Thursday, Israeli forces discovered a secret cross-border tunnel in Gaza leading to Israel. According to the military, over the last three days Hamas has attacked Israeli forces at least 12 times. Israeli forces have in turn responded with tank fire and carried out four airstrikes.
WASHINGTON (Sputnik)  On Thursday, Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu confirmed media reports that he would step down from the post of ruling Justice and Development Partys (AKP) leader and consequently the post of the country's prime minister.

"A NATO member, Turkeys recent moves toward one-man rule and away from constitutional secularism are putting pressure on the alliance," the report stated.

The firm argued that the strong-man rule has become more appealing because of economic and demographic changes in the country.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  Earlier this week, media reported that a refugee camp in Syria's Idlib had been destroyed by an airstrike, killing 28 people, including children. According to the White House , there were no US-led coalition air force operations in the area at the time of the incident.

On Friday, the Russian Defense Ministry said that al-Nusra Front terrorists may have been behind an attack on a refugee camp in Syria's Idlib.

"News circulated by some media outlets, which are involved in the bloodshed of the Syrian people, that the Syrian Armys air force targeted a camp for the displaced people in Idleb countryside are completely baseless," the Army Command said in statement, as quoted by SANA.
WASHINGTON (Sputnik)  Twenty-five additional Marines have arrived at the US embassy in Baghdad, Iraq at the request of the US Department of State, local media reported on Friday.

The US authorities' concerns over security have risen after protesters broke through Iraqi capital citys "Green Zone", which includes the location of the American embassy, CNN reported citing anonymous US officials.
"I was one of the best in my class, and I really liked learning how to read. But now we don't even have any books or anything that I can use to study on my own," Mohammed said.

Mohammed now works eleven-hour daily shifts at a garment workshop, where he earns 50 Turkish lira (approximately US$18) per week.

He is not the only child to suffer exploitation like this as a result of the war. As many children in Turkey and even those who have arrived on EU shores cannot go to school, they end up being trafficked and exploited.

"Where will they sleep tonight?" Alison Criado-Perez blogs from the Akcakale camp for Syrian refugees in Turkey. pic.twitter.com/wJKOFqR2dq  MSF UK (@MSF_uk) May 1, 2016

Jakub Sobik, press manager at the charity Anti-Slavery, said he was not surprised that these children end up being trafficked.

"I don't know the exact details of Turkey's policy, whether [it] helps refugees from Syria. Obviously the sheer number of them [refugees] makes it difficult," Jakub Sobik told Sputnik.

"What needs to happen is that European countries need to work on setting up safe migration routes and do more to organize safe migration channels and not leave them [refugees] at the mercy of finding an alternative.

"Trafficking will happen if you do not have a safe place, they will try to find routes and ways to move away from Syria and to find some kind of way to sustain their life. You can crack down and be tough on traffickers, but the fact these people cannot leave Syria safely is what is leaving them in a vulnerable position," Sobik told Sputnik.

HRW statistics have shown that prior to the conflict, 99 per cent of children were enrolled in primary school in Syria. Now 3 million Syrian children inside and outside the country are out of school, according to UNICEF.
The incident happened after a hearing of the case on stories published about Turkish intelligence services involved in transporting weapons to Syria.

The assailant came up to Dundar when he was speaking with journalist and fired at least two shots at him. Dundar managed to escape unharmed.

"You're a traitor!"  the shooter is said to have screamed during the incident, Hurriyet Daily News said.
MOSCOW (Sputnik), Alexander Mosesov  On Thursday, Davutoglu confirmed media reports that he would step down from the post of the ruling Justice and Development Party's (AKP) leader and consequently the post of the country's prime minister after an extraordinary meeting of party leaders scheduled on May 22.

"I think the situation is worse enough. In general, the policy of the Turkish state is not to accept the Kurds anymore, their political, fundamental and cultural organization rights I think that it doesnt matter if Davutoglu is prime minister or somebody else is. Erdogan will still maintain his war against the Kurds," Uzun said.

According to Davutoglu, the resignation was a necessity because of the lack of unity in the AKP leadership. He added that he would be loyal to Erdogan and would not criticize his fellow party members.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  State Comptroller Yosef Shapira was this week accused of drafting an "unserious report that reeks of politicking" on Netanyahus decision-making during Operation Protective Edge in Gaza. The report submitted for high-level officials comments reportedly found that Netanyahu, his defense minister and then chief-of-staff withheld significant information on the campaign against Hamas from other members of the Security Cabinet.

"[Draft report findings were] leaked and distorted by interested parties, among them irresponsible politicians who were members of the security cabinet," a source close to Netanyahu was quoted as saying by the Haaretz newspaper.

Those who leaked the report "know the truth but prefer to falsify it in order to make political capital," one of the paper's sources claimed.
WASHINGTON (Sputnik)  US media reported earlier in the day that 25 Marines had arrived to the US embassy in Baghdad at the request of the Department of State.

The US Embassy [in Iraq] continues to operate normally, the official stated. We routinely re-balance our security and diplomatic personnel at all of our missions worldwide.

Security concerns in Baghdad have risen after protesters broke through Iraqi capital citys "Green Zone," which includes the location of the American embassy, CNN reported citing anonymous US officials.
ANKARA (Sputnik)  According to Ustundag, the indictment will unlikely contain homicide charges due to the lack of evidence, and Celik may be just charged of illegal gun possession.

"We expect the Prosecutor's office to prepare the indictment on Monday or Tuesday," Ustundag told RIA Novosti.

The Russian Su-24 combat plane was shot down by a Turkish F-16 fighter jet over Syria on November 24, 2015, and fell 4 kilometers (2.5 miles) from the Turkish border. The crew of the plane ejected and one of the pilots, Oleg Peshkov, was killed by fire from the ground, while the second pilot survived and was later rescued.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  Cumhuriyet editor-in-chief Can Dundar escaped unharmed earlier in the day when a man fired two shots at his legs, calling him a "traitor." The incident took place during a break at the fourth hearing on an espionage case against Dundar and Cumhuriyet's Ankara bureau chief Erdem Gul. A reporter for the NTV broadcaster was wounded in the leg.

The assailant, identified as Murat Sahin, was seen in video footage surrendering calmly to the authorities after the attack, the Hurriyet Daily News reported.

Sahin was reported to have a criminal record for similar armed attacks.
WASHINGTON (Sputnik)  On Friday, the Russian Defense Ministry said that al-Nusra Front terrorists may have been behind an attack on a refugee camp in Syria's Idlib.

"Nope," Kirby said when asked if he could confirm the Russian statement on Nusra Fronts responsibility for the attack. "I dont have any information that indicates that we are still gathering information right now and are not in a position to definitively say exactly what happened there."

Kirby noted that despite the recent attacks on refugee camps in Syria, the United States remains opposed to establishing a safe zone in the country.
WASHINGTON (Sputnik)  Armed forces of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have carried out successful liberation of Yemeni port Mukalla from an al-Qaeda affiliate in the country, UAE embassy in the United States said in a Twitter message on Friday.

"Liberation of Al Mukalla from Al Qaeda successful in every aspect," the embassy stated citing UAE Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Anwar Gargash. "UAE armed forces excelled in planning & performance."

Earlier on Friday, the Pentagon announced that it had deployed a small number of US troops to provide intelligence assistance for operations in Mukalla.
Following the fourth hearing on the case on Friday, Dundar was sentenced to five years and 10 months in prison and Gul for five years and six months over releasing secret documents, according to the Daily Sabah newspaper.

A separate verdict should be issued on charges of journalists' links to terrorist organizations, the newspaper said.
WASHINGTON (Sputnik)  A member of the US-led coalition against Daesh was killed in Iraq from a non-combat injury, Combined Joint Task Force  Operation Inherent Resolve (CJTF-OIR) said in a statement.

"A Combined Joint Task Force  Operation Inherent Resolve service member died as a result of a non-battle related injury in Iraq today," the Department of Defense stated on Friday.

The statement did not immediately identify the nationality of the service member killed.
WASHINGTON (Sputnik)  The US government has likely acted to prevent the Syrian governments armed forces from recapturing the city of Aleppo from the al-Qaeda affiliated al-Nusra Front, Senator from the US State of Virginia Richard Black told Sputnik.

"It is clear to me that what is happening is we are trying desperately to slow down the Syrian armys advance, which is on the verge of crushing al-Nusra and liberating Aleppo once and for all," Black said on Friday.

In an exclusive interview with Sputnik this week, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov indicated that the United States was attempting to create a safe-zone in Aleppo that covered al-Nusra Front fighting positions. The US attempt was made during Lavrov and US Secretary of State John Kerrys negotiations to reconstitute the Syrian cessation of hostilities.
The program seeks to mimic and recreate the criminal, to get ahead of their next move and potentially catch them at their next point of attack. Supposing that DARPA is capable of producing the tech capable of telegraphing attribution, the group faces another challenge, by apprehending a hacker or releasing warnings to the public, they may ultimately expose proprietary methods.

Keromytis has stated concern that sharing too much information about an adversary with the public may embolden others to find new ways to circumvent federal officials.

The US recently faced a similar challenge, by indicting Iranian Revolutionary Guard hackers, explained NSA security scientist Dave Aitel. "By indicting these individuals the US government showed the world  and showed Iran  what it knows about the Iranian effort and this announcement reveals more than just what the US is able to attribute, it also signals what it does not know and cannot detect."
In what can be seen as a sharp denial to the US, India has dismissed a proposal made by Lockheed Martin Corp to build F-16 fighter jets in India.

India's defense minister Manohar Parrikar said in Parliament, "The experience of flying against F-16 is what we require as we are not going to induct F-16, at least; as of now."

The defense minister was replying to a query by a lawmaker who suggested that Indian fighter pilots should get first-hand experience flying F-16s during the ongoing Red Flag joint exercise in Alaska. Parrikar informed the Parliament that the most crucial part of the Red Flag exercise was acclimatizing the Indian Air Force to counter enemy planes like the F-16.
Vice Adm. James Syring, the director of the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency (MDA), has recently told the US House Armed Services Committee that the MDA lacks such an initiative.

Syring also said that the MDA needs at least $23 million to develop a "low-power laser"to intercept advanced highly maneuverable, ultra-fast and elusive weapons like the ones that are currently under development in Russia and China. The laser could be tested no sooner than 2021.

US lawmakers now want the MDA "to develop and field a defensive system to defeat boost-glide and maneuvering ballistic missiles." This amendment was added to the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2017 that still needs to pass through the Congress.
Germanys ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems (TKMS) private naval vessel holding company told the newspaper it was "not in a position to comment on talks between the government of the two nations." The company spokesperson said, however, it was interested in offering its 214 class boats with increased underwater endurance and low detection risk.

"We define it as a no-holds barred transfer of technology in line with Modi governments Make in India push," the TKMS spokesperson said in response to a detailed questionnaire.

Russia and France are reportedly also competing for the P-75I project. In 2010, Russias Rosoboronexort and Frances DCNS/Armaris were expected to receive invitations to a foreign contractor tender alongside German and Spanish companies.
BOCHAROV RUCHEI (Sputnik)  The United States has been in dialogue with South Korea over the proposed deployment of the THAAD system over the past year. THAAD is capable of shooting down short-, medium- and intermediate-range ballistic missiles.

"As with the European segment of the US missile defense, we are told that it is not directed against us, but we have a somewhat different assessment. And if all of this is not directed against Russia, legally binding guarantees are required," Lavrov told reporters.
In January, Georgian Minister of Defense Tinatin Khidasheli indicated that the exercises are meant to deter Russian "aggression."

"Our task is to make sure that anyone, be it a person or a country, thinks twice before taking any wrong decision," Khidasheli said. "It is not arms we are talking about but the need to meet the most imperative needs of the Georgian army."

The war games, which will include 650 US troops, 150 British troops, and 500 soldiers of the Georgian army, is part of a series of aggressive exercises that has been carried out by Western powers in Eastern Europe. The Georgian troops participating will include a company that is part of the NATO Response Force and the exercise will be held at the alliances new facility in Vaziani, despite the fact that the country is not officially a member.
"The best method is to monitor the region [under ISIS control] and mobile threats, and to have capabilities to hit the threat at its originlike armed drones," said Turkeys chief procurement official, Ismail Demir, according to Defense News.

The acceleration has already resulted in the successful testing of the Bayraktar UAV at the end of the last month. The device uses smart missiles, known as MAM-L and MAM-Cs, with a maximum payload of 650 kilograms. The drone will soon include the Turkish-made BSI-101 signals intelligence (SIGINT) system, which will replace current American versions.
WASHINGTON (Sputnik)  A new financial report states that major US defense corporations are anticipating a flood of high-end weapons systems sales to Japan, Philippines, South Korea and Vietnam over alleged China threats in the South China Sea, according to US media reports.

"[T]his could mean good things for high-end US systems from nations such as Japan and South Korea, it has also had an early effect on smaller nations such as Vietnam, which has expressed growing interest in the US kit," Defense News reported on Friday, citing the new report from Guggenheim Securities.

Japan, South Korea, Vietnam and other nations in the region were building up their armed forces and buying new advanced weapons systems in reaction to Beijings alleged aggressive moves in defending its claim to sovereignty over islands in the South China Sea, Guggenheim Securities noted in its report.
The United States charges $2,350 for an individual to formally renounce their citizenship and hand in their passport.

Not all individuals renouncing their citizenship do so in response to politics. For years, the majority of individuals undergoing the process did so to avoid Americas burdensome global income tax regime. However, with the number of departures jumping 1700% over the Bush era, with the majority of the spike coming in the past 9 months, the possibility exists that this is, at least in part, a Trump-based phenomenon.

Over 50% of Republican voters have claimed in election exit polls that they would be very concerned or scared of a Trump presidency.
SHENZHEN (Sputnik)  Despite the constantly changing situation on the international arena, China is set to deepen its strategic partnership with Russia, Chinese Vice Premier Liu Yandong stressed at a meeting with Sergei Naryshkin, the speaker of Russia's lower house of parliament.

"In the context of a complex and changing international situation, Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian officials have achieved invariability in Russian-Chinese relations," Yandong said on Friday.

Speaking in Shenzhen, the Chinese vice premier stressed that her country will not change its intention to strengthen and deepen comprehensive strategic cooperation with Russia.
MEXICO CITY (Sputnik)  Venezuela's Foreign Minister Delcy Rodriguez has said Caracas has evidence of the United States' meddling in the country's internal affairs, including economics, aggravating the food-deficit situation in the country.

"We have evidence that the United States government contributes to the shortage of goods in Venezuela," Rodriguez said Thursday addressing the Organization of American States, as quoted by the local TeleSUR television network.

The foreign minister also accused Washington of conducting media and economic campaign against Venezuela to overthrow the constitutional government, promoting the idea of financial collapse in the country.
The journalist maintains that Ankara "shot itself in the foot" when a Turkish F-16 fighter jet downed a Russian Su-24 bomber that was on an anti-Daesh mission in northern Syria. Turkish authorities cited airspace violations  a claim Moscow has always denied.

"We did the Russians a great injustice," he observed. "We have applied double standards. Our country lost billions of dollars as a result."
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  On Thursday, Haddad held a meeting with Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov.

"We met with Bogdanov, he informed us about the ISSG meeting involving all the parties. Of course, the question remains whether or not Syria [government] will participate [in the meeting]," Haddad said.

On Thursday, a source in the Russian Foreign Ministry told RIA Novosti that the ISSG ministerial is slated to be held on May 17 in Vienna.
Russian officials have been concerned with NATO's increasing assertiveness in Europe following the outbreak of the Ukrainian civil war. The bloc has used the conflict as a pretext to secure more funding, conduct more war-games and preposition military equipment.

Moreover, US and NATO officials, including the bloc's new Supreme Allied Commander, US Army Gen. Curtis M. Scaparrotti, have often referred to Moscow as a threat.

On Thursday, Deputy US State Secretary Antony J. Blinken called on all NATO members to strengthen their "overall deterrence and defense posture" to counter "emerging challenges in the east and south," referring to Russia. "It means ensuring rotational land, sea, and air presence along NATO's eastern edge," he added.

Russian officials have always refuted these unfounded accusations, saying that Moscow is not a threat to any country and urging NATO to focus on areas of shared strategic interests. "What we need is more of that  discussing military transparency, Afghanistan, Crimea, and ultimately Syria, as well," Gardner agreed.
At the same time, it would be a mistake to say that the lawmakers behind the resolution are protecting Russias interests in France.

"They rather protect the interests of the French economy in Russia as well as Frances security interests in the world," Bret said.

Nevertheless, he noted, Russia has started to revamp its influence in Europe.

"After the fall of the USSR, the US has continued to use its soft power tools in Europe, including media and think tanks. Recently, Russia has started resurrecting its cultural and intellectual influence in France. Historically, this process is part of secular contacts between Moscow and Paris. The vote in the National Assembly is a political move, but it is also part of a broader trend," the expert explained.

Russia and France have long been tied economically, despite sanctions and official statements, Bret added.

"Russia needs investments and consumer goods. In turn, France needs a market to export its products and technologies. Anti-Russian sanctions and Moscows responsive measures have damaged bilateral trade. But there is a potential for effective partnership. Possibly, lifting of sanctions may already be in discussion," he said.

In turn, political scientist Florent Parmentier underscored that using material and non-material resource to influence allies and adversaries is a common practice for a modern state.

In this context, currently the US has stronger cultural, financial and humanitarian influence in France than Russia, he added.
Abe's visit to Sochi shows "how committed Japan is to advancing its national interests," political scientist Fyodor Lukyanov wrote for Rossiyskaya Gazeta. This is not a courtesy visit for the Japanese prime minister, he added. Abe "is convinced that Tokyo's relations with Moscow are critically important in the long term."

The Vzglyad business newspaper shared the sentiment, saying that Abe did not add Sochi to his European tour to discuss Russia's relations with the West.

"Abe wants to foster Japan's ties with Russia. It's no coincidence that he was the only leader of a G7 member state who was present at the opening ceremony of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi," the media outlet noted.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  Scottish National Party (SNP) leader Nicola Sturgeon said Friday she still wanted Scotland to be independent, but the decision was up to the Scottish people.

"Everyone knows I desperately want to see Scotland become an independent country but the decision on that will always lie where it firmly belongs  in the hands of the Scottish people," she told reporters in Glasgow.

In 2014, Scottish voters rejected a motion to break away from the United Kingdom by a margin of 55 percent to 45 percent.
BOCHAROV RUCHEY (Russia) (Sputnik)  Earlier in the day, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the Qatari top diplomat, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al-Thani, was expected to pass on the message during a meeting in Moscow.

"Mr. President, thank you very much for today's reception. His Highness the emir sends you his best wishes. And he sent me to Your Excellency to give his verbal message, which concerns the developments in our region, especially on the situation in Syria," the foreign minister said.

Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al-Thani said that he had discussed the situation in Yemen and Libya, among other regional issues, with Vladimir Putin.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  Davutoglu confirmed media reports on Thursday that he would step down from the post of ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) leader and would not run for prime minister at a May 22 extraordinary meeting of party leaders.

"I believe PM Davutoglu's decision will be for the better of Turkey and our nation," Erdogan was quoted as saying by the Daily Sabah's English-language Twitter account.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  On Wednesday, the European Commission recommended a conditional implementation of a visa-free regime with Turkey as part of the EU-Turkey deal on migration. European Commission Vice-President Frans Timmermans outlined several conditions that need to be fulfilled by Turkey before its citizens can be allowed to enter Europe without a visa. These included adopting anti-corruption measures, implementing judicial reforms, providing data protection and updating its anti-terrorism legislation.

"[The] EU asks Turkey to change its terror laws for [a] visa exemption; let [PKK] [Kurdistan Workers' Party] terrorists erect tents. You go your way, we'll go ours," Erdogan was quoted as saying by the Turkish Daily Sabah newspaper's official Twitter account.
BOCHAROV RUCHEY (Sputnik)  The Qatari diplomat conveyed Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thanis message earlier over the developments in the Middle East, particularly in Syria.

"We agreed on the need to preserve the unity of Syria and its territorial integrity," Al-Thani said after talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Sochi.

"The Syrian people have been suffering from the crisis for the past five years, and we need to join forces, all of us, to put an end to this crisis and to punish those who are guilty of it," Al-Thani added.
Russia is reacting to NATO's maneuvers and all this is presented as "Putin's aggression" against Europe, the Baltic states, and NATO.

It is worth mentioning that although the US guided-missile destroyer was sailing in international waters it was only 70 nautical miles from Russian territory.

Commenting on the issue, British political analyst Finian Cunningham wrote in his article for Sputnik:

"Let's run that scenario in reverse to highlight how "American exceptionalism" has become a chronic condition of irrational double-think. If a Russian warship was to approach the US coastline in similar fashion  even if theoretically in international waters  we can be sure that US fighter jets would be scrambled and forcefully deployed. The Russian ambassador would also probably be summoned in Washington."

"The fundamental question is: who is provoking whom," Professor Cohen underscored.

"It's hard to see where Russia is threatening NATO, it is responding to what NATO is doing," he stressed.

To complicate matters further, such NATO moves can only stir memories of the Nazi German invasion in 1941 in Russian minds  the last time such a considerable military force mobilized on the country's western border.

"If you see this through Russia's eyes there has not been any formidable military force amassed on its borders since the German invasion in 1941. And that might be the most searing living memory in Russia. Twenty seven point five million Soviets died in that war [the Great Patriotic War]," the American scholar pointed out.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  The European Commission said Wednesday that an EU country could opt out of accepting an asylum seeker if it agreed to pay 250,000 euros ($287,000) for their relocation elsewhere.

"There are no polite words to express my indignation," Orban said Friday in an interview with a Hungarian radio station. "Its no joke. They are trying to take away Hungarys right to decide who to live with."
EDINBURGH (Sputnik)  Earlier in the day, Scottish National Party (SNP) leader and First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said she still wanted Scotland to be independent, but the decision was up to the Scottish people.

"I dont doubt that Scotland will become independent, but it is not for the Green Party, or the SNP or the unionist parties to say when that decision will be put to the test. It may not happen immediately, but maybe sooner rather than later," Finnie said.

In 2014, Scottish voters rejected a motion to break away from the United Kingdom by a margin of 55 percent to 45 percent.
BOCHAROV RUCHEY (Sputnik)  Earlier in the day, Qatars foreign minister confirmed that he had brought a verbal message on the situation in Syria from the Arab monarchys emir to Putin.

The two leaders met in Russia's southern city of Sochi, where they discussed a wide range of issues, including developments in the Middle East, the Israeli-Palestinian issue, as well bilateral matters.

"Today, the president of Russia, in response to a message from His Highness the Emir [of Qatar], reiterated our focus on the development of cooperation, as well as all other areas, including political dialogue, the economy and humanitarian ties," Lavrov said following the meeting between Putin and top Qatari diplomat Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al-Thani.
"Davutoglu has followed all the orders given by Erdogan to follow his dirty war against the Kurds, against the intellectuals and the democrats in Turkey and even to support terrorists outside Turkey in Iraq and Syria. But it seems that it was not enough for Erdogan," Uzun added.

Davutoglu was appointed as the country's prime minister in 2014. His relations with Erdogan deteriorated because of the presidents wish to switch to a presidential system as well as different stances on freedom of speech in Turkey.

Meanwhile, the Honorary President of the pro-Kurdish Turkish Peoples Democratic Party (HDP) told Sputnik that the new Turkish prime minister will be more low profile and obedient to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in contrast to Ahmet Davutoglu who announced his resignation amid rumors of disagreements with the Turkish leader.

"Erdogan made final attempt to remove him [Davutoglu] out of his way and to seek new prime minister who will be very much low-profile and more obedient to Tayyip Erdogan," Ertugrul Kurkcu said.
According to the top Russian diplomat, Moscow and Tokyo proposed several ideas mainly through the intergovernmental commission on trade and economic cooperation with the involvement of the business community, and have ordered for them to be developed.

The issue of lifting sanctions against Russia was not discussed at Friday's meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said.

"No, the sanctions issue was not discussed," Lavrov told reporters.

Russia-Japan talks on the peace treaty issue will be held between the countries' deputy foreign ministers in June, Lavrov said.

"This issue was discussed. Steps that are being taken by the two foreign ministries on this matter, in accordance with earlier instructions by the [Russian] president and the [Japanese] prime minister were welcomed. Another round of talks on the peace treaty issue will be held at the level of deputy foreign ministers in June."

Putin and Abe agreed Friday to possibly resume bilateral meetings of foreign and defense ministers, Russian chief diplomat Sergei Lavrov said.
In contrast, Russia's involvement in Syria was the first tangible step in getting Syria out of the quagmire of the civil war.

The ceasefire agreement brokered by Washington and Moscow is supposed to pave the way for a political settlement. However, the truce has one important exception: Daesh and al-Qaeda's affiliate al-Nusra Front are not part of the ceasefire agreement and will continue to be targeted along with other terrorist groups. Given this, experts express doubts regarding the sustainability of the ceasefire.

The situation is complicated by the fact that Washington has seemingly no scruples about using al-Nusra Front as its proxy force against both Daesh and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

"This alliance of convenience, to fight both the Bashar al-Assad government and IS, has been the bedrock of US policy in Syria," Chakravarty remarks.

However, this approach did not work.

"American efforts to save al-Nusra Front from further punishment from Russian airstrikes did not succeed, again highlighting the irony of the US policy of supporting and protecting an affiliate of al-Qaeda in Syria," the diplomat underscores, adding that "Russia, Iran and Syria resolutely opposed the US' move and have continued to target al-Nusra Front and IS, as mandated by the UNSC resolution 2254 in December 2015."
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  Georgias membership in NATO will be addressed at the alliances June summit in Warsaw, and entry will depend on each of the current 28 alliance members agreeing to Georgias accession.

"We consider such a consistent 'exploration' of Georgian territory by NATO forces to be a provocative step, aimed at deliberately rocking the military-political situation in the South Caucasus," the ministry said in a statement.

In April, NATO leaders proposed a Black Sea fleet coordinated between alliance members Turkey, Bulgaria and Romania with participation by Georgia and Ukraine.
According to Erika Solem and Karen Montague of the Potomac Foundation, China's People's Liberation Army is "reorganizing itself to be a more modern, effective force."

"As China streamlines its military and works to improve the quality of its personnel, several cutting edge projects are in the works to provide the People's Liberation Army with advanced weapons. One of these is the PRC's hypersonic glide vehicle (HGV), called the DF-ZF in China and designated by US defense officials as the Wu-14," the US scholars write in their analysis for China Brief Volume supported by the Jamestown Foundation and republished by The National Interest.

The scholars draw attention to the fact that development and testing of this new class of hypersonic weaponry is shrouded in secrecy.

"Its eventual operational deployment will represent a significant improvement in the PLARF's [the People's Liberation Army Rocket Force] conventional and nuclear arsenals, as it has the potential to penetrate even the strongest layered anti-missile defenses of the United States and its allies," Solem and Montague underscore.

However, upon closer examination, it seems that the threat is exaggerated.

Solem and Montague refer to the fact most of Beijing's HGV tests have attempted to fly distances of up to 1,750 kilometers (1,087 miles).

"The intended distance of these tests is a strong indicator that China is either less advanced in its HGV development than the United States or is focused on addressing regional threats," the scholars suggest.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  According to media reports, Nepalese President Bidhya Devi Bhandari has canceled her visit to India scheduled to start on May 9 due to political instability in Nepal.

"I have been recalled by my government. There are some political differences. I have advised my government that Nepalese President's visit should not be canceled at the last stage as it will have a bad impact on the India  Nepal relations. But my government didn't heed to my advice. They are thinking that I am dictating them. But I have been working to improve the relations between the two countries," the ambassador said.

According to the ambassador, he will leave India within four to five days.
Listening to comments by Trump about his willingness to cooperate with Russia, about his focus on the terrorists rather than the legitimate government of Syria, I have hopethat we may make some progress, he said.

In late April, Black travelled to Syria where he was able to sit down with President Assad, First Lady Asma Assad, and a number of other military and political leaders.

In addition to presidential candidates, Black is hopeful he can work with members of US Congress to create a dialogue so that there is a greater comprehension of exactly what is going on in Syria.

The United States has virtually severed all ties with the Syrian government since the outbreak of civil war in Syria in 2011, and views the Assad government as illegitimate.

Black is the elected representative for Loudoun County, Virginia, a wealthy district on the outskirts of Washington, DC.

Richard Black also noted that the US deployment of troops into Syria without permission from the Syrian government of President Bashar Assad is a clear violation of the law.

"We have put an additional 250 troops into principally the Kurdish held areas of Syria, we should have requested the permission of the government of Syria if we were going to do that," Black said.

The senator added that it is "clearly unlawful to insert troops" as the United States has done.
"Local Turkish media is reporting that this is a coup, an AKP  Justice and Development Party  coup against Davutoglu to try and stop him from stealing the lead from Erdogan, as it were," Whiteman says.

The frustrations lie in Davutoglus preference to negotiate with Kurdish rebels in the countrys southeast, as well as the fact that Western leaders tend to view the prime minister in a more sympathetic light than President Erdogan.

The presidents popularity within his own party is also questionable.

"Obviously, in order for him to do what he has doneit would seemingly suggest that he [Erdogan] is more popular than Davutoglu within his own Justice and Development Party," Whiteman says. "However, how he is seen by the Turkish people, that remains to be seen."
How can this be happening seven years after Obama promised an end to the US war and occupation? He is joined by Iraqi-American journalist Raed Jarrar and Iraq war veteran Michael Prysner to discuss Iraq today and why there may well be will be a U.S. troop surge in Iraq and Syria.

Elections take place across Scotland today for Parliament, with the Scottish National Party expecting to dominate. Will a resounding SNP victory or an English vote to leave the European Union while Scotland votes to stay in clear the way for another possible referendum on Scotlands independence from the UK? Becker is joined from Glasgow by journalist Liam O'Hare.

Will the U.S. succeed in getting Caribbean countries to turn away from Venezuela for their discounted oil supply? An energy summit held in Washington DC wrapped up yesterday that was attended by several Caribbean countries in an attempt to counter the the Petrocaribe oil alliance between Venezuela and the Caribbean. Joining Becker to discuss the important of Petrocaribe is Dr. Francisco Dominguez of the Venezuela Solidarity Campaign UK.
Becker speaks to RT journalist William Whiteman about how their feud developed, what it means for the ruling AK Party, Erdogans accumulation of power, and the future of Turkey.

Britain has voted in regional elections, with polls showing a possible national decline in support for the Labour Party of Jeremy Corbyn. But do the polls actually reflect voters turning away from Labour now that a socialist is leader of the Party? Becker talks to Pablo Navarrete, a member of the Labour Party's Momentum grassroots campaign that was formed to support Corbyn's quest to transform the Party.

Brazils special Senate committee is set to vote today on whether to proceed with impeachment proceedings against President Dilma Rousseff. But her main accuser has been forced out by the Supreme Court because of his own personal corruption trial. Will the right-wing coup against Dilma succeed? Joining Becker to discuss developments in Brazil is journalist and activist Victor Fraga.
In an article titled Violence in Syria escalates; world leaders seek truce in Aleppo, carried by the Associated Press, the outlet reports that:

Shells and mortar rounds are raining down on every neighborhood of Aleppo," said Aleppo-based health official Mohammad Hazouri, speaking from Al-Razi hospital. He said four people were killed and more than 30 wounded in Dubeet hospital alone, adding that half the casualties at the hospital were women and children.

It goes on to explain that:
In fact, as Sutter notes in his column on the new survey from the Yale and George Mason University's programs on on Climate Change Communication, "The percentage of conservative Republicans (not just Republicans but conservative Republicans) who believes climate change is happening has jumped 19 percentage points in the last two years, to 47%."

He goes on to explain why that movement seems to be occurring now and to offer his explanation for the apparent contradiction between a huge majority of GOPers who support research into clean, renewable energy, even as so many of them remain climate crisis deniers.

"I think there's a disconnect between what people believe out there in reality and what politicians are willing to say. Because for them to propose regulating carbon dioxide as a pollutant, for example, they'd have to go up against some pretty monied special interests," he says. "There's a difference between real people and what politicians are willing to take up."

We also discuss Sutter's very encouraging recent reporting on the upcoming Washington state Initiative-732, which would put a price on carbon emissions  "this often gets called the 'Holy Grail' of climate change policies," he says  so that polluters will no longer be allowed to pollute for free. Just over the border in British Columbia, where a carbon tax was implemented in 2008, he explains, "the sky didn't fall" as predicted by fossil fuel industry opponents. In fact, "their economy has actually been out-pacing the rest of Canada" and "the level of support for the carbon tax has grown over time."

While Sutter's reporting on these issues at the CNN website is fantastic, I felt I still needed to ask him about the dearth of climate reporting on CNN's airwaves where, as a study last month found, viewers "see far more fossil fuel advertising than climate change reporting."

Also on today's BradCast: The U.S. Dept. of Justice notifies North Carolina that their new law to discriminate against the LGBT community is a violation of the federal Civil Rights Act and may cost the state more than $2 billion in federal education funding; and Donald Trump, who will desperately need Hispanic voters if he hopes to win the Presidency this November, offers a remarkably offensive tweet on Cinco De Mayo. Because, of course he does.

You can find Brads previous editions here.

And tune in to Radio Sputnik one hour a day, five days a week.
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On Wednesday, the United States and Russia agreed to extend the 'silent' period to Syria's Aleppo province.

The United States is unable to force Syrian opposition groups they support to cut ties with al-Nusra Front terrorists.

"Our American partners are so far incapable of forcing Syrian opposition groups they support to separate from al-Nusra Front."

She noted that al-Nusra Front terrorists get weapons and reinforcement via the Syrian-Turkish border.

"By hiding behind a number of armed opposition groups and sometimes engaging in tactical alliances with them, al-Nusra Front is trying to make up for their losses due to the influx of new fighters and weapons via the Turkish-Syrian border."

Moscow insists on a hard-loine fight not only against al-Nusra Front terrorists, but also against so-called opposition groups like Ahrar ash-Sham and Jaysh al-Islam, Zakharova said.

She added that the creation of a Russian-US center of monitoring the Syrian truce "has brought the cooperation on the crisis settlement to a new level."

"This cooperation could be more active, thus, more effective," she said.

Turkey's Violations of Greek Airspace
BEIJING (Sputnik)  Beijing expects Moscow to hold a successful Victory Day military parade honoring the 71st anniversary of Nazi Germany's capitulation on May 9, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said Friday.

"We expect that Russia will hold another successful ceremony this year," Hong told a news briefing, adding that it was yet unknown whether China would send a delegation to the celebration.

In May 2015, Chinese leader Xi Jinping visited Moscow to participate in the celebrations of the 70th anniversary of the Soviet contribution to the Allied victory in World War II, including the biggest ever military parade, featuring over 15,000 service personnel and some 200 pieces of military equipment.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  The Admiral Grigorovich is expected to arrive in Sevastopol in late May, Fedotenkov added.

"We inspected the professionalism of the vessels crew, the logistical readiness for inter-fleet transition. The ship is ready to perform the task of transitioning to a permanent base in the Black Sea Fleet," Deputy Navy Commander Vice Adm. Alexander Fedotenkov said.

In service since March 10, the Admiral Grigorovich is the first of six planned Project 11356 frigates, three of which are due to be delivered to the Defense Ministry by 2017.
The study, The Leonardo Project, hopes to reveal the Renaissance artists and inventor's characteristics by searching out DNA from traces of fingerprints, flakes of skin and hair that might still be on his paintings, notebooks and drawings that are hundreds of year's old.

The technique to extract and put in order genetic remnants from renaissance art has been developed by specialists from the J. Craig Venter Institute in California.
The papers under question are created by the NSA Ombudsman Program. The program is tasked to settle what are considered to be minor or informal issues, such as personal conflicts between staff, complaints about job assignment, and customer service, including "parking, cafeteria concerns, National Archives senior records analyst Sean Curry stated

"The short retention for these records supports the level of confidentiality afforded NSA staff members who utilize the ombudsman for assistance," the National Archives' approval reads.

The move, however, caused suspicions that the agency is suppressing inconvenient ombudsman documentation that contains reports on victims of agency retaliation. Tensions mounted amid the high-profile case of NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  US Republican presidential candidate, billionaire Donald Trump, has spoken in favour of Brexit (the United Kingdom leaving the European Union).

"I think the migration has been a horrible thing for Europe," Trump told Fox News on Thursday, adding that "A lot of that was pushed by the EU. I would say that theyre better off without it, personally, but Im not making that as a recommendation. Just my feeling."

The United Kingdom is set to vote in a June 23 referendum on whether to stay in the 28-nation bloc. British Prime Minister David Cameron has been campaigning for continued EU membership on renegotiated terms.
via Rock Jong Il's Facebook Page

On Saturday, May 7, put down that Communist Manifesto you've been perusing and take a stroll Downtown to Launchpad for the album release party of Rock Jong Il. The quintet of local rockers and stalwart party members are having a fete to celebrate the recording Dictators of Rock. Longtime members of the anti-capitalist forces seeking a rock and roll revolution in this city, Rock Jong Il have a sound that reviewers have rightly compared to seminal bands like Pere Ubu and the Dead Boys.

Though the comrades in Rock Jong Il wear their influences heart-like on their tattered, war-weary sleeves, they're anything but derivative. With a list of songs that explore the miasma of postmodern culture through a cynical lensthrough the use of hardcore aesthetics balanced with a casual mastery of their instrumentsthe band depends on the musicianship of its members. Rock Jong Il is a band whose steadfast dedication to form and function result in a rocking and rousing output. Members Jeff Cohen, Johnny Huchmala, Jay Collins, Bob Beckley and Brandon Davis have got what it takes to move past insurgency and toward world domination.

Get Action, Suspended and Russian Girlfriends will provide support for a night of rampage and revolt. Tickets for this introduction to what punk rock should probably sound like cost $5. Launchpad  Sat May 7  9pm  21+  View on Alibi calendar
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  On Wednesday, the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled that arguments made to reverse Yaroshenkos conviction lacked merit. Following the ruling, Russian Foreign Ministry's Human Rights Ombudsman Konstantin Dolgov said the decision was "nothing but a political put-up job" and that the case was politicized.

"I don't want to die here, in the US prison. I no longer believe in the integrity and legitimacy of American justice. That is why I refuse to continue litigation, appeals After the court decides to put me away for 20 years, despite ample evidence of my innocence, torture, kidnapping, no one in the United States will go against themselves. To hope that the Supreme Court will make a lawful decision on my case is useless," Yaroshenko told the Russian Izvestia newspaper.

The US authorities detained Yaroshenko in Liberia in 2010 after conducting a sting operation across West Africa, and transferred the Russian pilot to the United States where he was sentenced to 20 years in prison by a US court on charges of smuggling cocaine.
NEW YORK (Sputnik)  The initiative was run by the Russian Youth of America organization for the fifth year in a row with the aim to "remind Americans about our common history and about our common fight against Nazism," a representative of the movement Igor Kochan said. He noted a general interest and friendliness among those who came up to take a ribbon.

Participants of the New York event displayed pictures of their relatives who fought in World War II as part of the international Immortal Regiment march commemorating Victory Day.

So far, 15,000 ribbons have been handed out in the United States, with a total of 25,000 to be given out by May 9, when Victory Day is celebrated in Russia, according to Kochan. At least nine US cities will hold "Immortal Regiment" marches ahead of the Victory Day celebrations.
Among measures proposed by the US presidential administration are new US Department of the Treasury rules to close loopholes that enable foreigners to hide financial activities behind false US entities, stricter rules for banks on handling clients' money and measures to combat money laundering and to allow greater transparency, according to the publication.

Building on years of important work with stakeholders, the actions we are finalizing today mark a significant step forward to increase transparency and to prevent abusive conduct within the financial system, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew was quoted as saying in the statement.

On April 3, the German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung exposed the alleged involvement of a number of former and current world leaders in offshore schemes by publishing materials it claimed came from the Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca.

Mossack Fonseca has refused to validate the information contained in the leaks although it has accused reporters of gaining unauthorized access to its proprietary documents. It warned that using unlawfully-obtained data was a crime that it would not hesitate to punish through legal means.
An average voter in the United States prefers to vote for the candidate who is totally in contrast with the incumbent leader, like it was with George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and then Barack Obama.

Trump is quite the opposite of Obama. The tycoon who made his wealth in real estate has been a tabloid and reality-show star for the last 30 years. He took the world of big politics by storm.

"Whether you worship or despise Trump, the man has no strings. Nobody controls Trump. Not the Republican Party, not the media, not the other candidates, not the donors, not social mores, not basic political truths, not special interest groups, not even the voters. Trump pulls their strings," Professor Eddie Zipperer wrote in January.



Admired by Media

Trumps signature non-politically correct rhetoric turned him into the main star of the presidential campaign. His affronts of opponents and shocking statements have been covered the most by media.

Analysts even described it as a "symbiosis" between media and the candidate.

"It may not be good for America, but it's damn good for CBS," he said of the presidential race," CBS CEO Leslie Moonves said, adding that he likes the ad money Trump is bringing to the network.
WASHINGTON (Sputnik)  A suspect who shot at least three people at a shopping mall in the US state of Maryland is not in custody, the Montgomery County Police Department said on its official Twitter account on Friday.

"[Bethesda] Mall Shooting: Suspect is not in custody," the police department tweeted.

"Westfield Montgomery Mall (Bethesda): Preliminary info: 3 shooting victims: 2 males and 1 female. Suspect outstanding," police tweeted.
"We have no reason to believe the victims knew the suspect," Montgomery County Assistant Chief Darryl McSwain told reporters. "But we are certainly looking at all angles."

Police have apprehended Eulalio Tordil near the Aspen Hill grocery store location in connection with the shootings. Tordil was observed by plainclothes officers for an hour before authorities felt it was safe to move in and apprehend him.

The incident occurred in a parking lot of Westfield Montgomery mall in Bethesda, Maryland, with one male victim deceased. Two other victims, a man and a woman, are in the hospital with one in critical condition, according to Montgomery County police. The hospital has been placed on placed on lockdown as an act of precaution.

According to one witness, a woman was walking toward the mall when a man approached her and asked where she was going. When she didn't respond, the man reportedly reached into his car and pulled out a gun.

 Nikki Burdine (@NikkiBurdine) May 6, 2016

Preliminary reports suggest that the suspect shot one victim and then fired on two people who rushed to the victims aid.

 FOX 5 DC (@fox5dc) May 6, 2016

Authorities have reason to belive that the mall shooting is connected to a separate shooting that occurred at a grocery store Friday morning, only 8 miles away. One person has been reported killed in that shooting.
Binney explained that intelligence agencies often receive too much information which they are unable to process in time and detect threats in advance. Therefore, they fail to prevent terrorist attacks and often find criminals when it is too late.

"They have too much data to be able to sort out and detect threats in advance. They have no opportunity to stop them. So the result is: the attacks succeed, people get killed, and then they focus on them with all the data they got on everybody on the planet. Then they can follow them up and go after them. But it is too late," Binney said in an interview with RT.

Following the scandal with Snowden, the NSA still receives a huge amount of personal data from all over the world. President Obama supported the NSA, despite obvious revelations about the violation of citizens' privacy. In one of his speeches on the subject, he said that security requires the restriction of certain rights, including the right to privacy.
When asked why a Muslim would back Trump, given the candidates call for a temporary ban on Muslims entering the United States until a system to weed out terrorists is in, Tarar replied that Trump is the candidate willing to say out loud that radical Islam is a threat to Western civilization.

"Hes talking about Muslims who are not Muslims to begin with," Tarar noted. "The people who are chopping heads off people, innocent people, they are not Muslims. That is not Islam."

Trump has angered many Muslim groups with his call for a temporary ban on Syrian asylum seekers entering the United States until a system is devised to weed out terrorists hiding among refugees  a tactic used by several Islamists who recently attacked targets in Belgium and France.
Bessemer was caught on an Ann Arbor Whole Foods surveillance camera entering the store and spraying the salad bar with a mixture of rat poison, hand cleaner and water. The store was one of three he allegedly targeted.

Its a very scary crime that happened, Washtenaw County prosecutor Brian Mackie told the local Fox affiliate. Thankfully as far as we know, nobody has been hurt.

Prosecutors stated that "on April 22 he purchased rat poison specifically for a salad which is an anti-coagulant that causes rats to internally bleed."
NEW YORK (Sputnik)  Hundreds of people are expected to attend the Immortal Regiment march in New York City honouring victory over Nazism in World War II, event coordinator Igor Kochan told Sputnik.

"We think its going to be around 300 or 400 depending on weather," Kochan said on Friday.

Veterans from the former Soviet Union and the United States are expected to participate in the march, Kochan added, mentioning that the events purpose is to raise awareness of the vast sacrifices made by both countries during the war.
Pasvik Kraft AS General Director Monica Jerirvi explains that under a new amendment to the Norwegian law the Lille Mennika dam located on the Russian side of the Paz River in the Pasvik Natural Reserve should be upgraded. This large-scale project requires assistance from the Government of the Murmansk Region.

The height of the dam has to be increased by 1.5 meters and the project should be coordinated with Russia. The dam owner is planning the exploratory and building stages in 2016 and 2019, respectively.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  A wildfire near Fort McMurray, a city located in Canada's oil-rich western province of Alberta, was discovered late on Sunday before spreading into the city on Tuesday. On Wednesday, Alberta declared a state of emergency as the number of evacuees surpassed 80,000. At least 1,600 buildings have been affected by the fire.

"Fire conditions remain extreme, with 18 new starts across Alberta yesterday. A total of 49 wildfires are burning, with seven considered out of control, 12 being held, 23 under control, and seven turned over to the responsible parties," the statement published on the Alberta website late on Thursday reads.

Official info for Albertans affected by wildfires is available online and by phone. #ymmfire #ymmhttps://t.co/gsAz2N7LjO  Alberta Government (@YourAlberta) 5  2016 .

According to the authorities, over 1,110 firefighters, 145 helicopters and 138 pieces of heavy equipment are fighting the fires.
For now, Russian-Swedish relations seem to have reached a new all-time low, especially in light of Sweden's paranoid fear of Russia. No joint military exercises, a stoppage of research contacts and a resolute refusal to take part in events at the Russian Embassy. These are the consequences of Sweden's frozen military relations with Russia. "It is important not to engage in activities that may be exploited for propaganda purposes," Johan Lagerlof of the Defense Ministry told Swedish Radio

At present, only the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency (MSB) still participates in multilateral activities with Russia, such as the Barents Rescue international exercise. However, bilateral contacts have virtually ceased. According to Communications Director Svante Werger, the aim is to avoid becoming a pawn in the Russian information war.

"We think it is important not to risk situations where Russia can benefit from cooperation with Sweden from a propaganda perspective. This can be used to create legitimacy in other dubious contexts," he told Swedish Radio.
PRAGUE (Sputnik)  Czech President Milos Zeman will take part in Victory Day celebrations on May 9 at the Russian embassy in Prague, his spokesman Jiri Ovcacek said Friday.

"President of the republic Milos Zeman will take part in a reception organized on the occasion of the Russian state holiday- Victory Day on Monday, May 9, 2016 in the building of the Russian embassy," Ovcacek said.

On May 9, Russia will commemorate the 71th anniversary of victory over the Nazi Germany in World War II and honour the memory of those who fought against fascism in celebrations across the whole country.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  Jordan will receive 25 million euros ($28.5 million) for the purchase of Marder infantry fighting vehicles to protect its borders with Syria, while Tunisia will get at least 10 million euros ($11 million), the German news magazine said on Friday.

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, such as Daesh.
Danish Darby didnt make headlines during eight trips to the track in last years freshman campaign, but the John Bax trainee might be on to keep your eyes on this year.

The three-year-old daughter of Majestic Son-Danish Diamond failed to win a race despite eight kicks at the can as a rookie, but shes 2-for-2 this season thanks to Thursdays 1:54 score in a $17,000 conditioned event at Mohawk Racetrack.

With Paul MacDonell at the lines, Danish Darby rolled to the lead from Post 2 and carved out fractions of :27.4, :57 and 1:26 before using a :28-second kicker to win comfortably over Tymal Tempest and Zagster.

Bax Stable, Anderson Family Stables and Goin To The Show Stable share ownership on the talented trotting lass who lifted her lifetime earnings to $51,816 with the win.

To view results for Thursday's card of harness racing, click the following link: Thursday Results  Mohawk Racetrack.
If you havent made plans for your Mom or that special lady in your life for this Sunday (May 8) dont worry, theres still time to make Mother's Day plans -- and weve got a great idea for you that the whole family will enjoy!

Imagine taking your Mom (and your family) out for a scrumptious brunch or delicious lunch, and then for a lovely drive through the countryside with a stop at a Standardbred Horse farm to see mares and foals frolicking in the fields? Wouldnt that be a great way to spend Mothers Day? High Stakes Farm in Moffat and Seelster Farms in Lucan will be opening their farms to the general public for a special Mothers Day Open House.

Seelster Farms will be opening their farm from 10:00 am until 4:00 pm. The Open House at Seelster Farms is an officially recognized fundraiser for the Canadian Cancer Society, with voluntary donations being graciously accepted on their behalf.

High Stakes Farm will be opening their gates from 1:00 pm until 4:00 pm. Guests at High Stakes will be able to visit Emprize Hanover and her two foals! The Open House at High Stakes is an officially recognized fundraiser for the Ontario Standardbred Adoption Society (OSAS).

The farms will showcase their mares, foals, stallions and facilities, and in collaboration with the Standardbred Breeders of Ontario Association (SBOA) and Standardbred Canadas I Love Canadian Harness Racing Fan Club, will educate visitors about Standardbred breeding and racing. The Open House provides a great opportunity for people who would not normally have a chance to visit a horse farm to connect with the horses and the people in the Standardbred industry. This event is free to the general public.

And if youre a member of the I Love Canadian Harness Racing Fan Club, heres your chance to take some photos for Mays Zoom Photo contest. The theme is Frisky Foals! Were looking for photos of foals and the frisky things they have been getting up to this spring! Foals taking their first steps, frolicking in the pasture, enjoying the sunshine or just getting up to no good!

Get out there and get snappin for your chance to win some great prizes! Please send your photo submissions to [email protected]. The deadline to enter is Friday May 20, 2016 at 5:00 p.m. (EST).

The addresses for each of the participating farms are as follows:

High Stakes Farm

9685 FIRST LINE

Moffat, ON L0P 1J0

(5 minutes from Mohawk Racetrack & 15 minutes from downtown Milton)

Seelster Farms

33618 Roman Line, R.R. # 3

Lucan, ON N0M 2J0

(15 minutes from London)
Program Manager Pete Worden to Present Interstellar Mission at International Space Development Conference

Contact: Lynne Zielinski, National Space Society, 202-429-1600, Media2016@nss.org



WASHINGTON, May 6, 2016 /Standard Newswire/ -- Pete Worden, former director of NASA Ames Research Center, will present "Starshot, Mission to Alpha Centauri," at the Thursday (May 19) luncheon during the National Space Society's International Space Development Conference. NSS Governor Janet Ivey will emcee the luncheon which also features the presentation of the Heinlein award to Dr. Jerry Pournelle. Rich Pournelle of Nanoracks will receive the award for his father. The conference is open to the public and is set for May 18-22, 2016 at the Sheraton Puerto Rico Hotel and Casino in San Juan, Puerto Rico.



Breakthrough Starshot is a $100 million research and engineering program aiming to demonstrate proof of concept for light-propelled nanocrafts. These could fly at 20 percent of light speed and capture images of possible planets and other scientific data in our nearest star system, Alpha Centauri, just over 20 years after their launch.



The program will be led by Pete Worden, the former director of NASA AMES Research Center, and advised by a committee of world-class scientists and engineers. The board will consist of Stephen Hawking, Yuri Milner, and Mark Zuckerberg.



ISDC is the yearly conference of the National Space Society, a non-profit organization that has hosted the gathering since 1982. The event brings together leading managers, engineers, scientists, educators, and business people from civilian, military, commercial, entrepreneurial, and grassroots advocacy space sectors.



Online registration is currently open with a variety of options, from single-day registration passes to full conference registration with meals. Discounts are provided for youth, full-time students, seniors, and members of the National Space Society and its affiliates.



"We would like to invite local attendees interested in space to the annual conference of the world's premier space public interest group," stated Aggie Kobrin, the conference organizer and NSS board member.



For more information, visit isdc2016.nss.org.



About the National Space Society (NSS): NSS is an independent nonprofit educational membership organization dedicated to the creation of a spacefaring civilization. NSS is widely acknowledged as the preeminent citizen's voice on space, with over 50 chapters in the United States and around the world. The Society publishes Ad Astra magazine, an award-winning periodical chronicling the most important developments in space. To learn more, visit www.nss.org.



About the International Space Development Conference (ISDC). National Space Society's International Space Development Conference (ISDC) 2016 (May 18-22) celebrates the increasingly collaborative, multinational, multidisciplinary, and interconnected nature of space development in the 21st century: Space Beyond Borders. If you seek to accelerate our pursuits beyond planet Earth and learn about the opportunities the emerging space economy can bring to science, technology and exploration, ISDC is the preeminent gathering place for you. NSS chose Puerto Rico as a surprisingly inexpensive travel destination. isdc.nss.org/2016/

National Space Society

P.O. Box 98106

Washington, DC 20090-8106

(202) 429-1600
SISTERS, Ore.  Although Ive roamed the extensive trails of Central Oregon for 15 years, I still come across areas where I have never set foot.

Somehow I had yet to explore the Whychus Canyon Preserve, nearly 1,000 acres of stunning canyon and stream terrain where the pine trees stubbornly give way to the unforgiving High Desert just northeast of Sisters.

Its that transition zone which makes it so dramatic, and so important for the wildlife, said Brad Chalfant, executive director of the Deschutes Land Trust.

The conservation and restoration of Whychus Creek has long been a crucial project for the Bend-based Deschutes Land Trust.

Just last week it announced that it had finalized an agreement to purchase 1,120 more acres of land  known as Rimrock Ranch  along Whychus Creek, just downstream of the preserve.

The land trust has protected 8 miles of Whychus Creek and more than 2,200 acres of adjacent flood plains, wetlands and forests, according to Chalfant. The 930-acre Whychus Canyon Preserve was established in 2010, and it now includes several miles of hiking-only trails that parallel the creek and the canyon rim.

I made the 30-minute drive northwest from Bend on a cool, sunny morning when the Central Oregon rain shadow was in full effect, clouds in the Cascade Range banking hard against Black Butte and Black Crater to the west.

The 41-mile Whychus Creek flows out of glaciers on Middle Sister then carves through steep, boulder-lined canyons before making its way through the town of Sisters. Past Sisters, the creek continues northeast through pine forests and High Desert rimrock, eventually converging with the Deschutes River just south of Lake Billy Chinook.

In the span of 40 miles, you go from a glacially fed stream into a desert canyon, Chalfant said. You cover about every different ecological zone you can think of in a very short distance.

After parking at the trailhead of the preserve, I glanced at the map and set out for a loop hike of about 5 miles. The singletrack trail cut along the sides of the canyon through ponderosa pine and juniper trees. About half a mile into the hike, I turned onto a trail that led steeply down to babbling Whychus Creek.

The creek followed the rimrock canyon into a lush, green meadow, which no doubt will become greener in the weeks to come.

Its just a really rich spot, Chalfant said of Whychus Canyon Preserve. Islands of green . those areas become so important in an arid valley. Those of us in the pine belt (Bend and Sisters), we forget just how arid much of this landscape is.

Salmon and steelhead once called Whychus Creek home, and a main objective of the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlifes ongoing reintroduction effort is to bring those fish back to Whychus and other streams in the Upper Deschutes watershed.

But the restoration of Whychus will benefit a wide range of wildlife in the area, according to Chalfant, including cougar, bobcats, mule deer, Rocky Mountain elk, golden eagles, bats, raptors and songbirds.

I continued trekking along the flat valley bottom before turning back up the canyon on the northeast end of the trail system. Once atop the rim again, I was treated to an awe-inspiring view of Whychus Creek meandering through the trees and the rimrock of the narrow gorge. Snow-covered South Sister popped into view as I gazed to the southwest.

Along the trail, tiny yellow wildflowers (goldfields, according to Chalfant), were just beginning to sprout, giving the desert a refreshing splash of color. The wildflowers will no doubt grow bigger and more beautiful in the weeks ahead.

Things are just starting to pop, Chalfant said of the wildflowers along Whychus Canyon. Were still a couple weeks away. Well have a variety.

I made my way back toward the trailhead along the edge of the canyon, taking in views of the creek far below and of the Three Sisters on the distant horizon. Near the end of the trail, Black Butte appeared from behind the canyon wall and two large raptors circled the sky, catching thermals as the wind gusts increased.

The 5-mile hike required about three hours and was only moderately difficult. With the addition of the Rimrock Ranch property, more trails eventually could be built along Whychus Canyon, according to Chalfant.

We currently have a conservation easement at Rimrock Ranch, so theres already a level of protection, Chalfant said. The landowner has long intended that we would eventually own it. Weve had incredibly good landowners who have long desired to protect and conserve that property. We can preserve what theyve always envisioned, creating the greatest ecological resource out there that we can.

That is good not only for the wildlife but also for the hikers, trail runners, birders and other outdoors enthusiasts who want to access the canyon. Chalfant said the addition of Rimrock Ranch will absolutely mean more trails, but only after some additional planning.

Its likely well extend the trails on Whychus Canyon itself, he said. We still have to figure out the appropriate places to go, and where we shouldnt go.

Hikers looking for the quintessential Central Oregon terrain, where the pines meet the desert, should go to the Whychus Canyon Preserve.
A fourth candidate has entered the race for the county commissioner seat now held by Mike Karnofski.

Arne (pronounced Arn) Mortensen, 68, is challenging Karnofski, whos a Democrat. Mortensen is chairman of the Cowlitz County Republican Party Central Committee.

Curtis Hart and Jim Hill also have declared their candidacies for commissioner District 1, which includes Kelso east of the Cowlitz River and the southern part of the county. The official filing period starts May 16 and ends May 20.

Mortensen grew up in Venezuela and graduated from high school in Spain. He has a bachelors degree in physics from Harvey Mudd College and a Ph.D. in oceanography from the Scripps Institute of Oceanography. Mortensen worked as a scientist and engineer at several companies in Massachusetts and in San Diego, including a stint as vice president for engineering of Qualcomm. He also opened a bicycle shop in San Diego and is still an avid wheelman.

In 2005, Mortensen he and his wife traveled around the country and picked the Kelso area to live. I dont know why they listed it as one of the 10 worst places, he said.

Mortensen said he isnt focusing on any particular issue before the county, but he doesnt like the way commissioners conduct business. The process to me seems totally wrong, he said. That needs to be changed.

Too often, proposals for new programs come from county staff or other agencies, rather than from the public, Mortensen said. Things are done backwards, he said. People should be driving the programs, not the bureaucrats and not the commission.

He was miffed when the commission recently passed its Strategic Plan, though he asked for more time to study it. Its a lot of fluff, he said of the document. Most of the citizens in the county have no idea of whats in that plan.

Commissioners shouldnt assume that because people arent showing up to meetings that they approve of commissioners decisions, Mortensaid said. Like Hart, he questioned the wisdom of holding regular commission meetings at 9 a.m. Tuesdays. Anybody whos paying bills is working then, Mortensen said.

Unlike Hart and Hill, Mortensen said he doesnt have a strong opinion about county funding for the Love Overwhelming homeless shelter in Kelso.

However, he said the countys preferred shelter first philosophy of finding housing for the homeless even theyre using drugs or alcohol (though not in the shelter itself) doesnt seem right.

I tend to prefer the Frank Morrison approach, Mortensen said. Morrison, who is running for a commission seat against Dennis Weber, is director of Community House on Broadway, which requires inmates to be drug and alcohol free.

The Community House philosophy is just something that seemed it was working fine, Mortensen said. Ive only heard of problems from the new (shelter first) approach, and I havent heard of problems from the old one.
A Longview man was sentenced this week to nearly 13 years in prison for senselessly beating two men outside a Longview taco joint with a car jack, nearly killing one and attempting to drive over them with his car in October 2014.

It started with a karaoke song, said Cowlitz County Deputy Prosecutor Jason Laurine.

Fernando Jaca-Ortiz, 31, was at Morenita Tacos (since closed) on 14th Avenue, getting drunk with a buddy, Ciro Aguilar, Laurine said.

Jaca-Ortiz and Aguilar didnt like Juan Wandestrand-Ledesmas singing, and Aguilar and Wandestrand-Ledesma stepped outside and started to fight.

Laurine said Jaca-Ortiz used a tire iron from his Ford Expedition to pummel Wanderstrand-Ledesma, 30, and Juventino Manzano-Quiroz, 38, who had attempted to break up the fight.

In the span of a minute and with a few cracks of the car jack, Jaca-Ortiz nearly sliced off a nose, broke off a palate, fractured one victims skull in two places and caused brain hemorrhaging and a hematoma (blood pooling inside the skull and putting pressure on the brain), Laurine said.

Misael Ledesma, a cousin to Wandestrand-Ledesma, saved the men by taking the car jack away and stepping in front of Jaca-Ortiz when he tried to drive over the two injured men, Laurine said.

Juan Wandestrand-Ledesma was placed in a two-week medically-induced coma at Oregon Health & Science University while his skull healed. Juventino Manzano-Quiro was hospitalized in Vancouver for a few days while his nose was stitched back to his face and his palate repaired.

Jaca-Ortiz was sentenced for first-degree assault with a deadly weapon enhancement and second-degree assault with a deadly weapon enhancement. He had no prior felony convictions.

Laurine argued that by trying to run the men over with a car, Jaca-Ortiz exhibited an extreme lack of remorse for his actions.

It was a stupid, senseless attack, Laurine said. Theres no reason for it. There was no need to introduce a car jack.
tech2 News Staff

News has it that Google has been feeding its AI engine over 2500 romance novels over the past couple of months.

According to a report by BuzzFeedNews, Google's AI has already devoured steamy novels like Unconditional Love, Ignited, Fatal Desire, and Jacked Up. The reason for doing so is to make it more conversational. So, Google wants its AI machine to answer in a natural way rather than stiff, robotic way.

"By reading thousands of such books, the AI can detect which sentences contain similar meanings and gain a more nuanced understanding of language," the report adds.

A company spokesperson told TheVerge that Google's AI is intelligent enough to understand the conversation, but the participation isn't in the most natural way. And, it is believed to have worked as Google got the AI to write some sentences resembling the ones in the novel.

The report also adds how children's books could have been a good choice, but romance novels offer a wider range of vocabulary. For those not in the know, an artificial engine is a computing system that learns, based on whatever it has been taught. It is used to communicate with humans in a natural way, which is considered to be one of the biggest hurdles by Google.
tech2 News Staff

The father of modern psychology and psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud's 160th birth anniversary has been celebrated in an interesting looking Google Doodle today.

The Google Doodle, made by artist Kevin Laughlin, shows a profile of Freud floating above the surface of an ocean. Only a part of his profile is visible above water and the majority of the rest of the part is submerged under water.

This art work alludes to the work of Freud, the Iceberg Model in particular. Freud postulated that there were three levels of consciousness - the conscious, preconscious and the unconscious. Mapping it to an iceberg, the conscious part is the part which is seen above the surface which is only a fraction of the whole picture, whereas the preconscious and unconscious make up the rest of the picture.

Sigmund Freud was born on 6 May, 1856, lived his life in Vienna before moving to England to escape Nazi forces. He is credited with path breaking work in the field of psychology and has authored books such as The Interpretation of Dreams, The Ego and the Id, Psychopathology of Everyday Life, Beyond the Pleasure Principle and many more. Apart from his books, Freud is also renowned for his scientific papers exploring sexuality.
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Alphabet's Google and climate control systems maker Honeywell International have reached an agreement to resolve patents disputes related to Alphabet's Nest Labs, a maker of Internet-connected thermostats.

The companies said on Thursday that they had reached a long-term patent cross-license agreement.

The statement did not disclose financial and other details of the agreement.

Google had acquired Nest Labs, the makers of the Nest Learning Thermostat and the Protect smoke detector for a whooping $3.2 billion.

(Also read: CEO Tony Fadell meets Google to defend Nest: Report)

Nest Labs was one of Googles biggest acquisition this year. It was founded by Tony Fadell, a former Apple employee who is popularly known as the Father of the iPod. The company said that nearly 5000 developers had shown interest in creating apps for Google.

last year, a Cisco report revealed how the number of devices connected to Internet of Things (IoT) will increase from 15 billion today to 50 billion in 2020. Another report by Juniper Research claimed the figures could go as high as 38 billion by 2020. We arent sure if these predictive numbers could possibly be true, but it is certain that IoT is big and here to stay.

With inputs from Reuters
Naina Khedekar

We've been hearing about Google's carrier billing plans for some time now, and finally it is here. Idea Cellular has teamed up with Google to offer its prepaid users the option to buy apps, make in-app purchases and so on, adding the purchase amount directly to monthly bills, and negating the use of credit cards.

So, Idea Cellular subscribers, both prepaid and postpaid, will be able to buy apps through direct carrier billing. This move could help boost app/in-app purchases. In fact, at the recent Reliance Games PGConnects, we had a quick chat with Anurag Sachdeva, Country Director (India & South Asia) at Rovio who emphasises how credit card limitations is one of the barriers at revenue generation in India. Idea is known to have teamed up Angry Birds-maker Rovio too.

At the same event, Amit Khanduja, CEO of Reliance Games told Firstpost, We (India) are not an extension of what you launch in the US or the UK. We have unique requirements like content not only localised in language but also regional, payment methods people are applicable to here, as credit card penetration is minimum and only at the higher end of spectrum.

Speaking on the occasion, Mr. P. Lakshminarayana, Chief Operating Officer  Corporate, Idea Cellular, said, Idea has been at the forefront of the internet revolution and has built a robust network through an extensive 3G and now 4G rollout. With capabilities to provide wireless broadband services to nearly 880 million Indians, Idea is well poised to take the lead in the way content is served to an increasing army of digital savvy users. This tie up with Google Play creates a vast set of opportunities for Idea subscribers and also builds a secure gateway to the digital world.

This option will make purchases easier considering that there is less than 3 percent credit card penetration in India. Bango CEO Ray Anderson said, "Taking Google Play carrier billing to India is a major milestone for Bango. India offers enormous potential for online commerce. We are pleased to provide Ideas 182 million subscribers with a universal payment method so they can enjoy the complete app store experience, and to expand the reach of carrier billing in the Google Play store.
tech2 News Staff

While earlier reports pointed out stating that the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation's (IRCTC) website was hacked, turns out, it was not. The IRCTC themselves have come out stating that their website was not hacked, but that some data in the name of IRCTC is in circulation.

CNN-News18 connected with IRCTC PRO Sandip Dutta, who commented on the issue, "Three days ago, IB cyber cell, Mumbai informed us that some data in the name of IRCTC is in circulation. We have set up a committee which is probing this."

Earlier reports even cited a source from the IRCTC stating how the stolen data could be used to create forged documents. Another source also claimed how the stolen data that contains, PAN card details and addresses of each and every customer could be sold to corporations to target customers. Indeed, the data is valuable, but for now users can be sure that the website was not hacked.

Dutta added that the Railways will be looking into the data as soon as the Cyber Cell gets a copy of the same. So for now, it has yet to determine whether the leaked data belonged to the IRCTC. As for the website, Dutta says that it is "absolutely fine". The IRCTC has also informed the Maharashtra Government and railways about the same.

Breach or no breach, this sort of an attack is highly probable and can have far-reaching effects. Speaking on the matter to Tech2, Sanchit Vir Gogia, Chief Analyst and CEO at Greyhound Research says, "Things like security breaches are already happening all year round. It's not something new. The sad part is that companies, be it public or private, are not prepared to handle anomalies like this and it's just a matter of what gets reported when. In case of IRCTC, there is a serious gap in planning that needs to be plugged. They cannot afford to get complacent about matters of security."

"IRCTC keeps talking about improving experience, but there is hardly any mention of the security aspect of the website. Security attacks are ever-changing - it's a moving goal post. The only way to address it is regular auditing of product, people and processes. Companies cannot afford to let go once they have set up a website, new technology and defence systems need to be put in place regularly. This holds especially true for IRCTC where the scale of impact is so huge," shares Gogia.

Sharing the same sentiment, Sudeep Das, SE Manager - India and SAARC for RSA says, "New and increasingly sophisticated ways to perpetrate fraud are constantly being developed and deployed. This makes it extremely difficult to keep pace with the individual fraud attempts targeting an organisation's website. The hackers use business logic abuse mechanisms to hide within legitimate traffic but in a manner unintended by the site owner. Such sophisticated attacks often go unnoticed by either Web Application Firewalls or Log Analysis tools. It seems the same has happened in case of IRCTC hack."

Speaking about measures to counter such attacks, Das adds, "The traditional Web Application Firewall technologies needs to be augmented with Behavioral Intelligence to hunt these attacks in real time and respond to them quickly. Need of the hour is to detect quickly and respond even quicker before there is a major damage to business."
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Fashion e-tailer Myntra Thursday said it expects 15-20 percent of its sales to come from its desktop website, which will be re-launched next month.

A year after going app-only, fashion e-tailer Myntra has now decided to re-launch its desktop website from June 1.

"The re-launch of a full-fledged site is aimed to provide convenience to a segment of customers, especially women customers, who have a marked preference for browsing and shopping on multiple platforms such as mobile, tablet & desktop," Myntra said in a statement.

Myntra, part of e-commerce giant Flipkart, had attributed its earlier decision to go 'mobile-only' from May last year to the manifold growth in traffic from smartphones.

Stating that its mobile strategy had witnessed huge success, Myntra said it had seen 70 percent growth and become the most loved mobile app amongst leading Indian e-commerce firms over the last year.

"Despite the many clear positives, the company has decided to revisit its strategy and re-launch the desktop site. The biggest reason for this is the feedback from Myntra's consumers," it said.

An internal study also suggested that Myntra could expand its customer base by 20 percent if it allowed users the flexibility of using multiple platforms for shopping, it added.

"Myntra expects 15-20 percent of its sales to come from the website," the statement said.

Myntra CEO Ananth Narayanan said while it is still true that the mobile experience is far superior to the web, "we have recognised that some consumers still want the option to shop on the web and we're humble enough to listen to our customers".

According to Google Play Store, Myntra's app has seen over 10 million downloads.

Following Myntra, many Internet-based services companies had begun contemplating going app-only with the likes of Ola announcing the same. There were indications that Myntra's parent firm Flipkart might itself take that route.

PTI
tech2 News Staff

OnePlus has filed a patent for Dash Charge, which is a quick charging technology. The same was reported by PocketNow and is also expected to make an appearance in the company's upcoming OnePlus 3 smartphone as the OnePlus 2 missed out on it completely.

OnePlus has been a value for money brand and at times launching such a product does come with its shortcomings. This became evident in the case of the Chinese smartphone maker's current flagship that was launched last year.

The OnePlus 2 missed out on Quick Charging due to its USB Type C port even though it packed in the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 (the not so hot headed variant) which was disappointing; more so because there was plenty of other stuff that was missing as well. Soon enough, it appeared that OnePlus did "settle" when it came to the OnePlus 2.

With the company's new Dash Charge patent on the horizon, it does seem that OnePlus may actually be preparing to go head to head with it higher-priced competitors. Add to this another report coming from GizmoChina, about a 4GB RAM and a 6GB RAM variant and it becomes clear, that OnePlus is going all in for this year's flagship.

Also interesting is the pricing details that comes from the same report. A OnePlus employee told GizmoChina that the OnePlus 3 will be priced at around CNY 1,999 (approximately Rs 20,000) which sounds like a good deal for its base model 4GB RAM and 32GB of storage. Whatever it is, we will know soon as the flagship smartphone is expected to be announced in Q2 this year.
Naina Khedekar

Finally, Apple chief Tim Cook is in India. He has begun the day by visiting the Siddhivinayak temple in Mumbai, and has a busy schedule lined up ahead with visits reportedly to Delhi, Bangalore and Hyderabad.

Keeping global Apple iPhone sales stats and it's bad quarter aside, the year seems to have started on a good note for India's Apple fans as Cook has already announced a startup accelerator in Bangalore and development centre in Hyderabad. But, what has got everyone excited are the reports around the first exclusive retail store in the country.

We have already heard about applications and re-applications being submitted to the government, talks with brokers for plush large format stores, competitors (read: Samsung, Xiaomi) planning exclusive stores and more. While the company is yet to get a final approval, the most discussed, speculated and debated part is where or in which city Apple could possibly open its first store.

Metros and high-spenders

The most simple answer could be the region it expects the most sales. Now, Apple is known to be quite discrete when it comes to revealing India specific region-wise sales numbers which could have otherwise helped point out to a particular zone based on some number crunching.

"Mumbai and Delhi could be the first cities to get the Apple store. Personally, I think a city like Delhi would make more sense, considering it is known for high spenders, who eventually give adequate business to luxury retailers," Sanchit Vir Gogia, Chief Analyst and CEO, Greyhound Research said.

Anshul Gupta, Research Director, Gartner refused to comment on where possibly Apple could open its first store, but he did add that, "Apple is looking to offer exclusive, premium shopping experience, so it would target buyers from large metropolitan cities."

"While it may not be a good idea for Apple to take on a competitor who is large and has a diverse presence (Android dominates the Indian market), they will have to open many stores to reach the prospective buyers in locations such as South Delhi, Gurgaon, Mumbai (a few places), Bengaluru, Hyderabad," explains Ashutosh Sharma, Research Director, Forrester. This makes sense as the company has already announced a startup accelerator for iOS development in Bengaluru and is rumored to open a development centre in Hyderabad.

But there are other factors

While analysts believe it will be the metros or locations inundated with high spenders, some also add that a lot will also depend on other factors such as areas showing high growth rates.

"The idea is to drive a large audience to experience the premium devices, and its not about sales. It is about an experience store wherein people and come and experience the devices and the ecosystem," explains Gogia. He also points to other factors such as a city with capable tech support for Apple centres and also a city with corporate offices, again hinting at Bengaluru, which is also known as the tech hub of India.

Moreover, an ET report had also pointed out, "The company wants to set up most of the Apple Stores of over 2,000-3,000 sq ft area in India, including space for technical support and holding small workshops."

"Location is a key factor for any retail presence and Apple is no exception. Apple's retail approach has been to make their store an extension of the customer experience that their products tend to provide. This translates into characteristics such as a comparably large store format (than traditional electronics store in India), in an up-scale location, prominently visible (like a ground floor store in high end mall), and staffed by highly educated and well-trained staff," adds Sharma.

Going the China way and hurdles

Tim Cook, in the recent earnings call, said how he saw huge potential in India. He also said that India is behind China by some 6-8 years, and that probably explains why the company plans its first exclusive store in India almost 8 years after its first store in Beijings Sanlitun Village. A hip place where one will find the latest in fashion and luxury.

But Apple seemed to have been on an aggressive path as it is said to be almost on track of 40 stores by 2016. The most recent stores have been in IST Mall at Zhongshan Road in the Xuanwu District and in Guangzhou at Parc Central, Tianhe Road in Tianhe District that saw the first store. So, its quite possible the company may target popular and premium malls for its stores.

"Within these cities, it will again look for upmarket regions. For instance, in Mumbai, one expect its first exclusive store in South Mumbai, rather than the suburbs," Gupta adds.

It is also believed that Apple may plan multiple stores in India. The ET report, citing some industry sources had also claimed that "brokerage firms are looking for prime retail locations in Mumbai, the National Capital Region, Bengaluru and Pune for Apple's first phase of company-owned stores."

"Unlike China where they plan to have about 40 odd stores by the end of this year, I'm expecting them to open about a dozen stores within 18-24 months after they get approval from Indian Government," points out Sharma.

Sharma also explains that Apple can not possibly believe that it can turn the Indian market around by sparsely opening few stores. "That strategy will certainly convert some prospects into buyers but still be very limiting. Apple will have to strike a balance between their reach, brand dilution and in the end profitability."

Gupta also believes that these stores may not necessarily drive sales but will help offer a platform to experience the Apple ecosystem and devices.

The recent setback, of India rejecting Apple's plans to sell refurbished phones, could have played a huge role otherwise. It was also not aimed at driving sales but at making more people use the cheaper devices, and eventually turn to Apple for an upgrade. There are unconfirmed reports about Cook meeting Modi, and 'refurbished iPhones' could be one of the topics up for discussion. On the other hand, a Canalys report claims that despite the poor numbers, Apple showed 63 percent growth in India. With the stores, in place, it may be able to introduce users to its entire portfolio, which isn't just limited to the iPhones.

So, where do you think Apple should open its first store in India?
Pirate ringleader killed in Sundarbans gunfight

The ringleader of a pirate gang was killed in a reported gunfight between his cohorts and members of Rapid Action Battalion (Rab) at Mrigmari of the Sundarbans in Mongla upazila early Friday. Lieutenant Colonel Faridul Alam, commanding officer of Barisal Rab-8, said acting on secret information that some fishermen were kidnapped by a gang of pirates, a team of Rab-8 conducted a drive near the Shela River of the Sundarbans at night. When the elite force reached Mrigmari area around 6:15 am, some pirates opened fire to them, prompting the law enforcers to retaliate, triggering a gunfight. At one stage, Alam alias Alam Khan, 45, the ringleader of infamous pirate gang Alam Bahini, was caught in the line of fire during the half an hour long battle while his other associates managed to get away. Later, Rab members recovered the body. Twelve firearms, 209 bullets, huge sharp weapons and a solar panel were also seized. The body and the seized items will be handed over to Mongla Police Station, said Faridul Alam. -- Bagerhat, May 6 (UNB)
President of cyber heist-tainted Philippines` RCBC resigns

President and CEO of Philippines Rizal Commercial Banking Corporation Lorenzo Tan has resigned. The bank said in a statement on Friday that it had accepted the resignation of Tan, even as it cleared the official of any liabilities in connection with the $81-million Bangladesh Bank fund heist. The board of directors of RCBC has accepted with regrets the resignation of Mr Lorenzo V Tan as president and CEO effective 6 May 2016, it said. He resigned to give the board a free hand in directing the course of the banks future, Philippines online newspaper rappler.com said quoting the statement. Until his replacement takes place, RCBC Chair Helen Y Dee will oversee the banks operations as president and CEO, according to the statement. RCBC said its internal investigation into the stolen $81-million Bangladesh Bank funds cleared Tan of any breach of bank rules and policies. Tan is the latest RCBC top executive to quit following the investigation of one of the largest money-laundering cases in the world. Part of the stolen funds found its way to several accounts in the RCBC branch in Jupiter in Makati City, and ended up in three local casinos. RCBC Treasurer and Executive Vice-president Raul Victor Tan resigned in April, since Maia Santos-Deguito, one of the central figures in the case, had worked under him. Like Lorenzo Tan, RCBC's internal investigation had cleared him of involvement in the money-laundering case.--bdnews24.com
China seeks global support for South China Sea policies

Ouyang Yujing, China\'s director-general of the Department of Boundary and Ocean Affairs of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, is surrounded by reporters after his briefing on China\'s stance on the South China Sea, in Beijing on Friday.

AP, Beijing :China is seeing mixed results in its effort to enlist friendly states in its push to exclude the U.S. and its allies from the festering South China Sea dispute, underscoring the limits of Chinese diplomacy despite its massive economic clout.Beijing won a major endorsement for its position with remarks by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov last month that players from outside the region should not get involved.However, its recent announcement of added support from Brunei, Laos and Cambodia drew unusually strong criticism from senior Singaporean diplomat Ong Keng Yong, who said Beijing may be trying to split the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, the regional bloc to which all four nations belong. China's announcement was even questioned by Cambodian government spokesman Phay Siphan, who said no new agreement with China had been reached.Despite the blow-back, China has noted recent statements that "show that the international community has come to understand and support the Chinese government's position on handling the South China Sea issue and the arbitration case brought by the Philippine side," Ouyang Yujing, the head of the Foreign Ministry's Department of Boundary and Ocean Affairs, told reporters Friday.Ouyang was referring to a case challenging China's South China Sea territorial claims brought by fellow claimant the Philippines before the United Nations Court of Arbitration in 2013. China has refused to join in the legal process and says it won't accept the court's ruling, expected within weeks.Beijing's approach displays its craving for international respect and desire to avoid isolation over the issue, and provides "an iota of self-satisfaction," said Yu Maochun, an expert on Chinese politics at the U.S. Naval Academy.
Reunion of Newspapers Computer Assoc held

Chittagong Bureau :

The reunion function and reception of the Newspapers Computer Association,Chittagong was held at Chittagong Press club hall on Sunday.

Chairman of Chittagong development authority Abdus Salam graced the occasion as chief guest duly presided over by its President Md.Rafiqul Islam . In the function, renowned freedom fighter and the elderly journalist Nasiruddin Chowdhury and the elderly operator of Dainik Azadi Md. Mofizuddin were given honoury award.

President of Chittagong Union of Journalist Riaz Haider chowdhury , joint convenor of Juboleague Farid Mahmud, councilor Kafil uddin, councilor Saibal Das summon, consultant physician MA Malek attended the function as special guests.


Death anniv of Ahsanullah Master today

City Desk :

Today is the 12th death anniversary of veteran freedom fighter, labour leader and teacher Ahsanullah Master.

Various programmes have been chalked out at different places in the country including Dhaka and Gazipur to mark the day.

Wreaths will be placed at his grave in his village home Haidrabad under Gazipur City Corpation in the morning on the day. Milad and Doa Mahfil will be organized and food will be distributed among the poor.

Marking the day, Ahsanullah Master MP Smriti Parishad organized a discussion meeting at the Jatiya Press Club on Friday.

Ahsanullah Master was elected Member of Parliament twice from Gazipur-2 constituency in 1996 and 2001. He was also national committee member of the Awami League and was involved with different national and international organizations.
Condolence meet on Prof Azizul Haq today

City Desk :

A condolence meeting and Doa Mahfil on Professor SM Azizul Haq would be held today at 10am at Rezaur Rahman auditorium of Dhaka University's AF Mujibur Rahman Ganit Bhaban.

Prof Haq passed away on April 13 last in Boston, USA.

In 1949, he joined the Mathematics Department of Dhaka University and retired in 1982. He served as hall provost, faculty dean and department chairman of the university.

He was the founding president of Bangladesh Mathematics Society.




BSF returns body of BD child

Nilphamari Correspondent :Border Security Force (BSF) of India at Singpara camp in Kunchbihar district handed over dead body of a Bangladeshi girl child to local Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB) personnel posted at Thanarhaat camp in Dimla upazila of the district at 6.00 PM on Friday.Before this, a flag meeting was held between the BGB and the BSF near international border at Thengjhara Charkharibari village, a shoal of Testa river in the upazila. Earlier, BSF recovered the dead body from a maize field at Singpara village on Wednesday and handed over it to their police of Kuchlibari thana for post mortem at Kunchbihar district hospital in West Bengal.Police of Dimla and locals informed that the victim Yesmin Ara (9) was the daughter of day labourer Yasin Ali alias Refatullah of a cluster village in Purbo Satnai union of the same upazila near the border. He was also a student of class three of Dakkhin Jharsingheswar Govt Primary School.However, Officer in Charge of Dimla Police Station Ruhul Amin Khan, who was present in the handover venue, informed quoting Indian postmortem report that the girl was killed by suffocation.He, however, said that the Indian authority could not confirm whether she was raped before being killed, as her lower part was severely decomposed.Locals reported that the girl was abducted by miscreants while playing beside her house with other girls in the afternoon of Sunday.As other girls returned home that day before evening, her parents made announcement through loudspeaker for trace of the girl. Locals also informed the matter to Thanarhat BGB camp that night BGB sent message to BSF to keep watchful eyes if the girl was taken there after abduction.
President proposes new ministry for Suu Kyi

Channel NewsAsia, Yangon :Myanmar's president has urged the creation of a new ministry for Aung San Suu Kyi's state advisor position, official media reported Friday (May 6), a move that will deepen her influence and likely rile the powerful army.Suu Kyi is barred from the presidency by the military-drafted constitution despite having led her pro-democracy party to a landslide victory in November.She has instead hoovered up a slew of other senior positions, including foreign minister,president's officer minister, and the specially-devised role of state counsellor, which gives her vaguely-defined powers to guide parliamentary affairs. The broad array of powers across government has helped the veteran activist fulfil a pledge to rule "above" her presidential proxy and close ally Htin Kyaw. Shortly after taking office she used her role as state counsellor to announce a major political prisoner release in April.
No free expression in Bangladesh

THE LANCET :We grieve for Xulhaz Mannan, a gay rights activist and editor, and his friend Mahbub Rabbi Tonoy, who were viciously killed last week in Dhaka. Alarmingly, this brings to five the number of writers, activists, or intellectuals murdered in Bangladesh in April alone, and to ten in 2016. The common denominator is that of expression of views perceived to be anti-Islamic by extremists, although worryingly the targets seem to be widening to anyone with a progressive or liberal view. The brutality of the killings is matched in tragedy by the impunity with which the crimes are carried out. Not a single person has been held to account, says Amnesty International, and the Bangladesh authorities insist the security situation is normal. The impunity follows a pattern of shameful indifference. The governmental response following 2015's rash of murders of secular writers was to advise bloggers to "use restraint in their exercise of free speech". Last week, the Prime Minister again blamed the victims saying her government will not take responsibility for "untoward incidents" against people who express objectionable opinions, reported The Economist. In 2013, The Lancet's Series on Bangladesh celebrated the country's secularism and pluralism as drivers of its remarkable global health development. Now it is hard to deny that some views are being marginalised, threatened, and extinguished.But a country that cannot ensure free expression cannot fulfil its promise of progress. And freedom of expression-a basic human right-is inseparably linked to health. A lack of freedom of expression can literally kill you, as the Bangladesh situation shows. Whether religious, cultural, sexual, artistic, or journalistic, freedom of expression is fundamental to the ability to discuss and debate current predicaments and the future vision of societies-how people wish to live and prosper, of which health and wellbeing are central components. Anything that restricts the freedom of expression restricts health and development. That a country so distinguished for its development success seems to be dangerously sliding backward is distressing. We mourn the precious lives of those brutally killed for expressing their views, but also the wound this leaves on Bangladeshi society.
Education Ministry's action against corruption

Staff Reporter :

Responding to the direction of the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) to eliminate corruption from the education sector, the Education Ministry has already started its action against corruption.

The top bosses of the Ministry have brought all the officials under surveillance to identify the corrupt staff.

Terming the education sector as most corrupted, the ACC has sent a letter recently to the Education Ministry to take proper action against the unscrupulous officials to make the Ministry as well as the education sector corruption-free.

An official of the ACC wishing anonymity told The New Nation on Friday that the anti-corruption watchdog has found many irregularities in the education sector. Most of the officials, especially officials of the audit department, are directly involved with the corruption.

Education Secretary Sohrab Hossain said that Education Minister Nurul Islam Nahid and other top officials are determined to remove corruption from the education sector.

"We are bound to serve the country. No patriot official can involve in any kind of

corruption. If any one is found in such activities we will not tolerate it," he warned.

The secretary said, "No corruption will be allowed in the ministry as well as the education sector. Please don't try to practice corruption here. If it is your habit, you should try to go another sector."

On May 3, two officials (Swapan Kumar Gosh, Joint Chief of Planning Wing, and Imrul Mohsin, Deputy Chief of the wing were asked not to join office until further notice.

The Ministry has taken the decision after a written complaint from the Khulna University (KU) Vice-Chancellor as they demanded Tk 10 lakh for evaluating the university's infrastructure project.

The Education Ministry opened an investigation into an allegation headed by Ashoke Kumar Biswas, Additional Secretary of Technical Wing of the ministry and asked to submit a report in the shortest possible time, the ministry sources said.

The Ministry and KU sources said these two ministry officials incorporated the component of a remuneration of Tk 10 lakh in the Revised Development Project Proforma (RDPP) as mid-term evaluation without informing the education secretary.

The four-year project was launched in 2010 at a cost of Tk 80 crore, but its term was extended twice as the fund was not released on time. The project cost stands at around Tk 86 crore, said KU officials.
4th phase of UP polls today

Candidates, voters frustrate over EC's relaxed steps

Joynal Abedin Khan :Candidates and voters have expressed frustration over the relaxed security steps of the Election Commission (EC) ahead of Fourth phase of polls of 709 Union Parishads in different districts today (Saturday). Elections will take place without any break from 8:00am to 4:00pm. The EC has not taken any extra security measures, though over 71 people have been killed and around 6,000 injured during polls violence in last three phases. According to EC officials, 3,245 Chairman candidates from different political parties, including ruling AL, and independent aspirants will contest in 709 UPs. The Commission has already postponed polls in 16 UPs in Rajshahi's Bagmara Upazila.Of them, Awami League has fielded its candidates in 691 Unions, BNP in 619, JSD in 42 and Islami Andolon Bangladesh in 154, they said. Already, the EC has sent necessary materials, including 5 crore ballot papers, to different district's election offices, they added. Over 100,000 election officials and around 150,000 members of different law enforcing agencies will be on duty on elections day, they said. Campaigns for all chairmen, general and reserved seat candidates ended at midnight on Thursday.The government has declared public holiday in the election areas on the day of polling. Ban on traffic movement excluding the vehicles having stickers of the Election Commission (EC) has been imposed in the areas.Members of law enforcement agencies, including Police, Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) and Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB) are working in the field. All election materials, including ballot papers and boxes, have reached the polling centers, said the officials.Besides, the judicial and executive magistrates will do their duties to help ensure fair polls. Amid criticisms, the EC has urged the law enforcing agencies to take effective steps against violence.Meanwhile, the EC has ordered Sherpur-1 Awami League MP and a Whip in Parliament Md Atiur Rahman Atik to leave the constituency for reportedly breaching the UP electoral code of conduct.He will have to stay out of district until the election ends, says the EC, which had also ordered the withdrawal of the Sherpur Sadar Police OC on Thursday.EC Deputy Secretary Farhad Ahmed Khan said Atik was ordered to leave in the interest of fair polls on Saturday."The letter in this regard has already been sent to the Returning Officer concerned and the MP," he said.Sherpur election officer Md Mokhlesur Rahman said that ruling party lawmaker Atik, on May 3, had sought votes from the locals for Awami League chairman candidate Awladul Islam at Gazirkhamar Union in violation of the Code Of Conduct.The EC on Thursday suspended voting in 16 Unions in Rajshahi's Bagmara Upazila following allegations that Rajshahi-4 Awami League MP Enamul Haque was trying to influence the voters. In most areas, the Awami League-backed candidates and rebel contenders of the same party are now face-to-face centering the polls, which has already deteriorated law and order situation in several localities. At least 150 AL candidates were made chairmen in last three phases and 33 ruling party men nominated candidates have won in the fourth phase without any contest, EC sources said.According to sources, over 700 polling centres in different unions, including all 106 centres of 11 unions under Sadullapur upazila in Gaibandha district, have been declared 'risky' by the local administration. The situation in Gaibandha is so deteriorating that, out of 106 'risky' centres, 90 centres have been marked 'highly risky'.In Dinajpur district, about 48 centres out of 75 under Parbatipur upazila have been declared 'risky'. The law enforcement agencies were paying extra attention to Belaichandi, Chandipur, Monmothpur, Mominpur, Mostafapur and Harirampur Unions apprehending possible violence."Seventy-five centres in eight unions are very important. We have marked 48 centres of six unions highly risky," Mahmudul Alam, Officer-in-Charge of Parbatipur Model Police Station, said yesterday.Expressing disappointment, Upazila Nirbahi Officer [UNO] of Parbatipur Upazila Tarafdar Mahmudur Rahman said, "We have urged the EC to appoint 10 executive magistrates to conduct the polls smoothly. The EC ensured only four magistrates. "The criminals stabbed and injured rebel candidate of Awami League Rabiul Islam at Palashbaria union under Mohammadpur upazila in Magura district on Wednesday. In another incident, the criminals hacked to death one Abul Kalam, a supporter of independent chairman candidate Assaduzzaman Jamal Mollah at Sahebrampur Union Parishad Kalkini upazila in Madaripur district on Wednesday. "Some unidentified persons hacked him to death when Kalam came out of his house. He was rushed to Kalkini Upazila Health Complex where on duty doctor declared him dead," Officer-in-Charge of Kalkini police station Kripa Sindhu Bala said. At least 10 people, including police officials, were injured when supporters of two chairmen candidates in Jamalpur's Bakshiganj upazila were locked in a fierce clash on Tuesday night.The EC has a plan to arrange elections to 4,275 UPs out of the country's 4,546 ones in six phases being held along political party lines for the first time. The fifth phase will start on May 28 in 714 UPs, and the sixth phase on June 4 in 660 UPs. Earlier, polls to 2119 UPs were held in three phases on March 22, 31 and April 23. All the three phases witnessed widespread violence and irregularities that left at least 71 people dead and more than 6,000 injured.Contacted, EC Secretariat Deputy Director Shamsul Alam told The New Nation, "The law enforcers are active in the field since two days before the polls. They have been directed to maintain the highest caution to prevent violence."The EC has directed the outsiders to leave the poll areas to avert any untoward situation during the election, he said.
Economists for permanent brake

Kazi Zahidul Hasan :

As the government is finalizing the new budget for the fiscal 2016-17, business leaders, including the realtors, are bringing pressure to continue the provision of whitening black money in the next budget.

But the economists are opposed to such 'fiscal indiscipline' any more and said that it may open a floodgate of undisclosed income in the economy dumping the honest taxpayers who adhere fiscal discipline.

"I have always opposed the scope for whitening black money as it is immoral", former Finance Adviser to a caretaker government Dr AB Mirza Azizul Islam told The New Nation on Friday.

He said, instead of continuing this year after year, the government should give a permanent pause on the scope, while sources of black money should be identified and blocked.

"If it cannot be verified whether an amount of money is earned through legal ways or not, what's the logic behind giving the scope?" he argued.

Mirza Aziz further said that the government should give no scope for whitening black money in the upcoming budget as such a scope

will open up the floodgates of black money or undisclosed income in the economy.

"I oppose it from all perspectives, in terms of social justice, economic justification and political culture," distinguished fellow of the Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD) Debapriya Bhattacharya told The New Nation yesterday.

He said, the money-whitening opportunity is given almost every year but it never brought the government any substantial revenue. Even it also failed to bring illegal wealth into the mainstream economy.

"Those who advocate for the provision to bring illegal wealth into the mainstream economy have no data to back them up. The reality is there is no evidence that such big liberal provisions brought big amount of investment.

Rather, it creates a culture of tax evasion, which, in turn, is an unjust punishment to honest tax payers," Bhattacharya added.

Referring to a figure, he said, the history of this controversial privilege provides an even bleaker picture. Between 1972 and 2013, around Tk 13,808 crore was whitened, with the NBR receiving taxes worth Tk 1,455 crore.

The highest amount of taxes on black money or undisclosed income came to the public exchequer during the 2007-09 period of the army-led caretaker government when Tk 9,683 crore was disclosed which yielded Tk 914 crore in taxes.

As the controversial privilege did not yield much benefit to the mainstream economy, he said, the government should not bow down to any pressure from the business community and give up the fiscal measure for ever.

"I do not see any justification of providing the facility once again when it received poor response from the black money holders," lead economist World Bank's Dhaka office Dr Zahid Hussain told The New Nation yesterday.

He added, "The facility has nearly become a permanent feature of the fiscal incentive regime in Bangladesh, but there was hardly any evidence of substantial revenue being earned in the past because of such a policy".

Opposing the amnesty on black money in the real estate sector, Dr Zahid Hussain said the sector had not only generated more illegal wealth in the past, but also pushed up property prices over the years.

"It is an unproductive sector and the economy will not get any benefit from such an amnesty on black money in it," he added.


Family meets Nizami at jail

All procedures to be maintained for execution, says Kamal

Staff Reporter :Family members met death row war crimes convict Jamaat-e-Islami Ameer Motiur Rahman Nizami at Kashimpur jail in Gazipur on Friday morning. "A total of six members of the family-his wife Shamsunnahar, two sons Barrister Nazibur Rahman and Dr Naimur Rahman, daughter Khadiza Mohsina, daughters-in-law Riyan and Saleha-were allowed to meet him in the jail, Jail Super Proshanto Kumar Bonik of Kashimpur Jail-2 told journalists."They entered the jail at about 11:15am and stayed there with Nizami for 40 minutes," he said. After meeting with Nizami when the family members came out of the jail gate, the journalists tried to talk to them. But they did not respond to the journalists and left the place quickly.On Thursday, the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court rejected his review petition and upheld death penalty for committing crimes against humanity during the Liberation War in 1971.A four-member Appellate Division panel headed by Chief Justice Surendra Kumar Sinha pronounced the verdict.The man, who led the ruthless militia Al-Badr in the massacre of Bangalees, including intellectuals and professionals, during the 1971 Liberation War, has now only one option left-seeking Presidential clemency by confessing to the crimes he committed during the nine-month war.As per the past precedents it is expected that after the SC's dismissal of the petition, the court will release the full text of the verdict and send it to the tribunal.The copies of the verdict will be sent to the Jail Authorities and the District Magistrate in Dhaka. The Jail Authorities will then ask the condemned war criminal if he will seek Presidential clemency within a "reasonable time".If Nizami, now 73, seeks mercy, his plea would go to the President through the Home Ministry.If he refrains from seeking clemency, the Jail Authorities will take preparations for his execution.Meanwhile, Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal on Friday said, maintaining all legal procedures the death sentence of condemned war criminal Motiur Rahman Nizami will be executed."Government will not be in a hurry for Nizami's execution as it wants to maintain all legal procedures," he told journalists at his Dhanmondi residence in the city. Replying to a query about Jamaat's hartal, the Home Minister said law enforcers will stay on stern position on that day.Jamaat-e-Islami called a 24-hour countrywide hartal for Sunday protesting the Supreme Court order.In reply to a query on the clemency seeking period, Kamal said the Jail Authorities will inform the convict about the review plea rejections and try to know whether he will seek clemency from the President.
Judgement has held out a beacon of hope for democracy and freedom

The High Court Division of the Supreme Court by declaring unconstitutional the amendment by which the parliament claimed the power of punishing the judges of the Supreme Court has asserted the position of the Supreme Court as the guardian of the Constitution.A Special Bench of the High Court Division presided by Mr Justice Moyeenul Islam Chowdhury delivered the judgement while deciding on a writ petition challenging the constitutionality of the amendment. The two other judges are Mr Justice Dr Quazi Reza-Ul Hoque and Mr Justice Md Ashraful Kamal.Despite the government's absolute control over the controversial parliament the government was advised to take the most audacious decision to change the Constitution once again, this time to deny the Supreme Court its independence. Nothing is surer for destroying democracy than to deny the judiciary independence.Their Lordships observed that to remove a judge byparliament is an accident in history but in most Commonwealth Countries the judges are not removed by the parliament. Their Lordships were highly critical of Article 70 of the Constitution by which a member of the parliament loses his/her seat if he/she votes against the party line.What the Special Bench has found most inconsistent with the Constitution is that the judges of the highest court shall be at the mercy of MPs.What should be clear to all is that the 16th amendment to the Constitution was brought in to keep the supreme judiciary under threat of impeachment and the government free to do any illegality unrestrained by any constitutional constraint. The expectation was that the Supreme Court judges shall remain ready to oblige the Prime Minister right or wrong otherwise live under the threat of impeachment hanging over them. Previously, the government amended the Constitution to hold general election by not resigning. As a result elections have become meaningless for the people to change the government.At that time the government took advantage of a one-judge majority judgement of the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court which permitted the government not to resign for holding the general election. The eminent lawyers of the country advised the court against the propriety of such decision. Three out of four judges dissented. But to no avail.There is no precedent that under the parliamentary system general elections are held without first dissolving the parliament and declaring the parliamentary seats vacant. This judgement will remain a black spot in the history of our democratic struggle until the judgement is revisited for more careful scrutiny.In effect this judgement of the Supreme Court under the then Chief Justice his Lordship Mr Justice ABM Khairul Haque, who cast the deciding majority vote, disenfranchised the people. Elections have become mostly a violent exercise and there is no way to ensure fair elections. Lives are lost for the greedy struggle of power of others. The election as a democratic institution has been choked to death.Unfortunately, the Constitution was changed again to destroy another vital democratic institution, the guardian of the Constitution, namely, the Supreme Court itself. Some elements somewhere issuing the guidelines for our self-destruction and we are not careful.If the present amendment prevailed the Prime Minister would have all the powers of controlling the government, the parliament as well as the judiciary. To make this to happen is to destroy the democratic Constitution, the guarantees of fundamental rights and the rule of law. The all powerful Prime Minister will be target of all powerful enemies.The judiciary without independence is no judiciary and becomes part of the government administration. The judges will be in all intend and purposes the government officials. We have only to look at such judiciary in socialist countries.In practice nowhere under one-house parliament which is controlled by the government the parliament claims the power of impeaching judges of the highest court. Only where the parliament consists of two houses, as in Britain, House of Commons and House of Lords, it is relied with the power of impeachment of judges with sufficient checks and balances. There is no fear that the wishes of the few will prevail against command of the people.It is of no help to forget that the sovereign people in their wisdom did not trust the government or the elected parliament with the responsibility of safeguarding the people's Constitution. On the contrary they are required to take the oath of office pledging to abide by the Constitution.By not yielding to the power assumed by the parliament to make the judiciary submissive to the government their Lordships have held up, as the protector of the Constitution, a beacon of hope for democracy and freedom.Let us not deny ourselves the protection of democracy and the rule of law to make ourselves vulnerable to violence and lawlessness. The power itself does not solve any problem, absolute power blinds one absolutely.It is understandable but painful to see the angry reactions of the persons in power to the judgement for protecting the independence of the justice system. We cannot be uncivilised not to know the need of impartial justice.
Did City Marshal Brian Pope use taxpayer dollars to cover the cost of legal action last year seeking to open the Garber divorce files? The paper trail suggests so.

Among the public records obtained by The Independent in its ongoing litigation against Pope is the November billing invoice from Charles Middleton, the first of now three attorneys to represent Pope in his court battle with this newspaper. Although the invoice  reproduced at the bottom of this story  was redacted before being turned over, it shows that on Nov. 16 Middleton billed Pope for one hour of work, citing Draft motion; text conference with Brian re (redaction). The next day Middleton billed Pope for an additional 2.5 hours for Revise draft of motion; legal research for motion; conference with Brian re (redacted). At $200 per hour Middleton collected a cool $700 for the work.

Two-thirds of the Marshal Pope legal team converse outside of the parish courthouse May 2: Chuck Middleton, left, and criminal defense attorney Kevin Stockstill Photo by Robin May

The timing of this legal work by Middleton for Pope raised our eyebrows. The IND served Middleton with the lawsuit seeking Popes office emails on the afternoon of Nov. 16, but Middleton didnt file anything into the court record titled Motion pertaining to our litigation until Jan. 2.

However, on Nov. 17 at 3:42 p.m., the same day the invoice indicated that Middleton revised a motion for Pope, a Motion and Order to Unseal Record and Sealed Video and for Expidited [sic] Hearing was filed in state district court by Troyce Thorla, the Broussard resident who sought to unseal the divorce files of then-sheriff candidate Mark Garber and his wife, Rachel Garber.

Thorlas motion was filed three days before the runoff election between Garber and Scott Police Chief Chad Leger, a contest handily won by Garber. As this newspaper reported this week, Thorla later signed a notarized affidavit expressing regret for his role in the bid to unseal the Garbers divorce files. The affidavit goes on to attest that Thorla was pressured by Pope to file the motion seeking the divorce files because the Leger campaign believed there was information in them that would be damaging to Garber in his bid to be elected sheriff. The affidavit also states that Pope paid the legals costs in preparing and submitting the motion.

Thorla further attests in the affidavit that he picked up an envelope  presumably containing the motion to unseal the divorce files  at the Stewart Street office of the law firm Goforth & Lilly. Although hes not part of the firm, Middleton leases office space from Goforth & Lilly at the same Stewart Street address. Coincidental perhaps  but probably not  the word expedited is misspelled in Thorlas Nov. 17 motion to unseal the Garbers divorce files; the word is also misspelled in the same way  expidited  in a Feb. 23 letter from Middleton to attorney Clay Burgess, who is representing political operative Joe Castille, Legers campaign manager in last years failed sheriff bid.

The documents Thorla filed into the public record were not signed by an attorney but clearly drafted by Middleton, as evidenced by the consistent misspelling of expedite(d).

Troyce Thorla

Its already been well-established through public records obtained in our suit against Pope that the marshal conspired with the Leger campaign to scare voters into believing there are possibly hundreds of criminal undocumented immigrants roaming the streets of Lafayette Parish because the sheriffs office has made the parish a de facto sanctuary city by not complying with federal immigration laws. Sheriff Mike Neustrom had endorsed Garber ahead of the October primary. The affidavit signed by Troyce Thorla on April 5 further establishes that Pope had a principal role in the attempt to discredit Garber by unsealing his divorce files.

What the paper trail suggests is that Pope paid his attorney, Charles Middleton, to draft and revise the motion to unseal the divorce files that Thorla submitted on Nov. 17, and its been clear thus far in this saga that Pope has incurred no personal expense in his legal battle with this newspaper  its been covered entirely by the city marshals office, i.e., taxpayers. In other words, Pope used taxpayer money to help his pal Leger in his campaign for sheriff.

This would be a betrayal of taxpayer and voter trust of a proportion merely equal to the elected city marshals already well-established abuse of public office, but it leaves us marveling at the depth of the rabbit hole we dashed into last fall when we submitted a public records request seeking to understand the bizarre Oct. 7 press conference Pope held at his office regarding a now-discredited investigation into the Lafayette Parish Sheriffs Offices compliance with federal immigration laws.

Currently pending in this saga is The INDs latest public records request to Pope seeking a copy of the motion Middleton drew up for the marshal on Nov. 16 and revised on Nov. 17. If its not Thorlas motion to unseal the Garbers divorce files well be shocked.

Middleton did not return The IND's phone or email messages seeking comment for this story.

Also worth noting is the possibility that Middleton, in anonymously drafting the motion on behalf of Thorla, violated the Louisiana Rules of Professional Conduct addressing attorneys ghostwriting legal documents.

Stand by.
Calls to delay a special session on taxes would be irresponsible, allowing damaging cuts to take hold across state services, Gov. John Bel Edwards says.

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BATON ROUGE, La. (AP)  Calls to delay a special session on taxes would be irresponsible, allowing damaging cuts to take hold across state services, Gov. John Bel Edwards said Thursday.

The Democratic governor is planning a June special session for lawmakers, to consider tax changes that could drum up new money for the state treasury and help stave off deep reductions to education and health care programs in the financial year that begins July 1. The state is estimated to be $600 million short of the money needed to continue all current state services.

Edwards described the threat of cuts to safety net hospitals for the poor, public schools and colleges that would start in July.

"I don't think we need to wait 'til September to take action on that. That would be the most irresponsible thing to do," he said.

He said the budget that lawmakers will have to craft in their current legislative session, when taxes are off the table, will include such hefty cuts that "I think it's going to produce enough concern across the state that we will have a sense of urgency about fixing the situation."

But some lawmakers and others have questioned the timeline.

Republican Rep. Cameron Henry, House budget committee chairman, said a June session is too soon because Louisiana won't yet know how much money will be raised by tax hikes passed earlier this year. Estimates are those tax increases will bring in $1.2 billion for next year's budget, but GOP lawmakers believe the figure may be higher.

"There's no need to rush back into special session until we know how much money was raised from the previous special session," Henry, R-Metairie, said Thursday.

The head of the powerful Louisiana Association of Business and Industry, Stephen Waguespack, raised similar concerns. In his weekly column, Waguespack called a June special session "clearly premature."

"If this happens, legislators will be asked to vote on more taxes without any confidence in the size of the actual budget hole they are asked to fill," Waguespack wrote.

In response, Edwards referenced Waguespack's previous position in the administration of former Gov. Bobby Jindal, whose policies are blamed for many of Louisiana's budget woes.

"I suspect that that's similar to the counsel that Mr. Waguespack gave Bobby Jindal over the years that resulted in many years of midyear budget cuts because they were going to wait and see and hope, rather than take a responsible, honest look at the situation," Edwards said.

On other issues, the governor:

 Said he supports a Senate-approved bill that would expand the reach of Louisiana's medical marijuana program to add more disease states that would allow people to gain access. "I personally know too many individuals, and really particularly children, who are suffering from medical conditions and traditional medicines are not providing relief," he said. But he said he would not support any effort to legalize recreational marijuana.

 Described his concerns with a House-approved proposal to penalize jurisdictions that don't align with federal immigration law. He said he'd like the measure to include an exception to account for a legal agreement New Orleans has with federal officials regarding police actions. He said the proposal would vest too much discretion in Attorney General Jeff Landry to determine what municipalities are "sanctuary cities." But he also said he supports the intention of the bill.
Pre-purchase property inspection is a relatively new thing in the United Kingdom. Its not something that most people have heard about, but it has become increasingly popular over the last few years with the rise in property prices and increased demand for high quality homes.

What are the benefits of pre-purchase building inspection? What can you expect to find out when you pay someone else to inspect your home before you buy it? And what should you look for during an inspection?

Many people want to know if theyre buying a house thats been well maintained or if its had any serious problems. If youve found a place on the market that seems attractive, but then discover some issues after moving in, you may not be as excited about buying it as you thought you were.

Its important to do your due diligence when looking at properties. A lot goes into making a property appealing to potential buyers, from the landscaping to the flooring to the kitchen appliances. The same applies when inspecting a property  there are many things that need checking over to make sure everything is running smoothly.

Here are some of the benefits of performing a pre-purchase inspection:

You get to see exactly what will happen to your money

When you go shopping for a new car, youll probably be shown several different models. You might even be shown one that looks like a great value, but doesnt fit around all of the extra features that you want. When it comes time to actually buy the vehicle, however, you wont have seen how your money will be spent on it once you drive it off the showroom floor.

Likewise, when you shop for a new home, you dont really know what youre getting yourself into until you move in. In order to get a feel for whether the home youre considering is what you want, you normally have to spend quite a bit of time inside it. This allows you to learn more about everything that youre going to be spending your hard-earned cash on.

A pre-purchase building inspection gives you much the same kind of experience without having to spend thousands of dollars. Since youre paying for the service, you can expect to see exactly what youre paying for, instead of just seeing a vague idea of what you might end up with.

You find out about potential major repairs

Some buildings are very expensive to maintain, which means that owners often neglect them for the sake of saving money. While youre paying for a building inspection, youre also paying for a professional who knows how to spot signs of trouble and repair work that needs doing.

If you notice that a particular area of your new home needs fixing right away, you can call in an expert to take care of it quickly. If you find that theres something wrong with your boiler, you wont have to wait weeks for a plumber to come over and fix it. Instead, youll have access to a solution immediately.

You can save hundreds of pounds by finding out about potential problems early on

One of the biggest expenses when you first buy a home is the cost of moving in. Many people dont realize this until its too late. Buying a home involves not only paying for the actual house, but also for moving costs, furniture, and other items that have to be moved along with the home.

Having a good idea ahead of time of what youre likely to encounter can help you avoid these kinds of costs. If you know youll need to replace the plumbing system, for example, youll be able to put together a budget for the expense and plan accordingly.

You can protect your investment by finding out if the homes been well cared for

While there are plenty of people who think that houses always look better when theyre newly built, youd be surprised at how well maintained older residences can still look nice. Sometimes, though, those homes need some additional maintenance to keep them looking their best.

This could involve repairs that arent so noticeable or small improvements that you wouldnt consider otherwise. Even worse, some houses have fallen into disrepair without anyone noticing. This is why having a professional perform a building inspection prior to purchasing a home is such a big benefit.

Not only will it give you insight into the state of the property, but it will also give you peace of mind knowing youre not getting taken advantage of. As long as youre aware of the potential pitfalls, youll have less reason to worry about the state of your new home.

You can use information gathered during a building inspection to negotiate a lower price

If youre worried about buying a home because you suspect that it may need extensive renovation work, you may already have a rough idea of how much work youll need to do to bring it up to scratch. That knowledge can come in handy if you decide to buy the home.

You can use all of the details that you gather during a building inspection to present a realistic picture of what the home is worth to prospective buyers. If a potential buyer thinks that the home is worth more than what you paid for it, you can try negotiating a lower price.

You can sell your home faster and for more money

If you decide to list your home on the market soon after buying it, youll need to price it accurately in order to attract buyers. But if youve already done a thorough building inspection, youll know exactly what work is needed and what the current market conditions are.

In other words, youll be able to make a more accurate estimate of the amount of money youve invested in the home and how much its worth. If you find that youre selling your house for close to its full market value, you can use this information to convince the potential buyer that your home is worth the asking price.

Even if youre planning to stay in the home for a while before you decide to sell, the fact that you did a thorough building inspection will give you more confidence when listing it. Prospective buyers will know exactly what theyre paying for.

Your home will hold its value longer

As mentioned earlier, the value of a home depends heavily upon the condition of the building itself. If your home is in bad shape, potential buyers wont be interested in buying it. On the other hand, if youve performed a thorough building inspection and know what sort of repairs are necessary, you can offer your prospective buyer a compelling reason to invest in your property.

When you buy a home, youre essentially agreeing to have it inspected periodically to ensure that it stays in top shape. Not only does this allow you to avoid expensive repairs down the road, but it can also increase the value of your home.

You can make smart decisions about property investments

Buying real estate isnt as simple as just driving a couple of minutes to pick up a house. There are lots of considerations involved, ranging from location to cost. The same is true when youre investing in property.

If you find a house that meets all of your requirements, youll want to make sure that you have a solid understanding of where it stands with regards to the rest of the market. If you havent spent enough time researching the area, you could inadvertently end up with a bad deal.

There are lots of resources available online that can help you determine the overall level of competition in your area. They can also help you figure out if there are any properties that meet your requirements that you didnt know about.

If you own rental property, you can use the information to identify tenants who might cause damage

If you own rental property and youve noticed that certain tenants consistently cause damage, you can use the results of a building inspection to identify them. You can then contact them directly to let them know that youre watching them closely and that you dont appreciate the problem theyre causing.

They might start taking better care of their homes, which would be good news for everyone. It could also be the case that youll find out that theyre responsible for previous damages that werent caught during a previous visit.

You can make smarter decisions about hiring contractors

If youve hired contractors to build or repair your home, you might want to ask them for references. However, unless you perform a thorough building inspection, you might not know exactly what to look for.

For instance, maybe you only checked the roof for leaks or the walls for cracks. You might not have looked underneath the foundation for anything that could cause a future issue. By performing a building inspection, you can ensure that you hire reputable contractors who will be trustworthy with your money.

You can avoid purchasing a home thats in poor condition

Of course, the main benefit of structural inspections perth is that it helps you avoid purchasing a home thats in poor condition. Before you make the decision to buy a home, you should do whatever you can to find out about the state of the building.

You can also ask your realtor about what sorts of inspections are typically recommended. Some agents say that its standard practice to check the heating system, the roof, the electrical wiring, and the floors. Others will tell you that they recommend that you check the entire structure.

Either way, if you choose to hire an inspector, youll find out exactly what needs to be fixed and how much it will cost to do so.

As a result, it can be concluded that a pre-purchase building inspection is highly important for the buyers because it provides transparency regarding the current conditions of the structure. Additionally, the building owner is made aware of any upgrades or repairs that are required, which could lead to a fair deal throughout the purchasing and selling process.
Paris, TX (75460)

Today

Thunderstorms with locally heavy downpours. Potential for severe thunderstorms. High around 75F. Winds SSW at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall near an inch..

Tonight

Thunderstorms this evening followed by occasional showers overnight. Potential for severe thunderstorms. Low 49F. Winds SW at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 100%.
The sextoy market is growing quite rapidly in India right now.

Although it is not a big trend, it is a hot topic on the internet as it is secretly expanding its market.

In this article, we will focus on sextoy and introduce recommended sextoy for Indian beginners of sextoy by gender.

India, the birthplace of the Kama Sutra, is very strict about sex.

Also, premarital sex is basically not allowed. Therefore, there are many people who are sexually restricted.

But what happens when you continue to be sexually restricted?

Frustration may build up and you may end up taking your sexual stress out on your partner.

If you are able to adopt sextoy in a timely manner, you can get rid of those problems.

I want to have more exciting sex than Im having now.

I want more variation in masturbation

I want to get even stronger pleasure than I do on my own.

If you have any of these problems, please stay with me until the end.

What is sex toys for Indian?

Sextoy, as the name implies, is a toy used during sex and masturbation.

It is a generic term for vibrators, Egg-vibrators, Electric massagers, dildo, handcuffs and condoms.

They are used to make regular sex more exciting or to make masturbation more pleasurable.

Because sextoy is very stimulating, it can help you to get rid of the problems and frustrations of being in a rut of sex with your partner for a long time, or if you are unhappy with the lack of pleasure in sex with your partner.

The ability to satisfy your desires with movement, texture, and size, which cannot be done by a normal human being, can help you to be satisfied with sex and, as a result, improve your relationship with your partner.

It is also said to help improve sexual dysfunction (inability to get an erection or ejaculate) and difficulty in feeling during sex (insensitivity), which is attracting more attention than in the past.

In recent years, the demand for sextoy has increased due to the spread of smartphones and the Internet and the increasing number of people using online shopping.

Even those who are concerned about the appearance of sextoy (and find it difficult to purchase) can now easily obtain it by using mail order.

In the case of online shopping, most of the stores have taken steps to ensure that the contents of the products delivered to you are not revealed, so you can purchase them without your family members knowing.

Until a while ago, you had to go to the store where the adult goods were sold to buy them, so it was quite a hurdle to overcome.

Also, many people may have an image that sextoy is somehow embarrassing to own.

But nowadays, some of them are so stylish and cute that you cant believe they are sextoy at a glance.

More and more people are using them for travel and outdoor use because they are not too bulky and are suitable for carrying around.

Sextoy situation in India

Before introducing the recommended sextoy for Indians, lets talk about one of the sextoy situations in India in recent years.

In India, due to the high concentration of population, the following six cities have particularly high sales of sextoy in India.

Mumbai

Kolkata

Bangalore

Delhi

Chennai

Hyderabad

These cities account for roughly 70 percent of sextoy sales in India.

In the future, the percentage of sextoy use will gradually increase in other cities in India as well.

If you never talk about sextoy publicly, that girl in your neighborhood might be a sextoy user too.

If you are interested in sextoy, you dont have to suppress your desire for it.

What are Sextoys for beginner?

Among all sextoys, sextoy for beginners are vibrators, dildo, masturbators, Sex Lubricants, and condoms.

Sex Lubricants and condoms, which are familiar to people who have had sex, are also a great beginners sextoy.

I will explain the details of each toy later, but there are many sextoy products that are painful to use and can only be used after some anal expansion.

I assume that the Indian readers of this article are people who have not had much experience with sextoy.

If such people use professional sextoy suddenly, they are at risk of injury or trauma.

Therefore, to introduce sextoy, you need to start with a beginners version and gradually become familiar with it.

Advantages of using sextoy for Indians

There are three advantages of using sextoy for Indians

You can masturbate in a wide variety of ways.

Can have stimulating sex

Can develop new sexual zones

If you try to masturbate with your own fingers or hands, it tends to be a pattern.

However, with sextoy, you can easily masturbate in a variety of ways.

You will definitely be fascinated by the attraction of new stimulation.

Also, your daily sex life will be more exciting than ever.

There are many things in sextoy that are visually stimulating and give you a strong and intense feeling of pleasure.

This allows you to see your partners promiscuity in a way that you wouldnt normally see it.

When you are in a relationship, sex with your partner may become a pattern, but it can also eliminate these problems.

It can also lead to the development of new sexual zones (which is the training of sexual stimulation to allow you to feel orgasms).

For more information on the development of new sexual zones, see the following articles

[Women's Erogenous Zone]How to find and develop, 7 hidden sexual zones !![In India] In this issue, we will dissect the female erogenous zone! ..." Many of you may be like that. Men, in particular, shou...

Thus, the use of sextoy can only be a good thing for the men and women of India.

Sextoy for beginner men in India

So, lets continue with the recommended goods for Indian sextoy beginners.

For ease of understanding, we will introduce them by gender. Lets start with the men!

The following five goods are recommended for novice Indian sextoy men

Masturbator

Cock rings

Love Doll

Sex Lubricants

Toys for the prostate

Lets check each one in detail.

Masturbator

The masturbator is a sextoy for men that elaborately reproduces a womans vagina, mouth, and anus, and is one of the most popular sextoy products.

It is used by men to masturbate, and it is popular because it provides stronger stimulation and pleasure more easily than using hands.

Most are made of good quality silicone, and their softness is something that cannot be achieved with ones own hands.

They can provide stronger pleasure than a real womans vagina, so be careful not to overuse them. (You wont be able to have an orgasm in a womans vagina anymore.)

Again Male masturbators are a wonderful toy. I do not need any favourite timing, bothersome bargaining. You do not have to worry too much.

Revolutionize your masturbation time! ! !

Made in Japan is a wonderful kinky toy.#sextoysindia #SexToyIndia #Japanhttps://t.co/4k70QGzoTP pic.twitter.com/tRVdxTKPpa   SEXToys India PR  (@SextoysIndia) November 12, 2018

Some of them are disposable, while others can be washed and used over and over again, so its fun to buy a few to use depending on your mood.

If you want to know more about masturbator, please click here

Really pleasant male masturbation and how to do it Are you in a rut with your daily masturbation routine? I'm going to show you five ways men masturbate that you might ...

[For Beginners] How to choose and use a male masturbator without fail Gentlemen.Have you ever used a masturbator? The person who sees this article is probably the one who has not experien...

Cock Ring

A cock ring is literally a ring-shaped sextoy that is worn on a mans penis.

It maintains an erection by binding the penis with a ring of rubber and blocking blood flow.

It is sometimes used as an accessory to be worn on the penis, and may be made of metal or plastic as well as rubber.

In some cases, cock rings have parts or vibrators attached to them that stimulate the vagina, so they kill two birds with one stone, giving a woman pleasure while maintaining an erection.

Cock rings are also sometimes used to treat erectile dysfunction.

It can help with erectile dysfunction, where the penis doesnt get hard when you get an erection or doesnt last long when you try to insert it.

Men who are prone to breakage or who are unsure of the hardness and size of their erections can use a cock ring to increase the size of their penis and maintain an erection for a longer period of time.

Cock rings vary in price from around RS700 to over RS2000 with a vibrator function.

Some of them do not fit your penis, so you should check the size of the cock ring before you buy.

You should know the size of your partners or your own penis when it is erect.

[Penis enlargement] What is a cock ring? Types and usage Cock rings can make your penis bigger and harder. It also makes sex with women more fulfilling and increases your sat...

Love Doll

Love dolls, also known as Dutchwives, are dolls with the appearance of a woman who can experience simulated sex.

There are dolls that look like a woman, but they have no face and only have their breasts and lower torso cut off, and some dolls are so realistic that they can actually be mistaken for real women.

Some expensive dolls can cost more than 1 million yen, and the quality of the doll is easily influenced by the price.

The higher the price, the higher the quality of the doll will be, the closer it will be to the real woman, and the cheaper the doll will be, the less elaborate it will be, making it look like a real doll! Something is wrong! That is also true.

You cant go wrong if you choose a balance between price and taste.

There are stores that allow you to make custom-made love dolls, so you can create a girl of your choice.

You can make a girl of your choice. You can start with inexpensive love dolls at first, and once you get used to it, you can try custom-made love dolls.

If you want to know more about Love doll, please click here

Thorough explanation of the charm of sex dolls! Have you ever heard of sex dolls that are used primarily for pseudo-sex purposes? It is a doll that is quite close to...

Sex lubricants

Sex lubricants are used as a substitute for lubricating fluid during sex or as a lubricant for men to use masturbator rules.

It is not uncommon for women to have difficulty getting wet, depending on their physical condition, or to have difficulty getting wet due to their constitution.

Forcing the penis into the vagina at such times can cause painful intercourse.

There are various types of Sex Lubricants, some with a warming effect, some with a cooling effect, and some with a scent.

Changing the Sex Lubricant used during play is recommended as a good sex accent.

If you want to learn more about Sex Lubricants, click here.

What is sex lubricant?Explain the difference and usage of each ingredient The word "sex toy" may seem like a hurdle to overcome, but lotion is actually one of the most familiar sex toys. Many...

Toys for the Prostate

Another sextoy for men is prostate toys.

The most famous prostate toys include Enemagra, which was originally a prostate massager developed by an American urologist to treat an enlarged prostate line.

Modern prostate toys are imitations of Enemagra that have spread as sextoy for men.

Many people think of prostate toys as being used by gay men, but in fact they are often used by straight men.

What is the prostate?

The prostate is an organ found only in men. It is a walnut-sized organ located deep in the pelvis, just below the bladder, and its primary role is to protect and nourish sperm.

You cannot touch the prostate gland from outside the body, but you can touch it by inserting a finger or sextoy through the anus.

By inserting a finger or sextoy through the anus and touching the prostate and developing it, you can feel intense orgasms.

Orgasms felt in the prostate are mainly dry orgasms, which are orgasms that do not involve ejaculation. (You can also feel orgasms with ejaculation through prostate stimulation.)

The prostate is called the male G-spot, and dry orgasms can be much more intense than ejaculation.

Therefore, men who are able to develop a prostate can become addicted to the pleasure.

sextoy for beinner women in India

The following are the recommended goods for Indian women who are new to sextoy.

The following three are recommended for use by women who are new to sextoy.

Vibrator.

Dildo

Electric Masserger

Lets check out what each one is in detail.

If you want to check out womens toys, click here.

[BEST25]Sex Toys for Women in IndiaThat Can Help You Have an Orgasm There are many women who pretend to feel orgasm during sex. But don't worry, you don't have to pretend to feel orgasm...

Vibrators

A vibrator is a sextoy that vibrates with an Egg-Vibrator to provide stimulation and is often referred to simply as a vibrator.

Some vibrate as well as rotate, and there are many variations of sextoy.

It is quite a popular sextoy, and is well recognized by people who do not know much about sextoy.

Its usage is similar to that of a massager, but it is more compact and easier to carry than a massager, and many of them look as cute as a lipstick or a macaroon, so they are popular among women.

For a while, a famous influencer on twitter said, This is good! You may have heard of the topic of this article by introducing the recommended vibrators.

Vibrators are great for women to use on their own, but they are also recommended for men who have difficulty satisfying women with sex.

Since it is powered by electricity, it is far less tiring than moving your hands by yourself.

This makes it easier to satisfy a woman with sex because you can caress her for longer than usual.

Vibrators are mainly used on the female side, but they can also be used on men.

When used on men, they are used to attack the nipples and glans, and in both cases it is recommended to wear a condom for hygiene reasons.

Introducing how to use the vibrator, its purpose, and how to choose it! Vibrator uses the vibrations caused by the rotation of the motor to provide stimulation. It is one or two of the most...

Dildo

A dildo is a model sextoy made to mimic a male penis.

It can be made of silicone, elastomer (think of it as a material similar to PVC), metal or glass.

A dildo can be used by a man for his female partner during sex, or by a woman for masturbation to get pleasure from it.

They are mainly inserted into women, but some can be used in the male anus as well.

It is sometimes used synonymously with vibrators, but the vibrator is not the same thing as a vibrating device.

A model of a penis that does not vibrate is a dildo.

Some of them have suction cups that can be attached to the floor or wall so that you can enjoy realistic masturbation without using your hands.

For fun, there is a dildo made in the shape of your partners penis.

This one is also popular as a gift, and if youve been together for a long time and are having trouble finding a gift for your partner, you might want to pick one.

To learn more about dildo, please click here.

What is Dildo: Orgasms with Dildos for Men and Women A dildo is a model of a male organ that is used by women for masturbation and by men to stimulate the prostate gland. Th...

Electric Masserger

A Electric Masserger is a hand-held electric massager, also known as a handheld massager, and can usually be purchased at electronics stores.

It was originally designed to relieve stiff shoulders and back pain, so the hurdle of buying one in a physical store is quite low.

Many people may have seen or used it in some form or another, as it is often installed in leisure hotels.

Such a massager is highly recommended for beginners because it is easy for women to get pleasure from it when they use it during masturbation.

It is larger than Egg-Vibrator and vibrations are stronger than those of Egg-Vibrators and vibrators, so even just hitting the clitoris can give you a great deal of pleasure.

For those women who have never had an orgasm during sex with their man, the massager may be a good way to get a feel for what it feels like to have an orgasm.

It looks and feels like an electric massager, so you wont have to feel awkward if your roommate finds out.

If you are in a rut of having sex with your partner, if you want to feel an orgasm through masturbation, or if you are thinking of using a sextoy, why dont you try it from a simple massager?

To learn more about Electric Masserger, click here.

What is a massager? Introducing types, selection methods, and usage Originally, the Magic-wand vibrator and the massage machine were sold as a home massage machine used for the back and th...

How to choose a sextoy for Indian

Now that weve covered the different types of sextoy, heres how to choose one.

Especially if you are trying sextoy for the first time, pay attention to the following three points:  Does the size fit you (the partner)?

Does the size fit you (your partner)?

Is the environment able to produce sound without problems?

Price range

First of all, the choice of size is quite important.

Most sextoy are used against or inserted into the genitals, but the genitals are very delicate organs for both men and women.

For this reason, using an inappropriate size may cause damage.

Secondly, the environment should be able to produce sound without problems.

Some sextoys not only wear, but also rotate and vibrate. Its easier to get pleasure from something that moves than something that doesnt, but the fact that it moves means that the internal rotors make some noise.

If you live in a house with thin walls or if you have roommates, you may not be able to concentrate because of the noise, so it is best to choose one that is silent or has a low noise level.

Especially in India, where many people live with their families, it is very important that you dont have to worry about sound when you use it.

Finally, there is the price range.

The price range of sextoy ranges widely, from around RS500 at the cheapest to RS10,000 or more at the highest.

Its good to consider how much money you can afford and how much you want to buy.

Do you want your family to not find out about sextoy?

I live with my family and want to use sextoy without them finding out! If you are a man, you should buy a camouflage sextoy that does not look like a sextoy at first glance.

For men, there are many masturbators that do not look like a sextoy, and for women, there are vibrators that only look like cosmetics.

If you choose such a type, youll be safe in case your family members find out.

How to buy sextoys in India

The best way to purchase sextoy is through online shopping.

For more information on how to purchase sextoy, please see the article below.

Sextoy is one of them.

Therefore, you can easily get sextoy in India by using online shopping.

SexToysINDIA is a long established and stable sextoy store and you can have sextoy delivered to any place in India.

They also offer cash on delivery, so those who are worried about shopping with a credit card do not have to worry.

Of course, the latest security is in place, so your information will not be taken out when you use your credit card.

To begin with, many people may be concerned about whether they are legally allowed to purchase sextoy.

ikmAs it turns out, its not illegal.

Right now, it is not open to the public because the Indian adult market is still in the development stage, but it will gradually spread from now on.

Take advantage of sextoy and open the door to new pleasures and culture.

Cautions for Indians using sextoy

When using sextoy, keep the following three things in mind

Keep sex toys clean

Watch out for electrical leakage

Beware of the heat generated by the body while using a sex toy

As I mentioned earlier, many sextoy products are used for the delicate zone.

Therefore, it is most important to keep the sextoy itself clean. It is very important to keep the sextoy itself clean, because if a slight scratch is created by friction, bacteria can enter and breed there.

It is safe to wear a condom when using the masturbator, just in case.

In addition, many sextoy devices are powered by a power source, so if they are not waterproof, there is a possibility of electric shock or malfunction due to wetness.

Some may even develop heat during continuous use. If the fever becomes too much, you may get burned, so be careful.

If you get a fever during use, stop driving the sextoy immediately and refrain from using it.

You will enjoy sex more if you keep it safe and use it correctly.

Summary

What did you think?

In this article, we have introduced the recommended sextoy for the beginners of sextoy in India.

The sextoy market is growing rapidly in India and it will continue to grow steadily in the future.

As India is a rather closed-minded country, it can be difficult to be open about ones sexual habits and values.

However, being faithful to ones desires by properly dissolving ones sexual desire is very effective for ones physical and mental health.

If this is your first time to learn about sextoy, or if you are interested in using sextoy, why not give it a try?

Indian Sextoys for ur best! will introduce you to sextoy and other trivia about sextoy, sexuality, and sexuality for men and women.

I want to read more! If you think its a great idea, please bookmark it.
CARBONDALE  As shovels began to turn over dirt Friday, developers and city officials knew they were in the beginning stages of filling a need in downtown Carbondale.

A groundbreaking ceremony for the eventual Hilton Home2 Suites was hosted by the developer, Sai Krishna, LLC, next to PKs, where the hotel will be located.

Development team member Srinivas Gundala said the hotel will occupy the 200 block of West Elm Street. The developers will knock down two existing buildings on the lot  office buildings just north of Elm Street on South University Avenue, across the alley from Horstman's Cleaners  and the development will sit between South University Avenue and South Illinois Avenue.

The parking lot next to PKs will be gone, but the city has set up a temporary parking lot across South Illinois Avenue for patrons of downtown businesses.

Pradeep Reddy, another member of the development team, said the initial plans call for 97 rooms and about a $9 million price tag when everything is finished.

The front of the hotel will face West Elm Street. The structure will wrap around the edge of the block with enclosed parking, Gundala said.

He said official construction will begin this month and the plan is to finish in 12 months. The plan is to have the hotel open by next summer.

Gundala, who is also developing an Indian restaurant and a liquor store in downtown Carbondale, said his development team shares the same goals as the city to revitalize the downtown.

We want to attract all the people in the community  not just the students  to the downtown, he said. We are making a wonderful hotel that we needed to have in Carbondale.

He said a majority of the rooms will be extended stay rooms, meaning they will have kitchenettes and other features for multiple night stays. He said these features will serve professionals at Southern Illinois University and Southern Illinois Healthcare.

Gundala said Hilton completed its own survey to make sure the Carbondale market was right for the extended stay hotel.

Don Monty, former mayor and longtime city employee, said the city acquired an urban development grant in the 1980s, which helped it acquire the land. He said there was a hotel being planned at that time, but the economy went south and the project couldnt be financed.

This has taken a long time, but we are really glad to see it happen, he said. This is something the community has needed.

The Carbondale City Council approved the sale of property at 200 W. Elm St. in June 2015 for $75,000.

Councilman Lee Fronabarger says the hotel will be another anchor in the downtown. The project increases his optimism for the future of downtown.

This is one more step in our progress, he said. Hopefully, this will spur even more economic development.
MARION  The lack of a sidewalk around Lincoln Elementary School is noticeable. But, in the near future, construction crews will begin pouring concrete.

This construction of a new sidewalk will give children and pedestrians in Marion a safer and better alternative to get to school or through the neighborhood. The sidewalk is being built as part of a federal program called Safe Routes to School.

Looking Good: Herrin working to entice development by beautification HERRIN  A little bit at a time, Herrin is making strides to beautify its downtown, while ma

Lincoln School Principal John Fletcher, along with other teachers and parents, applied for the grant about five years ago, but didnt get funding at the time. Then, about two years ago, the group reapplied after scaling down the project a bit  and were awarded funds.

According to the states Safe Route to Schools website, the city was awarded $160,000 for 12,165 feet of sidewalk for the Lincoln School Sidewalk Program.

John Goss, street and public improvements commissioner with the Marion City Council, said the city kicked in $32,000 and the Marion School District Unit 2 added about another $30,000.

We met in our library in 2001 and just started talking about this, Fletcher said. You can have a kid walking from Ray Fosse Park, and along the pool here is sidewalk, but on the next block there is no sidewalk. Then, there isnt sidewalk until you to Garfield (street).

Golf carts now allowed on public streets in Carbondale CARBONDALE  Residents can now use an alternative forms of transportation to move around the

Goss said the city has continued to make it a safer atmosphere for students who walk to school. He said the city has plans to do something with the sidewalk on Wildcat Road, just east of Pyramid Parks entry. He said the city wants to lay new sidewalk and guard rails.

There is a lot of high-speed traffic there, he said. That is where the traffic leaves the school.

He said the city has spent about $415,000 on improving sidewalks and other beautification projects throughout the city in the past three years. Other projects include construction of sidewalk from Marion High School to Boulevard Street. Also, a project installing sidewalks on Cherry Street, from Russell Street to Carbon Street.

There is also a downtown restoration program costing the city $80,000 for facade improvement for businesses around the downtown square, Goss said.

We have been very proactive in this thing, he said. All our sidewalks around the square were really in bad disrepair.

For the Safe Routes to School program, the Marion City Council also decided to change the two-way stop at North Garfield Street and East Illinois Street to a four-way stop.

Southern Illinois municipalities working to make it easier for pedestrians and cyclists Sometimes people need to get from place to place without the assistance of a motor vehicle. 

Goss said this will also improve safety, adding that any time motorists are driving in a school area, traffic should be slower.

The Safe Routes to School concept started in the 1970s in Odense, Denmark, because of a concern for the pedestrian accident rate, the states website said. After installing several improvements  pedestrian and bike path, slow speed areas, narrowed roads  the result was an 85 percent reduction in traffic injuries to children.

Following Denmarks lead, the program went international.

Marion isnt the only Southern Illinois city to take advantage of the funds. Carbondale was awarded about $100,000 for construction or repair of sidewalks near Carbondale Middle School. Also, in 2011, Carbondale was awarded about $4,000 for repair crosswalks near Thomas Elementary School.

Debra Neighbours, with the safety engineering department at the Illinois Department of Transportation, the agency overseeing the funds, said there hasnt been a recent award.

Although, the funds are federal dollars, it still flows through the state. The state processes the paperwork and then pays the contractors, and when the project is complete, the feds repays the state, Neighbours said.

Since there isnt a state budget as of May 2016, there arent any dollars available for the process.
SPRINGFIELD  Illinois voters will get a chance to consider a constitutional amendment aimed at preventing funds collected for transportation projects being used for other purposes.

It's the only lawmaker-generated measure that'll be on the Nov. 8 ballot. Legislators approved the plan Thursday.

Democratic state Rep. Brandon Phelps sponsored the so-called "lockbox amendment." He says it'll secure more money collected from transportation-related fees like tolls for infrastructure and create jobs.

The Illinois Chamber of Commerce backs the measure, saying over $6.4 billion has been swept from the state's Road Fund since 2003.

Any lawmaker-generated ballot measure had to be approved this week and both chambers adjourned until Tuesday. Other ballot measure attempts faltered, including proposals to eliminate the lieutenant governor's office and institute a graduated income tax.

__

The legislation is HJRCA36.
SPRINGFIELD  Voters may get the chance to have their say on two proposed changes to the Illinois Constitution when they head to the polls in November.

Supporters of a citizen-driven initiative that would take the power to draw legislative district boundaries out of the hands of the General Assembly on Friday delivered petitions with more than 570,000 signatures to the Illinois State Board of Elections. A day earlier, the Illinois Senate followed the Houses lead in approving a proposed amendment that would protect state transportation funds from being spent on other expenses.

The nonpartisan group Independent Maps has been working for the past two years to win support for an amendment that would allow an independent commission to redraw the states legislative map once a decade following the U.S. census. A previous attempt was blocked from the ballot in 2014 after a judge ruled that the proposal went beyond the scope allowed for a petition-driven amendment.

Senate passes $454 million funding bill for higher ed SPRINGFIELD -- Democrats and Republicans in the Illinois Senate believe they've found a succ

Denis FitzSimons, chairman of Independent Maps, said the number of signatures supporters collected is totally indicative of how much Illinois voters want reform, how much they want their votes to count.

The current system allows the party that controls the Legislature at the time of redistricting to carve up the state to its own political benefit and discourages challengers from taking on incumbents, FitzSimons said, noting that 60 percent of seats in the General Assembly went uncontested in 2014 and 67 percent are uncontested so far in 2016.

The maps are drawn by politicians for politicians, he said.

While redistricting reform is a major component of Republican Gov. Bruce Rauners turnaround agenda, FitzSimons pointed out that the Independent Maps organization includes prominent Democrats  including former Lt. Gov. Sheila Simon and William Daley, former chief of staff to President Barack Obama  as well as Republicans.

Critics of the proposal say it wont do enough to protect the voting power of minority communities.

In response to those concerns and others, each chamber of the General Assembly attempted to advance its own redistricting amendment.

Republicans use state board figures to attack Manar education bill SPRINGFIELD  Senate Republicans used the release of long-awaited figures from the Illinois 

Rep. Jack Franks, D-Marengo, introduced a plan that also would have put the remapping process in the hands of an independent commission. It would have also prevented members of the commission from serving in the Legislature for 10 years. The citizen group tried that in its 2014 proposal, which is what the judge ruled went beyond the allowed scope.

The House approved Franks proposal on a 98-4 vote, well above the three-fifths majority needed for a constitutional amendment. However, a Senate subcommittee killed the plan Wednesday, with Democratic Sens. Toi Hutchinson of Olympia Fields and Kwame Raoul of Chicago, both members of the black caucus, voting against it. Sen. Jason Barickman, R-Bloomington, cast the lone vote in favor.

The Senate had earlier approved a redistricting proposal, sponsored by Raoul, that would have left the process in the hands of the Legislature. The House never took action.

FitzSimons said his groups plan includes strong protections for minority voters, and he noted that its board has numerous black and Latino members.

The elections board will soon begin reviewing a random sample of the petitions, which the group wheeled into the boards office in a 36-foot-long, 1,800-pound box, to make sure they have enough valid signatures. At least 290,216 registered Illinois voters must have signed in order for the question to appear on the ballot.

Steve Sandvoss, the boards executive director, said the review should take about two weeks.

Graduated tax amendment won't be on November ballot SPRINGFIELD  Illinois voters will have to wait at least two more years for their chance to 

Members of the public also have the right to challenge the validity of the signatures as well as the constitutionality of the proposal itself, which, based on past attempts, is highly likely.

Barring successful challenges, voters will get to weigh in on that issue and on the amendment creating a so-called lockbox for state transportation funds. That proposal passed both chambers of the General Assembly with overwhelming bipartisan support.

Supporters say Illinois residents should have confidence that the taxes and fees they pay for things like gasoline and license plates will be used to maintain the states transportation infrastructure.

To take effect, each proposed amendment will require the support of either a majority of those casting ballots in the election or 60 percent of those voting on that specific question.
CARBONDALE  Southern Illinois University officials are bracing for another enrollment drop in the fall  and theyre pointing fingers at Springfield.

Were not there yet to give you specific data, said SIU Carbondale Chancellor Brad Colwell. But we will be down if projections hold. Its not because of a lack of anything the Carbondale campus has done.

Instead, Colwell said students and parents are telling school administrators they are worried about whats happening in Illinois.

Our data is showing theyre not going to another Illinois institution. Theyre leaving the state, Colwell said, speaking to reporters after SIUs Board of Trustees meeting on Thursday morning.

SIUC typically releases enrollment numbers 10 days into the semester, and theres room for change between now and August.

But this is prime enrollment season for incoming students as they graduate high school this month. Many students have already solidified their college plans. So, despite SIUCs reluctance to provide specifics on the enrollment picture to date, application and acceptance data, even this early, likely provides a decent glimpse as to what's in store for the 2016/2017 school year.

Were down, Colwell said. Were going to be down.

Colwell declined to elaborate on the projected depth of the decline. He said administrators should have a clearer picture of enrollment expectations by early July.

For the fall 2015 semester, enrollment was down by about 4 percent, or 697 students. The enrollment declined from 17,989 students in fall 2014 to 17,292 in fall 2015. This past year, administrators anticipated that drop in enrollment to result in $5.2 million in lost revenue for the university.

Colwell said the university is constantly in talks about ways to bolster enrollment, such as the most effective way to target scholarship funds. This keeps us up late at night trying to figure that out, he said.

Because SIU is such a huge economic engine in Southern Illinois, and Carbondale particularly, the number of students expected in the fall is a closely watched and highly anticipated figure for area political and business leaders.

Carbondale Mayor Mike Henry said he believes that SIU President Randy Dunn, Colwell and their teams have done an excellent job of preserving the universitys core, and that first-time and returning students will find the school just as strong in the fall as its always been.

But one of the more frustrating aspects of the budget impasse  now in its 11th month  is that the uncertainty requires downsizing plans, and can breed uncertainty and rumors about the stability of the institution.

SIU isnt going to go out of business, Henry said. Its going to be here. But the damage has already been done, he said. Until a recent stopgap measure sending $34.4 million  less than a third of its annual appropriation  to the Carbondale campus, SIUC had not received any money this fiscal year, which began July 1. I think its going to take the better part of a decade to recover, Henry said.

The citys fiscal year budget, which began May 1, projected a $100,000 sales tax decline as it relates to an expected dip in enrollment at SIUC.

During the board meeting, SIU Edwardsville interim Chancellor Steve Hansen said the budget impasse has also affected his campus. Freshman admissions are down about 6 percent compared to the same time last year, he said, and applications are also behind.

Its the uncertainty in Illinois over MAP (Monetary Award Program) funding and the overall future of higher education thats having a detrimental effect, Hansen said.

Henry and others also noted that nearby schools located in other states are taking advantage of Illinois soured political climate, and places such as Southeast Missouri State University and Murray State University in Kentucky have stepped up their recruitment efforts of Southern Illinoiss graduating high school seniors.
The following editorial appeared in Wednesday's Washington Post

Two persistent failings of U.S. foreign policy have been an overdependence on individual leaders, who frequently fail to deliver on American expectations, and a reluctance to accept that an established status quo can't hold. The Obama administration has committed both those errors in Iraq - and it has done so more than once.

In its zeal to withdraw all U.S. troops in time for President Barack Obama's reelection campaign in 2012, the administration threw its weight behind then-Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, with disastrous consequences. Maliki's Shiite sectarianism fractured the fragile political system and opened the way for the Islamic State. In 2014, having pushed for Maliki's removal, the administration bet on Haider al-Abadi; now, in its impatience to reduce the Islamic State before Obama leaves office, it clings to a prime minister who has proved unable to govern the country or reconcile its warring factions.

Abadi's impotence was revealed most dramatically over the weekend, when Shiite supporters of anti-American firebrand Moqtada al-Sadr stormed into Baghdad's walled-off Green Zone and invaded the parliament. Nominally, the protesters were supporting one of Abadi's aims, to create a new, technocratic cabinet to replace a corrupt system of dividing ministries according to party and sectarian lines. But Abadi denounced the invasion, which showed him as unable to control either the political insurgents or the established parties that have repeatedly rejected his reform proposals.

The blowup came at a particularly awkward time for the Obama administration, which had just doubled down on its support for Abadi during a visit to Baghdad by Vice President Joe Biden. As The Post's Greg Jaffe reported, an administration briefer told reporters that Biden's visit was "a symbol of how much faith we have in Prime Minister Abadi" and expressed optimism that his government was getting stronger.

Whether Abadi survives the present crisis will likely depend on whether Shiite parties, with help from Iran, can patch up their differences. But already he has proved incapable of addressing Iraq's fundamental political problem, which is the schism among the Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish communities. That brings us to the Obama administration's second error: an unwillingness to accept that Iraq cannot survive under its present system of governance, which centralizes power in Baghdad.

Since the rise of the Islamic State in Iraq's Sunni-majority areas, the administration has stubbornly stuck to the slogan of a "unified Iraq," even though that has effectively meant depriving Kurdistan's autonomous government and armed forces of the resources they need to fight the war, and critically delayed the development of a Sunni leadership that could effectively govern areas liberated from the terrorists.

The latest crisis should prompt a reconsideration. Kurdish leaders are now openly saying that Iraq's post-2003 political structure has collapsed; the United States should be forging closer ties to their regional government. It should also be working to encourage a similar federal state in Sunni areas of Iraq. If Iraq survives as a nation-state, it will be because power, and oil revenues, are radically decentralized from Baghdad. Continuing to center U.S. support on a single Iraqi leader, whether it is Abadi or someone else, is a recipe for more failure.
SPRINGFIELD -- Democrats and Republicans in the Illinois Senate believe they've found a successful formula for ending nearly yearlong partisan standoffs over state spending.

For the second time in as many weeks, senators from both sides of the aisle came together Thursday to approve funding for public universities, community colleges and grants to low-income students, all of which had been deprived of state money since the fiscal year began July 1 without a budget in place.

The winning formula: spending bills that aren't tied to items on Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner's pro-business, union-weakening "turnaround agenda" but are tied to specific revenue sources.

Its worked in the Senate, and I strongly encourage the House to do the same as we have done, said Sen. Pat McGuire, D-Joliet, chairman of the Senate Higher Education Committee, because its the best thing to do -- the best way to move forward, obviously, in a bipartisan manner -- for all the people of Illinois.

The measure approved Thursday would spend $454 million to bring eight state university systems up to 60 percent funding, the same level that Chicago State University received in a measure Rauner signed into law last week. That part of the plan was approved on a 55-2 vote.

The spending would be covered by letting the state off the hook for repaying money borrowed from special funds to plug holes in last years budget. That portion passed on a 54-3 vote.

McGuires comments came at a news conference shortly after the votes. He was joined by a fellow Democrat, Sen. Gary Forby of Benton, and Republican Sens. Jason Barickman of Bloomington, Chapin Rose of Mahomet, Dave Luechtefeld of Okawville and Karen McConnaughay of St. Charles.

Barickman, who represents Illinois State University, called the legislation yet another small step forward, but an important one.

Were demonstrating an ability to work together in a bipartisan manner, he said. I think theres a blueprint here for how we can continue to work together on all the various things that are important to our state and ultimately get a budget passed for this next fiscal year.

Forby, whose district includes a portion of Southern Illinois Universitys Carbondale campus, acknowledged that this could be the last state funding universities see for the current year.

But were not going to give up on it, he said.

Approval of the measure came a day after Eastern Illinois University President David Glassman told a House committee that the $12.5 million his school is receiving from the $600 million stopgap measure Rauner signed last week wont be enough to get the school through the summer.

Glassman told committee members that hell likely have to cut more positions on top of the 363 jobs that have been eliminated since last summer.

The initial stopgap measure funded Eastern Illinois and seven other state universities, aside from Chicago State, at 31 percent of last years levels. If the House approves the new Senate measure and Rauner signs it, Eastern Illinois would receive an additional $11.7 million. Southern Illinois would receive $53.8 million, and Illinois State would receive $19.6 million. Community colleges, which received 27 percent of their funding in the previous bill, would also be brought up to 60 percent funding.

The Senate is also waiting for the House to take action on a measure it approved two weeks ago on 55-0 vote that would authorize spending $441 million on social service programs that have been deprived of funding amid the budget impasse. Like the money in the earlier higher education stopgap plan, the social services money would come from a dedicated state fund.

The Senates newfound bipartisan spirit hasnt extended to a Democratic proposal to overhaul the way the state distributes money to local school districts.

Sen. Andy Manar, D-Bunker Hill, didnt call his measure for a vote Thursday following strong criticism from Republicans a day earlier upon the release of the Illinois State Board of Educations district-by-district analysis of the plan.

John Patterson, a spokesman for Senate President John Cullerton, D-Chicago, said leadership wanted to give members more time to review what it would mean for the school districts they represent.
This group show is the result of an open call, which challenged numerous artists' to create vigorous works in microscale. Runs through 06/04/2016.

Fine art in miniature will be showcased on Saturday, May 7th from four until eight p.m. at Metallo Gallery in the heart of Madrid, New Mexico. In Microscale features collected artists such as Kevin Box while introducing emergent talents including Melissa Morgan, Shelly Johnson and Alicia Stewart. In its sixth year, this all-original show has established itself as a must-see event.

This group show is the result of an open call, which challenged artists to create vigorous works in microscale. Operating in miniature, the artists have concentrated their visions into works, which surge from their tiny confines. This years show received the largest number of submissions to date, in a dynamic variety of media and genres ranging from enigmatic shadowboxes to fanciful sculptures. In Microscale is a personal passion of owner Cassidy Watt, who will be contributing several pieces from his new series of patinaed copper to the show.
Local lawmakers say there will be no effort to consolidate Orangeburg County school districts during the final days of this legislative session, but its likely to come up in the future.

Concerns spread on social media this week that lawmakers were preparing to consider a consolidation bill.

But Sen. John Matthews, D-Bowman, said the bill dealing with Orangeburg County schools was only a skeleton bill.

Theres nothing in it and it is going to die at the end of the session in three weeks, he said.

The bill appeared to be related to the regular redesign of election districts within the school districts, rather than consolidation. Election district lines are regularly redesigned to ensure they have equal population and an equal voice on each board.

Matthews said that the districts are reapportioned every 10 years. It will probably be done in 2017.

Rep. Gilda Cobb-Hunter, D-Orangeburg, says she doesnt foresee any move to approve consolidation this year.

There have been conversations about it in the General Assembly, but nobody that I know of has any intentions to push that issue this late in the session, she said.

Both Cobb-Hunter and Rep. Russell Ott, D-St. Matthews, say the issue is still on the table for future sessions.

Ott said hes confident the House isnt going to take up consolidation during this session, but its not an issue that is just going to go away.

It will have to be dealt with and voted on at some time, but it needs to be carefully vetted and everybody needs time to look at the implications of consolidation, he said.

Consolidation is not just an issue for Orangeburg County, Cobb-Hunter said. Its something thats being looked at for districts across the state.

There is growing sentiment in the General Assembly that consolidation of school districts could be part of the answer to the Abbeville school lawsuit, she said.

In 2014, the S.C. Supreme Court decided in the Abbeville lawsuit that the state of South Carolina had failed to provide a minimally adequate education for children. The court said the state and districts should find solutions to equalize education.

I think its important as weve looked at this Abbeville situation that there will be a real push at some point to consolidate schools  not just in Orangeburg County, but across the state, Cobb-Hunter said.

Rep. Jerry Govan, D-Orangeburg, says he thinks its a stretch when it comes to comparing Abbeville to the need for consolidation in Orangeburg County.

The Abbeville decision is based on the state not having provided a quality education for students in poor and rural counties, he said. I think we need to be very careful about trying to compare consolidating portions of Orangeburg school districts with Abbeville.

Govan said that school consolidation should take place only if its the will of the people.

This is a decision that should be made by the people in a referendum, he said. In addition, he said complete transparency should be practiced throughout the process.

Cobb-Hunter says that she will support consolidation only under certain circumstances.

When this came up before, I held public hearings in my district and the consensus was pretty much against it, she said. However, there was also the consensus that if it was done, three points had to be made clear in the bill.

The people want a clear assurance that consolidation will create savings and that students will not be subjected to four-hour long bus rides to and from school, Cobb-Hunter said.

Additionally, people wanted assurances that a newly created board of a consolidated district will not have a majority made up of the current District Five, Cobb-Hunter said.

I dont disagree with any of those three points, she said. Any consolidation plan that I would support would have to clearly show where money is being saved, kids are not riding unbearably long hours on a bus and as much as possible a board that has adequate representation for the rural parts of Orangeburg County.

Ott says that hes coming to the table with an open mind, but there are also right ways and wrong ways to do things.

People obviously have strong feelings about this and hes not ready to fast track on something which people have such strong feelings about, he said.

He has strong feelings about consolidation himself, Ott said.

If I was going to vote for consolidation, there would have to some be very tight language, he said. Ott said hell need assurances on some issues and Its got to be about what is best for the students.

In May 1996, eight districts in the county were consolidated to form consolidated school districts Three, Four and Five after much debate in the legislature and meetings among the eight districts.

There was a strong reaction in 2014 when Matthews and Sen. Brad Matthews, D-Orangeburg, proposed combining the three districts into one. The measure failed to pass.
Thursday was the 55th anniversary of Americas first venture in manned space flight.

In 1961, astronaut Alan Shepard became the first American in space aboard the Freedom 7 space capsule. The suborbital flight, which lasted approximately 15 minutes and reached a height of 116 miles into the atmosphere, was a milestone achievement.

The trailblazing example of bravery and adventurous spirit is this essence of National Astronaut Day, which was observed Thursday.

By sharing the stories, experiences and perspective of actual Astronauts, the mission of National Astronaut Day is to inspire all to follow dreams, including both future astronauts and those who seek to keep their feet on the ground.

Uniphi space agency, a division of uniphi good LLC, is the driving force behind the first National Astronaut Day campaign, with plans to make the observance annual.

The campaign includes a collaboration with Fisher Space Pen Co. for the first-ever Astronaut Signature Pen Series, plus awareness and fundraising for more than 20 different charity partners.

National Astronaut Day features an inclusive #WeBelieveInAstronauts social media plan, which encourages fans to download, for free, a full set of Astronaut Cards.

Many in the T&D Region know a Holly Hill native is among the leading figures in the history of the U.S. space program. And those too young to remember his role need to know the story of Frank Culbertson and others who pioneered space flight.

Culbertson, who retired from NASA in 2002, is among 20 featured in the Astronaut Card collection. A veteran of three space flights, Culbertson logged more than 146 days in space.

STS-38 Atlantis (Nov. 15-20, 1990) was a five-day mission during which the crew conducted Department of Defense operations. The mission concluded after 80 orbits of Earth in 117 hours, 54 minutes, 28 seconds, the first shuttle to land in Florida since 1985.

STS-51 Discovery (Sept. 12-22, 1993) was a 10-day mission during which the crew deployed the U.S. Advanced Communications Technology Satellite and the Shuttle Pallet Satellite carrying U.S. and German scientific experiments, including an ultraviolet spectrometer. The mission concluded with the first night landing of the shuttle at Kennedy Space Center. Mission duration was 158 Earth orbits in 236 hours and 11 minutes.

The Expedition 3 crew launched on Aug. 10, 2001, aboard the shuttle Discovery and docked with the International Space Station on Aug. 12, 2001. Culbertson lived and worked aboard the station for a total of 129 days, and was in command of the station for 117 days. The Expedition 3 crew left the station on Dec. 15 aboard shuttle Endeavour, landing at Kennedy Space Center on Dec. 17, 2001.

Culbertson was the only U.S. citizen not on the planet when the 9/11 attacks took place in 2001. He was a month into the mission aboard the International Space Station along with two Russians.

A 1967 graduate of Holly Hill High School, Culbertson excelled as a student and played trumpet in the schools band. He took the same trumpet with him on his mission aboard the space station.

The plan was to play it for relaxation. But in the days following the 9/11 attacks, Culbertson used his trumpet to play Taps.

Culbertson has always proclaimed proudly that he is a native of Holly Hill and Orangeburg County. And Holly Hill and the county are equally proud of one of its most acclaimed native sons.

The contributions and sacrifices of Culbertson and so many, those who went into space and the thousands who made their missions possible, are to be celebrated by Americans and people everywhere. These few were explorers taking high risks every bit as much as those who sailed the high seas centuries ago in search of new worlds.

We echo Annie Balliro, president and CEO of uniphi good and uniphi space agency: Once you have the opportunity to meet and hear the perspective of these amazing individuals, you quickly realize that each astronaut took a unique path, but all have a common vision to share their experiences to make the world, and beyond, better for us all.

For more information, visit www.NationalAstronautDay.com.
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/By Azernews /

By Rashid Shirinov

Azerbaijan Export and Investment Promotion Foundation (AZPROMO) has opened a representative office in China to support and encourage relations between the two countries businessmen. It aims to expand Azerbaijani goods export to the Chinese market and attract China's leading investment funds to the Azerbaijan economy.

AZPROMO is a joint public-private-initiative, established by the Ministry of Economy and Industry of Azerbaijan in 2003 with the aim to contribute to the economic development through attracting foreign investments in the non-oil sectors of economy. In 2005, its functions were expanded, including the stimulation of country's exports of non-oil goods to the overseas markets.

The company has a network of international representative offices in Georgia, Austria, U.S., Germany and UAE as well.

AZPROMO assists the companies established in Azerbaijan in their intentions for entering foreign markets. Its wide network of foreign representations and partners offer good opportunity for companies to improve and expand their export capacities.

Elmar Mammadyarov, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Azerbaijan held a meeting with his Chinese colleague, Wang Yi during his recent visit to China in March 2016. They noted that both countries support one anothers territorial integrity, sovereignty and inviolability of their internationally recognized borders.

Expressing Azerbaijans support to the Silk Road Economic Belt initiative of China, Mammadyarov highlighted that Azerbaijan is an important part of the East-West and North-South transport corridors. It was also noted that the test container trains departed from China successfully reached the final destination along this route.

Wang Yi said that China gives high importance to the development of the transport corridors and stands ready for further advancing the cooperation with Azerbaijan in all fields.
/By Azernews/

By Rashid Shirinov

Azerbaijan and Georgia will accelerate the goods transportation through their borders. With this regard the two countries have launched the project of supporting the development of Red Bridge checkpoint located on Azerbaijani-Georgian border.

The transportation of goods through the Azerbaijani- Georgian border will be greatly accelerated, Ghulam Isaczai, the UN resident coordinator to Azerbaijan, said in an interview for Trend news agency on Thursday in the sidelines of the conference in Baku, dedicated the project.

The key objective of the project will be ensuring the border security and protecting goods quality. Infrastructure of the checkpoint will be upgraded to succeed with the commitments. Moreover, the custom workers of both countries will pass through special refresher trainings, Isaczai noted.

He supposes that this project is highly important for Azerbaijan, Georgia and the European Union: The project will bring together the two nations letting them vastly integrate into Europe.

Malena Mard, the EU Ambassador to Azerbaijan, said the project will take two years to complete.

The EU allocated 2.7 million euro for the project, with 1.8 million being allotted to Azerbaijan. I think that the project is very important for the European Union because this corridor is a part of the Silk Road through which goods are transported from Asia to Europe, she mentioned.

Addressing the conference Aydin Aliyev, the head of State Customs Committee of Azerbaijan, said that the country needs the EU and UN support to further upgrade the Sadigli checkpoint as well, which is located on the border with Georgia. We need to turn this checkpoint into a corridor for international shipping.

The project of supporting the development of Red Bridge checkpoint is a joint project of United Nations Development Program and State Customs Committee of Azerbaijan. The project of 3 million euro will be funded by the EU.
/By Azernews/

By Amina Nazarli

The government of Azerbaijan carries out big reforms in the education sector, and those working in the sphere bear an important responsibility.



Deputy Prime Minister Ali Ahmadov made the remark at the awarding ceremony of the "Best Presentation" contest dedicated to the 93rd anniversary of national leader Heydar Aliyev on May 5.



Ahmadov believes that educators will make every effort to ensure that students grow up as true citizens of the country.



Speaking at the ceremony, Education Minister Mikayil Jabbarov noted that in the next five years the number of students studying in the country's schools will increase by 30 percent.

This year some 165.000 children will go to the 1st form, compared to 138,000 in 2013, 152,000 in 2014 and 157.000 last year.



This rising tendency requires the use of new approaches for sustainable activities in the field of education, according to the minister.

Jabbarov also emphasized the growing importance of vocational education.

Memorandums have been signed with several international and local organizations, while partnership with business organizations has been enhanced and employment of graduates has been supported. The Education Ministry has proposed reorganization of vocational education system, creation of a new structure for the preparation of elementary vocational and specialized education programs capable of ensuring an adequate supply of labor market.

Recently, the head of state signed a decree on the establishment of the State Agency for vocational training under the Ministry, Jabbarov said.

The minister added that the new structure will improve the effectiveness of training in elementary vocational education and ensure training of competitive qualified personnel.

Following the speeches, the winners of the contest were announced. Under the results of the "Best Presentation" contest, five people were awarded diplomas of the first degree, 11 people - diplomas of the second degree, 16 people - diplomas of the third degree, and 18 people were awarded diplomas.

The competition among students of 9th -11th forms of secondary schools was organized by the Education Ministry, Heydar Aliyev Foundation, the ruling party "Yeni Azerbaijan" Communications and High Technologies Ministry and the National Committee of Free Trade Unions of Education Workers.
Director-General of the International Bureau of Liberal Democratic Party of Japan, member of House of Representatives Tanaka Kazunori has said his country stands for peaceful settlement of the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict as he met with Azerbaijani Deputy Prime Minister, Deputy Chairman and Executive Secretary of the New Azerbaijan Party Ali Ahmadov. He said resolution of the dispute would contribute to regional development. Mr Kazunori expressed condolences to the people of Azerbaijan over the casualties in the wake of recent escalation of tension on the line of contact in Nagorno-Karabakh.





He also stressed the importance of his visit to Azerbaijan, saying it aims to develop friendly relations between the two countries.





Mr Ahmadov said development of relations between the New Azerbaijan Party and the Liberal Democratic Party of Japan would contribute to the strengthening of the two countries` ties.





He also offered his condolences to Mr Kazunori over casualties in a series of quakes that his Japan last month.




The United States, along with the rest of the international community, does not recognize the "independence" of the occupation regime in Nagorno-Karabakh, Mark Toner, Deputy Spokesperson of the US State Department, said May 6.

"Nagorno-Karabakh's final status will only be resolved in the context of a comprehensive settlement", he stressed.

He also said, that the US urges the sides to come to the negotiating table in good faith in order to reach a settlement that achieves those goals.

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 Fatma Babayeva

Iran will be ready to join OPECs quota within one or two months of reaching pre-sanctions level of oil production and export, Rokneddin Javadi, Managing Director of National Iranian Oil Company told Bloomberg on May 5.

Earlier, Javadi stated that Iran will reach the pre-sanctions volume of oil production- 4 million barrels per day by July and to pre-sanctions export levels of 2.2 million barrels in one to two months or by the end of the summer.

The voiced commitment of Iran can be evaluated as the countrys interest in pushing oil prices up, while securing the stability in the oversupplied market.

Iran got rid of some economic sanctions in January 2016 after agreeing to significantly reduce the countrys nuclear potential. In this context, the Islamic Republic declared its desire to restore the pre-sanctions level of oil production and regain its previous market share.

Javadi went on to add that Iran doesnt have any crude oil in floating storage currently, while the country put oil in ships during the sanction years as exports dwindled. The official refused to comment on how much condensate has been stored in the sea.

Irans stance was one of the reasons why the Doha gathering of top oil producers on April 17 failed to obtain agreement on freezing participants oil output in the global market at the level of January-February 2016. Libya did not participate in the meeting either.

Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia insists other oil producers join freezing act as well, if it puts a cap on its oil production.

The next meeting of the cartel that will be held in Vienne in June 2016 is not expected to resolve the oversupply problem in the global oil market either. Once again, oil producers are going to discuss to revive OPECs output quota and try to freeze their oil production during this meeting.

Many experts said before that oil producers need to cut their production rather than curbing it on current production levels. However, none of the major oil producers wants to compromise their share in the market.

The cartel ceased setting production quotas for individual members in 2011 and abandoned an output ceiling entirely in December 2015.

The EU used to import 800,000 barrels of Iranian oil and condensate before sanctions imposed in 2012.

Iran's crude oil sales to Europe are expected to surpass 300,000 barrels per day once the all contracts that the Islamic Republic signed with international companies come into force.

According to the BPs statistical review of world energy 2015, Iran holds 9.3 percent of the worlds total proven oil reserves and produces 4 percent of the worlds total oil output.
India's top court told tobacco companies on Wednesday they must adhere to a new federal rule requiring much larger health warnings on cigarette packs, in a major setback for the $11 billion industry that opposes the new policy.



The Supreme Court turned down a plea to stay implementation of the new rules introduced from April 1, which require health warnings to cover 85 percent of a cigarette pack's surface, up from 20 percent earlier.



In a packed court room in New Delhi, a two-judge bench rejected the industry's plea to extend a stay it had obtained from a court in the southern Karnataka state but agreed to a request to move the rest of the appeals to the Karnataka court.



"You have duty towards the society," the judges told a team of industry lawyers, which included some of the most expensive advocates in the country.



The industry "should not violate any rule prevailing as of today", they said.



The Supreme Court also directed the high court of Karnataka state to hear dozens of pleas filed against the new rules in several Indian courts and decide on the matter within six weeks.



Shares in India's biggest cigarette maker ITC Ltd, part-owned by British American Tobacco, pared gains after the court ruling and ended with losses of 1 percent.



U.S.-based Philip Morris International's India partner Godfrey Phillips ended down marginally.



ITC, Godfrey and the industry lobby group Tobacco Institute of India did not respond to requests seeking comment.



BATTLE IN COURTS



The Supreme Court's ruling can leave the industry in limbo. It was not immediately clear whether it will start complying with the new rules or sell old stock while it waits for the Karnataka court to decide.



When the rules came into force last month, the industry shut down factories in protest for days. India's traditional hand-rolled cigarette makers also joined in the protest.



The rules were initially supposed to come into force on April 1, 2015 but were delayed.



The rules make India's health warnings on tobacco products among the world's most stringent, along with Thailand. Smoking kills more than 1 million people a year in India, according to BMJ Global Health. The World Health Organization says tobacco-related diseases cost India $16 billion annually.



The tobacco industry filed 27 cases against the federal rule in several courts around the country, according to lawyers involved in the case.



ITC has said it had obtained at least one judgment that allowed it to resume production with older warnings, and one that allowed it to sell old stock, which it then tried to use to circumvent the federal government's orders.



In a letter, dated April 26, seen by Reuters, ITC cited the two rulings to press a regulator who had seized its cigarette stock worth billions of rupees.



Ranjit Kumar, solicitor general of India, told the court that the federal government was committed to the new rules and opposes any stay on their implementation.-Reuters
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights on Friday reported that insurgent groups captured a strategically important village from government forces in fierce fighting south of Aleppo that killed 73 people.



The insurgents, including the Al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front, on Thursday launched an attack on government forces at the village of Khan Touman, which is important because of its location near the Damascus-Aleppo highway.-Reuters
Unknown gunmen shot and killed a Saudi policeman in the Mecca region, Saudi state news agency SPA reported on Friday, after four suspected terrorists died during a raid in the same area.



Corporal Khalaf Al Harithi was shot late on Thursday while on duty at a police station outside the holy city of Makkah, SPA reported, citing a local police spokesman.



There was no immediate claim of responsibility but Islamic State has previously staged such attacks on security forces or the country's Shi'ite Muslim minority, which is viewed by the jihadist group as heretics.



Saudi Arabia's Shi'ite community is largely based in the oil-producing Eastern Province.



On Wednesday Saudi security forces shot dead two suspected Islamic State fighters and two other militants blew themselves up outside Mecca, the interior ministry said.



Saudi Arabia, the world's top oil exporter, has been hit by a spate of deadly shootings and bombings targeting security forces or the Shi'ite minority since last year. Islamic State's local branches have claimed many of them.



Islamic State is bitterly opposed to the wealthy Gulf kingdom's Sunni Muslim rulers, whom it regards as having betrayed Islam through close ties with the West.-Reuters
Russian troops abandoned a key Ukrainian city so rapidly that they left the bodies of their comrades in the streets. The scene offered more evidence Tuesday of Moscows latest military defeat as it struggles to hang on to four regions of Ukraine that it illegally annexed last week. Russias upper house of parliament rubber-stamped the annexations Tuesday after referendums that Ukraine and its Western allies dismissed as fraudulent. Responding to the move, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy formally ruled out talks with Russia. Meanwhile, the U.S. announced it would provide an additional $625 million in military aid to Ukraine, including more of the advanced rocket systems credited with helping Ukraine's military momentum.
Jam session Sunday

Jam Session Sunday, May 8, 2016, 4 to 8 p.m., Eagles Hall, 306 N. Durbin St. Rob, Jim Vaughn and Gloria invite you to come out and dance, listen or join us on stage. All are welcome and the Casper Eagle Riders will be preparing juicy hamburgers for those who are looking for nourishment performed by burger experts and the profits go to charities supported by the Fraternal Order of Eagles Foundation. See you there.

Robbie Daniels  235-5130

Craig Johnson at Knowledge Nook

Craig Johnson, author of the Wyoming based Longmire Mystery novels, now a hit Netflix series, will be in Casper at 4 p.m., on Thursday, May 12, at The Knowledge Nook in Sunrise Shopping Center. He will be signing copies of the newest edition in his Longmire series, The Highwayman. Copies will be available for purchase at the event. A 15 percent discount will be given to the first 10 customers purchasing signed copies. Because it is a pre-release signing, The Knowledge Nook will hold customers books until May 17, the books release date, and then the pre-purchased copies can be picked up at The Knowledge Nook.

Mountain stewardship meets

The Casper Mountain Forest Stewardship Association will hold its annual meeting at 7 p.m., on Wednesday, May 18, at the Agricultural Resource Learning Center, 2011 Fairgrounds Rd. Topics for discussion include the health of the Casper Mountain forest, as well as the long term benefits of good forest management. For more information, contact Mary Peterson, 266-5737.

Audition for Arsenic and Old Lace

Casper Theater company will host auditions for Arsenic and Old Lace, by Joseph Kesselring, on Sunday, May 8, at 2 p.m., and Monday, May 9, at 7 p.m., at 735 CY Avenue. The two leads, Abby and Martha Brewster, are cast, but one female in her 30s, along with 11 men of all ages are needed. The story takes place in Brooklyn NY, and centers around two charming and innocent ladies who populate their cellar with the remains of socially and religiously acceptable roomers; the antics of their brother who thinks he is Teddy Roosevelt, and the activities of the other brother. well hes the one no one wants to admit they are related to, are just a sample of the fun this comedy brings to the stage. Performance dates are July 7-8-9-10, 14-15-16-17. If you cannot make the auditions and still would like a part please call the director, Casie Peppersack at 247-6167. For more information please call 267-7243, email us at caspertheatercompany@gmail.com or visit our website at www.caspertheatercompany.net

Author Craig Johnson talk and signing

The Natrona County Library will host author Craig Johnson on Thursday, May 12 at 6 p.m. in the Crawford Room. The talk is free and open to the public. Seating is limited, available on a first come, first served basis. Copies of Johnsons books will be available for purchase, which he will sign following his talk. Call 577-READ ext. 2 or email reference@natronacountylibrary.org for more information.

Murder at Cafe Noir May 19

An encore performance of the murder mystery dinner theatre, Murder at Cafe Noir, will be held May 19 at the Black Gold Grille, 1650 English Ave. The cost for the combined dinner and show is $35. To reserve a seat, call 472-4653 or stop by 1650 English Ave.

Veteran Cigar Night

Every Wednesday from 5:30 to 7 p.m., all veterans are invited to Veteran Cigar Night at the Casper Cigar Company, 4717 W. Yellowstone Highway, sponsored by Casper Cigar Company. There is no cost to attend.

This is a time and place for our communitys combat veterans to relax and share their stories with other combat veterans while enjoying a good cigar. Veterans receive 20 percent off cigars. For more information, call Josh Cruse at (307) 337-4400 or josh@caspercigar.com

Chicken collectibles on display

Its time for chicks to be hatched! Come see the display of chicken collectibles at the Casper Senior Center, 1831 E. 4th St., in Casper.

Senior enrichment

Free to men and women 60 or older. Join the tap dancing group of Joyces Senior Stompers. It is moderate, easy, balanced clogging keeping us seniors young. It is great exercise for developing flexibility, helps coordination, increases endurance and strength and helps stimulate our brain in learning different dance routines. Exercise is important to increase lung capacity, burn calories, relieve stress, and it is fun. We meet on Monday mornings at 10:50 a.m. Call Joyce Sisk, 237-4908, for more information.

Franscell sets book signing

Kelly Walsh, Casper College and University of Wyoming graduate Ron Franscell will return to Casper on Saturday, June 11, from 1 to 4 p.m., at Wind City Books to sign his newest book, Morgue: A Life in Death, (St. Martins Press). The nonfiction work explores some of the most historic, infamous, and heartbreaking cases of Dr. Vincent Di Maio, M.D., son of a famous New York City medical examiner and one of the lions of forensic science in his own right.

Franscell is the bestselling crime author of The Darkest Night, and Delivered from Evil. A lifelong journalist, he worked for newspapers in Wyoming, New Mexico and Californias Bay Area before hitting the road in one of American journalisms best beats, covering the evolution of the American West as a senior writer for the Denver Post. Shortly after 9/11, he was dispatched by the Post to cover the Middle East during the first few months of the Afghan war. In 2004, he became the managing editor for the Beaumont, Texas, Enterprise, where he covered the devastation of Hurricane Rita from inside the storm. He now lives in San Antonio, Texas.
Wyoming Food Bank of the Rockies will distribute food at mobile pantries in Gillette and Douglas in the coming days in response to the March 31 layoffs of nearly 500 coal miners in northeast Wyoming.

The food bank will distribute food from noon to 3 p.m. Monday at the Home Depot parking lot in Gillette. Supported by a grant from I:61 Ministries, the food bank is planning to have enough food for 600 families.

The Douglas distribution will be held from noon to 3 p.m. May 16 in the northeast corner of the Wyoming State Fairgrounds, with support from Wyoming Community Gas and Kings Portion Pantry. The food bank is planning to have enough food for 500 families.

Items included will be fresh fruits and vegetables, meat, canned goods and other food and personal products from the distribution center in Mills.

The organization will be distributing approximately 36,000 pounds of food equivalent to 28,500 meals at the two events.

The WFBR took a mobile food pantry to Gillette days after major layoffs at the North Antelope Rochelle and Black Thunder mines. There, 472 families were provided with food.

WFBR is the only food bank in Wyoming. It provides access to food in partnership with 254 pantries, ranging from small churches to community centers. Its on track to distribute 9 million pounds of food  7.5 million meals  throughout the state in this fiscal year.
The Mills town treasurer has been placed on administrative leave following the filing of embezzlement charges against her, Mayor Marrolyce Wilson announced Thursday evening.

Authorities say Lisa Whetstone embezzled more than $64,000 by pocketing town money she was supposed to deposit into the government bank account. Investigators also believe she used a town credit card for personal expenses, according to court documents.

The documents allege Wilson discouraged town employees from cooperating with a state criminal investigation into Whetstones actions. In a news release sent about four hours after Whetstone appeared in court, Wilson said she has cooperated fully and will continue to cooperate fully with the investigation and charges brought against Mrs. Whetstone.

When state agents interviewed Wilson in October, she covered her ears when they told her Whetstone was a suspect in a theft, the court documents state. Wilson and Whetstone told city employees they would face discipline if they cooperated with law enforcement.

One unnamed employee told a state agent he or she was placed on probation by Wilson and Whetstone after allowing law enforcement to enter the building with a search warrant, according to the court documents.

When asked whether Wilson would face charges based on allegations she discouraged employees from cooperating with investigators, Natrona County District Attorney Michael Blonigen said he could not comment because the case is ongoing.

Whetstone made her initial appearance Thursday in Natrona County Circuit Court, one day after prosecutors charged her with two counts of felony theft and one count of failure or refusal to account for property. She faces up to 25 years in prison if convicted.

Whetstone, who has also served as deputy clerk for the town, is free after posting a $5,000 bond.

Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation agents began looking into the alleged thefts after a 2015 state audit of town funds discovered discrepancies, according to the court documents. Auditors found cash receipts did not match the amount of money being deposited into the towns bank account. Instead, the deposit slip would have a decreased amount of cash or no cash at all.

Town employees told state agents that Whetstone had access to the cash that came into the office, that she made the deposit slips and that she entered the amount of the deposit into QuickBooks, the court documents state.

Wilson, who did not return a reporters phone message Thursday afternoon, said the town has taken the state audit seriously and has implemented recommendations from auditors. She said her office has enacted procedures with checks and balances to prevent this from happening in the future.

Whetstone is due back in court within about a month for a preliminary hearing, where a judge will decide whether enough evidence exists to warrant a trial.
A Pinedale magistrate who said she would not perform same-sex marriages is fighting a state judicial ethics commissions recommendation to remove her from office.

The Wyoming Supreme Court will decide if Pinedale municipal judge and circuit court magistrate Ruth Neely should be removed from her position.

The Wyoming Commission on Judicial Conduct and Ethics began investigating Neely in January 2015. The investigation was prompted by statements made by Neely to a Pinedale Roundup reporter, which were published in a newspaper article. After a federal judge in Casper struck down Wyomings gay marriage ban, Neely told the reporter that she would not be able to perform same-sex marriages.

When law and religion conflict, choices have to be made, she was quoted as saying.

On March 4, 2015, the Commission served Neely with a notice of commencement of formal proceedings, which is a disciplinary proceeding. The notice alleged she violated six separate canons, or rules of judicial conduct. The Commission alleges Neely acted with prejudice based on sexual orientation, refused to uphold the law and acted improperly.

During the proceedings, the Commission told Neely it wouldnt prosecute if she would agree to resign both of her positions and never again seek judicial office in Wyoming, as well as admit wrongdoing, according to a brief by Neelys attorneys filed with the Supreme Court. Neely declined to do so.

This February, the Commission asked Neely if she would publicly apologize and agree to perform same-sex marriages. Neely responded by saying that she could not perform such marriages because doing so would violate her religious convictions.

Soon thereafter, the Commission filed a recommendation with the Wyoming Supreme Court asking the court to remove Neely from her positions as municipal court judge and circuit court magistrate.

Last week, Neelys attorneys asked the Supreme Court to reject the Commissions recommendation. Nweely is being represented by several attorneys from the Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative Christian legal group.

The attorneys argue Neely has discretion when exercising her authority to perform marriages and that she could turn away a couple for any number of reasons. They noted that Neely has not been asked to perform a same-sex marriage. Neely has also been suspended from her role as a magistrate by Circuit Court Judge Curt Haws and is not currently performing marriages.

Neelys attorneys further argue her authority to perform marriages does not apply to her role as a municipal court judge and that she has not violated any judicial rules within that position. They also argue the Commissions actions violate Neelys constitutional rights to free speech and free exercise of religion.

Neelys attorneys also express concern that under the Commissions insistence, any judge in Wyoming who shares Neelys beliefs about marriage may be removed from his or her position.

This case threatens any judge who holds and communicates views about numerous potentially controversial topics, the attorneys write.

Ana Cuprill, the Wyoming Democratic Party chairwoman who originally informed the Commission of Neelys statements in the newspaper article, said she agrees with the Commissions recommendation.

My concern in passing on that information was that I felt that any judgment that Judge Neely would have in the future might be challenged if there was some sort of an issue with someone who is LGBT and felt prejudiced and that would be a liability in our town, Cuprill said.

She said she forwarded the newspaper article out of her concern for the community of Pinedale.

I was concerned when she said she was not going to follow the law, Cuprill said.

Neely has been a municipal judge in Pinedale for over 21 years and has performed marriages as a magistrate for over a decade.

According to state statute, the Supreme Court may suspend a judicial officer from practicing law in Wyoming and may remove a judicial officer from office or impose other discipline for a violation of the code of judicial conduct.

A phone message left for Neely at the Pinedale Town Hall was unreturned Friday. A message left for her attorneys at the Alliance Defending Freedom was also not returned.
The University of Wyoming is not closing its Casper campus despite rumors to that effect, but budget cuts can imperil any program with low enrollment and high costs, officials said.

Rumors that UW will absorb Casper programs into the Laramie campus to save money have persisted, and Wyomings economic downturn has many questioning the future of the four-year satellite school. But officials at both UW-Casper and the university say the recent spate of rumors is unfounded.

Were all in budget-cut mode, but the idea of closing (UW-Casper) is preposterous, said UW Spokesman Chad Baldwin.

Scott Seville, interim director at UW-Casper, said there is too much invested in the satellite campus, including a multi-million dollar building with a 50-year lease, he said.

I dont know where this is coming from, but I have heard nothing to this effect, he said. I would be shocked.

But though the university maintains a commitment to Casper, a detailed program review is ongoing, and low-enrollment programs in Casper will be flagged, just as they will be in Laramie, said Ray Reutzel, dean of the College of Education.

Three elementary education faculty at the Casper campus are set to move to Laramie. Thats prompted concern that elementary education programs could be cut.

That fear is not completely unfounded.

Two married Casper educators are moving to Laramie, because one was offered an administrative position at the university, Seville said. Another elementary education professor, Keonghee Tao Han, will also move to a position at the Laramie campus.

There are six education faculty members based in Casper, according to the college website.

Reutzel said no education programs have been cut yet, but each is vulnerable as administrators face the uncertain funding.

I can guarantee that there is going to be program review and program reduction, he said. We are going to use a rational, logical, decision-making process for that. Wed be hung, drawn and quartered if we didnt.

Small programs with few graduates are being analyzed closely, he said.

A secondary science education program with emphasis on biology has about three graduates per year from UW-Casper. The program began in 2004, according to UW-Casper spokeswoman Tammi Hanshaw.

The college has been given four different figures to consider for cuts in the last few weeks alone. As of Thursday, they still did not have concrete guidance, Reutzel said.

We have no hard percentage, or dollar target, or anything else, he said. We did what we call a disaster drill (running possible scenarios)  Im telling you, when people see the magnitude that is going to be lost, its going to make people quite nauseous.

Reutzel said he had his back against a wall, as did other deans at UW.

About 90 percent of college budgets are spent on personnel, he said. There are also many programs that are fundamental to the mission of the college that cant be cut, he added. Special education teachers are needed in the state, for example.

The elementary education program in Laramie will have 180 to 200 graduates this year, he said.

In contrast, UW-Casper graduates, on average, 36 students in elementary education per year, Hanshaw said in an email.

[The College of Education] graduates the largest number of doctoral degrees in the university, he said. I have to protect those things. I really do, and otherwise we wont have them in Wyoming.

Wyoming is also competing against education programs in neighboring states, he said.

As an alternative to cutting education programs, the college may be able to rotate specific programs around the state. Often when education programs are begun at one of the community colleges, the demand for the program diminishes once the initial need is filled. By then, the school has invested significant money and faculty to a low-enrollment program, he said.

Ultimately, the risks faced by UW-Casper are part of a larger discussion about education funding in Wyoming, Reutzel said.

We have all kinds of things floating around, all kinds of numbers, processes and timelines, and we simply do not know, he said. We are modeling so many different kinds of possibilities that no matter what emergency we come up against, we will already have a model. Thats how crazy its been.
DENVER  A fraction of the thousands of children whove fled poverty and violence in Central America alone in recent years are now scattered across Colorado, Wyoming and Montana living with relatives and other sponsors.

The Rocky Mountain states have taken in less than 1 percent of the more than 100,000 unaccompanied minors who crossed the border from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras since the fall of 2013.

The bulk  860  have ended up in Colorado. According to federal data, at least a third of them went to homes in four Front Range counties  Arapahoe, Denver, El Paso and Weld.

However, the data and the experience of immigration lawyers representing these children  whom immigration lawyers say range from age 6 through teenagers  suggest that the rest are scattered all around the state.

Sponsors in Wyoming have taken in 19 unaccompanied minors since 2013. Montana, meanwhile, became home to three migrants since 2013 though none have arrived yet so far this year.

All children  including those living in the U.S. illegally must attend school through at least the 8th grade or until they turn 16 under compulsory education laws in all 50 states.

Its not clear exactly where the children in Montana or Wyoming have ended up or what schools they might be enrolled in because the government only provides detailed county-by-county figures if more than 50 children were placed in a county to protect the childrens privacy.

State education departments dont track these students and school districts depend on students to volunteer information about their background because theyre not supposed to ask about their immigration status.

When Colorado got $77,000 in federal funding last spring to help pay for unaccompanied minors to learn English, officials didnt know which district had the most either and so divided up the money among school districts that had reported having refugees, which can also include students in the country legally from anywhere in the world.

In Colorado, two districts with extensive experience working with immigrant students from around the world  Denver and Harrison in Colorado Springs  say unaccompanied minors enrolled in their schools are getting intensive help learning English and also are receiving counseling to deal with trauma and adjusting to their new lives.

Some students who have been placed with relatives or family friends, who may be struggling with their own problems, dont feel accepted, said Jorge Robles, executive director of the districts English Language Acquisition Department.

Denver Public Schools estimates it has about 50 of these students. An exact count isnt possible because schools rely on students and families to volunteer the information.

With the number of unaccompanied minors entering the country expected to increase, Denver plans to add newcomer centers designed to help refugees at two schools in neighborhoods where the Central American children have mostly settled though they will accommodate any recent arrivals, Robles said.

The four existing welcome centers, which offer smaller classes and additional support staff, are in neighborhoods where refugees from Southeast Asia and Africa have settled.

In Colorado Springs, affordable housing has tended to attract many recent immigrants to the mainly low-income Harrison district, where about 17 percent of students overall need help learning English when they enroll, compared with 5 percent in surrounding El Paso County.

The district has four unaccompanied minors studying mathematics, language arts, social studies and science in classes with other students who have little knowledge of English at Harrison High School, district chief of staff Christine Lyle said.

Like other students, the recent arrivals from Central America can take advantage of three free meals a day and a school health clinic and dont have to pay extra to play sports. The migrant children, who face deportation unless they prevail in court, also work with case workers from Lutheran Family Services to help them cope with challenges in and out of school, she said.

The migrant children tend to be older than most students who need help learning English, sometimes speak an indigenous language in addition to Spanish and may have gaps in their education. Nationally The Associated Press has found that at least 35 districts in 14 states have discouraged hundreds of them from enrolling in school or pressured them into alternative programs.

Lyle said thats not the case in her district.

If theyre school age, were going to meet them where they are, she said.

Derek Schroeder, an AmeriCorps lawyer who works with Catholic Charities in Denver to provide free representation for children who arrived before they turned 16, said most of his clients are attending school or trying to enroll.

A good portion of them are really excited to be here and really excited to be able to go to school here, he said.

Stephanie Izaguirre, an immigration lawyer in Colorado Springs, said she has encouraged the 40 minors she has worked with to enroll and stay in school, partly because it helps them adapt to American culture.

However, she said some schools do not want the older teens to enroll and sometimes outside pressures get in the way. One of her clients dropped out of high school to work as a roofer to pay the rent after the older brother he was placed with ended up in jail.

They have a lot on their plate besides school, she said.
A Cheyenne Republican is trying again for state office.

Bill Henderson has announced a bid for the House District 41 seat, and is using his vision for the economy, health care and education as his platform.

I think now, more than ever, we need good, common-sense representatives developing realistic and beneficial public policies, he said.

Henderson said the state needs to help small businesses and should find a way to reduce utility surcharges as a way to help.

Were known as a business-friendly state, but we could do more, he said.

Henderson opposes Medicaid expansion because of the expansions association with the federal government, but he also said there should be assistance available to those who need it.

We have to think about how do we take care of young people, the elderly, people with special needs and people unable to work, he said.

Henderson said one idea could be for the state to provide financial assistance to cover insurance premiums.

Wyoming also should consider what would happen in the hypothetical scenario that Medicaid was not available.

We owe the people a solution, not excuses, he said.

Health care facilities should be a priority for the state, Henderson said.

I think we should look at ways to put dollars into health infrastructure, he said.

For education, Henderson would like to see the state Department of Education be able to operate independently of the federal government.

He also said the state needs to reconsider how new schools will be funded.

Henderson thinks across-the-board budget cuts are not the best way to deal with the states budget crisis, and departments should be examined individually to see where money could be saved.

The state also needs to plan its financial future further ahead than a two-year budget cycle and needs a plan to use the rainy day fund, he said.

Henderson said his experience would help him make good financial decisions for the state.

I think we need to represent the best interest of our people, he said.

Henderson ran for the House District 43 seat in 2014 (he has since moved), but lost in the primary to incumbent Rep. Dan Zwonitzer, R-Cheyenne. He then ran for a seat on the Laramie County School District 1 board of trustees later that year, but was not successful.

Henderson also ran for Cheyenne City Council in 2004.

The House District 41 seat is being vacated by Rep. Ken Esquibel, D-Cheyenne, who is running for the Senate District 4 seat.

House District 41 is in north-central Cheyenne.

This years primary will be held Aug. 16, and the general election will occur Nov. 8.
The Wyoming Department of Workforce Services has launched a new workplace safety division aimed at providing free safety advice and consultation throughout the state.

The new model, which was designed by the workforce agency in consultation with Gov. Matt Mead, will shift nine members of the Wyoming Occupational Safety and Health Administration to the new division. Those members will provide advice and conduct surveys to provide safer work environments, without handing out fines or penalties.

Over the last few years, the requirements on the federal OSHA side have just grown to the point of being onerous, said John Ysebaert, administrator of the Wyoming Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

Under the (original) OSHA model, (consultation staff members) had to wait for employers to call and ask for assistance. Under the new model, under workers compensation, (the workplace safety division will now) have access to the injuries and accidents that all those employers have. So theyre able to proactively look at that and go out and offer assistance to those employers.

Wyoming has ranked for years as one of the most dangerous states for workers. The high ranking has been attributed to the large number of people who work in dangerous sectors such as energy and agriculture. Thirty-seven people died on the job in Wyoming in 2014, according to federal figures. That represented a 42 percent increase over the year prior.

The new division is intended to minimize those figures.

(The workplace safety division will now) have all this great information, theyll know all the accidents and all of the injuries, and theyre able to prioritize it by industry and by accident rate, Ysebaert said. Theyre able to prioritize those employers that are having the high rates, and go offer assistance to them.

Brianna Jones, executive director of the government watchdog Equality State Policy Center, is intrigued by the new division.

This is a completely new development. We dont necessarily know yet what effect it will have, is the honest answer. I think the jury is still out, Jones said. But this seems like an innovative approach, and were interested in seeing any sort of development that will improve the job safety culture in Wyoming. Thats our ultimate goal: to make sure that people come home from work safe and sound.

The new division is purely assistive, not compliance-oriented. Its a free service that began on April 1.

Weve had a lot of inquiries from other states (interested in this concept), Ysebaert said. Its a pretty innovative idea. Were going to do it for about a year, and then evaluate the success, the impact of it, and then look at expanding it or leaving it the same or making any necessary adjustments.
CHEYENNE  A lawsuit accuses Cheyenne school officials of failing to stop a sixth-grade female teacher from sexually abusing a student over a two-year period even after they became aware of an inappropriate relationship.

The lawsuit contends an environment based upon preconceptions and stereotypes resulted in the school district failing to afford the protections to a young boy that would have been provided to a young girl in a relationship with a male teacher in a position of authority.

The teacher, Anna Andersen, is serving an eight- to 12-year prison sentence after pleading no contest last year to sexual abuse of a minor. Andersen was a teacher at Freedom Elementary School, and the boy was one of her students when the abuse began.

The federal lawsuit was filed on behalf of the boy against Laramie County School District 1, Superintendent John Lyttle, school principal Chad Delbridge and others. The suit seeks unspecified compensation and punitive damages.

The law firm representing the boy declined to comment, and both Lyttle and Delbridge said they couldnt comment on pending litigation.

The suit contends Andersen began to groom a 12-year-old boy in her class for a sexual relationship that began in the late spring or early summer of 2012. The relationship continued even after the boy moved on to a separate junior high school, with Andersen meeting and being seen with the boy almost daily on or near the grounds of Freedom Elementary, the lawsuit said.

Lyttle and Delbridge became aware of the relationship in late 2012 after a number of teachers and staff at Freedom expressed concerns to Delbridge about Andersen and the boy, it said. Delbridge met with Andersen several times in the ensuing months, but he took no action against her and did not notify police or the boys guardian of the situation.

The known inappropriate relationship between a teacher and her student made the risk of sexual assault and mental and emotional distress obvious, the lawsuit contends. However, no investigation was started. The suit said Delbridge instead threatened the boy with a restraining order, and Lyttle suggested that Andersen obtain counseling.

The response by Lyttle and Delbridge allowed the sexual assaults to begin and continue, where they could have been prevented and/or stopped. According to the lawsuit, the boy also was having issues because his academic performance declined and he was getting in trouble at school.

The lawsuit said the failure to investigate and act shocks the conscious and rises to deliberate indifference.

Attorneys for the boy have requested a jury trial.
Thats exactly what the Laramie Main Street Alliance aims to do by seeking a $3 million grant from the Wyoming Business Council to redevelop the former Foxhole or Empress Theater lot. Funds would cover the cost of constructing a new building on the grounds of the former Empress and Fox theaters.

The building would be a mix of retail space and residential apartments and would be owned by Laramie Main Street, which would contribute $37,500 to the project. Its also important to note the project would go a long way in helping revitalize a quiet block of South Second Street by filling a lot that has sat unused since the Fox Theater was demolished in 2009.

A portion of the building would be slated for residential apartments, while the rest would be the new home to Big Hollow Food Co-op, which would also contribute $37,500 to the project.

Opened in 2007, Big Hollow  which generates retail tax revenues  has outgrown its current location and would hire additional staff if the project moves forward and is OKed by the Business Council. After leasing the building from Main Street for 10 years, Big Hollow would then have the option to purchase the property.

Projects such as this  and the many others involving the Laramie Chamber Business Alliance  help create an ongoing cycle of business growth, since revenues generated from the lease and/or sale would be required to go toward further economic development in Laramie.

Some might have issue with state funds being used to help grow a business in such dire economic times. Such projects come down to judgment calls in deciding which businesses have the best plans  and greatest potential for future success. However, as Mead and others have said, Wyomings mission to attract and grow business doesnt stop because of the energy sectors woes. Instead, it becomes even more important.

Thats why we hope the Laramie City Council will be supportive of economic development and take the opportunity later this month to give the go-ahead for submitting the application.
WASHINGTON (AP)  If there's a War on Coal, it's increasingly clear which side is winning.

Wind turbines and solar panels accounted for more than two-thirds of all new electric generation capacity added to the nation's grid in 2015, according to a recent analysis by the U.S. Department of Energy. The remaining third was largely new power plants fueled by natural gas, which has become cheap and plentiful as a result of hydraulic fracturing.

It was the second straight year U.S. investment in renewable energy projects has outpaced that of fossil fuels. Robust growth is once again predicted for this year.

And while Republican lawmakers in Washington have fought to protect coal-fired power plants, opposing President Barack Obama's efforts to curtail climate-warming carbon emissions, data show their home states are often the ones benefiting most from the nation's accelerating shift to renewable energy.

Leading the way in new wind projects are GOP strongholds Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas, home to some of the leading critics of climate science and renewable energy incentives in Congress. Republican-dominated North Carolina trails only California in new solar farms, thanks largely to pro-renewables polices enacted years ago under a Democratic legislature.

The most dramatic change has been seen in the plummeting cost of emissions-free wind energy, which has declined by two-thirds in the last six years thanks to the availability of cheaper, more efficient turbines. An annual analysis by the Wall Street investment firm Lazard determined that wind energy is now the lowest-cost energy source, even before federal green-energy tax incentives are factored in.

"Wind energy is very low-cost and not subject to the fuel price risk that both natural gas and coal face," said Michael Goggin, senior director of research at the American Wind Energy Association, an industry trade group. "Adding wind is cheaper than new gas or new coal. It is by far the lowest-cost resource."

Billions of dollars in private equity are going to construct massive new renewables projects, especially in the Sun Belt and Great Plains. Thousands of miles of new high-voltage transmission lines are also under construction to send power from the wind and sun from the sparsely populated areas where it is collected to the urban centers where it's needed.

Even with the surge in new projects, energy from such renewable sources as wind, solar and water accounted for only about a tenth of total U.S. power generation last year.

Still, the U.S. leads the world in wind energy with about 48,800 utility-scale turbines operating across the country, generating enough electricity to power about 20 million homes. By 2030, the Energy Department estimates wind will provide a fifth of the nation's electricity.

Meanwhile, coal has dropped over the last decade from providing half of all U.S. electricity to about one-third.

Peabody Energy, the world's largest coal company, last month joined a growing list of major mining firms forced to seek bankruptcy protection. Big banks appear to also be writing coal's financial obituary. JPMorgan Chase recently announced it will no longer finance new coal mines or coal-fired power plants, following similar announcements from Bank of America, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo.

"We didn't see the decline coming this fast and this deep," said Luke Popovich, spokesman for the National Mining Association, an industry trade group. "I don't think we anticipated the determination of this administration to drive coal out of the market."

While new clean-air regulations and tax incentives for renewables are having a negative impact on coal, the plummeting cost of cleaner-burning natural gas made possible by fracking is largely driving the closure of many old coal-fired power plants. Exports of coal to foreign customers such as China also are down.

Closures mean America's coal mines now employ about only about 56,700 people, down from a peak of more than 10 times that. By contrast, the fast-growing solar industry now employs more than 210,000 workers. Wind energy accounts for another 77,000 by federal estimates.

Political giving by the big coal companies and their executives has declined, but the industry still spends heavily to protect its interests in Washington. Pro-coal interests spent at least $11 million to influence the 2014 Congressional midterm elections, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. More than 95 percent of that went to support Republican candidates.

Among them is Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who rarely misses an opportunity to blame Obama's "War on Coal" for killing mining jobs. Nearly all of the 27 states that have sued to stop the administration's carbon emissions-cutting Clean Power Plan have GOP governors. All but one of the 34 senators and 171 House members who have signed on to support the court challenge are Republicans. Sen. Joe Manchin of coal-dependent West Virginia is the lone Democrat.

For Republicans from areas benefiting from renewable energy, the political calculus is more complicated. An increasing number of them try to balance criticizing Obama's environmental efforts with quietly supporting the federal tax incentives helping drive investment in renewables.

GOP leaders compromised with Democrats and a growing number of pro-renewables Republicans to include a five-year extension of tax breaks for wind and solar projects as part of a federal budget agreement approved in December.

Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, among the earliest boosters of government support for wind power, points out that fossil fuels and nuclear plants have long benefited from tax credits. Last month, MidAmerican Energy announced plans to invest another $3.6 billion to add new turbines in Iowa, which already gets about a third of its electricity from the wind.

"We've seen the economic success story behind renewables up close and personal," Grassley said as the new project was announced. "There are more than 6,000 good wind jobs in Iowa."

___

Follow Michael Biesecker on Twitter at https://twitter.com/mbieseck and find his work at http://bigstory.ap.org/content/michael-biesecker
WASHINGTON (AP)  The federal government on Thursday announced sweeping new rules for electronic cigarettes that will for the first time require the devices and their ingredients to be reviewed, a mandate that could offer some protection for consumers and upend a multibillion dollar industry that has gone largely unregulated.

Before brands are allowed to stay in the market, regulators would have to check the design, contents and flavor of the fast-growing devices, which have found a foothold with teenagers.

"Millions of kids are being introduced to nicotine every year, a new generation hooked on a highly addictive chemical" Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell said. "We cannot let the enormous progress we've made toward a tobacco-free generation be undermined by products that impact our health and economy in this way."

The rules issued by the Food and Drug Administration would also extend long-standing restrictions on traditional cigarettes to a host of other products, including e-cigarettes, hookah, pipe tobacco and nicotine gels. Minors would be banned from buying the products.

E-cigarettes are battery-powered devices that turn liquid nicotine into an inhalable vapor. They lack the chemicals and tars of burning tobacco, but the cigarettes have not been extensively studied, and there's no scientific consensus on the risks or advantages of "vaping."

More than 15 percent of high school students report using e-cigarettes, up more than 900 percent over the last five years, according to federal figures.

Beginning in August, retailers will be prohibited from selling the tobacco products to anyone under 18, placing them in vending machines or distributing free samples. While nearly all states already ban sales of e-cigarettes to minors, federal officials said they will be able to impose stiffer penalties and deploy more resources to enforcement.

For now, the nation's estimated 20 million e-cigarette users may not see big changes. Companies have two years to submit their information to the FDA and another year while the agency reviews it. Government officials said this process is critical to taming the "wild west" marketplace for the products.

"Today's action is a huge step forward for consumer protection," said FDA Commissioner Dr. Robert Califf. "With this rule, the FDA will be able to prevent misleading claims and provide consumers with information to help them better understand the risks of using tobacco products."

The FDA action comes five years after the agency first announced its intent to regulate e-cigarettes and more than two years after it floated its initial proposal.

Public health advocates applauded the decision.

"Ending the tobacco epidemic is more urgent than ever, and can only happen if the FDA acts aggressively and broadly to protect all Americans from all tobacco products," said Harold Wimmer, president of the American Lung Association.

The vaping industry says the lengthy federal reviews would be time-consuming and costly and could put many smaller companies out of business.

The regulations "will cause a modern-day prohibition of products that are recognized worldwide as far less hazardous than cigarettes," said Gregory Conley, president of the American Vaping Association. "If the FDA's rule is not changed by Congress or the courts, thousands of small businesses will close in two to three years."

The agency has stumbled before in its efforts to regulate the products. In 2010, a federal appeals court threw out the agency's plan to treat e-cigarettes as drug-delivery devices rather than tobacco products.

Ray Story, who filed one of the initial lawsuits against the agency, vowed to sue the government again.

"We will come out with a vengeance," said Story, CEO of the Tobacco Vapor Electronic Cigarette Association. "We're certainly not going to allow this industry to get swiped under the rug."

House Republicans are already pushing back. A House spending committee last month approved industry backed legislation that would prohibit the FDA from requiring retroactive safety reviews of e-cigarettes that are already on the market and exempt some premium and large cigars from those same regulations.

The legislation's chief author, Republican Rep. Tom Cole of Oklahoma, called the FDA announcement an example of "nanny-state mentality."

Lawmakers on Capitol Hill have long enjoyed a close relationship with the tobacco industry, which has already given more than $1.8 million to members of Congress this election cycle, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

The FDA first gained authority to regulate some aspects of cigarettes and other traditional tobacco products under a 2009 law. But e-cigarettes and other vaping products were not covered by the original law.

The FDA spent more than two years finalizing its proposal for regulating nontraditional tobacco products, delayed for months by industry resistance.

Some smokers say they use e-cigarettes as a way to quit smoking tobacco or to cut down. However, there's not much scientific evidence supporting those claims, though officials said they are working on research.

"In the meantime, we know there are many other proven cessation tools available," Burwell said.

Sales of e-cigarettes and related vaporizers are projected to reach $4.1 billion in 2016, according to the latest figures from Wells Fargo analyst Bonnie Herzog. After growing rapidly over several years, sales have recently begun to slow due to negative publicity and questions about safety.

Retail sales are dominated by a handful of traditional tobacco companies, including R.J. Reynold's Vuse and Imperial Tobacco's blu brands. Those products are sold nationwide at convenience stores and gas stations.

Hundreds of smaller companies sell more specialized products  often with refillable "tanks" and customized flavors  at vape shops and over the Internet.

___

Associated Press writers Mary Clare Jalonick in Washington and Tom Murphy in Indianapolis contributed to this story.
Comcast celebrated the grand opening Thursday of its newly renovated 100,000-square-foot Center of Excellence call center in Tucson.

The state-of-the art facility will house more than 1,100 employees providing support for Comcast residential products and services, including Spanish-speaking employees who specialize in customer service online and through social media channels, local economic development agency Sun Corridor Inc. said in a news release.

Comcast announced plans to open the center a year ago, in the former American Home Furnishings building at 4690 N. Oracle Road.

At least 15 percent of the new positions are being filled by reservists, veterans and their spouses or domestic partners. The company is hiring at jobs.comcast.com.
For the third year, the Weintraub Israel Center is sponsoring Tucson Celebrates Israel Week from Monday, May 9 to Sunday, May 15.

Instead of organizing a one-day event, the center wants to "create many different events so everyone can find a way to connect to Israel," said Oshrat Barel, the executive director of the Weintraub Israel Center. "This week we are focusing on food, because food is a great bridge between cultures and languages and peoples."

The week begins at 6:30 p.m. Monday at the Tucson Jewish Community Center, 3800 E. River Road, with Yom Hazikaron, a free event recognizing Israel's national Memorial Day for fallen soldiers and terror victims.

On Thursday, May 12, 15 Tucsonans will be honored for their work developing connections between Tucson and Israel. The 12 Torches Ceremony at the Tucson JCC honors the close of Israel's Memorial Day and the start of its Independence Day celebrations, according to press materials. The 12 torches represent the 12 tribes of Israel.

The dinner begins at 5:30 p.m. and costs $36 per person, $68 per couple and $340 for a table of 10.

Yom Huledet L'Yisrael from 12:30 to 3 p.m. Sunday, May 15, at the Tucson JCC is a free family event celebrating Israel's 68th birthday.

Then at 6 p.m. Sunday at Vero Amore, 2920 N. Swan Road, four Israeli celebrity chefs will prepare a four-course dinner.

The chefs are Orli Varon Shushan, Maya Klein, Yael Shamir and Sahar Refael.

The dinner costs $75 per person.

For more information or to make a reservation for any event, contact the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona at jfsa.org or call 577-9393.
The KidsCare health insurance program refuses to die.

The program wasnt included in Tuesdays state budget deal but on Thursday, House Republican supporters joined with Democrats to try to revive it.

Whether it will be depends on a lot of factors, perhaps ultimately whether the governor will sign it into law. But one thing for sure, if Gov. Doug Ducey had pushed for it, KidsCare would be back in business already.

This program, as I reported Wednesday, is Arizonas version of the federal Childrens Health Insurance Program, for the children of working-poor families who dont qualify for Medicaid. Arizona is the only state in the country that doesnt take advantage of this program, which is paid for entirely by federal taxes and so has no impact on the state budget. We pay for it through our federal taxes but get no benefit from it.

On Wednesday, after a Tucson Hispanic Chamber of Commerce luncheon, I had the opportunity to ask Ducey about KidsCare. My precise question: How come you didnt take an active role in promoting KidsCare and getting that passed since it costs the state nothing?

His answer was convoluted, veering first into a pitch for people to support Prop. 123. But then he pointed out the budget includes $100 million more for the Department of Child Safety and additional dollars for K-12 education. His broad point:

We have our kids as a priority. We have not been able to fund every priority that we have in the state, but theres been no priority thats had more funding than our kids.

If the state keeps going in the right direction, he went on, noting the recruitment of Caterpillar to Southern Arizona, well have more available dollars to support the most vulnerable, the K-12 education system and our universities.

That led me to ask this follow-up: But Governor, you know this wouldnt have cost the state anything, and it probably would have just taken a little effort on your part to push it through.

Weve completed this budget season, he responded. Im open-minded to new ideas. We want to make sure the budget is structurally balanced, but this is the budget that we have.

Rep. Chris Ackerley, a Sahuarita Republican, was among a handful of Republicans who sat out Tuesdays vote to add KidsCare onto a state budget bill. That looked bad since he had previously voted, along with 22 other Republican House members, in favor of resuming KidsCare.

He told me Thursday the Tuesday vote amounted to a Democratic trap for him in that it forced him to choose between voting against KidsCare or voting for it and seeing the budget agreement destroyed  an agreement in which he and a few other Republican members had forced additional funding for K-12 education.

On Thursday, he, other Republicans, and the Democratic House members forced the amendment to a Senate bill, prompting passionate, sometimes angry debate between a number of lawmakers.

Ackerley, a teacher in the Amphitheater School District, said on the floor, I have to go back to school in the fall, and I have to look kids in the eye and say you cannot see a doctor because we will not halt the freeze on KidsCare.

Gowans tough day

The last days of the legislative session are again proving challenging for House Speaker David Gowan, the Sierra Vista Republican whose district reaches up to easternmost Tucson.

Last years session ended on a rough note for him, and on Thursday, the Senate voted down two of his bills. One bill, HB 2691, which would have required the state auditor general to conduct a special audit of refugee resettlement in Arizona, lost by a 15-14 vote. Another bill, HB 2398, which would have expanded the type of fireworks legal for sale in Arizona, also lost in the Senate by a 15-14 vote.

Gowan then went on to suffer an embarrassing defeat in his own district. He had pushed for a change in the law governing community facilities districts, which pay for infrastructure through the sale of tax-exempt bonds. The bill would have benefited the developer of the proposed Villages at Vigneto project near Benson.

In the afternoon, the bill lost by a 31-28 vote. However, in the evening, showing he still has a little mojo left, Gowan resurrected the bill and three Republicans switched their votes, allowing for passage. How did he get them to switch? Who knows!

Uber-extended offer

Pima County Attorney Barbara LaWalls office sent out an offer this week that seems like a great deal. If you sign up as an Uber rider during the month of May and use the promo code 2016Cinco, you will get $15 toward your first Uber ride.

Sounds great, and LaWall and an Uber representative presented the offer as part of an effort against drunken driving. But it turns out the deal is actually routine for new Uber riders.

Colleagues told me this was the case, so I signed up for Uber to check it out, and its true: You routinely get a promo code for a $15-$20 credit for your first ride even without the prosecutors offer. But hey, use her promo code if you want.

Democrats to Philly

Earlier this week my colleague Joe Ferguson listed the Southern Arizona delegates to the Republican National Convention in Cleveland.

Not all the Democratic delegates have been picked for their convention in Philadelphia, but here are the ones we know so far from Congressional Districts 2 and 3, denoted by whether theyre supporting Clinton (C) or Sanders (S):

CD2: Nathan Bacal (C), Ron Barber (C), Joseline Mata (C), Shasta McManus (C), Michael Gordy (S), Matthew Levy (S), Jenise Porter (S), Eve Shapiro (S).

In CD3, its a story of the Hernandez siblings: Daniel, Alma and Consuelo Hernandez all are delegates supporting Clinton. The Sanders delegates are Morgan Graham and Tom Prezelski.
A prominent Marana businessman was shot and wounded at a family business Wednesday morning, Town Mayor Ed Honea has confirmed.

John Kai Jr., 69, was in stable condition at Banner-University Medical Center Tucson, authorities said.

Marana police are asking the public for help in finding a man wanted for questioning in the shooting.

Detectives are searching for Ruben Duran Munoz, 63, who is described as an investigative lead, said Sgt. Chris Warren, a Marana Police Department spokesman.

Officers were dispatched shortly after 11 a.m. to Kai Construction at 6088 W. Arizona Pavilions Drive to a report of a shooting, Warren said. The business is near Interstate 10 and North Cortaro Road. It is the office for the Kai familys multiple businesses, Honea said.

The family  considered a founding family in Marana  has agricultural, real estate, construction and other interests in the area, and is one of Maranas largest land holders. John Kai is the brother of Marana Town Councilman Herb Kai.

I have no idea what happened, Honea said. I was shocked that it did happen. I have known John Kai all my life. Its an open investigation and we do not have any information.

Police found the victim shot at the office. The shooter fled before police arrived, Warren said.

Warren would not say if the victim and the person of interest know each other.

Kai suffered a serious wound, possibly life-threatening, said Capt. Brian Keeley of Northwest Fire District, whose paramedics treated him at the scene.

Detectives ask that anyone with information on Munozs whereabouts call Marana police at 382-2000 or 88-CRIME.
A teen asleep in his bed survived being ripped through a bedroom wall early Friday by a stolen SUV that smashed into his northwest side home.

Three teens in the stolen vehicle  a 17-year-old boy who was driving, and an 18-year-old woman who along with a 14-year-old girl were passengers  were not injured. Each faces criminal charges, said Sgt. Pete Dugan, a Tucson police spokesman.

The incident started about 1:30 a.m. when Tucson police received a LoJack signal about a stolen vehicle near West Grant and North Silverbell road.

Officers searched for the vehicle in squad cars and with a helicopter and confirmed it was reported stolen by the time it was located near Interstate 10 and West Cortaro Farms Road.

The SUV raced away when officers tried to stop it, but police decided not to chase it because it was determined to be too dangerous for a property crime, Dugan said.

Within minutes, Dugan said officers in the helicopter reported the car had wrecked into a house on the 7400 block of North Oldfather Road, near West Ina Road.

The SUV hit the homes living room wall before tearing into a teens bedroom. The vehicle hit the wall where the teens bed was located, pushing the bed  with the teen in it  across the bedroom and through an exterior wall.

The sleeping teen has serious injuries, but they are not life-threatening, Dugan said.

The teens parents were not injured. The house was condemned.

The 17-year-old driver was arrested on suspicion of felony criminal damage; the 18-year-old woman was arrested on suspicion of contributing to the delinquency of a minor; and the 14-year-old girl was arrested on suspicion of auto theft, Dugan said.

Speed and impairment were factors in the wreck and that criminal charges could change as the investigation continues, police said.
About 40 school administrators, principals, board members and teachers are visiting Sunnyside schools this week to pick the Tucson districts brain on educational technology.

The tours are part of the National School Boards Associations Technology Leadership Network, which allows school officials from around the country to learn about what other districts are doing to integrate technology into their learning environment.

The group visited Lauffer Middle School and Desert View High School Thursday. The group will visit Gallego K-8 Intermediate Fine Arts Magnet School and Los Amigos Technology Academy today.

Sunnyside is very much keeping pace with the nations leading ideas on educational technology, said Ann Flynn, director of educational technology for the National School Boards Association. The district has a one-to-one laptop program.

The group wants to see how technology is being used  rather than what technology the district has  and what sort of technological and professional development infrastructures are in place, she said.

Site visits like these give school leaders an opportunity to learn from someone else, Flynn said.

What made Sunnyside stand out among many school districts using educational technology is that technology is seamlessly integrated into instruction and that it adds to the fostering of college and career readiness, she said.

At Desert View Thursday morning, the group of 40 split into smaller groups to tour the high schools campus, 4101 E. Valencia Road.

Tour stops included the precision manufacturing class and shop, where students used sophisticated technology for design and manufacturing, and a U.S. history class, where students used their laptops to search for images from the Library of Congress website for their final projects.

Desert View Principal Jose Gastelum said he wants the visitors to see how technology enhances learning. The laptops and fancy equipment alone dont mean anything, but they are powerful tools in education, he said.

Teachers and students drive instruction, Gastelum said.

Vincent Williams, principal of the Barstow STEM Academy in California, said he has read about programs Sunnyside offers.

Its good to see so many of these programs in action, he said.

His school is also doing a one-to-one laptop program, he said. He wants to see what Sunnyside is doing to translate that program into academic improvement and take it back to his school.
Maria Teresa Leal, a well-known historian and activist in Nogales, Arizona, was found dead Tuesday morning at the Pimeria Alta Historical Society museum.

Nogales police received a call about 11:30 a.m. about a body in the museum on Grand Avenue in downtown Nogales, said Sgt. Robert Fierros.

There were no signs of foul play and Leal, 70, appeared to have died of natural causes "a day or two" before her body was found, Fierros said.

In addition to her work as curator at the museum, Leal was an environmental activist in Nogales, Sonora, and other parts of Sonora.

Leal was born in Navojoa, Sonora and she worked with the environmental group, SERI. Her activism sent her to work in Sonoran communities raising awareness of environmental degradation. She also trained indigenous women in Sonora as health educators.

In the mid-1980s, Leal founded the group Comadres, to address the issues of labor, environment and civil rights for women working in the maquiladoras in Nogales, Sonora.

She attended Catalina High School in Tucson and studied social anthropology at the University San Carlos in Guatemala.

Fierros said the body will be sent to the Pima County Medical Examiner for an autopsy.
Pima County is asking a court to dismiss a lawsuit by the Goldwater Institute over the countys economic development incentives with World View Enterprises.

The motion was filed Wednesday in Superior Court and the county will continue to aggressively defend against this biased and ill-founded litigation, County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry said in a memo to the Board of Supervisors.

The lawsuit was filed last month by the institute over the countys lease agreement with World View Enterprises, a Tucson-based company that specializes in high-altitude tourism and scientific research.

Huckelberry said in April that the county followed state law in drafting the economic agreement with World View.

The Board of Supervisors approved the agreement with the company in January, agreeing to spend $15 million to build facilities for use by the company in exchange for 20 years of lease payments.

In the memo, Huckelberry said the institutes suit against Pima County has a clear bias against Southern Arizona. Huckelberry said research shows the bias when comparing similar recent economic development incentives provided to Phoenix businesses by the cities of Mesa and Scottsdale and the town of Gilbert.

No objections were raised by the Goldwater Institute for these economic development incentive packages involving significant sums of money, greater than the Pima County expenditure for World View, Huckelberry said in the memo.

He said the incentive packages are based on costs that will be recovered over a 20-year lease/purchase, which is similar to the countys lease-purchase arrangement with World View.

Institute lawyer Jim Manley alleged in the lawsuit that county residents will bear the tax burden of the agreements unlawful expenditures.

The lawsuit alleges the county violated the states gift clause by extending its credit to a private company without a public purpose, that World View is paying less than market value for the facilities and that the county declared an emergency to avoid a competitive-bidding process.

Huckelberry has said that World Views rent will be lower initially, but that it increases every five years over the term of the 20-year lease. He said the agreement is not a gift, and that World View will pay $4.2 million more than the county is spending on the building, among other costs.
PLEASE NOTE!

Due to the March 23, 2020 NM DOH Public Health Order, These Event Listings Are Not Accurate!

All non-essential businesses are closed, public gatherings are prohibited!

(One day some of these events will be rescheduled or will resume, but they are not happening now!)
Pima County Law Enforcement Memorial

A US Border Patrol agent stands at his post next to a photograph of fellow agent Nicholas Ivie during the ninth annual Pima County Regional Law Enforcement Memorial Service at the Tucson Convention Center. Agent Ivie was killed on October 2, 2012 near Bisbee, Ariz. The service recognized the 47 law enforcement officers from 11 agencies killed in the line of duty since the 1878. Over 30 federal, tribal and local agencies representing the region participated.
PHOENIX  An attorney for a Phoenix family is asking the nations high court to effectively require TV stations to use tape delay when broadcasting events that could end in violence.

David Abney is arguing to the U.S. Supreme Court he should be allowed to argue to a jury that Fox News was negligent in the live national broadcast of a police chase that ended with the driver getting out of his vehicle and shooting himself in the head. Abney said Fox had delay capability but chose not to use it.

More to the point, Abney wants the justices to conclude that any First Amendment right Fox has to inform the public disappeared when the situation moved from news the public needed to know about the chase to the morbid and sensational, saying much of what passes for news is little more than infotainment.

Abneys interest is more than academic. He represents the children of the man who killed himself, suing for what he said is the intentional infliction of emotional distress.

They did not see it live. But having heard about the event the two oldest children searched the Internet and found the clip.

As they watched, they realized in horror that they were watching their father, Abney said in his petition to the court.

State courts threw out his lawsuit, ruling the chase was a matter of public concern protected by the First Amendment.

Requiring a broadcaster covering a matter of public concern to cut away whenever a violent or disturbing sight may be caught on camera, or to avoid broadcasting such a scene by use of a split-second tape delay, would chill the broadcasters news coverage to a degree the First Amendment does not permit, wrote Diane Johnsen for the state Court of Appeals.

Abney is hoping to convince the Supreme Court to take up the issue.

No judicial decision controls what protection the First Amendment provides for television broadcasters in the risk business of broadcasting live events where mayhem and death are likely at any instant, he wrote in his petition to the justices. And Abney is suggesting to the court that this is not just about what is traditionally considered news.

In a time when tasteless infotainment broadcasts of scandalous, unpleasant, and sometimes gruesome images are flourishing, this petition raises important First Amendment issues of first impression that only this court is capable of resolving on a national level, he wrote.

The case involes a lawsuit brought by Angela Rodriguez on behalf of her three minor children who in 2012 saw the video of their father JoDon Romero, getting out of the vehicle he stole at gunpoint after an 80-mile chase at speeds exceeding 100 mph. He put the gun to his head and shot himself.

The local Fox affiliate had stopped the broadcast ahead of the shooting. But the network kept the feed on live TV and the video eventually was posted on YouTube. Thats where the children, curious about the incident, first learned the dead man was their father.

Abney, in the petition he filed with attorney Joel Robbins, is not attempting to say that TV stations do not have a First Amendment right.

Instead, he is trying to convince the court that what Fox broadcast does not fit within that protection, saying there is no protected expression in accidentally transmitting images of the suicide itself.

When Fox News broadcast the suicide images, it was not presented opinions on suicides or police chases, or communicating views about any issue of public interest, Abney told the court.

He said Fox has admitted it did not intend to air the suicide, even citing the fact that Shepard Smith, who was hosting the show at the time, repeatedly said get off to try to get the network to drop the live feed. Smith subsequently apologized on air.

Apologies aside, the trouble was that Fox News technicians negligently failed to use reliable and available video-delay technology, although the local Fox News affiliate used the same technology to block the suicide images from its local broadcast, Abney wrote.

He also is trying to convince the court to differentiate between the fact of the suicide, which he said is newsworthy, there was no need to broadcast the image. Abney compared it to executions where while television broadcasts are forbidden, reporters can convey what they saw.

There was no First Amendment expressive value in broadcasting images of an obscure, desperate man taking his own life, Abney wrote.
DAVIS, Calif.  An epidemic of the tree disease "sudden oak death" cannot be eradicated in California, but it can be managed, a new study shows.

The computer model used in the study published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences took into account topography, weather and factors like funds available to fight the extremely contagious disease. It has killed millions of trees along the Northern California coast since it emerged in 1995.

The study suggests that the disease is spreading too fast to root out statewide, saying it will accelerate after 2020 when it is likely to flourish in California's northwestern corner, where conditions are perfect for it.

Had the state begun fighting the disease in 2002, it may have been possible to eliminate it, the study says.

Critics have faulted the state and federal government for failing to take such stronger actions, the Los Angeles Times reported (http://lat.ms/1SZhyr5 ).

But the report does not give a hopeless portrait, offering recommendations for fighting the disease on a small scale to slow its growth by focusing on restoring small local forests.

"We're going to have to learn to live with it and try to slow its spread with local management efforts and lots of experimenting," University of California, Davis, ecologist Richard C. Cobb told the newspaper. "We won't be able to avoid much of the ecological impacts of losing all these trees ... but there is still time to avoid the worst possible outcomes of this epidemic by prioritizing trees that are most at risk and taking steps to protect them."

Up to 90 percent of California's at-risk urban and wildland forests are still free of the disease, and the study intended to provide guidance on how to stop the next wave of its spread.

Cobb worked on the study with colleagues from North Carolina State University and the University of Cambridge in England.
PHOENIX  Forget setting off aerial fireworks and blowing stuff up in your back yard this July 4th.

On a 15-14 vote the Senate on Thursday defeated legislation that would have expanded the types of fireworks Arizonans can legally light up.

That means no firecrackers.

It also means no keg mortars loaded with multiple charges that shoot up to 100 feet in the air, both of which would have been legalized by HB 2398.

The defeat came over the objections of Sen. Steve Smith, R-Maricopa, who took a swipe at foes.

I dont know what the best PC way to say this is, he said, It just is ... the wussification of America.

Smith said people complain that fireworks wake up their children and their pets.

Well, its called the Fourth of July, he argued. I mean, if you dont like fireworks on the Fourth of July or New Years, go to another country.

Arizona has tiptoed into the area of consumer fireworks. Sparklers werent even legal until six years ago.

Along with sparklers, current law allows Arizonans to also have smoke snakes, fountains and ground spinners.

But anything that explodes or launches is prohibited.

The legislation drew opposition from Jim Ford, deputy fire marshal for Scottsdale and a member of the state Fire Safety Committee. He said expanding whats allowable is likely to lead to more accidents and more fires.

But Mike Williams, who lobbies for TNT Fireworks, said there is no evidence of any fires that have been started by what was made legal since 2010.

Gov. Doug Ducey was noncommittal when asked about the issue earlier this year.

We have incredible fire concerns, the governor said. But Ducey said he also is a big believer in personal freedom.
PHOENIX  Thwarted in earlier attempts, Republican supporters of a program to provide health insurance to the children of the working poor outmaneuvered their own leadership Thursday night to have the measure approved by the House.

Rep. Regina Cobb, R-Kingman, attached language to restore the program in Arizona to unrelated legislation dealing with vouchers that allow parents to use public dollars to send their children to private and parochial schools.

There was a political component to that choice: SB 1457, dealing with vouchers, is wanted by Republican legislative leadership  the same leadership that blocked efforts to put restoration of KidsCare into the just-approved budget.

That gambit succeeded, as the House attached the amendment and approved the bill with 38 votes, as 14 Republicans joined with all 24 Democrats to override the GOP leaders.

But hurdles remain.

Senate President Andy Biggs has refused to give a hearing to a previously approved stand-alone version of the measure that could make up to 30,000 children eligible for health insurance. It remains to be seen what Biggs will do with the now-amended version of SB 1457.

And even if it survives the Senate, Gov. Doug Ducey has refused to say whether he supports the program.

Hes open to any good idea thats fiscally responsible and works within the total budget framework, press aide Daniel Scarpinato said Thursday night.

KidsCare, formally known as the Childrens Health Insurance Program, provides health care for children of families whose parents make too much to qualify for Medicaid. For a family of three, that cap is about $27,700 a year.

House Majority Whip David Livingston, R-Peoria, decried the fact the program covers those up to twice the federal poverty level. That is about $40,100 for that family of three  but nearly $82,000 for a family of eight, the highest level on federal charts, a figure Livingston said does not qualify as needy.

But Rep. Chris Ackerley, R-Sahuarita, said there are people at those income levels who cannot afford health insurance. He said thats because anyone working at a job where health insurance is available does not qualify for the subsidized health care under federal Affordable Care Act.

Ackerley, a high school physics teacher, said he supports repealing the Affordable Care Act and wants a better system.

But in the meantime I have to go back to school in the fall and I have to look kids in the eye and say, Im sorry, you cant see a doctor in a timely manner because our state will not reinstate or drop the freeze on KidsCare, he said.

Arizona joined the federal program in 2001 under Gov. Jane Hull, a Republican. She said the federal match  three dollars for every state dollar  made it a good deal.

But it was that state cost that resulted in lawmakers freezing enrollment in 2010 during the recession.

At that time there were 45,000 children in the program; now there are fewer than 1,000. And Arizona is the only state without a functioning program.

Cobb said theres no cost to the state to lifting the freeze. She pointed out that Congress has agreed to pay the full cost of KidsCare through at least 2017.

She conceded that funding beyond that is not assured. But Cobb inserted a provision that allows the state to once again stop enrolling children, just as it did in 2010.

With no cost  at least not now  the opponents were stuck with philosophical arguments.

One thing I am fearful that is getting lost on our culture is personal responsibility, said Rep. Warren Petersen, R-Gilbert. He said putting families into a situation where they get such help teaches children a path to dependency.

Cobb said there is personal responsibility in KidsCare. She said the program has deductibles and includes co-pays based on a familys ability to pay.

Others were not convinced.

This particular piece of legislation, in my opinion, takes away the concept of America, complained Rep. Eddie Farnsworth, R-Gilbert.

And Farnsworth, like Livingston, decried the eligibility limits, citing the figures for a family of eight as close to $82,000.

I dont care whether you have 12 or 14 kids, he said.
Timothy Browning is thinking about forming a political action committee to try to get the mythical Hodag named the official state beast of Wisconsin.

In the meantime, the local artist used his annual Lake Monona ice canvas to set up a plywood installation of a prehistoric Hodagosaurus.

The full skeleton measures about 12 feet from nose to tail and is about 5 feet high, from its feet to the top of the spikes on its back.

The Hodagosaurus that Browning installed Sunday is similar to one of a dinosaur from 2010. This year he also brought back another former project: a miniature Eiffel Tower, on which he painted I am Charlie on all four sides.

I figure one wise ass should support other wise asses, even if they are in a different country, Browning said in reference to Charlie Hebdo, the satirical French newspaper attacked Jan. 7 by Islamic extremists.

Browning, who has been putting his art out on the lake for about 16 years, said he had some extra time to fix up the Eiffel Tower this year with the way the lake froze, thawed and refroze. And not everyone on the ice Sunday was fully confident it wasnt unfreezing again.

Im not going to tell anybody in my family I was out here, said Dick Guyot, one of a handful of people who helped Browning.

Guyot is another Lake Monona winter art enthusiast known for the 8-foot-long baby blue whale he puts on Lake Monona near Few Street.

I have to admit that as far as it normally goes, this is a little bit thin, Browning said as he exited the ice, some of it wet and slushy after a weekend that saw temperatures reach 40 degrees.

The two installations stand about 50 feet apart, and about 100 feet off the shore, where roughly 40,000 motorists a day driving toward Monona Terrace from John Nolen Drive have a clear view of them.

Most drivers probably wont recognize the skeleton as belonging to the Hodagosaurus. Only those in the know will understand the tribute to Rhinelanders mythical creature.

The Hodag is the official symbol of that North Woods city, where it is also is the mascot of Rhinelander High School. Many businesses and organizations in the area have adopted the name.

Because the Hodag is so closely associated with Rhinelander, Browning said, he didnt want his to be mistaken for their Hodag, so he did a dinosaur version.

Ive just been storytelling and interested in stuff like that for billions of years, said Browning, 56, who works third shift stocking shelves at a Madison grocery store.

As a Boy Scout, Browning said, he would camp in the Rhinelander area. The adults told stories about the Hodag and warned that it would come and get them, he said.

In the 1890s, well-known land surveyor and prankster Eugene Shepard began rumors about the Hodag and rounded up a group of locals to capture the animal.

Browning, who named his installation Eugene, is also a prankster. He likes to tell people that hes been working with North Woods farmers for the past 25 years to re-establish the Hodag in Wisconsin.
Help India!

By Md. Ali, TwoCircles.net,

New Delhi: Swinging into action after TwoCircles.net yesterday broke the story about the Enemy Property (Amendment & Validation) Second Bill, 2010, todays morning here saw lots of meetings between several Muslim Members of Parliament and civil society representatives in a bid to gather support against the bill.

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As the day proceeded they intensified lobbying and by afternoon, several Muslim MPs gathered and drafted a letter that will be sent to the Parliamentary Standing Committee (Rajya Sabha) on Home Affairs. They have urged the committee, which is working on the Bill, to extend the last date of accepting suggestions for one more month. The deadline is ending on 15th March 2011.





Parliament House [Photo: parliamentofindia.nic.in]



Several MPs including Asaduddin Owaisi, Ali Anwar, Mohd. Adeeb, Azeez Pasha, M A Khan, Zafar Ali Naqvi and D Raja have signed the letter and it is being made sure that more and more MPs recommend the extension of the last date.

The letter which is addressed to Mr. Naidu, goes like this, It is requested to kindly extend the date for public comment till 15th April, 2011, for more comprehensive response from the general public and affected parties.

Meanwhile, the efforts got boost from Minority Affairs Minister who said he will take up the issue with the committee chairman.

Talking to TwoCircles.net from Parliament Annexe, Navaid Hamid, Member, National Integration Council, said that the Minister of Minority Affairs Salman Khursheed has assured him and other Muslim MPs like Mohd. Adeeb that he would personally talk to Mr. Venkaiya Naidu, who heads the Committee. Naidu is Rajya Sabha Member and former president of BJP.

Ever since TCN broke this story, civil society representatives like Aariz Mohammed, director Center for Social Justice and Mr. Hamid have been discussing the issue with MPs to make sure that the political representatives of people pressurize the Committee to extend the dates.

Its important to mention here that yesterday TwoCircles.net highlighted the story that there were just two days left for the civil society to send suggestion to the Parliamentary Standing Committee. The Committee had asked for suggestions from the stake holders by tomorrow 15th March which left the civil society nothing but just two days to think and act.

The Enemy Property Bill is aimed at depriving thousands of genuine Indian Muslims of the properties they are legally entitled to inherit from their close relatives who migrated to Pakistan after Independence. As Raja of Mahmoodabad last year won his decades-long case on such properties declared enemy property under the Enemy Property Act, 1968, the central government is believed to have made up mind to block that court remedy on other claimants of such enemy properties. And so they are bringing this Enemy Property (Amendment & Validation) Bill.


Help India!

A candle vigil was organized in the evening paying homage to Khalid Mujhaid.

By TwoCircles.net Staff Reporter,

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Lucknow: Rihai Manch (Forum for the Release of Innocent Muslims imprisoned in the name of Terrorism) today started an indefinite dharna outside the state Assembly, demanding arrest of police officers involved in Khalid Mujahids murder.

Rihai Manch has announced that in coming days they will gherao the Muslim legislatures and ministers to press for their demand. Protesters warned that those clergies believed to be closer to the ruling SP government, should be careful to face the consequences if they try to hinder the protest.







Khalid had fainted on his way at Barabanki on Saturday, according to police and was taken to District Hospital, Barabanki where he was declared brought dead by the doctors. Autopsy report has been inconclusive in finding out the reason for death. However, photographs taken before his body was taken for the autopsy, accessed by TCN, clearly show torture marks on the face and blood clots.

Speaking to TCN, his uncle Zaheer Alam Falahi, who saw the dead body in the hospital, confirmed that although his nephew was quite fair, his face appeared to have turned black and that his neck was swollen as if someone twisted it. There were blood marks as well on face, and ankle, elbow, etc had turned black.

Khalid along with Tariq Qasmi was arrested by Special Task Force (STF) on 20 December 2007 from Barabanki. Huge explosives were also shown as recovered from his possession. STF claimed that he was involved in the serial blasts which occurred in Gorakhpur, Faizabad and Lucknow. Later, Nimesh Commission was constituted headed by Justice R D Nimesh who in its report raised fingers over STFs claim about the place of arrest.

Government has earlier claimed that Khalid had fainted on his way back and that he might have died due to heart attack or heat stroke. However, photographs taken before his body was taken for the autopsy, clearly show torture marks on the face and blood clots. Speaking to TCN, his uncle Zaheer Alam Falahi, who saw the dead body in the hospital, confirmed that although his nephew was quite fair, his face appeared to have turned black and that his neck was swollen.

There were blood marks as well on his face, and ankle, elbow, etc had turned black, he added. His family members and rights groups believe that he was murdered by police to protect those involved in his wrongful arrest.

On the complain of his uncle Zahir Alam Falahi, a case was registered on Sunday morning against 42 police officers including former DGP Vikram Singh, ADG Brijlal and others who were on duty during the time of Khalids arrest for murder and conspiracy.







In sudden move, Akhilesh Yadav led UP government on Tuesday suspended nine policemen who accompanied Khalid Mujahid while escorting him from Faizabad to Lucknow Jail on Saturday. These suspended 9 police officers are different from these 42 policemen. Earlier UP government has ordered for a CBI enquiry into the causes of death as even the autopsy report was inconclusive in finding out the exact cause of death.

Speakers also warned that the SP government cannot make a community fool any longer by giving false promises.

They also raised the issue of attack by lawyers in Faizabad on Advocate Mohammed Salim, an associate of Advocate Jamal Ahmed, who was lawyer of Khalid Mujahid in Faizabad case. Attackers had also ransacked chambers of Advocate Shakilur Rehman,Jamal Ahmed and Nadeem Ahmed.

Condeming the attack, Rihai Manch has demanded the arrests of hooligans of SP, Bajrang Dal, Hindu Yuva Vahini and BJP who were responsible for attack. Spokesperson of the Rihai Manch has blamed the Samajwadi Party for encouraging the communal elements to prevent oppositions and demonstrations in support of martyr Khalid Mujahid.

President of Rihai Manch Advocate Mohammad Shoaib, National President of Indian national League mohammad Suleman, General Secretary of Rihai Manch, former IG SR Darapuri, Magsaysay awarded social worker Sanddep Pandey, Asad Hayat of Awami Council, Rajeev Yadav and Shahnwaz Alam of Rihai Manch among others participated in the protest.

In the evening a candle vigil was organized paying homage to Khalid Mujahid.

Rajeev Yadav of Rihai Manch told TCN, We will use different methods of protest in the coming days as well and continue or dharna till our demands of sacking and arresting the erring cops are met.
Help India!

By TwoCircles.net Staff Reporter,

Guwahati: Hundreds bid tearful adieu to Additional Superintendent of Police (ASP) of Assams Sonitpur district Gulzar Hussain on Wednesday at his hometown. If the 21 gun salute brought more tears to the family, friends and relatives of the 37 year old dynamic police office, the state police promised not to let go his sacrifice waste.

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The NDFB (S) militants had ambushed the police patrol led by Gulzar Hussain at Thalola centre-Laodangi of Batasipur area under Dhekiajuli police station on Tuesday morning. Curfew had been imposed in Dhekiajuli area from 6 pm to 6 am following massive protests against the NDFB-S and killing of the ASP.





Locals throng in front of Dhekiajuli police station after the killing of ASP of Sonitpur Gulzar Hussain.



It was around 8 am when three militants hiding near a school fired at the team killing two persons, including ASP Hussain, Police said.

The ASP sitting in the front seat of his vehicle was hit by bullets on his head and leg. He was rushed to Armys 151 base hospital at Tezpur where the doctors declared him brought dead.

The place of ambush, over 200 km from the state capital, is about 60 km from district headquarters Tezpur and 20 km from Dhekiajuli police station near the Arunachal Pradesh border.

The five injured policemen admitted to Kanaklata Civil Hospital in Tezpur were identified as Umakanta Bailong (38), Rubul Borah (26), Dhiraj Bharali (38), Janak Basumatary and Pinku Borah (25).

Meanwhile, it was tearful tale as Hussain who was believed to be one of the honest and dedicated officer had left behind a 15 day old son and his wife besides the aging parents when outlawed members of National Democratic Front of Bodoland (Songbijit Faction) launched an attack on his team while coming back from an operation at Dhekiajuli in the morning hours of Tuesday.

Along with Hussain, another police informer was also killed and five police sustained injuries when their vehicles were attacked by militant bullets.

Though I hoped that my Janaza (prayer of last rites) would be performed by my son but Allah had something else planned for me. I feel proud to do the same for my son. I also take pride that he has died for the cause of the people, said Samsuddin Hafiz, father of the slain officer, after performing the Janaza on Wednesday as hundred others barring all religion and caste joined to pay their last respect at Bihpuria in Lakhimpur district.

Gulzar who joined the state police department in 2003 after a brilliant academic career with masters degree in Zoology from Dibrugarh University hailed from a very humble background. He was a very brilliant student throughout his student days. We were absolutely proud of him for what he has done. He was also very much eager to serve the police department with passion but it was cut short unfortunately, said Kabindra Hazarika, one of his teachers from school with tearful eyes.

The scene at his home, however, was inconsolable with his wife Rousan Ara Begum lost her consciousness, finding it extremely difficult to deal with the reality. One would get more emotion seeing the couple 15 day old baby besides their three year old girl who were just not aware of the fact that their beloved father was not anymore in the world.

It is extremely difficult to make his wife understand as she wept along his body throughout the night. Gulzar who recently came to his home could not see his baby anymore. I hope that such a situation do not reoccur in anybodys life. Its a tragedy that will linger in our heart for a longer period of time, a relative said.





The locals and well wishers carry the body of ASP of Sonitpur Gulzar Hussain for the last rites at his hometown on Wednesday.



This attack on the police has also witness state wide protest from various organizations and political parties. The locals also thronged the Dhekiajuli police station to express their displeasure and seeking punishment for the culprits. This is the supreme failure of the state government and the home department. Its an unfortunate incident for the people of the state to witness the death of a dynamic police office like this at an young age. We condemn the incident and demand that the strict action against the culprits, said Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) national vice president and Guwahati MP Bijoya Chakraborty.

His colleagues and other officials of the state police department have vowed to pay respect to the department with stricter action. We are hurt losing a dynamic office in Hussain but we will not let go his supreme sacrifice in waste. We have already started our mission in a stricter way, said Sonitpur Superintendent of Police Sanjukta Parashar after paying her last tribute.

However, many seems to be unhappy at the comment of the state chief minister Tarun Gogoi who had said that he had to be dead because Hussain did not use protection head gear and bullet proof jacket.
Help India!

By Raqib Hameed Naik, TwoCircles.net

Hyderabad: Not many people would consider giving up their comfortable, albeit hectic schedule in the US and traveling to India to treat poor patients at their own cost. But a couple from Chicago has been doing exactly this for the past four years.

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Dr Sabiha Gafoor examining patient in a free health camp

Dr. Sabiha Gafoor, 58 a pediatrician and her husband Dr. Mohammad Abdul Gafoor, 65 an internal and family medicine, from Chicago have been visiting India every year since 2012 to treat poor patients in rural and slum areas of India by camping for weeks altogether.

Dr Sabiha Gafoor was born to Abid Ali Usmani a forest ranger, whereas Dr M.A Gafoor was born to Mohammad Mehtab Ali, an employee in Post and Telegram Department, both in Hyderabad.

After completing their primary and secondary education in local Hyderabad based schools, Dr. Sabiha graduated in medicine from Gandhi Medical College in Hyderabad in 1980 whereas Dr. MA Gafoor graduated from Osmania University in 1972. Later, both moved to United States for higher education and after completion of their residency, they settled in Chicago with a daughter and son.

Dr. Sabiha has been practicing in primary health care clinics in Chicago and also into adolescent medicine and specialty care clinics. She is presently working in Cocounty Emergency Department of Pediatrics, supervising the residents and teaching the medicine students and participating in research projects.

Dr. MA Gafoor is also practicing internal and family medicine in Chicago.

The couple first came for treating poor patients in India in year 2012, with a US-based Indian charity organization, Indian Muslim Relief and Charities (IMRC), which conducts an annual India Health Initiative for treating poor patients in India for free.

Dr Mohammad Abdul Gafoor examining patients.

We always wanted to do something for our community back in India, but it was through IMRC founder, Manzoor Ghori, that we got motivated by the work, he was doing for people in India, says Dr. Sabiha Gafoor.

The India Health Initiative was started by IMRC in 2010.Every year doctors from the US volunteer for this health initiative by rendering their services free of cost. Since its inception, the organization has successfully conducted seven India Health Initiatives comprising of medical camps across different rural areas, poor localities and slums in India.

Dr. Sabiha and M.A Gafoor have treated thousands of patients in three heath initiatives; they have participated in with IMRC to work in Uttar Pradesh, Telangana, Kerala, Rajasthan and Haryana.

Due to poverty in India, a major chunk of population doesnt have resources to have access to quality medical care or even simple medical care at all and it feels great in helping them by donating our own time, expense and money. Every year we come to India and feel more encouraging and pushing to keep helping in this cause, says Sabiha.

Dr. MA Gafoor considers helping poor patients in India as a moral responsibility. India is the country which modeled me, raised me and helped me to pursue my goal. I always had desire to comeback to India and serve people. Back in 2012, I expressed my wish to work for Indian community to my childhood friend Manzoor Ghori, who asked us to join their annual health initiative to which I happily obliged. My wife also agreed to come for the same mission and it is our joint effort to help poor, says Dr. MA Gafoor.

This year both the husband-wife travelled to Barabanki (Uttar Pradesh), Slum areas of Hyderabad and villages in Kozhikode district of Kerala to treat poor patients for free. Every day they used to examine and treated between 100 and 150 patients every day, often working 10 hours a day. I came across variety of patients in the health camps from normal to serious diseases. Many of them have upset stomach, indigestion, joint pains, short breaths and also emphysema patients who smoke a lot and many with serious pulmonary diseases, says Dr. M A Gafoor.

Briefing us about the work they have been doing in India, the doctor couple said, Doing primary care here in India is totally different from what we do in United States. We just do the initial screenings and find out certain things and pick up and get the tests done, if necessary and provide them medicines which are free at our camps. The cases which require follow up; we compile them into a list and refer them to a local doctor.

Dr. Sabiha feels that more is required to be done towards helping patients who are economically backward and lack access to quality health care.

The community thinks that we are giving more but we feel, we can give much more than what we are giving them now, she says.

Explaining the level of satisfaction they get from volunteering for free health camps in India, both the doctors say, No other work gives you more satisfaction than helping poor people. It is like a mental therapy for us. At the end of the day, when we examine and treat poor patients here in India, we feel much relaxed and peace in our lives may be due to their prayers.

Dr. M A Gafoor emphasizes upon the need of doing a comprehensive study on diseases in different regions of India and feels that there is still a lot needed to be done by government, NGOs and individuals in health care sector in the country, so that it becomes accessible to everyone irrespective of his economic condition.

Everyone in the country should have access to quality health care and if health care sector of country improves only then the other sectors can experience development. I think more and more Indian-origin doctors should come forward and spare some weeks every year to come and treat poor patients in India, he says. We both look forward to continue visiting India and give back to the community by rendering our medical expertise to the poor patients, they added.

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UK & Ireland Online Poker Rankings: Moorman Back on Top

May 06 2016 Matthew Pitt Editor

Former world number one, Chris moorman1 Moorman, has returned to the top of the pile of the United Kingdoms online poker rankings on the back of several four and five-figures scores.

We mentioned in our last rankings update that Moorman had five final table appearances in the space of a couple of days, finishes that netted him more than $30,000, and he kept up his hot form by finishing fifth in the $215 Fat Thursday at PokerStars for $4,444 and winning the Americas Cardroom Extreme Tuesday for $10,879.

As a result, Moorman climbs to number one in the UK and is now back to 11th in the world.

Also climbing up the UK and world rankings are Jamie EzGame89 OConnor and Phil philroyal888 Mighall. OConnor is up to fourth in the UK and 27th in the world thanks in part to winning the $109 NLHE 6-Max Hyper for $5,668, finishing eighth in the $109 Sunday Cooldown for $2,886, and finishing fourth in the Big $215 for $5,016 all at PokerStars.

Mighall is one place behind OConnor in both the UK and world standings after winning the partypoker $50,000 High Roller for $13,460 and the PokerStars $55 NLHE 6-max Hyper for $3,490, before finishing fifth in the PokerStars Big $215 for $4,590.

UK Online Poker Rankings (May 6, 2016)

UK Rank Player Points 1 Chris moorman1 Moorman 6419.05 2 Oscar MendaLerenda Serradell 6310.74 3 Conor 1_conor_b_1 Beresford 6275.67 4 Jamie EzGame89 OConnor 5827.53 5 Phil philroyal888 Mighall 5814.37 6 Stephen woody1234321 Woodhead 5644.08 7 Lucas Show3rs4u Blanco 5463.63 8 Matas bebaimis777 Cimbolas 5436.52 9 Rhys floppinhel Jones 5350.36 10 10111420 5286.73 11 Andy wiisssppppaa Taylor 5264.24 12 Sergio trujustrus Cabrera 5238.24 13 Scott Aggro Santos Margereson 5118.32 14 Joel Crackdel29 Visa Jordana 5020.08 15 Vicent vicenfish Delgado 5011.04 16 Paul Fold Machiii Dando 4800.83 17 carpediem200 4704.87 18 Christopher NigDawG Brammer 4672.25 19 Tom Jabracada Hall 4569.19 20 Andy andyh26 Holman 4402.12

Wins Galore for Tomas Geleziunas

Tomas luckymo32 Geleziunas was the stand out performer from the Irish side of things this week, booking a staggering 10 outright victories in seven days. Geleziunas finished as the last man standing in these events:

The partypoker Clubber for $2,900

for $2,900 The 888poker $4,000 8-Max Special for $1,225

for $1,225 The 888poker $2,000 Smokin Omaha Hi-Lo for $900

for $900 The PokerStars Big $44 for $5,102

for $5,102 The partypoker Rocky for $1,850

for $1,850 The PokerStars $22 NLHE Rebuy for $1,138

for $1,138 The PokerStars NLO8 6-Max Hyper for $901

for $901 The partypoker $5,000 Gtd Rebuy for $1,375

for $1,375 The iPoker 2,000 Gtd 1R/1A Turbo for $691

for $691 The PokerStars $55 NLHE Rebuy for $2,831

Toby JobyToyce Joyce won the partypoker Knockout for $1,322 then finished second in the Balboa for $1,850 on the same night. Joyce also finished third in the PokerSTars.fr Night on Stars for $2,662 and then Dara Doke OKearney finished third in the PokerStars Hot $215 for $5,082 and won the Microgaming 5,000 Gtd for $1,895.

Irish Online Poker Rankings Top 20 (May 6, 2016)

UK Rank Player Points 1 Kevin SuitedAcesBaby Killeen 5138.81 2 Dan NukeTheFish! Wilson 4634.95 3 Tomas luckymo32 Geleziunas 4407.45 4 Toby Jobytoyce Joyce 4250.39 5 Daniel danielt999 Tighe 3940.21 6 Kursplunk 3839.17 7 Cathal shinerrr Shine 3640.47 8 Dara Doke OKearney 3605.13 9 John gruaiggorm Daly 3554.69 10 Conor ccoonnoorr O'Driscoll 3546.79 11 Jude j.thaddeus Ainsworth 3544.45 12 Frank Denman98 Lillis 3433.66 13 myleftfoot 3379.41 14 David Laois Hammer Scully 3183.74 15 Sergio EV4dGloryOMC Garcia 3066.89 16 Michael BIGMIKG Graydon 2979.47 17 Sean monkeybudgie Prendiville 2959.21 18 Nicholas YerSoLucky Newport 2894.72 19 Daragh daragh999 Davey 2827.10 20 James Jaymo Noonan 2746.33

Thanks to PocketFives.com for the use of their rankings to create this article

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The joint mission by the sub-regional bloc, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the regional grouping, the African Union (AU) and the global body, the United Nations (UN) that concluded a visit to Banjul on Thursday has appealed to the governments of The Gambia and Senegal to continue the dialogue underway in resolving the current border crisis.

The appeal contained in a statement released by the joint mission after their visit also called on the two governments to convene the bilateral meeting scheduled for the middle of May with a view to arriving at a mutually agreed solution.

Senegals Foreign Minister Mankeur Gueye said on Monday that Banjul has formally written to Dakar and authorities will meet in the coming days to find a lasting solution to the border crisis which is entering its third month.

The mission led by Marcel Alain de Souza, the President of the ECOWAS Commission; Dr. Aisha Laraba Abdullahi, the AU Commissioner for Political Affairs and Dr. Mohamed Ibn Chambas, the Special Representative of the UN Secretary General for West Africa and the Sahel and representative from the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights through its Regional Representative for West Africa were in The Gambia to develop an understanding of the viewpoints and perspectives of Gambian stakeholders on political and other developments affecting The Gambia ahead of the presidential election due to take place in December 2016.

Tariff increment sparked border crisis

Senegalese truck drivers refused to pay new tariffs after President Yahya Jammeh unilaterally increased the levy they have to pay to cross The Gambia was increased 100 times -- from CFA 4,000 per truck to CFA 400,000 (500; $700). The truck drivers refused to pay the high fee forcing them to take a 10-hour detour to Senegals Southern region of Cassamance around The Gambia via Tambacounda.

To some Senegalese travelers, it is longer hours but of less trouble of not having to deal with crossing The River Gambia at Barra with the unsafe and unreliable ferry services. President Jammeh has since rescinded the decision but the borders remain closed.Since the crisis started, Senegal has not been so vocal about the issue, no doubt for fear of exacerbating relations with its neighbor, The Gambia. Many believe that the mid May meeting on the border crisis will provide a solution.
Gucci apologizes over letters about funeral knock-offs Updated: 2016-05-07 02:04 (Agencies)

Italian luxury-goods maker Gucci and its parent company apologized Friday after drawing heavy criticism for warning some Hong Kong shops not to sell paper offerings for the deceased that resembled the fashion brands handbags and other products.

The apology was prompted after the warning letters had attracted amusement and scorn on social media in Hong Kong, with one resident joking: "Does Gucci want to open branches in the underworld?"

The brand and its Paris-based owner, Kering, also said in a statement that they regretted any misunderstanding caused by the letters, which were sent to six shops last month.

After meeting with the shop owners, "Kering and Gucci would like to reiterate their utmost respect with regards to the funeral context," the statement said.

The companies also said that since the shops did not intend to infringe copyright and trademark rights, they would not pursue legal action or seek compensation.

Burning paper offerings for the deceased is a common practice in Chinese culture, and is meant to appease the dead and show filial piety. The offerings are normally burned during the Hungry Ghost Festival, and Qingming, or tomb-sweeping day.

Specialty shops near funeral homes sell an array of paper offerings, including bundles of "hell money," mansions, iPhones, cars, cigarettes and designer handbags, cans of beer and soda, mahjong tables and dogs and cats. It is believed that when a paper version is burned, it will appear in the afterlife for the deceased to "use".

Gucci operates 11 boutiques in Hong Kong and is one of the brands most coveted by shoppers, including many visiting from the Chinese mainland, where luxury goods are more expensive because of higher taxes.
Taiwan probes suspected poisoning deaths of indigenous macaques Updated: 2016-05-04 16:51 (Xinhua)

TAIPEI - Taiwan's forestry and police authority is investigating the alleged poisoning of six protected indigenous macaques, including two that were pregnant.

An adult female macaque was found dead on March 20 in a mountainous area in Changhua County, by a team of researchers who were conducting a survey on the protected animal species. The team discovered the body after a tourist told them about an unusual smell, reported a local newspaper on Wednesday.

High levels of pesticide residue was found in the macaque's stomach, according to tests by Pingtung University of Science and Technology.

On April 15 and 16, five more dead macaques were discovered in the same area, according to a Nantou forestry official. Two of the dead macaques were pregnant. Another had no visible injuries, but the autopsy revealed it had suffered a subcutaneous hemorrhage in many parts of its body; injuries that led vets to suspect that the macaque had been poisoned.

Four bodies were seriously decomposed when they were found. Researchers removed multiple plastic bags, filled with fruit, that had been hanged on trees in the area. The bags and contents are undergoing tests.

"Generally, feeders do not go to the trouble of hanging food on trees for these animals," said the official.

There are about 200 macaques living in the mountainous area and they usually interact well with visitors, said another official. "It is the first time an incident such as this has been reported."

The macaques are protected in Taiwan. Local government and police are investigating the incident and have increased patrols to prevent poaching or slaughter.
China, Russia agree more parliamentary cooperation Updated: 2016-05-05 23:32 (Xinhua)

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BEIJING -- China and Russia on Thursday agreed to strengthen their parliamentary cooperation to contribute more for the bilateral relations.



The pledge was made in the second meeting of the cooperation committee between China's National People's Congress, the top legislative body, and the Russian Federal Council and the State Duma, the upper and lower houses of the Russian parliament.



Zhang Dejiang, chairman of the NPC Standing Committee, and Sergei Naryshkin, head of the State Duma, co-chaired the meeting at the Great Hall of the People in downtown Beijing.



Zhang said the two sides should take the 15th anniversary of the Sino-Russian Good-Neighborly Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation as an opportunity, carry forward the spirit of equality, mutual trust, mutual support, common prosperity and long-lasting friendship, and create better environment for the development of the bilateral relations.



He said legislative bodies of the two countries should continue to support the two peoples to choose their own path of development.



The two sides should strengthen cooperation on legislature and supervision to support the two governments to enhance coordination on locality and industrial development policies and plans, help the government solve problems in cooperation, and provide better legal and policy environment, he said.



Zhang called on the two sides to give full play to the cooperation committee and increase cultural and people-to-people exchanges.



He also urged the two sides to have closer coordination within multilateral frameworks including the BRICS parliamentary forum, the Inter-Parliamentary Union and the Asia-Pacific Parliamentary Forum, to jointly safeguard the two countries' common interest, and the peace and stability of the world.



Hailing the parliamentary cooperation and exchanges between the two legislative bodies as fruitful, Naryshkin said the Russia-China friendly cooperation is in the fundamental interests of the two countries and two peoples.



Naryshkin said the Russian side will well implement the results of the second meeting and strengthen the synergy of the two countries' development strategies, as well as their cultural and people-to-people exchanges and educational cooperation.



President Xi Jinping also met with Naryshkin on Thursday afternoon. Naryshkin, who was visiting China from Wednesday to Friday as guest of Zhang, will also go to Shenzhen in south China.
Many Taiwan suspects netted in narcotics bust Updated: 2016-05-06 08:30 By Zhou Mo In Dongguan, Guangdong(China Daily)

Guangdong police seized more than 700 kilograms of methamphetamine and arrested 28 suspects - more than half of them from Taiwan - in a joint operation with authorities from Fujian province and Taiwan aimed at drug smuggling.

The suspects used a fake courier company in Dongguan as a cover for storing the drugs. They had planned to smuggle the drugs to the Philippines by sea but failed, the police said. The smugglers then used cars to transfer the drugs from ports to the company, where they were caught on Feb 28.

A suspect drove a car to the company, but instead of parking it outside, as on previous occasions, the suspect parked it inside the company warehouse.

"After more than a month of investigation, and based on our judgment, we believed that the car carried drugs, so we carried out the operation immediately," a Guangdong official who participated in the raid said. He asked not to be named.

Nine guns, 1.5 million yuan ($230,000), HK$2 million ($258,000) in cash and several bank cards, as well as 11 cars were also seized in the operation.

It was the biggest drug-related operation to be foiled by the Guangdong border-control department this year.

"Drug smuggling in Guangdong province has been curbed to a large degree this year, but it still remains active," Deng Jianwei, director of drug enforcement at the Guangdong Department of Public Security, told reporters at a news conference in Dongguan on Thursday. "The anti-drug situation in the province is still serious. We have to remain vigilant."

Overseas demand for drugs has fueled illegal activity in the province, which has often been used as a base to transport drugs overseas, Deng added.

In the first quarter of this year, 3,433 suspected drug smugglers were apprehended and 4.83 metric tons of drugs were seized by Guangdong authorities, Deng said. The authorities also broke up 23 drugmaking factories and detained 26,812 drug users.

According to the Guangdong official, the courier company used in the recent case was not really engaged in the delivery business but only served as a meeting place for the suspects.

The smugglers intended to store the drugs temporarily at the fake company and transport them to overseas markets when they found an opportunity, the official said.

It is not known where the drugs were made. An investigation is ongoing.

Deng said identifying drug smugglers in Guangdong is more complicated than in other areas because many of them have international backgrounds and are engaged in cross-border business.

Last year, more than 500 drug smugglers from more than 40 countries and regions were arrested in the province. Of those, 252 came from Hong Kong and about 70 from Taiwan.

Last month, an international drug trafficking operation controlled by Hong Kong residents was broken up by Guangdong police. About 400 kilograms of cocaine from South America was confiscated.

sally@chinadailyhk.com

(China Daily 05/06/2016 page5)
Hebei province shuts down 200 polluting companies Updated: 2016-05-06 08:30 By Zheng Jinran(China Daily)

Monthlong inspection motivated govts to improve supervision, control, report says

Hebei province has shut down 200 polluting companies and punished 366 people in response to serious problems exposed in an environmental inspection in January.

The punishments came as the province gave priority to 2,856 cases involving environmental pollution that had been transferred from the central government's inspection team.

The province said it will clear up another 13,784 illegal projects this year.

According to a report released on Thursday by the Ministry of Environmental Protection, the monthlong inspection pushed forward the pollution restrictions, motivating governments to improve their controls and supervision.

The strengthened controls have worked, as in the first three months of the year residents have seen a clear improvement in air quality, the province said.

In a previous report released on Tuesday, the inspection team pointed out problems in the campaign against pollution, from insufficient attention from former provincial leaders to loose supervision, and from many illegal projects in protection zones to deterioration of water and soil quality in some cities.

The problems will be dealt with quickly and thoroughly, the province said.

For example, the inspection team received calls that three lime processing plants in Dachang county, Langfang were severely contaminating the air. However, information about the people who complained was leaked and they claimed they received threats from the business owners.

The provincial environmental protection and public security bureaus have launched an investigation and shut down the three plants.

In addition, nine government officials, including Chen Lijun, the county's deputy head of the environmental watchdog, have been punished, and Wang Tiejun, head of the county's environmental inspection team who leaked the information, has been expelled.

In Tuesday's report, the inspectors exposed insufficient controls on major polluting industries, especially iron and steel, in the province.

In response, Hebei plans to thoroughly research the iron and steel industry. It will combat the illegal or excessive discharge of pollutants and will phase out more plants.

Hebei is the first province inspected by the central government.

The inspection team is expected to examine other provinces' performance in curbing pollution within two years.

zhengjinran@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 05/06/2016 page5)
Photographer compares past to present Updated: 2016-05-06 08:30 By Tang Yue(China Daily)

Man fascinated by time travels the country to recreate scenes from yesteryear

Most tourists travel through space. Dheera Venkatraman also travels through time.

Enamored by photographs taken in China a century ago, Venkatraman has traveled across the country by train, taking photos in the same places as the historic images, comparing the past with the present in an ongoing project, Time Traveling in China.

"I like to do what others don't do so that I have something new to share with the world when I come back, instead of taking the same set of pictures everyone else does," he said.

The 31-year-old has a doctorate in electrical engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and co-founded a startup, Robby Technologies, that develops autonomous delivery robots. His professional interests have informed his photography.

"Having studied physics before, it was only natural to also think of traveling in time instead of space. So that's what I did here this time," Venkatraman said.

Among the 12 cities he has visited so far, he found Pudong New Area in Shanghai had changed most significantly. "Most people know that the city of Shanghai is a fairly recent development in Chinese history, but to see it in pictures is even more mind-blowing," he said.

Lanzhou, the capital of Gansu province, especially impressed him, as the city is unrecognizable from its old images, except for the mountains and river. "The fact that those natural formations haven't changed says something about how weak we still are compared with Mother Nature," Venkatraman said.

The Customs House in Wuhan, in central Hubei province, may be more typical of what he found in his travels. The area has experienced a transition from horses to buses and cars, "and that same building probably will see the transition to automated driverless cars, drones, and other new forms of mobility in the next 100 years," he said.

The project has been challenging as there are new obstacles and buildings that prevented easy access to the sites in the old photos or prohibited him from approaching from the right angles.

"I had a success rate of probably around 20 percent. There were many, many failed shots simply because I couldn't get the right angle," he said.

Among his numerous travels in China, he once bicycled nearly the entire 1,600 km along the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal from Beijing to Hangzhou,Zhejiang province.

He plans to photograph more northern cities for the Time Traveling in China series in the future as he didn't have much success in them during the smoggy winter.

Having grown up "moving around the world", Venkatraman considers himself a global citizen.

"I don't think of the world in terms of countries, and have no sense of identity that is based on a geographic or political boundary. My only sense of identity is in culture, arts and science," said Venkatraman, who speaks and writes in Chinese and was the technology director for the MIT-China Innovation and Entrepreneurship Forum from 2011 to 2012.

tangyue@chinadaily.com.cn

Four works from Dheera Venkatraman's Time Traveling in China series. Photos Provided To China Daily

(China Daily 05/06/2016 page7)
Teachers in Hunan demand unpaid wages Updated: 2016-05-06 14:08 By Zhang Yi(chinadaily.com.cn)

Hundreds of teachers protested in front of the government office building in Hengyang county in Hunan province earlier this week, seeking years of unpaid increase in the national salary schedule.

Police summoned six of them for impeding traffic as their rally blocked the main road and disturbing government office regular operations, according to a report by the website of People's Daily, citing a statement from the county government.

The local government said that it had promised on April 26 to respond to the teachers' request within 10 working days when they learned the teachers' requests from online posting, but teachers were unsatisfied and more than 200 of them went on protest in front of the government building for more than nine hours on Tuesday.

On Wednesday morning, more than 150 teachers gathered at the government gate again and would not leave despite all efforts. Their behavior greatly disrupted traffic and government orders, according to the statement.

Other media reports said the teachers are requesting for the salary increase since Oct 2014 under the national plan of salary increase and they also demand the year-end bonus of the past two years.

The teachers also claimed that irregularities have been found in their pension and housing subsidy accounts.

The government statement said Xiong Chaoqun, the county chief, held a meeting with officials in charge of educational affairs in the county and mapped out "a principle to settle the problem" after the government noticed the teachers' requests online. No details of the principle were given.

In the teachers' public letter to the government, they said they had not got a clear answer from the government.
China indicts four senior officials for graft Updated: 2016-05-06 14:10 (Xinhua)

BEIJING - Chinese prosecutors have filed corruption indictments against Zhang Lijun, former vice minister of environmental protection, and three provincial-level officials.

They are Sui Fengfu, former deputy director of the Heilongjiang Provincial People's Congress Standing Committee, Liang Bin, former head of the Organization Department of the Communist Party of China Hebei Provincial Committee, and Lu Wucheng, former deputy director of the Gansu Provincial People's Congress Standing Committee, according to a statement issued by the Supreme People's Procuratorate on Friday.

All four are charged with accepting bribes.
The family must wait - there is a bird u war to win Updated: 2016-05-06 06:54 By Tuo Yannan in Paris(China Daily USA)

Lifesaving work earns spot among five winners of For Women in Science Award

Chen Hualan works on the front line of the fight against killer viruses.

Behind the graceful demeanor of this award-winning scientist is someone who is recognized as one of the fiercest warriors in the laboratory.

Chen Hualan at her workplace in China's National Avian Reference Laboratory in Harbin. Provided to China Daily

"Fighting with a virus is a battle," says Chen, 47. "You have to deeply know it and understand it in order to conquer it."

Chen, a professor at the Harbin Veterinary Research Institute in northeastern China, has had some high-profile victories.

In 2013, after the outbreak of H7N9, a deadly strain of avian flu, her team collected more than 1,000 samples from markets, water sources and poultry farms around Shanghai. The data not only proved the virus could spread from birds to humans, but was also used to create a vaccine that has prevented countless infections worldwide.

In March Chen was among the five winners of L'Oreal-UNESCO For Women in Science Award this year for "her outstanding research into the biology of the flu virus, leading to the development and use of an effective vaccine".

The award is given to the world's most influential female scientists and carries with it a $100,000 grant for each laureate. Since 1998 it has honored five women every year, with two going on to win a Nobel Prize.

"Getting this award means my contribution to science has been recognized at a higher level. It means a lot," Chen told China Central Television, the state broadcaster, shortly after accepting her prize at a ceremony in Paris.

Earlier, she was also named among the "top 10 scientists who matter" by Nature magazine for her cutting-edge research in animal virology.

However, Chen says her work is far from over.

"Viruses keep changing," she explains. "If you develop a vaccine to fight against a virus you see now, when you use that vaccine the virus could very well have already changed. This requires us to keep a close eye on viruses (in nature) to understand them.

"We really want to understand what is going on; for example, what kind of birds can be infected by which virus. Then we need very detailed biological analysis to understand the risk of a virus. After that, we will try to develop vaccines."

Her research team has now established a "complete bird flu vaccine development platform" that will make it easier to control any new strains, she says.

Chen, who heads China's National Avian Reference Laboratory, is also known for her experiments to engineer hybrid flu viruses, such as by mixing genes from the H5N1 and H1N1 strains to prove that mutations can spread through the air between guinea pigs. This work demonstrated the threats posed by emerging strains and led to her developing two new vaccines to prevent potential epidemics.

Since 2004, about 140 billion doses of flu vaccine have been given to poultry in China, as well as several other countries, she says.

"We've provided a lot of support to other countries," she says, recalling that she once sent researchers to Vietnam for six months to help health authorities there combat a flu outbreak. "My science is driven by responsibility. I hope my research can be a contribution to the world."

Elizabeth Blackburn, joint winner of the 2009 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine and head of this year's For Women in Science Award jury, says Chen's achievements are an example of "science with the greatest quality and greatest importance" because "her research prevents epidemics".

Jean-Paul Agon, CEO of L'Oreal, also spoke highly of Chen and her peers at the award ceremony in March. "Chinese scientists are among the best scientists in the world," he said. "The work her (Chen's) team has been doing is amazing. I am sure that, year after year, China will be absolutely at the center of scientific discoveries."

After such plaudits, it is strange to hear Chen say she was originally hesitant to enter the field of veterinary medicine - largely because a neighbor in her childhood home in the northwestern province of Gansu had told her "a veterinarian's main job is to castrate animals".

However, she says she forged ahead after encouragement from her mother.

Outside the laboratory, she is also a wife and mother of a son, although her time at home is limited. The last family vacation they took was six years ago, she says.

"When they went out sightseeing, I locked myself in the hotel room to prepare a research paper," she says, laughing.

tuoyannan@chinadaily.com.cn
China needs brands to build its brand Updated: 2016-05-06 17:29 By Andrew Moody(China Daily USA)

Professor of marketing and innovation in UK says Europe is a promising strategic partner for Chinese companies

Wang Qing says China will find it difficult to become a technology leader without brands.

The professor of marketing and innovation at Britain's Warwick Business School says brands of the power and reach of Apple give companies breathing space to do research and development.

Wang Qing says the lack of global brands is a real problem for China. Liu Zhe / China Daily

"If you don't have a brand as a cushion, you only have technology and the problem with technology is that it is hyper-competitive," she says.

"People will grab your technology now and they won't come back for your next because they will go somewhere else. Apple has great technologies but the reason why it really dominates the market for mobiles is because of its brand. People will go back to it."

Wang, who was speaking at the Kerry Hotel in Beijing on one of her many annual visits to her native China, says the lack of global brands, not just in technology but in almost every sphere, was a real problem for the world's second-largest economy.

She cites that there were no Chinese brands in the Interbrand top 100 best global brands survey in 2015.

"When we look at these league tables, for a long time there have been no Chinese brands."

She believes the lack of brands is undermining the country's technological efforts and achievements even though it overtook the United States and Japan as the world's largest filer of patents in 2012.

"It has also overtaken everyone else in the numbers of papers published in top journals," adds Wang.

The major question though is how far China - once light years behind at the time of reform and opening up in the late 1970s - has to go in catching up with the West in terms of technology.

"I think China in some areas already is very close to what is cutting edge and, maybe in a couple of areas, they might even be more advanced."

One such area is high-speed rail. China opened its first line in 2007 and now has 19,000 kilometers of track in service, more than the rest of the world's high-speed rail networks together. China will be a likely bidder for construction contracts on the UK's HS2 high-speed rail link.

"They actually started in high-speed rail by borrowing Japanese technology but because of a lot of unique problems they had to do lots of innovations on top because of what they learnt.

"Because of the scale of the country's high-speed rail development, they have also accumulated experience that some other countries would not have."

Qing, 54, was born into an academic family in Shenyang in northeast China. Her father taught philosophy at a military college and her mother taught Chinese literature.

Her father was branded a "landlord" and lost his job at the height of the "cultural revolution (1966-76)", which meant the family was sent to the remote southwest Chinese province of Yunnan to a labor camp for intellectuals.

"I was a child but even though it was an extremely stressful and painful period for my parents I went to some sort of school and it was almost normality for me."

When the universities reopened in 1978 she was accepted by Xi'an University of Technology at just 16 to study engineering. She was one of only four women in a class of 30.

"I loved to read books and maths and did a bit of learning from school but I was taught a lot by my parents, who were obviously a good influence."

She then went on to study management science at Tianjin University before being accepted on scholarship under a technology cooperation scheme between the British Council and the Chinese government to study in the UK.

"At the time what was the most scarce resource was the ability to speak English and so they looked at your English score. I was told that I was selected and I was going to study not in China but in the UK."

So in 1988, she arrived at Warwick University to study for a doctorate in marketing and has lived in the UK ever since.

She went on to teach at John Moores University in Liverpool and after a spell at Sussex university in Brighton went back to Warwick University, where her specialization is a combination of marketing and innovation.

Along with others such as Peter Williamson at Judge Business School at Cambridge University, she is pre-eminent in combining these two disciplines.

"There is a tendency to keep the two apart. So researchers and scientists don't talk to marketers because they speak different languages. They have different perspectives, cultures and timescales.

"The researchers want everything perfect before anything is released to the consumer and the marketing people want it today."

Wang, who is engaging but with a steely determination, also specializes in Chinese marketing on the advice of Robin Wensley, the former dean of Warwick Business School.

"He said if I was to study marketing, I should study China marketing because it would give me a USP (unique selling point) in the in the UK," she laughs.

She says that it was a new subject in China because in the 1970s there wasn't even a word for it.

"It was a planned economy so there was no need for marketing. Nowadays the word is ying-xiao, which means selling, but there wasn't one then."

Wang has been quite evangelical in trying to get across the message in China itself that brands and marketing are important. She addressed the Pujiang Innovation Forum, organized by the Ministry of Science & Technology, in Shanghai as far back as 2000.

"People there were talking about innovation and I went there to talk about brands because I wanted to raise the awareness among Chinese companies and the government itself that they should really understand how to build brands."

She says when China first began to rapidly develop, many Chinese companies found their brands were killed almost at birth by Western companies.

"Some Chinese companies were very nave. They had brands that could have been quite promising but they allowed themselves to be acquired by Western brands who basically discarded them," she says.

Wang, who has held a number of posts at Chinese universities, including Sun Yat-sen, Tongji and Tsinghua, says the problem many Chinese brands face today is the negative association attached with being from China.

"Unfortunately, it means cheap and that is not just for Western people but the Chinese too. So Chinese companies often try to give their products Western-sounding names."

She, however, believes Chinese companies such as Alibaba, Tencent and Huawei have made huge strides.

Chinese infrastructure companies are also moving from markets such as Africa, where they are now well established, to Europe to be involved in major projects such as HS2.

"I think Europe is a very promising strategic partner for Chinese companies and I think they are very receptive to Chinese involvement. I think it is much more objective about this than the United States."

andrewmoody@chinadaily.com.cn

( China Daily USA 05/06/2016 page10)
There are things that China can still learn from Japan Updated: 2016-05-06 08:32 By Chen Weihua(China Daily USA)

Learning from Japan was trendy in China in the late 1970s and 1980s when the country started its reform and opening-up drive. As one of the top industrialized nations in the world, Japan had a lot to offer China, everything from management to technology to education. The Japanese economic miracle was also the envy of many Chinese.

In those days, the Japanese economy was several times larger than that of China, and Japanese tour groups were obvious on Shanghai's streets.

However, China overtook Japan as the world's second-largest economy in 2010 and is on way to surpass the United States, if it has not done so already. In contrast, the Japanese economy has stagnated over the last two decades.

Learning from Japan is no longer in vogue in China despite the fact that Chinese tourists to Japan love buying Japanese products, such as electronic toilet seats and cosmetics.

The latest media reports about Japan in China have largely been about the public protests against Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's government's bid to revise the Japanese Constitution, the disputes over the sovereignty of the Diaoyu Islands in the East China Sea, Japan's attempts to meddle in the South China Sea disputes between China and some Southeast Asian nations and the Japan-US alliance that is increasingly aimed at containing China.

So it was a bit surprising to see the Chinese version of Harvard University Professor Ezra Vogel's 1979 book Japan as No 1: Lessons for America among the bestsellers in Shanghai's bookstores.

Vogel was insightful. He wrote the book in 1979, more than a decade before Japan became the world's second-largest economy.

Vogel became a Japan hand before becoming a well-known China hand. He firmly believed the US, despite being the world's largest economy and dominant power, had a lot to learn from Japan.

That was also the message he has today for China. In the preface for the new Chinese edition, Vogel expresses concern that some of his Chinese friends feel that China has nothing more to learn from Japan now that their economy has eclipsed that of Japan.

Vogel noted that Japan still outperforms China in a number of areas, such as in relatively small income disparity, low corruption, high product quality, a universal and reasonably priced healthcare system, low crime rate, public civility, clean cities and an orderly and trust-based society.

Vogel argues that while Japan's situation today is quite different from 35 years ago when the book was first published, much of the essence of the book remains true today and is still worthy of learning by other nations.

That is so true for China, where everything from the widening income gap, rampant corruption to a problematic public healthcare system and incivility are major challenges.

Chinese companies, which are increasingly investing overseas, including in the US, have a lot to learn from the lessons of Japanese companies in the past decades.

It is also true that the sheer size of the Chinese economy has surpassed that of Japan, but in the per capita sense, China still lags far behind. And Japan still has a clear edge over China in technology, management, manufacturing prowess and education.

A friend of Japan and China, Vogel hopes the two nations would expand their peaceful interactions. He believes peaceful coexistence and close contact would benefit both nations.

I still remember visiting and chatting with Vogel at his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 2011 shortly after his book Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China was published. He praised Hu Yaobang, the Chinese leader in the 1980s, for promoting healthy China-Japan ties and cultural exchanges.

The author is deputy editor of China Daily USA. chenweihua@chinadailyusa.com

(China Daily USA 05/06/2016 page17)
Vietnam trip leaves sour taste Updated: 2016-05-06 08:32 By Huang Xiangyang(China Daily USA)

Thanks to their deepening pockets, Chinese tourists are welcome across the world. Quite a few countries have made their visa procedures easier to lure this ever-growing group that spent $200 billion overseas last year.

It is not all smooth sailing, though.

Media reports say early this week a group of Chinese tourists in Nha Trang, central Vietnam, were harassed, some even assaulted, at the airport when they refused to pay a "routine" 10-yuan ($1.55) "tip" to Vietnamese officers before boarding. According to the Chinese tourists, the Vietnamese officers tried to "confiscate" their passports and threatened them with Tasers when they refused to pay them.

Overcharging has long been the bane of some countries' tourism industries, Vietnam being one of them. But tips for airport officers doing their duty, that's too much.

Chinese consulate officials have reportedly asked the Chinese tourists to keep any evidence they have and are waiting for a formal response from their Vietnamese counterparts.

The practice of tips-on-demand, if true, will tarnish Vietnam's image as a hospitable tourist destination. The country received more than 2 million Chinese tourists last year, its largest source of foreign visitors.

But Chinese tourists have reportedly tipped custom officers in other countries, too, as advised by their tour guides, so as to save trouble or make their entries and exits easier. Since most have complied, the unreasonable demand seems to have become a formality in some places.

More than 120 million Chinese tourists travel around the world each year. Had all of them refused to comply with the illegal demands and reported them to the authorities, both at home and their destination countries, the practice would not have survived.

Chinese tourists can help change the world as law-abiding citizens, but the Vietnamese authorities also have some work to do.

(China Daily USA 05/06/2016 page16)
Tsai cannot keep dodging 1992 Consensus forever Updated: 2016-05-06 07:29 (China Daily)

File photo of Taiwan DPP chair Tsai Ing-wen.

With two weeks to go before Tsai Ying-wen delivers her inaugural speech as the new leader of Taiwan, it looks increasingly clear that the current impasse between the Chinese mainland and the new caretakers in the island will not end any time soon.

A dose of political realism is thus critical for crisis prevention at such a tricky juncture.

Through an article published in People's Daily, the central authorities reiterated that not adhering to the 1992 Consensus, in which it was agreed both sides of the Straits belong to one China, constitutes sabotaging the common political foundation for cross-Straits ties.

Yet that is precisely what Tsai, as head of the independence-minded Democratic Progressive Party, has been trying to skirt around. She did say she would prefer preserving the status quo. But she has been dodging inquiries about her position regarding the 1992 Consensus, which the DPP has vehemently opposed.

The mainland, on the other hand, has been unequivocal, warning that without the consensus the status quo will not exist.

To the mainland, one China is the bottom line. Which is a fait accompli in both international law as well as domestic laws in the mainland and Taiwan.

It may be difficult for Tsai to officially endorse the consensus in a policy statement that will be closely inspected by her party. Not only because she can't afford being identified as "pro-mainland" within her own party, but also because her party is already on an all-out offensive against everything Kuomintang. The consensus, as a core Kuomintang legacy, is a thorn in the DPP's side.

Openly denying it, however, is obviously a non-option, because that will result in withering cross-Straits economic and trade ties, renew military tensions, and put an end to the hard-earned "diplomatic truce".

DPP sources close to Tsai have indicated that Tsai will make no mention of the 1992 Consensus in her May 20 inauguration speech. Playing word games may save her from receiving an immediate, fierce backlash that day. But she can't count on being ambiguous indefinitely.

Even if not in her inaugural speech, Tsai must come up with an answer acceptable to the mainland. Because, as the mainland said, it is indispensable if the status quo is to continue.

The anticipated Ice Age for bilateral ties and subsequent "cold peace" would be best-case scenarios should the current goodwill come to an end.
Manila's arbitration has evidence problem Updated: 2016-05-06 08:11 By HE TIANTIAN(China Daily)

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]

On Oct 29, 2015, the Arbitral Tribunal constituted under Annex VII to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea in the arbitration instituted by the Philippines against China rendered its award on jurisdiction and admissibility. The tribunal concluded that it does have jurisdiction over the matters raised in seven of the Philippines' claims.

On Oct 30, the Chinese Foreign Ministry issued a statement saying the award is null and void, and that it has no binding effect on China. Subsequently, the Chinese government reiterated that it will neither participate in nor accept the arbitration initiated by the Philippines.

It is important to note how the tribunal reached the conclusion. Let us analyze the award from the evidence perspective, which clearly shows what the arbitrators were concerned with and what their contemplation and reasoning yielded.

First, a general problem of evidence in the arbitral proceedings is that all the evidence was produced by the Philippines unilaterally. International tribunals' fact-finding process is different from national ones, that is to say, what kind of evidence a tribunal can get depends on the willingness of the parties. It is up to the parties to produce whatever evidence they consider useful to their claims.

A party is not obliged to provide anything adverse to its claims to the adjudicative body. In the proceedings in question, the Philippines submitted to the tribunal piles of documents, files, figures and maps, which added up to 3,700 pages, to justify its claims. The five arbitrators would not have been able to access, interpret and evaluate this huge pile of material unilaterally produced by the Philippines in a limited period of time.

Second, there were other specific problems of evidence in the arbitral proceedings, one of which was the irrelevant set of evidence presented by the Philippines. The tribunal examined four Notes Verbales as evidence. They included China's two Notes Verbales, Nos CML/17/2009 and CML/18/2009 of May 2009, addressed to the UN secretary-general, and their contents were the same.

The other two were the Notes Verbales, Nos 000228 and CML/8/2011, from the Philippines and China to the UN secretary-general. The tribunal ignored the backgrounds of these Notes Verbales, which were very complicated.

Take Notes Verbales Nos CML/17/2009 and CML/18/2009 for example. Malaysia and Vietnam issued a joint submission to the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf regarding the outer limits of the continental shelf beyond 200 nautical miles on May 6, 2009. Vietnam issued a separate submission to the same commission on the same issue the next day. China presented its position to the UN secretary-general on May 7, 2009. That is the background of the two Notes Verbales.
Realistic simulation in the virtual world Updated: 2016-05-06 08:11 By ZHANG ZHOUXIANG(China Daily)

People wear Samsung Gear VR devices as they attend the launching ceremony of the new Samsung S7 and S7 edge smartphones during the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, February 21, 2016. [Photo/Agencies]

One after another company has been going to the virtual reality, or VR, business. Search VR on any domestic e-commerce platform and up to 1,000 devices will pop up, their prices ranging from 299 yuan ($46) to 30,000 yuan. Enter any shopping center and you will find many stalls offering VR experience.

But do not try the low-cost devices, because VR requires high-end software as well as hardware. If either is not good enough, you will have a bad experience.

Although it gained popularity recently, VR is an old concept. Pioneered by US computer "philosopher" Jaron Lanier in the 1980s, it gives you some virtual experience with visions. The trick is to deceive your eyes into believing what is displayed is true.

Most VR equipment for individuals use headsets, which display images inside a small, closed space. To cheat our eyes, the image on display must be clear enough and pixel density high enough to truly imitate the real world.

For that, the VR equipment software must be powerful enough to produce high-resolution and high-quality images, while the display hardware should be of high quality to support the high-quality images. If the equipment doesn't meet the requirements, the image quality will be damaged and the experience ruined.

On Apple's official Chinese website, the cheapest model of new iPad pro, with a resolution ratio of 27322048 and storage capacity of 32 gigabytes, is available for 5,888 yuan. Although its display accounts for a quite high percentage of the price, iPad pro is not the best in market and professional models may cost much more. To produce images on the display, you need software. The software that produces images almost like the real world is no less expensive. Since often it's several gigabytes in size, it takes hundreds of programmers more than one year to draft such a program, and several more months to test them. Intellectual property, too, is part of the VR cost. At present, there are several main tools for VR development, such as Virtools, Nibiru and Quest 3D, and the virtual worlds they make are rather expensive.

Moreover, high-resolution images, as well as the software, take up huge storage space; VR service providers need bigger hard disks to store, and wider bandwidth to transmit them. All these increase the cost, so you should not expect to meet all the demands for a few hundred yuan.

Actually, if the budget allows, you can enjoy VR experience without wearing headsets. Aviation companies and militaries sometimes use another kind of VR in their trainingcovering the walls and the roof with high-quality, high-density displays so that trainees feel as if they are in a new world.

That technology is open for civil use, too. Increasingly many parks now have virtual roller coasters: the user sits in a car that vibrates while images are displayed to make him/her feel the thrills of a real roller-coaster ride. But such devices are rather expensive, and individual use of VR is not yet that popular.

The author is a writer with China Daily. zhangzhouxiang@chinadaily.com.cn
There are things that China can still learn from Japan Updated: 2016-05-06 08:20 By CHEN WEIHUA(China Daily)

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang meets with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in Seoul, Nov 1, 2015. [Photo/chinadaily.com.cn]

Learning from Japan was trendy in China in the late 1970s and 1980s when the country started its reform and opening-up drive. As one of the top industrialized nations in the world, Japan had a lot to offer China, everything from management to technology to education. The Japanese economic miracle was also the envy of many Chinese.

In those days, the Japanese economy was several times larger than that of China, and Japanese tour groups were obvious on Shanghai's streets.

However, China overtook Japan as the world's second-largest economy in 2010 and is on way to surpass the United States, if it has not done so already. In contrast, the Japanese economy has stagnated over the last two decades.

Learning from Japan is no longer in vogue in China despite the fact that Chinese tourists to Japan love buying Japanese products, such as electronic toilet seats and cosmetics.

The latest media reports about Japan in China have largely been about the public protests against Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's government's bid to revise the Japanese Constitution, the disputes over the sovereignty of the Diaoyu Islands in the East China Sea, Japan's attempts to meddle in the South China Sea disputes between China and some Southeast Asian nations and the Japan-US alliance that is increasingly aimed at containing China.

So it was a bit surprising to see the Chinese version of Harvard University Professor Ezra Vogel's 1979 book Japan as No 1: Lessons for America among the bestsellers in Shanghai's bookstores.

Vogel was insightful. He wrote the book in 1979, more than a decade before Japan became the world's second-largest economy.

Vogel became a Japan hand before becoming a well-known China hand. He firmly believed the US, despite being the world's largest economy and dominant power, had a lot to learn from Japan.

That was also the message he has today for China. In the preface for the new Chinese edition, Vogel expresses concern that some of his Chinese friends feel that China has nothing more to learn from Japan now that their economy has eclipsed that of Japan.
Shaanxi shows its stuff to potential visitors Updated: 2016-05-06 11:38 By Chang Jun in San Francisco(China Daily)

Guests attending the Shaanxi Tourism Presentation on Thursday take photo with two actors dressed in Terracotta Warriors uniforms. A delegation from Shaanxi province tours California this week to promote the upcoming direct fl ight between San Francisco and Xian which the United Airlines will off er on May 8, and try to attract more western visitors. Provided To China Daily

Representatives of Shaanxi province, rich in historical heritage and relics of Northwest China, visited California to promote its abundance of tourist attractions, hospitality, business and trade potential on Thursday in downtown San Francisco.

Leading a delegation from the Shaanxi Provincial Tourism Administration, Chen Mengyu, deputy director-general of the Shaanxi Provincial Tourism Administration, in partnership with the Shaanxi provincial government, Shaanxi Huaqing Palace Cultural Tourism Co Ltd, Xi'an China International Travel Service and United Airlines, presented to an audience of around 400 on how the birthplace of Terracotta Warriors is well-prepared for more international tourists.

Chen said his hometown now is more attractive to visitors as it is the birthplace of President Xi Jinping. "It's very close to Xi'an, the capital city," he said.

On the upcoming inaugural United Airlines direct flight between San Francisco and Xi'an, capital city of Shaanxi, Chen said it will bolster connections between the Bay Area and one of the birthplaces of the ancient Chinese civilizations in the Yellow River Basin.

"On May 8, the United Airlines will launch its non-stop flights between Xi'an and San Francisco. We believe this will greatly facilitate bilateral business and people-to-people exchanges between Shaanxi and the West Coast," said Chen. "It's an action driven by the market."

Talking to dignitaries, elected officials and tourism industry representatives from the US and China, Chen said the United States remains the primary tourism source market for Shaanxi province, adding that the US ranks second in Shaanxi's source markets with a total of 300,000 journeys made in 2015.

As the eastern terminus of the Silk Road, Xi'an is a worldly city that has more than 3,000 years of history, including more than 1,100 years being the national capital of several ancient dynasties.

"Historical sites and cultural relics are abundant in Shaanxi and Xi'an," said Chen.

Zha Liyou, deputy consul-general of the Chinese Consulate General in San Francisco, said the direct flight will improve Xi'an's position as a transportation hub. "Earlier, visitors to Xi'an have to shuffle back and forth from Beijing or Shanghai, now it's one-stop service."

Following the presentation, there was a raffle drawing for two roundtrip UA tickets between Xi'an and San Francisco, two-night hotel accommodations by the Westin and a three-day tour by the Xi'an China International Travel Service.

During their US visit, delegation members will have in-depth exchanges about a series of activities of the China-US Tourism Year with the China National Tourist Office in Los Angeles, Los Angeles Tourism & Convention Board, US airlines and tourism enterprises to explore the American inbound market and promote China-US tourism visits and exchanges.

junechang@chinadailyusa.com
Houston company becomes top alfalfa exporter Updated: 2016-05-06 11:38 By May zhou in Houston(China Daily)

It all started with a hay named alfalfa, which, like a seed, gave birth to S&S AgriSource Holding. In less than a decade, the little seed grew and spread, enabling S&S to become an agriculture company drawing investments from both Chinese and American investors.

Widely grown throughout the world, alfalfa is a premium forage primarily used for high-producing dairy cows because of its high-protein content and highly digestible fiber, and secondarily for beef cattle, horses and sows.

"Many people are surprised when they learn that China is buying hay from the US. Apparently it doesn't seem that cool compared to importing aircraft. But the fact is, agriculture products are China's main import from the US, and alfalfa makes up to 1 percent of the total imports," said Lisa Yang, founder and CFO of Houston-based S&S AgriSource.

As for alfalfa, China has been the biggest buyer of the product from the US since 2014. In 2015, China accounted for 45 percent of the alfalfa exported from the US.

"We believe the market will continue to grow due to China's dairy sector growth and its resource and infrastructure limitations," said Yang.

By 2015, S&S AgriSource had become the fourth-biggest US alfalfa hay exporter to China. The company's total exports accounted for 18 percent of all alfalfa imported by China. Its clients include China dairy giants such as Yili, Modern Dairy and Bright Dairy.

S&S AgriSource's major operations are located in Western states, such as California, Idaho, Utah and Arizona, where plants produce the most hay for exporting.

"Our people in the purchase department live and travel between different fields all year round; some of them can't stay with their families for most of the year. They are our backbone," she said.

Most of the company's 30-plus employees are Chinese who graduated with an American university degree, according to Yang.

"It's not easy for an international student to get a job after graduation, especially considering the additional cost a company needs to pay to sponsor a foreign worker when the economy is stagnant. But we want to help those hard-working young people with the American dream to succeed and grow with us. We even consider offering company shares to our excellent employees, all of whom will have the opportunity to become shareholders in the coming years," said Yang.

To gain a firm foothold in the industry and secure a stable supply of alfalfa, S&S AgriSource has kept moving up the production chain.

In 2013, the company acquired a 72,000 square-foot warehouse in Long Beach, California. The warehouse is strategically located by a railroad and 20 minutes away from Long Beach Port. The company can transport alfalfa from inland farms for pressing and packaging and ship to China by boat with low transportation costs.

In 2015, the company moved further up the production chain by purchasing more than 1,200 acres in Idaho to grow its own alfalfa. "The land is of USDA certified organic soil for growing alfalfa. We integrated our production chain upstream so that our company can develop sustainably. We now compete in the production line, from growing and processing to exporting," said Yang.

mayzhou@chinadailyusa.com
Then US ambassador to China Gary Locke visits students of a primary school in Shanghai in 2011. Xinhua

Editor's note: This story is one in a series by China Daily USA that marks the 2016 US-China Tourism Year. President Xi Jinping and President Barack Obama declared the year-long program of activities during Xi's state visit to the US in September 2015.

Former US ambassador to China reflects on what's ahead in toursim and world affairs

Gary Locke, the former US ambassador to China, has led US public and private sector efforts to strengthen US-China relations over 30 years. He travels to China up to seven times each year to help Chinese and US companies on cross-border trade and US-China relations. In this Q&A with China Daily USA, he shares his insights on the future of US-China tourism.

Q: Does your current job also involve bilateral relations?

It is a continuation of what I was doing as US ambassador, US commerce secretary and governor of Washington state, which is to help promote bilateral relations, economic, people-to-people, scientific and cultural relationships between our two countries.

Q: Which Chinese city is your favorite? For first-time visitors to China, which city would you recommend going to?

My family very much enjoys exploring China. We enjoyed visiting Xi'an, Kunming, Sichuan province down in the south, and Shanghai and Guangzhou. To get a good and true picture of China, I would say don't just go to cities like Beijing, Shanghai or Guangzhou, but also go to the heartland of China; go to cities like Xi'an, Chengdu or the countryside and mountains. You can really experience the urban China, the rural China and the scenic beauty of China.

Q: President Xi Jinping and US President Barack Obama declared 2016 the year of China-US Tourism. This recognizes both US tourism to China and China visitation to the US. To the US, what does China's outbound tourism mean?

China has spent the most money on international tourism in the world. The amount of spending by Chinese tourists going abroad is three times higher than that by American tourists. China is expected to send 3 million tourists to the United States, and America probably will send tourists close to that number to China. Both countries benefit from this international tourism.

China's outbound tourism is good for our economy. When tourists come, they will shop at the malls, eat at restaurants, sleep in hotels and rent cars, which means jobs to us.

So we very much support that and desire that. It is made easier because we have instituted new visa policies. When I arrived in Beijing as ambassador, the US visa application process could take more than 100 days for Chinese people to get a visa interview. The long wait made Chinese who are interested in buying and touring in the US go to Canada and Europe.

Now we have made progress by offering 10-year visas to Chinese tourists. The new visa policy makes it easier for Chinese to come to the United States. I think we will see more and more tourists from China in the future.

Q: The First World Conference on Tourism for Development will be held this year in Beijing from May 18-21 with the specific goal of advancing the contributions of tourism to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) under the theme "Tourism for Peace and Development". It is expected that several heads of state and government as well as tourism ministers and senior officials from more than 100 countries will participate in this gathering. How likely is the conference to help develop China's tourism industry?

The conference is meaningful because it will help China to improve its tourism industry with information about the latest trends and predictions about international travel and help China better respond to the future demands of international tourism.

Q: You have said that the key to good bilateral relations is people-to-people exchange. Now China's inbound and outbound market, with an annual capacity of millions of visits, has become a major platform for China to strengthen ties with the United States. What do you think of China's "tourism diplomacy" strategy?

Tourism is very important for people all around the world in order to understand the people, the language, the customs and the culture of other countries. From that greater understanding comes diplomacy. Diplomacy first starts with people-to-people exchange.

Q:From your perspective, what should China do to better promote travel between China and the United States?

In addition to better promotional plans, I think easy access to well-designed packaged tours with a variety of options for international tourists to choose from is important. So foreign visitors can tour not only the cities in the east, but also can enjoy cities in the heartland with historical sites and natural scenery to get a real flavor of China.

lindadeng@chinadailyusa.com
Carnegie Hall celebrates 125th anniversary Updated: 2016-05-06 11:38 By Hezi Jiang in New York(China Daily)

While most of us only get one song on our birthday, Carnegie Hall got dozens as it entered its 126th year.

On Thursday evening - exactly 125 years to the day that the hall first opened its doors in 1891 - many of the world's most renowned musicians returned to the storied stage to celebrate its birthday with a benefit concert.

The lineup - including Lang Lang, Yo-Yo Ma, Emanuel Ax, Michael Feinstein, Rene Fleming, Marilyn Horne, Jessye Norman, Itzhak Perlman and James Taylor - brought a rich mix of solo, chamber and choral works from the worlds of opera, classical music, musical theater and contemporary popular song.

For the first time, Chinese pianist Lang Lang and Chinese-American cellist Yo-Yo Ma played on the same stage. Along with Emanuel Ax, they performed The Swan from Saint-Sans' The Carnival of the Animals.

"It's like a dream come true to play with these the best musicians in the world," said Lang before the performance, who also played two solos and a four-hands arrangement with Ax.

"All of the musicians rehearsed very hard for this performance," he said. "Many are soloists. We had to run the pieces together."

The busy hall, where 46,000 events have taken place since its opening, was once so close to demolition that it has made every birthday since more significant.

Carnegie Hall was slated to be destroyed to make way for a commercial skyscraper in 1960, when Lincoln Center was under construction. Violist Isaac Stern helped start a movement among musicians and fans that saved the hall.

Lang referenced the famous statement by Stern that everywhere in the world, music enhances the hall, with one exception: Carnegie Hall enhances the music.

Lang said that he couldn't agree more. "Carnegie Hall is irreplaceable. I first performed here in 2001 when I was 18. As I played, I found that my music sounded so much better than usual. Carnegie has its soul and the souls of musicians, as if Tchaikovsky and other legends are listening to you play," he said.

At its 125th anniversary, Carnegie Hall also invited music lovers to share their memories of the institution on its website.

A Canadian teenager who set the goal to play at "the most prestigious music hall in the world" after first visiting the hall as a tourist will perform with the Toronto Youth Wind Orchestra there in June. A black woman remembered going to see Nina Simone as a young girl.

Among the most inspiring experiences, there were also "heartbreaking" moments as well, as one anonymous music fan wrote:

"My daughter once lived on W56th Street - directly across the street from Carnegie. Years ago, I came into the City to visit her. We strolled around the neighborhood. A stranger approached and asked us how to get to Carnegie Hall. Before I could get the word 'Practice' out of my mouth, my daughter intervened with directions: 'Turn right at the next corner and then turn left onto 57th Street' I felt like screaming NO, NO, NO! A missed opportunity! An opportunity that likely will never present itself again."

hezijiang@chinadailyusa.com
China, Italy hold forum to promote cooperation Updated: 2016-05-06 16:12 (Xinhua)

ROME - China and Italy held a bilateral business forum here on Thursday to explore cooperation opportunities in the technical and commercial industries of two countries.

The forum, in its third year, mainly focused on finance, infrastructure construction and healthcare sectors. Representatives from leading Italian and Chinese companies also exchanged views over environmental protection and sustainable development.

The business forum is an important platform that helps companies from the two countries to better know each other and take advantage of collaboration opportunities, Italian Ambassador to China Ettore Francesco Sequi said.

On the sidelines of a gala dinner organized by the Italy-China Foundation earlier this week, Sequi also told Xinhua that China's Belt and Road Initiative has acquired more importance in Italy, where various events are being organized to present the many opportunities offered by the initiative, most notably for port infrastructures on the Mediterranean peninsulas.
Gary Locke: Still promoting exchanges Updated: 2016-05-06 10:26 By Yu Deng in Seattle(China Daily USA)

Editor's note: This story is one in a series by China Daily USA that marks the 2016 US-China Tourism Year. President Xi Jinping and President Barack Obama declared the year-long program of activities during Xi's state visit to the US in September 2015.

Former US ambassador to China reflects on what's ahead in toursim and world affairs

Gary Locke, the former US ambassador to China, has led US public and private sector efforts to strengthen US-China relations over 30 years. He travels to China up to seven times each year to help Chinese and US companies on cross-border trade and US-China relations. In this Q&A with China Daily USA, he shares his insights on the future of US-China tourism.

Then US ambassador to China Gary Locke visits students of a primary school in Shanghai in 2011. Xinhua

Q: Does your current job also involve bilateral relations?

It is a continuation of what I was doing as US ambassador, US commerce secretary and governor of Washington state, which is to help promote bilateral relations, economic, people-to-people, scientific and cultural relationships between our two countries.

Q: Which Chinese city is your favorite? For first-time visitors to China, which city would you recommend going to?

My family very much enjoys exploring China. We enjoyed visiting Xi'an, Kunming, Sichuan province down in the south, and Shanghai and Guangzhou. To get a good and true picture of China, I would say don't just go to cities like Beijing, Shanghai or Guangzhou, but also go to the heartland of China; go to cities like Xi'an, Chengdu or the countryside and mountains. You can really experience the urban China, the rural China and the scenic beauty of China.

Q: President Xi Jinping and US President Barack Obama declared 2016 the year of China-US Tourism. This recognizes both US tourism to China and China visitation to the US. To the US, what does China's outbound tourism mean?

China has spent the most money on international tourism in the world. The amount of spending by Chinese tourists going abroad is three times higher than that by American tourists. China is expected to send 3 million tourists to the United States, and America probably will send tourists close to that number to China. Both countries benefit from this international tourism.

China's outbound tourism is good for our economy. When tourists come, they will shop at the malls, eat at restaurants, sleep in hotels and rent cars, which means jobs to us.

So we very much support that and desire that. It is made easier because we have instituted new visa policies. When I arrived in Beijing as ambassador, the US visa application process could take more than 100 days for Chinese people to get a visa interview. The long wait made Chinese who are interested in buying and touring in the US go to Canada and Europe.

Now we have made progress by offering 10-year visas to Chinese tourists. The new visa policy makes it easier for Chinese to come to the United States. I think we will see more and more tourists from China in the future.

Q: The First World Conference on Tourism for Development will be held this year in Beijing from May 18-21 with the specific goal of advancing the contributions of tourism to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) under the theme "Tourism for Peace and Development". It is expected that several heads of state and government as well as tourism ministers and senior officials from more than 100 countries will participate in this gathering. How likely is the conference to help develop China's tourism industry?

The conference is meaningful because it will help China to improve its tourism industry with information about the latest trends and predictions about international travel and help China better respond to the future demands of international tourism.

Q: You have said that the key to good bilateral relations is people-to-people exchange. Now China's inbound and outbound market, with an annual capacity of millions of visits, has become a major platform for China to strengthen ties with the United States. What do you think of China's "tourism diplomacy" strategy?

Tourism is very important for people all around the world in order to understand the people, the language, the customs and the culture of other countries. From that greater understanding comes diplomacy. Diplomacy first starts with people-to-people exchange.

Q:From your perspective, what should China do to better promote travel between China and the United States?

In addition to better promotional plans, I think easy access to well-designed packaged tours with a variety of options for international tourists to choose from is important. So foreign visitors can tour not only the cities in the east, but also can enjoy cities in the heartland with historical sites and natural scenery to get a real flavor of China.

lindadeng@chinadailyusa.com
Seoul center, tourism week add to Chengdu's global reach Updated: 2016-05-06 10:26 By Li Yang and Li Yu(China Daily USA)

Left: A Chengdu tourism and culture week in Seoul begins on April 26. Right: Moscow's Chengdu tourism experience center opens in the Russian capital on April 25, which also marked the beginning of "Chengdu Gourmet Week". Photos Provided to China Daily

A Chengdu tourism and culture week in Seoul that began on April 26 has concluded successfully.

The two organizers, Chengdu tourism bureau and Chengdu Culture and Tourism Development Group, opened a Chengdu tourism experience center in the capital of South Korea on the opening day of the event, making it the third in the world after similar centers in Hong Kong and Moscow.

Chengdu also plans to open tourism experience centers in the United States, Australia, Japan and Taiwan province this year.

In addition to the opening of the center, the Chengdu event included a promotion event on Chengdu tourism, recommendations on Chengdu's most popular tourist routes and the launch of Chengdu's official Korean language tourism website.

More than 200 people from government departments, tourism agencies and tourism columnists and reporters from the host country attended the promotion, which included information on Chengdu's fashion, food, Taoism, Three Kingdoms culture, modern arts and giant pandas.

The Chengdu tourism experience center in Seoul, where travelers can directly book almost everything needed for a trip to Chengdu through the city's partner travel agencies in South Korea, promotes differently themed tourist routes, such as food, folk culture or natural scenery, in different seasons.

South Korea is an important source of tourists for Chengdu. Last year, South Korean travelers made about 120,000 trips to Chengdu.

In March, a giant panda themed pavilion was opened in a park 40 kilometers south of Seoul. Two pandas, named Aibao and Lebao, were sent to the pavilion from Chengdu.

On April 25, Moscow's Chengdu tourism experience center was opened, which also marked the beginning of "Chengdu Gourmet Week" in the Russian capital. The Chengdu tourism bureau and the Chengdu Culture and Tourism Development Group hosted this publicity campaign.

The center is located in one of the largest Chinese restaurants in downtown Moscow. During the gourmet week, local diners could sample more than 100 varieties of cuisine from Chengdu.

Luo Jianming, the Chengdu tourism bureau Party chief, said: "Using food to promote Chengdu in Russia, we expect the Russian people to start their trips to Chengdu from experiencing its tastes. Those tastes can attract them to visit Chengdu, and fall in love with the city."

Last year, Russian tourists made 14,507 trips to Chengdu. In May last year, a direct air route between Chengdu and Moscow began.

The Chengdu tourism bureau expects the number of Russian visitors to Chengdu will rise rapidly, given Chengdu's unique culture, nature and history.

Chengdu is now connected to 164 major cities around the world via 85 air routes.
Gentleman Artists come to DC Updated: 2016-05-07 04:19 By HUA SHENGDUN(China Daily USA)

Poetry, painting, and calligraphy  known as the Three Perfections  are the foundation of traditional Chinese art. No one body of art exemplifies the spirit of this practice quite like the acclaimed Gentleman Artists of the Wu School.

Walking by a Mountain Stream, painted by Shen Zhou, considered the founder of the Wu School, is a hallmark example of the Wu School style of painting. Wu Yi and Zhu Cunli, two friends of Shen, added calligraphic poems to the piece. Allan Fong / For China Daily

The Wu School is the symbol of Chinese painting in the Ming Dynasty, said Zhichao Lyu, a fellow of Chinese painting conservation at the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery in Washington.

The Sackler Gallerys exhibition Painting with Words celebrates the Wu School by examining the imagery, brushstrokes and poetry of the artists.

Based around the ancient city of Suzhou, East China's Jiangsu province, artists of the Wu School drew inspiration from the surrounding hills and wetlands by Lake Tai and the Yangtze River. Though the city was a vibrant and affluent hub of political and economic activity, it was still able to provide the quiet, simple lifestyle the Gentleman Artists sought.

The tranquil landscape surrounding Suzhou inspired a recurring theme of natural aesthetics and private outings. Depictions of thatched huts partially hidden by forests and gentlemen strolling along a mountain stream are typical of the Wu School style.

Followers of the Wu School were known for their gentle, lightly colored landscapes and a restrained use of color. Accompanied by fluid and graceful calligraphy, the overall effect of their work is a world of natural serenity.

The associated poems communicate a similar message, articulating the painted scene and, in those containing a human element, inspiring a layer of depth to the subjects state of mind.

Themes expressed in Ming Dynasty art were carried down from previous dynasties, though with stylistic variations.

Each painting is built up from a series of brush strokes meant to express the personality and feelings of the artist, rather than display his technical competence.

Zhichao Lyu (second from left), Andrew W. Mellon Fellow in Chinese- painting conservation at the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery in Washington, leads a Chinese-language tour through the Painting With Words exhibition on April 30. The gallery has one of the most comprehensive collections of Wu School art in the nation. Provided to China Daily

Artists of the Ming Dynasty inherited the essence of the arts from the Song and Yuan dynasties, and they directed the artists that came after them. So the artists combined some great effects together, as well as developed new techniques, said Lyu.

The Gentleman Artists of this era knew each other and bonded over their stylistic approaches. Wen Zhengming and Tang Yin, two of the Gentleman Artists, were very close friends, Lyu said. You can even see in their paintings that they have a good relationship.

Wen Zhengming, head of the Wu School for several decades, and Tang were born in the same year on the same street, and had frequent interactions in and outside of their artistic endeavors.

The same is true of many artists of the era, who were all like-minded in their pursuit of their craft. A different artist or artists, usually a close friend, traditionally wrote poems to accompany each painting, a practice that conveyed mutual respect for each others work.

The aspect of community surrounding the Wu Schools body of work is felt by admirers to this day. One self-proclaimed art enthusiast, Susan Feltner, organized a group of Chinese Americans at the Sackler gallery on April 30, for a private tour given in Mandarin.

Young people enjoy participating in these cultural events now as part of their life, especially in China, she said. This is how we socialize now, and how we bond over common interests.

It is not unlike the artists themselves, said Feltner. You look at these painters, and many of them knew each other, and became very good friends because they shared the same intellectual pursuits, she said. The same is true today; making friends is all about finding people who are on the same intellectual wavelength as you.

The Sackler Gallery is a branch of the Smithsonian museums exclusively dedicated to Asian art, and houses one of the most comprehensive collections of Wu School paintings in the country. The Painting with Words show runs through July 24.

Allan Fong in Washington contributed to this story.
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HA NOI  Exports of Vietnamese shrimp products are expected to experience a strong recovery in the first half of this year after a slowdown last year.

The export value of shrimp in the second quarter would increase by 10 per cent to US$788 million against the first quarter, the Viet Nam Association of Seafood Producers and Exporters (VASEP) said.

The total shrimp export value for this entire year was predicted to gain a year-on-year growth of 12 per cent to $3.3 billion.

In the second quarter, Viet Nams shrimp exports to Russia and China would increase as they were considered the major markets, and the local exports to the United States (US) and European Union (EU) would also be higher because of lower inventory in those markets.

The association reported that in the first quarter Viet Nam witnessed a recovery in exports after a drop last year. The export value reached a year-on-year increase of 7.9 per cent to $619.2 million.

The growth was a result of higher exports to the world market, stability in the monetary market and higher demand from major markets, the association said. In addition, lower shrimp exports of other shrimp producers in the world such as India, Thailand and Ecuador, would be an advantage for Viet Nams shrimp producers and exporters.

In the first quarter, Vietnamese shrimp products were exported to 64 markets. The top ten major markets included the US, the EU, Japan, and mainland China, in addition to South Korea, Canada, Australia, ASEAN, Taiwan and Switzerland, accounted for 94 per cent of the total national export value.

The exports to the US, were the highest at 30.6 per cent year-on-year in the first quarter, followed by China (up by 24.3 per cent), the EU (up by 2.9 per cent) and Japan (up by 0.7 per cent). Meanwhile, exports reduced by between 5.1 per cent and 30 per cent to South Korea, Canada, Australia, and ASEAN, apart from Taiwan and Switzerland.

Fisheries exports recover

Viet Nam earned $1.97 billion from fisheries exports in the first four months of the year, a 6.2 per cent increase year-on-year.

After a decline last year, the recovery in 2016 is a good sign for exporters.

According to the General Department of Customs, exports of two main items, shrimp and tra fish, were up 8 per cent and 2.4 per cent. But shipments of cuttlefish and octopus fell by 6.2 per cent and of tuna by 5.5 per cent. Exports of marine fish surged by 19.5 per cent and that of other marine creatures also saw an increase.

Tuna, cephalopods, crabs and marine fish accounted for more than 30 per cent of the total fisheries exports, and are forecast to increase significantly this year thanks to the steady supply and the rising demand in key markets.

Tuna and cephalopod exports are expected to be worth $507 million and $470 million, up 12 per cent and 10 per cent respectively, while exports of crab, surimi and marine fish are expected to top $1.3 billion, up 13 per cent, according to VASEP.  VNS
by Tu Quy

There is a little-known, traditional Cambodian market which has existed in the middle of HCM City for nearly 50 years, selling traditional foodstuff from the country of pagodas and bringing colour to this city.

If you ask for directions to the market, locals living in ward 1 in District 10, HCM City, they will enthusiastically tell you, that market is located in a hamlet where Cambodian Vietnamese originally inhabited and traded. There are a lot of interesting things to see in the market, and people are sociable as well.

Indeed, when we walked into the market, we could feel an atmosphere which was totally distinct from other Vietnameses common ones. The foodstuff on offer there had delightful eye-catching colours. The sellers are all Cambodian Vietnamese who have resided in Viet Nam for decades.

According to them, a significant number of Cambodians migrated to Viet Nam in 1970. At the beginning, the group lived in Hoc Mon District, but after relocating frequently, they chose to settle in District 10, and then the market was formed.

In the market, various products originating from Tonle Sap lake area in Cambodia are well-stocked on wood shelves. They vary from different kinds of dried fish, dried frog and vegetables, to traditional foods.

People can easily recognise the original culture of the neighbouring country by the written signboards and the particular layout of the market. There are a huge number of Cambodian products such as vegetables, dried food or necessities being sold here. Besides, though the sellers speak Vietnamese like natives, they still have the typical Cambodian swarthy skin and pleasant personality, Huong who lives at Le Hong Phong Street, District 10, said.

According to Vietnamese customers, there is not much of a price difference between Vietnamese products and Cambodian ones. The latter costs a bit more due to high transportation charges.

If you are a real foodie, you cannot miss the Num Bo Choc fish noodle of Tu Xe. Besides dried fish, my family also brings another hometown food, which is Num Bo Choc fish noodle, to the city. All of its ingredients are from my homeland, she said.

According to Xe, the main ingredient of the noodle is the snakehead fish from Tonle Sap Lake, Prahok and whole rhizome. Prahok is a Khmer traditional paste made with salted and fermented mudfish.

Noticing that the customers seemed surprised by neem tree leaves being sold in the market, Ba Sen, the seller, affably recommended, Cambodian Vietnamese like these a lot. They mostly buy these for a dish made of raw fish. It would be much more delicious if you tear the leaves off, mix it with a bit of shredded dried snakeskin gourami or snakehead fish, add some slices of pork side and cucumber, then eat with chili garlic fish sauce. Moreover, the price is not high at all, only VN5,000 - VN7,000 (20 to 30 US cents) per bundle.

Besides Xes noodle, there is another intriguing dish, which is sweetened porridge, cooked by Nguyen Thi Co in the market.

Just as Co said, she had sold sweetened porridge with her mother since childhood, and she kept doing this job for 40 years after her mother passed away.

Her porridge is a favourite of many Vietnamese for its extraordinary taste of palm sugar, which is the main ingredient.

The mixed porridge here is different as it is coloured with natural ingredients. This food makes me feel really fresh after school. It is low-priced as well, varying from VN7,000 to VN 20,000, Hang, a frequent visitor to the market, said.

At present, this market is not only the place where Cambodian-Vietnamese stay and trade, but it is also a meeting place for the Cambodian community in HCM City when they miss the atmosphere of their hometown.  VNS
BERLIN  A bilingual version of the Truyen Kieu (Kieu Tale), a Vietnamese masterpiece from the 18th century, was launched in Berlin on Sunday.

The Vietnamese-German book was printed by the The Gioi Publishing House in Ha Noi. Some 750 copies were shipped to Berlin.

Kieu Tale was composed by Nguyen Du. He and German author Goethe were contemporaries 200 hundreds year ago, Truong Hong Quang, doctor of linguistics, said at the book launch.

The work is a literary and a linguistic symbol of Viet Nam. The book has been translated into 20 languages.

Quang had also compared Nguyen Dus Kieu Tale with Johann Wolfgang von Goethes Faust in his research many years ago.

As long as Kieu Tale endures, the Vietnamese language shall exist, Quang was quoted as saying by Vietnamese scholar Pham Quynh.

The bilingual book titled Das Madchen Kieu is based on a German version by the late couple Irene and Franz Faber. The book was designed by Angelika Schulze and its cover was illustrated by artist Claudia Viet uc Brochers.

Faber, a former journalist, was presented the Kieu Tale by President Ho Chi Minh during his visit to Viet Nam in 1955. This bilingual version in Vietnamese and French comprises two volumes with 471 pages and was published in 1951.

Faber and his wife spent seven years studying the Vietnamese language to translate The Tale of Kieu into German so it could be introduced to the German people.

For the past 50 years, Faber keep the book safely and later presented it to the Ho Chi Minh Museum.

Kieu was published in German for the first time in 1964 in East Germany. It was reprinted in 1980.

The bilingual Kieu is a meaningful gift for expatriate Vietnamese parents in Germany who are helping their children read and understand a masterpiece of Vietnamese literature, Dr Nguyen Viet uc, from the Vietnamese Business Association in Germany, said at the ceremony.

The association is sponsoring this event being held to celebrate the 40th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Viet Nam and Germany and the 250th birth anniversary of Nguyen Du.

At the ceremony, the attendees, both Vietnamese and Germans, watched a short film about the book publishing project featuring artist Brochers idea to illustrate the book cover. Brochers is a close relative of Faber and is also heir to Fabers posthumous manuscript.

Nguyen Du was born in January 3, 1766. He is the first Vietnamese to be honoured as a world cultural celebrity by the World Peace Council in 1965 to mark celebrations on his 200th birth anniversary. He also received the honorary title Man of Culture by the UNESCO Great Council in 2015, for the second time.  VNS
LAC LA BICHE, Canada  Canada yesterday began airlifting to safety up to 25,000 people from the city of Fort McMurray forced from their homes by raging forest fires in Albertas oil sands region.

The authorities ordered the oil city of 100,000 people to be evacuated after firefighters backed by air tankers and helicopters failed to prevent the monster blaze from engulfing entire neighborhoods.

Some 4,000 people who fled to the north of the city have been airlifted to

Edmonton and Calgary, Alberta Premier Rachel Notley said, adding that the hope is to airlift 8,000 by the end of the day.

"Right now we are working with industry to do as much air evacuation as possible," she said.

"And we are doing everything we can to open the highways so we can get fuel up there and then get those folks moving south as quickly as we can."

The airlift, carried out with government and petroleum industry aircraft, began after evacuees who found refuge north of the city risked becoming trapped if shifting winds were to send the flames spreading toward them.

The government has declared a state of emergency in Alberta, a province the size of France that is home to one of the worlds most prodigious oil

industries.

Terrifying

More than 1,100 firefighters are battling 49 separate blazes across the province  seven of them totally out of control.

The fires have engulfed 85,000 hectares (210,000 acres) of forest including 12,000 in the area surrounding Fort McMurray, now the epicenter of the inferno, where 2,000 homes have been destroyed.

Television footage from the center of the disaster zone showed trees ablaze on the edge of highways crowded with bumper-to-bumper traffic trying to leave as billowing black smoke darkened the sky. Bright orange embers whizzed through the air and floated down onto cars.

"The footage weve seen, the cars racing down highways while fire rages on all sides, is nothing short of terrifying," Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told lawmakers in Ottawa.

The Alberta government has sent a tanker under guard to help rescue vehicles stranded south of Fort McMurray, with three mobile fuel stations set up along a 200 kilometer stretch of road.

Thousands of evacuees thronged the tiny hamlet of Lac La Biche, about 300 kilometers south of Fort McMurray, after making a chaotic escape.

"Theres no guide on how to get out of a forest fire," evacuee Alan Javierto said, recounting a hurried, frightening evacuation as homes and businesses were reduced to cinders.

The flight from Fort McMurray began in earnest shortly before midnight Tuesday after a mandatory evacuation order.

Late Wednesday, fires forced the evacuation of Saprae Creek, a neighborhood east of the citys airport where even firefighters had to pull out.

As strong northwesterly winds whipped up the flames, three more communities to the south were evacuated, including Anzac, with police going door-to-door to make sure no residents were left behind.

Slashing production

Oil companies crucial to the region such as Suncor, Syncrude and Shell have pulled out non-essential employees, and set up emergency shelters in their huge bungalow worker communities.

All three major firms have slashed their output  with Suncor shutting down its main production site north of Fort McMurray, and Shell Canada stopping production at its Albian site, with an output of 255,000 barrels per day.

Alberta has been left bone-dry after a period of unusually scant rainfall and unseasonably high temperatures.

Lawmaker Rona Ambrose, who represents the affected region, wept as she vowed in parliament that it would recover from the disaster.

"Fort McMurray is a place where Canadians have come from all across this country. Its a tough day for Albertans but we will persevere" she said through tears.

However, Notley said the tens of thousands evacuated from the city face a long wait to return home.

"I must be very, very direct about this," she said. "It is apparent that the damage to the community in Fort McMurray is extensive, and the city is not safe for residents at this time."

"I understand that the Albertans are scared, tired, and worried about their homes and what the future holds for themselves and their families," she added.

One particularly hard hit area was the Beacon Hill neighborhood some five kilometers from downtown Fort McMurray, where 70 percent of homes were in ruins. Even harder hit was the Waterways neighborhood, where nine in 10 homes have been reduced to charred remains.

Television footage showed the smoldering remains of a large motor home park, and the blackened carcasses of cars consumed by the flames.

Public Security Minister Ralph Goodale called the fire "terrifying."

"This kind of disaster will not be solved in a day or two, a week or two, or a month or two. Were all going to have to be here for the long haul."  AFP
UNITED NATIONS, United States  Microsoft has accepted an invitation from the UN Security Council to address a special debate next week on counter-terrorism and confronting "digital terror," UN diplomats said.

The ministerial-level debate on Wednesday is organized by Egypt, which holds this months presidency of the 15-member council.

It will be the first time that a technology company will address the Security Council, which has been increasingly concerned by the use of the Internet and social media to spread violent extremism.

A spokesman for Microsoft confirmed that a representative of the software giant will take part in the special session, but declined to give details.

A UN panel of experts in June called for Internet and social media companies to respond to the use of their services by Islamic State recruiters and other extremists.

The experts had recommended to the Security Council that invitations be sent to Internet companies to address the body on the measures they are taking to prevent such misuse.

In a report to the council, the panel raised alarm over the "growth of high-definition digital terror: the use of propaganda, primarily by Islamic State and its sympathizers, to spread fear and promote their distorted ideology."

IS recruiters have made savvy use of the Internet and social media to build up the groups pool of foreign fighters.

About 30,000 foreign fighters have flocked to Syria, Iraq and other countries to join the ranks of jihadists.  AFP
Sustainable development is a popular concept for businesses in developed countries. But in Viet Nam, it is still new. Hai Quan (Customs) Newspaper speaks with Nguyen Quang Vinh, vice general secretary of Viet Nam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI) on the issue.

In 2010, the Viet Nam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI) in co-operation with some businesses set up a Business Council for Viet Nam Sustainable Development. Could you see any change of Vietnamese business communitys awareness of the issue?

In fact, since 1999, we have started to introduce the concept of corporate social responsibility and sustainable development to the Vietnamese businesspeople. Since then, the businesses awareness about the issue has positively changed.

The VCCI has been playing leading role in supporting Vietnamese businesses to carry out the corporate social responsibilities through series of projects on training capacity enhancement and world experience sharing. Currently, small- and medium-sized businesses awareness on sustainable development has been considerably improved.

Notably, many large-scaled enterprises have been actively carrying out the corporate social responsibilities throughout several social and environment projects.

As you mentioned large-scaled enterprises have well done the responsibilities but small-and medium-sized businesses have just been aware of the issue. What are the difficulties to the businesses?

The biggest difficulty to the small and medium businesses is knowledge. In fact, implementing the corporate social responsibilities is not complicated. For example, a business just needs to review manufacturing process to save power, energy, and water. This is knowledge but not expense.

So far, the chamber has given financial assistance through projects just worth about VN5 million (US$220) but the benefit is big. Once, the chamber supported a business to make their workshops cool in summer. The project cost VN4 million ($180) but made reduce the workshops temperature by 2 degrees Celsius, which helped to lower the expense on electric and water consumption.

Thus, I can say that financial resource was not a hurdle. The chambers main task is to set up supporting programmes.

Along with resolutions on working environment and natural resource protection, the criteria of transparency and anti-corruption are important issues during the implementation of the sustainable development. Do you think these are the big hurdles to businesses?

This was the biggest concern. It is because building a transparency and non-corruption business culture is a mission impossible at this moment.

Recently, the VCCI has been assigned to carry out a project on building consistency and transparency in business relationship. The chamber has been mobilising active contributions of business community to fighting corruption. We expect to establish an anti-corruption business league, which helps to positively influence to business environment in the country.

Through the league, enterprises could establish many activities and suggest several proposals on anti-corruption to the Government. This will be an important activity of the business community to make contribution to building up a professional and transparent business environment, especially in the period of in-depth international integration.

Do you have any suggestion to improve the sustainable development activity in corporate? Do you think the current legal framework was sufficient enough for doing business?

As my opinion, the legal framework should be further completed to help the activity develop. For example, the Labour Code needs to supplement an item of making report on corporate social responsibilities and sustainable development. The item will show responsibility of making public enterprises operation.  VNS
Bui Sy Loi, deputy head of the National Assembly (NA)s Social Affairs Committee, spoke with Nong Thon Ngay Nay (Countryside Today) about workers access to social welfare policies.

What do you think about the fact that those who move from the countryside to the city to work are being left behind in social welfare policies, have to live in slums and are disadvantaged in many ways?

This fact is so bad that we must consider it in a serious way, in order to seek solutions to ensure social welfare policies for residents, following viewpoints of the Vietnamese Communist Party and Constitution. Workers who emigrate to urban areas face many difficulties. Most of the migrant workers are young and main labour force of their hometowns so their migration creates pressure on the elderly and children in their hometowns.

Migrant workers are facing too many problems in accessing social welfare, especially those of housing, childrens education, etc. Localities cannot manage migration because many migrant workers fail to follow laws and register for their residency at the place where they are staying.

Despite State policies and laws adopted recently on population, civil status, temporary residency registration, social housing, healthcare, health examinations and treatment, the implementation of these regulations at localities has not yet solved ongoing issues.

Research showed that up to 99 per cent of rural residents who move to big cities have no access to support from their new city. What do you think is the cause of this?

There are many reasons. More than 66.1 per cent of these workers are not skilled, while 86.3 per cent of them have to rent rooms. Only 2.9 per cent can afford to buy houses.

Domestic migration also leads to a considerable amount of socio-economic expenses.

The State has recognised domestic migration, with its positive contributions, as an essential contributor to poverty reduction and growth, but there are still worries from the Government on its negative impacts - especially those from spontaneous migration.

Spontaneous migration puts more pressure on already overloaded infrastructure systems and public services, making the management of social safety and order difficult.

The Government set up a residency registration system to control migration, but the system makes it difficult for workers to access employment opportunities, social services such as healthcare and education as easily as locals.

Much research proves that a majority of workers who move to the city temporarily will settle down in urban areas, so their lack of access to social services and opportunities to join social activities turns them into an increasingly large part of urban poverty and hunger.

Workers movements are a hot topic and are regarded as the consequence of urbanisation and industrialisation. Why are there still so few policies on movement between cities and rural areas?

In fact, the Vietnamese Party and State always attaches importance to ensuring interests and creating employment for labourers in general and this type of worker in particular. It is not a short-term fix. It needs a comprehensive solution and a long-term strategy. The point is that we must implement it in a comprehensive and positive way to make changes in awareness and call for involvement from sectors of all levels and political and social organisations.

According to current regulations, if there is any trouble, migrant workers must look to local authorities for help. They must register for residency and seek help from local authorities.

What measures will be taken in the upcoming time to help these workers access social welfare policies?

The NAs Social Affairs Committee monitored and submitted specific policies. The Government has added domestic migration policies but they are not comprehensive. The laws regarding population, social housing, education and public healthcare have been adjusted quite comprehensively. However, there must be more supervision of the NA and peoples councils at all levels to make proposals to review the matter comprehensively.  VNS
KHANH HOA  Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong has expressed his confidence in the political stuff and fighting spirit of officers and soldiers of the Viet Nam Peoples Navy (VPN) and units based in the Naval Zone 4 in particular.

At a meeting with officers and soldiers of the Naval Zone 4 High Command in Cam Ranh, the central province of Khanh Hoa yesterday, the Party chief highlighted the Viet Nam Peoples Army (VPA)s resolve to protect the nation, peace and peoples wealthy and happy lives.

He, therefore, underlined the need to increase the Partys all-round leadership and the States concentrated management over the army, and tighten links between the army and people.

The leader urged the VPN to thoroughly grasp the Partys guidelines and viewpoints as well as the States policies and laws on national defence, especially the Resolution of the 11th Party Central Committees 8th plenum on the national protection strategy in the new situation.

The naval force should take the initiative in co-ordinating with Party committees at all levels and local authorities to strengthen community-based national defence, he said.

The Party, State and people always pay special heed to building the army in general and the peoples navy in particular, the Party chief said, noting his belief that the VPN will carry forward the traditions of the Party, the VPA and the nation to achieve more feats of arms and contribute more to national construction and defence.

Meeting online with the army and people in the provinces Truong Sa Island District, Party General Secretary Trong praised their efforts in production and national protection.

The Party, people and army in the mainland always turn their heart towards Truong Sa, he affirmed, calling on the district to devise a long-term strategy on economic development and national defence.  VNS
HA NOI  Viet Nam still considers Japan its close, long-term partner on foreign policy, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc said while receiving Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida yesterday.

He proposed Japan continue providing ODA to Viet Nam in the fiscal year of 2016, along with supporting the country in its industrialisation process, high-quality infrastructure construction, economic restructuring and high-quality human resource training.

The Prime Minister also suggested Japan provide long-term assistance for Viet Nam in adapting to climate change issues - particularly drought and salt water intrusion.

He also urged Viet Nam and Japan to co-operate to implement signed agreements, connecting their economies at the central and local level.

He said the two countries should increase delegation visits and effectively implement dialogue mechanisms.

Phuc said he hoped Japan would continue striving for the common goal of ensuring security, maritime and aviation safety, and the peaceful resolution of disputes in the East Sea in line with international laws, including the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).

For his part, Japanese Minister Kishida affirmed that Japan attaches importance to relations with Viet Nam. He congratulated Viet Nam on the success of its 12th National Party Congress.

Foreign ministers talk

On the same day, Japanese Minister Kishida held talks with Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Pham Binh Minh.

The two sides expressed delight at stronger and more comprehensive development of the strategic partnership between Viet Nam and Japan.

They discussed measures to continue implementing results of the official visit to Japan by Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong last September. They also discussed making preparations for Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc to attend the expanded G7 Summit in Japan scheduled for later this month, and to hold talks with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

The two sides agreed to enhance political trust by keeping up with regular visits and dialogues, and upholding existing dialogue mechanisms.

The two sides discussed regional and international issues of common concerns and agreed to enhance co-operation at multilateral forums.

Regarding the East Sea issue, the two sides agreed on the need to ensure peace and security in adherence with international law.  VNS
Over 33,600 Vietnamese labourers have been sent to work abroad in the first four months of this year, including more than 12,800 women. Illustrative Image laodong.com.vn

HA NOI  Over 33,600 Vietnamese labourers have been sent to work abroad in the first four months of this year, including more than 12,800 women.

The number has been announced by the Department of Overseas Labour under the Ministry of Labour, Invalid, and Social Affairs.

The department said only in April, there were nearly 10,500 Vietnamese labourers sent to work abroad. Taiwan was the market receiving the highest number of Vietnamese labourers with about 4,990 people, second was Japan with nearly 3,350.

According to the department, the export labour market showed positive signs during the first four months of this year, offering job opportunities for Vietnamese labourers in Thailand and Australia .

A maximum of 200 Vietnamese labourers would be given visas for visiting and finding jobs in Australia this year.
Under the draft resolution, the country will have one million enterprises by the year 2020. The private sector will contribute about 48-49 per cent to GDP, and investment from people and private enterprises will account for 49 per cent of total investment.  VNA/VNS Photo Tran Viet

Viet Nam News -HA NOI  The Government resolution on Vietnamese business development would create a breakthrough in administrative management, create favourable conditions for business operations, and promote production and business activities, said Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc at a cabinet meeting yesterday to discuss the draft resolution on Vietnamese business development.

The resolution will contribute to protect the business rights of enterprises as per the laws and wipe out hurdles and sub-licenses, which are really burdens refraining the development of the business community, said Phuc.

Speaking at the meeting, the leader affirmed that the resolution will not discriminate between business sectors, and that foreign direct investment, State-owned and private enterprises will all be treated equally.

The Party, State and Government considered private business as a motivation to improve the competitiveness and independence of the countrys economy, he said.

Under the draft resolution, the country will have one million enterprises by the year 2020. The private sector will contribute about 48-49 per cent to GDP, and investment from people and private enterprises will account for 49 per cent of total investment.

The resolution focuses on five major tasks and measures including administrative procedural reform, the build-up of a favourable business environment, ensuring business rights and equality in business opportunity and approaches to human resources, the reduction of business fees, and the protection of legal rights and benefits of enterprises.

Notably, under the resolution, chairmen of cities and provincial Peoples Committees will have to organise monthly dialogues with the business and investor community and set up hotlines and online Q&A meetings.

The chairmen must also take responsibility to the Government for staff management violations including any negative acts of corruption and bureaucracy.

The resolution mentions credit assistance measures for small- and medium-sized enterprises and start-up enterprises.

According to Vu Tien Loc, chairman of the Viet Nam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI), the first target of the resolution was to strengthen belief and trust in businesses.

The No 1 important target of the resolution is to create belief and trust in the business community, Loc said.

In addition, the resolution should focus on solving difficult issues raised in the recent meeting between enterprises and the Prime Minister, Loc said.

He suggested the resolution should be supplemented and adjusted every year.

The chamber chairman also proposed that the resolution should focus on developing private enterprises as well accelerating the restructure of State-owned businesses.

The cabinet agreed with the targets and tasks mentioned in the resolution.

Speaking at the meeting, Deputy Prime Minister Vuong inh Hue said, The resolution must express a main point: that enterprises should put their trust in the State and vice versa. He also suggested that the Viet Nam General Federation of Labour should act as a representative of employees as the VCCI does for employers.

According to the deputy Prime Minister, along with administrative procedural reform, the resolution must focus on measures for developing markets of capital, labour and real estate so as to effectively support business development.

He recommended setting up criteria for assessing business development effectiveness.

Concluding the meeting, Phuc asked the Ministry of Planning and Investment  the resolution compiler  to collect opinions so as to complete the resolution and submit it to the Government next week for approval.  VNS
More than 80 per cent of companies in HCM City requires candidates having at least one year-work experience before recruiting them for IT-related jobs. Illustrative Image tayan.edu.vn

HCM CITY  More than 80 per cent of companies in HCM City requires candidates having at least one year-work experience before recruiting them for IT-related jobs.

It is the latest survey from the Centre for Forecasting Manpower Needs and Labour Market Information under the citys Labour, Invalid and Social Affairs Department conducting in April with participation of 1,868 local companies.

Over a half of companies demanded candidates graduated from universities, 29 per cent requested candidates graduated from colleges for positions of computer programmer, software engineer and database administrators.

Only 16 per cent of companies recruit labourers graduating from vocational and training schools to work as computer technician or computer-component salesperson.

Tran Anh Tuan, head of the centre said the labour market in the city was stable in the first four months of this year.

The companies gave priorities for experienced labourers and candidates graduating from universities, he said.  VNS
Labourers seek job at a job fair in HCM City. The Embassy of France in Viet Nam and the French Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Viet Nam (CCIFV) are organising the 2016 French-Vietnamese Job Fair on May 14 in HCM City.  Photo thanhnien.vn

HCM CITY The Embassy of France in Viet Nam and the French Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Viet Nam (CCIFV) are organising the 2016 French-Vietnamese Job Fair on May 14 in HCM City.

The annual event will provide French and Vietnamese companies a chance to meet with potential candidates.

Twenty-one French and Vietnamese companies will offer around 200 vacancies in diverse fields such as commerce, distribution, audit & accounting, IT, media and communication, industry, mechanical and electrical engineering, construction, service, hospitality and tourism.

Attendees include new graduates and as well as others who are working. Vietnamese who have studied in France and students with degrees in French will also attend.

Workshops will take place at the same time as the recruitment event, allowing participating companies to introduce their HR activities and strategies as well as provide new graduates and young workers with practical tips and advice.

Last year, 80 per cent of participating companies recruited employees at the fair.  VNS
A retiree receives pension at a Nha Be Social Insurance branch in HCM City. The HCM City Social Insurance Agency on Wednesday began to pay monthly pensions and social insurance benefits to pensioners through post offices in a few more districts.  Photo vov.vn

HCM CITY The HCM City Social Insurance Agency on Wednesday began to pay monthly pensions and social insurance benefits to pensioners through post offices in a few more districts.

It has added Hoc Mon, Cu Chi, Nha Be and Can Gio besides three wards of Tan Phu. Last July it had begun a pilot scheme to pay through post offices in Districts 1 and Binh Chanh.

The new model is aimed at replacing the traditional one that requires pensioners to go to local peoples committees to get their money.

Nguyen Thi Hong Lien of Nha Be District said it took her just five minutes to complete the paperwork and get her monthly pension at the Nha Be town post office.

The post office workers were polite, Lien, who was among nearly 100 pensioners who went to the post office on Wednesday (May 4), said.

The Nha Be post office is scheduled to pay around 500 pensioners every month.

Nguyen Thi Thu Van, deputy director of the HCM City Post Office, said money would be delivered home to people aged above 80 and those who are sick for free.

Cao Van Sang, director of the HCM City Social Insurance Agency, said most pensioners have expressed satisfaction with the service they receive at post offices nine months into the pilot programme.

The procedures for pension payment have been streamlined to make them faster and more convenient, he said.

A total of 5,217 people in District 1 have got pensions and social insurance benefits worth VN21.1 billion (US$942,000) at post offices in District 1 since last July.

In Binh Chanh, VN5.4 billion ($241,000) has been paid to more than 1,700 people.

The scheme will be expanded to all wards in the city by October when nearly 124,400 people will benefit.  VNS
United Nations (UN) Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson made a fact-finding trip to the southern province of BenTre yesterday to find out about the impact of the ongoing drought and saline intrusion. Photo zing.vn

BEN TRE  United Nations (UN) Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson made a fact-finding trip to the southern province of BenTre yesterday to find out about the impact of the ongoing drought and saline intrusion. Meeting with a local household victim, Eliasson vowed to seek solutions to help affected farmers.

He later inspected a landslide in Bao Thuan Commune where tens of hectares of soil have been lost to blasting sea waves every year. Truong Duy Hai, deputy chairman of the provincial Peoples Committee, said over 20,000ha of winter-spring crops have been completely destroyed, leading to food shortages.

Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Cao uc Phat informed the UN Deputy Secretary-General that not only the Mekong Delta, but the central and Central Highlands are suffering from severe drought.

The Mekong Delta has lost one million tonnes of rice and over 9,000ha of fruit orchards while more than 200,000 households lack enough water. Eliasson suggested Viet Nam work with countries to devise a joint action plan and solutions that take climate change into account.

He vowed to assist Vietnamese victims in drought-stricken areas and informed international organisations about Viet Nams ongoing disasters. The UN official said he will convey information and images of Viet Nams climate change-induced losses to a meeting in Turkey later this month.  VNS
HA NOI  World Vision is providing relief to vulnerable children and poor people in the southern province of Binh Thuan, suffering from the countrys worst drought in nearly a century.

The initial relief effort is worth some US$60,000 and focuses on providing drinking water and domestic water supply facilities.

Till date, more than 3,000 children and adults in the Ham Thuan Bac and Bac Binh districts have benefited from the organisations work, which includes distributing clean water for 60 days (120 litres per person), water tanks, water pipes and water filters. The initiative began in late April and will continue until mid-May.

Were seeking further funding opportunities to expand our emergency relief efforts to more drought-affected people, Le Van Duong, World Visions National Coordinator of Humanitarian and Emergency Affairs in Viet Nam, said.

Drought and saltwater intrusion began affecting the Mekong Delta last December, causing massive damage to the crops, threatening food security, worsening sanitation and affecting the peoples health.

World Visions actions in the two districts are in response to Viet Nams first-ever appeal for international support of some $48 million in April 2016 to address the prolonged drought and the saline intrusion impact in 20 provinces in the Mekong Delta, the South Central Coast and the Central Highlands.

World Vision has implemented 15-year area development programmes in Viet Nam, specifically in Ham Thuan Bac since 2007 and in Bac Binh since 2005. The programmes have focused on nutrition, education, child protection and participation, livelihood, disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation.

So far, with World Visions help, the living conditions of more than 52,000 people, including vulnerable children, in the two districts have improved.  VNS
SON LA  Several human trafficking cases were recently uncovered in the poor remote areas of the northern mountainous province of Son La.

Human traffickers had cheated people living in these areas and sold them to other countries, the local police said.

In a recent case, the Muong La District Police arrested three people - Thang Van Hang, 23, Vang Pao, 24, and Sung Thi My, 40. On April 30, these traffickers contacted two locals, Va Thi Nu and Vu Thi Dua, with the intention of selling them to China. The traffickers, who were stopped by the police while taking the victims to Muong La District on motorbikes, admitted to earning some US$460 for each girl.

Earlier on April 4, the Muong La District Police apprehended Vang A Cho, 26, and Thao A Sinh, 31, for human trafficking. The traffickers befriended Mua Thi De, 26, and Mua Thi May, 27, via a social network and promised to help the two girls find good jobs with high salaries and marry rich men. The traffickers were arrested while bringing the victims to the districts Chieng San Commune.

On March 21, the provincial police busted Giang A Chu, 27, Giang A Vu, 29, and Lo A Khai, 24, all from the northern province of Yen Bai. They admitted to cheating Vang Thi S and Giang Thi X, promising the victims good jobs with high salaries, but instead selling them to China.  VNS
HA NOI  The unemployment rate in Ha Noi has increased slightly in the first three months of this year, with 7,113 people registered for unemployment insurance benefits, said the Ha Noi Jobs Service Centre under the citys Department of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs.

Figures from the centre announced late last month showed that nearly 2,000 more people registered for unemployment than last years first quarter. The number of people registered for benefits in March was about 3,120, 1.88 times higher than in February.

Nguyen Toan Phong, director of the centre, said the rise was caused by narrowing production scales of businesses, branch closings and bankruptcy.

Some businesses with a high number of unemployed workers are Panasonic Industrial Devices Viet Nam Co with 197 people, Microsoft Mobile Viet Nam Co with 86 and Flexcom Viet Nam Co with 166.

After classifying, the centre has agreed that nearly 6,850 people would be eligible for unemployment insurance benefits. Of these, more than 2,460 were university graduates, accounting for 35.9 per cent. -- VNS
WATERLOO  Mark R. Mountain, 44, of Waterloo, died Tuesday, May 3, at Cedar Valley Hospice Home.

He was born June 16, 1971, in Mankato, Minn., son of John R. and Donna Vanlandingham Mountain. He married Emy Luck on April 2, 2015, in Cedar Falls.

Mark served in the U.S. Army and was employed at Omega Cabinets for 22 years.

Survived by: his wife; a son, Logan of Waterloo; his parents of Waterloo; a brother, Brian of Winthrop; a sister, Paula Mountain of Waterloo; and his father and mother in-law, David and Sue Luck of Cedar Falls.

Preceded in death by: paternal grandparents, Stanley and Evelyn Mountain; and maternal grandparents, Forest and Gail Vanlandingham.

Public visitation: 4 to 7 p.m. today, May 6, at Hagarty-Waychoff-Grarup Funeral Service on West Ridgeway, with private family inurnment at Mount Olivet Cemetery. Full military rites will be conducted by Waterloo AMVETS Post 19 and Evansdale AMVETS Post 31, assisted by the Iowa Army Honor Guard.

Memorials in lieu of flowers: may be directed to American Cancer Society or Cedar Valley Hospice.

Condolences may be left at www.hagartywaychoffgrarup.com.
Jail is hell

The eye-catching Vietnamese model and Playboy Playmate Angie Vu complained to the New York Daily News in April her five-plus months in jail in Brooklyn have been torture and cruel because of her lack of access to beauty care. Vu is fighting extradition to France for taking her 9-year-old daughter in violation of the fathers custody claim and is locked up until a federal judge rules. Among her complaints: turning pale in the harsh light; lack of Guerlains moisturizer; inability to look at herself for months (because glass mirrors are prohibited); and worrying about being hit on by women (thus causing wrinkles). At least, she told the reporter, she has found God in jail and passes time reading the Bible.

Unclear on the concept

Zero tolerance claimed another victim, in Charlotte, N.C., in April, when Jaden Malone, 12, came to his bullied friends aid. Malone was knocked down and repeatedly punched in the head by the bully, and pushed the boy off of him to avoid further damage, but was suspended for three days by his charter school Invest Collegiate. A school official pointed out the bully got five days, and besides, the policy against all physical violence is very clear. After having Jaden treated for a concussion, his mother promptly withdrew him from the school.

Religious messages

Christian political activist David Barton told his WallBuilders radio audience recently Disneys anthropomorphic characters (e.g., Bambi) are simply gateways to kids learning Babylonian pagan worship.

Brooklyn, N.Y., prophet Yakim Manasseh Jordan told followers recently that he has arranged with God to bring people back from the dead if they  cheerfully  offer a miracle favor cloud of gifts as low as $1,000.

Police blotter

The Tap Inn bar in Billings, Mont., released April 11 surveillance video of the armed robbery staged by two men and a woman (still on the lam), showing two lip-locked customers at the bar, lost in affectionate embrace during the entire crime, seemingly oblivious of danger. The robbers, perhaps impressed by the couples passion, ignored them, even while emptying the cash register just a few feet away.

Andru Jolstad, 26, was arrested April 16 and charged with using a pry bar to break into the cash boxes of four machines at Zaps Arcade in Mesa, Ariz. Following citizen tips, a cop arrived to find Jolstad on his knees alongside one machine with his arm still inside. His total take from the spree was $18, and hell likely be sent back to prison from an earlier charge.

Under the influence

Police in the Augusta, Ga., suburb of Hephzibah arrested a meth-addled Ray Roye for battery and family violence against his wife in March. Roye was yelling about custody of their child, but his wife informed police they dont have a child.
TOLEDO  Dustin Jefferson apologized through tears Thursday, turning and speaking directly to his late wifes family.

I want to say to you guys, Im sorry, he said.

Jefferson, 40, though, also denied involvement in Kerry OClair Jeffersons murder. Instead, he placed the blame on his mother.

If I had known my mom had this plan I would have stopped her, he said.

Jurors Feb. 9 in Jasper County convicted Jefferson of aiding and abetting first-degree murder. Prosecutors Laura Roan and Brent Heeren argued Jefferson helped his mother, Ginger Jefferson, kill his wife.

Judge Mary Chicchelly on Thursday sentenced Dustin Jefferson to life in prison with no possibility of parole. His mother is already serving life in prison for committing first-degree murder.

OClair Jefferson died of stab wounds Sept. 25, 2013, in Tama.

Nothing about this is easy. What do I say to the man who killed my sister? Nicole Hitchcock told Jefferson during her victim-impact statement Thursday.

She added as her sisters husband, Jefferson was supposed to love and protect OClair Jefferson.

How could you have done this? Why? Hitchcock added later. Only you can answer that, but I dont think I will ever understand.

Hitchcock also read letters written by her young daughters, Maddy and Brooke, to their Uncle Pies. Both expressed sadness for their loss and ongoing love for Jefferson.

Im sooo sad. I really hope you tell the truth. What you did to aunt Kerry was wrong. She loved us and even you, Brooke, 8, wrote.

The trial in Jasper County was the states third attempt to prosecute Jefferson. The first in Tama County stopped because of questions about Native American representation in the jury pool.

Jefferson is a member of the Meskwaki tribe based in Tama County.

The second trial ended with a jury hung 11-1 to convict. A unanimous verdict is required.

Marlene OClair, Kerrys mother, on Thursday also provided a victim-impact statement and also addressed her comments directly to Jefferson.

I really cant believe and dont want to believe that you took Kerrys life, but all the evidence points to that fact that you helped murder her, Marlene OClair said.

Prosecutors alleged Ginger Jefferson, Dustin Jefferson and OClair Jefferson got into an argument after a day of drinking. According to the state, OClair Jefferson had reported her husbands whereabouts to the Meskwaki Nation Police Department.

Jefferson at the time had an outstanding arrest warrant for multiple counts of sex abuse involving a young girl.

Marlene OClair on Thursday reminded Jefferson she had loved him like a son and everyone in the family tried to give him a chance, including her daughter.

You were right when you stated that Kerry had your effing back, even when you were bad,  Marlene OClair said.

She offered no condolences on Jeffersons life sentence, noting his relatives could visit him in prison.

What about our friends and family? All we have is Kerrys gravesite to visit, Marlene OClair said.

She finished with a passage discovered online.

I hope you ache in regret as the truth hits you like a bullet, and you find yourself replying: She loved me more than anyone else in the world and I destroyed her, Marlene OClair read in court.

Though not obligated to speak, Jefferson did before being sentenced. He said he had told his wife a divorce was OK. But, he said, OClair Jefferson refused.

She wouldnt leave me. And I was glad for that. Because I love her. I always did and I always will, he said.

Jefferson added another comment for his wifes family.

I just want you to know, deep down inside, Im not the monster that you think I am.
GRINNELL -- A convicted sex offender headed to prison will instead first face additional allegations in Poweshiek County.

Leroy Kula Jr., 36, of Arlington, opted for a bench trial in January in Fayette County. Judge Richard Stochl subsequently found him guilty of two counts of second-degree sexual abuse and two counts of sexual exploitation of a minor.

The charges are felonies.

Stochl in April sentenced Kula to serve up to 60 years, and he was being held in the Fayette County Jail. Officials this week, however, transferred Kula to Montezuma and the Poweshiek County Jail.

Kula is now accused of two counts of indecent contact with a child. The charge is an aggravated misdemeanor.

The alleged offenses happened in November 2014, according to court documents.

Grinnell police filed the criminal complaints in February. According to the document, Kula touched a 10-year-old girl.

Kula's victims in Fayette County were 4-, 5- and 6-year-old girls.

The Poweshiek County Clerk of Court's Office filed Magistrate Michael Marquess' order for an arrest warrant Feb. 21. At that time, Kula was awaiting a Judge Stochl's verdict in Fayette County.

James Davis, chief deputy in Fayette County, investigated Kula and testified at his trial in West Union. He told Judge Stochl homemade videos recorded by Kula contained evidence of at least eight children. At that time, Davis said not all of the kids had been identified.

According to Davis' testimony, Kula's videos show he also recorded children while living in Oelwein, Independence and Grinnell.

Davis said investigators recovered more than 200 videotapes and "hundreds" of CDs and DVDs in Kula's home in Arlington.

Kula rigged his residence with a crude, but extensive, surveillance system with up to two cameras in most rooms. The cameras fed images to VCRs in a bedroom closet and in the kitchen, according to Davis.

Denise Timmins, an assistant Iowa attorney general, prosecuted Kula in Fayette County.
According to police a 17-year-old girl was driving with at least two passengers in the area of East Fourth and Keystone streets at about 1 a.m. when another vehicle came up beside hers and opened fire, striking a drivers side mirror and a tire. No injuries were reported
WATERLOO  Plans to refurbish the Fourth Street Bridges iconic pedestrian canopy suffered a major setback this week.

The only bid the city received by Thursdays deadline was more than double engineering estimates for the project.

Peterson Contractors Inc. of Reinbeck bid just over $2.57 million to repair the 40-year-old covered walkway, while AECOM had estimated the project would cost about $1.23 million.

AECOM project manager Doug Schindel said the firm would review the bid documents before making any recommendation. The bid is slated for a public hearing at Mondays City Council meeting.

The city had been expecting the overall design and construction to cost $1.5 million, with the funding split equally between the Black Hawk County Gaming Association and general obligation bonds repaid with property taxes.

Any cost overruns could be a problem, because the project did not enjoy overwhelming support.

One member of the BHCGA referred to the walkway as the worlds longest urinal, while the City Council only approved the grant agreement on a 5-2 vote. Tom Lind and Steve Schmitt voted against it.

The proposed project included structural repairs to the concrete walks, repairs and repainting of the canopy, replacement of the polycarbonate windows and new lighting.

The canopy, which is featured predominantly in city and downtown marketing materials, was built in 1976 for $500,000.

Windows on the east side of the canopy were removed in 1981 by Mayor Leo Rooff when residents complained of stagnant air created by the tunnel. The windows on the upstream side of the canopy were removed in the 1990s when city officials tired of replacing those broken by vandals.
CEDAR FALLS  Iowa state Rep. Walt Rogers, R-Cedar Falls, will hold a fundraiser next week that includes several prominent Republicans from throughout the state.

The event will begin at 5 p.m. May 14 at Mudd Advertising, 915 Technology Parkway. There is a $50 suggested donation and food and drink will be provided.

No RSVP is necessary, though people can send a donation at waltrogers.org and specify it is for the fundraiser.

Rogers, who is seeking a fourth term, has no primary opponent, but he is being challenged in the general election by Democrat Gary Kroeger, a Saturday Night Live alum and advertising executive at Mudd Advertising.

Rogers fundraiser will include both Republicans who will be on the ballot along with him this fall and others who are not.

Federal candidates U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley and 1st District U.S. Rep. Rod Blum are expected to attend. Gov. Terry Branstad and Lt. Gov. Kim Reynolds, who are not up for election this year, also will attend.

Rogers also will be joined by fellow Iowa House Republicans, who will be on ballots in their respective districts, House Speaker Linda Upmeyer of Clear Lake; House Majority Leader Chris Hagenow of Windsor Heights; and House Appropriations Chairman Rep. Pat Grassley of New Hartford.
Iowas fight to end the scourge of bullying within its borders took a step backward this year.

After three consecutive sessions of discussion and near-passage of a bill to strengthen state anti-bullying law during the last session, the Legislature this year virtually ignored the issue.

Iowas children deserve better.

Last year, momentum was building for action on bullying. Gov. Terry Branstad supported the anti-bullying bill during the legislative session, then later in the year issued an executive order through which he created the Governors Office for Bullying Prevention at the University of Northern Iowa. The state Senate passed the anti-bullying bill, 43-7. Anti-bullying leaders in education supported the bill.

Iowans overwhelmingly supported the effort. In a February 2015 Des Moines Register poll, 73 percent of Iowans answered favor to the following question: Do you favor or oppose authorizing school personnel to react to bullying by notifying parents and disciplining students even when the incident takes place away from school, including through social media?

Only the state House stood in the way of significant additional protection for victims of bullying.

Creation by Branstad of the Governors Office for Bullying Prevention struck us as a valuable contribution to this dialogue, but we believe strengthening state law remains the most effective way to protect Iowa children from bullying.

We supported last years anti-bullying bill largely because we believed it would address the pervasive problem of cyberbullying  tormenting, threatening, harassing or embarrassing someone using the Internet or other technologies, like cell phones  in effective fashion. We were hopeful this year would be the year in which anti-bullying legislation reached the finish line.

Its unclear to us why, exactly, the issue fell from the Legislatures radar screen. In what would be an ironic twist, perhaps creation of the Governors Office for Bullying Prevention, in effect, suppressed legislative action because lawmakers felt the office solved the problem. Through the office, Branstad sought to meet some provisions of failed anti-bullying legislation.

However, Branstad didnt direct funds to the office in his budget recommendation for the next fiscal year and the Legislature appropriated no money for the office.

In other words, this year produced no bill and no money to combat bullying.

The result? An important issue was, it appears, simply forgotten.

Thats disappointing. And unacceptable.

We will continue our support for stronger anti-bullying laws in Iowa. We will do so until this state properly meets its responsibility to stamp out an ugly problem no student should have to experience.
Advertisement

By The Associated Press

May. 06, 2016 | BETHESDA, MD

By The Associated Press May. 06, 2016 | 12:59 PM | BETHESDA, MD

Police in Maryland say a woman is dead and three people are injured in shootings at a mall and a shopping center in the Washington

suburbs.



Montgomery County Police Assistant Chief Darryl McSwain says three people were shot in the Westfield Montgomery Mall parking lot in Bethesda on Friday morning. He says one person was shot and two others may have been shot coming to that person's aid. He says there's no reason to believe the victims knew the shooter.



McSwain says a woman was shot at a grocery store about 5 miles away. Police later tweeted that the woman has died. It's not clear if the shootings are connected.



McSwain says no one is in custody, but police are looking at a person of interest.
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If youre looking to try out an online casino, there are several things that will help you make a decision. Heres what you should look for when choosing an online casino

 Are they regulated? A lot of the larger ones have licenses issued by the authorities in their respective regions, so its worth checking this first.

 Do they offer games from different software providers? Some casinos just use one software provider and limit your selection. This is fine if you like playing those types of games but you may want to check other casinos as well.

 What does their payout percentage look like? The payout rate refers to how much money you can expect to win after every bet. A high payout rate means youll be able to play more often without having to worry about losing all your money. Its also important to know the minimum and maximum bets allowed on each game. If youre going to play roulette, for example, then you probably dont want a casino with a minimum bet of less than $2.50 or even lower than that.

The players used to play the game slot online in the land based casinos in the past time. But now with time after the invention of the online casinos players play the game slot online. Online platform provide the players with the convenience in playing and even better winning. Even after keeping a good percentage of the profits, they distribute good funds to players.

 How many games do they offer? There are lots of different types of games to choose from. Roulette, blackjack and poker are some of the most popular options, but you might find slots, video pokers, video bingo and others as well. You can usually filter these games down to only show the ones that interest you best, so make sure that your list isnt too long!

 Is there a bonus offer? Many online casinos offer free bonuses as part of their welcome package  which includes new players being awarded 100% up to $10 instantly, for example. These offers are great but not everyone has access to them all the time (and some require you to deposit real money). If youd prefer to avoid paying a fee, some casinos offer no-deposit bonuses where you can get a certain amount of funds before you need to put any actual money into the account. These are usually offered alongside welcome bonuses, so make sure you read both parts of the terms and conditions carefully before signing up.

 Does it offer live dealer games? Live dealers are much preferred by many over regular virtual versions, so it pays to check this option out too. Most online casinos now offer live dealer games in addition to their regular offerings, allowing you to experience the thrill of the real thing without needing to leave home.

Now that youve got an idea of what to look for when choosing an online casino, heres some tips for making the right choice

It really comes down to personal preference. No two people are exactly alike, so everyone has an opinion on what they like and dislike about each casino. That said, here are some things to consider in order to narrow down your choices

 Popularity. Check out reviews, forums and Facebook pages to see what other people think of the casino. Also, ask around at work or friends houses who they would recommend to you. You could always take a look at the casinos website too, to see what kind of information they provide about themselves.

 Reputation. Find out what the general public thinks about the casino. Check out any customer reviews on sites like Trustpilot, Amazon and Google Play to find out more. As far as gaming goes, you can also check out the Better Business Bureau to see whether there have been any complaints against the casino.

 Security. Make sure the casino uses SSL encryption to secure its transactions, meaning that your private data stays safe during transactions. Other than that, look for security seals on the site itself and verify that theyre legitimate. You can also check out the casinos privacy policy to see how they handle confidential information.

 Payment methods. Its good to have multiple payment options available, especially if you plan to play frequently. Its also nice to find a casino that accepts cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum. If youre worried about safety, you can always opt for a credit card or PayPal instead.

With all those criteria in mind, heres our top picks

Betway:

Betway is a relatively new UK casino offering online gambling to residents of the United Kingdom and European Union. They offer hundreds of games across both land based and digital platforms, with plenty of top software providers like Net Entertainment, Microgaming and Yggdrasil Gaming Network. With a generous welcome offer that gives players 100% up to 100, you really cant go wrong with Betway.

Coral Casino:

Coral Casino is operated by the same company that runs the famous Caribbean casino, Grand Reef. Like many casinos, Coral Casino offers a wide variety of games, including plenty of video slots and table games. New players can benefit from a huge 100% match bonus up to 1000, while existing customers enjoy 25% cash back on deposits made within 48 hours of opening an account.

Ladbrokes Casino:

Ladbrokes Casino is owned by the same company as the famous bookmaker that started life in 1921. With more than 500 games from leading software providers such as Amaya, NetEnt and Microgaming, you wont be disappointed by the quality of the games here. New players get a 200% match bonus up to 500, while existing customers can claim 35% cashback on their first three deposits.

Paddy Power Casino:

Paddy Power is another Irish-owned casino that operates throughout Europe. Not only does Paddy Power Casino offer traditional casino games like blackjack, roulette and slots, but it also provides a full range of sports betting, including football, tennis, boxing and horse racing. New players can receive a massive 100% match bonus up to 200, while existing customers can claim 35% cashback on their first three deposits.

William Hill Casino:

William Hill Casino is one of the biggest names in the industry, operating in Europe, Asia and North America. Founded in 1984, this online casino has more than 400 games to choose from, including slots and table games, with a wide array of software providers like WagerLogic, Big Time Gaming and Rival.

Bonus: 100% Match Bonus up to 100  Register Now

Betway: 100% Match Bonus up to 100  Claim Now

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Canl Bahis siteleri sektoru son derece onu ack ve farkl ozelliklere sahip bir sektordur. Elbette bahis secenekleri arasnda yuksek kazanc getiren alan kuskusuz canl bahistir. Peki, canl bahis nedir?

Canl Bahis Nedir?

Canl bahis adndan da anlaslacag gibi devam eden musabakaya bahis yapmaktr. Bu bahis musabaka devam ederken de yaplabilir olmasdr. Basta futbol olmak uzere voleybol, tenis, hentbol, basketbol, buz hokeyi ve masa tenisi gibi spor organizasyonlarna canl bahisler yaplabilmektedir. Canl bahis siteleri bu oyunlarn hepsine yuksek oranlara bahis yapmanza imkan tanr. En fazla tercih edilen futbol canl bahisleri diger alanlara gore daha fazla on plandadr. Siteden siteye degisen sartlar ve uygulama esaslar soz konusu olsa da kurallar sabittir.

Canl bahisi populer klan ve heyecan katan en onemli ozellikle musabakann basladg ana dek bahis yapabilmedir. Canl bahis icerisinde yer alan secenekler kazanma sansnz da dogrudan arttrmaktadr. Ilk korneri kim kullanr, ilk tac, gol, sar kart, krmz kart gibi futbol musabakas icerisinde olabilecek hemen hemen her seye bahis yaplabilmektedir. Normal bahisegore de son derece yuksek oranda olmas avantajl yonlerini ortaya koymaktadr. Nitekim dogru secenek ksa surede kazancl ckmanza etki edecektir.

Strateji ve dogru analizle 90 dakika gibi bir surede anaparanzkatlayabilirsiniz. Tabi bunu basarabilmek icin mutlaka musabakaya dair ayrntlar iyi degerlendirmek gerekir. Soz konusu musabakann detaylarn inceleyip, cezal, sakat oyuncu veya performans dusen takm oyunu gibi detaylar bilmek canl bahiste kazanc belirleyen onemli unsurdur. Guvenilir Canl bahis hem heyecanl zaman gecirmeyi hem de musabakalar takip ederken para kazanmay saglamaktadr.

Canl Bahis Nasl Oynanr?

Bahislerinizi guvenilir sitelerden gerceklestirdiginiz zaman herhangi bir sekilde para cekme de sorun yasamazsnz. Guvenilir bahis siteleri tespit edip sonrasnda da uyelik islemlerini tamamlamanz gerekmektedir. Belirlenen uyelik sartlarn yerine getirip hesabnza da paray aktardktan sonra bahis islemlerini sorunsuz yapabilirsiniz. Peki, canl bahis nasl oynanr?

Oncelikle bahis konusunda mutlaka dogru site arastrmas yapmalsnz. Yapacagnz arastrma neticesinde buldugunuz site uzerinden canl bahisislemlerini gerceklestirebilirsiniz. Bunun icin uye olup, hesaba para atp, canl bahis bolumune girmelisiniz. Sonrasnda dahil olmak istediginiz musabakann saatini ogrenip, gerekli analizleri yapmalsnz. Tahminlerinizi belirledikten sonra karsnza ckacak olan bahis sayfasndan istediginiz hamleyi yapmalsnz. Bahis tutarn belirledikten sonra musabaka baslayacaktr.

Canl bahis diger normal bahis esaslarna gore farkllklar icermektedir. Bunlardan en onemlisi musabakann gidisatna gore islem yapabilir olmaktr.Ayrca musabakann 2. Yarsna gore hamle yapp ayr bir bahisin soz konusu olmas da ciddi avantajdr. Dogru hamle ile sizde istediginiz bahisi yapp kazanc elde edebilirsiniz. Nitekim canl olarak yapacagnz bahis icin mac oncesi raporlara gore hareket etmek onemlidir. Cunku takmlarn durumlarn analiz etmek tahmin gucunu arttracaktr. Misal tamnn en iyi oyuncusu sakat ya da kart cezals ise takmn performansnda dusus yasanacaktr. Buna ek olarak takmn deplasman performans ile evinde ki performans ayr olacaktr. Burada da takmn musabakay nerede yaptgna bakmak gerekir. Bu ayrntlar da iyice analiz ettikten sonra bahsinizi yapp kazanmann keyfini yasayabilirsiniz.

Canl Bahis Siteleri

Son derece yuksek getiriye sahip bahis sektoru uzun zamandr faaliyet gostermektedir. Cok ciddi rakamlarn soz konusu oldugu bu sektor zamanla sanal ortamlara donusmustur. Elbette guvenli ve bir o kadar da avantajl olan bu siteler cok yonlu frsatlar sunmaktadrlar. Canl iddaa siteleri gerek yeni uyelere gerekse de hali hazrdaki uyelerine bolca bonus frsatlar vermektedir. Yatracagnz tutara gore belirlenen bonuslar site icerisinde rahat hareket etmenizi de saglayacaktr.

Canl bahis sitelerini kullanmadan once mutlaka guvenli olup olmadgna goz atmalsnz. Zira baz kullanclar guvenli olmayan sitelerden yaptklar islemlerden dolay magdur olmaktadrlar. Nitekim guvenli ve sorunsuz hizmet sunan yurt ds site tercih etmek en dogru secenektir. Sektorde uzun yllar faaliyet gosteren siteleri tercih edebilirsiniz. Bu alanda yer alan yabanc siteler musteri memnuniyetine onem vermektedir. Oncelik site kullanclarn sorunsuz sekilde bahislerini yapabilir olmasn saglamaktr. Bahis sitelerinde amac hem daha fazla kullancya hizmet vermek hem de sektorde emin admlarla ilerlemek onceliklidir. Dogru site tercihi ile sizde canl bahislerinizi sorun yasamadan gerceklestirebilirsiniz. Sizler icin hazrlams oldugumuz canl bahis siteleri listesi su sekildedir;

Mobilbahis Tempobet Bets10 Bahigo 1xbahis Betboo Youwin Superbahis

Sralams oldugumuz bu siteler sektorde basarl islere imza atms sitelerdedir. Canl bahis konusunda beklentileri karslayacak olan bu siteler sizlere kolaylk sunmaktadrlar. Bol bonuslu secenekle de sizlere farkl bahis yonlerini sunacaklardr. Sistemsel etki icerisinde her zaman etkin sonuc alabilmek icin surekli olarak faaliyet icerisindedirler.

Canl Bahis Taktikleri

Bahis sektorunun en fazla dikkat edilmesi gereken hususu dogru taktik ve dogru tahmindir. Elbette dogru tahmini yapabilmek icin analizi cok iyi yapmak gerekir. Canl bahis taktikleri arasnda ilk sra analiz gelmektedir. Analiz yapamadgnz zaman basarl tahminlerde bulunmanz pek de mumkun degildir. Cunku bahiste onemli olan konu musabakann analizini cok iyi yaplmas gerektigidir. Canl bahisin ozelliklerini iyi bilmek ve nasl bir hamle yapacagnz bilmek gerekir. Ozellikle riskli maclarda yaplacak degerlendirmeler cok daha onemlidir.

Canl bahis yapacaklarn takip edecegi degerler takmlarn durumlar ile alakal olmaldr. Performans uzerine kurulu bahis sisteminde takm degerlendirmesine iyi bakmak gerekir. Iki takmn son 5 macta nasl bir sonuc ortaya koyduguna bakarak hareket etmek onemlidir. Ayrca hangi takm evinde daha iyi performans sergiliyor diye de ayrca bakmak gerekir.

Analizlerle alakal puan durumlarna da goz atmak cok onemlidir. Puan degerlendirmesinde oncelikle takmlarn ihtiyaclar ile dogru orantl hareket etmek gerekir. Cunku olusturulan performans takmn da durumunu ortaya koymaktadr. Nitekim istenilen sonucu elde edebilmek icin tum ayrntlar bilmek gerekir. Takm ici duzenden tutunda da takmn son durumuna kadar her ayrnt onemlidir. Iki takmn birbirleri arasnda ki sonuclar da incelemek gerekir. Burada dikkat edilecek detaylarn basnda maclarda kac gol oldugu ve gollerin hangi dakikalarda atldgdr. Cekismeli gecen musabakalarda bazen goller ilk yarda daha fazla olurken baz maclarda da ikinci yarda daha cok gol olmustur. Iki takm arasnda ki maclarda gollerin cogunlugu ilk yarda geliyorsa buna gore bahis yapabilirsiniz.

Canl Bahis Siteleri Bonuslar ve Kampanyalar

Bahis yapanlar veya yapmay dusununler sitelerin sunmus olduklar frsatlar merak etmektedirler. Cunku siteler daha fazla kullancya erismek icin her donem kampanyalar duzenleyerek kullanc odakl hamleler yapmaktadrlar. Canl bahis bonuslar ve kampanyalar oldukca populer olup, siteler bu konuda adeta birbirleri ile yarsmaktadrlar. Birbirinden farkl ozelliklere sahip olan kampanyalar size frsatlar sunmaktadr. Daha cok kazanma ihtimalinizi arttran bu bonuslar daha cesur olmanza da dogrudan etki edecektir. Nitekim bonuslar sitelerin cekiciligini ve avantajlarn arttrmaktadr. En cok kazandran canl bahis siteleri bedava bonuslar ve kampanyalar icin http://www.milano2018.com/canli-bahis-siteleri-2022/ linkinden yardm alabilirsiniz.

Hos geldin bonusu ile baslayan ve sonrasnda para yatrdkca bonus veren cok sayda site bulunmaktadr. Canl bahis bonusu veren siteler yeni uyelere sunduklar frsatlar farkl kampanyalarla mevcut uyelerine de sunmaktadrlar. Hali hazrda siteyi kullananlarn da bonus frsatlarndan yararlanmalar icin donemsel kampanyalar olusturmaktadrlar. Boylece baska sitelere gidisler olmayacag gibi site de daha keyifli zaman gecirmek mumkun klnmaktadr. Bu tur eklentiler yapan sitelerde musteri memnuniyeti daha fazladr.

Bahis siteleri ozellik ve uygulama bakmndan farkllklar bunyelerinde bulundurmaktadrlar. Verilen bonuslarn olusturulmas ve kullanclar aktarlmasnda yatrlan para miktarlar belirleyici olmaktadr. 1.000 TL yatran bir kullanc yuzde 20 bonus frsat olan bir kampanyadan 200 TL bonus kazanabilmektedir. Yatracag tutar 10.000 TL oldugunda bu bonustutar 2.000 TL olabilmektedir. Gerceklesen ve uygulanan esaslar tamamen donemsel olarak yaplan kampanyalarla alakaldr. Iyi Canl bahis siteleri bonuslar ve kampanyalar icin sitelerin vermis oldugu oranlar takip edebilirsiniz.

Canl Bahis Siteleri Para Yatrma

Online Canl bahis yapacaklarn merak ettigi konulardan bir digeri de para yatrma islemleridir. Oldukca onemli olan bu konuda hata yapmamak cok onemlidir. Canl bahis sitelerine para yatrma islemi sanlann aksine son derece basittir. Oldukca basit ve uygulama esas dogru etki olusturan bu yapda sizde islemi rahatca tamamlayabilirsiniz. Para yatrma konusunda su yolu izleyebilirsiniz.

Guvendiginiz ve herhangi bir sekilde aklnzda soru isareti kalmayan bahis sitesine uye olmanz gerekmektedir. Uyelik islemini sorunsuz sekilde tamamladktan sonra para yatrma islemine gecebilirsiniz.

Kullanacagnz siteye uye olduktan sonra karsnza kullanc ad ve sifresini gireceginiz yer gelecektir. Buraya giris yaptktan sonra site icerisine islemlere devam edebilirsiniz.

Sitede yer alan para yatrma sekmesine tklayp sonrasnda karsnza gelen sayfay inceleyebilirsiniz. Para yatrma bolumunde yer alan ksma ne kadar para yatracagnz yazp devam tusuna basmalsnz.

Yatrmak istediginiz tutar girip sonrasnda da devam tusuna bastktan sonra karsnza kart bilgilerinizi gireceginiz sayfa gelecektir. Kredi kart kullanarak para gondermek isteyenlerin tercih ettigi bu sayfa tum bilgiler girilip islem onaylanmaldr.

Canl bahis sitelerine para yatrma islemini gerceklestirmek icin hesaba havale secenegini de kullanabilirsiniz. Site icerisinde musteri hizmetleri ile iletisime gecerek banka hesap numaralarn ogrenebilirsiniz. Belirtilen IBAN numarasna istediginiz tutar havale edebilirsiniz. Havale ederken acklama ksmna yazlacak bilgilere dikkat etmelisiniz.

Kredi kart veya banka havalesi ile gerceklesen para yatrma islemi sonucunda site hesabnzdan bakiyenize bakabilirsiniz. Bakiyenize gore dilediginiz sekilde bahislerinizi gerceklestirebilirsiniz.

Canl Bahis Siteleri Para Cekme

Canl bahiste dogru hamleler ve dogru tahminler sonucunda kazandgnz bedeli geri almak isteyebilirsiniz. Kazanclarnz istediginiz banka hesabnza cekebilmek icin uymanz gereken kurallar soz konusudur. Oncelikle bahis sitelerinden para cekebilmeniz icin uye olurken dogru bilgi paylasmnda bulunmanz gerektigidir. Cunku canl bahis sitelerinden para cekme islemi icin kullanc hesab ile talep edilen banka hesap bilgilerinin ortusmesi gerekir. Yani uye olurken verilen bilgi ile banka hesab kime ait ise o bilgiler ayn olmaldr. Bu uygulama sitenin hem kullancsn hem de kendisini guvene alma politikasdr. Ayrca frsatclarn onune gecerek yeni bir uye olusumunun da onune gecmek amac gutmektedir. Uye olan kisi farkl para cekilme talebi verilen hesap farkl oldugunda para cekme islemi gerceklesmeyecektir.

Bahisleriniz sonucunda kazanc elde edebilir ve bu kazancnz da hakknz olarak almak isteyebilirsiniz. Burada son derece basit uygulama soz konusu olurken siteler aras farkl gorunumler soz konusu olabilir. Fakat yine de tum sitelerde uyenin site icerisinde para cekme bolumune girmesi yeterlidir. Burada cekilecek olan tutarn belirlenmesi ve hesap numarasnn girilmesi ile birlikte islem onay gerekecektir. Para cekme taleplerinde sizden gerekli bilgiler istenmekte ve havale islemi istenilen bilgiler esliginde yurutulmektedir. Dogru bilgi paylasmak sorunsuz para cekebilmeniz en onemli kuraldr. Istenilen bilgiler girildikten sonra site sorumlular gerekli kontrolleri yapp herhangi bir sorun yoksa ksa surede hesabnza gerekli paray aktaracaklardr.

Canl Bahis Sitelerinden Para Cekmek Icin Istenen Belgeler

Bahis sitelerine uye olduktan sonra baz kullanclar para cekme taleplerinin karslanmadg konusunda sikayetlerde bulunmuslardr. Bu sikayetlersektorde uzun zamandr bulunan guvenilir bahis siteleri de yer almaktadr. Fakat sikayetlerin dayanaklarna bakldgnda ise islerin tamamen farkl oldugu gorulmektedir. Yasanan bu durum kullanclarn hatal bilgi girmesi ve uyelik bilgileri ile banka bilgilerinin uyusmamas ile dogru orantldr. Birde canl bahis para cekmek icin istenen belgeler eksik ya da hatal olarak sunulmus olabilir. Ortaya ckan karsklar neticesinde para cekme talebinde bulunan kisi istedigini alamadg icin sikayetci olmaktadr. Oysa ki istenilen bilgiler dogru ve istenilen evraklar eksiksiz sunulsa para cekme islemi sorunsuz olacak.

Sitelerin para cekme konusunda dikkatli hareket etmesi hilelerin ve illegal faaliyetlerin onune gecmek adnadr. Cunku baz kullanclar farkl bilgiler vererek ikinci hesap acabilmektedirler. Bazen de bilincsizce hatal bilgi girilebilmektedir. Hatal islemlerin cozumu konusunda islem yaptgnz sitenin musteri temsilcileri ile gorusebilirsiniz. Talepleriniz dogrultusunda para cekme islemlerinde ki sorunlar giderilecektir. Canl bahis para cekmek icin istenen belgeler listesi su sekildedir;

Kullanc bilgileri ile banka bilgilerini karslastrmak icin kimlik fotokopisi

Banka hesap bilgileri

Ikametgah ve kisiye ait herhangi bir fatura.

Kacak Iddaa

Turkiyede dogrudan bahis yapmak icin resmi kanallar kullanlabilmektedir. Fakat tercih edilen ve oran olarak cok daha fazla frsatlar sunan kacar iddaasiteleri bulunmaktadr. Bu siteler kanunlara aykr sekilde yaplmakta olup, yasal bir dayanag yoktur. Elbette bu sitelerin kurulus merkezi Turkiye olmayp, ds ulkelerdedir ve faaliyetler belirlenen siteler uzerinden yaplmaktadr. Kacak Iddaa oldukca riskli olup, cok dikkatli olunmas gerekir.

Kacak Bahis

Kanunlar cercevesinde istediginiz gibi bahis yapamayabilirsiniz. Bahis yapabilmek icin ya kanuni olarak sorun olmayan ulke dsnda ki kumarhanelere gitmeniz veya kacak bahis sitelerinden islem yapabilirsiniz. Zira bu durum tehlikeli olsa da cok sayda site guvenli sekilde bu alanda hizmet vermektedir. Kacak bahiste oldukca fazla secenek bulunurken yuksek oranda kazanc sunuyor olmas da ragbeti arttryor.

Illegal Bahis

Bahisin bircok alanda yasak oldugu Turkiyede bu alanda cok sayda yabanc merkezli siteler hizmet vermektedir. Illegal bahis sektorunde faaliyet gosteren siteler guvenli hizmet anlays ile kullanclarna frsatlar sunmaktadr. Yurt ds merkezli bu siteler sorunsuz sekilde hizmetlerini surdururken bulunduklar ulkelerde kanunlara uygun sekildedir. Elbette faaliyet noktasnda bulunduklar ulkelerde sorun teskil etmese de Turkiyede faaliyet gostermeleri kanunin yasaklanmstr.

Yasads Bahis

Gerek olusturulan etkenler gerekse de ortaya konulan riskler yasads bahis de oldukca tehlikelidir. Kanunlarn mudahil olduklar bu alanlar da hem kullanclar hem de populer bahis yaptranlar tum riskleri goze almaktadrlar. Fakat yasaklardan uzak sekilde guvenli hizmet sunan siteler de bulunmaktadr. Takipler neticesinde kapatlan sitelerin muhakkak alternatifleri kurularak yollarna devam etmektedirler.

Canl Iddaa Siteleri Nelerdir?

Dunya genelinde kabul gormus cok sayda guvenli hizmet veren populer bahis siteleri bulunmaktadr. Elbette bu siteler dunyann bircok ulkesinde faaliyet gosterse de Turkiyede yasaktr. Sektorde yer alan cok sayda legal iddaa siteleri bulunmaktadr. Herhangi bir kanunsuzlugun olmadg bu sitelerden hzl ve guvenli islem yaplabilmektedir. Tabi bu sitelerde uygulanan oranlar yasal olmayan sitelere gore daha dusuktur. Illegal sitelerin tercih edilme sebeplerinin en onemli etkeni de olusturulan oranlardr. Peki, Iddaa siteleri nelerdir? Faaliyetleri ve uygulama esaslar nelerdir?

Turkiyede faaliyet gosteren yasal iddaa siteleri listesi su sekildedir;

Iddaa

Bilyoner

Tuttur

Birebin

Oley

Nesine

Misli

Iddaa

2004 ylnda hizmet vermeye baslayan Iddaa Spor toto tarafndan kurulmus olup, ilk etapta bayilik seklinde calsmaya baslamstr. Elbette zamanla gelisen teknolojiye ayak uydurarak internet uzerinde de populer bahis severlerin hizmetine sunulmustur. Kuruldugu donemde devletin resmi kurumu olarak faaliyet gosterirken gelinen yeni donemde ozellestirilmistir.

Bilyoner

Turkiyede faaliyetine 2006 ylnda baslayan Bilyoner ilk ozel yasal bahis sitesi olma ozelligine sahiptir. Guvenilir bahis siteleri Turkiyede bunlardr. Ksa surede populer olan site halen faaliyetlerini sorunsuz sekilde surdurmektedir.

Tuttur

Ksa surede adndan bahsettirmeyi basaran Tuttur 2009 ylnda faaliyetlere baslamstr. Guvenilir bahis siteleri arasnda yerini almstr. Gunumuze dek bircok alanda populer bahis yapanlara frsatlar sunarken avantajlar ile de begeni toplamstr.

Birebin

Kullanc odakl calsmalar surdurse de 2011 ylnda sektore giren Birebindiger sitelere gore daha az ragbet gormektedir. Bahis oynamak ise bu sitede oldukca kolaydr. Elbette farkl yaklasmlara sahip olmasndan dolay ilerleyen sureclerde adndan sklkla bahsettirecek gibi gorunuyor.

Oley

2009 ylnda Dogus yayn gruplarnn istiraki olarak kurulmus olup yasal olarak herhangi bir sorunu olmayan sitelerdendir. Bahis siteleri arasnda hzl cks yapms bir sitedir. Oley yapms oldugu yenilikler ile kullanclarn da dikkatini ksa surede cekmeyi basarmstr.

Nesine

Birbirini takip eden surecte Nesine de yine 2006 ylnda hizmet vermeye baslamstr. Yasal bahis siteleri arasnda yerini almay basaran firma ksa surede sevilen ve ragbet goren bir site olmustur.

Misli

2009 ylnda sektore cok hzl giris yapan Misli cok sayda reklam filmi ile on plana ckmay basarmstr. Internet uzerinden hem yasal hem de sorunsuz hizmet veren bahis sitelerinden bir tanesi olmustur.

Canl Bahis Siteleri Kayt ve Uyelik Islemleri

Her zaman populerligini koruyan ve surekli gelisim gosteren canl bahis gun gectikce daha da gucleniyor. Bahis oynamak icin ise sitelere uye olunmas gerekir. Yuksek getirisi ve begeni toplayan faaliyetleri ile cok sayda site bu alanda faaliyet gostermektedir. Elbette sorunsuz sekilde uye olmanz ve faaliyetler gostermeniz de oldukca kolaydr. Canl bahis siteleri kayt ve uyelik islemleri dakikalar icerisinde gerceklestirilecek yapya sahiptir.

Uye olacagnz siteyi belirledikten sonra siteye girmeniz gerekmektedir. Girdiginiz sitenin ana sayfasnda uye ol ya da kayt ol bolumu bulunacaktr. Siteler arasnda degiskenlik gosteren bu alanda temel unsurlar bulunmaktadr. Elbette farkllklar olsa da temelinde benzer bilgiler uye olmak isteyen kisilerden talep edilmektedir.

Uye ol bolumune tkladktan sonra karsnza uyelik bilgi formu ckacaktr. Bu formda sizin kim oldugunuzu ogrenmek ve sitenin guvenligini saglamak adna islemler yaplmaktadr. Uyelik formunda yer alan ad soyad bolumunu eksiksiz ve dogru sekilde doldurmalsnz. Sizden bu formda istenen bilgilerin tamamn girmeniz istenecektir. Istenen bilgiler mutlaka dogru ve eksiksiz sekilde olmaldr. Eksik veya hatal bilgi uyelik islemlerinde sorun teskil edebilir. Yine de yanls bilgi girisine ragmen uyelik islemleri tamamlanabilir. Fakat boyle bir yol izleyenler sonrasnda buyuk skntlarla karslasabilirler. Bu skntlarn basnda da para cekme islemlerinde yasanan sorunlardr.

Uyelik islemleri dikkatli ve ozenle doldurulmas gereken yapdadr. Canl bahis siteleri kayt ve uyelik islemleri gerceklestirilirken verilen bilgiler site yonetimi tarafndan muhafaza edilmektedir. Herhangi bir sekilde 3. Sahslarla paylaslmas gibi bir durum soz konusu degildir. Bu faaliyetleri surduren sitelerin guven unsurlar arasnda bu nokta onceliklidir.

Bahis sitelerine uye olurken hatal bilgi paylasmnda bulunmak size faydadan cok zarar verecektir. Diyelim ki bilgileri hatal girdiniz ve uyelik onayland. Uyelik tamamlandktan sonra siteye para yatrdnz ve kazanc elde ettiniz. Kazancnz sonrasnda hesabnza almak istediginizde karsnza banka bilgileri bolumu gelecektir. Para cekme talebi gerceklestikten sonra site uyelik bilgileri ile banka hesap bilgileri ortusmez ise paranz alamazsnz. Boyle bir durumla karslasmamak adna bu hususa ayrca dikkat etmelisiniz.
CROWN POINT, IN, May 06, 2016 /24-7PressRelease/ -- Cynthia C. Agans, Vice President and Chief Operations Officer of Burrell Colour Imaging LLC, has been named a Worldwide Branding Professional of the Year in Business Administration. While inclusion in Worldwide Branding is an honor, only small selections of members in each discipline are chosen for this distinction. These special honorees are distinguished based on their professional accomplishments, academic achievements, leadership abilities, years of service, and the credentials they have provided in association with their Worldwide Branding membership.



With an impressive professional history dating back more than four decades, Ms. Agans is uniquely qualified to manage a variety of tasks on behalf of Burrell Colour Imaging LLC, a professional portrait finishing company that primarily serves wedding and portrait photographers around the United States. During the course of her daily duties, in her dual roles of vice president and chief operations officer, she oversees production, customer service, and sales. Additionally, she attends conventions, and keeps a network of clients, maintaining relationships with each one.



Ms. Agans attributes her years of success in the field to having a great opportunity with her current boss, who helped her became a great financial professional. She maintains a connection with her field through her affiliation with the APCL. Within the next five years, Ms. Agans intends on consulting and traveling more.



For additional information regarding Burrell Colour Imaging LLC, please visit http://burrellimaging.com.



About Worldwide Branding

For over 15 years, Worldwide Branding has been the leading, one-stop-shop, personal branding company, both in the United States and abroad. From writing professional biographies and press releases, to creating and driving traffic to personal websites, our team of branding experts tailor each product specifically for our clients' needs. We are dedicated to empowering our 600,000 clients with effective branding tools to help them achieve success. From healthcare to finance to education and law, our constituents represent every major industry and occupation, at all career levels.



An international company, we provide our members with access to members in over 52 countries including, the United States, Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, France, The Netherlands, Germany, Ireland, Spain, Switzerland, South Africa, Belgium, Mexico, Italy, Brazil, Sweden and The United Arab Emirates, just to name a few.



For more information, please visit http://www.worldwidebranding.com.



# # #
I remember the first time I walked down the runway which felt like walking down a plank. The agents and scouts ended up rejecting me, and that was the first time I thought I was ugly.

PALM SPRINGS, CA, May 06, 2016 /24-7PressRelease/ -- Terrah Holder and Krystle Kelley have always loved being in front of the camera. So it was only natural, of course, that they seem destined to model. They quickly learned, however, you had to develop some pretty tough skin. After all, it's a business that can be downright brutal.



"I remember the first time I walked down the runway which felt like walking down a plank. The agents and scouts ended up rejecting me, and that was the first time I thought I was ugly," said Krystle describing her first photoshoot in San Diego at age ten. "I couldn't stop crying. It was a bit traumatizing."



However, she didn't let the rejection get her down. She kept pursuing her dreams--just like her partner in crime, Terrah, who didn't start modeling until age 20.



"I grew up in a small town in southern Utah where there weren't any modeling options. When I moved to California that obviously wasn't the case," explained Terrah. "It's a tough world. However, I learned a lot about the industry itself and self-acceptance. It also taught me a lot about business."



Unfortunately, in the world of modeling, it's a short-lived ride. Generally, by the time a model turns 25, their career in the fashion world is over. For those who are smart, they go on to develop other passions. Take Cindy Crawford, for example. She's gone on to develop a popular furniture line through Rooms to Go. Meanwhile, former Victoria's Secret model, Heidi Klum, has become a popular TV host for Project Runway and judge of America's Got Talent.



"After I turned 25, no major agency would re-sign me. I decided to make a blog about modeling," explained Krystle. "While I was learning to make a website for myself, I soon realized that I was naturally gifted with HTML coding and designing websites. At that moment, I realized I should be designing websites for profit."



Shortly after, she joined forces with her friend and fellow model, Terrah, who shared her same passion for web development. In 2013, Terrah graduated with a bachelor's degree in business marketing. In 2014, the two re-invented themselves, getting serious about web design as a full-time career.



"I began to feel that the modeling industry was losing momentum and large companies were reaching out to influences to represent their brands rather than the Cindy Crawfords of the world," stated Terrah. "It was then that we began to see small businesses take root in the social media world. Krystle and I found that there was a niche in this world and have focused on the web design and creation of small brands and how blogging and social media play a huge role in all these small business successes."



And so far, this dynamic duo hasn't looked back. The skills they both developed in the fashion world are now being applied to their new business venture with Desert Pop Design.



"Modeling has helped me look at websites through a beauty and fashion lens. I'm very visually creative, and the websites I design reflect that. I make sure every website is beautifully appeasing, so you want to be on the website for long periods of time," explained Krystle.



To learn more about Terrah and Krystle's business, click here.



About Krystle Kelley: Before delving into the world of web design, Krystle, a native of Palm Springs, previously worked as an international fashion model for a variety of couture fashion designers. She's also worked the runways of major fashion events, like: LA Fashion Week, New York Fashion Week and El Paseo Fashion Week. After turning 25, she decided to focus her attention to her second love: computers. After extensive training in the field of web design-her career has never looked brighter. When she's not working, she enjoys scuba diving, shopping, making jewelry and painting.



About Terrah Holder: Born in Cedar City, Utah, Terrah is the vice president of Desert Pop Design. At just 18-years-old, she married her high school sweetheart and remain happily married. Together they have three young children. With a degree in business marketing, she continues to push herself both professionally and personally in this ever changing digital world. When she's not working, she enjoys spending time with her children and husband. Her hobbies include: fashion, photography, styling, designing and snowboarding.



Contact Us:

Krystle Kelley, President

Desert Pop Design

Phone: (760) 333-4974

Email: [email protected]

Web: www.desertpopdesign.com



# # #
MIAMI, FL, May 06, 2016 /24-7PressRelease/ -- Javier Gavilan, Chief Executive Officer of International Meal Company, has been named a Worldwide Branding Executive of the Year in Food & Beverage Services. While inclusion in Worldwide Branding is an honor, only a few members in each discipline are chosen for this distinction. These special honorees are distinguished based on their professional accomplishments, academic achievements, leadership abilities, years of service, and the credentials they have provided in association with their Worldwide Branding membership.



Mr. Gavilan has 23 years of professional experience, with nine years as the CEO of International Meal Company. Throughout his career, he has set himself apart as an expert in field operations, private equity, entrepreneurship, valuation, due diligence, start-ups, emerging markets, SAP and investments. On a daily basis, he is responsible for overseeing all daily operations of the company, in addition to handling 15,000 employees and chains of restaurants all over the world, in countries such as Brazil, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Spain, Panama, Colombia, and Mexico. Mr. Gavilan also holds executive meetings and reports to the board of directors.



In 2006, Mr. Gavilan started IMC. The company's restaurant brands include: Viena, Frango Assado, Wraps, Go Fresh, Brunella, Gino's, Margaritaville, and Airports Concepts/Airport Shoppes. This past year, Mr. Gavilan purchased Margaritaville Enterprises, LLC from Jimmy Buffet.



Mr. Gavilan attributes his success to treating people the way he would like to be treated. He became involved in his profession because his family owned KFC franchises; three in Boca Raton, Fla., eventually growing the amount to 18. Mr. Gavilan gained further experience in the food industry by working for T.G.I. Friday's in Spain.



Mr. Gavilan received a Bachelor of Commerce in International Business from Florida Atlantic University. In years to come, he plans to serve on the board for other companies. He would also like to stay with IMC, expanding more into Latin America. A people-person, Mr. Gavilan also hopes to help younger people improve themselves.



For more information about International Meal Company, visit http://www.internationalmealcompany.com.



About Worldwide Branding

For over 15 years, Worldwide Branding has been the leading, one-stop-shop, personal branding company, both in the United States and abroad. From writing professional biographies and press releases, to creating and driving traffic to personal websites, our team of branding experts tailor each product specifically for our clients' needs. We are dedicated to empowering our 600,000 clients with effective branding tools to help them achieve success. From healthcare to finance to education and law, our constituents represent every major industry and occupation, at all career levels.



An international company, we provide our members with access to members in over 52 countries including, the United States, Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, France, The Netherlands, Germany, Ireland, Spain, Switzerland, South Africa, Belgium, Mexico, Italy, Brazil, Sweden and The United Arab Emirates, just to name a few.



For more information, please visit http://www.worldwidebranding.com.



# # #
May 6, 2016 | By Alec

Australian researchers can already be found at the forefront of 3D bioprinting innovation, but the Australian government is about to give them another huge boost. They have just announced the establishment of the ARC Training Centre in Additive Biomanufacturing, a collaborative 3D bioprinting initiative that will cost $3.7 million AUD and will involve various Australian universities, companies and clinicians. Its goal? To develop new 3D bioprinting innovations and apply them in clinical environments.

This announcement is quite remarkable, as Australia is already pushing the 3D bioprinting envelope and has realized several remarkable breakthroughs over the past few years. Just last February, one Australian patient received a 3D printed vertebrae to combat chordoma cancer. Especially the University of Wollongong has been advancing this revolutionary medical technology. Just a few weeks ago, Wollongong professor and biomedical expert Gordon Wallace published a paper showcasing a potential 3D bioprinted solution for Alzheimers disease. That same professor also teaches an online 3D bioprinting beginners course.

But as Simon Birmingham, the Australian Minister for Education and Training, just announced, the University of Wollongong will now be teaming up with researchers from the Queensland University of Technology, the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology University, Deakin University and the University of Melbourne. Also involved in this new 3D bioprinting center are surgeons from St Vincents Hospital Melbourne and the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, who will push for the introduction of the technology in clinical environments.

This new center will also partner with industrial developer Osteopore, who are known for developing resorbable 3D printed polymer implants that can be used to treat bone defects. 3D printed surgical implant and surgical planning tool pioneer Anatomics and 3D printed cochlear implant developer Cochlear will also be involved in the ARC Training Centre in Additive Biomanufacturing. The center will also house three research fellows and 12 PhD students.

As Birmingham revealed, the ARC Training Centre is part of the governments Industrial Transformation Training Centres scheme. Through $3.7 million AUD in funding (approximately $2.7 USD), the center will push for the development of 3D printed medical implants and will bring personalized 3D bioprinted medical treatments closer to patients. The government hopes that this step will position Australia as a world leader in 3D bioprinting.

And according to Professor Wallace, its a necessary step. Despite fantastic advances in the technologys capacity, he argued, there is still a debilitating gap in the amount of available hardware, materials and skilled personnel. Its important that research centers and industry combine to meet these needs. We at ACES are excited to be able to provide our state-of-the-art 3D printing facilities and highly skilled personnel to this venture. We look forward to working with our colleagues at QUT and other research training organizations, Professor Wallace said. Australia, it seems, is ready to take the lead in 3D bioprinting.

Posted in 3D Printing Technology

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alvaro wrote at 5/9/2016 3:19:20 PM:Once Again Australia is giving us good examples




May 6, 2016 | By Kira

Leading additive manufacturing R&D facility Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) has partnered with Boeing and seven industrial partners to 3D print and test the first 100% digitally manufactured tools in an industrial autoclave setting. The results demonstrate the feasibility of using high-quality 3D printed parts as a low-cost alternative in the tooling industry.

ORNLs Manufacturing Demonstration Facility (MDF) 3D printed four thermoplastic molds made from two new specially developed, high-temperature materials. The molds were then inserted into Boeings autoclave, a high-heat pressure chamber that is primarily used to cure aerospace-grade composite parts. Despite being subjected to temperatures as high as 350F and pressures of 90psi, the 3D printed thermoplastic parts survived. Post-autoclave laser scans of the tool dimensions revealed surface deformation was less than 0.002 inches.

3D printed thermoplastic mold

This was the first successful demonstration of 100 percent digitally manufactured tools in an industrial autoclave, confirmed ORNL researcher Vlastimil Kunc.

What is particularly significant about these thermoplastic molds, which measure roughly 18 x 18 x 6.5, is that they were 3D printed in just one hour and machined in fourtraditionally, lead time for these parts could be as much as 14 weeks.

Results from laser scanner show deformation less than 0.002" after 350F, 90psi cycle

Example of 1 of the 3D printed molds made from high temperature thermoplastic materials.

This demonstrates the viability of using additively manufactured parts in the tooling industry to significantly reduce manufacturing costs and energy requirements by accelerating production times.

Indeed, the projects entire timelineincluding developing of the new materials, manufacturing the tools, and finally testing in the autoclavewas remarkably fast.

The initial collaboration between ORNLs MDF, Boeing, and seven other industry partners began in November 2015. At this time, six new 3D printing materials were successfully tested on the BAAM large-format 3D printer, which was developed in conjunction with ORNL and Cincinnati Incorporated.

In March 2016, two of those six materials were chosen for 3D printing the four high-temperature tools. Of these, two were machined and uncoated, while the other two were coated and unmanned using experimental coating systems developed by a Knoxville-based company. As mentioned above, the total manufacturing time for each part was just five hours including 3D printing and machining, with no touch labor involved.

Finally, in April 2016, the 3D printed molds were taken to Boeings St. Louis testing facility. The successful testing resulted in high quality composite parts that can be used in primary aircraft structures. Furthermore, the tools can be re-used to produce part replicatesresulting in further time and energy savings.

In addition to the thermoplastic 3D printed tools, ORNL has therefore been developing several other additive manufacturing-related processes and technologies.

One of their key areas of focus is Metal Additive Manufacturing (MAM) and Electron Beam Melting (EMB), whereby metal powders or wires are melted and then built-up, layer-by-layer, into complex and high-quality 3D objects. In contrast to subtractive metal manufacturing, metal 3D printing increases material utilization and minimizes scrap, resulting in all-around energy and waste efficiency.

ORNLs 3D printing research has also extended into the realm of Polymer Additive Manufacturing (PAM), which allows for complex, lightweight, and low-cost components to be built for a range of industries, from automotive and aerospace, to rapid tooling.

And of course, ORNL took a lead role in designing and creating a 3D printed house and car capable of producing and sharing clean energy.

Beyond 3D printing, ORNL is also involved in several other research initiatives centered on novel materials and energy efficiency. These include hard carbon materials recycled from old tires that could be used in sodium-ion batteries, and accident-tolerant nuclear fuels made from silicon carbide-based materials.

Posted in 3D Printer Company

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thunderhunter wrote at 9/14/2016 4:34:23 PM:it just seems to me that the surface of the mold is cnc milled?Ross wrote at 5/10/2016 3:01:18 PM:This is far from the first application of additive manufacturing in composite tooling.




May 6, 2016 | By Benedict

Xerox, the American business and technology corporation, is developing 3D printed circuit board technology for smart devices that can sense and interact with their environment. Janos Veres of Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), A Xerox Company, just gave an update on the companys progress.

Despite having had a foothold in 3D printing technology for some years now, Xerox is, understandably, still most commonly associated with a more established printing machine: the photocopier. Since its inception in 1906, Xerox has slowly become one of the most well-known and trusted business service providers on the planet, pioneering a number of groundbreaking printing techniques and becoming a household name in the process.

Needles to say, Xerox creates much more than just photocopying equipment. The international corporation, headquartered in Norwalk, Connecticut, invented the computer mouse and the graphical user interface, and is now looking towards 3D printing to spark further revolutionary developments in the tech sphere. According to Janos Veres, Novel and Printed Electronics Program Lead at PARC, the Xerox Innovation Group is channeling its 3D printing expertise to create smart devicesnew electronics which take full advantage of the design flexibility afforded by 3D printing. Making a very complex part 3D printed is just as simple as making a cubea simple geometric component, Veres explained. [All] it takes [is] pressing a button on the printer.

In order to build a new generation of smart devices, Xerox is attempting to rewrite the rulebook, starting with an integral part of all electronic devices: the circuit board. The potential uses for advantages of 3D printed PCBs are a hot topic in the additive manufacturing world, with companies such as Nano Dimension and Voxel8 developing new and exciting techniques for creating PCBs, often 3D printing them directly inside a component. Xerox joined the 3D printed PCB party a few years back when it started developing flexible, electrically conductive plastic filaments for 3D circuits, and now believes that 3D printing can be used to create new kinds of circuit boards, with flexible shapes suited to the specific electronic component.

Most electronics devices that you have today are built on a board, which is rigid, Veres said. Once weve made that board, we put it in a box. Every single electronics piece looks like that! It doesnt make sense. We should be able to make electronics to shape that we dream of, so that designers will be able to come up with new configurations of electronics that have intricate shapes, and place the sensors where they belongnot necessarily being constrained by what kind of shape and size can I have for that box?

With 3D printing, Xerox is able to create 3D circuitry within a 3D printed object as it is being manufactured, with sensors, actuators, coils, and such embedded directly into the device. This means that objects can be designed without having to accommodate traditional rigid circuit boards or unnecessary assembly of several parts. Best of all, this technology can be applied to an incredibly diverse range of devices, enabling 3D printing to take a foothold at the core of Xerox product development. The company is even developing materials which have been precisely engineered to suit the 3D printing process, with their viscosity, temperature resistance, and adhesion all optimized for additive manufacturing.

At Xerox Innovation Group, we [want 3D] printing to become a production technique for creating smart devices, Veres explained. Whether its a phone, a computer, smart labels, wearables, components in automotive or aerospace, customized sensors, or batteries, 3D printing has the potential to achieve that very exciting goal of being able to produce basically anything of any complexity.

After conceding 2015 as a year of transition, with financial results mixed in an increasingly challenging market environment, Xerox separated into two separate companies in early 2016. If Veres comments are to be believed, 3D printing could yet form an important part of the companys future strategy. There are incredible opportunities for [3D] printing, Veres commented. They truly open an entirely new field, and make production on demand and local instead of being the privilege of large factoriesthats the power of printing.

Posted in 3D Printing Application

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Clara wrote at 4/17/2018 7:37:12 PM:So cool. Very well said Janos




Adam Kirsch in Tablet:

Today most Americans would be surprised to learn that the original ghettos were inhabited by Jews. That is the experience Mitchell Duneier relates in his new book Ghetto: The Invention of a Place, the History of an Idea, when it comes to teaching his own students at Princeton about the history of the ghetto. For the last 70 years, Duneier shows, the word ghetto has for Americans become exclusively associated with poor black neighborhoods, especially in big cities like New York and Chicago. Few people know that, for centuries before America even existed, Jews in many European cities were legally confined to walled neighborhoods known as ghettos. (Ghetto is the Italian word for foundry; the first Jewish enclave in Venice was located on the same island as a foundry, and the word came to refer to the neighborhood by extension.)

When it comes to understanding the black American ghetto, can we learn anything from the history of the European Jewish ghetto? It is a tricky question, which Duneier addresses carefully, since it seems to invite comparisons about who was more victimized and more resilient. Yet as he tells the story of the evolution of American thinking about the black ghettoprimarily through the lens of successive generations of academic sociologists, from Gunnar Myrdal to William Julius Wilsonthe Jewish ghetto refuses to disappear. It haunts the subject like a ghost, raising questions that continue to define the way sociologists think about ghettos today.

Matters are complicated by the fact that, during the Holocaust, the word ghetto took on a very different freight than the one it had traditionally carried. Ghettos like the ones in Venice or Frankfurt were poor, isolated neighborhoods subject to discrimination and surveillance; but they were places where Jews lived and where their culture and civilization sometimes thrived. These ghettos had almost all disappeared by the 20th century, as European countries abolished official discrimination against Jews. It was the Nazis who brought the word back into common use when they created their own Jewish ghettos in occupied cities like Warsaw and Vilna. But the Nazi ghettos were not places for Jews to live; they were places for Jews to die of starvation and disease, or to await death in the gas chambers.

More here.
Jessa Crispin in Boston Review:

Two weeks after I left the United States for a stay in Germany, I found myself nearly incapacitated by nausea, pain, dizziness, and fatigue. I had moved to Berlin on my own. I knew no one in the city and barely spoke the language. My American health insurance did me no good, and I had not yet set up German coverage.

Alone, with no one to care for me, I dragged myself to daily doctor appointments. I stumbled around grocery stores, trying to cope with the nationwide lack of Saltine crackers when everything I ate immediately came back up. And every day, I worked from my bed, with my laptop laid warmly on my chest. Freelance writers do not get sick leave. After about ten days of this, I had a quick outpatient surgery, paid for with cash. I woke up from the anesthesia, still alone, in a small, curtained cubicle, only to find the clinic would not release me unless someone picked me up. I called the only local whose phone number I had, a German guy I had met at a party on one of my first days in the country. This is going to sound weird . . . . But he was a war photographer, and he handled it well. I once had to have surgery in rural Nigeria, he told me as he bundled me into his car.

While reading Rebecca Traisters All the Single Ladies: Unmarried Women and the Rise of an Independent Nation, I often thought of this episode. In her examination of Americas fast-growing unmarried population, Traister makes single life sound so romantic. She is married now, but she looks back on singlehood as a period of ease and freedom. If bad things happened to her, it was only the universe demonstrating how much she could overcome. Her great challenge was transporting an air conditioner to her apartment. Turns out, it wasnt that hard. She got a taxi, and then her landlord helped her carry it up the stairs. She felt empowered.

My story does not make me feel empowered. It makes me feel lucky. I was lucky that German law allows even uninsured people to obtain treatment at a price I could afford. I was lucky to have had surgery early enough to fix my problem. But with luck comes fear.

More here.
How to watch and what to know about South Dakota State at North Dakota


Corporate Update for Market

Perth, May 6, 2016 AEST (ABN Newswire) - Strategic Elements ( ASX:SOR ) is pleased to provide a Corporate Update for shareholders and market participants.



Nanocube Memory



Memory is at the heart of electronics and the Nanocube Memory Ink is a revolutionary technology addressing a large global Printed Electronics market. The Company and team based at the University of New South Wales have been extremely successful in fast tracking the Nanocube Memory Ink technology since development programs commenced less than 10 months ago.



As previously announced, the Company has assessed different prototype fabrication options for the Nanocube Memory technology and the University of New South Wales team successfully optimised a number of prototype fabrication parameters. The Company is continuing to determine the impact of different materials, device configurations and fabrication methods and will communicate results as soon as appropriate.



Success in innovative new sectors such as Printed Electronics requires partnership. Going forward, a priority focus of the Company will be on development and other activities related to partnering.



Capital Raising



Despite receiving approaches from domestic and overseas potential investors over the past 12 months, the board made the decision not to make a placement of shares. The Company decided instead to provide an opportunity to its own shareholders first under a share plan. Eligible shareholders will be mailed their documents on May 10th, 2016 and have the opportunity to acquire further shares in the Company prior to the next phase of potential developments in the Nanocube Memory technology and other projects.



SOR acknowledges many Australian shareholders support the Company due to its registration as a Pooled Development Fund by the Federal Government and the requirement for it to back innovative Australian companies. The significant tax benefits provided under the tax act to domestic and overseas investors work to assist Pooled Development Funds stimulate investment in Australian SME's.



Expansion



Multi-billion-dollar semiconductor fabrication plants (required by silicon based electronics) are not required to manufacture printed electronics that use traditional printing processes. Printed Electronics is one of the fastest growing technologies in the world. It is of vital interest to industries as diverse as consumer goods, healthcare, construction, electronics, media and transit. It is allowing electronics to be used in places it has never been before and it is improving existing electronics. Printed Electronics is forecast to be a USD 73 Billion market by 2023.



SOR is the only ASX listed Company actively developing technology focused on this market in which there is a very limited number of start-ups. However, Australia has significant existing research institution expertise in materials science and engineering, which could be recruited to target the Printed and Flexible Electronics sector.



In Australia, the Company has a real opportunity to leverage a first mover advantage. SOR is establishing a Printed Electronics advisory panel to assist it with Printed and Flexible Electronics industry sector development in Australia and technology acquisition opportunities.

Other Assets



Investors have enquired as to the Company's intentions with the high-grade gold asset held within 100% owned Strategic Materials Pty Ltd (SML). Whether SOR proportionally distributes the shares it holds in SML directly to SOR shareholders (for free) or seeks a 3rd party joint venture, it is intended that the Company or its shareholders will retain control.





About Strategic Elements Ltd





Strategic Elements (ASX:SOR) shares are listed on the Australian Stock Exchange under the code SOR. The Company is registered under the Pooled Development Program run by the Australian Federal Government to encourage investment into SMEs. To assist Pooled Development Funds to invest and raise capital, the Federal Government enables most shareholders in a Pooled Development Fund to make capital gains and receive dividends tax-free.
PORTALES, N.M.  A Portales man is accused of wounding a Portales police officer during a traffic stop in the eastern New Mexico city.

The Portales Police Department said 28-year-old Anthony Ortega was served Monday night with an arrest warrant in the Monday afternoon shooting after initially being booked into jail on warrants in unrelated matters.

The officers name and details of his injuries werent released, but the Clovis News Journal (http://goo.gl/GXfniV ) reported that the injuries werent life-threatening.

The warrant accused Ortega of aggravated battery, disarming a peace officer and resisting and evading an officer. It wasnt immediately known whether Ortega has an attorney who could comment on the allegations.

Police said several people in a vehicle stopped by the officer ran away and that the shooting occurred as the officer tried to apprehend one of those people.

The shooting marked the first time in at least 30 years a Portales police officer was shot in the line of duty, said Lonnie Berry, a retired officer.
PHOENIX  The Republican-controlled Arizona House on Thursday advanced a proposal that could cut off nearly 80,000 people from the states food stamp program, despite assurances from the sponsor two months ago that he would remove the provision.

Republican Rep. Justin Olsons bill is mainly aimed at cutting fraud and includes lifetime bans for some violations of food stamp rules. Senate Bill 1161 also bars anyone who is behind in their child support payments from getting food stamps.

Olson promised House members in March he would remove a part of the bill blocking the state from seeking or renewing waivers on federal work requirement waivers to receive food stamp benefits. The bill stalled in the Senate, and he revived the components this week.

Olsons new version contains the ban on Arizona seeking waivers, but it adds a provision allowing them if a GOP-controlled Legislative panel and the governor agree. The work requirements, contained in a 1990s-era welfare reform, apply to able-bodied adults with no dependents.

Democrats argued that Olsons proposal in effect is a ban, since Republicans on the panel or Gov. Doug Ducey could easily block any waiver requests. The federal government grants the waivers when entire states or certain areas have high unemployment. They also say it continues the narrative from some Republicans that public assistance encourages dependency and could affect children living with some of the people cut off.

I think the reality is we are up against an ideology here  the same ideology that we dont want to provide health care for kids because its creates dependency, said Rep. Rebecca Rios, D-Phoenix, referring to GOP lawmakers blocking a childrens health insurance program this week. I dont think we should be worried about creating dependency when were talking about kids who are hungry.

But Olson said requiring able-bodied people to be actively seeking work or actually working is a reasonable expectation and that the doomsday scenarios some opponents suggested would not occur.

This is a good bill that makes good reforms, he said.

Other provisions require the Department of Economic Security to add photo identification to benefit cards, though recipients could choose to decline to have their photos taken. Legislative analysts estimate it would cost $12 million in the first year and $8 million annually.

Nearly 1 million people receive benefits through the states food stamps program at an average monthly allowance of $120 per person as of January, according to legislative analysts.

The House advanced the measure Thursday on a voice vote. It awaits a formal vote and must return to the Senate for a final vote.
TUCSON, Ariz.  A Tucson woman accused of killing a Gila monster with a screwdriver and bragging about it on social media has pleaded not guilty in the case.

Sarah Elisabeth Crabtree is facing five citations including the taking of wildlife without a license.

The 26-year-old Crabtree posted photos of the dead reptile with a screwdriver through its head on her Facebook page March 28.

That caused a public outcry, prompting the Arizona Game and Fish Department to take action and issue her five citations.

The Gila monster is a nearly endangered species. Its federally protected, making it illegal to capture or kill one in Arizona.

Each of the five citations carries a maximum penalty of six months in jail and a $750 fine.

Crabtree will be back in court on June 16.
A celebration of the states craft beers is heading to Las Cruces and serving the tastes, flavors and aromas of New Mexico brews to those down south.

Blazin Brewfest, in its fourth year, will feature 15 New Mexico breweries serving up their ales, lagers and some ciders throughout the event. Live music, food trucks and games also will be part of the festivities.

Participating breweries are Abbey Brewing Co., Bosque Brewing Co., De La Vegas Pecan Grill & Brewery, La Cumbre Brewing Co., High Desert Brewing Co., Marble Brewery, Picacho Peak Brewing, Ponderosa Brewing Co., Red Door Brewing Co., Santa Fe Brewing Co., Sierra Blanca Brewing Co., Spotted Dog Brewery, Taos Mesa Brewing Co. and Tractor Brewing Co.

Theyre probably going to be bringing anywhere from three to five beers each, New Mexico Brewers Guild Executive Director John Gozigian said of the participating breweries. Theres going to be a lot of different beers available  somewhere between 50 and 100 different beers.

Blazin Brewfest

WHEN: 5-9 p.m. Saturday, May 7

WHERE: 211 Main Street in Las Cruces

HOW MUCH: $15 advance, plus fees at 5-9 p.m. Saturday, May 7211 Main Street in Las Cruces$15 advance, plus fees at holdmyticket.com or $20 at the door

The event it somewhat of a hybrid, Gozigian said. The ticket cost gets you unlimited sampling of all the breweries beers, and you can also purchase your favorite beer by the pint.

The event began at a smaller venue called The Grapevine, on the western edge of Las Cruces. The event eventually outgrew the space and moved to the Main Street mall in Las Cruces, a pedestrian mall that is currently being revitalized.

Las Cruces had one brewery, High Desert, when Blazin Brewfest began there. Now there are four breweries: Spotted Dog, Picacho Peak and De La Vegas Pecan Grill & Brewery, as well as a Bosque Brewing tap room, according to Gozigian.

Theres a ton of craft brewing culture and activity and festivals in central New Mexico, Albuquerque, Santa Fe  youve got the Middle Rio Grande corridor  theres always something to do, so we really try to get out into other parts of the state to do cool stuff, Gozigian said. Thats why we chose to do a festival in Las Cruces a few years ago. Its really been very successful and well-received. People down there really look forward to it. Their brewing scene is really burgeoning out too.
Consumers may soon be able to get their day in court to settle disputes with lenders and credit card companies.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau issued a proposed rule Thursday that would allow more people to take their credit card and loan complaints to court, rather than being forced to argue their cases in front of closed arbitration panels.

But finance industry representatives sharply criticized the new rule, which would give consumers an option for redress besides the arbitration clauses commonly found in banks fine print. They said that would lead to frivolous lawsuits and warned the bureau should expect a legal challenge.

The bureau hosted a field hearing Thursday in Albuquerque, where regulators outlined the rule, and then heard spirited debate among speakers and panelists at the Albuquerque Convention Center.

New Mexico Attorney General Hector Balderas and representatives of consumer groups, both statewide and national, said people should be able to join class actions if they feel theyve been harmed.

Signing up for a credit card or opening a bank account can often mean signing away your right to take the company to court if things go wrong, bureau Director Richard Cordray said. Many banks and financial companies avoid accountability by putting arbitration clauses in their contracts that block groups of their customers from suing them.

Theres only one winner coming out of this rule: the plaintiffs class action bar, countered Alan Kaplinsky, head of the consumer finance practice at the law firm Ballard Spahr. Its not good for the industry, for banks or for nonbanks. And consumers are going to be net losers.

Millions of contracts include provisions that bar consumers from bringing group suits and companies have used the clauses to keep fights out of court almost two-thirds of the time, the CFPB found in a study released last year. Very few consumers bring, or even consider, individual actions against their financial service provider in court or in arbitration, the study showed.

The regulators proposal would cover new agreements for products such as credit cards, auto loans, credit reports and even mobile phone services that provide third-party billing.

There will be a public comment period for 90 days before the CFPB can issue a final rule.

The soonest it could take effect is mid-2017 and companies would then have 210 days to comply with the requirements.

Companies could still include arbitration clauses in contracts, but they would have to state that those cannot be used to stop individual consumers from joining a class-action case. Companies that do have arbitration clauses will be required to submit some related information to the CFPB, the bureau said.

Some players, such as credit unions, which are member owned, may be looking for exemptions.

Credit unions dont need to be tarred with this brush, said Kevin Hammar, a representative of the Nevada Credit Union League. Many credit unions are justifiably leery of a loss of members money to fund legal defense funds.

Hammar was on the panel with Paul Bland of Public Justice; Deepak Gupta of Gupta Wessler PLLC; Christine Hines of the National Association of Consumer Advocates; Kaplinsky of Ballard Spahr LLC; and Travis Norton of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Lawsuits challenging the rule are probable, said Kaplinsky.

Financial services companies and groups including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce have argued arbitration is a valuable tool to help avoid frivolous, expensive lawsuits that often dont do much to benefit borrowers.

The finance industry argues that curbing arbitration will result in higher legal costs that banks will ultimately pass on to consumers in the form of higher fees and reduced services, said Norton.

All the major financial industry lobby groups announced their opposition to the CFPB proposal in prepared statements on Thursday.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
As the man charged in a crime that shook the Navajo Nation and the entire state appears before a judge in a federal courthouse in Albuquerque today, the 11-year-old girl he is accused of kidnapping and murdering Monday will be laid to rest near her hometown nearly 200 miles to the northwest.

A public funeral will be held for Ashlynne Mike at the Farmington Civic Center today at 10 a.m., capping off several days of public mourning.

The San Juan Chapter House near her home held a candlelight vigil Tuesday evening, and the following night the Nenahnezad Chapter House near her elementary school held a community meeting, where her father spoke.

Banners and memorials popped up at Ashlynnes school, the school bus stop near where she was abducted and along roadsides throughout the Shiprock and Farmington area.

As a safety precaution, all elementary schools in the surrounding school district will require parents to pick up their children at the bus stop until the end of the school year, said James Preminger, a district spokesman.

And news of the tragedy struck a chord among activists against sexual assault and violence among Native American populations.

The Coalition to Stop Violence Against Native Women held a community gathering and donation drive at the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center in Albuquerque Thursday evening to pay respects to Ashlynne and her family and bring awareness to the high levels of violence committed against Native women and children.

About 400 Native and non-Native people filled the courtyard, many wearing yellow in honor of Ashlynne.

Students from the Native American Community Academy in Albuquerque performed a traditional song and dance to tell Ashlynnes spirit that people care about her in the living world.

Students at the school made a memorial banner for the girls family to wish her spirit well on its journey, and a teacher invited all in attendance to pray over it.

Donated money and goods will be given directly to Ashlynnes family.

Deleana OtherBull, the executive director of the coalition, said community leaders and other members are beginning to discuss how to make the community safer.

This brings the community closer, OtherBull said. It brings them tighter, starts that dialogue. I see a lot of people wanting to talk to their children and the community acting and planning.

In the meantime, the suspect, Tom Begaye Jr., 27, remains in custody on murder and kidnapping charges.

He attended his initial appearance in Farmington Wednesday and was then taken to Albuquerque, where he will appear before Magistrate Judge Steven Yarbrough in federal court for preliminary and detention hearings this morning.

Begaye doesnt appear to have much of a criminal history.

He had been ticketed for speeding a few times since 2006 and was charged with DWI in 2015, according to the Shiprock District Court for the Navajo Nation. He defaulted on the speeding tickets and the DWI charge was dismissed.

Three weeks ago, he was charged with misdemeanor possession of drug paraphernalia and a petty misdemeanor of possession of marijuana or synthetic cannabinoids. He was supposed to be arraigned in Farmington on Thursday on that charge, but he was already being held in federal custody.

He was arrested Tuesday evening, a little more than 24 hours after Ashlynne Mike and her 9-year-old brother were abducted from a bus stop near their home in Fruitland, near Farmington.

Begaye told federal investigators he wanted to have sexual intercourse with Ashlynne so he offered to give the children a ride, an FBI agent wrote in a criminal complaint charging Begaye with murder and kidnapping.

Begaye then drove the siblings down a desolate dirt road south of the Shiprock pinnacle.

According to the complaint, Begaye admitted to sexually assaulting Ashlynne before hitting her over the head with a tire iron. He then let her brother go.
Protest of the University of the New Mexicos official seal over what some students call racist imagery continued to inch forward Thursday with an unusually boisterous committee meeting of the regents.

Roughly two dozen students with highlighter-yellow protest signs with statements such as No school pride in genocide dominated the public forum section of the Academic/Student Affairs and Research Committee on Thursday afternoon.

That committee is made up of three regents as well as Provost Chaouki Abdallah and the heads of the faculty senate and staff council.

Some students say the seal, which features a conquistador and a frontiersman, glorifies the violent European treatment of Natives.

The students were not part of the meetings agenda. Regent Brad Hosmer, the head of that committee, said the students absence on the schedule was because the committee had yet to find anyone who supported the seal, whose origins trace back to 1910, though the most recent iteration was adopted in 1969.

That got the audience attention. Many murmured. Someone shouted, Maybe that should tell you something.

At least the first hour of the meeting was lively. Protesters would snap their fingers or clap while others spoke in favor of abolishing the seal and righting the deeper-seated racism against Native Americans. Students again reiterated their list of 11 demands, which includes increasing the number of Native Americans on faculty, the creation of a Native American cultural center and tuition waivers for members of federally recognized tribes.

Former Albuquerque City Councilor Rey Garduno also joined the protest Thursday.

As long as UNM holds onto this heraldry, there will be no change, he said. The disrespect needs to be removed to move forward.

Hosmer ended the public comment period with a brief reflection.

This is a subject that calls for a dialogue, he said. I have heard no proposals other than demolition today.

Three-quarters of the room emptied after public comment. As Hosmer moved forward with the rest of the meeting, the din of the protesters in the hallway could still be heard. Virginia Scharff, an associate provost, talked with the protesters after the meeting and said the office would listen to students concerns about the seal.

Its not surprising we see this kind of process of rethinking what represents us because over time this institution has changed an enormous amount, Scharff said at the start of the meeting. Were grateful for the opportunity to see our seal anew through your eyes.

Ultimately, its up to the board of regents to alter or change UNMs official seal.
Art that expresses our intimate relationship with the seeds, plants and soil that support human and other life on this planet will be on display through part of the summer in New Mexicos State Capitol.

And if you swing by between 4-6 p.m. today, you may even have a chance to contribute to some of it.

Sarah Molina will invite visitors to help weave willow branches into an olla, a cooking pot that brings to mind the nourishment we enjoy from plants.

Using willows gathered along the Gila River, the activity also will invite public discussion of the proposed damming of that river, one of the few remaining wild, free-flowing rivers in the Southwest, said Bobbe Besold, curator of the exhibition titled The Ecozoic Era: Plant|Seed|Soil.

Ecozoic can be translated as house of living beings, a reminder that, on Earth, we all share the same house with everybody.

Its a term that Besold said she prefers to the proposed designation that we are living in the anthropocene epoch, which refers to a time beginning when humans began having a major impact on earth geology and ecosystems.

The anthropocene term, she said, doesnt put any responsibility on us to reflect on and adjust the human footprint.

Opening activities also will include a seed exchange sponsored by SeedBroadcast, a project of Jeanette Hart-Mann and Chrissie Orr that includes a truck where they collect and record peoples stories about seeds.

Reunity Resources will also be on hand with information about its efforts to turn food waste citywide into compost, along with tips on how you can set up your own compost bin in a backyard, garage or even under your sink, according to Besold. Plants of the Southwest and Newmans Nursery have donated free seed packets for visitors.

The curator said her inspiration for the exhibition, which will include more than 20 visual artists, performers and poets, came about a year and a half ago.

If you go

WHAT: The Ecozoic Era: Plant|Seed|Soil

WHERE: State Capitol Rotunda

WHEN: Opening reception 4-6 p.m. today, on display through Aug. 5

HOW MUCH: Free

She had done a piece about soil based on her interviews with farmers, and she began to realize how many artists she knew who were doing interesting work involving seeds and plants.

At the same time, she was thinking about how a very powerful way to deal with climate change is by carbon sequestering and a very simple way to keep carbon out of the atmosphere is by composting. The soil itself is at risk because of the number of chemical inputs in the soil every day  . Those chemicals slow down and even stop the ability of plants to sequester carbon, she said.

The artists in the show take different paths and use various mediums to express many of these ideas.

Paintings by three-generational Native American artists Margarete Bagshaw, Helen Hardin and Pablita Velarde express indigenous, earth-based views, Besold said.

Ruben Olguin will project video images upon clay vessels he has made, while Matthew Chase-Daniel will show sculptures made from bundles leaves and dried plants.

Sabra Moore will bring a giant ear of corn with each kernel made from a squashed can and Nancy Sutor will show photographs of patterns within her compost pile.

Rulan Tangen of Dancing Earth collaborated with video artist Marion Wasserman on a dance video interspersed with quotes related to ecology, while Jade Leyva produced paintings in the style of magical realism with content related to plants and the earth, Besold said.

A curator of several past exhibits at the Capitol, Besold said she happened to call asking for a possible date for the exhibition not long after there was a cancellation, giving her a chance to stage the show sooner than she had anticipated.

I like working there because a lot of people go there, she said, giving an estimate of 65,000 people a year who go through the Roundhouse. Some want to visit the Capitol, some want to see the architectural elements or art on permanent display, some come as senior citizen or school groups on tours. The bonus of doing an exhibit there is that a lot of people see it who would not normally go to an art museum, she said.
No, City Council (and particularly new Councilor Michael Harris), dont try to wean the residents of mid-city Santa Fe from their library.

Theres talk of shutting down La Farge Branch Library, located on Llano Street virtually next door to prime book audiences at Santa Fe High School and De Vargas Middle School/Mandela International Magnet School, to help balance the city budget.

I find myself using that library least of all, Harris said at a recent council meeting. He said city government needs to wean some of our users from that particular facility and redirect them to other facilities.

Those other facilities would be the main library, about four miles away in the congested Plaza area, and the Southside Branch Library, about six miles away. Not so convenient for those SFPS students who now have a library a block away, and probably not convenient for many other Santa Feans who use La Farge, which gets about 234,000 visits a year to its centrally located site.

Centrally located is a key phrase here. The middle part of Santa Fe, located along and around thoroughfares like St. Michaels Drive/Osage Avenue, Siringo Road and Camino Carlos Rey, sometimes seems likes a forgotten part of town  in between the affluent and historic east and north sides, and the newer, expanding south side  when it comes to city improvements and infrastructure investment.

A small example: When the city commissioned those cool artist-designed bus stops a few years ago, they showed up downtown and on the south side, not along Siringo or St. Mikes.

Meanwhile, city workers began demolition of a bus stop in front of Santa Fe High, for some reason stopped the work and left a concrete jumble as an ugly ruin along Siringo for a ridiculous period of many months before finally completing the job.

Now, city leaders have raised the possibility of ripping out one of the areas major public amenities.

There are complicating factors for La Farge. The school district owns the land where the library branch is located and the $1-a-year lease runs out next year. There are rumors the district might want to sell the site or take it back, although its hard to understand how a school board dedicated to education could justify action to shut down a library that is so perfectly located to serve students.

Also, the La Farge building is 40 years old and is said to need $2 million to $3 million in wiring and other improvements. But, remember, this would be a capital expenditure, not part of the operating budget said to be facing a big deficit.

Despite the controversy over the use of a $30 million parks bond approved by city voters in 2008, Santa Fe voters, based on history, would almost certainly approve library upgrades as part of a capital improvements package, if asked.

Theres also talk of having La Farge absorbed into existing facilities at the nearby Santa Fe University of Art and Design. Thats not a bad idea but, with guarded entrance gates to boost campus security, SFUAD may not be seen as openly accessible by immigrants or others.

It should be pointed out that, as library hours have become a focus of budget-cutting talks, the city administration came up with $300,000 in unbudgeted excess land use permit fees to support a project near and dear to Mayor Javier Gonzales  his proposed Verde Fund to fight global warming and poverty.

First, we note here that, given this development, the projected $15 million deficit surely now should be downgraded to $14.7 million on all city documents. And it makes one wonder if there arent other dollars lying around that could be used to support libraries if the right people wanted to find them.

As weve noted before, there are a couple of obvious ways to scrape together more dollars in the police department  by cutting back the expense of paying for fuel and wear and tear on patrol cars that officers get to use on commutes from homes in Rio Rancho or other not-so-near domiciles, and the additional overtime costs that city records show were racked up by the return under Gonzales to four-day, 10-hour-per-day workweeks for officers. But these unnecessary costs apparently are a sacred cow that shall not be touched by the hands of city leaders.

In any case, the council and the school board should cooperate and find a way to keep La Farge going strong.
At the outset of the ceremony, an old teacher used the feather from a calligraphy pen to symbolically open the eyes of a statute of Buddha sitting atop an altar at the end of a long room packed to the brim with more than 100 people.

It represented an awakening  a re-awakening in this context  for Santa Fes Mountain Cloud Zen Center, a Zen training and practice center nestled in the foothills just east of Santa Fes city limits.

The gesture, as well as the knocks on a woodblock and the ringing of a bell, and the chanting of the Heart Sutra to honor founding teachers, was part of a rededication ceremony celebrating, in part, the 31st anniversary of the Zen Center.

The ceremony also commemorated the connection between the center and the Sanbo Zen lineage of Zen Buddhism, headed by Yamada Ryoun Roshi of Japan, roshi a title meaning old teacher.

The hope is to make Mountain Cloud the principal center for the Sanbo Zen in North America.

That is what Id like to see, the abbot said after Thursdays ceremony. My father, Yamada Koun, really wanted this to happen in this country. Its a very important place for me to make it grow.

Yamada Ryoun Roshi, who learned from his father, said the practice originated in India, then migrated to China and then to Japan.

Likewise, I want to bring that into this country. North America is a very important place.

Yamada was making his third trip to the center from his home in Kamakura, Japan, where the abbot also serves as CEO of Itoki Corp., a major manufacturer and seller primarily of office furniture.

He holds an MBA from Harvard, and is credited with orchestrating the merger of the Bank of Tokyo and Mitsubishi Bank in the 1990s, the biggest bank merger up to that time.

Not to be mistaken as religion, Sanbo Zen is the practice of meditation that can be integrated in all aspects of ones life, even business, and is said to be uniquely appropriate to Western practitioners.

Sanbo Zen is really true Zen, independent of any divisions, Yamada said. Those people who are Christian, practicing Zen can make them better Christians. Those who practice Islam, practicing Zen can make them better Muslims. Practicing Zen can help you realize your true self; that is why it is open to everyone.

Students of Sanbo Zen include California Gov. Jerry Brown, and renowned Beat poet and environmental activist Gary Snyder. Former U.S. diplomat and presidential assistant Joe Wilson of Santa Fe is also a practitioner and is actively involved at the Mountain Cloud center.

In the days leading up to the ceremony, Yamada led the North American Sanbo Zen Shesshin, an annual five-day silent meditation retreat. Dozens of people from different corners of the world attended the retreat, which was held at Santa Fes Immaculate Heart of Mary Retreat and Conference Center to accommodate the large gathering.

Center now busy

For many years, the modest, yet impressive, main structure built for the Mountain Cloud center by its founding members was underused, says Henry Shukman, who practiced meditation at the facility for years before leaving the Santa Fe area and then being invited back by those still carrying on the practice to help revive the center in 2010.

Now, we have quite a busy program of meditation gatherings, he said, adding that the center, set on two dozen tranquil acres, also hosts retreats and study sessions, conducts hospice care projects and runs a prison outreach program, in addition to serving as a training and practice center.

The center may be able to expand its programs. Shukman says that, just last week, the center received approval from the county that will allow it to expand and develop, the culmination of what he said was a two-year process.

Shukman speaks with a British accent. He first came to New Mexico in 1991, following the tracks of English author D.H. Lawrence with the intent of writing a book. Savage Pilgrims turned out to be a descriptive narrative of people he met from Taos to T or C, intertwined with some stories of Lawrences own New Mexico excursion.

It was one of several books hes written, both fiction and nonfiction. But perhaps most notable is that he is an accomplished poet who has won numerous major awards for his books and collections.

He has also published articles in The Guardian and the New York Times, and has often contributed writings to Buddhist journals.

Im also a teacher, said Shukman, who trained under Yamada Ryoun Roshi, furthering the connection the center has with the original source of the Dharma, the teachings of Buddha.

The initial ties go back to Philip Kapleau, a Sanbo Zen student and the centers first director, who authored the 1965 book The Three Pillars of Zen, considered a fundamental book on the practice, offering a practical way to living and training in Zen Buddhism.

Kapleau oversaw construction of the Santa Fe center in 1985, but left after several years and returned to another center he had established 40 years earlier in Rochester, N.Y.

Built specifically as a training facility for lay students in the local community, the Mountain Cloud Zen Center was designed in the traditional layout for a Japanese zenbo, but was constructed in Santa Fe style, made of packed adobe and straw, and accentuated by vigas featuring designs carved by the builders and first users of the facility.

Inside are a kitchen and dining room, Shukmans small office and the horizontal meditation hall.

Just outside the building is a patio-like area with a fire pit and gazebo that serve as gathering spots for small groups or a place one can sit silently. Small sculptures adorn the area from which hiking paths lead into the surrounding forest of juniper and pinon trees.

For two decades, the center was maintained by the community of local practitioners that remained after Kapleaus departure. Thanks to them, Shukman says, the center survived to celebrate a 31st year and achieve a higher plane of significance within Sanbo Zen.

Simplest form of Buddhism

Shukman describes Sanbo Zen in simple terms because it basically is simple and perhaps easier for the Western culture to embrace.

Among all forms of Buddhism, Zen is the simplest. Its the most bare bones, he said. We dont do deities. There is no belief system. In this lineage, we dont do a lot of ritual. We keep it pretty simple.

There are no monks, or people with shaved heads  unless they choose to shave their head, he says.

Its non-monastic  . Its something you do, he said.

He said the meditation isnt about retreating from the world, its about living in awareness, kindfully and helpfully.

Beginners typically start by focusing on their breathing. Later, theyll be introduced to koans  what Shukman called mysterious little phrases  the most famous of which is: You know the sound of two hands clapping. What is the sound of one hand?

Shukman says people find practicing meditation can change the brain and make the mind more elastic.

Even if you do it 10 minutes a day, it will make a difference, he said. People can come to some experience and find much more peace of mind than they ever believed possible  all just by sitting still and being quiet, and with a little bit of guidance. Thats where the teacher comes in.

The Santa Fe center offers a 70-minute introductory class beginning at 5 p.m. each Wednesday. It is free of charge, but donations are appreciated.

Mountain Cloud Zen Center is located up a nearly hidden driveway at 7241 Old Santa Fe Trail.
Tired of stereotypes that are far removed from how they see themselves, students from Santa Fes south side are taking the stage of downtowns major performing arts center to declare who they are in video, poetry, radio conversations, music and more.

City of Dreamers, coming to the Lensic at 7 p.m. Sunday, grew out of a project at Capital High School in which students complained of a fracture between the north and south sides of the city.

Estevan Rael-Galvez, working with the students as part of the city of Santa Fes Culture Connects program, recalls one girl saying, They just dont understand who we are as Mexicans.

WHAT: City of Dreamers

WHEN: 7 p.m. Sunday

WHERE: Lensic Performing Arts Center, 211 W. San Francisco St.

HOW MUCH: $5-$15

FOR TICKETS: 988-1234, City of Dreamers7 p.m. SundayLensic Performing Arts Center, 211 W. San Francisco St.$5-$15988-1234, ticketssantafe.org

Someone else, he said, responded, Thats why we need to tell them.

So thats what theyre doing.

Back in the olden days, said Priscila Guillen, 18, Capital High had the reputation of being a rough school, with gang fights and high dropout rates, and students getting into trouble and not showing interest in pursuing an education or a career.

And maybe a decade or so ago, at least some of that was true, she said, true enough that she felt apprehension when she was heading to Capital after finishing at De Vargas Middle School.

When I actually got here, I realized it was the complete opposite of what I had come to believe, she said. The students here want to study, want to get an education.

But while the reality on the ground changed over time, the image did not.

Challenging stereotypes

Some 60 students from the 12th-grade AVID college preparatory program at Capital have worked on the City of Dreamers project, which grew out of an after-school film-making program that Santa Fe-based nonprofit Littleglobe started in the fall of 2014 at Capital. Littleglobe, according to executive director Chris Jonas, works with people in its programs to help them tell their own stories in unique ways.

When the videos were screened from that after-school project, people asked that it continue, with particular interest from the AVID students, he said.

They looked at it as a way to challenge the stereotype about immigrants, Jonas said, noting that many Capital students come from such a background.

Guillen, for example, said her parents both came from Chiapas, Mexico, but she hasnt seen her father since 2008 and was raised by her mother, who has little education and cleans houses for a living. She came here for me, said Guillen, who was born in this country. She worked so hard.

Her mothers sacrifices opened up opportunities for Guillen, who said she in turn worked hard at her education and now has been accepted to Bates College in Lewiston, Maine, where she plans to study biology, then enter dental school and eventually specialize in orthodontics.

Im not the only one, she said, adding that many of her classmates are heading to higher education.

Capitals graduation rate rose from 50.9 percent in 2008 to 60.7 percent in 2012, according to Santa Fe Public Schools.

In 2014, Capitals graduation rate was up to 68.5, surpassing Santa Fe Highs 67.1 percent. (Santa Fe High was back ahead, with a grad rate of 69.9 percent compared to Capitals 66.4 percent, in the recently released 2015 numbers.)

This is a group of hard-working students on course to succeed in education, Jonas said.

Yet they would tell him stories about how, if they held a car wash to raise money for school programs, no one would turn in if the signs said it was for Capital High. You would get the face,' he said they told him. Yet, if the signs simply said the car wash was raising money for school programs without identifying the school, they would get customers, he said.

In a video promoting City of Dreamers, a student says when she tells a new acquaintance she goes to Capital, the person will respond, Oh, THERE in a deprecating voice.

Yeah, THERE, she says, and its awesome  deal with it!

Getting ahead

Students came up with a story that runs as a theme throughout the event, Jonas said. It tells of a seed that lands on broken concrete in a vacant lot, yet still grows into a tall tree.

The place was formerly an orchard. The acequia stopped running, but the seed starts to grow anyway, he said. It reminds people of the way things used to be. It contains the legacy of its forefathers in a new place; it rethinks what it is and remembers what it once was.

That story parallels arrival as an immigrant to Santa Fes south side, which was once farmland, but has become commercial and residential lots  and sometimes can be a harsh place for a young person, he said.

A lot of people come here fleeing violence, Jonas said. There are not opportunities where they come from.

But getting ahead in Santa Fe isnt necessarily a picnic, either, he noted.

One student in the video talks about the need to make sure there is food on the table and clothes on his familys back.

Sometimes I do feel Im not going to make it, why should I go to school? he said. I want to work to help my mom pay the rent.

Many stories

A range of stories will be told during the night at the Lensic, Jonas said: Students who are headed to college and are advocates for their community; students who are struggling just to graduate high school; a mom who does not have a Social Security number and lives in the shadows, but her kids are American citizens.

Were looking at how Santa Fe is a setting of complex beauty, history and culture. Not one story sums us all up, he said. The south side is a growing side of town that weve neglected to fully embrace.

Included in the project are three paid interns from the Youth Media Project of Youthworks! who are in training for film production.

One of them is Gabriel Martinez, a 17-year-old from Espanola who earned his GED through Youthworks! programs. He will also host a section of the onstage performance and hopes to get a degree in audio production.

Its a great way to connect our community, and to bring everyone together and have an understanding of each other, he said of City of Dreamers, which he described as very powerful.

His father, Martinez said, was an immigrant from Chihuahua who was deported when Martinez was too young to remember ever knowing him.

I like the project; it kind of touches me, too, Martinez said. I know what immigrant children are feeling with their parents.

He said he hopes the stage presentation can help people step into the shoes of an immigrant and help erase some of the stereotypes. Asked to name those stereotypes, Martinez offered, All different things, like education isnt respected, immigrants are criminals, theyre here illegally. Thats not true.

Jonas said he hopes to take the project into a second year, perhaps including the whole city. We are all dreamers, he said. We all dream of Santa Fe as a town that includes all of us.

Or, as a student says in the video, People say kids are hoodlums  . Theyre just kids, you know. They just believe and dream.
The State Investment Council is contending that Marc Correra, one of the main players in New Mexicos multimillion-dollar investment scandal, filed for bankruptcy earlier this year to thwart the states legal actions against him.

The SIC is asking federal Bankruptcy Court in Dallas to allow its lawsuit against Correra to proceed to trial late this year, as scheduled.

Correra, who shared in more than $22 million in finders fees for helping financial firms get millions of dollars in state investments during the administration of Gov. Bill Richardson, filed for bankruptcy in Texas shortly before he was scheduled to testify in the states lawsuit.

In court filings, the SIC claims the timing of this Bankruptcy Case suggests the Debtor (Marc Correra) and his father have been improperly thwarting the NMSICs rights to discovery in the pay to play action  a significant abuse of the bankruptcy process.

The SICs civil lawsuit names Correra and his father, Anthony Correra, a close friend, adviser and political fundraiser for Richardson. The lawsuit accuses the elder Correra of abusing his position as an unofficial adviser to the SIC and Richardson, allowing his son to share in millions of dollars in fees paid by financial firms chosen to get investments from the SIC. The SIC is seeking return of all fees paid to the Correras and other monetary damages.

Marc Correra is one of the main defendants in multiple civil lawsuits filed by the State Investment Council, Educational Retirement Board and two Fraud Against Taxpayers Act lawsuits filed by Frank Foy, former chief investment officer for the teachers pension fund. Foys lawsuits were the first filed, but the cases have been tied up in the courts for years.

A filing in federal Bankruptcy Court usually brings a halt to all civil lawsuits against the person seeking bankruptcy protection or liquidation.

The SIC argues that its lawsuit, scheduled to go to trial at the end of this year, will resolve many of the issues that face the Bankruptcy Court.

Both Marc and Anthony Correra refused to appear to give sworn testimony in the SICs lawsuit after the bankruptcy petition was filed.

The SIC argues that Anthony Correra has no right to refuse to give a sworn deposition just because his son filed bankruptcy and point out that Marc Correra didnt provide much of the financial information contained in the Bankruptcy Court filing when ordered to produce that information in the states lawsuit.

Marc Correra estimated his assets at between $1 million and $10 million earlier this year.

According to the bankruptcy documents, in 2014 and 2015 Marc Correra transferred $3.7 million to his fathers accounts as repayments for loans.

He also claims to owe his father an additional $1.5 million.

In the initial bankruptcy, Marc Correra estimated his potential liabilities at up to $500 million but didnt include the additional $1.5 million owed to his father.

Correra said that his assets were tied up in his divorce proceedings for several years and that his parents were paying his bills, including legal bills. He said that he has not worked since 2009 and that financial firms that owe him money have refused to pay since the investment scandal became public.

He testified in the bankruptcy proceeding in late March that once his assets were freed up after his divorce he began paying his parents back.

Finally when the divorce was settled, the funds were released, and then at that point I was able to repay the loans, Correra told the bankruptcy trustee earlier this year.

Documents also show more than $4 million set aside in IRAs and accounts for his two children.

Correra said that his parents still are paying his bills and that those bills continue to climb, including legal fees.

He testified that he paid his wife more than $4 million in the divorce settlement, that his children now live in Paris and that his parents pay for their private schooling.
A top strategist for presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump threw cold water on speculation that Gov. Susana Martinez could be Trumps vice presidential pick during a segment Wednesday night on The Kelly File on Fox News.

Fox host Megyn Kelly invited Paul Manafort  a Trump adviser who will also serve as the presumptive nominees national convention manager  to discuss the campaigns plans heading into the general election. Toward the end of the segment, Kelly asked about the Manhattan billionaires thoughts on choosing a running mate, and specifically about Martinez.

Do you believe what people are saying, that it (the VP choice) has to be someone like Susana Martinez, a woman, a Latina? Kelly asked.

Manafort replied, Hes said hes looking for someone who has Washington experience and someone who can help him in dealing with problems in foreign policy and defense policy. That is more important, in my judgment, and that is what he thinks, which is even more important.

Martinezs foreign policy experience is limited, at best, and she seems to avoid Washington like the plague. Trumps troubles with female voters are well-documented but Manafort said the candidates success thus far in the campaign proves he doesnt need to change a thing.

 Michael Coleman, mcoleman@abqjournal.com

FLAMES OF IGNORANCE: New Mexico Democrats took just one day to organize an official repudiation of Trump.

Calling him scary and dangerous, Democratic Party of New Mexico Chairwoman Debra Haaland, along with Sen. Jerry Ortiz y Pino, D-Albuquerque, and Reps. Gail Chasey, D-Albuquerque, and Javier Martinez, D-Albuquerque, vowed that New Mexicos Democrats will help block Trumps attempt to reach the White House.

The world became a whole lot scarier, Haaland told a news conference the Democrats called Thursday morning to blast Trump.

The Republican Party of New Mexico came out in full support of Trump after Indianas primary results Tuesday night. Haaland said Thursday the statement shows local Republicans support Trumps racist, sexist and xenophobic views.

So New Mexico also became a whole lot scarier, she said.

Martinez said Trump has fanned the flames of ignorance.

 Maggie Shepard, mshepard@abqjournal.com

TRUMP BANDWAGON: Don Tripp, R-Socorro, speaker of the New Mexico House, told El Defensor Chieftain on Thursday that Trump has encouraged participation if nothing else.

Im now a Trump supporter, Tripp said.

Tripp said he was concerned about how Trumps nomination would affect state and local races in November, but feels Trumps presence could boost Republican candidates chances.

There is some concern about turnout, Tripp said. But hes gotten so many people involved in the process who havent been involved before. It might energize things.

 Scott Turner, sturner@dchieftain.com
The attorney for a 25-year-old schizophrenic man who went into Kmart on Tuesday  possibly to shoplift  says the man didnt have any physical medical issues and would have left the chain store alive had loss prevention officers not tried to detain him.

The Office of the Medical Investigator has not released their findings on Jonathan Sorensens cause of death, but police said he was being restrained by loss prevention officers when he died. They said the death was from a medical episode or medical distress, which could include asphyxiation but also could have been related to an underlying medical condition.

Witnesses who were in the store at Carlisle and Indian School NE during the incident told the Journal they saw Sorensen pinned facedown on the ground by two loss prevention officers. A third joined soon after.

Sorensen apologized and then said he was scared, according to the witnesses, and thats the last thing he said.

At a news conference at his northeast Albuquerque office, attorney George Anthony Bleus repeatedly said Sorensen should have left the store alive  whether he was shoplifting or not.

Peoples lives are more valuable than products, Bleus said. Loss prevention should never involve loss of life or limb, ever.

The case is being investigated as a homicide, according to Albuquerque police spokesman Tanner Tixier. No charges had been filed against the loss prevention officers as of Thursday evening.

A woman who answered the phone at Kmart on Thursday said her manager wouldnt comment, and she would not provide his name.

Sorensens caretaker and family friend Ilena Estrella said Sorensen was a junior at the University of New Mexico when he was diagnosed with schizophrenia.

He stopped attending the university but was trying to get more stable mentally so he could return.

Bleus said Sorensen was clearly mentally ill and should have been treated with more care.

Online state court records show he pleaded guilty to misdemeanor criminal trespassing last month, but those records show he has no other serious criminal history in New Mexico.

Bleus said he is waiting for the outcome of the police investigation before determining whether to file a lawsuit against Kmart.
Donald Trump marked his first full day as the presumptive Republican nominee for president with an old habit: Tweeting something that people couldnt believe theyd just seen.

On Twitter and Facebook, the real estate mogul shared a picture of himself smiling widely and eating a sour cream-covered pile of Mexican food inside of a crispy flour shell.

Happy #CincoDeMayo! wrote Trump, celebrating, in his way, the Mexican armys 1862 victory over French invaders. The best taco bowls are made in Trump Tower Grill. I love Hispanics!

Within an hour, Trumps celebration of Hispanic culture and himself had been retweeted more than 34,000 times, rocketing to the top of the Twitter Moments metric. By contrast, the White Houses announcement of a Consumer Finance Protection Bureau rule that would widen consumers ability to file class-action lawsuits against banks was retweeted less than 150 times. Trump, not the president, had captured the medias imagination, enjoying Mexican food despite favoring a deportation force and a wall on the Mexican border.

I didnt predict that the Republican Party would lose its fing mind, tweeted Nate Silver, whose site FiveThirtyEight just published a mea culpa for insisting Trump would not win the nomination.

Were sending a squad of fact-checkers to Trump Tower to taste the taco bowl, tweeted the public-service website Politifact.

Reporters quickly pored over the tweet to find meaning. A reporter for Buzzfeed called the Trump Tower Grill to confirm that it did not sell a taco bowl. Milo Yiannopoulous, an alternative right writer and speaker who supports Trump, quickly pointed out that the $13.25 item was sold at the Trump Cafe, elsewhere in the moguls eponymous Manhattan tower.

Food writers sprang into action, too, pointing to crowdsourced ratings on Yelp that pronounced the food in Trump Towers restaurants to be bland. Indeed, the crispy shell that serves as the taco salads bowl, and is typically fried in oil or lard, counteracting the health benefits of its contents, was invented by Americans, not Mexicans. In an April poll conducted by Latino Decisions, 79 percent of Latino voters expressed unfavorable opinions of Trump  something he has insisted he will overcome in the general election.

Hillary Clintons campaign, which has reacted with something like delight at the prospect of running against Trump, took less than an hour to respond.  I love Hispanics! Trump, 52 minutes ago, the campaign tweeted.  Theyre gonna be deported.  Trump, yesterday.

There was no such response from Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont. As discussion of the taco bowl swirled, he tweeted that Americans were tired of working longer hours for lower wages and seeing almost all new income going to the top 1 percent. It was retweeted less than 1,000 times.
Copyright  2016 Albuquerque Journal

After nearly a quarter of a century on the lam, a priest who helped ignite the clerical sex abuse crisis in New Mexico in the 1990s has turned up in Morocco, working at an English-language school for children, an Albuquerque attorney said.

Arthur Perrault, who vanished from his Albuquerque parish in 1992, was served last month with a civil lawsuit filed by a man who alleges he was sexually molested repeatedly by the former Archdiocese of Santa Fe priest.

Getting (Perrault) away from children is priority No. 1 for me, especially if he is still surrounded by kids, because he will never change, said Kenneth Wolter, 35, who filed the suit against Perrault in December.

Wolter was an altar server at St. Bernadettes Church in Albuquerque in 1991 and 1992 when Perrault sexually abused him at the church and at Kirtland Air Force Base, where Perrault served as a chaplain, the lawsuit charges. Wolter was age 10 and 11 at the time of the abuse, which ended when Perrault fled New Mexico.

Wolter wants Perrault to return to New Mexico to face the civil charges against him.

Its good that hes been located, but Ill believe it when I see it, said Wolter, who now lives in Detroit. Hes a slippery individual.

The last time parishioners at St. Bernadettes saw Perrault was in September 1992, when their pastor, then 54, announced his resignation and sabbatical in Canada.

Perrault bought a ticket for a Sept. 29, 1992, flight for Vancouver, British Columbia, and appeared to vanish from the Earth.

Just 11 days later, Albuquerque attorney Bruce Pasternack filed two lawsuits against the Archdiocese of Santa Fe on behalf of seven people who said that Perrault had sexually abused them as children at St. Bernadettes and other churches.

But it appears allegations against Perrault had surfaced decades earlier.

In 1966, Perrault was sent by the Archdiocese of Hartford, Conn., to a now-closed facility in Jemez Springs operated by the Servants of the Paraclete, which received pedophile priests from around the nation, according to news reports and lawsuits.

He left Jemez Springs in 1967 and became a diocesan priest in the Archdiocese of Santa Fe, serving posts at St. Pius X High School and several Albuquerque parishes.

Brad Hall of Albuquerque, Wolters attorney, said investigators working with an informant in Morocco learned that Perrault works at the American Language Center and English-language school in Tangier, where Perrault has lived off and on for 30 years.

A man who answered the phone at the American Language Center said Thursday that Perrault is not an employee at the school.

A website for the school does not list an age range for students. Photos posted on the site show children and young adults of various ages.

An employee at the American Language Center received, and signed for, a FedEx package addressed to Perrault, Second Judicial District Court records show.

The package, which contained a copy of Wolters lawsuit and a legal summons, was received and signed by the school official on April 22, according to an attorney for Ancillary Legal Corp., an international process delivery firm.

A second FedEx package with similar documents addressed to Perraults apartment in Tangier could not be delivered, the firm wrote. A similar package was delivered by regular mail to Perraults address, it said.

A man who alleges he was abused by Perrault in the early 1970s said efforts to bring him to justice are long overdue.

Serving him papers and bringing him to justice is what needs to happen, said Mark Romero, who said he was an altar boy at Our Lady of Guadalupe Church in Albuquerque when Perrault abused him. Romero is represented by Hall but has not filed a lawsuit against the archdiocese. He also spoke publicly in January at a rally of clerical abuse survivors.

You have a man who has ruined the lives of children  some of them have taken their own lives  and hes out in Morocco, Romero said. Theres something wrong with that.

A woman who became a vocal critic of the archdiocese after her two sons were allegedly abused by Perrault in the late 1970s said she has seen him avoid justice for decades despite warnings to church leaders from parents and victims.

It would be beneficial to many people if he had to come back to this country and face the music, said Marlene Debrey-Nowak, who now lives in Hawaii. But I suspect thats not going to come about because hes been very cagey about finding ways to avoid the matter.

The Archdiocese of Santa Fe did not respond to requests for comment on Thursday.

If Perrault fails to respond to the lawsuit, Hall said he plans to ask District Judge Denise Barela Shephard to find Perrault in default and to resolve the case in Wolters favor.

Wolters lawsuit names only Perrault as a defendant and seeks compensatory and punitive damages. An earlier lawsuit Wolter filed against the Archdiocese of Santa Fe was settled in December for undisclosed terms.
SANTA FE  With a judge finally on the case, the attorney general is asking a court to schedule a preliminary hearing in July for former state Sen. Phil Griego on the corruption charges filed against him by the AG.

In a motion filed this week, Attorney General Hector Balderas asked state District Judge Brett Loveless to schedule a preliminary hearing to begin July 5 and to set aside five days for it.

Griegos lawyer, Tom Clark, said Thursday that he is fine with the date, which is likely to be discussed Monday at a brief court session in Albuquerque that Loveless has set for scheduling purposes.

A trial date would be set if Loveless determined after a preliminary hearing there was probable cause for the case against Griego to proceed to trial.

Griego, a Democrat from San Miguel County, is charged with 10 criminal counts  including bribery, fraud and perjury  related to allegedly using his position as a legislator to profit from a real estate deal. He pleaded not guilty.

Loveless, of Albuquerque, was assigned to the case in late April by state Supreme Court Chief Justice Charles Daniels after all nine judges in the Santa Fe-based 1st Judicial District were removed from it  eight because they stepped aside and the ninth by Griegos request.

Balderas this week also filed a request that Loveless set a hearing in the dispute over whether the Legislatures administrative arm must turn over records related to Griego, which the AG wants.

The Legislative Council Service has asked the judge to deny Balderas bid for the documents, saying the Legislatures independence and integrity would be jeopardized.

The AG wants correspondence related to the drafting of the 2014 property sale legislation thats at the heart of the case, as well as documents from a Senate ethics subcommittee that was looking into a complaint against Griego when he resigned in 2015.
HOUSTON  A rare $2 bill led to cash confusion at a school in Houston when an eighth-grader in line for lunch was told her money was fake and police were summoned.

KTRK-TV (http://abc13.co/1SDehLR ) reports a Fort Bend Independent School District police officer questioned the girl before taking the $2 bill to a bank, which verified the currency.

The district, on its website Friday, said nobody was charged and investigations continue into counterfeit money at schools.

Danesiah (duh-NEE-see-uh) Neal was getting lunch last year at Christa McAuliffe Middle School when a cafeteria worker said the $2 bill was fake. The student received the cash from her grandmother.

Police later returned the $2 to Sharon Kay Joseph, who says school officials should have apologized. Her granddaughter had no other money and missed lunch.

___

Online:

http://www.fortbendisd.com/

___

Information from: KTRK-TV, http://abclocal.go.com
ALAMOGORDO  Otero Countys 12th Judicial District Attorneys Office is expected to file an emergency motion for conditions of release because Terrick L. Thompkins was released on a $240,000 cash surety bond from the Otero County Detention Center Wednesday.

Thompkins, 34, is charged with two counts of first-degree felony murder in the double-homicide of Phillip Banka, 33, and Jessica Thompkins, 30, in March 2015.

Terrick Thompkins is also charged with one count of first-degree felony child abuse (great bodily harm), second-degree aggravated burglary (deadly weapon), second-degree shooting at a dwelling (great bodily harm) and three counts of third-degree abuse of a child (not resulting in death or great bodily harm).

Terrick is also charged separately for fourth-degree felony possession of a firearm by a felon because he was allegedly in possession of an AR-15, a shotgun, several handguns and a revolver at the time of the 2015 fatal shooting.

Terricks defense attorney Todd Holmes said everyone is entitled to bond.

We believe in the concept of presumption of innocence, Holmes said. I dont have any problem with added conditions of release but to put him back in jail would be unconstitutional unless he violated his conditions of release.

Representing the state Chief Deputy District Attorney Scott Key said he wants to point out to the court the irony of Terricks defense in the case.

In this case we want to point out the irony and hypocrisy that the defendant has opined to the court that hes incompetent and cannot be held responsible for committing the murders, Key said. Yet he wants to argue that hell be responsible and follow all of the conditions of bond and bail. Theres a certain hypocrisy to that that we want to point out to the court. We have not had the competency hearing thats scheduled for June 7.

He said he wants to ask the court to protect the community by adding certain conditions of release for the defendant.

We need to ask the court to protect the community and impose conditions upon him that will do that, Key said. Most defendants are bondable but not all.

Alamogordo Police Department officers responded to a home in the 1500 block of Florida Avenue around 10 p.m. March 12, 2015 in reference to a possible shooting incident.

Upon arrival APD officers found Banka and Jessica Thompkins deceased inside the home from what appeared at the time to be gunshot wounds then found a 13-year-old boy who was suffering from non-life threatening injuries inside the residence as well.

The boy survived his injuries after being treated at Gerald Champion Regional Medical Center.

Moments after officers responded to the first home, APD dispatchers received a shots fired call at a second residence in the 1200 block of North Florida Avenue.

Officers along with New Mexico State Police officers and Otero County Sheriffs deputies responded to the second home then found Terrick allegedly with a firearm at the home.

Terrick eventually exited the home then officers arrested him without further incident.



2016 the Alamogordo Daily News (Alamogordo, N.M.)

Visit the Alamogordo Daily News (Alamogordo, N.M.) at www.alamogordonews.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

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(Bloomberg) President Barack Obama renewed his push to make it harder for people to hide money in the U.S., jumping on momentum created by the release of leaked Panama legal documents to pressure Congress on proposals that have been languishing for years.

The government will send proposed legislation to lawmakers that would require companies to name the owners of any new entities they create and would expand the Justice Departments power to subpoena information in some corruption cases.

It also on Thursday finalized a rule that will require financial institutions to identify the account holders hidden behind shell companies, while proposing new rules to eliminate a loophole that allows some foreign-owned companies to hide assets in the U.S.

Were saying to those financial institutions youve got to step up and get that information, Obama told reporters Friday at the White House, regarding the finalized Treasury rule.

The leak of more than 11 million documents from a Panama law firm last month put the spotlight on offshore companies used to shield owners identities and sparked an international push for transparency. While U.S. officials said Thursdays proposals werent in response to the Panama documents, the leak highlighted the need for more to be done to combat money laundering and tax evasion.

The U.S. Treasury Department announced a proposed rule that would require certain foreign-owned companies to get employer identification numbers from the Internal Revenue Service, something that hadnt been required. The rule would allow the IRS to determine if the companies owed U.S. taxes and to share information with other jurisdictions. Officials also repeated the administrations call for Congress to pass legislation that would require financial institutions to report U.S. accounts held by foreign persons to overseas regulators, bringing the U.S. in line with other countries.

Were not going to be able to complete this job unless Congress acts as well, Obama said Friday. Im calling on Congress to pass legislation to require all companies created in the U.S. to report information about their ownership to the U.S. government.

House Speaker Paul Ryans office referred questions to the House Financial Services Committee, Doug Andres, a spokesman for Ryan of Wisconsin, said in an e-mail. Sarah Rozier, a spokeswoman for the panel, didnt immediately respond to a request for comment. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky will review the proposal, said Antonia Ferrier, a spokeswoman.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch, a Utah Republican, will also study the proposals, said Julia Lawless, a spokeswoman. While there is certainly a bipartisan desire to craft effective policies to prevent tax cheats from gaming the system, details matter, she said.

Collecting Names

In its final language for the rule requiring banks to collect the names behind corporate accounts, the administration made tweaks to extend its implementation period and allow more exemptions. The so-called customer due-diligence rule left at 25 percent the level of ownership that triggers disclosure.

The changes dont go as far as advocates want. Under the rule, would-be money launderers could structure companies with multiple owners, so each falls below the 25 percent threshold. They could then put in place managers and use their names to satisfy the rule, while withholding true owners identities, said Stefanie Ostfeld, acting head of the U.S. office for Global Witness, a non-profit group that presses for global financial transparency.

Theres still loopholes in it and its possible to provide the information, to be in compliance, without providing the true beneficial owner, she said.

For years, Congress and the Treasury have floated measures that would require greater disclosure of the beneficial owners of companies registered in the U.S. Those efforts escalated after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, as homeland security officials warned that onshore shell companies could be used to finance terrorist groups. But opposition by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the American Bar Associationand lobbying by the National Association of Secretaries of Statethwarted most of those calls for more disclosure, according to Heather Lowe, director of Global Financial Integrity, a group that advocates for greater business transparency.

The primary opposition was from the secretaries of state, who didnt want to lose business, she said. And politicians dont want to alienate the secretaries of state because they are the ones who run the elections.

Some other countries have also been pushing for greater transparency. The European Union last year passed a directive requiring member states to set up registries to collect companies real owners -- an effort to crack down on money laundering and terrorist financing. But the EU effectively left it up to each country to decide if its registry should be fully public.

If Congress passed legislation creating a central registry to list the beneficial owners of shell companies, the impact could be felt across multiple industries. Swaths of high-end real estate in the U.S., as well as some art, are purchased through companies that shield the identities of the true owners. The Treasury said it is temporarily requiring ownership disclosure for all-cash purchases of high-value real estate in New York and Miami.

The Treasury also pushed Congress for action on tax-information sharing. Nearly 100 jurisdictions around the world have agreed since 2014 to impose new disclosure standards for bank accounts and other investments requiring that information is shared with regulators in their home countries regardless of where the account is held. But the most prominent holdout is the U.S., which along with Panama has not signed onto the standard.

Obama pressed Congress to approve eight pending tax treaties, singling out Senator Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican, for blocking them.

Were going to need to cooperate internationally because tax avoidance and money laundering take place globally, Obama said. If we cant cooperate with other countries, it makes it harder to crack down.

Account Disclosure

A 2010 U.S. law, the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, or FATCA, requires financial firms to disclose foreign accounts held by U.S. citizens and report them to the IRS. But the law doesnt require disclosure of U.S. bank accounts held by foreigners to regulators overseas. As a result, financial planners are advising customers seeking confidentiality to move accounts out of traditional secrecy jurisdictions like Switzerland and Bermuda and into the U.S., as reported by Bloomberg in January.

Currently, the United States does not provide its FATCA partners with the same information about U.S. financial institutions that foreign financial institutions must provide the IRS, Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew said in a letter to Ryan. Reciprocity with other jurisdictions is a key component of any successful strategy for combating international tax evasion.

The Justice Department proposed a series of legislative changes that it said would help boost efforts to pursue kleptocrats and speed up the ability to gain evidence located in other countries.

One proposal would let the agency seek evidence in money laundering investigations through the use of civil administrative subpoenas, as opposed to a criminal grand jury. Leslie Caldwell, head of the Justice Departments criminal division, said those subpoenas would be used in civil cases, such as those involving funds stolen by leaders of corrupt countries.

The Justice Department also wants to increase the time foreign governments have to initiate a forfeiture case when seeking assets located in the U.S.from 30 days to 90 days.
Kurkure, the snack brand from PepsiCo India, has introduced 15 new snack offerings like South Tangy Twist, Chiwda Mix for the West, Punjabi Chatka, Shahi Mix, Navratan Mix, to address the diverse Indian palette. These snacks will be available in 150 different pack offerings to cater to different consumption occasions, at different price points. With this, Kurkure now straddles across the current range of snacking formats available in the market, while bringing in new innovations like Butter Masti and Karare Peanuts.



Partho Chakrabarti, Vice President - Snacks Category, PepsiCo India, said, The last few months have been really exciting for Kurkure. We introduced a new range of namkeens and flavours to address diversity in palettes, size preferences and budgets of Indian consumers and the initial response has been great. Kurkure has always been the most loved Indian snacking brand. With the new expanded range Kurkure is now truly a master brand spanning all Indian snacking.

Families bonding over snacks and conversations have always been at the core of brand Kurkure. It has constantly re-invented itself to remain relevant to the Indian ethos and culture. Over the years, the brand has celebrated families, festivals with its unique consumer engagements/ initiatives like Chai Time Masti, Why So Sweet, and Fly Home Free.

In yet another initiative, Kurkure will travel across the country with Indias first food train, the Kurkure Family Express. Trains are quintessentially about families, conversation and snacking and hence, build synergies for Kurkure as a platform to engage. Kurkure Family Express seeks to bring families together this holiday season for a fun filled Kurkure culinary extravaganza. Food aficionados Rocky Singh and Mayur Sharma will host 40 different families across the four zones over an eight-day journey across India. The journey will entail different fun recipe contests, where families will compete with each other to win. Four families will be sent on an all-expenses paid culinary trip to Europe. Families will also have a chance to be the face of the Kurkure brand and get featured on TVCs, digital platforms and other marketing initiatives.



For the first time ever, Kurkure reached out to art students across the country, through a contest to bring alive their interpretation of consumers love for Kurkure. Their artworks were then selected by a panel of judges comprising Art Directors, Brand Custodians and Culinary Experts. Their designs will be used to adorn the full train bogeys covering more than 800 sq feet of the train exterior as well as interiors.

Chakrabarti added, Kurkure has been radical when it comes to placing its brand in the hands of its consumers. Whether it is featuring them in brand advertising or bringing alive their interpretation of it, we continue to create opportunities for them to express their love. The Family Express will feature 10 unique art works by design students and family moments from train journey will also be captured for the new television campaigns that will go live in mid-June.

The Kurkure Family Express will leave Delhi on May 16 and travel across the country, through 12 cities, including Sawai Madhopur, Surat, Lokmanya Tilak Terminal (Mumbai), Pune, Tirupati, Chennai, Vijaywada, Bhubaneshwar, Chitpur (Kolkata), Mughalsarai and Kanpur Central, before culminating at Delhi. Families will embark and disembark at the four metro stations.
Air Force civic leaders visit USAFE

Pull the pin and throw it!



Time seemed to stand still as the sudden rush of pressurized smoke escaped the canister.



Ting  pffft  pfffffff



Those words and the proceeding actions are what injected an exhausted and jet-lagged group of 21 Air Force civic leaders with a dose of adrenaline.



Mission creep had set in on the group as they were five days into a weeklong, eventful, information gathering mission, but the red smoke now billowing out of the smoke grenade on the flightline of Royal Air Force Base Lakenheath, England, was a wake-up call. It was also the signal marking the landing zone for Air Force pararescuemen responding to an exercise where a convoy had come under simulated attack and required the rescue of an injured Airman.



The civic leaders were nearly asleep in their bus when they approached the overturned Security Forces vehicle that appeared to have taken a blast from an improvised explosive device.



The group watched as Airmen with the 48th Security Forces Squadron provided security for pararescuemen assigned to the 57th Rescue Squadron, as they jumped into the landing zone. Highly skilled in personnel recovery, the pararescuemen bounded to the scene and seamlessly transitioned from M-4 carbines to power tools, rescued the trapped Airman and were then hoisted onto a HH-60 Pave Hawk operated by the 56th Rescue Squadron.



The scenario described above was not a real-life event, but training that showcased the combat search and rescue capabilities of Airmen stationed at RAF Lakenheath. Air Force civic leaders, werent really on a tactical mission; however, the importance of their visit to several bases in Europe is real.



The Air Force Civic Leader Program is an Air Staff-level program whose membership is comprised of community leaders selected by the Air Force major commands, National Guard Bureau and Headquarters Air Force.



The group consisted of leaders from a wide variety of industries and sectors including banking and economic development, construction, manufacturing, education, healthcare, science and technology.



Members are unpaid advisers, key communicators and advocates for Air Force issues. They provide ideas and feedback to the secretary of the Air Force, Air Force chief of staff, and Air Force senior leaders about public attitudes toward the Air Force.



As liaisons, they serve as an interface between the Air Force and their communities. They explain and interpret Air Force programs, positions and issues to other key local communicators through personal contact and correspondence, and to the general public through various outreach efforts that include speeches, articles, social media, as well as local, regional, state, and national activities.



Air Force civic leaders typically serve for four years in a current status, thereafter serve as a civic leader emeritus. The members meet up to three times a year, once in Washington D.C. and one or two times at an Air Force installation.



According to Air Force Vice Chief of Staff Gen. David Goldfein, who escorted the group on the trip, exposing civic leaders to Airmen and families who live and work with allies and partners every day in their countries is essential. Civic leader events afford a level of communication that significantly contributes to the publics understanding of our current state of readiness, as well as operational challenges and issues.



Bringing civic leaders to Europe to witness firsthand the importance of our mission there is vital, Goldfein said. Most importantly, they met Airmen and family members who have been sent forward to build vital relationships with our allies and demonstrate our resolve and commitment to European safety and security.



On this trip, the civic leaders got an inside look at Ramstein and Spangdahlem Air Bases in Germany, RAF Lakenheath and RAF Mildenhall in England, as well as a stop in Paris to attend the 100th anniversary ceremony to celebrate the Lafayette Escadrille.



The National Military Strategy states that the U.S. militarys purpose is to protect the U.S. and its interests, and central to these efforts is strengthening Americas global network of allies and partners. This trip provided the group the opportunity to witness firsthand the efforts the Air Force is making to enhance partner capacity and maintain constant readiness to deter mutual threats.



Members of the group said that because of the trip, they now have a higher degree of understanding of the Air Forces abilities to protect and defend Americas interests.



Each of our Airmen in USAFE is building and nurturing relationships every day as they work side by side with our allies and local communities, said Michael Gin, an Air Force civic leader. This experience has taught me that each of our Airmen not only is responsible for their daily work duties in the Air Force, they are also unofficial ambassadors for our nation and each one of us who has the privilege of being an American.
Leaving a legacy, beginning a tradition

If there is one thing you would like people to remember about you when you pass on, what would it be?



Gen. Jerome F. OMalley and his wife Diane were known for their leadership and contributions to Air Force families and the communities surrounding them.



Gen. OMalley often told his staff, You have three priorities: First to yourself, second to your family and third to the Air Force. Unless the first two are in order, the third one cant be.



The general often penned birthday cards for those in his command, while Diane focused on family resilience  domestic violence and child care concerns, mil-to-mil couple challenges and single-parent issues.



After their passing 31 years ago, the OMalleys children decided their efforts shouldnt go unnoticed, so the General and Mrs. Jerome F. OMalley Award was established.



There was no award for a couple and how they made a difference in the Air Force, said Sharon OMalley-Burg, daughter of the awards namesakes. We wanted to give an award to those young enough to still have a future in the Air Force, but senior enough that they have proven they can do what it takes.



The annual award is given to the wing commander and spouse whose contributions to the nation, Air Force and local community best exemplify the selflessness displayed by the OMalleys.



Its a tribute to my parents, Sharon said. They have been gone a long time, so for us as a family, this award allows us to define who they are, today. What we are doing is keeping my parents memory alive through this award and through all these people who now live up to the OMalley legacy.



Now in its 30th year, the award was most recently given to Col. William J. Liquori Jr. and his wife Amy for their exceptional work at Schriever Air Force Base, Colorado, during a ceremony at the Pentagon May 3.



Frankly, it was no surprise to learn Bill and Amy were this years award recipients, said Under Secretary of the Air Force Lisa Disbrow. As my military assistant, I saw his energy and professionalism every day. So, it was no surprise to hear about the great work the Liquori family did at Schriever.



During Liquoris command, Schriever Airmen completed 164,000 space and cyber missions and completed a record-setting 674-day space flight with the X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle.



While exceling in mission accomplishment, the Liquori family held a food drive delivering more than 1,400 pounds of food to the community and led efforts to deliver thousands of cookies to Airmen in the dorms during the holidays.



They also served as Air Force ambassadors in their area, hosting more than 500 visitors and engaging in various community functions to strengthen wing awareness and local affiliations.



We are just the ones who are fortunate enough to accept it on their (the Airmen of Schriever) behalf, and we are really happy to be able to share it with all of them, Liquori said. We miss Schriever a lot, and all the people, so this is one of those days where you get to remember back and think about each and every one of them.



The Liquori family was honored in front of family, friends, co-workers and previous award recipients. Sharon gave Amy a crystal rose to represent the beauty and light of her mother; she presented the colonel with a pair of stars that were worn by her father.



Air Force Vice Chief of Staff Gen. David L. Goldfein and Disbrow presented the Liquoris with a certificate and a portrait of a falcon with a rose stem in its beak which symbolizes both General OMalley, who led to great heights, and Diane, who guided him with grace.



Its humbling to receive those kinds of gifts especially knowing what kind of people they were and how (Diane) was so full of grace and kindness -- its very meaningful, Amy said.



Its incredibly special to think these are the stars (General OMalley) wore and to have them as a constant reminder of what it is they stood for and what is important in the Air Force, Liquori said. We are humbled to be a part of such an amazing group of people, and to be recognized in the same sentence as the OMalleys is just amazing.



The Liquoris are now part of the family, bonded to the previous recipients through their selfless service and sacrifices, while continuing the legacy the OMalleys left behind.
AF spouse receives spouse of the year accolades

Michelle Aikman was named Military Spouse Magazines 2016 Air Force Military Spouse of the Year during a luncheon May 5 at Fort Myer.



Surrounded by her family and previous Air Force military spouses of the year winners, Aikman was recognized for her lifetime of accomplishments.



Aikman, who graduated from the Colorado School of Mines with a degree in chemical engineering, has dedicated much of her professional life to pushing military spouse career issues forward but didnt know what to expect when she was first nominated for the award.



I'm very surprised how many people are involved and invested in what's happening here, Aikman said. It is just beyond words how much this means to me. So much work often goes unrecognized, I'm very, very honored to be here and I'm slightly overwhelmed.



Military Spouse Magazine created the award in 2008 to honor military spouses of all ranks and from all branches of service. More than a 1.1 million military spouses support and maintain the homefront while service members defend the nation and its freedoms. The military spouse of the year award recognizes military spouses important contributions and unwavering commitment to the military community and country.



Aikman founded the SkillAssets, a career management organization that specializes in proactive solutions for major career changers and professionals with significant employment challenges such as gaps in paid employment or a string of seemingly unrelated work experiences.



As I was pursuing my own career goals, I ran into people over and over again who didn't fully recognize how much value they can bring to an employer, Aikman said. It just opened my eyes to the need that people needed to be told and showed how awesome they are and especially for this (military) community. They are phenomenal and there is a lot of skill sets and traits that are developed just by being in the military or being in military family life.



As a recipient of the award, Aikman will continue her work to enhance communication and strength and connections among military spouses at local-base level to pursue solutions that will improve the lives of military spouses and family.



Shes an inspiration and great role model for all spouses, said Dawn Goldfein, wife of Air Force Vice Chief of Staff Gen. David L. Goldfein. It was a privilege to meet her and her family.
AF Reserve, ANG Airmen prepare for 2016 wildland fire season

More than 400 Air National Guard and Air Force Reserve Airmen from across the country gathered May 2-6 to be certified on the Modular Airborne Fire Fighting System in preparation for the 2016 wildland fire season.



Airmen from four ANG wings, along with the Reserves 302nd Airlift Wing, took part in classroom-based briefings and training, as well as C-130 flying operations. Military flight instructors trained alongside U.S. Forest Service aircrew flying in mountainous terrain over simulated fire lines, while ground crewmembers honed their skills servicing the aircraft and reloading the MAFFS units at the tanker base located at Channel Islands Air National Guard Station. Military and civilian agencies synchronized and coordinated during the training in order to ensure fluid processes during firefighting operations.



Col. Scott Sanders, the MAFFS Air Expeditionary Group commander, said the training went well for aircrews this year.



MAFFS is an interagency partnership. We train as we fight -- together. It is far and away one of our most satisfying missions, said Sanders, who is assigned to the Wyoming ANGs 153rd AW. One of the reasons we enjoy flying it is to see the immediate results of our efforts."



Throughout certification week, 80 C-130 Hercules aircrews flew approximately 200 training sorties, performing targeted water drops in the mountains of Southern Californias Angeles National Forest. An estimated 1.5 million gallons of water was estimated to have been dropped.



Kim Christensen, the National Interagency Fire Center deputy assistant director of operations for fire and aviation management, said the wildland fire potential for 2016 was similar to that of other years.



The 2016 fire season prediction for the country has been pegged at a normal, significant fire potential, Christensen said. There are two areas that are pointing to above average fire potential out West, including the Great Basin in Nevada and areas throughout Southern California.



In previous years, requests for MAFFS support has increased. The average fire season, according to California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, has increased by 64 to 72 days.



During an activation to support wildland fire suppression, MAFFS units can drop up to 3,000 gallons of retardant per run on wildfires. Retardant is dropped ahead of a fire in an effort to slow its spread, giving ground crews a critical edge in gaining the upper hand on the blaze. The retardants bright red color also helps aircrews determine the accuracy of their drops.



MAFFS is a partnership between federal land management agencies and the Air Force to provide supplemental air tankers to assist in fire suppression efforts nationwide during times of high fire activity. The system itself is a portable fire retardant delivery system that can be easily inserted into a C-130, converting the vessel into an air tanker when civilian fleets have been fully committed.



The Air Force's MAFFS aerial firefighting fleet is supported by the Reserve's 302nd AW, based in Colorado Springs, Colorado; the ANG's 153rd AW, located in Cheyenne, Wyoming; the 146th AW, based at Channel Islands ANGS; and the 145th AW in Charlotte, North Carolina. Recently, the National Guard Bureau selected the 152nd AW with the Nevada ANG in Reno to replace the 145th AW as the North Carolina-based unit begins its transition to the C-17 Globemaster III.
A5A8 provides strategic planning for today, tomorrow

Logistics and support mission planning was once referred to as the task of ensuring members of the services had beds, beans and bullets  all the essentials they needed to get the job done.



Now, for the young Airmen at the wing level who perform the daily work of the Air Force Reserve, logistics and support mission planning is where the rubber meets the road.



However, the average Airman or person in the community does not dwell deeply inside all the requirements that go into this planning.



Readiness, mobilization, basing strategies, Total Force Initiatives, global power, global reach, global vigilance, and program capabilities of the Air Force Reserve, and that is why Air Force Reserve Commands A5A8 Plans, Programs and Requirements directorate exists.



No matter what a wings mission requirements are, the execution of turning wrenches, flying sorties or just moving the beds, beans and bullets requires the necessity of planning, organizing and equipping the troops to maintain flexibility across the spectrum of warfare to fly, fight and win.



The responsibility for making sure the wings have all of the money and resources they need to perform their mission falls squarely on the shoulders of the men and women at the major command  specifically, those who work in A5A8 or the Plans, Programs and Requirements Directorate.



The determinations and outcomes of the choices made for the entire Air Force Reserve Command of encompassing building the future force, recapitalizing and modernizing the fleet, and developing the team are handled at A5A8.



Within AFRC, the challenges for those within the directorate are multiplied due to the many mission sets the command provides to the total Air Force. No other major command is involved on a daily basis in such a wide variety of missions to include space and cyberspace, air mobility, air combat and special operations forces, as well as special mission groups that include hurricane reconnaissance, mobile aerial firefighting and aerial spray support.



In providing this support, the personal effects are sometimes lost between developing strategies, mission sets and goals.



We must remember to keep the faith with our Reserve families and members, said Maj. Gen. Derek Rydholm, A5A8 director. If we forget to incorporate the young Airmen at the unit level and how they fit into this process, we run the risk of dis-incentivizing our traditional reservists.



The A5A8 directorate prepares war and mobilization plans to support the combatant commanders. Through what is known as the POM, the program objective memorandum, the planning, programming and budgeting process takes place, Rydholm said. The Air Force Reserve is one of the most important pieces, and we are being asked to do more than weve ever done before in more demanding circumstances. The end result is providing highly trained personnel to meet the demands of the commanders.



These plans encompass contingency, wartime and adaptive planning by posturing AFRC forces and capabilities. What this means to the young Airmen at the unit level is the oversight and support provided by the people within A5A8 gives each and every Reservist the resources necessary to fulfill their mission to fly, fight and win.



As a senior leader at AFRC, Rydholm meets with the Senate Appropriations Committee to ensure its members understand how the need for modernization is met through the National Guard and Reserve Equipment Account. The NGREA plays an important role in tackling the uphill battles of maintaining predictability and sustainability of the agile combat support needed from these limited resources.



Were trying to get too much out of too small of a force, Rydholm said.



A5A8 validates all requirements for the command from people, money and equipment. Through the work at the MAJCOM, the command provides the resource allocation to meet mission needs.



From the traditional Reservist to the Airman deployed, all the initiatives are reviewed to ensure the best execution to modernize all the commands resources are accomplished under the same demanding circumstance the personnel see happening at the lowest levels all the way up to the command level.



The most important thing of being the A5A8 director is to ensure we have the best plan to support our Reservists, Rydholm expressed.
Air Force report on sexual assault highlights program's progress

Air Force reports of sexual assault decreased slightly in fiscal year 2015, while reporting by male victims increased according to the services annual report on sexual assault released May 5.



The report highlights an increase of more than 5 percent for both unrestricted and restricted reports of sexual assault from male victims.



I think were making progress on sexual assault and heading in the right direction, but Im certainly not satisfied that the work is done, said Secretary of the Air Force Deborah Lee James. We have to keep up the focus and pressure to make sure we are taking care of victims. We have to make sure more Airmen  male and female  feel comfortable reporting, which enables us to follow up appropriately in the justice system.



A positive sign in the 2015 report is the increase in male reporting, which rose by 5.4 percent in unrestricted reports and 6.3 percent in restricted reports, said Chief Master Sgt. of the Air Force James A. Cody.



Every victim of sexual assault responds differently and requires different support to become a strong survivor. We want Airmen to come forward and seek help, and it's our job as leaders to instill confidence that they'll receive the care and support they need, Cody said. We are absolutely committed to providing the best possible care and support to our Airmen, and I want our Airmen to know they can trust their leaders to support them when they file a report of sexual assault.



Unlike the previous years report, the fiscal year 2015 report is not accompanied by data from the Workplace and Gender Relations Survey, which is only conducted every other year for the active-duty force. The Air Force uses the survey to measure the prevalence of sexual assault in the force.



The Air Force compares prevalence rates to reporting rates to evaluate Airmens confidence in coming forward to report sexual assault and receive support. Ideally, the service wants to eliminate the gap between prevalence of the crime and the number of reports received, then see both numbers come down to zero, said Col. Mark Ramsey, the Air Force Sexual Assault Prevention and Response operations director.



Without the survey data, it is difficult to determine if the decrease in reports this year is tied to a decrease in prevalence or another factor; so, a closer look will have to be taken at next years report to see if a trend can be identified, Ramsey said.



According to the report, the Air Force increased its focus on prevention efforts over the past year, hosting a summit to understand Airmens perspectives and implementing a five-year prevention strategy focused on eliminating sexual assault.



As long as we have even one report of sexual assault in the Air Force, we have a problem, Ramsey said. Were going to continue to draw on every resource at our disposal, and thankfully, we have the best resource in the world  American Airmen. Im confident our Airmen will continue to drive change across our force and move us toward our goal of eliminating sexual assault.
Injustice is meted against Hamid in Pakistans jail and his health is deteriorating.

Hamid Ansari, the Mumbai software engineer who has been sentenced for three years in Pakistan jail has completed three years five months imprisonment term. Consular access has to be granted within 90 days but more than 120 days has passed but consular access has been denied to Hamid. The High Court of Peshawar has also directed the Pakistani Government to offer Hamid benefits available to him under Section 382-B. Also there are media reports pertaining to assault on Hamid in jail.

Krishna Hegde, Congress leader and former MLA from Vile Parle said, Hamid too is being attacked in jail like Sarabjit Singh. His health is deteriorating. I have forwarded a letter to Pakistani Desk through MEA. Even Kirit Somaiya is following up this case in Delhi. Hamid Ansaris parents had even met Sushma Swaraj and briefed her about this case.



Hegde had played a key role in the expedition procedure of Mumbai based Bhavesh Parmar who had crossed the border and reached Pakistan. He had taken up this matter with the then External Affairs Minister of India S.M. Krishna. After having spent five years in detention in Pakistans Kot Lakhpat Jail at Lahore, Bhavesh was given Emergency Travel Certificate by the Indian Embassy in Islamabad to enable him to return to India.

The Indian Govt needs to act swiftly to expedite the release of my son as he has completed his jail term. I urge Indian and Pakistani governments to see the case of my son with compassion and above politics, said Fauzia Ansari, mother of Hamid Ansari.

We are not giving up hope. We have faith in god. We have faith in the Indian government and judiciary and we will do all that is possible from our side to get him back safely, said Fauzia.

I have been running from pillar to post and I have already appealed to the external affairs ministry and have submitted all documents, she added.

It is highly irresponsible on the part of Indian government, that Hamid is not been given consular access. The Indian government should extend all the co-operation to him. He has completed his jail term, should be deported and given landing permit, said Abbas Kazmi, Advocate. If at all Indian government fails to recognize him or refuses to intervene, then Hamid should seek asylum through the assistance of United Nations, he added.

The Ministry of External Affairs along with Home Ministry should approach the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. This case can be reported to other Independent Human Rights organizations, to help save the life of the Indian who is suffering illegal detention in other country, said Advocate Asim Sarode.

Ansari had crossed over to Pakistan from Afghanistan in 2012 and then went missing. But his family later learnt from officials and associates that he was in love with a woman from the Kohat region of western Pakistan, and had decided to cross over to prevent her marriage with another man. He was later arrested and tried by a Pakistani military court, which pronounced him guilty of espionage.

The Pakistani government has informed the Peshawar High Court that benefit of section 382-B of the Code of Criminal Procedure would be given to the convicted Indian national Hamid Nehal Ansari by a military court for entering Pakistan on fake documents. The law officers including Deputy Attorney General Musarrat Ullah Khan and Additional Advocate General Waqar Ahmad informed a division bench comprising Chief Justice Mazhar Alam Miankhel and Justice Muhammad Daud Khan that the Indian convict was entitled to the benefit of Section 382-B. However, the bench sought details from the provincial and federal governments regarding the arrest of the Indian national and his expected release from the prison before the next hearing. The court also directed the government to provide required treatment to the said prisoner in the Peshawar Central Prison.

Pakistani media reported that Ansari has confessed to illegally entering Pakistan from Afghanistan for espionage and he had seven Facebook accounts as well as 30 email addresses. He was reportedly found to be in possession of sensitive documents, reports claimed.
The Bombay High Court on Friday ruled that possession of beef slaughtered outside Maharashtra would not be a criminal offence. However, the HC upheld the Maharashtra governments decision to ban the slaughter of bullocks in the state.

It struck down as unconstitutional provisions which held mere possession of beef as crime, saying only conscious possession of the meat of animals slaughtered in the state will be held as an offence.

A division bench of Justice Abhay Oka and Justice S.C. Gupte upheld the constitutional validity of The Maharashtra Animal Preservation (Amendment) Act, 1976.

The court said that section 5D that prohibits possession of the flesh of cow, bull or bullock slaughtered outside the State of Maharashtra infringes privacy therefore it has been struck down.

The court was hearing a bunch of petitions which challenge section 5A of the Act that prohibits transport or export of cows, bulls or bullocks for the purposes of slaughter, section 5B that prohibits sale, purchase, distribution in any other manner of cows, bulls and bullocks, section 5C prohibits possession of the flesh of cows, bulls or bullocks, section 9 of the said Act that empowers the police authorities to search and seize cattle suspected to be taken for slaughter.

As per the law, possession of beef was criminalised, thereby indirectly banning sale or possession of beef in any form in the state.

The Maharashtra Animal Preservation (Amendment) Act was enacted in March 2015 and bans the slaughter of bulls and bullocks, in addition to an earlier ban on the slaughter of cows. The law makes the sale of bulls, bullocks for slaughter a crime, punishable with a jail term of up to five years and a fine of Rs 10,000.

The aim and object of the Act is to preserve cattle for their undeniable utility in agriculture and drought sectors.

The government affidavit said that the eating habits of a group of persons do not make that group a cultural minority entitled to protection under Article 29 (protection of interests of minorities). The concept of culture is far above issues like what one eats, it said. If a food habit, that too not essential food, is considered to be part of culture, then there would be thousands of minority groups in the country on this basis alone, it said. Further, it had said, India is a vast country and people living in different parts of the country have different food cuisinesTherefore, eating a particular food does not entitle the constitution of a cultural minority.

The state government had also clarified that it does not have any intention to impose a vegetarian regime or dictate or force food habits. The non-vegetarians are free to have their own food choices but cannot insist, as a matter of right, on a particular type of food.

Arif Kapadia, a city resident, and noted lawyer Harish Jagtiani had challenged the provision which says mere possession of beef anywhere in the state is a crime.

This is arbitrary and undermines the cosmopolitan nature of the city which houses people from all religions and communities, they had contended.

Other petitions had been filed by Vishal Sheth, a lawyer, and Shaina Sen, a student, contending that the ban on beef violates fundamental rights of citizens.

Both Congress and the NCP alleged that BJPs real face stood exposed as the party-led government was bent on imposing a particular lifestyle on others along with pursuing the divisive politics.

Congress spokesperson Sachin Sawant alleged that BJPs intention since beginning was not noble, but creating divisions among various communities. The High Court order partially striking down has exposed BJPs political ploy, he said.

Meanwhile, NCP spokesperson Nawab Malik welcomed the High Court order and said that people habituated to eat bull and bullock beef will continue to do so from now. The fundamental right has been restored, he opined.

Bhimrao Dhonde, a BJP legislator from the drought-hit Beed district in parched Marathwada, said that the governments priority should be to support farmers, and they should be allowed to sell their cattle to whoever they wish to. It is time to withdraw the ban, Dhonde stated, adding that the governments ban on sale of unproductive cattle has adversely impacted farmers as they had to bear additional burden.
The Congress has become very anxious about allegations of corruption that it has launched a protest against anti-democratic policies of the BJP. BJP and its leaders accused Sonia Gandhi of being involved in chopper scam and also attacked her saying Congress blocked investigations into, corrupt payments linked to an order of a dozen helicopters from Agusta, owned by Italian defence giant Finmeccanica. Whereas these days, BJP and its PM both boasted about being committed to rooting out corruption, but in the last 2 years NDA did nothing but twiddled their thumbs. When lakhs of crores are involved in various scams including Chikki to Vyapam, government has not given any priority for conducting the investigation. Actually, NDA is stiff scared of Congress and they are in awe of Gandhis. This applies to PM Modi also, who has proven that he can only talk big but no action on the ground level.

[inlinetweet prefix= tweeter= suffix=]Congress president Sonia Gandhi refuted the Bharatiya Janata Partys (BJP) allegations over AgustaWestland case and dared the ruling party to prove charges.[/inlinetweet] She claimed that all the allegations against her in the VVIP chopper deal are baseless and part of the BJPs strategy of character assassination. She said that they have nothing to hide. She asked for proofs. According to media reports, the Italian court ruling states how the firm lobbied with Congress president Sonia Gandhi and her close aides besides the then NSA MK Narayanan and the then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Gandhi was described as the driving force by the judge behind the AgustaWestland deal.

Subramanian Swamy, who took an oath as the newly-nominated member of Rajya Sabha, spearheaded the BJPs attack against Sonia Gandhi and the Congress in Rajya Sabha. BJP had appointed Meenakshi Lekhi to lead the attack against the Congress Party in Lok Sabha. From social network to Rajya Sabha, the saffron party randomly attacked Congress and its president but interestingly, the united Congress including Manmohan Singh came in defence of Gandhis and took aggressive stand against the BJP. The world renowned Economist who was assumed being a puppet in the hands of the Congress but now he has openly commented and passed statements on BJPs wrongdoings. Nowadays, people can see the hidden courage of Mr. Singh, whereas Sonia is displaying her mature side of politics just like Indira Gandhi. Rahul Gandhi too is very active these days, and anyhow they managed to grab peoples attention once again. BJPs Congress mukt Bharat dreams have come to a halt.

Recently, a Milan court has sentenced the former bosses of Finmeccanica and its AgustaWestland unit to jail for corruption in the India deal. Documents it referred to included letters from middlemen that mentioned Mrs. Gandhi and other Congress leaders as people to pursue or influence to land the deal. The CBI and the Enforcement Directorate, which tackles financial crimes, are trying to piece together who was bribed in India for the helicopter scam. In Parliament, Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar said the Congress misdoings stand exposed. Congress lawmakers walked out in protest, demanding that the Supreme Court monitor the investigation into the helicopter deal, which was signed in 2010 and cancelled in 2014. Earlier on Friday morning, Mrs. Gandhi led a Congress rally which turned into her courting arrest, along with her son and party Vice President, Rahul  a move in keeping with the aggressive strategy the Congress is exercising.

Manmohan Singh accused the Narendra Modi government of trying to dislodge Congress governments in the states. He said ever since BJP has come to power they have only one mission Congress-mukt Bharat. They say this wherever they go. I want to tell the Modi government that Congress is Indias soul and further he stressed on Saving Democracy. According to Manmohan, Congress is like a flowing Ganga. You defame it or do whatever, it will not change its course. There have been many attacks on Congress in the past since 1885 (when it was established). People have tried to weaken the party. However, they could not succeed. Referring to the political crises in Arunachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, Singh said, Congress is not there in many states. But wherever it is ruling attempts have been made to dislodge it.

The Modi government has attacked democracy. Now, they are targeting other Congress ruled states like Manipur, Nagaland, Mizoram and the Virbhadra Singh government in Himachal Pradesh. They are trying to dislodge these governments. It is necessary that Congress workers reach out to people in every corner of the country and spread the message that the Modi government is uprooting democracy. Looking at Congresss no nonsense mood, its quite clear that they will not allow BJP to succeed. At present universities are not safe, courts are not safe. So, it is your duty to understand this and ensure defeat of the Modi governments designs. People need to be wise enough to understand the political motives and only they can save the democracy.
The Attorney General (AG) on Friday informed the Supreme Court that the Centre is ready to conduct floor test in Uttarakhand under the courts supervision.

A bench comprising Justices Dipak Misra and Shiva Kirti Singh had on Tuesday repeated its suggestion that the Centre should consider holding a floor test in the assembly under its supervision.

The apex court however also added that the nine Congress MLAs who were disqualified by the assembly speaker would not be allowed to vote in the floor test.

During the floor test, those who are in favour of confidence motion will sit to one side and those against will sit on the other side. They will then, on the Speaker calling the name of MLA, will show their hand and their position will be recorded.

The apex court directed the Principal Secretary, Legislative Assembly, to be responsible for the conduct of the floor test in a fair, transparent and peaceful manner inside the House. The State Chief Secretary and the Director General of Police will be responsible for the safety of the MLAs and the Houses security outside the Assembly.

The Bench ordered that Presidents rule be lifted between 10.30 a.m. and 1 p.m. on May 10 to pave the way for the floor test.

The court will hear the matter again on May 11 and will decide whether Rawat will continue as Uttarakhand chief minister or not.

During the hearing, Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi favoured a former Chief Election Commissioner or a former judge as an observer to oversee the voting process.

Earlier, the apex court had asked the Centre to respond to its suggestion about the feasibility of holding a floor test in Uttarakhand Assembly under its supervision.

The Nainital High Court on April 21 declared the Presidents rule imposed in the state on March 27 as unconstitutional. The court had also ordered the floor test on April 29.
A combative Sonia Gandhi attacked the Modi government for murdering democracy and unleashing a campaign of baseless allegations against the opposition, as top Congress leaders hit the streets and courted arrest near Parliament.

Congress Party staged its Save Democracy rally at a time when the BJP is accusing its leaders of accepting bribes during the purchase of 12 helicopters from the British-Italian company AgustaWestland for Rs. 3,600 crores.

Last month, an Italian court ruled that bribes were paid to seal the deal.

Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi were taken into custody along with Sonia Gandhi, who predicted that the Governments days were numbered the way it was functioning.

Do not try to frighten or defame us life has taught me to struggle, we have faced a lot of challenges. They dont know what we are made of, she said addressing the partys Save Democracy rally at Jantar Mantar here.

Asserting that her party will play role of an alert opposition with full vigour both inside and outside Parliament, she asked partymen to unmask the Modi Government.

Opposition leader in Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azad, party leader in Lok Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge and others courted arrest at Parliament Street Police station after they were stopped from marching to Parliament. They were released after a short while.

They should understand very well that when matters would become unbearable, people of India know how to teach them a lesson. The way the Modi Government is playing a fraud on the mandate, it seems its days are numbered, the Congress president said.

The rally saw Rahul Gandhi and Manmohan Singh also attacking the Modi dispensation over pulling down of Congress governments in Arunachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand.

The AgustaWestland issue appeared to be weighing heavily on her mind as Sonia targeted the Modi dispensation accusing it of starting this game of leveling baseless allegations against leaders of opposition parties.

But, I would like tell them they should not commit the mistake of assuming that Congress is a weak force. Congress is never going to bow before injustice. We will play our role of an alert opposition with full vigour in coming days, (both) within Parliament and outside too and combat injustice, she said.

Sonia said that the way the Centre has toppled Congress governments in Arunachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand through money and muscle power has not only shaken the foundation of democracy, but has murdered it.

She also asked the partymen to reach out to each corner of the country and unmask the Modi Government through democratic means.

Declaring that the Congress will not allow the ruling party to destroy countrys democratic set up, she accused it of attempting to divide people on the basis of religion, region, language and eating habits.
Maintaining heat on the Congress, the government on Friday said the previous UPA government had done everything to help AgustaWestland bag the contract for VVIP helicopters and asserted that it will track down the main beneficiaries of the kickbacks in the deal.

Defence minister Manohar Parrikar said in the Lok Sabha that former Air chief S P Tyagi and Gautam Khaitan, both accused in the case, are small people who simply washed their hands in a flowing Ganga (of corruption) and that the government will find out where the river was going.

Speaking on a Calling Attention Motion on the chopper deal, he took a dig at Congress, saying it seemed to know where this Ganga was going.

He said the UPA government had done everything to help AgustaWestland bag the contract and that its action against the company following the disclosure of corruption was not pro-active but forced by circumstances.

Tyagi and Khaitan were small people who simply washed their hands in a flowing ganga (of corruption), Parrikar said, asserting that the government will track down the main beneficiaries of the kickbacks in the Rs 3600 crore deal for 12 VVIP choppers.

Congress MPs walked out of the Lok Sabah in protest against defence minister Manohar Parrikars allegations.

Why are you (Congress) concerned? I have not named anybody. You seem to know where the ganga was going, the defence minister said, taking a swipe at Congress.

Parrikar, who was criticsed by opposition members for reading from a statement during a debate over the issue in the Rajya Sabha, mostly spoke extempore and narrated the sequence of events related to the contract and its subsequent cancellation.
Benjy Sarlin of MSNBC went after Trump for lots of things in this May 3, 2016 piece, " Donald Trump is obsessed with race-baiting conspiracy theories."

Equally significant, though, is that he uses these falsehoods to elevate fringe conspiracy theories and anecdotes that politicians are normally careful to keep far away from mainstream politics. Hes spread discredited claims linking vaccines to autism, for example  a debunked theory that medical officials say has harmed efforts to wipe out preventable diseases.

Sarlin cant say enough bad stuff about Donald Trump and his campaign tactics. Sarlin denounced Trump as race-baiting and conspiracy minded. He cited thhe time Trump linked vaccines to autism. Its a dangerous and discredited theory, according to Sarlin.

What I find incomprehensible about the major news outlets is their continual and blanket denial of any link in the face of so much evidence to the contrary. This theory hasnt been debunked by any means. Its alive, well, and exploding.

Id like to remind Sarlin of the MSNBC coverage of Hannah Polings settlement in 2010. Shes the girl from Georgia whose father is a neurologist and whose claim of vaccine-induced autism was conceded by medical experts at Health and Human Services.

Sarlin needs to watch Karen DeSotos commentary on Hannah aired by MSNBC on Sep 19, 2010, "HHS Hides Information on how Vaccines Cause Autism."

DeSoto, who is a well-respected legal analyst for MSNBC, was clearly angry about the case. She wanted to know why the government paid Hannah Poling millions for her vaccine induced autism, then sealed the case files and hid the story.

DeSoto noted that there were almost 5,000 cases claiming vaccination caused autism in Vaccine Court. She said, Up until this case, the cases that were tried, were lost. So it really looked like there was going to be no medical evidence to link autism with the vaccines. However, this puts a huge chink in the armor of the government. One of the most disturbing things about this case is that the government did settle, but now the case has been sealed. I think thats a very disturbing factor that everybody in America really wants to know, If this is a public safety concern, and this was because theres cell disorder, or the amount of shots, shouldnt you tell us who have children who are getting kids vaccinated?...

Autism is such a problem. There are so many children. Its an epidemic. So sealing anything that could give you a clue as to when, why, or how is, I think, wrong. It is a public safety issue and therefore unseal it. The government is using tax dollars to pay for compensation and damages in this case. Dont we have the right to know what this case is about? Hiding it begs the question: What is the government hiding?

MSNBC read a commen from then head of the CDC, Dr. Julie Gerberding, downplaying the impact of Hannah Polings settlement. DeSoto responded by saying, So why settle the case? If this is some kind of freak reaction, why did the government feel theyre liable to pay $1.5 million, plus $500,000 a year, which will total about $20 million this opens the door for a whole host of "

DeSoto next asked the logical questions: Are they prescreening kids now because of this? I know my son got vaccinated. He wasnt screened for mitochondrial abnormalities. What are they going to do now that they know or have evidence that there may be some type of abnormality that might cause autism? There are all kinds of things that need to be answered here. It feels like the government is hiding---something.

The MSNBC anchor promised that MSNBC would continue to follow this [story], but of course they didnt.

The questions asked by DeSoto were never pursued by anyone in the media, especially at MSNBC, following the government's concessoin. Now the networks job seems to be to promote vaccines as safe, something that Im sure makes pharmaceutical advertisers very happy.. As far as Benjy Sarlin and the rest of the mainstream media are concerned, its as if Hannah Polings case never happened.
Seminar Explores Assyrian Self-Determination in Iraq

On the evening of Wednesday May 4, the Parliament of New South Wales, Australia hosted an important Evening Seminar entitled 'The Current Genocide Perpetrated by ISIS against Assyrians and Other Christian Minorities in Iraq & Syria'. The Seminar was jointly hosted by the Assyria Parliamentary Friendship Group of the NSW Parliament and the Assyrian Universal Alliance -- Australian Chapter (AUA). After welcoming the attendees, the Master of ceremonies Mr. Ninos Aaron, Chairman of The Young Assyrians, invited Mr. Hermiz Shahen, Deputy Secretary General of the Assyrian Universal Alliance, to officially welcome the guests, followed by Mrs Tanya Davies MP, State Member for Mulgoa, the current Chairperson of the Parliamentary friendship of Assyria. Guest speakers Dr Nicholas Al-Jeloo and Mr Joseph Haweil delivered insightful presentations. Dr Al-Jeloo provided a thematic analysis of the concept of 'genocide' and its applicability to the Assyrians of Iraq and Syria in light of recent events. Dr Al-Jeloo referred to a number of important textual sources including the seminal works of Raphael Lemkin a Polish-Jew who coined the term 'genocide'. Mr Haweil explored the unfilled Assyrian quest for a homeland in the Middle East and charted a series of policy proposals in an Australian political context. The Seminar was attended by Ms Tanya Davies MP (Sate Member for Mulgoa), Mr Guy Zangari MP (State Member for Fairfield), Dr Hugh McDermott MP (State Member for Prospect) and The Honourable Reverend Fred Nile MLC (Assistant President of the Legislative Council). Displaying the strength of their commitment to the Assyrian-Australian community all the parliamentarians in attendance expressed their passionate belief in Assyrian self-determination in Iraq, reiterating their call for the establishment of Assyrian homeland in the Nineveh Plains, northern Iraq. The event was well attended by members of the Assyrian-Australian community and representatives of the Jewish, Armenian and Greek communities amongst others. The mentioned parliamentarians and others not able to be in attendance have been longstanding allies of the Assyrian-Australian community, raising and passing numerous motions in the NSW Legislative Assembly and Legislative Council on the human rights of Iraq's indigenous Assyrians. Both main speakers were presented with awards by the AUA In recognition of their selfless devotion and tireless efforts in promoting recognition of the crimes of genocide against Assyrians and dedication in conveying the needs of the Assyrians to the Australian Government. The event capped a historic week for Assyrian political activism in Australia. During the evening, footage was screened showing Monday's unprecedented motion in the Australian House of Representatives in which the House recognized that crimes committed by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) against Assyrians are 'genocide'. The motion, introduced by The Hon Chris Bowen MP, Shadow Treasurer and seconded by The Hon Tanya Plibersek MP, Deputy Leader of the Opposition and Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs, contained strong language on the indigeneity of the Assyrians and was passed unanimously. This important Seminar builds on the ongoing and tireless political advocacy of the Assyrian Universal Alliance in Australia which has seen Assyrian matters raised at the highest levels of Australia's Federal Government and state Parliaments.
Christians At Risk of Being Wiped Out in Iraq and Syria Amid Intense Persecution From ISIS

Christians in Iraq and Syria face the risk of extinction due to actions of genocide suffered from the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Many Christian churches in Syria and Iraq are reportedly being destroyed by the extreme Islamic group. Millions of their members are forced to flee their hometowns as refugees, while those who left behind are killed. Many of these churches have been around for thousands of years already. As Juliana Taimoorazy, executive director and founder of the Iraqi Christian Relief Council, stressed in an interview with National Catholic Register, "We gave a lot to Christianity as Eastern Christians, and we gave a lot to humanity as the Assyrian people: Our history is 6,700 years old, and we established the first library in the world, among other contributions." The Roman Catholic Church is also one of the religious groups that condemns the displacement of many Christian communities. In Nineveh Plains in Iraq for instance, more than 100,000 Christians have been forced to flee since the Islamic State occupied the region. Roman Catholic Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York, said, according to Christian Post, that these Christians have been forcibly relocated and threatened, and they now worry about their survival. Still, some leaders of the Catholic religious group, including Bishop Yousif Habash of Syrian Catholic Eparchy of Our Lady of Deliverance based in New Jersey, believe that even though ISIS may take away everything from the Christians, there is one thing that they cannot take away, and that is their faith. Many religious groups and leaders have called for people to pray for the persecuted Christians in Iraq and Syria, specifically for their survival. Taimoorazy further reflected that after survival, they will also need restoration and then rebuilding. Father Douglas al-Bazi, a priest who has experienced the wrath of ISIS, warned people of the dangers to come, saying in an interview with Christian Post that the word "genocide" is an understatement. The Islamic State is not only cooking a one-time event. They are rather trying to change history by wiping out an entire people group.
May 5, 2016

QAMISHLI, Syria  Deir ez-Zor is a city divided and beset on all sides. Though much of the city is still controlled by the Syrian government, it has been under attack and blockaded for more than a year by the Islamic State (IS). Shelling and starvation have killed dozens of civilians, and much of the city has no electricity.

The siege "is threatening the lives of the biggest unarmed mass of humanity in Syria, according to a report titled 420 Days of Siege Laid on Deir ez-Zor, issued by the Justice for Life Observatory (JFL). The civil rights organization is comprised of activists and journalists in the city.

Civilians are trapped. JFL director Jalal al-Hamad said IS began besieging neighborhoods controlled by President Bashar al-Assad's forces in January 2015, closing all land and water crossings leading to it and preventing food and medical supplies from reaching the civilians there.

Both IS and the regime are preventing civilians from entering or exiting the areas under their control. While IS interrogates, harasses and confiscates the documents of whoever wants to leave the city, the Syrian government asks those who want to leave, be it by land or by air, for security approvals from intelligence authorities.

Speaking to Al-Monitor, Hamad revealed that between February 2015 and March 2016, the death toll reached 63, including 14 women and 25 children, due to IS shelling of regime-controlled neighborhoods. What's more, JFL correspondents reported 32 civilians in the besieged neighborhoods died due to malnutrition and the spread of diseases.

In the besieged neighborhoods, only Assad's government hospital is operating, but it lacks medical professionals. There is the military hospital, but it is reserved for the military, Hamad said.

In the absence of food and income, many civilians in Deir ez-Zor have cut back to only one meal a day, and that meal contains only half the usual amount of food. The deteriorating living situation has prompted residents to use grass and wild plants in their food, according to the World Food Program organization. The situation has become dire, much like Madaya earlier this year.

I stand in queues for hours to get bread. Most of the population is relying on bread, grass and water to survive, Mariam, who did not reveal her last name, told Al-Monitor via WhatsApp.

On April 10, the United Nations airdropped its second batch of relief supplies to help the city's estimated 200,000 civilians besieged by IS militants. According to the UN, the besieged are in dire need of humanitarian assistance as cases of malnutrition and starvation deaths have been reported."

Adding to residents' difficulties, the prices of what basic foodstuffs and fuel are available have tripled since IS took control of the area, according to another JFL report, issued April 24.

A woman from the IS-controlled Hamidiya neighborhood told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity, The living conditions in the IS-controlled regions are worsening as the fluctuating dollar exchange rate inflates the prices of food and vegetables. She added, Formula milk is completely missing, and pharmacy shelves are almost empty."

Syrian dissident Riad Dirar also painted a grim picture of life in his city: This town is forgotten, despite the atrocities committed by both IS and the Syrian regime.

Dirar told Al-Monitor that residents are suffering from both the IS blockade on the one hand and regime shelling on the other. He pointed out that the battle for Deir ez-Zor will probably drag on, as the province is not a priority right now. "All of the international efforts are focusing on confronting IS in Raqqa, which will further extend the blockade of Deir ez-Zor.

Dirar called for international humanitarian aid to secure the necessary civilian supplies and basic needs and ease the dual blockade.

While government forces control part of the citys west, its civil airport, central prison, official buildings, the Brigade 137 headquarters and the vanguard camp, IS controls the remaining parts of the city and its entire countryside. Deir ez-Zor is the capital of the eastern province of the same name, adjacent to the border with Iraq. The government controls only about 20% of the province, mostly in the west.

The province covers about 33,000 square kilometers (12,741 square miles), roughly the size of Maryland, and accounts for about 18% of the country's land area.

Out of about 15 besieged regions in Syria, the city of Deir ez-Zor is the most heavily populated. According to the UN, in the city and surrounding provincial areas, 400,000 people are suffering from the siege, while all the warring military forces are using civilians as weapons in their open battle.
May 6, 2016

CAIRO  Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi inaugurated a new office of the Interior Ministry at the Police Academy in New Cairo, east of the Egyptian capital. The April 27 move came as part of the ministry's relocation from the Cairo's downtown area, which has become an all but official protest center over the last several years.

The city of New Cairo, which was established by presidential decree in 2000, is comprised of a number of affluent residential complexes. It has also become the home of key state institutions that have recently been moved out of downtown Cairo, such as the prosecutor-general's office, the Police Academy, state security offices and the State Lawsuits Authority.

The transfer of many government facilities to New Cairo is part of the government's plan to relocate all remaining ministries out of the capital's downtown and into New Cairo, the new administrative capital. The government plans to complete this transfer within two years, to an area roughly 60 kilometers (37 miles) from the heart of Cairo.

This government plan amounts to a transformation of the downtown area  a recent center of demonstrations that has long served as a ministerial zone, having housed the Ministries of the Interior, Justice, Health, Education, Military Production, Supply and Internal Trade, International Education and Scientific Research alongside the Egyptian Cabinet and the parliament  into a cultural heritage area. The transfer of these ministries to their new location will have a profound impact on the downtown area.

Hani Yunis, an official spokesman for the Egyptian Housing Ministry, told Al-Monitor, "Government facilities and institutions will be enclosed between the regions of New Cairo, which contains more than one office for key ministries and institutions at present, and the new administrative capital, to which all remaining ministries will be transferred. That is, after their new facilities have finished construction. [The goal is] to alleviate the pressure on the downtown region that has housed these institutions and ministries for the last several decades."

Yunis added that the new administrative capital will be a short distance from New Cairo and "will include facilities for 12 ministries, alongside the Cabinet and the parliament, which will be transferred with all their dependencies following the establishment of the administrative capital."

He noted that construction of these offices should begin within two months, and expressed his expectation that all of these state institutions "should be transferred to their new offices in a period of between two and a half to three years."

For his part, Gen. Ahmad al-Badry, the former head of the Police Academy, said in remarks to Al-Monitor that the decision to transfer the ministry's office to the new site alongside a number of ministerial offices out of downtown Cairo was related to the country's current security climate. "The security situation is connected to the targeting of these institutions by a number of protesters centered in downtown Cairo. They seek to spread chaos throughout the country, especially after the demonstrations became unfortunately chaotic themselves. And they're attempting to break the aura of authority around state institutions by putting them under siege, covering their walls with graffiti of vulgar images and language degrading to those who work there."

Badry stressed that the state was seeking to exploit the wide-open spaces and the network of new roads within New Cairo to set up buildings characterized by a high degree of development and modernization. He said the government also hopes to establish new facilities to train public servants and increase their efficiency, noting that the old buildings currently being used for public institutions have not been modernized.

Badry added that the ministry's new buildings will be equipped with the most modern security and development programs, with electronic gates at every entrance. He said, "The security challenges the country is going through have forced the ministry to accelerate its construction plans."

Ali al-Rigal, a researcher in political sociology, has a different take on the decision to move government offices away from centers of protest to new cities. He said it comes from political and sociological considerations, whereby the ruling authority wants these institutions to be located among a wealthy upper class  typically sympathetic with the government  to serve as a first line of defense for the buildings. "The regime seeks, through this step, to isolate itself from the old city and its residential areas. It believes they're a burden and a danger to it, due to this class' political leanings, which tend to cut against the regime," he said.

Rigal added, "The government is sure that the bourgeois social class will not come out to demonstrate in opposition against it, since it understands the government's role, historically, has had the defense of the bourgeoisie's interests, at the expense of other classes, as a fixed pillar of its security policy."

He expressed his belief that the regime is currently isolated, "[caught] between oppressed, laboring classes and the more affluent classes. It tends to move with the class that is more supportive of it, and that lives in its midst, thus removing itself from the class that it has categorized as [vulnerable to] demagoguery and useless for anything other than demonstrations, and [supplying] thugs when necessary."

He added, "The government seeks to impose general sovereignty over all by a variety of means, such as establishing new offices for its institutions, especially after its mystique of authority was broken by civil society in the wake of the January 25 Revolution, which was effectively a wide-scale defeat for them on every level."

The project of transferring ministry buildings and government agencies and assets out of downtown Cairo is not a new one, but it seems that its tempo has accelerated of late due to the government's urgent desire to extract these critical governmental facilities out of the residential areas to put some distance between them and areas of protests and demonstrations.
May 5, 2016

CAIRO  The maritime border demarcation agreement under which Egypt ceded the Red Sea islands of Tiran and Sanafir to Saudi Arabia has brought back to the surface the dispute between Egypt and Sudan over the Halayeb and Shalateen triangle. While Khartoum insists on international arbitration or peaceful negotiations to decide the fate of this disputed region along Egypts southern border, Cairo refuses to discuss the issue.

On April 17, the Sudanese Foreign Ministry issued a press release in which it called for direct negotiations with Egypt in a bid to resolve the dispute over the region, similarly to what happened with Saudi Arabia, or for international arbitration, as provided for in international law, similarly to how Egypt regained the town of Taba from Israel in 1989.

The press release, which followed numerous unsuccessful diplomatic attempts aimed at starting negotiations with Cairo, emphasized that the agreement between Egypt and Saudi Arabia regarding the maritime border also affects Sudan given its connection with the two regions of Halayeb and Shalateen and the surrounding shores. The Sudanese Foreign Ministry is closely following up on this agreement and its consequences to make sure it does not prejudice the sovereign, historical and legal rights of Sudan in Halayeb, read the statement.

In response to the Sudanese request, the Egyptian Foreign Ministry issued an extremely brief statement April 18 saying, Halayeb and Shalateen are Egyptian territories subject to Egyptian sovereignty, and Egypt does not have additional comment on the Sudanese Foreign Ministrys statement.

A diplomatic official working on the African dossier at the Egyptian Foreign Ministry told Al-Monitor, Egypt categorically refuses to discuss the issue or to go for international arbitration, and it has made this clear to Sudan during several high-level and diplomatic meetings.

The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said, There should be a political settlement to this issue, which is constituting a major obstacle to Egyptian-Sudanese relations.

He noted that the Sudanese political administration is using the dispute over the sovereignty of Halayeb to place pressure on Cairo regarding thorny issues. Chief among these is the Nile water and the Renaissance Dam crisis with Ethiopia.

He added, The negotiations between Egypt and Saudi Arabia over the maritime border demarcation agreement did not address the Halayeb shores of the Red Sea, and the issue was not raised in any of the official meetings.

Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir had asked Saudi Arabia in October 2015 to take on the role of mediator between his country and Egypt to put an end to the conflict between the two countries over the Halayeb border triangle. His request came after Riyadh played a role in ending the crisis of the Sudanese miners detained in Egypt last year.

The dispute over the Halayeb region dates back to 1902, when the administrative border between Egypt and Sudan set by the British differed slightly from the border set by the Anglo-Egyptian Condominium in 1899. According to the 1899 boundary agreement, the 22nd parallel marked Egypts southern border, which indicates that the Halayeb region falls under Egyptian sovereignty. However, following Sudan's independence and separation from Egypt in 1956, the dispute arose over Egypt and Sudans inclusion of the Halayeb area within their administrative borders. This led Sudan to file a complaint against Egypt with the United Nations in 1958. Subsequently, Egyptian forces entered the Halayeb region in 1995 following the assassination attempt on President Hosni Mubarak as Sudan was accused of involvement.

Sudanese presidential assistant Ibrahim Hamid told Al-Monitor, We are constantly seeking to prevent the border dispute from affecting our relationship with Egypt. We gave away Sudanese territory in the city of Halfa, which was completely submerged for the sake of the High Dam construction and the Egyptian peoples interests.

There is an African agreement whereby borders inherited from the colonial power should be respected in accordance with international treaties and agreements, Hamid explained.

According to the borders left by colonialism and signed by Britain and Egypt, the Halayeb region falls within the borders of Sudan, he added, noting, We have legal and historical documents signed by Britain and Egypt, and we have included these documents in the complaint filed with the Security Council.

Observers of the Egyptian-Sudanese relations believe that the dispute over Halayeb and Shalateen has always been politically used in order to place pressure on Egypt. However, the dispute has never hampered cooperation between the two countries on other issues.

Hani Raslan, Head of the Sudan and Nile Basin Studies at Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, told Al-Monitor, The dispute over the Halayeb region has not impeded the signing of important agreements with Sudan, knowing that the High Dam Convention was signed at a time when Sudan was filing a complaint against Egypt near the UN because of Halayeb.

Raslan added, Ever since Bashir's Islamist regime rose to power, it has been using the Halayeb issue politically against Egypt, as it resorts to domestic mobilization by creating a foreign enemy and portraying Egypt as a rival and sometimes an enemy. The Sudanese now feel that Egypt is treating their country condescendingly."

The Sudanese administration is now using the dispute over Halayeb as a pretext to justify an alliance with Ethiopia against Egyptian interests in the Nile River water. Sudan is taking pro-Ethiopia positions in the construction of dams that pose a threat to Egypt's water security, Raslan further commented.

He also ruled out the potential issuance of a Security Council resolution in favor of Sudan, saying, Sudan is now an internationally isolated state due to US sanctions. In order for it to pass this resolution, it must have a strong international policy to be able to mobilize and convince the Security Council to consider this issue.

The Halayeb issue remains a fundamental reason behind the chill in Egyptian-Sudanese relations and a direct threat to Egyptian national security, despite all of Cairos attempts to seek rapprochement with and give special attention to Sudan, which is a priority on the Egyptian foreign policy agenda.
May 5, 2016

As presidential, legislative and municipal elections have been disrupted in the Palestinian territories since 2006, due to the Fatah-Hamas divide, the university elections seem to be the most credible indicator to identify the weight of the Palestinian political forces.

The elections of the student cabinet, in which 9,000 students voted, at Birzeit University in the West Bank on April 27, resulted in Hamas' student wing the Islamic Bloc winning 25 out of 51 seats. Fatah's student wing, the Shabiba movement, won 21 seats and the Democratic Pole affiliated with the Palestinian Front for the Liberation of Palestine obtained five seats.

Ibrahim Jaq, the Islamic Bloc coordinator at Birzeit University, told Al-Monitor, The reason behind the bloc winning the elections is its work among the students throughout the year; the student cabinet led by the bloc provided many services to the university students. This has resulted in the substantial support for the bloc and its victory in the elections with the largest number of votes. In addition, the students have opted for the resistance and Jerusalem intifada, and we also did not distinguish between this or that party in the provision of services. Thus many Christian students and unveiled female students voted for us, in light of the Israeli arrests of the student cabinets head and 30 activists, and the Palestinian Authority's [PA] pursuit and restrictions against the blocs activists.

Hamas regards the victory of its student branch to go beyond the campus of Birzeit University. In an official statement April 27, it said that the victory is a referendum on its armed resistance program against Israel, a message of support for the Jerusalem intifada and a sign showing Hamas strength.

Khaled Meshaal, the head of Hamas' political bureau, said April 28 that the Islamic Blocs victory is a proof of the Palestinians support for the resistance and opposition to the security coordination between the PA and Israel.

Remarkably, as part of the competing parties electoral campaign the day prior to the vote, the Islamic Bloc displayed what it viewed as Hamas political and military achievements.

While Fatah did not issue an official statement commenting on its defeat in the elections, its officials expressed their disappointment. Sufian Abu Zaida, a member of the Fatah Revolutionary Council, said, How many defeats are still needed before Fatah rises up?

Nabil Amr, the former adviser to President Mahmoud Abbas, said that the defeat in the Birzeit Universitys elections is a defeat to the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), which has continued to say that it has the Palestinian peoples support.

Fatah member of parliament Majed Abu Shamala demanded that an inquiry committee be formed to look into the reasons behind Fatahs defeat in the elections.

Yousef Rizqa, the former minister of information and Hamas leader, told Al-Monitor, Hamas victory in the elections at Birzeit University points at the Palestinian people's mood, given that the university is a bastion of democracy that allows identifying the orientations of Palestinian voters and public opinion. Therefore, they go beyond the mere result of the elections among the Palestinian factions in order to reach wider regional and international prospects. They are a sign indicating the weight of the Palestinian factions, and what happened at Birzeit University reflects the Palestinian public awareness, which is looking for what is changing and what is new  after it has lost trust in what is old and the political blocs that have seized the Palestinian leadership and the electorates votes for a long time.

Hamas victory at Birzeit University can be interpreted at two levels: place and timing. The victory came following the wave of arrests and pursuit by the PA and Israel of its students and activists, most notably former student cabinet head Seif al-Islam Dughlas, who was arrested by Israel in December 2015.

As for the place, Birzeit University is the oldest Palestinian academic institution. It was founded as a school in 1924, then turned into a college, before it became a university in 1961, where liberal rather than Islamic orientations prevailed. The PLO and Fatah have considered it their historic stronghold in Palestine. Yet for the second year in a row, Hamas is winning in the elections there.

Speaking to Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity, a member of Fatahs Central Committee, said, Fatahs defeat at Birzeit University was anticipated as the university students judged the movements political leadership rather than the performance of its students branch. Unfortunately the PAs performance has been weak in the eyes of the Palestinian street recently, particularly since the outbreak of the current intifada. This is especially true since it was seen as a party working as a security agent for Israel, which prompted the university students to vote against the PA and Fatahs political program in order to sanction them.

Remarkably, the Islamic Blocs policy at Birzeit University seems to have been a drive behind non-Hamas students voting for Hamas. The bloc has adopted an unprecedented openness to the other doctrinal orientations, allowing unveiled students to take part in their activities for the second year in a row.

It seems that the Islamic Bloc has a solid organizational structure. Despite the arrests of its most visible activists  namely prominent Hamas cadres such as the head and members of the Birzeit University student cabinet  lower-level activists have proven that they are no less important, and that they can lead and win an intense battle.

Sari Arabi, a Palestinian political analyst in the West Bank, told Al-Monitor, The elections at Birzeit University are one of the most important elections in the history of the Palestinian student movement because it took place between the Islamic Bloc  which has been banned by the Israeli occupation since 2000 and subjected to the PA's restrictions  and Fatahs Shabiba movement  which was supported by the PA. The Birzeit University elections in general have been a sign of Palestinian discontent with the PA and its policies.

Given the difficult times the movement has been experiencing in the West Bank, the victory in Birzeits student elections was a much-needed win for Hamas. It delivers a message of support to its members, who have been facing restrictions imposed by the PA and Israeli security forces. At the same time, Fatahs loss fans the flames of internal disputes within the party, despite Fatah receiving financial support from the PA and not facing security restrictions like those imposed on the Islamic Bloc.
May 5, 2016

TEHRAN, Iran  President Hassan Rouhani presented a general budget bill to parliament Jan. 17  one day after the formal lifting of nuclear-related sanctions  for the current Iranian fiscal year, which began March 20. More than three months later after its introduction, the bill is still being reviewed, in part because of the Iranian New Year holidays, with members of parliaments National Security and Foreign Policy Commission taking a particularly close look at the details.

After the Management and Planning Organization released official budget documents for the current Iranian year in mid-March, shock spread through right-wing media outlets and publications. Many of them lashed out at Rouhani under headlines such as The administration has decreased the defense budget. Despite such assertions, was there actually a proposed decrease in the defense budget?

Based on the number of personnel employed by the Armed Forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran, the army has the most troops, weapons and military installations at its disposal. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), possessing about one-third of Irans military power, is ranked second. Following them are the paramilitary Basij organization, the Ministry of Defense and the Armed Forces General Staff. Although the army's capabilities far exceed those of the IRGC, the latter always receives almost two times as much funding as the former.

In the fiscal year that began March 20, 2013, the first five months of which took place during President Mahmoud Ahmadinejads last year in office, Irans total defense budget was $6.24 billion. In the following fiscal year, beginning March 21, 2014, marking Rouhanis first full year in office, the defense budget grew by $1.85 billion, bringing the total to more than $8 billion.

The increase was mostly because the Rouhani administration had to allocate additional funding to the IRGC for its spending in Syria, Iraq and Yemen. In other words, the IRGC, which was allocated $3.3 billion for fiscal year 2013-14, saw its budget grow to some $5 billion during Rouhanis first year in office. This amount is separate from the revenue the IRGC brings in from the major economic enterprises in which it is involved.

Nevertheless, the Iranian defense budget reflects some major changes in the current Iranian fiscal year. Based on past trends, the armys spending would typically be increased by 2-5% each year. For the first time in decades, however, the armys budget is being increased by about 15%, from $1.5 billion to $1.75 billion. The Ministry of Defense, which is responsible for supplying military equipment, will also see an increase in allocated funding, from $770 million last year (ending March 19) to $890 million in the current fiscal year. The Basij and the General Staff have meanwhile each been allocated some 10% more in spending.

In contrast, the IRGC has had its budget decreased by some 16%. The $900 million cut brings its total budget allocation to some $4.1 billion. Although the decrease is considerable, the IRGCs budget in 2013-14 clearly shows that the funding allocated is sufficient to cover all its costs, except for foreign expenses.

The changes sought indicate that the Rouhani administration is looking to implement structural reform in military spending. Unlike his predecessors, Rouhani wants to increase the quality of the armed forces by supporting the Ministry of Defense and the domestic arms industry and by paying more attention to the dilapidated army. Due to decades of negligence, the regular army is worn down and in dire need of funding to be reinvigorated. The current administration is very much aware of this reality and has therefore resisted demands by the IRGC for more funding even though it already has a bigger budget than the army.

Nonetheless, Iranian parliamentarians, especially members of the National Security and Foreign Policy Commission, many of whom are retired IRGC generals, are looking to modify the budget bill. At an April 8 session, lawmakers decided that 10% of funds related to Amendment 3  which sets the upper limit of foreign expenditure credits at $50 billion in local currency  will be allocated to the defense industry. The change is based on a proposal by Esmaeil Kowsari, a retired general and commission member, that 10% of the country's financial credit be used to buy new military equipment.

Hassan Sobhani Nia, deputy head of the National Security and Foreign Policy Commission, said March 23 in an ICANA interview, With the decision made by the MPs in the joint commission, in the [current Iranian] year 1395, about 5,000 billion toman ($1.65 billion) from the released [foreign-held] assets [unfrozen as part of the nuclear deal] will be used for strengthening and supporting the countrys military and defense capabilities.

The budget submitted to parliament clearly demonstrates that the Rouhani administration is determined to address Iran's domestic and international military and security needs. As such, the bill can analyzed in two ways.

First, by reducing the overall military budget, the administration has shown its interest in decreasing the countrys military expenses as well as its interest in alternative investments in other economic sectors. More important, it has clearly demonstrated that it is not interested in increasing military expenditures abroad, including in Iraq, Lebanon and Syria.

Second, by noticeably increasing funding for the army and the Ministry of Defense, the administration has shown its determination to implement structural reforms by providing more money to poorly maintained organizations, such as the army, and by increasing the quality of training, equipment and weapons, as well as offering more support to the Ministry of Defense. Indeed, this government has supported and strengthened the ministry more than any other administration in the history of the Islamic Republic. It has even engaged in intensive negotiations with other countries with the aim of purchasing new equipment, including fighter jets.

All in all, the governments proposed budget bill and its relationship with the armed forces show that the administration is seriously looking to improve the structure of the military and to ensure that the structure holds. This is particularly important since Irans rivals in the region  Israel, Egypt, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia and other members of the Gulf Cooperation Council  are constantly increasing their military expenditures, fueling an arms race.
May 5, 2016

In April, the Dov Hoz Community Center was inaugurated in a renovated old building in Tel Aviv. Since then, said Nadav Avnery, the centers director, it has seen nonstop visitors who pop their head in the door and ask what we do here and when there will be activities for them. The renewed vitality of the place testifies to the potential for the evolution of buildings in Israel.

The structure was built in 1938 as a Mizrahi home for young women, to help house the influx of children during the youth immigration of that period, and then it became a boarding school for girls. In 1999, the building was abandoned, after which it attracted the homeless and drug users, becoming a sore at the center of Tel Aviv on very expensive land. In 2011, the old abandoned building became a symbol in the protest over the cost of living, with social activists taking it over and establishing an independent community center and running programs and other activities out of it.

Despite the activists' positive initiative, which was warmly received by the public, the city of Tel Aviv evicted them, promising to renovate the building. One can interpret this as evidence of the municipalitys warped priorities in that it prefers an abandoned building in the center of the city to a social initiative that, although not legally sanctioned, was nonetheless effective. Would the city have bothered to renovate the building without the protests and the activists takeover? Even if so, it is clear that the protests and takeover served as catalysts.

The Dov Hoz Community Center is an educational community complex that also includes a cluster of preschool classes. There was a process of involving the public that the municipality is proud of, Avnery told Al-Monitor. The city involved the public in a comprehensive and approachable way. It held an event at the place before the renovations started, with the participation of hundreds of residents of all ages, and had an online process for brainstorming ideas for its use. There were also focus groups. Based on all this, alongside the citys formal education needs, the uses of the building were determined.

Avnery added, While the building isnt designated for historic preservation, in appearance and spirit we will treat it as such. We will respect and defer to the history of the building, both in its interior design and in the content of the activities that will take place there.

Such success stories are rare. Architect Sharon Raz has, to use his own word, obsessively documented abandoned buildings in Israel for more than 12 years. In the process, he has assembled tens of thousands of photos of such buildings, including factories, swimming pools, cafeterias, army buildings, water towers, cinemas and community halls.

Raz told Al-Monitor, I give respect to the built heritage that the State of Israel and its citizens have abandoned. I dont sit and wait until someone moves and authorizes a single building for preservation and then wait for it to actually happen, I go and document.

Historic and architectural documentation are only part of the story. The 2011 Trajtenberg Committee on the Cost of Living dealt with the issue of abandoned buildings in Israeli city centers, in addition to the thousands of ghost apartments, privately owned units sometimes bought as investments or vacation homes that sit empty. It suggested taxing the owners of abandoned and neglected properties.

Vitali Dubov-Dotan, an urban planner, has for two years hosted the Facebook page Abandoned Buildings in Haifa. According to him, the empty buildings in the city represent 1,500 potential housing units, which could help relieve the problem of the cost of housing in Israel. If you destroy the buildings and build on the sites, youll get thousands of housing units, he said.

Caring for abandoned buildings is a mission for Dubov-Dotan, who told Al-Monitor, As a child I wandered the city and saw abandoned buildings. I dreamt of healing them as you would abandoned animals.

Referring to one site, Dubov-Dotan said, The Talpiyot market [is] in a building in the Hadar neighborhood that is an amazing gem of Bauhaus architecture in the middle of a down-trodden neighborhood. Today the building has operations in the basement, but the rest of it is abandoned. For 10 years, the municipality has published announcements of its renovation, but the beautiful building is still abandoned, and the whole area looks neglected.

Dubov-Dotan added, [There is an Israeli tendency] to expand at the expense of green space before using existing and abandoned properties. I dont oppose new construction, but first populate the unused, wasted areas in the cities. After you do that, you build new buildings.

More than a hundred buildings are highlighted on Dubov-Dotan's Facebook page, which includes historical details about them. He noted, [Today they] attract negative elements and cause the neighboring buildings to suffer neglect as well. The municipality of Haifa offered no response to Al-Monitor's questions on the issue.

Like Dubov-Dotan, Eitan Zalkover also documents abandoned buildings, but his focus is the Old City of Beersheba. I searched for a property owner who would allow me to use his [old deserted] buildings, but they are not eager to rent, and if they are, it's at very high prices, while the investment in such a place is also very costly, he told Al-Monitor.

One of the problems Dubov-Dotan and Zalkover noted is that local authorities don't incentivize private owners of abandoned buildings to put them to use, and they don't rush to do so themselves. The Trajtenberg Committees recommendation to cancel the exemption from property tax for owners of abandoned buildings was only passed in the Knesset Ministerial Committee for Legislation in November 2015.

In the Old City [of Beersheba], there are five bars and cafes that are gems, but theres a dark, neglected and dirty space between them. There are amazing Turkish buildings here that are more than a hundred years old, insanely abandoned, crumbling. They housed offices, shops, banquet halls and even an army camp. All this in an area of 60 dunams [15 acres], said Zalkover.

The Municipality of Beersheba told Al-Monitor, The issue of abandoned property has been dealt with vigorously by the municipality and the economic corporation that manages the Old City. Most of the abandoned properties are privately owned, which limits intervention and treatment. The mayor is working on transferring properties owned by the state to the city in order to continue to advance sites of culture, tourism and art. Naturally, these are long-term processes.
May 5, 2016

Another violent clash between Israel and Gaza was averted at the last minute on May 4. A statement issued by senior Hamas official Moussa Abu Marzouk said understandings were reached between the sides through Egyptian mediation about a cease-fire on the Israel-Gaza border. According to the statement, Hamas pledged to prevent all rocket launches at Israel by various Palestinian factions in the Gaza Strip, whereas Israel promised to stop its airstrikes on the Strip and withdraw the military forces that had begun operating inside Gaza. As of the morning of May 5, Israel had not responded to Abu Marzouks statement.

All of Israels past military operations in Gaza started out this way: a limited exchange of blows, a smattering of mortar shells from Gaza and Israeli air strikes on Gaza  all snowballing into another round of vicious violence with thousands of dead and wounded.

The latest escalation, including several mortars fired from Gaza to Israel over the past few weeks, was foreseeable. Israeli defense officials have been telling me for weeks that Hamas was unlikely to put up with new Israeli limitations on the transfer of goods and raw materials through the Kerem Shalom crossing into Gaza. As it is, the situation in Gaza is desperate and even the slightest change can result in total collapse.

Last week Al-Monitor reported this Israeli thinking, including concerns about another military clash with Hamas. It all started when Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz ordered restrictions on the number of trucks allowed through the Kerem Shalom crossing into Gaza, under pressure from residents of the Gaza border communities troubled by the heavy truck traffic on the narrow, potholed 232 route leading to the sole access point for food and goods into the Strip.

As if this were not enough, Israel also announced that it would no longer allow cement into Gaza because Hamas was using it to build tunnels instead of rebuilding homes and infrastructure destroyed in Operation Protective Edge in 2014.

Hamas officials who spoke with Al-Monitor dismissed Israels claims. The entry of cement into the Strip is under close supervision, they said, and Hamas has been adhering to the agreement struck at the end of Operation Protective Edge. Hamas thinks Israel decided on a cement embargo after a tunnel was uncovered next to the Kerem Shalom crossing on April 18, much to the chagrin and embarrassment of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).

An examination of the newly exposed cross-border tunnel proved that it had been dug in the past  before the summer of 2014  and was not new, but Israel had failed to locate it during Operation Protective Edge. Since then, the armed forces of Hamas, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, continued to maintain and reinforce that tunnel.

After the tunnel was uncovered, Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon said Israel was not deluding itself that Hamas would stop digging tunnels, adding that Israel is not seeking a confrontation, "but if Hamas tries to challenge the State of Israel or disrupt the lives of Gaza border residents, it will be hit very hard.

It is therefore not clear what prompted senior defense officials to act at this time. The IDF and Shin Bet security agency are closely monitoring the tunnel construction push on the northern and southern edges of Gaza, which is being carried out in broad daylight. Open-source material and intelligence information point to the fact that for the past year Hamas has been energetically rehabilitating its tunnel network destroyed during Operation Protective Edge. Almost every Gaza resident knows that the many bulldozers and sand-bearing trucks moving about northern Gaza are being diverted to the national Hamas tunnel-digging project.

Back in March 2015 I wrote here that eyewitnesses were reporting from Gaza that the armed wing of Hamas was openly building tunnels. Everything was indeed known and clear at the time, but it appears that stopping the passage of cement at this time is actually designed to calm Israelis upset by recent discovery of the tunnel.

This is the essence of the great dilemma with which Israel is dealing. The ongoing transfer of building material to Gaza enables Hamas to intensify its tunnel project. On the other hand, halting the passage of raw material will result in a flare-up of hostilities.

What, then, is the solution? It would appear there is none.

More than 1.8 million Palestinians live in Gaza. Entire neighborhoods were destroyed during Operation Protective Edge and have not been rebuilt since. The Gaza rehabilitation plan has been bogged down for a long time and the economic situation is deteriorating daily. Young couples cannot get married because they cant afford to build a home or rent a roof over their heads in order to begin their lives together. The cement and building material issue troubles Gaza residents even more than the shortage of electric power.

Does anyone in Israel really believe that it can limit the transfer of raw materials on the one hand and on the other expect life in Gaza to be dictated by the amount of food it allows residents? How long can Israel maintain its embargo, which has not contributed to Israels security? How much longer can residents of the Strip sustain themselves through a feeding tube from the narrow and restricted Kerem Shalom crossing?

Since the siege on Gaza was imposed in June 2007, Hamas has dedicated all its energies to its removal. The Qassam rockets and mortar shells were always the means used by Hamas to bring Israel to the negotiating table and force it to discuss the easing of the blockade or its removal. This was also the case this week. The mortars fired at Israel were the Hamas way of signaling Israel that additional economic pressure would lead to another major clash.

The siege on Gaza has been in place for nine years already. So far Hamas has proven that it is willing to sacrifice a great deal in order to bring it to an end.

Israel must now accept the Turkish reconciliation proposal that includes a lifting of the Gaza blockade. This would enable the creation of an international supervisory mechanism for Gaza and rid Israel of the onus of caring for 1.8 million hungry Palestinians. Otherwise, the next major military operation is only a matter of time, and it will be far more lethal and bitter than the previous round.
May 5, 2016

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip  The second and largest exhibition for pigeon enthusiasts and breeders in the Palestinian territories took place in Gaza April 7-9. Turnout was high, including the participation of 170 breeders and 250 pairs of rare and fancy pigeons. Gaza's first gathering of this kind was held in April 2015.

The exhibition was held in Gaza City's Saad Sayel arena and was organized by a popular Facebook group called Pigeons in Palestine, followed by over 13,000 pigeon enthusiasts and breeders from Palestine.

Coordinator Mohammed al-Ghoul told Al-Monitor, We have been preparing for this since 2007, and Facebook played a major role in gathering this huge number of pigeon enthusiasts, most of them young. We sent out many invitations to many people, including some in Jordan, Egypt, Arabian Gulf [countries] and Oman, but they could not attend because of the blockade imposed on the Gaza Strip and the closure of crossings.

He explained that the coordinating committee for the exhibition contacted Nasser Al Hindi, the head of the Jordanian Society of Breeders and Enthusiasts of Pigeons and Ornamental Birds. The group invited the Omani Association for Bird Enthusiasts as well as various figures from Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Oman to participate. Because of the closure of the Rafah border crossing between Egypt and Gaza, they were unable to attend, but expressed support and encouragement for the exhibition.

The exhibition showcased various pigeon breeds such as the American King, the English Carrier, the German Beauty Homer, the Egyptian Swift, the homing pigeon, the Bolo pigeon and the Maltese pigeon, in addition to others coming from al-Sham in Syria, through Jordan and the West Bank.

Abu Wadih Jadallah, another of the exhibition's coordinators, told Al-Monitor, Israel had prevented the entry of pigeons into the Gaza Strip because of the bird flu. But we were allowed to import them in 2011, and we used to communicate with Israeli traders in order to import certain breeds from Europe through traders in Jerusalem and the West Bank who would bring in these breeds in small boxes through the Erez crossing.

Jadallah noted that the prices of imported rare breeds range from $2,000 to $5,000, adding, We contacted Nassim al-Rajbi, a pigeon breeder and enthusiast from Jerusalem, to import the rare English Carrier pigeon, with black and white spots, from Hungary. Over four months later, we received the pigeons through the Erez crossing. After the Syrian crisis broke out, many pigeons from Damascus such as the Syrian Wheatear and the Mesawed entered through breeders in Jordan into the West Bank and then the Gaza Strip.

In the absence of international judges, the pigeons are evaluated according to international standards for the birds facial features, neck length, eye spacing and leg length. Those with the highest scores receive monetary prizes and awards that increase their market price.

Pigeon breeder and seller Fahad Hameed, 65, was surprised by the high youth turnout. He told Al-Monitor, Most of the visitors are young people. Some of them are not even 20, and they own pigeons of excellent breeds allowing them to compete with breeders and enthusiasts who have kept pigeons for decades.

He pointed out that the youth are developing beautiful hobbies in a bid to escape the harsh economic, political and psychological realities that they suffer in the Gaza Strip. This, he added, explains the enthusiasm to purchase pigeons of excellent breeding, whose price ranges from $2,000 to $5,000.

Breeder Assaad Essi, 28, told Al-Monitor, The exhibition served as a meeting point for us amateurs and young breeders of pigeons, and we were able to convey a message to the world that we love life; we can compete in art, culture and beautiful hobbies.

Essi expressed his wish to take part in international exhibitions to improve the breed he has, raise new pairs and compete for global awards.

Asked how the exhibition affected supply and demand in the domestic pigeon market, Iyad Abu Obeida, 36, told Al-Monitor, The exhibition is clearly working to revitalize the pigeon market in Gaza. As pigeon breeders, we noted a rise in demand for rare pigeons, and we have established contact with Palestinian merchants in the West Bank to supply additional quantities of English Carrier pigeons, Damascene pigeons and homing pigeons.

Homing pigeon enthusiast Amjad Jradeh, 29, told Al-Monitor, There is a clear lack of veterinary care for pigeons. Owners of veterinary clinics lack the necessary experience to deal with pigeon diseases, such as flu, Salmonella and gas buildup, and the clinics provide costly, self-produced medications that often kill the pigeons.

Regarding the Ministry of Agricultures support for pigeon breeders, Essi told Al-Monitor, The Ministry of Agriculture in Gaza does not provide us with plastic anklets for the pigeon's legs. Also, it fails to provide us with the necessary medicines and proper health care, and it does not monitor the pigeon-importation process to see whether the pigeons are infected. Moreover, the food used, such as wheat, ends up harming the health of the birds.

The pigeon breeders criticism of the Ministry of Agriculture in the Gaza Strip prompted Al-Monitor to communicate with the head of the ministry's Veterinary Department, Zakaria Kafarna, who told Al-Monitor, There are a great number of breeders and enthusiasts and they have now come to organize themselves into groups, and they are adding new types of pigeons. It is not the job of the ministry to provide medicines and plastic bands for pigeons, as there are private veterinary clinics that sell them. Pigeon breeders should provide us with a list of medicines that are not available in the market so that we ask traders to import them.

Due to the blockade imposed on Gaza, pigeon breeders are unable to import medicines to treat diseases that infect birds despite several drug-smuggling attempts via the Erez crossing.

The organizers of the exhibition hope that through this initiative, a formal association or institution will form and bring together all of the Gaza Strip's enthusiasts and breeders, and that the exhibition will be organized on an annual basis.
May 6, 2016

Since time immemorial, mothers-in-law have been the source of marital distress and the subject of vilification and ridicule. In Turkey, the proverbial rivalry between a mother-in-law and a daughter-in-law is perhaps best illustrated in a popular folk song, which says the best way to deal with a mother-in-law is to throw her in a boiling caldron and toss more wood in the fire each time she screams for help. The dreadful mother-in-law described in the song may be fiction, but among Turkeys 39.9 million women today, there remain many overbearing mothers-in-law who terrorize families and refuse to share their sons.

From the fictional "Game of Thrones" queen who had her daughter-in-law locked up to the real sultanas and queen mothers who waged bitter battles in Ottoman and Western courts, the image of the mother-in-law is rarely a flattering one. (Bad daughters-in-law are, of course, a separate issue.)

The domineering mother-in-law, a central figure in the traditional Turkish family, features prominently in Turkish literature, cinema, television and music. In fact, Turkeys first sitcom series, a big hit in the 1970s, was called Mothers-in-Law. Years after her death, Turkish actress Aliye Rona remains the unforgettable bad mother-in-law of the big screen. The scowling shrew she played would torment brides played by the top beauties of Turkish cinema, poisoning many romances, much to the dismay of Turkish viewers. About a decade ago, another bad mother-in-law became a household name. Semra Yucel was a memorable participant in a blockbuster reality show called "Would you be my daughter-in-law?" in which young women competed to win the hearts of would-be mothers-in-law.

The hegemony of the mother-in-law remains widespread in families in Turkeys rural backwaters, where brides are expected to raise children, do housework, toil in the fields and take care of livestock. In such patriarchal clans, male children mean power for women. Sons become their means of gaining respect, an asset they refuse to share with daughters-in-law, laying the ground for conflict.

The problem of the nitpicking mother-in-law has now reached the top echelons of the Turkish justice system. Last week, press reports circulated about a revolutionary judgment by the Court of Appeals that upended archaic norms dictating that women move in with their in-laws after marriage and submit to the tutelage of their husbands' mothers.

The judgment was a victory for a young woman from the southern province of Osmaniye who filed for divorce after failing to persuade her husband to move into their own house. The local court ruled the plaintiffs objection to sharing a home with her mother-in-law was not a valid reason for divorce. The woman, however, appealed the ruling. The appeals court overturned the ruling and found that the husbands refusal to provide a separate residence was a wrongful act under Turkey's Civil Code, reported Hurriyet. The plaintiff, it said, had a legitimate reason to seek divorce, as the husband has failed to make sufficient effort to meet his wifes wish to live in an independent residence and forced her to reside with his family.

The courts emphasis on compulsory residence sets a precedent that strengthens the hand of women seeking divorce.

According to lawyer Yasar Sevuk, women unwilling to share a home with their in-laws can now use this as grounds to seek divorce if they so wish. People file for divorce on grounds of irreconcilable differences, and the judges look for reasons that hinder the cohabitation of the sides and the harmony [of their marriage], Sevuk told Al-Monitor.

The Court of Appeals judgment, he stressed, has deemed the state of living with ones mother-in-law as a cause of irreconcilable differences. The snoring of a spouse, for instance  cannot be considered such a reason. But a mother-in-laws behavior toward a daughter-in-law and other damaging behavior like jealousy and domination  constitute reasons for divorce, he said.

Certainty, not all mothers-in-law fit the dreaded stereotype. Beyhan Tuncer, a 70-year-old owner of a popular bridal gown studio in Ankara, believes the secret of peaceful relationships lays in keeping expectations reasonable and living apart. Admonitions and lectures are a no-no, she cautions.

Recounting her own experience to Al-Monitor, Tuncer said, My son learned to stand on his own feet, to be a versatile and independent person at a very young age. When he introduced me to my daughter-in-law, I was determined to not keep my expectations too high. I had shared a home with my mother-in-law for seven years and learned a lot from this relationship. Being patient and temperate toward daughters-in-law and keeping your nose out of their business do the trick. Living in separate homes and even in separate cities could have helped us. My daughter-in-law is a professional with a strong personality. They have their own business lives with all the challenges they face there. If we were to share a home on top of all this, we would have probably had no peace at all.

Sharing a home with a mother-in-law is no lesser challenge for sons-in-law, either. In Turkish culture, this could be even a source of humiliation since traditionally grooms move in with their in-laws only if they are poor or when the brides family needs a young man for their work. There is a special term for this status that has unflattering connotations and could be roughly translated as a live-in groom. If you ask a dispirited Turk how he is doing, he might tell you he is little better than a live-in groom. A broader interpretation of the recent legal judgment could perhaps provide a way out for unwilling live-in grooms as well.
May 5, 2016

Turkey recently stepped up its game against the Islamic State (IS) in response to increasingly militarized attacks on targets inside Turkey's borders.

IS is striving to open a front against Turkey to expand its area of operations and ease the heavy pressure it is under in Iraq and Syria. No doubt IS is keen to show that its success story continues by shifting the war to Europe and Turkey. IS is also holding Turkey directly responsible for losses in northern Syria.

For about a year, Turkey has been arresting a growing number of IS militants and sympathizers, but Ankara, aware of local sensitivities, has been careful to keep its anti-IS struggle inside Turkey low-key without attracting media attention and upsetting public opinion.

This approach was maintained until about 10 days ago when Turkey was forced to escalate to a high-profile military struggle after IS directly targeted security forces and fired anti-tank missiles.

What changed in the past 10 days? For one thing, as IS continues its Katyusha rocket attacks on the Turkish border city of Kilis, it's improving its accuracy. There are also reports that IS might have transferred some of these rockets to inside Turkey.

As I wrote April 26, Turkey is trying to devise a strategy with US assistance against these rocket attacks, which have killed 21 people so far. Similar situations in other parts of the world show that such attacks can be mitigated, but not fully eliminated, with effective defense measures.

One of the first attacks of its type was an IS missile assault against a Turkish howitzer battery at Karkamis, directly opposite IS-controlled Jarablus in Syria.

Photos posted at the Aamag website of IS on April 28 show IS militants firing a Russian-made, wire-guided Metis anti-tank missile from 1,400 meters (nearly nine-tenths of a mile) and hitting Turkeys T-155 howitzers. This was the first anti-tank attack by IS from Syria into Turkish territory. Turkish security sources say the attack was not covered widely by the Turkish media.

Military sources said one T-155 was hit and lightly damaged, and there were no casualties. Security sources reported two howitzers were hit.

Another first attack of its type came May 1 when IS carried out a vehicle-borne suicide attack in front of Gaziantep police headquarters. This was first vehicle-borne suicide bomb in Gaziantep but also the first such attack directly targeting security forces in the country.

Authorities said Ismail Gunes carried out the attack, which killed two policemen and wounded 20 people. They said he had crossed to Syria in 2014 and later joined the group led by Yunus Durmaz, who had planned the Suruc suicide bombing against civilian volunteers going to Kobani, and the double-bomb attack against a peace rally near the Ankara train station that killed more than 100 people.

A debate has been raging about how Gunes  who was supposed to have been monitored by Turkish intelligence services  was able to carry out the May 1 attack.

Meanwhile, local media in the southeast reported that IS gave mosque sermons April 29 at Bab, Manbij and Jarablus that called for attacks against security forces and public buildings in the border region, primarily at Gaziantep, Karkamis and Kilis. IS-penned sermons said such attacks should inflict massive damages and force the locals to evacuate.

Another worrisome development was a police report carried by the media April 25. The report, prepared by the Police Intelligence Department, said that since April 2011, 2,750 Turkish Salafists had moved between Turkey, Syria and Iraq. The report said there are 1,222 Turkish Salafists in Syria, 749 of them with IS and 136 with Jabhat al-Nusra. It added that 457 Turkish Salafists have been killed in the region.

The police report warned that some of the thousands of Turkish militants of IS are now trying to find ways to return to Turkey.

Turkish decision-makers have noticeably changed their approach against IS. After virtually ignoring the IS threat to Turkey since the summer of 2014, they seem to have belatedly recognized the danger. One impediment to a clearer understanding of the threat is that some Turkish officials have been promoting conspiracy theories about foreign powers being behind IS. Another hurdle is Turkish political parties' inclination to identify the IS threat according to their ideologies, and not through joint political and popular approaches.
May 6, 2016

"We would expect that Turkey will follow its own democratic procedures  I am not going to speak to the specifics of an internal process there inside Turkey. Gotta go." With these dismissive comments, US State Department spokesman John Kirby ducked questions at a press briefing last week about a Turkish government-inspired bill to strip lawmakers of their parliamentary immunity and clear the path for their prosecution over alleged crimes.

Championed by Turkey's unabashedly authoritarian president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the legislation targets members of the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP). Just days before Kirby's remarks, the HDP's charismatic co-chair, Selahattin Demirtas, was in the US capital where he met with senior State Department and White House staff.

Erdogan labels Demirtas and his colleagues "terrorists" over thinly supported charges that they are acting on behalf of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), the rebel group with which the Turkish government was negotiating until February last year to end a bloody 32-year-long insurgency for Kurdish self-rule.

Coming on top of the collapse of a two-year cease-fire in August and a sharp escalation in violence between Turkish security forces and the PKK, the ouster of the HDP deputies would deal an additional blow to the country's fraying democracy. It would also increase political instability and deepen the chasm between Turks and Kurds, perhaps even thrusting them into the intra-ethnic conflict Demirtas recently warned against.

Mounting turmoil in a critical NATO ally ought to be of concern to the United States. But its response to the latest twist in the political drama unfolding in Ankara was typically muted.

Commenting on the effective ouster of Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu by Erdogan  which many call a "palace coup" that will allow the president to take full control of the country  White House spokesman Josh Earnest said, "I do not anticipate that this is going to have any impact on the ability of the United States and Turkey to work together to continue to implement our strategy to degrade and destroy Daesh [the Arabic term for the Islamic State (IS)]."

Earnest's words were something of a giveaway. Turkey is a critical if reluctant ally in the war against IS. Washington's single-minded focus on IS means that "from the US perspective the backbone of the relationship is cooperation in the anti-IS campaign," said Gonul Tol, the executive director of The Middle East Institutes Center for Turkish Studies in Washington, in an interview with Al-Monitor. This in turn means that it is that much more willing to overlook Turkey's seemingly unchecked rush toward authoritarianism.

Washington's apparent insouciance may be something of a trade-off for its continued alliance with the Syrian Kurdish militia known as the People's Protection Units (YPG) in its battle against IS in Syria. Turkey is incensed by the partnership, calling it a betrayal because the YPG is closely allied with the PKK. Striking a balance between Turkey's security concerns and the YPG's goal of territorial expansion remains the hallmark of US policy.

Yet in recent months, Washington has been bending over backward to accommodate Turkey. The United States has stepped up air support for Turkish-backed Syrian rebels, including the jihadi Ahrar al-Sham. These rebel groups are fighting to eject IS  thus far unsuccessfully  from areas bordering Turkey, with the aim of preventing the YPG from doing so and laying claim to those territories.

Washington has reportedly arranged for meetings between Arab members of the YPG-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and Turkish officials in order to appease Ankara's fears over an imminent US-backed SDF operation to wrest control of the Syrian town of Manbij, an operational center for IS overseas attacks.

In a recent Senate hearing, US Secretary of Defense Ash Carter, who is cited as one of Erdogan's fiercest critics within the Obama administration, confessed that the YPG and the PKK were closely linked, thereby ending nearly two years of formal denial of a well-established fact.

Meanwhile, Washington has said little if anything about the gross human rights violations opposition lawmakers insist were committed by Turkish security forces as they flush out PKK militants embedded in neighborhoods in the mainly Kurdish towns and cities in southeast Turkey.

Some analysts argue that US silence stems in part from the belief that its words carry less weight than they are credited with. Omer Taspinar, a professor of international relations at the National Defense University in Washington, told Al-Monitor, "The United States has long believed it has very little leverage in terms of moving things in the right direction when they speak up." And when dealing with a prickly nationalist like Erdogan, public criticism can often make things worse.

But Hishyar Ozsoy, a prominent HDP lawmaker who traveled with Demirtas to the United States, said Washington needs to be tougher. He told Al-Monitor, "The United States needs to speak up about human rights, about the stripping of our parliamentary immunity that will have a devastating effect on stability and the peaceful resolution of the Kurdish problem. In failing to do so, the United States is tacitly encouraging Erdogan to continue with policies that hurt its own interests as well."

Many believe that Washington ought to have done more to support Davutoglu, who sought an Oval Office meeting with President Barack Obama prior to his ejection. The outgoing prime minister, who espoused a less hawkish stance on the Kurds and a more conciliatory tone with the European Union, was merely granted a drop-in by the president during Davutoglus bilateral talks with Vice President Joe Biden, planned for early May. A miffed Davutoglu canceled the trip altogether. Henri Barkey, Middle East program director at the Wilson Center, said that even with Washington's backing, Davutoglu would have been purged by Erdogan anyway. "This is a bulldozer coming down the side of a mountain," Barkey told Al-Monitor. Ever since the Cold War and because of Turkey's pivotal location at the crossroads of the Caucasus, Europe and the Middle East, "the United States has always put other [strategic] considerations ahead of human rights with Turkey  this is not new," he added.

Even so, Erdogan has made a key concession in recent days, withdrawing Turkey's veto over cooperation between Israel and NATO. US officials predict that diplomatic relations between the two countries, which have remained frozen since the Mavi Marmara crisis in 2010, will soon resume.

Indeed, many US diplomats claim that criticism over their Turkey policy is exaggerated. They point to Biden's tough messages on the lack of press freedom during his latest trip to Turkey.

Biden met with prominent Turkish journalists, including Al-Monitor columnist Kadri Gursel, who were fired under government pressure, saying, "If you do not have the ability to express your own opinion, to criticize policy, offer competing ideas without fear of intimidation or retribution, then your country is being robbed of opportunity."

In a recent interview with Obama for The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg revealed that the president didn't think much of Erdogan's leadership either, even though he met with the Turkish leader on the sidelines of the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington on March 31-April 1. "Early on, Obama saw Recep Tayyip Erdogan  as the sort of moderate Muslim leader who would bridge the divide between East and West  but Obama now considers him a failure and an authoritarian, one who refuses to use his enormous army to bring stability to Syria," Goldberg wrote.

Erdogan would likely retort that it is Obama who is refusing to use his enormous army to bring stability to Syria and instead is relying on local partners on the ground. And for as long as this policy remains, Washington will continue to rely on local partners such as Turkey and largely "ignore Erdogans power grab in order to secure Ankaras support in the fight against IS," Tol concluded.
May 6, 2016

In Turkey, prime ministers normally lose their job when they lose an election, or they lose the majority of the seats in the parliament due to a break down in their party. Turkeys current Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu had none of those problems. He had won a sweeping election victory just six months ago and his party is more intact than ever. Yet, still he had to give a farewell speech on May 5. He announced that there will be a surprise snap party congress in 17 days to chose the new party leader, but he himself will not run. This is not my decision, he said, but a necessity.

The whole of Turkey knows what the necessity is: President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who had nominated Davutoglu for the post of prime minister back in August 2014, had recently changed his mind. In the 20 months that has since passed, an ever-deepening rift emerged between the two men, and in Ankara rumors had spread the past few months that Davutoglu soon would be gone. Just four days before Davutoglus resignation, a new blog by an anonymous hard-core Erdoganist exposed all the details, as reported in Al-Monitor May 3. Accordingly, Davutoglu had betrayed Erdogan by collaborating with the Western powers and their agents that conspire against the CHIEF.

In fact, the only way Davutoglu betrayed Erdogan was that he tried to be relatively more moderate and less authoritarian. Unlike Erdogan, for example, Davutoglu seriously considered forming a coalition government with the main opposition party after the elections on June 7, 2015, when the Justice and Development Party (AKP) lost the parliament majority. Unlike Erdogan, he opposed the jailing of journalists and academics who were put on trial. And unlike Erdogan, he tried to build a consensus with environmentalist protesters rather than demonizing them as political provocateurs. That's why, compared to Erdogan, Davutoglu became a relatively less negative figure in the eyes of the opposition circles. For Erdoganists, however, all this translated into treason.

Here is something ironic: In August 2014, Erdogan had preferred Davutoglu to Abdullah Gul, whose presidency was ending and who was planning to run for the leadership of the AKP. Then, Gul was also found too moderate and too liberal  not fit for fighting ferociously against the endless conspiracies Turkey is supposedly facing. Gul, as the founder of the AKP, also had his own political persona and charisma and would not be loyal to Erdogan.

Now, less than two years later, Davutoglu has turned also into a problem for not being loyal enough to Erdogan. That's why virtually every political observer in Turkey expects that he will be replaced by someone who will be loyal to the president. Here are the top three names that are being speculated right now:

Berat Albayrak: the minister of energy. What makes Albayrak, 38, more than an energy minister is the fact that he is Erdogan's son-in-law, and is also known to be a key name in his most inner circle. Hence, those who know the inner workings of the AKP well think that Albayrak would be the most ideal candidate to head the Prime Ministry. The only problem is that he is too young and inexperienced.

Binali Yildirim: As the longtime transportation minister, Yildirim, 61, is probably the most likely candidate. He has no charisma, but has a good reputation as an able manager of Turkeys major transportation projects and is a close confidant of the president.

Bekir Bozdag: As the justice minister since late 2013, Bozdag, 51, is known to be the perfect yes-man for Erdogan, realizing all the reforms that destroyed much of the independence of the judiciary in the past three years. He has no charisma, no fame, but Erdogan's full trust.

The point is that the new prime minister will be a low-profile figure, as an Erdogan adviser said on TV after Davutoglus departure. Other pro-Erdogan writers are politely saying that this will create harmony between the president and he prime minister. But the more explanatory term is obedience: Perfect harmony will be achieved only with a perfectly obedient prime minister.

As for the calendar of events, here is what will happen: On May 22, in a big hall in Ankara, thousands of AKP delegates will gather to chose the new party chair. A few days before, Erdogan will make clear who he prefers for the job. That person will run as the only candidate, get all the votes and become the new AKP chair. Meanwhile, Davutoglu will continue his life, for the time being, as one of the more than 300 parliamentarians of the AKP.

The new AKP leader will immediately be appointed by Erdogan as the new prime minister as well. He will make a list of Cabinet members, get Erdogans approval and start working. In this new Cabinet, those in the current government who are known as close to Davutoglu will most probably no longer be there. One of them could be Lutfi Elvan, a deputy prime minister; the other could be Mehmet Simsek, the other deputy prime minister who is responsible for the economy and who has been one of the few remaining trusted figures by international investors.

Will all this solve Erdogans problem of not having enough power? Not really, for Erdogan wants to turn his de facto power into a constitutional reality. That's why he still wants a presidential system with an all-powerful presidency. For this he needs to change the entire constitution, but the AKP does not have enough seats for that.

So, Erdogan will either try to gain more seats in the current parliament, or call for new elections when he feels the time is right. The first option could develop from the cooperation with the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), whose leader, Devlet Bahceli, has lately been flirting with the AKP to suppress the political rebels in his own party. Or it could develop from the jailing of a few dozen deputies of the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), for links with terrorism and running a mini-election for the emptied seats, which the AKP is likely to win.

The second option, yet another early general election, is what those in Ankara consider possible also. Accordingly, early elections at the right time  perhaps this autumn  could push both the pro-Kurdish HDP and the nationalist MHP below the 10% threshold, giving the AKP more than enough seats to present its new constitution, and the presidential system, overnight.

Thus, Erdogans march toward absolute power continues. Davutoglu could have been only a slight nuisance on that path. But Erdogan has no tolerance for such annoyance; he wants all the political power there is  along with the power to control the judiciary and media. And he is steadily getting close to it.
Food truck collage.jpg

The fifth annual Protective Life Food Truck Roundup takes place Saturday, May 7, 2016, in the parking lot of the Summit retail center in Birmingham, Ala.

The Protective Live Food Truck Roundup returns for its fifth year this Saturday, May 7, and the 2016 edition features a new location and six new food trucks.

The event moves from its previous location at Brookwood Village to the Summit, where 16 mobile food vendors will set up their trucks and carts in the parking lot in front of the Carmike Summit 16 movie theater.

Hours are 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., and tickets are $15 at the gate for adults and $5 for children 10 and under. Unlike previous years, patrons will not use tokens for their food purchases but will pay the vendors directly.

The new trucks this year include Snapper Grappers Coastal Kitchen (seafood), Cheezin (grilled cheese sandwiches), Bendy's Cookies & Cream (ice cream sandwiches), Big Spoon Creamery (gourmet ice cream), Lazy Boy BBQ and Slap Happy BBQ.

Returning from last year's Food Truck Roundup are Cantina on Wheels (tacos), Dreamcakes (cupcakes), Full Moon Bar-B-Q, Greg's Hot Dogs, the Heavenly Donut Company, Mellow Mushroom (pizza), Melt (grilled sandwiches), Off the Hook (seafood), Repicci's Italian Ice & Gelato and Slice (pizza).

Also, an art show will include works from eight local artists and photographers.

The event benefits PreSchool Partners, which prepares at-risk 3- and 4-year-olds and their parents for kindergarten in the Birmingham City Schools. The previous four Food Truck Roundups have raised more than $200,000 for the program, according to organizers.

For more information about the Protective Life Food Truck Roundup, go here.
Much as the DC Comics movie world was (briefly) torn asunder in "Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice," superhero versus superhero strife is now coming to the Marvel Cinematic Universe with this weekend's premier of "Captain America: Civil War." While the film's story is built on a total of 12 previous movies and decades of comic book character development, there are certainly some essentials that will help casual fans or even MCU newbies get (or get deeper) into the action, so here are a list of the must-see movies and must-read comics before "Civil War":

1. "Captain America: The Winter Soldier"

Why watch it: The second in the Captain America film trilogy, it directly precedes "Civil War." It's also probably the best Marvel movie.

What it's about: "Winter Soldier" is not so much a superhero picture as it is an espionage thriller in spandex. Our hero Captain America is getting used to the 21st century (having spent the last 60 or so years frozen) when he learns that an old enemy -- the Nazi scientist group called Hydra -- is still around and thriving. As he tries to fight Hydra, Cap must also face his World War II-era sidekick Bucky Barnes, who is now the brainwashed Winter Soldier. The cloak and dagger stuff is great, but the film also humanizes Captain America to an extent that other MCU movies don't quite hit. "Winter Soldier" also helps to explain why Cap might be willing to sacrifice for Barnes even though he's been up to some pretty reprehensible things.

2. "Avengers: Age of Ultron"

Why watch it: It's the last time the whole gang was together on screen. "Age of Ultron" was the second and most recent Avengers film, and while "Civil War" is under the Captain America brand, you certainly get the sense that it wouldn't be that out of place as an Avengers film given its scope. But other than that...

What it's about: "Age of Ultron" is not great. It's not fun like the first Avengers adventure, and the story of Tony Stark's AI gone wild is also not particularly compelling. Furthermore, the action tends to drag -- how many robots can we see get smashed to bits before it gets boring, anyway? So why watch this before "Civil War?" Well, it explains a couple of key departures of the Norse and angry green variety, and it teases the conflict that will come to the forefront in the new film. But otherwise? Meh.

3. "Ant-Man"

Why watch it: It's the 12th and final Marvel film leading into "Civil War."

What it's about: Scott Lang is an ex-con without too many prospects until he's contacted by Hank Pym, a brilliant but jaded inventor and industrialist, to aid in a little industrial sabotage. Lang, with Pym's help, becomes the "Ant-Man," both able to shrink to the size of an insect and command a legion of crawly critters. Like "Winter Soldier," this is not really a superhero movie so much as it is a heist picture set in the Marvel Universe. But Paul Rudd's charming hero seems like he'll figure prominently in "Civil War," and (spoiler alert) the post-credits stinger ties directly into the upcoming film. "Ant-Man," if you're looking for another reason to watch it, is also pretty darn good.

4. Ed Brubaker's 2004 "Winter Soldier" story arc in "Captain America," Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale's miniseries "Captain America: White"

Why read them: They're fantastic explorations of Captain America and his relationship with Bucky Barnes.

What they're about: Writer Ed Brubaker, perhaps best known for his noir work in series like "Criminal," "The Fade Out" and "Velvet," provided the basic framework for the "Winter Soldier" film with his run in the "Captain America" comic. While Brubaker's story featured Cap villain Red Skull and the chase for the mysterious "Cosmic Cube" (two elements not present in the movie) a lot of the beats were the same, and Brubaker did a great job of getting across Captain America's angst in having World War II memories bleed into present day problems. Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale's "Captain America: White" miniseries took Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes back to the big war itself, with Cap as a narrator dissecting every moment in the pair's relationship after Barnes (apparently) died.

5. Marvel's "Civil War" comic event

Why read it: It was a super-mega Marvel event that, in only seven issues, touched almost every series and character the publisher could claim, and it also provides the skeletal framework for the film. If you want to go deeper than the original miniseries, there are many, many more stories that tie into the event.

What it's about: When a reckless team of novice heroes indirectly causes the destruction of a school and hundreds of deaths, the American people say no mas, and politicians pass the Superhuman Registration Act, a piece of legislation that required heroes to unmask and serve as agents of the federal government. Iron Man supports the bill, but Captain America opposes it, and the two have an extended, bloody fight that splits the Marvel universe more or less in half (the X-Men, notably, remain neutral). Spider-Man also plays a pivotal role in the miniseries, which might explain why Disney and Marvel Studios made the deal with Sony that allowed for the character to appear in the film.

Ultimately, if "Captain America: Civil War" plays out anything like the event series, expect Cap to both play outside of the law and be the real hero at the end.
One visit to Red Mountain Park made Dr. Jack Schaeffer a believer. Schaeffer wanted to share that vision with others--and he wanted to go beyond writing a check.

On Friday Red Mountain Park unveiled The Schaeffer Spectacles, a 10-foot-wide, 5-foot-long sculpture sponsored by Schaeffer Eye Center, where Schaeffer is president and CEO. The company has also sponsored the Schaeffer Segway Tours, which help generate revenue for the park.

MESH Collective artists Heather Spencer Holmes and Forrest Millsaps created the steampunk-inspired sculpture of glasses, which includes lenses by artist Amy Soverow. They've affectionately dubbed the work "Vulcan's lost safety glasses."

The glasses, inspired by safety gear that would be worn in mines like those that once operated where the park now stands, incorporate materials from the site. A strap made of hoisting cable from the mines curls on the ground between the earpieces.

"(Public art) challenges the imagination," Holmes says.

But the art itself is only one piece of Schaeffer's vision. Next week U.S. 280/U.S. 31 drivers will see the work replicated on a billboard, an effort meant to generate additional interest in the park. Decades ago, Schaeffer Eye Center sponsored a similar work composed of trash employees cleaned out of the Cahaba River.

"This is not about this piece of art," Schaeffer says. "This is about our future."

Schaeffer and Dionne say The Schaeffer Spectacles are the first, but won't be the final, piece in the park. Even after the billboard is dismantled, they expect the art will continue to draw interest in Red Mountain Park.

Dionne agrees: "We're honoring our past and imagining our future."
Bill Cather Sr.jpg

Bill Cather Sr. looks over printing equipment in 2014 as A.H. Cather Publishing Co. prepared to close its doors at its Lakeview office in Birmingham.

(AL.com File)

William Cather Sr., born Nov. 2, 1918, grew up in Norwood and moved to Homewood as a teen. He attended Shades Cahaba High School and flew bombing missions in World War II.

He once sank a Japanese ship and took part in air raids that helped the Allies regain footing on a Japanese stronghold during World War II.

He also ran a successful family printing business in Alabama that traced its history back before the Civil War and churned out weekly bulletins that Birmingham-area churches handed out in their worship services for decades.

William Cather Sr., who had been a member of Trinity United Methodist Church in Homewood since 1938 and who owned and operated A.H. Cather Publishing Co. for nearly six decades, died May 2. He was 97.

"He was dependable and honest as the day is long," said his son, Bill Cather Jr., who succeeded his father as owner of the family business. "He came up through the Depression. He always said, 'You can be generous but thrifty at the same time.'"

"He lived life to the fullest, in ways that meant something to him, family, friends and the community," said his other son, Patrick, who worked in the family business for 15 years, then opened a rare book shop.

Cather printed weekly church bulletins for Trinity Methodist, First Presbyterian, Dawson Memorial Baptist, St. Mary's Episcopal, Highlands United Methodist, Shades Mountain Baptist and other churches in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s.

"They were a big thing for us," Bill Cather Jr. said. "It was regular work. Churches pay their bills."

Bill Cather Sr. started work at the family business a few years before World War II started.

He joined the military in early 1941 and went through B-25 pilot training before deploying to New Guinea in May 1943. During his nine months as a member of the 501st "Black Panther" squadron of the 345th Bomb Group he flew 51 combat missions and 300 combat hours. He earned a Distinguished Flying Cross with an Oak Leaf Cluster.

"He was quite a pilot, had some close calls, won some medals," Bill Jr. said. "He said it wasn't him; he was just lucky. When the Japanese are shooting at you, you are lucky to survive. He had a lot of friends killed. He said it was the luck of the draw that he survived."

Cather always emphasized that he could have died just as easily as his friends who were killed in the war.

"The day he was supposed to get news of my birth, he was in New Guinea, and his squadron commander told him he could stand down and not go on that day's raid," Bill Jr. said. "The guy that took his place got shot down."

Cather wrote a book called, "The Gunfight at Rabaul," about the unescorted raid by B-25 strafers of the 345th on the Japanese stronghold at Rabaul, New Britain, on Oct. 18, 1943.

"He didn't like to talk about it, but he wrote it down," Bill Jr. said. "He never liked to watch war movies. He just didn't want to think about it."

After the war, Cather Sr. returned to the family business. "His father, A.H. Cather, ran it until the early 1950s," said Bill Jr. Then Bill Sr. took it over and ran it, with help from his sons, until his retirement.

"He had it set up perfectly for production," Bill Jr. said. "We had a steady clientele, the right equipment."

The family business was started in 1860 by George R. Cather, who joined the Confederate Army and was captured during the Civil War. The Union Army seized his printing press, but he got it back after the war and resumed printing. That press is now housed at the University of Alabama.

Cather Publishing set up in Birmingham in 1913 after Bill Sr.'s father, Alonzo Heath Cather, moved it from Ashville in St. Clair County, where he had operated the St. Clair News-Aegis newspaper. The company moved to Birmingham's Lakeview district in 1973-1974, and just closed its building down and sold the printing equipment in 2014.

"I've got to get it cleaned out by the end of this month," Bill Jr. said.

After Bill Sr. retired in 2005, he still came into the office occasionally. "He was a blue-collar guy," Bill Jr. said. "He would come in, hang around the guys, talk to people, smell the ink."

Legal advertising was another staple of the printing business. Cather formerly owned and printed The Alabama Messenger, a weekly newspaper of legal advertising that was later sold.

"We were a union shop," Bill Jr. said. "My dad was a member of the International Typographical Union for 60 years. My grandfather and dad took a lot of pride in being a union shop that paid a good wage. We had 15 employees in my lifetime. Before the Depression, we were much bigger. My grandfather didn't lose the business but lost a lot of it during the Depression."

But the Cathers adapted to the times.

When Dawson Baptist Pastor Edgar Arendall retired in 1984 after 36 years, Cather lost one of its biggest and most loyal customers. The new administration fired them. That's when the Cathers decided to diversify.

"We got involved in doing high-end work for the federal government: the White House, military work, Joint Chiefs letterheads, White House press passes," Bill Jr. said. "We started doing that in 1985."

Bill Jr. said his father ran a pleasant workplace with a true family atmosphere.

"I can't remember us ever having an argument," Bill Jr. said. "It was a pleasure working every day with your dad."

Click here to read the obituary.
Lamar Jaggears says he is "excited and elated" after being named acting Gadsden police chief. It was, in fact, the culmination of a dream.

Jaggears, 45, has been with the police force since 1991, working as a patrol officer, investigator, rangemaster, patrol sergeant, patrol lieutenant and captain.

The Gadsden Civil Service Board named him to the post this week, where he will take over for the retiring John Crane. Crane has served as police chief for the past four years.

A Gadsden native, Jaggears is a graduate of Litchfield High School, Gadsden State Community College and Jacksonville State University, where he graduated with honors in 2000, majoring in political science.

Currently overseeing the department's operations division, Jaggears was one of four officers within the department who interviewed for the job during a public meeting Tuesday.

It has been a long journey. Jaggears applied to the force out of high school at the suggestion of several officers already on the force who were involved in a taekwondo class he attended at the time. He turned 20 while at police academy.

"I've known ever since I was a sergeant that my goal was to eventually become police chief," he said. "I love police work. We're trying to protect the public, but I believe in service too."

Jaggears said he is sometimes known as a blunt speaker but he believes in being honest. He knows segments of the public may not trust police, but they want traffic laws enforced and streets kept safe.

He said he believes in keeping things simple - police should "protect and serve."

"People sometimes get wrapped up in the politically correct goals, and memorize these long mission statements which they're never quite able to give back to you," he said. "If you keep everything simple, everybody understands what the goals are. If they don't understand the goals, they just keep doing what they're doing. And we have to do more than just answer calls."
One person was killed in an early-morning crash in Walker County.

The crash happened at 3:45 a.m. on Interstate 22 at the 56 mile marker near Jasper, said Senior Alabama State Trooper Johnathan Appling.

Appling has identified the driver as Robert Edward Brown. He was 44.

Brown was driving the 2005 Volvo tractor-trailer hauling a load of chickens when he left the roadway and overturned in the median. He was pronounced dead on the scene.

Though authorities remain on the scene, there is no road blockage. Troopers ask motorists to use caution in the area.
A 21-year-old man was killed Thursday night in a two-vehicle crash in Tuscaloosa County.

Alabama State Troopers this morning identified the victim as Keyonta Montrel Williams of Uniontown. The crash happened at 11:10 p.m. on Interstate 59 two miles south of Tuscaloosa.

Authorities said Williams was driving a 2003 Mercury Grand Marqui that collided with a 2003 Nissan Sentra. Williams, troopers said, was not using a seatbelt and was pronounced dead at the scene.

The driver of the Sentra, 25-year-old Cory Andrew Gunkel of Mississippi, was taken to DCH Regional Medical Center. The extent of his injuries wasn't immediately available.

Senior Trooper Reginal King said the preliminary investigation indicates alcohol may have been a factor. He didn't elaborate.

The crash remains under investigation.
A toddler boy was killed this evening when he was struck by a car in front of his Blount County home.

The accident happened about 4:30 p.m. on Elvester Road south of Hayden, according to Blount County sheriff's officials and Alabama State Troopers. Family identified the 3-year-old boy as Blaine Logan.

Blount County sheriff's Operations Officer Tim Kent said the accident happened when Blaine accompanied his mother when she went to check the mail. As Blaine was crossing the road, he was struck by a 1991 Dodge Dakota pickup.

Blaine was airlifted from the scene Children's of Alabama, where he later died. "It was a bad thing'' Kent said.

Troopers said the driver of the pickup truck that struck Blaine was not injured and remained on the scene. The crash remains under investigation.

Friends of the family have started a GoFundMe page to help with Blaine's funeral expenses and to help with care of his three siblings.
A 24-year-old man was found shot to death in the backyard of an Ensley home.

Birmingham police this morning identified the victim as Hanif Russ. His body was discovered about 6:45 p.m. behind a home in the 1500 block of 34th Street.

West Precinct officers were dispatched at 6:45 p.m. on a report of a person shot. When they arrived on the scene, they found Russ and he was pronounced dead a short time later by Birmingham Fire and Rescue.

Birmingham police Sgt. Bryan Shelton said residents in the home heard the shots, and then found Russ. He did not live at the home or in the area, he said.

Police do not yet have a motive or a suspect in the case.

Russ is the city's 36th homicide victim this year, and the second man killed on Thursday. Earlier in the day, 44-year-old Damon McCain was killed in a shootout at Valley Brook Apartments in east Birmingham.

"If you live in the neighborhoods where these crimes are happening, you are also a victim. It takes away from your way of life. It takes away from your peace of mind," Shelton said at the Thursday night scene in Ensley.

Anyone with information on this slaying or any of the homicides is asked to call Birmingham police at 205-254-1764 or CrimeStoppers at 205-254-7777.
A Mountain Brook woman recently pleaded guilty and was sentenced to probation for assault and leaving the scene of a February 2015 accident where she struck a construction worker with her SUV - severing one of the man's legs and seriously mangling the other.

Attorneys also confirmed Friday that the woman has resolved civil claims, in an undisclosed settlement, with the injured construction worker.

Amanda Brown, 27, entered a blind plea on April 21 to charges of first-degree assault and leaving the scene of an accident with injury, court records show. A blind plea means there was no plea agreement with the Jefferson County District Attorney's Office.

Jefferson County Circuit Judge Tommy Nail sentenced Brown to three years in prison for both charges, but suspended the sentence and placed her on two years of unsupervised probation on the condition that she continue mental health treatment.

"This was a blind plea," said Deputy Jefferson County District Attorney Joe Hicks. "Although the state requested the defendant (Brown) serve some time, the victim in the case asked the court to give the defendant probation."

Brown was charged in the Feb. 25, 2015 crash that severely injured Bobby Joe Smith, 48, of Munford, known to his friends as Rusty. Driving under the influence is an element of the assault charge.

Smith was injured when Brown hit him in her GMC Yukon while on her way home from a wedding with friends, pinning Smith between her SUV's bumper and the sharp edge of the bucket of a backhoe, according to police and court records. Witnesses told officers that after the wreck, Brown attempted to drive away. She then got out of the vehicle and walked to her apartment which wasn't too far from the accident scene. She admitted to police that she was under the influence when the crash happened, police said.

The crash happened in the 2600 block of Lane Park Road where a construction crew was working to install gas lines. Smith's right leg was severed, his left leg mangled, and he suffered internal injuries that included the loss of a portion of his colon, according to a lawsuit filed in the case.

Smith underwent multiple surgeries and medical treatments and has had rehabilitation to learn how to walk with prosthesis.

"We are very grateful to the Smiths for not opposing our request for probation, and for the Judge imposing the sentence that was imposed," said Brown's attorney, Tommy Spina.

Spina said that Ms. Brown's guilty plea represents her willingness to take responsibility for her behavior.

"Ms. Brown has been from the beginning deeply remorseful for the conduct that resulted in the injuries to Mr. Smith," Spina said.

Spina and an attorney for Smith, Todd Wheeles, said that any claims Smith had against Brown were settled confidentially. The focus now is on the lawsuit Smith filed against Magnolia River, a company that was supervising the construction project.

The lawsuit against Magnolia River claims that besides lighting towers, reflectorized cones, traffic barrels, and mobile traffic boards that flashed and warned motorists, Magnolia River had been having off-duty police officer working to control traffic in the area. But the night of the crash, a supervisor had told the off-duty police to go, the lawsuit states.

An attorney for Magnolia River had not responded to a request from AL.com for comment prior to publication of this story.
President Barack Obama on Thursday commuted the sentence of 58 federal inmates, including one from Alabama.

Jerome Lee Menefee, 40, whose hometown is listed as Montgomery, was convicted of possession with intent to distribute cocaine base out of a federal court in the central district of California, according to the White House announcement.

Menefee had been sentenced to 20 years in prison, followed by 10 years of supervised release on Oct. 24, 2005. According to the federal Bureau of Prisons website Menefee was set to be released on Aug. 21, 2022 from the Oakdale Federal Correctional Institution in Louisiana.

But now with the commutation, his sentence is to end Sept. 2, 2016, according to the White House press release.

Court records on Menefee's charges, conviction, and sentence could not be located Thursday in federal online court filings.

In a statement after he issued the commutations, President Obama highlight a few cases where those who had previously had their sentences commuted had turned their lives around after being freed.

"As President, I've been working to bring about a more effective approach to our criminal justice system, particularly when it comes to drug crimes," Obama stated.

Part of that effort, Obama states, has been to "reinvigorate our commutations process" and highlight individuals who are doing extraordinary things with their second chances. To date, Obama stated he has commuted 306 which he says is more than the previous six presidents combined.

"While I will continue to review clemency applications, only Congress can bring about the lasting changes we need to federal sentencing," Obama stated. "That is why I am encouraged by the bipartisan efforts in Congress to reform federal sentencing laws, particularly on overly harsh mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent drug offenses.

It doesn't make sense to require a nonviolent drug offender to serve 20 years, or in some cases, life, in prison, Obama stated. "An excessive punishment like that doesn't fit the crime. It's not serving taxpayers, and it's not making us safer."

"As a country, we have to make sure that those who take responsibility for their mistakes are able to transition back to their communities. It's the right thing to do. It's the smart thing to do. And it's something I will keep working to do as long as I hold this office," Obama stated.
A domestic violence charge against a former Alabama state trooper has been dismissed after his wife decided she no longer wanted to move forward with the case, court records show.

Jonathan Hebren Ryan, 30, of Danville was arrested Jan. 7 after he allegedly beat on the windows of his wife's car with a tactical baton and threatened to kill her following a night of drinking. He was charged with misdemeanor domestic violence harassment.

Ryan was also placed on administrative leave without pay pending the outcome of the case, court records show. Senior Trooper Jonathan Appling told AL.com Friday that Ryan is no longer employed with the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency.

The judge who dismissed the case ordered him to pay court costs, as well as a bail bond fee and $25 to the local domestic violence program.

Updated at 1:35 p.m. to reflect Ryan's employment status with the ALEA.
Boeing Huntsville lab

Boeing's Mark Trammell explains some of the uses of Boeing's Huntsville chemistry and materials lab on a press tour last week. The lab is part of Boeing's worldwide research and technology development effort. (Lee Roop/lroop@al.com)

Solving potty problems on the International Space Station wasn't necessarily what Boeing anticipated when it moved part of its top research laboratory to Huntsville in 2015.

But when NASA had a near-emergency with the system that processes urine into drinking water for astronauts 250 miles above the planet, it found the answer was found at the new Boeing Research & Technology (BR&T) - Alabama.

NASA has a sophisticated system aboard the space station to separate salt and chemicals from urine and treat the remaining water for drinking. In addition to chemistry, that system relies on hardware like hoses, fittings and filters. The hardware - some of the most-sophisticated anywhere - can go bad, sometimes unexpectedly.

"They have a hose that transfers pre-treated urine to the urine processor, and it has a service life of around five years," explained Boeing's Mark Trammell this week on a tour of the company's Huntsville chemistry and materials lab. "This hose went out of service at the end of its life. They put a new one in - they had two - and after a few months the new one's performance started degrading."

Degrading after a few months isn't good. Seriously not good.

NASA sent the worn-out original unit down to Earth aboard a SpaceX Dragon capsule and asked Boeing a simple question: "Can you (fix) this really fast?" The lab's answer? "Absolutely."

Unique capability

"We have a really unique capability here," Trammell said. "We have a fluids engineering team, we're able to do precision cleaning, we have a clean tent and a chemistry lab and we have the ability to turn things around quickly."

Within two days of landing, the system was in Boeing's lab near the Huntsville International Airport. It was disassembled, cleaned, reassembled with new parts, tested and certified ready.

"It went back up on SpaceX 7 and, unfortunately, we lost SpaceX 7 and it was destroyed," Trammell said, referring to the ill-fated resupply launch that exploded on after liftoff in July, 2015.

NASA asked Boeing "to build a new one, and we turned that around really quickly," Trammell said. "They got us the parts, we did everything really quickly, it went up on a Japanese flight and now it's on the space station."

"So as a result of that effort," Trammell said, "another one is coming back down for refurbishment and we're going to turn it back around for them really quickly by the end of this month."

300 researchers, techs

Boeing's very proud of the work its lab can do, but the lab is only part of its new capability in Huntsville. The company moved 300 research positions to Alabama, including a new center for simulation and analytics. It's all part of a 4,000-person unit operating around the world to support Boeing's commercial, defense and space businesses.

Boeing hired more than 200 technicians and researchers when it got to Alabama, and the company says the talent it found in the South was world class.

"It's been a pleasure to come down here and set up our business," said Steve Swaine, Boeing Director of Support and Analytics Technology.

It's a pleasure no doubt shared by America's astronauts on the International Space Station.
One person was killed and two others were injured in a Friday morning shooting at a Bethesda, Md. mall.

WUSA9 is reporting two men and one woman were transported to a hospital after being shot at the Montgomery Mall. One of the men was pronounced dead at the hospital.

The suspected gunman, Eulalio Tordil, 62, is now in police custody, according to reports.

Tordil is also the suspect is another shooting that occurred 20 minutes later at Giant grocery store in the Bethesda community of Aspen Hill, WJLA reported. One woman died in the gunfire there.

According to the report, Tordil was wanted in the Thursday shooting death of his estranged wife, Gladys Tordil, at High Point High School in Beltsville in Prince George's County, Md.

Tordil, who worked for the Federal Protective Service, was placed on administrative duties and stripped of his service weapon in March, after his wife obtained a protective order against him after years of alleged abuse, according to reports.

The motive for today's hasn't been released.

This report will be updated.
Vernon Madison.jpg

Police officers escort capital murder Vernon Madison (center) into the courthouse for a bail hearing in 1985. Upper right corner: Madison as he appeared in a 2001 mug shot. (File photos)

Attorneys for an Alabama death row inmate have filed an emergency petition asking a federal judge to stay his execution next week.

They argue that Vernon Madison, 65, is incompetent to be executed because he suffers from dementia, and several strokes have caused significant mental decline, including memory loss and a "profound level of disorientation and confusion."

Attorneys from the Montgomery-based Equal Justice Initiative filed the emergency stay request Wednesday in U.S. District Court in the Southern District of Alabama. The state attorney general's office must file a response by Monday.

Attorneys for the state previously have argued that Madison does understand why the state is moving to execute him. They say testimony shows that Madison does not suffer from psychosis or delusions, and no mental illness or defect would cause him to lack an understanding of reality.

Madison was convicted in September 1985 and sentenced to death in Mobile County in the April 18, 1985, slaying of police Officer Julius Schulte, who was responding to a domestic disturbance call. Madison was on parole at the time.

His attorneys filed the federal request soon after a state circuit court judge denied a similar request based on testimony offered during an April 14 competency hearing.

"In denying this petition, the circuit court failed to consider Mr. Madison's dementia and resulting memory deficits as relevant to his ability to rationally understand why the State of Alabama is seeking to execute him, and instead determined that because Mr. Madison does not currently suffer from mental illness, he does not meet the standard for demonstrating incompetency to be executed," Madison's attorneys wrote. "The state court's determination is both contrary to and an unreasonable application of clearly established federal law and an unreasonable determination of the facts in light of the evidence."

They argue that Madison is not competent to be executed based on the standards of evidence and testimony established in earlier cases the U.S. Supreme Court has heard.

They also say that because the Supreme Court has found the death penalty to be inappropriate if not for either retribution or deterrence, it is not justified in Madison's case. In fact, they argue, "he is in a class of offenders for whom execution is a categorically prohibited punishment" because of his dementia.

He was most recently hospitalized in January. One of his attorneys has noticed that, since then, he repeatedly asks the same questions, does not indicate that he remembers having the same conversation previously, and speaks nonsensically.

Madison, who has been on death row since Nov. 12, 1985, is one of Alabama's longest-serving death row inmates.

He had three trials, the last one in 1994. State appellate courts twice had sent the case back to Mobile County, once for a violation based on race-based jury selection and once based on improper testimony for an expert witness for the prosecution.

Over the years since, he has filed numerous state and federal appeals that have been denied, including denials by the Alabama Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court to review the case.

The Alabama Supreme Court in January issued an order setting May 12 as the date for execution. Madison was one of three death row inmates for which the Alabama Attorney General's Office had requested the court in February to set execution dates.

The inmates are being held on death row at Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore, where the executions take place.

Note: AL.com is participating in "The Next to Die" with The Marshall Project to track and provide information on scheduled executions
For the Yoruba in Nigeria, funerals provide an opportunity to renovate run-down family homes and their surroundings.

Ibadan, Nigeria  Mama Debo is a house-proud widow who takes special care of the one-storey residence her husband bequeathed his entire family. She complains that her dirty tenants have become a nuisance since his death. Ideally, she says, she would have evicted them from the property, but as the residence belongs to the extended family she doesnt feel able to.

The family house is a quintessential symbol of genealogy for the Yoruba people and a source of pride. Its a centre for ceremonies  christenings, weddings, retirement parties and, of course, funerals. From the smallest villages to the biggest cities of Yorubaland, family houses are architectural heirlooms passed from one generation to the next.

Tradition forbids people from selling the houses. They are often shared between the wives of a deceased patriarch  the size of a womans share is related mostly to her seniority and sometimes to the number of children she has.

The family is an undying concept in Yoruba culture, explains Kunle Ogundoro, a PhD candidate and social commentator. Hence renovating ones family house is an image-making endeavour.

And that renovation often happens when somebody dies.

Deaths [especially those of the elderly] bring members of the family together. The idea of beautifying the family home is another way of bestowing honour on the deceased.

When Mama Debos husband died three years ago, relatives came from far and wide to attend the funeral in Ibadan. Today, she is the sole occupant of the landlords section of the family house  a relatively modern apartment in the New Adeoyo district of the city. Her grown-up children have left to fend for themselves. Despite her displeasure with the tenants poor hygiene and unsanitary habits, the property is well-maintained.

Mama Debo lounges in her parlour, a family room that is modestly furnished with four armchairs and a sofa that serves as an ideal spot from which to watch Nollywood blockbusters. Theres also a dining table and chairs.

We didnt renovate our [family] house prior to the burial ceremony of our husband, she recalls. The owner himself had painted his property before his demise.

Almost every family in Yorubaland adheres to the custom of refurbishing the family house in preparation for funerals.

In many cases, years of neglect have turned these residences into run-down eyesores. So Nigerians and, in particular, members of the Yoruba ethnic group use family occasions and ceremonies as a justification to upgrade their family house to meet modern aesthetic styles. Since no single person can claim absolute ownership of a family house, its maintenance is often a collaborative effort.

The wives and children of the deceased pool their funds to replace old furniture, repair peeling paintwork and renovate other worn-out fixtures. Some wealthy families will even repair damaged neighbourhood roads, particularly those that lead to the residence of the deceased, in order to bolster the familys image.

But the rivalry that is common within polygamous families in Nigeria can make such efforts challenging.

I personally dont believe in the custom of refurbishing a deceased [persons] property. Why cant it be done when the person is still alive to enjoy and appreciate it? says Mama Debo. I think people do it for show. They want their guests to think they are more than they really are.

Just across the street from her residence is a newly renovated family house. The patriarch of the Oyebode family has recently died and in preparation for his funeral, his residence had been painted in bright hues. It stands out amid the other weather-battered properties in the neighbourhood. A colourful banner hangs proudly on the facade  an obituary of the deceased.

Unbeknown to the passers-by who stop to admire the house, the Oyebodes have also contributed to the aesthetics of their neighbourhood and by extension, the city.

The Obas palace was the seat of government before the city became a British protectorate in 1893. The edifice was upgraded to reflect the influence of the colonial overlords. But the surrounding buildings retain the ambience of the distant past. Mud houses with rusted corrugated roofs spread out in all directions.

The Ojaba, the Kings Market, is directly opposite the palace and remains one of the busiest commercial centres in the old town.

Across the city, statues of heroes adorn major road intersections and roundabouts  a testament to the value afforded to history and heritage here.

Yoruba culture is very dynamic and [our] society is very articulate in keeping this dynamism, says Niyi Akangbe, a lecturer in the African languages department of the University of Ibadan. It is part of the unwritten tradition of the Yoruba people to give a new touch to their buildings when the elderly ones die.

In fact, in 2012 when my own father died we did the same thing. Well, the [family] house is not too old. So we repainted, and areas that had cracks were fixed too. We gave maximum attention to the frontage where guests and passers-by would see. It cost us about 500,000 naira [$2,175].

Akangbe explains that such renewal projects are not peculiar to the Yorubas. His academic colleague, an Edo woman who recently lost her mother, spent more than $4,000 to refurbish their family house in Benin City.

But Joe Omirin, a town planner, believes such traditions may be dying. He was forced by elders in his family to perform certain burial rites for his deceased mother and hopes others keep them alive too.

When people die, they must be given a befitting burial, he says. Part of  a befitting burial is that they leave behind a legacy.
Israels rejection of a new peace initiative by France was unsurprising, and its excuse flimsy.

Israel adheres to its position that the best way to resolve the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians is direct, bilateral negotiations, said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. However, the French initiative does not preclude direct, bilateral negotiations.

What it does do is propose an initial peace conference on May 30, which is reportedly expected to include some 30 countries and international organisations. That is the problem: Israel does not like outside mediation from any party except the US, because it knows that Washington  its closest and strongest ally  will never be a truly honest, even-handed broker.





Under US auspices, Israel can act as belligerently as it likes towards the Palestinians, because there will be no consequences. The most that can be expected is relatively soft verbal criticism, couched in terms of having Israels best interests at heart. That, ultimately, is the point of US mediation  an outcome that primarily benefits its ally.

Overwhelming frustration

Take US Vice President Joe Bidens expression last month of overwhelming frustration with Israel, and his criticism of the steady, systematic expansion of Jewish settlements on Palestinian land.

READ MORE: Israel-Palestine  The delusion of a two-state solution

He did not say this was morally wrong, a violation of international law, or speak out of concern for the Palestinians. He said Israels colonial project is leading to a one-state reality, and that reality is dangerous. Dangerous to Israels Jewish demographic supremacy, of course.

Open criticism might be relatively uncharacteristic of US administrations, and certainly there have been tensions between Netanyahu and US President Barack Obama. However, this is meaningless because it is business as usual regardless of what Israel does and says.

As a prime example, just a week after Bidens criticism, a White House official said the Obama administration was ready to offer Israel the largest single pledge of military assistance to any country in US history.

If Israel is generously rewarded for behaving badly, what incentive does it have to behave otherwise?

This is particularly true of US election cycles, when presidential hopefuls fall over themselves to profess loyalty to Israel. Whether Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump become the next president, both will be more staunchly and overtly pro-Israel than Obama has been, so Israel can simply bide its time until he is out of office in a matter of months.

Best-case scenario

If Israel is generously rewarded for behaving badly, what incentive does it have to behave otherwise? by

Some argue that because Trump is not beholden to pro-Israel donors in the way that Clinton is, he may be more independent on the issue.

However, even if that is the case, his America first foreign policy  which is widely regarded as isolationist  will benefit Israel in the sense that it can be left completely alone to deal with the Palestinians as it wishes.

This is its best-case scenario because of the overwhelming imbalance of power between the two sides on the ground and at the negotiating table, and because its tactics will not come under outside scrutiny.

Given all of the above, initiatives such as Frances are a sideshow that Israel can reject or ignore at will. Netanyahus reaction may result in Paris cancelling the forthcoming peace summit altogether. Even if it goes ahead, it will be meaningless because it will not result in any repercussions for Israel, either for its rejection of the initiative or its ongoing oppression of the Palestinians.

Any initiative not proposed by the US would share the same fate, because in that case Israel does not have to bother with the facade of involvement.

READ MORE: The Al-Aqsa cameras are a sideshow

Remember the Quartet, comprising the UN, US, EU and Russia? It still officially exists, though it has achieved nothing since it was established in 2002, because no pressure has been applied on Israel to take it seriously.

As such, the Quartet is left to its own irrelevance. So too is the UN, which should be central to a solution to the conflict, but has been relegated to simply a member of the Quartet, its numerous Security Council resolutions that Israel violates simply gathering dust, and new ones thwarted by US veto power.

Direct talks

Netanyahu insists on direct talks with the Palestinian Authority (PA), but what is the point when his government is replete with members and parties that oppose a Palestinian state? He himself vowed during his last election campaign that this would not happen under his watch.

The only scenario it will accept is Palestinians' total submission to their subjugation. by

As a PR ploy, however, he expresses his desire for peace and entertains the notion of a Palestinian state, while presenting a growing list of preconditions that make it all but impossible, and rejecting the PAs legitimate precondition that Israel stop expanding its settlements.

Meanwhile, Israel rejects all forms of resistance (armed and peaceful) to its occupation and colonisation of Palestine, which is approaching half a century  the longest military occupation in modern history.

The only scenario it will accept is Palestinians total submission to their subjugation. For Israel, the peace process is about process over peace, and what it seeks is not peace but pacification.

It is merely a means for Israel to buy time and cover to entrench its occupation and colonisation until they are accepted as an irreversible fait accompli  a point that more and more people believe has already been reached.

It is much like Netanyahus statement last month that the time has come after 40 years for the international community to finally recognise that [Syrias] Golan Heights will remain for ever in Israeli hands. Whatever the outcome of peace talks, he added, the border will not change  as if there is any point or possibility of such talks given this stance.

Israeli officials condemn any mention of a one-state solution with the Palestinians by those who desire it, or a one-state reality for those who fear it. The irony, however, is that Israel itself is ensuring the very outcome it so vehemently rejects.

Sharif Nashashibi is an award-winning journalist and analyst on Arab affairs.

The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial policy.
The huge forest fire in the Canadian oil city of Fort McMurray has not been reduced by the recent change of weather.

On Thursday, a weak cold front dropped the temperature, brought imperceptible light rain but more importantly changed the wind.

Over the past two weeks, including at the time the fire began, the wind has come from the southerly quarter with gusts recorded in excess of 70km an hour.

Following the front, the wind swung around to the northwest, gusting briefly to 52km/h, which should, in theory, drive the fire in a different direction. Indeed, smoke is now crossing Alberta provinces border into Saskatchewan.

In practice, a fire this big produces its own weather and wind. It builds huge pyrocumulus clouds above it, but any rain generated evaporates before it hits the ground. Wind gusts from fire-generated convection can whip the flames quickly into new areas.

The temperature of 32.8C recorded in the city on May 3 was a record breaker. The average temperature in May in Fort McMurray is 17C. The recent three-day heatwave may have felt like the cause of the fire, but in reality, the underlying conditions of deficient rainfall and low humidity have been preparing the ground for ages.

Average rainfall is low anyway, on a par with central Spain which is a high desert plateau. Fort McMurray should get about 420mm of rain a year, most of which should fall in the summer, but for the past three years the amount of rainfall has been short of the norm.

The year 2015 was particularly deficient with only 65 percent of the long-term average received, most likely as a result of the major El Nino.

With a dry environment underneath the forested slopes, the fire risk was already high. When humidity dropped below 15 percent on May 3, which was on a par with the Arabian desert, all that was needed was a spark.

Although it may be of little help, the chance of rain showers over the weekend is quoted at 30 to 40 percent and temperatures will remain nearer to normal.
The targeting and killing of people with albinism in Malawi has a reached a crisis point after two more people were killed and their bodies mutilated, a leading activist has said, just days after the UN said the community faced systematic extinction.

Bonface Massah, head of the Association of People with Albinism in Malawi, told Al Jazeera on Friday that the community had seen an increase in attacks over the past three months sparking concerns that not enough is being done to protect their rights.

We have seen an increase over the past three months and though the authorities have arrested some perpetrators, the situation has reached a crisis level, Massah said.

Before the latest set of incidents, the UN recorded at least 65 cases of violence against people with albinism, including killings and dismemberment, since 2014.

Horrific crimes

Massahs comments come a day after Amnesty International issued a statement in which it described the attacks on Albinos as ritual killings over the past 18 months and urged the government to act immediately.

The Malawian authorities must ensure that the suspected perpetrators of these horrific crimes are brought to justice, and that they address the root causes of these killings, which have left people with albinism living in constant fear, Amnestys Southern Africa Deputy Director Muleya Mwananyanda said.

Malawis ministry of information was not immediately available for comment.

Albinism is a congenital disorder affecting about one in 20,000 people worldwide who lack pigment in their skin, hair and eyes. It is more common, however, in sub-Saharan Africa. There are an estimated 10,000 people with albinism in Malawi  a country of 16.5 million people.

Some people believe that body parts belonging to people with albinism have magical powers, leading to those with albinism being targeted and sold on the black market run by criminal gangs across southern and central African countries.

Attacks against people with albinism this year have also been reported in Burundi, Mozambique and Zambia.

According to the Red Cross, witch doctors in Tanzania will pay as much as $75,000 for a complete set of albino body parts  including all four limbs, genitals, ears, tongue and nose.

Albinism is one of the most unfortunate vulnerabilities [] and it needs to be addressed immediately at international level, Bekele Geleta, from the Red Cross, said.

On Thursday, two men were found guilty of murdering an albino a week ago. Massah said that while the government has indicated political will to address the scourge, there is lack of a systematic approach to solving the crisis.

Likewise, Jake Epelle, founder and CEO of the Albino Foundation in Abuja, Nigeria, described the crisis in Malawi as a lingering problem.

It seems everyone is concerned with the effects and not the root causes for this issue [] more work needs to be be done to find the end users of these body parts.

It is too reactive. There is no consistent strategy to tackle the root issue.

Ikponwosa Ero, United Nations independent expert on human rights and albinism, said last week following a visit to Malawi that even wildlife gets more protection than people with albinism.

Persons with albinism do not rest in peace as their remains are robbed from graveyards.

The atrocities in Malawi render persons with albinism an endangered people group facing a risk of systemic extinction over time if nothing is done to stem the tide.
Public transport, municipal workers and others join 48-hour strike against government plans to change pension system.

Greeces public transport networks ground to a halt on Friday after trade unions called for a 48-hour strike to protest at the governments plans for further austerity measures.

Greek MPs are currently debating an overhaul of the pension system, proposed by the countrys left-wing government under the countrys obligations to rescue lenders from other countries using the euro.

Unions are having a two-day general strike to protest against the vote on a draft legislation scheduled to be held on Sunday.

No public transport services in Athens were working on Friday as metro, tram, bus and rail workers began a strike that is set to run through Sunday.

Train services across the country were halted, and ferries linking mainland Greece to the islands remained anchored in port.

Opinion: Greek austerity is dead, long live austerity

The only mode of transport still available in the capital was taxis.

Other state-run and municipal services, including rubbish collection were also disrupted.

The journalists union also joined the strike, and most public and private radio and television channels did not broadcast news bulletins.

Changes to Greeces pensions system, which caused this weekends strikes, were demanded by creditors as a condition of the countrys third bailout in five years, worth $95bn, agreed in July last year.

Opinion: Greece and the swansong of the nation-state

Al Jazeeras Tony Birtley, reporting from Athens, said the Greek people are losing hope and patience.

In the last five years nearly 250,000 Greek businesses have either gone bust or gone abroad, 6,000 of them in the last few months, he said, Companies are moving away to Cyprus and Bulgaria, heaping more social misery on the country.



Austerity has practically destroyed Greece

And with the third wave of austerity measures about to be implemented, things are about to get worse before they get better.

The strikes come before a meeting of eurozone finance ministers to discuss Greeces bailout on Monday in Brussels.

The meeting was initially scheduled for Thursday but was cancelled amid disagreements between Athens and the International Monetary Fund, which has demanded more reforms from Greece.

Marches are expected in Athens and other cities this weekend, coinciding with celebrations for International Workers Day this Sunday which were postponed from May 1 owing to the timing of Easter in the Orthodox Church.

The strikes are the fourth to be called since Prime Minister Alexis Tsiprass leftist government won re-election after organising a referendum on the countrys bailout.
Court rules there is no proof that the man was part of the group of alleged assailants.

An Algerian man, who stood trial in connection with the alleged sexual attacks on women in the German city of Cologne on New Years Eve , was cleared on Friday of attempted sexual assault, though he was convicted of handling stolen goods.

The 26-year-old man was the first to be placed on trial for a sexual offense after the New Year events in Cologne that heightened tensions over Germanys migrant influx.

However, the victim of the assault did not recognise him and the Cologne regional court ruled there was no proof that the man was part of the group of alleged assailants, news agency dpa reported.

The suspect, whose name has not been released in keeping with German privacy rules, was accused of being in a group of around 10 men who surrounded and groped a woman in the central train station, and of stealing her cellphone.

He also was charged with attempted theft over a December 13 incident in which he and another man were accused of trying to break into a car.

The womans cellphone was found on the suspect, but he said he had bought it from an acquaintance.

The defendant was convicted of handling stolen goods and of the attempted car break-in, and was given a six-month suspended sentence.

Public concern

The alleged attacks sharpened public concern about the arrival of over one million mostly Middle Eastern asylum seekers, with far-right groups railing against sex jihadists and rapefugees.

According to a report released by the German Criminal Police Office in late April, the first three months of 2016 saw 347 crimes on refugee accommodation. Among the offenses were three attempted homicides, 37 arson attacks and 23 injuries. The whole of 2015 saw a total of 1,031 such crimes.

The scenes also cast a harsh spotlight on the citys police who initially failed to prevent the violence then tried to play down the extent of the chaos for several days.

As the attacks gained wider media coverage, more women came forward. Prosecutors have now received some 1,170 criminal complaints, including 492 accusations of sexual assault. Nine men have so far been sentenced in Cologne, all for property crimes.

A key suspect in the Cologne sexual violence, a 19-year-old Moroccan man, is set to face trial after he was spotted shoplifting in southern Germany and arrested across the border in Switzerland last week.

Another Moroccan man is on trial in the western city of Duesseldorf over a New Years attack there in which he allegedly groped an 18-year-old woman encircled by some 15 to 20 men.
Norms Bill would ensure that laws passed in Israel would immediately apply to settlements, but not to Palestinians.

Bethlehem, occupied West Bank  Israeli settlers living in the occupied West Bank may be granted further protections if a new proposal for an official dual legal system, set forth this week by Israels Justice Minister, Ayelet Shaked, comes to fruition.

Israelis living in illegal West Bank settlements are already governed by a separate set of laws laid out by military decrees, legal rulings and legislative amendments. For every law passed by the Israeli Knesset, another set of paperwork must be put together by one of several governmental institutions to make the same Israeli law relevant in Israeli settlements.

Shakeds proposal, referred to as the Norms Bill, would ensure that laws passed in the Israeli legislature would immediately apply to illegal Israeli settlements, without applying to their Palestinian neighbours.

INTERACTIVE: How many Palestinians are imprisoned by Israel?

It is my goal to equalise conditions [between Israel proper and Israels settlements] within one year, either by a [military] decree or through legislation, Shaked said earlier this week in a speech at the Legal Forum for Israels annual conference. Al Jazeera could not immediately reach Shaked for further comment.

Critics have slammed the proposal, claiming it furthers a system that already threatens the future of a possible two-state solution.

Any automatic extension of Israel's domestic legislation to its settler population merely reinforces Israel's commitment to the implementation of a two-tier legal system inside the West Bank. by Simon Reynolds, legal advocacy coordinator for the BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights

Aida Touma-Suleiman, a member of the Knessets Arab Joint List, called Shakeds plan part of Israels expansionist ideology that is leading to the crawling annexation of the occupied territories.

This adventurous policy will ultimately lead the two peoples to the verge of explosion, threatening many more lives of innocent Palestinian and Israeli civilians.

While Touma-Suleiman and others on the Joint List say they would vote against the proposed legislation, they fear it would be passed regardless. While Shaked says she wants the changes to be implemented within the next year, there is no scheduled timeline yet for discussion of the proposal.

I think, unfortunately, this legislation would pass, especially if it has the governments support  but even if the government isnt in support, there are members of the opposition who fully support the initiative, and that could be enough, Touma-Suleiman said.

The Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), an Israeli human rights group, has long documented problems resulting from the current, unofficial dual legal system.

In a 145-page report released in 2014, the group broke down the dual system, explaining the effects on everything from criminal and traffic law to building and planning regulations, to freedom of expression.

In one case highlighted by the ACRI, two residents of Hebron, where Israeli settlers and Palestinian residents live side-by-side, got into an altercation. The Israeli settler was detained, taken to a civil court hearing within 24 hours, and released on bail; the Palestinian, meanwhile, was held for four days, then brought before a military court and jailed directly.

ACRI has denounced Shakeds new proposal, noting that institutionalising the two sets of laws for Israelis and Palestinians would result in furthering systematic discrimination against the Palestinian population. Ronit Sela, the groups public outreach director for human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, said the move would further legitimise illegal Israeli settlements and their expansion.

Its a mess, and Shakeds claim is that she wants to make the mess less messy  But Shaked is taking one more step on a path that has already been paved by other people, Sela told Al Jazeera. Its a gradual path whereby in the West Bank theres actually two rules of law, which was never intended, but happened gradually. And now Shaked is looking to institutionalise these two separate rules of law that should have never existed.

READ MORE: Palestinians battle Israel to bury their sons

The proposal would be particularly troubling with regard to laws on building and planning, which are supposed to be different for Israeli settlements, where building is meant to be strictly regulated compared with inside Israel.

Simon Reynolds, the legal advocacy coordinator for the BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights, said the proposed legislation not only threatens any hope for a two-state solution, but is also in direct breach of international law.

Any automatic extension of Israels domestic legislation to its settler population merely reinforces Israels commitment to the implementation of a two-tier legal system inside the West Bank, and in doing so highlights a contempt for the rights of Palestinians and for international law generally, Reynolds said.

Not only is such a clear separation of law along racial lines entirely compatible with the accepted legal definition of apartheid, but in exercising de facto sovereignty over occupied territory, Israel is acting in gross contravention of a key principle of the law governing military occupation: that the occupying powers control of a territory is to be temporary in nature.
Canadian authorities evacuate at least 8,000 more from work camps north of oil city as inferno grows to 850sq km.

A massive wildfire in Canada exploded tenfold in size, forcing the evacuation of 8,000 people from work camps north of Fort McMurray by air as the inferno grew to 850sq km.

Canadian officials said they would move thousands more via a highway convoy on Friday.

A government airlift of those cut off to the north began from oil facility airstrips. Alberta Premier Rachel Notley said some 4,000 people had already been airlifted to the cities of Edmonton and Calgary as of late Thursday.

The damage to the community of Fort McMurray is extensive and the city is not safe for residents, said Notley in a press briefing late on Thursday, as those left stranded to the north of the city clamoured for answers.

READ MORE: State of emergency as fire engulfs Canadian city

It is simply not possible, nor is it responsible to speculate on a time when citizens will be able to return. We do know that it will not be a matter of days, she added.

Officials also warned that the communities of Anzac and Gregoire Lake Estates, about 50km south of Fort McMurray, were under extreme threat as the flames spread to the southeast.

More than 80,000 people have already been evacuated as the out-of-control blaze has burned down whole neighbourhoods of Fort McMurray and forced a precautionary shutdown of some oil production, driving up global oil prices.

Three days after the residents were ordered to leave, firefighters were still battling to protect homes, businesses and other structures from the flames.

The Alberta government, which declared a state of emergency on Thursday, said more than 1,100 firefighters, 145 helicopters, 138 pieces of heavy equipment and 22 air tankers were fighting a total of 49 wildfires, with seven considered out of control.

READ MORE: Wildfire forces evacuation of Canadas For McMurray

There have been no injuries or deaths so far, but at least one vehicle crash with fatalities on the evacuation route was reported.

Notley said financial support will be provided to Albertans and that cash cards may be made available for evacuated residents.

More than 1,600 structures, including hundreds of homes, have been destroyed.

The fire has also destroyed nearly a third of the countrys daily crude capacity. At least 64,000 barrels of crude output is offline as a result of the fire, according to Reuters news agency.

Although the cause of the fire is unknown, officials said tinder-dry brush, low humidity and hot, gusting winds left crews unable to stop the massive conflagration.

The blaze, which erupted on Sunday, was contained south of Fort McMurray until Monday. However, the inferno quickly expanded, forcing the citys evacuation.
Kim says nuclear achievements show North Koreas endless power, in opening speech of first party congress in decades.

North Koreas leader Kim Jong-un has praised the magnificent strides made in the countrys nuclear weapons programme in a speech marking the opening of the first party congress in nearly 40 years.

Hailing the historic test of what North Korea claims was a hydrogen bomb in January, the states leader said it had shown the world that it would not be cowed by sanctions or outside pressure.

The test, which was followed a month later by a successful long-range rocket launch, clearly demonstrated to the whole world our undefeatable spirit and endless power  in defiance of malicious pressure and sanctions by enemy forces, he said.

Most experts have questioned the Norths H-bomb claim, saying that the detected yield from the January test was far too low for a full-fledged thermonuclear device.





Kim, 33, who was not even born when the last Workers Party Congress was held in 1980, said in a speech on Friday that the party conclave would prove to be a new milestone that would lay out the future direction of our revolutionary march.

Kims speech was delivered to thousands of party delegates who had gathered in Pyongyang for the once-in-a-generation conclave.

New milestone

Around 130 foreign journalists were invited to cover the event, but were not allowed inside the congress venue, restricted instead to watching from a spot 200 metres away.

There has been widespread speculation about the North preparing another nuclear test to coincide with the congress as a defiant gesture.

READ MORE: Now North Korea has nothing to lose

It may also enshrine as formal party doctrine Kims Byungjin policy of pursuing nuclear weapons in tandem with economic development.

Since Kim took power after the death of his father in December 2011, North Korea has carried out two nuclear tests and two successful space rocket launches that were widely seen as disguised ballistic missile tests.

Even as the international community responded with tougher sanctions, he pressed ahead with a drive for a credible nuclear deterrent with additional missile and technical tests.
The anonymous source behind the Panama Papers scandal has broken his silence for the first time, offering to make leaked documents available to public prosecutors.

The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and the German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung published a 1,800-word statement by the whistle-blower on Friday.

Signed with the name John Doe, the manifesto, entitled The Revolution Will Be Digitized, cited the need for better whistle-blower protection and hinted at more revelations to come.

The documents suggested that 140 politicians and officials from around the globe, including 72 former and current world leaders, have connections with secret offshore companies to escape tax scrutiny in their countries.

The Suddeutsche Zeitung was offered the data more than a year ago through an encrypted channel and started publishing material last month, in what has been called the biggest information leak in history.

Panama Papers: Why should we care?

The source of the leak said in the manifesto that a new global debate has started, which is encouraging.

Its author said: I do not work for any government or intelligence agency, directly or as a contractor, and I never have.

My viewpoint is entirely my own, as was my decision to share the documents with Suddeutsche Zeitung and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, not for any specific political purpose, but simply because I understood enough about their contents to realise the scale of the injustices they described, the statement said.

The source also said that he was willing to cooperate with public prosecutors.

ICIJ and its partner publications have rightly stated that they will not provide them to law enforcement agencies. I, however, would be willing to cooperate with law enforcement to the extent that I am able.

Attorney-client privilege

Mossack Fonseca, the law firm from where the Panama Papers were leaked, said on Friday that it has issued a cease-and-desist letter to the ICIJ urging it not to release the trove of documents online.

The firm issued the letter to the US-based consortium stressing that the information was stolen and its release would breach attorney-client privilege.

The ICIJ has announced that it will next Monday put online many  but not all  of the 11.5 million documents it obtained from the Suddeutsche Zeitung.

Panama Papers: Mammoth leaks and media collaborations

Reports done on the records since early April have revealed how the worlds wealthy, many politicians, and a few criminals used Mossack Fonseca to set up offshore entities to stash their assets.

The scandal put pressure on some politicians, notably forcing Icelands prime minister to resign, and prompted Europe and the United States to look at ways to crack down on offshore tax havens.

Several countries have started investigations into possible tax evasion or money laundering.

Mossack Fonseca says it committed no crimes, and states that the data was illegally obtained through a hack perpetrated using foreign servers.
Pontiff urges European leaders to tear down walls put up to keep refugees fleeing wars out of the continent.

Pope Francis has urged Europe to tear down the walls being built to keep out refugees and to create a radical new social economy serving the many not the few.

Invoking the memory of the European Unions founding fathers pursuit of integration in the aftermath of World War II, the pontiff on Friday said they inspired because they had dared to change radically the models that had led to war.

Saying he dreamed of a Europe in which being a migrant is not a crime, Francis said: Today more than ever, their vision inspires us to build bridges and tear down walls.

The comments came in a speech at the Vatican following the 79-year-old pontiffs presentation with the EUs Charlemagne Prize for his contribution to European unification.

Having unexpectedly decided to accept the award, Francis delivered a typically hard-hitting message to an audience including German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the heads of the EUs main institutions, the Council, the Commission, the Parliament and its central bank.

What has happened to you?

What has happened to you, the Europe of humanism, the champion of human rights, democracy and freedom? he asked.

What has happened to you, Europe, the home of poets, philosophers, artists, musicians, and men and women of letters?

Borrowing a phrase from writer and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, the Argentinian pontiff said Europe needed a memory transfusion to free itself from the temptation of quick and easy short-term political gains.

And after that reference to the migrant crisis, Francis went on to say Europe had to fundamentally change its economic model.

If we want to rethink our society, we need to create dignified and well-paying jobs, especially for our young people.
Last week, activist Maria-Teresa Tess Asplund, 42, took part in a counter-demonstration during a Nordic Resistance Movement rally where she stood alone with her fist firmly raised confronting hundreds of neo-Nazi marchers.

The act of defiance lasted for only a couple of seconds, but was enough for photographer David Lagerlof to capture the action.

Asplund was adopted when she was seven months old by a Swedish couple, who brought her to Sweden.

She describes herself as Afro-Swedish and is a part of the Afrophobia Focus organisation that addresses afrophobia and hostility towards people with a sub-Saharan African background in Sweden.

Her picture went viral and was widely praised on social media by, among others, Harry Potter author JK Rowling, who called her magnificent.

Al Jazeera: What made you stand alone confronting these several hundred neo-Nazi marchers?

Maria-Teresa Tess Asplund: I saw the Nordic Resistance Movement marchers parading down a street and that made really angry, because what they are parading for is to promote hate speech and I could not tolerate that in a country where I was brought up.

I got a rush of emotions and the dominant one was anger. I ran towards them and raised my fist in the air like Nelson Mandela. He is my hero and I believe he loves compassion and humanity, so thats why I raised my fist; to send a message to them that we believe in justice, freedom and love.

OPINION: Seeing Swedens race problem for what it is

What do you have to say about the Nordic resistance movement and the march?

I think it is an organisation that promotes hate speech. What else are they trying to promote? I just cannot understand when they say we dont want migrants coming in to our country. Hatred and discrimination like this leaves a mark from generation to generation. This needs to stop, we are all human and cannot be treated based on our background or colour. I still wonder why they were allowed to march.

What kind of issues do people of colour face in Sweden?

In Sweden today we see that racism is on the rise and it is scary. I can be in a store or anywhere on the street and anyone, anywhere can use the N-word for me. As a person of colour, Ive been attacked in the past because of my race and background. Ive faced several racial attacks, which is why I pledged to become an activist to change the trend and the mindset of such people promoting hate towards other humans.

Why do you think the image of you standing in front of the demonstrators went viral?

I am shocked myself. All this media attention I just cannot understand it. I am not a hero, I just did this for a cause and to promote peace and freedom. Social media is very powerful these days, this one picture has reached millions  just this one picture. The photographer, David Lagerlof is the actual hero who took this picture and released it. He is the messenger who has let my word out.

You were removed by police during your protest. What was your reaction?

The police were just doing their job. They took me away but they were not harsh to me. The neo-Nazi marchers gave me an ice cold stare when I came close to them raising my fist. We were both staring at each other. We didnt speak  it was just a few seconds of stares, not very pleasant ones of course.

What happened in the aftermath? Did you get any negative feedback?

I did not receive any threats, but on social media I did get negative comments on my picture, but I try to avoid seeing them because my purpose is way more than what they think of me and my actions. I would like to focus more on my purpose than anything else.

Your actions have also put a spotlight on Afrophobia Focus. What is the cause of this organisation?

Racism has been normalised in Sweden. It is very sad to accept this fact, but it exists. We are living this nightmare. People need to open their eyes and look around to know what is happening. Our organisation is helping others to share their experiences which further helps us to work together on how we can change the mindset of people who think that using racial slurs is normal. We are trying to create awareness and hopefully we will be successful one day and we wont live with ignorant people any more.

What do you think of people who justify the rise of Nazism?

People who justify Nazis are racist and promote hate speech. Their actions cannot be justified in any way possible. Any form of promoting hate among each other needs to stop. This is affecting our children and is becoming a vicious cycle.

What do you think of the fact that people are blaming refugees and migrants for the rise of crime in Sweden?

I feel ashamed to be living around such people. Migrants have nowhere to go, they are homeless. These people have risked their lives to make it here for a better future for their children. They are under threat back home, they are living a nightmare every day. They are not protected anywhere in the world, where will they go? Someone has to accept them. They dont deserve all this. We cannot blame other people for our own faults. We need to take responsibility of our own drawbacks and mistakes.

READ MORE: Sweden immigrants dismayed by far-right gain

What would you like to change in Sweden?

I want people to open their eyes. Racism and hatred exists and we are living it. People have to step in and help people in need instead of spreading hate. We wont have a better future for our children and their children if this continues. Marches like this needs to be banned by the government and everyone should stand united against the discrimination, racism and hate.
Fighters led by the al-Nusra Front capture village of Khan Touman, opening up key supply line to rebel areas of Aleppo.

Syrian rebels have captured a strategic village outside of Aleppo that could open up new supply routes for rebel-held areas of the city.

Fighters led by the al-Nusra Front took control of Khan Touman to the south of Aleppo on Friday, shortly before a 48-hour truce in the city was due to come to an end.

The capture opens up an alternate supply route to rebel-held areas of the city, connecting it to areas of Idlib that are also opposition controlled.

Syrian government forces have been trying to encircle rebels in the city by cutting them off from supply routes in the north.

Sources told Al Jazeera that groups involved in the attack included Ahrar al-Sham, Ajnad al-Sham, and other factions under the command of the Army of Conquest.

British-based activist group, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said more than 73 people had died in clashes in Khan Touman and surrounding villages, which included at least one al-Nusra suicide bomber.

The group put the number of government dead at 30 and rebels killed at 43, with dozens of wounded on both sides.

Hama prison siege

The rebel advances in Aleppo came as Syrian government forces launched an assault on a prison they had placed under siege in the city of Hama.

Syrian security forces surrounded the complex after an uprising led to the capture of several guards by the prisoners.

An Al Jazeera correspondent said hundreds of security forces had used live ammunition and tear gas during the raid, which left two inmates critically injured and dozens more wounded.

The prison is home to about 650 people, many of them political opponents of the government, with a further 85 prisoners on death row.

A prisoner inside the building who spoke to Al Jazeera called for international aid agencies to provide help immediately.

We call on the Red Cross to help, the Red Crescent teams being sent to the jail are regime intelligence officers, they are not Red Crescent, they are intelligence officers, the inmate said, warning a massacre was imminent.

Video posted on social media showed prisoners suffering from breathing difficulties after inhaling tear gas.

Al Jazeeras Zeina Khodr, reporting from the Turkish city of Gaziantep, said security forces were unsuccessful in their attempt to regain control of the building and the standoff was ongoing.

This revolt began a few days ago  they [prisoners] heard some of them would be transferred to another jail north of Damascus, known for extrajudicial killing, Khodr said.

Were also getting reports that government security forces arrested family members of the prisoners who were outside the building and were concerned about their loved ones.

They want to use them to pressure the inmates to give up.

The Syrian government holds tens of thousands of political prisoners according to Humans Rights Watch. Thousands have been killed in industrial-scale killing , according to a report by a team of international prosecutors.

With additional reporting by Zouhir Al Shimale in Aleppo
Ahmet Davutoglu says he is stepping down from office later this month. Why now? And what does it mean for Turkey?

There has long been speculation in Turkey about a rift between President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the man he handpicked as Prime Minister, Ahmet Davutoglu.

The two men once represented the countrys strongest political relationship.

But its a relationship thats looked increasingly strained in recent weeks. And on Thursday, Davutoglu perhaps felt it was time for him to go.

He announced he would step down as AK Party leader at an extraordinary congress to be held later this month. A decision that paves the way for Erdogan to choose a new ally to serve as prime minister.

But why is Davutoglu stepping down now?

And what does it mean for the state of democracy in Turkey?

Presenter:

Hazem Sika

Guests:

Ozgur Ozdamar  Professor of International Relations at Bilkent University

Wolfango Piccoli  Managing director at Teneo Intelligence

Sinan Ulgen  Visiting scholar at Carnegie Europe
The 27-nation bloc has three months to decide on suspension of funding for Hungary over charges of damaging democracy.
Listening to a recording, one can assume, as opposed to attending a performance, involves just one of your five senses, hearing. The concert has of course sight, but something about' Crowded Solitudes suggests other senses to consider. This trio recording follows City Of Asylum (Clean Feed, 2013). Revis has retained pianist, butreplacesat the drum chair.Revis, the longtime bassist for, can also be heard on the highly acclaimed Aruan Ortiz Trio recording Hidden Voices (Intakt, 2016) and in collaboration with pianistin various ensembles, plus their creative trio Tarbaby with. His recordings as a leader have progressed from the kitchen-sink busyness of this early efforts to a dazzling quartet session, In Memory Of Things Yet Seen (Clean Feed, 2014) and a meeting of the improvisation giantsandon Parrallax (Clean Feed, 2012). What is evident in all his work as a leader is his knack for employing talents he is working with. He never tries to force a round peg into a square hole.With his return to the trio format, Davis at the piano and Cleaver the drums the music rises above be merely auditory. The shortish piece "QB4R" adds a tactile sensation. Revis pulling, then sawing taut strings before plucking notes that resonate deep within the chest. Cleaver's brushes dusting cymbals and tambourine while Davis sprinkles notes like rain. It is one of three free pieces the trio recorded. The other two are the haunting "Crowded Solitudes (for B.K.)" where Revis bends bowed notes to the cymbal tap and scrape of drums and Davis' minimalist melody and the opening piece "Arcane 17" contains an entire universe of ideas. Revis' monster bass opens up to Davis fragments of a melody, as if a radio signal was cutting out. Her intermittent pieces and spasmodic parts coagulate into a percussive crescendo of energy. Davis drawn much attention with her ability to cast-like notes at one moment before switching to minimalism. She is prominently featured here, mimicking the sampled speech pattern of a child on "Bontah" and partitioning her brain on "Anamnesis -Parts I & II" with an incessant hammering left hand and gentle melodic right. Revis' composition "D.O.C." work a post-bebop swing into a modern deconstruction that doesn't eschew melody.'s "Victoria" opens with Revis' titanic bass thundering yet gentle notes over Cleaver's brushwork. Davis renders the theme, squeezing emotion onto the sensory inputs of sound, touch, and maybe even taste.
Over the past few years, there's been one relatively new drugstore brand we've noticed popping up more and more on celebrity makeup artists' lists of must-have products. Reddit makeup threads drop its name more often than just about any other drugstore brand. What is it? Drumroll, please...

The drugstore brand everyone seems to be freaking out over lately isyou guessed itE.L.F. Cosmetics. The Oakland-based company (whose name stands for Eyes, Lips, Face, in case you were wondering) was founded in 2004 by two beauty obsessives who wanted to create affordable makeup after they noticed that there were often expensive cars parked outside of 99-cent makeup stores. "I saw all these women with Louis Vuitton purses, and they were just buying truckloads of lip balms and nail polishes," cofounder Scott Vincent Borba told CNN in an interview. So Borba, along with his business partner, Joseph Shamah, decided to find factories that understood their mission to create inexpensive good-quality makeup. "We feel women shouldn't have to skip lunch or not go out for dinner or have other cutbacks to afford a makeup," Shamah told CNN. Today, you can find the line at stores like Target, Walmart, and even Old Navy. Here, we break down why people love it so much.

People on the Internet rave about the quality. E.L.F. is often cited in Reddit threads as some of the best makeup out there for the price. In February, we wrote about how people hold the $6 E.L.F Powder Blush Palette in the same esteem as high-end blush palettes. "I love this palette, [because the colors] are so pigmented," writes one person. "I'm used to lousy blushes that you have to build up, so if I'm not careful I end up looking sunburnt." Achelle Dunaway, E.L.F.'s global artistic director, says that the blush palettes were created to make sure that people could have a multitude of options in one product. "We love to provide luxurious products that are accessible to women so they can play with looks, so our palettes are made for customization and are meant to be used with trends like contouring and strobing," she says. "As a makeup artist, I love mixing and matching cheek colors to create looks that complement a lip color, so it was important that our blush palettes provide four different colors that can be worn alone or blended together."

The company pays attention to what people want. We wrote a whole article about how people with small eyes swear by the E.L.F. Crease Brush because it's tiny enough to ensure that they don't end up looking like an "overly blended raccoon-eyed mess." It was the number-one pick for a crease brush for small eyes, just ahead of another affordable option, the $6 EcoTools Duo Eye Set. How does E.L.F. seem to know exactly what its customers want? It pays attention to what they say online. "We're very engaged with our consumers, and we make sure to listen to their product requests and suggestions," says Dunaway. "We travel around the world and look at social and global trends, which inspire new colors and innovative textures that we think would be great for the company."




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By Site Searches; It Can be Wrong by Jay Bhatti Chatting Up The Cat God Gave Me Dominion Over Him

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AFTER 5 YEARS, WE'RE STILL LIED TO ABOUT IRAQ by Randolph T. Holhut DUMMERSTON, Vt. -- Next week is the fifth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. And it is likely that sometime in the next couple of weeks, the 4,000th American soldier will die in Iraq. [MORE] Momentum

OFF TO SEE THE WIZARD by Joyce Marcel DUMMERSTON, Vt. - It's 1931, and a 14-year-old girl is standing alone on a stage. She's small and lively with dark curly hair, widespread hazel eyes, slender wrists and an open, eager face filled with the wonder of performing. Her name is Rose, and one day she will be my mother. But now she is performing an Eugene O'Neill monologue called "Before Breakfast" for a ladies' club in a wealthy suburb of Long Island. [MORE] One Woman's World

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BEWARE THE SELF-REVERENTIAL PRESS by Walter Brasch BLOOMSBURG, Pa. -- Shortly before the primary votes this past week, Newsweek's Jonathan Alter called Sen. Barack Obama's surge to the Democratic nomination "inevitable." It also called for Hillary Clinton to "start her campaign for Senate majority leader." [MORE] Constance

A CONVERSATION WITH MY CAT Constance Daley ST. SIMONS ISLAND, Ga. -- Normally, when the cat starts his evening rant of meowing continuously until he makes his point, I just take it as long as I can, pick him up, and put him in the garage for the night. He doesn't want to go, but the meowing stops and I don't care if he likes it or not. [MORE] Momentum

OUT OF STRUGGLE, ART by Joyce Marcel DUMMERSTON, Vt. -- Here we are again at the crossroads of art and social change, having the opportunity to watch good and great films about the lives of women in support of the Women's Crisis Center. [MORE] Campaign 2008

HOW TO PREDICT SUPER TUESDAY II WINNERS? ONLINE SEARCH by Jay Bhatti NEW YORK, March 4, 2008, 7:00PM ET -- With the outcomes of the Texas, Vermont, Ohio and Rhode Island primaries to be decided tonight, how possible is it that online searching can predict who will win tonight's primaries? [MORE] One Woman's World

DON'T VOTE; IT ENCOURAGES THEM by Elizabeth T. Andrews CARTERSVILLE, Ga. -- Call me angry and disgusted but don't call me un-American because I won't be voting come November. [MORE] On Native Ground

BUSH AND THE KEYBOARD COMMANDOS by Randolph T. Holhut DUMMERSTON, Vt. -- As the days tick down toward the eventual departure of President George W. Bush from the White House, it's a hopeful sign that most Americans are no longer moved by his Administration's constant exploitation of terrorism for political gain. [MORE] Momentum

WHICH AMERICA DO YOU LIVE IN? by Joyce Marcel DUMMERSTON, Vt. -- It's a little confusing. [MORE] Make My Dat

THE LAWYER THAT ATE NEW YORK by Erik Deckers INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. -- I used to know a guy who, quite literally, didn't get hyperbole. He didn't understand exaggeration. As a result, he missed most jokes that came his way. [MORE] On Native Ground

FIDEL RETIRES: NOW THE COLD WAR IS REALLY OVER by Randolph T. Holhut DUMMERSTON, Vt. -- Maybe now, we can finally say the Cold War is over. [MORE] Make My Dat

THE LAWYER THAT ATE NEW YORK by Erik Deckers INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. -- I used to know a guy who, quite literally, didn't get hyperbole. He didn't understand exaggeration. As a result, he missed most jokes that came his way. [MORE] One Woman's World

POLITICS IS NO PARTY by Elizabeth T. Andrews CARTERSVILLE, Ga. -- Are you having a hard time focusing your eyes? Do you have faint red spots all over your body? Is there a ringing in your ears and do you see wavy lines when you look at your television set? Do your hands shake when you try to hold a cup of coffee? And have you recently been forgetting what day of the week it is - or what year? [MORE] Make My Day

FOR BETTER OR WORSE ... A LOT WORSE by Erik Deckers INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. -- "Marriage: It's Only Going to Get Worse." [MORE] Constance

YOU CALL THESE RIGHTS? by Constance Daley ST. SIMONS ISLAND, Ga. -- When you express an opinion you hope to persuade others to your point of view. It doesn't always happen but still, opinion writers try. [MORE] Momentum

THE BRIDGE WOMAN by Joyce Marcel DUMMERSTON, Vt. - Out there in America - yes, still - is a generation of women who were born in the 1940s, raised in the 1950s, and who came to radical consciousness in the late 1960s and early 1970s. I am one of them. Hillary Clinton is one of them. [MORE] On Native Ground

OBAMA AND MY GENERATION by Randolph T. Holhut DUMMERSTON, Vt. -- I originally planned on voting for Dennis Kucinich in the Vermont Primary on March 4. [MORE] The Willies:

WARNING: THIS MEDICATION MAY MURDER YOUR FRIENDS by Joe Shea BRADENTON, Fla. -- You've heard the warnings, haven't you? Stop Prozac and you may take a shotgun, an Uzi or an AK-47 and mow down your family and friends, or even a whole classroom full of your fellow students. You didn't? Well, that warning is not on the bottle, but like countless mass-murder incidents before it, Friday's shootings at Northern Illinois University, as well as the Virginia Tech shootings that killed 32 last year, was probably precipitated by the effect of stopping medications that suppress anger and other powerful emotions but do not relieve the underlying cause. Isn't it time we started warning people - or stopped prescribing these medicines? [MORE] One Woman's World

DON'T KNOCK ON MY DOOR by Elizabeth T. Andrews CARTERSVILLE, Ga. -- I wish I could feel delight in my poet's mansion being like Grand Central Station all the time, but I can't. And I wish my place was such a place that someone would one day write: "Her door was always open and she always made you feel all fuzzy and warm in her presence. She could make a cup of coffee seem like a banquet." [MORE] Reporting: Panama

PANAMA'S VIOLENT LABOR UNREST INTENSIFIES Mark Scheinbaum PANAMA CITY, Panama, Feb, 15, 2008 -- After just one day of relative calm, wildcat construction strikes by some members of Panama's largest union flared up again Friday morning, four days after a police sniper shot one worker. More than 140 demonstrators have been injured and at least 500 arrested, authorities say. [MORE] Brasch Words

TO STIMULATE ECONOMY, BUY A CHINESE-MADE U.S. FLAG by Walter Brasch BLOOMSBURG, Pa. -- Walking down Main Street, pushing a grocery cart loaded with clothes, toys, and appliances was Marshbaum. Fastened to the right front corner of the cart was an American flag tied onto a three-foot ruler. [MORE] Make My Day

THE TOOTH, AND NOTHING BUT THE TOOTH by Erik Deckers INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. -- To commemorate the death of noted shark exploder Roy Scheider, and the "Jaws" movies that resulted in Erik never setting foot in the ocean again, we are reprinting this column from 2003. Shark Experts 0, Sharks 1 [MORE] Momentum

THE WINTER OF MY DISCONTENT by Joyce Marcel DUMMERSTON, Vt. - As I write this, it's raining ice. Maybe a half a foot of snow and ice has already landed up here in the woods of Dummerston. Our cars are encased in it, and the door to the house is blocked. The satellite dish that brings in our Internet service quit about 20 minutes ago - frozen solid. [MORE] The Willies

AMERICA TO HILLARY: GET OUT! by Joe Shea BRADENTON, Fla., Feb. 13, 2008 -- Sen. Hillary Clinton has adopted the Rudy Giuliani strategy, and it's working - for Sen. Barack Obama. It turns out to be the strategy all Democrats are seeking - an exit strategy. But it's not for Iraq. It's for her exit from the race for the 2008 Democratic Presidential nomination. [MORE] Constance

CONFESSIONS OF A DISAPPOINTED VOTER by Constance Daley ST. SIMONS ISLAND, Ga. -- A week ago at just about this time, I completed an article and was about to submit it as scheduled to The American Reporter. I was feeling rather elated, ready to show up on Super Tuesday morning, firmly touch the X next to Rudy Giuliani's name and get on with my day. He was my choice; he would get my vote. [MORE] Reporting: Florida

SIERRA CLUB SET TO SUSPEND FLA. CHAPTER by Joe Shea BRADENTON, Fla., Feb. 10, 2008 -- The national Sierra Club is set to suspend its Florida chapter after years of divisive infighting, the president of the national club told Florida members in a letter delivered to some this weekend. It is the first time in its 116-year history that such a step has been considered by the club, according to news reports. [MORE] One Woman's World

PLANT A NEW WORLD THIS SPRING by Elizabeth T. Andrews CARTERSVILLE, Ga. -- For a little while, the men will just have to toss and turn in their fear-free-women beds. For a small space of time Hillary Clinton will just have to trudge on toward the White House without my faint applause in the background. [MORE] On Native Ground

VERMONT AND THE 5 STAGES OF CONSERVATIVE GRIEF by Randolph T. Holhut DUMMERSTON, Vt. -- First, Vermont tried to convince the nation to impeach President Bush and Vice President Cheney. [MORE] Make My Day

REBEL WITHOUT A TONGUE by Erik Deckers INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. -- Kids' brains work in amazing ways. At times, they can grasp complex concepts and make impressive discoveries. Other times, you have to wonder how we ever survived as a species. [MORE] The Willies

FOR DEMOCRATS, NOW IT'S ABOUT RACE, INCOME AND GENDER by Joe Shea BRADENTON, Feb. 6, 2008 -- It's not a good time to be a Democrat. As the Super Tuesday results demonstrated, the presidential race between Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton has divided the partly along clear racial, income and gender lines - the very distinctions the party has sought to erase in principle but has emphasized in its pursuit of diversity. [MORE] Momentum

SUPER TUESDAY BLUES by Joyce Marcel DUMMERSTON, Vt. -- Super Tuesday has come and gone and I still can't get excited about the upcoming presidential elections. [MORE] The Willies

ON THE BRINK OF HISTORY, YOUR PUSH IS NEEDED by Joe Shea BRADENTON, Fla., Feb. 5. 2008 -- I'm expecting a sea change tonight. I believe that for the first time in this nation's history we will once and forever banish racism as the deciding factor in the destiny of African-Americans, and indeed adopt diversity as our path to the future. [MORE] Campaign 2008

AT 88, EVERY VOTE REALLY COUNTS by Ted Manna DENVER, Feb. 5, 2008 -- Pearl Turner will caucus for Mitt Romney tonight in Denver. [MORE] One Woman's World

STAND BY YOUR WOMAN by Elizabeth T. Andrews CARTERSVILLE, Ga. -- The black vote. The gay vote. The fundamentalist vote. The Hispanic vote. [MORE] An AR Special

SUSPECTS IN BENAZIR ASSASSINATION HAVE TIES TO MUSHARRAF by Ahmar Mustikhan WASHINGTON, D.C. -- When Gordon Brown this past Monday feted coup-leader-turned-President Pervez Musharraf at 10 Downing Street, Britain's new prime minister probably didn't ask the Pakistani dictator a question that is now on many minds: Did you order the murder of Benazir Bhutto? [MORE] Momentum

TO THE VERMONT DELEGATION: WHAT HAVE YOU DONE FOR US LATELY? by Joyce Marcel DUMMERSTON, Vt.  Back when President George W. Bush and Dick Vice President Dick Cheney were building up to their loathsome war in Iraq, very few people were brave enough to call the bullies' bluff. [MORE] On Native Ground

IF BUSH HAS HIS WAY, WE'LL NEVER LEAVE IRAQ by Randolph T. Holhut DUMMERSTON, Vt. - In his final State of the Union address on Jan. 28, President Bush cautioned against accelerating U.S. troop withdrawals from Iraq, saying that it would endanger the process that has been made over the past year. [MORE] Campaign 2008

CLASH OF COMMENTS AND PROTESTORS AT CLINTON, OBAMA RALLIES IN DENVER by Ted Manna DENVER, Feb. 1, 2008 -- At least four presidential campaigns of both partiers rolled into in Denver this week ahead of the Feb. 5 "Super Tuesday" primaries in 22 states, but it was the Democratic presidential contenders who drew the big crowds and duked it out Wednesday. If sheer numbers are any indication, Sen. Barack Obama - preceded by a buoyant and beautiful Caroline Kennedy - won the round handily. He is the overwhelming favorite to win the Colorado primary next Tuesday. [MORE] The Willies

WHY THE FLORIDA PRIMARY STINKS by Joe Shea BRADENTON, Fla., Jan. 30, 2008 -- I was with my wife and daughter driving the back way from Miami home to Bradenton when we stopped at a McDonald's in Clewiston, the only big town along the vast shore of Lake Okeechobee, the state's precious freshwater reservoir. The McDonald's had three televisions at a central seating area, each tuned to a different network, and our table was in front of CNN as the very first election results started to pour in around 7:30PM. With them, almost as counterpoint, suddenly came such an overwhelming odor of cow plop that my wife started to throw up as we all ran to the parking lot. [MORE] Passings: Suharto

DEATH OF A KEMUSU THUG by Andreas Harsono JAKARTA - A few minutes after hearing that former president Suharto had died in his hospital bed, Marco, a militia leader in downtown Jakarta, raced to Suhartos house, wearing his jungle camouflage and began guarding the Suhartos residence on Cendana Street. [MORE] Constance

I REMEMBER YOU by Constance Daley ST. SIMONS ISLAND, Ga.. -- It seems to be more often lately that the sentiment is spoken but it's always been out there: "You never get over the death of your child." This is true. But the heartfelt expressions come from some who cannot fathom the notion of losing a child; their own child is who is in their mind, not another mother's child. [MORE]
Pros and Cons of a Clinton Win

By Gordon Matthews

True nationwide banking could become an early reality  helping bank stocks  if Gov. Bill Clinton were elected President.

But the tradeoff, analysts said, might be a strengthened Community Reinvestment Act, with bankers obliged to step up urban-renewal financing. That would be less likely if President Bush returns for a second term.

Bradford M. Johnson, a banking analyst in Atlanta for Sterne, Agee & Leach Inc., said nationwide banking legislation could be enacted before the end of 1993 if the Arkansas governor is elected. He thinks the absence of U.S. institutions from the ranks of the world's largest banks could spur action under a Democratic administration headed by Mr. Clinton.

Source of Stock Profits

"It may be dangerous to be sticking our neck out this far this early, but extraordinary profits in the stock market do, after all, come from thinking ahead  and being right," Mr. Johnson said.

Frank J. Barkocy, an analyst in New York for Advest Inc., agreed that a Clinton victory, coupled with retention of Democratic majorities in Congress, "could speed up the timetable for nationwide banking."

A Bush triumph would mean continuity in leadership at bank regulatory agencies but no improvement in strained presidential relations with Congress.

Moreover, noted Fred W. DeBussey of Fitch Investors Service Inc., the President does not seem inclined "to accommodate major banking initiatives."

But President Bush could, as he has been asserting recently, focus his second term on domestic economic issues. While this might not offer near-term benefits for banks specifically, it could be positive for them later on.

The problem for both candidates, Mr. DeBussey noted, is that "the savings and loan bailout continues to cause banking legislation inertia in Washington."

Among other things, he said, record turnover in Congress may open many prized committee slots and cause senior banking panel members to seek more rewarding assignments, leaving those committees with less influence.

But Mr. Clinton's economic advisers would likely focus on the U.S. position versus other nations in developing a plan to spur growth and competitiveness, Mr. Johnson said. In doing so, they could hardly overlook the relative decline of this nation's banks.

The largest U.S. banking company, Citicorp, ranked only 23d in the world in assets at yearend, according to American Banker.

Mr. Johnson said he believes that fact means a Clinton administration would begin with "a strong presumption in favor of further bank consolidation and liberalized geographic restrictions."

True nationwide banking would mean banks could branch across state lines and acquire banking companies in other states.

The "high-probability targets in an environment of true nationwide banking" would be banks with dominant positions in growing markets, Mr. Johnson said. Barnett Banks Inc., Florida's largest banking company, is a prime example, he said.

Other companies that are the last large-entry vehicles in their states for acquirers would immediately become big targets. Fourth Financial Corp., Wichita, Kan., is a "less obvious example," Mr. Johnson said.

Others are less sanguine, however. Democrats running both the White House and Congress "could give the appearance of harmony on the Potomac," said Mr. Debussey. "However, given Mr. Clinton's apparent absence of strong feelings about banking, there is little expectation for significant legislative changes."

Moreover, Mr. DeBussey said, "the voices of community bankers may well be recognized more quickly in a Clinton White House."
Given that he was a member of the famously ascetic Franciscan order with his own reputation for detachment from worldly things, St. Bernardine of Siena (1380-1444) was remarkably insightful about money.

Understandably, most people are surprised to learn that some of the important intellectual developments that first enabled finance to become an engine of growth were made by men like Bernardine who had, for the most part, freely taken vows of poverty.

Like all medieval clergy, Bernardine fiercely opposed usury. In a sermon, Bernardine wrote: "Usury concentrates the money of the community in the hands of a few, just as if all the blood in a man's body ran to his heart and left his other organs depleted."

Yet the same Bernardine also invested time in explaining why it was legitimate for creditors to charge interest on loans to compensate themselves for relinquishing the opportunity to invest their money elsewhere. In such circumstances, he believed the lender had a right to be compensated for what amounted to foregone profits.

He wrote: "What in the firm purpose of its owner is ordained to some probable profit has not only the character of mere money or a mere thing, but also beyond this, a certain seminal character of something profitable, which we commonly call capital."

This title, known as lucrum cessans (profits given up or what we today might call the opportunity cost of liquid funds) reflected the insight that money was not always sterile and could become productive: money could turn into capital.

Franciscans didn't limit themselves to writing about such issues. From the 14th century onward, they sought to help the needy gain access to credit in the form of loan companies. The first of these lending institutions  more popularly known as montes pietatis  were established by Franciscans and initially funded by donations from wealthy Christians. The montes pietatis lent money to relatively poor people who were unable to access loans from established moneylenders. Borrowers would provide the montes with small items of value as a form of security for the loan's repayment.

Controversy arose, however, when the montes began charging interest that ranged between 4% and 12%. One of their strongest boosters, another Franciscan, Bernardine of Feltre (1439-1494), insisted that some interest-charging by such institutions was essential if they were to become self-sustaining. Eventually, this became the norm for all Franciscan-established montes. Not surprisingly, they were also eventually accused of engaging in usury.

The montes and their interest-charging practices were, however, vindicated, first by Pope Paul II in 1467 when he approved the original montes in Perugia, and then by Pope Leo X in 1515 when he issued the papal bull "Inter multiplicis" also affirming that montes were not engaged in usury.

Subsequently, hundreds of montes emerged throughout Italy, France, Austria, Germany, Flanders and Spain. One of the earliest, the Monte dei Paschi di Siena, was founded in 1472 and still exists today. It is Italy's third-largest bank and employs thousands of people around the world.

Despite papal approval, usury accusations against the montes didn't disappear. This produced defenses of their interest-charging by scholastic thinkers such as the 16th-century Dominican Martin de Azpilcueta (1491-1586). He argued that the interest was, strictly speaking, a charge for administering the loan rather than a direct payment for the loan.

Many people today look at the way in which Christian thinkers reacted to these developments throughout the medieval and early modern period with some cynicism. More than one person has suggested it amounted to Christians engaging in tortuous semantics to help Christianity adjust to widespread economic changes as the world's first forms of capitalism began taking root in medieval Europe.

To reduce such intellectual development to a crass adjustment to circumstances would be a mistake. Certainly, context is important. But it's also true that an environment of immense economic change stimulated many Christian scholars from the 11th century onward to rethink the nature of money. Over time, they developed a series of important insights and clarifications  the most significant being a clear distinction between usury and legitimate forms of money lending.

These writers did not approach these issues as economists. They addressed these questions in the context of moral theology and law.

In short, the ideas that drive modern banking  like the banking profession itself  have a much deeper pedigree than many people realize. That's not a bad thing to keep in mind in an age when bankers and banking are viewed with much suspicion.

Samuel Gregg is research director at the Acton Institute. He writes widely on finance and ethics. His latest book is "For God and Profit: How Banking and Finance Can Serve the Common Good."
One of the last surviving black-owned banks in Chicago was rescued from its loan-related woes by a Ghanaian-American family.

The $101 million-asset Illinois Service Federal Savings & Loan completed its sale to the Nduom family on April 28, family members said in an interview with American Banker on Thursday. Dr. Papa Kwesi Nduom, a former partner at Deloitte & Touche, and his wife, Yvonne, made a $9 million equity investment in the bank, which was under a consent order from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency to raise capital.

"All [outstanding] shares have been issued to the members of the Nduom family, so we control 100% of the institution," said Chiefy Nduom, vice president and general counsel at Groupe Nduom, the family's holding company for various business enterprises.

Illinois Service will remain a black-owned bank, he said, and there are no immediate plans to shutter any of the bank's offices or branches.

Established during the Great Depression to assist Southern blacks who migrated to northern cities for better economic opportunities, the black-owned financial institution suffered from mortgage-related deteriorating loan portfolios following the 2008 financial collapse. The OCC confirmed Thursday that it approved the acquisition last week.

The first order of business now is to shore up credit quality. "Really one of our  priorities are making sure that we understand their portfolio, make sure that we're doing the right things that we need to do to improve its quality," said Nana Kweku Nduom, vice president of business development and finance at Groupe Nduom.

Ultimately the new owners plan to beef up mobile banking services and take more steps to attract younger customers, Crain's Chicago Business reported this week.

Ghana-born Papa Kwesi Nduom moved his family from West Africa to Milwaukee during the 1970s, eventually settling in the Washington D.C. area. Most of the family returned to Ghana in 1991, but some family members still live in the U.S., and its business interests are based in Washington.

Groupe Nduom invests in industries that include tourism, media, sports, hospitality, real estate, and investments and financial services, primarily in Ghana.


National Capital Bank of Washington has a new chief executive.

The $408 million-asset bank said in a press release that Richard Anderson also became its president on April 18. He succeeded James Didden, who served as president and chief executive since 2007.

Anderson recently served as a regional president at United Bankshares in Vienna, Va. He also served as chief lending officer of Virginia Commerce Bank in Arlington for 17 years before it was sold to United in 2014.

Didden, who stepped down to work part-time as the bank's marketing adviser, will remain on the board, a spokesman said.


Banc of California in Irvine is showing no signs of growing pains despite bulking up quickly after the financial crisis.

In four short years the company has evolved from a mediocre community bank to a regional player that is closing in on $10 billion in assets and the added regulatory scrutiny that comes with such heft. Banc of California since early last year has added $3.5 billion in assets, though it largely reinvested deposits into short-term securities to manage risk.

With the potential for loan growth, and a key regulatory threshold looming, conventional wisdom would peg Chairman and Chief Executive Steven Sugarman as an executive determined to make a big acquisition to catapult over the mark.

To the contrary, he is comfortable going it alone.

Banc of California, meanwhile, has plenty of opportunities to move from holding securities to making more loans, given disruption from other big deals that have closed in recent months, including the sales of City National to Royal Bank of Canada and OneWest Bank to CIT Group. Sugarman has also been devoting more resources to community development.

Banc of California, which has been devoting more resources to community development, is also looking to raise about $125 million through a common stock offering, based on the company's closing price Thursday.

The following is an edited transcript of a recent interview with Sugarman.

How are you growing your assets so fast?

STEVEN SUGARMAN: Our brand and value proposition have gotten a bit of a tailwind from a lot of the larger peers that have left the market or sold themselves. We have been well positioned to benefit from that activity. A lot of our growth is from local southern California residents and businesses that are opting to bank with a bank with local decision making. They see Banc of California as the largest regional bank left with local decision making and the capabilities to serve their needs.

How are you attracting customers?

It's not just customers who want to bank with someone that has local decision-making and strong community values. Top banking talent has started to come to us as well. We're seeing the ability to hire some of the top banking teams and professionals. Employees like to have access to senior leadership and strong engagement with the community.

Other banks must have a similar plan to capitalize on market disruption. What are you doing to differentiate from competitors?

Business clients and private banking clients are smart and they distinguish between opportunistic companies looking to take advantage of market distortions and banks that are committed to the community. What's distinguished us is our track record of being California's largest independent bank with an outstanding [Community Reinvestment Act] rating. We don't do business in New York and Canada, and they know that for every dollar they deposit here, we'll make a dollar of loans here. It's a business model. It's not a marketing piece.

As you get bigger, how will you retain local decision making?

It is our business model and you know that by our name. We had the chance to rename our bank a couple of years ago [from First PacTrust in 2013] and we chose Banc of California because that's what our focus is. You will always have local decision making at Banc of California because that's where we're from. I'm not moving anytime soon.

Will that focus on California, and even the bank's name, constrain growth?

California has a bigger economy than many countries like France. France has their own home banks and California deserves one, too. That doesn't constrain the size we could be.

You committed in June to raising $200 million from other banks for community development. Is there an update on that effort?

It's been going great. It is much easier to meet our commitments around CRA given that it is a core part of our business. We view serving all of California's communities as a core part of our vision. We have been exceeding the goals we set out for community development activities by multiples of our targets. It's not something we look to get over a minimum threshold. Frankly, we credit a lot of the growth in assets, deposits and profitability to the fact that people who live within California and its communities want to bank with a bank they are proud of, a bank that is doing the right thing.

When you bought Banco Popular branches, you faced objections over your CRA plan. Have there been any long lasting effects from that?

I think there's a strong lesson all banks can learned from the Popular acquisition. Unfortunately, banks often approach these things with skepticism or a view that CRA is a tax or not something worthwhile. You could see lasting damage occur. Folks on both sides of the discussion have learned to approach banks and community groups with some skepticism. You saw that with Banc of California. I was new to these community groups and they were new to me. We started with skepticism. It took some dialogue for them to understand our approach to community development and for us to understand the areas where they had particular insights.

How are you managing for risk as you bulk up assets?

We've invested heavily in compliance and risk analytics and culture. We needed to grow to a certain size in order for our economics to shine through, and that's what investors are seeing now. But given the traction we're getting with our value proposition with clients in southern California, we're redoubling all of our efforts in analytics and investments on the risk side. You don't want to mess up a really good thing by being sloppy on credit and compliance risk, so it takes up a large amount of my time and the management team's time. We view that as the table stakes of being able to serve our clients well.

Have the regulators indicated any concerns about your fast growth?

We continue to enjoy a very positive and collaborative relationship with our regulators. My greatest positive since becoming CEO has been the ability to interact with our regulators, make sure we're thinking about things correctly, and make sure regulators can help us learn from any best practices or lessons banks should have learned in the past crisis.

The economy isn't growing very fast and some people could be skeptical about Banc of California's growth.

Our growth is driven by strong core deposits from California depositors. Our growth is a deposit growth story. Over the last couple of quarters, the preponderance of our asset growth has come from highly rated and agency government guaranteed securities. We don't want to grow our assets faster than the market is willing to give us good high-quality assets. We grow by [bringing in] deposits and by serving our clients' banking needs. We don't feel any pressure to grow loans artificially and quickly through pricing or changing of underwriting terms. Today, we can hit our economic goals with strong deposit growth complemented by agency and triple-A securities. When you look at our first quarter results, our net interest margin stayed flat and the average price of loans was right on our target of 4.5%. There's no repricing of loans.

How will you handle crossing $10 billion of assets?

We have no acquisitions announced. We're comfortable with our organic pace of growth, coupled with the market conditions we're seeing. We will be able to cross the $10 billion mark without an impact to our shareholders.

Do you think more banks will consider crossing the mark organically?

If a bank built the risk, the credit, compliance systems necessary  then there really shouldn't be any significant impediments to crossing organically. Each bank has to evaluate its own risk, compliance systems and culture and make a decision on their own.

What is your acquisition strategy?

We haven't announced a deal in two years. We continue to look at opportunities but, with our organic growth, we're growing the size of a small acquisition every quarter or two, so we have no pressure to make acquisitions. We would do so if it was good for our shareholders.


The finance industry pushed back against a proposal by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Thursday that would ban arbitration clauses in consumer contracts, saying it will pave the way for a flurry of class-action lawsuits and result in higher prices for products and services.

The proposal drew criticism across the various affected industries, including most types of consumer lending with the exception of mortgages. Industry lawyers made it clear at a field hearing in Albuquerque, N.M. that they are expecting a fight.

"Ultimately, there's a high likelihood that the rule will be challenged," said Quyen Truong, a partner at Stroock & Stroock & Lavan LLP, and a former assistant director and deputy general counsel at the CFPB. "I think the impact will be tremendous and the CFPB recognizes that internally because it will increase class actions, which is a big cost in terms of litigating."

The proposal would still allow companies to offer arbitration as a way to resolve disputes. But industry lawyers said by allowing consumers to bring class actions, particularly over small-dollar amounts, the CFPB had opened the flood gates to class-action suits. Companies cannot afford to set aside reserves for class-action litigation and operate an arbitration process.

"I believe most companies will simply abandon arbitration altogether because of the cost-benefit analysis," said Alan Kaplinsky, who leads the consumer financial services group at Ballard Spahr. "Consumers will pay for this in the form of higher prices and reduced services."

Speaking at a panel at the hearing, Kaplinsky listed the benefits of arbitration including that recovery amounts for consumers are higher, costs are capped at $200, and the timeframe for resolution is less than five months.

The CFPB's own study of arbitration found that consumers received an average of $32.25 from class actions that were analyzed, compared with an average of $5,389 in arbitration.

But the CFPB's 728-page study found that consumers rarely file individual disputes involving financial products or services in any forum.

CFPB Director Richard Cordray defended the plan during the hearing, arguing it was unfair to force consumers through arbitration.

"This practice has evolved to the point where it effectively functions as a kind of legal lockout," he said. "Companies simply insert these clauses into their contracts for consumer financial products or services and literally 'with the stroke of a pen' are able to block any group of consumers from filing joint lawsuits known as class actions."

Deepak Gupta, a founding principal at the law firm Gupta Wessler and a former senior counsel at the CFPB, said few consumers file for arbitration and the amounts are so small that they have no redress for wrongdoing.

"Arbitration doesn't move small-dollar claims to a faster, cheaper forum," Gupta said. "Instead it kills those claims. Those claims simply disappear."

Cordray said consumers often do not understand the agreements and have a tough time going up against a financial firm.

"When faced with the daunting prospect of spending considerable time and effort to recoup a $35 fee or even a $100 overcharge, it is not hard to see why few people would even bother to try," Cordray said.

Even Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton weighed in on the proposal, saying she plans to protect consumers from unfair and deceptive practices.

"Mandatory arbitration clauses buried deep in contracts for credit cards, student loans, and more prevent American consumers from having their day in court when they've been harmed," Clinton said in an emailed statement.

But Republican lawmakers voiced their opposition.

"Unfortunately, we have yet another example of an unelected, politically motivated, single director choosing what he thinks is best for the American consumer," Rep. Randy Neugebauer, R-Texas, said in an emailed statement. "Today's proposal is a clear win for class-action trial lawyers who reap unseemly recoveries, while consumers recover pennies on the dollar."

The impact of the proposal on consumers is important and could be used to challenge the plan.

The Dodd-Frank Act gave the CFPB the authority to prohibit or impose limitations on the use of arbitration clauses if the bureau finds that such measures are "in the public interest" and "for the protection of consumers," and if the findings are consistent with its study.

Industry representatives have used the bureau's study to try to bolster their claims that arbitration is in the public interest, and that the CFPB's findings do not align with the proposal.

"A challenge to the proposed rule would come under the three prongs embedded in Dodd-Frank," said Walter Zalenski, a partner at BuckleySandler.

The proposal includes extremely broad language covering roughly 50,000 firms, including banks, credit unions, credit card issuers, certain auto lenders, auto title lenders, payday lenders, private student lenders, loan servicers, debt settlement firms, foreclosure rescue firms, prepaid card issuers, installment lenders, money transfer services and certain payment processors.

There also are crucial issues related to the practical implementation of the proposal.

"Companies need to look at their contracts and think about how they want to proceed, and if they would structure agreements differently beyond simply striking the provisions preventing class actions," Truong said.

Arbitration agreements have been prohibited by Congress from being used in residential mortgages and home equity lines of credit and in connection with certain loans to servicemembers.

There is a 90-day comment period for the proposal, which is expected to go into effect next year.


The Obama administration announced several major initiatives aimed at countering money laundering on U.S. soil, just days before the names of thousands of companies implicated in the Panama Papers investigation are expected to be made public.

Along with the publication of a long-awaited beneficial ownership rule, the Treasury Department and the Justice Department said that they would urge Congress to pass several bills designed to improve transparency and put the U.S. on par with foreign partners in the fight to curb the flow of illicit funds.

"Illicit financial activity is a critical concern for the United States and our partners around the world, and the Administration is committed to taking all available steps on this important issue," Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew said in a letter urging congressional leaders to adopt new and pending legislation.

The beneficial ownership rule will expand customer due diligence requirements for U.S. banks by forcing them to obtain the names of any individual who owns more than 25% of a company or controls it, as soon as an account is opened.

The Treasury will also send a bill to Congress that would require a new company to disclose the name of its owners when it is formed.

"Together these initiatives mark an essential step forward in preventing criminals from using companies to hide their identities and laundering criminal proceeds," said Jennifer Fowler, the Treasury's deputy assistant secretary for terrorist financing.

"They also target two different points of access to the international financial system: when accounts are opened in a U.S. financial institution; and when companies are formed or when company ownership is transferred in the United States."

The bill would bring together the information available to authorities on companies operating in the U.S. through a "central registry for beneficial ownership information," Fowler said. But it is unclear if the registry will be accessible to financial institutions themselves as they search for company information to implement the beneficial ownership rule.

The Treasury Department also announced a plan to extend the reporting requirements to certain foreign-owned companies that have been exempt: single-member limited liability companies. "This loophole can be used to shield the foreign owners of non-U.S. assets or non-U.S. bank accounts," said Robert Stack, deputy assistant secretary for international tax affairs at the Treasury Department.

On the foreign front, the Justice Department announced it would send legislation to Congress to increase its authority over transnational money-laundering cases by speeding up the subpoena process, adding foreign corruption laws to its arsenal, and extending the amount of time the U.S. can freeze assets at the request of a foreign government.

Treasury also urged Congress to pass legislation that would require domestic companies to send more information to foreign jurisdictions under the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act of 2010.

Money laundering has come to the fore in recent weeks, since the publication last month of investigative news articles drawn from millions of documents tied to the law firm Mossack Fonseca. The articles brought to light the widespread and global nature of tax evasion. A searchable database is expected to be made public on Monday, including hundreds of thousands of offshore entities.

"Nobody should be able to hide in the shadows of their legal obligation and nobody should be able to play by a different set of rules," Wally Adeyemo, the deputy national security adviser for International Economics, said on a conference a call with reporters.

"What the Panama Papers do is they highlight the work that we've been doing here to aggressively go after this issue," Adeyemo said. "But it also makes clear that more needs to be done, and we're going to look for administrative means to do that. "

He added, "In addition to these administrative means, we need Congress to act."

The following is a summary of the steps outlined by the administration.

Treasury Department Initiatives:

Release of the final Beneficial Ownership rule, which will:

Require financial institutions to obtain and verify the identity of the so-called beneficial owners of a company. This includes individuals who control or own more than 25% of a company.

Amend Bank Secrecy Act regulations to expand law enforcement's access to company data.



Beneficial ownership legislation: As an additional measure to its rule for financial institutions, Treasury proposed a bill that would require U.S.-formed companies to know and disclose the identities of their owners at the time of creation or ownership transfer.



Proposal to close a reporting loophole for foreign-owned U.S. entities: Treasury's plan would require single-member limited liability companies and other foreign-owned U.S. entities to obtain a tax identification number and share their ownership and transaction data with the Internal Revenue Service.



Tax treaties: The agency is urging the Senate to pass eight tax treaties that have been awaiting final passage for years. Those include treaties with Luxemburg and Switzerland, which have been pending since 2010 and 2011, respectively.



FATCA reporting reciprocity: Treasury asked Congress to enact legislation that would require U.S. financial institutions to provide the same amount of information to other jurisdictions as foreign companies report to the IRS.

Justice Department Initiatives:
The word "populist" is being tossed around a fair amount today, mainly to discredit Donald Trump. The implied idea is that populist politicians are demagogues who appeal to the lowest denominator of the popular imagination  a kind of redneck voter, whom Obama, in all his arrogance, referred to as Midwesterners with their God and their guns.

Obama was speaking to a fundraising party of wealthy True Believers in San Francisco, dope-smoking good time rock-'n'-rollers, who devoutly believe in all the liberal superstitions  like man-made global warming  in the face of all the evidence to the contrary. Those folks will probably vote for Bernie Sanders because they are secret totalitarians who believe they have the answer to all of life's problems (except their own)  wealthy liberals who yearn every day for the power to control all the idiots in the country who don't know how to live their own lives.

Today we are being treated to the sight of conservative George Will of the Washington Post, denouncing Donald Trump to the bitter end. Mr. Will is the WaPo's nod to Madisonian democracy, which feels safe enough to the lefties of the WaPo  because who is going to bring James Madison back to life today?

Mr. Will is there like a gold ormulu clock on the mantelpiece, to show the intellectual diversity of the WaPo. He writes and speaks in whole sentences, but secretly, my hero George Will is a member of the Whig Party, the founding elite of the United States.

Now, I admire Mr. Will as one kind of true conservative, believe it or not. But he is not a Burkean conservative, because Edmund Burke (1729-1797) was actually a populist intellectual.

Burke believed in the intuitive wisdom and good sense of ordinary people. I'm afraid that Mr. Will sneers at popular conservatives because they are...well, popular. Like GOP winner Donald Trump, who talks the earthy language of Queens, New York.

Trump is attractive to voters who are sick and tired of being preached at and lied to by our mis-educated elites. Trump is not as intellectual as Ted Cruz. Intellectuals are good for Supreme Court justices, and Cruz knows his constitutional law.

But Trump understands and likes people, which is not the same thing.

Conservatives have long been divided between intuitive people and intellectuals. Thomas Jefferson was an intellectual. Andrew Jackson was an intuitive conservative.

Abe Lincoln was a very rare politician who had a liking and appreciation for everyday people but could still make eloquent speeches that educated Americans could love. Ben Franklin was also able to bridge popularity and intellect. But Alexander Hamilton famously said, "The People? Sir, the People is a Great Beast!"

In some way George Will is more of a Hamiltonian. Nothing wrong with that, but Mr. Will consistently fails to understand the Donald Trumps of this world. Ronald Reagan and Harry Truman had sound intuitions about people. Woodrow Wilson was an intellectual.

In truth, Trump understands sophisticated ideas also, and he can talk in complete sentences. We can see that as he is making his "pivot" to more conventional politics. But Mr. Trump loves to outrage the Hamiltonians in Washington, D.C., who are still freaked out by the prospect of a practical person getting a chance.

Burke was an Irishman who served in the British Parliament, a life history that might explain his hatred for tyranny and his love and respect for human intuition. Ireland in his time was miserably poor, generally uneducated, and badly exploited by English landlords, but still rich in human talent. Burke empathized with the poor and powerless, but he also admired the decency and good sense of most people.

In Burke's time, throngs of impoverished Irish fled to Britain, America, Australia, India and New Zealand, which is why so many American politicians have Irish roots.

Burke supported the American Revolution, because he saw the Constitution as an extension of British rights and freedoms, earned over the centuries in power struggles against tyrants. But the key to Burke was his faith in the good judgment of everyday people.

That's what he wrote about in his most famous paragraph, comparing the grasshoppers of the chattering classes to the mass of ordinary people, "reposed beneath the shadow of the British oak."

His advice was not to pay much attention to screaming headlines, but to put your trust in the intuitive good sense of the people.

Because half a dozen grasshoppers under a fern make the field ring with their importunate chink, whilst thousands of great cattle, reposed beneath the shadow of the British oak, chew the cud and are silent, pray do not imagine that those who make the noise are the only inhabitants of the field.

Trump is a practical man. George Will is a classic intellectual. They don't need to fight each other, because a viable world needs both kinds of people.

But maybe it's time for conservative intellectuals to stop sulking and get with the program. Worse things than Trump have happened to this country  like the last seven years of Obama, or (heaven forefend!) the next eight years of Hillary.

Today we have a choice, not an echo.

You may not love the choice, but consider the alternative.
A few weeks ago, the bloviator-in-chief moved his lips in another deathless lumbada of badda -- another nugget of Obamaesque [un]truthiness.

His words: An attack on islam is an attack on all faiths. Outside a Baltimore mosque, he added, When any religious group is targeted, we all have a responsibility to speak up.

That goes double for you, too, Mr. President. And you have the means, and the daily morning update briefings, to be hyperaware of the true extent of threats against religious groups. And those under threat are far and away not Muslims.

But equal faiths is simply not so, Mr. O.

Few religions chattelize all women, sanction the taking of all and any female child or adult as fit booty after unprovoked aggressions aimed at wresting land and money and valuables from innocent civilians doing no one any harm. No Protestant sect advises the mutilation of female genitalia, the forced donning of impenetrable, crippling body bags to ensure that men cannot gaze on a workaday female going about her daily rounds. Judaism has no brief with forced conversions under pain of death or the payment of vast sums of Jizzya to apologize for not converting. Judaism frowns on conversions altogether, as those wishing to convert for a variety of reasons soon learn.

The Hindu does not rampage ceaselessly over lands they once inhabited -- as in Andalusia, the Muslim coinage for Spain, 700 years ago. BahaI have no brief with enforcing a specialized hell on earth called sharia that essentially nullifies the Constitution or any national democratic document that asserts primacy over a nations laws and people.

In an extensive, groundbreaking study of hundreds of stateside mosques undertaken in the 90s by leading anti-terror national security expert Steven Emerson, executive director of the Investigative Project on Terrorism, the vast majority of U.S. mosques feature violent and unmitigated anti-infidel literature, problematic clerics advocating unholy screeds and actions, and in the past and to this day harbor often-scabrous terrorists in training or worse.

During the first days in May, I attended a three-day conference held in the Roosevelt Hotel in NYC, sponsored by CitizenGo!, that dedicated a full day to hourly panels and discussion of ISIS and related Islamist groups torture, beheading, ravaging of property, abduction of women, selling captured Christian, Yazidi, and minority women into actual slavery, and of course, personal witness of their men being beheaded, shot or otherwise tortured to death.

Conference days on which there were no Christian survivor panels showed unwatchable full-length documentaries and trailers gotten through hidden cameras inside ISIS tents as they jubilantly discussed trading slaves and practicing sexual abuse on Yazidi women and children. These films show the ravages of Shia, Sunni, or Syrian Alewite massacres of mostly Christians, or other Muslims. Witness after witness spoke of being raped, even tiny girls. Men who had escaped, including priests and prelates of various Christian denominations, called on the world, and in particular President Obama, to come to their aid. Though there are some four thousand Jews in Iran, ostensibly a protected minority useful for the Shia regime of the mullahcracy, there are no longer any Jewish populations of any numbers in any Middle Eastern -- that is, Muslim -- state.

While in the world at large, freelance killers (so-called lone wolves) or disordered minds have been on rare occasions known to kill innocent persons, the overwhelming majority of terror acts the world over are, as we all know if we have an IQ awareness beyond that of an eggplant, committed by Muslims.

President Obama obliviously plows on, promoting a false narrative of equality and peace by his youthful passion, Islam. Somehow failing to register the obvious. Somehow failing to do anything substantive about hundreds of thousands of non-Muslims at horrific risk. He sniffily ignores the indisputable evidence of cultic death that is encouraged or, just as perturbing, mildly tolerated even by mosque-goers who themselves dont indulge in the koranic invocation to kill the infidel or extract conversion.

We under the odd president now closing in on eight peculiar years are chided to respect this glorious cultic anathema, encouraging unchecked and undocumented hordes to infuse our nation, chunk by chunk, with a slew of religionists who do not respect or acknowledge our culture or mores. A cultic swathe of humans who reach the tipping point and demand we change to accommodate their ancient and primitive customs, holidays, savage treatment of women, and the like.

So, no, Mr. President.

Caution is a self-defensive action grounded in not losing ones precious head, and not losing ones rights in a republic that was established by centuries of earnest refining and effort.

The impassive president has nothing to say beyond a vague tsk-tsk about the mass genocide of Christians in majoritarian Islamic lands, as the Copts in Egypt, the Christians of Iraq, and the Yazidi in Syria are now experiencing.

This Christian is about defending and protecting his pet patrimony, under the two stepfathers his mother hung with, or the real father his mother consorted with before he was conceived, and who, according to Herb London of the London Center for Policy Research, master of much well-founded scholarship, informs us had the greatest impact on the growing Manchurian cum Indonesian cum Hawaiian lad who smoked and poked his way into an adulthood that included multiple names, affiliations, and identities and Social Security bona fides and questionable alliances and grade-point averages and foreign allegiances boosting him into the privileged ranks of those more erudite and achieved than he, but of a different ratio of skin tone and vocal timbre.

So no, defensive actions to forestall attacks on us from Muslim solo actors or ragtag militia cadres is not an attack against all faiths.

And no, Mr. President. For the moment, all faiths are not the same. And certainly, we are all aware that among the 1.2 stealth billion near-co-religionists of this stealth president, there may indeed be peaceful observers of the desert sword faith-complex. But defensive actions against a marauding juggernaut of extreme heedless bent on extirpation of any and all noncompliant mankind that does not buckle under the yoke of an excessively punitive real estate cult on conquer and destroy is not exclusionary of all other faiths.

It is self-defensive to be cautious in the face of this phenomenon, geared to not losing ones precious, only head. And not losing ones rights in a republic that was established by centuries of earnest refining and effort.

Such sane defensive posture is the reaction of normal persons to neutralize and defeat avowed public efforts to destroy and unman the West, the which both the Torah and the New Testament agree is sane behavior. We are commanded to live.
Hillary Clinton, the almost certain Democratic nominee for president, is manifestly unfit to serve as president. She is a pathological liar who abused her office, violated the law, and sold influence for personal gain while abandoning subordinates in a war zone. Arguably, her corruption is orders of magnitude beyond any previous case in U.S. history.

Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, is manifestly unfit to serve as president. He is a pathological liar who bought influence with elected officials for personal gain. He is corrupt, amoral, and surrounds himself with people who cannot be trusted with responsibility or government power. He is an unstable conspiracy theorist so narcissistic as to make President Obama seem humble by comparison.

Many disagree, and they are free to enthusiastically embrace Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Trump, or another socialist.

Others -- call them conservatives -- face several unacceptable options and dismal prospects for our Republic. Trump is heading for a defeat of historic proportions. Republican gains of 2010 and 2014 at the state and local level will be reversed. Worse, those who choose to stay with the party will now be painted with all the negative attributes of Trump. Unlike the easily disproven memes about Republicans being racists who want to poison the air and water, in making Trump their nominee, Republicans will wear Trump like an albatross around the neck.

If Clinton is somehow prevented from finishing the race and Trump wins by default, the prospects are potentially worse. Trump will cut deals with his friend U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer and Republicans will be unable to oppose any liberal fantasy advanced thereafter. In the name of Republicans and the Republican Party, Trump can implement single-payer healthcare, blanket amnesty, gun control, and a slew of other disastrous policies. Republicans will be powerless, like unarmed eunuchs incapable of offering even tepid opposition.

What can conservatives do?

If he becomes the Libertarian Party nominee, polls show former New Mexico governor Gary Johnson actually does surprisingly well against Clinton and Trump. Many conservatives will find his positions on foreign policy and social issues unacceptable, but there are two other competitive Libertarian candidates. John McAfee is even less appealing to conservatives. Austin Petersen's positions are much more closely aligned with conservatives, but he is young, lacks experience, and his performance in the Libertarian Party debates was not polished.

The Constitution Party still exists and they nominated Darrell Castle for president this year. Unfortunately, they have ballot access in less than 20 states. They are on the ballot in Florida, but not in Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, or California. Their foreign policy positions differ very little from those of Johnson, the Libertarian candidate. Many conservatives will find the notion of unilateral withdrawal from NATO, among other positions, as non-starters in the face of world jihad and expanding communist Chinese influence.

A political party is just a vessel used to achieve political goals. Ideally, a party should represent some guiding philosophy and core principles, but as the current Democrat party shows, a party can just be a random collection of victim groups seeking largesse from the government. When a vessel is no longer seaworthy, the vessel needs to be repaired or replaced. The keel of the GOP is worm eaten. Like exposed insects and worm holes, Trump is proof positive the hulk is beyond repair.

Given there is no longer the party of Reagan, or even a party that loosely believes in limited government, free trade, the sanctity of life, federalism, regulated and legal immigration, the Constitution, and that the United States is an essential force for good in the world, we need a new party.

A new party requires a leader.

Leaders take risks. Leaders have vision and are able convey their vision to a larger following and inspire others to action. Leaders rise to a crisis.

We need a leader. Actually, we need many at the local, state, and national level. Forming a new party is a monumental task. The prospects for success are small. The career risks will be great. Leaders will need a degree of stature and the willingness to stick their neck out.

Like the formation of the Republican Party as the Whig Party disintegrated, existing elected officials must join the new party for it to gain credibility and make leaving the GOP acceptable. This will call for real leadership, not the ovine behavior masquerading as 'leadership' seen in the Peter Kings, Jeff Flakes, and Nathan Deals of the world. We need true leaders. Justin Amash? Ben Sasse? Greg Abbott? Dan Patrick?

We require a leader -- somebody with a vision, a plan, determination, and lots of courage -- who will take the slings and arrows. Former allies will attack them and accuse them of self-promotion. Friends will abandon them. They will become a pariah within the political establishment, and in the unlikely event of success, all the glory will go to those elected under the new party's banner. Their only reward will be knowing they saved the Republic, or at least mobilized a resistance for those who still considered the Republic worth saving.

Don't wait to apply, just act.
Ben Rhodes is perhaps the weirdest foreign policy adviser in the history of the White House. His path to his current position as deputy national security adviser for strategic communications was, as this New York Times profile informs us, "perhaps not strictly believable, even as fiction."

Forget his title. Ben Rhodes is "the single most influential voice shaping American foreign policy aside from Potus himself," according to the Times. What makes that so bizarre is that Rhodes has no background in foreign policy at all. He was a failed short story writer who wandered into the orbit of Obama aides almost by accident and served as a speechwriter during the campaign.

But he helped the administration identify friendly reporters and nonprofits who could be counted on to carry a completely false and misleading "narrative" about the Iran deal.

And it worked.

John Podhoretz:

The storyline they peddled was that the Iran deal had been negotiated in a furious round of back-and-forthing in 2014 and 2015, with the United States getting far better terms out of Iran than it expected due to the flexibility of a newly moderate government in Tehran. It was, Samuels says, a deliberately misleading narrative. The general terms were actually hammered out in 2012 by the State Department officials Jake Sullivan and William Burns, rooted on Obamas deep desire from the beginning of the administration to strike a grand deal with the mullahs. Why on earth was such conduct remotely acceptable? Because, Samuels makes clear, Rhodes and Obama believe theyre the only sensible thinkers in America and that theres no way to get the right things done other than to spin them. I mean, Id prefer a sober, reasoned public debate, after which members of Congress reflect and take a vote, he tells Samuels. But thats impossible. Impossible? There was a sober, reasoned public debate over the Iran deal. Its opponents were deadly serious. In the end, 58 senators voted against it on sober, reasoned grounds. What the Samuels piece shows is that the Obama administration chose to attempt to get its way not by winning an argument but by bringing an almost fathomless cynicism to bear in manipulating its own clueless liberal fan club.

It's amazing how Rhodes sees himself and his role. He refers to the foreign policy establishment as "the blob," and at bottom, he believes he and Obama are the only smart ones in the room.

Weekly Standard:

Samuels's profile is an amazing piece of writing about the Holden Caulfield of American foreign policy. He's a sentimental adolescent with literary talent (Rhodes published one short story before his mother's connections won him a job in the world of foreign policy), and high self regard, who thinks that everyone else is a phony. Those readers who found Jeffrey Goldberg's picture of Obama in his March Atlantic profile refreshing for the president's willingness to insult American allies publicly will be similarly cheered here by Rhodes's boast of deceiving American citizens, lawmakers, and allies over the Iran deal. Conversely, those who believe Obama risked American interests to take a cheap shot at allies from the pedestal of the Oval Office will be appalled to see Rhodes dancing in the end zone to celebrate the well-packaged misdirections and even lieswhat Rhodes and others call a "narrative"that won Obama his signature foreign policy initiative.

The creation of that narrative was, as Samuels points out, a tissue of lies and misdirection that made the Iran deal sound a lot better than it really was. All you have to do to discover the extent of their flim-flamming is to look at the talking points about the agreement after the preliminary deal was agreed to in April and compare it with the final agreement in July. The dishonesty in selling this deal to Congress was so profound that we still don't know yet how Iran is interpreting parts of it.

Samuels's profile is very long and, at times, strains credulity that such a creature could become a top adviser to the president. But it also unintentionally reveals how easily the Washington press corps can be manipulated into doing the president's bidding. There was very little objective analysis of the Iran deal, nor any attempt to reconcile what was in the deal with what the administration was claiming in public.

If there had been, it's doubtful that the deal would have gone through Congress.
The difference between 1,237 and 1,600 isn't 363; it's the difference between the Republican nomination and the White House.

A Trump victory in November may require anti-Trump conservatives to board the Trump train, but already a number of pundits and Republican politicians have vowed not to support Donald Trump.

According to The Hill , Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska is proposing a third-party challenge to Trump. The Weekly Standard's Bill Kristol has come up with a few names that might fit the bill. The Hill also lists radio host Glenn Beck, former congressman Ron Paul, Erick Erickson, political strategist Liz Mair, and former governor Tom Ridge, among others, as those who will not vote for the presumptive nominee. On Wednesday, George W. Bush and his father said they had no plans to endorse Trump. An aide to Mitt Romney says the failed presidential candidate will not attend the Republican National Convention in July. Ditto for John McCain. Speaker of the House Paul Ryan announced he's "just not ready" yet to back Trump.

Does Trump really need their support? Not only has the New York real estate mogul managed to beat out 16 opponents to be the presumptive nominee of the Republican Party, but his candidacy has given rise to what many are calling a "historic political movement."

During the 2008 primary season , Republicans tallied over 15 million votes. Eight years later, that number is over 25 million. Tuesday's Indiana primary saw an increase in 2016 of over 600,000 votes from 2008 totals on the Republican side. Trump won that contest in a landslide. A certain faction of the Republican Party may feel splintered off, but Americans from all over are coming together and uniting to vote for Trump.

Moreover, removing status quo GOP stalwarts and their globalist cronies from power has been the driving force behind Trump's candidacy. Who needs their endorsement? Trump has altered the political landscape so much party unity, if it includes the same-old special interests D.C. crowd, may actually work against him. The more politicians like Ryan and Romney reject Trump, the closer he gets to the White House.
Judicial Watch released more Hillary emails that were withheld from State Department after she claimed to have turned over all of them. This contradicts earlier sworn statements and raises potential legal issues:

Judicial Watch today released new State Department emails (one batch of 103 pages, the second of 138 pages) that again appear to contradict statements by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that, as far as she knew, all of her government emails were turned over to the State Department and that she did not use her clintonemail.com system until March 18, 2009. (snip) Many of the documents predate March 18, 2009, go back as far as January, and were not turned over by Clinton to the State Department from her non-government server. The emails cover topics such as: her schedule and travel plans; criticisms of Clinton by Richard Gere; Afghanistan; U.S. financial aid and security concerns for several Pacific Islands; the recommendation for a health care system overhaul; and food security.

No doubt Hillary will claim that the withholding was inadvertent and that aides are responsible for the oversight. Her lickspittles in the media will accept this and deny criminal intent.

But there is one juicy tidbit concerning the odd relationship between Hillary and her very close aide, Huma Abedin, who, we just learned, was already grilled by the FBI a month ago.

The Abedin emails include an exchange with Clintons former Deputy Chief of Staff Jacob Sullivan, in which Abedin suggests Clinton would often complain of being exhausted: From: Abedin, Huma To: Sullivan, Jacob J. Sent: Thursday, April 16 18:54:22 2009 Subject: I have to go to the dinner with her [state dinner in Santa Domingo, Dominican Republic] I just got the Im exhausted thing from her and Eugene [likely Eugene Bae, Clintons advance official] isnt going to be able to tell Oscar de la Renta to shut up. A March 31, 2011, email from State Department official Michael Hammer to Abedin and others shows yet another non-State.gov email address of HumaMAbedin[Redacted], which differs from the known Huma@clintonemail.com and HAbedin@hillaryclinton.com. These emails further undermine Hillary Clintons statement, under penalty of perjury, suggesting she turned over all of her government emails to the State Department, said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. How many more Hillary Clinton emails is the Obama State Department hiding?

Is Huma griping about the Im exhausted thing? At a minimum, it suggests that Hillary frequently complains about being exhausted, reinforcing a talking point Donald Trump has already used about Hillary  one he is expert at wielding (remember low-energy Jeb?)

But it also suggests that Huma has her limits in putting up with her boss.

I was stunned last week to read this in Newsweek:

She was a very, very religious personshe didnt smoke, drink or swear, always very polite, recalls one Clinton friend, who, like most people who spoke to Newsweek, asked not to be named. A lot of times, Hillary would snap her fingers and go, Gum. And Huma would fetch it. Abedin took her duties so seriously, the source recalled, that when she learned that Clinton had once carried her own bag up a flight of stairs in her aides absence, Abedin nearly burst into tears.

Perhaps that level of devotion has frayed a bit?
A perfect illustration of the power of identity politics and how even public safety must take a back seat to political correctness.

The Oakland police department issued a statement yesterday that celebrating Cinco de Mayo is fine, but remember to designate a sober driver so that no one drives drunk.

A commonsense and perfectly logical warning. During holidays, DUIs shoot up, and the police want to protect pedestrians and other drivers from irresponsible drinkers.

For some reason, the Mexican community found this "offensive":

First, the Oakland Police Department put out a Cinco de Mayo news release called "Fiesta Time or Jail Time" that equated the cultural holiday with getting buzzed on margaritas and shots of tequila. Then, early Tuesday, after receiving complaints that some of the language in the advisory about extra DUI patrols was offensive, police officials issued an apology. But apparently that was not enough. By Tuesday afternoon the department said it was pulling the plug on the special enforcement plans. "The decision was made that that particular operation was going to be canceled," police Spokeswoman Johnna Watson said. Watson said she could not say why. Watson stressed that the department would still deploy extra officers who will be on the alert for drunken driving and other criminal activity during the holiday. However, she said, the specific DUI traffic patrols that are paid for by a state grant will be moved to another date. The decision came just hours after a public apology for an advisory that the department called "completely insensitive to the cultural holiday." The message said, "In the United States, Cinco de Mayo has become synonymous with festive fiestas and salty margaritas," and later added " ... present-day celebrations often lead to drunken driving." Watson said the department had received a half dozen email complaints. "It's important not to lose focus that our intention is to remind everyone of public safety and if you are going to be drinking, to designate a sober driver," Watson said. "At the same time, we have to be careful about our language and not use words that can be offensive." The language was drafted by the California Office of Traffic Safety, and used by other law enforcement agencies as well.

What words in that statement were "offensive" to anyone except people who want to get behind the wheel after getting drunk? There is no cultural dog whistle in that statement  just a simple acknowledgment that it's a holiday, and people tend to drink too much while driving.

But in this age of political correctness, meaning doesn't matter. It's how you can twist words and turn them into a race issue that's the point. The power to interpret  or deliberately misinterpret  the meaning of anything that originates with authorities is what gives juice to minority communities. And it's done at the expense of public safety.

I sincerely hope no one was killed yesterday because the police found it necessary to bow to identity politics rather than take drunk drivers off the streets.
Several high-profile Republicans have indicated recently that they can't support Donald Trump for president. The two President Bushes, Mitt Romney, much of the GOP foreign policy establishment, and several senators, including Ben Sasse, have all said they will sit out the election.

Speaker Paul Ryan hasn't quite abjured his support for Trump, but he made clear to Jake Tapper that Trump must change for him to endorse him.

"I'm just not ready to do that at this point. I'm not there right now," the Wisconsin Republican told CNN's "The Lead with Jake Tapper" in an interview. Ryan's position makes him the highest-level GOP official to reject Trump since the real estate mogul became the last candidate standing in the party's nominating contest. His move gives down-ballot Republicans cover to hold off on supporting Trump. It could also keep his agenda in the House from being overtaken by Trump's policy positions. Ryan said he hopes to eventually back Trump and "to be a part of this unifying process." The first moves, though, must come from Trump, he said. Ryan said he wants Trump to unify "all wings of the Republican Party and the conservative movement" and then run a campaign that will allow Americans to "have something that they're proud to support and proud to be a part of." "And we've got a ways to go from here to there," Ryan said. Asked whether Trump's proposed Muslim ban, his opposition to free trade and his call to deport 12 million undocumented immigrants would preclude him from ever supporting Trump, Ryan said: "We got work to do." Trump responded to Ryan late Thursday afternoon, saying in a statement that "I am not ready to support Speaker Ryan's agenda. Perhaps in the future we can work together and come to an agreement about what is best for the American people. They have been treated so badly for so long that it is about time for politicians to put them first!" Trump didn't address Ryan's comments at a campaign event Thursday night in Charleston, West Virginia. But speaking to reporters at the event, Trump's campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, dismissed the idea that the remarks are a slap in the face to the presumptive nominee coming from the leader of the Republican Party. Lewandowski then pointed to onstage to Trump. "That's the leader of the Republican Party," Lewandowski said, adding that it's too early to say where Trump and Ryan might find common ground in terms of their political agenda.

Trump was surprisingly diplomatic about the snub from Ryan, considering that the speaker is asking him to toss out the agenda that got him the nomination and substitute Ryan's.

But perhaps Ryan would be satisfied with a change in tone from Trump. Other politicians like Senator Susan Collins have indicated they could support Trump if he stopped his juvenile name-calling and insults. That's easier said than done for Trump, who appears to relish getting laughs and cheers at his rallies when he lays into his latest target.

Calling on Trump to unify the party before he offers his support, Ryan has to realize that things have gotten way beyond simple concepts like "unity." For many in the GOP, opposing Trump has become a matter of principle, which is why, like the Whigs in the 1840s, the GOP as we know it is headed for the dustbin of history.
The Clinton spin machine went into high gear yesterday. A series of leaks to the media cascaded out a day after Catherine Herridge of Fox News broke the story that Romanian hacker Guccifer told her that he had easily been able to hack into her private email server, and browse through the emails that we now know contained material of the highest classification. Notably, NBC News had access to this information earlier, but sat on it for weeks, leaving the scoop to Fox News, which is bizarre behavior for a purported news organization. But then again, other mainstream media largely have ignored the Fox scoop.

But they are not ignoring the leaks about Huma Abedin, Hillary Clintons closest aide, being grilled by the FBI for two hours a month ago. Other Clinton aides, reportedly, also have been interviewed. Who is doing the leaking and why now are two important questions. My gut tells me that we are being played, that it is the Clinton camp spinning the arrival of bad news via anonymous sources.

Dan Quentin Wilbur of the LA Times:

Huma Abedin, a close aide to Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton, was questioned last month by FBI agents investigating whether classified material was mishandled on the private email server used by the former secretary of State and her aides, according to a person familiar with the investigation. Abedin was interviewed for about two hours at the FBIs field office in Washington on April 5, according to the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing.

The spin began with the speed of light.

Most legal experts, including a number of former federal prosecutors, believe that Clinton faces little risk of being prosecuted for using the private email system to conduct official business when she served as secretary of State. Using a private email system was not banned at the time, her supporters note, and other senior government officials also have used personal email to transact official business.

Hillarys apologists in the DavidBrockosphere are mightily spinning. The familiar and specious argument that there was no criminal intent prominently appears in many MSM accounts. Matt Zapotosky of the Washington Post makes it his lede:

Prosecutors and FBI agents investigating Hillary Clintons use of a personal email server have so far found scant evidence that the leading Democratic presidential candidate intended to break classification rules, though they are still probing the case aggressively with an eye on interviewing Clinton herself, according to U.S. officials familiar with the matter.

That is pure spin from the Clinton camp. The relevant federal statute is based on gross negligence, a standard by which intent is irrelevant. As Charles Cooke pointed out at NRO:

18 USC 793(f)(1)-(2) holds that: Whoever, being entrusted with or having lawful possession or control of any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, note, or information, relating to the national defense, 1) through gross negligence permits the same to be removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of his trust, or to be lost, stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, or (2) having knowledge that the same has been illegally removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of its trust, or lost, or stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, and fails to make prompt report of such loss, theft, abstraction, or destruction to his superior officer Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both. As far as I can see, Clinton is guilty of violating at least two federal laws[.]

There is some reason to believe that the anonymous officials leaking the story are from the State Department, which has consistently spun in Hillarys favor. John Sexton at Hot Air connects the dots:

[T]here is no source named for this story but it does say the FBI and DOJ declined to comment. Speculating a bit here, the other agency that has been heavily involved in the process from the start is the State Department. The State Department has reliably taken Clintons side at every point, making their judgment somewhat suspect. Of course we cant say for sure thats where this is coming from but if it is then its little better than a press release from the Clinton camp. (snip) [W]eve seen Clintons camp (and the State Department is firmly in her camp) try to get ahead of negative stories before with statements that turn out to be false or at least unverifiable. For instance, last August when the FBI seized Clintons private server she put out a statement which said, She directed her team to give her email server that was used during her tenure as Secretary to the Department of Justice That made it sound as if she was the one taking the initiative when, in fact, it appears she had nothing to do with the decision and no choice in the matter. When asked if Clinton had given this direction to her staff before or after being contacted by the FBI, her spokesman would not say.

While I have little confidence in the Justice Department when it comes to acting on whatever information is developed by the FBI in its investigations, I take the timing and nature of the spin effort underway as a signal that the Clinton camp realizes that some bad news is coming the way of Hillary. I am not alone in my suspicions.
Long ago, a large part of north-western Europe, particularly Ireland and Great Britain, were covered in bogs. These soggy wetlands, composed of partially decomposed remains of dead plants, formed at the end of the last ice age, about 10,000 years ago. At this time, much of north-western Europe was covered by shallow lakes left behind by the melting glaciers. Poor drainage and build up of dead plants created layer upon layer of peat. Researchers estimate that nearly one-fifth of Ireland was covered by bogs.

In order to cross these marshy lands, the ancient people built raised wooden roads or trackways. These wooden trackways, unique to Europe, were built from the Neolithic times until the middle ages. Originally they were used for foot traffic, but once wheeled carts were invented and introduced into the north of Europe they became a necessity. Eventually, the trackways deteriorated and fell into the bogs, where the unique chemical structure of the bog soil and the lack of oxygen preserved these ancient structures to this date.

Photo credit: Kevin King/Wikimedia

One of the best preserved examples of wooden trackways is the Corlea Trackway that lie across an ancient bog near the village of Keenagh, south of Longford town, in Ireland. The trackway is a kilometer long and wide enough to fit a cart.

The Corlea Trackway is located in an area where large-scale mechanised peat harvesting is carried out to supply raw materials for the peat-fired power stations. While the area today is a flat brownish wasteland, in the Iron Age it was covered by bog, quicksand, and ponds. This was surround by dense woodlands of birch, willow, hazel and alder while higher ground was covered by oak and ash. The terrain was dangerous and impassible for much of the year.

In 1984, while digging for peat, the trackway was discovered about two meters under the surface of the bog. Tree ring analysis of the oak planks used to construct the trackway revealed the trees were felled in late 148 B.C. or early 147 B.C. Further excavation revealed more than a hundred trackways in the area and an additional seventy-six trackways were discovered in the nearby Derryoghil bog.

The Visitor Center containing the preserved section of the Corlea Trackway. Photo credit: www.ancientireland.org

The majority of these trackways, also called toghers in Ireland, are constructed from woven hurdles laid on heaped brushwood on top of the surface. The Corlea Trackway is made from oak planks 3 to 3.5 meters long and around 15 centimeters thick, laid on rails. To construct this kilometer-long walkway, the wood of at least 300 large oak trees must have been felled. This would amount to a thousand wagons loaded with oak. Around the same amount of birch wood was used for the rails beneath.

The Corlea Trackway ended on a small elevated land, from which a second trackway, again around 1 kilometer long, connected to dry land on the far side of the bog. Wood used to build the second trackway came from oaks that were cut down in the same period as that for the Corlea Trackway, so there is good reason to believe that the entire road system was completed in one year. The construction of the roadway must have required a great deal of labour, which is odd because the Corlea Trackway seems to have no useful purpose that justifies the immense undertaking.

Not all trackways were built to cross bogs. Some were also designed to get into the bogs, and the Corlea Trackway might have been one of them. Over the centuries, archeologists and peat harvesters have pulled out hundreds of bodies from peats across Europe. These bodies bear signs of violent death that suggest they were either victims of ritual sacrifice or prisoners executed for their crimes. Read more about these bog bodies.

About 18 meters of the original Corlea Trackway is now preserved in a specially designed hall with humidifiers to prevent the ancient wood from decomposing or cracking in the heat. A surrounding area of 4 hectares of intact raised bog with the trackway was left undisturbed in waterlogged conditions. About 80 meters of buried trackway, leading to the visitor center was boarded over with modern boardwalk.

The preserved section of the Corlea Trackway inside the display hall. Photo credit: www.boomingback.org

Photo credit: www.ancientireland.org

Photo credit: Peter Mattock/Flickr

Photo credit: www.ancientireland.org

Another wooden trackway discovered in Annaholty Bog, in Ireland, and subsequently excavated. The trackway was up to 7m wide and 65-70m long, connecting two islands of dry ground within the bog. Dendrochronological dates place the felling of the trees around 40BC. Photo credit: www.tvasireland.ie

A replica of a trackway called the Sweet Track in Shapwick Heath, Somerset Levels, England. The original was built in 3807 or 3806 BC to cross a marsh. Photo credit: Geof Sheppard/Wikimedia

A replica of another neolithic trackway in Somerset, called Abbots Way. It was built around 2000 BC. The replica no longer exist, as it was washed away in a flood. Photo credit: www.megalithic.co.uk

The Corlea Trackway. Photo credit: Tommy Reynolds/Flickr

Sources: Wikipedia / www.megalithicireland.com / Old European Culture / www.ancientireland.org
The story surrounding Motorola and Google just continues on it seems, despite the fact that Google sold much of Motorola Mobility to Lenovo back in 2014. Recently, news surfaced that Motorolas Rick Osterloh, who left the firm earlier this year, would return to Google to head up a new hardware division at the Internet giant. Osterloh was instrumental at the new Motorola under Google as a lead product developer for key launches like the Moto X and Moto G that helped put Motorola back on the map. Now, hes headed to Google to manage a hardware division that hopes to bring all of Googles disparate hardware ventures under one division, giving them a focus. One initiative that isnt technically all Googles is Android One, and now that is set to be thrown into the mix for Osterlohs new division.

According to Googles own Mike Hayes, Android One has become a part of the broader hardware strategy, under which Motorolas Rick Osterloh has joined Google recently. This would put Android One under the control of someone who has experience creating products, including budget-minded options like the Moto E and Moto G, so it makes sense to put Android One under Osterlohs purview. While Android One hasnt become the runaway success that Google was surely hoping it to become, it has helped get Android into the hands of more people. Hayes was specifically talking about the Indian market in the interview, where he says that deals with local vendors in the country such as Karbonn, Micromax and Spice are still valid and more devices are definitely on their way to market.

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Android One is the sort of thing that Google will use to cement Android in a region, by making sure that those looking for the cheapest devices out there can get something running Android, and for the most part, its working. The first-generation of devices however did have some limitations, and hopefully these, as well as other issues will be ironed out in future releases. With Rick Osterloh now having a say in Android One, its possible that these devices will start to offer even more value, as the Moto E and Moto G have been praised for their great balance between features and price for a long time now.
Google is utilizing its A.I. expertise for just about everything it can think of, from using the technology to power self-driving cars to using it for improving search rankings. Googles DeepMind division even created the AlphaGo A.I. to challenge world champion Go player Lee Sedol and beat him. Now Google is doing something a little bit different. Its making an A.I. engine read copious amounts of romance novels. The reason? It wants the A.I. engine to be more conversational, and according to the details, the trick is apparently working as the teaching process has resulted in the engine having the ability to write out sentences that appear as they do in the books.

This might seem like a weird experiment but there is a method to the madness. Google is trying to make the Google app more conversational by teaching it to understand the nuances of what people ask it. What Google is hoping by doing this is that it will make using the Google app and asking it questions more of a fun process and more human-like. This ties somewhat into what Googles speech engineers were talking about with Nat & Lo when they went behind the scenes of the new voice for the Google app back in March.

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In total, Google has fed 2,685 romance novels into the A.I. engine for the past couple of months. Whether or not Google feels there is more conversational skills for it to learn at this point wasnt made clear although they seem to be finished with this particular stage of the improvement to the engine. Where they plan to move forward with this is to get the A.I. to use the conversational styles its picked up during its steamy book sessions to better humanize the Google app and other products which are powered by the A.I. technology. According to Google, romance novels helped the A.I. learn more efficiently because they follow a similar plot with different wording, allowing the A.I. to grasp the similar meanings across different sentences with the ultimate goal of helping it reach a more nuanced understanding of the language. As for why it had to read so many books to achieve Googles desired results, Google says its because the A.I. may only be able to pick up small bits of information from each book, so they would need to use tons of data and compile it all to get what they needed.
Do you plan on buying a new smartphone this year? This is the question many companies are hoping you will answer with a firm and resounding yes. While it could be argued that every year, these companies are hoping you will upgrade and buy their latest evolutionary smartphone, this year things are a little bit different. The reason for this difference  reports on smartphone sales worldwide for the first quarter.

In case you havent been following the news. Smartphones sell and they sell a lot. Each year, more and more smartphones are being sold and with the commonly referred to emerging markets emerging more as mega markets, the long-held assumption has been that the smartphone gravy train would continue rolling indefinitely. At the very least, for the foreseeable future. But last week, things changed when the first reports starting coming through from Strategy Analytics and essentially confirming that the first quarter of 2016 resulted in a worldwide year-on-year contraction. Correction, the first on record year-on-year contraction.

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Yep, according to the data, the first quarter of 2016 is the beginning of the end for smartphones sales. Of course, this is all relative as the same report does detail that as many as 335 million units were shipped in Q1 of 2016. And by anyones standards, that it still a hefty number of units being shipped in three months. Maybe even a number which some would call healthy. But in this world of ever-changing tech, healthy is not really defined by how many you are selling, it is more about the longevity in your business model, its sustainability. And this is why the market did shake a little when the latest results came through. It is not that sales are bad, as 335 million units is clearly not bad, but the fact that this represented a drop of 3-percent compared to sales for the same period last year  which came in at $345 million. As Strategy Analysts put it, It is the first time ever in history the global smartphone market has shrunk on an annualized basis.

So no matter whether you take the end is nigh approach or the 335 million approach, it is clear that there is a problem with smartphone sales. The problem is not that people are not buying them, but more so, they are not buying them as much or as frequently as they used to. And to be clear this is not an Android problem as the same quarter saw Apple reporting a year on year decline for the first time in thirteen years. So while not as dramatic as the first time ever in history, the fact that Apple buyers are buying Apple products less frequently in the first quarter of 2016 than they did last year (a pattern which has now been bucked for the first time in 13 years), does further add to the industry-wide concern that this could be the start of something bigger. Of course, if we were to focus on the iOS/Android debate, then the Apple loss of market share is one of the big specific and driving losses for Q1 smartphone sales overall, but this is an aspect which affects all vendors. While some smartphone vendors (mainly Chinese OEMs) are seeing an increase and taking away from the bigger name like Samsung and Apple, smartphone sales as a whole are down.

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So what is causing it? Why are you not buying smartphone products as frequently as you should beor used to? While the industry will look to answer this, the real answer is likely to be a combination of things. Firstly, there is the two-pronged lack of innovation/smartphone greatness issue. And this is a complicated and almost contradictory one. On the one hand, smartphone makers are very often being accused of not being innovative enough. HTC for instance, released a perfectly good handset last year and one which could be easily defined as a good purchase. However, the market, be that the consumers or the media (or a combination of both) deemed the HTC One M9 as not evolutionary enough. The other pronged part of this issue is that smartphones are now significantly better than they have ever been. In fact, it could be argued that any of the top-tier flagship smartphones that you purchase this year, will be one of the best smartphones that has ever been created. While the arguments will rage over which of the top-tier phones is best, the commonality is that they all represent a massive improvement over smartphones of the past. Whether the media and market deem them enough of an improvement is irrelevant. They are still the best. You want pure design, Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge is the one. You want innovation to the point those most of us are having trouble understanding, go for the LG G5. You want a more compact, yet stylish smartphone, head for the HTC 10. You want 6GB RAM priced at under $400, you got it with the OnePlus 3.

And this is where this combined issue is now starting to take shape. On the one hand, consumers are hearing about the lack of innovation and opt not to buy this time around (meaning this year). While on the other hand, those who are buying are getting such super smartphones. Ones which mean that they are suddenly feeling less of a need to update at the time of the next product cycle. To be clear, while the innovation down and quality up cycle has been in effect for the last few years, those years have been predicting this year-on-year contraction was coming. The warning signs have been there and 2016 just marks the year in which (for Q1 at least), the barrier was broken with sales down. However, there could also be another reason as to why sales are down this quarter and even this year.

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It does also have to be addressed that 2016 is the first year in which virtual reality seems to be a mainstream product. Of course, that has not happened yet, as sales of VR units are still way too low for it to be considered an actual mainstream product. But it does seem clear that virtual reality is now a mainstream thought in the back of consumers minds. As a result, many will be planning on buying a new virtual reality-related product this year and for the first time. With Samsung, HTC, Sony and even Google looking to really drive forward with virtual reality in 2016, it could be the case that consumers are having their heads turned a little by virtual reality. That is, turned away from smartphones. While Samsung wants you to buy the Galaxy S7 Edge and HTC wants you to buy the HTC 10, maybe the HTC Vive or the Sony PlayStation VR is what is catching your attention, dividing your interest and ultimately, going to be an example of the product which you will purchase this year. After all, if the HTC 10 (relatively) costs the same price as the HTC Vive and you are still rocking that great Nexus 6P from the end of last year, then what is the harm in forgoing the HTC 10 this year and opting for the HTC Vive instead. By the time the HTC 11 comes out, you will only be 18 months behind the smartphone market, but you will be at the forefront of the virtual reality market.

While individually we all might be thinking what is the harm? The reality is that this is the harm. Market contraction. While one person looking to postpone their latest smartphone purchase is not a big deal, when the market as a whole is shifting in a similar direction (consumers and the media), then the repercussions of all that shifting is a slowdown in sales to the point where Q1 of 2016 marks first time ever in history the global smartphone market has shrunk on an annualized basis. So while it is true that the market is healthy and 335 million smartphones were shipped, indicators like innovation (or lack thereof), quality (requiring less frequent product cycles) and virtual reality (stealing attention) do highlight that the smartphone market is changing. While the change has been happening for some time and is a slow change at the moment, the next quarter will be where we get to see if this is actually becoming an issue or not. If Q2 of 2016 also sees a similar level of contraction year-on-year, then that will mean the bi-yearly results are also likely to be contracting too. Which in turn will fuel the notion that 2016 as a whole will be smartphone market contracting year, overall. Takeaway  your Nexus 6P is old now, go buy a smartphone.
Unlicensed LTE, or LTE-U, is an emerging technology designed to allow carriers to boost coverage in small, specific areas by broadcasting into the unlicensed frequencies. By unlicensed, this is referring to parts of the spectrum used by 802.11 Wi-Fi and Bluetooth frequencies, typically at the 2.4 GHz and 5.0 GHz points. LTE-U can be used to increase coverage in especially busy areas, such as a major sporting event, or perhaps deep inside buildings. One of the main criticisms of LTE-U is from Wi-Fi equipment manufacturers and operators, citing that the technology could effectively block access to their networks. For those readers who live or work in an area with several Wi-Fi networks within range and where getting a reliable connection can be troublesome, this sounds ironic! However, mindful of the opposition to LTE-U and with a nod towards many carriers aligning their business model to control a customers connection as much as possible, a new, improved and refined standard has been implemented called LAA, which stands for License Assisted Access. LAA technology relies on the carrier pairing up unlicensed spectrum with licensed and includes a number of technologies designed to reduce or eliminate interference between unlicensed LTE, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth radios such as listen before talk. For the time being, LAA is not ready but LTE-U is and is being tested to prove that it can cooperate with existing networks.

Many networking equipment manufacturers have announced that existing equipment designed around LTE-U will be software upgradeable to the newer LAA standard, which has presumably allayed fears from carriers not wanting to support LTE-U as this could be a dead end, short lived technology. One month ago, Qualcomm, one of the leading manufacturers behind both LTE-U and LAA, asked the FCC for permission to test LTE-U networking in North America inconjunction with T-Mobile USA, following a similar test in conjunction with Verizon Wireless. Weve received word today that the FCC has granted Qualcomm a Special Temporary Authorization order allowing it to test LTE-U in four locations across America. These are T-Mobile USAs test facilities at Bellevue, Washington, Simi Valley in California, Richardson in Texas and North Las Vegas, Nevada. Qualcomm is likely to be operating the LTE-U network at these locations in order to prove that the technology will happily coexist and cooperate with other networking standards.

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As part of the temporary arrangement, which expires on the 21 October, Qualcomm must coordinate and comply with the Western Area Frequency Coordinator at Ventura, California, before operating at the 5.8 GHz frequency. Qualcomm also needs to obtain the consent of local AWS licensees before using the 1.7 GHz, 1.9 GHz. 2.0 GHz or 2.1 to 2.2 GHz frequencies for testing. Dean Brenner, Qualcomms Senior Vice President of Government Affairs explained: Qualcomm continues to prove fair coexistence between LTE-U and Wi-Fi through our own testing, through third-parties and through our work with other stakeholders within the LTE and Wi-Fi industries  Qualcomm is very pleased that the FCC granted our request and will continue to work with the FCC and other stakeholders to ensure LTE-U will fairly coexist with Wi-Fi.
Rugged, tough, active, call em what you will, but waterproof, dustproof and shockproof all-weather devices are steadily becoming more popular. A number of companies unrelated to the smartphone industry are now throwing their hats in the smartphone ring by announcing such ruggedized handsets targeted at the outdoorsy types and industry workers. Of course, the devices will also offer additional options to the large number of consumers who spend lots of money each year on cases and covers hoping those accessories will protect their costly investments from total destruction in case of drops or liquid spillage.

As for companies that are getting into the rugged smartphone business, power tool-maker Dewalt announced its MD501 handset earlier this month, while British automotive brand Land Rover announced a tie-up with an electronics design firm earlier this week to launch its own lineup of rugged devices. Sadly though, not all tier-1 smartphone vendors look to tap into the niche rugged smartphone market, leaving it wide open for companies such as Caterpillar and Kyocera to be major players in an admittedly miniscule market. Samsung though, is an exception. The company is one of the only top-flight smartphone OEMs to have actually released at least one rugged smartphone every year over the past few years as part of its Galaxy Active lineup. Now, rumors originating out of Vietnam seem to suggest that the South Korean tech giant is prepping a new rugged smartphone that will be released on AT&T in the U.S. as the Galaxy S7 Active.

What we do have are a bunch of low-resolution images that seem to show the camouflaged back panel of a smartphone with what looks like rubberized protection on all four sides. While theres no way to verify the legitimacy of the report at this stage, Samsungs Galaxy Active range has launched on AT&T every year since 2013, so it wouldnt be too much of a stretch to expect that the two companies will look to extend their partnership this year as well, especially as rugged smartphones are believed to be seeing more demand in recent times. Meanwhile, the leak also suggests that the Galaxy S7 Active will be powered by the Snapdragon 820 and sport 4 GB of LPDDR4 RAM, making it quite possibly the most powerful rugged device once launched.
When it comes to densifying a network, small cells is the most popular solution. We covered small cells in depth last year, to put it simply, small cells are little towers that can be mounted on utility poles throughout cities and towns to extend coverage and increase bandwidth. Carriers have typically kept to using them in heavily populated areas like downtown areas, stadiums and the like. With carriers focusing on densifying their networks, particularly Sprint and Verizon, small cells have been a pretty popular product for fiber companies. Which include Zayo and Lumos, both of whom talked about small cells on their recent quarterly earnings calls. However, they also noted that its tough to tell what the demand will be for small cells in the immediate future. But do believe that T-Mobile and AT&T will be relying on them soon enough for their own networks.

Zayos CEO Dan Caruso stated on his companys earnings call this week that small cells are interesting because its live, its all over the map right now. Caruso also mentioned that there is a bit of a learning curve here with small cells. Mentioning that those bidding on projects, implementing them, and investors are not too sure where the prices should be. Weve seen some deals in pricing out there that frankly we scratch our head at Caruso stated. The companys CFO, Kenneth desGarennes added to the conversation and stated that Zayo has been working on a deal in Texas for small cells that it just completed in March, after taking 18 months to work on. This was to drive the point that its not out of the ordinary to work on some of these deals for a long period of time before they get inked.

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Backhaul is pretty important for carriers wireless networks. It essentially opens up capacity for everyone to get more out of their wireless network. Small cells has been a great way to increase backhaul for carriers because its cheaper than getting another tower, and it doesnt require much maintenance. While analysts believe that small cells are going to continue to be a popular topic over the next year or so, its tough for fiber companies to gauge just how big of a deal it is at this current point in time.
Sprint is providing Kansas City residents an opportunity to experience the smart city concept at its best. Through a collaboration with Cisco, the carrier today launched its Sprint Wi-Fi network which will be available for Kansas City residents as well as Sprints own customers. The Wi-Fi network will be available along the 2.2-mile Kansas City Streetcar line which will run through downtown and will connect River Market, Kansas City Power & Light District and Crossroads which are among the citys most prominent districts.

Even though Sprint will bring in more facilities and services in the future, the Sprint Wi-Fi network on Kansas City Streetcar line is presently offering public Wi-Fi services which residents and visitors will be able to access through their connected devices. Additionally, existing Sprint customers will be able to choose from alternate high-speed connectivity options while travelling through or staying alongside the Streetcar line. The carrier has also set up 25 new digital kiosks on the Streetcar line which are connected to its Wi-Fi network and will offer residents and visitors access to city services, transportation services, cultural events and exhibitions taking place in the city. These kiosks will also alert residents and visitors during emergency situations. Sprint has also made use of Sensitys NetSense platform to automatically adjust street lights and thereby reduce light pollution and energy wastage.

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Today marks a significant day in the advancement of IoT services in the service provider industry. Cisco is pleased to work with Sprint on the advancement of a Cisco Smart+Connected Community framework as the company connects the digital kiosks, outdoor street lighting, the streetcar line, and other technologies to be utilized in Kansas City to its Wi-Fi network. Together we are demonstrating endless possibilities of new experiences in downtown Kansas City for years to come, said Suraj Shetty, VP and General Manager of mobility solutions at Cisco. To ensure that the Streetcar line gets to benefit from a range of advanced Internet of Things sensors and technologies, Sprint has implemented intelligent data management solutions and a network of wireless sensors along with a communications network.

As per Rootmetrics, Sprint is currently tied for the number one spot in network reliability, call and text performance in Kansas City. The new smart city project is a way to demonstrate its capabilities in offering the best network, capacity and speed to its customers and also its willingness to work with brand new and advanced IoT devices and sensors in its home city. After Kansas City, Sprint is also aiming to become the first U.S.-based Smart Connected+ Network in many other cities in Europe like Barcelona, Copenhagen, and Hamburg, but the carrier has not announced any timelines for such plans to be implemented. As per reports, Verizon is also planning to create new smart cities based on IoT technologies and has completed a few deals with the likes of Cisco, GE and IBM to implement its ideas in the coming days.
It looks like T-Mobiles CEO, John Legere is getting creative about advertising for his wireless company. Track Star and Two-Time Olympian, Nick Symmonds, auctioned off about 9 square inches on his right shoulder, over on eBay. Legere was the winning bid, at $21,800. The way that the advertising will be done is using a temporary tattoo. Which in the description of the auction over on eBay, Symmonds notes that the tattoo must be in the form of a logo, website URL, and/or social media username. The auction is only for the right shoulder, as the left shoulder is used for the Run Gum Company which Symmonds owns and founded in 2002. Symmonds writes in the description here that due to rules and regulations, during some races hell have to tape over the advertisement. As he can only have logos of his apparel and equipment manufacturers showing.

If you follow Legere at all on social media, youll know that he is a big fan of running. He will typically Periscope while running either with his daughter(s) or with the other executives at T-Mobile. Legere said that he is happy to do my part to support USA running & this amazing athlete! He is also asking his Twitter followers what he should have temporarily tattooed on the right shoulder of Symmonds. There are four choices in his Twitter poll, which include: #WeWontStop (Magenta T), American Flag, I Run Good, and F^@% AT&T w/ his emoji. Right now, the last choice which is taking aim at competitor AT&T is in the top spot with 47% of the vote. Followed by the American Flag.

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Its worth noting that AT&T is the official telecommunications partner for the US Olympic Committee since 1984, and for the US Track & Field since 2006. So using that profane ridden temporary tattoo would definitely get some attention during the 2016 Track & Field season. Symmonds has about 6 events listed that he plans to participate in, including the 2016 Olympic Summer Games which are taking place in Rio de Janiero, Brazil in mid-August. Symmonds says that he does still need to qualify for the national team  which those trials take place in early-July  but since he is a two-time Olympian, its pretty likely hell be involved.

There are a few hours left to vote on what Legere should have tattooed on his new advertising real estate. So head on over to his Twitter account and cast your vote.
Google has been besieged with one allegation after another in regards to its business practices over the past few years in Europe as well as in the US. The UK authorities charged the company with tax evasion last year after a multi-year investigation, and the company eventually agreed to pay 130 million to settle that case with the HMRC (Her Majestys Revenue Service), the UK equivalent of the IRS. The company has also faced allegations of abusing its position of dominance with regard to Android as well as its internet search service, and the European Unions Competition Commission under former Danish Deputy Prime Minister, Ms. Margrethe Vestager, has already been investigating the company on that front for years now.

Worryingly for Google, though, allegations that some of its practices are tantamount to monopolistic bullying are not just restricted to the EU either. Earlier this year, Google lost its case against Russias anti-monopoly watchdog, FAS (Federal Anti-monopoly Service), who started investigating the companys practices based on a complaint from the countrys largest internet company  Yandex. While the search giant has vowed to appeal against that verdict in Russia, the company will still have to deal with issues closer home, where the US FTC (Federal Trade Commission) has been investigating the company for alleged monopolistic trade practices because of the search giants insistence that its own apps and services, must be installed by its OEM partners on every Android device if they want to have access to Google Play.

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Meanwhile, as mentioned already, the European Unions Competition Commission is already investigating the exact same issue, alleging that the practice violates the regions stringent anti-monopoly regulations. While some sections of the media believe Google may eventually escape censure in the US by arguing that closer integration of its apps and services with Android helps end-users have a better overall experience, the Silicon Valley tech giant may not have such luck in convincing the more hawkish EU Commission that has already charged other American tech giants for what it considers breaches of regulatory guidelines prevalent in the region. A case in point would be the 2.2 billion ($2.5 billion) fine it slapped on Microsoft after a long investigation into the companys business practices.

While the EU regulator recently charged Google in its antitrust investigation regarding Android, it is an earlier case against the tech giant that might be coming towards a conclusion in the coming months. That case has been dragging on since 2010 and relates to whether Google unfairly and unlawfully favors its own shopping service in its search results in Europe. However, the tech giant apparently isnt too keen on reaching an out-of-court settlement with the EU Competition Commission in the matter. According to some observers, Googles insistence on going the distance rather than giving in to the demands of the EU antitrust watchdog might actually suit the company, because even if it ends up having to pay a fine, chances are it will still be significantly lower than the profits it stands to accrue from carrying on with business as usual.

From a pure profitability perspective, it is better off dragging out the competition case, continuing its practices for as long as possible, and ultimately paying a fine that will be smaller than the profits it generates by continuing the conduct. Thats according to Mr. Thomas Vinje, a lawyer whos said to have advised other tech companies on similar issues. Not that everyone is on the same page with him on this one, though. Mr. Ioannis Kokkoris, Professor of Law and Economics at Centre for Commercial Law Studies, Queen Mary University of London, UK, cites the example of Microsoft and its aforementioned multi-billion dollar fine to argue that the strategy of going to trial does have its pitfalls if the gamble does not pay off. According to him, You are entering a long battle, an expensive battle; and if you go to court, the outcome would not necessarily be better.

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It remains to be seen which way the cookie crumbles in the end, but for now, it looks increasingly likely that Google may well have to fork up a significant amount of cash as fines and penalties irrespective of whether it chooses to settle or go to trial. Now whether the company chooses to brush off those fines as a cost of doing business in the EU will be a different matter altogether, but the search giant will also need to remember that whatever happens in this case, may not only set a precedent for other regulators around the world to follow, a long drawn-out trial may also do the company a great disservice with respect to its already-strained relations with Ms. Vestager and her team, especially with the more financially significant case against Android still brewing in the background.
(ANSA) - Rome, May 6 - Italy must do more to ban illegally logged wood, Greenpeace environmentalist group said Friday. "According to the European Commission, Italy is among the least engaged in applying the EU Timber Regulation (EUTR) to stop the circulation of illegally logged wood," said Greenpeace Italy Executive Director Giuseppe Onufrio.

The EUTR went into effect in March 2013, and Italy has yet to take steps to implement it, he said. This not only harms timber-exporting countries but penalizes Italian companies that work lawfully, he said.

Illegal logging has severe economic, environmental and social impacts on some of the world's most valuable remaining forests and the communities that rely on them, according to the European Commission.


AMU foreign ministers express 'total' support for Sarraj Call for terms of Skhirat deal to be respected

(ANSAmed) - TUNIS, MAY 6 - The representatives of Mauritania, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya have expressed their "total" support for Libya's government of national unity led by Premier Fayez al Sarraj at a meeting of foreign ministers of the Arab Maghreb Union (AMU) in Tunis, it emerged on Friday. The meeting ended on Thursday with the reading of a joint statement also calling on the parliament of Tobruk to ensure that the terms of the UN-brokered political agreement signed in Skhirat, Morocco, are fully met. The AMU council of foreign ministers also highlighted the need to preserve Libyan sovereignty and unity and reaffirmed its opposition to foreign intervention in the country. (ANSAmed).




(ANSAmed) - CAIRO, MAY 6 - A renowned Egyptian lawyer and human rights activist has been detained for 15 days for allegedly attempting to overthrow the regime of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, daily newspaper Youm7 and other local media reported Friday.



Malek Adly has been detained in connection with protests on April 25 condemning the government's decision to recognise two Red Sea islands, administered by Egypt, as belonging to Saudi Arabia. The detention order was issued by the prosecutor's office in Shubra El Khema in north Cairo. The same office issued arrest warrants against Adly and at least another 46 people immediately after the protests, drawing criticism from human rights organisation Amnesty International. Adly works for the Egyptian Centre for Economic and Social rights and was also a key exponent in the movement to overthrow former president Hosni Mubarak. (ANSAmed).


FLORENCE - Premier Matteo Renzi said in his State of the European Union address Friday that shutting down EU borders would only mean locking Islamist terrorists in.



"They were born and bred in our home," he said. "International terrorism has struck at the heart of Europe using local killers, who were born in the same hospitals our children were born in". Renzi added that "either we recover culture as an element of identity or we lose this challenge".



Renzi also urged the European Union to invest in job creation both at home and in Africa instead of building walls against asylum seekers and allowing demagogues to flourish. Investing in Africa in a bid to help prospective migrants find livelihoods at home is not only ethical but also useful, he said. "We propose aiding Africa, helping the migrants in their homelands, investing in international development," Renzi said. "If we say we need to help them in their home countries however, we can't cut international development budgets - we need to take a risk and bet on Africa, not only because it's ethical but also because it's useful".



Renzi went on to say that Europe's failure to create employment provides fertile ground for the rise of populists and demagogues who play on the fears of the disenfranchised.
'Athos, the Colors of Faith' depict monks' lives and faith Rome, 120 photos by Stratos Kalafatis in the heart of Orthodoxy

(ANSAmed) - ROME, MAY 6 - Spirituality, faith, silence, mystery, untouched natural landscapes and meditation are what Mount Athos is most known for. The 'theocratic republic' in northern Greece is where Orthodox monks, spread out among a few medieval monasteries, live an existence of work and prayer that has remained unchanged for centuries and is depicted in an exhibition of photos by Stratos Kalafatis in Rome entitled 'Athos', the Colors of Faith'. Sponsored by the Greek embassy in Italy and the Italian section of the Greek Culture Foundation, the exhibition was inaugurated on Friday and will remain open until May 22 and includes 120 photos taken between 2008 and 2013. The photographer told ANSAmed that he had ''been at Mount Athos 26 times for a total of about 200 days. I took photos of monks as I would have taken photos of any other human subject.'' ''They gave me hospitality, warmth, friendship and openness.



During my trips I saw places, faces and images - especially that of the cross - that over time were transformed from an external object to an internal moment. I think that even though there are differences between Christians, all of us identify with the cross and its strong symbolism.'' Kalafatis's photos are all of very strong chromatically and the cross reappears often in different shapes, colors and sizes.



And then there are the faces: old, bearded monks as well as young ones portrayed in a light reminiscent of Caravaggio or Rembrandt. ''There is no electricity on Mount Athos. There is only natural light or candles and so I made these portraits like a painter from the past would have. And many of my influences -in addition to the photographers Diane Arbus, Anders Petersen and Alex Hoff - are Renaissance painters,'' the artist said, who is originally from Kavala in northern Greece. Women are not allowed on Mount Athos due to a ban known as 'avaton', and non-Orthodox Christian men are granted only very limited stays. Mount Athos is under the direct control of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople and not the Greek government.



Kalafatis's photos express all the evocative power of the place and its timelessness, even in the objects shown: a table, a fish on a dish, a parrot perched on a monk's arm and a monk working in the fields. Kalafatis is part of a tradition in which photography tries to enter this mysterious locale. The first photographer to get there was the Russian Sebastianof, who in 1860 produced about 40,000 photographs on glass plates. He was followed in the twentieth century by such well-known photographers as Stephane Passet and Fred Boissonnas as well as a series of famous Greek photographers in the 1950s and '60s, such as Takis Tloupas, Kostas Balafas and Spyros Metletzis.(ANSAmed).




ANSAmed - Weekly diary from May 9 to May 15

(ANSAmed) - ROME, MAY 6 - The following are some events scheduled in Euro-Mediterranean area between May 9 and May 15. MONDAY, MAY 9 VARIOUS CIIES - Europe Day to celebrate peace and unity in the continent TUNIS - Italy-Tunisia Business Forum VENICE - presentation of the 'Venice-Tunisia' project at the S.Maria Maggiore penitentiary, in which Italian, Tunisian and Moroccan detainees will translate children's messages into Arabic and Italian TUNIS - International Green Energy Conference InGEC and EmHyTec TUESDAY, MAY 10 BRUSSELS - EU agriculture and fisheries ministers to meet BRUSSELS - European Commissioner Violeta Bulc will be receiving Qatari transport minister Jassim Saif Ahmed Al Sulaiti WEDNESDAY, MAY 11 CANNES - International Film Festival (until 22/5) THURSDAY, MAY 12 POZZALLO (RAGUSA) - The Sabir (from the name of the language spoken in medieval ports) Festival will begin, with debates and initiatives focusing on the issue of refugee reception (until 15/5) DUBROVNIK (CROATIA) - First Forum of the EU Strategy for the Adriatic and Ionian Region (EUSAIR) (also 13/5) BRUSSELS - EU foreign ministers council to meet (also 13/5) FRIDAY, MAY 13 POZZALLO (RAGUSA) - The Sabir Festival continues (through 15/5) DUBROVNIK (CROATIA) - the First Forum of the EU Strategy for the Adriatic and Ionian Region (EUSAIR) ends BRUSSELS - EU foreign ministers council meeting ends SATURDAY, MAY 14 POZZALLO (RAGUSA) - The Sabir Festival continues (until 15/5) SUNDAY, MAY 15 RAMALLAH/GAZA - anniversary of the Nakba ('catastrophe' in Arabic), when 760,000 Palestinians went into exile from land that would afterwards fall under Israei sovereignity POZZALLO (RAGUSA) - Sabir Festival ends. (ANSAmed).




Italy-Tunisia: business forum in Tunis on May 9 Government delegation led by Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni

(ANSAmed) - TUNIS - Everything is set for the Italy-Tunisia business forum scheduled to be held at the headquarters of the Tunisian industrialists' association UTICA in Tunis on Monday.



Confindustria, the Italian institute for foreign trade ICE, the banking association ABI and other actors have organised an entrepreneurial mission to the north African country to further explore the opportunities offered to Italian companies by the local market in terms of trade, industrial partnerships and investment in the fields of agriculture and agricultural machinery, food processing technologies, infrastructure, construction and renewable energy. The mission is to be accompanied by a large government delegation led by Italian Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni.



Italy is currently Tunisia's second largest foreign investor and trade partner, with bilateral trade in 2015 amounting to approximately 5.5 billion euros and over 800 Italian companies operating in the country. (ANSAmed).




Cumhuriyet editor gets 5 yrs for 'revealing state secrets' Deputy editor of Turkish daily also sentenced

(ANSAmed) - ISTANBUL, MAY 6 - The editor-in-chief of Turkish opposition daily Cumhuriyet, Can Dundar, was on Friday sentenced to 5 years and 10 months in prison for violating state secrets after publishing a report on the sending of weapons into Syria last year. In the afternoon, a man shot at Dundar while he was in front of the Istanbul courthouse waiting for the verdict to be announced. The attacker - later arrested - was stopped by the journalist's wife Dilek and the lawyer and MP of the opposition CHP party Muharram Erkek.



Dundar's deputy editor Erdem Gul was also sentenced to 5 years in jail.



Both men were acquitted of the crime of espionage and attempting to overthrow the state. NTV reports that the court ruled that they would not be jailed ahead of an appeals trial but that they cannot leave the country. (ANSAmed).




Cumhuriyet editor shot at in front of Istanbul courthouse Dundar on trial for reports of Turkey sending weapons to Syria

(ANSAmed) - ISTANBUL, MAY 6 - A man shot at the editor of Turkish opposition daily Cumhuriyet, Can Dundar, on Friday in front of an Istanbul courthouse where he is standing trial. Dundar is accused of ''revealing state secrets'' after publishing a report in May 2015 on weapons transfers from Turkey into rebel-held Syria in that allegedly occurred in early 2014. Dundar was unharmed while an NTV reporter, Yagiz Senkal, suffered minor injuries. The attacker was arrested and identified as Murat Sahin, 40, from the central Anatolian city of Sivas, reported NTV. Dundar tweeted that those to blame for the attack were the ones who had made him a target. An eyewitness said that the attacker had shot at least twice, yelling ''you are a traitor''. (ANSAmed).




Egyptian lawyer-activist Malek Adly detained for 15 days Case over protests against 2 Red Sea Islands going to S.Arabia

(ANSAmed) - CAIRO, MAY 6 - A renowned Egyptian lawyer and human rights activist has been detained for 15 days for allegedly attempting to overthrow the regime of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, daily newspaper Youm7 and other local media reported Friday.



Malek Adly has been detained in connection with protests on April 25 condemning the government's decision to recognise two Red Sea islands, administered by Egypt, as belonging to Saudi Arabia. The detention order was issued by the prosecutor's office in Shubra El Khema in north Cairo. The same office issued arrest warrants against Adly and at least another 46 people immediately after the protests, drawing criticism from human rights organisation Amnesty International. Adly works for the Egyptian Centre for Economic and Social rights and was also a key exponent in the movement to overthrow former president Hosni Mubarak. (ANSAmed).




Catania - The Italian navy rescued 1,759 migrants in ten different operations during patrols in the Sicily Channel under the Safe Sea operation on Thursday, sources said Friday.



The frigate Grecale rescued a total of 698 migrants in two separate operations, the patrol boat Bettica rescued 588 people in five separate operations and the frigate Bergamini rescued 473 migrants in three operations.



The Grecale is now heading to the Sicilian port of Augusta, where it is expected to arrive on Saturday morning. (ANSAmed).


VATICAN CITY- Pope Francis called on Europe to adopt an open stance on welcoming asylum seekers after receiving the prestigious Charlemagne Prize in the Vatican on Friday.



"I dream of a Europe that is young, still capable of being a mother: a mother who has life because she respects life and offers hope for life," the pope said after receiving the award given to figures who have contributed to European unity.



"I dream of a Europe where being a migrant is not a crime but a summons to greater commitment on behalf of the dignity of every human being". "The founding fathers (of Europe) were heralds of peace and prophets of the future. "Today more than ever, their vision inspires us to build bridges and tear down walls". The Argentine pontiff has repeatedly called for the EU to open its doors to the massive waves of asylum seekers trying to enter following a long series of migrant-boat disasters in the Mediterranean.



"Today we urgently need to build "coalitions" that are not only military and economic, but cultural, educational, philosophical and religious," he said in the presence of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Italian Premier Matteo Renzi, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, European Council President Donald Tusk and European Parliament Speaker Martin Schulz, among others. "Coalitions that can make clear that, behind many conflicts, there is often in play the power of economic groups. "Coalitions capable of defending people from being exploited for improper ends. Let us arm our people with the culture of dialogue and encounter".



The pope said that in a "complex multipolar framework" it was necessary to have "courage" and determination" to accept the "challenge of updating the idea of Europe". He said Europe should be based on "the capacity to integrate, the capacity to dialogue and the capacity to generate".



The Charlemagne Prize is awarded annually since 1950 by the German city of Aachen to people who have contributed to the ideals upon which Europe has been founded. The pope received the prize from the head of the awarding committee. Schulz said Francis deserved the prize because "he recalls us to the real European values". He said the time had come to "fight for the EU" and the pope was a "beacon" for his message. There was a mood of great expectancy over the speech by the pope, who has been recognised as Europe's "conscience". Earlier Linden, the jury chair, read the citation which said the pope's award was a tribute "to His extraordinary commitment in favour of peace, understanding and mercy in a European society of values". Francis held a private audience Friday morning with Schulz, a former Charlemagne Prize recipient, Junker and Tusk, and also met with Merkel. Previous winners of the prize include former U.S.



President Bill Clinton and St. John Paul II, who received a special edition of the prize in 2004. The Holy Roman emperor Charlemagne once ruled a large swathe of western Europe from Aachen, near the Belgian border (ANSAmed).
Renzi migrant proposal 'right direction', Juncker (EU) says Help to African countries to encourage people to stay at home

(ANSAmed) - ROME, MAY 6 - Matteo Renzi's proposed migration compact to help African countries of migrant origin and transit goes in the "right direction", European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said in Rome Friday.



He declined to comment on how the project should be funded but stressed that "the Italian programme is line with the agenda that the EC has had for many months".



The compact aims to help 16 African countries, starting with seven - Tunisia, Egypt, Ghana, Niger, Nigeria, Ivory Coast and Senegal - to boost their economies and encourage would-be migrants to stay at home.



German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Thursday said she backed the project but was against Renzi's idea of funding it with new 'eurobonds'. She said that, instead, the money should be taken from the existing EU budget for development aid, boosted by a budget flexibility clause in the EU's Stability and Growth Pact.



(ANSAmed).




Tunisian PM in Tripoli to support Sarraj Border management deal and flights to resume

(ANSAmed) - TUNIS, MAY 6 - The prime minister of the Libyan national unity government Fayez Al-Sarraj on Friday announced that an agreement had been reached with his Tunisian counterpart Habib Essid for border management and the resumption of air traffic between the two countries. During a joint press conference as part of Essid's visit on Friday to Tripoli, Sarraj spoke positively about Tunisia and its behavior in the delicate phase of Libyan dialogue. ''The meeting today,'' Sarraj said, ''was positive and constructive. We also agreed to resume flights between the Tunis-Carthage airport and the Mitiga one in Tripoli. We will coordinate with Tunisia on security issues but also economic, political, border management and counterterrorism ones.'' Essid said that Tunisia ''is standing by the side of the Libyan reconciliation government and is supporting it in everything it needs'', and as a state it ''supports Libyans and the objectives that this government, which has an important role in the country's history, has set. We will work to make sure that Libya becomes better than before, and we are optimistic about this.'' (ANSAmed).




The forces of globalization that have lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty and powered growth across the Asia-Pacific for a quarter century are being increasingly tested by changing economic and social conditions. It is a challenge that is driving policymakers to modernize the underpinnings of economic integration and trade for a new era.

Trade Ministers from the 21 APEC member economies will convene in Arequipa, Perus second largest city, on 17-18 May to launch collaborative actions for taking this ambitious effort forward. They will do so against the backdrop of global uncertainty that is weighing on trade flows but which has not altered the regions fundamental position as an engine of growth and prosperity.

The period of transition unfolding in the world economy and demographics is giving rise to questions about the future of globalization, explained Dr Alan Bollard, Executive Director of the APEC Secretariat. The shifting landscape does not undermine globalizations enduring relevance but rather speaks to the need to update the approaches we take.

Swings in global demand are impacting trade yet the fact remains that it is still the lifeblood of economies and improvements in living standards in the Asia-Pacific, Dr Bollard noted. Actions that address emerging structural impediments to trade and quality growth, and position more people to take advantage of new economic opportunities are at the top of the regional agenda.

The 2016 APEC Ministers Responsible for Trade Meeting will target enhanced job creation and living standards via next generation trade and economic policy. The proceedings will build on a cluster of APEC technical working group exchanges here over the next week and inputs from APEC Senior Officials on 14-15 May.

Priorities include advancing regional economic integration and the efficient, secure movement of people, goods, services, data and capital across borders; small business development and participation in regional supply chains; cross-border education and training; and food security, sustainable management of oceans and fisheries, and green growth.

There is a shared belief in APEC in the potential for closer people and markets to support a new phase of productivity and higher living standards while fostering sustainability in viable ways, concluded Dr Bollard. Building capacity for the regions diverse economies to increase openness and interconnectivity among them can go a long way to realizing this vision.

Trade Ministers will consider recommendations from the APEC Business Advisory Council and APECs Official Observersthe Association of Southeast Asian Nations, Pacific Economic Cooperation Council and Pacific Island Forum.

A presentation on the state of global trade from World Trade Organization Director General Roberto Azevedo and the unveiling of the APEC Policy Support Units latest Regional Trends Analysis report will also help to guide Trade Ministers discussions.

# # #

For additional information, or to arrange possible media interviews with APEC officials, please contact:

David Hendrickson (in Arequipa) +65 9137 3886 at [email protected]

Michael Chapnick +65 9647 4847 at [email protected]

More on APEC meetings, events, projects and publications can be found on www.apec.org. You can also follow APEC on Twitter and join us on Facebook and LinkedIn.




Capacity grew slightly faster at 5.9% which pushed the average load factor down by half a percentage point to 79.6%.

March performance shows a moderate slowdown on the year-on-year growth rates recorded in January (7.2%) and February (8.6%) even after adjusting for the leap-year impact in February. Demand for international traffic grew significantly more quickly (6.2%) than that for domestic travel (3.7%).

Middle East carriers experienced a 12% rise in demand in March, which was the largest increase among regions. Capacity increased 13.6%, however, and load factor dropped 1.1 percentage points to 76.5%.

While in line with long-term trends, demand growth in March represented a slow-down compared to January and February. It is premature to say whether this marks the end of the recent very strong results. We do expect further stimulus in the form of network expansion and declines in travel costs. However, the wider economic backdrop remains subdued, said Tony Tyler, IATAs Director General and CEO.

International Passenger Markets

March international passenger demand rose 6.2% compared to March 2015, which was a decline compared to the 9.1% increase in February. Airlines in all regions recorded growth. Total capacity climbed 6.9%, causing load factor to slip 0.5% percentage points to 78.5%.

Asia-Pacific airlines traffic rose 6% in March compared to the year-ago period; however, capacity increased 7.8%, which caused load factor to slide 1.3 percentage points to 77.4%. Key routes within Asia, across the Pacific and to the Middle East grew strongly in the opening months, although Asia to Europe routes lagged behind.

European carriers saw March demand climb 5.5% over March 2015. Capacity rose 5.4% and load factor edged up 0.1 percentage points to 80.8%, highest among regions. The largest routes, including between the UK and Germany, and to and from Spain, have seen strong growth this year. It is too soon to know how the terrorist attacks in Brussels will affect demand.

North American airlines traffic climbed 0.7% in March compared to the year-ago period, the slowest pace since April 2013. Carriers here have been concentrating their efforts on the larger and stronger domestic markets. Capacity rose just 0.6% and load factor was flat at 80.5%.

Latin American airlines had a 7.9% increase in traffic in March, down from a 10.4% increase in February, suggesting the upward trend in business-related international demand has softened. Capacity climbed 6.3%, causing load factor to surge 1.2 percentage points to 78.5%.

African airlines continued to enjoy strong demand, with traffic up 11.2% compared to March 2015. The turnaround after several difficult years coincides with expansion of long-haul networks by the regions carriers. Capacity rose 9.7%, and load factor strengthened to 66.6%, up 0.9 percentage points.
Le CBD, cette molecule active du cannabis a aujourdhui le vent en poupe. Et cela est en grande partie du au fait quil permet...
At the beginning of April, Bocca suddenly announced that, for personal reasons, he was temporarily stepping down as artistic director of Uruguays National Ballet. This week, equally unexpectedly, he appeared at a gala to announce that he was back  with two new lieutenants: Sofia Sajac (interim director while he was away) as co-director and Maria Noel Bonino as ballet mistress. And it turns out, naturally, that there was some backstage discord involved. (in Spanish; Google Translate version here)
Beijing (AsiaNews) - The government of the northwestern province of Gansu has reacted with fury to the video posted online showing an infant in a kindergarten recite some verses of the Koran. The movie, titled "A cute little girl reads the scriptures in Gansu", has been published on several Chinese social networks by a network of users divided between positive and negative reactions. Education authorities in the province have "blamed" the kindergarten directors and "strongly condemned what happened. It is an act that damages the mental and physical health of the younger generation ".



Gansu Province hosts Chinas third largest Muslim community after Xinjiang and Ningxia. About 1.6 million Muslim faithful live here. While not suffering the same restrictions on personal freedom as the Uyghurs, local Muslims are forced to comply with different "rules for religious regulation" imposed by the government. The most criticized among these is the ban on growing a beard "for security reasons"; the prohibition of following Ramadan fasting "for health reasons" and the prohibition of teaching religion to minors. The latter rule applies to all five official religions in China: Catholicism, Protestant Christianity, Buddhism, Taoism and Islam.



In criticizing the kindergarten in which the video was taken, the authorities cite the Constitution: ", which state that religious activities shall not get in the way of education " but they forget the protections of freedom of worship and religion guaranteed by the Charter. Schools, continues the reprimand, "can not conduct religious activities or to talk about religion. They shall not force or induce pupils to convert to a certain religion or establish any religious organisations in schools. "



Government control on religious activity and life of the faithful seems to be getting tighter. After imposing state recognition" on Buddhist lamas, the ban on Ramadan fasting for Muslims, caused the disappearance of Catholic priests and bishops, the removal or demolishing of Christian crosses from churches and communities, Beijing has clarified the Party line in a keynote speech by the President Xi Jinping.



On April 22 and 23 last, the communist leader participated at a meeting on religious affairs and among other things said: "Religious groups should mix religious doctrines with Chinese culture, obey Chinese regulations and laws, completely devote themselves to the reform and opening of China, to socialist modernization, to help realize the Chinese dream and national rejuvenation".
by Qaiser Felix

Qaiser Felix was a contributor to AsiaNews. Yesterday he told his story during the Prayer Vigil to "dry the tears." In Pakistan he used to tell the stories of the Christian minority, persecuted for their faith. He had to run when Islamic extremists threatened to kill his family. With the help of AsiaNews and Jesuit Fathers, he now lives and works in Venice.

Vatican City (AsiaNews) - "It's over. Quit your work and leave the city. Save your family and run as fast as you can, AsiaNews editor and other organisations advised Qaiser Felix to do.

A Pakistani journalist persecuted for his Christian faith, he told the story of his family and described the tragic fate of Pakistans Christian minority during yesterdays prayer vigil to "Dry the tears in St Peters.

Felix was a contributor to AsiaNews, writing about his countrys social conditions and that of persecuted Christians. However, when Islamic extremists threatened to kill his wife and children, he was forced to flee his homeland. He arrived in Rome and thanks to AsiaNews and the Centro Astalli, he was able to rescue his family and "reinvent a new life for himself.

His address follows, ending in a plea not to abandon those many brothers and sisters who risk their lives to bear witness to the Gospel.

Holy Father, my name Qaiser Felix. In Pakistan I was a journalist for many years. I belong to the Catholic minority and my faith was at the core of all my work. I travelled to every region of my country to tell the difficult life Christians are forced to lead in Pakistan, discriminated by the law against blasphemy and often victims of brutal violence, even murder.

I loved my job. For me it was more than just a job to feed my family; it was my struggle. I wanted to give voice to the suffering of the persecuted Christian minority. That is why I felt so proud when in 2007 I received an international award from the Association of Catholic journalists, and became the national secretary for South Asia for the same association.

However, my articles and my growing fame brought me to the attention of some terrorist groups who considered my words an open attack on the country and Islam.

The first acts of intimidation and threats against my wife and children pushed me to ask for help from my agencys editor and various organisations. They all gave me the same, direct and irrevocable answer: It's over. Quit your work and leave the city. Save your family and run as fast as you can.

It was the same news agency editor who organised my departure for Rome. So I suddenly found myself in a foreign country, far from the people dearest to me.

In Italy I cannot practice my profession as a journalist because it is too hard to get my diploma recognised and getting a qualification is too difficult. Still, I did not give up.

At the beginning it was very hard. My wife and my two children were left in Pakistan; it was not possible to bring them with me. I desperately needed to send them money.

Here in Italy I had to reinvent my life, and I had to wait to write again. I accepted odd jobs in Rome. I attended training courses and through the Centro Astalli I visited schools to tell my refugee story to secondary school students.

Then in 2011, after more than two very difficult years, I was able to reunite with my wife and two children. When we hugged I realised that the worst was over, that together we could make it. And so we did.

Today, thanks to Jesuit priests, my wife and I work at a student college in Venice. The children, who are now teenagers, go to school and are good at it. They learnt Italian quickly and well, and now their future is here.

To experience persecution and the fear of death is a terrible thing, especially for my children. Faith in the darkest hours was my lifeline. My colleagues and friends at AsiaNews and the Centro Astalli were a providential Godsend to me.

In such an important moment, allow me to remember those who stayed behind in my country: the many fellow Christians who are persecuted, the men and women who every day risk their lives because of human rights violations and persecution. Do not leave them alone; they need our prayers and our help.

I am here today also for them to bear witness to the life and the greatness of God the Merciful. Thank you, Holy Father!
Whispers of a conflict between the "Rais" Erdogan and "Hoja" (professor) Davutoglu had been heard for some time. The prime minister does not approve of the presidential ambitions of his boss; the president does not like the Davutoglus pro-European attitudes. Erdogan strengthens alliance with military in anti-Kurdish and anti-religious key.

Ankara (AsiaNews) - On Thursday Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu announced that he will resign as head of the AKP (Party for Justice and progress, in power) party during its Congress May 22 next, and will not seek re-election.

The news has not aroused much amazement because there had been talk for some time in political circles of an open struggle between President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the "Rais", and his Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, known as "Hoja" (the Professor), to whom the Turkish president had entrusted the presidency of "his" party in August of 2014.

The veneer of a perfect harmony between the two politicians, conceals a struggle for power made of suspicions, rivalries and betrayals, leaked at times in the Turkish press and immediately denied.

The crack in the ice emerged in February, when the Prime Minister, in his capacity as General Secretary of the AKP appointed Abdurrahman Dimez as a counselor for the section of Adiyaman. Instead Erdogan had wanted one of his loyalists.

Erdogan has not forgiven this "challenge" by Davutoglu. Moreover, he has been long given to contradicting the Prime Minister, especially as regards his pro-European views. Two months later, on 29 April this year, during his official visit to Doha in Qatar, the Turkish prime minister Davutoglu, learned from the press that the appointment of the party's councilors would henceforth be taken place by the Executive Council of the AKP party and no longer directly and exclusively by the Secretary general.

Until 2002, the year of coming to power of the AKP, the appointment of the directors was the prerogative of the party president. And at the time, Amet Davutoglu became leader and a fervent defender of this prerogative, allowing Erdogan to "model the party" to use the expression of a Turkish journalist, Sami Kilic, removing anyone who could challenge then Secretary Erdogan, or prevent him from rising higher and higher.



Slowly, the Erdogan - Davutoglu couple managed to alienate all the faithful of Necmettin Erbacan and even dauphins of Fethullah Gulen, two charismatic leaders who had laid the foundations of the Turkish religious political party of which Erdogan was able to enjoy all the fruits.



On returning from Doha, a worried Davutoglu consulted AKP party spokesman Omer Celik, who reassured him by denying any "crisis".

The denial of "any crisis" only aroused more suspicion about the existence of irreconcilable divisions between the two columns of the Party, the President and his Premier.

Many analysts believe the successes recorded so far by Davutoglu (last November he led the AKP to attract 49% of the votes), together with the growing sympathy of the European chancelleries towards him, while increasing dissent of the same against Erdogan, have bothered the president who began no longer to see him as an ally but as a rival.

This gave rise to a series of maneuvers designed to prevent the Premier from operating both in government and in the management of the Party: Erdogan buried the law on transparency, commissioned by Davutoglu; the candidacy for the post of head of the MIT (Turkish Secret Service) at the personal request of Davutoglu was rejected by Erdogan, as well as the assignment of a ministry to Ali Baban - for 12 years Minister of the economy - Davutoglu had convinced to run in the 2015 elections, to end with negotiations on the "visa" for Turks to travel to the European Union and the issue of negotiations with the PKK (the Kurdish militant party).



The final blow came through the pro-Erdogan press. Nasuhi Gungor, vice-director of the TRT state television network, wrote an editorial in the daily Star: "We can no longer go along with Davutoglu". It 'also true that after that statement, Gungor was suspended for "having publically declared what is rumored in the" corridors, as they say in Ankara.

Now the name of the future prime minister is rumored, Binali Yildirim, Minister of Transport, but as if by magic, in the press favorable to Davutoglu, a picture of the Binali Yildirims son appears, that shows him playing roulette in a casino Singapore ...

Pro Erdogan press starts talking about Western conspiracies that aim to overthrow Erdogan in favor of Davutoglu. So for example, on the pages of the newspaper Hurriyet, Abdulkadir Selvi headlines: "The summer will be hot", and speaks of an irreconcilable "separation".



After the "Turkish Spring" of Takhsim square, allegations of corruption against Erdogan's family in 2013, the demands of the Kurds, there has been a rapprochement between the army and the AKP, which materialized with the acquittal of the 236 defendants in the "Ergenekon" case already convicted in first instance to penalties from 6 to 20 years in prison.

This once again underpins the "flaws of the Turkish judiciary", as described by the journalist Demir Erme. The judiciary itself has increased the number of suspects, adding all journalists or writers unfavorable to Erdogan's policy, to their list.



The Turkish President - who has turned against the Kurds and the Fethullah Gulen Movement - thus finds his "natural" allies in the anti-Kurdish and anti-religious army.

Yesterday, Davutoglus announcement that he will not run for President is seen by the Arab daily Al Hayat as a consequence "of criticism directed against him by the entourage of the President of the Republic." According to the newspaper "Davutoglu has violated the two conditions imposed on him in exchange for the post of Prime Minister, namely: the adoption of the Presidential Regime [which Erdogan is aiming for] and interruption of any cooperation with the Western world, which could unseat Erdogan. "

Davutoglu is also accused - according to Al Hayat- of being the architect of Turkeys failure in Syria and fostering Fethullah Gulen's followers. " The Presidents entourage did not like Davutoglus request to meet with US President Obama a month after the summit took place between the two Presidents.

The Turkish Islamic Party is now split into four parts: one in favor of Erdogan; another for former President Gul; the third, albeit tiny, to Prime Minister Davutoglu; the fourth to the preacher Fethullah Gulen, who lives in exile in the United States.

The removal of the Premier could lead to early elections the results of which, this time, would not undisputed. (PB)
"Human happiness can be taken away by anything, even by a few difficulties." But Jesus wants to give us a joy that no one can take away: "It is lasting. Even in the darkest moments. "

Vatican City (AsiaNews) - Nothing and no one, not even great pain, can take away our Christian hope which becomes joy, said the Pope at Mass celebrated this morning in Casa Santa Marta. Taking his inspiration from the days reading where Jesus warns his disciples of a coming sadness but says it will be transformed later into a cry of joy, Pope Francis reflected in his homily on how Christians should always maintain their joy and hope, even in the midst of pain. He used the example of a woman in labour, saying: Shes in pain because her time has come but when she gives birth to her baby she no longer remembers the suffering. She carries on hoping throughout the pain and then she rejoices.

This is (the impact of) what joy and hope together can have on our lives, when we are facing tribulations, when we have problems, when we are suffering. It is not an anesthesia. Pain is pain but if lived through with joy and hope it will open the door for you to the joy of a new being. This image of the Lord should give us great hope amidst our difficulties: difficulties that often are awful, horrible difficulties that can even make us doubt our faith But with joy and hope we journey forward because after this tempest a new man arrives, just like with a woman giving birth. And Jesus tells us that this is a lasting joy and hope that will not go away.

The Pope went on to explain that the joy and hope of a Christian are always tied together and they should not be confused with simple happiness or optimism.

A joy without hope is just enjoyment, a temporary happiness. A hope without joy is not hope and doesnt extend beyond a healthy optimism. Joy and hope always journey together and both of them create this explosion that the Church in her liturgy almost cries out -- allow me to say the word -- without shame: Rejoice for your Church!, Rejoice  without formality. Because when there is a strong joy, theres no formality, just joy.

Pope Francis went on to explain how joy and hope depend upon each other to flourish and urged Christians to open out towards others with these two virtues.

Joy strengthens hope and hope blooms amidst joy. And we go forward like this. But both of these Christian virtues, along with the attitude that the Church seeks to give them, show us the way to open out (towards others). Joyful people do not stay closed in on themselves: hope makes you open outwards, it is just like an anchor on the shore of heaven that pulls us up and out. Open out from ourselves, with joy and hope.

The Pope noted that human joy can be taken away at any time whereas Jesus gives us a lasting joy that nobody can take away from us. It remains even during our darkest moments just like the Apostles who after being reassured by the Angels following Jesus Ascension into heaven retrace their steps full of joy. He said the Apostles have that joy of "knowing that our humanity entered heaven for the first time," that hope of life and of rejoining our Lord. This, he concluded, becomes "a joy that pervades the whole Church."
The ceremony for the awarding of the 2016 International Charlemagne Award, Francis affirms that Europe has to find creativity, ingenuity, ability to stand up and step outside the limits that belong to it. "What has happened to you, the Europe of humanism, the champion of human rights, democracy and freedom? ". Give spaces to young people, changing the economic model.

Vatican City (AsiaNews) - "Updating" the idea of Europe, a Europe which today sometimes seems "tired and aged" so it may once again be "capable of giving birth to a new humanism based on three capacities: the capacity to integrate, the capacity for dialogue and the capacity to generate ." A Europe that is a "new humanism", "a constant process of humanization". There is both a warning and a hope in Francis words, this morning, during the ceremony in which he was awarded the 2016 International Charlemagne Prize.



The ceremony was attended by the President of the European Parliament, Martin Schulz, the president of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker and President of the European Council, Donald Tusk, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the President of the European Central Bank Mario Draghi and Italian Premier Matteo Renzi.



The Pope spoke of his hopes for a Europe with the ability to integrate, finding solidarity in its "way of acting, overcoming the temptation to withdraw into itself in favor of a "encounter of civilizations and peoples" that makes it "a model of new syntheses and of dialogue ." To to respect the foreigner, the immigrant and people from different cultures as worthy of being listened to".



In this Europe young people have a critical role, they "hey are not the future of our peoples; they are the present. Even now, with their dreams and their lives they are forging the spirit of Europe. We cannot look to the future without offering them the real possibility to be catalysts of change and transformation. We cannot envision Europe without letting them be participants and protagonists in this dream". But it demands that these people be given the opportunity to earn and then "passing from an economy directed at revenue, profiting from speculation and lending at interest, to a social economy that invests in persons by creating jobs and providing training".



For a Europe that promotes and protects the rights of everyone, without forgetting the duties to all. "A a Europe of which it will not be said that its commitment to human rights was its last utopia".



This is the text of the Pope's speech.

Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen,

I offer you a cordial welcome and I thank you for your presence. I am particularly grateful to Messrs Marcel Philipp, Jurgen Linden, Martin Schulz, Jean-Claude Juncker and Donald Tusk for their kind words. I would like to reiterate my intention to offer this prestigious award for Europe. For ours is not so much a celebration as a moment to express our shared hope for a new and courageous step forward for this beloved continent.

Creativity, genius and a capacity for rebirth and renewal are part of the soul of Europe. In the last century, Europe bore witness to humanity that a new beginning was indeed possible. After years of tragic conflicts, culminating in the most horrific war ever known, there emerged, by Gods grace, something completely new in human history. The ashes of the ruins could not extinguish the ardent hope and the quest of solidarity that inspired the founders of the European project. They laid the foundations for a bastion of peace, an edifice made up of states united not by force but by free commitment to the common good and a definitive end to confrontation. Europe, so long divided, finally found its true self and began to build its house.

This family of peoples, which has commendably expanded in the meantime, seems of late to feel less at home within the walls of the common home. At times, those walls themselves have been built in a way varying from the insightful plans left by the original builders. Their new and exciting desire to create unity seems to be fading; we, the heirs of their dream, are tempted to yield to our own selfish interests and to consider putting up fences here and there. Nonetheless, I am convinced that resignation and weariness do not belong to the soul of Europe, and that even our problems can become powerful forces for unity.

In addressing the European Parliament, I used the image of Europe as a grandmother. I noted that there is a growing impression that Europe is weary, aging, no longer fertile and vital, that the great ideals that inspired Europe seem to have lost their appeal. There is an impression that Europe is declining, that it has lost its ability to be innovative and creative, and that it is more concerned with preserving and dominating spaces than with generating processes of inclusion and change. There is an impression that Europe is tending to become increasingly entrenched, rather than open to initiating new social processes capable of engaging all individuals and groups in the search for new and productive solutions to current problems. Europe, rather than protecting spaces, is called to be a mother who generates processes (cf. Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, 223).

What has happened to you, the Europe of humanism, the champion of human rights, democracy and freedom? What has happened to you, Europe, the home of poets, philosophers, artists, musicians, and men and women of letters? What has happened to you, Europe, the mother of peoples and nations, the mother of great men and women who upheld, and even sacrificed their lives for, the dignity of their brothers and sisters?

The writer Elie Wiesel, a survivor of the Nazi death camps, has said that what we need today is a memory transfusion. We need to remember, to take a step back from the present to listen to the voice of our forebears. Remembering will help us not to repeat our past mistakes (cf. Evangelii Gaudium, 108), but also to re-appropriate those experiences that enabled our peoples to surmount the crises of the past. A memory transfusion can free us from todays temptation to build hastily on the shifting sands of immediate results, which may produce quick and easy short-term political gains, but do not enhance human fulfilment (ibid., 224).

To this end, we would do well to turn to the founding fathers of Europe. They were prepared to pursue alternative and innovative paths in a world scarred by war. Not only did they boldly conceive the idea of Europe, but they dared to change radically the models that had led only to violence and destruction. They dared to seek multilateral solutions to increasingly shared problems.

Robert Schuman, at the very birth of the first European community, stated that Europe will not be made all at once, or according to a single plan. It will be built through concrete achievements which first create a de facto solidarity. Today, in our own world, marked by so much conflict and suffering, there is a need to return to the same de facto solidarity and concrete generosity that followed the Second World War, because, as Schuman noted, world peace cannot be safeguarded without making creative efforts proportionate to the dangers threatening it. The founding fathers were heralds of peace and prophets of the future. Today more than ever, their vision inspires us to build bridges and tear down walls. That vision urges us not to be content with cosmetic retouches or convoluted compromises aimed at correcting this or that treaty, but courageously to lay new and solid foundations. As Alcide De Gasperi stated, equally inspired by concern for the common good of our European homeland, all are called to embark fearlessly on a construction project that demands our full quota of patience and our ongoing cooperation.

Such a memory transfusion can enable us to draw inspiration from the past in order to confront with courage the complex multipolar framework of our own day and to take up with determination the challenge of updating the idea of Europe. A Europe capable of giving birth to a new humanism based on three capacities: the capacity to integrate, the capacity for dialogue and the capacity to generate.

The capacity to integrate

Erich Przywara, in his splendid work Idee Europa [The Idea of Europe], challenges us to think of the city as a place where various instances and levels coexist. He was familiar with the reductionist tendency inherent in every attempt to rethink the social fabric. Many of our cities are remarkably beautiful precisely because they have managed to preserve over time traces of different ages, nations, styles and visions. We need but look at the inestimable cultural patrimony of Rome to realize that the richness and worth of a people is grounded in its ability to combine all these levels in a healthy coexistence. Forms of reductionism and attempts at uniformity, far from generating value, condemn our peoples to a cruel poverty: the poverty of exclusion. Far from bestowing grandeur, riches and beauty, exclusion leads to vulgarity, narrowness, and cruelty. Far from bestowing nobility of spirit, it brings meanness.

The roots of our peoples, the roots of Europe, were consolidated down the centuries by the constant need to integrate in new syntheses the most varied and discrete cultures. The identity of Europe is, and always has been, a dynamic and multicultural identity.

Political activity cannot fail to see the urgency of this fundamental task. We know that the whole is greater than the part, but it is also greater than the sum of the parts, and this requires that we work to broaden our horizons and see the greater good which will benefit us all (Evangelii Gaudium, 235). We are asked to promote an integration that finds in solidarity a way of acting, a means of making history. Solidarity should never be confused with charitable assistance, but understood as a means of creating opportunities for all the inhabitants of our cities  and of so many other cities  to live with dignity. Time is teaching us that it is not enough simply to settle individuals geographically: the challenge is that of a profound cultural integration.

The community of European peoples will thus be able to overcome the temptation of falling back on unilateral paradigms and opting for forms of ideological colonization. Instead, it will rediscover the breadth of the European soul, born of the encounter of civilizations and peoples. The soul of Europe is in fact greater than the present borders of the Union and is called to become a model of new syntheses and of dialogue. The true face of Europe is seen not in confrontation, but in the richness of its various cultures and the beauty of its commitment to openness. Without this capacity for integration, the words once spoken by Konrad Adenauer will prove prophetic: the future of the West is not threatened as much by political tensions as by the danger of conformism, uniformity of thoughts and feelings: in a word, by the whole system of life, by flight from responsibility, with concern only for oneself.

The capacity for dialogue

If there is one word that we should never tire of repeating, it is this: dialogue. We are called to promote a culture of dialogue by every possible means and thus to rebuild the fabric of society. The culture of dialogue entails a true apprenticeship and a discipline that enables us to view others as valid dialogue partners, to respect the foreigner, the immigrant and people from different cultures as worthy of being listened to. Today we urgently need to engage all the members of society in building a culture which privileges dialogue as a form of encounter and in creating a means for building consensus and agreement while seeking the goal of a just, responsive and inclusive society (Evangelii Gaudium, 239). Peace will be lasting in the measure that we arm our children with the weapons of dialogue, that we teach them to fight the good fight of encounter and negotiation. In this way, we will bequeath to them a culture capable of devising strategies of life, not death, and of inclusion, not exclusion.

This culture of dialogue should be an integral part of the education imparted in our schools, cutting across disciplinary lines and helping to give young people the tools needed to settle conflicts differently than we are accustomed to do. Today we urgently need to build coalitions that are not only military and economic, but cultural, educational, philosophical and religious. Coalitions that can make clear that, behind many conflicts, there is often in play the power of economic groups. Coalitions capable of defending people from being exploited for improper ends. Let us arm our people with the culture of dialogue and encounter.

The capacity to generate

Dialogue, with all that it entails, reminds us that no one can remain a mere onlooker or bystander. Everyone, from the smallest to the greatest, has an active role to play in the creation of an integrated and reconciled society. This culture of dialogue can come about only if all of us take part in planning and building it. The present situation does not permit anyone to stand by and watch other peoples struggles. On the contrary, it is a forceful summons to personal and social responsibility.

In this sense, our young people have a critical role. They are not the future of our peoples; they are the present. Even now, with their dreams and their lives they are forging the spirit of Europe. We cannot look to the future without offering them the real possibility to be catalysts of change and transformation. We cannot envision Europe without letting them be participants and protagonists in this dream.

Lately I have given much thought to this. I ask myself: How we can involve our young people in this building project if we fail to offer them employment, dignified labour that lets them grow and develop through their handiwork, their intelligence and their abilities? How can we tell them that they are protagonists, when the levels of employment and underemployment of millions of young Europeans are continually rising? How can we avoid losing our young people, who end up going elsewhere in search of their dreams and a sense of belonging, because here, in their own countries, we dont know how to offer them opportunities and values?

The just distribution of the fruits of the earth and human labour is not mere philanthropy. It is a moral obligation. If we want to rethink our society, we need to create dignified and well-paying jobs, especially for our young people.

To do so requires coming up with new, more inclusive and equitable economic models, aimed not at serving the few, but at benefiting ordinary people and society as a whole. This calls for moving from a liquid economy to a social economy; I think for example of the social market economy encouraged by my predecessors (cf. JOHN PAUL II, Address to the Ambassador of the Federal Republic of Germany, 8 November 1990). It would involve passing from an economy directed at revenue, profiting from speculation and lending at interest, to a social economy that invests in persons by creating jobs and providing training.

We need to move from a liquid economy prepared to use corruption as a means of obtaining profits to a social economy that guarantees access to land and lodging through labour. Labour is in fact the setting in which individuals and communities bring into play many aspects of life: creativity, planning for the future, developing talents, living out values, relating to others, giving glory to God. It follows that, in the reality of todays global society, it is essential that we continue to prioritize the role of access to steady employment for everyone, no matter the limited interests of business and dubious economic reasoning  (Encyclical Laudato Si, 127).

If we want a dignified future, a future of peace for our societies, we will only be able to achieve it by working for genuine inclusion, an inclusion which provides worthy, free, creative, participatory and solidary work. This passage (from a liquid economy to a social economy) will not only offer new prospects and concrete opportunities for integration and inclusion, but will makes us once more capable of envisaging that humanism of which Europe has been the cradle and wellspring.

To the rebirth of a Europe weary, yet still rich in energies and possibilities, the Church can and must play her part. Her task is one with her mission: the proclamation of the Gospel, which today more than ever finds expression in going forth to bind the wounds of humanity with the powerful yet simple presence of Jesus, and his mercy that consoles and encourages. God desires to dwell in our midst, but he can only do so through men and women who, like the great evangelizers of this continent, have been touched by him and live for the Gospel, seeking nothing else. Only a Church rich in witnesses will be able to bring back the pure water of the Gospel to the roots of Europe. In this enterprise, the path of Christians towards full unity is a great sign of the times and a response to the Lords prayer that they may all be one (Jn 17:21).

With mind and heart, with hope and without vain nostalgia, like a son who rediscovers in Mother Europe his roots of life and faith, I dream of a new European humanism, one that involves a constant work of humanization and calls for memory, courage, [and] a sound and humane utopian vision. I dream of a Europe that is young, still capable of being a mother: a mother who has life because she respects life and offers hope for life. I dream of a Europe that cares for children, that offers fraternal help to the poor and those newcomers seeking acceptance because they have lost everything and need shelter. I dream of a Europe that is attentive to and concerned for the infirm and the elderly, lest they be simply set aside as useless. I dream of a Europe where being a migrant is not a crime but a summons to greater commitment on behalf of the dignity of every human being. I dream of a Europe where young people breathe the pure air of honesty, where they love the beauty of a culture and a simple life undefiled by the insatiable needs of consumerism, where getting married and having children is a responsibility and a great joy, not a problem due to the lack of stable employment. I dream of a Europe of families, with truly effective policies concentrated on faces rather than numbers, on birth rates more than rates of consumption. I dream of a Europe that promotes and protects the rights of everyone, without neglecting its duties towards all. I dream of a Europe of which it will not be said that its commitment to human rights was its last utopia.
by Nirmala Carvalho

Holy Mother of God parish church is located in Talasari, in the heart of the Adivasi mission. During the celebration, the archbishop of Vasai confirmed 260 children and adults. Our brothers and sisters are quite well settled as solid Christians, Mgr Machado said. They will be the the solid leaders of tomorrow.

Talasari (AsiaNews)  More than 3,000 Catholics gathered in Talasari, a city in the Diocese of Vasai (Maharashtra), for the opening of a new parish church dedicated to the Holy Mother of God in the heart of the mission to the Adivasi.*

Mgr Felix Machado, bishop of Vasai, celebrated the first Mass on 30 April, during which he confirmed 260 children and adults. "It was a lovely gathering, the archbishop said. Our Adivasi brothers and sisters are quite well settled as solid Christians. The youth who were confirmed will be, I am sure, the solid leaders of tomorrow.

The Talasari mission has 150 years of history. Founded by the Franciscans, it was expanded by the Jesuits, and now it is home to many religious communities and diocesan priests. Most locals belong to tribes and subtribes that speak the Varli language.

The Churchs thrust is education and Adivasi empowerment through social outreach, the prelate said. Health has been given priority, and the Church has started schools in every little hamlet. There are also a couple of institutions of higher education (e.g. Junior Colleges).

However, For years, the Adivasis voice was suppressed, and Adivasi communities were systematically exploited and even at times abused.

Over time, Attracted by Jesus Christ and his Gospel, many Adivasi have embraced the Christian faith, the archbishop explained. Now They are fervent in their faith, and vocations to the religious life and to the priesthood have blossomed.

Adivasi culture has also been acknowledged, preserved and promoted, he noted. The Church has always kept the principle of serving the least, the lost and the last, regardless of caste, creed, race or religion.

In practice, The Church has reached out to help the poor. Many sisters are involved in women empowerment. Children are cared for and go to boarding schools.

During the inauguration of the parish church, I blessed the Community Hall, Mgr Machado said, which was built [. . .] to encourage people from the area to come together to pray, exchange ideas and foster fellowship.

* The term Adivasi (Original inhabitants in Hindi]) refers to Indias Scheduled Tribes who are considered the indigenous people of the Indian subcontinent.
Drone Footage Captures Rebel Ambush In Khan Tuman

Trending News: Dramatic Drone Footage Captures Battle For Khan Tuman In Syria

Why Is This Important?

Because we can't forget about the conflict in Syria.

Long Story Short

Video taken by a drone depicts a fierce battle for the village of Khan Tuman, just outside of Aleppo, Syria. Rebel forces claim the video documents their victory over Assad's regime forces, though the government says the village remains under their control.

Long Story

With ISIS constantly doing very bad things (and sometimes, doing bad things badly), it's easy to forget that there's a massive conflict between Bashar al-Assad's government regime and a smattering of rebel forces in Syria. In case you're wondering what's going on over there to cause millions of people to risk their lives to flee their homeland, allow this recently published drone footage to remind you that shit is indeed very real in Syria right now.

Apologies in advance if the background music alarmed your coworkers.

I'll confess I can't find an original source for the video, as versions on YouTube keep popping up before being removed again. But according to Sky News, what you're looking at is a fight between rebels and government forces for control of Khan Tuman, a village just outside of Aleppo, Syria's largest city. The rebels claim the video depicts a victory, while the government denies this.

The video is stunning in its clarity. In the beginning, you can clearly see rockets and missiles as they launch and head out toward the horizon. Later, the drone captures the massive, terrifying shockwaves that spread after heavy artillery finds its target. Sky News says that the attack was launched by various freedom fighters, some of which have ties to terrorist group al-Qaeda.

"Throughout the night the battles were very intense," said Abu al-Baraa al-Hamawi, a fighter from the Ajnad al-Sham group, one of the factions taking part in the attack.

According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, 73 people (40 rebel fighters and 33 government soldiers) were killed in the attack.

Own The Conversation

Ask The Big Question

Who should the US support in Syria.

Disrupt Your Feed

I can't decide if it's a bad thing or a good thing that this footage makes war look like a video game.

Drop This Fact

There are some 6.5 million refugees displaced within Syria alone.
A Sydney magistrate was set to convict 31-year-old judges associate James Cowled but changed her mind when she realised his character reference came from a retired federal court judge.



Cowled pled guilty to possession of cocaine after police found him with a bag back in March.



Whats the use of a character reference, magistrate Lisa Stapleton said.



You were found in possession of cocaine. If the person says this was out of character for you they dont know you very well so why shouldnt I convict you of this offence?



According to a report by The Daily Telegraph, Stapleton fell silent when Cowled told her he was a judges associate, before asking to read the reference by retired judge Michael Lloyd-Jones.



I must say telling my former judge was one of the most difficult things Ive done in my life, Cowled said, telling the court that his current boss, also a Federal Circuit Court judge, was unaware of the charges.



You are not the first person in the justice system to appear before the court for possession of a drug, Stapleton said.



But the fact you do work in the justice system doesnt mean you have to have higher standards than everyone else, the law applies equally.



Cowled was sentenced to a 12-month good behaviour bond with no conviction.


A Chicago-Starbucks-goer has filed a $5m lawsuit against the coffee chain, accusing it of using too much ice in cold drinks.



Stacy Pincus, the customer who filed the suit, claims that the coffee chain advertises its cold drinks by fluid once so the numbers are only accurate when ice is added to a drink, a CNN report said.



Starbucks is advertising the size of its Cold Drink cups on its menu, rather than the amount of fluid a customer will receive when they purchase a Cold Drink -- and deceiving its customers in the process, the suit said.



So a cold drink, for example the Venti which has 24 fluid ounces, only includes 14 ounces of the actual liquid, the rest is just ice, the lawsuit claims.



Spokesperson for Starbucks Jamie Riley said the company believes the claim is unfounded.



Our customers understand and expect that ice is an essential component of any 'iced' beverage. If a customer is not satisfied with their beverage preparation, we will gladly remake it, she said.



Claims could exceed $5m.


Brian Key makes it sound so simple (Australasian Science April 2016, http://www.australasianscience.com.au/article/issue-april-2016/do-fish-f...). People feel pain in a particular part of our brain which fish simply don't have. End of story. But this only creates a bigger mystery. We've known where people feel pain and the essentials of both fish and human anatomy for decades. So why, I wonder, is there a debate? Key acknowledges the debate at the beginning of the article but doesn't explain it. Are those who think fish feel pain simply ignorant of basic piscean anatomy and the pain centres in people? No and no.

Clues to this mysterious debate are contained within Key's article itself. First, his computer analogy. It's simply wrong. A low end computer can do any computation that a supercomputer can do; it just takes longer. The complexity of the circuits is irrelevant. Alan Turing proved this result back in the 1930s; long before anybody made a computer of any kind! It's not quite as film worthy as breaking German U-boat codes, but it's a result with deep practical significance. The complicated instructions used by programmers in their various programming languages are...
ANDI HORVATH

I'm Doctor Andi Horvath, thanks for joining us. Today we bring you Up Close to research on researchers. We're putting academics and scientists under the microscope and on the psychiatric couch. While scientists serve society well, we are increasingly concerned about misconduct in research results that don't hold up under scrutiny. We're now realising that many research findings aren't in fact reproducible, a key factor in research credibility.

The reasons can range from fraud, to poor understanding of methodology, to simply careless work. So what's driving researchers to undermine their own science? As with people in other professions, scientists have job related stress and occupational burn out, they're under pressure to perform, after all it's a publish or perish world.

But does the pressure on scientists help explain compromised research? What else could be going on between the ears of the people whose work can have a real impact on the rest of us? To explore the question of how scientists and other researchers view the pressures they're under, and how their work is affected, we're joined by researcher and psychiatrist, Dr Joeri Tijdink. Joeri has written a number...
By Peter Keller, Professor of Cognitive Science, Western Sydney University

Shutterstock

Music and dance are far from idle pastimes. They are universal forms of expression and deeply rewarding activities that fulfil diverse social functions. Both feature in all the worlds cultures and throughout history.

A common feature of music and dance is rhythmic movement, which is often timed with a regular pulse-like beat. But the human capacity for rhythm presents something of a puzzle.

Even though rhythmic coordination seems fundamental to human nature, people vary widely in ability. Some have the machine-like precision of Michael Jackson, others are closer to the case of beat-deaf Mathieu.

What are the underlying causes of these individual differences? By looking at the way the brain responds to rhythm, we can begin to understand why many of us cant help but to move to a beat.









Power of rhythm

Rhythm is a powerful force. It can regulate mood, ranging from the arousing effect of pounding war drums to the pacifying effect of gently rocking a baby. It can even induce altered states of consciousness, as in spiritual rituals and shamanic traditions involving trance.

Rhythm and music can also be used for therapeutic purposes in the rehabilitation of conditions characterised by motor impairment, such as stroke and Parkinsons disease.

Even more fundamentally, rhythmic skills displayed in the context of music and dance may have been essential to our evolution as a species.

In The Descent of Man (1871), Charles Darwin mused that:

it appears probable that the progenitors of man, either the males or females or both sexes, before acquiring the power of expressing their mutual love in articulate language, endeavoured to charm each other with musical notes and rhythm.









Rhythmically coordinated body movements may function similarly to fuel sexual attraction by providing an honest signal (one that cant be faked) of an individuals health and fitness.

Outside the competitive arena of finding a mate, coordinating with others through music and dance facilitates social cohesion by promoting interpersonal bonding, trust, and cooperation.

These prosocial effects of music and dance may have contributed to the flourishing of human culture by preventing the disintegration of early societies into antisocial mobs.

Today, they remain potent enough to be relied on, even in maximum security prisons.

Entrainment

But if music and dancing are so universal, why are some people simply unable to hold a rhythm?

The key to answering this question lies in how the human brain locks onto rhythms in the external environment, and how this process of neural entrainment supports the coordination of body movements.

Neural entrainment occurs when regular sensory input, like music with a clear beat, triggers periodic bursts of synchronised brain activity. This periodic activity can continue independently of external rhythmic input due to interactions between already excited neurons. It is as if they expect the sensory input to continue.

Entrainment can thus enhance processing of incoming information by allocating neural resources to the right place at the right time. When performing or dancing to music, entrainment allows the timing of upcoming beats to be predicted.









Scott Robinson/Flickr, CC BY





A recent study on individual differences in rhythmic skill identified relationships between the strength of neural entrainment and the capacity to synchronise movements with musical rhythms.

We measured entrainment to the underlying beat in two types of rhythm using electroencephalography (EEG), a technique where electrical signals reflecting neural activity are recorded via electrodes placed on the head.

One rhythm had a regular beat marked by periodically occurring sound onsets. The other was a relatively complex and jazzier syncopated rhythm in which sound onsets were not present on all beats: some were marked by silence.

Results indicated that the strength of neural entrainment was related to peoples ability to move in synchrony with the beat. Individuals with strong neural responses were more accurate at tapping a finger in time with the beat of the two rhythms.

We also found individual differences in brain responses to the two rhythms. While some individuals showed a large difference between strength of entrainment for the regular rhythm versus the syncopated rhythm, others showed only a small difference.

In other words: some people required external physical stimulation to perceive the beat, whereas others were able to generate the beat internally.









Remarkably, people who were good at internally generating beats also performed well on a synchronisation task that required them to predict tempo changes in musical sequences.

So the capacity for internal beat generation turns out to be a reliable marker of rhythmic skill. This adds new meaning to Miles Davis reported maxim that in music, silence is more important than sound".

But we still dont know why individual differences in the strength of neural entrainment occur in the first place. They may reflect the efficiency of neural responses at early levels of auditory processing, such as brainstem responses. Or the degree of connectivity between higher-level auditory and motor cortical regions.

Another open question is whether rhythmic skills can be boosted by recent advances in neuroscience. Brain stimulation techniques that induce neural synchrony at specific frequencies provide a promising method for enhancing entrainment and thereby improving an individuals capacity for rhythm.

Peter Keller receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Originally published in The Conversation.
Just an update and a few questions.



My fiance was contacted 7 weeks after via the online application to provide more info.

The info which needed to be provided was the original police check to be taken to the embassy, letter from the church (our NOIM was already provided previously) updated info on the way we communicate and just two documents to be translated.



After 6 weeks they called him up telling him that he has a phone interview. The phone interview has been done. The interview went well. The CO was very happy with how our application was done. The CO told him that his form 80 was already in Australia, so that we needed to wait. The CO didn't give a timeframe.



After he had his interview I logged onto the online application and my sponsorship has a mark as APPROVED. Does anyone know what this means?
Hello, I am looking for support / options for how to proceed with a refused 600 visitor visa.



Brief overview of the circumstances.

2013 July - applied for visitor 600 visa (offshore) granted, arrived shorly after

2014 July - departed before visa expired

2014 August - applied for visitor 600 visa (offshore) granted, arrived shortly after

2015 July - left and came back, extending the visa 12 months

2016 May - applied for visitor 600 visa (onshore) refused



What can I do in this situation, the reason stated is that a visitor visa cannot be stayed on for more than 12 months. Should I leave Australia, apply from outside?
Hi guys I'm sorry if this has been asked before I did do a search before posting...I've just got a few questions.

My husband and I recently tied the knot after being together just over a year and we are wanting to apply for the partner visa onshore.



1. How do I get a police check for an american citizen in australia ? And is it needed?

2. Does he just need a physical or full bloods etc need to be taken ?

3. With the first part of the visa, the temporary partner visa, is that granted upon application or is there a process we have to go through first? My husband wishes to work as soon as possible as our funds are getting low.

4. Does pregnancy factor into the application as I'm almost four months pregnant so not really a dependant ? Lol



Okay that's all I have for now  I'll check back later when my pregnancy brain has checked back in
Only SUV in its class to offer seven seats, the BR-V gets familiar 1.5-litre petrol and diesel engines, and also offers an auto 'box option.

Honda today marked its entry into the popular small SUV and premium crossover segment in India with the introduction of the BR-V small SUV at a starting price of Rs 8.75 lakh for the base petrol E variant. The BR-V has four variants on offer the base E, S, V and the top-spec VX  all of them available with the option of both petrol and diesel engines. A CVT automatic gearbox is also being offered on the V trim as an option.

The Honda BR-V top-spec petrol variant is priced at Rs 11.84 lakh. The base diesel is priced at Rs 9.90 lakh going upto Rs 12.90 lakh and the petrol automatic at Rs 11.99 lakh. (ex-showroom, Delhi).

First unveiled at the Indonesia International Auto Show last year, the BR-V or Bold Runabout Vehicle is based on the same platform as the Brio, Mobilio and Amaze to better manage costs. It goes up against established rivals such as the Renault Duster as well as the Maruti S-cross and the hugely popular Hyundai Creta.

The talking point for Hondas small SUV is its ability to seat seven, just like the Mobilio, making it the only car in its class to offer a third row of seats.

With regards to the exterior, the BR-V features a bold, upright nose that carries Hondas now trademark grille, a solid strip of chrome, sharp, angular headlights, a new wider air dam on the front bumper and two chrome-ringed fog lamps. Also lending the BR-V strong, SUV-like cues are the massive wheel arches, which can house wheels measuring up to 17 inches; the India-spec vehicle comes with 16-inch wheels.

The BR-V also comes with 210mm of ground clearance, which would be welcome on our uneven roads. In the cabin, the small SUV is expected to be generous on space given Honda's clever packaging skills and the fact that it's the longest car in the segment, measuring up to 4,456mm.

In terms of features, the BR-V gets steering-mounted audio controls, drivers seat height adjust, push-button start with keyless entry, 2 DIN audio player with Bluetooth, automatic climate control and leather seats and leather-wrapped steering wheel, gear knob and armrests based on trim levels. However, the BR-V does not get a touchscreen, which could be a disappointment to many buyers.

In terms of safety, the vehicle comes with dual front airbags as standard. ABS with EBD, however, is only available on mid-range and higher versions of the BR-V petrol, while they are standard on the diesel variants.

Under the hood, the BR-V is equipped with the familiar 1.5-litre petrol and diesel engines from the City and the Mobilio. The diesel engine continues to make 100hp and 200Nm, contrary to prior indications that the engine would be tuned for more power. The petrol motor is a 1.5-litre, i-VTEC petrol unit making 119hp and 145Nm. A six-speed manual gearbox is offered as standard on both petrol and diesel variants, while the petrol gets the additional option of a CVT gearbox. Interestingly, the petrol automatic variant is also equipped with steering-mounted paddle shifters, a class-first feature.

In terms of mileage, the diesel manual returns 21.9kpl, the petrol manual 15.4kpl and the petrol CVT 16kpl, according to ARAI ratings.



The BR-V will plug a vital gap in Hondas portfolio and the carmaker is hoping to pull in buyers with this SUVs roomy cabin and strong diesel engine. Although the vehicle has some design elements resembling the Mobilio which may not go down well with image-conscious Indian buyers, the fact that Honda will be the only carmaker to offer a seven-seater in the small SUV or crossover segment is sure to give it an edge over rivals.

Here is how the BR-V stacks up against its rivals in terms of prices:

Honda BR-V petrol vs rivals (ex-showroom, Delhi) Honda BR-V Hyundai Creta Renault Duster Nissan Terrano 1.5 E MT - Rs 8.75 lakh 1.6 MT Base - Rs 9.16 lakh 1.6 RXE - Rs 8.47 lakh 1.6 XLP - Rs 9.99 lakh 1.5 S MT - Rs 9.90 lakh 1.6 MT S - Rs 10.32 lakh 1.6 RXL - Rs 9.27 lakh --- 1.5 V MT - Rs 10.90 lakh 1.6 MT SX+ - Rs 11.84 lakh --- --- 1.5 VX MT - Rs 11.84 lakh 1.6 AT SX+ - Rs 12.87 lakh --- --- 1.5 V CVT - Rs 11.99 lakh --- --- ---

Honda BR-V diesel vs rivals (ex-showroom, Delhi) Honda BR-V Hyundai Creta Renault Duster Nissan Terrano 1.5 E MT - Rs 9.90 lakh 1.4 MT Base - Rs 9.99 lakh 85PS MT Standard - Rs 9.27 lakh XED 85PS MT - Rs 9.99 lakh 1.5 S MT - Rs 10.99 lakh 1.4 MT S - Rs 11.20 lakh 85PS MT RXE - Rs 9.47 lakh XLD 85PS MT - Rs 11.52 lakh 1.5 V MT - Rs 11.85 lakh 1.4 MT S+ - Rs 12.11 lakh 85PS MT RXL - Rs 10.27 lakh XLD Plus 85PS MT - Rs 12.17 lakh 1.5 VX MT - Rs 12.90 lakh 1.6 MT SX - Rs 12.37 lakh 85PS MT RXS - Rs 10.77 lakh XVD 110PS MT - Rs 13.50 lakh --- 1.6 MT SX+ - Rs 13.37 lakh 85PS MT RXZ - Rs 11.47 lakh XVD 110PS Premium MT - Rs 13.84 lakh --- 1.6 MT SX(O) - Rs 14.43 lakh 110PS MT RXL - Rs 11.07 lakh --- --- 1.6 AT SX+ - Rs 14.50 lakh 110PS AMT RXL - Rs 11.67 --- --- --- 110PS MT RXZ - Rs 12.27 lakh --- --- --- 110PS AMT RXZ - Rs 12.87 lakh --- --- --- 110PS MT RXZ AWD - Rs 13.57 lakh ---

Honda BRV Diesel prices: (ex-showroom, Navi Mumbai)
Nevertheless, while your... average TT Lambo street car delivers somewhere around 1,250 ponies, the big boys who like to take their boosted Italian exotics to races won't get their peace without 2,000 hp or more, hence the title above.Of course, in the world of drag racing, nobody can trust the dyno hp story you tell, so you'll have to prove yourself with MPH numbers. The piece of footage below brings us the freshest example of this, showing a 2,000 hp Gallardo that goes drag racing to demonstrate its potential.This Sant'Agata Bolognese beast has been gifted with Underground Racing's X Package and, as the name suggests it, this delivers a savage velocity experience.The Lamborghini, a pre-revamp Gallardo Superleggera, took part in Texas' TX2K16 event, where it engaged in multiple rolling star shenanigans. And since we mentioned numbers above, we'll go ahead and tell you this Lambo managed to climb well past the 200 mph (make that 320 km/h if you're a fan of the metric system) in its half-mile adventures.And while this monstrous Gallardo makes it look easy in the video below, strapping a pair of turbos to your Lambo does also require a boost in driving skill. Alas, there are owners in this world who haven't found out about the mandatory supporting driver mod, which is how we end up with TT Gallardo crashes that bring a bad reputation to the breed, such as the one we've recently shown you.P.S.: Those of you curious about how the Huracan is continuing the twin-turbo Lamborghini story should check out this story.
SUV

MQB

TDI

The image above is the first teaser that confirms the name of the 2017 Skoda Kodiaq. According to the Czech manufacturer, the handle refers to the Kodiak bear that lives in the Kodiak Archipelago in Alaska. Pretty inspired for anand rather funny when you think that Skoda also sells a model called the Yeti.While Skoda refers to the Kodiaq as being a large SUV, the definition of large in Europe differs from what a large SUV is in America. In other words, dont get too excited for a competitor for the Cadillac Escalade ESV or Ford Expedition EL. In truth, the Kodiaq will be able to seat seven and it will be underpinned by theplatform of a soon-to-debut Volkswagen SUV Motivation for the Kodiaq is expected to be provided by a series of four-cylinder turbo gasoline and diesel engines including a 2.0 BiTDI like the one you can get in the 2016 Volkswagen Passat . A V6 such as the 3.0has slim chances of being made available for the upcoming Skoda model.Skoda lets it slip that overall length stands at 4.70 meters (185 feet), which makes the yet-to-debut Kodiaq almost as long as the Volkswagen Touareg (4.81 meters or 188.8 inches). Were also told to expect remarkable performance both on and off the beaten track from the Kodiaq, as well as distinctive, muscular lines and a dynamic, robust and strong appearance. The 2016 Paris Motor Show in October is where the Skoda Kodiaq will make its first public outing and deliveries will begin in the first months of 2017.
Nevertheless, expecting a budget go-fast machine built in the 80s to provide hefty slip angles and serious sliding speed is rather silly. Sure, the Hachi-Roku does provide a brilliant starting point for a drift car project, but without serious investments, you'll simply end up spinning your way through the first corner and the speedometer needle won't climb too far in the process.So, what's it like driving an AE86 that was converted to drift-sped in the 90s and left that way to be used as a reminder of how early drift cars felt like?Fortunately, Japan-savvy enthusiasts Noriyaro, a guy who has delivered many JDM insights in the past, is here to provide an excellent answer. The man recently visited the Ebisu Circuit with the aim of driving just such a Toyota.Under the hood, the little sliding devil packs Toyota's 4A-GE powerplant, which probably means that we're looking at under 150 hp here. And when you have this little power, throwing the car into a drift, as well as overcoming its tendency to spin when you go too far, will be anything but easy.Back in the day, drift cars didn't come with the extreme steering angles we get nowadays, while hydraulic handbrakes hadn't been introduced yet. As a result, sliding this AE86 is one hell of a job, as our man demonstrates. Nevertheless, using the kind of driving seen in Keiichi Tsuchiya's old drifting videos, this driver finally manages to get the expected sideways thrills, as you'll be able to see in the video below.P.S.: As a bonus, an important part of the clip is dedicated to deciphering the age-old stickers outside and inside the car.
According to the Lancashire Telegraph , two cousins named Nazim Hussain and Mohammed Aseeb Hussain must surrender their assets and pay compensation to the people they tricked into buying cars with clocked mileages.A judge ruled that they must compensate 22 of their victims across the country, and the total amount exceeds 90,000.However, the court has found the pair bought and sold over 500 vehicles in 2011 and 2012. They paid a total of 3.3 million to just one auction company over the two-year period, and collected over three million pounds from the sale of cars with tampered odometers.In total, they removed around four million miles from the odometers of the vehicles they sold (6.4 million kilometers). The fraud was discovered after several customers filed complaints regarding their used car operations in Accrington, and one vehicle was found to have its odometer turned back by 234,000 miles (376,000 km).The scammers have three months to pay compensation to their victims, or they will get 20 months (13 for Aseeb Hussain) added to their ongoing sentences if they do not respect the courts decision.One of the victims stated that he did not even make it home after buying a car from the fraudsters. Considering the team "invested" their illegal profits in purchasing new vehicles, refunding or compensating all of the victims on such short notice is close to impossible.At their 2014 trial, both pleaded guilty to participating in a fraudulent business. Nazim was sentenced to 26 months in jail, while Aseeb received a 24-month sentence. Initially, the investigators focused on 36 cars, and only 22 victims will receive compensation. Estimates place the total loss of the 36 victims at over 150,000, while the assumed profit from selling the vehicles mentioned above was of 40,000.According to a report, three cars out of the 36 checked had their odometers turned back by over 200,000 miles (321,000 km), while most of the vehicles were altered by over 100,000 miles (160,000 km). None of the vehicles tested by investigators had less than 46,000 miles (75,000 km) removed from their odometers.
EV

Musk also said that he expects up to 200,000 Model 3s to be ready for delivery by the end of next year, a feat that would require a significant increase in production capabilities. That number spread over half a year (since it starts with July 1) means that Tesla would be able to build up to 400,000 units annually. The company's CEO went even further, announcing that the target production rate of 500,000 cars a year initially scheduled for 2020 will be moved forward two years.This important news made some people wonder how exactly Tesla will be able to meet the new deadlines since it's currently operating in just one car assembly plant (the one in Fremont). Musk made it very clear he intends to expand with new locations, but we're nearing the mid-point of 2016 and no concrete options have emerged so far.A plant in China sounds like the most logical solution (it was recently revealed that China has the second most Model 3 registrations, only trailing the USA), but even if things were to move very quickly, it would still be a stretch to imagine it will be ready in time for 2018.To clear up the waters, Elon Musk held a conference call with a number of financial analysts, and not only did he answer their questions but he even went as far as saying that he could see a way for the Fremont plant alone to churn out up to one million cars a year, with help from the Gigafactory in Nevada where the batteries would be built.However, he quickly goes on to dismiss the idea as not being "advisable," which means it could have been nothing more than just the usual Musk-talk where he exaggerates something just to prove a point.specialist website Electrek quotes Tesla Motors' CEO: Well, I think it is actually feasible, maybe not advisable, but feasible to do it with just Fremont and the Gigafactory. We actually believe that Fremont and the Gigafactory could scale to a million vehicles. Whether thats actually wise is a separate questionThe Fremont plant was previously owned by both Toyota and GM, and its maximum production value then was around the 500,000 units per year announced by Tesla yesterday. Currently, the facility hasn't been extended, but Tesla has bought several plots of land in its vicinity, plus leasing one million square feet worth of warehouse space in the Bay Area.All these signs could point towards a decision to move certain production processes out of Fremont and focus on car assembly there. Would this be enough to reach that one million cars figure? We only have two options: either trust Musk on it, or wait until time proves him right or wrong.
Skepticism about Teslas chances of success led to a five percent drop in share value, closing the day at $211.53, according to Automotive News Teslas new production target is seen as too aggressive, while its capital expenditures are larger than originally planned, says UBS analyst Colin Langan.Some investors are afraid of companies that are too bold, and analysts feel the same, as these can set up investors for disappointment.As some of you already know, Tesla has set the deadline for the Model 3 production start for July 1, 2017 . And Elon Musk claims to use a sleeping bag at his office to ensure this gets done. If sleeping at work to eliminate lost time during commuting is not the definition of a workaholic, we dont know what is.Once Model 3 production begins, Elon Musk expects to build 200,000 units by the end of next year. In case the company fails to start the manufacturing process ahead of the deadline, the factory will have to work full-time to try to match Musks statements.Unfortunately for Tesla, the company has a track record of delays in production, and their most recent launch was also involved in a few recall actions because of overcomplicated design, as those Falcon doors are not easy to make.However, Elon Musk says the Model 3 will not be affected by the same issues as the Model X, as the new car has been designed with simplicity in mind. Instead of making its most affordable product an unsophisticated vehicle, Tesla Motors changed its views on the production process to develop an easy-to-build car.
For now, we only have a few low-res images, but these are enough to allow us to discuss the positive aspects brought by such a potential 86 derivative.For one thing, we're dealing with a fully-functional vehicle that already has some "evaluation" miles on it. The wheelbase is identical to that of the coupe, while the same can be said about the front section and even the doors.While the commonalities might keep costs under control, increasing the chances of such a vehicle entering production, they also mean the rear legroom is extremely limited - last time we checked, the 86 was the world's smallest production four-seater coupe and such a title doesn't come without its cabin space drawbacks.Even so, the added rear-seat headroom and the unconventional design could be strong assets. The changes have only seen the vehicle gaining 86 lbs (39 kg). This means the boxer engine under the hood, which finds itself at the limit of delivering an underpowered experience (for a sportscar, at least) wouldn't have to be upgraded for such family version.Since we learned about Toyota engineers spending their time on a shooting brake derivative of the 86 as early as 2013 , we have to admit the concept we see now doesn't exactly come as a surprise.Still, given the limited sales of the sportscar, a more practical version could help, so here's to hoping the Shooting Brake doesn't have the same fate as the 2013 open-top derivative, which never moved past the concept car status.Now that Toyota has unveiled the 2017 mid-cycle revamp for the 86 (the GT part of the car's name is gone), the timing seems just right for new body types.
Five people were injured on anAllegiant Air jet that encountered clear air turbulence Thursday, forcing the flight to divert and land at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport. The Airbus A319departedPunta Cana and was bound forPittsburgh with 137 passengers and six crew members, according to media reports. The airline stated that three passengers and two flight attendants from Flight 7001 have been transported to the hospital, WTAE in Miami reported.

The flight landedin Fort Lauderdale at 2:43 p.m. local time with ambulances waiting. Passengers told aCBS station afterward they were already experiencing a bumpy ride when the severe turbulence caused a rapid descent, sending people and loose items tumbling. Other witnesses told the station the injuries included a broken nose anda head injury.
AVwebs search of news in aviation found announcements from jetAVIVA, Flightdocs, Kansas State Polytechnic and the Upwind Foundation. jetAVIVAannounced that it has reached an agreement to acquire Kansas Aircraft Corporation, a highly respected aviation sales firm based in the Kansas City metropolitan area. Flightdocs Inc., global provider of aircraft maintenance tracking services, announced the release of Flightdocs Enterprise. Incorporating the best features of the powerful Flightdocs Maintenance Tracking system, Flightdocs Enterprise provides full fleet capabilities, maintenance-inventory-flightlog integration, comprehensive work order management and API integration to customer business systems.

Kansas State Polytechnic is introducingFly K-State Academy  a three-day piloting program, June 27-29, for high school students entering their freshman through senior year who dream about a future in aviation. In this immersive experience, students will complete four missions and earn three and a half hours of flight time.The Upwind Foundation announced the Upwind Summer Scholarship Program Class of 2016 for the following California high school juniors: Travis Bender of Redwood City, Kyle Caverly of San Mateo, Leon Lam of San Jose, Michael Salazar of San Bruno and Patrick Shea of San Carlos.
6 May 2016 11:07 (UTC+04:00)

By Gunay Camal

An evaluation mission including representatives of the legal bureau of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Azerbaijan office Alexander Novikau, Oliver Tuholske and Elsevar Agayev have visited Tartar region, which was recently intensively shelled by Armenian troops.

They have familiarized with the needs of people, who temporary changed their place of residence in the wake of the recent incidents on the troops line of contact, Azertac reports.

Head of Tartar District Executive Authorities Mustagim Mammadov informed the UNHCR representatives about the recent incidents on the frontline. He said the residential areas in the district were subjected to heavy shelling as Armenian armed units violated ceasefire.

256 houses, 4 schools, 2 medical centers, a kindergarten were damaged, while 32 houses were destroyed completely as a result of the shelling, he said, adding that 7 civilians were wounded, and 2 IDPs were killed.

Mammadov reminded that shelling Azerbaijani civilians, Armenian armed units ignored the resolutions of the UN.

The UNHCR representatives then visited Gapanli village which was mostly damaged by the Armenian units, and met with residents and IDPs whose houses were destroyed.

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.

The hostilities in the contact line of troops renewed on April 24 as a result of the Armenian provocation. Despite the Russia-brokered agreement achieved on April 5, Armenia violated ceasefire with Azerbaijan by shelling its positions and civilians using prohibited weapons.

The Armenian military units have shelled Azerbaijans Terter district, including Gapanli village on April 26 from 01:05 to 04:25 (UTC/GMT +4 hours).

Baku has repeatedly called on Armenia to abstain from violence, but Yerevan keeps ignoring all the appeals.

Azerbaijans State Commission on Prisoners of War has informed the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) of these acts that are contrary to the norms of international law and rules of war, and urged on the Armenian side to avoid atrocities against civilians.

Moreover, the Foreign Ministry has sent letters to the UN and OSCE urging the heads of international organizations to strongly condemn Armenia for violating the ceasefire agreement and to demand Armenias complying with the undertaken commitments and withdraw its troops from the occupied territories of Azerbaijan.

Armenia captured Nagorno-Karabakh and seven surrounding districts from Azerbaijan in a war that followed the Soviet breakup in 1991. More than 20,000 Azerbaijanis were killed and nearly 1 million were displaced as a result of the war. Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the occupied territories.

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6 May 2016 11:41 (UTC+04:00)

The United States has once again voiced support to territorial integrity and sovereignty of Azerbaijan.

The U.S., along with the rest of the international community, does not recognize the "independence" of the occupation regime in Nagorno-Karabakh, said Mark Toner, Deputy Spokesperson of the US State Department, on May 6.

"Nagorno-Karabakh's final status will only be resolved in the context of a comprehensive settlement", he stressed.

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.

Toner further said that Washington urges the sides to come to the negotiating table in good faith in order to reach a settlement that achieves those goals.

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 in the contact line of troops renewed on April 24 as a result of the Armenian provocation. Despite the Russia-brokered agreement achieved on April 5, Armenia violated ceasefire with Azerbaijan by shelling its positions and civilians using prohibited weapons.

The Armenian military units have shelled Azerbaijans Terter district, including Gapanli village on April 26 from 01:05 to 04:25 (UTC/GMT +4 hours).

Baku has repeatedly called on Armenia to abstain from violence, but Yerevan keeps ignoring all the appeals.

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6 May 2016 14:58 (UTC+04:00)

Azerbaijans Defense Ministry has announced that in case the Armenian side does not comply with UN Security Council resolutions on the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of its troops from the occupied Azerbaijani territories, the Azerbaijani armed forces attacks are inevitable.

The Defense Ministry issued such a statement in response to Armenian criminal military-political regime's allegations that the Azerbaijani side would attack the opposite side on the eve of May 8-9, Azertac reports.

"The Armenians should every day, every instant, every hour wait for the Azerbaijani Armed Forces taking steps towards liberation of our lands and fully ensuring the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan," the statement reads.

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.

The Defense Ministry further stated that Azerbaijani armed forces are able and completely ready to liberate the occupied lands.

The Armenians must leave the Azerbaijani territories and put an end to the occupation if they do not want to die and live in fear and anxiety waiting for their death," the Defense Ministry said.

Long-simmering tensions between Armenia and Azerbaijan flared again on April 2 when the Armenian side began to shell the Azerbaijani positions and settlements along the frontline. To protect civilian population, the Azerbaijani Armed Forces launched counter attacks and repulsed the enemy forces back. On April 5, the two sides agreed on a ceasefire. However, the Armenian forces commit armistice breaches on the frontline almost every day targeting civilians and shelling villages.

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6 May 2016 14:41 (UTC+04:00)

By Gulgiz Dadashova

Yerevan is about to blast the already tense situation in the region. Aggression rather than talks seems to be the major artery of the Sargsyan regime, which assiduously stages provocations against Azerbaijan.

For over two decades, Azerbaijan and Armenia have been locked in conflict, which emerged over Armenia's territorial claims against its South Caucasus neighbor. Despite the official ceasefire, each year the conflict becomes a cause of the deaths of dozens of civilians and military.

The latest outbreak of violence on the contact line in Nagorno-Karabakh threatens to destabilize the whole region. The renewed hostilities also proved that it is impossible to resolve the conflict by keeping a status quo.

Baku has repeatedly stated the conflict must be ended as the status-quo is only a time bomb, which can blast every minute. However, Yerevan still refuses to take any step in resolving the conflict instead refusing the peace talks and warning to recognize the separatist regime in Nagorno-Karabakh.

Rhetoric about recognition of the "independence" of the separatist Nagorno-Karabakh is an attempt to put pressure not only on Baku, but also on the mediators of the OSCE Minsk Group, believes Nadana Fridrikhson, political analyst, journalist and expert of the 'Cube' analytical center.

The April hostilities actually canceled existing status quo in the Nagorno-Karabakh issue, she said, claiming that under the current situation, where there are all prerequisites for the start of the war, Armenia is trying "to play on the nerves."

This de jure "recognition" of the separatist Nagorno-Karabakh may provoke Azerbaijan on fighting, because Baku will have no other choice, the expert said.

Azerbaijan's Foreign Ministry already warned that Armenia`s recognizing the separatist regime in the occupied territories of Azerbaijan would mean an end of the Minsk Group Process and the Minsk Group will have no mandate for any negotiations.

Urging the international community to adequately respond to Armenian provocations, Baku stated that the OSCE Minsk group co-chairs need to bring Armenian leadership to peace and constructive negotiation process.



The U.S., Russia and France, which are the co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group established to broker a settlement of the conflict, has not yet reacted to Armenias provocative intention to spoil the peace process through opposing the principles of international law.

Indeed, experts agree that in case Yerevan recognizes the "independence" of the separatist Nagorno-Karabakh, Armenia itself will provoke a war.

This [the recognition] will mean demonstration of disrespect to norms and principles of the international law, peace process and once again prove the terrorist essence of the Sargsyan regime, for which the international law is only a piece of paper, said expert Arye Gut.

Still, the recognition of the draft law presented by two Armenian MPs may entail more problems than breaking the peace process. This is a step directed against the existing world order, internationally recognized borders of a sovereign state. Any attempt for illegal annexation of Azerbaijans Nagorno-Karabakh can provoke Azerbaijan to demand its other historical lands, including Zenegezur and Irevan.

The Azerbaijani state and people will never allow the establishment of a second Armenian state on Azerbaijani territory. The world should show firm position, and avoid double standards as the failure can result in a new war.

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Follow Gulgiz Dadashova on Twitter: @GulgizD

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6 May 2016 15:16 (UTC+04:00)

Azerbaijan has urged the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to increase the efforts for releasing its citizens Dilgam Asgarov and Shahbaz Guliyev taken hostage by Armenian militaries.

Azerbaijan's Deputy Foreign Minister Khalaf Khalafov has voiced Bakus request at a meeting with ICRC president Peter Maurer in Geneva, Azertac reports

In turn, Peter Maurer said the ICRC is regularly visiting Shahbaz Guliyev and Dilgam Asgarov and will continue its humanitarian activities in this regard in accordance with its mandate.

He also expressed hope for an early political solution to the Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict at a meeting with.

Armenian forces killed an Azerbaijani, Hasan Hasanov, and detained Guliyev and Asgarov while they were attempting to visit the graves of their relatives in July 2014.

Guliyev and Asgarov have been judged illegally by the unrecognized courts of a separatist regime in occupied Nagorno-Karabakh. Following an expedited judicial process" in December 2015, Asgarov was sentenced to life imprisonment and Guliyev to 22 years.

Khalafov further informed the ICRC president that Armenia has been shelling Azerbaijans densely populated residential areas along the contact line since 2 April 2016, which resulted in the death of numerous military and civilian casualties and damage to public and private property.

The sides also noted the ICRCs intermediary role in the handing over on 10 April 2016 of the bodies of those killed in the latest fighting at the contact line.

They exchanged views on the current state and future prospects of the existing relations between Azerbaijan and the ICRC.

The situation on the contact line of Armenian and Azerbaijani troops has again aggravated despite the ceasefire agreement that was reached with the mediation of Russia on April 5. Thus, the Armenian military units have shelled Azerbaijans Terter district, including Gapanli village on April 26 from 01:05 to 04:25 (UTC/GMT +4 hours).

The long-lasting Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict remains unresolved due to the continuation of Armenias occupant policy. Yerevan has not yet implemented the UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the occupied Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts.

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6 May 2016 13:32 (UTC+04:00)

By Rashid Shirinov

The example of Azerbaijan's tolerance and multiculturalism has received recognition of the UN, Murad Sadeddinov, a political analyst, said. This statement was announced at the meeting of Baku Networks experts group dedicated to the 7th Global forum of the UN Alliance of civilizations of April 25-27.

Despite the bitter fate of Azerbaijan, occupation of its 20 percent by Armenia, the presence of more than one million refugees, the country became an island of tolerance throughout the world and serves as an example. Those are not just words. We live in a country where offences on the basis of religious differences among people have never been noticed," he said.

Sadeddinov noted the intensifying anti-Russian spirits in this south Caucasus nation due to unwise policy pursued by the authorities in the region. "Look at the situation in Armenia. What is their current attitude to Russians and Russia, who have always helped and supported them in all their endeavors? How many Russian schools remained in Armenia and how many in Azerbaijan?" he inquired.

The analyst said that Azerbaijan has conserved Russian culture, although Armenia's aggressive policy relied mainly on the support of the former leadership of Russia and the events of January 20, 1990 when the Soviet troops entered Baku. All this stands for the tolerance of Azerbaijan that the whole world needs. "The example of Azerbaijan's tolerance and multiculturalism was recognized by the UN, which made the decision on holding the next meeting of the Global forum of the UN Alliance of civilizations in Baku, Sadeddinov noted.

He thinks that today, the role of the UN in world politics has weakened significantly and this organization needs support. Azerbaijan implements that support, and the factor of holding of the forum in Baku is very important.

Modern Azerbaijan is not the same as it was 20 years ago anymore. It has transformed into a political, economical and military power of the region. The holding of this forum in Baku is the estimate of Azerbaijan, the analyst emphasized.

He also stressed the statements of the U.S. officials on the UN's role in resolving of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Furthermore the forum held under the auspices of the UN and the appeal of the UN Secretary General to the forum participants and people of Azerbaijan open wide perspectives for a fair settlement of the conflict.

Murad Sadeddinov said definite portion of the Armenian population has already admitted the necessity of returning the occupied lands of Azerbaijan. Armenia has no future and everybody understands that. Their government is in a critical situation, protests against the authorities are held in Yerevan time after time. The reaction of the world community on the recent developments on the line of confrontation has disappointed the leadership of Armenia because they have not received the support that they expected. Azerbaijan gives a chance for Armenia to think again and find a solution that would be beneficial for the Armenian people. They may lose this chance in the future, Sadeddinov believes.

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6 May 2016 16:32 (UTC+04:00)

Azerbaijan and Armenia are working out a possible meeting on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict settlement, said Maria Zakharova, spokesperson for Russia's foreign ministry, Trend's special correspondent reported.

A decision on the venue and the exact date of the meeting has not been made yet," Zakharova said, adding that the matter rests in the nearest weeks, but it is too early to talk about the format.

Russia's foreign minister Sergey Lavrov has recently told RIA Novosti that a meeting on Nagorno-Karabakh conflict settlement is planned to be held with the participation of the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairmen in the nearest future.

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 commit armistice breaches on the frontline almost every day.

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6 May 2016 16:45 (UTC+04:00)

Representatives of the diplomatic corps accredited in the country have visited the frontline zone in order to familiarize with the consequences of damage caused to the civilian population in the wake of the Armenian armed forces' shelling the residential areas.

The visit was organized by Azerbaijan's Foreign Ministry, Azertac reports.

The diplomats first visited Gapanli village in Tartar region, where Head of the Tartar Region Executive Authority Mustagim Mammadov informed the delegation about the difficulties the peaceful population faced during the recent skirmishes on the frontline and problems caused as a result of Armenia's shelling the residential areas.

The diplomats then reviewed villager Ilgar Mammadov's house which was destroyed by an Armenian shell.

The visit of the heads of diplomatic missions and about 80 delegates, including military attaches to the frontline aims to ensure objective coverage of the current situation along the line of contact.

Long-simmering tensions between Armenia and Azerbaijan flared again on April 2 when the Armenian side began to shell the Azerbaijani positions and settlements along the frontline. To protect civilian population, the Azerbaijani Armed Forces launched counter attacks and repulsed the enemy forces back. On April 5, the two sides agreed on a ceasefire.

The hostilities in the contact line of troops renewed on April 24 as a result of the Armenian provocation. Despite the Russia-brokered agreement achieved on April 5, Armenia violated ceasefire with Azerbaijan by shelling its positions and civilians using prohibited weapons.

Baku has repeatedly called on Armenia to abstain from violence, but Yerevan keeps ignoring all the appeals.

Azerbaijans State Commission on Prisoners of War has informed the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) of these acts that are contrary to the norms of international law and rules of war, and urged on the Armenian side to avoid atrocities against civilians.

Armenia captured Nagorno-Karabakh and seven surrounding districts from Azerbaijan in a war that followed the Soviet breakup in 1991. More than 20,000 Azerbaijanis were killed and nearly 1 million were displaced as a result of the war. Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the occupied territories.

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6 May 2016 10:43 (UTC+04:00)

By Rufiz Hafizoglu

It became clear in early April that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu had disagreements.

The disagreement between the president and prime minister occurred after Davutoglu's statement over a hundred of academicians who opposed the military operations in the country's south-eastern provinces and criticized the actions of the government and the army in this regard.

Turkey perceived the criticism of academicians as the support for the PKK terrorist organization.

President Erdogan stood for the arrest of academicians, while Davutoglu in his statements urged to give them a suspended sentence.

But then, no one could ever predict that this disagreement between the prime minister and the president will result in Davutoglu's decision to leave his post in the party, that is, the post of chairman of the Justice and Development Party (AKP).

According to the Turkish media, Davutoglu was ready to resign from the post of AKP chairman May 4. But the president urged him to convene an extraordinary congress for the election of the party leader.

Undoubtedly, it is a very wise decision made by Erdogan, as Davutoglu's resignation would be considered as a political crisis.

Nevertheless, an extraordinary congress of the ruling party is not so different from a political crisis.

The extraordinary congress of the Justice and Development Party will be held May 22.

It is not ruled out that it is another step towards Turkey's switching to a presidential system.

Some experts in Turkey believe that Erdogan is deliberately weakening the parliamentary system in the country and thereby, wants to prove the necessity of the presidential system.

On the other hand, it shows that Erdogan fully controls the situation and the policy of the Justice and Development Party.

Five candidates, who have sufficient experience in politics, have been nominated for the position of the ruling party's chairman.

The Minister of Transport, Maritime and Communication Binali Yildirim, Minister of Justice Bekir Bozdag, Minister of Energy and Natural Resources Berat Albayrak, Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus, and the ruling party's vice chairman Mehmet Ali Sahin are among them.

But who among these politicians is a real candidate for the post of the AKP chairman and Turkey's prime minister?

If one compares all the candidates and their political past, it can be concluded that Numan Kurtulmus and one of the founders of the AKP Binali Yildirim, as well as Mehmet Ali Sahin are most likely to take these posts.

Regarding the candidacy of Minister of Energy and Natural Resources of Turkey Berat Albayrak, he has less chances compared with other politicians. Undoubtedly, blood relations with Erdogan will hinder Albayrak's plans, because he is the Turkish president's son in law.

It is not excluded that namely Numan Kurtulmus will become new prime minister and chairman of the AKP. Head of the Turkish intelligence Hakan Fidan, who hasn't yet appeared in the list of candidates, may become another potential candidate for these positions.

Regarding further political fate of Davutoglu, he is more likely to share the fate of former Turkish President Abdullah Gul, who became completely isolated from political activity.

The question arises whether this event will affect the reputation of the party, which is famous for its stable domestic policy and hasn't suffered any defeat throughout its activities.

Prime Minister Davutoglu in his latest statement said that the post of the prime minister has no importance for him and the most important thing is to be committed to the party's political line.

Considering this, a number of analysts in Turkey do not assess the situation as a political split.

But the number of the AKP's quite serious politicians, who have been isolated from active politics, grows year after year. Turkey's former president Abdullah Gul, former prime ministers Ali Babacan, Bulent Arinc, AKP's former deputy chairman Huseyin Celik are among them.

All this gives a reason to think that the AKP may have serious internal problems that could lead to a split in the party, even though its members themselves reject these developments.

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6 May 2016 15:54 (UTC+04:00)

By Justin W. van Fleet

In mid-April, a 7.8-magnitude earthquake struck Ecuador, killing at least 500 people and injuring another 4,000. The immediate priority is relief and rescue  searching for survivors (100 people are still missing), reuniting loved ones, and providing care, water, shelter, and food. But once this is accomplished, the work will have to continue.

In particular, some 150,000 young people, according to UNICEF estimates, will have to be provided with psychosocial support, and a sense of normalcy, protection, and hope. And the best way to do that is through the rapid provision of education.

When humanitarian relief efforts neglect the need for education, young people are left on the streets  vulnerable to trafficking, violence, extremism, and exploitation. Moreover, the failure to provide up-front education investment during crises makes the provision of a broad range of social services less cost-effective, as consistent learning spaces aid in the delivery of health, counseling, and other family services and training.

In Lebanon, Turkey, and Jordan, many Syrian refugee children have waited six years to reenter a classroom. Similarly, the roughly one million children affected by the 2015 earthquake in Nepal and five million students who were shut out of school when the Ebola crisis gripped West Africa have struggled to continue their studies.

The children in Ecuador risk falling through the cracks of an insufficient international humanitarian-aid system, in which less than 2% of aid is directed toward education. These children are in danger of joining the 80 million children around the world whose education has been disrupted by crisis, emergency, or conflict.

Sadly, of the 133 education appeals made since 2010, just six  four of them related to the Syrian crisis  received nearly half of all funding. In 2015, four education appeals received no funding at all. As a result, humanitarian appeals provided education to just 12% of children and youth in emergency situations last year.

As an upper-middle-income country, Ecuador does not qualify for many multilateral assistance initiatives for education. It will be the recipient of funds from emergency appeals, but only a small amount will trickle through the system to support education. In the absence of other financing options, existing development funding is often siphoned off to mount an emergency education response, as happened in the areas afflicted by the Ebola virus and the Nepal earthquake. In this way, our failure to plan for crises hinders progress toward long-term education goals.

That is why policymakers are working on an initiative to ensure that no children are deprived of an education because of an unexpected crisis or emergency. At the World Humanitarian Summit, to be held in Istanbul in May, a new Education Crisis Platform and fund will be launched. Once it is established, support would be made available to humanitarian workers and educators to develop immediate plans for the provision of education to children affected by emergencies, based on the recognition that humanitarian, development, and security needs can no longer be addressed in silos.

An injection of financing, supporting a common strategy developed in partnership with governments, would enable the immediate delivery of education in emergency situations. The fund will thus fill the gap in coordination and provision of services by strengthening the system at its weakest point, providing a bridge to longer-term development.

If this initiative had been in place before the earthquake in Ecuador, it could have provided 12 months of emergency support, helping the country until it could reinstate education according to its national plans. In a more protracted crisis, like that of Syria, the funding platform could help neighboring countries establish, with the support of the international community, a long-term financing strategy, perhaps by brokering an arrangement whereby donor governments could pay the principal over 30 years on concessional loans from the World Bank.

In Nepal, the proposed education platform could have helped meet immediate needs and bridge the gap to the Nepal School Sector Reform Plan 2009-2016. Developed with and supported by the Global Partnership for Education, this $60 million, four-year grant could have benefited from additional resources at this point of crisis, so that the development dollars originally allocated to the sector were not jeopardized.

The need will only become greater. The world is experiencing the largest refugee crisis since World War II. As millions leave everything behind in search of security and a future for their children, our current, shortsighted approach has become untenable. Some 124 million young people are already out of school, and a quarter-billion will leave fourth grade without mastering basic skills. A huge cohort of young people lacking the skills necessary for this century  let alone last century  is emerging, particularly in the worlds most marginalized and volatile countries.

At the recent International Monetary Fund/World Bank Spring Meetings, world leaders made clear that additional resources must be sought to improve the delivery of education in emergencies. Officials from major donor countries  including Norway, the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, and the European Union  joined with ministers from countries affected by emergencies (such as South Sudan and Lebanon) and civil-society representatives in a meeting convened by UN Special Envoy Gordon Brown, Julia Gillard of the Global Partnership for Education, Tony Lake of UNICEF, Irina Bokova of UNESCO, and Filippo Grandi of UNHCR. All agreed to establish the Education Crisis Platform.

The platform will be launched in less than a month  too late, unfortunately, to help the children in Ecuador, but not be too late for those whose education will be jeopardized when the next crisis inevitably occurs. Catalytic donors  foundations, philanthropists, businesses, and nontraditional supporters  are needed. If they step up, we can leverage significant financing and ensure that all children receive the education they need, preventing another lost generation.

Copyright: Project Syndicate:An Earthquake in Education Funding

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6 May 2016 10:00 (UTC+04:00)

By Amina Nazarli

Delicious Azerbaijani cuisine is one the first things that tourists want to discover coming to the Land of Fire.

Visiting foreign countries tourists are prone to try local dishes, but not their usual nationals dishes or fast food. For instance, Italians coming to Azerbaijan prefer to try the king of the national cuisine -- Plov in Baku, instead of eating familiar pizza.

According to the World Tourism Organizations studies, the visitors remember a country thanks to its national cuisine.



Azerbaijan already has experience in local food promotion. The country serves no exception to the old adage that breakfast is the most important meal of the day and during the first European Games in Baku last summer, which gathered thousands of tourists, the country patented Azerbaijani breakfast, allowing it to stand out among regional fare.



The traditional Azerbaijani breakfast consists of sweet butter, various types of white cheese, cream, honey, preserves, tea, and kuku or scrambled egg with herbs.

The decision to register the brand was aimed at promoting national cuisine and today Azerbaijani breakfast options are compulsory in hotels throughout the country for tourists to enjoy.

So far, the Azerbaijan National Cuisine Center has already patented several national main dishes and now working on certification of the rest dishes.

Director General of the Center Tahir Amiraslanov said that this process is not an easy process.



Talking about the regional food, Amiraslanov said that the root of the South Caucasus cuisine goes to the Azerbaijani dishes.



The root of the dishes prepared by the nations in the South Caucasus goes to the Azerbaijani cuisine. These dishes have their history, author and cooking method, he stressed.



We were able to gather some 4,000 kinds of dishes. Its not easy to determine ancient dishes. We should study historical sources, and this requires sufficient funding, he said.

Azerbaijans national cuisine, being one of the oldest and richest cuisines in the world, makes many gourmands mouths water. "Nush Olsun!" ("Bon Appetite!") begins every meal time in Azerbaijan with rich and delicious national cuisine, delighting both soul and flesh.

National dishes are very delicious and diversified, distinguishing with their originality and refined taste.



Different kinds of dolma, levengi, kabab, qutab, piti, dushbere, khingal different sweets such as pakhlava, shekerbura and etc. will really inspire you to stay here for ages.

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Amina Nazarli is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @amina_nazarli



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6 May 2016 10:45 (UTC+04:00)

Strong Azerbaijani army can give a stiff resistance to the armed forces of Armenia, and today Azerbaijan has well-trained, well-equipped army, said Miad Khater, a Jordanian political analyst.

However, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has repeatedly stated that Azerbaijan is committed to peaceful settlement of the conflict within the framework of international law. Azerbaijan supports the peaceful resolution of all the existing conflicts in the world. This position of the Azerbaijani leader is highly appreciated all over the world. Inhumane terrorist acts conducted by Armenia force Azerbaijan to take adequate counter-measures," Khater made the remark while talking to Azertac

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.

Khater further said that the Azerbaijani armed forces have demonstrated professionalism and high morale while liberating several strategically important heights and settlements in early April following the Armenian provocation on the frontline.

This is natural - over the last years Azerbaijan under the leadership of President Aliyev has focused on development in all fields and has achieved impressive success in record time. Special attention was paid to enhancing the defense capability, strengthening and upgrading of the countrys armed forces," he said.

The political scientist also hailed the relations and cooperation between Azerbaijan and Jordan. "President Aliyev very competently builds effective fraternal and friendly relations not only with Jordan, but also with many other countries of the Middle East. Jordan always supports the just position of Azerbaijan on all international platforms. The Council of Jordanian Senate issued a statement condemning the occupation of Azerbaijani territories and urged the release of the occupied lands", he reminded.

Long-simmering tensions between Armenia and Azerbaijan flared again on April 2 when the Armenian side began to shell the Azerbaijani positions and settlements along the frontline. To protect civilian population, the Azerbaijani Armed Forces launched counter attacks and repulsed the enemy forces back. On April 5, the two sides agreed on a ceasefire. However, the Armenian forces commit armistice breaches on the frontline almost every day targeting civilians and shelling villages.

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6 May 2016 11:33 (UTC+04:00)

By Nigar Abbaseva

Japan is keen to develop its cooperation in a number of areas with Azerbaijan and is interested in broader economic cooperation.

Tanaka Kazunori, head of international relations division of the Chamber of Representatives of the ruling liberal-democrat party of Japan who is on an official visit to Azerbaijan mentioned the great importance of Azerbaijan for Japan and underlined great opportunities for further development.

Japan mainly cooperates with Azerbaijan in the energy and oil spheres, Tanaka Kazunori said.

Tanaka also expressed his hope for further development and extension of relations between the two countries in the spheres of IT and science. Azerbaijan is an attractive country for the activities of private companies.

Tanaka expressed his satisfaction with the sustainable development of amicable relations between Japan and Azerbaijan ever since the two countries established diplomatic ties.

He also expressed his hope for further strengthening of the cooperation of parliaments between the two countries and noted the importance of enhancing dialogue between the two governments at various levels, including the expansion of exchange between the members of the parliament of the two countries with a view to foster the ties.

We would really appreciate if Azerbaijani parliamentarians enhance frequency of their visits to Japan, and parliamentarians from Japan pay frequent visits to Azerbaijan respectively, Tanaka Kazunori said.

He voiced his hope that Japanese PM Shinzo Abe will realize his scheduled visit to Azerbaijan.

Azerbaijan attaches great importance to the cooperation with Japan, which is a well-developed country with high-tech manufacturing and services sectors and is the third-largest economy of the world.

The two countries enjoy friendly relations and cooperate on various platforms. Japan and Azerbaijan established the Friendship Association on March 4, 2015, while both parliaments interact through friendship groups called Azerbaijan-Japan Inter-parliamentary Friendship Group and Japan-Azerbaijan Inter-parliamentary Friendship League.

Delegation from Japan was on an official visit to Azerbaijan at the invitation of the ruling New Azerbaijan party.

During the visit, the Japanese delegation met with Azerbaijani Deputy Prime Minister, Deputy Chairman and Executive Secretary of the New Azerbaijan Party Ali Ahmadov. The sides mulled issues of bilateral cooperation between the parties, and the two states.

Tanaka Kazunori stressed the importance of his visit to Azerbaijan, saying it aims to develop friendly relations between the two countries.

Ahmadov in turn voiced belief that development of relations between the New Azerbaijan Party and the Liberal Democratic Party of Japan would contribute to the strengthening of the two countries` ties.

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6 May 2016 18:34 (UTC+04:00)

By Rashid Shirinov

The National Army of Azerbaijan was rated one of the best among the post Soviet countries, according to Russia's Oruzhiye Rossii news agency.

Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan Armies are in the best conditions among the former USSR countries after Russia, the report said.

Russian analytics believe that these countries possess enough funds for purchasing modern weapons in required quantity thanks to their natural resource export. "They buy from Russia, Israel and Western countries," they stressed.

Both Baku and Astana have their own defense industry, and, what is very important, staff of enough number in order to explore modern weapons, that is to say, both for production and exploitation, the report underlined. "For example, Azerbaijan produces its own Marauder vehicles, an armored, mine-protected vehicle that was originally released by a South African military company."

Oruzhiye Rossii accents that the micro war of April confirmed that the technical abilities of Azerbaijan Armed Forces have risen significantly.

The Military of Azerbaijan possesses the latest technology equipments, which are constantly bought and produced. It ranks as the 60th of 126 explored countries Armies worldwide. For example, it includes more than 300 tanks, tank destroyers, 127 fixed-wing and rotary-wing aircrafts from all branches of service, helicopters and helicopter carrier vessels. Total naval strength includes all known auxiliaries as well, according to the Global Fire Power.

Over the past few years, Azerbaijan has succeeded to stay in the top-three ranking of the post-Soviet countries Armed Forces, made by different news and analytical agencies. This indicates the strength of Azerbaijan and its readiness to resist any external invasion and liberate its occupied lands from the enemy.

The Navy of Azerbaijan Republic also enjoys high capabilities, enabling to be listed the second strongest navy on the Caspian after the Russian fleet.

Azerbaijani Navy keeps implementing its exercises and its volumes are growing constantly. Moreover, Russian and Azerbaijani Navies have held their joint naval exercises repeatedly and plan to continue that experience in future.

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6 May 2016 10:40 (UTC+04:00)

The Azerbaijani-Italian business forum will be held in Rome on June 13, Azerbaijan Export and Investment Promotion Foundation AZPROMO announced on May 5.

The business forum will be organized within the 4th meeting of the Azerbaijani-Italian intergovernmental commission on economic cooperation.

Italy is one of Azerbaijan's main trade partners. Italy took the first place in the list of Azerbaijan's foreign trade partners in the first quarter of 2016, according to Azerbaijan's State Customs Committee.

The trade turnover between the two countries totaled $462.44 million, which is the 12.82 percent of the total volume of Azerbaijan's foreign trade operations.

Goods worth $368 million (20.67 percent of the total volume) were exported to Italy during the first quarter of 2016.

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6 May 2016 11:47 (UTC+04:00)

By Nigar Abbasova

Azerbaijan can make a good use of the extensive knowledge and experience of Hungary in non-petroleum areas such as the construction industry, info communication.

Agricultural production in Hungary is one of the most developed fields of national economy, while development and strengthening of these industries are one of the top priorities for Azerbaijan today.

In this context, Hungarian Ambassador Azerbaijan Imre Laslocki underlined the importance of bilateral cooperation between the countries and his country's intention to enhance its relations with Azerbaijan.

"Cooperation in the sphere of agriculture is one of the top priorities for the governments of Azerbaijan and Hungary," he said.

The development of bilateral cooperation between Azerbaijan and Hungary in different spheres such as education, tourism is also of great importance for the governments of the two countries. Laslocki appraised successful development of cooperation in the sphere of education. A number of students from Azerbaijan applied for the Hungarian Government Scholarship program 2016-2017. Scholarship is awarded in the field of animal nutrition, plant protection, rural development and agribusiness. The ambassador mentioned that specialties offered by Hungarian universities will give a stimulus for the further strengthening of non-oil sectors of economy such as agriculture in Azerbaijan.

Laslocki also spoke about resumption of the Baku-Budapest-Baku flights operated by Hungarian low-cost WizzAir. He voiced his regret over current underfilling of aircrafts but also expressed his confidence in future success of WizzAir flights.

Laslocki said that most probably the Intergovernmental Commission Azerbaijan-Hungary will meet in Baku in June. He underlined the importance of forthcoming visit of Azerbaijani Agriculture Minister Heydar Asadov to Hungary with a large delegation of businessmen. We have about 60 agro-industrial companies interested in the cooperation with Azerbaijan, Laslocki said.

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6 May 2016 18:08 (UTC+04:00)

By Fatma Babayeva

Azerbaijan is ready to support and take an active participation in consultations over Asian Development Bank's new strategy Road to 2030.

The statement was made by Azerbaijan's Finance Minister Samir Sharifov, who led the countrys delegation during the 49th annual gathering of ADBs Board of Directors in Frankfurt, Germany on May 2-5.

The Finance Minister uttered confidence about the new strategy Road to 2030 which is being developed by the Bank.

This strategy will ensure more comprehensive solutions to the arising challenges, and its implementation will strengthen the ADB, Sharifov believes.

The minister noted that the current difficult external environment has been posing significant challenges for many Central Asian countries, including Azerbaijan, which is being severely affected by contagion of weak economic developments in the neighboring countries and sharp fall in oil prices.

Like many oil exporting countries, Azerbaijan faced decrease in oil export revenues that was reflected in reduction of current account surplus, substantial devaluation of the national currency and fall in budget revenues. In response, Azerbaijans government plans a transition to a new, more sustainable and balanced model of the economic growth, Sharifov said by explaining that this model envisages structural changes to diversify the economy, to reduce the dependence on oil and gas revenues, as well as, gradually to substitute public investments with foreign or domestic and/or private investments and to stimulate the growth of the private sector.

Under these circumstances, formulation and implementation of well-coordinated, broad based policy response is of great importance, said Sharifov.

In his remarks, the minister also drew the attention to the significance of increasing and expanding the credit operations of the ADB including support to the public sector.

Taking into account the various challenges that the member states have faced, special attention should be paid to increased utilization of rapid support instruments for the member countries in need while enhancing flexibility for processing standard and special loan instruments, he said.

Sharifov further reminded that the ADB has already reached its record performance in terms of loan allocation to the private sector and co-financing operations back in 2015.

The minister believes that the development in the private sector would reinforce the effectiveness and sustainability of ADB's operations in the public sector.

The ADBs new strategy Road to 2030 will outline a vision and key directions for the banks engagement with developing member countries until 2030, describe how the bank aligns with the sustainable development goals and the new climate agreement, and identify institutional and organizational reforms necessary to sharpen the efficiency and effectiveness of the bank's engagement.

Azerbaijan has been a member of ADB since December 22, 1999. Share of the country in the banks capital amounts to 5 percent.

ADB has been allocated $2.6 billion loans and grants since 1999 including $738 million for the private sector.

In its turn, Azerbaijan's government is firmly set to create a favorable business environment that encourages investments to the private sector of the country. The government plans range of economic reforms recently in order to increase the resilience of the country to the external shocks.

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Fatma Babayeva is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Fatma_Babayeva

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6 May 2016 17:32 (UTC+04:00)

By Rashid Shirinov

A single competitive rate will be introduced in the framework of the of Trans-Caspian international transport route project from June 1, 2016.

The Trans-Caspian international transport route (TITR), which is designed to provide transport connections between the East and West of Eurasia, will enable the countries to reduce the costs of international cargo transportation.

The delegations from Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Georgia and Ukraine attended the recent meeting of the TITR members, which mulled further actions to increase the efficiency of the route.

Nadir Azmammadov, spokesman for the Azerbaijan Railways, said that the major topic of discussion was the application of competitive tariffs for the TITR and the internal rules for container transportation on the Dostyk/Altyngel-Aktau-Baku (Alyat)-Batumi route. "We also talked about the work plan of the route," he added.

The meeting ended with signing a protocol which provides the application of the competitive preferential tariffs on the Trans-Caspian route from China and Central Asia via the Black Sea and Ukraine to Europe.

The Azerbaijani delegation included Igbal Huseynov, Deputy Chairman of Azerbaijan Railways, Azad Gasimov, director of ADY Express, Farhad Guliyev, Deputy Chairman of Azerbaijan Caspian shipping company and Vahid Aliyev, Deputy Director of the Baku international sea trade port.

The Coordinating Committee on development of Trans-Caspian international transport route was created in October 2013.

Not long ago, in April, an agreement on the establishment of Trans-Caspian international transport consortium between the railway departments of Azerbaijan, Georgia and Kazakhstan was signed in Baku.

Azerbaijan's ADY Express Ltd. and Logistics company, Kazakhstan's KTZ Express and Georgia's Trans Caucasus Terminals Ltd. became the members of the consortium. The Supervisory Council included one representative from each member company. Igbal Huseynov was elected the chairman of the consortium.

Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Georgia and Ukraine decided to apply the competitive feed-in tariffs for cargo transportation via the TITR in January, 2016.

The Trans-Caspian international transport route runs through China, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Georgia and then to Europe via Turkey and Ukraine. The first test container train on route Shihezi (China)-Dostyk-Aktau-Alat, arrived in Baku international sea trade port on August 3, 2015.

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6 May 2016 17:31 (UTC+04:00)

By Rashid Shirinov

Azerbaijan and Georgia will accelerate the goods transportation through their borders. With this regard the two countries have launched the project of supporting the development of Red Bridge checkpoint located on Azerbaijani-Georgian border.

The transportation of goods through the Azerbaijani- Georgian border will be greatly accelerated, Ghulam Isaczai, the UN resident coordinator to Azerbaijan, said in an interview for Trend news agency on Thursday in the sidelines of the conference in Baku, dedicated the project.

The key objective of the project will be ensuring the border security and protecting goods quality. Infrastructure of the checkpoint will be upgraded to succeed with the commitments. Moreover, the custom workers of both countries will pass through special refresher trainings, Isaczai noted.

He supposes that this project is highly important for Azerbaijan, Georgia and the European Union: The project will bring together the two nations letting them vastly integrate into Europe.

Malena Mard, the EU Ambassador to Azerbaijan, said the project will take two years to complete.

The EU allocated 2.7 million euro for the project, with 1.8 million being allotted to Azerbaijan. I think that the project is very important for the European Union because this corridor is a part of the Silk Road through which goods are transported from Asia to Europe, she mentioned.

Addressing the conference Aydin Aliyev, the head of State Customs Committee of Azerbaijan, said that the country needs the EU and UN support to further upgrade the Sadigli checkpoint as well, which is located on the border with Georgia. We need to turn this checkpoint into a corridor for international shipping.

The project of supporting the development of Red Bridge checkpoint is a joint project of United Nations Development Program and State Customs Committee of Azerbaijan. The project of 3 million euro will be funded by the EU.

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6 May 2016 18:05 (UTC+04:00)

By Laman Ismayilova

A renowned French accordion player, Pascal Contet performed at the Heydar Aliyev Center accompanied by the Travelling Quartet group, Azertac reports. The concert titled " Influences Latines" featured some popular tango tunes in a brand new arrangement and interpretation.

In their music, the musicians interpret new arrangements of old tangos so as to create a link between tradition and modernity. To come up with this new program, the musicians worked in close junction with France-based Argentine composers with a view to presenting traditional tango tunes in a new arrangement. This resulted in an interesting blend of traditional music and modern style.

Before the concert, the creative team shared their impressions about the first visit to Azerbaijan.

" I really enjoy the uniqueness and local color of Baku. I would like to visit regions of Azerbaijan in order to get acquainted with your customs and traditions, and, most importantly, with folk music. I'm so attracted to your national instruments and I would like to implement the project together with your musicians, to create a synthesis of French and Azerbaijani music," said Pascal Conte.

Pascal Conte has been one of France's leading figures in developing new genres of modern music for over 20 years. Author of more than 300 pieces, he happened to work with some true celebrities like Luciano Berio, Bernard Cavanna, Joshua Feinberg, Jean Francaix, Bruno Mantovani and Martin Matalon. Pascal Contet, a protean and adventurous accordionist is a winner of a number of international awards.

Member of the Travelling Quartet, Anne Gravoin spoke about the visit to historical part of Baku. The musician was amazed by the historical site of the city, especially Icherisheher (Old City ), the historical core of the city.

Gravoin is a laureate of the Conservatoire de Paris. In 1986, she composed Sans Tambour ni Trompette along with Veronique Fiszman. For more than 25 years, Anne Gravoin is actively involved in concerts with leading symphony orchestras and smaller chamber groups.

Double bass player Vincent Pasquier was impressed with acoustics at the Heydar Aliyev Center, which allows to convey to the listener all the sounds of the performed tunes.

Vincent Pasquier was awarded double bass first prize by the National Music Conservatoire of Paris. He has played recitals and Masters Classes in Finland, The Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Italy, North Korea, the United States and France.

Cellist Mathilde Sternat, for her part, noticed the kindness and sincerity of Azerbaijani people and their ability to appreciate the cultural heritage of the country.

Sternat was awarded with chamber and cello music first prize by the National Music Conservatoire of Paris. She is involved in releasing albums, writing musical pieces for theatre productions and arranging for string quartets.

Finally, violinist David Braccini, who had been travelling the world extensively as a member of the European Union Chamber Orchestra in 1996-2000, shared the impressions and the feelings he had experienced during his visit to the "Land of Fire".

"I`m so glad to discover such a wonderful city as Baku. The whole crew has had only good impressions, and we'll take a piece of Azerbaijani soul to France", said Braccini.

---

Laman Ismayilova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Lam_Ismayilova

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
6 May 2016 18:46 (UTC+04:00)

By Amina Nazarli

This summer Baku will be the focus of sport community all over the world, as the city will host one of the significant motor racings- Formula 1 Grand Prix of Europe.



Organizers and experts say that the Baku race will be distinguished by its uniqueness, as the Azerbaijani capital, along with Monaco and Singapore, will host a street circuit.

The track will start and finish near Government House and cover all the landmarks of the capital city, medieval Old City, modern iconic skyline, and spectacular views across the Caspian Sea.

Bulent Ozerdim, Executive Advisor and Head of Commercial of the Baku Grand Prix said that sale of tickets for the race has significantly accelerated.

The sale of tickets abroad continues at the moment, and it's a positive aspect, he said.

"Most of all, the tickets are sold in Russia and other neighboring countries of Azerbaijan," Ozerdim said. "They are followed by European countries in accordance with the number of tickets sold - the UK, Germany and the Netherlands. I think the stands will be completely full in the days of the race."

Earlier, organizers reported that over 60 percent of tickets have been purchased by foreigners, mostly from European countries such as the UK, The Netherlands, Ukraine, Russia as well as Arab countries.

In a meantime, Baku City Circuit is conducting extensive work to ensure access for people living or working in areas directly adjacent to the road the Formula 1.



Nigar Arpadarai, Head of Marketing and Communications at Baku City Circuit, said that a large number of people living and working in the areas, where the race will take place.

She emphasized that all residents will be informed in the near future about the need to obtain special permits.

We are actively working with the Baku City Executive Power and the Center for Intelligent Transport Management, so that each resident was informed which roads will be closed, and how people living and working around the track can enter these areas, she explained

The Grand Prix of Europe to take place on June 17-19 is second longest F1 track on the calendar.

With the length of the stage -- 6 km as well as 8 right and 12 left turns, the speed on the track will reach 340 km/h.

--

Amina Nazarli is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @amina_nazarli



Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
6 May 2016 11:02 (UTC+04:00)

By Fatma Babayeva

International rating agency Moody's Investors Service has released its rating indices for Azerbaijans state-owned oil and gas company SOCAR.

The agency assessed SOCARs corporate family rating at Ba1, senior unsecured notes rating at Ba1 and probability of default rating at Ba1-PD. Overall, the outlook on the ratings is negative.

Moodys decision to confirm SOCAR's ratings factors on the company's high level vertical integration into refining and trading operations allows the company to maintain adequate credit metrics for the given categories in a "lower-for-longer" oil price environment.

SOCAR's rating also benefits from continued strong support by the state as the country's largest employer and tax contributor.

The state energy company's Ba1 rating by Moodys takes into account the key role of the company in the oil and gas sector and national economy of Azerbaijan, the estimates by the agency on SOCAR's stable oil and gas production during 2016-17, its robust liquidity profile underpinned by substantial cash balances and comfortable debt maturity schedule, as well as, its close linkages with the Azerbaijani government.

In addition, the rating also reflects Moody's conservative view on the potential challenges in maintaining stable production in a longer-term if the upstream cap-ex is kept at a sustainably low level, the company's ability to efficiently replenish its oil reserves, as well as, low oil price environment and regulated prices for domestically produced oil products in Azerbaijan that will continue to negatively impact the company's profitability and cash flow metrics.

In the statement, the agency also drew attention to SOCARs participation in all international consortia that develops new oil and gas projects in Azerbaijan.

The largest of these consortia are the Azeri Chirag Gunesli oil project and the Shah Deniz gas project, and their respective transportation routes which are Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline and South Caucasus gas pipeline.

In 2015, SOCAR reported its revenues at approximately $31.5 billion including trading operations and EBITDA at $3.1 billion.

Given to the Ba1 local-currency rating and sovereign ceiling of the Azerbaijans government, upward pressure on SOCAR's ratings is unlikely for now.

SOCAR is involved in exploring oil and gas fields, producing, processing, and transporting oil, gas, and gas condensate, marketing petroleum and petrochemical products in domestic and international markets, as well as, supplying natural gas to industry and the public in Azerbaijan.

Three production divisions, one oil refineries and one gas processing plant, a deep water platform fabrication yard, two trusts, one institution, and 23 subdivisions are operating as corporate entities under SOCAR.

It has representative offices in Georgia, Turkey, Romania, Austria, Switzerland, Kazakhstan, Great Britain, Iran, Germany and Ukraine, as well as, trading companies in Switzerland, Singapore, Vietnam, Nigeria, and other countries.

As a side note, recently, Moodys confirmed both Azerbaijans state oil fund SOFAZ (for the countrys long-term issuer and senior unsecured debt ratings) and the Southern Gas Corridor's (for state-guaranteed senior unsecured debt rating) at Ba1 as well.

---

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
6 May 2016 16:08 (UTC+04:00)

The Southern Gas Corridor project, designed to deliver the Azerbaijani gas to Europe, plays an exceptional role in ensuring the EU energy security, U.S. ambassador to Azerbaijan Robert Cekuta told reporters on May 6.

The U.S. continues to work with Azerbaijan and the EU on the Southern Gas Corridor project, said the ambassador.

Cekuta noted that recently, discussions on the oil sector have been held with the EU.

The topic of ensuring Europe's energy security became an important part of these discussions, he said, adding that Azerbaijan's important role in this sphere was emphasized during those talks.

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 Azerbaijan's Shah Deniz field is considered as the main source for the Southern Gas Corridor projects. Other sources can also connect to this project at a later stage.

As part of the Stage 2 of the Shah Deniz development, the gas will be exported to Turkey and European markets by expanding the South Caucasus Pipeline and the construction of Trans-Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline and Trans-Adriatic Pipeline.

---

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
6 May 2016 18:39 (UTC+04:00)

By Fatma Babayeva

The Asian Development Bank will eye possibility of allocating loan worth $1.505 billion for the development of the second phase of Azerbaijans Shah Deniz gas and condensate field.

The Bank informed that the investment plan for multi-tranche financing of the Shah Deniz-2 project is at the proposal stage currently.

The proposed investment plan will bolster Azerbaijani government's efforts to finance Shah Deniz-2 project. It is aimed at improving the fiscal situation of the country by increasing its revenues from natural gas exports from the expanded Shah Deniz field and creating additional jobs.

The plan will provide a partial credit guarantee to support commercial bank financing of the government's shares in the amount of 16.67 percent of the project's cost.

The ADB mission will visit Azerbaijan from June 15 to June 24 to gather facts on the project. In addition, the investment plan will be considered on July 4 by the bank's management, and it is expected to be approved on August 22 by the banks Board of Directors. If the loan is allocated, it will be used by Southern Gas Corridor CJSC.

Shah Deniz will be the main source for the Southern Gas Corridor. The corridor is included to the list of priority projects for the EU. It envisages the provision of more than 10 billion cubic meters of Azerbaijani gas annually from the Caspian region to Europe.

The pipeline network will stretch across 3,500 kilometer area from the Caspian Sea into Europe via Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkey and Greece.

First gas delivery to Georgia and Turkey is targeted for late 2018. Gas deliveries to Europe are expected a year after first gas is produced in offshore Azerbaijan.

Other gas sources can be connected to the pipeline at the later stages.

Today, the SGC is one of the biggest construction projects of our times with a value of $45 billion.

Moreover, the World Bank and the European Investment Bank are also expected to allocate more than $2 billion loans together for the construction of TANAP pipeline.

The realization of this pipeline project will contribute to enhancing the EUs energy security and diversification of its gas supply routes.

---

Fatma Babayeva is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Fatma_Babayeva

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
6 May 2016 13:54 (UTC+04:00)

By Fatma Babayeva

Irans National Oil Company holds talks with French oil and gas company Total over co-operation in Irans liquefied natural gas project.

The statement was made by the Iranian Deputy Petroleum Minister and Managing Director of NIOC, Rokneddin Javadi, to the Shana news agency on May 5.

No decision has been reached on the issue yet, Javadi said, adding that he hopes that the talks will be concluded as soon as possible.

The biggest challenge for Irans LNG project is the funding. LNG project of Iran with the annual production capacity of 10.5 million tons of LNG requires $3.3 billion. Due to the international sanctions against Tehran which lasted over years, Iran could not find the necessary investment, he said.

Iranian officials state that 60 percent of the project is complete. However, imports of new equipments and structures that will bring it online are pending.

Previously, it was announced that NIOC, which has 49 percent stake in this project , was holding talks to sell its share to the foreign firms. In addition, the remaining shares are owned by the Iran Oil Pension Fund Investment.

After most of the sanctions imposed on Iran were removed in early 2016, many international oil and gas companies are eyeing to invest in the hydrocarbon projects in the country.

In his remarks, Javadi told that BP is also eager to invest in Iranian oil and gas projects. Contrary to the past, BP is highly willing to cooperate with Iran and transfer needed capital and technology, he said.

Iran has long term potential for becoming one of the worlds top gas producers with 34 trillion cubic meters of blue fuel or around 18 percent of the worlds total reserves.

---

Fatma Babayeva is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Fatma_Babayeva

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
6 May 2016 18:30 (UTC+04:00)

By Fatma Babayeva

Iranian minister has blocked importing of Chevrolet cars after Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei criticized imports of U.S. autos.

Irans Industry, Mines and Trade Minister Mohammed Reza Nematzadeh ordered to prohibit the import of 24 models of the American car brand Chevrolet, Mehr news agency reported.

Nematzade also made a decision to cancel the import of 200 Chevrolet cars worth $7 million that were to be shipped to Iran from South Korea according to the approval previously given by Iran.

The requested batch of the Chevrolet cars was not made in U.S. It was agreed that the Islamic Republic would import automobiles produced by South Korea. However, after the ministers decision, the importer has been notified that it does not have a permission to import those cars any more.

This decision followed Ali Khameneis speech criticizing the U.S. car industry last week.

In his remarks, Khamenei asked the Iranian government to support domestic industrial production, stressing out that even Americans are not using their own vehicles as they are heavy and consume too much fuel.

Meanwhile, Chevrolets producer General Motors Co. announced that although Iran is highly lucrative market, the company currently has no plans to enter this market.

Today, Iran's automobile industry produces about 900,000 vehicles a year and plans to increase this figure to 3 million by 2025.

Two local companies control more than 90 percent of Iranian automobile market. These companies are Iran Khodro which assembles Peugeot-branded vehicles and SAIPA produces Citroens and Kias. These manufacturers also assemble Renaults.

Iran sees automobile industry as the biggest field of non-oil economy. This industry accounts for nearly 10 percent of Iranian GDP.

Lifting of the international sanction imposed on Iran creates better opportunities for the country to improve the given sector.

Recently, Iranian Industry, Mines and Trade Ministry has obliged foreign carmakers to use 20-percent Iranian-made car parts while assembling cars if they want to operate in the Iranian market.

The ministry has also obliged the Iranian car makers to purchase 40 percent of the parts used in car production from the domestic market.

Today, only 15-20 percent of car parts cannot be produced in Iran which is due to the fact that launching their production lines is not economically beneficial. These parts mostly include electronic car parts.

The government sees fully privatization of the car industry as a tool to improve this field.

Officials believe privatization is a key strategy for the rehabilitation of the Iranian economy and will facilitate upgrading the Iranian car industry, as well as, its growth.

---

Fatma Babayeva is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Fatma_Babayeva

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
6 May 2016 17:41 (UTC+04:00)

By Rashid Shirinov

Having developed tourism infrastructure, nine climatic zones and five world heritage sites of UNESCO, Azerbaijan, which follows examples of other oil-rich countries, creates its way into the tourism sector, Travel & Tourism News Middle East news portal reported.

Along with the national air carrier AZAL, international airlines of Qatar, British Airways, Turkish Airlines, Georgian, Lufthansa and others are also operating in the country. The new terminal of Heydar Aliyev airport, being one of the most beautiful airports worldwide, is entitled to cope with huge loads of tourists coming to the country since 2014.

Azerbaijan has a large number of brand luxury hotels, including Hilton, Hyatt, Sheraton Kempinski, Marriott, Fairmont and Four Seasons, but also offers low star hotels for those desiring to travel the country.

The article said that a number of countries, for example, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and UAE, have easier VISA relations with Azerbaijan.

Overall, Azerbaijan greeted over 2 million tourists in 2015. That could be linked with several major high-level events held in Azerbaijan for the last years. The first European Games took place here in the summer of 2015. Formula 1 Grand Prix races will be held in Baku in June. The event will take place right in the streets of Baku, revealing its beauty for international spectators, Travel & Tourism News Middle East told its audience.

Furthermore, Azerbaijan is going to accept the Islamic Solidarity Games next year, expecting elite athletes from over than 30 countries of Asia and Africa will join.

All this create favorable conditions for informing tourists about Azerbaijan and make it one of the most visited countries of the region.

---

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
 

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Chris Ormrod, managing director of Taunton-based Ministry of Cake, has told British Baker that he expects the company to start exporting to China within the year.

He has just returned from a fact-finding trip to China, where he spent seven days meeting with importers and distributors, as well as local bakeries.

Ormrod said of the trip: Its such a different world out there, and I now feel that we understand it far better. Everything that I discovered out there really sparked my interest. We will begin exporting to China within the year, in all likelihood.

In February, Ministry of Pudding spent around 500,000 on new equipment, ahead of fresh product releases later in the year.
Top 13 dealer tricks

Most car dealers arent really out to rip you off, but keep in mind that car dealerships are for-profit entities.
At Bankrate we strive to help you make smarter financial decisions. While we adhere to strict editorial integrity , this post may contain references to products from our partners. Here's an explanation for how we make money .

Our home equity reporters and editors focus on the points consumers care about most  the latest rates, the best lenders, different types of home equity options and more  so you can feel confident when you make decisions as a borrower or homeowner.

Bankrate follows a strict editorial policy , so you can trust that were putting your interests first. All of our content is authored by highly qualified professionals and edited by subject matter experts , who ensure everything we publish is objective, accurate and trustworthy.

Founded in 1976, Bankrate has a long track record of helping people make smart financial choices. Weve maintained this reputation for over four decades by demystifying the financial decision-making process and giving people confidence in which actions to take next.

Bankrates editorial team writes on behalf of YOU  the reader. Our goal is to give you the best advice to help you make smart personal finance decisions. We follow strict guidelines to ensure that our editorial content is not influenced by advertisers. Our editorial team receives no direct compensation from advertisers, and our content is thoroughly fact-checked to ensure accuracy. So, whether youre reading an article or a review, you can trust that youre getting credible and dependable information.

We value your trust. Our mission is to provide readers with accurate and unbiased information, and we have editorial standards in place to ensure that happens. Our editors and reporters thoroughly fact-check editorial content to ensure the information youre reading is accurate. We maintain a firewall between our advertisers and our editorial team. Our editorial team does not receive direct compensation from our advertisers.

Bankrate follows a strict editorial policy , so you can trust that were putting your interests first. Our award-winning editors and reporters create honest and accurate content to help you make the right financial decisions.

Bankrate.com is an independent, advertising-supported publisher and comparison service. We are compensated in exchange for placement of sponsored products and, services, or by you clicking on certain links posted on our site. Therefore, this compensation may impact how, where and in what order products appear within listing categories. Other factors, such as our own proprietary website rules and whether a product is offered in your area or at your self-selected credit score range can also impact how and where products appear on this site. While we strive to provide a wide range offers, Bankrate does not include information about every financial or credit product or service.

Were transparent about how we are able to bring quality content, competitive rates, and useful tools to you by explaining how we make money.

Bankrate follows a strict editorial policy , so you can trust that our content is honest and accurate. Our award-winning editors and reporters create honest and accurate content to help you make the right financial decisions. The content created by our editorial staff is objective, factual, and not influenced by our advertisers.

You have money questions. Bankrate has answers. Our experts have been helping you master your money for over four decades. We continually strive to provide consumers with the expert advice and tools needed to succeed throughout lifes financial journey.

The cost to buy a home in the U.S. has skyrocketed since early 2020, reaching record highs. As a result, many homeowners have significant equity in their homes.

One of the ways homeowners can tap their equity is by taking out a second mortgage, a loan that uses the equity in your home as collateral. Common examples include a home equity loan and a home equity line of credit (HELOC).

Lightbulb Key takeaways Who: Homeowners with sufficient equity in their homes can take out a second mortgage on the property.

What: A second mortgage is a type of subordinate mortgage taken out while the original, or first, mortgage is still being repaid. Like the first mortgage, the second mortgage is secured by a lien on your property.

Why: Homeowners take out second mortgages to access cash for uses like paying off debt, funding home renovations and covering medical bills.

What is a second mortgage?

When you take a second mortgage, you borrow from the equity youve built up in your home  in other words, the difference between the value of your home and the remaining balance on your first mortgage. Homeowners typically access equity by taking a home equity loan or a home equity line of credit (HELOC.)

You can use funds from a second mortgage for a variety of purposes. Some of the most common uses of second mortgages include consolidating other debts (especially high-interest credit cards) and financing home improvements or repairs.

How does a second mortgage work?

To obtain a second mortgage, you typically need to do the same things you did to qualify for a primary mortgage. The process includes submitting an application to a lender and providing documentation regarding your income, debts and more. You might also need to get an appraisal to confirm the value of your home.

Equity requirements vary, but many lenders prefer that you have at least 15 percent to 20 percent equity in your home. You can typically borrow up to 85 percent of your homes value, minus your current mortgage debts. If you have a home worth $300,000 and $200,000 remaining on your mortgage, for instance, you might be able to borrow as much as $55,000 through a second mortgage: ($300,000 x 0.85)  $200,000.

Requirements for applying for a second mortgage

At least 15 percent to 20 percent equity in your home

Remaining mortgage has to be less than 85 percent of the homes value

A credit score of 600 or higher (recommended)

Types of second mortgages

Borrowers who wish to take out second mortgages can choose between home equity loans or home equity lines of credit. Heres a look at each of these financing options.

Home equity loan: A home equity loan comes with a fixed monthly payment. You receive all of the money upfront and pay it back, with interest, over time. To see if it makes sense for you, use Bankrates home equity loan calculator.

Home equity line of credit (HELOC): A HELOC also lets you access the equity in your home, but youre charged interest only on the amount that you borrow. This can be a great option if youre not sure exactly how much of your equity youre looking to borrow. Use our HELOC payoff calculator to see if this option makes sense for you.

Should I get a second mortgage?

Before you take out a second mortgage, consider the risks to make sure this type of financing will work well for your situation. The best reason to get a second mortgage is to use the money to increase the value of your home.

Using the money from a second mortgage to improve your homes value can maintain the equity you have in your home. Plus, if you use a second mortgage to buy, build or substantially improve the home you use to secure the loan, the interest may be tax-deductible.

If youre thinking about getting a second mortgage to buy a car, pay for a vacation or purchase other luxuries, be cautious. The equity in your home is one of your most important assets  think twice before using it for these types of expenses.

Where to find second mortgage rates

A local bank or credit union can be a good place to start, but be sure to get quotes from several lenders, including online lenders, and compare them in detail. You can browse Bankrates best home equity loan rates and the best HELOC rates.

Second mortgage FAQ



What is the difference between a home equity loan and a second mortgage? Both home equity loans and HELOCs are considered second mortgages and are secured by a lien on your home.



Are second mortgage rates higher than first mortgage rates? Second mortgage rates are likely to be higher than first mortgage rates simply because the lender with the second mortgage will be second in line to be paid should your home fall into foreclosure. However, second mortgage rates still may be lower than rates on unsecured debt like personal loans or credit cards.



Is it better to get a home equity loan or refinance? The choice between a home equity loan and refinance depends on your financial circumstances.



A cash-out refinance replaces the first mortgage on your home with a new mortgage thats more than the current outstanding debt on your home. You then receive the difference between the existing mortgage and the new mortgage in a one-time lump sum. This option may be best for someone who has a high interest rate on a first mortgage and wants to take advantage of lower interest rates. However, mortgage rates have risen sharply in 2022, making a cash-out refinance less attractive to many homeowners.



A HELOC might be a better option in situations where the homeowner has ongoing financial needs, such as recurring tuition payments or a series of home update projects, and wants to keep drawing money as needed. Its also likely a better choice if you already have a good rate on your mortgage.

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The youngest member of this years graduating class at University of South Florida is an 18-year-old with a perfect grade point average.

But that isnt even the most impressive fact about Ahmed Mohamed.

Ahmed Mohamed is the first student to undertake dual law and medical degrees from USF and Stetson University



The 18-year-old is graduating this spring with his Bachelor's



He credits his mother as his inspiration

Soon the Eagle Scout will enroll in a program that will allow him to graduate with his medical and law degree at the same time.

Born in Egypt, Mohamed and his family moved back and forth from the United States, finally landing in Tampa. Mohamed graduated from Blake High School at the age of 15. Hell be the first student at USF to be enrolled in medical school and Stetson University School of Law simultaneously.

Its really exciting, but you have to try and stay humble, Mohamed said.

According to Dean of USF Honors College Charles Adams, Mohamed is not quick to reveal his age to his peers. Mohamed says its partly to stay humble  and he also likes to fit in.

But Mohamed, like it or not, is not your average student. Aside from his perfect GPA, hes also an accomplished pianist, competitive swimmer and triathlete.

He makes me feel like a slacker, Adams said. Hes just remarkable. Hes in a category unto himself.

Mohamed convinced USF and Stetson to create a program to fit his needs. He will concentrate the first two years on medical school, then two years on law school, followed by two more in medical. At the end of his studies, he will graduate with both degrees.

At the end of the program, Mohamed will only be 24 years old.

Where did Mohamed get his smarts? His father is a transplant surgeon, but Mohamed credits his mother with the ambition.

Shes been really my source of inspiration and motivation, he said. Shes a really compassionate person, thats something Ive tried to learn from her.

Mohamed wants to work for the Centers for Disease Control or the Food and Drug Administration once he graduates.




The St. Vincent de Paul shelter in St. Petersburgs Methodist Town is under fire for not doing a better job cleaning up after the people it serves.

Residents say their yards are overrun by trash from the shelter

Police project they will respond to over 1,500 calls about problems surrounding St. Vincent

The city of St. Petersburg appropriates $40,000 to St. Vincent annually

Residents like Lara Vasquez, who lives directly across the street from the shelter, said her front yard is overrun by trash left behind by homeless people.

They come and they use the bathroom on our front porch," said Vasquez. "They leave syringes, trash bottles, you name it. All over the place.

Last year, police responded to roughly 1,000 calls regarding problems involving people at the shelter. This year, its projected theyll respond to nearly 1,500 calls about problems surrounding St. Vincent.

On Thursday, city council members got an earful from residents about the problems. Council members, in turn, gave the shelter an ultimatum.

Every red flag is showing that we need to look more closely at the management of this facility, said councilwoman Darden Rice. We need more accountability, and I'm comfortable discussing that before we appropriate any more funds, it has to be tied to better accountability.

The city gives St. Vincent nearly $40,000 annually. The next installment is due in October. St. Vincent CEO Sheila Lopez says theyll meet the challenge.

We're gonna make a concerted effort now, because we are concerned," said Lopez. "So we need to show it to [neighbors] that we are concerned or show it more.



Officials are asking any neighbor whose yard has been trashed by shelter residents to contact St. Vincent de Paul at 727-823-2516 or http://www.svdpsp.org/ and theyll clean it up.


Here's what you need to know about Tampa Bay's weather for Friday:



Cooler air is here



Friday will be a gorgeous day



Low humidity Friday, nice cool breeze



The cooler air we discussed all week is here. It was a beautiful day across the area and we will have below average temperatures into Friday. Skies will be clear tonight with a cool northwest breeze. Morning lows will be in the low to mid 50s north, mid to upper 50s inland, and low 60s closer to the coast.

Friday will be an absolutely gorgeous day with low humidity, a nice cool breeze, and high temperatures about ten degrees below average. Skies will be sunny, with highs getting into the mid 70s.

Friday evening will also be clear and cool, with lows dropping into the 50s for most spots, but low 60s along the coast.

Saturday will feature sunny skies with continued low humidity. It will get slightly warmer in the afternoon, with a high in the upper 70s to near 80.

The boating forecast for Friday will again feature breezy winds from the northwest, but they will not be as strong as they were today. Winds will be at about 15 knots. Seas will run 3 to 4 feet. Bay and inland waters will go between a moderate chop and choppy.




A Brandon High student is accused of punching a teacher, then attacking a deputy.

Teen accused of punching teacher at Brandon High School

Officials say she attacked responding deputy, lacerating his arms

The 15-year-old girl is facing charges of battery on a specified employee, battery on a law enforcement officer and resisting arrest with violence.

According to the Hillsborough County Sheriffs Office, the deputy responded to the school at 10 a.m. Thursday after receiving a report that the student had punched teacher Carrie Andreev.

As Deputy Andrew Deluna tried to take the girl into custody, she began to violently resist, investigators say. The girl allegedly scratched him with her fingernails, causing multiple lacerations on both arms.

Officials say the deputy did not use force when taking her into custody and the girl was not injured during the arrest.

We are not naming the girl in accordance with our crime guidelines, as it is not known whether she will be charged as an adult.

WARNING: The photo below is graphic in nature.
Part of Tampa Road in Oldsmar has been closed Friday morning while CSX crews work on a railroad crossing.

Crews closed Tampa Road at the railroad crossing, just north of State Road 580, last night, so they could replace the crossing. The work will continue non-stop through the weekend. The road is expected to reopen by 5 a.m. on Monday.



Detours and digital information boards have been set up to help people get around the closure.

Tampa Road sees more than 50,000 cars a day, and as a result, drivers should keep in mind that even the detour routes will be packed with traffic and so they should expect delays.

Detour Information

Westbound: Drivers will be detoured using SR-580.

Eastbound: Drivers should use McMullen Booth Road to SR-580.

Eastbound Tampa Road will remain open to Bayview Boulevard to provide access to businesses and homes, but extremely heavy congestion is expected.


Two inmates accused of escaping the federal prison complex in Beaumont last month were indicted Wednesday by a grand jury.

Todd Allen Hammer, 40, and Jason Wesley Tate, 44, are both charged with escape in addition to the drugs and illegal firearms possession charges for which they were already serving time.
A woman who worked at a private north Texas jail where a federal inmate once lived is accused of helping him escape from a minimum security Beaumont facility and lodging him at an expensive downtown Dallas hotel, according to authorities.

Lorna Leslie, 55, of Sherman, was indicted Wednesday by a federal grand jury for instigating or assisting an escape after two inmates went missing April 9 from the Federal Correctional Complex in Beaumont.

They are the third and fourth inmates accused of escaping from the minimum security camp in Beaumont since last November.

Jason Wesley Tate, 44, of Lorena, and Todd Allen Hammer, 40, of Greenville, are both charged with escape. They were already doing time on 12- and eight-year prison sentences, respectively, for convictions on drugs and weapons charges.

The satellite prison camp in Beaumont houses about 612 minimum-security offenders.

No walls, fences or barriers prevent inmates from walking away.

A Federal Bureau of Prisons spokesman said in November that the likelihood of harsher prosecution if they are caught is usually a deterrent to escape.

The affidavit supporting the charges against Leslie stated that she was Hammer's last visitor before he went missing April 9 and was recorded in a jail call planning the escape moments before it happened.

A U.S. Marshals Service investigator's report cited more than 1,100 phone calls between Leslie and Hammer "in the period of time leading up to Hammer's escape."

Hammer, according to the investigator's affidavit, asked Leslie in an April 9 phone where she was and why she wasn't almost there to get him.

Hammer and Tate escaped together later that same day, according to the affidavit.

U.S. Marshals found Hammer and Leslie six days later at the DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel in downtown Dallas.

The couple spent the previous night in a U-Haul truck, the affidavit stated.

They checked into the hotel on April 15 under aliases - Hammer under "Pete Smith" and Leslie with her first and last names swapped.

"Further investigation reveals that Leslie and Hammer have a long history together," the affidavit stated.

Leslie worked in the food service division at the Fannin County Detention Center, about an hour north of Dallas, where Hammer was housed before transferring to the Beaumont facility.

She formed a relationship with Hammer and visited him regularly after he was transferred to Beaumont, according to the affidavit.

James Ortega, 38, of McKinney, made his first court appearance earlier this week on charges he escaped from the camp Feb. 27.

Ortega was serving a 24-year sentence for possession with intent to distribute a controlled substance, court records showed. He was sentenced in 1998. He applied last October to have his sentence reduced, but his request was not granted.

Ortega surrendered at a federal complex in Seagoville two days after he went missing.

Jose Sandoval, 31, walked away from the camp Nov. 1 but was captured a few days later. Sandoval, who was serving a five-year sentence for cocaine distribution, was discovered missing during a routine head count.

His disappearance came on the weekend federal prisons began to release 6,000 drug offenders nationwide and more than 200 from the Eastern District because of changes in minimum sentencing guidelines, particularly for cocaine.

Sandoval pleaded guilty on Dec. 5, 2013, to possession with intent to distribute 1.19 kilograms of cocaine and was sentenced in February 2014 to five years in federal prison. He petitioned for a reduced sentence but his application was denied, according to prison records.

Hammer was convicted in April 2012 of drug trafficking violations that involved 35 co-defendants in the northern and eastern parts of the state.

He reached a sealed plea agreement with federal prosecutors Sept. 17, 2013, but last year his 10-year prison sentence was cut by two and a half years.

Tate was arrested April 20 near Waco. He had been placed on supervised release in 2006 after serving five years of a six-year federal prison sentence for dealing meth.

On Nov. 1 2010, Waco police arrested Tate at his loft, which doubled as a storage unit where he sold illegal drugs.

Tate was sentenced to 12 years in federal prison for drug trafficking and firearms violations.

If convicted in the escape, Tate, Hammer and Leslie each face up to five years in prison, which would be added to the inmates' current prison sentences.

BScott@BeaumontEnterprise.com Twitter.com/BrandonKScott
Clyde DeFrates, 90, of Beaumont, recently flew to Washington, D.C., with the Honor Flight Houston group that takes veterans to see the war memorials. A special focus is on World War II veterans.

DeFrates served in the United States Army Air Forces in the European theater of the war. He was a ball turret gunner in the belly of a B-17 bomber.
Before you pore over our choices of iconic Texas bars, you should know that the criteria didn't involve places with media buzz or expertly mixed cocktails.

On the other hand, we sought out just the opposite: under-the-radar joints with cold beer, live music and oftentimes a spacious dance floor. While grand bars abound in Texas, the state really prides itself on grungy saloons and loud dance halls, the "old as dirt" establishments that have stood the test of time.
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Two days after Michael Gelagotis was sentenced in a state district court to 10 years in prison for pretending to be a cop, a federal grand jury indicted him on an illegal weapons charge for the 34 firearms seized from his Beaumont home during his September arrest.

Gelagotis, 43, is charged with one count of felon in possession of a firearm, according to an indictment filed Wednesday in federal court.

He already had felony convictions in Connecticut and Vermont before his Beaumont arrest.

Gelagotis was sentenced Monday to 10 years in state prison for impersonating a public servant and unlawful possession of body armor by a felon.

Gelagotis could face an additional 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine on the federal charge. If the judge determines him to be an "armed career offender," he could get up to 15 years.

Also this week, John Joslin, a Liberty County constable charged with perjury in the Gelagotis' scandal, had his peace officer's license suspended by the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement.

While on suspension, Joslin, 47, will not be allowed to wear his uniform or carry a gun.

Joslin was indicted in Jefferson County on a perjury charge on Jan. 20. He won reelection to his Liberty County Precinct 6 post in March. No trial date has been set in his case.

Prosecutors allege Joslin allowed Gelagotis to work for his office and fraudulently represent himself as a real police officer. Joslin is accused of lying to an investigator about his relationship with Gelagotis.

Keith Breiner, who was a Beaumont PD sergeant before his Nov. 4 criminal indictment, is accused of helping Gelagotis secure a one-year free trial of a rifle under the pretense it would be tested by BPD in 2013.

Breiner, who is charged with tampering with a government document, resigned in early November.

The charge is a "state jail" felony, which under Texas law carries a possible punishment range of 180 days to two years and a fine up to $10,000. No trial date has been set.

In his indictment, Breiner, 50, is accused of using "a letter generated on Beaumont Police Department Letterhead, with knowledge of its falsity and with intent that it be taken as a genuine governmental record."

One month after police claim Breiner and Gelagotis sent the fraudulent letter, the pair appeared together publicly at a Houston Rockets game alongside Joslin, a video posted online shows.

Gelagotis used fake credentials to order law enforcement equipment and body armor recovered from his home that could only be legally obtained by real police, said Assistant District Attorney Ashley Molfino on Monday.

Beaumont police Sgt. Mike Custer said on Monday that Gelagotis also represented himself as an installer of police equipment, which is something he did in his garage.

BScott@BeaumontEnterprise.com Twitter.com/BrandonKScott
A new microwave backup to the region's 911 emergency telephone service will add a layer of reliability in case of violent storms or an accidental slicing of a fiber-optic cable.

The South East Texas Regional Planning Commission will spend about $3.3 million to erect 12 towers and equip five existing towers with the technology, said Pete De La Cruz, director of the commission's 911 program.

Although it could become the primary system for Jefferson, Hardin and Orange counties sometime in the future, for now it's designed as a backup, De La Cruz said.

Recently, a contractor in Lumberton building a new dentist's office sliced through a fiber-optic cable bundle in the ground.

The bundle contained the cable that connected to the Hardin County Sheriff's Office 911 dispatchers at the courthouse in Kountze.

No emergency calls were missed because all the Hardin County calls were routed to the Silsbee Police Department, the second location for incoming emergency calls in Hardin County.

But it did demonstrate a vulnerability of the 911 system, De La Cruz said.

Everyone with telephone service - whether it's a landline or wireless - pays 50 cents a month for 911 service, a fee that goes to the state comptroller.

The local agency that maintains the 911 system - in this case the regional planning commission - creates a budget for improvements and submits it to the Legislature, which approved the microwave system for Jefferson, Hardin and Orange counties last year.

The regional 911 system serves a population of about 385,000 and averages about 400,000 calls a year, De La Cruz said.

Southeast Texas was the first regional 911 system in the state, he said. The system became operational on Dec. 12, 1991.

That was when the regional system required every resident to have a street address, particularly in rural areas, where people were comfortable giving directions like "third house after the oak tree that split after it was hit by lightning."

In the past 25 years, fiber optic cable has been installed for 911 service, with a new technology upgrade completed just a couple months ago, De La Cruz said.

When people with landlines call 911, a box on a dispatcher's screen appears that shows the phone customer's name, address and the appropriate responding agencies.

When a caller with a wireless connection calls in, the information that appears is less detailed but pinpoints the caller's location with the device's onboard GPS system.

De La Cruz said the microwave system presents the possibility for texting 911. He said it's working in a limited area in Dallas and that a test was completed in College Station a couple of months ago. The challenge lies in routing an emergency text to the appropriate dispatchers.

Twelve agencies in Southeast Texas receive 911 calls, De La Cruz said.

In Hardin County, calls go to the sheriff's office in Kountze and to the Silsbee police department.

In Jefferson County, calls go to the sheriff's office, the Beaumont police, Port Arthur police and to Nederland police, which also handles calls for Groves and Port Neches.

In Orange County, calls go to the Orange sheriff's office, city of Orange police and to police departments in Bridge City and Pinehurst.

DWallach@BeaumontEnterprise.com Twitter.com/dwallach
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The intoxicated driving case against a prominent Houston lawyer has been reset to May 31, according to Harris County criminal records.

Houston police arrested Anthony "Tony" Buzbee on March 31.

Buzbee  who worked on the team representing Rick Perry after the then-Texas governor was indicted in an abuse-of-power case in 2014  was charged with driving while intoxicated, a misdemeanor, and was later released after posting bail set at $500.

In 2009, a federal jury awarded more than $100 million to 10 plaintiffs, seven of which were represented by Buzbee's law firm, who alleged they were injured in 2007 by toxic emissions at a BP plant in Texas City.

In addition to being a high-profile Houston lawyer, Buzbee also is a regent at Texas A&M, his alma mater. He also helped with former Texas Gov. Rick Perry's 2012 presidential campaign.
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AUSTIN  Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry on Thursday endorsed Donald Trump, a onetime GOP rival for president he once likened to a 'cancer' on American politics.

In an interview with CNN, Perry said he will do everything he can to get Trump elected, even as he acknowledged that the brash New York real estate mogul is not his ideal choice.

"He is not a perfect man. But what I do believe is that he loves this country and he will surround himself with capable, experienced people and he will listen to them," Perry said in the interview from his home in Round Top.

"I believe in the process, and the process has said Donald Trump will be our nominee and I'm going to support him and help him and do what I can."

Perry also ruled out suggestions that he may re-enter the race as a third=party candidate. He said he may entertain the idea of being Trump's running mate, if asked.

"He is one of the most talented people who has ever run for the president I have ever seen," Perry told CNN. "I am going to be open to any way I can help. I am not going to say no."

Perry's comments on Thursday came in sharp contrast to the sentiments he expressed publicly about Trump year, when he blasted the billionaire in campaign speeches as a "cancer" on conservative politics.

BACKGROUND: Perry hit Trump at undercard Republican debate

"Let no one be mistaken  Donald Trump's candidacy is a cancer on conservatism, and it must be clearly diagnosed, excised and discarded," Perry said in a speech in July 2015, as he unsuccessfully tried to overcome Trump's growing voter influence.

"It cannot be pacified or ignored, for it will destroy a set of principles that has lifted more people out of poverty than any force in the history of the civilized world  the cause of conservatism.

"I feel so strongly about this because I believe conservatism is the only way forward for this country," Perry said at the time.

In the weeks thereafter, Perry and Trump engaged in a running verbal battle over their policy proposals, in what became one of the first heated moments of an overall campaign that later got much nastier between Trump and the other candidates.

At one point, Perry likened Trump's immigration activism to the United States' 19th-century "Know Nothing" movement, which shunned Catholic immigrants from Ireland and Germany.

When Perry suspended his presidential campaign in September, he again repeatedly blasted Trump without using his name.

"Demeaning people of Hispanic heritage is not just ignorant, it betrays the example of Christ," Perry said in his withdrawal speech, where he criticized Trump's rhetoric against undocumented immigrants and refugees. "We can enforce our laws and our borders, and we can love all who live within our borders, without betraying our values."

"It is time to elevate our debate from divisive name-calling, from sound bites without solutions, and start discussing how we will make the country better for all if a conservative is elected president," he said.

He blasted Trump as a "celebrity" candidate who had little of substance to offer American policy.

"For me, the message has always been greater than the man," Perry said last September. "The conservative movement has always been about principles, not personalities. Our nominee should embody those principles. He  or she  must make the case for the cause of conservatism more than the cause of their own celebrity."

Hours after House Speaker Paul Ryan told CNN on Thursday he isn't ready to endorse Donald Trump for president, another famous Republican announced he's backing the presumptive GOP nominee.

PAUL RYAN SPEAKS OUT: GOP star says he's not backing Trump 'at this point'

Chron.com producer Dana Thompson contributed to this report.
A working group comprised of 39 physicians published a "Medicare for all" proposal in American Journal of Public Health, according to U.S. News & World Report Health.

Here are six takeaways:

1. Many group members are members of Physicians for a National Health Program.

2. So far, more than 2,200 other physicians and medical students signed the proposal, which would entail the government entirely funding the single payer system.

3. Under the "Medicare for all" proposal, the program would fund all medically necessary care for all Americans, including illegal immigrants.

4. Adam Gaffney, MD, lead author of the editorial and co-chair of the working group, cited high co-pays and high deductibles many patients face. Dr. Gaffney said many Americans are forced to forgo much-needed care due to high medical expenses.

5. The group's proposal differs from universal healthcare in other developed countries because it allows physicians and hospitals to remain privately owned and operated, although the government could give them a budget to cover all operating costs.

6. The medical group claims a single-payer system would save $500 billion annually as it would get rid of the paperwork physicians and hospitals have to fill out for private health insurance companies. The healthcare industry would use the savings for enhancing public health.

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Changing the mindset of unhealthy employees  5 observations

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Florida family practitioner Ona M. Colasante, MD, has been charged with committing 210 counts of healthcare fraud and money laundering, according to Gainesville.com.

Here are five key points:

1. The physician allegedly submitted fraudulent claims for unnecessary tests, bought drugs from outside the United States that are not approved for use and administered those drugs to patients without their knowledge or consent.

2. Dr. Colasante is accused of submitting such claims from 1998 to 2009.

3. On May 3, Dr. Colasante entered a plea of not guilty and her trial is scheduled for June 14.

4. The physician faces up to 10 years in prison for each of the healthcare fraud counts.

5. She also faces up to three years for each of the FDA counts and up to 10 years for each of the money laundering counts.

More articles on coding & billing:

Changing the mindset of unhealthy employees  5 observations

Tenet officials unfazed by UnitedHealth's ACA departure  3 points

CMS willing to work with legislators on Medicare Part B proposal  4 insights
Mean compensation data doesn't tell the whole story about which jobs are best-paid it may not even come close.

Physicians may be surprised to hear surgeons from the Fort Smith, Arkansas-Oklahoma metropolitan area actually hold the best paid occupation in America, according to an analysis in The Atlantic of data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

These surgeons have the best paid position not because they earn the most dollars, but because the cost of living allows those dollars to go farther than anywhere else in the country. Based on BLS data, surgeons in Fort Smith earn an annual mean salary of $274,180, but when adjusted for regional price parities, those physicians have the purchasing power of a salary of $320,304. By this same measure, surgeons from Brownsville-Harlingen, Texas, are not far behind their peers in the Ozarks, earning a price-adjusted salary of $313,831.

In comparison, a surgeon in the New York, Northern New Jersey, Long Island area, earns a price-adjusted salary of $191,907 and a surgeon in the San Francisco, Oakland, Fremont, Calif., area earns a price-adjusted salary of $173,833.

However, as the BLS notes, price-adjusted wages matter even more to workers who earn lower wages. Instead, low-wage occupations tend to see a more pronounced effect when adjusting for purchasing power. The agency gives the example of food service workers and cashiers, occupations that earn the most dollars in San Francisco and San Jose, Calif. However, after adjusting for purchasing power, their salaries fell in the bottom 25 percent nationally, according to BLS.

This data helps illustrate why recent minimum wage increases at hospitals and health systems are so important. Recent examples include the University of Alabama at Birmingham and UAB Hospital and Bloomington-based Indiana University Health, which both increased their employees' hourly minimum wage to $11 per hour in February.

More articles on compensation:

7 physician compensation trends to consider when establishing FMV

This MD was the highest-earning CEO in 2015

The lowest paid CEOs in the S&P 1500
The following hospital and health system rating and outlook changes and affirmations took place in the last week, starting with the most recent.

1. Fitch affirms Centegra Health's 'BBB' rating

Fitch Ratings affirmed the "BBB" rating on Crystal Lake, Ill.-based Centegra Health System's $134.7 million of series 2014A bonds and $190.4 million of series 2012 bonds.

2. Fitch assigns 'AA-' rating to SCL Health's bonds

Fitch Ratings assigned an "AA-" long-term rating to Broomfield, Colo.-based SCL Health's $220 million of series 2016 A-D revenue bonds.

3. Moody's assigns 'Baa1' to Memorial Hospital at Gulfport's bonds

A proposed $50 million of series 2016A bonds from Memorial Hospital at Gulfport (Miss.) received a "Baa1" rating from Moody's Investors Service.

4. Moody's affirms Baystate Medical Center's 'A2' rating

Moody's Investors Service affirmed the "A2" rating on Springfield, Mass.-based Baystate Medical Center's $240 million of debt issued through the Massachusetts Development Finance Agency.

5. Fitch revises Memorial Hospital at Gulfport's outlook to stable

Fitch Ratings revised Memorial Hospital at Gulfport (Miss.)'s outlook to stable from negative.

6. Moody's downgrades Iraan General Hospital District's rating to 'Baa3'

Moody's Investors Service downgraded Iraan (Texas) General Hospital District's rating to "Baa3" from "A2."

7. Moody's changes NYU Hospitals Center's outlook to positive, assigns 'A3' rating

Moody's Investors Service assigned an "A3" rating to New York City-based NYU Hospitals Center's series 2016A bonds and affirmed the "A3" rating on NYUHC's overall outstanding debt, affecting approximately $1.3 billion.

8. Fitch affirms Memorial Hospital's 'BBB' rating

Fitch Ratings affirmed the "BBB" rating on North Conway, N.H.-based Memorial Hospital's $17.8 million of series 2006 bonds.

9. Fitch assigns 'A-' rating to Beloit Health System's bonds

Fitch Ratings assigned an "A-" rating to Beloit (Wis.) Health System's $14.7 million of series 2016 revenue bonds.

10. Fitch assigns 'A-' rating to Mercy Health Corp.'s bonds

Fitch Ratings assigned an "A-" rating to Janesville, Wis.-based Mercy Health Corp.'s $484.9 million of series 2016 revenue bonds.

11. S&P raises Kaiser Permanente's rating to 'AA-'

S&P Global Ratings raised its long-term and underlying ratings on Oakland, Calif.-based Kaiser Permanente's existing debt to "AA-" from "A+."

12. Moody's assigns 'Aa2' rating to Duke University Health System's bonds

Moody's Investors Service assigned an "Aa2" rating to Durham, N.C.-based Duke University Health System's proposed $169 million of series 2016A fixed rate revenue bonds.

13. Moody's affirms Calvert Health System's 'A3' rating

Moody's Investors Service affirmed the "A3" rating on Prince Frederick, Md.-based Calvert Health System's $31 million of outstanding rated revenue bonds.

14. Moody's affirms Skagit Regional Health's 'Baa2' rating

Moody's Investors Service affirmed Mount Vernon, Wash.-based Skagit Regional Health's "Baa2" rating, affecting $109 million of debt.

15. Moody's affirms Northeast Health System's 'Baa1' rating

Moody's Investors Service affirmed the "Baa1" rating on Beverly, Mass.-based Northeast Health System's $45 million of debt.
Recent studies from the Urban Institute, Kaiser Family Foundation and TransUnion show Americans are increasingly concerned with rising insurance premiums and out-of-pocket medical expenses.

Even middle-class families with incomes above the threshold for subsidized exchange coverage are experiencing affordability problems. Nearly 25 percent of Americans surveyed last September who had coverage through employer plans, the Affordable Care Act exchanges or commercial plans reported difficulties paying family medical bills in the past 12 months, according to the Urban Institute's Health Reform Monitoring Survey.

Here's how the candidates have said they plan to address to unaffordable out-of-pocket costs, reports Crain's Chicago Business.

1. Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton has proposed the most direct assistance plan. She said she would require the following stipulations from health plans: cover three annual sick visits to a physician without applying the deductible, give insured families a $5,000 refundable tax credit for out-of-pocket costs exceeding 5 percent of their income, bar providers and insurers from charging patients out-of-pocket rates for services performed at in-network hospitals, and strengthen state authority to block excessive premium increases.

2. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders said he wants to eliminate premiums and cost-sharing enterprises entirely by establishing a tax-funded government single-payer insurance program covering the full range of healthcare services.

3. Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, released a seven-point agenda that doesn't directly address out-of-pocket costs. It would, however, offer households a tax deduction for buying coverage, expand health savings accounts and enable insurers to sell plans across state lines.

More articles on finance and politics:
Three executives at Columbus (Ga.) Regional Health are leaving their positions to accept promotions with other organizations, according to a Ledger-Enquirer report.

Resignations have been submitted by L.M. "Tripp" Layfield III, senior vice president and legal counsel; Meredith Bass, director of corporate finance; and Stan Hickson, executive vice president and president of Northside Medical Center in Columbus.

Mr. Layfield has accepted a job as executive vice president and legal counsel at Renown Health, a $1.2 billion healthcare system based in Reno, Nev., according to the report. Ms. Bass will become vice president of hospital financial operations at WellStar Kennestone Hospital in Marietta, Ga. Mr. Hickson will be CEO of the Northeast Market for Johnson City, Tenn.-based Mountain States Health Alliance.

The departures come as Columbus Regional has decided to explore potential alignments or partnerships with other healthcare organizations, the Ledger-Enquirer reported.

But Scott Hill, president and CEO of Columbus Regional, told the publication the timing is by chance.

"The fact that all three of these executives had probably been involved in their job searches for months," he said, according to the report. "...The more successful you are, the more valuable your people are. I am not surprised that all three of these individuals have been recruited by other organizations because they all three are very talented. ... I love them all and wish they would stay, but frankly, they got great opportunities."

According to the report, Columbus Regional also recently announced these promotions:

Ryan Chandler has been promoted to lead Columbus Regional's hospital operations division.

Laura Drew has been promoted from senior vice president of quality and clinical transformation to senior vice president of operations and quality.

Doug Colburn has been promoted from vice president of operations at Midtown Medical Center in Columbus to senior vice president of operations for Midtown and Columbus Regional.

Cary Burcham, RN, has been promoted from vice president and CNO of Northside to senior vice president and CNO for Columbus Regional's nursing services.

Holly Lehmberg has been promoted from interim CNO at Midtown to assistant CNO at Midtown.

Allen Holladay has been promoted from director of decision support services to vice president of finance for Columbus Regional.

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Debra Mathias joins Freed Associates: 3 things to know

St. Elizabeth Healthcare names VP of marketing and public relations: 4 things to know

New COO joins Atrium Medical Center: 3 things to know
Stay in the know with Becker's Hospital Review's weekly roundup of the nation's biggest healthcare news. Here's what you need to know this week.

1. 2,000 physicians get behind Bernie Sanders' single payer health plan

A 39-physician panel Thursday unveiled a proposal for single-payer healthcare reform, endorsed by 2,231 physicians, that promises to remove all financial barriers to medical care with no increase in current spending.

2. Humana considers dropping out of state ACA exchanges

Louisville, Ky.-based Humana might be following in the footsteps of other top insurers as it considers exiting the Affordable Care Act exchanges in some states in 2017, according to Reuters.

3. Medical errors are No. 3 cause of death in the US, study unveils

The CDC lists chronic respiratory diseases as the No. 3 cause of death in the U.S., behind heart disease and cancer, but researchers from Baltimore-based Johns Hopkins beg to differ. They analyzed data from an eight-year period and found medical errors are the true third leading cause of death in the U.S.

4. Congress members call on CMS to abandon Medicare drug pilot

More than 240 Congress members penned a letter May 2 to CMS Acting Administrator Andy Slavitt outlining six chief concerns with the agency's Medicare "Part B Drug Payment Model" proposed rule.

5. These 10 hospitals have the biggest surpluses  and they're mostly nonprofit

A small percentage of U.S. hospitals earned large profits from patient care services in 2013, and seven of the 10 most profitable were nonprofit hospitals, according to research from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Washington and Lee University.

6. CDC: Hepatitis C most deadly infectious disease in America

Hepatitis C-associated deaths peaked in 2014 with 19,659 infected individuals dying, according to data released by the CDC on Wednesday.

7. Looking into missing drugs, hospital surveillance footage accidentally filmed patient surgeries

After realizing someone was taking drugs from surgery carts, SharpGrossmontHospital in La Mesa, Calif., mounted small cameras inside computer monitors attached to mobile anesthesia machines in operating rooms, according to inewsource. Upon reviewing the tape, the hospital found they had accidentally filmed women undergoing surgery without their permission. The filming, which took place between February 2013 and June 2013, caught one physician in the act of pocketing a vial of anesthetics.

8. Harvard study finds consumer price shopping doesn't lower healthcare costs

A recent study published in JAMA suggests consumers don't exercise savvier healthcare shopping practices when they have access to increased price information.

9. Capella, RegionalCare merge into $1.7B company

Brentwood, Tenn.-based RegionalCare Hospital Partners and Franklin, Tenn.-based Capella Healthcare merged to create a combined company with 18 hospital campuses in 12 states.

10. CHS completes 38-hospital spinoff

Franklin, Tenn.-based Community Health Systems completed its previously announced spinoff of Quorum Health Corp., which includes 38 hospitals across 16 states as well as CHS' hospital management and consulting business.

11. How CHS, Tenet, UHS, LifePoint and HCA fared in Q1

Franklin, Tenn.-based Community Health Systems reported revenues increased 1.8 percent year-over-year to nearly $5 billion in the first quarter of 2016.

Tenet Healthcare recorded revenue of $5 billion in the first quarter of 2016, up 14 percent from $4.4 billion in the same period the year prior.

King of Prussia, Pa.-based Universal Health Services recorded revenue of $2.5 billion in the first quarter 2016, up 10.1 percent from the year prior.

Brentwood, Tenn.-based LifePoint Health saw revenue increase to nearly $1.6 billion in the first quarter of 2016, up 25.1 percent from revenue of $1.3 billion in the same period of 2015.

Nashville, Tenn.-based HCA Holdings saw revenue increase to $10.2 billion in the first quarter of 2016, up 6 percent from $9.7 billion in the same period of 2015.

12. Number of 5-star hospitals up slightly in new Hospital Compare update

CMS updated its Hospital Compare database May 4 with new HCAHPS survey results, and the number of hospitals that received a five-star summary rating for patient experience is up slightly from the December update. The improvement reverses a two-quarter slide in the number of hospitals that received the highest rating.

13. Obama administration grants Texas 15-month Medicaid waiver extension

Federal officials gave Texas an extension of a special flow of Medicaid dollars to help hospitals treat uninsured patients, according to a Dallas Morning News report. President Barack Obama's administration granted the 15-month Medicaid waiver extension Monday.
Medical school training is incredibly important, not only because it molds the future healthcare workforce, but also because it can also provide a blueprint for where the industry is headed.

For Salt Lake City-based University of Utah Health Care, training the next generation of physicians is particularly integral to its mission, according to Vivian Lee, MD, PhD, CEO of the University of Utah Health Care, dean of the University of Utah School of Medicine and senior vice president for the University of Utah Health Sciences.

That's because University of Utah Health Care is the only academic medical in the state and one that accounts for a region spanning 10 percent of the geographical U.S., Dr. Lee said in a keynote address at the 12th Annual AAMC Health Workforce Research Conference in Chicago. Roughly two-thirds of the physicians practicing in the state got their training at U of U, making that question  how do we train our workforce to prepare us for the future  all the more salient.

"One of the most important values or principles we want our trainees to emerge with is a very strong sense of how to deliver value," Dr. Lee said. University of Utah describes value as delivering the highest possible level of health at the lowest possible cost.

To drive this mantra home among today's trainees, who are mostly millennials, it is helpful to put yourself in their mindset, Dr. Lee said. This mindset is different than her own and that of many of her executive peers, she acknowledged. After all, when she asked her trainees, she found most thought Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg was old.

At the core of the millennial mindset are values of transparency, patient-centeredness and data-driven approaches to problem solving, according to Dr. Lee. As such, in teaching value-based care, medical educators need to think about it in terms of value to the patient, or even better, value to the consumer.

Drawing these values of consumerism, transparency and data into healthcare is what Dr. Lee calls "millenification." Channeling this mindset she outlined four companies that have captured the millennial spirit and can help provide direction for the industry in general.

1. Yelp-ification

Popular consumer review website Yelp embodies the millennial value of crowd-sourced customer feedback. U of U took this mindset to heart, launching a journey in 2008 that led to online star reviews of physicians by 2012. It was started by Dr. Lee's predecessor, Lorris Betz, MD, PhD, who felt the health system needed to launch an exceptional patient experience initiative because "medical care can only truly be great if the patient thinks it is."

U of U began collecting physician-specific data in 2008 benchmarked against the Press Ganey database. It then started sharing it privately with physicians and slowly ramped up transparency until its online launch in 2012, which has inspired many other institutions around the country to follow suit, Dr. Lee said.

2. Delta-ification

Delta Air Lines embodies the value of convenience by providing customers with an app to buy tickets, check in, download boarding passes, etc. In the spirit of Delta-ification, U of U wanted to make it easier for patients to make appointments  allowing them to schedule online or use its Epic MyChart for test results, physician communication and prescription refills.

"It's really not that impressive when you consider how the rest of life is, but for us it was really transformational," Dr. Lee said.

3. Zappos-ification

Online retailer Zappos has an infallible commitment to customer service and can serve as an example to many healthcare organizations that need to think about how to deliver a better patient experience, according to Dr. Lee.

In this vein, she cited three examples from one of her system's outpatient clinics. The first was in-clinic child care for parents who can't leave small children at home during their own physician appointments. The second was in-home newborn visits or well-child checks. This allows parents to keep their one- and two-week old babies out of the physician's office waiting room, which is full of kids with pink eye and runny noses, Dr. Lee said. It also allows providers to asses the child's home environment. The last example she gave that tailored care to the customer was U of U's same-day multi-disciplinary visits, which were originally designed for women but have since been extended to men, and cover annual labs, check-ups and skin checks.

4. FitBit-ification

The beauty of FitBit is it provides data back to the consumer, allowing them to improve and also providing a little bit of competition. According to Dr. Lee, U of U took FitBit-ification beyond feeding data back to patients and brought it to providers.

Based on what the system learned from its patient satisfaction transparency initiative, it saw providers were really responsive to seeing their progress compared to their peers. So in thinking more broadly about value, the patient satisfaction initiative led the system to provide physicians with data not only on patient satisfaction, but with data from the entire value equation, Dr. Lee said. U of U created a tool that can spell out the total cost of care for every component of every patient stay. Its surgeons were particularly fond of the idea and now have a special dashboard that shows them their supply costs, and they have gotten competitive with each other to drive these costs down.

To bring residents on this journey, Dr. Lee said it offers a portal entirely dedicated to process improvement, with videos and a platform to launch their own data-driven improvement projects. It has been incredibly successful with 61 training projects so far. Most are aligned with systemwide goals, but some are more personal, according to Dr. Lee. And that's fine with her  driving change is not a top-down effort, she said.

"Will we transform the workforce, or really will the workforce transform us?" Dr. Lee asked. "And to what extent is it our job to allow them to lead us through this very difficult time period of change?"

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For Sharp Grossmont Hospital in La Mesa, Calif., looking into one serious problem caused another.

After realizing that someone was taking drugs from surgery carts, the hospital mounted small cameras inside of computer monitors attached to mobile anesthesia machines in operating rooms, according to inewsource. Upon reviewing the tape, the hospital found they had accidentally filmed women undergoing surgery without their permission. The filming, which took place between February 2013 and June 2013, caught one physician in the act, pocketing a vial of anesthetics.

The accused physician's attorney told inewsource that his client was removing anesthesia from the carts to use on patients, as other clinicians would, and that the video evidence should reflect that.

The attorney is also arguing the secret surveillance measures violated the privacy of hundreds of Sharp Grossmont patients. Court documents reflect the video captured patients in vulnerable states while they were undergoing medical procedures, inewsource reported.

The hospital has opposed releasing the video evidence for the sake of patient privacy, and a hearing on the action against the physician's license is slated for October, according to inewsource.
In July, Hartford, Conn.-based Aetna plans to open a new office in Baton Rouge, La., that will create 100 positions, according to The Advocate.

The new positions will include member service representatives, clinical care managers and consulting nurses, according to Aetna's website.

Aetna has existing Louisiana offices in New Orleans and Kenner.

Nearly two years ago, Aetna Better Health of Louisiana was one of five companies chosen to insure two-thirds of Louisiana's Medicaid customers. Aetna sees Gov. John Bel Edwards' (D) decision to expand Medicaid in the state as the perfect opportunity to gain headway.

"With the Medicaid expansion in Louisiana, there's a possibility for expanded membership for us," said Aetna company spokesman Walk Cherniak, according to the report. "So that's leading to these brand new positions."
National Nurses Week kicks off Friday and will run through May 12. The week-long, annual veneration of the nursing profession has roots that stretch back to the 1950s. Here are how five organizations are honoring nurses for National Nurse's Week 2016.

1. According to the Rhode Island Monthly, nurses from Miriam Hospital in Providence, R.I., are being bolstered by community retailers as they work to raise money for the American Heart Association. A handful of local businesses have pledged to donate 5 percent of sales, during all or part of the week, to the AHA in the name if Miriam Hospital nurses.

2. Magnet-designated Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tenn., will honor its nurses with a docket of events that extend to May 20. Main events include an address on the state of nursing that will be accessible live via webcast during the event and the distribution of nursing awards based on nominations with a reception to follow. See what Vanderbilt Nursing recommends for a successful nurses week celebration here.

3. This year's National Nurses Week theme is a "Culture of Safety  It Starts with YOU." In honor of that theme, the Nursing Education and Continuing Education departments at Gadsden (Ala.) State Community College are co-sponsoring an auditorium event featuring local healthcare professionals from hospitals, educational institutions and rehab facilities to deliver safety information to attendees.

4. The Minnesota Nurses Association has an extensive list of sponsored activities lined up for the week. On May 9, Mary Turner, RN, will throw out the first pitch at a Minnesota Twins game for scrubs night  healthcare professionals will receive a pair of Minnesota Twins-branded scrub pants with ticket purchase. The organization is also hosting an open house in St. Paul featuring educational sessions and food.

5. In July 1994, a group of nurse leaders from Tucson, Ariz., came together with hopes of galvanizing citywide recognition of nurses within their community during National Nurses Week. The Tucson Nurses Week Foundation will be offering two major events to honor Tucson-area nurses as a part of this year's festivities. On May 6, the organization will hold a health fair to engage educators, staff nurses, administrators, clinical nurse specialists, nurse practitioners, researchers and other practicing professionals from a variety of disciplines in an educational conversation about nursing research and practice. On May 7, the organization will host a formal gala honoring distinguished area nurses.

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This year's National Nurses Week theme is "Culture of Safety  It Starts with YOU." The American Nurses Association is calling on nurses to enhance workplace safety to improve patient care and the health and well-being of nurses.

Registered nurses rank sixth among occupations for the highest instances of musculoskeletal injuries resulting in missed work days, according to the ANA.

"Injuries to nurses and other healthcare professionals should not be tolerated as just 'part of the job'," said Pamela F. Cipriano, PhD, RN, and ANA president.

Dr. Cipriano went on to add that patients also deserve a safe environment. "In a culture of safety, nurses are encouraged to talk openly about safety issues and their impact on patient care. A 2013 study showed that preventable adverse events accounted for 210,000 to 440,000 deaths of hospital patients every year. Clearly, there is still work to be done, and nurses will play a key role," said Dr. Cipriano.

The ANA defines a culture of safety as one in which all involved in a healthcare organization are committed to practices and values that prioritize safety over competing objectives.

In celebration of National Nurses Week and this year's emphasis on improving working environments for nurses, the ANA is offering a free webinar on the importance of diversity in the workplace. The organization is also offering a resource toolkit to help nurses promote the annual observance in their communities and in the media. Find the toolkit here.

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Here four spine surgeons discuss how the spine industry and care delivery has changed over the course of their career.

Ask Spine Surgeons is a weekly series of questions posed to spine surgeons around the country about clinical, business and policy issues affecting spine care. We invite all spine surgeon and specialist responses.

Next week's question: What trait(s) are essential for a good mentor?





Please send responses to Anuja Vaidya at avaidya@beckershealthcare.com by Wednesday, May 11, at 5 p.m. CST.

Question: What is the biggest change in the spine industry since you started practicing?

Kern Singh, MD, Minimally Invasive Spine Institute, Chicago: The biggest change is the evolution of value-based spine surgery. The days of using a device just because it's better are done. Now we have to justify the increase in cost and prove to the insurers and patients that these new devices are not only better but are also cost effective.

Richard Kube, MD, Founder, CEO, Prairie Spine & Pain Institute (Peoria, Ill.): I would break up the answer into two parts. From a strictly industry standpoint, there is a lot more regulation and innovation has become much harder. The average physician has a harder time being involved in much of the consulting for new products as their time is further stretched with patient care. Also, many current consulting options are money-loss propositions for the physician so getting the best and brightest to help innovate and bring a product from the lab to the operating room is more difficult.





From a practice standpoint, the explosion of minimally invasive techniques has created a huge change. Many of the procedures I do now didn't exist when I was a fellow 10 years ago. The dynamics of practice are different as we aren't rounding daily on a large service of patients. Most of my cases are done outpatient or are discharged early the morning after the surgery. That would have been unheard of during my training. That change has then opened the opportunity to do surgeries in an ambulatory setting. During my training, 0 percent of our cases were performed there, but now more than 90 percent of my cases are done in the outpatient setting. Spine has really evolved away from the days when you had cases lasting several hours and patients admitted for days or more. Though some of our cases still require that type of postoperative care, it only applies to a distinct few instead of the practice as a whole.

Jack Zigler, MD, Medical Director, Texas Back Institute, Plano: The biggest change I have seen is the intrusion of the health insurance industry into the doctor-patient relationship. My career started before the era of prior authorization. If a patient was seen with a large disc herniation and an acute foot drop, they were taken to the operating room and the problem addressed. Although there were undoubtedly physicians and surgeons who took advantage of that system, one has to wonder if the enormous cost of the layers of bureaucracy involved in pre-authorization, on both insurance and physician side, have offset that potential overuse.

Far worse has been the erosion of the unique bond between a surgeon and patient. The surgeon uses his/her education, knowledge and clinical experience base to make a surgical recommendation specific to the patient, who in turn must literally trust the surgeon with their life. But now the insurance industry has come between this historically sacred relationship, imposing their poorly explained "medical policies" and even more puzzling guidelines to delay and even deny care. Despite the existence of longer term level I data in the peer-reviewed literature, it is not uncommon to see four different insurance companies make four different coverage decisions based on the exact same data. And patients, paying their ever-increasing monthly insurance premiums, are blind-sided when they learn that the procedure recommended by their doctor is capriciously considered "experimental and investigational" by their insurance company, and not a covered benefit.

The loss of professional respectability by the medical provider, being morphed into a "line-item widget" in a provider's portfolio, has been tremendously disappointing to me when looking back at my 35-year career as an orthopedic spine surgeon. I do not see this as an improvement in medical care delivery.

Brian R. Gantwerker, MD, The Craniospinal Center of Los Angeles: The industry has really shifted toward ambulatory surgery, as well as toward deformity correction. These seem irreconcilable but I think the government and insurers will push back when it comes to deformity. I admire the work that is being done, but the pressure from payers will change the way we practice even more than it already has. The industry itself is offering up more innovative ways to do minimally invasive surgery as well as motion-preserving technologies. Hopefully, the money for research and development will still flow into the industry so we can offer evolving ways to help people.
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Sponsors of the 2016 awards, and category winners from 2015, gathered at the Culloden Estate & Spa ahead of tonights gala event

Northern Ireland's most successful food retailers and manufacturers will enjoy an evening of celebration at the annual Ulster Grocer Marketing Awards tonight.

The event, at Belfast's Culloden Estate & Spa, unites grocers of all sizes - and their suppliers - from across Northern Ireland.

The awards are part of the GroceryAid Ulster Grocers' Ball and are open to any company involved in retail grocery trading, from suppliers and wholesales to retailers and producers.

And Business Telegraph sponsors the Green Retailer of the year award, which recognises companies who are working to improve the environment.

The awards are chaired by marketing analyst Michael Maguire of Quintus, while the judging panel also includes Marian Norwood, lecturer in marketing at the Ulster University, and Emma Cowan, a writer, editor, designer and business consultant specialising in food, drink and retail.

Other sponsors include economic development agency Invest NI, crisps brand Hunky Dorys, Henderson Food Machinery and Reach Retail Services.

Winners will be announced in categories including best marketing campaign, best new product launch, best artisan foods campaign, best food export marketing award and best corporate social responsibility initiative.

Ulster Grocer manager Mark Beckett said the strength of this year's shortlist was particularly apt during the 2016 Year of Food and Drink.

Tonight's event is held to raise funds for GroceryAid, a charity set up to help people in need in the grocery trade.

Earlier this year a campaign by GroceryAid raised money for debt charity StepChange.

Sponsors of the 2016 awards, and category winners from 2015, gathered at the Culloden Estate & Spa ahead of tonight's gala event.
A new grocery store complex is expected to create around 50 jobs in south Belfast.

Bosses at Eurospar Creighton's of Balmoral announced they will create the posts for the area as they celebrate the opening of their new super-store.

The 6,000sq ft store on the Upper Lisburn Road opened after a significant redevelopment of the original Spar store on the site and marks the latest of a number of developments in the Balmoral area.

In March it was announced that the iconic King's Hall building would undergo a 100m transformation to become a health centre which will employ around 500 people, while part of the showgrounds will be used for high-end housing.

Owners of the new grocery complex, Niall Creighton and Gail Boyd, also own two other stores in the south of the city - Eurospar Creighton's of Finaghy and Spar Creighton's of Blacks Road.

The family has been running their business since the 1930s, and already employ more than 100 people. The siblings joined the Henderson Group network in 2005.

Niall Creighton said: "We are delighted to open Eurospar Creighton's of Balmoral, which brings not only a wealth of new services and convenience to the area, but also employment opportunities for our local community; in opening the store, we created 50 new full and part-time roles from customer service to deli staff.

"We have a wealth of experience in retail having traded for over 80 years in Northern Ireland, and our links with the Henderson Group only make us a stronger business. We have been part of their retailer network for 11 years, and this latest store in our portfolio is testament to the support gained from their retail services team, in terms of assisting in the planning of the layout of the new store; merchandising and IT services."

Paddy Doody, sales and marketing director at Henderson Group, said: "This is a fantastic addition to the 49-strong Eurospar network here in Northern Ireland, and the facilities and services offered in-store are second to none.

"We are delighted to see the store bring positive employment opportunities to the area, adding to the almost 2,000 staff that are employed by the Eurospar brand across Northern Ireland, through both independent and Henderson Retail-owned stores."
McDonald's is to champion British and Irish farming with a virtual reality show across the UK.

The fast food giant has loaded up a truck with the latest in virtual reality technology and will invite the public to climb on board for a look at its growers and producers, without having to set foot on a farm.

McDonald's, whose campaigns for some years have focussed on its links with local farming, said the latest drive was part of Farm Forward, its long-term programme to address the challenges facing the sector.

Figures from the Food and Drink Federation suggested the industry needed 109,000 new recruits by 2022 as the UK population is projected to rise by 4.4 million in the next decade.

McDonald's said it used technology developers, young farmers and food experts to create the show, which it hopes will reach up to one million people at farming shows and other events across the UK over the next year.

A YouGov poll of 2,000 consumers for the chain found 74% want to know more about where their food comes from, but one in five cannot explain any process behind food production.

Two in five (41%) have never set foot on a working farm and 83% have never received careers advice about the food and farming sector, while 60% have never considered working in the sector.

The roadshow follows food production from provenance through to preparation and cooking in McDonald's restaurants.

McDonald's UK director of supply chain Connor McVeigh said: "By bringing together tech developers with farmers and food experts, we have created an immersive virtual reality experience that will allow people to follow in the footsteps of farmers, suppliers and our crew, bringing the best of UK food production from the countryside to communities across the UK.

"Our hope is that it will help build pride in British and Irish farming, challenge outdated stereotypes and celebrate the best of food and farming in the UK today."

Environment Secretary Liz Truss said: "As a nation we are now far more plugged into where our food comes from. Projects like this that link field to fork, or in this case fingers, not only supports our farmers but educates our children too.

"With 3.8 million people employed in the food chain it is vital for our economic future that we make British food and farming all it can be. By embracing the latest technology we will foster the next generation of entrepreneurs."
Not a single non-Catholic school has made it into the top 11 in Northern Ireland for A-level results.

Today the Belfast Telegraph publishes its annual must-read guide for the performance of every post primary school in the province.

The league table for A-levels sat during the 2014/15 academic year reveals that Catholic schools have increased their lead, taking the top 11 spots. Last year four of the top six schools had been non-Catholic.

The top performing grammar was St Dominic's High in west Belfast, where 94.9% of pupils received three passes at A-level.

The top non-grammar was St Colm's High in Draperstown, where 88.1% achieved the top grades.

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Whereas the top performing non-Catholic school was Friends in Lisburn (83.9%).

These results have prompted the principal of one of the top performing Catholic schools to call for the Department of Education to examine what makes these institutions so successful and learn lessons from them.

Sean Rafferty, head of St Louis Grammar in Ballymena, said: "If you take a look at the top 11 schools they are all faith-based, and I think that says it all."

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He added: "It's a combination of community support and a buy-in from parents, whole ethos of acheivement, we don't accept second best and all the time strive for excellence.

"This is something which I think the Department of Education should be looking at, they should be asking what is the magic ingredient which is making all the top performing schools in Northern Ireland Catholic schools."

DUP education spokesman Peter Weir said lessons could be learned from Catholic schools. "While there is a very strong caveat to be made to the results, as some schools put in pupils for three A-levels and some for four, and some stagger entries while others don't, therefore you are not comparing like for like always, nevertheless there are important lessons to be learned," he said.

He added the main focus on educational underachievement should primarily be put on Protestant working class boys.

The performance of six grammars fell below the Northern Ireland average of 64.9%, including Royal Belfast Academical Institution (64.8%).

Principal Janet Williamson said she believed it did not reflect the true success of her pupils. The Department of Education said it did not endorse league tables as a "valid basis" for comparing schools.

Methodology: how we compiled the data

The Belfast Telegraph is the only source of comprehensive league tables showing the results of every post-primary school in Northern Ireland.

We obtained the data from the Department of Education for A-level and GCSE examinations sat in the 2014/15 academic year following a Freedom of Information request and compiled the figures into easy-to-read league tables ordered from top to bottom.

In the A-level league tables we have used the percentage of pupils in the final year of a level 3 course who achieved three A-levels between an A* to C grade in each school as the standard measure.

There are then 36 schools where A-levels were either not sat in 2014/15 or the numbers who sat them were so low that the pupils could be identified if results were published. We have not ranked these schools by number.

The Department of Education does not produce A-level or GCSE league tables and have asked us to point out that they do not endorse them.
Exam grade excellence could suffer due to a cut to school budgets, it has been warned.

The principal of one of Northern Irelands top performing schools  which has achieved a 100% pass rate for the fourth year in a row  has expressed her concern over the impact the cuts will have on test results.

Deirdre Gillespie, head of St Marys Grammar in Magherafelt, said she feared decreased funding may force her to end support programmes she believed were key to the colleges success.

Principals from post-primaries in a number of sectors united last month to warn cutbacks could result in fewer subjects being offered and even shorter school days.

Ms Gillespie warned slashed budgets could also affect academic standards.

The stark warning comes as the Belfast Telegraph publishes its annual GCSE league tables.

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Five schools achieved a 100% pass rate at GCSE (including English and maths) in the 2014/15 academic year, compared to six in the previous year.

However, on the other end of the scale there were five schools where less than a fifth of grades achieved were between A*-C (including English and maths).

At the worst performing school, Movilla  which is currently in formal intervention  the pass rate was just 13.2%.

The top 57 schools were from the grammar sector, with the best performing non-grammar  St Eugenes College in Roslea  reaching 61st with a pass rate of 87%.

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Many of the schools where the top grades were achieved spoke of the importance of support programmes, including Dalriada in Ballymoney, which improved its pass rate from 98.2% to 100% in the 2014/15 academic year, and St Marys, which scored 100% for the fourth year in a row.

But there are fears tightened purse-strings could spell the end of many of these programmes. A statement issued by a group representing the 90 post-primaries across Northern Ireland last month warned that cuts could leave some schools facing a deficit of up to 500,000.

In March Education Minister John ODowd announced the aggregated schools budget would be cut by 0.8%.

On top of absorbing this, schools must also fund a 3.4% rise in employer National Insurance contributions  an average 70,000 increase per school  as well as a 4.1% rise in employer superannuation contributions, and cost of living pay rises for staff of between 1% and 2.2%.

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Ms Gillespie said she was worried that St Marys learning support programme may have to be sacrificed.

At the moment we are cutting back considerably on some of the provisions and some of the choices that we can provide moving forward into next year, she said.

Ultimately I am going to have bigger class sizes; that means my teachers dont have the same amount of time to spend with children individually and one of the things that probably will go is my learning support, and that has been the key of the success we have here.

That worries me.

Todays league tables for exams sat in the 2014/15 academic year were compiled from statistics released by the Department of Education following a Freedom of Information request.

However, the department has cautioned that it does not endorse league tables as a valid basis for comparing schools.

Examination results should always be considered in the context of other information about a school and its pupils; and these data should be interpreted in that light, it said.
The DUP is to nominate its first Lord Mayor of Belfast in almost four years, it can be revealed.

South Belfast councillor Christopher Stalford is rumoured to be the candidate being lined up.

The new Lord Mayor of Belfast and their deputy will be nominated at the next full meeting of Belfast City Council on June 1.

The Lord Mayoral term of Sinn Fein's Arder Carson is coming to an end.

He was the party's second first citizen in three years.

The DUP's Guy Spence is also finishing his term as Deputy Lord Mayor.

Earlier this week Mr Carson thanked councillors for working with him throughout the year.

The DUP has not formally announced who it plans to nominate as the next Lord Mayor, but it is understood Mr Stalford is the front-runner, while councillors Brian Kingston and Tommy Sandford are also being considered.

It is understood that the final decision will be made after the new Stormont Assembly is elected this weekend.

Mr Stalford is running to be an MLA in the South Belfast constituency.

If he is elected, he must stand down from the council under new Assembly rules against double-jobbing.

Sinn Fein has already announced it will nominate councillor Mary Ellen Campbell for Deputy Mayor at the June meeting.

That would make Ms Campbell the city's first openly gay Deputy Mayor.

She was one of three gay councillors to be elected in Belfast in 2014.

"Inclusion will be one of the themes of my term in office," she said.

"It's vital to promote positive messages and demonstrate public commitment to equality. I'm a woman, I'm openly gay, I'm a republican ex-prisoner and I'm from a working-class community in north Belfast.

"So I would say I have some experience of the challenges that many marginalised citizens face in Belfast."

Belfast agreed several years ago to start using the system of d'Hondt to allocate the top positions such as Lord Mayor, Deputy Lord Mayor and committee chairs based on the strength of each of the parties elected to the council.

However, the system is not universally popular.

Last year a PUP proposal to use the Sainte-Lague system of allocating positions of responsibility rather than d'Hondt was voted down.

The loyalist party, which has three councillors, had argued the change would ensure more posts for the smaller parties at Belfast City Hall.

Under the d'Hondt system, Alliance is set to nominate the Lord Mayor in 2017, with the Ulster Unionist Party due to nominate a Deputy Lord Mayor.

In the following year, under the d'Hondt arrangements, it will be the turn of Sinn Fein to nominate Lord Mayor, with Alliance due to nominate a Deputy Lord Mayor.
Emma King admitted stealing painkillers from the Causeway Hospital where she worked

A staff nurse who was addicted to painkillers because she was depressed was aware a surveillance camera was fitted in a hospital medication room but "didn't care" as she had to satisfy her craving for the tablets, a court heard on Thursday.

Emma King (36), of Ballyclose Street, Limavady, but whose address was given previously as Lyttlesdale, Garvagh, had pleaded guilty to the theft of 982 Co-codamol tablets and other medication from the Causeway Hospital in Coleraine where she worked.

She admitted two charges of theft as an employee and a judge previously said it was a "breach of trust" case.

The defendant took the Co-codamol tablets - used for pain relief - worth 80 from the Causeway Hospital between June 15 and September 11 last year.

During the same period King also took a quantity of Gabapentin Medreich of unknown value from the hospital.

It is used to treat epilepsy and as pain relief.

References handed into the court for the defendant included one from one of the Queen's representatives in Northern Ireland, broadcaster Helen Mark, who is Deputy Lieutenant of County Londonderry and is a neighbour of King's family.

At Coleraine Magistrates Court a prosecutor said staff made a complaint to police that King was suspected of theft while on duty in a rehabilitation ward

During a "frank and emotional" police interview King admitted she took the tablets and was addicted to them as she suffers from depression.

The court heard she had been working on all occasions when medication was taken and tablets were found during a search of her property.

She told police she was aware a camera had been installed in the medications room but because of her addiction she "didn't care".

The court heard she had a previous caution for a similar matter and on this occasion she had made full admissions and co-operated with police.

The prosecutor said King had been suspended from her job and reported to the nursing authorities.

Defence solicitor Fergus McIntosh said a pre-sentence report gave a detailed insight into what happened to Mrs King and her family over the past 10 years. The court was told her late mother had also been a nurse.

Four references were handed into the court including the one from Mrs Mark.

Mr McIntosh said the defendant came from a highly respected family in the Limavady area and family members were in court to support her.

He said she has lost her job, marriage and home and asked what greater penalty a court could impose.

The solicitor said King has addressed her addiction issues and is never likely to be back before a court.

He said justice should be tempered with compassion and asked for a conditional discharge.

District Judge Chris Holmes said the references spoke well of King's character and the devastating effect the offending had on her.

However, he said the public demands the highest standard of behaviour from people who are working in important positions of trust.

He said King clearly had a significant addiction problem which was recognised by her employers and was working under CCTV surveillance.

The judge said he suspected there had been a degree of "turning a blind eye" because people felt sorry for her and said he was not saying that as a criticism of anyone.

He said he agreed King had been punished enough as he told her there was "really no way back" into nursing for her.

The judge handed down a one-year conditional discharge and ordered her to pay 80 compensation to the hospital.

Mr McIntosh said the money had already been lodged with him.

by nevin farrell
The police swooped on a house in an estate in Strabane after the funeral

A guard of honour flanks the coffin of Michael Barr at his funeral in Strabane

Police have denied they swooped on a paramilitary colour party at the funeral of murdered dissident republican Michael Barr following criticism of previous operations during paramilitary funerals.

Fifteen men arrested under the Terrorism Act at the funeral in Strabane are being questioned about membership of a proscribed organisation, namely the New IRA.

Michael Barr was murdered in a Dublin pub on April 25 in a shooting thought to be part of a bloody feud between two rival criminal gangs.

A dozen men and women in full paramilitary uniform, berets and sunglasses accompanied the funeral cortege of Mr Barr (36) from his father's home in Clady to St Mary's Church in Strabane for Requiem Mass.

The colour party, none of whom had their faces covered, dispersed through the chapel car park ahead of the funeral service, which was attended by several hundred people.

Police maintained a visible presence throughout the morning including a Land Rover parked near the church which had cameras mounted on the roof recording the arrival of the procession.

An hour after Mr Barr was buried in the graveyard across the road from the church, the police swooped on a number of cars across Strabane town which are understood to have contained the colour party, making the arrests.

District Commander Superintendent Mark McEwan denied the swift action by his officers was in response to criticism of previous police actions during paramilitary displays.

He said: "We have had some public commentary that the deceased was allegedly a member of the violent dissident republican grouping known as the New IRA and that the funeral would take place in line with that.

"What we saw on the streets of Strabane was to all intents and purposes a paramilitary-style display and as a result of that policing operation we have arrested 15 men in connection with suspected terrorist-related offences.

"Where we suspect a criminal offence has taken place, we will move to act. The public would expect us to act.

"Sometimes it is more appropriate that we take an evidence-gathering approach and seek to follow that up with arrests and potential prosecutions at a later date, but with the situation that presented itself this morning, it was appropriate, necessary and proportionate that we would take those steps, so subsequently 15 men were arrested.

"We don't respond to political pressure; we are cognisant of it, but more importantly we are cognisant of the wider community impact and there is a desire amongst the wider community to see the sort of behaviour we witnessed this morning dealt with.

"There is an expectation for us as a police service to take some action but we are sensitive to the fact that this was a funeral, there is a family at the centre of this, so there are people who are grieving."
Volunteers empty a ballot box in the counting centre at the Titanic Exhibition Centre, Belfast

The Democratic Unionists and Sinn Fein were on course to retain their grip on power at Stormont as the Assembly election count neared its half way point.

While the two parties are set to solidify their positions as the largest parties on their respective sides of the traditional unionist/nationalist divide, independents have also notched some significant scalps.

The People Before Profit Alliance is poised to secure two seats in the Assembly chamber, with Gerry Carroll elected after topping the poll in Sinn Fein's West Belfast heartland and party colleague Eamonn McCann set to join him in Foyle.

At 9pm, 45 of the 108 seats were filled. The Democratic Unionists had won 21, Sinn Fein 13, the Ulster Unionists four, Alliance three, SDLP two with People Before Profit Alliance and the Traditional Unionist Voice (TUV) landing one seat each.

The DUP went into the election with 38 seats and Sinn Fein 29.

DUP leader Arlene Foster expressed confidence she will be returned as Northern Ireland's first minister, as her party was assured of again emerging as the region's largest party.

"I am confident that I will be the first minister of Northern Ireland," she said after topping the poll in Fermanagh and South Tyrone.

Mrs Foster added: "I feel great, it is a great endorsement of our campaign in Fermanagh and South Tyrone, and indeed across Northern Ireland, and I am absolutely delighted.

During the campaign, Ms Foster placed particular onus on beating Martin McGuinness in the race to see which one of them takes the First Minister's job ahead of the Deputy First Minister's job.

Mr McGuinness, who topped the poll after returning to stand in his native Foyle, admitted some voters had turned away from the mainstream parties.

But he insisted the swing to Independents and smaller parties would not be that significant and claimed Sinn Fein could still secure 30 seats.

"In all probability all major political parties will go down a bit - not that significantly in my view," he said.

"At this stage, we can say with considerable confidence that the ball park figure of 28, 29, 30 MLAs is eminently achievable (for Sinn Fein) even at this early stage.

"I think that is pretty remarkable performance."

In a clear sign the larger parties will not have it all their own way, Mr Carroll stormed home in west Belfast with more than 8,000 first preferences.

"For all the parties we will be a thorn in their side and I think it is needed," he said.

"You hear all this talk about a different type of politics and we hope we provide that for the next term."

Among the most high profile political casualties was Independent John McCallister who lost his South Down after nine years.

A number of others, including the Alliance Party's Naomi Long and Sinn Fein's Michelle Gildernew will be making a return to the Stormont benches after previously serving as MPs.

Jenny Palmer, who quit the DUP amid allegations she had been bullied, took a seat from her former party when she was elected for the Ulster Unionists in Lagan Valley.

UUP leader Mike Nesbitt said he was surprised to top the poll in Strangford.

Former DUP Health Minister Jim Wells, who was embroiled in a series of controversies in the last term, was also re-elected in South Down.

The count for the 18 constituencies in the proportional representation contest began at 8am on Friday with the process of verifying ballots. It is set to finish on Saturday.

The poll was the first chance to vote for people born after the historic Good Friday Agreement.

Eighteen years on from the signing of the 1998 peace accord which paved the way for a devolved power-sharing government, voters were selecting the latest batch of MLAs to represent them at Stormont. There were 276 candidates standing across the 18 constituencies.

The overall turnout of valid and invalid votes has fallen on the 2011 Assembly election, but only slightly. More votes were actually cast than five years ago, but in the context of a larger electorate.

In 2011, 674,103 people went to the polls out of an electorate of 1,210,009 - a turnout of 55.71%. This year, 703,744 ballots were cast out of an electorate of 1,281,595 - giving a 54.91% turnout.

SDLP leader Colum Eastwood predicted an "Independents' day" across Northern Ireland.

The 33-year-old, presiding over his first election in charge of the party, said early results appeared to show a voter trend in the Republic spreading across the border.

"This is the year of the Independents," he said.

"We have seen it in the south, we've seen it in west Belfast, we've seen it right across the north, where people who are frustrated with the lack of delivery from this executive are voting Independent in large numbers."

At 11.15pm, 58 seats were filled. The DUP had 25, Sinn Fein 16, the UUP eight, Alliance Party five, SDLP three and the TUV and PBPA one each.
Conaire Whyte is to appear in court charged with rape

This is the teenager accused of raping a 12-year-old girl and fathering her baby son.

West Belfast man Conaire Whyte (19) is to appear in court later this month charged with rape after DNA tests were conducted by police.

The PSNI launched an investigation last year after the girl, who is now 13, became pregnant.

The west Belfast mum gave birth to a boy last month, making her one of the youngest ever mothers in the UK.

Whyte was arrested in the Lenadoon area in October after police were advised about the young girl's pregnancy.

It is understood that he denied he was the father of the child. He was released on police bail.

Police waited until the baby was born, however, and then carried out DNA tests. When the results came back last week, police charged Whyte with rape. The results of the DNA tests are understood to form part of the case against him.

The Belfast Telegraph also understands that Whyte fathered another child by a different woman earlier this year.

He is believed to have been in a relationship with the child's mother, but they have since broken up. The PSNI confirmed that a 19-year-old man is expected to appear at Belfast Magistrates' Court on May 24 charged with rape.

The family of the young mother are understood to have been left deeply shocked by the schoolgirl's pregnancy when it came to light last year. According to recent statistics, 98% of teenagers who gave birth in 2014 were over 16. The youngest mother in the UK is thought to have became pregnant when she was still in primary school at the age of 11.

The girl, from London, gave birth in April 2014 aged 12 years and three months. In summer 2014, a north Belfast woman became Britain and Ireland's youngest known grandmother at 29 when her 15-year-old daughter gave birth.

The age of sexual consent in Northern Ireland has been reduced from 17 to 16. It is a criminal offence to engage in any sexual activity with any child, with a maximum penalty of 14 years' imprisonment. Where the sexual activity involves rape, the maximum penalty is life imprisonment. The number of teenage girls to give birth here has been steadily decreasing in recent years. Statistics from the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency showed that in 2014, 839 children were born to teenage mothers.
Four Seasons, Northern Ireland's biggest care home provider, has been dealt a hammer blow after international credit agency Moody's branded the company's financial structure as "unsustainable"

Four Seasons, Northern Ireland's biggest care home provider, has been dealt a hammer blow after international credit agency Moody's branded the company's financial structure as "unsustainable".

The firm operates 62 care homes here.

The highly critical verdict from senior Moody's analyst Tim Snow comes just a week after the company reported a 39% fall in annual earnings to 38.7m, and its equity owner admitted that Four Seasons did not have enough money to meet its long-term needs.

The company - which looks after 20,000 elderly residents across 450 properties in the UK - has also been hit by a cut in local authority fees and the rising cost of nursing staff.

And it faces further financial pressures following the introduction of the national living wage.

Four Seasons is saddled with 525m of debt, and must make interest payments of more than 50m a year.

Mr Snow said the company "will not be able to service material levels of cash to pay debt going forward".

He now views a debt for equity swap with lenders as "the most likely outcome".

The company's lenders include US investment giants HCP and H/2 Capital Partners. Owned by City financier Guy Hands' private equity vehicle Terra Firma, the company has said it is exploring all options for Four Seasons as it battles to secure the firm's future.

Mr Hands is best known for his 2007 takeover of EMI, the record label that famously signed The Beatles.

The deal ended in disaster when he was forced to hand the business over to lender Citigroup four years later.

A well-placed source in the Northern Ireland care homes sector said last night that Four Seasons' financial difficulties were likely to come to a next month when its next quarterly payment to creditors was due.

The normally reliable source did not expect the company's financial difficulties to impact on the people receiving care in Four Seasons homes here.

It is thought that - as with Southern Cross some years ago - other local providers could step in.

Or new firms could enter the sector to acquire any care homes which became available from Four Seasons, thereby providing continuity of care for the residents.

Southern Cross collapsed in 2011, quitting all its 752 care homes in the UK.

Unison regional organiser Brian Ferguson said the Moody's announcement was "very worrying".

"We would have major concerns that this news means that there is a potential that further Four Seasons Northern Ireland many be closed or sold to other providers," he said.

Four Seasons said last night that it had appointed advisers last October to help it enhance financial flexibility.

It added that it had sufficient medium-term financing for its needs.

The company stressed that the quality and standard of patient care was its highest priority.

"We can't envisage any scenario that would have any effect on the quality of care for residents in our homes or patients in our specialist care units," Four Seasons said.
Francis Rowntree, who was 11 years old when he was killed by a rubber bullet more than 40 years ago

There was "no reason" to the fire rubber bullet that struck and killed a schoolboy in Northern Ireland over 40 years ago, a coroner's court has been told.

Even though young children were throwing stones at an Army vehicle, eyewitness Noel Loughran said there was absolutely no threat to soldiers.

He told Belfast Coroner's Court: "In my opinion there was no reason for it to happen."

The former roofer and glazier was giving evidence at the inquest for Francis Rowntree.

The 11-year-old died two days after he was hit on the head by a rubber bullet while walking through the Divis Flats complex close to Belfast's Falls Road in April 1972 -- one of the most turbulent years of the Troubles.

The case is mired in controversy with disputed claims on whether the boy was hit directly or injured by a ricochet, and if the rubber bullet had been doctored to make it potentially cause more harm.

Mr Loughran, who was in his mid-20s at the time, was left in a state of shock after seeing a young child being hurled into the air by the force of the shot.

He never told anyone about what happened and only came forward after reading about the inquest on Teletext.

"It was like something from a scary movie, what I saw," he said.

"I was so shocked. Walking up the street, walking home to get your dinner you do not expect to see anything like that. It was a horrible thing to see."

The court heard Mr Loughran had been making his way home from work along Divis Street when he came across a group of young children, estimated to be aged about eight years old, throwing stones at an Army Saracen, then running towards the vehicle to retrieve them.

He said there were no adults in the vicinity, adding: "They were only small children and only throwing stones. I could not see any threat at all."

After a short time, the rear slots of the vehicle were opened and the barrel of a baton round gun was pointed at the children, Mr Loughran claimed.

"What I described happened in a second or two," he said.

"I heard a loud bang. One child was hit. He was off the ground - his feet and legs were up in the air pointing at the sky but his whole body was off the ground.

"Once I saw the child, I immediately turned away and I never saw anything after that."

It was obvious the child had been hit in the upper body area, the court was told.

Although he heard through media reports that Francis Rowntree had died, Mr Loughran never made any statements to investigators until last week.

"I was in shock for days after," he added.

"When I heard the child had died, I felt very guilty. I kept saying 'could I not have helped' but at the time I was in complete shock."

Earlier, the inquest heard how the soldier who fired the baton round was never told the weapon was potentially lethal.

The retired sergeant major, known only as Soldier B, said rubber bullets were generally fired to disperse aggressive crowds.

When asked by a Ministry of Defence barrister if he knew they could kill, he said: "I suppose common sense would tell you that depending on how or where they were used, it may well be (lethal).

"But, as a general rule, no. It was to incapacitate or drive back."

The former soldier, whose identity is protected by a public interest immunity (PII) certificate, was giving evidence via videolink from an undisclosed location.

He served with the Royal Anglian Regiment and was on his first tour of duty in Northern Ireland based at Albert Street Mill, in the heart of West Belfast.

At the time, he had responsibility for distributing ammunition to the troops in his company and had never known a baton round to be altered.

He had also never engaged in the practise, he told the court.

Although Soldier B has no memory of the incident involving Francis, he described the difficulties in trying to distinguish between those participating in a riot and curious onlookers.

He said: "In those circumstances it was extremely difficult. When you are being pelted with varying missiles the group is a group. You are not in a position to identify one that's watching and one that's actually throwing things.

"It is a general thing -- almost impossible, I would say, to identify. It is a group."

An investigation by the now defunct Historical Enquiries Team concluded Francis Rowntree was an innocent bystander.

The hearing continues.
A 44-year-old woman has been acquitted by a jury of murdering her partner during a drunken row in his south Belfast flat.

Angeline Sara Jane Mitchell from Lindsay Court in Belfast was charged with murdering her partner, Anthony Robin, on May 11, 2009.

Prior to the trial commencing at Belfast Crown Court, Mitchell pleaded guilty to a charge of manslaughter after she admitted stabbing Mr Robin, but denied murdering him.

She made the case that while she accepted unlawfully killing Mr Robin in his Fitzroy Avenue flat, she never intended to kill him.

Mitchell said that during the drunken row, Mr Robin (44) was both verbally and physically abusive to her, and that she grabbed a knife in panic.

Mitchell also made the case that at the time of Mr Robin's death, she was in the grip of Alcohol Dependency Syndrome.

Mr Robin sustained several knife wounds to his body and head, including a fatal wound to the right side of his chest which was 20cm deep.

Despite the plea to manslaughter, the Crown proceeded with the murder charge as it was the prosecution's case that Mitchell intended to cause Mr Robin serious injury.

Following a two-week trial - during which Mitchell took to the stand to give evidence - the jury returned a majority 'not guilty' verdict.

After the verdict was delivered Mr Justice Treacy thanked the jury for their diligence.

Mitchell was then released on bail and told to return back to court later this month when she will be sentenced for the manslaughter of Mr Robin.
ESA follows changes on the Earths surface and in its oceans

A constellation of eye-in-the-sky sentinels is helping the Earth to cope with natural disasters, rising food prices and climate change.

So says an Armagh-born scientist who is responsible for using the data from the orbiting satellites to improve the lives of the planet's people.

Dr Mark Doherty works for the European Space Agency and heads its Earth Observation exploitation division, based in Frascati, Italy.

Next week the ESA will host the world's biggest ever conference on Earth Observation, and more than 3,200 scientists from across the globe will see how satellites in the Copernicus project are revolutionising everything from earthquake prediction to tackling illegal trafficking.

On April 25 Sentinel 1B was the latest European satellite to be launched into orbit, where it will use radar to image the Earth's surface through cloud and rain, day and night.

"We received the first image a few days ago. That means that in the UK we're getting complete coverage of the UK and Ireland every six days," Dr Doherty said.

His team works with the science community and people developing applications for the terabytes of data being beamed back down from the satellites, including public sector users and private companies developing commercial applications.

"We've been developing Earth Observation in Europe starting in the mid-70s when the first meteorological satellite went up," he said. ESA went on to develop satellites in the Nineties which focused on international and climate issues, launching satellites ERS1 in 1991 and ERS2 in 1994.

"These focused very much on environmental issues and climate issues, as well as civil security," Dr Doherty explained.

"The reason is that the EU needs information if it is going to formulate policies on environmental and climate issues."

The information will help explain how to limit global warming and adapt to climate change.

One application is developing ice charts to allow ships to navigate cold regions safely.

Another is monitoring crop production so that countries can plan for food security and reduce food price volatility.

Dr Doherty went to St Patrick's College in Armagh before studying in London, Oxford and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He joined ESA in 1986.

And he has a message for politicians who refuse to believe in man-made climate change.

"The global sea level is rising by 3mm a year. You can see it."
Doug Beattie and his family are mourning the loss of baby Cameron Tindale who was found dead in his bed

The UUP Upper Bann election candidate and war hero Doug Beattie has paid a moving tribute to his grandson who died at the age of just 15 months.

Cameron Tindale was found dead in his bed on Wednesday morning.

He was the youngest son of Mr Beattie's daughter, Leigh (28).

Mr Beattie, a councillor in Portadown, will be one of three UUP candidates contesting for Upper Bann.

The Northern Ireland soldier and war veteran has served in the Army for 34 years.

He has been awarded the Queen's Commendation for Bravery for his actions in Iraq, the Military Cross for his bravery in Afghanistan, and the Nato Meritorious Service Medal for his peacekeeping contributions in Bosnia.

He is now a reservist, but was recently told he must quit the military if he was to challenge for a seat in the Assembly.

In a statement released on Friday, the grieving grandfather said: "I have waited until after the polling stations closed to take this opportunity to thank all those who have sent their condolences.

"Our lovely grandson Cameron was a beautiful young lad and although only 15 months old he had a huge personality.

"His smile lit the room and our lives and the news of his passing has devastated the whole family."

Mr Beattie continued: "I have received messages of support from all quarters - friends, family, colleagues, political opponents. I can but thank you all for taking the time to think of us at this terrible time.

"I have passed on all your messages to my daughter Leigh and her husband Mark who continue to struggle with their loss.

"Although the funeral will be a private family service with some close friends - if you feel you would like to send a floral tribute then please send directly to Ian Milne Funeral Services at Seagoe Cemetery.

"Anyone wanting to make a donation please make it out to The Children's Heartbeat Trust, in name of Cameron Tindale, directly to the charity of Ian Milne.

"I hope you can all understand my decision to remain with my family through out the process."
DUP candidate Jim Wells spent part of polling day yesterday in court in relation to the case against a woman charged over the row that led to his resignation as Health Minister.

But once again the proceedings did not take place. For the third occasion the hearing at Downpatrick Court was adjourned, this time for two weeks.

The accused, Dorothy Elaine Dawn Gardner (48), of Killycanavan Road, Dungannon, is charged with causing "wasteful employment of the police by knowingly making a false report or statement tending to show that an offence had been committed by Mr James Wells MLA".

The case is not connected to a separate police enquiry into the taping of allegedly anti-gay remarks by Mr Wells at a public event in the run-up to last year's general election.

Instead, the charges are believed to relate to a complaint made to the PSNI following the hustings meeting in Downpatrick last April.

Mrs Gardner was not present in court yesterday when an adjournment until May 19 was agreed.

Mr Wells, who said he had wanted the case to be dealt with before the Assembly election, has long claimed the recording of the allegedly anti-gay comments at the hustings event was "doctored" and gave a misleading impression.

A few days after the meeting he was involved in an altercation with a lesbian couple while canvassing in Rathfriland. Police investigated both incidents and concluded there was no basis for a prosecution.

At the hustings event he had said: "All evidence throughout the world says the best way to raise children is in a loving, stable, married relationship; the facts show that, the facts show that certainly you don't bring a child up in a homosexual relationship."

Then, despite uproar from the audience, he went on: "I say again, I say again, a child is far more likely to be abused or neglected in a non-stable marriage situation, gay or straight."

Mr Wells argued that in the full context his remarks overall made clear he was talking about unstable relationships, whether heterosexual or homosexual.

After a full transcript emerged he told the Belfast Telegraph last year: "Essentially, I resigned over remarks which it now turns out I did not say. I feel a huge sense of injustice. My whole career in politics over 33 years came crashing down in 17 seconds.

"As Health Minister, I thought I might achieve something. I thought, well finally I have something to put on my tombstone.

"And I felt I was beginning to come to terms with the job, which I enjoyed. But it all came tumbling down."
Caretaker Taoiseach Enda Kenny has been trying to form a government

Ireland's caretaker Taoiseach Enda Kenny will go before parliament again on Friday for his fourth and likely final attempt to be re-elected premier after a months-long political stand-off.

Mr Kenny believes he has enough support from a raft of Independents to help him prop up a minority government led by his Fine Gael party, which suffered humiliating losses in February's general election.

His re-election - which would be the first time a Fine Gael leader has won a second term - is dependent on arch-rivals and the country's second largest party Fianna Fail abstaining from a vote of 157 TDs (MPs).

Fianna Fail agreed to do just that in a deal struck at the weekend which handed concessions to the main Opposition party and which is to be reviewed at the end of 2018.

Since then, Mr Kenny's party has been locked in talks with two factions of 11 Independents - known as the Independent Alliance and the rural alliance - to agree a programme for government.

A number of Cabinet positions and junior ministerial roles are being offered to woo the potential coalition bedfellows.

The Fine Gael leader needs the backing of just six more TDs outside his own rank and file to help make it over the line.

The vote in the Dail (parliament) is expected to take place at noon.

The leaking of a draft deal between Fine Gael and the Independents threatened to upset last minute negotiations being wrapped up on Thursday evening.

John Halligan, Waterford TD, said his Independence Alliance was "deeply disappointed" that the document was "leaked before we saw it".

"I think it is absolutely outrageous and unprofessional," he told reporters outside the government formation talks.

"It's no way to do business."

Nonetheless, Government chief whip Paul Keogh told TDs the Dail would meet again for a special Friday sitting to vote for a Taoiseach.

The move is being seen as a deadline for Independents to either join the coalition or rule themselves out of power.

Ireland has been locked in a political stalemate since the February 26 general election split the vote like never before.

Fine Gael and Fianna Fail, the traditionally dominant parties who swapped power for generations and whose bitter enmity stems back to the Irish civil war, balked at pressure to form a "grand coalition".

Attention is already being focused on how long a new minority government will last.

Under the arrangement, Fine Gael will have to rule and Fianna Fail oppose without either of them undermining the other too much.
Newly elected Taoiseach Enda Kenny receives the Seal of the Taoiseach and Seal of Government from President Michael D Higgins at Aras an Uachtarain, Dublin

Taoiseach Enda Kenny has vowed to make life better for everyone after securing a history-making back-to-back term in office.

The premier named five women in his cabinet and pledged to make people's experiences as important as tax returns and economic data.

Mr Kenny said his minority government - propped up by decades-old adversaries Fianna Fail on the opposition benches and a diverse group of independents - was facing an unprecedented challenge and opportunity.

"Its formation proves that politics is not about power and its attainment," he said.

"It is rather that politics is always about what is possible, about the possibility of what can be achieved. And achieved not for parties or individuals or sectors, but for the whole country."

The Fine Gael leader scraped into power at the fourth time of asking, 70 days on from one of the most divisive elections in the Republic's history.

The Taoiseach has opposition support, albeit fragile and for only three years, on a select number of issues such as suspending and reviewing water bills and easing unprecedented housing and homelessness.

Mr Kenny identified the record levels of homelessness and housing waiting lists, health and pressure on working families as some of the key issues facing the country.

"We must ask how alive are we willing to be to the experience of all our citizens, and to the opinions of those with whom we differ or even strongly disagree," he said.

Mr Kenny's back-to-back success as Taoiseach - a first for Fine Gael - was achieved after seven weeks of negotiations.

And he also warned the historic arrangement with Fianna Fail and others will test democracy and the character of politicians.

He said one of his immediate concerns was the threat of Brexit and announced plans for several trips to Britain and Northern Ireland to canvass Irish citizens and business people to vote for the UK to remain.

Outlining policies closer to home, Mr Kenny said the new government's priority will be for more affordable childcare, more and better jobs, lower taxes on workers, help for low paid workers and safer streets.

Housing was described as an "urgent challenge", with a new minister tasked with easing the crisis and a spring economic statement to be published to set out where money will be spent.

New investment in hospitals and primary care centres will follow, Mr Kenny said, and there will be specific focus on disability and mental health issues.

Finian McGrath has been given a new junior ministry to oversee disability issues.

Mr Kenny also raised concerns about mental health issues.

"It is clear that our children and teenagers especially need support to navigate a world that, while it can be marvellous, can also be merciless," he said.

In the first 100 days of the government, a new housing action plan will be published and a task force on youth mental health will be set up to identify resources for troubled young people and their families.

Mr Kenny also said a political commitment was needed to drive suicide prevention strategy.

"It is up to all of us every day to make the difference," he said.

"I wish for Ireland to become more aware of how we depend not alone on those in our community, but frequently on the kindness of strangers.

"We must be that kind stranger ourselves."

The February 26 general election split the vote like never before and left the country locked in a political stalemate for 10 weeks.

Fine Gael and Fianna Fail, the traditionally dominant parties who swapped power for generations and whose bitter enmity stems back to the Irish civil war, balked at pressure to form a "grand coalition".

Mr Kenny said the hung parliament thrown up by the election meant no party has a mandate to "instruct, force, direct or coerce" anyone else.

Mr Kenny was re-elected Taoiseach by 59 votes to 49, largely with thanks to the abstention of Fianna Fail.

Among the independents to support him were Katherine Zappone, a gay and women's rights campaigner, and Michael Lowry, a former cabinet colleague.

Two factions of Independents - known as the Independent Alliance and the rural alliance - were then pulled in but not without a few casualties.

Michael Fitzmaurice, a Roscommon Galway TD and former Turf Cutters and Contractors Association leader, was the most high profile, having been a vocal figure in negotiations over the last few weeks.

Despite giving Mr Kenny understated support, Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin attacked his minority government.

"The damage of regressive and divisive policies in recent years has been significant," he said.

"The new government is not committed to the scale of comprehensive and urgent action which we believe is needed. In many areas the programme for government represents a repackaging of current policies and bland aspiration rather than a radical commitment to action.

"Policy on health remains as incoherent as ever and specific actions on most areas are limited. Pushing for movement on these areas will form our priority in every part of our work."

Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams said his party will be the real opposition over the term of the government.

"The joint Fine Gael-Fianna Fail programme is a masterclass in waffle and bluster. No real ambition. No big ideas. No costings. Little real detail," he said.

"Never was so much negotiated for so long, for so little."
Count volunteers count ballot papers at the Latton Bush Centre, Southern Way, Harlow, Essex, as counting begins across the UK in local council elections.

Jeremy Corbyn appears to have survived a mauling from voters in his first major electoral test as Labour leader, after apparent victory for Sadiq Khan in the London mayoral contest gave a positive spin to an otherwise dismal set of results for the party.

As Labour crashed into third place in the Scottish Parliament, lost its overall majority in the Welsh Assembly and became the first opposition in three decades not to gain council seats in a poll of this kind, Mr Corbyn's performance was openly criticised by a number of his MPs.

Shadow cabinet member Ian Murray warned that voters do not see the party as a credible party of government under his leadership, while veteran backbencher David Winnick said he should consider his position.

But there appeared to be little mood among Labour MPs for an immediate move against Mr Corbyn, and the leader himself said the party had "hung on" and he would be "carrying on".

Mr Khan forged what seemed to be an unassailable lead in the first round of voting in London, scooping 44% of first preference votes, to 35% for his Conservative rival Zac Goldsmith. But final confirmation of the result, after redistribution of second preferences, was delayed until midnight or later by "discrepancies" in the count.

Victory in the fractious contest to succeed Boris Johnson at City Hall was a rare bright moment for Corbyn as "super Thursday" results rolled in. The Labour leader jumped the gun to publicly congratulate Mr Khan before official results were announced, saying: "Can't wait to work with you to create a London that is fair for all."

With votes continuing to be counted into the weekend, key results included:

:: Labour lost 13 Scottish Parliament seats, including 11 to the SNP and two to the Conservatives, although Nicola Sturgeon's nationalists lost their overall majority.

:: In Wales, Labour lost its overall majority in the Assembly, with the totemic Rhondda seat falling to Plaid Cymru leader Leanne Wood.

:: In England, Labour lost control of Dudley Council in the West Midlands, but held on to major cities including Birmingham, Newcastle upon Tyne and Sunderland, as well as key southern outposts such as Exeter, Southampton, Crawley and Slough.

:: With results in from 117 out of 124 councils, Labour was down by 18 seats, the Conservatives down 25, Ukip up 25 and the Lib Dems up 32.

:: The Conservatives lost overall control of Worcester but secured an absolute majority in Peterborough.

:: Ukip secured its first representation in the Welsh Assembly, and added seats on councils including Thurrock, Tamworth and Bolton, but its gains were well short of the triple-figure advances made in similar polls over the past three years.

Speaking during a visit to Sheffield, where Labour held onto a safe Westminster seat in a by-election, a smiling Mr Corbyn said: "All across England last night we were getting predictions that we were going to lose councils. We didn't. We hung on and we grew support in a lot of places."

But Mr Murray - Labour's only MP in Scotland - reflected deep unhappiness among MPs opposed to their leader's left-wing agenda when he told the BBC: "I don't think that the public see the UK Labour Party led by Jeremy Corbyn at the moment as being a credible party of future government in 2020.

"That's something, after this week's results, we should reflect on - the leadership of the party should reflect on - and find a way of finding a strategy and a narrative that changes the perception of the UK Labour Party across the United Kingdom so that we can go on and have a real shot at winning in 2020."

Veteran backbencher Mr Winnick called on Mr Corbyn to consider his position in order to give the party a chance of regaining power at the general election.

"The party faces a crisis and the onus is on Jeremy himself. He should decide whether his leadership is helping or hindering the party," he told the Press Association. "I think all the evidence shows that it is not helping."

And Jo Cox, who nominated Mr Corbyn for the leadership, said he should take responsibility for results which were "not good enough". Although she said she neither wanted nor expected a coup, she warned: "The clock is ticking."

Union boss Tim Roache, general secretary of the GMB, said Labour should have been winning hundreds of seats at this stage in the electoral cycle, and gave Mr Corbyn "a year or so" to prove himself.

"It certainly wasn't the disaster for Labour many people were predicting and sadly some in the Labour Party were actually hoping for," Mr Roache told the BBC.

" Let's give it a go for a year or so. Who knows what might happen? Leicester City won the Premier League only the other day. Who knows?"

Mr Corbyn's position was bolstered by Labour's influential deputy leader, Tom Watson, who urged critics to show "patience".

"I think even our opponents who are not members of the Labour Party would say that after eight months it would be very unfair and improper, actually, to hang this set of election results on Jeremy Corbyn's peg alone," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

With the overwhelming majority of grassroots members still strongly behind the leader, his close ally, shadow chancellor John McDonnell, said it was time for the "begrudgers" in the party to "put up or shut up".

Allies of the Labour leader took some comfort from a BBC projection which showed the party narrowly ahead in the share of the national vote - with 31% compared with 30% for the Conservatives - but critics said they should be making big gains if they were to go on and win in 2020.

A jubilant David Cameron hailed a "realignment" in Scottish politics after Ruth Davidson led the Tories to a "historic" result that means the party is now the main opposition to the SNP in Holyrood.

During a visit to Peterborough, the Prime Minister said Labour had "completely lost touch" with the working people it was supposed to represent.

"They are so obsessed with their left-wing causes and unworkable economic policies, they've forgotten that people want jobs, people want livelihoods, people want lower taxes, people want homes they live in and can afford to own," he said.
A human embryo has been grown in a laboratory for twice the length of time than was previously possible in a breakthrough that could revolutionise medicine but also raises fresh ethical questions about when life begins.

Since scientists first fertilised an embryo in a test tube in 1969, they have never managed to keep one alive for long after the point at which the foetus implants in the womb, normally about seven days.

However researchers at Cambridge University have now grown embryos for 13 days -- a process they only stopped to avoid breaking the current legal limit of about 14 days.

The ability to observe a human embryo as it grows during this most enigmatic and mysterious stage of life in a lab should shed new light on genetic diseases and disabilities.

And it could help improve the dismal failure rate of IVF embryos -- currently up to 70 per cent do not successfully implant  and lead to better understanding of miscarriages.

Greater knowledge of our early embryonic development might also hasten the arrival of one of the medical worlds greatest hopes: regenerative medicine using stem cells. These can turn into any different kind of cell and doctors believe they could one day be used to treat Alzheimers, heart disease and a host of other conditions.

The breakthrough immediately led to calls for the Government to consider extending the legal limit, but such a move would be hugely controversial.

About 14 days  the limit is also linked to biological changes -- was chosen in the 1980s because it was deemed to be the point at which individuality is assigned as twins do not develop after this point.

Professor Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz, one of the lead researchers, stressed the benefits of being able to observe an embryo up to 13 days.

We can now, for the very first time, study human development at this very critical time, the time of implantation, she said.

It is really most enigmatic and mysterious stage of our own development.

Implantation is a milestone in human development as it is from this stage onwards that the embryo really begins to take shape and the overall body plan is decided.

It is also the stage of pregnancy at which many developmental defects can become acquired. But until now, it has been impossible to study this in human embryos.

"This new technique provides us with a unique opportunity to get a deeper understanding of our own development during these crucial stages and help us understand what happens, for example, during miscarriage.

It had been absolutely unbelievable, she said, to see the amazing, self-organising ability of the cells.

They have to talk to themselves and together they make something more beautiful, Professor Zernicka-Goetz said.

But she accepted the research raised ethical questions, particularly how far we can go?

I think that longer cultures [of embryos] could provide absolutely critical information for basic human biology. They can improve IVF success, they can improve stem cell differentiation, so this is very important, she said.

But this would raise the next question, where should we put the next limit? I think this is really not my place to say, one way or the other.

"Even if I believe theres a scientific case for it, [the decision] should be taken with other scientists, ethicists and the general public.

Professor Zernicka-Goetz added that she thought they might only be technically able to grow an embryo for perhaps a day past the limit and dismissed suggestions that it could lead to the lab-based creation of human life.

Theres no way to grow [even] a mouse outside the womb. Its really just science fiction, its not possible, she said.

This point was echoed by Professor Allan Pacey, of Sheffield University, who was not involved in the research.

"It will not open the door to couples being able to grow babies in the laboratory; this is not the dawn of a Brave New World scenario," he said.

"But it does open up exciting opportunities to understand the nature of human disease and disability and for that reason the scientists involved should be congratulated."

Professor Robin Lovell-Badge, a leading geneticist and stem cell expert, said there should be a public debate about the 14-day limit.

He suggested it could be extended only slightly to allow scientists to study a key process in embryonic development called gastrulation.

We dont need to take it beyond that, but just that few days [after 14] would be useful, he said.

I think you could do a lot of valuable research. Other scientists are arguing for maybe just a couple more days, maybe a week.

"Proposing to extend the 14-day limit might be opening a can of worms, but would it lead to Pandoras box or a treasure chest of valuable information ? This is not a question to be left to scientists alone.

Religious figures expressed concern about how any new limit would be set.

The Rev Dr Brendan McCarthy, the Church of England's national adviser on medical ethics, welcomed the scientists' calls for a debate.

But he added: "The present limit recognises the importance of the emergence of the primitive streak heralding the beginning of neural development.

"If the beginnings of neural development do not provide a watershed for research, it is difficult to see where else the limit might be placed in order properly to respect the developing human embryo and foetus.

However Professor David Jones, director of the Roman Catholic Anscombe Bioethics Centre, described the 14-day limit as "completely arbitrary" and pointed out abortions were legal up to 24 weeks.

He said it was likely that a scientist somewhere in the world would now go further than the Cambridge team.

"In the future this may even be seen as the first step towards culturing babies outside the womb, where the child is not only conceived outside the protection of his or her mother's body but no such protection is even envisaged at any stage," said Professor Jones, who opposes any research on human embryos.

"Human life and human pregnancy should not be separated in this way. On a technical level it is a scientific breakthrough but it is also a further step away from humane and ethical science and a further step towards an increasingly inhuman future."

The Nuffield Council on Bioethics has already decided to hold a meeting of experts "to evaluate whether, after 25 years, there may be persuasive reasons to review this legal limit or whether the reasons for its introduction remain sound".

"The Council has agreed to explore whether arguments for reviewing the 14-day limit are gaining force," it said, "in the expectation that any move to review this limit will be likely to generate significant moral controversy and would require careful analysis."

The research was reported in the journals Nature and Nature Cell Biology.

Independent
SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon celebrates after retaining her seat at a Scottish Parliament election count at the Emirates Arena. Danny Lawson/PA Wire

SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon reacts as results come in at a Scottish Parliament election count at the Emirates Arena. Danny Lawson/PA Wire

GLASGOW, SCOTLAND - MAY 06: SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon arrives at the count for the Scottish Parliament elections at the Emirates Arena (Photo by Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)

GLASGOW, SCOTLAND - MAY 06: SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon arrives at the count for the Scottish Parliament elections at the Emirates Arena (Photo by Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)

As well as winning in Dumfriesshire, the Tories also seized the Eastwood constituency from Labour, with Conservative deputy Jackson Carlaw taking the seat.

Early indications it could be a bad night for Ms Dugdale's Labour were apparent from the second seat to be declared.

The party lost the Rutherglen constituency which it had held since 1999 to the SNP and seats which had previously been considered part of Labour's heartlands also fell to the nationalists, including Motherwell and Wishaw, and Greenock and Inverclyde.

A year after losing all its Glasgow seats in the Westminster election, Labour suffered the same result at Holyrood, with the SNP winning all nine of the constituencies in the city.

Ms Dugdale failed to win the Edinburgh Eastern seat she had stood in and had to rely on the Lothian list vote to secure her place in the Scottish Parliament. Her deputy Alex Rowley lost the Cowdenbeath seat he won in a by-election, and was returned to Holyrood via the Mid Scotland and Fife list.

Veteran Labour MSP Jackie Baillie held on to the Dumbarton constituency she has represented since 1999 but with a majority of just 109 over the SNP.

Labour did enjoy a rare gain from the SNP in Edinburgh Southern, where Daniel Johnson won the seat for the party.

The Liberal Democrats secured some victories, with their leader Willie Rennie winning the North East Fife constituency while children's charity worker Alex Cole-Hamilton was elected as the new MSP for Edinburgh Western, taking the seat from the SNP.

The party failed to increase its tally of MSPs at Holyrood, remaining on five, while the Scottish Greens are now the fourth largest party.

They had their second best ever result, with six MSPs elected, all via the regional list system after Patrick Harvie came second to the SNP in Glasgow Kelvin.

He was again returned as a regional representative for the city, with the Greens also securing two MSPs from the Lothians, one from Mid Scotland and Fife, on from the Highlands and Islands region and one from the West of Scotland, where Ross Greer made history by becoming the youngest-ever MSP at the age of 21.

The Prime Minister has phoned Nicola Sturgeon to congratulate her.

David Cameron spoke to the SNP leader on Friday morning and it was agreed the two governments would work together "constructively" - with a focus on the steel industry, a Number 10 spokesman said.

Mr Cameron had earlier congratulated Ruth Davidson, leader of the Scottish Conservatives, on the "historic result", saying she would "stand up to the SNP and give Scotland strong opposition".

A Downing Street spokesman said: "The Prime Minister congratulated Ms Sturgeon on her party having the largest representation in the Scottish Parliament and, in return, Ms Sturgeon congratulated the Prime Minister on the gains made in Scotland by his party.

"The Prime Minister and Ms Sturgeon agreed that the UK and Scottish governments must continue to work together constructively, most crucially in the short-term on the future of the steel industry.

"It was noted that the two governments sharing information and experience could be of benefit to the steel industry across the UK and they agreed to keep in touch on this issue."

Scottish Secretary David Mundell, who is the only Conservative MP in Scotland, echoed Mr Cameron's comments.

He said: "I congratulate Nicola Sturgeon on her success in the election and I look forward to working with her over the next four years.

"With the Smith Commission delivered in full, and the Scottish Parliament set to get a raft of significant new powers, we have a real opportunity for our two governments to work together for the benefit of the people of Scotland."

Among the party's major gains was Ms Davidson winning the Edinburgh Central constituency from the SNP and deputy leader Jackson Carlaw taking the Eastwood constituency on the outskirts of Glasgow from Labour's Ken Macintosh.

Two Tory MSPs were elected in Glasgow, where academic Adam Tomkins and food retail manager Annie Wells picked up seats.

The SNP's Dennis Robertson lost his Aberdeenshire West seat to the Conservatives while Oliver Mundell - son of the Scottish Secretary - captured the Dumfriesshire constituency from Labour.

The Tories' previous best result at Holyrood was 18 MSPs, a total the party achieved in both 1999 and 2003.
The wake of a shooting at High Point High School, Maryland (Michael Robinson Chavez/Washington Post/AP)

Police are hunting for a man they say shot and killed his estranged wife in the car park of a high school in suburban Washington DC.

Prince George's County Police Department said officers are working to find 62-year-old Eulalio Tordil in connection with the killing.

A statement said Tordil, from Adelphi, is an employee of the Federal Protective Service, which provides security at federal buildings and properties.

Police said the victim of the shooting at High Point High School in Beltsville, Maryland, was 44-year-old Gladys Tordil. A bystander was also wounded.
A convoy of evacuees has begun the long drive out of work camps north of the fire-ravaged Fort McMurray area.

Police and military were overseeing the procession of an estimated 1,500 vehicles.

Meanwhile, a mass airlift of evacuees was resuming, a day after 8,000 people were flown out.

In all, more than 80,000 people have left Fort McMurray, in the heart of Canada's oil sands. Officials say no deaths or injuries related to the fire have been reported.

The Alberta provincial government, which declared a state of emergency, said more than 1,100 firefighters, 145 helicopters, 138 pieces of heavy equipment and 22 air tankers were fighting the fire, but Chad Morrison, Alberta's manager of wildfire prevention, said rain is needed.

"We have not seen rain in this area for the last two months of significance," Mr Morrison said. "This fire will continue to burn for a very long time until we see some significant rain."

Environment Canada forecast a 40% chance of showers in the area on Saturday.

About 25,000 evacuees moved north in the hours after Tuesday's mandatory evacuation, where oil sands work camps that usually house employees were used to house evacuees. But the bulk of the more than 80,000 evacuees fled south to Edmonton and elsewhere, and officials are moving everyone south where it is safer and they can get better support services.

The Alberta government is providing cash to 80,000 evacuees from the Fort McMurray fire to help them with their immediate needs.

Premier Rachel Notley said her cabinet has approved a payment of 1,250 Canadian dollars (669) per adult and 500 Canadian dollars (267) per dependent at a cost to the province of 100 million Canadian dollars (53m). She told a briefing in Edmonton that she wants people who were forced from their homes to know that the government "has their back".

More than 7,000 evacuees were flown to Edmonton and Calgary by Thursday night. It appeared the road was safe enough on Friday to move thousands more south.

Officials said a military helicopter led the evacuation convoy which passed through Fort McMurray where the fire has torched 1,600 homes and other buildings.

"That's why we had the helicopters ... just to make sure the motorists and responders are safe in case there's a sudden change in fire direction," said Sgt John Spaans, a Royal Canadian Mounted Police spokesman. "They would be able to notify everyone immediately."

Sgt Spaans said the goal was to get all vehicles out of the area on Friday, if the weather, fire and road conditions cooperate, but municipal officials later said it would take about four days.

Fort McMurray is surrounded by wilderness, and there are essentially only two ways out via road.

Fanned by high winds, scorching heat and low humidity, the fire grew from 75 square kilometres (29 square miles) on Tuesday to 850 square kilometres (330 square miles) on Thursday.

Unseasonably hot temperatures combined with dry conditions have transformed the boreal forest in much of Alberta into a tinder box.

"They are dealing with a beast of a fire, one of the worst we've ever seen," Federal Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale said. "There is a forecast of improved weather conditions with perhaps the possibility of some precipitation. But the humidity remains very low and the forest is very dry, high winds continue to cause dangerous circumstances."

Firefighters and water bombers from other Canadian provinces are being drafted in.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said the federal government has met all of the Alberta government's requests for assistance, including providing air assets and 7,000 cots for evacuees in emergency shelters, with 13,000 more on the way.
On the fifth of May is Cinco de Mayo, a celebration of the Mexican armys victory over France in 1862.The Mexican army was under siege from the powerful French who were looking to take over the small town of Puebla de Los Angeles with an army of 6,000. Compared to 2,000 men going against the French, Mexico pushed the assailants back.

They miraculously, not only survived, but lost 100 men compared to the 500 that were lost on the French side. This fortified the Mexican army to withstand the French for the next six years, and eventually they withdrew and the war ended.

Back in the U.S., Cinco de Mayo is big holiday that celebrates the Mexican culture every year.

We celebrate Cinco de Mayo with dinners, parties, festivals, parades, drinking, and music in Mexico and in America. The first Cinco de Mayo extravaganza took place in southern California in 1863, called the Festival de Fiesta Broadway and moved to New York, Houston and across America. U.S. News reported how this spread. holiday holiday

Mexican immigrants flooded into the American southwest, they joined in the festivities with their fellow Mexican-Americans who were already living in the United States without really knowing the story behind the holiday, and over time the date came to be a showcase of Mexican ethnic identity rather than a celebration of the battle against the invading French forces.

Now, lets look at six facts on this holiday that helped improved Latin relations with America, and the fun it brings!

1. September 16th is actually Mexicos day of independence. May 5th was the celebration of Mexican armys victory over France in 1862. Remember Mexico was outmatched and a couple thousand men stood up and sent the French running. This also kept the French occupied as it was believed they wanted to fund the Confederate War. Many make this mistake.

2. Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte used Mexico as a way to expand his empire so he could have key access to the states through Mexico. He declared war on Mexico and planned to turn it into a colony while Mexico was working on paying debts with other countries.

3. Its been quoted that Cinco de Mayo has to be one of the best holidays in the world. Burritos, tacos, and beer, is there anything better? What is better than that? Well, for the avocado industry it is really good. An estimated 81 tons of avocados are eaten during this holiday.

4. In Mexico this holiday is just a day off the website About Travel explained. Besides some parades and civic events, celebrations are generally low-key. In Mexico Cinco de Mayo is not, as it is in the United States, a general celebration of Mexican culture and history or even a time to imbibe substantial amounts of tequila. We like to party here in America, for sure!

5. The Pew Research Center reported in 2013:

That there were 33.7 million Hispanics of Mexican origin resided in the United States in 2012, according to an analysis of Census Bureau data by Pew Research Center. This estimate includes 11.4 million immigrants born in Mexico and 22.3 million born in the U.S. who self-identified as Hispanics of Mexican origin.

6. Bring me a tortilla and a margarita, two of the most popular things to eat and drink on Cinco de Mayo. Americans love their margaritas and consumed over $2 billion dollars annually on the drink. During this holiday sales soar, and so do spirits.

Corine Gatti is a Senior Editor at Beliefnet.com.
Indian activists shout slogans as they are confronted by police during a protest outside Kerala House in New Delhi, following the rape and killing of a student in the southern Indian state of Kerala, May 4, 2016.

A week after a lower-caste woman was raped and killed in the Indian state of Kerala, police Thursday had yet to make an arrest in the case that has triggered national outrage in the streets and on social media.

The police have failed to investigate the case properly. There was a deliberate attempt to cover up, Thasni Banu, a Kerala-based social activist, said while addressing a rally organized in Keralas Kochi city to protest the police probe.

Referring to the Dalit victims mutilated body, she said, Despite the evidence, the police [did] not show urgency.

The body of the 30-year-old victim, a law student who belonged to a community considered the lowest rung of Hinduisms caste hierarchy, was discovered in her house in Ernakulam districts Perumbavoor town by her laborer-mother a week ago. The victims intestines had been gutted.

On Wednesday, the Kerala government announced compensation of 1 million rupees (U.S. $15,026) for the victims family.

Body bore bite marks

The post-mortem report, which was released Thursday, said her body had 38 injuries, of which less than 10 were stab wounds. She died of strangulation and internal injuries, the report said, adding that her body bore bite marks, which indicated sexual abuse.

Based on the report, the police filed an interim report in a local court confirming that the victim was raped. The police had initially only registered a case of murder.

Police in Kerala, one of four Indian states in the midst of assembly elections, are working overtime to solve the case, which has caused a public outcry owing to its similarities to the infamous gang rape and killing of a paramedic student in a moving bus in New Delhi four years ago, state police chief T.P. Senkumar told journalists.

Some investigations take time. All aspects need to be probed. We cant arrest someone based on suspicion, Senkumar said, adding that his team was under 24-hour duress, including policing election-related processions. Kerala goes to the polls on May 16.

The victims house was cordoned off only on Tuesday, five days after she was killed, local media reported.

But Senkumar challenged those allegations.

Their [the medias] belated reaction to the gruesome crime [does] not mean the police were doing nothing during the time the press realized the incidents importance, he said.

The IG (Inspector General) was at the crime scene immediately after it came to light and initiated a scientific inquiry, Senkumar said.

Taking a dig at the media, Senkumar said: Such people seem to have vested interests in not seeing crimes solved.

Police superintendent expects arrest soon

Ernakulam districts Superintendent of Police Yathish Chandra said the investigation had entered its final stage.

The culprit will be nabbed very soon, Chandra told reporters.

On Tuesday, Chandra told BenarNews that only one person was involved in the crime.

The police have so far detained five people for questioning, one of whom has been let off, a source close to the investigation told BenarNews.

Among the four detainees are two migrant laborers who were working at a construction site near the crime scene, the source said.

A blood-stained shoe, usually worn by construction workers, was recovered from near the victims house. That is why our focus went toward bricklayers working in the area. One of the workers we have picked up has scratch marks on his body, the source said.

The investigation is headed in the right direction, he added.

Meanwhile on Tuesday, another Dalit woman, a 19-year-old nursing student, was allegedly gang raped by an auto-rickshaw driver and two of his friends in the seaside resort of Varkala in Kerala. All three accused were arrested Thursday.

The victim, who knew the auto-rickshaw driver, was in his vehicle. Two of his friends got into the vehicle later and they allegedly went to a deserted spot and raped the girl, according to the victims statement.

Social media campaign launched

Even as investigators scramble for evidence in the case, which has garnered national attention, a social media campaign under the hashtag JusticeForJ*^*ha is echoing across the country, with demands of speedy justice for the victim.

In India, it is illegal to identify the victim of a sex crime, even by her first name.

Oscar-winning sound designer Resul Pookutty, a Keralite, while supporting an online campaign that calls for a boycott of the upcoming elections until the culprits are nabbed, said on twitter: Guys and Gals be firm about this, dont let down #J*^*ha. Kerala is not Delhi, we have to be assertive.

Every Indian man should fight for this young woman. Tomorrow it could be your sister or daughter. No more Nirbhayas, senior television journalist Zakka Jacob tweeted, while referring to the 2012 New Delhi gang rape victim, whose name was coined Nirbhaya, meaning fearless, by the Indian media.

But others were against the victims caste being linked with the crime.

It was a WOMAN who was raped and killed. Not a Dalit, tweeted Sudhir Kothari.

The victims family, however, insisted their caste was possibly the reason for the crime.

Since the day we moved into that house 40 years ago, not a day has passed without the neighbors troubling us, the victims sister, Deepa, told news channels at a local hospital, where her mother, Rajeshwari, has been recovering since discovering her eldest daughters body. Not once, have we been invited to a neighbors house, she added.

On several occasions, men from the neighborhood made lewd and sexual passes at my sister. We even filed a police complaint. But the police only shooed us away.
Bangladeshi activists who fought in the 1971 war of independence celebrate a Supreme Court decision in Dhaka that cleared the way for the execution of Jamaat-e-Islami leader Motiur Rahman Nizami, May 5, 2016.

Motiur Rahman Nizami, the chief of Bangladeshs largest faith-based party, is a step closer to the gallows after the Supreme Court on Thursday rejected his appeal of a death sentence on a war-crime conviction.

The head of the opposition Jamaat-e-Islami (JeI) party lost his last legal bid to avoid execution when a four-member panel of the courts appellate division turned down Nizamis claim of innocence over crimes committed during the war of independence in 1971.

Motiur Rahman Nizamis review appeal has been rejected and the court upheld his death sentence. This verdict ends legal procedures. The only option left for him is to seek presidential clemency, Attorney General Mahbubey Alam told reporters after the courts ruling.

Alam said the jail authorities would read out the death warrant to Nizami and ask him whether he would submit a petition for clemency.

He would get the time to file the petition, the attorney general said without specifying a time for execution. Previously, hangings have been carried out within days of similar rulings.

Nizamis lawyer, Khandker Mahbub Hossain, told BenarNews that he was not sure what the next step would be.

My client will decide whether he wants to seek presidential clemency, Hosain said.

JeI, which is aligned with the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), has called a nationwide three-day protest against the ruling, including a general strike on Sunday, according to a statement posted on JeIs website.

Starting on Wednesday afternoon, police were deployed around the courthouse and other government buildings in anticipation of potential violence around the Supreme Courts decision. On Thursday officers manned checkpoints throughout Dhaka.

Two other JeI leaders, Abdul Kader Molla and Mohammad Kamaruzzaman, went to the gallows without seeking clemency.

JeIs secretary general, Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mojahid, and the BNPs Salahuddin Quader Chowdhury, who were executed in November 2015, sent letters to the president questioning the fairness of their trials. The government claimed both had sought clemency through their letters  but their families rejected that claim.

Following their executions, the country remained on a heightened state of alert for days as thousands of police and paramilitary units were deployed in Dhaka and other major cities. The government shut down social media sites Facebook, Viber and WhatsApp for several days over fears that trouble makers could communicate with each other or foment violence.

A litany of alleged crimes

A war crimes tribunal on Oct. 29, 2014, sentenced Nizami to death.

Sixteen war-crimes charges had been brought against Nizami, who during the war headed an auxiliary armed force, Al-Badr, which allegedly killed civilians and intellectuals while siding with the Pakistans army. The tribunal ruled that eight charges were proven, including four that carried the death penalty.

Alam said the apex court upheld three of the tribunals death penalty verdicts and two life sentences. It dismissed one of the death penalty and three other convictions.

Nizami was charged with crimes including the indiscriminate rape and murder of 450 people in Baushgari and Demra villages in Pabna; the killing of 10 people and the raping of three women in Koromja village; the murder of 52 people in Dhulauri village and a plan to massacre intellectuals.

A historic day

Pro-independence groups rejoiced Thursday at news of the Supreme Courts ruling.

This is a historic day for us. The whole nation is satisfied with the court judgment. The family members of the victims would get some solace if the verdict is implemented, Fazlur Rahman, a member of the Ghatak Dalal Nirmul Committee, which calls for the executions of war criminals and their accomplices, told BenarNews.

However, acting JeI chief Moqbul Hossain and acting secretary general Shafiqur Rahman accused the government of bringing false charges against Nizami.

The two issued a statement saying that JeI leaders and activists would offer prayers for Nizami on Friday and hold peaceful demonstrations across the country against the verdict. The statement urged people to participate in a 12-hour hartal (strike) on Sunday.
Sankari Mondal, a transgender woman shown in an undated photo in Jadavpur, West Bengal, dropped her bid for a state assembly seat in West Bengal.

Sankari Mondal had hoped to create history when she decided in March to seek office in West Bengals state assembly elections, which ended Thursday.

Mondal and Bobby Halder, another transgender, were being touted as the first ever third-gender electoral candidates in West Bengal.

But days before Mondal was to challenge political heavyweights in the Jadavpur constituency on April 30, including Manish Gupta of the states ruling All India Trinamool Congress (AITC) party and Sujan Chakraborty of the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M), the 31-year-old transgender backed out.

Halder, 39, who planned to challenge Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee in Bhawanipur, also dropped out at the last minute.

It was a personal decision. I just did not feel like pushing it anymore, Mondal told BenarNews, saying she was aware that she had stopped short of making political history.

Halder declined comment.

But Mira Chakraborty, state president of the Lok Janshakti Party (LJP), which fielded both candidates, said the duo dropped out of the elections out of fear that the ruling party would attack them.

There was immense pressure on Sankari and Bobby from the goons of Trinamool Congress. They were so afraid that they not only decided to abstain, but also could not muster the courage to register a complaint with the State Election Commission, Chakraborty told BenarNews.

Widespread violence

The West Bengal assembly elections, which kicked off April 4, were held in six phases owing to a long history of poll-related violence in the state, Kolkata-based historian Syamal Sengupta said.

The results of the election will be announced on May 19.

Tamil Nadu state, which is comparable to West Bengal in size and number of constituencies, will conduct its polls in a single day [on May 16], as will Kerala. But voting in West Bengal was divided into six phases. This itself tells the story of West Bengal, Sengupta told BenarNews.

As of Thursday, the last day of voting, the death toll in the state since the election was announced on March 4 stood at 18, according to data collected from news reports.

Dukhiram Dal, 57, and Sheikh Fazal Haque, 58, both activists of the CPI-M party, were hacked to death shortly after polling ended in the Khandaghosh constituency of Burdwan district on April 21.

A day later, Congress party worker Kandekar Ali was beaten to death in the same district after he protested against voting irregularities.

Chief Minister Banerjees Trinamool Congress party has been blamed for allegedly ordering these killings and string of other violent crimes statewide during the election period.

[AITC] is doing this out of frustration. But they wont be able to win by using violence. We are arranging processions all over the state against this violence and we will fight it in a democratic way, CPI-Ms Jadavpur candidate Sujan Chakraborty said.

Reacting to allegations that the Lok Janshakti Partys transgender candidates dropped out of the election because of threats from the ruling party, AITC state president Subrata Bakshi told BenarNews: If anyone faced any problem filing their nominations, they should have approached the election commission. Please check with the commission if the concerned individuals filed any [complaints].

Bold social message

LJP president Chakraborty said the decision to field transgender candidates was made to emphasize her partys commitment to stand by socially marginalized people.

With only about 800 transgender people on West Bengals electoral rolls among the states voting population of nearly 65 million, Chakraborty conceded that Mondal and Halder had absolutely no chance of winning.

But had they contested, it would have sent out a bold social message, she said.

However, Manabi Bandyopadhyay, Indias first openly transgender university chancellor from West Bengal, said the LJP was using the third-gender community to gain political mileage.

One needs to have a certain level of education and awareness to represent a mass of people. Do they [Mondal and Halder] have such qualifications? Do they even understand the onus that was put on their shoulders? Id say, they were being used by a certain political party, Bandyopadhyay told BenarNews.

Mondal acknowledged that her knowledge of politics was minimal.

I came in touch with Mira Chakraborty less than a year ago through a common acquaintance. She suggested that I should contest the polls on their party ticket. I obliged, Mondal said.

No one from my family was happy about my decision. They were apprehensive that it will only lead to further humiliation. My party colleagues were cordial to me, but I didnt do much party work, she said.

Mondal added that she was happy with her decision to back out this year, but did not rule out the possibility of running again in the future.

You never know. I may decide to contest. Ill think about it when another opportunity comes my way, she said.
Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak (left) greets Sarawak Chief Minister Adenan after a national cabinet meeting at Sarawak state secretariat building in Kuching, the first such meeting held outside of Putrajaya.

A helicopter carrying a Malaysian deputy minister and five others vanished Thursday during a flight in Malaysias eastern state of Sarawak, two days ahead of closely watched state elections.

The helicopter disappeared from radar screens while flying from the town of Betong to Sarawak's capital Kuching, local media quoted Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi as saying.

"The helicopter is believed to be in the Sebuyau costal area. Police, General Defense Forces and Marine Police have been deployed to the area to try to carry out a search-and-rescue operation," Zahid said.

Those on the flight were identified as Plantation Industries and Commodities Deputy Minister Noriah Kasnon, her husband Asmuni Abdullah, Sundaran Annamalai, the ministry's secretary general, Kuala Kangsar MP Wan Mohammad Khair-il Anuar Wan Ahmad, bodyguard Ahmad Sobri Harun and the pilot, Capt. Rudolf Rex Ragas.

Air traffic controllers lost contact with the helicopter at 5 p.m. Thursday, near Sebayau, according to early reports. A search and rescue operation has been launched, the Department of Civil Aviation confirmed.

Deeply concerned about the reports of helicopter missing between Betong and Kuching. Search and rescue activated. Let us pray for their safety, Prime Minister Najib Razak said in a message posted on Twitter and Facebook.

Sarawak official seeks federal concessions

As many as 1.3 million people are eligible to vote in Saturdays State Legislative Assembly election. It is being seen as a litmus test for Malaysias ruling Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition, which also controls politics in Sarawak but has been mired in corruption scandals.

Sarawak and neighboring Sabah are the only Malaysian states that hold legislative elections separately from parliamentary elections. Eighty seats are being contested but BN already has captured two other seats unopposed.

After being ruled by BN for 53 years, people in Sarawak want the Malaysian government to give their state a greater share of revenue from its own resources. Chief Minister Adenan Satem, who is running in the May 7 election, has been spearheading talks with federal officials over this issue.

Adenan disassociates himself from federal government policies when talking to the states residents, Universiti Malaysia Sarawak associate professor Jeniri Amir told BenarNews.

If you listen clearly to his speeches, his message is always saying that whatever Putrajaya is doing has nothing to do with Sarawak. This election is about Sarawak and has nothing to do with Najib, Amir said.

Sarawaks biggest demand is that royalties from oil and gas production be increased from 5 percent to 20 percent.

Najib, who leads BN, on Wednesday shot down that demand. He said it was not the right time to pursue negotiations because government revenues had shrunk due to a sharp drop in oil and gas prices.

The professor said some many translate Najibs presence in the region during the campaigning season and his announcement on royalties as a threat to Adenan. In urban areas,opposition parties have labelled Adenan as a puppet for Putrajaya.

Opposition Democratic Action Party (DAP) candidate Abdul Aziz Isa has tried to seize on Najibs announcement, claiming that Adenan failed Sarawak for not getting the higher royalties.

BN, affiliates draw support

Observers expect that, come Saturday, BN will retain control of the legislative assembly in Sarawak.

It will be difficult to shake support for BN in Sarawak because many still regard the coalition as the only option, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia associate professor Mohd Faisal Syam Abdol Hazis told BenarNews.

The opposition cant even work together and agree on seat allocations. In Batu Kitang constituency for example, DAP is challenging PKR [The Peoples Justice Party] which is also challenging BN. This alone not only sends a strong message to the voters, it will also split their chances, Hazis said.

Meanwhile, a group of affiliate parties represent BN in Sarawak.

Sarawak United Bumiputera Heritage Party (PBB) is the strongest affiliate party in the state and is targeting 40 of the 82 seats contested.

Three other local affiliates are Sarawak People's Party (PRS), Sarawak United Peoples Party (SUPP) and Sarawak Progressive Democratic Party (SPDP). These affiliates allow Sarawak BN to create a perception that it is run by local parties that understand local concerns.

Three parties, namely DAP, PKR and National Trust Party form an opposition bloc. The Islamic party, Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party left the bloc several months ago and is contesting 11 seats on Saturday.
A recovery team carries the body of Noriah Kasnon, a Malaysian deputy minister, from the site of a helicopter crash near Sebuyau, Sarawak, May 6, 2016.

Updated at 3:35 p.m. ET on 2016-05-06

Malaysian officials Friday confirmed the death of a deputy minister, Noriah Kasnon, in a helicopter crash in the eastern state of Sarawak but rescue teams still were searching for the pilot and four other passengers.

The body of Kasnon, deputy minister of Plantation Industries and Commodities, was recovered Friday from the crash site near the coastal town of Sebuyau.

Prime Minister Najib Razak confirmed Kasnons death via Twitter late Friday.

Razak and his deputy Ahmad Zahid Hamidi were at the Sarawak General Hospital mortuary where Kasnons remains were taken after being recovered from near a debris field along the Batang Sadon River.

The AS350 helicopter went down during a flight from the Sarawakian town of Betong to the state capital of Kuching, less than two days before legislative assembly elections there. The aircraft departed Betong at 4:12 p.m. Thursday but vanished from radar screens about 20 minutes into a 45-minute flight, officials said.

Among those still unaccounted for were Kasnons husband, Asmuni Abdullah, Sundaran Annamalai, the secretary general of the ministry where Kasnon serves as deputy minister, and Wan Mohammad Khair-il Anuar Wan Ahmad, an MP representing the Kuala Kangsar constituency in Perak state. The pilot, Capt. Rudolf Rex Ragas, and another passenger, bodyguard Ahmad Sobri Harun, were also missing.

The ongoing search occurred on the eve of state legislative assembly elections set for Saturday. These are being scrutinized as a test for Malaysias ruling Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition, which also controls politics in Sarawak but has been mired in a corruption scandal.

Wide debris field

A hearse carrying Kasnons body arrived at the hospital morgue from the Kuching Royal Air Force Base at 3:30 p.m. Friday.

The team found the wreckage at 9:30 a.m. today and we began combing the area following the river currents. Based on that, our search radius is currently within four kilometers [2.5 miles] wide, State Fire and Rescue Department Director Nor Hisham Mohammad told BenarNews.

He said a search and rescue operation comprising more than 100 personnel was scouring the area for signs of the five missing people and more debris. So far, the searchers had recovered a rotor blade from the helicopter, a floatation device, part of a wall, a door and a seat.

Difficult terrain

Transportation by helicopter is the preferred mode of transportation for politicians and other VIPs traveling in Sarawak, a heavily forested state with rugged terrain and that lacks many roads.

Apart from the option of traveling by car or truck to reach communities in mountainous or areas or in the jungle, VIPs also travel by boat through the states complex network of rivers.

At least seven helicopter crashes have occurred in Sarawak over the past decade. The most notorious accident took place in 2004, when seven people, including an assistant state minister, were killed when their helicopter crashed into the Bakelalan mountains.
A group of Thai academics is petitioning the U.N. to investigate Thailands crackdown on dissent as tensions build over a constitutional referendum in August.

We strongly urge the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights to take a firm stance against the military government and the NCPO [National Council for Peace and Order] to help put an immediate end to the atrocious violations of human rights in Thailand, the Thai Academic Network for Civil Rights said Thursday on Facebook, using the Thai juntas official name.

The academics pointed to recent arrests of at least eight people who posted messages on social media that allegedly criticized the government over an Aug. 7 referendum on a proposed, military-backed constitution. A new law prohibits people from campaigning in the run-up to the vote.

"If the U.N. acknowledges the problems, when Thai representatives participate internationally the Thai government will have to seriously respond to the human rights violations, Professor Anusorn Unno, dean of sociology and anthropology Thammasat University in Bangkok, told BenarNews.

On Friday, Thai authorities arrested another person under Lese-Majeste, the country's royal defamation law. Patnaree Charnkij, the mother of leading pro-democracy activist Sirawith Ja New Seritiwit, turned herself into police on an arrest warrant for allegedly defaming the monarchy and violating Thailands computer-crimes law.

Attorney Arnon Nampa, who represents Patnaree, said on Facebook that his client was charged for not dissuading another user of the social media network from posting messages online that could be construed as defamatory to royals.

Under Lese-Majeste, anyone who defames, insults or threatens the king, the queen, the heir-apparent or the regent faces up to 15 years in prison.

Never been abused

Anusorn and other academics behind the petition also cited the arrests of others accused of violating Lese-Majeste, as well as the expansion of military powers through Article 44 of the interim constitution and other decrees issued by the junta since it seized power from a civilian-led government two years ago.

Over time, political dissenters have faced arrest, abduction and torture while a large number of people, including university students, academics, journalists, social activists and politicians have faced constant threats and harassment in various forms for criticizing the military government and the NCPO, the petitioners said.

Such  control and curtailing of rights and freedom of expression have intensified during the time when the country is preparing for the draft constitution referendum, they added.

In petitioning the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), the Thai Academic Network for Civil Rights also accused the military of abducting anti-government critics and holding detainees at undisclosed sites for more than 24 hours to extract information from them.

Maj. Gen. Sansern Kaewkamnerd, the deputy spokesman for the prime ministers office, denied the allegations contained in the academics petition, saying no one had been mistreated while in custody.

[T]he perpetrators have never been abused. I want the academic network to prove [this] with evidence. Do not believe such information is true from just hearing or reading from social media, without [checking the facts], he told reporters on Thursday.

UN airs concerns

The United Nations did not respond immediately to the petition from the academics, but two weeks ago the U.N.s human rights chief voiced concern about Thailands widening crackdown on dissent.

An open and dynamic public debate on the draft constitution would foster national unity, strengthen the legitimacy and acceptance of the constitution and provide a sense of collective ownership, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Raad Al Hussein said in a statement issued on April 22.

The proposed constitution is controversial because it contains a clause that would allow the junta to hand pick all 250 members of the Thai senate, including six officers from the militarys top brass.

I urge the government to actively encourage, rather than discourage, dialogue and engagement on the draft constitution. This would be an important step in establishing a solid foundation for a sustainable democracy in Thailand.
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Let's pause to take a look at 10 extraordinary mothers in the Bible. These women obeyed God's calling, served sacrificially, and built a life of faith for their family. We can learn much from the examples of these Biblical mothers.

1. Sarah: The Mother Who Waited

In Genesis 11:30 we learn, Now Sarai was childless because she was not able to conceive. This would have grieved both Sarah and Abraham, and in Genesis 15 when the word of the LORD came to Abram he answered, what will you give me LORD since you have not given me an heir? God tells him to look at the stars in the Sky, for that would be the number of his offspring. Abraham and Sarah waited 15 years before God renewed His promise, and 10 more years before the promise was fulfilled and Sarah bore a son, Isaac.

Sarah probably wouldnt win an award for waiting and she even laughed at the idea that God could do what He promised, but thankfully Gods promise did not rely on the level of Sarahs faith. God fulfilled His promise according to His plan and Sarah responded in Genesis 21,

God has brought me laughter, and everyone who hears about this will laugh with me. And she added, Who would have said to Abraham that Sarah would nurse children? Yet I have borne him a son in his old age.

Can you imagine waiting that long for a blessing? Sarah tried to believe the promise, but she had doubts until it finally came to fruition. Then she laughed with joy at what the LORD had done. Isaac would go on to continue the legacy of his father Abraham.

2. Hagar: The Mother Who Endured

Hagar was an Egyptian slave and a maidservant to Sarah, the wife of Abraham; she didnt have much say about anything and especially not in becoming Abrahams wife. Though her status changed, she was still secondary to Sarah.

Once Hagar became pregnant with Abrahams child, a rift developed between her and Sarah. After receiving mistreatment from Sarah, Hagar fled toward her homeland. But she met the angel of the LORD who told her to return, He also promised her numerous descendants through her son whom she was to name Ishmael.

Later, Hagar and her son Ishmael were sent away into the desert, where she believed they would both die. But God is faithful and showed her a well. Genesis 21 tells us, God was with the boy as he grew up. He lived in the desert and became an archer.

Hagar thought she would get to escape her misery, but God called her to return to it. She obeyed, and He blessed her and her son just as He promised He would.

3. Rebekah: The Mother Who Believed

Rebekah was a woman of great faith, obeying God when Isaacs servant told her of the man who wanted to marry her. Genesis 25 tells us that when Rebekah became pregnant she could feel the babies jostling within her. When she asked the LORD why this was happening, He answered her: Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples from within you will be separated; one people will be stronger than the other, and the older will serve the younger. In that time, the older would have never served the younger, and the firstborn son would have inherited the best of everything.

When Isaac was old in age, he told Esau to hunt and prepare food so that he could receive his blessing. But Rebekah overheard this and told Jacob to bring her food so she could prepare it for Isaac first. Jacob was unsure about deceiving his father, but Rebekah responded in Genesis 27, My son let the curse fall on me. Just do what I say; go and get them for me. I think it is safe to say that she remembered and took very seriously what God had spoken to her during her pregnancy.

Rebekah risked deception to follow Gods promise because she believed what He said was true. It should be noted that God did not call Rebekah to deception, but God is sovereign despite the good or bad choices we may make. And His plan unfolded exactly as He had told her. Later her son Jacob would wrestle with God and be given a new name, Israel.

4. Leah and Rachel: The Mothers Who Had to Share

When Jacob went to stay with his uncle Laban, he met one of his daughters, Rachel, and loved her. He wanted her for his wife and was willing to work seven years to marry her. But Laban tricked Jacob by giving him his older daughter Leah in marriage instead. Jacob worked another seven years for Rachel, and he loved her more. Leah, knowing that she was unloved, bore Jacob many children to please him, while Rachel remained barren.

Both women ended up giving their maidservants to Jacob, who in turn bore him more children. Genesis 30 tells us, Then God remembered Rachel; he listened to her and enabled her to conceive. Rachel bore Jacob two sons, Joseph and Benjamin, before she died in childbirth with Benjamin.

Siblings like to compete, but can you imagine having to share a husband with your sister, feeling like you always had to outdo the other. But God blessed both Leah and Rachel with children, continuing his covenant promise with Abraham. Leah and Rachels sons would go on to form the 12 tribes of Israel.

5. Jochebed: The Mother with a Plan

A new pharaoh in Egypt came to power who was under no obligation to honor Josephs deeds in Egypt and keep the special arrangement with the Israelites. He was worried about the Hebrews outnumbering and overtaking the Egyptians, so he made them slaves. He also commanded the Hebrew midwives to kill Hebrew baby boys when they were born, but they did not listen. Then Pharaoh gave another decree in Exodus 1, Every Hebrew boy that is born you must throw into the Nile, but let every girl live.

A Levite woman, Jochebed, gave birth to a son and hid him for 3 months. Exodus 2 tells us that when she could hide him no longer, she coated a papyrus basket with tar and pitch, placed the baby in it, then she set it in the reeds along the bank of the Nile. Jochebeds daughter, Miriam, watched to see what would happen as Pharaohs daughter went down to bath. When Pharaohs daughter saw the basket, her servants retrieved it for her and inside she found the baby crying and knowing he was a Hebrew child she felt sorry for him.

Miriam then spoke up and asked her if she would like her to fetch a Hebrew woman to nurse the baby; she agreed and Jochebed returned with her daughter to nurse her own baby. Pharaohs daughter paid Jochebed to nurse and raise the baby until he was old enough to come live with her. She then adopted him as her son and named him Moses.

Jochebed was determined to find a way to save her son, and God blessed her plan. Not only was her son saved from death, she was able to nurse and raise him until he was old enough to go live with Pharaohs daughter. Her son, Moses, went on to free the Hebrew people from Egypt, leading them in the desert toward the Promised Land according to Gods plan.





6. Samsons Mother: The Mother Who Followed the Rules

She is not mentioned by name in the Book of Judges, although some would say she is the Hazelelponi mentioned in 1 Chronicles 4. We cannot know for sure, so we can deduce that what she did is more important than her name. She was married to a man named Manoah but was unable to conceive. Judges 13 tells us,

The angel of the LORD appeared to her and said, You are barren and childless, but you are going to become pregnant and give birth to a son. Now see to it that you drink no wine or other fermented drink and that you do not eat anything unclean. You will become pregnant and have a son whose head is never to be touched by a razor because the boy is to be a Nazirite dedicated to God from the womb. He will take the lead in delivering Israel from the hands of the Philistines.

Samsons mother knew there was something special about the angel of the LORD, and when her husband was afraid they would die for having seen the face of God she became the voice of reason saying He would not have told us these things if He were going to kill us.

She gave birth and named the baby Samson, and the LORD blessed him. Although some of his actions were questionable, the LORD used him mightily in His plan to defeat the Philistines.

7. Naomi: The Mother-in-Law Who Shared Her Faith

Naomi and her family fled to the country of Moab because of a famine in their land. Her husband died, and her two sons married Moabite women, Orpah and Ruth. After 10 years both of Naomis sons passed away, and Naomi heard that the LORD had blessed the land of her people with food again. She told her daughters-in-law that they could return home to find new husbands. Although they both wept at her leaving, one refused to leave Naomis side. Orpah returned to her people and her gods, but Ruth said,

Dont urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the LORD deal with me, be it ever so severely, if even death separates you and me.

Ruth was already learning from Naomis faith even during a time of bitterness. Naomi continued to watch out for Ruth and instruct her wisely in her dealings with Boaz, who became her kinsman redeemer. The LORD blessed Naomi, and she gained a son when Boaz married Ruth. Ruth and Boaz had a child, and the women of the land said to Naomi,

Praise be to the LORD, who this day has not left you without a guardian-redeemer. May he become famous throughout Israel! He will renew your life and sustain you in your old age. For your daughter-in-law, who loves you and who is better to you than seven sons, has given him birth.

The child was named Obed, the father of Jesse, the father of David who would be king. -Ruth 4:17.

8. Hannah: The Mother Who Kept Her Promise

Hannah was married to a man who loved her very much, but he also had another wife. This wife was able to bear children, but in 1 Samuel 1:5-6 we learn that the LORD had closed Hannahs womb. The rival wife provoked Hannah continually, but Hannah would go to the house of the LORD to pray. Her husband tried to console her saying, Dont I mean more to you than 10 sons? in 1 Sam. 1:8. Hannah prayed to the LORD and wept bitterly; she made a vow saying,

LORD Almighty, if you will only look on your servants misery and remember me, and not forget your servant but give her a son, then I will give him to the LORD for all the days of his life, and no razor will ever be used on his head.

In fact, she was praying so hard that her lips were moving but no sound came out so that the priest, Eli, thought she was drunk. The LORD blessed Hannah, and she gave birth to a son and named him Samuel, saying, Because I asked the LORD for him. -1 Sam. 1:20

She did just as she had promised, and when the boy was old enough she took him to the house of the LORD and presented him to Eli. Hannah then prayed,

My heart rejoices in the LORD; in the LORD my horn is lifted high. My mouth boasts over my enemies, for I delight in your deliverance. And her beautiful prayer continues in 1 Samuel 2:1-10.

Samuel lived a life dedicated to the LORD, and he would go on to lead the people of Israel, anointing Israels first and second kingsSaul and David.

9. Elizabeth: The Mother Who Believed in Miracles

Elizabeth was married to a priest named Zechariah, and Luke 1 tells us that both Elizabeth and Zechariah were righteous before God, observing all of His commands. But Elizabeth was childless, and they were both old in age. Similar to people in Jobs day, people would have thought that sin prevented Elizabeth from bearing a child. This would have been very hard to face, especially being a wife of a priest.

When Zechariah was serving in the temple, an angel of the Lord, Gabriel, approached him and said,

Do not be afraid, Zechariah; your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you are to call him John. He will be a joy and delight to you, and many will rejoice because of his birth, for he will be great in the sight of the Lord. Luke 1:13-14

Zechariah still questioned how this would be possible and because he doubted he was struck mute for the duration of Elizabeths pregnancy. Elizabeth was overjoyed at this blessing of life and said, The Lord has done this for me In these days he has shown his favor and taken away my disgrace among the people. Luke 1:25

When Mary, the mother of Jesus, came to visit her cousin Elizabeth, the baby leapt in Elizabeths womb and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. She took great joy in Marys pregnancy and blessing from the Lord. And when it came time for Elizabeth to give birth, she named her son John. When neighbors went to confirm this with Zechariah he wrote the same name and his mouth was opened; everyone wondered at what the child would be since his birth was miraculous.

John would go on to baptize people from their sins with water. He would prepare the way for the Messiah.

10. Mary: The Mother Who Is Blessed among Women

Mary, a virgin pledged to a man named Joseph, was also visited by the angel Gabriel. He said to her in Luke 1:31,

Do not be afraid, Mary; you have found favor with God. You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over Jacobs descendants forever; his kingdom will never end.

Mary wondered at how this would be possible, and the angel told her, The Holy Sprit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God. Mary embraced these words in faith. When she visited her cousin Elizabeth, Elizabeth proclaimed, Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the child you will bear! Mary believed God would fulfill His promise.

An angel of the Lord also visited Joseph, who put him at ease with Marys pregnancy. As we read in Matthew 1, Joseph took Mary to be his wife, but they did not consummate the marriage until after she had given birth. Mary and Joseph traveled to Bethlehem for a census, where she gave birth in the humblest of environments.

Mary treasured up many things in her heart as she raised Jesus, but she also had to endure the greatest sacrifice of all timeher son was the Son of God and He had come to give Himself up as a sacrifice, the one and only sacrifice that could be made for mankind. She had to watch Him suffer, be tortured and mocked, and die a cruel death on a cross by crucifixion.

John 19 tells us,

Near the cross of Jesus stood his mother, his mothers sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus saw his mother there, and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to her, Woman, here is your son, and to the disciple, Here is your mother. From that time on, this disciple took her into his home.

Even while He was dying, Jesus cared for His mother and gave her a new son to love her. Mary was blessed among women, for she was chosen by God to bear His Son and raise Him. Though there was death there was yet joy for Mary, as her son did not stay dead. He rose again from the grave, securing eternity for her and all who would believe.

Liz Auld is the managing editor for Crosswalk.com.




First up, Joe Biden is thinking about dropping tariffs against China. But theres a spy in prison this morning that helps us understand why he shouldnt. Ill explain.





Your second brief, If youre looking for a good paying job, you might consider being a CEO for a health insurance company. One executive made $142M dollars last year. Let's talk about that.





And as always, Im keeping an eye out for developing stories. Put this one on your radar. Mexican cartels are grooming American kids online and paying them cash to traffic illegals or run drugs across the border. Ill share details.





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For Immediate Release, May 6, 2016 Contact: Lori Ann Burd, (971) 717-6405, laburd@biologicaldiversity.org Court Hearing Will Focus on EPA's Failure to Protect Nation's Endangered Wildlife From Pesticides SAN FRANCISCO The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals will hear arguments Monday, May 9 in the most comprehensive legal action ever brought under the Endangered Species Act to protect rare and threatened plants and animals from pesticides in the United States. The Center for Biological Diversity and Pesticide Action Network North America are challenging the Environmental Protection Agencys systemic failure to assess the impacts of more than 30 pesticides known to be harmful to dozens of endangered species found across the country. Florida panther photo by Larry W. Richardson, USFWS. This photo is available for media use. Pesticides are poisoning endangered animals, but the EPA is turning a blind eye, said Lori Ann Burd, environmental health director at the Center. This lawsuit, if were successful, will force the EPA to take a comprehensive look at pesticide impacts on endangered wildlife across the country at long last  and take common-sense steps to protect our wildlife from these chemicals. The lawsuit seeks protection from dangerous pesticides for dozens of endangered and threatened species throughout the United States, including Florida panthers, California condors, piping plovers, black-footed ferrets, arroyo toads, Indiana bats and Alabama sturgeon. Documents from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and EPA, as well as peer-reviewed scientific studies, show that these animals may be hurt by the pesticides at issue in the case. Despite well-documented risks of pesticides to imperiled wildlife, for decades the EPA has registered pesticides for use in the United States without conducting legally required Endangered Species Act consultations with expert federal wildlife agencies to determine whether the pesticides will harm protected wildlife. This failure prevents the Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service from fully evaluating pesticide risks and from restricting pesticide uses known to be harmful to protected plants and animals. An example of the EPAs failure to protect people and the environment is its continued registration of the dangerous herbicide atrazine, a widespread pollutant of groundwater and drinking water in this country. Atrazine, which causes reproductive problems and chemically castrates male frogs even at extremely low concentrations, was banned in the European Union more than a decade ago. Just last week the EPA, in a preliminary risk assessment, found that the amount of the herbicide thats released into the environment in the United States is likely harming most species of plants and animals, including mammals, birds, amphibians and reptiles. Mondays hearing before Circuit Judges Wardlaw, Paez and Bea will be at 10:30 a.m. in Courtroom 2, 3rd Floor Room 330, James R. Browning U.S. Courthouse, 95 7th Street in San Francisco, Calif. The hearing addresses the environmental groups appeal of the district court decision granting in part motions by the EPA and pesticide industry groups to dismiss the lawsuit. The hearing is open to the public. Center attorneys will be available after the hearing to discuss the case. Background

More than a billion pounds of pesticides are used annually in the United States, and the EPA has registered more than 16,000 different pesticides for use. Extensive scientific studies show widespread and pervasive pesticide contamination in groundwater, drinking water and wildlife habitats throughout the country. Many EPA-approved pesticides are linked to cancer and other severe health effects in humans. Some pesticides can act as endocrine disruptors, interfering with natural hormones, damaging reproductive function and offspring, and causing developmental, neurological and immune problems in wildlife and humans. A series of lawsuits by the Center and other conservation groups has forced the EPA to consult on the impacts of scores of pesticides on some endangered species and has resulted in temporary restrictions on pesticide use in sensitive habitats. Just last month, as a result of litigation by the Center, the EPA completed its first rigorous nationwide analysis of the effects of three pesticides on endangered species. The agency found 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. The analysis is likely to lead to permanent restrictions on some of the most harmful uses of these highly toxic pesticides. The Center for Biological Diversity is a national, nonprofit conservation organization with more than 1 million members and online activists dedicated to the protection of endangered species and wild places.
According to research done by EMC, most South African CIOs and business leaders believe they are not at all prepared for the technological shifts taking place in the economy, with the result that their current business plans will have lost their relevance.

Wavebreak Media Ltd via 123RF

In addition, many internal departments  notably marketing and even IT departments themselves  seem to be resisting the move from products to data-based services. Jonas Bogoshi, country manager for EMC Southern Africa, said EMC wanted to explore the business challenges and opportunities facing IT in South Africa today.

Research findings

The research unveiled widely different and often incompatible views, underpinned by a lack of common ground and a common language. It shows that the greatest IT challenge South African businesses face today is the need to manage and extract value from ever greater volumes of data. However, in the future the challenge will be the demands of real-time business on IT, Bogoshi said.

The research targeted 2,700 business and IT professionals in equal numbers in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, from the C-suite to frontline managers. Most (40%) have 250-499 employees and 68% are in the IT and tech space. This approach illuminated the same technology-related issues from different perspectives: Large and small; junior and senior; technology and business.

Concern about the future

Discussing the South African results of the research, Bogoshi says most businesses are increasingly concerned about their ability to manage and extract value not from their current products, as much as from the data generated in the process of selling those products. In particular, there is a strong upward curve in executives' view that the impact of business unpredictability and associated demands for rapid scaling are their current greatest IT challenge.

Most (73%) of respondents agree that, no matter your business, if you are online you are a tech company. But there seems to be a lot of insecurity in the sector, as almost 80% believe their current business models will be out of date in three years time.

The reality is that their future competitors will be agile organisations that do not even exist yet. More than 80% of respondents find it hard to predict how business will evolve in the current fluid, rapidly evolving landscape. The key point of concern is that the growth in the tech sector and the changing business environment will put excessive pressure on IT operations, damaging quality, customer satisfaction and brand reputation. The standard response to this fear that growth may accelerate IT complexity faster than companies can adapt, is to outsource.

In short, executives feel out of their depth as they are working against invisible competitors.

Limiting innovation

A point of concern for Bogoshi is that 48% of respondents see IT departments themselves as limiting innovation. Part of the reason may be that 66% of businesses still isolate IT departments, possibly because IT is seen as a behind-the-scenes function that has little to do with customer service. To make matters worse, two-thirds of IT team members feel isolated within their teams.

So you have isolated people, working within isolated teams, resisting the seismic shifts happening in the economy  quite possible because they are not allowed to see the bigger picture within the company they work for. Disconcertingly, 93% of executives still believe that their IT department meets the company's needs.

Executives feel inept

Most businesses surveyed reflected a mixed response to the perceived tech challenges. Only 42% have initiated processes to help IT departments work more closely with other parts of the business and to become more customer-focused. Also, 57% have started, or are planning to start training employees to implement converged or hyper-converged infrastructure. But when asked whether they personally feel they have the skills to understand what technology could do for their businesses, only 46% of executives agreed. A slightly larger percentage (49%) said they did not, but realised that they ought to.

In their journey towards becoming a digital, customer-focused business, 83% of respondents are not moving forward due to fear of damage to brand reputation, credibility and revenue if they get it wrong. Also, 61% of businesses do not feel ready for the data, operational and technological responsibility of offering a service and not just products  although 84% believe that scaleable and flexible IT will reduce risk by laying foundation for growth and innovation.

Business needs technology in order to develop more value-added services and products and get them to market quicker, to meet rapidly-evolving customer demands for a seamless, connected experience. They need to do all this while cutting costs, reducing risk and complexity and improving efficiency.

Respondents agree that you have to offer customers an experience to stay competitive, but realise that this cannot be met by their existing IT infrastructure, data processing capability and employee skills base.

Indeed, most decision-makers are afraid of getting it wrong when it comes to moving to a tech and data-focused approach to business, concludes Bogoshi.
Since the Heidelberg Mall's shoe collection drive launched in February 2015, residents have stepped up for their community and donated more than 1300 pairs of shoes.

The initiative started as a meaningful drive to collect shoes, of any size, colour or style to assist those most in need. On 13 April, the mall made its third shoe drop-off at Shalimar Ridge Primary School where 128 pairs of shoes were donated to children from grade 0 to grade 7.

Before the centre opened, the owners of the Heidelberg Mall asked communities within Heidelberg how the malls social initiatives could best help them. The answer was that shoes could make a big difference in the community.

After being informed that many of the children at Shalimar Ridge Primary lacked basic necessities, including much-needed shoes, the Heidelberg Mall decided to lend its support to hand over shoes donated by shoppers. To ensure the perfect fit, shoes were allocated to each child according to their shoe size.

Many Heidelberg Mall tenants also regularly join in the drive by donating food. This time, Delhi Delicious came on board to donate 150 large pies to children in Shalimar Ridge Primarys feeding scheme. Bargain Books was also on hand to host an educational and entertaining book-reading session where fun stickers were given to little ones in grade 0 and grade 1, while two goody bags were handed out to each of the children who correctly answered questions from the story book.

Just the beginning

This is just the beginning of the Heidelberg Malls involvement in the community, said Patricia Sefuthi, Heidelberg Mall marketing assistant. Our aim is to support as many people as we can in the community and make a difference in peoples lives.

Chris Bendall, Heidelberg Malls GM, who also attended the drop off, added that the success of the shoe collection drive is thanks to the generous support from shoppers. The continuous support from shoppers and the Heidelberg community has been incredible. Were delighted to have the opportunity to make a positive contribution and lend our help where its needed most, he said.

To get involved in this community-changing initiative, all you have to do is drop off a pair of shoes  or two, or more  at Heidelberg Mall's centre management offices. The shoes will be then distributed to communities within the greater Heidelberg area.
The Competition Commission will ask for another extension to scrutinise Anheuser-Busch InBev's (AB InBev's) planned $106bn takeover of SABMiller, its spokesman said on Thursday.

The watchdog was due to finish its investigation on Thursday, after it was granted a 15-day extension to complete its scrutiny.

It has already extended the deadline four times.

"I confirm that the competition Commission will not be issuing a decision on the SAB-ABInbev merger yesterday. There will be another extension," Competition Commission spokesman Itumeleng Lesofe said.

Lesofe said details would be provided at a later stage.

Reuters
Grant's has announced the launch of Grant's 18 Year Old in South Africa. A blend of Scotland's top single malt and famous grain whiskies that have been matured for a minimum of 18 years, Grant's 18 Year Old is finished in casks that previously held port to deliver a full-bodied taste of unique intensity. Grant's 18 Year Old is now available in South Africa at all leading liquor outlets, priced at R820.

Grants 18 Year Old is a multi-award winning blended whisky finished for up to six months in port pipes, huge casks capable of holding up to 600 litres. Adding the final touch to the 18 Year Old blend in this way helps the liquid develop a subtle added flavour. Delicate, fruity port notes come through on the nose and the taste spectrum has complex layers of fruit cake, malty honey and port.

The blend is sourced from a variety of barrels and casks, and the additional finishing develops a mature blend with a spectrum of intense flavours. Grants 18 Year old is the most awarded Scotch whisky blend in the extensive Grants range with 37 awards to its name, including six trophies or Masters and 18 Gold Medals. The most recent awards for Grants 18 Year Old include Gold at the 2015 and 2014 Scotch Whisky Masters, a Silver tasting award at the International Spirits Challenge in 2014, and Gold outstanding at the 2013 International Wine & Spirit Competition.

Whisky innovation

Rob Allanson, global brand ambassador for Grants, said: Its exciting to showcase some of the whisky innovation behind Grants award-winning whisky range. Crafted from some of the most famous aged whiskies in Scotland, Grants 18 Year Old is a truly exceptional blend that is made even more special thanks to the finishing in port pipes. Marking the launch of the 18 Year Old in South Africa offers us a chance to highlight some of the wonderful final touches applied by our expert blending team.

Grants Whisky SA marketing manager, Lauren Kuhlmey, said: It gives us great pleasure to showcase this award-winning expression from the family-owned distillery. Grants 18 Year Old is truly an exceptional blend that is crafted from some of the most famous aged whiskies in Scotland, a testament that is proven by the multi awards received internationally and we are happy our South African consumers get a chance to enjoy it.

Grants master blender, Brian Kinsman, commented: The intricate mix of aged whiskies that goes into Grants 18 Year Old, coupled with the finishing period in port pipes, produces a blend of subtle grace and elegance. The single malt and single grain whiskies we use for this blend are specifically chosen to deliver a refined and sophisticated flavour profile. The aromas are fruity and slightly nutty, and the lush flavours of dark honey and fruit cake make this a perfect autumnal whisky.

For more information, go to www.grantswhisky.co.za or follow on Twitter @GrantsWhiskySA.
Volkswagen Group South Africa hosted its first ever Black-Owned Suppliers' Day on 5 May in its Uitenhage plant in the Eastern Cape. Attended by the Minister of Trade and Industry Dr Rob Davies among others, the event was designed to highlight black participation opportunities within the South African automotive manufacturing industry.

Minister Rob Davies is flanked by Thomas Schaefer (right) and Eastern Cape MEC for Economic Development Saki Somyo.

The event presented a platform for 45 companies - out of 430 applications - that met VWSAs stringent supplier criteria to profile themselves to the local automotive industry. Successful organisations had to have a minimum of 51% black ownership (includes Coloured, Indian and Chinese as per BBBEE guidelines) and/or a minimum of 30% black female ownership. Another key requirement considered by VWSA was companies that are owned or managed by disabled persons or war veterans. The event was anchored by a conference of speakers and drew audiences from the broader automotive industry and other global automotive brands like BMW, Toyota, Ford and Mercedes.

One of the highlights of the days programme was a ministerial roundtable that discussed how black industrialists and black-owned suppliers could be assisted to be part of the automotive sector. The participants were: Minister Rob Davies; the CEO of the Black Business Council, Mohale Ralebitso; CEO of the Automotive Industry Development Centre, Dr David Masondo; and Philisiwe Mthethwa, the CEO of the National Empowerment Fund (NEF).

Compliance difficulty

VWSA chairman and managing director, Thomas Schaefer, said that the concept for the Supplier's Day originated from the company's desire to support economic transformation, but he cited some difficulties experienced due to current legislation.

We understand governments priority elements of the BBBEE codes and the drive for ownership. We, however, have difficulty complying with the Enterprise and Supplier Development element set out in the recently-revised BBBEE mandate. This is not because we do not want to, but because it is virtually impossible given the scarcity of black-owned suppliers to the local automotive industry. In our case, this is compounded by our high level of local content in the manufacture of Polo and Polo Vivo, explained Schaefer.

Incubation for upliftment

Some of the speakers cited an incubation ecosystem as an important consideration to promote black participation in automotive manufacturing and improving the local industry on a whole. Mthethwa stated the following in her address: As the NEF we have found that incubation can go a long way towards establishing and nurturing enterprises that can supply components to automotive production lines.

Masondo said the automotive sector must view the incubation proposition within the broader context of the need to reindustrialise the economy and increase local production on a grand scale. And Minister Davies stated that the industry must find a way to deepen and broaden its supplier base in line with empowerment regulations. Incubation, said Davies, is one of the best ways to uplift new entrants.
WASHINGTON - If you thought long-form journalism would die from the shift to mobile news, think again.

A Pew Research Center study released on Thursday found consumers spend more time on their phones with long-form news articles than with shorter ones, and that the elusive notion of "engagement" increases with word count.

The study contradicts a widely held belief that people's attention spans for news articles decrease when they read articles on their smartphones.

Andriy Popov via 123RF

"These findings suggest that on small, phone-sized screens, the public does not automatically turn away from an article at a certain point in time -- or reject digging into a longer-length news article," said Amy Mitchell, direct of journalism research at Pew.

"Instead, the average user tends to stay engaged past the point of where short-form reading would end, suggesting that readers may be willing to commit more time to a longer piece of work."

The researchers defined long-form articles as those of 1,000 words or more.

They found that the "engaged time" -- scrolling, clicking or tapping -- was about twice as great with news stories that are 1,000 words or longer compared with shorter pieces.

The total "engaged time" with the long-form articles averaged 123 seconds, compared with 57 seconds for short-form stories, according to the research by Pew in collaboration with the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

The researchers found that the gap between short- and long-form engagement time is not differentiated by the time of day or the "pathway" taken to get to the news story.

But there were factors within the two categories that made a difference. For both story lengths, reader spend the longest average in the late night and morning hours, the study concluded.

People spent more time with an article when arriving there from an internal link, compared to an email, external website, search or social media.

Social media sites drive the largest share of traffic for news -- around 40 percent -- even though readers may not stay with articles as long, the researchers said.

Pew found that while Facebook drives more traffic, Twitter tends to bring in people who spend more time with content, either for short or long articles.

Facebook referrals drive more than 80 percent of visits from social media sources, while Twitter drives about 15 percent, according to the study.

The researchers found that regardless of the source or the length of a story, news articles online have a short shelf life: 82 percent of interactions with short-form articles begin within the first two days after publication, and the same is true for 74 percent of long-form articles.

The researchers used data provided by the analytics firm Parse.ly on 117 million anonymized phone interactions with 74,840 articles from 30 news websites in September 2015.

The data "cuts across a mix of general and subject-specific news sites, legacy and digital-only sites and sites with large national audiences, as well as those with smaller, niche user bases," according to Pew.

Source: AFP
Microsoft Philanthropies has partnered with over 100 non-profit organisations in 55 countries as part of its $75m commitment to increase access to computer science education around the world.

Microsoft is partnering with these non-profits by providing cash grants, content and other resources they need to bring computational thinking and problem-solving skills to young people in local communities. These skillsets are important building blocks that help the youth succeed in todays tech-driven economy.

Computational thinking and problem-solving skills will be relevant to every job in the future. Through our partnerships with non-profit organisations around the world, we aim to empower all youth to prepare for this future, with the foundational knowledge of computer science that enables them to create the innovations of tomorrow, said Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft.

Get Online programme

Here in South Africa, the grant that Microsoft Philanthropies made through Microsoft YouthSpark to Mentec Foundation is in support of the Get Online programme that is aimed at unemployed matric or university graduates and unemployed members of under-resourced communities. Through this grant, Mentec Foundation will be able to provide these communities with access to Microsoft Office Specialist and Basic Microsoft Technology Associate training, as well as to business and life skills training.

The programme aims to equip graduates not only with skills but with the ability to teach their skills to others, explained Solly Khoza, CEO of Mentec Foundation.

The Get Online programme, initiated in September 2014, has successfully trained 300 master trainers to date through the assistance of trainers from 17 community-based organisations in townships and rural communities in all nine provinces of SA. The hope is that these 300 trainers will in turn reach 36,000 beneficiaries within their communities and surrounding areas.

Expanding accessibility

Closing the computer science skills gap and reaching young people on a global scale is a multi-faceted challenge that cannot be solved by one organisation or solution alone. Microsofts partnerships with non-profit organisations mean that more young people around the world - particularly underserved communities, girls and ethnic as well as racially diverse populations - will have access to computer science education, helping to expand the accessibility to skills critical for future success.

We see our work with non-profits as a partnership where we can bring to the table our resources and tech expertise to some of the organisations that are already making impact with young people in our community. The purpose of the Mentec Foundation, through the Get Online training programme is to upskill on an individual level, while driving broader impact on employment and entrepreneurship opportunities," said Zoaib Hoosen, MD of Microsoft SA.
The 2016 Green Building Conference, set for 26-28 July in Sandton, will have keynote speakers Dr Ian McCallum, John Elkington, Paul Clements-Hunt, Mario Molina, Jeff Speck, Terri Wills, and Evan Rice share their expertise.

Brian Wilkinson, CEO of the Green Building Council of South Africa (GBCSA)

We know time is not on our side. Climate scientists have told us this is the decade to take decisive action. Small steps wont get us where we need to go. Now is the time for bold leadership focused on purpose and on collaborative communities and cities, and its time for innovative and disruptive technology. We have to unite with one common purpose - to build a better world now, so we have chosen this as the theme for the 2016 convention, says Brian Wilkinson, CEO of the Green Building Council of South Africa (GBCSA) who are hosting the event.

Keynote speakers:

John Elkington is a writer of over 30 ground-breaking books, including The Zeronauts: Breaking the Sustainability Barrier. Known as an advisor from the future, Elkington works with large corporations, the finance and investment community, industry bodies, media, academia, government, innovators and entrepreneurs across the globe. He has been described as a true green business guru and a dean of the corporate responsibility movement.

Dr Ian McCallum is a medical doctor, analytical psychologist, psychiatrist and former Springbok. McCallum is a specialist wilderness guide, an author and poet as well as a director of the Wilderness Foundation. His award-winning book, Ecological Intelligence, Rediscovering Ourselves in Nature, addresses the interconnectedness of all living things and ultimately, the survival of the human animal.

Paul Clements-Hunt is former head of the United Nations Environment Programme Finance Initiative and a founding board member of the United Nations-backed Principles for Responsible Investment, an initiative supported by more than 1,000 of the world's largest institutional investors. Clements-Hunt has worked across business, investment, international affairs and the media to promote sustainable finance and responsible investment.

Jeff Speck is an urban designer and author who advocates internationally for smart growth and sustainable design, Speck was the former director of design at the National Endowment for the Arts. As the overseer of the Mayors Institute on City Design, he has helped many American mayors overcome pressing city planning challenges. Speck has dedicated his career to determining the one key factor which makes cities thrive  walkability.

Mario Molina is responsible for the design, strategic goals and engagement programmes for the Climate Reality Leadership Corps in the USA and abroad. Molina joined the Climate Reality Project in 2013 and has spearheaded training for over 4,000 leaders around the world. His expertise in international climate policy and strategy drives the Leadership Corps with data-driven engagement across multiple sectors.

Evan Rice is business development manager for Tesla Energy, South Africa. Over the past decade he has been active in energy across both the public and private sectors. Most recently he headed up GreenCape, an agency set up to support the accelerated development of an investment in the renewable energy and clean tech sectors in South Africa.

Terri Wills is CEO of the World Green Building Council, an organisation uniting 100 Green Building Councils. She previously headed the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group, a network of the worlds megacities committed to addressing climate change and served as the London city director for the Clinton Climate Initiative.

Benefiting people, planet, profits

In their experience and ideas lie the solutions; some outrageous and some extremely simple, but all revolutionary in their power to affect positive change and build a better world now. There is no better platform than this convention to network and engage with these change agents, says Wilkinson.

South African green building is driven by an acknowledgement that green building is the right thing to do, rather than by regulations, according to new research published in World Green Building Trends 2016. The report also predicts that South Africa could be a leader in the global green market in the next three years.

Its a clear sign that green building practices are gaining significant momentum in South Africa, along with an acknowledgment that Green Star-certified projects are not only world-class and innovative, but benefit people, the planet and profits, says Wilkinson.

For more on the Green Building Convention 2016, go to and to www.gbcsaconvention.org.za.
Most entrepreneurs, when deciding to start a business, don't really know where to start. Yearly, hundreds of thousands of South Africans take a leap of faith and start their own business which requires a lot of hard work, dedication and commitment and, unfortunately, many fail. But for the businesses that survive, the rewards of entrepreneurship far outweigh the challenges.

Darlene Menzies

It is said that entrepreneurship is living for a few years like most won't so you can live for the rest of your life like most never will. Darlene Menzies, CEO of SMEasy offers some guidelines to consider before starting your own business.

1. Taking a leap of faith: One of the most important characteristics of successful entrepreneurs is courage. When it comes to starting a business some people need the courage to let get go of the security of a monthly salary and the benefits of employment, others need courage to put everything they own or have saved on the line and for some its finding the courage to take the leap even when their family and friends are not convinced. There is never the perfect time to start your own business and you may never feel 100% ready but once you have considered every aspect, have done your planning and preparation then the only thing left it to find the courage to go for it!

2. Registrations: On the practical side, entrepreneurs who want to start a business need to be aware of the various business registrations required in order to trade. These include getting your business name approved and registering your business with the government department called CIPC (Companies and Intellectual Property Commission). This CIPC registration includes automatic SARS registration for your companys Income Tax number. If you will be paying yourself a salary or you employ staff you will have to register for UIF and Workmans Compensation with the Department of Labour. These are the basic legal registrations required when you start a business. It is also helpful to register a domain name so you are able to create email addresses and a company website.

3. Startup capital and access to finance: Funding is a major challenge for many entrepreneurs. According to the 2015 Ventureburn Startup Survey, 56% of startups are self-funded and 11% borrow money from friends and family. If neither of these resources is available to you, using a free product like finfind to secure finance is your best option. finfind is a unique product that enables business owners to understand and identify the best finance solution for their needs and includes tools which will help you to check your financial readiness, get small business advice, learn about access to finance and find lenders.

4. Budgeting and cash flow: Having enough money to meet your expenses each month is critical for every business. Well managed cash flow is the lifeblood of your business and is important for survival. How can you ensure that you will have the resources available to fund your business if you don't do a budget to understand your cash flow needs at the start? By committing a budget to paper, your chances of success are far greater as you are able to plan for all your future needs. To set yourself up for success from the get-go, choose an easy-to-use system that helps you stay on top of your cash flow. Something like the awarding SMEasy  an online accounting and small business management software package especially developed for startups.

5. Getting your name out there: Marketing and advertising play a huge role in ensuring the success of startup businesses. Marketing, even if it is simply word of mouth advertising, is crucial to attracting new business and ensure that you establish your footing. Put time aside to think about and define your brand (who you are, what you do, why you do it, etc.) and also to understand your target market (who are you selling to) is very important. Once you have done this you can then decide what the optimum marketing strategies are for you to implement to get your name out there, taking into account what you can afford of course.

Starting a new business is an exciting journey and as with any journey, there are often unexpected challenges to overcome. Give comprehensive consideration to these five critical factors to help you to plan for success and avoid failure. Success is where preparation meets opportunity. Prepare well so that you are well positioned when doors of opportunity start to open.
With the rise of robots, artificial intelligence and automation, today's comfortable careers are no longer an option for job seekers from Generation Z. The majority of learners attending school right now will one day work in jobs that do not currently exist.

Angelique Robbertse

A fighting chance

Members of this generation, born from the mid-1990s through to the 2010s have to develop new skills and need to be flexible to compete against robots and automated systems that are threatening traditional jobs. The future isnt all that bleak for this generation, in fact, they can look forward to excelling in fields such as technology, science and mathematics while working remotely and when they want to, says Angelique Robbertse, product and marketing manager for Job Mail.

Science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) skills remain important, especially since this generation will have to solve problems in a technology-rich environment. Technology will provide them with both opportunities to excel and obstacles to overcome, she says.

One of the fears is that robots will result in retrenchments as jobs are displaced, but companies are developing innovative internal skills development programmes so that workers have a fighting chance to stay employed. Hailed as the new corporate social investment, these programmes develop both hard and soft skills within an organisation to feed the talent pipeline from within, adds Robbertse.

Are robots really treading on traditional jobs?

Associated Press publishes 3,000 financial earnings reports each quarter with the help of an automated system. The same system generates millions of articles a week for other well-known news platforms and it is estimated that it can produce 2,000 articles per second if need be. The thinking is that it frees up journalists time to enable them to tackle in-depth articles.

In Japan, global advertising agency, McCann, hired a robot as a creative director earlier this year. The agencys reasoning is that an AI (artificial intelligence) can advise creativity, rather than substitute it.

The sharing economy, think Airbnb and Uber, that enables ordinary citizens to make their assets work for them, has given way to the gig economy where people can work when they want to. With Amazons Flex programme, people in certain US cities can deliver packages for the company, become their own bosses and work when it suits them.

Future careers

Innovation, collaboration and transparency are all attributes that drive members of Generation Z and these are also what they look for in a workplace environment. But what traits does a future career ask of them? Critical thinking, problem-solving, creativity, digital literacy, entrepreneurialism and the ability to blend a variety of skills from different jobs to become a specialist in a new field are required.

The Millennial generation championed flexible work styles and a path of continuous learning during the span of their career. It is up to Generation Z to adapt to new jobs that we cant even fathom and possibly multiple jobs during their career, she says.

Some of the future job titles include nano-specialists, specifically in the medical field, personalised caregivers for the elderly, space farmers cultivating crops in space and on celestial objects, water supply transitionists to harvest water, avatar designers and managers managing virtual replicas of people, child designers creating children that fit the requirements of their parents, drone traffic optimisers for the commercial drone industry and driverless operating system engineers for deliveries by autonomous vehicles.

The next generation has disorder, disruption, diplomacy, socio-cultural shifts and complex ethical issues to deal with, but it looks like they will have the tools and drive to figure it out, says Robbertse.
Withing one week the 2016 #Stellenblog campaign reached close to 4,7-million people worldwide, revealing an exceptional amount of publicity for the Stellenbosch region. Showcasing Stellenbosch beyond just its vines, the #Stellenblog campaign saw international and local bloggers explore as much of the area as they could fit into just a few days to get a feel for why Stellenbosch is the perfect hub from where to explore surrounding regions like Cape Town.

We are extremely excited to have reached as many people as we did with this years campaign, says Annemarie Ferns, CEO of Stellenbosch 360. Between the bloggers own content posted during their time here, other local online influencers that joined in on the fun as well as the work of our team, we have generated just under R12-million worth of exposure in one week!

Kiersten Rich, blogger at The Blonde Abroad, believes that South Africas Stellenbosch region is an incredible place to visit and that her trip completely changed her perceptions about the country as a whole. Twiggy Moli, blogger at Sleepless in Soweto, believes that Stellenbosch is the ideal place for people from Johannesburg to head to if theyre looking for a great foodie destination and to unwind.

The team of bloggers was selected by Destinate and campaign partner, iAmbassador, the world's most representative blogger network, and includes some of the best-known travel, lifestyle and food bloggers in the world and South Africa. International bloggers included: Rob Lloyd of Stop Having a Boring Life from Canada; Luiz Hara of The London Foodie from the UK; Marvin Schonberg of Niedblog from Germany; and Kiersten Rich of The Blonde Abroad from the USA.

These international bloggers were joined by three local South African travel and lifestyle bloggers: Meruschka Govender of MzansiGirl, Twiggy Moli of Sleepless in Soweto and Natalie Roos of Tails of a Mermaid and Destinate.

"Travellers as we know them have changed, shifting their focus to experiential travel. Its now all about getting under the skin of destinations, connecting with locals and creating memories rather than checking off sightseeing attractions through a bus window. The #Stellenblog campaign is well aligned with global travel trends and speaks to the new traveller, says Stellenbosch Wine Routes manager, Elmarie Rabe."We are thrilled with the results achieved so far."

To make sure you dont miss out on any of the action, follow the #Stellenblog hashtag on Twitter and Instagram or follow the action on our social stream. For more information and reasons to visit the region for more than a wine tour visit Stellenbosch Experience and keep an eye on #visitStellenbosch on social media.

The Stellenbosch Experience, a joint marketing venture between Stellenbosch Wine Routes and Stellenbosch 360 was conceptualised by Destinate and is made possible through multiple partnerships, including: Kleine Zalze, Spier, First Car Rental, LAvenir, Delaire Graff Estate and South African Airways.
The view from Victoria Falls is so impressive that 68 years ago British Airways' forerunner, BOAC, added a stop to its UK/ Johannesburg service, just so its customers could see it. It launched the new service on 4 May 1948, using Solent flying boats. These departed Southampton and - via five stops, including the one at the Falls - landed on the Vaal Dam four-and-a-half days later.

BOAC Short Solent S45 G-AHIN Southampton

It wasnt the quickest way to travel between Johannesburg and the UK - a Skymaster could do the trip in about 30 hours  but the BOAC planners hoped that a scenic night stop at the Falls would convince leisure travellers that the extra time the flying boats needed to cover the 5,600 nautical miles was worth it.

The Vaal Dam was chosen as a flying-boat station because, according to a BOAC newsletter from the time: With a useable area of approximately 90 square miles, and alighting areas varying from 11,000 to 20,000 feet in length, Vaaldam (sic) now makes and ideal flying-boat station. It is almost unheard of for flying conditions to be suspended owing to severe weather.

Another attraction of the Dam was that BOAC didnt have to start from scratch. Training facilities which flying boat crews had used during the war, when C- class flying boats operated the Horseshoe route from Durban, could be upgraded and enlarged.

The flight

After taking off from the Vaal Dam the Solents flew to Victoria Falls, landing on the Zambezi. Station engineer, S. Kempson, describes what it was like seeing one of the flying boats coming in to land: It circled Victoria Falls at 14.08 hours and in a few moments was orbiting the alighting area, four-and-a-half miles above the cataracts. Approaching from low above Kandahar Island, the aircraft lost height with superb grace, and scudding swiftly across the waters of the Zambesi, completed a perfect touch-down. She taxied easily towards the mooring-buoy, and tied up in seconds.

The next day  there was no night flying - the aircraft took off for the onward flight to the UK via Port Bell on Lake Victoria, Khartoum, Alexandria and Augusta.

The weekly service is commemorated on a mural at the Victoria Falls Hotel, where the 34 passengers overnighted; a stop which was affectionately nicknamed the Jungle Junction, a name given to the hotels buffet restaurant in 1996.

Originally BOAC hoped to grow the flying boat service to three a week, but rapid improvements in post-war aircraft design meant that pressurised Hermes aircraft replaced the Solents. The Hermes could do the London/Johannesburg journey in a day-and-a-half. The last BOAC flying boat service to Johannesburg ended in November 1950.

Today

Today British Airways operates its most modern aircraft on the route. The A380 can accommodate 469 customers in four cabins; First, Club World, World Traveller Plus and World Traveller. It does the journey from OR Tambo to Terminal 5 in 11 hours. Its franchise partner, British Airways operated by Comair offers daily flights to Victoria Falls from Johannesburg.

In 1948 a return ticket on the flying boat service cost 300,12s about 10,695 or R224,595 in todays money. This week British Airways is offering a special, with World Traveller return tickets from Johannesburg to London starting from R10,540. The equivalent Club World (business class) fare is R45,42. The special is available for booking until 9 May for travel until 8 December in Club World. Dates for travel in World Traveller are 3 May to 21 June and 12 September to 8 December.

Although the scenic stopover at the Victoria Falls wasnt enough to save the flying-boat service, as faster, more efficient aircraft were introduced on the route, theres still plenty of demand for the flight of angels, with various charter companies offering flights over the Falls. Contrary to what visitors may think, the term wasnt coined tourism brochure copywriters, but David Livingstone, the first European explorer to see the Falls. He wrote in his chronicles: It had never before been seen by European eyes, but scenes so lovely must have been gazed upon by angels in their flight.
"You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete." - R. Buckminster Fuller. Those words, though spoken a decade ago, still ring true in present times, especially when it comes to the progression and innovation in technology. At Check Point there's a lot of thinking about future trends and potential threats, as well as innovating and building solutions to combat these cybersecurity challenges.

Eugene Sergeev via 123RF

To be as effective as possible, threat defences need to be observed and managed in real time to give as much time to respond as possible. Robust security management is a solution that includes the installation of high-tech systems designed to protect an organisations data, networks and devices, while providing real-time visibility into security risk.

This includes the development, documentation, and implementation of policies and procedures for protecting these assets. Unfortunately, the response to potential threats tends to be point product or the reactive construction of new policies and rules, which only serve as a Band-Aid, at best. This is largely because a unified security program  based on integrated technology  is often not being used.

Start solving real problems

The security industry does not need more point products to duct-tape solutions together and hope for the best. Companies need real solutions  ones that can integrate their system and give them visibility into the security risk of the environment. A powerful security management platform gives your company a strategic and tactical advantage by enabling the management of potential threats, without inhibiting business innovation.

With that said, there are four primary ways in which you can help secure your companys environment:

1. Conquer with consolidation: Security complexity can be conquered through consolidation  bringing all security protections and functions under one umbrella. By consolidating security on a single platform, companies gain more control over their security, get better insight into their security posture and can respond more quickly to shut down threats to their entire environment.

2. Unified policy management: Ultimately, when policies are misconfigured, the organisation is not able to protect and gain visibility into the increasing number of business segments. This puts the entire organisation at risk. The key to strong security architecture that can overcome the most difficult cyber security challenges can only be delivered by using a security management solution that delivers unparalleled operational efficiency.

3. Integrated threat management: You cannot monitor or protect devices you dont know about. Security challenges are increased when there is a lack of proper visibility for incident detection and response. This is precisely the reason why a single, visual dashboard is so important for event analysis, and threat monitoring and mitigation, to ensure full-spectrum visibility into threats across the entire perimeter and beyond.

4. Automated operations: By automating operations, security teams have the confidence to integrate ticketing, network management or cloud orchestration systems, knowing that they can limit exactly what integrated systems have access to and what they are capable of doing.

Consolidate and optimise

As evasion techniques evolve and become more intelligent, so must the technology to keep your business secure. A robust security management platform allows your company to be proactive in its approach to security, rather than reactive.

To provide security professionals with a comprehensive resource on security management, weve developed a whitepaper that provides you with solutions to tackle the most complex environments.

We invite you to rethink your current security posture, and enable strong protections for the organisation. Everything from technology, people, policy, operations and management must be considered in a new light, with a fresh mindset.
The tit-for-tat exchange between Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan and the board of directors of state-owned Denel intensified on Wednesday, with the minister lashing out at what he described as the entity's arrogance and belligerence.

Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan - Image via Who's Who

Struggling South African Airways (SAA) is another state-owned company the minister is having to grapple with. The airline's board of directors was put on notice by Deputy Finance Minister Mcebisi Jonas, who told MPs during the debate on the Treasury budget in the National Assembly that the airline would receive financial support from the Treasury once a new board was in place.

It has been reliably learnt that the long delay - since January - in getting a new board appointed is a result of the stalemate between President Jacob Zuma, who insists on the retention of his close friend, SAA chairwoman Dudu Myeni, and Mr Gordhan who has proposed a new board.

Regarding his dispute with Denel, Gordhan said, in his concluding remarks on the debate, that recently when the boards of state-owned companies did things they were not supposed to, they tended to "display a level of arrogance and belligerence" that did not befit the right kind of corporate governance. "The board at Denel needs to take that message to heart," Gordhan said.

Dispute over Denel's joint venture with Gupta-linked company

The Treasury is in dispute with arms maker Denel over the joint venture Denel Asia entered into with the Gupta family-linked VR Laser Asia. Denel went ahead with the venture without first obtaining Treasury's approval, as required by the Public Finance Management Act.

Public Enterprises Minister Lynne Brown has prohibited the company from trading, pending the resolution of the dispute. Brown said last week that she would be meeting Gordhan to discuss the matter.

In a previous statement about the joint venture, Gordhan reiterated comments by Zuma that no state entity could dictate to government how it should be supported or led.

He noted in the statement that disciplinary proceedings would be necessary for any failure to comply with the finance management act. The minister's statement prompted the Denel board to issue its own media statements. One of them noted the constitutional obligation on all spheres of government and organs of state - including the Treasury and Denel - to cooperate with one another in mutual trust and good faith and to deal with matters of mutual interest internally instead of through the media.

Gordhan's comments are likely to worsen the already less-than-ideal relations between the parties.

Turnaround strategy for SAA

On SAA Jonas said once appointed, the new board would have to choose a competent CEO, chief financial officer and fill other key posts. The executive team would have to accelerate the implementation of the long-term turnaround strategy and deal with the rationalisation of government's airline businesses including SAA, SA Express and Mango.

NJR ZA via Wikimedia Commons - SAA park

"Once all of these are implemented, government will be in a position to consider possible support that would enable SAA to table its annual financial statements for the last two years, as a going concern," Jonas said.

The deputy minister emphasised that SAA needed to reduce its losses significantly and increase its revenue. The airline has been unable to table its financial statements for 2014-15 in Parliament - due by August last year - because of the concern by auditors over its going-concern status. The airline is currently kept afloat by a R14.4bn guarantee from the state, and applied in December last year for further state support of R4bn-R5bn.

Gordhan has had to ask the Speaker of the National Assembly Baleka Mbete for an extension for the tabling of the annual report while he tries to get a new board of directors in place. He told MPs that the government wanted to introduce a minority equity partner into SAA at some future stage, but only once the airline was firmly on its feet, was well-governed, and the turnaround plan had been implemented. - With Carol Paton

Source: BDpro
After several delays, the Department of Communications says SA is on track to complete the migration process from analogue to digital television by the end of next year.

SA already lags much of Africa on migration and missed last year's June International Telecommunications Union deadline to switch its broadcast signal to digital. This means the union will no longer protect SA's analogue signal, with the immediate effect that people living in border areas will experience signal interruptions.

Communications Department spokesman Mish Molakeng, speaking before Minister Faith Muthambi's budget vote in Parliament tomorrow, said the department was hopeful the migration would be completed next year.

The Northern Cape would become the first province to successfully migrate by July, he said.

"We are continuing and we are on the ground every other week to educate people on the migration process. The deadlines are tight. There is a consensus among the Southern African Development Community ministers that the countries in the region should complete this process by the end of next year," Molakeng said.

The rollout of digital terrestrial television has been hampered by delays amid bickering over the inclusion of a conditional access or encryption system for set-top boxes required when the country moves to digital.

Late last year the high court in Pretoria ruled that broadcaster e.tv could appeal in the Supreme Court of Appeal against the government's digital terrestrial television policy.

This could further delay the migration process and the government may be forced to pay millions of rand to replace the set-top boxes already made. E.tv had challenged the policy, in which Muthambi barred government-subsidised settop boxes from being programmed to allow for encryption.

The broadcaster argued that the minister had exceeded her powers, did not consult relevant stakeholders and that her decision was unreasonable. E.tv said that conditional access was also needed in free-to-air set-top boxes to allow broadcasters to compete more effectively with DStv.

Molakeng would not comment on the case, but said the department was forging ahead with its plans to complete the migration process.

Muthambi's views on encryption are similar to those of the SABC and MultiChoice, the owners of DStv. Both broadcasters contend that encryption would add extra costs to manufacturing settop boxes.

Source: Business Day
Five Zimbabwean men have been successfully growing crops on land abandoned as unprofitable in Malmesbury. The landowner, N7 Meat, gave up farming crops on the land, claiming losses of over R1 million.

Photo via GroundUp - Albert Chinhanga, one of the N7 Farmers. Photo supplied

Zinhanga and four friends met the landowner when buying an ox for slaughter at N7 Meat in 2014. Noticing fallow land, they asked why it was unutilised. The farmer said it was unprofitable and if the Zimbabweans refused to believe him, he said they could try and farm it for free for a year. They could use his farming equipment and only pay for electricity. He bet them they could not make a go of it.

According to one of the Zimbabweans, Albert Zinhanga, a teacher of African languages at Cravenby High School in Parow, the farmer was told it would cost R300,000 to correct the pH of the soil. He didn't want to invest further and continued concentrating on rearing sheep, cattle and pigs elsewhere on his farm.

Zinhanga has four partners; one does have a doctorate in agriculture, the others have degrees in physics, science and engineering. "We never dreamt or even thought that one day we will be farmers," said Zinhanga. "We were just a group of academics driving around buying farm products."

The secret is in the cow dung

The five men tested the soil and the water and it seemed good to them, albeit sandy. To counter this, they say they watered continuously before planting any crops. They planted three hectares in all, with tomatoes, cauliflower, broccoli, spinach and maize. Neighbouring farmers, watching the developments, came to them and gave advice. They also introduced the men to Cape Town Epping Market to sell their produce.

When the maize crop ripened, the surrounding farmers were stunned. They said they had never seen such big stalks, says Zinhanga. The Zimbabweans say the secret is to use cow dung and not to rely solely on fertiliser.

Taking turns

After the initial success, the farm owner offered them the land at a rental of R1,200 per hectare. They now farm 15 hectares and have also started growing a leaf vegetable called tsunga. They call themselves the N7 Farmers, but as they all have full-time jobs, they work the farm on Saturdays and Sundays and during the week take turns after work. They have six employees. The farm manager is Malawian. Four general workers are South Africans and there is one Zimbabwean. During planting and harvesting time, they hire 20 part-time workers on Saturdays.

Zinhanga and his team were announced winners in the small business of the year award category on 2 April at the Cape Town Zimbabwe Excellence Gala Dinner Awards Ceremony 2016 at Kelvin Grove, Newlands.
SAN FRANCISCO - YouTube plans to launch a service that streams cable television channels to viewers over the Internet for the price of a subscription, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday.

YouTube has made a priority of creating the service, called Unplugged, which could debut as early as next year, according to the report, which cited unnamed people close to the project.

YouTube executives have talked about the plan with major media companies such as Viacom, NBCUniversal, and Twenty-First Century Fox but had yet to obtain rights to any content, according to unidentified sources cited by Bloomberg.

YouTube is a unit of Alphabet-owned Google, where it has been billed as a star performer when it comes to attracting viewers and revenue.

YouTube last year introduced Red, were ad-free videos can be seen for monthly subscriptions of $10 in the United States.

When contacted by AFP, YouTube declined to comment on the Unplugged report.

Source: AFP
On the eve of World Press Freedom Day, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) launched the campaign, 'Great year for censorship', an ironic campaign about 12 heads of state who will be throwing parties tomorrow to celebrate their victories over media freedom.

Designed by the Paris-based advertising agency BETC for RSFs 2016 World Press Freedom Index, the campaign focuses on leaders in 12 countries who have trampled on media freedom and gagged journalists in various spectacular ways.

Burundi President Pierre Nkurunziza

These include: grenades thrown at radio stations in Burundi; journalists fired over a tweet in Turkey; massive state propaganda in China, Russia and Eritrea; a blogger jailed and flogged in public in Saudi Arabia; military detention camps for journalists in Thailand these are just a few examples of how these 12 enemies of media freedom behave.

RSFs 2016 World Press Freedom Index has highlighted a deep and worrying decline in the ability of journalists to operate freely and independently throughout the world, including these 12 countries.

Journalistic independence is being undermined in both state and privately-owned media as a result of enhanced mechanisms for censorship and news control, propaganda apparatuses, and ideologies  especially religious extremism  that are hostile to journalism.

Eritrea leader Isaias Afwerki

And all over the world, oligarchs are buying up media outlets and subjecting journalists to pressure that adds to the existing pressure from governments often allied with leading corporate interests.

The campaign targets these leaders:

Pierre Nkurunziza (Burundi) Isaias Afwerki (Eritrea) Salman bin Abdelaziz Al Saud (Saudi Arabia) Ilham Aliyev (Azerbaijan) Abdel Fattah al-Sisi (Egypt) Prayuth Chan-ocha (Thailand) Recep Tayyip Erdogan (Turkey) Kim Jong-Un (North Korea) Ali Khamenei (Iran) Nicolas Maduro (Venezuela) Vladimir Putin (Russia) Xi Jinping (China).

BETC has produced the World Press Freedom Day campaign free of charge for RSF for the fifth year running. The ad agencys staffers even posed for the photos on which the heads of these leaders were superimposed.

The campaigns posters can already be seen on the streets of Paris and in digital format on social networks.
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KIA Battalion 17 under the group's Brigade 4 and the Burma Armys Light Infantry Division (LID) 77 fought on 29 and 30 April.

When reached for comment Lt-Col Naw Bu from the KIAs Laiza headquarters confirmed that the clashes took place.

The KIA and the Burma Army clashed on the Kutkai to Kunlong Road to the west of the Salween River at around 10 am on 29 April while the KIA troops were returning from Man Kang near Ji Lai Pa, which is under KIA Battalion 17s territory, according to details provided by the KIA.

Another battle broke out at noon on 30 April after the Burma Army forcibly entered Hu Yau Bum where the KIA Battalion 17s Second Unit was located, according to information released by the KIA .

On 22 April KIA Battalion 35, under the group's Brigade 8, fought with the Burma Army in the west of Mohnyin while KIA Mobile Battalion 255 fought with the Burma Army near the group's Laiza headquarters. The KIA and the Burma Army also fought in Hpawng Seng in northern Shan State on 21 April.

Translated by Thida Linn
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C-130J Super Hercules aircraft

KOLKATA (PTI): Indian Air Force chief Air Marshal Arup Raha on Thursday reviewed a new hangar facility for C-130J Super Hercules aircraft at Air Force Station Arjan Singh in West Bengal's Panagarh.



Raha is on a two-day visit to the Eastern Air Command's area of responsibility from on Thursday, officials said.



As a turnkey project, Lockheed Martin, the US-based aircraft manufacturer, has built hangar facilities and other associated infrastructure as it was done in Hindon airbase for the military transport aircraft which can refuel mid-air.



The infrastructure is similar to the facilities built world over for Super Hercules tactical aircraft that IAF also operates since February 2011, officials said adding a new transport squadron will be raised at the Panagarh airbase, recently renamed AFS Arjan Singh, to operate the Super Hercules aircraft.



Presently, two AN-32 squadrons operate out of the Jorhat airbase in upper Assam, while a flight of Avro aircraft undertakes VIP communication duties from Borjhar airbase, Guwahati.



With the arrival of two aircraft from the Hindon-based 'Veiled Viper' squadron, IAF's second C-130J Super Hercules hub had become operational last year.



A batch of six C-130J aircraft will be handed over to the IAF by Lockheed Martin early next year.



A fly-past by a single C-130J Super Hercules flying in from Hindon was timed to coincide with the Air Chief's visit to the newly-built hangar facilities at the airbase even as another was parked at the tarmac for static display.



The Air Chief interacted with the air warriors of the airbase and officials of Lockheed Martin.



Raha will also visit other adjoining airbases of Kalaikunda, Salua and Purnea during his visit.






NEW DELHI (PTI): Indian Air Force gains by participating in international combat exercises, especially when its fighter jets are pitted against US F-16s and F-18s which are used by Pakistan, government said on Friday.



Without naming Pakistan, Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar said in Lok Sabha that knowledge of close combat ability of F-16s and F-18s was important for the Western front of India.



He said the experience of flying against the F-16s was important for the IAF which has currently deployed its Sukhoi 30s and Jaguars in the ongoing exercise 'Red Flag 16-1' being held at Alaska in the US.



Responding to a supplementary on the benefit of participating in bilateral or multilateral exercises if IAF pilots don't get to fly F-16s, he said the idea is to pit IAF pilots and its machines against F-16 to understand the adversary.



He said most aircraft are lost in the first 10 clashes in a war as pilots are unable to identify the 'signature' of enemy planes. Such exercises help understand other planes better, he added.



To a question on the flaws and shortcomings found following the Alaska exercise, he said when the IAF contingent returns in June, then the work on understanding the achievements and shortfalls will begin.



Pakistan uses the F-16 fighter jets. The US government has made a case to the US Congress to sell eight new F-16s to Pakistan to assist its counter-terror and counter-insurgency operations.


Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 06/05/2016 (2362 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

FOXWARREN  While most of Westman was enjoying record-breaking temperatures, a different kind of historical moment was being celebrated in Foxwarren on Thursday afternoon.

Roughly 75 people attended a ground blessing ceremony at the towns old school site to mark the end of a decade-long addition to reserve (ATR) process for Birdtail Sioux First Nation.

Im really ecstatic, I cant really put it into words  I didnt know how to feel after 10 years, Birdtail Chief Ken Chalmers said.

Tim Smith/The Brandon Sun Birdtail Sioux First Nation Chief Ken Chalmers addresses the crowd gathered to witness a ground blessing on newly acquired reserve land in Foxwarren on Thursday. After a 10-year land transfer process, Chalmers is really ecstatic and looking forward to development opportunities.

Birdtails chief and council first applied to acquire the eight-and-a-half acre plot of land off Highway 16 in 2005 and the land transfer was officially approved by the federal government on April 22.

On Thursday, community members from Birdtail and Foxwarren gathered under a big blue and white tent for the hour-long ceremony, which included a smudge, a drum song and a blessing by Sioux Valley First Nation elder Harold Blacksmith.

Dignitaries at the event included several chiefs from nearby Dakota First Nations, representatives from the Manitoba branch of Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada and Arthur-Virden Progressive Conservative MLA Doyle Piwniuk.

Prairie View Municipality Coun. Roger Wilson was on hand to congratulate Birdtail and welcome new economic development into the RM.

Weve had population decline in the last 30-ish years in Manitoba  we need to reinvent how we do business in this part of the world and we think will be a fantastic opportunity to open those doors, Wilson said, adding that the municipality has been on board with the plan since it was first proposed 10 years ago. Its frustrating (and) it baffles me how it can take this long.

In Canada, any First Nation interested in accumulating more land must conduct stakeholder negotiations with nearby communities and all levels of government, complete an environmental assessment and outline the legal description of the land before its application can be approved by Indigenous and Northern Affairs.

Birdtail is one of five Manitoba First Nations that have not signed a treaty with the federal government and Chalmers believes that status played a role in the length of the ATR process.

Tim Smith/Brandon Sun Students attend a Birdtail Sioux First Nation ground blessing for newly acquired reserve land in Foxwarren on Thursday afternoon.

That did have an effect because were in Treaty 4 country (which covers Southern Saskatchewan and part of western Manitoba) and this is their territory, but we know this is our territory, he said. It took the Department of Justice three years to work out the details with the treaty bands.

Chalmers also attributes the ATRs approval to a recent face-to-face meeting with Indigenous and Northern Affairs Minister Carolyn Bennett in Toronto.

I put a lot of passion into it, he said. It sat for two years on the ministers desk in the Harper government and it should have been signed off three years ago.

Birdtail has already started renovating the interior of the Foxwarren school and Chalmers hopes the proposed bingo hall, VLT centre, restaurant and gas bar will be open for business later this year.

Were pushing it for November  weve got to work at the speed of business, Chalmers said.

Birdtail is putting $1.25 million of its earnings from other business ventures toward the renovations and the project will also be supported by private investors and federal funding, according to Chalmers.

Once built, Chalmers says the gaming and hospitality complex will create jobs for Birdtails young people and provide a source of revenue for housing, social programs and education  the chief estimates the development will bring in $200,000 per month for the First Nation.

Tim Smith/The Brandon Sun The former Foxwarren school, which Birdtail has already started renovating as it looks to open a bingo hall, VLT centre, restaurant and gas bar on the newly acquired land.

We have a vision  The work begins now, Chalmers said.

 ewasney@brandonsun.com

 Twitter: @evawasney
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 06/05/2016 (2362 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Wheat City felt the heat on Thursday, as officials to rolled out new fire bans for parts of Westman.

The mercury spiked at about 33.7 C at about 3 p.m., topping a record for May 5 set in 1934 by exactly four degrees.

Environment Canada warning preparedness meteorologist Natalie Hasell said the hot spell will only be a day long, and a cold front was expected to roll into Brandon overnight.

Were under the influence of a ridge of high pressure which allowed for sunny skies and light winds, she said. The hot air above Manitoba came from the southwestern portion of the continent, she added.

Right now were in a warm sector of a low-pressure system that is travelling across the northern and central areas of the province, thats where that cold front is going to come from.

That means a forecast thats closer to seasonal for the weekend: Highs in the low 20s, with nighttime lows keeping several degrees above zero.

On May 5 in 1959, Brandon received four centimetres of snow and in 1944 the daytime high was 8.3 C. The average high this time of year is about 16 C.

While a cool and wet April kept the prospects of wildfires low, the warm weather has also forced officials to call for fire bans in several Westman municipalities heading into the weekend.

Dry, windy weather means the risk for fire is higher, until trees start to green later in May, a statement from Manitoba Sustainable Development noted.

As of Thursday afternoon, burning is prohibited in the RMs of Whitehead, Victoria, Elton, Prairie Lakes (including Pelican Lake), North Cypress-Langford, Cornwallis, Stanley, Roblin and Riding Mountain West, the municipalities of Glenboro-South Cypress, Oakland-Wawanesa, Norfolk Treherne, North Norfolk, Souris-Glenwood and the Town of Carberry.

Officials also restricted some activities in Spruce Woods Provincial Park and Spruce Woods Provincial Forest, including Camp Hughes and the Spruce Woods Wildlife Refuge near CFB Shilo. Restrictions include camping away from developed campgrounds and non-permitted back-country travel, and a ban on remote cottage access. In all provincial parks, except Bird Hills, campfires are permitted in approved pits with no additional restrictions.

 tbateman@brandonsun.com

 Twitter: @tombatemann
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 06/05/2016 (2362 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Canadas Army reserves are understaffed, undertrained and underprepared for international and domestic missions, an auditor generals report reveals.

The report, released this week by Auditor General Michael Ferguson, identifies only 13,944 reservists considered as ready for service, while there are 21,000 positions on the books for the 123 units across Canada.

The federal government has stated it wants to increase the force up to 27,000 reservists.

Reservists from Manitoba and northwestern Ontario eat lunch while on a soldier qualification course at CFB Shilo. Canadas Army reserves are understaffed and underprepared for missions, according to an auditor generals report.

The 38 Brigade Group, made of 13 units from Saskatchewan, Manitoba and northwestern Ontario is on average the least-staffed per capita in the 2014-15 fiscal year. Of the 12 units with fewer than half of the soldiers needed last fiscal year, four were in the 38th Brigade.

Ferguson attributed the issue to the recruiting system being unable to supply the number of soldiers needed by reserves.

The 26th Field Artillery Regiment RCA, based in Brandon and Portage La Prairie, is at 54 per cent of its size, according to the audit.

Maj. Mike Lagace, a retired Winnipeg officer who first became a reservist in the 1970s, believes quality training will help bolster local reserves.

Lagace is the public affairs officer for 38 Brigade.

If its not challenging, worthwhile training (then) theyre going to show a lack of support with their boots, meaning they are just going to find something else to do, he said.

Lagace pointed to an exercise this weekend in Dundurn, Sask., that will be attended by several 38 Brigade groups, including the Fort Garry Horse armoured regiment and Saskatchewan Dragoons  which are two of the better staffed groups locally.

My son-in-law (a sergeant with Fort Garry Horse) is saying that his unit numbers having increased because it looks like a very challenging exercise. Just this morning he said, Weve had to lay on more vehicles to Dundurn because the challenging activities look great.

Ferguson noted that across Canada, reserve soldiers had lower levels of training as cohesive teams and collective training was not well integrated with regular army units.

Similarly, on international missions, the audit suggested that reserve units lack clear guidance to prepare for international missions.

Lagace estimates 20 per cent of 38 Brigade was deployed to Afghanistan.

Weve got units that are

40 per cent deployed to Afghanistan. Those opportunities to go off on a tour are very real, he said.

Lagace was deployed to Bosnia, and his son served in Afghanistan in 2008. Hes confident reservists are ready for what theyre deployed to.

Ive seen the work-up training for their deployment and did he feel prepared? He absolutely felt prepared.

Theres also significant issues for those serving: Ferguson found reservists havent been properly trained on some basic weapons including the pistol, explosives and grenade launcher.

Domestically, reserve units, which played major roles in Saskatchewan wildfires and Manitoba floods in recent years, have been expected to head into the field without proper training, and with a lack of important resources like vehicles, command posts and communications equipment.

Ferguson noted there isnt a defined list of all the equipment reserves should have for training and domestic missions.

This means that Army reserve units may have to rely on other Canadian Armed Forces units to provide this equipment, but we were told that it is often not available, the report says.

National Defence, in its response, agreed with the criticism and said it is working on the equipment issue.

Lt.-Gen. Marquis Haines, the commander of the Army, says theyre putting in place measures to ensure that reservists are more prepared to deploy, both at home and abroad.

Any gaps in training will be assessed and resolved before deployment and the completion of army reserve training objectives will be confirmed annually, he said in a statement.

But Lagace remains confident in the Armys ability to best prepare troops, and said the rigour of training for reservists has increased through the years hes served.

Honestly, to where we are now or even when I rejoined (the reserves) in 1990 (from the 1970s), it was night and day, he said.

It was almost like a time warp when I left for those 13 years, seeing the difference in training  and then from 90 to now its even much more so now, he said.

 tbateman@brandonsun.com, with files from The Canadian Press

 Twitter: @tombatemann
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Stickiness is the main reason consumers havent seen a drop in beef prices despite a market decline in the cattle industry, according to Manitoba Beef Producers general manager Brian Lemon.

Cattle prices have fallen approximately 15 to 20 per cent since last summer and 20 to 25 per cent since their peak in the fall of 2014. Despite the market shift, beef prices have stayed strong at the grocery store according to data from Statistics Canada.

Lemon, while referring to the market as sticky, said that similar to the petroleum industry there is a lag before consumers benefit from a decline.

Bruce Bumstead/The Brandon Sun Cattle graze in a field near Douglas. While cattle prices are well off their 2014 peak, consumers have yet to reap the benefits, which Manitoba Beef Producers general manager Brian Lemon attributes to supermarkets trying to hold onto high prices and demand at this time of year.

Price stickiness is the resistance of a price to change for a certain good despite changes in input cost or demand patterns.

Grocery stores, according to Lemon, are trying to hold onto higher prices for as long as possible to ensure they dont incur any losses from when they purchased the product at a higher rate.

Another reason why prices have remained strong is that demand is typically higher at this time of year.

A lot of people talk about the barbecue season and that there is a higher demand coming into the spring and summer on the retail side which helps support higher prices, Lemon said.

Prices for quality cuts of beef are expected to come down, something that typically takes four to six months after downward market pressure.

Its not the only challenge for the beef industry, however, as eating habits, including a shift toward poultry, eggs, beans and fish, are affecting the market.

Lemon said its important for the beef industry to continue to analyze market trends and keep a close eye on some of its main competitors at the grocery store.

With such a small percentage of the global herd, Canada cant dictate prices.

With 11.9 million head of cattle, Canada has the 11th-largest herd, according to the United States Department of Agriculture. That represents only 1.23 per cent of the total herd of cattle with India (301.6 million), Brazil (219.1 million), China (100.2 million), the U.S. (92 million) and the European Union (88.6 million) making up the top five spots.

The top five producers account for more than 82 per cent of the total market.

Were not the masters of our pricing scheme as were part of the global market, Lemon said. Canada tends to be a price taker in many respects.

A changing consumer is also presenting challenges for the industry as educated buyers now demand more transparency about how the animals were cared for prior to making their decision.

Tyler Stephens/The Brandon Sun Most meat prices have been rising steadily over the past five years, although beef prices are expected to drop later this year.

In April, the Canadian restaurant chain Earls announced it would source its beef from the U.S. from a farm stamped with the Humane Farm Animal Care seal of approval.

The move created backlash acrosss Alberta with several campaigns created to boycott the restaurant chain and Wednesday Earls announced it would reverse its decision.

We made a mistake, Earls president Mo Jessa said via Twitter. We should have worked with local ranchers that met our criteria. And I assure you were going to do everything in our power to find local ranchers, work with them and get Canadian beef back into Earls. And do it quickly.

Lemon said Canadian producers are already renowned for treating animals humanely.

We dont have a fancy logo and havent paid to be part of that marketing program, but everything short of filling out that companys paperwork we are already doing, Lemon said.

Merv Nykoliation, who farms 275 head near Lenore, said Earls initial decision infuriated beef farmers, who said the campaign is nothing more than a clever marketing ploy designed to make the rest of the industry look bad.

It was a slap in the face as a producer, Nykoliation said. Canadian farmers looked after our animals even when they were worth nothing and we looked after them when they were worth a fortune. Its a life, a living organism and we do what we can to make sure its healthy.

 ctweed@brandonsun.com

 Twitter: @CharlesTweed
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LAC LA BICHE, Alta.  Emily Ryan died in a car crash while fleeing wildfires in northern Alberta, but firefighters were determined not to let memories of her disappear.

The 15-year-old was the daughter of a deputy fire chief in Saprae Creek east of Fort McMurray. After her death, when flames threatened her family home, crews spent the night dousing the exterior with water.

That was a huge sacrifice on their behalf, because some of them lost their homes while they were making sure that we didnt lose ours, said Emilys sister Chelsi Ryan, her voice shaking.

Triplets Lucas Ryan, left, Emily Ryan, second from left, and Abby Ryan, right are pictured with their stepmom Melonie Matthews-Ryan in this undated handout photo. Emily Ryan, 15, died in a car crash on Wednesday while evacuating Fort McMurray. THE CANADIAN PRESS/HO - Facebook, Chelsi Ryan - MANDATORY CREDIT

She had this big book collection downstairs that were very happy to know that, as of yesterday, it is still there.

Emily and her stepmothers nephew, Aaron Hodgson, died Wednesday when their SUV collided with a tractor trailer on Highway 881 near Lac La Biche, Alta. She had been fleeing from the community of Anzac after evacuating her Saprae Creek home a day earlier.

We dont even know what happened. It was a split second, said Chelsi, 22. It was the worst split second of my familys life.

Now, Emily is being remembered as a bright, engaging Grade 9 student and voracious reader who dreamed of becoming a nurse. She kept her book collection in pristine condition and was careful about who she would allow to borrow them, Chelsi recalled with a chuckle.

She hated cracked spines and she hated people who dog-eared their pages, she said.

But she was also confident and outgoing, even boisterous, and she loved to sing and draw. She recently performed in her high schools rendition of Emma! A Pop Musical, a play adapted from the Jane Austen novel.

Kevin Bergen, principal of Fort McMurray Composite High School, said he drove past the tractor trailer that Emilys SUV later crashed into. When he heard about the accident, he said he felt absolute shock and sadness.

She was always smiling. Thats why I use the word engaging, because you always had a sense that she was present at the moment you were interacting with her, he said.

Emily was a triplet, with a brother named Lucas Ryan and a sister named Abby Ryan. She wanted to learn as much as possible about aboriginal cultures so she could work as a nurse in First Nations communities in northern Alberta, said Bergen.

We had such high hopes and dreams for the triplets as they matured, he said. Unfortunately, she was taken so young and well before she was able to reach her full potential.

Mindy Rickards, a family friend, said Emily was an amazing person.

I remember her infectious laugh and her quick smile, she said. She was always quick with a hug whenever we arrived. She was welcoming and all I know for sure is that she will be missed more than words could ever say.

Chelsi said her large family is torn apart by grief after losing both Emily and Aaron. Evacuations have scattered family members across Alberta and they havent been able to plan a funeral yet.

But she said one thing is certain  it will be in Fort McMurray.

As long as it takes, it will happen in Fort McMurray, she said through tears. Its our home. Well be on the front lines of that rebuild. Well be there.

Everything Emily ever loved was there, so it wouldnt make sense to us to do it anywhere else.

 By Laura Kane in Vancouver.
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VANCOUVER  The catastrophic wildfire devouring Fort McMurray, Alta., underscores the vital contribution of natural resources to Canadas economic prosperity, say leaders of Western provinces and the three territories.

British Columbia Premier Christy Clark wrapped a two-day summit in Vancouver on Friday by emphasizing their concerns that the wildfire has charred the integral oil sector.

As Fort McMurray burns, and as the economic infrastructure that has so long supported Canadians is threatened, international observers are suggesting that our economic growth is going to suffer disastrously, said Clark, surrounded by her counterparts.

Premiers from Canada's western provinces speak with media during the Western Premiers' Conference in Vancouver, B.C. on Friday, May 6, 2016. Left to right are Nunavut Premier Peter Taptuna, Yukon Premier Darrell Pasloski, Manitoba Premier Brian Pallister, British Columbia Premier Christy Clark, Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall, Alberta Deputy Premier Sarah Hoffman, and Northwest Territories Deputy Premier Robert C. McLeod. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jimmy Jeong

I think that puts the finest point possible on why Western premiers are so focused on making sure that we have investment in our resource economy, she said, referencing a report from the Bank of Montreal.

BMOs chief economist released a report on Friday citing the horrible news of the wildfires in Fort McMurray. Douglas Porter wrote that the bank is adjusting its forecast for Canadas growth rate from 1.5 per cent to zero for the second quarter.

He referenced the fires that burned through Slave Lake, Alta., in May 2011, when the energy sector GDP fell by 3.6 per cent.

Based on what we do know at this point about the production curtailments  we have cut our (second quarter) GDP estimate to zero, he wrote.

Albertas government has not started counting the infernos costs to oilsands production, said its Deputy Premier Sarah Hoffman, who attended on Premier Rachel Notleys behalf.

Instead, officials top priorities are getting the fire under control, ensuring the safety of citizens and protecting a hospital and government buildings, she said.

As every member of our government continues to rebuild Fort McMurray, were also working to diversify our economy, she said.

We cant control the international price of oil, but we can do something as Canadians to try to get to the most markets.

Hoffman expects their government will begin to assess the economic impact in the days ahead.

She also thanked provinces for offering unique supports you dont plan for, such as by sending psychologists to Alberta to treat firefighters who may suffer trauma on the front lines.

Later in the day, Clark tweeted that B.C. will donate $300,000 to Red Cross Canada for fire relief.

Nick Lupick, an oilsands analyst for AltaCorp Capital, told The Canadian Press no physical damage has been done so far to any projects.

But he estimated production has dropped between 1.1 million and 1.25 million barrels of oil per day, as workers have fled their homes and cant keep up operations.

While the fires were top of mind as the leaders gathered, said Clark, they worked through a series of substantive topics to find common ground.

The group will press the federal government to launch discussions about promised changes to the health-care funding formula, she said.

She reiterated the provinces want Ottawa to return as a full partner, especially as the population ages  a message first delivered by provincial health ministers in January.

It didnt produce enough progress, Clark said of the winter meeting.

The leaders also discussed energy and resource development, climate action including methane emission reduction, and partnerships with indigenous groups.

They will ask the federal government to lift caps on the provincial nominee program, allowing provinces to bring in more skilled immigrants. They also want Ottawa to address changes in employment insurance that have impacted people in some parts of Alberta and Saskatchewan.

The leaders will meet again next in Yukon in July.

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With the full support of council, Birdtail Sioux First Nations chief will again ask band members to vote on a railway development within the community this July.

The proposal to build a two-kilometre rail spur off the nearby Canadian National main line was voted down in a 2013 referendum, but Chief Ken Chalmers is hoping a revamped plan and better community engagement will lead to a different outcome this time around.

Were not going to have anchor tenants like we did last time, meaning we had companies picked out already, Chalmers said. We first designate it and with the community well pick the companies that come and lease off us.

Birdtail is approved through Aboriginal and Northern Development Canada for another fully-funded referendum to gauge community support for the potentially multi-million dollar venture.

Chalmers says he is going to rely heavily on social media to educate voters on the project and to get residents living off-reserve involved in the voting process.

Last time, we didnt have one vote coming from the outside  Theres going to be no excuses not knowing what were doing, Chalmers, adding that he feels a lot more confident despite the stakes of the upcoming vote. I think were ready now  This is the only chance we have, we can never do this again.

 The Brandon Sun
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The image of a helicopter ferrying a small bucket of water through towering plumes of smoke made clear the daunting, seemingly futile, task of fighting the Fort McMurray wildfire from the sky.

To observers, it was like flicking water on a raging grass fire.

But experts in fire suppression and management say the aircraft play a critical role in a multipronged strategy in containing expansive fires.

It has a target and a usefulness, for sure, said Roger Collet, a wildfire prevention officer with Natural Resources in New Brunswick.

Its just not fighting that big flame that were seeing on the TV because it wouldnt have much of an effect on that huge wall of flame, but it does have an effect in protecting the infrastructure in the area.

Collet said the helicopters carrying water  larger ones transport up to 1,000 gallons  are usually used to douse buildings or land in the path of a fire. They also can snuff out flames from smaller fires that have jumped from the original blaze.

That has been a particular challenge for crews fighting the Fort McMurray wildfire, since winds have blown embers and fuelled its spread.

He says that while the buckets may appear small, they can dump a large amount of water in a single area or spread out over a larger swath.

Its deceiving at how small that bucket is under it, but if youre trying to stop a fire thats moving in toward the airport, for instance, and youve got some hotspots that are starting to flare up its quite effective in trying to knock down some of those little flareups.

Firefighters are also using aircraft to disperse fire retardant on the perimeter to try to stop it in its tracks. Collet said crews usually put down a succession of lines of the red retardant to hem the fire in.

Crews water-bombed the city Thursday to try to keep the wildfire at bay, having22 water bombers on hand and more on the way, including four from Quebec.

Still, Chad Morrison of Alberta Forestry has said air tankers alone wont stop the fire, which could continue to push through dry conditions if the area doesnt get significant rainfall.

David Martell, a professor in the forestry department at the University of Toronto, said the aircraft are invaluable when it comes to limiting the damage and eventually extinguishing a fire by using the retardant or water to arrest its growth.

You are trying to build a barrier that the fire cant burn through, he said. One way is to put people on the ground with axes and shovels to dig a trench, and the other is to drop fire retardant.

Slave Lake Fire Chief Jamie Coutts was battling the blaze soon after it began closing in on Fort McMurray and says the helicopters are now likely working on the sides and possibly the head of the fire.

He says helicopters are useful because they can get low and drop water where they want, whereas fixed wing planes have to stay higher and the wind affects how much water they can carry and where they can go.

He returned home to Slave Lake early Thursday, but plans to return to Fort McMurray on Saturday to help in the effort.

The helicopters would be doing hotspots now, he said. The first thing theyre going to do is try to wrap it with Cats and heavy equipment so that theres a firebreak and then the bombers will come in and reinforce that firebreak so the fire doesnt jump it. Its quite a orchestrated use of manpower.

The fire grew from 75 square kilometres Tuesday to 100 square kilometres on Wednesday, helped along by high winds, scorching heat and low humidity. By Thursday it was almost nine times that at 850 square kilometres  roughly equivalent to the size of Calgary.
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OTTAWA  Partisan politics took a back seat to partnership this week as Parliament Hill came together in support of the people of wildfire-ravaged Fort McMurray.

The terrifying images of residents fleeing down towering corridors of encroaching flames obscured some subtle yet fundamental shifts in Canadas political landscape, as well as astute observations about the federal governments first six months in power.

Both illustrated themes that are sure to impact how Canadians interact with their elected officials in the coming years.

Heres how politics touched the lives of Canadians this week:

FLAME WARS: political parties are expected to set their rivalries aside in the face of tragedy. As wildfire pushed the population of Fort McMurray into a state of homelessness, the non-partisan reaction went a step further as politicians asked the public to set their own critiques aside as well.

There have always been fires. There have always been floods, said Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Pointing at any one incident and saying, Well, this is because of that, is neither helpful nor entirely accurate. We need to separate a pattern over time from any one event.

Climate-change politics were clearly not welcome. Similarly, there was no chatter about the auditor generals report, which chided the government for not preserving the ranks of its military reservists  a vital resource in times of crisis. No one really questioned the sufficiency of the federal response  neither the level or type of support, nor the speed at which it was provided.

Old habits, however, die hard: by weeks end, the Liberals had sent supporters an electronic pamphlet that highlighted the spirit of unity and soliciting donations to the Red Cross. When does making a political virtue out of non-partisanship become partisan?

SPLINTERS: Alberta conservatives gathered in Red Deer to hash out ways to unite the provinces fractured right, with a push to create a third conservative party that would pull together supporters from Wildrose and the Progressive Conservatives. In Quebec, the brief political career of Pierre-Karl Peladeau came to a screeching halt as he resigned less than a year into his leadership of the separatist Parti Quebecois  leaving the door open for a new leader who could, perhaps, bring back the social democrats who have broken away.

As those two forces struggle to find unity and relevance in opposition, a group of federal Conservatives has been sizing up interim leader Rona Ambrose as their answer to coherence. The Draft Rona campaign was short-lived, though: she made it clear she doesnt want to be the partys permanent leader.

Now, as candidates for the race to replace Stephen Harper come forward, their challenge is to win  but without tearing the party apart along regional or ideological lines.

All of it is taking place before the backdrop of an electoral system the federal Liberals have promised to completely reform  a promise they repeated again this week.

So much of choosing a leader is about strategy for the next election. But without knowing what system will guide voters the next time they cast their ballots, its very difficult for opposition parties to prepare.

CONSULTATION CONSTIPATION AND THE MAIL: Three political veterans got together this week to talk foreign policy  but they couldnt resist offering Trudeau some free advice. Former Liberal leader Bob Rae, former Quebec premier Jean Charest, and former foreign minister John Manley zeroed in on the penchant the governing Liberals have for talking. And talking and talking.

All three warned that task forces, advisory groups and the like have their place, but shouldnt be an excuse for doing nothing. Manley was blunt, calling on the government to be mindful of consultation constipation.

Also this week, the government announced a four-member task force to look into the future of Canada Post, including whether it should resume door-to-door delivery in some form, or even get back into banking.

During the campaign, the Liberals promised to restore home mail delivery. The $2-million panel is to produce final recommendations by the end of the year, but opposition critics have made it clear they smell another broken promise.

And there ends the spirit of co-operation.
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Five stories in the news today from The Canadian Press:



CREWS SCRAMBLE AS FORT MCMURRAY FIRE GROWS

Crews fighting to save Fort McMurray from rampaging flames water bombed the Alberta city Thursday to try to keep away a wildfire so intense it has spawned its own weather. Chad Morrison of Alberta Forestry said the fire continues to grow, but at a slower rate than before, and the spread was happening in forested areas away from the community. Morrison said there were 22 water bombers at work and more were coming in, including four from Quebec.



PREMIER NOTLEY LOOKS AT WHATS NEXT FOR FIRE VICTIMS

While fire crews continue battling the massive wildfire in Fort McMurray, the premier of Alberta is turning at least part of her focus to what comes next. Rachel Notley says plans are in the works for concrete support for the more than 80,000 evacuees, including financial aid and transitional housing. But as for when the evacuees might be able to return home, Notley said that wont happen until it is safe to do so.



MINISTERS MEET TO TALK ABOUT EMERGENCY PREPAREDNESS

Federal and provincial ministers responsible for emergency preparedness meet in Toronto today. The meeting was planned before wildfires in northern Alberta forced a massive evacuation of Fort McMurray, but Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale notes the irony of the timing. He says this weeks wildfire disaster provides a powerful case study for todays discussions.



FIRE COULD FORCE SOME FOREIGN TEMP WORKERS OUT OF COUNTRY

Advocacy groups say temporary foreign workers displaced by the raging wildfire engulfing Fort McMurray are at even greater risk than the rest of those who were forced to flee the northern Alberta city. They say many of them could face an immediate accommodation crisis, since they often lack friends or family in the area to put them up. Advocates are calling on the federal government to make allowances for those workers under the circumstances.



DOCUMENTARY DETAILS UNSAFE WORKING CONDITIONS FOR MIGRANTS

A documentary by Canadian filmmaker Min Sook Lee tells a dismal tale of the life some migrants face when they come to Canada under the temporary foreign worker program. The film says they sometimes find unsafe working conditions, substandard living arrangements and are forced to pay exorbitant fees to deceptive recruiters. The documentary makes its world premiere at the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival in Toronto.



ALSO IN THE NEWS TODAY:

 Statistics Canada will release the unemployment figures for April.

 Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will visit a subway yard in Toronto.

 Hydro One Ltd., Ontarios largest electricity transmission and distribution utility, releases its first-quarter results.
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CALGARY  Enbridge and its partners behind the Northern Gateway pipeline are asking for three more years to build support for the controversial project, but some First Nations say their opposition will never waver.

The companys Northern Gateway subsidiary and 31 aboriginal equity partners said Friday theyve asked the National Energy Board for an extension to the 2016 construction deadline to secure legal and regulatory certainty as well as continue consultations.

Northern Gateway president John Carruthers said the company had made mistakes and is committed to creating stronger partnerships with communities along the proposed route.

From the beginning, Northern Gateway should have done a better job of building relationships with First Nations and Metis communities, Carruthers said in a statement Friday.

Northern Gateway has changed, he said. We are making progress and remain open to further changes. We believe this is the right course of action for Northern Gateway and the right thing to do as Canadians. We know this process requires time and we are committed to getting it right.

Currently, Enbridge (TSX:ENB) is required to start construction by the end of this year as one of the 209 conditions attached to the 2014 federal approval of the project.

National Energy Board spokeswoman Sarah Kiley said there is no set process for reviewing an extension application. But when the Mackenzie Gas pipeline proponents requested one last August, the board asked for public comments in an ongoing process that is expected to take about a year.

Final approval of any extension would have to be approved by federal cabinet, Kiley said.

A spokesman for Natural Resources Minister Jim Carr said the federal government is committed to regaining public trust with credible regulatory reviews. Alexandre Deslongchamps said the government encourages proponents of major resource projects to consult and engage indigenous peoples throughout the application process.

So far Northern Gateway has the support of the 18 First Nations and Metis communities in Alberta and 13 in British Columbia that form the aboriginal equity partners, five of which signed on in the past two years.

But the pipeline has faced stiff opposition from other First Nations groups and others who have voiced environmental concerns, citing the potential for leaks and the likelihood of increased carbon emissions.

The Gitgaat First Nation and Coastal First Nations won a court challenge in January when the British Columbia Supreme Court ruled that the province must conduct its own consultations with the Gitgaat and issue a separate environmental certificate from the federal one already issued.

Northern Gateway said the ruling was one of the key reasons why it needs the extension in its application because it doesnt expect the provincial certificate to be issued until after the 2016 construction deadline.

Kelly Russ, chairman of the Coastal First Nations that represents nine aboriginal communities along B.C.s northern and central coast, said they dont support the pipeline in any form. He said Enbridge can apply for its extension, but the extra time isnt going to sway their position.

The reply from us is going to be no different, he said.

Were of the view it will have a severe impact on First Nations traditional territory in the event of a spill and we just dont support it at the end of the day.

The $6.5 billion project would carry an average of 525,000 barrels of oil from Bruderheim, Alta., near Edmonton to the deepwater port of Kitimat, B.C., through a 1,177-kilometre pipeline. It would help open up Alberta oilsands crude to international markets.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has committed to formalizing a ban on tanker traffic on B.C.s north coast that some say could derail the project. Last month, he reiterated his opposition to a crude oil pipeline through the Great Bear rainforest, through which Northern Gateway would traverse.

The Conservatives have long opposed any ban on tanker traffic. Still, Conservative natural resource critic Candice Bergen said the governments delays on the moratorium and changes to the project review process were creating uncertainty in the industry.

The Liberals dont seem to understand the major implications that their whims  even their processes for other projects  they dont understand the uncertainty that it causes, and uncertainty in the market is worse than a No,' she said in Ottawa.

 With files from Terry Pedwell in Ottawa.

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Shawn Gramlich didnt have time to finish packing when he and his pregnant wife had to flee their house in Slave Lake, Alta., in May 2011 before flames engulfed their home.

What transpired after included frustrating negotiations with his insurance company, a $30,000 payment to an independent adjuster and waiting about 1 1/2 years to move into his rebuilt home.

They beat a guy down, Gramlich says. They lowball you, lowball you, lowball you.

Many of the more than 80,000 people recently forced to evacuate Fort McMurray, Alta., due to the ongoing wildfire will soon be filing their insurance claims.

That can be a lengthy process for some, and those who experienced the Slave Lake fires have some advice.

Most homeowners will have insurance that covers fire damage to their property, possessions and some living expenses, though the amounts differ based on the scope of damage and the maximum payout in the policy purchased. Some policies will include a clause guaranteeing funds above the maximum payout, if needed.

One factor that doesnt impact the claim is the homes market value, said Rocco Neglia, vice-president of claims with Economical Insurance. That may be a silver lining for residents of Fort McMurray, where house prices have fallen because of the waning economy.

The average sale price of a detached house in the Fort McMurray area dropped by 9.11 per cent in the first three months of 2016 compared with the same quarter last year, according to the local real estate board.

What does matter is how much it would cost to rebuild the home or repair damage, Neglia said. If the owner opts not to rebuild, he said, they are generally entitled to a cash payout minus depreciation.

But it can be difficult to receive insurance money when its needed, say some of those who fought for their settlements after the Slave Lake fires destroyed hundreds of properties.

Gramlich said his insurance company initially offered his family about $280,000 to cover the loss of their home, car and all possessions, though he estimated it would cost hundreds of thousands more to rebuild it.

He eventually hired an independent adjuster to fight on their behalf. That earned Gramlich an extra $170,000 on top of the highest offer he managed to negotiate by himself.

Gramlich received $770,000, minus the $30,000 adjusters fee, in the end.

Know your policy, he said. Dont take less than you think its worth.

If the insurer is offering you much less, consider enlisting the help of an independent adjuster, he said.

Slave Lake Mayor Tyler Warman recommends everyone do that as it helps to have an insurance specialist on your side.

It often doesnt make any difference which insurer people are with, but rather the adjuster sent on the companys behalf, Warman said, adding that one may be very helpful, while another with the same company may put the business first.

Its also important to be careful during the rebuilding process once the money rolls in, he said.

Recovery takes a lot of time and shouldnt be something that you rush into, Warman said, citing as an example the hiring of contractors.

Some contractors, mostly from out of town, swooped into Slave Lake following the fires and then made off with peoples money, Warman said.

We had a lot of fly-by-night guys come through town, said Gramlich, who knows three people who lost roughly $100,000 to a contractor.

He suggests hiring a local builder when possible.

If your neighbour is building your house, hes got to be responsible, Gramlich said.

He echoes that suggestion for selecting an insurance provider. Gramlichs family has since switched to a local insurance provider.

The Fort McMurray fires are on track to become the most expensive insurance disaster in Canadian history. The fire could result in an insurance payout between $2.6 billion and $9 billion, said Tom MacKinnon, an equity research analyst with BMO Capital Markets, in a report this week.

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TORONTO  With wildfires raging and firefighters still struggling to control the situation, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Friday that now is not the time for him to visit the ravaged Alberta community of Fort McMurray.

Trudeau did promise to visit the region in the near future when the situation, which has forced tens of thousands of people from their homes, has calmed down.

Were all aware that a prime minister showing up in Fort McMurray, when firefighters are busy trying to contain a massive raging wildfire, is not a particularly helpful thing, Trudeau said.

But I am certain that in the coming weeks, I will have an opportunity to go out to Fort McMurrayto understand and share with Canadians the scale and the scope of the devastation that struck this community.

Trudeau, who was in Toronto for a transit funding announcement, said he looked forward to the visit because it was extremely important that he make the trip and express his support directly.

Last summer, former prime minister Stephen Harper came in for some criticism when he showed up on the fire lines near Kelowna, B.C., where a battle was underway to contain a large wildfire.

The brief visit and photo-op  which included exhausted firefighters  prompted one news outlet to publish a mocking account under the headline Man in blue suit thanks firefighters. Other outlets, however, defended the visit, saying thats what good leaders do.

The horrific situation in Fort McMurray has seen 80,000 people forced to flee and at least 1,600 structures reduced to ash. It remained uncertain when anyone might be able to return to the city.

In the interim, Trudeau said, the main priority for his government was ensuring effective communications between those on the ground, the province and Ottawa, and ensuring emergency authorities get everything they need to deal with the catastrophic situation.

Among other things, the federal government has already met Albertas requests for assistance, he said, including providing air assets and 7,000 cots for evacuees in emergency shelters, with 13,000 more on the way.

Trudeau praised Fort McMurray for having contributed over the years to Canadas economic growth, and said his government was committed to helping the community not just in the days and weeks to come but also in the months and years to come.

As part of a series of transit funding announcements, the prime minister announced $840 million for upgrades to the Toronto system.
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 06/05/2016 (2362 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

TORONTO  The Liberal government is reviewing Canadas stance on American war dodgers who have sought refuge in this country rather than fight in Iraq, Prime Minister Trudeau said Friday.

Trudeau, however, gave no commitments that Ottawa might smooth the path to permanent residency for the conscientious objectors, some of whom have been forced to return to the U.S. to face prison terms, but said the issue was a live one.

Its one that we are looking into actively as a government, Trudeau said after a transit-funding announcement in Toronto.

Members of the War Resisters Support Campaign protest quietly outside a Prime Minister Justin Trudeau event in Toronto on Friday, May 6, 2016. Trudeau said his government was looking into government policy toward American conscientious objectors who have sought refuge in Canada rather than fight in Iraq. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Colin Perkel

He did not elaborate.

Outside the transit yard where Trudeau was speaking, a handful of protesters from the War Resisters Support Campaign quietly held up a banner and signs calling on the government to let them stay.

Last summer, a campaigning Trudeau criticized the Conservative government under prime minister Stephen Harper for acting in a way he called lacking compassion and lacking understanding when it came to the American soldiers.

I am supportive of the principle of allowing conscientious objectors to stay, Trudeau said at the time.

He called it problematic and disappointing and unworthy of Canada that Conservative MPs had cheered in the Commons in 2012 amid word that one of the Americans, a mother of four, had been arrested after deportation to the U.S., where she was later court-martialled and gave birth in prison.

I am committedto restoring our sense of compassion and openness and a place that is a safe haven for people to come here.

However, little appears to have happened since the Liberals took office last fall.

In an email to The Canadian Press last month, a spokesman for Immigration Minister John McCallum said he had no indication that a decision was made or is about to be made on the issue.

Starting a decade ago, scores of American military personnel who objected to the war in Iraq sought refuge in Canada. They argued the military effort had not been sanctioned by the United Nations and was illegal. Some have been fighting for years to obtain regular status while the government has sought to deport them.

The Harper government, in particular, took a hard line on their presence, at one point calling them deserters and bogus refugee claimants and directing immigration officials to ensure they were returned to the U.S.

About 15 of the soldiers are estimated to be still caught up in their fight to gain status in Canada, according to the resisters campaign

Supporters say it is time the Trudeau government acted, noting it was his father, former prime minister Pierre Trudeau, who welcomed many American soldiers who came to Canada rather than fight in the Vietnam War.
Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 06/05/2016 (2362 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

I feel that 2016 beer trends are pushing towards Belgian-style farmhouse saisons and incredibly tart/sour beers that taste more like a wine than a beer, but one trend that doesnt seem to be dying down is the classic India pale ale.

One of the biggest complaints I get from local beer drinkers is that too many breweries have their own IPAs and that theyre always too bitter. The trend for overly bitter IPAs is currently on the decline so instead we are seeing more releases of IPAs brewed with one strain of hop to show off the characteristics of what the hop is supposed to smell/taste like in a beer.

Alexander Keiths had a lukewarm Hop Series of pale ales that did just that with five single hopped beers. In the end, Keiths drinkers simply preferred the lack of hop presence of the traditional Keiths IPA so they have, for the most part, abandoned the project.

The folks over at Fernie Brewing in Fernie, B.C., have a Bucket List series of IPAs that are mostly experimental IPAs that range from a tropical citrusy IPA to a full on rye IPA. Their newest (to me) IPA is their The Eldorado Single Hop IPA, an IPA brewed with lemongrass. Im not familiar with the Eldorado strain of hops so I get to try something completely new to me!

The Eldorado pours the typical IPA pour, its a cloudy orange beer with a nice amount of creamy beige head on top, the head quickly diminishes into just a thin layer of sediment clinging to the side of the glass. The aroma is first, and foremost a lemongrass aroma, its fairly moderate and citrusy, grassy, gives off a bit of an herbal  almost tea like essence to it. Hint of pine and grapefruit in there as well.

The flavour starts out all tropical, which is great with the heat were getting right now, theres a quench of pineapple and grapefruit that make an appearance right out the gate. The hops arent as bitter as your typical cascade bitter hopped IPAs, so this one gives off more of a lemongrass summertime patio vibe to it. With all that being said, it does still have that typical IPA bitterness that most of you know and hate, I love it!

Ive had a bunch of beers from Fernies IPA Bucket List and I feel that this may be their best beer yet as its a nice citrusy, grassy India pale ale thats not overwhelming in any fashion. Its light to mildly bitter and has a bit of a creamy feel on the palate. This is truly a patio worthy IPA in my opinion!

You can find Fernie Brewings The Eldorado Single Hop IPA at all three Brandon Liquor Marts for $6.50 per 650 ml bottle. It tops out at a surprising 6.8 per cent ABV, certainly stronger alcohol content than your typical 5-5.5 per cent IPAs on the market today.

 Rating: 4 pints out of 5

Cody Lobreau is a Canadian beer blogger who reviews every beer he can get his hands on as he believes that he should try every beer twice to get an understanding if its truly good or bad.

 BeerCrank.ca
It has all the makings of a Hollywood movie, but this story is as real as it gets.

Ohio cant seem to get enough of Kirtland Police Department and their newly adopted pooch JD as the tale of how this loveable pooch found his way into these officers lives continues to melt away the hearts of all that hear it.

The responsible officers at Kirtland Police Department found stray dog John Doe wandering their precinct and took him in with the intention of finding his owner.

However the officers soon found themselves endeared to the stunning animal who fitted into the officers' lives quickly and with enthusiasm.

Luckily for these police officers  and JD - no one came forward to claim John Doe, despite the police departments social media campaign and some of the officers expressed a desire to keep JD around for good.

The officers took their case to their Chief and with his approval and the approval of their local mayor, JD became an honorary police dog at the Kirtland Police Department.

Once they had gotten permission from their superiors they announced the newest member of their team.

"Some of you may have followed the story of our stray John Doe. We tried to find the owner of this marvellous animal to no avail.

The folks here at the Police Department wanted a good home for JD (this is now his name) so with the permission of the Chief and the Mayor, JD has been adopted by the Kirtland Police Association but they also share the warmth this stoic animal has brought with City Hall and the Fire Department.

JD has fit into the environment as though he were here always. We are happy to have him in our department and our lives. He loves everyone and we love him".

As if this story wasn't cute enough then the local community got involved donating toys and essentials for JD.

Another good new story to restore your faith in humanity.
The trial of a taxi driver accused of careless driving after food critic Tom Doorley was knocked down in Dublin city-centre has been thrown a curve ball after a new witness came forward.

Mr Doorley suffered two broken shoulders during the incident and Dublin District Court had already heard all the prosecution and defence evidence.

Judge Miriam Walsh had adjourned the case for more than a week to consider her verdict.

When it resumed the defence said a man has come forward as a potential witness having read about the case in the media.

She described the development as a curve-ball and adjourned the case for another two weeks.

A decision has yet to be made as to whether the alleged new evidence will be admitted.

Taxi driver Mark Cruikshanks (aged 38) of Cushlawn Park, Tallaght, Dublin has pleaded not guilty and has gone on trial accused of careless driving at Fleet St on the evening of Oct. 17, 2014.

He claims Mr Doorley rushed out in front of his Toyota Avensis.

In evidence given earlier, Mr Doorley told Judge Walsh he suffered two broken shoulders when he was knocked down.

He alleged he checked if any cars were coming before he crossed the Fleet Street junction with Westmoreland Street.

Mr Doorley, a gourmet who appears as a resident critic in TV3's hit reality show The Restaurant, also writes a food and wine column for the Irish Daily Mail.

He told the court that he lives in Cork but also has a flat in Dublin. He said he went into the city-centre for a business meeting and lunch at the Merrion Hotel.

He drank two average sized glasses of red wine. Afterwards he went to Trinity College to check some references for a book he was preparing, he said.

Later, at about 6pm, he went to another restaurant for another meal during which he drank two small bottle of water. He then decided to get a taxi home and walked along Westmoreland Street.

At the junction with Fleet Street, he said, he was on the outside flank of a number of people crossing the road.

Due to a particular childhood experience I am extremely cautious crossing the road, he has told Judge Walsh. He had said he looked up Fleet St and confirmed nothing was coming.

He claimed he proceeded to cross and he recalled that as he was about to step on to the pavement on the far side kerb when he spun and ended up on a bonnet of a car.

He said he then landed on the ground on his back.

The court heard he was then taken by ambulance to St James's Hospital and was given painkillers; he was subsequently treated at Blackrock Clinic.

One shoulder was broken in three places and he also broke his other shoulder, the court heard.

His left side was immobile for six months and he just recently had surgery, he said. Medical reports were furnished to the court.

Mr Doorley showed the clothes he had been wearing: a blue jacket, light blue shirt and fawn coloured trousers. CCTV evidence was shown and medical reports were furnished to the court.

Gda Declan Ryan said it was an extremely wet and there would have been a lot of traffic.

Though there is lighting in the area, it is not well lit, he said. Gda Ryan said the taxi driver Mr Cruikshanks was "very shaken up by what happened".

He said the taxi man told him that he did not see the pedestrian and suddenly there was an impact on the front of his Toyota Avensis and he braked immediately.

Passers-by assisted the man on the ground and an ambulance arrived, the court heard.

Mr Cruikshanks has told the court he picked up a passenger and had to make his way to Fleet Street.

He was 10 to 15 metres from the corner and the road was clear as he continued driving.

He said a person appeared in front of his car.

He claimed Mr Doorley had been in the middle or the road when he was hit and other people were still waiting cross.

He said he would have braked if he had seen him but he rushed out in front of me.

Witness Lucy Fallon-Byrne was driving in her car behind the taxi.

She said it pulled out in front of her and seemed to be in a hurry but she did not feel it was dangerous and she was not overly concerned.

She said the taxi stopped suddenly and she described how a woman standing at the scene looked shocked.

She said she had the impression the man hit by the taxi was very far across the road.

Ms Fallon-Byrne described the weather conditions as wet" but she did not think it was lashing.
A Dublin food supplier has been fined 200,000 after a man died in an accident at the company's premises.

Robert Ceremuga - a warehouse supervisor at V F Cold Stores - died when a loaded racking fell on him on November 28, 2013 in Finglas.
The new minority Government will test democracy and the character of politicians, re-elected Taoiseach Enda Kenny has said.

The Fine Gael leader scraped into power at the fourth time of asking, 70 days on from one of the most divisive elections in the Republic's history.

The back-to-back success - a first for Mr Kenny's party - was achieved after weeks of negotiations secured a deal with decades-old adversaries in Fianna Fail and a diverse groups of independents.

The Taoiseach has opposition support, albeit fragile and for only three years, on a select number of issues such as suspending and reviewing water bills and easing unprecedented housing and homelessness.

"If economic survival was the urgent priority of the last Government then using a strong economy to improve the lives, the quality of the lives of our people, must and will be the priority of the new Government and that fundamental principle will be the bedrock of our policy programme," Mr Kenny said.

Among the new reforms will be the appointment of a Minister for Housing with increased powers.

Health will also form key planks of policy while spending will run twice as fast as tax cuts.

In his victory speech in the Dail Mr Kenny accepted very many people have not felt a revival in the economy in the six years since Ireland went bankrupt.

Enda Kenny elected Taoiseach on the fourth Dail vote, 70 days after the General Electionhttps://t.co/GMwWV33KA0  RTE News (@rtenews) May 6, 2016

He said his minority Government had been formed in "almost unprecedented circumstances" which created room for a new and inclusive democracy.

"Everyone will have the opportunity to play a constructive role as we work in partnership together to build a better Ireland," he said.

"It will be a great test of our democracy, of our character and indeed of this house, a test that I am convinced that we will pass."

The February 26 general election split the vote like never before and left the country locked in a political stalemate for 10 weeks.

Fine Gael and Fianna Fail, the traditionally dominant parties who swapped power for generations and whose bitter enmity stems back to the Irish civil war, balked at pressure to form a "grand coalition".

Mr Kenny said the hung parliament thrown up by the election meant no party has a mandate to "instruct, force, direct or coerce" anyone else.

"We therefore must all work together in the best interests of all our people," he said.

Mr Kenny was re-elected Taoiseach by 59 votes to 49, largely with thanks to the abstention of Fianna Fail.

Among the independents to support him were Katherine Zappone, a gay and women's rights campaigner, and Michael Lowry, a former Cabinet colleague.

Two factions of Independents - known as the Independent Alliance and the rural alliance - were then pulled in - but not without a few casualties.

Michael Fitzmaurice, a Roscommon Galway TD and former Turf Cutters and Contractors Association leader, was the most high profile, having been a vocal figure in negotiations over the last few weeks.

Following the vote, Mr Kenny receive his seal of office from President Michael D Higgins before formally announcing the new cabinet.

Attention is already being focused on how long the new minority government will last.

Under the arrangement, Fine Gael will have to rule and Fianna Fail oppose without either of them undermining the other too much while the third biggest party, Sinn Fein, will be looking to steal more ground from their foes on all sides.

Mr Kenny said his new government had a plan for a more caring, fairer and more prosperous Ireland with a belief in the enormous potential of the Irish people and country.

"The new government will be driven by a firm belief that good politics can help to realise all of that potential in the interest of all our people all over the country," he said.

Despite giving Mr Kenny understated support, Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin attacked his minority Government.

"The damage of regressive and divisive policies in recent years has been significant," he said.

"The new government is not committed to the scale of comprehensive and urgent action which we believe is needed. In many areas the programme for government represents a repackaging of current policies and bland aspiration rather than a radical commitment to action.

"Policy on health remains as incoherent as ever and specific actions on most areas are limited. Pushing for movement on these areas will form our priority in every part of our work."

Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams said his party will be the real opposition over the term of the government.

"The joint Fine Gael-Fianna Fail programme is masterclass in waffle and bluster. No real ambition. No big ideas. No costings. Little real detail," he said.

"Never was so much negotiated for so long, for so little."
A row over who will control the new National Maternity Hospital has intensified.

The management of Holles Street want to maintain their independence, even if they move to Saint Vincent's Hospital in South Dublin.
Update 11.36am: Independent TD Mattie McGrath has said he will not be voting for Enda Kenny as Taoiseach this afternoon.

He stated: I will not be voting for Enda Kenny this afternoon and will issue a full statement on my involvement in the talks and achievements to date as soon as possible!

I would like to thank you all for your patience and understanding to date. Mattie

Update 11.21am: The Fine Gael Parliamentary Party is hoping the vote will still go ahead as planned at 12 noon, but has requested one change to the Programme for Government document.

The meeting wants commitments around the Children's Ombudsman inserted into the document.

Clarity was also sought around the ongoing discussion with Independents on turf cutting - and TDs and Senators were assured that what was being sought was not a breach of the EU directive.

It needs to happen as soon as possible, according to Paschal Donohoe.

The process has to come to an end today, he said.

We indicated this to everybody yesterday, I think its understood by everybody that this process has been going on for nearly 70 days. The country needs a Government.

However, Independent Michael Collins said that he is not happy with the draft Programme for Government.

He wants the issue of abortion dealt with.

I think the people elected the representatives of their Dail and they should be making the decision in relation to abortion, he said.

We seem to be continuously moving quite a lot of issues, and I see this in the Programme for Government and other issues also, were setting up all sorts of forums and all sorts of discussion groups and I mean  who was elected here? We were elected to make a decision.

Update 7am: Fine Gael may be forced into delaying the vote to elect Enda Kenny as Taoiseach by several hours after failing to get an agreement with Independents.

A number of issues remain outstanding and it's unclear if they can be resolved before the planned sitting of the Dail at midday.

Fine Gael took a gamble yesterday afternoon and scheduled the vote for 12pm today in the hope they would conclude negotiations with Independents.

However, a number of issues remained outstanding and despite talks until after midnight a deal couldn't be reached.

One of the outstanding issues for the Roscommon TD and Independent Alliance member Michael Fitzmaurice relates to turf cutting on bogs.

Other members of the alliance have issues too and are sticking to their 'all for one' position that nothing's agreed until everything's agreed.

Talks are expected to resume at around 9am, but a scheduled meeting of the Fine Gael parliamentary party and the planned high noon vote in the Dail to re-elect Enda Kenny as Taoiseach may have to be delayed by a least a number of hours.

Earlier: Enda Kenny is facing a high noon vote to be re-elected the country's leader.

For the fourth and likely final time, the acting Taoiseach is going before the Dail to ask for its backing to head up a minority government after over a months-long political stalemate.

He is counting on the support of a raft of Independents to get him over the line, having effectively handed them a deadline to join him or rule themselves out of power.

If successful, he will be the first Fine Gael leader in history to secure a second term in office. Ireland has been without an elected government for 70 days.

Outgoing coalition partners Fine Gael and Labour took a hammering in February's General Election, which opened up an unprecedented split in the Irish electorate.

Weeks of talks led to Mr Kenny's party doing a deal with arch-rivals Fianna Fail, who agreed to abstaining from a vote of 157 TDs on his re-election.

A number of concessions were handed to the main Opposition party under the accord struck last weekend and which is to be reviewed at the end of 2018.

Since then, Mr Kenny's party has been locked in talks with two factions of 11 Independents - the Independent Alliance and the rural alliance - to agree a programme for government.

A number of Cabinet positions and junior ministerial roles are being offered to woo the potential coalition bedfellows. The Fine Gael leader needs the backing of just six more TDs outside his own rank and file to help make it over the line.

The vote in the Dail is expected to take place at noon.

The

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John Halligan, Waterford TD, said his Independence Alliance was "deeply disappointed" that the document was "leaked before we saw it."

"I think it is absolutely outrageous and unprofessional," he told reporters outside the government formation talks.

"It's no way to do business."

Nonetheless, Government chief whip Paul Keogh told TDs the Dail would meet again for a special Friday sitting to vote for a Taoiseach. The move is being seen as a deadline for Independents to either join the coalition or rule themselves out of power.

Fine Gael and Fianna Fail, the traditionally dominant parties who swapped power for generations and whose bitter enmity stems back to the Irish civil war, balked at pressure to form a "grand coalition".

Attention is already being focused on how long a new minority government will last.

Under the arrangement, Fine Gael will have to rule and Fianna Fail oppose without either of them undermining the other too much.
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The chief executive of vitamins firm Blackmores, Christine Holgate, says there is a huge untapped opportunity in the fast-growing Chinese herbal medicine market as the company seeks to replicate its success in vitamins using newly acquired Byron Bay firm Global Therapeutics.

Blackmores has paid $23 million for the company, which is the market leader in Chinese herbal medicine in Australia with an estimated 80 per cent market share in health food stores.

Ms Holgate said the business, whose two main brands of Fusion and Oriental Botanicals are sold only in Australia currently, would swing its focus to exports to China over the next year to tap into rising demand in a market worth $170 billion globally.

She said there were vast opportunities in China and other Asian countries for the business, which would be run as a stand-alone operation at the "front end" but have better access to capital and Blackmores distribution grunt by being part of a larger group.
There's a tense game of high-stakes chicken about to be played out in the stretched Australian retail industry: Who might break first and start discounting winter fashion before any winter arrives?

Sydney has had only one day this year with a maximum temperature of less than 20 degrees, but while sun bakers lap up the rays and girls totter about the city in not very much at all, retailers are sweating for an entirely different reason.

It's a strange industry at the best of times that clears out summer stock and replaces it with winter gear in February. When autumn subsequently doesn't arrive, let alone any hint of Jack Frost, that's a big investment in long sleeves, coats and boots not walking out of any doors.

Ditto the heaters sitting in warehouses awaiting a little cold front. A merely cool breeze would be welcome by now.
Fey optioned the book and she and her producing partner Robert Carlock set about bringing it to the screen. The initial attraction, she says, was that she was not just looking for something to produce, but also something in which she could star. "I'm always looking for things where it's remotely plausible that I could be that person," Fey says. "The real Kim was very adventurous to agree to go to these places and cover these stories. I feel like I myself would not be that adventurous. I am adventurous in other ways. "I like that the character is intelligent, the character writes for a living, there are many kinds of things I identify with," Fey adds. "I like that she is choosing to kind of have this new stuff in her adult life. We see a lot of movies about people very early in their life. This is more interesting to me in a way." We are sitting in a cavernous anteroom to the sound stages in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where the film is being shot. Outside the sandy landscape doubles as Afghanistan. Inside the media operations centre and battlefield accommodation of the press corps have been recreated. We're in a room which doubles as a production staging area, and a dining area for the crew and cast. Carlock, who has collaborated with Fey on several projects, including the TV comedies 30 Rock and Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, says the most powerful element in Barker's book was its permission to treat the subject material with humour. In the present media landscape, that's not always easy.

Tina Fey as journalist Kim Baker in Credit:Photo credit: Frank Masi "It had a very dense and layered world, and characters, if you read the book there are a lot of things that are borrowed and adapted [for the film]," he says. "[There is also] permission to treat this world with humour. With comedy. With dark comedy," he adds. "[And] Kim's general journey from someone who just takes a crazy leap into the deep end of let's just completely change my life, to realising she needs to escape this new life, and having the sanity and strength to be able to pull that off." One of the film's more unusual characteristics is the presence of two directors Glenn Ficarra and John Requa. The pair are noted for their willingness to improvise on the run, a technique which seemed to fit perfectly with Fey, whose background is in improv and sketch comedy, notably the long-running sketch comedy Saturday Night Live. "It's been a really nice collaboration because they are writers also themselves so they understand jokes," Fey says. "They also have this art school background. Their movies are beautiful. I don't know if you've seen Focus, I love it. And I Love You Phillip Morris. They have a real sense of visual style. This world is so lush and so beautiful."

Fey also praised their willingness to let the actors play with moments and lines. "For me, sometimes, since I come from an improv background, it's nice to know even though I never have any intention of changing what's on the page," she says. "Sometimes if you have a take where you're permitted to change it, you just feel freer. Even if you don't end up changing a word." The mood on the set, she says, was one of "looseness and freedom", aided by the strong cast, particularly Freeman and Thornton. "A lot of times we'll do takes of the scene as scripted and then move away from it or have the freedom to move away from it and then come back to it. Hopefully it will add a little liveliness to it and you might get a moment or two." Tina Fey as Kim Baker with Martin Freeman as Iain MacKelpie in Credit:Photo credit: Frank Masi One of the most critical aspects of the production, Fey says, was getting the timing and backroom economics right. Unlike most big-ticket studio films  most of which seem to feature costumed comic book heroes  Whiskey Tango Foxtrot is a mainstream film with an indie flavour, a rarity at a time when such films are either migrating to Netflix or vanishing completely.
A report that recommends putting a price on emissions from the electricity sector has been held back by the Climate Change Authority until after the election, prompting calls from Labor and the Greens that it be made public to inform debate.

The independent authority, whose board is now dominated by appointments made last October by Environment Minister Greg Hunt, was to have released its policy options paper for the power industry by the end of April.

The board, though, decided to withhold the report - along with the large Special Review due out by June 30 - until after the election, "assuming it is called for early July," the authority said on its website.

"Why would the authority not release something before the caretaker period?" a source said to Fairfax Media about the report on the power sector, which creates about one-third of Australia's carbon emissions.
The Greens will have a permanent presence in north Queensland if it won a second Senate seat at the federal election, with Andrew Bartlett committing to move north should his bid for a return to the upper house be successful.

Mr Bartlett, a former Democrats leader in the Senate, will be second on the Greens' ticket on July 2, behind sitting Queensland Senator Larissa Waters.

Greens Senate candidate Andrew Bartlett has promised to move to north Queensland if he is returned to the upper house. Credit:Julian Meehan

Despite living in Brisbane all his life, Mr Bartlett said he would relocate to north Queensland should he be elected a Greens senator.

"Having represented Queensland before, it's a bloody big state," he said.
It seems like an age but the 44th Parliament began only 2 years ago. As it officially closes ahead of the eight-week election campaign, here are the highlights and lowlights, some you may have forgotten and some you'll wish you could.

The good

January 2015: Rosie Batty's appointment as Australian of the Year forced attention and action on family violence, an issue left untouched for too long.

July 2015: Following the unexpected death of Western Australian MP Don Randall, MPs on all sides of Parliament united to pay respect. A white rose has adorned his former seat in the House since.
Murmansk Region authorities are expecting new investors, including some from Asia Pacific countries, to finance local and Arctic projects, Murmansk Region Governor Marina Kovtun told TASS news agency.

"The Arctic issue will once again figure prominently at the 2016 St. Petersburg Economic Forum. We are expecting a discussion of Arctic trade and economic cooperation issues and the Arctic macro-region's investment potential for the purpose of attracting Russian and foreign investors, including some from the Asia Pacific countries," Kovtun said.

The Governor believes that growing attention toward the Arctic's development on the part of many countries, including non-Arctic countries, creates a solid basis for promoting multilateral cooperation.

"Many of our investment proposals are directly linked with the region's Arctic specifics. The ice-free Kola Bay, nuclear icebreaker operator Atomflot's basing site, and overall Arctic development prospects make it possible to create profitable investment proposals in transport and logistics, and the high-tech oil transshipment and fisheries sectors," Kovtun noted.
A Saturday night out at a Chinese restaurant in Bondi Junction has resulted in a three-month police investigation and a public search for eight diners who detectives believe know more about a wild brawl that broke out during the meal.

Chairs were used as weapons, bottles smashed and punches thrown when a birthday party at Zilver restaurant, on the top floor of Westfield Bondi Junction, descended into violence on the night of February 13.

Police would like to speak to this man, and seven other people, about a brawl at a Chinese restaurant in Bondi. Credit:NSW Police

A large window was smashed during the fight, which started in the restaurant about 9.50pm and spilled out into the Oxford Street shopping centre. A number of young children were believed to have been in the restaurant at the time.

Officers from the Eastern Suburbs Local Area Command went to the restaurant on the night of the brawl, but most of those involved in the fight had already left.
BY KEITH JACKSON

ONE OF THE great things that the introduction of radio broadcasting did for PNG was to ensure the recording and preservation of the old stories, myths, songs, dances and sounds.

We broadcasters in the sixties and seventies placed great emphasis on this responsibility  undertaking recording patrols using portable audio equipment; travelling around rural villages spending long nights gathering material of cultural value.

While the sounds of PNG were on tape, and while they were looked after, they would never die.

The material recorded was carefully archived, and stored in an air conditioned room to protect it from heat, humidity, mould and a fatal condition of magnetic tape called print through.

The aircons there for the equipment, father, not for you, as 1970s PNG broadcasting controller, HH (Jim) Leigh, liked to put it.

And, of course, this material also made it to air in programs like Toktok Bilong Tumbuna and Singsing Bilong Ples and Sitori Bilong Yumi.

Such programs, innocuous thought they seem, were not without controversy. For example, in Bougainville , back then anyway, the people of the north detested the Siwai music of the south, and remained in a constant fever of complaint about it.

But broadcasting the stories and the music exposed PNG's cultural variations to its own people and, in a small way, helped build a sense of unity and nation within its great diversity.

When Bougainville disintegrated into a bloody civil war, the radio station I had managed was razed and the irreplaceable collection of tape recordings was destroyed with it.

But now, apropos of no civil strife or natural disaster but simple bureaucratic humbug, the PNG National reports that a rare collection of traditional Chimbu songs, string band music, legends, myths and traditional bamboo flute harmonies has been wilfully ruined.

The National Broadcasting Corporations library and archives building in Kundiawa, constructed in 1973, has just been demolished to make way for the new highlands regional Treasury building.

Some 37 years of recordings have been wantonly destroyed.

And all this was done in the presence of Governor Fr John Garia, other Chimbu MPs, PNG Finance secretary Gabriel Yer, NBC managing director Memafu Kapera, and NBC chairman Paul Reptario.

They are named because they need to be shamed.

The Nationals reporter saw remains of the destroyed material, much of it still burning, lying in the wreckage of the bulding and around the perimeter fence.

The management and staff of NBC Kundiawa have been blamed for failing to relocate the items when they moved from the building three months ago.

Whoever is responsible, it is a national and cultural disgrace.
A man armed with a knife robbed a pizza delivery driver at Miami on the Gold Coast just before midnight on Friday.

Police are appealing for public assistance to find the offender who fled on foot with the delivery man's mobile phone and money.

A man armed with a knife robbed a pizza delivery guy at Miami on the Gold Coast just before midnight on Friday.

The robbery happened about 11.45pm in the front yard of a Gold Coast Highway address.

The 24-year-old male employee was not physically injured during the incident.
In the end it was bloodless, with the decision all but decided before the speeches had even begun.

But the result, which has seen Tim Nicholls installed as the LNP leader, will mark a change in attitude and approach for the Queensland Opposition, which plans on taking off the muzzle and "taking the fight back to Labor".

Lawrence Springborg and John-Paul Langbroek had attempted to take the party in another, less combative, direction following the 2015 election loss, which was partly blamed on the divisive way the LNP had governed while in power.

"Look, Lawrence and JP did what they had to do to get us through that first period after the election loss," a senior LNP source said.
Queensland police have appealed for public help to find a 13-year-old boy last seen five days ago west of Brisbane.

The boy was last seen at an address in Raleigh Place, Redbank Plains on May 1.

Police are looking for this 13-year-old Redbank Plains boy missing since Sunday.

He is described as Pacific Islander in appearance, about 175 centimetres tall, of proportionate build and with black hair and brown eyes.

Anyone with information is urged to contact Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.
Comedian and single mother of four George McEncroe is happy to have a laugh about most things, but the safety of women and children isn't one of them. 

That's why she's raising money for Mum's Taxi, a ride-sharing app where only women are drivers and only women and children are passengers.

McEncroe, who many be familiar to listeners of ABC radio, was working several jobs and saving for a house deposit when she tried joining Uber.

"I registered a couple of times and realised I was just too scared, there are too many risks. I can't afford for something to go wrong," she said.
Damien Mantach defrauded the Victorian Liberal Party of $1.55 million while he was state director, and used some of the money to try to salvage a disintegrating marriage, a court has heard.

Mantach, 42, fronted the County Court on Friday to formally plead guilty to 15 representative charges of obtaining a financial advantage by deception, related to pocketing 53 payments from Liberal coffers between May 2010 and January last year.

Former Victorian Liberal state director Damien Mantach.

Judge Liz Gaynor was told Mantach and wife Jodie were enduring a marital breakdown at the time of the offending, and that the frauds - which Mantach used to buy a $611,000 cafe for his wife to run as well as shares, a car, and repayments on their Ocean Grove home - were his way of trying to address the problem.

"It was clearly a marriage that was in strife and this was his very simplistic way of dealing with it," Judge Gaynor said.
Melbourne Lord Mayor Robert Doyle has welcomed the prospect of a large mosque being built in the CBD, following claims demand for prayer space is outstripping supply.

Cr Doyle said Melbourne was one of the great multicultural cities of the world and agreed there was a need for a bigger site.

The Islamic Council of Victoria that it wants to create a mosque for more than 2000 worshippers. Credit:Neil Newitt

"I think a mosque would be a wonderful addition to multicultural Melbourne," he said.

"We have a wonderful Islamic community in Melbourne and as far as I'm concerned, they are most welcome in the centre of our city."
The family of Zoe Buttigieg burst into tears as Bowe Maddigan told a court he was not guilty of raping and murdering the 11-year-old girl.

Magistrate Jonathan Klestadt committed the 30-year-old Mildura man to stand trial in the Supreme Court, as a three-day hearing in Wangaratta ended on Friday, the Border Mail reports.

Bowe Maddigan is heading to Melbourne for a directions hearing at the Supreme Court on May 13. Credit:Mark Jesser/Fairfax Media

Maddigan stood expressionless and stared straight ahead when he entered his not guilty plea to one count of murder and two counts of sexual assault  the first time he had spoken during the proceedings.

Just two members of Zoe's family were in the public gallery.
In Simbu the ritual of the side-blown flute (Kuakumba) is known as Kua ombuno in the Kuman-Nagane dialect.

Instruments used in traditional rituals  like the side-blown flute of the Sepik and parts of the Highlands, Madang and Oro, usually played in pairs - can only be used by those who have had the appropriate initiation.

TRADITIONAL musical instruments and their uses vary widely from place to place in Papua New Guinea.

Kua ombuno means introduction to the birds call. Each family imitates the call of a bird and this is the familys identity. My mothers familys bird call is the call of the Mourning Dove (Nerebare). Adapting a birds call into the family gives the feeling of being united with nature.

People of Simbu, like all other Papua New Guineans, have close links with nature. Birds are seen as messengers and certain bird calls signify certain messages: warnings, good news, bad news. The soft, low pitched called of the Nerebare is played on the flute and the grey-brown feathers and long pointed tail is carved on the culm (stem) of the bamboo.

Playing Kuakumba signifies two things. It announces that the family has a surplus of pigs and will kill them at a pig killing ceremony. It also announces that the family is well equipped to sponsor the pre-rituals - traditional dances and initiation ceremonies - before the pig killing begins.

Children between the ages of eight and twelve are given this ritual in the mens house. Two or three open fire places are built in the centre of the house. The adolescents sit in front of the fire and lectures on societys norms are delivered.

The heat of the fire symbolises strength. It is believed that the adolescents are more attentive to traditional teachings whilst being exposed to heat and that they will live up to societys expectations.

The Kuakumba fluteis only blown when the family have enough pigs to kill otherwise it collects dust in the ceiling, which is considered a disgrace.

At the crack of dawn, the initiated adolescents are led to the secret fall, which is said to be the drinking place of the birds ancestor. The fall is guarded by four half-naked men covered in black ashes with scary looking faces and stone axes in hand ready to attack intruders.

Near the fall lies a body covered with fake blood. The daunting setting was designed to replace fear with courage.

So the first encounter of the initiate at the fall is shocking. The procession begins from the mens house with all heads low as the straight line marches to the fall. The instructors, like guards on patrol, kept a watchful eye making sure nobody falls out of line.

Each instructor had a branch of salat (a bush leave with hurtful and itchy spores) in hand to swipe anyone who falls out of the line.

When the procession reached the spot where everyone has a clear view of the body covered in fake blood, the four guards rush out, pretending to attack the line.

It happens so quickly that the initiates are caught off guard. They seek to run in all directions for safety but the instructors whip them with the salat to make them stay in line. Amidst all this disorder, the scary looking men and the body lying near the fall quickly and quietly sneak away.

Seeing that no one is there to attack, the initiates calm down and the instructors team leader congratulates them on meeting the birds ancestor.

The side-blown flute engraved with the familys bird is given to the initiates and the instructors teach the tune of the birds call to them. They practice near the fall for a week or two.

The purpose of being in this remote place is because women and children are forbidden to look at the flute whilst its played. It is believed that, if they do, they will contract an epileptic illness or their pigs will grow thin.

To avoid such tragic situation the flute is practiced in secret out of earshot.

When the bird call can now be played confidently on the Kuakumba, a feast is arranged. The food for the initiates is served on special wooden bowls upon which the familys bird is engraved. The initiates remain in the mens house and their biological mother or grandmother brings food to them.

After the party, the initiates come out and blow their flutes openly so the whole village can hear. In so doing, they have accomplished the Kuakumba ritual and are officially given the mandate to play the flute whenever the need arises.

The Kuakumba ritual is accompanied by a traditional dance performed by men and young girls decorated in fine birds of paradise plumes. The dance concludes the second significant Kuakumba ritual by displaying wealth and status in terms of bird plumes and large mother of pearl shells (minge oungan-kina shell) which was of high value then.

Today, the name Kuakumba has made its way into the English vocabulary as a modern musical instrument but, sadly, no longer a ritual instrument.
A puppy missing after a vehicle rollover near Carrabin led to the discovery of skeletal remains that police have now confirmed as human.

Thirteen-week old Ruby was thrown from a ute on April 20 after it rolled several times and the uninjured, but scared dog ran off into dense bush.

Runaway Ruby - safe after a vehicle rollover - but the accident led to the discovery of human remains. Credit:WA Police

The driver of the ute, Russell Thomas, was also unhurt in the crash however was distressed to lose the dog he had just bought for his daughter.

He left some bedding by the wrecked vehicle in the hope Ruby would return to it and headed into Carrabin, about 300 kilometres east of Perth.
London: Britain's opposition Labour Party looks set to lose ground in regional and local elections, partial results showed on Friday, pointing to a dip in support that could challenge the already fragile authority of party leader Jeremy Corbyn.

In the biggest test of the political mood since David Cameron's Conservative Party won a national election a year ago, Britons voted on Thursday to elect new devolved authorities in Scotland and Wales, more than 2700 local officials across England and a new mayor of the nation's capital, London.

Sadiq Khan, the Labour Party candidate for London mayor, and his wife Saadiya Khan, after voting in the Mayor of London and London Assembly elections on Thursday. Credit:Bloomberg

The elections have been framed as a test of Mr Corbyn's first eight months in charge of Labour after his surprise victory in an internal leadership contest last September shifted the party's political stance sharply to the left.
There are echoes of Trump's rise through the presidential primaries to this week become the presumptive Republican candidate in the high point of Zhirinovsky's success - in the Russian parliamentary elections in 1993. Agressive: Ultranationalist Russian presidential candidate Vladimir Zhirinovsky gestures at a press conference in 1996. Credit:Misha Japarizde That year the conflict between President Boris Yeltsin and a parliament elected under Soviet rule in 1990 had been resolved by Yeltsin using military force, with hundreds being killed and the Russian White House being shelled in October. Many in the West thought Yeltsin's victory, albeit tainted by his use of violence, gave democrats the upper hand and that supporters of democracy would receive a strong mandate in elections in December. US Republican Donald Trump has reached many voters with simple messages and plenty of television coverage. Credit:Bloomberg

The campaign ran for little more than three weeks. At the start polls indicated the misnamed Liberal-Democratic Party  it is often described as "neither liberal nor democratic"  had only 2 per cent support, and even a week out from the election only 7 to 9 percent. US academic and later US ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul wrote in his 1994 book Understanding Russia's 1993 Parliamentary Elections: implications for US foreign policy that television was the only effective means to campaign. Russian ultranationalist presidential candidate Vladimir Zhirinovsky rose to prominence on the campaign trail in 1996. Credit:AP "After Russia's Choice [the government party], the LDP had more television time than any other party or bloc. As an individual candidate Zhirinovsky received more television exposure than any other candidate," McFaul wrote. "Zhirinovsky used his television time effectively. He spoke in short sentences using simple language. His message was clear. He addressed issues that were of concern to voters  He lambasted the people in government as theoreticians who cared little and knew even less about the Russian people.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump surrounded by his glamorous wife Melania right, daughter Ivanka, left, and son Eric on Tuesday. Credit:Mary Altaffer "He blamed Caucasians*, Jews, neighbouring countries, and the West for Russia's woes. Russians, Zhirinovsky declared, no longer had to sacrifice and wait to be great again. "Boasting that he had never been a member of either the Communist Party of the Soviet Union or Democratic Russia, Zhirinovsky offered a third, new option to those voters tired of the status quo." Vladimir Zhirinovsky dances with showgirls as he sings at the launch of a CD of him singing in 1999. Credit:Mikhail Metzel Hopes that democrats would prosper were dashed. The LDP received the most votes of any party, capturing 22.9 per cent of the vote and garnering a total of 70 seats in the 450-member legislature. International observers considered the elections free and fair.

McFaul seems to have been unnecessarily been concerned about the victory of Zhirinovsky, whom he called a fascist. He was more prescient about the ultranationalist's future, even though his party has always got less than 12 per cent of the vote since 1993. "Zhirinovsky's electoral victory has made fascist ideas respectable in Russian politics ... all contemporary Russian political figures ... have felt compelled to become more nationalistic in their rhetoric and actions. This redefined Russian political spectrum offers opportunities to future Russian leaders of a more militant nationalist persuasion." Indeed, the way for authoritarian Russian leaders, including the long-serving President Vladimir Putin, was partly paved by Zhirinovsky. Russian political analyst Leonid Radzikhovsky also condemns Zhirinovsky for lowering the tone of Russian politics. In an interview on Ekho Moskvy radio station on Wednesday, he described Zhirinovsky as the "true face, soul and brain" of the Russian parliament.
NEAL CONAN | Hawaii Public Radio

THE five countries in the Melanesian Spearhead Group were scheduled to meet in Port Vila this week, with West Papua at the top of the agenda.

But the summit was postponed for at least a month as Vanuatu, Fiji, Papua New Guinea and the Kanak Liberation Front of New Caledonia try to bridge a deep split.

Two years ago, several West Papuan groups formed the United Liberation Movement as an umbrella organisation to take their case to the world, beginning with their Melanesian brethren in the Pacific.

Indonesia, which has ruled the western half of New Guinea since 1963, rejects any discussion of the issue as interference in its internal affairs, and, in the context of South West Pacific islands, Indonesia is an economic and military powerhouse.
Latest News Westpac's second-half profit takes $824 million blow from unit sale The bank's fiscal 2022 results will be out in November

Banking Code of Compliance Committee welcomes moves to boost transparency Changes supported by ABA will hold banks to account, says BCCC chair

National Australia Bank ( NAB ) has reported housing lending growth of 6% through its third party channel.According to the major banks 2016 first half-year results, brokers settled $84.8 billion in home loans in the six months ending March, up from $79.8 billion settled in the same period in 2015.By comparison, the proprietary channel settled $106.8 billion in home loans in the first half-year, up 5% from $101.5 billion in 2015.NABs total home loan book reached $271 billion with mortgage brokers attributed to almost one third (31.3%) of the major lenders total book. However, mortgage broker market share declined slightly from the 31.4% reported in NABs September 2015 results.Subdued first-half 2016 broker lending growth was impacted by the investor lending slowdown, credit policy changes and interest-only repricing, according to the bank.NAB says it will continue to maintain a strong focus on building relationships with mortgage consumers via the broker channel, however, reporting a 14% increase in the number of brokers under its group of aggregators  PLAN, Choice and FAST  in the year to March 2016.At March 2016, there were 4,204 mortgage brokers under the PLAN, Choice and FAST brands.The major bank reported a statutory net loss of $1.74 billion reflecting a one-off related to discontinued operations of its troubled British operation, Clydesdale Bank. NABs interim dividend remains unchanged at 99 cents per share, fully-franked.
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They want to keep it old school.

Kindergarten applications for a struggling elementary school next to a Vinegar Hill public housing complex have spiked since the city controversially expanded the area it serves to include one of Brooklyns wealthiest neighborhoods, but parent leaders warned the new moms and dads from trying to turn the institution into a literal playground for the rich.

We dont need any galloping knights coming here and trying to change it to an image that its not, said PS 307 parent teacher association co-president Benjamin Greene to the crowd of local parents, and school and education officials at a meeting intended to help ease the integration on Thursday night.

PS 307, which enrolled just 17 kids for kindergarten last year, has already sent out 97 offer letters for this years class since the city in January expanded its school zone from part of the Farragut Houses  plus any kids who come in via a science and math magnet program  to encompass all of Vinegar Hill, Dumbo, and the Navy Yard, principal Stephanie Carroll announced.

A Department of Education spokesman later said those offers were for pre-kindergarten, however, and it had sent out 66 kindergarten offers.

Either way, it isnt entirely clear who the new kids are  Carroll said she cant give enrollment figures yet, and the department rep says it cant reveal applicants backgrounds until everyone has selected a school.

But the rezoning is expected to dramatically alter the schools demographics  the student body will drop from 90 percent minorities to around 5565 percent, education officials predict.

The expansion was intended to ease the squeeze on overcrowded PS 8 in Brooklyn Heights, but education officials and pols argued desegregating PS 307 and filling more of its seats  it currently has 488 students, but space for 703  would be a boon for its pupils, too.

Many local families werent convinced, though, fearing wealthy, white families would push out the community that has studied at and shaped the York Street school for decades.

Greene said he is happy to work with the new cohort, but urged those parents to respect the schools existing character and the students who live in the New York City Housing Authority buildings next door.

We want to make sure PS 307 is not going to be this Fortune 500 school in two or three years, he said. Were not going to push out our NYCHA parents.

But Carroll and district superintendent Barbara Freeman said they didnt think the old families had anything to fear from the new ones, and most of the parents in attendance agreed that they must work together to ensure nobody gets knocked back when the new students start school in the fall.

Carroll unveiled several programs the school has instated to help bring families from all of the neighborhoods together  including opportunities for first graders from PS 307 and PS 8 to visit each other to see how the other half lives, and monthly PS 307 and Me events where 2- and 3-year-olds and their guardians can get familiar with the elementary school.

And at least one future PS 307 parent says he and his daughter cant wait to be a part of the school  just as it is.

Were very impressed with the school and were impressed with the principal, said Jonathan Poplack, who is moving to Brooklyn Heights from Manhattan and sending his daughter to pre-kindergarten at PS 307.

The rezoning has also had an impact on PS 8, its principal reported. The school had to put dozens of prospective kindergartners on its wait list in 2015, but only one unlucky young scholar for this coming school year.
As soon as Merediths opening voice-over referenced the Biblical story of King Solomon and the two mothers, I had the feeling we were in for a long and difficult night on Greys Anatomy. Scratch that. As soon as previously on Greys Anatomy hit all of the highlights of the Calzona relationship in 30 seconds, I was filled with dread and I steeled myself for a grueling hour of custody battle nastiness. I was not wrong. Mama Tried proved to be every bit as cruel and mean-spirited as I had feared as Callie and Arizona went toe-to-toe over Sofia. Unfortunately, while Kevin McKidd ably directed, the writing was a hot mess as viewers were hit over the head with stereotype after stereotype in this odd medical drama meets courtroom procedural hybrid episode.

We Are At An Impasse Here

Full disclosure: I was never a fan of the Calzona relationship and have concluded that Callie and Arizona are much better apart than together. That said, up to this point, they had done a stellar job of co-parenting their daughter, Sofia Robbin Sloan Torres, even after Callie embarked upon a new romantic relationship with resident Penny Blake. Then, somewhere around mid season, Penny received a prestigious grant which would relocate her to the east coast for a year. Instead of riding it out and pursuing a long distance relationship, Callie lost her mind and decided to relocate as well, intending to take Sofia with her, thinking Arizona would be totally cool with it. So, with that sound reasoning in mind, we found ourselves witnesses to a custody hearing, because REALLY Callie? Arizona was just going to take that lightly? After attempts to settle went nowhere, it was ON.

Greys Anatomy Recap: Meredith Gives Amelia Advice >>>

Things That Cannot Be Unsaid

Witnesses were solemnly instructed that this was not a popularity contest. All parties were to act in the best interest of the child who is, apparently, six years old (Greys Anatomys time never makes any sense, but whatever). Anyway, a parade of witnesses was trotted out. Owen, Meredith, and Penny were Team Callie. Richard and Andrew were Team Arizona. Miranda did her level best to be impartial. Things went badly on both sides as Arizonas lawyer pointed out that Sofias entire support system would evaporate with a cross-country move and Callies lawyer called both Arizonas character (see Trivia Nights with Richard) and her long workings hours (Fetal Surgeon) called into question.

While it was refreshing to see the rights of adoptive parents set on an equal plane as those of biological parents, the heavy-handed attacks on working moms and the over-the-top tactics of both lawyers were so ridiculous that I was cringing. Bailey was right. A womans success in her career should never be a con. And Callies lawyers snotty statement that Arizona continually chose work over her daughter? At this point, I wanted to throw things at the TV, because a father would never have to defend going to work. As someone who has been both a working mom and stay-at-home (working!) mom, I say on behalf of all moms: STOP. Ugh. Enough.

Though attacks came from both sides, Arizona kept things about Sofia and Arizonas desire to be with her daughter, while Callie went for the jugular and, despite what she told Arizona at the end of the episode about AZ being a good mom, tried to undermine her ex-wife personally in every way. I found myself on Team Arizona and was pleased, yet not entirely surprised, when she won full custody of Sofia. Callie, of course, was devastated and was already recoiling from Pennys touch. Yikes.

6 of the Most Complicated Sister Relationships on TV >>>

In Other News

* Pregnant teen, Jenny, and her mom, Tara, returned after Jenny took a bad fall which put her baby in danger. Dr. Russo (whose presence affirmed that other doctors do work at Grey Sloan Memorial) was assigned the case since Arizona was in court, with Alex and April on the team as well. When things went south with Jennys baby, Arizona left the custody hearing to return to the hospital. As she explained to the judge, Sofia would survive, no matter the outcome of the hearing. Jennys baby would not live without Arizonas help, so she helped, which spoke volumes about her true character.

* Stephanie regretted breaking up with Kyle. Jo stopped her friend from drunk dialing him to ask for a second chance. By episodes end, Kyle was readmitted to the hospital with a case of possible meningitis. He wanted nothing to do with Stephanie, as Amelia and Jo worked on his case, while Stephanie watched helplessly.

* Jackson and April had a civil (and oh-so-sad) conversation about the custody of their unborn child. When they were dividing up holidays (including the Super Bowl!) I wanted to say, Or you could stop being stupid and work things out and celebrate all of them TOGETHER!!! Sigh.

* Next weeks penultimate episode looks craaaaaazy! Two proposals? One unexpected hookup? Count me inis it Thursday yet?

Memorable Moments and Quotes

Jo: I cant believe you dumped Kyle with a note. Brutal.

Stephanie: Yeah, not my finest moment.

Jo: Thats like dumping somebody by text  only in 1980.

Miranda (while testifying): Objection. Speculation.

Lawyer (to the judge): She cant do that.

Judge (to Miranda): You cant do that.

Alex: Should you be here? Shouldnt you be at home getting ready for court or something?

Arizona: No, I shouldnt be here. I should be at home fixing my daughter ice cream and reading her Charlottes Web.

Ben: I mean, just because youre not the parent who gave birth to the kid, doesnt make the kid any less yours, (speaking about Arizona and Sofia himself and step-son, Tuck).

Jackson (about the baby): We make a plan.

April: We respect the plan. We dont fight.

Jackson: We dont fight.

Callie and Merediths conversation (how far has that friendship come  seriously) and the many references to the late (sob!) Mark Sloan

Callie: I tried. Not to love Penny, Mer. I tried so hard.

Meredith: I know. This sucks.

Arizonas testimony and its aftermath  kudos to Jessica Capshaw for her portrayal of Arizona

Lawyer: To be clear, Dr. Sloan and Dr. Torres were Sofias parents and then youcame around.

Arizona: No. I didnt come around. Im Sofias mother. I legally adopted her.

Arizona (to Callie): The things you let them say about me. I would never have done that to you. Never.

Callie (sobbing in Merediths arms): How the hell did this happen?

Greys Anatomy airs Thursdays at 8 p.m. on ABC.

(photo courtesy of ABC)
Greys Anatomy season 12 episode 22, Mama Tried, is almost entirely about Callie and Arizonas custody battle for Sofia. Their friends take the stand for them, their lawyers battle it out and Arizona is forced to choose between staying in court or saving her patient and her baby. She chooses the latter. Some good does come of this custody battle, as seeing it leads to April and Jackson having a very civil discussion about their childs future.

Here are the important moments in Mama Tried leading up to Arizona getting custody of Sofia.

Greys Anatomy Recap: Who Was Granted Custody of Sofia?>>>

Arizona and Callie Cant Come to an Agreement Outside of Court



Callies Lawyer Uses Owen to Show Callie is Caring and Is Making the Best of a Tough Situation

Arizonas Lawyer Has Andrew Talk About Life at Home

The place is happy, he says. We see so much dark stuff every day at work, its really nice to come home to a happy kid.

Penny Starts off Strong on the Stand but Then Falters

Yes, shes come to love Sofia and she knows all her favorites, but she cant say what she was wearing that morning or remember what grade shes in.

Callies Lawyer (Eventually) Gets Bailey to Admit Arizonas Schedule Is More Unpredictable Than Callies

However, Bailey doesnt hide how offended she is by this line of questioning. I would never put a womans success in the con column, she argues, pointing out Arizona was saving babies and parents from losing their own children all those times the lawyer says Arizona was choosing work over her child. Would you ask that if she were a man?

Callies Lawyer Has Meredith Do Damage Control About Penny, While Arizonas Gets Her to Admit What Sofia Would Lose Moving to New York

Penny is a very good person, Meredith says. She and Sofia get along great.

However, as Meredith admits, it takes a village to raise a kid, especially for single parents. We have a village. Yes, its here in Seattle. Sofias friends, school, teachers, her home, thats all in Seattle. Its what Sofia would be leaving, right?

Richard Praises Arizona as a Role Model Parent, but Then Callies Lawyer Brings up Their Trivia Nights

According to the record she has, Arizona has asked Callie to swap nights with Sofia 34 times. They swap all the time, Arizona tells her lawyer, but its not looking good when combined with her unpredictable work schedule.

Arizona Begins Losing Hope

Theyre making it sound like a working mom is a bad mom, she tells her lawyer. We just lost in there, right? Because they made me sound like I was a selfish, irresponsible, sex-crazed   Her lawyer tells her to take the stand and tell the truth and shell win this.

Callies Lawyer Has Callie Speak About the Day Sofia Was Born

She was in a car accident and though she doesnt remember much, Callie says being a mother is the reason Im still alive today. She knew she couldnt give up because she was pregnant with her and shed die if she did.

Callies Lawyer Tries to Argue That She Was Late to the Parenting Plan, But Arizona Defends Her Role in Sofias Life

She says that Callie and Mark were Sofias parents and then Arizona came around. No, Arizona argues. Im Sofias mother. I legally adopted her.  Youre not going to imply that Im any less Sofias mother because we dont share the same DNA. Because that would be offensive. It would be offensive to anyone in the room who has an adopted child or is an adoptive child. I chose to be Sofias mother. It did not fall into my lap. There was a choice and I could stay or I could run and I chose motherhood and it was the best choice I ever made.

Arizona Makes the Tough Call to Go to Work When a Patient Needs Her

I love my child and I want her with me, but I know no matter how this ends, shell survive. Shell be healthy and safe and well-taken care of and loved because we are her mothers, Arizona explains. But theres a child at the hospital who will not survive unless I am there so I have to go.

Is Sara Ramirez Leaving Greys Anatomy?>>>

The Brief Exchange Between Callie and Arizona Before the Judges Decision Shows the Damage Done

Callie: No matter what the judge decides, I know that youre a good mom too and I just want you to know this doesnt change that.

Arizona: The things that you let them say about me, I would never have done that to you. Never.

How the hell did this happen?

Callie cries to Meredith after Arizona is granted sole custody of Sofia.

Greys Anatomy season 12 airs Thursdays at 8pm on ABC.

(Images courtesy of ABC)
Scandals fifth season is getting eerily topical. In the same week that Donald Trump locked up the Republican presidential nomination, the shows Trump doppelganger Hollis Doyle is in the lead. Can Olivia and Abby do what the real-life Republican establishment couldnt and stop Doyle?

Thats not all. The episode may start with five candidates running for president, but by the end, only two are left standing to go head-to-head in November. But the election may be taking a backseat to some major developments between Olivia, Fitz and Jake.

#NeverDoyle

With Hollis Doyle now in the lead, Olivia and Abby call a truce to go after him instead of letting Susan and Mellie attack each other. They throw everything they can at Hollis, saying he used taxpayer money to by a private island, raped his wife and hunts with the KKK. But just like in the real world with Trump, it only makes Doyles poll numbers rise.

Doyle is unstoppable and makes things even more interesting when he claims that whichever lady drops out first, Susan or Mellie, will be his vice presidential pick. Liz wants Susan to take the deal, but Abby talks her out of it. Mellie considers taking the deal too, but Marcus shuts it down in a scene rife with sexual tension. By the end of the episode, the two almost kiss.

Olivia Defeats Doyle

Olivia goes to Doyle to say Mellie will accept the deal, but gets him to admit that all of the offensive things he says are just an act and that he actually hates those inbred morons who support him.

Of course she recorded the whole conversation, leaks it to Sally Langston and Sally then uses it to destroy Hollis on live TV. Just like that, Hollis is out. If only it were that simple in the real world to stop Trump.

Who Is the Republican Nominee?

With Hollis out, the race is back to Susan and Mellie, which means Abby and Olivias truce is over. A meeting is called in the Oval Office with Susan, David, Liz, Fitz, Abby, Olivia, Mellie and Marcus. Both sides agree to present their worst opposition research to agree which of them should drop out.

Olivia reveals that David dropped a federal lawsuit to secure the Florida governors endorsement for Susan. Thats bad because Fitz immediately asks for Davids resignation as Attorney General and Susan isnt happy either, dumping David for good and ending their engagement from earlier in the episode.

Abby once again proves that shes not a real political monster because she doesnt drop the bombshell about Olivias abortion she got from Papa Pope. Instead, she has some stupid story of Mellie talking to psychics after her son died.

With the cards on the table, Susan drops out and Mellie Grant is the Republican nominee for President. In the aftermath, Olivia confronts Abby about what she really had. Abby tells her she knows about the abortion and Papa Pope told her, but didnt reveal it because it would hurt Fitz, who still doesnt know.

Edison the Puppet

Cyrus is a true believer in Frankie Vargas, but hes still losing to Edison Davis. Cyrus asks Olivia for help and learns that Papa Pope is actually running Edisons campaign. Theres no winning because Rowan was Command and hell be better at stealing an election than Cyrus and Olivia ever were.

Shes not wrong because Papa Pope explains to Edison that he cant attack Hollis because he cant act like an angry black man. Hes already going to get all of the black vote just because hes black, so he needs to play nice for white people so theyre not threatened by him and will be OK with making him the first black president. Papa Pope also lays down the law about proposing Jake as a vice president.

Edison talks to Jake and tells him he wont be his vice presidential pick. Jake explains that he doesnt have a choice and basically threatens his life if he doesnt pick him.

Who Is the Democratic Nominee??

Later, Olivia goes to Edison to appeal to his better nature. She points out that hes just her fathers puppet and urges him to drop out. He listens and does exactly what Papa Pope warned him against doing, railing against Hollis Doyle to the press in an awesomely angry speech. However, the sad reality is that an angry black man speaking the truth means hell lose the election.

Indeed, Edison calls Vargas to concede. So now we officially have a Mellie vs. Frankie showdown in November, with Olivia and Cyrus running the campaigns.

In the final scene of the episode, Papa Pope and Jake rough up Edison a little bit, with Papa Pope revealing that he knows his daughter was behind the implosion. Rowan leaves and thats when Jake shows his true colors. He tells Edison to ask Olivia for help because Jake wants out. He wants to leave Papa Popes clutches and chase the sun.

Next week is the Scandal season 5 finale and while picking vice presidents will be a big deal, the real drama comes from Olivias personal life. Will she help Jake get away from her dad? Will Fitz learn the truth about Olivias abortion? And will Mellie and Marcus finally have sex?

(Image courtesy of ABC)
A progressive group founded by one-time presidential candidate and former Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean is supporting Eric Kingson in the 24th Congressional District race.

Democracy for America announced its endorsement Friday. The organization is backing Kingson, D-Manlius, over two other Democrats  Colleen Deacon, U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand's former central New York regional director, and Steve Williams, a Syracuse-area attorney.

Charles Chamberlain, DFA's executive director, said the group has worked with Kingson on income inequality issues for nearly a decade.

"As a national leader in the fight to expand Social Security benefits for struggling seniors, Eric Kingson is the true progressive in this race and the only candidate ready to address America's growing retirement security crisis from day one," Chamberlain said.

This is the latest endorsement Kingson has received from a progressive organization.

After Kingson announced his congressional bid last year he was endorsed by Blue America, a group which supports progressive Democratic candidates.

DFA's support could provide a boost to Kingson's campaign. The political action committee has 111,750 members in New York and 1 million members throughout the U.S.

"As a lifelong advocate for working families and seniors I am honored to be endorsed by Democracy for America," Kingson said in a statement. "DFA is a leading voice in the national progressive movement, fighting to take back our democracy, rebuild our economy and create a more just society. I have been a proud ally in DFA's work and I plan to continue that work as a member of Congress."

The endorsement comes two days after Kingson learned he would remain on the Democratic primary ballot in the 24th Congressional District.

A Williams campaign supporter objected to hundreds of signatures Kingson collected to qualify for the ballot. If the signatures were ruled invalid, Kingson wouldn't be eligible for the primary election.

The state Board of Elections determined Kingson had 1,269 valid signatures  19 more than the 1,250 signatures he needed to secure a spot on the ballot.

Kingson will face Deacon and Williams in the Democratic primary on Tuesday, June 28. The winner will challenge U.S. Rep. John Katko, a freshman Republican, in the general election.
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October 3, 2022

Dee Gambit

Hundreds  if not thousands  of new and returning TV shows and movies are released every month  your options of what to watch are endless. Variety, they say is ...
Moorestown honors Percheron that helped build the town

Percheron Park opened in downtown Moorestown with a tribute to the horse of yesteryear and its owner, who first brought the breed to the U.S.
A third Republican has publicly announced he's exploring the possibility of running to fill the seat being vacated by retiring state Sen. Michael Nozzolio.

Mike Sigler, a Tompkins County legislator and former county Republican chairman, said Friday he's considering a state Senate bid. He decided to enter his name into the discussion after Assembly members Gary Finch and Bob Oaks, both of whom live in the 54th Senate District, opted not to run.

"I think this is just a good opportunity for me to help my town and to help the district at the state level, so that's why I'm interested," he said in a phone interview.

A Lansing resident, Sigler is employed as a sales manager with Park Outdoor Advertising in Ithaca and is the marketing director for Innovative Dynamics, an engineering research and development firm also based in Ithaca.

Sigler began his career in television after earning his bachelor's and master's degrees in journalism at Northeastern University and Columbia University, respectively. He held various posts before joining WTVH, the CBS affiliate in Syracuse, as a staff reporter and producer.

After a year at channel 5, he took a job as a lead anchor at WETM, the NBC affiliate in Elmira.

In 2002, Sigler left broadcast journalism to run for state Assembly.

"In that race, I ran against Barbara Lifton," he said. "I lost  it was 58-42 (percent)  but it was a pretty good showing considering literally when we started nobody knew our name."

Four years later, Sigler ran for Tompkins County Legislature. He won that election and served for four years, from 2006 to 2010.

In 2014, he ran again and won a seat on the county Legislature. He's currently serving his second four-year term.

If he's elected to the state Senate, Sigler said he'll focus on a range of issues, including how economic development dollars are invested, government mandates and the SAFE Act, a controversial gun control law that was signed in 2013.

"It was an unrealistic law when it passed," he said.

Sigler is the latest Republican to express interest in the open Senate seat. Oaks, who also serves as Wayne County Republican chairman, said Thursday there are 10 to 12 people interested in running to succeed Nozzolio.

Two Republicans have made their plans public: Brian Manktelow, Lyons town supervisor, and John Tubridy, a member of the Webster Republican Committee.

The 54th Senate District includes all of Seneca and Wayne counties, plus portions of Cayuga, Monroe, Ontario and Tompkins counties.
The residence of Gujarat University Vice-Chancellor M N Patel was unusually busy on May 1. The 64-year-old held an impromptu press conference at his house that instantly catapulted him into the limelight.

To the handful of print and electronic media journalists who had turned up, Patel revealed the score card of Prime Minister Narendra Modi: the marks he had obtained in MA (political science) as an external student of the university.

Patel revealed that Modi had scored 62.3 per cent in MA in 1983. In all, the prime minister had got 499 out of 800 marks.

The timing and the manner of this revelation raised many questions. Only a few days ago, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal had sought information on Modi's educational qualification from the Central Information Commission (CIC). Until Kejriwal raked up the issue, Gujarat University had maintained that it would not reveal this information to anyone other than the student concerned. Yet, no sooner did Kejriwal approach the CIC than the marks were made public by way of a press briefing - a move that has been questioned by many, especially the Congress.

"The post of a vice-chancellor of Gujarat University, or for that matter of any university in Gujarat, is politically backed. So, questions will naturally be asked," says a senior Congress leader in Gujarat.

Patel could have simply passed on the information to CIC. He was not bound to make it public. But those who know Patel say he has always been proactive.

Before he was brought back from retirement and appointed vice-chancellor in 2014, Patel was the principal of L D Engineering College.

His peers remember him as a workaholic who would come in to office early and stay till late, expecting the same from his colleagues and juniors.

Patel is known to be close to Gujarat Chief Minister Anandiben Patel from the time she was the state's revenue minister under Modi. Both Anandiben and he are from north Gujarat - Patel from Tunda village in Unjha and Anandiben from Mehsana. One of his relatives is also said to hold an important position in the Bharatiya Janata Party.

His career in academics spans five decades, during which he was the longest serving member secretary of the admission committee of professional courses. The committee is responsible for the regulation of seats and admission of candidates to professional degree courses in the state.

A civil engineer with a doctorate in structural engineering, Patel is also on several state-government-appointed committees. His detractors allege that Patel's decision to reveal Modi's marks was backed by the government to silence naysayers like Kejriwal. "It is either done to please the government or he was asked to do it," says a Congress leader.

Patel denies these allegations. He says he "simply wanted to end the speculation" and "put the matter to rest". The information had been shared with the Prime Minister's Office six months ago, he says.

Having stirred the pot, the vice-chancellor who is known to work long hours is now taking a break. He is off on a trip to Europe this weekend.
Recently, soon after Prakash Javadekar was seen in a suit signing the historic Paris agreement on climate change at the United Nations headquarters, T V tweeted to the minister: "Sir why the suit! Please wear Indian clothes and stand out as an Indian."



The comment elicited sharp reaction from the twitteratti. Clothes are a matter of personal choice; it's unfair to comment on them, said some. The suit could be a protocol, said the others. There is no such protocol, countered Pai. "Look at the African leaders," he retorted.

Sitting in his Bengaluru office, Pai tells me: "Don't decry your roots, they give you confidence." He lightly thumps the table between us every time he wants to emphasise a point, which is often.

Once best known for his role as chief financial officer at Infosys, Pai has carefully picked up many hats along the way. He is today known as one of India's leading angel investors, a philanthropist and a social commentator who has taken upon himself the task of upholding and promoting all things Indian. The tweet to Javadekar is a case in point.

In Pai, several startups have found a ready investor. In 2015, he, along with Tata Sons Chairman Emeritus Ratan Tata, ranked as India's top angel investors. According to VCCEdge data, while Pai made investments across 18 deals (amount disclosed $0.4 million), Tata invested across 17 deals (value not disclosed). Pai invested across segments, from lifestyle brand Kaaryah to online meat ordering startup Licious.

As a philanthropist, he is involved with the Akshaya Patra midday meal programme as its founding member. The programme feeds about 1.5 million children every day. A data-driven man with a wealth of information on his fingertip is how Biocon Chairman Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw describes Pai. She has known him for the past few decades and along with him has founded the Bangalore Political Action Committee, a citizen-led body aimed at promoting good governance and Bengaluru's development . "Both of us," she says, "are very outspoken and we are often the lone voices on issues where no one wants to speak."



Of late, it is more because of this outspokenness that Pai has been in the news. A distinctive leaning is now visible in his tweets and blogs. A clear bent towards the right, is how his critics describe it. "An Indian point of view", is how Pai sees it.

Thus, he is all for re-writing India's history. "India's history has been captured by the Left and extreme Left," he says, adding, "They dominate Indian history councils and academics. Our children are reading what they've written and are getting a distorted view of what India is. like Irfan Habib and Romila Thapar are examples of this."



Thapar has countered this very view in a recent interview to The Caravan. She said she keeps hearing of how left-wing intellectuals hog institutions and have kept out the right-wing intellectuals. "I don't know why that is said because I don't see a regiment of right-wing intellectuals all waiting at the gates of JNU [Jawaharlal Nehru University] and other institutions, unable to enter. This is factually not so," she said in the interview.

Both Thapar and Pai acknowledge this is but a battle of ideologies.

Thapar suggests that communalism is being used as a strategy to change the mindset of Indians to support a certain ideology - of a choice between a Hindu rashtra and a secular democracy. In this confrontation, universities and the educational system are, and will continue to be, obvious targets because education can easily be converted into indoctrination, she has said.

But Pai stands his ground and driven by the belief that the Indian civilisation "has been in the past captured by those who are outside the country," he has launched the 'Foundation for Indian Civilisation Studies'. The first series of this Bengaluru-based NGO will see conferences on ancient Indian mathematics and Indian metallurgy. "Besides funding conferences, we will also fund research papers with rigorous academic standards which we can then export to the world," he says. "I'm working towards arranging the first of the conferences."



He is also of the view that "we should have our own scholars," adding, "I like Rajiv Malhotra." Malhotra, an Indian-American author and Hindu activist, had after a career in the computer and telecom industries, found The Infinity Foundation. The foundation focuses on Indic studies and promotes a non-western and nationalistic view of India and Hinduism. "I don't agree with many of the things he says, but he's fighting for the Indian point of view," says Pai.

The "Indian point of view" repeatedly comes up during the conversation.

At the mention of animated Sanskrit film, Punyakoti, which he has co-produced, Pai's eyes instantly light up. Shoulders pushed back, he begins to sing the Kannada folk song the movie is based on. His voice is clear and confident as he sings about a cow that always speaks the truth.

"Besides Kannada, I grew up on Konkani nursery rhymes because of my mother," he says. "Children should be brought up connected to our culture and should be introduced to characters from our mythologies. Why promote silly characters like Mickey Mouse and Goofy? What is this Baa Baa Black Sheep?"



Remarks such as these often have dubbing him a right-winger.

His recent blog on student protests in JNU made waves when he wrote that students of the university are funded by taxpayers for their education and not politics. Criticism came in buckets with political analyst Pawan Khera describing it as the "most bizarre argument offered on the issue".

The irony of the argument stands out as Pai recalls his own days in college. "College was a time of a political awakening for all of us," he reminisces. "We marched on the streets after Emergency; we marched for nuclear disarmament. We'd go to listen to Jayaprakash Narayan when he'd visit the city; we were rebels." It does not escape him that the 'rebellion' seen on campuses today is also the youth questioning the times, the way he did back in college. "Students are always rebels," he says, "but it needs to be productive in the long run since higher education is a privilege, not a right."



He goes on reminiscing about those days when Amitabh Bachchan, as the angry young man, brought to screen the frustrations of the common man. "We were the Deewar generation; there was a lot of anger. In those days (the 1970s), India was a failing country. There were no jobs."



If society was polarised then, it is polarised again today, though over different issues. Those on one side of the divide often criticise Pai for being on the other side of the spectrum. The criticism is louder for him because being in the position of influence that he is, he is both heard and followed.

But Pai remains unfazed. "I can take valid and data-based criticism," he says. "Data" is easily one of Pai's most favourite words; it is the hammer and the chisel in his personal toolbox. It always has been. By the time he was 22, he had collected and studied 3,000 annual reports. "I'd read them like story books," he says.

Pai believes that with time he has become more tolerant towards dissent. "I'm 57 now. I don't argue much, and I don't want to win all the time now," he says. "As the CFO of Infosys, I wanted to win arguments all the time - (Narayana) Murthy knows about this," he says as he smiles. Mazumdar-Shaw agrees. "If you reason with him, he's willing to concede," she says.

Pai says there was a time when once in a while he would call names. "But I have stopped now because my sons have asked me to. They tell me, very rightly, 'Don't attack the person; attack the idea'."



So that is what he does, sometimes unabashedly going against popular opinion. Most recently, when everybody seemed to be gunning for Vijay Mallya, he asked why no one was being held accountable for Air India's losses (Rs 30,000 crore) just as Mallya was being held responsible for Kingfisher Airlines (losses of over Rs 9,000 crore).

Getting abused on the social media, he says, has become a daily occurrence. "The Congress thinks I'm a Sanghi (affiliated to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh) and the BJP thinks I'm an agent of the Congress," he says. "What I support are economic policies." Rajiv Gandhi, he says, was a great white hope. "I liked whatever United Progressive Alliance-1 was able to do. I liked Manmohan Singh's economic policies. And I like Narendra Modi's economic policies. But I don't like what UPA-II did, and I don't like Rahul Gandhi's policies."



Unlike Nandan Nilekani, his colleague from Infosys who has entered politics, Pai says he doesn't have what it takes to be a politician. He would prefer to remain on its fringes as he continues to wage ideological battles.

So, as we wrap up, he hands me two hardbound books: William Durant's The Case for India and Rajiv Malhotra's The Battle for Sanskrit. On his way out, he picks up a few more copies to give away.
INDIA'S BROKEN TRYST

Author: Tavleen Singh

Publisher: HarperCollins

Pages: 424

Price: Rs 699



Before we go any further, a few declarations of interest may be in order. I know and admire . In fact, I admired her long before I knew her. At university I was fascinated by the column she wrote for the short-lived New Delhi magazine and later, I was a fan of the stories she did for Sunday and The Telegraph.

At a time when journalists quaked with fear at the very mention of Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale's name, Tavleen had the guts to confront the "Sant" without a trace of fear and her reporting from Punjab was easily the best.

I admired her for her honesty about her private life too. In the mid-1980s, when India was a much more conservative place than it is today, Tavleen told the story of her relationship with Salman Taseer and the birth of their son Atish on the pages of Savvy magazine with courage and candour.

The honesty seemed to me to characterise Tavleen's attitude to life. She has always lived on her terms, apologising for nothing and being openly contemptuous of political correctness. She was, as she says in the book, born into privilege and has never made any attempt to conceal it.

For a few years in the nineties, we both had flats in the same building in Delhi and this finally gave me an opportunity to see her up close. She would throw elegant dinner parties where guests may include Patrick French, VS Naipaul, a couple of maharajas and maharanis or a model straight from the Paris catwalk. But early the next morning, she would drive off to some grimy little village hours from Delhi to file gritty, on-the-spot reports.

And yet, as much as we admired her, I think everyone in the building was secretly (and sometimes, not so secretly) terrified of her. She was quick to anger, viewed fools with a contempt she did not bother to disguise and if you got on her wrong side, she would lacerate you with her put-downs.

Many of these qualities continue to characterise her journalism, though in recent years she had proved to be a much better story-teller than any of us suspected. Durbar, her book on the Delhi of the seventies and eighties, was easily the most evocative account of that period that I have ever read.

has received a rapturous response from what might be unkindly described as the bhakt lobby because, superficially at least, it tells the story they so desperately want to hear: Nehru made many mistakes, and his dynasty kept India poor; Rajiv may have been a nice enough fellow but he surrounded himself with idiots from Doon School, and as for Sonia Gandhi, well, she could well be the criminal mastermind in a James Bond movie with her friend Suman Dubey playing the role of chief henchman.

In this gloomy and depressing scenario in which the hopes and aspirations of millions of Indians have been thwarted by the evil Gandhis and their English-speaking sidekicks, Narendra Modi, a man from the new India, has come to save us all.

And yes, at one level, it is possible to caricature the book in those terms. Interviewers and reviewers have repeatedly suggested that Tavleen is obsessed with Sonia Gandhi, an implication that she has either treated with lofty disdain on TV or handed with more aggression on Twitter: "A gang of hacks who never leave Lutyens' Delhi believes my book defiles their mother goddess!"



The book begins in vintage Tavleen style, when a raiding party arrives at a seaside retreat that she shares with her long-term partner, industrialist Ajit Gulabchand.

The raiders are dismissed in Tavleenisms. One of them is a "short woman: with a "shrill grating voice". Obviously Tavleen does not treat them with the deference they expect because "the short woman started jumping around" accusing her of using the word "bloody". Tavleen writes, "I was tempted to add that if I had used an abusive word it would have been the 'F' one but knew that there would be more hysterical screaming from the woman."



The raiders eat dinner: "takeaway food out of plastic boxes" but Tavleen and a friend eat "the grilled fish and salad I had ordered for us, and to really annoy the raiders I asked Deepak, my butler, to go ahead and serve the red wine."



A more politically correct author might have thought twice about retelling this story (how many of us have "butlers" at home?) but it is somehow typical of Tavleen that she makes no apologies for who she is or how she lives.

And there are painfully sharp and often vitriolic portraits and put-downs of Delhi and Mumbai notables, some of which are clearly indiscreet. If Jayanthi Natarajan is really the unnamed minister who calls Tavleen to say about Sonia, "You were absolutely right about her," adding, "Do you know that she called me in one day and yelled at me because she objected to my friendship with you... I was reduced to tears," then this book will end any hope Natarajan may have of ever returning to the Congress.

Activists don't get off lightly. Tavleen writes of Medha Patkar, "there was something contrived about her straggly hair, her crumpled blouse with its sweat stains under the armpits and her cheap cotton sari."



Nor do journos. (In case you wondered, I am lucky to get off with a gentle rap on the knuckles for my naivety.) Poor old Karan Thapar is portrayed as being so distressed when Narendra Modi won the general election that he kept advising caution on an election programme on TV ("these are only trends and not results") even when it was clear who the victor was.

view of the book, that it is a Hindutva-loving diatribe against the dynasty, fails to recognise that Tavleen is not so wild about the BJP either. She is especially (and in my view, unfairly) harsh on Atal Bihari Vajpayee ("as PM he seemed to lose confidence in his own instincts"), his staff ("he gathered around himself dreary people who wrote dreary speeches that he read in dreary tones"), his family, and even his chief aide, Brajesh Mishra ("arrogant ''and surrounded by "fawning" people). Even Lal Krishna Advani gets the Tavleen treatment ("a pathetic old man trying to look young").

Nor does Tavleen swallow the whole Hindutva package. She talks of touring Gujarat a year after the riots. "It was a horrible journey. I met terrified Muslim families, who were still in hiding because they were too afraid to return to their villages .. And in villages with Hindu Rashtra written before the names of the villages, I met Hindu killers who told me proudly that they would have been in jail if it had not been for the protection they got from Modi."



Her view is subtler than her critics (and fans!) claim. Much of the book is about the homeless and the miserable children she encounters in the streets of Mumbai. She believes that the reason they lead these wasted, hopeless lives is because the Congress (oh, okay the Dynasty!) has done nothing to remove poverty.

In her reckoning, Modi recognises the problem, offers new solutions and, therefore, represents the best chance for India. But she is worried by the fanaticism of some of Modi's supporters and upset that "not even when his own ministers have made foolish racist remarks has Modi made a serious effort to express his disapproval".

"If Modi allows his mandate to be stolen by his Hindutva friends, then India could lose its first real chance to take a new road," she writes. "History will judge him very harshly if he does."



I don't agree with much of what Tavleen writes. But this is a good book, fun to read and evocatively written. You should read it - if only to see where you disagree.
In 2008, the then Director-General of the Bureau of Energy Efficiency Ajay Mathur floated the idea of a new company to sell energy efficient electric equipment. The idea was readily accepted by the ministry of power and 2010 saw the birth of Energy Efficiency Services Limited (EESL). Saurabh Kumar, a former Income Tax officer, was put at its helm.

For six years EESL was an anonymous organisation and came out of the shadows with the NDA governments much-talked-about LED distribution programme. The company had an equity base of Rs 90 crore in 2010-11. In 2015-16 it clocked a turnover of Rs 700 crore and made profits of Rs 50 crore.

We will touch a turnover of Rs 2,500 crore during the current financial year and double our profits, said Saurabh Kumar, managing director, EESL, in an interaction with Business Standard. EESL is based in Noida Sector 1, sharing an office with Inland Water Authority Limited. The two floors of EESL are lit with LED bulbs. EESL first came into limelight in July 2014 when it completed the Puducherry street lightning programme in four months. In November, it revamped the urban streets of Andhra Pradesh with LED lights just two months after a cyclone.

In January 2015, Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the domestic efficient lighting programme along with Piyush Goyal, minister of state for coal, power and renewable energy. Since then, LED has made the headlines and EESL expanded its business across the country.

Having started with 10 employees, the company now has a staff of 450 and is looking to hire another 100 people. The equity of the company is Rs 450 crore. We paid a 30 per cent dividend to our promoters. For the coming year we have raised debt of 300 million euro from German bank KfW. Recently, ADB approved a line of credit of $200 million and we received the same amount of credit from the World Bank, said Kumar.

Total LED distribution touched the 100-million mark in April. The price has crashed 83 per cent in a year to Rs 75 per piece. The power ministry pegs savings in the power bill at Rs 14.5 crore per day.

EESL calls itself Super Energy Service Company (SuperESCO) with no fixed assets. EESL now plans to handhold other ESCOs in some states and devise standards and verification for energy efficient equipments. Everyone you meet at EESL office is thankful to the NDA government and an endorsing minister like Goyal. The social media savvy minister is quick to share all the achievements of EESLreal time on different platforms and also flaunting the mobile app tracking LED distrbution.

Shifting gears, in the next phase, agricultural pumps, centrally monitored street lightning programs and Building Management System (BMS) in on the cards for EESL. Under BMS, the company would make government buildings energy efficient. The office of NITI Ayog at Parliament Street has already been retrofitted by EESL and made a 5-Star energy efficient building.

We will sign MoUs with Central Public Works Department as most government buildings are in their portfolio. We will work along with them to retrofit the buildings with energy efficient lighting and cooling systems. The exercise would start from 20 buildings in North and South block of the Central government, said Kumar.

Currently, EESL is busy retrofitting the energy guzzling Shram Shakti Bhawan at Rafi Marg, Delhi to set a befitting example. The building among other ministries houses power ministry as well. Kumar adds with a smile, It is 3-Star efficient building now and we will take it to 5-star.
Korean firm Hyundai is planning to launch two vehicles every year in India. The pipeline includes smart hybrids, sub four-metre SUVs (sport utility vehicles) and AMT (automated manual transmission) vehicles. The company hopes to grow six-seven per cent year-on-year.

Speaking to the media as the company completes 20 years in India, managing director and chief executive Young Key Koo said the last two decades were significant for the company globally.

Hyundai Motor Company has transformed into a global automobile firm from a Korean company and India played a key role in this transformation. Today, Ltd (HMIL) accounts for nearly 13 per cent of Hyundai's volumes globally and it is the third-biggest market for Hyundai after China and the US.

In India, Hyundai sold 4,189,875 units till April cumulatively, said Koo. The company has invested $3.1 billion till now.

Hyundais exports started in 1999 from India with 20 cars, now this has increased to 2.3 million units cumulatively, making the company the largest car exporter from India.

On way forward, he said, HMIL's vision was to be a great workplace, market leadership, most beloved and trusted brand and modern premium brand. Market leadership is not just about volume, it is about quality and brand, he said.

Hyundai also said it would launch two new products every year and will have offerings in every segment. Each product would attract minimum $100 million to develop.

Rakesh Srivasthava, senior vice president - marketing and sales, HMIL said that we have committed to make Hyundai as a market leader with its core value and brand direction.

In the last 20 years from one product the company now got 10 products. He claimed that all the products are segment leaders and trend setter.

The pipeline includes smart Hybrid, while declining to give any timeline Srivasthava said that globally Hyundai has got a strong technology. The Indian Government is also supportive to bring this technology and the company will bring the technology at a right time.

Currently Hybrid segment is dominated by Maruti Suzuki with its Ciaz and Ertiga, while Toyota has one product Camry.

The other focus would be SUV, he said, the SUV market is growing since geography is big and road conditions are challenging. To meet the demand Hyundai will bring one product above Creta and one below, which will be sub 4 mete in 2-3 years.

On the SUV Creta, Koo recently said waiting period for the product is around four months and Hyundai is planning to bring it down to two months by increasing the production volume to 13,000 units from 10,000 units from June 1st. Of the 13,000 units, around 10,000 units will be for domestic and balance would be for exports.

Koo said the vision for the next 20 years for HMIL is to be most beloved brand and a great place to work and not chasing number one position, which is held by Maruti.

Taking the leadership position in the near future will be difficult for the Korean car marker, mainly due to manufacturing. The company can produce around seven lakh units, while Marutis capacity is more than double of Hyundais. Koo said for the next 3-4 years the company can manage with the existing capacity.

During the current year, Hyundai set a target of around 6.65 lakh units, including five lakhs in domestic and balance in exports. Last year the company sold 4.70 lakh units in India.

According to Koo, the export market has slowed down due to crude oil prices. The main markets, which HMIL has been catering includes South America, Africa, Middle East and Asia. He hopes from the second half export would improve.
has posted a 51 per cent increase in net profit at Rs 27.3 crore for the quarter ended March, against Rs 18 crore for the corresponding quarter last year.

Gross sales rose 17 per cent to Rs 786.45 crore for the quarter, against Rs 671.8 crore for the corresponding quarter last year. Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation at Rs 114 crore witnessed 23 per cent growth from Rs 92.6 crore in the previous years corresponding quarter.

Harsh Pati Singhania, vice-chairman & managing director, said, The significant operational improvement in performance is due to the substantial benefits derived from the companys new state-of-the-art pulp and paper plant at its Odisha unit, coupled with growth in market share in its mainstay office papers business and a richer product mix. The company has been able to increase its exports despite tough overseas markets.



is the market leader in the branded copier paper segment in India, with a market share of 27 per cent. It is also among the top producers of coated paper and packaging boards in the country. The company is consistently following a policy of focusing on value-added products such as coated paper, virgin fibre packaging boards and high-end maplitho paper.

As part of the companys ongoing fund raising programme, the company has decided to issue foreign currency convertible bonds (FCCBs) not exceeding $25 million. The proceeds will be used for repayment or pre-payment of existing external commercial borrowings (ECBs)/FCCBs and to meet capital expenditure, Singhania added.

The companys stock closed at Rs 51.30, up 0.10 per cent, on the BSE on Friday.
The Maharashtra Protection of Interest of Depositors (MPID) court has ordered transfer of Rs 12.74 crore from 27 bank accounts of Lotus Refineries Pvt Ltd to the account of the competent authority in the Rs 5,600 crore National Spot Exchange Ltd (NSEL) scam case.

The court has directed the Economic Offences Wing (EOW) of the Mumbai Police to ensure the transfer of funds efficiently. Having defaulted for the amount of Rs 252.48 crore, Arun Kumar Sharma, director of Lotus Refineries was arrested on November 11, 2013 and was released on bail after three months.

"The court (MPID) has issued the order without considering our side of arguments. We filed an arbitration case last year against which is pending before the court. Also, all our accounts are blocked," said Sharma.

This year on March 4, MPID court had also attached 37 properties of ARK Imports Pvt. Ltd. and has directed the competent authority to fetch the market valuation of the property and file draft sale proposal. One of the largest defaulters with the outstanding liability of Rs 719.21 crores, trading in wool, is a sister concern of B R Spinners represented by the directors Kailash Agarwal and Anubhav Agarwal. Kailash was also arrested in August 2014 and released on bail in a month. At a recently conducted raw wool auction in Ludhiana, received three bids with the highest being and sold at Rs 0.40 crore.

The court rejected the application of Nimish Patel, chairman of N K Proteins Ltd, NSEL's largest defaulter of Rs 934.45 crore seeking his travel to the United States between May 3 and June 21. Patel's application was rejected on the suspicion raised by investigating agency of potential absconding of the defaulter.

"The suspicion, as raised by the investigating agency, pending further investigation cannot be said to be false and baseless. Applicant was also alleged to be arrested by belated stage. Permission is not sought for any bonafide purpose. Under above circumstances, I am of the view that application deserves to be rejected," Justice D P Surana, Special Judge, MPID Act and Additional Sessions Judge, City Civil Sessions Court, observed in his order.

Patel was arrested by the EOW on October 29, 2015 and later released on bail. EOW has attached various properties of N K Proteins including their plant at Kadi-Thor in Mehasana, Gujarat and Tirupati oil segment.

The EOW has also attached assets worth around Rs 5,000 crore of defaulting trading members and already secured recoveries worth Rs 1,233.02 crore through decrees on admission against five defaulters and through injunctions from a total of 18 defaulters with outstanding of Rs 4,515.93 crore.
May 6, 1936

The annual Cayuga County 4-H Club dairy judging tour held last Saturday was conceded to be one of the most successful in the history of the organization.

Winners in judging of all breeds were: First, John Coapman of Half Acre; second, Elwyn Bell of Sennett; third, Herman Eberhardt of Owasco, and Doris Ferris of King Ferry. Winners in Ayreshires judging at the farm of Leonard Covert in Sennett were as follows: Elwyn Bell of Sennett, Robert Hoagland, North Street Road, Everett Lucy of Port Byron, Arthur Stevenson of Cayuga, Doris Ferris of King Ferry.

May 6, 1961

The United States' first space man, Alan B. Shepard Jr., rocketed briefly across the threshold of space today and landed safely after a 5,100 mile-an-hour journey that carried him 115 miles high and 302 miles down range.

The pickup occurred at 9:53 a.m. (EST) 19 minutes after the Redstone booster rocket blasted off from Cape Canaveral at 9:34 a.m. The flight reached an altitude of about 115 miles and lasted 15 minutes.

May 6, 2006

New Hope Mills, of Auburn, and Schoolyard Sugarbush, of Moravia, are among nearly 50 New York food companies exhibiting at the world's largest food show at Chicago's McCormick Place from Sunday to Tuesday. The show attracts more than 30,000 buyers from around the world and provides a cost-effective means to connecting hundreds of food companies with thousands of buyers.

May 6, 2011
It was a pleasant afternoon in December. A dozen people gathered in a room and looked at each other uneasily. Out of a staff of 120, these were the only ones who knew what was happening. They all held various positions of seniority at Eduventures, an education-technology company in Mumbai. The companys primary objective was to organise industrial visits  either day-long workshops or week-long trips  for students of graduate colleges.

They had just been told the company had just about Rs 3 crore left and they were burning a cool Rs 1.2 crore a month. Things were desperate.

The company managed to get a bridge round in January. To stem the cash burn, 40 staffers were asked to leave and several more resigned. All good now? No. Fast forward to April and the company downed its shutters and bookmarked another failure in the ed-tech ecosystem. The company raised about Rs 15 crore in its lifetime. Not a lot in the current climate but it was possibly one of those which was too early for its time. Also, it tied itself to the inflated valuations game.

Lets begin with the beginning. was incubated at IIT (Indian Institute of Technology)-Bombay in September 2013. It was founded by Aditya Gandhi and Sahiba Dhandhania. They wanted to start a company which took students on industrial visits across the country. The duo wanted to focus on learning. They wanted to take students to where they would get a leg-up when they finally graduated.

The long-term plan was to get students placed in these and get a commision for headhunting. But that was after it hit a critical mass, said a former employee.

With that idea, Gandhi sent a team of sales executives with brochures to colleges. The executives tried to sell the idea to the professors and the student body. Most times, they were turned away.

Students didnt want to learn on these trips. They didnt want to go to Hyderabad or Chennai. They wanted Manali and Goa, said the ex-employee. So, every time the professor agreed, the students nixed it. But the company managed to make Rs 3 crore in the March quarter of 2015. The margins were really good. Almost 20 per cent, said the ex-employee. The company would find reasonable accommodation near the client and keep the costs low.

Encouraged by this, Matrix decided to invest Rs 12 crore in April. Sources said was under pressure to achieve a target of Rs 30 crore by 2015-16.

To achieve this target, Purple Squirrel needed volume and quickly. It now started focusing on taking students to tourist destinations just to get them on board.

But that meant you were competing with travel agents. Most colleges usually tied up with travel agents for industrial visits and had a cost structure in mind, said the employee. These travel agents bought inventory in bulk from hotels in popular destinations, something Purple Squirrel couldnt do as it didnt have the volume. To be competitive, Purple Squirrel had to burn its own cash. The margins started to disappear. Students got their parties but the music was not playing for Purple Squirrel anymore.

Matrix, sources said, had promised another round of investment in September if the company had hit the Rs 15-crore revenue mark. We couldnt even reach a third of that, said another former employee. The investors refused to take the lead on the round. The Series B plans collapsed. So in November 2015, the co-founders started hunting for other investors.

The valuation of the company was too high. Almost 15 times their revenue. I could see merit in the business model but not the valuation. A down round was not on the table at the time, said the managing director of a Mumbai-based venture capital firm that Purple Squirrel approached multiple times.

Sources said the co-founders, in their desperation to be relevant, started the hit-and-hope approach. We were told to launch a LinkedIn for students. Where they listed their skills a resume of sorts, said a former employee. And as soon as the development was done, it was launched without testing or a focus group.



But it wasnt an idea that would bring revenue immediately. It depended on scores of customers using the services.

This was the time when we needed to tie up with colleges on multi-year contracts and thats where we hit another roadblock, said another former employee. Colleges wanted names of and when the students could travel there. And Purple Squirrel couldnt give them that. Most Fortune 500 companies, sources said, had processes in place. They wouldnt give approval until 45 days before the visit. Why? Most who had a factory floor couldnt guess what would happen in a year or six months in advance. If they had a huge order, no one would be allowed inside, said an employee part of the sales force. Those companies which did agree didnt pass muster with the colleges. All colleges want to put our students visited Maruti or Wipro in their prospectus. Not a no-name automobile ancillary company, said the employee. And in December, the founders called a meeting to brainstorm. The industrial visit season was now ending. Cash flow had slowed to a trickle.

In January, it got a bridge round of about Rs 2 crore from its investors. The layoffs came and the founders got on a path to sell the company. They approached two prominent tour operators.

Think about it, a tour operator, which makes crores in sending families to Europe, will have to hand-hold teenagers in vacation cities it is laughable, said an employee who quit after the bridge round.

The company, which held great promise, was heading to a place where they were losing staff and had no way to make money. It was March, it was exam season and no industrial visit was possible. There was no way to generate a sale and in April the two founders decided to call it quits.

Business Standard tried to get in touch with Gandhi but emails and text messages were unanswered.
An arbitration court in Singapore has ordered Malvinder Singh and Shivinder Mohan Singh, former owners of Ranbaxy Laboratories, to pay damages worth Rs 2,562.78 crore (based on Thursday's exchange rate) to Japan's Daiichi Sankyo Co. Malvinder Singh, currently chairman of Fortis Healthcare, and his brother Shivinder Singh will have to pay the fine for concealing and misrepresenting facts from the Japanese drug giant when it purchased about 35 per cent stake in Ranbaxy from them in 2008.

The court has ruled that the Singh brothers did not share information with Daiichi on investigations into Ranbaxy by the US Department of Justice (DOJ) and Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The arbitration court gave this judgment last week. It has issued an award by a majority of 2:1 in favour of the claimant.

In 2013, Daiichi had filed an arbitration case in Singapore, accusing the Singh brothers of concealment and misrepresentation of facts, after Ranbaxy paid $500 million to the DoJ as settlement for misrepresenting facts.

The 2008 agreement between Daiichi Sankyo and the former promoters of Ranbaxy had a provision that any future arbitration related to the deal would be pursued in Singapore, in accordance with commercial arbitration rules.

The arbitration dispute was between Daiichi Sankyo and sellers of shares of erstwhile Ranbaxy Laboratories, which includes RHC Holding and Oscar Investments. Ranbaxy was subsequently purchased by the Dilip Shanghvi-led Sun Pharma, while the Singh brothers control a majority stake in RHC Holding and Oscar Investments.

RHC Holding said in a statement that the former owners were considering challenging the verdict.

In 2008, Daiichi Sankyo had bought the entire 34.82 per cent stake in Ranbaxy from its promoters in a $4.6-billion deal. Five years later, in 2013, Ranbaxy had to pay a fine of $500 million to the US authorities after it pleaded guilty to fraudulent activities and misrepresenting data to seek fast drug approvals.

BIG BLOW FOR SINGH BROTHERS 2006: US FDA issues warning letter to Ranbaxys Paonta Sahib facility

US FDA issues warning letter to Ranbaxys Paonta Sahib facility 2007: A whistle-blowers lawsuit alleges Ranbaxy defrauded Federal programmes

A whistle-blowers lawsuit alleges Ranbaxy defrauded Federal programmes Jun 2008: Daiichi Sankyo acquires majority stake in Ranbaxy

Daiichi Sankyo acquires majority stake in Ranbaxy Sep 2008: FDA imposes import alert on Ranbaxys Paonta Sahib and Dewas factories; bans 30 drugs

FDA imposes import alert on Ranbaxys Paonta Sahib and Dewas factories; bans 30 drugs May 2013: Criminal charges filed; Ranbaxy agrees to pay a fine of $500 million

Criminal charges filed; Ranbaxy agrees to pay a fine of $500 million Sep 2013: US bans imports from Ranbaxys new formulations factory in Mohali

US bans imports from Ranbaxys new formulations factory in Mohali Nov 2013: Daiichi Sankyo accuses Singh brothers of hiding information regarding investigations, files a case in Singapore court

Daiichi Sankyo accuses Singh brothers of hiding information regarding investigations, files a case in Singapore court Jan 2014: US FDA bans imports from Ranbaxys main API factory in Toansa

US FDA bans imports from Ranbaxys main API factory in Toansa Apr 2014: Sun Pharmaceutical acquires Ranbaxy in a $4-bn deal

Sun Pharmaceutical acquires Ranbaxy in a $4-bn deal Sep 2015: Shivinder Mohan Singh steps down, joins Radha Soami Satsang Beas, an Amritsar-based spiritual organisation

In 2014, Sun Pharma agreed to buy Ranbaxy - which was then controlled by Daiichi - in a proposed $4-billion deal, including a debt of $800 million.

Currently, Malvinder Singh owns a majority stake in Fortis Healthcare - which runs 30 hospitals in the country; Fortis Healthworld - a pharmacy chain; Religare - a financial services company; SRL Diagnostics - a diagnostics chain, etc. On September, 2015, Shivinder Mohan Singh stepped down from his executive role in the and joined Radha Soami Satsang Beas, an Amritsar-based spiritual organisation.
After achieving three-fold year-on-year growth in sales in April this year, and a 4.4 per cent market share in the Indian market between January and April, Renault is optimistic on a five per cent market share in India by 2016, much sooner than its earlier target of 2017-end. India chief executive officer and managing director Sumit Sawhney talks to Sohini Das on plans. Edited excerpts:



Your sales so far this year have been promising. What are your targets for market share in the Indian passenger vehicle industry?



The sales growth has been extremely encouraging. We are the fastest-growing brand in India and already rank five in the Indian market. We are just a four-year-old brand here in India, however, we are the No 1 European brand in the country. We had originally planned to garner a five per cent market share in the Indian industry by the end of 2017, however, our January to April figures show that we already have a 4.4 per cent market share in the country. In fact, if we consider April alone, the market share was around 5.2 per cent. Therefore, in the coming months, we expect to hold on to this five per cent market share, and, hence, we have revised our target market share. We aim to achieve a five per cent market share in India by the end of 2016. We follow a calendar year.

How are you planning network expansion to keep up the sales momentum?



We obviously have aggressive network expansion plans in place. In 2014, we had around 157 outlets, which increased to 205 by December 2015. And this year the target is to have 270 outlets by the end of 2017. More than 50 per cent of the upcoming outlets would be in upcountry locations. Our Kwid has seen some great response from smaller towns and cities apart from the big metros. We are also planning to introduce 'workshops on wheels' for those areas where we do not yet have physical presence. Customers can access these mobile workshops for any servicing help with their Renault cars. This would be the first time in India.

When shall we see the new variants of Kwid? When do you plan to start exporting the Kwid?



We have plans to bring in a 1,000cc engine capacity variant of the Kwid, along with an automated manual transmission (AMT) variant. At least one of these variants should be available within the first half of the year. We will start exports of the Kwid to Saarc (South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation) countries this year, which will be followed by Brazil. We are also exploring some African markets.

Given the uncertainties around diesel cars, and new emission norms to be implemented by the Centre, what would be your product strategy in the long term?



The government is looking forward to having Euro VI cars by 2020. We should always keep in mind that it took almost 10 to 11 years in Europe to move from Euro IV to Euro VI, and we are trying to achieve that in four years. So, its a challenge. It was easier when we rolled out Euro IV in 13 cities. In that case, even if you took out your Euro IV car outside these cities and refilled it with Euro III fuel, it would still run. However, that is not possible in case of Euro VI. An Euro VI car won't run on Euro IV fuel. Therefore, Euro VI fuel has to be made available all across. As manufacturers, we have already expressed our feedback to the government. As a company, we are future-ready; we have the Euro VI technology.

From the government point, they have to make the fuel available, which they have said that they would. The environment challenges are well taken care of then, as we are straight away moving to Euro VI. As such an Euro IV car emits one-fourth of the emission compared to a non- Euro IV car. We require an overall 360 degree understanding of the situation and holistic and longterm planning.

What is the share of diesel versus petrol vehicles in your portfolio and how do you see that changing with the new Duster?



Share of petrol is high in our portfolio, around 75 per cent, thanks to the petrol Kwid. We do not see this ratio changing significantly in recent times. As such when the difference between petrol and diesel had steeped to around Rs 26, the demand for diesel smaller cars had swelled. However, the difference a customer pays for a diesel car is around Rs 80,000 or so. When this difference in fuel prices comes down to around Rs 10, as is now, then it does not make economic sense for the buyer of a small car to invest that extra amount. However, for those buying cars priced above Rs 8-10 lakh, paying this premium makes sense as they get better torque and better fuel efficiency. Going forward, I feel the demand for diesel cars would primarily be in the Rs 8-10 lakh bracket.
A day after broke that former Ranbaxy owners Malvinder Singh and Shivinder Mohan Singh had been fined Rs 2,562 crore by an arbitration court in Singapore for concealing facts from Daiichi Sankyo, the Japanese pharma major has put the damages at around Rs 3,500 crore.

The amount of 56.2 billion Japanese yen (Rs 3,500 crore) includes interest cost, lawyers' fee and amount incurred by Daiichi Sankyo in the arbitration process, according to a statement issued by the Japanese company on Friday. The Rs 2,562 crore figure, presented by the Singh brothers on Thursday, excluded these three costs.

The judgment was pronounced by an arbitration court in Singapore on April 29. Daiichi said former shareholders of Ranbaxy have to pay Rs 851.06 crore as interest, Rs 96.81 crore as lawyers' fee and Rs 3.98 crore as compensation of arbitration costs.

Daiichi had launched the arbitration proceedings in 2013, alleging that Singh brothers had concealed and misrepresented critical information concerning US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Department of Justice (DoJ) investigations into Ranbaxy in 2008 when the Japanese company acquired controlling stake in the company. "The total amount of award is approximately 56.2 billion Japanese yen (conversion rate; 1 rupee = 1.6 yen, 1 dollar = 107 yen)," stated Daiichi Sankyo. This translates to around Rs 3,510 crore, which would keep increasing if the payment gets delayed. The Singh brothers' spokesperson did not respond to the queries sent by Business Standard. Even as Malvinder Singh and Shivinder Mohan Singh, owners of the Fortis group, are contemplating to appeal against the fine imposed by Singapore arbitration court, their listed companies' stocks showed mixed signals on Friday. Religare Enterprises saw its share price increase 1.44 per cent to Rs 277.95. Fortis Healthcare saw its share price decrease 1.85 per cent to Rs 167.05.
Kolkata-based Torero Corporation, which has recently acquired the rights to design, manufacture, distribute and retail Police branded leather accessories, bags and shoes in India, USA and in western Europe is expecting a business of $10 million in the current financial year from this business.

For the year 2017-18, the company is thinking of doubling this earning to $20 million.

"In four years, our target is to achieve atleast $50 million from sales of Police branded products", the company's Director and CEO, Yashovardhan Gupta said.

In this endeavor, it has alloted $1.1 million of investment to reach out to the masses in India, UK, France, Spain, Belgium and USA with the brand.

As per Gupta, Police, the brand owned by the De Rigo group since 1983, has earnings to the tune of Euro 400 million.

The company, which is paying a royalty to the Italian brand Police for manufacturing and distribution rights, is presently scouting for a retail partner to have atleast 75 point of sales in India and atleast 225 international point of sales and is prioritising Shoppers Stop as the retail partner in India.

Besides, it is also in talks with players like Amazon, Myntra and Jabong to sell the Police products online.

"Materials to make the product is being sourced from Spain as well as locally", he said.

In India, Police leather accessories have been priced 30-35 per cent less than the global prices. "India is a price sensitive market and thus we opted the offer premium quality products and competitve price points", he reasoned.

Police will be directly competing with brands like Fossil, Hidesign, Tommy Hilfiger, Woodland and other apparel brands, which also has accessories' line.

The company also has plans to launch its own brand, Torero in the Indian market in 2016-17.

Last year, Torero Corporation, a leather products company, had also acquired international rights to make and sell Cross leather accessories.

However, post the agreement with Police, the company is not looking for further tie-ups with international designer and street-wear brands.
The CBI on Thursday questioned IAF's former assistant chief of air staff (plans) N.V. Tyagi and city-based lawyer Gautam Khaitan in connection with the alleged payoffs in the Rs. 3,600-crore helicopter deal.

Air Vice Marshal N.V. Tyagi (retd.) was questioned for a few hours while Khaitan, the former board member of Aeromatrix, one of the suspect companies in the case, was questioned for around 10 hours each at the Central Bureau of Investigation headquarters in New Delhi.

Sources said that N.V. Tyagi, who has already been questioned in 2013, was quizzed on Thursday as he was the part of a team of senior officials who were involved in the deliberations to tweak the specifications of the helicopters meant to ferry VIPs, including the president and the prime minister.

N.V. Tyagi is not named as accused in the case, the sources said.

Former IAF chief S.P. Tyagi, who was questioned by CBI on three consecutive days from Monday-Wednesday, has been accused in Italy and India of helping win the chopper contract by reducing the flying ceiling of the helicopter from 6,000 metre to 4,500 metre (15,000 feet). The Enforcement Directorate (ED) questioned S.P. Tyagi on Thursday in the case.

He, however, has denied the allegations against him and said the decision was reportedly taken in consultation with officials of the Special Protection Group (SPG) and the Prime Minister's Office. Twelve helicopters were to be bought by India.

Khaitan, who is alleged to have formed shell companies to route the bribe money to India, informed CBI, during his interrogation, that he had taken payments from Augusta middlemen Guido Ralph Haschke and Carlo Gerosa.

But, the informed source said, he did not gave clear input about the purpose for which he had received the payments.

Khaitan was again called for questioning on Friday - the third consecutive day. He was questioned on Wednesday too. CBI has also called the three cousins - Sanjeev, Rajiv and Sandeep Tyagi - of the former IAF chief.

The agency has been probing the case since March 2013 after filing an FIR against S.P. Tyagi and 13 others including his cousins and European middlemen.

The chopper deal resurfaced after an Italian court last month referred to Congress president Sonia Gandhi and former prime minister Manmohan Singh among others in connection with the chopper deal but gave no details of any wrongdoing by the two leaders.

The CBI has told the court that the three Tyagis were associated with Haschke and Gerosa for a long time after they entered into a consultancy with a Tunisia-based company of the two middlemen in 2004.

In January 2013, India cancelled the chopper deal and the CBI was told to investigate the bribery allegations.
The order of the high court here to decriminalise possession and consumption of beef in Maharashtra, while continuing the ban on cow slaughter in the state, has evoked mixed reaction.

The HC partially struck down the Maharashtra Animal Preservation (Amendment) Act, to exempt possession and consumption of beef. However, the court upheld the constitutional validity sections of the Act which ban slaughter in the state.

The court further said mere possession will be read down as conscious possession. This essentially means that unless someone is consciously bringing meat into Maharashtra, the burden of proving his innocence is not on the person.

The Congress and Nationalist Congress Party, both in the opposition, have said the order is a big blow to the state government, which had enforced a complete ban and made the sale or consumption of beef punishable by a five-year jail term and Rs 10,000 fine.

Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis said the state government will file a petition against the order to decriminalise beef possession after seeking the state law and judiciary departments views.

Fadnavis hastened to mention that the high court has however, upheld upheld the imposed by the state government after the enactment of the Maharashtra Animal Preservation (Amendment) Act. The Act bans slaughter of bulls, bullocks.

Both Congress and NCP alleged that BJP's real face stands exposed as the party led government was bent on imposing a particular life style on others and also pursuing the divisive politics.

Congress spokesman Sachin Sawant alleged that BJP's intention since beginning was not noble but creating divisions among various communities. ''The high court order partially striking down has exposed BJP's political ploy,'' he said.

NCP spokesman Nawab Malik, while welcoming the high court order, said people habituated to eating bull and bullock beef will continue to do so from now. The fundamental right has been restored.



Bhimrao Dhonde, the BJP legislator from the drought hit Beed district in parched Marathwada, said the government's priority should be to support farmers, and they should be allowed to sell their cattle to whomever they want. "It is time to withdraw the ban," Dhonde stated adding that the government's ban on sale of unproductive cattle has adversely impacted farmers as they had to bear additional burden.

Dhonde informed that more than 3,50,000 cattle in Marathwada are housed in the camps located in the worst-affected districts of Beed, Latur and Osmanabad. While referring to the state finance minister Sudhir Mungatiwar's announcement in the annual budget on the establishment of "Govardhan Govansh Raksha Kendra" in 34 rural districts for rearing of non-lactating and unproductive cattle breed with participation of NGOs, he said so far not a single such centre has been formed and there has been no transfer of non lactating and unproductive cattle there. The one-time grant of one crore as announced has yet to reach to districts.

Interestingly, BJP's ally the Swabhimani Shetkari Sanghatana (SSS) reiterated its opposition to the state law saying that it has not resulted in the increase in number of cattle population though there has been rise in milk production. State SSS chief Sadabhau Khot observed that the high court's order allowing eating and keeping of beef from outside Maharashtra will not help the local farmers as the ban on sale of unproductive cattle continues. He claimed that cattle are dying of thirst and hunger. Khot demanded that the government should step up its efforts to save cattle while providing due attention on farmers.

The All India Majlis-e-Ittehad-ul Muslimeen legislator Imtiyaz Jaleel said, "We are surprised. It seems the court want to say yes and no at the same time. The court has pleased the government and at the same time has given a free hand for public to consume beef which had come from outside the state.However, the real question is how and from where people will get beef for storage and eating. It must be told here that in Parliament it was informed by the government that during 2015-16 about 21 communal riots took place due to transportation of cattle. Actually, this is the real issue which would have been addressed by the court."



He noted that the present condition of farmers and also of cattle in drought hit districts in the state is really pathetic and the government's announcement to open cattle camps has been an eye wash.

"We will approach the Supreme Court with a plea to allow the slaughtering of bull and bullock above 16 years of age and sale of their beef in Maharashtra. Today's High Court order does not permit sale of beef within the state as the Court has allowed transportation of beef from outside the state for its consumption and possession," said Arif Chowdhury, president, Jamat-ul-Quresh Minority Association, one of the petitioners in the case, said.
The Bombay High Court on Friday upheld the state governments ban on slaughter of cows and bullocks in Maharashtra, but struck down a statute that sought to criminalise possession of beef, saying possession would not attract charges if brought from outside the state.

In February last year, Maharashtra government enforced a after President Pranab Mukherjee gave his assent to the Maharashtra Animal Preservation (Amendment) Act (MAPA Act).

The slaughter of cows was already prohibited in the state under Maharashtra Animal Preservation Act, 1976. The new Act also bans slaughter of bulls and bullocks, previously permitted on a fit-for-slaughter certificate.

Under the new Act, slaughter of livestock was to attract a five-year jail term and Rs 10,000 fine while possession of meat would attract one-year in jail and Rs 2,000 fine.

Justices A S Oka and S C Gupte were hearing a petition filed by a Hindu-Muslim-Christian coalition of 29 Mumbai residents, had sought an interim stay on section 5 (d) of the Maharashtra Animal Preservation (Amendment) Act (MAPA). This provision made it a criminal and cognisable offence to possess beef, even if the animal was slaughtered outside Maharashtra where it is legally permissible, punishable with a jail term of up to one year. The petitions had opposed the ban on slaughter of cows, bulls and bullocks, and consumption and possession of their meat, introduced under MAPA, even if the animals were slaughtered outside Maharashtra. According to the petitions, this prohibits import of meat. The petitions had said the ban violates the fundamental rights of a person to have his choice of food.

However, the Advocate General Sunil Manohar argued that consuming beef was not a fundamental right.

(More details awaited)
The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has conducted searches at multiple locations in Rajasthan in connection with its money laundering probe arising out of a case of land grab in Bikaner involving a company allegedly linked to .

Officials said the searches were conducted on at least eight locations in the border town of Bikaner and adjoining areas on Thursday and the action has now ended.

The agency said the premises of 10 people, including some retired government officials, were brought under the action.

ED teams examined documents allegedly related to Vadras company, which purchased lands and also quizzed some people, ED spokesperson A K Rawal said on Friday.

The probe is related to the purchase of 275 bigha land allegedly by the company of Vadra, son-in-law of Congress President Sonia Gandhi, in Kolayat area of Bikaner.

Officials said action was taken to gather documents and hard data from various officials and individuals involved in the case under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act. ED said property documents, bank accounts and Income Tax Returns were seized after the searches got over.

It is understood that the agency will soon issue summons to some firms and people involved in the case.

ED said "Bagadwa with the help of other accused persons allegedly forged the documents of colonisation department and got the government land allotted in the name of fictitious persons.

"The mutation in respect of said land was carried out in government revenue records in connivance with certain government officials.

"The plots of aforesaid land were further sold to various companies and individuals with help of forged letters of power of attorney in name of other accused persons. Acting on the inputs, the Directorate of Enforcement initiated its probe," the statement said.

It added "certain documents seized at premises of Bagadwa reveal the association of accused with the land scam".

The central agency registered a criminal case of money laundering in this case last year on the basis of 18 FIRs filed by the state police after the local tehsildar lodged a complaint.

ED has not mentioned the name of Vadra or any company linked to him in the FIR but it named some state government officials and some of the "land mafia".

While filing the case, it had also taken cognisance of reports that had referred to a firm allegedly linked to Vadra which had purchased some of these Bikaner located lands.

Vadra has denied any wrongdoing even as Congress party called the action "sheer political vendetta".
HIT: To funding that will bolster three Auburn events this year.

Tomatofest, Majorpalooza and Founders Day are all recipients of $10,000 from the state's Community Arts Grants Program. Tomatofest, which helps local food panties keep their shelves full, is moving from Emerson Park to downtown Auburn this fall.

And Majorpalooza and Founders Day organizers say the extra money will help pay for musical acts that will make their events more attractive to larger audiences.

MISS: To an Auburn man making a return trip to state prison.

We're always amazed when people who have been to prison don't do all they can to prevent a repeat, but it seems to happen all the time.

Ina recent Cayuga County Court case, a 31-year-old who had previously been to prison more than once, including an eight-year sentence for robbery, pleaded guilty to criminal possession of a weapon and attempted assault, charges that will earn him another 2 1/2 to 5 years behind bars.

HIT: To recognition for a local educator.

Auburn High School science teacher Prin Furst has been named an outstanding teacher by the Technology Alliance of Central New York, which recognizes teachers who show excellence in promoting science, technology, engineering and math.

Furst will be honored at a banquet tonight in Fayetteville.
The condition of JNU student leader Kanhaiya Kumar, who was admitted to AIIMS on Thursday afternoon following "mild dehydration" during his ongoing hunger strike, was stable, doctors said.

According to the hospital authorities, was undergoing necessary treatment at the emergency department.

"There is nothing to worry as nothing serious has happened to him. It was just a mild dehydration," said a statement from AIIMS.

and 19 other students have been on a hunger strike since April 28 to protest against the punishment handed out to them by a high-level committee that probed the February 9 event on the campus.

Anti- slogans were allegedly raised at an event on the JNU campus on February 9 to commemorate executed parliament attack convict Afzal Guru, following which Kanhaiya Kumar, Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya were arrested on sedition charges.

The committee report, which was released on April 25, fined Rs.10,000 and rusticated Khalid and Bhattacharya for one semester each.

Earlier, Kanhaiya Kumar refused to end his protest fast despite doctors' appeals after his health deteriorated.

Doctors urged him to end his protest after his ketone level rose to "dangerous" levels, fellow student Khalid said.

"Kanhaiya continues his hunger strike. He was given saline without glucose," said Khalid, who is also among the 19 students on hunger strike.

Khalid said Kanhaiya Kumar slipped into a semi-conscious state and started vomitting on Thursday morning after which he was admitted to the JNU health centre.

"There is a possibility of internal damage to (his) organs," he said.

"The health of the rest of the students is also deteriorating fast. All students have lost around 4-6 kg of weight," Khalid told IANS.

He said the JNU administration has not moved even after eight days of the "indefinite hunger strike".

Khalid said the ketone level of other students was also dangerously high, meaning their bodies had started burning fats for energy as they have not eaten anything for eight days.

On Wednesday, 170 JNU teachers joined the protesting students on a day's hunger strike in solidarity.
At the current juncture, South Block as well as spokespersons from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) are finding it difficult to defend the Pakistan policy of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

While BJP can do little more than bristle at Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwals stinging criticism that the PM is dancing to the tunes of Pakistans infamous spy agency Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) and the Prime Ministers Office (PMO) are busy limiting the damage by hoping that Islamabad asks Abdul Basit, Pakistans outspoken envoy in New Delhi, to shut up.

But the peace process, re-initiated as a result of some bold diplomacy by Prime Minister Modi and his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif since end-November, has received a blow. The two leaders had tried to build it upon their personal equation, but key stakeholders like the Pakistani Army werent always on board.

On Thursday, Basit left New Delhi embarrassed to no end. He suggested that the peace process was off, and that there was no question of reciprocity in allowing a Investigation Agency (NIA) team from India to travel to Pakistan as part of the probe into the Pathankot terror attack. The South Block said Islamabad was reneging on its commitment about reciprocity, as the Pakistani Joint Investigation Team (JIT) was allowed in India on that understanding.

Soon, a Pakistan foreign ministry spokesperson clarified that the dates of talks between the two foreign secretaries were still under discussion. The Indian side pointed to that statement to indicate that Basis was out of the loop. But it would be difficult for India to agree to any talks in the absence of a visit of NIA to Pakistan. It remains to be seen how the two sides negotiate the latest twist in their bilateral ties.

However, the relations are unlikely to escalate into a war of words in the near future, given that Islamabad will be hosting the South Asian Association for Regional

Cooperation (SAARC) Summit later this year. Sharif had invited Modi to attend the summit and the Indian PM has accepted. Indian PMs were in attendance on the previous two occasions that Islamabad hosted the SAARC Summit. If it was Rajiv Gandhi who attended the summit in 1988, Atal Bihari Vajpayee attended in 2004.

For now, Basit's comments are a political embarrassment for the PM. Former PM Manmohan Singh has more than once pointed to the inconsistencies in Modi's Pakistan policy and is critical of him having visited Lahore. Modi's efforts, however, could give him the moral authority to take a much tougher line against Pakistan in the future, but that time is not now.
The Supreme Court Thursday agreed to hear the plea of Sahara Chief seeking parole to perform cremation rites of his mother who passed away in the wee hours this morning.

Roy has been in Tihar jail since March 4, 2014 on the orders of the apex court in relation with a long running dispute with market regulator Sebi.

A bench headed by Chief Justice T S Thakur said the matter would be taken up by the appropriate bench at 2 pm, after senior advocate Kapil Sibal sought parole for the beleaguered businessman.

Roy's mother Chhabi Roy, 95, passed away in Lucknow today after a prolonged illness.
The Supreme Court on Friday ordered the provisional release of Sahara group chief for four weeks.

Roy and his brother-in-law Ashok Roy Choudhary, lodged in Tihar jail since March 2014, had moved an application seeking provisional release for three weeks to perform the last rites of Roys mother who passed away on Friday. Chabbi Roy, 95, passed away in Lucknow at around 1:30am after a prolonged illness, a Sahara release said.

After hearing the plea, the bench headed by T S Thakur permitted the release for four weeks for last rites and connected ceremonies subject to conditions. The applicants shall be escorted by a team of police officials. The officers shall be in plain clothes, the bench said.

The court said the police officials shall lodge the applicants back in Tihar jail after the four-week period is over. It recorded Sahara counsel Kapil Sibals assurance that there would not be any attempt to escape.

Roys release comes a day after the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) opposed his application for parole against the collateral of land worth over Rs 6,000 crore. Roy, Roy Choudhary and Ravi Shankar Dubey were jailed for not complying with the apex courts orders relating to refund of the money raised by two group firms. The court had ordered Sahara India Real Estate Corp and Sahara Housing Invest Corp to deposit Rs 24,029 crore raised from some 29.6 million bondholders along with interest of 15 per cent.

Roy and the group claimed these had been refunded directly to the bondholders. Sebi and the court insisted the full payment of the sum, which has now swelled to about Rs 40,000 crore. In March 2014, the apex court had set bail conditions of Rs 5,000 crore in cash and an equal amount in bank guarantee. Sahara is Rs 100 crore short of the cash component and has not been able to come up with the bank guarantee.

In the earlier application for parole, it wanted the 67 properties, which have been put on sale by Sebi, to be taken as collateral instead of bank guarantee. In an affidavit on Thursday, Sebi said Roy should be released only after the conditions of the bail were complied with. It said Sahara was "likely to once again adopt an uncooperative attitude to delay the satisfaction of the judgment and various orders passed by this court."



Lastmonth, Sebi has directed Sahara to submit the list of all its properties, which, according to the group's own estimates are worth over Rs 1.87 lakh crore. The matter was scheduled to be heard on May 11.
Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar said the government would track down the main beneficiaries of the bribes paid in the helicopter deal, doing what the Atal Behari Vajpayee-led government could not in the Bofors case.

Parrikar was replying to a calling attention motion on the deal in the Lok Sabha. The Congress, led by its president, Sonia Gandhi, and vice-president, Rahul Gandhi, staged a walkout, demanding a Supreme Court-monitored probe.

Speakers from the Congress argued the deal was pushed and specifications for the helicopter altered during the Vajpayee government. While Parrikar said the payments for the helicopters were made during Congress rule and it was obvious the bribes were received by people in that party. The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and Enforcement Directorate probes will find the main beneficiaries, he asserted.

Parrikar added his Congress predecessor, A K Antony, was aware that bribes have been accepted in the Rs 3,600-crore deal for 12 helicopters. Antony is a man very conscious of his clean image. He hurriedly ordered a CBI inquiry and transferred the files within two-three hours to the agency. He said the decision on the contract was taken in 2010. Who gave the order?...How much has that person got? We have to find that...What we could not do in Bofors, maybe we will in .



The Bofors scam of the late 1980s had contributed to the defeat of the then Rajiv Gandhi-led Congress government in the 1989 elections. However, subsequent probes into the deal to buy the Swedish artillery guns had largely been inconclusive.

During his speech, Parrikar accused the Congress of spreading rumours that the Rafale fighter jet deal was being signed for $9 billion. We will reduce the deal value and we will save a lot. We will show them that we got a better deal than what (their) government was getting that time. The Defence Minister also said that he suspected a conspiracy destroy evidence in the Agusta deal. The minister said he will ask the CBI to probe the "mysterious fire" that occurred in the premises of the Air Force Headquarters on July 3, 2014.

Countering the BJP's charges, Congress leader Jyotiraditya Scindia said, "Do not level baseless allegations. Supreme Court monitored investigation should happen and its reports should be placed in the House every three months." Scindia defended Sonia Gandhi and said nowhere in the judgment of the Italian court is her name mentioned. "Whenever the name of Sonia Gandhi comes, they start feeling irritated and they are afraid of her because she is a 'sherni' (lioness). That is why they (BJP) are afraid of her," he said.

He said it was the UPA government that had ordered an inquiry into allegations of bribery in the Agusta deal. Congress MPs kept asking the treasury benches why it took the current government two years to wake up to start probing the Agusta deal.
Concerned over stagnating garment exports, the Union ministry of commerce has removed restrictions under the Incremental Exports Incentivisation Scheme.

The Directorate General of Foreign Trade, in a notification, allowed regional authorities to process cases in this regard without imposing any cap. The earlier stipulation restricted the entitlement to 25 per cent growth or incremental growth of Rs 10 crore in value, whichever was less.

R K Dalmia, chairman of The Cotton Textiles Export Promotion Council, said: This decision will improve the cash flow of exporters.



The decision was taken in the wake of various complaints from exporters. The present restrictions came in late 2013 and were not part of the original scheme; this led to multiple lawsuits, too. Textile exports have remained at $40 billion annually for two years.

The government has also included exports of made-ups (a category defined in the rules) to select countries under the Merchandise Exports from India Scheme.

This will promote export of made-ups to Australia and New Zealand, said Dalmia.

Also, landing certificates shall not be required under MEIS. Exporters faced difficulty in getting these from shipping companies, beside incurring costs. The dispensation of the requirement to furnish landing certificates has come as a huge relief to the exporters and would certainly reduce the transaction costs for the exporters, said an exporter.
On an average, every Indian eats about four kilos of wheat every month. But India's wheat crop faces potential danger from a disease lurking across its eastern border in Bangladesh, where it has led to the burning down of standing crop in 15,000 hectares.

Wheat Blast is an agricultural disease that can cause more than 75 per cent yield loss in affected fields, rendering the region non-cultivable for years. It is caused by the 'Magnaporthe oryzae' fungus, which also causes Rice Blast. It thrives in hot and humid climates.

The government has taken the development seriously and might consider directing eastern states of West Bengal and Assam to stop farmers from cultivating wheat in border areas, if Bangladesh fails to contain the disease. The government might even ban import of wheat from Bangladesh.

"Quarantine facilities in Bangladesh might not be very good. Hence, infected wheat might have sneaked into the country, but we (India) have very strict quarantine norms, which is why there is no possibility of any infected wheat coming into the food chain," said R K Gupta, acting director of the Karnal-based Indian Institute of Wheat and Barley Research.

Bangladesh detected the first case of Wheat Blast a few months ago. It was notified in the first week of April, sending alarming signals across South Asia. Subsequently, Bangladesh has burnt down the standing wheat crop in 15,000 hectares to control the disease.

Like India, wheat is the second most consumed grain in Bangladesh, after rice. A wider outbreak could be devastating for South Asia, where 300 million malnourished people consume over 100 million tonnes of wheat each year.

India is also in the process of dispatching 35 Wheat Blast-resistant varieties to Brazil and other South American countries, where the disease is believed to have originated. Wheat Blast was first identified in 1985 in Brazil and thereafter spread to Bolivia and Paraguay.

According to Indian agricultural scientists, these varieties would enable South American countries to uproot the disease altogether. According to experts in the Indian Council of Agriculture Research (ICAR), the majority of wheat grown in India is resistant to "Blast infection".

A high-level team of senior ICAR officials visited the wheat growing areas of Assam and West Bengal but could not find any trace of Wheat Blast. "We already have Blast-resistant varieties and our record shows that Indian wheat has not been impacted by any major epidemic in the past four decades. Nonetheless, we are not taking any chances," Gupta told Business Standard. He said that till now there has not been any report of Wheat Blast in India and there is no need to panic.

WHAT IS WHEAT BLAST?
As informed by the University Grants Commission (UGC), there are 25 Universities & 18 Colleges offering Masters Degree in Yoga as per All India Survey of Higher Education(AISHE) provisional report 2014-15). UGC has notified Regulation, 2010 on Teachers appointment which specify the rules for appointment of Associate Professor, Assistant Professor and Professor. .

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The following two Yoga Universities are in UGC list: .

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(i) Lokulish Yoga University, Ahmedabad .

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(ii) Swami Vivekanand Yoga Anusandhan Sansthan(Deemed to be University), Bangalore. .

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The Ministry of Human Resource Development has informed that a Committee has been constituted by the Government on Yoga education in universities under the chairpersonship of Prof. H. R. Nagendra, Chancellor, Swami Vivekananda Yoga Anusandhana, Samsthana, Bengaluru. The Terms of Reference(TOR) for the committee included prescribing qualification of faculty of Yoga in Colleges and Universities and also to examine whether the existing qualifications for recruitment of the faculty in the Colleges and Universities as presently approved by the University Grants Commission(UGC), will need amendments. .

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The Committee in its report has recommended as follows: .

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I. Appointment of a sub-committee to finalise the NET syllabus. .

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II. Implementation of seven programmes in universities viz. (i) Certificate Course in Yoga (CCY) of 6 to 12 months duration; (ii) Bachelor of Science (Yoga)- BSc. (Yoga) of 3 to 6 years; (iii) Post Graduate Diploma in Yoga (PGDY) of 1 to 2 years; (iv) Post Graduate Diploma in Yoga Therapy (PGDYT) of 1 to 2 years; (v) Masters of Science (MSc.) Yoga of 2 years to 4 years; (vi) Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D) -Yoga of 3 years to 5 years; and (vii) Doctor of Philosophy (Integrated) Yoga of 4 to 6 years. The committee has also prescribed the qualifications for faculty of yoga. The committee has made other recommendations for promotion of yoga in universities. The recommendations of the committee are being examined. .

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This information was given by the Minister of State (Independent Charge) for AYUSH, Shri Shripad Yesso Naik in written reply to a question in Lok Sabha today. .

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NB/SK
Creation of post of Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) was recommended by Group of Ministers in 2001. A decision in this regard was to be taken after consultation with political parties. The consultation process however could not be completed because all political parties have not yet responded. Subsequently, Naresh Chandra Task Force (NCTF) on National Security had recommended creation of the post of Permanent Chairman Chief of Staff Committee in 2012. Both the proposals are simultaneously under consideration of the Government. .

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This information was given by Defence Minister Shri Manohar Parrikar in a written reply to Shri Pralhad Joshi in Lok Sabha today. .

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DM/NAMPI/RAJ ?
Doubling the Income of Farmers by 2022 .

Government is aware of the need to review the strategy and programmes to double the farmers income by 2022. A Committee has been constituted under the Chairmanship of Additional Secretary, Department of Agriculture, Cooperation and Farmers Welfare for examining the following aspects to double the farmers income: .

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(i) To study the current income level of farmers/agricultural labourers. .

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(ii) To measure the historical growth rate of the current income level. .

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(iii) To determine the needed growth rate to double the income of farmers/agricultural labourers by the year 2021-22. .

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(iv) To consider and recommend various strategies to be adopted to accomplish (iii) above. .

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(v) To recommended an institutional mechanism to review and monitor implementation to realise the goal. .

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(vi) To examine any other related issue. .

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This information was given by the Minister of State for Agriculture and Farmers Welfare Shri Mohanbhai Kalyanjibhai Kundariya in Rajya Sabha today. .

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SS
Its often said that the movies that were fun to make never turn out great. Well, George Clooney and Julia Roberts look like they had a grand time making the Bali-set Ticket to Paradise. The film is an old-fashioned proposition: a movie built strictly  and without apologies  on the charisma of its two stars. If you just want to see Roberts and Clooney together, Ticket to Paradise clears that not-very-high bar with just enough charm, writes AP Film Writer Jake Coyle in his review. But laughter is in short supply in a film mostly happy to bask in the glow of its two stars.
Indo-Japan Collaboration in the Field of Science & Technology .

India and Japan have immense potential to further strengthen their collaboration in Science & Technology. There are several joint projects which are already in progress and more are in the planning process. .

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The Union Minister for Science & Technology and Earth Sciences Dr.

Harsh Vardhan held a meeting with the Japanese Minister for Education, Culture, Sports, Science & Technology (MEXT) Mr. Hirodie Hase in New Delhi today. .

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The meeting was a follow up of the six-month earlier meeting held in Japan. .

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India and Japan are in close collaboration on several focus areas and projects like Artificial Intelligence, Energy, Ocean Sciences and Marine Instrumentation, High Skill Development, Use & Analysis of Big Data, Research & Development and Bio Information. .

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These projects include the exchange of students of both countries, training for Indian Scientists, Joint Research Programmes and Scholarships. .

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Both the governments attach a lot of significance on the joint collaborations in various spheres of Science & Technology. .

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Government has stopped publishing All India Income Tax Statistics since the year 2000. The data published in the All India Income Tax Statistics is based on the estimates being made on relatively small sample size. The small sample size was not representative of the population of tax payers/assesses for different categories. Therefore, it was considered by National Statistical Commission (NSC) in one of its recommendations to make sample size representative and broad based. This recommendation came in the wake of number of tax payers/assesses having been increased over the years. Secondly, the National Statistical Commission also pointed out time lag of 2 to 3 years in the publication of Income Tax statistics. The said publication was discontinued with the aim of bringing it out with computerization and networking of all offices under Central Board of Direct Taxes. .

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The Government now proposes to restore the publication in the revised format in public domain. .

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This was stated by Shri Jayant Sinha, Minister of State in the Ministry of Finance in written reply to a question in Lok Sabha today. .

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Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has released a Charter of Customer Rights, which enshrines broad, overarching principles for protection of bank customers and enunciates the five basic rights for bank customers, that I s, (i) Right to Fair Treatment, (ii) Right to Transparency, Fair and Honest Dealing, (iii) Right to Suitability, (iv) Right to Privacy, and (v) Right to Grievance Redress and Compensation. RBI has advised banks to formulate either an exclusive Customer Rights Policy keeping the spirit of the Charter intact or dovetail the existing Customer Service Policies suitably to integrate the Charter and its tenets with the approval of the Board. The banks have since framed Customer Rights Policy with the approval of the Board. Banks have also been advised to review internally by the Board the progress made in implementation of the Charter. .

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RBI vide its circular dated September 28, 2006, issued guidelines on Fair Practices Code (FPC) for all Non-Banking Financial Companies (NBFCs) to be adopted by them while doing lending business. The guidelines inter-alia covered general principles on adequate disclosures on the terms and conditions of a loan and also adopting a non-coercive recovery method. The same was revised in view of the recent developments with sector including creation of New Category of NBFCs viz., NBFC-MFII and also the rapid growth in NBFCs lending against gold jewellery. Revised circular was issued on March 26, 2012. .

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The Banking Ombudsman Scheme has specified 27 grounds of complaints under which complaints can be lodged with the Banking Ombudsman on grievances related to deficiency in banking services provided by commercial banks, Regional Rural Banks and scheduled primary cooperative banks. In so far as NBFCs are concerned, no cases of depositor cheating by the entities regulated by RBI have come to the notice of RBI during the last three years. .

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RBI has also set up the Banking Codes and Standards Board of India (BCSBI) as an autonomous body, adopting the stance of a Self-Regulatory Organization in the larger interest of improving the quality of customer service by the Indian Banking System. .

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Further, RBI has issued guidelines on Fair Practices Code for Lenders. In terms of these guidelines the banks have been advised to frame the Fair Practices Code duly approved by their Board of Directors. .

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This was stated by Shri Jayant Sinha, Minister of State in the Ministry of Finance in written reply to a question in Lok Sabha today. .

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Strict vigilance to prevent misuse of customs warehouse by importers of pulses .

Strict vigilance by Directorate of Revenue Intelligence is being kept to prevent importers from mis-using the facilities of Customs Bonded Warehouse facility. The Government has also setup of a Group of Officers for regular monitoring and exchange of information on hoarding, cartelization etc to check prices of pulses. .

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Other steps taken by the government include: .

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Export of all pulses is banned except kabuli channa and up to 10,000 MTs in organic pulses and lentils. .

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Import of pulses is allowed at zero import duty. .

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Stock limit on pulses extended till 30.9.2016. .

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Government imported 5000 MT of Tur from Malawi/Mozambique and allocated it to States for retail sale to consumers to improve availability and to moderate prices. .

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MSP (including bonus) raised for kharif pulses for Tur and Urad and Moong. MSP also raised for Rabi pulses for Gram and Masoor. .

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Government has approved creation of buffer stock of 1.5 lakh MT of pulses for effective market intervention. .

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Government has decided to immediately release 10,000 MT of pulses from the buffer stock (consisting of 8,000 MT of Tur and 2,000 MT of Urad) to States/UTs at subsidized rates for retailing by them at not more than Rs 120/- per kg to improve availability and stabilise prices. .

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Regulatory measures by Securities & Exchange Board of India (SEBI) on Chana contracts including increase in the margin requirement to discourage speculation and to moderate the price volatility in forward market and close monitoring by SEBI. This information was given by the Minister of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution, Shri Ram Vilas Paswan in a written reply in Rajya Sabha today. .

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Reckitt Benckiser Group shareholders protested the 23.2 million ($33.6 million) pay package for chief Rakesh Kapoor, the latest sign of growing investor discontent at hefty executive compensation. Almost 18 per cent of shareholders who voted rejected the company's remuneration report, Reckitt Benckiser said in a statement Thursday after its annual general meeting in London. The vote was non-binding, with dissent coming from investors including Royal London Asset Management Ltd, which has said that the company's pay pushes the boundaries of acceptability. The company's ...
Two of Indias leading private sector insurers are looking to raise over $1 billion (Rs 6,650 crore) this financial year in the sector's first initial public offerings (IPOs), as insurance companies rush to take advantage of a change in ownership rules.

ICICI Prudential Life Insurance and HDFC Standard Life Insurance will likely be followed by SBI Life Insurance in reacting to a relaxation in foreign investment regulation last year that made share sales more feasible, in a country where most life insurers are part-foreign owned.

Asias third-largest economy boasts a $50 billion insurance sector yet is home to relatively few people owning life insurance policies. With an increasingly wealthy middle class, insurers see plenty of room for growth.

The business potential for insurance companies is large, said New Delhi-based R K Gupta, managing director at Taurus Asset Management.

But, too many players are in the market, competition is going up, he said. ICICI and HDFC are well-established and big enough to beat back rivals, he said. ICICI Pru Life, a joint venture between India's ICICI Bank and Britain's Prudential PLC, is set to hire Bank of America Merrill Lynch and ICICI Securities for an IPO up to $700 million in size, Thomson Reuters publication IFR reported on Friday.

HDFC Standard Life, a venture of Indian mortgage lender Housing Development Finance Corp and Britain's Standard Life PLC, will hire Citigroup, JPMorgan, Kotak Investment Banking and Morgan Stanley to handle its IPO of up to $500 million.

SBI Life, a venture of State Bank of India and BNP Paribas Cardif SA, could announce its intention to go public by March, its Chief Executive Arijit Basu told Reuters. An actual listing would be two years away, he said by phone.

ICICI Pru Life and ICICI Securities did not respond to Reuters requests for comment. Bank of America Merrill Lynch declined to comment.

Well received



Two dozen life insurers operate in a sector dominated by state-owned Life Insurance Corp of India.

Most insurers are joint ventures between local and foreign partners. The foreign ownership limit was raised to 49 per cent from 26 per cent in March last year, after which foreign partners raised their stakes in accordance with agreements made at the outset of many ventures.

With those agreements fulfilled, venture partners are now able to sell shares to the public.

"Investors have been anticipating Indian insurance IPOs for a while so these offers will be well received. It's a new asset class and one which has plenty of macro factors in its favour," said one senior Hong Kong-based financial institutions group banker.

ICICI Pru Life will add more banks to manage its IPO, IFR reported. ICICI Bank last week said it intended to file the IPO in the current financial year ending March 31.

The insurer was valued at Rs 32,500 crore ($4.9 billion) when it agreed to sell a 6 percent stake in two separate deals.

HDFC has said it aimed to sell a stake of up to 10 per cent in the HDFC Life IPO.

($1 = 66.5550 Indian rupees)
Benchmark share indices ended flat after gains in financials capped further downside while caution was seen ahead of the US jobs data later today.

The S&P BSE Sensex ended down 34 points at 25,229 and the Nifty50 closed 2 points lower at 7,733. In the broader market, BSE Midcap index gained 0.4% while the Smallcap inded ended down 0.2%. Market breadth ended weak with 1381 losers and 1069 gainers on the BSE.

"After sharp gains in the previous months are taking a breather and are in a consolidation mode. Earnings have been a positive surprise which could prevent further downside. Foreign institutional investors are also partially booking profits after recent gains," said Kunj Bansal, ED & CIO, Centrum Wealth Manageme



Foreign institutional investors turned net sellers in equities to the tune of Rs 389 crore on Thursday, as per provisional stock exchange data.

The Reserve Bank of India late Thursday issued draft guidelines on granting licences on a continuous basis for setting up of universal banks in the private sector.

ICICI Bank ended up over 1.5%. The company's insurance arm ICICI Prudential Life Insurance is set to hire Bank of America Merrill Lynch and ICICI Securities for its planned $600 million to $700 million initial public offering (IPO), IFR reported on Friday citing two sources close to the plans. SBI was also up 2%.

Bharti Airtel ended up 0.6% after it entered into an agreement with Helios Towers Africa (HTA) for divestment of about 950 towers in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

IT majors which earn most of their revenues from exports to the US ended mixed ahead of the US jobs data later today. Infosys and Wipro ended down 1%-2% each while TCS gained 0.4%.

Hero MotoCorp posted a 71% growth in net profit for the March quarter at Rs 814 crore against Rs 477 crore in the year-ago period. Turnover for the quarter increased to Rs 7,512 crore from Rs 6,794, an increase of around 11%. The stock ended down 0.8% on profit taking.

ITC shut its plants from May 4 to comply with a new stipulated pictorial warnings rule issued by the federal government, the company said in a statement. ITC has gained marginally. The stock pared early losses to end flat with positive bias.

Among others, Xchanging Solutions ended locked in 20% upper circuit on the BSE after the company engaged in information technology (IT) services business announced voluntary delisting plan.

Diamond Power Infrastructure ended locked in upper circuit of 10% on the BSE after the company announced that the board will meet on Monday, May 16, 2016, to evaluate various debt re-alignment options including stake sale to strategic investor and re-organization of companys various businesses.

ABG Shipyard slumped 20% to Rs 30.65, also its lifetime low on the BSE, after ECL Finance sold more than one million shares of the company in the open market.

Hindustan Composites surged 16% after the company reported 135% growth in net profit at Rs 18.9 crore for the quarter ended March 2016 compared with Rs 8 crore in the same quarter last fiscal.
The benchmark stock index capped its second week of declines amid losses in Asian equities before key US jobs data that may indicate whether the world's biggest economy can withstand higher borrowing costs. Dr Reddy's Laboratories was the worst performer in the S&P BSE Sensex, while Wipro, a software exporter, retreated to a two-month low. Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone slid to about a three-month low. GAIL India rallied to a 10-month high after CNBC-TV18 reported the largest natural-gas supplier plans to sell its stake in a city-gas distributor. Tata Motors, owner of Jaguar ...
Actor Alexander Skarsgard has been roped in to play the lead role in Duncan Jones's upcoming thriller 'Mute'.

The 44-year-old film director, the son of the late music legend David Bowie, is happy to cast the 39-year-old actor as a vigilante barman in his forthcoming movie, Channel 24 reports.

In the story, which is set 40 years in the future, the 'True Blood' actor will be seen playing the role of a mute vigilante Leo Beiler, who is unable to speak due to a childhood trauma but goes in search of a missing girl in mid-21st century Berlin.

Talking about Skarsgard, Jones said he feels that the actor will do a terrific job and will justify his role.

Speaking of the development of the movie, the director said over the years he had some big, leaping ideas about what would make the film weirder and darker, and therefore they "future-fied it".

It's a thriller with a very weird tone ... The two villains of the piece are what's kept me want to do it since day one. Those characters are unique. You have not seen a pair like this," he added.

The forthcoming movie will also star actor Paul Rudd.
Namsai (Arunachal Pradesh), May 6 (ANI): Arunachal University of Studies (AUS) has opened with quality as its hallmark and would spread education throughout the state of Arunachal Pradesh, said Deputy Chief Minister Chowna Mein.Mein, who was accompanied by parliamentary secretaries Chow Tewa Mein (Forest and Environment) and Chau Zingnu Namchoom (Tax, Excise and Handicrafts), formally inaugurated the privately-run AUS, its agriculture and science block and laboratory block at a glittering ceremony on Thursday.

Namsai DC R K Sharma and higher and technical education director Dr Tejum Padu were also present on the occasion.

Calling for developing a sense of competitive spirit for delivering quality education to one and all in the state, Mein highlighted his concern over the poor quality of SSA schools, and said that it is a goal of the Kalikho Pul-led state government to make the required changes that would have a significant impact on the education sector in the future.

AUS, he said, would provide a nurturing environment for the youth of the state and prove to be trend setter in research on indigenous agri-horti species.

"I have applied for a patent right for Khampti rice," he said.

Recalling the devastating impact of natural calamities in Namsai district recently, Mein called for scientific steps to check such incidents.

"Teachers are the first parents and parents are the second teachers", goes the adage, he said and advised students to excel in life and become worthy citizens of India.

Set up in a 30-acre lush green area along Highway-52 by the global NGO World Education Mission under the GoAP 2012 Act, the launch of the AUS drew the who's who of the area, monks, PRI leaders, GBs, parents and students.

AUS Chancellor Kamal Lochan, pro-chancellor Professor K G Goel, Chairman Dr. A L Agarwal, VC Professor G N Pandey, Pro-VC Professor Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, WEM executive director Vishva Lochan were all guests who were honoured.

Educational institutions are man makers and life changers, said WEM chairman Dr. Agarwal, adding that the AUS has obtained approval of the University Grants Commission, the All India Council for Technical Education, the Indian Council for Agriculture and Research, the Council for Teachers Education, the Rehabilitation Council of India and the Bar Council of India besides being a regular member of the Association of Indian Universities.

The AUS is offering LLB, BA-LLB, B Ed, four-year integrated BA/BSc-B Ed and special education programmes in hearing impairment and visual impairment.

Chancellor Kamal Lochan said the goal of meeting the educational aspirations of the students of the region with interactive learning would be achieved.
The process of treating reclaimed wastewater to make it clean enough to drink as well as the regulation of pipes carrying reclaimed water through Flagstaff will be getting a closer look by state regulators in the coming months.

Those topics are among many that the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality will be considering as it begins a process to recraft its rules for permitting, distribution and use of reclaimed wastewater in the state.

The department is starting the rule revision process with a listening tour, which landed in Flagstaff Thursday morning. More than 50 people attended and offered dozens of comments on everything from the need to test reclaimed water for chemicals of emerging concern to the need for more tribal consultation in creating reclaimed water regulations.

State officials said the crowd was nearly double the number of attendees who showed up for ADEQs listening sessions in Tucson and Phoenix and provided many more comments than either of the previous events.

ADEQ began its rule revision process in December and hopes to have new rules in place by the end of the year, said Chuck Graf, principal hydrologist for ADEQ who led the session.

Current reclaimed wastewater rules date back to 2001 and since then reclaimed water use has grown incredibly, Graf said. The state, which first established reclaimed water regulations in 1972, is second in the nation in per-capita wastewater reuse. Reclaimed water makes up 7 percent of the states total supply.

Other comments from attendees on Thursday touched on the need to review rules that allow reclaimed water to be used for snowmaking, called for improving signage related to reclaimed water and suggested further treatment for water used for agriculture.

Another focus of discussion was direct potable reuse, or the advanced treatment of wastewater so it can be reused as part of the local drinking water supply. The state will more than likely take up that topic in this rulemaking process, Graf said. Many utilities, including Flagstaff, want to see the state come up with regulations so they can start evaluating the feasibility of direct potable reuse, he said, acknowledging that the technology for such treatment is probably there.

Brad Hill, utilities director for the city of Flagstaff, confirmed that the city is following the direct potable reuse conversation closely, including Californias current work on developing criteria for the treatment process.

The Flagstaff Water Group is one contingent advocating direct potable reuse, though the groups focus on Thursday was on the need for adequate regulations for contaminants of emerging concern, said George Kladnik, a member of the group. Wastewater treatment plants currently arent required to test for that suite of trace chemicals, which includes pharmaceuticals, personal care products and endocrine disruptors.

What were recommending is that there be new regulations to do advanced treatment on reclaimed water before its used, particularly if it can get back into a municipal water supply, Kladnik said.

A portion of Flagstaffs treated wastewater, for example, is released into the Rio de Flag and from there seeps into the regional aquifer, at a faster pace in some places than others.

According to others, direct potable reuse is exactly the wrong direction the state should be heading. That was the perspective of Rudy Preston who, along with several others in council chambers where the meeting was held, carried signs that read Wastewater: not safe to eat frozen or thawed.

The state should first focus on testing reclaimed water for the contaminants of emerging concern to ensure that using the water for things like snowmaking and the watering of parks doesnt pose a health risk to people, said Preston, who has long been an opponent of the use of reclaimed water for snowmaking at Arizona Snowbowl.

ADEQ officials said the department hopes to have an initial draft of the reclaimed water rule revisions completed by this fall. The department is accepting comments on its website at http://www.azdeq.gov/environ/water/permits/reuserulemaking.html.
Asthma not only takes its toll on lungs, but can also make it harder for women to get pregnant.

A new study has revealed that asthmatic women may take more time to concieve and have a lower pregnancy rate than those without the lung diseases.

Dr. Archana Dhawan Bajaj, gynaecologist and obstetrician, Nurture IVF Centre, explained that asthma's effect on fertility increases with time and age and so, the female patients should conceive at an early age and step up their asthma treatment before getting pregnant.

Asthma is a chronic respiratory disorder due to inflammation of the airways in our lungs. Some of the common symptoms of asthma include breathlessness, chest tightness, and night cough among many. Often the affected person finds it extremely difficult to breathe.

In early age, boys are twice more likely to suffer from asthma than girls. However, this ratio gets reversed as they grow up. Pre-pubertal girls suffer from severe asthma attacks as the hormones change. The peak is observed at menopause when women are twice likely to suffer from asthma as compared to men of the same age.

What make asthma so severe in women are their reproductive hormones. When it comes to women and asthma, the ability to breathe can be affected by menstrual cycle, pregnancy and eventually menopause.

Creating awareness among patients is as fundamentally significance as adherence to treatment might. It is important that women take utmost care when conceiving, informed Dr. Bajaj.

Dr. Randeep Guleria, Head of Department, Pulmonology and Sleep Disorder at AIIMS says, "Women needs to be very careful of asthma triggers like use of biomass fuels (for cooking), passive smoking, smoking, alcohol consumption and other environmental factors along with their fluctuating hormones, during different time of month."

He added, "To further compound the problem, asthma in women is a much stigmatized condition. Women with asthma are looked upon as people with lifelong compromised . But asthmatic women can get pregnant and have a normal delivery."

According to Dr. Guleria, inhalation therapy for asthma is recognized as the most preferred form of treatment worldwide, with developed countries like USA and UK adopting inhalers as an integral part of asthma therapy.

"This therapy is so safe and easy to use for expecting mothers and women who are breastfeeding. It is important to note that asthma is not a transmitted disease. As opposed to oral therapy, inhalers are highly effective, safe and cost effective not only for women but any asthmatic patient. In India, however, due to many myths and beliefs about inhalation therapy being common, the use of oral corticosteroids is rampant," he said.

The study is published in the European Respiratory Journal.
The power of our beliefs in guiding our lives is well documented and now, a new study has shed some light on whether or not believing oneself to be a food addict influences how much we eat.

Helen Ruddock and colleagues from the University of Liverpool examined the impact of changing participants' personal food addiction beliefs on eating behaviour.

In two separate studies, women completed a series of computer tasks about food. On completion, they were given bogus feedback on their performance which indicated that they had either high-, low-, or average-levels of food addiction. Their intake of unhealthy foods (chocolate and crisps) was then measured in a taste test.

Participants who were told they scored highly in food addiction went on to consume fewer calories than those who were told they had a low or average score.

Furthermore, participants who were told they scored highly in food addiction reported greater concern about their eating behaviour. This, in turn, reduced the amount of time they spent tasting the foods during the taste test

Helen Ruddock, said: "Our research found that participants who believed themselves to be 'food addicts' reduced the amount of time they were exposed to unhealthy foods and ate less as a result. This appears to be because the perception of being a food addict made them concerned about their eating behaviour."

She added, "Our study is first to show that personal beliefs about food addiction can influence how much we eat. Further work with a larger sample group and over a longer time period is now needed."

The study appears in journal Obesity.
Targeting Congress president Sonia Gandhi for featuring her son-in-law Robert Vadra in posters waved about at the party's mega rally, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Friday called the 'Loktantra Bachaao Yatra' (democracy march) a 'dynasty march', adding it is a march to save the dynasty from extinction.

"It's an irony that the Congress party is calling this as a democracy march. Rather than calling it a democracy march what is evident is and what the Congress party should be calling it is a 'dynasty march'. Please look around the march and you would find the hoardings and posters of a single family. You would see Vadra ji, Sonia Ji, Vadra Ji everywhere. So definitely it is a dynasty march, it is a march to save the dynasty from extinction," BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra told ANI here.

Patra also said that the Congress must hold a 'surrendering march' rather than a democracy march.

"The dynasty has been caught in the AgustaWestland case. The big question that the Congress should be answering to is that is it a sort of launch of Mr. Robert Vadra because only a few days ago he (Robert Vadra) was saying that he is interested in coming into politics. And today is not a co-incidence that most of the posters and hoardings carry Mr. Robert Vadra. Is he that the new incarnation is to save democracy in this country? The Congress has a lot of answering to do rather than marching towards the law," he added.

BJP leader and Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Rajiv Pratap Rudy said that the democracy needs to be saved from this party (Congress).

"Slogan 'Loktantra Bachao' needs to be changed. The slogan should be save democracy from Congress. Till now we were seeing the images of Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi but today we are even seeing the poster of Vadra. Rahul ji has to answer a lot of questions from Italy to Delhi. These are all tactics to divert the attention of the people," Rudy added.

He also said Narendra Modi Government is forward at all fronts, adding that India has for the first time got a Prime Minister who not only speaks but also takes action.

Echoing similar sentiments, party MP Meenakshi Lekhi said the Congress is not able to handle the situation and is, therefore, making such statements to hide their faults.

"They are hiding their faults as these people are not able to handle the situation. They are blaming the BJP but their own leaders are sick of the way they work and left them. At all fronts the BJP government is doing work," she said.

Displaying a major show of strength against the Centre, Sonia Gandhi had earlier waged a war against the BJP, saying she will never let the NDA government succeed in 'murdering democracy' in the nation.

Gandhi, who was addressing her party workers ahead of the 'Loktantra Bachaao Yatra', also accused the ruling dispensation of firing false charges against the Congress to cover two years of failure of Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led government.

Accusing the BJP of being on a 'power-hungry' mania, Gandhi said that the Centre had toppled the Congress-led governments in Arunachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand by sheer power of money, corruption and false promises.

The Congress president also used the occasion to issue a warning to those in power, saying the BJP must not make the mistake of thinking that the opposition is weak.

"We will never bow before them and in the upcoming days we will put a bigger fight against them. I want to appeal to my fellow Congress colleagues and to everyone in the nation to go to every corner of the country and expose the true face of Modi. We will not them destroy democratic legacies," Sonia said.

Earlier, the BJP had in a countering move staged protest against corruption of the Congress near the Gandhi Statute in Parliament premises.

The 'Loktantra Bachaao Yatra' has been organised amid a face-off between the Opposition and the BJP led-NDA Government at the Centre over various issues, including the AgustaWestland VVIP chopper deal and the Uttarakhand political crisis.
The grand old party on Friday accused the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of unnecessarily defaming its leaders in the wake of AgustaWestland scam adding that the saffron outfits' wish of a Congress free India will remain a dream.

Congress leader Sachin Pilot told ANI that, "Our party president Sonia Gandhi has herself vouched for an investigation in AugustaWestland scam. We call for unbiased investigation, a time bound probe. But the way BJP is making relentless efforts to maligning image of our leaders and is wishing of a Congress free India is a mere dream."

The Congress leaders under the leadership of Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi carried out the 'save the democracy protest' against the Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) move of trying to topple the Uttarakhand government.

Sonia Gandhi along with many other Congress leaders have been accused by the BJP of a prime position in the scandal, which saw bribes being paid in India by Anglo-Italian firm Agusta for a contract to sell 12 helicopters for Rs. 3,600 crores.
Even as the country reels under severe drought, information secured by Greenpeace suggests that India's coal-hungry government is willing to overlook policy meant to protect the country's pristine forests, wildlife and the fresh-water sources.

The information accessed by Greenpeace India under the Right to Information (RTI) from the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change (MoEFCC) reveals that as many as 417 out of 825 current and future coal blocks should be categorised as inviolate areas as per hydrological parameters.

Last year, the Forest Survey of India (FSI) assessed 825 coal blocks based on the draft parameters for identification of inviolate forest areas. For applying the hydrology parameter, the from the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change has recommended excluding 250 m on either side of a first order stream while marking the boundaries of coal blocks. Taking this criteria into consideration, a whopping 50.5 percent of the coal blocks are rendered as 'partially inviolate'.

"It's been close to four years since the exercise to identify inviolate areas started and the MoEFCC (Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change) is still dragging its feet on this policy while the Coal Ministry is going ahead with auctioning and allotting these precious forest areas," said Nandikesh Sivalingam, senior campaigner, Greenpeace India.

"The MoEFCC's silence gives tacit go-ahead to the government's coal-dependent energy policy. In effect, it allows the greed for coal to take precedence over everything else, including the inevitable consequence of coal mining destroying sensitive forest areas and freshwater sources in our drought-afflicted country," he added.

Sivalingam said mining in the forests even beyond the 250m of the river banks often has a dramatic detrimental impact on the catchment, including water pollution, erosion and worsening water scarcity during dry season.

He added that if all the streams (second and third order) in the river basins are to be taken into consideration, the impact on central India's water sources could be much higher.

Besides the hydrological parameters, the RTI data accessed by Greenpeace India shows that currently the list of inviolate coal blocks stand at a mere 49, covering an area of 1271.43 Sq Km as per four parameters: forest cover, forest type, biological richness and landscape integrity.

Reports show that the government has started applying the inviolate policy partially. However, it is not clear how they include or exclude coal blocks from this list. At the same time, coal blocks listed as inviolate are being auctioned/allotted to mining companies.

"What is worrying is the callousness that the MoEFCC has towards protecting the country's pristine natural resources. It's no longer only about forests, it's clear that mining in the central Indian forest could also have serious impacts on water sources," said Sivalingam.

Lack of information in the public domain, on what the current inviolate regions are, is putting our forests and water resources at risk. Biodiverse land that should otherwise be left untouched is being auctioned for coal mining.

Greenpeace India has demanded that the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change fix a deadline to finalise, publicise and enforce the inviolate policy; publish the forest areas/coal blocks that are inviolate along with the geo-referenced maps, for all the concerned stakeholders - including affected forest communities - to be consulted before the land is considered for mining.

Apart from hydrological parameters, the other most important parameter that MoEFCC has neglected is the wildlife value. With close to 688 tigers present in Central and Eastern Ghats landscape according to government's own report (Status of Tigers, Co predators & amp; prey in India, 2014) coal mining poses a further threat to the distribution and connectivity of the species since many coal fields overlap with forests occupied by the tigers and their migratory corridors.

Besides this, 49 coal blocks fall under inviolate areas on the basis of the first four of the draft parameters forest cover, forest type, biological richness and landscape integrity.

Wildlife value and hydrological values are other two criterias that were part of the draft inviolate criteria. Wildlife value was later dropped from the list without any scientific basis.

Stream order is a measure of the relative size of streams. The smallest tributaries are referred to as first-order streams, while the largest river in the world, the Amazon, is a twelfth-order waterway. First- through third-order streams are called headwater streams.

The draft inviolate parameters were prepared by MoEF: Originally known as 'Go-No Go' policy, the idea of 'Inviolate Forests' came into place at the request of Coal India and the Ministry of Coal way back in 2009. The objective was to have certainty on which forests area will be permitted for mining and which will be not allowed for mining coal. But over the years, Inviolate' policy, has been watered down to a great extent.
A post-mortem report of Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) worker Aftab Ahmed Hussain, who died in paramilitary Rangers custody on Tuesday, said that he was subject to torture 'before his death' with around '35 to 40 per cent' of his body bearing bruises.

A 90-minute-long autopsy, performed by senior doctors at the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre under the supervision of a judicial magistrate, found multiple bruises on Ahmed's body, reports the Express Tribune.

Aftab died within 48 hours of his detention by the paramilitary force.

He was reportedly picked up from his residence on Sunday and presented in an anti-terrorism court on Monday.

While the Rangers said that Aftab died of cardiac arrest, the MQM allege that he was tortured during interrogation which led to his death.

Aftab, 42, working as Sattar's coordinator since 2002 was detained by the Rangers in a raid in Karachi's Federal B area. He was later shifted to the Mitha Ram Hostel, a declared sub-jail where the paramilitary force interrogates suspected criminals and terrorists.

General Raheel Sharif and the Sindh Rangers had called for an inquiry into his death and said justice must be done.

The post mortem report noted that bruises, overlapping each other, were found on his head, chest, arms, buttocks, thighs, legs and feet while the nail on his left foot's big toe was also damaged.

However, the report did not list the actual cause of Hussain's death but confirmed that the torture marks the body bears were definitely inflicted 'ante-mortem', that is he suffered them when he was still alive.

One of the doctors who conducted the autopsy said that they will have to carry out a chemical examination report to ascertain the exact cause of his death.

Meanwhile, MQM leader Dr. Farooq Sattar said that the autopsy proves that their party colleague was tortured prior to his death.

Sattar demanded action against those officers responsible for torturing Aftab, and said that they hoped the army chief would also take note of its 65 'missing' party workers who are in the custody of law enforcement agencies but have not been produced in courts.
Fortis Escorts Heart Institute has initiated a wide expansion plan in Bangladesh following the highly successful launch of the AFC Fortis Escorts Hospital at Khulna last year with a strategic tie-up between Fortis Escorts Heart Institute and AFC Limited of Bangladesh.

The plan includes construction of five AFC Fortis Escorts Hospitals in Chittagong, Dhaka, Comila and Sylhet across Bangladesh with about 450 beds spread over the five units and equipped to extend the best and advanced treatment solutions to the patients in Bangladesh.

Spearheading the initiative, Dr. Ashok Seth, Chairman, Fortis Escorts Heart Institute (FEHI) has also established a direct contact for patients and cardiologists from Bangladesh at these centres with the Fortis Escorts Heart Institute in Delhi.

This facilitates a 24X7 direct tele link-up of all angiographic images and visuals of critical care areas so that the doctors from Bangladesh can be directly in touch with Dr. Seth in Delhi and have his oversee and guidance 24x7.

The AFC Fortis Escorts hospitals in Bangladesh will have the highest standards of infrastructure, advanced equipment and updated treatment solutions identical to Fortis Escorts Heart Institute in New Delhi.

Qualified cardiologists from Bangladesh are receiving advanced training under the expert tutelage of Dr. Seth and his team in Delhi, as are the nurses and cardiac surgeons from Bangladesh. Dr. Seth will be conducting training programs for doctors in Bangladesh to cover Cardiology; cardiac surgery and pediatric cardiology with quality at par with treatment solutions available at Delhi.

Dr. Ashok Seth said, "The patients in Bangladesh will have access to the best infrastructure in Bangladesh, for Bangladesh, by Bangladeshi doctors. My vision is that no patient from Bangladesh should be going out of Bangladesh for any form of advanced cardiac treatment. They should find everything at hand's reach and the team will work towards delivering it."

Dr. Seth added, "While all local cardiologists and cardiac surgeons and senior nurses are being handpicked by my direct involvement and trained by me at Delhi, they will also be supervised and will be constantly in touch with me while at our facilities in Bangladesh. We hope to deliver the highest standards of quality, ethical and compassionate services to benefit people of Bangladesh."

Dr. Somesh Mittal, Zonal Director FEHI said, "FEHI is continuously introducing newer ways of extending the best treatment solutions through one of the best team of cardiologists in India. In reaching across to patients at Bangladesh we are opening a newer way to reach across to extend the highest level of expertise and skills to patients who do not have access to excellent treatment solutions."

Coronary heart diseases constitute for almost 54 percent rate of deaths in Bangladesh with an almost 7% cause for death globally forming the fourth top most reason for mortality. A study that categorized the search on prevalence and cross-sectional studies, the outcome revealed cardiovascular disease, CVD, myocardial infarction, ischemic heart disease, hypertension, high blood pressure, coronary artery disease to be dominating in the top most diseases in Bangladesh coming as a parallel to Diabetes Mellitus.

In a study conducted on the population in Bangladesh by a professor from Cambridge, it was revealed that besides battling the worst of climate changes, Bangladesh also records the highest rate of urbanization and population density in South Asia. This contributes significantly to the predisposition of suffering from cardiovascular diseases. In addition to these, poor nutrition, environmental contaminants genetic markers are other factors that could be identified as making the population more vulnerable to the disease.
Republican House speaker Paul Ryan has said that he couldn't lend his support to Donald Trump, the party's presumptive presidential nominee.

"I'm just not ready to do that at this point. I'm not there right now," he told CNN's "The Lead with Jake Tapper" in an interview.

The Wisconsin Republican's rejection makes him the highest level GOP official to reject Trump since the New York billionaire became the only candidate standing in the party's nominating contest.

Ryan's move gives down-ballot Republicans cover to hold off on supporting the real estate mogul.

Ryan said eventually hoped backing Trump and "to be a part of this unifying process" but the first move must come from the latter.

He said that he wanted Trump to unify "all wings of the Republican Party and the conservative movement" and then run a campaign that would allow Americans in being part of something they that they are proud to support.

The House speaker, who will be chairman of the Republican national convention in July in Cleveland, hoped to come around in supporting Trump.

However, neither of the last two Republican presidents , George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush will attend the GOP convention in Cleveland.

Nor will the 2008 nominee, John McCain, or the 2012 nominee, Mitt Romney be present.

Ryan said that he had only started considering whether he would support Trump after the real estate mogul won Indiana primary on Tuesday, knocking both Texas Senator Ted Cruz and Ohio Governor John Kasich out of the race.

"I thought about this two days ago. I thought, actually, this thing was going to go to June 7 at the very least -- probably to a convention -- and so this is all pretty new for us," he said.

"The bulk of the burden on unifying the party will have to come from our presumptive nominee," Ryan said.

The House Speaker pressed that the party hopes the nominee aspires to be Lincoln.

" I don't want to underplay what he accomplished. ... But he also inherits something very special, that's very special to a lot of us. This is the party of Lincoln and Reagan and Jack Kemp. And we don't always nominate a Lincoln or a Reagan every four years, but we hope that our nominee aspires to be Lincoln- or Reagan-esque -- that that person advances the principles of our party and appeals to a wide, vast majority of Americans," he said.

"And so, I think what is necessary to make this work, for this to unify, is to actually take our principles and advance them. And that's what we want to see. Saying we're unified doesn't in and of itself unify us, but actually taking the principles that we all believe in, showing that there's a dedication to those, and running a principled campaign that Republicans can be proud about and that can actually appeal to a majority of Americans -- that, to me, is what it takes to unify this party," he said.
Adopting bullish approaches, both the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Congress used different venues in the capital on Friday to galvanise their workers to take on each other over the AgustaWestland copter matter and other issues that have stalled proceedings in parliament.

While the grand old party is leading a march from Jantar Mantar to the Parliament, the BJP organised a sit at Ghyara Murti, a reminder of Mahatma Gandhi's famed march to Dandi in the 1930s.

Congress leader Sachin Pilot, who is protesting against the ruling party said that the BJP is trying to weaken states where with Congress government, not just that Congress is being targeted by CBI and ED.

"BJP has destroyed the roots of democracy. They have attempted to remove congress governments from states. Under Sonia and Rahul Gandhi we want to show BJP real mirror. We are protesting here to give answers to the government. The protest 'loktantra bachao march' we are taking to save the democracy. The BJP is destroying the image of Congress. Ed and other agencies are targeting Congress. Sonia Gandhi has asked for investigation," he added.

Senior Congress leader and former Union minister Kamal Nath said that BJP counter protesting against the grand old party are the 'diversionary tactics' of the Centre.

"The democracy has been murdered. This is what BJP is attempting to do. The issue of AgustaWestland was brought to light by Congress, Congress only ordered the probe. What has BJP done in last two years in this case? These are diversionary tactics of the govt. Even the Italian government has said that it is for the Indian Government to probe the matter," he said.

Congress spokesperson Randeep Surjewala alleged that Prime Minister Narendra Modi government and Modi himself are doing schemes against the Congress party.

"At one side they are destroying elected government & at another point they are threatening the former chief minister.Modi government and Modi are doing schemes against Congress. No investigation they have done against AgustaWestland to which they call bogus company," Surjewala said.

"Farmers are committing suicide, there is drought in nation, Modi government is sleeping. They should wake up and smell the coffee: The people are fighting the drought situation and Modi government is sleeping nicely.To wake them up this protest is happening under Sonia and Rahul Gandhi," he added.

Congress Uttarakhand state chief Kishore Upadhyay accused the BJP of conspiring against Uttarakhand former chief minister Harish Rawat.

"This is Modi bureau of investigation. They murdered democracy and to safeguard themselves they conspired against Harish Rawat. We have full faith in judiciary," he added.

Meanwhile, to ensure a parallel show of strength the BJP members counters the Congress and sits in a protest against corruption of the grand old party near the Gandhi Statute here.

"They (Congress) have nothing to say. It is the democracy of this country that we are debating in parliamentary freely. The Defense Minister of that time said himself that there is scam. During the Congress regime this scam happened and they did not do anything. They have tried to hide their scams and that is why they are protesting here," said BJP leader bhupendra yadav.
New Delhi, May 6 (ANI): Taking the world of fashion by storm, today's kids are giving their adult counterparts a run for their money and now, for these budding fashion stars, India Kids Fashion Week (IKFW) is back with its fifth edition.

The selections for kids for the event are going to be held in Delhi on May 14-15, 2016 at Ambience Mall, Gurgaon and will be open for kids between 4 to 14 years of age.

The registrations for the auditions are open already and can be done from the official India Kids Fashion Week website www.ikfw.in or just by calling the hotline number 022 64501234.

The 3-day fashion extravaganza and exposition will be held from June 3 to 5, 2016 at the Phoenix Market City, Mumbai and from June 17 to 19, 2016 at The Ambience Mall, Gurgaon.

The 2016 edition of the Asia's largest platform for kids fashion industry will be a 360-degree event that will see buyers from India as well as participation from retailers across Middle East and Asia.

All the brands and designers participating in the mega show will get an opportunity to establish their presence and reach out to a wider audience by displaying their collections, including apparels and accessories.

Mr. Manoj Mahla, Director, Craftworld Events said, "Indian designers are trying their best to fill the void in the segment of kids' fashion. Some of them already have their own line of kidswear and several others are choosing to design for children than for adults. While we already have participation from renowned designers and brands, several talented, up and coming designers are also showing keen interest in India Kids Fashion Week as it will give them a platform to evolve and widen their reach."

Mahla added, "After the phenomenal response we have received to the last three editions of the India Kids Fashion Week, we are now set to roll out another exciting fashion extravaganza that will be bigger and better than the earlier editions and is set to redefine kidswear India."

Speaking on the occasion, Mr. Deepak Choudhary, Director, CEO, Event Capital said, "In the past few years, kids fashion has evolved drastically. Parents are now extremely style-conscious and want their kids to be sporting the latest trends. Kids, too, don't lag behind when it comes to hitting the right notes, be it in a jacquard skirt or a long-hooded waistcoat."

He noted, "They look up to their favourite icons be it actors, musicians or even cartoon characters and draw inspiration from their styles. Understanding the potential for kidswear market in India, many international brands have created a strong foothold in the country. We wish to give further impetus to this space with the latest edition of our highly successful fashion show, India Kids Fashion Week."

The past three editions of IFKW have received support from the personalities like Sushmita Sen, Dia Mirza, Sohail Khan, Vivek Oberoi, Neil Nitin Mukesh, Mandira Bedi and Genelia D'Souza, who shared stage with the kids to boost their confidence and strutted the ramp in creations from designers like Rocky S, Narendra Kumar,Nishka Lulla, Malini Ramani, Payal Singhal among others.

Most of the leading kids fashion brands in the country have also been associated with the event and showcased their latest collections on the IKFW platform.
High school seniors from around the city gathered at Northern Arizona Universitys Rolle Activity Center Wednesday evening to celebrate the decision to go to post-secondary education on Flagstaffs first College Signing Day.

Flagstaff High School counselor Katherine Pastor, who was named the national school counselor of the year in December, organized the event as part of Michelle Obamas Reach Higher initiative, which encourages high school students to purse higher education, including four year institutions, community colleges, trade schools and the military.

I think we needed to do something that celebrates all students in the city, Pastor said. I wanted us to have an event that brought everyone together to support one another and to celebrate this momentous night.

The Reach Higher initiative has been in place for three years, and last year some schools hosted their own College Signing Days.

Banners with images of diplomas from NAU, ASU, UA and Grand Canyon University hung on the walls at the event, as well as a poster for CCC and out of state institutions. Students were asked to sign their names on the banner of the institution they will attend. The banners will be hung inside the Greater Flagstaff Chamber of Commerce.

Pastor said she wanted to bring the celebration to Flagstaff, and show students that the community supports a culture of higher education.

About 200 students and family members attended the event, and Pastor said she hopes to grow the celebration in future years.

Its great to see so many families out here because it really is a family decision, Pastor said.

The event featured various leaders from around Flagstaff, who spoke about their experiences with college and higher education. Rafael Lopez, the Commissioner of the Administration on Children, Youth and Families from the Department of Health and Human Services also spoke at the event as a representative of Michelle Obama.

Lopez said more than 1,000 cities nationwide hosted a College Signing Day event this year, and said he and the First Lady were thrilled to celebrate the decision to pursue higher education.

You have decided to reach higher and we are so proud of you, Lopez said. Through all of the struggles and challenges, you have overcome. Attending college is no longer a dream, but a reality.

Flagstaff Mayor Jerry Nabours read a declaration at the event, officially declaring Wednesday Flagstaffs College Signing Day, and shared his own story of attending community college before NAU and finally law school at the UA.

NAU President Rita Cheng shared her story of attending several colleges for her undergraduate degree before finally graduating, and said the path to graduation or career goals might not always be clear.

The pathway is not straight, Cheng said. The pathway you think youre on today, you will self-examine, and some of you will stay on that path, but others will find different opportunities.
As part of an initiative to take bilateral cooperation in the education sector forward, India and the United Kingdom will launch the "100-foot Journey Club" on May 10 (Tuesday).

A release issued by the Indian High Commission in London said that Reserve Bank of India Governor Raghuram Rajan would deliver a talk under the initiative that is a joint collaboration between the Indian High Commission and the South Asia Centre of the London School of Economics (LSE).

Earlier, India's High Commissioner to the United Kingdom Navtej Sarna, interacted with more than 75 Indian academics and students at India House on Wednesday and discussed India-UK cooperation in the education sector.

Dame Asha Khemka, OBE, DBE, Principal and Chief Executive, West Nottinghamshire College Group also addressed the gathering.

The event included the Indian origin academics who have visited India under the Global Initiative on Academic Network (GIAN) programme.

High Commissioner Sarna briefed the audience on the UK-India relationship in education, research and innovation, and highlighted the development of UK-India relationship in education over the last few years with the introduction of bilateral programmes such as India-UK Education Forum, UK-India Education and Research Initiative (UKIERI), Newton-Bhabha Fund, Generation UK-India programme and so on.

High Commissioner Sarna also spoke about the Global Initiative on Academic Network (GIAN) initiated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi last year. An announcement was made during the visit of the Prime Minister to the UK about UK's plans to send 100 academics to India over the next two academic years as part of the GIAN.
Following the furore across the nation over the brutal rape and murder of a Dalit law student in Perumbavoor in Kerala's Ernakulam district, Home Minister Rajnath Singh on Friday assured that the guilty will not be spared and said that the Centre is ready for a probe by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) into the matter.

"As this country's Home Minister, I assure you that as soon as we get recommendation from the state government, we are prepared to conduct a CBI probe. The guilty shall be punished," Rajnath said here.

The Centre's announcement comes even as the Kerala High Court is considering a petition.

Earlier, asserting that 'swift' action would be taken against the perpetrators of the brutal rape Chief Minister Oommen Chandy, who met the family members of the victim, said his government would do the 'necessary' towards the demands of the victim's family, who have asked for a job for the victim's sister.

Chandy also announced that the state government has decided to give Rs 10 lakh as compensation to the family of the victim.

Earlier this week, the Human Rights Commission (NHRC) took suo motu cognizance of media reports about yet another 'Nirbhaya' like rape and murder of a Dalit law student.

The 29-year-old law student was brutally raped and murdered on April 28.

Her body had at least 30 injuries, including on the private parts. Reportedly, the assault on her stomach was such that the small intestine had spilled out.
The US-India Council (USIBC) announced that Prime Minister Narendra Modi will address its 41st Annual Leadership Summit in Washington DC.

The anniversary event of USIBC will witness top and government leaders as a forum for engaging in discussions on deepening US-India commercial and strategic ties.

The Prime Minister's address will be on June 7th, ahead of his address to the Joint Session of the US Congress. As part of the USIBC annual summit, Prime Minister Modi will also participate in a roundtable with top global CEOs.

"It's a privilege for USIBC to welcome Prime Minister Modi on his fourth visit to the US, particularly in light of the advancement of our countries' relationship over the past two years. India became the top global FDI destination in 2015 - attracting USD 63 billion - fueled by PM Modi's ability to attract foreign investors and to build a globally competitive environment in India," said USIBC President Dr. Mukesh Aghi.

"The US-India bilateral relationship has also matured significantly over the last few years, and extends beyond the leadership of the two countries. The council's annual summit not only honors strategic and commercial aspects of the bilateral ties, but also celebrates people-to-people ties that have come to define the opportunities between the two nations," added Dr. Aghi.

In keeping with the annual award tradition, this year's honorees for the USIBC Global Leadership Award are Amazon Founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, and Founder and Managing Director of Sun Pharmaceuticals Dilip Shanghvi.

"Jeff and Dilip are two leaders that are shaping the US-India trade ties with their incredible acumen and have made a lasting impression in integrating India into the global economy," said Dr. Aghi.

"We couldn't think of more qualified icons that are emblematic of the immense potential of our trade relationship. We are honored to be presenting the 2016 Global Leadership Award to them," he added.

Last year, the council's 40th Annual Leadership Summit served as the official kick-off to the US-India Strategic and Commercial Dialogue and hosted Vice President of the United States Joe Biden, US Secretary of State John Kerry; US Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker, Minister of State for Commerce and Industry Nirmala Sitharaman, Minister of State with Independent Charge for Power, Coal and New and Renewable Energy Piyush Goyal, among others.

Last year's business honorees were Indra Nooyi, CEO and Chairperson, PepsiCo, and Shobhana Bhartia, Editorial Director of the Hindustan Times Group.
Nepal's pre-budget discussion for the next fiscal began on a stormy note on Friday, as the United Democratic Madeshi Front (UDMF) walked out of parliament.

Federal Socialist Forum Nepal Vice-Chairman Ashok Rai, while speaking in parliament, accused the government of not paying attention to the demands raised by the Madhesi party, reports the Himalayan Times.

Rai also criticized the government for not expediting post-quake reconstruction works.

While the UDMF have walked out from the House meeting, the session is underway.

The Parliament is scheduled to discuss the principle and priority of the Appropriations Bill in a bid to make preparations for the upcoming budget.

The discussions will lead the way for making preparations for the budget before it is tabled in Parliament.

Finance Minister Bishnu Paudel has told Parliament that the budget will give priority to increasing economic growth and investment in big infrastructure projects.

President Bidhya Devi Bhandari is set to present policy and programme of the government on Sunday.

The government will table the budget on May 28.
New Delhi, May 6 (ANI): The Tibetan community should be prepared for the worst and will experience a vacuum of authority, both physical and spiritual, after their leader, The Dalai Lama, passes away, a U.S.-based Chinese dissident has warned.

In an exclusive interview given to ANI in New Delhi after attending a three-day informal conference in Dharamsala on "Strengthening our Alliance to advance the (Tibetan) people's dream.", U.S.-based Chinese dissident Yang Jiamil said, "It is proper to look at a post-Dalai Lama scenario. China has a plan to choose its version of the Dalai Lama reincarnation, although, it has no right whatsoever to do so. That will cause all round confusion and anxiety among the Tibetan people."

"The Tibetan people, community should be prepared for the worst. The Dalai Lama is such an imposing and impressive figure that when he is no longer there, there will be some vacuum of authority in the Tibetan community. However, having said this, I will also say that thanks to his (Dalai Lama's) vision, the Tibetans have created their own form of democracy, which they will convert into an authority. When the Dalai Lama leaves, this authority will fill that vacuum," he added.

Jiamil told ANI that there may be another reincarnation of the Dalai Lama, but he would not be able to emulate or replace the present one (14th) in terms of both spiritual and political caliber.

"Chaos will prevail for some time," the Chinese dissident cautioned.

Turning his attention to the outcome of the Dharamsala conference, Jiamil said that it was the 11 in a series of inter-faith conferences being held since the year 2000.

"We chose India as the venue of the conference as it is a major democracy that has strategic significance and impact vis-a-vis China and for the future of China. Our objective has been to bring people from all faiths - be they Uyghur's, Christians, Falun Gong or human rights supporters to engage in a real dialogue, to promote friendship, brotherhood and form an alliance to convince China (to reconsider its approach)," he said.

Jiamil further said that the second objective behind organizing the conference in Dharamsala was to honor the Dalai Lama and Mahatma Gandhi, both of whom were and are inspiring apostles of peace and non-violence.

He said that the conference was rich in terms of the agenda of issues that it took up for deliberation, and a key aspect of this was the "Democratisation of China".

Jiamil told ANI that a candid understanding has been arrived at on the action plan for the next year.

He also said that most of the 69 delegates at the conference had the privilege of interacting with the Dalai Lama for approximately two hours and with the Prime Minister of the Tibetan government in exile Lobsang Sangay for an hour.

"We came away from these meetings with a spirit of tremendous encouragement. We don't see any change taking place in China. We are sending a strong signal to China that they have to reconsider their policies vis-a-vis Tibet. The Dalai Lama said, 'We are one in humanity. We must love each other; tolerate each other's differences and adopt the middle-way approach, and practice non-violence'," Jiamil said.

He was also of the view that New Delhi had reacted to Beijing's pressure with regard to cancelling the e-visa of Dolkun Isa, the Germany-based head of the World Uyghur Congress, and that was only because China had got Interpol to issue a Red Alert on Isa.

"I want to urge observers and experts not to overlook the Indian government's move to allow this conference to take place. This is significant, a first from India. The Indian government was struggling to find a balance to respond to China and at the same time, keen to project the universal truth of sharing democratic values. The denial of a visa to Isa is regret, but we do feel that we have had a very successful conference, and we expect the next one be held somewhere in Europe, "he said.

"Our conference has made a contribution to India. It has spurred a debate on the need for democratization in China. Indian society needs to reach a consensus, an understanding that this democratization of China is in India's interest," Jiamil concluded.
Actor Ritiesh Deshmukh, who is gearing up for the release of his comedy flick 'Housefull 3,' has revealed that he feels that the upcoming film 'Sairatt' deserves to be the the highest-grossing Marathi film ever.

The 37-year-old actor seems to be really impressed by the film as he lauded it in series of tweets. He tweeted, "#Sairat : haven't seen a better love story in a long time - the genius of @Nagrajmanjule & the magic of @AjayAtulOnline - ??? ???????? ??."

The 'Masti' actor continued, "#Sairat : Lead Pair - Rinku & Akash make a stupendous debut. brilliant. Producers NitinKeni, NikhilSane & Team Zee - More power to you."

"#Sairat rightfully deserves to be the highest grossing Marathi film ever," reads his tweet.

Notably, his wife Genelia D'Souza too went all gaga over the movie and tweeted, "Saw #Sairat yesterday..Refreshing 2see such a pure,real, coming of age love story..congratulations Team #Sairat.. Well deserved success."

Directed by Nagraj Manjule, the forthcoming romance film that follows the story of Parshya, a low-caste man and Archie, a rich daughter of an upper caste landlord, who fall in love despite pressures from society, is slated to hit the theatres on April 29.
The Afghan intelligence operatives have arrested Qari Syedullah, a Taliban commander in Afghanistan's central Maidan Wardak province involved in major terrorist attacks.

The National Directorate of Security (NDS) arrested Syedullah who also famous as Worekhmin during an operation of the intelligence operatives, reports Khaama Press.

The operation was conducted in Sheikhabad village of Syedabad district said National Directorate of Security (NDS) in a statement.

Syedullah was involved in numerous terrorist attacks, including bombings, ambushes on Kabul-Kandahar highway, armed attack on convoys carrying logistics for security forces, the statement said.

The intelligence operatives during the operation have also seized a 82mm rocket launcher, 1 Dshk heavy machine gun, 1 Ak-47 rifle with 4 magazines and one communication device set.

So far, the Taliban militants group has not commented regarding the report.

Wardak is among the relatively volatile provinces in central Afghanistan where anti-government armed militant groups actively operate and carry out carry out insurgency activities.
Maintaining their diplomatic streak over India and Pakistan, the United States has called on both nations to pursue closer counter-terrorism cooperation as it would 'benefit' the regions which have been marred by terrorism.

In reply to a question at a press briefing talking about counter-terrorism efforts by the countries U.S. State Department deputy spokesperson Mark Toner said that there is some level of counterterrorism cooperation between India and Pakistan and also dialogue, which the US wants to see being augmented.

"This is something that's in both Pakistan and India's interest to pursue a closer counterterrorism cooperation for the region. It's good for the region," Toner said.

Earlier, the US had said that it is concerned about the allegations of gross violations of human rights in Pakistan by its security forces during its counterterrorism operations.
Posters showing Robert Vadra's face along with Congress chief Sonia Gandhi herself and party vice-president Rahul Gandhi during the mega 'Loktantra Bachao Yatra' here has sparked rumours of the businessman finally dipping his toes in the murky waters of politics.

However, the posters were reportedly put by without sanction by a Congress worker and Gandhi loyalist.

In response to the poster with Vadra's face being used in the march, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) called the 'Loktantra Bachao Yatra' (democracy march) a 'dynasty march', adding it is a march to save the dynasty from extinction.

"It's an irony that the Congress Party is calling this as a democracy march. Rather than calling it a democracy march what is evident is and what the Congress Party should be calling it is a 'dynasty march'. Please look around the march and you would find the hoardings and posters of a single family. You would see Vadra ji, Sonia ji, Vadra ji everywhere. So, definitely it is a dynasty march. It is a march to save the dynasty from extinction," BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra told ANI here.

The Congress president's son-in-law had while talking exclusively with ANI last month hinted that he may enter politics.

"I would not say never, let's see what future has in store for me," he said when asked whether he would take the plunge into active politics.

Vadra has in the past campaigned for his brother-in-law Rahul Gandhi and his mother-in-law Sonia Gandhi in Uttar Pradesh but never made campaign speeches or taken part in political meetings.
On 12 May 2016

Andrew Yule & Company will hold a meeting of the Board of Directors of the Company on 12 May 2016 Preferential Issue of Equity Shares of the Company in favour of Bank of Baroda, against conversion of Working Capital Term Loan availed of by the Company, as approved by the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs; and Preferential Issue of Equity Shares of the Company in favour of President of India as per BIFR Order.

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For a second consecutive year, partners of the Northern Arizona Forest Fund volunteered to help improve Arizonas Oak Creek watershed on the Coconino National Forest as part of a Friends of the Forest Volunteer Day.

SanTan Brewing Company, Pink Jeep Tours, Nackard Beverages and Salt River Project all came together for the volunteer day, turning out 27 volunteers. The National Forest Foundation and Coconino National Forest Red Rock Ranger District hosted the volunteer event with organizational and on-the-ground leadership from the Oak Creek Watershed Council.

Collectively, volunteers invested more than 150 hours on the project. The work directly aided the Coconino National Forest, providing much needed support on a high priority project. Volunteers raked, seeded and mulched six and a half acres of reclaimed roadbeds near Forest Service road 9845. These activities decrease erosion and sedimentation in Oak Creek while restoring native vegetation in a popular recreational area near Sedona.

We believe one of the best ways to enhance forest health is to engage local communities, business partners, and individuals in a hands-on experience in the forest. Today, we did just that! said SRP Surface Water Resources Manager and volunteer Charlie Ester. Restoring six and a half acres of compacted soil by reseeding it with native grasses and flowers will reduce the amount of sediment going into Oak Creek, which benefits fish and wildlife, improves the recreational experience, and enhances water quality.

The Northern Arizona Forest Fund engages Arizona municipalities, businesses and residents in a multi-year effort to support implementation of priority watershed health projects across Northern Arizonas National Forests. High priority watershed restoration projects are happening across all five National Forests of northern Arizona. These projects reduce wildfire risk, improve streams and wetlands, enhance wildlife habitat, restore native plants, enrich recreational experiences, and limit erosion and sediment into Arizona streams, rivers, and reservoirs.

To support the Northern Arizona Forest Fund or volunteer for a Friends of the Forest Day, contact Marcus Selig at mselig@nationalforests.org or 720-437-0290.
The Solvent Extractors' Association of India has compiled the export data for export of oilmeals for the month of April 2016. The overall export of oilmeals during April 2016 is reported at 54,390 tons compared to 182,638 tons in April 2015 i.e. down by 70% due to lesser availability of oilseeds for crushing and continuous disparity in exporting oilmeals in International Market.

South Korea, Iran and Thailand - Major Importers of Oilmeals: - Oilmeal import by South Korea from India during April 2016 is reported at 47,082 tons compared to 119,297 tons; consisting 10,302 tons of rapeseed meal and 36,780 tons of castor meal.

Vietnam imported 1,182 tons compared to 21,132 tons last year; consisting of 182 tons of rapeseed meal and 1,000 tons of Deoiled Rice Bran Extraction. Taiwan imported 2,474 tons compared to 6,411 tons last year; consisting of 2,021 tons of rapeseed meal and 453 tons of castor meal. Myanmar imported 1,116 tons (rapeseed meal) compared to 3,762 tons last year.

The export from Kandla is reported at 47,082 tons (87%), followed by Mumbai including JNPT handled 1,442 tons (3%), Kolkata handled 1,000 tons (2%) and Mundra handled 4,866 tons (9%).

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Hero MotoCorp's net profit rose 70.85% to Rs 814.16 crore on 10.57% increase in total income to Rs 7614.61 crore in Q4 March 2016 over Q4 March 2015. Earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) margin edged higher to 15.65% in Q4 March 2016, from 12.34% in Q4 March 2015. The result was announced after trading hours yesterday, 5 May 2016.

The improved profit margins were the combined result of the highest-ever quarterly sales of 17.21 lakh units and several margin improvement initiatives taken during the period, the company said in a statement.

Hero MotoCorp's board recommended a final dividend of Rs 32 per share for the financial year ended 31 March 2016.

Banking stocks will be in focus after the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) issued draft guidelines on granting licences on a continuous basis for setting up of universal banks in the private sector. The bank can be promoted by a non-banking finance company (NBFC) controlled by residents with a successful track record for at least 10 years and individuals/professionals who are residents and have 10 years of experience in banking and finance. The RBI has also allowed entities/groups in the private sector owned and controlled by residents to promote a universal bank subject to the condition that the non-financial business of the group does not account for 40% or more in terms of total assets/gross income. The initial minimum paid-up voting equity capital for a universal bank has been set at Rs 500 crore. Thereafter, the bank will be required to have a minimum net worth of Rs 500 crore at all times. The bank will have to open at least 25% of its branches in unbanked rural centres (population up to 9,999 as per the latest census). The bank will have to comply with the priority sector lending targets and sub-targets as applicable to the existing domestic scheduled commercial banks. The board of the bank should have a majority of independent directors, as per the draft guidelines.

The promoter group of the bank will be required to hold a minimum of 40% of the paid-up voting equity capital of the bank with a lock-in period of five years from the date of commencement of the business of the bank. The promoter group has to reduce its holding in the bank to 15% within a period of 12 years from the date of commencement of business of the bank. The bank will be required to get its shares listed on the stock exchanges within six years of the commencement of business. The RBI has invited feedback from the public on the draft guidelines by 30 June 2016.

ITC announced that the Supreme Court on 4 May 2016 passed an order transferring to the Karnataka High Court all writ petitions pending in various courts challenging the rules prescribing 85% pictorial warnings on packages of tobacco products. The Supreme Court observed that all parties should endeavour to follow the rules. In the meantime, ITC has had to shut its cigarette factories from 4 May 2016 until the company is in a position to comply with the interim requirements pending hearing in the Karnataka High Court, the company said. The announcement was made after market hours yesterday, 5 May 2016.

Bharti Airtel said that its subsidiary, Bharti Airtel International (Netherlands) BV, and Helios Towers Africa (HTA), a leading independent telecoms towers company in Africa, announced an agreement for the divestment of approximately 950 telecoms towers in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) from Bharti Airtel to HTA. The divestment also includes towers currently under construction in the DRC. The agreement will allow the company to focus on its core business and customers, while enabling it to deleverage through debt reduction, Bharti Airtel said. The deal will significantly reduce the company's ongoing capital expenditure on passive infrastructure and also mitigate the proliferation of towers through enhanced sharing, Bharti Airtel said. The deal will help expand HTA's tower coverage in Africa to over 6,500 owned towers.

The agreement follows Bharti Airtel's and HTA's strategies to drive cost efficiencies throughout the industry, the promotion of passive infrastructure and to mitigate against the proliferation of towers. Post deal, Bharti Airtel will have full access to the towers from HTA under a long term lease contract. The agreement is subject to statutory and regulatory approvals in the respective countries. The announcement was made after trading hours yesterday, 5 May 2016.

Wipro after trading hours yesterday, 5 May 2016, announced that it has successfully implemented its Software as a Service (SaaS) platform- Managed File Transfer as a Service (MFTaaS) on Amazon Web Services (AWS) for organizations, thereby helping them integrate digitally with their clients, partners and employees. Wipro anticipates that the MFTaaS platform can potentially reduce up to 30% in TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) for its clients vis-a-vis traditional deployments, the company said in a statement.

In a separate announcement, Wipro said that it has won a multi-year contract from Thames Water in the United Kingdom. Wipro will develop new IT systems and processes to help Thames Water improve customer experience and drive operational efficiencies. The announcement was made after trading hours yesterday, 5 May 2016.

NTPC after trading hours yesterday, 5 May 2016, announced that it has raised Rs 1000 crore through private placement of secured non-convertible debentures at a coupon of 8.05% per annum with a 10 year door-to-door maturity. The proceeds of the issue will be utilized to finance capital expenditure/refinancing the debt requirement in on-going projects including recoupment of expenditure already incurred.

Emami's consolidated net profit fell 45.2% to Rs 75.85 crore on 17.3% increase in total income to Rs 676.79 crore in Q4 March 2016 over Q4 March 2015. The result was announced after trading hours yesterday, 5 May 2016. Meanwhile, Emami said that Emami International FZE, (a wholly owned subsidiary of the company based in Dubai) has further acquired 18.33% of the share capital of its subsidiary Fravin Pty., Australia. Consequent to the acquisition of shares, aggregate shareholding of Emami International FZE in its subsidiary company Fravin Pty has increased to 85% of share capital of Fravin Pty. from 66.67 %.

Multi Commodity Exchange of India (MCX)'s net profit fell 45% to Rs 27.10 crore on 14.8% fall in total income to Rs 83.35 crore in Q4 March 2016 over Q4 March 2015. The result was announced after trading hours yesterday, 5 May 2016.

SML Isuzu has scheduled a board meeting on 10 May 2016, to consider a proposal for raising long term borrowings by way of external commercial borrowings (ECB) for partial funding of capital expenditure plan of Rs 220 crore towards product improvement / variants and up-gradation of technology and plant infrastructure. The announcement was made after trading hours yesterday, 5 May 2016.

Syndicate Bank said it allotted 9.51 crore equity shares of face value of Rs 10 each for cash at an issue price of Rs 77.79 each, aggregating to Rs 740 crore on preferential basis to Government of India. The announcement was made after trading hours yesterday, 5 May 2016.

On a consolidated basis, Great Eastern Shipping Company (GE Shipping)'s net profit fell 57.51% to Rs 58.20 crore on 7.26% increase in total income to Rs 968.42 crore in Q4 March 2016 over Q4 March 2015. On a consolidated basis, GE Shipping's net profit rose 38.91% to Rs 1039.40 crore on 9.83% increase in total income to Rs 4078.51 crore in the year ended March 2016 over the year ended March 2015. The result was announced after trading hours today, 5 May 2016.

In a separate announcement, GE Shipping said that its board approved raising upto Rs 1500 crore through private placement of non-convertible debentures during the year.

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From 04 May 2016

ITC announced that the Hon'ble Supreme Court on 04 May 2016 passed an Order transferring to the Karnataka High Court all writ petitions pending in various Courts challenging the Rules prescribing 85% pictorial warnings on packages of tobacco products. The Hon'ble Supreme Court observed that all parties should endeavour to follow the Rules.

In the meantime, the Company has had to shut its cigarette factories from 04 May 2016 until the Company is in a position to comply with the interim requirements pending hearing in the Karnataka High Court.

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Government of India (GoI), Ministry of Civil Aviation has received a proposal from Government of Uttar Pradesh (GoUP) in April, 2016 for grant of Site Clearance for proposed Noida International Airport near Jewar, Dist. Gautam Budh Nagar, Uttar Pradesh.

GoI has notified a Greenfield Airport Policy, 2008 to provide guidelines for setting up of new airports in the country. As per the Greenfield Airport Policy, the proposal has been sent to Airports Authority of India (AAI), Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) and Ministry of Defence (MoD) for their comments/observations on the site identified for setting up of International Airport near Jewar, Uttar Pradesh. The proposals are considered by Steering Committee set up in Greenfield Airport Policy in consultation with AAI, DGCA and MoD.

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Revises price band to Rs 215 - Rs 227 per share

The initial public offer (IPO) of Parag Milk Foods, which was slated to end today, 6 May 2016, was extended till Wednesday, 11 May 2016. The company has also revised the price band of the issue to Rs 215 - Rs 227 per share from Rs 220 - Rs 227 per share earlier. The IPO opened for bidding on 4 May 2016.

Meanwhile, the IPO received bids for a total of 2.48 crore shares on the third day of bidding for the IPO today, 6 May 2016, as per data from the National Stock Exchange (NSE) website at 16:00 IST. The IPO was subscribed 1.30 times.

The company raised Rs 342.85 crore by selling 1.51 crore shares to a total of 17 anchor investors ahead of the opening of the IPO. The shares were allotted to the anchor investors at Rs 227 per share, the top end of the Rs 220 to Rs 227 per share price band for the IPO.

Among the anchor investors, Nomura India Investment Fund Mother Fund will be allotted 22.02 lakh shares, Tata Balanced Fund will be allotted 19.21 lakh shares and Abu Dhabi Investment Authority - Behave will be allotted 14.23 lakh shares. Other investors include, Government Pension Fund Global, Morgan Stanley Mauritius Company and Copthall Mauritius Investment, among others.

The IPO of Parag Milk Foods, one of the leading manufacturers and marketers of dairy-based branded foods in India, comprises of fresh issue of equity shares aggregating up to Rs 300 crore and offer for sale of up to 2.05 crore shares from existing shareholders.

The three investors who are selling shares via the IPO are India Business Excellence Fund (IBEF) which is a unit scheme of venture capital fund Business Excellence Trust, India Business Excellence Fund I (IBEF I) and IDFC Private Equity Fund III (IDFC PE) which is a unit scheme of venture capital fund IDFC Infrastructure Fund 3. IBEF is selling 21.09 lakh shares, IBEF I is selling 39.17 lakh shares and IDFC PE is selling 82.59 lakh shares via the IPO.

From the promoter group, Netra Shah is selling 20.04 lakh shares and Priti Shah is selling 11 lakh shares. Other selling shareholders are selling a combined 31.81 lakh shares.

The company will utilize the proceeds of the fresh issue of shares to fund the expansion and modernisation at its existing manufacturing facilities at Manchar in Pune and Palamaner in Andhra Pradesh and improving the marketing/distribution infrastructure. The company has earmarked Rs 147.70 crore the expansion and modernisation plan. It has earmarked Rs 2.29 crore for investment in its subsidiary for financing the capital expenditure requirements in relation to the expansion and modernisation of the Bhagyalaxmi Dairy Farm. A sum of Rs 100 crore will be used for partial repayment of the working capital consortium loan.

Promoted by Devendra Shah, Pritam Shah and Parag Shah, Parag Milk Foods manufactures a diverse range of products including cheese, ghee (clarified butter), fresh milk, whey proteins, paneer, curd, yoghurt, milk powders and dairy based beverages targeting a wide range of consumer groups through several brands. The company currently has aggregate milk processing capacity of 2 million litres per day. The cheese plant has a raw cheese production capacity of 40 MT per day. The company's two flagship brands are Gowardhan and Go.

The company operates a diary farm through its subsidiary Bhagyalaxmi Dairy Farms Private Limited. It is a fully automated cow farm housing over 2,000 holstein breed cows with superior quality yields. It produces farm-to-home premium fresh milk, which is marketed under the Pride of Cows brand in Mumbai and Pune.

Based on the consolidated financial performance, Parag Milk Foods registered net profit of Rs 31.92 crore on revenue from operations of Rs 1230.60 crore for 9 months ended 31 December 2015. The company reported net profit of Rs 25.96 crore on revenue from operations of Rs 1438.70 crore for the year ended 31 March 2015. The company has stated in its Red Herring Prospectus that it has not declared any dividend in the last five financial years. The company has no formal dividend distribution policy.

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The Reserve Bank of India has released Draft Guidelines for 'on tap' Licensing of Universal Banks in the Private Sector.

Final guidelines will be issued and the process of inviting applications for setting up of new universal banks in the private sector will be initiated after receiving feedback, comments and suggestions on draft guidelines.

In a departure from the earlier guidelines on universal banks dated February 22, 2013, the present guidelines include (i) resident individuals and professionals having 10 years of experience in banking and finance as eligible persons to promote universal banks; (ii) large industrial/business houses are excluded as eligible entities but permitted to invest in the banks to the extent of less than 10 per cent; (iii) Non-Operative Financial Holding Company (NOFHC) has now been made non-mandatory in case of promoters being individuals or standalone promoting/converting entities who/which do not have other group entities; (iv) The NOFHC is now required to be owned by the promoter/promoter group to the extent of at least 51 per cent of the total paid-up equity capital of the NOFHC, instead being wholly owned by the promoter group; and (v) Existing specialised activities have been permitted to be continued from a separate entity proposed to be held under the NOFHC subject to prior approval from the Reserve Bank and subject to it being ensured that similar activities are not conducted through the bank as well.

Key features of the guidelines:

(I) Eligible Promoters

i. Existing non-banking financial companies (NBFCs) that are 'controlled by residents' and have a successful track record for at least 10 years.

ii. Individuals / professionals who are 'residents' and have 10 years of experience in banking and finance.

iii. Entities / groups in the private sector that are 'owned and controlled by residents' [as defined in FEMA Regulations, as amended from time to time] and have a successful track record for at least 10 years, provided that if such entity / group has total assets of ?50 billion or more, the non-financial business of the group does not account for 40 per cent or more in terms of total assets / in terms of gross income.

(II) 'Fit and Proper' criteria

Promoter/promoting entity/promoter group should have a past record of sound financials, credentials, integrity and have a minimum 10 years of successful track record.

(III) Corporate structure

The requirement of Non-Operative Financial Holding Company (NOFHC) is not mandatory for individual promoters or standalone promoting/converting entities who/which do not have other group entities. Individual promoters/promoting entities/converting entities that have other group entities, shall set up the bank only through an NOFHC. The NOFHC shall be owned by the promoter/promoter group to the extent of not less than 51 per cent of the total paid-up equity capital of the NOFHC. Specialised activities would be permitted to be conducted from a separate entity proposed to be held under the NOFHC subject to prior approval from the Reserve Bank and subject to being ensured that similar activities are not conducted through the bank.

(IV) Minimum capital requirement

The initial minimum paid-up voting equity capital for a bank shall be ?5 billion. Thereafter, the bank shall have a minimum net worth of ?5 billion at all times.

The promoter/s and the promoter group/NOFHC, as the case may be, shall hold a minimum of 40 per cent of the paid-up voting equity capital of the bank which shall be locked-in for a period of five years from the date of commencement of business of the bank. The promoter group shareholding shall be brought down to 15 per cent within a period of 12 years from the date of commencement of business of the bank.

(V) Foreign shareholding in the bank

The foreign shareholding in the bank would be as per the existing foreign direct investment (FDI) policy subject to the minimum promoter shareholding requirement indicated in paragraph (IV) above.

At present, the aggregate foreign investment limit is 74 per cent.

(VI) Corporate governance prudential and exposure norms

The bank shall comply with the provisions of Banking Regulations Act, 1949 and the existing guidelines on prudential norms as applicable to scheduled commercial banks. The bank is precluded from having any exposure to its promoters, major shareholders who have shareholding to the extent of 10 per cent or more of paid-up equity shares in the bank, the relatives of the promoters as also the entities in which they have significant influence or control.

(VII) Business plan for the bank

The business plan submitted by the applicant should be realistic and viable and address how the bank proposes to achieve financial inclusion.

(VIII) Other conditions

The bank shall get its shares listed on the stock exchanges within six years of the commencement of business by the bank.

The bank shall open at least 25 per cent of its branches in unbanked rural centres (population up to 9,999 as per the latest census). The bank shall comply with the priority sector lending targets and sub-targets as applicable to the existing domestic scheduled commercial banks. The board of the bank should have a majority of independent directors.

(IX) Procedure for application

The licensing window will be open on-tap, and the applications in the prescribed form along with requisite information could be submitted to the Reserve Bank at any point of time.

The applications will be referred to a Standing External Advisory Committee (SEAC) to be set up by the Reserve Bank.

The Committee will submit its recommendations to the Reserve Bank for consideration.

The decision to issue an in-principle approval for setting up of a bank will be taken by the Reserve Bank.

The validity of the in-principle approval issued by the Reserve Bank will be 18 months from the date of granting in-principle approval and would thereafter lapse automatically.

The Reserve Bank's decision in this regard will be final.

In order to ensure transparency, the names of the applicants for bank licences and the names of applicants that are found suitable for grant of in-principle approval will be placed on the Reserve Bank's website periodically.

Background

It may be recalled that the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) had last issued guidelines for licensing of new banks in the private sector on February 22, 2013. Consequently, the Reserve Bank issued in-principle approval to two applicants and they have since established the banks.

Recognising the need for having an explicit policy on banking structure in India in line with the recommendations of the Narasimham Committee, Raghuram G. Rajan Committee and other viewpoints, the Reserve Bank came out with a policy discussion paper on Banking Structure in India - The Way Forward on August 27, 2013. After a thorough examination of the pros and cons, the discussion paper made out a case for reviewing the current 'Stop and Go' licensing policy and for considering a 'continuous authorisation' policy on the grounds that such a policy would increase the level of competition and bring new ideas into the system. The feedback on the discussion paper broadly endorsed the proposal of continuous authorisation with adequate safeguards. The first Bi-monthly Monetary Policy Statement 2014-15 announced on April 1, 2014, among other things, then indicated that after issuing in-principle approval for new licences, the Reserve Bank will start working on the framework for on-tap licensing as well as differentiated bank licences, Building on the Discussion Paper and using the learning from the recent licensing process, such as, the experience of licensing two universal banks in 2014 and granting in-principle approvals for Small Finance Banks and Payments Banks, the Reserve Bank has now worked out the framework for granting licences to universal banks on a continuous basis.

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Syndicate Bank gained 3.57% to Rs 68.20 at 15:02 IST on BSE after the bank allotted 9.51 crore shares at Rs 77.79 each, aggregating to Rs 740 crore, on preferential basis to Government of India.

The allotment price of Rs 77.79 per share to Government of India represents at premium of 14.06% over the stock's prevailing market price. The announcement was made after trading hours today, 5 May 2016.

Meanwhile, the S&P BSE Sensex was down 49.14 points or 0.19% at 25,213.07

On BSE, so far 3.58 lakh shares were traded in the counter as against average daily volume of 3.14 lakh shares in the past one quarter. The stock hit a high of Rs 69.45 and a low of Rs 66.50 so far during the day. The stock had hit a 52-week high of Rs 118.20 on 29 May 2015. The stock had hit a 52-week low of Rs 49.40 on 17 February 2016.

The mid-cap state-run bank has equity capital of Rs 703.37 crore. Face value per share is Rs 10.

Syndicate Bank reported net loss of Rs 119.67 crore in Q3 December 2015 compared with net profit of Rs 304.99 crore in Q3 December 2014. Total income rose 4.5% to Rs 6188.25 crore in Q3 December 2015 over Q3 December 2014.

The Government of India held 65.17% stake in Syndicate Bank (as per the shareholding pattern as on 31 March 2016).

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Australian authorities deported to Sri Lanka a group of asylum seekers who were intercepted earlier this week near the Coco Islands in the Indian Ocean, sources said on Friday.

However, the immigration ministry declined to comment on what it called an "operational matter" or reveal the exact number of people deported, which is between 12 and 15.

Inhabitants of te Coco Islands said the group departed Thursday night on a chartered flight a few days after arriving in a boat, the first documented asylum seeker boat to arrive in Australia in almost two years, EFE news reported.

In 2001, Australia began its practice of mandatory detention of undocumented immigrants, who were trying to reach Australian shores, to third countries, which was interrupted for two years during the Labour government of then prime minister Kevin Rudd, who in 2013 toughened the country's immigration policy and banned refugees from setting foot on Australian territory.

Many of the immigrants that Australia intercepts have fled conflict-ridden countries or regions like Afghanistan, Darfur, Pakistan, Somalia and Syria, or have escaped conditions of discrimination or statelessness such as the minority Rohingyas in Myanmar or the Biduns in the Persian Gulf.

--IANS

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The Bihar Human Rights Commission (BHRC) has fined a police officer in Gopalganj of Rs.25,000 for illegally felling a 'jamun' (blackberry) tree before selling it.

Sub-inspector Uday Narayan Singh allegedly cut the tree, but did not record this in the police station as is required by the law.

The matter came to light when Janak Dubey, a resident of Gopalganj, filed a complaint with the human rights panel, alleging that Singh, in connivance with his neighbour, had felled the tree.

The BHRC then directed Gopalganj superintendent of police to investigate the matter and submit a report.

In course of his investigation the SP found that Singh did cut the tree and take it away.

According to BHRC member Neelmani, it was also found that sub inspector Singh did not record the matter in the police station diary and the tree was not found in the station either.

The sub inspector's explanation in this regard was also unsatisfactory, Neelmani added. Singh also did not appear before the BHRC despite repeated summons.

The BHRC then ordered the sub inspector to pay the compensation to the owner of the tree.

The BHRC has also directed the police to initiate a departmental action against the sub inspector.

Over the years Bihar has lost much of its green cover, particularly after Jharkhand was carved out of the state. Keeping that in mind, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar has launched a drive to increase the green cover to 35 percent.

--IANS

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Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Friday said the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Congress were "dharna parties" and that only the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) delivered on governance.

Referring to the protests by Congress and BJP leaders against each other over the AgustaWestland scam, Kejriwal tweeted: "BJP n Congress both r dharna parties. They do dharnas almost everyday. Today, BJP on dharna against itself. Only AAP delivers governance."

Earlier in the day, scores of Congress supporters and senior leaders, including party president Sonia Gandhi and vice-president Rahul Gandhi, protested against the BJP for accusing the grand old party leaders of corruption in the Rs.3,600-crore AgustaWestland deal for 12 helicopters.

Similarly, BJP supporters staged a demonstration against the Congress before the Gandhi statue in Parliament over the AgustaWestland scam.

--IANS

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Will you be ready if Coconino County gets another Slide, Schultz or Hardy fire this summer? Do you have the supplies you would need to survive a fire, earthquake or flood? Are you prepared to shelter in place for days if a big snowstorm knocks out the power? Could you help your neighbors if disaster struck your neighborhood? Does your family have an emergency plan?

The members of the countys Community Emergency Response Team Program want to make sure everyone in Coconino County can answer yes to all those questions.

The Coconino County Sheriffs Office and the Coconino County Emergency Management Division will present two Community Emergency Response Team  or CERT  training classes this month at the Law Enforcement Administration Facility located at 911 E. Sawmill Road in Flagstaff. The three-day training is free.

One of the things people say is that the definition of an emergency is an unexpected event, said Sheriffs Office spokesperson Gerry Blair. But if you live in Flagstaff, you have no excuse for not being prepared for a severe winter storm with down utilities or a wildland fire or flooding.

Coconino County CERT is part of a nationwide training program sponsored by Federal Emergency Management Agency. The program teaches regular people how to prepare for a fire, flood or other emergency and gives them basic skills for responding to that disaster. The idea is for as many local communities as possible to have a network of trained volunteers who are ready to help their family, friends and neighbors in a crisis. The CERT motto is doing the greatest good for the greatest number of people.

Our main purpose is to assist the professional responders, especially if theyre overtaxed, said, Tony Bond, the team coordinator for the Munds Park rural CERT team. Were there on the scene first a lot of times because Munds Park is kind of way down out of town. It may take time for the professional responders to get down there and generate the response, so we help out with getting things moving before they get there.

Coconino County CERT has conducted more than 100 training classes to urban, rural and reservation communities throughout the county, including trainings for teenagers, Northern Arizona University students and people with hearing impairments. CERT organizers are also working with the Catholic Church to start a class for people who only speak Spanish.

The three-day training program includes hands-on and lecture instruction on disaster preparedness, fire suppression, basic first-aid, triage, light search and rescue, team organization and disaster psychology. It wraps up with a disaster simulation that lets the participants practice the skills they have just learned.

We know that in a time of disaster, untrained spontaneous volunteers are going to help, said CERT Coordinator Alan Anderson. Knowing that, why wouldnt we try to give them some extra training so that theyre going to be safer and more successful in their efforts?

That training came in handy a few years ago when a big winter storm forced Interstate 17 to shut down, stranding some vehicles on the icy road, said Leslie DeGroot, who has been a member of the Munds Park Rural CERT Team and the Coconino County CERT team for about eight years.

We kind of got isolated (in Munds Park) for a little while and we had to open up a shelter, she said. The CERT training that we received helped us to organize that correctly. We successfully took care of people for 24 hours (when they) were stranded on I-17.

In many communities nationwide, the extent of the CERT teams duties is responding to disasters at a neighborhood level. With the enthusiastic support of leaders like Coconino County Sheriff William Pribil, though, it has become much more.

It was meant for people to be trained in case there was an emergency in their neighborhood and we couldnt get to them for one reason or another, Blair said. But whats happened in a lot of the (Coconino County) communities and in Flagstaff is, they also supplement the first responders response.

Once a month, about 65 county residents return to the Law Enforcement Administration Facility for additional training on everything from hazmat safety to directing traffic. They participate in multi-agency disaster drills and do moulage  makeup that mimics traumatic injuries  to make it more realistic for first responders.

Local CERT team members are often at community events preaching the doctrine of preparedness. Soon, the Coconino County CERT team will set up information booths at entry points to the Coconino Forest, where they will stop visitors as they enter the forests and talk to them about ATV safety and wildland fire dangers.

We just want to keep everybody safe, Bond said.

When a disaster strikes anywhere in or near Coconino County, those core CERT members get to put their knowledge to the test. One of the biggest ways they helped during the Rodeo, Schultz and Yarnell Hill fires was by setting up road blocks to keep looters away from evacuated homes.

Once you have evacuated an area, you certainly dont want people going in and ransacking other peoples houses, said Flagstaff resident David St. John, a retired DPS assistant director who joined CERT about 10 years ago. What CERT allows is for law enforcement officers who really have more critical missions to be freed up.

Sometimes, CERT volunteers bring manpower to an emergency response. Other times, they bring special skills.

In August 2015, DeGroot went to Jacob Lake to find a 5-year-old Colorado City boy who went missing in Kaibab National Forest. There was already a large search and rescue team, but they needed someone who could help organize. Over the next four days, she kept track of 900 spontaneous volunteers. Although the child did not survive, DeGroot said she would do it all again.

To see this group of people work so hard to find this child was very inspiring, she said. I felt like I was doing something worthwhile with my life.
Nidhi Chaphekar, the Jet Airways flight in-charge who was injured in the March 22 Brussels terror attacks, returned to India on Friday morning for further treatment and recovery, an official said.

"Chaphekar has made significant recovery from her injuries sustained during the blasts at Brussels airport. She is in good spirits and very happy to be back with family," a Jet Airways spokesperson said.

Chaphekar, 42, who flew down from Belgium late Thursday, was shifted from Mumbai Airport to Breach Candy hospital for the next phase of her recovery programme as outlined by the medicos.

Admitted to Grande Hospital de Chaleroi in Belgium, Chaphekar, who sustained a fractured foot and 15 percent burn injuries, was accompanied by her husband Rupesh Chaphekar.

Shortly after landing she had a happy but emotional reunion with her family members including two children -- son Vardhan, 14, and daughter Vrishi, 11 -- whom she met first time in over six weeks, said her nephew Samir.

Chaphekar and her flight manager Amit Motwani, were among the injured as two blasts ripped through the Zaventem Airport. The attack left 34 people killed including an Infosys employee, Raghavendran Ganeshan.

Chaphekar will continue the treatment for her leg injuries with the airline providing necessary support to her and the family.

"Our priority is to ensure that she continues to receive the best medical care and attention so she can resume her normal life at the earliest," the spokesperson said.

--IANS

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Can other technology companies defy the government the way Apple did when asked to help US federal investigators to crack the code of iPhone 5C?

Unlikely. Especially in jurisdictions where the governments may not be so benign in pursuing hidden material in electronic devices or data centres.

Not EMC Corporation, the world's largest data storage multinational.

"We must comply with any sovereign demand in any jurisdiction that we work in," said David Webster, President and Senior VP, Asia, Pacific and Japan of EMC, when asked how the company would react to demand for data, especially where they are offering cloud storage facilities.

EMC supplies cloud computing hardware and software to data companies and others through its subsidiary VirtuStream, which it acquired in 2015. It offers infrastructure as a service to governments and private companies. It provides protection to data through encryption which is not easy to break.

Webster said their high level of protection assures the data integrity of material sent by clients to cloud centres, but those who want to be extra cautious can set up such centres in different jurisdiction. He was talking to the media at the EMC World annual conference here.

According to Matt Waxman, Vice President of Product Management, Data Protection and Availability Division of EMC, integrity of data was very important to the company and it had put in place both software and hardware based protections.

The question of sovereign demands on data generally had not arisen because it supplies hardware and software for cloud computing which typically are managed by their clients. The responsibility would the clients, he said.

But he agreed that EMC would be liable to provide data in its own cloud computing centres if governments demanded. That was true for the US, Europe or China. "That is something the legal department would have to grapple with," he told IANS in an interview.

Dell and EMC announced their $67 billion merger in October last year, the largest such action by tech companies in history.

Earlier this week, Michael Dell, Chairman and CEO of the larger company, said at a Las Vegas conference that the merged entity would be called Dell Technologies. The enterprise company, though, would be called Dell-EMC.

Dell is a $58 billion company taken private two years ago. The $25 billion EMC will change its status from a corporation to a private company before the merger, expected to be finalised between June and October this year.

The merger is awaiting final approval from US and Chinese regulators.

The question on security of data arose after US authorities took Apple, the computer and mobile phone giant, to court for refusing to give them access to encrypted material in an iPhone that they had confiscated from two shooters in San Bernardino last December.

The married couple were killed in a police shootout after the two had killed 14 people.

Apple said it could not comply with the court order and had expected to take the battle to the US Supreme Court. But the Federal Bureau of Investigation chose to hire a tech firm to break the Apple 5c encryption paying them over a million dollars. The case was then withdrawn by the FBI.

But the question of sovereign jurisdiction over data was left hanging.

(Hardev Sanotra is in Las Vegas at the invitation of EMC. He can be contacted at hardev.sanotra@ians.in)

--IANS

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Swiss luxury jewellery and watch company Chopard will officially launch its new collaboration with Gemfields, a supplier of responsibly sourced coloured gemstones at the upcoming Cannes Film Festival.

Chopard has been the official partner of the Cannes Film Festival since 1998.

The company will officially launch its new collaboration with Gemfields during a lunch on May 14. It will be hosted by Caroline Scheufele, Colin and Livia Firth, read a statement.

To mark the occasion, Chopard will unveil a new capsule collection of green carpet high jewellery within its red carpet collection, showcasing the Gemfields emeralds.

The new completely ethical pieces will be premiered by an Oscar-winning actress on the festival's opening night.

Chopard will work with Gemfields to set the agenda for a new global standard for coloured gemstones.

The gala will be held from May 11 to May 22, 2016.

--IANS

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Some parts of debris from the missing helicopter carrying senior government officials were found in Malaysia's Sarawak state, Prime Minister Najib Razak said on Friday.

The helicopter carrying six people lost contact with air controls around 20 minutes after taking off from Betong on Thursday. Search and rescue operations were subsequently launched, Xinhua news agency reported.

Najib said parts of the missing AS350 helicopter were found near a river. The people aboard were yet to be found, he said.

--IANS

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England and Arsenal's midfielder Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain was on Friday ruled out for up to two months with a fresh knee injury, ending his Euro 2016 participation dreams, says Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger.

The 22 year-old England midfielder, who has not played for Arsenal since injuring his knee against Barcelona in a Champions League match in February.

"There is no chance," Wenger said on Friday, when asked if Oxlade-Chamberlain could make Roy Hodgson's squad for this summer's tournament in France. England's first Group B game is against Russia in Marseille on Saturday, June 11.

"I had a little conversation with Alex and with our medical team. They told me yesterday that he will be back at the beginning of July."

"It is very sad. He was physically ready and looking sharp. He had one week's training last week, but he planned to play on Tuesday night but got injured on Monday morning."

He started the first game of Euro 2012 against France, stood a very good chance of being in Roy Hodgson's squad if he was fit, but will now surely miss the tournament which starts on June 10.

Although the 22-year-old had recovered from an original knee injury, he suffered a setback on Monday morning ahead of an Arsenal Under-21 match on Tuesday, Wenger confirmed.

He was expected to return to the first team for Sunday's Premier League game against Manchester City.

--IANS

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Scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have compiled a comprehensive list of potential gases to guide search for life on exoplanets.

Biosignature gases emitted by exoplanetary life forms could be detected remotely by space telescopes but these gases might have quite different compositions from those in the Earth's atmosphere.

"This work reminds me of Charles Darwin's voyage aboard 'The Beagle', exploring the vast diversity of life by sailing around the world," said Nancy Y Kiang, scientist at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

"In the search for life beyond our planet, we are currently at a similarly exciting, early but rapidly evolving stage of exploration as the discovery of exoplanets accelerates," he added.

Instead of netting strange creatures from the bottom of the sea, the authors searched and found thousands of curious, potentially biogenic gas molecules.

"These will inspire a new body of research into identifying also larger molecules, investigating their origin and fate here, and their potential expression on exoplanets as signs of life," Kiang added.

This approach maximises the chances of identifying planets orbiting nearby stars that support life.

According to S Seager, W Bains and J.J. Petkowski from MIT and Rufus Scientific from the University of Cambridge in a paper published in the journal Astrobiology, all stable and potential volatile molecules should be considered as possible biosignature gases.

--IANS

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Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Friday asked the central government to return the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) to him for a fair probe into the AgustaWestland chopper deal.

Addressing the media at the Secretariat, Kejriwal again accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of lying about his BA degree but quickly added that formal education was not needed to become the prime minister in India.

"We had the courage to register cases against Reliance and (former chief minister) Sheila Dixit during our previous 49-day government in Delhi," he said.

"But later, during President's Rule in Delhi, those files were locked up. When we again took power, we found the data in the files were lost.

"This is how the central government probes corruption cases. If they can't do (a thorough job), hand over the ACB to us," he said.

After Kejriwal returned to power in February 2015, the Modi government took away the ACB from the Delhi government.

Recalling his mentor Anna Hazare, Kejriwal said the Gandhi didn't receive formal education but he had immense knowledge.

Modi, he said, had lied to the nation on his educational qualification.

"Modiji lied in his election affidavit that he had done BA and MA from Delhi and Gujarat. But in our investigation we have not found any records about Modi.

"The prime minister should not have cheated the nation which gave him such a huge mandate."

He alleged a "setting" between the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

"Why is Congress silent on the issue? Similarly, why is the BJP not arresting (Congress president) Sonia Gandhi over the AgustaWestland scam? Because there is a setting between them."

He added that instead of arresting Sonia Gandhi, the BJP was requesting Sonia Gandhi to accept her fault.

"Is this how you probe corruption charges?"

--IANS

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The Bombay High Court on Friday upheld the Maharashtra government's decision to ban slaughter of bulls/bullocks in the state but ruled that possession of beef slaughtered outside the state will not be a criminal offence.

The ruling by a division bench comprising Justice A.S. Oka and Justice S.C. Gupte came on a bunch of petitions challenging the Maharashtra Animal Preservation (Amendment) Act that stipulated penal action even for possession of beef brought from outside the state.

Accordingly, while slaughter of bulls/bullocks will not be allowed in the state, bringing and consuming beef of animals slaughtered in other states into Maharashtra will be permitted.

Striking down Section 5D and 9B of the Act, which makes possession of beef from animals slaughtered outside the state as a criminal offence, the judges said these sections were "unconstitutional" and "infringe on a person's right to privacy, which is a fundamental right under Article 21 (Right to Life)".

The court ruled that only 'conscious possession' of meat of animals slaughter in Maharashtra could be held as an offence and the burden of proving this would be on the state and not on the individual.

Until 1976, under the Act, the state government banned slaughter of cows, possession and consumption of cow meat. The law was amended in 2015 to include slaughter of bulls and bullocks, possession and consumption of their meat.

The president of India had granted assent to the Maharashtra Animal Preservation (Amendment) Act, which prohibited slaughter of bulls/bullocks as well as possession and consumption of their meat in the state.

For violators in the state, the Act stipulated a five-year jail and Rs.10,000 fine for the slaughter of bulls/bullocks and one-year imprisonment and Rs.2,000 fine for possession of beef.

The court did not grant relief on state government's plea for a stay on striking down of these sections from the Act, which had been challenged as 'draconian' by several petitioners.

Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis welcomed the judgment.

As for the other aspects of the high court order, Fadnavis told the media that if required, the state government will consider an appeal in the Supreme Court after seeking legal opinion.

The petitioners included activist Arif Kapadia, lawyers Vishal Seth and Harish Jagtiani and student Shaina Sen, besides representatives of the beef traders.

--IANS

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A US-based war research group said the Islamic State (IS) terror group "intends" to announce "an affiliate" in Bangladesh, where it has "designated a local leader".

The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) said the radical group was preparing for a "global surge of activities" before and during Ramadan, which falls between June 6 and July 5, bdnews24 reported on Friday.

"IS continued to pursue its regional campaign objectives of establishing affiliates and increasing disorder throughout historically Muslim lands," ISW said.

The IS has reportedly been claiming responsibility for the killing of secular writers, online activists and liberal publishers in Bangladesh since September last year.

The Bangladesh government, however, denies the presence of the IS or Al Qaeda in the country, claiming that the killings were masterminded by "home-grown Islamist radicals".

The ISW said the IS could launch new offensives in North Africa and declare new affiliates in Southeast Asia, apart from Bangladesh.

This strategy will also seek to establish resilience "elsewhere" in the region as it faces challenges in Iraq and Syria, where the radical group is based.

Earlier, in its online magazine, 'Dabiq', the IS said they had found a leader for the Bengal region.

The leader, the magazine claimed, had pledged allegiance to the Khalifah Ibrahim - Al Baghdadi, who now controls parts of Iraq and Syria.

--IANS

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The Jadavpur University authorities on Friday filed a police complaint against four outsiders  three of them activists  for allegedly molesting female students of the varsity during a commotion over an open-air screening of Vivek Agnihotri's film "Buddha In A Traffic Jam".

With the campus on the boil over the screening of the movie, that faced loud protests from a large section of left-leaning students loyal to FETSU and sparked clashes, vice chancellor Suranjan Das blamed the JU alumni association for giving permission to the organisers to use the Triguna Sen Auditorium and then cancelling it.

Read more from our special coverage on "ABVP" ABVP leader booked for verbally abusing mediapersons

"We have never given permission, nor cancelled it. The Triguna Sen Auditorium is owned and managed by the JU Alumni Association and we have no say in its running. We have no control over to whom and when they will rent the hall, or the money they will charge," said Das.

"The main culprit is the alumni association. Why did they give the hall to the Pune-Based organisation in the first place, and then again cancelled it? We will talk to the alumni association," said Das.

The organisers, Das said, should have taken permission from the university authorities before holding the open-air screening.

"If any outside organisation wants to hold a meeting on the ground, they need to take permission from the authorities. The organsiation which held the screening is not even remotely connected to the university. But they never bothered to take permission," said Das.

Asked why the authorities did not stop the screening after it was started, Das said it was felt there could be trouble in such an eventuality.

"There were two simultaneous screenings by this Pune-based organisation and the university students. When the screenings started, everything was peaceful. But later, there were some unfortunate incidents."

Das said the university authorities have received complaints from the students that some outsiders had molested the female learners. "Four of them were identified and kept in our estate office. But no one was confined. They have been handed over to the police. We have filed an FIR on behalf of the university against them".

Das said he firmly believed that a university should be a place for liberal thinking and everybody should be able to express their view points.

"In this case the organisers should have taken permission before holding the open-air screening," he added.
The FBI and the Navajo Department of Public Safety are asking the public to help identify three persons of interest in the armed robbery of a Tuba City gas station.

According to the FBI, there was an armed robbery at a Chevron station in Tuba City on May 2. Three people were captured on surveillance video in the vicinity of the gas station during the robbery. Law enforcement are calling them persons of interest because they may have information about the crime.

Anyone with information regarding the robbery or the identity of the persons of interest can contact the FBI's Phoenix Field Office, Flagstaff Resident Agency, at (928) 774-0631, or the Navajo Department of Public Safety at (928) 283-3130.
Tourism authorities in Russia want customs and immigration officials to brush up on their English, even as they acknowledge that not knowing the language could prove an impediment to increasing tourist inflows from the English-speaking world, especially India.

Random delays at immigration counters and a dearth of English signages have emerged as some of the red flags for Russian tourism authorities, who have begun to focus on the outbound market from India, which is expected to grow to $40 billion by 2020.

"There is very little excuse for the discomfort caused by the conduct of the customs officers. We regret it. Knowledge of English among customs officials in Russia has to increase, there is no question about it," Rimma Sachunova, deputy chairperson of the St. Petersburg Committee on Tourism Development told IANS after a group of travel agents from India were detained for nearly three hours at Moscow's Domodedovo airport.

"We will write an official letter to the customs service because now we have a lot of hope and expectation from the Indian tourist market," Sachunova said.

Tourism experts believe that while the need for Russia to open up its locales for tourism is very real and necessary, the transition from being a country that was once "behind the Iron Curtain" to a democracy with open transit norms is not an easy one.

"Give us a little bit of time for us to change our borders," said Marina Sokolov of Indigo Tour, which caters to the bulk of the inbound Indian tourists to Russia.

Ekaterina Borisova, attached to the Moscow Tourism Office, hoped that the federal government's plan to set up a tourist office at major transit points used by international tourists could help cut down on the delay at Russian immigration and customs counters.

"We are trying to make customs (and immigration) more open, but unfortunately it takes time. Hopefully, we will open a tourist office at the airport, railway stations and all places where tourists arrive," she said.

Sachunova also said that efforts to include the English language in the city's road and Metro signages were already underway.

"We are working at ensuring that there are more signages in English at St. Petersburg. In fact St. Petersburg is the only city in Russia that has English signages in all its Metro stations," she said.

While the lack of knowledge of the English language both among officials and amongst the populace is an acknowledged impediment, when it comes to enhancing tourist inflows to Russia from India, Paresh Navani of the Russian Information Centre, India, claimed that visa norms should be tinkered to allow easy access to Indians to visit Russia as tourists.

"With the Russian Federation opening up its policies and borders to ease tourism, this gives Indians the opportunity to tour these locations with ease, safety, comfort and at very reasonable costs compared to any other European destination and even in comparison to domestic destinations in India," Navani said.

Over 50,000 Indian tourists visit Russia annually, while around 200,000 Russians visit India, especially Goa, every year.

(The writer's visit was at the invitation of the Russian Information Centre, India. Mayabhushan Nagvenkar can be contacted at mayabhushan.n@ians.in)

--IANS

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The head of the joint investigation team probing former Pakistan prime minister Benazir Bhutto's assassination said on Thursday that the team could not trace the threatening call allegedly made by then president Pervez Musharraf to Bhutto.

Mohammad Khalid Qureshi, the JIT chief, was the last prosecution witness in the high-profile assassination case, Dawn online reported.

During cross-examination by Barrister Farogh Nasim, counsel for Musharraf, in the Anti-Terrorism Court (ATC) at Rawalpindi, Qureshi admitted that JIT could not trace the call.

However, Qureshi expressed the possibility that Musharraf might have made the call from any of his official phones.

The prosecution case was based on a threatening call which Musharraf allegedly made to Bhutto while she was at the office of US Congressman Tom Lantos.

According to the prosecution, US lobbyist Mark Siegel claimed that on September 25, 2007, in his presence at the office of Congressman Lantos in Washington, Bhutto received a telephone call which she later described as "a very bad call" from Musharraf.

The statement said the former military ruler had warned Bhutto that "her safety depends on the state of their [Musharraf and Benazir's] relationship".

According to Siegel, Bhutto sent him an email on October 26, 2007, in which she expressed her sense of insecurity.

Bhutto said that if something happened to her, she would hold the military ruler responsible, apart from the individuals mentioned in her letter to Musharraf on October 16, 2007.

During the cross-examination, Barrister Nasim asked Qureshi whether he submitted any forensic report of the email to the court.

In response, Qureshi admitted that no forensic report was submitted to the court, adding that the email was sent from two official accounts of Bhutto and did not need any forensic audit.

Qureshi also denied having any direct evidence of the conversation between Musharraf and the then city police officer of Rawalpindi, Saud Aziz.

The prosecution had alleged that Aziz got the crime scene washed to destroy the evidence at the direction of Musharraf.

In the written statement recorded with the ATC, Qureshi said: "During the investigation of this case, I also personally recorded statements of ... retired General Hameed Gul, retired Brigadier Ejaz Shah, retired General Tauqeer Zia, Senator Rehman Malik, Khusro Pervez and many others. I issued a questionnaires to a number of people, including former secretary interior Syed Kamal Shah."

He also said that he included Musharraf, Deputy Inspector General Aziz and Senior Superintendent of Police Khurram Shahzad in the high-profile murder case.

When Barrister Nasim told Qureshi that he had some personal grudge with Musharraf due to which he implicated him in the murder case, the JIT head said he was the head of the counterterrorism wing of the FIA and had probed several high-profile cases.

Qureshi denied having any personal grudge with Musharraf, adding that he was also the investigating officer in a terrorist attack on Musharraf in 2003 in which the court awarded life imprisonment to six persons.

--IANS

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At least one person was killed and half a dozen others were injured in sporadic incidents of violence on Friday during the fourth phase of Bihar panchayat elections, officials said.

At least 100 people have been arrested during the polls.

Over 65 lakh people were eligible to vote in the fourth phase at 13,335 polling stations in 61 blocks spread over 38 districts.

Over 50 percent voters cast their vote to elect members of the three-tier rural Panchayati Raj Institutions, officials said.

"A youth was killed in Bhadvas village when a bullet hit his head in Vaishali district during firing between two rival groups," a state Election Commission official said.

Half a dozen people were injured in violent clashes between rival groups and 100 people arrested, the official said.

According to police, clashes between rival groups were reported from Muzaffarpur, Lakhisarai, Jamui, Arwal, Jehanabad, Araria, Sitamarhi, Darbhanga, and Siwan districts.

Police were attacked at many places and chased by supporters of different candidates.

In the first, second and third phases of the 10-phase polls, one person each was killed and over a dozen injured in group clashes.

The staggered elections will conclude on May 30.

--IANS

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I hate filling in forms. Ever since I watched Blade Runner I feel nervous even when a website form says: "Fill in this captcha screen to prove you're not a robot." I mean, ultimately, who knows, right?

True story: A company's personnel officer ordered a new staff member to see a doctor because he thought he was shaped like a giant discus. The guy's computerized application form said he was just 17.6 centimeters high but had a Body Mass Index of 149,000. That would make him a flat, room-sized disk.

They sent a message to the man, whose name was O'Neill, to get a doctor's report before turning up for work at the UK firm, reader Wendy Tong reported.

It turned out the guy had accidentally input his height as 17.6 cm instead of 176 cm and this had caused the computer to deduce that he was some sort of human flying saucer. "The funny thing is that the human resources people had no problem with him being 17.6 cm high, which is shorter than a Barbie doll," said Wendy. "It was his being overweight that gave them pause."

But at least they'd read the paperwork.

The same cannot be said for HSBC. A finance reporter colleague forwarded me a news item saying that the bank was scolded by watchdogs recently for failing to notice that it was handling money for an obviously fake company - a firm which claimed to be exporting mini-skirts to Iran.

That's as ridiculous as exporting air-conditioners to the North Pole or running saunas in Thailand. Wait. Thailand's full of saunas. Never mind.

Personally, I have sympathy for the HSBC guys as my eyes blur over when looking at boring small print. My motto: Never sign a contract without pretending to read it.

People like us can learn a lesson from a legendary police officer in the US, who used a bit of zen logic to save himself a large amount of paperwork.

A fugitive barricaded himself into his house in Texas with his guns and declared that nothing could persuade him to come out. The sheriff didn't send a tactical squad to arrest him. He just let the man, whose name was John Joe Gray, stay there.

As the years passed, the chuckling sheriff explained that the man was holding himself in prison without realizing it.

Joe Gray finally left the house 15 years later, long after his crime had been forgotten. Think how much paperwork was saved.

Mind you, I must admit the whole concept of temporary house arrest intrigues me. "You're under house arrest. Don't show up at work. Stay at home and eat snacks on the sofa while watching bad TV for a month." How exactly is that a punishment?

One of the reasons I hate form-filling is my inherent truthfulness, which also makes me terrible at job interviews. Interviewer: "What do you think you'll be doing in five years' time?" Me: "I dunno, whatever people who get sacked from here end up doing, to be honest."

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to spend time working out how to get myself placed under house arrest. The sofa is calling my name.

(06.05.2016 - Nury Vittachi is an Asia-based frequent traveller. Send comments and ideas via his Facebook page)

--IANS

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Ousted Uttarakhand Chief Minister Harish Rawat on Friday thanked the Supreme Court for allowing him to take the floor test in the state assembly.

Talking to media soon after the apex court asked him to take a floor test on May 10, Rawat said he was happy that this "golden opportunity" has come his way.

"I am very optimistic that the legislators in the Uttarakhand state assembly would vote for democracy on May 10," he said, claiming that he enjoys support of 34 legislators.

He also trashed allegations of having bribed legislators to vote for him in lieu of ministerial berths, describing it a "propaganda unleashed by the BJP".

"I am open to scrutiny by the CBI or any other agency," he said, adding the BJP by conspiring to topple his duly elected government had "murdered democracy".

"The BJP has inflicted a wound on Uttarakhand and now it is a fight for saving democratic values in the country," he added.

The Supreme Court on Friday cleared the decks for ousted Rawat to prove his legislative majority in the state assembly on Tuesday, but nine disqualified rebel Congress legislators would not be allowed to vote.

The top court said it would monitor the voting that is to take place at 11 a.m. The entire proceedings of the house will be videographed, the court said.

--IANS

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Turning down an Indian offer to build Nepal's second international airport outside capital Kathmandu, the government has decided to mobilise resources on its own for the long pending project slated to come up in the south-central Nijgadh town.

A meeting of the cabinet, presided over by Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli, on Thursday decided to initiate the process of land acquisition for the project which is estimated to cost $1.20 billion in the first phase.

Thursday's decision by the Oli government -- in the immediate aftermath of a U-turn by its Maoist ally from their threatened withdrawal of support and forming a national unity government -- is seen here as Kathmandu cocking a snook at New Delhi for perceived meddling in Nepal's internal affairs.

The threatened withdrawal of support by the Maoists is believed here to have been engineered at New Delhi's instance -- and Oli, who is perceived as cold towards Indian overtures, feels the Nijgadh decision will rightly convey that all is not well between the two close neighbours.

The abortive coup against Oli earlier this week involved Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal aka Prachanda leading a new government supported by the main opposition -- and the largest group in parliament -- Nepali Congress along with Madhes-based parties.

However, the wily Prachanda on Thursday backtracked from plan thus pouring water on the designs of new NC president Sher Bahadur Deuba to yet again play a decisive role in Nepali politics.

As the Oli government survived the day, a cabinet meeting in the evening decided to construct the country's second international airport at Nijgadh town of Bara district, with Nepal mobilising on its own the resources required for the ambitious project.

The Nijgadh international airport will be designed to handle 15 million passengers annually and even accommodate the super-jumbo Airbus A380 after the first phase of construction. According to a feasibility study, prepared in April 2011, the airport would cover 3,000 hectares of land: 2,000 hectares for the airport itself and the remaining 1,000 hectares for an airport city.

Nijgadh is about 130 km south of Kathmandu from where the travelling time by road is approximately 3 hrs 22 mins.

India has shown interest in construction of the multi-billion-dollar project due to its strategic importance and proximity to the Nepal-India border.

Last June, during the International Conference on Nepal's Reconstruction, Indian External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj first disclosed the Indian interest in constructing the second international airport in Nijgadh, including a fast-track road linking Kathmandu with Nijgadh.

While expressing India's interest in constructing the airport, Sushma Swaraj had told the conference: "The two visits of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Nepal last year gave a significant impetus to bilateral cooperation in different fields. Hydropower projects now need to be speedily implemented and work on construction of the Kathmandu-Nijgadh fast-track road and the Nijgadh airport with India's participation should be expedited."

The Indian consortium comprising Infrastructure Leasing and Financial Services (IL&FS) Transportation Networks, IL&FS Engineering and Construction and Suryavir Infrastructure Construction have already prepared the detailed project report of the project.

However, a parliamentary Finance Committee, on March 20, had recommended to the government to mobilise its own resources to construct the Nijgadh airport and the fast-track road.

Nepal's Minister for Tourism and Civil Aviation Anand Pokhrel echoed the same view and told the House panel that the government would mobilise its own resources for constructing the project.

In a recent Parliamentary Party meeting, main opposition Nepali Congress had criticised the government for not expediting construction of the second international airport.

At present, Nepal has only one international airport -- the Tribhuvan International Airport (TIA) at Kathmandu. TIA has one domestic and one international terminal and it handled 3.21 million passengers last year.

At present, about 30 international airlines connect Nepal to destinations in Asia and the Middle East, and the airport serves as a hub for several Nepali airlines.

(Anil Giri can be contacted at girianil@gmail.com)

--IANS

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The ruling Scottish National Party (SNP) has won the parliamentary elections, bagging 58 of the 93 seats for which results have been announced, officials said on Friday.

The house has a total of 129 seats.

The SNP will form the Scottish government for the third time in a row, with party leader Nicola Sturgeon continuing as First Minister of Scotland, Xinhua news agency reported.

Among the announced seats, the Scottish Conservative Party garnered 16 and the Scottish Labour Party 11 seats.

--IANS

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The Scottish National Party (SNP) on Friday claimed a "historic" victory for a third term in parliament.

Britons on Thursday voted in a series of elections across the country. Elections took place for the Scottish parliament, National Assembly of Wales, the Northern Ireland assembly, for 124 councils in England and for new mayors in London, Bristol, Liverpool and Salford, with parliamentary by-elections in Ogmore and Sheffield Brightside

Counting is underway with further results to come in later in the day.

SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon is expected to lead her party to a third successive term in office, telling supporters: "We have made history".

"What we're seeing tonight, not just across Glasgow but across the central belt of Scotland, is the SNP replacing Labour," The Scottish Daily Record quoted Sturgeon as saying.

"The collapse in Labour support is quite staggering."

By 5.00 a.m., the SNP won 39 of the 48 seats to declare.

The Labour Party vote share plunged by 17 points in East Kilbride and Clydebank and Milngavie and the Tories beat them into third place in Clydesdale.

They had 15 constituency seats and had lost eight of them.

--IANS

ksk/vm
Facing charges of corruption, Congress president Sonia Gandhi on Friday took to the streets to accuse the government of working under RSS' diktat and pledged that her party won't be cowed down.

Addressing thousands of supporters in the heart of the capital, Gandhi along with former prime minister Manmohan Singh and her son and Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi also courted arrest.

"A strong message should go from here and it must be heard not only by those in from Raisina Hill but those also in Nagpur, on whose directions the (Narendra) Modi government is functioning," she thundered.

Gandhi's reference to the Prime Minister's Office at Raisina Hill and the seat of the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh headquarters in Nagpur.

Amid incessant shouting of "Sonia Gandhi Zindabad!", she said the way the Modi government "is betraying the mandate of people, it appears their days are over".

In her around 15-minute speech in Hindi from a makeshift platform, the Congress president made no reference by name to the AgustaWestland chopper deal which the government is using to charge her and the earlier Congress regime with corruption.

"I want to caution the government that they should not make the mistake of considering the Congress weak," she said. "The Congress will never bend to injustice.

"Any number of attempts may be made to scare us, to defame us. We are not going to bend. Life has taught me to struggle.

"We have always faced challenges. If some think it is easy to push the Congress from the path of saving democracy, they don't know what stuff we are made of," she added to thunderous applause.

She said fear was being created among minorities and the society was being divided in the name of language, dress code and food habits.

"Atrocities are being committed against students. Anyone who does not agree to them faces the music.

"They must understand... The day the threshold of tolerance is breached, the masses will teach them a lesson."

Attacking the government for ousting the Congress government in Uttarakhand, she said the forest fires in the hill state could not be controlled in time as "there was no government".

"Modi and his political advisors call themselves a social organisation. What do they know about people's woes? Whatever may happen to democracy, their only goal is to see that everything remains in their grip."

She accused the Modi government of making baseless allegations against its opponents to hide its own failures.

Rahul Gandhi, the first among the major speakers, accused the Modi government of destabilising Congress governments in Arunachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand.

"Today, in India, the voice of only two people are heard, Narendra Modiji and Mohan Bhagwatji," he said, referring to the prime minister and the RSS chief.

Manmohan Singh - who looked physically weak - spoke on similar lines after Rahul Gandhi, accusing the BJP of demolishing democratic structures.

Sonia Gandhi, Manmohan Singh and Rahul Gandhi then courted arrest after being stopped by police from carrying out a march to Parliament barely one kilometer away.

The show of strength by the Congress came on a day Lok Sabha took up discussion on the AgustaWestland chopper deal.

Soon after Sonia Gandhi finished her speech, Congress workers sought to march towards Parliament by breaking the police barricades.

Police sought to push back Congress activists so that the security cordon around Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh was not broken. In the melee, the name tags of some policemen came off their uniform.

Congress MP Renuka Chowdhury climbed the grill outside the Parliament Street police station. Police said Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi and Manmohan Singh were released after about 30 minutes.

Several other party leaders including A.K. Antony, Ambika Soni, Ghulam Nabi Azad and Jyotiraditya Scindia also courted arrest.

--IANS

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Senior Congress leaders, including party president Sonia Gandhi, vice president Rahul Gandhi and former prime minister Manmohan Singh, on Friday courted arrest after they were stopped from going to Parliament House as part of their "Save Democracy March".

The Congress leaders started their march from Jantar Mantar to Parliament House but were stopped by police as section 144, which prevents assembly of five or more persons in an area, had been imposed in the area. They later went to the Parliament Street police station to court arrest and were released after some time.

A police official said the Congress leaders were at the police station for about 30 minutes.

Former defence minister A.K. Antony, Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azad, party's leader in Lok Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge, were among those who courted arrest.

The march began after Congress leaders addressed party workers assembled at Jantar Mantar. The party had organised the march to protest against the NDA government, including its actions in Congress-ruled states of Uttarakhand and Arunachal Pradesh.

--IANS

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The Delhi Police told a court here on Friday that a special public prosecutor (SPP) had been appointed as their defence counsel in the terror case relating to Sayyed Liyaqat Shah.

Police had arrested Shah on charge of planning to execute attacks in the national capital in 2013 but he was later given a clean chit by the National Investigation Agency (NIA).

According to court sources, during the in-camera proceedings, a Delhi Police official said the state government's notification on the appointment will be submitted on the next date of hearing.

The court then adjourned the matter to August 1.

The court was hearing on a report filed by the NIA on January 24 last year, wherein it dropped charges against Shah but charge-sheeted Sabir Khan Pathan that he was responsible for placing weapons and explosives in a guest house near the Jama Masjid here.

The police said that on the basis of his disclosure statement, the Special Cell raided the Haji Arafat Guest House and recovered arms, ammunition and explosives.

The NIA had filed the charge sheet against Pathan, who is absconding, on charges dealing with forgery, the Arms Act and the Explosive Substances Act.

The Delhi Police had in September last year filed an application in the court, pleading for an opportunity to submit their arguments before it decided on the NIA report and Shah's plea for discharge in the case.

Shah was arrested by the Delhi Police Special Cell on March 20, 2013, while he was returning from Pakistani Kashmir to the Kashmir Valley via Nepal.

He was later released on bail.

The Jammu and Kashmir Police had protested the arrest, saying Shah was returning home as per the state government's policy of allowing people, who had ex-filtrated to Pakisntani Kashmir in the early 1990s, to return.

--IANS

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Can Dundar and Erdem Gul, journalists from Turkey's Cumhuriyet newspaper, have been convicted on charges of "revealing state secrets" and sentenced to over five years in prison by an Istanbul court.

Dundar,editor-in-chief of Cumhuriyet newspaper, was sentenced to five years and ten months in prison, while his colleague, who headed the paper's Ankara bureau, got five years behind bars, Turkish Hurriyet daily reported on Friday.

The Turkish court has reportedly acquitted them on some of the charges, including that of "coup attempt," according to the newspaper.

The two had also faced life sentences for publishing their report which claims that Turkey has delivered weapons to terrorists in Syria.

Earlier in March, the court named Turkey's president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, as the complainant in the case. The hearings were held in secret.

The case of the two journalists, who faced charges for revealing state secrets, espionage, and aiding a terrorist group, has drawn international attention since the Erdogan critics were jailed last year.

The opposition journalists' arrests have sparked protests in Turkey, while the international community has also slammed the government's action against them. Moscow has called the case an example of Ankara's "crackdown on the media."

--IANS

ahm/
Defence Minister Manohor Parrikar on Friday assured the Lok Sabha that the CBI probe into the AgustaWestland chopper scam will be taken to its logical conclusion and accountability fixed on wrongdoers.

After the government rejected a Congress demand for a Supreme Court-monitored probe into the chopper deal, parliamentarians from the opposition party at a later stage walked out of the lower house, including Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi.

"I can assure you all, I will not fail. What we could not do in Bofors, we may be able to do in AgustaWestland," Parrikar said.

His response came on queries and observations of members, including Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) parliamentarians Anurag Thakur and Nishikant Dubey, Saugata Roy (Trinamool) and Jyotiraditya Scindia (Congress), during a discussion on a calling attention motion under Rule 197.

The Bofors controversy erupted after allegations surfaced regarding kickbacks from Bofors AB company of Sweden for winning a bid to supply 155 mm field howitzer to India. It led to the ouster of the Rajiv Gandhi-led Congress government in 1989.

Parrikar said the then defence minister A.K. Antony put on hold the deal only on May 12, 2014, at the fag end of the Lok Sabha elections, and wondered if it was driven by the results of exit polls, which were going in favour of the Bharatiya Janata Party.

"The field trials of the chopper were initially opposed by Antony. But he was later convinced to change his stand," the minister said.

"Some concessions were given, especially to a single vendor. It was not given to other companies. This showed the favour," the defence minister said.

Parrikar said that while the then Atal Bihari Vajpayee government broadened the Services Qualitative Requirements to get more companies in the tender process for the VVIP choppers, the successor United Progressive Alliance government made it restrictive only to help AgustaWestland.

Amid objections from some opposition members, the minister said: "The CBI (Central Bureau of Investigation) may not be under me, but I am monitoring the progress in the case."

While attacking the Congress government, Parrikar also tried to show sympathies with Antony and dubbed him "bechare (helpless)".

"Bechare Antony sahab ke haath baandhe they (a helpless Antony had his limitations)," Parrikar said and added that once an arrest was made in 2012 in Italy in the case, "Antony was virtually in panic".

"...because Antony wanted to protect his image," Parrikar said, adding, "within two-three hours, Antony moved the file, cleared papers and ordered a CBI probe".

However, the minister said, the CBI just sat over the matter and "did nothing" till January 2014.

The debate was punctuated with sarcasm and humour from both sides.

At one point, Congress members, including party president Sonia Gandhi and vice president Rahul Gandhi and Congress leader in the Lok Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge, walked out after Kharge's demand for a Supreme Court-monitored probe was rejected by the government.

Parrikar said the tender for the contract was submitted by Italy-based AgustaWestland but given to the UK-based AgustaWestland International.

"This was my biggest shock. I have never seen that a tender submitted by one company is given to some other company," he said.

Parrikar said former Air Force officer N.V. Tyagi and city-based lawyer Gautam Khaitan, the two accused in the Rs.3,600-crore chopper scam, were only "small people".

The minister tabled a document, saying it pertained to minutes of a meeting held on May 9, 2005, wherein the VVIP choppers' cabin height was mandated to be 1.8 metre.

He also referred to a fire mishap in an office wherein important files are stored.

"The fire broke out mysteriously and many files were destroyed. But three files were safe as they were retained in a locker by an official. I will now even ask the CBI to probe the cause of the fire as it raises some questions," Parrikar said.

--IANS

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Amid a political slugfest between the Samajwadi Party and BJP over the water crisis in Uttar Pradesh, especially in drought-hit Bundelkhand region, Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav will meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi here on Saturday.

"The chief minister will formally meet the prime minister here tomorrow (Saturday), where issues relating to governance and drought and water scarcity will figure," an informed source said here.

Akhilesh Yadav's Samajwadi Party on Friday raised in the Rajya Sabha the issue of an "empty water train" reaching Bundelkhand. SP members later staged a walkout from the upper house.

In Lucknow, the state government on Thursday accused the Centre of "playing politics" over drought and said nobody had requisitioned water from the union government as there was not much need.

--IANS

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Mining conglomerate Vedanta on Friday signed an MoU with the Jharkhand government to set up a steel plant of one million tonnes capacity in the state.

"We will set up the hot iron and ductile iron (DI) pipe plant in the state. The company will invest Rs.15,000 crore to Rs.17,000 crore in the project. We have spotted two locations for the proposed plant," Vedanta CEO Kishore Kumar told reporters here.

Additional chief secretary (industries) U.P. Singh said: "The proposed plant is likely to create 2,000 to 2,500 jobs. The proposed site for the plant is in Seraikela-Kharsawan district."

The company needs 390 acres of land. Referring to the issue of land acquisition, Vedanta CEO Kumar said: "We are hopeful that we will set up the plant without any hassle."

The plant is likely to be functional by 2020-2021.

--IANS

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A wildfire has emptied Canada's oil-producing city of Fort McMurray in Alberta province as the government has instructed no one must return until it is safe.

The fire has expanded to 85,000 hectares and has so far razed roughly 1,600 buildings, including homes and businesses deep inside the city limits, Xinhua news agency reported.

Moreover, it has forced the evacuation of an estimated 90,000 people from the northern oil-producing city.

Dramatic videos surfaced on Canadian social media Thursday showing panick escapes by drivers on highways swarmed by fire and black smoke.

Early estimates suggest that as many as 80 percent of homes in one neighbourhood were lost in the fire, with extensive damage in several other neighbourhoods.

The total extent of the destruction is yet to be ascertained as the blaze continues to spread southward on several fronts.

The mandatory evacuation on Wednesday clogged the major highway that feeds into the city from the north and south, forcing roughly 10,000 people into shelters and work camps at points north, while tens of thousands fled to points south.

More than 100 firefighters, 10 helicopters and 16 air tankers were fighting the blaze in forests around the city, with more resources on the way.

Another 200 firefighters and 25 fire trucks were fighting the fire within the city, trying to protect homes and buildings.

By Thursday, changing weather patterns forced the evacuation of the nearby communities of Anzac, Gregoire Lake Estates and Fort McMurray First Nation, causing evacuees which had already sheltered in Anzac's community recreation centre to flee once again.

Fire officials said only colder, wetter weather would put a stop to the blaze, although the forecast called for several more days of dry and warm weather in the region.

In Anzac, Alberta Premier Rachel Notley met officials and evacuees. After declaring the fire as a provincial emergency, the premier pledged the government's support to the victims of the fire.

"The government of Alberta is behind them," the premier said after touring the evacuation operation.

"We may have a long road ahead of us, but they can count on not only the government, but the people of Alberta, to support them in the ways that we need," she said. "This is a devastating, devastating, event."

So far, no deaths have been reported due to the fire.

Speaking in the national capital of Ottawa, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said the federal government would match all individual donations made to the Canadian Red Cross.

He said the Royal Canadian Air Force would deploy several military aircraft to assist with firefighter transports, the evacuation effort, and delivering aid.

The Alberta government said 18 new wildfires had sparked around the province on Thursday and that 49 wildfires were burning across the province. Seven of those were considered out of control.

--IANS

py/
A woman was found alive on Thursday under the debris of a residential building that collapsed six days ago in Kenyan capital Nairobi.

The National Disaster Management Unit incident commander, Pius Masai, said doctors at the scene attended to the woman immediately after she was rescued, Xinhua reported.

"The woman was rushed to hospital since she is weak but is safe. She has no physical injuries and she is talking," Masai said.

He said the woman had survived in a pocket of a broken building material.

The six-storey building in Nairobi's Huruma district collapsed on Friday night in heavy rain.

Death toll has reached 33 while 137 people have been pulled out. Nearly 80 are still believed to be trapped under the rubber.

Rescue workers are still trying to gain access to the area where the woman had been found.

--IANS

sku/
Whether the AP in the AgustaWestland papers is Ahmed Patel or not, two things are clear: there is little about the Congress that Patel doesnt know; and when the Congress was in power, no decision was taken by the government without consulting him first.
India could teach a thing or two about dealing with bad debt. Banks in the world's two most populous countries have lent hundreds of billions of dollars to politically connected companies that are now in trouble. Yet, while Indian authorities are at last pushing lenders to come clean, their counterparts in Beijing seem intent on ignoring the full extent of the problem. It is a rare example of India showing its larger neighbour the way.

Most corporate lending in both nations resides on the balance sheets of banks, the majority of which are government-owned. Larger-than-life Indian tycoons like Vijay Mallya and vast Chinese state-owned enterprises such as Bohai Steel have historically used strong political connections to help them borrow. That helps explain why lenders have continued extending credit even after companies run into trouble. The absence of a functioning bankruptcy process also discourages banks from calling in overdue loans.

These structural shortcomings have left behind mountains of bad debt. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) estimated earlier this year that 14.1 per cent of all the country's bank loans were doubtful. By contrast, only 1.7 per cent of Chinese loans at the end of 2015 were officially classified as non-performing. That figure has little credibility. Researchers from the International Monetary Fund last month estimated that at least 15.5 per cent of bank loans to Chinese companies are at risk of not being repaid.

For years, Indian regulators hoped the country's banks would grow their way out of the problem. That changed last summer when Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government set out a plan for state-owned lenders to raise $27 billion in fresh capital over four years, with more than a third coming from taxpayers. New Delhi has also stopped interfering in lending decisions. At the same time, RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan is forcing state-owned banks to acknowledge their bad loans and set aside adequate provisions. The regulator has drawn up a list of delinquent borrowers, and is pushing all lenders with an exposure to those companies to recognise their loans as potentially defunct.

Though the clean-up in India is still underway, it has scored some early success. Banks are now hounding overextended moguls like Mallya, who has fled to London. Bank of Baroda, India's second-largest state-owned lender, announced in February that bad debt provisions for the final quarter of 2015 had increased fivefold, dragging the bank into the red. Yet, its shares soared as investors applauded the newly installed management team's decision to clean house.

The contrast with is striking. Though big banks like Industrial and Commercial Bank of and China Construction Bank are reporting higher bad debts, they are not topping up provisions at the same pace. A government plan to swap a reported 1 trillion yuan ($154 billion) of corporate debt into equity only makes sense if the underlying businesses are viable. Meanwhile, lenders are still doling out credit - banks handed out new loans worth $718 billion in the first quarter, according to the People's Bank of China, almost a third more than in the same period of last year.

It's true that China's debt headache is much, much larger. Chinese companies collectively owed a massive $17.4 trillion at the end of September, according to the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) - equivalent to 166 per cent of GDP. India's total corporate debt burden of $985 billion, which is equivalent to about half the country's yearly economic output, looks small by comparison.

On the face of it, however, the People's Republic should be in a stronger position to tackle the problem. While Modi must worry about the electoral backlash of bailing out state-owned banks, China's communist rulers face fewer constraints. Besides, the Chinese government has more financial capacity to fund capital injections. The country's sovereign debt was 43.5 per cent of GDP at the end of September, according to the BIS, well below India's 68.4 per cent. And, China does not depend on fickle foreign investors for funding.

Though India's efforts are more promising, there is no guarantee they will succeed. The government's estimates of the clean-up costs look optimistic, especially as private investors are unlikely to put up fresh capital while banks are still controlled by the state. Recognising bad debt does not mean defunct companies will be closed or restructured. And, failure to overhaul banks' governance and risk management could lead to a new reckless lending binge.

Nevertheless, the divergent paths taken by India and China could have significant long-term consequences. Better-run banks with cleaner balance sheets should be in a stronger position to direct credit where it is most productive. By contrast, large volumes of unrecognised bad loans can strangle economic growth as banks overlook deserving new borrowers. China could learn some lessons from its less developed neighbour's bold approach.
Theres a serious possibility that a woman will be President of the United States, leader of the free world. A woman! With her hormones and hysteria and moon-driven moods  irrational, emotional, indecisive, jealous, weak-willed, bird-brained, vain, easily confused. Hillary Clinton has been going about screeching about equal rights, equal pay, and rights for sexual deviants. Thats fine, but hows she going to manage ISIS and Putin  threaten to cry? Can she handle work and home? What if she quits to spend time with family? Plus shes wrinkly and wears pantsuits. And there are rumours that she might, might, might field Elizabeth Warren, the equally female senator from Massachusetts, as her running mate. A broad in the White House is bad enough, but two? We should never have let them out of the kitchen.
Rarely in modern history has a party appeared as divided over its nominee as Republicans are over Donald Trump. But will his GOP critics really keep their backs turned through November, or will they come around?

Some leaders of the conservative movement claim they will never vote for him  not only think-tank intellectuals, but also members of Congress, such as Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska. Columnist George F. Will, once a backstairs advisor to Ronald Reagan, says good Republicans shouldnt merely withhold their votes, but work to make sure Trump loses all 50 states  to make sure Trumpism is discredited forever.

And yet, as Trumps nomination becomes more certain, more Republicans are finding nice things to say about the businessman.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said Trump had done an impressive job attracting new voters to GOP primaries. Former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman said Trumps centrist positions might have bipartisan appeal. Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said Trump was showing promise as a foreign policy thinker. Rep. Duncan Hunter, one of Trumps earliest backers in Congress, offered a more practical assessment: People like to be with the winner.

And that is whats really going on here. Republicans arent falling in love with Trump; they just figure that, since the real estate promoter is about to become the leader of their party, its better to grit their teeth and hope for the best than to fight a losing battle. Even Jeb Bush, whose presidential hopes were demolished by Trump, now says he will support the nominee. He just wont say his name.

But the never-say-#NeverTrump Republicans have a problem: In private, many of them  perhaps most of them  dont think Trump can win the general election.

The structural problem of the Trump candidacy is his unfavorable numbers, GOP pollster David Winston told me. Among women, who  did I mention?  are the majority of the electorate, his unfavorables are in the 70s. Those arent easy numbers to turn around, particularly when a candidate has had as much exposure as Trump.

Thats why even if, in the end, few Republican politicians will actively oppose Trump, many wont actively support him either.

One bellwether to watch: how many Senate candidates in tough races decide to skip the Republican National Convention, which is likely to be a weeklong celebration of everything Trump.

Youre going to see a lot of Senate candidates staying home and doing their own knitting that week, GOP strategist Scott Reed told me.

Instead of focusing on the presidential campaign, many in the GOP  not just candidates, but also activists and donors  will focus on congressional races.

Republicans are terrified that a Trump defeat would lose the GOP its majority in the Senate, which they gained only two years ago. Some even worry that a Democratic landslide could endanger the GOPs majority in the House of Representatives.

In some states, candidates are going to depend on people who are voting for (Democrat Hillary) Clinton to switch sides and vote for the other party when it comes to Congress, Winston noted. Thats hard to do.

One answer: the program House Speaker Paul Ryan plans to unveil next month, aimed at giving GOP congressional candidates a list of conservative policies they can campaign on, whether they correspond to Trumps positions or not.

In effect, the GOP could enter the fall campaign with two different platforms: one espoused by its mercurial presidential candidate, the other by the more orthodox conservatives around Ryan.

House candidates are going to need a sense of direction, and they dont necessarily want to rely on Trump to provide it, Winston said. If Trump appears headed for defeat, the Ryan program could give them a lifeline.

Political parties can of course recover from bad elections  even from campaigns that divide them internally.

Four years after the 1964 election, which Republican candidate Barry Goldwater lost in a landslide, the GOP won the White House. And four years after Democrat George McGovern lost in the landslide of 1972, the Democrats came back too.

Everybody writes off a party after it has a bad election, Winston said. After 2008, when Obama won, people said it was the end of the Republican Party. But two years later we had 2010 and won a majority in the House.

To many Republicans, the prospect of a loss to Clintons Democrats looks painful, but it also presents a familiar, even comfortable problem: At that point, their mission will be to make Clinton a one-term president.

The greater dilemma  the fear they wont acknowledge, at least in public  is that Trump might actually win. If that happens, conservatives who dont love their candidate will face four years of having to defend his policies and trying to tame his excesses. Thats when their real troubles would begin.
Congress party president Sonia Gandhi hit the streets on Friday, leading a Save Democracy march to protest against the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led Centres murdering of democracy in Uttarakhand and Arunachal Pradesh.

Senior Cabinet minister Venkaiah Naidu said the Congress wanted to divert public attention from the AgustaWestland bribery case.

Sonia Gandhi, party vice-president Rahul Gandhi and former prime minister Manmohan Singh courted arrest when the march they led was stopped on the way to Parliament. Parliamentary leaders Mallikarjun Kharge and Ghulam Nabi Azad and Congress communication chief Randeep Surjewala also courted arrest. They were all later released.

Addressing party workers, MPs and state leaders ahead of the march, a combative Sonia Gandhi said: Do not mistake the Congress as being weak...we have to send a message so strong that people sitting in Raisina Hill and Nagpur (RSS headquarters) sit up and listen.



Declaring she and the Congress were ready for a long struggle, she said: My life has been one of struggles and I dont shy away from a fight.



On the AgustaWestland scandal, she accused the BJP of indulging in character assassination and baseless allegations. Anybody who opposes the BJP she said, was immediately labelled as traitors.

Congress scion and party VP Rahul Gandhi levelled similar charges. Manmohan Singh said, Since the BJP has come to power, they have only one mission, a Congress-mukt Bharat. They say this wherever they go. I want to tell the Modi government that the Congress is Indias soul. Adding: The Modi government has attacked democracy. Theyre now targeting other Congress states like Manipur, Nagaland, Mizoram and Himachal, trying to dislodge the governments there.



Congress MPs also attempted to raise the issue in Parliament. When not allowed, they forced two adjournments in the Rajya Sabha with disruptions. Amid the din, party leader Anand Sharma accused the government of insulting and abusing all Constitutional norms.
Congress vice president on Friday launched a scathing attack at the Narendra Modi government, saying the country was being run by only two persons -- Modi and RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat.

Rahul said: "Anyone who dares to speak against them (Modi and Bhagwat) are charged with false allegations."

"Today in India, the voice of only two people are heard, Narendra Modiji and Mohan Bhagwatji," Rahul said at Loktantra Bachao march at the Janatar Mantar here.

He alleged that the government made false accusations against people who are critical of the prime minister and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Scores of Congress leaders, including party president Sonia Gandhi and former prime minister Manmohan Singh, took to the streets of capital to protest against the Centre.

The Congress leader also alleged that the Union government broke all the laws by destabilising the Congress government in Arunachal Pradesh and removed all the elected leaders.

Congress and the BJP have been of late involved in a bitter banter on a range of issues, including the AgustaWestland VVIP chopper scam.
The Supreme Court on Friday cleared the decks for Uttarakhand's ousted chief minister Harish Rawat to prove a majority in the state Assembly on Tuesday, but nine disqualified rebel Congress legislators won't be allowed to vote.

In an unprecedented move, the Court said President's Rule in Uttarakhand will be held in abeyance for two hours from 11 am to 1 pm while a floor test takes place in the Assembly. The proceedings of the House will be videographed.

The order came after the Centre informed the court that it was ready for a floor test only if it was done under the Supreme Court's supervision. Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi, appearing for the government, said: "We will go along with the floor test as suggested by the (apex) court."



The Court directed the Chief Secretary and the Director General of Police of Uttarakhand to ensure all qualified members are able to attend the Assembly on Tuesday and no hindrance is caused to anyone.

Voting will be by show of hands and will be counted by the Principal Secretary of the Assembly. The results of the floor test are to be placed before the Court in a sealed envelope, along with the records of the proceedings.

On the modalities, Rohatgi cited the past precedents of Jharkhand and Uttar Pradesh where floor tests had taken place on intervention of the Court and opined there should be an observer, preferably any of the former chief election commissioners.

In February 1998, both incumbent Chief Minister Kalyan Singh (BJP) and Jagdambika Pal (Loktantrik Congress) claimed they had a majority in Uttar Pradesh assembly. Governor Romesh Bhandari invited Pal to form the government. On that occasion, the Court monitored a floor test where ballot boxes were placed on the table of the Assembly and each MLA dropped his vote in the ballot box, opened in front of a court-appointed officer.

In 2005, the Court ordered a floor test along the same lines in Jharkhand when a dispute arose between incumbent BJP Chief Minister Arjun Munda and opponent Shibu Soren. On that occasion too, the Court ordered video recording of the proceedings.

Rohatgi said: "There should be one agenda (for the short session in the Assembly). It should only be a composite floor test of strength between the two political alliances in the Assembly to ascertain which of the two alliances had majority of the House."



The court, however, made it clear that only Rawat would seek the vote of confidence.

Constitutional experts say disqualification of the nine MLAs, as ordered by the Speaker, should have been put aside by the Court if the question was whether Rawat has a majority or not.

In the new scenario, the effective strength of the 70-member House has been reduced to 61. This means, Rawat requires the support of 31 MLAs to pass the floor test. Political observers say Rawat should not have any problem in winning the trust vote on Tuesday. However, two MLAs of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) are keeping their cards close to the chest, saying they will vote as per the directions of BSP chief Mayawati. Tebel Congress MLAs are anxiously waiting for the decision of the high court, which will hear the matter related to their disqualification on Saturday. Senior counsel C A Sundaram, appearing for the nine disqualified rebel Congress MLAs, urged the apex court to allow them to participate in the voting but the court was not moved. A couple of other rebels said the high court's decision on the disqualification can change the equation altogether.

Rawat, on the other hand, looked elated and said the Supreme Court's order was a victory of democracy over Prime Minister Narendra Modi's "bid to suppress the power of the Vidhan Sabha".

Congress spokesperson Randeep Surjewala said, "Once the Supreme Court has given a decisive verdict and ordered a floor test on May 10, the cloud of uncertainty has cleared. The Modi government should see the writing on the wall. The message is loud and clear."



BJP sources, however, said the party was confident that Rawat-led Congress will be unable to prove majority on May 10. They indicated that there was a possibility of more Congress legislators breaking away and voting against Rawat. "Four days is a long time in politics," said a senior BJP strategist.

Uttarakhand has been under President's Rule since March 27 after the central government dismissed the Congress government, led by Rawat, citing a constitutional crisis in the hill state.
A-100-year-old woman, who is all set to cast the first vote of her life in the May 16 Assembly elections, will be a poll mascot in Kerala's Kannur district.

Though many elections had come and gone in her lifetime, centenarian Thressiamma Chacko, a native of Kolakkad here, had been indifferent to them.

When she expressed desire to cast her vote for the first time in the coming polls, the district administration has come up offering her all support and decided to present her as a mascot to woo voters to exercise their franchise.

Thressiamma, who is living with her son Johny, had applied for voters' identity card at an Akshaya centre, a project focusing on the various facts of e-learning and e-governance, at Kolakkad recently.

District Collector P Bala Kiran himself arrived at her residence and handed over her the voter identity card last evening.

"She is very active even at this age and really enthusiastic to exercise her franchise. She will be an inspiration to all voters to exercise their franchise in the upcoming polls," Bala Kiran told PTI.

The district administration officials also gave the woman some lessons on how to use the voting machine.

The woman told officials that she had no time to think about polls or casting vote during her young age as she had been struggling to meet both ends of her family.

Thressiamma would cast the vote at the polling booth in a local school near her house, family sources said.
The Centre has given its in-principle approval for 17 new national highways in Himachal Pradesh, Union Minister Nitin Gadkari said here today.

These national highways include stretches of state highways - the 57 km Bhota-Nerchouk, 47 kmRanital-Kotla, 62 kms Rohru- Bhalidhar-kiari-Kotkhai, 153kms Chailla-Sarahan- Narayangarh, 106 kms Taradevi-Nalagarh-Ghanouli, 118kms Neripul-rajgarh-Banethi, 125 kms Mandi-Chailchouk-Nagan, 78 kms Narkanda-rohru, 14kms Takshal-Nogli,43.

The total length of these roads will be 1368.20 kms.

Union Road Transport and Highways Minister Gadkari said he will include more roads after consultation with MPs to bring the total road leangth to 1500 kms in this year.

Gadkari said, "If the state government helps in land acquisition procedure, the ministry under him will not hesitate in widening the every national highway in Himachal Pradesh.

"He said that the central government is encouraging Himachal Pradesh in shifting towards electric transportation system."



Gadkari said, "ISRO has developed Lithium batteries for buses which are 30 per cent cheap to its European version, once the commercial production is on India shall have electric buses on low price.

He said that the government is encouraging the owners of the deasel taxis to convert their vehicles to CNG kits.

The government is also getting extra timefrom court to off road the diesel vehicles.

Gadkari said that there is ample space for the extension of the runway in Gaggal airport of Dharamshala.

He said, "The land mass extracted of due to the four-lanning of Pathankote -Mandi NH can be used for filling of land for extending the air stripe."



He said that the artificial water bodies created due to big dams in Himachal can be used for aero planes which could land on water surfaces to attract the tourists.

In the press briefing, Transport Minister of Himachal G S Bali was also present.
Delhi police has arrested a 23-year-old youth for allegedly murdering a trader in northeast Delhi.

According to police, one of the three other assailants, Azim, who are still at large in the case, had played a key role in the Karkardooma court firing by providing weapons to the juveniles with the purpose to train them.

Police said that the accused was apprehended on a tip off and has been identifies as Mohammad Vasim, a resident of Janta Majdoor Colony in Welcome area.

The agency claimed that the victim, Mahender Chand Ramola, who was into the business of ready-made garments, was dragged out of his office by four men and shot dead in the full public view on Monday night.

It said that there is possibility that Ramola was killed because Azim feared him to be a police informer.

On Monday, Vasim and his three associates -- Azim, Sameer and Ashraf -- reached Ramola's office and eliminated him, it said.

"Recently, a raid was conducted and a gambling racket being run by Sameer and his partner, Sharif, was busted. 30 men were arrested for gambling in this raid, however, the duo managed to escape. The two accused suspected that the raid was conducted after Ramola tipped off the police. They developed enmity towards him and wanted revenge," a police officer said.

"During the interrogation, it has been revealed that the four assailants had come on two two-wheelers and fled away with Ramola's licenced pistol. The arrested accused has been involved several cases of house theft and robberies in the areas of south and northeast Delhi," he said, adding that further efforts to arrest other absconding members of the gang are underway.
The Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai has decided to cut the water supply by 25 per cent for 36 hours on account of pipeline repair work in the neighbouring Thane district.

A press release from the MCGM said today the water cut would be in effect from 11 AM on May 10 to 11 PM on May 11.

The Tansa (West) Trunk Main pipeline would be repaired in Gandhi Nagar, Pokhran Road no 2, in Thane during this period.

The areas situated at the fag end of distribution zone, elevated areas and residents on upper floors having direct supply in city area will be more affected due to the low pressure, it said.

The administration also appealed the Mumbai citizens to store the sufficient amount of water a day before.
A 40-year-old water tanker operator was shot dead outside his house in south-east Delhi area, police said today.

The incident occurred last night when the victim Jeevan Kumar, resident of Sangam Vihar was called out of his house by the accused persons to meet them at Barn Complex near Devli. After that there were few gunshots and later he was found lying in a pool of blood, family members said.

A personal rivalry might be the cause of murder, police said.

Jeevan owned a finance company and use to supply water tankers in Neb Sarai area that do not have water connections and there were possibilities that he had fallen out with some people over the share of money which led to the murder.

Jeevan's family members later staged a protest in the locality demanding arrest of the accused.
Banks in India are expected to cut by up to 50 basis points by September as there is sufficient liquidity in the system, says a Bank of America Merrill Lynch report.

According to the global financial services major, sufficient liquidity should generate excess supply in the loan market and lead to reduction in .

"We continue to expect banks to cut by September atop 50 bps last fiscal," the BofA-ML report said.

It noted that the Reserve Bank is expected to ease liquidity to support recovery. "We estimate that the RBI will need to inject $50 billion of reserve money (including Rs 500 billion towards neutral liquidity) in FY17," it added.

"The loan market will likely see potential excess supply for the first time since 2013. This could lead to lending rate cuts of 50 bps by September," the report said.

Regarding the Central Bank's policy stance, the report said that the RBI is expected to cut rates 25 bps on August 9.

In April, RBI reduced policy rate by 0.25% to 6.5% -- lowest level in more than 5 years. While this was the first rate cut after a gap of six months, RBI has lowered the repo rate by 1.5% since January 2015.

However, the industry still wants further rate cuts to boost investments.
Opponents of government health insurance for children of the working poor want to frame the issue around personal responsibility and financial self-reliance. Subsidized health care, they say, teaches dependency and an entitlement to other peoples hard-earned money.

Leaving aside for the moment that children dont get to choose their parents, we would note that children already receive a major taxpayer-supported benefit  an education  and their parents get a big tax credit against the cost of raising them. And if tax rates were truly confiscatory, presumably voters would have risen up by now and turned out of office those responsible for them.

Were also part of a representative democracy, and when 47 of 60 House members have a petition to give KidsCare a hearing ignored, the debate moves beyond philosophy to the abuse of power by party leaders. When a Senate president can violate due process and simply sit on a bill, the question becomes: What empowers a legislative leader to even contemplate such an act?

The answer is found in the majority control of both chambers and the governors office that not only doesnt require sharing power with the minority but actively discourages it. And now, in stonewalling KidsCare, majority leaders are applying that top-down approach to members of their own party and daring them to do something about it. Campaign contributions and plum committee assignments hang in the balance.

This isnt the first time weve seen such arrogance of power. Republican leaders have made a habit of challenging programs passed by citizen initiative, using taxpayer funds to file lawsuits and pursue appeals in some cases all the way to the state and U.S. Supreme Court. They did it with Clean Elections, Medicaid fees and Prop. 301 school funding, and twice with the citizen redistricting commission  losing every time. They did so, in part, because they can  they have the Attorney General at their disposal and an apparently unlimited litigation fund. And we suspect they saw citizen initiatives as end runs around their authority  and they didnt like to lose.

So on KidsCare, which would see the federal government underwrite the full cost of health care for 40,000 Arizona children for at least two years, Republicans leaders see it as an extension of Obamacare, which they have fought unsuccessfully for four years. Never mind that Republicans at both the state and federal levels have no viable alternative for getting the working poor affordable health insurance  and sometimes any kind of insurance at all . Politically, they are determined not to lose, even if it means sicker Arizona children and the loss of $60 million that will simply go somewhere else.

This time, though, rank-and-file Republicans have stood up to leaders who appear to have lost their way  49 other states participate in KidsCare. As of Thursday night, the House had revived and passed Kids Care again, this time tying it to a pet bill of their leaders: government vouchers for private schools. How it fares in the Senate may depend more on hardball politics than common sense and fair play. Leaders can play that game only so long, however, because without the support of a majority of their caucus and having earned the enmity of the minority, they have little room to maneuver, unilaterally or otherwise. It shouldnt have to come to this, but the lessons learned will invaluable for leaders, rank-and-file -- and voters, too.
Polling in fourth phase of panchayat polls in Bihar ended with a total turnout of 62.5 per cent amid reports of killing of a person in a firing and attack on the vehicle of Madhepura DM and SP.

"The Commission has received reports of 62.5 per cent voters turnout in the fourth phase of panchayat polls that passed off peacefully barring some stray incidents," State Election Commissioner (SEC) A K Chauhan told reporters.

Chauhan, who was accompanied by Commission's secretary Dugesh Nandan, said the Commission has received reports of 62.5 per cent of voting in fourth phase which is 1.5 per cent more than the fourth phase of panchayat polls in 2011.

The voting per centage may slighty increase once the final figures reach to the Commission, he said.

Chauhan said the vehicle of Madhepura DM and SP was attacked at polling station 76 at Muraut village in Ratwara police station of the district.

The vehicle's windscreen was damaged when a group of rival candidates attacked the vehicle to protest against the arrest of their relatives. Polling was not hampered, the SEC said.

One person was killed in a firing 300 m from polling station 281 in Bhadwas village in Mahua block of Vaishali district, the SEC said adding voting was completed without any disturbance. The reason for firing is being investigated by the police.

A Presiding Officer and a polling officer were arrested for favouring a candidate at polling station 101 in Dihura village of Tekari block of Gaya district, he said.

One policeman died of heart attack at polling station 205 and 206 at Kamti in Kishanganj district, the SEC said adding he was admitted to a nearby primary health centre, but died during treatment.

Chauhan said repolling has been ordered at four polling



stations in Alamnagar block of Madhepura, one polling station each in Gorha block of West Champaran and in Mahua block of Vaishali and at two polling stations in Naubatpur block of Patna district.

The repolling was ordered due to printing error in ballot papers.

The SEC repolling has been ordered at 50 polling stations of third phase.

A total of 549 persons were arrested, while 38 vehicles were seized besides, four IED bombs weighing 3 kg each were detected from one km away from Amma Kuan village under Tekari block of Gaya district, Chauhan said.

In the fourth phase, votes were cast to elect 134 members of Zilla Parishad, 1,289 members of Panchayat Samitis, Mukhiyas and Sarpanchs in 939 gram panchayats, 12,859 members of Gram Panchayat and 12,863 members of Gram Kutchery.

The ten phase three-tier panchayat polls are being held to elect 1,161 Zilla Parishad members, 11,496 panchayat samiti members, Mukhiya and Sarpanch in 8,392 gram panchayats, 1,14,733 members in Gram Panchayats and Gram Kutchery.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has hailed a potential breakthrough in a decades-long territorial dispute with Russia, after talks with President Vladimir Putin, Japan's foreign ministry spokesman said.

"The prime minister said that today he could feel a breakthrough, he could make a breakthrough in the currently stagnated negotiation," Japanese foreign ministry press secretary Yasuhisa Kawamura said.

Tokyo-Moscow relations are hamstrung by a row dating back to the end of World War II when Soviet troops seized the four southernmost islands in the Pacific Kuril chain, known as the Northern Territories in Japan.

Japan and Russia's lingering tensions have prevented them ever signing a peace treaty to formally end World War II hostilities, hindering trade and investment ties.

Abe, in a rare visit by a G7 leader to Russia, met Putin for talks at his holiday residence in the Black Sea resort of Sochi with their talks focusing on the dispute.

"The prime minister said that Mr Putin also shared ... the same feeling" and the leaders "agreed today that they themselves directly get involved in the negotiation," Kawamura said.

Putin and Abe agreed to "promote negotiations by employing a new approach without being bothered by the old previous thinking," Kawamura said.

"This is literally a new element," he said, without giving more detail.

"Japan is not just our neighbour, it is a very important partner for us in the Asian-Pacific region," Putin told Abe at the start of the meeting.

"We have certain questions that demand special attention, maybe for this reason we must devote special attention to building relationships," the Russian leader added.

The Kremlin had dismissed hopes of any major breakthrough towards resolving the dispute at Friday's meeting, while playing up Abe's visit as a symbol of warming ties despite Western attempts to isolate Putin.

The leaders held talks lasting more than three hours, including a tete-a-tete section, in what Abe called "an extensive, frank and candid exchange of views," Kawamura said.

Both sides had earlier mooted the possibility of starting negotiations on signing a peace treaty, with Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida saying in April that they could begin "as soon as possible" after the leaders met.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said briefly after the talks Friday that the sides "discussed the problem of the peace treaty," giving few details but announcing another round of foreign ministry consultations in June.
AFSPA will continue to remain in force in 12 districts of Arunachal Pradesh for six more months on the ground of continuous violence, extortion and intimidation by insurgent groups.

The Union Home Ministry has said the security scenario in Tirap, Changlang and Longding districts along with areas falling under 16 police stations in nine other districts of the state remains vitiated due to the spill over of Naga insurgency.

Naga groups -- NSCN-K, NSCN-IM, NSCN-R and NSCN--NK -- along with ULFA-I and NDFB-S, continue to indulge in extortion, area domination, inter-factional rivalry in these areas of the state.

Tirap, Changlang and Longding districts and the areas falling within the jurisdiction of 16 police stations in nine districts bordering Assam are declared as "disturbed area" under section 3 of the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act 1958 for six months beyond May 4, 2016, a gazette notification issued by the Home Ministry said.

There have been 24 insurgency related incidents perpetrated by Naga groups in the last six months in which three people have been killed and 24 militants arrested.

On March 27, 2015, the Centre had declared all districts of Arunachal Pradesh bordering Assam as "disturbed areas" under AFSPA. However, the order was withdrawn following strong protests from the the Nabam Tuki government.

A revised notification was issued a few days later declaring Tirap, Changlang and Longding, along with 16 police stations areas in nine districts as "disturbed".

The state shares a 1,126 kms of the border with China and 520 kms with Myanmar.
Two days after two children died following consuming milk as part of mid-day meal at a school in Kansi Ram colony here, the area is facing another crisis - with over 100 people suffering from cholera which "virtually has taken an epidemic form".

"Anganwadi Assistant Usha Devi, who was also taken ill after consuming the milk, died last evening. The number of children and adults suffering from vomiting and loose motion has swelled from 48 by Thursday evening to 118 today," officiating Chief Medical Officer Dr Sajjan Kumar said.

Since only 29 children had consumed milk on Wednesday as part of mid-day meal and a majority are of different age groups, it has been established that cholera has spread in the area, District Magistrate Rajesh Kumar said.

"There was no casualty today. On the basis of stool test it has been established that most of the patients are suffering from cholera which virtually has taken an epidemic form," he said, adding the other cause appears to be mixing of drain water with drinking water.

"Over 100 patients have been discharged after treatment and 79 are still admitted at different hospitals but they are out of danger," the district magistrate said.

Since nothing wrong was found in the overhead water tank of Kanshi Ram Colony, underground pipeline leading to different houses, was checked.

"At a few places the pipelinewas found damaged with some portion in contact with drains. It may be another reason of cholera," he said.

A temporary 20 bed hospital, lead by two doctors, has been set up in the primary school adjacent to Kanshi Ram Colony. Also two teams of experts will arrive here from Lucknow, Kumar said.

Since cases from adjacent Baad, Aurangabad and Sarai Azmabad villages have also been reported, 50 beds have been added in Swarn Jayanti Hospital and District Hospitals each, he said.

"Cleanliness drive with 250 Safai Karmi has started in the area. Since it is an infectious disease, people are advised not to consume stale food or cut fruits and wash hand before eating," Kumar added.

The officiating CMO said though he is not in a position to give the exact break up of the patients, a majority of them are children and asserted that cholera may be another reason of the casualties and people falling ill.
Bollywood star Akshay Kumar today said he "hopes" the on-going feud between actors Hrithik Roshan and Kangana Ranaut comes to a close soon.

The two actors have been at loggerheads since the "Queen" star called Hrithik her "silly ex". The feud between Hrithik and his "Krrish 3" co-star turned nasty after they slapped legal notices on each other.

Asked about his views on the "war in Bollywood", Akshay, who lives in the same apartment as that of the 42-year-old "Bang Bang" star, quipped, "Bollywood may kahan meri building may chal raha hai (war is going on in my building)."



The "Boss" actor, however, said he hopes that the raging row between the two is resolved soon.

"All I want is it to end and everything get resolved peacefully. That is what the whole thing is ... It shouldn't happen. Time will come now, it has to stop now. Everything will be solved, let's hope for that," Akshay told reporters.

The actor was speaking at the song launch of his upcoming film "Housefull 3".

Abhishek Bachchan, who was also present at the event, said he "agrees" with what Akshay said on the matter.

Hrithik, who was the first to send the legal notice, has demanded Kangana apologise in a press conference and clear the air about their alleged affair, which he firmly refutes.

A defiant Kangana had said she was not a "dim-witted" teenager and refused to apologise. The 29-year-old multiple National Award winning actress instead shot off a counter- notice to Hrithik, warning him to take back his notice or face a criminal case.
The punitive action taken against JNU students, including JNUSU chief Kanhaiya Kumar that led him to sit on a hunger strike, reached the President's doorstep today with some opposition party MPs seeking his intervention in resolving the crisis and restoring normalcy in the varsity.

A delegation of MPs from various parties including the Left and Congress today met President Pranab Mukherjee and asked him to withdraw forthwith all actions taken against students by JNU authorities pending judicial outcome.

"All actions taken by the VC and the university administration against the students must be withdrawn forthwith. You will agree that all of us will have to wait till the ongoing judicial proceedings are concluded," a memorandum handed over to the President said.

The MPs - Digvijay Singh (Congress), Sitaram Yechury (CPI-M), D Raja (CPI), K C Tyagi and Pawan Kumar Verma (JD-U), KTS Tulsi (nominated), Majid Memon (NCP) and Baishnab Parida (BJD), told Mukherjee that current crisis over disciplinary action by the Vice Chancellor "threatens to engulf the university in a crisis of unprecedented proportions".

They said JNU is considered among the best universities in India which has an unblemished global ranking and standing and the issue has done damage to the varsity.

"Under these circumstances, when the damage to the university is reaching irreparable proportions, we are urging your urgent intervention.

"As Visitor of the university we hope that you would intervene to ensure that justice is done," the MPs told the President.

The MPs also said the stringent punitive action against some students including the elected president of Jawaharlal Nehru Students Union appear to be based on sections of the HLEC report that have been released by the university.

They added that these conclusions are based on "so-called evidence that is currently under dispute in judicial proceedings. Hence the matter is sub-judice. It is unprecedented that the Vice Chancellor should take such strong action on the basis of so-called evidence which is a sub judice matter."



The leaders also said the "so-called" evidence has been contradicted by Delhi government mandated magisterial enquiry, which concluded that the "so-called visual evidence electronically recorded has been doctored".

Despite this, they said, the varsity proceeded on such punishment of students that pushed JNU students and academic community to strong responses culminating in indefinite hunger strike by JNUSU President and some other students.
Amnesty International today asked the Kerala authorities to ensure an independent investigation into allegations of police inaction in a case involving the rape and brutal murder of a 30-year-old Dalit woman in the state.

"Police inaction in cases involving violence against Dalit women is unfortunately disturbingly common. Even in this case, the police failed to act on earlier complaints from the family," said Rekha Raj, programme manager, women's rights, at Amnesty International-India.

The failure of the police to investigate previous complaints about caste-based discrimination and harassment against the woman's family must also be investigated, Raj said.

"Dalit women face multiple levels of discrimination - from the community and often from the police. The Kerala government must hold the police accountable for any inaction on their part," she added.

According to local police, the woman, a law student, hailing from a poor family was raped and brutally assaulted using sharp edged weapons before being murdered at her house at Perumbavoor in Ernakulam district on April 28.

Three men have been detained in relation to the killing.

"We have complained earlier against certain individuals who used to threaten us, but the police did not take any action," the victim's sister told Amnesty.
Investigators interrogating the three youths arrested for alleged links with banned Jaish-e- Mohammed today said the trio were shown videos pertaining to alleged atrocities against Muslims in Jammu and Kashmir, Muzaffarnagar and Iraq to induct them into the outfit and execute terror strikes in the national capital.

A senior police official said prime accused Sajid had joined a social media page where he met a cyber entity 'Talha', believed to be close to JeM chief Maulana Masood Azhar, who is wanted by India in connection with 2001 Parliament attack case and the terror strike on Pathankot IAF base in January.

The web page had links to several websites which allegedly propagate jihad ideology. In one such website, Sajid found a phone number, which pertained to Pakistan and the contact number later turned out to be that of Talah, the official said.

Once Sajid had roped in the other accused youths -- Sameer Ahmed and Shakir Ansari into the module -- the cyber entity sent them links to videos showing alleged atrocities against Muslims in Jammu and Kashmir, Muzaffarnagar and Iraq. The idea was to induct them into the outfit and plan serial blasts here, the official added.

Investigators had yesterday said the trio was initially inspired by the dreaded ISIS and later shifted their ideological leaning.

Sajid was self-radicalised and propagated ideology which was in line with that of the Islamic State until he came in touch with Talha. However, the circumstances behind the change in the ideological unit was yet to be ascertained.

All 13 people, including the three arrested, picked up by police in connection with the matter were members of a WhatsApp group, the communications under which is currently being scrutinised by investigators.

Apart from data shared through Internet and an 8 GB pen drive recovered from the possession of the arrested persons, investigators are also scrutinising books which the trio possessed.

The police had claimed to have recovered from Sajid's residence one live improvised explosive device (IED), one damaged IED and materials like batteries, timer devices, pipes, wires, adhesives and over 250 grams of suspected explosives in powdered form, all sent to a forensic lab now.

The three youths, who were under the lens of intelligence agencies for the past one year, were arrested after late night raids starting Tuesday. While Sajid and Sameer hail from Delhi-NCR, Ansari is a resident of Deoband in Uttar Pradesh.

The three had been learning to put together IEDs over the past fortnight and on Tuesday, Sajid got injured while making the explosive device. His left hand was damaged when it went off accidentally. Sajid had called up Sameer immediately after the explosion and the latter rushed to his house.
An Assistant Sub Inspector of Rajasthan Police was today arrested by the Anti Corruption Bureau for allegedly accepting a bribe of Rs 50,000 in Karauli district.

Antu Lal Mandal, posted at Hindaun city police station, had demanded the bribe from Guman Singh Jogi to file a final report in a case against him, Inspector General (IG) of Anti Corruption Bureau (ACB) V K Singh said.

He said after verification of the complaint, a trap was laid and Mandal was arrested.
Preparations were today underway in Bangladesh for the execution of chief of fundamentalist Jamaat-e-Islami Motiur Rahman Nizami, a day after the Supreme Court rejected his plea to review the death penalty for war crimes, with family members meeting him in prison for the last time.

"Seven members of his family including his wife, two sons, daughter visited him," jailor Nasir Uddin of suburban high-security Kashimpur Central Jail told PTI over phone.

He said the close relatives were allowed to stay for 40 minutes with the top leader of Bangladesh's biggest Islamist party which was opposed to the country's 1971 independence from Pakistan.

Another senior official of the prisons department said the 73-year-old war crimes convict was expected to be executed at Dhaka Central Jail but simultaneous preparations were underway at Kashimpur jail as well.

"The execution is likely to take place in Dhaka Central Jail, but we asked officials at Kashimpur prison to make alternative preparations to carry out the process in two hours' notice, if required," said the official, requesting anonymity.

The Jamaat chief could be executed any time after he yesterday exhausted his last legal opportunity to overturn the death penalty, with the Supreme Court rejecting his petition to review the death sentence it earlier upheld for committing crimes against humanity during 1971 Liberation War, siding with the Pakistani troops.

He was particularly found guilty of systematic killings of more than 450 people alone in his own village home in northwestern Pabna, siding with the Pakistani troops.

Nizami, a former lawmaker and minister in ex-prime minister Khaleda Zia's cabinet, has been in jail since 2010, when he was arrested to be tried for 1971 war crimes in a special tribunal which handed him down death penalty on October 29, 2014 on charges of mass murder, arson, loot and rape.

Nizami, who headed the infamous Al-Badr special militia force and Jamaat's student wing in 1971, challenged the International Crimes Tribunal (ICT-BD) verdict before the Supreme Court which upheld the original judgment on January 6 this year.

In his last legal efforts to save the neck, Nizami then sought to get the judgment reviewed by the apex court itself, which yesterday dismissed his last appeal, clearing the way for him to walk to the gallows.

Jail officials, however, declined to give details about when they were planning to hang the war crimes convict but said that in line with the procedure, Nizami would be asked if he preferred to seek presidential mercy, acknowledging his guilt, as his last ditch effort to evade the noose.

Attorney General Mahbub-ey Alam earlier said that unlike ordinary death row convicts, Nizami could be hanged anytime as set by the government after the final verdict of the Supreme Court though he would get the chance to seek the presidential clemency.

(Reopens FGN9)



President Abdul Hamid, however, has earlier rejected two such prayers by 1971 war crimes convicts - Nizami's top aide in 1971 and Jamaat's secretary general Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mujaheed and Salauddin Quader Chowdhury of ex-premier Khaleda Zia's BNP.

They were hanged on the night of November 21 last year, immediately after the president rejected their mercy petitions which they had filed earlier on that very day.

Bangladesh in 2010 initiated the process to try top Pakistani collaborators who acted as perpetrators of 1971 atrocities, constituting high-powered special tribunals and an investigating agency.

Nizami is one of the last remaining top perpetrators of crimes against humanity as Bangladesh so far saw execution of four war crimes convicts since the war crimes trial process began six years ago.

"It would be a failure of justice, unless he is handed down the death penalty," the ICT-BD commented as it handed down Nizami the capital punishment in October 2014, convicting him of "superior responsibility" as Al-Badr militia forces chief in 1971.

The so-called elite militia force is blamed for running a systematic campaign to massacre a large number of top intelligentsia just ahead of Bangladesh's victory.
Members of Bar Association Etah today went on an indefinite strike, demanding withdrawal of cases against advocates booked for allegedly assaulting a police officer.

We will remain on strike for an indefinite period till the case against advocates is taken back, President, Bar Association Etah, Satya Prakash said.

Police had on Tuesday filed a case against Suneel Kumar, Rakesh Kumar, Prashant Pundhir, Daya Ram Rajput and 40 other unidentified advocates for allegedly assaulting station officer of Saket Kotwali Naushad khan after the later had allegedly presented a lawyer Daya Ram, booked in an Arms Act case, in the court handcuffed.

However, bar association members refuted the allegation and said they had only protested against the handcuffing of the lawyer, and have been wrongly booked.

Meanwhile, Bar Association has threatened to expel advocates from the membership if found working during the strike.
The Maharashtra government, if required, will approach the Supreme Court against the Bombay High Court's decision of striking down of "unconstitutional sections" of Maharashtra Animals Preservation (Amendment) Act, Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis said today.

The high court today struck down two sections of Maharashtra Animal Preservation (Amendment) Act which criminalised possession of beef of animals slaughtered outside the state while upholding the ban on slaughter of bulls and bullocks in the state.

"The HC has affirmed that our law is constitutional and it has not targeted any religion, caste or creed. I am happy that our stand is vindicated by the court," Fadnavis told reporters here.

"However, there are two provisions of the law that have been struck down by the high court. We will consult our lawyers and if necessary, will approach the Supreme Court against this. Other than these two provisions, the court has found no fault with the law," he added.

A division bench of Justices AS Oka and SC Gupte struck down sections 5(d) and 9 (b) of the Act, which criminalised and imposed punishment on persons found in possession of beef of animals, slaughtered in the state or outside, saying it infringes upon a person's Right to Privacy.

Under the Act of 1976, there was ban on cow slaughter and possession and consumption of their meat. However, in 2015, the ban on slaughter of bulls and bullocks was also included in the Act by an amendment.
Hitting back at Congress chief Sonia Gandhi, BJP today dubbed the party's 'save democracy march' as 'save family' campaign and asserted that regardless of what she says the government is going to probe the fairly and promptly.

Addressing a press conference, Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said it has been a practice with the Congress that whenever an "earnest investigation" is done, it treats it as anti- and an attack on democracy.

"If a case of corruption is being probed honestly, then how does it become anti- The fight is not with your (Gandhi) family but corruption. Congress should answer why does trail of all corruption cases lead to you? A series of scams has become a benchmark of Congress government.

"Every attempt was made to put obstacles in the AgustaWestland probe. Regardless of what Congress says, this government is going to prosecute (accused) in a fair manner. Probe will be done in a fairest manner and promptly," he told the media.

Today's march was a "save family" campaign of Sonia and Rahul Gandhi, he said.

Attacking the Congress chief, he said if she claims she fears none, then why is she afraid of a fair investigation.

Alleging that the UPA government committed scams in sky (AgustaWestland), land (Adarsh), sea (submarine) and underground (coal), he sought to know why two key people, former governors M K Narayanan and B V Wanchoo were not questioned in the . It was done only after the NDA came to power, he said



Raising more questions, he said the Congress should show concern over probity and propriety.

Targeting the Gandhi family, he said when Indira Gandhi faced legal trouble prompting her to impose Emergency and Rajiv Gandhi faced questions in Bofors case, these were termed anti- and as an attack on democracy and this was happening again.

"Their language has not changed in 40-45 years but the nation has," he said.

Making a jibe at the presence of Robert Vadra's poster in the Congress' march, he said it may be a design to "complete the family".

BJP National Secretary Shrikant Sharma said the whole purpose of the march was to save family and its son-in-law and that is Vadra's posters were put up.
British spies based in Gibraltar, an overseas territory of the UK, have helped smash an Islamic State terror gang which was reportedly planning attacks on holiday resorts in Spain, according to a media report.

They were able to track down the gang after propaganda messages were found online, leading to Spanish police arresting four people on suspicion of spreading extremism online and indoctrinating recruits, the Daily Express reported.

Police said the cell, operating in Gibralter on the south coast of Spain, was trying to recruit radicals and persuade them to attack holiday resorts in Costa Del Sol, a region popular with British holidaymakers.

Armed police carried out a raid in Madrid and the Spanish towns of Pinto and Ciempozuelos earlier this week.

Police arrested three Moroccans and one Spaniard who are allegedly part of an organised cell spreading extremist material online.

Video footage of their capture has also been released by the Spanish Guardia Civil police force, the daily said.

The group have allegedly made contact with hundreds of people, selecting potential members to be radicalised and indoctrinated using different webpages and instant messaging apps to communicate.

Spain remains on high alert after the anti-terror level was raised in June 2015.

The Spanish Guardia Civil have intensified their investigations into propaganda and recruitment groups.

Almost 20 people have now been detained in the country this year so far in connection with extremism and terrorism.
A Moroccan court has sentenced a brother of the suspected Paris attacks ringleader to two years in prison.

Official Moroccan agency MAP reported that Yassine Abaaoud, a younger brother of Abdelhamid Abaaoud, was convicted of being an apologist for terror and failing to report terror-related crimes.

The court in the city of Sale was not convinced by Abaaoud's argument that he was not an extremist militant and was unaware of his brother's deadly projects.

Authorities have identified Abdelhamid Abaaoud as the ringleader of the November 13 attacks in Paris that left 130 people dead and hundreds wounded. He died in a police raid a few days later.

Yassine Abaaoud was arrested October 10 in Morocco while on a family visit.
Fair trade regulator CCI has rejected allegations that Ambika Trading & Construction indulged in anti-competitive practices with regard to sale of cottages in Nainital, Uttarakhand.

After finding that the entity is not a dominant player in the relevant market, the Competition Commission of India (CCI) dismissed the complaint.

For this case, the watchdog considered 'provision of services for development and sale of residential units in Nainital' as the relevant market.

It was alleged that the firm did not hand over possession of cottages even after receiving most of the sale amount and also did not execute the sale deed.

According to CCI, there are many other players operating and providing similar products to the consumers in the market concerned.

"... The Commission is of the view that the opposite party does not possess market power to act independently of competitive forces in the relevant market or to affect its competitors or consumers or the relevant market in its favour," the regulator said in an order this week.

"Thus, the opposite party is not found to be dominant in the relevant market."



In a separate case, CCI has rejected a complaint against one Raj Kumar, three central ministries and the Delhi government, among others, saying "there is no competition issue involved in the matter".

The complainant (one Bosco Joseph) had alleged that Raj Kumar tried to evict him from his rental shop in New Delhi. Besides, it was alleged that shops were purchased by Kumar in an illegal manner in collusion with various central ministries and NDMC (New Delhi Municipal Council), among others.

The complaint was also filed against the ministries of Law & Justice, Culture and Urban Development.

Noting that the matter is a property-related dispute, CCI rejected the allegations against the entities.

"... Allegations raised by the informant do not raise any competition concern and therefore, do not fall within the ambit of the (Competition) Act," the regulator said in an order this week.

CCI also said no specific allegation has been raised against the government bodies.
Food Minister Ram Vilas Paswan today said a team will be sent to Bundelkhand to look into the alleged death of a dalit due to hunger in Banda district in Uttar Pradesh.

Responding to the issue of the alleged death raised by Prabhat Jha (BJP) during Zero Hour in Rajya Sabha, Paswan said Food Security Act has been implemented in the country, except two poll-bound states of Tamil Nadu and Kerala.

He expressed surprise that when 100 per cent foodgrains are lifted for distribution at subsidised rates, how can a person die of hunger.

"We will send a team (Bundelkhand)," he said, adding that earlier a team was also sent to Bihar.

The team, Paswan said, will also find out since when foodgrains were not being given to the affected family.

Earlier, Jha said Kanhaiya, a dalit, had died of hunger in Banda district and police was trying to hush up the case. "Why is no one shedding tears on his death," he said.

Jha said Muni Devi, widow of the victim, has given a statement that her husband died of hunger. She also alleged that there was pressure on the family to complete the last rites of the victim.

Kumari Mayawati (BSP) said Kanhaiya's case was not an isolated incident. According to her, there have been murders in Bundelkhand and several others too have died of hunger. She also demanded that Centre should send a team there.
The Centre has asked state governments to adopt as part of their school syllabus so that willing students can take it as a subject.

Minister of State for AYUSH Shripad Yesso Naik said in Lok Sabha that the letter to the states favouring adoption of as part of the school syllabus was sent by the Human Resource Development Ministry so that those students who wished to enroll themselves could take it, though it will not be a compulsory subject.

"We hope that will be part of the school curriculum from the next academic session," he said during Question Hour.

Naik said yoga has been made compulsory for police personnel and plans are afoot to make it compulsory also for defence personnel.

"A scheme titled 'Yoga Training for Police Personnel' has been initiated by the Ministry," he said.

The minister said that the government has succeeded in adoption of June 21 as the International Day of Yoga. The first International Day of Yoga was celebrated in the country in a grand manner on June 21, 2015, which was celebrated across the globe involving 192 countries.

"Arrangements for celebrating second International Day of Yoga on June 21, 2016, have also started," he said.
Accusing the Centre of playing politics over water-train issue, UP Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav today asked it to send tankers in large numbers to the parched Bundelkhand region for supply of water from dams and canals there.

"If the central government really wants to help the state, it should provide tankers in thousands so that water can be provided in the villages there," he said at a public event here.

Yadav said the train sent to Jhansi in Bundelkhand region had no water in the wagons.

"The Bundelkhand region has many dams and canals where there is enough water. The requirement is to supply water from them," he said, adding the state government is working in that direction.

Yadav, who dedicated to the people 46 projects worth Rs 79.02 crore and laid the foundation of 28 projects worth Rs 800 crore, said his government was working to strike a balance between cities and villages.

Referring to welfare schemes, he said a record of sorts is being made in the state by laying roads.

The Agra-Lucknow expressway is being completed in a record time without any controversy over the acquisition of land, the Chief Minister said.

Taking potshots at the central government, he asked it to highlight a single welfare scheme for the people of the state.

"We have given autos and e-rickshaws to the people on the basis of their requirement, whereas the central government is giving e-rickshaws by arranging its cost through other means," he said.

Yadav said the issue of raising honorarium of anganwadi workers was being looked into.
The first Chinese Maglev rail line began operating in Changsha city today as China looks to sell the system abroad along with its bullet-train technology.

The magnetically-levitated (Maglev) train shuttles between Changsha's south railway station and the airport, with one stop in between.

It takes 19 minutes and 30 seconds to complete the 18.5 -km journey, according to a statement from operator Hunan Maglev Transport Co. The train can carry 363 people at a maximum speed of 100 kms an hour.

The price of a one-way ticket is 20 yuan (USD 3).

Construction of the maglev trains, designed and manufactured by CRRC Zhuzhou Locomotive Co in Hunan Province, began in May 2014 with total investment of 4.29 billion yuan.

The domestically produced moderate-speed Maglev rail costs between 150 million yuan and 250 million yuan per kilometer.

It is highly economical in terms of construction and maintenance costs, according to the statement.
China will take part in a regular US-led naval exercise starting next month, a top US commander said today, despite tensions over Beijing's territorial claims in the South China Sea.

The United States will host multi-national naval drills called the Rim of the Pacific Exercise (RIMPAC) -- billed as the world's largest -- off Hawaii in June and July.

Although the Chinese navy has previously joined the exercises, held every two years, the latest drill comes as the country more aggressively asserts its maritime claims in Asia, prompting the US to say in March that it was "reassessing" Beijing's participation.

But Vice Admiral Joseph Aucoin, commander of the US Seventh Fleet, told journalists in Shanghai today: "The PLAN (People's Liberation Army Navy) will participate in an exercise, the largest exercise that we do, in a couple of months."



He was speaking after the arrival of his flagship the USS Blue Ridge in the commercial hub, just days after China denied a port call for a US aircraft carrier in its special administrative region of Hong Kong.

US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said in April that China was still invited to the massive exercises.

"It was really good that we were able to have the PLAN participate in the last Rim of the Pacific, and they're participating also this summer," Aucoin said.

"It's a way to better understand one another, to work together closer, so that we can help one another, especially with things like humanitarian assistance, disaster relief."



China has just announced its own naval combat drills in the South China Sea with three vessels leaving port on Wednesday to join the exercises, according to state media.

It has also built up artificial islands on outcrops in the area.

The United States has sent ships and planes into the strategically vital waters in an attempt to counter what it has described as a threat to freedom of navigation.

Aucoin denied that the US presence in the region was raising tensions, saying the goal was to allow access to sea lanes in international waters, and urging China to cooperate to maintain peace and security.

"We're sailing and flying and operating in international waters," he said. "We do this to challenge excessive maritime claims, so it doesn't impede commerce.
The Chinese consulate will celebrate Rabindranath Tagore's 155th birth anniversary in a big way tomorrow with a conference in the city where distinguished scholars and experts from the two countries will discuss the bard's relationship with China.

The conference, to be organised in collaboration with Visva Bharati University set up by the bard, will be the first such gathering of so many Tagore experts from China anywhere in India.

Chinese experts who will participate include professor Liu Shuxiong of Peking University, Prof Mei Xiaoyun of Northwest University and Dr Zeng Qiong of Tianjin Foreign Studies University.

"Tagore's values are very much shared by the people of the two countries. Tagore was very much inspired by Chinese philosophy," Chinese consul general Ma Zhanwu said.

"The values and philosophies we share are reflected in his poems and writings ... He is loved by both people of India and China," the diplomat said.

The conference on Tagore and China tomorrow will mark the 155th birth anniversary of the Nobel laureate.

There will be a session on Tagore and literature in China, which includes the Chinese translation of Tagore's literature and Tagore's influence on Chinese writers.

Another session will be on Tagore's journey to China, including his motivation and the message which he inculcated among Chinese people.

During the conference, scholars will also discuss Tagore-related teaching and research in China.
The Chinese military has launched "purification" campaign to combat corruption in the 2.3-million-strong army by deploying anti-graft teams to different command centres.

Ten new anti-corruption teams were posted to departments, theatre commands of Central Military Commission (CMC) to "purify" People's Liberation Army (PLA) as part of its revamped disciplinary reinforcement and anti-corruption system, official media here reported.

Over the past three years, nearly 50 senior officers of the PLA and the Armed Police Force have been convicted or investigated for corruption allegations in an unprecedented campaign launched by President Xi Jinping. The campaign also drew criticism that the "big purge" was aimed at consolidating his hold on power.

Read more from our special coverage on "CHINA"

Besides Presidency, Xi heads the ruling Communist Party and the CMC.

Those indicted included Guo Boxiong and Xu Caihou, both former vice-chairmen of the CMC. Xu died in mid-March last year before standing trial.

Under the new initiative, central inspection teams are being sent to all main parts of the Chinese military.

After a training sessions, 10 teams of the CMC's newly appointed inspectors are assuming their posts in all CMC departments and theatre commands.

This will be the first time the top military authority has established a standing anti-corruption force that will be directly under its control within its units, state-run PLA Daily reported, adding that this will help reshape the military's disciplinary inspection system.

The planned by Xi is aimed at purifying the People's Liberation Army, state-run Daily quoted an official as saying.

The inspection teams directly reporting to the CMC will be more effective in improving the behaviour of officers at major general level and above, the official said.

There are 15 departments under the CMC and five theatre commands, which means each inspection team will oversee two departments or commands on average.

It was not known whether these CMC departments and theatre commands, which were formed in January at the height of the unprecedented military reform initiated by Xi, have their own anti-graft bodies.

The former top PLA departments-general staff, political, logistics and armaments-as well as seven former regional commands had their own disciplinary inspection commissions.

General Xu Qiliang, vice-chairman of the CMC, asked inspectors to take advantage of the CMC's authority and the fact that they will be close to the units they supervise to fulfil their missions.

Ren Jianming, director of the Clean Governance Research Centre at Beihang University in Beijing, said that sending disciplinary inspection teams to CMC departments and regional commands is part of the country's reform of its anti-corruption system.
A Chinese province with large population of Muslims has ordered kindergartens to enforce a ban on religious activity on campus after a video of a little girl reciting the Quran at a nursery school went viral, according to a media report.

The education authority in Gansu province criticised the kindergarten in Linxia, where the girl read the Islamic religious text.

The local government said it "strongly condemned the damaging act to the physical and mental health of the younger generation", Hong Kong-based South Morning Post reported on Friday.

The video was titled "Cute girl reciting scriptures in Gansu." In the video, the unidentified girl is seen wearing a black Muslim head covering and sitting in a classroom with dozens of other students apparently all in Muslim attire.

Many people commenting online were angered by the video, the report said.

Gansu is home to about 1.6 million Muslims.It has the third highest population of people holding the faith among China's provinces and regions, behind Xinjiang and Ningxia.

China's communist government is atheist, but people are allowed to follow authorised religions under official controls.

The Gansu education authority cited the country's constitution and education laws, which state that "religious activities shall not get in the way of education."



Apart from religious institutions with government approval, schools cannot conduct religious activities or preach religion, the statement said.

"(They) shall not force or induce pupils to convert to a certain religion or establish any religious organisations in schools," the statement said.
The CID today arrested three persons from Nadia district for allegedly running a fake organization claiming to have 78 medical colleges under it throughout the country.

They were produced in Krishnagar court today and taken into CID remand for 10 days, CID sources said.

The CID had initiated the probe after receiving a letter from the Ministry of Health, Government of India on the suspicious activity of the organization 'Bio-chemic Education Grant Commission'.

The UGC had also lodged a complaint with the Kotwali police station regarding the fake organization headed by Shyamal Dutta.

"It has opened 78 medical colleges in India and also launched a Medical Court which has no recognition from the concerned authority," a CID source said.

Dutta allegedly was going to open two more colleges at Shantipur and Kalyani in Nadia district.

The fake organisation provides various medical courses such as DMBS, for which it takes admission fees starting from Rs 9,000. The monthly fee amounts to Rs 1,250-Rs 2,000. The duration of the courses is four years. There is no fixed amount for admission. They manage as much as they can, sources said.

Dutta claimed to possess relevant papers allowing him to run the organization but failed to satisfy the CID.

The team arrested two more persons, Dibyendu Hazra from Sutragarh and Ranjit Biswas from Debra Para in Shantipur.
The Chief Justice of India (CJI) Justice T S Thakur during his maiden visit to Odisha after assuming office in January this year, will deliver the convocation address in the Third Convocation of National Law University here tomorrow.

This was informed by the University Vice Chancellor Prof Srikrishna Deva Rao here today.

The CJI along with several judges of the Supreme Court and other High Courts of the country would be in the city to attend the centennial celebrations of the first sitting of the circuit bench of High Court for Odisha at Cuttack.

Speaking about the convocation, the VC said a total of 135 students would be conferred with degrees by the CJI, out of which 108 would be receiving the LLB degrees, 25 would receive LLM degrees and two would be awarded with PhD.

A total of 17 gold medals in different categories would be given to the students at the convocation this year, the VC said.
Democratic presidential front- runner Hillary Clinton has denounced Republican presumptive nominee Donald Trump for doubling down on his plans to deport millions of immigrant families, saying his "hateful" language needs to be repudiated.

"Now, every election is a choice, and just yesterday, Donald Trump doubled down on his plan to create a deportation force to round up millions of people. That's actually what he said," she said at a campaign rally in Los Angeles.

"He has pledged in his first days in office to scrap DACA and DAPA and to finalise a design for a giant wall on the border. Well, the best way to prevent that from happening is to make sure he never gets near the White House," she said as the audience booed the Republican leader.

The former secretary of state urged her supporters to recognise that the kind of language coming from Trump is hateful, and needs to be repudiated.

"We not only have to work for comprehensive immigration reform, we have to recognise that the kind of language coming from Donald Trump is hateful, and we need to repudiate it," he said amidst cheers from the audience.

Clinton, currently campaigning in California where the primary is scheduled for June 7, said the next president has to meet three tests: Can he actually help families get ahead and stay ahead? Can he keep Americans safe? And can he bring the country together?



"Well, Donald Trump fails all three of those tests. With all the challenges we face in America and in the world, we can't have a loose cannon in the Oval Office. That is a risk we cannot afford," she said, in a repeat of what she told CNN a day earlier.

As president, creating good jobs and raising incomes will be her number one priority, Clinton said.

"We will follow the lead of California and raise the minimum wage across America. We will guarantee equal pay for women's work. I think that's way overdue.

"I will do everything I can to make the economy work for everybody, to help more people lift themselves out of poverty, lift themselves into the middle class, and go as far as their hard work and talents will take them," she said.

"President (Barack) Obama said it extremely well, both in



what his speech discussed in the convention, what his press conferences since have pointed out. This is a crossroads election. There is so much at stake," she said.

Clinton said she will bring the country together. "I think we have three overarching goals: we need more economic opportunity, we need to protect our national security and we have got to work toward American unity," she said.

"I have been trying to understand what it is that has driven people to support Trump and I've met with some people, I have listened to them," she added.

"I want to be the President for all Americans. I want to lift up and give everybody a chance to pursue their dreams. And that means people who are supporting him," Clinton said.

(Reopens FES 32)



Meanwhile, US Vice President Joe Biden said that some of the things that Trump does or says defies logic.

"I can't figure out Mr Trump. I've known him a while, not well," Biden told reporters travelling with him in Florida where he campaigned for his Democratic party candidates and attended fund raising events.

"You know, it's true that when you've never run for public office before, going out there and getting on the biggest stage in the world, you're bound to make mistakes. But some of the things that he does and says sort of defy logic for me," Biden said.

The Vice President in particular referred to Trump's comments on Russia, NATO and nuclearisation.

"Especially his comments on nuclearisation, nuclear weapons, Russia - I mean, it borders on - I don't think he intentionally wants to undermine our security. But I've spent more time working on NATO and US-Russia relationships than anybody, literally, left in the United States Congress," Biden said.

"It has been (Russian President Vladimir) Putin's objective from day one to prevent a Europe -- which we've agreed is our goal -- a Europe whole, free and secure, and he's been going out of his way to try to break up the EU and break up NATO," he noted.

"The stuff that Mr Trump is saying, the greatest military alliance in all for human history -- NATO -- and after almost 70 years, and he's talking about he's not sure he's going to honour our commitment?" he said.

Observing Trump is a showman here, Biden said this is not how the Republican presidential candidate is viewed overseas.
Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan today visited the ongoing Simhastha Kumbh Mela site where seven people were killed and around 90 others injured when heavy rains accompanied by lightning and squall flattened and uprooted makeshifts tents of pilgrims.

Chouhan arrived here at around 4 AM, and after visiting the affected area he returned to Bhopal at 9.30 AM, Ujjain Divisional Commissioner Ravindra Pastaur said.

The Chief Minister promised all help to the devotees, he said, adding the injured are being treated in hospitals.

Meanwhile, life today limped back to normal, a day after the nature's fury at the Kumbh Mela site in this ancient city.

"Normalcy has returned to the holy city fast. Help from adjoining districts is pouring-in," Pastaur said.

The rain had yesterday made large parts of the Mela ground slushy, making the rescue operation difficult. The authorities had cut off the electricity supply to the area as a precautionary measure.

"Things have been set right and electricity supply has been restored in the city," Pastaur said.

Around nine lakh devotees and sadhus are in the city taking part in the Kumbh.

Since midnight, the devotees have been taking a dip in the holy Shipra river, he said.

"With the help of people from adjoining districts, we are providing meals and other facilities to the pilgrims," Pastaur said.

Six persons were killed yesterday due to collapse of tents and some gates erected at the Kumbh area. Besides, a woman pilgrim was killed in Undasa area when lightning struck her.

The second 'Shahi Snan' (royal bath) at the Kumbh is slated for May 9.

A police official had yesterday said that nearly a third of the tents put up by the pilgrims were blown away in the squall. It will take at least a week to erect them again, he said.

Terming the incident as painful, Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan has announced an ex-gratia of Rs 2 lakh each to the kin of the deceased.

The state government has spent more than Rs 3,600 crore for developing infrastructure and facilities for the month-long congregation.
Colombian authorities have arrested a prominent Panama businessman sought by the US and dismantled an empire of businesses that the US says were part of a top worldwide money-laundering organization for drug traffickers.

The coordinated operation was announced yesterday as the US Treasury Department froze US assets owned by 68 companies in this Central American nation and in Colombia under a drug kingpin designation.

As part of the effort, Colombian police arrested Nidal Waked the previous day at an airport in Colombia's capital, Bogota.

The Colombian police today showed reporters several videos of Waked taken after his arrest. In one, he is reading the charges against him and a list of rights for prisoners held in Colombia.

Waked and his father, Abdul Waked, are accused of being the co-leaders of an organization that laundered drug profits through a web of companies including a luxury mall, a bank and the duty-free zone at Panama City's international airport, which had attracted US law enforcement's scrutiny before.

The family also owns Panama's oldest newspaper, the Estrella de Panama.

Grupo Wisa, the family's holding company, issued a terse statement saying the accusations "are false and unfounded." The company said it had instructed its lawyers to cooperate fully in the investigation announced by Panama's attorney general.

The action comes as Panama is struggling to overcome international rebuke of its offshore banking system in the wake of a damaging leak of 11.5 million documents detailing how a prominent law firm helped the world's rich and famous hide their wealth.

Panama's tradition for financial secrecy and crossroads location along the path of South American cocaine heading to the US has long made it an attractive money-laundering center.

The Drug Enforcement Administration described Waked as "one of the world's most significant drug money launderers and criminal facilitators." It said he faces money laundering and bank fraud charges in Florida.

A law enforcement official, who agreed to discuss the matter only if not quoted by name because he was not authorized to discuss the case publicly, said the Waked family is accused of laundering funds on behalf of Colombian and Mexican drug cartels as well as independent drug-trafficking organisations.
Congress in Rajya Sabha today accused the government of "abusing and insulting" the Constitution, on a day its top leadership took to streets to protest the "assaults on democracy".

Raising the issue during Question Hour in Rajya Sabha, Deputy Leader of Congress Anand Sharma said the top leadership of his party is protesting against the "assaults on democracy" by this government.

"This government is abusing and insulting the Constitution. Indian Constitution is being insulted. Democracy is being assaulted," he said.

Sharma said all party leaders including Congress President Sonia Gandhi and Vice President Rahul Gandhi have been "arrested".

"We are protesting the assault on democracy by this government," he said.

Under attack over AgustaWestland issue, a combative Sonia Gandhi, while addressing the protest march, hit back at the Modi government saying it should "not try to frighten" Congress and that life has taught her "to fight on".

She, Rahul Gandhi and other top party leaders later courted arrest after they were stopped from marching to Parliament.
Congress today sought to put the onus on the ruling NDA government about the irregularities in Agusta Westland helicopter deal and demanded a Supreme Court monitored probe in the issue.

"Do not level baseless allegations. Answer the questions which we are raising. Supreme Court monitored investigation should happen and its reports should be placed in the House every three months," senior Congress leader Jyotiraditya Scindia said in Lok Sabha during debate on a Calling Attention Motion on the issue.

He said it was practice of the BJP members to level wrong and baseless allegations and through that, they want to create an illusion.

"But we too have taken an oath that we will break that 'mayajaal' (illusion) and place the facts in front of the country and this House," Scindia said.

The reality is that this deal was started during the NDA regime in 1999 and the issue they are talking about bringing down the height of the helicopter from 6000 to 4500 metres, it was done by NDA government in 2003 and not the UPA, he said.

In December 2003, a letter was written from the Prime Minister's Office to change the norms and make it 4500 metres, Scindia said.

The moment the issue came ouot in newspapers, he said the UPA government wrote to the embassy in Rome that investigation should be done as early as possible.

In April 2012, it was in fact the UPA government which ordered CBI to investigate the matter, Scindia said, adding that the contract was cancelled on February 15, 2013 and a notice was served on AugustaWestland and on January 1, 2014, the UPA government cancelled that contract.

In February 2013, the UPA government gave the case to the CBI and within 12 days, a preliminary inquiry was lodged, he informed adding Letter Rogatory too was issued to Tunisia, Mauritius and Italy.

"...24 months have passed of your government, what have you done in 720 days of your government? Have you brought in a single penny? Have you even identified a single person who has indulged in corruption," he asked.

"In March 2013, we in the House had proposed to form a JPC (joint parliamentary committee). Why did the NDA oppose that proposal? People of this country should ask why you opposed that proposal in 2013," the Congress leader said.

He said the banning and blacklisting of companies too was started by the UPA government. The then Defence Minister had stated that no deal would happen with AgustaWestland, Scindia said, adding it was UPA government which had brought Rs 2,063 crore.

Stoutly defending his party President, the Congress



leader said nowhere did the name of Sonia Gandhi was mentioned.

"Whenever the name of Sonia Gandhi comes, they start feeling irritated and they are afraid also from her because she is a 'lioness' that is why they (BJP) are afraid of her," he said, adding that the mention about the "family" was of Tyagi's family and not the Gandhi family.

On the term 'AP', he said there are so many people who could have this abbreviation and "we have the Gujarat Chief Minister whose initials are also AP...On such things they are labelling the allegations", he added.

Continuing his tirade against the Modi government, Scindia said "you have not been able to get the responses from those countries in two years time ...It was our Defence Minister who stated that corruption is there in the deal and we will investigate that."



Despite being blacklisted, the NDA government permitted the company to send RFI (request for information) some contracts like in the Naval Utility helicopters.

"Why in the FIPB meeting on October 8, 2015, permission was given to AgustaWestland which was a blacklisted company? Answer this ... Why Finmeccanica was invited to participate in a Make in India programme," he asked.

"Your (BJP) party president said that this is a bogus company and you invited a bogus company in Make in India. They have to give the answers to this," the Congress member said.

"Today we have put our balance sheet in front of you. Show us your balance sheet of two years. Tell the country that in two years what you have done," he said.
The issue of CAG listing irregularities in Gujarat State Petroleum Corporation's KG basin gas project again reverberated in Rajya Sabha today with a Congress member seeking government's reply on the issue.

Raising the issue at the start of the Question Hour, Jairam Ramesh said "it's one week since I have been asking this question every day. This is a matter of national importance" and sought an answer to the CAG findings of alleged regularities running into several thousand crores in the matter.

Modi as Gujarat Chief Minister in 2005 had announced that GSPC had struck 20 trillion cubic feet of gas reserves in its KG basin block. But recoverable reserves had proved to be one-tenth of that and GSPC's borrowings shot up to Rs 19,716.27 crore as of March 31, 2015, according to CAG report.

Congress had raised the issue in the Upper House on Monday as well.

The government had then said CAG reports are examined by Public Accounts Committees (PACs) of state assemblies and there was no convention to discuss those in Parliament.

It had also then alleged that Congress was trying to divert attention from AgustaWestland helicopter deal.

Chairman Hamid Ansari, however, insisted that Question Hour should be allowed and wondered what is the point in "disrupting" the Question Hour.

As sloganeering continued, Kurien adjourned the House again for 15 minutes.

Earlier in the day, Rajya Sabha was adjourned briefly towards the end of Zero Hour in the pre-noon session as Congress members raised slogans against the government and trooped into the Well.
Union minister M Venkaiah Naidu today hit out at Congress over the issues of Uttarakhand political crisis and VVIP chopper deal, accusing the opposition party of "weakening" democracy by indulging in "evil deeds".

The Parliamentary Affairs minister also questioned the Congress' demand for a SC-monitored CBI probe in the AgustaWestland chopper deal saying it did not initiate the same during its own rule when the scam took place.

It is the Modi government which cancelled the deal and handed over the matter to CBI and Enforcement Directorate, he claimed.

"We believe in Loktantra (They Believe in Kutantra). They did every Kutantra (evil deed) to weaken Loktantra (democracy)," he said in a tweet.

"Agusta Scam happened under Congress Rule; because of this country lost thousands of crores of money. They wasted full two years without taking action, we have cancelled the deal. CBI and ED are taking necessary action," he said in a series of tweets.

Questioning its demand, he said "during Congress regime they didn't order CBI inquiry under the SC-supervision on Agusta. Now they are asking for it. Why the new demand?"



"They are not able to hear the facts from the Defence Minister, that's why they talk out and walk out of house, that is their style."



The senior BJP leader also took a dig at Congress on conducting a floor test in Uttarakhand after disqualifying nine MLAs, saying it was their "new form of democracy".

"Disqualifying the 9 MLAs in Uttarakhand and then conduct floor strength is the 'Naya Loktantra' (new form of democracy) of Congress," Naidu tweeted.

The Supreme Court today ordered a floor test on Tuesday when ousted chief minister Harish Rawat will have to prove majority in the House between 11 AM and 1 PM.

The apex court also directed that the nine rebel Congress MLAs, who have challenged their disqualification by the Speaker in the High Court, will not participate in the floor test "if they have the same status" at the time of vote of confidence.

However, the petition of the disqualified MLAs will come up tomorrow before the Uttarakhand High Court. If these MLAs are allowed to vote, Rawat's fate in the 70-member Assembly may be sealed.

President's rule was imposed in hill state in March after it plunged into a political crisis following the rebellion of the nine legislators.

While releasing the electronic version of the Year Book,



he said the e-version provided latest technical features and conformed to the best international standards.

The e-book had a variety of reader-friendly features like searchable content, referencing, and was priced at 25 per cent less than the print books, the Union Minister said.

Taking forward the governments digital push, the Division has converted over 750 books into digital format, and is poised to meet the 12th Plan Scheme target of digitising 1,000 books by the end of March 2017, he said.

Naidu also gave an overview of the activities and initiatives taken by the Ministry of I&B and its Media Units during the two weeks Swachhta Pakhwada for the period from Jan 16 to Jan 31.

Ministry of I&B had proactively planned a theme based Swachhta Calendar for period August 2016 to July 2017 to give a thrust to the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, he said.

Naidu said his ministry tried to retrieve space after disposal of old furniture, fixtures, electronic and electrical waste. It had successful retrieved 60,624 sq feet of space after the special campaign between September to November 2016.

A sum of Rs 14,21,484 was realized after auctioning of disposed goods, he said.

On the redressal of grievances, Naidu said a total of 4132 grievances had been disposed off during the last one year.

The Minister also mentioned the innovative ways that were taken to seek people participation in the mission through Swachh Bharat Short Film Festival, street plays, constitution of 'Best Section Award on Swachhta' by the Ministry.

A special 5 minutes Bulletin - Swachhta Samachar was also started on all weekdays by DD news, he added.
Opposition Congress today moved a privilege notice against Odisha Law Minister Arun Kumar Sahoo alleging that he misled the Assembly while making a statement on April 4.

The notice was brought by Congress Chief Whip Taraprasad Bahinipati who also demanded setting up a special committee to consider this matter as the law minister heads the existing privilege committee.

Bahinipati said the law minister in his statement had claimed that the leader of opposition tried to mislead the House on alleged receipt of funds by the ruling BJD from chit fund firms.

He said, the minister told the Assembly that "This is not happening for the first time that the leader of opposition tried to mislead the House. The time of the House was spoiled by raising the case of misbehaviour towards a woman earlier. Later the leader of opposition had tendered apology over this issue."



However, the statement of the law minister was not based on truth, Bahinipati mentioned in the privilege notice.

"You can verify the recordings of the House. The minister has tried to mislead the House and the people of Odisha by giving an untrue statement," the Congress chief whip said.

Demanding that the minister be punished for making false statement in the House, Bahinipati said outside the Assembly that Sahoo had raised the case in the House based on a newspaper report. The leader of the opposition was in no way connected to raising this (alleged rape case) matter in the Assembly.

"Neither the issue was raised by the leader of the opposition nor had he tendered apology in the House as said by the minister," Bahinipati added.
A Delhi court has said that prima facie the offence of unnatural sex is made out against a pilot who allegedly sexually assaulted his cabin crew, observing that consent is no ground for discharge.

The court said that charges can also be framed for rape and criminal intimidation against the accused who used his authority over her.

"The facts of the cases cited by the counsel for accused cannot be applied to the present case since the specific allegation of unnatural sex has been leveled against the accused for which consent cannot be ground of discharge. Further the prosecutrix is stating that the accused used his authority to force the prosecutrix into the physical relationship," Additional Sessions Judge Anuradha Shukla Bhardwaj said.

The court also said that keeping aside the allegation of promise of marriage, "There is otherwise prima facie material available to frame charges against the accused for the offences under sections 376(2) (rape), 377 (unnatural sex) and 506 (criminal intimidation) of the IPC."



Arguing on the point of framing charges, the prosecutor said the woman, who was a senior cabin crew, has stated in her complaint that the man used his authority of being a pilot in an airlines to obtain sexual favours, threatening her that he will finish her career. She has also leveled allegations of physical assault.

He argued that the woman had leveled allegations of unnatural sex and rape and alleged that the accused had induced her into a relationship on the pretext of marriage.

The woman had stated that she had resisted the advances of the accused and that he had her objectionable pictures which he threatened to use in case she made a complaint, he said.

Seeking discharge in the case, the counsel for accused argued that the woman was already married at the time of alleged incident and therefore it was in her knowledge she that was not free for marriage and could not have been raped on the pretext of false promise of marriage.

A case was lodged against the man at Moti Nagar Police Station in west Delhi in 2014.

The court fixed August 1 for framing charges on the accused after the defence counsel sought deferment saying that proceedings are already pending before the Delhi High Court and are listed for July.
Three persons have been awarded four years jail term by a Delhi court for planning to commit dacoity here in 2011.

"It has been proved on record by the prosecution that these persons had assembled with the intention to commit dacoity as they had deadly weapons like country-made pistol and knife," Special Judge Shail Jain said.

The court also imposed a fine of Rs 5,000 on each of the three convicts who were caught from Maharaja Agrasen Park near Kashmere Gate, while making preparations for a dacoity.

According to the prosecution, on April 4, 2011, the police officials, acting on a tip-off, nabbed Javed, Wahid, Ayyub and Pradeep from the park while they were making plans to commit dacoity in buses going to Shahdara from Mori Gate here. It also alleged that they were armed.

During the trial, the four men claimed innocence and that they were falsely implicated in the case.

The court observed that the defence counsel, during the cross-examination, was not able to bring forth any material suggestions to prove the innocence of the accused.

"The entire stress in the cross-examination has been about the visibility of the persons standing behind the statue of Maharaja Agrasen, which to my mind was not significant," the judge said.

Pradeep had died during the pendency of the trial and proceedings against him were abated by the court.
The police crime statistics in Bihar backs Chief Minister Nitish Kumar's claim that crime rate has come down by about 27 per cent since imposition of total prohibition in the state in early April.

Crime figures compiled by state police headquarters reflect slide in heinous crimes like murder, kidnapping for ransom, rape, dacoity, arms act, atrocities against women and SC & ST and riots among others during the month of April as compared to data of last year.

Chief Minister Nitish Kumar had announced complete ban on sale and consumption of alcohol, including country, spiced and Indian Made Foreign Liquor (IMFL), in the state on April 5 last.

Murder cases fell from 276 in April 2015 to 206 in April 2016, a decline of 25.36 per cent, Additional Director General of Police (Law and Order) Alok Raj, who is the nodal officer for enforcement of prohibition, told PTI today.

The police headquarters have compiled the figures on the basis of reports submitted by respective SSPs and SPs of districts following the prohibition.

As per data, a total of 12 persons were kidnapped for ransom in April 2015, while the number declined to one in April this year. The number of rape cases fell from 112 to 59 in April this year, a decline of 47.32 per cent.

Asked whether prohibition alone was the reason for decline in the crime graph this April in the state, the ADG said "Prohibition and pro-active policing have been major contributors for decline in the number of criminal cases in April this year."



Chief Minister Nitish Kumar has been claiming that crime has dropped by about 27 per cent since Bihar was declared a total dry state.

As per data prepared by CID-Bihar, the number of both



minor and major riot cases witnessed a drop in April this year.

The total number of minor riot cases was 1,118 in April 2015, which slid to 684 in April 2016, a sharp decline of 38.82 per cent from last year.

Similarly, 27 major riot cases were reported in April last year compared to nine cases during the same month now, a 66.67 per cent drop.

The number of dacoities fell from 39 to 23 this April, a decline of 41.03 per cent, as per police headquarters data.

The report said the number of loot cases declined from 138 in April last year to 96 April this year, a fall of 30.43 per cent.

The number of road accidents has witnessed a decline of 17.62 per cent from 840 to 692 in April this year.

The number of burglary also slid by 2.40 per cent (from 333 to 325), number of atrocities against women by 13.32 per cent (from 398 to 345) and number of atrocities against SC and ST by 45.09 per cent (from 499 to 274).
A week after the brutal rape and murder of a Dalit woman in Ernakulam district, Kerala Police today said the incident appears to be a "planned one" and its probe has entered a "crucial stage".

"Investigation is going through a crucial stage. It appears to be a planned murder and not an un-premeditated," Additional Director General of Police K Padmakumar, who is supervising the probe by the Special Investigation Team comprising experts from the state police, told reporters here.

He said the investigation is on the "right track", but refused to say about the arrest of the culprits.

Police, which continued questioning people, including some neighbours, a bus driver and his assistant, to get a lead in the case, said it was verifying the inputs received from various persons.

Over 125 people have been questioned in connection with the rape and brutal murder of the 30-year-old law student, who hailed from a poor family, at her home at Perumbavoor in Ernakulam district on April 28.

Earlier, state police chief T P Senkumar had rejected suggestions that there were many major lapses by the force initially which have impacted the probe.

After holding meeting with the top cops supervising the case at nearby Perumbavoor last evening, Senkumar had said "a scientific, professional investigation" is progressing in the case, but admitted that they could not reach a "sudden detection."



"We are doing a professional work. Many experts in the police team have been called in to assist the probe. We are taking all types of inputs. Scientific, professional investigation is on. We have not reached a sudden detection but the probe is in progress," he told reporters.

The top police officer said there were "not much lapses" from the local police in the initial stage of the investigation.
Lieutenant Governor of Delhi Najeeb Jung agreed in priniciple today to allot two plots of land for construction of two annexes to Arunachal Bhawan on the request of state Chief Minister Kalikho Pul.

The chief minister called on the Lieutenant Governor, who also heads Delhi Development Authority (DDA), at the Raj Bhawan in New Delhi for assistance in deputing a nodal officer to help identify and allot two plots of land, each measuring 8000 sq mts in north and south Delhi.

"The construction of annexes will greatly benefit people from Arunachal who often come to the national capital for matters of healthcare, education and trade. Also officers of the Arunachal government have to visit New Delhi regularly to attend development meetings," Pul told the Lt Governor, an official report here said.

"Today when there is so much concern about the sense of alienation being faced by people from northeast in New Delhi, this gesture will really touch people's hearts," the chief minister said.

Pul informed that there is a Arunachal Bhawan at Chanakyapuri for visitors from the state but the available space is proving to be insufficient to accommodate their large numbers.

State chief secretary Shakuntala Gamlin, who accompanied Pul, apprised Jung on the development initiatives and policies being taken up by the state government to make the state investor-friendly, the report added.
A demand to confer Bharat Ratna to social reformer Jyotiba Phule, known for his work on upliftment of dalits and education of women, was made in the Lok Sabha during the Zero Hour on Friday.

The demand was made by Boinapally Vinod Kumar (RTS) and Rahul Shewale (Shivsena).

Satyapal Singh (BJP) demanded seperate provision in the curriculum for hotel management and catering for vegetarians as it will help popularise vegetarianism.

"Many universities and institutes offering hotel management degrees and diploma have a mandatory course on preparing non-vegetarian food. Since there is a substantial vegetarians in India, many opt out of the course," Singh said.

Jagdambika Pal (BJP) raised the issue of death of three children and an anganwadi worker in Mathura after consuming packaged milk, which was supplied through the mid-day meal scheme and demanded action against those responsible for it besides compensation of Rs 10 lakh to the family of the deceased.

Santosh Ahlawat (BJP) said several people have died in her Jhunjhunu constituency due to cancer after drinking arsenic water. She demanded a multi-speciality hospital in Jhunjhunu.

Ramesh Bidhuri (BJP) said since Delhi has a lot of archeaological sites, strigent laws are becoming a hindrance for development as even a road cannot be enlarged.

Highlighting the plight of Bundelkhand, which has been facing a a third consecutive drought, Pushpendra Singh Chandel (BJP) said the Samajwadi Party government in Uttar Pradesh has still not disbursed Rs 1,304 crore meant for farmers following the drought despite instructions from the Centre.

With the crashing of onion prices, Pralhad Patel (BJP) said while the Centre is procuring over 15 lakh tonnes of onions, states who consume more onion should also buy excess yield.

Shankar Prasad Dutta (CPI-M) said salaries have not been paid to over 1,050 workers of Hindustan Antibiotics Ltd in Pune over the last 18 months, which is leading them to a starvation like situation.

Mahendra Nath Pandey (BJP) raised the issue of over 3 lakhs vacant posts of teachers. He said that when a demand was made to fill the posts by youth, they were lathi-charged.

It was worse than Jallianwala Baug episode, he said.
Indian and American officials are holding discussions on a potential visit of the Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the US, the White House has said.

"I know that there been some discussion about the potential of Prime Minister Modi visiting Washington and visiting the White House," the White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest told reporters at his daily conference yesterday.

At this point of time, there is no "update" on those discussions, he said.

A day earlier, the US India Business Council (USIBC) announced that Modi would address its annual gala in Washington on June 7.

The Speaker of the House of Representatives Paul Ryan has invited Modi to address a joint meeting of the US Congress on June 8.

Prime Minister's Office has not made any conformation of these meetings yet.

If it happens, this would be Modi's fourth visit to the US and third to Washington after he became the Prime Minister in May 2014.

His earlier visits were in September 2014 (Washington Dc and New York), September 2015 (New York and Silicon Valley) and March-April 2016 (Washington DC).
French Prime Minister Manuel Valls accused the presumptive US Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump of being a "bad man" today, having previously criticised him over his views on Muslims.

Trump's win in Tuesday's hotly contested Indiana primary, pushing his remaining rivals out of the race and leaving him as the presumptive nominee, has drawn criticism at home and abroad, including from within the Republican party.

"Look at what is happening in the United States, we have great challenges but at the same time...," he said before being interrupted by his interviewer from France's Public Senat channel, who suggested: "Little men?"



"Yes, yes, yes, yes. Little men," said Valls during the interview, seen by AFP ahead of its broadcast this evening.

When asked if Trump was a "little man", Valls said: "Yes, and probably a bad man."



He said that populism had grown as democratic societies struggled to confront the challenges of globalisation and terrorism, hinting at France's own experience with the growth of the far-right National Front (FN).

Valls has previously criticised Trump, accusing him on Twitter of "stoking hatred" in December following the real estate mogul's suggestion that Muslims be banned from entering the USA.

Trump's path to Tuesday's victory was defined by a brutal primary campaign and a string of insulting remarks about other candidates, Muslims, Mexicans, refugees, women and others made by the billionaire businessman.
Revenue Department has detected a scam relating to diversion of Basmati rice meant from Iran to Dubai, government informed Parliament today.

"Yes," replied Minister of State for Finance Minister Jayant Sinha to a question in the Lok Sabha as to whether a "massive scam" in the export of high quality Basmati rice has been unearthed in the recent past.

In the written reply, Sinha said the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence "had detected cases of diversion of Basmati rice export wherein consignments or rice meant for Iran were diverted to Dubai".

The payments for the goods were made in Indian rupees instead of freely convertible foreign currency "by misusing" the facilities granted to the goods actually exported to Iran, he added.

Sinha, however, did not provide details regarding the case but replied in negative to a question whether any agency involved in the scam has been identified.
Egyptian police have arrested a prominent rights lawyer after protests in Cairo rattled President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi's government and ushered in an escalating crackdown on dissidents.

Plain-clothed policemen arrested Malek Adly, a vocal opponent of the government, late yesterday, his lawyer Mahmoud Belal said.

Adly had supported protests in April against the handing over of two islands to Saudi Arabia, which provoked outrage in Egypt and accusations that Sisi "sold" them in return for Saudi investments.

Police arrested dozens of activists ahead of an April 25 protest, hoping to forestall the repeat an earlier rally in Cairo in which more than a thousand people chanted for "the fall of the regime".

A continuing crackdown after the protest, which police quickly dispersed, led to a confrontation with the powerful Journalists' Syndicate after police raided its headquarters to arrest two reporters.

The two journalists were wanted in the same case as Adly, on suspicion of "attempting to topple the ruling system" and "spreading false news", a prosecution official said.

The official said Adly has been remanded in custody for two weeks, which the prosecution may extend.

He is also accused of joining a "group aimed at annulling the constitution", the official said.

Belal said Adly's lawyers had asked the prosecution service to elaborate on the accusations.

"We asked them 'what is that group, what is it called, or who are its members?' There were no answers to these questions," Belal said.

He said the "false news" they are accused of spreading amounts to Adly's contention that the Straits of Tiran islands handed to Saudi Arabia rightfully belonged to Egypt.

Sisi defended his decision to hand over the islands, saying they were Saudi to begin with and were leased to Egypt in the 1950s.

The former army chief come to power after toppling his Islamist predecessor Mohamed Morsi in 2013, unleashing a crackdown on his supporters that killed hundreds of protesters and imprisoned thousands.

Sisi, who was elected in 2014, had been feted by millions of Egyptians who opposed Morsi's rule and welcomed a firm leader at the helm to revive the country's economy.
An elderly couple has allegedly committed suicide at their residence in suburban Borivali apparently over financial problems, police said today.

The victims identified as Ashok H Shah (58) and his wife Ila (56) ended their lives last evening by hanging themselves from the ceiling of their house in Saidham Apartment in Borivali west.

Police recovered a note from the site, which says that nobody should be held responsible for the suicide.

According to police, the note, written in Gujarati, revealed that they were depressed over financial problems.

"The victims stayed with son Mihir, his wife and their son. Both-- Mihir and his wife-- are child specialist doctors. At the time of incident, Mihir's wife and son were in Ahmedabad at her maternal home. When Mihir returned home around 10.45 pm, he found it locked from inside," police said.

"By using another set of keys, he entered the house, only to find his parents hanging from the ceiling with a duppatta," police said.

They were rushed to Shatabdi hospital, where they were declared brought dead. A case of accidental death was registered in this regard.

The victim has a daughter, who stays in Dombivali with her family.

Further investigation into the case is on.
Nidhi Chaphekar, the 42-year-old Jet Airways crew member whose image sitting bloodied and dazed and her yellow uniform shredded in Brussels airport bombings became an iconic picture of the horror, returned home today to an emotional homecoming.

The mother of two from Mumbai, Nidhi, who has not yet recovered from the injuries suffered in the deadly terror attack on March 22, arrived here at around 7.30 AM on a Paris-Mumbai Jet airways flight and was driven straight to Breach Candy hospital from the airport. She was injured from the force of the first blast of the attack.

Relieved on her return, Nidhi's husband Rupesh Chaphekar said,"we are extremely happy to have Nidhi back home with us in Mumbai after the horrific episode in Brussels."



"Her homecoming is an extremely emotional moment for all of us, especially her two children, who were reunited with her after six weeks as they could not travel to meet with her owing to their studies," he said.

Rupesh said the family has had a harrowing time since on the brazen strikes trickled in.

On Nidhi's medical condition, he said, "Nidhi has received the best medical care and attention and has now recovered significantly from her injuries."



She will now continue her recovery process at a hospital in Mumbai. The most important thing for us now is that Nidhi makes a full recovery, he said.

Expressing his gratitude to doctors and medical staff in Brussels, Rupesh said, "We would like to thank them for the care they gave Nidhi during her stay in the hospital."



He also thanked Jet Airways Jet management for the support they extended, not just to Nidhi but also to the family.

A Jet statement said Nidhi is in good spirits and is very happy to be back with her family.

Airline officials said Nidhi has low immunity and doctors have advised her to avoid contact with people.

On March 22, three bombs went off - two at the Brussels airport and one at Mallbeek metro station - leaving 35 people dead, including three suicide bombers.

Nidhi was on her way to board a Jet flight for Newark when the explosions took place. She suffered 15 per cent burns and fractured an ankle.

Her colleague, Amit Motwani, was also injured and is still recovering at a Brussels hospital.

Nidhi, who was treated at Grande Hospital de Chaleroi, about 40 km from Brussels, was discharged yesterday afternoon and taken to Paris where she boarded the flight to Mumbai.

Nidhi spent about 25 days in medically induced coma at



the Chaleroi hospital and underwent extensive skin grafting.

Nidhi, who is still wheelchair-bound, was accompanied by her husband and brother-in-law Nilesh Chaphekar, besides the airline's support staff and its chief medical officer on her return.

She has been with Jet Airways since August 1996.

A Jet statement said she has made significant recovery from her injuries sustained during the blasts at Brussels airport.

Jet Airways continues to provide all the necessary support to Nidhi and her family during this time, it added.
Former Goa Minister Atanasio Monserratte was today sent in three-day police custody by a Court in connection with alleged rape of a minor girl after "buying" her from her mother for Rs 50 lakh as Crime Branch launched a search for a woman accused of human trafficking.

The expelled Congress legislator, arrested last evening, was produced before Judicial Magistrate First Class Vaishali Lotlikar, who remanded him in police custody for three days.

The victim's mother, held for human trafficking, too, was sent in police custody for the same duration, while Crime Branch said it is looking for another woman.

Opposing the Crime Branch's custody plea, Rajiv Gomes, the lawyer of Monserratte, said the case had been filed to tarnish the image of his client and weaken him politically.

He said the girl was forced to file a complaint. "The investigation conducted so far has not been fair and its details have been leaked to the media," Gomes claimed.

Crime Branch Inspector Dattaguru Sawant, who is investigating the case, refuted the allegations levelled by the defence lawyer.

The MLA was taken for medical examination to Goa Medical College (GMC) before being brought to the Court. "Some forensic tests were conducted on him which are crucial as an evidence," a senior GMC doctor said without giving details.

The lawmaker from St Cruz Assembly constituency had appeared before police yesterday after he was booked for rape and human trafficking.

The 16-year-old girl had alleged she was sold to Monserratte by her mother and another woman for Rs 50 lakh and he sexually assaulted her in March.

The lawmaker has been booked for "buying" and raping the girl, whose mother faces human trafficking charge.

Relevant sections of Goa Children Act and the Protection of Children From Sexual Offences Act, too, have been invoked against the controverisal politician, who has run afoul of law in the past also.

During investigation, the role of a third woman came to light. "We have launched a search to arrest the third accused, Rosy Ferros. She is wanted in connection with the offence of human trafficking," Superintendent of Police (Crime Branch) Karthik Kashyap told PTI.

Monserratte's wife, Jeniffer who is the MLA from Taleigao, met him in police lock up last night.
A former petroleum minister and close aide of ex-Pakistan president Asif Ali Zardari was today charged along with five others for money laundering and fraud that caused Rs 462 billion loss to the national exchequer.

Asim Hussain and other accused were produced in an accountability court where Judge Saad Qureshi read out the charges against them. They all pleaded not guilty.

The court summoned the prosecution witnesses with direction to record their testimonies in the next hearing of the case on May 14.

Few months after Hussain was arrested by the paramilitary rangers, former President Zardari went abroad and has remained there since.

In references filed against Hussain, the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) charged him with of misusing his authority for getting plots allotted fraudulently and encroaching upon state land for expansion of his Dr Ziauddin Hospital/Trust, illegal gains, kickbacks and money laundering.

Hussain has also been accused of receiving commissions from a fertiliser cartel for an "exploitative price hike".

Another charge related to "black marketing and fraud with the public" in the name of a charity hospital.

The NAB said that Hussain while he was federal petroleum minister had deprived the state of Rupees 462.5bn from 2010 to 2013 - Rupees 450 billion through the fertiliser scam, Rupees 9.5 billion through land fraud and Rupees 3 billion through money laundering.
Search teams today recovered the body of a Malaysian deputy minister in the Borneo island state of Sarawak near where a helicopter carrying her and five others is believed to have crashed, officials said.

The Eurocopter AS350 had been ferrying Plantation Industries and Commodities Deputy Minister Noriah Kasnon and her husband Asmuni Abdullah from Sarawak's interior to its capital Kuching when it went missing yesterday.

Parliament member Wan Mohammad Khair-il Anuar Wan Ahmad, two other government officials and a Filipino pilot were also on board.

Community Development Minister Rohani Abdul Karim confirmed in a Facebook post that the woman's body was Noriah's.

"Now, I'm at the Sarawak police headquarters to receive the body of...Noriah, who is the first victim of the helicopter crash," she wrote.

Nor Hisham Mohammad, a local fire and rescue official, told AFP the body was found near the banks of a river.

He said divers had begun searching for wreckage in the river which, like many in rugged, jungled Sarawak, are prowled by massive crocodiles.

Search teams today recovered a rotor blade, a flotation device, and other debris.

The purpose of the group's travel was not immediately clear, but much of the country's political attention in recent weeks has been focused on election campaigning in Sarawak, which holds state polls tomorrow.

Crashes of small aircraft and helicopters are not uncommon in Malaysia.

In April 2015, parliament member Jamaluddin Jarjis, a close aide to Prime Minister Najib Razak, perished in a helicopter crash along with five others not far from the capital Kuala Lumpur.
The district police today carried out raids at the residence of former BSP minister, Ramvir Upadhaya to arrest his brother Rameshwar Upadhaya who is wanted in a case.

Police raided the residences of the former minister in Sadabad, Hathras and Sikandarau but his brother Rameshwar could not be traced, police said.

The CJM Hathras, Gaurav Kumar had yesterday issued NBW against Rameshwar Upadhaya in connection with a tiff over elections to sahkari Samiti between Sadabad MLA belonging to Samajwadi Party Devendu Agarwal and BSP supporters on March 27, 2013.

Rameshwar Upadhaya was the block pramukh of Gursal area here at that time.

Meanwhile, BSP workers held a protest before the Hathras police station against the raids . Additional force has been deployed in the area as a precautionary measure.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel expects Turkey to stick to a deal to limit refugee flows to the EU even after the announced resignation of its Prime Minister, her spokesman said today.

"The Chancellor has worked very well until now with Turkish Prime Minister (Ahmet) Davutoglu and all Turkish representatives and we assume that this good and constructive cooperation will continue with the new Turkish Prime Minister," German government spokesman Georg Streiter told reporters.

"The EU and Germany will continue to fulfil all their obligations under the agreement and we expect this from the Turkish side as well."



Davutoglu yesterday announced he would step down in two weeks as ruling party chief and premier, in a shock departure expected to further tighten President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's grip on power.

The premier championed a March deal with the EU, brokered by Germany, to stem the flow of refugees across the Aegean Sea -- an accord in which the President has shown little interest despite Turkey being on the verge of winning visa-free travel to Europe for its citizens.

Davutoglu's impending departure sparked fears for the pact in Germany, which saw the biggest influx of asylum seekers in the EU in 2015 with more than one million people seeking refuge from war, persecution and poverty.

A senior member of Merkel's Christian Democratic Union party, Norbert Roettgen, called the reshuffle "bad for Europe and Turkey".

"Davutoglu wanted to move Turkey toward Europe on all issues that are important for Europe," he told German public radio. "Erdogan is dead-set against that."



German refugee rights group Pro Asyl said it feared for asylum seekers in Turkey after Erdogan consolidated his power.

"The forced resignation of Davutoglu shows that Turkey is still miles away from being a country under the rule of law," its managing director Guenter Burkhardt said.
A giant panda who disappointed her fans with a 'phantom pregnancy' in 2014 gave birth to a cub today with more than a lakh of people viewing her delivery online.

The male cub, weighing 145 grams, was born at 6:06 AM (local time) at Chengdu Giant Panda Breeding Research Center in southwest China's Sichuan Province.

The baby panda, the first born worldwide this year, and the mother are in good health. Staff at the research center made a live broadcast of Ai Hin, 9, available on the Internet from 7 PM on Wednesday as she was exhibiting prenatal behavior.

Before then, she had shown signs of pregnancy, including increased production of progestational hormones and reduced appetite for more than 20 days, state-run Xinhua agency reported.

In August 2014, viewers tuning in to a 48-hour live feed of the supposedly pregnant Ai Hin were surprised when she never gave birth. It was later discovered that she was not actually pregnant.

Phantom pregnancies -- an abnormal condition in which signs of pregnancy are present in a mother who is actually not pregnant -- are common among pandas.

Non-pregnant pandas are often subject to progestational hormone changes and scientists who work with pandas say the "mothers" sometimes notice differences in their treatment and carry on with the pregnant behavior in anticipation of greater comforts and attention.

"After showing prenatal signs, mothers-to-be are moved into single rooms with air conditioning and round-the-clock care. They also receive more buns, fruit and bamboo, so some clever pandas have used this to their advantage to improve their quality of life," Wu Kongju with the center said.

Ai Hin was one of two twins born to Mei Mei in Japan in December 2006. The twins were returned to China in 2012.
Government must give public sector enterprises freedom and flexibility to grow and make them board-managed to take on their private rivals, NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant said today.

"We must give the public enterprises the freedom and flexibility to grow. All these companies must become board managed. You make these companies board managed, they will take on the private companies and beat them hollow", Kant said at the Yes Bank National CFO Forum event here today.

"We must build professionalism. Government has played around with these companies far far too long. From government, we must keep our hands off. Allow a very high level of professionalism to be built," Kant said.

He also said that Make in India cannot succeed without public enterprises playing a very critical and major role. "Right across the sectors, the public sector has done extremely done," he added.

Kant also said that despite India growing at the fastest pace in the barren landscape of global growth, the challenge really is to open up the vast sector of the Indian economy.

Replying to a question, the NITI Aayog CEO said: "If you want your pubic sector to grow, prosper and drive India's growth allow them to take the private sector at the arm's length. Singapore has done that... And after doing that if the public sector is not able to compete, then allow them to die but give them the freedom".
The Allahabad High Court was today told by Uttar Pradesh government that a decision has been taken to appoint senior judicial officer Rang Nath Pandey, currently the District and Sessions Judge at Gorakhpur, as the new Principal Secretary (Law) of the state.

A special seven-judge bench headed by Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud was apprised of the state government's decision to fill up the post which had been lying vacant for the past several months much to the displeasure of the High Court. The state's Chief Secretary Alok Ranjan also appeared before the court and offered his "unconditional apology" for having stated in his affidavit that the post had been lying vacant on account of lack of response from the High Court to communication from the state government in this regard.

The court had, on the last date of hearing on April 26, pulled up the Chief Secretary for making the submission while pointing out that as per records, the High Court had sent its response to the state government's letter suggesting names of judicial officers considered eligible for the post and that the same had been received by the top bureaucrat himself who had made his own endorsements on the note. The seven-judge bench, which has been reviewing arrangements of security and safety in courts across the state, accepted the Chief Secretary's apology, issued directions to the state government for installation of CCTV cameras and bio-metric cards at the High Court here and its bench in Lucknow and fixed May 25 as the next date of hearing on the matter.
Government is looking at creating a fund under India's first sovereign wealth fund, National Investment and Infrastructure Fund (NIIF), which will address capital requirements of domestic steel companies.

In December, the government created the Rs 40,000-crore as an investment vehicle for funding commercially viable greenfield, brownfield and stalled projects.

"Government is also working on operationalising National Infrastructure Fund, the sovereign fund, and that is envisaged as a mother fund and within that there will be specific sectoral funds," Steel Secretary Aruna Sundararajan said at an event here while speaking on the capital requirements of the domestic steel industry.

Read more from our special coverage on "NIIF"

"We are trying to see how we can structure something for the steel industry there, which I think will definitely go a long way in bringing down the capital costs," she added.

The Finance Ministry had signed an memorandum of understanding with Abu Dhabi and Russian nano-technology company and is also having discussions with some funds with the UK for investments in .

While the government will invest Rs 20,000 crore in NIIF, the remaining amount will come from private investors.

is set up as a fund of funds (Category-II Alternate Investment Fund) with a proposed series of funds.

She further said that high capital cost is one of the major reasons that affects the competitiveness of Indian steel industries and the government is working on a two pronged strategy to deal with that.

"One is that right now as you know government is looking at developing long-term funding for sectors like steel and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has brought out the 5/25 format, where there is a recognition that you cannot expect industries like steel to repay their loans in short spans of 5-7 years," she added.

The stressed assets are a major challenge. The RBI, Department of Financial Services and the banks are working to see how the government can help clean up the balance sheets so that banks can get capital at lower costs.

Lenders today are unable to get capital at lower costs as their credit ratings are impacted due to the stressed assets, Sundararajan said.

"While trying to do that, we are also trying to see that how we can balance that with the steel industry because we do recognise that some of this stress is not coming because of mismanagement, a lot of stress is due to global factors that are beyond the control of individual firms," she added.
Confrontation over VVIP chopper deal escalated today with the government vowing to track down the main beneficiaries of the kickbacks so that "we can do" what "we could not do in Bofors" even as Congress said it is ready to face a probe that is monitored by the Supreme Court.

The government and the Congress clashed in the Lok Sabha after which the main opposition party staged a walkout led by Sonia Gandhi even as Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar was responding to a Calling Attention Motion on the scam-tainted AgustaWestland deal.

The two sides traded charges and sought to put the onus on each other for controversial decisions regarding the Rs 3600 crore deal for 12 VVIP helicopters in which about Rs 360 crore are alleged to have been paid as kickbacks.

The previous UPA government had "done everything" to help AgustaWestland bag the chopper deal, Parrikar said and asserted that the main beneficiaries of the kickbacks will be tracked as the CBI is "very seriously" probing the case.

In a hard-hitting speech, Parrikar said the "entire corruption" in the deal took place during the UPA tenure but former Air chief S P Tyagi and Gautam Khaitan are "small people" who "simply washed their hands in a flowing ganga (of corruption)" and that the government will "find out where the river was going".

Suggesting that some people higher up in the UPA dispensation might have been major beneficiaries of the kickbacks, he said the decision on the contract was taken in 2010 while Tyagi had retired in 2007 and "might have got just a 'chiller' (loose change)" or 'prasad'.

"Who gave order in 2010?... How much that person has got we have to find that out.... He (Tyagi) was not there then," the Defence Minister said.

"I hope members are satisfied and members will support government in finding the truth. The truth may lead to many unwanted realism. What we could not do in Bofors, may be we will do it in AgustaWestland," Parrikar said but deliberately refrained from naming anybody.

As Congress members created uproar and tried to disrupt his speech, he remarked, "Why are you (Congress) concerned? I have not named anybody. You seem to know where the ganga was going."



Countering the attack, Congress leader Jyotiraditya Scindia said, "Do not level baseless allegations. Answer the questions which we are raising. Supreme Court monitored investigation should happen and its reports should be placed in the House every three months."



Stoutly defending Sonia Gandhi, he described her as a 'sherni' (lioness) and said nowhere was her name mentioned.

"Whenever the name of Sonia Gandhi comes, they start feeling irritated and they are afraid of her because she is a 'lioness'. That is why they (BJP) are afraid of her," he said.

Scindia said it was the habit of BJP to level wrong and



baseless allegations and create an illusion through that.

"But we too have taken an oath that we will break that 'mayajaal' (illusion) and place the facts in front of the country and this House," Scindia said.

The reality is that this deal was started during the NDA regime in 1999 and the issue they are talking about bringing down the height of the helicopter from 6000 to 4500 metres, it was done by NDA government in 2003 and not the UPA, he said.

In December 2003, a letter was written from the Prime Minister's Office to change the norms and make it 4500 metres, Scindia said.

In April 2012, it was in fact the UPA government which ordered CBI to investigate the matter, Scindia said, adding that the contract was cancelled on February 15, 2013 and a notice was served on AugustaWestland and on January 1, 2014, the UPA government cancelled that contract.

"...24 months have passed of your government, what have you done in 720 days of your government? Have you brought in a single penny? Have you even identified a single person who has indulged in corruption," he asked.

"In March 2013, we in the House had proposed to form a JPC (joint parliamentary committee). Why did the NDA oppose that proposal? People of this country should ask why you opposed that proposal in 2013," the Congress leader said.

He said the banning and blacklisting of companies too was started by the UPA government. The then Defence Minister had stated that no deal would happen with AgustaWestland, he said, adding it was UPA government which had recovered Rs 2,063 crore from the company.

Parrikar said the UPA government's action against the company following the disclosure of corruption was not pro-active but "forced by circumstances".

Noting that the scam had surfaced in 2012, he said nothing was done by the then UPA government till January 2014.

Describing the then Defence Minister A K Antony as "bechara" (helpless), Parrikar contended that his "hands were tied" and he "feared that his sainthood would be disrobed".

He said Antony acted only after a top official of Finmeccanica, the parent company of AgustaWestland, was arrested in Italy in connection with bribery in the deal.

Soon after the arrest, Antony gave the files to CBI in 2-3 hours, he said, adding "He (Antony) wanted to protect his image....Whether he knew or didn't know (of the bribe), I don't know."



Responding to Congress contention that the Italian judge had said that there was no evidence against Sonia Gandhi, Parrikar said it was half-truth as the judge had said that it was for India to investigate and for its investigating agencies to "prove the guilt of people who are suspected".

He asserted that the government will recover damages to the tune of 398 million euros as well as the "bribe".

Referring to the Italian court's recent judgement, Parrikar said with this, the criminal conspiracy has been established and "we will get the documents very fast".

Responding to Congress contention that the Italian judge



had said that there was no evidence against Sonia Gandhi, Parrikar said it was half-truth as the judge had said that it was for India to investigate and for its investigating agencies to "prove the guilt of people who are suspected".

Suspecting a conspiracy to eliminate evidence in the chopper deal, Parrikar referred to a "mysterious" fire incident on July 3, 2014 in the Air Force headquarters here and said he would be asking the CBI to probe it.

He said all files were burnt in that fire but luckily three files related to the AgustaWestland deal were saved as those had been kept by an official in his locked drawer.

"If it was in somebody's mind to set it on fire, we think that failed as the official who was there because the Agusta issue was sensitive. He had locked the files in his drawer. So three files were saved and the three files related to AW-101 helicopters," the Defence Minister said.

Alleging that Congress had close links with middleman Christian Michel, Parrikar said the contract was given to a firm which had not even participated in the tendering process.

The tender was submitted by Italy-based AgustaWestland but the contract was given to the UK-based Agusta Westland International Ltd (AWIL), which was not Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM), he said, finding loopholes.

"I am shocked, how could you accept order from a company who has not given tender? They (Congress) lost sense of proportion. They thought they will be in power for ever. The smell and sight of Euro was so attractive, so intoxicating that they forgot everything. They should take consultation from Michel on how to cover up and how to do white wash," he said taking a dig at the opposition party.

On the initials 'AP' that figured in the documents in the Italian court judgement, Scindia said there are so many people who could have this abbreviation.

"We have the Gujarat Chief Minister whose initials are also AP...On such things they are labelling the allegations," the Congress leader said targeting the ruling side.

Attacking the Modi government, Scindia said "you have not been able to get the responses from those countries in two years' time ...It was our Defence Minister who stated that corruption is there in the deal and we will investigate that."



Despite being blacklisted, the NDA government permitted the company to send RFI (request for information) some contracts like in the Naval Utility helicopters.

"Why in the FIPB meeting on October 8, 2015, permission was given to AgustaWestland which was a blacklisted company? Answer this ... Why Finmeccanica was invited to participate in a Make in India programme," he asked.

"Your (BJP) party president said that this is a bogus company and you invited a bogus company in Make in India. They have to give the answers to this," the Congress member said.

"Today we have put our balance sheet in front of you. Show us your balance sheet of two years. Tell the country that in two years what you have done," he said.

With regard to this, the Defence Minister said the firm had only put on website its Request for Information (RFI) which anybody can do in a digital world.

"Any person who wants can put his own information there. Now it is on open interent and if anyone wants to put information, whether it is (Congress leader) Jyotiraditya Scindia, or Christian Michel or Agusta Westland, we cannot stop him," he said.

Taking a dig at Congress, he said they seemed to know every action of AgustaWestland. He said he was not aware that the firm had uploaded something on the website and he looked for it only after Congress raised the issue.
The Gujarat High Court today upheld the termination of services of 94 HC employees recruited by the Court administration under the then Acting Chief Justice V M Sahai.

A division bench of Chief Justice R Subhash Reddy and Justice V M Pancholi dismissed the plea of these employees who had challenged the verdict of a single HC Judge in December last year that went against them.

Sahai had made the recruitments before August 2015 using special powers under Article 229 of the Constitution.

City-based RTI activist Ajay Prajapati had in August filed an affidavit before the HC, saying due process was not followed and several rules were flouted by the High Court in recruiting these Class IV employees which included peons.

During the hearing of the PIL, a committee of HC Judges was formed to probe the allegations of "flouting" of rules by Sahai while making these recruitments.

Based on the panel's findings, on September 25 last year, when Sahai retired, the HC cancelled the alleged irregular recruitments to these 94 Class IV posts.
Gunmen today killed the chief of the main prison in Yemen's southern port city of Aden where jihadists remain active, a security source said.

Wahab Nejib Ahmed Aoun and a relative were gunned down by two men on a motorbike in the central district of Mansura where the prison is located.

The incident comes a week after a similar attack claimed the life of a police colonel in the city.

This method of attack is often used by Al-Qaeda, which has operated for years in south and southeast Yemen, and is currently the target of a huge offensive by government forces.

Other security officials in Aden have been targeted by bombings and assassinations -- some of which Al-Qaeda or the Islamic State group have claimed.

Yemen-based Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) is regarded by Washington as the network's most dangerous branch.

It had taken advantage of the government's war against Shiite rebels to spread its presence in the south.

AQAP was ejected recently from Aden neighbourhoods including Mansura and also from cities in neighbouring provinces -- Huta in Lahj and Mukalla in Hadramawt.

Yesterday, AQAP began withdrawing from Abyan provincial capital Zinjibar and the nearby city of Jaar following tribal mediation to spare them from destruction.

In a statement released on Wednesday, the militants threatened to attack the homes of officials and soldiers who took part in the offensive to drive them out of Mukalla.

Yemen's internationally recognised government has declared Aden the country's temporary capital since Iran-backed Shiite rebels took Sanaa and control much of the north.
Haryana Police will launch an awareness campaign from May 15 to 31 against agents who dupe people on pretext of sending them abroad (locally called kabootarbaazi), Additional Director General of Police (Law and Order) Muhammad Akil said today.

The main aim of the campaign is to make people aware and educated about the modus-operandi being adopted by agents, groups and middlemen who dupe people on the pretext of sending abroad, especially to Gulf countries, Canada, Europe, among others, he said.

He said the campaign would be initially launched for two weeks, but depending on its success and as per requirement, it could be re-launched any time in future.

The campaign would also be launched on social media to make it more effective, the ADGP said, adding in any incident of kabootarbazi, a case would be registered and pursued with intensive probe. If there would a need to collect evidences in the case, the culprit would be arrested and interrogated, he added.

He said the belt of north Haryana from Yamunanagar to Sirsa, including the areas of Kurukshetra, Ambala, Panchkula, Kaithal, Jind, Hisar and Fatehabad, are most affected from kabootarbazi.

Apart from Haryana, he said, there are groups from outside whose agents are operating in the state and duping people.

He said of late cases from Uttar Pradesh have also come to the fore, with one each from Meerut and Muzaffarnagar being brought to the notice of Haryana Police.
The Madras High Court today restrained the office bearers of 'Abdul Kalam Vision India Party' from using the name and the pictures of late former President A P J Abdul Kalam.

Hearing a civil suit from APJ Mohammed Muthu Meera Maraikayar, brother of Kalam, vacation judge Justice S Vimala said, "this court is of the considered view that a prima facie case is made out and the balance of convenience lies in favour of the national interest to grant an order of injunction."



"Therefore, having regard to the larger civil rights involved in the suit, ad-interim injunction is granted, restraining defendants from using the name/figurine/ picture of Dr.A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, as a part of the party name or in the flag of their political party or for any other political activity..."



This is pending final decision to be taken by Election Commission of India and the Chief Election Commissioner of Tamil Nadu on the representation submitted by the petitioner/ plaintiff, the judge said.

The judge, in her order, said, "the name or the office of any president of the country is not used as a name or a symbol of any political party."



"In fact, right from Dr.Rajendra Prasad to Dr.Prathiba Patil none of the presidents had permitted their names to be used in the name of any political party nor have any of them associated themselves with any political party after their term of Presidency."



Hence formation of political party with the name of A P J Abdul Kalam is in breach of such glorious tradition left behind by the former presidents, the judge said.

Ponraj, who worked as Secretary to Abdul Kalam with S.Kumar and R.Thirusenduran had formed a political party-- 'Abdul Kalam Vision India Party', on February 28.

The petitioner submitted that they started the political party only with a view to encashing the love and faith that the people of the nation reposed on his brother.

The petitioner further said even during his Presidency, his brother was apolitical.

The judge said the issue to be considered in the



application was whether the petitioner is entitled to an order of injunction.

"It is a fact that, of all the Presidents of India, Dr.A.P.J.Abdul Kalam holds the unique distinction of being the typical apolitical leader appointed as the President of India. In fact, he never held any political office prior to his crowning glorying as President of India," henoted.

The judge further observed that the office of the President of India was proposed by the ruling party of the day, National Democratic Alliance, not on the political considerations, but solely on appreciation of his sterling contribution to the Defense Research and Development in India.

"Though the legal heirs are better placed to resist any attempt to monopolize the image, contribution, reminiscence, of any particular national leader, than anyone else, if such an attempt is targeted, towards achieving monetary gain, political considerations, the executive is the rightful guardian of national legacy and as such have equally better claims as the close relatives of the national leader."



The judge, in her order, said, "it is brought to the notice of this court that an attempt is being made to gain certain political mileage, presumably against the attitude of the great leader and definitely against the wishes of his legal heir, who is none other than his elder brother."



If the promoters of the party are serious about realizing the goals of Dr Kalam, "they are at liberty to serve the people in all possible ways that are agreeable to the great leader except through electoral politics through which the possibility of abuse by anybody, including the rival political party cannot be ruled out," the judge said.
The Allahabad High Court today stayed the proceedings of a criminal complaint case against former Uttar Pradesh Lokayukta, Justice (retired) N K Mehrotra, filed by social activist and wife of suspended IPS officer Amitabh Thakur before the Chief Judicial Magistrate here.

Justice Sudhir Kumar Saxena of Lucknow bench gave the order on a petition filed by Mehrotra seeking directions for quashing the case and staying its proceedings during pendecy of this petition under the Criminal Procedure Code.

It was submitted on behalf of the petitioner that criminal proceedings could not be initiated against him as he was Lokayukta at the time in question.

Government counsel Rishad Murtaza contended that sub section 17 of the UP Lokayukta and UP Lokayukta Act 1975 contains a protection clause for the anti-graft body.

Therefore, no criminal prosecution can be initiated against a Lokayukta in respect of anything which was done in good faith or intended to be done under the Act, he said.

Since the complaint was a fallout of the report submitted by the Lokayukta against Amitabh Thakur, husband of complainant Nutan Thakur, hence, no criminal case can be initiated against the former for discharging his official functions, Murtaza said.

The complainant, Nutan Thakur, had alleged that Mehrotra had made an inquiry against the rules and prepared a completely false report against her husband by twisting facts, which constitutes an offence under IPC.

The CJM, Lucknow had taken cognisance of the complaint and it was being heard before him, the complainant further said.

Murtaza said the HC has directed the complainant to file a counter affidavit (reply) within two weeks.

A rejoinder affidavit may be filed by the petitioner within one week thereafter. HC has directed to list this matter thereafter, he added.

The former UP Lokayukta had recommended registration of an FIR and an inquiry against Amitabh Thakur by "any agency", including CBI in a disproportionate assets case.

Thakur was suspended by the UP government on July 13 last year on charges of indiscipline.

The decision came a few days after Thakur had lodged a complaint with the police claiming he was threatened by Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav.
French President Francois Hollande will visit the Central African Republic on May 13 to pledge France's support for peace efforts in the restive country, his office said today.

Hollande will go on to Nigeria the following day to attend a regional summit focused on fighting the jihadist group Boko Haram.

In the Central African Republic, Hollande will "pledge his support for the peace and the stabilisation of the country," a presidential spokesman said.

But the visit is sensitive because of accusations that French peacekeepers sexually abused children in the country.

There are currently three investigations under way into the accusations against the French troops.

Inter-communal violence between Muslim and Christian militias has killed thousands of people in the Central African Republic since 2013.

France deployed a peacekeeping force in 2013 to curb the unrest.

In Nigeria, the summit on Boko Haram will also be attended by the United States, Britain and the three countries neighbouring Nigeria which have also been the target of attacks from the jihadists -- Cameroon, Chad and Niger.

Boko Haram has killed more than 20,000 people since 2009, according to World Bank figures.
The HRD Ministry has asked all states to make yoga compulsory in school curriculum and the course is expected to started from the coming academic session, Minister of State for AYUSH Shripad Yesso Naik said today.

"Recently, our HRD Minister has sent a notice to all states asking them to make yoga compulsory (in schools). I think it will be started in all schools from the coming academic session," he said in Lok Sabha during Question Hour.

Naik said so far, Yoga has not been made compulsory in all schools and they were told that those students who wished to enroll themselves in it should be allowed to do so.

"We have told them that whoever wants to do Yoga, they should be allowed to do Yoga. Otherwise physical training is adjusted in the same period," he said.

Naik said Yoga has been made compulsory for police personnel and plans are afoot to make it compulsory also for defence personnel.

"A scheme titled 'Yoga Training for Police Personnel' has been initiated by the Ministry," he said.

The Minister said the government has succeeded in adoption of June 21 as the International Day of Yoga. The 1st International Day of Yoga was celebrated in the country in a grand manner on June 21 2015, which was celebrated across the globe involving 192 countries.

"Arrangements for celebrating 2nd International Day of Yoga on June 21, 2016 has also started," he said.
US President Barack Obama today said he does not pay attention to the tweets of Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, which of late has been creating a lot of controversies in the social media.

"I have no thoughts on Mr Trump's tweets," Obama said.

"As a general rule, I don't pay attention to Mr Trump's tweets. I think that will be true for, I think, for the next six months. So, if you could just file that one," Obama told reporters when asked about Trump's latest taco bowl tweet.

A day before, Trump tweeted picture of him showing eating taco bowl.

"I love Hispanics!" Trump said. "I had 59,000 retweets in a short period of what, that's like, almost got to be some kind of a record," Trump told Fox .

"People loved it. And you know what? I'm going to do great with the Hispanics. I mean, I'm going to do fantastic, because I'm bringing jobs back to America," he said.

Trump has nearly eight million followers on Twitter.
Indian Air Force gains by participating in international combat exercises, especially when its fighter jets are pitted against US F-16s and F-18s which are used by Pakistan, government said today.

Without naming Pakistan, Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar said in Lok Sabha that knowledge of close combat ability of F-16s and F-18s was important for the Western front of India.

He said the experience of flying against the F-16s was important for the IAF which has currently deployed its Sukhoi 30s and Jaguars in the ongoing exercise 'Red Flag 16-1' being held at Alaska in the US.

Responding to a supplementary on the benefit of participating in bilateral or multilateral exercises if IAF pilots don't get to fly F-16s, he said the idea is to pit IAF pilots and its machines against F-16 to understand the adversary.

He said most aircraft are lost in the first 10 clashes in a war as pilots are unable to identify the 'signature' of enemy planes. Such exercises help understand other planes better, he added.

To a question on the flaws and shortcomings found following the Alaska exercise, he said when the IAF contingent returns in June, then the work on understanding the achievements and shortfalls will begin.

Pakistan uses the F-16 fighter jets. The US government has made a case to the US Congress to sell eight new F-16s to Pakistan to assist its counter-terror and counter-insurgency operations.
Giving new dimensions to agripreneurship development, a Memorandum of Agreement (MoA) has been signed between University of Agricultural Sciences Raichur (UAS-R) and city-based International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT).

This will provide support to set up an agribusiness incubator (ABI) at the university's Raichur campus in Karnataka, a release from ICRISAT said today.

ICRISAT will help to identify and promote agribusiness start-ups, as well as facilitate agro-technology transfer in the North Karnataka region, which is expected to enhance the impact of outreach activities for the university, it said.

"Entrepreneurs will get technical and business development support in seed production, farm machinery and food processing domains. This will be through technical support to develop business models, capacity building and training for incubator personnel, facilitate strategies and systems," the release said.

The partnership with ICRISAT opens a new chapter for the university in promoting technology and agri-based entrepreneurship in the region, said PM Salimath, Vice Chancellor of UAS-R.

"ICRISAT and its partners have been successful in facilitating the establishment of agribusiness incubators in India and Africa aimed at engaging youth, women and farmers to initiate small and micro-level agribusiness ventures. We hope to achieve similar results through this partnership," said Peter Carberry, Deputy Director General (Research), ICRISAT.

The handholding and mentoring support for UAS-R will be provided through the co-business incubation initiative of the Agri-Business Incubation Program - part of the ICRISAT Agribusiness & Innovation Platform (AIP).
North Korea may be preparing for a nuclear test in the near future, a US website that monitors the isolated nation has said.

The website 38 North said commercial satellite imagery taken Thursday shows vehicles at a command centre believed to control the underground explosions, which could be sign that a test is imminent.

The centre lies nearly four miles from the test site at Punggye-ri. The website said the level of activity at the test site continues to be low, but vehicles are not often seen at the command centre except during test preparations.

Predicting North Korea's nuclear tests is notoriously difficult. The last test, North Korea's fourth since 2006, happened in January and was followed by a long-range rocket launch, drawing the toughest UN sanctions yet against Pyongyang.

Yesterday, North Korea began a ruling party congress to cement the authority of its leader, Kim Jong Un.

South Korean officials say the North has finished preparations for a fifth nuclear test and it could happen any day.

A US official said yesterday the US has seen activity at the site and wouldn't be surprised if there was a test. The official, who was not authorised to comment publicly and requested anonymity, said the assessments have been mixed.
A trio of Sri Lankan strangers pretends to be a family to flee their war-torn country for France in the drama "Dheepan," which is finally opening in US theaters after winning the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival last year.

The film is playing now in New York and opening in Los Angeles next week.

French director Jacques Audiard was inspired by the basic idea of Sam Peckinpah's classic "Straw Dogs" for the story, but decided to set "Dheepan" in France.

The setting establishes both cultural and language barriers for his three outsiders who unwittingly find themselves in yet another violent situation - a suburban housing project with a gang presence - despite their efforts to create lives of relative normalcy and peace.

Speaking through a translator, Audiard explained he wanted to give a face and a voice to the immigrant experience without softening the psychological effects of their former circumstances.

"What happens to them when they arrive at a different place carrying the experience of being raped, of being tortured, of living with trauma and violence? How does the subconscious work out this violence?" he said.

"To negate the violence that they carry in them is a form of racism. It's denying the experience of violence that they carry with them. In that frame of mind they'd just be poor travelers and they're not."



He settled on Sri Lanka by deduction, mainly wanting a culture that was disconnected from the French colonial experience. The choice made casting a bit trickier. "In the diaspora of immigrants in France in the Sri Lankan community, there are no actors, really, that are professional," he said.

So he had to think outside of the box and consider nonprofessional actors to keep the casting authentic. In France, he found both his lead actor, author Antonythasan Jesuthasan, a former teenage Tamil Tiger who found refuge in France, and the young girl who becomes his de facto daughter in the new arrangement, Claudine Vinasithamby.

He found his lead actress, Kalieaswari Srinivasan, in India. Unlike her co-stars, Srinivasan had a theater background.

Anchoring a film with mostly unprofessional actors speaking in a non-native language proved to be quite an interesting challenge for Audiard, who would sometimes do 20 takes for a scene - quite different from his experience working with stars like Marion Cotillard and Matthias Schoenaerts for his last film, "Rust and Bone.
To improve visa clearance between India and Bangladesh, top officials of both countries have proposed to strengthen its existing consulate in Agartala even as the Ministry of External affairs has approved setting up of another Bangladesh consulate in Guwahati.

The decision in this regard was taken after transport officials of both countries reviewed the progress of the passenger bus-services, officials said today.

The meeting held here on May 4 discussed the need to improve visa clearance facilities so as to make the clearance faster.

For this, Bangladesh proposed to strengthen its existing consulate in Agartala. The Ministry of External Affairs has also approved setting up another Bangladesh consulate in Guwahati, an official said.

The meeting also discussed improving passenger amenities on both sides, besides other issues like rationalising fares and additional stoppage points along the route, he said.

Top officials from the Transport, Home and Foreign Affairs Ministries of both sides attended the meeting which was also attended by transport commissioners and representatives of Transport Corporations of Assam, West Bengal and Tripura.

The objective of the meeting was to take stock of the bus services plying on four routes between two countries and to bring in improvement wherever possible to facilitate smooth and comfortable movement of passengers.

The review meeting was the first of its kind since the earliest protocol was signed between the two countries in 1999 to start a bus service between Kolkata and Dhaka.

The next review meeting has been scheduled for the last week of June in Guwahati.

Bus services are currently being operated on four routes between India and Bangladesh in which three buses operate on the Kolkata-Agartala via Dhaka route.

The operation of passenger buses between the two countries is part of the ongoing efforts to enhance regional cooperation since both countries are signatories to the BBIN Motor Vehicle Agreement.
India and Bangladesh held a meeting to take stock of the bus service between the two countries and discussed ways to improve amenities for passengers on both sides, the government said today.

"Indo-Bangladesh ties gained further strength when officials from the Transport, Home and Foreign Affairs Ministries from both sides met in Shillong on May 4 to review the progress of the passenger bus services between the two countries," the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways said in a statement.

The objective of the meeting was to take stock of the bus services plying on four routes between the two countries, and bring in improvement wherever possible to facilitate smooth and comfortable movement of passengers, it said.

"The meeting discussed the need for improving visa clearance facilities so as to make the clearance faster. For this, Bangladesh proposes to strengthen its existing Consulate in Agartala. In addition to this, the Indian Ministry of External Affairs has approved setting up another Bangladesh Consulate in Guwahati," the statement said.

The meeting also discussed issues like improving passenger amenities on both sides and a demand for adding a stoppage in Bangladesh on the Kolkata-Dhaka route and the issue of rationalising fares were also taken up in the meet.

This review meeting was the first of its kind since the earliest protocol was signed between the two countries in 1999 to start a bus service between Kolkata and Dhaka.

The next review meeting has been scheduled for the last week of June in Guwahati.

Bus services are currently being operated on four routes between India and Bangladesh and these include Kolkata to Agartala via Dhaka in which three buses operate on a round trip basis by Tripura Road Transport Corporation/ WB Surface Transport Corporation and Bangladesh Road Transport Corporation.

This service has helped to bring down travel distance between Kolkata and Agartala from 1,550 KM along the traditional Siliguri-Guwahati-Silchar route to just 640 KM along the new route, the statement said.

The other route pertains to Dhaka-Guwahati via Shillong in which one bus each is run on round trip basis by Assam State Transport Corp and Bangladesh Road Transport Corp.

These two services were flagged off from Dhaka in June last year, by the Prime Ministers of the two countries.

In addition, there are two earlier services - Kolkata - Dhaka and Agartala-Dhaka which are in operation since 2000.

The operation of the passenger buses between the two countries is part of the ongoing efforts to enhance regional cooperation.

India and Bangladesh have both signed the BBIN Motor Vehicle Agreement, along with Bhutan and Nepal, which aims to regulate passenger and cargo vehicular traffic between the four countries and provide seamless movement of people and goods across their borders for the benefit and integration of the region and its economic development.
Three Indian Naval ships will visit Dubai this week as part of a month-long deployment to the strategic Gulf region and enhance bilateral defence ties as well as India's experience in combating maritime threats with regional navies.

Indian Naval ships - Deepak, Delhi and Tarkash - under the Command of the Flag Officer Commanding Western Fleet, Rear Admiral Ravneet Singh will visit Dubai from May 7 - May 10.

The ships are part of the Indian Navy's Western Naval Command based at Mumbai and are on a month-long deployment to the Gulf to enhance bilateral ties with friendly regional navies, Indian embassy in Abu Dhabi said in a statement.

During the visit, the naval ships will have professional interactions with the defence forces aimed at enhancing co-operation and sharing the nuances of naval operations including disaster management and combating maritime threats of terrorism and piracy.

The Indian Navy today is the largest resident Navy in the Indian Ocean Region, with a multi-dimensional capability comprising aircraft carriers, modern ships, submarines, aircraft and marine commandos, the release said.

The Indian Navy has close and friendly ties with all navies in the Gulf and has been regularly exercising with many of them. The Indian Navy is also privileged to provide training and hydrographic support to several navies in the region, the statement said.

The involvement of Indian Naval ships in combating piracy off the coast of Somalia since October 2008 has further strengthened bilateral ties and interaction with navies in the region, it said.

The UAE is today India's second largest trading partner and maritime cooperation between the two countries have increased steadily. Frequent port visits by naval ships of both countries, visit by Service Chiefs and training of UAE naval officers have further bolstered naval cooperation between the two countries.

India and UAE are also members of Indian Ocean Naval Symposium (IONS), a voluntary and co-operative initiative between 35 countries of the Indian Ocean Region, which has served as a forum for sharing of information and cooperation on maritime issues.
An Iranian director sentenced to 223 lashes for making a film that has never been officially shown in his homeland said today he just wanted to be left alone to work rather than "be turned into a hero".

Keywan Karimi ran into trouble with Iran's powerful Revolutionary Guards over a documentary he shot called "Writing on the City" about graffiti in the capital Tehran.

He spent 15 days in solitary confinement in 2013 and was accused of making "propaganda against the regime" and "insulting religious values".

But since then, the young avant-garde filmmaker told AFP, several other "ridiculous" charges have been added including drinking alcohol, having extramarital affairs and making pornography.

"All I was doing was filming what was being written on the walls of Tehran," said the 33-year-old, who comes from the country's Kurdish minority.

Karimi was sentenced to six years in prison in 2015 but after an international outcry in which acclaimed Iranian directors including Jafar Panahi and Mohsen Makhmalbaf rallied to his support, five years of the term was suspended.

The threat of the 233 lashes has not however been lifted, and the prison authorities are now demanding that the punishment be carried out.

"I am not a political activist," Karimi told AFP in a telephone interview. "I am not being sent to prison because I oppose the regime but because I am a filmmaker."



The police have contacted him several times but have not yet arrested him to bring him to prison to be whipped and serve his sentence, he said.

"Writing on the City" has since been shown at film festivals in France, Spain and Switzerland and in the meantime Karimi has continued working on another film project.

"I am waiting for them to come for me. The support I have received helps break the solitude and solidarity from the film world also warms my heart," he added.

Karimi said that he could have immigrated "quite easily but I want to remain to defend my right to live my life.

"The fact that my artistic activity is seen as an act of political opposition says a lot about the situation in Iran," he added.

"When the (Turkish Kurdish director) Yilmaz Guney won the Palme d'Or at Cannes for his film 'Yol' (in 1982), he said that cinema was a part of his political activism.

"He was an activist who was part of a political organisation. But what I draw from his experience is that making films is also a kind of struggle, a struggle in defence of the courage to think," Karimi insisted.
HRD minister Smriti Irani today rejected a demand for waiving off rustication and other punishments meted out to students in universities, terming it a "Pandora's Box" and saying that these institutions have been granted autonomy to handle administrative matters.

Irani's comments in Rajya Sabha came in the backdrop of recent action by JNU authorities imposing fine on student leader Kanhaiya Kumar and rustication of some other students in connection with the controversial February 9 campus event against Afzal Guru's hanging.

Her reaction came during a debate on the functioning of her ministry when Congress member Ananda Bhaskar Rapolu said the students were looking at Irani's "magnanimity" to waive off punishments and rustication of students in various universities.

In her response, Irani said "this minister is a mere mortal who is tied to this very Parliament and this Parliament does not allow intervention in the administrative matter of any University.

"My request is only this. This is a pandora's box, I am sure you don't want to open that....Let the University be autonomous enough."



Earlier in the day, members in Rajya Sabha had sought the government's intervention in resolving the protests by JNU students by advising the authorities to reconsider their decision to severely penalise some of them.

Deputy Chairman P J Kurien had also said the government should resolve the issue and had asked Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi to convey the feeling of the House to the concerned Ministers.

Irani, in her 70-minute long reply, also lamented that there appeared to be a "Sanskrit phobia" and said the Government or NCERT have not carried out any change in the curriculum.

Referring to Rapolu who she said had called her 'Sanskrit Irani', she said a recent circular to IITs only asked them to pick up those parts of work in Sanskrit language which contained scientific knowledge.

She said a US university academic came to Tamil Nadu to do research on the oldest treatise in Geometry but not many in India know about the contributions made by the country.

"The challenge is where do you bridge the gap. Where do you introduce the subject or for that matter, give the freedom to academicians to absorb it, without being called communal or saffron," Irani said.

On members' concerns over appointments in various



educational institutions, Irani sought to make it clear that her ministry only functioned as the "secretariat" of the President by forwarding the names for appointment of Vice Chancellors.

She defended the appointments saying the key nominations made or recommended by her in IITs, were all of eminent people belonging to the fields of science, commerce or industry.

Experts in nanoscience, linguistics, communications or even in missile technology had been appointed as Directors of various IITs and even those appointed by UPA government who had done well had been retained, she said.

Speaking on the curriculum, Irani elaborated on the gamut of programmes that her ministry had undertaken in the fields of school as well as higher education.

She said her ministry was working to create a system where teachers are rewarded for teaching and improving learning outcomes.

"Teachers' promotion needs to depend on the promotion of their class, when a teacher is involved completely in teaching the students and does not involve in extra curricular activity, that teacher is in no way penalised, this government has decided," she said.

Irani said when a proper notification on Academic Performance Indicator scores comes out, many teachers who have been agitating on this issue will get relief.

The Minister said that it is natural for people to question when "political announcements" are made on whether work is being carried out on the ground.

Referring to an experiment in a UP district of Auraiya, she said an IIT Lucknow faculty member had trained some teachers after which students started showing greater interest in government schools than private ones.

Assuring members that actual ground work was being done by her ministry, Irani mentioned that from next academic session there will be a pan India child tracking system, through which Aadhar numbers would be used or students will be provided with a unique identity number.

This initiative she said would help in monitoring the academic progress of students "per child, per class" and help in finding individual specific solutions if the student needs remedial assistance, will the student pass or drop out.

Fifteen states, she said, were already taking part in this initiative.

Information collected through technology regarding



teachers will help in rational deployment of teaching professionals, which would also ensure that all classes have teachers, the Minister said, adding it would ensure quality of teachers as well.

Speaking on the midday meal scheme, she said a committee headed by AIIMS paediatrician Vinod Paul, set up to make recommendations regarding nutritional requirements for the scheme, has submitted its report which will be forwarded to states.

She said to assist the states, Centre was also willing to provide a transport fee for taking children to schools.

Referring to real time monitoring along with reviews of key schemes like Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan and Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan with regard to school education, she said states have been asked to fill vacancies to ensure quality of teachers.

She said a portal that would let states about the quality of training by their District Institutes of Education and Training (DIET) was also in the works.

States have been asked to form separate cadre for teacher trainers, she said and added that 15-18 states have shown interest in this.

To concerns about the recent CBSE exam, Irani said "for example the maths paper of CBSE, which came into much controversy and people said was very tough", the ministry was trying to progressively take students on the path of applying what has been learnt.

Irani also said that her ministry is also trying to facilitate students who have discontinued regular education because they started working and a Bachelor's Degree in vocational education was also being given through the UGC.

She also mentioned various schemes of her ministry like GIAN under which foreign faculty would teach in India, and a Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCS) project which will allow students to pursue courses online and supported by a mobile app.
The dreaded ISIS terror group intends to announce "an affiliate" in Bangladesh, where it has already "designated a local leader", a US-based think-tank said, amid a series of brutal killings of secular bloggers and intellectuals in the Muslim-majority country.

The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) said the radical group was preparing for a global surge of activities before and during the Ramadan, which falls between June 6 and July 5.

"ISIS continued to pursue its regional campaign objectives of establishing affiliates and increasing disorder throughout historically Muslim lands," ISW said.

Earlier, in its online magazine, 'Dabiq', the ISIS said they had found a leader for the Bengal region.

The leader, the magazine claimed, had pledged allegiance to Ibrahim - Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi, who now controls parts of Iraq and Syria.

But the Bangladesh government has denied presence of ISIS in the country.

The group claimed responsibility for the gruesome April 23 murder of English professor Rezaul Karim Siddique, who was hacked to death in northwest Bangladesh.

Since September 2015, the ISIS has claimed responsibility for eight brutal attacks in Bangladesh.

In February, a head priest was killed at a Hindu temple in an area bordering India, the first attack claimed by the ISIS targeting the community.
Jammu and Kashmir government has set up a Women Employees Grievance cell to address the complains and problems of female employees working in the state government.

"Sanction is hereby accorded to the establishment of a Women Employees Grievance Cell", under-secretary General Administrative Department (GAD) Imteeaz Kacho said in an official order here.

"The cell comprises of three members headed by senior IAS officer Sarita Chauhan, Commissioner-Secretary to the Government, Social Welfare Department. Two other members are Omera Shafat, Joint Director, Tourism Department and Kiran Raina, Under-Secretary to the Government, Relief and Rehabilitation Department," Kacho said.

The committee has been setup on the directions of Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will meet Russian President Vladimir Putin today in the Black Sea resort of Sochi in a bid to bolster ties and seek to resolve a decades-long territorial dispute.

Tokyo-Moscow relations have been hamstrung by the row dating back to the end of World War II when Soviet troops seized the four southernmost islands in the Pacific Kuril chain, known as the Northern Territories in Japan.

Japan and Russia's lingering tensions have prevented them ever signing a peace treaty to formally end World War II hostilities, hindering trade and investment ties.

"This is a complex, multi-faceted issue that can only be resolved in a manner acceptable to both sides through an even deeper partnership between the two countries," Putin's chief foreign policy advisor Yury Ushakov said ahead of the visit.

Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida said in April that Russia and Japan had agreed to start negotiations on signing a peace treaty "as soon as possible" after the meeting.

His Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov on a visit to Tokyo last month said Russia wants to "move forward" in relations, but is not prepared to budge on the "result of World War II".

Putin said during a public phone-in in April that he thinks "a compromise could be found at some point -- and it will be found" on the territorial dispute.

Moscow hopes the meeting will help create a "constructive atmosphere in bilateral relations", but "immediate serious progress" is unlikely, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov warned.

Despite the warmer words from the Kremlin, tensions between the two sides continue to surface and Japan has hit Russia with sanctions over the Ukraine crisis.

Russia has in turn angered Japan recently by building new modern compounds for its troops stationed on two of the disputed islands.

Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev also infuriated Tokyo by visiting one of the islands, home to some 19,000 Russians, last year.

Putin said last month he welcomed Abe's visit as it comes despite "pressure from (Japan's) partners, particularly the United States".

Abe will later this month host a summit of the Group of Seven advanced industrial countries, from which Russia has been excluded over its annexation of Crimea.

"Evidently Japan will try to act as a kind of middleman in the talks process between Russia and the US," Russia's government newspaper the Rossiiskaya Gazeta said yesterday.

US President Barack Obama reportedly asking Abe in February to postpone his trip to Russia, according to sources quoted by Japan's Kyodo agency.

Writing in pro-Kremlin daily Izvestia yesterday, a former deputy foreign minister and ambassador to Tokyo, Alexander Panov, suggested the meeting could see "Japan drop a number of sanctions" it imposed on Russia over Ukraine.
A civil society organisation here today criticised the PDP-BJP government in the state for opposing the Supreme Court's order for a common National Eligibility Entrance Test across the country for under-graduate medical courses.

"We criticise PDP-BJP coalition government for opposition to the Supreme Court's order that vouched for one common National Eligibility Entrance Test across the country for under-graduate medical courses," Jammu for India (JFI) convener, Hari Om told reporters here today.

He charged the BJP with playing with the career of the youth of Jammu and termed their "senseless opposition" to the NEET as an "act of betrayal".
The indefinite hunger strike by JNU students entered ninth day today even as the health condition of the student's union president Kanhaiya Kumar, who was admitted to AIIMS, has improved.

While five students yesterday withdrew from the hunger strike against the punishment by the university in connection with the February 9 event during which anti-national slogans were allegedly raised, 15 others continued with their fast.

Kanhaiya, who is out on bail after his arrest in a sedition case, was yesterday admitted to AIIMS in a semi-conscious state. He was treated for mild dehydration and ketosis.

"Doctors have advised that Kanhaiya be kept under observation. His health is better," a statement from the JNU Students Union said.

"Kanhaiya has appealed to the students to continue with the agitation in his absence from the campus," it said.

On day nine of the hunger strike, the students called for a protest against the JNU administration which has termed the fast as "unlawful" activity.

The keytone level of the fasting students is high and the BP is low, according to the test reports from the health centre.

25 students had gone on hunger strike last week. While five members of ABVP called off their fast on Wednesday claiming they have an assurance from the JNU administration that their demands will be considered, five members of the Left-affiliated groups withdrew from the stir yesterday citing deteriorating health.

JNU VC Jagadesh Kumar had appealed to students to put forward their demands using "constitutional" means and asked them to come for a "dialogue" to resolve the matter.

Two other students -- Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya -- were arrested along with Kanhaiya in the sedition case.

While Kanhaiya has been slapped with a penalty of Rs 10,000 on grounds of "indiscipline and misconduct", Umar, Anirban and a Kashmiri student, Mujeeb Gatoo have been rusticated for varying durations.

Financial penalty has been imposed on 14 students. Hostel facilities oftwo students have been withdrawn and the university has declared the campus out of bounds for two former students.

Saurabh, who is the lone ABVP member in JNU Students Union, has also been slapped with a fine of Rs 10,000 for blocking traffic.
The Nashik police arrested Bhausaheb Chavan, alleged kingpin of the Rs 210-crore 'KBC scam', at the Mumbai international airport early morning today.

His wife Aarti was also arrested.

Chavan, his wife and others are accused of duping 8,000 investors who had deposited money in the chit-fund schemes of his Nashik-based KBC Group.

He and his wife, facing cases of cheating under the IPC and under the Maharashtra Protection of Interest of Depositors (MPID) Act, had jumped the bail on June 19, 2014, and fled to Singapore, said Nashik police commissioner S Jagannathan here.

The case was transferred to the Economic Offences Wing from the CID upon the order of Aurangabad bench of Bombay High Court last week.
"Twilight" actress Kristen Stewart paid tribute to her "Panic Room" co-star Jodie Foster at a ceremony to honour the actress-filmmaker with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Stewart was on hand to fete the 53-year-old veteran actress and delivered a heartwarming speech in which she recalled the time they worked together for the 2002 thriller, reported Ace Showbiz.

"I watched 'Taxi Driver' when I was far too young to watch it," Stewart said, referring to Foster's 1976 movie directed by Martin Scorsese.

"And I was already saying Jodie Foster was my favorite actress before I was cast as her daughter," she said, jokingly adding, "Technically she was cast as my mom. She came onto the movie late and I was there to show her the ropes."



Calling Foster her "first adult friend," Stewart went on praising the "The Beaver" director, "There's nothing self-serving about her. She cares about people. She's quite the opposite of the type of person that is gravitated towards being an actress."



"I was drawn to her before I met her, and trust me, she's way cooler than me," the 26-year-old actress added.
Sri lanka today ended a common amnesty granted to illegal weapon owners who are to hand over the arms to authorities.

Military spokesman Brigadier Jayanath Jayaweera said the amnesty was in force from April 25.

"We have received 264 weapons during this period. Anyone could have handed over illegal weapons in their possession without any legal implications," he said.

Jayaweera said the military will launch operations to nab illegal weapons in future.
A Dubai-bound IndiGo plane from Hyderabad had to be diverted to Mumbai after the pilot found that there was "less-than-required" fuel in the aircraft.

The incident was reported last month, when the commander of IndiGo Hyderabad-Dubai flight (6E-026) sought permission to land from Mumbai air traffic control tower after it was found that there was one-tonne less fuel in the Airbus A-320 plane than the required quantity of 13 tonnes, a DGCA official said today.

Initial probe suggests complacency on the part of the airline's technician and his superior for the "less-than-required" jet fuel intake, he said.

"Their work will be reviewed before taking any action against them," the official said, adding that the pilot of the flight will also be called for investigation.

IndiGo said fuel onboard its Hyderabad-Dubai flight was as per the regulatory requirement, though not in accordance with the company's requirement.

"IndiGo flight 6E-026 on April 26 from Hyderabad to Dubai met the necessary DGCA requirement but was less than the company requirement. This was detected by the pilot after starting the cruise," an IndiGo statement said.

As the aircraft was flying over Mumbai, the pilot decided to divert the plane there for precautionary reasons, it said.

"The matter is being investigated by DGCA along with the flight safety department of IndiGo," the airline added.
Commanders in Libya's third city Misrata rushed militiamen to a key crossroads today after it was overrun by the Islamic State (IS) group in an assault in which a suicide bomber killed two police personnel.

The mobilisation came as the UN-backed unity government in Tripoli announced the formation of a new military command to take charge of the battle against the jihadists.

The Abu Grein crossroads lies 120 kilometres south of Misrata where the highway along Libya's Mediterranean coast meets the main road south into the desert interior.

It was captured by IS yesterday in an advance from their stronghold in the city of Sirte 140 kilometres to the east.

Misrata hospital said it had received eight dead and 105 wounded from the attack, without specifying whether they were all security force personnel or also included civilians.

The head of the Misrata military council, Colonel Ibrahim Bel-Rajab, said he had ordered all brigades under his command to head to Abu Grein without delay, Libya's LANA agency reported.

"Numerous armed vehicles of IS have been spotted in this area," he said.

Misrata's two main television channels broadcast appeals to militiamen on leave to return to their barracks.

In a statement, IS said a Tunisian fighter had blown up a vehicle at the crossroads allowing other fighters to advance and take control of it and five other villages in the area, the SITE Intelligence Group reported.

IS captured Sirte in June last year and has since transformed it into a training camp for Libyan and foreign militants.

With its port and airport, there are fears the jihadists could use the city as a staging post for attacks on European soil.

The group is estimated to have around 5,000 fighters in Libya, and is trying to attract hundreds more.

Western powers including the United States, Britain and France have openly considered international military intervention in Libya against IS.

They have expressed strong support for the UN-backed unity government which has slowly asserted its authority in the capital Tripoli since the end of March.

The government announced the formation of a new military command to oversee the campaign against IS in a statement on its Facebook page today.

The six-member command will be headed by General Bashir Mohammed al-Qadi, it said.
Two persons, including a senior citizen, were killed after being struck by lightning in Amreli district of Gujarat, officials said today.

The deceased were identified as Shivraj Pratap Khuman (19) and Jinarambhai Karsandas Gondaliya (60), both residents of Pithvadi village of the district, which has been receiving unseasonal rains for the last two days.

Both were returning home after grazing their cattle when they were hit by lightning last evening, M Solanki, an official of District Disaster Management Centre in Amreli, told PTI by phone.

In a separate incident, two bullocks from Gajarwada village in the district were killed today after being hit by lightning, he said.

Khambha taluka in the district received 31 mm of rain in just one hour (between 1700 hrs to 1800 hrs) this evening while Amreli received 4mm, he said.
A committee, formed under the chairmanship of Union Culture Minister Mahesh Sharma, today held a meeting to oversee the plans to celebrate the auspicious occasion of Buddha Poornima on a grand scale on May 21.

The committee for 'International Buddha Poornima Diwas Celebration-2016' also has Minister of State for Home Affairs Kiren Rijiju and MoS for HRD Upendra Kushwaha as co-chairpersons.

"It is proposed to celebrate this auspicious occasion (Buddha Poornima) on a grand scale on May 21 this year. Not only will this help Buddha's timeless teachings to further permeate the Indian consciousness, but will also reaffirm India's historical status in the eyes of the world, especially the comity of Buddhist nations," an official release said.

Buddha Poornima or Vesak marks Gautama Buddha's birth, enlightenment and death.

Speaking at the International Buddha Poornima Diwas Celebration last year here, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had declared that henceforth, Buddha Poornima will occupy a prominent place in the Indian calendar as a National Celebration.
A Mexican national has been arrested in California on charges of helping drug traffickers launder more than USD 60 million in proceeds through an elaborate scheme.

Gustavo Barba, 59, of Guadalajara, was detained on Tuesday as he sought to enter the United States through San Diego, authorities said yesterday.

Three of his associates were also jailed and charged in the 32-count indictment that details how the group laundered millions of dollars in drug proceeds through legitimate businesses in Mexico and South America.

Barba's organisation allegedly laundered the money by using a "Black Market Peso Exchange" (BMPE) scheme to convert millions of dollars in drug money generated in the United States into pesos that were then delivered to drug cartels in Mexico.

"The BMPE involves both illegal drug trafficking and legitimate businesses operating throughout the Americas, and the scheme solves problems faced by both groups," prosecutors said in a statement.

"Drug cartels have massive amounts of US currency - often in small denominations - that is difficult to transport in bulk or to deposit into financial institutions," it added.

"At the same time, some legitimate businesses in Mexico want US dollars in the United States to pay domestic suppliers and manufacturers so they can avoid incurring fees and taxes that would result if they wired the money to the United States through legitimate channels."



The BMEP brings the two groups together through a broker, according to the indictment, which was handed down last July but remained sealed until Thursday.

Once the peso broker facilitates the transactions for both sides -- the cartels and the legitimate businesses -- the proceeds are turned over to drug dealers or intermediaries, completing the cycle, authorities said.

Three other suspects are being sought in the case, including Barba's 77-year-old father-in-law, Roberto Castaneda, who allegedly coordinated the delivery of the drug profits.

The other two suspects allegedly acted as couriers.
Twenty persons have been booked for holding a Panchayat "in order to settle a matter" of the alleged rape of a 16-year-old girl student, who claimed she is now six-months pregnant.

Police in Adilabad district of Telangana have also registered a case against five persons who allegedly repeatedly raped the minor over the past 16 months.

The victim, a class 10th student, last night lodged a complaint with Madamarri police station, alleging that the five men, who are her neighbours, threatened her and raped her (individually) since January 2015, Police Inspector P Sadaiah said.

The girl further said she had first approached the villagers of Pallemguda of Kasipet mandal of Adilabad, who held a Panchayat over the incident even as one of the accused came forward to marry the girl. Also, she was offered Rs 2.5 lakh amount (Rs 50,000 each) from the five accused "to settle the matter", though she along with her family members lodged a complaint with police, Deputy Superintendent of Police (Bellampalli Sub-Division) Ramana Reddy said.

"The villagers, who held the Panchayat should have actually informed the police about the matter (of rape). However, it did not happen. Hence, a case under section 201 (causing disappearance of evidence of offence) of IPC has been registered against the 20 villagers, who organised the Panchayat," the DSP told PTI over phone.

The minor girl has been sent for medical examination, and the report would confirm whether she is pregnant or not, he said.

The five persons were booked on charge of rape and criminal intimidation under relevant sections of IPC besides under Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, the Inspector said while refusing to divulge details if the five accused were detained or are being questioned saying the matter is under investigation.
Ahead of Akshaya Tritiya festival, gold and silver refiner MMTC Pamp today launched new gold coin 'Tola' of 11.6639 grams and said it would mint 0.5 million pieces of these coins in the current fiscal.

The 'Tola' is an octagonal shaped coin with distinctive knurled edges and an intricate finish with 999.9 pure gold. It has the design of a traditional weighing balance and the reverse features 'potli' containing one hundred ratti seeds.

"For centuries, gold was measured in tola but the advent of metric system overtook this historical association. We have tried to capture the ancient wisdom and heritage in the 'Tola' coin," MMTC-Pamp Managing Director Rajesh Khosla said.

The company, which already mints different designs of gold and silver coins, aims to manufacture 0.5 million pieces of 'Tola' coins this fiscal, he told reporters.

MMTC-Pamp also has plans to launch half and quarter 'Tola' gold coins in the coming months.

In its initial phase, Khosla said that the 'Tola' coin will be available for purchase in select outlets of MMTC-Pamp outlets, Stock Holding Corporation of India (SHCIL), Indian Potash Ltd, as well as reputed jewellers in 28 cities including Chennai.

He further said that MMTC Pamp has also integrated a buy-back option at prevailing market price of gold that can presently be availed at its company-owned retail outlets in Bangalore, Chennai, Coimbatore, Delhi and Hyderabad.

MMTC Pamp is a joint venture between state-run MMTC and Switzerlands PAMP. It has an installed capacity to refine 200 tonnes of gold and 600 tonnes of silver per annum. It has a capacity to mint 2.5 million pieces in gold or silver.
Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today accused the Narendra Modi government of trying to dislodge Congress governments in the states.

"Since BJP has come to power they have only one mission 'Congress-mukt Bharat'. They say this wherever they go. I want to tell the Modi government that Congress is India's soul," he said at the 'Save Democracy' rally at Jantar Mantar here.

"Congress is like a flowing Ganga. You defame it or do whatever, it will not change its course," Singh said.

"There have been many attacks on Congress in the past since 1885 (when it was established). People have tried to weaken the party. But they could not succeed," he said.

Referring to the political crises in Arunachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, he said, "Congress is not there in many states. But wherever it is there attempts have been made to dislodge it. Congress governments were dislodged in Arunachal and Uttarakhand."



"The Modi government has attacked democracy. Now they are targeting other Congress states like Manipur, Nagaland, Mizoram and the Virbhadra Singh government in Himachal Pradesh. They are trying to dislodge these governments," he said.

"It is necessary that Congress workers reach out to people in every corner of the country and spread the message that the Modi government is uprooting democracy. We will not allow them to succeed," the former Prime Minister said.

He also said, "At present universities are not safe, courts are not safe. So it is your duty to understand this and ensure defeat of the Modi government's designs.


Former Union minister Arun Shourie on Friday hit out at Prime Minister accusing him of narcissism and of running a one-man Presidential government the direction of which was dangerous for India.

Bracketing with leaders like Indira Gandhi and Jayalalithaa, Arun Shourie accused the prime minister of indulging in narcissism.

Shourie, a Cabinet minister in the Vajpayee government who has drifted away from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in recent years, called the Modi government a Presidential government without checks and balances and said that the direction of the government under his supervision is not good for India.

In a 40-minute interview to Karan Thapar for India Today TVs To The Point programme, he analysed the two years of Modi government and warned that over the next three years he expected a more systematic attempt to curb civil liberties and an increase in decentralised intimidation besides choking of inconvenient voices.

Bracketing Modi with leaders like Indira Gandhi and Jayalalithaa, Shourie accused the prime minister of indulging in narcissism, which he described as both self-love to an exaggerated extent and insecurity, and Machiavellism, which meant that he exploits events to his benefit, according to a press release issued by the channel.

The former minister, who has criticised Modi in the past also, said that the prime ministers attitude to people is to use and throw them. He treats people like paper napkins and was remorseless, he alleged.

Shourie also referred to the raging controversy over the AugustaWestland helicopter deal and criticised the Modi government for not appealing against the acquittal by the Italian trial court of the company's two former chiefs Giuseppe Orsi and Bruno Spagnolini.

According to him the reference by the Italian appeals court judge to the Indian government being unhelpful in the matter was specific to the Modi government.

Commenting on Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar's speech in Rajya Sabha on the helicopter deal, Shourie used a Hindi metaphor to say it was like digging a mountain to find not a mouse, but an "invisible chouha (mouse)".

He compared Modi's two years as prime minister "as a boxing match with everybody" and said that he had not "had the focus we expected of him". This was a "great opportunity completely missed", he added.

The press release quoted the former minister as saying that one of the problems was that Modi "is getting inputs from very few people and they are, additionally, the people he has chosen".

Shourie saw "a clear line of logic" that linked ghar- wapsi, love-jihad, beef ban, the return of awards, the campaign against anti-nationalism, the focus on 'Bharat Mata ki jai' and student protests. This was "deliberately orchestrated by the government".

Shourie said the intention was to create "confrontation and polarisation" as he accused Modi of deliberately dividing India, calling it a policy of "divide and rule".

While accepting that under Modi corruption at the Centre had diminished or disappeared, he said that nothing was deliberately done in the states, citing Vyapam scandal in Madhya Pradesh, Lalit Modi episode and Saradha scam.

The former minister described as "unconstitutional" the imposition of President's rule in two Congress-ruled states of Uttarakhand and Arunachal Pradesh. The "deliberate" BJP policy of attracting and inviting defectors would "undermine" the party, he said.

Shourie was sharply critical of Modi's handling of relations with Pakistan, saying, "we have made fools of ourselves in the eyes of Pakistan".

Shourie said there was no consistency or logic to Modi's Pakistan policy which had "confused" India. He was sharply critical of "U-turns" in handling Pakistan.

Attacking the prime minister's policy towards China also, he said that it was comparable to Jawaharlal Nehru's policy towards the big neighbour.

Both believed that "they could charm the dragon" and both turned out to be wrong, he said, adding that Modi's policy could encourage China to claim that Kashmir is not a bilateral but a trilateral matter with Beijing being the third party because of its presence in the Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.

Speaking about the economy, the former World Bank economist said he believed that the claim of 7.6 per cent GDP growth was similar to the "exaggerated claims" of investments made during the Gujarat investment summits.

According to him the government had failed to be radical in its policies and had failed to handle tax issues, including retrospect taxation and the banking crisis.

Shourie accused the government of "gross negligence" and of being "irresponsible" in handling the banking crisis.
In a strong attack, former union minister Arun Shourie today hit out at Prime Minister Narendra Modi accusing him of "narcissism" and of running a one-man "Presidential government" the direction of which was "dangerous" for India.

Shourie, a Cabinet minister in the Vajpayee government who has drifted away from BJP in recent years, called the Modi government "a Presidential government without checks and balances" and said that the direction of the government under his supervision "is not good for India".

In a 40-minute interview to Karan Thapar for India Today TV's "To The Point" programme, he analysed the two years of Modi government and warned that over the next three years he expected "a more systematic attempt to curb civil liberties" and an increase in "decentralised intimidation" besides "choking" of "inconvenient voices".

Bracketing Modi with leaders like Indira Gandhi and Jayalalithaa, Shourie accused the prime minister of indulging in narcissism, which he described as both "self-love to an exaggerated extent and insecurity", and Machiavellism, which meant that he "exploits events to his benefit", according to a press release issued by the channel.

The former minister, who has criticised Modi in the past also, said that the prime minister's "attitude to people is to use and throw them". He treats people "like paper napkins" and was "remorseless", he alleged.

Asked about an impression it was hurt pride and anger at not becoming finance minister that made him attack Modi, Shourie said "anybody who thinks like that thinks poorly of him. Let them think like that.
Members from Congress, BSP and NCP in Rajya Sabha today made a strong pitch for reservation in higher judiciary by amending Constitution and sought an all-party on the issue, even as Government insisted it was not considering any proposal to amend the Constitution for such a quota.

At the same time, Law Minister Sadananda V Gowda said that reservation does exist in lower judiciary in at least 19 states.

Replying to a question on whether the ministry has received requests or suggestions favouring reservation for OBCs, SCs, STs, Muslim and women in the judicial services, Gowda said the appointment of judges of Supreme Court and High Courts is made under Articles 124 and 217 of the Constitution which do not provide for any quota for any caste or class of persons.

"The government has, however, requested the Chief Justices of High Courts that while sending proposals for appointment of judges, due consideration be given to suitabale candidates belonging to Other Backward Classes, Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, Minorities and from amongst women," the minister said.

He also informed the House that his predecessor Ravi Shankar Prasad had written a few letters to all Chief Justices of the High Courts to consider reservation for SCs, STs and other sections.

He said as far as the higher judiciary and higher judicial services are concerned, there were certain differences.

"The appointments of the judicial officers in the states is completely under the domain of the High Courts...There are about 19 states, where there are reservations in the appointment of judicial officers in the lower judiciary.

"But as far as High Courts and Supreme Courts are concerned, these are constitutional posts and are governed by constitutional authorities. There is no such reservation there," he said.

The minister sought to make it clear,"there is no proposal before the government as far as constitutional amendment is concerned" to provide quota in higher judiciary.

Congress member K V P Ramchandra Rao sought to know whether the demand for reservation in judiciary would be considered favourably and if not, then why.

Responding to demands from members for an all-party



meeting to consider the matter, the minister said the suggestion has been "well-taken" and the government will look into it. He, however, refused to give a timeline for the same.

Gowda at the same reminded that "so far as the High Court and Supreme Court judges are concerned, there is practically no reservation as far as any caste or community is concerned. But we are writing repeatedly to the Chief Justices of various High Courts."



He said there were 24 high courts under which quota exist in the appointment of judges in the lower judiciary. Citing the example of Andhra Pradesh, he said that it has 29 per cent reservation for Backward Classes, 15 per cent for SCs and 6 per cent for STs in the lower judiciary.

"It is applicable to the lower judicial services," Gowda said.

Rao, however, argued that framers of the Constitution had never banned or disallowed reservation in the judiciary, a view shared by BSP's Satish Chandra Mishra, who said "there is no prohibition" for quota in High Courts and Supreme Court.

He also expressed disagreement with the minister's contention that the appointment of judges of Supreme Court and High Courts are governed by Articles 124 and 217 of the Constitution which do not provide for any quota for any caste or class of persons.

"Is any prohibition there? You can still make reservation over there under rules...The High Court and Supreme Court are not beyond states. And Article 16 (4) deals with respect to state and its says they can frame reservation for them."



Digvijay Singh (Congress) said since the minister has said the proposal for NJAC was passed unanimously with support of all parties, what was the problem in amending the Constitution now to press for reservation in judiciary.

"The Constitution can be amended. It is the right of Parliament," Singh said.

The minister, however, made it clear "at present there is no proposal before the government as far as Constitutional amendment is concerned.

Replying to the questions raised, Gowda said under



Article 235 of the Constitution, the administrative control over members of district and subordinate judiciary in the states vested with the concerned High Court.

"Further, the respective state government, in consultation with the High Court, frames the rules and regulations regarding the issues of appointment, promotion, reservations etc of judicial officers in the state judicial service. Central government has no direct role in this regard," he said.

The Minister also recalled that recently, upon receiving representations from various sources, Member Secretary of National Commission for Backward Classes (NCBC) requested the government to consider providing 27 per cent reservations for OBCs in lower as well as Higher Judicial Services in the National Capital territory of Delhi.

"Since the matter pertains to state governments of NCT of Delhi, the request has been forwarded to them as well as to the Delhi High Court for taking necessary action," he said.

Replying to supplementaries, the minister rued that unfortunately the government's attempt to set up National Judicial Appointments Commission (NJAC) has got stuck.

"But we have seen the intention of Government. It was a unanimous decision of the Parliament," Gowda said referring to the provision to have SC/ST members in the proposed body.

Declaring that judiciary cannot risk being caught in a "web of indebtedness" towards the government, the Supreme Court had in October last year rejected the NJAC Act and the 99th Constitutional Amendment which sought to give politicians and civil society a final say in appointment of judges to the highest courts.

D Raja (CPI) took objection to the mention of the word "suitable" saying it keeps coming when the issue of appointing people from SC/ST category is brought about.

"Who is a 'suitable' candidate? It is insulting. You say that eligibility/suitability is not there among SC/ST? It is a very insulting word," Raja said.

Reeling out figures to buttress his point about low representation of SCs, STs and OBCs in higher judiciary, Raja asked the minister "how do you justify it".

Hanumantha Rao (Congress) demanded a separate discussion for one hour dedicated to the issue of reservation in judiciary. Majeed Memon (NCP) also backed the demand for quota in the judiciary.
Opposition National Conference today said only the Jammu and Kashmir Governor being invited to attend the high-level meeting chaired by Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh in New Delhi to discuss various issues pertaining to the state, amounted to "bypassing" of the elected chief minister.

"Instead of the elected chief minister, New Delhi invited the state's Governor for the high-level meeting to discuss various key issues pertaining to it.

"This is yet another sign of how Mehbooba Mufti has bartered the constitutional mandate and sanctity of the Chief Minister's Office to remain in her chair. This brazen disempowerment of the chief minister is an alarming development," NC chief spokesperson Aga Syed Ruhullah Mehdi alleged.

The fact that the central government has "sidelined" the elected chief minister in dealing with vital issues of the state and the subsequent "conspicuous silence" of the chief minister does not auger well for the state, he said here.

"The Union Home minister chaired the meeting to discuss various key issues pertaining to the state including the issues of rehabilitation of Kashmiri Pandit migrants, return of civilian land by the army, the security situation in the state post the Handwara and Kupwara tragedy and the situation along the Line of Control.

"While the meeting was attended among others by Defence Minister Manohar Parikar and National Security Advisor Ajit Doval, the state was represented by Governor N N Vohra and not the chief minister," he said.

The NC chief spokesperson alleged Mehbooba had now been "officially relegated to the status of an ad hoc chief minister" who had been placed in the chief minister's office by the BJP for "specific and limited purposes of furthering BJP's agenda in the State".

"If the chief minister has no say in these issues that pertain to the state, one wonders why she has been placed in the chief minister's chair in the first place.

It is evident that the state is being "run from New Delhi" and the state government has been "divested of all its rights and roles", he alleged.

"Even law and order, which is a state subject in exclusivity, is now being supervised directly by New Delhi as was proven in the NIT issue and more recently the Handwara incident," he said.

Mehdi said the chief minister's "omission" from these meetings indicates a "continued erosion of the state's democratic institutions" under the PDP-BJP Alliance and these developments have created "widespread disillusionment and resentment" in the state.

"This seems to have become a norm now and the most tragic



part is that Mehbooba sees no problem in her open, public marginalisation by Delhi and is hence endorsing how the Chief Minister's position is being undermined. She seems to have been reduced to be a non-essential formality in the scheme of things," Omar said.

Condemning PDP's alleged U-turns, Omar said the PDP-BJP government's "back-pedalling" on promises of revocation of AFSPA and the return of power projects to the state were examples of how the "sacrosanct" mandate of the people of J-K was "violated and sold".

"PDP's actions of opportunism has been in stark contrast to its pre-election rhetoric and grandstanding. The same Mehbooba who had publicly said that BJP could never be acceptable to the people of the state has gone on to assume the role of ridiculing Muslim countries and societies for their internal struggles. This is a poignant, almost poetic, example of her hypocrisy and defines the politics of her party," he said.

Meanwhile, Omar took a dig at the Chief Minister on Twitter, saying after her yesterday's meeting for improving the traffic, the condition on the roads was "worse than before" today.

"Yesterday @mehbooba_mufti took a meeting to improve the traffic management in Srinagar & today things are so much worse than before," Omar wrote on Twitter.
The government today said multi-national giants like Apple can take advantage of the relaxed FDI norms in the single-brand retail sector.

Secretary of the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) Ramesh Abhishek said that as per the specific FDI policy announced in November last year, the local sourcing requirements could be relaxed for state-of-the-art and cutting-edge technology.

"It was not a policy for one individual company. The government works on transparent policies which are applicable to all who fit into that. So, whether it is Apple or Orange or whatever, whosoever fits into that policy will take advantage of it," Abhishek said here at a CII function on manufacturing.

There are a whole lot of many applications in the single-brand retail sector, the secretary said.

DIPP has already recommended exempting iPhone and iPad maker Apple from the mandatory 30 per cent local sourcing norms.

Chinese firms Xiaomi and LeEco have also submitted applications to open stores in the country.

Speaking at the same vent, NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant said the government does not work on individual cases.

"If you look at the policy regime, we have radically liberalised it across sectors, whether it was infrastructure or FDI regime," Kant said.

"Now, we are going to do this in social sector from education to health, creating world-class universities... We never work for individual specific case, that has never been done."



Kant also said land cost component for projects has increased to 40-42 per cent from 14-15 per cent, but "despite that, the government went ahead and acquired land".

There are a lot of projects in the pipeline and "you will see lots of action in coming years. 10-12 states should grow at a double-digit rate. Every state cannot be a manufacturing state," he said.

Talking about ease of doing business, Kant said the government wants to improve its ranking within top 50.

On GST, CII President Naushad Forbes called for quick implementation of the crucial tax reform.

"It is frustrating to be deprived of benefits of the transformative reform of GST. Introduction of GST could add Rs 8,000 to the income of the average Indian household each year which would progressively increase in future. Hence, the opportunity cost of not introducing GST was high," he explained.

CII Director General Chandrajit Banerjee stressed on political maturity and convergence of political minds to get GST through.
Multiple torture marks have been found on the body of a senior worker of Pakistan's Muttahida Qaumi Movement who allegedly died in the custody of paramilitary Rangers, according to a postmortem report.

The MQM had claimed that senior party leader Farooq Sattar's coordinator Aftab Ahmed died while he was in Rangers' custody in Karachi.

42-year-old Ahmed, a father of five, was arrested from Karachi.

A high-level inquiry ordered by army chief General Raheel Sharif has found that a senior worker of the MQM who died in the custody of the paramilitary Rangers was subjected to torture.

Over 35 per cent of the body was covered in bruises and abrasions, the postmortem report said yesterday.

Ahmed, died two days after he was picked up by the paramilitary force in a raid at his residence in Karachi.

The rangers, however, had claimed that Ahmed had died from a heart attack.

The MQM held peaceful protests here demanding an independent inquiry into the death of Ahmed. The MQM had been complaining that it is being targeted as part of the military operation launched in 2013.

Senior party leader Sattar said that the autopsy proves that their party colleague was tortured prior to his death.

"Around 3,000 of our workers bear torture marks on their bodies. It is the responsibility of the law enforcement agencies to expose such black sheep amongst them and get rid of them," he said.

The MQM leader said that the army chief should also take notice of the 65 other 'missing' party workers who are in the custody of law enforcement agencies but have not been produced in courts.
Former Pakistani military dictator Pervez Musharraf's alleged threatening call to ex-premier Benazir Bhutto in 2007 could not be traced, according to the joint investigation team probing her assassination.

During cross-examination by Barrister Farogh Nasim, Musharraf's counsel, in the Anti-Terrorism Court (ATC) Rawalpindi, joint investigation team (JIT) chief Mohammad Khalid Qureshi admitted that his team could not trace the call either from the two mobile phones of Bhutto or the ex-military chief's cellphone.

However, he said that there was a possibility that the then President Musharraf may have made the call from any of his official phones.

Qureshi, who is a former additional director general of the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA), was the last prosecution witness in the high-profile murder case, Dawn reported.

The prosecution's case was based on the threatening call which Musharraf allegedly made to Bhutto while she was at the office of US Congressman Tom Lantos.

According to the prosecution, US lobbyist Mark Siegel claimed that on September 25, 2007, in his presence at the office of Congressman Lantos in Washington, Bhutto received a telephone call which she later described as "a very bad call" from Musharraf.

The statement said the former military ruler had warned Bhutto that "her safety depends on the state of their (Musharraf and Benazir's) relationship".

According to Siegel, Bhutto sent him an email on October 26, 2007, in which she expressed her sense of insecurity. She also said if something happened to her, she would hold the military ruler responsible, apart from the individuals mentioned in her letter to Musharraf on October 16, 2007.

The individuals Bhutto had mentioned in the letter were -- retired Brigadier Ejaz Shah, retired Lt Gen Hameed Gul and former Punjab chief minister Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi.

During the cross-examination, Nasim asked Qureshi whether he submitted any forensic report of the email to the ATC.

In response, Qureshi admitted that no forensic report was submitted to the court and said the email was sent from two official accounts of Bhutto and did not need any forensic audit.

Qureshi also denied of having any direct evidence of the conversation between Musharraf and the then city police officer Rawalpindi Saud Aziz.

The prosecution had alleged that Aziz washed the crime scene to destroy the evidence on Musharraf's direction.

Bhutto, former two-time premier, was killed on December 27, 2007, when she was coming out of a park in Rawalpindi after addressing an election rally.

(Reopens FGN 13)



In the written statement recorded with the ATC, Qureshi said, "during the investigation of this (Benazir murder) case, I also personally recorded statements of...Retired General Hameed Gul, retired Brigadier Ejaz Shah, Zamurd Khan (former MD Baitul Maal), Farhatullah Babar, retired General Tauqeer Zia, Senator Rehman Malik, Khusro Pervez, retired Brigadier Javed Iqbal Cheema and issued questionnaires to a number of people, including former secretary interior Syed Kamal Shah."



He also said he included Musharraf, DIG Aziz and SSP Khurram Shahzad in the high-profile murder case.

When Nasim told him that he had some personal grudge with Musharraf due to which he implicated him in the murder case, Qureshi replied that he was the head of the counter-terrorism wing of the FIA and had probed several high-profile cases.

He denied having any personal grudge with Musharraf and said he was also the investigating officer in a terrorist attack on Musharraf in 2003 in which the court awarded life imprisonment to six persons.

On the request of senior lawyer Malik Rafique, ATC Judge Rai Ayub Khan Marth adjourned the proceedings yesterday to May 11 when Rafique would cross examine the JIT head.
Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar's de facto leader and foreign minister, visited neighboring Laos today in her first official trip abroad.

Myanmar and Laotian state media reported that Suu Kyi accompanied Myanmar President Htin Kyaw on the visit, which came at the invitation of the President of Laos, Bounnhang Vorachit.

Htin Kyaw was the first head of state to be hosted by Bounnhang, who officially assumed his post just three weeks ago.

The Laotian state agency, KPL, said the purpose of the visit was to strengthen relations and cooperation between the countries.

It said, both sides also exchanged points of view on regional and international issues of common interest, and discussed restarting direct flights between tourist and commercial destinations in both countries.

Suu Kyi, who took office on March 30, already held a meeting with a representative of Myanmar's most important neighbor, when Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi visited the Myanmar capital Naypyitaw in early April.

Suu Kyi holds the post of state counsellor, which was specially created for her, and in that position is the country's real leader. The military-imposed constitution barred her from becoming President, so as leader of her National League for Democracy party, she arranged for her close associate Htin Kyaw to become President but defer to her as the decision-maker.

She seems likely to expand her power, as Htin Kyaw yesterday proposed to Parliament that a Ministry for State Counsellor be created.

According to the state-controlled Global New Light of Myanmar newspaper, he explained that his proposal "is intended to speed up the government's efforts at national reconciliation, internal peace, national development and the rule of law.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un hailed the country's "historic" nuclear test in January in a keynote address today to the ruling party's first party congress for nearly 40 years.

"This year during which the party's congress is held, our military successfully conducted the first H-bomb test...An historic landmark in the 5,000-year history of our people," Kim said in his speech broadcast on state television.
North Korea today staged its most important political show for a generation, aimed at cementing the absolute rule of leader Kim Jong-Un and underlining the sanctions-hit country's "prestige" as a nuclear power.

The first ruling party congress for nearly 40 years drew thousands of selected delegates from across the country to Pyongyang for what, in theory at least, was a gathering of North Korea's top decision-making body.

It also drew around 130 foreign journalists who were invited to cover the event but not allowed inside the venue, restricted instead to watching from a spot 200 metres (yards) away in the light drizzle falling on the capital.

And state television provided no live coverage, devoting its programming to archive material, films and patriotic concerts.

The 33-year-old Kim, who was not even born when the last Workers' Party Congress was held in 1980, was to deliver a keynote address that will be scrutinised for any sign of a substantive policy shift, especially on the economic front.

Analysts will also be watching for personnel changes as Kim looks to bring in a younger generation of leaders hand-picked for their loyalty.

State media previewed the event by hailing the North's most recent nuclear test in January as evidence of its "greatness and prestige as a nuclear power state."



And the North's Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea slammed the international community's opposition to Pyongyang's nuclear weapons programme.

"Regardless of whether someone recognises it or not, our status as a nuclear state that is armed with H-bombs cannot change," the committee said in a statement.

There has been widespread speculation about the North preparing another nuclear test to coincide with the congress, as a defiant gesture of strength and future intent.

The 1980 event was staged to crown Kim's father Kim Jong-Il as heir apparent to his own father, the North's founding leader Kim Il-Sung.

The 2016 version was being held inside the imposing April 25 Palace, whose stone facade was adorned with huge portraits of the two late leaders, along with giant red and gold ruling party banners.

While the agenda -- and even the duration -- of the congress remains unknown, its main objective is to confirm Kim Jong-Un's status as legitimate inheritor of the Kim family's dynastic rule which spans almost seven decades.

It may also enshrine as formal party doctrine Kim's "byungjin" policy of pursuing nuclear weapons in tandem with economic development.

Notably absent was any Chinese representation -- a possible reflection of the increasingly strained ties between the North and its sole major ally.
National Conference today pitched for the promotion of the displaced Kashmiri Pandits (KPs) appointed under Prime Minister's employment package in the Relief department in Kashmir Valley.

"The State government should promote the displaced KP employees appointed under PM employment package in Relief Organisation in Kashmir," NC minority cell president M K Yogi said.

The displaced KP employees met the NC leaders in this regard and highlighted the issue.

"While other employees have been given promotion in Revenue and other departments, class IVth displaced KP employees were not promoted as yet," Yogi said.

Sanjay Koul of Displaced Employees' Association also demanded grant of the promotion to them and said the government should do justice with them".

"If these employees appointed under PM package are not promoted how can government bring back KPs and rehabilitate them in Kashmir because you need to take confidence building measures in this regard," Koul said.
Nepal's first woman President Bidhya Devi Bhandari has cancelled her visit to India, which would have been her first foreign trip after assuming office, in the wake of the political instability in her country.

Bhandari was scheduled to visit from May 9 as the state guest at the invitation of President Pranab Mukherjee. She was also scheduled to participate in a 'Shahi Snan' in Ujjain's Simhastha Kumbh on May 14.

Government sources in New Delhi said, "We have learnt that Nepali President Bidyadevi Bhandari's official visit to India has been postponed by the Nepali side. We understand that this is on account of the political developments in Nepal."



Earlier this week, UCPN-Maoist led by Prachanda triggered political instability by declaring the end of the coalition with the ruling CPN-UML.

The Maoists and the opposition Nepali Congress have accused Prime Minister K P Oli for failing to implement the new Constitution, address problems related to Madhesis, expedite the post-quake reconstruction work, failing to check soaring prices and promoting black marketing and corruption.

However, Oli yesterday survived a threat to his government after a U-turn by Prachanda-led Maoists who decided not to withdraw support to him "for the time being".
Israel's premier said today he would host a lecture on Jewish history for UN staff, following a resolution of the organisation's cultural body "denying" Jewish ties to Jerusalem's holiest site.

UNESCO's executive board last month adopted a resolution condemning "Israeli aggressions and illegal measures against the freedom of worship and Muslims' access to their Holy Site Al-Aqsa Mosque/Al-Haram Al Sharif," failing to mention the site's Jewish name of the Temple Mount.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had attacked the "absurd" resolution which "ignores the unique historic connection of Judaism to the Temple Mount, where the two temples stood for a thousand years and to which every Jew in the world has prayed for thousands of years".

Today, he reiterated that he was "shocked" UNESCO would adopt "a decision denying any Jewish connection to the Temple Mount, our holiest site".

"That is why today I am announcing a seminar on Jewish history for all UN personnel in Israel," he said in a statement.

"I will personally host the lecture at the prime minister's Office," said Netanyahu, the son of a historian, noting that it will be delivered by a "leading scholar of Jewish history".

Diplomats will also be invited, "including of countries which voted for this outrageous decision", Netanyahu said of the resolution on "Occupied Palestine" presented by several Arab states.

After Israel's reaction to the resolution, UNESCO chief Irina Bokova issued a statement stressing that "Jerusalem is a Holy Land of the three monotheistic religions, a place of dialogue for all Jewish, Christian and Muslim people".

Netanyahu's spokesman David Keyes said that denying the Jewish people's connection to the site "isn't only ahistorical. It actually makes peace harder to achieve."



"Peace is forged through respect and understanding. This shows neither," Keyes said.

The compound in east Jerusalem, which was taken by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War and later annexed in a move not recognised internationally, has long been a flashpoint in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

It has seen frequent clashes over fears that Israel is planning to change the rules which currently state that Muslims can pray there, while Jews can only visit.

Netanyahu denies seeking to change the status quo.
IT solutions provider NIIT Technologies today reported a consolidated net profit of Rs 79 crore for the March quarter on the back of strong growth in the US and banking and financial services vertical.

The company had registered a net loss of Rs 17.5 crore in January-March 2015 on account of certain exceptional items.

NIIT saw revenues grow 12 per cent to Rs 684.7 crore in the reported quarter, from Rs 611.2 crore in the year-ago period.

"We saw a strong growth in our international business, especially in the US as well as the BFSI vertical... Margins expanded as we reduced our focus on government and domestic business," NIIT Technologies CEO Arvind Thakur told PTI.

For the fiscal, net profit zoomed 145 per cent to Rs 280 crore while revenues moved up 13.1 per cent to Rs 2,682 crore.

The company's BFSI vertical grew 29 per cent during the year, increasing the revenue share to 38 per cent from 33 per cent last year.

Travel and transportation contributed 35 per cent of revenues while the manufacturing / distribution share stood at 8 per cent and business from the government at 4 per cent.

Revenues from the Americas grew 17 per cent, representing 46 per cent of the total revenue mix.

The figure for Europe, the Middle East and Africa grew by 8 per cent during the year, contributing 34 per cent to the revenue, while the Asia-Pacific accounted for 10 per cent of the total revenue mix.

"India revenue share reduced to 10 per cent, declining 14 per cent year-on-year, as a result of reduced focus on government business," he said.

The CEO added that the company received fresh orders of USD 120 million during the said quarter, taking the cumulative figure to USD 301 million worth of orders executable over the next 12 months.

"The order intake includes a new multi-year large transformational outsourcing engagement with an insurance client in Europe and another multi-million dollar new insurance logo acquired in the US, Thakur said.

NIIT added 4 new clients during the quarter -- 2 each in the Americas and the Asia-Pacific.

The digital segment contributed to 16 per cent of the overall revenue mix during the quarter.

The company's headcount came down by 40 to 9,476 at the end of the period under review. The attrition rate stood at 12.7 per cent.
Nine persons including two women were today arrested by Railway police while they were trying to smuggle 110 Kilograms of cannabis worth Rs 50 lakhs, in Howrah-Delhi Rajdhani Express here, police said.

"We were informed that a gang including two women were trying to smuggle a stock of cannabis from Howrah station after which a search operation was launched and the culprits were nabbed at Kanpur station," a GRP police official said.

The arrested persons revealed during interrogation that they received the stock at Howrah railway station and their job was to deliver the goods to someone in Delhi. They only provided courier service and nothing else.

We have got information about the real kingpins through there mobile details and have informed the Delhi and Howrah police, the officer added.
Militants have blown an offshore oil facility operated by US oil group Chevron in southern Nigeria, the navy and the company said today, in renewed violence that could hit exports in Africa's largest oil producer.

"There was an attack on a Chevron facility near Escravos on Wednesday night. The incident happened about four nautical miles from Escravos, near Warri, in Delta state," spokesman Chris Ezekobe told AFP.

Ezekobe said "militants using explosives blew up the Okan platform, a collection facility for offshore oil and gas that feeds the Escravos terminal".

He said it was not known how many people were on the platform at the time, but that there were no known casualties.

The navy was working with other security agents to track down the culprits, he added.

"A previously unknown group called the Niger Delta Avengers has claimed responsibility for the incident," the spokesman said, confirming a statement on the group's website.

"But we are not ruling out the involvement of former Niger delta militant leaders, particularly Tompolo, who is wanted on fraud charges."



Chevron Nigeria Limited (CNL), which operates the joint venture with Nigeria's state-run oil firm, confirmed in a statement that the facility was attacked at 11:15 PM (local time) on Wednesday.

The company blamed "unknown persons" for the breach, adding: "The facility is currently shut-in and we are assessing the situation, and have deployed resources to respond to a resulting spill."



"The incident has been reported to the relevant security and regulatory bodies."



"CNL continues to monitor the situation and remains committed to meeting its business and corporate obligations, including protecting people and the environment and conducting its operations reliably and safely."



There was no immediate indication of the volume of crude affected but a Chevron official, who asked not to be identified, said the attack would hit gas supply to power plants already affected by almost daily outages.

Attacks on oil and gas facilities have increased since January when Tompolo -- whose real name is Government Ekpemupolo -- was declared wanted on multi-million-dollar corruption charges.
Oilmeals export fell by 70 per cent to 54,390 tonnes in April on lower availability of oilseeds and price disparity with global markets, according to an industry data.

"The overall export of oilmeals during April is reported at 54,390 tonnes compared to 1,82,638 tonnes in April 2015 i.E. Down by 70 per cent due to lesser availability of oilseeds for crushing and continuous disparity in exporting oilmeals in international market," Solvent Extractors' Association of India said in a statement.

Oilmeals export to South Korea declined 60.53 per cent to 47,082 tonnes last month as against 1,19,297 tonnes in April 2015. Vietnam imported only 1,182 tonnes compared to 21,132 tonnes during the period under review.

"India is currently totally out priced in international market due to huge price variation," the statement said.

India's oilmeals exports dropped by 52 per cent to 11.84 lakh tonnes in financial year 2015-16 as against 24.65 lakh tonnes in the previous year, due to sharp fall in soyabean shipments.

In value terms, the exports fell by 65 per cent to Rs 1,510 crore compared with Rs 4,298 crore in 2014-15.
One of the cousins of former IAF chief S P Tyagi, Sanjeev Tyagi, has admitted to have had financial dealings with European middlemen Carlo Gerosa and Guido Haschke in AgustaWestland chopper deal, CBI claimed today.

Chances of first arrests by CBI in the high-profile case increased as sources in the agency claimed that Sanjeev and another accused Gautam Khaitan, who were questioned today, remained evasive and concealed information.

The sources claimed Sanjeev has also admitted property dealings with the former Air Chief.

"But when asked about the details, he did not give proper details and remained evasive during the questioning on some crucial questions," said one of the officials.

Message sent seeking his reaction remained unanswered.

Besides Sanjeev and Khaitan, two other accused in the CBI FIR Sandeep Tyagi and Rajeev Tyagi were questioned by the agency today individually in separate chambers at its headquarters here for over eight hours.

CBI sources claimed Khaitan, former board member of Aeromatrix--one of the firms accused of receiving alleged bribe in the deal, "concealed" information regarding his companies and AgustaWestland.

He was allowed a break presumably to bring some documents which he was not carrying with him at the time of questioning.

The sources said Khaitan yesterday had admitted setting up a shell company IDS Tunisia through which alleged kickbacks were received from AgustaWestland which were then forwarded to different countries and from there to India.

CBI had registered a case against S P Tyagi along with 13 others including his cousins and European middlemen.

The allegation against S P Tyagi is that he reduced flying ceiling of the helicopter from 6,000m to 4,500m (15,000ft) which put AgustaWestland helicopters in the race for the deal without which its choppers were not even qualified for submission of bids.

Tyagi has denied allegations against him and said the change of specifications, which brought AgustaWestland into contention, was a collective decision in which senior officers of Indian Air Force, SPG and other departments were involved.

(Reopens DEL 62)



"My financial dealings with Carlo and Haschke date back to 2004 and Feb 2005, which is precisely two years before the tender was published and six to five years before the order was placed by Indian government and on top of it payments received by me were for power sector jobs all received by bank and income tax paid and nothing to do with this damn helicopter," Sanjeev Tyagi later said in response to CBI's claim.
The process for the selection of pilgrims for the Kailash Manasarovar Yatra 2016 through computerised draw of lots started today.

Union minister Gen (retd) V K Singh, who began the process, said that after the computerised draw of lots, the selected ones will be informed through SMS and email.

"We will not select the names, the computer will do it. It is the endeavour of the Ministry of External Affairs to do every work with transparency. We have done a similar thing for Haj and our efforts are to provide better amenities to pilgrims," the Minister of State, Ministry of External Affairs, said.

The four-month travel period to Kailash Manasarovar Yatra starts from June.

Pradeep Rawat, Joint Secretary (East) in the ministry said they had received 2,600 applications this year, of which 2,400 were found in order. The list also has 87 doctors.

Eighteen batches of 60 pilgrims will take the Lipulekh Pass route while seven batches comprising 50 pilgrims will take the Nathu La route. The former is known to be more arduous.

"Once the list is generated and locked in the computer, it cannot be changed. We have added certain new features this year under which pilgrims can give us suggestions online. This will help in addressing the issue at a faster pace," Rawat said.

After the draw of lots, the pilgrims can seek changes in their batch by sending their request online or by calling the designated number.

He said the ministry is working with the governments of Sikkim, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarkhand on the matter.
Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif today accused his political opponents of obstructing the progress of Pakistan and compared them to "terrorists", amid mounting pressure on him from opposition parties to quit following the Panama Papers leak.

"Terrorists and agitators are pursuing the agenda to hinder progress and prosperity of Pakistan. There is no difference between them," Sharif said while inaugurating a 393-kilometre-long Sukkur-Multan motorway in Sukkur.

"People should think twice about which side they want to be on...What do terrorists do? They wish to halt progress in Pakistan," he said in harshly-worded remarks.

Referring to the sit-ins staged by the opposition, he asked: "What is the agenda of those who agitate?"



"Don't they try to stop progress in Pakistan? Don't they try to disrupt peace? What is the difference between them and terrorists?" he questioned.

The premier said that the country would not have lagged behind in progress if there was no sit-in politics.

The motorway is a part of the Peshawar-Karachi motorway and falls under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. It will be built with financial assistance from China.

Sharif said the assistance from China would have come earlier if the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf party led by Imran Khan had not staged a "sit-in" in Islamabad.

A war of words between opposition leaders and the government has escalated over the past few weeks, with opposition parties holding anti-corruption rallies and building pressure on the premier to step down.

Sharif said former military dictator Pervez Musharraf had spent nine years trying to find proof of corruption, kickbacks and commission against him and his family and failed.

Major opposition parties this week asked the prime minister to present himself and his family for accountability after the Panama leaks claimed his sons and daughter held stakes in off-shore companies worth millions of dollars.
The mystery behind the toxic sweetmeat that claimed 33 lives in Pakistan's Punjab province has been resolved with a man confessing to intentionally mix pesticide in them, police said today.

Khalid Mahmood, 18, told police that he had mixed poison (pesticide) in the sweetmeat prepared by his elder brother Tariq at his shop to settle a score with him.

"Tariq used to torture me. I decided to mix pesticide in the sweet so that he is held responsible for selling poisonous sweet and arrested by police," Mahmood said while recording his confessional statement before a magistrate yesterday.

Khalid confessed to have mixed a liquid pesticide, 'Exeed', in the material being prepared for manufacturing sweetmeats at the shop owned by his elder brother, police said.

The incident took place in Layyah district, some 325 kilometers from Lahore, about two weeks ago.

Sajjd Hussain had brought the sweetmeat from Tariq's shop to celebrate the birth of his child.

It was served to his family members. Their condition deteriorated soon after eating the sweetmeat. They were rushed to the nearby hospital.

Sajjad, his six brothers and a sister and 25 others including five children who consumed the poisonous sweet died.
Kashmiri Pandit organisation Panun Kashmir today criticised the Centre for the removal of army bunkers from Handwara.

"The government policy of public removal of security bunkers and pickets in presence of army chief as was done in Handwara recently is an act of self-laceration of the credibility of the security establishment - particularly that of Indian Army", Panun Kashmir Chairman Ajay Chrungoo told reporters here today.

"Policies pursued with regard to terrorist-separatist war in J&K, demonstrate a proclivity to abdicate and have only resulted in volcanic separatist eruptions," he alleged.

The organisation also criticised the Centre's statement that there was no bar on Hurriyat leaders meeting Pakistani officials.

"The happenings in NIT Srinagar should make Government understand not only the fundamentalist communal ferment ruling the roost there, but also its almost non-existent control of the political sphere at the ground," he said.
The Patidar Anamat Andolan Samiti today announced to intensify its agitation over the Patel quota issue, adding that it would invite prominent politicians from other states, including Nitish Kumar, Mamata Banerjee, Uddhav Thackeray and Raj Thackeray to address the rallies.

The organisation, which is spearheading the Patel quota movement, said that it would organise several rallies till the end of this year to highlight their demands and the next round of agitation will start from Visnagar in Mehsana district on May 8.

The decision comes in the wake of Gujarat government's recent decision to provide 10 per cent reservation for Economically Backward Classes (EBC).

To chalk out their road map for the agitation, several PAAS leaders, including Akhilesh Katiyar, who is also the national general secretary of Patel Navnirman Sena (PNS), today held a meeting near Gandhinagar.

Talking to reporters before the meet, Katiyar rejected the 10 per cent reservation announced by the Gujarat government.

"We never demanded reservation under EBC quota. Since the beginning of our stir, we have been demanding inclusion of Patels under the OBC quota only. Since our demand is not fulfilled, we will intensify our stir in the coming months by involving national leaders," said Katiyar.

Convener of Saurashtra unit of PAAS, Lalit Vasoya, said, "The next round of agitation will see presence of several national leaders, such as Bihar CM Nitish Kumar, West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee, MNS chief Raj Thackeray and Shiv Sena president Uddhav Thackeray. They will be invited here to address rallies and gatherings in the coming months."



PAAS also plans to invite social activist Anna Hazare, Jat quota leader Yashpal Malik, Gujjar quota leader Colonel K S Bainsla as well as Himmatsinh.

"We will also take the agitation at national level by organizing a huge gathering in Delhi," he added.

After the meeting, PAAS released a list of rallies and gatherings they have planned to hold across Gujarat.

On May 8, Patels will hold a maha-panchayat in Visnagar, followed by foot-marches, rallies and gatherings in parts of the state at regular intervals till the end of December.

(Reopens BOM 28)



Meanwhile, a fresh letter written by the jailed PAAS



leader Hardik Patel surfaced today, in which, he has urged his community members not to invite any politician in any of the programmes organised by the Patels.

The letter has been addressed to his Surat-based lawyer Yashwantsinh Vala, who shared it with media today.

In the letter, Hardik, who is lodged in Lajpore jail in Surat, also asked his community not to attend any function of two of their biggest religious bodies - Khodaldham and Umiyadham, as he feels that leaders of these bodies are working against the interests of Patels.

In a veiled attack on the BJP that has been ruling Gujarat since 1995, Hardik alleged that 6.5 crore people of the state have been fooled by politicians since the last 20 years.
Drug firm Pfizer today reported a 56.9 per cent rise in its stand-alone net profit at Rs 66.9 crore for the March quarter.

The company had posted net profit of Rs 42.7 crore for the same period in the previous fiscal, Pfizer said in a BSE filing.

Stand-alone total income from operations rose to Rs 515.1 crore for the quarter under review as against Rs 463.1 crore a year ago.

For the entire 2015-16, the company posted a net profit of Rs 222.8 crore as against Rs 69.8 crore in the year-ago period.

Stand-alone total income from operations soared to Rs 2,017 crore for the fiscal compared with Rs 1,853.3 crore for 2014-15.

In a separate filing, Pfizer said its board of directors has recommended a dividend of Rs 15 for 2015-16.

The stock today closed 1.95 per cent up at Rs 1,779.90 on BSE.
Police today resorted to "mild lathicharge" to disperse a mob protesting the alleged assault of a girl by some youths and demanding eviction of an alleged illegal colony along the railway tracks where the accused resided in Nagaon town of Assam.

"The mob started vandalising properties and burnt the house of a person in a settlement near the railway tracks in the town. Police had to use mild lathicharge to control them. No one was injured," Nagaon Deputy Commissioner Adil Khan told PTI.

The people were protesting the alleged assault of a girl by some youths in that area last night and as the accused were from the colony, they demanded its eviction. After getting complaint of the assault, police had arrested the main accused last night itself, he said.

"One more person was arrested this morning. We have already done the medical examination and are awaiting the report," Khan said.

"The protest was peaceful initially. But as soon as TV channels arrived to cover it, people started getting violent and damaged properties in the area. They even beat a few persons, including women, residing in the colony," he added.
Pope Francis today asked Europe to "tear down" the walls being built to keep out migrants and to create a radical new "social economy" serving the many not the few.

Invoking the memory of the EU's founding fathers' pursuit of integration in the aftermath of World War II, the pontiff said they inspired because they had "dared to change radically the models" that had led to war.

Saying he dreamed of a Europe in which "being a migrant is not a crime," Francis said: "Today, more than ever, their vision inspires us to build bridges and tear down walls."



The comments came in a speech at the Vatican following the 79-year-old pontiff's presentation with the EU's Charlemagne Prize for his contribution to European unification.

Having unexpectedly decided to accept the award, Francis delivered a typically hard-hitting message to an audience including German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the heads of the EU's main institutions, the Council, the Commission, the Parliament and its central bank.

"What has happened to you, the Europe of humanism, the champion of human rights, democracy and freedom?" he asked. "What has happened to you, Europe, the home of poets, philosophers, artists, musicians, and men and women of letters?"



Borrowing a phrase from writer and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, the Argentinian pontiff said Europe needed a "memory transfusion" to free itself from the temptation of "quick and easy short-term political gains."



And after that reference to the migrant crisis, Francis went on to say Europe had to fundamentally change its economic model.

"If we want to rethink our society, we need to create dignified and well-paying jobs, especially for our young people.
President Pranab Mukherjee will visit China from May 24 to 27 during which he will hold talks with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping and attend Sino-India Business meet in the industrial city of Guangzhou.

Mukherjee, the first president to visit China after his predecessor Pratibha Patil's trip in 2010, will first arrive in the highly industrialised Chinese city which has strong business links with India.

Besides interacting with the Indian community, which has over 3,000 businessmen, he will addressIndia-China business event to highlight the investment opportunities in India.

A number of Indian and Chinese businessmen were expected to take part in the event, official sources said.

Later, he will arrive in Beijing on May 25 and hold talks with Xi and Chinese Premier Li Keqiang and address a gathering for which details are being worked out.

Mukherjee's visit would set off a series of high-level visits between the two countries as they seeks to deepen their engagements despite irritants in ties over issues like Beijing blocking India's bid to get a United Nations ban on Jaish-e-Mohammed chief Masood Azhar.

The visit was announced by National Security Advisor Ajit Doval when he called on Chinese Premier Li here on April 21 after taking part in the 19th round of boundary talks.

Mukherjee's visit, which was a reciprocal visit of President Xi to India in 2014, will be followed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi's trip to the Chinese city of Hangzhou to attend the G-20 summit on September 4 and 5.

Xi himself was expected to travel to India to take part in the Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS) summit scheduled to be held in Goa on October 15-16.

Modi made a high-profile visit to China last year.

The high-level visits make 2016 a unique year, officials said as they help widen the contacts between the two nations.

This itself is a progress in India-China contest, an official said.

Such contacts were expected to help iron out irritants like China's attempts to block India's bid to ban Azhar in UN.

China has put a technical hold on the India's move setting off strong reactions from New Delhi.
The deal for purchase of 36 Rafale fighter planes from France is not done yet, Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar said today with an assertion that the government was negotiating to reduce to deal value and "save a lot" of money.

He accused Congress of spreading rumours that the Rafale deal was being signed for USD 9 billion.

"We will reduce the deal value and we will save a lot. We will show them that we curved out a better deal that what the UPA government was getting that time," Parrikar said in the Lok Sabha during Calling Attention Motion on the controversial AgustaWestland VVIP helicopter deal.

He said Congress had spread the word that the Rafale deal was signed for USD 9 billion, which got widely reported. "In such a situation, even other people also get carried with such false information," Parrikar said.

The BJP had last month tweeted a graphic, saying that the Rafale combat aircraft deal has been "finalised" and the Narendra Modi government had saved over Rs 21,000 crore in the "re-negotiation" with the French government.

The Defence Minister had later clarified that it is not complete as yet but at an "advanced stage" and the intention is to "close it quite soon".

India has been bargaining hard with France over the pricing of the 36 fighter planes, a deal that was announced first during Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Paris in April last year.

Parrikar was responding to Congress leader Jyotiraditya Scindia who said that the previous UPA government was doing the Rafale deal for USD 10 billion.

"Jyotiraditya Scindia took total liberties with the truth by saying that they were doing Rafale deal worth USD 10 billion. First Rafale deal did not happen, their defence minister had written it.. He was scared that his image would be tarnished...," Parikkar said.

Arguing that Antony had left it to others to finalise the deal, he said, "He (Antony) had written that L-1 determination is done and now negotiate price. After finalising it, bring it back to me to check up if the company is L-1. I have never in my lifetime seen such a comment".

"They would have had the experience from Agusta deal and that is why they had wrote it on top of Rafale deal (file)," he said.
Rajya Sabha was adjourned briefly in the pre-lunch session after Congress members trooped into the Well raising anti-government slogans protesting against "assault on democracy".

Congress members, who came to the House little before noon after a protest march at Jantar Mantar here, trooped into the Well raising slogans like 'Modi teri tanaashahi nahi chalegi (Modi's autocratic rule will not do)'.

Deputy Chairman P J Kurien made repeatedly asked them to return to their seats, but to no avail.

BJP member Vijay Goel, who was called to raise his Zero Hour mention, said he cannot speak amidst slogan shouting.

As sloganeering continued, Kurien adjourn the House a few minutes before noon.

When the House met to take up the Question Hour at noon, Anand Sharma (Congress) said senior leader of his party including Congress President Sonia Gandhi, Vice-President Rahul Gandhi and former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had been arrested.

"We were protesting against assault on democracy," Sharma said as Congress members continued raising slogans in the Well.

He also alleged that a minister has made a statement that Rajya Sabha is 'Agusta House', an apparent reference to the controversial AgustaWestland deal.

To this, Chairman Hamid Ansari said the House "does not need certificate from anyone".

Jairam Ramesh (Congress) too said something but could not be heard in the din. Ansari told him that he could not answer his query in the House.
Thousands of farmers and NCP members today staged a 'rasta roko' protest in the district demanding higher support prices for onion.

Farmers and NCP activists gathered on the main roads in Dindori, Vani, Lasalgaon, Niphad, Devla and Kalwan areas, and staged the protests affecting vehicular traffic, the Rural Police Control Room said.

Support price for onion has decreased significantly at 15 Agriculture Produce Market Committees (APMCs) to about Rs 600-700 per quintal, NCP Nashik district chief Ravindra Pagar said.

Nanasaheb Patil, former chairperson of Lasalgaon APMC said, "Following a bumper onion crop in the country, onion prices have declined. Even onion growers could not bear the production cost of Rs 1,000 per acre of the crop."



Patil, who is also the Director of NAFED, lamented that the central government's purchase of 15,000 metric tonnes of onion through National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India Ltd (NAFED) was much less as compared to lakhs of tonnes of production in Nashik district alone.

Hundreds of farmers from Niphad tehsil of the district yesterday staged an agitation in front of district collectorate and demanded increase in time of power supply for agriculture in wake of the water availability situation getting worse, Niphad MLA Anil Kadam, who led the protest, told reporters.

Kadam submitted a memorandum to the Additional Collector Kanhuraj Bagate and sought uninterrupted electric supply for at least six hours.

The Maharashtra State Electricity Distribution Conmpany Limited (MSEDCL) and the administration curtailed the power supply for the farmers from eight hours to four hours from the beginning of this week, he said.
Former judge of Delhi High Court Justice M L Mehta was today appointed as chairman of a three-member government panel on revision of Delhi Metro rail fares.

Besides Mehta, Delhi Chief Secretary K K Sharma and Durga Shanker Mishra, Additional Secretary of Urban Development Ministry, have also been nominated as its members.

The panel will submit its report within a maximum of three months time.

The Appointments Committee of the Cabinet has approved the proposal for appointment of Justice Mehta, as chairman of the 4th Fare Fixation Committee in the Delhi Metro Railway Corporation Limited (DMRC), an order issued by Department of Personnel and Training said.

The DMRC has requested the Centre to constitute 4th Fare Fixation Committee for recommending fares for Delhi Metro network.

Justice Mehta was sworn in as additional judge of Delhi High Court on December 3, 2010. He retired on December 30, 2013.

As per rules, the central government need to constitute a fare fixation committee for the purpose of recommending fare for the carriage of passengers by the metro railways. The Committee consists of a chairperson and two other members--one each nominated by central and Delhi government.

The panel is mandated to submit its report within a maximum of three months time or before as defined by its terms of reference.

The recommendation made by fare fixation committee is binding on the Delhi Metro administration.

According to an official data, DMRC registered a net loss before tax of Rs 275.46 crore in 2014-15, a whopping increase of 353 per cent from Rs 60.74 crore in 2013-14.

The net loss was to the tune of Rs 7.94 crore in 2012-13.

Recently, DMRC chief Mangu Singh had also hinted that it was time for a fare hike as the current charges did not reflect the increase in costs of operation.

The fares were last revised in 2009.
A Pakistani rights group today condemned a village council for ordering the brutal murder of a young woman after she helped a friend to elope.

The woman, believed to be around 16 to 18 years old, was drugged, strangled and her body burnt in a Suzuki van on the orders of the Makol village jirga (council) in northwest Pakistan on April 29 -- her murder a so-called honour killing.

"It is impossible to not be astounded by the brutality and ruthlessness of those who ordered and oversaw the callous mowing down of a young person...In order to satisfy their notions of cultural proprietary," independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan said in a statement.

"The criminal actions of the jirga (village council) must be condemned unreservedly by all those who stand for rule of law and the right to life itself."



Police have arrested 13 members of the jirga who ordered the murder of the girl. The victim's mother was also arrested, a police officer said, because she supported the jirga's decision.

A local anti-terrorism court yesterday remanded the 14 suspects in police custody for two weeks on murder and terrorism charges.

Hundreds of women are murdered by their relatives in Pakistan each year on the pretext of defending family "honour", but it is rare to hear of those who facilitate elopements being killed as well.

Pakistan amended its criminal code in 2005 to prevent men who kill female relatives escaping punishment by pardoning themselves as an "heir" of the victim.

But it is left to a judge's discretion to decide whether to impose a prison sentence when other relatives of the victim forgive the killer -- a loophole which critics say remains exploited.

"A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness" -- a film telling the story of a rare survivor of an attempted honour killing -- won the Academy Award for best documentary short in February.

Amid publicity for the film, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif vowed to eradicate the "evil" of honour killings but no fresh legislation has been tabled since then.
A Chinese robot is set to compete with grade 12 students during the country's national college entrance examination next year and get a score qualifying it to enter first-class universities.

The robot being designed will appear in three exams - math, Chinese and a comprehensive test of liberal arts, which includes history, politics and geography, said Lin Hui, CEO of an artificial intelligence company in Chengdu.

The robot will have to finish the exams during designated periods like the other examinees. It will take its exams in a closed room with just proctors and a notary present.

The robot will be linked to a printer before every exam, and the electronic examination paper will be loaded to the robot's programme when the examination begins, Lin said.

It will be totally disconnected from the internet and can solve the problems with its artificial intelligence programme, 'China Daily' reported.

It is believed that Chinese and a comprehensive test of liberal arts, rather than maths, will pose challenges to the robot, since questions in maths are objective with specific answers, while in the other test subjects, there are some subjective questions, such as the reading comprehension and essay-writing.

According to Lin, the robot writing technique nowadays has been increasingly mature.

The robot can analyse the topic of the writing session and complete writing. The essay may turn out to be an emotionless piece, which slightly affects the grades, Lin said.

The key technology of the robot lies in understanding language and reasoning, said Fu Hongguang, who is in charge of the research and development of the artificial intelligence programme required in the math test.
Senior RSS leader Krishna Gopal today pitched for revision of content in text books so that they reflect the "country's philosophy".

"We have Constitution, but no discussion ever happened on what should be the rashtra darshan (philosophy). All of us will work, but for whom? What will be the destiny of the country? When the future of the country was not decided, same happened about education," he said.

He said the issue has been ignored for 50-60 years.

"We have to make a start somewhere. By making small groups we will have to hold sittings across the country and then intellectuals will write," the RSS' joint general secretary said responding to a question during his lecture on 'nationalism', organised by a group of academicians here.

On the border issues in Jammu and Kashmir and Bangladesh, he expressed hope that the Kashmir issue will be solved and said the government is working in that direction.

"So many Bangladeshis have intruded in the country. You can't remove them in a day. Border areas should be managed properly, there should be tribunals, there should be identification...For the first time you have a government which is not into appeasing voters," he argued.

Gopal also sought to highlight "difference" between the concept of nationalism in western countries, especially European ones, and that in India.

"If we have to differentiate the western concept of nation and India's rashtravad, rashtra bhav...Their concept of nation is (of) aggression, intolerance, loot of kingdoms. Their tendency continues to be like that; they come together and exploit the world even today. Globalisation, MNCs are examples," he said.

He claimed European countries "broke into pieces whenever differences cropped up but India sustained because of its philosophy and Hindutva which takes all together".

Supreme court advocate Monika Arora also addressed the gathering, which included RSS ideologue Dinanath Batra among others.
Russia's military today insisted, no aircraft flew over a Syrian refugee camp the day it was hit by deadly strikes, suggesting Al-Qaeda-linked Al-Nusra Front could have shelled the location.

"We have attentively studied the information from the air space monitoring data in this area for May 4 and 5, 2016. There were no flights by Russian or any other aircraft," spokesman Igor Konashenkov told Russian agencies.

"Judging by the damage shown in photographs and video, the camp may have been shelled either on purpose or by mistake by multiple rocket launchers which are currently being used very actively in this area by terrorists from Al-Nusra," Konashenkov said.

Syria's military has denied any involvement in the raids yesterday that killed at least 28 civilians in territory controlled by Syria's Al-Qaeda affiliate Al-Nusra and rebel allies.

The United Nations' rights chief said today that air strikes on a camp for displaced people in Syria's Idlib province were almost certainly not accidental and likely amounted to a war crime.

Rights chief Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein said, responsibility for the strikes remained unverified but cited "initial reports" indicating that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's forces were to blame.

Women and children were reported to be among the civilians killed in the strikes close to the Turkish border, which left 50 others wounded.
London was preparing for its first- ever Muslim mayor as Sadiq Khan was holding on to a comfortable lead over rival Zac Goldsmith today.

Counting in the polls which took place on so-called 'Super Thursday' carries on but the Labour party's candidate Khan, the son of a Pakistani bus driver, looks set to clinch the post at City Hall in London despite his party's overall poor showing in the country-wide local elections.

Voters were able to register their first and second preferences for mayor and two types of London Assembly member -- one for their area and one for the city.

The final results will be announced later, once all the first and second preference votes have been taken into account.

The new mayor, who will succeed Boris Johnson, has control over four major policy areas in London -- transport, policing, environment, and housing and planning -- under the London Assembly's scrutiny.

The assembly must also be consulted over the Greater London Authority budget.

It can reject mayoral policies or amend the draft budget if two-thirds of assembly members agree to do so.

"This vile campaign run by the Tories, the way they've tried to smear Sadiq Khan, the methods they've used and the language they've used, has had a very big effect in exactly the way they didn't want. So many people are just revolted by what was said about Sadiq, yesterday they came out and voted for us," said Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn, in reference to the Conservative party camp's attempts to link Khan with extremist views in the British capital.

Corbyn, however, has not had a very successful result overall in elections that were widely seen as a test for his leadership.

The party registered major losses in Scotland, where it was pushed into third place by a resurgent Scottish Conservative party. But it managed to hold most of its ground in the Welsh Assembly and English council elections.

The close shave aspect for the UK's Opposition party was clear as Corbyn told supporters, "All across England last night we were getting predictions that we were going to lose councils. We didn't. We hung on and we grew support in a lot of places."



The ruling Conservative party, meanwhile, is spinning the results as a vote of confidence in the central government.

British Prime Minister David Cameron said, "The 'Super Thursday' elections show that Labour has completely lost touch with the people it is supposed to represent."



"Local election day for sitting Prime Ministers is supposed to be a day of dread. It's meant to be a day when you are sitting there waiting for someone to knock on the door like the condemned man waiting for the hangman. That wasn't what it was like last night," he said.

Besides Scotland and Wales, in total 2,747 seats in English councils, spanning metropolitan boroughs, unitary authorities and district councils, were up for elections.
Two Indian fishermen who went missing at the Indo-Myanmar since May 2 are yet to be traced and search is on to find them, Chandel district police said today.

Following rumours that two bodies were seen in Myanmar in the vicinity of the border area, there was joint discussion with the the deputy commissioner of Tamu town in Myanmar during the day.

However, the rumours were dismissed as they were unfounded, police said.

The two missing fishermen have been identified as Md Jalaluddin (30) and Md Kheruddin (24). They hailed from the border town of Moreh in Manipur and had gone for fishing but failed to return, the police added.
The SFI and DYFI today organised a protest-rally demanding severe punishment for those involved in the rape and murder of the dalit woman in Kerala a few days back.

The two Left students' organisations took out a procession from College street in central Kolkata to Esplanade in the city.

"We demand immediate arrests of all the culprits involved in the heinous crime and all of them should be given severe punishment," SFI leader Madhuja Sen Roy said.

A week after the brutal rape and murder of a Dalit woman in Ernakulam district, Kerala Police today said the incident appears to be a "planned one" and its probe has entered a "crucial stage".
A shop owner was looted of cash and his help was shot at allegedly by four persons in R K Puram area, police said today.

The owner, Brajesh, was closing his shop late last night when the four masked men arrived on motorcycle and two of them snatched his bag containing cash, they said.

The shop owner was hit on the head with the butt of a pistol while his help who tried to save him was shot at in the arm, a police officer said, adding they also fired in the air to scare away the locals who tried to chase them.

An investigation is on and police is trying to nab the robbers who are reportedly locals and frequented the market.
In his first public comments since the issue broke out, Prime Minister Narendra Modi today dubbed the controversial deal a "chori" (theft) and indicated that the guilty, howsoever big, would not be spared.

Without naming Congress, Modi also attacked the party which has launched a counter-attack on his government for dragging the name Sonia Gandhi, asking "if the court in Italy has said that people from the last government in India have eaten money, why then are you troubling us here? "Does anyone of your relatives live in Italy? Does any of my relatives live in Italy.... I have not seen Italy. I have not been to Italy. Nor have I met anyone in Italy. If Italians have accused them what should we do?" Modi said. "Those involved in helicopter chori, should they be punished or not? Should legal action be taken against them or not. However big they are, should action be taken against them or not? I want to know from the people of Tamil Nadu," said Modi at an election rally here on Tamil Nadu-Karnataka border".

He said people of Tamil Nadu should now be knowing why people in New Delhi "don't allow" Modi to work.

"It is because he (Modi) has tightened the screws. This has affected the corrupt. It has disturbed their sleep. So they are attacking me," the Prime Minister said. Asserting that he had people's support, Modi said "I won't fear this or bow to this.

On Tamil Nadu Assembly polls in which BJP is contesting in alliance with a few minor parties, Modi said elections this time were different from earlier ones.

"Earlier people did not have any alternative. There were two parties. People used to give victory to one party if they were unhappy with the other and vice versa.. Sometimes, they used to fall into a well or a valley," he said, projecting the emergence of BJP as a third alternative. Modi said there was a time when Tamil Nadu was among the strongest states in terms of economy and played a very important role in give economic direction to the country but the state of affairs is such that 'it is going down and down.'



"This election is not about which MLA or party wins but all about who can save Tamil Nadu," Modi said. "Corruption has destroyed Tamil Nadu. If you want to save Tamil Nadu and save the future of the youth, then Tamil Nadu should be freed from corruption," he said without naming any party or government in the state.

Modi said that in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, people of the country had stood against corruption and "now even Tamil Nadu will not tolerate corruption."



NDA government had been ruling for the past two years but no corruption charge had been levelled against it, he said.

"Some people have compromised with corruption but if there is courage, clean policies and sincere action, we can eradicate corruption," the Prime Minister said.
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More than 100 film stars from South Indian film industries will participate in an annual award show to be hosted in Singapore onJune 30 and July 1.

The South Indian International Movie Awards (SIIMA) will recognise stars and technicians of Telugu, Tamil, Kannada and Malayalam film industries, organisers said today.

"SIIMA 2016 would witness over 100 leading stars from South India and 12 performances over two days," said Brinda Prasad, chairperson of SIIMA. This is 5 edition of SIIMA, the last of which was held in Dubai last year.

The South Asian movies have a huge following in Singapore, especially as Tamil is one of the four official languages of the city state.

"We are lookingat sold out shows on each of the two days at the 6,000-seat convention centre here," Prasad told PTI.

Indian film screenings began in Singapore in the 1940s, according to Uma Rajan, a Singapore Indian cultural icon, recalling early days of Indian film screenings in Singapore.

"Therewas craving for Indian movies. The influence of the cinema has been tremendous on Indians in Singapore," said Rajan.

"Indian dance and musicin Singapore has stayed very much alive especially because of cinemas. The influence of cinemas has been tremendous. There was craving for Indian movies," Rajan added.
Akshaya Tritiya, considered an auspicious day to buy gold, is likely to be lacklustre this time as jewellers are expecting negative to marginal growth compared to last year, on the back of rising gold prices, which is ruling at over Rs 30,000 per 10 grams.

"During Akshaya Tritiya (which falls on May 9) we are expecting marginal growth in sales compared to last year as the prices are ruling very high and due to the present dry weather conditions in the country," All India Gems and Jewellery Trade Federation (GJF) Chairman Sreedhar G V told PTI here.

He said even as the overall market sentiment is positive, the surge in gold prices is likely to put a halt on consumer demand for heavy jewellery and people might go for small ticket size items, chains and bangles.

Gold is currently ruling at Rs 30,050 per 10 grams in domestic market. In February first week it was at Rs 26,930.

Echoing a similar view, former GJF Chairman Bachhraj Bamalwa said in terms of volume, the consumer demand might witness a negative growth of about 10 per cent, but in value terms it is likely to be at par with last year's sales.

"There will be buying as people will purchase a token small ticket size jewellery or coin for the festival and they will hesitate to go for heavy pieces due to high prices," he said.

As for wedding jewellery, he said, usually consumers book for bridal jewelleries before one month for which most of the bookings were already done just after the strike ended.

"Bridal and wedding jewellery takes time so we usually get most of the bookings before one month. We got most of the wedding jewellery bookings just as the strike ended," he said.

However, World Gold Council (WGC) MD Somasundaram PR felt that there will be sharp hike in demand during Akshaya Tritiya, where wedding jewellery as well as investment-related items like coins, bars will also move fast.

The industry has been facing a challenging time as people



were waiting for the Budget expecting a cut in import duty, Somasundaram said.

"However, the jewellers went on strike after the announcement of excise levy. The industry is gearing up to meet the pent-up demand which will be witnessed during this Akshaya Tritiya," he said.

However, he cautioned that there are restrictions in Tamil Nadu and Kerala, the two big markets, due to elections.

Also the artisans, who had ventured into other professions during the strike, are coming back slowly and cannot meet the demand in such a short time.

"We don't expect the price to deter demand. However, we feel that it will be difficult for the industry to increase supply in such a short time," he added.

Ishu Datwani, founder of Anmol Jewellers, said there is likely to be 20-25 per cent rise in demand, mainly ruled by wedding jewellery.

"Whatever demand was there during the strike we cannot regain it. But we are trying to make up for the lost business through many offers to attract consumers. Wedding jewellery will dominate the demand during Akshaya Tritiya as the bookings look good.

P N Gadgil Jewellers Chairman and Managing Director Saurabh Gadgil opined this is the first major festival after the strike and there is a positive sentiment all around.

"Expectations of good monsoon and wedding season will also help boost demand, which is likely to go up by 15 per cent compared to last year," he said.

Gadgil said this will mainly be aided by the weekend preceding Akshaya Tritiya, which falls on the coming Monday, so people will get three days to shop.
South Africa called up uncapped left-arm wrist spinner Tabraiz Shamsi for next month's triangular limited-overs series in the Caribbean and rested fast bowler Dale Steyn amid concerns over his workload.

Shamsi was the only new player in the one-day international squad announced on Friday, although pace-bowling allrounder Wayne Parnell was recalled for the first time in more than a year.

Head selector Linda Zondi said Steyn was rested for the triangular series against West Indies and Australia to keep him fresh for the test season. South Africa, which lost its No. 1 ranking in tests with a home loss to England in January, has series against New Zealand, Australia and Sri Lanka this year.

Batsman Faf du Plessis was in the ODI squad for the Caribbean despite sustaining a broken finger in the IPL. Du Plessis had surgery on the broken left ring finger this week and should be ready for South Africa's second game of the triangular series against Australia on June 7, team manager Mohammed Moosajee said.

Steyn won't play in the triangular after the 32-year-old quick bowler struggled with a series of injuries at the end of last season. The latest, a right shoulder problem, kept him out of most of the series loss to England.

Steyn's workload has been exacerbated by his franchise commitments. He is currently playing in the IPL and is also due to play in the Caribbean Twenty20 league starting in late June.
A South African woman has been arrested at Indira Gandhi International Airport (IGIA) with cocaine having a street value of Rs 3 crore.

She was intercepted by customs officials after her arrival from Dubai yesterday. Examination of her baggage and personal search resulted in recovery of a white crystalline powder which is believed to be cocaine, said Vinayak Azaad, Additional Commissioner of Customs at the airport.

She had concealed the powder in an octagonal box of 'Nadiya' brand of chocolate dates, he said. The seized cocaine weighs 595 gms with an estimated street value of Rs 3 crore, the official said.

"The passenger had come via Dubai from Johannesburg. She has been arrested," Azaad told PTI. He said of late, customs officials have registered similar cases where smugglers have tried to dodge authorities by coming through Dubai and other destinations which are not noted for drug smuggling.

In another case, customs officials arrested a man for allegedly trying to smuggle in gold chains valued at about Rs 33 lakh.

The accused was intercepted after his arrival from Muscat yesterday. "On detailed examination of his baggage and personal search, five gold chains weighing 1.1 kg were found concealed in a trouser pocket," the official said.

The value of the seized gold is Rs 33.26 lakh. The passenger has been arrested, Azaad said.
Spanish police say they found 15 migrant youths hidden in cargo of junk that was to be shipped from a north African enclave to mainland Spain for processing.

Civil Guard spokesmen said the migrants, all believed to be minors, were discovered late yesterday during an inspection of the cargo load at Melilla port.

The officer, who spoke today on condition of anonymity in keeping with police regulations, said the minors were trying to make it to Spain and possibly elsewhere in Europe. He said none was injured.

The agent said 58 other youths looking to clandestinely board ships headed for Spain were found in the port yesterday. Melilla is one of two Spanish enclaves surrounded by Morocco on side and the Mediterranean Sea on the other.
Police have arrested 44 people in Britain and Spain suspected of involvement in a scam to hack into accounts belonging to company bosses and steal thousands of euros, officers said today.

Police arrested 43 people thought to be involved in the so-called "CEO swindle" in Spain and one in Britain - 17 of whom are thought to be the ringleaders of the scam.

The largest single sum lost to the fraud was 1.8 million euros (USD 2.1 million).

The scam is alleged to have used forged emails to dupe senior company executives into parting with personal details which were then used to empty their financial accounts.

The man arrested in Britain was detained close to an airport where the gang allegedly hoarded large sums of cash before it was to be transported to Nigeria.

Seven people involved in running an Internet cafe in the Madrid region are suspected of having organised weekly transfers of cash to Nigeria by plane.

"135,000 euros in notes was discovered at Madrid airport hidden in rubbish bags and concealed among underwear in a suitcase destined to travel in the hold of the aircraft," police said in a statement.

Several Spanish businessmen suspected of helping the syndicate to launder the stolen funds were among those arrested, according to police.

The investigation began at the end of 2014 after a Pakistani citizen reported that he had been robbed of 34,000 euros after his bank account was hacked.

Police refused to comment on the nationality of the suspects or when exactly the operation to arrest them took place.
Sri Lankan Navy has arrested five Indians from the country's territorial waters for allegedly trying to smuggle 120 kg of 'Kerala cannabis' to the country.

The Indians were arrested by the Navy on Wednesday while they were transporting a stock of 'Kerala cannabis' through the sea. A Sri Lankan national was also arrested for helping them transfer the banned drug, Colombo Page reported.

Navy officials deployed at the west of Silavathurai and Mullikulam areas in the Northwestern Naval Command arrested the five Indians and seized approximately 120 kg of 'Kerala cannabis', the report said.

The Navy said all the six persons along with the cannabis would be handed over to the Kalpitiya Police in the country's North Western province for further investigations.

Sri Lankan Navy said this year, a total of approximately 420 kg of 'Kerala cannabis' have been seized in 13 cases so far.
Syria's military denied today any involvement in air strikes that killed at least 28 civilians in a camp for displaced people near the Turkish border, state media said.

"There is no truth in the information in some media that the Syrian air force targeted the displaced camp in Idlib province yesterday," the SANA agency quoted the military as saying.

It accused rebels of targeting civilians.
The Delhi High Court today directed Delhi government to produce before it a reason on the basis of which the plea of Sushil Sharma, former youth Congress leader convicted in tandoor murder case, for his premature release from Tihar jail was rejected.

Justice Siddharth Mridul also sought the record of the decision, if any, passed by the Lieutenant Governor (LG) in Sharma's case.

Despite the decision taken by the Sentence Reviewing Board (SRB), which is headed by Delhi government's minister and officials, premature release is subject to approval of the LG.

The court's direction came on a plea by Sharma's counsel Sumeet Verma who alleged that without any communication from the competent authority (the LG) about finality of the decision, the accused was forced to return to jail on April 12.

The government's home department had informed them about the LG's decision, which is not on record, on May 2, Verma said.

The court said that since the decision of SRB is here, the convict's prayer dose not survive any more.

It, however, expressed displeasure over the reason given by the government for rejecting the convict's release and said that there is nothing against him.

"It is due to the gravity of the offence, his application for premature release has been rejected. You can't decide in an arbitrary manner. I will issue notice to Delhi government and the LG. You file an affidavit explaining the merit on which you have rejected," the court said and fixed the matter for May 25.

The high court had on September 15 last year said Sharma will remain out of jail on parole till the time the competent authority decides his plea seeking remission and premature release.

Sharma in his application has contended that he remained in jail for over 25 years, which is maximum as per SRB guidelines, so he be released from jail.

Sharma has been convicted for the sensational murder of his wife Naina Sahni. He had shot her with his licensed revolver on July 2, 1995, took her body to a restaurant, chopped it into pieces and tried to burn them in a restaurant's oven. The case came to be known as 'Tandoor murder case'.

The Supreme Court had commuted to life imprisonment the death penalty awarded to Sharma by a trial court in 2003 and upheld by the high court in 2007, saying the murder was the outcome of "strained personal relationship" and the convict was "not a confirmed criminal".

While reducing the sentence awarded to him, the apex court had said "life sentence is for the whole of remaining life of Sharma subject to remission granted by the appropriate government under Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC).
The Cotton Textiles Export Promotion Council (Texprocil) today welcomed the government's announcement to remove the restriction under the Incremental Exports Incentivisation Scheme, which will help in improving the cash flow of the exporters.

The government removed the restriction under the Incremental Exports Incentivisation Scheme (IEIS) yesterday.

"The decision of the government to issue duty credit scrips under the IEIS without any restriction will certainly improve the cash flow of the exporters," Texprocil Chairman R K Dalmia said in a statement here.

The IEIS for the last quarter 2012-13 was introduced vide DGFT notification in December 2012.

The scheme extended a duty credit scrip of 2 per cent on the incremental growth in exports during the period from January-March of 2013 as compared to the period from January-March of 2012 on the FOB value of exports to the US, EU and Asian countries.

Subsequently, DGFT issued a notification in September 2013 restricting the entitlement under the scheme to 25 per cent growth or incremental growth of Rs 10 crore in value, whichever is less.

Many of the exporters were affected because of this restriction, which was not there in the original scheme, Dalmia said.

The Chairman also praised the government for including exports of Made ups falling under chapter 63 to Group C countries under the Merchandise Exports from India Scheme (MEIS).

"This will promote exports of Made ups to countries like Australia and New Zealand, which falls under group C of the MEIS," he said.

Henceforth, the landing certificates will not be required under the MEIS.

Dalmia pointed out that exporters faced difficulty in getting landing certificates from the shipping companies besides incurring costs. The dispensation of the requirement to furnish landing certificates has come as a huge relief to the exporters and would certainly reduce the transaction costs for the exporters, he added.
Assam Rifles Commandant Col Jasjit Singh, accused of being involved in a robbery in which his men decamped with Rs 14.5 crore worth of gold smuggled from Myanmar, was today remanded to police custody for three days by a district court.

Chief Judicial Magistrate R Vanlalchami allowed the police plea for three days remand of Singh, Commandant of AR's 39th battalion, and he would be produced before the CJM's court on Monday.

Singh was arrested yesterday in Aizawl district court premises after the district and sessions judge Lucy Lalrinthari rejected his anticipatory bail plea.

Eight other AR personnel were arrested earlier on the charge of highway robbery committed on December 14 last when they reportedly decamped with 52 gold bars worth around Rs 14.5 crore from a vehicle that had reportedly smuggled the gold bars from Myanmar.

They reportedly told the police that they were ordered to commit the dacoity by Singh.
Three persons were arrested today and over 125 packets of illicit liquor seized from them at three different locations in Samba district of Jammu and Kashmir.

Acting on a tip-off, officers of the special branch of police raided a shop in Bari Brahmna area of the district and recovered 45 pouches of illicit liquor from the shopkeeper, a police official said.

The accused, Roldu Ram, was arrested and booked under the J&K Excise Act, he said.

In a separate incident, Sohan Lal and Ajit Singh Boha, residents of Ramgarh, were apprehended near Swankha Morh and 56 and 25 pouches of illicit liquor were recovered from them respectively, the official added.
Police today arrested three persons in connection with the gangrape of a 19-year-old Dalit nursing student in Varkala on May 3.

The accused have been identified as Safeer (25), Saiju (21) and Rasheed (20), all hailing from Varkala, said Thiruvananthapuram Superintendent of Police (Rural) Shefeen Ahamed K.

The victim, a second year BSc nursing student, was raped allegedly by Safeer along with his friend Saiju, an autorickshaw driver near Ayanthi bridge in Varkala and later by their friend Rasheed, the SP said.

They took the girl to a deserted place and committed the offence, he said.

"We want to ensure maximum punishment for the accused. After getting legal advice, charges would be framed," he said when asked whether they would be charged under IPC 376 (2) (g) (gangrape).

Medical examination had confirmed that she had been gangraped.

The victim had gone with Safeer, who was known to her, in the autorickshaw of his friend, Saiju, on the day of the incident, police said.

Later, they called Rasheed and asked him to take her to the railway station in the auto, police said, adding, he also allegedly raped the girl en route.

The incident comes days after a 30-year-old Dalit law student was raped and murdered at Perumbavoor in Ernakulam district.
A Trinamool Congress worker was shot at and injured in Khejri area of East Midnapore district, day after polling in the area, as part of the final and sixth phase voting for West Bengal assembly polls.

A police officer said the TMC activist suffered bullet wound on chest by bike-borne assailants and admitted to Tamluk Hospital.

The TMC candidate from Khejuri Ranjit Mondal blamed CPI(M) for the attack saying the left was trying to unleash terror after seeing the groundswell of support for the TMC in entire Nandigram-Khejuri belt.

The CPI(M) alleged it was due to TMC's inner squabble.
City-based Torero Corporation today said it will set up exclusive single-brand stores of international premium fashion label 'Police' in the country.

"We are in the process of setting up exclusive Police brand shops in India and in the next few months at least one would be unveiled at Mumbai airport," Torero Corporation CEO Yashovardhan Gupta said here.

Torero is the global licensee for Police leather bags and accessories, except for Middle East and Japan.

The USD 400 million brand from Spanish group De Rigo is known for premium urban street fashion range, offering sunglasses, denims, watches and men's accessories.

Gupta said initially Torero will set up exclusive brand shops of Police without any direct financial involvement from the Spanish parent.

De Rigo may later invest in India directly, he said.

Torero is also in talks with Shoppers Stop and online platforms like Amazon, Jabong and Flipkart for multi-channel distribution. Pricing of offline and online channels will remain the same, he added.

Gupta said most of the leather accessories will be manufactured in India from imported leather.

"As the leather products will be made in India, we will have an advantage of 30 per cent in cost by way of customs duty compared to other luxury leather brands in India," he said.
In a bold initiative, the tribals of a village panchayat in Chhattisgarh's worst insurgency-hit Sukma districthave decided to oppose Naxal atrocities carried outin the name of people's movement and device their own efforts to prevent violence by the ultras.

Armed with bow and arrows and other traditional weapons, the youths can be seen patrolling the peripheral areas of their villages throughout the night to ban the entry of rebels at their native place.

The practice started in Kumakoleng and Nama villages falling under Kumakoleng gram panchayat, located around 22 kms from Tongpal police station on National Highway- 30 which connects Jagdalpur to Sukma, about two months back.

"We were disturbed with the Maoists' act of obstructing development which had resulted in no power supply and lack of proper road connectivity in our village. In the name of police informers, innocent villagers have been killed," Aayta Karma, a resident of Nama village, said.

"Braving Naxal threats, the youths of the two villages have decided not to allow anymore act of atrocity or violence in the area. Now we want development and peace," Karma said.

The Kanger Area Committee of the outlawed CPI (Maoist) looks after the Maoists' activities in Kumakoleng, which lies on the bordering region of Chhattisgarh-Odisha, around 400 kms from the state capital Raipur.

The committee has been instrumental in executing several major incidents in the region, including the 2013 Jiram valley attack in which Congress leaders were killed.

The distance between Kumakoleng and Nama villages, having a population of 500-550, is about 1.5 kms.

A group of 60-65 men from the two villages carry out night patrolling to prohibit entry of Naxals in their areas.

"Each and every youth has been assigned with a responsibility. They are deployed randomly at several locations in and around villages," Karma said.

Ruling out that the initiative may take an ugly turn in future, another villager, on condition of anonymity, said, "We just want peace in our village and don't want to enter in any violent clash with Maoists."



"While patrolling, youths had come face-to-face with Naxals twice, but on both the occasions the ultras fled after facing strong opposition from us," he said.

Meanwhile, police said similar initiatives against Naxals have also been reported from other places in Sukma.

"Villagers from Kumakoleng had requested us to set up a police camp in their area which is quite in the interior. We have assured them to think over it. As of now, we have stepped up patrolling in the region to ensure security to them," Sukma Additional Superintendent of Police Santosh Singh told PTI.

The villagers had also demandedthe district



administrationto provide better road connectivity which is also being considered, Singh said.

Not only from these two villages, the people from other remote patches of Sukma have also sought police camps in their region, expressing their willingness to get rid of the Maoists who had done nothing for them expect obstructing development works, the ASP said.

"Everyone has the right to peacefully protest against atrocities and violence in a democracy," he said, about the initiative in Kumakoleng.

Fighting the Maoist menace for over three decades, Chhattisgarh has witnessed protests against Naxals by the tribal populace a number a times in the past.

An anti-Maoist civil militia- Salwa Judum (meaning peaceful gathering for a hunt in 'Gondi' language)involving local people was launched in 2005 in the Bastar region.

However, itwas disarmed and disbanded in the state following a court order declaring the deployment of tribal youth as special police officers in the fight against Maoist insurgency as illegal and unconstitutional.

Several rallies by schools children and the victims of Naxal violence were also held in the past couple of years in Bastar as a mark of protest against Maoists.
Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has backed Brexit, saying the UK would be "better off without" the European Union, a stand contrary to the views of US President Barack Obama.

However, Trump said it was his personal view and he would want the country to make its own decision.

"I think the migration has been a horrible thing for Europe. A lot of that was pushed by the EU," Trump told Fox .

"I would say that they're better off without it, personally, but I'm not making that as a recommendation. Just my feeling," the White House aspirant said.

Trump's comments came two weeks after President Obama urged Britain to stay in the EU when it votes on June 23.

Earlier this week, Trump had criticised Obama for supporting Cameron in his campaign for Britain to remain in the EU.

"I know Great Britain very well. I know, you know, the country very well. I have a lot of investments there. I would say that they're better off without it. But I want them to make their own decision," the 69-year-old tycoon-turned- politician said.

Trump's comments carry weight as he is now alone in the White House race in the Republican party and his being crowned as the presidential nominee at the Cleveland convention in July is now only an formality.

Britain will vote to leave the EU, termed as Brexit, in a June 23 referendum.

British Prime Minister David Cameron yesterday stood by his criticism of Trump's vow to ban all Muslims from entering the United States.

However, he said the billionaire property tycoon "deserves our respect" for his victory in one of the most contentious nomination battles in generations.
Donald Trump's foreign policy is showing signs of flexibility and realism, a top Republican Senator said today offering to help develop a foreign policy platform for the presumptive presidential nominee.

"I saw in his foreign policy speech last week and a very important step forward, and what I think he's saying is that he's going to embrace foreign policy much like Bush 41 did," Senator Bob Corker, Chairman of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told MSNBC in an interview.

"Much like people like former Secretary of State James Baker, where there's a degree of realism in our foreign policy that we obviously understand how the world is. Certainly, I believe in American exceptionalism. But at the same time, there are limits. And I think that is a mature way for us to look at foreign policy," Corker said.

The Republican Senator, who has put a hold on Obama administration's proposal to sell eight F-16 jets to Pakistan with a significant American taxpayers' money, was appreciative of Trump's foreign policy speech last week.

"I do look forward to talking with him more fully about it and other issues like our indebtedness and economic growth and those kinds of things. But that's the place we should be. Certainly the 'establishment' is not going to hijack this campaign," he said.

"He's his own person. But to be able to give input and to develop it is an important phase for us now. The third phase will kick in after the convention. But let's - let's work with what has - what has occurred. We've got someone that people believe in and let's help develop - let's help develop those policies," Corker said in his interview.

Globalisation, he observed, is here to stay.

"I mean, every person who is deal with an iPhone on a daily basis is involved in globalisation. It's here. And trade pacts are there to set the rules of the road," he said.

"Obviously, there are going to be trade pacts that we're going to need to enter into, certainly as we mention, China is pushing people our way and we need to figure out a way in that part of the world to more fully engage them economically in a way that benefits Americans and benefits our national security interest," he said.

Corker said he is getting the sense that this campaign is in a phase where they are more fully developing policies.

"I have seen some flexibility already. There's some flexibility there. Sometimes, when people are out running, they think things are a certain way and then they get additional information and they realize maybe there's a little different way of getting to the same place, but let's add some nuance to it," he noted.

"When the general election begins, if people are not happy, they may make other choices, but let's let this play out. Let's chill. Let's not be making demonstrative statements about where we are, until we fully see what the contrast is going to be between these two candidates," Corker said.
Turkish opposition journalist Can Dundar escaped a shooting today outside the courthouse in Istanbul where he is on trial on charges of revealing state secrets.

Brandishing a pistol, the attacker fired several times before being detained by police, an AFP reporter said. Dundar, the editor-in-chief of leading Turkish opposition daily Cumhuriyet, was unharmed.

Dundar was outside the courthouse during a break as the court prepared to deliver its verdict in his trial for allegedly revealing state secrets in a newspaper story.

The assailant fired twice or three times in front of the cameras of media who had crowded outside Istanbul's main courthouse during the closed door trial.

NTV television reported that its reporter Yagiz Senkal was lightly injured because of the ricocheting bullets.

"I am okay ... The court was in a break to deliver a verdict. The attack occurred after we went out to wait for the ruling," Dundar said.

"I don't know who or what it is. I only saw the gun had been pointed at me," he added.

Dundar and Erdem Gul, his Ankara bureau chief, are charged with revealing state secrets over a story accusing the government of seeking to illicitly deliver arms bound for Syria.

Cumhuriyet's report on a shipment of arms intercepted at the Syrian border in January 2014 sparked a furore when it was published last May, fuelling speculation about Turkey's role in the Syrian conflict and its alleged ties to Islamist groups in the country.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan reacted furiously to the allegations, personally warning Dundar he would "pay a heavy price".

Accusing Erdogan and pro-government media of whipping up a climate of hatred against him, Dundar said: "We know very well who showed me as a target.
Two people were killed and two others wounded in a pair of shootings today in the suburbs of Washington, and authorities sought a federal law enforcement officer.

Police put out a bulletin seeking help in locating Eulalio Tordil, a 62-year-old officer in the Department of Homeland Security's Federal Protective Service.

Tordil is sought in the yesterday shooting death of his wife at a school in Prince George's County, Maryland, which occurred on the eve of the two incidents in adjacent Montgomery County.

Today morning, gunfire broke out at the Westfield Mall in Bethesda, with one man killed and two people wounded.

A second shooting later at a supermarket in nearby Aspen Hill, Maryland left one woman dead.

"This continues to be a very active investigation," Montgomery County police Captain Paul Starks told reporters.

"We're still looking at the possibility that these shootings here (in Bethesda) and the shooting in Aspen Hill are related."



Starks added that "we are looking at whether last night's shooting in Prince George's County and these shootings were committed by the same suspect."



Schools in the vicinity were asked to keep children in place "out of an abundance of caution," the official said.

The incidents occurred in some of the same areas hit by the so-called "Beltway Sniper" in 2002 that prompted a lengthy manhunt and resulted in 17 deaths before a suspect was caught.

According to Pentagon, suspect Santiago was recipient of



several medals including one 'Global War on Terrorism Service Medal'.

Police said he arrived at the airport with a checked gun. After he claimed his bag, he took the gun from bag. Thereafter, he went into the bathroom to load it.

Santiago started shooting as he came out of the bathroom. His brother was quoted as saying in the local press that Santiago was receiving psychological treatment while living in Alaska.

"Our hearts ache for those killed in this senseless attack, and we pray for the swift recovery of all who were wounded. No words can replace the loss of loved ones. No moments of silence can quiet the voices across America calling for action," said Nancy Pelosi, the House Minority Leader.
The Centre has agreed to set up two Sainik schools in Arunachal Pradesh and two permanent recruitment centres in view of increased recruitment to the ranks of defence forces from the state.

Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar agreed to a proposal mooted by Arunachal Chief Minister Kalikho Pul when he called on him at New Delhi yesterday, an official release said here today.

The Chief Minister also met Chief of Army Staff General Dalbir Singh.

According to the proposal, two Sainik schools, one at Tezu in the eastern region and one at Shergaon in the western region would be established.

On permanent recruitment centre, the Union Minister agreed for establishment of the centre at Tawang for the western zone and Tezu for the eastern zone, the release said.

Parrikar also agreed to revise the MoA to make easier for use of the Advanced Landing Ground (ALG) used by the defence forces for civilian purposes, which would enable emergency deployment of helicopters in times of emergencies and medical evacuations, it said.

Pul also urged for construction and regular maintenance of all border roads by the BRO, the release added.
Congress today demanded that Prime Minister Narendra Modi should apologise for "trampling" democracy in Uttarakhand in the wake of the landmark judgment of the Supreme Court.

"Today was a landmark victory for constitutional democracy by the Supreme Court on Uttarakhand issue. Prime Minister must apologise to the people of Uttarakhand and India. He must vow never to try to topple an elected state government," party's chief spokesman Randeep Surjewala said.

Insisting that Congress' stand that floor-test is the only way to test the mandate of the people was vindicated, he told reporters that the Prime Minister must step down from his "pedestal of arrogance and face the truth".

Claiming that the nine rebel MLAs were still debarred, he said the "unprecedented" order of the apex court is a resounding defeat of those who "trampled democracy and held people ransom by misusing money and muscle power".

Asked about CBI summons to former Chief Minister Harish Rawat in the sting operation case, he said to go into the "fake" sting operation would be a "great disservice" to the order of the Supreme Court.

He said summoning Rawat in such a situation would mean that CBI/ED are now being used to carry out BJP's political vendetta.

Surjewala claimed that Congress would prove its "full majority" in Uttarakhand Assembly on May 10 when the Supreme Court has ordered a floor-test in the House.
The United Nations' top aid official has demanded an immediate investigation into the killing of displaced civilians in a camp hit by air strikes in northern Syria.

"If this obscene attack is found to be a deliberate targeting of a civilian structure, it could amount to a war crime," said Stephen O'Brien yesterday, the UN under-secretary general for humanitarian affairs.

At least 28 civilians including women and children were killed in the air strikes at the camp near Sarmada in Idlib province, which is controlled by the Al-Qaeda-linked Al-Nusra Front and rebel allies.

"I am horrified and sickened by the of civilians killed today by air strikes that hit two settlements where displaced people had sought sanctuary," O'Brien said in a statement.

Thousands of Syrians have fled fighting in the northern province over the last weeks, and camps for the displaced have been set up along the Turkish border.

The air strikes come after an intense diplomatic push to revive a landmark ceasefire and salvage peace efforts to end Syria's five-year conflict.

The war in Syria has killed more than 270,000 people and displaced millions since it started after the brutal crackdown of anti-government protests in 2011.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said today he was "outraged" by the deadly attack on a camp for displaced Syrians and said those responsible must face justice.

Ban demanded once again that the UN Security Council refer Syria to the International Criminal Court so that the tribunal based in The Hague can open up investigations of possible war crimes.

"Those responsible for yesterday's seemingly calculated attack against civilians in the camp in Idlib, which could constitute a war crime, must be held accountable," said Ban's spokesman.

Women and children were reported to be among 28 civilians killed in the raids near the Turkish border, which also wounded 50.

The strikes in Idlib province, which is controlled by Syria's Al-Qaeda affiliate Al-Nusra Front and rebel allies, came as a 48-hour ceasefire took hold in the battleground city of Aleppo to the east.

UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said it was "difficult to believe" that the air strikes were "a mistake", adding that there needs to be further investigation to determine who is responsible.

The United Nations is working with its partners on the ground to collect information about the attack, said the spokesman, adding that countries that "have military assets should also take a look" at what happened.

Both Syria and Russia denied that the camp had been hit by an air strike and suggested that rebels could have shelled the site.

A bid by the Security Council in 2014 to refer Syria to the ICC was blocked by China and Syrian ally Russia, and it appeared unlikely that a new push for such action would garner support from the veto-wielding members.

Ban has said that the starvation sieges and hospital attacks during Syria's five-year conflict are war crimes and that the ICC should put those responsible on trial.

Syria's conflict erupted in 2011 after anti-government protests were put down. Fighting quickly escalated into a multi-faceted war that has killed more than 270,000 people and forced millions from their homes.
Amid a war of words between the Centre and Uttar Pradesh government over sending water train to drought-hit Bundelkhand, Union Minister Ramkripal Yadav today said the most populous state had funds at its disposal which it could spend for transportation of water through 10,000 tankers.

The Uttar Pradesh government had around Rs 416 crore, out of which it could spend 25 per cent (around Rs 82 crore) to meet the cost of hiring 10,000 tankers for transportation of water, Yadav told PTI.

The Union Minister of State for Drinking Water's reactions came a day after the UP government sent back the water train offered by the Centre for drought-hit Bundelkhand region in the state.

The UP government, however, requested the Centre to provide it 10,000 tankers for distributing water in the region.

"Akhilesh Yadav (UP CM) is a sensitive Chief Minister. Hence he should not waste time in political blame game like RJD president Lalu Prasad did and instead work with the Centre to meet the water need of the people," the Union Minister said.

Ramkripal said that as per estimates, hiring 10,000 tankers for transportation of water would require an expenditure of around Rs 50 crore for the UP government.

"They already have about Rs 82 crore (as per norm that a state can spend 25 per cent of the fund available for meeting such emergency) hence their argument that the Centre should provide tankers instead of train loaded with water is not convincing," he said.

The minister said Bundelkhand region which has six districts are battling shortage of water due to the searing heat.

"This is the time to work together to help people of Bundelkhand solve the problem of water instead of indulging in political one-upmanship," Ramkripal, BJP MP from neighbouring Bihar state said.

He stated Prime Minister Narendra Modi was working sincerely to meet the need of 13 states badly hit by drought situation, including UP, and there was no "political consideration" in sending water train to Bundelkhand.
Alleging that benefits of government relief measures and funds were not reaching the needy in drought-hit areas of Uttar Pradesh, Congress today said its leaders will tour all water-scarce districts to review implementation of the state and central schemes in UP.

"Party legislators have been instructed to visit the drought-hit districts between May 9 and May 22 along with city and district unit presidents and former peoples' representatives to find out the reality of various schemes of the state and central governments being run there to deal with the situation," Congress Legislature Party leader Pradip Mathur said.

The decision has been taken on the directives of AICC general secretary and in charge of party affairs in UP Madhusudan Mistry, he said.

The visiting teams will check the reality of schemes like MGNREGA, food security, waiver of farmers' loans, among others, and submit their reports by May 31, Mathur said.

Alleging that the benefit of the relief funds and schemes was not reaching the needy, he said in the absence of a proper monitoring system, funds were being misused and its utilisation shown only on papers.

He alleged that at a time of a famine-like situation in the state the central government was merely indulging in "gags", while the state government's schemes were not benefiting the people.

With Bundelkhand region facing severe heat wave and drought, the UP government has announced a special package for the parched area, while the Centre has chalked out a multi- pronged strategy to mitigate the woes of distressed farmers, several of whom have committed suicide.

Talks for an alliance with Congress had hit a roadblock



with Mulayam ruling out such a possibility and favouring only merger of parties with SP.

With the Akhilesh faction breaking away from the parent Samajwadi Party, the possibility of an alliance with Congress has suddenly brightened.

As Muslims, the traditional vote bank of Samajwadi Party, appeared to be a confused lot, BSP supremo Mayawati is eyeing the minority community, giving a lion's share of tickets to Muslims, to bolster her party's electoral prospects.

Realising this, SP might join hands with Congress to bring about a greater consolidation of Muslim voters that should boost the allies in terms of countering BSP.

Mayawati has been cautioning Muslims that if they voted for SP, which is already in doldrums, they will be indirectly helping BJP.

BSP has decided to field as many as 97 Muslim candidates of the 403 seats, the highest number fielded by any party in UP so far, perhaps to present itself as a true well-wisher of the community and as a party that can stall BJP in its tracks.

Congress and SP leaders believe that an alliance between them will reassure voters that the regional party's core Yadav-Muslim combination is intact.
Uttar Pradesh Governor Ram Naik today referred to the President another controversial bill which seeks to end the role of the Chief Justice of Allahabad High Court in selection of Lokayukta.

The Uttar Pradesh Lokayukta, Up-lokayukta (Amendment) Bill, 2015, has been referred to President Pranab Mukherjee by the Governor, according to a Raj Bhavan release issued here.

Naik, after studying the bill in detail, found that the role of the Chief Justice of the Allahabad High Court in selection of the Lokayukta comes to an end through this bill, whereas the Chief Justice of India has a great role in the selection of Lokpal in the central Act, it said.

"This bill appears to be contrary to the central Act and so the Governor has referred it to the President," the release said, adding Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav has also been informed about it.

In the backdrop of the tussle with the Raj Bhavan over appointment of a new Lokayukta, the bill was passed by the state legislature in August last after the Governor turned down the name of Justice (retd) Ravindra Singh, recommended by the state government, for the post.

According to the bill, the new committee to recommend the Lokayukta's name was to be headed by the chief minister and have as its members the Assembly Speaker, Leader of the Opposition and a retired judge, nominated by the committee chairperson in consultation with the Speaker.

Earlier, the selection committee included the CM, the Leader of the Opposition and the Chief Justice.

The Governor had yesterday referred two controversial bills to the President, including one to curtail powers of mayors, which led to a war of words between senior minister Azam Khan and Naik.

The two bills are Uttar Pradesh Nagar Nigam (Amendment) Bill, 2015, and UP Nagarpalika Vidhi (Amendment) Bill, 2015.

A Raj Bhavan release said that after going through both the bills, the Governor found that some provisions in the two proposed legislations were contrary to the concept of local self administration and democracy.
Maintaining heat on the Congress, the government on Friday said that the previous United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government had "done everything" to help AgustaWestland bag the contract for VVIP helicopters and asserted that it will track down the main beneficiaries of the kickbacks in the deal.

Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar said in the Lok Sabha that former air chief S P Tyagi and Gautam Khaitan, both accused in the case, are "small people" who "simply washed their hands in a flowing ganga (of corruption)" and that the government will "find out where the river was going".

Speaking on a Calling Attention Motion on the chopper deal, he took a dig at Congress, saying it seemed to know where this "ganga was going".

He said that the UPA government had "done everything" to help AgustaWestland bag the contract and that its action against the company following the disclosure of corruption was not pro-active but "forced by circumstances".

Tyagi and Khaitan were "small people who simply washed their hands in a flowing ganga (of corruption)", Parrikar said, asserting that the government will track down the main beneficiaries of the kickbacks in the Rs 3600 crore deal for 12 VVIP choppers.

"Why are you (Congress) concerned? I have not named anybody. You seem to know where the ganga is going," the defence minister said, taking a swipe at Congress.

Parrikar, who was criticised by Opposition members for reading from a statement during a debate over the issue in the Rajya Sabha, mostly spoke extempore and narrated the sequence of events related to the contract and its subsequent cancellation.

While a criminal case was registered in Italy in November 2011 over alleged exchange of bribe in the deal, the UPA government continued with the acquisition of choppers and three of them were delivered, he said.

Only after Finmeccanica, parent firm of AgustaWestland, officials were arrested in 2013, that the then defence minister A K Antony asked the Central Bureau of Investigation to probe the matter, he said.

Before then the government had not even written to the company and instead taken up the matter with the embassy, Parrikar said, likening it to "setting up a committee when you do not want to do anything".

"Its (UPA) action was compulsorily forced by the arrest of Finmeccanica official... It did not take any pro-action measure," he said.
US House Speaker Paul Ryan, the highest-ranking elected Republican official of the nation has said that he is "not ready" yet to back his party's presumptive presidential nominee .

"I'm just not ready to do that at this point. I'm not there right now," Ryan told CNN in an interview.

Ryan's stunning statement had its immediate ripple effect inside the party and might have lasting impact on Trump's presidential ambitions, if the divisions within the Republican establishment are not sorted out soon.

Read more from our special coverage on "DONALD TRUMP"

Ryan said that the onus for uniting the party now lies on Trump, who after his Indiana primary win and withdrawal from the race by his two opponents  Ted Cruz and John Kasich  is the presumptive presidential nominee of the Republican party.

"And I hope to (support Trump), though, and I want to. But I think what is required is that we unify the party. And I think the bulk of the burden on unifying the party will have to come from our presumptive nominee," Ryan said.

"This is the party of Lincoln, of Reagan, of Jack Kemp. And we don't always nominate a Lincoln and a Reagan every four years, but we hope that our nominee aspires to be Lincoln- and Reagan-esque," the House Speaker said.

He hoped that the candidate "advances the principles of our party and appeals to a wide, vast majority of Americans".

However, Trump fired back immediately.

"I am not ready to support Speaker Ryan's agenda. Perhaps in the future we can work together and come to an agreement about what is best for the American people. They have been treated so badly for so long that it is about time for politicians to put them first!" Trump said.

The tensions between Trump and Ryan go beyond temperament, The Washington Post reported.

"They have philosophical differences about the size and scope of government. Ryan champions free-trade agreements, military engagement, and sweeping overhauls of Social Security and Medicare, whereas Trump is an avowed opponent of recent trade deals, foreign interventions and proposed changes to entitlement programs," the Post reported.

"The GOP divide over Ryan's decision not to board the Trump Train reflects the broader civil war raging within the Grand Old Party as it prepares to coronate a billionaire real estate mogul and reality TV star with zero political experience and a questionable conservative record," The Hill reported.
A day after DJB reported an "acute drop" in the water level of Wazirabad pond, its chairman Kapil Mishra today said the supply is "normal" and all the water treatment plants are functioning with full capacity.

Mishra, the Delhi Water Minister also said the WTPs are registering a record production of 900 MGD.

The Delhi Jal Board (DJB) had in a statement yesterday reported an "acute drop" in the water level of Wazirabad pond and "reduced" supply in carrier lined channel, and urged residents of several parts of the city to store adequate water.

Lutyens' Delhi, north Delhi, north-west Delhi, central Delhi, and parts of south and west Delhi were expected to be hit by the reduced water supply.

Leader of Opposition in Delhi Assembly Vijender Gupta today wrote an 'open' letter to Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal claiming that Delhi is going to face an "acute shortage" of water in coming days.

"Uttarakhand will stop supply of water to Delhi from May 8 from Tehri Dam reservoir which will lead to a complete shut down of Sonia Vihar in Delhi," he wrote in his letter.

He also alleged that Delhi government was "intentionally" trying to create a "water crisis" so that it could "blame" the Centre for the problem.

However, Mishra said, Gupta is indulging in "petty politics", adding, Delhi is getting good cooperation from Haryana and UP which were supplying water as per the Supreme Court directions.
For families in search of a fun activity Sunday, a Mothers Day Landmark Tour will be held in downtown Beatrice from 2-4:40 p.m.

Tour goers will get an inside look at historical buildings in the downtown area. The event will showcase locations on the National Register of Historic Places and promote adding more downtown buildings to that list.

It started out as a Mothers Day Church tour and weve just done all kinds of tours in the downtown area since, said Beatrice Library Director Laureen Riedesel, who will conduct the tour on Sunday.

Mothers arent always interested in sitting around watching a game, and we encourage people to take mothers out to lunch downtown and then join the tour where they get to see upstairs and parts of buildings that arent normally available, Riedesel added.

The tour starts at the Carnegie Building, about a block north of the strip of downtown restaurants on Court Street. The tour will then visit the Beatrice Municipal Auditorium, the Paddock Kensignton, and the Schmuck Building, each with its own story to tell about the history of downtown Beatrice.

Most of the time people will comment that these are buildings that they didnt know much about and were happy to learn a lot more about, Riedesel said.

All four of the buildings are on the National Register of Historic Places. The city and area historians hope to expand that designation throughout the entire area later this year. Tour goers are advised to bring their walking shoes, because while the tour covers only around six blocks, they will be on their feet checking out the various buildings the entire time.

The event is sponsored by Main Street Beatrice and Gage County Heritage Preservation Inc. The groups expect to draw families downtown, and intend for the tour to show off the area they want to add to the National Register of Historic Places by the end of the summer.

Its a great way to have a fun event that serves to draw people downtown to check out the historical features of the area, said Michael Sothan, executive director at Main Street Beatrice.

On May 13 the Nebraska State Historical Society will meet at the Beatrice Public Library to review the historical nature of downtown for the National Register, Sothan said. From there the application will hopefully go on to the National Park Service, which will decide whether to approve its historical status sometime this summer, he explained.

The National Register of Historic Places is the official list of the nations historic places worthy of preservation, according to the National Park Service.

To be considered for the National Register, a location is considered in light of its historical contribution and must be unaltered for 50 years.

It sounds like we are in really good shape, Sothan said of the downtown application. Our confidence is high.

If approved, 112 buildings and 119 properties in the downtown area will be deemed "historically contributing," Sothan said. The application covers an area from Charles Park in the north to Market Street in the south, and Third Street in the west to Eighth Street in the east.

To be deemed historically contributing is more than just a title, Sothan explained, as it will help to promote downtown Beatrice to tourists and bring economic development tools in the form of tax changes and grants.

Organizers of the Mother's Day tour decided a good way to promote the downtown area's addition to the National Register would be to center it around buildings already listed as historic places.

We want it to be a family activity, Sothan added. For families to show off downtown Beatrice to friends and family and to enjoy a fun afternoon.
Mounting attack on Congress, the government today said the previous UPA government had "done everything" to help bag the chopper deal and asserted that the main beneficiaries of the kickbacks will be tracked so that "may be we can do" what "we could not do in Bofors".

In a hard-hitting speech in the Lok Sabha, Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar said the "entire corruption" in the deal took place during the UPA tenure but former Air chief S P Tyagi and Gautam Khaitan are "small people" who "simply washed their hands in a flowing ganga (of corruption)" and that the government will "find out where the river was going".

He said while the decision on the contract was taken in 2010, Tyagi had retired in 2007 and "might have got just a 'chiller' (loose change)".

Amid a walkout by Congress which was pressing for a Supreme Court-monitored probe, he said CBI is "very seriously" investigating the case.

"I hope members are satisfied and members will support government in finding the truth. The truth may lead to many unwanted realism. What we could not do in Bofors, may be we will do it in AgustaWestland," Parrikar said while replying to a debate on the Calling Attention Motion during which he continuously targeted the Congress but deliberately refrained from naming anybody.

He said the UPA government had "done everything" to help bag the Rs 3600 crore deal for purchase of 12 VVIP helicopters and that its action against the company following the disclosure of corruption was not pro-active but "forced by circumstances".

He asserted that the government will recover damages to the tune of 398 million euros as well as the "bribe".

Referring to the Italian court's recent judgement, Parrikar said with this, the criminal conspiracy has been established and "we will get the documents very fast".

Alleging that the Congress party had close links with Christian Michel, the middleman in the deal, he said the contract was given to a company which had not even participated in the tendering process.

Finding loopholes in the deal, the Defence Minister said the tender was submitted by Italy-based but the contract was given to the UK-based Agusta Westland International Ltd (AWIL), which was not Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM).

"I am shocked, how could you accept order from a company who has not given tender? They lost sense of proportion. They thought they will be in power for ever. The smell and sight of Euro was so attractive, so intoxicating that they forgot everything. They should take consultation from Michel on how to cover up and how to do white wash," he said taking a dig at the Congress.

As Congress created uproar and tried to disrupted his speech, he remarked, "Why are you (Congress) concerned? I have not named anybody. You seem to know where the ganga was going.
Mounting attack on Congress, the government today said the previous UPA government had "done everything" to help AgustaWestland bag the chopper deal and asserted that the main beneficiaries of the kickbacks will be tracked so that "may be we can do" what "we could not do in Bofors".

In a hard-hitting speech in the Lok Sabha, Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar said the "entire corruption" in the deal took place during the UPA tenure but former Air chief S P Tyagi and Gautam Khaitan are "small people" who "simply washed their hands in a flowing ganga (of corruption)" and that the government will "find out where the river was going".

He said while the decision on the contract was taken in 2010, Tyagi had retired in 2007 and "might have got just a 'chiller' (loose change)".

Amid a walkout by Congress which was pressing for a Supreme Court-monitored probe, he said CBI is "very seriously" investigating the case.

"I hope members are satisfied and members will support government in finding the truth. The truth may lead to many unwanted realism. What we could not do in Bofors, may be we will do it in AgustaWestland," Parrikar said while replying to a debate on the Calling Attention Motion during which he continuously targeted the Congress but deliberately refrained from naming anybody.

He said the UPA government had "done everything" to help AgustaWestland bag the Rs 3600 crore deal for purchase of 12 VVIP helicopters and that its action against the company following the disclosure of corruption was not pro-active but "forced by circumstances".

He asserted that the government will recover damages to the tune of 398 million euros as well as the "bribe".

Referring to the Italian court's recent judgement, Parrikar said with this, the criminal conspiracy has been established and "we will get the documents very fast".

Alleging that the Congress party had close links with Christian Michel, the middleman in the deal, he said the contract was given to a company which had not even participated in the tendering process.

Finding loopholes in the deal, the Defence Minister said the tender was submitted by Italy-based AgustaWestland but the contract was given to the UK-based Agusta Westland International Ltd (AWIL), which was not Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM).

"I am shocked, how could you accept order from a company who has not given tender? They lost sense of proportion. They thought they will be in power for ever. The smell and sight of Euro was so attractive, so intoxicating that they forgot everything. They should take consultation from Michel on how to cover up and how to do white wash," he said taking a dig at the Congress.

As Congress created uproar and tried to disrupted his speech, he remarked, "Why are you (Congress) concerned? I have not named anybody. You seem to know where the ganga was going.

"An investigation is underway with regard to those who



washed hands in the flowing ganga. Those who wash hands in the ganga have an idea about temperature of the water, how fast the water is flowing. Based on that, we are assessing whether water was cold or hot, whether the water had Hindi, English, Italian or German and what was the issue," Parrikar said.

Refusing to spell out what CBI probe had revealed, the Defence Minister told the House, "I can assure you that I will not disappoint you."



He said he has already started personally "monitoring" the probe even though CBI and ED are not under him.

"I am personally taking interest into the sequence of events," he said.

When CPI(M) member Mohd Saleem questioned how he could "monitor" CBI and whether it was not affecting its independence, the minister amended his version to say that he was not telling CBI what to do but only "trying to find out what they are doing" and "monitoring its progress" to check if they are doing something.

He asserted that it was within his right as otherwise he would not be able to inform the House about the progress of the probe.

Parrikar, while giving details of the case, said the decision to prescribe higher cabin height of 1.8 metres of the helicopter was taken by the UPA government on May 9, 2005 and to buttress his point, he placed on the table of the House the minutes of the meeting that was chaired by the then NSA M K Narayanan.

Making 1.8 metre height of the cabin mandatory ensured that only AgustaWestland could qualify.

Noting that the scam surfaced in 2012, the Defence



Minister said nothing was done by the then UPA government till January 2014.

Describing the then Defence Minister A K Antony as "bechara" (helpless), Parrikar contended that his "hands were tied" and he took no action as he "feared that his sainthood would be disrobed".

He said Antony acted only after a top official of Finmeccanica, the parent company of AgustaWestland, was arrested in Italy in connection with bribery in the deal.

Soon after the arrest, Antony gave the files to CBI in 2-3 hours, he said, adding "He (Antony) wanted to protect his image....Whether he knew or didn't know, I don't know."



Responding to Congress contention that the Italian judge had said that there was no evidence against Sonia Gandhi, Parrikar said it was half-truth as the judge had said that it was for India to investigate and for its investigating agencies to "prove the guilt of people who are suspected".

With regard to the Congress charge that the Modi government had allowed an AgustaWestland affiliate to participate in another tender despite the company being blacklisted, the Defence Minister said the firm had only put on website its Request for Information (RFI) which anybody can do in a digital world.

"Any person who wants can put his own information there. Now it is on open interent and if anyone wants to put information, whether it is (Congress leader) Jyotiraditya Scindia, or Christian Michel or Agusta Westland, we cannot stop him," he said.

He then took a dig at Congress, saying they seemed to know every action of AgustaWestland. He said he was not aware that the company had uploaded something on the website and he looked for it only after Congress raised the issue.

"So on RFI, if someone has put it, I didn't know. It came to my notice, when these people (Cong) raised it. So with these (company) people, how much close relation they share, it comes to our mind. I didn't know about it that they have loaded information on RFI," Parrikar said.

Suggesting conspiracy to eliminate evidence in the deal, he referred to a "mysterious" fire incident on July 3, 2014 in the Air Force headquarters here and said he would be asking the CBI to probe that.

He said all files were burnt in that fire but luckily three files related to the AgustaWestland deal were saved as those had been kept by an official in his locked drawer.

"If it was in somebody's mind to set it on fire, we think that failed as the official who was there because the Agusta issue was sensitive. He had locked the files in his drawer. So three files were saved and the three files related to AW-101 helicopters," the Defence Minister said.
The New York Times Co, which has delivered newspapers for decades, now wants to help deliver food to people's door steps.

The newspaper publisher has partnered with Chef'd, a meal kit delivery company, to ship boxes of uncooked food based on recipes from The New York Times Cooking site and app.

Customers cook up the meals on their own, using step-by-step recipes that come in the boxes.

The New York Times, which is licensing its brand to Chef'd, said the meals will go on sale this summer. Customers will be able to order meal kits anytime they want, or subscribe to receive weekly boxes. A box that can make meals for two people typically costs around USD 30 on Chef'd.

The deal is another way for The New York Times to boost revenue outside of its print business. The New York company also sells tickets to its conferences and hawks posters, maps and jewelry online.

Revenue from those types of endeavours rose 6.3 per cent to USD 95 million last year, while revenue from advertising fell 3.6 percent to USD 638.7 million. Circulation revenue rose 1 percent to USD 845.5 million.

Meal kits have exploded in recent years as competition heats up. People around the world spent USD 1.5 billion on meal kits last year, with less than half of that coming from the US, according to research group Technomic. The US market is expected to grow to as much as USD 6 billion by 2020, Technomic said.

Blue Apron and HelloFresh are just some of the competitors in the space. Late last year, food writer Mark Bittman left The New York Times to join vegan meal kit company Purple Carrot.

Chef'd, based in El Segundo, California, was founded a year ago. It has similar deals with other publishers, including fitness magazine Men's Health. Bloomberg first reported the deal Thursday.
An email from a 36-year woman in the UK that she was raped while studying in India has landed her 60-year-old uncle in jail for seven years.

Additional Sessions Judge Harpreet Kaur on Wednesday sentenced Sukhwant Singh Sidhu, who was living in Rani Bagh locality, to seven years in jail, a police official said.

The convict, who was out on bail at the time of the verdict, has been arrested.

Officials of NRI Police Station here said the complaint was lodged with them through email sent from the UK in which the victim wrote to the Inspector General of Police that she was repeatedly raped by her uncle at home for many years.

The victim, who was born in 1980, was left with her uncle by her mother for the purpose of her study. But she was raped since she was 9-year-old and had she not told anyone about it due to fear, the police official said.

But soon after going to the UK after completing her MBBS, she wrote an email to Punjab Police and subsequently a case of rape was registered in the NRI Police Station on May 5, 2014 and Sukhwant was arrested on July 7 the same year.

During the pendency of the case, she visited India and along with her mother recorded their statements before the police and court.
China today asserted that it will not backdown over its maritime rights on the South China Sea regardless of international pressures and the outcome of a case with the Philippines in a UN tribunal that is likely to deliver its verdict soon.

"Some country tried to pressure China to backdown by using this award and using it as a fait accompli on China. It is impractical illusion. Whatever the award it is illegal. China will not accept or acknowledge it," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei today told media here.

Asked how China would deal with the UN Convention on Law of Sea (UNCLOS) tribunal case if it goes against it, Hong said China will not accept it whether the award favours or goes against it.

"China is determined to safeguard the national territory and maritime rights and interests," he said.

The tribunal which is arbitrating the case filed by the Philippines is set to deliver its judgement in the next weeks which was largely expected to go against China as Beijing boycotted it questioning its legality.

China claims all most all of South China Sea, (SCS). The Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan fiercely contest China's claims.

They also have overlapping claims over the area stated to be endowed with oil, minerals and rich with fisheries.

While dismissing UNCLOS jurisdiction over the SCS dispute, China whose claims are mostly based on its historic rights said it however endorse UNCLOS right to uphold international maritime law in general.

"At the same we will also uphold international rule of law and the integrity and sanctity of UNCLOS," Hong said.

Also another Chinese Foreign Ministry official, Ouyang Yujing, director-general of Department of Boundary and Ocean Affairs China will bounce back with spring effect to counter any adverse impact from the UNCLOS.

"Of course we're willing to take on board constructive comments and criticism by the relevant countries," he said.

"But if they are aimed at putting pressure on China or blackening its name, then you can view it like a spring, which has an applied force and a counterforce. The more the pressure, the greater the reaction," he said.

China has already built substantial military installations including a runway on reclaimed islands.

While China is putting up a brave front and stepped up its diplomatic campaign to counter any adverse impact, Chinese officials admit that UNCLOS judgement bears the stamp of authority of international law and puts Beijing in a tight corner.

It would also give the US, which has stepped its presence



in South China Sea, to mount an international campaign to isolate Beijing.

China also apprehends that if Philippines petition goes through, the rest of the claimants may take the same route to assert their rights.

Ouyang said, "it's not as though we don't want to resolve the dispute in the SCS. We do. But what we want is to resolve the territorial dispute through direct negotiations, as we have clearly stated in our agreements with the Philippines and through the Declaration of Conduct agreement with ASEAN," he said"



"China and Philippines reached consensus on the settlement of issues in the SCS through bilateral negotiations. We have said we won't allow the dispute to be settled through other dispute settlement procedures. Therefore the arbitration court has no jurisdiction on the dispute between China and the Philippines. This arbitration case has been illegal from the start," he said.

"The core of the territorial dispute between China and the Philippines is that the latter is attempting to harm China's interests in the Nansha Islands. China firmly opposes a certain country's taking hostage the international rule of law for its own selfish gains. They are violating the law under the guise of the 'rule of law,' and China won't accept any of these acts.," he said.
By Rishika S

- IT services provider Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp said it expects a pipeline of new projects from its healthcare and financial services clients to fuel growth for the remainder of the year, after a weak first quarter.

The company's shares rose as much as 3.8 percent.

Like its Indian rivals, Tata Consultancy Services Ltd and Infosys Ltd, Cognizant also gets the largest chunk of its revenue from financial services clients.

Revenue from its financial services sector, which accounts for more than a third of its total revenue, rose 10.7 percent, while revenue from healthcare services rose 4 percent in the first quarter.

The company reported its slowest quarterly revenue growth in 14 years as majority of its clients held back on spending.

Cognizant also forecast its second quarter earnings below estimates and tightened its revenue range for the full year.

"First quarter saw softness in healthcare and financial services sector. So, this makes numbers for second quarter and full year a little difficult," President Gordon Coburn told .

New Jersey-based Cognizant said it expects second quarter revenue in the range of $3.34 billion-$3.40 billion and adjusted earnings between $0.80-$0.82.

Analysts on an average had expected a profit of 84 cents per share and revenue of $3.41 billion, according to Thomson I/B/E/S.

However, Coburn said he does not expect the trend to continue for the full year.

The company has been placing big bets on digital services as it seeks to offset the cut in client spending.

"We are looking at more acquisitions for the year in the digital services sector," Coburn told Reuters.

The company's net income rose to $441.2 million, or 72 cents per share, in the first quarter ended March 31, from $382.9 million or 62 cents per share, a year earlier.

The company's revenue also rose 10 percent to $3.20 billion.

Excluding items, the company earned 80 cents per share.

Analysts on an average had expected a quarterly profit of 79 cents per share and revenue of $3.23 billion, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

TCS and Infosys, India's biggest IT services firms, in April also reported better-than-expected quarterly profits.

(Reporting by Rishika Sadam in Bengaluru; Editing by Shounak Dasgupta)
Prime Minister Narendra Modi will address the annual gala of US-India Business Council next month during his visit here, the advocacy group said on Thursday.

Modi's address to the USIBC before who's who of American corporate sector would be on June 7. He will also participate in a roundtable with leading global CEOs, USIBC said.

"It's a privilege for USIBC to welcome Prime Minister Modi on his fourth visit to the US, particularly in light of the advancement of our countries' relationship over the past two years," USIBC president Mukesh Aghi said.

"India became the top global FDI destination in 2015 attracting $63 billion fuelled by Modi's ability to attract foreign investors and to build a globally competitive environment in India," Aghi said.

The bilateral relationship has matured significantly over the past a few years, and extends beyond the leadership of the two countries, he said in a statement.

Though there has been no official confirmation of Modi's visit either from the Prime Minister's Office or the White House, he is expected to visit the US at the invitation of President Barack Obama, who is likely to host him for a State dinner.

US House of Representative Speaker Paul Ryan has already invited him to address a joint meeting of the Congress on June 8.

During the annual gala, USIBC will present its Global Leadership Award to the Amazon Founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, and founder and MD of Sun Pharmaceuticals Dilip Shanghvi.

"Jeff and Dilip are two leaders that are shaping the US-India trade ties with their incredible business acumen and have made a lasting impression in integrating India into the global economy," Aghi said.

"We couldn't think of more qualified icons that are emblematic of the immense potential of our trade relationship.

We are honoured to be presenting the 2016 Global Leadership Award to them," he said.
The New York Times Co, which has delivered newspapers for decades, now wants to help deliver food to people's door steps.

The newspaper publisher has partnered with Chef'd, a meal kit delivery company, to ship boxes of uncooked food based on recipes from The New York Times Cooking site and app.

Customers cook up the meals on their own, using step-by-step recipes that come in the boxes.

The New York Times, which is licensing its brand to Chef'd, said the meals will go on sale this summer. Customers will be able to order meal kits anytime they want, or subscribe to receive weekly boxes. A box that can make meals for two people typically costs around $30 on Chef'd.

The deal is another way for The New York Times to boost revenue outside of its print business. The New York company also sells tickets to its conferences and hawks posters, maps and jewelry online.

Revenue from those types of endeavours rose 6.3 per cent to $95 million last year, while revenue from advertising fell 3.6 percent to $638.7 million. Circulation revenue rose 1 percent to $845.5 million.

Meal kits have exploded in recent years as competition heats up. People around the world spent $1.5 billion on meal kits last year, with less than half of that coming from the US, according to research group Technomic. The US market is expected to grow to as much as $6 billion by 2020, Technomic said.

Blue Apron and HelloFresh are just some of the competitors in the space. Late last year, food writer Mark Bittman left The New York Times to join vegan meal kit company Purple Carrot.

Chef'd, based in El Segundo, California, was founded a year ago. It has similar deals with other publishers, including fitness magazine Men's Health. Bloomberg first reported the deal Thursday.


TECUMSEH -- A Johnson County grand jury has cleared prison officials in the deaths of Shon Collins and Donald Peacock, inmates killed last year during the Tecumseh prison riot.

The grand jury found no true bill on April 19, according to court documents provided to the Journal Star.

No further information was available Thursday, and Johnson County Attorney Rick Smith said he couldn't comment because it involved a grand jury.

Prosecutors haven't yet charged anyone for the deaths of Collins and Peacock, both 46 and serving time on sex assault charges.

Prison staff found them beaten to death -- presumably by other inmates -- late May 10 or early May 11 after they regained control of the Tecumseh State Correctional Institution.

Earlier this year, Collins' mother filed a wrongful death claim against the state, alleging the prisons employees and administrators were responsible because they failed to contain, control or stop the 11-hour riot.

His family is seeking $1.2 million in damages.

His untimely death was the result of neglect due to one or more of the following reasons by the employees of the facility: failure to protect, failure to sufficiently staff, failure to warn, or failure to properly manage the facility, Susan Collins, wrote in the tort claim filed in late January.

She continued: The officials at the Tecumseh Prison and at the Nebraska State Department of Corrections knew there was a problem with overcrowding and under-staffing, which also led to Shon Collins untimely death.

Prison officials have said more than 400 inmates were involved in the uprising, which left Collins and Peacock dead from blunt force trauma to their heads and several inmates and employees injured.

Rioters burned down a wall, broke windows and set mattresses on fire, leading to a more than $2 million repair bill.
Sigmund Freud was an Austrian neurologist best known for his influential theories on psychiatry and psychology. Google has honoured the father of psychoanalysis with a Doodle on what would have been his 160th birth anniversary.

Today's doodle has been designed by artist Kevin Laughlin and depicts the Frued's most commendable theories - the iceberg theory. The theory explains the presence of unconscious, pre-conscious and conscious in a human mind and how they give birth to id, superego and ego which eventually shape a person's personality. The Google Doodle shows only a part of the psychologist's face above the surface of water to represent the conscious whereas the rest of it is shown as submerged and unknown, representing the pre-conscious and unconscious.

He was born on May 6, 1856 and changed the way world understood human behaviour forever. The idea that 'dreams' can mean anything and the presence of a subconscious mind, is a concept we owe to Sigmund Freud. Freud also introduced the method of resolving mental illness through a dialogue between a doctor and patient.

Explaining the idea behind the Doodle, Google says, "With a vast hidden base, the iceberg references the murky depths of the unconscious mind. More importantly, the design draws our eye to the horizon, reminding us how the genius of Freud's practice rests in the space between doctor and patient, reader and text, human and world."



The Freudian method of interpretation, i.e. looking for meaning beyond the surface of things and the usage of Freudian terms like "narcissism" "death wish" and "Oedipus complex" now extend to popular culture too. He has also authored books such as The Interpretation of Dreams, The Ego and the Id, Psychopathology of Everyday Life, Beyond the Pleasure Principle and many more.

Freud passed away in the 1939 at the age of 83 due to oral cancer.
Balance sheets are always supposed to be balanced. A balance sheet is a financial statement of what a firm owns and what it owes. What it owns are its assets, while what it owes are its liabilities. Let us put this idea in a different perspective. Let us call a company's statement of social assets and social liabilities as its Social Balance Sheet. Without any exception this statement also needs to be balanced. The value of what it owns in the form of social wealth should match the value of what it owes as social responsibilities. If such a balance is recognised and met, a company can claim to present holistically true and fair view of its business.

In a strict financial sense, when assets exceed the liabilities there is financial imbalance in the company. Either it leads to excess capacity or excess debt. Either ways, the balance gets disturbed. There are several checks and controls which try to ensure this financial balance. So, when we look at published financial records, we are unlikely to spot an unbalanced balance sheet. But does the same financial prudence of balancing work for social assets and liabilities? Do companies try to ensure that its social wealth creation matches its social obligations? Are there social accountants who help companies to make it happen?

Let's understand social wealth creation. Like assets created through application of funds, companies generate social capital by spending on projects of social welfare. This spending is not targeted towards for-profit business activities. This is in fact a mechanism to transfer a portion of profit to the stakeholders who could not be compensated in the normal course of business. Also, like liabilities that arise out of various sources of funds, companies accept social responsibilities and prioritise areas of fulfilling some of the responsibilities.

Large conglomerates of India have been attempting to balance their social accounts voluntarily since long. Tata, Mahindra, ITC, Godrej, Infosys and many others have been doing commendable service to the society in some way or the other. Much before the mandate of Companies Act 2013 to contribute 2 per cent of average net profits for three years came into operation, some Indian companies represented and nurtured ethos of corporate social responsibility.

It is perhaps impossible to set any benchmark or standard in write the social accounts and drawing a social balance sheet. Any attempt to do so will not only be futile but also counterproductive. Each company should decide how it wants its social balance sheet to look like. There could be few business leaders who might like to go beyond any stipulated standard for accepting their social responsibility. Their standards of social wealth creation could be higher than average measure of central tendency. After all what matters is whether there is balance. The sum total of what the company owns and what it owes cannot become more important than balancing the equation.

Why did the need for a compulsory rule to contribute rise in India? As a special case our Companies Act is the first law towards mandatory CSR spending. The premise of such an unprecedented law is simple. Businesses must be encouraged and forced to share their wealth on social issues which need institution frameworks of men, machinery and money. Individuals, howsoever motivated they are, have limited capacity to spread their reach for solving social problems. When such individuals get support from institutions i.e. corporate entities they are able to achieve their goals. What such compulsions do is that it establishes a model for social control. It leads to design of systems which are essential to execute programs for social wealth creation.

With willingness to fix accountability, both in letter and spirit, companies can become structurally powerful to bring about social change and well being. From primary education to rural sanitation, every single objective can be framed into a smaller short-term target. People can be trained to own the targets assigned to them. Only when the degree of engagement is phenomenally high there can be rewarding satisfaction in balancing what is owned and what is owed. Balance is therefore about this mindfulness of knowing what belongs to you and what does not. The more you give, the less you lose.



The author is Assistant Professor, Institute of Management Technology (IMT), Nagpur
Start-ups are closer to my heart and abundant in reality. These days they are without a leash and largely linear or without many hierarchies, suiting best to the millennials as per their free-spirited attitude and working style.

What is typical of a start-up's initial organisational structure of behaviour is that while it takes time to architect it, it is heavily dependent on essentially the core and usually which is a small team. In an ideal world, the team is expected to stick to their originality and perpetually allow the flow of autonomy, experimentation and innovation that had in the beginning attracted the first batch of like minded employees. If they manage and succeed to maintain the same degree of heightened passion, employee engagement or resourcefulness it would essentially lead to productivity and building up scale of the organisation.



Later as the years pass, employees choose to leave even if the start-up has done great or have grown substantially into a well established organisation; it is clearly both a deflection and a confluence. This also is a common ground where the worries of even big conglomerates and MNCs meet. People leave when they figure out that one has failed to remain a part of the '', the belongingness that initially served as an attraction have ceased to exist or the employee could not experience it after a while. Innovation in management becomes therefore imperative, an indispensable necessity.

One of the relatively new management tools discussed from time to time in the corporate circles is Holacracy. It is a term given to a specific social technology or system of organisational governance developed by HolacracyOne, LLC. In this, authority and decision-making are distributed throughout a holarchy of self-organising teams rather than a management hierarchy. It is known that Holacracy system was incubated at Ternary Software, a Pennsylvania company when its founder Brian Robertson compiled the best practices into an organisational system in 2007. Robertson later developed the Holacracy Constitution in 2010 which lays out the central principles and practices of the system, and has supported companies in adopting it. In June of 2015, he also released a book, Holacracy: The New Management System for a Rapidly Changing World.

The name Holacracy is derived from author Arthur Koestler's term 'holon' in his 1967 book The Ghost in the Machine, which means a whole that is part of a larger whole very similar to concepts of sets and subsets in mathematics. A holarchy is a hierarchy of self-regulating holons that function both as autonomous wholes and as dependent parts. The term was also used extensively by American philosopher and writer Ken Wilber. The system Holacracy, is believed to have been adopted in many for-profit and non-profit organisations in Australia, France, Germany, New Zealand, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States etc.

Holacrats have roles, not job titles creating autonomy. It is about constantly evolving a network of self organising, overlapping circles of distributed authority supported by Glassfrog, a planning and discussion software platform designed by HolacracyOne. It is designed and intended to replace traditional organisation structure with circles and some more concentric circles.

Holacracy pertains to a quick review, in which everyone is involved in the project discussing issues or red flags or tensions that could come in way of completing the project. In tactical meetings, within 30 seconds or less than a minute, issues or lagging tasks that need to be resolved have to be spelt out and then assigned basis the role to one who is capable of accomplishing. Holacracry challenges the conventional methods like top down pyramid approach where aspirational needs of employees and command flows top down. It is suggested to replace pyramid with a rectangle that allows people to gain recognition for a particular kind of expertise that form circles of roles they can manage, execute or supervise well. Some consider it as 'evolution powered organisation', a series of highly structured governance and yet meant to be self driven.

The main premise of creating 'flat' organisations were based on skill enhancement and self empowerment, in Holacracy it means much more than working as entre- or intra-preneurs, it is still subjective to an individual's willingness and conscious efforts to self motivate and self direct work responsibilities.

Another distinct feature is close coordination with outside factors. Working with inside factors of an organisation is easy most of the times, but it takes a while and some conscious effort of time and money to assess the outside influence and impact. Holacracy does not ignore the outside influences.

But the system comes with certain warnings and deficits just like any other. One it is that it is a detailed process with over 15,000 words comprising the Robertson's Holacratic Constitution and adhering to it seems extremely procedural. As it requires a lot of effort, deliberations and integrated levels of coordination within the circles, it may appear complex for managements and employees to follow and may not displace bureaucracy completely. While it may allow lot of individuality, transparency and equality, it may take away vertical bureaucracy and yet hold it horizontally. Many say it rather only 'hides' hierarchy and not 'eliminate' it despite the middle level managerial level being knocked off. This may look doubtful to especially larger organisations that need extensive capabilities and expertise at all levels failing which may affect performance. Also constant mentoring and guidance may not be compromised.

In a bid to create more like him, very recently Kishore Biyani announced his intent of putting 'Holacracy' system on trial within his companies. He ran a campaign 'Ban Jao Biyani' at the start of this year where nine entrepreneurial employees (intrapreneurs) were chosen from 450 applications (average age: 26 years) who are considered ideal to run parts of the company's business like their own. Not new, right? This may presumably seem a modification of age old SBU concept. He seemed to have adopted the popular concept as it brings forth roles that are flexible, authority is distributed and rules are clearly laid out and meant for all to follow. The strategic decisions will be made by these chosen entrepreneurs who will set their business targets and markets to operate long with product and marketing strategies. While they enjoy the autonomy, they have to still create a proper feedback mechanism to report on their progress and requirement for resources. The over the top objective is to integrate suppliers, partners and top level management and work together to bring down costs of the products. This cannot be just a flying thought of Biyani, a well thought out, post number crunching strategy to deploy 'Holacracy'.

There aren't too many apples to compare with or documented findings available even though over 400 organisations have already adopted the model so far at some stage of growth.

A popular US based shoe and fashion accessories retailer Zappos founded in 1999 and later went on to become a subsidiary of Amazon, have been vociferous about Holacracy model since many years, rather they also plan to make it available for management students and corporate to learn from its case study. There are some amazing details known of what Zappos has been able to reflect of itself through its day to day innovative people initiatives which substantiates and practically defines what Holacracy has been able to do for an organisation that started as a start-up some 15 years ago, and Holacracy came into being for them in 2004. The employees there claim of a less-diplomatic -authoritative -bureaucratic milieu in their company, though the ones who did not believe in the no-hierarchy system left sooner it was implemented, perils of asking to taste fresh out of the oven cookies!

The summer interns at Zappos launch its new e-tail platforms, apps or bargains pushing shopping experience in the trendiest manner. A basic version of '6pm app' gathered initial reviews from their customers and helped Zappos mobile development team to create a roadmap for future products. This may seem radically transparent, but they are fearless in establishing new business norms and ethos.

Fred Mostler, holds no official title, has been the part of the founding team of Zappos since over 17 years, recently announced his time to depart the company in June. He holds 12 different roles representing 12 different work areas. Along with Tony Hsieh, he discussed his exit work review and realised the benefits of Holacracy, easy transition at top level being one of them. The company can either hire few people to manage his roles or 12 different people to replace each of his function. Mostler himself had explained that he is still committed to Holacracy even after he leaves Zappos, he will remain its lead link for his future organisations, DTP Real Estate being one of them. The firm believers will take it to places they will go.

Although Zappos still cannot come out of the mired controversy the system adoption has created for them. It is believed that they lost nearly 1/3rd of its employees and fell off Fortune's ranking of the 100 best companies to work for (on the list for 7 consecutive years). Though for Hsieh, the Holacracy concept has proven over time that it has stood the test of time and scaled, ideal for longevity and scaling. Zappos has over 1,600 employees and 500 circles with one filling up multiple roles. Hsieh mentioned that every human in the company is like a sensor - a marketing person may see something different than the IT admin or the customer service representative and idea is to bring the feedback into an integrated system.

With adoption of newer management structures and behaviours, Leadership will have to brave more voices and certainly a leader will have a bigger and more crucial role to play. However, what remains constant is, the organisation will be arched by values - spelling out core values and their meaning in day to day operational tasks will be critical to organisation's success.

As it is evident, Holacracy will undergo vast changes from its present nascent form or early version. It may not change the world drastically though unless people become too much self driven and unaffected by fallacies or fantasies to need someone to motivate them - too often, till then with this, human resource management is in its beta testing mode.

The author is a veteran in consumer durables and retail, and is currently consulting with World Bank
An analysis has showed that there has been an increase in cancellation charges for air tickets, Union Minister Mahesh Sharma said on while emphasising that airfares are not regulated by the government.

In a written reply to Lok Sabha, he said cancellation charges are not fixed and varies from Rs 1,500 to 100 per cent fare of the ticket depending upon the class, price level and time before departure.

"Analysis on the increase of the cancellation charge was carried out and it was found that there was increase in cancellation charges. Cancellation charges are not fixed," Sharma said.

The Minister of State for Civil Aviation was responding to a query on whether the ministry has taken note of steep hike in cancellation charges by airlines.

However, he did not provide details on whether aviation regulator DGCA has taken any action on the matter.

"Airfares are not regulated by the government. With the repeal of Air Corporation Act in March 1994, the provision of fare approval was dispensed with by the government, including charges for cancellation," Sharma said.

In recent times, many local carriers have increased the charges for cancellation of air tickets.

Last month, taking note of domestic airlines increasing ticket cancellation fees by a significant amount, aviation regulator DGCA last month sought an "explanation" from the carriers on the rationale for such a steep hike.
The central banks of India and Iran have reached an arrangement to use European banks to process pending oil payments to Tehran, Oil Minister Dharmendra Pradhan said, unlocking $6.4 billion in stalled funds.

Buyers of Iranian oil were prevented from using global banking channels to clear their transactions after sanctions were imposed on Iran in 2011 over its nuclear programme. With the end of those sanctions in January, after an agreement to curb the programme, Iran is finally gaining needed access to the funds.

Iran hopes the money will revive its moribund economy and raise Iranian living standards as well as help to integrate the country into the global economic system.

Indian refiners have been holding 55 per cent of its oil payments to Iran after a route to make payments through Turkey's Halkbank was stopped in 2013, although payment of some of those funds was allowed after an initial temporary deal to lift the sanctions.

"There is an agreement between (India and Iran's) central banks. European banks will be the clearing agent. They will be dealing with Iranian banks and we have to pay those European banks," Pradhan told Reuters in an interview.

He did not elaborate further, saying the finance ministry was dealing with the issue.

Also because of the previous sanctions, Indian refiners have been depositing 45 percent of their oil payments to Iran in rupees with India's UCO Bank.

Tehran has been using the funds, currently about 130 billion rupees ($1.95 billion) to import non-sanctioned goods from India.

Indian government sources said during Pradhan's visit to Tehran last month Iran had asked India to consider clearing the oil payments through Europaeisch-Iranische Handelsbank (EIH) of Germany, Central Bank of Italy and Halkbank of Turkey.

One of the sources said the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has ruled out channelling funds through Halkbank.

"Halkbank's Iran-related foreign trade activities with Iran have been carried out since 2004 ... Halkbank will continue its operations in accordance with international law," a senior Halkbank official told Reuters.

No immediate comment was available from EIH and Central Bank of Italy.

The government sources said Indian refiners will remit funds to Iran through state-owned UCO Bank.

UCO Bank's chairman did not respond to calls from Reuters to his mobile phone.

Reserve Bank of India Governor Raghuram Rajan said on April 5 India will make payments to Iran in a staggered manner.

"Oil companies are working out the banking arrangements in coordination with Iranian counterparts and payments will be made by them presumably over time with minimal impact on the market," an RBI spokesperson said on Thursday.

Despite the sanctions, India continued its engagement with Iran and was among a handful of countries that sourced oil from Tehran.

Iran was India's second-biggest oil supplier before the sanctions hampered its trade relations. The country is set to import at least 400,000 barrels per day of Iranian oil in the year from April 1.


Breach of faith, dreams turned sour and a $5.35 billion hole in the pocket. That, in substance, was the Japanese pharma major Daiichi-Sankyo's failed India sojourn that began in June, 2008 and packed up in April, 2014.

Thursday's Singapore Arbitration Tribunal judgement directing Singh brothers, Malvinder and Shivinder, to pay Rs 2562.78 crore to Daiichi-Sankyo for misrepresentation of facts during sale of Ranbaxy Laboratories to the Japanese firm is more of the nature of salvaging their pride, rather than any consolation for the deal that left Daiichi bruised and battered.

Daiichi no longer owns majority shares in the company, and Ranbaxy no longer exists as a corporate entity. However, the verdict remains a stark reminder of the need for intense due diligence before business decisions of mammoth proportions are taken.

It was in 2008, Daiichi invested $4.6 billion to acquire about 51 percent stake in Ranbaxy, then India's largest generics company, with its own ambitions to grow global by challenging patent validity of blockbuster molecules in the world's biggest drug market - the United States.

Daiichi Sankyo, being an innovator pharmaceutical company, was much bigger in terms of revenues, but Ranbaxy had the lure of a global presence - across developed and developing markets - that Daiichi thought it can leverage. A hybrid business model that allows the company to develop and sell expensive and patent protected new drugs and also serve the mass market of generics across the world was the dream that led the acquisition.

Soon after the acquisition got over, which included Daiichi buying out the entire 34 % stake of the promoters - Malvinder Mohan Singh and Shivinder Mohan Singh - for $ 2.4 billion and an open offer for a majority stake, the troubles that were plaguing Ranbaxy from within came to fore. After a series of loss making quarters, Daiichi was compelled to record a valuation loss and one-time-write down of goodwill on its investment made in Ranbaxy. Almost $ 3.45 billion was written off in 2009. Meanwhile, tipped off by a whistle blower, US drug regulator FDA which had given generic drug approvals with market exclusivity to some of the blockbuster drugs, including Prizer's Lipitor, found serious malpractices associated with the data submitted by Ranbaxy for product approval. The investigations that followed resulted in a series of adverse actions including ban on manufacturing facilities and a fine of$ 500 million to the US government in 2013.

Unable to steer the ship, Daiichi had to exit Ranbaxy and bid bye to its generic dreams in 2014 by merging the company with a rival Indian drug major Sun Pharmaceuticals and selling the entire resultant stake in Sun for $ 3.2 billion.

On paper, it was a business deal that involved an investment of $8.55 billion, but which recovered barely $ 3.2 billion.



The Singapore arbitration court's verdict will roughly fetch another $ 400 million for Daiichi. That is, if the former promoters fail to reverse the verdict in an appeal forum.

In a statement, the owners of RHC Holding Pvt Ltd and Oscar Investments Ltd, the two legal entities that held the shares of Ranbaxy, stated that the Arbitration Tribunal had issued an award on the basis of the India law and they are exploring legal options to challenge it. Justice A M Ahmadi, former Chief Justice of India, who was a member of the three member tribunal, had given a dissenting opinion dismissing all claims of Daiichi.

For now, the verdict will barely prove that the Japanese company was wronged. As for the loss..it has to swallow that bitter pill.
After launching the K5 Note and flagship Vibe X3, Lenovo is now looking at the budget smartphone market with the Vibe K5 Plus. Pegged to be the successor to the company's own A6000, the Vibe K5 Plus isn't alone and faces tough competition.

The Lenovo K5 Plus has a decent build and design. It has a lightweight aluminium casing with the back trying the mimic metal finish. It is 8 mm thick and has round edges on the corners. The front is dominated with a 5-inch full-HD display with three capacitive touch keys. Rear is basically neat with the camera module, Lenovo branding and speaker grills. Power key and volume key are placed on the right edge and the 3.5-mm jack and charging port on the top. The rear panel is removable, housing the battery and dual SIM card slots. Overall, the K5 Plus has a neat design, making it comfortable to hold.

Running on Android 5.1.1, the Vibe K5 is powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 616 processor and is paired with 2 GB of RAM. It doesn't have the vanilla Android user interface. There isn't any app tray and all the apps are placed on the home screen. Being a budget phone, it comes with 16 GB of internal storage with support for expandable memory. It is LTE enabled and other connectivity options onboard include WiFi and Bluetooth. Overall, the experience of using the K5 Plus was a pleasant one. The call clarity was good. It was able to handle YouTube video streaming and app downloads without any lag. Multi-tab browsing on the Chorme browser was smooth. It handled casual games such as Candy Crush, Temple Run, etc. without any lag but at times, it lost a few frames. The device started heating up after long sessions of streaming or gaming. It comes pre-loaded with apps such as Syncit app for backing up contacts, SMS and call logs; Shareit app for sharing files; Lenovo's companion app, Theme center and more. It also support Theatre Max technology for ANT Virtual Reality headset.

Lenovo Vibe K5 Plus packs in a 13-MP rear camera and a 5-MP front facing camera. The camera performance is just about average as it captures decent images but nothing extra-ordinary. The camera takes time to process an image and get ready for next shot. It isn't a great performer in low light either. The sound output on the K5 Plus is loud and clear, especially for its price. It is equipped with Dolby Atoms, which offers controls too in selected apps.

With a 2,750-mAh battery onboard, the Vibe K5 Plus managed to last a day with average usage.

Bag it or Junk it: Spend a bit more and get Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 for Rs 9,999

Rating: 3/5

Plus: Display, Sound

Minus: Camera
Greeks went on a 48-hour nationwide strike on Friday to protest against tax and pension reforms, as Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras appealed to fractious lawmakers to approve the overhaul as part of a multi-billion euro bailout.

Lowering its annual pension bill, one of the most expensive in the euro zone, is a condition for Athens to qualify for a fresh installment of the bailout worth up to 86 billion euros it signed up to almost a year ago.

Greeks, incensed at years of austerity, declared a 48-hour strike starting on Friday. Major labour unions were planning protests outside Greece's parliament on Sunday, when the reforms are due to be put to the vote.

Tsipras, who is clinging to a slim majority of 3 seats in the 300 member parliament, appealed to members of his Syriza party to approve the package. Whether Greece signed up to a bailout or not, he said, the reforms were still needed.

"The necessity to make an intervention into the pension system must be understood by all. It was a necessity borne from the need to make it viable Without this intervention, the pensions system would collapse."

In the meantime, the head of the International Monetary Fund, Christine Lagarde, urged euro zone finance ministers to start talks on Greece's debt relief together with discussions on reforms, according to a letter published by the Financial Times.

Tsipras has called for debt relief of some form to help Greece as it introduces the reforms.

Friday's strike left ships docked at port, disrupted public transport and kept civil servants and journalists off the job.

Greece's largest labour union, the private sector GSEE, said the reforms, now pending approval in parliament, were the "last nail on the coffin" for workers and pensioners who have sacrificed enough after six years of austerity.

"They are trying to prove to the Eurogroup that they are good students but they are destroying Greece's social security system," a GSEE official said, referring to euro zone finance ministers who are due to meet on Monday.

Civil service union ADEDY held rallies in central Athens on Friday. Thousands of protesters with the Communist-affiliated group PAME marched before parliament holding banners that read: "Rise up now!" and "Resist".

Athens hopes the measures, due to be voted on in parliament on Sunday, will help persuade creditors to approve the release of bailout cash.

A tranche of more than 5 billion euros is overdue, after talks faltered over the pace of reforms. The Eurogroup is expected to discuss the stalemate on May 9 and long-desired by Athens debt relief measures.

Greece needs the bailout funds to pay IMF loans, ECB bonds maturing in July and growing state arrears, subject to lenders signing off on a review in its reform progress that includes changes to its tax and pension laws.

The proposed legislation would raise social security contributions, increase income tax for high earners and introduce a new national pension. It would also gradually phase out a top-up pension for low income earners.

Worn by years of austerity, Greeks fear that the new reforms will push the country further to the brink.

"We don't have food to eat and nobody asks us how we are," said shopkeeper Anna Papadopoulou, 74, who wept as she spoke.

Asked what she wanted to tell the Greek government, she said: "Wake up. We are dying. (Reuters)

Source: www.businessworld.ie
Here at Business World, we understand the importance of a strong online presence for business. As a content creator, Business World, offers a range of written content services for companies to support their numerous online platforms. Business World benefits from a team of blog creators, content creators and skilled SEO writers.

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Open House /

A 6-Hour Window on a 24-Hour Book, with David Scher and friends

Date: Saturday, 14 May 2016, noon to 6 pm

Location: Cabinet, 300 Nevins Street, Brooklyn (directions here)

FREE. No RSVP necessary

At 10 am on Saturday, 14 May 2016, artist David Scher will sit down at Cabinets gallery space to begin making a book. By 10 am the next morning, the completed book will be at the printers and available shortly thereafter for readers.

Scher, who will arrive without any prepared material, will of course also have to remain open to the contingencies of an unfamiliar environment, dodgy takeout, and a makeshift bed, not to mention the obvious pressures of working under extreme time constraints. If that were not enough, this particular scene of artistic production will be a public one, with curious onlookers encouraged to drop in between noon and 6 pm on Saturday to watch Scher at work. Artist Michael Ballou will also be on display, periodically modeling various gladiatorial attitudes for Schers sketches. Finally, to help him through the 24 hours, Schers friends will join him in playing occasional live music. Please come!

About Cabinets 24-Hour Book series

Inspired by literary precedents such as automatic writing, by the resourcefulness of the bricoleur making do with what is at hand, and by the openness toward chance that all artistic production under severe constraint must necessarily incorporate, Cabinets series invites a number of distinguished authors and artists to be incarcerated in its gallery space to complete a project from start to finish within 24 hours. More information about the first volume in the serieswriter Brian Dillons I Am Sitting in a Roomis available here.

About the Artist

David Scher is an artist living in New York City. He is represented by Pierogi in New York, Galerie Jean Brolly in Paris, and Galerie Ute Parduhn in Dusseldorf. In 1969, he cofounded o.n.e.m., a performance and music group that has persisted.

Cabinet wishes to thank the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts for their support of this project.
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.
On April 11, Kyrgyzstans prime minister officially announced his decision to step down amidst allegations of corruption. Temir Sariev, who has headed the Kyrgyz executive for less than a year, became the 26th Kyrgyz prime minister to leave his post since the countrys independence.

Speculations on Sarievs possible resignation appeared in the media after a statement by Kyrgyzstans Minister of Transport and Communication, Argynbek Malabaev, on April 6. The minister publicly accused the prime minister of involvement in a tender to build a strategic 100-kilometer road in the Issyk-Kul province, linking the towns of Balykchy and Korumdu. The estimated cost of the project is ca US$ 100 million and the tender was won by the Chinese company Long Hai, which according to Malabaev even lacked the license and the needed technical equipment to go ahead with the construction. Malabaev claimed that he was out of the country in neighboring Kazakhstan during the selection process, and that his deputy helped the prime minister conclude the deal in order to attain personal gains for both of them from this large-scale project. In further support of his allegations, Malabaev also stated that Long Hais representative in Kyrgyzstan is a member of the prime ministers party Ak-Shumkar.

In response to these allegations, Sariev sent a note to President Almazbek Atambayev, requesting Malabaevs dismissal. The presidents office officially responded that there were no formal grounds to dismiss the minister. A specially created parliamentary commission was set up to investigate the case, chaired by Kanat Isaev, leader of the Kyrgyzstan parliamentary faction. Sariev issued a statement declaring that he does not believe in the objectivity of the commission since its chair Mr. Isaev wanted to participate in the tender himself, but was late with the submission of documents. However, before the parliamentary commission could complete its investigation, the prime minister announced his decision to step down. Standing in front of the parliament, Sariev stated, I am resigning from the post of the prime minister, but for the sake of my good name, I am ready to fight till the end. I was never engaged in political intrigues and never will be. Even in the most difficult times, I have fought for my beliefs and principles and therefore, I am demanding an objective investigation of the case, not by a biased parliamentary commission, but by the Anti-Corruption Agency of the State Security Service.

In his statement, Sariev also expressed his intention to remain active in politics. But according to former MP Ravshan Jeenbekov, if after his resignation, Sariev will turn into an opposition politician, the authorities might open a criminal case against him regarding the tender. Therefore, he has the option to remain silent just like his predecessors. Time will tell which path the former prime minister will choose; Sariev has previously stated his intention to pursue the presidency in the 2017 elections.

The unexpected resignation of Sariev, appointed less than a year ago, has generated varying reactions in Kyrgyzstans expert and political circles. According to political analyst Emil Juraev, in a parliamentary system, the resignation of the head of the government is a normal and legitimate procedure. But given the recent border dispute with neighboring Uzbekistan as well as socio-economic challenges, this is not the best time to change the government. Indeed, all former prime ministers of Kyrgyzstan since independence have served less than a year on average, without demonstrating any significant results and progress, be it in the economy or the social sphere.

Nevertheless, within one day, the ruling coalition chose a new prime minister; the former deputy head of the presidential administration Sooronbai Jeenbekov, who is considered extremely loyal to the president. Jeenbekov took office on April 13, without even presenting his governments program, simply stating that he will pursue the agenda of his predecessor. There were no significant changes to the government. Malabaev is not included in the new government, but has publicly stated that the President has promised him another position, also in the transport sphere.

Following the appointment of a new prime minister, the speaker of parliament has also voluntarily stepped down, for the simple reason that he is Jeenbekovs younger brother. The parliament now has to elect a new speaker.

Image attribution: pbs.twimg.com, accessed on May 3, 2016
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By Elizabeth Riggle, Special to the Caller-Times

Mother's Day joyful festivities and George's Seafood Company are the ideal pairing to celebrate this special occasion.

Invite the entire family to honor mom because this is a large restaurant. Ordering delectable choices of fresh seafood is easy because the majority of the entrees are served family-style. In honor of Mother's Day, George's Seafood Company will open early at 11:30 a.m. and close at 8 p.m.

Begin the party with toasts to mom and oysters on the half shell by the half dozen and dozen. Additional oyster offerings include hillbilly Rockefeller, voodoo oysters and oysters charbroiled over a mesquite wood fire grill.

Indulge in George's Seafood Company's specialty: Family-style dining on fresh seafood. Order by the pound or half pound and pick your favorite way for your meal to be prepared.

Pass around heaping platters of crispy fried catfish, blackened drum and mesquite grilled snapper. Fill your plates with mounds of wild caught gulf shrimp or sweet sea scallops. Share side orders of flavorful, golden brown onion rings, sweet potato fries or hush puppies. Share a customer favorite: George's original avocado salad or its spicier cousin, the Bombay salad.

George's Seafood Company is a great place to entertain business clients, host a party or enjoy date night with your sweetie. This full service venue has a big, comfortable private room with seating for 80, catering for banquets and parties , both on and off site, and take-out.

In addition to family-style entrees, individual plates are featured including certified Black Angus steaks, mesquite grilled chicken and seafood entrees. Appreciate the robust flavors of center cut 10-ounce sirloin steak covered with sauteed mushrooms. Savor the pecan-crusted snapper topped with a brandy butter shrimp sauce, the cedar plank salmon or the shrimp baja which is shrimp wrapped in bacon, smothered with sauteed mushrooms, onions and bell peppers and served over a bed of rice pilaf. Finish the meal with a cup of coffee and a slice of homemade deep dish apple pie with a scoop of ice cream.
GABE HERNANDEZ/CALLER-TIMES Desirae Saldana from Ballet Folklorico Viva Mexico! performs during the Cinco de Mayo celebration hosted by the Westside Business Association on Thursday, May 5, 2016, at Heritage Park in Corpus Christi.

SHARE GABE HERNANDEZ/CALLER-TIMES The Moody High School Mariachi Band performs during the Cinco de Mayo celebration Thursday, May 5, 2016, at Heritage Park in Corpus Christi. GABE HERNANDEZ/CALLER-TIMES People gather as they watch Ballet Folklorico Viva Mexico! perform during the Cinco de Mayo celebration Thursday, May 5, 2016, at Heritage Park in Corpus Christi. GABE HERNANDEZ/CALLER-TIMES Performers from Ballet Folklorico Viva Mexico! prepare to perform during the Cinco de Mayo celebration Thursday, May 5, 2016, at Heritage Park in Corpus Christi. GABE HERNANDEZ/CALLER-TIMES Dancers from Ballet Folklorico Viva Mexico! perform during the Cinco de Mayo celebration Thursday, May 5, 2016, at Heritage Park in Corpus Christi. Related Photos Celebrating Cinco de Mayo at Heritage Park

By Fares Sabawi of the Caller-Times

Moody High School's mariachi band was silent as they walked single file into Heritage Park. With their instruments in hand, they stood still briefly before playing music considered a must at the Westside Business Association's 4th annual Cinco de Mayo celebration Thursday evening.

"We do this in celebration of the Battle of Puebla," said Ben Molina, president of the association. "This has to do with our roots. We want to make sure we honor that."

The event has grown in size each year, Molina said. Food trucks took over the parking lot, serving tacos, sandwiches and funnel cakes. Several organizations and vendors also set up booths for the hundreds of people who showed up to celebrate the holiday.

Culture is the primary reason the association puts together the celebration, but it was also important to gain a sense of community.

"There's an important aspect of festivity," said Rev. James Farfaglia, pastor of Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic Church. ". We need to take a break, talk to one another, and hear good music."

Twitter: @Caller_Fares
GABE HERNANDEZ/CALLER-TIMES

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By Fares Sabawi of the Caller-Times

Police have not named any suspects in connection with a fatal Westside shooting Monday morning, but they say progress has been made in the case.

The 12:10 a.m. shooting outside a bar in the 3100 block of Morgan Avenue took the life of 27-year-old Stephanie Cortina.

Lt. Chris Hooper said police interviewed Cortina's husband Thursday morning to gather his account and to see if he could positively identify the shooter.

Witnesses told police Cortina was with her husband and other family members when her ex-husband arrived with two men and caused a disturbance. Police say the men assaulted Cortina's 39-year-old husband before someone pulled a gun and shot Cortina in the head. Hooper said Cortina's husband may have been the initial target of the attack.

The three men police believe are responsible for the shooting fled the scene. Officials previously reported Cortina was 31.

Twitter: @Caller_Fares
Contributed

A rendering created by a Texas Main Street official shows a potential new look for a North Chaparral Street building. The program is designed to offer free technical advice for small business owners and property owners downtown.

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By Matt Woolbright of the Caller-Times

Corpus Christi has joined the Texas Main Street Program, and that's reason enough for the state's first lady to come celebrate with the Sparkling City by the Sea.

First lady Cecilia Abbott and officials from the Texas Historic Commission will gather for a dedication ceremony at 11 a.m. Friday at the outdoor stage near 223 N. Chaparral St. The event is open to the public, and there will be a meet-and-greet after the ceremony.

"(Her visit) shows the significance of the program and the commitment the state has to downtowns around the state and preserving the historic fabric of our communities," said Terry Sweeney, the executive director of the Downtown Management District.

The Texas Main Street Program started in 1981, and there are now 87 communities under the endeavor's umbrella. Corpus Christi, one of 15 urban population centers in the state, is the largest participant.

"It's about preserving historic qualities of cities and urban revitalization, so it fits perfectly for both the small town main streets, as well as the traditional main streets in the larger downtowns," Sweeney said.

The program provides technical assistance for small business owners and property owners in the designated main street districts to encourage developing historic-tourism draws that can spur new growth and excitement about downtown area. It also qualifies cities for certain grant funds and tax credits, Sweeney explained.

"As First Lady of Texas, I have traveled throughout the state I can tell you that there is no better way to experience Texas than through one of our Texas Main Street communities," Abbott said in a statement. "These communities have done an exemplary job of revitalizing and preserving their historic downtowns to earn the official designation and support from the Texas Historical Commission."

The commission estimates the program has helped secure $3.2 billion in "economic reinvestment" in the districts and create nearly 35,000 jobs and 8,700 small businesses.

Sweeney said the expertise, which has already been employed here when state officials visited in April to meet with small business and property owners, will help the downtown corridor reach its potential. The timing also fits with the City Council's priorities and the development of a new comprehensive plan.

"We're a small organization so we don't have all the technical expertise," Sweeney said. "That's what great about the state's help  they become an extension of our staff for the small business and property owners here that are looking for that guidance."

Twitter: @reportermatt

If you go

What: First lady Cecilia Abbott and other officials celebrate Corpus Christi joining Texas Main Street Program

When: 11 a.m.

Where: Outdoor stage near 223 N. Chaparral St.
What has Gov. Abbott done about the six mass shootings on his watch?
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By Beatriz Alvarado of the Caller-Times

An independent insurance consultant who faces up to five years in prison for fraudulent behavior counseled Corpus Christi ISD for at least three years, district officials confirmed.

William O. Haff, who pleaded guilty in March to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, was the "frontman" for Wortham Insurance & Risk Management when CCISD contracted the company in 2010, CCISD Chief Administrative Officer Xavier Gonzalez said. Of the five years the company was contracted by the district for its health insurance consulting services, Haff represented the San Antonio-based company for the first three and a half years, Gonzalez said.

Haff, 46, of San Antonio, admitted he engaged in fraudulent behavior while working for school districts during a window of time that precludes Wortham's contract span with CCISD.

Earlier this week, superintendent Roland Hernandez and Gonzalez said the district had no immediate plans to re-evaluate Haff's work following the guilty plea and FBI investigation. Hernandez added CCISD has not been tapped by investigators.

Gonzalez, who in his role with the district worked directly with Haff, said there weren't any inappropriate dealings.

"My relationships have been strictly above board," Gonzalez said.

The CCISD board approved an $85,000 per year contract with Wortham Insurance in July 2010.

Under Wortham's guidance, CCISD transitioned from a fully funded employee health plan to a partially self-funded plan. Wortham also helped the district select two carriers: Meritain Health and Blue Cross and Blue Shield. CCISD switched from Blue Cross and Blue Shield to Aetna in September.

In March 2015, the board awarded Arthur J. Gallagher & Co. a multiyear, $200,000 per year contract for health insurance consulting services.

Hernandez assured the switch to Gallagher from Wortham "had nothing to do with (Haff)."

Haff was indicted in February 2015 and pleaded guilty March 31. He admitted that while working for Wortham he also was getting paid by an insurance agent/broker to help secure contracts for its clients. Haff said from March 2008 to February 2010 he was paid about $64,000 by the Mullen Pension and Benefit Group LLP in exchange for confidential information from employee insurance plan request for proposals issued by the Edgewood Independent School District in San Antonio and other districts, according to a news release from the Department of Justice.

Haff also sought to influence the board of trustees for the districts to award contracts to clients of the Mullen Group by making formal recommendations. In July 2008, Haff accepted $2,500 for his recommendation of a Mullen Group client to the San Antonio ISD board of trustees, the news release states.

Haff sentencing is scheduled for July 13.

Twitter: @CallerBetty
JULIE GARCIA/CALLER-TIMES The 2016 Coastal Bend Hurricane Conference at the Richard M. Borchard Fairgrounds featured 45 different sessions for emergency personnel.

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By Julie Garcia of the Caller-Times

ROBSTOWN  Four behavioral health crisis action plans have been activated in the first five months of 2016 in Texas, and it's likely more will be necessary soon.

After devastating weather events, there has been a strong need to address the mental and behavioral health of the first responders, said Liza Carol Chigos, disaster health planning coordinator with the Texas Department of State Health Services.

Chigos conducted "Zen and the Art of Stress Management," at the 2016 Coastal Bend Hurricane Conference at the Richard M. Borchard Regional Fairgrounds. The coordinator is a former Federal Emergency Management Association employee who now works to help emergency responders find the best ways to cope with heightened stress levels.

"I told myself that I was the job, and there was nothing else in my life," Chigos told the session attendees Thursday. "During a disaster, and especially after, you have to take care of yourself."

Forty-five sessions were held at the sixth annual conference that is hosted by the Nueces County Office of Emergency Management. It is geared for emergency personnel, law enforcement officers and other first responders. Sessions ranged from storm surge hazards, U.S. Coast Guard severe weather response and using citizens band, or C.B., radios.

In the hourlong session, Chigos addressed the affects of crisis on the human body and ways to get through it, including psychological first aid, spiritual care, counseling for post-traumatic stress disorder and critical incident stress management for first responders.

Supervisors from the Corpus Christi Police Department attend the conference every year, said Capt. Billy Breedlove. This year, 14 officers and animal care service officers took part in the sessions.

"We attended different courses related to evacuation and different challenges that could come up during hurricanes for police departments," Breedlove said. "We're learning from other people what they have had to experience, like how storm surge is now a whole other topic of discussion. "

Breedlove will start using a digital map software that he learned about in a session at this weekend's Fiesta de la Flor in downtown Corpus Christi. The interactive map can be altered, shared and used to broadcast information on social media, he said.

Twitter: @Caller_Jules
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Sid Miller, the current Texas Agriculture Commissioner who has been embroiled in one controversy or another since his inauguration in January 2015, is instantly recognizable.

The brim of his broad white hat defines the visual outlines of his political persona, and is part of a concerted effort on his part to create a memorable and marketable image.

And a lot of time, he succeeds. The intentional and less-desirable publicity Miller has received is a facet of his visual and literal associations with rodeo.

Miller is for sure the most easily identified Texas Agriculture Commissioner in recent memory, but only in part because of his savvy marketing. Miller has recently faced national scrutiny and ridicule for using state funds to participate in a rodeo in Mississippi and to receive a pain-relief injection common to rodeo competitors called the "Jesus shot."

It is no accident that Miller's political career is tied to his participation in rodeo, or that he has drawn on his rodeo identity to market his image. Rodeo and the beef industry share historical ties, dating to when Texas was at the center of a nascent American cattle culture. From the first informal rodeos, where makeshift arenas corralled a diverse group of cattle workers for ranch audiences, the men at the center of rodeo were the same men at the center of the beef trade.

Professional rodeo did not become a nationally popular spectacle until after World War II. Young ranch men, such as Harley May from Alpine, Texas, returned from war to enroll in agricultural colleges  and many brought rodeo with them.

May and a group of his young veteran college peers inaugurated the National Intercollegiate Rodeo Association. By the late 1950s, May was president of the first national rodeo governing body, the Rodeo Cowboys Association, which organized the existing regional rodeo patchwork and brought professional rodeo to a national audience  all the while using his agricultural education to grow a successful cattle operation.

Men like May used their agricultural educations to make both beef and rodeo successful businesses. In the process, rodeo became a staging ground for conservative politics, as it mobilized a celebration of ranching "tradition" alongside a policy agenda that favored the growth of large cattle operations.

In fact, since the 1950s, there have been connections between conservative politicians and professional rodeo. May specially honored Republican President Dwight Eisenhower at the first National Finals Rodeo in 1959. Ronald Reagan's Secretary of Commerce, Malcolm Baldrige, died while competing in a rodeo during his time in office. And Miller is a lifetime member of the Houston Rodeo and was crowned a "world champion calf-roper" in 2004.

Rodeo has doubled in popularity over the past 40 years, paralleling the growth of industrial beef, which concentrates huge numbers of cattle on feedlots, or confined animal feeding operations. The problem with rodeo's popularity, however, is that it has made cattle ranching serve as a visual and cultural shorthand for agriculture.

It is true that cattle are by far the largest agricultural commodity in the state. But this fusion of agriculture with beef obscures the diversity of agricultural products and producers in Texas. The high economic impact of beef is wildly disproportionate to the state's geography: Only five Texas counties account for almost 90 percent of the cattle industry.

Miller's heavy emphasis on his rodeo identity as his main public relations wheelhouse continues this disparity in the eyes of Texans who may not be aware of the actual and potential diversity of agriculture in the state. Professional rodeo has been formed over time to reproduce the myth of conquest of the West, gradually erasing contributions from black, indigenous and Mexican influences to produce the spectacle we now recognize.

In conflating ranching with Texas agriculture, we similarly lose the historical contributions of enslaved cotton laborers, freed black horticulturists, women subsistence farmers and independent farmers. Today, Miller's rodeo image makes it hard to see  and support  the farmers of Texas who live beyond the five counties that make up the vast majority of what counts as Texas agriculture. It's time we get out from under the hat and contribute to the health of all Texas producers, in all their complexity.

Jeannette Vaught is a lecturer in American studies at The University of Texas at Austin. She is the author of "Rationalizing the Rodeo: Animal Agriculture and Taming the American Environment."
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Charlene Hunter James, AARP Texas president

Blaze a trail in support of family caregivers

With so many of us wanting to age in place, it's no surprise that the number and economic impact of family caregivers has grown steadily. In Texas, more than 3.4 million family caregivers are providing care valued at over $35 billion a year.

As we celebrate Older Americans Month throughout May, as well as Mother's Day on May 8, it's important to remember that many caregivers are older people themselves and the majority of them are women. I know, as I'm a long-distance caregiver for my 91-year-old father. Nationally, about 6 of every 10 caregivers are female and nearly 1 in 10 is 75 years or older, according to a 2015 report conducted by the National Alliance for Caregiving and the AARP Public Policy Institute. The research shows that older caregivers are more likely to be looking after loved ones without other unpaid help. Our chores are great and the caregiving comes for many of us at a time of life when incomes are fixed.

Family caregivers are the meal givers, the medicine givers, the compassion givers. We help loved ones bathe and dress, drive to medical appointments, assist with finances and much more. Some of us perform complex medical tasks like giving injections, managing complicated medications or cleaning wounds  often with little or no training. Many provide that 24/7 care while working full-time jobs away from home and without a break.

Today's family caregivers sacrifice their time, money and even well-being to ensure that family members live comfortably in their home and out of costly institutions. That's why caregivers' needs can include things like improved workplace flexibility, respite care, and home care services. And on those occasions when caregivers' loved ones are hospitalized, caregivers need information from hospitals on how to continue the care when a patient is discharged.

Thankfully, the governor and Texas Legislature last year funded $31 million in home and community services that help individuals stay independent. Programs like these are crucial for helping family caregivers cope.

This year, the theme for Older Americans Month is "Blaze A Trail." So, let's all do our part to be trailblazers by being more supportive of caregivers who enhance the quality of life of older adults in our communities.
His immediate rivals John Kasich and Ted Cruz have all dropped out of the nomination race.

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The Republican party officials in the United States of America are cogitating on how to cope with violent Donald Trump who has been given the leeway to win the partys nomination as candidate in the November 8, 2016 presidential election.



Since Wednesday, May 4, 2016, he is the lone candidate in the partys nomination race as his then remaining rival John Kasich dropped out of the race. "As I suspend my campaign today I have renewed faith, deeper faith that the Lord will show me the way forward," BBC quoted him as having told supporters in Columbus. John Kasich only won his home state but had hoped to lobby for his candidacy at the Republican convention in July.



John Kasichs withdrawal came on the heels of his ally and another candidate in the Republican presidential nomination race Ted Cruz who dropped out of the competition on Tuesday, May 3, 2016 after lowing heavily to Donald Trump in the Indiana primary. Mr Kasich had been widely seen as the most moderate and electable Republican candidate but this did not garner him enough support among Republican primary voters.



From every indication, it is now certain Donald Trump will have the 1,237 delegates needed to become the Republican party nominee before the July convention in Cleveland, Ohio. In the remaining States such as California, which holds its primary on June 6, he will have no challenger. His clear victory now puts some of the Republican party officials in an embarrassing situation and they remain divided over whether to support his nomination.



"If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed... and we will deserve it," BBC quoted South Carolina Senator Lindsay Graham as saying. Media reports cite some Republican party senior officials as saying that they would not back Donald Trump, with some saying they would prefer to vote for Mrs Clinton. Reports further say , Mr Kasich's named has been floated as a possible vice presidential pick but he has denied that he would accept it.



The leading candidate in the opposing Democratic party nomination race, Hillary Clinton talking about Mr Trump her possible rival in the presidential race, reportedly said, he was a "loose cannon" who had run a "negative, bullying" campaign.

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Indonesia is Southeast Asias largest economy. Its GDP reached 5.04 percent in the last quarter of 2015, according to government estimates released in February, expanding faster than expected. Whilst its economy picked up speed, 2015 growth overall was still the slowest since the global financial crisis.

In March, the World Bank cut its forecast for the countrys 2016 GDP growth from 5.3 percent to 5.1 percent. A World Bank report cited that sluggish commodity prices posed a risk to the continuity of government investment.

The International Monetary Fund, which released its annual policy review on Indonesia, also in March, had a more positive outlook for this year, forecasting GDP growth at 4.9 percent, up from its figures of 4.7 percent in 2015.

The IMF said Indonesia had safely navigated challenges caused by commodity price falls and slower growth in China, but cautioned that the outlook for the economy could still worsen. It said that recovery will be driven by increased investment, especially public sector spending on transport and energy.

Earlier this month, the Asian Development Bank said it expected the countrys economic growth to rebound this year, as consumers and private investors respond well to the governments public investments and structural reform policies.

Digital landscape

Indonesias digital media landscape is buoyant  likely boosted by the fact that half of the countrys 250 million people are under the age of 30 and early technology adopters, with more than 80 million people using the internet and 79 million active social media users, according to We Are Socials Digital in 2016 report.

This is only roughly one-third of the countrys population, suggesting there is plenty of room for growth. Indonesia also has one of the highest Facebook penetration rates in Southeast Asia with 78 million users this year according to eMarketer  and it expects this figure to increase to just over 100 million users by 2019.

Indonesia is another of Southeast Asias mobile-first nations, and this space is only growing. Many citizens access the internet and social media from mobile devices.

Traditional media is still holding its own though, in particular television. Findings from a PR Newswire report on Indonesias media landscape, released in 2015, show that around 97 percent of the population watches television each month.

A sharp decline in print newspaper readers in recent years is slowing too, according to the Indonesian Media Guide 2015, published last year by the Indonesian Association of Advertising Companies.

Expert analysis

Ong Hock Chuan (pictured) is co-founder and partner at Jakarta-based Maverick, which works with brands including Sennheiser, Dyson, Netflix, Heineken, Airbus Group and Nissan.

He says the PR industry in Indonesia remains lucrative and busy because of the relatively optimistic economic climate in the country  he adds, however, that the sector is not necessarily progressing.

"Clients tend to be the same ones already using PR but upgrading to better firms," Chuan says. "Like most other parts of the world, there is a shift away from brands using mainstream media as a channel to get messages across to target audiences."

He says this has resulted in increased key opinion leader and community engagement, but he believes that most efforts are still stuck in using social to promote brands, with few companies understanding the dynamics between paid, earned, shared and owned media.

"There is still a lot of education and learning needed to adjust to the new rules of PR that social has wrought," he says.

"The market is coming round to a more real appreciation of the potentials and limits of social though, and we see a shift from engaging key opinion leaders with huge numbers of meaningless followers to those that have a smaller number of true followers."

Mavericks biggest challenge is finding the right people  particularly senior hires, as Chuan believes the talent pool in Indonesia for this calibre of staff is very shallow.

Fast facts

Population: 256 million

256 million Urban population: 53.7 percent

53.7 percent GDP: US$2.84 trillion

US$2.84 trillion GDP per capita: US$11,300

US$11,300 Unemployment: 5.5 percent

5.5 percent Life expectancy: 72 years

72 years Poverty ratio: 11.3 percent

11.3 percent Language: Bahasa, Javanese, local dialects

Bahasa, Javanese, local dialects Capital city: Jakarta

Jakarta Ruling party: Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P)

Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) Currency: Rupiah

With Indonesia still transitioning into a fully-fledged democracy following years as a dictatorship, he says there are huge opportunities for both corporate and marketing communications.

"Society is in flux and the urban young especially are all plugged in on the internet," he says. "Companies need to be more transparent, accountable and responsive and this is where PR can help most."

Djohansyah Saleh (pictured) is head of operations at Weber Shandwick Indonesia. With an increasing number of local and state-owned companies, including start-ups, willing to engage PR agencies for their outreach campaigns, Saleh says the PR industry is buoyant, and has been "growing tremendously" in the last decade.

He adds that an increasing number of clients are working with Weber Shandwick on digital mandates, where previously the in-house PR person would be the only one responsible for PR.

As the penetration of all things digital continues to grow, Saleh expects integrated PR services will play a more imperative role in the sector.

The agencys primary focus is in content creation, including visual and community management and similar to other agencies, finding the right employees to address PRs increasing digital needs, continues to be a challenge for Weber Shandwick Indonesia.

"In the near future, PR agency talent must be able to incorporate digital into their list of abilities," says Saleh. "As it stands today, PR agencies must also be able to attract talent with a different set of skills, such as content creators, advertising experts, marketing experts, graphic designers and more."

A key growth area for the agency is providing comms support, particularly in the digital sphere, for local and foreign businesses, an approach that Saleh says requires a different kind of thinking, with a faster pace of engagement.

Since mid-2014, the agency has actively been hiring people at all levels with backgrounds that are not traditionally associated with advertising or digital, including those that have a strong set of skills in video and graphic design, creative and planning.

"At Weber Shandwick Indonesia we have a strong tradition of hiring from non-communication/PR backgrounds, as we think such people are well placed to enrich the agency," explains Saleh. "Our senior members of staff include lawyers, mechanical engineers and those with a banking/finance background."
| BY Ricki Green |

The next Budget Direct Captain Risky instalment  a commercial called Home Sweet Risky Home via 303 MullenLowe Sydney  goes to air this Sunday 8th May 2016.

In the latest spot, Captain Risky has moved to the suburbs and is shaking up the neighbourhood with his new and improved house, complete with a helicopter pad and a 10-foot ramp for launching himself into his second storey garage.

Says Jonathan Kerr, director, marketing and digital, Budget Direct: Living in the suburbs was just not risky enough, so Captain Risky has done a little DIY renovation to make it feel more like home.

This is the second TVC weve launched this year to highlight Budget Directs outstanding customer recommendation rating of 94%. Most of Captain Riskys neighbours would recommend Budget Direct to their friends, and Captain Risky is starting to feel a little left out knowing that Budget Direct definitely wont insure him.

The campaign builds on the insight that Budget Direct doesnt insure the Captain Riskys of this world to keep insurance premiums low.

In February 2015, Budget Direct became Australias first insurer to publish Claims and Sales reviews, collected, moderated and managed by an independent third party and published on BudgetDirectReviews.com.au via Bazaarvoice, a leading independent ratings and reviews provider.

The site, which is updated daily, features both good and bad reviews from over 7,600 actual Budget Direct customers that have either purchased a Car or Home & Contents policy or finalised a Car or Home & Contents Claim with Budget Direct.

Currently both Budget Direct Car Insurance and Home & Contents Insurance have a 4.5 out of 5 Star rating and collectively, over 94% of the customers said theyd recommend Budget Direct to a friend.

Home Sweet Risky Home follows the launch of Jumping The Double Helix Divide in January.

Client: Budget Direct

Director of Marketing & Digital: Jonathan Kerr

General Manager  Brand and Media Marketing: Warren Marsh

Marketing Manager  New Customer Acquisition: Catherine Harty

Agency: 303 MullenLowe Sydney

ECD: Richard Morgan

Copywriter: Sean Larkin

Art Director: Adam Whitehead

Agency Producer: Sean Ascroft

Head of Business Management: Tony Dunseath

Business Director: James Lammert

Production Company: Goodoil Films

Director: Hamish Rothwell

Executive Producer: Sam Long

Producer: Claire Richards

DOP: Crighton Bone

VFX: Jess Bradstreet  ALTVFX

Editor: Bernard Garry  The Editors
| BY Ricki Green |

Dan King has been appointed managing director of Edge Melbourne. A genuine digital native King is excited about solving business problems with strategy, creativity and technology.

As former director of digital at JWT and director at Tongue, Melbourne, King brings considerable digital and BD know-how to the role. Most recently King has worked as head of strategy and client services at Keepers  a specialist marketing agency, working with clients including; Amcal, Mattel, Hamilton Island and Simply Energy.

He now joins Edge, Australias leading strategy-led, creative content agency with offices in NSW and Victoria. King said this week that he was excited about working with Edge because they are restlessly working to become the nations expert in super-serving the consumer one-to-one content at scale. King will help Edge continue this mission, by bringing considerable expertise in data and technology to the table.

Says King: My experience in tech and data will play a broader role, pushing Edge to fulfil their mission of delivering a one-to-one content experience at scale. I want to help accelerate that nationally.

Edge currently has offices in Sydney and Melbourne. In Sydney Edge works with clients including; Suncorp; Aussie Home; Loans, Volkswagon, LendLease and Pet Barn and in Melbourne with clients such as Australia Post, ANZIFF and Australian Unity and Australian Super. Together with managing partner and head of strategy in Sydney, Richard Parker, King will now target Victorian business owners in the retail, FMCG, telco, travel, financial services and property sectors.

Says King: Theres no great content shop really nailing it in Melbourne right now. Theres a massive opportunity in Melbourne where many head offices for content rich categories are located including; financial services, retail and FMCG. These brand sectors need to build a better and more direct relationship with content. Theres also plenty of automobile brands based in Victoria who could benefit from being more content centric.

Says Fergus Stoddart, managing partner and commercial director at Edge: Dan is excellent at developing strategy and ideas that connect with audiences in unexpected ways. Dans tech and data experience is the perfect compliment to our content expertise and Im looking forward to seeing this in action.
You've heard it a million times, and guess what? It's true. Breakfast really is the most important meal of the day. Fuelling up with a nutritious meal in the morning lays the foundation for the day ahead, supplying you with much-needed energy to start your day - every day.Weekday or weekend, these quick, easy and healthy ideas will put a spring in everyone's step. The few minutes it takes to prepare them is worth it, and some have ingredients that can be prepared the night before, making them ready-to-go in the morning.Using frozen fruit, even the most time-crunched among us can whirl up a batch of. For a heart healthy Omega-3 boost, add a spoonful of crushed flax seeds before blending.During the tail end of these colder months, enjoy a warm, hearty bowl of. Not only tasty, it keeps you feeling full for an extended period of time with stick-to-your-ribs goodness.Our toastedis equally delicious presoaked or not, and served with milk or yogurt, and fresh fruit.are a fun, kid-friendly breakfast idea that take only minutes to prepare.are a cinch to make when you chop and refrigerate ham and veggies the night before. Or,complete with feta cheese will satisfy the vegetarian in your family. Layer store-bought or homemade granola with yogurt and fruit for homemade breakfast parfaits  Spread whole grain toast with almond butter; top with raisins and sliced apple or banana. For an on-the-go breakfast sandwich, top with another slice of toast and cut in half. Make a batch of your favourite fruit and whole grain muffins . Wrap individually, pop into freezer bags and freeze. Thaw or microwave as needed. Enhance and add nutrition to store-bought breakfast cereal by adding crushed flax seeds, hulled sunflower seeds, dried blueberries or cranberries, toasted sliced almonds or pepitas to the mix.
Method

Cook pasta according to package directions until al dente; drain, reserving ? cup cooking liquid.

Meanwhile, in large skillet, heat 1 tsp olive oil over medium heat; cook sausages until browned and almost cooked through, about 7 minutes. Remove to cutting board and slice.

In same skillet, heat 2 tsp olive oil over medium heat; cook onion, stirring often, until softened, about 5 minutes.

Return sausage to pan; cook, stirring often, until cooked through, about 3 minutes. Stir in spinach; cook until starting to wilt, about 1 minute. Add pasta and pesto; toss with enough of the reserved cooking liquid to coat.
" 'The whole trouble,' proceeded Mr. Archibald, with some heat, 'is that the present Minister for Home Affairs [O'Malley] is an incompetent man ... He is a curious product so far as Ministerial life is concerned. You [O'Malley] have no right to be there [in government]. Men like you are in office at the present time when instead we want the best brains of this House at the head of affairs.'
"It is difficult to comprehend why you were willing to engage in such selfish and destructive cruelty for the sake of fleeting sexual gratification," the judge said.
Labor's immigration spokesman Richard Marles said this was not good enough.



"The Government needs to provide an assurance it has not returned anyone to harm," Mr Marles said.



"Australia has international obligations that this Government simply can't ignore. It is not good enough to try and dismiss this as an operational matter."
Her barrister, Ron Merkel, told the court the woman had told her legal team on Thursday she felt she was "going crazy" and said she might hurt herself "like Hodan" - a reference to the young Somali woman who this week set herself on fire on Nauru.
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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.

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You are our people. You Care. We Care2.
Applications have been invited by Nirma University, Ahmedabad for admission to Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D) programme.

Admissions are offered at Nirma University Institute of Management for the academic session 2016.

Eligibility Criteria:

Candidates should have master's degree or equivalent degree recognised by Nirma University with a minimum of 55% marks or equivalent grade

Candidates appearing for final examination are also eligible to apply

How to Apply?

Download application from here

Filled in application form and the required documents should be sent along with demand draft of Rs 1,000/- . The DD should be drawn in favour of Institute of Management, Nirma University payable at Ahmedabad.

Selection Procedure:

Admission will be offered to candidates based on their performance in the written test and interview, conducted by the institute.

Selection of candidates will be based on the following component:

Admission Test: 50%

Personal Interview: 50%

Important Dates:
Occasionally, automakers take a more imaginative (or desperate, take your pick) approach with their marketing tactics, often turning to companies in completely different niches to spice up their cars and create what they call special edition models.

One of the more recent examples is the Fiat Group, which earlier this month, rolled out the second edition of its 500 by Gucci series based on the faux-convertible version of the city car featuring a simple folding fabric roof.

But this isnt the first time that Gucci has joined forces with the auto industry. Back in the late 1970s, the famous high-end Italian fashion and leather goods label collaborated with GMs Cadillac division to create the Seville by Gucci special edition.

Introduced on the 1978 Cadillac Seville, the Gucci package was supposed to add some Italian flair/bling to the V8-powered sedan.

Aldo Gucci, one of the sons of the founder of the Italian company and the person responsible for the design of the special edition Seville, said at the time: The Gucci styling we have created for this car is designed to give a fortunate few owners a rare possession of distinction, beauty and ultimate luxury.

These special edition Sevilles would leave GMs factory fully equipped but in stock form and arrive at a Miami-based company called International Automotive Design Inc. (IAD), which would then apply the Gucci treatment.

The Seville by Gucci was offered with a choice of three exterior colors: white, black or brown.

What made them special on the outside were a vinyl top covering only the C-pillar and featuring the Italian design houses interlocking double G crest, a gold Gucci hood ornament, gold Gucci emblems on the wheels, front fenders and C-Pillar and Guccis green and red stripes across the trunk lid.

Inside, the Gucci treatment included the addition of the firms exclusive fabric material on the headrests, armrests, headliner, and floor mats, plus the Gucci nameplate on the steering wheel center hub, the passenger side of the dashboard and on the pillars. Finally, all special edition Sevilles were offered with a full set of Gucci luggage in the trunk.

The cost of the package pushed the price of the 78 Seville by Gucci to $19,900 while the 1979 model retailed for $22,900.

Being that the Gucci Sevilles were produced in limited numbers, they dont often pop up for sale. However, we did find a couple of brochures up for sale on eBay as well as a video, which you can check out below.

Story sources: Automotive Milesposts, eBay.com, eBay.co.uk

PHOTO GALLERY





VIDEO


In between modern supercars and rare vehicles of the last century bound to go under the hammer, a Cadillac Type 51 stands out.



Described by the vendor as a large, luxurious automobile, it was introduced in September 1914, as a 1915MY, its Caddys first ever V8-powered car and also its first left-hand drive model, as previous ones were offered in RHD. The classic Cadillac was imported from Massachusetts, USA, to Denmark, in 1990, where it stood on a farm for a few years until it was purchased by an enthusiasts who was building a collection of early cars.

It underwent through a complete restoration process that took five years, during which the body was separated from the frame, everything was sandblasted and painted in a base coat and the leather was removed from inside, only to display the wood in perfect condition. Before being ready for the road, it has its engine rebuilt and body painted in deep Royal blue with Black wings, using long-gone techniques.

Many months of assembly later, the car was returned to its former glory and will hit the auction block on May 28, at SilverstoneAuctions event at the Classic Race Aarhus 2016, estimated to fetch anywhere between 120,000 and 135,000 ($174,000-196,000).

PHOTO GALLERY
Honda has kicked off the assembly of the new pick-truck at its manufacturing facility in Alabama.



The 2017 Ridgeline joins the Pilot sport utility vehicle, Odyssey minivan and Acura MDX luxury SUV at Honda Manufacturing Alabama (HMA), which celebrates its 15th year of operation. The plant employs 4,500 associates, spreads on 3.7 million square feet and has the capacity to build 340,000 vehicles annually.

Today we celebrate the dedication of our Alabama team in bringing a very innovative new pickup truck to market. I congratulate all of our associates for their commitment to our customers as the Ridgeline returns with new features that will deliver even more of what todays truck customers want and need, said HMSA president, Jeff Tomko.

Having made its debut earlier this year at Detroit, Hondas new pickup truck is longer and wider than its predecessor, it has a fully flat-floor and is powered exclusively from a 3.5-liter V6 engine mated to a six-speed automatic transmission.

The Japanese automakers claims that the new Ridgeline offers the best handling, ride quality, all-weather traction capability and cabin quietness in the segment, along with class-leading space, innovative features such as In-Bed Trunk, Dual Action tailgate, Truck Bed Audio system and 8-inch Display audio with Apple CarPlay and Android Auto compatibility.

PHOTO GALLERY
Holden is killing the Colorado 7 nameplate for the facelifted version of their seven-seater SUV that will arrive in Australia adopting GMs global Trailblazer moniker from Chevrolet.



GMs Australian arm said that customer feedback and a change in vehicle design were important factors in the decision to rename the SUV . The move to adopt the Trailblazer name emphasizes the vehicles new direction into a more luxurious and premium space, explained Holdens Executive Director of Marketing, Geraldine Davys.

In other words, while the new Trailblazer continues to be the SUV body-style of the also resigned Colorado truck that was introduced in Brazil last week, Holden wants to disassociate it (marketing-wise) from the pickup in the minds of buyers.

The 2017 Holden Trailblazer that will go on sale in Australia later this year adopts the same cosmetic upgrades as the Colorado, bringing a new, more Americanized and boxier fascia with modern LED daytime running lamps, plus added chrome accents and new tail lamp fixtures.

The changes are more evident inside where GM gave the refreshed Colorado truck and Trailblazer SUV a brand new dashboard design together with more upmarket materials and trim. Another highlight is the eight-inch touchscreen for the infotainment system with Apple CarPlay and Android Auto technology.

Holden says it also retuned the suspension and made efforts to reduce noise and vibration inside.

We understand the vehicle will be mostly used by families and those expecting a more premium experience so, when working with the Brazilian homeroom, weve focused on reducing noise and vibration as well as ride isolation, to give customers a comfortable cabin environment, said Holdens Lead Dynamics Engineer, Rob Trubiani.

The Australian carmaker did not provide details on the powertrain, but the 2017 Trailblazer is expected to continue with the same 147kW (197hp) and 500Nm (369 lb-ft) 2.8-liter turbocharged four-cylinder diesel as the outgoing Colorado 7.

Photo Gallery
Two Honda drivers have lost their lives in separate crashes, possibly linked to the problematic Takata airbag inflators, which could raise the total deaths to 13, including 10 in the United States.



An official cause of death has yet to be determined for the two latest accidents that occurred in Honda City cars in Malaysia, on April 26 and May 1, respectively, but in both cases, the driver-side airbag inflators were ruptured, confirmed by Honda during an inspection with the Royal Malaysia Police.

Honda Malaysia is working with the local authorities to get the database of current owners of these cars and communicate with them on the recall, said Honda Malaysias spokesperson, Jordhatt Johan, quoted by AutomotiveNews.

An eight-and-a-half-months pregnant woman is the first known death linked to Takatas airbags, in Malaysia. The driver lost her life two years ago, following a collision that set the airbag off, which sent a 1-inch shard of metal into her neck.

In the United States, 10 people have been killed by the problematic airbag inflators that use ammonium nitrate, a cheap but volatile explosive, and lack a drying agent, which leads to degrading over time due to exposure to environmental moisture and wide temperature fluctuations.

PHOTO GALLERY
Skoda has chosen to put an end to months of speculation by officially announcing the Kodiaq name for its upcoming 7-seater SUV.



And yes, the pun in the title is intended, as the moniker was inspired by the Kodiak bear that lives on an island in Alaska.

Theres no typo, either; according to the company, it is derived from the language of the Alutiiq natives, who use the letter q at the end of characteristic animal names.

Sitting at 4.70 meters in length, the SUV that will be inspired by the VisionS Concept is 21 cm longer than the Volkswagen Tiguan and 34 cm longer than the Seat Ateca. Unlike its Spanish cousin, it will be able to sit seven people comfortably, as the automaker states.

Skoda has yet to announce any engine details, but while the study used a plug-in hybrid powertrain, the production car is expected to get similar three- and four-cylinder petrol and diesel engines as the Ateca and Tiguan, at least at launch. Base models are expected to come with a manual gearbox in front-wheel drive, while more expensive versions will be offered with a DSG and all-wheel drive.

The new Skoda Kodiaq will celebrate its public premiere in the second half of 2016, probably at the Paris Motor Show in October and will hit the market early next year.

PHOTO GALLERY
Photo: Wildsafe BC

Early spring temperatures have prompted bears to begin foraging and filling their bellies after their long winter sleep.

In West Kelowna, there have been at least four black bear reports in the last two days according to the Wildlife Alert Report Program.

Residents reported seeing the animal near garbage containers and fruit trees in Shannon Woods, Glenrosa and near Shannon Lake.

A Castanet reader said they put their garbage out the night before pickup and were shocked to find a bear lumbering through the neighbourhood minutes later.

Dave Calder, a local resident, who started West Kelowna Bear Volunteers to help get the message out about keeping neighbourhoods safe, says garbage left unattended or put out before pickup day is a major draw to bears.

Residents should not be putting their garbage out before 7 a.m. on pickup day, and its really a bad habit to put garbage out the night before, he said.

Last fall, Calders neighbourhood of Rose Valley had several bears stroll through backyards looking for goodies.

He took the initiative to print pamphlets and stickers with information on bear awareness. Then he rallied volunteers to door-knock in neighbourhoods where there have been a high number of bear sightings to educate them on becoming bear aware.

Calder says he isnt starting up the campaign again as he hoped most got the message.

I havent seen too many bears in our Rose Valley area yet. But that doesnt mean they arent around.

According to WildSafe BC, 55 per cent of calls to Conservation regarding bears stem from garbage issues.

To keep your neighbourhood bear-safe, its recommended:
Photo: Kevin Trowbridge

The Capital One Race for Kids is just around the corner and its not too late to register a team.

On Saturday May 28, bring three colleagues, friends, family members or anyone you know who likes to have fun and come out to play like a kid again, says Philippa Douglas, event coordinator.

Not an uber athlete? No worries! This wild and wacky event is meant for all adults regardless of your fitness level. This event is a great team-builder and challenges both your physical and mental abilities in a fun-filled way.

The fifth annual Capital One Race for Kids places teams of four adults against one another in a zany race course.

Challenges and checkpoint locations are kept secret until race day - but you can expect challenges such as Master Chef, building with spaghetti, water balloon toss, an obstacle course and much more, says Douglas.

After the race, participants are invited to a BBQ and awards ceremony for winners and standout teams.

The Capital One Race for Kids raises funds to provide young people in the community with a safe place to belong.

The proceeds of the event will go directly to the Okanagan Boys and Girls Clubs.

You can register your team online today, click here.
Photo: Canadian Red Cross

Castanet readers have come through for the victims of the devastating wildfire in Fort McMurray.

In just two days, the Castanet Cares campaign, in partnership with the Canadian Red Cross, has raised $18,940.

The fundraiser continues, and all donations are being matched by the federal government, doubling their effect in the fire-ravaged Northern Alberta city.

Kelowna has a special connection to the disaster unfolding in Alberta.

Kelowna fought through its own firestorm in 2003, when more than 200 homes were destroyed by the Okanagan Mountain Park wildfire.

We rebuilt, and Fort Mac will, too.

We've set up our own local portal to donate directly to the Red Cross Alberta Fires Appeal via Castanet to show just how much the Central Okanagan understands what residents of Fort Mac are going through.

Your support helps provide comfort kits, blankets, meals, shelter beds and more.

Having been in Kelowna during the 2003 wildfire response, I know people in the Okanagan will have a special empathy for how it feels to flee from a raging wildfire. The Canadian Red Cross is proud to once again be providing support to people in need, this time in Fort McMurray. We thank Castanet and its readers for helping raise funds to assist thousands of people in the days and months ahead," said Kimberley Nemrava, Canadian Red Cross vice-president for B.C. and Yukon.

The Fort McMurray wildfire has destroyed more than 1,600 structures, forcing 80,000 residents to evacuate the city and burning 1,000 square kilometres.

To donate, simply click the Donate Button in the photo above, or go here.
Photo: City of Kelowna

The City of Kelowna is looking for input on how best to use Cameron House.

The heritage house on Richter Street has been the subject of much discussion over what to do with the building, which requires hundreds of thousands of dollars in structural repairs.

Any remediation work has been put on hold, pending a comprehensive planning and business case exercise.

Part of that exercise is what the city is calling an "idea fair," set for May 12 in Cameron Park from 3:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m.

We are looking to residents to come up with creative ideas on how we can best make use of this piece of Kelowna history, said planner specialist Pat McCormick.

This valuable heritage asset has the opportunity to provide a service to the neighbourhood and contribute to the creation of a community hub.

The idea fair is designed to identify activities and uses that are compatible with the heritage building, Cameron Park and the surrounding neighbourhood.

Once information has been gathered on potential uses, it is the citys intention to seek a private or not-for-profit partner to assist in financing capital improvements for the building and adjoining site.

Cameron House, built in 1928, is a 1.5-storey log home, located on the Guisachan property in the South Pandosy neighbourhood.

It was home to Waldorf Preschool until the building was deemed not structurally sound, in 2011.
After two years of dealing with a water-logged backyard, Cassiar Road resident Duane Thachyk is finally seeing a response from the City of Kelowna.

A storm sewer is being installed on Cassiar Road, an extension from the system on Silver Place.

City of Kelowna infrastructure delivery manager Brian Beach says the city recognized there was a significant ground water issue for residents on Cassiar.

There is a site drain issue, so we are connecting to the existing storm sewer nearby and will run a new storm main up the street to the properties and provide a service connection to the property line, Beach explained.

Castanet reported on the ground water issue in Thachyks backyard in March.

At the time, Thachyk said land around his house was sinking due to a pool of water in his yard that exists even in the heat of summer.

While Thachyk will have to install his own gravity storm drain or sump pump, the water will now have somewhere to go after the sewer system is installed.

Without a connection to the underground storm system there would be no where to dispose of that water, said Beach.

The drainage issue on Cassiar appears to be an isolated incident affecting only Thachyk and his neighbour.

Beach says it is unclear where the water is coming from, but the city is sure it is not a broken water main.

It is not a problem for neighbours on either side. It is so difficult to determine where the water is coming from, he said. Underground water can change with time, and development can have an impact, but it is just Mother Nature  and it may have been affected by blasting with the homes.

The homes Beach is referring to are those in the new Selkirk Development above Cassiar, which Thachyk questioned the city about in the past.

However, Beach says it would be too hard to trace where the water was coming from for certain.

The city budgets $200,000 per year to address unforeseen drainage issues on city roads.
West Kelowna

The crash happened near the RCMP detachment on Dobbin Road at about 4 p.m. when the driver of a three-ton truck rear-ended an SUV, causing it to hit a pickup truck.

COMMENTS WELCOME

Comments are pre-moderated to ensure they meet our guidelines. Approval times will vary. Keep it civil, and stay on topic. If you see an inappropriate comment, please use the flag feature. Comments are the opinions of the comment writer, not of Castanet. Comments remain open for one day after a story is published and are closed on weekends. Visit Castanets Forums to start or join a discussion about this story.
Someone strapped a GoPro to a rocket and captured its launch and separation in space.
Photo: Sherri

UPDATE: 9:40 a.m.

Those who left a couch, seat and stove on the side of the road across from Country Pines Gate in West Kelowna called Castanet Friday morning to say the spot is a well-known place to leave items for others to take.

They said there was a sign on the items saying free, and added the stove still works fine.

"People have been putting stuff out there for years."

Residents in the area drop items off there three or four times a week, they said.

ORIGINAL

A Glenrosa resident is angry and dismayed, after watching a fellow West Kelownian use an area of Glenrosa Road as his personal garbage dump.

Sherri (who didn't want her last name used), said she watched a man in a dark coloured van dump an old sofa set and stove off to the side of the road across from Country Pines Gate.

It happened about 6:15 p.m. Tuesday.

"I did a U-turn and pulled up," Sherri said upon witnessing the dumping.

"When I did that, he jumped in his van and took off. I wrote down his licence number."

She followed him but was unable to locate the man, or the van.

"I was going to ask him what the ... do you think you're doing. Take your garbage to the dump like everybody else. We live in that community. Stuff like that irritates me. If people don't get called on that kind of stuff, that's why they do it."

Sherri did say the area is used by people who are trying to sell a car or give away stuff in good condition.

"But, I could see this stuff is just garbage."

She did call the City of West Kelowna to complain about the incident, but said nothing has been done yet.

"The stuff was there today. What do they need, the picture of the guy doing it? That's why I took down the licence number," said Sherri.

"I know garbage is a big problem up there. They're dumping it in the bush on the way up to the ski hill and all kinds of places. Enough already."

Why should our taxes go up to clean up his garbage, she asked.
Photo: Contributed

Those relying on the Canadian Pension Plan are facing a meager rate of return, says a new study.

The reality is that Canadians born after 1971 are receiving modest returns from the CPP, said Jason Clemens, executive vice-president at the Fraser Institute.

Anyone born after 1955  retiring in 2021 or later  will receive a modest return on their contributions of 3 per cent or less, as found by the study. Any CPP-eligible Canadian born after 1971  retiring in 2037 or later  who worked full-time will receive an annual return of just 2.1 per cent in retirement.

Read more.
Photo: Twitter - Alberta RCMP

Residents of the Central Okanagan who have endured evacuations and uncertainty from wildfires on both sides of the lake know what it means to get help.

Many are now looking to help the more than 80,000 people facing the same uncertainty after being evacuated from Fort McMurray and surrounding communities.

In Fort McMurray alone, at least 1,600 homes, businesses and structures have already been lost.

And, they are not out of the woods yet.

Central Okanagan residents have been asking, how can we help?

Several organizations, individuals and businesses have stepped up.

In Kelowna, organizers of the Mission Hall Spring Barn Dance are pledging to send 50 per cent of all proceeds from the dance to the Red Cross Disaster Relief Fund.

The dance is scheduled for Saturday, May 14. Tickets are $20.

Of course, the Red Cross is accepting donations themselves, while all BC Liquor stores are also accepting donations on behalf of the Red Cross.

For those interested in helping with tangible goods, instead of cash, the Canadian Brewhouse on Pandosy near KLO is accepting both clothing and non-perishable items. They are also accepting donations for the Red Cross.

The Brewhouse has locations all across Alberta as well, including in Fort McMurray.

Andrew Garagan has also started up a Facebook Page, Kelowna Helping Fort McMurray.

He is hoping to receive enough goods to fill a truck for transport to Alberta next Thursday or Friday.

"With everything going on in Fort McMurray, I feel the City of Kelowna can help out. If we can get donations of any kind to the people displaced by the fire, this will go a long way," Garagan said in setting up the group.

"If people have food, clothes, shoes  anything will help."
Photo: The Canadian Press

The Alberta government is providing cash to 80,000 evacuees from the Fort McMurray fire to help them with their immediate needs.

Premier Rachel Notley says cabinet has approved a payment of $1,250 per adult and $500 per dependent at a cost to the province of $100 million.

She told a morning briefing in Edmonton that she wants people who were forced from their homes to know that the government "has their back."

She also said efforts continue to move evacuees stranded at oilfield camps north of Fort McMurray by the fire that has grown to 1,000 square kilometres.

The plan is to airlift another 5,500 today and to move about 500 vehicles in a convoy through the devastated city and south from there.

About 7,000 people were flown out of the camps on Thursday.
Photo: The Canadian Press

The Liberal government is reviewing Canada's stance on American war dodgers who have sought refuge in this country rather than fight in Iraq, Prime Minister Trudeau said Friday.

Trudeau, however, gave no commitments that Ottawa might smooth the path to permanent residency for the conscientious objectors, some of whom have been forced to return to the U.S. to face prison terms, but said the issue was a live one.

"It's one that we are looking into actively as a government," Trudeau said after a transit-funding announcement in Toronto.

He did not elaborate.

Outside the transit yard where Trudeau was speaking, a handful of protesters from the War Resisters Support Campaign quietly held up a banner and signs calling on the government to let them stay.

Last summer, a campaigning Trudeau criticized the Conservative government under prime minister Stephen Harper for acting in a way he called "lacking compassion and lacking understanding" when it came to the American soldiers.

"I am supportive of the principle of allowing conscientious objectors to stay," Trudeau said at the time.

He called it "problematic" and "disappointing" and unworthy of Canada that Conservative MPs had cheered in the Commons in 2012 amid word that one of the Americans, a mother of four, had been arrested after deportation to the U.S., where she was later court-martialled and gave birth in prison.

"I am committed...to restoring our sense of compassion and openness and a place that is a safe haven for people to come here."

However, little appears to have happened since the Liberals took office last fall.

In an email to The Canadian Press last month, a spokesman for Immigration Minister John McCallum said he had "no indication that a decision was made or is about to be made" on the issue.

Starting a decade ago, scores of American military personnel who objected to the war in Iraq sought refuge in Canada. They argued the military effort had not been sanctioned by the United Nations and was illegal. Some have been fighting for years to obtain regular status while the government has sought to deport them.

The Harper government, in particular, took a hard line on their presence, at one point calling them deserters and "bogus refugee claimants" and directing immigration officials to ensure they were returned to the U.S.

About 15 of the soldiers are estimated to be still caught up in their fight to gain status in Canada, according to the resisters campaign

Supporters say it is time the Trudeau government acted, noting it was his father, former prime minister Pierre Trudeau, who welcomed many American soldiers who came to Canada rather than fight in the Vietnam War.
Photo: Alberta Wildfire

The image of a helicopter ferrying a small bucket of water through towering plumes of smoke made clear the daunting, seemingly futile, task of fighting the Fort McMurray wildfire from the sky.

To observers, it was like flicking water on a raging grass fire.

But experts in fire suppression and management say the aircraft play a critical role in a multipronged strategy in containing expansive fires.

"It has a target and a usefulness, for sure," said Roger Collet, a wildfire prevention officer with Natural Resources in New Brunswick.

"It's just not fighting that big flame that we're seeing on the TV because it wouldn't have much of an effect on that huge wall of flame, but it does have an effect in protecting the infrastructure in the area."

Collet said the helicopters carrying water  larger ones transport up to 1,000 gallons  are usually used to douse buildings or land in the path of a fire. They also can snuff out flames from smaller fires that have jumped from the original blaze.

That has been a particular challenge for crews fighting the Fort McMurray wildfire, since winds have blown embers and fuelled its spread.

He says that while the buckets may appear small, they can dump a large amount of water in a single area or spread out over a larger swath.

"It's deceiving at how small that bucket is under it, but if you're trying to stop a fire that's moving in toward the airport, for instance, and you've got some hotspots that are starting to flare up it's quite effective in trying to knock down some of those little flareups."

Firefighters are also using aircraft to disperse fire retardant on the perimeter to try to stop it in its tracks. Collet said crews usually put down a succession of lines of the red retardant to hem the fire in.

Crews water-bombed the city Thursday to try to keep the wildfire at bay, having22 water bombers on hand and more on the way, including four from Quebec.

Still, Chad Morrison of Alberta Forestry has said air tankers alone won't stop the fire, which could continue to push through dry conditions if the area doesn't get significant rainfall.

David Martell, a professor in the forestry department at the University of Toronto, said the aircraft are invaluable when it comes to limiting the damage and eventually extinguishing a fire by using the retardant or water to arrest its growth.

"You are trying to build a barrier that the fire can't burn through," he said. "One way is to put people on the ground with axes and shovels to dig a trench, and the other is to drop fire retardant."

Slave Lake Fire Chief Jamie Coutts was battling the blaze soon after it began closing in on Fort McMurray and says the helicopters are now likely working on the sides and possibly the head of the fire.

He says helicopters are useful because they can get low and drop water where they want, whereas fixed wing planes have to stay higher and the wind affects how much water they can carry and where they can go.

He returned home to Slave Lake early Thursday, but plans to return to Fort McMurray on Saturday to help in the effort.

"The helicopters would be doing hotspots now," he said. "The first thing they're going to do is try to wrap it with Cats and heavy equipment so that there's a firebreak and then the bombers will come in and reinforce that firebreak so the fire doesn't jump it. It's quite a orchestrated use of manpower."

The fire grew from 75 square kilometres Tuesday to 100 square kilometres on Wednesday, helped along by high winds, scorching heat and low humidity. By Thursday it was almost nine times that at 850 square kilometres  roughly equivalent to the size of Calgary.
Photo: City of West Kelowna

West Kelowna's Kids Care Spray Park is opening early.

Thanks to above-average spring temperatures, the water park will open this weekend.

The park will be open from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Saturday, and will remain open until September.

During July and August, hours will extend from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m.

The spray park is located in Westbank Centre Park, at the end of Dobbin Road or Main Street (Highway 97 couplet) at Herbert Road.

It offers 20 motion-activated pieces of equipment, including geysers, hoops, shower towers and water cannons, along with lawn space, shade trees, picnic tables and change rooms. Best of all, it's free to use.

To conserve water, the park uses a recirculating system, which collects and treats water on site before pumping it back through the park. It uses a fraction of the water used by standard water parks.
A motorcyclist was slammed to the pavement in a police takedown caught on a surveillance camera.

The takedown happened in South Vancouver Monday evening and, after being posted to social media, has been viewed thousands of times.

Vancouver Police told CTV the video shows the arrest of a rider who had refused to pull over.

He was spotted driving erratically, dodging in and out of traffic, police say, and narrowly missed hitting pedestrians. Police say he was also speeding past playgrounds and ignored stop signs.

Officers tackled the man to the ground when they eventually caught up with him in a parking lot.

The video shows the rider being pushed to the ground, kneed in the ribs and held down by two officers as he's put in handcuffs.

A spokesperson said officers don't use force if a suspect is compliant.

 with files from CTV Vancouver
If you have just started your journey in an online casino or are looking for a new site to play,...
Rep of Congo: Cimenterie de Lukala to close down

ICR Newsroom By 06 May 2016

Cimenterie de Lukala (CILU), located in the Republic of Congo, will be closing down due to the unfair competition it has faced since December 2015, according to its CEO, Ola Ora. The factory had been running at capacity utilisation rates of below 50 per cent in recent times.



The countrys government had allowed conditional imports of cement into the Republic of Congo. Domestic cement demand is estimated at around 3Mt, but local production is limited to 0.5Mt.

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Vietnam: Loesche to supply new Long Son Cement plant

ICR Newsroom By 06 May 2016

Loesche GmbH, Germany, has signed a new contract with Sinoma-NCDRI, China, to supply a new mill to Long Son Company in Vietnam.

Long Son is building a new cement plant at Dong Son Bim Son and the equipment is to be delivered in the next 8-9 months.

Loesche will supply a type LM 56.4 mill with a performance of 520 t/h. The gearbox of this mill has a power output of 3,600 kW.

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Omans Raysut Cement Somaliland terminal on track

ICR Newsroom By 06 May 2016

Raysut Cement said its project with Barwaaqo Cement Co in Berbera, Somaliland, is progressing well.



The Oman-based cement producer signed a joint venture agreement with the Barwaaqo Cement Co in September 2014 for building a 12,000t bagging and distribution terminal at Berbera. The project reflects an investment of US$7.5m and is expected to support the companys expansion.



At its Raysut works, the company also plans to install a 150tph rotary packing machine with an auto truck-loader, with an additional attachment for a palletised sling bag to provide larger and faster capability of packing cement in bags.

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A rustic recreated 1940s shantyboat, a daring river voyage, and a meticulous archive of river stories are all part of a multi-year art and history project, A Secret History of American River People. Santa Cruz artist Wes Modes is fundraising for this year's expedition on the historic Tennessee River. https://goo.gl/adKGTG.

For the last few years, Santa Cruz artist Wes Modes set sail on the Upper Mississippi River and floated for months at a time to collect the stories of people who live and work on the river from the deck of his homemade houseboat. This year Mr. Modes and his crew (and dog) will launch in Knoxville, Tennessee for a journey through Alabama, Mississippi and Kentucky.

Mr. Modes is trying to raise more than $5000 before May 31st to bring the project to the American South. Exhibitions of the project are planned in Knoxville, Chattanooga, Huntsville, Florence, and Paducah. At exhibitions throughout the country, visitors step onto the recreated shantyboat, pick up the banjo or a book from the library, sit awhile and overhear the stories of shantyboaters, scientists, historians, and locals who live and work on the river.

The archive of river stories will be available to future generations of scholars.

The journey and the project are detailed in the project website at http://peoplesriverhistory.us/
Evergreen Packaging officials announced Friday the company will locate its global headquarters in Memphis. The company will invest $915,000 and create 70 jobs in Shelby County.

We welcome Evergreen Packaging to Memphis and thank them for creating 70 new jobs in Shelby County, Governor Bill Haslam said. It is not taken lightly when a company chooses to locate its global headquarters in our state and we thank Evergreen for bringing us one step closer towards making Tennessee the No. 1 location in the Southeast for high quality jobs.

This is our third headquarters announcement statewide in three weeks and I am excited that Evergreen Packaging has decided to call Tennessee home, Economic and Community Development Randy Boyd said. Tennessee is known for its business friendly environment, which makes Tennessee and Memphis the perfect location for Evergreen Packaging. Thank you, Evergreen Packaging, and welcome to Team Tennessee.

Evergreen Packaging will combine with its sister companies Closure Systems International and Graham Packaging Company into one consolidated global headquarters in Memphis. Together, the three companies comprise 127 global manufacturing facilities in 36 countries, 14,000 employees and revenues of approximately $5.5 billion annually. In order to accommodate the headquarters consolidation in Memphis, the company plans on adding additional square footage to its current facility.

Evergreen Packaging is appreciative of the support we have received from the state of Tennessee, Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland, Shelby County Mayor Mark Luttrell, Jr. and all of the state stakeholders, President and CEO of Evergreen Packaging John Rooney said. Our leadership team has been impressed by the concerted effort to recruit and support this company throughout this entire process.

Evergreen is a manufacturer of fresh carton packaging for beverage products, primarily serving the juice and milk markets and also provides a variety of paper-based products for commercial printing. Closure Systems International is a manufacturer of packaging closures and fitments. Graham Packaging is a leader in plastic bottles and packaging solutions.

This business chose to be in Memphis, and that's something we should celebrate, Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland said. I was glad to meet with Evergreen's corporate representatives during their decision-making, and we look forward to their growth in Memphis."

There is great momentum in corporate headquarters choosing Memphis and were excited to see Evergreen Packaging among those companies who recognize not only our business-friendly environment but that Memphis is a great place for families to live, work and play, Phil Trenary, president and CEO of Greater Memphis Chamber said. This year alone, we have seen LEDIC Realty and Orgill choose the Memphis region, all bringing jobs and investment to our regional economy.
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Quantum information science and technology has emerged as a new paradigm for dramatically faster computation and secure communication in the 21st century. At the heart of any quantum system is the most basic building block, the quantum bit or qbit, which carries the quantum information that can be transferred and processed (this is the quantum analogue of the bit used in current information systems). The most promising carrier qbit for ultimately fast, long distance quantum information transfer is the photon, the quantum unit of light.

The challenge facing scientists is to produce artificial sources of photons for various quantum information tasks. One of the biggest challenges is the development of efficient, scalable photon sources that can be mounted on a chip and operate at room temperature. Most sources used in labs today have to be very cold (at the temperature of liquid Helium, about -270C), which requires large and expensive refrigerators. Many sources also emit photons in undefined directions, making efficient collection a hard problem.

Now, a team of scientists from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem has demonstrated an efficient and compact single photon source that can operate on a chip at ambient temperatures. Using tiny nanocrystals made of semiconducting materials, the scientists developed a method in which a single nanocrystal can be accurately positioned on top of a specially designed and carefully fabricated nano-antenna.

In the same way large antennas on rooftops direct emission of classical radio waves for cellular and satellite transmissions, the nano-antenna efficiently directed the single photons emitted from the nanocrystals into a well-defined direction in space. This combined nanocrystals-nanoantenna device was able to produce a highly directional stream of single photons all flying to the same direction with a record low divergence angle. These photons were then collected with a very simple optical setup, and sent to be detected and analyzed using single photon detectors.

The team demonstrated that this hybrid device enhances the collection efficiency of single photons by more than a factor of 10 compared to a single nanocrystal without the antenna, without the need for complex and bulky optical collection systems used in many other experiments. Experimental results show that almost 40% of the photons are easily collected with a very simple optical apparatus, and over 20% of the photons are emitted into a very low numerical aperture, a 20-fold improvement over a freestanding quantum dot, and with a probability of more than 70% for a single photon emission. The single photon purity is limited only by emission from the metal, an obstacle that can be bypassed with careful design and fabrication.

The antennas were fabricated using simple metallic and dielectric layers using methods that are compatible with current industrial fabrication technologies, and many such devices can be fabricated densely on one small chip. The team is now working on a new generation of improved devices that will allow deterministic production of single photons straight from the chip into optical fibers, without any additional optical components, with a near unity efficiency.

"This research paves a promising route for a high purity, high efficiency, on-chip single photon source operating at room temperature, a concept that can be extended to many types of quantum emitters. A highly directional single photon source could lead to a significant progress in producing compact, cheap, and efficient sources of quantum information bits for future quantum technological applications", said Prof. Ronen Rapaport, of the Racah Institute of Physics, The Department of Applied Physics, and the Center of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
A federal judicial panel in Chicago will soon begin considering a number of suits filed against food manufacturers pertaining to labels. (Carline Jean / Sun Sentinel)

By now, you probably know your Parmesan cheese may contain wood pulp, your oatmeal might not contain maple syrup and your tuna could be a little light in the can.

And that's just from the past few months. Would-be class-action lawsuits that challenge food labeling claims have been on the rise in recent years, driven in part by increased consumer demand for healthier food and more honest labeling, legal experts say. Of course, more opportunities for litigation also means more money for lawyers, prompting skepticism from some about whether these suits are really for the common good.

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Later this month, a bevy of food labeling lawsuits  including more than a dozen filed against Kraft Heinz over the marketing of its Parmesan cheese  will be considered by a federal judicial panel in Chicago, which will decide whether to combine similar cases and where to locate them for pretrial hearings.

Whether those suits are certified for class-action treatment, and eventually prompt companies to cough up a settlement, remains to be seen. But they're in the legal pipeline, for better or worse.

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"I believe strongly in the rights of consumers and appropriate food labeling. What I'm skeptical of is that this is the appropriate mechanism to determine these issues," said Adam Hoeflich, a professor of practice specializing in complex litigation at Northwestern University's Pritzker School of Law.

Hoeflich has handled many class-action lawsuits himself and believes them to be "appropriate and beneficial in certain circumstances," notably in civil rights cases. But he remains leery of those involving food labeling issues, which he believes should be left to the Food and Drug Administration and Federal Trade Commission.

The lawsuits to be considered by the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation on May 26 include:

Suits filed against Trader Joe's alleging the grocery chain is underfilling its 5-ounce cans of tuna and therefore misleading customers.

Suits filed against Quaker Oats alleging consumers have been misled because Maple & Brown Sugar oatmeal does not contain maple syrup despite the wording and images of maple syrup on the packaging.

Suits against Kraft Heinz alleging misrepresentation in the marketing of its Parmesan cheese, which is labeled "100% Grated Parmesan Cheese," despite containing filler material derived from wood chips.

"What's happening here is more and more people are concerned about what they're putting in their bodies, concerned about processed foods and the things added to them," said Michael Moss, author of "Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us."

The lawsuits are part of a healthy process, a sort of national conversation, that's forcing food companies to examine their practices, Moss said. That it's happening without federal regulators makes it even better, he said.

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"I love it that consumer agitation can cause companies to respond without government intervention," said Moss, formerly an investigative reporter with The New York Times.

On the other hand, many food labeling lawsuits seeking class-action treatment contribute to negative perceptions of lawyers padding their pockets, said Bill Marler, a Seattle-based attorney specializing in food safety cases.

"You've got to do the right thing for your clients, but you cannot overreach. You don't want to have your case to be the next Cap'n Crunch Berries," Marler said.

Marler referred to the 2009 lawsuit in which a California woman sued PepsiCo, parent company of Quaker Oats, alleging she was misled because Cap'n Crunch Berries cereal does not contain any real fruit. A California federal judge tossed the suit.

"This Court is not aware of, nor has Plaintiff alleged the existence of, any actual fruit referred to as a 'crunchberry.'  So far as this Court has been made aware, there is no such fruit growing in the wild or occurring naturally in any part of the world," U.S. District Judge Morrison England wrote in his opinion.

Not all plaintiffs reach for low-hanging fruit. The Center for Science in the Public Interest, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit that operates as a sort of watchdog on health and nutrition issues, has successfully challenged food companies on numerous fronts, prompting labeling change and/or settlements from companies such as Airborne, Kraft, General Mills, Dr. Pepper Snapple Group, PepsiCo and Kellogg.

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It's currently involved in a dozen other cases, including one against Kellogg's Kashi cereal "for false and misleading labeling of its 'all natural' products."

Clint Krislov, a Chicago-based class-action attorney, hasn't litigated any food labeling cases in years. But back in 1994, Krislov and his colleagues argued a class-action suit against General Mills over Cheerios tainted with unauthorized pesticides that resulted in a settlement of $10 million in coupons for consumers and a nice payday for the attorneys, too.

From Krislov's perspective, that's fair game.

"People have a right to know what they're buying. And until the FDA regulates these claims, as to whether they're objective or mere puffery, we're going to have to continue to challenge them," Krislov said.

gtrotter@tribpub.com

Twitter @GregTrotterTrib
Chicago State University President Thomas Calhoun Jr. speaks during a board meeting May 6, 2016. Board member James Joyce is at right. (Antonio Perez / Chicago Tribune)

Already reeling from a financial crisis and mass layoffs, Chicago State University acknowledged Friday that its graduation rate had dropped to 11 percent.

The public university, which has long been criticized for its strikingly low graduation rate, could now face increased scrutiny from lawmakers and accreditors. In recent years, the graduation rate ranged from 13 to 21 percent.

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"There are so many different factors that impact graduation rates," new Chicago State President Thomas Calhoun Jr. said after a five-hour board meeting at the Far South Side campus, which serves about 4,500 mostly low-income and minority students. "Chicago State has to analyze our data and look for the factors so that we can be aware of what's contributing."

The graduation numbers show that of the 589 full time freshmen who started in 2009, only 11 percent  or about 65 students  graduated six years later in 2015. This year's figures have not yet been calculated, officials said.

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School officials attributed some of the decline to CSU dismissing nearly 300 undergraduates in 2011 after discovering that, in violation of school policy, they had been allowed to continue to enroll despite failing GPAs. A previous Tribune story said that the group included 47 students from the 2009 freshman class.

"The 11 percent graduation rate is a result of the students dropped in spring 2011 for poor academic performance as previously reported by the Chicago Tribune," Sabrina Land, director of marketing and communications, said in a statement. "This decision was made to preserve the academic integrity of the university."

Still, the low graduation rate cannot be fully attributed to dismissing those students  many of whom likely were not on track to graduate within six years anyway. As the Tribune previously reported, the 2009 freshman class got off to a troubling start. Of the 589 students who started, about 61 percent were enrolled a year later. And they had earned on average only 20.1 credits during their first year. Research has shown that students who earn fewer than 24 credits in their first year of college are less likely to get a degree.

Chicago State has long argued that it's unfair to judge it on the graduation rate of first-time, full-time freshmen since that national standard fails to include the many students who transfer into the institution later in their studies  or leave and graduate from other institutions.

The university's six-year graduation rate for transfer students was 49 percent in 2015.

"The uniqueness of Chicago State University is that it primarily serves transfer students," Land said.

The six-year graduation rate is the universal standard, and is used by the U.S. Department of Education. It includes only first-time, full-time freshmen. Nationally, about 59 percent of students obtain a bachelor's degree within six years.

The university's graduation rates have been cause for concern in the past.

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In 2009, Chicago State's accreditation agency, the Higher Learning Commission, cited "grave" concerns with the school, including the university's "remarkably poor" graduation and retention rates. The accreditation was reaffirmed and the university's previous president, Wayne Watson, touted increased retention and graduation rates as evidence that the institution was on the upswing. Watson stepped down in December after six years in the job.

Elaine Allensworth, director of the Consortium on Chicago School Research at the University of Chicago, called the graduation rate "exceptionally low."

"The chances are stacked against (students) that they are going to graduate," said Allensworth, who studies student success, particularly for Chicago Public Schools students.

"For a lot of students in Chicago, Chicago State is an institution that they can get into despite low qualifications or because it is convenient for them for a number of reasons," including being close to home and having relatively low tuition, she said.

Expand Autoplay Image 1 of 5 An information map at Chicago State University campus on April 22, 2016. (Antonio Perez / Chicago Tribune)

She advised students who go there "to put in a lot of effort  more than the other students because most are not going to graduate. Seek whatever academic help you can get if you are falling behind. Make sure you are going to class every day and getting the work done," she said.

Kati Haycock, director of the Education Trust, a Washington-based advocacy group focused on academic achievement, said Chicago State's graduation rate is lower than that of its peer institutions.

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"It is quite clear that they serve students who are on average poor and have more challenges than at the average college in America," Haycock said. "But when you look at institutions that serve similar students ... most of them get better results."

Chicago State trustees and administrators did not publicly discuss the graduation figures at the Friday board meeting.

The data comes at an already difficult time for the university.

Chicago State and other Illinois schools went nearly the entire academic year without state money as lawmakers were unable to agree on a budget. In April, lawmakers approved $20.1 million in emergency funding for Chicago State, part of a larger funding package for public universities, but it was less than 60 percent of what the university had expected to receive this fiscal year.

It proved to be too little, too late, for a school that relies heavily on state funding. About 300 administrators and staff lost their jobs, Calhoun said. Faculty positions may be eliminated as well.

The university declared a financial emergency earlier this year and moved up graduation by two weeks to ensure classes would end before money ran out.

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Calhoun Jr. emphasized Friday that the university has to find other funding streams if it wants to thrive, leaning more on alumni donations as state funding is unpredictable.

"We do not deserve, nor can we tolerate, being simply in survival mode," Calhoun told the board during his report.

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"The reality is we're in the second decade of a consistent decline in state funding for public higher education," he said. "This is a national trend."

The university has started a telethon to solicit donations from its more than 40,000 alumni, Calhoun said, and is making plans to expand outreach to let the public know about the school's needs.

The university also must work harder to boast about its success stories, Calhoun said. Many in the public don't know that the school has a unique cyber security program or that it produces a high number of African-American physics majors.

Calhoun pushed the audience to think hard about how they can generate money and recruit students for the school.

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"Think: What can I do to make our university become more sound?" he said.

lbowean@tribpub.com

jscohen@tribpub.com
Students from New Trier High School, Maine South High School and North Shore Country Day School participated in the Student Alliance for Homeless Youth Paddleball Tournament on May 1. (Alexandra Kukulka / Pioneer Press)

Students from New Trier High School, Maine South High School and North Shore Country Day School participated in a paddleball tournament on May 1 to raise money for homeless and at-risk youth in Chicago.

The Student Alliance for Homeless Youth hosted the sixth annual tournament at the Winnetka Park District Paddle Courts.

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Admission to the event was $20 and all proceeds went to scholarships for homeless students, said Lauren Miller, SAHY student advisory board co-president and a New Trier senior. Forty-three students attended, and the student-run organization raised $860, said Cindy Mogentale, SAHY president.

"I am really happy with the turnout. We usually have similar to this amount of people, and it's nice that over the years it stays so consistent," said Lily Ellyin, SAHY student advisory board co-president and a Maine South senior.

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Every year, the organization's goal is to raise $3,000 in scholarships, which the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless awards to Chicago Public Schools students who have experienced homelessness, Mogentale said.

If the members raise more than $3,000, those funds go toward other programs, like Teen Living Programs that offer shelter to homeless youth, she said.

The organization also raises money through a November letter writing campaign, in which students ask their families and friends to donate, Mogentale said.

Members hold supply drives by setting up tables outside stores like Costco, Walgreens or Dick's Sporting Goods, and handing out lists of items, like school supplies and toiletries, that shoppers can buy for homeless youth, Miller said. The organization also hosts holiday parties at the Kelly Hall YMCA and Madonna House, a homeless shelter for women and children, Miller said.

"The kids love it and we love it because it's fun, and you get to see who you are helping and donating money to," Miller said.

Each November, members organize a candlelight vigil for National Hunger and Homelessness Awareness Week. The organization invites homeless teens and mothers from the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless to share their experiences with homelessness, Mogentale said.

"It's a time commitment if you want it to be, and if you don't want it to be, it doesn't have to be. You can just be a member and come every couple Sundays and some Saturdays, or you can work really hard and become the president and do it everyday," Miller said.

The organization leaves a lasting impression on its members, said Ellyin, who has participated since 8th grade and wants to continue volunteering when she enters the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign this fall.

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"[SAHY] leaves you with a lasting legacy, in that you want to continue to help in whatever way possible. I think that's a really cool part of it, because you really, truly feel something by doing this," Ellyin said.

akukulka@tribpub.com
Bruce Rauner did not attend the Republican National Convention and did not endorse Donald Trump as the party's nominee. (AFP/Getty Images, left; Antonio Perez / Chicago Tribune)

Gov. Bruce Rauner won't attend the Republican National Convention or formally endorse Donald Trump for president as fallout from the controversial presumptive nominee reverberates throughout the Illinois GOP.

Aides to the first-term Republican governor said Rauner, who declined to back a candidate in what was once a crowded GOP presidential field, would remain focused on Illinois' troubled finances.

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Rauner joins U.S. Sen. Mark Kirk in bypassing the July convention in Cleveland as Illinois' two highest-ranking Republicans seek to avoid the political minefield created by Trump, the real estate mogul and former reality TV show star.

Unlike Rauner, Kirk faces a high-stakes re-election contest in November against Democratic U.S. Rep. Tammy Duckworth. But Rauner does have some skin in the game on the fall ballot as he seeks to erode Democratic supermajorities in the legislature. The dispute between Rauner and Democratic House Speaker Michael Madigan has left the state politically stalemated without an operating budget for more than 10 months.

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By skipping the national convention, Rauner also may be hoping to avoid any comparisons with Trump. Both are wealthy businessmen who campaigned as outsiders with no previous elected experience and an expressed desire to want to run government like a business.

Rauner's move has some risks. Incurring Trump's wrath on Twitter or in a speech could set in motion a weekslong narrative in Illinois, with gleeful Democrats seeking to take advantage. In March, Rauner told students in Wilmette that he was "horrified" by the rhetoric in the Republican presidential campaign, saying "it's ugly and it's nasty and it's weird."

Both Rauner and Kirk were entitled to special at-large delegate spots to the national convention, to be formally awarded at the state Republican convention in Peoria that starts May 19. By declining the delegate spots, both Republicans are avoiding having to cast a pledged vote for Trump's nomination, which is virtually assured after Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Ohio Gov. John Kasich dropped out of the race this week.

Underscoring the politics behind Rauner's move, the governor's decision means he also will not accept the traditional role of heading up Illinois' 69-member convention delegation and the high-profile media appearances that come with it. At the same time, Rauner avoids any potential appearance with Trump, which some advisers said privately would not be helpful to the governor back home.

Rauner repeatedly had sought to stay out of the presidential race, though he did say that as leader of the GOP in Illinois, he would back the eventual nominee. But Rauner aides stressed there are various levels of "support," and that the governor would not be giving Trump a formal endorsement.

Paul Ryan says he can't support Donald Trump right now. May 5, 2016. (CBS Miami)

Trump picked up 54 delegates by winning Illinois' March 15 primary, including the 15 at-large delegates made up of party officials who are pledged to vote for the winner.

Rauner's move came as Republicans nationally showed divisions over Trump's candidacy. U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan, a Republican from Janesville, Wis., told CNN he was "just not ready" to back the presumptive nominee because he needed to unify, not divide, the party.

Trump created further controversy on social media by posting a picture of himself eating a taco bowl at Trump Tower in New York to celebrate Cinco de Mayo and adding, "I love Hispanics!" Trump has called for deporting people who are in the country illegally and building a border wall with Mexico to block "rapists" and "criminals" from entering the U.S.

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Since Trump's decisive victory in Indiana's primary Tuesday, Democrats have intensified attempts to tie the controversial candidate to Republicans up and down the Illinois ballot this fall.

The Trump factor weighs most heavily on Kirk, U.S. Rep. Robert Dold, and state Comptroller Leslie Geissler Munger, who is running in a special statewide election to keep her appointed post. Regardless of Trump, the three already faced a big challenge since Democratic turnout rises in Illinois during presidential years, and the former bellwether state hasn't gone Republican for president since 1988.

But even in their desire to try to exploit Trump's controversies, some Democratic consultants were cautious. They noted the volatility of the electorate, how the White House race must still play out, and, ultimately, who turns out to vote in a likely contest against Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton.

"It's hard for me not to believe that at least, even at the most local level, the presidential race doesn't have some impact," said Democratic strategist Eric Adelstein, who noted the intense interest in the contest by even those who have been minimally politically active.

"For Donald Trump, any Republican running will be asked, 'Do you agree on the latest outrageous thing?'" Adelstein said. "The same is true about Hillary Clinton, who engenders strong opinions on each side."

Christopher Mooney, director of the Institute of Government and Public Affairs at the University of Illinois, said that while voter turnout in the fall is always a key issue, Trump's candidacy and the divisions he has caused in GOP ranks make it a paramount factor.

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"If the right wing is particularly offended by Trump, it's not that they're going to vote for Hillary, they're not going to vote," Mooney said. "Certainly, some people won't vote the top of ticket and will vote down the ticket. But generally speaking, what drives people to the polls is the top of the ticket."

Though Kirk has worked to try to separate himself from Trump, he also has said he "certainly would" back Trump as the party's nominee.

Kirk campaign manager Kevin Artl noted the Republican's ability as a North Shore congressman to best GOP President George W. Bush's showing in 2004 by 17 percentage points and 2008 Republican presidential contender, Arizona Sen. John McCain by 16 percentage points.

"Sen. Kirk has always outperformed the top of the ticket because Illinois voters know and respect his thoughtful, independent leadership and personal brand of being a fiscal conservative, social moderate, security hawk," Artl said.

"Kirk is probably one of the better positioned Senate Republicans due to his brand and where he currently stands with key demographics like Hispanic voters and independent females," he said.

But Trump's candidacy creates an added problem for Kirk in taking on Duckworth. National polling has shown women as among the most significant demographic groups opposing Trump, and Duckworth is allied with Democratic women's groups, such as EMILY's List, sure to push the issue.

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"Mark Kirk and Donald Trump have already embraced an out-of-touch agenda that puts barriers in the way of Illinois women. Now the question is, since he has no record of providing economic opportunity for women, will Sen. Kirk play the 'woman's card' too?" said EMILY's List spokeswoman Marcy Stech, a reference to Trump's contention that "the only thing" Clinton's "got going is the woman's card."

Even before this week, Duckworth's campaign had sought to link the Republican presidential candidate's disparaging comments toward women with a series of gaffes Kirk committed, such as referring to unmarried GOP Senate colleague Lindsay Graham of South Carolina as a "bro with no ho."

"Kirk is more loyal to the Republican Party than he is to Illinois values," Duckworth campaign spokesman Matt McGrath said.

There have been a few signs of concern about Kirk and the new presumptive GOP nominee.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee sent out a fundraising email Wednesday saying "America simply cannot afford to elect Hillary Clinton to the White House" without mentioning Trump.

In addition, Doug Truax, who lost a bid for the 2014 Republican U.S. Senate nomination in Illinois to challenge Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin, has formed a super political action committee to help five conservative GOP Senate candidates in the fall. Kirk was not among them.

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Dold, who won the North Shore 10th Congressional District seat in 2010, lost it in 2012 to Democrat Brad Schneider in a presidential year and won it back two years ago, faces Schneider yet again. Dold repeatedly has said he won't back Trump as the nominee.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee took aim at Dold in an email Wednesday, saying the Republican "twists himself into a pretzel trying to win re-election with Trump on the ballot."

But beyond the races for federal offices, there also may be some interesting Trump influences on state contests ahead of the November general election.

Take the special election for state comptroller pitting Republican Munger against Democratic Chicago City Clerk Susana Mendoza. Democrats could attempt to use the issue of wealth to link Trump to Rauner. Rauner appointed Munger to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Republican Judy Baar Topinka.

"Right now, Rauner is more of a lightning rod than Trump in some ways," said Adelstein, who is working for Mendoza. "I think there's a potential (tie-in with) Rauner's hand-picked candidate, the self-described governor's wingman on the budget."

But Adelstein said he sees an even more generic response being used by Democrats against Republican attacks, regardless of whether GOP candidates have endorsed or sought to distance themselves from Trump.

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"In response to (Republican) attack ads and attack mail pieces, they'll be called Trump-like attacks. Democrats will work to quickly dismiss the attack and link it to Trump and accuse the Republican of using his tactics," he said.

But Mooney, the U. of I. political scientist, said never dismiss the adage that all politics is local.

"My feeling is we overestimate the impact of tactics and underestimate broad trends and demographics," he said. "What Trump does or doesn't do may have less impact than what Munger or Kirk does. Then there's the broader context of the election and who votes and who doesn't vote and what gets people to come out to vote."

rap30@aol.com

Twitter @rap30
BLOOMINGTON, Ill.  Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner would not elaborate Friday on his decision not to formally endorse presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump and said working for Illinois is more important than attending the party's national convention in Cleveland this summer.

Speaking to reporters after visiting a central Illinois power equipment store, Rauner was pressed to explain his moves, but the first-term governor said he was "not going to comment on the presidential race" other than past statements he has made critical of the campaign's tone.

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"I am focused 100 percent on the state of Illinois  100 percent. We have a major crisis. We don't have a budget. We've had a deficit spending for more than 20 years. We have an unfunded pension liability that's outrageous. We have employers leaving the state. And we're running out of cash as a state," Rauner said.

"I don't need to go to Cleveland. I'm not going to Cleveland. That's not where I should spend my time. I should spend my time working for the people of Illinois," he added.

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For months, Rauner has tried to avoid making news about the Republican presidential contest and never endorsed a candidate even when the field was large. After the Illinois primary, Rauner told students in Wilmette that he was "horrified" by the rhetoric in the Republican campaign, saying "it's ugly and it's nasty and it's weird."

But Rauner never singled out Trump. Risking Trump's wrath could prove unwise  a single needling tweet or throwaway attack line in a speech would reverberate throughout Illinois, where Rauner is embroiled in a lengthy struggle with Democrats over his pro-business, union-weakening agenda and the state is in its 11th month without a full budget.

In March, Rauner said he would support the eventual GOP nominee, but his aides now say there will not be a formal endorsement of Trump, the controversial real estate baron and former reality TV star. It's unclear what kind of support Rauner, the leader of the Illinois GOP, will provide for Trump in Illinois. Rauner is expected to spend millions to try to whittle down Democratic supermajorities in the Illinois House and Senate, whose candidates are backed by labor unions and trial lawyers.

"I've said all, everything, I'm going to say about the presidential race. I'm focused on helping the people of Illinois grow our economy, get a lower tax burden and have a better quality of life, and that's 100 percent my focus," Rauner said Friday when asked to elaborate on the lack of a formal Trump endorsement.

Asked if it was unprecedented for an Illinois governor not to attend the national convention of his own party, Rauner said he didn't know.

"There are a lot of things I'm doing different as governor. We've been going the wrong way for a long time as a state and I'm taking us the right way," he said.

Republican U.S. Sen. Mark Kirk, seeking re-election against Democratic Rep. Tammy Duckworth, also is skipping the national convention but is reiterating his support for Trump.

In an interview with CNN last week that was released Friday, Kirk indicated Trump might help the Republican Party.

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"Donald Trump is kind of a riverboat gamble," Kirk said. "He won the Illinois primary, in this case we have seen the Republican vote up and the Democratic vote down, so it looks like it's a net benefit."

Duckworth, whose campaign has sought to tie Kirk to Trump, had a quick response.

"I think that Donald Trump is such a polarizing figure and it's really amazing to me that Mark Kirk has said he will support Donald Trump and that has been helpful, honestly," Duckworth told CNN.

cbott@tribpub.com
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump puts on a miners hard hat during a rally in Charleston, W.Va., on May 5, 2016. (Steve Helber / AP)

Generally, foreign leaders don't criticize other nation's electoral candidates. The logic is simple: This person might win and you don't want your witty insult from a year prior hanging over you if you have to work together. This tradition hasn't continued with Donald Trump. A range of foreign leaders past and present have publicly expressed doubts about Trump and his proposals; others have spoken off-the-record to more candidly explain their angst at the thought of a President Donald Trump.

1. "Divisive, unhelpful and quite simply wrong." British Prime Minister David Cameron on Trump's proposed Muslim travel ban.

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2. "He changes opinions like the rest of us change underwear." Danish Foreign Minister Kristian Jensen.

3. "His discourse is so dumb, so basic." Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa.

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4. "That's the way Mussolini arrived and the way Hitler arrived." Mexican President Enrique Pena on Trump's rhetoric.

5. "Trump is an irrational type." Chinese Finance Minister Lou Jiwei.

6. "You [Trump] are a disgrace not only to the GOP but to all America. Withdraw from the U.S. presidential race as you will never win." Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Alsaud.

7. "Mr. Trump's statement only serves to show not only his insensitivity, but also his ignorance about Pakistan." Pakistani Interior Minister Chaudry Nisar Ali Khan after Trump demanded the release of a doctor who helped the CIA hunt down Osama bin Laden in 2011.

8. "Let's be clear, Donald Trump is an idiot. I have tried to find different, perhaps more parliamentary adjectives to describe him but none was clear enough. He is an idiot." Gavin Newlands, a British MP with the Scottish National Party.

9. "Scary. That's how we view Trump [. . .] Could we depend on the United States? We don't know. I can't tell you how the unpredictability we are seeing scares us." An unnamed ambassador whose country has a close relationship with Washington.

10. "When an apple's red, it is red. When you say ignorant things, you're ignorant." Mexico's top diplomat, Foreign Affairs Secretary Claudia Ruiz Massieu.

11. "I think the Donald Trump phenomenon is a real problem for the United States, making their democracy look kind of weird." Christopher Pyne, minister for industry, innovation and science in the Australian government.

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12. "Whether Donald Trump, Marine le Pen or Geert Wilders - all these right-wing populists are not only a threat to peace and social cohesion, but also to economic development." Germany's Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel.

13. "Seriously, have you ever heard me say something like that?" French far right politician Marine Le Pen on Trump's proposal to ban foreign Muslims from entry to the United States.

14. "Given his positions, do we even want to have anything to do with this guy?" An unnamed European ambassador.

15. "If he becomes president, it will be a disaster." Former Danish foreign minister Martin Lidegaard.

16. "[Trump has] no regard for alliances at all." Former Australian ambassador to the U.S. Kim Beazley.

17. "You listen to him at the debates and what he says is unsettling - he is promising to change things from one day to the next. A lot of us thought he couldn't possibly be the nominee [. . .] The uncertainty is very, very scary." An unnamed European ambassador.

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18. "Donald Trump's remarks are totally absurd and illogical." Ri Jong Ryul, deputy-director general of the Institute of International Studies in North Korea, after Trump suggested that Japan and South Korea arm themselves with nuclear weapons.

19. "He is very good at making speeches, but as a politician and a world leader? No, I don't think that's a very good idea." Jimmie Akesson, leader of the far right Sweden Democrats.

20. "Some of the claims made during the campaign have been empty or just wrong." Peter Westmacott, former British ambassador to the United States.

21. "A person who thinks only about building walls - wherever they may be - and not building bridges, is not Christian." Pope Francis.

22. "The orange prince of American self-publicity." Marcus Fysh, British MP with the Conservative Party.

23. "To start with, it was no more than a joke, and we all laughed - but now it is becoming quite concerning." Soren Espersen, a foreign affairs spokesperson for the far right Danish People's Party.

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24. "If Trump beats Hillary, that means that the scenario of the clash of civilisations created by Samuel will come to light at the hands of the candidate and [Islamic State leader] al-Baghdadi." Lt. Gen. Dahi Khalfan bin Tamim, head of general security for the Emirate of Dubai.

25. "So Donald Trump . . . is ambitious but not exactly very well-informed man, I don't want to say ignorant, but he is not very well informed." Former Mexican president Felipe Calderon

26. "The comments made are unacceptable." Irish Taoiseach Enda Kenny on Trump's Muslim travel ban.

27. "If he met one or two of my constituents in one of the many excellent pubs in my constituency, they may well tell him he is a wazzock." Victoria Atkins, British MP with the Conservative Party.

28. "In the past when candidates said extreme things, there always has been some seasoned, experienced adviser you could talk to, or who would speak out to soften what was said. This is not the case with Trump." Unnamed ambassador from South America.

29. "The person you are dealing with may be a successful businessman, but he's also a buffoon." Gavin Robinson, a British MP from Northern Ireland who represents the Democratic Unionist Party.

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30. "Trump's remarks do not show a sense of introspection on what their results would bring about; he does not know the gravity of what he says." South Korea's vice foreign minister Choi Young-jin.

31. "[A Trump presidency would be] a disaster for E.U.-U.S. ties." An unnamed senior E.U. official.

32. "If Donald Trump was to end up as president of the United States, I think we better head for the bunkers." Carl Bildt, former foreign minister of Sweden.

33. "[The anti-Islam rhetoric of] Donald Trump and others in Europe are really the shame of our civilization." Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama.

34. "A successful politician would not make such statement, as there are millions of Muslims living in the U.S." Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Trump's proposed ban on Muslim arrivals.

35. "The opportunism, unreliability and amorality that we have seen during the [Trump] campaign would be damaging for the world in general and hurt Europe in particular." Ana Palacio, former Spanish foreign minister.

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36. "Trump, like others, stokes hatred and conflations." Manuel Valls, prime minister of France, on the proposed Muslim travel ban.

37. "I can only hope that the election campaign in the U.S.A. does not lack the perception of reality." German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier.

38. "This nation [the U.S.] is going to fail if it goes into the hands of a crazy guy." Former Mexican president Vicente Fox.

39. "We had such appreciation for your system when Barack Hussein Obama was elected [. . .] Hussein was his middle name. Hussein! He was black. We so admired that America could do something like that. Now you have a candidates who doesn't want Muslims." An unnamed ambassador from the Middle East.

40. "Vulture." Gerard Araud, French ambassador to the U.S., in response to a Donald Trump tweet about gun control in France (Araud later deleted this tweet).

41. "Trump solutions for me are false solutions, but they're not original. They're things that we have heard in Europe from extremist sections," Sandro Gozi, undersecretary for European affairs in the Italian government.

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42. "It's not a man I would vote for, I can tell you that [. . .] I hope that the American people, and I think they will, choose someone else who is better equipped for this task." Swedish Defense Minister Peter Hultqvist.

43. "Prime Minister Netanyahu rejects Donald Trump's recent remarks about Muslims." A statement from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after Trump's proposed Muslim travel ban.

44. "Saying the U.S. will no longer engage in anything that is a burden in terms of its relationships with allies, it would be almost like abandoning those alliances [. . .] It will inevitably give rise to anti-American sentiment worldwide." Former South Korean vice foreign minister Kim Sung-han.

45. "Trump's statements are shocking and disgusting." Isaac Herzog, Israeli opposition leader, on Trump's proposed Muslim travel ban.

46. "The only reason I wouldn't visit some parts of New York is the real risk of meeting Donald Trump." London mayor and British Conservative MP Boris Johnson.

47. "The fact is, Cape Breton is lovely all times of the year and if people do want to make choices that perhaps suit their lifestyles better, Canada is always welcoming and opening." Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau when asked a question about the potential that Americans could leave the country if Trump is elected.
With his big victory in Indiana, Donald Trump has all but secured the Republican presidential nomination. What nearly a year ago many considered a joke has now become reality, and it is time to consider the causes and the consequences of the Trump phenomenon.

Many people have recognized a strong similarity between Trump and former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. It's a handy comparison, but if a Berlusconi-like candidate is prevailing in the United States, it must mean there is a similarity between the conditions that created the fertile ground for Berlusconi's electoral successes in Italy and the conditions that have led to the surprising success of Trump in the Republican primaries.

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In other words, Trump's success suggests that the U.S. is looking increasingly like Italy  and not in the good ways (food, wine, design and culture), but in the bad ones: government corruption and no hope of social mobility except through political connections and illegal activities.

Berlusconi emerged from nowhere in Italy as a political leader in the mid-1990s in response to a generalized distrust toward a political class that had been in power for more the 40 years. Most Italian politicians of the pre-Berlusconi era, whether Christian Democrats or Socialists, financed their political activities with illegal bribes. In this context, Berlusconi  a wealthy businessman  appeared as a credible alternative to a corrupt political class.

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It did not really matter that Berlusconi had a history of profiting from political connections; he appeared sufficiently rich to be able to stand up to the power of vested interests, and he appeared a sufficiently good businessman to be able to run the country. None of these hopes materialized. The country went through its worst-ever spell of slow growth and corruption.

The problem is that Berlusconi was the wrong response to some very real economic problems, which the previous political class was ignoring.

The same is true for Trump.

Republicans or Democrats, most American politicians are financed by a few wealthy donors. For example, 53 percent of now former candidate Ted Cruz's campaign financing came from donations (to his campaign, PACs and super PACs) above $5,000  an amount that anyone in the bottom 95 percent of the population can hardly afford. Forty-one percent of donations to support Cruz were above $100,000  a level beyond the reach of 99.5 percent of the population. Clinton's donations are hardly less skewed, with 38 percent of donations to support her campaign above $5,000 and 31 percent above the $100,000 level.

Yes, making large campaign donations is legal in the United States, even if the system does resemble a form of bribery. But it undermines the trust voters have in their elected representatives. According to data from the American National Election Studies, 64 percent of Americans in 1964 agreed with the statement that government was run for the benefit of all people, and only 29 percent disagreed. By 2012, 79 percent of voters believed that government is "run by a few big interests looking after themselves," with only 19 percent disagreeing.

In this context, Trump  a wealthy businessman like Berlusconi  appears as a credible alternative to a corrupt political class. It does not really matter that Trump has a history of profiting from political connections; he appears sufficiently rich to be able to stand up to the power of vested interests and a sufficiently good businessman to be able to run the country.

But the key question is: In the interest of whom?

This is where the Berlusconi comparison slips. Berlusconi entered politics to defend his businesses, and pleasing his gigantic ego was only an added benefit. For Trump, the latter seems the primary motive. On one hand, this should be a consolation: Trump might actually champion serious campaign finance reform. On the other, it is scarier. With all of his defects, Berlusconi was neither strongly anti-immigrant nor a pro-war monger  at the very minimum because it was not good for his business. We cannot be reassured of the same with Trump.

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Luigi Zingales is a professor of entrepreneurship and finance at the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business and director of the Stigler Center for the Study of the Economy and the State (www.promarket.org).
After months of will-we-or-won't-we, Chicago Teachers Union officials have landed on won't. The union wisely sidestepped an end-of-school-year strike that would have disrupted student graduation, infuriated parents and spurred a citywide backlash against the teachers.

CTU officials blinked  at least temporarily. But they keep the threat of a strike on the table for the fall. They promise to continue bargaining, even though the chances of a breakthrough now appear to be vanishingly small. And they resurrect the hope that City Hall, if not Springfield, will finally yield to their demands.

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CTU's latest $502 million "revenue recovery package" is a dizzying compilation of its greatest tax-hiking hits over the past months, including a call for a revival of the city's corporate head tax; higher fuel taxes; a shift of the $1.2 billion in borrowing proposed for the Lucas Museum to schools; a tax on ride-share services such as Uber and Lyft; and a hike in the city's hotel tax.

CPS, meanwhile, has its own fantasy tax list, led by the reinstatement of a pre-1995 property tax levy dedicated to the teachers pension fund. And the district still wants Springfield to cough up beaucoup bucks.

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Now, back to reality. A windfall to save CPS is a long shot, even though union-friendly Democrats rule the legislature and City Hall. Neither a state nor a city rescue is likely to happen, for reasons outlined in today's companion editorial. Sneak preview of Reasons 1-5: The city and state are broke, broke, broke, broke, broke.

Sure, the district will keep negotiating with union officials, who have reserved most of their creativity for heaping scorn on Gov. Bruce Rauner and Mayor Rahm Emanuel. That is, when the CTU isn't imagining that rainbow of new city and state taxes to meet its contract demands. But, as the novelist Flannery O'Connor said, "The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it."

In this case the truth is: Teachers should grab the deal offered by CPS in January and seconded last month by an independent arbitrator. To reiterate:

The proposed deal generously bumps base salaries 8.75 percent over four years.

In return, teachers would accept a phaseout of a 7 percent pension payment pickup that the district no longer can afford. (The district still would pay the employer's share into the pension fund but asks employees to pay their share.)

The proposed contract is filled with sweeteners for the teachers: They still would receive "step and lane" raises that reward those who earn more degrees or add a year of seniority. And the district would cave to charter-phobic union officials by capping charter school expansion.

Lewis praised that deal before her comrades at the union stomped on it. More stomping after the arbitrator's recommendation that CTU take the deal. "Dead on arrival," the union declared of that recommendation.

This financial flailing means that school district officials face a bleak summer vacation: CPS must scramble to scrape up enough cash to open its doors in the fall. It says it will make a $676 million pension payment by June 30. But then, according to CPS, it will have a paltry $24 million on hand  enough to cover less than two days of expenses. The district's long-term borrowing ability likely is maxed out. CPS will need to pass a balanced budget  fill a $1 billion deficit  in order to secure another line of credit to limp through the next school year.

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If only City Hall or Springfield or doe-eyed taxpayers would fly to the rescue. But that isn't happening. As CPS' threats of financial implosion grow more frantic, the silence from the halls of government is deafening. One more time: broke, broke, broke, broke, broke.

The politicians haven't merely spent all the money. They've put taxpayers in hock for decades to come. The possibility that the district once again will avoid doomsday is always, well, possible. But thus far that ... isn't ... happening.

So which threat looms larger: that the teachers once again go on strike, or that an insolvent CPS doesn't have the money to open its schools?

Politicians spent and borrowed CPS into this ruination. The Illinois Way is failing.

Join the discussion on Twitter @Trib_Ed_Board and on Facebook.
Police escort two unidentified Thai citizens who allegedly violated the Computer Crimes Act into military court in Bangkok, Thailand, on April 29, 2016. Eight people were arrested for allegedly posting messages critical of the military onto Facebook. If convicted, the alleged offenders could face up to 10 years in prison. (Narong Sangnak, EPA)

Thailand is an exotic destination for travelers and a big Southeast Asian economy, but it has an ugly side. Freedoms there are under siege from a heavy-handed military government that intends to rule indefinitely.

While Thailand has a shaky political history, the country ramped up its commitment to free markets and free elections in the 1990s, a development that was good for the country and the rise of democracy in Asia. For a while you could put Thailand in the same basket as South Korea, Taiwan and Indonesia  each a positive example of how economic liberalization can lead to political liberalization.

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These days Thailand is defying that model. The Thai military seized power in 2014 for the second time in a decade, damaging the country's chances of securing a stable, representative government. Rather than rebooting and trying again for democracy, Thailand's army seems determined to keep order by keeping power.

This is a mistake with far-reaching consequences. The instability is messing up Thailand's export-driven economy because investors are leery of putting money in a country that looks untrustworthy. For U.S. interests there is a larger concern: whether undemocratic Thailand might drift into China's orbit. Certainly the Thai military government today has more in common with Beijing than Washington.

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In March, Thailand's rulers, led by a former general, unveiled a proposed constitution that would keep the country firmly in the junta's grip. How? Through control of an appointed senate, which would have far-reaching powers, including the ability to name a general as prime minister.

The government will put the constitution to a vote in August, but the gesture looks bogus. A few days ago Thailand implemented a draconian law outlawing any aggressive campaigning  for or against  the constitution. Not surprisingly, the government quickly filed charges against a group of people who criticized the draft constitution, saying they used "foul and strong language" on Facebook. Those arrested face up to 10 years in prison.

So much for encouraging debate about the new constitution, or for respecting the public's role in guiding Thailand's future. Any Thais not getting this message risk a chilling punishment: detention in a government camp. The U.N.'s human rights chief says 85 people have been called in by the authorities this year for "attitude adjustment" sessions.

There was plenty imperfect with Thailand's political system before the army took charge. Former leader Thaksin Shinawatra, a divisive billionaire businessman, was ousted in a 2006 coup and fled the country. His best hope for a return came when democracy was restored and his sister, Yingluck Shinawatra, was elected prime minister. But she was kicked out of office before the army took over in 2014.

The most important figure in Thailand is neither a political leader nor a general. It's the country's revered but ailing monarch, 88-year-old King Bhumibol Adulyadej, who has sat on the throne since 1946. The military likely wants to be in control when the king dies to protect its future role. That complicates Thailand's path back to democracy, Walter Lohman, an Asia expert at The Heritage Foundation, told us.

Clearly the biggest losers are the Thai people, forced to live under a regime that is repressing dissent and driving away prosperity. The U.S. has pulled back on its relationship with Thailand. Exports are contracting and direct foreign investment was down nearly 80 percent last year. The country is going backward. If Thailand's leaders want to turn that around, they'll affirm a commitment to democracy  by scrapping the proposed constitution, for starters. More likely, it will fall to Thai voters to summon the strength to reject this undemocratic measure.

Join the discussion on Twitter @Trib_Ed_Board and on Facebook.
Family and friends of a Buffalo Grove mother of two who was killed in a shooting this week as she and her family headed home from a trip to the Wisconsin Dells gathered in Arlington Heights May 6, 2016, to grieve and remember a life cut short by a random act of violence. (Karen Cullotta/Chicago Tribune) (Chicago Tribune)

Family and friends of a Buffalo Grove mother of two who was killed this week as she and her family headed home from a trip to the Wisconsin Dells gathered in Arlington Heights Friday to grieve and remember a life cut short by a random act of violence.

As scores of relatives and friends of Tracy Czaczkowski, 44, arrived at the funeral home, where the lilacs hemming the packed parking lot were in full bloom, Dennis Wichern, special agent in charge of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration's Chicago field division reflected on the sadness of holding a wake for a young mother on a picture-perfect day.

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Tracy Czaczkowski, 44, a mother from Buffalo Grove, was shot and killed while returning from a trip with her family to the Wisconsin Dells on May 1, 2016. (Facebook photo)

"It's a sorrowful time in there, and a beautiful day out here," said Wichern, who said the Czaczkowski family has asked, that "their privacy be respected at this difficult time."

"Today, the family and friends of Tracy Czaczkowski continue to grieve  while preparing to say goodbye  to a wonderful wife, mother, daughter and friend," Wichern said. "The family is extremely thankful for the continued prayers and outpouring of support."

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While a Wisconsin man, Zachary Hays, 20, was charged Wednesday with first-degree intentional homicide and recklessly endangering safety in connection with the shooting death of Czaczkowski, Wichern said he did not think the news was any comfort to the family.

"I don't think they are there yet, because they're still dealing with the loss of Tracy," Wichern said.

Wichern described Czaczkowski's wake as "somber," but said it also included a "celebration of her life," featuring a display of photographs of the young family together on vacations over the years.

"[The children] are doing as well as can be expected," Wichern said. "They are all dealing with unimaginable pain and shock."

Tracy Czaczkowski was in a car with her husband, Greg Czaczkowski, and their two young children on their way home from the Wisconsin Dells on Sunday, when police said another motorist shot at their car, striking her in the neck.

Friends and family gathered at a funeral home in Arlington Heights Friday, May 6, to grieve the death of Tracy Czaczkowski, a Buffalo Grove wife and mother of two who was killed while traveling with her family in Wisconsin earlier this week. (Karen Cullotta, Pioneer Press)

Greg Czaczkowki has worked for 11 years for the DEA, but police said the shooting was unrelated.

In the criminal complaint filed against Hays in Sauk County, Wis., on Wednesday, investigators said the man's brother, Jeremy Hays, told them that Zachary had smoked marijuana on April 27 and "had been acting extremely paranoid ever since."

Jeremy Hays, who was with his brother Sunday, told police that he had been concerned for his own safety since Zachary was carrying a long-barreled .45-caliber revolver and had threatened to kill Jeremy and another brother if they left him, the document states.

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Authorities have said the suspect in the Czaczkowski shooting was also wanted in the previous fatal shooting of a man in West Allis, Wis., though no charges against Hays in that case had been announced.

In addition to her husband of 14 years, Tracy is survived by her son Matthew and daughter Sofia, along with her parents, six siblings, in-laws and several nieces and nephews.

A fund has been set up for her children at www.gofundme.com/czaczkowskifamily.

kcullotta@tribpub.com

Twitter @kcullotta
Clare Slowik, 90, is shown in 2013 outside the home where she grew up near 71st Street and Western Avenue in Chicago's Marquette Park neighborhood. It was her first time in about 40 years she had visited the home. (Ted Slowik, Daily Southtown)

When someone raises 12 kids and then earns a doctorate in education, you know she's figured out how to balance career and family.

It's simple, really. Family first, then career.

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South Side native Clare Slowik is celebrating her 70th Mother's Day. Her oldest child, Stan, was born in 1946. I'm her youngest. Pampers weren't introduced until 1961, so our mom washed a lot of poopy diapers back in the day.

She says she didn't plan to have 12 kids. After World War II, big families were the norm. It was the baby boom. She and our dad, Jozef, thought they'd have six or so. But God had other plans for the Polish Catholic couple.

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"All my life I've prayed to the Blessed Virgin Mary," she said the other day. "Any time there's been a crisis, she's always come through. In my old age I realize it wasn't fate, it was God's will."

She grew up near 71st Street and Western Avenue in Chicago's Marquette Park neighborhood, the youngest of five children of Polish immigrants. Her father was a night watchman at Crane Co.'s "Great Works" factory, her mother trimmed meat at the Chicago Stockyards.

Raised during the Great Depression, she learned from an early age how to stretch a dollar. Mom cooked, baked, sewed, shopped for groceries, kept up with the laundry and cared for the kids, like a lot of mothers of baby boomers. She had a kid in diapers for about 25 years.

It's hard for moms sometimes to see past the next feeding, the next school assignment, or the next instance of teenage troublemaking. But our mom knew there would come a day when the kids would grow up and leave the nest. She was ready, and she made the most of it.

"I knew I would not be happy unless I got my nursing degree, and dad backed me 100 percent," she said.

When I was in morning kindergarten at St. Cletus School in LaGrange, I remember she'd pick me up and we'd drive to the College of DuPage in Glen Ellyn, where she earned an associate's degree in nursing.

She worked as a nurse at LaGrange Memorial Hospital while I was still in school. She also continued her education and obtained a bachelor's degree from Lewis University in Romeoville.

She wasn't your typical college student. When she graduated at age 51, she was Lewis' 1977 recipient of the student laureate award from The Lincoln Academy of Illinois, which recognizes "overall excellence, in both curricular and extra-curricular programs."

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We drove down to Springfield and watched her receive the award from then-Gov. Jim Thompson. On the way home, mom said the governor's wife looked pregnant. It hadn't been publicly announced yet, but when you've had 12 kids I guess you develop an eye for these things.

Turns out Jayne Thompson was indeed pregnant at the time with the couple's daughter, Samantha.

Mom kept working as a nurse, often pulling late shifts so she could continue her education during the day. In 1981, she earned a master's degree from Loyola University in Chicago.

She started teaching nursing at Lewis University. Her students performed clinicals at Little Company of Mary Hospital in Evergreen Park, where they gained hands-on experience caring for patients.

She kept adding letters after her name and displayed the nameplates on the door of her office at Lewis. She attained the terminal degree in her profession, the highest degree a teacher can achieve, in 1989 when she completed her doctorate in education at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb.

Her dissertation was on aging, and how women cope with the "empty nest" syndrome and find meaning after their kids are grown. She knew her subject matter well.

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She added the letters Ed.D. after her name. She also goes by Dr. Clare Slowik.

"You have to fulfill the dreams you had when you were younger or you'll be a bitter old person," she said.

Of course, all of us kids are immensely proud of her. Through all her work and education she never forgot a birthday, never missed sending an anniversary card, never seemed like any less of a mother than when she was washing diapers.

She and dad retired and traveled the world, visiting Poland, Italy, Great Britain, Russia, China, even Antarctica. We lost dad in 2005 at age 84. Mom's still active, serving as parish nurse at St. Cletus and checking blood pressures after Masses.

She figured out you can have it all, and that it's never too late to pursue a new chapter in your life.

"At this age I've got no regrets about what I did with my life," she said.

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Our parents enjoyed a beautiful 60-year marriage.

"We were compatible," she said. "We were a partnership. We had differences but we talked it through. We were two made into one."

Lucky for me, they both loved having kids as much as they loved each other.

Daily Southtown Twice-weekly News updates from the south suburbs delivered every Monday and Wednesday >

Because he loved her, dad supported and encouraged her career. More than anyone else, he was most proud of her accomplishments. He kept a scrapbook of stories, including a front-page Chicago Tribune article published on Mother's Day in 1989.

Mom's an embarrassment of riches. As a nurse, she understood the importance of health, nutrition and fitness. She's mentally and physically doing well. At 90, she's not only had years in her life, she still has life in her years. She's blessed with dozens of grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and prays that we all continue to get along.

We look forward to the times when we can all get together  at reunions, on holidays and other special occasions.

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Mom got everything she wanted  a happy marriage, a big family, and a career as a nurse and teacher. As she reflects on 70 years of motherhood, I asked her if there's anything else she'd like people to know.

"Never discard your dreams," she said.

tslowik@tribpub.com

Twitter @tedslowik
Richard Wilson (left) is joined by North Chicago Mayor Leon Rockingham at Wilson's swearing in as police chief on May 2. - Original Credit: City of North Chicago photo (Handout)

A 23-year veteran of the North Chicago Police Department has been chosen as the city's new police chief.

Deputy Chief Richard Wilson will replace James Jackson as the highest-ranking police officer, according to a news release from the city. Jackson took over the post in 2012 when then-chief Michael Newsome resigned when department faced allegations of police abuse.

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Newsome was later charged with official misconduct, theft of government property and misallocation of funds when prosecutors claimed he took $140,000 from the city's drug asset forfeiture fund. A trial date is set for June 20, according to the circuit court's website.

The spotlight shined brightest on the department after the 2011 death of 45-year-old Darrin Hanna, who authorities said died one week after police beat him and repeatedly shocked him with a Taser. Hanna's family later received a $3 million settlement from the city.

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A 2012 Chicago Tribune investigation found that in the four years leading up to Hanna's death, department's reports showed use of force climbed every year. Ten federal lawsuits had been filed against the city in that time, eventually leading to payments of $1.4 million to settle complaints of excessive force.

Jackson was charged with overhauling the department. Wilson had served as Jackson's next in command for part of that time  and even served as interim police chief when Jackson resigned because he didn't meet the city's residency requirement.

"The city values the service and commitment of Chief Wilson," Mayor Leon Rockingham said in the news release. "He not only brings years of experience, but he is an excellent leader and role model for all of our officers and the entire community."

City officials did not return a call for further comment Thursday afternoon.

emcoleman@tribpub.com

Twitter @mekcoleman
Naperville Sun readers have plenty of opinions when it comes to the news of the day. Here are some of the comments left on stories posted on our website, www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/naperville-sun/, and on our Facebook page, www.facebook.com/napervillesun/.

The Naperville chapter of Concerned Women of America, a politically active group that is promoting boycotts of Target for its position on transgender restroom use and supports the defunding of Planned Parenthood, held a prayer service in Naperville City Council chambers this week.

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On general principles, I'm not in favor of any religious group using the chambers as a way of getting their message to appear to be sanctioned by the City Council, regardless of affiliation. The message of the group gives me pause since they appear to wish to influence government to their views. I wonder about their motives here. I would be concerned about any group wanting to influence how government thinks as not a good idea. This isn't a book club or a knitting group, but a group that wishes to cross the wall separating church and state. I would not agree to have them use my tax supported chamber.

Are other groups allowed to use the council chambers for free? If the room is open to ALL groups then it shouldn't be a problem. If the room is open to all group and some groups have to pay and some don't THAT is a problem. If some groups are allowed and others aren't allowed that's also a problem. BUT if the general rules of room use are the same across the board, that just means this group got on the schedule first. So - if I wanted to start a knitting club or a book group, would I be able to use that space? For free? Would I only be allowed to have my group use the space a certain number of times a year? Is any kind of money collected at the prayer service? And would that money be used in a way that might be contrary to the separation of church and state, or to a large portion of the Naperville tax payers? So just from reading the article it seems this group is a more conservative group -- if they're having a prayer service AND if they are collecting money AND if that money is going to political candidates from one party over another party because that candidate held the same values - then as I taxpayer in Naperville (and a person that "owns" some of that property) I'd be ticked off. This is not a yes/no question - but a question which begs to know more details.

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If you let one group in,you must let ALL groups in !!!!

Maybe they could be the first religious entity to PAY TAXES

It's a free country, this does not faal under a church separation from state category. They're just using some available public space. They can pray wherever they want. People shouldn't freak out over it.

Inappropriate use of government property.

Live and let live. Leave them alone.

Mayor Steve Chirico (HANDOUT)

Naperville Mayor Steve Chirico told the city council that forced annexation should be considered if a deal to maintain Naperville Township roads, which city officials say can save taxpayers $800,000 a year, can't be worked out.

I wish the city would consider the townships offer to help them do work that they currently contract out. The township could save the city money, isn't that what the city wanted in the first place. I would like to see the city be more open to negotiating like the township is.

This is what Chirico wanted in the first place: to force annexation to add to the city's tax base.

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You don't need to annex all, just enough to get Township roads under 10 miles. With that, the Highway Department must dissolve. I called the Highway Dept. (very nice person on the phone there) to request brush pick-up. I do not live in the unincorporated area of the Township so I was told they will not pick up. I explained that incorporated tax payers pay the same amount as unincorporated tax payers to the Department so all Township property tax payers should get the same level of service from the Department. If you pay additional tax to municipality, you would get the municipal service too since you're paying for it.

Stop goofing around with Stan and just do it!! Its wrong that the township unincorporated residents and Stan are holding all of us taxpayers hostage. ENOUGH!!!!! All the taxpayers in Naperville Township have paid enough money for all of them!!!!! Don't give them anything more than the rest of us get!!!

Why should the city pay the township for an additional administrative staff person if they take the township's road services off of their hands?? Shouldn't it be the other way around? What am I missing?? This move should result in a net savings of administrative efforts, which is something that desperately needs to be done all over Illinois in all forms of government as we lead the country in most governing entities by a fairly wide margin. Stop the waste!

A no weapons sign. (Photo illustration / HANDOUT)

A Naperville student was arrested and charged with two felonies after officials found he had taken an unloaded gun into Metea Valley High School in Aurora.

This is unfortunate. From what I understand, the gun wasn't loaded. While I think it's completely inappropriate for him to have brought a gun to school, his entire life is now damaged because of one bad decision.

This makes me angry.

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Expulsion and jail. The only acceptable recourse in this matter. There are laws against bringing guns on school grounds for a reason: Columbine, Virginia Tech, Antigo, NIU, and Sandy Hook. Time to wake up and take guns seriously.

So, since he managed to get the gun in the school (and he could have just as well had ammunition also), do you honestly think that some law would prevent a school shooting?

They should be talking a jail stint and instead are talking expulsion while no doubt blaming the gun for getting there.

From what is being said, possibly a bullied student who sought the wrong response to the situation. Sad that he will now have it following him forever.

More criminal acts from young people. Maybe a nice long prison term will teach some him to show respect for the law.

Yeah, nice long prison term for doing something with ZERO criminal intent, that's the ticket. Meanwhile the Justice department pleads away or drops federal gun charges regularly for gang-bangers who actually commit gun crimes.

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Yet another case of Naperville crime leaking into nearby communities. If they can't get the heroin epidemic under control in the schools, I shudder to think what the future looks like for kids way out there in the far west suburb. Glad I got out of there before things got to this point. People still talk about it like nothing is wrong, but things like this are happening right under their noses. Denial is more than just a river in Egypt.
Underwriters Laboratories' John Drengenberg holds up the two splinters chipped from a two-by-four fired at 36 miles per hour at a barrier being tested May 3. Another UL engineer said a better testing speed might be 100 miles per hour, but "it would have splintered all over the place." (Irv Leavitt / Pioneer Press)

Underwriters Laboratories, known mostly for testing survivability under extreme stress on equipment used in homes, has branched out to testing for extremes placed on the homes themselves.

Northbrook-based UL's Building Envelope Performance Test Lab last month began testing windows and other building elements graded to withstand some of the strongest winds and hardest-driving rain driven by hurricanes, tornadoes and other dangerous weather phenomena, company officials said. At a grand opening on May 3, the firm demonstrated some of the equipment it has recently tested.

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In one trial, a two-by-four fired from a compressed air gun struck a steel-louvered wall at 36 miles per hour. The wall, designed to protect a generator used for electricity during emergencies, sustained a little dent.

In another test, water was hurled at 65 miles per hour at a shack fronted by a three-ply laminated plastic wall. The window-wall, about three-quarters of an inch thick, held up with nary a visible leak, while television news people tried to describe the moment from inside, despite the din of water pounding on the surface.

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Illinois may not yet be a big market for wind-resistant products, as the state, though plagued by tornadoes, remains behind most hurricane-prone states in updating and enforcing building codes to require wind-blown resistant building products, UL engineer Wayne Breighner said.

Preparing for tornadoes, which can be sudden killers, and hurricanes, which can usually be seen coming days before, is different, he said.

"With a tornado, you don't care if you lose your roof," he said. "You just want to save your life. With a hurricane, you're trying to save your assets, and your house."

Some of the new materials are being used to make tornado "safe rooms" similar to the water-pounded shack in the 63,000 square-foot UL building. Others are being used on buildings in the southeastern United States, and UL is beginning to test their strength against the elements and how they perform in combination with other building materials. Beigner said that as skyscrapers rise, concerns about the weight of protective materials increases, while manufacturers must also keep aesthetics in mind.

Also on hand was former Federal Emergency Management Agency head Robert Paulison, now a UL director. Paulison succeeded the embattled FEMA chief Michael Brown after criticism of Brown's handling of disaster relief after Hurricane Katrina.

Paulison had said that there are at least two ways to satisfy codes  and concerns  regarding hurricane protection of home windows. One is the heavy steel hurricane shutters that he once used on his own Davie, Fla., home, and the other is the collection of storm-resistant windows he replaced them with  at $28,000.

The windows are expensive, he said, but they let in light, even when a storm has knocked out electricity.

"With the shutters, it's dark as a tomb" inside, he said.

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ileavitt@pioneerlocal.com

Twitter: @IrvLeavitt
The village of Oak Park has agreed to provide incentives of approximately $385,700 to help redevelop the former bank at 1 Lake Street into a brewpub. (Steve Schering / Pioneer Press)

To help a proposed Lake Street brewpub open, Oak Park village trustees unanimously approved an initial grant of $50,000 and a tiered rebate of future sales taxes generated by the business, which could total more than $385,000.

According to the proposal presented at the May 2 village board meeting, the brewpub will contain 144 seats on two levels with a rooftop deck and bar area.

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The property, which had an address of 412 N. Austin Blvd., will now be known as 1 Lake Street for "branding purposes" according to the village agenda.

According to a letter from Oak Park Economic Development Corporation Executive Director John Lynch, the building's owner requested "a financial incentive" to redevelop the property.

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Lynch said in the letter to trustees the OPEDC projects the total incentive will be approximately $385,700, paid by the village over seven years. Lynch wrote the EDC feels the plan is "an appropriate and justifiable development incentive."

According to the letter, Greg Sorg of Pioneer Property Advisors purchased the building, a former bank, in 2012.

"I want to respect you for having the brilliance of actually having a plan for this building," Trustee Peter Barber said. "I've been in Oak Park for 17 years, and when we talk about blighted areas of the community, I'm always kind of struggling to think what is really blighted. That corner is blighted."

Barber cited the new Pete's Fresh Market, the park district's gymnastic center and the proposed brewpub as reasons to be excited for development along that portion of Lake Street.

"I think it's fantastic that you're going to be making that kind of investment to do it," Barber said. "I'm very proud that it looks like we're going to be doing something to further support it. It's not only going to help this building and help this developer, but it's going to help continue the momentum that's [happening] on the east side of Lake Street. It's truly going to be a gateway to Oak Park on the east side, which I think is very exciting."

Trustee Bob Tucker agreed, while addressing those who may feel its location is not ideal for such a plan.

"I've even heard some in this community say that is not a great location because it borders Chicago," Tucker said. "I like this because it borders Chicago. This is going to be a fabulous gateway restaurant for this community that can serve Oak Park and Chicago. It's terrific."

Should the proposed tenant not perform and Sorg not be able to occupy the space with an alternative restaurant user, the sales tax sharing will not occur, according to Lynch.

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As part of the agreement, the developer is expected to complete construction and occupancy of the space by June 30, 2017.

sschering@pioneerlocal.com

Twitter: @steveschering
A long-time appellate public defender has been chosen to replace chief Lake County public defender David Schneider, who is retiring in the fall after 16 years as chief and four decades in the office.

Marce Gonzalez Jr., who maintains a private practice, recently was named to the position by the five-member public defender board. Gonzalez will assume full-time administrative duties for the office that includes 19 trial attorneys, four appellate attorneys, and 20 to 25 contract attorneys who handle the overflow for trial attorneys involved in death penalty cases.

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The office represents about 1,800 indigent clients a year in the four criminal-division courtrooms, Schneider said. The budget is about $2.5 million, of which 40 percent is reimbursed by the state for non-death penalty cases.

Schneider's departure after his fourth four-year contract comes with a short extension.

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"We operate on a four-year contract, so technically it would have ended in June, but I asked the board if I could stay until Oct. 4th. That's 40 years to the day that I started as a public defender," Schneider said.

While there have been a few changes over the years in how the office operates, Schneider anticipates a smooth transition once Gonzalez takes the helm.

Before 2000, if a trial attorney believed an expert should be hired in a particular case, the presiding judge would approve or reject a request. Now, the attorney confers with Schneider, who reviews the case and makes a decision.

"I think maybe twice in 16 years I denied the request," Schneider said.

David Schneider (Ruth Ann Krause / Post-Tribune)

Another change is the use of paralegals and law clerks who assist trial attorneys. The office started with two paid law clerks and now has three from Valparaiso University, Schneider said. The office also has a working relationship with the paralegal program at Ivy Tech State College. Paralegals assist in time-consuming tasks, including taking discovery materials to defendants at the jail.

"Overall, the clients are happier because the paralegal will talk with the client within two days," Schneider said.

Gonzalez, who is winding down his private law practice of 33 years, has been an appellate public defender with Lake County for 31 years. He has handled more than 450 appeals cases, including a successful direct appeal that resulted in the Indiana Supreme Court vacating the death penalty, and has served as appellate counsel during death penalty trials. He's also handled several life-without-parole cases as an appellate public defender, including a case in which the Indiana Supreme Court reversed a life sentence. In his private practice, Gonzalez handled three such cases in which clients were released from custody on appeal.

Gonzalez has taught more than 75 Continuing Legal Education seminars, and has been named one of Indiana's Top Rated Lawyers by Martindale Hubbell in its first edition in 2012 through 2016.

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Gonzalez said his vision for the office is to make it the best and most respected public defender office in the state.

"We have a very talented group of lawyers and support staff. I envision my job as ensuring that indigent folks are afforded a level playing field," Gonzalez said.

"Two of the greatest equalizers in challenging the vast resources of the state of Indiana are education and training. Our lawyers deserve the best quality continuing legal education," he said. "Everybody is entitled to competent representation, and being prepared and professional are benchmarks," Gonzalez said.

Munster attorney William Padula, a member of the Lake County Public Defender Board, said Gonzalez was one of four applicants for the chief public defender position.

"Marce has wonderful qualifications, 30-plus years of experience and is very well respected," he said. "I am the judges' representative on the board  they love the guy. He works well with everybody. I honestly think we're lucky to have him apply."

Ruth Ann Krause is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
Home prices in first- and second-tier cities will probably rise this year because of relaxed regulatory policies, but if the overall economic situation continues to sour, this may put downward pressure on the real estate market, according to the Blue Book of Real Estate 2016, released on Thursday.

If the country's economic growth continues to decline, home prices will probably start to fall across the board from the second half of 2017, said economists from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences who compiled the book.

Authors of the CASS book estimate that the real estate market is set to recover this year as the favorable policies continue. Eased macroeconomic policies may further release speculative demand and raise demand for housing, which will result in increases in housing sales and home prices in general.

Additionally, the sales recovery of commercial housing in first- and second-tier cities may provide incentives for real estate developers to increase investments.

However, "since 2014, the country's real estate investment growth rate has continued to decline", said Wang Yeqiang, a researcher at the Institute for Urban and Environmental Studies at the CASS.

"In 2015, the growth rate of real estate investment had hit a record low of 1 percent," said Wang, a co-author of the book. "China's real estate investment has started to enter a long-term downward cycle."

If the macroeconomic situation worsens, which is quite probable, the risks of China's real estate market will increase, the report said.

"Sharp rises of home prices in some key cities from the end of 2015 and the beginning of 2016 may only be a short-term uptick," said Wang.

"Considering both the possible macroeconomic downturn in the longer term and the trend of a tightened policy stance, we draw the conclusion that we may see an overall decline in home prices starting from the second half of 2017," Wang said.

To achieve a healthy development of the real estate sector, the authorities need to clamp down on speculation, analysts said.

"Regulators need to encourage normal consumption and cool down speculative deals," said Ye Jianping, economist of Renmin University of China in Beijing. "Taxation policies, for example, can be used to that end, but administrative measures should be avoided".
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File photo of IPHONE bags. [Photo: d9soft.com]

Apple has decided to bring its "iPhone" trademark case to the Supreme People's Court, the highest court in China.

In a statement sent to the South China Morning Post, the U.S. tech giant said it "will continue to vigorously protect our trademark rights".

Apple reported Xintong Tiandi Technology Company to the Chinese trademark authority in 2014, claiming the firm was in breach of trademark rules by using the word "iPhone" on bags and other leather products it made.

After the authority ruled against Apple, the company initiated a lawsuit in a lower Beijing court where it also lost.

The firm then appealed to a higher court in Beijing.

The Beijing Municipal High People's Court dismissed Apple's appeal, saying the U.S. firm could not prove the "iPhone" brand was well-known in China in 2007, when Xintong Xiandi filed the trademark application for leather goods. The Chinese company secured the trademark in 2010.

Apple iPhone first went on sale in China in 2009.

Although it applied for the "iPhone" trademark for computer hardware and software in China in 2002, the application was only granted in 2013.

The higher Beijing court said in the latest ruling the Chinese company could continue using the word "iPhone" on its merchandise.
China will step up law enforcement in the South China Sea to prevent illegal fishing activities and rehabilitate marine resources during the upcoming seasonal ban, an official with the fisheries authority said on Thursday.

Zhao Xingwu, head of the Bureau of Fisheries under the Ministry of Agriculture, said on the sidelines of a news conference that enforcement will be jointly conducted by the Chinese Coast Guard and local fishery bureaus.

"We will definitely step up law enforcement in the South China Sea to enhance regulation of our fishing vessels. Meanwhile, we will also step up the regulation of foreign ships," he said.

Since 1999, China has imposed an annual fishing ban in parts of the South China Sea between May 16 and Aug 1 as part of an effort to protect marine resources in an area under its jurisdiction.

The ban covers areas north of the 12th parallel, including Huangyan Island but excluding most of the Nansha Islands.

In the Bohai Sea, Yellow Sea and East China Sea, the fishing ban falls between June 1 and Sept 1.

Yu Xinrong, vice-minister of agriculture, told the news conference that the ministry will roll out a guideline to manage the growth pattern and adjust the structure of the fishing industry, which will make a priority of fostering and protecting fishery resources.

Yu said authorities will also seek to reduce the country's fishing capacity and encourage more fishermen to reduce the number of fishing vessels and switch to other trades.

The ministry has launched four campaigns targeting fishing nets with small mesh and those that often result in higher percentage of bycatch.

Authorities nationwide have so far confiscated about 600,000 pieces of fishing gear that violate regulations, and banned the use of 16,000 unlicensed vessels, the ministry said.

China's territorial waters have long been troubled by overfishing. Around 8-9 million tons of fish can be harvested legally in China's territorial waters each year, but the actual amount reaches 13 million tons, according to a report by Economic Daily.

Overfishing has resulted in the destruction of spawning sites for some species, reducing stocks in China's coastal areas, as well as leading to a prolonged recession in the sector, especially in the East China Sea, the report said.
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Police have arrested 28 suspects, including 15 from Taiwan, from a drug smuggling gang in south China's Guangdong.

Photo taken on May 5, 2016 shows confiscated articles involved in a major drug smuggling case at the border detachment of Dongguan, south China's Guangdong Province. [Photo: CRI Online]

Police have confiscated over 700 kilograms of methamphetamine, along with nine pistols.

Police have also confiscated 11 luxury cars and cash worth around half million US dollars.

The news came as police said on Thursday they have seized 4.8 tonnes of crystal meth so far this year in Lufeng City.

The Guangdong city is known as a hotbed for production and the trade in drugs.
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Chinese prosecutors have filed corruption indictments against Zhang Lijun, former vice minister of environmental protection, and three provincial-level officials.

They are Sui Fengfu, former deputy director of the Heilongjiang Provincial People's Congress Standing Committee, Liang Bin, former head of the Organization Department of the Communist Party of China Hebei Provincial Committee, and Lu Wucheng, former deputy director of the Gansu Provincial People's Congress Standing Committee, according to a statement issued by the Supreme People's Procuratorate (SPP) on Friday.

All four are charged with accepting bribes.

Prosecutors in the four cases accused the suspects of taking advantage of their posts to seek benefits for others and accepting "huge amounts" in bribes.

Zhang's case was investigated by SPP prosecutors and later transferred to a lower-level procuratorate in Beijing to launch the indictment.

The SPP designated the provincial procuratorate in Liaoning to investigate the cases of Sui and Liang and the provincial procuratorate of Shaanxi for Lu's case, according to the statement.

The three cases were later transferred to city-level procuratorates for indictments.

The defendants have been informed of their litigation rights and questioned by the prosecutors, who have heard representations from the defendants' lawyers in each case.
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Surgeons conduct organ transplantation at a hospital in Dalian, northeast Chinas Liaoning province, on March 24, 2015. [Photo: Xinhua]

China's health, police and transportation authorities have jointly established a "green passage" to ensure fast and safe transfer of donated human organs.

The move is aimed at shortening transportation time and reducing damage or waste of human organs to help patient survival.

According to a Friday circular on the mechanism, police will help ensure ambulance right of way when health authorities receive donated human organs. Airlines should provide priority boarding services and allow planes carrying human organs to depart first.

Health authorities transporting human organs may buy tickets after boarding a train. The Red Cross will also provide help during the transportation process.

"The transportation of human organs is like a race between time and life," said the circular.

Many human organs, such as the liver, cannot be stored for longer than 12 hours or they will become unusable or dysfunctional following transplant, it said.

China has a serious lack of human organs, though the nation ranks third globally in terms of the number of organs donated. Some patients must wait for years for transplant surgery, and many don't survive long enough to receive a transplant.

In 2015, 2,766 people donated major organs after death, almost double the number in 2014.

Previously, executed prisoners were one of the major source of organs. On January 1, 2015, China banned the harvesting of organs from prisoners.
Chinese authorities are throwing cold-water on any suggestion China will accept impending results of a UN arbitration panel's deliberations on a territorial dispute with the Philippines in the South China Sea.

The UN Court of Arbitration is due to release the findings of its Philippine-initiated probe into the dispute over the Nansha Islands in the coming few weeks.

Addressing its impending release, Ouyang Yujing, Director-General of the Chinese Foreign Ministry's Department of Boundary and Ocean Affairs, is taking issue with the Philippines for unilaterally launching the arbitration process in the first place in 2013.

"China and Philippines reached consensus on the settlement of issues in the South China Sea through bilateral negotiations. We have said we won't allow the dispute to be settled through other dispute settlement procedures. Therefore the arbitration court has no jurisdiction on the dispute between China and the Philippines. This arbitration case has been illegal from the start."

But while saying the Chinese side will not accept the results of the arbitration panel, regardless of whether it's for or against China, Ouyang Yujing says the door remains open for one-on-one negotiations.

"Look, it's not as though we don't want to resolve the dispute in the South China Sea. We do. But what we want is to resolve the territorial dispute through direct negotiations, as we have clearly stated in our agreements with the Philippines and through the Declaration of Conduct agreement with ASEAN."

Responding to suggestions China would be in violation of international law by not adhering to any ruling by the UN Arbitration Panel, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hong Lei suggests it's the Philippines which has been breaking international law.

"The core of the territorial dispute between China and the Philippines is that the latter is attempting to harm China's interests in the Nansha Islands. The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea doesn't apply to this case. China firmly opposes a certain country's taking hostage the international rule of law for its own selfish gains. They are violating the law under the guise of the 'rule of law,' and China won't accept any of these acts."

Chinese authorities have refused to take part in the UN arbitration panel hearings.

However, despite the entrenched positions on both sides right now, there may be a window opening for movement on the Philippine side.

The current front-runner to replace outgoing Philippine President Benigno Aquino III in next week's elections, Roderigo Duterte, is on-record saying he's willing to open direct negotiations with China to bring the dispute to a resolution.

This is something the outgoing Aquino has refused to do.
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Chinese President Xi Jinping met Thursday with Bob Iger, vice chair of U.S.- China Business Council (USCBC) and chairman and chief executive officer of the Walt Disney Company.

China is striving to advance economic structural reform and foster a more open economy. "China will provide convenience for foreign businesses, institutions and individuals to have exchanges and cooperation with China, " Xi said.

Chinese President Xi Jinping (R) meets with Bob Iger, vice chair of U.S.-China Business Council and chairman and chief executive officer of the Walt Disney Company, in Beijing, capital of China, May 5, 2016. [Photo/Xinhua]

There are extensive areas for China and the United States to cooperate, Xi said, calling on both sides to view the big picture, maintain and expand mutual interests and deepen practical cooperation.

Xi applauded the USCBC and Walt Disney Company for their efforts to boost bilateral relations with China.

Xi said economic cooperation is an important component of China-U.S. relations and that China and the United States, with strong economic complementarity, enjoy great potential for cooperation.

"China is in favor of reaching a bilateral investment treaty through negotiations at an early date," Xi said.

Acknowledging the importance of U.S.-China cooperation, particularly in trade, Iger said the U.S. supports an early investment treaty through negotiations, which will help businesses in both countries to expand cooperation on the basis of mutual respect and benefit.

Disney attaches great importance to promoting the culture exchanges between the U.S. and China. The Shanghai Disney Resort, which will open soon, will work to offer safe, quality and pleasant services to the Chinese visitors, Iger said.

Shanghai Disney Resort, Disney's first theme park on the Chinese mainland, is located in Shanghai's premier development zone of Pudong and is expected to open on June 16.
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A Taiwan fishing boat seized and then released by a Japanese vessel last month returned to the island on Thursday as Taiwan authorities vowed to protect fishermen's rights.

"Tung Sheng Chi 16" arrived in Pingtung County in southern Taiwan on Thursday afternoon. Officials and family of the crew welcomed them at the port.

The fishing boat was chased and seized by a Japanese vessel on April 25 when it was sailing at 138.38 degrees east longitude and 19.47 degrees north latitude. Japan released the boat and crew after its owner paid a deposit as demanded by Japan.

The seizure triggered protests from Taiwan authorities and fishermen. On Sunday, Taiwan dispatched two patrol ships to protect fishing boats operating on high seas near the Okinotori Atoll.

The atoll is just a reef and thus Japan cannot claim a 200 nautical-mile exclusive economic zone, said a statement of Taiwan authorities. Taiwan leader Ma Ying-jeou vowed to resolutely safeguard fishermen's rights.

Every year, some 100 to 200 Taiwan fishing boats operate near the atoll, according to Taiwan fishery authorities.
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Rebels in Syria's northern city of Aleppo have violated the regime of calm, firing 20 mortar shells into government-controlled areas on Thursday, state news agency SANA reported.

The rebels fired improvised rockets into the al-Ashrafiyeh district, Jamiyet al-Zahra', Midan, Slaimaniyeh, and the Family House area as well as the al-Farah School, said SANA.

Earlier in the day, a military source told Xinhua that the rebels in eastern Aleppo violated the truce just eight minutes after it went into effect with two mortars slamming west of Aleppo.

They also fired two mortars early Thursday, the source added.

A 48-hour regime of silence started in Aleppo at 1:00 a.m. Thursday (2300GMT Wednesday), said a military statement.

The truce in Aleppo came as the city has witnessed over 10 violent days, during which more than 120 people were killed and hundreds of others wounded.

The truce in Aleppo, backed by both the United States and Russia, came to bring a lull to the troubled city that has witnessed the most violent shelling from rebels on government-controlled areas.

Opposition activists also accused government troops of conducting airstrikes on rebel-held areas in the eastern part of the city.

The "regime of silence" has previously been announced to include areas in the countryside of the capital Damascus and the northwestern province of Latakia.
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A Hamas operative who is involved in the organization's underground tunnel network was arrested by Israeli security forces, the Israeli military and Shin Bet security agency revealed on Thursday.

In separate statements, the Israeli military and Shin Bet announced on Thursday afternoon that the suspect from the Gaza Strip enclave was arrested last month, after crossing the border fence into Israel, as tensions in the Israeli-Gaza Strip border fence area are flaring.

According to the Shin Bet's statement, the operative, who was carrying two knives when he was arrested, supplied Israeli security forces with information on Hamas' underground tunnels in the strip, as well as on the methods used to dig them.

Israel's security forces believe he was about to attack Israeli soldiers or civilians and an indictment against him was filed at the Be'er Sheva District Court, the Ha'aretz daily reported.

Earlier on Thursday, Israel's military announced it had uncovered an underground tunnel extending from the Gaza Strip enclave into Israeli territory.

The tunnel's exit is located on the southern Gaza border near the town of Rafah, where fire exchange had taken place between Israeli soldiers and Palestinians over the past two days.

The army considers the 28-meter-deep tunnel as an "offensive" tunnel aimed at attacking Israelis in the future, and is set to destroy it in the upcoming days. Soldiers also closed the area near the tunnel's exit for the passage of civilians.

It was the second cross-border tunnel found since the 2014 war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. On April 18, Israel said it has uncovered and destroyed a tunnel built by Hamas, the Islamist organization that controls Gaza.

With that, fire exchange continued in the border fence area for the second day in a row on Thursday.

At least 10 mortars rounds were fired from the strip into Israel these past two days, four of them on Thursday, Israeli military said. No injuries were reported. Israeli media outlets reported the fire was aimed at soldiers and heavy machinery around the site of the recently discovered tunnel.

Israel's military responded in the past two days with tank fire, without any injuries. Israel also operated its war jets to strike several targets across the Strip early Thursday. The Palestinian news agency Ma'an reported that four Palestinians, including three children, were injured.

Israel and Hamas said on Thursday that Egypt was mediating a restoration of the 2014 truce amid the flare up of the past two days.

Israel and Hamas fought several rounds of fighting in the enclave, which is ruled by Hamas since 2007, the latest being the 51-day war fought in the summer of 2014, claiming the lives of at least 2,250 Palestinians, mostly civilians, and 72 Israelis, mainly soldiers, and destroying thousands of buildings. It ended in a cease-fire, mediated by Egypt, on Aug. 26.
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An IS-affiliated suicide bomb attack on Thursday hit a check point in the town of Abu-Gren, nearly 110 km south of Misrata, killing and wounding several security guards, a security source told Xinhua.

The attack was followed by separate clashes between the IS affiliates and security guards nearby, the security source added, confirming that the IS is using a large number of military vehicles.

Ibrahim Ben Jarab, the chief of the military council of Misrata, ordered all militias of the council to go immediately to Abu-Gren.

No official medical source was available to confirmed the number of casualties.

Abu-Gren is located about 140 km west the city of Sirte. The town is used by the IS as a strategic supply line.

The city of Sirte, almost 450 km west the capital Tripoli, is controlled by the IS for almost a year.

The terrorist group has launched several suicide attacks and kidnapped and killed foreign workers in Libya.
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Russia on Thursday urged Armenia and Azerbaijan to observe the cease-fire and avoid escalating tensions in the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh.

"No doubt, we still expect the conflicting sides will avoid any steps that may violate a rather fragile cease-fire and lead to the escalation of tensions in Nagorno-Karabakh in general," Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

Earlier Thursday, the Armenian government approved draft legislation on the recognition of the self-proclaimed Nagorno-Karabakh Republic. The bill is being considered by Parliament.

Peskov was quoted by Tass new agency as saying that the draft legislation has not been discussed between Armenia and Russia, adding that Moscow is "carefully monitoring the decisions taken in this context."

Brutal fighting broke out on April 2 between Armenian and Azerbaijani forces over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region. A cease-fire was reached on April 5.

However, the conflicts have not ceased, and Armenia and Azerbaijan accused each other of violating the cease-fire.
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Jihadi groups in Syria unleashed a wide-scale offensive against a government-controlled town south of the northern town of Aleppo, in another breach to the shaky, yet strenuous truce that started in the city early on Thursday, a military source told Xinhua.

The radical groups, mainly the al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front, started a broad offensive with assorted weaponry and artillery against the town of Khan Tuman in the southern countryside of Aleppo, the source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

The Syrian army responded to the attack, destroying a number of tanks, he said, adding that the attack was preceded with heavy artillery shelling followed by the rebels' attempt to advance toward the town from the area of al-Khalidiyeh.

Clashes erupted and various weapons were used, including the heavy ones, he added.

The Nusra Front has announced on its Twitter account the commencement of the battle to "liberate" the town and nearby areas with the help of the rebel groups such as Failaq al-Rahman, Ahrar al-Sham, and Nour Addien al-Zunki.

Meanwhile, the source said the Syrian army fired a rocket at an explosive-laden armored vehicle, which was approaching Khan Tuman, adding that another SUV outfitted with heavy machine gun was also destroyed along with its occupants.

It also said that Syrian warplanes carried out several raids on the approaching rebels and their reinforcements near the town.

The attack on Khan Tuman was not the first rebel breach to the truce, as over 20 mortar shells slammed government controlled areas earlier on Thursday.

A 48-hour regime of silence started in Aleppo at 1:00 a.m. Thursday (GMT 2300 Wednesday), said the military statement.

The truce in Aleppo comes as the city has witnessed over 10 violent days, during which over 120 people were killed and hundreds of others wounded.

The U.S.-Russia-backed truce in Aleppo came to bring a lull to the troubled city that has witnessed the most violent shelling from the rebels on government-controlled areas.

Opposition activists also accused Syrian warplanes of striking rebel-held areas in the eastern part of the city.

The "regime of silence" has previously been announced to include areas in the countryside of the capital Damascus and the northwestern province of Latakia.

Russia and the United States have recently discussed including Aleppo in the regime of calm.
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Militants of the Yemen-based al-Qaida offshoot agreed Thursday to withdraw from two strategic southern Yemeni towns without armed confrontations after a tribal-led mediation, a government official told Xinhua.

"Commanders of the al-Qaida agreed to a full withdrawal from the key towns of Jaar and Zinjibar in Abyan province after successful mediation efforts by some powerful tribal leaders," the Yemeni government official said on condition of anonymity.

Hundreds of Yemeni soldiers, newly trained by the Saudi-led coalition, were preparing to launch an anti-terror offensive to flush out al-Qaida militants from the two coastal towns.

"The al-Qaida militants began to pull out of Zinjibar peacefully and handed over three government compounds to the tribal mediators," the government source said.

A local tribal chief said that "driving al-Qaida from Jaar and Zinjibar by military force will cause huge destruction to the infrastructure. The al-Qaida withdrawal was the only solution."

"Terms of the tribal-led mediation allowed the al-Qaida militants to bring with them all the weapons and military vehicles out of Zinjibar and Jaar, " the tribal source said.

Last December, scores of the al-Qaida gunmen took full control of the two towns, about 45 km from Aden, Yemen's temporary capital.

Yemen, an impoverished Arab country, has been gripped by one of the most active regional al-Qaida insurgencies in the Middle East.

The AQAP, also known as Ansar al-Sharia, emerged in January 2009. It had claimed responsibility for a number of attacks on Yemen's army and government institutions.

It took advantage of the current security vacuum and the ongoing civil war to expand its influence in Yemen's southern regions.

The fragile security situation in Yemen has deteriorated since March 2015, when a war broke out between the Shiite Houthi group, supported by former President Ali Abdullash Saleh, and the government backed by a Saudi-led Arab coalition.

More than 6,000 people have been killed in ground battles and airstrikes since then, half of them civilians.
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No document will be signed at the upcoming meeting of Russian President Vladimir Putin and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, said the Kremlin on Thursday.

Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a video-conference in Sochi, Russia, on May 5, 2016. [Photo/Xinhua]

Abe and Putin are expected to meet at Russia's Black Sea resort of Sochi on Friday.

The signing of a peace treaty between the two countries is "a complex and multifaceted issue, and can be resolved only on terms that are acceptable to both sides," Tass news agency quoted Putin's aide Yuri Ushakov as saying.

Ushakov said it will take more time to find a final solution to the territorial disputes between Russia and Japan over the Pacific islands that are known as the Northern Territories in Japan and the Southern Kurils in Russia.

The territorial disputes prevented the two sides from inking a peace treaty after World War II.

Problems in Russia-Japan relations could only be solved by "establishing even closer partnership between our countries," Ushakov told a news briefing. "We expect this visit will give a new impetus to development of comprehensive ties not merely in political but also in trade and economy sphere."

Ushakov called for more cooperation in such areas as science and technology and culture, and the establishment of effective interaction on the international arena. The two sides will also discuss the situation in Ukraine and Syria and on the Korean Peninsula, bilateral cooperation within international frameworks such as the United Nations.

Ushakov said the talks would be a chance for Abe to "synchronize his watch" with Putin over key international issues, including the Syrian crisis, which would be discussed during the G7 summit slated on May 26 and 27 in Japan.

Abe was invited to participate in the Eastern Economic Forum to be held in Russia's Vladivostok from Sept. 2 to 3, he said.

The relations between Russia and Japan deteriorated as Tokyo joined the anti-Russian sanctions after the Ukraine crisis.

Japanese broadcaster NHK TV reported Thursday that Abe will offer an eight-point plan on bilateral economic cooperation with Russia when meeting with Putin, including cooperation on oil and gas development and the modernization of seaports and airports in Russia's Far East.
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A Palestinian woman was killed on Thursday evening and two other civilians wounded in an Israeli tanks shelling on an area east of the southern Gaza Strip city of Khan Younis, medics said.

Ashraf al-Qedra, spokesman for the Gaza health ministry, told reporters that Zina al-Amour, 53 years old, was critically wounded together with another two civilians in the neighborhood of al-Fukhari east of the city by the shells shrapnel.

He added that the woman died of her wounds at Nasser Hospital in the city and the two other civilians are receiving treatment in the hospital and they are in moderate condition.

Earlier on Thursday, Israeli war jets struck with three missiles an area east of Rafah town in southern Gaza Strip; no injuries reported, according to security officials and paramedics.

The sources and eyewitnesses said the airstrike targeted a field close to the commercial crossing of Kerem Shalom on the borders between southeast Gaza Strip and Israel. Huge explosions were heard in the area.

It is the third Israeli airstrike on the Gaza Strip at predawn on Thursday. Four Palestinian civilians were injured, including an old man and three children in several successive airstrikes on southern, eastern and northern Gaza.

On Wednesday night, Israeli war jets carried out five separate airstrikes on empty fields, mainly at the area of the destroyed and inoperative Gaza Airport southeast of the Gaza Strip. No injuries were reported.

Since Tuesday, the Israeli army has been operating near the fence of the borders between eastern Gaza Strip and Israel. Gaza militants of Hamas and Islamic Jihad traded fire with the Israeli army ground forces that acted in the area.

On Thursday, the Islamic Jihad armed wing claimed responsibility for firing five mortar shells on the Israeli army ground forces acting near the fence of the borders with Israel.

The group said in an emailed leaflet that it is the first time that the group claims responsibility for firing mortars since Israel ended its military campaign on Gaza in the summer of 2014.

Tension grew on Thursday afternoon as Gaza security officials said on Thursday that the Israeli army forces pulled their bulldozers and tanks that rolled around 300 meters into the territory of eastern Gaza Strip close to the fence of the borders.

Well-informed sources, close to Hamas, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told Xinhua that Egypt intervened between Hamas and Israel to defuse a growing tension between the two.

The sources said that on Thursday morning, Israel responded to Egypt's mediation and pulled out its ground forces from the area, while Hamas and other militants refrained from firing mortars and attacking the force.

Musa Abu Marzooq, a senior Hamas leader who is based in Qatar, wrote on his Facebook page in Arabic that the Egyptian sponsor reached a truce agreement between Hamas and Israel.

He said that the two sides have accepted the Egypt-backed mediation and brought the situation back to calm.

In 2014, Israel waged a large-scale military operation on Gaza that lasted for 50 days during the summer, which left 2,200 Palestinians more than 70 Israelis killed besides large destruction in housing and infrastructure.

Meanwhile, the Palestinian consensus government of the Palestinian National Authority said in an official statement that "the dangerous Israeli escalation on the Gaza Strip should end immediately."

Yousef al-Mahmoud, spokesman for the government said in an emailed press statement that the international community has to immediately move to halt the new Israeli aggression on the Gazans.
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One person was killed and seven others injured Thursday after two Katyusha rockets launching from northern Syria hit southern Kilis province of Turkey, private Dogan News Agency reported.

A total of four rocket projectiles fired from Islamic State (IS)-controlled area hit the border town since late afternoon, according to the report.

On Thursday morning, three other rocket projectiles fired from neighboring country injured two people including one police officer.

Turkey's military had killed four IS militants in northern Syria in retaliatory shells to the group's territory earlier on Thursday, Turkish Armed Forces said in a written statement.

In recent weeks, Kilis has been repeatedly hit by rocket fire from territories in Syria in the hands of the IS militants.

Turkish military destroyed a total of 2144 Is positions in northern Syria and killed 807 militants, the army said in a separate statement on Thursday.

Rockets fired from Syria have be fallen Kilis since mid-January, killing a total of 21 people including seven Syrians refugees and injured 66 more including 17 Syrians, according to the figures of Turkish Armed Forces.

While Ankara said it is battling the IS as part of a U.S.-led coalition, the extremist group also orchestrated a number of suicide bombings in Turkey's capital and Istanbul provinces, leaving hundreds killed.
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A U.S. diplomat on Thursday said his country is committed to assist those who have been affected by conflicts in Sudan.

The U.S. government is committed to work the World Food Programme (WFP) to reduce the number of people who go to sleep hungry in Sudan, said U.S Charge d'Affairs in Khartoum Benjamin Moeling on Thursday.

A cargo ship, contributed by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), carrying 47,500 metric tons of sorghum worth of 35 million U.S dollars, docked at Port-Sudan, in eastern Sudan, to support the needs of around 200,000 South Sudanese refugees in many parts of Sudan and about one million internally displaced in Sudan's Darfur region.

The WFP, meanwhile, said in a statement that the USAID contribution tends to support the WFP operations in Sudan.

Last April, UN agencies warned against limited funding to provide assistance to around 221,000 South Sudanese refugees in Sudan, saying that the funding shortfall in 2016 is estimated at 62 percent.

During the period 2010- 2016, the USAID has contributed over 1.4 billion dollars for the WFP operations in Sudan.
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The abrupt departure of Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu from the office after winning a landslide election in November last year shows how much grip the Turkish president has over the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) in Turkey.

Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu delivers a speech at a press conference in Ankara, capital of Turkey, May 5, 2016. [Photo/Xinhua]

Davutoglu announced on Thursday that he will step aside after he reportedly had a tense meeting with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan who hand picked him as his successor in August 2014.

"As long as (Turkey President Recep Tayyip) Erdogan stays in the power, the question of who will become new prime minister is no longer relevant," Murat Yetkin, a political analyst, said.

He said the new chairman of the AKP will be determined by the Turkish president.

For the first time in the Turkish politics, a prime minister is forced out from his office due to an internal squabble within the party rather than a loss in elections or a defeat in the Parliamentary vote of confidence.

"It was not the opposition but rather his own party, his own leader (Erdogan) that pulled the rug from under Davutoglu, unfortunately," Yetkin said.

The Turkish prime minister successfully led the AKP in snap polls in November, receiving the support of 49.5 percent of the electorate and securing the majority of the seats in 550-seat Turkish Parliament.

Although he has the mandate to run the nation as the head of the government until 2019, he has decided to resign in a move that was seen as yielding to immense pressure brought forward upon him by the president.

"The fact that my term lasted far shorter than four years was not a decision of mine but it was out of the necessity," Davutoglu said in his farewell speech, suggesting he was forced to do so.

Yet the Turkish president told reporters on Thursday that it was the prime minister's own decision to step aside.

The AKP is set to convene an emergency convention on May 22 when it will pick a new chairman of the party and prime minister as well as reshuffle in the top management of the party.

Erdogan and Davutoglu have had a falling out with each other recently when the latter is seen not very enthusiastic about the change of Parliamentary system to an executive presidency, something Erdogan wholeheartedly wishes to secure.

The executive presidency would officially give Erdogan new powers to control the ruling AK party and the government that he has been already enjoying albeit unofficially.

According to Turkish analyst Serpil Cevikcan, last week's decision by the AKP's 50-seat Central Decision and Executive Board's (MKYK) to strip Davutoglu of the powers to appoint provincial party leaders was a signal flare that led to his resignation.

Davutoglu also clashed with Erdogan over the management of the economy and the policies of supposedly autonomous central bank of Turkey, eventually yielding to the policy choices made by the Turkish president.

Both leaders have marked differences in their approach to resolve Turkey's decades-long Kurdish problem and how to improve Ankara's relations with the European Union, especially on migrant deal that was largely brokered by Davutoglu.

Murat Sabuncu, political analyst, believed the failure of Davutoglu in setting up his own team in the government as well as in the top management of the ruling party helped seal the prime minister's fate.

"He has been fully encircled by names [of the people] compiled by Erdogan," Sabuncu underlined.

On Thursday, following the Central Executive Board (MYK) meeting, Davutoglu tried to draw a positive picture for his departure, saying that he has no regrets in taking a decision to leave the post.

Yet most are not content with those explanations.

Mumtaz'er Turkone, professor of political science, underlines that the departure of Davutoglu was not based a well-reasoned decision, adding that it will further throw Turkey into chaos.

"Whomever comes next (as prime minister), he will have no credibility other than being a preferred name by Erdogan," he pointed out.

Among the names that were floated in Ankara circles as candidates for the party leadership include Transport Minister Binali Yildirim, Energy Minister Berat Albayrak, who is also the president's son-in-law, Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag, deputy Prime Minister Yalcin Akdogan, deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus, and Defense Minister Ismet Yilmaz.

Only one compromise candidate is expected to contest the chairmanship as it was the case in previous party conventions.

According to Sabuncu, a new chairman of the party would be someone who will not question the president on any issue at all and will fully comply with Erdogan's wishes.

Some believe Erdogan will likely to push for an early election to gain absolute majority in parliament to officially change the regime in Turkey into an all-powerful executive presidency.

Mehmet Altan, an economist and author of dozens of books on Turkey, said the Turkish president plans to hold an early election at a time that will catch the opposition off-guard and give the ruling party more power in the Parliament.

In the meantime, the main opposition Republican Peoples' party (CHP) described Davutoglu's ouster as a palace coup by Erdogan, saying that he was legitimately elected as the prime minister with the votes of 24 million people.

The cabinet reshuffle is expected to follow the AK Party's convention.
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Supreme Court (STF) Justice Teori Zavascki accepted a request to suspend Eduardo Cunha, president of the Chamber of Deputies, for allegedly interfering with a corruption investigation and personally pressuring lawmakers to vote his way.

File photo taken on April 17, 2016 shows Eduardo Cunha, president of Brazilian Chamber of Deputies, reacting in a vote on the admissibility or not of the impeachment process against Dilma Rousseff at the Chamber of Deputies, in Brasilia, Brazil. [Photo/Xinhua]

Cunha is already being investigated by the STF on charges of taking bribes within the Petrobras corruption ring. However, prosecutor general Rodrigo Janot also asked the STF this week to remove Cunha for interfering with investigations against him.

Zavascki accepted this request, although the suspension is temporary until a full vote by 11 STF justices is carried out on the matter.

As president of the lower house, Cunha would become vice president, should President Dilma Rousseff be impeached by the Senate.

Given his position and influence, the justice wrote in his decision on the matter that Cunha "presents a risk for the credibility of the country's main political institutions ... as well as to ongoing investigations in the STF."

Zavascki added that "everything indicates" Cunha acted to "disqualify people, companies and politicians" from collaborating in investigations against him.

Cunha, a member of the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party, began the impeachment process against Rousseff.
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U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan told CNN on Thursday he was not ready to support the campaign of presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump.

"I'm just not ready to do that at this point. I'm not there right now," said the top House Republican and 2012 Republican vice presidential nominee in an interview with CNN.

Despite Trump's recent pledge to unify the GOP after his bombastic style and incendiary remarks had alienated many within the party, Ryan on Thursday took implicit jabs at the presumptive GOP standard-bearer, urging Trump to run a campaign that would allow Americans to "have something that they're proud to support and proud to be a part of."

"We've got a way to go from here to there," said Ryan.

Ryan's position had so far made him the highest-level Republican official to reject Trump's campaign since the New York billionaire developer won Indiana on Tuesday and forced his last two competitors out of the race.
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The African Union peacekeeping mission (AMISOM) said Thursday 39 former Al-Shabaab combatants have completed rigorous rehabilitation programme and are ready for reintegration.

A statement from AMISOM said the ex-combatants, 20 males and 19 females, received vocational training and psychological counselling at the Rehabilitation Center in Baidoa.

Many of the female graduates expressed optimism that they were ready to return to the community and to make a positive contribution to the development of the country.

"I came to Baidoa fearing for my life. A friend of mine informed me about this center. I realized that this was the only place I will be safe. I have learned a lot," said Nina.

"There is real difference in my life when I compare the time before I came to this center and now. I was welcomed, given shelter, food and above all training and counseling," the former combatant added.

The new disarmament, demobilization and reintegration center for former Al Shabaab militants is used to disengage the militants while also serves as a platform from where they can be reintegrated back into the communities.

Another ex-militant, Batula, urged donors to continue funding the project to enable more ex-combatants to benefit from the facility.

"We want more priority to be given to women. There is a functioning center for men. We want one like that for women. Women are the backbone of the community," she said.

This is the second graduation ceremony for ex-combatants since the male center was established in Baidoa. The center is considered one of the most successful humanitarian projects in the country.

UN Assistance Mission in Somalia (UNSOM) Chief Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration Section Officer, Patrick Loots, congratulated the ex-combatants for successfully completing the rehabilitation programme, and urged communities to reintegrate them into society.

"This is an important day; we celebrate the achievement of these young people. I congratulate you all for the successful completion of this program. The graduands are ready to go back to their community and help themselves and their people," said Loots.

UNSOM has been at the forefront in rehabilitating ex-combatants and helping in the establishment of centers in other towns.

Somalia Interim South West Administration Minister of Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration, Hassan Hussein hailed the program as a step in the right direction, but said more work needs to be done to win over more youths recruited by Al-Shabaab and reintegrate them into society.

"We were able to persuade these young people to embrace peace, not to kill each other or kill innocent people. There is life beyond Al-Shabaab; they can do business and be part of a productive community," Hussein added.
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The jihadi groups have breached the recently declared truce in Syria's northern province of Aleppo with intensified shelling and a wide-scale offensive on Thursday.

File photo taken on Jan. 19, 2012 shows the overview of old city of Aleppo, Syria. The citadel of Aleppo is a large medieval fortified palace in the center of the old city of Aleppo. [Photo/Xinhua]

The rebels in eastern Aleppo violated the truce just eight minutes after it went into effect at 1:00 a.m. Thursday (2300GMT Wednesday) with two mortars slamming west of Aleppo.

Later in the day, state news agency SANA said the rebels breached the truce with 20 mortar shells hitting government-controlled districts, killing at least three civilians.

The al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front and like-minded groups later unleashed a wide-scale offensive against a government-controlled town south of Aleppo, a military source told Xinhua.

The Nusra offensive started with assorted weaponry and artillery against the town of Khan Tuman in the southern countryside of Aleppo, the source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

The Syrian army responded to the attack, destroying a number of tanks, he said, adding that the attack was preceded with heavy artillery shelling followed by the rebels' attempt to advance toward the town from the area of al-Khalidiyeh.

Clashes erupted and various weapons were used, including the heavy ones, he added.

The Nusra Front has announced on its Twitter account the commencement of the battle to "liberate" the town and nearby areas with the help of the rebel groups such as Failaq al-Rahman, Ahrar al-Sham, and Nour Addien al-Zunki.

Meanwhile, the source said the Syrian army fired a rocket at an explosive-laden armored vehicle, which was approaching Khan Tuman, adding that another SUV outfitted with heavy machine gun was also destroyed along with its occupants.

It also said that Syrian warplanes carried out several raids on the approaching rebels and their reinforcements near the town.

The military source told Xinhua that the Syrian army succeeded in repelling the attack.

But later in the evening, the rebels renewed their heavy shelling on government-controlled areas west of Aleppo, according to pan-Arab al-Mayadeen TV.

Meanwhile, the Foreign Ministry in Syria has condemned the rebels' breach of the U.S.-Russian-backed truce in Aleppo, saying the "armed terrorist groups breached a truce in Aleppo that culminated tough efforts to which the Syrian Arab Army has fully committed since Thursday morning as agreed."

The ministry said that a few hours after the truce took effect, "the armed terrorist groups shelled the safe residential neighborhoods in Aleppo city," adding that "the crime of violating the truce in Aleppo reveals the real face of the terrorist armed groups."

"These terrorist groups which are backed by Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other countries have no other aim but to kill Syrians and destroy their country, yet some insist on calling them 'moderate opposition'," the ministry said.

The ministry stressed that the terrorist attacks will not prevent Syria from fighting terrorism and working towards a political solution to the crisis through Syrian-Syrian dialogue which will lead to the elimination of terrorism and restoring security and stability.

A day earlier, the Syrian army announced its commitment to observe a 48-hour truce, or a regime of silence, in Aleppo. It came as the city has witnessed intense violence over the past 10 days, during which more than 120 people were killed and hundreds of others wounded.

The truce in Aleppo came to bring a lull to the troubled city that has witnessed the most violent shelling from rebels on government-controlled areas. Opposition activists also accused government troops of conducting airstrikes on rebel-held areas in the eastern part of the city.

The "regime of silence" has previously been announced to include areas in the countryside of the capital Damascus and the northwestern province of Latakia.
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UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Thursday urged the world's nations to "take climate action to the next level," two weeks after 175 governments signed the historic Paris Agreement on climate change in New York.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon addresses the opening session of the Climate Action 2016 summit, a two-day meeting seeking to accelerate global action on climate change, in Washington D.C., the United States, on May 5, 2016. [Photo/Xinhua]

"We need action now," Ban said at the opening of the Climate Action 2016 summit in Washington D.C., a two-day meeting seeking to accelerate global action on climate change.

"Temperatures continue to climb. Arctic sea ice is melting fast. Droughts, storms and floods are costing lives and productivity," he said.

Ban stressed the need to accelerate the speed, scope and scale of response in the fight against climate change, both locally and globally.

He also called for "a radical transformation of the global economy" in order to realize the goal of achieving a zero-carbon world in the second half of this century.

Specially, the UN chief thanked China and the United States, two of the world's largest emitters, for their leadership in tackling climate change.

"Both have pledged significant reductions in their emissions," he said. "And both have agreed in Paris on transparent rules of the road to monitor progress, enhance accountability and foster a race to the top to drive climate ambition."

Also speaking at the event, World Bank President Jim Yong Kim called for investment in lower-carbon transport systems to move goods off roads and onto rail and waterways, and help move people in a more sustainable way.

Otherwise, the world would see emissions from transport account for up to 33 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, an increase from the current 23 percent, Jim said.

"Inaction means we will not meet our targets set in Paris, and the global temperature will soar above 2 degrees Celsius," he said. "That would spell disaster for us, for our children, and for the planet."

Over the course of two days, the summit will bring together nearly 700 people from various circles to discuss how to deliver on climate commitments and embed the transformation agenda globally in government, key sectors and among the general population.
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The ruling Scottish National Party (SNP) won the Scottish parliamentary election as the largest party with 63 seats out of the total of 129, poll results showed on Friday.

The SNP will form the Scottish government for the third time in a row, with the party's leader, Nicola Sturgeon, continuing as first minister of Scotland, though the party is short of the overall majority.

The Scottish Conservative Party garnered 31 seats, and the Scottish Labour Party won 24, while the Scottish Green Party and the Scottish Liberal Democrats won six and five, respectively.

In the last Scottish parliamentary election in 2011, the SNP won 69 seats, the Scottish Labour Party won 37 while the Scottish Conservative Party took 15.

More than four million people were registered to vote in the fifth Scottish parliamentary election since the establishment of the Scottish parliament in 1999. For the first time in a Scottish parliamentary election, 16- and 17-year-olds were eligible to vote.

The overall voter turnout was 55.6 percent, higher than the 50.4 percent in 2011.
Anartist performs the Lion Dance to celebrate the Chinese lunar New Year in Chinatown in Lima, Peru, Feb 6, 2016. [Xinhua/Luis Camacho]

LIMA - China's current investment of $22.7 billion in Peru has boosted the Latin American country's gross domestic product (GDP), Peruvian Prime Minister Pedro Cateriano said.

"Chinese investment in Peru has considerably increased our mining production," Cateriano said in a recent interview with Xinhua, citing the Las Bambas and Toromocho copper mine projects as two examples.

"The Las Bambas copper mine, which may be one of the largest such projects in the world, has seen an investment of over $10 billion. The Toromocho project has also seen much success, with an announced expansion costing $1.5 billion," said Cateriano.

"This has made China the foremost investor in our mining sector," said Cateriano.

Besides the two cooper mine projects, a Chinese company is currently exploiting iron deposits in Peru's coastal region of Ica. Mining has become an important pillar of China-Peru trade, which reached $15.5 billion in 2015, despite the international financial crisis.

Bilateral ties between China and Peru are going very well, said Cateriano, adding that a joint commission by the two countries to examine a number of matters is progressing apace.

The exchange of visits by leaders of the two countries have contributed to bilateral relations, "leading to the creation of a mechanism of permanent dialogue to evaluate political, diplomatic, economic and cultural matters," he said.

Cateriano emphasized that China has "not only benefited Peru but all of Latin America. The Chinese economy is so strong that it has an affect on the entire world."

"In my experience as Defense Minister and now as Prime Minister, I have seen (cooperation in) the areas of politics, diplomacy, economy, trade and culture all make significant progress," he said.

"Peru must be grateful for the role that China plays in the economic sphere. However, it is true that some fear a slowdown in China's economy will have a negative impact on all sides," he added.

In terms of future progress, the prime minister said that "there are other fields where I would like to see improved cooperation, such as in the transfer of technology," said Cateriano.

"We have progressed greatly in this area in recent years but I would like China to not just sell us equipment but manufacture them jointly in Peru," he said.

On the upcoming summit of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum, which is to take place in Lima in November, Cateriano said that "the government of President Humala has paid great attention to the importance of APEC and our policies have followed the priorities set within the bloc."

"Our administration will end its mandate on July 28 and we are seeking to ensure this international meeting will be successful, which most Peruvians also want," the prime minister said.
VLADIVOSTOK - The current condition of the Chinese social-economical development is stable and deserves attention, a Russian expert said Thursday in an exclusive interview with Xinhua.

"It is a very unique task to reform such a huge economy and the country, thus I give the highest score to the Chinese economic reform," said Maxim Krivelevich, head of the expert community of the School of Economics and Management at the Far Eastern Federal University.

He also said universities worldwide can cite China's economic reform as an example in teaching how to survive the crisis and make it a legitimate part of the economic process.

The Chinese economic policy not only encourages growth, but also makes the economic readjustment less painful, the expert said.

The slowdown of China's economy was a challenge for the whole Asian region and the world as there is no coutry that is not trading with China, he said, adding that "in such condition, it is very important for the United States, Europe and other Asian countries to see China not as an enemy but as a partner and ally to achieve significant results in their cooperation."

On the upcoming G20 summit in Hangzhou, China, on Sept 4-5, the expert said he expected a significant convergence of positions of countries on such issues as territorial disputes and trade conflicts related to the rules of the World Trade Organization.
HANGZHOU - China's railway line with Europe has boosted foreign trade in east China's export powerhouse of Zhejiang in the first quarter, according to the line's operator.

The Yiwu-Madrid freight route saw 11 trips in the first three months carrying 958 TEUs, up 556 percent year on year.

The train service links Zhejiang's Yiwu, the world's largest wholesale market for small consumer goods, with the European commodity center of Madrid by way of northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region.

The freight service is operated by the Yiwu Tianmeng Industrial Investment Co Ltd, a private firm.

Feng Xubin, chairman of the company, said a rail line from Yiwu to the Iranian capital, Tehran, was launched on Jan 28. Goods can continue on to Europe through existing rail routes from Tehran.

"Many foreign companies have approached us to discuss the opening of more direct transnational freight services with Yiwu. A line to Russia is under discussion," he said.
Xie Hua, a fifth-generation inheritor of the handmade Chaozhou red clay teapot craft, in his studio, May 5, 2016 [Photo/IC]

Xie Hua, a fifth-generation inheritor of a time-honored teapot craft in Chaozhou, South China's Guangzhou province, has managed to improve the technique and pass it down to hundreds of young disciples.

With a history of more than 300 years, the handmade Chaozhou red clay teapot is as famous as the Yixing purple clay teapot, produced in Yixing, East China's Jiangsu province.

The craft involves dozens of elaborate processes all conducted by hands. Even when mechanic production is prevalent today, no precision instrument can produce as good a teapot as that made by hand.

According to tradition, the craft of making the Chaozhou red clay teapot was only passed on to male descendants of a family.

Xie started to learn the craft handed down from his family in 1980s. In the years around 1990, he began to integrate techniques for Yixing purple clay teapot into his work. Later he also drew on the local porcelain making techniques.
A Chinese investor looks at prices of shares (red for price rising and green for price falling) at a stock brokerage house in Hangzhou city, East China's Zhejiang province, May 6, 2016. [Photo/IC]

Stocks slumped the most in more than two months on Friday, after the country's central bank drained a combined hundreds of billion yuan liquidity from the market since last week.

The benchmark Shanghai Composite Index tumbled 2.8 percent to a seven-week low, closing at 2,913.25, while the Shenzhen Component Index dropped 3.6 percent to 10,100.54 on Friday.

Telecommunication and computer service companies led the decline, as Datang Telecom Technologies Co and Hundsun Technologies plunged 6.7 and 5.3 percent respectively. China Unicom slid 2.4 percent.

Property developers also led the loss. Shanghai-headquartered Greenland Holdings tumbled 3.6 percent, and Beijing North Star Co 2.3 percent. Poly Real Estate Group, the country's second largest developer, fell 1.8 percent.

The People's Bank of China pulled back net 220 billion yuan ($33.85 billion) liquidity from the money markets this week, following a drain of 290 billion yuan last week, according to Xinhua.

The slump also comes as the April Caixin services Purchasing Managers' Index (PMI) released Thursday stood at 51.8, down from 52.2 in March.

The CSI Index, which tracks some of the largest cap stocks at Shanghai and Shenzhen, dropped 2.6 percent to 3,130.35.
The China Beijing International Fair for Trade in Services is an important event for people from the service industry to acquire resources and find partners, said Pan Jianjun, president of Meorient International Exhibition.

At a news conference in Beijing for the fair's convention and exhibition section, he said: I will visit other sections at the fair, such as the language service section, to find resources our clients may need to better develop.

Pan's company signed a $10.08 million cooperation agreement with an Indian trade fair company and a $9.3 million contract with a Brazilian company at the third China Beijing International Fair for Trade in Services in 2014.

Chu Xiangyin, executive vice-chairman at China Convention/Exhibition/Event Society, said it's difficult to showcase many services. Through the trade fair, to be held from May 28 to June 1, conventions and exhibitions can be platforms to promote the development of the service industry and boost trade in services, he added.

He said the event, which involves 14 categories of service trade, is a comprehensive and high-level platform where people from the convention and exhibition industry can promote their convention and exhibition concepts.

At the convention and exhibition section of the fourth trade fair, an international conference will discuss trends in the convention and exhibition industry, from new technologies, services and business models to international trade situations.

Speeches at the conference will discuss new cooperation opportunities in the Chinese and South Korean convention and exhibition sectors under the Belt and Road Initiative and how the mobile internet can make conventions and exhibitions more efficient.

Representatives from mobile internet companies will attend a separate activity to discuss how the convention and exhibition industry can better use mobile internet.

The section will also organize a conference to discuss and promote environmentally friendly development of the convention and exhibition sector, organizers said.

The organizers said the convention and exhibition section at the third trade fair had 24 trade negotiation areas and a 508-square-meter exhibition area. The section served as a communication platform and helped solve problems in the industry, they said.
China's top price regulator will soon launch "large-scale and systematic" anti-trust investigations into drug companies, both foreign and domestic, after it recently summoned them to collect data and information, a source close to the regulator said on Friday.

The National Development and Reform Commission may require more drug companies to provide information after Pfizer, a US pharmaceutical company, and a number of distribution companies and medical device manufacturers were summoned, according to the source, who requested anonymity due to lack of authorization to speak on the matter.

The commission, which is in charge of China's anti-trust affairs, is collecting evidence to see whether these companies might have violated regulations regarding competition, according to the source. But this does not mean these companies have violated the law, the source said.

The NDRC could not be reached for immediate comment, and Pfizer refused to comment.

A spokesman for a foreign drug-making company, who declined to be identified, said the move led by the commission is "regular work" and that the company will work with the commission, if necessary.

The commission has prepared for a long time for the current move, which is intended to improve order in the drug market, the source said.

As China has sought to improve its public healthcare system and make its medical products and services more affordable, the world's largest pharmaceutical companies and local competitors have felt pressure that has triggered a slowdown in sales growth, Bloomberg reported on Friday.

But analysts said China should put in place a more transparent and market-oriented pricing plan as the government emphasizes lowering drug prices and improving the public health system.

Premier Li Keqiang said during an executive meeting of the State Council last month that healthcare reform has entered a crucial stage, with reducing drug prices listed among key tasks.

Li stressed the importance of establishing a drug price tracing system to improve drug management, ensure the quality of drugs and make prices transparent.

Early in January, the NDRC imposed total fines of 4 million yuan ($616,000) on five domestic pharmaceutical companies for acting in collusion to fix the prices of a common drug.

The NDRC first levied fines on the pharmaceutical industry in 2011, when two companies were ordered to pay a total of 7 million yuan in fines.
A mini car at an international new-energy vehicles expo in Nanjing, Jiangsu province. WEI XIAOHAO / FOR CHINA DAILY

Not long ago, I had my very first experience of test driving an electric car in suburban Beijing by selecting a premium homemade model Denza, a joint product by BYD Co and Mercedes-Benz's parent company Daimler AG.

Smooth driving, amiable guest services and the attractive post-service guarantee, gave me a strong urge to put an order.

Also, here are a couple of reasons I should have got one:

It will be the second car for my family;

I have been joining the car plate license lottery for my second car for years but failed all the time;

It is rumored that Beijing will resume the alternate car running rules during its five-month-long heating season, which means I would only be able to drive to work every other day;

A sufficient electric-car purchase quota means there is no need to wait for the meager chance to win any lottery;

A pure electric car is eligible for running on the capital's road everyday throughout the year;

Attractive government subsidies are offered to buyers of models such as the Denza, priced between 369,000 yuan ($56,680) to 399,000 yuan, but the government offers a subsidy at around 110,000 yuan per unit;

And most importantly, driving an e-car makes me feel better for being an environmentally friendly driver and an accountable citizen.

Before I put in an order, my husband said: "Think about it, do you really need a second car? or an electric car? or an electric-vehicle license? " I said yes, I need them all.

The thing is, my home, his office and our son's school all in a 2-kilometer radius. Walking and biking are the best way for them to commute every day. Driving my son to school has repeatedly proved a wrong decision since the car will get stuck on the narrow lane.

I'm the only one in my family in real need of driving since my office is about 15 km from home.

"Plus there are parking and charging problems," he said.

As I was wondering, a piece of news about Tesla Model 3 being available for order appeared at the beginning of April. It's sold at $35,000, even cheaper than the Denza, Oh, my gosh, why not buy a Tesla? But it will not roll off the production line until the end of 2017 in Los Angeles. It is estimated the first shipment to China will be 2018. Reservations for Model 3 hit 253,000 units in 36 hours after the news release, even though no one has seen a real car yet.

"I can wait, it's cheaper, better and cooler," I said.

In fact, Tesla is seeking ideal local partner in China for possible local production and to offer more affordable models.

My enthusiasm for electric car was fueled partly by the market boom last year.

According to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, China produced 340,471 clean-energy vehicles in 2015, up 3.3 times over that in 2014. Of them, 254,633 units of pure electric cars were produced, up 4.2 times over the previous year. The number of plug-in hybrid production is 85,838 units, almost double that in 2014.

Boosted by the government's supportive policy and subsidy incentives, China has seen an explosive growth for clean-energy vehicles last year. It produced only 83,900 units in 2014 and only 17,500 units in 2013.

Besides conventional carmakers, a group of IT companies are also tapping the clean-energy auto market, making more fancy and sexy models.

Chinese internet company LeEco Holdings Ltd has displayed its latest LeSEE concept car at the ongoing Beijing Auto Show. BYD, the world's largest clean-energy vehicle maker, with sales of 62,000 units last year, is presenting its new model the Yuan and BAIC Group is showing its D80EV.

Of the total number of about 1,200 cars on display at the Beijing show, about 150 units are clean energy, much more than the last show.

"We have so many choices and the market will be more mature in the foreseeable future," my husband said.

I have started to believe that any incentive and subsidy should be a positive message, allowing me to care more about the trend and market, not necessarily the prime time to buy or own.

Since a group of new models will be available, I might be planning more test driving. Even for the driverless car, I want to have a try, why not?
The loading page for iQiyi is displayed on a smartphone. [Photo/IC]

iQiyi, one of the largest video-streaming sites in China, announced a major push on Thursday in virtual reality with an ambitious goal to build the world's largest Chinese-language platform for the new technology with partners.

Beijing-based iQiyi said it will launch two new apps, iVR Panorama Cinema and iVR Game Room, as well as a new feature in its existing app to allow users to enjoy their VR viewing experience.

More importantly, it will establish an incentive scheme to support VR content producers and VR gear producers to jointly build an "ecosystem" that is expected to boost the overall development of the sector.

iQiyi's announcement that it would tap into VR, a technology that gives users an immersive experience in a non-physical environment, is seen as an important move for the company to consolidate its leading position in China's video-streaming industry.

The company, which was majority owned by Baidu Inc, announced in February it would seek a listing in the Chinese mainland at an appropriate time once its privatization plan is completed.

"In recent years, investment in VR hardware development has made significant gains, but this cutting-edge technology still remains a futuristic concept to ordinary people in the absence of a VR content platform," said Gong Yu, founder and chief executive officer of iQiyi.

"iQiyi's expertise in online video and games will serve as a springboard to build up an open and complete industry chain that covers VR production, distribution and interaction," he said at the opening of the 2016 iQiyi World Conference in Beijing.

With an estimated revenue of more than 5.6 billion yuan ($860.5 million) in China in 2016, VR has already become the battlefield for a growing group of tech companies in China, from e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd to internet major LeEco Holdings Co.

Statistics from industry consultancy firm iResearch Consulting Group predicted that VR market revenue in China is expected to exceed 55 billion yuan by 2020, a sharp increase from 1.5 billion yuan in 2015.

However, factors such as a lack of VR content and immature VR technology remain obstacles which could hampering the industry's further growth.

As part of the incentive scheme, iQiyi said it will provide marketing, production and operation assistance to more than 300 of its partners in the VR content and device manufacturing sectors with a goal to attract 10 million VR service users in the next 12 months.

Pang Yiming, an analyst with Beijing-based internet consultancy Analysys International, said that it is a smart move for iQiyi to tap into the VR sector as the company will transform itself from an online video site into an online content platform, providing not only videos but also games and e-books.

"It is very necessary for iQiyi to tap into VR, the next big thing, as it works harder to connect users and content," she said.

"By doing it together with partners in content and gear production, iQiyi may see its VR service take off quickly. The only downside is that the model of teaming up with partners can be easily replicated by its competitors in the online video sector," she added.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (R) meets with Robert Iger, CEO of the Walt Disney Co, in Beijing, May 5, 2016.[Photo/Xinhua]

Shanghai Disneyland will strive to ensure "safe and pleasing service of high quality" to its guests in China, the CEO of Walt Disney Co promised President Xi Jinping on Thursday.

Robert Iger made the remark while meeting with Xi in Beijing, just before the start of the park's trial operation on Saturday.

"It's good to see the fruits of efforts over the years," Xi said. He congratulated Iger for the upcoming official opening of the park on June 16.

The project, the first Disney park on the Chinese mainland, was approved when Xi was working as Shanghai's Party chief in 2007. It is a joint investment by Walt Disney Co and Shanghai Shendi Group Co, and revenue will be shared.

"By working together, our two countries can accomplish some big tasks," Xi said.

He said that as China-US cooperation has a solid foundation, "it is important for both sides to expand new areas of cooperation and carry on cooperation in greater depth".

"The Chinese government is totally open to such efforts" and will provide support, Xi added.

He also expressed his wish to see a bilateral investment treaty with the United States signed at an early date.

"What the Walt Disney Co has achieved in China I think is a perfect example of cooperation, but it also came after years of understanding, years of building up deep respect for one another and appreciation for each other's interests," said Iger, also deputy chief of the US-China Business Council.

"I support many efforts to strengthen US-based companies' cooperation in China. I am particularly a supporter of the bilateral investment treaty."

Jia Xiudong, a research fellow with the China Institute of International Studies, said the park is an example of win-win cooperation between the two nations.

"It earns money, provides convenience to Chinese tourists and promotes cultural exchanges," Jia said, adding there are more such cases emerging in China-US cooperation.
Academics call for definition of what constitutes an ad

Search engine Baidu, which has been caught in public outcry over a man's recent death, was also suspected by several medical NGOs of presenting fake advertisements.

Chinadolls Center For Rare Disorders, one of the NGOs, said on Thursday that it had reported Baidu to Beijing's industry and commerce authorities for what it believed could be fake medical advertisements.

Wei Zexi, a 21-year-old computer science major at Xidian University in Shaanxi province died from synovial sarcoma, a rare soft tissue cancer, on April 12. Since September, he had received four treatments using cells generated by his own immune system to kill cancer cells.

Wei's parents said their son researched the disease on Baidu, and the hospital that provided the treatmentthe Second Hospital of the Beijing Armed Police Corpswas listed second in the search results.

Paid listings are part of an internet advertising model used to direct traffic to websites. The system, under which an advertiser pays a search engine each time an ad is clicked, has long been a major source of revenue for Baidu.

Zhang Haoyu, an officer at the NGO, said the report claimed that such a model violates the country's advertising law.

The State Administration for Industry and Commerce made public a draft regulation for online advertising to solicit public opinion last year, but no announcement has been made on its status.

Liu Junhai, a professor of civil and commercial law at Renmin University of China, said that a paid listing is advertising.

Zhu Wei, an associate professor at China University of Political Science and Law, said that whether or not a paid listing is advertising should be clarified and its difference from general advertising should be defined.

On Jan 19, after receiving many patients' complaints saying that they were defrauded by hospitals they found on Baidu, the center set up the NGO Alliance of Anti-Online False Medical Advertising with another 30 NGOs and reported Baidu to the industry and commerce bureau in Haidian district.

"We were informed that our report was being investigated three days later, but then no more information was released," Zhang said, adding that is why he went to the Beijing Administration of Industry and Commerce to push the case on Wednesday.

A report from Beijing News said the authorities will extend the time for the investigation because it is hard to define whether or not the promotion on Baidu is advertising.

Luo Wangshu contributed to this story.
The repatriation of suspects and recovery of illicit money are the focus of the Fox Hunt operation this year aimed at seizing corrupt officials and economic fugitives who flee China.

Fox Hunt forms part of the Sky Net campaign led by China's top anti-graft agency, which was launched in 2014.

This year's goals were outlined by the Ministry of Public Security on Wednesday.

Meng Qingfeng, vice-minister of public security, who is in charge of the operation, asked police departments nationwide to target the right suspects, to work more efficiently and to bring them to justice.

The ministry said it will work with the People's Bank of China, the central bank, to launch a special operation to crack down on the illicit transfer of money overseas. It will also help the central government's efforts to root out irregularities in officials' overseas trips.

In November, Chinese authorities uncovered the country's biggest underground banking case, involving transactions of more than 410 billion yuan ($64 billion).

The ministry says underground banks have been used for laundering money obtained from corruption, online gambling, telecommunications fraud, drugs and terrorism.

The Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, the top anti-graft watchdog, announced two weeks ago that it had decided to continue the Sky Net campaign this year.

The commission will coordinate the campaign with the Ministry of Public Security, the Supreme People's Procuratorate, the People's Bank of China, the Organization Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

During Fox Hunt 2015, China seized 857 fugitives from April to December hiding in 66 countries and regions, according to the Ministry of Public Security.

Huang Feng, a professor of international criminal law at Peking University, said the economic fugitives who flee overseas usually have substantial funds with which to buy properties, and live under assumed names.

They can also move between different countries to elude capture, or hire experienced lawyers to exploit legal loopholes to prevent being repatriated, Huang said.

It would also be difficult to repatriate suspects who have become citizens of other countries, as their right to live in these countries would be protected and the procedures involved likely to be more complicated, Huang said.

In April last year, Interpol's China bureau released a list of 77 men and 23 women wanted worldwide who are suspected of being involved in corruption and economic crimes. The list is part of the Sky Net campaign.
China will step up law enforcement in the South China Sea to prevent illegal fishing activities and rehabilitate marine resources during the upcoming seasonal ban, an official with the fisheries authority said on Thursday.

Zhao Xingwu, head of the Bureau of Fisheries under the Ministry of Agriculture, said on the sidelines of a news conference that enforcement will be jointly conducted by the Chinese Coast Guard and local fishery bureaus.

"We will definitely step up law enforcement in the South China Sea to enhance regulation of our fishing vessels. Meanwhile, we will also step up the regulation of foreign ships," he said.

Since 1999, China has imposed an annual fishing ban in parts of the South China Sea between May 16 and Aug 1 as part of an effort to protect marine resources in an area under its jurisdiction.

The ban covers areas north of the 12th parallel, including Huangyan Island but excluding most of the Nansha Islands.

In the Bohai Sea, Yellow Sea and East China Sea, the fishing ban falls between June 1 and Sept 1.

Yu Xinrong, vice-minister of agriculture, told the news conference that the ministry will roll out a guideline to manage the growth pattern and adjust the structure of the fishing industry, which will make a priority of fostering and protecting fishery resources.

Yu said authorities will also seek to reduce the country's fishing capacity and encourage more fishermen to reduce the number of fishing vessels and switch to other trades.

The ministry has launched four campaigns targeting fishing nets with small mesh and those that often result in higher percentage of bycatch.

Authorities nationwide have so far confiscated about 600,000 pieces of fishing gear that violate regulations, and banned the use of 16,000 unlicensed vessels, the ministry said.

China's territorial waters have long been troubled by overfishing. Around 8-9 million tons of fish can be harvested legally in China's territorial waters each year, but the actual amount reaches 13 million tons, according to a report by Economic Daily.

Overfishing has resulted in the destruction of spawning sites for some species, reducing stocks in China's coastal areas, as well as leading to a prolonged recession in the sector, especially in the East China Sea, the report said.

Xinhua contributed to this story.
Monthlong inspection motivated govts to improve supervision, control, report says

Hebei province has shut down 200 polluting companies and punished 366 people in response to serious problems exposed in an environmental inspection in January.

The punishments came as the province gave priority to 2,856 cases involving environmental pollution that had been transferred from the central government's inspection team.

The province said it will clear up another 13,784 illegal projects this year.

According to a report released on Thursday by the Ministry of Environmental Protection, the monthlong inspection pushed forward the pollution restrictions, motivating governments to improve their controls and supervision.

The strengthened controls have worked, as in the first three months of the year residents have seen a clear improvement in air quality, the province said.

In a previous report released on Tuesday, the inspection team pointed out problems in the campaign against pollution, from insufficient attention from former provincial leaders to loose supervision, and from many illegal projects in protection zones to deterioration of water and soil quality in some cities.

The problems will be dealt with quickly and thoroughly, the province said.

For example, the inspection team received calls that three lime processing plants in Dachang county, Langfang were severely contaminating the air. However, information about the people who complained was leaked and they claimed they received threats from the business owners.

The provincial environmental protection and public security bureaus have launched an investigation and shut down the three plants.

In addition, nine government officials, including Chen Lijun, the county's deputy head of the environmental watchdog, have been punished, and Wang Tiejun, head of the county's environmental inspection team who leaked the information, has been expelled.

In Tuesday's report, the inspectors exposed insufficient controls on major polluting industries, especially iron and steel, in the province.

In response, Hebei plans to thoroughly research the iron and steel industry. It will combat the illegal or excessive discharge of pollutants and will phase out more plants.

Hebei is the first province inspected by the central government.

The inspection team is expected to examine other provinces' performance in curbing pollution within two years.
A couple in Xixiang county, Shaanxi province, was detained recently for allegedly selling their children.

The county's public security bureau said its investigation showed that the husband, surnamed Li, 43, and his wife, surnamed Huang, 35, got 74,000 yuan ($11,300) from the sale of their two sons - one in 2013 and the other in 2014 - during a period in which they were migrant workers in the Inner Mongolia autonomous region.

According to Xu Guodong, chief of the No 1 criminal police squadron, Li came to the bureau in March to report that his wife had sold the boys. Li said she often quarreled with him and wanted a divorce, but investigators determined that in fact Li and his wife sold their sons together, Xu said.

Li and Huang went to Inner Mongolia in June 2012. When Huang became pregnant, the two discussed selling the baby after it was born, the investigation found. In April 2013 Huang gave birth to a baby boy and sold him for 34,000 yuan the same day, the police said.

Then, in June 2014, Huang gave birth to another baby boy at a Dengkou county hospital and sold him for 40,000 yuan.

Zhao Jing, a police officer involved in the investigation, told China Daily that the husband had no children before their marriage, while Huang had a child from a previous marriage.

"The couple confessed that the boy born in the hospital in Dengkou county was sold to a local resident surnamed Xiao. Following clues, we caught Xiao and his wife and took the boy back. It's been arranged for him to live with his grandfather," Zhao said.

Xiao couple was detained for buying the boy.

The Xixiang county police are continuing to search for the first boy, who was sold in 2013.

Under the Criminal Law, selling a child carries a minimum sentence of five years in prison. The penalty rises with multiple children or other circumstances. In severe cases involving the death of a child, sexual abuse, selling a child overseas or other serious acts, sellers can face a life sentence or even the death penalty.

The ninth amendment to the Criminal Law enacted in November increased penalties for those who buy children. Under the modified provision, a buyer is not immune from punishment, although buyers may receive less severe penalties if they have not abused the child or attempted to hinder rescue efforts.

The amendment is a big shift from the previous situation in which those who buy children were generally not subject to criminal liability.
Guangdong police seized more than 700 kilograms of methamphetamine and arrested 28 suspects - more than half of them from Taiwan - in a joint operation with authorities from Fujian province and Taiwan aimed at drug smuggling.

The suspects used a fake courier company in Dongguan as a cover for storing the drugs. They had planned to smuggle the drugs to the Philippines by sea but failed, the police said. The smugglers then used cars to transfer the drugs from ports to the company, where they were caught on Feb 28.

A suspect drove a car to the company, but instead of parking it outside, as on previous occasions, the suspect parked it inside the company warehouse.

"After more than a month of investigation, and based on our judgment, we believed that the car carried drugs, so we carried out the operation immediately," a Guangdong official who participated in the raid said. He asked not to be named.

Nine guns, 1.5 million yuan ($230,000), HK$2 million ($258,000) in cash and several bank cards, as well as 11 cars were also seized in the operation.

It was the biggest drug-related operation to be foiled by the Guangdong border-control department this year.

"Drug smuggling in Guangdong province has been curbed to a large degree this year, but it still remains active," Deng Jianwei, director of drug enforcement at the Guangdong Department of Public Security, told reporters at a news conference in Dongguan on Thursday. "The anti-drug situation in the province is still serious. We have to remain vigilant."

Overseas demand for drugs has fueled illegal activity in the province, which has often been used as a base to transport drugs overseas, Deng added.

In the first quarter of this year, 3,433 suspected drug smugglers were apprehended and 4.83 metric tons of drugs were seized by Guangdong authorities, Deng said. The authorities also broke up 23 drugmaking factories and detained 26,812 drug users.

According to the Guangdong official, the courier company used in the recent case was not really engaged in the delivery business but only served as a meeting place for the suspects.

The smugglers intended to store the drugs temporarily at the fake company and transport them to overseas markets when they found an opportunity, the official said.

It is not known where the drugs were made. An investigation is ongoing.

Deng said identifying drug smugglers in Guangdong is more complicated than in other areas because many of them have international backgrounds and are engaged in cross-border business.

Last year, more than 500 drug smugglers from more than 40 countries and regions were arrested in the province. Of those, 252 came from Hong Kong and about 70 from Taiwan.

Last month, an international drug trafficking operation controlled by Hong Kong residents was broken up by Guangdong police. About 400 kilograms of cocaine from South America was confiscated.
Passengers line up and wait for a security check during morning rush hour at Tiantongyuan North Station in Beijing on May 27, 2014. [Photo/Agencies]

Beijing city government plans to reduce the number of permanent residents at six downtown districts within this year, a senior economic planner said on Thursday, the 21st Century Business Herald newspaper reported.

The city has recently published its economic and social development plan for next five years, and an important goal is to cap its population at 23 million by 2020 and reduce the number at six downtown districts by 15 percent from 2014. This is the first time that the capital has drawn a red line on its population.

The six districts are Xicheng, Dongcheng, Chaoyang, Fengtai, Haidian and Shijingshan. About 12.76 million people lived in these six districts in 2014, which means the figure would be 10.84 million by 2020 according to the plan.

Lu Yan, director of Beijing Municipal Development and Reform Commission, the economic planning body, said the city government will take intensive measures to fulfill the goal, relocating its population to new towns and outlying regions.

Beijing has taken economic and administrative measures to relocate factories, low-end markets, education and medical institutions, as well as administrative organs to remote areas, nearby Hebei province and Tianjin.

Xicheng's population started to reduce in 2014, and Dongcheng saw a fall last year, but the total population still increased.

Lu said that six districts will focus on some areas to complete the relocation plan this year, such as the surrounding areas of Palace Museum in Dongcheng and Beijing Zoo in Xicheng.

Besides the overpopulation, the city also faced other three major "pains" - traffic congestion, high home prices and worse ecological environment, Lu said, the Beijing Morning Post news paper reported.

To solve the traffic problem, a rail transit system of 900 kilometers will cover all districts by 2020, Lu said. Suburban districts of Pinggu, Miyun, Huairou and Mentougou will also be connected with the downtown areas with subways.

People could walk about 750 meters to reach the nearest subway station at downtown areas by 2020, he said. In the suburban areas, parking lots will be built around the subway stations for people to take the rail system.

The latest plan has drawn four red lines for the city's development for the first time: except for a cap on the population of less than 23 million, others include cap on urban construction areas of less than 2,800 square kilometers, yearly water consumption of less than 4.3 billion cubic meters and the yearly energy consumption meets national standards, Lu said.

Lu also added Thursday that the city will also increase the capacity of kindergartens to admit 150,000 more children in the future to fulfill the rising pre-school education demands after the country launched the two-child policy.
Hundreds of teachers protested in front of the government office building in Hengyang county in Hunan province earlier this week, seeking years of unpaid increase in the national salary schedule.

Police summoned six of them for impeding traffic as their rally blocked the main road and disturbing government office regular operations, according to a report by the website of People's Daily, citing a statement from the county government.

The local government said that it had promised on April 26 to respond to the teachers' request within 10 working days when they learned the teachers' requests from online posting, but teachers were unsatisfied and more than 200 of them went on protest in front of the government building for more than nine hours on Tuesday.

On Wednesday morning, more than 150 teachers gathered at the government gate again and would not leave despite all efforts. Their behavior greatly disrupted traffic and government orders, according to the statement.

Other media reports said the teachers are requesting for the salary increase since Oct 2014 under the national plan of salary increase and they also demand the year-end bonus of the past two years.

The teachers also claimed that irregularities have been found in their pension and housing subsidy accounts.

The government statement said Xiong Chaoqun, the county chief, held a meeting with officials in charge of educational affairs in the county and mapped out "a principle to settle the problem" after the government noticed the teachers' requests online. No details of the principle were given.

In the teachers' public letter to the government, they said they had not got a clear answer from the government.
BEIJING - Chinese prosecutors have filed corruption indictments against Zhang Lijun, former vice minister of environmental protection, and three provincial-level officials.

They are Sui Fengfu, former deputy director of the Heilongjiang Provincial People's Congress Standing Committee, Liang Bin, former head of the Organization Department of the Communist Party of China Hebei Provincial Committee, and Lu Wucheng, former deputy director of the Gansu Provincial People's Congress Standing Committee, according to a statement issued by the Supreme People's Procuratorate (SPP) on Friday.

All four are charged with accepting bribes.

Prosecutors in the four cases accused the suspects of taking advantage of their posts to seek benefits for others and accepting "huge amounts" in bribes.

Zhang's case was investigated by SPP prosecutors and later transferred to a lower-level procuratorate in Beijing to launch the indictment.

The SPP designated the provincial procuratorate in Liaoning to investigate the cases of Sui and Liang and the provincial procuratorate of Shaanxi for Lu's case, according to the statement.

The three cases were later transferred to city-level procuratorates for indictments.

The defendants have been informed of their litigation rights and questioned by the prosecutors, who have heard representations from the defendants' lawyers in each case.
A special task force has been established by Guangzhou's Yuexiu district police to investigate the incident in which a senior stomatologist was seriously wounded after being attacked by his former patient.

Chen Zhongwei, 60, former director of the stomatological department of Guangdong General Hospital, was rushed to hospital after he was stabbed 30 times with a knife from his head to feet on Thursday evening. Chen was in intensive care for further medical observation and treatment on Friday. He retired as director earlier this year.

The incident took place when Chen was attacked by a man who followed him to his home at 5:20 pm. Chen's family immediately called police and rushed Chen, who was bleeding profusely, to hospital.

The suspected attacker committed suicide after jumping off a building from the 18th-foor balcony in Chen's home.

According to police, the unnamed man was one of Chen's patients who was once treated by Chen 25 years ago. The suspect was reported to have once arrived in Chen's hospital to seek compensation and created trouble before he attacked Chen.

And Chen once sought police help when he thought the man had mental problems.

Liao Xinbo, an inspector with the Guangdong Provincial Commission of Health and Family Planning, said he was shocked when he learned Chen was attacked by his patient.

"Chen is an honest, low-key and capable doctor," Liao said.

He urged police and relevant departments to investigate the case to its fullest extent.
Liu Yongwei tells the story of his missing kidney on April 19, 2016. [Photo/VCG]

The Health and Family Planning Commission of Xuzhou, East China's Jiangsu province, has formed a panel of experts to investigate the "stolen kidney" case in a local hospital, which has aroused much discussion on China's internet.

Three experts from the thoracic surgery and urology departments and health authorities from the commission arrived at the Affiliated Hospital of Xuzhou Medical College on Thursday and have checked related medical records and materials.

A patient from the neighboring Anhui province, Liu Yongwei, told a local newspaper Xin'an Evening that his kidney was missing after receiving a surgery at the Xuzhou hospital in June 2015.

The story has attracted nationwide attention after it was released on Thursday.

Liu was transferred from a local hospital to Xuzhou after his tractor turned over and seriously hurt the right lung, right kidney, liver and some bones.

In April 2016, he was told that his right kidney was missing after having his infected left kidney checked at a hospital in Anhui province.

"The panel will have a meeting with the patient and arrange a third-party medical institution to examine his body," said Sun Jingsong, director of the commission's medical administration and management department. "His health will be fully discussed and the result will be released to the public as soon as the panel reaches an agreement."

The Xuzhou hospital on Thursday released an official statement, accusing the Anhui newspaper of distorting the facts and tarnishing the hospital's reputation.

According to the statement, Liu's right kidney showed on the two CT scan films of the health checks after the surgery was done.

"The kidney was found atrophied and hidden in his abdominal cavity," Xu Kai, director of the hospital's radiology department, was quoted by Chinanews.com as saying. Xu also said that Liu's blood vessel had turned calcified, which was another symptom of post-traumatic renal atrophy.
CHENGDU - A giant panda that let down her fans with a "phantom pregnancy" in 2014 gave birth to a cub on Friday morning, with more than 100,000 people viewing her delivery online.

The male cub, weighing 145 grams, was born at 6:06 am at Chengdu Giant Panda Breeding Research Center in Southwest China's Sichuan province.

The baby panda, the first born worldwide this year, and the mother are in good health.

Staff with the research center made a live broadcast of Ai Hin, 9, available on the Internet from 7 pm on Wednesday, as she was exhibiting prenatal behavior.

Before then, she had shown signs of pregnancy, including increased production of progestational hormones and reduced appetite, for more than 20 days.

In August 2014, viewers tuning in to a 48-hour live feed of the supposedly pregnant Ai Hin were surprised when she never gave birth. It was discovered that she was not actually pregnant. She showed signs of pregnancy but her behavior and physiological indexes later returned to normal.

Phantom pregnancies are common among pandas. Non-pregnant pandas are often subject to progestational hormone changes, and scientists who work with pandas say the "mothers" sometimes notice differences in their treatment and carry on with the pregnant behavior in anticipation of greater comforts and attention.

"After showing prenatal signs, mothers-to-be are moved into single rooms with air conditioning and round-the-clock care. They also receive more buns, fruit and bamboo, so some clever pandas have used this to their advantage to improve their quality of life," Wu Kongju with the center said.

Ai Hin was one of two twins born to Mei Mei in Japan in December 2006. The twins were returned to China in 2012.
URUMQI -- Northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region is expanding bilingual preschool education further into its rural and pasturing areas to enable more children have access to such education.

With central government funds, Xinjiang plans to offer three years of bilingual preschool education instead of the current two years in the region's rural area during the 2016-2020 period, sources with the regional education authorities said on Friday.

Xinjiang is aiming to ensure 85 percent of pre-school children across the region have access to such education in 2020. Seventy-seven percent of its preschool-age children attended bilingual kindergartens last year, according to official figures.

The central government has invested over 1 billion yuan ($153.7 million) this year to build 552 bilingual kindergartens in Xinjiang, mainly in the southern part and rural and pasturing areas of the region. Xinjiang had established 2,500 bilingual kindergartens in rural areas over the previous five years.

The autonomous region is heavily populated by people of Uygur ethnicity. The government says bilingual education, based on the official tongue Mandarin and minority languages including Uygur, will help improve ethnic groups' job prospects.
Feng Lei, gives her daughter Feng Junxi a final kiss at a hospital in Beijing, June 9, 2012. A couple from Chifeng in north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region decided to donate their daughter Feng Junxi's body organs after her death.

BEIJING -- China's health, police and transportation authorities have jointly established a "green passage" to ensure fast and safe transfer of donated human organs.

The move is aimed at shortening transportation time and reducing damage or waste of human organs to help patient survival.

According to a Friday circular on the mechanism, police will help ensure ambulance right of way when health authorities receive donated human organs. Airlines should provide priority boarding services and allow planes carrying human organs to depart first.

Health authorities transporting human organs may buy tickets after boarding a train. The Red Cross will also provide help during the transportation process.

"The transportation of human organs is like a race between time and life," said the circular.

Many human organs, such as the liver, cannot be stored for longer than 12 hours or they will become unusable or dysfunctional following transplant, it said.

China has a serious lack of human organs, though the nation ranks third globally in terms of the number of organs donated. Some patients must wait for years for transplant surgery, and many don't survive long enough to receive a transplant.

In 2015, 2,766 people donated major organs after death, almost double the number in 2014.

Previously, executed prisoners were one of the major source of organs. On January 1, 2015, China banned the harvesting of organs from prisoners.
Premier Li Keqiang checks employment data on Friday at the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security in Beijing. Wu Zhiyi / China Daily Premier says efforts to create opportunities must focus on college students, migrant workers

Premier Li Keqiang vowed on Friday that the government will provide opportunities for steady employment to college graduates and migrant workers, even though the country is undergoing economic restructuring.

He made the remark while visiting the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security as part of efforts to review the nation's employment situation.

Yin Weimin, minister of human resources and social security, said 4.43 million people found jobs in urban areas from January to April, accounting for 44.3 percent of this year's target set in March.

Yin also said the registered urban unemployment rate was 4.04 percent by the end of March  lower than the maximum 4.5 percent annual rate set forth by Premier Li in the Government Work Report in March.

The premier said employment opportunities must focus on key groups  college graduates and migrant workers  by helping them with training and other supportive policies.

Li said migrant workers are the most vulnerable group during economic restructuring.

"Channels have to be broadened to boost employment for migrant workers and increase their income," he told officials during a meeting on employment at the ministry.

"In this way, their lives can be improved and the new type of urbanization can proceed together with agricultural modernization."

A record 7.65 million college students and about 5 million vocational school students will graduate this year, so more than 12 million young people will need to find jobs.

Li said many traditional industries have a limited capacity to provide new jobs. "So we have to create more jobs for young people by cultivating new economies, new technologies and new business models, as the national economy restructures," he said.

Zheng Dongliang, director of the ministry's Work Science Research Institute, said, "The premier's visit underscores the importance the central government has attached to employment."

Migrant workers should learn new skills to work in the service sector or start their own businesses in their hometowns, Zheng said.

He suggested that the government work out more favorable policies to create job opportunities in small cities or townships, where migrant workers can settle down with affordable housing and education for their children.

Zheng also said universities should provide students with proper training that caters to market demands and should also find more ways to help graduates.
For expats living in China, finding their way around the giant online shopping platforms run by Alibaba, which offer more than 800 million products, can be a daunting task.

This led long-term US expats Charlie Erickson, Jay Thornhill and Tyler McNew to develop Baopals, an English-language website that helps foreigners in China to navigate and buy goods on Alibaba platforms Taobao and Tmall.

With an investment of about 500,000 yuan ($77,000), which included their own personal savings together with financial help from friends, the trio set up Baopals in Shanghai in February.

"The idea was born out of necessity from all of us," said co-founder Erickson. "I was always asking my Chinese colleagues to help me buy things on Taobao. So, we just wanted to figure out a way to do this independently."

Baopals constantly updates the flow of goods from Alibaba's platforms and automatically translates the product information, including customer reviews, into English.

The website also reorganizes products into different categories to facilitate the item search for non-Chinese speakers, and it has a bilingual customer support team to help with questions.

To make the shopping experience even more convenient, Baopals accepts Alipay, WeChat Wallet and China UnionPay as payment methods and is working on integrating Visa, Mastercard and Paypal into the system.

In the past two months, the website has sold 7,000 products and shipped them to 40 cities in China.

Erickson said Baopals sees steady growth ahead. "We expect to keep doubling our transactions every month for the next three to four months, at least", he said.

For every transaction on the platform, Baopals charges a service fee of 5 percent of the item price, plus 8 yuan per item type. The service fee is automatically included in the pricing of all the products on the site.

Because the website is still in early stages of development, the company expects to secure more funding in the coming months to improve technology.

"We are currently in talks with some Chinese investors interested in participating in the next round of investment that will take place in the next three to six months," said Erickson.

Similar to the general shopping trends on Taobao, the biggest categories on Baopals are women's clothing, electronics and household goods.

Abby McBride, a US expat living in Shanghai and a regular user of the website, said her purchases have ranged from home decor to charcoal for her grill. One of the major advantages of the website is being able to use WeChat Wallet, since Alibaba accepts only Alipay, she added.

"It can be challenging for non-Chinese speakers to use Chinese shopping platforms," said McBride.
Thanks to their deepening pockets, Chinese tourists are welcome across the world. Quite a few countries have made their visa procedures easier to lure this ever-growing group that spent $200 billion overseas last year.

It is not all smooth sailing, though.

Media reports say early this week a group of Chinese tourists in Nha Trang, central Vietnam, were harassed, some even assaulted, at the airport when they refused to pay a "routine" 10-yuan ($1.55) "tip" to Vietnamese officers before boarding. According to the Chinese tourists, the Vietnamese officers tried to "confiscate" their passports and threatened them with Tasers when they refused to pay them.
Thai civil servant Supapan Pullbangyung spends just under half of her salary on caring for her 75-year-old father, who suffers from diabetes and dementia.

Hers is one of many Thai families looking after elderly relatives at a cost that countrywide adds up to just under a third of household income.

The number of families facing similar problems will balloon as the population ages at a rate among the fastest in Southeast Asia.
Monkey stamps. [Photo provided to China Daily]

As Chinese culture becomes popular abroad, many countries are issuing special postal stamps to celebrate the Year of the Monkey this year.

A set of four stamps marking the year in Chinese zodiac was jointly issued by Fiji Post, the Chinese embassy and the Chinese Cultural Center in that country on May 4.

Monkey stamps. [Photo provided to China Daily]

Designed by Chinese artist Xu Hongfei, the stamps show four Chinese monkey species with the natural scenery of the Pacific Ocean island nation as a backdrop to signify the cultural exchanges between China and Fiji.

Earlier in the year, monkey stamps were also issued in the United States and Canada.

Related:

Fiji launches monkey-themed stamps to mark Chinese New Year
Former supermodel Ma Yanli will launch her new clothing range that combines the simple look of a white blouse with blue jeans.[Photo by Wang Zhuangfei/China Daily]

Chinese designers should now aspire for individualism like Western designers do, Ma Yanli, a former supermodel tells Andrew Moody and Yan Dongjie.

Leading fashion designer Ma Yanli, also known as Mary Ma, says Chinese designers have no need to flaunt their Chinese origins in the clothes they produce.

The 41-year-old former supermodel and actress says they should aim instead to be as individualistic as Western designers.

"Today's top Chinese designers are designers in their own right and are competing with other international designers. Of course, designers reflect their personal influences and some of these may involve Chinese characteristics, but this is not what it should be about," she says.

"It is not East versus West or China versus America, it is down to individual designers."

Ma, once described as China's answer to American model Cindy Crawford, was speaking at the Kerry Hotel in Beijing, ahead of the launch of her new clothing range that combines the simple look of a white blouse with blue jeans. ( Video: Model Mary Ma on colors )

The blouses, which will be available online later this month, will range in price from 399 yuan ($61) to 2,500 yuan. The jeansto be launched in Junewill be similarly priced.

"I like simple clothes in my daily life since they suit many situationsfrom relaxing at home and going to dinner with a friend to a relatively important event like an interview," says Ma, who was wearing an outfit from her new range for a China Daily interview.

"I think girls are sexy when they are in jeans. You can forget about your height or weight, and just match a white shirt and jeans. Everyone can look great in this, if you are confident about yourself."

Ma, who studied design at Shanghai-based Donghua University, launched Maryma Haute Couture in 2005. It is based in Beijing and now employs 20.

Earlier this year, her company was chosen to design outfits for Chinese Premier Li Keqiang as well as leaders of five Asian countries for the welcome dinner of the 1st Lancang-Mekong Cooperation Leaders' Meeting in Sanya in South China's Hainan province.

The design on the blue tunic made for the event had a representation of the Mekong River with a flower to mark each of the six countries that surround it.

"It was our first design related to either diplomacy or government. I was so proud seeing the leaders wear our designs. We worked crazily for a whole month on them (the outfits)," she says.

"Many at the dinner came to me and praised my design. It was a milestone for our business," she adds.
Model-actor Vivian Dawson (front) at a promotional event for Mis-fit in Beijing.[Photo provided to China Daily]

With the technology-themed Met Gala red carpet held in New York earlier this week, "smart tech" has become a buzzword in the fashion industry.

The two worlds, which rarely interacted with each other a few years ago, are now integrating seamlessly.

Leading the trend is American wearable technology company Misfit, which recently held a fashion show in Beijing, showcasing its latest product Ray, a wrist fitness and sleep monitor.

The runway show presented 12 looks styled around the product.

Ray follows ShineMisfit's first wearable fitness and sleep monitor.

Designed as a band, Ray can work with watches as an accessory.

"We want to make wearable technology that does not look like wearable technology. We want to make products that are indistinguishable from jewelry," says Sonny Vu, co-founder of Misfit, who is also president and chief technology officer of Connected Devices at Fossil Group.

The company was recently acquired by Fossil Group, which makes watches for brands like Michael Kors, Diesel, Adidas, Karl Lagerfeld and Burberry.

The move will take the brand closer to the fashion world, says Vu.
English chef/restaurateur Jason Atherton has opened two dining ventures in Shanghai.[Photo provided to China Daily]

Being a celebrity chef is nice, Britain's Jason Atherton tells Xu Junqian, but spending more time in his kitchens from London to Shanghai is what keeps him on his game.

His fame may be built on his work with Gordon Ramsay and his regular appearances on TV cooking shows, but after declaring independence in 2010 from his longtime mentor, Jason Atherton has now made up his mind to make a break with television, too.

"You should be famous because you are a good chef, not because you are on TV dancing like a clown," the 45-year-old English chef/restaurateur tells China Daily during his latest trip to Shanghai. "What's really important for me is the kitchen."

Fame causes some chefs to lose their focus, he says.

"I think it's a shame because we lose our integrity and the realization of what's important. I believe that for each person, God gives us a gift. You just have to find what your gift is," he adds.

The Michelin-starred chef was in Shanghai to celebrate the sixth anniversary of Table No 1, his first independent dining venture after leaving Ramsay, and the third birthday of Commune Social, a tapas venue that is his second outpost in Shanghai.
By Wang Zhen in Beijing and Liu Mingtai in Jilin | China Daily | Updated: 2016-05-06 08:35

Staff members and youngsters play a game in Mingzhi Zhi Jia, a private rehabilitation center for autistic people in Jilin city.[Photo provided to China Daily]

A private facility is doing its bit to help as autism afflicts a growing number of children in China. Wang Zhen in Beijing and Liu Mingtai in Jilin report.

Sha Lin walks through an office corridor firmly holding the side rails. The 19-year-old has just finished cleaning a part of the building in Jilin city.

The young adult suffers from autism, which is a complex brain development disorder that leads to difficulties in social interactions, among other issues.

He arrived at Mingzhi Zhi Jia (home for the wise), a private rehabilitation center for autistic people, in Northeast China's Jilin province, seven years ago.

Sha has since been leading a largely self-reliant and calmer life.

But things weren't the same earlier. The frustrations related to his disorder often got the better of him - he used to smash things.

Wang Liying, founder of Mingzhi Zhi Jia, says her center aims to help young people with autism lead as normal a life as possible by enhancing their social skills and lowering emotional barriers.

The center provides help to autistic children, teenagers and young adults through counseling, therapies, education and professional training.

Wang's concern for autistic people emerged after she attended a charity program in 2006 while working for Shell China in Beijing.

"I met with a group of autistic children at the event. All of a sudden, a kid bit my arm," Wang recalls.

Then, she got a chance to deepen her understanding of patients and found that most rehabilitation facilities in China targeted preschool children. Wang's academic background in industry management helped her create Mingzhi Zhi Jia in 2009, when she quit her well-paid communications job at Shell and went back to her hometown, Jilin.

The center developed quickly, offering treatment and training for about 80 patients.
Guo Luping, an obstetrician, says she's proud to be part of a Chinese medical aid program in Tunisia.[Photo provided to China Daily]

When speaking of Guo Luping, a doctor who saved the lives of his wife and son during childbirth a few years ago, Yan Xiaojun, a man from Xinyu city, in East China's Jiangxi province, can't help but feel sad.

Guo is now suffering from cancer.

"My wife cries each time Guo is mentioned," Yan says.

Guo, 40, works at the Maternity and Child Care Center of Xinyu, and has nearly 20 years of experience in obstetrics.

She went on a Chinese medical aid program to Tunisia in November 2014, but was diagnosed with breast cancer in January this year after she returned home for a holiday.

Today, as she stays hospitalized for treatment in Nanchang, the capital city of Jiangxi, she is keen to return to Tunisia to finish the program.

"Before coming back, I promised several patients that I would deliver their babies," Guo says.

Zhang Yue, director of international cooperation for the province's health and family planning commission, says Guo had volunteered to join the program in Tunisia.

Since 1973, the province, like many other Chinese provinces, has been sending medical professionals to treat patients at local hospitals and provide training to doctors there.

Usually, more than 40 doctors and nurses from Jiangxi are selected to go to Tunisia and Chad every two years, but it is getting difficult to recruit team members, says Zhang.

That is mostly because when a doctor comes back from such a mission in Africa, he or she will very likely lag behind colleagues at home, due to the fast development of China's medical sector.

As people's standard of living improves in China, the allowance and payment such projects give to team members are not as appealing as they used to be, he says.

But for Guo, it seems the decision to enroll into the program was easy.

"I knew it is hard, tiring and even dangerous to work in Tunisia, but I just wanted to broaden my horizons with experience of overseas work. So I took it up," says Guo, who has conducted about 4,000 surgeries and has won several awards at the Xinyu hospital for her service to patients.

"It is a doctor's duty to treat patients and I'm glad to be able to contribute to our country's medical aid program as well."
Lu Yuxin takes part in the English speaking competition in China Daily,Beijing on March 27, 2010. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

I may be just 13 years old, but I've known 21st Century English for over half my life. Needless to say, over the years, I've shared many exciting stories, experiences and memories with 21st Century English, and each one just gets better and better - but there will always be three that I remember particularly well, the first of which happened when I was 6 years old.

I've always liked learning languages. English, of course, was no exception! I had just begun to learn English when I was 5 years old, and I was eager to improve. At that time, many of my friends were already subscribed to various English newspapers and magazines. Seeing them read prompted me to want to read English newspapers as well, so I asked them which newspaper they usually read and they recommended 21st Century English to me. So I went home and asked my father to subscribe me to the newspaper. At first, I didn't like reading it, but gradually I began to love it.

The next encounter came soon after. It was a lazy Saturday morning, and I had just woken up to a faceful of newspaper.

"Wake up, Lucy," my dad said, placing the newspaper on my head. "Your newspaper's here."

I groaned and got up. My dad had put the newspaper down with the front cover facing up, so when I lifted it from my face, I read the back cover first. It was an advertisement, advertising an English speech competition held by 21st Century English. For some reason, I really wanted to enter the competition, so I quickly rushed to my parents' bedroom.

Lu Yuxin reads the 21st Century English Newspaper published by China Daily. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

"Hey dad, can I enter this competition?"

"Competition?" my dad repeated. "What competition?"

"This one, right here." I handed over the newspaper.

"A speech competition?" he scanned the paper quickly.

"Yeah."

"Seriously?" my mother interjected, confused. "What's with all this all of a sudden?"

"Nothing, I just thought it looked interesting and I wanted to give it a go," I shrugged.

"What will you write about then?" my mum asked.

"Oh, I don't know yet, but I'm sure I'll figure it out later," I said confidently. "It shouldn't take that long."

"Okay, if you say so," my mother eyed me warily. "Alright then. You can enter this competition."

And so began my second experience. Although now, I found it very hard to find ideas for anything, I found my speech topic extremely quickly - but again, I suppose 6-year-olds see and notice things older people can't. We lose some of the magic as we grow up. I passed heat after heat - the Beijing preliminaries, semi-finals and finals. I was eliminated in the national semi-finals - but that didn't matter too much then. I had already gained more confidence in my English speaking skills - and with the help of the confidence I gained from entering the competition, I began to write for 21st Century English as a junior reporter. I loved it - to be able to share even the most everyday, mundane things in life, and watch that everyday, mundane thing blossom into words and share it with other people - that is truly something magical, indeed.

I didn't know then that one of the everyday, mundane things I wrote about in 21st Century English led me to my third encounter. I didn't even know by myself - it was a blogger who left a comment on my blog. The blogger said that they'd seen one of my articles and turned into a cloze test question in an exercise book of theirs. My article gave the link for my blog, and they'd looked it up, thinking it might have a joke and was surprised to find that it was not a joke, but a real and active blog. I was so surprised that the article I wrote when I was 6 years old managed to be turned into a cloze question - after all, I was just writing about normal things that happened to me. I was busy with school at the time, so I wasn't able to go back to China to sort out the copyright issues, but as soon I went back, I contacted the publishers. After a lot of hassle, I managed to sort out the copyright issues - my first copyright issue.

I've spent so many happy years with 21st Century English, and I think it's fair to say I've grown up with it! I feel very honored to have been given the chance to write for 21st Century English, the English newspaper I've been reading since I was 6 years old. It's offered me so many opportunities, new experiences, but most of all, it was thoroughly fun and enjoyable. So, happy 35th birthday!

The author currently receives education in the Henrietta Barnett School,UK.
For most of my life, I was profoundly fascinated by both the Chinese culture and the Chinese glorious history. Consequently, I was aching for an opportunity to quench my thirst for knowledge about China with a chance to visit it and interact with its people.

My dream of visiting China was put on the back burner for few years as I left Egypt to establish my new home in Canada. Nevertheless, I couldn't help myself but to scan all venues of the media in search for information about my dream destination, China.

The biased negative perceptions of the Western media with regard to China and the Chinese people didn't succeed in altering my deep respect and admiration of the Chinese people.

After few years of procrastination and hesitation, in 2003, I fulfilled my dream and came to China.

Being an avid reader with an eternally inquisitive mind, I searched for English newspapers to satisfy my curiosity. Fortunately for me, I came across a copy of the China Daily newspaper. I was pleasantly surprised by its uncomplicated coverage of the current affairs in China and internationally.

After reading few issues of China Daily, I discovered that Western newspapers' tendency to portray China as a hostile environment, and the Chinese people as aggressive individuals, is based upon misconceptions and motivated by political ideologies.

From reading China Daily, I came to the conclusion that Chinese people are friendly, hospitable and peace-loving human beings. My conclusion about the nature and essence of being Chinese was corroborated by having the opportunities to interact with them and know them closely.

For certain, Chinese have different customs, traditions and trains of thoughts that are different from their Western counterparts. However, portraying them as being aggressive by the Western media is nothing but a biased misrepresentation. In my more than 12 years of living among them, I found no evidence to support the claim of the Western media.

For certain, China Daily helped me to grasp the essence of being Chinese. That prompted me to seize every opportunity to rectify the injustice inflected upon China and the Chinese people through misrepresentation of their nature and their attributes by the venues of the Western media.

Whenever I had the chance, I wrote articles to the English newspapers, including China Daily, to defend it against biased views of the Western media

Finally, on your 35 years of enlightening people worldwide about China and the nature of the Chinese people, I like to extend my best wishes of a happy anniversary. May you prosper and expand to keep us informed for many years to come.

I, also, wish to express my thanks for making my stay in China enjoyable through reading your daily English issues.

If you also want to share with us your story with China Daily, please check the activity information: China Daily, 35 years on: your memories.
I first discovered China Daily a few years ago. It was my first visit to China, and I was waiting for my tour guide to arrive. I sat down in the lobby of the St. Regis hotel in Beijing, and picked up an English-written newspaper with the title (in its famous capital white and blue letters) CHINA DAILY.

I opened the newspaper, and from that day on, in every hotel I visited, when the staff asked me, "Would you like a newspaper delivered to your room?" I would always answer, "Do you have China Daily?" And if they said no, there would be no newspaper in my room the next morning.

Why had I immediately taken a liking to China Daily after just one reading of it? I think that China Daily is a very influential newspaper for many reasons.

First of all, China Daily writes about both Western and Chinese culture, so both sides of the world can learn something about their cultural traditions. An example to support this reason is an article I read just the other day: When the Bard met his Chinese Match. This article is about how both China and the UK will honor their most famous playwrights with a series of events this year. The playwrights are, William Shakespeare and Tang Xianzu. Both the wonderful playwrights died in 1616, and China Daily wrote an article about the events to honor these writers this year. The newspaper managed to compare two influential playwrights from China and the UK.
The picture is taken when she was in Shanxi with China Daily in the program "Shanxi in the eyes of foreigners" on May last year. [Photo/China Daily]

My acquaintance with China Daily started a couple of years ago when I was doing my internship with "The World of Chinese" magazine in Beijing, and was responsible for writing and uploading blogs onto the website. At that time, I was a newbie in the media world.

My job was about gathering information from various media outlets focusing on China and compiling it into blogs. What I did excited me a lot, and the biggest source where I got most of the information from was China Daily. It was a trustworthy news giant where you would expect to find any timely information, local and global news, opinion, photos, polls etc.

I was so impressed by the quality of the material, its openness to the audience and interest in attracting new authors, that, being an English author myself, I felt like I needed to make my contribution to the newspaper. So, here my China Daily story began.

My first work was published in 2014 and was titled "Meeting the master" in their section "My China Story" which welcomed foreign authors to share their story on China. It was published a couple of months later after I had submitted it and was featured on State Administration of Foreign Experts Affairs official website as well. That was a surprise for me because I didn't expect much success.

The article was about my Chinese martial arts master whom I had been lucky to know some five years ago when I had been working as an interpreter. That same year I started my blog on China Daily Forum platform and met other nice authors and the managers of the platform.

The author, Anastasia Sukhoretskaya poses a photo in Shanxi on May last year. [Photo taken by courtesy of Stephanie Tay provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

For me, the China Daily Blog platform provided the opportunity to share with the readers the topics I was interested in myself: culture, traveling, life in China, interviews with interesting people in China that I did for "International Talent" magazine etc. I took part in the China Daily blog competition and won second place. More than that, a couple of meet-ups were organized last summer that brought together both bloggers and readers.

Last autumn I interviewed Mr. Raymond Zhou, who is a columnist and writer with China Daily. He is a famous movie critic and it was such a pleasure to talk with him about Chinese, American and Russian movies. He gave me an insight into what it's like to be a movie critic. Personally, I admire his style in reviews and articles. His language is very precise and coherent.

To continue, my two-year cooperation with China Daily has been quite fruitful. Last year I was chosen as one of the participants for a trip "Shanxi in the eyes of foreigners", and again, my articles appeared on the China Daily website.

At the end I would say, maybe no other media helped me develop professional qualities needed for a writer, enriched my knowledge about China and brought so many new interesting friends into my life, as China Daily.

It has been in the media arena for 35 years, broadcasting China news to the world and bringing two poles together, taking its firm place among other media giants.

We would sincerely hope that it would broaden its international influence and get more representatives in other countries, for example, Russia; give opportunity to young journalists to showcase their abilities and continue to serve locally and internationally.

If you also want to share with us your story with China Daily, please join us and click China Daily,35 years on: your memories.
Photo provided to China Daily

I am from Sri Lanka, a country that was under the British empire for 150 years and we have English everywhere in our homeland. When I came to China five years ago, everything around me was in Chinese. My eyes were tired of seeing the complex letters around me; however I saw an English newspaper in our dormitory reception area and it was a cool experience for me. It was China Daily. I turned several pages and suddenly found an English window into this unknown and to-be-explored nation. It was the beginning of my friendship with China Daily.

And gradually I got to know that China Daily has a web portal and also a blog section, which allows us to contribute our ideas. I started writing blogs on it and slowly built a group of readers who keep in touch with me on WeChat and via private message on the platform. It does not imply that I did not encounter unfriendly comments and messages. A few guys threw me bad comments and messages. However, I did not respond to them at all. Anyway, collectively it is very pleasant experience, every minute I spend on this newspaper and also website is interesting. I visit the website everyday and occasionally read the newspaper from the dormitory office, when I go there.

China Daily is like a friend who stays with me in every mood in my life. If I am happy, I can write a blog and if I am upset, I can enjoy what others have said and let my feelings go away. I have read other bloggersarticles on the 35th anniversary. They also expressed their strong attachment to the paper. Perhaps this looks odd for a stranger, however, people who read and stay in touch with China daily Daily know better. We all love China Daily and we stay in touch every day.

Good Luck my friend. It is 35 years. You are a big man now.

The original blog is at: http://blog.chinadaily.com.cn/blog-1457555-35597.html
The first time I saw China Daily was when I was in high school. Influenced by our English teacher, I often bought China Daily newspaper from a news stall. But as a high school student, it was difficult for me to thoroughly understand the meaning of the news. Though difficult, I still try my best to read through a whole page and check the words I don't know in the dictionary. During that time, I learned much more vocabulary outside of class. And also during that time, I formed the habit of reading China Daily newspaper often.

I have to say, due to my habit, my knowledge has become rich and my horizons have widened. In China Daily, I can learn about cultures, customs and news all over the world without traveling there in person.

My most favorite section is the Cultural section. I like discovering the differences between Chinese culture with other nations. What do other people in other nations eat every day? Do they eat the same food that we Chinese people eat every day? What kind of festivals do they celebrate? All the above questions will arouse my desire to seek knowledge. So China Daily becomes the first choice for me. I have read many newspapers like China Daily, but I do prefer to reading China Daily; maybe it is because the first impression is the strongest. China Daily has become one part of my life; I read it on the website, on China Daily's official WeChat accounts and also read the traditional newspaper.

Now I am working for a foreign company in Beijing, and I never want to give up my habit of reading China Daily. I love China Daily!!
China's administrative departments of health, business and cyberspace have launched a joint nationwide campaign to solve the issue of over-exaggerated online promotion of certain hospitals or medical treatments.

The death of a college student in Shaanxi province, Northwest China, on April 13 stirred wide debate about the responsibility of search engines, hospital outsourcing and the watchdogs. The student went to a subcontracted department of a public hospital in Beijing for an experimental treatment, which he had found on Baidu, China's largest search engine, to treat his cancer.

The affiliated center at the armed police hospital was subcontracted to people employed by an investment company funded by investors from Putian, Fujian province in Southeast China, the hometown of a large number of private hospital owners. It turns out the Putian businesspeople pay Baidu huge amounts of money every year to promote their hospitals in its search results, while the latter did not closely examine the clinics' true qualifications and medical care capabilities. Baidu's paid listing system ranks hospitals according to their amount of advertising they pay for.

The authorities are expected to track down on illegal online hospital promotions according to the clues on the internet and investigate the problematic hospitals.

The' names of the hospitals found to have engaged in such practices will be exposed and registered in the social credit system. The people subcontracting public hospitals' departments in violation of regulations will be held accountable for the losses they incur according to law.
File photo of Taiwan DPP chair Tsai Ing-wen.

With two weeks to go before Tsai Ying-wen delivers her inaugural speech as the new leader of Taiwan, it looks increasingly clear that the current impasse between the Chinese mainland and the new caretakers in the island will not end any time soon.

A dose of political realism is thus critical for crisis prevention at such a tricky juncture.

Through an article published in People's Daily, the central authorities reiterated that not adhering to the 1992 Consensus, in which it was agreed both sides of the Straits belong to one China, constitutes sabotaging the common political foundation for cross-Straits ties.

Yet that is precisely what Tsai, as head of the independence-minded Democratic Progressive Party, has been trying to skirt around. She did say she would prefer preserving the status quo. But she has been dodging inquiries about her position regarding the 1992 Consensus, which the DPP has vehemently opposed.

The mainland, on the other hand, has been unequivocal, warning that without the consensus the status quo will not exist.

To the mainland, one China is the bottom line. Which is a fait accompli in both international law as well as domestic laws in the mainland and Taiwan.

It may be difficult for Tsai to officially endorse the consensus in a policy statement that will be closely inspected by her party. Not only because she can't afford being identified as "pro-mainland" within her own party, but also because her party is already on an all-out offensive against everything Kuomintang. The consensus, as a core Kuomintang legacy, is a thorn in the DPP's side.

Openly denying it, however, is obviously a non-option, because that will result in withering cross-Straits economic and trade ties, renew military tensions, and put an end to the hard-earned "diplomatic truce".

DPP sources close to Tsai have indicated that Tsai will make no mention of the 1992 Consensus in her May 20 inauguration speech. Playing word games may save her from receiving an immediate, fierce backlash that day. But she can't count on being ambiguous indefinitely.

Even if not in her inaugural speech, Tsai must come up with an answer acceptable to the mainland. Because, as the mainland said, it is indispensable if the status quo is to continue.

The anticipated Ice Age for bilateral ties and subsequent "cold peace" would be best-case scenarios should the current goodwill come to an end.
Republican US presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks as (L-R) his daughter Ivanka, his son Eric and Eric's wife Lara Yunaska (R) look on during a campaign victory party after rival candidate Senator Ted Cruz dropped out of the race for the Republican presidential nomination following the results of the Indiana state primary, at Trump Tower in Manhattan, New York, US, May 3, 2016. [Photo/Agencies]

US PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE DONALD TRUMP vowed to unite the Republican Party after his landslide victory in Indiana, which all but confirmed him as the party's nominee. Beijing Times commented on Thursday:

Trump's latest triumph almost certainly sets the stage for this presumptive nominee to face off against Hillary Clinton, the likely Democratic nominee.

This is interesting as it will be a man and a woman competing for the first time for the US presidency.

Both of them are familiar to the rank-and-file voters as television celebrities, as well as controversial presidential candidates.

The two camps have been busy trading barbs with Trump accusing Clinton of "telling lies" and Clinton calling Trump "a loose cannon".

However, Trump has a natural advantage, his inflammatory rhetoric, which led to him being called "crazy" by other candidates, is something new to US voters and has contributed to his popularity. And the New York real estate mogul is appealing to people's emotions rather than presenting policies, which could be used against him.

He has also been exploiting the gender card by calling Clinton "weak" and presenting himself as "strong", and engaging in a character assassination against Clinton claiming she cannot be trusted, which is likely to damage Clinton in the eyes of some undecided voters.

However, it is noteworthy that many voters seem afraid of both candidates and a recent poll suggests more than 40 percent of voters are still struggling to make a choice.
A patient weeps in front of the Second Hospital of the Beijing Armed Police Corps on Wednesday. Wang Zhuangfei / China Daily

THERE HAS BEEN A PUBLIC OUTCRY over public hospitals subcontracting their departments to unqualified "medical staff" after the death of college student Wei Zexi, who was charged for an expensive experimental treatment at a subcontracted department of a public hospital in Beijing. Beijing Youth Daily on Thursday made the following comments:

After the scandal happened, the Beijing health authorities said they welcomed complaints from residents about the subcontracting of departments by public hospitals.

By doing so, the authorities are trying to recover the public trust that they have lost.

But merely welcoming such complaints is far from enough. They need to strengthen regulation over hospital subcontracting too, because it is difficult for residents or patients to get all the information they need to make an informed decision on subcontracted treatments.

It has long been a practice among public hospitals to subcontract departments for profit; these subcontracted departments enjoy the reputation of the public hospitals but many actually employ unqualified staff and give patients "treatments" that are not as effective as promoted or have already been discredited. This is cheating the patients, because they visit these departments, thinking they are part of the hospital.

The law has long forbidden public hospitals from subcontracting departments, and a regulation of the State Council, China's Cabinet, last July repeated the ban. But some public hospitals have not stopped such practice. Some hospitals related to the army and armed police, especially, subcontract their departments, because they are not subject to the regulations covering civil medical facilities. But these hospitals also profit from the market.

Wei's death has finally prompted the health authorities to pay more attention to the practice of subcontracting by hospitals. But disciplinary penalties are far from enough; some subcontracted departments cheat patients for money and their illegal deeds should be investigated. That requires the police and the judiciary to seek out and punish those seeking to illegally profit from people's health.
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]

On Oct 29, 2015, the Arbitral Tribunal constituted under Annex VII to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea in the arbitration instituted by the Philippines against China rendered its award on jurisdiction and admissibility. The tribunal concluded that it does have jurisdiction over the matters raised in seven of the Philippines' claims.

On Oct 30, the Chinese Foreign Ministry issued a statement saying the award is null and void, and that it has no binding effect on China. Subsequently, the Chinese government reiterated that it will neither participate in nor accept the arbitration initiated by the Philippines.

It is important to note how the tribunal reached the conclusion. Let us analyze the award from the evidence perspective, which clearly shows what the arbitrators were concerned with and what their contemplation and reasoning yielded.

First, a general problem of evidence in the arbitral proceedings is that all the evidence was produced by the Philippines unilaterally. International tribunals' fact-finding process is different from national ones, that is to say, what kind of evidence a tribunal can get depends on the willingness of the parties. It is up to the parties to produce whatever evidence they consider useful to their claims.

A party is not obliged to provide anything adverse to its claims to the adjudicative body. In the proceedings in question, the Philippines submitted to the tribunal piles of documents, files, figures and maps, which added up to 3,700 pages, to justify its claims. The five arbitrators would not have been able to access, interpret and evaluate this huge pile of material unilaterally produced by the Philippines in a limited period of time.

Second, there were other specific problems of evidence in the arbitral proceedings, one of which was the irrelevant set of evidence presented by the Philippines. The tribunal examined four Notes Verbales as evidence. They included China's two Notes Verbales, Nos CML/17/2009 and CML/18/2009 of May 2009, addressed to the UN secretary-general, and their contents were the same.

The other two were the Notes Verbales, Nos 000228 and CML/8/2011, from the Philippines and China to the UN secretary-general. The tribunal ignored the backgrounds of these Notes Verbales, which were very complicated.

Take Notes Verbales Nos CML/17/2009 and CML/18/2009 for example. Malaysia and Vietnam issued a joint submission to the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf regarding the outer limits of the continental shelf beyond 200 nautical miles on May 6, 2009. Vietnam issued a separate submission to the same commission on the same issue the next day. China presented its position to the UN secretary-general on May 7, 2009. That is the background of the two Notes Verbales.




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The first Boeing B787 airplane in China lands on White Cloud Airport in Guangzhou, on June 2, 2013. [Photo/VCG]

China's post-80s and 90s have surpassed the 70s to become the major force of first-class and business-class passengers, and the number is still growing, according to the first season report issued by Ctrip on Wednesday.

The report shows that among these two kinds of seats takers, those born in 80s account for 28 percent of the total seat, over that of the 70s, which is 27 percent.

The post-90s generation, though making up only 9 percent of the total number, sees a steady slow rise from 2014's 6 percent and 2015's 7.5 percent.

As to the gender distribution, the report shows that first-class male passengers exceed that of the opposite sex by 40 percent, making up over two-thirds of the total number.

It is notable, however, that the figures might vary taking into consideration data from all the airlines. The result from a 2014 survey done by Guangzhou Daily, for example, shows that post-80s females, aged between 25 and 35, take 35.94 percent of the first and business class, while their male peers make up only 17.36 percent.

The younger trend taking place in China, as some industry experts analyze, results primarily from the growing number of post-80s replenishing executive and managerial positions in the society.

Another contributing factor is that airline companies are introducing special offers for hot routes between major cities, namely, Beijing, Guangzhou, Shanghai and Chengdu.

Take June 6 flight of FM9018, special offer of first class is 1,300 RMB (about $199), only slightly higher than the full price of economic class, and a 66 percent discount of the full price of first class.

Changes behind the seat takers and the more affordable prices, as airline leaders observe, also reflect the strategic adjustments resounding the nation's curb on three public consumptions.

"It was a rigid demand for most first-class and business-class passengers, as the price was not a problem," a domestic airline marketing department officer told First Financial Daily. He said that now airlines are trying to promote "value first-class seats" to compete for such a group.

Budget airlines are also joining traditional airlines to earn a piece of the pie. As Spring Airlines CEO Wang Zhenghua said, the company has seen a continuous rise of "economic business-class" seats.

"Economic business class" offers passengers an in-between choice, with seats 20-40 percent more spacious than economic class, and the price 70-90 percent of the full price.
Voters cast their votes in a pub being used as a polling station in west London, Britain May 5, 2016. [Photo/Agencies]

LONDON - Millions of people are voting across Britain in what is being called Super Thursday. When the first results start to flow in some time after midnight, it will give the earliest indications on whether the political landscape is likely to change in the country.

Thursday's elections are the first big test for main opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn since his election last year as leader of the Labour Party.

Elections are taking place for the Scottish Parliament, the National Assembly for Wales and the Northern Ireland Assembly, as well as for directly elected mayors in London and several other cities.

Directly-elected police and crime commissioners are also up for election on Thursday in England and Wales, as well as councilors in around 140 towns and cities. Two House of Commons seats are also being contested.

London will be seen as a focal point for political watchers and commentators with Conservative Boris Johnson's eight-year rule coming to an end.

The battle for London is likely to be between Conservative Zac Goldsmith and Labour's Sadiq Khan. There are 10 other candidates in the race for London, but the latest polls has given Labour the lead.

Londoners will also be voting Thursday for members to serve on the London Assembly, the 25-strong body that keeps a watch on the mayor. Currently the assembly is made up of 12 Labour, nine Conservatives, two Greens and two Liberal Democrats members.

In Scotland, the Scottish National Party (SNP) is in control with a single-digit majority over the combined opposition benches at Holyrood. In 2011 it won 69 seats, followed by Labour with 37, Conservatives with 15 and the Liberal Democrats 8.

The power base in Wales is finely balanced, with Labour as the largest party holding 30 of the 60 seats in the Cardiff assembly. The Conservatives have 14 seats, Plaid Cymru 11 and the Liberal Democrats 5. Nigel Farage's UK Independence Party (UKIP) is predicting it will win its first seats in the assembly.

More than 270 candidates are competing for the 108 seats in the Northern Ireland Assembly.
Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu speaks during a news conference at his ruling AK Party headquarters in Ankara, Turkey May 5, 2016. [Photo/Agencies]

ANKARA - Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu declared Thursday that he will not seek mandate at an extraordinary congress on May 22 when Turkey's ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) will choose a new party leader and prime minister.

"I have no sense of failure or regrets in taking this decision... The change of chairs is more proper. I don't want to run as candidate at the congress," Davutoglu said at a press conference after holding an extraordinary Central Executive Board (MYK) meeting.

Davutoglu said he would not consider being a candidate unless there is a consensus, adding that his relationship of loyalty with the President Recep Tayyip Erdogan would continue.

"Congratulations. It is the prime minister's own decision," Erdogan told reporters in his first comment about Davutoglu's decision.

The decision to replace the prime minister came after a meeting of Davutoglu and President Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday after weeks of tension between the two statesmen.

"If necessary, I would turn down any position that many may think a mortal could not leave," Davutoglu told lawmakers on Tuesday, triggering speculation that he was ready to leave his position due to disagreement with Erdogan, the founding leader of the AKP.

The AKP's Central Decision and Executive Board's decision come after Davutoglu, who took over the party chairmanship after Erdogan was elected as president in 2014, has recently reshuffled around 15 provincial and district party heads.

Erdogan has reportedly been seeking an executive presidency, which did not have Davutoglu's full support. Under the current parliamentary system, the presidency is mostly a symbolic institution.

Observers say Davutoglu's upcoming ouster is likely to pave the way for a new prime minister who will back Erdogan's plan of changing the constitution and bringing an executive presidency.
NEW DELHI - Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is likely to visit Iran later this month in a bid to spruce up bilateral ties with the West Asia nation.

However, the dates for Modi's visit have not yet been finalised, Indian External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Vikas Swarup has said.

"The Prime Minister had been extended an invitation by President (Hassan) Rouhani when the two had met in Ufa (Russia). He had accepted the invitation in principle. We are currently in the process of working with our Iranian counterparts to work out the suitable dates," he told the media Thursday.

He added: "We share a very close, historical and civilisational friendship with Iran, a relationship which is in existance for a long period of time."

Iran has reportedly said that it can be a "reliable partner" for India's energy needs and New Delhi has lined up 20 billion U.S. dollars investment in oil and gas, petrochemical and fertiliser projects in that country.
(Photo : Getty Images) China and Russia will conduct their first computer-assisted anti-missile drill later this month.

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China and Russia will hold their first computer-assisted anti-missile drill test later this month at a Russian military research center, Chinese state media said on Thursday.



The anti-missile drill is expected to help the militaries of both countries to acquaint themselves with their respective command structures and data transmission processes.



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Russian Defence Minister said that drill would help militaries of China and Russia to provide thorough protection from accidental or provocative ballistic or cruise missile attacks.



Both countries have stated that this drill is not targeted against any third party or any specific country



However, the announcement of the drill is conspicuously timed ahead of high-level talks between the U.S. and South Korea's defence ministry next week. The main agenda of the defence talk is to work out a plan to deal with possible nuclear and missile threats from North Korea and discuss the possible deployment of THAAD missile to South Korea.



Last week, foreign ministries of China and Russia jointly protested against the deployment of THAAD anti-missile system in South Korea. China and Russia claim that such a move will not only threaten equilibrium in the Korean peninsula but also poses a security threat to both countries.



South Korea and the U.S. have been mulling action against North Korea after it defiantly went ahead with nuclear and missile tests earlier this year. In response, the United Nations (UN) has imposed fresh sanctions against North Korea, which was backed by almost all countries including China.



Experts are confident that despite Beijing's vehement protest against the deployment of the THAAD missile, it will continue to implement UN sanctions against North Korea.



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Tagschina, Russia, South Korea, THAAD missile system, North Korea
(Photo : Getty Images) China has accused the Philippines of ignoring previous treaties that have already fixed the latter's boundaries in the South China Sea

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A Chinese high-ranking official has dismissed the Philippines' claims to the South China Sea saying previous international treaties have already delineated Manila's boundaries in the disputed waters.



Ouyang Yujing, director-general of the Chinese Foreign Ministry's department of boundary and ocean affairs, said the 1898, 1900, and 1930 international treaties have already established Manila's boundaries in the South China Sea.



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The official said that based on the earlier treaties, the Spratly group of islands and Scarborough Shoal clearly belong to China.



Yujing, at a press conference on Friday, said Beijing has already studied and discussed the Philippines' case and has decided not to participate in the court proceedings.



Chinese sovereignty



He said the case was ultimately about China's sovereignty and maritime demarcation, adding that Beijing has all the right to refuse participation.



Yujing emphasized that the Philippines has denied the previous treaties and has been 'illegally occupying' Chinese-claimed islands.



Beijing is said to be warming up to the press more to explain its side of the South China Sea issue in anticipation of a Hague court ruling on the case in a few weeks.



The Philippines filed a case before the Permanent Court of Arbitration in Hague last year against China's claims in the South China Sea.



UNCLOS



Tensions in the South China Sea region is expected to heighten as the ruling is widely expected to go against Beijing.



China has reiterated that it does not recognize the court's jurisdiction and will refuse to abide by the ruling of the court - despite the fact that Beijing is a signatory of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).



China is laying claim to almost the entirety of the South China Sea, an important international waterway in which $5 trillion worth of ship-borne trade passes through each year.



The Philippines, Vietnam, Brunei, Malaysia, and Taiwan have overlapping claims.



China's rapid expansion of artificial islands and its construction of outposts and airports in disputed territories in the South China Sea as well as the consequential US' freedom of navigation operations have raised tensions.



The Group of Seven (G7) economies have warned China about its reclamation activities in the region saying any provocation must be immediately stopped.



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Tagsunclos, Scarborough Shoal, Spratly group of islands, South China Sea, china
Burj Khalifa, the world's tallest building at 830 meters, is located in Dubai

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The United Arab Emirates is attempting a Wonder of the World feat of engineering by trying to build a man-made mountain probably thousands of meters tall to bring more rain to its parched lands.



The UAE has approached scientists of the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) and the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), both based in Colorado in the United States, to make a detailed modeling study of this jaw dropping project. UCAR received $400,000 in 2015 to advance the study.



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Scientists from both institutions are looking at potential heights for the man-made mountain and different locations, among other needed data. When the research gets government approval, an engineering company will be tasked to determine if building the mountain is feasible at all.



The reasons for the UAE wanting more rain is obvious when one knows the realities facing citizens of this country that is home to the tallest building in the world, the Burj Khalifa.



In summer, temperatures in Dubai, the capital of the UAE, reach 45 C (113 F) for days with humidity averaging over 90%. The sea temperature can hit 37 C (99 F). The highest recorded temperature in Dubai is 52.1 C (126 F). The average rainfall is only 10 mm (0.4 inches) of rain that generally falls on just two days in January. And climate change is making things a lot worse.



"What we are looking at is basically evaluating the effects on weather through the type of mountain, how high it should be and how the slopes should be," said NCAR scientist Roelof Bruintjes, lead researcher on the project.



"We will have a report of the first phase this summer as an initial step."



Bruintjes explained the project by saying mountains make air rise and create clouds that can be seeded to produce rainfall. In nature, a mountain can help cause rainfall because its presence alters winds and causes winds to lift air containing evaporation upward, which promotes cloud formation. Those clouds can be seeded to stimulate precipitation.



This project is daunting to say the least.



"Building a mountain isn't a simple thing," said Bruintjes.



UCAR is a nonprofit consortium of over 100 colleges and universities providing research and training in the atmospheric and related sciences. UCAR manages NCAR, a US federally funded research and development center.



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TagsUnited Arab Emirates, University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, National Center for Atmospheric Research, Dubai, Burj Khalifa, Roelof Bruintjes
(Photo : Kevin Frayer/Getty Images) BEIJING, CHINA - APRIL 02: A young orphaned Chinese girl lays on a changing table at a foster care center on April 2, 2014 in Beijing, China. China's orphanages and foster homes used to be filled with healthy girls, reflecting the country's one-child policy and its preference for sons. Now the vast majority of orphans are sick or disabled. China says it has 576,000 orphans in its child welfare system though outside groups put the number at closer to a million. The parents who abandon them either cannot afford treatment or feel an inability to cope with raising a child who has special needs. In many cases an unwanted baby is never registered so the parents can skirt the one-child policy if they try for another.

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A Chinese couple has been detained by police on account of abandoning their young daughter, reports say.



Police from Nanjing's Xuanwu district, in eastern China's Jiangsu province, have caught and detained the parents of a 2-year-old girl who was found walking alone in the streets, reports Guancha.cn. Police announced that the child was found through a post in their Weibo account Sunday night.



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According to the post, the young girl was brought by police to a nearby police station. Three days later, police were able to locate her parents, and through the use of DNA testing confirmed that they were indeed her father and mother.



The father, a man in his early 30s, said that they were willing to take her back into their custody, explaining that they, him and his wife, both regretted the decision to abandon the poor child. They said that they decided to leave her behind as it became difficult for them to raise a family of four children.



The girl is the youngest of four kids.



Police have arrested the couple after confirming their identity. The mother is currently out on bail, while the father is still under police custody. The young girl, on the other hand, is now under the care of a local welfare center.



Reckless Abandon



In another part of China, three young boys have been abandoned by their mother who suddenly disappeared without a warning nor a trace.



The three boys, a group of triplets aged four, were reportedly left by their mom named Han Xinghua, 27, last December. They are currently traveling around China to search for her. Of course, they are not without an adult companion in the form of their father, a man named Huang.



These young boys were last seen in Shenzhen, wearing matching uniforms while handing out missing persons flyers containing details regarding their mom. According to the flyers, their parents didn't fight before Han left, and that she took her daughter with her.



Although some were amused by their cheerful demeanor, pedestrians couldn't help but feel sad for the children.



China's criminal law states that those found guilty of abandoning their children will be sentenced to up to five years' time in jail, reports the South China Morning Post.



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TagsNanjing, Xuanwu, Jiangsu province, abandon, Han Xinghua, Shenzhen
Atheists sue U.S. House of Representatives chaplain on National Day of Prayer 06 May, 2016 by Gregory Tomlin , |

WASHINGTON (Christian Examiner)  On the same day many Americans of different faiths were praying  on the National Day of Prayer May 5  the Freedom from Religion Foundation was filing a lawsuit against U.S. House of Representatives Chaplain Patrick Conroy.

According to the lawsuit, Father Conroy, a Jesuit Catholic priest, would not allow FFRF's Co-President Dan Barker, a former minister who now professes atheism, to offer a "secular" invocation before the House. Barker had been invited in February 2015 to offer the invocation by Rep. Mark Pocan, who represents the district of Madison, Wisconsin.

Almost a year later (in January 2016), Conroy's office notified Barker he could not deliver the invocation because the chaplain's office requires guest chaplains to be ordained and submit an ordination certificate and the content of their prayer, which must at least reference a "higher power."

Conroy also noted, the filing said, that Barker had renounced his father and was no longer a "true minister of the gospel" entitled to appear before Congress.

Barker, however, insists that his ordination certificate  received at the onset of his 19 years in ministry for a religion to which he no longer adheres  is still valid. He also submitted at the time a prayer which, according to the suit, referred to "We, the People of the United States" as the only "higher power."

The lawsuit claims that Conroy "has imposed requirements for guest chaplains that discriminate against the nonreligious and minority religions, and has explicitly refused to allow Plaintiff Dan Barker, who actually met the requirements, to serves as guest chaplain because Barker is nonreligious."

The filing also claims that Barker believes only in the power of reason, rather than "the supernatural," and "there is no governing entity behind Barker's deeply and sincerely held beliefs that issues ordinations."

Other members of the House are also included in the lawsuit, as is Speaker of the House Paul Ryan. Barker alleges discrimination against "non-believers" because no non-believer has ever been invited to offer an invocation. Non-believers, he claims, "constitute one-fourth of the U.S. population."

That figure, however, is grossly overstated.

According to the latest Pew Research Center Religious Landscape Survey, 22.8 percent of Americans classified themselves as "religiously unaffiliated" or, in other words, perhaps religious but unattached to a denomination or historic religion. Within that segment, only 3.1 percent classified themselves as atheists, while another 4 percent claimed to be "agnostic."

Still, FFRF's complaint alleges that 97 percent of the prayers over the past 15 years have been offered only by Christian ministers, while 2.7 percent were offered by Jewish rabbis and less than one-half a percent were offered by Muslim or Hindu religious leaders.

The chaplain's office for the U.S. House coordinates religious services for House members who adhere to a variety of religions. A schedule of House religious services reveals that Anglican, Baptist, Catholic, Christian Science, Episcopal, Greek Orthodox, Lutheran, Methodist, Non-denominational, Orthodox, Presbyterian, Quaker, Reformed and Seventh-Day Adventist services are coordinated on a regular basis. Non-Christian services, including, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist and Mormon services, are also provided. The chaplain's office does not provide services for "non-believers" who, according to the definition of non-belief, do not have religious services.

Barker alleges in the complaint that Conroy is violating his First Amendment rights, the Establishment Clause of the U.S. Constitution and Article VI, Section III of the Constitution, which prohibits a religious test for public office holders or public trusts.

Congress first elected a chaplain in 1789 and convened each day's business with a prayer, though some of the nation's founders, including James Madison, questioned the constitutionality of the practice. The chaplaincy has been challenged by secularists and atheists on numerous occasions, but the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the practice of retaining chaplains for the legislature in Marsh v. Chambers in 1983.

In the case, Chief Justice Warren Burger argued that chaplaincy was "simply a tolerable acknowledgment of beliefs widely held among the people of this country."

In 2014, the high court also upheld prayers of invocation at legislative or city council meetings in Town of Greece, N.Y. v. Galloway, primarily because the town "at no point excluded or denied an opportunity to a would-be prayer giver" (minister, layperson, or atheist) to offer a prayer.

It is on that basis that Barker has demanded the opportunity to pray.

The timing of the lawsuit filed by FFRF was also not coincidental. According to the filing, the group claims it took "satisfaction in filing this lawsuit on the National Day of Prayer."

The National Day of Prayer was enacted by Congress at the encouragement of evangelist Billy Graham in 1952. Each year, the president issues an official proclamation encouraging Americans to pray for their country. FFRF claims the law is unconstitutional.

In this year's presidential proclamation, President Barack Obama said prayer sustains Americans of all walks of life "through great uncertainty and moments of sorrow" and "allows us an outlet for introspection, and for expressing our hopes, desires and fears."

"It offers strength in the face of hardship, and redemption when we falter. Our country was founded on the idea of religious freedom, and we have long upheld the belief that how we pray and whether we pray are matters reserved for an individual's own conscience," Obama said. "On [the] National Day of Prayer, we rededicate ourselves to extending this freedom to all people."
COMMENTARY: A conservative millennial's guide to surviving the 2016 election 05 May, 2016 by Caleb Parke , |

NEW YORK (Christian Examiner)  We've all been there  a newly formed friendship quickly crumbles at the mention of the 2016 election.

As a conservative living in New York City, when someone asks the innocent question, "So who are you voting for?" I give my humble, unwanted answer, but it inevitably ends in anger and frustration.

How could I be such a hater? So bigoted? Close-minded? (And on and on.)

This election year has been rough for all of us  and we've all failed miserably in some way.

We may disagree about the future of America and think it can't get any crazier, but our country has been through much worse.

In 1804 Vice President Aaron Burr fatally shot long-time political opponent Alexander Hamilton in a duel.

Or that the election in 1864 occurred right after 620,000 individuals were killed in the Civil War and an entire half of the country had to put together the pieces of their lives.

I've compiled a few helpful tips on how to survive this election.

1. Keep relationships over politics.

Your family and friends are worth more than your opinions.

Don't unfriend someone on Facebook because of who they're supporting  unless you're not actually friends, then please unfriend that stranger.

2. Be a good listener.

Sometimes wisdom is best shown with a closed mouth and open ears.

Everyone loves a good listener, and showing you're willing to listen builds relationships and you might learn a thing or two.

Even better is being an informed listener. Do your homework so you can be an active listener and give an answer when asked a question.

3. Call Mom and Dad every day.

It's a commandment in the Bible  hear me out. Obey your parents and, BONUS, it will go well with you and you will enjoy long life on the earth. #goals

There's nothing more important than talking with your parents and getting their input  even on politics. I call my mom and dad at least once a day, ideally. Keep them on the "recent calls" list.

While I have disagreed with my parents at varying levels, it's always helpful to hear their perspective. My dad and I have a code for when we've talked too much politics  we say "NP" meaning "no politics" and if either one of us says NP, it's off the table for the rest of the call. (Feel free to take that one free of charge.)

4. Don't take attacks personally.

When someone posts a negative video about your candidate, it's not an attack on you. Don't be ashamed of your beliefs.

And please don't attack people personally for who they're voting for.

5. Admit when you're wrong.

There are no better words in the English language  better yet, election season  than, "I'm sorry  please forgive me." Seriously.

Also, it's okay if you don't know the exact bill your candidate supported 12 years ago, and that's a great chance for further conversation  after the fact.

6. Don't lose your soul.

Take a step back. Breathe. And ultimately be yourself. Yes, you might get into some heated debates. You might lose friends. You might even do something you regret this election cycle. But that's okay. Learn from it and don't beat yourself up over it. That's the beauty of a democratic republic  it's messy and it requires our participation.

As of today, there aren't any perfect candidates or political parties, so this one is pretty easy in theory, but can be hard in practice.

Be active, let your voice be heard, and do not be ashamed, but remember there is more to life than politics.

True hope and change are found in the Lion of Judah, not the Democratic donkey or the Republican elephant.

7. Rest up and have fun.

While you're at it, drink plenty of water. Nobody wants to talk politics with a boring or sickly tired person.

Get away from it all. Turn off the TV. Shut the laptop. Hang up the phone. Observe Sabbath like it's one of the Ten Commandments.

Don't take yourself too seriously.

Share some smiles and laughter. For example, face swap the candidates like I did on Snapchat.

And eat some Chick-fil-A. That makes everything better.

Caleb Parke is a millenial and a graduate of Grove City College. He freelances as a production assistant for FoxNation.com. Click here to visit his website CalebParke.com. Used with permission.
Republican candidates Ted Cruz and John Kasich dropped out of the presidential race after losses in the Indiana primary on Tuesday.

Cruz's decision came on the same day as the results of the primaries were declared, while Kasich ended his campaign late Wednesday.

Donald Trump won the Indiana primary with 53.3 percent votes, while Cruz trailed at 36.7 percent, followed by Kasich at 7.5 percent.

Cruz finished the race to the Republican nomination with 565 delegates, and Kasich with 153. Trump had maintained his lead in the primaries, and now has the backing of 1,053 delegates.

"American parents and grandparents will watch the fireworks with their kids and will dream of the grandchildren and great-grandchildren to come and wonder how those future generations of Americans will remember what we do not only this summer but in the coming decades," Cruz said in his Tuesday speech after dropping out of the campaign.

"From the beginning I've said that I would continue on as long as there was a viable path to victory. Tonight, I'm sorry to say it appears that path has been foreclosed. Together, we left it all on the field in Indiana."

"I am not suspending our fight to defend the constitution, to defend the Judeo-Christian values that built America," he said.

Kasich was the last Republican candidate to withdraw from the race.

The Ohio governor had earlier faced pressure to step down from the race, with only a small number of delegates supporting him outside his home state.

After the results of Indiana primary, Kasich still wanted to remain in the race until the Republican National Convention. He even posted a Star Wars parody video on Twitter early Wednesday, saying that he was the "only hope" left to defeat Donald Trump and Democratic forerunner Hillary Clinton.

But, he changed his mind when he was at the Columbus airport. According to CNN, he was quoted by a source as saying, "My heart is not in this." He had scheduled a press conference yesterday, but decided to end the campaign with an official statement at 5 pm ET.

"I have always said that the Lord has a purpose for me as he has for everyone," Kasich said. "And as I suspend my campaign today, I have renewed faith, deeper faith, that the Lord will show me the way forward, and fulfill the purpose of my life."
As about 47,000 gatherings were reported to have taken place on Thursday, some 300 Korean Christians also gathered in Fullerton, CA on Thursday evening to commemorate the annual National Day of Prayer and to intercede for the elected officials, schools, families, and laws of the country.

Though the National Day of Prayer (NDOP) has taken place each year since 1952, this was the first to come after the Obergefell v. Hodges ruling that legalized same-sex marriage, and this years NDOP also comes during a time when North Carolinas transgender bathroom law has been the center of controversy.

Forgive this nation for departing from your standard regarding marriage, pastors prayed at the Korean Christian gathering. Help your church to teach biblical family values and let your standards for family be restored in this nation.

Despite the emphasis on the moral decline of the country, many also took a hopeful tone.

At this point in time, many of the dark aspects of our nation are being revealed, said Rev. Paul GiHong Han, the senior pastor of Grace Ministries International. To note, Han was mentioned by the Associated Press last year for saying that same-sex relations are sinful during the NDOP gathering that took place in Washington, D.C.

But as long as there are many people praying for this nation, there is hope, Han said. And thats because God will do the restoring.

Its time to put our lives on the line to pray, he added.

Pastors also prayed for other topics such as the next generation, campus organizations, world missions, healing and unity within the church, people in oppression through crimes such as human trafficking, and others.

Prayers for President Obama, congressmen, state legislators, and members of the Supreme Court were also offered, and a prayer for the successor of the late Justice Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court was also lifted.

A video greeting from Congressman Ed Royce was also featured, during which he encouraged the congregants to pray for those held captive by ISIS and the victims of human trafficking.

Several Korean Christian groups sponsored and hosted this specific gathering, including the Council of Korean Churches in Orange County, Jesus Awakening Movement for America, Korean Christian Council in America, SOON Movement, Holy City Movement, Fire Crusade, and others.

To note, many of these sponsoring and hosting organizations have been involved in organizing numerous previous prayer meetings to pray for the nation. Most recently, they led the rally of Korean Christians during the Azusa Now gathering that took place at the L.A. Memorial Coliseum in early April, and in November, they hosted a gathering called Heal Our Land at the Anaheim Convention Center. Another Heal Our Land prayer gathering is set to take place in October this year, according to the organizers.
Update (May 11): Donald Trump is viewed unfavorably by 67 percent of registered evangelical voters, while Hillary Clinton is viewed unfavorably by 81 percent, according to a new survey by Barna Group. Its full chart is embedded below.

By comparison, in World magazines latest poll of evangelical insiders, 51 percent of the 77 respondents said they would never vote for Trump, while 21 percent said they would vote for him. Only 1 percent said they would vote for Clinton.

Instead, 46 percent told World that they would vote for a third-party candidate, regardless of that candidates chance of winning.

Meanwhile, NBC News took a deep dive through its exit polls and found that white evangelicals lacked a distinctive leader for their cause for the first time in three election cycles.

A plurality of self-identified white evangelicals voted for Trump (40%), while the majority split their votes between Ted Cruz (34%), Marco Rubio (11%), and John ...

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It was one of the greatest disappointments of my young life. My middle-school catechism class teacher, and pastor at the time, explained to us that the makers of the film Road to Perdition (which was shooting in the area) had asked him if they could use our church in the movie.

He told us firmly: hed politely but soundly refused.

To me, an almost-teenager, usually too keen to scoff at the adults (and even the pastors) in my life, this was a huge mistake. Our churcha red-brick, colonial-style building with a towering white steeple, its front door shaded by four wide, white columns, its only flaws a lack of air conditioning and a putridly yellow stained glass windowdeserved to be in a movie. It had been chosen for its stately churchy-ness, its near-perfect adherence to a certain ideal of American church architecture. To reject such recognition made no sense. At least, it made no sense to me.

I understand now that my pastors rejection of the filmmakers offer was based in his understanding that a church is more than just its buildingand that even this building, beautiful as it was, was more than its facade. It was a fragile, temporal, often all-too-easily-exploitable ribcage that housed, Lord willing, a heart fed and sustained by an eternal Spirit. To allow this building to be used for its own sake would deny that beating heart in favor of its earthly cage.

A few decades later, having forgotten that great but fleeting childhood disappointment, I moved to another state for work and started to look for a church. I found one very soon, housed in a brick building less grand than my childhood church, but with much in common: a proud steeple, a tall ceiling that drew the eye upward, wooden ...

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home Faith America not founded as a Christian nation, says Russell Moore, to say so would be 'contrary to the Gospel'

It has long been argued by many that America was founded a Christian nation, but evangelical theologian Russell Moore of the Southern Baptist Convention thinks otherwise.

"If what you mean by that is a nation in which most of the people profess to be Christians, then certainly the United States of America was and is a Christian nation, based on that sociological definition of a Christian nation," he said in a video uploaded on YouTube by conservative group The Gospel Coalition.

He went on the say, however, that that is not what people mean when they use the term "Christian nation."

"What they mean is the idea that God was in covenant with the United States of America in order to bless the United States of America as a special people, as a New Israel, as a group of people covenanted under Christianity," he said. "And the answer to that is clearly, no."

He explained that the founders of the United States were influenced by Christian ideas, including those from the Protestant Reformation as well as The Enlightenment, but they did not found the U.S. as a Christian nation. This is why there is no religious test for those who hold office and why there is a separation between church and state.

"I think the confusion often comes in when people assign to the United States of America a providential place in history that the Bible never assigned it," he said.

He cites as an example people pulling out passages from the Old Testament and applying those directly to the country, such as 2 Chronicles 7:14. But the promises were given to the people of Israel, and they were fulfilled in Jesus.

"So the idea that we're living in a Christian nation in that sense is really a form of theological liberalism," he said. "It assumes that a person or a nation can be a Christian apart from the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit, apart from new birth. That is contrary to the Gospel."

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Liberal activist organization Americans United for Separation of Church and State shares a view similar to Moore. In a brochure titled "Is America a Christian Nation: Religion, Government, and Religious Freedom," the group asks if the founders intended to create a government that gives special recognition to Christianity. Their answer is no.

"The U.S. Constitution is a wholly secular document," the brochure says. "It contains no mention of Christianity or Jesus Christ. In fact, the Constitution refers to religion only twice in the First Amendment, which bars laws 'respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' and in Article VI, which prohibits 'religious tests' for public office. Both of these provisions are evidence that the country was not founded as officially Christian."
home Faith Bridging the gap between Jews and Christians

Many Christians are concerned for Israel, and they make it a point to pray and give support for the country and its people. However, it's not always taken as a positive thing by those who are being prayed for.

"We've definitely seen resistance from the Jewish community," Yael Eckstein, senior vice president of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, told Breaking Israel News. Referring to founder Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein's earlier efforts in delivering Christian support for Israel, she said, "My father was ostracized for the once-radical thought that Christians could become Israel's greatest friend."

Many Christian organizations are faithful supporters of Israel. The Victory Christian Center in Oklahoma, for instance, has a yearly fund-raising event called "A Night to Honor Israel," and also partners with the local synogogue. They also have a weekly group prayer that focuses on Israel and Jews. Its prayer leader, however, feels that their prayers are sometimes not welcomed.

Reconciliation for Israel founder Kellen Davison explained that some Jews try to distance themselves from Christians because they're afraid they will try to "convince them to embrace a non-Jewish belief."

Albert McCarn, Executive Director of the Bnei Yosef Congress of North America, told BIN that they are beginning to understand how offensive it is for Jews that someone would try to convert them or even make them accept Jesus as Messiah.

"It is just as great an offense to us when our Jewish brethren seek to convert our people to Judaism, or to persuade them that Yeshua is not the Messiah," he said.

There are groups that try to bridge the gap between the two Abrahamic religions. Reconciliation with Israel, for instance, has hundreds of people in 20 countries praying for Jews and Israel, and Davison said that the Jews he knows receive these prayers and other efforts rather well.

Last year, a petition titled "To Do the Will of Our Father in Heaven: Toward Partnership between Jews and Christians," signed by a number of Orthodox Rabbis, says that they "seek to do the will of our Father in Heaven by accepting the hand offered to us by our Christian brothers and sisters."

Ecktein, meanwhile, shared that there has been great improvement in the relationship between Jews and Christians.

"The Jewish world is learning that a Christian can love Israel without wanting to missionize or convert Jews," she said. "We are finally at the point where Jewish organizations say they are willing to accept donations from the Fellowship, but we really need to do more."

She did say that there is a need to reach out in return to the Christian Zionists who are supportive of the cause, as "they are a strategic partner in Israel's future, if we are to have a future in the Mideast."
home World Britain's anti-extremism bill could target Christians opposed to gay marriage

The British government is expected to announce a bill on May 18 that would address counter-extremism, but the leader of a Christian organization has warned that Christians who go against gay marriage could be criminalized if the bill becomes law.

"The government talks about tackling extremism and preventing people promoting hatred," Simon Calvert, deputy director of public affairs at The Christian Institute, told Christian Today. "If those words had their ordinary meaning Christians would have nothing to worry about but unfortunately they don't."

Calvert explained that Christians are often labeled as "extremists," and are falsely accused to hatred.

"If you put those two words into a statute," he said, "how can you be sure they won't be interpreted in that same overly broad way to capture innocent Christians simply going about the business of preaching the gospel and declaring the council of God?"

The legislators have been working on the bill for several months, and The Guardian says that the proposed law has undergone "dozens of drafts," with the lawmakers trying to come up with a "legally robust" working definition of "extremism."

According to Breitbart, hate messages against the military and calls for the widespread adoption of Muslim sharia law in the United Kingdom are said to be some of the actions that have been suggested to be criminalized, as reportedly discussed at a Home Office internal meeting. While the details have not yet been disclosed, it is believed that one of the main points of the bill is what is known as EDOs or "Extremism Disruption Orders," a controversial order that would allow police to ask the High Court for power in order to restrict the freedoms and movements of people suspected of being extremists.

Last year, Tory MP Mark Spencer cited gay marriage as an example, as quoted by Breitbart, "Teachers will still be free to express their understanding of the term 'marriage', and their moral opposition to its use in some situations without breaking the new laws. The EDOs, in this case, would apply to a situation where a teacher was specifically teaching that gay marriage is wrong."

Because EDOs are believed to threaten free speech, The Christian Institute allied with human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell Foundation and the National Secular Society in 2015 and launched a campaign group caled Defend Free Speech.

The problem is the government's "overemphasis on what it calls non-violent extremism," Calvert said. "Sadly when the government says it wants to promote British Values it seems to mean gay rights. Trying to force Christians to sign up to LGBT rights won't do anything to stop Islamist terrorists murdering innocent civilians."
home World China continues to tear down Christian churches

In its "Three Rectification and One Demolition" beautification campaign where church buildings or crosses are most often deemed as illegally constructed, China adds one more in its growing list of demolished Christian churches.

According to China Aid, authorities demolished the three-story church building Island Head Christians Church in Wenzhou, Zhejiang on April 13 because the cross was constructed too high. Authorities insisted this was in violation of the communist country's policy on buildings which means it was illegally constructed. Church leaders and members only relented after persistent threats. A church attendant estimated that the value of the building was about 3 million Yuan ($460,000).

According to reports, the country has already demolished more than 2,000 church crosses in Zhejiang province alone. Last March, 50 of these churches were taken down from Wenzhou. These demolished churches are often heavily opposed by Christian members but only to the latter's detriment as with the case in Beitou Church in Zhumadian, Henan.

The church pastor, Li Jiangong, and his wife, Ding Cuimei, firmly opposed their church's demolition after a local developer desired to take over the church property. The demolition team resorted to burying the couple alive. Li was able to dig his way out but his wife died from suffocation.

"The top leadership is increasingly worried about the rapid growth of Christian faith and their public presence, and their social influence," China Aid President Bob Fu said in an earlier interview with The Christian Post, adding "It is a political fear for the Communist Party, as the number of Christians in the country far outnumber the members of the party."

According to a Pew Research Center study, Christians in China were already 67 million in 2011 and the numbers would still have risen through the years. Fu also added that official documents can reveal the government's aim to "contain the overheated growth of Christianity."
home US Christian school in California investigating possible teacher sexual misconduct; parents informed after seven months into investigation

The Capital Christian School in Sacramento has been conducting an investigation on what could possibly be an inappropriate physical contact between a teacher and student, but parents are apparently upset that they were informed only after seven months since the investigation started.

"We took steps early on to take care of the issue from our employment stand point," said school superintendent Todd Jacobs in an interview with Fox40. "The individual was placed on leave. They were allegations. They still are allegations at this point. What we needed to do was comply with law enforcement and we didn't want to impede on the investigation or complicate that. We've been following their lead."

In a letter to parents on May 2, the school explained that an investigation is being conducted regarding an alleged sexual misconduct of a teacher toward a student. The incident happened in October last year in the school's early education program.

Upon receiving the letter, an aunt of an early education student was upset that it took the school seven months before the parents were informed, while a parent said that the reason why it took so long is probably because the school wanted to confirm if it really happened.

According to ABC 10, because of the sensitivity of the issue, the school does not want to divulge information about the teacher or the child. They want to protect those involved and their families. The teacher in question has already resigned after being put on leave and after being questioned.

The investigators, meanwhile, are assuring parents that they should not be worried.

"Multiple forensic exams have been performed as well as many interviews with staff members," Lt. Tim Curran with the Sacramento County Sheriff's Department said, as quoted by Fox 40. "As far as we've been able to determine, no crime has been committed."

While there are some who are speculating that the school has tried to cover it up, the investigators said that there no cover-up involved.

The school is now making sure that there is more than one teacher in a classroom at all times. This ensures that the kids are not left alone with just one adult for any given time. They are also looking into the current school policies, and are reportedly going to have abuse risk experts evaluate them.
home World Christian woman in Uganda says she was raped and beaten for testifying against an imam

A Christian woman is in serious condition after being raped and badly beaten by Muslims in Eastern Uganda as an act of retribution following their imam's imprisonment for her testimony that the mosque leader killed her father.

The 22-year-old woman, whose name remains hidden, was found unconsciously lying in a pool of blood and with cuts on her body. She said three Muslims raped and beat her up on the evening of April 19 at her home in Kanginima village, Pallisa District. This was after she boldly identified and testified in court that Sheikh Musana Ibrahim, the imam of a mosque in Kanyumu village, Pallisa District, was the one who killed her father, Samson Makuma, on Jan. 28.

Two other Muslims were accomplices to the killing of her father but since she was not able to identify them in court, they were released and now only the imam is held in prison. "I was able to identify the sheikh because we are neighbors, and my father had been questioning him about the Islamic faith not leading one to salvation with God," she told Morning Star News. "The sheikh had said to him, 'You have no respect of our religion, and we have come for your life today.' They started strangling my father as well as hitting him on the head with a big stick. When my father fell down, I managed to escape through the window."

Autopsy reports indicate that Makuma's death was due to homicide. The imam is currently held in Kamuge cell until the court decision is released. Pallisa Police Officer Otwai Francis is in charge of the case.

The woman recalled the words said to her by one of the men who assaulted her, "We shall kill you today because you are the one who made our sheikh to be imprisoned." She is still being treated for what happened to her and requires medication for the next three months. Having no one to care for her a she is an only child and her mother has passed away five years ago a the young woman has since been taken in and cared for by an elder in an undisclosed church.
home US Donald Trump's win as presumptive Republican presidential candidate considered a loss for Christians

Business tycoon Donald Trump has been confirmed as the presumptive Republican nominee for the United States presidential elections after Senator Ted Cruz bowed out of the race earlier this week, and some view Trump's rise to the top as a loss for the social agenda of right-wing Christians.

According to Christian ethicist and progressive evangelical Dr. David Gushee, in an article on Religion News, both conservative and progressive Christians are not in favor of Trump because of his temperament and character. However, conservatives are particularly worried because Trump doesn't seem to be overly interested in core conservative Christian social policies. Meanwhile, liberals are more concerned with Trump's apparent intolerance toward those of opposing opinions.

Church leaders have written an open letter calling for Christians to resist Trump. They point out that Christians should consider asking questions like "What does the Bible say?" and "What does Jesus teach?" They said that the churches as well as the country is facing a moral threat, showing the worst values in American history.

"Donald Trump directly promotes racial and religious bigotry, disrespects the dignity of women, harms civil public discourse, offends moral decency, and seeks to manipulate religion," the letter says. "This is no longer politics as usual, but rather a moral and theological crisis, and thus we are compelled to speak out as faith leaders."

There have been calls for Christians to not vote for Trump because his behavior does not reflect what the Bible says.

"I am extremely troubled by Mr. Trump's relatively high polling results with Evangelical voters. On January 26, 2016, Politico Magazine reported that Donald Trump had 37 percent support among Evangelical voters," U.S. Representative Reid Ribble wrote on The Christian Post in February. "It's time for Christian voters to pause. Take a minute and read the texts of scripture at the beginning of this article. Then ask yourself a question. Does Donald Trump exemplify the teachings of the Christian Church, not in how he may lead the country but in how he has lived his life and managed his campaign for president?"

Gushee, in his article, said that he wishes that the Republicans had chosen to nominate someone other than Trump.
home World Former Christian Brother to be sentenced for sexually assaulting boys at Austalian orphanage in the '60s

A victim of abuse told a County Court in Australia that he still feels angry at how he was treated by the Christian Brothers at an orphanage when he was a boy. The man, who is now in his 60s, said that he was accused of lying by two Brothers when he approached them about having been sexually abused by another Brother, and he was punished.

"I am still angry to this day and the anger will be there because as a ward of the state I was let down by the system," he said, as quoted by The Age. "I will never forgive William Houston for what he did to me."

The man recalled being strapped each morning for five days in front of all the other kids, with the head Brother reportedly saying, "This is what we do to boys who fabricate stories about us."

William Stuart Houston, now 77, was a Christian Brother who worked at St. Augustine's Orphanage for boys in Geelong, Victoria from 1963 to 1970, then later taught at other Catholic schools in Melbourne. According to Broken Rites Australia, an organization focused on abuse by members of the clergy, Houston had many victims, one of which was a boy of 12 who was sexually abused by the accused on his third day at the orphanage. It reportedly happened over and over for two to 2 1/2 years, and there were other incidents wherein up to four boys were called by Houston into his room in a day.

According to the Herald Sun, Houston was first taken to court in 1997, but was ordered to stand trial for only three charges of indecent assault and buggery out of 14 charges filed, but he never went to trial. Two other victims came forward in 2008 and the original complainant signed a new police statement. Houston got off scot free in 2014 for a case on sexual assault against a 12-year-old boy.

Broken Rites Australia, meanwhile, said that the Melbourne Magistrates Court ordered Houston in October last year to stand trial (in 2016) for the case involving eight living victims and one who has passed away.

Houston was reportedly taken into custody in late April. The Age said that last month, he was found guilty of three charges of indecent assault, four of buggery, and one of attempted buggery in relation to attacks on three boys at the orphanage. He also pleaded guilty to 12 charges of indecent assault in relation to assaults on three other boys.

The court will sentence him this month.
home World Israel, Hamas, and Egypt join forces against Islamic State

An affiliate of the Islamic State (IS) in Egypt are making attacks at the Gaza border which impelled Israel, Egypt, and Hamas, the Palestinian militant group, to join forces against the said terrorists.

Hamas sent hundreds of fighters to the border at Gaza last week as part of an agreement with Egypt to keep the Islamic State out of the commune. This move followed the decision of Israel to build a blockade along the border of Israel and Egypt.

According to officials from these two countries, this alliance is said to be the "greatest cooperation" between their militaries since 1979 when they agreed on a peace deal.

The affiliate that these countries are up against is the Wilayat Sinai. This affiliate claimed liability for the bombing of a Russian charter flight at the Sinai Peninsula last October. There were 224 people who died in the incident. Some of the bold attacks they are now doing among Egyptian soldiers include running over military posts and throwing roadside bombs at them.

The IS in Sinai, however, has only hundreds of fighters, according to analysts and military officials. They have a small number of foreign fighters, not like the IS in Iraq and Syria. These militants do not hold large offensives and work in small portions. However, they do have weapons like anti-tank ground missiles and grenade propelled by rockets.

There used to be tension between Israel and Egypt. But last year, a ceasefire was agreed upon by the two countries. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu assembled the security cabinet of the country to vote for a ceasefire.

Officials from Israel and Egypt suspect Hamas of supplying arms to the militants. These are, however, mere allegations which have been denied by Hamas.

Because of these concerns, Egypt pressured Hamas to strengthen their control at the border. About 300 Hamas fighters are now assigned to three regions along the sea and the land border.
home World Muslim attackers throw homemade bombs at Christian family's home in Bangladesh

A Christian family became the target of an attack on Tuesday, May 3 when attackers, believed to be Muslims, threw homemade bombs at the family's home in western Chuadanga, Bangladesh. The attack adds to the increasing cases of discrimination against religious minorities in a country dominated by Muslims.

The incident left two people injured. One of the victims was a Christian, 45-year-old Alam Mondol, who was reportedly on his veranda when the bombs were thrown. Splinters from the explosion left him with wounds on his hip and left hand.

The villagers sought to drive away the attackers, who threw more bombs before fleeing the place. The explosions injured another man, who is also a Christian.

District chief police officer Rashidul Hasan said the attackers are suspected of "attempted robbery." He explained that the culprits attempted to break into Mondol's house and ask for money, Mail Online reported.

However, targeted attacks of Muslim extremists against Christians in Bangladesh are increasing, with al-Qaeda and ISIS claiming responsibility for the incidents. Other religious minorities like Hindus have also been victims of violence.

Just last week, a 50-year-old Hindu tailor was hacked to death because of allegedly "blaspheming the prophet Mohammed." ISIS said they were responsible for the murder.

Hossain Ali, a Muslim who had converted to Christianity, was killed in Kurigram in March. According to ISIS, who also claimed responsibility for the attack, Ali's death should serve as a "lesson to others."

According to Open Doors, Christian persecution in Bangladesh stems from Islamic extremism. Christians in the country are at risk of violence, and those who live in rural areas face greater persecution from local Muslim leaders and the community.

In recent years, violence against Christians has increased in the country, which is predominantly Islam, even though the constitution mandates that religious freedom should not be suppressed.

The Bangladesh government has constantly denied the involvement of al-Qaeda and ISIS in the attacks against religious minorities, saying that the two groups do not operate in the country. The government puts the blame on the local militants.
Bishop Efraim: To build bridges with Catholics, we must prioritise evangelicals

The Secretary General of the World Evangelical Alliance, Bishop Efraim has warned against forgetting the plight of minority evangelicals in the effort to find unity with the Catholic Church.

"In order to have relations with Roman Catholicism, we need to be first sensitive towards our own group, and particularly those who are from the Latin side," Tendero told Evangelical Focus.

While unity with the Catholic Church remains a key focus for the Bishop, he reiterated that the priority remains to first ensure "a good relationship" with evangelicals.

He highlighted that in many contexts, including Italy and the Bishop's country the Philippines, evangelical christians exist in Catholic majority countries.

For this reason, he said, it is essential to "first hear their perspectives" on the Catholic church before building closer relationship with the Vatican.

This does not exclude the possibility of Catholic and Evangelical churches working together, but rather determines the nature of the collaboration.

Bishop Efraim suggested that the two denominations work together in "co-belligerence", rather than ecumenicalism, in addressing key societal issues, including "the fight against corruption (both in government and in society), the alleviation of poverty, the promotion of peace processes, the promotion of integrity in the electoral process, the fight against human trafficking or addressing the adverse effects of climate change."

Co-belligerence allows a union focused around a common issue, rather than uniting in a more integral sense.

Bishop Efraim was speaking ahead of the release of a joint document between the Pontifical Commission for the Unity and the World Evangelical Alliance.

He also spoke on the church's responsibility to engage with the issue of climate change, as "God created this universe" and "entrusted" it to us, "so, this is part of our Creation mandate, to care for what He has given to us."

He said the refugee crisis was an opportunity for the church to "show the love of Christ" to "the people whom God is bringing right to our doorsteps.

"It is an opportunity to minister to them in the time of need. And as we minister to them, they are not only in need in terms of the physical needs but also the spiritual needs. Therefore, the churches are in the position where they can provide for both needs."
China and India protest US religious freedom report

China and India have strongly refuted the findings of a US report that condemned violations of religious freedom around the world.

China was so angry it lodged a formal diplomatic protest after the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, a bipartisan federal body that defends the universal right to freedom of religion or belief around the world, condemned "systematic, egregious and ongoing abuses".

The report said China was violating in a "severe" way the religious freedoms of Muslims, Buddhists and Christians in particular.

Hong Lei, spokesman for China's foreign ministry, told a news briefing that the United States continued to ignore the facts while it attacked China over religion.

"China is resolutely opposed to this and has already lodged stern representations with the US side. We demand the US side objectively and justly view China's religious policy and Chinese citizens' freedom of belief and stop using the religious issue to interfere in China's internal affairs," Hong said. "The US side should reflect more on its own problems and not always gesticulate about other countries."

On India, the same report said: "In 2015, religious tolerance deteriorated and religious freedom violations increased in India." It also said: "India is on a negative trajectory in terms of religious freedom."

India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the US commission have been at war since Modi was denied a US visa in the wake of a earlier report by the commission, in 2002. The commission had itself wanted to visit India this year, but was denied visas.

Vikas Swarup, spokesman for India's external affairs ministry, attacked the report.

He said: "Our attention has been drawn to the recent report by the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, which once again fails to show proper understanding of India, its constitution and its society. India is a vibrant pluralistic society founded on strong democratic principles. The Indian Constitution guarantees fundamental rights to all its citizens including the right to freedom of religion," Indian Express reported.

He added: "Government does not see the locus standi of a foreign entity like USCIRF to pronounce on the state of Indian citizens' constitutionally protected rights. We take no cognizance of their report."

Launching the report, US State department spokesman John Kirby said Burma, China, Eritrea, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan were redesignated "countries of particular concern". For the first time Tajikistan was added to the list as a country of particular concern.

Presidential actions for Burma, China, Eritrea, Iran, North Korea, and Sudan were implemented. Application of presidential actions with respect to Saudi Arabia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan were waived "following determinations that the important national interest of the United States required exercising this waiver authority."

Kirby said: "These designations help us shine a spotlight on countries and conditions that require the international community's attention. Today and every day, as you know, we are committed to working with governments, civil society organizations, and individuals to achieve our shared interest in promoting peace and stability through, in part, the promotion and protection of all human rights including religious freedoms."

The report said religious freedom had come under "serious and sustained assault" across the globe in the past year with several countries are "plagued by extremism and religious freedom violations."

The commission said: "From the plight of new and longstanding prisoners of conscience, to the dramatic rise in the numbers of refugees and internally displaced persons, to the continued acts of bigotry against Jews and Muslims in Europe... there was no shortage of attendant suffering worldwide."

It highlighted religious freedom violations in more than 30 countries, including China, Sudan, North Korea, Nigeria, Pakistan, Iraq and Syria, and urged the Department of State to re-designate China's government as a top-tier violator.

In China, the report said the communist government had "stepped up its persecution of religious groups deemed a threat to the state's supremacy and maintenance of a 'socialist society'. Christian communities have borne a significant brunt of the oppression, with numerous churches bulldozed and crosses torn down".

In India, it said: "Minority communities, especially Christians, Muslims, and Sikhs, experienced numerous incidents of intimidation, harassment, and violence, largely at the hands of Hindu nationalist groups."
Christians in America face 'unrelenting assault' claims Franklin Graham

Franklin Graham has warned American is in "imminent danger" because of its rejection of God.

The son of famous evangelist Billy Graham has launched a tour of all 50 American states to urge Christians to pray for the political process. The Decision America Tour began in January and Graham says he has "no hope in either the Democratic or Republican party" but "our only hope is in Almighty God".

In a damning piece for Decision Magazine Graham asked whether the "writing was on the wall" for the US.

"Has God decided that our idolatry, immorality and godlessness has become such a stench in His nostrils that we as a people will experience a harsh form of divine judgment?," he wrote.

"Have our iniquities grown so foul and vast that we will reap the bitter harvest of our wickedness and rebellion against Almighty God?"

He continued: "We are a people and nation in imminent danger. We mock God, ridicule His Word and His ways, and flaunt gross immorality.

"Only Almighty God can deliver us, and it is our fervent prayer as we go across America in the months to come, that He will hear our prayers and heal our land."

Graham is CEO of Samaritan's Purse and the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. He claimed Christians in America are under "constant, unrelenting assault for our beliefs and practices".

"Never before have I seen such a sharp rift in the moral and spiritual fabric of our country. The Cross of Christ has become the deep divide between a growing segment of our population that no longer fears God and those who follow Christ as Lord and Savior.

"In this secular age, the influence of Biblical principles and values has diminishing impact upon education, government and politics."

Despite his bleak outlook on the spiritual state of America, Graham offered a ray of light to finish.

"I do believe that God is able to restore and heal us if we repent of our sinspersonal and corporateand turn to Him in humility and reverence."

He wrote: "He is our only hope."
Christians in Syria plead for 'day of prayer' for city of Aleppo after yet more deaths and bombings

An international plea for a global day of prayer for Christians in Aleppo has gone out for this Sunday, 8 May.

The day of prayer has been prompted by the intensive bombing that has recently brought yet more devastation to the city, killing hundreds and even hitting hospitals according to Open Doors, the charity that serves persecuted Christians.

One of the people killed in the latest bombings was a baby aged just one minute.

"We are asking you to join us in an international prayer and fasting day for Aleppo. We are refusing to see the death any more in Syria, Aleppo especially, and we are declaring the resurrection of the Christ on our beloved country," said one Christian from Aleppo.

Another man described the attack on a hospital a few days ago: "Today, the hospital where my wife gave birth to our daughter was hit. This is the best hospital for giving birth in Aleppo. It is also considered as one of the most important hospitals for infertility treatment in the Middle East. The total amount of people killed is 17. These are the numbers from this hospital only. One of the martyrs is a baby, one minute old.

"For me and my wife, it is very symbolic. This is where my daughter was born and a place where new babies come to this world and new life begins. Today it is full of death and destruction."

At the start of the year, Open Doors partnered with a local church in Aleppo to dig a well to ensure a supply of clean water to the city after the water supply was regularly cut off in 2014 and 2015. Last year alone, Open Doors provided 50,000 people in Syria with food, medicines and rent.

One church leader from Aleppo said this earlier this year: "The living situation in Aleppo has become very difficult and tiring. There is no income for the majority of families in the city. Our work has never stopped, but has increased month by month. We are also working to support the people psychologically and morally, because we care about all aspects of the people.

"The people in Aleppo pray for you, as your aid is of great help to them. Thank you. We support them with all we can and with all our strength because the people in Aleppo are very tired and have even despaired because of the situation."

Syria is currently at number five on the Open Doors World Watch List.
Conservative Christian trucker refuses lift for disabled woman because she supported Bernie Sanders

A conservative Christian truck driver refused to help a stranded woman with severe disabilities because she was a Bernie Sanders supporter.

Ken Shupe received the call to pick up Cassandra McWade from a highway in Asheville, North Carolina, because her car would not start after a tractor collided with her. McWade has psoriatic arthritis, impaired mobility, early stage Crohn's disease, severe fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome.

Shupe arrived at the scene but when he saw a Bernie Sanders poster in her car he told McWade: "I can't tow you...you're a Bernie supporter."

He said he was a conservative Christian and had "just drawn a line in the sand".

He said: "I'm not going to associate or conduct business with them."

Shupe runs Shupe Max Towing but would not tow McWade because she was "obviously a socialist", according to Fox Carolina. He suggested she "call the government".

He said he did not realise McWade was disabled but said, had he known, he would still not have towed her away but would have waited until another lift had arrived. He said McWade was "sitting there in a very safe area ... with her air conditioning on and her car locked, she was perfectly fine."

McWade's mother, Kelle McWade, posted the story on Facebook. "I'm guessing he's a Trump supporter", she added.

Shupe said he initially supported Ben Carson and Mike Huckabee for the Republican nomination but now that Trump was the presumptive nominee he would support him "100 per cent".

He said in an earlier interview: "I'm the farthest thing from a bigot or a racist" and told Fox Carolina: "I respect their beliefs, and I hope they respect my views."

He added he would probably have done the same had McWade been a Clinton supporter. "I have the same principles there," he said.
Controversial 'Get Them Married' teen retreat cancelled after outcry

A controversial retreat aimed at bringing together Christian families who want to find husbands and wives for their children has been cancelled after an outcry against the group that promoted it.

The 'Get Them Married' retreat was scheduled to be held in Wichita, Kansas on premises owned by the Salvation Army. The planned retreat was publicised when it was covered by Raw Story and led to an outburst of criticism as it was said to be promoting an extreme version of patriarchy and child marriage.

The retreat was scheduled to be run by Vaughn Ohlman, an adherent of the 'Quiverfull' movement that advocates large families for Christians.

The Salvation Army denied permission for the retreat to be held there, saying in a statement that the Let Them Marry group had sought permission to use it but that no contract had been signed. It said: "Our decision is based upon our long-standing concern for the welfare of children. At The Salvation Army, we work every single day to provide a safe, caring place for children, many of whom have been left vulnerable due to the actions of adults."

Ohlman promotes early marriage between Christian young people, taking aim at the 'True Love Waits' movement.

Ohlman writes: "While it may sound very spiritual, the idea of getting a wife or husband by a mere avoiding of fornication is neither practical nor scriptural. In order for true love to have successfully 'waited', true love needs to stop waiting at some point. Our young people are not going to be married by a mere 'waiting'. No one has ever been married by such a method, and no one ever could be."

He also claims that fathers have a right to choose a spouse for their child: "We believe that Scripture teaches quite clearly that the father does have the power to choose a spouse for their virgin child; and we see this in several Scriptural examples."

Ohlman also teaches that betrothal is a "binding contract", saying: "It has many of the same obligations as a full-fledged marriage, though not yet consummated. To disavow the betrothal is willful abandonment and/or adultery."

Perhaps his most controversial teaching is his advocacy of "young marriage". He cites Calvin's view that a woman is in "the flower of her age" between 12 and 20, John Gill's figure of 12 and a half and Martin Luther's of 15-18. However, he says: "We do not endorse marriage at ages as young as twelve," and he flatly denies endorsing paedophilia. He adds: "But we are certainly in agreement with the commentators that marriage (in order to be timely and to accomplish its purposes) ought to happen before the age of twenty for almost everyone."

In a response to the criticism directed at his movement, Ohlman wrote denying that the planned retreat was aimed at arranging marriages and reiterating his opposition to child marriages.
Husband of killed gym instructor: 'leaning on God' has pulled me through

The husband of a fitness instructor killed in a Texas church has said he has found peace in the tragedy by "leaning on God".

Terri "Missy" Bevers was killed last month at the Creekside Church of Christ, Midlothian, last month, where she was found with puncture wounds to her head and chest.

A suspect wearing a SWAT uniform carrying tools that fit the injuries she suffered was caught on CCTV inside the church, but no arrests have been made.

"If it wasn't for me leaning on God as heavily as I am right now, OK, there is no way - I would be melted just into this asphalt," Brandon Bevers told NBC News from outside a police station in Texas.

"There is no way that Brandon Bevers before this would be standing here today without me leaning on God, and His word and His direction, like, I find peace in it. It's very comforting. I obtain wisdom from it."

Bevers explained that he has so far refused to read any reports detailing the attack, saying,

"I haven't ever read it, so don't divulge. I haven't even read the story."

Missy Bevers was found dead on April 18 at around 5am by one of her clients who was planning to attend her bootcamp scheduled for that morning in the church.

Authorities have said they found signs of forced entry into the church and that Bevers may have interrupted a robbery while preparing for her Camp Gladiator fitness class.
Leading Christian PR exec steps down from Liberty in Donald Trump controversy

A world leader in public relations has resigned from the board of the infuential Christian education establishment Liberty University.

Mark DeMoss has stepped down after a disagreement with Jerry Falwell Jr, president of Liberty, over Falwell's expression of support for Donald Trump when the Republican candidate spoke earlier this year at Liberty.

His departure throws further light on the rifts caused in the evangelical Christian community by the ascendancy of Trump.

DeMoss said he thought the endorsement was not appropriate, according to Religion News.

He said: "I hope we have not 'fallen out' over this matter. I am a Liberty graduate and have been associated with the school for nearly 40 years. Despite our differences on this endorsement, Jerry and I share a love for Liberty University."

Patheos reports on the background, citing DeMoss's statement to Washington Post's Philip Rucker that he thought Falwell was mistaken to back Trump.

Some individuals at Liberty University asked DeMoss to resign from the executive committee that he had chaired for many years and his name was removed from the university's list of trustees.

Liberty told Patheos in a statement: "Mark DeMoss sent an email with his resignation on Tuesday, April 26, 2016, four days after the most recent Board of Trustees meeting. He was not removed from the Board of Trustees nor did the Board of Trustees ask for his resignation."

DeMoss told Patheos that he had agreed to resign as asked, and wrote a letter "tendering my resignation from the board I had served for 25 years."

In the 2008 and 2012 campaigns, DeMoss was an adviser to Republican candidate Mitt Romney. Earlier in this campaign, he supported backed Marco Rubio.
Mideast beheadings, bombings and other killings blamed on 'Tom and Jerry'and 'Mickey Mouse,' too!

All the beheadings, bombings and other violent acts in the Middle East can be blamed on a cunning creature and his sidekickno, it's not the Islamic State (ISIS) or some other terrorist groups, according to the head of Egypt's State Information Service (SIS).

In a Cairo University speech this week, SIS head Salah Abdel Sadek said the violence is due to an American creationthe cartoon characters Tom and Jerry, the Washington Post reports.

"Tom and Jerry" portrays "the violence in a funny manner and sends the message that, yes, I can hit him ... and I can blow him up with explosives," he said. "It becomes set in [the viewer's] mind that this is natural."

Social media users were quick to pounce on the Egyptian bureaucrat's statement. "Egypt's rulers must have been watching a lot of Tom and Jerry if this is the case," tweeted Sarah Birke, referring to the Egyptian military's crackdown on dissenters.

But Sadek is not alone in blaming Tom and Jerry for the violence in the region. The news site Egyptian Streets said the American cartoon duo "warps the idea of justice, helps children come up with sinister plans, and encourages violence and the use of sharp instruments such as knives, guns and chainsaws," according to WND.

It could be recalled that Tom and Jerryand Mickey Mouse as wellhave long been targeted by Muslim critics.

In 2006, Tom and Jerry were accused by an Iranian official of being part of a Jewish conspiracy, WND reports.

Professor Hasan Bolkhari, a cultural adviser to the Iranian Education Ministry, told a film seminar that the "Tom and Jerry" cartoon was created to remove the link between mice and Jews created in the minds of Europeans by German fascist leader Adolph Hitler.

"If you study European history, you will see who was the main power in hoarding money and wealth in the 19th century," Bolkhari said. "In most cases, it is the Jews. Perhaps that was one of the reasons which caused Hitler to begin the anti-Semitic trend...

"Watch 'Schindler's List.' Every Jew was forced to wear yellow star on his clothing. The Jews were degraded and termed 'dirty mice.' 'Tom and Jerry' was made in order to change the Europeans' perception of mice," Bolkhari said.

In 2008, Sheikh Muhammad Munajid, a former Saudi diplomat to Washington, D.C., also denounced Tom and Jerry and also Mickey Mouse, saying these cartoon characters should all be killed, according to WND.

"The mouse is one of Satan's soldiers and is steered by him," he said.

"Mickey Mouse has become an awesome character, even though according to Islamic law, Mickey Mouse should be killed in all cases," Munajid added.
Religious freedom linked to economic growth and innovation

Countries that allow greater religious freedom are more likely to be innovative and experience economic growth, researchers have found.

A fifth of countries with low levels of religious hostilities and government restrictions on religious freedom were strong in innovation.

This compared to just 8 per cent of countries that had high levels of religious hostilities, and 7 per cent of countries with high levels of government restrictions.

The study, 'Is Religious Freedom Good for Business?', was published in the Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion and looked at GDP growth in 173 countries in 2011. This was compared to data on religious restrictions, and the level of economic and business freedom in the country.

It was authored by researchers at Georgetown University's Berkley Center for Religion, Peace & World Affairs, and Brigham Young University's International Center for Law and Religion Studies.

Commenting on the findings, the Religious Freedom & Business Foundation said: "As the world navigates away from years of poor economic perforamnce, religious freedom may be an unrecognised asset to economic recovery and growth."

The foundation agreed that religious hostilities and restrictions could create "climates that can drive away local and foreign investment, undermine sustainable development, and disrupt huge sectors of economies", and cited Egypt as an example of this.

It shared the study's concern that young entrepreneurs may be pushed into taking their talents elsewhere.

The study follows the 2011 study by Brian J Grim and Roger Finke, The Price of Freedom Denied, which concluded that restricting religious freedom was associated with higher levels of violent persecution.
US called to strengthen policies on freedom of religion and belief

A multi-faith network has published a letter calling on the US government to do more to protect and promote international religious freedom.

The US-based International Religious Freedom (IRF) Roundtable is made up of organisations and individuals across the faiths advocating for freedom of religion or belief.

The letter warns that the current state of international religious freedom is "one of deepening crisis".

It urges the United States to strengthen its IRF policy so that freedom of religion, conscience, and belief "is protected and promoted, resulting in reduced persecution and repression, as well as greater security and stability worldwide".

The IRF also wants measures to strengthen the mechanisms of the 1998 International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA), which "have been allowed to wither and atrophy".

"IRF policy has not been integrated into US foreign policy and national security, and we have not had a significant impact on other governments," the letter states.

The letter was published following the second annual IRF event on Capitol Hill, which was co-hosted by Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW).

CSW's Chief Executive Mervyn Thomas said, "Together with the IRF Roundtable, we urge the US government to engage fully with the recommendations in this letter.

"In the week when the EU published new Guidelines on Freedom of Religion or Belief ,affirming its commitment to addressing violations of this right, we encourage the US government to strengthen its policies in order to ensure a systematic, co-ordinated approach to the defence and promotion of this right worldwide."
WATCH: Full interview with McArthur family ahead of gay cake case

Daniel and Amy McArthur have spoken about the ordeal of a court trial as their appeal will return to Belfast High Court on Monday.

You can watch their full interview below which was given ahead of their first appeal in February 2016.

That appeal was halted after a dramatic intervention by Northern Ireland's Attorney General. The case was postponed and will return to court on Monday 9 May, two years exactly after the order for the cake was first made.

Gareth Lee requested a cake that featured the Sesame Street characters Bert and Ernie with the slogan: "Support gay marriage". He paid the 36.50 in full and had wanted the cake for a private function to mark the International Day Against Homophobia.

However two days later Lee received a phone call from Ashers to say they would be unable to complete the order because of the slogan. Lee said he left the encounter feeling like a lesser person, leading to the ruling that Ashers had discriminated against him. The company was ordered to pay 500 in damages and the county judge who delivered the verdict said religious belief could not dictate the law.

However the McArthurs insist they refused the order on the basis of the slogan that supported gay marriage, not because Lee was himself gay. They said the slogan contradicted their Christian faith.

A petition to support the McArthur family "in their stand for freedom of speech and freedom of conscience" was launched by The Christian Institute (CI) and has over 16,000 signatures.

In the interview produced by the CI, Amy McArthur spoke of how the trial has strengthened their marriage and trust in God.

"God has said he will never leave us or forsake us and I have really found that to be true. When I am tempted to worry about the case and the outcome it a great reminder to me that God is in control."

She continued: "No matter the outcome, it will be for our good and his glory.

"The court case (first) was probably the most emotionally draining thing I have been through yet.

"God has used it to strengthen our marriage and strengthen our relationship with him as well."
West Virginia lawmakers push religious freedom bill despite governor's veto threat

Legislators in West Virginia are determined to pass a Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

If the bill succeeds, West Virginia would be the first state to legislate a religious freedom law over the veto of the governor.

"Religious freedom is a basic right that deserves attention under the law," Republican House Majority Whip John O'Neal, R-Raleigh told CBN News.

Speaker Tim Armstead of the West Virginia House of Delegates said, "West Virginians take their religious liberties and their religious rights very seriously, and they want to see us ensure that those are protected."

He said they just want to ensure that "those who feel their rights have been infringed upon that they have a remedy."

Lawmakers said they expect stiff challenge as they move the bill for a vote. They plan to hold a rally in support of the bill on Jan. 28.

"We would surely appreciate the prayers of the people across this country, that we would do what's right and show the courage that's needed to take this across the finish line," Armstead said.

O'Neal lamented that "in our state and in many others right now, unfortunately, a person can go to church on Sunday and worship, and on Monday they can go to work and lose their business because of who they love, if the person they love happens to be the Lord."

West Virginia introduced a bill last year to have its religious freedom law but it failed.

Three bills, two in the House and one in the Senate, on religious protection act were introduced but none made it through the committee, according to the Charleston Gazette-Mail.

Another bill was introduced but was recommitted to the House Government Organization Committee, essentially killing it with the bill's opponents saying that it was an attack against the people on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.
Why no country should call itself a 'Christian nation'

Mention Liberia and everyone thinks "Ebola".

Like other West African countries, Liberia suffered grievously because of the last epidemic. But though it was devastating, it was an episode in the nation's life. Something with the capacity to do more lasting damage  and even to cost more lives  has been fermenting among Liberia's political classes for the last year. Now the influential Liberia Council of Churches (LCC) has made a stand.

As part of the reconstruction process after its long-running civil wars, the government set up a Constitutional Review Committee (CRC), which met from 2012-15. In April last year it held a four-day conference out of which came a recommendation that Liberia  which is 85.5 per cent Christian  should become a Christian state.

The move had wide public support, including from among church leaders. It was also fiercely opposed by Muslims, who feared an upsurge in tensions, outbreaks of violence, the potential breakdown of Liberian civil society and even a return to murderous civil war. However, the LCC has rejected the plan. Bishop Jonathan Hart said earlier this week: "We strongly believe that furthering our collaboration and interfaith dialogue with all those united with us by faith and humanity will strengthen our harmonious relationship and create a peaceful society for mutual coexistence irrespective of race, creed, ethnicity or religion."

According to Front Page Africa, he said that "legitimising" religion in this way was to make it compulsory, and that wasn't what the church was for.

Whether the lawmakers who will have to decide this question will pay attention to the LCC's stance remains to be seen. But Liberia should be very grateful for the clearsightedness of its Christian leaders.

In England we have a Church established by law. That establishment arises from particular historical circumstances (the political need for an heir for Henry VIII, among other more worthy reasons). It has not always used its pre-eminence wisely or fairly, as Nonconformists and Roman Catholics remember, but nowadays, in general, it serves as an honest broker for Christians in general very well. Nevertheless, even in England, in a perfect world we wouldn't start from here.

The truth is that privileging one religion above another  and still less one denomination or branch of a religion  can't be justified anywhere, and particularly when religion is used as a marker of communal or ethnic identity. We see the results of this everywhere in the world today, as the Middle East burns, as other African countries labour under religious tensions, and as Hindus and Buddhists become increasingly assertive of their national prerogatives in India and Sri Lanka. Labelling Liberia, or any nation, as a "Christian country", is as much a mistake as attaching a Muslim label to Malaysia or Bangladesh. It isn't just that there are sizeable minorities in all these places that don't belong to the main religion. It is that the function of government is not to enforce a particular belief or practice, but to permit people to worship as they choose.

In many countries in today's world, this is not a view that's self-evidently true. If Islam is true, why shouldn't the government enforce it? If Christianity is true, why not enforce that? Tolerate other religions perhaps, but say your country is Christian.

But this a specious logic, that's undercut at three points.

First, we live in a globalised world in which the idea that cultures can be kept free from outside influences makes no sense. No society is hermetically sealed. Everyone drinks Coke and watches TV. Consequently, everyone's aware that there are alternatives to how they live now. Any government that tells its people who they are will have to backtrack before too long.

Second, there's the legacy of the Reformation. Slowly and painfully, the implications of Martin Luther's teachings became clear: that the individual had to make a personal response to the offer of salvation in Jesus Christ. The state is not involved, except insofar as it provides the conditions under which seeds of faith can grow. A Christian state is no more a sensible idea than a Christian teapot.

Third, there's the Bible. If the book of Revelation teaches us one thing, it's that the state is Babylon, not Jerusalem. It is, to a greater or lesser extent, corrupt and oppressive. It is not to be trusted, and Christians are not to feel entirely at home in it. Identifying any state with the will and purposes of God is dangerous. It leads us to justify the unjustifiable and defend the indefensible.

In the US at the moment  with feelings and rhetoric heightened by the forthcoming presidential election  there are many who want to claim that America is a 'Christian nation'. They were answered this week, bravely, by prominent evangelical leader Russell Moore, who said the idea was "really a form of theological liberalism. It assumes that a person or a nation can be a Christian apart from the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit, apart from new birth. That is contrary to the Gospel."

Religion and power don't mix. As Liberia's Christian leaders know, the best thing the Church could wish for is a secular state, in which its voice is heard and respected, but in which its hands are nowhere near the levers of power.

Follow Mark Woods on Twitter:@RevMarkWoods
Art League Houston has announced the recipients of its prestigious annual awards, which honor three people each year whose work or patronage has had a significant and positive impact on contemporary visual art in Texas.

The league named the veteran painter Terrell James its 2016 Texas Artist of the Year and philanthropist Poppi Georges Massey its 2016 Texas Patron of the Year. Legendary sculptor Jesse Lott will receive the 2016 Lifetime Achievement Award.
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May is National Hamburger Month, a time to celebrate all things beefy and good.

It is not the time for bad news about one of Houstons burger institutions.

So lets start with the good news: You still have two weeks to try the hamburger that critic Alison Cook decreed should be in a Houston Hall of Fame.

RELATED: Twenty juicy, must-try burger joints in Houston.

The bad news: The (almost) original Christians Tailgate will serve its last customer May 24.

Its tough, but 21 years is enough, owner Steve Christian told the Chronicle.

Christian is handing over the keys on May 25 to a to a development company, which has plans to remodel and lease the space, which is neighboring several new apartment complexes. Christian sold his Midtown restaurant several years ago; the younger operating group subsequently opened three more locations.

Christian said his grandfather moved to Houston from Mexia, telling his wife that there had to be a better way to make a living than working in the oil fields. He opened the original Christians on North Main in the 1930s. Christians three great uncles and father were all involved in the restaurant business for a time.

The restaurant and bar business is changing, Christian said. It is time to go.

Christian, an inventor as well as burger master, has five patents and more pending. Last year he appeared on the ABC reality show Shark Tank with his invention the Table Jack, a table stabilizer.

The restaurant's regulars arent taking the looming closing well. The response has been huge, Christian said.

You ought to hear them, he said.  Where am we going to get our hamburger fix? I tell them I have to retire, too.

Christians Tailgate: 7430 Washington, 713-864-9744

Browse the slideshow above to see photos of Christian's Tailgate on Washington.
Its not quite the full reunion that Brooks & Dunn fans may be longing for, but the iconic country duo reunites on Ronnie Dunns forthcoming single, Damn Drunk.

The song, Dunns second release as a Nash Icon signee (following "Ain't No Trucks in Texas"), features the vocals of Kix Brooks. He asked me to sing on it, says Brooks, and, adds Dunn, Kix was gracious enough to do that. Dunn shot the video in New Mexico a few days ago, but, as Brooks jokes, He wasnt so gracious as to ask me to be in the video.

Thats as likely an audio reunion as fans can expect for now, but the duo continues to pair up for their periodic Together in Vegas dates with Reba McEntire at the Colosseum at Caesars Palace. Their residency began in June 2015  following a five-year hiatus  and even though the initial two-year deal isnt even half through, Dunn notes the duo has already re-upped for a longer stay.

Its already turned into a much more lucrative and longer deal than we ever thought, he says. If its fun, well keep doing it, Brooks chimes in. Its a change to sing those songs again in the best of conditions. Its the best situation. Dunn agrees: I think its the ultimate job in show business. Lucky us.

This article originally appeared on Rollingstone.com: Ronnie Dunn, Kix Brooks Reunite on Dunn's New Song
I have actually walked in Beyonce's shoes. A pair of 5-inch black Prada platform slingbacks.

In 2011, I interviewed Tina Knowles  Beyonce's mother  onstage in front of an audience at a program for the University of Houston's Friends of Women's Studies Living Archives.

Beyonce, who was pregnant at the time, made a surprise appearance at the event. (By January, she'd given birth to daughter, Blue Ivy, and I had the exclusive.)

I showed up early to be styled by Knowles' assistant, who put me in a purple wrap dress from Knowles' Miss Tina for Wal-Mart collection, and a pair of platform Prada pumps borrowed from Beyonce's closet.

I had my own heels, but they weren't high enough, I was told.

Though I sat for the entire interview wearing the pumps, they hurt like hell. Beyonce can take it. She is also a fan of Giuseppi Zanotti stilettos, which are equally beautiful and painful. During a Houston visit, the shoe designer once told me his shoes are meant for fashion, not comfort.

By the time I posed for a photo with Beyonce and her mother after the interview, I had slipped back into my comfy shoes. I wish I had a photo of me wearing them.

This wasn't even the first encounter I'd had with Bey's shoes.

In 2004, I got a rare peek inside her closet at the family's Missouri City home. They lived in a gated community, and fans were known to drive by to see if they could catch the young superstar outside.

Beyonce was still singing with Destiny's Child then, though the group would break up the next year.

Her mother showed me the closet with nearly 200 of Bey's shoes, including the high-heeled, yellow platform pumps Bey wore in the "Crazy in Love" video. Some were flashy, some simple and most high-heeled.

"I put appliques on these and accented them with rhinestones and fabric, but all of them hurt after so long," Tina Knowles said back then. "I can't wait until she moves so she can take all of her shoes with her. Every new shoe or handbag that comes out, she has it. She loves buying bags to match the shoes."

Through the years, I've interviewed Beyonce, Solange and Tina Knowles. I've seen Beyonce walk in many sky-high stilettos.

Saturday, as Beyonce takes the stage at NRG Stadium for her "Formation" tour, I'll be checking out her shoes  and happily wearing flats.
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While much of the country displayed their solidarity with Mexican people by wearing their biggest sombreros for Cinco de Drinko, a Chicano has made the best hat yet.

A young Chicano from East L.A. decided to mix satire and a little bit of creativity by mocking Donald Trump's "Make America Great Again" slogan and creating red caps reading "Make America Mexico Again." His latest activist-wear didn't receive much backlash as expected, but hundreds of order requests.

His GoFundMe page to sale his #YaBastaTrumpHat has raised more than $10,000 in 3 days.

Jeronimo Saldana, a policy manager of legislation and organizing at the Drug Policy Alliance, is also an activist who previously worked on civic engagement and immigrant rights while serving as a program associate at the Open Society Foundations and New World Foundation.

More for you Donald Trump's Cinco de Mayo taco tweet has us asking a lot of questions

"I thought that the parody on Trump's slogan would be popular and I can't wait to see our folks wearing it," Saldana said on his fund page. "Do you know another person who would want to buy the hat or would you want to get a 2nd one as a gift?"

According to Latina Magazine, getting stores to print the hats wasn't easy at first. When Saldana walked into a Lids store in Manhattan and asked for the cap to be created, the manager refused, "stating that the company refrains from recreating political slogans because it constitutes as a copyright violation."

Big constitution lesson: making satirical clothing is acceptable under the First Amendment, according to FindLaw.

Since then, Saldana has gone to a Brooklyn-based independent distributor to make more hats.

The "Make America Mexico Again" hat might be on to something when it comes to Texas.

If anybody needed a refresher, our state was known back then as Tejas, a province of Mexico between 1821 and 1836. It wasn't until March 2, 1836 that the Lone Star state declared its independence from Mexico, becoming the Republic of Texas.

Sam Houston and Texas forces defeated the Mexican soldiers in The Texas Revolution, which lasted from that October 1835 until the Battle of San Jacinto on April 21, 1836. Officials later dedicated the San Jacinto Monument on April 21, 1939, to commemorate the battle that finally declared Texas independent from Mexico.

After gaining its independence, Texas held on to the idea that it would take a large chunk of the Territory of New Mexico. But as part of the treaty Texas agreed to in the Compromise of 1850, which maintained the balance of power between free and slave states, it "relinquished claims to roughly 67 million acres in exchange for $10 million to pay off its debt," according to History's website.

Trump once told The New York Times, that he believes America reached peak greatness in the 1900s or even the 1940s and 1950s. Some would point out those during those eras of American history minorities were getting the short end of the stick.

"(The United States) were not pushed around, we were respected by everybody," Trump said, "we had just won a war, we were pretty much doing what we had to do."

This week he tweeted a Cinco de Mayo message of how much he loved the Mexican food and those who make them. Backlashes went viral, from people questioning if taco bowls were even Mexican food, to the symbolism of his food choice.

"Of course Donald Trump eats taco bowls, the only Mexican food that comes with a wall built around it," Vocativ's Deputy Editor Erin Gloria Ryan said in her post.

All proceeds from the post-production and shipping of the cap will go to Mijente, a new political home for Latinx and Chicanx advocacy network, which is standing up against Trump and his hate filled agenda. Saldana's goal is to get 400 orders.

This would surely be a great gift for you Latina mom. If you need more ideas for a gift, check out these 11 others items that would annoy the Republican candidate.

"I want to focus our attention on flipping the script," Saldana said to NBC News. "[Trump's] supporters keep talking about building a wall, they're calling us rapists and thieves. There is nothing more powerful than satire and parody to change the tone of the conversation."
Northwoods Catholic School, a private and independently-run school that serves pre-kindergarten through eighth-grade pupils in Spring, is closing its doors at the end of May after 17 years.

Parents, students and employees were alerted on May 4 of the decision to close the school, which is located off Gosling Road and FM 2920 in Spring.

The school was battling budget deficits and dwindling student enrollment before the decision was made to shutter the school.

"We have to keep in perspective that private catholic schools are always a challenge. It's a very tough thing economically. In the 75 years that we've operated, it's always been a financial battle," said Jim Fair, the Legionaries of Christ director of communications and public relations for North America.

Student enrollment this year at the school is 268, but only a projected 160 students were expected to enroll for 2016-17. Private Catholic schools are dependent on the communities they live in to sustain funding.

"It really got to the point that we had a deficit this year, and we were projecting bigger deficits for next year, and there was no way to make that up. We tried with parents and benefactors, neighbors, friends and everyone we could, but there was no way to do it," Fair said.

At Northwoods, administrators are transitioning parents and students to nearby schools.

"Right now we're busy trying to take care of our students," said Kathy Graff, admissions director at Northwoods Catholic School.

The Northwoods community may transfer to nearby schools such as St. Anne Catholic School in Tomball, St. Edwards Catholic School in Spring, St. Anthony of Padua Catholic School in The Woodlands, Sacred Heart Catholic School in Conroe or St. Mary Magdalene Catholic School in Humble. For those graduating to high school, Frassati Catholic High School in Spring which is undergoing expansion, is an option. Other Christian schools include The Woodlands Christian Academy, New Life Community Christian School in Spring, Founders Christian School in Spring and Light House Christian Academy in Spring.

The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston sent out a memo to all its affiliated schools notifying them of Northwoods' closure, confirmed Jonah Dycus director of the secretariat for communications at the archdiocese. Area catholic schools hope to open their arms to help the Northwoods community through enrollment and job opportunities.

Parents are quickly trying to enroll their children in nearby Catholic schools. At St. Edwards Catholic School off Spring Stuebner Road, calls have quickly streamed in.

St. Edwards, a pre-K through eighth-grade parochial school in the Galveston-Houston archdiocese, is set on 15 acres and has an enrollment of 351 students. Current vacancies allows the school to hold another 70 to 80 students before reaching capacity.

"We've had a lot of phone calls, and several families came and picked up applications," said St. Edwards Catholic School Principal Patrick Clark. "It happens, and you do what you can for them."

St. Edwards is hosting tours May 9 through May 12 from 9 a.m. to noon and 1 to 3 p.m. to showcase its school for interested parents, particularly those from Northwoods Catholic School.

Northwoods Catholic School is not affiliated with the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston, and its curriculum follows a method developed by the Legionaries of Christ, a Catholic congregation.
A 7-year-old student who attended Sheldon Elementary School in East Harris County was able to get out of school by writing her own note requesting that she be sent home.

Rosabella Dahu didn't pack a lunch on Monday because it was pizza day at school. But when it came time to eat, the school was out of pepperoni pizza and only had cheese pizza. Not a fan of plain pizza, Rosabella decided to skip lunch.

When the final bell rang to release students for the day, the second grader was too hungry to stay in her after-school program where her father usually picks her up around 6 p.m. Instead, she wrote a note that said, "I want Rosabella to go too (sic) dus 131 today."

Officials at the school, 17203 Hall Shepperd Road, took it as a legitimate note written by one of her parents and allowed her to ride the bus to her home.

Her father, Charlie Dahu, said he was completely baffled that adults at the school didn't question the note and let her go home.

"How are you going to let a little 7-year-old walk away with a poorly written note?" Dahu said. "Something has to be done with the school system if everyone is going to write a letter to get out of school."

Dahu said a staff member at the school thought the note was suspicious and had a supervisor look at it. The supervisor took it as a legitimate note written by a parent.

When asked how a crudely written note authored by a 7-year-old could be considered legit, Dahu said the administration told him a lot of parents have terrible handwriting.

"They told me they've called parents before about questionably written notes and the parents got outraged they weren't taken seriously," Dahu said. "Luckily nothing happened to my daughter. Someone does need to look into this, though."

Trey Serna, spokesman for Sheldon Intermediate School District, said the incident is being looked into.

"Right now, we are still investigating the situation," Serna said in an email. "As we move forward, the district is working to make sure that all of our after-school grant staff receives the same training as district employees in order to prevent something like this from happening again. We can assure you that proper disciplinary action will be taken. As always, student safety is our top priority."

The apology wasn't enough for Dahu who transferred his daughter to an undisclosed new school.

The father said he was out with Rosabella's grandparents when his neighbor called him and told him his daughter was walking around their house.

"The one day my parents weren't home and this happens," Dahu said. "Guess that's Murphy's Law."

Dahu said he spoke with his daughter about why it was unsafe for her to leave the school prematurely. Next time, he told her, "Tell a teacher you want to call your parents."

"Arabic is her first language so she's learned a lot at school. Not bad for being here a year and a half," Dahu said. "But I don't think any reasonable parent would have been happy with what happened."
Three men will spend 40 to 50 years in federal prison after their guilty pleas in a string of armed robberies last year in the Houston area.

Federal prosecutors said Jerrol Bluford, 22, Calvin Smith, 20, and Jamone Jones, 21  along with a fourth man, 19-year-old Rodney Ford  were responsible for more than 30 violent holdups at restaurants, stores and cell phone businesses in January 2015.
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Suspected members of rival gangs put the Harris County criminal courthouse on high alert Thursday, a day after more than a dozen people were ejected from the courthouse for shouting and threatening each other.

More than a dozen deputies from the sheriff's office and the Precinct 1 constable's office lined the hallway outside of state District Judge Jan Krocker's courtroom Thursday, with more deputies from both agencies on the street outside in case of another disturbance.

The tensions may have contributed to a prosecution witness being jailed for contempt of court Thursday after refusing to testify despite repeated admonishments from the judge.

"I'm not saying anything," the 20-year-old man announced repeatedly on the witness stand.

Precinct 1 Constable Alan Rosen said a murder trial involving a known gang member brought several factions to court late Wednesday where they argued and had to be ejected from the courtroom.

He said the arguments increased in the hallway and more than a dozen people were escorted out of the 20-story courthouse at 1201 Franklin. Rosen said the increased police presence in and around the courthouse Thursday was "just in case."

"We just want to maintain a sense of decorum and keep everybody safe," he said.

Prosecutors and defense lawyers around the building said they witnessed large groups of young men, about 15 or 20 total, shouting at each other and challenging each other to fight as they were escorted out.

Rosen said Thursday he is investigating whether the altercations turned physical.

The man on trial, 23-year-old Jonathan Rawlins, is charged with murder, accused of gunning down Ernest Moore on May 17, 2015.

Moore, 21, was killed at a large pool party at the Chancellors Family Center in the 6500 block of Dumfries. Police said Moore was involved in a fistfight and when he tried to leave, he was followed and shot multiple times. He died at the scene. Another man, Dresean Holmes, 22, is also charged with murder in the case.

brian.rogers@chron.com

twitter.com/brianjrogers
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Yolanda Rios woke up the morning after the fire with a pounding headache.

She pulled out a mask she normally wears to scrub the bathroom and gave it to her 12-year-old son, David Melendez, as he prepared to leave for school.

Rios, 51, lives just a few homes away from a warehouse that caught fire Thursday and sent black, acrid plumes of smoke into the air, leaving a fine ash on much of her Spring Branch neighborhood. On Friday morning, as she took David to school, firefighters battled spot fires. Nearby, dead fish floated in a bayou stained blood-red by the fire runoff.

"They need to do a very hard cleaning," Rios said.

Explore Houston fires from 2015 and the first quarter of 2016 Red symbols: 1 or 2 family. Black symbols: Multifamily. Blue symbols: Other residential. Green symbols: Non-residential/other.

So far, she said, authorities have been unable to answer some of her most pressing questions, particularly what chemicals people near the fire may have been exposed to.

There have been no reported injuries, caused by inhalation or otherwise, said Jay Evans, a Houston Fire Department spokesman.

The fire started behind a house on Laverne Street and spread to Custom Packaging and Filling Company on Spring Branch Drive. A company manager told investigators that the warehouse contained barrels of petroleum-based additives and pesticides, fire officials said.

Fire officials on Friday, however, said they still did not know what chemicals burned or washed into Spring Branch Creek, which feeds into Buffalo Bayou.

Michael Walters, a spokesman for the Houston's Office of Emergency Management, said much of the company's paperwork burned in the fire, which made it hard for them to know what chemicals were there.

An environmental remediation company was trying to suck up the petroleum additive floating on top of the water, and dilute what remains.

Brian McGovern, a spokesman for the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, said Friday that a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency contractor was conducting air monitoring. The results were not yet available, officials said.

Public records identified the president of Custom Packaging and Filling Company as Thomas B. Jones. Jones' home phone number was disconnected.

The company served industrial customers and handled various hazardous substances, according to its website and TCEQ records.

It has no record of environmental violations with TCEQ and has not been inspected by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration in the past five years, records show.

Fear of potential harm from the hazardous chemicals prompted the evacuation on Thursday of about 650 children and 80 staffers from nearby Spring Branch Elementary School, said Spring Branch ISD Police Chief Chuck Brawner.

"Being in Houston, we have all kinds of things around our school," Brawner said. "But it all ends up with parents being reunited with their kids."

Adrian Shelley, the executive director of Air Alliance Houston, called the warehouse fire "the consequence of accepting the kind of industry in our city that we accept."

"If you have enough chemical warehouses in your city," he said, "you're going to occasionally have these very bad incidents."

Mark Collette and Michael Ciaglo contributed to this report.
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.
Bright, Infinite Future: A Generational Memoir on the Progressive Rise, by Mark Green (St. Martins Press, 368 pp. $ 26.99)

Mark Green, a longtime fixture on New Yorks political scene, has written a tell-all memoir and political manifesto about his years as an advocate and perennial candidate. Green is at his best in Bright, Infinite Future when he tells advocacy stories, like helping to kick the mob out of the carting business in New York City. He is happy to share the credit and doesnt get bogged down in denouncing enemies.

As a young lawyer working for Ralph Naders Public Citizenone of Naders Raidersand later as New York Citys first elected public advocate, Green was a happy warrior for the Left. While public advocate, he was a thorn in Republican mayor Rudolph Giulianis side. Over the years, Green frequently went toe-to-toe with William F. Buckley, Jr. as a regular on Firing Line. These were roles Green seemed born to play. But a candidate in a tough race? Not so much. He recounts his failed runs for Congress and Senate in the 1980s, for Gotham mayor in 2001, and for state attorney general in 2006. While he acknowledges missteps, much of the memoir is devoted to settling scores. Green takes pains to point out the many betrayals he has suffered at the hands of one-time allies and his opponents supposedly unfair advantages.

In 1985, Green, a relative newcomer to politics with no money, wanted to unseat Long Island Republican senator Alphonse DAmato. In the Democratic primary, Green faced multi-millionaire John Dyson, whom Governor Mario Cuomo, the titan of New York liberal Democratic politics, had encouraged to run. Cuomo helped both men behind the scenes, but publicly stayed neutral. Reporters hectored Green about that. Why do you listen to leaks from the governors aides? You should listen to the organ grinder, not the monkeys. And he says that hes neutral, Green told them.

What the hell [are you doing]?, Andrew Cuomo, the governors son, demanded to know in a telephone call. (Green dishes on his relationship with the Cuomos and a panoply of New York political figures.) The candidate, raised a Jewish boy on Long Island, claimed ignorance of the old-time ethnic slur against Italian Americans. This was the second time Green had angered the governor. Earlier, hed flippantly told a reporter that the governor might throw his halo in the ring and run for president.

Things only got worse. Green secured the nomination, but it did him little good. Help for the campaign, despite Greens entreaties, was slow in coming from Democratic quarters in Albany and Washington. And New York City mayor Ed Koch, whom Green also had insulted, crossed party lines to endorse DAmato. The senator, well-financed, well-connected, and politically savvy, trounced Green 57 to 41 percent.

Green recalls the boos from the crowd when, in his concession speech, he thanked the governor for doing everything he could to help with our campaign. So the loss was Cuomos fault after allnot Greens. Then again, maybe it was DAmatos. I completely violate the tradition that losers are supposed to suffer in quiet dignity, Green writes. A few years after the election, he filed a 32-page ethics complaint against DAmato with the Senate Ethics Committee, asking for an investigation of his campaign-finance habits. DAmato was cleared of criminal conduct and reelected.

Greens race against Michael Bloomberg for mayor in 2001 followed a hotly contested Democratic primary. Green narrowly lost the mayoral election in New York, he writes, because: Fernando Ferrer (his primary opponent) refused to endorse him in the general election; he was unfairly blamed for racially inflammatory fliers in Brooklyn; Reverend Al Sharpton tossed racial anthrax into his path; Bloombergs money gave the mogul an unfair advantage; and, of course, September 11 intervened.

Was it unreasonable to blame 9/11? Apparently not. In a stroke of extraordinary prescience, Green says he had warned his wife before the primary that he would win the election, so long as there was no intervening factor. September 11 was primary day. Governor George Pataki called Green at home after the attacks that morning to tell him he was postponing the primary. Later its reported that exit polls as of that morning show me hovering around the magic 40 percent threshold needed to avert a runoff. Green at least admits that union influencea Ferrer strengthcould have swayed voting that evening had the primary continued.

As Giuliani managed the aftermath of the attacks, he asked Bloomberg and the Democratic candidates for an extra 90 days in office. Green was the only Democrat to consent. It didnt go over well with Democratic voters who preferred Ferrers rebuff of what many viewed as a power grab. When Ferrer and Green ended up in a runoff for the nomination, Green stepped in it again when he told an interviewer that if he had been mayor on 9/11, he would have done as well or even better than Giuliani. He tried to repair the damage. I go on Imus the next day to eat crow, Green writes. It was too late. Bloomberg used his war chest to vilify him for the remark.

Looking back, Green concedes that it was a stupid answer, yet insists, Im not seeking office to do less well than the incumbent. Giuliani, he says, strayed off course after 9/11 when he started making political decisions such as seeking the 90-day extension. His comment was a gaffe in the sense of telling not a lie but the truth.

Green faced Bloomberg in a close general election that, because of the run-off primary, lasted only a few weeks. After debating the self-made billionaire, I recalled thinking . . . Wait, this guy is hanging in there with me! Hows he doing that? Bloomberg wound up winning by about 35,000 votes.

The political-manifesto passages in Bright, Infinite Future can be hard to stomach, especially the glowing descriptions of the genius Fidel Castro. Much of this content is devoted to simplistic vilification of Republicans and the insistence that all advancement since the American republics founding has been the work of progressives. Green is more intriguing when he lowers the decibel level and shares his intimate memories of Nader, a quixotic man who changed Washingtons regulatory landscape through intellect and dogged determination. Somehow, Nader did all that without calling anyone an organ grinder.

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
Who has heard of the rural-Iowa newspaper Farm News? A week ago, the answer was nearly no one. But nothing blasts a papers name into the public consciousness like an ethical meltdown, and thats exactly why thousands of people worldwide now knowand are criticizingthe small weekly. All it took was a pointed cartoon, a bitter advertiser, and a questionable editorial decision.

Last week, Farm News published a drawing by freelancer Rick Friday, whose Its Friday! cartoon has appeared in the paper for 21 years. In the sketch, a farmer leaning on a fencepost says he wishes there were more money in farming. There is, his pal responds. In year 2015 the CEOs of Monsanto, DuPont Pioneer and John Deere combined made more money than 2129 Iowa farmers.

The next day, Friday received an email from an editor, who said the sketch had caused a shitstorm here that I do not understand. In the eyes of some, Big Ag cannot be criticized or poked fun at. Farm News serves 24,000 readers in 33 counties. A client affiliated with one of the companies mentioned in Fridays cartoon had pulled its advertising from the paper. Farm News cut ties with Friday just as quickly.

Cartoonists have a long history of retribution from their powerful targets. Most of the backlash has come from governments and political leaders, extremist groups, and even grassroots protesters. Until now, pressure from advertisers and self-censoring editors has mostly spiked individual cartoons, not led to cartoonists being canned. Neither outcome benefits readers, but the case of Friday and Farm News seems a predictable step forward for those who aim to curtail freedom of the press.

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First, lets look at why cartoonswhich are inherently rowdydraw so much scrutiny and anger. Its a form of public humiliation, and people receive it differently than they receive words, says Victor Navasky, publisher emeritus of The Nation and author of The Art of Controversy: Political Cartoons and Their Enduring Power. At least some of the ire stems from the visual nature of the medium, which makes cartoons both striking and accessible. They sow discomfort for subjects and their followers, with no recourse for the aggrieved, Navasky says. The response to these things is disproportionate. (Disclosure: Navasky sits on CJRs board of overseers.)

Those reactions have destroyed cartoonists jobs, freedoms, and lives. As far back as 1832, the French caricaturist Honore Daumier was imprisoned for penciling colorful jabs at Emperor Louis Philippe. In the 1980s, a cartoonist and critic of Middle Eastern leaders was shot and killed outside his newspapers London office; observers have blamed both Palestinian and Israeli leaders, but his murder remains unsolved. Muslim extremists killed 12 people, including four cartoonists at the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, in January 2015. Others have recently been fired in Venezuela and South Africa, allegedly for irritating political leaders, and government coercion is suspected to have claimed the job of Kenyas most popular cartoonist in March.

In the US, backlash from governments and terrorists is less common than the suffocating grip of advertisers. Marketers understand the power in pulling ads, either to distance themselves from a news outlet facing public scorn or, maliciously, to punish one whose coverage has turned adversarial.

In 2014, a newspaper reporter in Kentucky was fired for bashing an advertiser, who complained to the writers supervisor. That same year, it was reported that a columnist for a firearms trade publication was let go after his call for gun control measures caused two major advertisers to walk. This shameful list also includes Coca-Cola removing its advertising from a French TV station in the wake of unflattering coverage, a videogame writer losing his job for penning reviews that angered sponsors, and a trade magazine axing a freelance motorcycle writer for reporting a story critical of an advertiser, even though the piece ran in a different publication.

We have no way of knowing just how many writers and editors engage in self-censorship, in misguided efforts to avoid the unemployment line. An editor for The Huffington Post, for instance, recently rejected a pitch that would have cast Uber in a negative light. His reasoning? The two companies were entering a business partnership, wrote The Washington Posts Erik Wemple.

Yet, somehow, oft-persecuted cartoonists have rarely, if ever, been fired over business-side conflicts. Ive seen cartoons be removed from the site or sort of censored by the editors for that kind of reason. That happens almost all the time, says Adam Zyglis, president of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists. But for someone to lose a gig over it, I dont know if there has ever been a situation like that. A 2004 study on cartoons and censorship reached the same conclusion. More often, public outcry convinces newspapers, particularly those run by college students, to cut ties with cartoonists who penned bigoted illustrations. In those instances, reason seems to be the guiding force.

Perhaps Farm News was particularly vulnerable to its advertisers demands. Its an industry newspaper, and niche publications have small audiences and rely heavily on major sponsors. Farm News is a local weekly offered free of charge to readers in its circulation area, so it presumably has little subscription revenue to offset advertising losses. The paper depends on big agricultural companieslike the ones targeted by Fridayto pay the bills. Hopefully my children and my grandchildren will see that this last cartoon published by Farm News out of Fort Dodge, Iowa, will shine light on how fragile our rights to free speech and free press really are in the country, Friday wrote on Facebook.

Yet Fridays cartoon is the kind of strong, straightforward journalism that Iowa farmers should expect from their newspaper. What good is Farm News if it lacks the guts to take on issues that matter most to its readers?

The publications news editor, Larry Kershner, said he couldnt discuss much about the incident. Trying to persuade him to talk, I told Kershner, who screens cartoons for the paper, that his story could benefit journalism as a whole. Thats the way you look at it when youre not part of a corporation, he responded. When youre part of a corporation, the perspectives change immensely.

Farm News is published by The Messenger, a daily in Fort Dodge that is owned by West Virginia-based Ogden Newspapers Inc. Neither Ogdens vice president, William Nutting, nor the publisher of Farm News, Larry Bushman, responded to multiple requests for comment.

Whats certain is that Bushman and Nutting now have a bigger shitstorm on their hands than they did when the comic first ran. Farm News and its mysterious former advertiser have failed spectacularly to confine this story to Iowas barns and bars. Thats mostly due to Reddit, the sprawling aggregator and online forum, which picked up the story and voted it to the sites front page, attracting an untold number of readers across the globe. The New York Times even ran a meaty piece on the farmer-cartoonist yesterday. This indicates that the publicor at least some portion of itvalues editorial independence. Of all the takeaways from this story, thats one of the most encouraging.

Navasky, the editor and cartooning expert, says technology is making attempts at censorship more difficult. The message will get out. This week, Friday began independently publishing cartoons for his newfound fans, drawing eyeballs he never would have if not for this debacle. The sketches still feature farmers and Big Ag. But Friday is also hammering a new target: the press. One drawing depicts an editor hunched over his desk, talking to a confused farmer whos holding a newspaper: We edited your opinion to please our masters.

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Jack Murtha is a CJR Delacorte Fellow. Follow him on Twitter at @JackMurtha
When 35 women appeared on the cover of New York magazine last summer, it symbolized a breakthrough in documenting the litany of rape allegations against Bill Cosby over four decades. The issue featured a photo essay and compilation of testimonies on trauma and survival, giving voice to women who had been shunned and shamed for years. They told of the culture that wouldnt listen, and the magazine was hailed for its powerful examination of that injustice.

A commitment to that subject would be expected going forward. But this week, New York printed a glowing 4,300-word profile of Charlamagne Tha God, calling him Tha God of Hip-Hop Radio. Charlamagne, born Lenard McKelvey, hosts a talk show on MTV2, and the cable channel Revolt televises his syndicated, New York-based morning radio show, The Breakfast Club. Hes an irreverent provocateur, hip-hops puckish Howard Stern, the magazine said, echoing a comparison made by Rolling Stone in 2014, before Charlamagne had 1.4 million followers on Twitter. New York Contributing Editor Mark Jacobson wrote of Charlamagnes shock-jock talent as an interviewer and the high-profile controversies that indiscretion ignites, but missing from the piece was virtually any description of the inappropriate things Charlamagne has said on his way to becoming so popular.

The Cosby date rape revelation was among the biggest stories of last year, and too often, Charlamagne more or less made a joke of it.

Its one thing to be sad at the sight of fallen heroes, or to allow eccentric guests to voice their views, but interview hosts are expected to shut down tastelessness past a point.

The culture that wouldnt listen describes a collective failure. Even Ta-Nehisi Coates of The Atlantic owned up to a reckless misjudgment of the Cosby allegations. But Charlamagnes running commentary on The Breakfast Clubwhere he interviews mostly musicians, actors, and comedianswent many steps beyond what was perhaps an understandable impulse for Cosby fans to resist such a dark truth. Charlamagne calls himself a journalist and cultural critic, thus he accepts a higher standard for tact and truth-telling beyond that of an entertainer. An in-depth profile should confront him on the most troubling instances when he appeared to fall short of that. In his own interviews, Charlamagne Tha God would never allow a guest to pass as infallible.

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Last July, Charlamagne told Marc Lamont Hill of The Huffington Post that he decided to stop defending Cosby after the 2005 deposition was released in which Cosby admitted to drugging women. We dont want to believe that about our heroes, Charlamagne said of his prior hesitation. Less than two months later on The Breakfast Club, the comedian Damon Wayans riffed about the rape accusers and said, Some of them, really, is unrapeable. I look at them and go, no, he dont want that. Charlamagne had to stand up from his chair because he was laughing so hard, then said, But mind you, 50 years later, they might have been hot in their younger days. Nah, you can tell, dude, Wayans replied as Charlamagne gripped his stomach, cracking up.

Damon Wayans really had my stomach hurting this morning. I love intellectual ignorance.  Charlamagne Tha God (@cthagod) September 4, 2015

Before and after Charlamagne and his co-hosts accepted Cosbys guilt, that sort of crude humor was routine on The Breakfast Club. Its one thing to be sad at the sight of fallen heroes, or to allow eccentric guests to voice their views, but interview hosts are expected to shut down tastelessness past a point. On the rival program Sway in the Morning on SiriusXM, the comedian Lavell Crawford once began a joke about Kanye West and Kim Kardashian naming their daughter North. Immediately, Sway shook his head and said, No, no, no. Dont do that. Dont go at the kid, and they moved on. The same off-limits instinct should apply to survivors of serial date rape, one would think.

Dont tell me Bill Cosby couldnt get no consensual buns because he was too old. You see who these girls fucking to go to Dubai?  Charlamagne Tha God (@cthagod) July 6, 2015

Charlamagne invoked criticism of how the rape allegations finally got national attentionwhen the stand-up comic Hannibal Buress called Cosby out for long-existing reports of rape during a set in late 2014. Chris Rock came on The Breakfast Club soon after, and Charlamagne asked, With Hannibal as a comedian, do you feel like he crossed that line with the [legends] like Bill Cosby? He just got on stage and said Cosby raped somebody. Wheres the punchline? As this warped argument goes, even if the allegations were true, Buress broke code by calling out his peer. Rock, of course, defended the younger comic.

Maybe Charlamagne has an evolved view of how he handled the Cosby story, or a justification of how he can be a journalist and cultural critic while also being so flippant on serious subjects. That wouldve been interesting to broach in the New York profile. But the piece marvelled at Charlamagnes ability to provoke without explaining what he says to be provocative. New York of all places would be expected not to brush past crassness related to the Cosby rapes.

The piece makes it very clear that Charlamagne is a provocateur, Lauren Starke, director of public relations at New York, wrote in an email, and to list every single occasion in which hes said something controversial would be impossible. On the question of Cosby specifically, Charlamagne issued a mea culpa nearly a year ago. Starkes email links to the Huffington Post story, which was not linked to or mentioned in the New York article.

In a piece about Kanye West a few months ago, New York Writer at Large Rembert Browne notes that when the rapper was deluded enough to tweet, BILL COSBY INNOCENT, you feel let down. Those same expectations explain why the incomplete profile of an important voice like Charlamagnes leaves one feeling let down, too.

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Danny Funt is a senior editor at The Week and a former CJR Delacorte Fellow. Follow him on Twitter at @dannyfunt
When the Tampa Bay Times announced this week that it had bought and closed its rival The Tampa Tribune, friends of mine who had worked at the Trib were saddened, and some were angry at how suddenly the paper was shuttered. But, many of them said: If only one newspaper could survive in Tampa Bay, better that it be the Times.

The Times has long been viewed with a certain romance in journalism circles, a beacon-on-the-hill sort of place where a unique ownership structure, set up by a revered newsman, ensured that the task of reporting was not held hostage to corporate profit marginsor hedge fund operators murky plans. Its lofty approach could rub competitors the wrong way, but it was also an object of admiration. Now, the heirs of that tradition have killed off a 123-year-old member of the journalism family, with its own significant history. It was a bid to preserve the future of the Times, and it may have been necessary, but its hard to cheer.

When the sale was announced at 3pm Tuesday, the Tribune ceased to operate as an independent publication more or less immediately. Its website redirects for now to the Times homepage; starting Wednesday morning, Tribune subscribers got the Times on their doorstep.

Paul Tash, the Times chairman and CEO, presented the sale as saving journalism in general in Tampa Bay by putting the Times on solid financial footing.*

[T]he continued competition between the Times and Tribune was putting both in peril, Tash said in a column announcing the news. In todays economy, you can count on one hand the number of cities that can sustain more than one daily newspaper, and the Tampa Bay region is no longer among them.

Tash also said this week that some of the 265 Tribune employees would be hired at the Times, but that at least 100 were likely to lose their jobs. From what Im hearing, only a handful from the Trib newsroom have been asked to stick around at the Times. The rest will be given two months severance.

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The outcome is, from one perspective, a vindication of the Times singular structure. Nelson Poynter bought the Times from his father in 1947 and set up what became the nonprofit Poynter Institute in 1975. He willed his controlling interest of the paper, then called the St. Petersburg Times, to the institute when he died in 1978. His goal was to preserve the independence of the paper, and over the years the Times did succeed in fending off at least one corporate raider.

Under Poynters successorsmost notably Gene Patterson, a civil rights crusader and one of the Souths great newsmen of the 20th centurythe Times also invested in journalism, as its 12 Pulitzers, including two just last month, attest.

And in the 1980s, it started to stake out its territory across the bay, beginning what would be a nearly 30-year battle with the Tribune. It was a move that might have seemed outlandish a decade earlier when the Tribune was one of the largest papers in Florida, but by then the Times was widely recognized as one of the best papers in the state. Pattersons paper was doing impressive journalism, while so many other papers, including the Tribune, were treading water.

Howard Troxler, a metro columnist who worked at both papers, noted the Tribune fought longer and harder than anyone really expected. If you could go back and tell the Times people back then, 30 years its going to take you, they wouldnt have believed it and they might not have done it, he said.

My own fondness for the journalism being done in Tampa Bay comes from spending most of my career in Florida reading the great investigations and beautifully written features the Times churned out, and watching the scrappy Tribune just refuse to stop fighting. It also comes with a family connection. My father, Jeff Nesmith, got one of his first jobs stringing for the Tampa Tribune in the late 1950s. His job was to check police reports in Gainesville on Sunday nights, back when one of the largest papers in the state kept an eye on the news more than 100 miles away.

Dad recalled a Tribune that was regional powerhousein fact, from about the 1920 to the 60s it was probably the best paper in the state, the historian Gary Mormino told me. But my dad also worked for the Atlanta Constitution in his early career, when that paper was the most important one in the South. There, Patterson and publisher Ralph McGill faced down white supremacists during the Civil Rights Movement, offering inspiration to a generation of idealistic reporters, and a vision of journalists as community caped crusaders. Patterson brought that crusading sense of mission to the Times.

Patterson, that champion of American journalism, was also in charge when the Times expanded into Tampa in 1987 and began its battle against the Tribune. It was a business decision. To survive even under the ownership of a nonprofit, Times leaders felt they needed to control the entire Tampa Bay market.* Now, they have itthough the act of killing off a rival, even if it had come to seem inevitable, sits a bit uneasily with the whole paper-on-a-hill mystique.

It may not be what Poynter would have wanted, said Philip Gailey, a former vice president of Times Publishing, but it may save his newspaper.

For an undisclosed price (though it cant have been much), the Times essentially bought a list of subscribers it will need to convince to stay on, along with some advertising contracts and maybe a little bit of leverage over future ad prices. It also bought the freedom to no longer worry about local competitionand, perhaps, to focus more single-mindedly on the transition to digital.

In advance of the deal, the Times itself has reported, the company took on new debt, borrowing against properties it owns. The papers debt has been a source of concern in recent yearsthough the Times was also able to pay off a good chunk of what it owed recently with the sale of its own headquarters. It reportedly owes less now than it did a few weeks ago. (The Times has also reported that the deal for the sale was actually agreed to back in February, when an agreement to have the Times print the Tribune was announced, and Trib brass were still talking about the viability of their paper.)

Among media watchers down here, I heard little consensus about the outlook for the Times in the wake of the purchase. Wayne Garcia, a veteran of both newsrooms and now the associate director of The Zimmerman School of Advertising & Mass Communications at the University of South Florida, was in the pessimistic camp, given the state of the industry. I dont know that this sets them up for the future, he said. Can any market really support one newspaper? That question is still unanswered.

Like many current and former Tribune reporters, he also wished the papers end had come differently. If a papers got to die, Id like to see it die on its own, rather than putting a bullet to its head with no last edition, Garcia said.

I talked to Tash Thursday afternoon, and asked about that. These are changes that were carefully planned, he said, noting that the Times will maintain the Tribune brand and its banner on twice-weekly local editions in Tampa.

The Times also plans a special section this Sunday as a tribute to the Tribune. On the issue of not letting Tribune reporters do that themselves, Tash said: Ive been involved in long goodbyes and short goodbyes in my life, and the long goodbyes are always more difficult.

Sure its sad, he said. Sometimes there are sad things that have to happen for good things to happen.

Tash caries the extraordinary legacy of people like Nelson Poynter and Gene Patterson on his shoulders. Lets hope hes right about this one.

* Corrections: This post originally misstated the title of Paul Tash, the Times chairman and CEO. Also, one line has been revised to clarify that the Times is owned by a nonprofit organization; it is not itself nonprofit.

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Susannah Nesmith is CJRs correspondent for Florida, Georgia, and Alabama. She is a freelance writer based in Miami with more than 25 years working for regional and national outlets. Follow her on Twitter @susannahnesmith.
Anyone who has had embarrassing photos posted on social media or been deluged with angry messages can attest to the high emotional cost of cyber bullying. But there is also a cost in real dollars for some to clean up their online reputations, including legal fees, security measures and even counseling.

For the 40 percent of adult Internet users who are dealing with this issue, according to 2014 Pew Research Center data, and numerous school-age children, there is a new insurance policy to help mitigate the financial repercussions.

Chubb Ltd recently began offering optional cyber bullying coverage for its homeowners insurance clients. The coverage is included in the companys Family Protection policy, which costs around $70 a year. It covers up to $60,000 in compensation to clients and their families to pay for services including psychological counseling, lost salary and, in extreme cases, public relations assistance.

Its so hard to have complete control online, said Christie Alderman, vice president of client product and services, Chubb personal risk services. We do know that when it does occur it can be really devastating.

Nicole Prause, a neuroscientist from California, learned the costs of cyber bullying the hard way.

After publishing a 2013 peer-reviewed paper that suggested sex addiction is not a clinical diagnosis, Prause said she was subjected to online insults from people she believes oppose her work.

The abuse varied in scope, from repeated claims that she faked her data to comments about her appearance.

I had a TED Talk (posted online) and they just filled it with tranny comments, said Prause, who worked at the University of California-Los Angeles at the time the attacks began. They have definitely singled me out.

Prause filed a cease-and-desist order against her harassers, and said those persons are no longer allowed to contact her directly. But Prause said she spent around $5,000 to mitigate the damage over the years, hiring an attorney and someone to take screenshots of the abuse lobbed at her online.

Rich Matta, the chief executive officer of ReputationDefender, an online reputation management firm, says that the average consumer dealing with this problem can spend around a few thousand dollars a year to combat cyber bullying.

Its no surprise that remediation of cyber bullying is now insurable, Matta said, referencing the Chubb insurance policy.

But some feel that taking out an insurance policy against online harassment is going too far.

Sameer Hinduja, co-director of the Cyberbullying Research Center and a professor of criminal justice at Florida Atlantic University, said insurance for cyber bullying reinforces a victim mentality and is tapping (in to) the fear.

You can do a lot on your own to safeguard your reputation, Hinduja said.

Experts say it is important for consumers to be proactive in protecting their online reputation, by taking a few simple steps.

Here are a few tips to avoid the cyber bully trap:

1. Keep it private

Hinduja recommends setting social media profiles to private, to avoid writing posts that are too frequent and opinionated, and to block or mute accounts that go too far.

You are going to be a much better advocate for yourself, Hinduja said.

2. Be proactive about your childs online presence

While more schools are educating kids about cyber abuse, Matta said parents still need to monitor how their kids use social media. They need to establish some boundaries and rules around when its OK to use technology, he said.

3. Get help when you need it

For those who feel overwhelmed managing their online presence, resources like online ReputationDefender can offer a reprieve  for a price. ReputationDefender typically charges private clients between $3,000 and $20,000 per year, while Reputation 911 (http://reputation911.com/) offers monthly packages for personal reputation management between $195 and $995.

(Editing by Beth Pinsker and Matthew Lewis)
After fighting for more than two years to avoid paying almost $1 billion in oil spill damages to Gulf Coast shrimpers, oystermen and seafood processors it claimed didnt exist, BP Plc has thrown in the towel.

We have withdrawn our claims seeking an injunction against payments by the Seafood Program so the program can be concluded, Geoff Morrell, a BP spokesman, said in an e-mail Tuesday. The company will keep pursuing fraud claims against lawyer Mikal Watts and his firm, Morrell said. Watts was indicted for allegedly making false claims in connection with the BP spill.

A federal judge in New Orleans Monday allowed BP to drop its bid to avoid paying the second half of $2.3 billion in compensation promised to seafood interests harmed by the blown-out well. The subsea gusher pumped more than 4 million barrels of crude into the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, closing fisheries and blackening the shores of five states.

BP claimed lawyers negotiating on behalf of the seafood industry fraudulently inflated the number of Southeast Asian immigrant fishermen and boat hands claiming damages from the spill. The overstatement jacked up BPs settlement by hundreds of millions of dollars, the company said.

BP had paid out about $1 billion of the seafood fund when it balked at paying the remainder after discovering irregularities in a law firms client list. The seafood payout is a separate earmark within BPs larger settlement of all spill-related economic and property damage claims, which the company said in an April 26 earnings statement will now cost significantly more than $12.9 billion.

Watts Indicted

Watts, a Texas attorney, was indicted last year for allegedly lying about representing more than 40,000 mostly Vietnamese American boat captains and crew members in spill claims against BP. He was appointed to a lucrative seat on the lawyers steering committee largely on the strength of his client roster, which BP and federal prosecutors claim was riddled with fake names and Social Security numbers, dead people and even a dog.

Watts is set to face trial in Mississippi in July.

BP held onto its civil fraud claims against Watts and his San Antonio law firm, while dropping the rest of the fight against the seafood industry payout, according to court records. Tammy Tran, a spokeswoman and attorney for many in the Gulf Coast Vietnamese community, has submitted in a separate fraud lawsuit against Watts what she said is proof that most of the Vietnamese fishermen and women on the disputed client roster are real people with real claims against BP.

The court order doesnt specify how quickly BP would pay the balance of the seafood fund.

The case is In re Oil Spill by the Oil Rig Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico on April 20, 2010, 10-md-02179, U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Louisiana (New Orleans).

Copyright 2022 Bloomberg.
A fire that forced the evacuation of the Canadian oil sands city of Fort McMurray, Alberta, destroyed 80 percent of the homes in one neighborhood and extensively damaged property in a number of others, and officials warned it could get worse Wednesday.

More than 80,000 residents were ordered to flee as flames moved into the city, destroying whole neighborhoods. No injuries have been reported.

An overnight update from the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo said the Beacon Hill suburb in the south end has suffered the most damage from flames with 80 percent of the homes lost. A dozen trailers on one street in the neighborhood of Timberlea have gone up in flames, with serious losses are reported in the Abasand and Waterways suburbs. Some homes have been lost in four other neighborhoods.

Fire chief Darby Allen told the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. on Wednesday that parts of wooded areas of the city are still burning but no structures were currently on fire. But Allen said hes worried about the plumes of smoke he sees outside his window and worried about the wind and its direction. It could be even more devastating unfortunately, he said.

Firefighters were working to protect critical infrastructure, including the only bridge across the Athabasca River and Highway 63, the only route to the city from the south.

Forestry manager Bernie Schmitte told reporters overnight that there was still danger from very high temperatures, low relative humidities and some strong winds.

Canadian Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale said in a statement Wednesday he is watching the situation with great concern and said situation is fluid and evolving rapidly He noted the federal government is monitoring the situation carefully, including the military.

Defense Minister Harjit Sajjan, in a conference call from Germany early Wednesday, confirmed a formal request for assistance has been received from the Alberta government. What form that will take  at least on the military side  is still being determined and they are expecting to hear soon about the kind of equipment and personnel required.

Were making all assets available, whatever the province and the emergency operations center assesses that they need, he said.

Alberta Premier Rachel Notley called it the biggest evacuation in the history of the province. Residents were panicked.

When you leave  its an overwhelming feeling to think that youll never see your house again, said resident Carol Christian, who drove to the evacuation center with her son and their cat.

It was absolutely horrifying when we were sitting there in traffic. You look up and then you watch all the trees candle-topping  up the hills where you live and youre thinking, Oh my God. We got out just in time.'

Fort McMurray is the heart of Canadas oil sands region. The Alberta oil sands are the third largest reserves of oil in the world behind Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. Most oil sands projects are well north of the community, while the worst of the flames were on the citys south side.

We appreciate that some of you have lost properties. We have people working here right now that have lost property, too, Allen said.

Suncor, the largest oil sands operator, said it is reducing production at its regional facility  about 15 miles north of the city  so as to allow employees and their families to get to safety.

Medical staffers who were evacuated to Noralta Lodge, 26 kms (16 miles) north of Fort McMurray, were ready when a local woman went into labor.

The blaze had burned since Sunday and seemed on its way to being neutralized Tuesday morning, but it overwhelmed firefighters when winds shifted quickly and drastically in the mid-afternoon to the southwest of the city.

Pictures and video on social media depicted a hellish scene of fire jumping roads and burning debris pitched into the paths of cars as frantic residents, lined up bumper to bumper, scrambled and fumbled to find their way through the thick grey haze.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau tweeted that he spoke with Notley and said the federal government stands ready to help. He urged residents to follow evacuation orders.

As the afternoon wore on and the fire intensified, more and more sections of the city were ordered evacuated until the entire community was ordered out after 6 p.m.

Oil sands work camps were being pressed into service to house evacuees as the raging wildfire emptied the city.

Officials were also evacuating non-essential staff at Suncors base plant. It is 30 kilometers (18 miles) away and one of the closest facilities to the city. Spokesman Paul Newmarch said evacuees were moving into the plants work camps.

(AP reporter Rob Gillies in Toronto contributed.)

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Johnson & Johnson must pay $55 million to a 62-year-old South Dakota woman who blamed her ovarian cancer on the companys talcum powder in the second such trial loss this year.

J&J is accused in more than 1,000 lawsuits in state and federal courts of ignoring studies linking its Shower-to-Shower product and Johnsons Baby Powder to ovarian cancer. Women contend the company knew the risk and failed to warn customers. In February, J&J lost a $72 million verdict in the same St. Louis courthouse to the family of a woman who died of the disease.

The more talc verdicts that come down against them adds to the publics growing distrust of their baby powder, which is one of their iconic products, said Carl Tobias, who teaches product-liability law at the University of Richmond in Virginia. There are both economic and reputational issues that may motivate them to start thinking about a global settlement of these cases.

J&J should consider setting up a settlement program to dispose of the talc cases, said Tobias, who isnt involved in the case.

State court jurors Monday awarded $5 million in compensation and $50 million in punitive damages to Gloria Ristesund, who was diagnosed with cancer in 2011 after using J&Js talc-based feminine hygiene products for almost 40 years. Ristesunds cancer, after she underwent a hysterectomy, is in remission.

Science has been simple and consistent over the last 40 years: Theres an increased risk of ovarian cancer from genital use of talc, Allen Smith, Ristesunds lawyer, told jurors Friday. Ristesund used talc for four decades unaware there were any health concerns, he said.

Talcs Safety

J&J, the worlds largest maker of health-care products, denied any link between talc and ovarian cancer or any need to warn women. The company will appeal the verdict, Carol Goodrich, a J&J spokeswoman, said in an e-mailed statement.

Unfortunately, the jurys decision goes against 30 years of studies by medical experts around the word that continue to support the safety of cosmetic talc, Goodrich said. Johnson & Johnson has always taken questions about the safety of our products extremely seriously.

The jury cleared J&Js supplier and co-defendant, Imerys Talc America Inc., of any liability.

The outcome was a narrow victory for the plaintiff, with jurors voting 9-3 for Ristesund, the minimum required. The panel initially voted 7-5 for Ristesund, said juror Devon Small, 26, of St. Louis.

Jurors struggled to agree on whether talc was a contributing factor in ovarian cancer, said jury forewoman Teri Brickey, 45, of St. Louis. After we agreed on that, everything was easy, she said. We felt like they knew for decades that they should have put a warning on this product.

Third Trial

Ristesunds lawsuit is the third to go to before a jury, preceded by the trial in the suit brought by the family of Jackie Fox, who died at 62. An earlier trial in federal court in South Dakota in 2013 ended with a jury finding that J&J was negligent while deciding not to award damages. The company faces another talc trial in the St. Louis court in September.

Thousands of women or their family members contacted plaintiffs lawyers after the Fox verdict, attorney Jere Beasley said in March. His firm, one of several representing the Fox family and Ristesund, is reviewing more than 5,000 potential claims, he said in an interview.

Ristesunds case was a defense pick after the plaintiffs selected the first case to go to trial, Beasley said in an interview Monday. If they cant win that one, they cant win one. Theyre going to have to come to the table and start settling cases.

Targeting Women

J&J documents showed the company was aware of health concerns since the mid-1970s, Smith told jurors Friday in closing arguments. A 1992 document suggested targeting women who were high users of talcum powder to boost sales, he said.

Ristesund incurred $174,000 in medical bills, plus pain and suffering, Smith told jurors. Talc was found in her ovarian tissue after the hysterectomy, he said.

Christy Jones, a J&J attorney, told jurors that Ristesund had several risk factors for ovarian cancer, That included a family history of cancer, having endometriosis and the fact she had no children, Jones said. Nobody knows what causes ovarian cancer, she said.

Three jurors sided with J&J. I just thought there was a lack of evidence, juror Kayla McGuire, 32, said in an interview after the verdict. Other jurors had latched onto a few emotional statements, she said.

The case is Hogans v. Johnson & Johnson, 1422-CC09012-01, Circuit Court, St. Louis City, Missouri.

Copyright 2022 Bloomberg.
After warning for days about violent storms that could rake the central U.S. with huge hail, high winds and strong tornadoes, forecasters will review whether the messages they sent were appropriate for severe weather that some considered a bust because the tornadoes that did develop were small.

Storms on Tuesday brought grapefruit-sized hail in Kansas and winds near 75 mph throughout the Great Plains and Missouri River Valley. But the tornadoes that formed lacked enough of the right ingredients to become monster storms.

We had signals that it could be on the higher end, said Bill Bunting, the operations chief at the Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Oklahoma. But each system is different, and (this one) didnt live up to our expectations.

The center for the first time had said six days out that a severe weather outbreak was possible  raising questions on whether it was appropriate to sound a general alarm that far in advance.

The one thing missing was what the hazards were, said Kim Klockow, a visiting scientist at the National Weather Service who studies meteorology and human behavior. It was always entirely possible there would be tornadoes and it was possible there wont be.

The Storm Prediction Center doesnt quantify the chance of specific hazards in its forecasts until the day the storms are expected. On Tuesday, it predicted that the central U.S. had a moderate risk of severe weather based on a 45 percent chance of 1-inch hail, with at least a 10 percent chance of 2-inch hail. The center said there was a lesser risk of tornadoes.

Klockow, who was brought aboard to help forecasters communicate their messages more effectively, said the solution lies not only with the Storm Prediction Center but with all charged with spreading the news about bad weather. She noted that some broadcasters talked up tornadoes as though they were certain.

No single one of us communicates alone. We need to be on the same sheet of music, she said.

The dire predictions led several Oklahoma school districts to shutter their doors. Businesses cleared inventory from exposed areas, fearing the worst.

So many people were sheltering for the tornado, I would be surprised if there wasnt some talk of a bust, Klockow said.

Marshall Shepherd, a former president of the American Meteorological Society, a professor and director of the Atmospheric Sciences Program at the University of Georgia and the host of a Sunday talk show on the Weather Channel, noted in an email to The Associated Press that forecasters and the public often focus on tornadoes when discussing severe weather.

I think the communication of (a) severe weather threat is still tornado dominant, Shepherd said. The overall event was generally ok, the `bust is in the hyper-discussion and anticipation of an outbreak.

In a piece that he wrote for Forbes on Wednesday, Shepherd said some discussion of a bust is likely fair after the hype of Tuesdays storms. However, he went on to say, I frequently encourage society to move beyond the notion of being upset when preparing for the worst and it does not happen. Just say thank you.

Klockow said she would like to know how people handled information they received before and during the storms development  using actual data, not just anecdotes from people tweeting about what was perceived as a flawed forecast.

She said she also would like to see the National Weather Service collect data on social behaviors, like the agency already does on how storms come together.

Its a physical science agency, Klockow said. The pressure will need to come externally to bring that to the attention of the agency.

Bunting, whose team made the forecast, said the pre-storm outlooks succeeded in drawing attention to the weather, even if storms werent entirely as bad as expected.

We always have to work to improve how we present information, he said.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
WorldService Project Is 'For King & Country' on New RareNoise Records Release [REVIEW]

Can you take what WorldService Project is puttin' down? (Photo : James Drew Turner)

One cannot possibly describe the action going on during WorldService Project's For King & Country on London's RareNoise Records. It's inexplicable, outrageous and dares you not to like it. But if you're like me, born into rock and raised on fusion, metal, the avant-garde, King Crimson and Led Zeppelin, there's something about these eight blasphemies that will appeal to your sense of rebellion

It's punk. That's right. Record store owners may place this in the jazz rack and they wouldn't exactly be wrong but this is punk. Punk, in its true essence, is an attitude anyway, able to traverse across whatever genre it infests. Sure, its infantile manifestation was within rock'n'roll but take that spit and spirit into other genres and you have a surefire bonfire of raging proportions. Thus, welcome to the world of punk-jazz.

Blame keyboardist/composer Dave Morecroft. This follow-up to 2012's Fire in a Pet Shop even features a loathsome character from that earlier CD: "Mr. Giggles," who, as any kid who's ever been scared by a clown can tell you, is to be kept at far lengths away. Morecroft's merry band of pranksters are on sax, trombone, bass and drums but they play as if their skin is on fire.

You'd think it was an instrumental prog-rock project when opener "Flick the Beanstalk" sets this scene. When the "Fuming Duck" enters, though, one doesn't know what to think what with its odd angled meters, fuzz bass and Raphael Clarkson's electric trombone. One supposes that it's jazz at the outset of "Murano Faro" but that track morphs into a monster.

As the CD's rollicking and ranting craziness gets even more intense, one must think Frank Zappa, cartoon ska, horror soundtrack and maybe even the funkier fringes of the avant-garde. This Project is, indeed, a world service, perfect for those seekers amongst us. Rare noise, anybody?

 2016 The Classical Art, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.

TagsWorldService Project, RareNoise Records, REVIEW, King Crimson
Spain's acting Industry Minister Jose Manuel Soria said on Friday he was resigning from his position with immediate effect after alleged links to offshore companies in Panama and Jersey.

Soria has denied all wrong-doing, but said he was stepping down to limit any damage to the caretaker government, the People's Party (PP), at a time when Spain is facing a likely second general election after an inconclusive December vote.
Shares of AmerisourceBergen fell more than 7 percent Thursday after the company lowered its full-year earnings forecast.

The drug wholesale company slashed diluted earnings per share expectations by 10 cents to $5.44. Overall results were mixed; AmerisourceBergen beat analyst estimates by 9 cents a share, earning an adjusted $1.68 per share in the second quarter for this fiscal year. Quarterly revenue was just below forecasts at $35.7 billion, up 9.3 percent year-over-year.

The Pennsylvania-based company's stock is down more than 25 percent so far this year. Shares of AmerisourceBergen traded around $77 before the close Thursday, down from its 52-week high of $116 dollars.
Jim Cramer thinks sometimes stocks simply come down to supply and demand. When there is too much demand, a CEO can say anything and get away with financial murder. And when there isn't enough demand, nobody likes the CEO, no matter what is said.

That is exactly what Cramer sees occurring with Tesla , Apple and Fitbit .

Tesla CEO Elon Musk seems to think he can say whatever he wants and get away with it. Meanwhile, Apple CEO Tim Cook has to watch every word out of his mouth, even though he repeatedly delivers on his promises. And Fitbit CEO James Park seems to think guidance is for idiots, Cramer said.

"During any given earnings season we have executives who really push the envelope and do things that are totally outrageous. But we have never seen the likes of Elon Musk in our lives," the "Mad Money" host said.
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On a clear day in East Providence, Rhode Island, dirt-filled dump trucks, bulldozers and a man with a hose engage in a carefully choreographed dance. The dump trucks unload the dirt, bulldozers push it down a smooth, sloped embankment near the Providence River, and the worker hoses it down. This is repeated dozens of time in the course of a work day, part of a plan to make the former industrial site free of contaminants and available for future development.

The company doing the work is Arcadis . The global engineering and consulting firm is headquartered in the Netherlands and works around the world on water, infrastructure and construction projects. The fastest growing part of its business is in the United States.

Chelsea Francis, Arcadis Water Resources Engineer CNBC

"Cleanup by far is the bigger piece of the (environmental) business, if you look at revenue generation," said John Jastrem, CEO of Arcadis North America. "North America has the strongest regulations and the best way to enforce those regulations."

Environmental work accounts for 65 percent of the company's revenue, said Jastrem. He said most of it is done at mining sites or sites that have been used by "extraction" industries like oil and natural gas. And while Jastrem acknowledges regulation is the primary motivator for firms undertaking this work, he said there is also an attitude among North American companies that cleaning up the mistakes of the past provides a long-term good for the community.

So for Arcadis and others that do this remediation work, their services are in high demand, along with the services of the workers who oversee the projects.

"Demand for environmental engineers is extremely high right now," said Frank De Safey, president of Sequence Staffing, an environmental recruiting firm. "If I could get some genetic material and shoot it into individuals to create a five-to-seven-year professional, an environmental engineer, I would be a very wealthy man."

We're looking to hire approximately 400 engineers and scientists this year. John Jastrem CEO, Arcadis North America

The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that from 2014 to 2024, the number of environmental engineering jobs in the U.S. will increase by 12 percent, almost double the expected rate of growth for all jobs. One of the firms that will be hiring is Arcadis. "We're looking to hire approximately 400 engineers and scientists this year," said Jastrem, who expects the 6,000-person company will add 15 to 20 percent more workers each year for the next five years.

Given that Arcadis competes with Silicon Valley, the pharmaceutical industry and others for talent, the company has gone to great lengths to get the attention of future employees early in their education. Jastrem said it partners with STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) high schools around the country through a program that allows students to come to Arcadis and be "an engineer for a day."

Arcadis has also nurtured relationships with over 100 colleges and has developed strong ties with 30 of those schools, including the Colorado School of Mines, Penn State and Georgia Tech.





"We prefer to hire right out of school, and we're well positioned to do that because of the career pathing and training programs we have to take them on," said Jastrem.

Arcadis pays these new hires $50,000 to $75,000 a year. Salaries increase if an employee has advanced degrees or professional licenses.

Jastrem said while a prospective hire's intellect is a key reason they are recruited, the firm also looks for those who can collaborate. He said ultimately the engineers work on a team with other engineers, biologists and chemists all of whom need to work together to find the most innovative, cost-effective solutions to the problems they are trying to solve.

They also want people who see their job as something more than a means to a paycheck.

"A lot of this comes down not only to the aptitude, or the ability, but also the desire on the part of many of these students to say I want to put my career into a place that is clearly going to make the world better," he said.





Chelsea Francis CNBC

The belief she is making a difference in a community is one reason 26-year-old Chelsea Francis is happy with her current job as a Water Resource Engineer at Arcadis. For the last three months, she has been working on building a waste water treatment plant for two small towns in Arizona.

"I felt like I needed to be a part of that," she said.

Francis has been a part of Arcadis since the summer of her senior year in high school, when she landed an internship that had her working on a road map for the city of Phoenix. She stayed with the firm through college and graduate school, as Arcadis allowed her to work part time, as her schedule allowed.

Francis traces her interest in engineering to a contest in eight grade when she and her fellow students in a technology class were tasked with building a spaghetti bridge. With the help of her grandfather, who was also an engineer, Francis built a bridge laced with the structure Francis learned was the strongest, a triangle. She won the contest.

"We built as many triangles into my design as possible," she said.

While Francis holds a B.A. in chemical engineering from Arizona State University, she said she realized during college she did not want to be a chemical engineer. She said she really liked the environmental side of engineering, and so went on to receive a master's degree in civil engineering and sustainable engineering from ASU.





Chelsea Francis as a child CNBC
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The Philippines, one of Asia's brightest economic spots, heads to the polls on Monday in an election that may hold the key to accelerating the country's development. The new administration will inherit a country that is in its best shape in decades, one that's evolved from Asia's "sick man" to "strong man." The Philippines recorded gross domestic product (GDP) expansion of 5.8 percent last year, beating out many Southeast Asian peers, including Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Singapore, and the Asian Development Bank is predicting 6 percent growth this year on the back of strong consumption. Building on that momentum is crucial. "In many respect, this is the most important political date for the Philippines in years. The president has only one six-year term and President Benigno Aquino's term is up this year. Markets are nervous about his replacement due to the immense potential that the Philippines holds," Natixis senior economist Trinh D. Nguyen said in a note.

The candidates

All four major candidates running this year have campaigned on different platforms, but economists say they share more similarities than differences.

"We find that on paper, there are only nuances, rather than stark differences in their broad underlying ideologies. For example, the common ground amongst most, if not all four candidates, includes creating inclusive growth, building infrastructure, improving health insurance, strengthening the agricultural sector and strengthening law enforcement institutions," Morgan Stanley said in a recent report. The frontrunner is Davao mayor Rodrigo Duterte, also known as "the Punisher." He's intent on fighting crime and corruption, as well as promoting equal opportunities, especially for low-income earners. Described as "individualistic, eccentric and unconventional" by Joey Cuyegkeng , ING's senior Asia economist, the mayora self-proclaimed socialistis seen as a polarizing candidate for his controversial views towards women, a lack of economic agenda and accusations of illegally acquired wealth.

Political newcomer Senator Grace Poe, the adopted daughter of Philippine film stars, is focused on making the government more sympathetic to people's needs. Some of her key policies include institutionalizing a free lunch program at public schools to combat malnutrition and taking a multilateral, diplomatic approach to the country's maritime dispute with China in the South China Sea, or West Philippine Sea, conflict. "She is likeable but lacks experience," points out Natixis' Nguyen. Vice President Jejomar Binay, who resigned from Aquino's cabinet last June, has been focused on business-friendly policies such as improving the country's competitiveness rankings and facilitating government transactions related to business registration. But his campaign has been marred by several graft allegations during his time as mayor of Makati City in the province of Metro Manila. Manuel "Mar" Roxas II, an ex-interior and transportation secretary and the grandson of former Philippine President Manuel Roxas, is pitching himself as the most trustworthy candidate given his corruption-free record. As a former New York investment banker, he's also won the endorsement of President Aquino. "Mar Roxas is Aquino's choice but seems unelectable due to his inability to connect with the public," Nguyen noted. The most recent opinion poll, conducted by Pulse Asia during April 19-24, revealed Duterte holding onto his double-digit lead, with 33 percent of the vote, compared to 34 percent during the last Pulse Asia survey done between April 12-17. In second place was Roxas, with 22 percent support, followed by Grace Po at 21 percent and Binay at 17 percent.

"It is important to recall that one of the key thematic views on the Philippines is that this is an evolutionary, not a revolutionary election. Whoever occupies Malacanang [the country's equivalent of the White House] will continue to walk the policy path well-trodden by [former President] Gloria Arroyo and Aquino," said Eugenia Victorino, ASEAN economist at ANZ.



The to-do list
With a debate heating up over how the rise in the minimum wage will affect job growth  especially in the small-business arena  new findings reveal surprising truths. In their latest survey of small-business owners, Manta, a social network for entrepreneurs, found they were almost evenly split on the issue, with 51 percent favoring raising the minimum wage and 49 percent against it. Among the respondents, 46 percent of owners said raising the minimum wage would hurt their business, while 26 percent said it would have a positive effect. Manta surveyed 1,099 small-business owners in April in the poll on its site.



John Swanciger, CEO of Manta, said he was initially surprised by the percentage of small-business owners who support a minimum wage increase. But after studying Manta's data, he said, "The overarching theme I've come to realize is the great majority of small businesses are already paying minimum wage, either well over it or somewhat over it." Among those who supported raising the minimum wage in Manta's survey, half said they supported raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour, while 30 percent said they'd favor raising it to $12 and 20 percent supported raising it to $10. Support for raising the minimum wage varied by industry. Owners of business services firms voiced the highest support, with 58 percent favoring a minimum wage increase. Not far behind were construction, with 50 percent of owners favoring a minimum wage increase and 47 percent of owners in retail supporting it. In consumer products and services businesses and agriculture, however, only 38 percent of owners support a minimum wage increase.

David Titterington has made a deliberate choice to pay his team more than Nebraska's $9-per-hour minimum wage. Titterington owns Wild Bird Habitat, a small business that sells items such as birdbaths and squirrel feeders from two stores in Lincoln, Nebraska. He said he pays everyone on his 12-person team at least $11 an hour to attract people who have the right expertise in wildlife. Plus, he said, it's the right thing to do. "I think everyone is entitled to make a fair wage," said Titterington, whose business generates just under $1 million in annual revenue.



With California and New York becoming the first states to increase the minimum wage to $15 earlier this year and the debate over the minimum wage raging in many cities, there is little agreement over how such wage increases will affect small business. The $15 minimum wage will take effect in California by 2022. In New York State it will start to take effect in 2018 for many New York City businesses and phase in gradually in the rest of the state. At least 16 states are slated to raise their minimum wage in 2016. Some business groups have opposed local pushes to bump up wages for hourly workers, arguing that employers can't afford the added overhead and will have to pass the costs along to consumers or cut jobs in response. The National Restaurant Association has challenged New York State's minimum wage law  which requires employers to pay fast-food workers $15 an hour  in court, arguing that it discriminates against restaurant owners. But small-business owners' reaction to the movement for higher wages is often more nuanced, with some sharing Titterington's position.

Many owners find they have to pay more than the minimum wage to prevent turnover. Gary Hu, owner of Check Maid Cleaning, a 50-employee residential cleaning business based in New York City, is among them. When he started the business in 2012, he hired cleaners as independent contractors and last year made all of them W-2 employees. Initially, they earned $10 or $11 an hour, but turnover was high, a factor compounded by the fact that he cannot afford to provide health insurance. "A lot of people would leave after a month or two for jobs that paid them even less but where they could get group health care," he said. To gain an edge, Hu raised their wages to $15 an hour, before tips, earlier this year. Since then, he has seen turnover dip from five to 10 cleaners a month to one or two, he said. Others find that paying more than the minimum wage helps attract workers with a positive attitude.

Workers at &pizza now get paid more than the minimum wage. Source: DC Inno | GRVTY
"Since that time we have seen a recovery in spreads in our core markets to more sustainable levels, which is expected to result in improved results in the coming quarters," he said, adding that the market needed to be cautious given the threat of cheap imports flooding in from China.

Chief Executive Lakshmi Mittal said in a statement on Friday that the very tough operating conditions of the second half of 2015 had continued into the first quarter.

While ArcelorMittal has no major exposure to China, the world's largest producer and consumer of steel is an important gauge for the global economy with increased exports from a weakened Chinese market hitting steel prices elsewhere.

ArcelorMittal , the world's largest steelmaker, said it was slightly more positive about the steel market, with a modest improvement in the outlook for China, though it kept its own forecast for 2016 earnings unchanged.

Paul Mullins, director at Kallanish Commodities, told CNBC on Friday he thought steel prices had improved a lot in the first quarter this year.



"They [prices] came from an awful place last year- as a benchmark, 2015 was atrocious so any any performance this year is going to look good in comparison - secondly, I think anything to do with the steel industry, no matter what the question is, the answer is usually China."

"The Chinese put an awful lot of credit into the month of March, steel prices started to rise and as a result a lot of Chinese companies made profits in April which wiped out all of the losses they made in the first quarter of this year," explained Mullins.

ArcelorMittal repeated its 2016 guidance for core profit to be above $4.5 billion. The group said an improved steel market would mean it needed more working capital in 2016, but it would still have a positive cash flow at the end of the year.

ArcelorMittal said it expected global apparent steel consumption, which includes changes to inventories, to rise by between zero and 0.5 percent this year compared to last.

In China, it raised its forecast to a decline of between zero and 1 percent from a previous drop of 0.5 to 1.5 percent.

ArcelorMittal joined the ranks of international companies becoming more downbeat about the Brazilian economy, expecting steel demand there to decline by as much as to 12 percent, from an expected fall of 6-7 percent previously.

For the group as a whole, core profit (EBITDA) fell by about a third in the first quarter to $927 million, just above the $919 million expected in a Reuters poll of 11 analysts.

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While a face off between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton in November seems ever more likely, Main Street is watching closely for key issues to be addressed. But what's lacking so far are details, especially when optimism is wavering among small business owners. Recent data from Wells Fargo and the National Federation of Independent Business' latest optimism indexes show sentiment taking a dip, due in part to uncertainty over the economy and the political climate.

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump Getty Images

Wells Fargo also finds nearly 70 percent of entrepreneurs said the candidates are not discussing the issues that are most important to them. "Overall we are disappointed by all of the campaignsthere's really not a lot of true small business focus out there," says Molly Day, spokeswoman for the nonpartisan National Small Business Association. "As far as I've seen, no one has a concrete plan." From taxes to wages and health care, here's a breakdown of where the candidates stand.

Taxes and regulation

All three candidates vow to simplify the tax code, a welcome message on Main Street. The Wells Fargo poll, released Wednesday, found business owners named changes in the tax code and regulations as the issue they most want addressed.



Under Trump's tax plan, no business of "any size" will pay more than 15 percent of their business income in taxes. He has also vowed to repeal the estate tax, which taxes transferred property post-death, something critics say hurts small companies, according to DonaldJTrump.com. Trump's personal income plan has four brackets0 percent, 10 percent, 20 percent and 25 percent. And Trump said on CNBC Thursday he would be "getting rid a tremendous amount of regulation."

Clinton has spoken about enacting tax reform that is friendlier to small businesses, and also vows to cut red tape at "every level of government," according to HillaryClinton.com. She voted against eliminating the estate tax, and has focused her proposal on reforming the tax code so that the "wealthiest pay their fair share." Bernie Sanders establishes four new personal income tax brackets of 37 percent, 43 percent, 48 percent, and 52 percent, while raising the seven other brackets by 2.2 percent. The Vermont Senator wants to increase access to low-interest loans for small businesses by re-instating the Glass-Steagall Act, which separates commercial banks and securities activity.

Wages

Wages are heavy on the minds of Main Street entrepreneurs over the past two years thanks to a strengthened move by cities, states and companies toward $12 to $15 an hour minimum wage.

Both Clinton and Sanders are in favor of raising the minimum wage, Clinton to $12 an hour at the federal level, Sanders to $15 an hour. Meanwhile Trump has made conflicting statements on wages on the campaign trail, but said this week he is "open to doing something" with the country's minimum wage.

Health care

Wells Fargo also found health care ranked a top-three issue for business owners polled. Trump has vowed to repeal and replace Obamacare with a national marketplace on his first day in office. Meanwhile Clinton is in support of the Affordable Care Act, and would like to see it further strengthened.
In the latest twist of a political scandal that has gone from bad to worse, Brazil's Supreme Court suspended the country's Lower House Speaker.

Eduardo Cunha, the man many see as the driving force behind the campaign to impeach President Dilma Rousseff, was removed from duty late on Thursday.



Cunha, an Evangelist Christian who often cites the Bible in his speeches, is accused of blocking an investigation into whether he took millions of dollars in bribes from companies hoping to sign contracts with state-run oil giant Petrobras. He is also accused of hiding bank accounts in Switzerland. Cunha has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.



The Petrobras scandal  nicknamed Operation 'Lava Jato' (Operation Car Wash) implicates an enormous amount of the country's politicians.



"Cunha is just one of numerous politicians in Brazil and especially in the Brazilian line of succession who could be losing their position over the coming months," said Jimena Blanco, head of Americas at Verisk Maplecroft, to CNBC on Friday.



"I think anyone who is looking at Dilma's potential impeachment as the end of the political crisis is at best misinformed This is a process and the process will continue and it could mean political volatility for the rest of 2016, even into 2017," said Blanco.



Brazil, once touted as the successful example of the so-called emerging markets, has been embroiled in a political scandal that just keeps unraveling. At the heart of it, Rousseff, the country's first female president, is accused of tampering with government accounts to make her re-election campaign stronger  a charge she flatly denies.



Brazil's Senate will vote next week on whether to proceed with an impeachment trial against her. Should this go through, she will be suspended from office for 180 days while vice-president Michel Temer takes over as acting president. However, Temer himself is also implicated in the charges against Rousseff, as he ran as her VP in 2014.

"I think the fate of Rousseff is nearly settled now  she has lost the support she needed to prevent this impeachment," said Carlos Caicedo, Senior Principal Analyst at IHS, to CNBC on Friday.
Now that Donald Trump is the presumptive nominee, the Republican civil war that will break the party into pieces, possibly for good, is fully underway. The biggest battlefront right now is Trump versus Paul Ryan. The House Speaker on Thursday said he was not ready to back the party's new standard-bearer. "I think what a lot of Republicans want to see is that we have a standard-bearer that bears our standards," Ryan told CNN. "I think conservatives want to know, 'Does he share our values and our principles on limited government, the proper role of the executive, adherence to the Constitution? There are lots of questions that conservatives, I think, are going to want answers to, myself included. I want to be a part of this unifying process. I want to help to unify this party."

On Friday, RNC Chairman Reince Priebus told Politico's Mike Allen that he would attempt to broker a peace. He said he told Trump, "Listen, let me just, my view is, just relax and be gracious and I'll talk to Paul and we'll try to work on this." There are a couple of factors at play for Ryan here. On a personal level, the House Speaker is clearly repulsed by Trump's calls to ban Muslim immigration, round up and deport all 11 million undocumented immigrants in a single year, rip up free trade deals and expand government spending. Shockingly, Trump posing with a taco bowl and wishing all Hispanics a happy Cinco de Mayo (a Mexican holiday that isn't even a big deal in Mexico itself) did not warm Ryan's heart. On a purely political level, Ryan has to worry about his House majority and the GOP's Senate majority getting swept away in a Democratic landslide driven by Trump's massive unpopularity. Ryan has a long-term plan for the GOP that does not include worsening the party's already dismal ratings among nonwhite women and all minority voters. Demographics in the United States are moving against Republicans, especially at the presidential level, and Ryan rightly fears that this will only be made worse by Trump raging across the country for the next six months as the Republican nominee. The problem for Republicans of course goes well beyond Ryan versus Trump. Hillary Clinton supporters at this very moment are furiously calling around to big GOP donors who are terrified of Trump and looking to bring their cash over to the Democratic Party.



Virtually the entire GOP establishment including the last two Republican presidents and the last two party nominees have all said they would skip this year's party convention. That could leave Trump's coronation celebrated only by the likes of Sarah Palin, Ted Nugent and Gary Busey (along with New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who is deeply unpopular in his own state). These people have big fan bases among angry, white Republicans, but they could put on a show that will further alienate the rest of the nation and tarnish the GOP brand in potentially irreparable ways. Trump's candidacy is also forcing many Republicans into impossible contortions. Texas Governor Rick Perry for instance once called Trump a "cancer on conservatism." Now he is an enthusiastic Trump backer who would be willing to serve as vice president. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell took the route favored by many other Republicans, issuing a tepid statement saying he would back the GOP nominee.

These Republicans are motivated by several things. Foremost among them, they loathe the idea of Hillary Clinton becoming the president and believe Trump could moderate himself and wind up being a decent candidate and perhaps even a successful president. But they also fear defying the very loud will of Trump's fervent and unshakable supporters. The problem with this approach is that around 16 million Republicans (and independents who voted in open primaries) have voted against Trump in the Republican primaries, while around 11 million have voted for him. There is no question that Trump by the end of the process will have won more votes than any other previous GOP nominee. But there will still be more Republicans who wanted someone else. The problem is they could never settle on who that other person should be.


1) Healthcare costs go down

A topic of increasing concern, healthcare costs have been rising rapidly in recent years. Promotion of well-being in the workforce has been identified as one of the most cost-effective routes to reining it in:

With 1 in 5 Americans experiencing a mental illness in any given year (at a $140 billion annual cost), the need for preventive measures that can boost mental resilience is at an all-time high. There's evidence that practices such as meditation and positive psychology exerciseswhich build the skills of emotional fitnesscan prevent these conditions from appearing and help treat them when and if they occur.

The implications of better emotional health do not amount to neck-and-up benefits alone: Numerous studies have shown that people with high levels of well-being enjoy many physical health benefits as well. This includes better sleep, reduced levels of pain, an improved immune system, better cardiovascular function and overall increased lifespan.

Furthermore, medical-behavioral integration of care (e.g: providing emotional assistance to people suffering from chronic illness) can save up to $48 billion annually, according to a report from Milliman.
Satya Nadella, Microsoft CEO Jim Bennett | Getty Images

On a Tuesday in late March, Vungle CEO Zain Jaffer arrived disheveled and jetlagged to Microsoft's developer space in San Francisco. He'd been on an overnight flight from Beijing following an Asian trip for his online advertising start-up. Jaffer returned home early when the opportunity arose for a one-on-one meeting with a key figure at Microsoft: CEO Satya Nadella. He sprinted through the airport to make it downtown in time for an intimate event with a handful of Microsoft's top-tier partners ahead of the company's Build developer conference. Nadella was flanked by corporate vice president and chief evangelist Steve "Guggs" Guggenheimer. "We were the smallest company there," said Jaffer, whose ad business forged a deal with Microsoft in November to make video promotions available in games on the new Windows 10 operating system. "I was flattered to be in the room."

A start-up CEO would, of course, be foolish to turn down face time with the head of the world's biggest software maker, grabbing a slot that would otherwise likely fall to a top executive at Google, Facebook or Twitter . That Nadella is carving out time for companies like Vungle shows Microsoft's renewed effort to lure mobile developers and the CEO's refusal to concede defeat after years of underperformance. It's hard to think of Microsoft as an underdog. Fifteen years ago the software giant was so powerful and dominant that the U.S. government sought to break it up. But in mobile computing, the struggle is real, and Microsoft is an afterthought. Windows commands just 4 percent market share, way behind Google's Android at 62 percent and Apple's iOS at 28 percent, according to Net Market Share. Microsoft has grown its share slightly from 2.6 percent at the end of 2015. Improving MIcrosoft's image as a serious mobile player won't be easy. In July, just over a year after acquiring Nokia's handset business for $7.2 billion, marking a head-first dive head into mobile phones, Microsoft wrote off the entire purchase and announced 7,800 layoffs, mostly in the phone division.

Atari founder Nolan Bushnell, who recently partnered with publisher Spil Games to develop mobile apps for iOS and Android said of Windows, "They're such a small footprint on phones and tablets that we may do it later, but not initially." Yet there's a quiet but growing group of Nadella fans that sees Windows 10 differently. The new and improved operating system, advocates say, is part of an evolving Microsoft, a company that two years into a management overhaul is embracing openness, simplifying development and encouraging innovation from outsiders. Read MoreAtari founder joins forces with Spil Games for mobile Can Windows 10 mimic Microsoft's growing presence in cloud computing? In that market, its Azure infrastructure is going head-to-head with Amazon.com and rescuing Microsoft's once dominant server business from potential extinction. "This is a new regime," said Jason Hardi, CEO of Muzik, a wireless headphone start-up that's getting engineering and marketing resources from Microsoft to create high-tech consumer products that work with all devices. "They recognize that they're not going to be the number one phone in your pocket, but they might be the second or they might be the tablet. And they're one of the leaders in gaming."

Muzik CEO Jason Hardi Source: Muzik

As an early-stage start-up, Hardi is impressed by the level of support Muzik gets from Microsoft, including a coveted speaker slot at Build. The two companies are also co-sponsoring hackathons like an event called MuzikHack that was held in Vancouver last month. Hardi said the session, designed to let developers build apps and services for his company's headphones, filled up five minutes after it was announced online. There are more anecdotes pointing to early success. Vungle, whose ad technology gives developers a new way to make money in their apps, is seeing growth of at least 25 percent a month across the Windows platform by linking brands with relevant games. Random Salad Games, the creator of casual titles like "Simple Solitaire" and "Hearts Deluxe," has seen downloads triple since the launch of Windows 10. Meanwhile, Chinese developer Yodo1, the publisher of casual game "Crossy Road," has been on Windows for a year, and the platform already accounts for 15 to 20 percent of the company's revenue. CEO Henry Fong said he expects Yodo1's Windows business to double over the next 12 months. "We're seeing Microsoft having a vision for universal gaming across multiple devices and making it really easy," Fong said."I upload once, save once and distribute across multiple platforms."

As a developer, I want to spend dollars where I get the most bang for the buck. Alain-Daniel Bourdages GreenCod founder

That idea of universal development is central to Microsoft's grand plan. In order to take advantage of its full device suite  Xbox consoles, desktops, laptops, Surface tablets, mobile phones and even Hololens for augmented reality  cross-platform game development is essential. Build one version, let the device of choice figure out screen size and controls, and have the software automatically sync so that a user can stop playing on one device and pick up on another. The Universal Windows Platform, first introduced as part of Windows 10, was on full display at Build.

In March, Microsoft made a move that was as symbolic as it was lucrative. The company shelled out about $500 million for Xamarin, whose software helps developers create apps across all major platforms. (Yes, that means iOS and Android.) Microsoft knows that if small teams working on tight budgets have to choose where to focus their efforts, most are going to follow the audience  and the money. Indie developers like Alain-Daniel Bourdages of GreenCod still need to see the results. With Android and iOS accounting for over 90 percent of the market, Windows has to show it can attract users and deliver returns to developers. "I don't want the market dominated by two players, so I wish the best for Microsoft," said Bourdages, whose company's casual games include "Pinball Deluxe," "Bad Traffic" and "Snood," and has struggled to make money on Windows. "As a developer, I want to spend dollars where I get the most bang for the buck. It comes down to market share."

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Numbers out of Microsoft suggest that business is on the upswing. The company said on Thursday that 300 million devices are now running Windows 10, thanks in large part to Microsoft providing free upgrades to users of older software, a promotion that will end in July. In its first eight months on the market, the growth of Windows 10 outpaced Windows 7 by 145 percent and Windows 8 by 375 percent over the same debut stretches, said Lisa Gurry, a Microsoft spokesperson. "You're seeing a new, hungry, open approach that's starting to pay off for us," Gurry said.

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Vine have all updated their Windows 10 apps in the past week with enhancements over the previous versions.

The bigger story Microsoft is selling is that it's not all about mobile market share. That's because games and apps are everywhere.


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Gold demand may not pick up until November in India, one of the world's largest consumers. Blame the Hindu calendar. May is usually the wedding season in India as auspicious wedding dates tend to fall in the month. Typically, this drives gold imports up and the India rupee down, wrote ANZ ' s FX strategists, Khoon Goh and Rini Sen in a note on Friday.

Indian gold import volumes by month (% of calendar year total)

This year however, there is a lack of auspicious wedding days, also known as Vivah Shubh Muhurat, in May.

"In fact, there are no such dates from May to October, which point to some pent-up demand in November and December," the analysts note. India's gold imports in March slumped 80.5 percent from a year ago to $973 million, Reuters reported in April, citing government data.

Due to the pickup in gold demand that usually happens in May, the Indian rupee is also typically one of the weakest performing currencies in the month, depreciating with "consistent regularity" from 2000 to 2015, note the analysts. That's because gold prices are denominated in dollars so gold buyers need to sell the Indian currency for the greenback.

The Indian rupee is historically the weakest currency in May (2000-2015).
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Another prominent Republican is distancing himself from Donald Trump. Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush said Friday he will not vote for the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. He joins his father and brother, two former presidents, and 2012 GOP nominee Mitt Romney in declining to support Trump. "Donald Trump has not demonstrated that temperament or strength of character. He has not displayed a respect for the Constitution. And, he is not a consistent conservative. These are all reasons why I cannot support his candidacy," Bush wrote in a Facebook post.



Jeb Bush Sean Rayford | Getty Images

Bush added that he would not vote for likely Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. He called the former Secretary of State an "untrustworthy liberal politician" who would bring "a third term of the disastrous foreign and economic policy agenda of Barack Obama." With the departure of his last two remaining opponents this week, Trump, the billionaire businessman, all but assured he will be the party's standard-bearer in November. However, his positions and often divisive rhetoric have left many prominent Republicans hesitant to endorse him. Throughout the primary process, though, Trump has tried to cast himself as a clear alternative to traditional Republicans. Bush, who was often considered the Republican front-runner when Trump entered the race last summer, frequently clashed with Trump on debate stages. Trump repeatedly called Bush a "low-energy" person and criticized his family's legacy.
Slow growth and high valuations remain the two biggest problems for the stock market. The slightly below-expectation print for the April jobs report (160,000 vs. 205,000 expected) is supportive of the market trend in the last several weeks: that growthboth in the U.S. and internationallyhas slowed somewhat in the last month or so. You can see this in the disappointing April retail sales, where it appears that after a decent start in the first two months of the year, sales slipped in the second half of March and into April. You can see it in the earnings commentary. If you want to know what "lower for longer" means for energy or mining companies, look at construction & engineering firm Fluor , which gets about half its revenues from the oil & gas business. They cut their full-year guidance by 8 percent as projects are getting delayed.

Mike Kane | Bloomberg | Getty Images

The same thing is happening in Europe, where everyone from Rolls Royce to the banks have talked about slower growth. That has hurt banks and particularly commodity stocks, which have posted large rallies in the last two months on the hope for some kind of bottom. European stocks this week: Commerzbank down 14.7% Deutsche Bank down 13.2% Glencore down 15.7% Rio Tinto down 11.6% Antofogasta down 11.9%

Commodity countries have also had a rough week: South Africa down 9.6% Brazil down 6.3% Russia down 5.5% As have U.S.-based commodity sectors like steel and oil services, down nearly 9 percent apiece.
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Louisiana has shed thousands of oil and gas sector jobs since crude prices collapsed in 2014, and as the slump continues, the effects are spreading across the state. Louisiana is one of the most important oil-producing states in the nation, home to drillers that operate in shallow coastal waters, and to shipbuilders and support companies that contribute to oil operations in the deeper waters offshore. One place the pain is now being felt acutely is the bayou. Louisiana's low-lying marshlands have been buffeted from the north as drillers deactivate onshore rigs and from the south as surveying work in the Gulf of Mexico dries up.



It's a total disaster. There's no other way to say it. We're in deep trouble, all of us, and something's got to happen. Marc Moncla co-owner Moncla Cos.

Louisiana's mining and logging sector, an official statistical category that includes oil and gas extraction, shed about 12,100 employees in the 12 months through January. Employment in the manufacturing sector, which is highly exposed to the energy industry, was down by nearly 7,000 positions during the same period. Local economies from Houma to Lafayette, in particular, are feeling the pinch. Derricks are stacked up all along the highway from Houma to Morgan City. Fisherman are seeing their share of the pie shrink as laid-off oil workers flood the industry. Business is down at restaurants. A rebound in crude prices from 12-year lows earlier this year has not yet provided relief, and bayou businessmen say oil probably needs to head significantly higher before their balance sheets look healthier.

Oil's magic number

Moncla Cos., a third-generation rig company, currently has only 2 of its 11 barge rigs operating on work sites. It weathered at least one stretch when its entire inventory sat idle for about a month.

Co-owner Matt Moncla said he was hoping demand would pick up when oil returned to about $45 a barrel, but now he thinks the magic number is closer to $60 or $65. Even when rigs are running, day rates have collapsed from about $18,000 to $12,000, and the company has seen its revenue cut in half. Though Gulf oil output is near highs, Moncla's clients aren't planning to bring on any new production that would require the company's services, said Marc Moncla, Matt Moncla's brother and business partner. "It's a total disaster. There's no other way to say it. We're in deep trouble, all of us, and something's got to happen," he said.

Brothers Matt and Marc Moncla run Moncla Companies, a third-generation rig operation. Theyve had to cut their workforce by more than 60 percent as their revenues have sank 50 percent amid a protracted oil price downturn. Brad Quick | CNBC

The underutilization and discounts have forced the company to reduce its employee count from about 650 to 250. Marc Moncla said he handled the layoffs himself.

"I know their kids. I know their husbands or their wives. I know them very well and it was a very personal thing for me to go and do that," he said. While workers whom Moncla let go early on have found work in other industries, the cream of the crop who survived the first round of layoffs is now in dire straits, he said. By the time they got their pink slips and hit the market, there were simply no jobs left. To make matters worse, he said he has to turn away job seekers virtually every day.

Oilmen gone fishing

During energy's boom times, Louisiana workers migrated from fishing boats to oil fields. But as the tide has turned in the energy sector, oilmen are returning to the state's waters.

James Blanchard, a shrimp boat captain and commercial fisher for the last 35 years, currently employs two men who previously worked for offshore drillers. Before that, he took on his brother, who was also laid off from a drilling ship at the start of last year.

Blanchard said he welcomes the return of skilled workers to the industry. But the number of vessels has fallen over the last 10 years as shrimp prices have remained depressed, so the industry can't absorb every job seeker, he explained. "There's only so many boats, and like I said, it's only a two-man crew, so you can't hire them all," he said. Pete Gerica, a crabber and third-generation fisherman, said it's no surprise that oilfield workers are turning up on the docks. "The fisheries have always been the answer to Louisiana's unemployment. When the oil patch goes sour, well, everybody goes and becomes a fisherman," he told CNBC. But Gerica is troubled by the influx. He has played a part in keeping the state's fisheries healthy for about four decades, serving as the chairman of the Crab Task Force and now as president-elect of the Lake Pontchartrain Fishermen's Association.

Pete Gerica Brad Quick | CNBC

He says he thought that at his age  he's 63  he'd be able to take it a little easier, but he and other fishermen in Louisiana's bayou are grappling with the impact on fisheries from major storms. They used to be able to make a living with 250 traps, but now it can take 800 to 1,000. "If you're using more equipment to catch the same amount of product, you got a problem. But on top of that problem, we got more people that come in, so you've got even more equipment in the water," he said. Fair-weather fishermen with little stake in the long-term health of the fishery are not always the best operators, he said. As the waters get more crowded, more fishing lines get cut and more traps get stolen. Gerica said that in a regular year, he can expect to lose about 60 traps. Already this year, he's lost 100 or so, he said, and at $45 apiece, the losses add up. The number of traps left abandoned is also on the rise, exacerbating the problem of overfishing as crabs wander into the forgotten equipment.
Janet Cowell is the sole fiduciary of North Carolina's $90 billion pension investments and the chair of the state's banking regulation commission, a rare concentration of power, according to the International Business Times. Meanwhile, she'll be responsible for board seats on insurance conglomerate James River Group Holdings and retail technology firm ChannelAdvisor .

North Carolina 's state treasurer was appointed to two corporate boards while holding public office, a move that watchdogs said could be a "breathtaking" conflict of interest, the International Business Times reports.

Ethics experts and employee rights groups raised concerns that the combined pay from Cowell's board seats will be more than her full-time paycheck as treasurer, according to the IBT. On top of that, one of James River's largest shareholders has also managed North Carolina pension funds, and James River's CEO has ties to a North Carolina-based bank.



A spokesperson told the IBT that Treasury staff were not involved in the negotiation of either board appointment, and that Cowell would recuse herself from all decisions related to either company. Still, the International Business Times points to email exchanges between Cowell and James River's lawyers, where Cowell offers to have the state ethics commission draw up a statement that would meet the company's "needs and preferences."

Treasury spokesman Brad Young told CNBC that Cowell intends to evaluate any official actions by the standards outlined in her formal recusal. ChannelAdvisor declined to comment beyond public filings. James River did not immediately respond to CNBC's request to comment.

For the full investigation, click here to read the article at the IBTimes.com.
Having notched big sales of body cameras to the police in Chicago, Minneapolis and Baltimore, Taser International has its sights set on an even bigger prize  the New York City Police Department.



Taser Axon Body Worn Police Camera Source: Michael Luciano

The NYPD recently completed a 15-month pilot program of 54 officers in six precincts using Taser body cameras and a system from privately held rival Vievu, and now the agency is preparing a wider test involving about one-fourth of the city's precincts. Taser also has been awarded camera contracts in Los Angeles and Philadelphia.

"We've been laser focused on winning the biggest agencies on to our platform," Taser co-founder and CEO Rick Smith told analysts Wednesday during the company's first-quarter earnings call. "We may not win every opportunity, but we're certainly winning a dominant share." Taser's Axon body camera and services segment has been a lucrative business for the Scottsdale, Arizona-based company and could drive growth for years to come as more police departments purchase the equipment. But a patent infringement lawsuit filed by a small competitor could potentially prove costly for Taser.

In January, Digital Ally of Lenexa, Kansas, sued Taser in federal court alleging patent infringement and seeking "a permanent injunction barring Taser from selling its infringing Axon products with Signal technology." The Kansas company is asking for monetary damages "in an amount no less than a reasonable royalty as well as its lost profits for Taser's infringement." "We patently deny the frivolous accusations by Digital Ally and we'll address their claims appropriately in the courtroom," Taser said in a statement provided to CNBC. Digital Ally couldn't be reached for comment. Taser stock climbed about 4 percent on Thursday after the company reported better-than-expected results . The stock is beating the broader market year-to-date, but is down nearly 50 percent from a year ago and was lower by more than 1 percent Friday. Taser said it shipped more than 8,000 cameras in the quarter ended in March. Overall, Axon revenues were up 51 percent year-over-year, while the Taser weapons segment revenues grew almost 20 percent. Operating expenses soared 66 percent in the quarter, leading some analysts to caution investors.

"We've never denied the opportunity for Taser or its competitive advantages, but we worry investors aren't thinking through the impact of operating expenses spend to get there," Oppenheimer analyst Andrew Uerkwitz said in a research note Thursday. The analyst lowered his full-year 2017 estimates for Taser.

Taser Axon Body Worn Police Camera Source: Michael Luciano

Meanwhile, Taser has been careful not to comment specifically on the NYPD program in order to avoid running afoul of what CEO Smith previously termed "pretty stringent guidelines" for vendors participating in the bidding process. Winning the expanded pilot contract would be significant for Taser and also could set the stage for the company to ultimately land a larger deal with the NYPD, which has a sworn force of about 36,000 officers.

"The next phase of the body camera pilot program will be to identify 20 precincts and deploy 20 cameras in each of these," an NYPD spokesperson wrote in response to an inquiry. "For this purpose we will be using cameras from a projected 1,000 supply we plan to obtain this summer. The request for proposal process for supply body cameras to the NYPD is still in the evaluation/review stage." Last year, the Los Angeles Police Department  the nation's second largest police force  negotiated a five-year, $31.2 million deal with Taser. The agreement includes body cameras for 7,000 uniformed officers as well as stun guns made by Taser. Several L.A. City Council members have voiced concerns about the costs of the camera initiative, but L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti convinced the Council to fund the program, and full deployment is now expected in late 2018. The Boston Police Department also is aiming to launch a pilot program consisting of 100 cameras later this month or in early June. The vendor selection hasn't been finalized.

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This was originally published on TheHill.com.

"Never Trump" Republicans aren't giving up in their quest to find a conservative alternative to Donald Trump.

Now that Trump has cleared the field of rivals to become the GOP's presumptive presidential nominee, anti-Trump conservatives have turned their attention to recruiting a candidate to challenge Trump and Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton in the general election, either as an independent write-in candidate or as part of a third-party campaign.
Running a business is difficult. Running a business with a toddler is even harder. And yet Robyn Jasko, who co-founded hot sauce company Homesweet Homegrown with her husband, is doing just that. The business's vegan, non-GMO, farm-to-table products are on the shelves of more than 200 stores, including Whole Foods locations in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. More than 5,000 bottles have sold, and sales are expected to double this year.

Robyn Jaskos products are in Whole Foods stores in the tri-state area, among other retailers like Central Market, MOM's Organic Market, and Giant. Source: Homesweet Homegrown

Jasko decided to try crowdfunding three hot sauces on Kickstarter in 2013 while pregnant, after starting a successful blog that turned into a book. The initial goal was $800, but people loved her idea, and the campaign raised more than $53,000, or roughly 6,500 percent more than her goal. "When I launched my first Kickstarter, I was about six months pregnant. I had no idea it was going to take off the way that it did," Jasko said.

At the same time, Jasko left her full-time job as the creative services director for Runner's World. She loved the idea of running her own business, even if it meant juggling that and taking care of a newborn. She took some time during her maternity leave to prepare her business, which worried her parents who wanted her to rest.

"I quickly had to learn how to scale up, find a bottler, get nutritional labels.I was determined to get us in the retail space," she said. "All of a sudden we sold 5,000 bottles." So how did she and her husband Paul David do it, while raising a child?

Homesweet Homegrown hot sauces Source: Homesweet Homegrown

Her husband's support proved crucial in successfully launching the business. David shares her entrepreneurial drive and concentrates more on Pollock's Kefir Pop, a fermented beverage company that the couple also co-founded.

"My husband and I take turns doing everythingdoing dishes, making dinner, taking care of our son. And we give each other give breaks. I think that's important. Not one person is doing everything," she said.

Her advice to other mothers who want to start a business? Work efficiently, not constantly. "Babies require so much stuff, they need so much care. Because you want to spend as much time with them as possible, you want to have the most efficient work day as possible," she said.

Find a balance that works for you and make sure to put yourself in there too Robyn Jasko Homesweet Homegrown co-founder

Jaskos son Ajax likes to help out on the farm. Source: Homesweet Homegrown
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House Speaker Paul Ryan will meet with presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump next week, after both had publicly declined to support the other in recent days. Trump, Ryan and other House Republican leaders will convene Thursday "to begin a discussion about the kind of Republican principles and ideas that can win the support of the American people" in November's election, Ryan's office said in a statement. The speaker and Trump will hold a separate meeting with Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus. With the departure of his last two remaining opponents this week, Trump, the billionaire businessman, all but assured he will be the party's standard-bearer in November. However, his positions and often divisive rhetoric have left some GOP lawmakers hesitant to endorse him.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump (l) and Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (r). Getty Images

On Thursday, Ryan told CNN he was "not ready" to support Trump yet. He had previously said he would support the Republican nominee. "I think conservatives want to know does he share our values and our principles," he said. "There's a lot of questions conservatives are going to want answers to."




Before your investment advisor was recommending that you buy Target stock, he may have been stocking shelves there. He or she may have been flipping burgers at McDonald's, or even unemployed.

Even investment professionals have to start somewhere, and investment advisor representatives are required to report their full employment histories for the last 10 years on an ongoing basis. That includes gaps in employment and non-financial jobs they gave up years ago.

A look at the data shows where the more than 325,000 IARs registered with the SEC worked over the last decade. In the last 10 years, about 50,000 people said they were unemployed. About 10,000 worked at food service companies like McDonald's, Hooters, Starbucks or Red Lobster or for retail companies like Target or Home Depot.
(Eric Reinhardt / BJNN file photo)

SYRACUSE, N.Y.  U.S. Senator Charles Schumer (DN.Y.) wants Congress to approve $1.9 billion in emergency funding to help develop an anti-Zika vaccine.

Schumer made his call during a visit to SUNY Upstate Medical University on Wednesday.

His appearance follows Oneida Countys announcement that one of its residents has the Zika virus, Schumers office said. NewsChannel 9 (WSYR-TV) is also reporting that Onondaga County has confirmed two cases on Zika virus as well.

Broadcast reports on both cases cite public health officials indicating neither case poses a threat to the public.

Schumer contends that the emergency funding could help SUNY Upstates efforts to treat, prevent, and understand the Zika virus, according to the news release.

Upstate New York hospitals, medical providers, and public-health systems need immediate access to money to fight the spread of the virus and treat those who have been infected, the Senator said.

Medical professionals suspect the Zika virus causes micro-encephalitis in babies, an inflammation of the brain contracted in the early stages of pregnancy. The funding could help institutions such as SUNY Upstate advance their important work to protect pregnant mothers and their children  before its too late, according to Schumers office.

With so many women and families across Central New York looking for action and global health leaders like Upstate ready to assist, it is critical that members of Congress work together to green-light this $1.9 billion in emergency funding. We need to get this done as soon as possible so that institutions like SUNY Upstate can use their expertise to help stem the spread of Zika, said Schumer. Simply put, anyone repellent to this emergency funding plan isnt serious about beating Zika.

With legislation necessary to take on the Zika virus headed to the Senate floor soon, Schumer announced he is supporting President Barack Obamas emergency funding request of $1.9 billion, which would help prevent and treat the spread of the Zika epidemic.

More than 800 Americans have already contracted Zika, with more than 60 confirmed cases in New York state, Schumer said.

The data prove the disease is still spreading and Congress must act to help stop it, Schumer said.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently confirmed the link between Zika during pregnancy and severe birth defects, like microcephaly, a medical condition where the brain doesnt develop properly and the childs head is smaller than normal.

Upstate Medical research

SUNY Upstate Medical University conducts work and research in solving serious health issues facing women and children, Schumer explained.

The medical school is well equipped to aid in the development of prevention, diagnosis and treatment of these types of viruses.

The medical school on April 28 announced its global maternal child and pediatric health program to address global-health issues women face during pregnancy and children face during early childhood, including the Zika virus.

The program is part of Upstates Center for Global Health & Translational Science.

The Zika virus is an example of an infectious disease that has emerged as a global health problem creating a global health emergency, Dr. Timothy Endy, professor of medicine and vice-chair for research in the schools department of medicine, said in Schumers news release. Endy is also chief of the departments infectious-disease division.

The association of Zika virus with birth defects and sexual transmission is in particular concerning and devastating to mothers and their infants who are born with Zika associated birth defects. Understanding how to control this virus in its mosquito vector, preventing its spread to other countries and to the United States; protecting mothers and their infants through the development of therapeutics and vaccines against this virus, are essential efforts that require funding and support. Sen. Schumers efforts to increase the funding to support these efforts is outstanding and key to stopping the spread of this viral infection and devastating health effects, said Endy.

Contact Reinhardt at ereinhardt@cnybj.com
May 6, 2016

 A massive chunk of the United States' first space station is about to land at auction.



Billed as the "largest existing piece of Skylab wreckage in private hands," Regency-Superior Auctioneers of St. Louis is offering the 300-pound (136-kilogram) artifact as part of its online space memorabilia sale scheduled for May 12.



The semi-circular relic has a minimum bid of $30,000 and is estimated to be worth between $45,000 and $55,000  shipping from Utah not included.



"Fragment is not terribly attractive (it was, after all, part of a re-entry crash!), but is extremely historically significant," the auctioneers wrote. "A huge hunk of space history!"



Launched on May 14, 1973, the Skylab orbiting workshop used the converted upper stage of a Saturn V moon rocket to host three astronaut crews for NASA's first long-duration missions. The space station was damaged during its liftoff though, which curtailed its full potential use.







Skylab orbital workshop, America's first space station. (NASA)

NASA hoped to reboost and repair Skylab using the space shuttle, but the winged vehicle's first launch was delayed and the space station fell back to the Earth six years after it was launched on July 11, 1979.



"Much of the debris hit the ocean, but much rained down on Western Australia as well," Regency-Superior wrote in its auction catalog. "The result? Tiny pieces of Skylab were found by many Aussies and they frequently change hands for hundreds of dollars."



The largest fragments of the fallen space station to survive the re-entry and later be found were the oxygen tanks that supported the astronauts on orbit. Two of the outpost's six tanks are exhibited at the Esperance Municipal Museum in Australia and U.S. Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama.



A third tank, or at least part of the other two, was found on the land of a privately-held farm, 6 miles (10 km) south of Rwalinna, Western Australia and acquired by a marketing company in the early 1980s.



Delta Vee, Inc. recruited astronaut Charles "Pete" Conrad, who walked on the moon and then commanded Skylab's first crew, to help sell small pieces of the tank, which they attached to trading cards and embedded in paperweights to raise funds to promote on-going space missions such as NASA's Viking 1 Mars lander.







The oxygen tank fragment was found in Western Australia in 1979 and was acquired by a marketing company. (Regency-Superior)

"This piece of Skylab was identified by NASA as part of the covering of one of our oxygen tanks," stated Conrad in a 1982 letter that accompanies the 3-foot by 5-foot (0.9 by 1.5 meter) artifact now headed for auction. Conrad died in a motorcycle accident in 1999.



NASA relinquished its claim on the Skylab parts found in Australia, but inspected and identified the fragments from the oxygen tank, as described in a letter from a member of the agency's Skylab team.



"It is assumed a form of this verification letter was given to all who had recovered pieces of Skylab and cooperated with NASA, which promised to return all pieces to finders," the auction listing states.



The oxygen tank is among 400 space history artifacts and collectibles Regency-Superior is offering in its latest sale. The auction also features a large collection of autographs, including the signatures of Skylab's nine crew members.
In the third quarter of 2015, Missouri's state government employees made an average weekly wage of $803, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. This puts Missouri dead last of all the states.
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By Ted Evanoff of The Commercial Appeal

Evergreen Packaging has decided to put its 70-employee global headquarters in Memphis.

The decision brings to the city the head office of a multi-billion-dollar company producing in 36 nations.

Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam announced the decision Friday.

In March, Evergreen was awarded $1.1 million in PILOT property tax breaks by the city-county EDGE Board as an incentive to locate the headquarters in Memphis. State incentives were not disclosed by Haslam.

Evergreen currently makes milk and juice cartons in Memphis. The business was spun off by Memphis-based International Paper Co. in 2007.

The head office will expand to 40,000 square feet in its current building at 5350 Poplar, or the company will move to another East Memphis building, said Melissa Alexander of Cushman & Wakefield Commercial Advisors, a Memphis real estate firm.

New Zealand owner Graeme Hart is combining Evergreen and Indianapolis-based Closure Systems International and York, Pennsylvania-based Graham Packaging Co., Evergreen officials said.

Memphis, Indianapolis and York, as well as Lake Forest, Illinois and Charlotte, North Carolina, were competing for the headquarters, officials told the Economic Development Growth Engine for Memphis and Shelby County.

Evergreen currently employs 103 workers in the city and will add 70.

Evergreen, Closure and Graham Packaging operate 127 plants employing 14,000 workers. Annual revenue is about $5.5 billion.
A FedEx plane prepares for takeoff at the Memphis International Airport. FedEx is ramping up pilot hiring to keep pace with growth and pilot retirements.(Yalonda M. James/The Commercial Appeal)

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By Wayne Risher of The Commercial Appeal

FedEx is aggressively hiring pilots to keep pace with growth and accelerated retirements of senior flight crew members, pilots say.

The Memphis-based delivery giant notified its pilots' union April 1 it wants to hire as many as 600 pilots over the next 18 to 24 months, a union leader said.

The push comes amid ramped-up hiring efforts by major U.S. airlines and a pilot shortage that has hit small, regional airlines particularly hard.

FedEx spokesman Jim McCluskey said, Our hiring of pilots has increased over the last couple years to fill vacancies caused by retirements, as well as to accommodate business growth and our fleet modernization program as we continue adding newer, more efficient cargo aircraft.

It was unclear how many pilots FedEx is losing to retirement and what hiring levels have been in recent years.

FedEx has plenty of competition in the cockpit labor pool, said aviation consultant Kit Darby of KitDarby.com.

Major airlines will hire 3,000 to 4,000 pilots this year, with Delta, United and American expected to hire 750 to 1,000 each, Darby said. Compare that to 2009, when 30 pilots were hired in the recession's depths, Darby said.

"This is a shortage like we've never seen before," Darby said of the industrywide hiring effort.

He doesn't think big companies like FedEx will have trouble attracting pilots. "They are one of the top pay and benefits companies in America."

Pilots said FedEx slowed hiring in the Great Recession, but staffing levels didn't suffer because Congress in 2007 raised mandatory retirement age for pilots to 65 from 60.

Coming out of the recession, FedEx in 2012 launched a multi-year profit improvement program that combined cost-cutting and upgrades to new, more efficient aircraft, designed to increase FedEx Express profits by $1.6 billion a year by May 31.

Last October, FedEx Express' 4,300 pilots accepted a six-year contract with industry-leading pay in most job classifications. The first-year increase brought FedEx pilot pay to more than $257,000 a year on average.

The union expects FedEx to hire about 60 pilots a month, said Captain Chuck Dyer, chairman of the FedEx unit of the Air Line Pilots Association.

"There's a lot of catchup on our pilot staffing situation taking place, so I know the company's scrambling to add pilots," Dyer said. "They just put out the word last month they're looking for 600 now. They've got a very robust authorization to hire pilots."

Dave Brown, an Airbus first officer, said, "I think some of that was brought on by the contract we finally resolved in October. That has kind of opened up the floodgates for the company to proceed with hiring. We're late doing that."

The staffing pinch appears to have led to increased outsourcing of flights, an arrangement called ''wet leasing,'' Dyer said. He said the company notified the union it was using wet leases to cover 10 routes in December, and he believes those arrangements are still in effect.

The company has offered some pilots the opportunity to be paid to forego scheduled vacations in recent months, an indication of the staffing crunch, Brown said.

Airlines have been concerned about a pilot shortage for several years. A 2014 Government Accountability Office study said not enough people are entering the field because of education, training and experience requirements and costs that sometimes top $100,000 a pilot.

Airline representatives told the GAO a downsized U.S. military is supplying fewer pilots to commercial airlines. The military, which pays pilots to train, supplied 70 percent of pilots before 2001, but the number has declined to about 30 percent, the GAO was told.

Dyer said the military once accounted for as much as 85 percent of FedEx's pilots.

Even with the company hiring at a faster clip, Dyer believes it will take four to five years to get caught up. "The problem is the time it takes to train pilots," Dyer said.

The company alerts ALPA as a courtesy when it's hiring pilots, Dyer said. FedEx doesn't really need to advertise the positions because it has thousands of applications on file at a given time, he said.

Brown said he's not sure about FedEx's recruiting success rate, but he's confident the company will do what it needs to do.

"A lot of other airlines are hiring now, so FedEx has a lot of competition," Brown said. "The next challenge is how do you train X number of pilots a year to join the company. That's exercising a system or pipeline that hasn't been exercised in quite a while. It's going to be a challenge, but I'm quite confident the company will solve the challenge."

To keep pace with training needs and new aircraft deliveries, the company built a new flight simulator complex on Airways south of Winchester. The project was listed as costing $141.8 million and creating at least 333 jobs when it was approved in 2012 for a partial freeze on Memphis and Shelby County taxes.
May 5, 2016 - Victor Wainwright plays keyboard while Billy Dean plays drums and Terrence Grayson plays bass guitar during soundcheck before the 2016 Blues Music Awards at the Cook Convention Center. Wainwright is nominated for the B.B. King Entertainer and Pinetop Perkins Piano Player awards as well as best band for his work with the Wild Roots. (Brandon Dill/Special to The Commercial Appeal)

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By Bob Mehr of The Commercial Appeal

Memphis- and Mid-South-connected artists came away as big winners during Thursday night's Blues Music Awards.

The 37th edition of the annual ceremony  held at Downtown's Memphis Cook Convention Center  saw Memphian Victor Wainwright, Mississippians Mr. Sipp and Cedric Burnside, and late Hi Records recording artist Otis Clay claim some of the evening's top honors. Famous names including Chicago guitar legend Buddy Guy and soul-blues songstress Bettye LaVette also walked away with trophies.

Amid a parade of performances and speeches that lasted late into the night, 26 awards were handed out, honoring the best in the blues. The event, staged by Memphis-based The Blues Foundation, recognized musicians in the genre and a number of related subcategories.

Victor Wainwright, the piano-playing Georgia native and Memphis resident, won the coveted B.B. King Entertainer award. Wainwright and his group, the Wild Roots, also earned the Best Band honor. Rising star Mr. Sipp, a native of McComb, Mississippi, took home the trophy for Best New Artist Album. And fellow Mississippi resident Cedric Burnside was recognized with the best Traditional Blues Album award, for the "Descendants of Hill Country" project. Burnside also won a top instrumentalist award for his drum work.

The awards also recognized some recently departed giants. New Orleans icon Allen Toussaint, who passed away last fall, won the Pinetop Perkins Piano Player Award. Former Hi Records star Otis Clay, who died in January, was given posthumous awards for Soul Blues Artist and Soul Blues Album for his collaboration with Billy Price, "The Time for Real."

Other national names also won. Buddy Guy nabbed a pair of awards for Album of the Year and Contemporary Blues Album for his latest, "Born to Play Guitar." Bettye LaVette was named the top female soul-blues artist, while Blues Hall of Famer Joe Louis Walker got the nod for top male artist in the same category.

The Blues Music Awards followed Wednesday's Blues Music Hall of fame induction ceremony. The event saw The Memphis Jug Band  the famed Bluff City group that ran from the 1920s through the 1950s, led by the legendary Will Shade  enshrined, alongside Chicago blues musicians Elvin Bishop, Eddy Clearwater, Jimmy Johnson, British blues pioneer John Mayall and Malaco label co-founders Tommy Couch and Wolf Stephenson.
Ricci Ellsworth and Michael Rimmer during a visit while he was incarcerated. (Courtesy of Shelby County Criminal Court)

By Katie Fretland of The Commercial Appeal

Family members of a Memphis woman who disappeared in 1997 said Thursday they are completely for the death penalty in the case of the man charged with her killing, but they want this to be over with for good.

"At this point we think it would be sufficient if he gets life in prison without the chance for parole," the family of 45-year-old Ricci Ellsworth said in a statement. "He needs to be locked away and forgotten about for ever! We don't want him to have the opportunity for an appeal so we have to relive this tragic event once again."

Michael Rimmer, 50, is on trial in Shelby County Criminal Court for capital murder in the killing of Ellsworth, his former girlfriend. Special prosecutor Pam Anderson, of Davidson County, filed notice of intent to seek the death penalty relying on three aggravating factors, including that Rimmer was convicted previously of one or more felonies involving Ellsworth. Rimmer was convicted of raping Ellsworth in 1989. She disappeared Feb. 8, 1997, from her job as a night clerk at the Memphis Inn near Interstate 40 and Sycamore View.

The trial began April 28 after three days of jury selection. Rimmer was convicted and sentenced to death in 1998, but a new trial was ordered in 2012. A judge found Rimmer's defense counsel, both in 1998 and at a resentencing, failed to effectively investigate the capital case.

Shelby County Criminal Court Judge James Beasley Jr., a former prosecutor, found that the Shelby County prosecutor who handled the case, Thomas Henderson, "purposefully misled" Rimmer's defense counsel about evidence.

Rimmer's mother, Sandra Rimmer, who has attended the trial, declined to comment while the proceedings are ongoing.

People sentenced to death in Tennessee get an automatic appeal to the Court of Criminal Appeals. If that court affirms the conviction and sentence, the Tennessee Supreme Court automatically reviews it, according to the Administrative Office of the Courts.

If the higher courts require a new trial or sentencing and the death sentence is again imposed, the appeals process starts again.

Defendants sentenced to death also have a post-conviction appeal process. The Court of Criminal Appeals reviews the post-conviction proceedings, and defendants can ask for permission to appeal to the state Supreme Court.

After the state post-conviction phase, defendants can file federal appeals in a U.S. District court that can be then appealed to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals and the U.S. Supreme Court. The defendant can also raise mental competency issues as well as ask for clemency from the governor.

Tennessee has executed six people since 1976, and the last execution was in 2009.

Five of the six people were executed by lethal injection, and in 2007 the state electrocuted convicted killer Daryl Holton. Holton chose the method.
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By Yolanda Jones of The Commercial Appeal

Four teenagers have been charged with having a loaded gun and marijuana on school property at Wooddale High.

On Thursday, school resource officers at the high school at 5151 Scottsdale stopped a car in the schools parking lot.

The officers searched the Toyota Camry and found a loaded gun that came back stolen from Mississippi and 18 grams of marijuana.

Police arrested Eric Flores, 18, and three juveniles. One of the teens was a student and another was a former student, who told police he was on campus to pickup paperwork after dropping out of the school last month.

Flores and a fourth teen were not students at the school.

Flores and the three juveniles were charged with carrying a weapon on school property, and possession of marijuana and trespassing. Flores also faces an additional charge of providing a handgun to juveniles.

Flores bond was set at $7,500 and he remains in Shelby County Jail at 201 Poplar. The three other teens were detained at juvenile court.
May 5, 2016 - MPD director Michael Rallings, center, with Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland, center right, and other high-ranking MPD officials show some of the drugs and weapons taken of the streets of Memphis recently during a press conference at the Organized Crime Unit Thursday. (Nikki Boertman/The Commercial Appeal)

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By Kayleigh Skinner of The Commercial Appeal

Memphis Police Department Interim Director Mike Rallings and his staff invited media to a very pungent room on Thursday to learn about drugs and weapons seized during a two-and-a-half-month period.

Between Feb. 1 and April 15, the Organized Crime Unit's investigations through MPD's Blue CRUSH program resulted in the seizure of 223 pounds of marijuana worth $223,000, 1,118 grams of crack and powder cocaine worth $46,500 and unspecified amounts of heroin, methamphetamine and various pills, Rallings said. During the same period, undercover investigators also seized 130 guns.

"This is what police are facing every day," Major Paul Wright said of the multiple high-powered rifles displayed on tables inside the room.

During the same period, officers made 394 felony arrests, 61 of which were weapon charges, 424 misdemeanor arrests and 808 misdemeanor citations, Rallings said.

"This is probably one of the largest collections of guns, firearms, long guns and marijuana that I have personally witnessed," he said. Rallings, who began serving as interim director on Feb. 1, did not specify if the quantity of drugs and weapons confiscated was abnormal for that time period. Wright said staff would need to examine statistics closely to make a fair comparison.

In a separate operation, OCU investigators searched a home in the 1000 block of South Wellington Street which led them to two other homes in the 900 block Newell and the 500 block North Holmes.

Officers confiscated $13,135 in cash, roughly 33.3 pounds of marijuana, 405 Xanax pills, 22 firearms, and multiple rounds of assorted ammunition and magazines from the trio, Rallings said. Ten of the firearms recovered were stolen from citizens and six were reported stolen from Richard's Armory Gun Shop in Bartlett.

Marlo Coleman, 23, was charged with two counts of felony possession of a controlled substance with intent to distribute and possession of drug paraphernalia in the investigation, Rallings said.

Rallings also spoke on the growing tally of murders in Memphis this year, which currently sits at 78. Of the 78, 64 were committed with a firearm.

At this point in 2015 the city had 47 homicides, he said. Eleven of this year's homicide victims were juveniles and four were fetuses. Two homicide suspects are also juveniles, Rallings said.

Police suspect 11 of the homicides are gang-related and suspects are identified in 55 of the cases.

Rallings stressed the situation will not improve unless the community works together, encouraging citizens to use their voices and speak up.

"We can do our part by placing officers in areas that we have identified as potential high crime locations," he said. But "we cannot do this without the help from our community."
May 5, 2016 - Aurelia Kyles, center, is embraced by Patrice Robinson, left, at the visitation held for her late husband Rev. Samuel "Billy" Kyles held at the National Civil Rights Museum as Kyles is escorted into the visitation by Richard Flowers, right, of R.S. Lewis & Sons Funeral Home. (Nikki Boertman/The Commercial Appeal)

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By Jody Callahan of The Commercial Appeal

Michael Williams had a special memory of Samuel Billy Kyles, one that led him to the National Civil Rights Museum Thursday afternoon to pay his respects.

"He married my wife and I. We've been married 36 years," said Williams, 58. "A beautiful memory as I look back now."

It's likely that the hundreds of mourners who filed through the museum for Kyles' visitation Thursday had beautiful memories of their own of the noted civil-rights leader, who died April 26 after a lengthy illness. He was 81.

"He's been my pastor, my friend, my confidant, my brother and almost my father," said Howard Kyles, remembering his older brother. "Now that he's gone, we're going to make sure his legacy lives on."

Kyles lay in repose in the museum's auditorium as mourners walked by for one last look, greeting the family as they passed. Kyles' daughter, Epernay Kyles, fought back tears as she stood by her father's casket. His wife, Aurelia, noted that they would have celebrated their 30th wedding anniversary in June.

Embroidered on the inside lid of the coffin was "The Witness," a name bestowed on Kyles because he was on the balcony at the former Lorraine Motel when a sniper's bullet felled Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. 48 years ago. After further celebrations of his life Friday and Saturday, Kyles will be laid to rest in Elmwood Cemetery.

Born in Shelby, Mississippi, in 1934, Kyles and his family moved to Chicago when he was 6. He came to Memphis in 1959 to become pastor of Monumental Baptist Church, where he remained for the next 55 years until his retirement in 2014.

In April 1968, Kyles helped bring King to Memphis on behalf of the striking sanitation workers. Early on the evening of April 4, Rev. Kyles was with King at the Lorraine Motel. They were due at the Kyles home for dinner that night, and Kyles was urging King to leave the motel. As they were standing on the balcony, the fatal shot rang out, striking down King as Kyles stood just a few feet away from him.

"I turned to go down the steps. And I heard this noise. A rifle shot. I couldn't believe what was happening. It was beyond my belief. I could not believe what I was looking at," Kyles told The Commercial Appeal in 2013. Kyles was also the subject of the short film, "The Witness: From the Balcony of Room 306," which was nominated for an Academy Award in 2008. In 2009, when the Dalai Lama visited Memphis, Kyles stood on the balcony again. The Dalai Lama was moved when he learned he was standing where King had been struck down, and he blessed the site.

In 2011, the museum honored Kyles with its annual Freedom Award. It was highly appropriate then, those gathered Thursday said, that Kyles lay in repose at the museum, a place to which he was devoted. Kyles is only the second person to receive the honor, following the death of Judge D'Army Bailey last July.

"It's just a (measure) of respect that seemed appropriate," NCRM President Terri Lee Freeman said.

Aurelia Kyles remembered how much her husband treasured the museum, particularly since he had such horrible memories of what had happened there long ago.

"He spent so many hours here," she said. "He loved to walk the museum, greet visitors and just talk to them."
April 26, 2016  KIPP students, from right, Yazmyn Love, Montrell Jackson, and Asia Settles show their love for their children's charter school during the SCS board meeting. (Nikki Boertman/The Commercial Appeal)

By Jennifer Pignolet of The Commercial Appeal

Two charter school operators are appealing the Shelby County Schools board's revocation of their charters, citing a lack of closure procedures in the district.

The leaders of Omni Prep Lower and Middle schools and Southern Avenue Middle filed appeal paperwork with the Tennessee Board of Education this week. Along with another appeal from the Memphis and Bartlett-based New Consortium of Law and Business, which the school board voted the previous month to close, they mark the first appeals of charter closures to the state board since charter schools came online in the state in 2003.

"We believe that SCS's approach to charter revocation is, at best, ad hoc and conducted without due process or transparency," Omni Prep leaders wrote in their appeal. "We are disappointed by SCS's decision to revoke our charter and dismayed by their conduct in reaching their decision."

Southern Avenue's appeal letter accuses SCS of revoking charters arbitrarily and selectively.

"The reason for the decision to identify and revoke the charter of Southern Avenue Charter Middle School was not universally applied to other schools in the district," the document states.

SCS said in a statement that the district respects the right of the charters to appeal.

"In addition, we understand that school closures are difficult but we cannot continue to wait when it comes to the education of our students," the statement said. "In the meantime, we are working to ensure all families involved have information about education options within the SCS or Charters and will be offering assistance so they can make the best decisions for their children in 2016-17."

The votes to close Southern Avenue and the two Omni Prep campuses last month were split, with no more than six board members voting for each closure. Another three charter schools, each performing slightly better, were spared closure for another year.

Board members acknowledged they had no set closure procedures, and that the not-yet-finished Charter Compact was intended for such issues. Board member Scott McCormick asked if there could be legal ramifications if some charters were closed and not others. General counsel Rodney Moore said closure criteria would need to be clear.

A state law that will automatically revoke charters that perform in the bottom 5 percent of all schools in the state does not take effect until next year. Charters in danger of that were notified by the state, but told they had another year to improve.

But with a looming $86 million deficit for next year, SCS Superintendent Dorsey Hopson proposed closing both district-run and charter-operated schools that were performing poorly. Hopson, backed by Moore, said the board could revoke a charter under a breach of contract if they been open more than three years and were not performing at the level promised in the charter agreement.

The board voted to close three district-run schools and voted individually on the charter schools, closing just the three that were in the bottom 5 percent.

The state board's executive director will hear the appeal on New Consortium  whose charter was revoked due to operational issues and poor performance  in Memphis on Friday. A hearing for the two Omni Prep schools and Southern Avenue Middle will take place May 18 in Memphis, and the board will vote on all four in Nashville at the end of the month based on the director's recommendation. Each meeting has time for public comment. Sign-ups are available at tn.gov/sbe.
Riverdale School students, parents and faculty gather on the school's front lawn to celebrate Thursday's groundbreaking. A 64,087-square-foot expansion will hold classrooms, space for band and choir, a gym, science lab, art room and office space. (Stan Carroll/The Commercial Appeal)

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By Kayleigh Skinner of The Commercial Appeal

The atmosphere at Riverdale School was electric on Thursday morning as students, faculty and government officials gathered on the front lawn to mark the initial groundbreaking for the school's future expansion.

"This addition to Riverdale School represents the value our community has placed on education," Linda Fisher, Germantown Municipal School Board chairwoman told the crowd of kids and teachers in the audience.

School board members, aldermen and Shelby County government officials attended the ceremony to celebrate the future expansion.

For more than 20 years, students have attended classes in 22 portable classrooms outside the main building because enrollment exceeded classroom space, said Superintendent Jason Manuel.

The city of Germantown issued $11 million in bonds for the project, $4 million of which the school district is expected to pay back, said city administrator Patrick Lawton. The district will also spend about $750,000 on furniture, fixtures and equipment and roughly $400,000 in architect fees.

Board members and city officials said the expansion represents the benefit of local control of schools. Germantown Municipal Schools first opened its doors for the 2014-15 school year after breaking off from Shelby County Schools in the year prior.

"We own our schools now; we make improvements," said Germantown Mayor Mike Palazzolo. "We own education in our community."

During the ceremony students sat on blankets, laughing and playing while officials participated in a ceremonial dirt shovelling ceremony.

The event took place on the lawn where the building will eventually stand. Fluorescent yellow traffic cones dotted the lawn with signs noting where specific rooms will be when construction is complete.

Zellner Construction will begin work this month, but workers won't really get into the swing of things until the school year ends on May 27, Manuel said.

The 64,087-square-foot expansion will hold 18 classrooms, 2 special education classrooms, a gymnasium, office space, space for the school band, choir and orchestra to practice, multipurpose room, science lab and art room with an outdoor patio.

The district expects the addition to be ready in June 2017.

The building will primarily serve students in grades six through eight, Manuel said.
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If you think pro-gun legislators in the Tennessee General Assembly might be satisfied with the extent of their campaign to put loaded firearms in the hands of more people in more places, consider the threat issued this week by Rep. Andy Holt, R-Dresden.

Holt, the House sponsor of a bill that allows employees of Tennessee's public colleges and universities who have handgun-carry permits to carry their guns on campus, said the law paves the way toward a future in which Tennessee college students will eventually be allowed to pack their Rugers, Sig Sauers and Colts next to their laptops and textbooks.

"My intention," he added, "is to eliminate all gun-free zones, whether it's the legislature or a college campus."

Which seems to be, if not the intention at least something Gov. Bill Haslam is resigned to. Haslam declined to veto the legislation, mildly expressing some concerns but allowing it to become law without his signature.

Haslam had previously shown his weakness on the issue by signing legislation that prohibits state colleges and universities from taking "adverse action" against students and employees with permits for transporting or storing a gun or ammunition in their parked vehicles on campus.

It does seem like an inevitable march toward a riskier environment, thanks to a legislature that has permitted guns in bars, parks and other venues, constantly challenging the limits imposed by a Supreme Court ruling that the Second Amendment is not a license for citizens to go armed in any place under any circumstance.

It's no mystery why the General Assembly has cavalierly waived aside the rights of businesses to control the possession of guns on their property. It doesn't take a genius to figure out why legislators routinely ignore the warnings of law enforcement officials  and campus police chiefs, in this case  who, through their training and experience, have concluded that firearms proliferation leads to greater risks to the public's well-being.

The sad fact is that they're too frightened to listen to the experts when firearms proliferation is being promoted. The National Rifle Association has their ear, and it will continue to fight the re-election hopes of those whose votes offend the gun industry's powerful lobby.

Tennessee is not unique in this respect. Georgia lawmakers overwhelmingly voted in favor of similar legislation during their recent session.

Every one of the state's 29 public university and college presidents, along with their police chiefs, opposed the bill, but it was a top priority of the NRA.

A veto by Gov. Nathan Deal has, at least temporarily, prevented it from becoming law.

But in Georgia, Tennessee and elsewhere, those concerned with the rising threat of gun proliferation must brace themselves for more of the same.
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Robert B. White

Germantown

Only the Pollyanna-thinking crowd would not favor the position of state Rep. Andy Holt, R-Dresden, to eliminate all gun-free zones (Spineless again on latest gun proliferation, May 4 letter). Almost all mass shootings in this country occur in gun-free zones. They are the most dangerous places to be in this country.

There is even some evidence that the deranged people who commit such acts search out gun-free zones so there will be no one to stop them from carrying out their heinous acts. The only people who obey the gun-free zone signs are those with carry permits, and they are the most trustworthy, safest and law-abiding among us

Citizens who have gone through the extensive background checks and required training to hold a carry permit should be allowed to carry their side arm anywhere they go. No exceptions.
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By Megan Mcardle

In the aftermath of Donald Trump's victory Tuesday night, other columnists may look forward, to the heat death of the Republican Party and the triumphant ascent of Hillary Clinton to the position of least popular Democratic president since Jimmy Carter. But I'd like to take a moment to remember the folks who have brought us to this strange pass  the four horsemen of the Republican apocalypse, if you will.

We would not be in this situation if Republican primary voters had mostly rationally tried to pursue two goals: 1) nominate someone as conservative as possible and 2) win the general election. The field would have consolidated around Marco Rubio, and Democrats would now be anxious rather than openly celebrating the nomination of a no-hoper.

That's usually the outcome we see in both parties: the field consolidates around the most ideologically congenial candidate who is capable of winning a general election. Why didn't that happen? Blame the four horsemen.

DONALD TRUMP: There are any number of explanations for what Trump is bringing out in the electorate. But the most compelling explanation also, curiously, gets the shortest shrift: He's a celebrity candidate, and celebrity candidates break election models. Jesse Ventura in Minnesota, Arnold Schwarzenegger in California: these people bring out folks who don't normally vote. In a low-turnout election, or a badly divided field, that's enough to turn things in their favor.

Celebrity candidate voters aren't normal voters. Normal voters care more about policy than normal nonvoters, care more about party identification, care more about ideology. Simply trying to transfer analysis of normal voters over onto the new people that celebrity candidates bring out to the polls doesn't work very well, because you're searching madly for clues to things that aren't really there. This is why such candidates often surprise political scientists by winning.

JEB BUSH: I have nothing against Bush as a man or a governor. But his decision to run for president in this cycle has to rank as one of the stupidest political bids of all time, simply because his last name is toxic. His brother left office after an unpopular war and an even more unpopular economic crisis, with an approval rating of 35 percent. Why on Earth would anyone think that he had any chance at the nomination? Even if his brother's presidency had ended better, it would have been folly, simply because voters don't like the idea that they get to have only Republican presidents named Bush. Yet somehow, Jeb Bush not only threw his hat in the ring but also managed to persuade Republican donors to come along for the ride.

To Bush, I am sympathetic. His brother gets unfair blame for things that are not really his fault, and it can be hard to see yourself, or your family, with the crystal clarity of an outsider. The Republican donors have no such excuse. These folks suddenly and for no apparent reason decided that it would be a great idea to donate $100 million to the cause of running a completely hopeless establishment candidate. And as soon as it became clear he couldn't win, they incinerated the remainder of the bundle taking down Rubio, the only candidate who could plausibly unite enough of the party's factions to stop Trump at the voting booth. When those donors are sitting in their living rooms, wondering how their beloved party has come to this pass, I invite them to get up and take a long look in the nearest mirror.

CHRIS CHRISTIE: He should never have stayed in the race as long as he did. He was a pretty good governor of New Jersey and, at one point, a plausible presidential candidate. But well before New Hampshire, it was clear that the rest of the electorate did not agree, and it was time to drop out. But as mentioned above, I do understand that it can be hard to see these things with perfect clarity when it's your candidacy, your dreams on the line. So now we must address Christie's somewhat odd decision, when the hopelessness of his cause became clear even to him, to use the remainder of his candidacy to help destroy Rubio, the aforementioned only candidate who could plausibly unite enough of the party's disparate factions to stop Trump.

That decision started looking less crazy when Christie dropped out and actually endorsed Trump. Only now we have to deal with the fact that a sitting governor burned immense political capital and tanked his own approval rating to endorse a man whose policy knowledge was oftentimes negative (consisting of more wrong "facts" than right ones) and who was prone to pro political moves like making fun of POWs and the handicapped. Getting Christie's endorsement helped Trump enormously at a time when he needed it. But it hurt the rest of the party, including Christie. In the annals of politics, this may go down as one of the strangest decisions of all time.

JOHN KASICH: I have but two questions for the Kasich campaign: "What color is the sky on your planet?" and "On your visit to Earth, why haven't you bothered to get out and meet some actual human beings?" Kasich was never going to be president, primarily because he is not a particularly compelling candidate, lacking charm or a strong political base. This is why he was forced to fall back on selling himself as the least conservative guy on the debate stage  a really terrible selling point in a Republican primary, which should have been obvious to his campaign long before the polls confirmed it.

What puzzles is his decision to stay in, splitting the establishment vote so Trump could become the nominee. None of the stories his campaign told ever made the least bit of sense. The party would consolidate around him  ummm-hmmm. Then he was gunning for a brokered convention, in which his party, out of exquisite gratefulness for his role in siphoning off just barely enough suburban voters to ensure that the non-Trump vote never consolidated around anyone else would, um, hand him the nomination. Or make him vice president. Or do something other than smuggle rotten fruit through convention security in order to pelt him with it if he dared to show his face on stage.

And why aren't Ted Cruz and Rubio ranked as the fifth and sixth horsemen? Certainly Cruz is a charmless candidate with little hope of winning outside the Bible Belt, and Rubio is a charming politician who failed to win many primaries, and shot himself in the foot making jokes about the size of Trump's  hands.

But both of them behaved basically rationally throughout this campaign. Cruz executed by far the most masterful campaign this cycle, hoped that this would be enough to give him a chance outside the Bible Belt, and dropped out this week when it became clear things were hopeless. Rubio was a good politician facing impossible odds, as a series of completely irrational decisions by Bush, Christie and Kasich battered him, then siphoned off just enough of his voters to make it impossible to consolidate a lead. He made a Hail Mary pass by attacking Trump on Trump's own terms, and it didn't work. And as soon as it became clear that it hadn't, he left the race.

If everyone else had been behaving as rationally as these two, I suspect we would not be now looking forward to another six months of Donald Trump speeches. And perhaps then another four years of same.

Megan McArdle is a Bloomberg View columnist.
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The accounting software industry is, contrary to what you might think, a pretty interesting place. Characterized by three large vendors that hold the lion's share of the market in their respective geographies, until recently it has been a fairly sedentary place with Intuit (U.S.), Sage (U.K.) and MYOB (Australasia) happy to organically grow their businesses. That all changed around 10 years ago when Xero, a New Zealand-based startup, came on the scene and started taking well-aimed kicks at the three sleeping bears.

Since then, Xero has gone on to take significant market share in its home market of Australasia, pretty positive market share in the U.K., and is trying its hardest against a newly invigorated competitor to gain a toehold in the all-important U.S. market. That isn't proving quite as easy as in Australasia and the U.K., due to some structural and competitive issues and also due to the fact that Intuit is doing a fantastic job (at last) of innovating and doing what it needs to do to keep market share.

All of this makes it even more interesting to hear from yet another U.S. market entrant, ZipBooks. ZipBooks is a new startup, based out of Utah, that hopes to deliver a compelling point of difference for its customers. ZipBooks comes to market with the perspective that for small and midsize businesses, nothing matters more than cash. Its primary focus is on doing everything it can to help customers get paid faster.

"None of the existing small-business accounting solutions out there are solving the most important problem for small businesses -- managing cash flow," notes Tim Chaves, founder and CEO of ZipBooks. "I've felt the misery myself as a small-business owner, having to make payroll when a needed payment was still outstanding. We are putting enterprise cash flow management tools into the hands of small businesses. More importantly, we're working these tools right into the process of sending an invoice that business owners already use every day."

That's a pretty staunch claim to make. If you were to ask Intuit or Xero (not to mention Wave Accounting, FreshBooks or any of the other competitors), they'd say that they're helping customers get paid. So what are the key points of difference for ZipBooks?

Unlike Intuit and Xero, ZipBooks is following the example of Wave and offering its product for free. So how does ZipBooks offer bookkeeping, invoicing, time tracking, bank information and credit card processing without a monthly subscription? By finding alternative revenue stream.

For Wave, that all focuses around giving business owners opportunities to buy products and services that are tailored to them. ZipBooks takes another approach and has set up strategic partnerships with credit card processors and finance companies. What this means is that ZipBooks customers can, from within the ZipBooks application, obtain invoice financing.

In other words, financial institutions take over their accounts payables, give them the cash to use for day-to-day purposes, and do the hard stuff around ensuring the invoices get paid. ZipBooks' platform can underwrite a business within 24 hours of its application for Invoice Instant Payments. Businesses that opt to finance an invoice can see money hit their account the day after an invoice is sent, regardless of when a client pays.

While other accounting vendors have partnerships with financing organizations, ZipBooks does it natively from within the application. This is even the case for its recently released iPhone application. The app has on-the-go invoicing functionality, and ZipBooks monetizes that by charging 0.5% per week of the advanced amount and automatically scheduling repayment over a 12-week period with no penalty for early repayment.

MyPOV

While both Wave and ZipBooks are free products, it seems to me that ZipBooks has worked out a more sustainable model. The question comes down to whether its invoice financing model is scalable -- ZipBooks believes it is, and reports that it has many financing companies ready to jump on board with the platform. As such, it seems that for those looking for a free solution, ZipBooks is the way to go.

Which gets us to the central issue: Do businesses trust a product which is free, or for their core business needs would they rather pay a modest amount for a solution that they feel more comfortable with? If this were an enterprise product, the answer would be obvious -- enterprises need the security that comes with a direct contractual relationship between software vendor and customer. But this is the SMB space, and the success of other free or freemium products has shown that this is a valid route to market.

It's hard to see how ZipBooks will gain traction in a market that has a lot of vendors -- two in particular that are spending massive money trying to drown the other one out. Traction is hard enough at the best of times, even harder in such a busy market and targeting such a broad customer base.

The other issue is that it's not a huge leap for either Xero or Intuit to add invoice financing natively within their applications. Do that and they've removed at least part of ZipBooks' uniqueness. Time will tell where this all goes.
Box is launching a new offering aimed squarely at government customers in an attempt to get more public agencies to use its file storage and collaboration service.

On Thursday, the company launched Box for Government, designed to make it easier for government organizations to deploy Box for their employees. That announcement was timed with Box receiving provisional authority to operate under the Federal Risk and Authorization Management program (better known as FedRAMP), a sign that the company meets key requirements for handling government data.

The government push is an important move for Box, which has been positioning itself as a cloud storage and content services provider focused on serving large organizations like public agencies and enterprises. Its FedRAMP Moderate certification meets a bar set to protect types of data that include personally identifiable information.

The certification opens Box up for greater use not only in the U.S. government but at other agencies in the U.S. and abroad that use FedRAMP as a bellwether.

In addition to FedRAMP, Box already holds several other security certifications, including HIPAA compliance for U.S. health care, U.K. Government Cloud Accreditation and ISO 27001 certification.

Box already claims more than 6,500 government customers, including the U.S. Department of Justice, the State of California and the United Nations.

Government is a key area of potential growth for the company, which is fighting off big rivals and upstarts to store organizations' digital files.

Box already offers other industry-specific services, including ones focused on education, financial services and health care. Following the introduction of those services, the company has landed deals with major players in each sector, including Stanford University and pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca.
The U.S. International Trade Commission has launched an investigation into seven smartphone companies on charges of patent infringement, which could lead to a ban on the sale of certain phones imported and sold by these vendors in the country.

The commission said it is looking into devices from a group of mainly Asian companies, including Lenovo and its Motorola subsidiary, Samsung Electronics, ZTE, Sony, LG Electronics, HTC and BlackBerry.

The complaint was filed against these companies by Creative Technology of Singapore and its U.S. subsidiary Creative Labs of Milpitas, California, on March 24.

Known for its Sound Blaster sound cards for PC audio, Creative has charged these companies with infringing U.S. Patent No. 6,928,433 entitled Automatic Hierarchical Categorization of Music by Metadata, which claims various methods for accessing different types of data, such as music or video files, on a portable media player.

Apple is said to be one of the licensees of the patent, and in 2006, Apple paid Creative $100 million for a nonexclusive license, according to Creatives complaint. Creative had earlier that year asked the ITC to block the sale of Apple's iPod devices for allegedly infringing the same patent.

Among the alleged infringing products named in the complaint are Samsungs Galaxy S6 smartphone and other Samsung phones containing either the Google Play Music app (version 5.9.l854R.l904527), or the Samsung Music app (version 6.0.1508051449), which were installed on the phones prior to import.

The products at issue in the investigation are smartphones, with the capability of playing stored media files selected by a user from a hierarchical display, the ITC said in a statement Thursday.

If it finds infringement after investigation, the ITC can place a ban on the sale of products by these vendors, under a limited exclusion order requested by the complainant. The ITC cautioned that the launch of an investigation did not imply a decision on the merits of the case. It will set a target date for completion of the investigation within 45 days of its institution.
The impact of mobile on healthcare is among the most acceptable elements of the digital transformation of everything that is taking place right before our eyes, and the latest news from IBM is that iPads and iPhones will become essential tools for eye surgeons, I spoke with the company to find out more.

Eyesight

IBM and Bausch + Lomb are developing the first iOS app for cataract surgeons. Bausch + Lombs vision is to optimize the app to collect data over time, resulting in a cognitive app that applies machine-based learning and predictive analytics to deliver real-time insights to surgeons. Pilot study testing of the app should begin later this year.

Thats right, this means this will eventually become one of the first trailblazing examples of big data analysis and machine intelligence used in support of healthcare. You can expect much more of this in future, and look forward to a plethora of third-party iOS-compatible devices that can significantly boost healthcare such as AliveCor.

Getting inside the data goldmine

For more about the solution please read IBMs press release. I spoke with Andy Chang, senior vice president and general manager, U.S. Surgical, Bausch + Lomb; and Terrel Marks, Global Apple Partnership Lead, Healthcare & Life Sciences, IBM to find a little more detail, but before we get into that a few data points:

Cataracts affect over 22 million Americans.

The app compiles patient information, including intraocular lens calculations, biometry results and lifestyle preferences.

It electronically manages patient data across iPhone and iPad. It hosts health-related data on secure cloud-based platform, IBM Cloud Platform, Bluemix.

Surgeons can access each patient's information using iOS, enabling them to create personalized intraocular lens and procedure recommendations.

Why?

Why might the app make a difference? The process for managing patient information today is still very much a manual process for many cataract surgeons, explained Chang. With this app, surgeons will now have the ability to access each patients surgical information in one place, receive intuitive feedback for IOL selection, and help improve future procedures while driving greater efficiencies in managing patient flow; an incredible benefit for practices.

Digital dividend

The plethora of connected devices, including wearables (39.5 million U.S. adults 18 and over uses wearable devices, including smartwatches and fitness trackers, says eMarketer) means the sheer scale of patient data being collected is growing incredibly fast, and this is where digital technologies can help realize valuable insights.

Health information is doubling every two years now, and it's too much for any one person to keep up with, said IBMs Marks.

Explaining this is why IBM is attempting to exploit mobile, cloud and data analytics solutions to help acquire insights from this information, he said, Through our partnership with Apple, we have an entire suite of apps for nurses and doctors to streamline workflow Watson technologies, which are delivered on mobile devices via the cloud, are helping clinicians sift through structured and unstructured information from clinical data, genomics, and medical literature to help deliver evidence-based, personalized cancer care.

Accurate diagnosis, personalized care

Thats the point, I guess  to realize more accurate diagnosis, more personalized treatment by unlocking more holistic insights from previously siloed data, Marks points out.

Through this new app, we're bringing together data from the clinical record, the specific measurements of the cornea, and surgical guidelines -- and we're serving it up in an app to help streamline how doctors access the information they need before performing eye surgery.

By capturing, displaying, and analyzing the data over time in an iterative process, this app is expected to help surgeons provide better care and potentially help provide improved surgical outcomes, while at the same time increasing their efficiency, said Anil Shivaram, M.D., Claremont Eye Associates, in a press release.

What makes these families of app possible is IBMs enterprise partnership with Apple.

The collaboration combines our industry strength and expertise, IBMs advanced data management capabilities, Apples innovative app ecosystem and Bausch + Lombs clinical expertise, to give surgeons the ability to easily access patients information in one place, from an iPad or iPhone.

Good health is good business

With Apple expected to introduce new health-focused features in the coming weeks and its provision of HealthKit, CareKit and ResearchKit tools for the sector, the company is clearly set to play a part in future health provision across this planet.

Thats not just potentially good for your health, its also good business -- w earable health devices will be a $17.8 billion annual market with 97.6 million devices shipping each year by 2021, according to Tractica.

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Oracles legal fight with Google over its use of Java in Android goes to a jury trial for the second time next week, and the stakes are even higher than when the two sides met in court four years ago.

Oracle wants a whopping $8.8 billion in damages from Google, much more than the first time around, making it one of the biggest copyright cases ever, and it's anyones guess which way the jury will go.

The timing is awkward for Google  its I/O conference comes smack in the middle of the trial -- and developers at that event should pay attention to the outcome. If Oracle wins, Google could be forced to make changes to the way people build apps for Android, or else swallow a royalty fee for continued use of Oracle's technology.

Barring a last-minute settlement, the four-week trial begins Monday, and we're likely to see a parade of Silicon Valley bigwigs called to the stand to testify, including Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison and Google CEO Larry Page. Its a complex case thats likely to stretch the jurys understanding  Judge William Alsup has worried aloud that they wont be able to keep up.

The trial will be split into two parts. In the first, the jury will decide whether Google's use of Oracle's technology is protected by the doctrine of "fair use," which allows copying for some purposes. If it decides it was, Oracle walks away empty handed (though it's likely to appeal). If its use wasn't fair, the second half of the trial will be to calculate damages. Heres what you need to know to follow the trial, held at the federal district courthouse in San Francisco.

Whats this dispute about?

When Google created Android 10 years ago, it decided to make Java the basis for its OS. The Java language is open source and free for anyone to use, but Google also used 37 carefully structured Java programming interfaces (APIs), including 7,000 lines of "declaring code," for which Sun held the copyright. Early on, Google tried to negotiate a license but couldnt reach a deal and went ahead with Java anyway. Sun never showed much interest in filing lawsuits, but soon after Oracle took control of the company, it pounced.

Havent we been through this movie before?

Yes, but after a trial in 2012, the jury was split on the question of fair use. The new jury will be asked to decide whether Googles use of the APIs was fair and, if not, how much damages it should pay.

How does Oracle get to such a huge sum?

Oracle's "damages expert" calculates that Google made $40.6 billion in revenue from Android through the end of last year, mostly from mobile search ads but also from apps, digital media, and hardware. After deducting costs and estimating what proportion of Google's profit should be attributed to Android itself -- as opposed to other Google technologies like its search engine -- he comes up with the figure of $8.8 billion.

Hang on, arent those 37 APIs only a tiny portion of Android?

Thats a big part of what Google's lawyers will try to convince the jury. Oracle advances a legal theory of commingling  which basically says the gains from the APIs are so wrapped up in the whole that they cant be separated out. Google will counter that the APIs are a tiny fraction of Android so Oracle's reward should be far less.

Just this week, Alsup dealt Oracle a setback. He said its expert can cite the $8.8 billion figure in court, but he can't tell the jury Oracle is entitled to the whole amount.

This case sounds complicated.

You havent heard the half of it. As well as learning about APIs, virtual machines and declaring code, the jury will hear testimony about different software licenses and what they allow developers to do. They'll also need to understand fair use.

What is that anyway?

Under U.S. copyright law, exceptions are made for certain types of copying, commonly for things like satire, news reporting, research, and commentary, but there are other exceptions, too.

The jury will be asked to weigh four fair use factors, which the judge has described here. One of the most important is the purpose and character of the work, including whether Google's use of the APIs was commercial, and whether it was "transformative" -- whether it turned them into something new and different. It's pretty clear that its use of Java was commercial, so Google will need to convince the jury that Android transformed the original copyright work into something different.

The original work is Java 2 Standard Edition - the desktop version of Java - but the copyright protection extends to derivative works, including Java 2 Micro Edition, the version for mobile.

One of Google's arguments will be that Java 2 ME was used mainly in feature phones, and that it never approached the capabilities of Android -- making Google's use transformative.

Also crucial is the fourth fair use factor -- the effect on "the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work. Oracle will tell the jury that Android destroyed any chance Java ME had of succeeding in smartphones. Google will respond that Sun failed because it never built a decent mobile OS.

Google will also argue that the APIs were functional - that it needed them to make use of the Java language, which after all is open source. To the extent the jury agrees, that could sway them toward fair use.

Who are these so-called expert witnesses?

Good question. Each side hires experts to testify on their behalf, often academics and consultants. Alsup has been a bit disdainful of experts; he's aware they might just say whatever they're told to in order to earn their fees.

Alsup says the jury has a right to know how much each expert is being paid, and he might reveal that in court. Oracle's fair use expert, for instance, is getting $1,200 an hour. The jury decides how much weight they give to each expert, depending on things like how trustworthy they find them to be.

This doesnt sound very scientific.

Its not. The facts of the case are only part of what will determine the outcome. A lot rests on how convincing the testimony is. Other potential witnesses include Google Chairman Eric Schmidt, former Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz, and Android creator Andy Rubin. Theyll testify about topics such as why Google chose Java, and whether it believed it needed a license in the first place.

What else do I need to know?

Whatever the jury decides, it almost certainly wont be the end of the matter. The losing side is sure to file an appeal, and the case will drag on.

Whos likely to win?

Thats hard to say. A jury has heard the facts in the case once already, and on fair use, they were split, nine jurors to three in Google's favor. Under California law, the verdict needs to be unanimous.

But this is a new trial, with a new jury, and Oracle has a different legal team running its show.

Tyler Ochoa, a professor at Santa Clara University School of Law, notes that in copyright trials, the conventional wisdom is that the plaintiff -- Oracle -- usually starts in the stronger position. Its easy for a jury to see when material has been copied, he says, and the onus is on the defendant to prove its use was fair.

But he also notes that in the San Francisco Bay Area, the jury is more likely to have at least one member who's got some understanding of tech, who could better follow the nuanced arguments and influence the rest of the jury.

Predicting a winner, he says, is a "fool's errand."
Iain Dale is Presenter of LBC Drive, Managing Director of Biteback Publishing, a columnist and broadcaster and a former Conservative Parliamentary candidate.

If I were Dominic Cummings (and theres a thought), Id be deploying the acronym TTIP as a major part of the Leave campaign. The Transatlantic Trade & Investment Partnership is a very boring-sounding trade plan between the US and the EU. From what I know about it, it scares the s**t out of me. I have always suspected it was a bad thing, but now we have proof. If it were just a free trade agreement everyone would support it  but it goes far beyond the realms of free trade.

Until this week, we only suspected what its contents are. Its drafting was so secret that the European Commission banned any knowledge of the negotiations. Anyone who revealed the contents were threatened with criminal proceedings. This week, a draft of the agreement was leaked to Greenpeace and it makes for pretty horrifying reading.

One of the main aims of TTIP is the introduction of Investor-State Dispute Settlements (ISDS), which allow companies to sue governments if those governments policies cause a loss of profits. In effect, it means that unelected transnational corporations can dictate the policies of democratically-elected governments.

For example, if the Government introduces an environmental tax on fracking which affects the profit of a US mining company, they can sue for loss of profits. Totally outrageous. It also forces public sector organisations such as the NHS to effectively open up all their services to privatisation. Now that may be a good idea, but it is our Government that should decide to do this  not TTIP.

US-manufactured GM food products will be forced on EU countries who currently ban them. I could go on. Its an issue which even many Remain supporters are uncomfortable with. In essence its an affront to democracy. There is some debate about whether national governments have a veto over its final draft. Some say it is subject to Qualified Majority Voting. In my opinion, its so important that there should be a referendum on it in each of the 28 countries.

On Wednesday I interviewed Mike Gapes, a TTIP enthusiast, and War on Wants John Hillary. You might be interested in listening to the discussion, which can be heard above.

         

All anyone seems to want to talk to me about nowadays is who I think will be the next Conservative Party leader. Whenever anyone asks the question, I sigh inwardly. Its an impossible question to answer in any meaningful way, mainly because there isnt actually a vacancy.

If there is one after June 24, then its clear that Boris Johnson will be in the driving seat. The niggling doubt in his mind, though, is that he might not be able to convince enough of his fellow MPs to vote for him to reach the final two. Like Theresa May, he has very few devoted followers and acolytes. Off the top of my head James Cleverly, Ben Wallace and Nadine Dorries are the only three MPs who I have heard being Boris enthusiasts. I am sure there are others, but would they number more than a dozen?

But if he gets into the final two, I suspect that Party members would give him a bigger majority than David Cameron achieved (66-33) against David Davis. The task for people like me is to identify who the outsider candidates might be.

Sajid Javid was a good bet up until the moment he inexplicably declared himself to be a supporter of Remain. Greater love hath a Cabinet Minister than he lay down his career for beliefs he doth not possess. Its a funny old world.

Nicky Morgan has made clear she wants to stand, but the policy of forced academisation has done her no good among a range of Tory backbenchers.

Priti Patel, Andrea Leadsom, Amber Rudd and Penny Mordaunt are four leading female contenders. Indeed, its possible there may be more female candidates than male. Anna Soubry has impressed me of late, with some very deft handling of the steel crisis, but would Conservative MPs vote for the woman who is possibly the most vocal advocate of Remain?

My money remains on Michael Gove, who last week topped the ConHome next party leader poll for a second time. Michael protests he isnt qualified for the job and wouldnt want it. Funnily enough, I have never heard Mrs Gove back him up on that one. Someone should place a recording device under their respective pillows. I suspect the results would be very revealing. (Get your minds out of the gutter, please).

         

So Donald Trump has more or less secured the Republican nomination. Shows how much I know.

Can the Republican Party unite around him? Judging from the comments of many Republican commentators and strategists, that is doubtful. Most of my Republican-supporting friends will be holding their noses and voting for Hillary Clinton.

However, that might not be enough to stop Trump. If he can appeal to people who havent voted for years and really burnish his anti-establishment credentials, he could still do it.

I wonder whether we in this country have fallen for the same trick that we fell for when many people (not including me, I should say) thought that no way could the Americans vote for that stupid George Bush. We constantly misunderestimated him, and suspect that we (myself included) are now repeating that trick with The Donald.
Close

It seems fans will have to wait a little longer for their favorite upcoming Maze Runner movie to get released as the production of "Maze Runner: The Death Cure" has been delayed due to actor Dylan O'Brien's injuries which he sustained on the sets sometime earlier this year.

O'Brien met with a serious accident on the sets of "Maze Runner: The Death Cure", when he was shooting in Vancouver, Canada last March 18. According to the Hollywood Reporter, Dylan O'Brien "was in a harness on top of a moving vehicle when he was pulled off the vehicle unexpectedly and hit by another vehicle." Work on the film has been suspended since the accident. The accident left him a concussion, facial fracture and lacerations.

Dylan was expected to return back to work in a few weeks, but, now, it seems the actor will need more time to recover from his injuries. A new statement coming from producers at Fox has confirmed that they have not yet decided on a date when the film's production work will resume. It is reported that a new date will be set depending on O'Brien's recovery. The actor's injuries are more severe than first believed.

"His injuries are very serious, and he needs more time to recover," O'Brien's publicist Jennifer Allen said in a statement, reported NME. "The resumption of principal photography on Maze Runner: The Death Cure has been further delayed to allow Dylan O'Brien more time to fully recover from his injuries. We wish Dylan a speedy recovery and look forward to restarting production as soon as possible," the statement read.

The film "Maze Runner: The Death Cure" was originally scheduled for release on February 17, 2017. But, now looking at the situation it doesn't seem like that the film will make it to the scheduled release. Death Cure is the third film in the Maze Runner franchise.

O'Brien is widely popular for his role on TV's "Teen Wolf" series. According to his Maze Runner co-star Giancarlo Esposito, the actor is healing pretty well.

"He's one tough cookie," Esposito said in an interview with E! News in April.

See Now: What Republicans Don't Want You To Know About Obamacare
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Modern Family star Ariel Winter is perhaps one of the best linked stars standing up for Kim Kardashian following that celebrated nude selfie she posted on Instagram.

Kardashian gave birth to her second child (Saint West) on December 5, 2015 but eventually decided to show off her pre-baby body with a nude image for International Women's Day. Parts of the photo where placed with censor strips to abide by the rules on Instagram.

The pic was however not a recent one but something taken over a year ago where she weighed 25 lbs. less. Regardless, the photo drew criticism from popular names that included Bette Midler, Piers Morgan and Moretz.

"If Kim wants us to see a part of her we've never seen, she's gonna have to swallow the camera," the 70-year-old Midler said. The reality TV star did fire back by replying: "Hey @BetteMidler I know it's past your bedtime but if you're still up and reading this send nudes #justkidding."

Winter came out to back up Kardashian on the Jackie O show explaining that posting a nude pic wasnt intended to hurt anybody. "If somebody doesn't like the post, they can unfollow them," she said. "There's no reason to go on and publicly bash them and I think, you know, she's promoting positivity instead of being a bad role model."

But not long after comes the take of Moretz on Glamour.

"I saw that photo, and I had to say something. That picture wasn't linked to body confidence. It wasn't a #BodyConfidence or #LoveWhoYouAre. It was done in a slightly voyeuristic light, which I felt was a little inappropriate for young women to see."

When that came out, Winter didnt exactly stand up and defend but took an indirect swipe at the certain interview which was obviously aimed at Moretz.

A photo posted by Ariel Winter (@arielwinter) on May 4, 2016 at 1:52pm PDT

"Many have asked about my opinion on a certain interviewall I'm going to say is this: If you take a photo in which you feel CONFIDENT about yourself and think it spreads a positive image, then GO FOR IT."

Kardashian and Moretz have been at it since March touching on setting goals for women and teaching them more about than just offering their bodies. The reality TV star responded (sarcastically) saying: "Let's all welcome @ChloeGMoretz to Twitter, since no one knows who she is."

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Researchers were able to unearth a mother lode of a half dozen fossil primate species recently in southern China and it seems that such has shed some more light on the fate of some primates after the Eocene-Oligocene transition.

For those who are unaware, the Eocene-Oligocene period was when drastic cooling made Asia as one of the hard places to reside in. Such was caused by the rearrangement of the earths major tectonic plates where a rapid drop in temperature and humidity caused hard times for the primates of that time.

Ideally, primates preferred to live in warmer and wet settings and such forced some inhabitants to move to North American and/or Europe. Despite that however, there were some who managed to survive and tell the tale. And much of that was because anthropoid primates were able to adjust and grasp the arc of early primate and human evolution.

"We had a lot of evidence previously that the earliest anthropoids originated in Asia. At some point, later in the Eocene, these Asian anthropoids got to Africa and started to diversify there. At some point, the geographic focal point of anthropoid evolutionmonkeys, apes and humansshifted from Asia to Africa. But we never understood when and why. Now, we know. The Eocene-Oligocene climate crisis virtually wiped out Asian anthropoids, so the only place they could evolve to become later monkeys, apes and humans was Africa," bares K Christopher Beard, senior curator at the University of Kansas' Biodiversity Institute and co-author of the report.

The paper is a result of a decades work of fieldwork over southern China, where six new species identified through jaw and tooth fragments that survived that time. It is believed that these species were able to survive with tough enamel surfaces and serve as "fingerprints" to identify ancient animals.

"The fossil record usually gives you a snapshot here or there of what ancient life was like. You typically don't get a movie," Beard adds.

Beard also adds that ancient Chinese primates were tropical tree dwellers. One species was known as the Oligotarsius rarus which he claims was "incredibly similar" to the modern tarsier many of us see today in the Philippines and Indonesian islands.

Proof of that is the fossil teeth included in the report, something that seems identical to the present day tarsiers we see.

Beard adds that if it were not for the Eocene-Oligocene transition, primate evolution would have likely happened in Asia rather than in Africa where Homo sapiens emerged. The findings somehow shed some light on the real score as far as the vulnerability to climate change endured by all primates.

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A woman who had a full face transplant in 2011 followed by a cruel attack by a chimpanzee is admitted in hospital again on Wednesday. It is reported that transplanted tissues are being rejected by her body after five years of surgery.

Charla Nash, 62, from Stamford was mauled by a chimpanzee named Travis, which was a local celebrity that appeared in a couple of television commercials. The animal brutally attacked Nash when she tried to stop her neighbor's pet from escaping. In the encounter Nash lost her hands and her eyes, nose and lips were severely injured.

Though the 14-year-old chimp was shot dead by a police officer on the same day, the fatal injury Nash suffered is taking a toll on her till date. The woman then underwent a full face transplant surgery two years after the attack in 2009. Now, five years after the transplant Nash is admitted in hospital again as her body has started rejecting the graft, but luckily in moderate levels.

"Charla is currently experiencing a moderate rejection episode, which face transplant patients experience on occasion," explained Dr. Bohdan Pomahac, director of plastic surgery transplantation, according to New York Post. "Overall, she is doing well," he said in a statement. "We expect this rejection episode to be resolved within the coming week."

Dr. Eduardo D. Rodriguez, chair of the Hansjorg Wyss Department of Plastic Surgery at NYU Langone, said that moderate rejection can be seen in patients while they are adjusting to immunosuppressive drugs. He also noted that an acute rejection episode which usually appears like a rash could be treated by making changes in the medication.

"I gave it my all and know my participation in the study will still be beneficial," said Nash who received the transplant as a part of military funded experiment, to Associated Press, reported CBS News . "I'd do it all over again, if I could. The men and women serving our country are the true heroes. I'm just happy I had the chance to help," Nash said. "I wish I could have done more. I believe in the power of prayer and appreciate everyone who is praying for me," she added.

See Now: What Republicans Don't Want You To Know About Obamacare
Dialogue With A Revolutionary Who Commited Suicide

By Daljit Ami

06 May, 2016

Countercurrents.org

It is sad that Satnam chose to walk away. After writing a book like Jangalnama and translating a novel like Spartacus into Punjabi, Satnam finally resigned from his own life. In Sanjay Kaks film Red Ant Dream, Satnam reads out Paashs poem, looks into the camera and expresses his agreement with the seditious poem. He grins and looks straight into the camera while talking about sedition.His frame becomes a representation of disobediencea gainst authority. Satnam addressed life through this very resistance. Satnams suicide unveils the covert and the overt violence of our times when questions arising with every kind of resistance are labelled seditious. That is why it becomes essential to ask why someone like Satnam commits suicide?Who is responsible for this suicide and who owns the responsibility to evaluate its genesis?

For four long decades Satnam remained a full time revolutionary. He contributed towards the mobilization of resistance and inspired a lot of young people to walk the path of revolution. He motivated those who walked the path and maintained sincere relationships with those who chose to step out of the path. His friends, compatriots and even his opponents praise his warm and amiable nature. His friends will tell you that he presented his views with extraordinary clarity and listened sensitively to the views of his opponents. His writings are evidence of his curiosity and clarity. There is no doubt that staying active in revolutionary politics for so long demands conviction and courage. It demands a thorough review of the system. It demands a review of the political, class and caste structures of society. It also demands adeconstruction ofthe social and the emotional aspects of society.

The revolutionary dreams are shaped through these reviews of the system. Fearlessly, the revolutionary activist, upon reviewing the system, changes his or her own self as per the principles of revolution. Every activist has to balance heavy odds: on the one side one has to live in a current unequal patriarchal world and on the other side one has to nurture the dream of the revolution. Balancing these becomes a cause for conflict between many activists and organizations. In such situations, a revolutionary activist comes face to face with his or her own organization.At times these conflicts result in splits of organizations and disillusionment among activists.

This is the most complexand painful aspect of revolutionary movements. When one seeks to change the times, one also experiences inner change. The associations with other revolutionaries inspire these inner changes, the change of preferences; the changes in the social sphere and the emotional universe. If an activist abandons the ranks, the question of settling down in another way of life arises from the very place where the abandonment takes place. The route, for someone who chooses to turn back before the revolution, is not paved and decorated - the question of resurrecting ones life becomes important. When activists return from long jail terms, the manner in which they engage with the organizations  the earlier alignments- change. These changes rupture the activists emotional and social life.

The experience is similar to clashes between activists and organizations when, due to ill health, the organizations leave the activists back home at the mercy of their families. Or when organizations give activists time off to take care of their family members. In such times complicated familial relationships come to the fore. Relations that the activist once rejected or neglected, now seek new terms to establish themselves. The inevitable conflict between that imagined and actual patriarchal family puts revolutionaries under tremendous pressure. Such experiences of rupture and resettling are never pleasant.

When these happenings are frequent in revolutionary politics, who has the responsibility to take required initiatives? When the revolutionary activists return home before the revolution, only an exceptional one has the skill to negotiate with the new life-style. While some fall victims to disappointments and decadance, many struggle to create a healthy engagement and a warm sphere around them. The claims of and on organizations recede and it is quite difficult to retain confidence in a new social scanerios. This is also when an activist addresses what has broken within and realises how his or her intellectual, emotional and human side has developed: at times the emotional development has not reached the level of intellectual development and at other times the human development has fallen short of the intellectual development. Current social systems and medical practice fail to understand this. No amount of advice or comfort talk soothes the one who is drowning. The activist does not find resources to change his or her environment and is unable to find an engagement that occupies the mind.

It could seem that such a person cannot be saved. In fact, saving such a person is not the responsibility of the current system because the powers that be seek their importance in the death of such people. That is why a case is being made out that Satnams death was for the advancement of spirituality and religion. This argument is similar to that of the system which links every question to the idea of seditiona and seeks to cover every failure of a revolutionary with the banner of devotion. The irony is that the so called spiritual ones, who speak of the well being of the human race, are making such arguments. These are the ones who celebrate such deaths.

No establishment has an interest in saving people like Satnam.Rather establshments find vindication in his end. Facebook and social media is replete with the claims of vindication by radical right wingers and advocates of spirituality. Satnams decision is definitely a failure of the revolutionary politics and their social structures. In the shadow of this dejection it is incumbent upon us to realise that the current socio-political reality of our times cannot assuage the heart of activists.The question arising from the suicide might be asked from any point of view but must be addressed. Satnam who gave the Punjabi audience a classic like Spartacus and Jangalnama has resigned from life so the review of his life must start with an apology. After Rohit Vemula, we had Navkaran and now we have Satnam. All three are linked to each other and breaking this chain of suicides by activists is not any less a matter than a revolution. We must confront Satnam and respond to his questions. We need to address his seditious silences. He is speaking to us through Paash. When he has frozen in time, his eye contact with the camera defines him and that needs to be deciphered.

Daljit Ami is an independent documentary filmmaker and pursuing PhD in Cinema Studies from Jawaharlal Nehru University. This article has been translated from Punjabi by Amandeep Sandhu.

Amandeep Sandhu is the author of Roll of Honour, translated by Daljit Ami into Punjabi as Gawah De Fanah Hon To Pehlan.














The Danger Of Fascism In The United States

By John Scales Avery

06 May, 2016

Countercurrents.org

The Indiana primary election, which took place on the 3rd of May, 2016, produced two results, one of which was hopeful, and the other, profoundly worrying. Bernie Saunders wakened hopes for restoration of democracy in the US with a resounding win over the political oligarchy's candidate, Hillary Clinton. The other result gave rise to fears of fascism. Donald Trump won the Republican primary by a large majority. Ted Cruz dropped out of the race, and the Republican leadership declared Trump to be their party's presidential candidate.

There is a real danger that Donald Trump, who is not only xenophobic. racist and hatemongering, but also misogynistic, wildly erratic and manifestly unqualified for the post, could be elected to the US Presidency in November. It could happen in the following way. If the Democratic Party's establishment succeeds in making Hillary Clinton their candidate, young voters and independents could become disillusioned. Without their support Hillary could lose to Trump.

By contrast, every recent public opinion poll shows that Bernie Sanders, the idealist and reformer, would win massively in a presidential race with Trump.

http://sourceplanet.net/politics/trump-vs-sanders-sanders-wins-in-every-poll/

It is impossible to listen to Donald Trump's speeches without being reminded of the fascist dictators who took control of Europe in the 1930's. His rhetoric is especially similar to that of Mussolini, who promised to make Italy great again, just as it was under the Roman Empire. In my opinion, it is correct to call Trump a fascist.

One wonders, however, whether Hillary Clinton might not also be called a fascist. She is in favor of the attempted US domination of the world through military force, and she is in favor of the US corporate oligarchy. Perhaps choosing between Hillary and Donald is like choosing which form of cancer is better for you.

In the 1930's, when Hitler, Mussolini and Franco came to power in Europe, they did so against the background of serious economic stress which made voters desperate to find leaders who promised salvation. Today too, economic stress forms the background for a drift towards fascism. This is not only true in the United States, but also in Europe, where an influx of refugees from war and climate change has produced xenophobia and racism.

Just as the rise of fascism in Europe in the 1930's led to an all-destroying world war, so too today the threat of fascism is also a threat that all that we love will perish in a catastrophic global war, which today would be a thermonuclear inferno. We all have a responsibility to work with dedication to avoid this threat. One of the most important things that we can do is to support the campaign of Bernie Sanders in every way possible, by financial contributions, social media posts, articles in the alternative media, telephone calls, conversations with friends, lobbying of superdeligates, and every other way that we can think of.

The threat of fascism is real. We must join hands and work with courage and dedication to avoid it.

Some suggestions for further reading

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article44584.htm

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/35899-donald-trump-set-to-be-gop-nominee-despite-links-to-organized-crime

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/35896-sanders-dnc-chair-clash-over-democratic-party-inclusivity

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/04/opinion/its-donald-trumps-party-now.html?_r=0

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/05/04/why-must-trump-alternative-be-self-satisfied-complacent-democrats

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/05/04/bernie-sanders-wins-indiana-and-political-debate

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/05/04/5-reasons-bernie-sanders-wins-big-cruz-dropout

http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/35914-tv-is-donald-s-free-trump-card-to-stoke-racism

http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/35891-like-it-or-not-the-democratic-party-now-must-answer-to-millennials

http://www.truth-out.org/buzzflash/commentary/lucifer-is-out-of-the-presidential-race-conceding-to-the-chief-tour-guide-in-hell

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/may/04/climate-change-is-corroding-our-values-says-naomi-klein

http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/05/05/trump-unifier-are-hillary-clinton-and-neoconservatives-ready-join-forces

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/05/05/noam-chomsky-predicted-rise-trump-six-years-ago

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/05/05/which-democratic-party-bernie-sanders-and-fdrs-second-bill-rights

http://www.newyorker.com/news/john-cassidy/why-bernie-sanders-is-staying-in-the-race

http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/ordinary_voters_can_now_lobby_superdelegates_

for_bernie_sanders_20160504#.VystgQ8dGA4.facebook

http://www.inquisitr.com/3062395/drop-out-hillary-campaign-to-dump-democratic-frontrunner-hillary-clinton-goes-viral-nearly-100k-tweets-to-dropouthillary/



John Avery received a B.Sc. in theoretical physics from MIT and an M.Sc. from the University of Chicago. He later studied theoretical chemistry at the University of London, and was awarded a Ph.D. there in 1965. He is now Lektor Emeritus, Associate Professor, at the Department of Chemistry, University of Copenhagen. Fellowships, memberships in societies: Since 1990 he has been the Contact Person in Denmark for Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs. In 1995, this group received the Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts. He was the Member of the Danish Peace Commission of 1998. Technical Advisor, World Health Organization, Regional Office for Europe (1988- 1997). Chairman of the Danish Peace Academy, April 2004. http://www.fredsakademiet.dk/ordbog/aord/a220.htm. He can be reached at avery.john.s@gmail.com








Printer Friendly Version The Condition Of Hunger Striking Students In JNU Worsen, Kanhaiya Kumar Admitted To AIIMS By Countercurrents.org 06 May, 2016

Countercurrents.org The indefinite hunger strike of JNU students against rustication of students and other punishments handed down by High Level Enquiry Committe has entered 9th Day. Many of the students are weak and JNUSU president Kanhaiya Kumar is admitted to AIIMS, New Delhi. This is from a Facebook post from Stand with JNU: This morning Aqsa, one of the students on indefinite hunger strike, who was having breathing problems, was asked to discontinue her strike. Pratim is also having breathing problems and has lost a lot of weight. Saborni who is also on indefinite hunger strike, vomited while making a presentation, but she is continuing with hunger strike. Parthipan has been asked by doctors to discontinue the strike, because, due to raised bilirubin levels, he's facing the danger of contacting jaundice. He's been advised to get some tests done urgently from AIIMS, but he is holding up. We have advised him to discontinue. Umar has developed severe chest infection, but he's holding up for now. Kanhaiya continues to be in AIIMS for treatment and is continuing with hunger strike. In the meantime a group of prominent citizens have started a petition campaign requesting President of India to intervence and resolve the imbroglio. You can sign the petition here

Shri. Pranab Kumar Mukherjee,

His Excellency the President of India,

Rashtrapati Bhavan,

New Delhi. Sir, We, a group of Indian citizens, organized under the banner of PRAHAAR (Peoples Resistance Against Hatred And Authoritarian Repression) urge you to mediate in the matter of the ongoing JNU students indefinite fast against injustice meted out to them by the JNU Administration. The disproportionately stringent disciplinary action taken by the JNU Administration against the student leaders is not only unwarranted, but also seems to be inspired by some ulterior motive. We fail to understand as to what inspired the JNU Administration to take disproportionally stringent action against such bright and promising students, especially when most of the so-called misdemeanors are also the subject matter of ongoing investigations/court proceedings that are currently sub judice. As you are well aware, of late, several institutions of higher learning have been the target of Machiavellian intrigues and political machinations. In its eagerness and zeal to suppress the voices of well-informed dissent, the Government of the day seems to have turned against its own youth. Since the last two years, democratic space has been shrinking at an alarming rate and the country is finding itself in the clutches of bigotry, extreme intolerance and unprecedented authoritarian repression. Universities are meant to encourage freethinking and churning out of new ideas. Fearless critique of the old and established ideas forms the bedrock of any aspiring egalitarian social order. Freedom of thought and expression are inalienable prerequisites for germination of new ideas. It is therefore a great tragedy that universities that took pride in their liberalism have been chosen as prime targets for suppression of the freedoms guaranteed by our constitution. Sir, we urge you to kindly use your good offices to intervene in the JNU imbroglio and ensure that better sense prevails. The bright youngsters studying at JNU are the future of this country. They are the torchbearers of our collective hope. The least we can, and must do, is to ensure that such promising youngsters are not made to bear the brunt of vindictive political hatred and authoritarian repression. Our hopes rest on proactive and affirmative action from your end. With warmest regards and great hope Yours sincerely, Prof. Krishna Garg

Sanjiv Bhatt

Chandrasekaran Subramanian

Shweta Sanjiv Bhatt

Amita Buch

Nitin Barsur

Freeda Nicholas

Arun Pannalal

Rushda Sid

Hari Krishna Prahlad

Amitabha Basu

Snigdha Samal

Rajiv Tyagi

Seema Tyagi

Rakesh Thind,

Yazdy Rusi Palia

Anirban Mukherjee

Hari Krishna Prahlad

Alka Verma

Sidharthan PM

John August

Deepa Khadar

Karuna Sharma

Vistap Hodiwala

Peggy Mohan

Shams

Anshoo Sharma

Abhishek Singh

Ashima Jamal











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The TTIP Leaks

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark

06 May, 2016

Countercurrents.org

The monstrous Siamese twin of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, known as the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), has been in a growing puddle of dispute after 248 pages of its content were leaked.

The organisation behind the measure, Greenpeace Netherlands, had done its best to shed light on a document that remains obscured, clandestine and hidden. The TTIP leaks were initiated prior to the commencement of the 13th round of TTIP negotiations between the EU and the US held in New York (Apr 25-29). According to the organisation, the final document will consist of 25 to 30 chapters with extensive annexes.

The leaked and hefty portion constitutes roughly half to two-thirds of the text under negotiation, providing more than a decent snifter as to what European and US diplomats are up to. They have met 13 times over three years in situations that were far from transparent. Topics traversed are bound to worry any individuals with even the slightest leanings to democratic representativeness. Whether you care about environmental issues, animal welfare, labour rights or internet privacy, you should be concerned about what is in these leaked documents.

A few pointers from the leaks are worth noting. None of the chapters in the released portions make reference to the principle of General Exceptions permitting states to regulate trade to protect human, animal and plant life or health for the conservation of exhaustible natural resources. The omission suggests who, and what the negotiators are really barracking for.

Similarly to the TPPA, matters of climate change get short shrift, notably in the chapter covering National Treatment and Market Access for Goods. Showing yet again that a privileged corporate interest is inherently hostile to the commonweal, trade is deemed a domain outside the impact of climate change.

Overwhelming floor room is given to corporate agents who are noted in the negotiations as important partners in the determination of foreign policy. While that position has been clearly articulated by US negotiators, the EU remains coy about industry influence. The strongmen and women of capitalism are never far away. Little wonder, then, that popularity for such an arrangement is as low as 39 per cent in Germany and 50 per cent in France.

Those at the European Commission, a body that has been historically indifferent to concepts of sovereignty, has taken the view that they were open all along, the true doyens of transparency. EU trade commissioner Cecelia Malmstrom seemed to find the fuss over the leaks amusing. In the past year, the European Commission has opened up the negotiations to make our positions on all matters in the negotiations public. After each negotiation round, we publish round reports as well as our position papers and textual proposals. So the positions of the EU are well-known and nothing new.

Malmstrom is certainly right in so far as the Commission has been spouting fact sheets, making assumptions that these are perfect in conveying pictures of accuracy to constituents across Europe. As aspirational as they are, such publications only give a sense about some of the essential fault lines in the negotiations. For one, they show that Malmstroms stance that no EU trade agreement will ever lower our level of protection of consumers, or food safety, or of the environment seems unduly confident.

The leaks sent ripples through various parliaments in Europe. Frances Francois Hollande decided on Tuesday to make his opposition clear. We will never accept questioning essential principles for our agriculture, our culture and for the reciprocity of access to public [procurement] markets. Frances trade secretary, Matthias Fekl, even went so far as to suggest that the agreement, in its current form would be a bad deal, one which needed to be suspended. Even prior to the release by Greenpeace, German Deputy Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel had suggested that negotiations had moved into a glacial state.

Such sentiments do little to deflate such ideologues as US Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker, who puts such suspicions down to matters of misunderstanding. I think, she explained to the German magazine Der Spiegel, we have to do a better job of educating our peoples about the importance of trade. In this cosy universe of commercial dealing, trade is all, trade is good  why fight it?

The TTIP, pushes Pritzker, is a geostrategic choice to strengthen the trans-Atlantic bonds between two regions that share the same values and standards. She proves deaf to questions about concerns of re-enforcing corporate market power at the expense of accountability, insisting on altering rules and regulations that are standing in the way of doing more business together. US President Barack Obama similarly intoned on his recent visit to the UK that the TTIP would eliminate regulatory and bureaucratic irritants and blockages to trade.

To that end, the Commission has attempted to give the impression that pitfalls can, in time, be papered over with the good sense of compromise. As diversely opposed as the parties are, movement, of the negative sort, is possible. Positions can, as was all too evident in the TPPA negotiations, bend. In some cases, they can be abandoned altogether. That remains the greatest danger: the document continues to flicker, and it will take more than Gallic opposition, Germanic scepticism, and general European stubbornness, to sink it.

Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com










Salman Abu Sittas, Mapping My Return: A Palestinian Memoir

Book Review By Vacy Vlazna

06 May, 2016

Countercurrents.org

I spent the rest of my life on a long, winding journey of return, a journey that has taken me to dozens of counties over decades of travel, and turned my black hair to silver. But like a boomerang, I knew the end destination, and that the only way to it was the road of return I had decided to take.- Salman Abu Sitta.

The spirit of Dr Abu Sittas Mapping My Return: A Palestinian Memoir mirrors precisely the dynamic quintessence and will of its creator - in a word- sumoud - a compelling steadfastness to his homeland Palestine and to the right of return of every Palestinian,

It is the determined will of people that counts. It must of course be accompanied by vigorous planning and action. An iron will does not bend in the face of obstacles or challenges, failures or disappointments. These challenges only sharpen it. Its ultimate reward is to enforce justice, to return home.

Abu Sittas personal experiences, great intellect, moral substance and totality of purpose confer authoritative soundness to his part in Palestines modern history. The Palestinian narrative is rare and future readings, such as Ilan Pappes definitive history outlining Israels systematic strategies and crimes of the Nakba, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, now, thanks to Abu Sitta, will be imbued with the flesh and breath of Palestinian truth and rights.

Opening the door of the memoir, we step into and see, through the eyes of the 10 year old Salman, his birth place, the village of Main in the Beersheba district as yet pristine and undefiled by the zionist scourge and anguished loss. We witness the prosperity of the land abundant in maize, barley, date palms, figs, grapes, almonds, apricots, melons, cactus fruit and wheat harvested, gleaned, and threshed by families and poor itinerant workers. It is a generous land that feeds well its people and their livestock of camels, horses, cows, oxen, sheep, and goats.

We join in the robust vitality of Palestinian village life; the flirting, courting, marriage customs, the rituals, like the blessing of wells, defined by religion, superstitions and omens, childrens games and school lessons, and listen to the men gathered in the shigg sharing anecdotes, news, future plans, hopes and fears. and listen to the poetic recitation of family histories by storytellers who are the real source of our history.

Abu Sittas memoir is rich in this tradition. It chronicles his familys illustrious lineage of the Tarabin, the largest, wealthiest, strongest tribe in southern Palestine that extends into Egypt as far as Cairo. The Tarabin is the tribal tree from which the Abu Sitta sheiks branched since the 16th century from Darshan I to Abu Sittas father, Hussein. The Abu Sitta bloodline of belonging to and defending their precious land begat landowners and warriors with a history of Arab resistance to invaders.

Resistance to foreign invaders is oxygen to Abu Sittas father Sheik Hussein, a self-educated man who was chief judge at the tribal court in Beersheba. He became a key player in the Palestinian national movement ensuring no land was sold to Jews and spurned collaboration with the British.

Cousin Abdullah was leader of the southern front of Palestinian 1936-39 revolt blowing up railways, cutting telephone wires and ambushing British convoys. In 1938, he, allied with Abd al-Halim al-Joulani of al-Khalil, liberated Beersheba, an area equal to half of Palestine from British control for a year. He also resisted the zionists from 1947-56.

Abu Sitta details the fateful impact of the arrival of European colonialism. Its imperial machinations to control Palestine, he clarifies, were predetermined by decades of covert British, German and Zionist intelligence gathering culminating in the Sykes-Picot betrayal and the legally void, morally wicked and politically mischievous Balfour Declaration that opened the immigration floodgates of Jews bent on Palestines annihilation.

Abu Sitta documents the post WWII departure of the British that shamefully abandoned the meagrely armed Palestinians to the well armed terrorist Haganah, Irgun and Stern militias. With cousins, Abdullah, Hamed and brother Ibrahim at the front line of defense, Abu Sitta details the tragi-heroic resistance of villagers in the Beersheba district doomed to join the surviving hoards of terrified Palestinians fleeing massacres, such as Burayr, Tantura, Deir Yassin, and death from 670 ethnically cleansed villages.

At 11 years of age, young Salman, like his contemporary Naji Al-Ali and hundreds of thousands of children, becomes Handala* incarnate destined to wander the paths most travelled to the wretched camps of the dispossessed. The Abu Sittas set up tents in Gaza alongside fellow uprooted people, robbed of their land, but not of their identity and least of all family cohesion. Groups maintained their social structures, complete with the village mukhtars and sub-mukhtars. Here, Sheikh Hussein, despite losing everything, was determined to maintain university costs for his 4 sons.

After 1948, the refugee template, with its trials and triumphs, of itinerant study, employment and residence was cast. Abu Sitta himself studied in Egypt, UK and Canada as well as set up business in Kuwait, Iraq, Yemen, Canada , and the UK.

Page upon page is packed with firsthand personal and historic facts, figures, keyplayers, letters, and Palestinian endeavours to fight the occupier; the formation of the General Union of Palestinian Students, the Palestinian National Council and the Palestinian Liberation Organisation, Palestinian Lawyers Syndicate, Hajj Amin al-Husseini, General Ahmed Fouad Sadek, Gamal And al-Nasser, Kamel al-Sharif, Ismail Shammour, Jawaharlal Nehru, Che Guevara, Edward Said, Khalil al-Wazir and Arafat with his calamitous concessions peaking with the infamous Oslo Accords.

In the 60s the Royal Geographical Society library was the starting point of Abu Sittas journey of sleuthing maps and literature on Palestine before the Zionists savagely rent it to pieces to wipe Palestine from memory. Then came the challenge, over decades, of meticulously making Palestine whole again.

Dr Abu Sitta is no dreamer, he is a pragmatic visionary whose unwavering yearning for home has morphed into the Palestinian Land Society his literal piece de resistance that has created the phenomenal Atlas of Palestine, 1917-1966 and meticulous plans for the inevitable return,

We plan for the reconstruction of destroyed Palestinian villages. Our plans are derived from a massive database. We are creating a file for every village, its house plans before 1948, its features and characteristics, its economies and its status of educationYoung architects are now working on the reconstruction of these destroyed villages to be built in the same locations with the same beautiful old features, but with modern amenities.

Fahrenheit 451 is the burning point of paper, and at the end of Bradburys book of the same name, hope, for a society that was culturally reduced to ashes by the systematic burning of books, lies in a group of intellectual renegade exiles who are individually responsible for memorising and preserving one book each and become its living version.

Dr Abu Sittas life is an Opus Magnus preserving the integrity of the land of Palestine, past, present and future in preparation for the certain return of all its stranded children. The outstanding feature of the memoir is its invitation to meet a distinguished colossus of Palestinian sumoud.

* Handala is the eternal child; the eternal 10-year-old refugee child conceived in the Nakba fragmented childhood of the late Palestinian cartoonist Naji Al-Ali. In Palestine, Handala is loved and cherished as a symbol of righteous steadfast resistance.

The book will be launched in London on May 20th.

Dr. Vacy Vlazna is Coordinator of Justice for Palestine Matters and editor of a volume of Palestinian poetry, I remember my name. She was Human Rights Advisor to the GAM team in the second round of the Acheh peace talks, Helsinki, February 2005 then withdrew on principle. Vacy was convenor of Australia East Timor Association and coordinator of the East Timor Justice Lobby as well as serving in East Timor with UNAMET and UNTAET from 1999-2001.








Russia Accuses Obama Of Supporting Al Qaeda In Syria

By Eric Zuesse

06 May, 2016

Countercurrents.org

On May 4th, Russias Sputnik news agency headlined "Lavrov: US Tried to Include Al-Nusra Front Positions in 'Silent Period, and reported that Russias Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, speaking in Moscow about the lengthy negotiations between himself and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry to agree on conditions for a Syrian ceasefire and peace talks to take place between Syrias government and Syrias rebels, said, "During the negotiations, our US partners actually tried to draw the borders of this zone of silence to include a significant number of positions occupied by al-Nusra [Front]. We managed to exclude this as it is absolutely unacceptable.

Al Qaeda in Syria calls itself Al Nusra."

The zone of silence or silent period (and there are other phrases for it) refers to the areas in Syria that would be excluded from the ceasefire.

In other words: Lavrov was saying that whereas Russias President Putin refuses to stop military action in Syria to kill Syrias Al Qaeda, Americas President Obama has been continuing, ever since the U.S.-Russian negotiations for a ceasefire in Syria started in January of this year, to insist that Russia must stop bombing those jihadists. Russias Foreign Minister was saying that Obama has been trying to protect Al Nusra.

Here is a chronological presentation of the reporting in the Western press, about U.S. President Obamas efforts on behalf of Syrias Al Qaeda (Al Nusra):

On 7 January 2016, Seymour Hersh reported in the London Review of Books,

Barack Obamas repeated insistence that Bashar al-Assad must leave office  and that there are moderate rebel groups in Syria capable of defeating him  has in recent years provoked quiet dissent, and even overt opposition, among some of the most senior officers on the Pentagons Joint Staff. Their criticism has focused on what they see as the administrations fixation on Assads primary ally, Vladimir Putin. In their view, Obama is captive to Cold War thinking about Russia and China. ... The militarys resistance dates back to the summer of 2013, when a highly classified assessment, put together by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, then led by General Martin Dempsey, forecast that the fall of the Assad regime would lead to chaos and, potentially, to Syrias takeover by jihadi extremists, much as was then happening in Libya.  Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, director of the DIA between 2012 and 2014, confirmed that his agency had sent a constant stream of classified warnings to the civilian leadership about the dire consequences of toppling Assad. The jihadists, he said, were in control of the opposition. ...

On 20 January 2016, the AP headlined "Kerry, Lavrov try to settle differences over Syrian talks, and reported,

Differences over which Syrian opposition groups should be labeled terrorists and barred from the negotiations and the ceasefire have led to concerns that the talks may have to be postponed. Russia and Iran, which back Assad, have immense differences with Saudi Arabia, other Arab states, the United States and Europe over which opposition groups should be considered terrorists and therefore excluded.

On 12 February 2016, the New York Times bannered, "In Syria, Skepticism That Cease-Fire Will Stop Fighting, and reported that,

With the proviso that the Nusra Front, Al Qaedas branch in Syria, can still be bombed, Russia puts the United States in a difficult position; the insurgent groups it [i.e., the U.S.] supports cooperate in some places with the well-armed, well-financed Nusra in what they [i.e., the U.S. government] say is a tactical alliance of necessity [with Nusra] against [Syrian] government forces. So Russia can argue that many of them [by which the NYT journalist refers to anti-Assad fighters] are, in effect, Nusra affiliates.

On 16 February 2016, independent journalist Gareth Porter headlined "Obamas Moderate Syrian Deception, and reported that,

Information from a wide range of sources, including some of those the United States has been explicitly supporting, makes it clear that every armed anti-Assad organization unit in those provinces is engaged in a military structure controlled by Nusra militants. All of these rebel groups fight alongside the Nusra Front and coordinate their military activities with it.

That reporter, unlike some others, assumes that Obamas support of Syrias Al Qaeda is due to Obamas weakness in adhering to the desires of haters of Russia, both in the U.S. and among Americas allies abroad:

President Obama is under pressure from these domestic critics as well as from Turkey, Saudi Arabia and other GCC allies to oppose any gains by the Russians and the Assad regime as a loss for the United States.

Mr. Porter presents no evidence backing up his assumption that President Obama is reluctant to adhere to this obsession against Russia. Seymour Hersh had reported, in his 7 January 2016 LRB report, facts that contradict Mr. Porters assumption:

General Dempsey and his colleagues on the Joint Chiefs of Staff kept their dissent out of bureaucratic channels, and survived in office. General Michael Flynn did not. Flynn incurred the wrath of the White House by insisting on telling the truth about Syria, said Patrick Lang, a retired army colonel who served for nearly a decade as the chief Middle East civilian intelligence officer for the DIA. He thought truth was the best thing and they shoved him out.

In other words: Despite the opposition by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Obama was determined to help Nusra replace the Assad government. Despite what Mr. Porter assumed, Barack Obama was not a weak President, but instead a very determined President, a President who fired people in his Administration who advised him against continuing his attempt to replace al-Assad by al-Nusra. Russia insisted on bombing them, and reluctantly  and in fits and starts  U.S. President Obama accepted Russias condition.



On 19 February 2016, the Washington Post bannered "U.S., Russia hold Syria cease-fire talks as deadline passes without action, and reported that,

Russia was said to have rejected a U.S. proposal to leave Jabhat al-Nusra off-limits to bombing as part of a cease-fire.

That report even included an indication that President Obamas current Secretary of Defense, Ashton Carter, who started his job on 17 February 2015, after the war against Syria was already well under way and Obama had replaced the people on his team who were opposed to it, is, if anything, even more obsessive against Russia than Obama himself is:

Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter was said to have opposed the high-level contact with the Russians, at least initially.

In other words: when Obama replaced Chuck Hagel by Ashton Carter, he was replacing someone whom he held to be insufficiently anti-Russian, by a person, Carter, who is so extremely hostile toward Russians, as to have since been restrained by Obama from pursuing this hostility as forcefully as he wishes to. The only Cabinet member mentioned there as having persuaded Obama not to follow Carters more aggressive stance against Russia was Obamas second-term Secretary of State, John Kerry.

On 20 February 2016, Reuters headlined "Syrian opposition says temporary truce possible, but deal seems far off, and, under the sub-head Nusra Front in Spotlight," reported that,

A source close to peace talks earlier told Reuters Syria's opposition had agreed to the idea of a two- to three-week truce.

The truce would be renewable and supported by all parties except Islamic State, the source said.

It would be conditional on the al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front no longer being attacked by Syrian government forces and their allies.

Of course, Syrias opposition there included the United States; and so the U.S. President was, at that time, still insisting upon rejecting the Russian Presidents demand that Nusra be included in the zone of silence, the locations where the war would continue uninterrupted during the otherwise-ceasefire.

That report went on:

The spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin, Dmitry Peskov, said on Saturday: "Russia is sticking to its consistent policy of rendering assistance and aid to the armed forces of Syria in their offensive actions against terrorists and against terrorist organisations."

The source close to peace talks described the opposition's insistence on the Nusra Front no longer being targeted as "the elephant in the room".

Obama, like King Saud, Emir Thani, Tayyip Erdogan, and the other enemies of Russia, still stood firm that Nusra not be destroyed.

Therefore, the issue of whether Putin would be allowed to continue bombing Nusra was a heavy topic of disagreement between Obama's pro-al-Qaeda-in-Syria alliance, versus Putins anti-al-Qaeda-in-Syria alliance.

Seymour Hershs 7 January 2016 LRB article concluded:

Obama now has a more compliant Pentagon. There will be no more indirect challenges from the military leadership to his policy of disdain for Assad and support for Erdogan. Dempsey and his associates remain mystified by Obamas continued public defence of Erdogan, given the American intelligence communitys strong case against him  and the evidence that Obama, in private, accepts that case.

Even though Obama accepts the case that Turkeys leader, Erdogan, is a dangerous man to be allied with, Obama moves forward with what is perhaps the most rabidly hostile toward Russia U.S. Administration ever. And this is after the USSR, and its NATO-mirror organization, the Warsaw Pact, were terminated by Russia in 1991, and after Al Qaeda perpetrated not only 9/11 but many other terrorist attacks, not only in the U.S., but in many of Americas allied countries  not to mention in Russia itself.

Furthermore, Seymour Hersh, in his 4 April 2014 article in LRB, The Red Line and the Rat Line, said that,

The full extent of US co-operation with Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar in assisting the rebel opposition in Syria has yet to come to light. The Obama administration has never publicly admitted to its role in creating what the CIA calls a rat line, a back channel highway [of weapons from Gaddafis stockpiles in Libya] into Syria. The rat line, authorised in early 2012, was used to funnel weapons and ammunition from Libya via southern Turkey and across the Syrian border to the opposition. Many of those in Syria who ultimately received the weapons were jihadists, some of them affiliated with al-Qaida.

And, even prior to that, on 7 October 2013, Christof Lehmann at his site nsnbc.me, headlined Top US and Saudi Officials responsible for Chemical Weapons in Syria, and opened by summarizing:

Evidence leads directly to the White House, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey, CIA Director John Brennan, Saudi Intelligence Chief Prince Bandar, and Saudi Arabias Interior Ministry.

He said that, regarding the 21 August 2013 sarin gas attack, which Obama claims crossed his red line to launch an invasion of Syria to overthrow Assad, and which Hersh and others report to have been based actually on Obamas and his allies Rat Line of weapons from Libya into Syria, the initial decision was made by the Saudi agent in Syria, Zahran Alloush:

The final decision, made by Zahran Alloush may in fact have been predetermined together with his U.S.  Saudi liaison officers.

Launching a chemical weapons attack would allow the USA, UK and France, to call for military strikes against Syria and to turn the tide.

Zahran Alloush was killed by a Russian missile on Christmas Day 2015, and his nephew and close associate Mohammed Alloush was chosen by King Salman al-Saud (actually by his son Prince Salman al-Saud) to lead the Syrian opposition in the peace talks on the Syrian war. Zahran Alloush, like the Saud family, favored extermination of Shiites (including Assad), and so does Mohammed Alloush, which (besides the Alloushes support of foreign jihad generally) is perhaps the main reason why the Sauds had selected him to lead the U.S.-Saudi-Qatari-Turkish side in these peace negotiations against Syria. However, the Alloushes also greatly admire Osama bin Laden, who founded Al Qaeda; and, so, in total, there can be little if any doubt that what Lavrov was reported on May 4th to have said about Obamas support for Syrias Al Qaeda makes sense, even though Obama himself had arranged for bin Laden to be killed.

It seems that, at least after Obamas success at killing off many of Al Qaedas leaders, he is determined to support Al Qaedas original jihad, which had been against the Soviet Union, and which continues now against Russia and its ally Assad. Obama therefore protects, and helps to arm, Al Qaeda in Syria, so as to eliminate, if possible, yet another ally of Russia (after Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi, and Viktor Yanukovych): this time Bashar al-Assad.

Whereas the U.S. and its allies will not likely affirm what Lavrov said, the facts do  even some that have been reported in the Western press  not only in non-Western media.



Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of Theyre Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRISTS VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.








The potential framework for a grizzly bear hunting season, wolf hunting seasons and quotas and a proposal to transplant sharp-tailed grouse in Western Montana are a few of the items on the Montana Fish and Wildlife Commission's agenda for Thursday.

On Wednesday the commission will hold a work session to discuss a variety of ongoing issues: Beaverhead River water quality investigation, catch-and-release outreach, archery technology, a review of the commissions petition process, and a grizzly bear delisting update. No audio or video will be available during the work session.

Both meetings are open to the public. The work session on May 11 begins at noon and is scheduled to last until 5 p.m. The commission meeting on May 12 will begin at 8 a.m. and is scheduled to last until 3 p.m. Public comment will be taken at the commission meeting only.

At their monthly meeting, the commission plans on making a final decision on: a quiet water initiative petition by Montana Backcountry Hunters and Anglers; Big Hole  Beaverhead River administrative rules; Widow Coulee Fishing Access Site construction closure; Wolf Creek Bridge FAS construction closure; inholding acquisitions in the Sun River, Blackleaf and Beartooth Wildlife Management Areas; and a trapping regulation petition from the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Additionally, the commission will consider proposals on: the nongame wildlife check-off work plan; Clark Fork River remediation phase 5 and 6 floodplain closure rule; hunting access agreements for 2016 under House Bill 454 authority; 2016 fall upland game bird quotas and limits; 2016 wolf season quotas and hunting district boundaries, along with quotas authorized under Senate Bill 200; the tri-state memorandum of agreement with Idaho and Wyoming for grizzly bear management; 2016-17 furbearer seasons and 2016 quotas; and the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem grizzly bear hunting regulation framework.

The agency is also seeking the commissions endorsement on: acquiring a FAS at Gold Creek on the upper Clark Fork River; Racetrack Pond acquisition on the upper Clark Fork River; and sharp-tailed grouse transplanting in FWP Region 2.

The commission will also hear information about bighorn sheep augmentation in the Madison Valley.

For the full agenda and background on the scheduled topics, go to the FWP website at fwp.mt.gov; under Quick Links click "Commission.

FWP's website offers live streamed audio of each commission meeting. The public can also view a live television feed of the meeting at FWP regional offices. However, due to technical issues, there will not be a live feed in the Region 7 office in Miles City.

Both meetings will be held at Montana WILD, which is located in Helena at 2668 Broadwater Ave., next to Spring Meadow Lake State Park off Highway 12 West.
How is early voting trending in Vanderburgh County?

A lot more people are eligible to vote in Vanderburgh County this year than four years ago, but early signs are that a lot fewer of them will do so.
By Richard Gootee of the Courier and Press

The man who is accused of dragging a dog five miles behind a truck earlier this week is now in jail.The Vanderburgh County Sheriffs Office announced Thursday night that Brandyn A. Cox, 24, was located and arrested in Mount Vernon, Indiana, just a few hours after a warrant was issued for his arrest.According to the sheriffs office, authorities threatened to use a K-9 unit to locate him inside an auto repair shop, but Cox surrendered to law enforcement before the dog was deployed. The Posey County Sheriffs Office and the Mount Vernon Police Department assisted in the arrest, which was made about 9:30 p.m.Cox, an Evansville resident, is now lodged in the Vanderburgh County jail on $10,000 cash bond. He faces a total of six charges including four counts relating to alleged animal cruelty. They are aiding, inducing or causing the killing of a domestic animal, two counts of aiding, inducing or causing the torture or mutilation of an animal  all felonies  and one count of misdemeanor animal cruelty. The other two charges against Cox, intimidation and attempted interference with the reporting of a crime, stem from his alleged actions toward a reported witness who tried to stop Cox from leaving the scene before police arrived.That witness  a 40-year-old woman  provided photos of both the license plate of the truck Cox was in and a photo of his arm that showed distinct tattoos, according to the sheriffs office. Sheriff Dave Wedding thanked the woman for her involvement in the case.I want to thank those members of the public who called 911 to report this crime, especially the woman who risked her personal safety to try and save this animal, he said in a news release. We normally encourage citizens to just be good witnesses and not become involved, but I certainly understand why this good Samaritan elected to take action.Cox is accused of leaving a residence on Old Henderson Road Tuesday morning with a the dog, a Great Dane mix named Hank, tied to the trucks trailer hitch on Tuesday morning. Several people called 911 during the dogs alleged 5.3 mile journey that eventually ended on Pearl Drive on Evansvilles West Side.Hank died during the incident. Investigator said the entire left side of (Hanks) body, down to (his) rib cage, (had been torn) away by road friction.During a reported interview with investigators, Cox said he did not know that Hank was attached to the trailer hitch. While another man  identified as 44-year-old Jamie McFarland  allegedly tied the animal to the truck, Cox said he was inside McFarlands home using the bathroom and didnt realize the dog had been tied to the truck.A passenger in the truck who said he stayed in the truck during the alleged incident also told investigators he was unaware that the dog was tied to the vehicle.McFarland has also been arrested in connection with the case. He faces a preliminary charge of torturing or mutilating an animal, a level 6 felony.Another man who was inside the garage with Cox Thursday night, Matthew B. Reed, was also arrested. He is accused of being in possession of a stolen handgun, according to the news release. Reed was taken to the Posey County jail, authorities said.
SHARE An old mugshot of Jordan Reed and surveillance footage from the suspected bank robbery at Old National Bank on the East Side of Evansville Thursday, May 5, 2016. (Provided by Evansville Police Department)

By Max Roll and Richard Gootee of the Courier and Press

Update:

Jordan Eric Reed was lodged in Vanderburgh County jail at 10:43 p.m. Friday.

Police received a tip and took Reed into custody at Burlington Coat Factory on Green River Road near Lloyd Expressway in Evansville.

He faces preliminary charges of robbery and theft. Bond is set at $100,000 cash or $1,000,000 surety, according to Vanderburgh County court records.

Evansville police said an arrest affidavit is not yet available for public viewing as 6 a.m. Saturday.

Court records also show that Reed served time in the Indiana Department of Corrections after being convicted of residential burglary in September 2012 and was released on probation in May 2014.

Earlier:

Evansville police have identified the man suspected of robbing an Old National Bank branch Thursday morning.

Investigators believe the man, shown in a photo standing at the counter of the Washington Avenue banking location, is Jordan E. Reed, 23. The suspect did not physically show a weapon during his encounter with a bank employee but the man believed to be Reed implied that he had a gun, police have said.

He reportedly got away from with the bank with an undisclosed amount of cash. According to police, Reed is 6-feet tall and weighs about 180 pounds.

Police released a clear photo of the suspect taken from the bank's surveillance footage Thursday afternoon. Anyone with information about Reed is asked to call police at 812-436-7979 or the WeTip hotline at 1-800-78-CRIME.

No one was injured during the incident.
By Richard Gootee of the Courier and Press

Four of the arrests in a Warrick County drug sweep earlier this week were related to dealing heroin, according to court documents.

The people accused of dealing the opiate-based drug are: Jordan L. Lemmert, 27; Madison Carter, 19; Nathan M. Ambrose, 26; and Maranda M. Dickerson, 23. Investigators specified that Lemmert and Carter are a couple in probable cause affidavits and indicated that both Ambrose and Dickerson were present together during one alleged heroin sale back in January.

The quartet was among 17 people arrested this week, the cumulation of a yearlong investigation undertaken by local, state and federal law enforcement. Confidential informants were used during the investigation into the alleged heroin sales, according to court documents.

In the news release announcing the arrests on Wednesday, Warrick County Sheriff Brett Kruse called heroin "a rising epidemic in the Tri-State area." In recent years, heroin use, and deaths from the drug, have skyrocketed in many parts of the Midwest, even though it had seemed to largely miss Southwestern Indiana until last year.

"It is becoming more and more of a problem every day," Kruse told the Courier & Press on Friday. "We're seeing a lot more of it. We used to never see heroin  two years ago we didn't see any heroin around here. It's coming in now, and there's quite a bit of it. It is a bad drug that is highly addictive."

In 2015, there were two fatal overdoses blamed on heroin in Warrick County, according to Sarah Seaton, the county's coroner. Even though there have been no heroin-related deaths in Warrick County this year, Seaton called the drug's presence in the community "extremely troubling."

"I don't think the public understands the severity of the problem and I don't think the (drug's) users understand the high risks they're taking when using it," she said.

Vanderburgh County also saw its first deaths in recent memory from the drug during the last 15 months. There were six such fatalities due to heroin in Evansville during 2015, and there have been four already this year, according to Steve Lockyear, chief deputy coroner for Vanderburgh County.

In addition to heroin, Lemmert and Carter are also accused of selling fentanyl patches to an informant during the recent investigation.

According to the affidavit, the informant asked Lemmert if he had any heroin and Lemmert offered the prospective buyer fentanyl because did not have any heroin to sell at the time. Fentanyl is a powerful opiate-based painkiller that can be used in anesthesia.

A few days later, Lemmert told the informant he had some heroin and a sale was conducted in a Boonville parking lot. According to the affidavit in the case, Carter is the one who met with the informant to complete the sale. Both transactions took place in April.

Though both Lemmert and Carter's official address in court documents is listed as 303 Chestnut St. in Boonville, they were located and arrested Tuesday at a home on Indiana 68 with a Dale, Indiana, address, according to court documents. Inside the home, investigators found multiple prescription pills, as well as suspected heroin residue on a can, authorities wrote in an affidavit. Both Carter and Lemmert face additional drug-related charges stemming from that alleged discovery.

Ambrose and Dickerson are accused of selling some of the drug in the parking lot of a Boonville gas station in January. There were no other alleged drug buys from the couple listed in any of the investigation's documents.

In court records, Ambrose is listed as a Lynville resident, while Dickerson is from Chandler.
HELENA  A Montana legislator should be fined about $145,000 and be removed from office for committing the most serious violation of campaign laws in state history, an attorney for the state said in a court filing Friday.

A judge also should bar Republican Rep. Art Wittich of Bozeman from running for office again until the fine is paid and his campaign finance reports are corrected, Special Attorney Gene Jarussi said in the documents.

A jury in April found that Wittich took $19,599 in illegal and unreported in-kind contributions from an anti-union organization during his 2010 campaign for state Senate. District Judge Ray Dayton now must impose penalties, and he has set a June 17 hearing to decide the matter.

Jarussi, who is representing Commissioner of Political Practices Jonathan Motl, urged Dayton to throw the book at Wittich because the seriousness of case and because of Wittich's refusal to accept responsibility.

"In short, this is the most serious violation of Montana's campaign laws ever," Jarussi wrote.

Quentin Rhoades, a Missoula attorney who represents Wittich, said he will argue that Wittich's actions are protected by the First Amendment. The U.S. Constitution's authority is superior to Montana laws, regardless of whether Motl believes the campaign violations are the most egregious in the state's history, Rhoades said.

"Whether or not it is, we think it's consistent with the U.S. Constitution," he told The Associated Press.

Wittich should be fined no more than $19,599  the amount the jury found he illegally took  and be allowed to remain in office and on the 2016 ballot, another Wittich attorney, Lucinda Luetkemeyer, said in his own court filing submitted Friday.

Wittich no longer holds the office he was elected to in 2010, when the violations occurred, so the question of removing him from that office is moot, Luetkemeyer wrote.

Wittich served one term in the Senate seat he won in that 2010 election where he was found to have taken illegal contributions. In 2014, he was voted into the state House seat for which he is now seeking re-election against challenges from two Republican primary opponents.

Dayton's decision will come after the June 7 primary elections.

Jurors in the civil trial found that Wittich took contributions from the National Right to Work Committee and affiliated organizations. Wittich strongly denied any illegal coordination and accused Motl of going after him because he is a conservative.

Candidates cannot receive contributions from corporations like Right to Work, and must fully report donations and spending under Montana law.

A Montana judge has not removed an elected official from office since 1940.

Motl also had been seeking a ruling from Dayton that what Wittich did amounted to corruption. But Jarussi's recent court filing appears to back off that position somewhat, saying corruption will only be brought up if Wittich challenges the constitutionality of Montana's campaign laws during this penalty phase.

Rhoades said in response that Motl's pivot is a tacit acknowledgment the case against Wittich is not about corruption.

A ruling by Dayton that Wittich's actions amount to corruption or the appearance of corruption would support Motl in defending Montana's low campaign contribution limits against a pending challenge in a separate federal lawsuit.
SHARE The Safe Haven Baby Box at the Woodburn, Ind., Volunteer Fire Department, is temperature-controlled and sounds an alarm when the door is opened.(Photo: Chad Ryan, AP)

By Marisa Kwiatkowski/ USA Today Netowrk/ The Indianapolis Star

An Indiana nonprofit installed its first baby box, a tool meant to temporarily shelter babies abandoned by their parents, at a fire station in northeastern Indiana last week.

Advocates say the incubators  padded, heated boxes that are rigged to notify emergency personnel when a baby is placed inside  provide parents a safe way to give up their infants without speaking to anyone and would deter parents from leaving babies in the woods or a trash can. But critics have questioned the cost and potential liability associated with using the boxes.

Safe Haven Baby Boxes activated the incubator this week at a fire station in Woodburn, a small city in northeastern Indiana near Fort Wayne. The organization plans to activate its second baby box Thursday at the Cool Spring Fire Department in Michigan City.

"Anything we can do to make that specific situation better," said Wes Rogers, captain at the Cool Spring Fire Department. "We try to do it every day with running our calls, fighting fires and helping sick people. This is just another way to help."

Indiana's Safe Haven Law enables someone to give up an unwanted infant anonymously  without fear of arrest or prosecution. The adult may give up custody of a baby less than 30 days old to a hospital emergency room, fire station or police station.

But despite support in the community for the boxes, some officials were not convinced.

State Department of Health officials wrote a 2-page report in December that recommended the incubators not be used. They advocated for increasing public awareness of the existing law."

A team of child health experts ... carefully studied available research on newborn safety incubators and determined that there are no standards or protocols that can ensure the safety of children placed in these devices," Jennifer O'Malley, spokeswoman at the State Department of Health, previously told IndyStar.

Monica Kelsey, founder of Safe Haven Baby Boxes, said the boxes have been tested and improved to address people's concerns. Emergency dispatch is alerted within one minute of a baby being placed inside a box, and the child is removed within five minutes, she said. She said the box automatically locks when a baby is placed inside, so no one else can take the child.

Kelsey works at the Woodburn Fire Department, where the first incubator has been placed.

"We have listened to all the concerns and listened to all the criticisms, and its helped us improve the box," she said. "Weve never lost focus on our goal. Its to save these babies that are abandoned."
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By Shannon Hall of the Courier and Press

A Boonville man was killed in a single-vehicle crash near Folsomville on Thursday.

James Hopper, 50, died at the scene. The crash occurred about 8:20 p.m., Warrick County Sheriff Brett Kruse said.

He was a passenger in a vehicle driven by 47-year-old Tim Hale of Warrick County. According to a sheriff's office news release, Hale was eastbound on Leslie Road near Folsomville Road when his 2005 Chevrelot Colorado swerved out of control, rolled and then struck a utility pole.

Hale was injured and taken to St. Mary's Medical Center in Evansville for non-life-threatening injures. According to St. Mary's officials, Hale was listed in good condition as of Friday morning.

The investigation is ongoing, and alcohol may have been a factor, according to a news release.

Thursday's wreck was the third fatal vehicle crash in about three weeks in Warrick County. Thomas C. Hall, 45, of Huntingburg, died April 20 after flipping his vehicle on Interstate 64.

James "Stan" Ensor, 60, of Boonville, died in an April 24 wreck on Interstate 64. Ensor was a passenger in a vehicle that was struck by a Jeep driven by Justin Birdwell, 29, of Evansville. Birdwell was arrested last week.
<p>FILE - In this file photo taken on Tuesday, Jan. 14, 2014, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence delivers his State of the State address to a joint session of the Legislature at the Statehouse in Indianapolis. (AP Photo/Darron Cummings, File)</p>

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By Maureen Groppe, USA TODAY NETWORK The Indianapolis Star

WASHINGTON  Donald Trump's sweep of Indiana ended the race for the GOP presidential nomination. But now that the candidates are gone, there are other interesting nuggets to be gleaned from the results. Here are seven of them.

Skipping over Pence

More than a quarter of Hoosiers who voted for a Republican presidential candidate did not vote for Gov. Mike Pence, who was unopposed for the nomination in his bid for a second term.

That 27 percent drop-off is larger than the 11 percent of GOP voters who did not vote for one of the Senate candidates.

It's also a larger decline than on the Democratic side. About 14 percent of Hoosiers who voted for a Democratic presidential candidate skipped over the gubernatorial race, where John Gregg was the only candidate on the ballot.

Baron Hill, the only Democrat running for Senate, was skipped over by 19 percent of Democratic voters.

Marc Lotter, Pence's deputy campaign manager, attributed much of the drop-off for Pence to the fact that the governor endorsed Texas Sen. Ted Cruz shortly before the primary. Lotter also said some of Trump's votes came from Democrats who pulled Republican ballots in Indiana's open primary.

Lotter said Gregg should be worried about getting 267,671 fewer votes than Pence did Tuesday, when both were unopposed.

Jennifer Duffy, who tracks gubernatorial races for the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, said primary numbers have little impact on the general election. She does, however, see the race tightening.

A series of controversies, including the state's new abortion law and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, have left Pence more vulnerable, although the state's economy is in better shape than when he became governor, Duffy wrote Friday in explaining why she's changing her ranking of the race from "Likely Republican" to "Lean Republican."

"Both sides went up with television ads immediately following the primary, a sign that this will be a very long election," she wrote.

Best and worst for Trump

The most Trump-friendly county was Vermillion, a rural west-central county that hugs the Illinois border, where he got 70 percent of the vote. His next-best showings were in nearby Sullivan and Knox counties.

Trump's worst performance was in Adams County, where he got 36 percent. Adams, which is south of Fort Wayne, along the Ohio border, was one of the five counties won by Cruz. The others were nearby Wells, Elkhart, Whitley and Allen counties.

Best and worst for Sanders

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who won 52.5 percent of Indiana's Democratic vote, got 65 percent in Monroe County, home to Indiana University. Not surprisingly, Tippecanoe County, home to Purdue University, was also a top county for Sanders. He got 61.5 percent of the vote there.

Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton did best (58 percent) in Ohio County, the state's smallest county in geographic size and population. Her next-best county was Lake (57 percent), which has the state's second-largest African-American population.

2016 vs. 2008

The 2016 GOP primary wasn't as big a draw as the 2008 Democratic primary. More than 1.1 million votes were cast for Republican presidential candidates Tuesday, compared with almost 1.3 million cast for Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama in 2008.

Overall presidential voting, however, was about 3 percentage points higher Tuesday than in 2008, when Republican John McCain had already clinched the GOP nomination before Hoosiers voted.

Senate stomping

Rep. Todd Young beat Rep. Marlin Stutzman in 79 of 92 counties in the GOP Senate race. Almost all of the counties Stutzman won are in his congressional district. Young won Blackford County, which is partly in Stutzman's district. When Richard Mourdock beat Sen. Richard Lugar in the 2012 primary, Mourdock won all but Marion, Boone and Tippecanoe counties. But his 60.5 percent win was not as strong as Young's 67 percent victory.

Mourdock was backed by some of the same conservative groups that supported Stutzman, but those groups did not spend heavily to help Stutzman as they did Mourdock.

Raking it up

None of the seven House members who sought re-election Tuesday had more than a nominal primary challenger or two. The two Democrats scored the largest primary victories: 86 percent for Rep. Andre Carson of Indianapolis and 80 percent for Rep. Pete Visclosky of Merrillville. The lowest share of the vote was Rep. Larry Bucshon's 65 percent against a fellow physician.

Vermont socialist vs. Hoosier socialist

Sanders, a Democratic socialist, did something that Terre Haute native Eugene B. Debs never managed: win Indiana. Debs was the presidential candidate for the Socialist Party of America five times and never carried his home state. Sanders got 52.5 percent of the Hoosier votes cast for a Democratic presidential candidate Tuesday. Debs' high point was 5.6 percent of Indiana's votes in the four-way presidential race in 1912. (Democrat Woodrow Wilson got the plurality of Hoosier support.)
Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a meeting at the Bocharov Ruchei state residence in Sochi on May 6, 2016.

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By Robert Farley, FactCheck.org / USA TODAY NETWORK

continues to make the puffed-up assertion that Russian President called him a genius. Russian language experts tell us that Putin described Trump as colorful or maybe bright, depending on how one translates Putins words, but he never called Trump a genius.

of the Washington Post Fact Checker wrote on May 3 that Trumps repeated claim that Putin called him a genius was based on a mistranslation of Putins words. Nonetheless, Trump continued to mischaracterize Putins praise the following day in an interview with CNNs .

So far, were off to a good start, Trump said of his relationship with Putin. He said Trump is a genius, OK?

Trump frequently claims that Putin called him a genius. He said it in an interview with on Fox News on April 28. And in an April 29 radio interview with . And during a town hall interview with Fox News on April 4. And during a campaign event in South Carolina in February.

Trump is basing his claim on comments Putin made during a press scrum in December, when Putin was asked what he thought about Trump.

According to a translation by Russia Insider, which uploaded the video, Putin responded, Hes a very colorful person. Talented, without any doubt. But its not our affair to determine his worthiness  thats up to the United States voters. But he is absolutely the leader in the presidential race. He wants to move to a different level of relations, to more solid, deeper relations with Russia. And how can Russia not welcome that  we welcome that. As for his internal political issues and the turn of speech which he uses to raise his popularity, I repeat, its not our affair to evaluate them.

Its the word colorful in the first sentence of that translation that is at issue here.

The Washington Posts Kessler found various media outlets provided slightly different translations of it. Some said Putin called Trump colorful, others lively or flamboyant. One outlet, the Hill, translated Putins praise of Trump as really brilliant.

The Guardian newspaper initially wrote that Putin called Trump bright, but then revised its item with this explanation: An earlier version quoted Putin as saying bright and talented. To clarify: The word he used was yarkii (), which can mean bright or brilliant, but not in the sense of intelligent; it can also be translated as colorful, vivid or flamboyant.

Of note, none of those news reports say Putin called Trump a genius.

We reached out to several Russian language experts, and they all agreed that Trump was inflating Putins rather guarded praise. But there is some disagreement about the precise meaning of Putins phrase.

The adjective  in this context is a carefully selected word and it means here not ordinary or impressive,  Constantine Muravnik, a professor in the Department of and at Yale, told us via email.  Extraordinary, remarkable, or outstanding would be too positive, colorful or eccentric  too negative, brilliant or bright  simply wrong. This is why Putin added a phrase, talented beyond any doubt, just to push the otherwise neutral and ambiguous word in a slightly more positive direction. He also compensated this ambiguity with his overall positive and respectful intonation.

Trump is slightly twisting his words by adding the connotation of admiration always associated with the word genius,  Muravnik added. Theres no admiration in Putins words, just a respectful acknowledgement of some of his impressive traits. Also, Putin emphatically, even if a bit slyly, refrained from any comments on the internal US affairs.

Edna Andrews, professor of linguistics and cultural anthropology at , told us Putin definitely did not call Trump a genius.

I believe colorful is a very good translation of the use of this term in the given context, Andrews said. Putin also clearly stated that it was not his business to get involved in the choice of a U.S. elected official, but he did welcome a deepening of US/Russian relations.

Putin called Trump bright,  Ilya Vinitsky, chair of the Department of Slavic Languages and Literature at the , told us via email. Genius in Russian is genii. Putin didnt use this word.

And finally, Boris Gasparov, a professor of Russian and East at , told us that if he [Putin] said  it means, applied to a politician, definitively a compliment, although by far not such ravishing as that of the genius. It does not mean colorful (that is, it is by no means tinged with ambiguity), but it is not entirely unqualified either. The meaning lingers somewhere between standing out, unusual, bold, unpredictable, but hopefully for the better. 

So there is a bit of disagreement among Russian language experts about the precise translation of Putins words. But not one of them agreed with Trumps translation of genius.
Jeb Bush reacts as he announces the suspension of his presidential campaign during an election night party at the Hilton Columbia Center on February 20, 2016.

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By Eliza Collins, USA TODAY

Jeb Bush will not be voting for Donald Trump.

The former Florida governor and GOP presidential candidate announced on his Facebook page Friday that he wouldnt vote for either Trump or Hillary Clinton.

In November, I will not vote for Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton, but I will support principled conservatives at the state and federal levels, just as I have done my entire life, Bush wrote.

The American Presidency is an office that goes beyond just politics. It requires of its occupant great fortitude and humility and the temperament and strong character to deal with the unexpected challenges that will inevitably impact our nation in the next four years. Donald Trump has not demonstrated that temperament or strength of character. He has not displayed a respect for the Constitution. And, he is not a consistent conservative. These are all reasons why I cannot support his candidacy.

Bushs father and brother, former presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush, have also declined to endorse the presumptive nominee.

Jeb Bush was one of the most vocal critics of Trump on the campaign trail. Bush, meanwhile, was one of Trump's most frequent targets for insults. Bush, who at the beginning of the race was presumed to be the frontrunner, struggled to escape the "low-energy" nickname Trump hit him with repeatedly during the campaign.

Trump was asked Thursday on Fox News Channel about Bush 41 and 43 declining to back him.

"Well, I understand that. And I understand why they're not. The war in Iraq was perhaps the worst decision ever made in this country's history. It totally destabilized the Middle East, it was a total disaster. It was made by Bush," Trump said. "I took Jeb Bush on very hard. He was very nasty to me. He spent $15 million, $20 million on negative ads on me. You know, nobody mentions that. They just say I was very nasty to him."

At a rally Friday in Omaha, Nebraska Bush said he was 'not surprised' by the decision of all three Bushes not to support him.

Another former 2016 GOP presidential candidate, South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, also said Friday he would not vote for Trump.
SHARE Salesforce is expanding its operations in Downtown Indianapolis and renaming the city's tallest building Salesforce Tower. (Photo: JLL)

By James Briggs/ USA Today Netowrk/ The Indianapolis Star

Salesforce is planning to add hundreds of high-paying technology jobs in Downtown Indianapolis.

The San Francisco cloud computing giant has leased hundreds of thousands of square feet at Chase Tower on Monument Circle as part of a massive expansion. The deal includes naming rights, meaning the state's tallest building will soon be called Salesforce Tower.

Salesforce.com Inc. plans to hire more than 800 people Downtown by 2021 and invest $40 million over 10 years as part of its expansion, the company announced Friday. That's on top of an Indianapolis workforce that already includes more than 1,000 employees. Salesforce plans to begin moving into Chase Tower in early 2017.

The move into one of the city's most prominent buildings is yet another splash for Salesforce in Indianapolis. Salesforce in June 2013 reached a deal to acquire ExactTarget for $2.5 billion. Since then, Salesforce has steadily added workers and made a name for itself by opposing the the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and advocating for LGBT rights in Indiana.

Salesforce already leases space at three buildings in Indianapolis: the Guaranty building at 20 N. Meridian St., the Gibson building at 433 N. Capitol Ave. and the Century building at 36 S. Pennsylvania St. Rumors have persisted for months that Salesforce wanted to lease space in Chase Tower.

The 48-story, 1 million-square-foot Chase Tower offers the best views in the city at one of the most desirable locations. Yet, the building's occupancy rate last year slumped to around 70 percent, second-worst among the city's 13 tallest buildings, according to real estate firm Cushman & Wakefield.

Salesforce's lease is expected to accelerate improvements to Downtown Indianapolis' office market, which for years has had a vacancy rate of around 20 percent. The vacancy rate dropped to 18.2 percent during the first quarter, a six-year low according to real estate firm Colliers International, and will dip lower once the Salesforce lease is factored in. Salesforce will become the largest tenant at Chase Tower.

"The highly publicized and anticipated decision by tech giant Salesforce to lease significant square footage in the premier Chase Tower will shake up the user landscape in the city's evolving core in 2016," James Winkler, the director of market research for Colliers International's Indianapolis office, wrote in a first-quarter report.

Chase Tower, built in 1989, was known as the Bank One building until 2005. JPMorgan Chase acquired Chicago-based Bank One in 2004.

The Chase Tower lease follows Salesforce's pattern of putting its name atop skyscrapers. The company is building a 61-story building in San Francisco, also dubbed Salesforce Tower, that will become the tallest building west of the Mississippi River when it's completed. Salesforce in March announced that it leased space in a prominent 41-story New York City building that likewise will be renamed Salesforce Tower New York. Salesforce, however, failed in its attempt to rename London's Heron Tower after itself.
Donald Trump greets supporters at the Indiana State Fairgrounds on Wednesday.

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By Maureen Groppe, IndyStar / USA TODAY NETWORK

WASHINGTON  Indianas federal lawmakers didnt have much to say about Donald Trumps presidential bid before he appeared to clinch the Republican nomination by winning Tuesdays Indiana primary.

They still dont.

Most of the eight Republicans running for the House or Senate either didnt respond when asked whether they support Trump, or gave hedged answers about backing the partys nominee and opposing likely Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

Only a few were willing to cite an issue on which they agreed with Trump and one on which they disagreed.

We are focused on defeating Baron Hill, said Trevor Foughty, campaign manager for Rep. Todd Young, who is running for Indianas open Senate seat.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., offered tempered support for Trump on Wednesday, while House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., said Thursday hes not ready to support Trump.

Republicans sharing the ballot with Trump face the problem of having to respond to his derogatory statements on Mexican immigrants and women, his proposal to ban Muslims from entering the United States, his mocking of a reporters disabilities and other controversial comments.

As a husband, a father of two daughters and the son of a single-parent mother, I'm offended by much of Trump's rhetoric on women, said Rep. Luke Messer. As an American, I am offended by much of his rhetoric on race. Frankly, to win in the fall, I think his campaign needs to provide a substantive focus on jobs and national security and leave the rhetorical sideshow behind.

Although Trump was not Messers first choice as GOP nominee, the Shelbyville Republican said he expects to support Trump over the Democratic nominee and likes Trumps focus on job creation.

In addition to concerns about Trumps rhetoric, many Republicans are advocating different positions from Trump on such issues as trade deals, international military involvement and overhauls of Social Security and Medicare.

Addressing the drivers of our debt is the main reason I ran for Congress, and Ive yet to hear Trump acknowledge that social entitlement programs are the problem and his plans for reforming them, said Rep. Todd Rokita, R-Indianapolis.

Rokita, who says he supports Donald Trump as our nominee, said he wants to know whether Trump agrees with the solutions proposed by House Republicans to deal with the debt, or whether he has a better plan.

Rokita, who represents a solidly Republican district, has less to worry about politically than those running statewide.

Although Trump swept Indiana with 53 percent of the vote Tuesday, 23 percent of Republican voters surveyed in an NBC News exit poll said they would not vote for Trump in the fall.

After Trumps Indiana victory made him the de facto GOP nominee, the nonpartisan Cook Political Report downgraded the likelihood that Republicans will win Indiana at the presidential or gubernatorial level. Handicappers still give Republicans the edge in both races, but Trumps position at the top of the ticket makes the outcomes more volatile.

Gov. Mike Pence, who endorsed Texas Sen. Ted Cruz for the GOP nomination, tweeted his congratulations for Trumps win Tuesday and thanked him for giving voice to the millions of Americans frustrated with the failed policies in D.C.

Hes looking forward to supporting Mr. Trump as the presumptive nominee and working hard to make sure Indiana is the first state on the board election night for Mr. Trump  #AnyoneButHillaryOrBernie, said Marc Lotter, Pences deputy campaign manager.

Trey Hollingsworth, the Republican businessman running for Indianas 9th Congressional District, commended Trump for bringing new people to the GOP. Hollingsworth also said he likes Trumps focus on keeping jobs in the United States and declined to name a position on which he disagrees with Trump.

Rep. Susan Brooks, R-Carmel, said she agrees with Trump that we must enhance our national security and focus on the many threats we're facing at home and abroad, including ISIS, al-Qaeda and the radicalization of foreign nationals and Americans through social media."

Asked whether theres a major position on which she disagrees with Trump, Brooks said shes concerned about some of Trumps comments and rhetoric.

We are a country built on inclusiveness, Brooks said. Policies and ideas that isolate us or discriminate undermine our leadership in the world and divide our country."

A spokesman for Rep. Larry Bucshon, R-Newburgh, said Bucshon will support the GOP nominee and declined to comment further.

Rep. Jackie Walorski, R-Jimtown, and state Sen. Jim Banks, who is running for Indianas 3rd Congressional District, did not respond to requests for comment.

Some Indiana Republicans not on the ballot have been outspoken in their opposition to Trump.

Evansville attorney Josh Claybourn told CNN on Thursday hes given up his delegate position at the Republican National Convention because he can neither vote for nor in any way support Mr. Trump.

Former Rep. Mark Souder said his Never Ever Trump position before the primary wasnt just a gimmick. Souder said he wont vote for Trump (or Clinton) in the fall but will look for another candidate to vote for and actively support Republicans  and people who are within the bounds of decency.

But Craig Dunn, a delegate and Republican chairman of Indiana's 4th Congressional District, said he wont even bat an eye about voting for Trump over Clinton.

Thats despite the fact that Dunn received threatening messages from Trump supporters after saying before the primary that the only way he could vote for Trump was if Satan had the lead on him and was one delegate away from being nominated.

Dunn said he still doesnt condone some of Trumps remarks and thinks they hurt the GOPs efforts to expand the party.

But weve never had a perfect candidate. Im sure he will soften some of his positions over the next couple of months. People will get more adjusted, and well agree on the core principles that we can take into November, Dunn said. I hope thats the way it unfolds.

Email Maureen Groppe at mgroppe@gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter: @mgroppe.

In their own words:

The eight Indiana Republicans running for the House or Senate were asked whether they support Donald Trump and whether theres a major issue on which they agree with Trump and one on which they disagree. Here are their responses:

Rep. Larry Buchson Bucshon, R-Newburgh:

On supporting Trump: Dr. Bucshon has said he will support the Republican nominee for president. That has not changed, said spokesman Nick McGee.

Where Bucshon agrees with Trump: Declined to comment.

Where Bucshon disagrees with Trump: Declined to comment.

Rep. Todd Young, the GOP nominee for Senate:

On supporting Trump: Todd Young has consistently said he intends to support the Republican nominee for president because we cannot have a third term of Barack Obama with Hillary Clinton as our next president, said campaign manager Trevor Foughty.

Where Young agrees with Trump: Declined to comment.

Where Young disagrees with Trump: Declined to comment.

Rep. Jackie Walorski, R-Jimtown:

Did not respond.

State Sen. Jim Banks, the GOP nominee in the 3rd Congressional District:

Did not respond.

Rep. Todd Rokita, R-Indianapolis:

On supporting Trump: I support Donald Trump as our nominee, as he is clearly better than the avowed socialist and likely felon whom the Democrats are running.

Where Rokita agrees with Trump: I share many of the concerns Trump has voiced during this campaign and look forward to talking with him as he releases more detailed proposals in the coming months.

Where Rokita disagrees with Trump: Addressing the drivers of our debt is the main reason I ran for Congress, and Ive yet to hear Trump acknowledge that social entitlement programs are the problem and his plans for reforming them. Since coming to Congress and as the vice chairman of the House Budget Committee, we have described in detail to the American people our solutions. I want to know that Mr. Trump agrees with our solution or if he has a better one.

Rep. Susan Brooks, R-Carmel:

On supporting Trump: "I've said from the beginning that I will support the Republican nominee. Republican voters in Indiana and across the country have spoken, and Mr. Trump is our presumptive nominee. I trust the voters and our process, and I will support the Republican nominee for president."

Where Brooks agrees with Trump: "The current administration's foreign policy has put our national security in jeopardy. In addition to prioritizing the care of our veterans and their families, I agree with Mr. Trump that we must enhance our national security and focus on the many threats we're facing at home and abroad, including ISIS, al-Qaeda and the radicalization of foreign nationals and Americans through social media."

Where Brooks disagrees with Trump: "I am concerned about some of his comments and rhetoric over the course of the campaign. We are a country built on inclusiveness. Policies and ideas that isolate us or discriminate undermine our leadership in the world and divide our country."

Rep. Luke Messer, R-Shelbyville:

On supporting Trump: Donald Trump was not my first choice, but I'm not supporting Bernie Sanders or Hillary Clinton. If Trump is the Republican nominee, I would expect to support him.

Where Messer agrees with Trump: I like Trump's focus on job creation. I also expect I'll like his Supreme Court nominees way better than the ones that either Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders would nominate.

Where Messer disagrees with Trump: As a husband, a father of two daughters and the son of a single-parent mother, I'm offended by much of Trump's rhetoric on women. As an American, I am offended by much of his rhetoric on race. Frankly, to win in the fall, I think his campaign needs to provide a substantive focus on jobs and national security and leave the rhetorical sideshow behind.

Trey Hollingsworth, the GOP nominee in the 9th Congressional District:

On supporting Trump: I will of course be supportive of our Republican nominee. We cannot afford to elect Hillary Clinton and continue the expensive, job-killing policies of the Obama administration.

Where Hollingsworth agrees with Trump: I commend the presumptive nominee, Mr. Trump, for bringing new people to our party and his continued focus on reforms that will help keep jobs and businesses in America."

Where Hollingsworth disagrees with Trump: Declined to comment.
At 45, Larry Whittaker isnt your traditional Rocky Mountain College student.

Whereas many students arrive at the four-year liberal arts college directly out of high school, Whittaker, a Chicago native, took a detour, spending 20 years in the Navy. Theres an advantage to that, he said Wednesday, sitting outside on a bench on the Rocky campus.

As we get older, we get a clear focus, he said. We dont want to waste time.

Whittaker, who has remained focused during two and a half years at Rocky, will graduate on Saturday with a bachelors degree in business management and a minor in organizational leadership. He also was selected by the faculty as the male student to receive the prestigious Presidents Cup.

The award is given to one male and one female  this year Amanda Webb  based on the students scholarship and leadership contributions to Rocky and the greater community.

A total of 184 undergraduates, including three who will also receive a master of accountancy degree, and 23 master of education leadership students, will receive their diplomas Saturday. The commencement ceremony begins at 1 p.m. in the Fortin Education Center gymnasium on campus.

The commencement speaker will be Jake Jabs, president and CEO of American Furniture Warehouse in Billings.

Whittaker graduated from Calumet High School in Chicago in 1988. Then he joined the Navy, first of all to get a look at the world outside the neighborhood where he grew up.

And the Navy gave me the opportunity to be around multiple cultures, both here in the continental United States as well as outside of it, he said. It helped me to understand and relate to people a bit more, and it helped me to appreciate people more.

Trained initially as a radio operator, Whittaker also worked as a data processer, frequency operator and help-desk manager. He was stationed on the USS Abraham Lincoln, an aircraft carrier, and at Diego Garcia, a small island in the Indian Ocean, as well as in Sicily and England.

Whittaker lived in or traveled to 13 countries while in the military, including the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Dubai, the Philippines, Hong Kong, Singapore, Germany, Austria and Malta.

All the places are my favorite because they gave me a diverse group of experiences that helped me understand and appreciate people, he said. Life is much bigger than the small communities we grow up in.

As much as he saw the differences in cultures, Whittaker also saw the similarities in people.

Whittakers last post was at the Royal Air Force Base near St. Mawgan in Cornwall. When he retired from the Navy, he was ready to go back to school.

His objective was to go to college and get an education to reach his eventual goal.

I want to help people come to a point where they can help themselves, Whittaker said. This country is only as strong as its weakest link.

He spent a few months with his grandmother while he researched colleges and universities across the U.S. Whittaker thought Rocky would be a perfect fit, based on what he read.

Living in England, he got used to living in a smaller community, and Billings seemed to echo that. Whittaker also was looking for a college that participated in the Yellow Ribbon GI Education Enhancement Program, which allows military vets to attend private colleges that cost more than the state tuition cap, and Rocky did.

When Whittaker first arrived in Billings, he enrolled in the two-month Veterans Upward Bound program at Montana State University Billings. It helped him do some prep work before entering Rocky.

Then he launched into his studies at Rocky.

When I first came here, I had one focus, and that was to do everything I could do to get my degree because I made so many sacrifices for me to get here, Whittaker said.

He determined that since it had been so long since hed been in school, I didnt want to be the worst student here, I wanted to be the best.

Whittaker lives in an apartment and takes public transportation to get to school. When he has spare time, he spends it with his dad.

He doesnt have much of a social life because he devotes his time to his studies. But Whittaker has delighted many of his teachers.

Karen Beiser, associate professor of business administration, called him an amazing student who was so much fun to have in class because he was the most serious student I ever had.

He would ask such wonderful questions and challenge things he knew in the world because hes been there, she said. Hes someone who would help raise the bar for his peer students.

When she found out he won the Presidents Cup, Beiser was "so excited."

Ive not had a student who deserved it more, she said. It was literally a cheering moment.

Nick Plunkey, assistant professor of English, taught Whittaker in freshman English. Plunkey remembered him as genuinely curious and interested in the books for the course and in the writing assignments.

From my point of view, hes one of the hardest working students at Rocky Mountain College, Plunkey said. And the thing thats unique, when I talk to him around campus, he likes to have deep philosophical conversations.

Business professor James Smith, Whittakers adviser, said hes seen a transformation over the years.

He came from a military background, where you have a world thats vastly different than the college setting, Smith said. And I think Larry has grown from seeking to define life as yes or no, right or wrong to see a lot of gray areas in life.

"He worked hard, did his best, had a good attitude and never made excuses," Smith said.

Robyn M. Cummings, an associate professor of mathematics, remembers that Whittaker was nervous about taking a math class.

But hes an incredibly hard worker and generous, kind, amazing student, she said. It was a pleasure having him as a student, and I think the world of him.

Cummings said she was one of the faculty who voted for him to be awarded the Presidents Cup.

Im happy that he received that honor, she said.

Scott Severance, professor of business administration and economics, had Whittaker in the first business class he took. Right away he knew that Whittaker was different, an older student with world experiences and an eagerness to learn.

Whittakers motives for pursuing a degree were pure, Severance said, and the cool thing is that remained the same throughout his years here."

Hes really a super person and a man who I think will do well from this point forward, because he has good priorities and hes good to people, Severance said. You couldnt talk to anyone on campus that wouldnt say hes a great guy.

Whittaker, for his part, is a modest man who feels somewhat uncomfortable in the spotlight. He is grateful for the many people at Rocky who helped him along the way.

However we measure success, one part is initiative and the other part are the people who encourage us and appreciate what weve done, he said. We always need help.
Outside magazine's Best Town Ever contest is down to the final eight, and Billings has made the cut.

Outside's criteria? "Places with great access to trails and public lands, thriving restaurants and neighborhoods, and, of course, a good beer scene."

Billings made the list when Outside editors asked the magazine's Instagram followers to nominate their favorite towns. They chose Billings; Imperial Beach, Calif.; Mammoth Lakes, Calif.; and Grand Marais, Minn.

The Magic City has so far beat out Livingston; Leavenworth, Wash.; and Boise, Idaho.

Here's how to vote for Billings: Click here and scroll down to the "vote here" section. The contest is organized by type of town  river, culture, beach and mountain.
Three years ago, felony drug and theft charges had left 33-year-old Annette Redding sitting in a jail cell thinking all was lost, as she waited to be introduced to the Yellowstone County Drug Court.

Thursday, more than 700 days after she entered the program, Redding was one of five graduates from the treatment and rehabilitation program that was applauded and celebrated in a packed Yellowstone County Courthouse court room.

I didnt even know that I could have this kind of life, Redding said.

Stephanie Cliff, 30, entered the program in January 2014. District Court Judge Ingrid Gustafson admitted that she wasn't sure Cliff would make it. "You have changed dramatically," Gustafson said.

Cliff's experiences in the legal system, like those of Redding, were in part caused by meth use.

Redding started using in 2012 and saw her life deteriorate under the influence of her addiction as it increasingly pulled her away from her five children. Redding admitted that shortly after entering the drug court program she gave up on herself.

Its a long, hard process, Redding said. For me, I just wanted my life to be fixed right away.

Cliff graduated with a practical nursing degree in 2010 from Montana State University Billings City College, but after failing to pass her NCLEX nursing exam, she started using heavily as she tried to cope with her feelings of failure. Ultimately she was arrested on the MSUB campus and found in possession of meth.

She said that she was angry and fought the drug court but that even as she fought it she was subtly changing. She now plans to begin studying again for the nursing exam and is hoping to pass.

If I dont pass, then no big deal, Cliff said.

Cliff said the structure the program imposed on her life is something she has benefited from. She also told Gustafson she was now a church member.

Erin Rodriguez, director of Court Services for the Rimrock Foundation, spoke after the last graduate had received their diploma.

This is one of the graduating classes that really gives us hope as professionals, Rodriguez said. The amount we get back from watching you guys grow is so much more than a paycheck.

People in the program receive treatment and attend classes at the Rimrock Foundation's Silverleaf building for what what Rodriguez described as a holistic approach to addiction treatment.

Gustafson said the program, now in its fifth year, is remarkably inexpensive compared to the average cost per year per inmate to the state of Montana.

Gustafson said she believes the state pays about $37,000 a year per male inmate and slightly more for female inmates. In the first three years, she said the drug court had a $97,000 budget. "It's one of those things that makes you feel like you're trying to solve problems instead of creating new ones," Gustafson said.

All of the graduates were given a chance to speak before the gathering from a courtroom podium, with many of them opting to have a conversation with Gustafson.

Gustafson asked Cliff what advice she had for those currently in the program.

Just let them love you until you can love yourself, Cliff said.
Montana finally has a plan for transitioning severely disabled adults into community care and out of an institution long plagued with abuse and neglect.

A year ago, lawmakers and Gov. Steve Bullock agreed that residents of the Montana Developmental Center at Boulder should be transitioned to community care and that MDC should be closed.

At the most recent meeting of the MDC Transition Advisory Council, state budget director Dan Villa presented a plan for carrying out the new law. The law aims to protect the rights of people with disabilities, rights that already are guaranteed in the Americans with Disabilities Act and affirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court.

When Senate Bill 411 was passed last spring, about half of the 50 residents at MDC already were on waiting lists to be moved to community homes. However, there werent community homes for them. Montana paid for placements for less disabled persons and it funded MDC where annual spending equaled about $275,000 per person. There was no community step-down alternative for these folks, some of whom are both developmentally disabled and mentally ill. A few also have history of violent behavior.

34 residents moving

As of April 25, the Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services had agreed upon cost and service plans for 34 MDC residents with one of three private nonprofit care providers: AWARE, Benchmark and Quality of Life Concepts. As of April 25, eight of those individuals had already been transitioned to community homes and 13 more were expected to transition this month.

Nobody is saying this community care will be cheap. These individuals require 24/7 care. But consider that the state has been spending about $275,000 per person to provide a year of institutional care that violates their right to live in the least restrictive environment.

The MDC advisory council was informed last week that the state has paid transition stipends totaling $1.26 million to the providers who have agreed to care for 34 residents. The providers get to keep the stipends if they care for these individuals for 12 months. The care providers will also receive Medicaid reimbursement with the federal government paying most of that cost.

DPHHS plans to propose changes in the Medicaid rate structure for clients who would have been served by MDC. The proposed changes are expected to be the subject of public hearings this fall, and then would need approval of the federal Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services to take effect.

The plan also calls for:

- Opening up to eight four-person community group homes. The rationale is that the state would have to serve individuals who cant be served by private providers in the future.

- Maintaining a 12-person unit at Boulder for individuals who require temporary security that cant be provided in the community.

The state-run group homes and 12-person Boulder unit would require legislative approval, as would other points in the transition plan that propose compensation for the city of Boulder.

The reason for this transition isnt to help or hurt Boulder. Nor is it to create or preserve jobs. This transition is about upholding the rights of disabled Montanans.

'Not a way to care'

Our position is that institutions are not a way to care for people, said Joel Peden, who lobbies for the states four private, nonprofit independent living centers. Other states have figured out how to do that. Were not breaking new ground.

Charlie Briggs, who serves on the board of Disability Rights Montana and represents that advocacy group on the MDC advisory council, said many important details must still be worked out over time. But he is pleased that the state has a plan and that it was endorsed by the council at its meeting last week.

Were excited the governor has really put forth a plan to effect the closure of MDC as set forth in SB411, Briggs told The Gazette.

Lawmakers got it right when they declared in Senate Bill 411: It is the intent of the legislature to provide services to individuals with developmental disabilities in the community, as established in (state law), and to close the Montana developmental center.

Now the executive branch must carry out that noble directive.
LIVINGSTON  The lone black student at Park High School, Darius Ivory, said Thursday he doesn't see flying the Confederate flag as racist.

Following multiple shoving matches, shouted threats and other disturbances that distracted students from their education, Park High School has banned displaying the Confederate flag on school property, Park High Vice Principal Tom Gauthier said.

"There was no valuable education that day," Gauthier said about the incidents.

The heated debate over whether preventing the flag from flying was violating First Amendment rights or if allowing the flag to fly was promoting racism has caused tension in the rural Montana town that, according to the 2010 census, has a black population of 0.3 percent.

Ivory, a recent transfer student from Houston, Texas, said he's never felt threatened by the Confederate symbol. He was raised around it.

"I don't see it as a bad thing," he said. "I'm not a slave, and it takes way more than flying a flag to faze me."

The 19-year-old Ivory moved to Montana and just started at Park High School when a rumor began to spread around the school that another student, a 17-year-old, had made some sort of threat against him. Another student, Alexis Bowman, said she heard a white student had threatened to hang and drag Ivory behind his truck.

When school administrators heard the rumor, Gauthier said he contacted the 17-year-old. The student denied threatening Ivory, but acknowledged making negative statements about the black student.

"He comes out and said he doesn't like black people and is racist," Gauthier said. "In my 20 years as an educator, I'd never heard someone admit they were racist."

The 17-year-old was raised in Missouri and had a bad perception of black people, Gauthier said. The student was warned there would be consequences if the behavior continued. The 17-year-old's mother told Gauthier later that she said the family did not share their son's beliefs.

Two weeks later on April 22, the 17-year-old drove to school with a Confederate flag on his truck.

"It was a really bad coincidence actually, because a second student, unrelated to the first, also was displaying the flag that day," Gauthier said.

Gauthier said a student removed the flag from the 17-year-old's car. A video of another student burning the flag was shown to police by the 17-year-old's father, said Livingston's Chief of Police Dale Johnson.

A school resource officer identified the student who burned the flag and said the student may face citations for theft and destruction of property.

The reactions from students were so strong, Gauthier said, the school had to take steps to bring things back under control. Administrators banned the flag and suspended the 17-year-old who had brought it to school.

Administrators sent an email to parents alerting to them to the events. The email read in part: "There were two students who came to school this morning displaying Confederate flags on their vehicles. This caused considerable disruption ... most classes had to devote class time to address student concerns and anger."

This led to an outrage among students and members of the community alike.

"Facebook exploded," Gauthier said.

Citing Tinker v. Des Moines, a case from the 1960s involving high school students who were banned from wearing black arm bands to protest the Vietnam war, Gauthier said the school was well within its rights to ban the flag.

The next week, however, Gauthier heard students would be coming to school on April 29 with Confederate flags ready to be displayed. The students parked their cars off school property in protest of the ban.

"The second group didn't do it for racial reasons," Gauthier said. "They did it because they were angry at the ban."

Johnson said the only students who displayed any aggression were the ones against displaying the flag.

"They were more mad than I was, which I appreciate," Ivory said. "They aren't tolerating the racism, and I respect that."

But, Ivory said he had a Confederate flag on his phone for a while. "I don't see anything racist about it," he said.

The school also has been in contact with Ivory's guardian, who was concerned about Ivory's safety. Gauthier said he assured the guardian there was no threat of violence against Ivory.

Ivory grew up in Houston and moved to Livingston a month ago. When he came to school, he said he was quiet and shy and realized he was the only black student. He wasn't sure how people would react.

"Everyone made me feel welcome, though," Ivory said. "Everybody thought I was awesome, obviously. To me the people here are awesome."

Coming from Texas, Ivory said he has grown up seeing the Confederate flag everywhere. It stood more for Southern pride than for racism.

When Gauthier told Ivory about the 17-year-old student's flag and alleged threat, Gauthier said Ivory seemed surprised.

"He asked to meet with the boy who had made the comments," Gauthier said. "They ended up talking for over an hour. It was interesting. I mean the student didn't pull any punches; he was clear about what he thought."

Ivory said when he spoke with the 17-year-old student and heard where he'd grown up and his experiences with black people, he understood where he was coming from. Since then, he has made a point to continue to spend time with the student. Though the 17-year-old dropped out following his suspension, he returned to school Monday  something that didn't bother Ivory.

"We've hung out a couple times," Ivory said. "He is a cool kid. I like him."

Gauthier said the same about Ivory, who he said was a great kid and not the victim people would like to portray him as.

Gauthier said after a meeting Tuesday with parents and other members of the community that most people understood why the ban was put into place.

Several Montana Human Rights Network members have notified the network of the Livingston dispute, said Rachel Carroll Rivas, Montana Human Rights Network co-chair.

Carroll Rivas commended Gauthier's and Livingston's actions to ban the flag.

"The Confederate flag is one of the preeminent symbols used to incite fear, promote oppression, and honor a dishonorable time in our nations history," Carroll Rivas said. "There is good reason that the Confederate flag, monuments and other associated symbols are being challenged in Montana and across the country.

While there was tension during the Tuesday meeting between the two sides, Gauthier said the school has no intention to reverse the ban for the time being.

"People on both sides of this issue can learn from what happened," Gauthier said. "As long as there is continued open dialogue."

This article has been updated with Gauthier's correct name.
Australian services provider Computergate Australia is taking a warranty services program to market for 3D printers to address a lack of support for the devices.

The program includes on-site extended warranty, helpdesk assistance during business hours, and telephone and onsite support services.

Computergate is partnering with not-for-profit industry body Australian 3D Manufacturing Association (A3DMA) to sell the service through distributors to both resellers and customers.

The two organisations will work to identify which 3D print vendors to take to market and receive accreditation for. So far, Computergate already has accreditation for Robox, Zeus and Mojo.

Computergate chief executive Mario Greco said businesses and schools were discouraged from investing in 3D printing due to lack of support and extended warranty.

"By implementing our managed maintenance programs we expect to deliver superior service offerings to support all products in the field that will provide our customers with a seamless experience," said Greco.

A number of big names in the IT industry are throwing their weight behind 3D printing. Japanese print giant Konica Minolta recently announced it was working to address service response times for 3D printers by offering same-day services and rental and leasing options to resellers.

Trans-tasman IT provider Datacom partnered with distributor 3D Printing Systems and software vendor Makers Empire to bring a 3D printing solution to primary schools.

Budget supermarket chain Aldi ruffled some feathers when it began advertising a 3D printer for $499.
On the 23rd day of the strike against Verizon, tens of thousands of employees across the US took to picket lines to broaden the protest.

Talks between the two sides have been largely unproductive in recent weeks, and Boston-area technician Kenny Caruso said Verizon has focused on the wrong issues.

"Were not out here for wages - lets make that clear," said Caruso. "Basically the only improvement they made [in talks] was a 0.1 percent raise in three years, and like I said, were here for job security, movement of work, call centres.

Workers have concerns over call centres that would outsource jobs, among other disagreements.

Caruso said he has been with the company for more than 20 years, and urged both Verizon partners and customers to air their complaints over strike-related service delays and cancelations.

"The pressure should be on Verizon to give their workers a fair contract," he said. "We're some of the best, highly skilled workers that the company has, and obviously people rely on that."

Brenda Hunter has worked for Verizon for more than 27 years, and she said hopes to retire with the company but has concerns over its commitment to its employees.

"We want to keep our jobs here in America, we want to keep the pensions that we have," she said.

Hunter asked for patience from partners and customers affected by the strike.

"We're asking them to hang in there and bear with us. We're hoping that between the union and our company, we will come together and get a fair contract, so that we can come back to work and provision the work, and give them the good quality service that we do every day," she said.

This article originally appeared at crn.com
Data center News

Sources: Cisco In Talks With IPO-Bound Nutanix About Strategic Hyper-Convergence Partnership

Kevin McLaughlin

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Cisco Systems, which tried unsuccessfully to acquire Nutanix last year, is once again in talks with the hyper-convergence startup, three sources familiar with the talks told CRN this week.

This time, Cisco and Nutanix are discussing a strategic partnership in which channel partners from both vendors would sell Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS) servers with integrated hyper-convergence software from Nutanix, said the sources, who didn't want to be named because the talks are confidential.

Nutanix and Cisco haven't yet finalized terms of the partnership, and it's possible an agreement may not be struck, the sources said.

Spokespeople from Cisco and Nutanix declined to comment.

These types of arrangements, known as a "meet-in-the-channel" partnerships, are on the rise in the emerging market for hyper-converged infrastructure, which refers to compute, storage and networking running virtually on x86 server hardware. Cisco has a similar partnership with number two hyper-convergence player SimpliVity, which has one with Lenovo.

Nutanix also has OEM agreements with Dell and Lenovo, in which the vendors jointly build and sell hyper-converged infrastructure appliances.

Cisco with HyperFlex, a product that marries its UCS servers with technology from software-defined storage startup Springpath. Cisco has invested in Springpath and has the option of acquiring it based on revenue results, said the sources.

Early returns on HyperFlex have been mixed. Although some Cisco partners are seeing demand for the product, several of the vendor's top partners have , despite being told by Cisco they'd get it in March.

A Cisco spokesman said the delay is due to higher-than-expected demand for HyperFlex, and that customer shipments are taking priority until Cisco can ramp its production of the product.

Meanwhile, some Cisco customers have also experienced issues with getting HyperFlex to scale in their environments, sources told CRN this week.

One Cisco partner told CRN a Nutanix partnership would raise questions in the channel about whether Springpath's technology is suitable for enterprises.

"Few partners had even heard of Springpath before HyperFlex was announced," said the Cisco partner, who didn't want to be named. "The whole thing seemed hasty. It's irrational to think that somehow, out of nowhere, Cisco just happened to stumble across this fantastic hyper-converged software."

While Cisco touts HyperFlex as a more economical and better performing alternative to Nutanix, the networking giant before deciding to invest in Springpath, sources told CRN in March.

Cisco offered Nutanix around $4 billion, but Nutanix's asking price was $6 billion to $7 billion, said the sources. Cisco cut off talks and since then has made no secret of its dissatifaction with Nutanix, according to several Cisco partners.

After reports of the talks surfaced last May, Nutanix CEO Dheeraj Pandey denied that his company was looking for a buyer and said Dell would have first shot at an acquisition if that stance changed.

Nutanix and then reportedly delayed the offering because of unfavorable market conditions. Last month Nutanix updated its S-1, apparently signaling that .

In its IPO filing, Nutanix said its revenue grew 85 percent to $190.5 million during the first half of its fiscal 2016, but it also reported an accumulated deficit of $345.2 million.

Given the current turbulence in the IPO market, Dell's preoccupation with acquiring EMC, and Cisco's previous struggles in storage with the glitch plagued Invicta line, some partners believe Cisco may make a last-ditch play to acquire Nutanix.

While Cisco would have to raise its earlier bid considerably, it has paid steep multiples to acquire similar market leaders like Meraki and Sourcefire, two Cisco partners said.
The annual Cruise Canada New England Symposium is set to take place June 7-9 in New York City. The event was last hosted in New York in 2011, and is dropping its traditional speaker and panel format for 2016 in favor of workshops.

The workshops will bring together cruise line executives, port officials, and service providers to identify opportunities to enhance growth for the region, said Elizabeth Shearin, director of cruise for the New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC), which is hosting the event.

All ports in the region and major service providers to the Canada/New England are expected to attend.

The Wednesday workshops include two sessions focusing on Building a Prosperous Canada and New England Cruise Region.

The second, afternoon workshop will see senior tourism and cruise line staffers critiquing ideas and providing input.

There will be a few presentations to kick off the program on Wednesday, but for the majority of attendees, they will be participating instead of listening in Manhattan Cruise Terminals Pier 90, located on the West Side of the borough.

The workshop is designed to be interactive so everyones participation lends to the success of the program, said Shearin.

In the big picture, capacity in Canada/New England remains steady, according to independently-researched data from Cruise Industry News.

One ongoing news item for the region has been summer traffic, anchored by Holland America Lines season-long deployment, and the region is using the move by Holland America to hopefully attract more regular vessels to the area in the summer.

The three-day Symposium expects over 100 attendees which will include ports from the region and cruise line representatives from Holland America, Princess, Carnival, Disney, Viking, Royal Caribbean and TUI.

Shearin hopes the New York event will offer the platform to foster a cooperative and non-competitive partnership to strengthen the alliance in the region.

Other events on the docket include an excursion to Williamsburg (Brooklyn) for food and beverage samplings; an opening night reception at the trendy Gallow Green in West Chelsea (Manhattan); and Wednesday evenings gathering at Pioneer Works in Redhook (Brooklyn).

Thursday sees traditional networking in the morning between ports and cruise lines, in a speed-dating format, as well as an interactive trivia game, and human services response training in the afternoon.
On Monday, May 9, Fred. Olsen's Balmoral will kick start the 28th cruise season in Saint John, Canada.

Mondays ship is scheduled to arrive at 10:30 am and depart at 11:00 pm and will be docked at the Diamond Jubilee Cruise Terminal.

Port Saint John has been advised that the Public Health Agency of Canada is monitoring the presence of elevated gastrointestinal illness rates aboard Balmoral and is working in collaboration

We at Port Saint John are excited about the start of the 2016 cruise season on Monday. The entire team at the Port from our operations group to our Meet & Greet volunteers and business development and marketing staff have been working in concert to ensure the guest and ship experience at Port Saint John exceeds expectations, said Andrew Dixon, Senior Vice President of Trade & Business Development for Port Saint John. We know that our industry and community partners are also gearing up to welcome the tens of thousands of guests and crew we are expecting this year.

Saint John will see six first-time callers this year, and four triple-ship days, and a single four-ship day (Sept. 28). The port will also welcome the return of Disney Cruise Line, and four calls by the Anthem of the Seas, which will be the biggest ship to visit this year.
According to the most recent Verizon data breach report, a phishing email is often the first phase of an attack. That's because it works well, with 30 percent of phishing messages opened, but only 3 percent reported to management.

But when employees are trained on how to spot phishing emails, and then get tested with mock phishing emails, the percent who fall victim decreases with each round.

[ Check out these 11 phishing prevention tips for best technology practices, employee education and social media smarts. | Get the latest from CSO by signing up for our newsletters. ]

Of course, it's impossible to get to a zero response rate. The criminals are becoming extremely clever with their messages. Fortunately, it's not necessary. If enough employees forward phishing emails to security, then the company becomes aware that it is the target of a campaign, and be prepared to deal with those messages that do slip through.

Anti-Phishing Working Group

The Anti-Phishing Working Group offers a variety of resources, including a phishing education landing page that companies can use in conjunction with their anti-phishing campaigns. Some of the vendors below, including Phishme and KnowBe4, also offer free resources.

Another free tool is MSI Simple Phish from MicroSolved, which allows security teams to run their own phishing tests inside their organization.

BetterCloud, which offers security and monitoring services for cloud-based office applications, started worrying about phishing when another company in their office building lost $2 million to a phishing scam, and their cybersecurity insurance would not cover the cost.

"Their business took a really bit hit," said Austin Whipple, the company's senior security engineer. "It was hard to recover from that."

In response, BetterCloud ran a company-wide training, then created its own phishing email campaign that seemed to be a note from the HR system, but actually came from an external email address. This was followed up with more education.

"Compared to other organizations, or to the Verizon report, we did fairly well," he said. "But there are still some areas we can improve on."

Once some time has passed, there will be another phishing test, he added. The employees forward suspicious emails to him personally, he added, and it's clear that the company has already been specifically targeted because some of the real phishing emails include inside information that would have required some research.

According to Whipple, setting up an anti-phishing training program is not too difficult.

"Any one tech person can do this whole thing," he said. "It doesn't take a massive amount of set up. Educate your people, do the test, then educate the people again, and do a follow-up test."

PhishMe

PhishMes phishing simulation, training and reporting platform is used by more than 800 customers world-wide, including nearly half of the Fortune 100, to proactively engage thousands of employees in simulations that condition them to detect and report phishing threats.

PhishMe also offers a phishing incident response platform, which automates and prioritizes reported phishing emails for faster response, and a threat intelligence service that helps threat analysis vet the phishing activity they see against verified external threats.

By combining awareness training, easy reporting, and appropriate security responses, employees can go from being a company's biggest security weakness to its first line of protectiong.

"Humans are the most powerful layer of defense against spear phishing, and organizations need to leverage every security benefit humans can provide to remain protected against this top attack vector," said Rohyt Belani, CEO at PhishMe.

PhishMe also offers a dozen free training modules, available in the form of interactive PDF files or SCORM-compliant files that can be run through a company's learning management system.

PhishLabs

Customers include four of the top five U.S. financial institutions, seven of the top 25 global financial institutions, leading social media and career sites, and top healthcare, retail, insurance and technology companies.

"Make the simulations as realistic as possible," recommends John LaCour, founder and CEO at PhishLabs. "If you want your employees to spot and report real-world attacks, the simulations need to mirror the real-world attacks they are most likely to see."

In addition, once employees do report the attacks, a company needs to have processes in place so that they can respond to targeted attacks early on, when they're the least costly to mitigate.

"But that cant happen if those reports just sit in a helpdesk queue," he added.

IronScales

The company offers phishing simulations and gamified training for employee security awareness.

Gamification makes the training fun and interactive, said Eyal Benishti, CEO at IronScales. "People are tired of bullets and boring videos."

Continuous assessment can make the biggest impact when it comes to changing behavior, he added. He recommends running tests at least once every two months.

According to data collected from about 60 companies, click-through rates can be reduced significantly as a result, with employees forwarding phishing emails 200 percent more often than before.

MediaPro

MediaPro offers training and reinforcement programs, and an adaptive phishing simulator. Customers include Microsoft, T-Mobile, Expedia, Cisco, Oracle, Boeing, Marriott, Costco and other Fortune 500 companies.

It's important not to test employees on the same kind of phishing message over and over again, said Steve Conrad, managing director at MediaPro Holdings, LLC

"Not all phishing campaigns are equal, nor should they be," he said. "You need to use a model that sends phishing messages of varying complexity and sophistication, and those are going to generate different kinds of results. Sending the same, or similar, messages to your end-users will show great results in a phishing reportyour click-through rates will go downbut it will not accomplish your business goal."

KnowBe4

KnowBe4 is the company that has Kevin Mitnick as its chief hacking officer, and claims to be the most popular integrated platform for security awareness training and simulated phishing tests, with thousands of enterprise customers.

According to Stu Sjouwerman, CEO at KnowBe4, phishing emails are involved in a variety of attacks, including ransomware and business email compromise fraud.

"BEC and ransomware are on pace to be a $1 billion a year crime this year," he said.

KnowBe4 also offers a free phishing security test for up to 100 employees. The company also has a one-time free email exposure check that identifies employees' email addresses that are exposed to the public.

Wombat

The company claims over 1,000 enterprise customers and offers automated phishing tests and training modules. One of the earliest vendors in this space, Wombat grew out of research at Carnegie Mellon University in 2008.

It makes sense that the company continues to focus on research, and it regularly puts out research reports about phishing trends and training effectiveness. For example, Wombat worked with the Ponemon Institute to determine that the average-performing program resulted in a 37-fold return on investment,

According to Joe Ferrara, CEO at Wombat Security Technologies, phishing costs the average 10,000-employee organization $3 million a year -- and a successful training program can reduce the number of employees falling for phishing attacks by up to 90 percent.

One key to a successful program, he said, is to automatically schedule the employee for a phishing training module when they fail a phishing test.

That's the point where they're most motivated to improve, he said.

Inspired eLearning

The company offers anti-phishing training, simulated phishing attacks, a monthly newsletter, posters, digital signage, and other job aids to provide a constant stream of tips and best practices that can help keep security top-of-mind for employees.

Customers include Franklin Templeton Investments, ING, Chicago Mercantile Exchange, Tata, RedBox, ADP, Jhnson Controls, Bridgestone, the USDA, and ABB.

The company says that it has more than five million users worldwide, and the programs reduce phishing succeptibility by more than 92 percent.

Its PhishProof product is available as a completely managed service where the company's team of experts designs and deploys assessments and training, or as a software-as-a-service model with online software that can be used to create and deploy assessment within minutes.

Blackfin

Blackfin Security, part of Symantec, offers phishing simulation and training. The awareness training can be integrated right into the phishing simulation assessments with immediate in-line training, or users can schedule follow-up training that fits their schedule.

In addition, there are training modules on social engineering, malware, physical security, and using public WiFi networks, among other general security topics.

This is different from Symantec's own training program, which is focused on helping enterprise security professionals install and maintain Symantec products.

PhishLine

Taking anti-phishing testing one step further, PhishLine targets a broader set of social engineering attacks, including text messages, phone calls and even "accidentally dropped" USB sticks.

Earlier this year, PhishLine launched a marketplace for third-party computer-based training materials, including hundreds of phishing templates, customized landing pages, risk assessment surveys and multi-lingual security training content.

In addition to training and simulations, the company also offers measurement tools that allow companies to track the success of their programs. One measurement, for example, which can be used for gamification, is risk-based scoring. Enterprises can set up custom dashboards where training scores can be compared by individual employees, departments or other groups, or to internal or external benchmarks.

InfoSec Institute

This company is best known for their in-person enterprise security training, boot camps, and certification programs.

But they also offer interactive online training modules for security awareness. Their SecurityIQ product combines computer-based security awareness training and a phishing simulator in one cloud-based service. Companies can set up automated campaigns to send phishing tests to employees over time, or to enroll and remind learners to take their security awareness training.

Although it's possible to build an anti-phishing training and testing program internally, vendors such as InfoSec Institute and the others listed above offer some significant advantages to the enterprise.

"Oftentimes, organizations arent equipped to provide great education, internally," said Mike Spanbauer, vice president of security test and advisory at NSS Labs.

Vendors who focus specifically on phishing are aware of new trends in phishing emails and can incorporate the tactics into their training programs and anti-phishing simulation templates quickly.
CASPER, Wyo.  A man is facing criminal charges for allegedly throwing rocks at the windows of Casper restaurants on Thursday, according to a police report.

Police arrested Darryl A. Anderson about 1:30 a.m. outside Buffalo Wild Wings on East Second Street. Anderson, 44, is charged with property destruction and public intoxication.

Anderson had glossy eyes and slurred speech, the police report states. A breathalyzer indicated he had a blood alcohol concentration of 0.19 percent. He was not wearing a shirt or shoes when police arrived.

Officers saw three windows of the restaurant and a double-paned door were shattered, according to the report. Anderson told police he had had a lot to drink and had gotten lost. He was angry that he could not find his way back to his hotel and in his anger he began throwing rocks at buildings, the report states.

A witness told officers he also saw Anderson throw rocks at the windows of Qdoba and the restaurants catering van, according to the report. The van had a smashed windshield and drivers side window, as well as several dents in the exterior. The restaurant had damage to some windows.

Anderson was being held in the Natrona County Detention Center as of Thursday afternoon.
The night before I planned on flying to Hawaii with my family for spring break, we got the greatest invitation of our lives: would we like to fly there by private jet? DUH!

One minor problem: the kind offer was only one-way. My wife, two daughters, and I would still have to fly home on the domestic airline on which I had already spent $2768 on tickets. I wont tell you its name, but by domestic, I mean American.

At $692 apiece, those ducats sure sound expensive, but those were the cheapest we could find; to secure that low price, we had to book a redeye return flight. Ive learned from experience that struggling to walk sleep-deprived through a cramped airplane aisle on cramping legs schlepping a carry-on, a dozing eight-year-old, and her carry-on is the best way to get the message, Your vacations over!

On the phone, the airline representative told me that I couldnt just blow off the commercial flight to Hawaii and expect to get on the return flight. If I wanted to skip the first part of our trip with them, the airline would charge a $200 change fee.

Per ticket.

$800 to change our tickets from there and back to back. How long would it take them to rip up half our tickets? Two minutes, tops? That $800 they would take out of the money I had already given them worked out to $24,000 an hour. Nice work if you can get it. Then, of course, they would resell our four outbound seats at last-minute prices and make more money!

What was in it for us? Between the change fee and the new one-way tickets, which cost $475 apiece, we would split the $2768 equally: they would keep the first two digits of $2700, and we would get the last two digits of $68. By not flying us for half of our trip, they would keep more than 97% of the money!

Would that whopping $68 be a refund to my credit card? HA! Just an airline credit. Would that be a $17 credit for the four of us individually? The rep wasnt sure, but I couldnt waste time; I had a private plane to catch.

Without making any changes, I hung up, huddled with my wife, and decided to press ahead with this I-hope-not-once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. As she called our generous hosts, I called back the airline to seal the deal.

As time passed on hold, my perception changed. My thinking went from, Were giving up 4 of our 8 flights, and theyre going to give me a measly $68 credit back? to What if the prices have gone up and its going to cost me more money for asking them NOT to fly us to Hawaii? I had learned the hard way that some airline offers may be off the table minutes later. What if I had blown it by not accepting right away? (Because making family decisions without discussing them with your wife can be harmful to your health.)

Finally, a new airline rep confirmed we could still get the deal. Heres where things get a little murky; I wanted to lock that in, while exploring other options. Greedy? Perhaps. Since we were exchanging round-trip for one-way tickets, could we use them on an earlier flight so I could avoid ending my vacation with the aforementioned, jet-lagged, break-of-dawn, child-and carry-on-juggling Walk O Pain?

Sure, said the rep. We could have four $475 seats on an earlier flight.

For a $200 change fee.

Per ticket.

Additional.

Nooooooooo! I argued that I was still in the process of changing our plans, but the rep said I had already rung up $800 in change fees, and that it would cost me another $800 to change plans again.

Can I speak to your supervisor, please?

BOOM! Immediately, my family and I were dropped into vacation limbo. If the phone had been disconnected, I wouldnt know what tickets we had in which direction; all I had to hang on to was my anger, the feeling that I might have blown our private jet trip, and minute after painful minute of non-threatening jazz hold music.

After what seemed like an interminable wait, the same rep returned, and beneficently granted my wish: in return for keeping our money, they would fly us back, and issue us the pocket change credit. I couldnt even use the credit to pay for our baggage fees on that flight!

Airline traveler complaints jumped 34 percent last year, to the highest level since 2000. Yet The Forbid Airlines from Imposing Ridiculous (FAIR) Fees Act, whichwould prohibit air carriers from imposing fees that are not reasonable and proportional to the costs incurred by the air carriers, recently died in Congress.

Airlines are overcharging consumers with fees that are grossly disproportionate to the value of the service received and result in a windfall for airlines. Exhibit A is change fees, where airlines charge $200 when the true cost of a change is 6 to 7 times lower, if not zero, Business Travel Coalition founder Kevin Mitchell told Skift. This kind of unconscionable consumer price gouging is a textbook example of unfair methods of competition that underpin competition laws.

Meanwhile, my tan is gone, and Im still waiting for my $17 credit. Aloha.
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HARTFORD  The chairman of the Republican State Central Committee on Friday denied Hearst Connecticut Medias political reporter access to the partys Monday convention.

J.R. Romano, of Derby, turned down Neil Vigdors request to attend the event in the Connecticut Convention Center, for what he characterized as a series of negative stories about state Republicans that used anonymous sources.

Im tired of him having unnamed sources, Romano said Friday. I question his motivations. Neil Vigdor is not treating us fairly. I just want to be treated fairly. Im not being treated fairly.

Romano later sent a fundraising email to the Connecticut GOP membership calling the reporter an anti-Republican blogger, and that I've had enough with unfair, biased media coverage of our party and candidates. He then solicited donations to fight against liberal bias.

State Democrats blasted the action, charging that for a party so focused on the importance of the U.S. Constitution, Romano is ignoring the freedom of the press.

Barbara T. Roessner, executive editor of the Hearst Connecticut Media Group, said Romanos exclusion of Vigdor will not affect readers. Vigdor will cover the event Monday whether hes in the Convention Center or not, she said.

Political reporter Neil Vigdor will continue to provide fair and independent coverage of the state party nominating conventions this weekend, Roessner said. Our job is to get information, analysis and insight to the public. A free press doesnt require approval from the state Republican Party, or anyone else.

Danbury Mayor Mark Boughton said he was unaware of the issues involved. The press has a job to do, said Boughton, who was a GOP gubernatorial candidate before dropping out in 2014. Im not going to criticize the chairman, but hopefully all parties will sit down and figure it out.

Romano said dozens of state reporters and photographers have been accredited for Mondays event, which will nominate a GOP challenger to Democratic U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, as well as congressional candidates. Political parties routinely allow reporters from a wide range of the news media access to their conventions.

The Hearst Connecticut Media Group includes the Connecticut Post, The Advocate of Stamford, The News-Times of Danbury, The Hour of Norwalk and Greenwich Time, as well as several weekly newspapers and websites.

James H. Smith, president of the Connecticut Council on Freedom of Information and a former editor of the Connecticut Post, said he was appalled by Romanos refusal to let Vigdor do his job.

Since when do politicians get to decide who will cover politics in America? Smith said. I suggest J.R. Romano re-read the First Amendment, the part about not abridging freedom of speech or the press. Neil Vigdor is one of Connecticuts finest reporters. This smacks of Donald Trump trying to quash Megyn Kelly. No one who believes in democracy should put up with such shenanigans.

State Senate Pro Tempore Martin M. Looney, D-New Haven said Romano was heading down a dangerous path.

This is a gross abuse of power and just another example of the Republican Partys open hostility toward reporters, Looney said. Every serious Republican in Connecticut should condemn Chairman Romanos actions and call on him to respect the First Amendment. If they dont, theyre complicit in blocking the media from informing the public.

Leigh Appleby, Connecticut Democratic Party spokesman, said the tactic of exclusion could have been picked up from Donald J. Trump, the presumptive GOP presidential candidate.

The Trump-Connecticut Republican Party playbook may try to obfuscate their motives with claims of unfairness, but censorship by any other name still runs counter to our values as a state and a nation, he said. While they resort to blocking reporters and attacking free speech and freedom of the press, Connecticut Democrats will fight for our First Amendment freedoms. Connecticut deserves better than J.R. Romanos childish temper tantrums."

Vigdor will cover the Democratic State Convention on Saturday, also in the Connecticut Convention Center.

kdixon@ctpost.com;
Connecticut lawmakers gave final legislative approval this week to a bill allowing the states community colleges to form special armed police forces to patrol their campuses.

The legislation cleared the House of Representatives on Wednesday night, the final day of the legislative session. The bill, which had already passed in the Senate, now moves to Gov. Dannel P. Malloys desk.

Under the proposal, formation of the special forces would be subject to approval by the Board of Regents. The officers would generally have the same powers as municipal police and must be certified by the Police Officer Standards and Training Council.

All of the states larger universities, including Western Connecticut State University in Danbury, already have armed police forces. State Rep. Dan Carter, R-Bethel, a co-sponsor of the bill, said theres no reason community colleges shouldnt have them as well.

I dont see why we couldnt have the same in community colleges, Carter said. Colleges are also a target... We need some sort of protection for our students.

Mark Ojakian, president of the Connecticut State Colleges and Universities System, said students and teachers want the armed police because they dont feel safe on campus.

The effort comes after a shooting last fall at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Ore., in which 10 people were killed and nine were hurt.

The new law will not immediately affect Naugatuck Valley Community College, which has long been authorized to have an armed force because it once shared a campus with a branch of the University of Connecticut. There are no armed officers, however, at Naugatucks small Danbury branch.

James Troup, the schools provost and senior dean of administration, said the facility at 183 Main St. has at least one full-time contracted security guard at all times when the campus is open.

What we would like to do at some point, when we believe we can afford it, is to phase in actual public safety employees, Troup said. We believe that would be right step.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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Now that the top of their ticket is less muddled, Republicans and Democrats in Connecticut will shift gears to underticket races for the U.S. House and Senate at their upcoming nominating conventions.

Both state parties will convene, starting with the Democrats Saturday and concluding Monday with both parties making endorsements in six federal races, including for five House seats. The marquee contest on this years ballot is the first re-election test of U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., who survived a $50 million onslaught by former wrestling executive Linda McMahon in 2010.

Each group of partisans enter the nominating phase of the calendar somewhat fractured, with Donald Trump a love-hate proposition for the GOP and Democrats split between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders.

Whichever Republicans emerge with their partys endorsement will be prohibitive underdogs in the general election, having to overcome name-recognition, fundraising and party membership deficits as well as history. The last time a GOP candidate won a statewide or congressional race in the state was 2006, which national handicappers say doesnt bode well for Republicans, especially if Connecticut stays true blue in the presidential election.

More News Democrats blast GOP for denying Hearst reporter access to...

Heck, we could see a unicorn this cycle, the return of the split-ticket voter, said Jennifer Duffy, senior editor of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report in Washington, D.C. But that return may never be seen in places like Connecticut.

Mounting a Senate challenge

On Saturday, Blumenthal is slated to accept the Democratic nomination for a second six-year term by voice acclamation at the Connecticut Convention Center in Hartford. The 70-year-old former longtime state attorney general has raised more than $5.4 million for the race, after spending $8.7 million in 2010.

I approach every election in the same way, like Im 20 points behind, Blumenthal told Hearst Connecticut Media.

During his first term in Washington, Blumenthal said, he has shepherded legislation aimed at preventing suicides by military veterans and the train derailments that have plagued Amtrak and Metro-North. He said he has pushed a bill to roll back a 2005 gun industry immunity law and sought to hold automakers liable for defective vehicles.

My approach is the same as when I was attorney general, standing up to special interests and big companies when necessary, said Blumenthal, a Yale Law School classmate of Clinton.

Republicans have tried to paint Blumenthal, a Greenwich resident and one of the Senates wealthiest members, as a grandstander who is fixated on picayune matters such as legroom on airlines and labeling requirements for GMO salmon. They say his support for the Iran nuclear deal is out of step with constituents.

A trio of GOP candidates want to challenge Blumenthal: 1984 Olympian August Wolf, of Stamford, state Rep. Dan Carter, of Bethel, and Michael Kors fashion label co-founder Jack Orchulli, of Darien.

I dont think you can discount anybody, said Danbury Republican Mayor Mark Boughton, a two-time candidate for governor. I think its going to be a very strange election year. Look, I think anybody who puts their name on the ballot definitely has a shot.

One of the three will emerge with the partys nomination Monday night, also at the Connecticut Convention Center. Unsuccessful candidates can still force a primary, which would be held in August, by mustering 15 percent of the vote at the state party convention.

State GOP Chairman J.R. Romano did not respond to a request for comment Thursday. Neither did the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

Democrats are already trying to lump GOP underticket candidates with Trump.

I think there will be those who embrace Donald Trump and there will be those that run for cover in the Republican Party, said Michael Cacace, a Democratic National Committee member from Stamford who is Blumenthals campaign chairman.

Last month, Wolf campaigned at a Trump rally in Hartford. He also Retweeted a state Democratic Party post saying that he was all aboard the Trump train.

Endorsing House contestants

The most competitive House contest for Republicans is in the 5th District, where three candidates are seeking their partys endorsement to challenge U.S. Rep. Elizabeth Esty, D-Conn.

They are Clay Cope, Shermans openly gay first selectman, Newtown businessman Bill Stevens, and perennial candidate John Pistone, of Brookfield. The GOP field shrank Thursday, with Sandy Hook resident and home renovator Matt Maxwell quitting the race.

Esty is poised to be nominated for a third two-year term Monday night in Waterbury  Democrats hold their congressional nominating conventions at the district level. The 5th District stretches from Danbury to the Farmington Valley and includes Litchfield County, Meriden and New Britain.

In the 4th District, which covers 17 cities and towns in the southwestern part of the state, including Bridgeport, Stamford, Norwalk and Greenwich, Republicans are expected to nominate state Rep. John Shaban, R-Redding, Monday night in Hartford.

Democratic incumbent Jim Himes, a Greenwich resident, will accept his partys nomination for a fifth term in Bridgeport that same night.
contributed / contributed

BRIDGEPORT - Rev. Larry Fullerton, executive pastor at Black Rock Congregational Church in Fairfield, will decliver the commencement address to the St. Vincents college class of 2016.

His talk will be on the responsibility caregivers have to make life better, particularly for those most in need.
CASPER, Wyo.  Authorities have charged the Mills town treasurer with embezzling more than $64,000 and say the mayor discouraged employees from cooperating with a state criminal investigation, court documents show.

Prosecutors suspect Lisa Whetstone, 50, pocketed town money when she was supposed to deposit the funds into the government bank account. Investigators also believe she used a town credit card for personal expenses, according to the court documents.

Whetstone made her initial appearance Thursday in Natrona County Circuit Court, one day after prosecutors charged her with two counts of felony theft and one count of failure or refusal to account for, deliver or pay over property. She faces up to 25 years in prison if convicted.

Whetstone, who has also served as deputy clerk for the town, is free after posting a $5,000 bond. During her court appearance, she spoke only to answer procedural questions.

Whetstone was represented in court by attorney Keith Nachbar. When a judge asked whether Whetstone had a job, Nachbar said she is still employed by the Town of Mills.

The judge advised Whetstone she is not permitted to have contact with any employees at the Mills Town Hall.

Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation agents began looking into the alleged thefts after a 2015 audit of town funds discovered discrepancies, according to the court documents. Auditors found cash receipts did not match the amount of funds being deposited into the towns bank account. Instead, the deposit slip would have a decreased amount of cash or no cash at all.

Town employees told state agents Whetstone had access to the cash that came into the office, she made the deposit slips and she entered the amount of the deposit into QuickBooks, the court documents state.

Officials received copies of Whetstones bank records, which indicated significant financial burden, according to the court documents.

When state agents interviewed Mills Mayor Marrolyce Wilson in October, she covered her ears when they told her Whetstone was a suspect in a theft, the court documents state. Wilson and Whetstone told city employees they would face discipline if they cooperated with law enforcement.

One employee told a state agent he or she was placed on probation by Wilson and Whetstone after allowing law enforcement to enter the building with a search warrant, according to the court documents.

Wilson did not immediately respond Thursday to a message left at the Town Hall.
Tony Robbins, Zig Ziglar, Ariana Huffington, Oprah Winfrey, Richard Branson and Mark Cuban. Serial entrepreneurs with serious successes. We have become accustomed to their infinite wisdom as theyve shared their success stories with us throughout the years. We find them on most social-media accounts and of course, Instagram.

However, while theres no shortage of inspirational and successful accounts that represent the highs of an entrepreneurs success, there is a new rising crop of Instagram users that are currently crushing it on Instagram by documenting their hustle.

Related: Instagram Is Crushing Twitter and Facebook on Brand Engagement

These individuals embody the journey, and their accounts reflect the current realities of their day-to-day highs and lows.

They come from a variety of backgrounds ranging from fitness to fashion and from Internet publishing to digital marketing, but they all have one thing in common. They are rising stars that represent a new school of motivation -- aka hustlers, doers, innovators, brand and product developers, speakers, bloggers, CEOs -- and entrepreneurs.

Hence, I thought you should know about them. Here are seven Instagram accounts that motivate and inspire the journey.

1. @Prsuit

Founded by Case Kenny, @Prsuit (prsuit.com) is an online publication and part of the rapidly growing Trep Media Group of brands. Its motivational and inspirational quotes feature perspectives that inspire from millennial men for millennial men.

The online articles come from over 400 authors globally, and its Instagram account sends readers to select articles each day. PRSUIT is on a mission to put an end to online clickbait, and its Instagram reflects this mission by providing content and images that describe real life experiences and stories that resonate with its large following.

Online publication for perspective that inspires

Motivational / inspirational quotes for audiences

Writers from all over the world writing about their experiences

Providing valuable links to articles

Guides for millennial men to download

Podcast: The Hustle Sold Separately

Help others launch their online publications and grow them

Image credit: Prsuit

2. @HDFMagazine

@HDFMagazine (hdfmagazine.com) is another online publication account from the Trep Media Group, and it delivers with pure style and design finesse. Similar to @prsuit, it features motivational and inspirational quotes taken straight from the most in-depth interviews of numerous up-and-coming global entrepreneurs featured on the site hdfmagazine.com, as well as from the creators (Matt Gottesman) own personal, business and life experiences.

The account's creators say that their motto is that they dont sell the dream, they document the hustle -- and they sure do. Their entire content fleet embodies people who are on the rise, and their visuals reflect it. Oh yeah, and if you comment on their wall, Gottesman is likely to respond to each and every post. Hows that for engagement?

Online publication that documents the hustle

Features rising star creators / entrepreneurs from international cities such as Hong Kong, Sydney, Montreal, Estonia, Los Angeles, New York City, Washington, D.C., Scottsdale, Argentina, Madrid, etc.

Motivational / inspirational quotes for audiences, promotes self-awareness / individuality

Hustle lifestyle (travel, culture, building companies, music, art, educating oneself)

Podcast: The Hustle Sold Separately

Help others launch their online publications and grow them

Image credit: HDFMagazine

3. @Garyvee

@Garyvee, owned by none other than Gary Vaynerchuk, is raw, upfront and direct. Given that hes a serial entrepreneur as well as an avid investor in companies such as Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Uber, hes got a lot to share about his day-to-day business ventures. His account features everything from marketing and social media insights to behind the scenes clips of his podcast and speaking engagements.

Motivational / inspirational quotes

Short videos

Behind the scenes

Podcast insights from #AskGaryVee

Marketing and social media insights

Speaking engagements

Mingling with other well known entrepreneurs

Image credit: Gary Vee

Related: How to Rock Social Media Like Gary Vaynerchuk

4. @AndyFrisella

@AndyFrisella is as direct as they come. A true entrepreneur whos not afraid to tell people to quit complaining and start doing. Hes not only the CEO of 1st Phorm, a supplements company turned multi-million dollar company, he speaks straight from the struggles he endured on his way to his success. Andys account features video snippets of him talking on his podcast, amply titled THE MFCEO (Ill let you Google it if you dont know the acronym) as well as interacting with other entrepreneurs, fitness folks and everything in between.

1st Phorm CEO / hustler -- supplements company to multi-million dollar company

Video snippets of him talking on his podcast (MFCEO)

Raw motivational quotes and videos about bettering yourself

Demonstrates the hustle and lifestyle

Shows himself interacting with other entrepreneurs and fitness / health people

Keeps it really real and raw / shows pictures of starting at the bottom

Image credit: Andy Frisella

5. @ArvinsWorld

@ArvinsWorld, started by Arvin Lal, founder of Shredz, has a highly engaged army of Instagrammers known as the #ShredzArmy. This man is pure motivation. He shares his thoughts on the journey of building a company that has gone global in less than a few years, as well as snippets of his speaking engagements. I like that Arvin also features behind the scenes footage and stories of him and his colleagues coming up through the hustle.

His own motivational quotes

Snippets of his speaking engagements

Behind the scenes of his Shredz Journey

Stories of him and his friends coming up through the building of his company

Image credit: Arvins World

6. @Crimebydesign

@Crimebydesign rocks culture. The man behind the scenes does an incredible job promoting individualism, remote worldly experiences and artistic thought. CXD represents a true cult following that I feel is inspired by his own definition of what it means to create ones own trend. Not to mention he brings awareness to a lot of other people who are coming up and doing their thing.

Lifestyle / culture of success

Has his own clothing line

Has a cult following

Demonstrates his network / relationships with influential people

Promotes events, promotes people

Quotes that inspire self-awareness, individuality

Creates his own definition of pop culture

Image credit: crime by design

7. @BethennyFrankel

@BethennyFrankel may be a reality television star, but it was her hustle to form Skinny Girl Cocktails that makes her account so good. Shes an entrepreneur through and through, and her Instagram details the work-life balance of an influential female entrepreneur. Bethennys account curates a behind-the-scenes look at the lifestyle of her numerous businesses and brands.

Motivational and inspirational quotes

Founder of SkinnyGirl products (i.e. vodka)

Curates behind-the-scenes lifestyle and her businesses

Features ideas around branding

Female perspective

Image credit: Bethenny Frankel

Everyones entrepreneurial path is different, but something we can all relate to is the fact that the journey can be rough. In a day and age where success is often glamorized and glorified, sometimes its hard to find motivation thats not only relevant, but applicable -- motivation from your peers if you will.

For me, these Instagram accounts are not just about motivation, but its their overall delivery of their content that truly excites me.

@AndyFrisella is very vocal about putting in the work, @prsuit features millennial men who define the journey, @hdfmagazine lays out the hustle of rising stars and thoughts with a killer brand and design, @crimebydesign curates culture, @bethennyfrankel balances her work and play, @arvinsworld demonstrates daily work strategies and lessons while he builds, @garyvee offers commentary on business and life.

These accounts are curating real conversations with their highly engaged audiences, sharing their raw emotions and experiences in the process. They are definitely worth a daily read and theyre a must follow.

Follow Entrepreneur on Instagram for engaging visual stories.

Related:

7 Instagram Accounts That Inspire the Entrepreneurial Journey

Facebook Pays $10,000 to 10-Year-Old Instagram Hacker

Want to Use Instagram to Promote Your Brand? Be Sure to Post Incredible Content.



Copyright 2016 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved
Summer internship season is here and with that not only comes a lot of pressure for students, but also a lot of pressure for companies to hire and train interns and create beneficial internship programs. Its important for these programs to be taken seriously, prioritized, and constantly be redeveloped to make them great experiences for both the students and the employees of the business. Here are eight ways to create a strong internship program for this summer.

If you dont have your summer interns hired, make that a priority in the coming weeks. If you can post your internship, interview candidates, and make your selections by early/mid-May that is going to be ideal. Many companies have already given out their internship offers and have locked in their candidates so you want to get moving on this ASAP.

2. Make sure your posting reflects the position.

Companies typically use the same internship posting for years and years. They never go back to actually read the posting to make sure it reflects the work that the interns are currently responsible for. Make sure that you update your internship listing before each semester so information is accurate. Students are expecting the internship to be what its advertised as. Oftentimes, students complain that their internship isnt what the listing said it would be -- definitely an avoidable problem.

Related: 6 Ways Employers Can Make Unpaid Internships Worthwhile

3. Assign an internship coordinator.

At large companies with HR departments, this isnt an issue. But many small businesses will task a few different junior or entry-level employees with recruiting and hiring the new intern class. Oftentimes the responsibilities are unclear and working with interns is never really established as a priority. The role of internship coordinator shouldnt be an ambiguous title. Determine who is responsible for the intern program and make the description of that role clear. When bringing students into your office, the program needs to be structured and safe for them. Remember, whenever there are students involved, there are parents involved as well.

4. Set specific dates for internship milestones.

Every internship program should have a clear start date, end-date, mid-way evaluation and a final exit interview. These dates should be set on the calendar before the internship starts. Anyone who plans to interact with the interns over the course of the summer should try and attend these evaluation and interview sessions.

5. Create a company process for intern tasks.

How will your company determine what the interns do? If employees want an intern to help them with a specific task, how do they request that? I recommend sending around an email that clearly outlines the process for requesting intern assistance two weeks before the interns start. Employees should outline the tasks they need help with and the learning objectives associated with each task. Interns should be getting a supervised learning experience, they shouldnt just be seen as an extra set of hands.

Related: Getting the Most From Your Interns -- and Giving Back in Return

6. Make sure the intern schedules make sense for business.

At my company, we start work at 8:30 a.m. We dont schedule interns to start their hours until after 10 a.m. We do this on purpose because we know that our team needs a moment in the morning to get organized. If we have interns starting at 8:30 a.m., they will just be sitting around unless they have leftover tasks to work on from previous days. We also make sure that our interns take breaks at 1 p.m. when we go to lunch and wrap up by 4 p.m. -- we do this because we dont want to leave them unsupervised when our team takes lunch. If an interns availability doesnt make sense for your team, Id suggest not hiring them. This will end up being more work for you to cater to their schedule.

7. Create an executive lunch series.

An added value for your program is to create an executive lunch series where once a week your company sponsors an intern lunch (make sure you have budget for this) and you invite executives from different departments to speak to the interns, explain how they got started, and discuss their role within the company. Youll find that this not only benefits the students but also motivates your employees as well. For many organizations, employees enjoy opportunities to mentor interns and younger employees. Schedule this lunch series before the internship begins to ensure you have a speaker who is available every week.

Related: Eight Lessons Learned From Internships

8. Make the program a priority.

There is a major difference in the experience a student gets from a company that makes their internship program a priority and a company that doesnt. The student can easily tell how important the internship program is to a team of employees right away. You must filter the message from the top down that the internship program is a priority. Not only can this program be used to better structure your team and be more efficient in the office but its also an extremely effective recruitment tool. The goal is that in the future you can hire from your intern class instead of having to hire completely new employees that may or may not fit your culture. These interns will already be trained by your team, theyll have an understanding of company processes, and they will be less of a risk than an unknown hire.

Remember that these internships have the ability to impact young people for the rest of their lives. Encourage your team to act as mentors for these students. Ive been in the internship space for seven years now and Ive seen the long tail effect of these programs. Students leave internships more confident and experienced than when they started. The internship experiences they have at your company will enable them to pursue the career path of their dreams.

Related:

8 Ways to Create a Strong Internship Program for the Summer

Don't Wait for Qualified Applicants -- Go Make Some

5 Essential Steps to Land an Internship You'll Love



Copyright 2016 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved
Bismarck's request for a five-year extension to its 15-year Renaissance Zone has been denied by the state Commerce Department, instead allowing for an additional 15 months.

The extension, through Aug. 1, 2017, will allow the upcoming Legislature to define "community support." The city's request for an extension was accompanied by a letter of support by the Bismarck School District. However, Burleigh County voted against providing support for the extension.

The program, geared toward older city commercial districts, offers investors state income tax and local property tax breaks up to five years for improvements made to older buildings and properties.

In a letter dated May 5, State Commerce Commissioner Alan R. Anderson responded to Bismarck Community Development Director Carl Hokenstad's application. Anderson said this was the first time in the state's Renaissance Zone program history that county opposition has been encountered. To date, 58 communities have been approved to participate in 15-year Renaissance Zone programs and six have been granted the five-year extension.

"The Department of Commerce is not granting approval for the five-year extension as the development plan does not contain all of the letters of support necessary," said Anderson, citing that "evidence of community support" must include letters of support from both the county commission and school board.

The Bismarck City Commission in March approved the five-year extension in a 4-1 vote, with Commissioner Steve Marquardt voting no.

All five Burleigh County commissioners voted to deny a letter of support for the five-year extension. The Bismarck School Board split in its vote, but approved a letter of support in a 3-2 vote.

"We hope the city of Bismarck capitalizes on the opportunity to gain insights into proposed zone extension, as well as resident concerns," Anderson wrote.

County Commissioner Kathleen Jones said she could support the short-term extension, but wants the state Commerce Department to take another approach.

"I'm not opposed to the Renaissance Zone, but you've got to look at all programs for the city, including the CORE fund and Vision Fund. They all need a good look at," Jones said. "I realized we need a viable downtown. But when we get off the interstate, who is helping those other people like at Gateway Mall?

"We need a total community effort," Jones said.

Commissioner Josh Askvig said he is hopeful the temporary extension will allow outstanding Renaissance projects, such as the MetroPlains 30-unit apartment building planned for seniors 55 and older, can be completed in time for developers to qualify for the incentive.

"It's an important discussion. Should the county pre-empt economic incentive programs for a city? We'll continue to have that discussion, and, hopefully, the Renaissance Zone will get a five-year extension," Askvig said.
Of course Senator Elizabeth Warren fiercely opposes Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee.

But which Democrat is she for? She has yet to choose between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders  at least not in public.

Her anti-Trump sentiments are loud and clear. After the business mogul sealed the deal on the GOP nomination by winning the Indiana primary Tuesday, she called him out, via social media, as a racist, sexist, xenophobic provocateur.

Im going to fight my heart out to make sure @realDonaldTrumps toxic stew of hatred & insecurity never reaches the White House, read one Warren tweet. What happens next will test the character for all of us  Republican, Democrat, and Independent, read another.

Shes right. Warrens political character is on the line as much as anyones  maybe more. After Warren turned down a national movement to draft her as a presidential candidate, Sanders picked up her progressive cause, and borrowed her rhetoric about a hammered middle class. Now Sanders  a democratic socialist who has never identified as a registered Democrat -- argues that he should represent a party he never wanted to join. After winning Indiana, hes vowing to take the fight to the convention, even though he trails Clinton in pledged delegates as well as in the popular vote.

This is where Warren could make a huge difference  the same kind made by the late Senator Ted Kennedy when he backed Barack Obama in 2008. If Warren backed Clinton now, it would give progressive voters permission to abandon Sanders and support her. Thats what endorsements from Ted and Caroline Kennedy did for Obama. It would also save Clinton from fighting a two-front war against Sanders and Trump.

Two delicate egos are involved: Warrens and Sanders.

If Warren endorses Clinton  as expected  she will want to maximize the impact. Waiting until the convention made sense as long as Clinton had the momentum. But after her loss to Sanders in Indiana, the perception of Clinton as presumptive Democratic nominee once again weakened. Meanwhile the campaign bubble of endless possibility that surrounds Sanders, no matter what the actual math, just got tougher to burst.

Who better than Warren to do it? For the Democrats, shes a rock star who is putting her political magic and fund-raising clout behind the effort to take back the Senate from a Republican majority. With that as her goal, she would never want a Republican  and certainly not Trump  to reclaim the White House. Yet as she tweeted Tuesday night: @realDonaldTrump is now the leader of the @GOP. Its real  he is one step away from the White House.

It will take more than tweets to trip him up. Trumps a proven master of social media, never its victim. Besides, how much do Warrens tweets actually help Clinton? On one hand, she can be blunter than the candidate. On the other, her tweets do more to advance Warren as the true warrior who is brave and principled enough to take on Trump. She had the chance to be that warrior, but she rejected the draft. Now, if she cares about her party and its ability to win in November, she has to pick her surrogate. As she correctly warns, Trump is too close to the White House for comfort.

The longer and more bruising the fight between Clinton and Sanders, the easier it will be for Trump to bludgeon the one left standing.

I know which side Im on . . .  Warren posted on Facebook. It matters when she chooses to let everyone else know exactly which side that is -- the sooner the better.

Joan Vennochi is a Boston Globe columnist.
Settling the state budget for the fiscal year that begins July 1, is going to have to wait for another day.

Thats disappointing, given that the primary purpose of this session of Connecticuts General Assembly was to put a budget in place.

One more midnight deadline has come and gone, despite the pleading earlier this year  most notably in Gov. Dannel P. Malloys State of the State address on Feb. 3.  to get the budget done early, before the fevered hours leading to Wednesdays midnight deadline.

Though they will have to come back, perhaps as soon as next week, to finish the painful process, legislators did manage to put some significant matters in place.

One of them was passage of House Bill 5054, An Act Protecting Victims of Domestic Violence. In cases of alleged domestic violence, police now can seize the weapons of any person named in a temporary restraining order within 24 hours of the orders issuance.

And they passed House Bill 5053, which, in the face of an epidemic of drug overdoses, limits opioid  aka, painkiller  prescriptions to a seven-day supply. A glut of such pills in Connecticut households has led to addiction and rise in heroin use.

This bill also requires emergency first responders in Connecticut to be equipped with naxalone, a drug that when administered in timely fashion, is effective in reversing an overdose.

The legislature also expanded the states medical-marijuana program to let children with neurological problems take liquid forms of the drug, a compassionate step, given that liquid cannabis has been found to help mitigate seizures in children with forms of childhood epilepsy.

Among disappointments was the quiet death of the so-called lockbox system for the states Special Transportation Fund, created in 1984, the year after the collapse of the Mianus River bridge on I-95 in Greenwich. The fund, fed by motor fuels and oil company taxes and a fraction of the states sales tax, was to be dedicated solely to repairing transportation infrastructure.

In fact, it became an irresistible $1.5 billion kitty for dipping into when times grew hard.

If Malloys ambitious  and well-reasoned  project to address Connecticuts economically crippling transportation system is going to succeed, the lockbox is necessary.

As the budget compromise moves forward, proposed cuts to municipal aid remain troublesome on at least two fronts: those cuts will have to be made up with higher local property tax, and anything that adversely affects Connecticuts cities hampers their ability to be the economic engines they should be. Meaningful job growth is not going to happen in Connecticuts suburbs or rural areas.

This session labored in the shadow of Januarys announcement that corporate giant GE was leaving the state after 42 years. Certainly that decision was not a hasty one, and while the high-tech environment of Boston may have been attractive to the companys plans for its future, theres little doubt that the overall unsettled, unpredictable state of Connecticuts financial affairs, entered into the formula.

Legislators need to keep that in mind when they return to finish the budget.
UPDATE: According to the state's attorney, the case against John Noto was dismissed.

STAMFORD  A New York Medical College researcher has been accused of stealing his car from a city impound lot to avoid paying for the tow bill, police said.

John Noto, 25, of Granite Springs, N.Y., turned himself in to Stamford police on Wednesday and was charged with third-degree burglary and sixth degree larceny for not paying the $291 tow bill, police said.

An employee of My Way Towing on Gleason Street reported to police on March 13 a car was stolen from the companys gated lot. The tow operator said a Jeep Grand Cherokee with New York license plates that was towed the day before from Forest Street was missing.

Security video footage showed a man entered the lot through a chained-off area the previous night, unscrewed a bolt holding the gate latch and drove off in the Jeep, police said.

Police traced the license plate to Noto and found the SUV parked in the driveway of his northern Westchester County home.

Noto, a research fellow at New York Medical College, admitted he took the car from the impound lot, his three-page arrest affidavit says.

He agreed to return to Stamford, where he typed and signed a statement admitting running out on his tow bill, police said.

Noto was released Wednesday after posting a $10,000 court appearance bond.
Heidi AnDraya (Jacobs) Borstad passed away unexpectedly in Bismarck, on May 2, 2016, at the age of 32. Mass of Christian burial will be held at 10 a.m. Saturday, May 7, at Church of Saint Anne, Bismarck.

Visitation will be held from 5 to 7 p.m. today at Bismarck Funeral Home, with a vigil service at 7 p.m.

Heidi was born July 19, 1983, to Gregory and Lynette (Tufty) Jacobs in Minneapolis. Heidi was, first and foremost, a beloved wife and mother. She was altruistic and devoted her life to helping others. She graduated from Bismarck High School in 2001. Heidi graduated magna cum laude from Minot State University, on the Bismarck State College campus, with a dual degree in psychology and social work. She worked with the after-school program at the YMCA and AmeriCorps VISTA. She then went on to receive her masters in clinical social work from Florida State University and began work at the Pride Manchester House as a therapist.

She dearly loved the children she worked with and felt great joy working with them and their families. She was the current president of the North Dakota chapter of the National Association of Social Workers and taught social work classes through Minot State University.

Heidi is survived by her husband, Dr. Josh E. Borstad, O.D. and beautiful daughter, Katie Bree Borstad; her parents, Greg and Lynn Jacobs, Monroe, Okla.; her sister, Michelle (Scott) Harmstead and their children, William and John, Bismarck; her brother, Alan (Stephanie) Jacobs, Ithica, N.Y.; her grandparents, Sylvia Jacobs, Bismarck, and Lyle and LaVonne Tufty, Brookings, S.D.; her mother-in-law and father-in-law, Karen and Barry Borstad, Bismarck; her brother-in-law and sister-in-law, Dr. Brett and Dr. Leilani Borstad O.D.s and their daughter and son, Alana and Bjorn, Littleton, Colo.; and her sister-in-law, Biana Borstad.

Heidi was preceded in death by her grandfather, Jerome Jake Jacobs; and pet cats, Skunk and Fuzzee.

In lieu of plants and flowers, memorials are preferred in the form of scholarship donations for her daughter, Katie, at Wells Fargo Bank.
FARGO -- News that Doug Burgum, a Republican running for governor, is holding a fundraiser hosted by Perry Miller, a Democrat, has raised a few eyebrows among political observers, but there's something else unusual about the event.

Burgum has long been one of the most prominent members of the Fargo business community, which has generally championed the Fargo-Moorhead flood diversion. Miller, a former Richland County commissioner, chaired the Richland-Wilkin Joint Powers Authority, which sued to stop the diversion.

"I fully support the diversion," Burgum said, because with the terrain here there's no way to build dikes high enough. "The diversion is an essential part of any kind of long-term flood protection and always has been. Lots of people have studied this for years."

"People holding fundraisers aren't influencing my campaign positions, certainly not something as important as the diversion," he said.

But as passionate as he is about the diversion, he said, he's also passionate about flood protection across the state. "I'm not running for mayor, I'm running for governor."

Among other gubernatorial candidates The Forum spoke with, some took supportive stances on the $2.1 billion project aimed at protecting Fargo, Moorhead and West Fargo. The state share of the project is $450 million.

Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem, the Republican Party's endorsed gubernatorial candidate, said in a statement that the Fargo area is a major economic engine for the state that must be protected. "The state has already committed hundreds of millions of dollars to the project, and funding necessary for permanent flood protection favored by the entire region will be a priority for my administration."

State Rep. Marvin Nelson, D-Rolla, who's also running for governor, said flood control is necessary despite its high cost. He said he would support state funding and even increase funding if necessary as long as the diversion meets all state permitting requirements.

Lawmakers are, however, nervous about how many communities around the state need flood control and how oil revenue has declined, he said.

Other candidates were less supportive.

Paul Sorum, a Bismarck Republican who's also running for governor, said he doesn't believe the diversion will work as advertised and is too costly. He said he instead favors retaining water upstream, an idea earlier considered and dismissed as impractical by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

Sorum, who cited his experience as a design professional -- he is an architect -- said he wouldn't necessarily veto funding that's already been pledged by the state, but would seek a "workable solution."

Marty Riske, a Fargo businessman running for governor on the Libertarian ticket, said in an email: "I would not be in favor of forcing people to lose their properties for water diversion."

While Miller is a Democrat and an outspoken opponent of the diversion, that's not the context of the fundraiser according to Burgum. He said Miller is one of many business leaders around the state holding fundraisers for him and that only shows he has broad support outside of the Republican Party establishment.

Jay Schuler, president of Wahpeton-based Giant Snacks, is co-hosting the fundraiser with Miller Tuesday, May 10, at Miller's home in Wahpeton.
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FARGO -- News that Doug Burgum, a Republican running for governor, is holding a fundraiser hosted by Perry Miller, a Democrat, has raised a few eyebrows among political observers, but there's something else unusual about the event.

Burgum has long been one of the most prominent members of the Fargo business community, which has generally championed the Fargo-Moorhead flood diversion. Miller, a former Richland County commissioner, chaired the Richland-Wilkin Joint Powers Authority, which sued to stop the diversion.

"I fully support the diversion," Burgum said, because with the terrain here there's no way to build dikes high enough. "The diversion is an essential part of any kind of long-term flood protection and always has been. Lots of people have studied this for years."

"People holding fundraisers aren't influencing my campaign positions, certainly not something as important as the diversion," he said.

But as passionate as he is about the diversion, he said, he's also passionate about flood protection all over the state. "I'm not running for mayor, I'm running for governor."

Other gubernatorial candidates took different stances on the $2.1 billion project aimed at protecting Fargo, Moorhead and West Fargo. The state share of the project is $450 million.

Paul Sorum, a Bismarck Republican who's also running for governor, said he doesn't believe the diversion will work as advertised and is too costly. He said he instead favors retaining water upstream, an idea earlier considered and dismissed as impractical by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

Sorum, who cited his experience as a design professional -- he is an architect -- said he wouldn't necessarily veto funding that's already been pledged by the state, but would seek a "workable solution."

State Rep. Marvin Nelson, D-Rolla, who's also running for governor, said flood control is necessary despite its high cost. He said he would support state funding and even increase funding if necessary as long as the diversion meets all state permitting requirements.

Lawmakers are, however, nervous about how many communities around the state need flood control and how oil revenue has declined, he said.

Marty Riske, a Fargo businessman running for governor on the Libertarian ticket, said in an email: "I would not be in favor of forcing people to lose their properties for water diversion."

Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem, the Republican Party's endorsed gubernatorial candidate, did not reply to a request for comment.

While Miller is a Democrat and an outspoken opponent of the diversion, that's not the context of the fundraiser according to Burgum. He said Miller is one of many business leaders around the state holding fundraisers for him and that only shows he has broad support outside of the Republican Party establishment.

Jay Schuler, president of Wahpeton-based Giant Snacks, is co-hosting the fundraiser with Miller.

The fundraiser will be Tuesday, May 10, at Miller's home in Wahpeton.
GRAND FORKS -- Despite teaching a leadership course, interim University of North Dakota President Ed Schafer said he doesn't believe leadership can be taught.

Instead, in a class he led for UND and North Dakota State University students this semester, Schafer tried to lead his pupils to finding the qualities of a leader within themselves.

"It isn't telling them what to do, it's showing them they have the capability to be a leader," he said.

Leadership and Our Food System was taught to about eight UND students and a dozen at NDSU via video teleconference. Schafer also traveled between campuses to teach in person at both.

The former North Dakota governor taught a similar class at NDSU as an adjunct professor during the 2014-15 school year.

It's not common to have a single class offering at both schools, but it's even more rare for a sitting university president to teach it. However, Schafer said he was upfront about wanting to continue teaching when he agreed to be a candidate for interim president.

"I love being with kids," he said. "They're energetic and energizing."

Schafer served as governor from 1992 to 2000 and was the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture under George W. Bush. He said he has been able to use his experience to teach the class, pointing to a visit he made to a New Orleans USDA research lab in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

"I could bring that to bear in the classroom," Schafer said.

North Dakota University System Chancellor Mark Hagerott said the class was a great example of collaboration between universities in the state, something he has pushed for since taking the job last year.

"People were doing it before, but I'm convinced we need to think more along those lines from shared services to courses that might be offered in two different places," he said.

NDSU President Dean Bresciani lectured during one class, but Schafer said collaboration wasn't his primary objective.

"I think the chancellor thought when I first approached the class this is an example of collaboration between the two schools, but I don't' know. I just kind of thought it would be nifty to teach the class in both places," he said.

Schafer was assisted by NDSU professor David Roberts and UND professor and political science Chairman Paul Sum, who said he assisted with the syllabus and other technicalities of instructing.

"Ed Schafer is more than interim university president," Sum said. "Ed Schafer is a former governor. Ed Schafer is a former head of the USDA. He has an illustrious career in business, so for my particular interests, it was a great opportunity."

UND and NDSU also offer a joint history program, according to the universities' websites.

Schafer said he plans to continue teaching leadership classes in the future at NDSU, though he's unsure about the future of the class at UND.

"People want to imitate and follow," he said. "They watch you, hear you and emulate you, so the strongest piece of leadership advice you can give is to lead by example and that's a lot of what this class focused on."
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While ministers have become totally distracted by the European referendum, the UK economy has all but stalled.

And there is, unfortunately, a close connection between these two phenomena. For the Government is not just guilty of taking its eye off the economic ball  a negligence seen at its worst during the steel crisis.

Ministers have actually talked the nations fortunes down, by scaremongering over and over again about the devastating impact on trade, pay and jobs if we vote to leave the EU.

Ministers have actually talked the nations fortunes down, by scaremongering over and over again about the devastating impact on trade, pay and jobs if we vote to leave the EU

No wonder confidence has taken a heavy knock, with businesses and consumers deciding it may be more prudent to defer spending decisions until after June 23.

According to the latest figures, manufacturing has stalled, construction has dipped and the services sector is at its weakest for three years.

Of course, Britain is an open, global economy, which is bound to be affected by events such as the slowdown in China and the collapse in the price of oil.

But when our own Government promotes, for shamelessly propagandist purposes, the claim that Brexit would be an economic catastrophe, and then lines up a range of institutions to endorse Project Fear, the inevitable effect is to engender a sense of nervous uncertainty.

This newspaper does not for one moment concede that Brexit would impoverish the UK. On the contrary, there is good reason to think that regaining the right to run our own affairs would, on balance, be highly beneficial.

If David Cameron and George Osborne now wish to strengthen, not undermine, belief in the economy, they must stop insisting we are on the edge of a precipice.

Doctors must adapt

The Mail welcomes the truce which has broken out between Jeremy Hunt and the junior doctors, with the Health Secretary calling a five-day halt to the imposition of the new contract, and the British Medical Association suspending its programme of strikes.

But this peace may be temporary and Mr Hunt is quite right to stipulate that in the talks which begin on Monday, the main issue has to be weekend working.

Here the BMA must be willing to show flexibility. Like other trade unions, its first instinct is to regard any change to its members working practices as an intolerable affront, and one that can only be mitigated by higher rates of pay.

The Mail welcomes the truce which has broken out between Jeremy Hunt (pictured) and the junior doctors, with the Health Secretary calling a five-day halt to the imposition of the new contract, and the British Medical Association suspending its programme of strikes

So from 1946 to 1948 the BMA fought the creation by Nye Bevan of a National Health Service, and is now fighting its necessary modernisation.

In both cases, the BMA failed to see that times had changed. Patients not only need but expect a seven-day service, as promised by the Conservatives at the last election.

The BMA should now work out how to provide this. It has made its point and must accept that more strikes would only lead to unforgiveable patient suffering.

A crying shame

The grieving father of Nangyalai Dawoodzai, the Afghan translator who killed himself rather than face deportation from the UK, has spoken for the first time about his sons death.

Malik Sayed Agha wept as he branded the British government a disgrace and said it had deserted his son, who served the British loyally and was threatened because of it by the Taliban.

The grieving father of Nangyalai Dawoodzai (right), the Afghan translator who killed himself rather than face deportation from the UK, has spoken for the first time about his sons death

The Red Cross warns that Afghanistan is becoming ever more dangerous.
Prince George and sister Princess Charlotte have Marvin the hamster and Lupo the cocker spaniel  a modest menagerie by royal standards.

In addition to the Queens horses, racing pigeons and dogs, Charles and Anne had a hamster, two rabbits and a pair of lovebirds. HM also had a chameleon given to her by Lord Mountbatten

Gifts to the royals (sent to London Zoo) included an African elephant, two pygmy hippos and a crocodile. The Queens then private secretary, Sir Martin Charteris, kept the latter in his bath until the zoo was ready to accommodate it, says my source.

Prince George and sister Princess Charlotte have Marvin the hamster and Lupo the cocker spaniel  a modest menagerie by royal standards. Gifts to the royals (sent to London Zoo) included an African elephant, two pygmy hippos and a crocodile

Pop tart Miley Cyrus, 23, has a new admirer  the libidinous movie director Woody Allen, 80.

He cast her in his new six-part series for Amazon, enthusing: She is a really talented girl.

Did the old goats glasses steam up when he viewed Mileys trademark, bottom-rotating twerking dance move?

Pop tart Miley Cyrus, 23, has a new admirer  the libidinous movie director Woody Allen, 80. He cast her in his new six-part series for Amazon, enthusing: She is a really talented girl'

Frail-looking ex-president Bill Clinton, 69, campaigning for his wife, Hillary, in Louisville, Kentucky, served food to customers at a local restaurant.

Local radio reports: Bill Clinton came to the hood in Louisville and literally served fried chicken to black people. Which was seen as a racial slur. As was Hillarys remark that she carries hot sauce in her handbag.

Accused of pandering to blacks, she responded: OK, is it working?

Might Clinton v Trump, 2016, be the weirdest election in US history?

Frail-looking ex-president Bill Clinton, 69, campaigning for his wife, Hillary, in Louisville, Kentucky, served food to customers at a local restaurant

Leader of the House Chris Grayling and his Labour shadow Chris Captain Underpants Bryant are feuding again. Bryant describes Donald Trump as Grayling with a hairpiece. Grayling invites Bryant to put principle before career and resign from Jeremy Corbyns front bench. A Bryant win?

Re: Trump, feminist Camille Paglia says he wants to look like his late, Scots-born mother Mary MacLeod Trump, who died aged 88 in 2000.

Having checked photographs, Ms Paglia says: There it was, the puffy blonde bouffant to which Trump pays daily homage in his impudent straw thatch.

Too unkind, surely.

Arts broadcaster and Labour life peer Melvyn Bragg, 76, wants a new likeness of him, by royal portraitist Michael Noakes, and exhibited at the Royal Society of Portrait Painters exhibition at Mall Galleries this week  hanging permanently in the National Portrait Gallery.

Noakes says: Ive put feelers out to the NPG and we both want it to go there permanently.

Lord Bragg, painted in his Garrick Club tie, adds shyly: Given the subject matter, Michael has made a decent job of it. So modest!

Arts broadcaster and Labour life peer Melvyn Bragg, 76, wants a new likeness of him, by royal portraitist Michael Noakes, and exhibited at the Royal Society of Portrait Painters exhibition at Mall Galleries this week  hanging permanently in the National Portrait Gallery

Has the Queen given David Cameron her view about a third runway at Heathrow Airport?

She has a right to consult, advise and warn prime ministers. A Heathrow flight path takes airliners over Windsor Castle, her favourite home.
Brexit buccaneer: Boris Johnson could soon be PM

Boris Johnson has sped out of City Hall on his bicycle for the last time as London Mayor  but he is now heading like a human missile straight towards Downing Street.

Yesterdays election results have a muddled look, but one thing is clear. The winner is not David Cameron or Nigel Farage  and certainly not Jeremy Corbyn. The winner has a mop of blond hair, supports Brexit, and has long believed he is Britains Prime Minister in waiting.

For the past eight years, Boris Johnson has been prevented by the heavy demands of the London mayoralty from launching his challenge for the Tory leadership. Now, he has been released to create maximum havoc  and at a perfect moment.

According to one plausible scenario, Mr Johnson can be in Downing Street as soon as July. For this to happen, Britain must vote to leave the European Union in the referendum on June 23.

In that event (contrary to conventional wisdom at Westminster), David Cameron will have no choice but to resign. This is because his position  in terms of his job being reliant on winning the vote  cannot be compared with Harold Wilsons, who was the prime minister the last time a referendum was held back in 1975.

In the run-up to that poll, Wilson did not play an active part in the campaigning. David Cameron, by contrast, has placed British membership of the European Union at the heart of his governments policy, and he has thrown the entire Conservative Party machine behind the EU membership.

This partisanship means that defeat in the national vote on June 23 would come as a humiliation for the Prime Minister. He could not conceivably remain in office in the wake of such a rebuff from the British people to the central policy of his government. Boris Johnson would be odds-on favourite to be installed within weeks.

It is, of course, rather more likely that Britain will vote to stay in the EU. Even so, Mr Johnson would still have excellent prospects of becoming Prime Minister in this parliament.

That is because of the calamitous mistake, made by David Cameron when  in an unprompted act of stupidity  he announced his intention to step down as premier before the 2020 election.

This means that, following referendum day, Mr Cameron will quickly turn into a lame duck Prime Minister. Though there are other able candidates, including Theresa May and George Osborne, Mr Johnson is in an exceptionally strong position to win.

Crucially, Mr Johnsons eight years as Mayor of London have given him huge credibility when it comes to making a claim for the highest office in the land.

I have often complained about the BBC, and there is a great deal to complain about. Nevertheless, the broadcaster is an ornament in British public life, it is respected throughout the world, and its independence is precious. I can think of nothing worse than allowing any politician of any party to give the BBC orders, which is exactly what is threatened by the Governments gimmicky proposals on the scheduling of popular programmes. From there, it would be a short step to ministers dictating content, and from there it would be an even shorter step to the drab propaganda-filled State television services of dozens of third-rate dictatorships. Later this month  after taking advice from a former investment banker named David Clementi  the Government will propose drastic restrictions on the independence of the BBC through the appointment of key non-executive directors. These proposals must be rejected at all costs if the BBC is to remain a beacon for the world.

I reckon that at least seven current heads of state  including Francois Hollande in France and Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey  are former mayors of major cities.

President Chirac of France was mayor of Paris and Yeltsin (another Boris) mayor of Moscow. London is one of the greatest cities in the world, and provides Mr Johnson with a massive platform.

More important still, yesterdays electoral calamity for the Conservatives in London shows that Boris Johnson is the only current Tory with the charisma to capture independent-minded voters.

London is naturally a Labour city, and two Tory candidates  Steve Norris 12 years ago and now woeful Zac Goldsmith  have tried and failed to become mayor. Only Johnson has succeeded, and succeeded twice. He also has the magnetism to appeal to the great northern cities, where the Tories are still unable to break through.

It is true that Boris is disliked by many Tories. Many of these tend to be the acolytes of his rival, Chancellor George Osborne.

Mr Osborne has been careful to use his position at the Treasury to build up a network of ministerial supporters dependent on his favours. They will do everything they can to block Boris, But I believe that in the end his proven ability to attract voters to the Conservative cause will prove decisive over the Osborne machine.

Of course he has his flaws, as do all politicians. His private life has occasionally been rackety, and he has not always shone in the Commons.

Mr Johnson is far more in tune with the popular mood than Westminster insiders like George Osborne and David Cameron

Yet he is already loved by the Conservative grassroots, and for good reasons. He is far more in tune with the popular mood than Westminster insiders like David Cameron and George Osborne.

He proved this last month when, in an article for the Sun, he challenged President Obamas intervention in British politics on the side of the Remain campaign.

Mr Johnson was condemned by metropolitan political commentators, one or two of whom went to the lengths of announcing that his career was over. Subsequent polls have shown he was right and Westminster opinion was wrong: most voters share his opinion that it was none of the Presidents business.

Mr Johnson now has free time on his hands. Since his return to the Commons as an MP last year, he has been frequently criticised for failing to make an impact. Only rarely have his critics pointed out that he was unable to prove himself in the Commons because of his arduous competing duties as London Mayor.

From next week, he will be able to show his mettle as a future Prime Minister and gather supporters on the back-benches.

The stakes are very high. With Labour in collapse, the successor to David Cameron can grab a very great prize. Not only does the Tory election victory in 2020 look like a near certainty at this stage, but 2025 looks a probable Conservative victory as well.

Whoever succeeds David Cameron can look forward to the likelihood of enjoying an uninterrupted 12 years as British Prime Minister. It is a glittering prospect, and free from the burdens of being Mayor, Boris Johnson now has a favourites chance of attaining it.

Why Id vote for ballots at the weekend

This weeks election was held, as it is conventional, on a Thursday. As will be the referendum next month.

For millions of schoolchildren this is an apparent blessing, because so many of our schools are used as polling centres and closed for business for the day.

Isnt it time that we developed a more practical alternative?

I believe there is no good reason why general elections should not be held over the weekend, when they would cause far less disruption to ordinary life and make it far easier for voters to get to the polling centres.

Since the advent of fixed-term parliaments, all elections in the UK fall during school term time. They force thousands of parents to find an extra days childcare. This is an unfair and unnecessary cost of British democracy. It is not even as if the tradition of Thursday elections goes back very far. They were brought in during the Thirties.

Thursdays were chosen because Fridays were then regarded as quiet trading days in the City, so the risk of market disruption in the event of a surprise result was less.

Such considerations no longer apply. Next time, lets vote for common sense.

George ducks the flak

It's six weeks since George Osborne attempted to gain extra glory by using his annual budget statement to announce that all schools should be made into academies.

Now the policy is in disarray and it is Nicky Morgan, the Education Secretary, who gets the blame.
In this age of social media it is all too easy to broadcast acts of unwitting stupidity to thousands of friends and followers.

From misspellings and autocorrect typos that would give Freud food for thought, to geographical errors and irony ignorance, digital media provides us with instantly published dull-wittedness.

Facebook is supposed to be a platform to communicate with friends, but judging from the number of embarrassing slip-ups shared across the internet, friendship is no protection if you commit a status sin.

Star pupil? Matthew's mistake, above, has been shared widely across the internet

Oh Jesus...this mum was baffled when her complaints about her son elicited a pious response

Oops: Thomas probably shouldn't have been so sure of himself on his Facebook status

As Bored Panda points out users ought to beware the perils of posting comments maligning others' stupidity, however.

A man known only as Matthew was left red-faced when he judged his teacher harshly, writing: 'My teacher is so dumb. He thought the sun was a star.'

His friend Allie replied: 'Umm that's because it is'

But even in the face of blatant correction, Matthew continued, insisting: 'No it's not. A sun is a sun, and a star is a star. Saying that a sun is a star is the same as saying a tomato is a fruit. That's right, it's not true.'

Don't assume you understand what your friends are on about.

In response to the status 'Long dayJesus makes things so hard on me' one well-meaning friend replied: 'Doesn't he?? But it's for the best, just keep him in your heart and keep praying gurlit will get better. Jesus works in mysterious ways'

Who says kids these days don't know how to do their own research?

From misspellings and autocorrect typos that would give Freud food for thought, to geographical errors and irony ignorance, digital media provides us with instantly published dull-wittedness

Marilyn Monroe: an icon for the Facebook generation

To which the response came: 'Jesus is my 14 year old son, he was suspended from school for punching a janitor again.'

Another top tip: avoid boasting about yourself, you never know who is going to respond. Something Thomas might have considered before he posted: 'Thomas... hears that they say I'm sexy now.'

But his disgruntled ex Jade replied: 'Wow. I see you're still full of yourself asshole.'

Not to be put off, Thomas replied: 'Really!? Pardon me if I'm wrongbut haven't I been inside you?'

To which the response from Jade came: 'Congratulations! We hooked up three years ago. You were a dick then and you're a dick now.'

And then there are the posts that put the Y in irony, such as:

'Anyone help me find articles on Generation Y, or just how our generation is lazy, that are empirical research studies!'

Sink or swim? This person was surprised to find out that Canadians believe the Titanic actually sunk

#LMOA - a valid question? This person seemed baffled that there was a use for hashtags before Twitter

The perils of virtual life - being sent a Farmville gift in return to cheating on your with your girlfriend might not cut it

A match made on Facebook? Seems a valid question if she's not actually his girlfriend

The old gaffes (dating way back to the Noughties) are still the best. This one did the rounds in 2010 and was advertised on hacker forums as 'the easiest way to get Facebook passwords ever'.

'Weird discovery of the day. If you type a word in Facebook (in a comment, status, etc.) that happens to be the same as your password, after you click 'Share', Facebook automatically converts it to asterisks to protect your security. Allow me to demonstrate. My password is *********'

And then there are the anachronistic posts, that assume technology like Facebook has been with us for rather longer than 12 years.

'You know you love someone when you save their texts and re-read them when no one is watching  Marilyn Monroe

I so do this ;D'

Who needs enemies when Donald Trump has friends like these?

Conspiracy theorists can be found in many unexpected corners of Facebook

'A simple mistake'. But it seems this person isn't alone in thinking Alaska is an island

Shopping fiasco: This poster tried to cover up their ignorance with a classic, 'I know but still'

The Greek physician Hippocrates is the subject of plenty of digital ire

Do you think someone tried to explain the answer to this person's not-so-clever question?

Some of the best examples of Facebook fails are the ones where language is no barrier to self-expression. Or woeful attempts at it, such as:

'U guys are f***ing gays those are all the people who dislike him in those country's (sic) if u stop being a whiny b**** about Donald Trump and what social media says about him and look in the polls u would be surprised and like wtf ur gunna (sic) die if he become president smh'

'A prime example of a failing education systemyou'

Then there are the challengers of modern science:

'99.9% of pictures that Nasa releases of space is fake and is CGI created. Hence which is why I believe earth isn't a globe.'

'Just when ya think you've found the dumbest person on the Internet.ppl like Edward keep ya looking.'

Failures of geography are common:

'Did anyone else use to think Alaska was an island? Totally argued with someone for an hour about it. Thank you, map of the US for making me feel dumb af! (sic)'

Food poisoning is the least of Alexander's worries...

Google probably think this is an excellent sign

Testing positive: pregnancy announcements are common on Facebook, but normally the dad knows first

Autocorrect strikes again, we hope

You say elevator, I say escalator

'Waitits not?'

'NOPE. Just found that out. But it's a simple mistake. Like, the map for real shows it ALL by itself. Not connected to anything.'

Then there are the signs that a person has never functioned without the help of their smartphone.

'How did people no (sic) what roads to take before Google maps was made?'

'They used maps'

'Wat?? (sic) No I said before Google maps.'

Grandparents on Facebook are priceless - especially this one's cute request for photos

This drama student obviously missed out on a few English lessons

Caulk is a sealant made from silicon used to plug drafts and gaps in the home

Average intelligence is required to navigate social media without pitfall

This homophobic person seemed to get their pain-coloured knickers in a twist for no reason

Happy birthday to mummy's big boy - although she can't be with him for important reasons

Dragons at the gate for Facebook as it gets the date of St. George's day wrong

'Memory foam in a cock' is one way to make your shoes more comfortable
Hotel staff seemed only too glad to satisfy his hilarious demands

Requests include asking for picture of dog dressed as boat captain

A travelling businessman amuses himself by making diva-like requests while he is away for work - and incredibly staff cater to his bizarre whims.

Jnut731 posted a series of images capturing his funny stunts on Imgur, writing: 'Ridiculous and hilarious hotel requests, fulfilled. One way my friend entertains himself while travelling on business.'

These include asking staff for a fortress made of pillows and to draw a picture of him from their imagination.

A travelling businessman makes hilarious requests while staying in hotels to amuse himself - and staff cater to his bizarre whims. A friend posted the results on Imgur

Jnut731 posted on Imgur: 'Ridiculous and hilarious hotel requests, fulfilled. One way my friend entertains himself while travelling on business,' showing images of the strange requests

The businessman, believed to be from the US, fills in the form for 'additional requests' from hotels - coming up with bizarre and ingenious ways to ask for an added extra during his stay.

In one, he wrote: 'Please provide a picture of a dog dressed as a boat captain and place on my bed, thank you.'

The hotel certainly delivered and on his bed was a picture of a small Dachshund in a captain's outfit and sunglasses.

For another request, he asked the staff to use a little imagination.

The businessman asked for a picture of himself with the staff imagining what he looked like

The hotel staff delivered and not only drew a picture of the businessman - they framed it too

The businessman asked for two pictures of US actors to be placed on his bed in another inventive request

The hotel placed a black and white picture of the Fresh Prince actor Alfonso opposite a picture of Baywatch actor Jeremy Jackson

He wrote: 'If you could please draw a picture of what you think I would look like and place on my bed I would appreciate it.'

And the staff went above and beyond, not only drawing the picture of the man with a sweeping fringe, designer stubble and very long eyelashes, but also framing their work.

In another inventive request, the businessman asked for 'a picture of Alfonso Ribeiro and Jeremy Jackson, placed on the bed like they're looking at each other'.

And the hotel came through, placing a black and white picture of the Fresh Prince actor Alfonso opposite an image of Baywatch star Jeremy Jackson.

For another silly request, the businessman asked for a 'fort out of pillows' to be built on his bed.

In another unusual request, the businessman asked for a 'fort out of pillows' to be built on his bed

He also asked for a picture of Grandma Windslow from the US sitcom Family Matters. Again, hotel staff gladly complied and left the print out on his bed

He also raided the depths of his imagination to ask for a printed out picture of Grandma Windslow from US sitcom Family Matters.

Sure enough the image was waiting on his bed for his return.

The post prompted other people to share the unusual requests they have made while staying at hotels.

One Imgur user said he asked for three single red M&Ms on the counter and a 'picture of bacon set on the bed' when booking a hotel room.

He said he had completely forgotten about it a month later, but to his delight staff had carried out his requests perfectly.

One user posted on Imgur a screenshot of the very specific request he had made when booking a room

He said he completely forgot about it a month later, but he and his girlfriend were delighted to find the M&Ms and a framed bacon photograph waiting for him

And the bored businessman isn't the only guest making bizarre demands. A Nicolas Cage fan made numerous requests for pictures of the actor to be placed around their hotel room during their stay.

Firstly, a framed picture of the Hollywood star in the action film Con Air was left on their bed by staff, along with a Post-It note reading 'Sweet dreams'.

The guest then asked for a picture of Nicolas Cage in Moonstruck to be taped to the bathroom mirror.

Unfortunately, staff were a bit slow in carrying out this request - and forgot to give them bath towels - but both arrived later with an apology note.

A Nicolas Cage fan made numerous requests for pictures of the actor to be placed around their hotel room

Firstly, a framed picture of the Hollywood star in the action film Con Air was placed on their bed

Finally, they requested a picture of the actor in the thriller 8mm to be placed next to the television and staff were only too happy to fulfil their whims.

Recounting their experience from the other side, a hotel worker revealed they had been asked for a framed picture of Sterling Archer, from the American animated comedy series, beside their bed.

And another guest asked for a framed picture of actor Christopher Walken.

Then the hotel guest asked for a picture of Nicolas Cage in Moonstruck to be taped to their bathroom mirror

Unfortunately, staff were a bit slow in carrying out their request - and forgot to give them bath towels

But thankfully both arrived later with an apology note - apparently signed by the actor himself

Finally, they requested a picture of the actor in the thriller 8mm to be placed next to the television. Again, staff were only too glad to satisfy their guest

Once again the hotel staff showed that they too had a sense of humour and complied with the requests.

Another hotel guest at a Novotel hotel in Wolverhampton asked for a picture of a T-Rex, which was gladly produced by staff.

Meanwhile, one fussy guest asked for one of the beds in their room to be made up facing backwards, with the pillows at the feet.

Ever the professionals, housekeeping complied to the instructions perfectly.

One hotel worker said they had been asked for a framed picture of Sterling Archer, from the American animated comedy series, saying 'Welcome to the Danger Zone' to be put beside their bed

Once again the hotel staff showed that they too had a sense of humour and complied with the unusual request

Another guest asked for a framed picture of actor Christopher Walken, which was there when they arrived

A hotel guest at Novotel in Wolverhampton asked for a picture of a T-Rex, which was gladly produced by staff
Just when you think the modern gender debate can't descend any further into toe-curling incredulity, something else emerges to surprise you.

So you can imagine my delight when I read yesterday's article in FEMAIL about the 'agony' of women having to consider their children's fathers as equal parents.

No doubt struggling to be heard over the swell of sympathy violins, three mothers all bemoaned the inconvenience of 50/50 access, implying that dads should be neither seen, nor heard - except when coughing up child support, of course.

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While some women are unhappy with having to give 50/50 access to their exes, others welcome the opportunity to give their children equal time with both parents

One summed it up when she said: 'I know the girls have to see their dad, but at the end of the day I'm a mother who has to somehow learn to stop being a mother for half of my life.

'I'm not sure I can ever come to terms with that. I don't know many mothers who could.'

My response? BOO-HOO. Not just because their grievances were focused on themselves, rather than their own kids, but 'cos men have been dealing with this crap for decades without any sympathy from the sisterhood.

Given that a child is produced by BOTH parents, meaning they are never just 'hers' - only 'theirs' - these mothers have no right to assume such entitlement.

Moreover, 50/50 access is basic equality. If these women don't like it they should either A) not have children or B) only get pregnant with a willing sperm donor who has already relinquished his human rights in advance.

That may sound gauche, but it's true. Besides, men have long suffered parental alienation at the hands of vindictive exes who become 'pawn' stars when separation strikes - using their children as a weapon to enact revenge for a broken heart.

Now, they're getting a taste of their own medicine and they don't like it.

Peter Lloyd was incensed by yesterday's article which detailed the 'agony' of modern women who share their children equally with ex-partners

It's not just ordinary people who are affected. In recent weeks alone we've seen Madonna embroiled in an ugly family spat, while Kate Winslet also got into hot water for dissing equal dad involvement.

So, for all their declarations of girl power, it's a bit rich that they're moaning now.

When I wrote about this hypocrisy in my book, Stand by Your Manhood, I met countless fathers who were suicidal because of such behaviour, including James Blunt's brother-in-law, Fathers4Justice campaigner Guy Harrison.

When the relationship with his first daughter's mother soured, he gave her more than 125,000 in child maintenance but still wasn't allowed any access to his little girl, Isabella.

To this day he hasn't seen her for 15 long years, despite spending an extra 50,000 on 38 court appearances, all of which were pointless because judges will not jail mothers who flout formal access orders. He became so depressed that he had a shotgun in his mouth - and very nearly pulled the trigger.

Peter Lloyd says that men have long suffered from minimal access to their children and it's hypocriticial for mothers to refuse to share access to their kids equally

Sadly, this is the rule - not the exception, with fathers frequently left so desperate they resort to scaling buildings in protest.

So how on earth can these women be so selfish to think this behaviour is acceptable? Let me tell you: the answer is modern feminism.

Since feminism became the social and political status quo, it has done nothing to tackle the countless big issues faced by today's men

Yep, what was once about basic equality of opportunity is now (and I quote yesterday's article) pre-occupied with the 'upper hand'.

Together, their approach is shamelessly Orwellian: 'everybody's equal, but some people are more equal than others'.

Don't believe me? Look at the facts. 100 years ago, while women who were campaigning for the vote, large numbers of working class men couldn't vote either - but the suffragettes only campaigned for women's emancipation. Sadly, since then little has changed.

In the 50 years that feminism has become the social and political status quo, it has done nothing to tackle the countless big issues faced by today's men - the soaring life expectancy gap fuelled by unequal NHS spending, the school system failing boys, the criminal sentencing gap, paternity fraud, circumcision, unfair divorce rulings, female-on-male domestic violence and false rape allegations.

Seriously, us blokes must be the worst oppressors in history.

But, because feminism teaches women they're perennial victims and deserve whatever they desire, the bare-faced cheek of being selfish with a child's parental relationship seems utterly acceptable.

He insists men who support this form of feminism - rather than true gender parity - are 'turkeys voting for Christmas'

When you add to this the fact that family breakdown annually costs us 44billion - yep, more than the defence budget - it's complete madness. Which is precisely why these women need a wake-up call. Because, until their spoilt-brat belief system changes, there will be countless more unhappy children who suffer as a consequence.

'The idea of equality seems to have come as a shock to some mothers,' says Matt O'Connor, who founded Fathers4Justice in 2001 and, 15 years on, is still battling to get equal parenting for both parents enshrined in law.

'Like pregnancy, you can't have a little bit of equality. You either have it, or you don't.

'There are four million UK children living in fatherless homes. In some inner cities up to 80 per cent of families have no dad. According to our own figures we estimate that 200 children lose contact with their dads every day in secret courts.

'The agony of mums who surrender time for children to see their own dads is insignificant to the the living bereavement that estranged fathers go through.

'For most dads, 50/50 parenting is a distant dream as they live the nightmare of being separated from children they love and desperately miss. Just imagine the pain of waiting every two weeks just to see your child for a single night? And just imagine if the roles were reversed, the outcry there would be if mothers were treated the same way as fathers?

For most dads, 50/50 parenting is a distant dream as they live the nightmare of being separated from children they love and desperately miss

'Women can't have it both ways. If they believe in equality and responsible parenting, they have to support shared parenting'.

Sadly, this also means that well-meaning men who support the Women's Equality Party's Sophie Walker in London's mayoral race are turkeys voting for Christmas.

And, if they tolerate it, their children will be next.

As maddening as it was, yesterday's article was a stark wake-up call for anyone who thinks feminism is truly about gender equity.

Until it evolves into something that also sets men free, it is just trade unionism for women.
A woman who suffered shocking swelling of the lips after using a CoverGirl lipstick has taken to social media to warn others about possible allergic reactions.

Lily Cleopatra Maurice of Orlando, Florida, recently went to Walmart and picked up a lipstick from the CoverGirl Queen Collection. But after applying it one day and later going to sleep, Lily woke up the next morning in incredible discomfort.

'Please be aware of the queen collection CoverGirl lipstick,' Lily later wrote on Facebook. 'Purchased [lipstick] this week woke up choking with huge swollen lips. I had to be rushed to the ER! Could've died in my sleep.'

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A new look: Lily Cleopatra Maurice of Orlando, Florida, claims that lipstick she bought from the CoverGirl Queen collection caused her lower lip to swell so large that she work up choking

Painful: Lily claims in her post that her doctors informed her that the reaction 'could've been fatal'

Along with her panicked post, Lily included a series of photos showing herself looking into the camera distressed in a hospital bed and showing off a terribly swollen bottom lip.

Looking at the images it seems that it was only Lily's bottom lip that was largely affected, and she also posed in one image alongside the offending lipstick she claims caused her lip to swell.

'Pls be careful with the harmful products in lipsticks, [sic]' she added in her post, replying to one user in the comments that the doctor told her 'it could've been fatal' if she had been a heavier sleeper.

Since being posted on Saturday, Lily's post and photos has been shared more than 56,000 times.

Sending a message: After her ordeal, Lily took to Facebook to warn others about the importance of researching cosmetic products

Far and wide: Since posting her story online on Saturday, Lily's words and images have been shared more than 56,000 times

Clearing it up: In light of the incident, CoverGirl responded saying that they 'conduct extensive testing on all our products to ensure they're safe and effective'

While it's not clear exactly how or if the lipstick definitely caused her situation, the company that produced the lipstick have stood by their product.

'As soon as we learned of this woman's experience, which would certainly not be expected from lipstick use, we reached out to her to learn more about what happened and see how we could help,' said CoverGirl Communications' Laura Brinker said.

'We are glad to hear she is okay and are awaiting her response. At CoverGirl, the safety of people who use our brand is our top priority. We conduct extensive testing on all our products to ensure they're safe and effective.'

Experts appear to agree that, based on their ingredients, the lipsticks should, in fact, be safe.

Another opinion: Cosmetic chemist Randy Schueller told Refinery29 that nothing in the list of ingredients in the lipstick stood out as out of the ordinary

Kind words: In a message to her supporters, Lily wrote that the swelling has since gone down, but encourages others to watch out for harmful ingredients in products

'There is nothing in the ingredient list that jumps out as an unusual ingredient for a lipstick.' cosmetic chemist Randy Schueller told Refinery29. 'CoverGirl is a major brand and I'm sure they vet all their raw materials appropriately.'

However, he does note that some fragrances in products can be an allergen for a very small number of people, but added that this is likely not to be the case with most customers.

After experiencing a huge influx of comments on her story and people reaching out in support of her predicament, Lily posted on Facebook thanking people 'for caring enough about us women and sharing this awful experience of mine so no one else has to endure what I had to'.
She said she the outing 'took three cars but we did it!!'

A mother who gave birth to quintuplets has shared the first adorable picture of all five babies lined up in their car capsules.

Kim Tucci, 26, and her husband Vaughn, both from Perth, welcomed the five new babies to their growing brood in January - a son, Keith, and four daughters - Ali, Penelope, Tiffany and Beatrix.

The children were preparing to head off to a medical appointment, with Ms Tucci revealing it took a huge effort to get them there.

'It took three cars but we did it!!'

Precious cargo: The children were preparing to head off to a medical appointment, with Ms Tucci revealing it was a huge effort to get them there

Life with five babies is still taking some getting used to with Kim emotional about leaving the house with her tiny family.

'I'm still overwhelmed by all the capsules lined up holding the precious cargo I call my babies.'

The logistical challenges the family face on a daily basis have been taking their toll on the young mother, with Ms Tucci telling Channel Nine's 60 Minutes she sometimes 'locks herself in the bathroom and cries on the floor' as she adapts to life with seven children all under five years of age.

The couple change 350 dirty nappies a week and feed each infant eight times a day and although are 'overwhelmed' by the momentous job, they are the 'happiest they have ever been in their life'.

'No-one thought I could do it, and I did, I showed everyone in my life. So, I think it's the first time that I've actually been proud of myself,' Ms Tucci told the current affairs show.

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Kim Tucci, 26, and her husband Vaughn, both from Perth, welcomed the five new babies to their growing brood in January

The couple change 350 dirty nappies a week and feed each infant eight times a day

Ms Tucci, who already had two young daughters with her husband Vaughn, fell naturally pregnant with quintuplets while trying for a boy.

The chance all babies would survive and be healthy was incredibly low.

But over a gruelling 27 weeks, Ms Tucci's body grew to accommodate each infant - each weighing more than a kilogram by the time she gave birth.

Her obstetrician, Professor Jan Dickinson, managed to deliver each healthy baby in under two minutes and said Ms Tucci had a 'super womb'.

The quintuplets were rushed to intensive care and were monitored for 24 hours a day for six weeks until they grew strong enough to return home.

Mr Tucci said that time was the hardest part of the entire ordeal.

'We went through everything. Seeing them in their incubators you know and having trouble to breathe it's scary,' he said.

'To hear 'em cry, it's great, you know? because you know they're alive'.

The couple get daily help from family and volunteers to care for the quintuplets and use feeding changing and sleeping charts to monitor each infant.

'You just gotta do it. We haven't got a choice,' Ms Tucci said.

'No-one thought I could do it, and I did, I showed everyone in my life. So, I think it's the first time that I've actually been proud of myself,' Ms Tucci said

Ms Tucci, who already had two young daughters with her husband Vaughn, fell naturally pregnant with quintuplets while trying for a boy.

Her obstetrician, Professor Jan Dickinson, managed to deliver each healthy baby in under two minutes and said Ms Tucci had a 'super womb'

Ms Tucci, who has a nine-year-old son from a previous marriage and two daughters with her husband Vaughn, fell naturally pregnant with the quintuplets (pictured) while trying for a boy

Kim Tucci, 26, and her husband Vaughn, both from Perth, welcomed the five new children to their growing brood in January - a son, Keith, and four daughters - Ali, Penelope, Tiffany and Beatrix.

The expecting mother wrote about her struggles with back pain, 12 bathroom trips a night and consuming the recommended 6,000 calories a day to feed her five babies

During her pregnancy, Ms Tucci wrote about her intense struggles with back pain, 12 bathroom trips a night and consuming the recommended 6,000 calories a day to feed her five babies.

'I'm struggling to eat and force feed myself leaving me with reflux for hours,' she wrote on her blog Surprised With Five.

'I can't tolerate a lot of dairy and I can't keep protein drinks down, I'm starting to lose weight when I really need to be gaining it.'

Her online posts about dealing with pain, nausea, changes to her body and going to the bathroom 12 times a night, amassed a following of more than 123,000 people  most of them mums who share their own personal stories.

The quintuplets were rushed to intensive care and were monitored for 24 hours a day for six weeks until they grew strong enough to return home

'I literally felt like my body was shutting down,' Ms Tucci told the program

A mother who gave birth to quintuplets says at times she 'locks herself in the bathroom and cries on the floor'

The chance all babies would survive and be healthy was incredibly low.

Speaking to Channel Nine's 60 Minutes, Ms Tucci said she was not at all prepared for how 'full on' the experience would be and her fears after giving birth at just 30 weeks

When she asked to use another sonogram machine so she could have a clearer view of the babies, her world was turned upside-down when the doctor found five separate heart beats

'It's getting harder as each day passes to push through the pain, every part of my body aches and sleeping is becoming very painful,' she said.

'No amount of pillows are helping support my back and belly. Sometime I get so upset that I just want to throw my hands up and give in!'

'I have a lot of stretch marks now, dealing with such a huge change in my body is hard. My husband always reminds me I should wear my stripes with pride and that I should be proud of them and what my body has achieved.'

At 24 weeks along, photographer Erin Elizabeth took photos of the expecting mum to commemorate her journey.

The images became a hit on Mrs Tucci's website and Ms Elizabeth's social media.

Mrs Tucci and her husband began trying for their third and final child together last year with the hope of having a son to complete their family

Mrs Tucci was admitted to the hospital on a few occasions for minor issues but all five of the children were born healthy

'I have a lot of stretch marks now, dealing with such a huge change in my body is hard. My husband always reminds me I should wear my stripes with pride and that I should be proud of them and what my body has achieved'

The expecting mother wrote about her struggles with back pain, 12 bathroom trips a night and consuming the recommended 6,000 calories a day to feed her five babies
This Morning viewers admitted it was uncomfortable viewing watching Britain's bendiest woman perform on today's show.

Claudia Hughes, 22, from London, who is 5ft 4ins and weighs seven stone, has hypermobile joints allowing her to bend her spine back and contort her body into eye-watering positions.

She is thought to be the only person in the country who can perform 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.

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Contortionist Claudia Hughes appeared on today's This Morning to show off her unique moves

Eamonn squirmed as he watched her performance saying it brought back memories of his recent hip op

Eamonn and Ruth Langsford gasped as they watch Claudia and asked if she was in pain

Eamonn Holmes, who has only recently returned to the This Morning sofa after hip surgery, said watching Claudia perform brought back painful memories of his ordeal.

Along with his wife Ruth Langsford, the 56-year-old squirmed with discomfort as she demonstrated some of her incredible moves.

Watching her in action today as she bent back on the floor to pull her head between her legs, Eamonn exclaimed: 'Oh deary me, this is bringing the pain of my operation back.'

He then joked 'did I just hear something snap?' and asked Claudia 'are you in pain?'

Ruth, 56, was equally amazed by Claudia's flexibility saying: 'Oh my goodness, that is amazing.'

Claudia said she wasn't in any pain as she assumed her unusual position saying: 'It is quite relaxing.'

But viewers watching at home found it uncomfortable viewing, just like the presenters.

Sandra Brown tweeted the show to say: 'Please stop! I'm two weeks post op from spinal surgery. You're making me cringe.'

Jess agreed writing 'My back hurts' while Joanne Harvey Tweeted 'that is not normal!'

Claire admitted Claudia was 'making me feel sick!' and Marie Robinson questioned her health Tweeting: 'Just because she can do it, doesn't mean she should. The word that springs to my mind is arthritis.'

This Morning fans found Claudia's performance uncomfortable viewing and Tweeted the show with their views

As previously reported in MailOnline, Claudia has broken records for her abilities which include being able to fold herself into a small wheelie suitcase.

She is so bendy she can do the washing up with her feet flipped over her head while balancing on her arms.

Of the dangerous gravity-defying stunt the Marinelli bend she can perform - which got its name from contortionist and international theatrical agent H. B. Marinelli - she 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.'

Claudia reveals she was teased as a child because of her 'weird flexibility', an attribute which is now making her a star.

Claudia is one of a few people in the world who can perform the gravity-defying stunt the Marinelli bend, demonstrated here

The move involves an inverted backbend, where she supports her whole bodyweight with her mouth by biting onto a leather strap attached to a pole which she then spins round

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.

Now, as well as performing all over the world, she also carries out household chores such as putting away the pots and pans, in eye-watering positions to maintain her impressive flexibility.

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.

Claudia has been honing her skills since she was eight and started dance classes with her sister

She even does the washing up with her feet to maintain her flexibility

Her 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 of discovering her talent at dance classes at a young age: 'During warm up I started doing flexes and stretches I thought were normal but even my dance instructor was shocked!'

It turned out she has hypermobile joints.

'This 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,' she said.

She decided to turn her unique talent into a career by enrolling at Circus Space to get her Bachelor of Arts in Circus Work with a major in Contortion.

Claudia attended Circus Space to get her Bachelor of Arts in Circus Work with a major in Contortion

The 22-year-old has hypermobile joints that allow her to get into positions most people can't

She has made a career out of her unusual body and performs around the world

Claudia said she finds her eye-watering moves 'relaxing' like yoga and is not in pain

Her retired Mongolian teacher helped her to achieve a first class honours and win the prestigious Jane Rice-Bowen Award.

Now she performs all over the UK at parties, conventions, schools, nightclubs as well as modelling for promotional artwork.
We ask a celebrity a set of devilishly probing questions  and only accept THE definitive answer. This week it's TV presenter Carol Vorderman...

The biggest regret you wish you could amend

Not living my childhood dream to be a pilot. The RAF rejected me as a teenager because they didnt accept women in that role then, but I got my pilots licence two years ago. Flying is amazing and makes me feel complete.

Carol Vorderman is now living her dream to be a pilot at the age of 55

The temptation you wish you could resist

Drinking the third bottle of champagne! Two bottles between two is great, but the third gives you a hangover.

The book that holds an everlasting resonance

I'm not really into novels, but I love poetry. I enjoy Shakespeares sonnets and the works of Carol Ann Duffy and Roger McGough.

The piece of wisdom you would pass on to a child

Just focus on doing what you want to do to the best of your ability.

The unending quest that drives you on

To keep on moving forward. The scariest word to me is 'forever'!

Carol got her pilot's licence two years ago after being rejected as a teen because she was a woman

The prized possession you value above all others

My teddy bear Bungee. My parents split up when I was three weeks old and my mum Jean brought up my siblings and me alone. Bungee was my first ever present, for my fourth birthday. Mum got him on sale from Woolworths because he only had one ear and he still has pride of place on my bed.

The priority activity if you were the Invisible Woman for a day

I'd sit in the cockpit of a Harrier jump jet as it flew over the deserts of America. That plane's vertical take-offs and landings are awesome.

The film you can watch time and time again

The Sound Of Music makes me cry every time.

The unlikely interest that engages your curiosity

I love to walk round a city and learn its history.

The pet hate that makes your hackles rise...

My mum being messy. She's 88 now and we've always lived together, but were like chalk and cheese when it comes to tidiness.

The person who has influenced you most

Donald Green, who was my director of studies at Cambridge. He offered me a place to study engineering when I was 16 and was an amazing teacher  he's in his 80s now and we're still in touch.

The figure from history for whom you'd most like to buy a pie and a pint

Mildred Bruce, the first woman to fly solo around the world in 1930. I have my own plane now and named it Mildred.

The treasured item you lost and wish you could have again

My sight started to go when I was 46. I'm 55 now and it'd be nice to have 20-20 vision again.

The presenter now intends to fly solo around the world, taking off in July

The poem that touches your soul

An untitled poem about the freedom of flying by the Australian poet Erin Hanson. It gets to the heart of my approach to life  that you must feel free to go for it, whatever you're doing.

The misapprehension about yourself you wish you could erase

That because I'm good at maths I'm dull. I'm a party animal and love the carnage of a big night. I have friends who get complaints from their neighbours when I'm staying!

The event that altered the course of your life and character

When my mum faked a letter from me in 1982 and sent it to the producer of a new programme called Countdown she'd read about in The Yorkshire Post. I was working for a cold storage company, but I got the job and it changed everything.

The crime you would commit knowing you could get away with it...

I'd steal the contents of Bollinger's cellars in France and throw a huge champagne party.

The song that means most to you

Dolly Parton's Coat Of Many Colours, about a poor girl whose mother makes her a coat out of rags. Its so touching.

Getting a job on Countdown changed her life and she still misses the late Richard Whiteley

The way you would spend your fantasy 24 hours, with no travel restrictions...

I'd start with bacon and scrambled eggs by the beach at San Diego in California. After that, I'd have coffee with my friend Gok Wan in Sydney Harbour. I'd meet my kids  Katie, 24, and Cameron, 19  to go snorkelling on the Great Barrier Reef to see the giant clams, then have a barbecue. I'd spend the afternoon in Hong Kong soaking up the buzz, before going to Washington DC for cocktails and burgers with my astronaut friends. We'd watch a rocket launch at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. I've seen four and they're so exciting.

The happiest moment you will cherish forever

Doing my first qualified solo flight, from Gloucester to Cambridge, two years ago. It was beyond my dreams that I could do that.

The saddest time that shook your world

When my Countdown co-host Richard Whiteley died suddenly after a heart operation in 2005 I was struck down with grief. He was very special. We used to have long lunches together  once we began at 11am and were thrown out of the restaurant at 3am!

The unfulfilled ambition that continues to haunt you

To fly solo around the world. I plan to take off in July and fly 28,000 miles. But I'll probably have a new ambition soon after that.

The philosophy that underpins your life

Never waste a day. If I have a bad one, I wring something good out of it.

The order of service at your funeral

I want Queen's Dont Stop Me Now to be played, and a big party afterwards. I want my ashes dropped from a plane over my home in Bristol  so my neighbours have to clean their windows!

The way you want to be remembered

I don't care because I'll be gone.
From place of birth to songwriting credentials and letters from the tooth fairy, New Yorkers have shared the lies their mothers told them.

With just days to go until Mother's Day on Sunday, Daily Mail Online spoke to people about what their mothers misled them on when they were growing up.

While some mothers were only guilty of minor offences, such as fibbing to their child they never swore, others were accused of lying outright about major issues such as their offspring's middle name and place of birth.

Fibs: Daily Mail Online spoke to New Yorkers about the lies their moms told them as Americans prepare to celebrate Mother's Day on Sunday

Honesty: The lies ranged from fibs about not swearing to misleading their child about where they were born and their middle name

In a video called The Lies Our Moms Tell Us, one woman claimed her mother told her she was born in Italy - when in fact she was born in Hackensack, New Jersey, and claimed her middle name was Chocolate.

'For the longest time she said I was born in Italy to make me feel special and I told all my school friends about it and when my mom told me she was like "oh, it's a joke" I was like, "what?"... I was born in Hackensack [New Jersey], but she made it seem like I was born in a temple or something,' she said.

She added: 'She said that my middle name was Chocolate, that was another lie. It wasn't Chocolate, I was very sad.'

In another elaborate hoax, one mother told her daughter that she wrote You Are My Sunshine - a song first recorded by Jimmie Davis and Charles Mitchell in 1939 and later covered by numerous artists including Nat King Cole, Johnny Cash, Aretha Franklin and Brian Wilson.

Uncovered: The video, called The Lies Our Moms Tell Us, shows sons and daughters sharing their lies

Misled: One woman, pictured, revealed that she believed her mother's claim that babies come out of a woman's ear until she was 25 years old

False: One woman, pictured, said her mother told her that her middle name was Chocolate and that she was born in Italy - both of which were lies

Her daughter said: 'My mom told me that she wrote You Are My Sunshine and I told all my friends and they told me I was wrong.'

Another woman claimed her mother misled her about the reproduction process - claiming babies 'come out of your ear' - and she believed her until she was 25 years old.

She said: 'I can remember back when I asked my mom where babies come from, she told me they come out of your ear, where else would they come from? Never from your stomach, they come out of your ear. And I was probably 25 before I realized they don't actually come out of your ear.'

A man said his mother told him 'she never curses' but as he grew up he realized this was in fact not true.

Searching: This man, pictured, said his mom told him he would meet a nice woman which he said has yet to happen

Acting: This man, pictured, accused his mother of putting on a southern accent

Another man said his mother told him he would 'find a nice lady' which he claimed did not prove to be true.

One mother was accused of putting on an accent. Her son said: 'My mom is particularly southern...which is weird because she didn't have a southern accent at all when I was a kid.'

A particularly hard done by daughter accused her mother of having 'lost her soul' for writing her letters on behalf of the tooth fairy - until one 'dark day' she found her out.

'My mom lost her soul, wrote very elaborate letters from the tooth fairy in a calligraphic hand that she would leave under my pillow,' she said.
Higher death rates at the weekend have been central to Jeremy Hunt's argument for a contract reform. But a new study suggests the argument is 'skewed'

Hospital death rates are higher at weekends - but only because the most sick patients are admitted, a study claims.

Although similar numbers of patients attended A&E each day at weekends and weekdays, hospitals admitted 7 per cent fewer patients at the weekend.

The research suggests that some patients may be admitted unnecessarily during the week, heaping pressure on already over-stretched services.

Professor Matt Sutton, who led the research looking at deaths in hospital within 30 days of admission, told MailOnline there was no issue with weekend care.

He said the Government policy of extending services at weekends is 'not going to save lives' and that the real issue was caused by daily admission rates.

'If you seek emergency care at A&E on a weekend, there is no change in the risk to your mortality,' he told MailOnline.

'This policy of extending services at weekends will lead to more people being admitted - and that will increase pressure on the NHS - but it is unlikely to save lives.

'Everybody has assumed that once you have been admitted, you get poorer quality care at the weekend (leading to a higher death rate).

'I think our study shows it's unlikely to be that, what is important is what your chances of being admitted are.

'We don't really know what the right level of admission is. That is the question we are really raising.'

Hospitals apply a higher severity threshold when choosing which patients to admit to hospital at weekends, he said.

Patients with non-serious illnesses are not admitted, so those who are admitted at the weekend are on average sicker than during the week and more likely to die regardless of the quality of care they receive, the study found.

Comparing the two - which has been central to Jeremy Hunt's controversial plans for a 'seven-day NHS' - leads to 'skewed' results, the researchers said.

Previous studies have considered only those patients who were admitted to hospital.

The new research, conducted by The University of Manchester, instead looked at all patients attending Accident and Emergency departments between April 2013 and February 2014.

It found patients attending A&E at the weekend are no more likely to die than patients attending A&E during the week.

Mr Hunt has repeatedly asserted that understaffing at hospitals during the weekend is causing 11,000 excess deaths every year - and a key factor in why the Government claims a new contract is necessary.

This had already been widely refuted by medical professionals and this latest study is likely reignite claims the Government got it wrong.

Medical professionals have gone on a series of strikes against the new contract which is set to be imposed in summer. Research by the University of Manchester suggests death rates at weekends are only worse because fewer patients are admitted to hospital and those who are tend to be very ill

The dispute has led to the first all-out strike by junior doctors in NHS history, with more than 100,000 appointments and operations cancelled following last month's two-day stoppage.

The government has said it wants to create a truly '24/7' NHS service, with Mr Hunt citing higher death rates for patients in NHS hospitals at weekends.

This policy of extending services at weekends isn't going to save any lives Professor Matt Sutton, University of Manchester

Doctors accuse Mr Hunt of conflating the arguments by saying that unless contracts are reformed immediately, patients will continue to die.

But the new research suggests Mr Hunt and the Department of Health have misinterpreted the death rates, according to study authors.

Rachel Meacock, lead author of the study, said: 'The so-called 'weekend effect' is a statistical artefact and extending services will not reduce the number of deaths.

'Instead, the most likely impact of the planned service extensions will be an increase in the number of less severely ill patients who are admitted at the weekend, further pushing up NHS costs.'

The paper will be published in The Journal of Health Services Research and Policy.

A new study which shows that patients attending A&E at the weekend are no more likely to die than patients attending A&E during the week is likely to anger doctors who argue the NHS is already 24/7

Dr Mark Porter, chairman of the BMA, said: 'This huge and robust study confirms what doctors have been saying all along: there is a lack of evidence showing that the 'weekend effect' is caused by the absence of senior doctors.

'It is a far more complicated picture than the one the Government has tried to portray.

The impact of the planned service extensions will increase the number of less severely ill patients who are admitted at the weekend, further pushing up NHS costs Rachel Meacock, University of Manchester

'These academics are the latest in a long line of health professionals and leading experts challenging the Government on its misleading use of figures.

'The BMA believes patients should have access to the same high quality of care, seven days a week.

'If the Government wants to make more services available across seven days, then it needs to explain how it will staff and pay for them at a time when existing services are struggling to keep up with demand.'

A spokesman for NHS England said: 'This analysis confirms the fundamental point that patients admitted to hospital at weekends are sicker, and need to have the right medical cover available, ensuring patients can see a senior doctor as soon as possible.'

A Department of Health spokesperson said: 'This study actually adds to the evidence of variation in care across the week because it indicates there is a higher level of sickness required for patients to actually be admitted at the weekend.
Peter Rees, 62, is seeking compensation for the ordeal which occurred after he was taken to hospital with a fit of uncontrollable coughing and shortness of breath

A retired businessman is suing the NHS 100,000 after he was told to walk 23 miles home from hospital in the middle of the night.

Peter Rees, 62, is seeking compensation for the ordeal which occurred after he was taken to hospital with a fit of uncontrollable coughing and shortness of breath.

But after a series of tests he was diagnosed with a chest infection, handed antibiotics and told to go home at 2am - on New Year's Day.

A court heard Mr Rees left his wallet at home, had no-one to pick him up and was offered no transport for the long journey home.

Mr Rees has described his ordeal as 'dreadful - the most horrible night of my life.'

He said: 'I had dark clothing on, I was feeling most unwell and I had to walk on unlit roads on one of the most dangerous nights of the year.

'Hospitals are supposed to be caring places but the nurse sent me packing knowing my only way home was to walk.

'I was shattered, freezing, I felt giddy and I lost my footing more than once. I was literally clinging on to bramble bushes as I edged along.

The court heard the father-of-three had arrived at West Wales General Hospital in Carmarthen without his wallet and asked staff for help with transport home.

He explained that he lived 23 miles away in the village of Llanwrda and had no one to collect him.

But he claims that he was offered no help - and was told by a nurse to leave the hospital for being aggressive.

Mr Rees is seeking 100,000 compensation from the Hywel Dda Health Board accusing them of neglect and failing in their duty of care after he was discharged.

Having walked around 12 miles along pitch dark roads, Mr Rees was picked up by a passing police car and arrived home at 6.30am.

He had become unwell while at home on New Year's Eve and was examined by a paramedic at home who took him to A&E at the 391-bed NHS hospital.

Former florist Mr Rees was later told he was allowed to go home following an examination, X-rays and a blood test.

He said: 'When I explained that I lived 23 miles away and had no way to get home, the nursing sister told me to walk.

'When I said I couldn't believe what was happening, I was accused of being aggressive.

'I was very tired, but I didn't raise my voice or swear. I was not aggressive, but they said I had to leave.

The court heard the father-of-three had arrived at West Wales General Hospital in Carmarthen (also known as Glangwili) without his wallet and asked staff for help with transport home. He explained that he lived 23 miles away in the village of Llanwrda and had no one to collect him

The Hywel Dda Health Board, which runs the hospital, denies it has done anything wrong - and has called for the compensation case to be thrown out

'There were ambulancemen there who saw my predicament but said they were not allowed to drive patients home.

'Even if I had money I would not have been able to get a taxi at that time on New Year's Eve.'

But the health board denies it has done anything wrong - and called for the compensation case to be thrown out.

Lawyer Christian Howells told the county court hearing in Carmarthen: 'The health board is not under any duty of care to provide a taxi back home for a fit patient.

'It was his own decision to walk home. He could have taken a taxi and paid once he had got there.'

Deputy district judge Rosamund Cleal told the hearing that she was 'not persuaded' the action by Mr Rees should be struck out.
Failing to get enough sleep can leave a person 'functionally drunk', in a matter of days, experts today warned.

They note sleep is much more important than many people realise.

Even if a person achieves six hours a night, they are building up a sleep debt, Olivia Walch from the University of Michigan said.

Her warnings come as a new study, co-authored by Ms Walch, reveal the sleep patterns of people across the world.

Failing to get enough sleep can leave a person 'functionally drunk', in a matter of days, experts today warned

The findings show middle-aged men are the most likely to be sleep deprived, often failing to get the recommended seven to eight hours shut eye.

Researchers found women are more concerned with scheduling their sleep, planning around 30 minutes more a night, on average than their male counterparts.

Women tend to go to bed earlier and wake up later, especially those aged between 30 and 60, the study found.

Those people who spend time in sunlight each day tend to go to bed earlier and get more sleep than those people who spend most of their time cooped up inside all day.

Ms Walch said: 'It doesn't take that many days of not getting enough sleep before you're functionally drunk.

'Researchers have figured out that being overly tired can have that effect.

'And what's terrifying at the same time is that people think they're performing tasks way better than they are.

'Your performance drops off but your perception of your performance doesn't.'

Researchers collated their data using a free smartphone app that helps reduce jetlag.

It allowed them to gather robust sleep data from thousands of people across 100 countries.

The researchers examined how age, gender, the amount of light and home country affect the number of hours sleep people around the globe get each night.

They also looked at when people went to bed, and when their alarms go off in the morning.

Researchers found that cultural pressures can override natural circadian rhythms, with the effects being most markedly seen at bedtime.

While morning responsibilities, such as work, children and school, play a role in a person's wake-time, the researchers said they are not the only factors.

Olivia Walch from the University of Michigan said: 'It doesn't take that many days of not getting enough sleep before you're functionally drunk'

Dr Daniel Forger, who also took part in the study, said: 'Across the board, it appears that society governs bedtime and one's internal clock governs wake time, and a later bedtime is linked to loss of sleep.

'At the same time, we found a strong wake-time effect from users' biological clocks - not just their alarm clocks.

'These findings can help to quantify the tug-of-war between solar and social timekeeping.'

When Dr Forger talks about internal or biological clocks, he's referring to circadian rhythms -fluctuations in bodily functions and behaviors that are tied to the planet's 24-hour day.

These rhythms are set by a grain-of-rice-sized cluster of 20,000 neurons behind the eyes.

They are regulated by the amount of light, particularly sunlight, our eyes take in.

It doesn't take that many days of not getting enough sleep before you're functionally drunk. Researchers have figured out that being overly tired can have that effect Olivia Walch, University of Michigan

Circadian rhythms have long been thought to be the primary driver of sleep schedules, even since the advent of artificial light and 9-to-5 work schedules.

The new research helps to quantify the role that society plays.

Dr Forger, Ms Walch and their team released an app called Entrain, several years ago.

It is designed to help travelers adjust to new time zones, and recommends custom schedules of light and darkness.

To use the app, a person has to enter their typical hours of sleep and light exposure, and users are also given the option of submitting information anonymously to the University of Michigan's research team.

The quality of the app's recommendations depended on the accuracy of the users' information, and the researchers say this motivated users to be particularly careful in reporting their lighting history and sleep habits.

With information from thousands of people in hand, the researchers then analyzed it for patterns.

Any correlations that bubbled up, they put to the test in what amounts to a circadian rhythm simulator.

Researchers found women are more concerned with scheduling their sleep, planning around 30 minutes more a night, on average than their male counterparts. Women tend to go to bed earlier and wake up later, especially those aged between 30 and 60

The simulator - a mathematical model - is based on the field's deep knowledge of how light affects the brain's suprachiasmatic nucleus - the cluster of neurons behind the eyes that regulates our internal clocks.

With the model, the researchers could dial the sun up and down at will to see if the correlations still held in extreme conditions.

'In the real world, bedtime doesn't behave how it does in our model universe,' Ms Walch said. 'What the model is missing is how society affects that.'

The spread of national averages of sleep duration ranged from a minimum of around seven hours, 24 minutes of sleep for residents of Singapore and Japan to a maximum of eight hours, 12 minutes for those in the Netherlands.

That's not a huge window, but the researchers say every half hour of sleep makes a big difference in terms of cognitive function and long-term health.

The findings, the researchers say, point to an important lever for the sleep-deprived - a group of people that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is concerned about.

A recent CDC study found that across the US, one in three adults aren't getting the recommended minimum of seven hours.
Security agencies are closely monitoring the speeches of Delhi cleric Abdul Sami Qasmi online.

Sami was arrested earlier this year by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) and charged with conspiracy to form a terror organisation and launch terror attacks in the country.

The police said the youths arrested by the special cell on Tuesday night were radicalised by the speeches of Sami.

Delhi Police arrested 12 men who they claim are JeM-inspired terrorists planning major attacks in Delhi

The investigator said Mohammed Sajid, Sameer Ahmad, and Shakir Ansari were influenced by Sami and had planned to meet him in December 2015 - but failed.

They came in contact through a social networking site where they initially communicated, but soon shifted to secured chat rooms.

They had a WhatsApp group of their own with 13 members, of whom three have been arrested and 10 detained for questioning.

Police also found books like Urdu and Hindi titles Mujahid ki Lalkar, Duniyabhar mein Musalmano ka Katle aam, Tareekh-e-Hind, Jihad ki Sabililah, and Apka Mustakbil, and hand-written notes on verses from the Holi Quran in their possession, the official said.

Senior officers said the group was motivated by Samis speeches. He has been travelling to states like UP, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Rajasthan and Punjab, delivering taqreer and bayaan in support of violent extremism and motivating youth for anti-national activities.

In some of his speeches, Sami made a direct reference to the Islamic State, the officer said.
After running through the Congress defence in the Rajya Sabha in the AgustaWestland corruption scandal, BJP MP Subramanian Swamy on Thursday said Sonia Gandhi must be questioned by investigators.

In an interview with India Today TVs Karan Thapar, the BJP MP said he would prove the charges against the Congress president in the court of law, and claimed he did not have any personal vendetta against her.

On being asked if he was targeting Sonia Gandhi on the basis of prejudice, not proof, Swamy said he had heard this before.

Controversial: BJP MP Subramanian Swamy said in an interview that Congress president Sonia Gandhi should be interrogated

I can have the opinion that Sonia Gandhi is guilty. But, in the process of proving it to your satisfaction, I have to go through the legal system. I never take up a case until I am convinced that the person is guilty, Swamy said.

Swamy also said that "somebody" within the Modi government was "protecting somebody in the murky defence deal.

Somebody was trying to protect somebody. In the last two years, attempts were made not to take the case forward, he said.

The BJP MP reiterated that middleman Christian Michels letter clearly points towards Sonia Gandhi though it was not the only piece of evidence pointing towards the involvement of the Congress president.

The letter stated that she is the driving force behind the deal, Swamy said.

The BJP is calling for a probe to establish if Sonia Gandhi is connected to the AgustaWestland chopper deal

I have evaluated the evidence. I have a track record of not being wrong so far. And, I am telling you that she is guilty in this matter. According to chapter 12 of the CrPc, when a crime is committed and a case is registered, it is the duty of the police, in this case the CBI, to make a list of people who they think might know something about the matter and question it, Swamy said.

Christian Michels letter said she was the driving force in the deal. Now if she knows about a deal, which is a crime, then she must be interrogated, he added.

Swamy pointed out that the Italian courts verdict also mentioned Sonia's name at least four times.

The former Union law minister also junked Michels claims that he was under pressure from the Modi government to incriminate the Gandhi family in the chopper deal.

He (Michel) didnt say it to the court of law. His statement has no locus. Michel is sweating now. He is being used by the Congress, Swamy said.

In a letter written to the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea and shared exclusively with India Today, Christian Michel had alleged that the Modi government tried to cut a deal with him.

Swamy refused to divulge on television the evidence that he claims he has against the Congress president in the AgustaWestland deal, but alleged that Sonia Gandhi was guilty.

As for her guilt, I will tell you she is guilty as hell.

On being reminded that the specifications for the height of flight were reduced from 6,000 feet to 4,500 feet under the recommendation of former NSA and close aide of former PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Brajesh Mishra, Swamy slammed Mishra too, while accusing him of working for the Congress.

The UPA awarded Brijesh Mishra with the second highest award of the country after Bharat Ratna. I am suggesting that he was a Congress bug, a cats paw. He was Congress Trojan Horse. Even as he was the NSA, he worked for the Congress party, Swamy said.

Whose invisible hand in the NDA government ensured that an appeal would not be made in the case of the two Italian marines?

It should be investigated, said Swamy, hinting that he knew who the person was, but refused to divulge the name of the entity that he suspected.

It was not a lapse on part of the government, it was complicity, Swamy added.

ED probes political hand in Haschke's directorships

By Atir Khan and Manoj Sharma

The Enforcement Directorate is probing the possible role of a politician in recommending the name of Guido Ralph Haschke, a key accused in the corruption-pocked AgustaWestland helicopter supply case, as a director on the board of leading real estate developer Emaar MGF.

ED officials questioned the realty firms managing director, Shravan Gupta, for several hours on Wednesday about his links with Haschke, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, and the lawmakers political aide, Kanishka Singh, sources said.

He was also asked to submit certain files for examination.

Gupta purportedly told investigators that lawyer Gautam Khaitan asked the company to make Haschke a director, and that he had no links with Kanishka Singh, otherwise his company wouldnt have been raided in the past under a Congress government.

According to sources, Gupta said Khaitan, who was in touch with his family, had projected Haschke's name for the director since the Italian businessman had impressive credentials and used to work in a senior role at the World Bank in Washington.

Before giving Haschke the post, Gupta had allegedly told Khaitan that there was a dispute in the family and asked him to find a board member, preferably a foreigner.

Emaar MGF was founded in 2005 as a joint venture between Emaar Properties of the UAE and MGF Developments of India. It had a major presence as a residential and commercial developer in Delhi NCR, Gurgaon, Chennai, Mohali and Hyderabad.

The Hyderabad International Convention Center and the Commonwealth Games Village in the Capital are its showcase projects in India.

Before the 2010 Commonwealth Games, the company had received at least Rs 7,000 crore as FDI and its prospects were bright. It also got clearance from the RBI and SEBI to come up with a public issue.

However, a series of raids by the CBI, ED and Income Tax Department over financial irregularities hit its fortunes.

ED grills Tyagi on AgustaWestland

Businessman and lawyer Gautam Khaitan has been questioned by the CBI

After a grilling from the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), former IAF chief SP Tyagi was quizzed by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Thursday in connection with the AgustaWestland helicopter deal.

The CBI, also investigating the corruption angle in the deal, claimed that former board member of Aeromatrix Gautam Khaitan has accepted that he took payments from Guido Haschke and Carlo Gerosa, middlemen in the chopper deal, but rejected allegations that they were part of any kickbacks.

He has agreed taking payment from European middlemen Guido Haschke and Carlo Gerosa. However, we do not agree with the purpose behind the payment which has been cited by him, CBI sources said.

Khaitan and former deputy Air Chief NV Tyagi were examined by the CBI in connection with the AgustaWestland deal on Thursday.

While the questioning of Khaitan continued for about 10 hours, Tyagi left within four hours after recording his statement before the investigators.

The agency sources said Tyagi's cousins - Sandeep, Sanjeev, and Rajeev - will be called for questioning on Friday.
India has asked Britain to deport Vijay Mallya over the Rs 9,500 crore owed by his defunct Kingfisher Airlines

The Lok Sabha has passed the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code Bill to remedy what is being termed Mallya syndrome.

The government said on Thursday that it plans to sign international treaties to confiscate the overseas assets of wilful defaulters, and recover the banks' dues.

Amid concerns expressed by members of Parliament over rising instances of defaulting, typified by liquor baron Vijay Mallyas case, minister of state for finance Jayant Sinha said that the bankruptcy framework would operate alongside the normal procedure against defaulters.

He was replying to a debate on the Bill, which seeks to update and consolidate existing laws.

Sinha claimed the legislation is a transformational building block for the economy, and explained that there will be one law dealing with bankruptcy instead of 12 different legislations - some of which are centuries old.

This will also make the whole process more transparent, Sinha explained.

The new framework will help improve Indias position in the World Bank's ease of doing business ranking, the minister added.
JNU student union president Kanhaiya Kumars condition deteriorated as his indefinite fast entered its eighth day.

On Thursday, he was admitted to the universitys health centre in a semi-conscious state, where he was being treated for low blood pressure.

Kanhaiya, along with other JNU students, was on a hunger strike against the punishment issued by the university in connection with the February protests.

JNU student union president Kanhaiya Kumar was taken to hospital after his blood pressure and glucose levels dropped drastically

While he was rushed to hospital, five students withdrew from the fast citing their deteriorating health.

The glucose levels and blood pressure of other protesting students were also reported to be low, according to the test reports from the health centre.

Kanhaiyas blood pressure dropped to a worrying 56 and his glucose levels also dipped drastically.

He has been vomiting since last night. He was taken to the health centre in a semi-conscious state and the doctor warned him of chances of internal bleeding if he continues with the fast, a statement by JNU students union said.

Since he has refused to call off the fast, he has been administered with the saline drip. The health condition of others are also deteriorating. The ketone levels are low. Many have lost five to six kilos of weight but the spirit to fight is still on, the statement added.

A total of 25 students have been engaged in the hunger strike, which began last Thursday.

Five members of the ABVP called off their fast on Wednesday, claiming they have an assurance from the JNU administration about consideration of their demands.

Five members of the Left-affiliated groups withdrew from the hunger strike due to health concerns.
A first-of-it-kind report based on interview of 373 death row convicts across the country released on Friday has revealed that 80 percent of them suffered custodial violence.

It also says of the 92 prisoners who said that they had confessed in police custody, 72 (78.3per cent) admitted to making confessions due to torture.

Of the 270 prisoners who spoke about their experience in police custody, 216 (80 per cent) admitted to have suffered custodial violence."

The shocking revelations came in the study titled Death Penalty Research Project by students of the National Law University

Amongst the states with 10 or more prisoners, Haryana has the highest proportion of prisoners (100 per cent) who were tortured in police custody, followed by Gujarat (94.7 per cent), Kerala (91.7 per cent) and Maharashtra (91.3 per cent).

Of the 92 prisoners who said that they had confessed in police custody, 72 (78.3 per cent) admitted to making confessions due to torture said the report Death Penalty Research Project by students of the National Law University.

'The discussion around the death penalty in India should not just be limited to executions,' said Anup Surendranath

Shockingly, 25 per cent of the prisoners in the study were either juveniles, or very young (between ages of 18 and 21) or very old (above 60 years old) when the crime was committed.

This is startling as the Supreme Court in 1980 held that if an accused is young or old, he shall not be sentenced to death.

The interviews were done from June 2013 to January 2015.

Is Indian legal system biased against the economically weak and the disadvantaged vis-a vis awarding extreme punishments like death sentence?

Until now it was in the realm of speculation. But now it has been confirmed by this empirical data on the subject.

The study found 79.8 per cent of those given the death penalty belonged to backward classes, SC/ST or religious minorities.

It gives an impression that gallows are only for the marginalised.

The first thing when a person is arrested is his access to a lawyer.

The poor may not get it while the well-off do.
An assessment by security forces has established that Pathankot terrorists were directed by a Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) handler who was also running a narcotics syndicate confirming fears of a terror-drug cartel nexus.

Sources in the security establishment also told Mail Today that the Ikagar Sagar, the taxi driver who was killed by the terrorists could be involved in drug peddling.

After verifying his antecedents it is suspected he was part of a smuggling ring, said a senior officer.

Pathankot airbase was attacked by Jaish-e-Mohammed terrorists in the early hours of January 2

It was always suspected that the attackers took routes used by drug smugglers but this is the first time a concrete link has been established.

Seven security personnel were killed and several others wounded when Pakistani terrorists owing allegiance to Pakistan-based JeM, attacked the Pathankot Air Force base after breaching the border on January 2.

Narco smuggling in Punjab from across the border has been rampant with thousands of youth being victims of substance abuse.

Sources say since there is good network of couriers ensuring the smooth clearance of consignments from the border areas the kingpins are never nabbed.

The ruling Shirimoni Akali Dal government in Punjab has blamed BSF for the drug menace in Punjab as a result of drug trafficking from Pakistan but the force has strongly refuted such allegations.

However, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) probing the Pathankot terror attack has said there is nothing to suggest an inside hand.

There is no doubt that terrorists came from Pakistan. Ikagars background is not part of the probe as he is dead and nothing can be established, the officer added.

This is significant in the backdrop of the recent Parliamentary panel report that made scathing observations about governments poor handling of the situation.

The panel also said the role of narco-syndicate active in border areas of Punjab, should be investigated as the terrorists might have taken help of channels or networks used by smugglers to infiltrate the border, shelter and carry out terror attack.

Something is seriously wrong in the country's counter-terror establishment and the airbases security was not robust, the panel report said.

The committee recommended that in view of the serious attacks from across the international border in the area, the government should pay attention to effectively sealing the border through enhanced patrolling, fencing, flood lighting etc.

But it seems no lessons have been learnt from the Pathankot attack to plug the gaps in border security to ensure zero infiltration from Pakistan.

A recent intelligence report just ahead of a Pakistani teams visit to India for probing the Pathankot said that a group of terrorists entered India again from Pathankot to carry out strikes in Delhi hotels and hospitals.

The report named former Pakistan army personnel Mohammed Khurshid Alam who along with six hardcore terrorists who had entered India.
King Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck of Bhutan with his grandson His Royal Highness Gyalsey Jigme Namgyel Wangchuck

Bhutan was recently in the news when the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge visited the Land of Happiness and trekked up to the picturesque Tigers Lair, also known as Paro Taktsang in Dzongka.

The monastery complex, hanging on a cliffside of the upper Paro valley, was built during the 17th century on the spot where the Swat-born Guru Padmasambhava meditated for three years, three months and three days. Paro Taktsang is one the 13 taktsang caves which were blessed by the Master of Supreme Happiness.

Variables William and Kate had to walk for nearly two hours to reach the gompa.

Looking at the photographs taken by the journalists who followed them half-way, it reflects that the royal couple must have experienced some bliss during the unusual trek.

Their visit and encounter with the charming royal couple of Bhutan (sometimes patronisingly called, The Himalayan William and Kate) were moments of rare happiness.

A few weeks earlier, data collected by the United Nations from people in 156 countries had surprisingly ranked Bhutan 84th in the list of Happy Nations.

Different variables were used: real GDP per capita, social support, healthy life expectancy, freedom to make choices, generosity and perceptions of corruption.

The fact that Denmark, Switzerland, Iceland, Norway and Finland are the five toppers shows that these variables are based on Western values.

Can you believe that China is listed 83, while India is 118?

Each country is also compared against Dystopia, a hypothetical nation characterised by human misery, oppression, disease, overcrowding and pervasive fear, a place where everything is wrong.

Dystopia is the opposite of Utopia, synonymous for an ideal society with no crime or poverty.

Despite the Western prejudice in the data collection and analysis, it is interesting to see that the UN has begun studying the concept of happiness which has been central to the Indian and Himalayan culture (including in Tibet before the Communists liberated the Roof of the World in 1950).

Whether on the Roof of the World, in Sikkim or in Bhutan, Padmasambhava has played a crucial role in this search for a deeper meaning in life and ultimately sustainable happiness.

It is significant that Bhutan Prime Minister Tshering Tobgay recently gave a most inspirational TED talk at Vancouver, Canada.

Tobgay spoke with great eloquence of the special culture of the Land of the Dragon, its concept of Gross National Happiness, climate change, environment and free education for all. Tobgay said: Of the 200-odd countries in the world today, it looks like we are the only one thats carbon neutral. Actually, thats not quite accurate. Bhutan is not carbon neutral. Bhutan is carbon negative.

Environment

The Happy prime minister asserted: But it is our protected areas that are at the core of our carbon neutral strategy. Our protected areas are our carbon sink. They are our lungs. Today, more than half of our country is protected, as national parks, nature reserves and wildlife sanctuaries.

The latter are connected through a network of biological corridors: Our animals are free to roam throughout our country, Tobgay added.

Even animals should be happy.

Just before 175 countries signed the COP21 agreement, Topgay mentioned his countrys participation in safeguarding the planet; projects such as Bhutan for Life intend to improve the countrys environment for the benefit of the earth.

With its 70 per cent forest cover (it is the highest proportion in Asia), Bhutan has almost five million acres of protected land, rich in forests, pristine rivers and thriving wildlife.

The question is: can it last? If one believes news reports, dam companies will soon rule the Land of the Dragon. With development becoming the universal god, can the society remain happy and contented?

Two years ago, the Royal Institute for Governance and Strategic Studies (RIGSS) invited former Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran for a lecture  Why Bhutan should worry more about climate change.

The talk touched some serious issues such as hydropower, national revenue, biodiversity, livelihood and, indirectly, happiness.

Glaciers

Shyam Saran spoke of the climate change taking place in Bhutan, which accelerates the melting of glaciers: This risk, at any time, can lead to landslide, avalanches and glacier lake outburst floods (GLOFs), he added.

He mentioned other vulnerabilities, particularly the hydropower plants on which Bhutan is heavily dependent to balance its budget.

Some of these dams, if not properly conceived, could speed up the destruction of natural resources. But, what is this true happiness that everybody is speaking about?

A friend, who often visits Bhutan, told me that on his first visit, he was surprised to see everywhere general stores-cumbar, hardware store-cum-bar, even medical shop-cum-bar.

It is true that the 14thcentury saint, Drukpa Kunley, the Mad Yogi who introduced Buddhism in Bhutan, was an adept of the good things in life and he is still revered by all in Bhutan.

On April 23, the Queen Mother, along with a royal princess and several ministers, trekked for four hours along a 21-km trail where Drukpa Kunley meditated, drank, hunted and subdued demons; it is still a place of pilgrimage with a number of sacred spots linked to Kunley.

I sometime wonder how Padmasambhava would have fared under the UN criteria.

Strange, isnt it? Ban-Ki-moon should visit the place.
MINOT -- Minots new airport terminal could be called the most modern and secure in America.

At least until the next one opens, said interim Minot International Airport manager Ann Thorvick with a laugh.

However, what the new facility does offer to the city of about 50,000 residents and the surrounding area -- including North Dakotas oilfields -- is the latest in technology to provide a safe and secure terminal and a much more comfortable and welcoming atmosphere with a bucketload of new amenities.

Its really a breath of fresh air, Thorvick said, compared to the old facility, which is still standing until bids are opened soon for its demolition.

Residents and dignitaries will all get a closer look at the facility today as the airport holds a ribbon cutting ceremony and open house -- about two months after the doors opened.

The states congressional delegation is attending as it helped to secure federal funding to aid in the construction of the $49.8 million terminal. State and local funds were also used in financing the city-owned and operated 1,500-acre airport -- which has been undergoing a five-year improvement project estimated at about $94 million.

Since opening March 2, Mayor Chuck Barney -- a frequent user of the facility as he has family on the East Coast and in California -- said the terminal has been incredibly well received.

The reasons, he said, are that from a travelers perspective it has a lot of the extras not often seen in other airports to enhance their experience and improve safety.

Thorvick said some of those new terminal features are:

 Cell phone plug-ins in 400 seats

 A new Wi-Fi network

 A 600 square-foot childrens play area

 Two Transportation Safety Administration lines instead of one and space for another

 A private screening room for enhanced security checks

 A secure exit lane to the baggage claim and expanded cameras for monitoring.

Its security and safety first, Thorvick said about how new airports are designed in the post-9/11 era.

She wouldnt say how many new security cameras were added.

Beyond that, other features for travelers -- totalling about 182,800 passengers last year -- are a new airside and landside restaurant and bar offered upstairs and downstairs and 18 new flight arrival and departure digital boards compared to only one in the old terminal.

Thorvick is an Indiana resident who served as a consultant on the terminal project and was then asked to serve as interim director until a new leader is selected from among three finalists currently being interviewed.

Although boardings are down because of the oil downturn in western North Dakota -- boardings peaked in 2012 at about 224,000 -- Barney said we are well positioned when the oil industry comes back to handle more fliers.

Even though numbers were down last year, they are still way up from just six years ago when there were only about 70,000 people boarding the flights in Minot.

North Dakotas two U.S. senators provided statements, too, about the benefits of the improved terminal.

The new  terminal serves as a fitting gateway to the Magic City, and with new and expanded services in the terminal, air travel will be more efficient and convenient for the community and its visitors, said U.S. Sen. John Hoeven. He said they worked hard to secure federal funding because this is the kind of infrastructure that will help us to grow our economy and also ensure that we maintain the high quality of life we expect in North Dakota.

U.S. Sen. Heidi Heitkamp added, North Dakotans depend on a strong transportation infrastructure to keep their businesses strong and carry them safely home. Thats why the opening of this new terminal in Minot is such an encouraging step forward. Its my hope that todays success in Minot paves the way for future transportation projects across the state so we can keep growing our local economies for years to come.
Lok Sabha speaker Sumitra Mahajan (pictured) advised Jyotiraditya Scindia to face her while speaking

Lok Sabha speaker Sumitra Mahajan, who had ticked off Jyotiraditya Scindia recently for misrepresenting her, advised the Congress MP to face her while speaking to avoid constant poking by the ruling members at the start of his speech on the AgustaWestland corruption scandal in Lok Sabha on Friday.

Sumitra Mahajan told the Congress MP that he can keep his gaze on her as she was not bad to look at.

Government and Opposition divide and rule

The battle lines between the government and the Opposition are clearly drawn along the two houses.

While the BJP and its allies dominate Lok Sabha, the Congress and the motley Opposition enjoy fiefdom in Rajya Sabha.

The disparity has begun to pinch members. Congress MP Anand Sharma on Friday complained to RS chairperson Hamid Ansari taking offence to a member referring to Lok Sabha as august house and addressing the Upper House as Agusta house.

Government kicks off online sojourn

MoS for Information and Broadcasting Rajyavardhan Rathore kicked off the government's online sojourn

MoS for Information and Broadcasting Rajyavardhan Rathore was on Facebook chat on Friday night.

His foray into social media is part of governments well thought out effort to expand its presence across digital platforms.

After Rathore, all other union ministers will come regularly on Facebook chats.

A small facility has been set up at the National Media Centre from where the minister answered the questions.

'Four days is a long time in politics'

Amidst all the drama in Supreme Court and parliament about the Uttarakhand issue, a senior BJP leader remarked on Friday that the story is still not over as four days is a long time in politics.

The BJP has made a dramatic turnaround in its strategy for Uttarakhand by agreeing to go for a floor test to fathom if Congress leader Harish Rawat enjoyed majority in the house.

With the court disqualifying rebels from voting on May 10, the balance seems to tilt in favour of the Congress.

BJP council meet scheduled

The Bharatiya Janata Party National Council is expected to place on June 11-12. The venue, however, is yet to be decided.

This will be the first National Council meeting after the re-election of Amit Shah as president earlier this year.
Samuel L Jackson said he still dreams about drugs despite his long-standing sobriety

Samuel L Jackson still dreams about drugs despite his long-standing sobriety.

The Pulp Fiction actor, 67, has not touched alcohol or drugs for more than 20 years but admits he still engages in a daily battle against temptation.

I didnt drink yesterday and I'm not planning on it today," he tells Mens Health magazine.

People treated for cancer might go into remission but there's a chance it will come back. I feel the same about alcoholism. I still have drug dreams. It's hard because I understand the weed is really good now, he joked.

The star has previously spoken about his substance abuse problems while working as a theatre actor in New York in the 1970s and 1980s.

"I fancied myself as (alcoholic British actor) Oliver Reed. Part of it is hereditary: my father died of alcoholism, Samuel told Britain's SEVEN magazine in 2012.

I took it a step further, I drank and I used drugs. I liked the feeling of not being cognisant of what was going on around me... I rehearsed and performed on drugs. I went on stage and watched people's eyes roll across stage.

contactmusic.com



Prediction for Tesla model

Tesla CEO Elon Musk surprised analysts in an earnings call by predicting Tesla would sell 5,00,000 cars in 2018, two years ahead of prediction.

Extremely strong demand for Tesla's Model 3  a $35,000 sedan unveiled in March and meant to be Tesla's first mainstream car that has booked more than 4,00,000 pre-orders  is partly behind the production ramp up.

The Model 3 is scheduled to enter production in mid 2017, but Tesla's history of production delays with its Model X make some analysts skeptical that Tesla can hit such an aggressive production target.

hollywoodreporter.com

How to forget your memories

Context plays a big role in our memories, both good and bad. Bruce Springsteen's Born to Run on the car radio, for example, may remind you of your first love.

But a Dartmouth- and Princeton-led brain scanning study shows that people can intentionally forget past experiences by changing how they think about the context of those memories.

The findings have a range of potential applications centered on enhancing desired memories, such as developing new educational tools, or diminishing harmful memories, including treatments for posttraumatic stress disorder.
Breaking his silence on the AgustaWestland corruption scandal, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday made it clear that those who took bribes would not be spared and denied having made any deal with the Italian government to implicate the Congress leadership.

Those responsible for the helicopter scam must be punished, the prime minister said addressing an election rally in Tamil Nadu.

Countering the Congress charge that he cut a deal with his Italian counterpart to dilute the case of Italian marines in exchange for information against the Gandhi family, Modi further said, They (Congress leaders) were identified as culprits by the people of Italy, what can we (BJP) do? I havent been to Italy, I dont know anyone there.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi made it clear that those who took bribes would not be spared and denied having made any deal with the Italian government to implicate the Congress leadership

Even as the prime minister declared the intent of his government in chasing the scam, while addressing a rally at Hosur in Tamil Nadu, Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar expressed hope inside Parliament that the Centre would be able to take the Agusta chopper deal to its logical conclusion unlike the infamous Bofors gun deal of the 1980s.

For the BJP strategists, Agusta chopper scam offers enough scope to fix the Gandhi family unlike the Bofors deal, which consumed the Rajiv Gandhi government in 1989 but could not be used to prove the guilt of the Congress high command.

What we could not do in Bofors, we may be able to do now, Parrikar said while speaking in a Parliament debate on the Agusta deal. Miffed over Parrikars response, the Congress walked out in protest. Narrating the genesis of the Agusta chopper deal, Parrikar highlighted how the previous Congress-led UPA regime twisted rules and procedures to benefit the Italian company, delayed action against alleged bribes and started the process to blacklist the manufacturer only when it became unavoidable.

Security personnel escort Congress chief Sonia Gandhi during the partys 'March for Democracy' protest against the Narendra Modi government in the Capital

Pointing out that UPA could have put an end to the Agusta scam in 2012, when executives of the firm were arrested in Italy, Parrikar said the Congress-led regime waited till 2014 to cancel the contract.

The UPA had finalised the deal for supply of a dozen helicopters for the use of VVIPs at a cost of Rs 3,600 crore in 2010.

The Agusta chopper scam has come into focus after a court in Milan, Italy ruled that top executives of Finmeccanica, which owns Agusta, paid bribes to Indians.

The Milan court order considered letters and hand written notes from middlemen and executives who mentioned Sonias name at several places along with her top advisors.

The BJP-ruled Centre believes this information can lead the investigators to Sonia, who they believe was the driving force behind the chopper deal.

The people being questioned are small fries who made quick bucks in the deal. We have to find out where the flow of bribe money ended, said Parrikar.

Parrikar countered Congress charge that the NDA invited Finmeccaninca in Make In India programme saying that the company was supplying components for several key defence equipment and banning it completely would have adversely impacted the national security.

Congress hits the street

Sensing the mood in the BJP camp over the Agusta scam, the Congress hit the streets saying it wont be cowed down by the ruling partys vendetta politics and pressed for a Supreme Court monitored CBI probe.

If they think they can threaten us, they are sadly mistaken, Sonia thundered at a show of strength at Delhis Jantar Mantar.

We want this message to reach Nagpur, from where the RSS controls the Modi government, she said.

If they think they can threaten us, they are sadly mistaken, Sonia thundered at a show of strength at Delhis Jantar Mantar

Former prime minister Manmohan Singh and Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi also spoke at the rally saying the party would not tolerate the BJPs vendetta politics.

Terming the protest a save democracy rally, Sonia led senior party leaders in a march towards Parliament and courted arrest along with Manmohan Singh and Rahul.

They were released shortly thereafter. Hours later, Congress chief whip Jyotiraditya Scindia launched a counter-offensive against the BJP inside the Lok Sabha saying Sonia was a lioness and the ruling party was scared of her.

Defending Sonia, Scindia said her name does not figure anywhere in any authenticated document in the Agusta deal.

Rahul, seated nearby, listened quietly to Scindia, who quoted from the order of the Milan court Judge Marco Maiga to argue there was no case against Sonia.

We have no evidence against Sonia Gandhi. Only a mention of her in the facts, Mrs Gandhi has only been indicated as someone who will fly in the VVIP helicopters, Scindia quoted from the Milan court order.

Noting the Congress too was in favour of a fair probe in the scam, Scindia demanded the Supreme Court should monitor the investigation.

He also quoted Agusta middleman Christian Michel as having said, "I have never met one single Gandhi ever in my life. Not a letter, not a message, not a mention (their's) in any memo. I am absolutely sure that no money was ever paid to the Gandhis."

The Congress leader further cited Michel as having said that he was pressured to implicate the Gandhis in the deal.

Trying to turn the tables on the BJP, Scindia questioned the Rafale fighter jets deal with France that is being pursued by the centre.

"The BJP must answer why it signed a deal of 36 Rafale aircraft for 9 billion dollars when the UPA had bargained for 125 aircraft for 10 billion dollars, said Scindia.
You have a right to remain red faced - police officers have cost UK forces 390,061 by topping up cars with the wrong fuel in the last five years.

That's according to a new investigation that said there have been 2,147 police misfuelling incidents since 2011.

This means more than one officer a day tops up his squad car with the wrong fuel type.

Misfuelling mishaps: 2,147 officers have put the wrong type of fuel in a police car in the last five years, according to an AutoExpress investigation

Automotive magazine and website, AutoExpress, issued a freedom of information request to forces around the country asking for details of fuel-pump fumbles made by officers.

The collective cost of just over 390k means each wrong-fuel top-up costs an average of 181,68 to drain and rectify the police vehicle.

The FOI request also found that the police spent a total of 378 million on fuel over the same five-year time frame - it means 1 is spent on repairing a misfulled police motor for every 970 forked out on diesel and petrol.

The biggest repair bill was issued to the Metropolitan Police, AutoExpress said.

However, with an almighty fleet of vehicles guzzling 64.6 million of petrol and diesel since 2011, this isn't much of surprise.

When you take fuel spent into account, the worst offender was Warwickshire - it spent 1 on misfuelling repairs for every 331.99 handed over to brim its cars.

TOP FIVE MISFUELLING FORCES POLICE FORCE MISFUELLED-VEHICLE REPAIR COSTS SINCE 2011 Metropolitan Police 167,118 Kent 25,629 Derbyshire 16,078.53 Hampshire 14,070 Devon & Cornwall 13,118

But not all police forces have made the mistake, thanks to a little help from technology.

Both Greater Manchester Police and Northern Ireland forces have bunkered fuel sites with pre-programmed keys to ensure the correct type of fuel is dispensed.

AA spokesman Luke Bosdet told AutoExpress that misfuelled police cars represent a mere fraction of the 150,000 cases a year.

He said: 'Its an annoying and avoidable mistake that will take a vehicle off the road and place an extra burden on stretched resources.

'But it shows that police officers are human like the rest of us.

'Stress and pre-occupied minds are often the cause of misfuelling mistakes, which fleet managers can try to beat with fuel-tank labelling and reminders.'

You also have to take into account the fact that officers may be switching between different vehicles on a regular basis, making the possibility of topping up with the incorrect fuel more likely.
Secretary of State John Kerry admonished the anonymous White House official who reportedly called Benjamin Netanyahu a 'chicken***t' on Thursday, saying the description of Israeli Prime Minister reflects neither his nor the president's opinion of the world leader.

'We condemn anybody who uses language such as was used in this article,' Kerry said during an on-stage interview at the Washington Ideas Forum.

'It is disgraceful, unacceptable, damaging,' he added.

Kerry did not apologize on behalf of the Obama administration for the slur. Rather, he claimed to have 'never heard that word around me in the White House or anywhere.'

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Secretary of State John Kerry said today that comments from the anonymous White House official who slurred Israeli PM Benjamin 'Bibi' Netanyahu neither reflect his views nor the president's

'The assault on me comes only because I defend the State of Israel,' Netanyahu said after an unnamed Obama administration official called him a 'chicken***t' in a conversation with a reporter

'I don't know who these anonymous people that we keep getting quoted in things,' he pondered aloud. 'But they make life much more difficult.'

Kerry then touted the president's support for the Iron Dome, and said it wouldn't have been possible without him, and pointed to Obama's statements supporting Israel's right to defend itself as evidence that there's no hard feelings between Obama and his Israeli counterpart.

The cabinet official's claims that he's never heard any one at the White House dis Netanyahu follows a New York Times report on Tuesday that alleged that Kerry is outside the president's inner circle, and as such, his views don't always reflect those of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

'White House officials joke that he is like the astronaut played by Sandra Bullock in the movie Gravity, somersaulting through space, untethered from the White House,' the Times wrote.

The characterization of Kerry in the in-depth report allows for the possibility that an administration official did make unflattering statements about Netanyahu, but Kerry wasn't privy to them.

The unnamed U.S. official's reported description of Netanyahu as a 'chicken***t', or worthless coward, drew a sharp response on Wednesday from the Israeli leader  no stranger to acrimony with the Obama administration  and a slam from America's Republican House Speaker.

The American broadside, in an interview in The Atlantic, followed a month of heated exchanges between the Netanyahu government and Washington over settlement-building in Israeli-annexed East Jerusalem, which Palestinians seek as the capital of a future state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

The White House soft-pedaled the insult as 'counterproductive' but offered no apology on Wednesday and didn't identify the official involved.

'The thing about Bibi is, he's a chicken***t,' the unidentified official was quoted as saying, using Netanyahu's nickname and a slang insult certain to redden the ears of the U.S.-educated former commando.

'The good thing about Netanyahu is that he's scared to launch wars,' the official said, alluding to past hints of possible Israeli military action against Iran's nuclear program. 'The bad thing about him is that he won't do anything to reach an accommodation with the Palestinians or with the Sunni Arab states.'

Netanyahu, the official was reported to have said, is interested only in 'protecting himself from political defeat ... He's got no guts.'

Israeli leaders usually do not respond to comments by unidentified officials. But Netanyahu addressed those remarks directly in opening a memorial ceremony in parliament for an Israeli cabinet minister assassinated by a Palestinian in 2001.

'I am not prepared to make concessions that will endanger our state,' Netanyahu said.

'Understand, our national interests, topped by security and the unity of Jerusalem, are not what top the interests of those anonymous forces attacking us, and me personally.'

'I am under attack simply because I am defending the State of Israel. If I didn't stand firm on our national interests, I would not be under attack.'

Otherwise occupied: Obama ducked mention of the controversy by spending his day focused on Ebola  meeting with doctors and nurses in an orchestrated photo-op

'Our supreme interests, chiefly the security and unity of Jerusalem, are not the main concern of those anonymous officials who attack us and me personally, as the assault on me comes only because I defend the State of Israel,' the Israeli prime minister added.

'Despite all of the attacks I suffer, I will continue to defend our country. I will continue to defend the citizens of Israel,' he said.

Such pledges by Netanyahu have resonated among Israeli voters, even amid fears his strained relations with U.S. President Barack Obama could ultimately weaken support from Israel's main diplomatic ally and arms provider.

After Netanyahu's speech, Alistair Baskey, a spokesman for the White House National Security Council, dismissed the purported slur, denying that it reflected how the Obama administration felt about the Israeli leader.

'Certainly that's not the administration's view, and we think such comments are inappropriate and counterproductive.'

The same word  'counterproductive  was on White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest's crib sheet during a Wednesday briefing with reporters.

'Those comments do not reflect the United States' position, and they do not reflect the personal views of the President of the United States,' Earnest said.

'I am not aware of who made those comments .... I am not aware if the president knows who made those comments. I'd be surprised if he did.'

Confronted with harsh criticism from John Boehner, the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Earnest called it 'a little rich to have a lecture about profanity from the Speaker of the House.'

Referring to the epithet 'chicken***t,' he claimed that Boehner has 'reportedly said that about the majority leader of the United States Senate,' Democrat Harry Reid of Nevada.

White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said Wednesday that the president doesn't know who called the Israeli prime minister a vulgar name, but that it was 'counterproductive'

The speaker had hours earlier called it a 'failure' of Obama's leadership that 'disrespectful rhetoric' has been 'used time and again by this administration with respect to the special relationship the United States has with the state of Israel.'

'When the president discusses Israel and Iran, it is sometimes hard to tell who he thinks is Americas friend and who he thinks is Americas enemy,' Boehner said in a statement. 'The House of Representatives has no trouble drawing that distinction.'

'Over the last several months, I have watched the administration insult ally after ally. I am tired of the administrations apology tour. The president sets the tone for his administration. He either condones the profanity and disrespect used by the most senior members of his administration, or he does not.'

Boehner's statement referred specifically to the use of vulgar language as a slam against a head of state, not the use of foul language in general.

Some Israeli pundits predict an Israeli election in 2015, two years early, speculation seemingly supported by increasingly vocal challenges to Netanyahu's policies from senior ministers to the left and right of him within the coalition government.

Economy Minister Naftali Bennett, whose ultranationalist Jewish Home party belongs to the coalition but who has had testy relations with Netanyahu, defended him on Wednesday.

'The prime minister of Israel is not a private person. He is the leader of the Jewish state and the entire Jewish people. Cursing the prime minister and calling him names is an insult not just to him but to the millions of Israeli citizens and Jews across the globe,' he wrote on Faceboook.

Israeli opposition leader Isaac Herzog sounded a more critical note, telling Channel Two television: 'Netanyahu is acting like a political pyromaniac, and he has brought our relations with the United States to an unprecedented low.'

In a series of recent speeches widely seen in Israel as setting the stage for a possible poll, Netanyahu has highlighted growing security concerns in the wake of the July-August war with Hamas in Gaza and regional unrest that has brought Islamist militants to Israel's northern border with Syria.

Drawing Palestinian outrage and a State Department accusation that Israel was distancing peace, Netanyahu pledged on Monday to fast-track plans for 1,000 new settler homes in Israeli-annexed East Jerusalem.

Netanyahu described criticism as being 'detached from reality', saying Jews had a right to live anywhere in Jerusalem, regarded by Israel as its united capital - a claim not internationally recognised.

Baskey, the U.S. spokesman, acknowledged longstanding policy differences between Israel and Washington over settlements. 'Obviously, despite the extremely close relationship between the U.S. and Israel, we do not agree on every issue,' he said.

'For instance we have repeatedly made clear the United States' longstanding view that settlement activity is illegitimate and complicates efforts to achieve a two-state solution.' Despite these differences 'the U.S.-Israel relationship remains as strong as ever', Baskey added.
If Morgan Stewart gets everything on her Gearys Beverly Hills gift registry she'll be a half-million dollars wealthier, but will she even make it down the aisle?

The blonde 27-year old star of E!'s Rich Kids of Beverly Hills had a mini-meltdown on Monday outside the lingerie store 'Addiction' while filming the popular reality show.

'Morgan was ranting to a crew member something about shoes, and someone being late,' a witness told Daily Mail Online.

'It was so embarrassing, her fiance [realtor Brendan Fitzpatrick] just got in his car and drove off,' the witness added. 'With five days to go until her big day, Morgan was in full-on Bridezilla mode!'

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The 27-year-old reality star is set to marry realtor Brendan Fitzpatrick on Saturday at an undisclosed location in southern California

Rich Kids of Beverly Hills star Morgan Stewart was spotted having a meltdown outside the lingerie store Addiction in Beverly Hills, California, on Monday

A witness called the scene 'embarrassing' and noted that Stewart is getting married just five days later

A witness said Stewart was 'ranting to a crew member something about shoes, and someone being late' on Monday

It was also recently revealed that Morgan freaked out about the possibility of her pal EJ Johnson wearing white to her wedding.

Morgan and Brendan are set to exchange vows on Saturday, at an undisclosed location in southern California.

The couple are set to rake in a haul of wedding gifts that could total almost a half-million dollars.

The Daily Mail Online took a peak at their gift registry with the upscale Gearys Beverly Hills, where the rich and famous shop for high end, designer china and housewares.

The couple's full wedding registry features more than 100 different items, but at the time of publication, only 19 of the gift requests had been fulfilled.

As the daughter of very wealthy architect and president of H Construct, Inc, Herb Stewart, Morgan is used to a certain lifestyle, and her extravagant choices reflect that.

Stewart's fiance, Brendan Fitzpatrick, was outside the store when the meltdown occurred. A witness said he got in his car and drove off

Fitzpatrick was seen paying a parking meter outside the Beverly Hills lingerie store ahead of Stewart's meltdown

Fitzpatrick is a successful realtor with The Agency - which is owned in part by Mauricio Umansky - and is said to be worth $500,000

Addiction, which describes its line as 'seductive transparency lingerie', is an upscale store in Beverly Hills, California

Among the items on her wish list is a request for 12 Malmaison place settings, which go for $1,240, adding up to a total of $14,880.

A Christofle sterling silver cake server on the registry costs $690.

The couple have asked for six Hermes Deco Breakfast cup and saucer sets, which come in at $215 each, totaling in at $1,290.

A Baccarat Cordon lamp and white shade on the registry goes for $2,400, while a Lalique carafe is priced at $900.

They have also requested two sets of four Ralph Lauren coasters, which go for $150 each, adding up to a total of $300.

The list also features an Ercolano Kandinsky triple watch winder that costs $3,995 and an Ercolano Zag multi-color wood zig-zag chess set totaling in at $1,380.

Also on the list are Baccara Mosaique small tumblers of various colors, priced at $245 each, Moser whisky shot glasses in multiple colors, worth $45 each, and a Ruutu moss green vase that costs $295.

A Christofle Albi coffeepot priced at $1,850 and Christofle Malmasison platinum-covered vegetable dishes that cost $780 are some of the registry's pricier items.

The registry features an Ercolano Kandinsky triple watch winder that costs $3,995 and a Ruutu moss green vase that costs $295

A Christofle Albi coffeepot priced at $1,850 and Christofle Malmasison platinum-covered vegetable dishes that cost $780 are some of the registry's pricier items.

Baccara Mosaique small tumblers of various colors, priced at $250 each, and Moser whisky shot glasses in multiple colors, worth $45 each, are also on the registry

ITEMS FEATURED ON MORGAN STEWART'S WEDDING GIFT REGISTRY Twelve Malmaison place settings: $1,240 each, adding up to a total of $14,880 Christofle sterling silver cake server: $690 Six Hermes Deco Breakfast cup and saucers: $215 each, adding up to a total of $1,290 Twelve Christofle soup spoons: $290 each, adding up to a total of $3,480 Baccarat Cordon lamp with a white shade: $2,900 A Lalique carafe: $900 Two sets of four Ralph Lauren coasters: $150 each, adding up to a total of $300 Baccara Mosaique small tumblers of various colors: $245 each. Moser whisky shot glasses in multiple colors: $45 each. Ruutu moss green vase: $295. Christofle Albi coffeepot: $1,850 Christofle Malmasison platinum-covered vegetable dishes: $780 Advertisement

As for the wedding itself, Morgan has revealed she has invited 150 guests, and they're sure to be treated to an over-the-top extravaganza, if the registry is any indication.

The couple were engaged on March 6 at Ysidro Ranch in Montecito, California.

Morgan's husband-to-be Brendon is a successful realtor with The Agency - which is owned in part by Mauricio Umansky - and is said to be worth $500,000.

Prior to the wedding, he has given interviews where he has expressed 'worry' about his future wife's expensive tastes.

A quick look at the registry shows that with just days to go before the wedding, not a lot of her 'wish list' has been fulfilled by guests.

'Brendan is right to be worried, if they don't get those items from guests, he'll have to buy them himself!' the witness who saw Morgan outside the lingerie store 'Addiction' told Daily Mail Online.
Solidarity hero Lech Walesa has denied claims he was a communist spy for Russia by new secret files which he says proves his innocence on Facebook.

The former president, who helped bring about the collapse of Communism in Poland, said he would publish 900 documents he has for people to decide for themselves whether he was a secret agent.

Walesa made the decision to start sharing the papers after documents apparently showing his signature seemingly agreeing to work for the Communist secret police were released in February - reigniting conspiracy theories around the leader.

Accusation:Files released in February suggest that Lech Walesa, 72, Poland's first post-communist president served as a paid spy, under the code name 'Bolek', for the same regime he later fought and brought down

Proof?: The papers include a one-page handwritten note declaring readiness to secretly provide information to the secret police, signed by hand with the name Lech Walesa and the codename 'Bolek'

Defence: But Walesa has hit back at the accusations, by getting hold of the file himself and publishing it online - pointing out pages like these, which he says hold the key to proving they are faked

The documents were handed to authorities in Warsaw by Maria Kiszczak, the widow of Poland's former Interior Minister General Czeslaw Kiszczak, who needed the money for home repairs.

They contained 183 pages of a personal file on an agent codenamed Bolek and 576 pages of work carried out by the agent between 1970 and 1976.

The files suggested that Poland's first post-Communist president served as a paid spy for the same regime he later fought and brought down - something Walesa has strongly denied.

He wrote: 'I've never kept secrets in my life. Let the truth of this rubbish come out. Almost everything is a lie and a fake against me.

'This is what I get for serving my country.

'So judge me, fight with me, and find the truth. I'm not hiding anything and do not deny anything. Let the truth prevail.'

He promised his 38,000 Facebook followers he would make all the documents public if his post received 10,000 likes.

But after falling short by 8,000 likes he decided to publish them anyway, saying: 'As promised all documents are posted here, you will see the deception.'

Legendary: Walesa - who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983 for his defiant opposition to the communists - says there should be more names than this on the forms and that 'anyone with experience' would know that

Murky: This form, dated January 27, 1972, shows 'Bolek' received 600 PLN 'from an officer of the SB' (the secret police) - but Walesa says he never received such a payment

The declaration released in February by Poland's Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) said: 'The undersigned, Lech Walesa, the son of Boleslawa and Feliks born in 1943 in Popowo, Lipno, agrees to maintain the strict secrecy of talks held between him and employees of the security services.

'At the same time he undertakes to cooperate with the secret police in detecting and combating enemies of communism. He will pass on the information in writing and it will be truthful.

'The fact that he cooperates with the secret services he undertakes to keep strictly confidential and to not disclose even to his family.

'The information will be signed with the pseudonym 'Bolek.'

Mr Walesa's signature appears at the bottom of the document just above the codename Bolek.

Mistake: The legendary leader admitted he had 'made a mistake' but flatly denied he was ever a regime agent. Exactly what the mistake is remained unclear, but he said a mystery person should come forward

U-turn: He had said on Facebook he would release the files if his post got 10,000 likes, but it only got 2,000. Walesa carried on and released the documents regardless

Idolised: Lech Walesa raises his arms to a cheering crowd as he leaves the shipyard in Gdansk, Poland, where he worked in June 1983

Secret: The files also contain 576 pages of work carried out by the agent between 1970-1976

But he has always denied having worked for the secret police, and, after obtaining copies of the documents contained in the so-called Kiszczak files, Mr Walesa is now publishing 30-a-day - along with secret police files from his personal collection.

Two of the documents posted online by Mr Walesa show the names of intelligence officers who dealt with his file - but some are missing, proving, he says, the documents are fake.

Mr Walesa posted the first set of documents on Thursday, but then bizarrely deleted them a few hours later. They failed to prove whether or not he was a spy. His press office failed to respond to calls from MailOnline.

Mr Walesa - renowned worldwide for negotiating a bloodless end to communism in Poland in 1989 - said: 'There are two documents, one in each file supposedly found in Kisczak's file.

'Anyone who has the slightest idea about these things knows that in those documents there has to be certain names. Here they are not.

I've never kept secrets in my life. Let the truth of this rubbish come out. Almost everything is a lie and a fake against me.

'I put these two documents as indisputable evidence they are fake.'

He added that he would make the names of the officers missing from the list public and then a few hours later published them.

Other documents show receipts for cash payments from secret police officers to an agent named Bolek.

One dated January 27, 1972, shows 'Bolek' received 600 PLN 'from an officer of the SB' (the secret police).

Another dated April 5, 1972, shows payment of 500 PLN while another from October 30, 1972, shows payment for 600 PLN.

But Mr Walesa denies receiving these payments and said there were a few agents using the codename Bolek and has now called for them to come forward.

He said: 'In Gdansk there were a few Boleks whose information was collected and added to my file. If some Bolek recognises this please contact me. He will not be in danger and I will be his protector. Here it comes down to truth, decency and honour.'

Last month, Polish prosecutors said they would be seeking the opinion of handwriting experts to compare various signatures of Mr Walesa with those in the documents to see if they were consistent.

Exposed: Maria Kiszczak (pictured), 82, the widow of the former Polish general Prime Minister General Czeslaw Kiszczak sold papers which suggested revolutionary hero Walesa was a communist spy

Defended: Mrs Kiszczak had no idea what they contained, but told MailOnline: 'My husband wanted to protect Walesa's reputation as a hero'

General Kiszczak's widow Maria Kiszczak, 82, who handed the documents over for an alleged 12,485 (90,000 PLN), because she needed to money for house repairs, won't be able to help, however.

She told MailOnline: 'Before he died, my husband said that if I ever needed financial help I should take these documents to the IPN.

'They were bound together and I didn't open them. It was only when the police came that I discovered there was a note inside saying they should not be made public for decades after his death.

'I feel guilty because I didn't realise there would be such a reaction. And I didn't realise the documents were supposed to be kept secret for years.

'My husband wanted to protect Walesa's reputation as a hero.'
A filing claims businessman Sumner Redstone gave a whopping $150million to two ex-girlfriends, Manuela Herzer and Sydney Holland.

Illness has robbed Redstone of his voice, but a trial scheduled to begin Friday will determine whether the ailing media mogul remains competent enough to make key decisions about his life.

For months, a battle has raged between attorneys for Redstone and his ex-girlfriend and longtime companion, Manuela Herzer.

Herzer was stripped of her authority to make medical decisions for Redstone in October and expelled from his mansion, and has since called into question whether he knowingly kicked her out.

A filing claims businessman Sumner Redstone gave a whopping $150million to two ex-girlfriends, Manuela Herzer and Sydney Holland. Holland is seen with Redstone in 2013 (left) and Herzer is seen with him in 2012 (right)

Redstone's lawyers contend Herzer is motivated by money and upset that she has been cut off from him.

In a filing Thursday, Redstone's lawyers state Herzer and another Redstone ex-girlfriend, Sydney Holland, received $150million of Redstone's money between 2010 and 2015.

The financial details and whether Herzer repeatedly lied to Redstone will be a factor in the trial, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge David J. Cowan ruled Thursday.

Herzer's lawyers contend Redstone is being manipulated by one of his nurses, his daughter Shari Redstone and others.

Redstone's lawyers however contend Herzer was kicked out of Redstone's home after lying to him, and before her expulsion she went on a spending spree in the weeks before their friendship ended.

Redstone's filing, according to The Los Angeles Times, alleges Herzer used Redstone's credit cards after getting the authority to make medical decisions for Redstone.

The newspaper quoted the document as saying: 'Ms. Herzer raised no concerns about Mr. Redstone's capacity and continued to spend his money.'

Herzer allegedly spent more than $7,000 at Barneys, and more than $57,000 at Windsor Smith Interior Design, the newspaper reported.

The outcome of the trial will have implications far beyond the small Los Angeles courtroom where the trial will examine Redstone's mind and the inner workings of his mansion in recent months.

The 92-year-old through his company National Amusements controls CBS Corp. and Viacom Inc., whose holdings including Paramount Pictures and numerous television networks, including CBS, MTV, VH1 and Comedy Central.

Redstone's lawyers state Herzer and Holland, received $150million of Redstone's money between 2010 and 2015

Since Herzer began her court fight in late November, Redstone has stepped down as executive chairman of both CBS and Viacom.

Shareholders have sued over stock prices, which have fallen at both companies in the past year. Viacom's losses have been much greater, with its shares down 40 percent from a year ago.

After Redstone's death, his National Amusements interests will transfer to a trust that includes daughter Shari Redstone and Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman.

Both have become involved in the competency case, although Dauman is not expected to testify in person, and both have been vying for control of the trust after Redstone's death.

The trial, which could last seven days, will feature testimony from Herzer; Shari Redstone, who has had a strained relationship with her father over the years; and Redstone's nurses, doctors and several medical experts.

Redstone, too, will be seen and heard, but only to lawyers and the judge deciding the case.

Citing medical privacy concerns, Cowan ruled Monday that Redstone will should give 30 minutes of sworn testimony, and video of the session will be played early in the trial in a closed session.

'It is essential that the court see and hear from Redstone himself to make a fully informed decision,' Cowan wrote in Monday's ruling.

The mogul's attorneys have said despite his difficulty communicating verbally, Redstone can still articulate his wishes and has been involved in business decisions and who will handle his medical care.

Redstone's attorneys have fought efforts to have him give testimony in the case.

Herzer's lawyers contend Redstone is being manipulated by one of his nurses, his daughter Shari Redstone and others. Sumner Redstone and Shari Redstone are seen together in this 2012 photo

Herzer and Redstone are seen together in 2010

'The court is told in some declarations which have been submitted that he can communicate; in other declarations that he cannot communicate,' Cowan wrote. 'The court does not know who or what to believe.'

Herzer's attorney Pierce O'Donnell said Monday that Redstone has severe mental capacity issues, and he believes he can demonstrate that to the court in the 15 minutes of questioning he has been allotted.

'We believe this trial will be classic drama of what happens to elderly persons of great financial means when they're no longer able to protect themselves,' O'Donnell said after a recent hearing.

'But for the stress that this litigation is causing him and notwithstanding his well-known physical ailments, Mr. Redstone is doing well,' his attorneys wrote in a trial brief Thursday.

Redstone gave sworn testimony at his home Thursday in a videotaped session that will be played at the outset of Friday's trial.

Attorneys said it went smoothly, although a lawyer for Herzer later said it did not last the full 30 minutes that was allotted.

Redstone's attorney Gabrielle Vidal has accused Herzer of filing the case to try to get more money from the mogul, and cited filings that have detailed Redstone's sexual appetite and other embarrassing details as proof that she does not have his best interests in mind.

'Ms. Herzer's eagerness to subject a 92-year old man with a severe speech impairment to these intrusive proceedings is offensive,' Vidal wrote in a statement last month. Vidal has said Herzer 'refuses to acknowledge that Mr. Redstone does not want her in his life.'

O'Donnell has denied Herzer is motivated by money, and has said she wants to protect Redstone's wellbeing.

Cowan, for his part, has said even if Herzer proves Redstone is mentally incapacitated, it does not necessarily mean she will be allowed back into his home.

Todd W. Bonder, a Beverly Hills attorney who handles probate and intellectual matters but is not working on the Redstone case, said the mogul's testimony will be crucial to Cowan and help him decide which medical experts to believe.

Court fights over a person's mental capacity are common, but they don't typically receive much attention.
London's first Muslim mayor Sadiq Khan is the proud son of a Pakistani-born bus driver who considers himself so liberal he backed gay marriage and even launched his campaign in a pub.

The Labour MP also put tackling terrorism and 'rooting out its cancer' at the heart of his election manifesto and pledged to put the capital on a 'war-footing from day one'.

Mayor Khan was helped into City Hall by Tory rival Zac Goldsmith's campaign, which was even branded 'racist' by his own party after he claimed Labour 'thinks terrorists are its friends.

Upbringing: The son of a bus driver Amanullah (far left) is proud of his life in South London (pictured in his mother's arms) and is now the first Muslim Mayor of London

Protection: The MP considered getting security for his wife Saadiya and children because of death threats received because he backed gay marriage

Khan appeared on platforms several times with Tooting imam Sulaiman Ghani, who was first described as an ISIS supporter by Andrew Neil on a BBC programme on April 18.

The allegation, which has been denied in the strongest possible terms by Ghani, was then repeated two days later by David Cameron during Prime Minister's Questions.

Ghani released a statement the next day, leading to Neil issuing a formal apology, while Ghani has threatened legal action should Cameron repeat the remark, which was said in the Commons and is therefore protected by parliamentary privilege.

MailOnline revealed this year that in 2009 he supported groups promoting Islamic extremism and gave a speech while the 'black flag of jihad' was openly flying in the hands of children.

This week he apologised for calling moderates Muslim groups 'Uncle Toms' on Iranian-backed Press TV, also in 2009, a slur used by black people to suggest that members of their community are subservient to whites.

Despite this the father-of-two has himself suffered death threats from Islamists who hate him for being too liberal, especially because he voted for same-sex marriage.

Mr Khan admitted a Fatwa on his head made him consider getting bodyguards for his solicitor wife Saadiya, and their two children Anisah and Ammarah, 16 and 14. because he feared their lives were also in danger.

Officers in his Tooting constituency in London have been put on high alert, and will respond extra-quick should an incident be reported at his home.

Sadiq Khan is the son of a bus driver who grew up in London, and represents the Tooting constituency he was born in.

Photographs of his childhood show his family standing proudly outside their council home and another shows him waving a union flag and wearing a crown on the day of the Queen's Diamond Jubilee in 1977.

He is Labour's first mayor since Ken Livingstone, who he used to help advise, but has fought to distance himself Red Ken's politics and also Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.

Lawyer Mr Khan wooed his fellow-lawyer wife of 22 years Saadiya over Filet-O-Fish in a Croydon McDonalds and nights at a nearby cinema.

The pair wed married in 1994 and now have two teenage daughters.

Early life: Bus driver Amanullah Khan with his childrens Farhat Khan, 8, Tariq Khan, 4, Sadiq Khan, 2, Zahid Khan, 12, on the Angell Estate taken in 1972

Growing up: Mr Khan, pictured in white shirt and blue jeans wearing a crown on the Queen's Silver Jubilee in 1977, says he has 'spent my whole adult life fighting extremism'

Mr Khan, one of Ed Miliband's closest friends, sees himself as a liberal left-winger and he has even admitted that enjoys facials and manicures.

Wife Saadiya recently booked him into a spa as a romantic surprise and he shops in Banana Republic because 'you can buy clothes for short people like me'.

The handsome 45-year-old says a cab drivers told him recently: 'I thought it was George Clooney for a minute' - another said he looked like Jose Mourinho.

London contains 40 per cent of Britain's Muslims and he has spoken widely about the importance of his faith.

It is their backing that will have helped him to 44 per cent of first preferences, compared

His family always observe Ramadan, including fasting, and he was the first British minister to make make the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca.

He said: 'I attended mosques and madrassas in Tooting and Balham, adding to the knowledge of Islam taught me by my family. From a young age we learned the importance of the five pillars of Islam; faith, prayer, charity, fasting  and Hajj, a pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia, a journey every Muslim must try to make in their lifetime'.

Mr Khan says he has 'spent my whole adult life fighting extremism'.

He added: 'I know that Muslims have a responsibility to speak up, address this problem head on and to show that it will not be tolerated  and Ive paid a high price for doing exactly that'.

He admitted recently that almost every Muslim has met one and said: 'Its affected my personal life, my friendships, and my career. People I knew as a boy have gone on to act on them in terrible ways'.

But only this week he was branded unfit to be mayor after it emerged that he had described moderate Muslim groups as Uncle Toms.

The claim emerged in a 2009 interview with Iranian-backed Press TV when he was minister for community cohesion, in charge of efforts to stamp out extremism.

Mr Khan has already faced claims about his dealings with extremists during the campaign to succeed Boris Johnson as mayor.

He has dismissed Tory attacks as smears, and insisted that he was a moderate Muslim.

Big win: Sadiq Khan, pictured walking on City hall with his wife Saadiya and children Anisah and Ammarah, together left, is the 'first the first generation of Khans not to be an immigrant'

Distance: Mr Khan kept himself away from Jeremy Corbyn during the campaign and despite having been close to Ken Livingstone called for him to be thrown out of Labour for anti-Semitism

But Mr Khan's former brother-in-law, Makbool Javaid, preached hatred against non-Muslims at a rally in Trafalgar Square  with the 'black flag of jihad' flying behind him.

And he suspended his Commons-based speechwriter after he laughed about seeing homosexuals being abused in public, and made reference to 'hoes' and 'f***ing f****ts'  on a Twitter feed followed by the Labour mayoral hopeful.

Zac Goldsmith and his wife Alice Rothschild on polling day - the Tory's campaign has been branded racist and outrageous by his own party

Shueb Salar, who has represented Mr Khan at public events, continued to post them after he started working for Mr Khan in the run-up to last year's General Election.

Among the messages Mr Salar posted on Twitter was 'advice to anyone who's looking to murder their girlfriend and get away with it LOL'. The acronym stands for laugh out loud.

Mr Khan arrives at City Hall with a CV including two ministerial jobs under Gordon Brown after he served as junior minister first at the Department for Communities and Local Government and then at the Department for Transport.

He has been an MP for more than a decade, representing the south London constituency of Tooting, and entered politics after a first career as a human rights lawyer - work which drew aggressive attacks from Zac Goldsmith throughout the campaign.

On the eve of the election, Mr Khan returned to the council estate where he grew up and tweeted: 'I'll be the council estate boy who fixes the Tory housing crisis.'

And explaining what he would offer London and what it had given him, Mr Khan said before the election: 'The Khan story is a London story.

'My grandparents left India to go to Pakistan. My parents left Pakistan to come to London.'

In the interview with The Economist, he continued: 'I will be in the first generation of Khans not to be an immigrant.

'London gave me and my family a chance to fulfil our potential: I went from a council estate to helping running a business to a transport minister attending cabinet.'

The Tories have come under fire - even from their own side - for running a 'racist' campaign against the new London mayor.

Sadiq Khan suspended Shueb Salar (pictured) over a series of tweets in which he made reference to 'hoes', 'f***ing f****ts'

Radical: A youth holds up the 'black flag of global jihad' in the audience during Mr Khan's speech in 2009

Andrew Boff, the leader of the Conservative group on the London Assembly, has claimed the Tory campaign is one reason why Mr Khan was installed in City Hall today.

Communities Secretary Greg Clark insisted today he did not accept that Mr Goldsmith had run a racist campaign.

He told ITV: 'What you've seen over the last few weeks, not just in London but across the country, is very serious concerns about the people that have associated themselves with the Labour Party and the lack of a grip on the part of the Labour Party in dealing with that decisively.'

Mr Khan has vowed to be his own man in City Hall - insisting the most successful mayors have to be free of central party control.

He said: 'Where I agree with the Conservative government, Ill work closely with them to get the best deal possible. Similarly where I disagree with them, Ill put Londons interests first.

'The same goes for the Labour Party leadership. In the cases where I agree with it, Ill work with it. I think Jeremy Corbyn is passionate about the housing crisis and reducing it.

'Where I disagree with him I will say so. '

Mr Khan traded on his personal story during the mayoral contest Tweeting hours before the polls opened from the council estate where he grew up

But his tweet prompted Labour's deputy leader to tease Mr Khan about how often he has told voters about what his dad did for a living

LONDON'S NEW MAYOR: SADIQ KHAN'S 10-POINT PLAN FOR THE CAPITAL Sadiq Khan will arrive at City Hall after a big victory in the London mayoral contest that saw him campaign across the capital Tackle the housing crisis, building thousands more homes for Londoners each year, setting an ambitious target of 50 per cent of new homes being genuinely affordable, and getting a better deal for renters. Freeze London transport fares for four years and introduce a one-hour bus 'Hopper' ticket, paid for by making TfL more efficient and exploring new revenue-raising opportunities. Londoners won't pay a penny more for their travel in 2020 than they do today. Make London safer, with action to restore neighbourhood policing, tackle gangs and knife crime, a plan to tackle the spread of extremism, and a review of the resourcing of our fire service. Be the most pro-business Mayor yet, working in partnership with industry to deliver on skills, infrastructure, and growth. Restore London's air quality to legal and safe levels, with action to make travel greener and pedestrianise Oxford Street, while protecting the green belt. Set up 'Skills for Londoners' to ensure all Londoners have the opportunity to train in the skills that our economy needs. Tackle low pay, working with employers to make London a Living Wage City. Challenge gender inequality, working to close the gender pay gap and support women to break the glass ceiling while helping to remove the barriers to women's success. Make cycling and walking safer, with more segregated cycle routes, action on dangerous junctions, and safer lorries. Make London a fairer and more tolerant city, open and accessible to all, and one in which all can live and prosper free from prejudice.




U.S. District Judge Marsha Pechman ordered him released until he turns 18, when he will be returned to the custody of immigration officials

A federal judge in Seattle has ordered immigration officials to release a Somali teenager who was taken from his Oregon foster family and placed in an adult detention center in Tacoma, Washington.

U.S. District Judge Marsha Pechman said in her order, released Tuesday, that the Office of Refugee Resettlement violated the law by saying the boy was no longer a minor based solely on a dental bone scan analysis, called radiography.

The boy fled Somalia after his father was murdered and requested asylum at a port of entry in Texas. The resettlement agency placed him in a shelter and then sent him to a foster home in Portland, Oregon. He was enrolled at a high school.

Officials said on December 9 that they no longer believed he was a minor, based on the bone scan, and they moved him to adult detention.

Pechman said a law enacted in 2008 precludes the government from determining age exclusively with the bone tests.

Messages left with the Department of Justice lawyer who handled the case were not immediately returned.

Matt Adams, legal director for the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, said the agency's actions were indefensible.

'Instead of protecting unaccompanied children and focusing enforcement actions on those who pose an actual threat to the community, they targeted a child,' Adams said in a statement.

The teenager, who was only identified by initials in court records, said the experience was frightening, the rights group said in its statement.

The teen said when authorities put him in handcuffs, they didn't talk to him and just said he was over 18, the group said. While at the Tacoma facility, the teen said he was so scared that he couldn't sleep for days and could barely eat.

Pechman ordered him released until he turns 18, when he will be returned to the custody of immigration officials.
On Friday police released images of people they would like to

Fight broke out during party at

A huge brawl erupted inside a popular Chinese restaurant where men used chairs and glassware as weapons.

The fight, involving around 10 people, broke out after an argument during a party for a newborn child at the Zilver restaurant, on level six of Westfield shopping centre, in Bondi Junction, just before 10pm on Saturday February 13.

Punches were thrown during the clash before the furniture was thrown.

Scroll down for video

A huge brawl erupted inside popular Chinese restaurant, Zilver in Westfield Bondi Junction (pictured) where men used chairs and glassware as weapons

Police investigating a violent brawl at a Chinese restaurant in Sydney earlier this year have released CCTV images of people (pictured) theyd like to interview in the hope that the public can identify them

At about 9.50pm on Saturday February 13 emergency services were called to Oxford Street, Bondi Junction, following reports a group of people had been involved in a brawl inside a Chinese restaurant (pictured)

A large glass window inside the restaurant was also smashed in the brawl.

A number of young children were believed to have been in the restaurant at the time.

Officers investigating the fight have released images of the people they want to speak to.

A fight broke out at a celebration for a new born baby at Zilver Chinese restaurant in Bondi Junction

Emergency services were called to Oxford Street, Bondi Junction on the night of the incident, following reports a group of people had been involved in a brawl inside a Chinese restaurant.

Officers from Eastern Suburbs Local Area Command attended the scene immediately where most of the people involved had already left the location.

It is believed that about 10 people, possibly known to each other, were involved in the incident.

Officers from Eastern Suburbs Local Area Command attended the scene immediately where most of the people involved had already left the location

During the fight (pictured) multiple punches were thrown, with some people using restaurant chairs and glassware as weapons

Several people were arrested nearby shortly after the incident but were released a short time later pending investigation.

On Wednesday March 16, police conducted a search warrant at a Pymble address in Sydneys upper north shore and arrested a 26-year-old man.

He was charged with affray and is due to appear at Waverly Local Court on June 8.

Police are appealing to the public after they released CCTV images of eight men who are likely to be able to assist with the investigation of a violent brawl outside a Bondi Chinese restaurant (pictured)

As part of the ongoing investigation, police released images on Friday of eight people who are likely to be able to assist with the investigation.

The persons depicted in the images and anyone with information about is urged to come forward via Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.

As part of the ongoing investigation, police released images (pictured) on Friday of eight people who are likely to be able to assist with the investigation

The persons depicted in the images and anyone with information about is urged to come forward to police via Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000

Several people were arrested nearby shortly after the incident but were released a short time later pending investigation

Emergency services were called to Oxford Street, Bondi Junction (pictured) on the night of the incident, following reports a group of people had been involved in a brawl inside a Chinese restaurant
Air passengers who struggle to make their departure gate on time may never have to miss a flight again.

British Airways is launching an new smart phone app which tracks the location of travellers and lets them know if they are running late.

The app will calculate whether someone has left enough time to make it to the gate from wherever they are in the airport - be it the duty free shop or the departure lounge.

Heathrow (pictured) is one of the biggest airports in the world. But the app would also help travellers who find themselves in large and unfamiliar airports like Chicago, Atlanta, Tokyo or Dubai

It will even factor in their average walking speed so customers with a tendency to dawdle or dragging several children in tow are given more time than those who race through the crowds.

Glenn Morgan, head of digital at British Airways, said: There are different profiles of customer and we want to take account of that.

The idea of this new app is about taking the friction out of travelling.

Customers who download the new BA app must agree to share their location.

The new British Airways app will allow people to find their way to the departure gate by the quickest route, very much like a sat nav system

Their phone will then show a series of warning messages that will urge them to hurry up if they have not allowed enough time.

It also shows a map on the mobile phone so travellers can plot the quickest route through the airport and gives them step by step directions like a car sat nav.

Thousands of passengers miss flights every year and airlines are under strict controls to shut gates and allow their aircraft to take off on schedule.

They are hit with big fines if planes are delayed and have to remove the baggage of passengers who fail to show up.

The new software is one of a raft of ideas being tested by British Airways that it hopes to launch over the next three years.

Mr Morgan was showcasing these ahead of British Airwayss inaugural flight from Heathrow to San Jose, the heart of silicon valley in California.

He has also developed electronic bag tags for frequent fliers, to replace adhesive ones attached to bags at check-in.

Passengers would buy the reusable device and attach it to their bags.

It would update with the correct bar code for each flight. The small screen uses a similar display to an Amazon Kindle and syncs with a passengers boarding pass on a mobile phone.

British Airways has just started flying to San Jose, the 'capital' of California's Silicon Valley so the showcasing of the latest app technology was quite appropriate

A more ambitious plan is aimed at helping forgetful travellers who forget to bring their passport on trips.

Passengers may eventually be able to show immigration officers an electronic version of a passport on their smart phones.

It would work in a similar way to Apple Pay which scans and verifies credit cards.

The technology has yet to be authorised by regulators but BA wants to be ready.

However, in the short term, BA is planning a new service which will allow frequent fliers to store their passport details so that they dont have to write them in every time they travel.

Mr Morgan, who is responsible for new technology at BA, said: We are always exploring innovative products and want to lead the way in making things easier for passengers.
Whitehall's secularists may want to lob a brick through stained-glass windows when they hear about this.

There are moves to use the Governments apprenticeship levy in part to fund thousands of curates for the Church of England.

Ha! George Osbornes apprenticeship levy, announced last year, is basically a Leftie tax on big business.

A vicar performs a wedding ceremony at a church in North Yorkshire (posed by models). But is George Osborne's new apprenticeship levy a Leftie tax on big business to help fund Church of England curates?

It is going to be used for training purposes and if you look at Government websites the images are of multicultural school-leavers applying themselves to hi-tech tasks in sterile-looking workshops.

Welders! Computer technicians! People in white coats and goggles! Look at us, were modern.

Ministers and their Civil Service accomplices want to be thought go-ahead, creating a Britain for the global challenge and that sort of thing.

It seems unlikely they ever thought this tax might be used on trainee vicars.

Every couple of months or so, the Commons holds a short session of Questions to the Church Commissioners.

The newish Second Church Estates Commissioner is Caroline Spelman (Con, Meridan), one-time Environment Secretary.

Step forward the Church Estates Commissioner, Caroline Spelman, formerly a mere Environment Secretary. She has a touch of the Jackanory presenter about her

She once had some trouble with her expenses claims, but no doubt she has long since squared that with the Archbishop of Canterbury.

It was during yesterday mornings question time in the Commons that the apprenticeships matter was raised.

The Church Estates job, which is in the gift of Downing Street, is much coveted by churchgoing parliamentary grandees.

It usually brings a knighthood, although in the case of Mrs Spelman, the first woman to be appointed, that will need to be a damehood.

The Commissioner does not stand at the despatch box when answering questions, but in other respects he or she behaves like a minister, responding to backbenchers queries.

Mrs Spelman, a moderate Tory, is in some ways a perfect representative of todays C of E.

She is so haloed by social concern that you feel she might at any moment be about to hand you a leaflet inviting you to attend an Alpha course.

She wears her hair short, although the hairdo is perhaps a little more chic than those of many modern Vicars of Dibley.

The voice, soft and reasonable, carries a hint of a Jackanory presenter, or perhaps a BBC weather forecaster.

Concerned, possibly just a little patronising, it could never be accused of being high-brow or resonant.

Yesterday, furthermore, she had a scarf draped round her neck and down her front which looked very like a jazzy priests stole.

After the customary few minutes of talking about gay rights (Cat Smith, Labours underwhelming MP for Lancaster and Fleetwood, had asked a question about gay clergy), the discussion moved to apprenticeships.

These were raised by Mark Spencer (Con, Sherwood).

Would the Church have to pay the levy? Mrs Spelman thought this was largely unlikely.

However, the levy could affect the Church at the other end of the equation.

She disclosed that it was hoped the money could be redistributed to allow the Church to train ordinands. Having a curate is quite a luxury, she said.

It was envisaged that some of the levy could be used to meet the shortfall of 40,000 ordinands in the Church of England.

If you look at the Government literature about apprenticeships, it makes much about how the scheme can have a beneficial effect on bottom lines.

An apprentice lathe operator is shown the ropes in a factory. The apprenticeship levy requires all employers operating in the UK, with an annual pay bill over 3million, to make an investment in apprenticeships.

Perhaps the same will be true of congregation sizes.

And Heaven knows, todays vicars could often do with more rigorous training. Many of them are strangers to the Book of Common Prayer.

It remains to be seen how state inspectors will check the progress of any priestly apprentices.

Will inspectors from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills be despatched to village fetes to ensure curates are conversing in a suitably vicarish way to old biddies in the tea tent?

Will chalice-handling techniques, intonation of the General Thanksgiving and the quality of extended metaphors in the pulpit be assessed by ministerial bods with clipboards?
A group of anglers have captured incredible footage of a monster great white shark circling their boat off the South Australian coast.

The fishermen were about five kilometres off Port Broughton when the great white appeared, according to 7News.

The shark can be seen circling the boat from a distance before coming within inches of the stunned fishermen.

A group of anglers have captured incredible footage of a monster great white shark circling their boat about five kilometres off Port Broughton in South Australia

The great white opens its jaws and shows its razor-sharp teeth to the camera.

One angler can be heard saying: 'That's f***ing huge isn't it?'

'It's over three-and-a-half metres man! The more he comes up the bigger he gets,' another said.

The great white opens its jaws and shows its razor-sharp teeth. One angler can be heard saying: 'That's f***ing huge isn't it?'

The shark can be seen circling the boat from a distance before coming within inches of the stunned fishermen

Despite the angler's shock, they said that the monster shark wasn't aggressive.

One fisherman, Courtney Canham, told 7News: 'He approached the boat a few times and came up on the surface - put his head out of the water and sort of eyeballed us.

'It was incredible - there was no aggression really whatsoever even when he opened his mouth.'

The sighting comes just two days after Shark Alert South Australia reported the first ever tiger shark to be tracked into South Australian waters.
A father saved his newborn daughter's life in an emergency delivery at their family home.

Geoff Mead took on the role of both doting husband and doctor when he was woken up by the disgruntled cries of his wife Renee, whose waters had broken at four in the morning.

Unable to make it to hospital from their Wanneroo home in Perth, Mr Mead was left with no choice but to deliver his daughter in their bathroom with the help of emergency services on the phone.

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Miracle baby Alysha Mead came into the world at 4am, delivered by her father at home. The umbilical cord was caught around her neck, but dad saved her life by removing it and helped her breath for the first time

Geoff Mead (left) took on the role of both doting husband and doctor when he was woken up by the disgruntled cries of his wife Renee (right), whose water had broken

The Perth father-of-three told Channel Nine News that it wasn't an ideal way to be woken up but it wouldn't be one he'd likely forget.

He said: 'Everything was running through my head, my adrenalin was pretty high.

'I was the only one in the right spot at the right place to do it.'

In the call to emergency services Mr Mead explained that his wife was on the floor having a baby.

He said: 'The head's out and we need an ambulance now.'

But the delivery took a turn for the worst when Mr Mead's new daughter had her umbilical cord stuck around her neck.

Safely strapped in Alysha's (pictured) parents are taking no risks with their little miracle born early last month

Best friends from the beginning, older sister Natasha (left) holds her miracle baby sister Alysha (right) after her terrifying home birth

He told emergency services: 'The umbilical cord's around bub's neck.'

Mr Mead told Channel Nine News his daughter hadn't been making any sounds when she was delivered.

The officer on the phone told Mr Mead the only way to save her was to try and make her cry.

Giving her a couple of taps on the back, Alysha finally began to breathe.

Big sister Natasha (left) didn't expect to see her baby sister Alysha delivered at home when mum, Renee (right) was unable to get to the hospital from their Wanneroo home in Perth

The Mead family relied on the help of older brother Kyle (pictured) to take care of, now older sister, Natasha, during the birth of the newest addition to their family

Alysha's birth wasn't the only surprise for the day, relieved to have his newborn safe and sound Mr Mead returned to the phone only to discover the operator who had been helping was his cousin.

Mr Mead's cousin Shane Kyriacou told WA Today: 'To actually get that and help sort of delivery a niece in law is unreal.'

But Shane wasn't the only member of the family to be there for Alysha's birth, Renee's aunt Carol Johns had also been on duty at the time.

Ms Johns told WA Today: 'I looked at where the call was and realised it was my niece, it was just mean to be.'

Alysha will be 4 weeks old this month and is a happy and healthy young bub

In a post to Facebook Mr Mead said that he had been lucky to have his son there at the time of the birth.

He said: 'So lucky to have Kyle here at the time to see his new sister.

'He did a great job looking after Natasha during the delivery.'

Alysha will be 4 weeks old this month.

Alysha's birth wasn't the only surprise for the day - when another twist revealed the emergency worker helping with the delivery was Mr Mead's cousin Shane Kyriacou (pictured)
Her husband has quite the reputation for awkward kisses - and it seems Dr Jill Biden does too.

During an event at the White House on Thursday, she planted a kiss on the cheek of Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos.

The encounter happened at the podium in the State Dining Room of the White House, shortly after Michelle Obama marked the fifth anniversary of a nationwide initiative supporting veterans.

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Dr. Jill Biden (right) plants a kiss on the cheek of Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos at a White House event

And Mrs Obama said the next president of the United States should continue to make a 'national priority' of supporting service members, veterans and their families.

The first lady and Dr. Biden, wife of Vice President Joe Biden, created 'Joining Forces' in 2011 to help retiring and returning service members find jobs, help spouses transfer professional licenses after they move to another state and provide other support.

Mrs Obama said that more than 1.2 million veterans and spouses have been hired or trained since the launch.

She announced that 40 companies have pledged to hire more than 110,000 veterans and spouses over the next five years.

Bezos, the founder and CEO of Amazon, appeared with her and said the online retailer will hire 25,000 veterans over the period, nearly one-fourth of the total.

Mrs Obama said service members don't stop learning when they hang up the uniform and are eager to 'find their next mission' and use their training and talent to serve the country at home.

The encounter happened at the podium in the State Dining Room of the White House on Thursday

Bezos, the founder and CEO of Amazon, appeared at the event that marked the fifth anniversary of a nationwide initiative supporting veterans

The first lady and Dr. Biden created 'Joining Forces' in 2011 to help retiring and returning service members find jobs. Above, Mrs Obama with Amazon founder Jeff Bezos (right) and Kathleen Carroll, head of Amazon's military outreach program (center)

From left, Amazon's head of military outreach Kathleen Carroll, Amazon fouder Jeff Bezos and Dr. Jill Biden participate in an event announcing commitments from more than 50 companies that have pledged to hire and train veterans and military spouses

Giving them the opportunity is the least the nation can do, she told an audience of business leaders.

'So we need to keep up this momentum,' the first lady said. 'And I will say this again and again and again: No matter who is in the White House next, this should absolutely continue to be a national priority with national leadership coming from this building.'

The announcement was part of a month-long series of events by Mrs Obama and Dr Biden to mark the program's anniversary.

President Barack Obama, Biden and their wives were headed to nearby Andrews Air Force Base later on Thursday to open a USO comedy show in observance of Military Appreciation Month.

Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon, said the online retailer will hire 25,000 veterans over the next five years

Mrs Obama announced that 40 companies have pledged to hire more than 110,000 veterans and spouses over the next five years

First lady Michelle Obama speaks as Jeff Bezos (right) the founder and CEO of Amazon, listens, during an event in the State Dining Room of the White House

First lady Michelle Obama hugs Jeff Bezos, the founder and CEO of Amazon.com during the event

The event marks the anniversary of 'Joining Forces' and the 75th year of the USO, a military service organization.

Former 'Daily Show' host Jon Stewart is headlining the extravaganza for some 1,500 service members and their families.

David Letterman, former host of 'The Late Show,' is scheduled to appear, and producer and writer Judd Apatow is among the comedians who are expected to perform.

Obama leaves office in January.
Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry  who once referred to Donald Trump's candidacy as a 'cancer'  is now endorsing his party's presumptive nominee.

'He is not a perfect man. But what I do believe is that he loves this country and he will surround himself with capable, experienced people and he will listen to them,' Perry told CNN by phone, speaking at his home in Texas.

He also said he was open to being Trump's running mate.

'I am going to be open to any way I can help. I am not going to say no,' Perry said.

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Presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump picked up another endorsement today in former Texas Gov. Rick Perry who was highly critical of The Donald when they ran against each other in the GOP primary

Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry's campaign for the White House was the shortest of any of the candidates, though his name was still floated as someone who could wage a third-party run against Donald Trump

Perry's name had been floating as someone who could potentially wage a third-party bid as Trump's two final rivals  Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Ohio Gov. John Kasich  both dropped out this week.

Perry, in the interview with CNN, closed the door on these whispers, saying he wasn't interested and called the quest for such a candidate 'quixotic.'

'I believe in the process, and the process has said Donald Trump will be our nominee and I'm going to support him and help him and do what I can,' Perry said.

'He is one of the most talented people who has ever run for the president I have ever seen,' Perry stated.

Perry has twice run for the White House himself, earning the distinction this time around as being the first candidate to drop out, in what was an overly crowded field.

In 2012, he famously said 'oops' mid-debate when asked what federal agencies he'd kill off.

He wished to dismantle three, but could only come up with two, a gaffe that basically ended his presidential run right there.

In those short months that he did run for the White House this summer, he was one of the first brand name Republicans to take Trump on.

Donald Trump and Rick Perry had a tumultuous relationship when running against one another with The Donald making fun of Perry's thick rimmed glasses

.@GovernorPerry in my office last cycle playing nice and begging for my support and money. Hypocrite! A photo posted by Donald J. Trump (@realdonaldtrump) on Jul 22, 2015 at 7:12am PDT

Speaking at the Opportunity and Freedom PAC forum in Washington, D.C., Perry said of Trump: 'He is without substance when one scratched below the surface.'

'He offers a barking carnival act that can be best described as Trumpism: A toxic mix of demagoguery and mean-spiritness and nonsense that will lead the Republican Party to perdition if pursued,' Perry continued.

'Let no one be mistaken, Donald Trump's candidacy is a cancer on conservatism, and it must be clearly diagnosed, excised and discarded,' Perry added.

Trump, in turn, handled Perry's criticism throughout the primary campaign in the most Trumpian of ways.

In early July, Trump tweeted that Perry ' failed at the border. Now he is critical of me. He needs a new pair of glasses to see the crimes committed by illegal immigrants.'

Later that month, after Perry's 'cancer' remarks, Trump posted a picture of the two of them grip-and-grinning to Instagram.

'Governor Perry in my office last cycle playing nice and begging for my support and money,' Trump said.
The New Zealand Fire Service have responded to a challenge from police officers to perform the 'Running Man' challenge currently taking the internet by storm.

Earlier this week footage of the New Zealand Police Recruitment Organisation (NZFS) went viral, and has since been viewed more than 7.7 million times.

On Thursday the NZFS posted their own dance video to the Ghost Town DJ's track My Boo in front of a firetruck.

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The New Zealand Fire Service have responded to the challenge from police officers to perform the 'Running Man' challenge

On Thursday the NZFS posted their own dance video to the Ghost Town DJ's track My Boo in front of a firetruck. Pictured: Employee Ryan Geen performing the 'running man' solo

Silverdale firefighters, donned in their full fireproof suits, boogied in front of the firetruck before fire brigade member Ryan Geen performed the 'running man' solo.

It comes after the New York Police Department performed their own version of the dance move to the same music track underneath the Brooklyn Bridge, complete with a microphone drop at the end.

'Hey, you didn't think we'd let the cops have all the fun did you?'

Their post online read:'We run to the truck every day to help our communities, so here's our #runningmanchallenge.'

Uploading the clip to its public Facebook page, the organisation challenged firefighter forces across Australia and the U.S. to a dance-off, encouraging them to share their own moves.

A video in which police officers challenged others around the world to a dance off after performing the Running Man has gone viral

The officers danced along to Ghost Town DJs track My Boo in the clip which has been viewed more than 7.7 million times

Since being uploaded less than 15 hours ago it has been viewed more than 240,000 times, with scores commenting to share their appreciation.

One Facebook user said she was 'loving these running man challenges with the police and fire keep it going guys so far NZ is the best choice hahahaha [sic].'

Other users encouraged the ambulance services to join in on the dance competition.

The video was shared more than 4,000 times since being posted on Thursday.

Scottish police have also entered the high stakes international dance competition - by doing the 'running man' in front of Edinburgh castle.

Officers strutted their stuff in front of the famous landmark in response to a challenge from cops in New Zealand.

Silverdale firefighters, donned in their full fireproof suits, boogied in front of the firetruck

Since being uploaded less than 15 hours ago it has been viewed more than 240,000 times, with scores commenting to share their appreciation

The New York Police Department have also responded to the 'Running Man' viral video sensation

The NYPD clip features one officer finishing the clip with a 'mic drop' and dropping his radio

It is the latest in a string of light-hearted social media posts by police forces across Australia and New Zealand, the U.S and U.K.

Earlier this year officers in Queensland jumped on board the 'Be Like Bill' trend sweeping Facebook and Instagram to mock users.

The image of the stick figure, Bill, popped up on news feeds and timelines the world over.

Poking fun at it, the force wrote in January: 'Queensland police are searching for a man with a very slight build, dark hat and no nose who has been repeatedly disturbing people's timelines.

'He answers to the name Bill.'

Police in Tasmania pulled an April Fools' Day prank last month, claiming they had begun using pigs as drug sniffers.

Sharing the clip on its Facebook page, the force challenged others around Australia and in the U.S. to a dance-off

It is the latest in a string of light-hearted social media posts by police forces across Australia and New Zealand, the U.S and U.K.

Thousands took to the post to congratulate the force, with many praising it as 'awesome' and 'great'
Schools Minister Nick Gibb (pictured) said the governments reforms will benefit all youngsters

Tougher tests for primary school pupils are vital because correct grammar and beautiful command of English must not just be the preserve of the middle-classes, it was claimed yesterday.

Schools Minister Nick Gibb said the governments reforms will benefit all youngsters, particularly those whose parents do not speak properly at home and fail to encourage daily reading.

He spoke out amid growing controversy about harder national curriculum tests for pupils aged seven and 11.

On Monday, thousands of parents kept their children off lessons in protest at Key Stage One assessments, for seven-year-olds, which they claimed are too difficult and age inappropriate.

Mr Gibb had attacked the move during a World at One interview on Tuesday but was left red-faced after failing to correctly answer a Key Stage Two grammar question aimed at 11-year-olds live on air.

Addressing a leadership conference at independent Brighton College yesterday, Mr Gibb admitted he had examined all the exemplar materials for the tests, including the question he was asked on Radio Four.

He had previously discussed at great length the poser involving the difference between a preposition and a subordinating conjunctive, which is why I was surprised I didnt get it right.

Defending the Key Stage Two grammar, punctuation and spelling tests, Mr Gibb told an audience of headteachers: I do keep challenging: are these questions too difficult?

Is the curriculum that was published in July 2013, consulted on widely, informally and formally (...), is it too demanding?

And the answer I got from our advisers is its not difficult if its taught.

These are ten and 11-year-old who absorb information, they absorb knowledge. If its taught, the argument is, they can do it and they can answer the questions.

The Conservative MP for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton insisted it was important that all youngsters master a high level of grammar.

He claimed that critics are often people who already have a beautiful command of English; who write beautifully, well constructed, grammatically correct passages.

He said: Our argument is that if you dont come from a home where your parents speak in a grammatically correct form day in day out, you dont have a home surrounded by books, where reading isnt a daily occurrence, they need that kind of structural instruction and teaching about how sentences should be constructed and grammar.

I think, if you just imagine in a few years time, (when) this is firmly embedded in our primary schools, well have a generation of pupils leaving primary school with a firm grasp of grammar, a better grasp of grammar than I have.

Well have a generation of primary school pupils leaving our primary schools fluent in reading because of phonics changes; a generation of primary school pupils who know their (times) tables by heart.

Earlier this week thousands of parents kept their children off lessons in protest at Key Stage One assessments, for seven-year-olds, which they claimed are too difficult and age inappropriate (file photo)

He added: Im very optimistic that our reforms are the right reforms. They are demanding. They are raising expectations.

The curriculum was advised upon by the national curriculum review panel, of senior head teachers, advised again by curriculum experts. We looked around the world to benchmark our curriculum against those of other countries.

Im convinced that we have produced the right curriculum and the right assessments.

Of course, we always keep things under review and will learn a lot from the assessments being taken this May.

Meanwhile Mr Gibb also called for headteachers to be given the opportunity to lead schools at a younger age.

He cited Max Heimendorff who became the youngest head in the country when he took up post at King Solomon Academy in London in 2008, at the age of 29.

Mr Gibb said: We need to get people into leadership positions earlier.

Its odd that historically its taken so long for ambitious and able young people to become head teachers when they can become a senior partner in law firms by their mid 30s.
Middle-aged borrowers turned down for a mortgage because they were too old have been given a lifeline.

Halifax, Britains biggest mortgage lender, is increasing its upper limit for customers from 75 to 80 after claims of age discrimination against the industry.

This is the maximum age borrowers can be when their mortgage term ends, not how old they are when they take out the mortgage.

Halifax, Britains biggest mortgage lender, is increasing its upper limit for customers from 75 to 80 after claims of age discrimination against the industry

Previously, the cut-off age to apply for a 25-year mortgage was 50  even for wealthier customers who could easily afford to meet their repayments in retirement.

The change, which will come into force on Monday, means a 55-year-old will be able to take out a 25-year mortgage as long as they prove they can afford the repayments.

Last night, experts hailed Halifaxs new policy as a move towards a more common-sense approach to borrowing into retirement.

Tougher affordability checks introduced in April 2014 have made it more difficult for many middle-aged and older people to get a mortgage.

Banks have been criticised for going too far when interpreting the rules because they fear falling foul of regulators. This has led to lenders turning down applicants who are likely to be making repayments in retirement when their incomes are lower.

There are a range of reasons why borrowers in their mid-fifties would apply for a mortgage  including downsizing, and freeing up equity to provide their children with money to get on the property ladder.

But the computer says no approach has even led to homebuyers in their forties being turned down because they are too old. Those forced to take out shorter loans face steeper mortgage repayments.

The change, which will come into force on Monday, means a 55-year-old will be able to take out a 25-year mortgage as long as they prove they can afford the repayments

Barclays, Royal Bank of Scotland and NatWest all have an upper age limit on mortgages of 70.

The problem has been exacerbated by soaring house prices, which mean many people cannot afford to buy their first home until they are in their thirties or forties.

But David Hollingworth, from mortgage broker London and Country, said the move will put pressure on other banks to follow suit.

He said: Hopefully this is a move towards a more common-sense approach to older borrowers and those who can prove they can fund a mortgage in later life.
Brian Wallender, 57, of Hazen, was killed at about 7 p.m. Thursday when he apparently lost control of his bike about 1 mile north of the Highway 200 crossroads. Wallender was southbound and apparently got too far into the shoulder of the road and was unable to pull out, according to the sheriff.
He may be one of the most powerful advertising executives in the world, but Sir Martin Sorrell has been forced to apologise after he was publicly accused of sexism by a glamorous female historian.

The monstrous crime of this unspeakable chauvinist?

He, er, forgot the lady's name.

A minor slip, you might think, but the lady concerned was the formidable Amanda Foreman, whose biography of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, was turned into a film starring Keira Knightley.

Sir Martin Sorrell (left) has been forced to apologise after he was publicly accused of sexism by glamorous female historian Amanda Foreman (right)

And in a cautionary tale of modern gender politics, Dr Foreman had no hesitation in taking to her keyboard and going online to shame Sorrell for this disgusting example of what she dubbed 'everyday sexism'.

During his acceptance speech after they were both honoured by the St George's Society of New York, Sorrell, 71, mistakenly congratulated 'Angela' instead of Amanda.

The mistake was reported by a Manhattan newspaper and Dr Foreman  who once posed naked behind a pile of books for a Tatler magazine article  posted a link to the report and criticised Sorrell.

'My congratulations to . . . whatshername,' said Dr Foreman, referring to the ad man's error. 'Any other women out there with similar horror stories?', she inquired, adding the Twitter hashtag 'everydaysexism'.

After Dr Foreman's comments, Sorrell, who was paid 70.2 million last year as the boss of advertising firm WPP, felt suitably chastened to say sorry privately.

'Sir Martin has now graciously sent me an apology,' the 47-year-old historian tells me. 'Although the timing was unfortunate, I'm quite sure no ill-will was involved. Lots of men forget women's names.'

Dr Foreman, who presented a BBC2 documentary series called The Ascent Of Woman last year, was honoured, along with Sorrell and British Consul General in New York Danny Lopez, for having made 'an impact on the Anglo-American community on both sides of the Atlantic'.

She's certainly made an impact on Sorrell.

Polish the silver salver. The Queen is advertising for a 'polite' and 'friendly' trainee butler to prepare her morning coffee tray at Buckingham Palace. Hospitality experience is not essential, but any Paul Burrell-in-waiting must have a good command of English and an 'eagerness to tackle new challenges'. On the downside, the salary is paltry at 15,781 and the hours are long. 'It'll be hard work,' warns the Palace. Service with a smile.

How Havers found love on the beach

Eighties heart-throb Nigel Havers starred in The Charmer, but his first night of passion was an alarming experience.

The 64-year-old has disclosed that he lost his virginity outdoors in Kent.

'It was on the beach because that's the only place we could go in Broadstairs at night,' he says on Channel 4's Very British Problems, to be broadcast next Monday. 'I thought it seemed to go pretty well.

'I remember she got up and ran . . . because it was summer, she ran into the sea, and I thought, 'Oh my God, she's gone to commit suicide, was it that bad?' But she came back and said, 'No, it was fine!' '

Eighties heart-throb Nigel Havers (pictured in 1976) starred in The Charmer, but his first night of passion was an alarming experience. The 64-year-old has recently disclosed that he lost his virginity outdoors in Kent

Eva the ugly duckling

Since her titillating Wonderbra advert 20 years ago, Eva Herzigova's modelling career has gone from strength to strength.

Now, the 43-year-old claims her longevity in the beauty industry is down to having been an 'ugly' youth, because women considered beautiful in their teens fare less well as they age. 'A beauty that is appreciated in the fashion industry is a beauty that is not recognised as a young teenager.

'Usually the girls that make it are the ugly ducklings because they are tall and skinny,' says Czech-born Eva, who lives in London.

'I was not a pretty girl . . . but I had a sister who was the beauty: a voluptuous, gorgeous woman that every boy was after.'

The Government has said it intends to come down hard on avaricious restaurateurs who appropriate tips intended for waiters. It should start with the House of Lords' catering operation. One peer was outraged to learn recently that a slice of the 250 Christmas bonus he gives staff in the Lords' catering operations each year doesn't end up in hard-working employees' pockets. My source says Lord Laming, chairman of the Lords' Refreshment Committee, asks peers to donate to the House of Lords Staff Christmas Fund 'to show their appreciation for help received from staff over the year'. But, in fact, Laming siphons off some of the fund 'to finance a proportion of the staff Christmas party'. 'I think it's just wicked,' says the disconsolate peer, who wishes to remain anonymous. 'Employers should pay for the office party. It should not come out of gratuities.'
A 'malicious' stepmother forced a girl of five to make false sex abuse allegations against her natural mother, a court revealed yesterday.

The girl told police in interviews that her mother had touched her  but only after she had been bullied and made to cry by her stepmother.

Her stepmother told the child during a break in questioning that she would get no sweets if she failed to accuse her mother, Manchester Family Court heard.

The child made the allegation during her third intensive police interview in just over 24 hours  and only after steadfastly denying in the first two that her mother had done anything wrong.

But the 26-year-old mother was arrested and forbidden from seeing her daughter for more than nine months.

During a break in police questioning, the stepmother told the child she would get no sweets if she failed to accuse her mother, Manchester Family Court heard (file photo)

Yesterday the police interviews of the girl were condemned by Recorder Carly Henley, who said they had been badly conducted and marred by the use of leading questions.

She agreed with a social worker who said the interviews 'were not child focused interviews, there being limited opportunity for the child to talk, and ... it was abusive to carry out all three interviews in respect of a five-year-old child in what was effectively little more than a 24-hour period'.

Recorder Henley also said the claim of sex abuse by the girl had never been credible. Following the 'confession' the mother was arrested, interviewed and bailed by police. Both the five-year-old and her two-year-old half-sister were taken from the mother, and the five-year-old was put on to a course of therapy.

Even when police decided three months later that there would be no criminal charges, the mother was prevented from seeing the five-year-old.

The police force has not been named by the Family Court, which can hear cases in secret and which often suppresses details of officials and authorities involved. Nor did the judgment by Recorder Henley indicate whether criminal prosecutions against the stepmother and father are under way.

However, the judge ruled that the girl should be removed from the home of her father and stepmother and go to live with her maternal grandmother under the supervision of Bury council. Her mother can see her regularly, without restrictions.

The mother, the court heard, had a troubled history of mental health which meant her daughter was living with her separated father and stepmother. However, the mother had made a good recovery from her problems. The abuse claims against her were made last July. The judge said that following 'oppressive and leading questioning, the father and the stepmother manufactured a case that the girl had been sexually abused by her mother'.

The 26-year-old mother was arrested and forbidden from seeing her daughter for more than nine months (file photo)

The allegations, and recordings of the girl being questioned aggressively by her stepmother, were taken to police. Both the father and stepmother made statements to the police.

The girl was interviewed by police on August 1, and made no disclosure of any abuse by her mother. She was interviewed again the next morning, and again made no disclosure.

However, she was brought back to the police station just under two hours after the second interview by her father and stepmother, and only then said her mother had touched and hit her.

Recorder Henley said: 'I am satisfied that in the intervening period the girl was crying and that she was made to cry by the stepmother telling her she had not told the truth and would not get sweets as a consequence.

'I am satisfied she was forced to return and give the 'correct' version of events. I find that this episode was significantly emotionally abusive.'

The 37-year-old stepmother, the judge said, was motivated by 'a combination of distorted perception and malicious behaviour'. The father had wanted to cut the mother, his former partner, out of his daughter's life.
More than half the northern part of the Great Barrier Reef is dead or dying due to the most severe severe coral bleaching event in its history, the chairman of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority said.

Dr Russell Reichelt said surveys showed about 50 to 60 per cent of the 900 reefs in the northern section of the Unesco World Heritage site have or would die.

'It's very strongly linked to global warming,' Dr Reichelt told a Senate estimates committee on Thursday.

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About 50 to 60 per cent of the 900 reefs in the northern section of the Great Barrier Reef are dead or dying

Many of the once colourful corals of the Great Barrier Reef have been damage due to coral bleaching

Under heat stress healthy corals (left) expel colourful algae living inside them and bleach white (right)

The reef north of Lizard Island, off the far north coast of Queensland, was the worst hit, he said.

Aerial surveys conducted by Australia's Coral Bleaching Taskforce have shown that only seven percent of the reefs that make up the natural icon have escaped bleaching, which is caused by heightened sea temperatures.

Underwater photos have confirmed the the severity of the event - showing once colourful reefs, teeming with fish, snow white.

The extent and scale of bleaching varies across the Reef. The most extreme bleaching is in the north, while the section between Cairns and Mackay is more moderately bleached, surveys show.

Reefs south of Mackay have escaped severe bleaching because water temperatures there were close to normal over summer.

Why does coral bleaching occur? Corals have a symbiotic relationship with a tiny marine algae called 'zooxanthellae' that live inside and nourish them. When sea surface temperatures rise, corals expel the colourful algae. The loss of the algae causes them to bleach and turn white. While mildly bleached corals can recover if the temperature drops and the algae return, severely bleached corals die.

Dr Reichelt climate change was the biggest risk to the reef.

A study published by a team of Australian scientists last week found that the current bleaching event would have been almost impossible without human-caused climate change.

Record-warm sea surface temperatures in the Coral Sea in March, which have driven the bleaching, were made 175-times more likely as a result of climate change, according to the study's preliminary findings.

The scientists used state-of-the-art modelling simulations, with and without the influence of greenhouse gases, to assess the impact of global warming on sea temperatures.

Researchers also estimated that record sea surface temperatures like those in March would be normal by 2034 - meaning corals will have less time to recover from more frequent bleaching events.

The Marine Park Authority says the reef north of Lizard Island, in far north Queensland, is the worst hit

'As the seas warm because of our effect on the climate, bleaching events in the Great Barrier Reef and other areas within the Coral Sea are likely to become more frequent and more devastating,' wrote Dr Andrew King, one of the study's authors and a Climate Extremes Research Fellow at the University of Melbourne.

Although the near-real time study is yet to be peer reviewed, the authors say the methods they used have been and they have confidence in their results.

Dr Russell Reichelt, of the Marine Park Authority, said the bleaching was strongly linked to climate change

The Federal government has said bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef is a significant event. This week Environment Minister Greg Hunt announced $171 million 'boost' to protect the Reef in the budget.

It was revealed yesterday, however, that the government's reef funding was mostly recycled.

Environment Department and Education Minister Simon Birmingham confirmed under questioning in the senate that the $171 million boost was not new, but came from other programs, The Sydney Morning Herald reported.

The extent and severity of bleaching varies across the Reef, with the northern section the hardest hit
Surely it is impossible to imagine the twisted inhumanity of someone who would pick up the phone to a bereaved mother campaigning for a safer health service and unleash cruel abuse.

Yet precisely this has just happened to Sara Ryan, whose teenage son died a needless death under the supposed care of one of Britain's biggest mental health trusts.

Dr Ryan found a message on her workplace voicemail from a woman identifying herself as an official with Southern Health NHS Foundation Trust.

She began by saying she felt sorry for the loss. But then this cowardly creep continued: 'I do think you are being very vindictive. I think you are a vindictive cow, on TV all the time, slating the NHS and Southern Health.'

No wonder Dr Ryan felt sick listening to the tape. She has suffered many low points since her son Connor drowned in a bath in July 2013 at a centre run by Southern Health, but this was among the worst. It was, she said, 'part of a set of improbably inappropriate, nasty responses we've endured'.

Dr Sara Ryan (pictured), whose teenage son died in one of Britain's biggest mental health trusts, received a voicemail from a woman who said she was from the trust saying: 'You are a vindictive cow.'

Yet this is not just the story of one woman. For this astonishingly callous phone call is a symptom of something desperately alarming, a corrosive sickness that has infected the very heart of our health system.

It shows what happens when someone dares challenge the arrogance, the complacency and the cover-up culture that scars our sacred National Health Service.

Although abusing a grieving mother plumbs fresh depths of cruelty, we have seen such attitudes before: the whistleblowers silenced and driven out, the grieving relatives whose motives are impugned, the patients' groups whose heartfelt concerns are ignored.

All too often, the instinctive response to tragic failures of care seems to be denial, regardless of how much additional pain this causes patients and families. Rarely is there a ready acceptance that mistakes have, or even can, be made.

This latest shocking case puts such attitudes into hideously sharp relief. Yet again, a flawed public body showed more concern for its tarnished reputation than a terrible truth: that failures and neglect contributed to the death of a young man entrusted into its care.

But Southern Health took on the wrong person with Dr Ryan. For this charismatic woman has used her articulacy and research skills as an academic  she is a senior researcher for Oxford's Nuffield department of primary care health sciences  to highlight systemic failures in the treatment of people with learning difficulties.

C onnor, who had epilepsy and autism, was nicknamed Laughing Boy by his parents for his sense of fun, and the situations they sometimes found themselves in with his offbeat behaviour. He was, for example, charmingly obsessed with buses and the Eddie Stobart lorries that travel up and down our motorways. He was also close to his three brothers and sister.

But he died aged just 18  almost certainly after a seizure while in the bath  at Slade House, a short-term assessment and treatment unit in Oxford, run by a trust caring for 45,000 people in five counties.

Dr Ryan's son Connor (pictured) drowned in a bath in July 2013 at a centre run by Southern Health

The Trust instantly went into defensive mode. The day after Connor's death they circulated a briefing around staff revealing that they were cynically monitoring his mother's online blog, and warning that some earlier issues she had raised (over their failure to notice a seizure) might cause them difficulties.

The Trust claimed Connor died of natural causes and that 'all appropriate systems and processes were in place'. Yet six weeks later, Slade House failed an assessment by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) watchdog because of a range of serious concerns. Three months later, the unit was closed (although it later re-opened).

His mother channelled her grief into fighting to find out what really happened. At the inquest, finally held last year, it emerged that Connor had been left alone in the bath and, incredibly, the door was locked. Then it was revealed that another patient had died in the same bath seven years earlier.

Little wonder the jury found that serious failings and neglect contributed to Connor's death. It has even emerged since that the Trust had been made aware of problems a year beforehand. Dr Ryan persuaded NHS England to investigate Southern Health.

The Trust claimed Connor (pictured) died of natural causes

It emerged that this dismal trust failed properly to probe the unexpected deaths of more than 1,000 people since 2011, especially older patients with mental health problems and those with learning difficulties. She turned this into a national issue over the safety of such units for people with learning difficulties, and was joined by other families who also felt they had been let down.

Yet instead of being hailed, this brave woman had abuse heaped on her head. Not just that sick phone call: there has been foul-mouthed criticism on social media from the son of a non-executive director of the Trust, and she was called 'toxic' by one staff member in a report.

At least the Trust's chairman quit last week after yet another CQC report slammed Southern Health for 'continuing to put patients at risk'.

Yet the chief executive Katrina Percy shows no shame, clinging to her post, with its hefty six-figure salary and pension pot approaching half a million pounds. Laughably, she was given an award as NHS Chief Executive of the Year in 2012.

This sad saga stains the NHS, revealing serial failures towards vulnerable patients in its care. Such is the casual bigotry towards people with learning difficulties  such as Connor, or indeed my own daughter  that an estimated 1,200 die every year due to inadequate care.

Yet perhaps the most egregious aspect is that there are so many echoes of similar cases when the system has closed ranks in the past against those whose only wish was to save lives and spare others from grief.

As Dr Ryan told me: 'It is shocking that what has happened to me must happen all the time. You raise concerns or are caught up in something awful, and they react by turning you into the problem.'

I saw the same with Julie Bailey, hounded from her job running a cafe and shunned by her local community after exposing the dreadful neglect that led to the death of her mother and many hundreds more in two Mid Staffordshire hospitals.

This amazing woman's reward for revealing the biggest NHS failure this century, a disaster of epic proportions, was to receive death threats and abuse from hospital staff, and see her mother's grave vandalised.

And I have heard the same from whistleblowers such as Gary Walker, a former hospital chief executive who was silenced, smeared and threatened after raising concerns over how pressure to meet targets was compromising patient safety.

A lthough he knew it was standard practice to cover-up incompetence with gagging orders, he was still shocked by the savage response when he spoke out. He was almost crushed for seeking better care  and claims he remains barred from jobs in the NHS.

I know from personal experience the abuse and criticism you can receive from NHS staff if you dare take on the medical fraternity and the shibboleths about our sacred health service in print, even though statistics show it performs badly in too many areas, from cancer care to infant mortality.

To a lesser extent, this high-handed attitude of some medical personnel  the assumption that it is their health service and they are beyond reproach  is writ large in the current junior doctors' strike. Anyone daring to disagree with their stance, perhaps supporting the idea of safer weekend services, gets accused of simply being a heartless Tory stooge.

The harsh truth is that for too long the NHS cruised along on waves of public worship, hiding its flaws behind a wall of smug arrogance, its failures behind a grotesque culture of cover-up, and turning its fire on those who dared to challenge its behaviour.

This undermines the many thousands of NHS staff who are efficient and dedicated, it impacts on vital services, and it is obscenely contemptuous of patients, families and taxpayers who, after all, pay the NHS bills. As costs are constrained and pressures build on a beleaguered system, such attitudes can only have damaging consequences.

Southern Health should immediately issue a full apology to Dr Ryan  and then sack its chief executive, who has overseen such lethal incompetence.
Great heroes like Sir Winston Churchill may have struggled in the devastating spotlight of social media, his grandson has said.

MP Sir Nicholas Soames recalled Sir Winston as a beloved grandfather and a human being with flaws, as well as the inspirational leader, speaker and statesman who led Britain to victory in the Second World War.

The difficulty would be that Sir Winston, a former Conservative prime minister, excelled at a time which contrasts sharply with today's instant media-fuelled hi-tech digital world.

Great heroes like Sir Winston Churchill may have struggled in the devastating spotlight of social media, his grandson has said

'It was a different life,' Sir Nicholas told the Brighton College education conference.

In response to the question 'Why aren't there any more Churchills?' he said: 'The whole social media can destroy people overnight. Anyone who is brave enough now to pop their heads above the balcony would find it pretty it hard going.'

He told delegates that social media allows 'an immense campaign' to be mounted against people'.

He said: 'I think it is a very hard thing for our democracy to cope with all that. One hopes that good, sensible and brave people will continue to go into public life at all levels.

'I do not mean Members of Parliament, local government - I mean everything ... to become magistrates and to do whatever it is they need to do for public service because we more than ever need people of quality, judgment and backbone who are prepared to come forward.'

MP Sir Nicholas (pictured) said leaders such as Churchill are not around today because social media can 'destroy people overnight'

Sir Nicholas urged youngsters today to value education, and said that 'the world is their oyster and never forget that thousands and thousands of people died horrific deaths so we could all have the vote and live in peace'.
He also claimed he paid 'nearly 500 Syrian just to have some Coco Pops'

Ousama justified the beheadings by ISIS and said he was not afraid to die

Abou Ousama was fighting with Jund al Aqsa a branch of al-Qaeda in Syria

The 'true blue Aussie' jihadist who fought in Syria, condoned ISIS beheadings and paid nearly 500 Syrian pounds to buy Coco Pops has reportedly been killed by airstrikes aimed at his village.

Abou Ousama's death in Syria was announced on social media last September and publicised again by a friend of the Jihadi on Telegram, a social media app, reported The Daily Telegraph.

Ousama, who also goes by the name Abu Safiyya Australi, is believed to have followed Sheik Mustapha al Majzoub, a prominent Sydney cleric to Syria, after informing family and friends he would be undertaking humanitarian work in 2012.

Instead Ousama is believed to have been killed while fighting for a branch of al-Qaeda, Jund al Aqsa, as a brigade combat medic, leaving behind two children in Syria.

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Father of two Abou Ousama who gained notoriety after claiming to have spent money for Coco Pops reportedly died in Syria last September

A tweet posted in Turkish on the app ascertained his death on September 24.

'Australian Nusra terrorist Abu Safiyya Australi Fua was killed by defence forces while attacking his village.'

A statement by a friend of the Jihadist also stated the Australian man was also fighting with ISIS before it became a household name.

'This brother Abu Safiyya Australi I know very well  he also came on a small interview on some Australian channel  he has two children here and he became shaheed (martyred) inshallah and I know that his inlaws (sic) here are very poor,' the friend wrote.

'Before he (Majzoub) was with Dawla (IS) then he became Jund al-Aqsa.'

Ousama's presence in the war torn country was splashed on Australian television after an interview by British photojournalist Tam Hussain with the jihadist was aired on Seven News in 2014.

Although failing to say where he was from in Australia, the jihadist did not shy away from saying the brutality of ISIS is a necessary part of establishing an Islamic State.

Abou Ousama reportedly followed Sheik Mustapha al Majzoub (pictured) in 2012 - a prominent Sydney cleric who was killed in a rocket attack

Abou Ousama justified the beheadings conducted by ISIS

The father-of-two said there is no difference between a missile killing 15 people and one man getting his throat cut

'You have these beheadings and some people might call them barbaric, some people might have these names for them but what is the difference between a missile that hits into a house which kills 15 kids compared to a man dying getting cut by his throat.'

'ISIS have taken this role of protecting the innocent Muslims of this country, of this land.

'So, they have to do what they need to do to make their state.

'If they're blackmailing America or anybody saying don't shoot a missile which is going to kill 50 or 60 people for one bloke how can we even say that's equivalent to it being a wrong?'

The young Aussie also revealed that there were no home comforts while living in Syria and as a result he had to pay 500 Syrian (A$3) for a box of Coco Pops.

'Just because you miss home you feel like some Coco Pops,' he said.

Despite his positive memories about Australia he did not rule out fighting against Australian troops who might invade.

'If they are going to come in with their aeroplanes and shoot missiles and kill innocents etc etc then how can anybody, you're forced to.

'I hope that Allah accepts the good we've done and blesses us with his reward if the highest paradise. This is the best. What more could you want, you know?

'I'm sad to see Australia taking that step to come into a place it doesn't need to be because it will cause a reaction, it will cause people to hate it,'
Brexit could spark the collapse of the European Union, leading financial analysts warned yesterday.

In a bleak report, credit agency Moodys said the EU was now so fragile that even a small crisis could threaten its sustainability.

The organisation warned investors that the bloc had suffered serious damage from its failure to tackle the migrant crisis and the problems of the eurozone. It came as European Council president Donald Tusk last night warned the Brussels dream of a European superstate is an illusion that should be stopped.

Brexit could spark the collapse of the European Union, leading financial analysts warned yesterday. In a bleak report, credit agency Moodys said the EU was now so fragile that even a small crisis could threaten its sustainability

In a devastating assessment, Moodys said there was a risk the Brussels club could disintegrate even if the UK votes to stay in the June referendum  and it could be a matter of when, not if.

Its report concluded: Even if the EU survives its current challenges largely unscathed, even a small future crisis could threaten the sustainability of current institutional frameworks, if it coincided with negative public sentiment and populist political developments. This can create the impression that the question is when the system breaks, rather than if.

Colin Ellis, Moodys chief credit officer for Europe, added that a British exit could spark an existential moment for the EU.

The warning came as European Council president Donald Tusk last night warned the Brussels dream of a European superstate is an illusion that should be stopped

The report is a serious blow to David Cameron, who has warned that the risks of leaving the EU far outweigh those of remaining in the troubled organisation.

Analysts were scathing about the response by Brussels to the crises gripping the EU. Their report called the EUs reaction to the refugee crisis fragmented and disorderly and criticised weak decision-making.

The EU faces strong internal challenges as well, with disappointment and resentment looming high and the EU becoming associated with austerity policies in many countries, said the report. Analysts also warned that efforts led by European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker to resolve the EUs economic problems were failing.

Meanwhile, former Bank of England governor Mervyn King warned that empire-building by Brussels risked a backlash across Europe. In a speech in Frankfurt, he said there was a limit to the economic pain that can be imposed in pursuit of a federal Europe without risking a political reaction.

Adding further fuel to the debate, European Council president Donald Tusk last night called on Brussels to halt attempts to replace individual countries with a European superstate. Speaking in Rome, he said it was time to redefine our dreams for the EU. This means that today we must admit this dream of one European state with one common interest and maybe in the future one common nation was an illusion, he said.
Donald Trump launched his general election campaign in coal country on Thursday, modeling a miner's hard hat and delivering his first campaign speech in nearly a year that didn't take a single shot at another Republican.

'I actually wish the primaries were not over. It's no fun this way,' the Republican Party's presidential nominee-in-waiting told an estimated 13,000 people in Charleston, West Virginia.

'But everybody's out. I'm the only one left!'

He even said no one needed to vote on Tuesday, claiming he had already 'won all your delegates.'

This week's unexpected campaign exits by Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Ohio Gov. John Kasich left the real estate billionaire with no one to pick on other than Hillary Clinton, the former secretary of state who is shaping up to be his November competition.

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TRUMP DIGS COAL: Custom-printed signs set the tone on Thursday night in Charleston, West Virginia as Donald Trump modeled a miner's helmet for 13,000 supporters

FAN BASE: An estimated 13,000 people came to the Charleston Civic Center to see the man who had already won the primary race

ROUGH AROUND THE EDGES: A Trump supporter gestured at photographers who saw him wearing a 'Hillary Sucks, But Not Like Monica' shirt and buttons that read 'Bomb the s*** out of ISIS' and 'Ban idiots, not guns'

'Let me tell you something,' he said, drawing a chorus of boos at the mention of Clinton's name.

'The Clinton administration, of which Hillary was definitely a part  she was a part of almost everything,' Trump recalled.

And then with a mischievous twinkle, he added: 'Almost, I say. Not everything.'

Laughter built to applause. A woman behind the press section at the Charleston Civic Center yelled 'Monica who?'

'I didn't think the people of West Virginia thought like that!' Trump chided the crowd in his best mock-lecturing tone as the guffaws continued over the sexual innuendo.

'That's terrible. You should be ashamed of yourselves! Terrible, terrible people.'

Trump spent only a few seconds noting the expanding legal quagmire surrounding 'Crooked Hillary's' classified email scandal, focusing instead on her embarrassingly candid statement that coal mining, a West Virginia economic mainstay, should be a casualty of a new green-energy economy.

'We have to win the general election. We cannot take Hillary Clinton any more,' he said.

'We can't take any more of the Clinton stuff, which is another 4 years of Obama. You can't take it folks. You're gonna have your mines closed, 100 per cent.'

HE'LL VOTE IN 2032: A young boy helped his father hold up a Trump sign Thursday night

'When she says she's going to close the mines, do you think she was kidding?' he asked, insisting that 'that's her true feeling. See, she didn't have a teleprompter for once when she said that.'

Clinton cleaned up her gaffe by saying she 'misspoke,' but Trump insisted she would continue 'years of horrible abuse' heaped on coal country by an overzealous Environmental Protection agency.

'All of it's getting safe,' he said of mining and burning coal for electric generation. 'And as it gets safe, they're taking it away from you in a different way.'

Trump accepted the endorsement Thursday of the powerful West Virginia Coal Association, a statewide trade group that he said 'spent, like 20 seconds' deliberating their decision.

The organization's president presented him with a ceremonial white hard hat as a trophy. In mere seconds 15,000 West Virginians were chanting for him to wear it.

'Put it on, right?' he asked before depositing the helmet on his signature yellow mane  boosting the noise level to a new peak.

'Thank you everybody! That is great!' he said after posing thumbs-up and miming a shoveling motion.

'My hair look okay?'

'And by the way,' a jubilant Trump added as he smoothed his locks, 'look  it really is mine, right? Look at that! My hair. Give me a mirror!'

CAMO: Trump draws military veterans at every rally who applaud his promises to reform the VA

WHAT PRIMARY? The billionaire told West Virginians that they don't need to vote on Tuesday since he's 'won all your delegates'  even though there are other political races on the ballot

Trump told the West Virginians repeatedly that Tuesday's Republican primary election won't matter  even suggesting that that dont need to participate.

'In November you're going to go out and you're going to vote. That's going to be the greatest vote you ever cast, okay?' he said. 'The vote was supposed to be on Tuesday. But now I can say, "Stay home, but get twice as many people in November," right?'

'Now what I want you to do is save your vote. You know, you don't have to vote anymore. Save your vote for the general election, okay? Forget this one. The primary is gone,' Trump continued.

Tuesday's election will still be held as scheduled; early voting has been going on for a week.

Primary races will be fought out in every legislative district, including a hotly contested congressional contest.

'I've won all your delegates. I don't have to do anything!' Trump said, mangling the rules.

Trump entered the arena to the sounds of 'Take Me Home, Country Roads,' a 1971 song by the late John Denver.

The tune is one of West Virginia's four official state songs.

The recording stopped playing in mid-chorus when Trump approached his podium, but the crowd finished the song in unison, singing, 'West Virginia, mountain mama, take me home, country roads'

'John Denver was a friend of mine,' Trump said near the end of the night.
Britain's 12.2billion foreign aid budget should be partly spent at home to help lone child refugees, MPs said yesterday.

The Government is facing calls to divert some of the huge budget to local authorities and resettlement programmes in the UK.

David Cameron dropped his opposition this week to the resettlement of up to 3,000 unaccompanied children stuck in squalid EU refugee camps.

The Mail was among those calling on the Prime Minister to show compassion towards the youngsters, some of whom are as young as five.

Britain's 12.2billion foreign aid budget should be partly spent at home to help lone child refugees, MPs said yesterday. The Government is facing calls to divert some of the huge budget to local authorities and resettlement programmes in the UK

More than 30 Tory MPs were also threatening to vote with Labour against the PMs refusal of sanctuary.

But yesterday, after he decided to let some children registered in camps before March 20 come to Britain, there were calls for the overseas aid budget to fund their lives in Britain.

The Local Government Association says it costs 50,000 a year to pay for the foster care, health and education of a child refugee.

But spending on refugees in the UK can only come from the Department for International Developments (DFID) ring-fenced international aid target for the first year they are here.

Last year, Britain became the first G7 country to meet the UNs 45-year-old aid spending target by committing to spend 0.7 per cent of its gross national income on aid every year.

Stephen Phillips, the leading Tory rebel on the child refugee issue, said yesterday: I would support using the foreign aid budget for this.

Its a change to the Overseas Development Assistance rules  internationally  which needs to be made. I have long supported spending as much as we do on overseas aid because Ive seen first-hand how important it is for our security here at home.

David Cameron dropped his opposition this week to the resettlement of up to 3,000 unaccompanied children stuck in squalid EU refugee camps

'But its only right in this crisis that the costs faced by local authorities should be met from that budget.

If Europe wants our help dealing with this crisis  and they need it  other countries who dont meet their international commitments to spend 0.7 per cent on aid must support us to get the rules changed. Former local government minister Bob Neill said: Im in favour of maintaining our aid budget, but using it to help people coming here.

Fellow Tory MP David Burrowes said: It makes sense for DFID to be long-term funding lone children here. The money would otherwise be spent on supporting them in camps.

However, LibDem leader Tim Farron said poor countries should not be robbed of foreign aid. Instead, Britain should make use of EU funds to help pay for refugees arriving here.

More than 2.3billion has been made available from an asylum, migration and integration fund. On top of this, member states can get 7,800 for every unaccompanied child they resettle.George Osborne has already announced that more than 460million of the overseas aid budget will be used by 2020 for refugees in Britain.

The Government will provide a further 130million by 2020 to local authorities to contribute to the costs of supporting refugees up to their fifth year.

 The number of European schoolchildren migrating to Britain has soared eight-fold in a decade  putting huge pressure on classrooms.

A record 25,000 aged five to 18 arrived from the EU in 2014, compared to just 3,000 ten years earlier  a rise of 733 per cent.
A police officer who adopted an orphaned kangaroo joey has saved the young marsupial's life for the second time after two ravenous eagles plucked him from the ground and tried to make him their lunch.

Senior Constable Scott Mason nursed Cuejoe the joey back to health after he was found hiding inside his dead mother's pouch following a truck accident in early March.

The small roo required saving again only weeks later as he was 'stretching his legs' outside Burringurrah Police Station, in outback West Australia, when a large wedge-tailed eagle swooped into the yard and carried him away over a two-metre high fence.

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Senior Constable Scott Mason and his adopted animal 'son' Cuejoe are reunited after the kangaroo was taken from the Burringurrah police yard by a Wedge-tailed eagle

Senior Constable Mason quickly jumped into action and pursued the winged predator, who was met with another hungry eagle only a short distance from the station.

He watched on in horror as the two birds started pecking at little Cuejoe before he ran towards them and scared the hunters away.

Cuejoe instinctively fled and was scooped up by his adopted 'dad' a short distance away.

'I finally caught up with him a few hundred metres down the way and found out that he was bleeding quite heavily,' Senior Constable Mason told the BBC.

Senior Constable Scott Mason nursed Cuejoe the joey back to health after he was found hiding inside his dead mother's pouch following a car accident in early March

He has since forged a unique bond with the little roo, taking him out on jobs and even to the beach

The small roo required saving again only weeks after his adoption after a large wedge-tailed eagle swooped into the police station's yard and carried him away over a two-metre high fence

Senior Constable Mason quickly jumped into action and pursued the winged predator, who was met with another hungry eagle only a short distance from the station.

The joey had sustained talon wounds to his chest and face, but with the nearest veterinarian a five hour drive away, the animal-loving officer decided to stitch little Cuejoe's wounds up himself.

He was given antibiotics to fight off any infections and has 'been doing a lot better' since getting some rest.

According to the Washington Post, the two eagles sat and watched the station for two days, reflecting on the meal that could have been.

This comes after officers from Laverton, west of Burringurrah station, rescued five puppies and two young kangaroos in less than 24 hours.

The joey had sustained talon wounds to his chest and face, but with the nearest veterinarian a five hour drive away, the animal-loving officer decided to stitch little Cuejoe's wounds up himself

The two joeys were fed milk and snacks by officers at the Laverton police station and are now being looked after by an animal shelter

Officers from the Goldfields town were flagged down on Monday morning by local children who found the joeys wandering along a street without their mother, according to Constable Richard Hall.

'We got them some milk and put them into some sacks to keep them warm and we've passed them on to someone who rescues joeys here,' Const Hall said.

'As soon as they hopped into the pouch, that was them asleep.'

A day earlier, a local resident surrendered five puppies to Laverton Police after their dog had an 'unexpected pregnancy'.

The five adorable puppies sit in the back of the police van at the Laverton police station. The dogs were handed in to officers by a local after their mother had an unexpected pregnancy

'They're living at the home of one of the police officers here at the moment and they're going to go down to Kalgoorlie on Friday where we have a connection with a dog rescue foundation,' Const Hall said.

'Animals are a big part of the community up here and it's just nice to help others out.'

Const Hall, originally from the United Kingdom, only moved to Laverton a month ago and said he was pleased to be involved in such an Australian rescue already.
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Plans to extend free childcare hours for three and four-year-olds suffered a major blow yesterday as a key pilot project hit the rocks over money.

Dozens of nurseries in York refused to offer the new provision over concerns it had not been funded properly and the terms were 'unfair'.

The government wants to double free childcare provision for pre-school children of working parents to 30 hours a week across the country from 2017, beginning with some test areas this year.

Dozens of nurseries in York refused to offer the new provision of free childcare hours for three and four-year-olds over concerns it had not been funded properly and the terms were 'unfair' (file picture, posed by models)

The move is designed to help parent return to work, but many nurseries have already said the burden of offering the extra hours would force them to close.

They say the Government needs to pledge more money to properly fund the scheme, or paying customers would be forced to subsidise it.

York is one of the first trial areas for the scheme, along with Wigan, Staffordshire, Swindon, Portsmouth, Northumberland, Newham and Hertfordshire.

Ministers announced in February that parents in these areas would benefit from this September, with a nationwide roll-out from next year.

But yesterday, 30 nurseries in York said the 3.95-per-hour funding for the extra sessions would mean a loss for providers.

Ken McArthur, owner of Polly Anna's, in Haxby, said: 'They want me to take less money per hour than I'm getting now. That is unworkable.'

Beverley Foers from Daisy Chain nursery, in Heworth, added: 'At this rate, they're stopping us from implementing this pilot and helping our parents.'

Menna Godfrey, representing all providers in Copmanthorpe, said: 'We have a responsibility to make sure this scheme is fair for everyone when it gets rolled out in September 2017.

'What we have been offered now is not workable.'

The nurseries said costs have substantially increased with the National Living Wage and pension auto-enrolment.

They added that to run a provision on under funding would leave many businesses unsustainable.

We don't want a situation where parents cannot benefit from the additional free hours because the funding rate is too low for providers to offer it Purnima Tanuku, chief executive of National Day Nurseries Association

Purnima Tanuku, chief executive of National Day Nurseries Association (NDNA), said: 'It is disappointing but entirely understandable that nurseries won't commit to the pilot because they aren't getting paid a fair rate.

'We don't want a situation where parents cannot benefit from the additional free hours because the funding rate is too low for providers to offer it.

'Quality learning and care does not come cheaply and that providers cannot subsidise free hours offer any further.

'We are hopeful that a workable solution can be found before the pilot is due to start in September.

'It is an early warning signal that the government must take this seriously and address the issues before the pilot starts.'

Parents of three and four-year-olds already get 15 hours of free childcare a week, as do the most disadvantaged parents of two-year-olds.

Thirty nurseries in York said the 3.95-per-hour funding for the extra sessions would mean a loss for providers

The extra free hours would be worth around 5,000 a year  including the 2,500 parents can already save from existing free childcare offers.

Announcing the scheme earlier this year, education secretary Nicky Morgan said: 'For too long, rising childcare costs have been a barrier preventing parents and particularly mothers from working.

'We have made a commitment to help working people, and through this extended offer we will help thousands more parents who want to return to work to do so.'

A Department for Education spokesperson said: 'We are investing more in childcare than any previous government - 6 billion per year by 2020 to support hardworking families. We have already invested 13million for early implementation in some areas which should benefit around 5,000 children.
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A bizarre bird caused quite a stir in his colony when he was spotted walking around having apparently lost his head.

Australian photographer Robert Ian Fraser, 53, noticed the peculiar sight while exploring the South Georgia Islands, as part of a three week cruise around the Falklands and Antarctica.

Seeing a headless penguin initially left Mr Fraser stumped - but he later came to realise that the sight was more common than he had imagined.

He said: 'Being around 500,000 penguins, the sight of an apparently headless bird was more common than you might think.'

Thanks to a clever optical illusion and the help of a double-jointed neck, the headless bird was able to pull off this unusual trick.

But such a manoeuvre is not just a display of the king penguins flexibility - it enables the flightless bird to reach deep into its feathers when they feel an itch or need to groom.

With over two million king penguin scattered across the world the unsettling sight has made several appearances in areas of Crozet Island, Prince Edwards Islands, the Kerguelen Islands and other parts of the South Georgia archipelago.

Bizarre bird: In the South Georgia Islands penguins appear to be walking around without heads. The optical illusion left Victorian photographer Robert Ian Fraser stumped by the unusual sight while he was

It's all in your head! The flightless bird caused a stir among the colony although Mr Fraser said the sight was more common than you might think among penguins
Fairfax Media has announced that their newspaper titles will move to publishing only at weekends in future years so as to reflect the changing consumer market.

The Sydney Morning Herald reports that the company's chief executive Greg Hywood told investors that publications like The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and The Australian Financial Review, will see a 'future sustainable, profitable publishing model' despite falling print profits and high printing costs.

Mr Hywood, who addressed the Macquarie investor conference on Friday, also told analysts and fund managers that Fairfax will be concentrating on a revenue model for The SMH and The Age that will be 'reset to focus on the 65 per cent of advertising revenue which is generated on the weekend'.

Fairfax's chief executive Greg Hywood said the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age will be 'reset to focus on the 65 per cent of advertising revenue which is generated on the weekend'

'Quite simply it is likely that one day, the viability for newspapers on current trends will run out. It isn't going to happen overnight  but eventually it will,' he explained.

'People have accused us of being too pessimistic about print  perhaps it's more a case of being too honest for their liking. We prefer telling it like it is and planning for it.'

Publications like The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age will only be published on weekends in the future

Mr Hywood did not put any date on when the changes will take place but admitted that 'all the signs indicate it is inevitable'

However, unlike the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, the Financial Review could go the other way and drop its print weekend edition which would 'focus on its weekday revenue strength'.

'It should surprise no one, and certainly not us, that the seven-day-a-week publishing model will eventually give way to weekend-only or more targeted printing for most publishers,' Mr Hywood said.

He did not put any date or deadline on when the changes will take place he said that, 'all the signs indicate it is inevitable  although some time away'.
Donald Trump marked Cinco de Mayo by posting a photograph of himself tucking into a taco bowl - and declaring 'I love Hispanics!'

But it provoked the ire of former Miss West Virginia Andrea Mucino, who pointed out his errors in an epic comment that quickly went viral.

The presumptive Republican nominee wrote alongside the image: 'Happy #CincoDeMayo! The best taco bowls are made in Trump Tower grill. I love Hispanics!'

However, in her comment, Mucino called Trump out on the fact that Cinco de Mayo is not a Hispanic holiday, but a Mexican one - and pointed out that he is the same color as the dish he claims to be enjoying.

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Former Miss West Virginia Andrea Mucino (pictured competing in the Miss USA pageant last year) attacked Donald Trump for his Cinco de Mayo picture on Thursday

'Too bad a taco bowl isn't Mexican, the Trump Tower Grill isn't either, you're not eating taco bowls from New York because you're in WV today,' she wrote.

The dish before him, also known as a taco salad, with a flour tortilla shell, originated in the United States.

'Cinco de Mayo isn't a hispanic holiday it's a mexican one, and you are the same color as the taco bowl shell. But I digress!'

However, Trump does appear to be in his Manhattan office - with a view of Central Park visible behind him - in the picture.

He appeared at an event at the Charleston Civic Center at 7pm on Thursday. However, the billionaire businessman does have a private jet at his disposal and has previously said he likes to travel home in between events.

Daily Mail Online has contacted the Trump campaign for comment.

Alongside the image of Trump with a hearty taco bowl, he wrote: 'Happy #CincoDeMayo! The best taco bowls are made in Trump Tower grill. I love Hispanics!'

Mucino called Trump out on the fact that the billionaire was not even in New York City, but West Virginia, when he posted the picture  and pointed out that he is the same color as the taco bowl's shell

But crucially, she noted that Cinco de Mayo is a Mexican  not Hispanic  celebration.

The term Hispanic refers to the people, nations, and cultures that have a historical link to Spain, such as Latin America and the Philippines.

Celebrated every year on May 5, it commemorates the Mexican Army's unlikely victory over French forces at the Battle of Puebla on May 5, 1862.

The point is particularly contentious as one of Trump's most controversial policies is his plan to force Mexico to pay for a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

The picture spawned criticism from some Latino groups that found it offensive and pandering.

Janet Murguia, president of the National Council of La Raza, the nation's largest Hispanic civil rights organization, tweeted a short time later that the Republican presidential front-runner's post was 'clueless, offensive and self-promoting.'

WHAT IS CINCO DE MAYO? Cinco de Mayo originally commemorated the Mexican Army's victory over French forces at the Battle of Puebla on May 5, 1862. In the United States, it has since been transformed into a celebration of Mexican culture and food. However, taco bowls, also known as a taco salad, with a flour tortilla shell, originated in the United States. Many Americans also have the impression that May 5 is Mexico's Independence Day, but it's not. That day is celebrated each year on Sept. 16. Cinco de Mayo isn't even a federal holiday in Mexico.

'Eating a taco or wearing a sombrero doesn't cut it w/our community in 2016,' Murguia tweeted.

The Latino Victory Fund, a left-leaning political group, released a statement that said: 'Donald Trump is doubling down on his racist, anti-immigrant, anti-Latino and anti-Mexican rhetoric.'

And Vicente Fox, the former president of Mexico who has clashed with Trump over the proposal to build a border wall, joked to Fox News that he saw that Trump is 'now having some enchiladas and some Mexican food - I hope that he will not get indigestion.'

Hispanic-Americans represent an increasingly important voting bloc in the United States.

Trump's poll numbers among Latinos have been consistently poor since he began his campaign by promising to build a border wall to prevent 'killers' and 'rapists' from coming to the U.S. from Mexico.

Polls show about three quarters of them hold unfavorable views of the billionaire, who insulted Mexican immigrants last year by branding some of them 'rapists' and other criminals.

He has also vowed to deport millions of undocumented immigrants and build a wall along the Mexican border in order to stem illegal immigration and drug flows.

A Gallup poll released last month showed 77 percent of Hispanics had an unfavorable opinion of Trump, while only 12 percent viewed him favorably.

Meanwhile, Democrats seized upon the post, suggesting it highlighted Trump's weakness with Latinos.

Hillary Clinton, the Democrat likely to face Trump in the general election in November, weighed in within minutes of the taco tweet - noting the irony of him saying he 'loves Hispanics'.

Hillary Clinton also responded to Trump's claims that he 'loves Hispanics' on Twitter, saying he talked about deporting some on Wednesday

The former secretary of state cited Trump's apparent love for Hispanics while also quoting him from his NBC interview a day earlier, in which he said 'they're gonna be deported.'

'I love Hispanics!' Trump, 52 minutes ago,' wrote Clinton. 'They're gonna be deported.' Trump, yesterday.'

She also added a tweet in Spanish, saying Trump's foreign policy was 'irresponsible.'

Clinton's campaign tweeted out a video - with Spanish subtitles - recounting Trump's past comments supporting mass deportations of immigrants in the U.S. illegally.

Meanwhile, Mucino, who is half-Mexican and half-French meaning Cinco de Mayo is a big holiday in her family, said she decided to post the comment because she found Trump's picture 'ridiculous.'

'I found it pretty disconnected from the Hispanic population [in the U.S.],' she told Buzzfeed News.

So she decided to 'poke the cat a little bit.'

She is shocked that the comment got so much attention, but says that it shows there is hope that the election is 'not going to be as awful' as people believe in what she said.

Mucino also claims that the comment, which received more than 30,000 likes within an hour of being posted, was deleted by the Trump campaign.

'Update: @realDonaldTrump deleted my comment on his Facebook picture,' she wrote on Twitter on Thursday evening.

Mucino (center), who is half-Mexican and half-French, said Cinco de Mayo is a big holiday in her family

Mucino claims that the comment, which received more than 30,000 likes within an hour of being posted, was deleted by the Trump campaign

'I think it's pretty funny that [Trump] kept all of the awful messages on his picture but [kicked one off] that was kind of a joke,' she added to Buzzfeed.

Ironically, Mucino was Miss West Virginia in 2015. Trump owned the Miss Universe organization until selling it last year.

From a cursory glance at her Twitter feed, it is clear that Mucino, who is from West Virginia but works at a political consulting firm in Washington, D.C., has been unnerved by a possible Trump presidency for some time.

'We have a Nacho Doritos colored, toupee wearing, delusional, fat cat, essentially as the GOP nominee. Head out of sand now please!' she wrote on Twitter in April.

After GOP rivals Ted Cruz and John Kasich dropped out of the race, she took to Twitter to say: 'Hell froze over this morning and it's only Wednesday #NEVERTRUMP'

Meanwhile, Trump also appears to be mistaken about what dishes are available at his establishments.

Donald Trump models a hard hat during a rally after accepting the endorsement of the West Virginia Coal Association at the Charleston Civic Center on Thursday

It is clear that Mucino, who is from West Virginia but works at a political consulting firm in Washington, D.C., has been unnerved by a possible Trump presidency for some time

The taco bowl - an American creation - is not actually on sale at the Trump Grill, but the Trump Cafe in the candidate's namesake tower offers a 'Taco Fiesta!' for $13.50.

The dish features 'ground sauteed beef with jalapenos, onions, tomatoes, and chili spices served in a taco shell topped with lettuce and cheddar cheese.'

The cafe also offered burritos, quesadillas and fajitas as specials.

Eater sampled the beef tacos from Trump Cafe earlier this year, writing; 'On the same pass I also ordered 'beef tacos' ($13.50) which turned out to be a fried tortilla bowl heaped with romaine lettuce, grated yellow cheese, and plain ground beef that was so devoid of flavor, it rendered an insult to Mexicans every bit as profound as Trump's previous pronouncements.

'Trump food is bland food.'

In a February 2013 interview with the Financial Times, Trump also proclaimed the buffet at Trump Grill was 'the best in New York.'
A seven-year-old girl is facing the heartbreaking prospect of a life without her father after he was diagnosed with a rare form of stomach cancer.

South Australian father Zander Uren, 31, was diagnosed with the rare cancer called Linitus Plastica just four weeks ago - and then on Tuesday he found it had spread to his liver and his abdominal lining.

Now Zander, from the Adelaide Hills in South Australia, has opened up to Daily Mail Australia about living with a terminal illness while his young daughter, Talika Rose, is only just starting to grow up.

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South Australian man Zander Uren, 31, is pictured with his seven-year-old daughter Talika Rose

The single father (pictured with Talika as a baby) has developed an aggressive form of stomach cancer known as Linitus Plastica

Zander has told Talika 'bits and pieces' about his illness, but not the complete story.

'She know's I'm very sick and have cancer and might die,' he told Daily Mail Australia.

'Last night Talika said she doesn't want me to die and she asked "who's going to be my father?"'

Despite the emotional and physical pain Mr Uren is enduring, he has maintained a positive attitude for Talika.

'I have to keep smiling and making jokes,' he said.

'I'm going through chemo to spend more time with her.'

Talika Rose as a toddler, with her father Zander, and her dad's sister Eliza (left)

Diagnoses of Linitus Plastica only happen when the cancer is quiet advanced, meaning survival rates are only between three and 10 per cent within five years.

'On Tuesday I was told there was no cure and I can't have surgery because it's spread to my liver and abdominal area,' Zander said.

Zander's daughter, Talika, will be genetically tested for the disease at 21. His mother, Margie Uren, said while that may seem like a long time to go without testing, it is highly unusual for anyone to get it under the age of 25.

'The cancer is genetically inherited, it's just bad luck and caused by mutated genes,' Margie, 56, said.

Diagnosis occurs once the cancer is already quite advanced, with survival rates for Linitus Plastica at only three to 10 per cent survival over five years

Zander cradles his newborn daughter: When Zander came home to visit his mother, he had lost a lot of weight and developed jaundice - symptoms that forced her to take him to hospital

Zander could live for between three to six months without chemotherapy, but having the treatment could prolong his life by up to two years.

'I'm having chemo to buy me more time,' he said.

When Zander came home to visit his mother, he had lost a lot of weight and developed jaundice - a yellow staining of the skin and whites of the eyes - symptoms that forced her to take him to hospital.

'My bile duct was blocked by lymph nodes that were enlarged,' Zander said.

Zander will undertake a bone scan as he is worried the cancer may have spread even further to his bones due to the back pain he's been experiencing.

But Margie says they won't know the results of the scan until he undergoes chemotherapy next Wednesday.

'The first week is intravenous infusion and then the next two weeks he'll take tablets, and then the three week cycle repeats but we're not sure how many times it will be repeated depending on how effective the treatment is,' Margie said.

Zander's mother, Margie Uren, 56, said Zander could live up to three to six months without chemotherapy, but with chemo he could live up to 12 months to two years

Talika Rose: Zander's daughter Talika will also be tested at 21, and while that may seem like a long time to go without testing, Margie insists it is highly unusual for anyone to get it under the age of 25

But Zander is not the only one that has to undergo invasive testing.

'Zander's Dad and I have to do genetic testing to see which side he got the cancer from,' Margie said.

Zander's brother and sister also had an endoscopy and biopsy to detect whether they also had the aggressive form of cancer.

While one of them had an ulcer, Margie said they free of the disease.

Zander and his mother, Margie, who will be genetically tested, along with Zander's father, in the coming weeks to see which side of the family the cancer was inherited

Sophie Rose, a close friend of Zander's, has set up aGoFundMe page to raise funds to help him care for Talika.

'We've started the GoFundMe page to financially get ahead enough to help her out with schooling in the future,' Zander said.

Funds raised will also go towards the latest medical treatments to give Zander the best chance of survival possible.

In just three days, the campaign has already raised $30,825 of its $100,000 goal.

Along with the GoFundMe page, Zander's family will organise fundraising events such as a silent auction or disco night.

'We're getting the immediate family together to have a holiday in Queensland where there's sunshine,' Margie said.

Despite the emotional and physical pain Zander is enduring, he has maintained a positive attitude for Talika

Zander on a trip to Bali, Indonesia: Sophie Rose, a close friend of Zander's, has set up a GoFundMe page to raise funds to help him care for Talika

Zander with his father (middle), his daughter and siblings: In just three days, the campaign has already raised $30,825 of its $100,000 goal

Zander pictured with his new car that was donated by a friend: Funds raised will also go towards the latest medical treatments to give Zander the best chance of survival possible
The Mehajer family have launched a stunning public attack on one of the Miss Lebanon Australia pageant judges - amid allegations the contest was 'rigged' for their sister Mary.

Salim Mehajer's little sister was crowned the winner of the contest on Sunday and the suspended deputy mayor couldn't keep the grin off his face.

But this week three of the judges exclusively told Daily Mail Australia Mary was not their top choice - and that seems to have gotten under the skin of Salim and Aiisha Mehajer.

The siblings both posted a candid picture of judge and celebrity dentist David Carr holding his middle finger up to the camera on Friday.

'The photo below reflects his true character,' Salim fumed. 'Which regular doctor poses like that?'

'Not sure which 'respected dentist' poses like this,' Aiisha added.

Dr Carr has been the most outspoken critic of the Miss Lebanon contest, saying on Thursday: 'We were just a little bit surprised at the result.

'We were surprised because none of us voted for her'.

Responding to the attacks, Dr Carr said he believed the picture was taken at the Melbourne Cup with his son a few years back and had been pinched from his Facebook.

'I am really interested why he went to so much trouble.'

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The Mehajer siblings both attacked dentist David Carr (pictured) over this image

Mary Mehajer was crowned as Miss Lebanon Australia on Sunday evening at Dolton House, Pyrmont. Her brother, the suspended Auburn deputy mayor Salim, was all smiles at the time

Aiisha Mehajer (right) joined in the attacks on the celebrity dentist, posting the same photo to Instagram and attacking Dr Carr's credibility

Catwalk: Mary Mehajer (left) and contestant Sanaa Ammoun (right) competed for the bikini wear title

Who do YOU think deserved the title? Three more contestants strol the runway during the contest

Evening wear: Two contestants shimmy down the Miss Lebanon Australia 2016 runway

The 'baby' of the Mehajer family cradled a large bouquet as she posed for pictures with her parents, Mohamed and Amal, and the rest of the clan

The nervous competitors, including Ms Mehajer (in a silver sequined dress, centre), placed their hands on their hips as they waiting for the winner to be announecd

A fellow contestant has complained to Fair Trading NSW about the Miss Lebanon Australia contest

The Mehajer Bros. logo is pictured inside the official guide to the Miss Lebanon Australia contest

He thanked the Mehajers for giving him publicity and urged the pageant organisers to reveal Mary Mehajer's vote count.

'I feel it would solve the mystery if the scoring was opened up to public scrutiny,' Dr Carr said.

On Thursday, two other judges on the five-person panel told Daily Mail Australia Ms Mehajer was not their first choice to be crowned Miss Lebanon Australia.

'I personally had voted for a few of the other girls... I had two favourites in mind myself,' the panel said.

'Look, she was up there, she was definitely up there. If the others had voted for her too she would have had the chance of winning number one.

A third judge, Krystsina Labuzova, also told Daily Mail Australia Ms Mehajer was not her favourite contestant either - though she said she was 'one of the best girls'.

Ms Labuzova said she believed Ms Mehajer would be 'one of the top three or five' girls, 'But I wouldn't say she was my top choice'.

When Daily Mail Australia contacted one judge, celebrity dentist David Carr (pictured), he said: 'We were just a little bit surprised at the result. We were surprised because none of us voted for her'

A third judge, Krystsina Labuzova (pictured), also told Daily Mail Australia Ms Mehajer was not her favourite contestants though said she was 'one of the best girls'

'She was pretty good, like I did expect she'd make it to one of the (final) three girls (the winner and two runner ups),' she said.

'I've seen how the beauty contests run before and if she (had) more experience I think she's very good.

'If you sum up all the marks from all the judges it could've happened. She wasn't the lowest mark'.

A fourth judge said Ms Mehajer was in their top three girls along with the first and second runners up, Mary Hakim and Jessica Nercessian.

'She was certainly articulate. She's very nice looking,' the judge said. 'Certainly Mary was top three with me. I would need the voting slips to confirm her exact position'.

Judges had to give the nine contestants a mark out of 20 each for the daywear, swimwear and evening wear and question and answer components of the pageant.

The votes were then passed up to an adjudicator where the votes were tallied. Daily Mail Australia has been unable to reach the fifth judge.

A second judge told Daily Mail Australia she had her eye on two other candidates but added Ms Mehajer was 'definitely up there'

Strutting her stuff, Ms Mehajer (centre) faced off against eight competitors in her quest for the prestigious title, catching the attention of several onlookers (right

One contestant approached by Daily Mail Australia said the contest was 'rigged, rigged, rigged' - although this has been denied by Joseph Khoury, the pageant director.

A contestant has lodged a complaint with the NSW Office of Fair Trading and the agency is assessing whether it can investigate.

A member of audience, who didn't want to be identified, told A Current Affair the result of the competition was 'disgusting'.

'When it came down to them selecting the top five, when his sister was in it (Mr Mehajer's sister Mary), everyone knew it was game over,' the audience member said.

'He (Mr Mehajer) acted in a way where I literally thought he was the one crowned Miss Lebanon.'

Belle of the ball! Touting a bouquet of flowers, Mary Mehajer poses with a friend (left) after sweeping the title. On right, she is pictured during a candid moment with Salim Mehajer's wife, Aysha

In this family photo obtained by Daily Mail Australia, Mary is pictured furthest on right with (from left) Aysha Mehajer, Salim Mehajer, the matriarch of the eight-strong clan Amal and sister Khadijeh

Choreographer Louis Abou Anny, who helped train the contestants in how to walk the stage and dance, told Daily Mail Australia Ms Mehajer deserved to win because of her 'simplicity'.

'She's the best. She's very simple, she's elegant, she's a natural. She's very natural, she deserves it'.

Mr Mehajer was pictured grinning when Mary when the competition, celebrating with a vague platitude on social media: 'Greatness is to stay humble when the world calls you great.'

Daily Mail Australia approached Salim Mehajer and pageant founder Joseph Khoury for comment.

Salim's older sister Khadijeh 'Kat' Mehajer is likely to bring some more good news to the family with a 'big wedding' to fiance Ibrahim Sakalaki expected later this year.

Old pictures obtained by Daily Mail Australia recently showed both Kat and Aiisha have turned over a glamorous new leaf in the lead-up to the ceremony.

Khadijeh (left) is pictured with look-a-like sister Aiisha (right). The pair are often confused with one another

Revealing photos of Salim Mehajer's sisters Kat (pictured left) and Aiisha (right) before their dramatic transformation have emerged

It is unknown how long ago the photographs were taken, but Aiisha (pictured left, before and right, after) has had dramatic changes to her appearance over the years

Salim Mehajer's wife Aysha Mehajer (centre) is pictured with Khadijeh (right) during family celebrations
The New Zealand woman whose most private part was exposed on prime-time television says 'it's only a vagina' and doesn't understand what the fuss is all about.

Exotic danger Tyler Diamond, 27, was seen nude on a current affairs show on Wednesday but is far from embarrassed, her only concern was how her hair extensions looked.

She told website stuff.co.nz 'I think they (the TV3 presenters) were more shocked than I was'.

'I'm not worried at all about it, I mean it's nudity, it's a body, we've all got one,' she said.

'It's a vagina at the end of the day, and we've all come from one. People need to chill out a bit.'

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Tyler Diamond, 27, was hired to work as a topless waitress at the eatery on Wednesday - she says should 'chill out' over the prime time broadcast which showed her fully nude

The mishap occurred when Ms Diamond (pictured) walked in front of the camera in a segment on nude dining

TV3 Presenters Duncan Garner and Kim Vinnell offered an apology to viewers if they saw too much

'I was more like, 'okay so it's a vagina, so what?' But I think they were kind of like, oh, a vagina, oh crap.'

While the dancer laughed it off the two New Zealand presenters from the Story program apologised after her crotch was broadcast live during a segment on nude dining.

The current affairs show was covering a dining stunt set up by a radio station when the hired waitress walked in front of the camera during a live cross, revealing a close up of her genitals.

The footage was not blurred.

'I can't believe what I just saw,' said Duncan Garner, the show's co-host said at the time.

Later in the show, after the program aired its second segment from the restaurant in Hamilton, in New Zealand's North Island, Garner offered a 'genuine' apology to viewers who may have seen 'a little bit more than they wanted'.

He later tweeted: 'Did you see what I saw?'

Both Garner and co-host Kim Vinnell told viewers at the start of the program they were apprehensive about crossing live to the restaurant.

'This can go so wrong in so many different ways,' Vinnell said.

Story, a prime-time current affairs show, was covering a nude dining stunt set up by a radio station when a camera caught a full front-on view of topless waitress Tyler Diamond

Garner said he was 'a bit worried about' the segment but reporter Lachlan Forsyth was one of the team's most experienced.

While Diamond says she hasn't had any direct negative feedback viewers did take to the program's Facebook page to comment on the mishap.

'What made yous think having a bunch of nude people on live TV was a good idea, was bound to have slip ups [sic]. Pretty awkward to watch with the family,' one person wrote.

Another viewer said: 'Thanks story, my kids just seen things they didn't wish to see...and I didn't wish to explain just yet... bravo! [sic]'

Veteran TV presenter Duncan Garner tweeted after the incident: 'Did you see what I saw?'

The show and its parent company Mediaworks apologised for the on air slip up

Other posters saw the lighter side of the incident, saying there was no need to apologise for the nude shot - and one person said it was lucky he had live rewind.

The show apologised again on Facebook the following day.

'If you saw last night's show we'd like to say we're very sorry the shot in the broadcast from the Hamilton cafe revealed more than we intended.'

The hosts said they were apprehensive about live crossing to the restaurant at the start of the show
A young boy hailed a hero after sacrificing his life to save his little brother will receive a posthumous award for bravery.

Jordan Rice, 13, died along with his mother in Toowoomba during the 2011 Queensland floods, which devastated the region and killed 35 people

Jordan, his brother Blake, and mother Donna were trapped on the roof of their family's car at an intersection by rising floodwaters.

Jordan Rice, 13, died while trying to save his younger brother during the 2011 Queensland floods

Jordan with his mother Donna were both killed in the Queensland floods which devastated the region

When passersby attempted to rescue the trio, Jordan told them to take his 11-year-old brother first. Moments later Jordan, who couldn't swim, and his mother were swept away in the raging torrent.

Jordan's father John Tyson said his son's last words were 'take my brother first.'

Jordan's bravery made headlines around Australia, but his father wanted his selfless act officially recognised.

More than 300,000 people signed a Change.org petition supporting the move.

On Friday afternoon Mr Tyson will accept a bravery award dedicated to his son from Queensland Governor Paul De Jersey at Government House.

Jordan Rice saved his brother Blake (above) before being swept away by floodwaters with his mum

Jordan's father John Tyson (left) has led a campaign to have his son's bravery recognised for saving Blake

'I think it's a win for the people,' Mr Tyson told AAP, adding promises of recognition from former Prime Ministers Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott weren't backed up by action.

'The politicians like to talk a lot but this is a real honour, not for me but for my son.'

Mr Tyson set up the Jordan Rice Foundation in 2013, which aims to help people cope with grief.

'I don't want anyone to go through what we've been through,' he said.

'Even when I'm out driving and see a makeshift cross on the side of the road, all the memories and empathy come flooding back.

'We want to do our best to help anyone who needs it.'

The foundation hopes to build a retreat for families who have lost a family member.

On Friday afternoon Jordan's father John Tyson will accept a posthumous bravery award on behalf of Jordan

Prime Minister Julia Gillard talks with Blake Rice (centre) and his father John Tyson in April 2011

The Queensland floods affected more than 200,000 Australians and killed 35 people

Flood waters surged through in Toowoomba in Queensland on January 10, 2011




said he shot boy 'like he was a monster and mongrel dog'

Sgt Dods was exonerated of any personal responsibility in 2011

Tyler Cassidy, 15, killed when shot by Sgt Dods in 2008 in Melbourne

Lawyer Michael McDonald said he 'executed' boy linked to neo-Nazi group

A senior police officer has been awarded $150,000 in damages after a jury found he had been defamed by a barrister who said he executed a teenage boy linked to a neo-Nazi group.

On Friday Supreme Court Justice Kevin Bell said he wanted to demonstrate that defamatory comments made online by Queensland Barrister Michael McDonald about Sergeant Colin Dods were a 'baseless challenge' to the police officer's integrity and public standing, Fairfax reported.

Tyler Cassidy,15, was shot dead when three police officers fired at him as he advanced on Sgt Dods armed with two knives during a stand-off at Northcote skate park in Melbourne in December 2008.

Tyler Cassidy (pictured) was shot dead when three police officers fired at him as he advanced on Sgt Dods armed with two knives during a stand-off at Northcote skatepark in Melbourne in 2008

Supreme Court Justice Kevin Bell said he wanted to demonstrate that defamatory comments made online by Queensland Barrister Michael McDonald about Sergeant Colin Dods (pictured) were a 'baseless challenge' to the police officers integrity and public standing

A total of 10 shots were fired and five struck Tyler, one killing him.

The teenager had listed himself as a member of a nationalist white supremacist group called the Southern Cross Soldiers on his MySpace page and had 'fallen in with the wrong crowd' prior to his death, according to his friends, the Herald Sun reported.

A coroner exonerated the officers, including Sgt Dods, of any personal responsibility in November 2011.

The teenager (pictured) had listed himself as a member of a nationalist white supremacist group called the Southern Cross Soldiers on his MySpace page

A total of 10 shots were fired and five struck Tyler, one killing him

Mr McDonald later published comments online that were found to be defamatory of Sgt Dods.

The barrister wrote that Tyler was 'executed' by Sgt Dods, and said the sergeant gunned down the teenager 'like he was a monster and mongrel dog'.

He claimed in online posts that Sgt Dods chose to shoot Tyler without any adequate reason and knew police could have overpowered the teenager without anybody being harmed.

Tribute: Bouquets of flowers at the spot Tyler Cassidy was shot

Shooting scene: A friend of the victim inspects flowers laid outside the skate park where he was killed

He said Sgt Dods had committed manslaughter.

Justice Bell described the defamatory comments as 'very grave,' Fairfax reported.

He said the comments by Mr McDonald, which he continued to publish online for more than six months after the sergeant was cleared by the coroner, caused Sgt Dods intense distress, humiliation and embarrassment.

Sgt Dods, speaking to reporters after the judgment, said he felt vindicated by the judge's ruling.

During the civil trail Sgt Dods gave evidence and said that he thought about the shooting everyday and that the online material was an additional heavy weight, Fairfax reported.

The online posts also included a section titled Who is Colin Dods?, naming his wife, the school his children went to and sporting clubs he was involved in.

Justice Kevin Bell awarded Sgt Dods $150,000 in damages on Friday and will rule on the payment of court costs at a later date.
Fatima Elomar, the wife of dead Islamic State terrorist Mohamed Elomar, may have pleaded guilty to supporting the terror group but she won't face sentencing until July at the earliest.

Until then, the first Australian woman guilty of supporting the ISIS extremists in Syria will be free to walk the streets.

Elomar, 31, was in Sydney's District Court on Friday where Judge Penelope Hock heard very few people had been prosecuted under the 1978 terror law and thousands of pieces of communications would need to be analysed ahead of sentencing.

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Fatima Elomar, 31, tries to hide her face after a court appearance in which it was heard she had pleaded guilty to one charge of supporting or promoting foreign hostile acts

Fatima Elomar, the wife of dead Islamic State terrorist Mohamed Elomar, will return to court in July for further sentence submissions following a brief hearing in Sydney

Elomar tried to hide her face from waiting media following Friday's hearing and covered her head before eventually dashing to a waiting car

Elomar is due to return to court for a sentence hearing on July 1. Judge Penelope Hock will impose her sentence at a date to be determined

She was arrested at Sydney Airport in 2014 when she tried to board a departing international flight.

And just days before she was to go to trial last November, she pleaded guilty to one charge of supporting or promoting foreign hostile acts.

Elomar is due to return to court in July for a sentence hearing, having pleaded guilty to supporting her late husband's hostile overseas actions.

Judge Hock will impose her sentence at a date yet to be determined.

It's believed Elomar's jihadist husband was killed in a drone strike on the Islamic State's self-declared capital of Raqqa in June last year.

Fatima Elomar leaves Sydney's District Court on Friday - she is the wife of dead extremist Mohamed Elomar

Fatima Elomar, pictured right with a friend out in western Sydney just two days after she pleaded guilty to supporting the terrorist group ISIS via her jihadist husband in Syria

Fatima Elomar (right) is due to return to court for a sentence hearing in July but her sentence may be delayed even further because the amount of documents which have to be reviewed

Court documents reveal that when Fatima Elomar (pictured shopping in Westfield following her guilty plea) confessed to supporting ISIS terrorism in Syria, the prosecutor did not oppose her remaining free on bail

Fatima Elomar had to bare her face in court but always covers up when walking outside to face the media

Mohamed Elomar, who is believed to have left Australia in 2013 to join Islamic State extremists in Syria, is seen in this grisly image holding up the decapitated heads of two men

Elomar appeared to hide from waiting media following Friday's hearing and covered her head in a large black scarf before eventually dashing to a waiting car amid a buzz of cameras and questions.

The widow of notorious Australian extremist Mohamed Elomar, pleaded guilty on November 16 to providing support to the terror group Islamic State via her husband who died in Syria in June last year.

She entered her plea on one count of supporting foreign hostile acts between April 3 and May 3 in 2014.

Prosecutor Neild said at the time 'there's no objection to the continuation of bail'.

Fatima Elomar, pictured last November before going grocery and meat shopping in south-western Sydney

Mr Neild at first applied to have Elomar sentenced in late March, then began negotiating with Judge Peter Berman over possible dates, the judge rejecting March 26 saying, 'No, that's Easter'.

Elomar will have at least two more months before learning when and for how long she will likely be imprisoned.

The maximum sentence under Australia's anti-terror laws, under the Crimes (Foreign Incursions and Recruitment) Act, is life imprisonment.

However that is for the charge of entering or preparing to enter a foreign country to engage in a hostile activity. Elomar has pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of supporting terror.

Fatima Elomar was arrested at 7.30pm on May 3, 2014 as she checked in to Malaysia Airlines Flight MH140 with her four children aged five weeks old, five, seven and eight.

Fatima Elomar wears the face covering niqab on the streets outside her court appearances but as Daily Mail Australia has revealed the terrorist supporter bares her face when shopping in south-western Sydney

When custom officers checked her six items of luggage, the documents say, they found mostly men's clothes and other items which could be considered war supplies.

In Fatima's suitcases were a North Face black beanie, Native brand camouflage shorts, Ridgeline buffalo camouflage pants and black fleece jacket, an Adidas polo shirt, three Kmart long-sleeve shirts, two pairs of cargo shorts, eight pairs of thermal socks, nine pairs of men's underwear and a set of Sportsbeatz wireless headphones.

Police searched the bags and also found a Remington men's grooming kit, a large quantity of insect repellent, Ugly Fish brand sunglasses, solar watches, power bank portable phone chargers and travel adaptors.

She had also packed two Casio Protrek Tough watches with camouflage bands and face, which had features including a digital compass and altimeter.

Fatima Elomar's husband Mohamed pictured in Syria where he was fighting for ISIS before being killed in a rocket attack in Iraq in June last year

Fatima Elomar, pictured bringing her shopping home in the week she pleaded guilty to supporting terror, originally claimed the charges against her were 'over zealous' and that she was just taking the kids on holiday

Transcripts of messages between Elomar and her husband while he was in Syria last year included his boast, 'It's amazing here wallah kids r going to luv it.'

Following her arrest, Elomar released a statement through her then lawyer to the media describing the charges against her as 'over zealous'.

She also said her 'children have already suffered the trauma of being ripped from their holiday to Malaysia' and that 'this is an example of one must be careful what you pack to travel, let it be a travel warning to leave the camouflage pants at home and best check with Smart Traveller as to what the acceptable fashion is'.
The woman and her daughter are being treated for their injures in

A 25-year-old woman veered off the road and flipped her car on

Police who attended the scene of a shocking car crash that claimed the life of a 19-month-old toddler have described the event as the 'most horrific' accident they have ever seen.

Officers were called to the scene of a crash on the Barrier Highway near Wilcannia, in central western New South Wales, on Thursday afternoon after a 25-year-old mother rolled her blue Toyota RAV4 SUV while driving with her two young children.

The woman's 19-month-old son sustained serious injuries and died at the scene, while she and her six-month-old daughter were taken to Cobar Hospital where they remain in a stable condition.

Police who attended the scene of a shocking car crash that claimed the life of a 19-month-old toddler have described the event as the 'most horrific' accident they have ever seen

Detective Inspector Rod Grant said going to an incident where a young child has perished always takes a significant toll on officers, with Thursday's accident being no exception.

'It's one of the most horrific things that you could ever go to as a police officer or any emergency service operator, anything involving a child,' Detective Inspector Grant told the ABC.

The vehicle is believed to have veered off the road before rolling, causing the young girl to suffer minor bruising while the mother sustained an injury to her hips and cut to her face, the Wellington Times reported.

Officers from Darling River police station have set up a crime scene and will continue to investigate the circumstances surrounding the accident with the Metropolitan Crash Investigation Unit before a report is prepared for the coroner.

Officers were called to the scene of a crash on the Barrier Highway near Wilcannia, in central western New South Wales, on Thursday afternoon after a 25-year-old mother rolled her car

The blue Toyota RAV4 SUVis believed to have veered off the road before rolling, causing the young girl to suffer minor bruising while the mother sustained an injury to her hips and cut to her face (Stock image)

Detective Inspector Grant told ABC he did not believe fatigue was a contributing factor in the fatal accident.
State media said nuclear weapons will 'bring forward the final victory', while they also praised country's 'prestige'

It will allow Kim Jong-Un to formally adopt his policy of simultaneously pursuing nuclear power and development

The ostracized state has forced workers to labour in seven-day working weeks preparing for the important event

North Korea has today begun the first congress of its ruling Workers' Party in 36 years in the capital Pyongyang

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North Korea kicked off the first congress of its ruling Workers' Party in 36 years today by hailing its 'prestige' as a nuclear power which will 'bring forward the final victory of the revolution'.

The ostracized state, which in recent months has increased its pursuit of nuclear weapons, today held its first ruling party congress since the rule of tyrant Kim Jong-Un's grandfather, Kim Il-Sung.

Preparation for the event has been a top priority for the North Korean Government - officials have been forced into seven day working weeks in order to ready the capital Pyongyang for the government-enforced festivities.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un addresses the congress in Pyongyang today to announce the key points of his dictatorship

Over the next few days the congress is expected to hear about Kim Kong-Un's plans to continue pursuing nuclear weapons

Thousands of party faithful attended the congress, which began in the capital Pyongyang today

Flags of the ruling Workers' Party fly draped across central Pyongyang's House of Culture, where the congress got underway today

Workers walk through the rain in the central city today as festivities for the extremely rare ruling party congress got underway

The congress - the first in 36 years - will allow Kim Jong-Un to cement his position as Supreme Leader and discuss his country's policies

Ruling party flags fly in the foreground as huge portraits of the regime's former leaders, Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jong-Il, are hung on display

Residents of Pyongyang pass by a TV screen showing Kim Jong-Un, who convened the ruling party congress to cement his leadership

Ahead of the event, it trumpetedadvances in nuclear and ballisticmissile developments that were 'the greatest gifts' for the rareparty congress, but little of substance was revealed.

Thousands of delegates from around North Korea were expectedto attend the first congress since 1980, before 33-year-old Kimwas born.

Security guards dressed in suits and ties surroundedthe venue and dozens of empty buses were parked outside.

Foreign analysts expect the third-generation leader of theKim dynasty to formally adopt his 'Byongjin' policy ofsimultaneously pursuing nuclear weapons and economicdevelopment, and to further consolidate his power.

Byongjin follows Kim's father's Songun, or 'military first'policy, and his grandfather's Juche, the North's home-grownfounding ideology that combines Marxism and extreme nationalism.

Foreign journalists invited to cover the event were not permitted inside the April 25 House of Culture, the stone-built structure draped in red party flags where the congress is expected to run for days.

State media previewed the event by hailing the North's most recent nuclear test in January as evidence of its 'greatness and prestige as a nuclear power state.'

And the North's Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea slammed the international community's opposition to Pyongyang's nuclear weapons programme.

'Regardless of whether someone recognises it or not, our status as a nuclear state that is armed with H-bombs cannot change,' the committee said in a statement.

North Korea's state television began its daily broadcastearlier than usual today, with special programming heraldingthe feats of its leaders.

State radio said the 7th Workers' Party congress would 'unveil the brilliant blueprint to bring forward the finalvictory of our revolution', according to South Korea's Yonhapnews agency.

North Korean state media has trumpeted a 70-day campaign ofintensified productivity in the run-up to the congress, andPyongyang has been spruced up for the event.

Foreign journalists invited to cover the event were not permitted inside the House of Culture (pictured), where the congress is being held

Foreign journalists are seen gathering on a roadside to take photographs and interview people ahead of the seminal event

Groups of residents enter an underground street crossing in Pyongyang amid the government-imposed festivities

North Korean residents walk past a banner erected on the side of the road announcing the rare party congress

North Koreans watch from a bus stop as vehicles ferrying foreign media stop at a junction in Pyongyang

A man passes by floral decorations erected near where the congress is being held to cement Kim Jong-Un's position as Supreme Leader

A woman walks past a store where the streets in front of it is decorated with flags. Many have been forced to work seven-day weeks in order to clean and improve the city

The state-run KCNA news agency cited advances in nuclear andballistic missile development, crediting military scientists andengineers for accomplishments that are 'the greatest gifts' forthe party congress.

'Miraculous results were produced,' KCNA said, toutingproduction in the industrial sector that achieved 144 percent oftarget and electricity generation 110 percent, although theactual targets were not given.

The congress opened on a rainy morning. Covers were hungover the giant portraits of Kim's grandfather, Kim Il Sung, andfather, Kim Jong Il, that adorn Kim Il Sung square in thecapital, apparently to keep them dry.

Under Kim Jong Un, an informal market economy has beenallowed to grow, although it has not been officially adopted asgovernment policy.

However, more taxis and private cars on the streets, moregoods in shops, and more buildings under construction attest togrowing prosperity and consumption among Pyongyang residents.

Kim has also aggressively pursued nuclear weapons andballistic missile technology. In March, the U.N. SecurityCouncil adopted the latest in a series of resolutions tougheningsanctions against North Korea, which conducted its fourthnuclear weapons test in January.

South Korea has been on alert in anticipation that the Northcould conduct another nuclear test to coincide with thecongress.

North Korea's founding leader Kim Il Sung spoke for morethan five hours at the last party congress. Kim Jong Il, whoalmost never spoke in public, did not hold a party congress.

Hundreds of North Korean men and women carry bouquets of decorative flowers as they wait at the Kim Il-Sung Square today

A photographer takes a picture of a television screen showing file images of Kim Jong-Un, who is expected to speak at the congress

Foreign journalists invited to the country for the event were not allowed to enter the meeting and were kept at a distance from the event

A female police officer wearing waterproof plastic stands at her post controlling traffic in downtown Pyongyang
Ms Lee is expected to be released on bail from Surry Hills Police Station

A 21-year-old woman accused of going on an extraordinary spending spree after millions of dollars were mistakenly transferred into her bank account has been arrested by immigration officials for breaching her visa.

Christine Jiaxin Lee, 21, was due to walk free from police custody after being granted $1000 bail in court over charges relating to the $4.6 million she wrongly received and kept for four years, allegedly spending a large part of the cash on luxury items such as handbags.

But Ms Lee was taken into custody by the immigration officers on Friday and transferred to Villawood Immigration Detention Centre, in Sydney's western suburbs.

She was detained again because she allegedly breached her student visa, according to a police source.

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Christine Jiaxin Lee (right) has been arrested on suspicion of spending millions of dollars that were mistakenly transferred into her account four years ago

Ms Lee is being held at Villawood Immigration Detention Centre in west Sydney after being re-arrested on Friday for allegedly breaching conditions of her student visa (stock image)

Ms Lee had been due to walk free on Friday after being granted $1000 bail, but was rearrested, this time by immigration department officers (stock image)

Dressed in a black tracksuit and cap, Vincent King spent a short time with lawyers on Friday before leaving and returning with a surgical mask over his face

'She was taken by immigration and will be held in detention at Villawood,' he added.

'She got bail for what she did but the visa is another thing and they'll deal with that.'

The Department of Immigration and Border Protection would not comment on her status.

'It is not appropriate for the Department to comment on matters before the court or an individual's visa status.'

Ms Lee had been granted bail on Thursday, provided she paid $1,000, surrendered her passport and lived with boyfriend Vincent King.

However, she was blocked from leaving custody when her boyfriend couldn't prove his identity and made spelling errors on the application form.

Ms Lee is thought to have been held at Surry Hills Police Station. She is accused of going on a spending spree after wrongly receiving $4.6 million

Mr King was seen with Ms Lee's mother outside Waverly Local Court on Friday

The woman was also dressed in a black tracksuit and cap with a surgical mask over her face

Earlier on Friday, Mr King presented several documents to Waverley Local Court with his name being amended to Junnan Jin so the Malaysian-born woman could make bail.

The chemical engineering student spent Thursday night behind bars after she was granted bail but not released as there were inaccuracies in her bail information, which included the spelling of an address on Marquet Street she was staying at with Mr King in Rhodes.

Mr King arrived just before 9.30am to speak to Ms Lee's Legal Aid lawyer who appeared on her behalf as she remained in custody.

Dressed in a black tracksuit and cap, he spent a short time with lawyers before leaving and returning with a surgical mask over his face.

He was seen with Ms Lee's mother also dressed in a black tracksuit and cap with a surgical mask over her face.

The pair wore the masks to obscure their faces in a bid to hide keep their identities a secret.

Ms Lee will have her case heard again in court on June 21.

She did not speak to media and is expected to travel to Surry Hills Police Station where her daughter is believed to be held

It is believed Ms Lee's mother and partner wore the surgical mask to obscure their identities

Mr King (pictured in a Real Madrid jacket) was pictured earlier in the day without a mask

The 21-year-old was detained at Sydney Airport on Wednesday night when she attempted to leave Australia en route to Malaysia - four years after she wrongly received the money.

According to police, Ms Lee opened the bank account before her 18th birthday, but it was not until 2014 that she started withdrawing money. Her transactions between 2014 and 2015 totalled $4,653,333.02, the Sydney Morning Herald reported.

When the Malaysian national appeared in Waverley Local Court on Thursday, she claimed she was living at a prestigious sub-penthouse in the inner west of Sydney.

With natural surroundings and oceanfront views of Sydney Harbour Bridge, the Rider Boulevard apartment is rented at $780 a week or $3120 per month, according to property records.

The contemporary property boasts two bedrooms, two bathrooms, kitchen, a spacious living and dining area which leads to a balcony - and just walking distance from cafes, restaurants and shops.

Ms Lee's boyfriend posted a picture of the stunning view seen from their shared accommodation in Rhodes

The Malaysian national had been renting a lavish penthouse in Sydney's inner west, believed to be $780 a week

The Rider Boulevard apartment boasts sweeping oceanfront views of the Sydney Harbour Bridge and city

Pictured is a $780-per-week sub-penthouse apartment in the same building where Ms Lee lives, similar to the one she rents

Her boyfriend Vincent King (pictured) - who tried to pay a $1000 bond for her release - was only carrying a Malaysian ID card and officers could not verify his identity

Wielding a batch of documents, Mr King appeared at Waverly Local Court on Friday for a bail application

She allegedly splashed out $3.3 million in less than a year, making cash transfers and adding to a collection of designer handbags, according to Nine News.

Earlier on Thursday, she was granted bail but her boyfriend Vincent King - who tried to pay a $1000 bond for her release - was only carrying a Malaysian ID card and officers could not verify his identity, The Daily Telegraph reported.

Lee appeared at court on Thursday after being charged with dishonestly obtaining financial advantage by deception and knowingly dealing with the proceeds of crime.

The chemical engineering student was arrested at Sydney Airport as she tried to board a flight to Malaysia

Her boyfriend of 18 months Vincent King did not bring verifiable documentation to court on Thursday

The court heard that although the police fraud unit had started their investigation into the withdrawal of the money in 2012, they only issued the arrest warrant on March 4 this year.

The student told her lawyer that she had obtained the emergency passport to fly home to Malaysia to visit her parents, who did not know about her arrest.

Lee's lawyer, Fiona McCarron told the court that the money was partly spent on luxury items like expensive handbags, to which the Magistrate commented: 'That's a lot of handbags.'

And Ms Stapleton agreed with the lawyer when she said the police would struggle to prove the spending of the money was illegal.

'They gave it to her,' said the Magistrate, who added that if it was proved that the money was indeed given to Lee, then the student would owe the money to the bank and have to pay it back.

The student will spend a night in jail after her boyfriend - who tried to pay a $1000 bond for her release - was only carrying a Malaysian ID card and officers could not verify his identity, meaning they had to refuse her bail

'But she wouldn't necessarily have broken the law,' said the Magistrate.

Court documents revealed she is alleged to have committed the offences on multiple occasions between July 2014 and March 2015.

She was mistakenly given a $4.6million overdraft on her Westpac account four years ago and allegedly owes the bank $3.3million after spending the cash on designer goods.

It is alleged she failed to notify the bank that she was not entitled to the money. The court heard she knew police were attempting to make contact with her and she obtained an emergency Malaysian passport in order to leave the country.

She was granted bail for $1,000 and faces strict bail conditions, with Magistrate Lisa Stapleton agreeing with the prosecution that her attempts to flee Australia meant that she posed a flight risk.

But Ms Stapleton suggested Lee may not have broken the law as the money she spent 'isn't proceeds of crime. It's money we all dream of', according to Fairfax Media.

She agreed with Lee's lawyer it would be hard to prove Lee had done anything wrong.

The court heard she knew police were attempting to make contact with her and she obtained an emergency Malaysian passport in order to leave the country

Lee still allegedly owes $3.3 million to her bank after spending the cash on designer goods and handbags

Lee obtained an emergency passport before attempting to make the flight on Wednesday, the court heard

'She didn't take it from them. They gave it to her,' she said.

If that was so, Lee would owe the bank the money spent but would not have broken the law, she added.

Lee, who claimed to have obtained the emergency passport because she had lost her original one, will not be allowed to enter any international airport.

She is also not allowed to apply for another passport. Lee, who has lived in Australia for five years, lives with her boyfriend at Rhodes in Sydney's north-west.

She is three years through a four-year chemical engineering degree but has deferred her final year.

Earlier on Thursday, her boyfriend of 18 months, arrived at Waverley Local Court where he told reporters that he had no knowledge of the funds.

He said he had 'no idea' she had ever been given access to the money and reportedly claimed to have never seen her make any extravagant purchases.

It wasn't until Thursday morning when Lee called him asking for help that he knew anything about it.

When told how much money she'd had access to, he said 'that's big money'.

The 21-year-old made a brief appearance at Sydney's Waverley Local Court (above) on Thursday morning
Accused 'burglar killer' Ben Batterham's parents have not appeared at their son's bail hearing 'because of threats made to them', a court has heard.

Batterham's lawyer, prominent Sydney barrister Winston Terracini, told Magistrate Robert Stone in Newcastle Court on Friday that Bruce and Dianne Batterham were not in attendance because of the threats.

The 33-year-old chef has been charged with the murder of Ricky Slater, 37, after he broke into Batterham's house in the early hours of Easter Saturday and an alleged fight ensued.

Ben Batterham, pictured after being taken into custody, was charged with the murder of home invader Ricky Slater after he broke into his Newcastle home, north of Sydney, on Easter Saturday

Mr Terracini told the court on Friday that Slater was armed when he broke into his Newcastle home and that 'it was a home invasion'.

He appeared at his bail hearing via audio visual link from Cessnock Correctional Centre on Friday.

Batterham, who clenched his hands and looked down at them while the bail application proceeded, appeared to have grown his hair, moustache and beard while in custody since Easter Sunday.

He was wearing a dark green prison issue sweatshirt.

Crown Prosecutor John Sfinas made an application to the court for suppression orders on the names and addresses of witnesses to the alleged scuffle between Batterham and Slater, for fear of interference with the witnesses.

Ricky Slater, 37, had his life support switched off a day after he broke into Ben Batterham's home and was allegedly chased and beaten by the 33-year-old accused

Ben Batterham, pictured in hospital after the struggle with alleged home invader Ricky Slater, can be seen showing the bite mark allegedly inflicted by Slater on his upper right arm in police photographs

Ricky Slater allegedly broke into Batterham's house (pictured) and stole his partner's handbag from his seven month old daughter's room before Batteham allegedly chased him 365 metres down several streets

Mr Sfinas also applied to have Slater's criminal past suppressed. Magistrate Stone denied both applications.

Batterham was charged with murder following the break in on Easter Saturday at his Newcastle home by Slater, a convicted burglar and rapist, after an alleged fight between the two men ensued.

According to police facts, Slater broke into Batterham's home in Cleary Street, Hamilton, north of Sydney, at about 3am on March 26 and stole a handbag from the nursery of Batterham's seven-month-old daughter.

Mr Terracini told the court that during the break in Slater was armed.

'What is relevant is that he did break in because there was personal property belonging to [Batterham's] wife,' he said.

'It was a home invasion. Secondly he [Slater] was found with weapons on him.'

Police say Ben Batterham (pictured) has no criminal record and on the night of the incident his partner and their baby daughter were staying at his parents' house while he and a friend celebrated his birthday

Ben Batterham, who was charged with the murder of home invader Ricky Slater sustained a facial wound (pictured) while falling in his pursuit of Ricky Slater who police allege stole a handbag from Batterham's infant daughter's bedroom

In police photographs, Batterham can be seen covered in scratches and abrasions, has severe bruising to his right cheekbone and a distinctive pair of teeth marks on the inside of his upper right arm

Batterham, who was celebrating birthday drinks with his friend Paul O'Keeffe, allegedly chased Slater from the house and down several streets.

Police will allege Batterham then tackled Slater on the ground, held him and punched him in the head.

Photographs and documents of the prosecutor's case obtained exclusively by Daily Mail Australia this week showed the injuries Batterham sustained in the Easter Saturday struggle.

Slater was taken to hospital where his life support was switched off the following day and Batterham's charge of assault causing grievous bodily harm was upgraded to murder.

A decision on Batterham's bail application has been delayed until next Tuesday.

Outside the court Ricky Slater's aunt Pauline Dickson said said she felt " sick and all shook up' after hearing the bail application and that her sister was "still grieving' Ricky's death.

She said if Batterham was granted bail ' it will break my sister's heart'.

Batterham tackled Slater (pictured) and police allege that he punched him at least twice in the head

Ricky Slater's mother Beryl Dickson (pictured) admitted that her late son was an ice addict and police facts now reveal that the 37-year-old was carrying ecstasy, opiates and prescription drugs at the time
The gauntlet was first thrown down by New Zealand's police department in a hilarious attempt to attract more recruits to the force.

Officers around the world are now putting their best foot forward to perform their own version of the 'Running Man' dance move to Ghost Town DJs track My Boo.

After the NYPD and officers in Scotland issued their own versions, the New South Wales Police has now launched their own Running Man, while officers in the Northern Territory have taken a different approach, claiming they've been left out.

New South Wales Police Department responds to the international dance challenge #runningmanchallenge after being nominated by the New Zealand police earlier this week

The east Australian police force posted their attempt online on Friday, performing at Manly Wharf in Sydney's north

New South Wales Police Department's dance moves are much to be desired when compared against New Zealand original video, which went viral after being posted to Facebook on Tuesday.

Officers are seen dancing with batons at Manly Wharf on Sydney's northern beaches before breaking-down into freestyle dance steps.

Shimmying and shaking, the three police officers move back towards their car and a staggered formation of officers return to the dance floor.

To finish, the officers are seen holding out their batons, before uniformly dropping them and walking off screen.

Shimmying and shaking three police officers break out freestyle dance moves before walking back towards their car

A staggered formation and the use of batons were seen throughout the New South Wales attempt to do the running man. The video posted to Facebook has been shared over 3,600 times in just two hours

The 44 second video was posted to the New South Wales Police Facebook page and has been shared over 3,600 times in just two hours.

New South Wales police said: 'NZ Police Recruitment challenge accepted! Our rehearsals took longer than expected...#runningmanchallenge.'

Before passing on the challenge to Queensland Police Service, Victoria Police, California Highway Patrol and Metropolitan Police Service.

In an attempt to stay involved, the Northern Territory Police Department followed suit posting their version of the dance just minutes after New South Wales. They are seen dancing with crocodiles in true NT fashion

The NT police are seen dancing in front of a large tank with a crocodile floating behind them

In an attempt to stay involved, the Northern Territory Police Department followed suit posting their version of the dance just minutes after New South Wales.

In a post to Facebook the NT Police commented on their obvious omission from the challenge and said: 'Hey NZ Police Recruitment GAME ON!'

'The Northern Territory Police, Fire and Emergency Services thank everyone for their support since our unfortunate omission from the #runningmanchallenge.

In a post to Facebook the NT Police commented on their obvious omission and were seen putting their best foot forward at the Crocosaurus Cove in Darwin

One of the officers is holding a baby crocodile, while two others roll back and forth on segways

'Challenge accepted (and smashed) and extended to Singapore Police Force, New Orleans Police Department, Polizei Berlin Police Nationale.'

Adding a special thank you to Crocosaurus Cove Darwin at the end.

The NT police are seen dancing in front of a large tank with a crocodile floating behind them.

Earlier in the week New Zealand Police Recruitment Organisation posted the video which has since been viewed over seven million times

Thousands took to the post to congratulate the force, with many praising it as 'awesome' and 'great'

One of the officers is holding a baby crocodile, while two others roll back and forth on segways.

But the international dance competition took its time reaching Australia having been performed by the NYPD and Scotland's task force.

The New York Police Department responded with their version underneath the Brooklyn Bridge complete with a mic drop at the end.

But the international dance competition took its time reaching Australia having been performed by the NYPD (pictured) and Scotland's task force

The New York Police Department responded with their version underneath the Brooklyn Bridge complete with a mic drop at the end (pictured)

And Scotland turned the running man into a scottish jig in front of another famous landmark - the Edinburgh Castle.

Earlier in the week New Zealand Police Recruitment Organisation posted the video which has since been viewed over seven million times.

The post read: 'We catch people on the run every day, this was a new #runningmanchallenge for our team.'

Scotland turned the running man into a Scottish jig in front of another famous landmark - the Edinburgh Castle (pictured)

The Scotland police said that 'the baton was passed' and they 'ran with it' - featuring bagpipes and all things Scotland

New Zealand said they wanted Victoria Police, NSW Police Force, Western Australia Police,Queensland Police Service, South Australia Police, ACT Policing, Tasmania Police, LAPD Headquarters, Isles of Scilly Police and NYPD to take on the challenge.

The video has received an overwhelmingly positive response from people who said it was great to see a different side of the police.

'Great to see the police having a bit of fun,' said one user while others described it as 'awesome'.
A former US soldier flew to India to have a sex change as part of a growing trend of foreigners traveling out to the country to have operations at budget clinics.

Dressed in a bright blue sari and wearing ornate Indian jewellery, Betty Ann Archer, 64, who was born Dale, said she felt trapped in the wrong body.

'I attempted to kill myself twice...I didn't like myself. I didn't like my body at all. I couldn't be myself', she explained.

'I became very ill in 2011 and almost died. While I was recovering I came to the conclusion that I had to transition or die.'

Seeking an affordable operation she travelled to India where procedures are cheaper and have no waiting lists.

She said: 'This is affordable. This is an option that some transgender people can look at and not have to kill themselves because they can't afford it.'

Betty Ann Archer, 64, applies lipstick following her life-changing sex change operation in India

Betty Ann paid about $6,000, a fifth of the price back home and more people are taking advantages of that

A growing number of transgenders are choosing to have their operations in India over leading sex-change destination Thailand, despite it traditionally shunning its own transgender community.

Betty picked the Olmec Centre clinic, tucked away in a northern Delhi neighborhood, over Thailand which she felt was 'just a bit too expensive'.

She paid about $6,000, a fifth of the price back home and said India's conservative views on transgenders had not been an issue when deciding to come.

Known as 'hijras', India's several million transgenders are often outcasts in society.

Born Dale Archer, the 64-year-old American said she felt trapped in the wrong body right from the start

For up to $22,000 Olmec provide the treatment, as well as accommodation, airport shuttles and post-operative care that includes shopping trips and visits to tourist sights such as as the Taj Mahal.

Olmec founder and plastic surgeon Narendra Kaushik said he was seeing an increasing number of foreigners in his clinic, from countries such as the US, UK and Australia.

The number of foreign nationals having such surgeries have jumped from between five and ten to as many as 20 a year, he said.

He explained: 'The number of surgeries are increasing day by day.

'This community is very well connected all over the world... If they are satisfied with their procedures in India, they spread the word.'

Another who received a sex change at the clinic was retired British violinist Rosy Mica Kellett who paid 14,000 ($20,000) - less than half the cost in the UK.

'It's significantly cheaper here than it is back home and in most countries, even including Thailand,' said the married 50-year-old during a recent follow-up appointment with Kaushik.

'Some of the feedback I received for this kind of procedure in Thailand didn't seem to be as super advanced as my surgeon performs,' said Kellett, formerly known as Michael, dressed in a flowing maxi dress.

'I wanted the very best and I got the very best.'

In November, Archer found herself at the Olmec Centre nestled in a northern Delhi neighbourhood, which she picked over clinics in Thailand which she felt were 'just a bit too expensive'

To tap into the growing trend, the government is promoting the country's booming medical tourism industry, which included overhauling a special M-visa, now issued faster and valid for one year.

The $3 billion industry is expected to more than double in size by 2020, a report from the Confederation of Indian Industry claimed.
A tiara-loving art curator accused of biting a passenger on a trans-Atlantic flight managed to have the charge reduced to harassment after an epic two-hour rant in court.

Stacy Engman, 38, who is originally from Monroe, Iowa, was charged with biting the passenger seated next to her on a Turkish Airlines flight from Istanbul to New York in July last year.

After dragging out her hearing at Brooklyn Federal Court for more than two hours with contradictory statements, Engman finally pleaded guilty to harassment, the New York Post reports.

As part of her plea deal, Engman wont have a criminal record but was ordered to complete 50 hours of community service and 24 hours of anger management classes.

Tiara-loving curator Stacy Engman (pictured) pleaded guilty to harassment after the incident on a Turkish Airlines flight from Istanbul to New York in July last year

Manhattan curator Engman was initially charged with simple assault for allegedly biting a fellow passenger, Christina Tyler, on the flight.

But after arriving in court dressed in typically flamboyant fashion, including one of her signature tiaras, Engman rambled on for more than two hours.

[Tyler] mentioned my tiara bit her, which evidently, it did, Engman said, the Post reports.

She also insisted that she woke up during the flight to Tyler hitting her with a seat cushion.

At first, Judge Marilyn Go refused to accept her guilty plea due to the contradictory nature of Engmans explanation.

But after a break, during which Engman and her attorney sorted out the details, she admitted she had harassed Tyler.

After the sentencing, she appeared thrilled to put the ordeal behind her  and insists she will spend her community service teaching children to design tiaras in schools.

But she insists that her only crime was looking dangerously glamorous on the flight.

The incident occurred in July last year, after Engman was returning from a shoot on the Mediterranean for her 'Yacht Life' photo series for W magazine. Pictured above, a picture Engman posted to her Instagram account in July last year

Engman (pictured left and right), puts on art and fashion shows for a living, told everyone she had spent five days on a yacht before allegedly biting a passenger

She is happy to take the anger management classes, however, because of the fury I feel from being a victim of fashion profiling, she told Page Six.

However, witnesses on the plane said Engman had been aggressive from the start of the flight and had spread herself out across several seats on the plane.

When Tyler complained about Engman invading her space, Engman allegedly screamed at her, violently dropped the seats armrest on the womans leg and then bit her on the back, according to court papers.

'It's absolutely not true,' Engman told Daily Mail Online in a recent interview, adding that she disagreed with Tyler's version of events.

'I was coming back from a work assignment. Anyone who knows me knows that I live and breathe art. I'm someone who is completely devoted to art.'

Engman, who is described as a 'New York City style icon and taste-maker' on her website, behaved like a spoiled brat during the flight in question, according to the criminal complaint.

Engman (right, at a show in December) allegedly called the passenger ugly and told her to move her fat a**, the court papers state

She reportedly spent the flight bragging about her hedonistic lifestyle

Engman was wearing a tiara and told anyone who would listen she had been on a yacht for five days, the complaint said.

When Tyler objected to her actions, Engman allegedly called her ugly and told her to move her fat a**, the court papers state.

After the incident, Engman called Tyler a granola girl and said her headpiece may have sparked class envy.

She said she had been in Paris for fashion shows and then in the Mediterranean to shoot pictures for her 'Yacht Life' series in W magazine, but became ill and had to leave early.

On the plane, she claimed she had fallen asleep and when she woke up, she was being assaulted by the woman.

'I was on the boat and I had my sunglass-tiara on, because I got utterly, horribly sick on the boat,' she told W magazine in February. 'I had horrible food poisoning and I had to come back early.'

She said: 'So I when I was coming back, I just remember waking up and this girl is whacking me over the head with her seat cushion.

'The flight attendants were immediately engaged. There was absolutely no biting. This is the most absurd thing I can imagine. And the flight resumed and everything was completely fine.'
Tasmania's Police Commissioner is expected to make a personal apology to the family of a murdered model whose death was solved 50 years after her disappearance.

Police Commissioner Darren Hine released a statement acknowledging the failings by Tasmania police during the initial investigation into the disappearance of Lucille Butterworth who vanished from a bus stop in Claremont, north of Hobart, in 1969.

On Monday a coronial inquest ruled she was strangled by Geoffrey Hunt, a convicted murderer who was jailed for the killing of another woman in 1976.

The aspiring model was strangled by a convicted murderer, a coronial inquest ruled in Hobart on Monday

'The Butterworth family, and those who loved her, deserve an apology for the deficiencies of the initial investigation and I intend to meet with them to personally express my sincere apologies,' Commissioner Hine said.

'Based on the information revealed by recent investigations, Miss Butterworths family may have had the answers they deserve if her disappearance been treated differently by police at the time.

'While I cannot explain the actions or attitudes of investigators at the time, I can assure both Ms Butterworths family and the Tasmanian community that policing has changed significantly since 1969.

'Investigative techniques, oversight and review of investigations that are now standard operating procedures would not allow a repeat of the failings of that investigation.'

Tasmania's Police Commissioner Darren is expected to make a personal apology to the family of Lucille Butterworth

Her family have since begged Hunt to reveal where her remains are after spending more than five decades searching for her.

Hunt has not faced criminal charges for the aspiring model's murder but allegedly confessed to being involved in her death in 1976. The confession was never followed up by police.

'Just tell us where Lucilles remains are. Please, we need to know. Thats just the most important thing ... just to know where she is.

'We need to know so desperately,' John Fitzgerald, who was dating the 20-year-old when she disappeared, told The Hobart Mercury.

Jim Butterworth, the victim's brother, pleaded for Hunt to be jailed.

'We were betrayed in the beginning and we hope to hell that we dont get betrayed in the end and they bring this maggot of a fellow and put him where he should be,' he said.

Geoffrey Hunt (above at the Magistrates Court of Tasmania in November 2015) killed the woman by strangling her, the inquest found

Jim Butterworth (left) urged the Department of Public Prosecutions to charge and try Hunt. John Fitzgerald (right) begged him to tell them where her body was

On Monday it was revealed how witnesses told the inquest Miss Butterworth was picked up by an 'old bomb' turquoise green Holden FB after she missed the bus to New Norfolk in August 1969.

Coroner Simon Cooper found the car was driven by Geoffrey Hunt who confessed to raping and murdering another Hobart woman, Susan Knight, in 1976.

He is said to have confessed to being involved in Miss Butterworth's death while being questioned for the other crime in the 1970s. Police have apologised for not following up on the confession, ABC reported.

'On the journey to New Norfolk Mr Hunt stopped the FB Holden, strangled Miss Butterworth in the vehicle and thereafter disposed of her body,' Mr Cooper said on Monday as he delivered his findings.

Witnesses told the inquest the 20-year-old typist was picked up by an 'old bomb' turquoise green Holden FB after she missed the bus to New Norfolk in Tasmania

Mr Butterworth pleaded for criminal charges to be brought against the convicted killer on Monday

Hunt confessed to involvement in Miss Butterworth's death while being questioned over another murder in 1976

He was unable to rule what the cause of her death was because her body has never been found.

'In the absence of any medical evidence I am unable to find the precise cause of Miss Butterworth's death,' he said.

Tasmania's Director of Public Prosecutions would not comment on the case when contacted by Daily Mail Australia on Tuesday.

In an interview with Channel Seven's Sunday Night last year, Hunt's brother, who did not wish to give his first name, said he believed his brother had a part in the killing.

'He was like a time bomb waiting to explode. So putting it all together, I'd have to say a very good possibility,' he said.

Hunt was sentenced to life in prison for the killing of Ms Knight in 1976 and released on parole in 2000.
Casino magnate and Republican donor Sheldon Adelson has backed Donald Trump in the race for the White House.

Adelson, who dropped put of college and went on to amass a $28billion fortune from the hotel, newspaper and gambling industries, said Trump 'won fair and square'.

'Yes, I'm a Republican, he's a Republican,' Adelson told the New York Times.

Casino magnate and Republican donor Sheldon Adelson (left) has backed Donald Trump (right) in the race for the White House

'He's our nominee. Whoever the nominee would turn out to be, any one of the 17 - he was one of the 17. He won fair and square.'

Trump and Adelson have had a tumultuous relationship in recent months, with the Republican presumptive nominee slamming the businessman on Twitter in October.

The Donald said the influential Republican donor wanted to make Florida Senator Marco Rubio - who later dropped out of the race for the nomination - 'his perfect little puppet'.

But the pair reconciled in December after a meeting in which they chatted about Israel, with Adelson later calling Trump 'very charming'.

Adelson has previously donated to President George W. Bush, last election's GOP nominee Mitt Romney and former candidate Newt Gingrich.

Trump's near-cementing of the party's nomination has split the party, with prominent figures such as House Speaker Paul Ryan and both Presidents Bush refusing to back him.

Trump's near-cementing of the party's nomination has split the party, with prominent figures such as House Speaker Paul Ryan refusing to back him

Asked if he could support Trump, Ryan told CNN: 'I am not there right now. I hope to and want to.'

Trump responded, saying: 'I am not ready to support Speaker Ryan's agenda.'

On Wednesday, both Bush presidents refused to back Trump.

Former President George W. Bush, whose brother Jeb pulled out of the race in February after a string of dismal results, will not be taking part in the campaign whatsoever.

When asked if the most recent Republican president would throw his significant political weight behind Trump, his spokesman Freddy Ford said: 'President Bush does not plan to participate in or comment on the presidential campaign.'

Former President George H. W. Bush's spokesman Jim McGrath said: 'At age 91, President Bush is retired from politics.'

Republican senator Ben Sasse, of Nebraska, reiterated statements that he would not back Trump and said he would look for an alternative candidate if Trump became the nominee.

Tim Miller, a former spokesman for Jeb Bush, tweeted: 'Never ever ever Trump. Simple as that.'

Former Presidents George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush (pictured in 2013) will not endorse Donald Trump

Republican Senator Deb Fischer madeclear in an interview with Nebraska Radio Network that she wouldsupport the party's nominee but was not comfortable with Trump.

'Mr Trump is going to have to work hard to bring the partytogether,' she said.

South Carolina's Republican governor, Nikki Haley, issued a statement saying she would support the Republican nominee but was 'not interested' in being the party's vice presidential running mate after there were rumors Trump might call on her.

Texas governor Rick Perry told CNN that he would try to help Trump and was open to being his vice-presidential nominee.

But Oklahoma Republican Governor Mary Fallin endorsed Trump enthusiastically and welcomed talk of her as his possible No. 2.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Trump has the 'opportunity and the obligation' to unite the GOP.

He said the party was committed to 'restoring economic and national security' and preventing a 'third term of Barack Obama' if Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton wins the White House.
The SNP failed to secure a second overall majority at Holyrood today dealing a heavy blow to its plans to restart the campaign for Scottish independence.

Nicola Sturgeon faces a new term as First Minister having failed to match the historic achievement of her predecessor Alex Salmond five years ago.

The SNP lost six seats overall while the unionist Conservative Party surged into second place with an extraordinary 16 gains. Ms Sturgeon ruled out building a formal coalition but promised an 'inclusive' government today.

Ruth Davidson will be the leader of the opposition and led the fight against a second independence referendum during the Scottish elections.

The Labour Party was devastated as Scottish politics realigned along nationalist-unionist lines, leaving leader Kezia Dugdale relying on a list seat to get into the Scottish Parliament.

The Tories surged in Scotland as politics north of the border appeared to undergo a dramatic realignment. The SNP fell short of an overall majority and Labour suffered devastating losses

Before the final results were achieved, Ms Sturgon declared victory and claimed an 'historic' achievement as the SNP secured a third term in power.

But the new opposition leader, Tory Ruth Davidson, said Scotland's voice would not be ignored and hit out at proposals for a second referendum.

She said: 'I hope the message that was resonating was of being a strong opposition, of holding the SNP to account, to saying no to a second independence referendum.'

The new row over independence began as:

The SNP, led by Nicola Sturgeon, topped the poll but fell just short of an overall majority potentially reducing the chances of a new independence referendum.

The First Minister ruled out building a formal coalition this afternoon but said she would look to run an 'inclusive' government in Scotland.

Ms Sturgeon described the collapse in Labour support as 'quite staggering'.

The party's worst result since devolution and the worst north of the border since 1910, before men and women were give equal voting rights.

Deputy Labour leader Tom Watson defended Ms Dugdale saying she had carried a 'heavy burden'.

But moderates said together with poor results in England and Wales it showed Jeremy Corbyn's leadership was failing.

The Tory success triggered a backlash on social media as some members of the group known as a 'cyber nats' lashed out at the results

Addressing the results this afternoon, Ms Sturgeon said: 'On the question of independence, the SNP will make our case with passion, with patience and with respect. But our aim is to persuade, not to divide.

'We will always respect the opinion of the people - now and in the future - and we simply ask that other parties do likewise.

'It is the greatest privilege imaginable to be elected as the First Minister of our country.

Nicola Sturgeon today announced she would not seek to form a coalition after falling just short of an overall majority in the Scottish Parliament

'To those who voted for me yesterday, thank you from the bottom of my heart. You have given me a precious opportunity to change this country for the better and I promise to seize it with both hands.

'To those who did not vote for me, I promise I will never stop striving to earn your trust and support.'

She added: 'I have a duty to rise above party politics and to govern in the best interests of all of our country.

'My pledge today is that I will always seek to do that.'

Ms Davidson tonight said offered Scots a more home spun response.

She said: 'Right, home after 40 hours on the go. Pyjamas, hoodie, sofa, Masterchef, large glass of rum, and then to bed.'

Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson seized the Edinburgh Central constituency from the SNP as Labour collapsed

Prime Minister David Cameron hailed the Scottish election results as 'historic' as he heaped praise on Ruth Davidson for securing second place

Labour's share of the vote has already plummeted by 10 per cent with even Ms Dugdale failing in her bid to win the Edinburgh Eastern constituency from the SNP.

The third place finish is Labour's worst performance in Scotland since 1910, throwing throw Jeremy Corbyn's leadership into fresh turmoil.

The veteran left-winger's allies had insisted he would help turn around fortunes in Scotland - where they claimed his stands against austerity and Trident renewal were more in tune with popular opinion.

The Tories have been the big winners of the night, seizing seats from the SNP and Labour.

What a difference five years makes: Maps comparing this morning's election results compared with 2011 illustrate Labour's losses

Ruth Davidson said she had little intention beyond relaxing after today's results confirmed she would be leader of the Opposition

Labour lost the Rutherglen constituency, which it had held since 1999, to the SNP, with mental health nurse Clare Haughey elected as the new MSP for the area.

Seats which had previously been considered part of Labour's heartlands also fell to the nationalists, including Motherwell and Wishaw, and Greenock and Inverclyde.

Ms Sturgeon described the apparent collapse in support for Labour as 'quite staggering'.

Speaking after holding Glasgow Southside seat with a majority of almost 10,000, she hailed a third consecutive victory in Scottish Parliament elections.

'That has never been done before in the history of the Scottish Parliament. We have tonight made history,' Ms Sturgeon said.

Downing Street today said Prime Minister David Cameron had called Ms Sturgeon to offer his congratulations.

A spokesman said: 'The Prime Minister congratulated Ms Sturgeon on her party having the largest representation in the Scottish Parliament and, in return, Ms Sturgeon congratulated the Prime Minister on the gains made in Scotland by his party.

'The Prime Minister and Ms Sturgeon agreed that the UK and Scottish Governments must continue to work together constructively, most crucially in the short term on the future of the steel industry.

'It was noted that the two governments sharing information and experience could be of benefit to the steel industry across the UK, and they agreed to keep in touch on this issue.'

Greg Hemphill suggested the Tories had 'moved the Scottish border' after results showed a sweep of the southern border seats for Ruth Davidson

But the chances of a fresh referendum on Scottish independence appear to have receded after the nationalists only secured 63 seats - two short of an overall majority.

The SNP's likely allies in the new parliament, the Greens, are not thought to be supportive of staging another poll on the issue.

Former Labour leader Iain Gray managed to hold on to his East Lothian constituency, but the party's current deputy Alex Rowley lost the Cowdenbeath seat that he had won in a by-election.

The party also lost Eastwood, a constituency on the outskirts of Glasgow which it had held since 1999, to the Scottish Conservatives.

Tory Ms Davidson, left, triumphed in Edinburgh Central but Labour's Kezia Dugdale failed to win in Edinburgh Eastern on a disastrous night for the party

Veteran Labour MSP Jackie Baillie held on to the Dumbarton constituency she has represented since 1999, but with a majority of just 109 over the SNP.

Labour enjoyed a rare gain from the SNP in Edinburgh Southern, where Daniel Johnson won the seat for the party.

But Anas Sarwar, former Scottish Labour deputy leader, conceded: 'Undoubtedly it's a difficult night for the Labour Party.'

The Tory campaign had focused on providing a strong opposition to the SNP, and Ms Davidson said voters were 'sending a message' to the SNP.

She said: 'I fully recognise and understand there are many people that have given us their vote for the very first time, not because they're true blue Conservatives but because there's a job of work they want us to do.'

She hailed her victory in Edinburgh Central as an 'incredible result' after the Tories came from fourth in 2011 to win the seat.

She added: 'I hope the message that was resonating was of being a strong opposition, to hold the SNP to account, to saying no to a second independence referendum, to respect the decision that our country made and to really focus on the things we're paying a government to focus on, on schools, on hospitals, on public services. That's what people want.'

Ms Dugdale, seen with her partner, will face questions about whether she will be able to continue as Labour's leader in Scotland after the dire election results

Another Tory gain saw Oliver Mundell, the son of Scottish Secretary David Mundell, win Dumfriesshire from Labour, while Alexander Burnett took Aberdeenshire West from the SNP.

David Mundell, the sole Tory MP in Scotland, told the BBC it would be a 'seismic change in Scottish politics' if his party comes second at Holyrood.

He told BBC Scotland: 'That will be good for Scotland, good for the Scottish Parliament, Ruth has demonstrated throughout this campaign that she is the one politician that can go toe-to-toe with Nicola Sturgeon, that she can stand up to demands for a second referendum.

'She can also scrutinise the SNP and make sure they deliver on promises they have made on health, on education, and I think by doing that we will get better government, and that will be good for everyone in Scotland.'

There was also success for the Liberal Democrats, with Scottish leader Willie Rennie winning back the North East Fife seat from the SNP, while children's charity worker Alex Cole-Hamilton won Edinburgh Western from the nationalists.
Triplet sisters who almost died after being born 15 weeks prematurely are now set to graduate top of their class in high school.

Baye Lee, Jenna and Allie Braschler, of Saugatuck, Michigan, each weighed less than two pounds when they were born in October 1997.

Doctors gave them survival rates between 50 and 70 per cent and kept them in the hospital for a combined 333 days, performing two heart surgeries and one eye operation, the Grand Rapids Press reported.

But the three sisters survived and, thanks to a mix of discipline and friendly competition, have thrived academically and are about to go their separate ways to begin college.

Baye Lee (left), Allie (center) and Jenna (right) Braschler, of Saugatuck, Michigan, each weighed less than two pounds when they were born in October 1997

The triplets' mother, Barrie, an online chat operator who works from home, caught a cold that turned into a staph infection and double pneumonia during her 25th week of pregnancy.

Doctors had to induce delivery when her oxygen levels dropped dangerously.

Being born prematurely late in the second trimester, with a low birth weight and as part of a multiple birth are three high-risk factors for health and development, pediatrician Dr Nancy Dodge told The Grand Rapids Press.

But the sisters attended preschool and already had three years of schooling under their belt by the time they began kindergarten.

'When they were in the hospital, we didn't know what kind of future they could expect,' their father Dave, who owns a bakery, told the newspaper. 'It was such an unknown.'

Baye Lee, Jenna and Allie became disciplined students, doing their homework as soon as they came home from school.

They don't usually study together but all three have blossomed in high school. Baye Lee became class president, Allie the vice-president, and Jenna the class treasurer.

Barrie Braschler (left), the triplets' mother, caught a staph infection and double pneumonia during her 25th week of pregnancy, making it necessary to induce the birth of Baye Lee (left), Jenna (center) and Allie (right)

All three play music - Baye Lee has mastered clarinet and tenor saxophone, Jenna chose the piano and Allie went for the alto saxophone.

They have joined the softball, cross country and track teams and performed in school plays and theater productions.

'I think it's how our brains work,' Baye Lee told the Grand Rapids Press. 'We never struggle.'

The sisters are now about to graduate as the top three students of their class, which includes about 50 students, at the end of the month.

All three scored at least 30 on their ACT assessment, landing in the 95th percentile.

'I think they always have a friendly competition to push themselves academically, and they each found different ways to push themselves,' Tim Travis the principal of Saugatuck's middle and high school, where the triplets, went, told the Grand Rapid Press.

'I think that is their uniqueness. They have a built-in support system, and built-in competition. I don't think they can slack.'

Jenna, Baye Lee and Allie have each chosen a different college for the fall and have obtained presidential scholarships.

Allie has been accepted into Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana, where she will take pre-law or business.

Baye Lee will head to Loyola in Chicago and study nursing, hoping to work in a neonatal unit.

And Jenna wants to focus on writing and actuarial science at Olivet College in Michigan.

The sisters told the Grand Rapid Press they are ready to leave behind the excellent academic reputation they have built in high school.
Nigel Farage today hailed a night of 'breakthroughs' for Ukip as the party won its first ever seats in the Welsh Assembly and revived Neil Hamilton's political career.

Mr Farage said his party was 'really biting hard' into Labour's traditional vote and as the results rolled in, six list seats were confirmed in the Senedd - including for the former Tory MP embroiled int the 1990s cash for questions scandal.

Mark Reckless was another former Tory to make an electoral comeback under the Ukip banner in Wales as the party enjoyed a good election night amid debate on the EU referendum.

Ukip was also expected to pick up seats on the London Assembly later and has so far won an additional 20 council seats across England.

Labour was today facing warnings it was 'complacent' in the face of the Ukip threat.

Neil Hamilton, pictured at a Ukip spring conference, revived his political career with victory for Ukip in the Welsh Assembly elections

The news Mr Hamilton had won a place in the Senedd was greeted with horror by some voters on social media - one of whom pointed out he lived in Wiltshire.

Charlie Evans said: 'NEIL HAMILTON IS GOING TO BE LIVING IN WILTSHIRE? Representing Mid and West Wales? What a joke.'

Stefan Simanowitz said: 'When did Neil Hamilton go from "disgraced former Tory MP" to "UKIP big hitter" & Wales, what were you thinking?'

Mr Farage insisted people had been turned off by Jeremy Corbyn's extremism and lack of patriotism.

In the wake of the recent rows over alleged anti-Semitism within Labour, Mr Farage claimed that 'nasty' and extreme views went 'right to the top' of Mr Corbyn's party.

Mr Hamilton today acknowledged he had not been Mr Farage's first choice of candidate but said Ukip would come together.

He told the BBC: 'Nigel is a democrat and I was selected by the overwhelming vote of the party members in Wales for a winnable place on the Assembly list and thank goodness now I am an elected member of the Assembly.

'We will work together as a team regardless of things that have divided us hitherto.

'This is nothing new in politics, you will have seen it millions of times the same as I did in the Conservative party I was a member of John Majors Government that tore itself to pieces over the years.

'I was a member of Margaret Thatchers government and we had all sorts of divisions in that but ultimately you have to get on with your colleagues and make a success of public life.'

Speaking on Sky News as the first election results rolled in, Mr Farage said: 'How many gains we are going to get in England, I can't say, but overall it's a night when Ukip's going to make breakthroughs and a night when Ukip really bites hard into that old Labour vote.'

Twitter used were a mixture of bemused and horrified at the prospect of Neil Hamilton returning to elected office in Wales

Mr Farage added: 'In the early days of Ukip, we picked up our votes from disenchanted Conservatives. I think the general election last year showed - and the results tonight already are showing me - that the growth in the Ukip vote is coming more from Labour than it is from anybody else.

'I feel there are many that will look at Jeremy Corbyn, look at the Labour Party, see it's become very extreme, see it as not being particularly patriotic and not really standing up for them.

'We don't tolerate anti-Semitism, we don't tolerate extremism.

'When we find people in Ukip who say or do nasty things, we get rid of them. They nearly always occur at very junior levels - in the Labour Party, this stuff goes right to the very top.'

Ukip was expecting to make gains in England and had expected to secure 'a minimum of five' seats on the Welsh Assembly and one in Northern Ireland.

Mr Farage had suggested he had a 'slightly better than 50 per cent chance' of picking up seats in Scotland - but was disappointed when the Holyrood results were finalised.

Mr Farage added: 'There's going to be a big reward for us in Wales, I think tomorrow in London we will break into the Assembly there.

'We are the third biggest party now in the United Kingdom by a country mile.

'We are about three times the size in terms of votes of the Liberal Democrats and that will show through in these elections across the United Kingdom, including in Northern Ireland, where we will be the only UK-wide party that wins a seat in Stormont.'

Ukip leader Nigel Farage, pictured today in Westminster, said it had been a 'breakthrough night' for his party as they secured seats on the Welsh Assembly for the first time

Labour Jonathan Ashworth told Sky News: 'Sometimes Labour politicians have said in the corridors of Westminster 'Don't worry about Ukip, they hit the Tories harder than Labour'.

'I don't believe that. I think the Labour Party have got to take the Ukip challenge very seriously.

'The way to do that is to demonstrate that Labour politicians and Labour councillors work best for communities, because what tends to happen when you get Ukip councillors in an area, they don't really stand up for the community and fight for their constituents.'
Muslim women should not wear trousers, leave the house without their husband's permission or use Facebook, according to controversial rules published by British mosques.

The Green Lane Masjid in Birmingham said that women were not allowed to wear trousers, even in front of their husbands, while the Central Masjid of Blackburn called Facebook a 'sin' and an 'evil'.

One Islamic organisation also stated that Muslim women must not leave the house without their husband's permission.

The Green Lane Masjid in Birmingham (pictured) said that women were not allowed to wear trousers, even in front of their husbands

The controversial ruling was published this week by the Blackburn Muslim Association, an affiliate member of the MCB, telling women that they should not travel more than 48 miles without a male chaperone. A document written by a mufti at the Croydon Mosque and Islamic Centre, entitled 'Advice for the husband and wife', also stated: 'A woman should seek her husband's permission when leaving the house and should not do so without his knowledge.'

In another article, the mosque calls abortion 'a great sin' and describes acting and modelling as 'immoral acts'.

Moderate Muslims and anti-extremism campaigners have slammed the statements as 'disgraceful' and 'outdated and patriarchal', according to The Times.

Campaigners called for the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), an umbrella body that represents hundreds of mosques, bodies and schools, to order its affiliated institutions to delete online advice that restricts women's freedom.

An article entitled 'Dangers of Facebook' was published on the Central Masjid of Blackburn's website, stating: 'Facebook has opened the doors for sin. Muslim girls and women alike have become prey to this evil.'

In a Q&A, one Muslim asked the Green Lane Masjid in Birmingham if women could wear jeans. Citing an Islamic scholar, the reply was that women were not permitted to wear trousers, even in front of their husband, as they show off 'the details of her body'.

One Islamic organisation also stated that Muslim women must not leave the house without their husband's permission

It said: 'The ones who wear trousers are men, and the Prophet . . . cursed women who imitate men.'

None of the organisations responded to The Times' requests for comment.

Justine Greening, the international development secretary, called the travel ban on women 'disgraceful and unacceptable' and urged the Blackburn Muslim Association to withdraw its comments.

A spokeswoman for Greening's department said that such views have 'no place in Britain'.

Sheikh Howjat Ramzy, a scholar and former MCB education committee member, told The Times: '[These interpretations of Islam] are totally wrong. It is nonsense. And Islam has no objections to Facebook, just as a woman can wear trousers or not wear a scarf and can still be a Muslim.'

Speaking about the MCB, Dr Ramzy said: 'They should ask the organisation to withdraw their statement or advise them that this may not be applicable for use in the United Kingdom.'

Salah al-Ansari, from the Quilliam Foundation anti-extremism think tank, told The Times: 'These are typical examples of literalist interpretations of Islam which are extremely fundamentalist and exclusivist.'

A spokeswoman for the MCB said that it 'does not dictate jurisprudential positions to its affiliates', but that there was a rise in the number of Muslim women taking roles as political figures and religious scholars.
A Labour councillor who thought he had lost the election kept his seat after a 'bundle' of votes was found under a 'pile' of Tory ballots during counting.

Duncan Enright was initially told he had been defeated in his bid for re-election in the ward of Witney East, in Oxfordshire, yesterday.

He took to Twitter to share his disappointment, saying: 'The fight goes on'.

Crestfallen: Councillor Duncan Enright was initially told he had lost in the ward of Witney East, in Oxfordshire

He did it! But a recount was held after a 'bundle' of his votes was found 'under a pile' of Tory ballots

But just an hour later, Mr Enright posted another message saying there had been a 'miscount' and he had in fact won by 70 votes.

Mr Enright, who stood against David Cameron in last year's general election, thought he had lost yesterday's contest to Conservative candidate Suzanne Bartington.

Moments before the results were announced, he tweeted: 'Very close in my seat of Witney East.'

He later shared that he had 'lost by 70 votes or so', adding: 'Thanks for the opportunity to serve. The fight goes on.'

But after a recount, Mr Enright announced to his 1,421 followers that there had been a 'miscount'.

He wrote: 'Miscount in #Witney East, result now in, I win by 70! THANK YOU!' He added: 'Actually I won! Bundle of my votes under a Tory pile! Delighted! Thanks Witney!'

Change in fortune: Mr Enright told his Twitter followers about his defeated... and shared his excitement

The councillor later said 'thank you to all my neighbours'.

West Oxfordshire council, where Mr Enright's ward is located, remains a Conservative majority after last night's election.
She worked as a high-fashion hat designer, with royals among her clients

A refugee who fled Nazi-occupied Austria and became a hatmaker to the Queen had died after being knocked over by a lorry.

Herta Groves was struck by the vehicle outside Wigmore Hall in central London after attending a concert on Wednesday last week, and was pronounced dead at the scene an hour later.

During her time in London the 96-year-old worked as a high-fashion hat designer, counting the royal milliner among her clients.

Herta Groves recorded her testimony as a Holocaust survivor by giving an interview to Steven Spielberg's Shoah Foundation in 1997 (pictured)

The pensioner was struck by the vehicle outside Wigmore Hall in central London after attending a concert on Wednesday last week, and was pronounced dead at the scene an hour later

But her life before moving to England was just as fascinating, helping others in Vienna to escape the Holocaust.

While still a teenager, Mrs Groves turned her middle-class family's large home into a school for Jewish women, to teach other women how to obtain work visas abroad as Nazism tightened its grip on Europe.

She would herself flee to Britain at the age of 19, leaving her parents and sister behind to an uncertain fate.

Her father would die soon after from pneumonia after being forced at gunpoint to shovel snow by Nazi officials, while her mother and sister would die at a concentration camp in Latvia in 1942.

It was after moving to London that Mrs Groves started her own business creating couture hats.

Called the London Hat Company, the enterprise soon became a continental operation, exporting her designs throughout Europe and eventually to the royal palaces of the UK.

Mrs Groves, who lived in a 1million home in St Johns Wood, died of serious injuries following the collision on April 27. The driver remained at the scene and was not arrested by police

The pensioner, who married twice during her lifetime, recorded her testimony as a Holocaust survivor by giving an interview to Steven Spielberg's Shoah Foundation in 1997.

Recounting her experiences, she said: 'I didn't speak about the Holocaust to anyone, when I gave speeches it was mostly about hats.

'The British gave us a chance to re-start our lives. We could rebuild everything here.

'The message is the Holocaust can't be forgotten  it needs to be remembered for future generations.'

Mrs Groves, who lived in a 1million home in St Johns Wood, died of serious injuries following the collision on April 27. The driver remained at the scene and was not arrested by police.

A police spokesman added: 'Police were called at 2.20pm to reports of a collision between a lorry and a pedestrian at Wigmore Street at the junction of Wellbeck Street.

'Emergency services attended the scene and found the pensioner with serious injuries. She was pronounced dead at the scene just before 3.30pm.'
The case against an Algerian man accused of groping a woman during the infamous Cologne New Year sex attacks has collapsed raising further questions about the city's under-fire police force.

Remarkably, the 26-year-old man was the first to go on trial for a sexual offence related to the incidents - despite the fact some 1,100 people complained they were victimized.

It also marks another damning indictment of local authorities which have been plagued by accusations of cover ups and their inability to catch those responsible.

The case against the Algerian man (pictured), who cannot be named due to Germany's strict privacy laws, collapsed when the victim of the sexual assault admitted she didn't recognize him as one of her assailants

The New Year celebrations in Cologne (pictured) were marred by hundreds of women reporting they had been sexually assaulted

Today a court in Cologne heard the victim of the assault didn't recognize the Algerian man on trial and it ruled there was no proof he was part of the group of alleged assailants, dpa reported.

More than 1,100 criminal complaints were filed over the crimes in Cologne, blamed largely on foreigners, with several hundred alleging sexual offenses.

The suspect, whose name hasn't been released in keeping with German privacy rules, was accused of being in a group of around 10 men who surrounded and groped a woman in the central train station, and of stealing her cellphone.

He also was charged with attempted theft over a December 13 incident in which he and another man were accused of trying to break into a car.

The woman's cellphone was found on the suspect, but he said he had bought it from an acquaintance.

Today the defendant was convicted of handling stolen goods and of the attempted car break-in, and was given a six-month suspended sentence.

Meanwhile, it was reported last month a German state minister tried to pressure police in Cologne to remove the word 'rape' from their reports on the sex attacks.

Many feared a backlash among far right groups after it emerged witnesses and victims described their attackers as mostly 'Arab or North African men'.

Police officers survey the area in front of the city's main train station, where many of the attacks occurred

Groups of young men light fireworks during the New Year festivities, which police later admitted were out of control

Cologne police even released a statement the following day describing the celebrations of 'exuberant, but mostly peaceful'.

Although it has since been retracted, a police chief has resigned, while broadcaster ZDF apologised for a cover up after it failed to report the story for three days, even though it knew about it.

Police notes revealed how women complained they were surrounded by sexually frustrated men who tried to put their hands inside their tights and knickers.

One woman told police she was surrounded by 20 men of North African appearance before they attacked her intimate parts.

A victim said she was pinched in the crotch, while another said hands were 'all over her breasts and buttocks'.
A man who claimed he 'accidentally' stabbed his brother to death sobbed, wailed and rocked in the dock as he was jailed on Friday.

Troy Angus Kearns came to blows with his older brother Wade in December 2014 at their home in Roma, in southern Queensland, during an argument over missing money.

The 32-year-old was sentenced to eight years in prison on Friday after pleading guilty to the manslaughter of his brother in April.

The Kearns family hugs outside court after Troy Angus Kearns was sentenced to eight years in jail over the stabbing death of his brother Wade

As the sentencing was read out a clearly distressed Kearns cried heavily, pausing only to draw more tissues from the box.

The Brisbane Supreme Court heard that the father of the boys, who was inside the home at the time of the stabbing, was alerted to their brawl after he heard a smash.

He then rushed inside where he found Troy Kearns crying with the knife in his hand and saying: 'I have stabbed him Dad, I didn't mean to, but I stabbed him', the Warwick Daily News reports.

Justice John Byrne was unconvinced by the suggestion Kearns had used a boning knife to scare off his phyiscally stronger sibling, before Wade accidentally impaled himself on the blade.

Troy Angus Kearns is led away by police after being charged over the death of his brother Wade in December 2014

Delivering his sentence on Friday, Justice Byrne said the wound that caused Wade's death must have been the last one suffered, given other marks and cuts on the late man's body.

'Your family is sympathetic to your plight but a life has been lost,' he told Brisbane's Supreme Court.

'(That) is an offence against the whole community.'

He accepted Kearns was remorseful and had tried to get his life back on track, but noted his history of violent offences.

Defence barrister Angelo Vasta said his client had completed a drug rehabilitation program and would grieve for his brother for the rest of his life.
One of the former NSW policemen charged with the murder of Jamie Gao has appeared in court to testify against his co-accused, Glen McNamara.

Roger Rogerson alleged he played no part in the murder, and was simply acting as a lookout for his friend during what he thought was a meeting set up with an informant for a book McNamara was writing on Chinese triads.

Appearing at the NSW Supreme Court, Rogerson said he was in a 'state of shock' after hearing the 20-year-old university student had been fatally shot during a struggle.

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Roger Rogerson, 75, is accused of the murder of 20-year-old university student Jamie Gao and of stealing over 2kgs of the drug ice

The ex-policeman told the jury he had gone to investigate after realising the door to the shed wasn't up as it should have been, and was confronted by a panicked McNamara.

His friend was 'white as a ghost', he said, and there was an Asian man lying on the floor with a gun next to his hand.

He says he was told that Mr Gao had shot himself during the struggle, and the two of them needed to flee.

Mr Gao's body was found lifeless in the ocean off Cronulla, NSW, six days after he was shot

'I could not believe this was happening. It was like one huge nightmare,' Rogerson said of the events.

'I said Glen, what the f*** happened?'

Rogerson said McNamara told him that Mr Gao had pulled a gun on him and was 'screaming' for his car keys.

Rogerson was arrested in May 2014, and this is the first time he has taken the stand

According to Rogerson, McNamara told him during the struggle in the shed he had managed to grab hold of Mr Gao's hands and twist the gun around.

'He said it went off twice and he said he (Mr Gao) shot himself in the chest,' Rogerson said.

McNamara allegedly told Rogerson that the place would soon be 'swarming with Chinese assassins', and the two of them would be killed if they didn't leave.

Rogerson and his co-accused McNamara have both pleaded guilty to the charges, and allege that the other was responsible for the murder

Rogerson told the jury: 'I said to him, `Glen ... I think the only thing we'll be doing here is calling the cops'.

He told the jury that he had told McNamara, 'pull yourself together' and 'thanks very much Glen. I'm a bit old for all this', before his friend pulled out a surfboard bag and the two men put Mr Gao's body in with the help of a rug from Rogerson's car.

Rogerson, 75, testified that he saw McNamara, 56, pick up a black bag, say there was something wrong and the bag only contained a towel, but did not understand what McNamara meant.

Security footage shows former detective and true crime author McNamara at the Padstow Rent A Shed where Mr Gao was shot

Rogerson alleges he was standing guard for his friend, as McNamara interviewed Mr Gao for a book he was writing on Chinese triads

The two former detectives are charged with the murder of Mr Gao and with stealing 2.78kgs of ice he had brought to sell them.

The university student was found dead, floating in the ocean off Cronulla, NSW six days later, and the drugs were found hidden in pillowcases in McNamara's car.

Both men testified against each other  McNamara alleged earlier this week that Rogerson shot Mr Gao dead in a failed drug deal and threatened the welfare of his daughters if he didn't help to dispose of the body.

The trial continues.
Fire has grown to more than 101,000 hectares Alberta provincial government said Friday

The weather forecast offered a glimmer of hope: a 40 per cent chance of rain on Sunday

Massive convoy under way Friday to move evacuees stranded at oil field camps north of wildfire-ravaged Fort McMurray

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A massive convoy was under way Friday to move evacuees stranded at oil field camps north of wildfire-ravaged Fort McMurray, Alberta, through the community to safe areas south of the Canadian oil sands capital.

The weather forecast offered a glimmer of hope: a 40 per cent chance of rain on Sunday.

As police and military oversaw the procession of at least 500 vehicles, a mass airlift of evacuees resumed. A day after 8,000 people were flown out, 5,500 more were expected to be flown out on Friday.

More than 80,000 people have left Fort McMurray in the heart of Canada' oil sands, where the fire has torched 1,600 homes and other buildings. The mass evacuation has forced as much as a quarter of Canada's oil output off-line according to estimates and is expected to impact a country already hurt by a dramatic fall in the price of oil.

The Alberta provincial government, which declared a state of emergency, said Friday the size of the fire had grown to more than 101,000 hectares (249,571 acres). No deaths or injuries related to the fire have been reported.

A truck drives toward a wildfire in Fort McMurray, Alberta, on Friday after more than 80,000 people have left Fort McMurray in the heart of Canada oil sands, where the fire has torched over 1,000 homes and other buildings

Media watch as smoke billows in the sky near a wildfire in Fort McMurray, Alberta, on Friday, May 6, 2016. More than 80,000 people have left Fort McMurray, in the heart of Canada's oil sands, as a wildfire that has devastated the area exploded in size

The charred remains of a bus sit on the side of a road in Fort McMurray, Alberta. More than 80,000 people have left Fort McMurray, in the heart of Canada's oil sands as a wildfire that has devastated the area exploded in size

The government said 1,100 firefighters, 110 helicopters, 295 pieces of heavy equipment and more than 27 air tankers were fighting the fire, but Chad Morrison, Alberta's manager of wildfire prevention, said no amount of resources would put this fire out. They need rain.

'We have not seen rain in this area for the last two months of significance,' Morrison said. 'This fire will continue to burn for a very long time until we see some significant rain.'

Moving footage shows the scorched remains of Fort McMurray's Beacon Hill neighborhood in the wake of the fire that has ripped through the city and forced all 88,000 residents to flee.

The video, taken by resident Jamee Lowndes, shows the charred remains of cars, devastated homes and blackened tree branches.

There are reminders of the once-thriving community, such as the remains of a bus shelter, but all that has been left now is debris and rubble.

The blaze started on Sunday in Canada's oil sands region and grew more than tenfold from 18,500 acres (7,500 hectares) on Wednesday to some 210,000 acres (85,000 hectares) on Thursday, an area roughly 10 times the size of Manhattan.

More than 1,110 firefighters, 145 helicopters, 138 pieces of heavy equipment and 22 air tankers were fighting a total of 49 wildfires. Seven of the blazes are deemed out of control last night.

Officials said conditions remained extreme across the region and that strong winds were helping spread the fire, which appears to be moving south, away from Fort McMurray.

Canadian officials are airlifting some 10,000 people who fled north from Fort McMurray, most of whom have been staying in oil sands work camps in the remote area.

Volunteers load water for evacuees from the Fort McMurray wildfires at the evacuation center in Lac la Biche, Alberta, Friday

A police officer stands at a roadblock as a fire flares up near Fort McMurray, Alberta

Evacuees from the Fort McMurray wildfires continue to arrive at the evacuation center in Lac la Biche, Alberta

The evacuees are being moved again because urban areas in the south are better able to support them, officials said. They hope the motorway to the south will become safe today to move the remaining 17,000 people, who are in danger of becoming trapped.

The Canadian government is working on finding temporary housing for families who lost their homes and belongings in the inferno. A rare province-wide fire ban has been declared to try to reduce risk of further blazes.

Many people had arrived in Anzac late on Tuesday, about 30 miles south of Fort McMurray but they had to move on again by Wednesday evening. They are now heading for the provincial capital of Edmonton.

As well as Anzac, the communities of Gregoire Lake Estates and Fort McMurray First Nation, an aboriginal reservation, were evacuated on Wednesday after the wildfires moved south.

There are still no known casualties from the fire but there was at least one vehicle crash with fatalities on the evacuation route.

Alberta Premier Rachel Notley warned city residents they faced a long wait before they would be able to return home.

She said: 'The damage to the community of Fort McMurray is extensive and the city is not safe for residents. It is simply not possible, nor is it responsible to speculate on a time when citizens will be able to return. We do know that it will not be a matter of days.'

The chief of Fort McMurray's fire department, Darby Allen said: 'There are certainly areas within the city that have not been burned, but this fire will look for them and it will find them and it will want to take them.

'The people here are devastated, everyone's devastated, the community is going to be devastated. This is going to go on. This is going to take us awhile to come back from. But we'll come back.'

Evacuees leave Fort McMurray in the early morning, after being stranded north of wildfire in Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada on Friday, May 6, 2016. The Alberta provincial government, which declared a state of emergency, said more than 1,100 firefighters, 145 helicopters, 138 pieces of heavy equipment and 22 air tankers were fighting the fire, but Chad Morrison, Alberta's manager of wildfire prevention, said rain is needed

Evacuees from the Fort McMurray wildfires rest on a hockey rink at the evacuation center in Lac la Biche, Alberta, Thursday

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau branded the situation 'terrifying' during a speech in Parliament on Thursday, calling it 'the largest fire evacuation in Alberta's history'.

'Homes have been destroyed. Neighborhoods have gone up in flames. The footage we've seen of cars racing down highways while fire races on all sides is nothing short of terrifying.'

Mr Trudeau called on all Canadians 'to support our friends and neighbors at this difficult time,' saying the federal government will match individual charitable donations to the Red Cross.

The blaze has already destroyed more than 1,600 homes and other buildings in Fort McMurray.

Another 19,000 are under threat, according to analysts and industry sources who estimate the bill for insurers is expected to exceed more than C$2 billion ($1.6 billion).

Resident Neil Scott told the BBC: 'It was something you'd see in a movie probably. I was stuck between a concrete barrier and the fire and I thought 'You know what? I might not make it out'.

'There's whole neighbourhoods that are gone. A hotel burned down, a gas station exploded. One lady that I met she actually was sheltered behind like an electrical box when it actually exploded and she felt a shockwave.'

An Alberta resident currently based in New York told Daily Mail Online: 'My dad is in Edmonton, Alberta, right now working for Imperial Oil.

'They can smell the smoke from the fire there - which distance-wise is like being able to smell a New York City fire in Washington DC, more than 250 miles away.'

The smouldering remains of houses in Slave Lake, in northern Alberta, following the wildfire that has seen 88,000 flee their homes

Horrific: A police officer surveys the damage on a street in Fort McMurray which looked apocalyptic on Thursday

Scorched earth: The once-thriving community was destroyed by the fire that ripped through the city and left 88,000 residents homeless

Unseasonably hot temperatures and strong winds combined with dry conditions which transformed the forest in much of Alberta into an extreme fire risk.

Crystal Mercredi packed her two kids and got out of town Tuesday, and even though her husband was just 20 minutes behind packing a trailer, he didn't get out until hours later because it was bumper to bumper traffic as the fire descended upon the city.

'I was worried that we were going to lose him,' she said in a telephone interview. 'He knew that I was upset so he jumped the curb on the wrong side of the road and got out.'

Mercredi evacuated north but then moved south overnight and headed to Lac La Biche, Alberta, about 175 kilometers (109 miles) south, where her family has a lake house that housed 50 people the first night of the mandatory evacuation.

Lac La Biche, normally a sleepy town of 2,500, is helping about 12,000 evacuees, providing a place to sleep, food, donated clothes and even shelter for their pets.

Mercredi said she was lucky that a Shell employee filled their tank with gas after they initially evacuated north. That allowed them to escape south to Lac La Biche. She believes her Fort McMurray home is still intact but said her best friend lost hers based on video they saw. She said she and her family have had trouble sleeping and have had nightmares involving fires.

A helicopter is dwarfed by the smoke billowing up into the sky as crews try to take aid to displaced families (pictured on Wednesday)

88,000 people have been evacuated and more than 1,600 homes torched in Anzac, Gregoire Lake Estates and Fort McMurray

Smoke rises above trees as a wildfire burns in Fort McMurray, Alberta on Wednesday - the province has declared a state of emergency

Fanned by high winds, scorching heat and low humidity, the fire grew from 75 square kilometers (29 square miles) Tuesday to 100 square kilometers (39 square miles) on Wednesday, but by Thursday it was almost nine times that  at 850 square kilometers (330 square miles).

That's an area roughly the size of Calgary, Alberta's largest city. The fire is so large that smoke from the fair is blanketing parts of the neighboring province of Saskatchewan where Environment Canada has issued special air quality statements for several areas.

Unseasonably hot temperatures combined with dry conditions have transformed the boreal forest in much of Alberta into a tinder box. Morrison, the wildfire prevention manager, said the cause of the fire hasn't been determined, but he said it started in a remote forested area and could have been ignited by lightning.

'They are dealing with a beast of a fire, one of the worst we've ever seen,' Federal Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale said.

Goodale said firefighters and water bombers from other Canadian provinces are arriving and if more is required they'll ask the United States.

The federal government is providing air assets and 7,000 cots for evacuees in emergency shelters, with 13,000 more on the way.

The region has the third-largest reserves of oil in the world behind Saudi Arabia and Venezuela.

Greg Pardy, an analyst with RBC Capital Markets, said that as much as 1 million barrels a day of oil may be offline, based on oil company announcements. That's just over a third of Canada's total oilsands output, Pardy noted.

Smoke billows from the wildfires as a truck drives down the highway in Kinosis, Alberta - many residents had to be evacuated twice

There was gridlock traffic as roads were closed to divert from the flames and thousands evacuated their homes on Wednesday

In the early hours Thursday, weary evacuees from Fort McMurray were sitting on buses headed for the provincial capital of Edmonton after being forced out of their temporary shelter in nearby Anzac

Taking precautions: A police officer wears a mask while controlling a roadblock near a wildfire in Fort McMurray
Women began marching in Astana and ended up

The moment 100 female cadets switched from an austere military march to perform a synchronised dance routine has been caught on camera.

The women made the video to thank male soldiers ahead of tomorrow's Defender of the Fatherland Day in Kazakhstan.

They gathered on a playground in the country's capital, Astana, where they dance in the shape of a number seven - the date of the formerly Soviet holiday.

Female army cadets have made a dance video to thank their male counterparts in Kazakhstan

The performance honours the country's Defender of the Fatherland Day on May 7 - and the young woman can be seen dancing in the shape of a number seven

The military-boot clad women can be seen displaying some very nifty footwork to the tune of Seve, the international hit by French pop group Tez Cadey.

They start with a more typical army display of marching but soon begin jumping up and down and waving at the camera.

All military cadets at higher education institutions in Astana, the young women blow kisses at the camera for the video, which instantly went viral on the country's social media.

Defender of the Fatherland Day is traditionally when people in Russia and former Soviet republics pay tribute to those who have served in the armed forces.

The uniform-clad women are all students at higher education institutions in the country's capital Astana

They move from military march to making heart signs with their hands to an overhead camera in the playful video

The film was a reply to a video from male Kazakh cadets who performed a dance to celebrate International Women's Day in March

But in recent years it has become a celebration of men as a whole, acting as a counterpart to International Women's Day.

Most countries which celebrate the holiday do so on February 23, but Kazakhstan celebrates on May 7.

The performance was a reply to a similar video made by male cadets - who danced to the same song - for International Women's Day on March 8.

The dance ends with the happy smiling girls making heart signs to the boys via an overhead camera.

Astana has been the capital of Kazakhstan, the world's biggest land-locked country, since 1997 when it took over from Almaty.

Defender of the Fatherland Day is traditionally when people in Russia and former Soviet republics pay tribute to those who have served in the armed forces

In recent years, the holiday has become a celebration of men as a whole, acting as a counterpart to International Women's Day
Sadiq Khan was officially declared the first Muslim Mayor of London last night after comfortably defeating Tory rival Zac Goldsmith.

The result from City Hall was a glimmer of light for Jeremy Corbyn from an otherwise dire set of election results.

In a clear dig at Mr Goldsmith's campaign, which had been portrayed as 'divisive', Mr Khan said: 'This election was not without controversy and I'm so proud that Londoners have today chosen hope over fear and unity over division.'

Sadiq Khan leaves his home in south London this morning following last night's results of the mayoral election

Sadiq Khan was officially declared the first Muslim Mayor of London last night after comfortably defeating Tory rival Zac Goldsmith

Mr Khan said: 'I hope that we will never be offered such a stark choice again. Fear doesn't make us safer, it only makes us weaker, and the politics of fear is simply not welcome in our city.'

He said he was 'deeply humbled' and was 'so proud' of London and he said his late father, a bus driver, would have been very proud too.

The bitterly contested battle had seen Mr Goldsmith and David Cameron repeatedly raise Mr Khan's ties to extremists.

But the interventions did not sway voters in the capital  and the Prime Minister is now facing a massive Conservative backlash over the tactics.

Mr Khan said: 'I grew up on a council estate a few miles from here. Back then I never dreamt someone like me could be elected Mayor of London.

The new mayor said he was 'deeply humbled' and was 'so proud' of London and he said his late father, a bus driver, would have been very proud too

The final tally showed the Labour candidate was 14 per cent ahead of his Tory rival, whose scare tactics about Mr Khan's alleged links to Muslim extremists appeared to have backfired

'I want to say a thank you for making the impossible possible. I have a burning ambition for London. An ambition that will guide me everyday: to give Londoners opportunities not to survive but to thrive, the opportunities to build a better future with a decent and affordable home.

'More jobs with better pay, not just being safe but feeling safe, cleaner air and a healthier city. Londoners to fulfil their potential.

'I've been thinking about my late dad. He was a great dad. I am so proud to say that the city he chose to call home has now chosen one of his children to be mayor.'

Mr Goldsmith said of the new mayor: 'I wish him well as he sets out to build on the success seen under Boris Johnson.'

Jeremy Corbyn was among the first to congratulate Mr Khan tonight even before the official results of the eleciton were declared

Counting stuff input papers into the electronic counting system. The mayoral election was the first big test for a new electronic counting system

Steve Hilton, David Camerons former director of strategy, said tonight: 'Zac Goldsmith has brought back the nasty party label to the Conservative Party.'

Labour MP David Lammy predicted that Mr Khan's victory could pave the way for a candidate from an ethnic minority to enter Number 10.

'If we ever get a prime minister of colour it will be because of what Sadiq Khan has achieved,' he said.

Tottenham MP Mr Lammy, who stood against Mr Khan for the Labour mayoral nomination, told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme Mr Khan 'is a grafter, he is someone who gets on with people, he is someone who is pragmatic when he needs to be and he certainly has a vision for this city'.

The official declaration was originally due around 6pm but 'discrepancies' in the count pushed the final result back to just after midnight.

Earlier Mr Corbyn welcomed the victory by tweeting: 'Can't wait to work with you to create a London that is fair for all.'

UKIP leader Nigel Farage claimed another 'big breakthrough' as his party had two candidates, Peter Whittle and David Kurten, elected to the Greater London Assembly.

Steven Norris, a former MP and mayoral candidate, insisted it was 'no use having a dog whistle when everybody can hear it' as he led criticism of Mr Goldsmith's campaign.

Andrew Boff, the Conservative leader on the Greater London assembly, said the strategy had been a mistake and could damage relations with the Muslim community.

In a remarkable broadside on the Tory mayoral candidate, Mr Boff said his party's tactics could damage relations with the Muslim community.

Roger Evans, a deputy to Boris Johnson at City Hall, also weighed in, warning that Mr Goldsmith's campaign would leave a 'negative legacy'.

Mr Khan and his family were met by a huge group of reporters as he arrived at London's City Hall for the declaration of the crucial mayoral race

Former Tory chairwoman Sayeeda Warsi said: 'Our appalling dog whistle campaign for London Mayor 2016 lost us the election, our reputation & credibility on issues of race and religion.'

Even Mr Goldsmith's sister Jemima said: 'Sad that Zac's campaign did not reflect who I know him to be- an eco friendly, independent- minded politician with integrity.'

She added: 'Congratulations to Sadiq Khan - 1st Muslim Mayor of London- a city for all cultures, backgrounds & religions. A great example to young Muslims.'

Tory candidate Zac Goldsmith, pictured on the campaign trail, faced a firestorm of criticism from the Tories after losing heavily

Steve Hilton, the former senior advisor to Mr Cameron, said Mr Goldsmith had returned the 'nasty party' label to the Tory party.

He told Newsnight: 'The overall impression I got from Zac's campaign was a rather old-fashioned and frankly uninspiring campaign which I was really surprised about.

'Because Zac, who I know pretty well, is actually a really interesting, thoughtful, somewhat anti-establishment character in politics.

'He's got a very interesting set of views of different kinds on different issues, and it seemed to me that none of that was conveyed in his campaign which to be honest I found really weird.'

Baroness Warsi, a former Conservative Party chairwoman, led criticism of Mr Goldsmith for the way he conducted his mayoral campaign

The extent to which the negative campaign run by the Tories failed was laid bare as the results rolled in.

Mr Khan was rewarded by strong swings in the vote in his favour across the capital and the result could help Mr Corbyn to shake off the toxic anti-Semitism row which has engulfed Labour for the past week.

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio led international congratulations to the new London Mayor, tweeting: 'Sending congratulations to London's new Mayor and fellow affordable housing advocate, @SadiqKhan. Look forward to working together!'

Bethnal Green-born actor Eddie Marsan sent this tweet to a friend in Calgary, Canada, which already has a Muslim mayor, Naheed Nenshi

Anne Hidalgo, the mayor of Paris, offered her 'felicitations' on Twitter, saying she was looking forward to strengthening co-operation between the two capitals on key issues like housing, pollution and culture.

Former Labour leader Ed Miliband said: 'Congratulations Sadiq Khan. You will be an outstanding Mayor of London.

'Your positive vision and dignity beat a campaign of fear and division.'

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio led international congratulations for the new Mayor of London

Tory Business Secretary Sajid Javid said: '@Sadiqkhan from one son of a Pakistani bus driver to another, congratulations.'

Bethnal Green-born actor Eddie Marsan tweeted to a friend in Calgary: 'Bet our Muslim mayor is better than your Muslim mayor.'

Outgoing mayor Mr Johnson thanked the capital for his eight years in office as he sent his final messages from the official London Mayor Twitter account.

He tweeted: 'It's time to sign off from City Hall - it's been the most amazing privilege to be your mayor.'

Sadiq Khan arrived at City Hall with wife Saadiya, right, but had a long wait for confirmation of his victory

Minutes after the polls closed in the London mayoral election last night, Mr Boff criticised Mr Goldsmith's strategy for focussing on Mr Khan's apparent links with radical Muslims, telling the BBC: 'It was effectively saying that people of conservative religious views are not to be trusted and you should not share a platform with them.

'That's outrageous.'

He added Mr Goldsmith had 'done real damage' and had 'blown up bridges' that the Tories had built with London's Muslim communities, adding it was a mistake to 'equate people of conservative religious views with sympathising with terrorism'.

'I mentioned that I thought this was a mistake for future integration in London. If you are a London politician this is just a bizarre thing to do,' he said.

'I do believe it's going to affect Conservatives at the sharp end, especially in those parts of London where there is a high Muslim population.'

Outgoing mayor Boris Johnson signed off from his official Twitter account today and said it had been the 'most amazing privilege' to fill the role for the past eight years

Mr Evans told BuzzFeed: 'I'm concerned that the campaign we've run is going to leave a negative legacy which we in London are going to have to clear up long after the the people who ran Zac Goldsmith's campaign have gone on their way.

'I've been the deputy mayor for the last year and it's been my job to go and talk to communities in London,.

'I've always been very pleased with the courtesy with which I was received and the hearing all communities were willing to give to a Conservative politician.

'We're going to have to do quite a lot of work to re-establish trust with a lot of communities in London, that's a shame and an opportunity missed.'

Voters in the London Borough of Barnet had reported problems at polling stations and said they were being turned away and told to come back later.

In his final hours as Mayor, Boris Johnson officially opened the huge new cycle routes across London - a project Mr Johnson has admitted was his toughest achievement

And in the Commons earlier this week, Mr Cameron used Prime Minister's Questions to build on the controversial campaign to link Labour to extremism.

He angrily challenged Mr Corbyn over alleged links to Hamas and Hesbollah.

Mr Corbyn initially tried to dodge the issue, insisting: 'I have made it very clear Labour is an anti-racist party and there is no room for anti-Semitism.'

But under intense pressure he then conceded that any group that committed racist or anti-Semitic acts was 'no friend of mine'.

The attack came after Israeli ambassador Mark Regev delivered a thinly-veiled attack on politicians who 'embrace' Hamas, the armed wing of which is banned in Britain as a terrorist group.

Voters went to the polls under sunny skies in Haringey, North London - driving turnout to more than 45 per cent

The bus driver's son who became London's first Muslim mayor: How ex-human rights lawyer Sadiq Khan has been dogged by links to extremists - but claims he's a moderate who loves manicures and wooed his wife with a Filet-O-Fish in McDonald's

London's first Muslim mayor Sadiq Khan is the proud son of a Pakistani-born bus driver who considers himself so liberal he backed gay marriage and even launched his campaign in a pub.

The Labour MP also put tackling terrorism and 'rooting out its cancer' at the heart of his election manifesto and pledged to put the capital on a 'war-footing from day one'.

Mayor Khan was helped into City Hall by Tory rival Zac Goldsmith's campaign, which was even branded 'racist' by his own party after he claimed Labour 'thinks terrorists are its friends'.

But his political career has been dogged by incidents where he has ended up sharing the platform with extremists.

The former human rights lawyer has also been forced into a recent humbling apology to Londoners for giving the impression he shared their views.

Upbringing: The son of a bus driver Amanullah (far left) is proud of his life in South London (pictured in his mother's arms) and is now the first Muslim Mayor of London

Protection: The MP considered getting security for his wife Saadiya and children because of death threats received because he backed gay marriage

The politician has apparently made nine appearances alongside Sulaiman Ghani, a radical cleric who said was a supporter of ISIS and believes homosexuality is 'unnatural'.

MailOnline also revealed this year that in 2009 he supported groups promoting Islamic extremism and gave a speech while the 'black flag of jihad' was openly flying in the hands of children.

This week he apologised for calling moderates Muslim groups 'Uncle Toms' on Iranian-backed Press TV, also in 2009, a slur used by black people to suggest that members of their community are subservient to whites.

Despite this the father-of-two has himself suffered death threats from Islamists who hate him for being too liberal, especially because he voted for same-sex marriage.

Mr Khan admitted a Fatwa on his head made him consider getting bodyguards for his solicitor wife Saadiya, and their two children Anisah and Ammarah, 16 and 14. because he feared their lives were also in danger.

Officers in his Tooting constituency in London have been put on high alert, and will respond 'extra-quick' should an incident be reported at his home.

Sadiq Khan is the son of a bus driver who grew up in London, and represents the Tooting constituency he was born in.

Photographs of his childhood show his family standing proudly outside their council home and another shows him waving a union flag and wearing a crown on the day of the Queen's Diamond Jubilee in 1977.

He is Labour's first mayor since Ken Livingstone, who he used to help advise, but has fought to distance himself Red Ken's politics and also Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.

Lawyer Mr Khan wooed his fellow-lawyer wife of 22 years Saadiya over a Filet-O-Fish in a Croydon McDonalds and nights at a nearby cinema.

The pair wed married in 1994 and now have two teenage daughters.

Early life: Bus driver Amanullah Khan with his childrens Farhat Khan, 8, Tariq Khan, 4, Sadiq Khan, 2, Zahid Khan, 12, on the Angell Estate taken in 1972

Growing up: Mr Khan, pictured in white shirt and blue jeans wearing a crown on the Queen's Silver Jubilee in 1977, says he has 'spent my whole adult life fighting extremism'

Mr Khan, one of Ed Miliband's closest friends, sees himself as a liberal left-winger and he has even admitted that enjoys facials and manicures.

Wife Saadiya recently booked him into a spa as a romantic surprise and he shops in Banana Republic because 'you can buy clothes for short people like me'.

The handsome 45-year-old says a cab drivers told him recently: 'I thought it was George Clooney for a minute' - another said he looked like Jose Mourinho.

London contains 40 per cent of Britain's Muslims and he has spoken widely about the importance of his faith.

It is their backing that will have helped him to 44 per cent of first preferences, compared

His family always observe Ramadan, including fasting, and he was the first British minister to make make the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca.

He said: 'I attended mosques and madrassas in Tooting and Balham, adding to the knowledge of Islam taught me by my family. From a young age we learned the importance of the five pillars of Islam; faith, prayer, charity, fasting  and Hajj, a pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia, a journey every Muslim must try to make in their lifetime'.

Mr Khan says he has 'spent my whole adult life fighting extremism'.

He added: 'I know that Muslims have a responsibility to speak up, address this problem head on and to show that it will not be tolerated  and I've paid a high price for doing exactly that'.

He admitted recently that almost every Muslim has met one and said: 'It's affected my personal life, my friendships, and my career. People I knew as a boy have gone on to act on them in terrible ways'.

But only this week he was branded unfit to be mayor after it emerged that he had described moderate Muslim groups as 'Uncle Toms'.

The claim emerged in a 2009 interview with Iranian-backed Press TV when he was 'minister for community cohesion', in charge of efforts to stamp out extremism.

Mr Khan has already faced claims about his dealings with extremists during the campaign to succeed Boris Johnson as mayor.

He has dismissed Tory attacks as 'smears', and insisted that he was a moderate Muslim.

Distance: Mr Khan kept himself away from Jeremy Corbyn during the campaign and despite having been close to Ken Livingstone called for him to be thrown out of Labour for anti-Semitism

But Mr Khan's former brother-in-law, Makbool Javaid, preached hatred against non-Muslims at a rally in Trafalgar Square  with the 'black flag of jihad' flying behind him.

And he suspended his Commons-based speechwriter after he laughed about seeing homosexuals being abused in public, and made reference to 'hoes' and 'f***ing f****ts'  on a Twitter feed followed by the Labour mayoral hopeful.

Zac Goldsmith and his wife Alice Rothschild on polling day - the Tory's campaign has been branded racist and outrageous by his own party

Shueb Salar, who has represented Mr Khan at public events, continued to post them after he started working for Mr Khan in the run-up to last year's General Election.

Among the messages Mr Salar posted on Twitter was 'advice to anyone who's looking to murder their girlfriend and get away with it LOL'. The acronym stands for laugh out loud.

Mr Khan arrives at City Hall with a CV including two ministerial jobs under Gordon Brown after he served as junior minister first at the Department for Communities and Local Government and then at the Department for Transport.

He has been an MP for more than a decade, representing the south London constituency of Tooting, and entered politics after a first career as a human rights lawyer - work which drew aggressive attacks from Zac Goldsmith throughout the campaign.

On the eve of the election, Mr Khan returned to the council estate where he grew up and tweeted: 'I'll be the council estate boy who fixes the Tory housing crisis.'

And explaining what he would offer London and what it had given him, Mr Khan said before the election: 'The Khan story is a London story.

'My grandparents left India to go to Pakistan. My parents left Pakistan to come to London.'

In the interview with The Economist, he continued: 'I will be in the first generation of Khans not to be an immigrant.

'London gave me and my family a chance to fulfil our potential: I went from a council estate to helping running a business to a transport minister attending cabinet.'

The Tories have come under fire - even from their own side - for running a 'racist' campaign against the new London mayor.

Sadiq Khan suspended Shueb Salar (pictured) over a series of tweets in which he made reference to 'hoes', 'f***ing f****ts'

Radical: A youth holds up the 'black flag of global jihad' in the audience during Mr Khan's speech in 2009

Andrew Boff, the leader of the Conservative group on the London Assembly, has claimed the Tory campaign is one reason why Mr Khan was installed in City Hall today.

Communities Secretary Greg Clark insisted today he did not accept that Mr Goldsmith had run a racist campaign.

He told ITV: 'What you've seen over the last few weeks, not just in London but across the country, is very serious concerns about the people that have associated themselves with the Labour Party and the lack of a grip on the part of the Labour Party in dealing with that decisively.'

Mr Khan has vowed to be his own man in City Hall - insisting the most successful mayors have to be free of central party control.

He said: 'Where I agree with the Conservative government, I'll work closely with them to get the best deal possible. Similarly where I disagree with them, I'll put London's interests first.

'The same goes for the Labour Party leadership. In the cases where I agree with it, I'll work with it. I think Jeremy Corbyn is passionate about the housing crisis and reducing it.

'Where I disagree with him I will say so. '

Mr Khan traded on his personal story during the mayoral contest Tweeting hours before the polls opened from the council estate where he grew up

But his tweet prompted Labour's deputy leader to tease Mr Khan about how often he has told voters about what his dad did for a living
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They are relics from some of the biggest conflicts the world has ever seen and now they could belong to you - for a hefty price.

Military and aviation fanatic John Hancocks, 85, has amassed a huge collection of war memorabilia since his childhood in Birmingham during the Blitz in the Second World War.

Over the years he has continued to build a museum's worth of WWII memorabilia, which also includes ejector seats, missiles and jet engines.

Now he is putting the massive hoard on sale with Halls Auctioneers on May 24 as he and his wife, Pat, 73, are selling their farm in Holt Heath, Worcestershire, to downsize.

John Hancocks, 85, pictured with his wife Patricia, is selling his huge collection of war memorabilia, valued at 100,000, at auction

Among his horde of military items is the cockpit of a Canberra TT18, pictured, a high-altitude bomber developed in the 1950s for the RAF

Mr Hancocks said: 'I have gone as far as I can go with the collection and it's time for it to be shared with other people.

'The collection has given me enormous enjoyment. I've met many interesting people as a result of assembling it.'

Mr Hancocks' parents bought the farm in Holt Heath in 1953 and he married Pat the following year and took on the role of farmer.

In his first barn is a Griffon 57 engine from a Shackleton surveillance aircraft and two Pegasus 103 engines from a Harrier GR3 jump jet.

There is also an unarmed de Havilland Firestreak first generation air-to-air missile from the Cold War era, a target flag towed by a Canberra TT18 bearing shell holes, and a diesel fume detecting spark plug that sniffed out fumes from submarines recharging at the surface.

In another building there is a comprehensive collection of Second World War items, ranging from manikins wearing full uniforms and a collection of radio equipment to deactivated munitions.

His Worcestershire farm also houses engines from the Canberra, right, Shackleton anti-submarine patrol planes, centre, and Phoenix spy planes, left as well as an unarmed de Havilland Firestreak, centre

There is even a parachute container with fuel drums, used in the 1977 epic war film 'A Bridge too Far'.

The third building houses a collection of kitchen and household items used during wartime, including an original radio and a Morrison table shelter.

During his National Service from the age of 18 to 20 John served with the RAF crash party, which visited aeroplane crash sites to salvage what they could.

He also served at the RAF bases in Padgate, near Manchester, Collerne, near Bristol and Little Rissington in the Cotswolds.

Andrew Beeston, Halls' senior auctioneer and valuer, said: 'I have seen private collections where there are a few pieces of militaria or a few pieces of aviation memorabilia out of cockpits, but here there are two sheds full of aero engines - and not little ones at that - and a Canberra cockpit.

'Then another building is full of militaria including munitions and manikins in full uniform and kit down to the last detail. Our munitions consultant says he has only ever seen one collection like this outside of a museum.

'Mr Hancocks has really thrown himself into what started as a hobby and became almost an obsession.

The Phoenix plane, pictured, is an unmanned vehicle that provided battlefield surveillance for the RAF between 1999 and 2008 and was used on missions in Kosovo and Iraq

Mr Hancocks also keeps a variety of military uniforms at his farm, using mannequins to display the full range of clothing and equipment

'We don't really see these sorts of collection outside of museums and it's got a lot of attention.

'We've had prospective buyers calling from all over Britain and even in Belgium and France on the continent.

'There have been a couple of big aviation museums from the UK who are interested and we expect it will fetch at least 100,000.

'You never know until the day though, and it could make an awful lot more.'

The Canberra was designed as a high altitude bomber and was first used in the 1950s. It even broke the world altitude record in 1957, hitting a height of 70,310ft, and was designed to be able to carry nuclear warheads if needed.

A Pegasus 103 engine from a Harrier GR3 jump jet is another piece of machinery that takes pride of place in the 85-year-old's collection

Mr Hancocks took great strides to display his collection properly, including this 1939 Watts fixed-pitch propeller, pictured, from a Spitfire, mounted on his wall

They could carry up to 10,000lbs of bombs but had a short range of around 2,000 miles. Although the RAF has never officially admitted it, Canberras are believed to have been used in reconnaissance missions over the Soviet Union in the 1950s.

Also among the treasure trove of memorabilia are missiles, rifles and mannequins kitted out in a variety of different military uniforms.

The auction takes place on May 24.
A young man has been sentenced to 21 months behind bars over a 'cowardly' one-punch attack in Brisbane's nightclub district.

Corey Glen Schumann pleaded guilty to a charge of occasioning bodily harm on Friday after he assaulted Bailey Merz on a night out in January.

The 21-year-old was sentenced to 21 months in jail and ordered to pay $2000 to his victim.

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The shocking moment Corey Glen Schumman (white shirt) attacked Bailey Merz (right) was caught on CCTV

Victim Bailey Merz was rushed to hospital after the attack but was later released. Just hours earlier a funeral had been held to farewell Brisbane teenager Cole Miller, who had been killed in a similar attack

Mr Merz was knocked to the ground from the force of Schumann's blow during an early morning fight in the nightclub precinct of Fortitude Valley, in Brisbane's CBD.

The assault came just hours after a funeral had been held to farewell Brisbane teenager Cole Miller, who had been killed in a similar attack.

Magistrate Scott Luxton said there was a need for the court to send a message to like-minded offenders with the sentence, describing the attack as 'cowardly'.

He said CCTV footage seemed to show Mr Merz acting like a peacemaker as a group he was with clashed with Schumann and his co-accused, Travis Miller.

However Magistrate Luxton accepted Schumann had himself been chased down the street by some of the group and tried to take evasive action before delivering the punch.

Police said he tried to intervene in an altercation (left) before he was knocked unconscious (far right)

He set a parole eligibility date of July 28 and declared the 67 days Schumann has already spent in custody as time served.

It came after police prosecutor Alice Matchett told the court the coward punch assault was an a example of 'gratuitous violence' that had taken a significant toll on his university student victim.

She said it was concerning Schumann already had a five-page criminal history and was on parole at the time of the Fortitude Valley incident.

He ran from the scene following the blow and later showed 'no remorse' when arrested by police, she said.

On Friday Schumann was sentenced to 21 months jail and ordered to pay Mr Merz $2000

Legal aid representative Natasha Bates said the Mackay-born man had become estranged from his family after moving to Rockhampton and starting to use drugs.

He then moved to Brisbane after finding an apprenticeship and was celebrating when he was approached by the group of men, she said.
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This pride of lions were spotted having picked an unusual spot for a group nap as they were seen sprawled over the branches of a large tree.

However, while the adult lionesses took the opportunity to have a rest, their cubs were keener on playtime, and could be seen scampering over the lower limbs of the tree.

While lions aren't natural tree dwellers, the 15-strong pride is well known in the area of central Serengeti, Tanzania, for climbing up into the foliage.

Family tree: A pride of lions were spotted sprawled out on the branches of a large tree in central Serengeti, Tanzania

Nap time: While some of the lions appeared to take the opportunity to catch up on their sleep, some of the younger ones seemed more keen on playing on the branches

The amazing sight was captured n Lake Manyara National Park by photographer Gina Owen, 33, who is from Britain but now lives in Zanzibar.

Ms Owen revealed that several lion prides in the national park have a fondness for heights, as the area is renowned for its climbing lions.

'This pride in particular are known to spend a lot of time in the trees, which is very rare as lions are not natural tree dwellers - but the area around the natural park is known for this behaviour,' Ms Owen said.

'I was lucky enough to see the same pride three times in a couple of days. Seeing them in the wild on the Serengeti is especially good.'

Amazing spot: The lions were photographer by Gina Owen, 33, during a visit to the Lake Manyara National Park in Tanzania

It's a fur tree: According to Ms Owen, this particular pride is known for spending time in the tree tops in the park

Time for a nap: Several of the members of the pride joined in the collective nap on the branches

'The younger members of the pride were very funny. While on the ground, they kept trying to climb on their mother's back.

'But when they eventually got up into the tree, the cubs already in the tree would do their best to thwart their siblings climbing efforts in an attempt to play.

'It was very similar to how domestic cats will play with each other. The mums all lazed around in the higher branches - they were clearly worn out from all the activity.'

I'm coming up: One of the younger lions lent a helping paw as one of its siblings climber up the tree trunk

Popular sight: While lions are not natural tree dwellers the Lake Manyara National Park is renowned for its climbing lions




Workers in a Saudi Arabia desert have discovered a blowhole that sends sand hundreds of feet into the air... but no one seems to know what it is.

Footage shows workers in the desert attempting to fill the hole with sand from a digger truck.

They throw other materials into the hole which then explode, sending a storm of sand hundreds of feet tall flying into the air.

A video shows a mysterious blowhole in the desert being filled in by a digger

But the hole begins to expel sand and other debris into the air

After a few seconds of the sandstorm, it dies away, and the digger retreats.

Workers then approach the hole and are seemingly baffled by how to solve the problem.

But as they throw another piece of debris into the hole, it again sends the sand shooting hundreds of feet into the air.

The video ends with the men looking on, puzzled at the mysterious phenomenon.

The sandstorm reaches hundreds of feet high, leaving the workers in the Saudi Arabian desert baffled

WHAT ARE DESERT BLOWHOLES? Blowholes are formed through small openings in the ground through which air will blow out or suck in. They have been likened to natural fans or vacuums. Blowholes are dependent on weather: air temperature and pressure interact to create the stunning effects when air travels from higher to lower density. When outside air warms up, it may eventually become the same density as air underground, causing air flow at the blowhole to stop. This outside air continues to warm up, causing air to begin blowing out of the hole. Source: National Parks Service US




Sir David Attenborough has been criticised by conservationists over a photo-shoot in which he held and fed a lion cub.

The veteran wildlife broadcaster was pictured holding the animal on the cover of this week's Radio Times ahead of his 90th birthday.

But the cover and accompanying photos of him feeding two lions brought to his home in west London have anger a wildlife charity - which claims they promote the use of animals as 'props'.

Sir David Attenborough has been criticised over this photo of him holding a lion cub in Radio Times

The photo-shoot was organised to echo a 1956 cover of the same magazine, where Sir David was shown bottle-feeding a bear cub that was found abandoned in an Indonesian forest.

Sir David was interviewed by the magazine ahead of his birthday this weekend and spoke of his continued love of nature and the difficulties of getting old.

But the photos that accompanied the article angered The Born Free Foundation, a British-based charity which rescues animals around the world.

Will Travers, the son of the charity's founders, actors Virginia McKenna and Bill Travers who starred in the 1966 film of the same name, said the photos encouraged animals to be seen as 'props'

He told Ben Webster of The Times: 'We are concerned that someone who is such an inspiration for so many has been photographed with a captive lion cub for the front cover of the Radio Times.

'Presenting lions as cute photo props does nothing to enhance their chances of survival as a species and may damage the reputation of our most beloved and respected naturalist.'

The pictures were organised to emulate this 1956 cover of the magazine ahead of Sir David's 90th birthday

The charity is concerned that the pictures will encourage people to visit farms in Africa which raise so called 'canned' animals, so they can be included in tourist photos.

The lion in the pictures was supplied by Amazing Animals, a company which has also been criticised after lions, a leopard and a polar bear were filmed performing tricks at the firm's Oxfordshire base.

Amazing Animals - which has also provided animals for a trailer of The Voice and adverts for Renault and Waitrose - insisted its work with animals is always done in an 'ethical and humane way'.

The Radio Times said the lions was looked after by trained professionals during the shoot.

MailOnline has contacted Sir David for comment.
A website purporting to be the official site for Republican Ted Cruz has declared that Hillary Clinton should be the next president.

Ted Cruz supporters who visited tedcruz.com were shocked when they viewed the homepage.

The image of Hillary Clinton on the TedCruz.com website with the text: 'Next President of the United States...'

It showed an image of Democrat favorite Hillary Clinton with the text: 'Next President of the United States of America!!!'

But this isn't the official Ted Cruz site - that's tedcruz.org. The fake site still prompted people on social media to react.

Some thought the site was just funny whilst others said it was proof why those in the spotlight should secure web domains containing their names.

It is not clear who or what organisation is behind the fake website but it struck an all together different tone to Ted Cruz's official Twitter feed which simply says: 'Thank you #CruzCrew - our movement will continue...'

Some Ted Cruz supporters visited the site and discovered the surprise message only to realise it was a fake

This Twitter user thought the fake website should act as a lesson for big names to secure web domain names

Cruz was the last Republican with a chance of seriously challenging Donald Trump in the race to be the party's presidential candidate.

He took himself out of the running after a disastrous showing in Tuesday's Indiana primary, leaving him with a mountain to climb in the delegate total.
This birthday girl got a little too close to the candles on her cake - and set herself on fire

Narda, two, was presented with a birthday cake to celebrate her special day and as she lent over to blow out the candles - her hair caught fire.

Having initially clapped her hands in delight over the cake, Narda, from Adiyaman in south-eastern Turkey, can later be seen shying away from her birthday treat in fear.

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Cake disaster: Little Narda sets her hair on fire as she tries to blow out the candles on her birthday cake

Video shows Narda's sheer joy at the sight of her surprise cake brought to her by her older siblings.

As the cake is put in front of her on the floor, the birthday girl - dressed in her best - tries to blow out the candles, but failed her first and second try.

When she leans further forward for her third attempts, a lock of her hair catches a lit candle, and bursts into flames.

Girl on fire: After failing to blow out the candles on her first two tries, Narda leans a little too close to the burning flames, and her hair catches fire

The little girl jumps up in fear, her dark hair on fire, before her older sibling helps put out the flames

Poor princess: The incident was filmed in the family home in Adiyaman in south-eastern Turkey

The little birthday girl jumps backwards in frights, but in less than a second nearly half of her dark hair is ablaze.

Thankfully, her older brother reacted quickly enough to pat out the flames before any lasting damage was caused.

But the scare left Narda very wary of her cake - and needing a trip to the hairdresser to put her hair back in order.
On the fateful night that put Ben Batterham behind bars and accused of another man's murder, he allegedly told police officers about Ricky Slater 'he's a dog. Give me two minutes with him. I should have killed him', according to the police facts document before a court.

Prosecutors will argue that the 33-year-old chef 'was extremely aggressive' and made a 'determined and volatile' attack on Slater after the convicted burglar and rapist broke into Batterham's home in Newcastle at around 3.20am on March 26.

In the Newcastle Court on Friday Batterham's barrister Winston Terracini, SC, indicated that his client was just defending his home against a daily ice addict, armed with knives, who committed a 'home invasion' and made off with a handbag stolen from the young father's baby daughter's nursery.

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Chef Ben Batterham, 33, allegedly told police on the night Ricky Slater broke into Batterham's Newcastle home and was attacked: 'he's a dog. Give me two minutes with him. I should have killed him'

In Batterham's trial for allegedly murdering Slater, police will argue he 'was extremely aggressive' and made a 'determined and volatile' attack on Slater after the convicted burglar and rapist broke into his home

Ben Batterham pictured in a police image with injuries to his face after the night of March 26

Ben Batterham, pictured after being taken into custody, was charged with the murder of home invader Ricky Slater after he broke into his Newcastle home, north of Sydney, on Easter Saturday

What is alleged to be a bite mark on one of Batterham's arms is shown in a police photograph

In police photographs, Batterham can be seen covered in scratches and abrasions, has severe bruising to his right cheekbone and a distinctive pair of teeth marks on the inside of his upper right arm

Swelling to Batterham's right hand is shown in this image

Ricky Slater in hospital after the attack with his mother Beryl Dickson. Slater's life support was later switched off

According to the police document, police will allege in the case that Batterham's pursuit and alleged tackling of Slater in the street ended up with him on top of the 120kg man saying 'you motherf***er ... you piece of s**t. I have a seven-month-old baby and you break into my house'.

Although it was in the very early hours of Easter Saturday morning following a Friday which has the most restricted alcohol trading laws of the year, Batterham was not alone in his late night revelling and the night was alive with witnesses.

Batterham and his old friend Paul O'Keeffe, down from Brisbane to celebrate his mate's looming birthday, had been drinking in the Cleary Street, Hamilton kitchen of Batterham's home, two hours north of Sydney.

Batterham's fiancee Monique Cameron and their young daughter are believed to have been next door at his parents' house.

Ricky Slater allegedly broke into Batterham's house (pictured) stole his partner's handbag from his seven month old daughter's room after which Batteham allegedly chased him 365 metres down three streets

Slater was a convicted burglar and rapist, and had allegedly broken into Batterham's home the night he was fatally injured

Batterham lived next door to his parents in Newcastle. His partner and daughter were at his parent's home the night of the attack

It is alleged in the police facts that When Slater entered Batterham's house he was carrying three knives, scissors, three new and possibly stolen iPhones and a smart watch plus drugs including Ecstasy tablets and opiates.

The 37-year-old, who had been released from prison just three months earlier also had $570 in cash.

Slater allegedly entered the house and took a handbag belonging to Ms Cameron as he made his way to the nursery.

Police say Batterham saw Slater and ran towards him as the intruder took through a side door, with the chef and his friend O'Keeffe in pursuit.

It is claimed The three men ran onto Cleary Street and down another street where Batterham tripped and fell onto his face.

The chase allegedly continued into a third street where Slater disappeared temporarily from view.

There, Batterham and O'Keeffe are said to have encountered two young people who had just left a party. One of them, a 24-year-old man, lent Batterham his phone to dial Triple-0 to report the home invasion.

Ricky Slater's mother Beryl Dickson (pictured) admitted that her late son was an ice addict and police facts now reveal that the 37-year-old was carrying ecstasy, opiates and prescription drugs

The police facts allege that Slater said 'let me up, let me up, I can't breathe' when being pinned down by Batterham

The police facts alleges that then Slater reappeared out from some nearby bushes and either Batterham or Mr O'Keeffe said 'there he is' and took off after him.

One of the young party goers then allegedly heard Slater say 'get off me' and Batterham respond 'you're done for mate, the cops are coming'.

The police facts allege that Slater said 'let me up, let me up, I can't breathe'.

By the time the young man retrieved his phone, around five neighbours had gathered around where Batterham was allegedly atop Slater in a driveway.

An off duty police officer was among the neighbours witnessing the incident and approached Batterham who allegedly had Slater in a 'choker hold', the police facts say.

The off duty officer allegedly said 'Let him go. Roll him over and get him on his back ... get off him or he's gonna die'.

Prosecutor John Sfinas said Batterham chased Slater for a total of 365m and that Slater 'was at one point hiding from' Batterham.

Prosecutor John Sfinas said Batterham chased Slater (pictured in a memorial) for a total of 365m and that Slater 'was at one point hiding from' Batterham

Slater had allegedly taken Batterham's partner's handbag from a room in the house before Batterham found him inside

'This was not a struggle. This was the accused chasing the deceased, ' Mr Sfinas said.

He said Batterham's aggression had continued even after his arrest and handcuffing and in the remarks he allegedly made on the way to hospital.

Winston Terracini told Newcastle court on Friday that Batterham had acceded to the off duty policeman's request to get off Slater and 'at one period when he did get off he was bitten savagely [by Slater] and when uniformed police did arrive he got off him'.

The police facts say that Batterham stood over Slater and said 'you f***ing dog. You f***ing piece of s**t' and made an attempt to kick him.

Police heard a snoring sound coming from Slater's mouth and then allegedly saw Batterham return to him and say 'F***ing get up, I will f***ing finish you'.

When offficers arrested Batterham for assault, he allegedly said 'he was in my daughter's room the c***'.

Mr Terracini said on the night in question ' there is no doubt thete w add a physical struggle between the two' but that 'the cause of death is unknown' for Ricky Slater.

In Newcastle Local Court on Friday, Magistrate Robert Stone reserved his decision on whether to grant Ben Batterham bail and said he would deliver it next Tuesday.
Akinwale Arobieke, 54, vowed to make a fresh start

A notorious 'muscle fanatic' has vowed to change his bizarre ways after a ten-year order stopping him from touching men's biceps was overturned.

Akinwale Arobieke's long-held fascination with pumped up physiques led to notoriety and repeated brushes with the law.

He became something of a 'modern day bogeyman' known for approaching younger males and striking up conversations about weight training, before touching and measuring their muscles, and inviting them to squat his body weight.

Now the 54-year-old from Liverpool - often termed 'Purple Aki' - has vowed to 'reinvent himself' in a quest for a 'fresh start'.

In 2003 he was jailed for six years after being convicted of harassing 15 well-muscled males.

Three years later, while he was still behind bars, a Merseyside Police made a Sexual Offences Prevention Order (SOPO), which banned him touching men's muscles and going to gyms.

Since the SOPO was made, Mr Arobieke has appeared repeatedly in court accused of breaching it in Manchester.

Now the unique ban has been scrapped - after Mr Arobieke successfully appealed against it.

Representing himself in court, Mr Arobieke argued that while his behaviour had breached the court order, it was neither criminal nor sexual.

Judge Richard Mansell QC, sitting at Manchester Crown Court, said while Arobieke's breaches of the order were a 'serious matter' - the restrictions it placed on his 'freedoms' could 'no longer be justified'.

Lifting the order would allow him to pursue his interest in an 'appropriate venue', the judge said, such as a gym or a bodybuilding event.

'The ban on touching muscles is just not on', the judge said. 'I'm not into bodybuilding myself, but I'd have thought men who have muscles in their arms the diameter of my leg are the sort of men who will admire each other's bodies.

'They don't build the body up to hide it under loose-fitting sweatshirts. They are men likely to talk to and weigh and measure each other.'

'Purple Aki': In 2003 he was jailed for six years after being convicted of harassing 15 well-muscled males. He has now had a ban on touching men's biceps and entering gyms lifted

The move brings to an end a lengthy and expensive series of hearings for alleged breaches stretching from North Wales to Manchester and Leeds, which have led to him spending months behind bars on remand.

The lifting of the SOPO also came as Mr Arobieke was given a suspended sentence after admitting flouting it four times.

The judge gave him an 18 month suspended sentence for the breach offences, suspended for two years, with a 60 day rehabilitation order and a warning that if he breached it, he would be jailed.

Akinwale Arobieke's extraordinary courtroom victory came in a case in which the judge tried to get to the bottom of behaviour which he described as 'bizarre'.

Judge Mansell said he was first given the breach proceedings to deal with 'because he was one of the few' who hadn't heard of him.

He said to Mr Arobieke: 'There's no doubt you have an interest in, some would say an obsession with, the musculature, or muscular build, of the male form.

'You have approached 20-plus year olds, and you have approached males between 15 and 17. Is it because younger males are in better shape than older men? Why are you interested in younger men?'

Mr Arobieke replied: 'I always have been (interested in younger men), but not in a sexual way.'

The judge went on: 'The first young male you come across in public, are you likely to approach him and ask him what weight he pumps and how big his muscles are?'

'From today I'm going to conduct myself properly', Arobieke said. 'I'm going to have to reinvent myself. I can take a holiday for a start. I'm going to try and put my life back to normality. I'm not going to run around touching everybody's muscles because there's no need for that.'

The judge then asked Mr Arobieke why he had flouted the order.

'It's a combination of a lot of things', he replied. 'Nobody likes to be told they can't do something. I want to calm down now. I don't think an order is necessary. There's ample laws to protect the public.'

'There's something inherently unusual, if not, some might think, unnatural about the way you have behaved', Judge Mansell added. I can't imagine for a moment in your average gym you would see large men, like yourself, lying on the back of somebody to see how far they could be lifted.'

The judge at Manchester Crown Court (pictured) gave Arobieke an 18 month suspended sentence for the breach offences, suspended for two years, with a 60 day rehabilitation order

Arobieke has been known by the moniker 'Purple Aki' for some 30 years, and it has even been used in court papers - despite it being a name he deems 'racist'.

The judge said: 'Let's not forget it was your behaviour over a number of years that brought this about', before referring to the case of Gary Kelly, who was electrocuted on railway tracks in Birkenhead in 1986.

It was alleged he was running from Mr Arobieke at the time, but his subsequent conviction for manslaughter was overturned.

'You are still carrying the stigma of the boy who died on the railway tracks. That still hangs over you.'

Arobieke replied: 'It's not nice in any way, shape or form to be involved in the death of another human being.'

He had admitted that his antics mean the public see him as 'infamous, notorious, everything from the bogeyman to whatever'.

But the judge told Arobieke: 'I'm giving you the clean slate you have desired for a long time. I'm also putting a considerable amount of trust in you to behave like a mature man in your fifties.'
The mother of a four-month-old boy who was told he wouldn't make it through childbirth is preparing for him to undergo a never-before-performed heart operation in the hopes it will save his life.

Sheralyn Coll, from Christchurch in New Zealand, was undergoing a routine ultrasound after her waters broke 35 weeks into her pregnancy. However, the images showed that there was a large tumour on her son's heart.

She was airlifted to Starship Hospital in Auckland, where doctors told her that her son would likely not survive, and at best would only live for a short amount of time.

Carsen Coll wasn't expected to live through childbirth, but has thrived for four months

Two weeks later she was induced and delivered her son Carsen.

The next day doctors scanned his heart and Mrs Coll, who has one other son, was told that due to the awkward positioning of the tumour, nothing could be done.

For a number of weeks, the growth appeared to be static, and Carsen was doing well, but a later MRI scan showed it was growing the same rate as his heart.

The detail in an MRI scan means that surgeons now have a better idea of how to operate, and the Coll family know that without surgery, Carsen, now four-months-old, will not survive.

The baby boy was born with a large tumour on his heart that doctors initially said was inoperable

The cardiac team at Starship are now preparing for what will be a very risky surgery. Specialists are still not sure what they are dealing with, and the procedure will be performed on the most vital part of the heart, where rhythm is regulated.

It's not somewhere surgeons would usually operate.

'None of the team have ever seen anything like it,' Mrs Coll told the NZ Herald.

The family are not worried though. Where most would expect her to be distraught and anxious, Mrs Coll has been a beacon of strength.

Cardiac surgeons at the Starship hospital will perform a risky and complicated surgery in an attempt to remove the tumour, which will prove fatal if it stays

She says that though it is a hard time for everyone, the family are strong, have good support and most importantly, have complete faith in Carsen.

'I look at Carsen every day and I think that he is a typical example of someone who is defying the odds.

'I have absolutely every belief that he will tackle this in the same way that he's tackled all of the other challenges, so we're right behind him.'

A family friend has set up a crowdfunding page for the family, and in less than a week, has raised almost $8,000 NZD.

The Coll family will fly to the Starship Hospital within the next few weeks for surgery.
He is now battling the infection in intensive car

A day later the misdiagnosed bacterial infection had spread to his lungs

A two-year-old boy bitten by an ant was left fighting for his life after hospital staff failed to diagnose a potentially fatal bacterial infection and sent him home.

Xavier Wakefield was taken to Sydneys Blacktown Hospital last Sunday with a red and swollen foot, which his parents thought was caused by an insect bite.

Staff at the hospital told his parents the swelling was nothing to worry about and sent Xavier home to let nature take its course, his family told 7 News.

Xavier Wakefield, 2, was rushed back to intensive care a day after doctors misdiagnosed a bacterial infection spreading throughout his body

Doctors told his parents that the swelling on his left foot was nothing to worry about and they should let 'nature take its course'

He was rushed back to intensive care less than a day later as the bacterial infection spread from his foot throughout his body and started attacking his lungs.

Xaviers uncle Mark Funnell said: They had a look and they told [his parents] to let nature take its course.

He is two and a half years old and this could prove fatal.

The infection started in his left foot but quickly spread. By the time he was taken back to hospital it had started attacking his lungs

Xavier is currently in a stable condition at the Royal Alexandra Hospital for Children in Sydney where doctors are treating the golden staph infection with intravenous antibiotics.

Golden staph, or Staphylococcus aureus, is the bacterium commonly responsible for skin infections, food poisoning and blood poisoning.

Xaviers aunt Rhiannon Funnell said the family was furious at the way her nephew had been treated.

She said: If they had run tests and checked what they should have we wouldnt be in this situation.

Xavier's uncle Mark Funnell said the mishap could have proved fatal if Xavier was not rushed back to hospital

Xavier is currently at the Royal Alexandra Hospital for Children where he is receiving intravenous antibiotics to fight the infection

Blacktown Hospitals medical director Dr Michael Datyner said an urgent investigation had been launched to find the cause of the mistake.

He said: We have apologised to the family for their distress and we have an urgent clinical review and investigation now underway.

Shadow Health Minister Walt Secord said Xaviers ordeal was the human cost of cuts to the health system.
Drone is no match and ends up falling into the water

The duck flies up and attacks the drone full-pelt

But a ferocious bird takes exception to its camera

It's not only humans who sometimes struggle to get to grips with modern technology.

And one very angry duck got so incensed by a drone flying over its pond that it crashed into it, as a comical video shows.

Footage captured by the drone see it hovering over an idyllic-looking pond, believed to be in the UK.

Drone footage shows the camera gliding over a peaceful-looking pond, filled with ducks

But a duck, having spotted the drone, quickly breaks away from enjoying its pond swim.

It flies up into the air and flaps towards the drone camera.

And it crashes straight into the drone, quacking furiously.

But one very brave duck takes exception to the drone and flies up on the attack

The incensed bird flies straight towards the camera with its huge wings outstretched

The drone is unable to withstand the collision and falls into the water.

The triumphant duck can still be heard quacking in the background, no doubt celebrating his victory against technology that invaded his territory.

The duck hits the drone at full pelt, sending it spinning
A sinister 'Santeria' shrine believed to be smeared with blood was discovered in the Florida jail cell of a Latin King gang member accused of killing his wife and her two young children.

Daytona Beach jail officials found drops of apparent blood on pictures of Luis Toledo's wife, Yessenia Suarez, 28, and her children, Thalia, aged eight and Michael, nine, according to local news outlets.

They were reported missing in October 2013 and their bodies have not yet been found.

A sinister 'Santeria' shrine was discovered in the Florida jail cell of Luis Toledo. From left, a cross made from ripped T-shirt, a cast of Toledo's hand smeared with red, photos of his family and the name of Circuit Judge Raul Zambrano also with red smeared

The former Latin King gang member (left) is charged with the murder of Yessenia Suarez, 28, and her children, Thalia, aged eight and Michael, nine (right)

The shrine included a newspaper clipping with a red mark through the name of Circuit Judge Raul Zambrano, according to jail records and depositions.

As well as the clippings, a white cast that Toledo took from his left hand was placed on the shrine with a nose and eyes drawn in red.

The shrine also included a paper cup filled with water, an orange and dried bread, with a cross apparently created from a ripped white T-shirt, according to News 6.

Felicia Perez, the mother of Yessenia Suarez, told News 6: 'That's evil stuff and I don't believe in witchcraft. The man is out of his mind . Probably don't have nothing better to do .

He just wants attention and all I want is my family,'

The items were arranged in a 'ritualistic way', possibly 'Santeria', according to the deposition.

Santeria - or Way of the Saints - is a religious tradition of African origin that spread through Latin America.

Toledo was given 30 days in disciplinary confinement after being charged with having contraband that could be used as a weapon or to escape

The trio were reported missing in October 2013 and their bodies have not yet been found. Pictured left is Michael and right Thalia

It is based on Yoruba beliefs and traditions, with some Roman Catholic elements added. It is a syncretic religion that grew out of the slave trade in Cuba.

Santeria also often includes animal sacrifice, the most common animals used are chickens, pigeons and doves but also goats sheep and turtles.

Officials said they found the shrine during a routine inspection of his cell, where they also discovered a razor and several letters containing references to the Latin Kings: '360 always' and 'ADR' - meaning Amor Del Ray or King's Love, according to Daytona Beach News Journal.

Toledo was given 30 days in disciplinary confinement after being charged with having contraband that could be used as a weapon or to escape.

He was once the third ranking Latin King gang member in the state, a position known as the enforcer or warlord.

The Latin Kings is the largest and one of the most organized Hispanic street gangs in America.


Nearly 1,800 migrants have been rescued by Italian authorities after attempting to cross the Mediterranean from north Africa in the past 24 hours, the Italian navy said today.

The warmer weather this week has seen a surge in crossings, with the total of migrants reaching Italy by sea this year now even higher than the record levels of 2015.

This comes as Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan made comments indicating that the country will not fulfil all conditions required as part of the deal with the European Union over migrant repatriation and visa-free travel for Turks.

Saved: Italian vessels have helped rescue nearly 1,800 migrants from boats trying to reach Italy from north Africa in the last 24 hours, the navy said on Friday, indicating that numbers are rising as the weather warms up

The Italian navy said Friday that 1,759 migrants were rescued in 10 operationsinvolving the Italian navy, coastguard and finance police, theEuropean Union's external borders agency Frontex and the medicalcharity Medecins Sans Frontieres.

The Italian frigate Grecale was taking the migrants to theSicilian port of Augusta, where they were expected to arrive onSaturday morning, a navy statement said. It gave no details oftheir nationalities.

The latest arrivals picked up in the Strait of Sicily willbring the total of migrants reaching Italy by boat so far thisyear to more than 30,000, slightly higher than in the sameperiod of 2015.

Officials fear the numbers trying to make the crossing tosouthern Italy will increase as sailing conditions improve inwarmer weather.

More than 1.2 million Arab, African and Asian migrantsfleeing war and poverty have streamed into the European Unionsince the start of last year.

Increase: The total of migrants reaching Italy by boat so far this year has now exceeded 30,000, a number slightly higher than in the same period in 2015

Migrants sit in their boat during a rescue operation by Italian navy ship Grecale off the coast of Sicily, Italy

Rejection: President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Turkey will not change its anti-terrorism law, despite it being a condition from the EU to ensure visa-free travel for Turks in connection with the deal over migrants

Most of those trying to reach Italy leave the coast oflawless Libya on rickety fishing boats or rubber dinghies,heading for the Italian island of Lampedusa, which is close toTunisia, or towards Sicily.

Humanitarian organisations say the sea route between Libya and Italy is now the main route for asylum seekers heading for Europe, after an EU deal with Turkey dramatically slowed the flow of people reaching Greece.

However, the EU deal may now be at risk as President Erdogan warned the EU on Friday that Ankara will not change its anti-terrorism law, despite it being a condition laid down by Brussels to ensure visa-free travel for Turks.

'The EU says: you will change the anti-terror law for visas,' Erdogan said in a televised speech in Istanbul.

'Pardon me but we are going our way and you can go yours.'

Protesting refugees and migrants are pushed back by Greek police during a protest at a makeshift camp at the Greek-Macedonian border near the village of Idomeni

Migrants and refugees shout 'open the border', during a protest against the poor camp conditions and the closed border on Thursday

Tension: Thousands of refugees and migrants are stuck in camps across Greece, including in Idomeni

Erdogan was speaking one day after Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, who had championed the accord, announced that he was stepping down.

Turkey must complete five more benchmarks by the end of next month to complete the EU's list of 72 criteria - which include changes to anti-terror law as well as protection of personal data.

The promise of visa-free travel for Turks is a key pillar of a deal between Brussels and Ankara to reduce the flow of migrants from Turkish territory to the European Union.

A Turkish official said this week talks with the EU were under way to meet the five remaining criteria including changes to the anti-terror law.

'I don't think it will be a problem,' the official said.

But Erdogan's comments came a day after Davutoglu announced he would not run in this month's party congress after a series of disputes with the president.
A furious passenger on board a holiday flight from the Canaries sparked off a major alert when he claimed there was a bomb on board after being refused a drink.

The man is reported to have been on a Ryanair flight which took off from Tenerife yesterday evening en route to the Spanish mainland.

Spanish newspapers are reporting he caused a commotion when stewards would not serve him with a beer.

Passengers on a Ryanair flight last night were left shaken up on a flight between Tenerife and the Spanish mainland after a passenger ran around saying there was a bomb

He then claimed he had a bomb which he would detonate, leading to a full-scale emergency. Witnesses said the man was 'visibly agitated'.

Local newspaper El Correo Gallego said the man rose from his seat and ran down the aisle shouting 'there's a bomb! It's going to explode!'

Several passengers confirmed that the man said 'I'm going to detonate a bomb because they won't serve me beer.'

The pilots contacted the control tower as the plane came into land at Santiago de Compostela.

'After the warning by the pilots, Spanish Airports and Air Navigation (AENA) activated the corresponding protocol and moved the aircraft to a remote area of the passenger terminal at the airport of Lavacolla,' reported Cadena Ser.

Several passengers confirmed that the man, who was said to be furious after being refused a beer, shouted 'I'm going to detonate a bomb because they won't serve me beer'

The incident happened at about 10.25 last night and on landing, the plane was surrounded by the Civil Guard and fire service and passengers were told to stay in their seats.

The man was arrested and luggage searched.

A spokesman for AENA confirmed the pilots had activated an alert as a result of an incident on board. The flight had landed safely at 9.23pm and the alert was deactivated 27 minutes later.

A spokesperson for Ryanair said on Friday: 'The crew of this flight from Tenerife to Santiago (5 May) requested police assistance upon landing at Santiago, after a passenger became disruptive in-flight, who was removed and detained by police.
Dr Adedayo Adedeji (pictured) has been cleared of killing a woman who bled to death after travelling from Ireland to the UK for an abortion

A doctor and two nurses have been cleared of killing a woman who bled to death after travelling from Ireland to the UK for an abortion.

Dr Adedayo Adedeji, 63, Gemma Pullen, 32, and Margaret Miller, 55, were formally acquitted of the gross negligence manslaughter of Aisha Chithira, 32, after the prosecution offered no evidence.

Ms Chithira was 22 weeks pregnant when she underwent the operation at the Marie Stopes clinic in Ealing, west London, on 21 June 2012.

She collapsed several hours later while travelling in a taxi in Slough, Berkshire, and died of 'extensive internal bleeding'.

Prosecutor Sally O'Neill QC told the Old Bailey the decision to drop the manslaughter charge was taken following a review of the case.

No detailed reasons for the decision were given in court.

Dr Adedeji was also cleared of the remaining health and safety charge and will take no further part in the case.

But both Pullen and Miller still face the charge under the Health and Safety Act and are due to stand trial at the Old Bailey on June 8 this year.

Their barristers urged the prosecution to reconsider their decision to pursue the allegation.

Adedeji, of Hornchurch, Essex, Pullen, of Stoke-on-Trent, Staffs and Miller, of Camberley, Surrey, were not in court when the decision was announced.

Both Pullen and Miller remain on bail.

Last June, CPS prosecutor Colin Gibbs had told magistrates it was a 'very serious' offence.

He added: 'The circumstances are it was [] during the professional activity of the defendants.

'The defendant Adedeji is a doctor and the defendants Pullen and Miller are nurses. They were practising in a private clinic, the Marie Stopes Clinic, which is a chain of clinics that deal with terminations and abortions.

Nurses Gemma Pullen (pictured left), 32, and Margaret Miller (right), 55, were formally acquitted of the gross negligence manslaughter of Aisha Chithira, 32, after the prosecution offered no evidence

'The victim in this case was someone who lived in Ireland at the time. She took a decision to have a termination at 22 weeks.

'She came to the clinic in the Ealing area on January 21, 2012, and things were fairly normal until the procedure took place at 4.30pm that day.

'It became apparent she was quite unwell as a result of the procedure. She actually suffered an internal tear and that was causing internal bleeding and blood loss.

'All her symptoms, which included falling to the floor, hyperventilating and many other things, were not properly dealt with.'

Mr Kevin McCartney, defending Adedeji, said at the time that the father-of-four was a 'professional' who had been working as a doctor since 1991.

The court also heard that Pullen was a 'professional of good character'.
Angela Walsh, (pictured) claimed she needed time work off to scatter her in-laws' ashes but was actually house hunting for a holiday home in France

A headmistress who claimed she needed time work off to scatter her in-laws' ashes was actually house hunting for a holiday home in France.

Angela Walsh, was suspended from Lymm High School in Cheshire, following an investigation into the school's finances and has now been banned from teaching for at least five years.

The head used a governor's electronic signature to write her own mortgage reference, failed to carry out performance appraisals of her teachers and 'bent the rules' to approve a 9,658 back payment to a staff member.

The school had a 630,000 deficit in the budget at the time, the National College for Teaching and Leadership heard, and all salary increases needed approval from governors.

Panel chair Peter Cooper described Mrs Walsh's actions as a 'serious disregard for the frameworks in place around teacher performance'.

When she was questioned about the reference Mrs Walsh said the governor was 'a very, very busy man' and claimed she had no reason to think he would not provide her with a reference.

Ms Walsh admitted being absent during term time, but said the purpose of the trip was to scatter the ashes of her mother-in-law and father-in-law.

She later accepted she had been looking for property after investigators found numerous exchanges from her school email account with a French solicitor.

Ms Walsh was suspended from the school in June 2013 following an investigation into the school's finances.

The accounts revealed money had been spent on alcohol, flowers and restaurants, although Walsh did not face any allegations in relation to misspent funds.

Ms Walsh admitted she had not carried out performance appraisals for staff.

It was found proved that she had made the unauthorised payment to the member of staff, and later given them a salary increase without permission.

Ms Walsh, was suspended from Lymm High School in Cheshire (pictured) , following an investigation into the school's finances and has now been banned from teaching for at least five years

She was also found to have forged a reference and was absent without leave during term time.

Ms Walsh was cleared of an additional charge of lying about the numbers of staff planning on leaving the school.

Banning her from teaching for at least five years, panel chair Mr Cooper said: 'Ms Walsh she behaved dishonestly in two different sets of circumstances.

'Her dishonest conduct was not isolated, but was repeated, and it spanned a period of a year.

'She also demonstrated serious disregard for the frameworks in place around teacher performance management and remuneration, which was of particular concern given her role as a head teacher.'

He added: 'In particular, we have found that she gave false evidence in an attempt to conceal her wrongdoing, and had in the past only brought things out into the open - the mortgage references - when she was forced to do so.'

Since leaving the school, Ms Walsh has founded her own education consultancy.

She told the Warrington Guardian: 'I was head teacher for 19 years during which time my team and I underwent four Ofsted inspections which were all rated outstanding.

'Since leaving Lymm High School we have set up Red Apple Education which offers training, school improvement and recruitment services covering the whole of the north west.'
Ken Livingstone has waded back into Labour's toxic anti-Semitism row as councillors defeated in a town with a large Jewish population today said they had been hurt by the 'grotesque' scandal.

Mr Livingstone admitted today the row over his remarks has left Labour facing a closer race than expected in yesterday's elections - as live results showed the London Assembly contest in Barnet and Camden, home to many of London's Jewish people, was neck and neck.

The confession did not stop Mr Livingstone again discussing the policies of Hitler in a live television interview on today's results.

And in a new interview with Memri TV, which broadcasts in the Middle East, Mr Livingstone branded the creation of Israel after World War II as 'fundamentally wrong' and a 'great catastrophe'.

Ken Livingstone appeared on Sky News today to defend Labour's election results amid claims his allegedly anti-Semitic remarks had hurt Labour at the ballot box. He repeated his claims about Hitler

And he repeated his incendiary claims Hitler had supported Zionism in 1932, remarks that originally triggered an extraordinary 10 day bout of vicious internal fighting and a wave of party suspensions.

Mr Livingstone told Sky News today: 'There was a relationship between a small section of the Jewish community and Adolf Hitler.

'I dont think the people of Israel need to be ashamed about what happened 80 years ago.'

There was evidence today the toxic row had hit Labour at the ballot box as reports emerged from places with large Jewish populations the party's vote had collapsed.

An eve of election poll for the Jewish Chronicle revealed the support for Labour among British Jews had plunged to just 8.5 per cent.

Labour MP Wes Streeting said: 'We have paid a heavy price in Havering and Redbridge for Livingstone's Hitler rants. Simply unforgivable.'

And Sedgley coucillor Alan Quinn told the Manchester Evening News two Labour losses on Bury council had been directly down to Mr Livingstone.

He said: 'Its down to one person, and thats Ken Livingstone.

'He has caused grotesque offence to the Jewish population in Prestwich with his absolutely awful comments.

'Our councillors put their hearts and souls into representing the area and there really is no place in the Labour Party for bigots like Ken Livingstone.'

Live updates for the London Assembly count in Barnet and Camden revealed a very close race in a seat which Labour won last time by almost 15 per cent. The area includes a large share of London's Jewish population

In his new interview, Mr Livingstone told Memri TV: 'The creation of the state of Israel was fundamentally wrong, because there had been a Palestinian community there for 2,000 years.

'The creation of the state of Israel was a great catastrophe. We should have absorbed the post-WWII Jewish refugees in Britain and America.

'They could all have been resettled, whereas 70 years later, the situation is still very tense, and there is potential for many more wars, potential for nuclear war.'

He added: 'When Hitler won the elections in 1932 and came to power, his policy was not directed toward killing the Jews.

'He wanted to deport all the Zionists to Israel [sic]. If you look at the Arab world at the time, there were large Jewish communities that never suffered threats or attacks.
Matthew Joseph Kearney III, 55, was arrested Thursday in Gainesville for stalking

The former administrator of a private Episcopal high school in Florida is accused of stalking a teacher he had been dating.

Matthew Joseph Kearney III was arrested Thursday in Gainesville after being released from a mental health facility.

The Florida Times-Union reports the teacher at Episcopal School of Jacksonville filed an injunction Monday against 55-year-old Kearney, who was hired in 2014 as the head of the high school.

The injunction calls Kearney her former boyfriend and details accusations of stalking, suicide threats, and threats to harm her friend if she refused to see Kearney.

Episcopal spokeswoman Meg Sacks did not comment on Kearney's departure from the school, saying it was a 'personal issue.'

However, News4Jax reported that he was fired from the school.

According to the injunction, the teacher called police when Kearney threatened suicide.

The teacher, whose name has not been released, said that Kearney texted her on April 27 saying that if she didn't see him he would harm one of her friends, the Times-Union reported of the injunction.

She claims when she met him, Kearney was drunk and threatened to end her career if she broke up with him.

Kearney told the woman that if she stayed with him, things would improve. The two then went to his farm in Alachua County when he told her that 'he would leave her alone after the weekend.'

According to the injunction, the teacher said he wouldn't let her leave but then agreed to drive her home Saturday, because there was only one car.

She claims he had a handgun and when they got in the car but he started driving erratically before turning around and going back to his farm.

Kearney, the former administration of a Episcopal School of Jacksonville (above) is accused of stalking a teacher he had been dating and threatened to commit suicide if she broke up with him

The teacher said he went inside, grabbed a shotgun and put it to his head, threatening to commit suicide.

She called police and when he saw the patrol cars coming to the farm, he tried to flee but was taken into custody.

Kearney, who has been going through a divorce since last year, was taken to a mental health facility and housed there for 72 hours, according to the Times-Union.

Once he was released, authorities arrested him for stalking. Kearney was booked into the Alachua County Jail on Thursday about 11.40am with a bond of $100,003 and is still being held as of Friday morning, according to jail records.

According to the Times-Union, the teacher said he is 'unstable' in the injunction and claims that he stalks her every time she tries to end the relationship.

'He states me and his job are all he had and now that he no longer has his job I believe his focus will be on me. I just want him to leave me alone,' the teacher said in the injunction, according to the newspaper.
Don Quixote author Miguel de Cervantes may actually be of English heritage

A Historic document has revealed that the famous Spanish author of Don Quixote may actually be of English heritage.

The startling findings were found by historian Julio Mayo, who suggests that some of Miguel de Cervantes's relatives appear to have been English.

The family tree seemingly contains a range of characters including a British spy and a suspected slave trader who lived in Bristol.

The manuscript, which was found in Utrera's town hall, is thought to date back to 1593 and identifies a certain 'Juan Titon de Servantes', thought to be a relative of the famous author.

Titon's relatives appear to suggest he comes from an Anglosaxon family, with the listed surnames including 'Tintam' (Titon) and Herbert' (Herver).

The Tintam family lived in Bristol before settling in Sanlucar de Barrameda, Cadiz in 1480.

The Medina Sidonia mayor Enrique de Guzman reportedly gave permission for the trader to stay in Spain, according to the Spanish newspaper The Olive Press.

'I truly believe I have proved Cervantes had English family and it's only the beginning,' Mayo said.

Last month Spain celebrate the fourth centenary of the death of Miguel de Cervantes with hundreds of events.

The author of the world-famous novel 'Don Quixote' died on April 22, 1616 in Madrid but the event has always been commemorated on the 23rd - the day when he was buried - coinciding with the passing of British literary co-star Shakespeare.

A colourful figure who survived a sea battle, capture by pirates, five years of captivity in Algiers and stints in prison, Cervantes is known as the father of the modern novel and his 'Don Quixote' has become one of the world's most translated works.

Cervantes is known as the father of the modern novel and his 'Don Quixote' has become one of the world's most translated works

The book about a delusional wanna-be knight who sets out to rid the world of its ills was an overnight success when it was published in 1605 - Cervantes' portrayal of a hero as imperfect as any other human being considered revolutionary at the time.

It inspired authors the world over, from Jane Austen and Fyodor Dostoyevsky to Gustave Flaubert and Mark Twain.

'Cervantes' work is universal because it's not just limited to an era or to a country, but talks about feelings and people... It's very relevant today,' says Javier Rodriguez Palacios, mayor of Alcala de Henares near Madrid where Cervantes was born.
And said he understands why Jeb Bush and his family won't endorse him

He revealed he hasn't spoken to Ted Cruz since the senator dropped out

Trump said today, 'He can do whatever he wants to do,' Trump said on Fox and Friends. 'It's fine, but I was surprised by it'

Yesterday: 'I'm not ready to do that yet,' says Ryan of falling in line with Trump, after pondering his own 2016 run

Donald Trump said this morning he was 'really surprised' by House Speaker Paul Ryan's refusal to toe the party line and endorse him yesterday, but 'it's fine.'

'He can do whatever he wants to do,' Trump said on Fox and Friends. 'It's fine, but I was surprised by it, and by the way many other people were surprised by it. And some were really surprised by it and not happy about it.'

Trump reflected on the number of Republicans lining up behind him since he became the presumptive nominee on Tuesday night and said of Ryan, 'He's one of the only ones that was really surprising.'

The Republican presidential candidate didn't seem phased, for instance, that Jeb Bush and former presidents George Bush - Jeb's father - and George H.W. Bush - Jeb's brother - gave him the back of their hands.

'The campaign was too tough, and he couldn't take it, and he couldn't be there, so you know I mean I understand,' Trump said of Jeb.

The Donald also revealed he hasn't talked with many of the Republicans making a show of declining to be on his ticket.

Mocking them, he said, 'So many people are saying, "I've decided to turn it down" - they were never on the list!'

Donald Trump said this morning he was 'really surprised' by House Speaker Paul Ryan's refusal to toe the party line and endorse him yesterday, but 'it's fine'

'I won't embarrass them, but senators and governors, and they're out saying, "I've decided not to accept," and I've never even talked to them, and they're not on the list, and they wouldn't be chosen.'

Trump wrote it off as 'politics, I guess.'

Discussing the list of possible running mates and cabinet members, Trump said he'd consider Marco Rubio - whom he infamously dubbed 'Little Marco' at the height of the campaign - 'for a lot of things.'

'We'll see what happens with Marco,' Trump said. 'You know I've always liked Marco, and then we had that little one month spat, which worked out fine, and we'll see what happens.'

He revealed that he still hasn't talked to Ted Cruz since the U.S. senator left the race.

'I have not,' he said this morning on Fox and Friends, adding, 'at some point I will.'

Trump observed, 'It was a rough campaign, let's face it. it was rough, and so I have not.'

This morning Bobby Jindal, a former GOP candidate and governor of Louisiana, said he would also skip the convention.

'I'm not boycotting it, I'm not deliberately not going because of Donald Trump, but right now there's not a point for me to go,' he said on CNN. 'If there were a point, I would certainly consider going, but I'm not staying away because of a boycott or to express any discontent. Right now, there's simply no point for me to go.'

Jindal said he'd vote for Trump over Hillary Clinton because he's 'more likely to do conservative things' than her.

But he said, 'I don't think he's a Reaganesque leader. I don't think he can say or do anything between now and November that will convince me that he's the next Reaganesque leader for our party or for our country.'

Yesterday Ryan put a wedge between himself and Trump as he said he's 'not ready' to back the only GOP candidate left in the race as the party's nominee.

The dueling statements immediately put Trump, who just locked up his party's nomination, into a test of wills with Ryan, who as leader of House Republicans must steer his cohort through a contentious convention where members are split over how to handle Trump.

'I am not ready to support Speaker Ryan's agenda,' Trump wrote in a brief statement issued Thursday afternoon.

'Perhaps in the future we can work together and come to an agreement about what is best for the American people. They have been treated so badly for so long that it is about time for politicians to put them first!' Trump added.

The statement fell far short of some of Trump's attacks on his former primary rivals, but nevertheless laid down a marker with Ryan, who pointedly withheld his support from Trump in an interview with CNN Thursday.

Time on his side? Ryan says he's 'not ready' to support Trump yet

In doing so, Ryan became the highest-ranking Republican to hold back from supporting Trump, speaking in an interview with Jake Tapper on CNN.

'Well, to be perfectly candid with you, I'm not ready to do that yet,' Ryan said, asked about supporting Trump. 'I am not there right now. I hope to and want to,' he added  indicating it would be possible for Trump to win him over.

'I think what a lot of Republicans want to see is that we have a standard bearer that bears our standards,' he said.

'I think conservatives want to know does he share our values and our principles,' he said. 'There's a lot of questions conservatives are going to want answers to,' Ryan said  in comments that provided Trump an opportunity to prove his conservatism going forward.

'The bulk of the burden on unifying the party will have to come from our presumptive nominee,' Ryan said, suggesting it is Trump who will have to move toward conservative leaders and not the other way around.

He added: 'Saying we're unified doesn't in and of itself unify us, but actually taking the principles that we all believe in, showing that there's a dedication to those, and running a principled campaign that Republicans can be proud about and that can actually appeal to a majority of Americans -- that, to me, is what it takes to unify this party.'

Lots to chew on: GOP leaders are split over whether to back Trump as he tries to win the whole enchilada

Trump hit back with his own statement, saying he's 'not read' for the Ryan agenda

Ryan had forecast his concerns about Trump in a speech during the primary season following an outcry over Trump's proposed Muslim ban, which Trump released in response to the attacks in Paris.

'What was proposed yesterday is not what this party stands for, and more importantly, it's not what this country stands for,' Ryan said.

The rising star in the GOP got drafted into speakership when Ohio Rep. John Boehner quit his post.

Ryan's comments reflect a GOP that is wrestling with how to handle Trump, who romped through the primary states and bested 16 rivals including many top party figures, while also completely blowing through a party 'autopsy' conducted after Mitt Romney's failed 2012 election.

Party leaders hoped to find a way to avoid losing Hispanic voters. Trump launched his campaign by saying Mexican 'rapists' were streaming across the border. On Thursday, he dug into a tortilla salad on Cinco de Mayo and said he loves Hispanics.

'We don't always nominate a Lincoln and Reagan, but we hope that that person advances the principals of our party and appeals to a wide vast majority of Americans,' said Ryan in the interview.

'I was pretty clear and I was outspoken on a number of occasions where I think that he did the wrong thing or said the wrong thing, and I'll do that in the future if need be,' he added.

Ryan's criticism is noteworthy for a number of reasons. As head of the convention, he will gavel it to order and oversee what could be nasty fights over the substance of the platform. He would have had a pivotal role if Trump had failed to get a majority of delegates, and would have had considerable power over party machinations.

With Trump effectively sewing up the nomination, Ryan's role should be more ceremonial.

He is also a relatively unblemished figure in the GOP House, having been goaded into taking the speakership as a figure mostly trusted by conservatives as well as more centrist members, and as a fresh face for the party's future.

Trump regularly says he plans to beat Hillary Clinton by winning states like Ryan's home state of Wisconsin.

Trump has divided the party in part because of his volatile campaign style and penchant for stirring up controversy, but also for some ideological heresies.

On Wednesday, he indicated he was looking at the possibility of a minimum wage hike. He has hailed Planned Parenthood, and vowed not to let people die 'on the sidewalk' even as he calls for repealing Obamacare. On the minimum wage, he said he was 'open to doing something with it.'

Other plans: 2012 GOP nominee and 2008 nominee John McCain both are skipping the GOP Convention

Ryan's comments come as 2012 nominee Mitt Romney indicated he wouldn't even go to the 2016 GOP convention in Cleveland.

Neither will President George W. Bush or his father. Arizona Sen. John McCain, the 2008 nominee, won't be attending either.

Ryan's Senate counterpart, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, essentially backed Trump on Wednesday.d

'I have committed to supporting the nominee chosen by Republican voters, and Donald Trump, the presumptive nominee, is now on the verge of clinching that nomination,'McConnell said in a statement.
Two police forces have launched formal investigations amid claims of electoral fraud by the Tories in last years General Election.

Gloucestershire Police became the first to confirm it is looking into an allegation that strict rules on candidate expenditure were breached.

Their probe is thought to relate to Cheltenham Tory MP Alex Chalk.

Probe: The Conservative Party was today facing two police investigations over its election expenses for a battle bus tour at the 2015 general election

In focus: Cheltenham Tory MP Alex Chalk, left, and North Cornwall Tory MP Scott Mann, right, are being looked at by officers

A second police force, Devon and Cornwall, is reportedly investigating North Cornwall Tory MP Scott Mann.

A spokesman said: We have received an allegation relating to electoral expenses and are investigating the matter.

Several other forces have received complaints, including West Yorkshire Police, which said it was considering whether to take further action.

According to an investigation by the Daily Mail and Channel 4 News, the accommodation costs of activists bussed around the country by the Tories to campaign in key constituencies were recorded as national expenditure.

The 2015 battle bus project was pioneered by then party chairmen Lord Feldman, left, and Grant Shapps, right

The Electoral Commission is investigating whether these should have been recorded under individual candidates limits. Deliberate breach of spending limits by individual candidates  usually around 15,000  is a criminal offence punishable by a fine or even a one-year jail term.

Any MP found guilty would be barred automatically from holding public office for three years, triggering a new election.

The probes come days after the Electoral Commission met police and prosecutors on Wednesday in an attempt to ensure they do not run out of time to launch possible criminal investigations into Tory funding of the 2015 election campaign.

The commission believes its investigation into alleged breaches of reporting obligations will take at least another month  over the one-year limit for launching criminal proceedings. The Tory party blames an administrative error for failing to register some accommodation costs. It also blamed an administrative error for failure to declare costs related to its BattleBus campaign in marginal seats in the South West, the Midlands the North. This was the brainchild of Mark Clarke, the so-called Tatler Tory later accused of bullying Elliott Johnson, a 21-year-old activist who committed suicide.

Mr Clarke, who was once tipped as a future minister by society magazine Tatler, denies the allegations.

His plan to bus activists to key marginal seats in the last ten days of the election campaign was signed off by Conservative central office (CCHQ) officials.

There is controversy over whether the money should have been counted as local expenditure, or declared as part of the national campaign.

Earlier this week Grant Shapps  who was co-chairman of the party at the time of the election, along with David Camerons close friend Lord Feldman  denied being involved.

Mr Shapps said: I can tell you absolutely that compliance was not my area ... compliance wasnt my side of things, campaigning was my side of things but not the money or the finance.
The contents of the luggage an Australian woman tried to take to her terrorist husband in Syria before she was stopped at Brisbane Airport have been revealed in court.

Fatima Elomar, wife of now-dead Islamic State terrorist Mohamed Elomar, had items such as watches, chargers, men's underwear, clothing and insect repellent confiscated at in May 2014 when she was stopped with her four children trying to travel to Syria via Malaysia.

She told authorities she was heading to Asia for a holiday with her family, the Sydney Morning Herald reported.

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Among the items in Fatima Elomar's luggage, which was seized when she tried to leave Australia in 2014, were (clockwise from top left) phone cases, a charger, a North Face beanie and insect repellent wipes

Fatima Elomar, 31, tries to hide her face after a court appearance in which it was heard she had pleaded guilty to one charge of supporting or promoting foreign hostile acts

More items found in the baggage Elomar said she was taking to Malaysia were (clockwise from top left) men's underwear, camouflage pants, a hooded shirt, and camouflage shorts

She had also packed (clockwise from top left) watched, a power bank, hiking boots and universal usb cables

Fatima Elomar, the wife of dead Islamic State terrorist Mohamed Elomar, will return to court in July for further sentence submissions following a brief hearing in Sydney

Fatima Elomar leaves Sydney's District Court on Friday - she is the wife of dead extremist Mohamed Elomar

Mohamed Elomar, who is believed to have left Australia in 2013 to join Islamic State extremists in Syria, is seen in this grisly image holding up the decapitated heads of two men

But among the random assortment of items including phone cases and hiking boots were $10,000 cash and her husband's birth certificate.

Elomar had sent his wife text messages detailing the things he needed.

She bought most of them online, resulting in an electronic trail that matched the texts - which police had intercepted - the Sydney Morning Herald reported.

Those intercepted messages also detailed discussions about her and their children moving to a warzone.

A Remington shaving kit (left), sunglasses and adapter plugs were found in Elomar's baggage in 2014

Elomar tried to hide her face from waiting media following Friday's hearing and covered her head before eventually dashing to a waiting car

Elomar is due to return to court for a sentence hearing on July 1. Judge Penelope Hock will impose her sentence at a date to be determined

Fatima Elomar, pictured right with a friend out in western Sydney just two days after she pleaded guilty to supporting the terrorist group ISIS via her jihadist husband in Syria

Other items in the seized suitcases included a North Face beanie, Native brand camouflage shorts, Ridgeline buffalo camouflage pants and black fleece jacket, an Adidas polo shirt, three Kmart long-sleeve shirts, two pairs of cargo shorts, eight pairs of thermal socks, nine pairs of men's underwear and a set of Sportsbeatz wireless headphones.

Police searched the bags and also found a Remington men's grooming kit, a large quantity of insect repellent, Ugly Fish brand sunglasses, solar watches, power bank portable phone chargers and travel adaptors.

She had also packed two Casio Protrek Tough watches with camouflage bands and face, which had features including a digital compass and altimeter.

Mrs Elomar may have pleaded guilty to supporting terror group ISIS but she won't face sentencing until July at the earliest.

Until then, the first Australian woman guilty of supporting ISIS extremists will be free to walk the streets.

Elomar, 31, was in Sydney's District Court on Friday where Judge Penelope Hock heard very few people had been prosecuted under the 1978 terror law and thousands of pieces of communications would need to be analysed ahead of sentencing.

Fatima Elomar (right) is due to return to court for a sentence hearing in July but her sentence may be delayed even further because the amount of documents which have to be reviewed

Court documents reveal that when Fatima Elomar (pictured shopping in Westfield following her guilty plea) confessed to supporting ISIS terrorism in Syria, the prosecutor did not oppose her remaining free on bail

Fatima Elomar had to bare her face in court but always covers up when walking outside to face the media

Just days before she was to go to trial last November, she pleaded guilty to one charge of supporting or promoting foreign hostile acts.

Elomar is due to return to court in July for a sentence hearing, having pleaded guilty to supporting her late husband's hostile overseas actions.

Judge Hock will impose her sentence at a date yet to be determined.

It's believed Elomar's jihadist husband was killed in a drone strike on the Islamic State's self-declared capital of Raqqa in June last year.

Elomar appeared to hide from waiting media following Friday's hearing and covered her head in a large black scarf before eventually dashing to a waiting car amid a buzz of cameras and questions.

The widow of notorious Australian extremist Mohamed Elomar, pleaded guilty on November 16 to providing support to the terror group Islamic State via her husband who died in Syria in June last year.

She entered her plea on one count of supporting foreign hostile acts between April 3 and May 3 in 2014.

Prosecutor Neild said at the time 'there's no objection to the continuation of bail'.

Mr Neild at first applied to have Elomar sentenced in late March, then began negotiating with Judge Peter Berman over possible dates, the judge rejecting March 26 saying, 'No, that's Easter'.

Elomar will have at least two more months before learning when and for how long she will likely be imprisoned.

The maximum sentence under Australia's anti-terror laws, under the Crimes (Foreign Incursions and Recruitment) Act, is life imprisonment.

However, that is for the charge of entering or preparing to enter a foreign country to engage in a hostile activity. Elomar has pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of supporting terror.

Fatima Elomar, pictured last November before going grocery and meat shopping in south-western Sydney

Fatima Elomar wears the face covering niqab on the streets outside her court appearances but as Daily Mail Australia has revealed the terrorist supporter bares her face when shopping in south-western Sydney

Fatima Elomar's husband Mohamed pictured in Syria where he was fighting for ISIS before being killed in a rocket attack in Iraq in June last year

Fatima Elomar, pictured bringing her shopping home in the week she pleaded guilty to supporting terror, originally claimed the charges against her were 'over zealous' and that she was just taking the kids on holiday
Gregory D Harris (pictured), 48, was charged with burglary and theft after he attempted to steal his girlfriend a $147,000 home in Indianapolis

A man who posed as a millionaire attempted to steal his girlfriend a $147,000 home in Indianapolis.

Gregory D Harris, 48, was charged with burglary and theft for trying to steal the home after he changed the locks, removed a 'For Sale' sign and moved in, according to the Indy Star.

A realtor from CastleRock REO went to show the home and noticed that the 'For Sale' sign was gone and the locks had been changed, court documents said.

Harris had previously made an offer to purchase the home but he was informed of other bidders who made higher offers.

The company then replaced the locks and a new sign was placed on the property.

But within a few days another realtor went to the home and the locks had been changed again and there was no 'For Sale' sign.

A CastleRock representative told the IndyStar that Harris had the lights, water and Internet service turned on at the home.

During a text conversation with a CastleRock representative Harris admitted to changing the locks and removing the 'For Sale' signs because he said he was under the impression that he owned the home since he made an offer.

Harris then sent falsified documents to CastleRock to prove that he owned the property, according to court documents.

At the time he was also driving a BMW that was stolen from a car service.

After Harris sent CastleRock officials a picture of his BMW SUV parked in the driveway of the home, as well as selfies of himself, CastleRock contacted police, according to the Indy Star.

Officers from the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department met with Harris and his girlfriend after receiving a call to the home on a report of someone trespassing, according to the Indy Star.

Harris' girlfriend told investigators that he told her he was a millionaire and bought her the BMW that was parked outside.

At the time Harris (left) was also driving a BMW (right) that was stolen from a car service. Harris sent CastleRock officials a picture of his BMW SUV parked in the driveway of the home

Investigators confirmed the car had been stolen from a car service company called Carmel, according to court documents.

Harris had a laptop, two flash drives and Donald Trump's book, TrumpNation: The Art of Being The Donald, according to the Indy Star.

His girlfriend said she found the home online and Harris told her he bought it and she could start moving in her things.
A teenage girl has been banned from her school in France after arriving in a long skirt that the headmistress decided appeared too religious.

The 16-year-old, who converted to Islam a year ago, arrived at her school outside of Paris on May 2 and, like each day, took off her veil.

However the skirt she was wearing that day, which reached below her knees and nearly to her shoes, was quickly spotted by the headmistress who allegedly decided it was too obviously religious, the Nouvel Obs reported.

A student is thought to have been turned away from the Flora Tristan school in Seine-et-Marne region of northern France after wearing a skirt deemed 'ostentatiously religious'

The day after, the student had a meeting with the headmistress in which she said she was told she could not come in to school in a long skirt, Islamophobie reported.

France passed a law in 2004 which applies to state schools and workplaces which bans the wearing of religious items such a veils, kippas and large Christian crosses.

Though 'discreet religious symbols' are allowed, the teenager's black H&M skirt was not viewed to be subtle enough.

According to Islamophobie, however, a long skirt alone is not enough to warrant a student being barred from a school on grounds of the 2004 law.

Her mother Marie-Christine de Sousa told the Nouvel Obs that her daughter was stopped by the headmaster who 'told her she was not allowed to enter [the school], but did not tell her why.'

She has been told she must find something else to wear before she returns to school.

Since her barring, the hashtag #JePorteMaJupeCommeJeVeux (i wear by skirt how i like) has since begun trending again after being created last year when a similar situation at a French school arose.

Wearing religious clothing and jewellery has been banned in France in state school and workplaces since 2004. Pictured are women protesting the controversial law when it was introduced

Her mother went into the Flora Tristan school in the Montereau-Fault-Yonne area of Seine-et-Marne area outside of Paris, to talk with the teachers, and the de Sousa family are now planning legal action.

'Yes, my daughter is French-Portugese, from a Catholic family and has converted to Islam. I always support her in her decisions and in what she chooses

'At the beginning of the year I allowed her to take the veil, which she removes each day before beginning class, however she wears long clothes to go to school,' Ms de Sousa told Nouvel Obs.

She added that her daughter was a law-abiding, respectful person and that people should stop 'judging so quickly.'
A private investigator who has spent two decades on the JonBenet Ramsey murder case says there has been a new break in the case.

In an interview with the Today show on Friday, Ollie Gray said a local 26-year-old man named Michael Helgoth may have been involved in the six-year-old pageant queen's disturbing 1996 murder and that a taped confession may even exist.

'There are probably three or four people who should have been investigated earlier and still need to be investigated,' Gray told NBC.

'The latest development in this particular case as far as I'm concerned is Michael Helgoth. He was basically a hellraiser,' Gray added.

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Ollie Gray, a private investigator originally hired by JonBenet Ramsey's family to investigate her murder, says he believes a 26-year-old man named Michael Helgoth was behind the 1996 killing

Helgoth's name reportedly came up early on in the investigation, but Boulder, Colorado investigators never got any answers because he committed suicide just months after the murder.

Gray says he has reason to believe though that Helgoth may have admitted to the murder in front of family and friends, in a taped confession.

'I don't think Mike did all of this by himself,' Gray added, inferring that Helgoth may have been murdered by a conspirator to keep his mouth shut.

Gray blames the 'totally inexperienced' Boulder police for not investigating Helgoth as a possible suspect earlier on.

'You have to look for something in order to find something, and unfortunately for this particular case you gotta totally inexperienced police agency,' he said.

Case solved? Helogth, a local 26-year-old man whose family owned a junkyard in the city, committed suicide months after 6-year-old JonBenet's murder

Linked? Gray called Helgoth (pictured) a 'hellraiser' and says he may have been killed by a co-conspirator in the murder

Gray was originally hired by the Ramsey family to independently investigate JonBenet's murder, but has continued to work the case for free for several years.

He remains optimistic that the girl's killer will eventually be found, settling a decades-long cold case.

'If you are asking whether or not I think that somebody will eventually be caught - yes I do. somebody out there knows what has gone on,' he said.

Gray's interview comes just a month after he spoke out to InTouch over his suspicions of Helgoth.

'Based on what we know now, I believe Helgoth and his accomplices committed the crime. There's no doubt about it,' said Gray.

His opinion was backed up by John Kenady, a man who used to work for Helgoth, who told the magazine; 'There was a tape recording made by Helgoth. And in it, he said he killed JonBenet.'

Helgoth's family owned a junkyard on the outskirts of the city.

Kenady also claims that someone close to Helgoth still has the tape, which was overlooked by police during the investigation.

Family: Her parents were the primary suspects in the case for over a decade, but were finally cleared in 2008, two years after Patsy died of ovarian cancer (JonBenet, John, Patsy and Burke in their 1993 Christmas photo)

Kenady claims that he first grew suspicious of Helgoth a month before the murder.

'In late November, Helgoth had told me that he and a partner were going to make a great deal and they each will bring in around $50,000 or $60,000,' said Kenady.

'I will never forget we were walking toward his house and he said, "I wonder what it would be like to crack a human skull."

'I was amazed. I thought it was a very odd thing to say.'

The body of JonBenet was found bludgeoned and strangled hours after she was reported missing and covered by a white blanket with a nylon cord around her neck, her wrists bound above her head and her mouth covered by duct tape.

Her skull was also cracked.

Her parents John and Patsy had called police to report her kidnapping and said they found a note demanding a ransom of $118,000 for her safe return - and that they had not contact the authorities.

Despite this, police arrived to their home shortly after in clearly marked vehicles.

John and Patsy would remain the primary suspects in their daughter's death for more than a decade, and it was not until 2008 that police finally cleared them of any wrongdoing.

At that time, Patsy had been dead for two years after a lengthy battle with ovarian cancer.

She was initially suspected by many of being the murderer after reports emerged that handwriting on the ransom note was similar to her own, but after she willingly provided a sample to police it was determined she did not write the note.

Many also suspected someone in the family as they claimed there were no footprints in the snow around the house and the ransom amount was the exact amount that John had just received in his annual bonus.

Gray however says that if police had just listened to Kenady they could have solved the case, but they refused to call him back despite the fact that he reached out almost 20 times with information about Helgoth.

Tragedy: The body of JonBenet (above in 1996), a child beauty queen, was found bludgeoned and strangled in her basement on December 26, 1996 when she was just six-years-old

'Kenady provided very relevant information that should have been a priority lead,' said Gray.

'But I got the distinct feeling that the Boulder police had absolutely no interest in anything that took away from the theory that John and Patsy Ramsey killed their daughter.'

Then, on February 13, 1997, Alex Hunter, who was then the district attorney, held a press conference where he spoke to JonBenet's unknown killer, saying; 'The list of suspect narrows. Soon there will be no one on the list but you.'

Helgoth died of an apparent suicide two days later at his home. Kenady believes he was murdered by an accomplice or accomplices who were with him when he killed JonBenet.

'The gun was found on Helgoth's right side, but the bullet hole goes from left to right. It doesn't make sense why someone would commit suicide in that manner,' said Kenady.

'He was murdered to keep his mouth shut.'

A few years after his death however Helgoth was cleared when it was revealed that none of his DNA was found under JonBenet's fingernails or in her underwear.

Gray however thinks that he is the killer, and claims he knows how to officially solve the case once and for all.

'If they could find out who killed Helgoth it could lead police to his accomplices in her murder,' he explains.

Difficult: John says that after his daughter's death, he and his wife Patsy did everything they could to could son Burke from the allegations he killed his sister (John above in 2006 with his father at his mother's funeral)

Suspects: John and Patsy Ramsey leave their attorney Lin Wood's office after questioning by Boulder Police shortly after their daughter's death

Many however still believe it was a member of the family, something JonBenet's father addressed in an interview with Barbara Walters that aired last year.

Appearing on Barbara Walters Presents American Scandals, John said that he and his late-wife Patsy did everything they could to protect their son Burke from learning that he was being accused of murdering his sister.

No one in the family was ever charged in the death of the six-year-old, but for years tabloids and members of the public believed they were the culprits of this unspeakable crime.

Most of these stories focused on parents John and Patsy, but some went so far as to claim that Burke had been responsible for his sister's death - despite the fact that he was only nine-years-old at the time.

'We tried to shield him from that,' John said.

'Friends would ask us, "What can we do to help?" We said, "Next time you go in the supermarket, call the manager over when you see our childs photo on the front cover, and ask him to remove it." A lot of them did that.'

Stories would point to the fact that Burke was in the house when JonBenet was reported missing, but his parents always stood firm on the fact that he was sleeping the entire time and did not wake up until after they called police.

He was exonerated by DNA evidence in May of 1999, a little over two years after the murder.

Burke - who is now 29-years-old - has never spoken publicly about his sister's death and has kept a low profile for the past decade.

John also said that he still believes the killer will be found.

'I think we will have two ways that will happen,' John tells Walters in their interview.

'It will either be a DNA match or someone who knows something will become angry or bitter against this person and will tell.'

Male DNA was found on the underwear of JonBenet when her body was discovered, but authorities have never been able to match it to a suspect.

There was also a bowl of pineapples found in the kitchen when the young girl was first reported missing but police on the scene allowed someone to clean the bowl.

This ended up being a crucial error as JonBenet was found with pineapple in her stomach when her body was examined by the coroner.

The house was also not sealed off by police and friends and family were allowed to come and go during the initial investigation, contaminating the crime scene.

Scene: The Boulder home where the family lived at the time of JonBenet's murder, which was sold for $650,000 in 1998

John - who was briefly linked to Natalee Holloway's mother Beth in 2007 and remarried in 2011 to Jan Rousseaux - also discussed how he lost his millions after the death of JonBenet when he decided to move the family out of Boulder and back to Atlanta, not realizing the stigma that would be placed on him by the public and how difficult that would make it for him to obtain a job.

'I was told by a very experienced FBI person that most victims of violent crime end up broke,' said John.

'It's very expensive to deal with the justice system. You make bad decisions - you sell your home, you quit your job, you move, you change jobs.'

In addition to losing JonBenet, John had also lost his oldest daughter Elizabeth from a previous marriage in 1992 when she was 22-years-old after she was in a car accident.

As a result of what he has gone through, he now has advice for others who might face a similarly tragic situation.

'When something really tragic happens in your life, put your life in park. Give your checkbook to a trusted friend. Avoid making any big decisions,' said John.

'Because you're just not capable of making good decisions.'

The case will be revisited later this year on CBS, where they are planning an unscripted miniseries which will reunite members of the original investigation team and bring in new experts to re-examine the murder mystery.

JonBenet, who would now be 25 years old, is buried next to her mother Patsy in Georgia.

Two detectives remain assigned to the case and review tips on a regular basis, the Boulder Police said in a statement to NBC.
Armed robbers poured boiling water over two pensioners they had taken hostage in their home.

The two-hour ordeal left the victims  aged in their 60s and married for 40 years  with horrific facial burns.

Three masked men brandishing knives burst into their 750,000 house as they watched television.

Detectives were today hunting an armed gang who broke into a retired couple's home near this road in Halstead, Kent, tied them up and poured boiling water over them in a two-hour torture ordeal

After tying the couple up, the gang demanded money, backed up by death threats to them and their relatives.

They poured a number of kettles of boiling water over their heads until  having extorted an unspecified amount of cash  they fled.

Twenty minutes later their victims managed to untie themselves and alerted a neighbour who called police.

Last night they were receiving treatment in separate burns units as police launched a nationwide manhunt for their attackers.

Speaking outside the victims home, the husbands 68-year-old brother said the attack was shocking.

It is outrageous  I just cannot comprehend it, he added. I was completely astonished when I saw them. It was just shocking to see the extent of their injuries.

'They were just sitting at home watching the TV  my sister-in-law was knitting something for one of their grandchildren  when the three robbers kicked in their front door.

They were on them within seconds. Their ordeal went on for a long time  it is beyond what you can imagine.

My brother had boiling water poured over his head and body and was kicked all over and they threatened to cut his ear off.

The husband and wife, both in their 60s, were left with 'life changing' injuries after the burglary at their home in the village of Halstead, and are still being treated at a specialist burns unit

His face was cut. My sister-in-law was beaten and had boiling water over her face.

There must be a local connection because they knew things. They threatened other family members. He said he could not understand why anyone would carry out such a savage attack.

He added: People are quite outraged that two innocent people have been subjected to all this. So I do hope the police get some leads soon. These people need to be off the streets.

My brother had boiling water poured over his head and body and was kicked all over and they threatened to cut his ear off The victim's brother

The robbery took place shortly after 9pm on Tuesday at the couples detached home on the outskirts of Halstead near Sevenoaks in Kent. The village is close to the M25 in an area popular with wealthy London commuters.

The husband, a 66-year-old businessman, sustained 10 per cent burns but his wife is in a specialist London hospital after suffering more serious injuries.

She has had surgery and both are expected to remain in hospital for a number of weeks.

Officers in Kent Police and the victims relatives have asked for their identities to be protected because of the threats the gang made to other members of the family. Detective Sergeant Simon Harrold said yesterday: The victims of this crime have been subjected to a horrendous ordeal.

Both husband and wife have suffered some severe burns and possibly been left with life changing injuries.

They are both continuing to require treatment in specialist burns units and I can only imagine the trauma and shock they have suffered.
Krispy Kreme is now selling edible coffee thins that promise to pack the same punch as a cup of joe - but will also give customers something to chew on.

It has begun selling solid coffee thins in original glazed, cappuccino and caramel macchiato flavors.

Three of them provide the same amount of caffeine as a cup of coffee according to Krispy Kreme.

The donut chain is now offering them at its Wal-Mart, Food Lion, Southeast Grocers and Southeast Circle K locations around the US.

Krispy Kreme has begun selling solid coffee thins in original glazed, cappuccino and caramel macchiato flavors. Three of them promise to deliver the same caffeine punch as one cup of coffee

The coffee thins, made by Miami-based chocolate and coffee maker Tierra Nueva, look like chocolate bars but actually list coffee as their first ingredient.

All three contain 160 calories and 10 grams of fat for three squares.

The cappuccino flavor has 14 grams of sugar per portion and the caramel macchiato as well as the original glazed flavor come at 17 grams.

A box of 12 packs each containing three Krispy Kreme coffee thins costs $16.85 online.

Tierra Nueva has partnered with other brands and produces coffee bars for Eight O'Clock, H-E-B and Walgreens.
He graduates at the end of this month, and hopes to become a chef

But he says the Ivy League university's staff were on his waiting list

But it drew the ire of Columbia U, which now says he needs to move out

The restaurant, available on Yelp, quickly became a New York favorite

A student who transformed his dorm room into the hottest restaurant in New York - earning an appearance on The Late Show - has been told he needs to pack up his pans and get out.

Jonah Reider, 22, opened Pith, a four-seat mini restaurant, in Suite 4-B of the Columbia University's Hogan Hall in September 2015, charging around $15 a meal to customers.

He took the operation to a larger university apartment, but after complaints from the Department of Health, he's being forced out of his accommodation,The Wall Street Journal reported.

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You've been served: Jonah Reider (pictured), 22, is being kicked out of his home by Columbia University after he opened Pith, a four-seater mini restaurant there that became New York's hottest joint

A tasty proposition: Reider made new dishes each night, with the cost changing but usually at around $15 per person. Left: cauliflower soup, saffron oil, Brussels sprout leaves; right: black truffle cheeses, olives and more

Reider, who is from Massachusetts, received a letter from his university professor landlord late last month that told him he had to leave his apartment by May 31 - cutting short his lease by three months.

'I thought I was doing really well,' he said. 'But I'm not making any money from this, and I'm about to get booted from my apartment.'

The aspiring chef attracted so many customers on booking app Yelp that he had a two-month waiting list within a month of opening.

By the time he made a guest appearance on The Late Show, he was able to tell host Stephen Colbert that he had a thousand parties of four on the waiting list, according to Boston Magazine.

He had attracted attention by cooking curated meals, with each night at the self-styled 'supper club' offering a different experience each time - and the price changing to suit.

On his Late Show appearance, he served Colbert 'a phyllo dough spanakopita kind of dessert thats filled with honey thats infused with black truffle,' along with a pear nectar sorbet, earning a surprised 'That's fantastic' from the host.

But despite - or rather, because of - the restaurant's popularity, it has been a constant source of friction between the outspoken Reider and his university.

'Columbias official magazine hit me up to write an article about it,' Reider said. 'After expressing some of my sentiments about the university and our relationship, they were like "Well hold the article for a little bit."'

Cook who's talking now: Reider became so popular that he even appeared on The Late Show, where host Stephen Colbert (left) said the food was 'fantastic.' Reider's waiting list had 1,000 groups of four on it

Food on film: The restaurant earned huge attention even before the Late Show appearance, much to the annoyance of Columbia University. NY's dept of health also warned that Pith was not up to code

Now the university, which had previously received complaints about Pith from New York City's Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, is citing 'conditions hazardous to all tenants in a faculty building' as its reason for kicking him out.

Still, Reider says he had mixed messages from staff, with some praising his vision and others saying it was unsafe.

And still others were... conflicted. 'I had university administrators on my wait list that were totally trying to come through,' Reider said. 'Theyd also be, like, "Please find a new place."'

Reider's eviction comes at an awkward time, as he is due to graduate at the end of this month.

He promises a last few servings at Pith to those on the waiting list, but is now looking elsewhere for accommodation - and a place to reopen his restaurant.

He's looking for a neglected second apartment that he can use as a base, he told The Wall Street journal - but has yet to find one.

In the meantime, the budding chef is hosting artistic 'dining performances' that combine his food with live performances from Brownstone Ensemble orchestra.

And as tickets cost $80 in advance and $100 on the door, it looks like Reider will be tasting success for a good while longer.
Alabama's physicians are urging our state lawmakers and Gov. Robert Bentley to start now to find a permanent revenue solution to fully fund Alabama Medicaid before the next fiscal year.



"Alabama already runs the most bare-bones Medicaid program in the country," said Medical Association Executive Director Mark Jackson, "so to end this legislative session without an appropriate funding solution is more than heartbreaking. It's dangerous. In just five months, one-quarter of our state's population will be at risk of losing their access to health care because of the legislature's inability to come to an agreement on funding options that would have helped close the $85 million gap in Medicaid's budget.

"More than half the births in Alabama and 47 percent of our children are covered by Medicaid, as well as 60 percent of Alabama's nursing home residents. Without full funding, the Medicaid program will collapse, leaving these individuals without coverage. We are asking Gov. Bentley and our legislators begin work today to find a permanent funding plan to secure Medicaid and reassure our residents that the medical care they need will remain within their grasp. The Medical Association remains ready to work with our elected officials to find a permanent solution to the Medicaid funding crisis."



The Medical Association believes Alabama Medicaid is more than an insurance program for the poor and underinsured and must be fully funded as it is critical to the health care infrastructure of our state. Alabama Medicaid provides health coverage for eligible children, pregnant women, and severely disabled and impoverished adults - about 1 million Alabamians.



Alabama's physicians strongly believe that Medicaid matters ... to all Alabamians.



For more information about the Medical Association's official statement on the Medicaid funding crisis, contact Jackson at (334) 954-2500 or mjackson@alamedical.org.
Brushes off top GOPers who are skipping party convention, says people 'make their own choices'

Head of the Republican Party says GOP didn't 'hit hard enough' against Obama in 2008

Republican Party chairman Reince Priebus says Donald Trump is going to keep the election close through withering attacks on Hillary Clinton  and insists that the hard-hitting candidate will 'bring it all out' by dredging up any unsavory material from in Clinton's past.

'If there's one person that knows how to bring all of that out in a way that people can understand, it's Donald Trump,' Priebus told Politico's Mike Allen in a televised interview just days after Trump became the GOP's presumed nominee.

'And he's going to do it, too. He's going to bring it all out and unfortunately for Hillary Clinton, it's not going to be very comfortable, because she's got a lot to answer for,' Preibus said.

'I think he will win and I think that you've got to look at Hillary Clinton and she's got a lot to answer for,' Priebus said, when asked if the election would be a blowout.

Trump will 'bring it all out' and make Hillary 'uncomfortable,' says RNC chair

As Allen tried to move on in the interview, Priebus interjected.

'Can I add one thing to that? Because sometimes in our party we get criticized because we don't don't hit hard enough. We didn't talk about Bill Ayers. We didn't talk about some of the things that had happened in Barack Obama's life in 2008,' he said, referring to the Weather Underground leader who was linked to Obama in media reports during the campaign.

'I don't think that Donald Trump's going to have a hard time bringing out some of the things that are going to be very not good for Hillary Clinton,' he said.

Priebus spoke a day after reports that FBI investigators probing Clinton's email scandal had interviewed Clinton's close aide Huma Abedin, an indication that the candidate herself might get interviewed soon.

Trump himself has vowed to bring up Bill Clinton's infidelities if Hillary Clinton goes after him as a sexist, and has even mentioned Whitewater and other 1990s-era controversies.

Ay caramba! Priebus says of Trump's Taco Thursday tweet: 'He's trying.'

Look out! Priebus suggests GOP was too soft on Obama in 2008 and won't repeat mistake in 2016

Priebus spoke during a tense time for the GOP, as leaders and party members grapple with how to handle the Trump phenomenon. The Wisconsin native had a major role pursuing a post-2012 autopsy that identified the need to reach out to younger and minority voters in order to avoid long-term structural problems, only to watch Trump vault to the nomination with his call to deport illegal immigrants and ban Muslims from entering the U.S.

In a gesture acknowledging the pickle he finds himself in, Allen presented Priebus with a bottle of Baileys cream liquor. It was a reference to a comment Priebus made during the fractious primary that, 'I haven't started pouring Baileys in my cereal yet, but I've certainly considered it.'

'Now where's the Lucky Charms and the bowl?' Priebus quipped.

Drink up: Priebus joked during the primaries about pouring Baileys in his breakfast cereal

Asked about Trump's Cinco de Mayo tweet Thursday that featured a photo of the candidate digging into a tortilla bowl, Priebus said, 'I didn't see it I heard about it.'

Pressed, he responded: 'Uh He's trying. Honestly. He's trying. I honestly think he understands that building and unifying and growing the party is the only way we're gonna win and I think he gets that.

Asked about the Muslim ban, which the candidate has stood by in recent interviews, Priebus said: 'It's not something that I believe in or our party believes in ... we are the party of the open door.'



'We're talking about long term commit to Hispanic, black communities, Asian communities, every community in between,' he said.

Asked if it was now Trump's party, Prieubs said: No, it's the Party's party. The party is, was, and will remain the Republican Party of the open door, freedom, opportunity and equality.' He added: 'Our platform will remain much the same as it is right now.'

He tamped down reports that Trump was taking over the party, and that RNC officials had told staff to leave if they can't tolerate Trumpism. 'They have no intention of taking over anything,' he said.

He spoke a day after House Speaker Paul Ryan said he is 'not ready' to support Trump.

Priebus expressed openness to Trump's idea -- first floated in an exclusive interview with DailyMail.com  off jazzing up the convention. Trump said the last one was boring.

Priebus tweeted that Trump was the 'presumptive' nominee after Trump won Indiana

'I like the idea of having more of a fun convention,' said Preibus, before raising concerns about costs.

Then he floated the idea of making networks pay for primary debates  which became a cash cow this year amid huge interest in Trump and the elections.
Michelle Obama and Dr. Jill Biden also spoke at the event, with the First Lady giving Letterman a big hug when she saw him on stage

cake at the event, which was emceed by Jon Stewart and featured the President and Vice President

David Letterman made a rare public appearance on Thursday night at an event celebrating Military Appreciation Month and the 75th anniversary of the USO.

The former late night host was on hand at Joint Base Andrews just outside Camp Springs, Maryland to honor the men and women of the armed forces alongside another former late night host, the evening's emcee Jon Stewart.

Also in attendance were President Obama and Vice President Biden, who were both joined by their respective wives for the event.

And no one was happier to see Letterman it seems than the First Lady, who greeted the 69-year-old with a giant hug upon seeing him on stage.

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Old friends: First Lady Michelle Obama gave David Letterman a giant hug at an event on Thursday (above with President Obama)

Out and about: Letterman appeared the event to celebrate Military Appreciation Month and the 75th anniversary of the USO (above with emcee Jon Stewart)

New look: The former late night host, who left CBS last May, joked in his remarks that his post-retirement beard had some confusing him with Walt Whitman

Letterman was there to present a special cake to mark the anniversary of the USO, and also took some time to make a few remarks about the evening's other guests, life after late night and how his lengthy post-retirement beard has some confusing him with one of America's most esteemed poets.

'I had a funny thing happen to me. A fellow came up to me before the show and he said, "We love what you do, we love your writing, we love what you mean to the country, we love your poetry,"' Letterman told the crowd when he took the stage.

'And I said, "Who do you think I am?" And he said, "Walt Whitman."'

Whitman, best known for his poetry collection Leaves of Grass, died in 1892. He and Letterman are both writers however, and do have remarkably similar beards.

Letterman, who has made only a handful public appearances since stepping down from his post at CBS last May, also said that he was glad to be part of the evening's festivities.

'Mrs Obama said something that rang true with me, and it makes perfect sense, but it's hard to get this group of people up on stage at the same time,' said Letterman.

'In my case, I'm pretty much ready to go and happy to be out of the house.'

Letterman also poked fun at President Obama and Vice President Biden for some of the remarks they had given earlier in the night.

'Sometimes the mind plays tricks on a person especially when you get to be my age,' said Letterman.

'I was listening to the President speak, I was listening to the Vice President speak, and for a split second my mind said to me: "Oh, that's nice they're running again.'"

That line was met with laughter, followed by thunderous applause.

Guests: Dr Jill Biden and her husband Vice President Biden (above with Letterman) were also at the event

One liners: 'I was listening to the President speak, I was listening to the Vice President speak, and for a split second my mind said to me: "Oh, that's nice they're running again,"' joked Letterman

Laughs: 'Mrs. Obama said something that rang true with me, and it makes perfect sense, but it's hard to get this group of people up on stage at the same time,' said Letterman. 'In my case, I'm pretty much ready to go and happy to be out of the house'

Look-alike: Whitman (left), best known for his poetry collection Leaves of Grass, died in 1892. He and Letterman (right) are both writers however, and do have remarkably similar beards.

Stewart also had some fun with the Vice President while introducing him and his wife Dr. Jill Biden at the event, saying; 'Hes always a guy, you know, we had a lot of fun with  hes a guy thats unpredictable.

'Hell say whatever he kind of thinks of, whatever comes to his mind, sort of impulsive.

'Sometimes, you might think to yourself, "That sounds crazy," or "Man, that crazy." And who would have thought that now, that gets you the Republican nomination.'

Stewart then looked around the airfield and said; 'Dont worry. Trumps gonna keep you busy when hes the commander in chief. Youre going to have to repaint all the planes with "TRUMP" in big gold letters. Youre gonna be busy.'

It was a reunion of sorts as well for Stewart as the former Daily Show host's coworkers Hasan Minhaj and Kristen Schaal performed later that night during the evening's comedy show alongside Judd Apatow and Jeff Ross.

On a serious note: The President spoke about the importance of 'using our military power wisely' and only sending those in the armed forces into harm's way 'when its absolutely necessary, adding; 'One of my greatest honors is to serve you and your families'

Giving thanks: The First Lady commented about how hard it is to get her and the President and the Vice President and his wife in the same place but said; 'Were doing it because of you. We have cleared our schedule, we made this happen, because we all care. You mean so much to us'

Laying low: Letterman has only made a handful of public appearances since stepping down from his post at CBS last May

Signing off: Letterman introduced the evening's comedy show by saying it was 'the best show in the United States tonight. Except maybe Hamilton' (above with Stewart and the Obamas)

President Obama and the First Lady skipped the comedy and used their remarks to thank all those who have served in the military, as well as their families.

The President spoke about the importance of 'using our military power wisely' and only sending those in the armed forces into harm's way 'when its absolutely necessary, adding; 'One of my greatest honors is to serve you and your families.'

The First Lady meanwhile followed up her aforementioned comment about how hard it is to get her and the President and the Vice President and his wife in the same place by saying; 'Were doing it because of you. We have cleared our schedule, we made this happen, because we all care. You mean so much to us.'

The evening's remarks ended though with Letterman taking the stage one last time to introduce the comedians set to perform for those in attendance.

And the former later night host proved that despite being off the air for almost a year, he can still deliver the perfect sign off.

'You are in store tonight for what will be  the best show in the United States tonight,' said Letterman.
A man has smashed a 126-year-old statue of a Portuguese king after toppling the iconic carving while climbing it to take a selfie.

The unidentified man climbed onto the pedestal of the Dom Sebastiao statue at Rossio railway station in Lisbon in order to capture the perfect shot.

Instead the 24-year-old managed to bump the item, sending it crashing to the ground and breaking into dozens of pieces.

Pieces of the revered statue lie in pieces after being collected from the train station in Lisbon, Portugal

The carving of 16th century king Dom Sebastian which was destroyed had been on display for 126 years

It had sat next to two horseshoe shaped entrances outside Rossio station in downtown Lisbon

A spokesperson for Infrastructure Portugal said they did not know when it would be fixed or returned to the site

The statue - which was in perfect condition - had sat adorning the station entrance since June 11, 1890, Globo reported.

A spokesperson for Infrastructure Portugal did not know when it would be fixed, or returned to the site. However, he ruled out attaching it to the base using screws once it was reinstalled.

Dom Sebastian, known as the child king, was a young leader who ruled Portugal from 1557 - 1578 after taking the throne aged three following the deaths of his father and grandfather.
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Nestled in the mountains on the island of Flores, Indonesia, lies a unique sight - rice fields divided in the shape of a spider's web.

The entire field is owned by the community and has been divided up over time in accordance with tradition which dates back hundreds of years.

Photographer and engineer Romulo Rejon was perched on a small hill in Cara village near Ruteng on the Indonesian island, as he took the photos.

The spider's web fields are known as Lingko fields and can be found in the mountains on the Indonesian island of Flores

Their eye-catching design is only visible from above and it is not clear whether villagers in nearby Ruteng intended for the design to look the way it does

The fields have traditionally been divided up in an equal manner - with larger families and those of higher status having bigger paddies

He said: 'I honestly don't know how big the field is but you can tell it is quite big by looking at the size and scale of people and houses in the pictures.

'I have visited many countries in Asia and this is the only place where I have seen rice fields shaped like this.'

Locals in Ruteng descend from the Manggarai people who came up with an unusual system of planting the fields to ensure it was fair.

The central point of the fields is known as the lodok, where there is a pole. When requesting a field, the head of a family is thought to have held up a number of fingers to the pole depending on how big his family was.

The space between the fingers was marked on the pole and lines were drawn from these two points to the outer circle of the Lingko, which determines the size of the field.

Families with a higher status also got a larger patch of the fields. It is not clear, however, whether the spider web's pattern came about by accident or was intended.

Like almost all of Flores - which used to belong to Portugal - the Manggarai people predominantly practise Christianity. They live in a clan-system and each village tends to have two clans.

It is generally thought that the design was intended to symbolize balance and harmony between people and nature.

When a new field was drawn out, a water buffalo was traditionally sacrificed to usher in good luck for the paddy's owner

The Lingko spider's web fields can only be found on the volcanic island of Flores, which is in the East Nusa Tenggara province

Photographer and engineer Romulo Rejon was perched on a small hill in Cara village when he took the stunning photographs

Originally, the fields were used to dry grow rice and root vegetables - but are now used to wet grow rice, which is found across the whole of Indonesia

Traditionally during planting and harvesting time, ceremonies and ritual offerings were held at the centre of the webs.

When a new field was mapped out in the web locals would sacrifice a water buffalo to usher in a bountiful harvest from the patch.

While root vegetables used to be grown in the fields, Mr Rejon, 56, who now lives in Sao Paulo, Brazil, said they are all used to make rice.

He said: 'It was a fabulous experience.

'We climbed to a nearby hill and I started playing with my camera, trying different lenses and compositions.

'For sense of scale, I then patiently waited for a family to come to work to their rice paddy.

The central point of the fields is known as the lodok, where there is a pole. When requesting a field, the head of a family is thought to have held up a number of fingers to the pole depending on how big his family was

The space between the fingers was marked on the pole and lines were drawn from these two points to the outer circle of the Lingko, which determines the size of the field

Tourists who make it to the rural destination can pay a guide to take them around the fields and tell them about their history
Nicky Morgan today unveiled a humiliating U-turn on flagship Government plans to force all schools to become academies while votes were still being counted.

In a move immediately blasted as burying bad news, the Education Secretary made the toe-curling announcement that good or outstanding schools would not now be forced to leave local authority control.

David Cameron featured the policy in his conference speech last year and George Osborne placed it at the heart of his Budget last month.

Education Secretary Nicky Morgan revealed the humiliating U-turn in a BBC interview today days after telling teaching unions there was no reverse gear on the plan

The embarrassing U-turn represents yet another aspect of his package to have fallen apart.

Mrs Morgan said: 'This is about being a listening government and I would consider myself to be a listening Secretary of State.

'Better to have reforms than have none at all.'

She added: 'We absolutely support those strong local authorities where schools are good and outstanding they can make the choice to convert.

'I hope that they will because we are convinced that becoming academies does lift standards but they can do the right thing for them and I think that reflects the concerns and the conversations that we have had.'

The Department for Education said the idea of converting all schools to academies within six years was now an 'aspiration' rather than a promise.

Less than a week ago, Mrs Morgan offered a defiant defence of the plans despite being heckled at the National Association of Head Teachers conference.

And last month she insisted at another teachers conference there was 'no reverse gear' on academisation.

The new U-turn represents a further collapse of George Osborne's March Budget after he added the controversial education policy to his most high profile speech of the year

Shadow Education Secretary Lucy Powell said: 'It is welcome news that the Tory Government has finally listened to Labour and the alliance of head teachers, parents and local government who opposed these plans, and dropped the forced academisation of all schools.

'It is frankly a humiliating climb down for David Cameron and his Education Secretary, who just weeks ago were insisting they would plough on with the policy regardless.

'There remain enormous challenges facing our schools under the Tories, and their fixation with structures has distracted school leaders and created panic in the schools system, at the expense of raising standards.

'Ministers must urgently tackle the serious problems they have created in education, including school budgets falling in real terms for the first time in twenty years, chronic shortages of teachers, not enough good school places, and chaos and confusion in the exams system.

'This Government's failed approach to education is letting down our children and will hold back young people for years to come.'

Shadow education secretary Lucy Powell said it was a 'humiliating' climbdown

Chris Keates, General Secretary of the NASUWT, the largest teachers' union in the UK said: 'This is another humiliating failure for the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

'Teachers, school leaders and schools have been subjected to an unnecessary period of anxiety and panic as a result of his ill-conceived and politically motivated statement, which did not even command the support of the Tory rank and file, particularly in local councils, and caused rebellion in his own ranks.

'It is disgraceful that teachers and school leaders, already under enormous pressure and stress, were ever subjected to this.

'Although the plan to convert every school to an academy has been dropped, the Government is still subjecting schools in particular Ofsted categories to forced academisation and still regards structural change as the answer to raising standards.

'This aspect of the academisation policy has not changed and the NASUWT will continue to challenge it.'

David Davis, one of the Tory MPs who led a rebellion on the policy, welcomed the U-turn.

He said: 'This is an intelligent concession by the Government.

'Along with a number of my colleagues, I expressed concerns about aspects of the Government's academisation proposals, and the Government has quite rightly considered our concerns and thought again.

'While I will need to examine the details of the Government's concessions, I welcome this sensible move by the Government.'

Labour MP Jenny Chapman said: 'Massive climb down from Nicky Morgan on academisation. Can't think what's behind timing of this announcement.'
A truck in Mexico that swerved onto a dirt track to try and avoid a military checkpoint ended up losing control and tipping over - revealing a huge stash of drugs that then came tumbling out.

The incident occurred close to the border between the states of Sinaloa and Sonora in western Mexico.

According to a statement from the Mexican military: 'A trailer that was transporting approximately 25 tonnes of marijuana turned over onto the 'Y' side road in the municipality of Huatabampo, Sonora, after being detected by military officials of the 60th battalion of infantry during a check in the border area with the state of Sinaloa.'

The articulated truck rolled over when the driver swerved attempting to avoid a military checkpoint

The driver attempted to duck down a rural back road outside Huatabampo, Sonora in Mexico when he crashed

The truck was carrying almost 2,500 packages of cannabis and a further 1.8kg of crystal meth

The Secretary of National Defence (SEDENA) detailed how they arrived on the scene to find the blue Kenworth lorry on its right side. The trailer had opened at the top, revealing its valuable drug cargo of marijuana and about 1.8 kilos of methamphetamine.

The truck driver, seeing the check-point ahead, had swerved off onto a dirt road called 'Y', which leads to some of the local villages, but in his panic lost control and tipped the vehicle over.

SEDENA added: 'We established that the lorry was on its way from the south to the north, where we believe it wanted to get to a coastal point on one of the states neighbouring Sonora and Sinaloa.'

The authorities found 2,495 packets with brown tape and each with an approximate weight of 10 kilos. In the cabin, the soldiers also found two plastic containers with 1.8 kilos of crystal meth.

It was not revealed whether the driver fled or was arrested.

Each of the 2,500 cannabis packages contained approximately 10kg of the drug weighing a total of 25 tonnes

The truck, pictured, swerved onto a back road and the driver lost control leaving it stricken on its side
He had his son, two, in the vehicle with him who he was taking to daycare

The man, 43, pulled out a gun but as he was putting it away he shot himself

between the two drivers became heated on road in Texas

A father shot himself during a moment of road rage whilst taking his two-year-old son to daycare in Texas.

The 43-year-old man was on Highway 281, near Nakoma, San Antonio when he became involved in an argument with another driver.

The man, 43, was driving on Highway 281 (pictured), near Nakoma, San Antonio during the road rage

Police said as the confrontation became heated the man pulled out a gun. He then accidentally shot himself in the leg while he was putting it away.

His son, who was in the car, was not hurt and was taken to daycare by officers.

Medics took the man to University Hospital for treatment.

No charges have yet been filed after the incident, police said.

There was also no information about what caused the road rage to flare up between the two drivers.
On Friday she was detained by immigration officers for breaching her visa

Alleged to have hidden $1.3m and spent the rest of the money

A 21-year-old student accused of going on a spending spree after millions of dollars were wrongly put into her bank account allegedly hid $1.3 million of the cash by make small transfers into private bank accounts.

Christine Jiaxin Lee, from Malaysia, who has been arrested by immigration officials for breaching her student visa, allegedly hid the money by transferring about $5000 per day into secret bank accounts across Australia.

According to The Daily Telegraph, police will allege that over nine-month period, about $33,000 per week was sent to bank accounts with no connection to Westpac bank, who initially transferred Ms Lee $4.6m after a processing error.

Those smaller payments were minimal enough to avoid raising any alarms with banking officials.

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Student Christine Jiaxin Lee, 21, from Malaysia but living in Sydney, allegedly hid $1.3m of the $4.6m mistakenly transferred to her by transferring about $5000 per day into secret bank accounts across Australia

The Malaysian national had been renting a lavish penthouse in Sydney's inner west, believed to be worth $780 a week

The chemical engineering student was arrested at Sydney Airport on Wednesday as she tried to board a flight to Malaysia

Dressed in a black tracksuit and cap, Ms Lee's boyfriend Vincent King spent a short time with lawyers on Friday before leaving and returning with a surgical mask over his face after providing documents to help her get bail

Christine Jiaxin Lee was been arrested on suspicion of spending millions of dollars that were mistakenly transferred into her account four years ago

The chemical engineering student allegedly splashed out $3.3 million in less than a year, making cash transfers and adding to a collection of designer handbags, according to Nine News.

Westpac confirmed the same amount, $3.3m, was still missing and was believed to have been spent or moved overseas, The Daily Telegraph reported.

Ms Lee also lived in a luxury apartment in Sydney's inner west overlooking the harbour, at a cost of more than $3000 per month.

She was due to walk free from police custody on Friday after being granted $1000 bail in court over charges relating to the $4.6 million she wrongly received.

But she was taken into custody by immigration officers and transferred to Villawood Immigration Detention Centre, in Sydney's western suburbs.

'She was taken by immigration and will be held in detention at Villawood,' a police source said.

'She got bail for what she did but the visa is another thing and they'll deal with that.'

The Department of Immigration and Border Protection would not comment on her status.

'It is not appropriate for the Department to comment on matters before the court or an individual's visa status.'

Ms Lee is being held at Villawood Immigration Detention Centre in west Sydney after being re-arrested on Friday for allegedly breaching conditions of her student visa (stock image)

Ms Lee had been due to walk free on Friday after being granted $1000 bail, but was rearrested, this time by immigration department officers (stock image)

Mr King was seen with Ms Lee's mother outside Waverely Local Court on Friday, where bail was granted for Ms Lee. However, she was later detained by immigration officers

The woman was also dressed in a black tracksuit and cap with a surgical mask over her face

Mr King (pictured in a Real Madrid jacket) was pictured earlier in the day without a mask

Lee still allegedly owes $3.3 million to her bank after spending the cash on designer goods and handbags

Ms Lee had been granted bail on Thursday, provided she paid $1,000, surrendered her passport and lived with boyfriend Vincent King.

However, she was blocked from leaving custody when her boyfriend couldn't prove his identity and made spelling errors on the application form.

On Friday morning, Mr King presented several documents to Waverley Local Court with his name being amended to Junnan Jin so the Malaysian-born woman could make bail.

Mr King arrived just before 9.30am to speak to Ms Lee's Legal Aid lawyer who appeared on her behalf as she remained in custody.

Both he and Ms Lee's mother dressed in a black tracksuit and cap with surgical masks over their faces.

Ms Lee will have her case heard again in court on June 21.

The 21-year-old was detained at Sydney Airport on Wednesday night when she attempted to leave Australia for Malaysia.

According to police, Ms Lee opened the bank account before her 18th birthday, but it was not until 2014 that she started withdrawing money. Her transactions between 2014 and 2015 totalled $4,653,333.02, the Sydney Morning Herald reported.

The luxury apartment building when Christine Lee lived in on Rider Boulevard in Rhodes

Beneath her luxurious apartment in the north-western suburb of Rhodes is the hairdressing salon she would frequent (pictured). Her hairdresser called Ms Lee 'a nice girl but she didnt talk too much'

The 21-year-old made a brief appearance at Sydney's Waverley Local Court (above) on Thursday morning

It is believed Ms Lee's mother and partner wore the surgical mask to obscure their identities

Ms Lee is thought to have been held at Surry Hills Police Station. She is accused of going on a spending spree after wrongly receiving $4.6 million

Wielding a batch of documents, Mr King appeared at Waverly Local Court on Friday for a bail application

When the Malaysian national appeared in Waverley Local Court on Thursday charged with dishonestly obtaining financial advantage by deception and knowingly dealing with the proceeds of crime, she claimed she was living at a prestigious sub-penthouse in the inner west of Sydney.

With natural surroundings and oceanfront views of Sydney Harbour Bridge, the Rider Boulevard apartment is rented at $780 a week or $3120 per month, according to property records.

Beneath her luxurious apartment in the north-western suburb of Rhodes is the hairdressing salon she would frequent.

Her hairdresser called Ms Lee 'a nice girl but she didnt talk too much'.

We heard what had happened, but it is ridiculous that they put all that money in someones account by mistake,' she said.

The stylist said there were no signs of a lavish lifestyle from her 21-year-old client and was shocked to learn the amount of money which was alleged to have been spent by the university student.

'On what? No, not here, we are not that expensive.'

The court heard that although the police fraud unit had started their investigation into the withdrawal of the money in 2012, they only issued the arrest warrant on March 4 this year.

The student told her lawyer that she had obtained the emergency passport to fly home to Malaysia to visit her parents, who did not know about her arrest.

Lee's lawyer, Fiona McCarron told the court that the money was partly spent on luxury items like expensive handbags, to which the Magistrate commented: 'That's a lot of handbags.'

And Ms Stapleton agreed with the lawyer when she said the police would struggle to prove the spending of the money was illegal.

'They gave it to her,' said the Magistrate, who added that if it was proved that the money was indeed given to Lee, then the student would owe the money to the bank and have to pay it back.

'But she wouldn't necessarily have broken the law,' said the Magistrate.

Ms Stapleton suggested Lee may not have broken the law as the money she spent was not 'proceeds of crime. It's money we all dream of', according to Fairfax Media.

Court documents revealed she is alleged to have committed the offences on multiple occasions between July 2014 and March 2015.

It is alleged she failed to notify the bank that she was not entitled to the $4.6m.

The court heard she knew police were attempting to make contact with her and she obtained an emergency Malaysian passport in order to leave the country.

Her boyfriend Vincent King (pictured) - who tried to pay a $1000 bond for her release - was only carrying a Malaysian ID card and officers could not verify his identity

Her boyfriend of 18 months Vincent King did not bring verifiable documentation to court on Thursday

The court heard she knew police were attempting to make contact with her and she obtained an emergency Malaysian passport in order to leave the country

On Thursday, Mr King, her boyfriend of 18 months said he had no knowledge of the funds.

He said he had 'no idea' she had ever been given access to the money and reportedly claimed to have never seen her make any extravagant purchases.

It wasn't until Thursday morning when Lee called him asking for help that he knew anything about it.

When told how much money she'd had access to, he said 'that's big money'.

Beneath her luxurious apartment is the hairdressing salon she would frequent.

Her hairdresser called Ms Lee 'a nice girl but she didnt talk too much'.

'I havent seen her for a long time now - its not true, is it?' she asked.

'We heard what had happened, but it is ridiculous that they put all that money in someones account by mistake.

'But she is okay now, right? adding she thought Ms Lee had been released.

The stylist said there were no signs of a lavish lifestyle from her 21-year-old client and was shocked to learn the amount of money which was alleged to have been spent ($3.3m) by the university student.

'On what? No, not here, we are not that expensive.'

Ms Lee's boyfriend posted a picture of the stunning view seen from their shared accommodation in Rhodes

The Rider Boulevard apartment boasts sweeping oceanfront views of the Sydney Harbour Bridge and city

Pictured is a $780-per-week sub-penthouse apartment in the same building where Ms Lee lives, similar to the one she rents

Lee obtained an emergency passport before attempting to make the flight on Wednesday, the court heard
When Kelly Hyles was growing up in Guyana, she could never have dreamed that one day she would be attending one of the most prestigious colleges in America.

But since coming to New York and settling in Queens with her family aged 11, Hyles went on to become her class valedictorian and was accepted into all eight Ivy League schools last month.

Now Hyles has revealed to Dailymail.com that she will be attending Harvard in the fall after rejecting Yale and Princeton, becoming the second New York teen to do so.

Hyles said that Harvard won her over with its welcoming atmosphere and prestigious faculty, but she was also attracted to its 'work hard, play hard' ethic.

Kelly Hyles, 17, who grew up in Guyana (right) but came to New York aged 11, has revealed she will be going to Harvard (left, next to statue of John Harvard) in the fall after being accepted into all eight Ivy League schools

She said: 'While I'm really looking forward to my studies, college is also a time to branch out and have fun, so there will definitely be some of that.

'I don't have any plans to join a sorority or anything like that at the moment, but maybe that will change when I get there.'

Despite accepting her place at the college on Saturday, which was attended by the likes of Barack Obama, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, Hyles said the reality hasn't sunk in yet.

She added: 'I'm still in disbelief. I thought I would be lucky to get into one of the Ivy League schools, but I never thought I would get into all of them. I think it's only going to sink in when I go away.

Hyles (pictured with her valedictorian trophy) said that she was attracted to Harvard for its prestigious teachers and it's 'work hard, play hard' atmosphere

'It's going to be a big change from living at home in Queens especially because I have a really close relationship with my mom, but it's something I'm looking forward to.'

Hyles' mom, Anetta, worked two jobs as a nurse in order to support her daughter through school, meaning she had to wake herself up at 5.30am in order to get herself to school on time.

Asked whether there were any days where she considered simply staying in bed, Hyles said: 'It wasn't always easy, but I knew that if I wanted to achieve my goals I couldn't really afford to give myself time off!'

Hyles said she is now most looking forward to working with the distinguished professors at the college, where she is planning to study to become a neurosurgeon.

While most girls grow up aspiring to be pop star or actresses, Hyles said she initially wanted to be a judge after growing up watching Judge Mathis on TV.

Her tendency to talk a lot, and ask a lot of question, led family members to joke that she should become a lawyer, which put the idea in her head.

But Hyles said: 'I know that whatever I end up doing I'm going to want to take it as far as I can go. So I didn't just want to be a lawyer, I wanted to be the judge.'

That changed when a relative was diagnosed with epilepsy, sparking Hyles' interest in studying the brain, while she was also naturally drawn to the science classes at the High School for Math, Science and Engineering at City College of New York, where she studied.

Hyles has become the second Long Island teen to accept a place at Harvard after getting into all eight Ivy League schools following an announcement by Augusta Uwamanzu-Nna (pictured) earlier this week

Alongside her regular classes, and college-level courses she is taking for extra credit, Hyles also began volunteering at Mount Sinai hospital where she helped out with diabetes studies.

Hyles is the second New York teen to accept a place at Harvard after being accepted by all eight Ivy League schools.

Augusta Uwamanzu-Nna, who attended Elmont Memorial High School, revealed her decision earlier this week by unzipping a sweatshirt to reveal the name of the college in front of her classmates.
The youngest member of the controversial Mehajer family has defended her 2016 Miss Lebanon Australia title, saying she won the pageant 'fairly' and rejecting suggestions the contest was rigged.

Mary Mehajer, the younger sister of controversial former Auburn deputy mayor Salim Mehajer, has told the Daily Telegraph she welcomes a consumer watchdog investigation into the contest.

The 18-year-old rejected claims from other contestants that the pageant had been influenced by her brother's sponsorship of the event, despite the fact that she was able to enter just three weeks beforehand.

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Mary Mehajer has defended her Miss Lebanon Australia 2016 title, saying she won the beauty pageant 'fairly'

'I would love for (New South Wales Fair Trading) to investigate and see that I won fairly,' Ms Mehajer told the Daily Telegraph.

'My brother being a sponsor is such a beautiful thing. Hes supporting his community and I think that is so positive.'

Claims that the competition was rigged emerged following Sunday's event, with at least three judges revealing exclusively to Daily Mail Australia that Mary was not their first choice for the crown.

In addition to Salim's sponsorship, Aiisha Mehajer was also involved on the event's organising committee.

Despite the criticism angering her older siblings, it appears not to have bothered the pageant winner.

'I just brush it off. Patience has a reward. Id rather have the fruits of patience than be bitter,' she said.

Mary Mehajer was crowned as Miss Lebanon Australia on Sunday evening at Dolton House, Pyrmont. Her brother, the suspended Auburn deputy mayor Salim, was all smiles at the time

A fellow contestant has complained to Fair Trading NSW about the Miss Lebanon Australia contest

'Patience, Silence and a Smile': Mary Mehajer posted this photo on Instagram showing off her Miss Lebanon Australia 2016 crown

However both Salim and Aiisha appeared unable to 'brush it off' this week, attacking one of the Miss Lebanon Australia judges who said no one voted for the eventual winner of the contest.

The flamboyant siblings both posted a candid picture of judge and celebrity dentist David Carr holding his middle finger up to the camera on Friday.

'The photo below reflects his true character,' Salim fumed. 'Which regular doctor poses like that?'

'Not sure which 'respected dentist' poses like this,' Aiisha added.

The Mehajer siblings both attacked dentist David Carr (pictured) over this image

Mary Mehajer, middle, poses with other contestant's after winning the Miss Lebanon Australia crown on Sunday

Dr Carr has been the most outspoken critic of the Miss Lebanon contest and continued his criticism when talking to the Daily Telegraph.

'The judges did not treat the competition as a beauty pageant, we were looking for an ambassador to represent the Lebanese community,' he said.

'We were looking for someone mature with poise, worldly, with elegance and diction

'Mary wasnt in that league, shes just young.'

On Thursday first expressed his surprise at the result.

'We were just a little bit surprised at the result. We were surprised because none of us voted for her,' he said.

Responding to the attacks, Dr Carr said he believed the picture was taken at the Melbourne Cup with his son a few years back and had been pinched from his Facebook.

'I am really interested why he went to so much trouble.'

Aiisha Mehajer (right) joined in the attacks on the celebrity dentist, posting the same photo to Instagram and attacking Dr Carr's credibility

Catwalk: Mary Mehajer (left) and contestant Sanaa Ammoun (right) competed for the bikini wear title

Who do YOU think deserved the title? Three more contestants strol the runway during the contest

Evening wear: Two contestants shimmy down the Miss Lebanon Australia 2016 runway

The 'baby' of the Mehajer family cradled a large bouquet as she posed for pictures with her parents, Mohamed and Amal, and the rest of the clan

The nervous competitors, including Ms Mehajer (in a silver sequined dress, centre), placed their hands on their hips as they waiting for the winner to be announecd

The Mehajer Bros. logo is pictured inside the official guide to the Miss Lebanon Australia contest

He thanked the Mehajers for giving him publicity and urged the pageant organisers to reveal Mary Mehajer's vote count.

'I feel it would solve the mystery if the scoring was opened up to public scrutiny,' Dr Carr said.

On Thursday, two other judges on the five-person panel told Daily Mail Australia Ms Mehajer was not their first choice to be crowned Miss Lebanon Australia.

'I personally had voted for a few of the other girls... I had two favourites in mind myself,' the panel said.

'Look, she was up there, she was definitely up there. If the others had voted for her too she would have had the chance of winning number one.

A third judge, Krystsina Labuzova, also told Daily Mail Australia Ms Mehajer was not her favourite contestant either - though she said she was 'one of the best girls'.

Ms Labuzova said she believed Ms Mehajer would be 'one of the top three or five' girls, 'But I wouldn't say she was my top choice'.

When Daily Mail Australia contacted one judge, celebrity dentist David Carr (pictured), he said: 'We were just a little bit surprised at the result. We were surprised because none of us voted for her'

A second judge told Daily Mail Australia she had her eye on two other candidates but added Ms Mehajer was 'definitely up there'

'She was pretty good, like I did expect she'd make it to one of the (final) three girls (the winner and two runner ups),' she said.

'I've seen how the beauty contests run before and if she (had) more experience I think she's very good.

'If you sum up all the marks from all the judges it could've happened. She wasn't the lowest mark'.

A fourth judge said Ms Mehajer was in their top three girls along with the first and second runners up, Mary Hakim and Jessica Nercessian.

'She was certainly articulate. She's very nice looking,' the judge said. 'Certainly Mary was top three with me. I would need the voting slips to confirm her exact position'.

Judges had to give the nine contestants a mark out of 20 each for the daywear, swimwear and evening wear and question and answer components of the pageant.

The votes were then passed up to an adjudicator where the votes were tallied. Daily Mail Australia has been unable to reach the fifth judge.

A third judge, Krystsina Labuzova (pictured), also told Daily Mail Australia Ms Mehajer was not her favourite contestants though said she was 'one of the best girls'

Strutting her stuff, Ms Mehajer (centre) faced off against eight competitors in her quest for the prestigious title, catching the attention of several onlookers (right

One contestant approached by Daily Mail Australia said the contest was 'rigged, rigged, rigged' - although this has been denied by Joseph Khoury, the pageant director.

A contestant has lodged a complaint with the NSW Office of Fair Trading and the agency is assessing whether it can investigate.

A member of audience, who didn't want to be identified, told A Current Affair the result of the competition was 'disgusting'.

'When it came down to them selecting the top five, when his sister was in it (Mr Mehajer's sister Mary), everyone knew it was game over,' the audience member said.

'He (Mr Mehajer) acted in a way where I literally thought he was the one crowned Miss Lebanon.'

Belle of the ball! Touting a bouquet of flowers, Mary Mehajer poses with a friend (left) after sweeping the title. On right, she is pictured during a candid moment with Salim Mehajer's wife, Aysha

In this family photo obtained by Daily Mail Australia, Mary is pictured furthest on right with (from left) Aysha Mehajer, Salim Mehajer, the matriarch of the eight-strong clan Amal and sister Khadijeh

Choreographer Louis Abou Anny, who helped train the contestants in how to walk the stage and dance, told Daily Mail Australia Ms Mehajer deserved to win because of her 'simplicity'.

'She's the best. She's very simple, she's elegant, she's a natural. She's very natural, she deserves it'.

Salim Mehajer was pictured grinning when Mary when the competition, celebrating with a vague platitude on social media: 'Greatness is to stay humble when the world calls you great.'

Daily Mail Australia approached Salim Mehajer and pageant founder Joseph Khoury for comment.

Salim's older sister Khadijeh 'Kat' Mehajer is likely to bring some more good news to the family with a 'big wedding' to fiance Ibrahim Sakalaki expected later this year.

Old pictures obtained by Daily Mail Australia recently showed both Kat and Aiisha have turned over a glamorous new leaf in the lead-up to the ceremony.

Khadijeh (left) is pictured with look-a-like sister Aiisha (right). The pair are often confused with one another

Revealing photos of Salim Mehajer's sisters Kat (pictured left) and Aiisha (right) before their dramatic transformation have emerged

It is unknown how long ago the photographs were taken, but Aiisha (pictured left, before and right, after) has had dramatic changes to her appearance over the years

Salim Mehajer's wife Aysha Mehajer (centre) is pictured with Khadijeh (right) during family celebrations
The CIA's Pakistani bureau chief was pulled out of the country just two months after the death of Osama Bin Laden with agonizing stomach pain, which may have been poison..

Mark Kelton, now 59, had previously worked in Moscow when he was brought in to oversee the CIA's Pakistani bureau, which had a fraught relationship with the country's Inter-Services Intelligence Department (ISI).

That relationship got dramatically worse very quickly - and saw Kelton flying out of the country seven months later in agony, taken down by what some in the agency suspect was a poisoning, The Washington Post reported.

Boss: Mark Kelton (pictured) was head of the CIA's Pakistan bureau in 2011, but had to quit after suffering agonizing stomach pains that some believe were caused by a rival intelligence agency poisoning him

A poisoning was never confirmed and both sides have officially denied the claim.

However, sources said the CIA took the possibility seriously, that a poisoning could well have happened, and that some still believe it did.

Top target: Kelton oversaw the raid in which Osama bin Laden was killed - leading to claims that Pakistani officials were hiding the terrorist. In retaliation, Kelton's name was leaked to press

The CIA even searched for evidence that Kelton - whose role at the CIA had been revealed by Pakistani press just before he fell ill, and whose relationship with the ISI chief had completely collapsed - was targeted.

If he was, it would come as little surprise, given how much his success at the Pakistan bureau were matched by the ISI's hatred for him.

Kelton's previous role in Moscow had seen him skirmishing with the KGB and its successor during and after the Cold War, and he brought that mentality to Pakistan, telling staff to stop treating the ISI like a belligerent partner and start treating them like an enemy.

If the ISI was keeping a list of black marks against Kelton's name, this would have been the first.

The second would come just 48 hours after he landed, when CIA contractor Raymond Davis was arrested on January 27 after shooting and killing two Pakistani men that he said tried to rob him.

Kelton told Cameron Munter, then the US Ambassador, not to admit Davis was a CIA contractor - despite his car being found to be full of spy gear, including a disguise kit.

Munter said that would patronize Pakistani officials, but even President Obama referred to Davis as a 'diplomat' for over a month until Munter was able to deal directly with then-ISI chief Ahmed Shuja Pasha.

After a secret trial Davis, a worker for the Blackwater private security firm, was released on March 16 - in exchange for a payment of $2.4million to the families of the men he'd killed.

His release coincided with the return of US drone bombings, which had largely stopped while Davis was imprisoned, and which are hated by members of the Army and ISI, who see them as the US overstepping their bounds.

ISI agents have even whipped up anti-American sentiment after drone bombs killed innocent civilians, The New Yorker has reported.

Pasha was furious about the drones coming back, The Washington Post said, and called the renewed bombings 'a kick in the teeth'. He reportedly refused to deal directly with Kelton ever again.

Troubles: Kelton's troubles began months earlier, when CIA contractor Raymond Davis (right, with his lawyer) killed two Pakistani men. Kelton refused to admit Davis's CIA connection, upsetting Pakistani authorities

Drones: And things got worse after the US negotiated Davis's freedom. The next day drone strikes, which had stopped briefly, began again. Kelton's Pakistani counterpart, who hated strikes, called it 'a kick in the teeth'

In May 2011, the Pakistani bureau achieved one of its greatest victories when Osama bin Laden's compound in the city of Abbottabad.

But this success only damaged the US-Pakistani relationship further, as some called the ISI incompetent and others - including then-CIA Director Leon Panetta - suggested Pakistani officials had actively hidden the terrorist kingpin.

In retaliation, senior officials leaked information about the CIA's operations to Pakistani press.

Counterpart: Kelton's counterpart at the time was Ahmed Shuja Pasha (pictured), chief of the Inter-Services Intelligence Department. He loathed Kelton and refused to speak to him

That information included not just the existence of a CIA safe house in Abbottabad or the agency using a Pakistani doctor to get DNA samples from bin Laden's compound, but also Mark Kelton's name and rank.

The chief's surname was misspelled as 'Carlton' but it was danger enough.

Soon after, Kelton began to experience severe stomach pains. At first it seemed as though he might just be responding poorly to local food - something common among Westerners living in Pakistan.

But the pains got worse. Kelton began to miss days of work, and flew out of the country to receive treatment that proved utterly useless.

So the agency began to suspect he might be being poisoned.

Current and former US officials told The Washington Post that the ISI has been linked with 'numerous plots' against journalists and diplomats - as well as other perceived threats to themselves or the state.

And while a full investigation never took place, the CIA did look through its intelligence to see if Kelton - who left the Pakistan post in July 2011 and then underwent abdominal surgery - could have been poisoned.

The CIA confirmed that it never found any proof, and Pakistan Embassy spokesman Nadeem Hotiana told the Post, 'Obviously the story is fictional, not worthy of comment.'

But in a brief phone interview with the Post, Kelton - who had declined to explain the details of his abdominal operation - confirmed that the agency did take the possibility of an attack on his life seriously, and even suggested the possibility in the first place.

'The genesis for the thoughts about [being poisoned] didnt originate with me,' he said.
However they warned people not to use the ruling in the abortion debate

But Iowa Supreme Court said Friday she can sue

Baldi's team said that didn't work because she was a fetus when Gray died

The daughter of the late Slipknot bassist Paul Gray can sue a doctor for the loss of her father's companionship even though she was still a fetus when he died, the Iowa Supreme Court ruled Friday.

The ruling came after Gray's wife Brenna filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Dr. Daniel Baldi and several medical care providers on behalf of her daughter in July 2014.

The suit was previously rejected in a lower court as the girl, referred to only as 'O.G.D.,' was just a fetus when Gray died of an overdose in 2010. But now the Supreme Court ruled it can go ahead - while warning people not to apply the decision to the abortion debate.

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Deceased: Paul Gray (pictured), from metal group Slipknot, died of an overdose in 2010. His daughter can now file a wrongful death lawsuit against medical professionals, even though she wasn't born when Gray died

Gray was found dead in a suburban Des Moines hotel room in May 2010. An autopsy showed he died of an overdose of morphine and fentanyl, a synthetic pain killer similar to morphine. He was 38.

Brenna Gray said Baldi and several medical care providers hadn't properly monitored the bassist during drug addiction treatment.

She then sued them for loss of spousal consortium, and on behalf of her daughter who was born several months after Gray died.

Because of a two-year statute of limitations, Brenna Gray's 2014 suit was thrown out.

But that statute of limitations does not apply to those under the age of eight, who can file a claim up until their tenth birthday.

Baldi's attorneys said that a child of 'negative age' cannot be considered a child under the age of eight.

But ultimately the court ruled that O.D.G. can pursue damages, as she experienced the loss of her father's support, companionship, aid, affection, comfort and guidance after she was born, not before.

'Whatever deprivation of consortium O.D.G. is currently experiencing is no less real just because she did not experience it while in utero,' the court said.

Wife: Paul Gray's wife Brenna (pictured), tried to sue in 2014 but a two-year statute of limitations stopped the suit. That statute of limitations doesn't apply to under-eights, but the defense argued fetuses don't count

Judges acknowledged that this was the first time this argument had ever come up in court, but cited similar conclusions in cases from Massachusetts and Wisconsin.

All but one of the court's seven justices agreed with the opinion. The seventh, Justice Brent Appel, didn't take part in the case.

However, the justices said that the conclusion of this case should not be used to inform the abortion debate.

They were setting aside 'all the philosophical arguments about the status of the unborn. Those arguments are not at issue here,' wrote Justice Daryl Hecht for the court.

'Any reader who scours this opinion's interstices for implied sentiments about any context beyond the narrow parental consortium question presented undertakes a fool's errand,' he added.

The case now goes back to Polk County District Court in Des Moines where Gray's daughter may pursue loss of parental consortium damages.

Paul Gray was a founding member of Slipknot, the heavy metal band formed in 1995 in Des Moines.

The group, known for wearing jarring masks, won a 2005 Grammy Award for 'Before I Forget,' a single from their third album, 'Vol 3: (The Subliminal Verses).'
Austrian police held an emergency meeting to discuss a new strategy to tackle 'foreign criminality' after an illegal immigrant battered a woman to death.

The 54-year-old victim, known only as Maria E, was beaten to death with an iron bar as she was walking to work in Vienna.

The arrested man is believed to be from Kenya and was known to the Federal Office for Asylum, who had been ordered for him to be deported two years ago.

Austrian police held an emergency meeting in order to discuss a new strategy to tackle 'foreign criminality' after an illegal immigrant battered a woman to death

He is thought to have come to Austria on a valid visa before overstaying. He reportedly had also amassed 18 previous offences since 2010, according to The Local.

The victim had been with a friend, who survived after she spotted the man holding the iron bar and crossed over the other side of the road to hide.

The victim's friend hid behind a market stall as the attack happened and managed to call the police.

'The women had parked their car nearby and were walking to work when they spotted the man with the iron bar,' said police spokesman Christoph Polzl.

'He made them nervous, and they had crossed onto the other side of the street, according to the statement by the colleague of the deceased woman.'

The victim had been with a friend, who survived after she spotted the man holding the iron bar and crossed over the other side of the road to hide

The victim's friend hid behind a market stall as the attack happened and managed to call the police

The police meeting was called 'Fight against foreign criminality' and was held in order to try and tackle similar attacks in the city.

Green politician Peter Pilz said: 'It is true that many offenders have themselves experienced terrible things. They are themselves injured and traumatised.'

'But in the moment, in which they attack the defenceless, they are offenders. And nothing else,' he said.
Care home one of two being investigated by police over systematic neglect

In one incident, his toenail was yanked off as care staff got him out of bed

Neglect is alleged to have occurred at care home in Swallowfield, Berkshire

Alan Church had an infestation of the creatures living underneath his skin, and was also found to be severely malnourished and dehydrated

An elderly man was so neglected by care home staff that his foot was left to be eaten by maggots, according to his family.

Alan Church had an infestation of the creatures living underneath his skin, and was also found to be severely malnourished and dehydrated while living at Woodbury Care Home in Swallowfield, Berkshire.

In another incident, one of the 89-year-old's toenails was pulled off as staff at the care home tried to get him out of bed.

The facility is one of two at the centre of investigation by Thames Valley Police looking into the possibility that Mr Church and other patients were being systematically neglected.

Mr Church, who was a father-of-four, died on August 24 last year after being discharged to another care home from the hospital.

His family have brought in specialist negligence lawyers Irwin Mitchell to investigate the care home as part of a private legal dispute.

Mr Church, who had seven grandchildren, had lived at the care home for a year before he was admitted to the Royal Berkshire Hospital in July 2015.

His son, David, said: 'We were shocked and absolutely horrified when we saw the full extent of my dad's condition and injuries. We cannot believe that any care home or healthcare provider could let a patient end up like this.

'Before Dad went into Woodbury House he was active and had a healthy appetite but after the new management took over, he began to lose a lot of weight, became very lethargic and always looked unkempt.

'We repeatedly raised our concerns to staff when we visited him but his condition continued to deteriorate at an alarming rate.

'He deserved so much better than the sub-standard quality of care he was given and we hope that from speaking out we can highlight the issues in care homes and that vast improvements are made so this never happens to any other families.

'We trusted staff and professionals at Woodbury House, but we feel that Dad was greatly let down and would have had a greater quality of life and still be alive if he had not been neglected.'

His death was one of the incidents that sparked a police investigation into neglect at the Swallowfield home.

Thames Valley Police have also begun an investigation into another care home, The Berkshire, both run by BrighterKind.

People from both Bracknell Forest and Wokingham borough were still being referred to the care homes as the police investigation entered its tenth month.

Wokingham Borough Council's Adult Safeguarding Team first raised concerns about the care homes in July 2015.

Detective Constable Nathan Adby, from Thames Valley Police's protecting vulnerable people investigation unit, said: 'Officers are currently conducting inquiries following concerns about people who are or who have been a resident at either The Berkshire or Woodbury House.

'Our priority remains with the welfare of the residents in the homes and the relevant next of kin have been contacted to ensure they are aware of our investigation.

Woodbury Care Home in Swallowfield, Berkshire, is one of two at the centre of investigation by Thames Valley Police looking into the possibility that Mr Church and other patients were being systematically neglected

'Thames Valley Police has been liaising with our partners at the Care Quality Commission and Wokingham Borough Council to ensure residents are safeguarded.

'If any friends or family of people who have been resident at the homes, staff or former staff would like to raise any concerns, please come forward and speak to officers.'

Stuart Rowbotham, director of health and well-being at Wokingham Borough Council, said: 'As soon as concerns were raised we took immediate action, working with our health partners and the police, to ensure the health and well-being of all residents at both Woodbury House and The Berkshire Nursing Home.

'I appreciate these concerns can cause worry and anxiety for residents and family members, and they have been fully informed of the situation by both ourselves and our partners including the police and the care provider BrighterKind.

'We will continue to support the provider to ensure they continue to make substantial improvements and that the safety and health and well-being of residents is a priority.'

A spokesman for BrighterKind said: 'We have been co-operating with Thames Valley Police since February during their inquiries relating to historical concerns that were raised with Wokingham Borough Council's Adult Safeguarding Team.

'The well-being of our residents is our first consideration and we actively encourage people to raise any concerns that they have about any aspect of care. If any concerns are raised they should be investigated in an unbiased and transparent way.

'The investigation was initiated as a result of concerns that were raised by one person and it is important to emphasise that the police have not said they have found any instances of neglect.

'Our residents and relatives have been informed. We have no current complaints open at these homes.

'At a relatives' meeting this week they confirmed their satisfaction with the care being provided.

'We are working with the CQC who along with the councils receive regular updates on all the work taking place in The Berkshire.

'Residents are being admitted to Woodbury from both Bracknell and Wokingham Borough Councils.'
A group of students at Newport Harbor High School in southern California are wearing 'Dump Trump' t-shirts to school on Friday, a week after administrators ordered them to take the shirts off.

The group of 10 mostly Hispanic students was told by the administration last week that it was for their own protection, since pro-Trump students at the school had issued threats.

In addition to the bullying, the students say racist messages like 'wetbacks' and 'go back to Mexico' have been graffitied with chalk throughout the campus recently.

After they came to school last Friday wearing the shirts, they were called one by one into the principal's office and asked to take them off.

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Free speech: A group of students has won the right to wear 'Dump Trump' shirts to school, at Newport Harbor High School in southern California

The students were initially banned from wearing the shirts to school last week, when pro-Trump students allegedly made threats against them. Above, a male student wears a 'Make America Great Again' hat at the school recently, according to an Instagram post by another student

They felt this was unfair since the other students at the school had been allowed to wear 'Make America Great Again' gear all year without consequence.

'The principal told us how he was afraid of what was going to happen to us, but we told him he couldn't silence us like that,' student Anthony Agama told NBC. 'We told him we have a right to wear them.'

The students protested the decision, and on Friday, were allowed to wear their shirts to school again.

'I feel like theyre saying that we can wear the shirt makes me feel equal with them now. That I have the same privileges as they do. I didnt feel that before,' Angelina Alvarez told CBS Los Angeles.

While the students have since won the right to wear their 'Dump Trump' shirts again, the administration is standing behind their earlier decision ordering the students to take the shirts off.

Newport Harbor High School is located in wealthy Orange County, which typically votes Republican in presidential elections

'Regardless of what side youre on, we do allow students to wear their political attire as long as safety and security of our students is not comprised and that we maintain focus on learning,' Newport-Mesa Unified School District spokesman Annette Franco said.

Newport Harbor High School is located in Newport Beach, California, a wealthy town south of Los Angeles, in Orange County. While the rest of California is a mostly-liberal state, Orange County regularly votes Republican in elections, due to its wealthy constituents. In the last presidential election, the district voted for Mitt Romney over Barack Obama, 53 per cent to 44 per cent.

Like many schools in southern California, a large part of the student body is Hispanic. In fact, the school is mostly split between 58 per cent white students and 36 per cent Hispanic students.

Students have told NBC that the two ethnic groups tend to sit apart at lunch time, and that relations between the two groups has only gotten worse since Trump announced his candidacy last year with an impassioned speech about Mexican immigrants being 'rapist' and 'criminals'.

Newport Harbor student Susan Chingay, 16, says she decided to make a stand and wear a Dump Trump t-shirt to school after she heard about a teen getting punched at an anti-Trump rally in California recently.
The federal security officer arrested for allegedly shooting his wife dead outside a high school and suspected of then going on a deadly rampage was previously accused of sexually abusing his children and beating his wife.

Police arrested Eulalio Tordil, 62, outside a Dunkin' Donuts in Aspen Hill, Maryland, shortly before 3pm on Friday.

Officers said they have 'reason to believe' he shot dead two people and injured two more in shootings at Westfield Montgomery Mall in Bethesda and the Giant grocery store just across the street from where he was arrested.

Tordil had been a wanted man for almost 24 hours after he allegedly shot his wife, Gladys Tordil, dead and wounded a bystander after a row outside her children's high school escalated.

He has been charged with the first-degree murder of Mrs Tordil but is yet to be charged in the other two shootings.

It has also emerged that Mrs Tordil previously alleged that he sexually abused her two children, subjected them to 'intense-military-like discipline' and slapped her across the face during a row.

Court documents from a restraining order filed against Tordil also revealed that he had seven guns, including one that he was given as part of his job but was later confiscated after the domestic violence allegations were made.

Eulalio Tordil, 62, was taken into custody outside of a Dunkin' Donuts in Aspen Hill, Maryland, Friday afternoon

The 62-year-old had been on the run since Thursday, when he allegedly shot dead his ex-wife outside of a high school in Beltsville, Maryland

Police also believe he may be responsible for two more shootings that took place Friday morning in Maryland

Police located Tordil at a Dunkin' Donuts across the street from where the third shooting took place on Friday

Tordil was a federal security officer, but was on leave from his job since March, when his estranged wife filed a restraining order against him

Above, the scene of the second shooting, which took place before 11am on Friday at the Westfield Montgomery Mall in Bethesda, Maryland

The third shooting in 24 hours took place half an hour after the mall shooting, in the parking lot of a Giant grocery store in Aspen Hill, Maryland

Above, the three shooting scenes. The first happened Thursday at High Point High School in Beltsville. The next morning, a man was killed and two people injured at a shooting at the Westfield Mall. Thirty minutes later, a woman was killed in a shooting at the Giant grocery in Aspen Hills

Tordil was arrested in a strip mall with a Boston Market and Dunkin' Donuts, just across the street from scene where a woman was shot outside of a Giant grocery store

Mrs Tordil claimed in a petition for a temporary protection order filed on March 2 and seen by WTOP that her husband sexually abused at least one of her children and touched one 'inappropriately'.

She also alleged that he subjected the two young girls to 'intense-military-like discipline' which saw them forced to do push-ups and locked in a dark closet, the Washington Post reported.

The mother, 44, also told a court that in a fight in 2010 'he slapped me so hard during our altercation, my glasses broke on my face'.

Mrs Tordil added that he 'threatened to harm me if I leave him'.

After the restraining order was granted - which barred Tordil from approaching his estranged wife, her children or their school - the Federal Protective Service stripped Tordil of his badge and gun.

The mother told the authorities that he had five guns - a .40-caliber hand gun, a .45-caliber hand gun, an M-4, a revolver and a hunting gun.

But he actually had seven firearms at home, the Daily Beast reported, including the one he handed over.

A woman was approached going into the mall on Friday morning and shot by the gunman. Two men that ran to her aid were also shot. One of those men has since died and the other man is in grave condition

The woman was reportedly walking into the Macy's at the Westfield mall when she was approached by the stranger with a gun

Police responded to the scene just after 11am Friday morning. While they were on the scene of the mall shooting, they received another call of a similar incident at a grocery store five miles away

Tordil was arrested on Friday afternoon as he left a Dunkin' Donuts in Aspen Hill.

Police said a plain clothes officer spotted Tordil's vehicle while searching the area around the third shooting scene Friday afternoon.

That officer then saw a man matching Tordil's description inside the Dunkin' Donuts. Police kept surveillance on the man until he exited the cafe and they arrested him without incident as he returned to his car.

Friday's first shooting happened just before 11am at the Westfield Montgomery Mall in Bethesda.

NBC Washington reported that the gunman approached a woman and asked her where she was going.

When she ignored him, he reached into his car and started shooting. Two men responded to her screams and were also shot by the suspect.

All three were taken to the hospital in critical condition. One of the men later died.

Just 30 minutes later, officers were called to another shooting at the Giant grocery store five miles away in Aspen Hill, where a woman was killed.

That woman was sitting in her car when the suspect approached her and opened fire.

'We have no reason to believe the victims knew the suspect,' Montgomery County Assistant Chief Darryl McSwain said. 'But we are certainly looking at all angles.'

Police have not officially connected all three shootings, but said at an afternoon press conference that they have 'reason to believe' Tordil is the person responsible for the spree.

Tordil allegedly fatally shot Mrs Tordil outside of High Point High School in Beltsville, Maryland Thursday afternoon and then fled the scene. He reportedly threatened to commit suicide by cop previously.

Tordil was caught driving the same car that police say he escaped the scene of Thursday's shooting in. Above, that car is towed on Friday from the scene where Tordil was arrested

Plain clothes officers blocked in Tordil's car so that he could not escape on Friday, after they found him not far from the sight of the third shooting

Members of the Montgomery County police collect evidence at the scene of a shooting in the parking lot of the Westfield Montgomery Mall in Bethesda, Maryland, on May 6, 2016

A police officer with his gun drawn runs for cover as Eulalio Tordil, 62, a suspect in three fatal shootings in the Washington, D.C., area is taken into custody nearby

Eulalio Tordil, 62, allegedly fatally shot his estranged wife outside of High Point High School in Beltsville on Thursday as she went to pick up two of their children

Gladys Tordil (pictured), who took out a protective order against her husband in March, was a teacher at another school

Tordil was an employee of the Federal Protective Service, and carried a gun as part of his job. However, he was on leave from his position and was supposed to have turned over his weapon. His wife was a science teacher at another school.

He is said to have followed Mrs Tordil to the high school school their children attend on Thursday.

When she got out of her car and started walking into the school, her husband got out of his vehicle and confronted her.

A male bystander then tried to intervene and Tordil allegedly took out a gun and fired several shots at him, before turning the gun on his wife.

Mrs Tordil was killed while the other man was taken to the hospital. He was last reported in stable condition and is expected to survive. He has not been publicly identified.

Tordil was seen leaving the scene in a car silver 2015 Hyundai Elantra rental car with Pennsylvania license plates JZA0123 - the same one he was driving when he was apprehended on Friday.

A witness at the scene said one of their daughters was just feet away when the shooting happened.

'She saw the shooting happen,' the witness told Fox 5. 'She came out of the building on the side where the band room is and we had to just pull her right back in ... She just was very shocked, out of breath. The guy that specifically held on to her to pull her inside the building, he walked into the auditorium and had his head up traumatized from the situation.'

Captain Paul Starks of the Montgomery County police speaks to the press at the scene of a shooting in the parking lot of the Westfield Montgomery Mall in Bethesda, Maryland, on May 6, 2016
This is the heart-stopping moment a gunman tried to assassinate a Turkish journalist outside a courthouse where he was on trial accused of exposing state secrets.

The shooter yelled 'traitor!' and took several shots at Can Dundar, the editor-in-chief of Cumhuriyet, before he was subdued.

Dundar survived the attack unharmed but he and his co-defendant Erdem Gul - the paper's Ankara bureau chief - were both sentenced to five years in prison for treason.

Dramatic footage and pictures showed the gunman brandishing a silver pistol at a cowering Dundar before his wife Dilek and the police wrestled him to the ground.

Dilek Dundar (left), the wife of Can Dundar, the editor-in-chief of Cumhuriyet Daily, grapples with the gunman as her husband (far right) is shielded by a bystander in the background

A policeman aims his weapon at the subdued gunman, alleged to have fired shots outside the courthouse

Dundar was waiting outside the courthouse while judges decided on a verdict when he was attacked.

He escaped unharmed but Yagiz Senkal, a journalist working for the private NTV television station was shot in the leg.

After the shooter was subdued, plain clothed officers forced the man to lift his jacket to check that he had no other arms.

He was later seen lying face down on the ground while a policeman searched his pockets and placed handcuffs on him.

The Dogan news agency named the attacker as 40-year-old Murat Sahin, who is believed to have a criminal record.

'I don't know who the attacker is but I know who encouraged him and made me a target,' Dundar said after the attack.

His comments are thought to have been aimed at the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and others who have called for him to be punished.

Incredibly, the incident played out in front of a packed media scrum gathered to report on Dundar's trial

Dundar is seen being wheeled away from the chaotic scene as his wife and another man hold the gunman

The couple react after the gunman let off several shots while crowds waited outside the courthouse

Dundar is pictured arriving at the courthouse earlier in the day to wait for a verdict on his treason charges

Last year Cumhuriyet published what it claimed were images of Turkish trucks carrying ammunition to Syrian militants.

The paper held up the images as proof that Turkey was smuggling arms to rebel groups fighting Syria's regime - a claim the government rejects.

Erdogan, who filed a criminal complaint against the journalists, is a plaintiff in the case which is widely seen as a test for press freedom in Turkey.

Dundar said after his attempted assassination: 'I am okay. The court was in a break to deliver a verdict. The attack occurred after we went out to wait for the ruling. I don't know who or what it is. I only saw the gun had been pointed at me.'

Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the leader of the main opposition party, supported the now convicted journalists.

He said: 'Those who turn journalists into targets by using hate speech are responsible for the attack on Can Dundar.'

Prosecutors have recently dropped the charges of espionage and aiding a terrorist organization leveled at the two.

Police later arrived, where they cordoned off the crime scene and undertook a forensic investigation

Police forensics expert photographs a gun left lying on the pavement following the dramatic incident

NTV television reported that its reporter Yagiz Senkal was lightly injured because of the ricocheting bullets

NTV TV reporter Yagiz Senkal after being mistakenly wounded by ricocheting gunfire during the tense ordeal

Dundar and Gul were both acquitted of espionage but were found guilty of revealing state secrets over a story accusing the government of seeking to illicitly deliver arms bound for Syria.

They will not immediately be placed in detention as the court of appeal has yet to rule on the case.
A quick-thinking husband saved his wife's life after he overheard her being carjacked and kidnapped over her Bluetooth cellphone head piece.

Priscilla Cercone was driving through Hollywood in Florida when she was threatened at gun point.

However, when Bernard Owens, 21, burst into her car, he did not realise she was talking to her husband over a headset.

Bernard Owens, left, is accused of kidnapping and robbing Priscilla Cercone of Hollywood, Florida, right

In an interview with CBS news, Cercone said Owens warned her: 'Do what I tell you, I have a gun and I will kill you. I knew I could not die like this.'

She was ordered to drive to an ATM and withdraw $500.

Cercone said she could not take out that amount in one go, so Owens lowered his demand to $400.

She added: 'He wanted more and more money. I said I am not a rich woman.'

Cercone said she would bring Owens back to her home, where her husband arranged for a police reception committee.

As soon as she turned into her street, Cercone jumped from her moving car.

Owens, who spotted the police, also tried to run but was arrested at the scene.

He was remanded in custody having appeared in court and denied bail.
A convicted sex offender has been found guilty of the murder of three women and could now be sentenced to death.

Michael Madison, 38, from Cleveland, murdered the women after 'spontaneous eruptions of violence' and wrapped their bodies in garbage bags.

Police discovered the bodies after a cable television worker complained about a putrid smell coming from a garage shared by Madison at his apartment building.

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Michael Madison, 38, (pictured) murdered the three women after 'spontaneous eruptions of violence'

The jury deliberated for a day before convicting Madison, pictured with his attorny David Grant, of aggravated murder and kidnapping

Defense attorney David Grant called the verdicts 'expected'.

He argued that the killings were not premeditated but occurred when Madison, who had problems with drugs and alcohol, flew into a fit of rage.

The bodies of Angela Deskins, 38, Shetisha Sheeley, 28, and 18-year-old Shirellda Terry were found in July 2013 near the East Cleveland apartment building where Madison resided.

After first being alerted to the revolting stench, police first found the decaying body of a woman in garbage bags that were sealed with tape.

Searches the following day discovered a body in the basement of a vacant house and another in the backyard of a home.

Madison - who was classified as a sex offender in 2002 when he was sentenced to four years in prison for attempted rape - was arrested at his mother's home in Cleveland after a two-hour standoff.

He told police during an interrogation after his arrest that he strangled two of the women during fits of rage.

A medical examiner said two of the victims, Deskins and Terry, were strangled.

An exact cause of death could not be determined for Sheeley.

Police first found the decaying body of a woman in garbage bags that were sealed with tape. Searches the following day discovered a body in the basement of a vacant house and another in the backyard of a home

The jury deliberated for a day before convicting Madison of aggravated murder and kidnapping.

Starting next Thursday, the same jury will consider whether to recommend to a judge whether Madison should be sentenced to death.

Madison showed no reaction as the judge read out the verdicts.

The discovery of the bodies had drawn parallels to the Anthony Sowell case.

He was convicted in 2011 and sentenced to death for murdering 11 women whose bodies were found at his Cleveland home.

The Ohio Supreme Court is considering whether to uphold his conviction and sentence.
A woman was shocked to see footage from a hidden camera of how a home healthcare aide worker tied her mother up like a 'mummy' and left her for nearly 45 minutes 'so she couldn't get out.'

Singo Omega, 30, was hired by Chantar Riviere, 50, to care for her mother, Yvonne Wilson, who has dementia while she was away at work, the New York Post reported.

'I never trust anyone, but at some point you have to give someone the benefit of the doubt,' she said.

As a precaution, Riviere set up a hidden camera in her mother's apartment in Queens and was shocked to see what the camera captured at the end of Omega's first day on February 15.

Chantar Riviere hired Singo Omega, a healthcare worker, to care for her mother, Yvonne Wilson (above), who has dementia while she's away at work

As a precaution, Riviere set up a hidden camera in her mother's apartment to watch how Omega (above right) treated her mother (above left at the table)

Riviere claims that Omega, 30, used bed sheets to wrap up her 69-year-old mother into a cocoon (above). The hidden camera she set up captured the incident on February 15

Riviere claims that Omega, 30, used bed sheets to wrap up her 69-year-old mother into a cocoon.

'This woman used a bedsheet as a straitjacket so that my mother couldn't get out. No way she would be able to get out of that,' 50-year-old Riviere said.

According to a police report filed with the NYPD, Riviere, who is a nurse on Long Island, told police that her mother was wrapped up for at least 45 minutes.

When Riviere called Omega to tell her to let her mother go, Omega said she 'didn't do it', the police report states.

Due to being restrained, the elderly woman had 'several marks' on her, the police report states.

The Post reported that the healthcare aide worker took Wilson to Mount Sinai Hospital in Queens and then disappeared.

'This was abuse. I know my mother is scared. [Omega] needs to go to jail. She shouldn't be taking care of elderly patients at all,' Riviere said..

Authorities are investigating the incident as 'unlawful imprisonment' and are searching for Omega.

When Riviere called Omega to tell her to let her mother go, Omega said she 'didn't do it', the police report states. Omega took Riviere's mother to a hospital and then disappeared. Police are searching for her

Chantar Riviere (pictured) said: 'This was abuse. I know my mother is scared. [Omega] needs to go to jail. She shouldn't be taking care of elderly patients at all'

'The police can't find her, but they're looking for her everywhere,' Riviere told The Post.

'The detective told me they're looking at hospitals and shelters.'

In addition, the state Health Department launched a probe into the agency that hired Omega, Continental Home Care, after Riviere filed a complaint, The Post reported.

'It's all about the money. When I told them about it, they didn't believe me. He [the coordinator] called me a liar,' Riviere told The Post.

'Then they dropped me and said they can't give me service anymore.'

The concerned daughter is preparing a lawsuit against Omega and Continental Home Care with Leitner Varughese PLLC.

'The abuse of our most vulnerable elderly citizens is as shocking as it is outrageous. Its time to take a stand and speak up for those who are not able to speak for themselves,' attorney Justin Varughese with Leitner Varughese PLLC told Mail Online in a statement.

'Our firm will not rest until we get justice for these innocent victims. No one should have to suffer such indignity and inhumanity.

'This woman, who was entrusted with caring for the victim, instead turned the victim's home and bed into a prison.

'This was a violation of her rights as a patient and as a human being. Our firm will vigorously work to protect the rights of the elderly to protect against negligence and abuse.

However, the company's attorney claims that Riviere was 'verbally abusive' and that she has used 13 different aides within a month.
A 12-year-old Maine boy who allegedly stole a big blue bus had his joyride interrupted by a fast-thinking couple, who caught it all on camera.

John St Germain III and his girlfriend were driving in Bangor when they spotted the kid behind the wheel and realized he was too young to be steering the empty bus.

They immediately called the police and reported the license plate, and told dispatch the boy had hit a few signs and was driving on the curb.

A 12-year-old Maine boy who allegedly stole a big blue bus had his joyride interrupted by John St Germain III and his girlfriend, who caught it all on camera

'He's up on the curb right now,' St Germain's girlfriend can be heard telling police. 'He's all over the road.'

They continue to film as they follow the swerving blue bus, but when it stopped at an intersection St Germain decided to take matters into his own hands.

He got out of the car and ran into the bus, taking control of the 'blue, rolling missile of destruction', as the Bangor Police Department described it on their Facebook page.

'The young man was taken into custody and John continued on his day,' the department wrote.

'There is no question in our minds that John St Germain saved the youth from causing more property damage but it is highly likely that he also saved the boy and other drivers from injury.'

They immediately called the police and reported the license plate, and told dispatch the boy had hit a few signs and was driving on the curb

St Germain (pictured) then got out of the car and ran into the bus, taking control of the vehicle. Bangor police were so grateful they awarded him the department's Challenge coin

The boy was taken into custody and charged with unauthorized use of a motor vehicle and driving without a license, police said.

St Germain was awarded the Bangor Police Department Challenge coin, which celebrates acts of kindness and unselfishness, according to the Boston Globe.

The video shot by St Germain and his girlfriend was also uploaded on the department's Facebook, although much of the sound was removed.

'When the excitement breaks out, sometimes the language filter is a barrier that is broken first,' the department joked in the post accompanying the video.

'It is rather funny this is a family page and John requested that we leave some things out. I will say that he sounded like Seth Rogan throughout most of the play by play.'
Former American Idol finalist Rickey Smith was killed in a multi-car highway crash in Oklahoma in the early hours of Friday morning after a truck driver slammed into him.

Smith's car was struck while driving on the I-240 after a man driving the wrong way on the interstate crashed into the vehicle head-on, according toTMZ.

Smith, 36, who was driving a Honda Accord, was killed in the crash which happened at around 3 am Friday.

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Former American Idol finalist Rickey Smith (pictured) was killed in a multi-car highway crash in Oklahoma in the early hours of Friday morning

The Texan born singer reportedly worked as a teacher before appearing on the show and was eliminated from the popular Fox show in week eight. Pictured, singing on the 2003 series

Smith's car was struck while driving on the I-240 after man driving the wrong way on the interstate slammed into the vehicle head-on

The driver of the truck survived and was taken to an area hospital, officials said.

Gerardo Cerda Jr., 27, has been identified as the man driving the truck and was booked for driving under the influence, according to KOCO.

Oklahoma Highway Patrol troopers told the site there was a clear odor of alcohol on Cerda, who was taken to custody following his hospital treatment but has not yet been booked into the Oklahoma County Jail.

Seat belts were in use in both vehicles involved, said News OK.

The fatal crash, which happened just west of S Walker Avenue in the eastbound lanes of I-240, remains under investigation.

Smith competed on the second season of American Idol in 2003 and finished in eighth place. Ruben Studdard took the title that year.

He was well-known for his performance of What the World Now Needs Is Love and was compared to R&B great Brian McKnight.

Smith remained in LA for several years following the end of the series in the hopes of launching a music career.

Speaking in a 2008 interview, he told USA Today: 'I almost had an album. I had some good people around me.

'I wasn't ready to accept the fact that I had to come back and give up music. I've made peace with it, but it's still frustrating.'

Smith (left and far right bottom) competed on the second season of American Idol (original cast right) and finished in eighth place. Ruben Studdard took the title that year

Fellow American Idol runner-up Clay Aiken said: 'Suffice it to say my heart is truly breaking today. Heaven's choir has a new beautiful voice. I love you and will miss you, Rickey.'

The Texan born singer reportedly worked as a teacher before appearing on the show and was eliminated from the popular Fox show in week eight.

According to Buddy TV, he started singing when he was only five years old, but began to take it more seriously when he was 18 and majored in Performance at Southwestern Adventist University.

Tributes have been pouring in on social media for the singer with many expressing shock at his sudden and tragic death.

Tweeter Liz Imbrie commented: 'Oh, no! I met him once: kind, funny, gentle soul with a wonderful voice. Rest well, #RickeySmith'

While a tweeter that goes by the name of Dj Lil Smurf wrote: 'RIP to my good friend and season 2 American Idol finalist Rickey Smith killed by a drunk driver this morning.'
She went to Catholic school, grew up going to Church on Easter and has an uncle who is a priest

Fakih, who was born in a Shiite family in Lebanon, has said her family 'doesn't take sides' between religions

She is set to marry Wassim Salibi, a Maronite Christian, this month

The first known Muslim Miss USA has converted to Christianity ahead of her wedding.

Rima Fakih, 30, who won the title in May 2010, is set to tie the knot with Wassim Salibi, a Maronite Christian music producer, later this month, Christian Today reported.

The former Miss Michigan converted to his faith in April and both will travel to Lebanon, where she was born, for the wedding.

Fakih grew up in a Shia family and has stated that they had a liberal approach to religion, refusing to pick sides between Muslims and Christians and observing both kinds of holidays.

'Were more of a spiritual family,' Fakih said in an interview published by the Huffington Post not long after she became Miss USA.

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Rima Fakih (right), who became the first known Muslim Miss USA in 2010, has converted to Christianity ahead of her wedding to music producer Wassim Salibi (left)

'Religion really doesnt define me or my family. My familys been very liberal, and we appreciate all different kinds of religions.'

She attended a Catholic school near Beirut when she was a child and in New York after they emigrated to the US in 1993, Today reported.

'Wed go to church on Easter. We always had a Christmas tree and every year we go the Radio City Christmas Show, and watch The Miracle on 34th Street. But we celebrate some of the Islamic holidays as well,' she sad.

Fakih's family moved to Michigan in 2003 and she learnt more about the Muslim faith once in college.

The former Miss Michigan (pictured in June last year) converted to his faith in April and both will travel to Lebanon, where she was born, for the wedding

Fakih (pictured in May 2010 with Donald Trump at New York City's Trump Tower) has said that her family had a liberal approach to religion, refusing to pick sides between Muslims and Christians

Once in college, Fakih (pictured in May 2010 after winning the Miss USA pageant) learnt more about her Muslim faith, encouraged by her father

Fakih (pictured in June 2010 in Las Vegas) went to Catholic school near Beirut and in New York after her family moved to the US in 1993

'When I went to the University of Michigan, because theres more of a Muslim community, my dad wanted me to learn more about Islam,' she said.

'I didnt know much about Ramadan and other holidays, and my dad wanted me to take that opportunity and learn.'

Fakih has a Christian brother-in-law who baptized his two sons. One of her uncles has converted to Christianity and become a priest.

She tweeted a Bible verse from the Philippians in March, quoting: 'I can do all things through him who strengthens me.'

Maronite Christians acknowledge the authority of the Pope and as such are Roman Catholics.

The Maronite Church has been one of Lebanon's two main religions since the country became fully independent in 1943.

Lebanon's government includes Christian, Muslim and Druze members, while most of the country's presidents have been Maronites.

Fakih appeared in court in early 2012 after being accused of drunk driving. Police said they had found an open bottle of champagne in the back of her Jaguar and that her blood alcohol level was more than twice the legal limit.

She pleaded no contest and was sentenced a six-month probation, 20 hours of community service and $600 in fines and costs.
A man who transformed a dilapidated hen house into a mini distillery that won 'Shed of the Year' may have to tear the building down.

Walter Micklethwait, 37, spent two years working on the shack and converted the space into a wild west themed saloon with a bar and a grand piano as well as adding an adjoining shop selling hand-crafted items and farm produce.

Last July the gin distillery was crowned Shed of the Year in a competition organised by Cuprinol, beating 2,520 entries to win.

Walter Micklethwait (pictured), 37, spent two years converting a dilapidated hen house into a mini distillery

Last July the gin distillery was crowned Shed of the Year in a competition organised by Cuprinol, beating 2,520 entries to win (Pictured Mr Micklethwait and Lizzy Westman)

However, last week Mr Micklethwait from the Highlands, in Scotland, lodged a retrospective planning application for the project, which also includes a small-scale glamping business and bothy.

As well as this his plans feature a proposal to reconstruct an old railway station on site for extra distilling space.

Mr Micklethwait said he had been in talks with Highland Council's planning officers for about a year regarding the wording of the application, adding that gaining permission should be a 'formality'.

He said: 'The next stage of the distillery is the railway station, so as soon as we have got planning permission we can go ahead with that. It all depends on planning, but we will aim to start that at some point this year.'

A Highland Council spokeswoman said: 'We are not aware of any pre application advice having been given that would have indicated planning permission would be granted ahead of due consideration taking into account all material considerations.'

The planning application has been called in by Cairngorms National Parks Authority (CNPA).

After the transformation the hen house looked akin to a scene from a Western - rather than a Scottish bar

Among the rustic furniture and quaint interior inside Mr Micklethwait's Wild West saloon is a grand piano

This means the park will have the final decision on whether the application will be granted.

In a letter to Highland Council, CNPA said: 'Although the individual elements of the application are small-scale, together, the developments would make a significant contribution the area's visitor infrastructure and are of significance to the each of the aims of the National Park.'

A CNPA spokesman later said: 'The reason we call applications in is because we deem it to be of significance to the national park. The fact it is retrospective is neither here nor there.'

Mr Micklethwait built Scotland's smallest bar (pictured, him in it) out of an old horsebox and describes it as a 'Victorian old man's pub'

Last year Mr Micklethwait also built Scotland's smallest bar - inside a dilapidated old horsebox.

The estate manager describes it as a 'Victorian old man's pub', which can accommodate two members of staff and has bar stools for customers.

It only serves Walter's Crossbill gin - which won gin of the year - and is made in his hen house distillery.
Waqas Choudhry, 47, has been jailed for 18 months after being linked to 67 speeding offences

A 'dishonest' company director who was caught sticking his two fingers up at a speed camera was today jailed for 18 months after being linked to 67 driving offences.

Waqas Choudhry, 47, made up false names to give to the police when he or his family members were caught speeding between 2003 and 2014.

Choudhry, of Wilmslow, Cheshire, did so after accumulating motoring fines in a fleet of luxury cars including a Porsche Cayenne and a Range Rover and then used his property portfolio to try and con his way out of them.

Manchester Crown Court heard Choudhry, who is the company director of furniture firm Speedy Sofas, was eventually caught after using an 'untraceable' foreign number plate.

The plate, from a Mercedes imported from Germany, was linked to speeding offences on police systems, but officers could not locate the driver because it was not registered with the DVLA.

Choudhry began using the plate on a Mercedes van he drove to deliver sofas across the country, but was repeatedly stop-checked when he drove the vehicle.

Once he was linked to the van and the foreign plate, PC Vaughan Sherrah-Davies, of Greater Manchester Police's Road Crime Unit, began looking into other addresses and cars he was associated with.

PC Sherrah-Davies then unravelled a complex web of deceit which stretched back years after Choudhry clocked up speeding fines across the UK in a Porsche Cayenne, a Range Rover and three different Mercedes.

He was also caught flicking two fingers at a speed camera after he had escaped fines for speeding offences up and down the country in a scam he thought was foolproof.

Choudhry, a company director, was caught flicking two fingers at a speed camera (pictured) after he had escaped fines for speeding offences up and down the country in a scam he thought was foolproof

The court heard when he received a notice of intended prosecution, Choudhry would invent a Pakistani name, add a false date of birth, and allocate one of the six properties owned by his family as an address for the fictional person.

The scam initially worked so well that ten court proceedings were instigated against people who didn't even exist.

He then began collecting tickets for other members of his family and doing the same thing, apparently without their knowledge.

Choudhry admitted conspiracy to pervert the course of justice and was today jailed for 18 months and disqualified from driving for 21 months.

In court, he put forward the excuse that he had been 'stressed' by family and business worries - and then became corrupted by his own behaviour.

Choudhry admitted conspiracy to pervert the course of justice and was today jailed for 18 months and disqualified from driving for 21 months at Manchester Crown Court (pictured)

Simon Csoka QC, defending, said: 'He began with a catastrophic error of judgement.

'But that error of judgement not only had the natural tainting effect on the justice system, it had the natural tainting effect on his own judgement, it made it easier and easier for him to do it again and again.

'There was no gain for him (to falsify information) for his family.

'It can perhaps be described as part a coping strategy where once he had crossed the threshold to do this for himself, it became easier to do it for his family, thinking he was assisting them.'

PC Sherrah-Davies said: 'Choudhry persistently broke the law and has ended up in prison.
Astonishing drone footage shows rebel fighters battling Syrian government soldiers on a battlefield on the outskirts of Aleppo.

One video showed how the shockwaves from one tremendous bomb blast were visible even to the naked eye.

As many as 73 fighters - 43 rebels and 30 government troops - are thought to have been killed in the battle for the village of Khan Tuman since Thursday.

Footage from the battle near Aleppo showed how the shockwaves from one tremendous bomb blast (pictured) were visible even to the naked ey

As many as 73 fighters - 43 rebels and 30 government troops - are thought to have been killed in the battle for the village of Khan Tuman (pictured)

The offensive was launched by a union of rebel fighters known as Jaish al-Fatah, which includes the al-Qaeda linked al-Nusra Front.

The rebels claimed they had seized the village, just 10 miles from Aleppo, but a Syrian army source denied it had fallen.

Footage showed tanks, armoured vehicles and fighters scrambling across the dusty battlefield as missiles flew in all directions.

Each low flying rocket could be seen speeding across the rugged, barren terrain as plumes of smokes from gigantic explosions shot into the air.

Smoke was also seen rising from charred buildings destroyed in the fighting.

A fighter from one of the rebel factions said: 'Throughout the night the battles were very intense... Areas south of Khan Tuman have been liberated.'

The fighting follows a deal brokered by the United States and Russia which extended the fragile Syrian ceasefire agreement to Aleppo, where 300 have been killed in the last two weeks.

The offensive (pictured) - caught on drone footage - was launched by a union of rebel fighters known as Jaish al-Fatah

Footage showed tanks, armoured vehicles and fighters scrambling across the dusty battlefield

Each low flying rocket could be seen speeding across the rugged, barren terrain as plumes of smokes from gigantic explosions

It comes just a day after 28 civilians, including women and children, were killed following an airstrike on a Syrian refugee camp in Idlib.

A Syrian military official denied the army had carried out any operation against the Sarmada refugee camp on Thursday.
Tom Begaye Jr, 27, allegedly stripped her naked & killed her with a crowbar but spared her brother

Her brother, Ian Mike, and Ashlynne were lured into a stranger's van and driven into the desert, say the FBI

Funeral of murdered Navajo girl Ashlynne Mike, nine, was held on Friday at Farmington Civic Centre, New Mexico

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These heartbreaking pictures show a young Navajo boy, whose life was spared by the man who allegedly stripped his 11-year-old sister naked and beat her to death, staring at her tiny coffin at her funeral.

Ian Mike and his sister Ashlynne were lured into the stranger's van and driven into the desert, where the man walked off with the girl and sexually assaulted her before murdering her with a crowbar, according to the FBI.

Ashlynne Mike was buried on Friday after a touching ceremony attended by thousands of people from across the Navajo Nation.

Family and friends paid tribute to their 'little angel' before her coffin was driven out into the desert and buried beneath the sand.

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Gary Mike has his arm around his 9-year-old son Ian as they listen as fellow family members speak about his 11-year-old daughter Ashlynne, who was with Mike when she was lured to her death

Holding back tears as his sister is buried, these heartbreaking pictures show a young Navajo boy mourning at the 11-year-old girl's funeral

Ian, centre, who crossed his legs as he sat on a chair at the ceremony, closed his eyes during the emotional ceremony

The naked body of Ashlynne Mike (left), a Navajo fifth-grader was found in the Shiprock desert on Tuesday - a day after she was kidnapped. Tom Begaye Jr (right) is accused of her murder

Ashlynne and Ian were playing near a bus stop in Farmington, New Mexico, when Tom Begaye Jr, 27, allegedly persuaded the pair of them to climb into his van.

Ian told police that a man took them deep into the desert, and then walked off with his sister to an even more remote spot, before coming back to the van alone.

An FBI agent's affidavit says Tom Begaye Jr, who is also a Navajo, told investigators he assaulted the girl and struck her twice in the head with a crowbar.

He also told them his motive was to have sex with her and described how he stripped the girl naked while she was 'crying and begging to be taken home', according to the complaint.

The Farmington civic center was packed with more than 1,600 people on Friday, and just as many stood outside as they paid their respects to the young girl.

'How do I begin a farewell when I still can't believe you're gone? How do I say goodbye to part of my soul?' said Pamela Foster, Ashlynne's mother.

Entire families, hugging each other and their children, gathered before her small white coffin, surrounded by flowers and balloons. Many people wore yellow T-shirts - one of her favorite colors.

New Mexico Governor Susana Martinez recalled Ashlynne as a budding musician who wanted to share her talents in playing the xylophone and piano with others. She called on the crowd to carry on the kindness Ashlynne showed the world.

'I cannot imagine the pain Ashlynne's loved ones feel right now,' the governor said. 'But even as we mourn her, we should celebrate her life and remember what a beautiful little girl she was, inside and out.'

More than 200 miles away in Albuquerque, Begaye appeared in U.S. District Court, waiving his right to a preliminary hearing on murder and kidnapping charges. The federal judge ordered that he remain in custody.

The casket of 11-year-old Ashlynne Mike sits in the center of the stage, surrounded by bouquets of flowers, at Farmington Civic Center in Farminton, N.M. before her memorial service Friday, May 6

The Farmington civic center was packed with more than 1,600 people, and just as many stood outside to pay their respects

The little girl and her brother were lured away from a bus stop by a stranger before she was killed in a desert and he was spared

'How do I begin a farewell when I still can't believe your gone? How do I say goodbye to part of my soul?' said Pamela Foster, Ashlynne's mother (pictured)

The murder has raised tough questions for both the community and law enforcers on the country's largest American Indian reservation, which stretches for 27,000 square miles into New Mexico, Utah and Arizona.

Begaye told investigators that the girl was still moving when he left her, according to the affidavit.

But eight hours passed between the family's initial missing persons report and an Amber Alert, which went out at 2.27am Tuesday.

Her body was not found until later that morning, south of the Shiprock Pinnacle, just inside the border of the Navajo Nation in the northwest corner of New Mexico.

One of Ashlynne's brothers told the audience at her funeral that he drove around the monolith for hours in the darkness, looking for his sister.

He said he asked for an alert at 10.30pm and was upset that hours passed before it went out.

Regina Mike decorated the windshield of her motorcycle in honor of her relative, 11-year-old Ashlynne Mike, as she and hundreds of other motorcyclists escorted the girl's casket following the memorial service

Pallbearers escort the casket out following the emotional memorial service. Thousands of people from surrounding communities gathered at the center and along the procession route

Posters with Ashlynne Mike's photo lined the entrance to the Farmington Civic Center as the overflow crowd watched monitors streaming her memorial service Friday

Ashlynne was killed after the man allegedly persuaded her and her nine-year-old brother, who had been playing near their bus stop after school, to climb into his van. Community members comfort one another, during a vigil for Ashlynne at the San Juan Chapter House in Lower Fruitland, N.M

Klandre Willie, left, and her mother, Jaycelyn Blackie, participate in a candlelight vigil, for Ashlynne Mike at the San Juan Chapter House in Lower Fruitland, N.M

'I really wish that this alert went out a lot sooner,' he said, prompting strenuous applause.

The alert set off cellphone alarms that jolted New Mexico residents awake and provided the first warning beyond the Navajo Nation to keep watch for Ashlynne and the suspect.

Some believe more could have been done to find the girl alive, but others say issuing the alert would have made little difference. All seem to agree that precious time was wasted while authorities evaluated and belatedly shared what information they had.

'My phone buzzed and I realized that this has gotten really serious. Why did it take so long for the Navajo Nation to issue an Amber Alert?' said Rick Nez, president of the tribe's San Juan Chapter, where Ashlynne lived.

The Navajo Nation, which counts 300,000 members, does not have a system to issue its own child abduction alerts. Across the U.S., only a fraction of the 566 federally recognized tribes do.

Governed by the Navajo Nation, Shiprock is in the Four Corners region and plays a significant role in Navajo religion, myth, and tradition

Begaye was arrested last Tuesday at a sweat lodge similar to this visitor center sweat lodge at the Navajo National Monument in Arizona, USA. The sweat lodge (also called purification ceremony or simply sweat) is a hut, typically dome-shaped and made with natural materials, used by Indigenous peoples of the Americas for ceremonial steam baths and prayer

In most cases, state authorities coordinate with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children when abducted children are in danger of serious injury or death.

The Navajo were one of 10 tribes named in a 2007 pilot project through the U.S. Justice Department to expand Amber Alerts into Indian Country, but it did not materialize.

Navajo President Russell Begaye, of no relation to the suspect, acknowledged this week that the tribe needs a more effective response system using modern technology.

Heidi Jose, a relative of Ashlynne, said she has long felt Navajo police are slow to react to reports of missing people and requests for help from residents.

'Why is it that they're not snapping their fingers and saying, "A child is missing. OK, let's go"?' Jose said. 'This is something that for them - the Navajo police - is a wake-up call.'

The FBI handles major crimes in Indian Country when the suspect, victim or both are American Indian.

Law enforcement officials escort Tom Begaye, left, after he made an initial court appearance Wednesday, May 4 at Farmington Municipal Court

San Juan Chapter President Rick Nez, second from right, walks out of the Farmington Municipal Court building on Wednesday, May 4 after initial court hearing for Begaye

An FBI agent's affidavit says Tom Begaye Jr (pictured getting into car), a 27-year-old Navajo from a community just down the highway from the children's home, told investigators he assaulted the girl and struck her twice in the head with a crowbar

By 8.30pm Monday night, the FBI was aware of the kidnapping, according to Framingham Police Lt. Taft Tracy, and yet the agency didn't notify the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children of the need for an Amber Alert until nearly four hours later, at 12.20am Tuesday, the center's Robert Lowery Jr said.

The FBI has declined to answer questions about its response.

Two more hours passed while the New Mexico State Police evaluated the center's request before the alert went out.

Meanwhile, the local sheriff's office said it found out about the kidnapping by chance at around 9.30pm, when talking to the FBI about an unrelated case.

'We struggle sometimes with communications between agencies and especially with the Navajo Nation,' San Juan County Sheriff Ken Christensen said.
Just as top members of the Republican Party are split on whether to attend the GOP Convention in Cleveland now that Donald Trump is the presumed nominee, some leading corporations are scaling back their contributions that bankroll the festivities.

The Coca-Cola company, which gave $660,000 to the convention in 2012, is giving only about $75,000 this year, with no plans to make further contributions.

Microsoft, which gave $1.5 million last time, this year is instead donating products and services. Google, which provided $350,000 in 2012, is providing live stream services.

An analysis by the Daily Beast found multiple corporations who wouldn't respond to comment about whether they were backing the convention. Top donors including the American Petroleum Institute, Florida Power and Light, and Lockheed Martin didn't provide comment.

Several other past donors, including Bank of America, Bacardi Limited, and the American Petroleum Institute didn't provide immediate comment to DailyMail.com on their sponsorship intentions.

Not all of corporate America wants to associate itself with Trump's legendary brand

Hot air: Trump will formally accept the Republican Party nomination in Cleveland

According to a Coc-Cola Company statement provided to DailyMail.com, 'Since the 1890s, the company and our local bottling partners have donated to the local host committees of both parties political conventions, regardless of the nominees.'

'Our support helps the host committees run these large events and contributes to local economic development but does not represent an endorsement of any specific party or candidate,' the company continued.

'In 2015, a $75,000 contribution was made by the Company to both the Cleveland 2016 Host Committee and Philadelphia 2016 Host Committee. The Coca-Cola Company is a nonpartisan business and does not endorse presidential candidates or nominees, nor do we endorse any specific party,' according to the statement.

Microsoft resisted pressure for a boycott.

Were not changing our planned activities for the conventions in 2016, wrote Fred Humphries,a vice president of communications for the retail giant.

We appreciate that this years conventions may have some more dramatic moments than in some prior years, he added. This is all the more reason, in our view, to ensure that they benefit from technology tools that are used for a range of important activities, from helping record accurate vote counts to sharing information quickly and accurately with the delegates and the public.

Republican National Committee chair Reince Priebus said Friday at a Politico breakfast the party was about 80 percent of the way toward meeting its fundraising goal.

RNC convention spokeswoman Emily Lauer told DailyMail.com the Cleveland host committee would raise $64 million, having raised $56 million to date.

'We have many sponsors from around the country but have not released a comprehensive list. Our Federal Election Commission filing after the Convention will include that information,' she said.

Battle of the brands: Participating companies are defending their participation in multi-day celebration of Trump and the GOP agenda in Cleveland

The only official sponsors the party has announced are JobsOhio, the city of Cleveland, and Cuyahoga County.

Those corporations who do contribute face potential backlash.

'They are sponsoring a party for Trump,' said Rashad Robinson of the group Color of Change told the Daily Beast as he opposed corporate contributions.'Muslim kids being bullied, Latino kids being yelled at with threats of deportation at sporting eventsthese corporations are closing their eyes, closing their ears, closing their mouths, and handing over their wallets,' he said.

Trump is making efforts to reach out in his own way. On Thursday he tweeted out a picture of him digging into a tortilla bowl at Trump tower.

RNC chair Reince Priebus says the party has reached 80 per cent of its fundraising for the convention

'Uh, he's trying,' said Priebus when asked about it. 'Honestly. He's trying. I honestly think he understands that building and unifying and growing the party is the only way we're going to win and I think he gets that.'

Other big companies that donated to the 2012 GOP convention include Amgen, Archer Daniels Midland, Chevron, Citigroup, Comcast, CSX, Federal Express, Google, Merck, Pfizer, Wal-Mart, and Xerox.

AT&T, Google, and Facebook all have official roles this year.

If corporations grow cautious, deep-pocketed individuals could fill the need.

Casino magnate Sheldon Adelson was the top giver to the GOP convention. On Thursday, he expressed support for Trump, though it wasn't exactly glowing praise.

'Yes, I'm a Republican, he's a Republican,' Adelson told the New York Times. 'He's our nominee ... He was one of the 17. He won fair and square.'

The apparent hesitation by corporations reflects divisions within the GOP leadership over Trump. Romney and former presidents George W. Bush an George H.W. Bush have indicated they don't plan to attend. Nor does Arizona Sen. John McCain, although 1996 nominee former Sen. Bob Dole has indicated he will go.

The Democrats have their own issues fundraising for their convention. Compounding the problem is the way many corporations give to both party extravaganzas  which could leave the Democrats on the hook for companies worried about Trump.

Both parties are on the verge of nominating candidates with record disapproval ratings. Hillary Clinton has been highlighting opposition to Trump from within the GOP, and on Friday her campaign released a video mocking Trump's tortilla bowl outreach.
Deal: The NHS has data sharing agreements with 1,500 third parties, it has emerged, as another hospital admitted it was in talks with Google to allow it to use data for a new app Hark, pictured

A Google boss insists that patient data is more secure with the online search giant than with NHS hospitals.

Mustafa Suleyman, co-founder of Google's secretive artificial intelligence arm, DeepMind, believes his company are better placed to handle sensitive information, after it was revealed that records of British patients were shared with 1,500 outside organisations.

Private firms including computer giants and consultancy agencies are among those who are being supplied with the confidential records.

Only this week the Royal Free NHS Trust in London revealed that it had passed on medical files of up to 1.6million patients to a Google subsidiary to develop an app called Hark.

This included highly personal details such as whether patients had been diagnosed with HIV, suffered from depression or had ever undergone an abortion.

Mr Suleyman said: 'As Googlers, we have the very best privacy and secure infrastructure for managing the most sensitive data in the world. That's something we're able to draw upon as we're such a core part of Google.'

'When we developed our information governance toolkit and we submitted that for assessment to the health and social care information centre (HSCIC), which approves these data-sharing agreements, we got 100% for our toolkit.

'There's pretty much nobody else who's been able to get a score as high as that.'

Mr Suleyman said DeepMind's security on sensitive information were given level three - the highest possible - status by the HSCIC, compared to most hospitals which are awarded level two, according to The Guardian.

Under Government rules drawn up in 2013, staff do not have to obtain patients prior consent as long as the information does not include names and is being used to improve care.

The revelation has exposed the ease with which private companies can obtain highly sensitive medical information without consent.

Explaining why they did not speak to patients first the Royal Free said: 'Health professionals may rely on implied consent when sharing personal data in the interests of direct care.

'The NHS has data sharing agreements with 1,500 third party organisations, many of which are vital to the safe and effective treatment of patients. It would not be practical or safe to ask every patient to consent to every one of these arrangements'.

Concerns: Experts say the deal between Google and the Royal Free NHS Trust could set a precedent for patient data being passed on - as it emerged St Mary's, right, is in talks with Google

Defence: The NHS at the Royal Free in London has said it did not need to ask permission from patients before they agreed to share their data with Google

The spokesman listed just two of these third party organisations: Cerner, a private firm that sorts data for hospitals and GPs, and Webmail, which allows staff to email each other about specific patients.

The trust said that the data will not be sold on, adding in an online Q&A: 'Patients can opt out of any data-sharing system that the Royal Free London uses by contacting the trusts data protection officer'.

NHS officials have since confirmed that similar data sharing arrangements are in place between hospitals and private firms throughout the health service.

Software: Google's company want to develop a programme that could, for example, analyse blood data

Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust admitted it was also in talks with Google over a deal - this time for an app to alert staff to hospital patients at risk of deterioration through kidney failure.

But bosses at St Mary's in Paddington, one of the hospitals overseen by the Trust, say that no patient records have been handed over to DeepMind.

It is not yet clear how many other NHS trusts or hospitals have already confirmed or are in talks to set up similar deals. It is also not known which organisations have existing deals with the NHS.
Eighty people have committed suicide in a village in India since the beginning of this year, sparking fears that 'evil spirits' are at work.

Rajendra Sisodiya is the village chief, or sarpanch, in Badi and he blames a 'demonic presence' in the village

The village of Badi is in the district of Khargone in Madhya Pradesh state.

Khargone district (pictured) is one of the 250 most impoverished and backward districts in India. Superstition and belief in evil spirits is common here

Khargone has reported 381 suicides in the past year.

Mr Sisodiya was elected two months ago after the previous sarpanch, his cousin Jeevan, hanged himself from a tree in front of his house.

His mother and brother had also killed themselves.

'There are 320 families in our village and at least one person from each has killed himself or herself,' said Mr Sisodiya.

The village only has a population of 2,500 but has had 350 suicides in recent years.

Police Superintendant Amit Singh said: 'In the first three months of this year, 80 Badi villagers have killed themselves.'

But while villagers believe 'demons' are to blame, psychiatrist Dr Srikanth Reddy told the Times of India he believed the suicides were due to depression and schizophrenic episodes possibly caused by excessive use of pesticides on their crops.

He said: 'Depression isn't something people here are easily able to relate to or identify. When they are unable to find any reason, they associate it with locally explainable phenomenon like demonic presence.

'Apart from financial distress, there could be other causes for this depression. In a study some years ago in China, where a large number of farmers in a particular area were committing suicide, it was found that insecticides used there contained organophosphate, which is highly toxic and causes depressive mental conditions.'

When they are unable to find any reason, they associate it with locally explainable phenomenon like demonic presence Dr Srikanth Reddy

People in villages like Badi depend on cash crops like cotton and if it fails they suffer severe financial distress.

Ashok Verma has formed a committee in Badi to look into the suicides.

He said: 'This is a very grave situation and we need to act fast. The villagers lack confidence and motivation and it's very important to counsel them.'

In a bid to get a grip on the suicide epidemic the villagers have agreed to ban the sale of alcohol in the village.

But one resident, Sunita Singh, said: 'Even if liquor is prohibited in Badi, our men go to adjoining villages to get drunk.'

Khargone is officially one of India's 250 most impoverished and backward districts and many such areas are extremely superstitious.
Two Albany college students who claimed to be victims of a racially motivated attack have been expelled and a third suspended for two years after police claims that they had started the incident.

Ariel Aguido, Asha Burwell and Alexis Briggs, all 20, had originally claimed they were assaulted by a group including a 19-year-old woman on a bus in January - only for prosecutors to later claim they had been the aggressors.

Aguido and Burwell, who were indicted May 3 on charges of misdemeanor assault and falsely reporting an incident, were expelled. Briggs, who was indicted just on a misdemeanor assault charge, has been suspended for two years.

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Ariel Agudio (left) and Asha Burwell (center) were expelled from the SUNY Albany after police said they falsely reported a racial attack; Alexis Briggs (right) was suspended for two years. All were charged with assault

Prosecutors claim footage from the January 30 incident (pictured) suggests the three, all aged 20, were the aggressors - not the 19-year-old white girl they said racially abused them

The girls had also claimed that a total of 12 people - including white men - had joined in the attack. But police suggested the others were bystanders who had tried to break up the fight

Cops say the video appears to show one of the men being hit. All three girls were indicted on charges of assault, and Aguido and Burwell of falsely reporting an incident, on May 3

The university's actions were announced in an email Thursday to The Albany Times Union by university president Robert J. Jones.

The three students claimed that they were on the bus at about 1am January 30 when an argument with approximately 12 white classmates resulted in them being called racial slurs, then being beaten.

Burwell took to Twitter to recount the ordeal that same day, writing: 'I just got jumped on a bus while people hit us and called us the 'n' word and NO ONE helped us.'

She then tweeted that she was in disbelief after experiencing 'what it's like to be beaten because of the color of my skin.'

Police said video shows that a 19-year-old woman was the victim, but appears to a show a man - a bystander that police say was trying to break up the fight - being assaulted at one point.

'The evidence indicates they were actually the aggressors in the physical altercation, and that they continued to assault the victim despite the efforts of several passengers to stop them,' police said.

Following the alleged incident, Burwell recounted it on Twitter, writing 'I just got jumped on a bus while people hit us and called us the "n" word and NO ONE helped us'

Burwell also Tweeted that she was beaten because 'the color of my skin' - a claim that cops refute

Police said they reviewed video from 12 security cameras and four cell phones during a three week investigation, and also interviewed 35 people.

The women's initial report of the incident led to national outrage, a massive campus rally and even Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton tweeted about it, hitting out against violence on a college campus.

Agudio's attorney Mark Mishler previously said in a statement that the charges against his client were 'unwarranted'.

He said Agudio was 'an exemplary young woman and an excellent student' and that she asked people 'not rush to judgement in this matter.'

Police said during a three week investigation, they reviewed video from 12 security cameras and four cell phones, and also interviewed 35 people, according to WNYT.

After the investigation, University of Albany police released two surveillance videos of the incident.

Indicted: Agudio, pictured here leaving Albany City Criminal Court, was indicted on May 3 on counts of misdemeanor assault and falsely reporting an incident

Expelled: Burwell was indicted on the same charges, and she and Agudio were both expelled from the university
Dominic Chappell (pictured) faces claims that he took 315,000 out of his previous company Olivia Petroleum to spend on himself

The man in charge of BHS after it went bust has been accused of taking 315,000 out of his previous company to spend on himself and then never repaying the sum.

Dominic Chappell, 49, was forced out of his last company Olivia Petroleum after making the cash transfer without the permission of other shareholders, reports the Guardian.

It is claimed that he splashed the sum on a lavish lifestyle, dining at a number of luxury restaurants, staying at plush hotels and enjoying shopping trips as well as diverting funds into the account of his wife.

Mr Chappell, a keen sailor, is also believed to have spent money at a chandlery business that works on the interior of luxury yachts.

The tycoon, who was once a racing driver, is no stranger to failure in business - having been bankrupted twice in his career.

His first case was due to an unpaid fee relating to the sale of a 1.2 million flat in Fulham, south west London, in December 2005 and the second was regarding a failed bid to build a marina on the Isle of Wight in 2009.

The Island Harbour Marina development consisted of a restaurant and bar called Bistro, 26 luxury waterside properties and private moorings, as well as a helipad Mr Chappell built for himself. It has since been completed by another company.

The businessman was slammed by residents on the island after his venture went under, owing 24 million, leaving a number of local firms taking a hefty financial hit with some losing out on fees well over 10,000.

Furious residents later told the Daily Mail that Mr Chappell flew in and out of the island in a top-of-the-range helicopter.

The tycoon, who took home a 510,000 salary at BHS, lives in a rented 1.5 million Grade II-listed manor house in Dorset.

However, while in London he stayed at the 300-a-night five-star Landmark Hotel, opposite the BHS head office in Marylebone.

It appears that accusations surrounding Mr Chappell putting his love of the finer things in front of his company's finances have reared their ugly head again.

He was the chief executive of Olivia Petroleum, standing as boss for three years from 2009 and holding a 40 per cent stake in the firm.

Ex- racer Chappell, right, poses with fellow driver Phil Andrews ahead of testing for Le Mans in 1994

However, the Guardian claim he was booted out by other private shareholders, who owned the rest of the firm, after accusations surrounding how company money was being spent emerged.

Olivia Petroleum was supposed to acquire an oil storage site in Cadiz, off the coast of Spain, but the project never took off and the firm was left in administration, with a number of financial affairs still to be resolved.

In an email sent by a lawyer at the firm in 2011, concerns are raised over how funds are being spent.

It reads: 'There is an awful amount of money spent in travel, restaurants, shopping and UK, which indicates that this could be considered as hidden salaries of payment in species to employees. Big liability here. The company is not trading and this is not in accordance with that.'

There are claims that Sir Philip Green asset stripped BHS and dumped it with a 571 million pension deficit

Mr Chappell told the Guardian that the claim that large amounts of cash were taken from the company for his personal use was 'totally untrue.'

He also said that the money withdrawn from Olivia Petroleum was his 'salary' before changing his mind and calling the sum a 'directors' loan'.

Mr Chappell later added that it amounted to around '212,000, I think'

The revelations will bring further scrutiny to the decision making of Sir Philip Green who sold the ailing BHS to Chappell's consortium Retail Acquisitions for just a 1 last year.

Sir Philip is set to be hauled in front of ministers for questioning, amid claims from some MPs that he asset stripped the much-love retail chain, before dumping it with a 571 million pension deficit.

Some ministers are calling for Sir Philip (pictured) to have his knighthood stripped over the closure of BHS

The closure of BHS left 11,000 people without a job, prompting some ministers to call for the retail giant, who also owns Topman and Topshop, to have his knighthood revoked.

Mr Chappell has fought back against the allegations and claims he is raising finance from international backers to buy back BHS.
The Obama White House set up an 'echo chamber' of planted experts to control the public discussion about the president's slow-brewing nuclear deal with Iran last year, according to the puppetmaster behind the program.

Ben Rhodes, the administration's top foreign-policy messaging expert, deployed 'legions of arms-control experts' to propagandize about the virtues of the controversial agreement, The New York Times Magazine will report on Sunday.

The anointed academics and think-tankers fed favorable information to reporters via interviews and social media onslaughts, making the case for an outcome that generated outrage among conservatives and horrified Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

'We created an echo chamber,' Rhodes admitted in the 10,000 word profile of his internal role as a stand-in for Obama on all things that extend past the water's edge.

'They were saying things that validated what we had given them to say.'

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PUPPETMASTER: Deputy national security adviser for strategic communications Ben Rhodes orchestrated an 'echo chamber' of media support for Obama's Iran nuclear deal last year

WHAT HE WANTS, WHEN HE WANTS IT: Obama, seen Friday briefing reporters on the latest job numbers, counts Rhodes among his most trusted advisers

The administration chose not to engage the media directly in the first critical days after details what it called the 'Joint Comprehensive Plan Of Action' hit the public airwaves.

Instead it dominated the national discussion through proxies, recognizing that it needed a swarm of support in order to distract reporters and editors from the ground-breaking nature of what was going on.

The JCPOA  known outside 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue as 'The Iran Deal'  called for the U.S. to relax international sanctions and cut loose $150 billion in frozen Iranian funds and assets, in exchange for Tehran's pledge that it would pare back its nuclear weapons ambitions and limit its ability to enrich uranium and other fissile material.

Fearing that the president's intentions would be misunderstood, Rhodes chose a strategy that is not uncommon in Washington, but which spin doctors seldom admit to using.

'In the absence of rational discourse, we are going to discourse the [expletive] out of this,' he told the Times.

'We had test drives to know who was going to be able to carry our message effectively, and how to use outside groups like Ploughshares, the Iran Project and whomever else. So we knew the tactics that worked.'

The result was what one senior Republican Capitol Hill aide to a member who stood against the deal called a 'joint comprehensive plan of confusion' on Friday.

The aide called Rhodes 'a spin doctor of a new kind, who isn't just satisfied telling reporters what the White House thinks.'

'Instead he's co-opting the free press and turning them into propaganda machines.'

'We drove them crazy,' Rhodes said of how the result paralyzed Obama's opponents.

Times reporter David Samuels spent time with the 38-year-old Obama whisperer in February on the day of the president's final State of the Union address, watching as he massaged a willing press corps to delay the outrage after Iran's navy intercepted and seized two U.S. Navy boats and their 10 American sailors.

Samuels wrote at length of how Rhodes, trained as a novelist, works  '[t]he narratives he frames, the voices of senior officials, the columnists and reporters whose work he skillfully shapes and ventriloquizes, and even the presidents own speeches and talking points.'

All those forces of nature, moving from Rhodes' mind to the computer keyboard of his deputy ned Price, blow through 'the administrations well-cultivated network of officials, talking heads, columnists and newspaper reporters, web jockeys and outside advocates who can tweet at critics and tweak their stories backed up by quotations from "senior White House officials" and "spokespeople".'

Once each chosen talking point ping-pongs to reporters from spokesmen at the White House, the State Department and the Pentagon, it rockets 'across the Twitterverse, where it springs to life in dozens of insta-stories, which over the next five hours don formal dress for mainstream [news] outlets.'

Samuels singles out two 'handpicked' reporters, Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic and Laura Rozen of Al-Monitor, as vehicles the White House uses to push its messaging.

Goldberg famously quoted an unnamed 'senior White House official' calling Netahyahu 'a chickens**t' in October 2014, for instance.

'PROPAGANDA': A senior Republican congressional aide said Rhodes (at right) is'co-opting the free press' and turning reporters and editors 'into propaganda machines' for the administration

FURIOUS: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was convinced to shelf a plan to strike Iran's nuclear infrastructure long enough for Obama's team to negotiate what they claim will be a slower dismantling

It remains unclear if it was Rhodes or Price who fed him that line, but little doubt remains that Obama sanctioned it.

'Rhodes has become adept at ventriloquizing many people at once,' Samuels writes, explaining how the administration goes beyond traditional press briefings to manipulate the press.

'There are sort of these force multipliers,' Price told him. 'We have our compadres, I will reach out to a couple people, and you know I wouldnt want to name them.'

Price explained how he plants ideas with journalists who seem to tweet in sync with White House messaging.

'I'll give them some color,' he said, 'and the next thing I know, lots of these guys are in the dot-com publishing space, and have huge Twitter followings, and theyll be putting this message out on their own.'

White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said Thursday that he hadn't read the Times story, but acknowledged that Samuels' anecdote about Rhodes trying to avoid media mentions of Iran's capture of U.S. sailors until after the State of the Union speech rang true.

'We've often found that it is easier to resolve situations like this when they arent subject to intense media scrutiny. We often will decline to discuss specific cases of Americans that are being held hostage around the world because we conclude that discussing them publicly before they are freed is not conducive to their prompt and safe release. I'm sure that was a factor in this situation,' he said.

'At the same time, I think anybody who took a look at the situation recognized that it was not going to stay secret for long, and that that certainly was true in this instance.'

'The way that it is covered publicly has a direct impact on the ability to resolve these situations,' Earnest added. ' And when we're talking about the lives of 10 U.S. servicemembers, their safe return is the top priority, and certainly much more important than any political calculation.'

For congressional consumption  lawmakers had to be persuaded not to block Obama's Iran nuclear deal  Rhodes' team set up a 'war room' in the White House and carefully coordinated which messages were being pushed to which parts of the U.S. Capitol.

'The way in which most Americans have heard the story of the Iran deal presented  that the Obama administration began seriously engaging with Iranian officials in 2013 in order to take advantage of a new political reality in Iran, which came about because of elections that brought moderates to power in that country  was largely manufactured for the purpose for selling the deal,' the Times feature explains.

FOOLED: Then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta now says he's not sure the president's aims were what the White House said they were at the time since Rhodes and his team of digital sorcerers controlled all the messaging

'Even where the particulars of that story are true, the implications that readers and viewers are encouraged to take away from those particulars are often misleading or false.'

The result, according to Samuels, was a sophisticated fabrication that reached as far as members of the president's cabinet.

Leon Panetta, who served terms as CIA director of secretary of defense, said that one of his most crucial jobs was persuading Israel to hold off military action that could have destroyed Iran's nuclear infrastructure before Obama could ink a deal to slowly dismantle it.

Netanyahu and his defense minister Ehud Barak 'were both interested in the answer to the question, "Is the president serious?"' Panetta said.

'And you know my view, talking with the president, was: If brought to the point where we had evidence that they're developing an atomic weapon, I think the president is serious that he is not going to allow that to happen.'

Asked if he is still convinced that was true, Panetta hedged.
Couple arrested on charge of injury to a child through the omissions of seeking medical treatment, preventing injury or sexual assault

Child Protective Services were told by the physician that there were injuries that were consistent with sexual

A one-year-old child possibly suffered sexual and physical abuse before dying at a Texas hospital.

Blanco police said Sunny Dakota Slade-Bort's mother, Jamie Petronella, 23, and her boyfriend John Lawrence, 24, reported the child unresponsive on Tuesday night, according to KHOU 11.

The couple said she was injured while playing with her two-year-old sister.

Petronella said her two-year-old, hit Sunny with a plastic chair causing her to fall on a table.

Police and Child Protective Services are investigating the baby's death because the family has a history of 'neglect' as they investigated the family a few days prior to the incident after a three-year-old boy in the couple's care suffered a broken arm.

Texas couple Jamie Petronella (left) and John Lawrence (right) are being investigated after Petronella's one-year-old daughter died after suffering physical and sexual abuse. They were arrested on a charge of injury to a child through the omissions of seeking medical treatment, preventing injury or sexual assault

When police arrived on the scene they found Sunny lying in the middle of the living room floor with Lawrence attempting to perform CPR on her, according to investigators.

Police said bruises were on both sides of the child's mouth along with a large wound on her face.

Lawrence told Blanco Police Chief Mike Ritchey that the bruise on the child's forehead was caused by him trying to 'rub' it away in order to diminish the effects of the bruise, according to an arrest affidavit.

The baby girl was flown by helicopter to a hospital in San Antonio, where the child's physician said her injuries indicated trauma to the head, according to KHOU.

The physician told police that the child had a spinal injury, bruising to the face and a fractured arm.

CPS were also told by the physician that there were injuries consistent with sexual assault, according to the arrest affidavit.

The two other children, a three-year-old boy and a two-year-old girl, in Petronella (right) and Lawrence's (left) care were taken to a hospital and there was evidence of sexual assault on the girl, two, as well as worms in her stool

The two other children, a three-year-old boy and a two-year-old girl, in Petronella and Lawrence's care were taken to a hospital and there was evidence of sexual assault on the girl, two, as well as worms in her stool.

One-year-old Sunny Dakota Slade-Bort (pictured) possibly suffered sexual and physical abuse before she died at a Texas hospital

Petronella and Lawrence were arrested on a charge of injury to a child through the omissions of seeking medical treatment, preventing injury or sexual assault, or by commission of the offenses, according to KHOU 11.

Police asked to recover DNA evidence from Lawrence, who has a prior arrest record.

He was arrested in 2015 for assault against his girlfriend at the time in Austin, Texas, according to KXAN.

A grand jury later indicted Lawrence on a felony strangulation charge.

There was also a protective order for the ex-girlfriend ordering Lawrence not to communicate with her or come within 200 yards of her home or workplace.

Investigators are searching the home for any evidence used to injure a child or commit 'aggravated sexual assault', according to KHOU.

The other two children are in custody with CPS.

A spokesperson for CPS told KXAN that the family has a history with the agency.
Presley the service dog never leaves her 14-year-old owner's side, not even in his yearbook.

A picture of the adorable female golden doodle can be found right next to Joseph 'Seph' Ware in the the Good Hope Middle School yearbook.

Presley has been helping Seph, who has Duchenne muscular dystrophy, for the last four years.

Presley the service dog got to stand by her owner Seph's side, even in his yearbook at the Good Hope Middle School in West Monroe, Louisiana

Presley has been helping Seph, who has Duchenne muscular dystrophy, for the last four years

The genetic disease causes progressive muscle weakness and often leaves patients wheelchair-bound by their early teens. Seph was diagnosed at the age of three.

Presley, who helps Seph get around, has never missed a day of class at his West Monroe, Louisana school, and is a beloved presence in the halls.

Administrators took notice and decided that Presley was just as much a part of the school as its students, according to the Huntsville Times.

After securing permission from Seph with a simple 'Why not?', the officials let Presley have her own chance to stand behind the camera. After about 10 minutes, she finally looked at it.

The tribute touched Seph's mother, Lori Watkins-Ware, who said her son's elementary school wasn't so welcoming of Presley's presence.

Presley, who helps Seph get around, has never missed a day of school and is a beloved presence in the halls

'To come to Good Hope and her to be welcomed has been very refreshing,' she told the paper. 'The kids adore her and she loves the attention.'

That attention has only increased after a parent of one of Seph's classmates posted a picture showing Presley's yearbook photo on Facebook, where it has been shared more than 22,000 times.

'We're kind of stunned at all the attention,' Watkins-Ware told Fox News. 'It's humbling. I'm glad Presley is making the world happy.'

And Seph has been loving it as well, even drawing a paw print on Presley's behalf when his classmates ask him to sign their yearbooks.
David Cameron and Zac Goldsmith are facing a bitter Tory backlash over 'dog whistle' tactics in the London Mayor battle - with even the candidate's sister condemning his behaviour.

Jemima Khan added her voice to criticism of the Conservatives repeatedly raising concerns about Sadiq Khan's extremist ties.

The Prime Minister joined the attacks on the Labour candidate in the House of Commons, insisting there were questions about whether he would do the best for Londoners.

The efforts failed last night as Mr Khan romped to victory with a huge mandate in the mayoral contest.

And a series of Tories broke ranks to complain that the approach had done serious damage to the party's reputation.

Steve Hilton, David Camerons former director of strategy, said tonight: 'Zac Goldsmith has brought back the nasty party label to the Conservative Party.'

Zac Goldsmith and his sister Jemima during the 2010 general election campaign

Former Conservative chair Sayeeda Warsi said: 'Our appalling dog whistle campaign for London Mayor 2016 lost us the election, our reputation & credibility on issues of race and religion.'

Steven Norris, a former MP and mayoral candidate, insisted it was 'no use having a dog whistle when everybody can hear it' as he led criticism of Mr Goldsmith's campaign.

Andrew Boff, the Conservative leader on the Greater London assembly, said the strategy had been a mistake and could damage relations with the Muslim community.

Roger Evans, a deputy to Boris Johnson at City Hall, also weighed in, warning that Mr Goldsmith's campaign would leave a 'negative legacy'.

In a remarkable broadside on the Tory mayoral candidate, Mr Boff said his party's tactics could damage relations with the Muslim community.

Ms Khan, Mr Goldsmith's sister, posted on Twitter: 'Sad that Zac's campaign did not reflect who I know him to be - an eco friendly, independent-minded politician with integrity.'

She added: 'Congratulations to Sadiq Khan - 1st Muslim Mayor of London- a city for all cultures, backgrounds & religions. A great example to young Muslims.'

Roger Evans, a deputy to Mr Johnson, also weighed in, warning that Mr Goldsmith's campaign would leave a 'negative legacy'.

And former Conservative mayoral hopeful Steven Norris pointedly said there was 'no use having a dog whistle when everybody can hear it'.

The extent to which the negative campaign run by the Tories failed was laid bare as the results rolled in.

Mr Khan was rewarded by strong swings in the vote in his favour across the capital and results suggested he won across more of the city than previous Mayors.

The poll result also indicates Mr Khan is set to shake off the toxic anti-Semitism row which has engulfed Labour for the past week.

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio led international congratulations to the new London Mayor, tweeting: 'Sending congratulations to London's new Mayor and fellow affordable housing advocate, @SadiqKhan. Look forward to working together!'

Baroness Warsi, a former Conservative Party chairwoman, led criticism of Mr Goldsmith for the way he conducted his mayoral campaign

Anne Hidalgo, the mayor of Paris, offered her 'felicitations' on Twitter, saying she was looking forward to strengthening co-operation between the two capitals on key issues like housing, pollution and culture.

Former Labour leader Ed Miliband said: 'Congratulations Sadiq Khan. You will be an outstanding Mayor of London.

'Your positive vision and dignity beat a campaign of fear and division.'

Outgoing mayor Mr Johnson today thanked the capital for his eight years in office as he sent his final messages from the official London Mayor Twitter account.

He tweeted: 'It's time to sign off from City Hall - it's been the most amazing privilege to be your mayor.'

Outgoing mayor Boris Johnson signed off from his official Twitter account today and said it had been the 'most amazing privilege' to fill the role for the past eight years

Minutes after the polls closed in the London mayoral election last night, Mr Boff criticised Mr Goldsmith's strategy for focussing on Mr Khan's apparent links with radical Muslims, telling the BBC: 'It was effectively saying that people of conservative religious views are not to be trusted and you should not share a platform with them.

'That's outrageous.'

He added Mr Goldsmith had 'done real damage' and had 'blown up bridges' that the Tories had built with London's Muslim communities, adding it was a mistake to 'equate people of conservative religious views with sympathising with terrorism'.

'I mentioned that I thought this was a mistake for future integration in London. If you are a London politician this is just a bizarre thing to do,' he said.

'I do believe it's going to affect Conservatives at the sharp end, especially in those parts of London where there is a high Muslim population.'

Jeremy Corbyn was among the first to congratulate Mr Khan tonight even before the official results of the eleciton were declared

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio led international congratulations for the new Mayor of London

Mr Evans told BuzzFeed: 'I'm concerned that the campaign we've run is going to leave a negative legacy which we in London are going to have to clear up long after the the people who ran Zac Goldsmith's campaign have gone on their way.

'I've been the deputy mayor for the last year and it's been my job to go and talk to communities in London,.

'I've always been very pleased with the courtesy with which I was received and the hearing all communities were willing to give to a Conservative politician.

'We're going to have to do quite a lot of work to re-establish trust with a lot of communities in London, that's a shame and an opportunity missed.'
Former I'm a Celebrity contestant Lady Colin Campbell and her son both walked away from a devastating car crash.

She is believed to have been unharmed after she was involved in a crash involving multiple cars in Worthing, West Sussex this afternoon.

Police officers, ambulances and a fire engine rushed to the scene of the accident where Lady C, 66, was with her son.

Former I'm a Celebrity contestant Lady Colin Campbell (pictured middle) and her son both walked away from a devastating car crash

Police officers, ambulances and a fire engine rushed to the scene of the accident where Lady C, 66, was with her son

The pair (pictured) - who were travelling with their dog - were pictured inspecting the damage to their car and talking to nearby motorists and passersby

The pair - who were travelling with their dog - were pictured inspecting the damage to their car and talking to nearby motorists and passersby.

Her blue Audi was heavily damaged on the driver's side after an apparent crash with a silver car, the Sun reported.

The reality TV star was also snapped talking to a police officer while she routed around the glove box for her belongings.

Local police closed off the road as emergency services began to clear up. It is not known if anyone was injured in the crash.

Lady C shot into the spotlight at the end of 2015 with her drama-filled appearance on ITV's I'm A Celebrity...Get Me Out Of Here.

The star famously clashed with her campmates before eventually leaving the show after complaining about being bullied by co-stars Duncan Bannatyne and Tony Hadley.

After leaving the Australian jungle, she let rip at her former campmates during an appearance on Alan Carr: Chatty Man, insisting that her claim that the pair had bullied her out of camp wasn't exaggerated.
Cops believe Simpson may have taken her to a campground or state park

Police issued Amber Alert yesterday but girl has still not been seen

The 57-year-old told staff that Carlie's father had been in a terrible crash

A nine-year-old girl abducted from school by her uncle on Wednesday may have been taken to an isolated area such as a campground or state park, police have said.

Carlie Marie Trent, nine, has not been seen since she was signed out of her Tennessee school by uncle Gary Simpson, 57, who falsely claimed that her father had been in a car accident.

Police are continuing to hunt for Simpson and Trent after an Amber Alert was issued yesterday, with Gary's wife Linda warning that the girl is in 'a lot of danger'.

Police believe Gary Simpson, 57 (left), may have taken niece Carlie Marie Simpson, nine, to an isolated area such as a campground or state park as they continue to search for the pair

Gary's wife Linda has also told the New York Daily News that she believes her husband is 'up to something bad'.

She said: 'I'm very worried. I'm very concerned. I think she's in a lot of danger. I don't see why you would kidnap a kid if you weren't up to something bad.'

Carlie is 4 foot 8 inches tall and weighs 75 pounds, with blonde hair and blue eyes. Simpson is balding, 5 foot 10 inches tall and weighs 157 pounds, with brown hair and eyes. Both are white.

The family realized Carlie had gone missing after the youngster failed to get off the school bus at the end of the day. 'She gets off the bus at my house and she didn't get off,' Linda said.

Panicked, the 54-year-old said that called her husband multiple times but he never answered.

Then she called the school who told her that Gary had picked up Carlie earlier that day. He had also told teachers that she might not make it to school the following day.

The pair were last seen driving away in Simpson's 2002 white Dodge Conversion Van. It was described as having Tennessee plates, with chipping paint and a stripe down the middle.

Trent has not been seen since Wednesday when she was checked out of school by Simpson as his wife Linda warns he is 'up to something bad'

Linda says she has no idea exactly where her husband, who does not have custody of Carlie would have taken their niece but believes he would have gone somewhere remote where they won't be found.

'I'm sure he's smart enough to not be out where someone might find him,' she said.

Police have issued an arrest warrant for Gary Simpson and are urging the public to come forward if they spot either him or Carlie.

The 9-year-old is described as being blond, blue-eyed and around 4'8 inches tall. She was last seen wearing a black and grey tank top with blue jeans.

Simpson is balding, wears glasses, 5'10 inches tall, 157 pounds and was last wearing a brown cap, a dark colored shirt and jeans.
Trump hits back: 'He was a poor representative and an embarrassment to the great people of South Carolina'

Graham is pals with John McCain, who got dissed by Trump over his Vietnam capture

Move comes after fellow GOP candidates Rick Perry and Chris Christie got on Trump train

Says he would have backed any of 16 GOP presidential candidates besides Trump

' Some will hold their nose. I just can't go there with Donald,' Graham says

Sen. Lindsey Graham is refusing to vote for Donald Trump, who he says 'conned' Republicans into voting for him.

'I just really el that the Republican Party has been conned here and this guy is not a reliable conservative republican,' Graham told CNN Friday.

Graham said in a statement that he 'cannot in good conscience support Donald Trump because I do not believe he is a reliable Republican conservative nor has he displayed the judgment and temperament to serve as Commander in Chief.'

'Some will hold their nose. I just can't go there with Donald,' Graham said.

Trump ridiculed Graham throughout the presidential campaign while Graham, a respected voice within the party on defense issues who nevertheless got thumped in his own state of South Carolina.

Graham says he won't hold his nose and vote for Trump

In just one explosive confrontation, Trump last year criticized Graham's friend and ally Senator John McCain over his time as a Vietnam War POW, saying 'I like people who weren't captured.'

Graham called Trump a 'jackass,' prompting Trump to give out Graham's cell phone during one of his televised rallies.

Campaigning in South Carolina, Trump called Graham a 'total lightweight  here's a guy, in the private sector, he couldn't get a job. Believe me  couldn't get a job. He couldn't do what you people did  you're all retired as hell and rich, okay? He wouldn't be rich. He'd be poor.'

'When it comes to the Donald, nothing surprises me anymore. It's just too bad, really,' Graham responded at the time.

Trump said Graham had called him 'begging' for a good reference with a Fox News morning show, and left his cell number.

Check your messages: Trump gave out Graham's cell phone number in South Carolina

Hard choices: Graham blasted Trump in a series of tweets

He won't back his former Senate colleague Clinton

Graham clashed with Trump over Iraq, immigration, and just about everything

Graham sits on the Senate Armed Services Committee

See you in November: Anything's possible after the election

Trump hit back with a blistering statement.

'I fully understand why Lindsey Graham cannot support me. If I got beaten as badly as I beat him, and all the other candidates he endorsed, I would not be able to give my support either. Every time I see Lindsey Graham spew hate during interviews I ask why the media never questions how I single handily destroyed his hapless run for President,' Trump said in a statement.

'As a candidate who did not receive 1 per cent in his own state  compared to my victory at nearly 40 per cent with many others in the race  he has zero credibility. He was a poor representative and an embarrassment to the great people of South Carolina.'

'Judging by the incompetent way he ran his campaign, it is easy to see why his military strategies have failed so badly  we can't even beat ISIS!' Trump added. 'While I will unify the party, Lindsey Graham has shown himself to be beyond rehabilitation. And like the voters who rejected him, so will I!'

In explaining his decision not to endorse Trump, Graham referenced how Trump last week brought up a National Enquirer story claiming Senator Ted Cruz's father was pictured with Lee Harvey Oswald.

'I've just got a hard time supporting somebody who claims that Ted Cruz's dad was associated with Lee Harvey Oswald and involved in the Kennedy assassination,' Graham said.

'I've got a hard time supporting somebody for president who spent thousands of dollars of their own money trying to find out if President Obama was born in Kenya versus Hawaii. I think that's crazy.'

He continued: 'I'm just glad we're having the convention in Cleveland, not Area 51. I think Donald Trump has gone to places where very few people have gone, and I'm not going with him.'

Graham tweeted that 'absolutely' will not be supporting Hillary Clinton, although he also tweeted that he won't be going to the GOP convention.

'Hillary Clinton represents the third term of Barack Obama & our nation cannot afford to continue those failed policies at home or abroad,' he wrote.

Graham and Clinton were friends in the Senate, but she's still not getting his vote either

Graham wrote that he will instead focus on down-ballot races.

'After the election, regardless of who wins, I'll do everything I can to help new President deal w/ the many challenges facing our nation,' he tweeted.

Earlier in the campaign, Graham called Trump a 'race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot,' in comments to CNN that have already been used in a Hillary Clinton web ad.

Graham dropped out after performing poorly in his home state, then threw his support to former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.

Later, when Cruz emerged as the last vessel of the 'stop Trump' movement, Graham backed the more conservative Texan.

He said Friday he would have backed any of the 16 other GOP candidates other than Trump.

A handful of Trump's former rivals have taken another path, although all of the have been insulted by Trump at one point or another. Former Texas Governor Rick Perry said Thursday backed Trump Thursday.

'He is not a perfect man. But what I do believe is that he loves this country and he will surround himself with capable, experienced people and he will listen to them,' Perry said.

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee tweeted this week, 'I am all in for @realDonaldTrump and urge all the GOP to unite and win back the White House.'

But many top Republicans including McCain say they won't be going to the GOP convention.
Several Wisconsin communities have decided to fine parents whose children repeatedly bully classmates.

Shawano, located about 40 miles northwest of Green Bay, is the latest Wisconsin municipality to pass an ordinance in recent days that holds parents of bullies accountable, according to the Star Tribune.

Plover and Monona also passed similar ordinances.

Police will first issue a warning to parents if their child is involved in demeaning behavior.

Pay for actions: Several Wisconsin communities have decided to fine parents whose children repeatedly bully classmates. If the bullying continues after 90 days, parents can be fined $366

If the bullying continues after 90 days, parents can be fined $366. Another offense in one year would cost the parents $681.

The ordinance involves a child meticulously using social media or saying things that are vulgar in an attempt to hurt or humiliate a classmate.

Kohl says the ordinance passed recently by the City Council is similar to those in Plover and Monona.

'We feel without getting the parent involved, just giving a ticket or fining someone out of this isn't the answer,' police chief Mark Kohl said.

Some parents told Fox that they agree that the bullying fine is a good measure to prevent harm from happening to their children in the future.

'I think something needs to be done for sure,' said Shawano parent Robert Riesterer.

'I know my son comes home and he's just not too happy some days.'

'They have three months where maybe their kid can go to counseling and move on from there and maybe get to know the situation at hand and why they bullied to begin with,' said parent Kylee Jones.

No one has been fined yet, say police.
Swedish model Victoria Silvstedt is supporting her former roommate Melania Trump and wants Donald Trump to win the presidential race.

The 41-year-old blonde bombshell told People.com that Melania Trump can 'bring the glamour back into the White House.'

Silvstedt shared that they were roommates when they were young models living in Paris and that Melania was 'so cool' as a roommate.

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Old friends: Swedish model Victoria Silvstedt is supporting her former roommate Melania Trump and wants Donald Trump to win the presidential race. Above they are pictured in 2003

Silvstedt said they were roommates when they were young models living in Paris and that Melania 'was so cool.' She thinks Melania can 'bring the glamour back into the White House.' Above they are pictured in 2001

Pictured above on Thursday at the Delete Blood Cancer DKMS gala, Silvstedt said: 'I came fresh out of Sweden, and she came from Slovenia, and we really bonded, she's wonderful'

'We lived together for almost a year in Paris, about twenty years ago when we both were starting our careers,' Silvstedt on Thursday at the Delete Blood Cancer DKMS gala according to People.com.

'I came fresh out of Sweden, and she came from Slovenia, and we really bonded, she's wonderful.'

The model, who was chosen as Playboy's Playmate of the year in 1997, recalled how they would run up and down the stairs in their building because they had eaten too much ice cream.

'We moved twice together, but our apartment in the Marais was in one of those old buildings with no elevators,' she told People.com

'So we had to run up and down to burn all the calories. She was always very disciplined.'

Fast forward years later, Silvstedt now hopes that Melania will become first lady of the United States as The Donald has eliminated all of his competition in the Republican party to hopefully secure the nomination for president.

Fast forward years later, Silvstedt now hopes that Melania (right) will become first lady of the United States as The Donald (left) has eliminated all of his competition in the Republican party to hopefully secure the nomination for president

'I'm just hoping that [Melania] ends up living in the White House,' she shared with People.com.

Silvstedt, who's modeled for Chanel, Christian Dior, Loris Azzaro, Givenchy, Valentino and Giorgio Armani, thinks Melania has the right potential to move into the White House as first lady.

'She's very respectful, classy. America isn't only about America,' Silvstedt told People.com.

'She's a foreigner, and that's what makes America great. She represents that woman.'

The blonde beauty also thinks that Melania is 'a very classy dresser' and is 'definitely a style icon.'

'She always looks amazing. I know that designers probably already do want to dress her, but I would imagine they're all going to want to dress her she's so beautiful and graceful,' Silvstedt told People.com.
A young girl and boy found chained up in a Texas back yard last week sustained hundreds of injuries after months or possibly years of abuse, police revealed Friday.

Mother Cheryl Reed, 30, was arrested Thursday night at a motel near to where the children were discovered in San Antonio and is now charged with two counts of injury to a child.

Police say Reed left her children in the care of Porucha Phillips, 34, a mother-of-six who is also pregnant, back in February before going to Sacramento, California, and had not returned since.

Cheryl Reed, 30, has been arrested after Texas police say her children were found covered in 'hundreds' of wound tied up in a back yard. Officers are also looking for Deandre Dorch, 36 (right)

Reed is accused of leaving her children, a young boy and girl, in the care of Porucha Phillips before they were discovered tied up in the back yard of her San Antonio home last week (pictured)

Investigators revealed today that the children were covered in hundreds of old and fresh wounds on their backs, heads, legs and arms.

The children were initially reported to be two and three years old, but officers now think they may be three and four. Phillips' children are aged between 10 months and 10 years old.

Police found Reed's children after being called to the home (back yard pictured) where they found six of Phillip's children left alone inside the house

Detectives also issued a warrant for Deandre Dorch, 36, Porucha's husband and father of several of her children, after charging him with injury to a child by omission.

Police say Dorch may have threatened Reed after she left her children at Phillips' home, demanding money from her while she was out of the state.

Dorch also told officers in an initial interview that he witnessed Reed whipping the two children with a switch on multiple occasions between November 2015 and February 2016 but did not get help.

He told cops it wasn't his place to report child abuse because he's not a 'snitch' and not 'God'.

Phillips has already been taken into custody after officers were called to her home last Thursday night to reports of a child who would not stop crying.

Police knocked at the front door but found nobody was home, before going around the back and discovering the two children tied up.

The girl was secured to the frame of the back door by a dog leash, while the boy had a chain around his ankle that was secured to the ground, cops said.

The boy and girl, who was suffering from hypothermia and a fractured arm, were initially hospitalized but have now been released.

Officers are still unsure who tied the children up in the back yard and are continuing to investigate.

Phillips (left), who is pregnant, is already in custody charged with abuse. Officers are now looking for Dorch (right), her husband, who is believed to be the father of some of the children found in her home

Police say Phillips' children, who are aged between 10 months and 10 years old, also showed signs of abuse and were dehydrated and exhausted when they were found

Investigators then discovered another six children who had been left alone inside the property. Police said the children were dehydrated and there was evidence they were also abused.

All eight children found at Phillips' property are now in the care of child protective services.

Neither Dorch nor Phillips were at the San Antonio property when police arrived, but were taken for questioning after returning the following morning.

While Phillips was arrested immediately, detectives said at the time Dorch was released after proving that he was at work on the night in question.

Reed is charged with two counts of injury to a child with bodily injury, while Phillips is charged with injury to a child by omission with serious bodily injury and bodily injury.
A Missouri pediatrician is a registered sex offender who was caught distributing child pornography.

Dr. Richard Leahy, 56, a practicing doctor in St. Charles, was convicted 20 years ago for distributing a 'visual depiction of a minor engaging in sexually explicit conduct' in Illinois.

The Missouri Board of Healing Arts stripped Leahy of his license but, once he served time in prison, he was issued a probationary license, 'restricting him from treating female patients under the age of 18', KPLR reported.

Registered sex offender: Dr. Richard Leahy, 56, a practicing doctor in St. Charles, Missouri, was convicted 20 years ago of distributing child porn in Chicago (left). Pictured right is a more recent sex offender registry photo

The Missouri Board of Healing Arts stripped Leahy of his license but, once he served time prison, he was issued a probationary license, 'restricting him from treating female patients under the age of 18'

However, just two years later, the State Board lifted the restriction and Leahy's full license was reissued.

Leahy is currently working as a pediatrician at a practice in St. Charles.

Someone discovered his name on the sex offender registry and word quickly spread around the area, mostly on social media.

The news came as a shock to many, with some parents refusing to believe it.

'I kind of put up a big fight. I was like no he's not,' said parent Mariela Nair, who has been taking her children to see Dr. Leahy for years.

'I was shocked to find out someone with so much power could be on the registered sex offender (list). That was mind blowing.'

'I was shocked': Missouri mom Mariela Nair has been taking her kids to Dr. Leahy for years

A local discovered Dr. Leahy's name on the sex offender registry and word quickly spread around St. Charles, where he practices, mostly on social media

Dr. Leahy refused to answer questions about his past conviction when confronted by a KPLR reporter this week.

However one patient, Victoria Stadler, who has been seeing Dr. Leahy for 15 years, confronted him herself during an appointment, and recorded the encounter on her phone.

In the recording, Dr. Leahy admits to Stadler that he is a registered sex offender.

'Yeah that was 25 years ago when the internet was new. I accidentally got onto something that I shouldn't have been on and I don`t know what to tell you except that it happened,' he can be heard saying.

Stadler then asked what happens, and Dr. Leahy replied: 'Not paying much attention.'

Patient Victoria Stradler secretly recorded Dr. Leahy admitting that he is a registered sex offender and gave the recording to a local TV station

Stadler said she feels that any doctor convicted of such an offense should not be allowed to practice.

'When you`re looking at child pornography and then you go back to being a pediatrician, that does not seem right to me,' she told KPLR.

However, the station reported that nearly 100 doctors were also issued probationary licenses like Leahy was in the past five years alone.
Nicky Morgan (pictured) last night ditched her flagship policy of forcing schools to become academies

Nicky Morgan last night ditched her flagship policy of forcing schools to become academies.

In her most humiliating U-turn yet, she bowed to pressure from Tory rebels preparing to sink her plans in the Commons.

The Education Secretary was accused of trying to bury bad news by announcing the decision on election results day.

It is the second time in a week the Government has been driven into reverse by its backbenchers  and the ninth since the general election a year ago.

The capitulation by Mrs Morgan  dubbed Ms U-turn following a series of policy reversals  was welcomed by Tory MPs, council bosses and teaching unions, who had threatened legal action.

Lucy Powell, Labour's education spokesman, said: 'It is frankly a humiliating climbdown for David Cameron and his Education Secretary, who just weeks ago were insisting they would plough on with the policy regardless. This Government's failed approach to education is letting down our children and will hold back young people for years to come.'

A Labour source added: 'The Tories are clearly trying to bury bad news by sneaking this embarrassing announcement out at 15:15pm on election results day.'

Kevin Courtney, of the National Union of Teachers, said it was the third recent major education U-turn, following the axeing of baseline assessments at primary level and the cancellation of a key stage 1 test.

'This is a clear indication that government policy is in tatters,' he added. It blows another big hole in George Osborne's much-criticised budget.

The plan to free primary and secondary schools from town hall control was the centrepiece of the Chancellor's March statement.

Mr Osborne declared that all schools in England  around 15,000  will either have to convert to academies by 2020 or be committed to doing so by 2022. Two-thirds of secondary schools have already converted.

Mrs Morgan heard the concerns of members of the influential 1922 Committee of Conservative backbenchers on Wednesday.

Its chairman, Graham Brady, said: 'I'm really pleased the secretary of state has listened to the concerns that were raised.

Education Secretary Morgan (left) was accused of trying to bury bad news by announcing the decision on election results day

'Crucially, the Government has accepted that where schools are already doing a great job, like the schools in my area of Trafford, there's no case for requiring them to change the way that they operate.

'I very much welcome the focus instead on using academies as a mechanism for pushing standards up where they're currently too low.'

Government insiders said the climbdown reflected the reality of having a small majority.

Mr Cameron dropped his opposition to taking child refugees from camps inside the EU once it became clear his MPs were prepared to force his hand.

Other U-turns since last May include cuts to tax credits and disability benefits, reforming union laws, the payment of short money to opposition parties, hunting, Sunday trading and on the Housing Bill.

The Queen's Speech on May 18 will include only limited powers for forced academisation in cases of poor performance or where a council can no longer viably support its remaining schools because so many have already become academies.

Lucy Powell, Labour's education spokesman, said the U-turn was a 'humiliating climbdown' for David Cameron (second from left) and Mrs Morgan (left)

A BRIEF HISTORY OF EMBARRASSING GOVERNMENT U-TURNS TAX CREDITS: In November, George Osborne performed a humbling U-turn over tax credit cuts which saw him abandon 4.4billion in savings and break his own cap on welfare spending. CHILD REFUGGES: David Cameron recently announced Britain would take in some child refugees living in camps inside the EU. At first, the Government resisted calls to take them in for fear that doing so would encourage more to make the perilous journey to the continent. TRADE UNIONS: Only last month, The Government executed an embarrassing U-turn on its flagship trade union reforms tonight after even Tory peers said it was going too far. Ministers had tried to scrap the 'check off' system which means many trade union members have their subscription deducted from their salaries. DISABILITY BENEFITS: New Work and Pensions Secretary Stephen Crabb said there would be no further raid on welfare spending to fund the 4billion black hole in the Budget left by the dramatic decision to abandon planned cuts to disability benefits. JUNIOR DOCTORS: In April, Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt was accused of backtracking over plans to impose a controversial contract on junior doctors. His threat to force the deal on medics prompted four strikes. Advertisement

The Department for Education also announced measures to protect small rural schools including extra financial support and a requirement that any closure would have to be agreed by the local authority and national government.

Mrs Morgan had offered a defiant defence of the academy plans less than a week ago, despite being heckled at the National Association of Head Teachers conference.

But yesterday she told the BBC: 'This is about being a listening government and I would consider myself to be a listening secretary of state.'

She has reversed a number of her predecessor Michael Gove's policies and now supports gay marriage despite angering the gay lobby by voting against it in 2013.

Academies are state schools that are independent of council control and can set their own budget, admissions policy, length of school day and curriculum.

The tactic of burying bad news when another major event is taking place was first highlighted on 9/11. Jo Moore, a Labour adviser, wrote an infamous memo saying: 'It is now a very good day to get out anything we want to bury.'




An annual father-daughter dance at a South Carolina elementary school was canceled after some parents complained the event wasn't inclusive.

Brockman Elementary School, a public school in Columbia, abandoned plans for the May 13 dance after fewer than 10 parents protested, Fox 10 reported.

The grumbling parents thought the event was too exclusive - even though the flyer explicitly said all were invited, said school district spokesperson Karen York.

A dance scheduled for May 13 was canceled after a few parents complained the event wasn't inclusive enough

The dance would have been a fundraiser for the school's parent-teacher organization

School district spokesperson Karen York said fewer than 10 parents complained before the event was scrapped

'There were a few parents that did not think the father-daughter dance was inclusive, when actually at all times it was never an event that was exclusive to only fathers and daughters,' York said.

'Mothers and anyone else who wanted to show up at the dance were certainly welcome to attend.'

The dance was supposed to raise funds for the school's parent-teacher organization. This year's event had already raised $1,000, but that money will be refunded after the cancellation, according to Fox 10.

In the last five years, the annual event has raised over $2,000.
The safeguards David Cameron secured to protect Britain and the City of London from the eurozone are not as strong as claimed, a senior Bank of England official has suggested.

As part of his deal with Brussels to keep Britain in the EU, the Prime Minister insisted he won guarantees that the UK would not be required to fund euro bailouts or sign up to draconian banking regulations.

He claimed a mechanism was now in place so that Britain could 'unilaterally' complain directly to national leaders on the European Council to ensure the country is not discriminated against.

David Cameron (pictured) insisted he won guarantees that the UK would not be required to fund euro bailouts but Bank of England's deputy governor suggests that is overstated

But a letter from Bank of England deputy governor Sir Jon Cunliffe to MPs suggests that the Government has overstated its case. It will fuel fears that Britain could be clobbered by rules designed to prop up the single currency and the region's basket case banks if it votes to stay in the EU on June 23.

Sir Jon, a former top official in Brussels, said Britain can raise concerns about economic and banking matters with finance ministers from the 28 EU countries.

Objections would only go before the European Council, where leaders set the broad direction of EU policy, with the backing of the chairman of the group of finance ministers  a job which changes hands every six months.

In his letter to Treasury select committee chairman Andrew Tyrie, Sir Jon said a request by the UK to have its concerns discussed at the European Council would be hard to turn down. But Mr Tyrie pointed out that 'there is no formal right' for the UK to have its concerns addressed.

Matthew Elliott, the chief executive of Vote Leave, said: 'The Government are trying to con the public into voting 'remain' on a false prospectus.'

Mr Tyrie said the protections Mr Cameron secured 'may be worth something' but were 'scarcely' as strong as the Prime Minister claimed.

Sir Jon Cunliffe's letter raised fears Britain could be clobbered by rules designed to prop up the single currency and the region's basket case banks (file photo)

Meanwhile, claims by pro-EU campaigners that Brexit would lead to higher air fares have been rejected by the head of British Airways' parent company.

Willie Walsh, chief executive of International Airlines Group, said he didn't think it would lead to higher prices or have 'any impact on our business'. EasyJet chief executive Carolyn McCall  a Remain supporter  has said Brexit would bring an end to the era of cheap flights.

Donald Trump yesterday declared that Britain would be better off without the EU. The Republican Party's presidential nominee-in-waiting also told Fox News that he thinks migration has been 'a horrible thing' for Europe. He added: 'A lot of that was pushed by the EU.'
Hillary Clinton felt the wrath of Bernie Sanders supporters at a rally in Los Angeles this week.

The Democratic front-runner for president was confronted by scores of protesters - some of whom held signs supporting Sanders - outside an organizing event in East Los Angeles on Thursday.

'I'm not with her,' read one, making a play on Clinton's campaign slogan, 'I'm with her.'

Hillary Clinton felt the wrath of Bernie Sanders supporters at a rally in Los Angeles this week

The Democratic front-runner for president was confronted by scores of protesters - some of whom held signs supporting Sanders - outside an organizing event in East Los Angeles on Thursday

Clinton was heckled indoors once she began speaking, as well, on at least five separate instances during her speech to a Latino audience

PIPE DOWN: 'I think we would be a lot better off if we actually talked to each other instead of yelling at each other,' she told the hecklers

Protesters outside the event were against Clinton for a variety of reasons, some taking aim at her vote for the Iraq War and support for trade policies progressives say hurt American workers, others her email scandal.

Protesters outside the event were against Clinton for a variety of reasons, some taking aim at her vote for the Iraq War and support for trade policies progressives say hurt American workers, others her email scandal.

More than one anti-Clinton sign referred to her as 'Killary' and several referenced her paid speeches to Wall Street.

Sanders has hammered Clinton over the checks she accepted from the financial sector for speaking gigs after she left President Barack Obama's cabinet and says she should release the transcripts of the sessions.

Clinton has steadfastly resisted, much to the chagrin of the Sanders supporters she must woo ahead of the November election should the election play out as expected and she become the Democratic nominee for president.

In order to tie her in pledged delegates, Sanders would need to decimate Clinton in California, where 475 pledged delegates are at stake.

The state votes on June 7, the second to last day of the primary season. The District of Columbia goes last on June 14.

Clinton leads Sanders by an average of 10 points in California as things currently stand, according to Real Clear Politics' data.

His campaign likes to boast that it has turned around more dire situations, and in the case of California, it may have an opening, based on the size of the protest Thursday against Clinton.

Clinton was heckled indoors once she began speaking, as well.

CNN counted five separate interruptions during her speech to a Latino audience.

'I think we would be a lot better off if we actually talked to each other instead of yelling at each other,' she said, according to the news network. 'Let the other side do the yelling.'

Eventually, she gave up, though, ending her talk after 15 minutes - roughly half the time she normally spends on the stump.

Protesters from Latino and Community groups make their way to East Los Angeles College in Monterey Park, California, for the Clinton event

More than one anti-Clinton sign referred to her as 'Killary' and several referenced her [aid speeches to Wall Street

Sanders has hammered Clinton over the checks she accepted from the financial sector for speaking gigs after she left President Barack Obama's cabinet and says she should release the transcripts of the sessions

In order to tie her in pledged delegates, Sanders would need to decimate Clinton in California, where 475 pledged delegates are at stake
A grandfather who wanted to 'make America great again' has used his obituary to ask his loved ones not to vote for Hillary Clinton.

Donald Trump supporter Carl Crocetti, 62, died on Sunday, but wanted his political views to count in November's presidential election.

At the end of his obituary, Mr Crocetti's family wrote: 'Carl requested in lieu of flowers that people elect NOT to vote for Hillary Clinton in the presidential election in November.'

Last request: Donald Trump supporter Carl Crocetti (left) used his obituary to ask his loved ones not to vote for Hillary Clinton (right)

The family man, from Stoughton, Massachusetts, ran a small meat processing plant specializing in Italian sausages and had strong political opinions.

His son, Carlo, told Brockton Patch that he wanted Trump to know that his father was one of the Republican presumptive nominee's biggest fans.

'He was fed up with the direction and leadership of this country that gave him so much,' Carlo said.

'I am trying to honor my father the best way I know how. I won't stop until the Donald sees this and knows how much my father wants to see America great again.'

Carlo told CBS Boston that his father was larger than life and was 'very passionate' about the election.

'What I will say is, he wants to make American great again,' he said, quoting Trump's slogan.

Mr Crocetti - who was married to his third wife, Catherine - had one son and four grandchildren, Carlo Jr, Julianna, Luca and Ana.

The rest of the much-loved grandfather's obituary mentioned his passion for racing on land and on sea.

'Carl loved fast cars and fast boats, racing both successfully over the years. Collecting and restoring classic cars was his passion and pleasure as he grew older and he was noted amongst his peers as an avid buff of muscle cars from the sixties and seventies,' the obituary read.

'If it went fast and was loud you could always count on seeing a smile upon his face.'

Larry Upright (left) and Elaine Fydrych (right) also used their obituaries to urge people not to vote for Clinton

Grandmother Alba Keus used her obituary to urge people not to vote for Trump.

Mr Crocetti is not the first person to make a political statement in their obituary.

In April, Republican voter Larry Upright, 81, also made a final wish for his friends and families to not vote for Clinton.

Mr Upright, from Kannapolis, North Carolina, was passionate about politics and would have found the obituary hilarious, his family said.

The final lines of the tribute said: 'Also, the family respectfully asks that you do not vote for Hillary Clinton in 2016. R.I.P. Grandaddy.'

Last year, Elaine Fydrych's obituary also asked loved ones not to vote for Clinton.

The former actress, from Runnymede, New Jersey, was a registered Democrat and a 'not a political person', but thought the former Secretary of State's handling of the attack on the U.S. embassy in Benghazi was 'terrible', her husband Joe said.

'Elaine requests, "In lieu of flowers, please do not vote for Hillary Clinton",' the obituary read.

In March this year, grandmother Alba Keus used her obituary to urge people not to vote for Trump.

'In lieu of flowers Alba's request would be that you do not vote for Donald Trump,' the tribute said.
Shocking footage has emerged of scaffolding collapsing during a strong storm in China.

Two people were injured after the scaffolding flattened in the bad weather.

The incident which occurred on May 4 in Guiyang City was caught on surveilance footage, reports the People's Daily Online.

Shocking: Two people were injured after scaffolding collapsed in Guiyang, south west China

Horrifying footage: The city was battered by a storm bringing heavy winds and causing chaos

Guiyang has been hit by bad weather in recent days.

In the footage,the scaffolding is located over an electric bike park.

The extent of the wind can be seen straight away as flags placed on top of the scaffolding and advertisements attached to the side can be seen violently flapping.

Suddenly the scaffolding leans towards the floor before crashing to the ground.

At one point a man can be seen walking alongside the bike park. As it starts to career into the ground, the man manages to run into the corner of a ground.

The bikes parked underneath are completely flattened in the process.

The aftermath of the incident was also caught on camera.

Police cordoned off the area and are still investigating the incident.

Extreme weather has hit China over the past week with heavy wind and freak storms reported across the country.

On May 4, a building was blown away and completely obliterated in northern China by extreme weather.

Footage showed the building being picked up by the wind and tipped over before smashing into pieces.

Tragic: In the footage,the scaffolding is located over an electric bike park right in the centre of the city

Lucky escape: At one point a man can be seen walking and when it starts to collapse he runs for cover
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Li Jinyuan, a generous Chinese billionaire boss who took 6,400 of his staff to France and Monaco last year, has done it again - this time taking his employees to Madrid.

This year, the group comprises 3,000 people and will be spending five days in Spain, according toPeople's Daily Online.

The trip, which also includes visits to Toledo and Barcelona, is estimated to have cost 20million euros (15.76million).

Hola Espana: The generous Chinese billionaire boss who took 6,400 of his staff to the South of France last year has done it again - this time taking his employees to Madrid

Group travel: There were 3,000 employees on this trip. They arrived in Madrid on May 5 on 20 separate chartered flights from China

Culture: The group were met at the airport by journalists as well as a man and woman in dressed as flamenco dancers (pictured)

Bus tour: Reports said 70 different tour buses were hired to take the visitors on various cultural trips around Madrid (pictured)

According to reports, the employees of Tiens Group arrived in Madrid on May 5 on 20 separate chartered flights.

From Madrid, the group will take a day trip to the historic municipality of Toledo.

They're scheduled to visit Barcelona on board four high-speed trains on May 8, before returning to China on May 10.

Although details of their itinerary hasn't been unveiled, they are said to be taking part in a host of different cultural activities.

A total of 2,000 hotel rooms have been booked for their stay while 70 tour buses were hired to transport them to different attractions.

The annual holiday celebrates the 21st anniversary of the company.

It's not clear whether the billionaire head of the group Li Jinyuan was actually part of the group.

Booked out: A total of 2,000 hotel rooms have been booked for their stay. The group will also go on to Barcelona in four high-speed trains

Bored: As can be expected on a tour group of such a large size, there was a lot of waiting around at the airport before things go going

Happy: The new arrivals look very happy to have landed in the Spanish capital as they wave for the cameras at Madrid Airport

A Spanish welcome: Two flamenco dancers were at the airport with flowers to greet the group. They will travel on to Barcelona on May 8

Working hard: While the employees are having fun, group director Li Zongmin (fourth from left) was busy meeting Madrid's city mayor Manuela Carmena (fourth from right)

However, his son and group director Li Zongmin was reported meeting Madrid's city mayor Manuela Carmena on behalf of him.

This is not the first time employees of the conglomerate Tiens Group have been taken on holiday by their generous employer.

Last year, MailOnline reported that Li Jinyuan himself chaperoned 6,400 of his employees to Paris and Cote d'Azur.

He booked up 140 hotels in Paris and another 79 in Cannes and Monaco for the extravagant trip.

All of the employees were wearing the company uniform to form the world's longest human chain.

Taking thousands of employees on incentives holidays seems to be a new trend this year for Chinese companies.

Earlier this week, MailOnline Travel reported that 8,000 employees of Chinese healthcare company Zhongmai were being taken to South Korea this weekend for a ginseng chicken soup party.

In March, MailOnline also reported that a beauty company, Aurance Group had taken 6,000 of its employees to South Korea for a beer and fried chicken party.

To France: Last year, billionaire boss Li Jinyuan (left, on truck) took 6,400 of his employees (right) to Paris and the Cote d'Azur
Lieutenant Colonel Jack Deichman, USMC (retired) was presented an overdue Bronze Star for his service during the Vietnam War.

Lt. Col. Jack Deichman with his family upon receiving his Bronze Star.

The award was presented to Lieutenant Colonel Deichman by Brigadier General William Weise USMC (retired) at a Vietnam War Commemoration ceremony at the Coatesville VA Medical Center on March 29.

The event was one of more than 150 that took place at VA medical centers across the nation that day.

The Lieutenant Colonel was born in Bethlehem and grew up in Nazareth. As an adult, he lived in Wyomissing, Pa., and in 1998, he moved to Limerick, Pa., where he resides today.

During the ceremony, Lt. Col. Deichman received the Bronze Star medal with the "V" device, which means he received the Bronze Star Medal for valor.

Lt. Col. Deichman was commissioned as a second lieutenant in April 1967. After months of training, he was sent to Vietnam in late September, where he was assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 4th Marines.

From March 30 to May 3, 1968, Lt. Col. Deichman participated in combat operations around a group of villages named Dai Do. The 652 marines and sailors of the 2nd Battalion, 4th Marines were tasked to stop the advance of the 10,000-man strong 320 North Vietnamese Army Division. The 2nd Battalion, 4th Marines halted the advancing enemy and drove them back into North Vietnam.

Lt. Col. Deichman was awarded the Silver Star and Bronze Star for his heroic actions under fire and the Purple Heart for being wounded in action. His company commander received the Congressional Medal of Honor. His battalion commander, now retired Brigadier General William Weiss was awarded the Navy Cross. Weiss presented Lt. Col. Deichman with his Bronze Star at the event.

After Vietnam, he continued his career in the Marine Corps. He transitioned and spent the next 22 years in the communications and intelligence fields. He served in various assignments which included serving as the first marine on the National Signals Intelligence Council. His last assignment was as a battalion commander of a Marine Support Battalion. He retired from the Marine Corps as a Lieutenant Colonel in 1986.

Lt. Col. Deichman's military awards include: Silver Star, Defense Meritorious Service Medal, Meritorious Service Medal, Purple Heart, National Defense Medal, Armed Forces Expeditionary Medal, Vietnam Service Medal, the Republic of Vietnam Campaign Medal and his newly presented Bronze Star Medal.

The Bronze Star is a prestigious decoration, presented to those who serve in combat and display heroism, outstanding achievement, or meritorious service.

Parts of this story were taken from an article written by Ginger Dunbar in the Daily Local News of West Chester, Pa.

Do you have community news to share? To see it posted here and possibly in The Express-Times, send me an email.
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A hotel room that hangs on the side of a cliff has been unveiled in Hunan, central China.

The unusual accommodation, is said to be the first of its kind in the country.

Unfortunately, although the see-through room gives unrivaled views of its surroundings, those who want to stay inside have to go rock climbing to reach it according to People's Daily Online.

New: The capsule hotel, suspended over a lake, was unveiled in Hunan, central China on May 4. It's made from acrylic plates and aluminium poles

Rustic: Although the room doesn't look very luxurious right now, it will be equipped with high-speed wifi and solar power chargers

Strong: The 180kg pod has been suspended 98 feet over Baofeng Lake in the Zhangjiajie scenic area with the help with a steel pulley system, which can support weights of up to 700kg

The pod, which was unveiled on May 4, has been constructed by a local youth out of 24 acrylic plastic plates and 12 aerospace strength aluminium tubes according to the report.

It measures just over 10 feet long and five feet wide - giving just about enough room for two people.

The 180kg pod has been suspended 98 feet over Baofeng Lake in the Zhangjiajie scenic area with the help with a steel pulley system, which can support weights of up to 700kg.

Both the interior and exterior have been inspired by Tujia traditions, an ethnic minority in China.

The pod is currently at a concept stage and has no toilet or catering facilities.

Unfinished: Both the interior and exterior have been inspired by Tujia traditions, an ethnic minority in China but it's currently a prototype

And although the room doesn't look very luxurious right now, it will be equipped with high-speed wifi and solar power chargers.

Zhangjiajie is well-known in the country for its stunning views of mountains and lakes as well as several glass-bottomed viewing bridges where visitors can experience the view.

However, Skylodge in Peru already offers a similar experience suspended 400 feet over the Sacred Valley.

MailOnline Travel reported that would-be lodgers have to climb the cliff-face in order to reach the room although there is a zip wire that speeds up the journey on the way down.

In Wales, there's also a very rustic version called the Portaledge Hotel, which lefts you sleep while dangling over the valley with almost no protection from the elements.

It's said to have been inspired by American rock climbing techniques.

Stunning: The Skylodge in Peru is composed of three luxurious transparent capsule suites which can sleep a total of eight people

Adventurous: In Wales, guests abseil from the cliff top to their beds at sunset. They are strapped into harnesses which are secured to the rock face




He gets run over by the second vehicle but survives with just

A shocking footage of a child falling out of a vehicle and then run over by another has recently emerged from Guazhou, north China.

The unidentified mother of the child had been completely oblivious to the incident and drove off. She was eventually called back to the scene with the help of local police according to Huanqiu, an affiliate of People's Daily Online.

Fortunately the six-year-old boy was not hurt in the accident.

Before: Shocking incident took place on a very busy road in Guazhou, north China. The boy was seen standing up as his mother's tricycle started moving

Accident: His mother drives off without realising what happened while the white car behind was too close to stop. It runs over the boy as he laid on the floor

The incident took place just after 6pm on April 13.

In the footage, the child is seen peeking his head from the back of an open tricycle while the vehicle is parked at a red light.

Just as he stands up, the traffic starts moving and the boy stumbles out of the tricycle, which drives off without him.

As the boy lies on the floor looking confused, the white car travelling behind his mother's vehicle runs over him.

Miracle: Incredibly, the boy survives being run over with just scratches and even clambers back up on his own

Help: A traffic police was seen running towards the scene. Police later helped to track down the mother and return the boy to her

Driver of the white car only stops after it has completely rolled over the boy, who is then seen clambering up on his own.

The whole incident was over in seconds.

According to reports, the mother never realised her son had fallen out.

She only returned to the scene after she was alerted by traffic police.

Luckily, the boy only suffered from minor scratches as a result of the incident.

Local police has revealed that the tricycle, which is considered an electric-powered vehicle, should not have been on the main road.
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Meet China's new addition, a one day old panda cub.

The adorable baby panda was born at Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding in Sichuan province earlier today, reports the People's Daily Online.

Pictures of the newborn which weighs 145 grams (5oz) show the cub with its mother and also being cared for in an incubator by staff at the centre.

Welcome to the world: Mother Giant Panda Ai Bang is seen pictured with her newborn cub at the base in Chengdu

Hello little one! The newborn cub is seen inside an incubator at Chengdu's Giant Panda Breeding Centre in south west Sichuan province

The new arrival which was born at 6.06am has not yet been named.

A live stream of Ai Bang, the mother giving birth which included pictures and video streams received more than 620,000 page views.

The adorable images released today show the baby being cared for by staff at the centre in Chengdu as well as the cub with his mother.

This isn't the first time Ai Bang has received media attention.

In 2014, the panda had shown signs of pregnancy and then it was discovered that she had been faking it in order to get a better enclosure along with more fruit and bamboo, according to China Daily.

Ai Bang was born in Japan in December 2006.

When a panda cub is first born it is pink, blind and toothless, weighing only 90 to 130 grams - a mere one eight-hundredth of its mother's weight.

A month after birth, the colour pattern of the cub's fur is fully developed.

At around 70 to 80 days it will begin to crawl and play with its mother or, in these conditions, with other pandas.

Giant panda cubs are extremely rare as female pandas are only in estrus - that is, ready to accept a male and mate - for around two to three days a year.

More problems occur when pandas are in captivity, as male pandas have been known to lose their sex drive, forcing scientists to try extreme methods including artificial insemination, giving male pandas Viagra and showing them videos of other pandas mating.

Once a female is pregnant, the gestation period for a baby panda lasts around 95 to 160 days.

The first of 2016: Chinese media claims the unnamed baby cub is the first to be born this year in the entire world

No name yet for this baby: The unnamed new arrival arrived at 6.06am this morning with the birth streamed live
Sickening footage has emerged of a husband of a patient punching a female doctor at a hospital in Taoyuan, Hunan province on April 23.

It's also claimed that the man also attacked another female doctor at the hospital leaving her bruised, Huanqiu affiliated with the People's Daily Online reports.

The husband became upset when his wife started bleeding after childbirth.

Horrifying: The man became aggressive with hospital staff over his wife's treatment at the hospital

Sickening violent attack: The man knocks the woman to the floor and onlookers rush to her aid

No respect: The woman had previously tried to reason with the man in the 5th floor corridor of the hospital

The incident took place on the fifth floor corridor at Taoyuan County Mother and Child Health Hospital.

Chinese media reported that his wife had a hemorrhage after giving birth.

In the footage caught on CCTV, the man can be seen talking with a female doctor who is wearing a face mask.

The man appears to be very angry, talking quickly and using hand gestures right in the doctor's face.

She appears to go through some medical notes as if to try and calm the man down.

Then suddenly the man violently punches her in the face.

She instantly falls to the floor and other people in the corridor rush to her aid.

According to reports, the husband was detained after the incident and then released on the afternoon of the 23rd.

At the time of the investigation, the wife was out of danger.

On April 26 he came to the hospital again and threatened staff and refused to apologise or pay for the medical treatment for those he injured.

Shocking case: The man was detained after the attack and was released that very afternoon
In a case of retro tech versus new world machines, a hack-happy Apple Watch owner has installed Windows 95 on his wrist computer.

In a YouTube clip, technology developer Nick Lee shows what the Windows software looks like scaled down on the Apple Watch.

As Lee explains in a blog post, the capacity of the Apple Watch exceeds that of Windows 95, so therefore it would be plausible for the gadget to be able to handle the old software.

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In a YouTube clip, technology developer Nick Lee shows what the Windows software looks like scaled down on the Apple Watch (pictured). As Lee explains in a blog post, the capacity of the Apple Watch exceeds that of Windows 95, so therefore it would be plausible for the gadget to be able to handle the old software

The end result is incredibly slow, but it runs impressively well.

Lee relied on a number of hacks to get this working, specifically as Apple does not let you easily install new operating systems onto its devices, or apps not scanned by Apple.

These included modifying Apple's development software so that he could turn Windows 95 into a Watch app that could also act as a place where OS can run.

Lee's blog explains the steps he took to make it work.

Apple's gadget was hailed as the most personal device Apple has ever created, but a recent study found that half of us think the Apple Watch is a flop.

Lee relied on a number of hacks to get this working, specifically as Apple does not let you easily install new operating systems onto its devices, or apps not scanned by Apple. In particular, he altered the Watch's software to enable the mouse to be moved by tapping the screen with a finger

Windows' released the computer software in 1995. They aimed to sell between 20 and 30 million packages in six months. They sold seven million in the first five weeks

However, the same survey found that around six per cent of Americans own the gadget.

This is around the same percentage as one year ago, perhaps suggesting the device hasnt caught on despite the launch of new apps and straps.

One issue was the watch screen wanting to sleep every time it wasn't in use.

His recommendation was to hot glue a motor to the digital crown at the side of the monitor in order to keep it awake.
General Motors announced a $500 million investment in Lyft earlier this year as a joint effort to develop a fleet of self-driving taxis.

Although the idea seemed like a distant dream, the duo has announced plans for a testing program on public roads by 2017.

The program will use Chevrolet Bolt electric taxis and 'include real customers in a yet-to-be disclosed city'.

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General Motors announced a $500 million investment in Lyft earlier this year, as a joint effort to develop a fleet of self-driving taxis. GM and Lyft plans for a testing program on public roads by 2017. The program will use Chevrolet Bolt electric taxis and 'included customers in a yet-to-be disclosed city'

WHAT ARE GM AND LYFT WORKING ON? General Motors announced a $500 million investment in Lyft earlier this year, as a joint effort to develop a fleet of self-driving taxis. And what although this idea seemed like a distant dream, the duo has announced plans for a testing program on public roads by 2017. The program will use Chevrolet Bolt electric taxis and 'included customers in a yet-to-be disclosed city'. In addition to the testing program, Lyft is working on a new app that will be used for the autonomous cars. The app is still a prototype, but will list the option for an autonomous car and there is a GM OnStar assistant to answer questions or report issues while you're en route to your destination. Passengers will also use it to tell the car when to 'go', when they've finished with the rid and the car can leave.

'GM continues to make progress on our previously announced plans related to an integrated on-demand autonomous network with Lyft. Similarly, we have said the Chevrolet Bolt EV is the ideal platform for ride sharing solutions,' a GM spokesperson told DailyMail.com.

'We believe electrification blends perfectly with autonomy when it comes to technology integration.'

'We have nothing specific to announce in relation to potential roll out of vehicles and technologies at this time.'

Although little details have been given about the program, Lyft executives said customers will have the option to opt-in or out while requesting a car via the app, reports The Wall Street Journal.

'We will want to vet the autonomous tech between Cruise, GM and ourselves and slowly introduce this into markets,' Taggart Matthiesen, Lyft's product director, told The Journal.

In addition to the testing program, Lyft is working on a new app that will be used for the autonomous cars.

The app is still a prototype, but will list the option for an autonomous car and there is a GM OnStar assistant to answer questions or report issues while you're en route to your destination.

Passengers will also use it to tell the car when to 'go', when they've finished with the rid and the car can leave.

Matthiesen said his company also is working out how to design the program by which Chevy Bolts would be available to prospective Lyft drivers, as many are unable to get an acceptable vehicle for taxi rides.

The car maker giant hopes to use Lyft and its fleet of drivers as customers for the Bolt  set to launch later this year.

As of right now, the auto giant and Lyft rent the Chevy Equinox to drivers in Chicago who need them.

The news of an autonomous fleet of taxis comes just a little over a month after GM acquired a small software company that has been testing the vehicles on the streets of San Francisco.

The Detroit automaker says it purchased Cruise Automation, a 40-person firm that was founded just three years ago.

In addition to the testing program, Lyft is working on a new app that will be used for the autonomous cars. The app is still a prototype, but will list the option to be picked up by an autonomous car and there is also a GM OnStar assistant to answer questions or report any issues

The move, coupled with GM's in-house research, should help the company in its race with Google and others to have autonomous cars start transporting people on public roadways.

Cruise Technology, along with Google, is among the few companies with permits from the state of California to test the cars, said Kyle Vogt, the company founder and CEO.
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New York is staging a series of shows with 2,000 pigeons tagged with LED lights illuminating the city's night sky.

For its premiere last night, the birds were released at sunset from coops aboard a former aircraft carrier docked at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

Improvising their own choreography, the flock swooped, twirled and glided through the sky above the East River for the show called 'Fly by Night.'

New York is staging a series of show with 2,000 pigeons tagged with LED lights (pictured) illuminating the city's night sky. For its premiere last night, the birds were released at sunset from coops aboard a former aircraft carrier docked at the Brooklyn Navy Yard

'It's almost like this shooting star going across the skyline,' said artist Duke Riley, who created the 30-minute spectacle on the Brooklyn waterfront. The birds' flight paths are pictured

'Pigeons suffer a PR problem,' said Creative Time curator Meredith Johnson. 'People have this sense that they're rats with wings. But pigeons are incredibly complex.' 'He wants to bring them out of the shadows,' she said of Riley. The pigeons' path is pictured

'It's almost like this shooting star going across the skyline,' said artist Duke Riley, who created the 30-minute spectacle on the Brooklyn waterfront.

LED light bands were attached to a bird's leg and remote-controlled from the Baylander, a decommissioned Navy ship from the Vietnam era.

Spectators lined a grandstand on land, surrounded by taped sounds of birds cooing and flapping their wings as the pigeons perched atop the warship, waiting for the sky to darken.

Then a hush descended on the scene as Riley and several assistants, hollering and blowing whistles, waved garbage bags - simulating hawks - over the vessel to start the flock flying around.

Spectators lined a grandstand on land, surrounded by taped sounds of birds cooing and flapping their wings as the pigeons perched atop the warship, waiting for the sky to darken. This image captures the flow of light from each of the birds as they soared at sunset

Improvising their own choreography, the flock swooped, twirled and glided through the sky above the East River for the show called 'Fly by Night.' LED light bands were attached to a bird's leg and remote-controlled from the Baylander, a decommissioned Navy ship from the Vietnam era

The 30-minute performance was part of artist Duke Riley's 'Fly By Night' creation. Riley selected the Brooklyn Navy Yard for his light show because nearby, on an artificial island, the Navy housed its first messenger-pigeon fleet in the early 20th century

THE PIGEON LIGHT SHOW Around two-thirds of the birds were donated by people from New York's pigeon community who were forced to give up their birds because of their housing situations. Others are on loan from friends. They come in an array of colours, some with silver heads, others with black stripes. Equipping thousands of pigeons with LED lights was a project unto itself - a team effort led by a company called 10xBETA. A technician in China creates a pigeon-light circuit and an American manufacturer made containers for the equipment.

The spectacle, which runs each weekend through June 12, is free of charge but requires online reservations. There's already a waiting list.

Riley selected the Brooklyn Navy Yard for his light show because nearby, on an artificial island, the Navy housed its first messenger-pigeon fleet in the early 20th century.

The project by the 43-year-old artist and Boston native is presented by Creative Time, a New York-based nonprofit that sponsors public art.

He said he was inspired for 'Fly by Night' after reading an old military manual on training pigeons for night missions.

About two-thirds of the birds were donated by people from New York's pigeon community who were forced to give up their birds because of their housing situations. Others are on loan from friends.

They come in an array of colours, some with silver heads, others with black stripes, and one with a red beak.

Equipping thousands of pigeons with LED lights was a project unto itself - a team effort led by a company called 10xBETA based at the Navy Yard.

It took a technician in China to create a pigeon-light circuit.

And an American manufacturer made containers for the equipment that volunteers snapped into the leg bands. The cost of the project was not disclosed.

It's not the first time Riley has used homing pigeons for his performance art. He says he smuggled cigars from Havana to Key West, Florida, in a 2013 project called 'Trading With the Enemy.' Last night's show is pictured

About two-thirds of the birds (pictured) were donated by people from New York's pigeon community who were forced to give up their birds because of their housing situations. Others are on loan from friends. They come in an array of colours, some with silver heads, others with black stripes, and one with a red beak

Equipping thousands of pigeons with LED lights was a project unto itself  a team effort led by a company called 10xBETA based at the Navy Yard. It took a technician in China to create a pigeon-light circuit. And an American manufacturer made containers for the equipment that volunteers snapped into the leg bands

The show also celebrates the vanishing hobby of keeping pigeons on the rooftops of Brooklyn's historic waterfront.

In the 1960s, thousands of people did that, but now, there are fewer than 200 raising pigeons in New York.

When the show is over in June, many of the birds will go to a Brooklyn man who lost hundreds of his pigeons in a fire earlier this year.

It's not the first time Riley has used homing pigeons for his performance art. He says he smuggled cigars from Havana to Key West, Florida, in a 2013 project called 'Trading With the Enemy.'

'Pigeons suffer a PR problem,' said Creative Time curator Meredith Johnson. 'People have this sense that they're rats with wings. But pigeons are incredibly complex.'

'He wants to bring them out of the shadows,' she said of Riley.

The show also celebrates the vanishing hobby of keeping pigeons on the rooftops of Brooklyn's historic waterfront. When the show is over in June, many of the birds (pictured) will go to a Brooklyn man who lost hundreds of his pigeons in a fire earlier this year
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SpaceX has successfully landed a rocket on a floating platform in the Atlantic Ocean, for the second month in a row, following a Japanese satellite mission.

The unmanned SpaceX rocket blasted off from Florida early this morning to put the communications satellite into orbit, with the launch vehicle's main-stage booster completing a quick return landing on the floating platform.

Due to the high altitude of the mission, SpaceX did not expect a successful landing, but the Falcon 9 rocket touched down on the drone platform - nicknamed Of Course I Still Love You - just over eight minutes after launching.

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SpaceX has successfully landed a rocket on a floating platform in the Atlantic Ocean after a delivering a Japanese satellite into orbit early this morning, and is the second rocket to successfully land in the space of a month. Pictured is the rocket blasting off from Florida

A company webcast showed the 23-story-tall rocketsoaring off a seaside launch pad at Cape Canaveral Air ForceStation at 1:21 am EDT (06:21 BST).

Perched atop the booster was the JCSAT-14 satellite, ownedby Tokyo-based telecommunications company SKY Perfect JSAT Corp,a new customer for Elon Musk's Space Exploration Technologies,or SpaceX.

About 2.5 minutes after launch, the rocket's first stagewas scheduled to shut down and separate, leaving the secondstage to deliver the satellite into its intended orbit more than25,000 miles (40,000 km) above Earth.

The returning rocket was programmed to fly itself back to afloating landing pad positioned more than 400 miles (650 km) off Florida's east coast in the Atlantic Ocean.

The rocket completed a vertical landing on the floating drone platform - nicknamed Of Course I Still Love You - in the Atlantic Ocean, 400 miles off the coast of Florida, just eight minutes after launch (pictured right)

The 23-story-tall Falcon 9 rocket launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida at 1:21 am EDT (06:21 BST) this morning (pictured). SpaceX confirmed that the rocket's payload was a Japanese communications satellite

A live webcast from SpaceX followed each stage of the Falcon 9 mission from the firm's control centre in Hawthorne, California

SPACEX REUSABLE ROCKETS Today's Falcon 9 landing is the second within a month for SpaceX. It takes the firm and the aerospace industry as a whole yet another step closer towards reusable rockets becoming commonplace. SpaceXis forging the way, with cargo contracts with Nasa as well as with the US military for satellite delivery.

SpaceX successfully landed a rocket on a drone ship inApril, after four failed attempts.

The company also landed arocket on a ground-based pad in December, a key step in Musk'splan to develop a cheap, reusable booster.

Before the launch, the company played down expectations fora successful return this time.

Unlike the April mission, therocket flying on Friday would have little fuel left over forengine burns to slow its descent after sending the 10,300-pound(4,700 kg) television broadcasting satellite into orbit.

In a tweet this morning, SpaceX owner Elon Musk was conservative in his hopes for the mission. He wrote: 'Rocket reentry is a lot faster and hotter than last time, so odds of making it are maybe even, but we should learn a lot either way.'

The satellite, built by Space Systems Loral in Palo Alto,California, is designed to provide television, data and mobilecommunications services to customers across Asia, Russia andOceania and the Pacific Islands.

The aerospace firm, owned by entrepreneur Elon Musk, played down its its expectations of this morning's launch, with Musk tweeting 'odds of making it are maybe even, but we should learn a lot either way.' Pictured is the rocket blasting off from Florida this morning

The official SpaceX Twitter account provided updates throughout the launch. The aerospace company tweeted updates throughout, marking the successful landing (left) and delivery of the Japanese communications satellite (right)

Friday's launch was the fourth of more than a dozen flightsplanned this year by SpaceX, which has a backlog of more than $10billion in launch business from customers, including NASA.

Last week, SpaceX won its first contract to launch a US military satellite, breaking a 10-year-old monopoly held byUnited Launch Alliance, a partnership of Lockheed Martin Corp and Boeing Co.

A live video feed of last month's successful Falcon 9 landing showed the rocket booster, its four landing legs extended, descending over the ocean before settling itself upright on the platform, roughly eight minutes after launch
With physical music collections fast becoming obsolete and users moving to digital storage and cloud streaming services, logging on to find your music has been wiped is a nightmare scenario.

But a number of Apple Music users have recently reported local files have been disappearing from their hard drives, with one unfortunate user claiming to have lost more than 120GB of music.

He claimed Apple's music service had automatically wiped files from his computer, deleting thousands of songs.

It adds to an increasing number of complaints about iTunes being deliberately difficult to use, as Apple pushes people towards its streaming service.

A number of Apple Music users have recently reported local files have been disappearing from their hard drives, with one unfortunate user claiming to have lost more than 120GB of music. He claimed Apple's music service had automatically wiped files from his computer, deleting thousands of songs

Writing in a post on Vellum Atlanta this week, James Pinkstone claimed his Apple Music subscription had scanned the music on his Mac's hard drive, synced it with the cloud service before wiping local files from his computer.

This resulted in 122GB of music being deleted.

Thankfully, Pinkstone was able to restore the deleted files using a recent backup.

He wrote: 'The only way to prevent this from happening over and over...was to cancel my subscription to Apple Music...and to make sure my iCloud settings did not include storing any music backups.'

The issue adds to an increasing number of complaints about iTunes being deliberately difficult to use, as Apple pushes people towards its streaming service. Apple scans local files on the user's hard drive and matches tracks to its Apple Music streaming library. The aim is users can stream high quality music from iCloud

Last August, the High Court ruled copying music from a personal CD collection to iTunes violates copyright law.

The same is true for backing up your music to an external hard drive or copying it to the cloud.

THE GREAT ITUNES BACKLASH Apple has been accused in the past of making it difficult for people to access their own music, with some claiming the firm does it deliberately to push users towards paying for music on iTunes. These criticisms increased when the firm launched Apple Music. More than a decade ago, Apple was accused of abusing its monopoly position in the digital music player market, and only last year lawyers claimed the firm deliberately deleted rivals' song from iPods. Plaintiffs claimed Apple's restrictive software froze out competitors and allowed Apple to sell iPods at inflated prices and sought $350 million (224m) in damages. Apple stopped using the particular software in question in 2009, which meant the lawsuit only covered iPod models bought between September 2006 and March 2009. Earlier in the trial, the prosecution told the court Apple deleted songs from iPods that had been bought from rival music stores. Each time an Apple user with non-iTunes music tried to sync their devices, between 2007 and 2009, the tech firm urged them to restore the players to factory settings. And the lawyers claimed this was a deliberate move to wipe the rival files, and cause the users' music libraries to 'blow up.' But Apple insisted the move was a legitimate security measure.

The Intellectual Property Office told MailOnline that copying music or other copyright works from one format to another without a license granted by the rightsholder now infringes copyright and is breaking the law.

Apple has been accused in the past of making it difficult for people to access their own music, with some claiming the firm does it deliberately to push users towards paying for music on iTunes.

These criticisms increased when the firm launched Apple Music.

More than a decade ago, Apple was accused of abusing its monopoly position in the digital music player market, and only last year lawyers claimed the firm deliberately deleted rivals' song from iPods.

Plaintiffs claimed Apple's restrictive software froze out competitors and allowed Apple to sell iPods at inflated prices and sought $350 million (224m) in damages.

Apple stopped using the particular software in question in 2009, which meant the lawsuit only covered iPod models bought between September 2006 and March 2009.

Earlier in the trial, the prosecution told the court Apple deleted songs from iPods that had been bought from rival music stores.

Each time an Apple user with non-iTunes music tried to sync their devices, between 2007 and 2009, the tech firm urged them to restore the players to factory settings.

And the lawyers claimed this was a deliberate move to wipe the rival files, and cause the users' music libraries to 'blow up.'

But Apple insisted the move was a legitimate security measure.

However, Apple community website iMore countered the claims, explaining the only way for this to happen would have been for him to consent to the files being wiped.

The articles highlight the situation of where the music is actually stored is tricky, and involves the default settings of the service and the use of primary and secondary devices.

When using Apple Music on a Mac, the service scans the local files on the hard drive and matches tracks to its streaming library.

According to Apple community website iMore, the service results in two libraries, the cloud library and the master library of the files, which is stored on the hard drive. Confusion can occur when users try to remove a track and choose to delete the physical song file rather than the temporary reference file. Stock image

iMore cautions that using the reference library should only ever be done on a 'secondary device' and no on the 'primary device' which holds the master library. Stock image

The aim is that users can stream high-quality music online from iCloud without having a physical file taking up space on the device.

IS APPLE WIPING USERS' FILES? Some Apple Music users have complained their music files have been deleted. One Atlanta user has claimed that 122GB of music files were wiped from his computer. However, others have countered the deletion was likely due to user error. As part of the service, Apple Music scans a users files and matches them with its streaming library.This results in two libraries, the original and the streaming. This may have led to some confusion for users, resulting in original music files, rather than reference files, being deleted.

iMore explained the function is ideal if a user wants to stream from their music library on a laptop, without clogging up the hard drive with tens of gigabytes of files.

The service essentially results in two libraries, the cloud library and the master library of the files, which is stored on the hard drive.

But when deleting a track, Apple gives the option of whether to 'Remove Download' or 'Delete Song'.

While the first option will send the reference file to the trash and leave it in the library, the second will remove the physical file and send it to the trash.

However, iMore does offer sympathy for affected users, explaining iCloud Music Library is 'confusing as hell' and has been since the introduction of iTunes.
If you can count the number of good friends you have on two hands, you might have a few more fingers spare than you thought after reading this.

Researchers believe that when it comes to social bonds, our judgement is actually quite poor, and only half of the people we consider as friends actually feel the same way.

A recent study suggests this poor judgement of who our friends are could have knock on effects when it comes to influencing and co-operating with others.

A study has found our judgement is actually quite poor when it comes to social bonds, and only half of the people we consider as friends actually feel the same way. Stock image

According to the team, led by researchers at Tel Aviv University, understanding these limitations could boost performance for companies and social groups that rely on social influence for action.

'It turns out that we're very bad at judging who our friends are, and our difficulty determining the reciprocity of friendship significantly limits our ability to engage in cooperative arrangements,' explained Dr Erez Shmueli, a researchers at Tel Aviv University.

'We learned that we can't rely on our instincts or intuition. There must be an objective way to measure these relationships and quantify their impact.'

In social experiments, 84 mature students were asked to rate each other on a scale from one to five, with one being a stranger, three a friend and five indicating one of their best friends, to see how people reciprocated and marked similar responses for each other.

The team behind the study said that understanding these limitations could help companies and social groups which rely on social influence for action. Stock image

KNOW WHO YOUR FRIENDS ARE The study found our poor judgement of knowing who our friends are could have knock on effects. In social experiments, students were asked to rate each other on a scale from one to five with one being a stranger, three a friend and five indicating one of their best friends. The study revealed just over half of those friendships were reciprocated. The team used the information to develop an algorithm to work out whether friendship was a one-way deal or whether it was reciprocal. Understanding these limitations could help companies and social groups which rely on social influence for action, say the researchers. The more they can exert peer pressure and socially influence them affects their behaviour.

While students thought that most of the friendships would be reciprocated, the study revealed just over half of those friendships matched  with a score of one to three.

This was backed up with survey data from 600 students in Israel, the US and Europe, which found a similar mismatch in the levels of who people thought of as friends compared to those who reciprocated.

Using this information, they developed an algorithm to work out whether friendship was a one-way deal or whether it was reciprocal.

'We found that 95 per cent of participants thought their relationships were reciprocal,' said Dr Shmueli.

'If you think someone is your friend, you expect him to feel the same way.

'But in fact that's not the case, only 50 per cent of those polled matched up in the bidirectional friendship category.'

What's more, they were able to predict with high accuracy in which direction the friendship between two people would work, depending on how their social circles overlap and their difference in social status.

Researchers claim friendships working both ways is important and it's all down to influence. The closer a person is to another, the more they can exert peer pressure and socially influence them, which could affect their behaviour. Stock image

'Our algorithm not only tells us whether a friendship is reciprocal or not. It also determines in which direction the friendship is 'felt' in unilateral friendships,' added Dr Shmueli.

According to the team, the reason friendships working both ways is important is all down to influence.

The closer a person is to another, the more they can exert peer pressure and socially influence them, which could affect their behaviour.

The findings were published in the journa lPLOS One.
Friday will be a big day for Boordy Vineyards.

Winery president Rob Deford wrote Thursday that "tomorrow is a watershed day for our Sweetland Cellars brand as we will be introducing new POS to our distributor, Breakthru Beverage [formerly Reliable Churchill]. For the past seven months we have been working on developing the personality of this brand with a really fun and creative marketing firm in Baltimore called PLANIT, populated by a high-energy group of 20- and 30-somethings. As hoped, they have come up with some really good stuff. We will be doing a blitz of Boordy accounts over the next month to re-set our store presence with the new materials."

That's improving news for Boordy and Deford, who admitted last October that this new line of sweeter wines was running into some headwinds.

"We've learned quite a lot about our customers in doing it and finding how strong the emotional attachment is to custom and habit and the familiar," said Deford at the time. We made a big change about 12 years ago to the label we just replaced and people really settled into that label. And when we made this change, we got mostly positive reactions, I'd say 85 to 90 percent, but about 15 percent, those folks, they felt like Boordy had changed too much or left them behind . . . and we didn't have the money or resources to do a big campaign to let people know why we did it."

Boordy is the oldest operating winery in Maryland and among the oldest on the East Coast. Previous owners Philips and Jocelyn Wagner opened the winery on their property north of Baltimore in 1945. It's about a 35-minute drive from the Pennsylvania line and a member of the Mason Dixon Wine Trail.

Otherwise, Deford said that he spent some of Thursday with several consultants looking over the vines at their South Mountain Vineyard, assessing the impact of several below-freezing nights in April. "It looks pretty good - surprisingly good, in fact - given that the potential for disaster was very real," he wrote. Our home vineyard appears to have been hit somewhat harder, but we haven't assessed things there yet as it always lags behind the western MD vineyard by 10-14 days."

Some of those grapes go toward Boordy's Landmark series of wines, its highest-quality and most expensive line, including a Reserve Chardonnay, Cabernet Franc and Landmark Reserve. Deford said several new wines - Viognier, Albarino, and a non-vintage Petit Verdot - will be joining that line soon.
For over 60 years, KFC restaurants have been serving the same secret original recipe to patrons.

But Colonel Sanders is going against tradition with a new concept store located in Shanghai, China that lets customers order fried chicken from a voice activated robot.

Dubbed 'Dumi', the robot is smart enough to handle order changes and substitutes, but its creators say it cannot distinguish other dialects or accents.

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Colonel Sanders is going against tradition with a new concept store located in Shanghai, China that lets customers order fried chicken from a voice activated robot. Dubbed 'Dumi', the high-tech automation can handle order changes, as well as substitutes  but it cannot distinguish other dialects or accents

WHAT ARE THE FEATURES OF DUMI AND ORIGINAL+? Dumi is a voice activated robot employed at a concept KFC store called 'Original+'. This automation can handle orders,as well as substitutes  but its creators say it cannot distinguish other dialects or accents. Original+, which opened its doors April 25th, features wireless charging stations that also allows customers to stream music. And payment is all done through a smartphone via mobile payment services like Baidu Wallet.

Located at the National Exhibition Convention Center, the store is a collaboration between KFC and Baidu. a Chinese web service.

The duo has named the establishment 'Original+', in honor of the brand's traditional recipe, reportsThe Nanfang.

The futuristic restaurant, which opened its doors April 25th, features wireless charging stations that also allows customers to stream music.

Payment is all done through a smartphone via mobile payment services like Baidu Wallet.

Original+ isn't the only high-tech KFC store in China, a separate location in Shenzhen allows patrons to pay for orders using China's popular text messaging system 'QQ'.

It seems that the East is beating the rest of the world when it comes to creating a robot-run world, as Japan is building an entire robot kingdom.

Just one day after Original+ launched, a Japanese amusement park announced it is adding a robotic world to one of its popular amusement parks.

Guests at Huis Ten Bosch will soon be able to enjoy over 200 androids that they can touch and interact with while spending the day at the park.

Located at the National Exhibition Convention Center, the store is a collaboration between KFC and Baidu  a Chinese web service. The duo named the location 'Original+', in honor of the brand's traditional secrete recipe. Customers walk up to Dumo, push a button and place their order

Original+ isn't the only high-tech KFC store in China, a separate location in Shenzhen allows patrons to pay for orders using China's popular text messaging system 'QQ'. But the Shanghai location is the first establishment to employ robots

Patrons can place their order with Dumi and ask for changes or substitutes. Once they have completed their order, customers simply pay using a mobile payment service. KFC hopes this new move will attract a younger crowd to the brand

IS YOUR JOB AT THREAT FROM ROBOTS? Claims made by an expert in artificial intelligence predict that in less than five years, office jobs will disappear completely to the point where machines will replace humans. The idea that robots will one day be able to do all low-skilled jobs is not new, but Andrew Anderson from UK artificial intelligence company, Celaton, said the pace of advance is much faster than originally thought. AI, for example, can carry out labour intensive clerical tasks quickly and automatically, while the latest models are also capable of making decisions traditionally made by humans. The fact that a machine can not only carry out these tasks, but constantly learn how to do it better and faster, means clerical workers are no longer needed in the vast quantities they once were,' Mr Anderson said. For example, a machine can recognise duplicate insurance claims by knowing it has seen a phone number or an address before.

The Dutch-theme amusement park, located in Nagasaki, Japan, plans to add the futuristic world to the attraction this coming July.

'Robots will arrive in this kingdom one after another, and the time will come when those technologies will be in use worldwide,' Hideo Sawada, president of the park's operator, told Nikkei Asian Review.

Admission to the robot kingdom is expected to cost $59.33 for adults and there is no sign of it increasing.

Not only will this be a robot-themed park, but developers can use the facility to test their own innovations and gain more experience.

This new attraction is building off of Huis Ten Bosch's smart hotel, which opened up last year.

The futuristic restaurant, which opened its doors April 25th, features wireless charging stations that also allows customers to stream music. And payment is all done through a smartphone via mobile payment services like Baidu Wallet

While patrons wait for their meals, they can sit at one of the charging stations located in the store. Not only can customers power-up, but they can also stream music

The futuristic resort features 72 rooms, three customer-service robots, one 'service bot' that serves guests coffee and others that perform different tasks.

When the guests check into at Henn-na Hotel they are greeted by 10 lifelike robots - and the mechanical service does not stop there.

The robots check-in new guests before carrying their luggage and cleaning their rooms  and all with a smile.

The Dutch-theme amusement park (pictured), located in Nagasaki, Japan, plans to add the futuristic world to the attraction this coming July

They come from a company called Kokoro, which has been developing 'actroid' or human-seeking robots, for just over a decade, The Telegraph reported.

The doors are fitted with face recognition technology, room temperature is monitored by guests body heat and a service robot is summoned via a tablet.

The hotel, which means 'change' or 'strange' in Japanese cost from $62.00 per night and a twin room will cost from $80 per night.

There are about 10 human staff members working at the hotel that observe the robots working, company president Hideo Sawada said that he hopes the robots will carry out 90 per cent of tasks in the hotel.

He told the Japan Times: 'We will make the most efficient hotel in the world.'

ONE BENEFIT TO HAVING ROBOT SERVERS... A Florida woman claims she was served two KFC chicken sandwiches with semen on them. The unidentified customer told police last week that she ordered two sandwiches at a Brandenton KFC and that both of them were adulterated with bodily fluids, according to The Smoking Gun. The woman, who appeared to be in her 20s, bit into a sandwich and told the police that she tasted what she believed was semen, Manatee County Sheriff's Office spokesperson Dave Bristow told Dailymail.com The woman handed her meal over to police as evidence and for testing. No preliminary charges have been filed against the fast food chain. Several sandwiches on KFC's menu are made with mayonnaise which may have been mistaken for something more crude.
A weird ancient reptile, previously thought to have had a squashed 'beak', has turned out to be more like a hammerhead shark.

Analysis of the plant-eater's fossils, first discovered in 2014, show it was far stranger than first thought and would have had a unique method of feeding.

Its jaws were filled with rows of sharp chisel-like teeth, but scientists believe the animal, called Atopodentatus unicus, also had densely packed clusters of needle teeth which acted as a filter.

A new study has revealed an ancient marine reptile, first discovered in 2014, would have had a head shaped like a hammer (illustrated). Its jaws were filled with rows of sharp chisel-like teeth, but scientists believe the animal, called Atopodentatus unicus, also had densely packed clusters of needle teeth which acted as a filter

When combined these would have enabled the hammerhead reptile to chisel off algae and plant material from rocks and filter it through the mesh of needle teeth further back.

'It's a very strange animal,' said Olivier Rieppel of The Field Museum in Chicago, and part of the international team which worked on the project.

'It's got a hammerhead, which is unique, it's the first time we've seen a reptile like this,' he added.

The international team, which involved of researchers in the US, Scotland and China, worked to piece together the mystery of what one of the strangest ancient reptiles ever discovered actually looked like.

A near-complete skeleton was uncovered in China in 2014.

This indicated that the creature - whose Latin name means 'unique strangely toothed' - would have been about the size of a crocodile and swam the seas around 242 million years ago.

The hammerhead reptile would have been able to chisel off algae and plant material from rocks and filter it through the mesh of needle teeth further back in its mouth (illustrated)

Scientists revealed the ancient reptile would have had a hammerhead, more like a shark (stock image)

HAMMERHEAD REPTILE Fossils of the ancient crocodile-sized creature were first discovered in China in 2014, showing a near-complete skeleton. Newly discovered fossils, unearthed in Yunnan Province in China, have provided more information on how its jaws fit together. Researchers believe that the discoveries provide an example of the first herbivorous marine reptile. But scientists believe this strange marine creature, and others from the same time, could provide unique insight into how life continued after one of the planet's largest extinctions.

But thanks to newly-discovered fossils found in China's Yunnan Province, researchers have been able to shed more light on how the jaws fit together, revealing how the animals fed.

The team created reconstructions of the jaws using play dough, with toothpicks in place of the needle teeth in order to work out how the upper and lower sections fit together.

Rieppel explained: 'It used the peg-like front teeth to scrape plants off of rocks on the sea floor, and then it opened its mouth and sucked in the bits of plant material.

'Then, it used its needle-like teeth as a sieve, trapping the plants and letting the water back out, like how whales filter-feed with their baleen.'

According to the researchers, not only do the discoveries solve the mystery of the strange-toothed animal, but provide an example of the first herbivorous marine reptile

Dr Nick Fraser, from the National Museums Scotland and one of the researchers, told MailOnline: 'It is almost certain that this is a branch of undiscovered marine reptiles - animals such as this do not just simply appear overnight a few million years of evolution are necessary.

'That is one of the exciting things about the discovery - it promises more unusual fossils are yet to be found. At the same time this might be the acme in terms of hammerhead shaped animals.'

The recently discovered fossils have provided evidence to suggest that the creature had evolved facial adaptations which enabled it to filter plant material. A model of the creature is shown next to its fossil

Incorporating details from newly discovered fossils, the team recreated the jaws using play dough, with toothpicks in place of the needle teeth (pictured). Using these models they were able to work out exactly how the upper and lower sections would have fit together

Furthermore, scientists believe this creature, and others from the same time, could provide unique insight into how life continued and flourished after one of the planet's largest extinctions.

Dr Fraser told MailOnline: 'In geological terms this lived quite soon after the end Permian mass extinction event = the Great Dying  when up to 95 per cent of all marine life became extinct.

'This very specialised habit alongside an increasing diversity of other reptiles from the same time period, indicates that the full recovery of life after the great extinction was actually quicker than previously thought.

'More unusual fossils are still coming to light from southern China, and our team is working on these.

'Ultimately we shall be able to piece together a heretofore unknown world of strange marine reptiles.'

The findings are published today in the journal Science Advances.

The fossils were unearthed in Yunnan Province in China (highlighted on the map). This region is a hotbed for unusual discoveries of this kind. The exact locations are typically kept a secret to avoid vandalism or similar

CROCODILE EYES GIVE AWAY EVOLUTIONARY HINTS A near-complete skeleton of Atopodentatus unicus was uncovered in China in 2014, and indicated that the creature was roughly the size of a modern crocodile (pictured) and swam the seas around 242 million years ago Atopodentatus unicus was an ancient marine mammal about the size of a crocodile, which had evolved an extraordinary skull and mouth apparatus. But modern day reptiles are no less magnificent. A study published earlier this week revealed how the crocodile's eye is perfectly evolved for stalking from the shallows. Biologists found that the fovea, which has the highest concentration of light-sensitive cells and provides the sharpest area of vision, forms a horizontal strip. In humans this circular patch provides a high definition spot of vision, but in the ancient class of reptiles the strip enables them to scan the river bank with minimal movement. What's more, the eye cells for detecting colour were adapted depending on their environment, with those croc species in salt water absorbing more blue light and freshwater crocs absorbing more red, reflecting the lighting conditions of their environments.




Scientists have discovered more than a ton of 71 million-year-old fossils in Antarctica.

The fossils are mostly from prehistoric marine repitiles and birds, which a large proportion belonging to the mosasaurus.

Scientists now hope that analysis of their massive haul of bones will help reveal more details about how the creatures went extinct.

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Scientists have discovered more than a ton of 70 million-year-old fossils in Antarctica. They now hope that analysis of their massive haul of bones will help reveal more details about how the creatures went extinct

WHAT DID THEY FIND? The researchers unearthed more than a ton of fossils in Antarctica  most of which are between 71 million and 67 million years old. Dinosaur remains were also found in the mix. The found a lot of marine reptile remains, so things like plesiosaurs and mosasaurs  a type of marine lizard made famous by the recent film Jurassic World. They also discovered the fossils of birds, including early ducks that lived at the end of the Cretaceous period.

The expedition took place on the James Ross Island, hundreds of miles south of Chile, and lasted from February to March.

'We found a lot of really great fossils,' said University of Queensland School of Biological Sciences researcher Dr Steve Salisbury.

'The rocks that we were focusing on come from the end of the age of dinosaurs, so most of them are between 71 million and 67 million years old.

'They were all shallow marine rocks, so the majority of things we found lived in the ocean.

They also discovered the fossils, including early ducks that lived at the end of the Cretaceous period.

The team found a few dinosaur remains too, which they hope to publish on in the future.

'We did find a lot of marine reptile remains, so things like plesiosaurs and mosasaurs  a type of marine lizard made famous by the recent film Jurassic World.'

'The diversity and quality of what we found will provide a detailed snapshot of life in Antarctica at the end of the age of dinosaurs', Dr. Salisbury told The Wall Street Journal.

'We went there because it is one of the few parts of Antarctica when in summer, rocks are exposed and for us it is a good spot for us to go because those rocks come from the end of the age of dinosaurs.'

'We found a lot of really great fossils,' University of Queensland School of Biological Sciences researcher Dr Steve Salisbury. 'The rocks that we were focusing on come from the end of the age of dinosaurs, so most of them are between 71 million and 67 million years old

The team found a lot of marine reptile remains, so things like plesiosaurs (left) and mosasaurs (right) as featured in Jurassic World

Not only did Dr Salisbury and his team look for remains, they studied the region.

'We also did a lot of good geological mapping while we were there,' he said.

'We recorded the thickness of all the different rocks and information on the sorts of environments that they represent and how it comes together to create a picture of the environment down there at the time these animals existed.'

All of the fossil now reside in Chile and will eventually be sent to the Carnegie Museum of Natural History for further analysis.

'A lot of the bigger bones will need quite a bit of preparation before we can do much research on them,' Dr Salisbury said.

'It may be a year or two before we get the results out.'

'The diversity and quality of what we found will provide a detailed snapshot of life in Antarctica at the end of the age of dinosaurs', Dr. Salisbury. Pictured is a plesiosaurs skeleton vertebrae

We went there because it is one of the few parts of Antarctica when in summer, rocks are exposed and for us it is a good spot for us to go because those rocks come from the end of the age of dinosaurs,' said Dr. Salisbury Rocks that have been house fossils like this shark vertebrae

All of the fossil, including these ammonites, now reside in Chile and will eventually be sent to the Carnegie Museum of Natural History for further analysis, which Salisbury explains it could be a year before the get results out

'What we found or didn't find isn't as important as the fact that we were actually there, trying to do it.

'If that inspires other people to get into the hunt for fossils, then I'll be very excited.'

The team had quite the journey to reach the field site, as they began their voyage flying to South American, where they hopped on a ship to the Antarctic Peninsula.

This was all before getting in helicopters and inflatable boats to travel through a sea of ice to the shore.

'Crossing the Drake Passage can be kind of rough  some of the biggest seas in the world occur in that area  so most of us just bunkered down for the time we were crossing it,' Dr Salisbury said.

The team camped on Vega Island and often hiked over rough terrain to reach the field site on Sandwich Bluff.

Dr. Salisbury (right) and his team had quite the journey to reach the field site, as they began their voyage flying to South American, where they hopped on a ship to the Antarctic Peninsula. This was all before getting in helicopters and inflatable boats to travel through a sea of ice to the shore

The team camped on Vega Island and often hiked over rough terrain to reach the field site on Sandwich Bluff, which is about six miles away

Six weeks of camping in the frigid temperatures of Antarctica and a six mile hike to and from the field site, is what 12 scientists endured while researching the end of the age of dinosaurs. They discovered a giant nautaloid (left) and fossil wood (right) among the ton of fossils unearthed at the field site

'There were a few days where we did get snowed in, and we'd just be stuck in the communal tent for a while,' Dr Salisbury said.

'I've tried to get to Antarctica to do this research several times before, but sea ice has prevented us from making land.

'It was so great to finally get there and have a full blown expedition. It's a very hard place to work, but it's an even harder place to get to.

'We found a lot of new ground to continue the search, so we'd all really love to get back down there at some point soon.'

The expedition was funded through the National Science Foundation and the United States Antarctic Program, and included scientists from the US, Australia and South Africa.
For someone who is in need of an organ transplant, every second counts.

To save more lives, a group of scientists in India have designed a new method of transportation that is much faster than hauling them in the back of an ambulance.

Called, Rs 100-crore National Programme for Micro Air, the project is set to use unmanned aerial vehicles to delivery of hearts and other vital organs, cutting time by more than 50 percent.

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A group of scientists from India are working on a way that will transport hearts and vital organs much faster than hauling them in the back of an ambulance. Called, Rs 100-crore National Programme for Micro Air, the project is set to use unmanned aerial vehicles to deliver organs, cutting time by more than 50 percent

THE DESIGN OPTIONS Currently the team has two options: design a drone with technology to preserve organs or variants that are able to carry the organ in a special box. The initial design will be able to carry up to 250 grams of weight, but the team hopes to reach a 100-km range.

The heart can be stored up to 10 hours, a kidney 24 and a liver 12 to 15, and the inventor of India's indigenous fighter Light Combat Aircraft wants to develop a method to deliver them sooner.

'The main focus will be on transporting hearts as other organs can be preserved for longer after harvesting,' Kota Harinarayan, who was the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Hyderabad, told Times of India.

The traditional method is referred to as a 'green corridor', which was established two years by the Mumbai traffic police.

This initiation entails police escorting an ambulance, as to move around traffic  usually a specific traffic lane is chosen and all signals on the route stay green.

Kota and Dr K Ramachandra from the National Design and Research Forum are leading the project along with the help of other experts in the US to iron out all the details.

'Once the specifications from doctors and engineers are finalized  the first leg of the process is expected to be complete this week  we will take the project to the government for funding and clearance,' Kota said.

The team has two options: design a drone with technology to preserve organs or variants that are able to carry the organ in a special box. The initial design will be able to carry up to 250 grams of weight, but the team hopes to reach a 100-km range

Kota's expertise lies in aerospace science, but has reached out to doctors in India and the US to discuss the kind of facilities organs need in order to be delivered safely.

As of right now the team has two options: design a drone with technology to preserve organs or variants that are able to carry the organ in a special box.

'We have demonstrated several technologies as part of the NP-Micav programme that was funded by the Centre,' said Ramachandra.

THE DRONE TAXI: WHAT FLYING IN THE 184 WIL BE LIKE The fully ready-to-fly 184 is a manned drone capable of automatically carrying a passenger through the air, simply by entering a destination into its accompanying smartphone app. The 184 uses multiple independent flight control systems to automatically navigate passengers from point A to point B. These systems combine real-time data collected from sensors throughout the flight and automatically plot the fastest and safest route to carry passengers to their destinations. The EHang 184 has built in reinforcements for all flight systems, so that in the unlikely event that a component does fail, multiple backups are already in place to seamlessly take over. The fully ready-to-fly 184 is a manned drone capable of automatically carrying a passenger through the air, simply by entering a destination into its accompanying smartphone app The 184 uses multiple independent flight control systems to automatically navigate passengers from point A to point B. EHang's independently developed Fail-Safe System ensures that if any components malfunction, or if there's damage while the AAV is in-flight (i.e. from a bird), the aircraft will immediately begin taking the necessary precautions to ensure safety. The 184's Fail-Safe System automatically evaluates the damage and determines whether the AAV will need to land to ensure its passenger's safety. The EHang 184 AAV flight control systems have multiple sets of sensors that provide the drone a constant stream of real-time data. The 184's communication system was also designed with a safety guarantee: every system is encrypted, and each AAV comes with an independent key. In the event of an emergency, passengers can elect to halt flight and simply hover in the air with just one click.

'For this project, we are looking at a vehicle of the regular UAV size and not the micro size.'

The initial design will be able to carry up to 250 grams of weight, but the team hopes to reach a 100-km range.

India isn't the only country looking to the skies for help with transporting organ.

A Chinese firm recently unveiled a self-flying 'passenger drone' that they say can be used to deliver human organs.

The heart can be stored up to 10 hours, a kidney 24 and a liver 12 to 15, and the father of India's indigenous fighter Light Combat Aircraft wants to develop a method to deliver them sooner. China is also working on a self-flying 'passenger drone' that they say can be used to deliver human organs

EHang revealed a collaboration with Lung Biotechnology PBC to develop and purchase up to 1,000 units of an evolved version of the 184, the world's first autonomous drone for humans, to automate organ transplant delivery.

The two companies have agreed to work together over the course of the next fifteen years to optimize the 184 for organ deliveries, a program which they are calling the Manufactured Organ Transport Helicopter (MOTH) system.

Lung Biotechnology specializes in manufacturing lungs and other organs for transplant using a variety of technologies, including pig-to-human xenotransplantation, as well as regenerating them from stem cells.

EHang revealed a collaboration with Lung Biotechnology PBC to develop and purchase up to 1,000 units of an evolved version of the 184, the world's first autonomous drone for humans, to automate organ transplant delivery

It plans to station the MOTH rotorcrafts outside of its organ manufacturing facilities, and use preprogrammed flight plans to hospitals and re-charging pads within the MOTH radius so that the manufactured organs can be delivered within their post-production window of viability.

This huge shift in organ production and delivery has the potential to save tens of thousands of lives.

The 184, which is an autonomous drone capable of carrying a passenger more than 10 miles through the air at speeds up to 65 miles per hour simply by entering a destination into its accompanying smartphone app, is perfected suited for a variety of medical emergency transport.

After several years of development, EHang unveiled the world's first autonomous aerial vehicle at CES 2016 to great acclaim.

The company says the 184 is autonomous, so all the passenger has to do is enter in their destination in the smartphone app, sit back, and let the drone take over.

The 184, which is an autonomous drone capable of carrying a passenger more than 10 miles through the air at speeds up to 65 miles per hour simply by entering a destination into its accompanying smartphone app, is perfected suited for a variety of medical emergency transport

EHang said the vehicle is primarily designed for traveling short-to-medium distances  around 10 miles  and will fly at around 60 miles per hour.

The firm will also have a command center that employs people to make sure everything is safe  sort of like an air traffic controller at an airport.

The command center will monitor every 184 in the air 24/7 and the company plans integrate with existing air traffic controller operations.

No official launch date has been set, but the company said commercialization will begin in a few months.
A miracle drug found in the soil at Easter Island is believed to have qualities that could one day help humans live longer  and it may already be working for dogs.

Scientists from the University of Washington are testing the effects of a drug called rapamycin on dogs to see if it will slow down the aging process.

Researchers were shocked by results of the initial trials, finding that some dogs showed improved heart functionality after just a few weeks.

Scientists from the University of Washington are testing the effects of a drug called rapamycin on dogs to see if it will slow down the aging process. Researchers were shocked by results of the initial trials, finding that some dogs showed improved heart functionality after just a few weeks

WHAT IS RAPAMYCIN? Rapamycin is a bacterial by-product discovered in the shadows of the Easter Island's famous statues. It is already used in transplant patients to prevent organ rejection and scientists say it can improve learning and help treat cognitive decline. However, it comes with some serious side effects. For instance, the compound suppresses the immune system and makes patients vulnerable to any viruses and bacteria. The existing version of the drug also increases the risk of cancer and would need to be modified before using in human trials. Advertisement

The study is led by biologist Matt Kaeberlein and his colleague, Daniel Promislow.

According to Fusion, the researchers began clinical trials this year, expanding on earlier findings that rapamycin increases the lifespan of mice.

Rapamycin is a bacterial by-product discovered in the shadows of the island's famous statues and is named after Rapa Nui, the Polynesian name for Easter Island.

Dogs age very quickly compared to a human lifespan; most live between 10 and 13 years.

This allows researchers to study the entire aging process in a short amount of time.

The team recruited 40 dog-owners, who were each to give their pets three tablets of rapamycin a week, Fusion reports.

Rapamycin is a bacterial by-product discovered in the shadows of the island's famous statues and is named after Rapa Nui, the Polynesian name for Easter Island, pictured above. It is already used in transplant patients to prevent organ rejection and scientists say it can improve learning and help treat cognitive decline

After the researchers weeded out dogs with heart conditions and other medical factors, they were left with 24 middle-aged dogs, who would each receive low doses of the drug.

This continued over the course of 10 weeks, and the researchers took echocardiograms throughout to determine any changes in the animals heart function.

The team discovered that dogs receiving rapamycin showed improved heart functionality, or showed no change.

And, those who had come in with worse conditions initially saw the most improvement, Fusion reports.

Kaeberlein says the results are 'astonishing' and he was 'shocked' when he got the data.

The team discovered that dogs receiving rapamycin showed improved heart functionality, or showed no change. And, those who had come in with worse conditions initially saw the most improvement. Moving forward, the researchers plan to conduct further tests with the drugs that will span multiple years

Rapamycin is already used in transplant patients to prevent organ rejection and several years ago, and scientists in the journal Neuroscience said it can improve learning and help treat cognitive decline.

In mice, it has been shown to extend the lives of mice by 13 per cent in females and nine per cent in males.

Now, the researchers say it may help dogs live longer as well.

It is almost certain that rapamycin can slow the effects of aging in dogs and people, Kaeberlein told Fusion.

The only question is whether it can slow aging with doses that dont have significant side effects.
Drought-hit Zimbabwe has invited local farmers and private game rangers to buy wild animals as it destocks national game reserves to save fauna from starvation.

Parks and wildlife authority spokeswoman Caroline Washaya said on Wednesday that it has asked individuals and private game keepers to step in and buy wild animals 'in the light of the drought'.

She did not have details of the species or numbers of the animals up for sale.

Zimbabwe has in recent years exported elephants in a bid to raise funds and cut the ballooning population

But the cash-strapped country has been battling to reduce its animals - especially elephants - whose population is more than twice what the parks can accommodate.

A notice in a state newspaper invited 'members of the public with the capacity to acquire and manage wildlife' to make offers to buy.

Zimbabwe has in recent years resorted to exporting elephants to countries such as China in a bid to raise funds and cut the ballooning population.

The drought has left at least a quarter of the population in need of food aid and President Robert Mugabe in February declared many parts of the rural areas in a 'state of disaster'.

The drought has further strained national parks that are already burdened by the growing numbers of species such as elephants.

The details of the species or numbers of the animals up for sale is currently unknown

The parks authority relies on donations from well-wishers to supply water for the wildlife, and volunteers to carry out patrols to ward off poachers.

The export of elephants to China angered international animal rights groups, but some local conservationists back government plans to sell off wildlife.

Jerry Gotora, a conservationist and former chairman of the parks department, said: 'Zimbabwe is facing one of its worst droughts ever, even worse than 1992 when thousands of wildlife were decimated.
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This round-the-world cruise that will stop at 66 destinations in 141 days  at a cost of more than 30,000 per person  may be the best way to trim your bucket list.

Viking Cruises has revealed plans for an epic journey from Miami to London, with stops in places such as Cuba, Tahiti and Malta along the way.

Setting sail in December 2017, Vikings fourth ocean ship, the Viking Sun, will visit five continents as it spends its maiden season on the companys first-ever world cruise.

Viking Cruises has revealed plans for its first round-the-world trip, with stops in places such as Cuba, Tahiti, Singapore and Egypt

The round-the-world trip will take place on the soon-to-be-built Viking Sun, which will be identical to the Viking Sea (pictured)

Viking Sun's on-board luxury spa will feature a 'snow grotto' where artificial snowflakes fall from the ceiling, plus a pool and a Jacuzzi

Holidaymakers will have three swimming pools to choose from, including a main pool that features a retractable roof

The cruise ship, which hasnt been built yet, will stop at 66 ports and stay overnight at 12 of them.

With prices starting from nearly 31,000 a person, every guest will receive a complimentary shore excursion at each of the 66 ports, free Wi-Fi throughout the journey, business class flights and other incentives.

Not long into the journey, guests will spend two days in Havana, where they will watch a local jazz ensemble and explore the citys neoclassical, Baroque and colonial architecture.

Viking Sun will sail through the 48-mile Panama Canal and enter the Pacific Ocean before heading to places such as Los Angeles, Tahiti, New Zealand, Australia and Shanghai.

When they're not stopping at exotic destinations around the world, passengers will be able to soak up some sun around the main pool

For pampering, the luxurious LivNordic Spa will feature a large Jacuzzi, a snow grotto and a number of different therapies

Viking Sun will be Viking Cruises' fourth ocean-going ship and will feature the same interiors as the Star and Sea cruise ships

The itinerary includes Bangkok, Singapore, India and the Mediterranean before the ship makes its final stop in Greenwich, London in 2018.

Passengers are also scheduled to stop in destinations which have suffered a downturn following terror attacks, although the itinerary is subject to change.

Those destinations include Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, Tunis, Tunisia, and Algiers, Algeria, and with the trip still more than 18 months away the security situation could change.

Classified as a small cruise ship, Viking Sun will have a gross tonnage of 47,800 tons and 465 all-balcony cabins, which can accommodate 930 passengers.

Cabins measure between 270 square feet and 1,163 square feet with amenities such as king-size beds, large showers, heated bathroom floors and flat-screen LCD TVs with on-demand films.

Guests who want to go for a swim can choose from a glass-backed infinity pool cantilevered off the stern or a pool with a retractable roof.

For pampering, the LivNordic Spa features a snow grotto where snowflakes fall from the ceiling through chilled air.

Torstein Hagen, chairman of Los Angeles-based Viking Cruises, said: Ever since our first ship set sail last year, we have been focused on bringing the destination back to ocean cruising.

This world cruise is the most extensive and culturally immersive itinerary we have ever offered.

Viking's third ship, the Viking Sky, will also debut in 2017. Its fifth and sixth ocean-going ships will launch in 2018 and 2020, respectively.
It aims to offer great views of nearby popular landmarks, and seeks to help the busy city cut its

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They like the high life in Chicago - there are 44 towers there over 600 feet tall - so a new $250million gondola system planned for the city centre should prove to be very popular.

Renderings for the stunning attraction, called the Chicago SkyLine, were released this week and show how glass pods will take 3,000 tourists an hour high above the Chicago River.

If given the go-ahead, the Chicago SkyLine would connect Navy Pier, the Chicago Lakefront and the Riverwalk with downtown Chicago, offering spectacular views for those who use it.

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Plans for the Chicago SkyLine were revealed this week, showing glass pods carrying 3,000 tourists an hour both ways over the Chicago River

The glass pods would be in operation all year long, moving visitors at 800ft per minute across the waterway in 30-minute sessions

If given the go-ahead, the Chicago SkyLine would connect Navy Pier, the Chicago Lakefront, and the Riverwalk with downtown Chicago, offering spectacular views for those who use it

The innovative 'gondolas' have been designed in a collaboration between Davis Brody Bond and Marks Barfield Architects, who hope the SkyLine will be part of a new vision for Chicago.

They hope to make the feature environmentally friendly so tourists can explore nearby popular spots like Millennium Park and Michigan Avenue without the use of cars and reduce the city's carbon footprint.

The glass pods would be in operation all year long, including in evenings, moving visitors at 800ft per minute across the waterway in 30-minute sessions.

Guests would be given a completely new perspective of the city, witnessing landmarks like the 1,127ft-tall John Hancock Center and the corn-cob-shaped Marina City towers, around 17 storeys above street level.

The cost of a journey in the domes is estimated to be comparable to tickets for the nearby observation areas such as the Willis Tower, which are around $20 (13.80).

If the plans are approved, designers estimate that the aerial cars would lure 1.4million visitors a year to the city, but could cost $250million (170million) to bring into fruition.

The cost of a journey in the domes is estimated to be comparable to tickets for the nearby observation areas such as the Willis Tower, which are around $20 (13.80)

If the plans are approved, designers estimate that the aerial cars would lure 1.4 million visitors a year to the city

UK-based director David Marks, who was one of the designers behind the London Eye on the River Thames, remarked: 'The Chicago SkyLine could do for Chicago what the London Eye has done for London and become a very identifiable landmark within the city, driving tourism and prosperity.

'Gently fitting in and standing out at the same time, it will allow local people and visitors alike to appreciate the city and its world-class architecture from a completely new perspective, stimulating Chicago's tourism industry.

'Its design touches the ground lightly and with an environmentally sensitive and delicate presence - like jewels in a necklace - energising the city's Riverwalk, and attracting the eyes of the world.'

Steven Davis, Partner at Davis Brody Bond, said: 'We realised that without creating an innovative mode of transport, directly connecting the Loop with Navy Pier, we would leave a trove of potential visitors untapped. The SkyLine is the embodiment of that idea.'

The plans were revealed on May 3 by visionaries Laurence Geller, chairman and CEO of Geller Capital Partners, and Lou Raizin, founder of Broadway in Chicago.

Currently the project is in its initial stages, and would need local approval to go ahead.
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From the crimson of monks' robes in Tibet to the shimmering licks of golden leaf that make Myanmar temples dazzle - Asia is a continent of extraordinarily rich and varied colours.

Photographer Jeremy Horner embarked on a pilgrimage to 16 countries where Buddhism is practiced, capturing the vibrant worship of the faith.

The spellbinding images show a candlelight procession of Thai monks illuminating the night with their torches, Kung Fu masters practicing their art in China and dedicated Buddhists visiting the Golden Rock Pagoda, which perches precariously atop a cliff in Myanmar.

Horner's breath-taking collection, which will be showcased in a photography book published by Goff Books, San Francisco on October 15 this year, captures aspects of each country on his exploration.

One of the most striking images is of lightning hitting a floodlit Potala Palace during a thunderstorm in Lhasa, a city in China. The impressive building was once the winter dwelling of the Dalai Lamas.

'Sharing experiences with the pilgrims, nuns, monks and novices across 16 Asian countries where Buddhism is embraced, has nurtured a reverence and belief in the calm and reassuring strength of this faith,' Horner wrote on Maptia.

'It has been a soothing companion during what became an odyssey of self-exploration through learning about and documenting the various sects and branches of Buddhist beliefs across this massive continent.'

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Buddhist monks gather at a candlelight procession held for the annual mass inauguration of new monks at the Wat Phra Dhammakaya, a temple north of Bangkok, Thailand. The holy site is the centre of the Dhammakaya Movement, a Buddhist sect founded in the 1970s and led by a monk called Phra Dhammachayo

Lightning strikes over the floodlit Potala Palace during a thunderstorm in Lhasa, China. The impressive building was once the seat of the Tibetan government and the winter residence of the Dalai Lamas

A Buddhist monk meditates in prayer at one of the thousands of shrines in Amarapura, a Myanmar city that was once the capital of the country

A monk makes a pilgrimage to the extraordinary site of Kyaiktiyo, or the Golden Rock Pagoda, located in Myanmar. A single hair belonging to Buddha is said to prevent the gigantic golden boulder from sliding off the cliff where it is perched

Buddhist monks at the Gelugpa school of Buddhism in Tibet, wear their characteristic yellow hats. They are pictured waiting outside the main prayer hall of Labrang Monastery

The monks of Shaolin Temple in Zhengzhou, China, are trained in the martial art of Kung Fu. They practise their craft against the backdrop of the picturesque and colourful sacred buildings at the temple

A pilgrim pauses for prayer above a crowd of maroon-robed Buddhist monks who are gathered outside the main prayer hall of Labrang Monastery in China. Established in 1709, Labrang housed over 4,000 monks at its peak, but now only has around 1,500 monks

Pictured here is the Shwedagon Pagoda, which is also known as the Crown of Burma. It is rumoured to be the oldest pagoda (tiered tower) in the world at 2,600 years old. Standing 324ft tall and crowning a hilltop, it can be seen from all over Yangon, by day and night - thanks to the 7,000 diamonds, rubies, topaz', sapphires and a massive emerald positioned on it to reflect the setting sun

The striking U Bein Bridge is a crossing that spans the Taungthaman Lake near Amarapura in Myanmar. The 0.74 mile-long bridge dates back to 1850 and is believed to be the oldest and longest teakwood bridge in the world

China's Jokhang Temple (which translates as 'House of the Lord') is the holiest site in Tibetan Buddhism, at the heart of the Barkhor Circuit, drawing thousands of Tibetan pilgrims such as this woman with braided hair

A young novice monk enters the sparkling Buddhist temple of Wat Mai in Luang Prabang, Laos, via its elaborately decorated golden entrance, which is supported by numerous columns

Here a monk touches a large Buddha statue at the Wat Si Chum temple in Thailand. Visitors can take a peek at this giant sculpture through a narrow opening in the temple walls

Rural tribes make their annual pilgrimage to the Punakha Festival in Bhutan, where Buddhist rituals and dancing are held inside the magnificent Dzong, or monastery

Clothed in vibrant red robes, novice monks return to prayer studies after a break in the courtyard of Semtokha Monastery near Thimphu, Bhutan
Some of the larger seagulls' wingspans can reach up to four feet in length

Officials in Venice are set to install giant aerosol devices to deter hundreds of highly aggressive seagulls that are attacking tourists and locals and swooping in to steal food from restaurant tables.

The brazen birds have become so menacing that waiters in popular St Mark's Square are now forced to place covers over food before carrying it to their customers, a council spokesman said.

There have also been numerous incidents of greedy gulls - which have a wingspan of up to four feet - nose-diving tourists to snatch food from their hands.

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Seagulls in Venice have become so menacing that waiters in popular St Mark's Square are now forced to place covers over food before carrying it to their customers

There have also been numerous incidents of greedy gulls - which have a wingspan of up to four feet - nose-diving tourists to snatch food from their hands

The Saint Mark's Association which runs the square tried playing recordings of falcon calls last summer, and also flew a remote-controlled falcon-shaped balloon, but both efforts failed.

They have now approached a company which has developed a 'seagull repellent' that can be diffused throughout the square to keep the birds at bay.

Marilena Cascone, of perfume firm Seneca Rouxair, said: 'Our system works by releasing an aerosol of essential oils into the air.

'The oils are not harmful to humans but birds don't like them.

'Not only will it keep the birds out of the piazza, it should also reduce their desire to reproduce which will mean the number of seagulls and pigeons will fall.'

The scent would also deter the thousands of much more timid pigeons which are a feature of St Mark's Square, Ms Cascone added.

A company has been developed a 'seagull repellent' that can be diffused throughout the square to keep the birds at bay

Cafe owner Renato Constatini told the Italian media: 'A seagull attack is very frightening. Those birds are larger than people think.

'When they attack someone carrying a tray it can be very dangerous. We are trying to protect ourselves as best we can but the birds no longer fear humans.'

Bird experts describe seagulls as 'resourceful, inquisitive and intelligent birds' with gull colonies displaying 'mobbing behaviour' and 'kleptomaniac tenancies' to get food.

In Britain last summer, youngsters began the craze of 'gull running' where they run down seafronts with bags of fish and chips above their heads.

The challenge is to see far they can go before being attacked by seagulls.
Passengers will be able to stream programmes on their own devices

British Airways passengers will finally be able to stream Netflix films, browse the internet or post Instagram snaps at 30,000ft starting next year.

Wi-Fi will be available on 118 of the flag carriers planes by 2019 in a deal signed this week between its parent company, International Airlines Group, and Chicago-based Gogo.

Gogos satellite-based 2Ku technology promises internet speeds of up to 70Mbps  fast enough to stream Netflix or Amazon Prime programming on their own devices or even video chat with someone on the ground via Skype or FaceTime, although those services could be blocked.

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British Airways will install Wi-Fi on 118 of its planes, including Airbus A380 aircraft, starting next year

IAG TO INSTALL WI-FI ON 90% OF ITS LONG-HAUL AIRCRAFT Airline British Airways British Airways British Airways British Airways British Airways British Airways Iberia Iberia Aer Lingus Aircraft Boeing 747-400 Boeing 777-200 Boeing 777-300 Boeing 787-8 Boeing 787-8/9 Airbus A380-800 Airbus A340-600 Airbus A330-300 Boeing 757-200 Number of aircraft 18 46 12 8 22 12 7 8 4 Source: International Airlines Group

It is not yet known how much passengers will have to pay to connect to the service, which is linked to satellites around the world.

Gogo currently sells 24-hour global internet passes for $28 (19) and monthly global multi-airline passes for $80 (55).

IAG will become the first European airline group to use the technology on aircraft such as the Airbus A380, the worlds largest passenger jet, and the Boeing 787.

Gogo Wi-Fi will also be installed on four Aer Lingus planes and up to 15 long-haul aircraft operated by Iberia  two other airlines owned by IAG, a British-Spanish multinational.

Gogo's satellite-based 2Ku technology (pictured) promises internet speeds of up to 70Mbps

By 2019, 90 per cent of IAGs long-haul fleet, or 137 aircraft, will be connected to Wi-Fi.

Atlanta-based Delta Air Lines announced this week it will use the 2Ku system on more than 600 of its planes, while Virgin Atlantic previously announced its commitment to the service.

While it may not match home or workplace broadband speeds, Gogo insists its next-generation 2Ku system can match or exceed the bandwidth of other in-flight Wi-Fi systems anywhere on the planet.

The system received certification from the Federal Aviation Authority in the US last November and has been tested on Aeromexico flights since then.

Speedy Wi-Fi has been one of passengers biggest demands in recent years.

Willie Walsh, IAGs chief executive, said: Global connectivity is something they demand and we are providing high-quality connections with innovative technology solutions to improve the travel experience.

With high product and installation costs, UK airlines have been slow to introduce Wi-Fi on their planes, choosing to wait for newer technology that features faster speeds and lighter equipment.

Andrew Ferguson, editor at London-based Thinkbroadband.com, said the 2Ku system's speed may be dragged down if too many passengers are connected.

He said: 'It is thought that the 2Ku technology will allow for 70 to 100Mbps per aircraft, but this may vary depending on the density of flights in a particularly area, so speeds may not be consistent on long flights, depending on how many other flights are sharing a particular satellite transponder at a time.

'This should mean that in theory streaming Netflix and video calls should be possible, but given a long-haul flight may be carrying 300 people it is unlikely to support everyone doing whatever they want.

'We may even see different cabins getting different levels of service, or frequent flyers receiving priority access.'

He said voice calls and video chat, if permitted, may experience a lag of around one second.
Some hotels have standards that are just plain criminal.

From Australia to Europe, former prisons all over the world are now being converted and remodelled into stunning hostel and hotel offerings, which cater to budgets of all types.

Whether you prefer a trendy, boutique hotel in a former medieval dungeon or a five-star resort that once housed political prisoners, one thing's for sure: you'll never want to escape these accommodations.

Hotel Het Arresthius in the Netherlands operated as a fully-functioning prison until 2007 - but is now a chic, boutique hotel

Hotel Het Arresthius  Roermond, Netherlands

This 19th century prison only closed its doors in 2007 - but it's now a boutique hotel offering guests the opportunity to sleep in the former cells.

The property has undergone an extensive makeover courtesy of Dutch hotel group Van der Valk, wherein the 105 cells were transformed into 40 luxurious rooms.

However, the lounge still retains the original hallways, though they've been spruced up some thanks to brightly coloured pillows, atmospheric purple lighting and contrasting white chandeliers.

The chic rooms are now fully outfitted with modern furnishings, yet each has retained its original door.

The 19th century prison was purchased by Dutch hotel group Van de Valk, and its 105 cells were transformed into 40 luxury rooms

However, plenty of the structure's original character remains, such as the hotel lounge, which features cell doors and high walkways

In keeping with the hotel's fascinating history, all four of the property's luxury suites are appropriately named The Jailer, The Lawyer, The Director and The Judge.

On site, there's an herb garden, sauna and several hotel bars.

And where prisoners once retreated for a few minutes' exercise, the picturesque courtyard now serves as a cafe and terrace, surrounded by olive trees.

During the month of June, prices range from 131.50 (96) to 211.50 (155) per night.

The Clink78 Hostel in London is a renovated 200-year-old courthouse, offering stays in the court rooms and converted prison cells

Clink78 Hostel  London, England

Set in a beautiful 200-year-old courthouse, the Clink78 hostel is as well-located today as it was in Victorian London - and boasts a connection with Charlies Dickens.

With a modern interior design, the jail-turned-social hub can now accommodate up to 500 guests in converted rooms - including some in real prison cells.

The court rooms themselves are similarly full of history - in fact, Dickens worked here while writing Oliver Twist.

Music lovers should also note that rock band The Clash were fined in this courthouse for shooting pigeons.

The building is steeped in history, with Charles Dickens having penned Oliver Twist while working here

Music-loving travellers will also appreciate this courthouse as the site where The Clash was fined for shooting pigeons

Private rooms are available and some even boast en suite bathrooms. Additionally, a continental breakfast is included for all guests, as well as a city walking tour.

Other amenities include an on-site basement bar, self-catering kitchen and an impressive stained-glass ceiling in reception.

Prices start at 17.50 per night for a mixed bed dorm room.

In Sweden, the Langholmen Hotel is located on what was once a rocky island just off the coast of Stockholm

Langholmen Hotel  Stockholm, Sweden

The Langholmen Prison was a functioning facility until the 1970s, tucked away on what was then a rocky island just outside of Stockholm.

Although it's now being used as a hotel and hostel, the jail is particularly noteworthy for being the location of Sweden's last execution before capital punishment was abolished in 1921.

The renovated cells may be small, but what they lack in size, they make up for in character.

The former prison was in operation until 1975 and is particularly noteworthy for being the site of Sweden's last-ever execution

Although the prison-turned-hotel is located on a private island, it's only a short distance away from the sites of Stockholm

Though the cells may be small, several themed experiences can be organised in the Langholmen, such as a 'day in the life of a prisoner' weekend

Additionally, guests can organise themed stays, such as romantic getaways - wherein chocolate, sparkling wine and fruit will be waiting in the cell when you arrive - or a day in the life of a prisoner experience that culminates with an authentic jail supper.

There's also an on-site museum so that visitors can learn more about the prison's storied 250-year history, as well as a unique outdoor cafe with segmented eating areas.

Though once barren, the island's surroundings are far more lush today thanks, largely, to the work that the prisoners did covering the land with mud dredged from the waterways.

An overnight stay in the hotel starts at 895 Swedish krona (70), while sharing a dorm-style hostel room costs just 225 Swedish krona (18) per night.

The trendy Malmaison hotel is located in Oxford's Castle Quarter in a revamped prison inside a medieval castle

Malmaison  Oxford, England

Now one of the town's trendiest hotels, the Malmaison is housed in a revamped prison inside a medieval castle.

There are 95 comfortably-appointed rooms and suites, though only 38 of them are located in the original jail cells of A-wing.

Of those more authentic offerings, each is converted from three adjoining cells - two of which make up the room and one for the bathroom - and all boast thick walls, original iron doors and barred windows.

As well as the 95 rooms, there's also an on-site neon-lit cocktail bar and a classic, cosy brasserie with dark wood accents (pictured)

For an authentic experience, choose a room in A-wing at Malmaison Oxford, where guestrooms are comprised of three cells - two for the bedroom and one for the bathroom

Ideally located in Oxford Castle Quarter, the hotel is just steps away from some of the best restaurants and bars in the city.

However, for those who prefer to stay in, there's also an on-site neon-lit cocktail bar and a classic, cosy brasserie.

A popular location for weddings, the original prison wing, with its high walkways is truly the piece de resistance of the hotel, but as might be expected: a stay in those particular rooms will cost a bit more.

Prices start from 127 per night.

The Fremantle Prison hostel is the only one in Western Australia that also boasts World Heritage status

Fremantle Prison YHA  Fremantle, Australia

This modern hostel, which boasts a mix of private and shared rooms, is the only one in the area with World Heritage status.

While there are private ensuite rooms for those who prefer a little added luxury, actual prison cells can also be booked.

First built in the 1850s and having housed prisoners all the way up until 1991, the women's division of the prison is the part now open for business.

There are also perfectly preserved Victorian-style guards cottages available for rent.

Guests can relax outside on the lawn at the Fremantle, which was once the prisoners' yard, or whip up a meal in the facility's former cookhouse

Having been built in the 1850s, the Fremantle jail housed convicts until 1991 and it's the women's division that's now open for business

Guests can relax outside on the lawn, which was once the prisoners' yard, or whip up a meal in the facility's former cookhouse.

Sure, cells are basic, but you're here for the ambiance, not the amenities.

Rooms run anywhere between AUS$28 (14) for a bed in a mixed dorm to AUS$140 (70) for a family room with private bathroom

Den Gamle Arrest Hotel  Ribe, Denmark

The 'Old Prison,' as its known, was originally built in 1546 as a residence for the assisting priest at the Cathedral.

After being converted into a girls' school in 1841, the building was used as a prison for almost 100 years - from 1891 to 1989 - before being sold to a private owner.

Today, the ground floor houses a clothing shop while the cellar, which was previously the dungeon, sells hand dipped candles.

On the second floor, there are several prison cells available to be booked, and on the top floor, cosy rooms with sloped attic walls offer stellar views of the city's only storks' nest on top of the old town hall.

For those looking to host their special day at the prison, a bridal suite is also available on the ground floor - complete with a four-poster bed and a bar.

Out back, the courtyard has been transformed into a beautiful garden with fragrant roses. Best of all, the brick walls that surround the courtyard still bear the prisoners' inscriptions, such as their names, addresses and the length of their sentences.

Prices start at 740 Danish Krone, or about 73, per night.

For those more adventurous travellers, the Karostas Cietums Military Prison in Latvia offers immersive overnight stays for guests

Karostas Cietums Military Prison  Liepaja, Latvia

This military prison has remained unchanged since its beginnings and is now open for overnight stays during the summer months.

Dating back to Tsarist times, this is certainly not a luxurious property. Instead, visitors will experience the harsh reality of prison life during their themed stay.

For the daring, there's the 'extreme night' option which includes an extravagant 12-hour immersive show experience.

The building dates back to Tsarist times and offers visitors the chance to experience the harsh reality of prison life over 12 hours

From 9pm until 9am the following morning, guests will play the part of a prisoner for a dismal overnight stay.

There's also the opportunity to participate in a 24-hour experience: a 'day in the life' of a guard or a VIP programme to the North forts, where visitors can experience a possible arrest, interrogation and a lunch in the prison canteen.

No matter which adventure you choose, one night's lodging runs to about 12 (9) a person, but must be organised in advance.

Overlooking the Old City, the Four Seasons Hotel at Sultanahmet once housed some of Turkey's most famous political prisoners

Four Seasons Hotel Istanbul at Sultanahmet  Istanbul, Turkey

It's almost impossible to imagine that this luxurious, 65-room hotel was once an Ottoman prison.

Located in the Old City, the guest rooms and suites all circle a manicured courtyard complete with herb garden - though over 100 years ago, it was convicted criminals who could be spotted spending time in the yard.

Sultanahmet was actually the first jailhouse in the capital of the Ottoman Empire, and was believed to have been constructed in 1918-1919.

The breathtaking three-storey building was constructed in Turkish neoclassical style next to the town's courthouse building

Today, the 65 guest rooms and suites at the Four Seasons all overlook a central courtyard, complete with an open-air pavilion and restaurant

Inside, select the room that once housed dissident writers like Nazim Hikmet, or outside, tuck into Turkish cuisine served in the yard's open-air pavilion and restaurant.

The three-storey building was constructed in Turkish neoclassical style, directly next to the courthouse building, which originally acted as a university and is conveniently only minutes by foot from the Blue Monsque and the Topkapi Palace.
A nervous flyer claims she was left humiliated after an Emirates employee told her she could be sent to prison if she was caught in the United Arab Emirates with a drug that eases her anxiety.

Karen Young, from Tamworth, Staffordshire, said she was reduced to tears because her condition was revealed to other travellers during the encounter at a check-in desk before a recent flight to Dubai.

Young, a 40-year-old mother of three, said she informed airline staff at Birmingham Airport that she was carrying diazepam tablets with a prescription and they warned her she would be locked up for being in possession of the drug.

Karen Young, 40, said she was left humiliated after an encounter with Emirates staff at Birmingham Airport

Young claimed she was reduced to tears and suffered a panic attack when she was told she could be jailed

Young said she was prescribed diazepam for flight purposes and was carrying the original prescription

The UAEs strict drug laws state that possession of medication containing codeine or similar narcotic-like ingredients could result in a mandatory four-year prison sentence, although tourists are allowed to bring their medicine into the country as long as they are carrying a prescription.

Young, who has a fear of flying, said she was prescribed diazepam by her GP for flight purposes and was carrying the original prescription.

Still, she claimed, she was berated and embarrassed in front of other passengers as staff repeatedly told her that diazepam is a banned substance in the UAE and she was at risk of being sent to prison if it was discovered by authorities in Dubai.

Young, who is seeking compensation, said the distress caused her to suffer an anxiety attack before the flight last February, causing her to develop a rash on her chest and neck which remained until she reached Sydney, her final destination.

Young, who is seeking compensation, said the panic attack left her with a rash on her chest and neck

Young, who was flying solo, said: I am a nervous flyer so my doctor prescribes me with diazepam every time I fly.

I was only informing the staff member that I had to take it for my anxiety and she proceeded to berate me, loudly, telling me I could go to prison for four years for possessing it.

After I assured her I had been prescribed it for flight reasons, she continued to embarrass me, shouting across the desk at another member of staff, saying diazepam isn't allowed in Dubai, is it, you can go to prison can't you?

I was mortified to have my medical history broadcast in front of other passengers. It certainly didn't help my nerves and telling me I'd be banged up in jail wasn't a good start to my holiday.

Young claimed a senior staff member was unhelpful when she complained.

She added: I was crying my eyes out, having a panic attack and was still being treated appallingly.

As someone with a crippling anxiety, with a 20-hour trip ahead of me, I wasn't expecting to be told I could face prison for doing nothing wrong.

If anything I had followed guidelines, by bringing necessary paperwork with me to support my medication. It was so stressful.

Young said she suffers a crippling fear of flying and a doctor prescribed diazepam before her flight to Sydney

She claimed a supervisor eventually apologised to her and offered an upgrade on the connecting flight to Sydney from Dubai if space was available. The upgrade did not transpire.

Young claimed she was sat next to an 18-year-old woman who drank copious amounts of alcohol on the seven-hour flight to Dubai and vomited into a cup.

She said she has since received an apology from Emirates customer services team.

She added: Being told I'd be banged up abroad is absurd and completely insensitive to say the least. Where are the caring, helpful and professional staff members who are trained to be considerate towards passengers who suffer from anxiety?

For a reputable airline I was shocked to be treated in such an ill-mannered way. I will definitely not be flying with them again.

A spokesperson for Emirates said: At Emirates we take pride in providing our passengers with the very best customer service and travel advice and were sorry to hear about Miss Young's complaint.

The UAE has a very strict, zero-tolerance anti-drugs policy, with some drugs and medications that may be purchased over-the-counter in other countries classified as controlled substances and illegal to possess.

As such, our staff deemed it important to notify Miss Young of these country-specific regulations prior to departure.
The love of all things Irish has hit Germany as the country's biggest theme park is set to open a dedicated land honouring the Emerald Isle.

The existing Childrens World at the Europa-Park has been given a new theme ready for the summer season in the form of Ireland.

Europa-Park has very high capacity roller coasters, 12 in total, and numerous other attractions meaning the park can accommodate up to approximately 50,000 guests per day.

The Irish-themed land will open in a month's time at Germany's biggest theme park

In 'Ireland' there will be a fishing village, an old castle and a farm with tractors and sheep

The green colours associated with Ireland will be well reflected in the newly-opened themed land

In 2015 there were over 5.5million visits to the themepark recorded.

And now, 'set amid the hills of Ireland, lies an idyllic little fishing village,' the theme park's website reads.

Here visitors can board the childrens swingboat Dancing Dingie, ride the childrens roller coaster Ba-a-a-Express, or take a trip on a tractor at Old Mac Donalds Tractor Fun.

There are many new attractions for the whole family to explore in this fairytale oasis set to open in a month's time.

In 2015 over 5.5 million people visited Europa-Park in Rust, Germany, making it the most popular theme park in the country

The Dublin Dockyard will contain a special 'boat ride' where people will get a taste of Irish history

The website says that the new themed land will be 'set amid the hills of Ireland'

The new dedicated adventure section will feature OMackays Cafe and Pub, the new shop Shamrock Gifts and Treats and a new show

The large, covered play area Limerick Castle will also guarantee memorable adventures at any time of the year, while the new gastronomic offering The OMackays Cafe and Pub, the new shop Shamrock Gifts and Treats, and a new show 'are sure to entice visitors,' reads the description.

Europa Park's director of communication, Jakob Wahl told MailOnline Travel: 'Our old childrens land needed a new look so our creative team Mack Solutions started a design process.

'Considering the location of the new area in between two arms of the Elz river and right next to the England area of Europa-Park, we thought about Ireland as a perfect match: it is a beautiful country with many different aspects, which we could use to design many exciting attractions and corners.

'There will be a fishing village, an old castle and a farm with tractors and sheep.

'Ireland will be a true park in the park, as we offer several rides for the whole family, shows, a nice cafe and a true pub. It actually is Europa-Parks 14th European land and we are very excited to open it in late spring with a true Irish party.

'We will even have our own beer: the oMackays, following the name of the owner family Mack.'

There are more than 100 attractions and shows and 14 European themed areas at the site in Rust, Germany, on a site measuring 95 hectares.

The parks five four-star themed hotels make Europa-Park a unique short break destination in the border triangle of Germany, France, and Switzerland.

This is an artist's impression of how the land will look when it opens for the summer season
She's a fitness enthusiast who loves to post to social media.

And Hilaria Baldwin kept up with appearances as she shared an Instagram video of herself clad in a black bikini and pretty white cover up earlier this week.

The 32-year-old was in the hallway of her Beverly Hills hotel as she showed off exercise poses from her upcoming workout book while daughter Carmen mimicked her. Hilaria and her actor husband Alec Baldwin as well as their two children have been visiting from New York City.

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Always time to work out: Pregnant Hilaria Baldwin, 32, donned a bikini and cover up as she exercised in the hallway on her Beverly Hills hotel as her daughter looked on in an Instagram video

'Showing a few sneak previews from some routines from my book (coming out in January) and how I manage to workout with 3 kids,' the fitness fanatic captioned the video.

As she held her 11-month old son Rafael in one arm, her two-year old daughter Carmen stood alongside her mom and copied her ballet and exercise poses.

'About half way through this pregnancy, let me tell you...it's a challenge!!' Hilaria continued.

Hotel hottie! The wife of actor Alec Baldwin showed off her enviable body

Mommy and me! Hilaria's two-year-old daughter Carmen mimicked her mom as she teased her upcoming workout book

'These are just little "found moment exercises" I make up that I do while cooking, waiting for the elevator, changing a diaper, heading down to the pool on vacation.

'Never miss a moment! See Rafa and #BaldwinBabyBump3 #366daysoflivingclearly #HilariaLCM @rodalebooks,' she finished, promoting her book which is to be released sometime next year.

And the brunette beauty was spotted out covered up a bit more while enjoying a romantic evening with her husband in LA a few night later with Alec.
Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner seem to be handling their divorce very well.

The 44-year-old actress has flown to the UK with her ex while he films his upcoming superhero movie, Justice League.

The duo are also joined by their children - Violet, ten, Seraphina, seven, and Samuel, four.

Friendly exes: Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner seem to be handling their divorce very well as the actress has flown to the UK with her children whilst Ben films his upcoming superhero movie, Justice League

It seems the mother of three certainly doesn't seem to be having any reservations about the extended trip across the Atlantic as according to People: 'They are enjoying showing the kids London'.

On Thursday, a Twitter user spotted Ben, Jennifer and their children waiting in line at the Amorino ice cream shop in Paris.

Earlier in the week, another eagle eye user posted on the social media site that the family was spotted at Warner Bros. Studios Leavesden for a Harry Potter studio tour in England.

The former couple - who were married for 10 years - announced their plans to divorce last June.

Moving forward: The pair were spotted by a Twitter follower this week waiting in line at an ice cream shop in Paris with their children

Doing it for them: Ben and Jennifer have stressed that their only concern moving forward is to protect and look after their three children

According to X17, Ben moved to the house next door to the $45 million Pacific Palisades mansion he used to live in with Jennifer and the children.

Since confirming their split in June, both actors have stressed that their children are their main focus and priority.

In an interview with The New York Times, The Argo actor said that in spite of his very public split, his family are still planning to join him in Europe so they could be together as a family.

Ben's upcoming movie will follow the earth's greatest heroes who come together to form the Justice League.

As a team they will combat a threat beyond all of their capabilities.

The star-studded cast includes Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman, Amber Heard as Mera, Jason Momoa as Aquaman, Henry Cavill as Superman and Amy Adams as Lois Lane.

The explosive film is to be released in theatres November 17, 2017.
He calls himself a lord.

But it seemed Scott Disick may have been experiencing a bit of self pity as he toured his new house with Kris Jenner in a deleted scene from KUWTK.

Kourtney Kardashian's 32-year-old ex seemed somewhat listless as he lead his former mother-in-law around his 'Hamptons style' abode.

Sad Scott? It seemed Scott Disick may have been experiencing a bit of self pity as he toured his new house with Kris Jenner in a deleted scene from KUWTK

Astounded: 'Oh my God, this place is beautiful,' gushed Kris as soon as she crossed the threshold

New digs: Scott's new house is in the Hidden Hills area just outside of Los Angeles

'Oh my God, this place is beautiful,' gushed Kris as soon as she crossed the threshold.

The reality star then moves on to show the Momager the pool and an amazing view, before informing her about the changes he has planned.

Lord Disick is revealed to be quite pragmatic, as he announces that a tree next to the pool is 'being moved because it comes over the pool and gets the pool dirty.'

As the pair move upstairs, he tiredly admits that 'it's a lot to deal with, a whole house, I tell you.'

It has everything: The reality star then moves on to show the momager the pool and an amazing view, before informing her about the changes he has planned

Of course the mischievous Kris isn't quite focused on her host, as she is distracted by a large picture window, where she proceeds to hatch a plan.

'You need some binoculars, or like, a telescope; we could spy on people over there,' she says as she peaks through the window, piquing Scott's interest, who then also takes a look.

Upstairs, the duo visit rooms already painted for Penelope and Mason. Penelope's is decorated with adorable polka dots, while Mason's is painted in a Ralph Lauren-type theme.

Peeping Kris? Of course the mischievous Kris isn't quite focused on her host, as she is distracted by a large picture window, where she proceeds to hatch a plan

Room for the kids: Penelope's room is decorated with adorable polka dots

Advanced design: Mason's room is painted in a Ralph Lauren-type theme

'P wants a white bed with an angel on top,' says Scott while he notes that Mason wants a Pokemon on top of his.

In the master suit, the opulent surroundings only promise to get more lavish, as Scott reveals he's having custom white linen drapes made, and that he plans to demolish the current fireplace in favor of white Carrara marble.

Moving on to the master bath, Kris stops to note Scott's fashionable house robe, which features some royal-looking gold stitching.

He knows his style: In the master suit, the opulent surroundings only promise to get more lavish, as Scott reveals he's having custom white linen drapes made, and that he plans to demolish the current fireplace in favor of white Carrara marble

He dresses the part: 'You're so regal, who knew,' asks Kris, before wondering 'Do you walk around the house like this?'

'You're so regal, who knew,' asks Kris, before wondering 'Do you walk around the house like this?'

The tour ends in one of Scott's massive closets, where he reveals he has another whole closet filled with only formal wear.

Even though he clearly lives in the lap of luxury, Scott sounds somewhat despondent as he comments that he's 'living like a lonely Lord,' before exiting his cavernous closet.

Lucky guy: The tour ends in one of Scott's massive closets, where he reveals he has another whole closet filled with only formal wear

Perhaps money isn't everything: Even though he clearly lives in the lap of luxury, Scott sounds somewhat despondent as he comments that he's 'living like a lonely Lord'




Jessica Alba injected a sense of glamour to a casual cool look when she attended an event at the UCLA Lab School in Los Angeles on Thursday.

The 35-year-old had a $3,550 baby pink Louis Vuitton chain purse slung over her shoulder as she strolled across the parking lot in a pair of chunky wedge boots.

Jessica also donned a long plaid shirt and a sophisticated black coat over the top.

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In the pink: Jessica Alba injected a hint of glamour to a casual cool look for an appearance at an event at the UCLA Lab School in Los Angeles on Thursday

Her hair was worn down in soft and easy waves, framing her made-up face which looked flawless with sun kissed blush and bare lips.

She topped off the look with a black shirt that she tucked into her high-waist jeans.

Check it out! Jessica also donned a long plaid shirt and wore a sophisticated black coat over the shirt

Keeping busy: The Honey actress has had a busy week thus far, as she earlier joined fellow entrepreneurs to speak about businesses at the Milken Institute Global Conference on Tuesday

Walking side-by-side a coffee-carrying friend, Jessica looked to be in good spirits as she strolled full steam ahead.

Jessica has had a big week thus far, as she earlier joined fellow entrepreneurs to speak about businesses at the Milken Institute Global Conference on Tuesday.

The actress co-founded The Honest Company four years ago, a company which sells non-toxic and organic products.

Hitting her stride: Walking side-by-side a coffee-carrying friend, Jessica looked to be in good spirits as she strolled full steam ahead

Putting her best foot forward: Alba donned a pair of chunky black wedge boots

Jessica is said to own between 15 to 20 per cent of the business, which has been valued at $1.7billion.

Last week, Honest Company vehemently denied claims their baby food was not organic following a lawsuit filed in April.

American advocacy group Organic Consumers Association alleged last month that Honest Company's Premium Infant Formula contains 11 synthetic ingredients, including some which haven't been 'assessed as safe for human foods'.

However, the company posted a blog post denying the claims in the suit, writing: 'It is unfortunate... Just know that it will not distract or deter us from our mission of helping families build happy and healthy lives.'
Peaky Blinders, which began its third series last night, is the show that proves Britain can make seriously cool television.

Attracting the kind of cult following of Mad Men and Game Of Thrones, the gangster drama set in Twenties Birmingham has inspired the unlikely new fashion craze for peaked caps and severe pudding-bowl haircuts.

If it hasn't quite managed to make Brummie accents sexy, it has certainly put the city on the tourist map, while the show's celebrity fans include Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise and Julia Roberts.

Peaky Blinders evenings are now all the rage in nightclubs, and top musicians are falling over themselves to compose music for the programme's soundtrack.

Here NICOLE LAMPERT reveals everything you need to know about BBC2's must-watch crime show.

Peaky Blinders, which began its third series last night, is the show that proves Britain can make seriously cool television

WHAT'S A PEAKY BLINDER?

Writer and creator of the show is Steven Knight, who helped create Who Wants to Be A Millionaire? and wrote Dirty Pretty Things, a film about London's illegal immigrants.

Knight based the series on the real life Peaky Blinder hoodlums who ruled Birmingham in the Twenties.

Members of his family were in the gang, based in the Small Heath area of the city, and as a child his mother was a bookies' runner for one of their rivals.

'Gambling was illegal so they used children to take bets,' he says. 'They would go walking up and down the street with a washing basket, and people would drop their bets into the basket and it would get taken to the bookies.

'My dad's uncles were Peaky Blinders. They were gangsters who ran the nation's racetracks throughout the Twenties and Thirties. It only really died out when gambling became legal and removed the reason for their existence.'

The Peaky Blinders got their names from the razors they kept in their caps in anticipation of violence. 'My dad told me lots of stories about how they looked, how they dressed, how people felt about them and how life was in those days, so I always felt this was a drama waiting to be told,' adds Knight.

Writer and creator of the show is Steven Knight based the series on the real life Peaky Blinder hoodlums who ruled Birmingham in the Twenties

THE STORY SO FAR...

Tommy Shelby (Cillian Murphy) and his brother Arthur (Paul Anderson) have taken their family bookmaker's business to new heights thanks to their aptitude for violence, honed in the trenches of World War I.

The first series, set in 1919, saw them muscle in on the nation's racing tracks, forcing the other bookmakers to pay them protection money.

Tommy does have a heart, and fell for barmaid Grace Burgess (Annabelle Wallis). But Grace is also a police spy sent to infiltrate the gang by none other than home secretary Winston Churchill, who suspected they were hoarding guns.

Series two, set in 1921, saw the gang expand into London. Closer to home, matriarch Polly, Tommy's fearsome aunt (Helen McCrory), bumped off the mob's nemesis, Major Campbell (Sam Neill), who'd raped her.

Tommy's love life was in turmoil, with Grace having vanished and then reappeared. While she was away he'd fallen for aristocrat May Carleton (Charlotte Riley). The series finale saw Tommy kidnapped and facing execution, before being reprieved by a man working for Churchill  now in the political wilderness.

Tommy is told the former home secretary will expect a favour in return.

The latest series opened last night with Tommy's wedding to Grace. Next week we'll see him promise to keep his bride safe  while being sucked in to two dangerous wars . . . with the Italian mob and mysterious Russians.

The first series, set in 1919, saw Tommy Shelby (Cillian Murphy) and his brother Arthur (Paul Anderson) muscle in on the nation's racing tracks, forcing the other bookmakers to pay them protection money

CUT-THROAT TRENDS

Cillian Murphy is stunned that his severe close-crop in the show has become popular, as he finds having his head shaved with a razor 'traumatic'. 'That's not really me, but if people are willing to endure that haircut then good luck to them,' he says.

'It's important to get that sharp, shaven silhouette, but I find it quite traumatic to have done.'

He is, however, a fan of the uber-smart peaked cap, waistcoat and jacket attire  based on real police images of the Peaky Blinders.

The garb has become so favoured by the fashionistas that Knight has agreed to license a clothing range called Garrison, named after the Shelby family pub  the scene of many gang battles. 'People are really beginning to dress like them,' he says. 'And it's a massive trend among the black and Hispanic populations in America.

'I think people respond to the look; since the Sixties people have dressed like American teenagers with jeans and trainers. This is a way of dressing like a serious man.' A pop-up venue called The TickTack Club, set up under a railway arch in London Bridge, is themed around the show, while there are several Peaky Blinders events in Birmingham.

New character Duchess Tatania Petrovna (left, played by Gaite Jansen) and Grace Burgess (right, played by Annabelle Wallis)

COULD BRAD PITT GET A ROLE?

David Bowie loved the show and sent Cillian Murphy a picture of himself wearing a cap adorned with razor blades. A week before the star's death, record execs played his final album Black Star to Knight, and two tracks feature in the new series.

The producers hadn't initially aimed to use modern music. 'The only music we could find from 1919 was classical and that didn't feel right,' says Knight. 'So we put on a track that we liked, thinking we would play around with it, but it just stuck. Now lots of musical heroes of mine have been in touch.'

These include Radiohead, Nick Cave, PJ Harvey and rapper Snoop Dogg  who told Knight the show 'reflects the world I come from'. A legendary American composer is also negotiating a song for the show.

It became a huge hit around the world after the first two series were bought by Netflix  but in America it's broadcast with subtitles in case viewers can't understand the Brummie dialect.

The accents haven't put off movie-star fans such as Brad Pitt, who Knight is working with on a film called Allied. 'I would love to get Brad in Peaky Blinders for series four,' he says. 'Watch this space.'

The accents haven't put off movie-star fans such as Brad Pitt, who Knight is working with on a film called Allied (pictured)

A STAR TURN FROM CHURCHILL

This may prove rather controversial. Already, the fictional version of Britain's favourite son has got rather mucky fingers in his dealings with the Shelbys, and in series three they will get even dirtier.

They have no choice but to obey when he demands that they help a group of White Russians, former Russian aristocrats  including the exotic Duchess Tatania Petrovna  determined to overthrow the Bolsheviks.

'Churchill is one of my all-time heroes,' insists Knight. 'He did many great things, but he also made mistakes. At this time he was in the wilderness. In this series he stands for a powerful group of people  politicians, generals, and people in the church  who wanted to bring down the Labour government.'

WHY IS IT FILMED IN LIVERPOOL?

Series three begins with the gang having moved out of urban Birmingham and living in a stately home, Arrow House.

Three houses, not too far from the main set in Liverpool (they couldn't make the show in Birmingham as so much of it was bombed in World War II) were used for filming.

The main exterior and ground-floor interiors were at Arley Hall in Cheshire, the kitchens were at nearby Tatton Park, and upstairs scenes were filmed at Croxteth Hall in Liverpool.

The feel of the home is deliberately old money mixed with new; symbolised by the rich dark furnishings and the badly drawn portraits of Tommy and his wife. The big theme of the new series is how far in society the Shelbys can climb.

'If people make money through nefarious means it doesn't always equal respectability, but occasionally it can,' says Knight.

'One example I looked at is Joseph Kennedy, President Kennedy's father. He began as a bootlegger and in the end became American ambassador to the UK. The question is, could it happen here?'

Unlikely, as Helen McCrory says: 'They can put on the finest gloves, but they still have the grime of Birmingham in their fingernails.'

Series three begins with the gang having moved out of urban Birmingham and living in a stately home, Arrow House

LEARNING ROMANY

The Shelbys are part gipsy and speak to each other in Romany. The stars were taught the language by gipsy actor Packy Lee, who plays Tommy's friend Johnny Dogs. 'It is wonderful to be able to speak Romany,' says Murphy, who was also taught to ride a horse bareback. 'We had to learn it phonetically because it is only spoken.'

HELL ON EARTH

Painstaking detail goes into giving the show its distinctive look. Scenes of Birmingham always contain vivid flames.

Knight explains: 'It's no exaggeration to say that the fires and the furnaces, the hammers and tongs were going 24 hours a day in Birmingham  it creates the right ambience of hell on earth. All of our characters are tortured because of their actions.'

Tommy might have moved on to a big new home but he can't escape his demons, and designers looked to movies including Citizen Kane and The Shining for inspiration. 'The house where Tommy lives almost has to become his enemy in the end,' says director Tim Mielants. 'It becomes like a prison for him.'

HARD-AS-NAILS WOMEN Aunt Polly is based on show creator Steven Knight's great-aunt Polly. 'I never met her,' says Knight. 'But she was very, very formidable.' In this series Polly, played by Helen McCrory, left, struggles with her guilt over killing a man, while entering bohemian London society. Other strong women who've returned to the show include Grace  the former spy and Tommy's flame  and Shelby sister Ada (Sophie Rundle), a Communist who has distanced herself from her violent brothers. 'We all think that in this era women were not allowed out and were weaker,' says Knight, 'But in Birmingham there was a pub called The Chain, and only women went there  men didn't dare. These women had ten children and worked in factories  they were as hard as nails.' Aunt Polly (pictured, played by Helen McRory) is based on show creator Steven Knight's great-aunt Polly

MACHO MEN

IT may be macho, but there's plenty for women to enjoy in Peaky Blinders, not least its mesmerising protagonist, Tommy Shelby.

At first producers turned down Irish actor Cillian Murphy, who they thought was too scrawny, but he campaigned hard for the role.

Now it's impossible to imagine anyone else as Tommy  and this series he's also an executive producer.

In last night's episode he showed off his bare bottom in a raunchy romp.

Knight says he's in awe of his leading man. 'Cillian is such a nice guy, but on screen he's terrifying. He has these dead eyes; all the emotion is behind them and that is exactly what I wanted.' But he isn't the only handsome man in the show.

London-born Hollywood star Tom Hardy reprises his role as the Jewish butcher/gangster Alfie Solomons, while Paul Anderson and Joe Cole are back as Tommy's brothers Arthur and John.

At first producers turned down Irish actor Cillian Murphy (pictured), who they thought was too scrawny, but he campaigned hard for the role
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As the daughter of Kim Kardashian and Kanye West, little North is already shaping up to be a miniature fashionista.

And the two-year-old looked adorable in a cream fringed outfit while exploring Cuba with her famous parents on Wednesday.

The eldest child of the reality star, 35, and rapper, 38, delighted in spending time with her parents as they toured Havana.

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Precious! North West, two, looked darling in a fringed ensemble as she toured Cuba with her parents on Tuesday

Despite her reality star family using the getaway as an opportunity to film scenes for season 13 of their Keeping Up With the Kardashians show, North was elated nonetheless.

Curly-haired North was clad in a matching cream top and skirt with tassels, and a pair of tan moccasins.

And it's clear that Kim had picked out the little one's on-trend choker necklace, which matched her outfit.

Quaity time: North delighted in bonding time with her parents, Kim Kardashian, 35, and rapper Kanye West, 38

Like mother, like daughter! It's clear that Kim had picked out the little one's on-trend choker

Kanye kicking up his heels! The rapper kept with the fashion in Cuban heels

WHY ARE THE KARDASHIANS ARE DRIVING CLASSIC CARS IN CUBA? Cuba is famous for its large number of classic cars due to the events that followed after Fidel Castro came into power in 1956. The former Prime Minister of Cuba banned car imports during his time in power which meant that the population had to become skilled at keeping the pre-1959 cars they owned up and running. The four-decade-long grudge between Cuba and the United States meant that it was hard to buy parts to maintain the classic American brand vehicles as they began to break down. However the current president, Fidels brother Raul Castro, abolished the need for permission in 2014 and opened up the car marker to all citizens.

The family all coordinated their wardrobes in shades of cream and white with Kim, 35, in a skintight white dress with back slit and strappy stilettos.

Kanye stepped out in a crisp white wardrobe with button-up dress shirt and distressed denim jeans that bared a hole in the knee.

But the Love Lockdown hit-maker added a bit of flare to his look as he kept with the local fashion and stepped out in brown suede Cuban heels.

As soon as they touched down in Havana, they immediately took to the city's streets in a vintage hot pink convertible.

But before they hopped in their head-turning ride, Kim made sure she was picture perfect and selfie ready, checking her makeup on the car's wing mirror.

Also along for the ride were Kim's sisters Khloe and Kourtney, and the latter's son Mason Disick, six.

Missing out on the family fun is Kim and Kanye's son Saint, five months, who is presumably being cared for by nannies.

Saint has barely been seen in public since his birth last year, with the reality TV star only sharing a handful of photos of the baby on her social media sites.

The Kardashians are just the latest Americans to take advantage of relaxed visa rules after being banned from visiting the Caribbean island nation for decades during the US trade embargo.

The Latin American country is still under a Communist government so there's no sign of US firms McDonald's or Starbucks like Kim and Kanye are used to seeing on their world travels.

Hot ride! As soon as they touched down in Havana, they immediately took to the city's streets in a vintage pink convertible

Picture perfect! Kim took an extra moment to make sure she was selfie ready in the car's wing mirror

All aboard! Once the reality star ensured her hair and makeup were perfect she hopped into the vintage vehicle
A bill to return the majority of New Orleans charter schools to the oversight of the citys elected school board has passed the Louisiana House of Representatives.

Under the legislation, the schools will remain charters run by their own appointed boards, but the Orleans Parish School Board would have the authority to decide whether charter contracts are renewed or schools are shut down.

Last month, lawmakers in the Senate approved the bill which would transfer the 52 charters overseen by the state-run Recovery School District to the local school board no later than 2019.

Following Hurricane Katrina, the state took control of most of the citys schools from the Orleans Parish School Board, which was plagued by corruption scandals, and started closing schools or converting them into charters.

For more on how New Orleans unorthodox education system works, check out Education Weeks special series on the evolution of public schooling in New Orleans 10 years after Katrina.

Today, Recovery School District oversees 52 charter schools while the Orleans Parish School Board oversees six district schools and 18 charters. The RSD would continue to run other charter schools in the state.

Both superintendents from the RSD and OPSB gave input on the bill, according to the Associated Press.

A recent poll by Tulane University in New Orleans found that 38 percent of registered voters supported shifting oversight of the schools to the OPSB by 2018, 13 percent indicated the switch should happen even later, while 32 percent said they preferred the status quo.

SB432 returns now to the Senate for lawmakers there to approve a minor change by their counterparts in the House before heading to Governor John Bel Edwards. Edwards has said he will sign the bill, according to the AP.

Related stories:

Photo: The John McDonogh building has been transferred between multiple schools since Hurricane Katrina. Swikar Patel/Education Week.
She's thought to be around seven months pregnant with his child and Kristina Rihanoff and Ben Cohen looked very cosy when they attended a charity event on Thursday night.

Kristina covered up her baby bump in a black loose-fitting blouse and matching skinny jeans and heels at the Back Up Trust's 30th anniversary fund-raising City Dinner at the Merchand in London.

She dressed up her outfit with a statement necklace, while supporting a suited and booted Ben at the event which supports those devastated by spinal cord injuries.

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Going well, then: She's thought to be around seven months pregnant with his child and Kristina Rihanoff and Ben Cohen looked very cosy when they attended a charity event on Thursday night

The couple met when they were partnered on the eleventh series Strictly Come Dancing, while Ben was married to now ex wife Abby - although he has always maintained that he never cheated.

In a now-deleted tweet, the scorned wife reportedly shared an image of a vandalised Range Rover in which the car had been spray painted with the words 'Cheater' among other slurs - with which Abby admitted she 'wished' she'd followed suit.

In an image obtained by The Mirror, Abby joined in many Internet users as she commented on images which surfaced on Wednesday showing a Range Rover parked outside Harrods.

Doing their bit: She dressed up her outfit with a statement necklace, while supporting a suited and booted Ben at the event which supports those devastated by spinal cord injuries

Controversial: The couple met when they were partnered on the eleventh series Strictly Come Dancing, while Ben was married to now ex wife Abby - although he has always maintained that he never cheated

The 75,000 motor was spray painted with the words cheater  its over and hope she was worth it in red paint - looking bold against the white paint job.

Abby reportedly shared a Tweet containing the image and added the caption: 'This is hilarious!! Wish I'd done this!' - although later deleted the note.

Ben has always vehemently denied any accusations of adultery.

MailOnline has commented a representative for Ben for comment.

Uh oh! Abby Cohen has once again shed light on her acrimonious split from rugby star Ben Cohen after he left her for Strictly Come Dancing star Kristina Rihanoff

Lost love: In a now-deleted tweet, the scorned wife (left) shared an image of a vandalised Range Rover in which the car had been spray painted with the words 'Cheater' among other slurs - with which Abby admitted she 'wished' she'd followed suit

Moving on: Abby shared a Tweet containing the image and added the caption: 'This is hilarious!! Wish I'd done this!' - although later deleted the note

Ben, who is set to have a child with Kristina later this year, separated from Abby in 2014, while always maintaining he didn't cheat, and Abby recently told The Mirror she is his 'ex-wife'.

In quotes printed by the newspaper, Abby - who has two daughters with the 37-year-old sportsman - allegedly said: 'I'm Ben Cohen's ex-wife. If it wasn't for that woman me and Ben would still be married. But so what? I'm moving on.

'I don't want to talk about being the ditched wife. Ben's getting on with his life. I wish him well with his new family.'

She did not name the Russian dancer, 38, directly in her statement, in which she appeared to reveal their divorce has finally gone through, a year and a half after their split.

Days gone by: Abby, a photographer and food stylist, has previously spoken out about her disdain for her ex-partner's romance with his Strictly co-star, with whom he was partnered on the show in 2013

Getting ideas? The wording was left in red outside the store in Londons Knightsbridge on Basil Street on the white diesel Range Roger Vogue TDV6 AU

Abby, a photographer and food stylist, has previously spoken out about her disdain for her ex-partner's romance with his Strictly co-star, with whom he was partnered on the show in 2013.

Ben and Kristina did not embark on a romance until after his 13-year marriage came to an end a year later.

But Abby, the mother of Ben's twin girls Harriette and Isabelle, earlier this year admitted her 'shock' upon hearing the news that her former husband and Kristina were expecting a child together.

And in an explosive interview in The Sun On Sunday last year, she said: 'My husband, who I was with for 23 years, unconditionally loved and was completely loyal to in every respect, has left me for a f***ing Russian dancer.'

'The last two years have been the most traumatic thing to ever happen to me. He's done the dirty on me. I want people to know.'

Furious: Abby's Tweet shone a light on the news story of the day about the flash car

New love: Ben, who is set to have a child with Kristina later this year, separated from Abby in 2014 and she recently told The Mirror she is his 'ex-wife'

The start of something new... Kristina - who has been dating Ben for around a year and a half, following their first meeting on the 2013 series of Strictly - unveiled their happy baby news back in January while she was taking part in Channel 5's Celebrity Big Brother, and she seems to have taken well to pregnancy

'I don't want to cause stress or further damage by stirring things up. But I'm just trying to recover from what has been the most horrific time of my life.'

Kristina - who has been dating Ben for around a year and a half, following their first meeting on the 2013 series of Strictly - unveiled their happy baby news back in January while she was taking part in Channel 5's Celebrity Big Brother, and she seems to have taken well to pregnancy.

It will be her first child, and Ben's third, and around the time of the reveal a source told The Mirror: 'She'll have to be linked to Kristina though family connections with the new baby being half-brother or sister to her twins.

'Ben and Abby have finally agreed to a financial settlement, which hasn't been without any argument.'

Another insider added in a chat with The Sun: 'Abby thought Kristina's announcement about her pregnancy was really tacky and stunt for the show.

'She knows Kristina and Ben make a lot of money through photoshoots and other publicity and doesn't want her children being any part of that going forward.'
Her modelling career has seen her represent plenty of iconic brands.

And Elyse Knowles has joined the ranks of another 'family', The Daily Edited, raising awareness about their special connection with the National Breast Cancer Foundation for Mother's Day on social media.

The 24-year-old beauty attended the brand's pop up launch night in Sydney on Thursday, wearing a very demure ensemble.

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Lovely in lilac: Elyse Knowles attended The Daily Edited Mother's Day pop up launch night in Sydney on Thursday and flaunted her svelte figure in a very demure ensemble

The blonde beauty donned a pale lilac blouse that featured billowing sleeves and a high neckline for a very feminine look.

Elyse teamed it with similar coloured intricate lace patterned skirt that skimmed her thigh as she held onto a personalised beige envelope clutch.

To finish her look she added some extra height to her long legs with a pair of beige stilettos.

Her blonde locks were styled with a slight wave and loose around her shoulders and for makeup she highlighted her striking features with a natural look.

Feminine: The 24-year-old wore a pale lilac blouse that featured billowing sleeves and a high neckline paired with a similar coloured intricate lace skirt

Keeping it simple: Her blonde locks were styled with a slight wave and loose around her shoulders, for makeup the beauty highlighted her striking features with a natural look

The pop up event was held at Laduree and will be open until Saturday in the lead up to Mother's Day.

100% of the proceeds will go to the National Breast Cancer Foundation.

A special collection of The Daily Edited pieces have been curated for last minute gifts, and the brand has announced that proceeds from the David Jones store will also be donated.

Elyse recently told The Daily Telegraph she only promotes items and brands she uses on a regular basis.

Support: The Melbourne-based beauty has joined the 'family' who have announced that up until Mother's Day 100% of sales proceeds will go to the National Breast Cancer Foundation

She said that social media has had a 'big impact' on her career.

'A lot of people can be Insta-famous but it is really up to you how you use the platform as to how you can grow your business,' she explained.

The beauty has amassed 534,000 followers on Instagram after she launched her modelling career through the social media application several years ago.
It's a rare season of Game of Thrones that ends with more Starks than it started with.

Rickon Stark is making his return to Game Of Thrones for the first time in three seasons.

Maisie Williams - who plays his big sister Arya - let the news slip during an interview with BBC Radio 1 on Thursday.

Stark reminder! Maisie Williams has let slip that Arya's little brother Rickon will also make his return in season six of Game Of Thrones

When a caller asked if viewers would get to see the youngest Stark child again she replied: 'yes, we will indeed.'

But when she suddenly realised she might face the wrath of the showrunners for letting the spoiler slip, she added: 'Oh no, I'm literally going to go off the air and someone's going to email me!' she said.

Rickon Stark, played by 14-year old Irish actor Art Parkinson, has not been seen in the series since the end of season three, when he was travelling with his brother Bran, Hodor, Osha, Jojen and Meera Reed, and the boys' pet direwolves Shaggydog and Summer.

But knowing how perilous his journey north of the wall to meet the Three-Eyed Raven would be, Bran sent him, his wolf and Osha east to the Last Hearth - the seat of House Umber - among their late father's most loyal bannermen.

Spoiler: During an interview on BBC Radio 1 on Thursday, a caller asked if viewers would get to see the youngest Stark child again she replied: 'yes, we will indeed.'

Missing: Rickon Stark, played by 14-year old Irish actor Art Parkinson, has not been seen in the series since the end of season three, when he was travelling with his brother Bran, Hodor, Osha, Jojen and Meera Reed, and the boys' pet direwolves Shaggydog and Summer

Unfortunately for Rickon, wolf-eared fans will have picked up in the most recent episode that the Umbers might not be as trustworthy as Bran had hoped.

Right before Ramsay betrays his father Roose and stabs him to death, he mentions that houses Karstark, Manderly and Umber are now allied with the Boltons, presumably after Robb Stark beheaded Rickard Karstark for disobeying orders and killing two young Lannister prisoners, way back in season three.

Indeed the trailer for season six third episode - Oathbreaker - shown last Sunday shows a procession of Umbers, recognisable from their silver chain sigil, travelling to Winterfell.

Ominous: Unfortunately for Rickon, wolf-eared fans will have picked up in the most recent episode that the Umbers might not be as trustworthy as Bran had hoped. The trailer for season six third episode - Oathbreaker - shown last Sunday shows a procession of Umbers, recognisable from their silver chain sigil, travelling to Winterfell

Pressie: When Ramsay questions why they came, the Umber clansman replies: 'I've got a gift for you' - likely Rickon himself

When Ramsay questions why they came, the Umber clansman replies: 'I've got a gift for you' - likely Rickon himself.

Ramsay is one of the few people in Westeros who knows Theon Greyjoy did not kill Bran and Rickon as he proclaimed; he also knows he needs to wipe out the male Stark heirs and marry the female to retain control of the North.

Season six has already seen the return of two other 'Starks': Isaac Hempstead Wright's Bran - whose storlyline was paused for a season - as well as Jon Snow, who was stabbed to death at the end of least season but resurrected by Melisandre after much speculation to that effect.

Fighting back: Season six has already seen the return of two other 'Starks', including Isaac Hempstead Wright's Bran, whose storlyline was paused for a season

Troll: Jon Snow, who was stabbed to death at the end of least season, was resurrected by Melisandre after much speculation to that effect
They're famous for standing out wherever they go and this red carpet affair was no exception.

Coco Rocha and Paris Hilton vied for attention in serious style as they attended the 10th Annual Delete Blood Cancer DKMS Gala in New York City on Thursday.

The 27-year-old Coco exuded charm and grace in a black fishtail gown with drooping sleeves while 35-year-old Paris looked model-esque in a black cut-out gown.

Back in black: Paris Hilton and Coco Rocha showcased their slim figures in long and lovely dark dresses with bright details as they attended Delete Blood Cancer DKMS Gala in New York City on Thursday

In Coco's case, the dress' drooping long sleeves allowed her to show off her creamy white shoulders and slim neck.

Coco turned on her heels to reveal, on the flip side of the black fabric, a neon green lining.

The bright chartreuse hue peeked out from the folds of the trailing train and the romantically designed split cuffs.

Vampy for a good cause: The 27-year-old model turned heads in her black number with the drooping sleeves and the fishtail train

Mama's night out: Coco posted a photo that showed her getting ready for the gala with daughter Ioni's help

All that glitters: The 35-year-old Paris wore glittering jewelry to match the silvery beaded details on her dress

Getting down to business: Coco Rocha caught up with event host Katharina Harf and Carina Ortel

Stage presence: Coco addressed the crowd on stage at the gala

Greetings: Coco looked ravishing as she gave her speech

Coco wore her raven-dark hair in a sleek and simple ponytail with a centre part.

Her eyes were heavy with mascara and black eyeliner and contrasted with her pale and flawless complexion.

There was just a hint of rouge on her cheeks and rose-tinted lipstick to liven up her features.

Trending: Georgia May Jagger lent classy catlike appeal in a black tuxedo with kittycat heels

Recognize the pout? The 24-year-old model is the daughter of Mick Jagger and Jerry Hall

Smile: Georgia flashed a gap-toothed smile beneath her wavy strands of blonde hair

Time to chat: Georgia May Jagger got a chance to chat with DKMS co-founder Katharina Harf

Coco probably caused a wave of ahhhs after she posed a cute snap of her and her one-year-old daughter Ioni before the gala.

The dark-haired stunner appeared to be putting on her earrings while the tot grinned happily beside her.

'Ioni helping me get ready for tonight's #DKMS gala! #houseofconran,' Coco captioned the photo.

Did you forget something? Olivia Culpo glided to the gala in a black-topped outfit with sheer polka dot skirt

Giddy: The beauty queen seemed to get a kick out of that revealing red carpet outfit

Paris was captivating in her black number that featured glittery trim around sleeves, split neckline and centre cut-outs.

The dress fit her slender figure snugly before descending in a little flourishing train.

Paris wore her waist-length blonde hair long and wavy, swept to one side to better showcase her dangling earrings and those cheekbones no doubt.

Amazing: Ariana Grande arrived in a low-cut black gown with sheer details along the trailing skirt

So happy to be here: Ariana mngled with Broadway star Chondra Profit at the gala

A kiss for you: The Bang Bang singer had a kiss for Republic Records exec Joe Carozza

Sparkling: The singer performed on stage for the audience

Entertainer: Ariana was accompanied by a pianist

Pretty ponytail: The singer swished a long and golden-tipped ponytail around as she sang

Spellbound: Ariana was in the moment and everyone else was too

The black tie fundraiser was designed to raise money to fight blood cancer and to help patients and their families dealing with the disease.

The event included cocktails and dinner along with a special performance by Ariana Grande.

Georgia May Jagger, the 24-year-old fashion model daughter of Mick Jagger and Jerry Hall, was also in attendance.

Jagger wore a classy black pantsuit with black vest and wide black choker.

Social butterfly: Ariana also said hello to Chazz Palminteri and his wife Gianna Ranaudo

Orange is nice: Victoria Silvstedt was every inch the blonde bombshell as she attended the fundraising event designed to fight blood cancer and help patients and their families dealing with the disease

Lacy and lovely: Magdalena Frackowiak was old-fashioned charm in a lacy number while Alicia Quarles looked classy in her black gown with little gold clutch

Beauty queen Olivia Culpo dazzled in daring get-up that featured a solid black top and a sheer polka dot skirt.

Olivia couldn't stifle the giggles as she showed off her long legs beneath the filmy fabric while strolling along the red carpet.

Swedish actress and model Victoria Silvstedt wowed in a brilliantly orange dress with plunging neckline and flirty high-low hemline as she mingled among the crowd that also included designer Vera Wang, Alicia Quarles and Magdalena Frackowiak.

Designing woman: Vera Wang mingled among the stars at the event taking place at Cipriani Wall Street

Running late? Paris seemed to run down the street to the evening event in NYC
He waved goodbye to Summer Bay favourite Oscar MacGuire in his final Home And Away scenes on Thursday night.

And while he is no doubt looking forward to the next chapter in his life, Jake Speer has revealed how much he will miss his much-loved character.

In an interview with TV Week, the 24-year-old said: You invest so much time into creating what you think is a living, breathing version of a human being. And, then to have someone say an 18-year-old kid is going to die  it is very sad.

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'It's really heartbreaking stuff': Jake Speer has opened up about his Home And Away departure after playing Summer Bay favourite Oscar MacGuire for over two years

His character was killed after an explosion ripped through a hospital fundraiser at the caravan park, which also took the life of his aunty, Hannah, who was played by Cassie Howarth.

A sister lost her twin brother and her aunty on the she same night, he added. Its really heartbreaking stuff.

The blast was accidentally caused by Andy Barrett and Tank Snelgrove after they had a huge fight, which resulted in them knocking over canisters on live wires.

A sister lost her twin brother and her aunty': His character was killed after an explosion ripped through a hospital fundraiser at the caravan park on Thursday's episode

End of an era? Speaking about what it was like to film the emotional scene, Jake explained, I spent a lot of cold wet nights on my back. It wasnt as fun as it sounds

Oscar died almost immediately after the fire broke, while Hannah died moments later due to a knock on her head causing internal bleeding.

Speaking about what it was like to film the emotional scene, Jake explained: I spent a lot of cold wet nights on my back. It wasnt as fun as it sounds.

The soap star first appeared on the long-running drama in September 2013, while actress Cassie joined one month prior to his arrival.

Shortly after the episode aired, Cassie took to her Instagram page to reveal that she's forever grateful for her time on the show.

Calm before the storm: Hannah Wilson, played by Cassie Howarth, was also killed from the fire which took place at the charity gala

Poignant: Shortly after the episode aired, Cassie took to her Instagram page to reveal that she's forever grateful for her time on the show

Meanwhile, Home And Away fans will also be gearing up to say a farewell to Bonnie Sveens character Ricky Sharpe in upcoming weeks.

Last month, the 26-year-old actress confirmed her departure from the soap after an incredible three-year stint.

At the Sydney premiere of We Will Rock You on Thursday, Bonnie told Daily Mail Australia that she was sad to be leaving, but was looking forward to her new project.

'It was a mixed decision,' she said, 'but I'm really excited to be on Secret Daughter,' a drama series on Seven in which she stars with Jessica Mauboy.

'I definitely enjoyed every day there, there was a lot of love on that set and I'm still very fond of all the people I worked with.'

Tragic drama: Oscar died almost immediately after the fire broke, while Hannah died moments later due to a knock on her head causing internal bleeding
She just celebrated amassing six million Instagram followers.

And it wasn't hard to see why fans are so drawn to Emma Roberts when she stepped out to meet up with a friend in west Los Angeles on Thursday.

The 25-year-old looked fashionable and flirty in a pair of ripped blue jeans and an even tighter black top, which clung to her cleavage and slender waist.

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What a jean-ius! Emma Roberts showed off her physique in pair of ripped blue jeans and an even tighter black top, which clung to her cleavage and slender waist when she stepped out to meet up with a friend in west Los Angeles on Thursday

The jeans skimmed right above her grey ankle boots with a chunky heel and were paired with a small and strappy leather purse, adding a bit of edge to her cool look.

She also sported a pair of shades and wore her auburn hair down in loose waves with a side-swept bang.

Emma even appeared to go without a stitch of makeup for the day.

Meanwhile, the actress celebrated her soaring popularity on Instagram by sharing a quick video of herself puckering up to a mirror as she prepped for Monday night's Met Gala.

Crowd pleaser: Roberts gave several reasons why fans may be so drawn to her when she stepped out in her clingy outfit

Natural beauty: Emma even appeared to go without a stitch of makeup for the day

'6M followers?! I love you guys,' she captioned the video.

Next up, Emma is set to star in Billionaire Boys, which is set in the 1980s and is about a group of affluent Los Angeles boys whose get rich quick scam takes a deadly turn.

The star-studded cast includes Kevin Spacey, Taron Egerton, Ansel Elgort, Billie Lourd, Jeremy Irvine and Suki Waterhouse.

Effortlessly cool: She also sported a pair of shades and wore her auburn hair down in loose waves with a side-swept bang

Meanwhile: Next up, Emma is set to star in Billionaire Boys, which is set in the 1980s and is about a group of wealthy Los Angeles boys whose get rich quick scam takes a deadly turn

It is a biographical crime-drama film directed by James Cox and co-written with Captain Mauzner.

Emma told WWD that they: 'Got to do amazing Eighties fashion. Kind of like Debbie Harry, not so much shoulder pads. My character is rock n roll-inspired, which I loved, and my hair and makeup direction was Debbie Harry'.

She has another movie coming out later this year called Nerve, which is due out in September and also stars the likes of Juliette Lewis and Dave Franco.
Caitlyn Jenner has visited with a group of low-income LBGT teens at a Brooklyn school who criticized the celebrity for not doing enough to advocate for people like them.

The students at the Academy For Young Writers had called out Caitlyn for being 'privileged' and not using 'her privilege to advocate for those who can't speak for themselves' in a roundtable discussion hosted by New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof.

In fact, the NY Times reported, they had pulled down a photo of the transgender reality star from a wall before the former Olympian paid them a surprise visit.

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A dose of reality: Caitlyn Jenner was a glamorous guest at the TIME 100 Gala in New York on April 26. On Thursday, she sat down with low-income LGBT teens in Brooklyn who said she wasn't doing enough to help less privileged transgender people

'Everyone's patting her on the back like many people have not been transgender before her,' one student said during the discussion.

The I Am Cait star spent 'hours' with the group and listened to their personal stories about growing up transgender and struggling with their identity.

In return, the students listened as Caitlyn spoke about how criticism from the trans community had been the hardest thing about transitioning to living as a woman.

Big change: Caitlyn, 66, lives in Malibu and has been feted by the media since the former Olympic decathlete revealed plans to transition to living as a woman. She stars in her own E! reality series

'For so many years, little Caitlyn has lived inside,' the 66-year-old said.

'And Bruce kind of took over the world, and did his thing. It was time to put him inside and lets let her live, OK?'

Caitlyn also refused to apologize for being a Republican.

But she did say she was working 'behind the scenes' to address the North Carolina transgender bathroom law that bans individuals from using public restrooms that do not correspond to their biological sex.

Brokered trip: NY Times columnist Nick Kristof arranged for Caitlyn's surprise visit to students. He reported the teens pulled down a poster of the reality star before she arrived at the school

'Maybe this is the reason God put me on this earth, to tell my story, to try to make a difference in the world,' the parent of Kylie and Kendall Jenner said.

'This is about life. This is about life and death. People destroy their lives over what we all kind of deal with.'

After the visit, Caitlyn tweeted: 'Seeing kids like these make it all worth it. Thanks @NickKristof for making this happen!'

Grateful: The 66-year-old appeared to appreciate the animated discussion with the youth and posted this thank you note to Kristof on her Twitter later onThursday

TV star: Caitlyn continues to appear in Keeping Up With the Kardashians following her divorce from Kris Jenner and her new life as a woman is documented in her own docu-series I Am Cait

The former Bruce Jenner revealed her decision to start living as a woman in a sit-down interview with ABC's Diane Sawyer in April 2015.

She then went public as Caitlyn by posing on the cover of the July issue of Vanity Fair magazine.

Her experiences and her engagement with the trans community has been documented in two seasons of her E! series I Am Cait.
Earlier this week she celebrated her 26th birthday.

And Caitlin Stasey has opted to change up her look after the momentous occasion, taking to social media on Friday to debut her new look, which features a bold front fringe.

The former Neighbours star snapped a selfie after her trip to the salon to flaunt her new hairdo and captioned it with a simple 'Y/N' in an effort to gauge her followers opinion on the change.

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Fringe benefits: Caitlin Stasey has opted to change up her hair after the momentous occasion of her birthday earlier this week and took to social media on Friday to debut her new look - a bold front fringe

In the selfie, Caitlin is relatively makeup free and appears only to be wearing mascara and a sheer layer of foundation.

The beauty gazed into the camera as she snapped the selfie and let the fringe be the focus as her dark locks cascaded around her shoulders.

She was dressed in a smart navy sweater layered over a white blouse as she snapped her selfie while seated in her car.

Chic: The 26-year-old actress gazed into the camera as she snapped the selfie and let the fringe be the focus as her dark locks cascaded around her shoulders (L)

The actress was bombarded by comments from her followers, who gushed over her new look with many writing: 'yes' underneath the image.

One of her followers added: 'Yes, yes, a thousand times yes', and it is apparent that her look is a winner.

On Monday, the brunette beauty celebrated her birthday with family and friends, and took to social media to share what appeared to be a surprise party to mark special occasion.

Birthday girl: The first snap, which was simply captioned with the word surprise, shows the starlet beam with delight as she was handed a large bouquet of flowers

Celebrations: She later followed the post with another picture of herself blowing out the candles on a birthday cake

The first snap, which was simply captioned with the word surprise, showed the starlet beam with delight as she was handed a large bouquet of flowers.

She later followed the post with another picture of herself blowing out the candles on a birthday cake.

Meanwhile, at the start of the year, the Australian beauty strongly hinted that she had tied the knot with Raising Hope actor Lucas, 30.

Cryptic: In January, she posted several images which show the Chicago native carrying her over the threshold and another as the pair punched the pair with glee

In January, she posted several images which show the Chicago native carrying her over the threshold and the pair punching the pair with glee.

Their close pal, actor Echo Kellum, took to Twitter to congratulate them, writing: 'Congrats to Lucas Neff and Caitlin Stasey on their marriage! They are the cutest!!! Proud to be y'all friend!'

Caitlin and Lucus have yet to address a marriage.
Former MasterChef contestant-turned-celebrity chef, Hayden Quinn, knows first-hand the importance of the Starlight Childrens Foundation, who bring cheer to seriously sick children.

The 29-year-olds younger sister, Madi, was diagnosed with leukemia at the age of five and spent a considerable amount of time in the Starlight Express Room after receiving life-saving treatment at the Sydney Children's Hospital at Randwick.

The MasterChef alumni too spent time doing arts and crafts or playing computer games in the special kid-friendly facility during visits to see his sister in hospital.

Good cause: Hayden Quinn has shown his support for the Starlight Foundation - a cause close to his heart after his sister Madi used the services during her stay in hospital as a five-year-old leukaemia patient

More than 18-years later, Hayden has returned to the Sydney Childrens Hospital to support the charity on Starlight Day - the foundation's annual fundraiser held on May 6.

The day includes celebrities coming together to raise awareness and funds for the not-for-profit organisation, as well as putting a smile on the faces of ill children.

Hayden told Daily Mail Australia exclusively ahead of the event, on Tuesday, that he wanted to give back to the organisation that had provided so much for him and his family.

Claim to fame: Hayden competed on MasterChef in 2011

Back to TV: The Northern Beaches native will make his return to TV in the show Surfing The Menu: Next Generation alongside fellow MasterChef contestant Dan Churchill on May 22

For me its all about promoting and helping get as much funding, sponsors and people behind Starlight as possible so that they can continue putting smiles on little kids faces, he added.

There is a lot of sick kids in the hospital each day and when they walk into the Starlight Room, their world changes a little bit. They get little prouder, they enjoy themselves a bit more and it takes their minds off being in the hospital.

To add to his busy schedule, the Northern Beaches native will make his return to TV in the show Surfing The Menu: Next Generation alongside fellow MasterChef contestant Dan Churchill on May 22 - taking over from original hosts Curtis Stone and Ben ODonoghue.

Book is out: The handsome cooks have also released a cook book under the same name as their show

Next challenge: Hayden is training to compete in triathlons

The show will follow the hunky reality TV stars across Australia as they whip up feasts, share a story and enjoy a surf.

Hayden said he was excited to take viewers on a surfie and foodie journey.

It's a revamp of the old Surfing The Menu format that Curtis Stone and Ben ODonoghue shot to fame many years ago, he said.

We have revamped the format and given it another little kick.

Dan Churchill and I spent two-months last year in September and October and travelled all the way from Broome to Byron Bay with 17 stops along the way and met some incredible people, cooked up some amazing food, shared some stories and had a surf along the way.

Practice time: He told the Daily Mail Australia that he'd been doing a combination of swimming, cardio and gym work over three-hours a day to improve his competition time

It was a real adventure and a boys road trip.

The hunky duo also released a cook book of the same title as the show.

Hayden said the recipe book had been going really well since its release more than three-weeks-ago.

Apart from charitable and TV work, the hunky star has also been training to compete in triathlons.

Showing off: The star showed off his muscular back as he did chin-ups in the gym

He told the Daily Mail Australia that he had been doing a combination of swimming, cardio and gym work over three-hours a day to improve his competition time.

He said he decided to compete in the difficult sport for a 'challenge'.

'Me and my two mates own a gym on the Northern Beaches called The Cube. I've spent a lot of time at the gym. You know you got to mix it up a little bit and taking on the triathlon.

'My brother-in-law does it. He is pretty good at it and loves it.

Keep myself busy and keep my mind busy from all the things that are going on.

Hayden will compete in the up coming Port Macquarie Triathlon in the coming months.

To make a donation, head to the Starlight Children's Foundation.

New love: Hayden with his new flame and model Jax Raynor




She recently revealed that she is almost back to her pre-baby weight.

And Kim Kardashian was happy to show off her slimmed down physique - and extremely ample cleavage - during a family holiday to Cuba on Thursday.

The 35-year-old was spotted heading for dinner in Havana with her husband Kanye West and their daughter North, as well as Kourtney and her two eldest children Mason and Penelope.

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Just popping out: Kim Kardashian put on a busy display during a family outing in Havana, Cuba on Thursday

Kim risked spilling out of her low-scooping skintight little black dress, which highlighted her petite but curvy figure and left her legs on show.

The reality star also wore heeled black sandals and a matching choker necklace with a gold cross pendant hanging from it.

Kim slicked her dark locks back into a ponytail and finished off her look with nude lipstick and smoky eye make-up.

The Keeping Up With The Kardashians star was seen carrying little North in her arms as she headed to their hot pink vintage convertible.

Giving her fans an eyeful: The reality star put her extremely ample cleavage on display in a little black dress

Risking a wardrobe malfunction: Kim nearly spilled out of the extremely low-scooping number

In fine form: Five months after welcoming son Saint, the star is almost back to her pre-baby weight

The two-year-old looked adorable in a white dress with black leather top and matching gladiator sandals.

North, who had her curly hair up, left the family's lodging carrying two leaves which she appeared to be quite fascinated with.

Kanye cut a typically casual figure as he doted over his little princess, dressed in a grey T-shirt and ripped jeans.

Her little princess: The 35-year-old was seen carrying North in her arms as they headed to the car

Off we go: The two-year-old looked adorable in a black and white dress and gladiator sandals for the evening

Say cheese!: Kim and Kourtney snapped a selfie with the kids from their hot pink vintage convertible

Family time: Kim, North and Kanye were joined by Kourtney and her two eldest children Mason and Penelope

Stylish as always: Kourtney looked great in a tan suede dress with matching heels and lots of red lipstick

Meanwhile Kourtney looked stylish in a suede tan dress and matching heels, along with a gold choker.

WHY ARE THE KARDASHIANS ARE DRIVING CLASSIC CARS IN CUBA? Cuba is famous for its large number of classic cars due to the events that followed after Fidel Castro came into power in 1956. The former Prime Minister of Cuba banned car imports during his time in power which meant that the population had to become skilled at keeping the pre-1959 cars they owned up and running. The four-decade-long grudge between Cuba and the United States meant that it was hard to buy parts to maintain the classic American brand vehicles as they began to break down. However the current president, Fidels brother Raul Castro, abolished the need for permission in 2014 and opened up the car marker to all citizens.

The 37-year-old had her locks tied into a chic ponytail and added a pop of colour to her look with lashings of scarlet lipstick.

Kourtney carried three-year-old Penelope in her arms and held hands with six-year-old Mason.

Not seen was Khloe, who has also joined her sisters on the trip now that the travel ban to Cuba has been lifted, as they film for the 13th season of Keeping Up With The Kardashians.

The Kardashians and their entourage appeared to cause quite a commotion on the communist-led island that has only recently restored diplomatic and trade ties with the United States following decades of isolation.

The trip to Cuba follows a number of glamorous holidays taken by the family on the show, with past episodes chronicling their exploits in Thailand, Mykonos and Bora Bora.

It comes just two weeks after Kim and Kourtney flew to Reykjavik, Iceland, on another holiday which was filmed for the reality series.

How does she do it?: The 37-year-old has three children and is in the best shape of her life
A plan by Rhode Islands governor could open up more choice for parents to select schools outside of their neighborhoods. But the schools first would have to choose to take children from outside their areas.

Gov. Gina Raimondo is proposing the School and Family Empowerment Act as part of her budget proposal, which Rhode Island Education Commissioner Ken Wagner announced in March.

The act would allow traditional public schools to apply to become Empowerment Schools, which would be free of certain regulations and give teachers and administrators more autonomy. Empowerment Schools could choose a special focus, like dual language or science. See a one-page description of the Rhode Island education plan .

It sounds kind of like charter schools, but those are separate. Krieger said the Empowerment Schools would be more like magnets. As part of that freedom, Empowerment Schools could choose to accept students from outside of their neighborhoods.

A school would have to apply to be an empowerment school and include open enrollment as one option, said Elliot Krieger, a spokesman for the commissioners office at the Rhode Island Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.

Still, even if open enrollment was allowed, Empowerment Schools would have to enroll neighborhood students first.

The act would include $1 million for the first year for schools to make their empowerment plans. Krieger said he expects about five to 10 schools would be in the first round.

Before that, the legislature would need to approve the plan through the budget . A few hearings have been held, but no votes have been taken, Krieger said.

This isnt the only way Raimondo is showing her support for school choice. Earlier this month, Raimondo said she would veto a bill that would restrict the growth of charter schools .

To learn more, WPRI has a breakdown of what the empowerment plan would do .

Contact Sarah Tully at stully@epe.org .

Follow @ParentAndPublic for the latest news on schools and parental involvement.

Dont miss another K-12 Parents and the Public post. Sign up here to get news alerts in your email inbox.
She welcomed her baby daughter Gigi a mere five weeks ago.

And rather than indulge in any protracted maternity leave, Kat Stewart has already jumped straight back into work after she was recently pictured on set of the new series of Offspring.

The 43-year-old - who plays the vivacious Billie Proudman in the comedy drama - was walking around with her five-week-old tot on the first day of shooting, which was taking place in Melbourne.

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Bring your baby to work day! Kat Stewart was recently pictured on set of the new series of Offspring with her five-week-old daughter Gigi

Cutting a relaxed and content figure, the actress emerged from her trailer in a blue dressing gown as she carefully cradled her little girl close to her chest.

She was also joined by co-star and leading heroine Asher Keddie as well as fellow cast members Deborah Mailman and Richard Davies, who plays Jimmy Proudman.

Kat - who is already a mother to four-year-old son Archie, whom she shares with husband David Whiteley - revealed that she will be taking her daughter Georgia, nicknamed Gigi, to the 'family-friendly' shoots.

Doting mother: The 43-year-old - who plays the vivacious Billie Proudman in the comedy drama - was walking around with her newborn on the first day of shooting, which was taking place in Melbourne

'I think it will only enrich the experience of doing the show having them around,' she told The Daily Telegraph during an interview last month.

'I wouldnt normally go back to work this early but Offspring is a family,' she added. 'Archie takes his role as big brother really seriously. Hes in charge of calming Gigi down with lullabies.'

Meanwhile, co-star Asher also revealed she will be bringing her one-year-old baby boy Valentino on set from the start of production.

The 41-year-old - who plays protagonist Nina Proudman - welcomed her son Valentino with husband Vincent Fantauzzo in March last year and is also a step-mother to Vincent's son Luca, from a previous relationship.

'It will enrich the experience': The actress said in a recent interview that it's such a family friendly set, it makes sense to take her newborn to work with her

Mixing roles: In between takes, Kat - who is already a mother to four-year-old son Archie, whom she shares with husband David Whiteley - was seen firmly in mum mode

Filming for the show's sixth season commenced last week, and the show's official Facebook page shared the first photo of the main cast on set.

Newcomer TJ Power, famed for his role in Eat Pray Love, was also in the shot as he was announced as a new addition to the show alongside Australian actor Dan Wyllie.

'New faces and familiar faves, we're excited to have begun filming for our new season... And we're even more excited to bring it to your screens,' read the start of the caption.

'Joining us this season for the first time are Dan Wyllie and TJ Power. See you soon,' the post concluded.

Doting mothers: Meanwhile, co-star Asher Keddie (R) also revealed she will be bringing her one-year-old baby boy Valentino on set while filming the new season of the show
She has two children of her own, so it's not surprising that Pia Miller is a natural around kids.

The Home And Away star was seen going gaga over her friend's baby during a trip to Paddington In Sydney on Friday.

The stunning brunette doted on the tiny tot as she enjoyed a meal with her pals at Indigo Cafe.

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Feeling clucky: Pia Miller was seen doting over her friend's baby during a lunch outing in Paddington, Sydney on Friday

The TV star met with her pals before visiting the store of designer-to-the-star, Steven Khalil, where she was spotted trying on a breathtaking off-the-shoulder black gown with cut-out detailing.

For her outing, the 32-year-old donned a navy and white star dress with ruffle detailing down the front.

She teamed the flirty ensemble with a black fedora hat, black ankle boots and a pair of cool black shades.

Stunning ensemble: The 32-year-old donned a navy and white star dress with ruffle detailing down the front

Gushing: The 32-year-old TV star showed off her maternal side as she gushed over the tiny tot

The mother-of-two was polished to a high standard with her brunette locks left out and straight, while opting for a natural palette of makeup to let her natural beauty shine through.

Days earlier the brunette beauty opened up about the breakdown of her marriage to AFL star Brad Miller, saying her hectic work schedule 'took its toll' on the relationship.

The TV star also spoke for the first time about how she tracked down her estranged father online - and how their reunion did not go how she had hoped.

Pia split from Brad last year after struggling to balance her family life and filming commitments for the soap.

Enjoying lunch: The mother-of-two looked to be in good spirits as she shared a chat and a giggle with her friends

No hat hair: It appeared the beauty managed to dodge messy hat hair after she removed her headware

Happy times: The TV star looked to be in good spirits as she sported a smile from ear-to-ear

'I'd shoot all day, jump on a plane, race home and make dinner - it was like I was working full-time in both places,' she told Marie Claire.

'I was trying to do everything and it took a toll on me physically, I think it took its toll on everything.'

She is now dating film producer Tyson Mullane, but remains friends with Brad for the sake of their son Lennox, nine, and her other son Isaiah, 13, from an earlier relationship.

The footballer even relocated from his home in Melbourne to Sydney, where she films the Channel Seven soap, so that they could continue to look after the children together.

Catch-up: The mother-of-two made sure to catch up with friends before the 58th Logie Awards on Sunday in Melbourne

Touch up: The brunette beauty made sure to fix her hat as she enjoyed lunch

They announced the end of their decade-long marriage in October last year and said they would 'always be supportive of one another'.

Months later, Pia left fans shocked when she moved on quickly and began a relationship with film producer Tyson.

She has remained tight-lipped about their blossoming romance.

'I think that in terms of a romance and a relationship, it's still early,' she told the magazine.

Concentration: The beauty looked as though she was listening intently as her friends chatted around her

Award time: She has recently been nominated for a Best New Talent award at this year's Logies for playing police officer Katarina Chapman

In March, she told TV Week: 'Entering into anything new has its own challenges and excitement and beauty and fear.'

The mother-of-two joined the cast of Home and Away in August 2014 - a year before her marriage to Brad broke down.

She has recently been nominated for a Best New Talent award at this year's Logies for playing police officer Katarina Chapman.
Christy Turlington and Amanda Peet attended the Moms & Social Good Conference in New York on Thursday evening.

The pair complimented each other beautifully as they both wore chic black and white outfits.

Christy, 47, wore a pair of flared checkered white and black trousers, which she teamed with a conservative black jumper.

Matching monochrome: Christy Turlington and Amanda Peet attended the Moms & Social Good Conference in New York on Thursday evening

Amanda, 44, wore a pair of cropped flared trousers and a short sleeved white blouse.

The duo put their natural beauty on display as Christy went for a minimal make-up look whilst Amanda went for subtle make-up look.

Both women accessorized with a pair of chic strappy heels.

Showing off her model looks: Christy, 47, wore a pair of flared checkered white and black trousers, which she teamed with a conservative black jumper

Natural beauty: Christy wore very little make-up as she posed in her chic outfit for the event

Moms +SocialGood is a one-day event to bring together community leaders, leading development voices, and popular philanthropists.

Together these individuals can highlight the global issues impacting the health of moms and children around the world.

The speakers at the event include ambassador Samantha Power, actor Amanda Peet, anchor Juju Chang, global health experts, and top journalists.

Nothing else needed: The mother of two didn't need to accessorize her outfit with anything as he bold trousers made enough of a statement

Meanwhile Christy has been shooting scenes for make-up brand Maybelline.

Her history with the cosmetics brand dates back to 1991 where her first contract paid $800K for 12 days' work.

Amanda has also been in the news recently in relation to cosmetics.

The actress recently revealed that she will never get Botox or plastic surgery because she is 'scared' of potential complications involved in the procedures.

Conservative look: Amanda wore a pair of cropped flared trousers and a short sleeved white blouse

It's all natural: The actress recently revealed that she will never get Botox or plastic surgery because she is 'scared' of potential complications involved in the procedures

The actress did she feels she needs to 'look younger and better' because she thinks she is being 'pushed out' of the industry by younger stars.

The 44-year-old mother-of-three, whose short-lived HBO series Togetherness was canceled in March after just two seasons, penned a very candid essay about her fears over aging in Hollywood for Lenny.

She confessed she would go to desperate lengths in order to maintain her appearance - while insisting she could never undergo Botox or any kind of plastic surgery.
Asher Keddie was seen having a cigarette break with her Offspring co-star Richard Davies between filming scenes for the new season.

The actress, who plays Dr Nina Proudman in the Logie award-winning drama, was seen puffing away on the cigarette with her on-screen brother on the first day of filming last week.

With her blonde hair tied back into a high bun, the 41-year-old was seen chatting to the younger actor during a break on set in Melbourne.

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Unhealthy habit: Asher Keddie was seen having a cigarette break with her Offspring co-star Richard Davies between filming scenes for the new season

She was later seen laughing and joking with her co-star Kat Stewart - who brought her five-week-old tot Georgia, nicknamed Gigi, along to the shoot last Wednesday.

Asher has also previously revealed that she would be bringing her one-year-old baby boy Valentino on set when the show's sixth season resumes filming.

But there was no sign of the youngster on last Wednesday.

TV star: The blonde actress plays Dr Nina Proudman in the Logie award-winning drama

Quick break: Asher was seen puffing away on the cigarette with her on-screen brother on the first day of filming last week

She welcomed her son with her husband Vincent Fantauzzo in March last year and she is also a step-mother to artist Vincent's son Luca from a previous relationship.

The TV star was seen on set wearing a black and red printed see-through top which revealed a hint of the black camisole she wore underneath.

She paired this with high-waisted white trousers and a large grey handbag.

Asher has previously been spotted smoking a cigarette with her husband in a local park in Perth four months after giving birth.

First day: She was later seen laughing and joking with her co-star Kat Stewart

Doting mother: Asher welcomed her son with her husband Vincent Fantauzzo in March last year and she is also a step-mother to artist Vincent's son Luca from a previous relationship

Welcome back: Asher was seen on set wearing a black and red printed see-through top which revealed a hint of the black camisole she wore underneath

The producers of the Channel Ten show shared the first photo of the main Offspring cast on set last Saturday.

It revealed that fan favourites Asher, Kat, Deborah Mailman and Richard Davies would all be returning.

Kat, who plays the vivacious Billie Proudman in the comedy drama, was seen cuddling her newborn daughter on set last Wednesday.

Cutting a relaxed and content figure, the actress emerged from her trailer in a blue dressing gown as she carefully cradled her little girl close to her chest.

Co-stars: They have both previously spoken about how they are planning to bring their children on set

Blonde beauty: The star is known for playing Nina Proudman on Channel Ten's Offspring

Doting mother: Asher has also previously revealed that she would be bringing her one-year-old baby boy Valentino on set when the show's sixth season resumes filming

She was also joined on set by Deborah Mailman.

TJ Power, famed for his role in Eat Pray Love, has been announced as a new addition to the show alongside Australian actor Dan Wyllie.

'New faces and familiar faves, we're excited to have begun filming for our new season... And we're even more excited to bring it to your screens,' producers said.

'Joining us this season for the first time are Dan Wyllie and TJ Power. See you soon,' it concluded.

Bring your baby to work day! Kat Stewart was recently pictured on set of the new series of Offspring with her five-week-old daughter Gigi
Tamara Ecclestone has been under fire from critics who attacked her for supposedly allowing her two-year-old daughter Sophia to get sunburned.

But after firing back at the 'busy bodies' who accused her of not protecting her toddler's skin, the defiant F1 heiress hit the beach in the Bahamas to work on her own tan.

The brunette beauty, 31, showed off her fabulous figure in an aquamarine bikini as she enjoyed a day on the warm sands of the Caribbean.

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Beach babes: Formula 1 heiress Tamara Ecclestone and her daughter Sophia spend the day on the beach in the Bahamas on Thursday

Toned: The brunette beauty, 31, showed off her fabulous figure in an aquamarine bikini, while her little girl wore a waterproof nappy

The mother-of-one went for a natural look in a pair of mirrored sunglasses and her hair in plaits as she larked around on the beach with her little girl.

Young Sophia, nicknamed Fifi, complemented her mother in her waterproof nappy, which happened to be the same colour as Tamara's bikini.

Meanwhile, later that day, Tamara's husband Jay Rutland joined them for a family stroll down the beach.

Hitting back: Tamara's family day at the beach came after she fired back at critics of her daughter's tan

Plait's a good look: The mother-of-one went for a natural look in a pair of mirrored sunglasses and her hair in braids

Tamara had switched her bikini for a multi-coloured flowing maxi dress, while Sophia looked adorable in a white sundresss.

Their day at the beach came after Tamara and Jay shared a number of cute images of the tot on holiday, some Instagram followers suggested the parents should keep an eye on Sophia's skin, prompting an angry outburst from the doting mother.

Both Tamara and Jay have been happily uploading snaps to their Instagram accounts this week as they enjoy some family time in their favourite holiday spot.

Family time: Later on Thursday afternoon, Tamara wore an eye-catching maxi dress for a stroll along the beach with Sophia and husband Jay Rutland

Keeping her on her toes: Tamara chases her little girl down the beach as she makes a break for it

Come here you: Tamara's husband Jay chats to his daughter

But a couple of snaps of Sophia prompted criticism over her holiday glow.

'She's sunburnt :(' one of Jay's followers wrote under a pic of the little girl playing in the water, while another added: 'Get some factor 50 on her!'

'Should a baby really be tanned though,' added another follower of Tamara's. But some fans pointed out that the parents had clearly used an Instagram filter on some of their snaps.

You little monkey: The former City trader clearly dotes on his little girl

Hitting back: Their evening stroll on the beach comes after Tamara hit back at critics accusing her of not protecting her daughter's skin in the sun

The light of her life: The F1 heiress has been inseparable from her daughter since her birth

Tamara shared another pic of her little girl on Thursday, and underneath took the time to tell her side of the story.

'For all you busy bodies commenting on Sophia's tan she is not burnt in the slightest has been wearing factor 70 and kept out of the mid day sun,' the mum wrote.

'She is a lucky girl that tans quickly none the less I am fully aware of the dangers of the sun and she has never burnt. What can I say @jayrutland is partial to a filter calm your boners people.'

'She's a lucky girl that tans quickly': Tamara insisted she put SPF70 on her daughter's skin

Loved up: The couple has been married for nearly three years

Colourful: The personality certainly stood out in her flamboyant maxi dress

The holiday is Tamara and Sophia's sixth vacation this year, having last travelled two weeks ago to Los Angeles, where her sister Petra Stunt lives with husband James and their three chlidren.

Tamara visited Switzerland - where her father Bernie lives - in March and February, while she also flew to Dubai in January and February.

The family also spent Christmas in Gstaad with Bernie, 85, and his new wife Fabiana Flosi. 38,

Hitting back: Tamara shared another pic of her little girl on Thursday, and underneath took the time to tell her side of the story, explaining she and Jay used filters on some of their snaps

Water baby: Tamara posted this cute shot of Sophia at the Atlantis in the Bahamas as she hit back at critics

Making memories: The family have enjoyed some amazing experiences during their break

Cuddle: Tamara carries her daughter as they enjoy family time on the beautiful beach in the Bahamas
She is always fond of a good night out with friends.

So it was no surprise that Kate Moss was one of the famous name that made their way to London's Chiltern Firehouse to help Poppy Delevingne celebrate her 30th birthday on Thursday evening.

The supermodel was spotted making her way out celebrity hotspot in a personalised jacket as she made her way to her waiting car.

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Fun night? Kate Moss was one of the famous name that made their way to London's Chiltern Firehouse to help Poppy Delevingne celebrate her 30th birthday on Thursday evening

The 42-year-old appeared to be somewhat bleary-eyed following the night of festivities which saw her put on a casual sartorial display.

Kate sported a black top and jeans underneath a leopard print shirt, while she added an extra layer to the look with her personalised jacket with read 'LA MOSS'.

She completed her look with black boots and a large handbag, while she opted for minimal make-up and wore her hair in natural waves.

Heading home: The supermodel was spotted making her way out celebrity hotspot in a personalised jacket as she made her way to her waiting car

Classic Kate: The 42-year-old appeared to be somewhat bleary-eyed following the night of festivities which saw her put on a casual sartorial display

Model style: Kate sported a black top and jeans underneath a leopard print shirt, while she added an extra layer to the look with her personalised jacket with read 'LA MOSS'

Hop in: The blonde supermodel was helped into her taxi as she came to the end of her night

Also pictured at the eatery was Poppy's model sister Cara Delevingne who kept things casual in a grey top, dark grey jogging bottoms and a camouflage jacket.

Who's that girl? She wore a stamp above her pocket that said 'LA Moss' just in case anyone forgot who she was

Her parents Pandora and Charles Delevingne were also seen heading into the location sporting eye-catching ensembles.

While actress Sadie Frost opted for an all-black look as she made her way out of the establishment walking arm-in-arm with British designer Matthew Williamson.

Model Eva Herzigova was also seen at Chiltern.

Fashion favourite Kate had started the week by snubbing one of the industry's most important dates in the diary.

Kate was noticeably absent from the Met Gala - or the Costume Institute Gala - and instead chose to head out for a low-key dinner in London with her boyfriend Nikolai Von Bismarck.

The blonde has not been in attendance since 2009, but the annual Vogue-hosted event drew in the likes of Sienna Miller, Kendall Jenner, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley and Beyonce, this year.

Cool kid: Also pictured at the eatery was Poppy's model sister Cara Delevingne who kept things casual in a grey top, dark grey jogging bottoms and a camouflage jacket

Fashionable family: Her parents Pandora and Charles Delevingne were also seen heading into the location sporting eye-catching ensembles

Stylish pals: While actress Sadie Frost opted for an all-black look as she made her way out of the establishment walking arm-in-arm with British designer Matthew Williamson

Wrapped up: Model Eva Herzigova was also seen at Chiltern Firehouse sporting a camel coat and leather trousers

In good company: Rocker Noel Gallagher was also in attendance on the night

Putting her feet up: Jo Wood couldn't wait to get comfortable as she was seen taking her shoes off in her taxi

Cute couple: Noel Gallagher and Sara MacDonald were among the celebrity guests that night

Kate seemed to make a further departure from her fashion roots last month, when she ditched the modelling agency that scouted her 28 years ago.

The Croydon-born stunner was discovered at the age of 14 by Storm Model Management's founder Sarah Doukas.

She's favoured a more low-key lifestyle since her separation from Jamie Hince, which she's still yet to confirm.

Retro: Sienna Miller cut a retro figure in a leopard print coat and tights

Cat eye flicks: She was particularly fashion-forward in the beauty department

Arriving alone: The fashionista attended the event by herself, but would be joining an A-list crowd

Always effortless: Stella and Mary McCartney paired up for their arrival

Always a happy soul: Noel escorted his glamorous companion into the event

Dressed up: Sara seemed to have followed a theme for the event on Thursday

Another Arabian Night: Poppy's father Charles was dressed to impress in gold
They've been putting on a united front these last few months in wake of the controversies that had plagued their personal life.

But it seemed it was difficult to wipe the smile of Beau Ryan and Kara Orrell's face as they attended radio hosts Hamish and Andy's annual Logies Spit Roast in Sydney on Friday.

The NRL Footy Show host, 30, placed his hand lovingly on his wife's bottom as they posed for photographers in a cute display of affection.

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Putting their past behind them? NRL Footy Show host Beau Ryan placed his hand on his wife Kara Orrell's bottom as they posed at Hamish And Andy's Logies Spitroast bash in Sydney on Friday

The father-of-one cut a casual figure for the outing, dressed in a simple burgundy T-shirt and black skinny jeans.

He opted for black thongs as footwear and styled his hair in his signature quiff.

Meanwhile Kara dressed up a little more in a pair of black skinny jeans and an over-sized white blouse with short sleeves.

Colleagues: Beau also posed with his co-host Erin Molan who showed off her slim pins in a pair of blue jeans

Pants Off Friday! Later the popular presenter took a snap with the party's host, while they posed without their pants in a weekly ritual on the show known as Pants Off Friday

She pumped up her height with a pair of simple pointed-toe pumps and added a pop of colour to her otherwise monochrome look with some red lipstick.

Beau also posed for photos with his co-host Erin Molan who showed off her trim pins in a pair of slashed blue jeans and a floral blouse with long sleeves.

Speaking with Daily Mail Australia at the event, Erin, who will make her appearance at the Logies in Melbourne on Sunday, revealed she felt a little awkward on red carpets.

'I always feel really silly when I pose with my hands on my hips,' she said.

'It's not my world but it's fun to do it every now and then.'

Controversial: In September, Beau was rumoured to have had an affair with former High-5 member Laurent Brant

Later that afternoon, Beau shared a happy snap with Erin, together with the hosts of the bash Andy Lee and Hamish Blake, who posed without their pants in a weekly ritual on the show, known as Pants Off Friday.

In the caption Beau wrote: 'Today Hamish and Andy just took their pants off. No warning. Nothing. Just straight off. Lucky they are big guys. Very tall long guys. That is all.'

In September last year, Beau and Kara's relationship was plagued with rumours of an affair that he allegedly had with former High-5 member Lauren Brant.

The former Cronulla Sharks and West Tigers player never officially confirmed the affair, but he made an emotional apology on the Footy Show after taking three weeks off to sort out the drama.
She's been nominated for Best New Talent at the 58th Logie Awards on Sunday.

So its little wonder Pia Miller could barely contain her excitement when she recently paid renowned designer Steven Khalils Sydney bridal store a visit three days before the star-studded event.

In a picture posted to Instagram on Friday, the model turned soap star let her hair down as she posed in a stunning white gown ahead of the weekend's festivities.

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Nice dress: Home And Away star Pia Miller tries on a wedding dress ahead of the 58th annual Logie Awards as makes a visit to Sydney bridal shop On Thursday

The haute couture dress featured intricate red and gold beading, along with a plunging neckline which revealed her cleavage to her 422,000 social media followers.

Hand-stitched floral embroidery also featured along the bottom of the fancy frock, which billowed outward.

The Australian beauty - who will flaunt her gym-honed figure down the red carpet at Australia's night of night's - looked nothing short of glamorous in the stunning dress as she snapped a selfie in the mirror.

Car selfie: The Australian actress showed off her natural beauty as posed in a car before an outing

Beach babe: Pia is known to flaunt her toned physique while filming takes for Home And Away

She later captioned the photo: 'When Logies fittings turn into a princess party @steven_khalil you are magic.'

She also added the hashtag 'dress ups' to the post.

As soon as the post went up, Pia's fans were quick to make comment.

In fact more than 5,431 of her dedicated social media followers either liked or left a remark about the bridal-inspired gown.

Present time: The beauty was pictured opening a present recently

Perfect poser: The beauty flaunted her gym-honed figure in daring swimwear

One follower wrote: 'she's so gorgeous I'm crying [sic].'

Another added: 'So pretty.'

Although the dress is more suited to a wedding or an all-white party, it is not yet known what she will wear on the awards night.

Celebrated fashion designer Khalil - who was pictured behind the beauty - is hugely popular among the stars and has dressed many big names, amongst them Jesinta Campbell, Delta Goodrem and Nikki Phillips - who married husband Dane Rumble in one of his stunning bridal gowns.

Leading role: The actress plays Katarina Chapman on the long-running Australian soap. She is pictured in her police uniform for an upcoming scene

Weeks earlier, the mother-of-two took to social media to gush about her award nomination.

Posting a head shot of herself alongside category nominees, including Joel Jackson, Dan Relly, Benson Jack Anthony and Adam Dovile, the beauty thanked everyone who taken the time and the effort to nominate her.

Thanks for the love Instafam- I'm super stoked to be nominated alongside these legends so thrilled to see #StevePeacocke, @msbonniqua &#HomeAndAway nominated again#Logies20,' she captioned the post.

This is Pia's first ever Logie nomination.
She hit the headlines last week for all the wrong reasons.

But Sheridan Smith seems to have put the drama behind her as she embraced fellow actress Tamsin Greig after leaving the Savoy Theatre in London on Thursday night.

The 34-year-old looked thrilled to see her former co-star from BBC comedy drama Love Soup, who had watched her action in Funny Girl.

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Beaming: Sheridan Smith seems to have put her off-stage drama behind her as she embraced her fellow actress Tamsin Greig as she left the Savoy Theatre in London on Thursday night

The actress - who plays Fanny Brice in the West End show based on the life of the Broadway star - appeared to be in high spirits as she exited the theatre and spoke to fans.

But the former Gavin and Stacey actress, seemed happiest to see Tamsin and the former Love Sou co-stars shared a warm hug.

Sheridan was channelling a stylish, but pared back ensemble of a chic white shirt, jeans and brown boots teamed with a dark blazer.

She wore her hair pulled back, showing off her silver hoop earrings.

Embrace: The former Gavin and Stacey actress, who was dressed casually, seemed happiest to see Tamsin Greig - the pair starred together in Love Soup, which hit screens in 2005

Relief? It seems the Funny Girl production is now running smoothly following last week's cancellation of one evening performance

Tamsin - recently in Episodes with Matt LeBlanc - was also dressed down in a floral patterned blouse, brown chinos, and turquoise plimsolls paired with a beige military style jacket.

She finished her polished look with a black leather bag and a Daunt Books tote.

Sheridan smiled for fans and was happy to stop and sign autographs outside the theatre before heading off with Tamsin.

One four-legged friend who couldn't join in the fun was Smith's French Bulldog, who was spotted waiting for its mistress, sitting attentively in the front seat of a taxi.

The Funny Girl production now appears to be running smoothly, following last week's cancellation of an evening performance.

All alone: One four-legged friend who couldn't join in the fun was Smith's French Bulldog - the cute dog was spotting waiting for its mistress, sitting attentively in the front seat of a taxi

Although the theatre blamed technical issues, some audience members claimed Smith 'appeared drunk on stage'.

A production source told the Mail there had been 'a lot of fear and terrible upset. The cast have been told to keep their mouths shut and support Sheridan'.

Audience member Abigail Richter told one newspaper: It was an unbelievable disaster. Sheridan was all over the place. At one point, she was standing centre stage and her leg went from underneath her.

She started in a Bronx accent but slipped into Irish. Then there was a dance scene where at one point she grabbed the dancers groins. She walked off and they literally just dropped the curtains.

Adoration: Smith smiled for fans and was happy to stop and sign autographs outside the theatre before heading off with Greig

Despite reports, the theatre and Sheridan have issued vehement denials, with the actress's spokesperson saying: 'I have spoken to my client and this is categorically not true.'

It appears this is all behind the actress, who has won rave reviews for her most recent performances.

On Wednesday night Star Wars actor Mark Hamill, who is currently in the UK filming Star Wars: Episode VIII was in the audience and made clear his appreciation of the show.

Posting a photo montage on his Twitter, he wrote: 'Another night of fantastic London theatre @FunnyGirl_UK Spectacular Sheridan Smith & ENTIRE company crushed it! #WOW.'

Sheridan has been in the role since December when the production originally opened in the smaller Menier Chocolate Factory in Borough, before moving to the West End last month.
They're proud parents to their newborn baby son.

And Cat Deeley and Patrick Kielty looked utterly smitten as they took their bundle of joy out on a low-key stroll around Beverly Hills on Thursday afternoon.

Cat, 39 - who relocated from the UK to Los Angeles back in 2006 - only had eyes for her beautiful baby boy as the family wandered through the streets, smiling contentedly as the tot sat peacefully in his pram.

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Three is the magic number: Cat Deeley and Patrick Kielty looked utterly smitten as they took their bundle of joy out on a low-key stroll around Beverly Hills on Thursday afternoon

The So You Think You Can Dance host, who welcomed her first child with Patrick, 45, back in January, looked utterly radiant for her day out.

Keeping a close eye on her son, Cat looked lovely in a loose-fitting oatmeal sweater, which she teamed with wide-legged tan trousers and a chic panama hat.

The attentive new mother made faces to entertain the tot as the couple waited to cross the road to continue their stroll.

Cat completed her look by going make-up free to showcase her naturally striking looks, and wore her long golden locks lightly tousled around her shoulders.

Both new parents sporting sunglasses, which shielded them from the Californian sun and helpfully hid any evidence of nights interrupted by their new addition.

Simply adorable: Cat, 39 - who relocated from the UK to Los Angeles back in 2006 - only had eyes for her beautiful baby boy as the family wandered through the streets, smiling contentedly as the tot sat peacefully

Patrick, 45, went for a blue ensemble, pairing indigo jeans with a powder blue v-neck cashmere jumper.

The couple have previously revealed they plan to raise their child in Los Angeles, so he can enjoy an active, outdoors lifestyle.

Cat said last year: 'We're going to take the baby back home to visit our families as much as possible but for now we're happy here in LA and are excited to bring up our child with an outdoors lifestyle.'

The couple revealed they were expecting their first child together in September, after three years of marriage.

Cat and Patrick - who tied the knot in a secret ceremony in Rome, Italy, in 2012 - announced they were expecting their first child together via Twitter in September.

Hot mama: The So You Think You Can Dance host, who welcomed her first child with Patrick, 45, back in January, looked utterly radiant for her day out

She gushed: 'Exciting news... Paddy and I are so happy to be expecting our first child in the spring... Lucky us.'

Patrick added: 'Well the cat's truly out of the bag! The news has been released. @catdeeley is pregnant! Congratulations sweetheart x'

The couple were friends for 10 years before they tied the knot and the 44-year-old star recently insisted there was 'always a spark' between them before their relationship became romantic.

The news comes just a month after the Northern Irish presenter joked about the possibility of having children with his wife.

He said: 'I hope any child we might have has Cat's looks and my accent. With our two strong accents, we basically needed subtitles or a UN translator.'

Stylish: Keeping a close eye on her son, Cat looked lovely in a loose-fitting oatmeal sweater, which she teamed with wide-legged tan trousers and a chic panama hat

Discussing the couple's close friendship, Patrick added: 'There was always a little bit of a spark between us but either she was with someone or I was with someone and by the time we were both single she was in America.

'It was always one of those things that never worked out.

Well known for her envy enducing svelte figure, Cat has revealed that breastfeeding played in big part in helping her to regain her pre-baby body.

Cat opened up about motherhood, as she told Closer magazine: 'I'm besotted with the baby and really enjoying motherhood.'

'People keep asking me if I've been hitting the gym, but I haven't!,' said Cat. 'I think breastfeeding is key and it's worked well for me.'

'Add to that running around after a new baby and you don't need to work out.'
Actual Innocence and How It Differs From a Not Guilty Verdict

When a jury or judge reaches a verdict after a trial, they have two choices -- guilty or not guilty. Innocence doesn't really come up too much in the criminal justice system, which may seem strange to some.

Actual innocence is different from being found not guilty after trial. But to understand what actual innocence is, and why a new program focusing on that is important, we have to understand the prosecution process a little bit.

Charged

After police file a report, it is forwarded to prosecutors who decide whether or not there is sufficient evidence to charge a crime. A prosecutor may decline to charge or even file a charge and then decide to dismiss it, or a case can proceed to a plea or trial.

When a prosecutor has proven a case at trial, the defendant is found guilty -- the prosecutor's burden of proof of guilt is beyond a reasonable doubt. When a prosecutor fails to prove a case beyond a reasonable doubt, the accused is found not guilty.

A finding of not guilty can mean that the evidence was insufficient or that it was improperly obtained or that the witnesses were not believable. It does not necessarily mean that the accused is innocent. And it also means that -- even if the person was innocent -- they still had to go through the ordeal of a criminal charge and trial with all the heartache, trouble, and expense that entails. This brings us at last to the actual innocence project.

Innocence

In St. Clair County, Missouri, State Attorney Brendan Kelly started a program two years ago that addresses actual innocence, allowing defendants who are innocent to make that claim and have their charges dismissed after taking a polygraph test.The Actual Innocence Claim Policy and Protocol is the only such program in the country, reports the BBC News, and it addresses a growing concern about prosecutorial over-zealousness and its impact on innocent defendants.

Kelly, the State Attorney, says, "I think it is a nightmare scenario for any prosecutor or any police officer to have investigated and prosecuted and convicted the wrong person. That strikes at our very sense of what our job is all about, which is to seek justice."

Since the policy was implemented two years ago, nine people have had their charges dropped before trial, and reportedly even the US Department of Justice is taking an interest in Kelly's work.

Accused?

If you have been accused of a crime -- and regardless of whether you're guilty or innocent -- don't despair. Criminal defense attorneys all over the country help their clients get cases dismissed every day, even in the many counties without an actual innocence project. Your lawyer will help you resolve the case in the best possible way, so get help.

Consult with counsel. Many criminal defense lawyers consult for free or a minimal fee and will be happy to discuss your case.

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While it may seem like the Kardashians Taking Cuba is all about the high profile adults, Thursday was dedicated to the Kardashian kids.

Kim Kardashian's daughter North West, two, was having the time of her life when the family descended on an amusement park in Havana with Kourtney's eldest children Penelope, three, and Mason, six.

The trio were finally allowed to do something child-centric as yummy mummies Kim, 35, and Kourtney, 37, continued to parade their enviable holiday wardrobes and insisted on extremely glamorous outfits for the park.

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Time of their lives: (From left) North West, Penelope Disick and Mason Disick enjoyed a day dedicated to the youngest of the Kardashian clan on Thursday in Cuba

Now a big sister, North was looking grown up in a leopard print vest and black sandals, even adding a stylish accessory in the form of a black ribbon choker.

Still the youngest of the group, North - whose new brother Saint was not present on the family fun day out - seemed to be having the most fun out of her cousins.

Big kid Kourtney sat on the back of the ride and encouraged her children to throw their arms in the air with reckless abandon as they were swung around on an old fashioned carousel, social media obsessed Kim snapping away at the sidelines.

Family fun: Kourtney was keen to get involved with the amusement thrills and sat behind her two eldest children on one ride

Best friends: BFFs and cousins North and Penelope paraded their mother's outfit choices for the fun day out

Yummy mummys: Kim Kardashian (left) and sister Kourtney Kardashian (right) made it a very glamorous day at the park

In doing so, cute three-year-old Penelope flashed her bare tummy in a cute frilly top and matching skirt that her stylish mother had no doubt picked out for her.

Like his father Scott Disick, Mason wasn't too cool to get stuck in with the youngsters and he too soaked up the thrills of an afternoon catered to the children.

Mason and Penelope's youngest brother Reign, one, was also absent from the day out, but has been pictured on the trip, unlike rarely-seen five-month-old Saint.

Their father, Scott Disick, - with whom mum Kourtney has recently separated - was also noticeably not invited to the Keeping Up With The Kardashians working vacation, as they film season 13.

Not so practical: Though she was keen to get stuck in, Kim looked a little unbalanced in heels on the stones

Having thrills: Kim leaned over to share some of her child's enjoyment and further showing off her sizeable behind

Look, no hands: It looked like the most family fun Kourtney had had in some time

Giving an eyeful: Kim's low-cut dress wasn't exactly a demure choice for the children's playground

Though somewhat inappropriate dressed for the day out, matriarch Kim was keen to get stuck in with her daughter and her young niece and nephew, helping them remove their shoes and have a fun time.

She was wearing denim heeled sandals that made the white gravel hard to navigate and was noticeably avoiding the rides thanks to her bright and busty dress.

Their filming wardrobes - not unlike that of their young children - have been an embarrassment of riches as Kim continues to parade her post-baby weight loss.

Helping hand: She got down almost on her knees in pure white to help North take off her shoes

Hands on: With maternal instincts kicking in, the mum-of-two was even hands on when it came to her niece and nephew

The group - which also includes Khloe Kardashian and Malaika Firth - descended on communist-led Cuba on Tuesday in a fleet of brightly-coloured American cars.

Not a family to go quietly, they have drawn significant crowds wherever they've been this week, racking up attendances at the Havana Club Rum Museum and the Prado promenade.

The fashion-conscious family no doubt caught the Chanel show, lead by Karl Lagerfeld, which also hit Cuba this week to debut the latest inter-seasonal Cruise collection.

Quite an entrance: The famous family descended on the Prado promenade in Havana on Tuesday to officially make their arrival

Getting in on the shot: Kim was naturally documenting every moment of the high profile trip to Cuba

Sitting pretty: Cuba is famous for its large number of classic cars due to a four-decade-long grudge with the United States, which meant sales of foreign cars were banned until 2014

Making a statement: The historic trip comes after U.S. President Barack Obama successfully restored relations between America and the Communist island nation

Stuck to her style: Kim appeared somewhat overdressed for her first engagement, a visit to Havana Club Rum Museum on Wednesday, where she showcased her figure in a skintight white dress with back slit and stiletto heels

Also on the trip: Sister Khloe Kardashian was more demure in a large fedora and jeans as she helped out with the childcare

Working vacation: Kourtney mixed up her wardrobe for the Havana Club Rum Museum on Wednesday (left) and headed out for dinner with Kim and the kids on Thursday night (right)

Family time: Kim, North and Kanye were joined by Kourtney and her two eldest children Mason and Penelope on Thursday, at dinner

Still stylish: Kim was wearing a figure-hugging black dress to dinner on Thursday, making the most of her recent weight loss

Another outfit change: Kim had toured the city in another white dress on Thursday, which featured puffball sleeves
She always looks pristine and stylish as she greets viewers bright and early every morning from the Good Morning Britain sofa.

But on Friday, Kate Garraway was getting in touch with her more practical side, as she kicked off her towering stilettos and ran barefoot along the pavement - revealing the dirty soles of her feet in the process.

Dressed in a bright orange top and white floral skirt split at the thigh, ever game Kate wasted no time loosing her shoes and running as fast as her pencil skirt would allow.

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Barefoot: Kate Garraway was getting in touch with her more practical side, as she kicked off her towering stilettos and ran barefoot along the pavement on Friday

With her honey blonde hair bouncing as she ran, Kate smiled and laughed as she went, not breaking a sweat or spoiling her camera-ready make-up.

Clutching her TV scripts and with her microphone pack precariously clipped onto the waistband of her skirt, she wasted no time heading along the river front.

The veteran breakfast presenter, 49, found herself in a tight spot, when she was due on camera to interview actor Matthew Goode, but had just minutes to make it to the location.

On the run: The TV presenter revealed the dirty soles of her feet as she jogged along the pavement to interview actor Matthew Goode, but had just minutes to make it to the location

No shine here: With her honey blonde hair bouncing as she ran, Kate smiled and laughed as she went, not breaking a sweat or spoiling her camera-ready make-up

Over she goes: Dressed in a bright orange top and white floral skirt split at the thigh, ever game Kate wasted no time loosing her shoes and running as fast as her pencil skirt would allow

Co-presenter Ben Shepard, 41, also had to hot-foot it across London's Southbank to make it in time for the pairs' link, but his more practical flat shoes and trouser combo meant he had no problem sprinting to his mark.

Despite her visibly mucky feet, Kate managed to make it in time, and a consummate professional she was composed and ready to chat to the Downton Abbey star.

It's not the first time Kate has got closer to the dust and dirt of the Southbank than she might have liked, all in the name of her GMB role.

Like a pro: The veteran breakfast presenter, 49, found herself in a tight spot, when she was due on camera to interview the actor

Bouncy Ben: Co-presenter Ben Shepard, 41, also had to hot-foot it across the Southbank to make it in time for the link, but his more practical flat shoes and trouser combo meant he had no problem sprinting to his mark

Hug it out: Kate and Ben greet actor Matthew Goode for his interview on the scenic Southbank, the perfect backdrop to their outside shoot

Made it! Downton Abbey actor Matthew Goode chats about life after Downton, auditioning for Bond and getting drunk with his former co-stars

Earlier this year cheeky Ben Sheppard took an unsuspecting Kate into his arms and pretended to dump her into a vat of muddy water.

Filmed outside the ITV studios for a segment about a new Tough Mums obstacle course, Ben took her completely by surprise as he picked her up and proceeded to carry her over to a tub of the gooey, muddy mess.

Kate was left embarrassed after the impromptu pick-up left her pants and the backs of her legs completely on show to the TV audience at home.

A busy mother-of-two, Kate has been presenting GMB since 2014, before which she hosted Daybreak and the Friday edition of Lorraine.

Multi-tasking: A busy mother-of-two, Kate has been presenting Good Morning Britain since 2014, before which she presented Daybreak and the Friday edition of Lorraine
She's brought plenty of glamour to the panel of The AFL Footy Show since joining in April.

And Rebecca Maddern looked suitably stylish in a floral mini dress as she attended the Crown Resorts Mother's Day Luncheon in Melbourne on Friday.

The 38-year-old blonde dazzled on the purple carpet at the Southbank restaurant Bistro Guillaume for a charity fundraiser in support of The Alannah & Madeline Foundation.

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Yummy mummy! The AFL Footy Show co-host Rebecca Maddern looked suitably stylish in a floral mini dress as she attended the Crown Resorts Mother's Day Luncheon in Melbourne on Friday

Rebecca, who originally hails from Geelong and supports local team the Cats, put on a leggy display in glamourous outfit which finished above the knees.

Wearing her shoulder-length hair loosely, she rounded off her look with a pair of strappy peep-toe red high heels.

Meanwhile, the journalist accessorised simply with a silver watch and sparkly earrings, while opting for a coordinated plum manicure and pedicure.

Glamour: The 38-year-old blonde dazzled on the purple carpet at the Southbank restaurant Bistro Guillaume for a charity fundraiser in support of The Alannah & Madeline Foundation

Mum's the word! Rebecca was joined by her mother Wendy, and the pair celebrated an early Mother's Day together as they will be inter-state on Sunday

She was joined by her mother Wendy, and the pair celebrated an early Mother's Day together as they will be inter-state on Sunday.

Rebecca was also spotted chatting the afternoon away with Fox FM radio personality Fifi Box, who opted for a black ensemble.

The 39-year-old offered a glimpse of cleavage in her figure-hugging dress and also wore a blazer with a pair drop earrings.

Girls lunch: Rebecca was also spotted chatting the afternoon away with Fox FM radio personality Fifi Box (right), who opted for a black ensemble

Now in its 21st year, the annual Mother's Day lunch welcomes a guest list of Melbourne celebrities and their mothers, sons and daughters to raise money for a good cause.

The Alannah & Madeline Foundation is a national Australian charity launched on in April 1997 with the mission keep children safe from violence.

Meanwhile, Rebecca has enjoyed mixed ratings since her high-profile appointment to The AFL Footy Show, after Garry Lyon took a leave of absence.

Psst! The 39-year-old Fifi offered a glimpse of cleavage in her figure-hugging dress and also opted for a blazer and a pair drop earrings

For her debut as the first female co-host last month, the show was a hit with audiences, as more than 580,000 viewers tuned in.

But her second appearance as presenter on April 14 pulled in just 427,000 for Channel Nine - a loss of more than 25 per cent of the audience.

The AFL Footy Show airs Thursday nights at 8.30pm on Channel Nine.
Almost a week has passed since she returned from her most recent getaway to Dubai.

But Billie Faiers' envy-inducing holiday shots don't seem as though they're going to stop anytime soon as she shared yet another sultry snap to Instagram on Friday.

The 26-year-old TOWIE star was bound to leave many of her 1.1 million Instagram followers with serious body envy as she showcased her generous bust and tiny waist in a bright orange bikini.

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Tangerine dream! Billie Faiers' envy-inducing holiday shots don't seem as though they're going to stop anytime soon as she shared yet another sultry snap to Instagram on Friday

The vibrant two-piece comprised of halter-neck straps, emblazoned with gold metal detailing across the shoulders, and a deeply plunging neckline that teased her ample assets.

The mother-of-one places her hand on her slim hip and subtly leans her body to one side as she poses against a picturesque pool backdrop.

Her hair is tied into an easy top knot, held into place with a coordinating tangerine band, while her face appears to be sporting minimal product beneath her glamorous gold-rim sunglasses.

'Missing the Dubai sunshine  ... Wearing my @bahimibeachwear bikini,' she captioned the snap.

What a pro: She also shared a glorious looking photo of herself mastering the art of paddle-boarding in a two-piece

Another of her holidays pictures depicted the blonde beauty standing atop a paddleboarding as she indulged in the relaxing water-sport, her body once again clad in another stylish two-piece.

On Wednesday, the sister of Samantha Faiers flaunted her tiny waist once more, this time in a very daring swimsuit.

Letting her followers know where they can get the look, she captioned the image with the words: 'This khaki swimsuit from my collection @inthestyleuk. 20% off ALL swimwear tonight x.'

Wow thing: Billie also showcased her incredible figure in a daring cut-out khaki swimsuit on Instagram on Wednesday, another of her latest fashion offerings

Billie has been regularly posting similar snaps which promote her latest fashion offerings on social media with this particular number running the risk of giving the wearer some serious tan lines.

With cut-outs at the navel, sides and tie-details and a daring neckline, no doubt Billie will be turning heads while enjoying her girls' holiday in Dubai.

With her blonde locks styled in loose curls which fell down past her shoulders, she added a pop of colour to her look with a slick of coral lipstick.

See more on TOWIE stars as Billie Faiers wears a sexy swimsuit in her Instagram snap

Stunning: She also showed off her favourite look from the collection, modelling a white lace two-piece which showed off a hint of her tummy

Showing off her golden skin, she accessorized with an oversized cuff which added a further hint of glamour.

On Tuesday, Billie flaunted her favourite pieces from her fashion collection, which was a lace bandeau top in white, with matching semi-sheer trousers.

She wrote: 'Little sneak peek from my @inthestyleUK shoot in Dubai! This lace outfit is one of my favourites! coming soon!'

A cute floral kimono playsuit showed off her golden legs as she took a multitude of selfies behind the scenes of her shoot.

While Billie took her break without her daughter Nelly, she has recently been vying for a pay rise for the tot as she demands TOWIE bosses pay her the same as the other cast members.

Billie insisted she deserves the bump in her wage as fans 'go mad' when she appears on the ITVBe show.

She told Heat magazine she is adamant Nelly should be given a similar wage to her older castmates.

'She does get paid!' she said. 'She's got her own bank account, so every time she films she gets some money put into it, which means she'll have savings when she's older.

'I told producers, "She definitely deserves it, she's a cast member!"'
She's mother to her adorable daughter Beatrix 'Trixie' Belle Box.

But Fifi Box got to celebrate early when she attended the Crown Mother's Day Luncheon on Friday.

The 39-year-old looked radiant at the Melbourne event wearing a sleek black and beige ensemble consisting of a fitted black mini-skirt and asymmetrical top.

Mum's day out: Fifi Box sported a sleek look as she celebrated Mother's Day early in Melbourne on Friday at the annual Crown Mother's Day Luncheon, raising money for the Alannah & Madeline Foundation

Fifi completed her luncheon look with a black waterfall blazer, tights and heels.

Adding a bit of contrast with her accessories, the mother-of-one held tight to a tan leather handbag.

While the radio personality added delicate jewellery, with a thin necklace and larger black earrings for the day-time event.

Fifi wore her signature blonde tresses out in loose curls while sporting fresh make-up with bronzed cheeks, a nude lip and lashings of mascara that complimented her dramatic eyeliner.

Sleek and sexy: The 39-year-old looked radiant at the Melbourne event wearing a sleek black and beige ensemble consisting of a fitted black mini-skirt and asymmetrical top

Now in it's 21st year, the annual Mother's Day Luncheon aims to raise awareness for the Alannah & Madeline Foundation.

Looking to be enjoying herself, Fifi chatted with AFL Footy Show host Rebecca Maddern, who opted for a floral mini-dress.

Rebecca, who originally hails from Geelong, put on a leggy display in a glamorous outfit that finished above the knees.

Whispers: Rebecca Maddern, the AFL Footy Show host who also attended the event put a hand over her mouth as she appeared to whispered to Fifi at the table during the course of the afternoon

Wearing her shoulder-length hair loosely, she rounded off her look with a pair of strappy peep toe red high heels.

Meanwhile, the journalist accessorised simply with a silver watch and sparkly earrings and appeared to share secrets with Fifi as they appeared to whisper at the table during the charity event.

Australians will celebrate their mothers on Sunday May 8.

Having a laugh: While Fifi looked to be having a hearty chuckle during the event, Rebecca looked a little unimpressed, although very stylish in a floral mini-dress

No doubt the television personality will be receiving loads of attention and gifts over the weekend from her three-year-old daughter Trixie.

Fifi regularly shares snaps of the gorgeous tot on social media and most recently confirmed the long-held suspicion that former Ironman Grant Kenny is the father of her child.

Taking to Instagram, Fifi shared a sweet picture of the daddy-daughter duo enjoying themselves on a bouncing castle at Trixie's third birthday party last month.

Daddy-daughter duo: Fifi is already mother to three-year-old Trixie and more recently confirmed the long-held suspicion that former Ironman Grant Kenny was her father

Mummy's girl: In the spirit of Mother's Day, Fifi will also no doubt celebrate her own mother, Pearl Box (L), with whom she shares a close relationship with

This is the first time Fifi has revealed the identity of Trixie's father, although it was widely reported to be the elite athlete.

In the spirit of Mother's Day, Fifi will also no doubt celebrate her own mother, Pearl Box, with whom she shares a close relationship with.
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They've remained on friendly terms since they announced their split last June after 10 years of marriage.

However, estranged spouses Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner appear to look closer than ever as they were spotted on a family holiday in Paris.

One eyewitness told the MailOnline the couple were spotted kissing in the hotel bar, no doubt prompting speculation they may be reconciling.

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Looking friendly: Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner take their children to the Amorino ice cream parlour in Paris on Thursday afternoon

Daddy's girl: The actor carried his youngest daughter Seraphina on his shoulders as she tucked into an ice cream.

The actor is filming his next movie Justice League in London, so Jennifer and their three children have been visiting him in the UK and using the opportunity to explore Europe as a whole.

The Afflecks presumably jumped on the Eurostar cross-channel train over to the the French capital and have wasted no time in checking out the sights.

On Thursday, Jennifer looked beaming as she and her estranged husband took Violet, 10; Seraphina, seven; and Samuel, four; to the Amorino ice cream parlour.

The former couple were accompanied by their children's nanny, who joined in the friendly conversation while they waited for their iced treats.

Family time: The exes are enjoying a break in Paris with their three children

Sweet treat: Ben made sure he got in on some of the ice cream action as they visited Paris' famous ice cream parlour

Just regular tourists: Samuel sat on the floor while the family patiently waited in the queue for the ice cream

Following the snack, they retreated to their luxury hotel, where one onlooker claimed to see them apparently kissing in the courtyard bar.

MailOnline has contacted reps for Ben and Jennifer regarding the alleged kiss.

A source close to the family told People.com they were loving being together as a fivesome: 'They are enjoying showing the kids London.'

Drawing a crowd: The famous actors happily chatted to fellow customers in the queue, who were no doubt thrilled to see the Hollywood stars

Content: The brunette beauty looked glowing with happiness during the visit

Doting dad: The 43-year-old carried his son Samuel as they mingled with fellow customers

Smart: The mother-of-three looked smart in black skinny jeans, top and blazer for her relaxing afternoon

Sight-seeing: The family have been making most of their time in Europe, checking out sights in Paris and London

Earlier this week, they were spotted visiting the Harry Potter studio tour at Warner Bros. Studios Leavesden in Hertfordshire - not far from where Ben is based while shooting the superhero movie, which is due for released in November 2017.

On Friday it was confirmed that Ben is stepping up his duties on Justice League: Part One, becoming Executive Producer on top of his acting roll as Batman/Bruce Wayne.

Ben and Jennifer shocked fans when they revealed they were separating in June 2015, but have continued to spend lots of time together as a family for the sake of their children.

This tastes gooood: It looked like the actress was certainly enjoying her sweet treat

Earlier this week, they were spotted visiting the Harry Potter studio tour at Warner Bros. Studios Leavesden in Hertfordshire

Smile for the cameras: Jennifer captured her adorable son Samuel tucking into an ice cream on her cameraphone

That's our boy: Jennifer shows her candid holiday photo to her estranged husband Ben

In an interview with Vanity Fair magazine in February, Jennifer spoke openly about their split: 'I didn't marry the big fat movie star; I married him. And I would go back and remake that decision. I ran down the beach to him, and I would again. You can't have these three babies and so much of what we had. He's the love of my life.

'He's the most brilliant person in any room, the most charismatic, the most generous. He's just a complicated guy. I always say, "When his sun shines on you, you feel it." But when the sun is shining elsewhere, it's cold. He can cast quite a shadow

However, she denied widespread reports of Ben's alleged affair with their children's nanny Christine Ouzounian: 'We had been separated for months before I ever heard about the nanny.

'She had nothing to do with our decision to divorce. She was not a part of the equation. Bad judgment? Yes.'

Mmmmm: Seraphina and Samuel certainly looked like they were enjoying their ice cream

Let's hope it doesn't melt! Seraphina enjoys her ice cream dangerously close to her father's hair

What a cutie: Ben carries his son Samuel, who was understandably getting tired from all the walking in the French capital

More than just exes? An eyewitness claimed the pair were spotted kissing in the courtyard bar of their Paris hotel

'He's the love of my life': Jennifer has spoken fondly of her estranged husband in an interview since their split

Parklife: The former Alias actress took her daughters to a nearby park for a runaround

Close family: Seraphina chases her big sister Violet in the park as their mother chats away on her mobile phone

His little star: Four-year-old Samuel looked cute in a blue T-shirt and sunglasses

When in Paris: The parlour drew a big crowd of Parisiens and tourists

Taking a stroll: Jennifer was in high spirits as she walked through the romantic French capital

Happy memories: The actress spent time capturing precious memories of her children with her phone

Family time: While Jennifer was looking high in spirits, her estranged husband was less than jovial

Doting dad: Ben perched one of his girls on his shoulders to give her a good view of the city

Keeping a low profile: Jennifer played the trip cool in a pair of dark shades and minimal makeup

Bonding time: The mother shared a tender moment with her youngest child as they enjoyed the French sunshine
The 2016 TV Week Logie Awards on Sunday night will celebrate the best of Australian TV.

But there will also be plenty of frocks and shocks as the country's hottest starlets go to scandalous lengths to dazzle on the red carpet.

After Jesinta Campbell confessed recently to ditching her knickers at the Logies once in a bid to avoid her underwear line showing in photographs, Sam Frost, Delta Goodrem and Erin Molan have given their views on 'going commando' at the event.

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'I've actually got some big high Spanx': The Bachelorette star Sam Frost - pictured here at the 2015 Logie Awards - told Daily Mail Australia she won't be following Jesinta Campbell's lead by 'going commando'

Last month, Jesinta told Today that she took off her underwear and stuffed them in her handbag because they were visible below her 'very tightly fitted' Burberry dress at the 2012 awards.

But don't expect it to be undie-geddon on the Logies red carpet this year, with The Bachelorette's Sam Frost revealing she'll be doing the exact opposite.

Speaking to Daily Mail Australia at Hamish & Andy's annual Logies Spit Roast party in Sydney on Friday, Sam said with a laugh: 'I'm going to be like Bridget Jones!'

Lovebirds: The Bachelorette star Sam Frost - pictured with partner Sasha Mielczarek at the pre-Logies Spit Roast party hosted by DJs Hamish and Andy in Sydney on Friday - confirmed she will be wearing both underwear and shapewear below her outfit

'All I'm going to say is I've actually got some big high Spanx,' the blonde beauty added.

'I'm not joking, so it's not going to be as sexy as that. But all I'll say is at least I'll be able to have a good time comfortably.'

Her partner Sasha Mielczarek also spoke about Sam's dress, revealing: 'It's beautiful, she's going to look fantastic.'

'For me, comfort is such a big thing': NRL Footy Show co-host Erin Molan, pictured at the Logies last year, told Daily Mail Australia she will 'definitely be wearing' knickers underneath her dress

Meanwhile, NRL Footy Show co-host Erin told Daily Mail Australia she will 'definitely be wearing' knickers underneath her dress.

'For me, comfort is such a big thing,' the 33-year-old said at the pre-Logies party.

'You still want to look lovely but you're going to be in the dress for a long time,' Erin explained before revealing that she will be wearing a red gown by a local designer.

Finally, Delta Goodrem brushed off any suggestion she would be 'going commando' underneath her Logies ensemble.

Glamour: Delta Goodrem, pictured at last year's ceremony, brushed off any suggestion she would be 'going commando' underneath her Logies ensemble, saying simply of Jesinta's fashion faux pas: 'Oh, goodness me!'

The 31-year-old, who will take the stage to sing her new track Dear Life on Sunday, was shocked when told about Jesinta's fashion faux pas, simply saying: 'Oh, goodness me!'

Delta also hinted that she would be swapping outfits before her musical performance, adding: 'I've got a couple of outfits I've got to think about... and I'm looking forward to rocking it.'

The candid talk of lingerie plans for the Logies follows 24-year-old Jesinta's bold confession last month.

The model detailed the last minute decision to whip off her underwear and stuff them into her clutch while talking about red carpet do's and don't's on The Today Show.

'I put them in my clutch!' Jesinta Campbell admitted to a Logies faux pas, telling the Today Show last month she went commando at her first awards in 2012 and stuffed her underwear in her clutch

When handing out fashion advice, the fiance of Sydney Swan Lance 'Buddy' Franklin added: 'You have to be very, very careful with what undergarments you wear.'

Jesinta then recalled a story about the time she walked the red carpet without any underwear on.

'I have a story from my very first Logies: I wore this beautiful Burberry dress, it was very tightly fitted, and as I was going onto the red carpet I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror,' she began.

Busty display: The 24-year-old model confessed that she wasn't wearing any underwear below this daring outfit at the 2012 Logie Awards, held at Melbourne's Crown Palladium

Frank discussion: Jesinta had joined co-hosts Karl Stefanovic, Lisa Wilkinson, Sylvia Jeffreys and Richard Wilkins for panel about red carpet do's and don't's

'I took them off  I went commando  and put them in my clutch. One of the red carpet reporters was doing a segment called "What's in your clutch?"

'I said to her, I actually can't open my clutch because my undies are in there,' she blurted out.

Left slightly red-faced from her embarrassing blunder, co-host Lisa added: 'You are a truth fountain, Jesinta Campbell.'
She was welcomed into the world on April 5 and Cheyenne Tozzi appears to be taking to her role as aunty like a natural.

The 27-year-old model and actress shared a snap to her Instagram on Friday night, showing her cradling her sister Tahyna's one-month-old daughter lovingly.

She flashed an exaggerated pout as she stared directly down the lens of the camera, covering the child's face with her right hand.

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Aunty Cheyenne! ANTM judge Tozzi cradled her niece Echo in a loving snap shared to Instagram on Friday night

'Just holding my baby,' the brunette beauty wrote in the caption of the snap.

Tahyna took to Instagram last month to announce the happy news of the arrival of her first child to her friends and fans.

The 29-year-old also revealed that she and her husband of two years Tristan had chosen a very unique name for their new bub, calling her Echo Isolde.

Love: Cheyenne posted an intimate snap of her sibling and her husband in hospital

'I love you and baby too': Cheyenne unofficially announced her sister Tahnya's pregnancy in a post on Instagram back in February

'Our baby girl Echo Isolde Macmanus was born 05/04/2016 healthy and happy,' she wrote alongside a snap of their baby's name, handwritten on a piece of paper.

'Tristan & I are so thankful for everyone's support Xx.'

Tahyna is understood to have given birth in Australia after being based in her hubby's native Ireland.

Meanwhile, her younger sister Cheyenne was the first to congratulate her sibling, posting a very intimate snap of Tristan and Tahyna in hospital.

Congratulations: Cheyenne was the first to congratulate her sibling on the arrival of the infant

The A Team: Cheyenne is back in Australia currently to film the long-awaited tenth series of Australia's Next Top Model

'Welcome baby girl Echo Isolde MacManus @tahynavalentina,' she wrote in a caption alongside it.

Apart from becoming an aunt for the first-time, Cheyenne is working on developing her music career.

Last year, she confirmed to the Daily Mail Australia that she had officially moved to Paris, however she is back in Australia currently to film the long-awaited tenth series of Australia's Next Top Model.
Spencer Matthews spoke candidly about losing his older brother Michael as he made his debut appearance as a 'Loose Man' on Loose Women on Friday.

The Made In Chelsea star, 26, looked glassy-eyed as he spoke about the shocking death of City broker Mike, who was just 22 when he died after reaching base camp of Mount Everest.

The reality star was just 10 in May 1999 when Mike passed away following bad weather in Nepal when he was on his way back down the mountain.

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Difficult past: Spencer Matthews spoke about the death of his brother Matthew 17 years ago as he appeared on Loose Women on Friday

New role: Spencer spoke about his brother as he joined the Loose Women panel as an honorary 'Loose Man'

When the topic on the ITV daytime show turned to losing family members, Spencer shared his own experience of the death of a loved one.

He said: 'When you lose someone, their memory lives on. It's always nice to think about them.

'I was 10, he was 22. He was the youngest to climb Everest.'

Spencer, along with his older brother James - boyfriend of Pippa Middleton - and their parents David and Jane, continue to mark Mike's birthday every year.

Tragedy: Michael Matthews was just 22 and was on his way back down Mount Everest after reaching Base Camp when he died in May 1999

Shocking: Spencer was only 10 years old when his brother Michael died

He explained: 'He lives on in our family. We celebrate his birthday every year.'

The TV personality admitted the memory of Mike has spurred him on during any low moments he has had in the past.

He said: 'Whenever you feel like giving up, you always think of them and it stops you.

'Mike was a very tough person to live up. We try to treat every day like he did. He was very successful.'

Always remembered: Spencer said his family always marked Mike's birthday every year

That's my brother: A photo of Spencer and Michael was projected on the screen behind him as Spencer talked to his fellow panellists

Spencer is in a new phase of his career after quitting Made In Chelsea to focus on other projects

He then addressed times his parents may have been disappointed by him in the past.

Last year, he was axed from I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here! after developing an addiction to steroids before entering the jungle.

He conceded: 'It's not easy for them sometimes. They continue to stand behind me. Most people would have booted me out by now, but they're still there.

His idol: Spencer adored his big brother and often thinks of him when he's experiencing tough times

New role: Spencer joined Birds Of A Feather actress Linda Robson on the panel

'I've very fortunate. I come from an extremely loving family.'

Meanwhile, also on the show Spencer admitted he ended up teaching sex education during his recent charity trip to Tanzania.

The star flew to Africa following his exit from I'm A Celebrity and worked with impoverished children.

Outnumbered: There were more men than women on the panel with Spencer joining Andrea McLean, Larry Lamb and Joe Swash, alongside Linda

Making an exit: Spencer will be a regular guest on the ITV lunchtime show from now on
She recently admitted she doesn't like the idea of natural childbirth, having seen every aspect of it whilst starring in Call The Midwife.

But it was her part in last year's Strictly Come Dancing series which was the topic of discussion when Helen George met The Duchess of Cambridge at BBC Radio 2's headquarters in London on Friday.

Looking chic in a patterned dress cinched in at the waist, the 31-year-old flashed just a hint of her chest.

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Camilla for Strictly? Helen George discussed Strictly Come Dancing with The Duchess of Cornwall at BBC Radio 2's headquarters in London on Friday

Time for the sunnies! The 31-year-old wore a modest patterned dress cinched in at the waist, flashed just a hint of cleavage and kept her make up minimal, accessorizing with grey heels and a cobalt blue designer bag

The Hotel Babylon star kept her make up minimal, accessorizing with grey heels and a cobalt blue designer bag.

Speaking to Helen about her time on Strictly, the Duchess said: 'I know you from Strictly and Call The Midwife. I've followed your progress!'

'Did you enjoy the dancing? It must have kept you quite fit?'

Seasonal: The Call The Midwife star completed her spring ensemble with an oversized blue handbag

On the go: Helen signed autographs for fans as she arrived at the Radio 2 studios

Helen, who was eliminated in week 11 finishing in sixth place replied: 'I did enjoy it. Ainsley Harriot lost about two stone the three weeks he was in it but it was really enjoyable and good fun.'

Camilla joked: 'People are going to think I spend all my time watching the television! I don't have time for anything else!'

The Duchess also revealed she was a huge fan of The Night Manager when she ran into heart-throb Tom Hiddleston who had just appeared live on Evans' breakfast show at the studios.

'It was good fun': Helen spoke to the Duchess of Cornwall about her Strictly experience

'Sunday nights just aren't the same without you', Camilla confessed to a blushing Hiddleston.

'Well I can only apologise unreservedly for that,' the ever-charming star replied.

Camilla was at the BBC studios joining DJ Chris Evans for a judge's meeting alongside authors Malorie Blackman, Frank Cottrell Boyce, Francesca Simon and Charlie Higson for his children's writing competition 500 Words.

Camilla (centre) with (left to right) Sophie Turner, Tom Hiddleston, Chris Evans and Helen
Maryland Shootings Suspect in Custody; Is a Federal Agent

Eulalio Tordil, a law enforcement officer with the Federal Protective Service, is in custody following three deadly shootings in Maryland over the last two days. Tordil allegedly shot and killed his wife Thursday evening, then killed two more at two separate mall shootings that also left two injured.

The Prince George's County Police Department is "investigating a possible link" between the shootings -- the first of which was in a high school parking lot and the others at a mall and supermarket -- but it was not immediately clear that the killings are related.

Two-Day Shooting Spree

Police believe Tordil shot and killed his estranged wife Gladys last night in the parking lot of High Point High School in Beltsville, and also shot a Good Samaritan who came to her aid. They also think he was the shooter at the Westfield Montgomery Mall in Bethesda, killing one man and wounding another and a woman around 11:30 this morning. (According to police, one victim was shot initially and the other two came to help.) Twenty minutes later, a woman was shot and killed at a Giant Food supermarket in Silver Spring.

Although Tordil's wanted poster from Thursday noted "threats to commit suicide by cop," he was arrested in Aspen Hill area without incident.

Homeland Insecurity

The Federal Protective Service is a division of Homeland Security tasked with providing security services at federal buildings and several foreign embassies in the Washington, D.C. area, and Tordil supervised contract employees handling security at federal facility entrances. Homeland Security officials told NBC News Tordil was put on administrative duties in March after a protective order was issued against him, although it's unclear who filed for protection. Later he was placed on administrative leave and "required to surrender his government-issued weapons, badge, and credentials."

Montgomery County Police Assistant Chief Darryl McSwain told press that links between the shootings "will obviously [need to be] further vetted," and they are "certainly looking at all angles."

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Take that Kim Kardashian - she was serious after all.

Hollywood's once famed ladies' man is off the market with Brody Jenner proposing to girlfriend Kaitlynn Carter.

The 32-year-old revealed the happy news on his Instagram early Friday morning, with his bride-to-be showing off her new ring.

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Put a ring on it: Hollywood's once famed ladies' man is off the market with Brody Jenner revealing on social media Friday that he asked his girlfriend Kaitlynn Carter to marry him

The former Hills star got down on one knee on Wednesday as the pair, who have been dating since early 2014, holidayed on at the Nihiwatu resort at Sumba, Indonesia.

Posting a picture of his 28-year-old love and himself sharing a kiss, Brody said: 'On May 4th 2016 I got engaged to my lover and my best friend @kaitlynn_carter.

'I couldn't be more in love with this woman and I can't wait to spend the rest of my life with her.'

Kaitlynn shared a slightly different angle of the photograph on her Instagram, writing: 'This trip has been memorable for many reasons... happiest girl in the world!!!'

Romantic setting: The former Hills star got down on one knee on Wednesday as the pair, who have been dating since early 2014, holidayed on at the Nihiwatu resort at Sumba, Indonesia

'My lover and my best friend': Kaitlynn shared a slightly different angle of the photograph (which had been flipped so made her ring seem on the wrong hand) where she kissed her fiance who said of his engagement, 'I couldn't be more in love with this woman and I can't wait to spend the rest of my life with her'

In the photograph, Kaitlynn is wearing sexy bikini and has her hand close to the camera showing off her new ring - except the photograph has been flipped so it appears on the wrong hand.

Making the engagement even more special, Brody invited Kaitlynn's family to join them on the holiday.

And Mark and Michelle know a thing about love, with the pair also marking their 30th wedding anniversary the day before.

A family affair: Making the engagement even more special, Brody invited Kaitlynn's parents, Mark and Michelle, to join them on the holiday. His mom Linda Thompson also joined

Brody also had his mother, Linda Thompson, there for support too, however, his father Caitlyn was not there to celebrate with them all.

Posting a picture of the group all together on Instagram, Linda wrote: 'If we look happy it's because we are! CONGRATULATIONS to @brodyjenner & @kaitlynn_carter who got ENGAGED in Nihiwatu!'

Someone who should probably be rushing to congratulate them - and eating humble pie - is Kim Kardashian.

Bikini babe for life: The 65-year-old proved age was just a number while on the trip, looking amazing in a white two piece

Celebration: Posting a picture of the group all together on Instagram, Linda wrote, 'If we look happy it's because we are! CONGRATULATIONS to @brodyjenner & @kaitlynn_carter who got ENGAGED in Nihiwatu!'

The star refused to give Brody a plus one so he could bring Kaitlynn to her wedding to Kanye as she did not think the couple was serious enough yet.

The fact Kaitlynn was not invited led to a falling out between the step-siblings which then escalated to the point the pair barely speak.

This is the first time Brody has put an engagement ring on a girl, but not the first time he has looked at spending the rest of his life with someone.

MIA: While The Hills star had his mom for support, father Caitlyn Jenner (pictured with Brody and his brother Brandon) was not there to celebrate

Don't expect an invite: Someone who should probably be rushing to congratulate them - and eating humble pie - is Kim Kardashian who refused to allow Brody to bring Kaitlynn to her wedding in 2014 as she did not think their relationship was serious enough

The Hills star dated Avril Lavigne from 2010 to 2012 and the pair got tattoo dedications to each other.

After his split with the pop star, Brody was always seen with a bevy of young ladies vying to be his girlfriend and briefly dated model Bryana Holly right before meeting Kaitlynn.

Prior to Avril, Brody was also in a public and tumultuous relationship with Playmate Jayde Nicole. Their fiery romance was often caught on The Hills cameras.

Ex files: The Hills star dated Avril Lavigne (pictured 2011) from 2010 to 2012 and the pair got tattoo dedications to each other

Ups and downs: Prior to Avril, Brody was also in a public and tumultuous relationship with Playmate Jayde Nicole (pictured 2009)

Speaking of The Hills, Brody also had a long time on and off again relationship with Kristin Cavallari.

The couple dated prior to the show and their history coupled with her history with his other on-screen love interest Lauren Conrad, saw Kristin, become a star of the MTV program.

LC and Brody's love, which never seemed to quit work, was long a fan favourite.

Stuff reality shows are made of: Brody also had a long time on and off again relationship with Kristin Cavallari (seen here in 2010)
He's been busy filming on the set of period drama series Taboo all week.

And Tom Hardy certainly looked comfortable in character on the streets around Charlestown Harbour in Cornwall on Friday.

The 38-year-old actor was seen relaxing during some downtime during the intensive shoot for the historical drama.

Relaxed: Tom Hardy certainly looked comfortable in character on the streets around Charlestown Harbour in Cornwall on Friday

Despite the warm weather, Hardy was at one point dressed in a thick a fur-collared ankle-length coat, dark trousers and heavy mud-splattered boots.

The look was finished off with a top hat - perfect for his role as the Georgian adventurer James Delaney.

Once removing his coat, he showed off his leather doublet, worn over a waistcoat and shirt to try to beat the heat.

As he paced around the set he found time to puff on his thoroughly modern vaper and appeared to be deep in conversation with other members of the cast and crew.

Hot: Despite the warm weather, Hardy was at one point dressed in a thick a fur-collared ankle-length coat, dark trousers and heavy mud-splattered boots

No stranger to adventure roles, the handsome former Mad Mad: Fury Road star was unrecognisable with his bloodied face and closely cropped hair.

One of Hardy's co stars sported a deep gash and his face was covered in blood - in an impressive display of make up artistry.

In a rare lull in filming the Oscar nominated actor was able to play with a beautiful golden retriever on set as he sat next to a modern-attired member of the crew.

Period: Once layered down, he showed off his leather doublet, worn over a waistcoat and shirt to try to beat the heat

The new BBC One and FX period collaboration, due out later this year, tells the tale of adventurer James Keziah Delaney - who builds his own shipping empire in the early 1800s.

The mini-series, based on a story penned by Tom and his father Edward 'Chips' Hardy, sees Delaney return to Georgian Britain circa 1814 (during the Napoleon's second resurgence in Europe).

Following 10 years in Africa, Tom's character arrives back in London to discover that he has been left a mysterious legacy by his dead father.

Gruesome: One of Hardy's co stars sported a deep gash and his face was covered in blood - in an impressive display of make up artistry

Driven to wage a personal war of vengeance on those who have done him wrong, Delaney finds himself in conflict with the notorious and powerful East India Company, while also playing a dangerous game between two warring nations  Britain and the newly independent United States of America.

Landing Hardy for the role is no doubt a major coup for the show's creators, and they have been effusive in their praise of the A-list star.

Polly Hill, Controller BBC Drama commissioning said in a statement: The talent on-and off-screen is incredible and I am so excited to see Steves captivating scripts come to life.

Tom Hardy and the rest of the cast are set to bring this original and spectacular story to life in a unique and epic way.

Down time: In a rare lull in filming the Oscar nominated actor was able to play with a beautiful golden retriever on set as he set next to a modern-attired member of the crew
He famously met wife Angelina Jolie while playing one half of an assassin couple in Mr. & Mrs. Smith.

And now Brad Pitt, 52, is flexing his hit-man muscles again, playing Max Vatan, a spy assassin in World War II drama Allied.

Dressed in a smart grey and navy military uniform, with his quiffed hair worn slicked back in a side-parting, the Hollywood star looked period perfect as he filmed scenes in the Oxfordshire countryside on Friday.

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First Mr. Smith, now Mr. Vatan: Brad Pitt, 52, is flexing his hit-man muscles again, playing Max Vatan, a spy assassin in World War II drama Allied

Brad was seen filming a tense scene with actress Lizzy Caplan, arguing outside in the street, before leaning in to whisper something in her ear.

Lizzy's character looks visibly shocked and upset by what she is told, vulnerably dressed in just a kimono style floral dressing gown.

With her auburn hair worn in tight curls, falling to the top of her shoulders, the 33-year-old Masters of Sex star was tended to by hair and make-up during the filming.

Up close and personal: Brad can be seen filming a tense scene with actress Lizzy Caplan, disputing outside in the street, before leaning in to whisper something in her ear

Left on her own: Lizzy's character looks visibly shocked and upset by what she is told, vulnerably dressed in just a kimono style floral dressing gown

Romantic drama: Also staring Downton Abbey's Matthew Goode, the film is directed Robert Zemeckis (Back To The Future) and is slated for release later this year on November 23

Boom in shot: The actors run through each scene, surrounded by cast and crew and a beautiful collection of classic period cars

Tense moment: The talented pair put their all into the dramatic scene

Dispute: The film has a romantic heart, with Max falling in love with a French spy, played by Parisian actress Marion Cotillard (not pictured), during their mission to kill a German official

The film has a romantic heart, with Max falling in love with a French spy, played by Parisian actress Marion Cotillard, during their mission to kill a German official.

According to uinterview, 'the two ultimately marry and start a family  but Max soon learns that Marianne is likely a Nazi spy'.

Also staring Downton Abbey's Matthew Goode, the film is directed Robert Zemeckis (Back To The Future) and is slated for release later this year on November 23.

Smart apparel: Dressed in a smart grey and navy military uniform, with his quiffed hair worn slicked back in a side-parting, the Hollywood star looked period perfect as he filmed scenes in the Oxfordshire countryside

Heated: Brad and Lizzy shot their scenes in the glorious Oxfordshire sunshine on Friday

Overstepping the mark: Brad's character Max leans into speak into Mean Girls actress, Lizzy Caplan's ear, as she puts her hand up to his lapel

Camera ready: With her auburn hair worn in tight curls, falling to the top of her shoulders, the 33-year-old Masters of Sex star was tended to by hair and make-up during the filming

Kiss and make up? The two appeared to share a smooch as the scene played out

While Brad looks set to be working in England for the foreseeable future, he won't have to make do without his family as they reportedly moved into an eight-bedroom, 14,700-per-month rental house in Surrey at the end of February.

The Oscar-nominated actor shares six children with his 40-year-old wife Angelina Jolie; Maddox, 14; Pax, 12, Zahara, 11, Shiloh, nine, and seven-year-old twins Knox and Vivienne.

As reported by Us Weekly, The Jolie-Pitt's new family home is described as a 'beautiful, White House-style' home in the well-heeled county, an area popular with commuters to London.

Huge production: Crew members were seen milling around set with lighting rigs and screens set up in the location

Classic car: While Brad looks set to be working in England for the foreseeable future, he won't have to make do without his family as they reportedly moved into an eight-bedroom, 14,700-per-month rental house in Surrey

Wry smile: The Oscar-nominated actor shares six children with his wife Angelina Jolie; Maddox, 14; Pax, 12, Zahara, 11, Shiloh, nine, and seven-year-old twins Knox and Vivienne

Plenty of people on set: The Jolie-Pitt family previously set up home in the UK when Brad shot World War Z in 2013

Star in town: The Hollywood cast have set up home in Oxfordshire for the shoot

In addition to eight-bedrooms, the spacious estate has an indoor pool and gym, and is close to the River Thames.

The family previously set up home in the UK when Brad shot World War Z in 2013.

Brad and Angelina are said to have chosen their rental in commuter's paradise' Surrey for its proximity to the capital.

New reports suggest that the family have become so at home in their UK residence that they're hoping to make a permanent move to England, though Angelina's international commitments to humanitarian work and film-making could hold back the move.

A source told Us Weekly: 'The house is big, kid-friendly and has all the modern conveniences. They like that there are toy shops in town and that its not far from central London.

'Its got that peaceful, leafy suburb vibe as well. They love being in London. Angie would pick it as their permanent home if she could.'

Chatting to fellow cast and crew: Brad and Angelina are said to have chosen their rental in commuter's paradise' Surrey for its proximity to the capital
She's a model, retail ambassador with high hopes to develop her career as an actress in Hollywood.

And ahead of spending her first Mother's Day at home in 10 years, Jessica Gomes has admitted her mother Pay Yuen has always believed her daughter could do whatever she set her mind to.

Speaking with The Daily Telegraph in an interview published on Saturday, the 30-year-old said she has been inspired by her mother's unrelenting drive.

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'She told me I could win an Oscar': Model Jessica Gomes said in an article published on Saturday she has been inspired by her mother's unrelenting drive

'My mum has always been my biggest supporter,' she said.

'Even when I said I am going to focus more on film, she said "yes, you could win an Oscar and really be a trailblazer for Asian actors out there".'

The David Jones ambassador praised Pay's drive, who last year at the age of 63 graduated from university as a registered nurse.

Inspiring: The 30-year-old said she had been inspired by her mother's unrelenting drive (pictured with Kanye West)

'You are my rock': At the age of 63, Pay Yuen graduated from university as a registered nurse

Jessica shared a snap of her mother at the time, writing a long note in admiration for her.

'You are my rock, my inspiration & the strongest woman I know,' she gushed.

'I love you so much no words can describe how much I care & how much I miss you so much. You are my guardian angel, my soul and my light at the end of a dark day.'

This Sunday May 8 will be the model's first Mother's Day she will spend with her family in a decade, having relocated to Los Angeles from Sydney to pursue acting.

Many talents: Jessica has recently re-signed with David Jones to continue her ambassadorship

First time home: It will be Jessica's first Mother's Day at home in 10 years

Jessica has in the past told of the challenges of being brought up in Perth as a mixed race child, saying there 'weren't many other Eurasian' girls in her peer group at the time.

Meanwhile, her mother has described her pride for her daughter, recalling when she left home for New York to pursue a modelling career when she was just 17.

In an interview with Perth Now, she said: 'In the earlier stages, our family never stopped worrying about her... [but] we are very proud of her.'
Hollywood star Susan Sarandon will be headed to Australia for the very first time, later this year.

The Academy Award winning actress will travel to Melbourne in August to appear at two events run by the La Dolce Italia festival, which stages events celebrating Italian culture.

The 69-year-old's first visit to the Victorian capital also coincides with the 25th anniversary of her popular movie, Thelma and Louise.

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Bellissimo! Hollywood star Susan Sarandon will travel to Australia for the first time in August to appear at two events run by the La Dolce Italia festival, which stages events celebrating Italian culture in Melbourne

Sarandon will share stories of her life and career during the events, which will be the only appearances for her stay.

Sarandon, who has Italian heritage on her mother's side, will take part in a luncheon and evening presentation to support Bully Zero - a national charity committed to introducing a culture of zero-tolerance to bullying.

'I'm very excited to visit Melbourne for the first time, especially to participate in events that support such a worthy cause,' she said in a statement on Friday.

Celebrations: The 69-year-old's first visit to the Victorian capital also coincides with the 25th anniversary of her popular road movie, Thelma and Louise (pictured), which was released in 1991

'As a mother and a grandmother, working with causes that support the protection of children is incredibly important to me,' she concluded.

Festival organiser Connie Paglianiti said Sarandon's career is one of incredible diversity.

'She is a wonderful example of not only raw talent, but the ability to remain relevant, active, and passionate," she said. 'I am thrilled that she will be sharing some of her story with us.'

Only appearance: Sarandon will share stories of her life and career during the events, which will be the only appearances of her stay

Alec Baldwin was scheduled to be the face of the annual La Dolce Italia Festival earlier this year, but pulled out unexpectedly in February, just three weeks before the Festival took place, with the gala being cancelled as a result.

La Dolce Italia, which runs a series of events across the calendar year, is in the midst of signing up an international guest artist to appear at its annual charity gala dinner in early 2017 to raise funds for The Bully Zero Australia Foundation.

Italian film goddess Sophia Loren held the honour in 2015.
She's one of Australia's most successful modelling exports, who is making a push into Hollywood.

But Jessica Gomes will continue her runway duties closer to home, reportedly re-signing with Australian retailer David Jones as their key brand ambassador.

According to PS Sydney, the 30-year-old will stay on with the department store for another 12 months, for a rumoured $350,000.

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Staying put! Jessica Gomes (C) will continue her runway duties closer to home, reportedly re-signing with Australian retailer David Jones for another 12 months for a rumoured $350,000

Daily Mail Australia has reached out to David Jones for comment.

The Perth-born beauty has been an ambassador for the department store for three years and regularly appears on the runway during Fashion Week and at new season collection launches.

Miranda Kerr previously held the position as lead model for David Jones before she left the brand in 2013 to pursue her career in the US.

Jessica's renewed commitment to the store, means Jesinta Campbell will continue to be number two to the LA-based model.

Top spot: Miranda Kerr previously held the same brand ambassador position with David Jones before she left in 2013, promoting Jessica to the top spot for the retail giant

Despite this, the 24-year-old was on hand earlier in the week to open the new David Jones store at Pacific Fair Shopping Centre at Broadbeach, Queensland.

Jesinta, who originally hails from the Sunshine State, turned heads in a a figure-hugging burnt orange dress, which featured a cut-out over the bust, showing off a hint of cleavage, and a material choker that fell over her shoulders.

The model, who is engaged to AFL star Lance Franklin, took to social media to tease fans about taking a 'sneak peek' of the new store before the official opening.

Not bothered: Despite still being the retailer's number two model, Jesinta was on hand earlier in the week to open the new David Jones store at Pacific Fair Shopping Centre at Broadbeach, Queensland

Rubbing shoulders: Jesinta appeared in high spirits on the day and joined TV presenter and model Chloe Maxwell at the opening

Meanwhile Jessica has begun her transformation from the catwalk to the silver screen, recently speaking to Today Extra about her foray into acting.

Jessica got her first taste of Hollywood appearing in the 2014 film Transformers: Age of Extinction.

Acting has always been there and I felt like now was the right time and a lot of doors have opened for me, she told the morning program.

New role: Meanwhile Jessica has begun her transformation from the catwalk to the silver screen, recently speaking to Today Extra about her foray into acting

Proving that she is one busy woman, Jessica will appear beside Hollywood heavyweights Bruce Willis and Owen Wilson in two upcoming films.

She has previously hinted at an eventual move away from the runway saying it's important for models to show depth and their inner being.
50 Cent was at Loews Hotel, in Philadelphia, when the gesture was made

Rapper 50 Cent visited a disabled fan two weeks before he accused an autistic worker of being 'high on drugs', it can be revealed.

He spent more than 90 minutes with Justin Brown who has reflex sympathetic dystrophy syndrome and is confined to a bed.

The musician, whose real name is Curtis James Jackson III, made the gesture after meeting Justin's brother, Chris, who was staying in the same hotel, Loews, in Philadelphia, for his wedding.

Rapper 50 Cent visited a disabled fan two weeks before he accused an autistic worker of being 'high on drugs', it can be revealed

This happened two weeks before 50 Cent mocked a young man who suffers from Asperger's Syndrome, which is on the autism spectrum.

Following that outrage he donated $100,000 to a charity which supports those affected by the condition.

On Thursday, TMZ reported the 40-year-old rapper had decided donate the large sum to Autism Speaks to attempt to start to make amends to the young man he insulted.

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Cruelly targeted: A day after posting a video making fun of a young man who suffers from Asperger's Syndrome (right) 50 Cent has donated $100,000 to a charity which supports those affected by the condition

The rapper - who is currently bankrupt - filmed Andrew Farrell, a Cincinnati airport worker, as he was doing his job as a janitor this week accusing him of being high on drugs.

Andrew, 19, suffers from Asperger's, hearing deficiencies and social anxiety and when the rapper was made aware of the teen's condition he apologized to Andrew and his family as well as publicly.

In a statement to the New York Post, the rap star said: 'While the incident at the airport resulted from an unfortunate misunderstanding, I am truly sorry for offending the young man.

'It was certainly not my intent to insult him or the disability community, which is a source of great strength in America. I have apologized personally to him and his family.'

Some good: On Thursday, reportedly the 40-year-old rapper had decided donate the large sum to Autism Speaks to attempt to start to make amends to the young man he insulted

Cruel joke: The rapper - who is currently bankrupt - filmed Andrew Farrell, a Cincinnati airport worker, as he was doing his job as a janitor this week accusing him of being high on drugs

A lawyer for the family, Matthew J. Hammer, suggested the rapper donate $10,000 to the charity.

In the video, Farrell can be seen pushing a trolley of cleaning supplies and products through Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport.

The 40-year-old rapper, whose real name is Curtis James Jackson III, says: 'This is the new generation, it is crazy, it's crazy!'

He then repeatedly asks Farrell what his name is but the teenager refuses to reply.

Just trying to do job: Andrew, 19, suffers from Asperger's, hearing deficiencies and social anxiety and when the rapper was made aware of the teen's condition he apologized to Andrew and his family as well as publicly

Caused hurt: He later removed the clip but the damage had been done, the cleaner's parents Kent Farrell and Amanda Kramer said

50 Cent then tells the camera: 'Look at him, look at him, what kind of s*** do you think he took before he got to work today. 'He is high as a motherf***** right here in the airport. Pupils dilated and everything.'

He later removed the clip but the damage had been done, the cleaner's parents Kent Farrell and Amanda Kramer said.

Kramer told WLWT5: 'Hes very upset.The more I thought about it, the more upset I got, the madder I got. This could hurt him for the future.'

Farrell's step father added: 'To put this video out there saying my son is on drugs or whatever, that is part of his social anxiety. Hes not wanting to talk, hes not wanting to communicate, hes walking on and hes doing his job.'

Farrell himself said that he didn't understand why the rapper was following him.

The teen remembered thinking, 'Why is he doing this,' he told a reporter with Fox 19 on Monday.

Asked what he thinks of 50 Cent now, Farrell said: 'A jerk.'

repeat offender: It is not the first time the rapper, pictured in March, has come under fire for appearing to mock people with disabilities. He was forced to apologize in 2012 for describing a fan as 'autistic'

It is not the first time the rapper has come under fire for appearing to mock people with disabilities.

In 2012, he was forced to apologize to a fan, who he described as looking 'autistic'.

He then followed the tweet saying: 'i dont want no special ed kids on my time line follow some body else.' (sic)
Aside from her vocal, dancing and acting capabilities, she is known for her striking good looks.

And per usual, Victoria Justice stunned at a party in her honour at the Hard Rock Hotel in her hometown of Hollywood, Florida.

The Latina beauty was the cover girl for the latest edition of Venice magazine, a Fort Lauderdale publication that highlights the arts and lifestyle of the area.

Her night: Victoria Justice, 23, was breathtakingly beautiful at a party in her honour at the Hard Rock Hotel in her hometown of Hollywood Florida

Revisiting: Vanessa is actively filming the live TV movie, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, which features talent such as Christina Milian, Adam Lambert, and Tim Curry

Victoria displayed an island vibe in a blue, tiered dress featuring a plunging neckline.

The 23-year-old star cinched in her slim waist with an elastic and metallic gold belt, accessorizing with a matching clutch and minimal jewelry.

Perhaps the most attention-grabbing piece of her ensemble was her nude-coloured lace up heels, tied all the way to her knees.

All about her: The Latina beauty was the cover girl for the latest edition of Venice magazine, a Fort Lauderdale publication that highlights the arts and lifestyle of the area

While at the event, Victoria signed copies of her stunning cover, which featured the former Victorious star in a mod-inspired look, hair curled and featuring a heavy fringe.

Unlike her spread, the stunner wore her tresses styled straight.

For make-up, the Vanessa Marcil look-a-like modeled a neutral eye, heavily lined and lashed, while her lips were coloured with a brown-red shade.

Her look: Victoria displayed an island vibe in a blue, tiered dress featuring a plunging neckline

Standing out: Perhaps the most attention-grabbing piece of Victoria's ensemble was her nude-coloured lace up heels, tied all the way to her knees

Currently, the brunette beauty has two projects set for release this year.

Vanessa is actively filming the live TV movie, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, which features talent such as Christina Milian, Adam Lambert, and Tim Curry.

She's also rejoining former Victorious co-star Avan Jogia in the comedy,The Outskirts, a flick bout best friends who seek help from their high school's outcasts to get revenge on the popular crowd after they were the butt of a mean prank.
In dramatic scenes during the filming of EastEnders spin off Redwater, Kat Slater was spotted almost drowning and surrounded by blood today.

Albert Square stalwart Jessie Wallace was snapped being rescued from the water by fellow star Oisin Stack in the small Coliemore harbour in Dublin.

The 44-year-old actress was surrounded by a team of scuba divers - who were on hand to help with filming in the freezing water.

Rescue: Albert Square stalwart Jessie Wallace was snapped being rescued from the water by fellow star Oisin Stack in the small Coliemore harbour in Dublin during filming for EastEnders spin off Redwater

It appears that Jessie's character has an injury and her body seems to lie face down and motionless in the water surrounded by fake blood before Oisin swims out to her.

He is then able to drag her spluttering and coughing back to the water's edge and on to the harbour side.

Out of the water Jessie cut a very different figure from her EastEnders days, the Kat Slater actress was wearing a pair of baggy fawn chinos, a loose white blouse and a teal parka.

Dramatic: In scenes filmed Friday, Kat Slater was spotted surrounded by blood today

Life or death: It appears that Jessie's character has an injury and her body seems to lie face down and motionless in the water surrounded by fake blood before Oisin swims out to her

Intrepid: The 44-year-old actress was surrounded by a team of scuba divers - who were on hand to help with filming in the freezing water

When filming stopped Jessie was able to keep warm with the help of a hot water bottle and hot drinks provided on set.

Jessie, who is set to star in the new BBC drama along-side long-term co-star Shane Richie (Alfie Moon), looked to be enjoying a change of scenery - having left Albert Square earlier on this year.

Little is known about what Redwater holds for its new cast, Shane and Jessie hinted the show had a sinister undertone during an interview in January.

Her hero: Jessie put her all into the performance, lying back as Oisin played rescuer

Back to safety: The actress looked a little worried as she was helped to safety by divers during filming

Nearly there! The men helped pulled Jessie into a boat and back to shore to get warm

Dramatic scenes: The actors put their all into the high drama scenes

Speaking about the six-part drama, which sees Kat and Alfie visit Ireland in the search for answers to some important questions brought about in their exit from EastEnders, Shane revealed its a departure from anything Walford related.

Sharing a tantalising hint of what fans can expect, Shane said:

'It's a really dark story. I read the first episode and I kept thinking Wicker Man [Robin Hardy's 1973 cult classic starring Christopher Lee].'

Bit cold! Despite the warm weather in the UK, Jessie felt the chill when she made her way into the water

Good spirits: The talented actress shared a laugh with her co-stars as she prepared for the scene

Get me out of here! A dripping wet Jessie hurried up the steps after being pulled out of the freezing water

Layered up: The actress was bundled into warm blankets to try and get warm

Out of the water Jessie cut a very different figure from her EastEnders days, the Kat Slater actress was wearing a pair of baggy fawn chinos, a loose white blouse and a teal parka

Cold:When filming stopped Jessie was able to keep warm with the help of a hot water bottle and hot drinks provided on set

Explaining the premise of the new drama, he added: 'It's a standalone drama, it has nothing to do with EastEnders apart from Kat and Alfie.

'It's not a spin-off, it's six stand alone dramas.'

And elaborating on what exactly set his mind racing to horror films when he read the script, Shane described how the first episode sees Kat and Algie arrive in a secluded and strange village in the Irish countryside.

Still smiling! Despite the cold, Jessie had a smile on her face as she made her way up the path

That's better! Jessie slipped on a cosy robe and UGG boots as well as some shades for the sunshine

Bloodied: Jessie sported fake wounds and was covered in blood for the scene

Taking a break: The soap star kept warm in a hooded coat in between takes

Big moment: Oisin dived into the water as the cameras rolled

Huge production: A large crowd of crew members set up camp on the waters edge




Kylie Jenner and mother Kris Jenner looked remarkably alike after playing around with Face Swap on Snapchat.

The 18-year-old shared the silly clip with fans on Snapchat on Thursday, and both the reality stars seemed surprised at the results.

'Oh, this is weird!' Kylie exclaimed as her mom leaned in over her shoulder.

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Double trouble: Kylie, left, and Kris Jenner looked surprisingly alike as they swapped faces on Snapchat

'Weird!' agreed Kris.

'So weird,' she added, before giving her daughter a quick kiss on the cheek.

Kylie wore a trendy burgundy bomber jacket over a white shirt in the Snapchat clips on Thursday.

With her new short bob, the mother-daughter pair even had matching hairstyles.

Freaky! 'This is weird,' Kylie laughs as the duo check out their face-swap results and Kris gives her a sweet peck on the cheek

Aw, mom! Kylie laughs as Kris gives her a quick peck on the cheek, making their faces merge

The Keeping Up With The Kardashians matriarch rested her chin on her daughter's shoulder as they laughed and played around with face swap.

Sixty-year-old Kris wore black top with a white design on the shoulders.

In addition to face-swapping with her mom, social media queen Kylie also shared a steady stream of silly Snaps, including a video selfie with animated, crying eyes.

'Cry baby,' she wrote.

So sad: The teenager shared another Snapchat of herself crying animated tears as she played around with Snapchat

And she posted another selfie video as she ran an admiring hand through her new, chic bob.

On Monday, Kylie and Kris attended the Met Costume Institute Gala in New York City, along with Kim Kardashian, Kanye West and Kendall Jenner.

And while Kylie and Kris then jetted back to Los Angeles, Kim, Kanye and daughter North headed to Cuba.

There, they joined Khloe and Kourtney Kardashian, along with Kourtney's children Penelope and Mason, to film new episodes of Keeping Up With The Kardashians.
Fan Sues Bieber for Smashed Camera After Beer Bong Drama

True Beliebers will be disappointed to hear that Justin Bieber is in trouble again. The pop star was accused of smashing a man's cell phone after the man filmed Bieber unsuccessfully chugging from a beer bong in Houston last month during his show after-party.

Robert Morgan filed a complaint in Harris County Court in Texas, reports Courthouse News Service, detailing Bieber's actions that night, and most of it is not nice. The Bieber fan is now demanding punitive and compensatory damages from the pop star for his phone and for a physical attack.

Beer Bong Drama

Not everyone is a beer bong expert, or even knows what one is, and Justin Bieber was apparently new to the tool himself. A beer bong is a device with a funnel, which facilitates fast intoxication by allowing a whole lot of beer to go down someone's throat rapidly.

But a whole lot of beer going down a throat fast can make the unaccustomed gag, and that is what happened to Bieber. According to Morgan's complaint, Bieber "was clearly a novice" at the beer bong, and he spilled it all over his face and clothes. Seeing this display, Morgan snapped a video to post on social media.

Obviously, as a pop star, Bieber's accustomed to being filmed by all kinds of people at all kinds of times. Usually, it's fine and everyone benefits. But Bieber, who according to the plaintiff "was intoxicated and had consumed some illegal substances" was unhappy about this particular moment being captured.

The complaint states, "He immediately looked up at Morgan and scolded him before he grabbed Morgan's phone from his person. Before Morgan could say anything else, Bieber smashed Morgan's telephone into pieces and had his security detail toss Morgan out of the area where Bieber was located. Bieber's security detail grabbed Morgan and pulled him out of the club."

Body of Work

The plaintiff in this case is arguing that he studied photography in college and that he lost 5,000 pictures and videos, some of which were precious to him. Specific mention was made of images from his grandmother's 100th birthday. Morgan is claiming conversion and assault and he wants Bieber to compensate him for his losses and be made to pay as punishment for his actions. Bieber's camp has not responded to reporters' requests for comment.

Follow FindLaw for Consumers on Facebook and Twitter (@FindLawConsumer).



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Jenna Dewan Tatum looked ready for summer in a pretty off-the-shoulder look on Friday.

The Supergirl actress wore a white top with a ruffled neckline as she headed to her appearance on Extra TV at Universal Studios in Los Angeles on Friday.

The 35-year-old looked stylish in the frilly white blouse, which she tucked into a white, pleated skirt.

Summer style: Jenna Dewan Tatum looked stylish in an off-the-shoulder, frilly top as she stopped by Extra TV at Universal Studios in Los Angeles on Friday

Jenna appeared upbeat, smiling and waving to fans as she strolled across the lot on Friday.

Her frilly white top featured flowing sleeves, and the A-line, pleated skirt hit just below-the knee.

The dancer, who has a two-year-old daughter Everly with actor husband Channing Tatum, 36, showed off her toned legs in towering nude stilettos.

The American Horror Story star carried a hot drink and her phone as she was escorted to the set by security guards.

Big wave: The Supergirl star waved to fans and showed off the blue bracelet she's designed to help raise money for St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital

Stepping out: Jenna added towering nude stilettos and a delicate white choker

All smiles: The mother-of-one, who is married to Magic Mike star Channing Tatum, carried a cosy grey wrap

And addition to being an actor and dancer, Jenna is now flexing her design skills.

On Friday, she showed off her blue agate stone bracelet, which she created to raise money for the world-famous St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital.

The turquoise-colored stone bracelet sells for $32 and has a pendant reading 'Strength Lies Within.' All proceeds go to the hospital.

Jenna chatted about her design with Extra host Charissa Thompson during her Extra appearance, and shared a close-up snap of her handiwork on Instagram.

'Talking @stjude today on @extratv!,' she wrote. 'Please support and buy the bracelet I designed..perfect for Mother's Day :)'

Good cause: Jenna modeled her bracelet as she chatted with Extra's Charissa Thompson

Gorgeous: The dancer tucked her frilly top into a pleated, mid-length skirt

Jenna also recently opened up to People magazine about how being raised by her 'super-affectionate' and independent single mom has influenced her own parenting style.

'I'm very nurturing as a person and I know absolutely it came from you,' she told her mom Nancy Smith ahead of Mother's Day on Sunday.

'I was smothered in kisses, that much love and nurturing and also I would say, there's a really strong sense of independence you had when I was growing up that I think I sort of took on,' Jenna said.

Meanwhile, her husband Channing has announced that he's bringing his Magic Mike act to Las Vegas and will direct - but not star in - a live stage show of the male stripper movies.
She is often seen in feminine ballgowns and dazzling dresses.

But Hollywood actress Cate Blanchett opted for an edgier look when she attended a film screening in central London on Friday.

The 46 year-old cut an androgynous figure at the Ham Yard Hotel, where she was present for a broadcast of new movie Dancer.

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Dapper: Cate Blanchett opted for a more masculine look when she attended a film screening in central London's Ham Yard Hotel on Friday evening

Keeping it classy for the occasion, the Australian star looked impeccably dapper in a satin, jet-black trouser suit.

Featuring no deviation from her block colour approach, the blonde beauty had clearly dressed to impress for the occasion, where she was joined by husband Andrew Upton.

She capped the ensemble with a pair of monochrome brogues with fringe detail.

See Cate Blanchett updates as she wears a trouser suit to a London film screening

Featuring no deviation from her block colour approach, the blonde beauty had clearly dressed to impress for the occasion, where she was joined by husband Andrew Upton

Wearing her bobbed hair in a low-key centre-parting, she was on fine sartorial form and appeared comfortably cutting-edge, yet classic

Deftly proving that she's a natural beauty, the critically-acclaimed actress went make-up free for the presentation, showing off her flawless complexion.

Wearing her bobbed hair in a low-key centre-parting, she was on fine sartorial form and appeared comfortably cutting-edge, yet classic.

Not that she was the only famous face there, of course. She was also joined by Sergei Polunin - the film's subject - and Natalia Osipova, who stepped out in Vivienne Westwood.

Not that she was the only famous face there, of course. She was also joined by Sergei Polunin - the film's subject - and Natalia Osipova, who stepped out in Vivienne Westwood

Strike a pose: Cate and her pal cosy-up for a photo opportunity at the Ham Yard Hotel bash

Other guests included pink-haired Mary Greenwell, who was there to support the film.

Directed by Steven Cantor, the documentary is described on IMDB as being about: 'Sergei Polunin, a breathtaking ballet talent who questions his existence and his commitment to dance just as he is about to become a legend.'

Polunin's movie offers a different view of the dance world and explains his 'bad boy of ballet' reputation.

Dancer is described on IMDB as being about: 'Sergei Polunin, a breathtaking ballet talent who questions his existence and his commitment to dance just as he is about to become a legend.'

Pretty in pink? Other guests included pink-haired Mary Greenwell, who was there to support the film




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He's only been glimpsed in a couple of photos shared by Kim Kardashian on her social media but finally Saint West is ready to join the rest of his famous family in the spotlight.

The baby boy, born December 5, was seen for the first time in public being carried by his daddy Kanye West during the family's trip to Cuba.

The five-month-old was dressed all in white and snuggled up to his rapper father who cradled him in both hands as he carried him from a car into a hotel.

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Daddy's little boy! Saint West made his public debut as his father Kanye carried him into a hotel in Havana on Tuesday night after the family arrived in Cuba for a short vacation

The first close up look at Saint reveals he's the spitting image of Kanye.

His hair is still growing in and he has dark eyebrows, a button nose and plump cheeks.

He looked utterly adorable in a long-sleeved cotton top and matching bottoms and was barefoot.

Family holiday: While Kanye took care of Saint, Kim Kardashian looked after their daughter North, two, who happily ran alongside her celebrity parents carrying a little bag

Despite all the attention he was getting, the infant seemed unfazed by the commotion and quite relaxed in his daddy's arms.

While Kanye cared for his son, Kim walked ahead with their daughter North, who will turn three in June.

North was super cute in a Thrasher singlet that fell almost to her knees and black and white checked slip on sneakers.

She may be only two but she already loves to accessorize, wearing a bright pink ribbon choker and several colorful and glittery wrist bands.

Little fashionista: North, who turns three in June, was impossibly cute in a Thrasher singlet that fell almost to her knees and chequered slip-on sneakers

The famous family has just landed in Cuba and were making their way into their hotel at the start of a short vacation that ended Friday.

They arrived from the airport in a red and white classic American car and North could be seen excitedly looking out the window as the vehicle pulled up to the hotel entrance.

She was seated in the back with her mom and dad.

Wide eyed: The family were driven from the airport in a red and white classic American car and North was seen looking excitedly out of the rear passenger window as they pulled up to the hotel

Curious: The two-year-old clearly wanted to take in as much as possible as she gazed out the window

Back in black: Kim, 35, opted to travel in an all-black ensemble of ripped jeans, chunky heels and, of course, a low-cut top that showed off her famous curves

Relaxed look: The mom-of-two draped a black coat over her shoulders and left her hair loose for the journey

Wait for me! Little North was seen dashing from the car to keep up with Kim, Kanye and brother Saint

The visit to Cuba was taped for season 13 of Keeping Up With The Kardashians and Kim, Kanye and North were trailed by a camera crew as they took in the sights on the communist-led island.

They were joined on the mini-break by Kim's elder sister Kourtney, 37, and her three children with estranged partner Scott Disick: Mason, six, Penelope, three, and Reign, one.

Younger sister Khloe, 31, was also along for the ride.

Wears his own designs: Kanye wore his signature outfit of very ripped jeans with a white shirt and Yeezy sneakers, while his family maintained a similar air of style

Racking up air miles: North carried a small travel bag that had stickers on it marking the places she's been including Miami Beach where the family vacationed before traveling to Cuba

Getting in on the shot: The famous family descended on Cuba's capital on Tuesday, with Kim naturally documenting every moment of the high profile trip for social media

Sitting pretty: Cuba is famous for its large number of classic cars due to a four-decade-long grudge with the United States, which meant sales of foreign cars were banned until 2014

Making a statement: The historic trip comes after U.S. President Barack Obama successfully restored relations between America and the Communist island nation

Family time: Kim, North and Kanye were joined by Kourtney and her two eldest children Mason and Penelope, who they took out for dinner on Thursday as one big happy family

Still stylish: Kim was wearing a figure-hugging black dress to dinner, making the most of her recent post-baby weight loss

Another outfit change: Kim had toured the city in another white dress earlier in the day on Thursday, which featured puffball sleeves while Kanye kept his look distinctly casual

Not so practical: Kim wore a similar figure-hugging white dress to the park for a day dedicated to the children and though she was keen to get stuck in, Kim looked a little unbalanced in heels on the stones

Yummy mummys: Kim (left) and sister Kourtney Kardashian (right) made it a very glamorous day at the park
He may play a Hollywood hard man but in real life this star is just a big softy.

Clearly Everly Tatum has her dad Channing wrapped around her tiny little fingers.

The two-year-old enjoyed the view and the comfort of her father's broad shoulders as pair as well as mom Jenna Dewan Tatum went on a hike in the Hollywood Hills on Thursday afternoon.

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Let's go! Channing Tatum treated his daughter Everly to a ride on his shoulders during a family hike in Los Angeles, California, on Thursday

Getting to skip the hike part of hiking, the tiny tot was having a ball taking in the scenery of the Fryman Canyon walking trail.

Clearly a little nature lover already, as they approached the carpark the toddler became fascinated with a tree's leaves which were now in her reach.

However, try as she might, the two-year-old could not grasp the leaves in her little hands.

But fortunately mom came to the rescue, with the 35-year-old grabbing a big leaf to take home and look at.

See Channing Tatum updates as he and Everly share a sweet father daughter moment

Family affair: The pair were joined by Jenna Dewan Tatum for their hike around Fryman Canyon

Bird's eye view: Getting to skip the hike part of hiking, the tiny tot was having a ball taking in the scenery

Really making it a family affair, the couple also brought along their beloved Pitt Bull mix, Lulu, and Pomeranian Meeka..

The dogs trotted obediently beside Channing, who had one of their leashes slung around his famous chest.

As Thursday was uncharacteristically cold for Los Angeles, the family bundled up to stay warm.

For their afternoon walk, Everly was dressed in a long sleeve purple top with purple pants featuring a bird pattern.

Almost... there: Clearly a little nature lover already, as they approached the carpark the toddler became fascinated with a tree's leaves which were now in her reach - almost

Making sure she stayed toasty, the two-year-old also had a brought covered beanie complete with pom poms, popped on her head.

Her mom also layered up with the actress wearing a grey V-neck tank with a pair of black pants - which she tucked into some fancy socks - and a big woollen cardigan.

As Channing was on kid wrangling duties, Jenna was the designated Sherpa carrying the little girl's brightly colour backpack and teddy.

Mom to the rescue: While the little girl missed the leaf, fortunately mom was able to grab hold a big leaf to take home and for the tot to look at

Channing obviously does not feel the cold as much as his special ladies and wore just a black T-shirt with a pair of army green pants.

The star, who kept his hat pulled down low, has previously described how being a dad is both the best and scariest thing in the world.

He told Vanity Fair: 'It's scary. You made this thing and have to bring it into the world together I think every parent has that moment where they're like, ''Oh, maybe this was a bad idea; we don't know how to do this.'' I love being a dad. Theyre like little mirrors running around. They show you things about yourself you wouldnt pay attention to before.'
She was among the first to congratulate her BFF Blac Chyna on her engagement to Rob Kardashian last month.

And no doubt Amber Rose, 32, is equally thrilled that the couple are expecting a baby together.

In fact, while Blac and Rob only went public with their happy news on Friday, Amber no doubt had advance knowledge of the 27-year-old's pregnancy since the two describe themselves as 'sisters.'

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Happy day: Amber Rose stepped out in LA on Friday with a big smile after her BFF Blac Chyna announced she's expecting a baby with boyfriend Rob Kardashian

Amberl, who has a son Sebastian with ex Wiz Khalifa, was seen beaming as she stepped out on Friday in LA with three hunky guys.

The men were all wearing MUVA hoodies and Nike shorts, and Amber, who designs the brand, was clearly on a business mission at the upscale Beverly Center shopping mall.

She herself wore a black cropped jacket embroidered with brightly colored stitching of various symbols and the word 'freak'.

Business outing: The fashion designer, 32, was seen strolling through the trendy Beverly Center accompanied by three male models wearing her MUVA brand hoodies

On trend: Amber wore ripped blue jeans with white hi top sneakers and a white top under an embroidered cropped jacket that featured symbols and the word 'freak' in colorful stitching

Amber completed her look with a white top with semi-sheer panel, a pair of ripped blue jeans and white hi top sneakers.

Her signature platinum buzz cut seemed even more closely cropped than usual and she added a pair of large-framed sunglasses.

The mom and businesswoman has plenty to smile about these days.

In addition to sharing in her friend Blac's new found happiness, Amber has also just landed her own weekly late night chat show.

It will be produced by Dr. Phil through his company Stage 29 Productions and is slated to start airing in VH1 this summer.

'Sisters': Amber and Blac, pictured in Trinidad in February, are very close and both are mothers to young sons. Amber shares Sebastian, three, with rapper Wiz Khalifa and Blac shares King Cairo, also three, with rapper Tyga

Amber and Blac have made a few personal appearances together lately, most recently in Trinidad & Tobago where they wowed in very skimpy outfits at the carnival.

Amber, of course, was in a two-year relationship with Kanye West who is now married to Rob's sister Kim Kardashian.

Back in early April, on hearing the news of Blac and Rob's engagement, Amber wrote a warm congratulatory message to the couple on Instagram.

'Congratulations to my Family @blacchyna and @robkardashian!!! Pease don't let nothing or no one tear u guys apart!' she wrote.

She added: 'I never seen my sis so happy and I couldn't be more happy for her! Sometimes we find love in the strangest places Lol.'

'God Bless you 2! Now let's get this wedding together so y'all can start making some babies.'
There are better and certainly bigger Armageddon movies than this, but writer-director Zak Hilditch has nonetheless crafted a thoroughly watchable picture, which asks one poignant question of its audience: what would you do, if the planet had less than a day left?

The answer, in Hilditchs vision of his native Australia, is: have sex, go mad, get drunk, get high, do a jigsaw puzzle, go looting, kill your loved ones or kill yourself. Or all of the above.

Meanwhile, the apocalypse is coming as a vast wall of all-engulfing fire, following an asteroid strike in the North Atlantic. A radio announcer says matter-of-factly that as of now, all of Western Europe has gone. The Antipodes have just a few more hours.

These Final Hours asks one poignant question of its audience: what would you do, if the planet had less than a day left?

James (Nathan Phillips) wants to spend them at a wild party, with his girlfriend.

But on the way he spots two scumbags about to see out their time on earth by raping a girl they have kidnapped, called Rose (Angourie Rice).

James rescues Rose and she pleads with him to reunite her with her missing father, so they can at least perish together when it happens.

From there the film mutates into an odd-couple road movie, albeit in the most extreme of circumstances.

James wrestles with his conscience and ponders whether to party or find Roses father. Then theres the thorny problem of another woman he has been seeing, who is expecting his child.
Lawrence After Arabia (Hampstead Theatre)

Rating:

Lawrence of Arabia was a scholar, spy, serviceman, national pin-up. What sort of voice and mannerisms did he have? We might guess he radiated romantic elan, yet that is seldom the way with intelligence officers, particularly those who have worn disguise in the field.

Would he perhaps have been an introvert, rather disappointing to meet?

Playwright Howard Brenton has hit on a good idea. He looks at Lawrence in 1922, after his return from Arabia. By this point he had turned down a knighthood from the King, left the Army as a colonel and joined the RAF as a lowly aircraftman, under an alias.

There is dramatic potential in Lawrence at this fragile point in his fortunes. Mr Brenton proceeds to tell us a lot of history. He explores Lawrence s relationship with G. B. Shaw and Shaws wife Charlotte (Geraldine James), who declares her love for him.

Jack Laskey, right, chooses to make Lawrence an unexciting figure in this play that shows what he did in 1922 after his return from Arabia

Yet Lawrence After Arabia never quite grips as it might. Perhaps that is because the actor who plays him, Jack Laskey, chooses to make him an unexciting figure. This may be truthful. It may have been how Lawrence was. Yet in terms of theatre it makes for a slender offering.

This play is perfectly satisfactory in some ways. I sat through it without boredom and only once or twice (when some Arab gunmen prowl the stage, trying to look threatening) did it teeter close to stereotype.

Michael Taylors design manages to give us both the Shaws home in Hertfordshire, where much of the action occurs, and a couple of scenes in the Middle East. We are given a desert scene with a cloud-painted backdrop and a convincing sense of vast emptiness.

Mr Brenton is a serious and polished writer and he forces us to consider the consequences of imperial Britains secretive deal with France  the Sykes-Picot Agreement. That drew lines in the sand to create the borders of Iraq and Syria.

Lawrence, who clearly understood the region and had dealt with Arab leaders, argued that geometrically precise borders went against the political realities of Arabia.

Mr Brenton has him speaking up for a nation that roams across the deserts, the wadis and the oases with rival traditions held in a delicate balance, united by two things  a language and a holy book.

Paris and Londons crude, bureaucratic carve-up of Asia Minor would not be forgiven and we would one day reap the whirlwind, says Lawrence. All this is impressively instructive and, alas, factual.

When it comes to flesh and bones, the play is less persuasive. Mr Laskeys Lawrence is a drab little beanpole, rather wet. Arabia, my bride, my husband, he mews.

When he put on Arab dress I had a terrible image of Carry On . . . Up The Khyber.

Jeff Rawle adopts a dicey Oirish accent to play Shaw, but Miss James suggests a flinty feminism in Charlotte. Mr Brenton has some fun poking fun at the Shaws vegetarianism and snooty Fabianism.
Kim hails N. Korea's nuclear prowess at rare party congress

Kim Jong-Un on Friday opened North Korea's first ruling party congress for nearly 40 years with a defiant defence of the "magnificent" strides made in the country's nuclear weapons programme.

Hailing the historic test of what North Korea claims was a hydrogen bomb in January, the isolated state's young leader said it had shown the world it would not be cowed by sanctions or outside pressure.

Dressed in a Western style suit and tie, Kim's speech was delivered to thousands of party delegates who had gathered in Pyongyang for the once-in-a-generation conclave.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un has ruled the Communist state since 2011

In particular, he praised the country's scientists for "creating milestone miracles with the magnificent and exhilarating sound of the first H-bomb of our republic".

The test and successful long-range rocket launch a month later "clearly demonstrated to the whole world our undefeatable spirit and endless power ... in defiance of malicious pressure and sanctions by enemy forces", he said.

His speech, shown late Friday on state TV, was frequently interrupted by thunderous applause and at last one standing ovation.

Most experts have questioned the North's H-bomb claim, saying the detected yield from the January test was far too low for a full-fledged thermonuclear device.

There has been widespread speculation that the North might have prepared another nuclear test to coincide with the congress, as a defiant gesture to underscore its nuclear power status.

Washington later urged North Korea to "come out of the wilderness" by "renouncing nuclear weapons and demonstrating a clear commitment to ending their provocative actions and denuclearising the Korean Peninsula".

The White House warned "the international community is serious about holding North Korea to account for their destabilising and provocative behaviour".

- New milestone -

The 33-year-old Kim, who was not even born when the last Workers' Party Congress was held in 1980, said the party conclave would prove to be a "new milestone" that would lay out the future direction "of our revolutionary march".

It is still unclear how many days the congress will last, but the speeches and delegate reports will be scrutinised for any sign of a substantive policy shift, especially on the economic front.

Analysts will be watching for personnel changes as Kim looks to bring in a younger generation of leaders hand-picked for their loyalty.

The state TV announcer said the congress had also discussed the operations of its powerful central military committee, revisions of party rules and elections to central party organs.

Around 130 foreign journalists had been invited to cover the event, but were not allowed inside the congress venue.

The 1980 congress was staged to crown Kim's father Kim Jong-Il as heir apparent to his own father, the North's founding leader Kim Il-Sung.

The 2016 version was held inside the imposing April 25 Palace in Pyongyang -- its stone facade adorned with huge portraits of the two late leaders, along with giant red and gold party banners.

- Kim's 'coronation' -

While the agenda had been kept secret, analysts said it amounted to a formal "coronation" of Kim Jong-Un as supreme leader and the legitimate inheritor of the Kim family's dynastic rule which spans almost seven decades.

It was also expected to enshrine as formal party doctrine Kim's "byungjin" policy of pursuing nuclear weapons in tandem with economic development.

The North Korean capital was immaculately primped and primed for the congress, with national and Workers' Party flags lining the streets, along with banners carrying slogans such as "Great comrades Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jong-Il will always be with us".

Preparation had involved mobilising the entire country in a 70-day campaign that New York-based Human Rights Watch denounced as a mass exercise in forced labour.

In his speech, Kim described the campaign as an "extraordinary feat" that had helped the country meet its economic target for the first half of the year.

Since Kim took power after the death of his father in December 2011, North Korea has carried out two nuclear tests and two successful space rocket launches that were widely seen as disguised ballistic missile tests.

Even as the international community responded with tougher sanctions, he pressed ahead with a single-minded drive for a credible nuclear deterrent with additional missile and technical tests.

He also demonstrated a ruthless streak, purging the party, government and powerful military of those seen as disloyal, and ordering the execution of his powerful uncle, and one-time political mentor, Jang Song-Thaek.

Journalists watch a television broadcast of a speech by North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un at the 7th Workers Party Congress, in the media room of the Yanggakdo hotel in Pyongyang on May 6, 2016 Ed Jones (AFP)

Kim Jong-Un's nuclear ambitions Adrian LEUNG, John SAEKI (AFP)

Portraits of late North Korean leaders Kim Il-Sung (left) and Kim Jong-Il on display in Pyongyang, on May 5, 2016 Ed Jones (AFP)
Japan PM Abe hails 'breakthrough' in island dispute at Putin talks

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Friday hailed a potential breakthrough in a decades-long territorial dispute with Russia, after talks with President Vladimir Putin, Japan's foreign ministry spokesman told AFP.

"The prime minister said that today he could feel a breakthrough, he could make a breakthrough in the currently stagnated negotiation," Japanese foreign ministry press secretary Yasuhisa Kawamura said.

Tokyo-Moscow relations are hamstrung by a row dating back to the end of World War II when Soviet troops seized the four southernmost islands in the Pacific Kuril chain, known as the Northern Territories in Japan.

Russian President Vladimir Putin (L) welcomes Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in Sochi on May 6, 2016 Sergei Guneev (Sputnik/AFP)

Japan and Russia's lingering tensions have prevented them ever signing a peace treaty to formally end World War II hostilities, hindering trade and investment ties.

Abe, in a rare visit by a G7 leader to Russia, met Putin for talks at his holiday residence in the Black Sea resort of Sochi with their talks focusing on the dispute.

"The prime minister said that Mr Putin also shared ... the same feeling" and the leaders "agreed today that they themselves directly get involved in the negotiation," Kawamura said.

Putin and Abe agreed to "promote negotiations by employing a new approach without being bothered by the old previous thinking," Kawamura said.

"This is literally a new element," he said, without giving more detail.

"Japan is not just our neighbour, it is a very important partner for us in the Asian-Pacific region," Putin told Abe at the start of the meeting.

"We have certain questions that demand special attention, maybe for this reason we must devote special attention to building relationships," the Russian leader added.

- Symbol of warming ties -

The Kremlin had dismissed hopes of any major breakthrough towards resolving the dispute at Friday's meeting, while playing up Abe's visit as a symbol of warming ties despite Western attempts to isolate Putin.

The leaders held talks lasting more than three hours, including a tete-a-tete section, in what Abe called "an extensive, frank and candid exchange of views," Kawamura said.

Both sides had earlier mooted the possibility of starting negotiations on signing a peace treaty, with Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida saying in April that they could begin "as soon as possible" after the leaders met.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said briefly after the talks Friday that the sides "discussed the problem of the peace treaty," giving few details but announcing another round of foreign ministry consultations in June.

While in Tokyo last month, Lavrov said Russia wants to "move forward" but is not prepared to budge on the "result of World War II".

Russia has angered Japan recently by building new modern compounds for its troops stationed on two of the disputed islands.

Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev also infuriated Tokyo last year by visiting one of the islands, home to some 19,000 Russians.

The two leaders on Friday discussed a long-planned visit by Putin to Japan this year, but did not announce a date.

"we agreed in principle that Mr Putin will visit Japan. We will continue to discuss this," Kawamura said.

- Lingering tensions -

Despite the warmer words from both sides, tensions between the two sides continue to surface and Japan has hit Russia with sanctions over the Ukraine crisis.

Though the situation in Ukraine was raised, Lavrov said Putin and Abe did not discuss a potential lifting of sanctions by Tokyo, imposed over Russia's support for separatists there.

Putin said last month he welcomed Abe's visit as it comes despite "pressure from (Japan's) partners, particularly the United States".

Abe will later this month host a summit of the Group of Seven advanced industrial countries, from which Russia has been excluded over its annexation of Crimea from Ukraine.

"Evidently Japan will try to act as a kind of middleman in the talks process between Russia and the US," Russia's government newspaper the Rossiiskaya Gazeta said Thursday.

US President Barack Obama reportedly asked Abe in February to postpone his trip to Russia, according to sources quoted by Japan's Kyodo news agency.

Japanese foreign ministry spokesman Kawamura insisted Friday that Abe's visit "has been well explained to the United States side."

The town of Kunashir, part of the Kuril chain of islands in the Pacific Ocean, on September 3, 1989 Junji Kurokawa (AFP/File)
Beijing 'tightens screws' on Taiwan's new president

When Tsai Ing-wen becomes Taiwan's president later this month, she will end a period of unprecedented rapprochement with rival Beijing -- and China is already ramping up the pressure on her new government.

Tsai's Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) is traditionally pro-independence and refuses to chime in with Beijing's message that self-ruling Taiwan is part of "one China".

Tsai won the presidency by a landslide in January as voters wary of closer China ties turned their backs on the ruling Beijing-friendly Kuomintang.

Tsai Ing-wen of Taiwan's Democratic Progressive Party won the presidency by a landslide in January 2016 as voters wary of closer China ties turned their backs on the ruling Beijing-friendly Kuomintang Sam Yeh (AFP/File)

Since then, with a transitional government in power until Tsai is officially inaugurated on May 20, Beijing has increasingly made life difficult for Taiwan in what observers say is an early challenge to Tsai's presidency.

Taipei was furious in April after Taiwanese fraud suspects were deported to China from Kenya and Malaysia, rather than back to their home territory.

China also recognised Taiwan's former ally Gambia in March, ending an unofficial diplomatic truce between the two sides.

Taiwan has haemorrhaged allies in recent decades as they jump ship to align with a rising China, and is now only recognised by 22 states.

"Beijing wants to teach Tsai a lesson. The incidents are intentional and send a very clear message that it is tightening the screws," said Francis Hu, a political scientist at Taiwan's Tunghai University.

Some local tourism operators have reported a decline in Chinese visitors since January -- after a boom prompted by the thaw in ties -- with some speculating they are being discouraged from heading to Taiwan.

Tsai's KMT predecessor, outgoing President Ma Ying-jeou, agreed there was "one China", but with different interpretations on each side of the strait.

That earned him a landmark meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping and a slew of trade deals.

Beijing wants Tsai to do the same.

"It's their bottom line," said Hu.

However, faced with increasing voter scepticism over China relations and a staunch pro-independence wing in her own party, it is a demand she is unlikely ever to meet.

- 'A cold peace' -

Taiwan split from mainland China in 1949 after a civil war, but has never formally declared independence, despite being a fully-fledged democracy.

Beijing still considers the island part of its territory awaiting reunification, by force if necessary.

China has been clear about its distaste for Tsai since she won the presidency -- on the day she was voted in, Beijing warned her against making any move towards formal independence.

For her part, Tsai has vowed to maintain the "status quo" with China and has given a measured response to the recent bouts of diplomatic sparring.

But she has also made clear future cross-strait policy will be "based on the principle of democracy and people's desires".

Tsai now has "a huge balancing act" to perform, said Kerry Brown, director of Lau China Institute at King's College London.

Not only must she handle Beijing and appease the electorate, she must also reassure Washington -- Taiwan's greatest ally and leading arms supplier -- that she will not rock the boat in the region, said Brown.

Her inaugural speech on May 20 is likely to reflect that high-wire act.

"She will try to maintain the moral high ground, to continue to have support from the US and the international community, by sounding reasonable, moderate, and diplomatic," Brown said.

"But she will also send Beijing a message that she will not be bullied and humiliated in front of her own people."

Observers predict Beijing will keep up the pressure when Tsai takes office, with the possible suspension of high-level dialogue between the two sides and a push for Taiwan's further diplomatic isolation.

Few believe there will be any drastic action in the near future.

"I think the most likely scenario is that China will not be satisfied but still find it acceptable," said Tang Shao-cheng, a political scientist at National Chengchi University in Taipei, who believes Tsai will toe a line in her rhetoric to calm US nerves.

However, Beijing's inherent lack of trust could lead to deterioration further down the line.

"It will be 'cold peace' in the short term -- and hot challenges in the long term," said Tang.

Some local tourism operators have reported a decline in Chinese visitors since January 2016, with some speculating they are being discouraged from heading to Taiwan Patrick Lin (AFP/File)

Taiwan's outgoing President Ma Ying-jeou (L) agreed there was 'one China', but with different interpretations on each side of the strait, a statement that earned him a landmark meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in November 2015 Mohd Rasfan (AFP/File)
Grim Sleeper Serial Killer Found Guilty

Over 30 years after his first murder, and six years after his arrest, Lonnie David Franklin, Jr., dubbed the Grim Sleeper serial killer was found guilty of 10 counts of murder in the slayings of nine women and one 15-year-old girl. Franklin targeted vulnerable young black women in the Los Angeles area for decades spanning the crack cocaine epidemic and killed his last known victim in 2007.

It was a 13-year gap in the middle of that span that earned Franklin the Grim Sleeper moniker, distinguishing him from other serial killers operating in the same area at the same time.

Grim Slayings

The Los Angeles Times described the similarities that bound the Sleeper's victims, normally drug addicts or prostitutes, together:

The victims were all young and black, with some leading troubled lives during the chaotic 1980s in South L.A. The dead were left along a corridor in the Manchester Square neighborhood. Their partially clothed or naked bodies -- some decomposing -- were found amid the filth and garbage of alleyways. All were left without identification, and each was initially labeled Jane Doe.

One of Franklin's victims, Enietra Washington, survived the brutal sexual assault, and told police her attacker took a Polaroid photo of her after shooting her in the chest in his car. When police arrested him in 2010, they found a photo of Washington in Franklin's garage, along with over 1,000 other photos. To date, 35 of the women in the photos remain unidentified and police have asked the public for help determining their identity.

Serial Slayings in LA

Initially, a series of crack cocaine epidemic-era killings were attributed to one "Southside Slayer" identity. Police later learned it was the work of at least three men operating independently, Franklin being one of them. Michael Hughes and Chester Turner are both on California's death row after being convicted of killing seven and 14 women respectively, during the same time period.

Other LA-based serial killers -- the Hillside Stranglers or the Night Stalker Richard Ramirez -- garnered more media and police attention, much to the chagrin of many in the community who believe police indifference to the Grim Sleeper was based on the race of victims, allowing him to kill more women. Even with the DNA that cracked Franklin's case, the total number of his victims may never be known.

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Hollywood's Universal Studios overrun by wannabe zombies

Troy Zimmerman staggers and lurches, a rasping, gutteral growl issuing from what must once have been fully functioning vocal chords, as he limps among a horde desperate for human flesh.

Zimmerman isn't really one of the undead -- he's a freelance designer with a jaunty Hercule Poirot moustache and a charming line in self-deprecation -- but he zombie-shuffles like a pro.

The 45-year-old is among more than 1,000 hopefuls who have come to audition for the newest attraction at Universal Studios in Los Angeles -- a live recreation of AMC's hit horror series "The Walking Dead."

Universal is looking for 100 "walkers" and human survivors for a permanent attraction due to open in summer that will recreate the experience of living through a zombie apocalypse Valerie Macon (AFP)

"I have down time for about half the year, so anything I can do to monetize my creepiness is always welcome," the San Jose native says moments before his audition.

Universal is looking for 100 "walkers" and human survivors for a permanent attraction due to open in summer that will recreate the experience of living through a zombie apocalypse.

Although applicants have been told to turn up without make-up, those who are hired will look just like the zombie extras on "The Walking Dead," the most popular cable show in history.

Universal has partnered with the program's creative team, including legendary zombie special effects master Greg Nicotero, who will painstakingly recreate the molds and prosthetics that have scared the living daylights out of millions of viewers weekly over six seasons.

- Getting into character -

"We want guests to feel like they stepped into the world of 'The Walking Dead' and they are active participants in that world," creative director John Murdy says.

Visitors entering the attraction will be approached by a "human survivor" who says the location isn't safe.

"You have to escape and get to another location," Murdy says. "You're not really sure if you should trust this person, but given that there are walkers trying to break in, you don't really have much of a choice."

The first few dozen auditioners -- mostly in their 20s and looking for their big breaks -- line up nervously under an unseasonably but fittingly oppressive California sky.

"I hope to be one of those big actors and I hope this really gets that going," says Eric Mejia, 19, who is unemployed and spent the previous night binge-watching zombie movies and practicing distorting his face in the mirror.

Further down the line, 23-year-old trapeze artist Emily Kates, from New Jersey, carefully sets out her strategy for getting into character.

"My plan is to do what I'm told, and when they say 'act like zombie' I'll act like a zombie," she explains.

Murdy, who has trained dozens of actors to be zombies at Universal over the years, says they always start out doing the same thing.

- 'Find your inner walker' -

"It will either be the right shoulder or the left shoulder, but one of the arms will go dead and one of the legs will go dead and physically if every actor is doing that, it's really boring."

A judging panel of some of Universal's most acute creative minds, all well-versed in how the undead should act, settle into their seats, sternly preparing to sift the good zombies from the bad.

The applicants are herded into a large, gloomy studio area on the edge of the park and asked, first in groups and then one-by-one, to be walkers.

The majority immediately drop one shoulder, let one arm hang and one leg go dead, launching into Murdy's "really boring" zombie shuffle.

Although a few have demonstrably put a lot of thought into their auditions, the majority look like end-of-night stragglers in the world's longest pub crawl.

Murdy prefers that his actors think about who their characters were before they rose from the dead -- how they lived and died, and how their deaths affected the way they move as the undead.

"The first thing I say is 'I want you to find the inner walker within yourself,'" he says. "It sounds kind of silly but it's absolutely true."

"It's a little bit method-acty, but what we're asking our actors to do is create their own back story."

Creative director John Murdy prefers his actors think about who their characters were before they rose from the dead and find their "inner walker" Valerie Macon (AFP)

Although applicants have been told to turn up without make-up, those who are hired will look just like the zombie extras on "The Walking Dead," the most popular cable show in history Valerie Macon (AFP)
Drag queens raise holy hell in Jerusalem's only gay bar

In conservative Jerusalem, the last thing you might expect to find in the cramped back of a bar is a clutch of amateur drag queens railing against political and religious taboos.

But there they are, balancing on needle-like high heels and heavily made up, spouting unholy views in the holiest of cities, a place revered by three of the world's major religions.

Anything goes with "Allah Nash", a group whose name plays upon the Hebrew for cross-dressing and the Arabic for God.

Israeli drag queen Yossale gets dressed at the family home in Jerusalem before performing at the "Video" bar outside the Old City Gil Cohen-Magen (AFP)

Fair game abounds, from laughing at the Israeli army and the Palestinians, mocking Jewish prayers and the sexual practices of the ultra-Orthodox, even impersonating Jewish American gay icon Barbra Streisand but with a yellow star pinned on her dress, recalling the evils of Nazism.

Yossale is our hostess for the evening. The young man in blonde wig, short sparkly dress and legs that go on forever singles out a member of the audience.

"He's cute enough to be introduced to the rabbi!"

The "Video" is now the only gay bar in town, just a few hundred metres (yards) from the walls of the Old City that shelter Christianity's Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Islam's Al-Aqsa Mosque compound and Judaism's Western Wall.

Some 30 people, both local and just passing through, are in the audience this night for the musical show that Allah Nash has put on for two years now.

The regularity of their performances depends on both availability and motivation of the artists in a city where religious and social inhibitions are widespread.

- Band of sisters -

Tonight's threesome is Yossale, Fatma and Supernova, each in turn playing the role of bad girl as they swear, spit, knock back the booze and tease members of the audience.

At a previous show, two high-kicking drag queens in uniform hosed spectators with plastic machineguns as martial music played in the background.

"I love very black humour and seeing the appalled looks on people's faces as they wonder how far we will go," says Fatma, who is actually a curvaceous 23-year-old apprentice comedian called Michael.

"I love to generate political and religious tension on stage. We have to do something funny, we have no choice -- either we laugh or we cry."

"I'm also an extremist in a city that's full of them. Above all else, I adore toying with people's moral boundaries."

He grew up in Jerusalem in one of the strictest of Jewish religious backgrounds -- the Lithuanian branch of the Ashkenazi ultra-Orthodox, who wear long kaftans and fur hats -- but never felt religious.

Yossale was also raised in an Orthodox Jewish household, but after coming out the two young men cut ties with both their religion and relatives.

As for the third member of this band of sisters, taking such a step would be unthinkable.

Supernova is an Arab Israeli currently doing his national service at a base near the Palestinian political capital of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank.

A clinging ballgown shows off his muscular physique to perfection.

- Haunted by tradition -

But the mere thought of a family member or military commander finding out that he's a homosexual haunts Supernova.

Under one satin glove lurks an engagement ring, a constant reminder that he will soon be married off to a young Muslim woman from the same community.

Israel is considered to be a pioneer in both promoting and respecting gay rights, including adoption for same-sex couples and preventing discrimination.

Its commercial capital Tel Aviv hosts a flourishing gay scene, a fact the government never misses a chance to point out.

But just 40 kilometres (25 miles) away in Jerusalem, homosexuals live another life altogether.

Cross-dressers in the ancient city used to have another hangout in the early 2000s in the form of the Shushan, another magnet for gays.

However, it was burned down in an arson attack in 2005 and is now no more.

And in July last year, ultra-Orthodox Jew Yishai Schlissel waded into a Gay Pride parade in Jerusalem with a knife and stabbed a 16-year-old girl to death.

Last month he was convicted of murder and six counts of attempted murder.

Despite the threats a drag queen may expect to face on the streets of Jerusalem, Yossi is undeterred as he leaves the bar with Yossale after the show.

He's wearing a faux leopard-skin coat above his mini-skirt.

"So what's the worst that can happen? The taxi driver makes a pass at me?" Yossi laughs.

Israeli drag queen Yossale performs on stage at the "Video" bar in Jerusalem's Old City Gil Cohen-Magen (AFP)

Israeli drag queen Yossale changes outfits in a dressing-room during a performance at the "Video" bar in Jerusalem's Old City Gil Cohen-Magen (AFP)

Israeli drag queen Yossale (C) smokes a cigarette before performing at the "Video" bar in Jerusalem's Old City Gil Cohen-Magen (AFP)
Philippine president Aquino calls for anti-Duterte alliance

Philippine leader Benigno Aquino called Friday on the trailing presidential candidates to unite against frontrunner Rodrigo Duterte, in a sensational finale to one of the nation's most divisive election campaigns.

Aquino has repeatedly warned Duterte is a dictator-in-the-making, and made the plea after polling showed the favourite had kept a huge lead ahead of Monday's elections despite allegations he has overseen vigilante death squads and a spate of controversies over vulgar campaign speeches.

Aquino told CNN Philippines in an exclusive interview that he was trying to get the other four presidential candidates to unite to defeat Duterte, who he said was likely to get 30 percent of the vote.

Philippine presidential candidate Rodrigo Duterte (pictured) has an 11-percentage-point lead over his nearest rival, Senator Grace Poe, according to the latest poll released on Friday Noel Celis (AFP/File)

"The whole point is to get even two of them to unite... then we have more than 40 percent," Aquino said.

In the Philippines, a president is elected simply by who gets the most votes.

Duterte has 33 percent support, with Senator Grace Poe next at 22 percent and administration pick Mar Roxas at 20 percent, according to the latest poll released on Friday by Social Weather Stations.

Aquino said he had talked to Roxas, his longtime friend and fellow Liberal Party stalwart, and sent a text message to Poe to try and get them to forge an eleventh-hour partnership.

This would mean one of the candidates withdrawing. If one did, they would ask Filipinos to instead vote for the other, but there are no guarantees the public would do so.

- 'Unity, decency' -

Roxas gave a short speech on Friday night saying he was ready for talks with Poe.

"I call for unity, I call for decency, I call for democracy," Roxas said, without saying whether he would be prepared to back out.

Poe, the adopted daughter of a dead movie star who owes her popularity to her father, said she would not pull out of the race, seemingly leaving a Roxas withdrawal the option for a unity ticket.

"We can talk anytime. But I will say this now... if they are thinking that someone among us will withdraw, I won't withdraw," Poe told reporters.

Duterte, 71, has gained support across all sectors of society by fashioning himself as an anti-establishment politician who can achieve quick fixes to deep-rooted problems, particularly crime.

The mayor of the southern city of Davao has vowed to end crime within six months of his presidency by ordering security forces to go on a killing spree.

He has said he would kill tens of thousands of criminals, then pardon himself if he was found guilty of mass murder.

Duterte has been accused of running vigilante squads in Davao that have killed more than 1,000 suspected criminals. At times he has boasted about his involvement but on other occasions denied any links to the vigilantes.

A self-confessed serial adulterer, he also generated outrage last month when he joked at a campaign rally that he had wanted to rape a "beautiful" Australian missionary who was sexually assaulted and murdered in a 1989 Philippine prison riot.

He has faced a barrage of last-minute attacks in recent days over allegations he hid millions of dollars in undisclosed bank accounts.

Duterte has also infuriated his opponents by warning he is prepared to shut down Congress if lawmakers disagree with him, and establish a revolutionary government that could rewrite the constitution.

Upending conventional political wisdom, the controversies appeared to have fuelled his popularity.

Aquino, whose mother led the 1986 "People Power" revolution that toppled dictator Ferdinand Marcos, said Thursday the Philippines was in danger of repeating history if Duterte was elected.

"We won't be able to run if we make a U-turn back to a martial-law style," Aquino said at Roxas campaign rally.

"We will go back to a Marcos-style martial law where he will monopolise the decision making."

Duterte's campaign manager on Friday described the election as a "war of the classes".

"All the innuendos, attacks, and mud thrown at us and our candidate, are acts of desperation, of panic and of cowardice," Leoncio Evasco said in a statement.

Philippine President Benigno Aquino has been in power since 2010 Yoshikazu Tsuno (AFP)
Australia gets Singapore defence investment boost

Singapore will invest up to US$1.67 billion in Australia's defence infrastructure and hike troop numbers it sends for training, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said Friday.

The new agreement also includes commitments to open markets and trade and increase collaboration in science and research, he said, adding it would create thousands of jobs in northern Australia.

"We will jointly develop military training facilities in northern Queensland which will be fully funded by Singapore," the prime minister told reporters.

Members of Singapore Armed Forces and Australian Defence Force land on the beach during a preview of Exercise Trident, part of Exercise Wallaby, at Freshwater Bay in Rockhampton, Queensland, in 2014 Mark Cheong (The Straits Times/AFP/File)

"Singapore will invest up to two-and-a-quarter billion dollars (US$1.67 billion) in the expansion of two of our most important military training facilities," he said, naming Shoalwater Bay and Townsville.

Turnbull said upgrading the Free Trade Agreement between the countries would make it much easier for Australians to live and work in Singapore.

"This is a great day for the Australian Singapore relationship," he said, dismissing concerns that deeper ties between Canberra and Singapore could rankle China.

Some 6,600 Singaporean troops already train each year in northern Australia. Under the new deal this will climb to 14,000, staying for 18 weeks instead of the current six, trade envoy Andrew Robb said.

Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership (CSP) signed with Canberra last year was "an ambitious package covering many aspects of our relationship".

"Our two countries are politically like-minded, strategically aligned and economically complementary. We have much to gain by working closely together," he said in a statement.

Singapore is Australia's fifth-largest trading partner, with gold and crude petroleum key exports.

As it looks to Asian markets for growth, Australia will encourage greater collaboration in research with Singapore and locate one of its five start-up "landing pads" in the city state to promote innovation and entrepreneurship.
Japan schools a 'hateful' place for LGBT students: rights group

Japanese schools are filled with "hateful" comments about gay and transgender people, including remarks by teachers that can aggravate bullying and push some students into depression, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a report Friday.

The study was based on interviews with dozens of LGBT students at schools across the country, and also teachers, who the rights group said were often a key part of the problem.

"Hateful anti-LGBT rhetoric is nearly ubiquitous in Japanese schools, driving LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) students into silence, self-loathing, and in some cases, self-harm," the group said.

Tokyo holds an annual gay pride event but Japan lags behind the US and many other Western nations in terms of gay rights and same-sex marriage Toru Yamanaka (AFP)

Nearly every interviewee "said that they heard anti-LGBT rhetoric in school, including LGBT people called 'disgusting,' the use of slur words such as 'homo,' and declarations that 'these creatures should never have been born'".

While HRW noted that such discrimination is not just an issue in Japan, the country does lag behind the United States and many other Western nations in terms of gay rights and same-sex marriage.

Historically, Japan has been broadly tolerant of homosexuality, with documented cases of samurai warriors during feudal times having male lovers, while same-sex relationships have been depicted in traditional art, such as ukiyoe, or wood block prints.

As Japan industrialised and modernised, however, from the late 19th century, Western prejudices against homosexuality were increasingly adopted.

Sachi N., a 20-year-old lesbian interviewed for the HRW report, said she learned in class that homosexual relations were the main cause of AIDS and were a "very weird thing to do".

"Everything I heard and was taught (about LGBT people) was bad," she was quoted as saying.

"Even though now I am a lesbian and I know it, I still have a bad concept of it. I still think it's my fault."

HRW researcher Kyle Knight said working with teachers and making LGBT issues part of the curriculum was crucial to fixing the problem.

"The most important thing to combat this... is to arm the teachers with appropriate information to have LGBT topics included in the curriculum," he told reporters Friday.

Bullying is widespread -- and sometimes brutal -- in Japanese schools, but government policies aimed at fixing the problem do not specifically address LGBT students, who are among the most vulnerable, the rights group said.

There are signs of a growing public acceptance, however.

Tokyo's bustling Shibuya entertainment district has started issuing symbolic "partnership certificates" to same-sex couples, in what was a landmark advance for Japan's gay rights movement.

Some other municipal governments have also followed suit, while corporate Japan is also showing signs of moving toward recognising same-sex couples.
Woman charged over $3.4 mn Australian 'handbag spree'

Australian police have charged a 21-year-old woman with fraud after she allegedly spent US$3.4 million that her bank mistakenly gave her, with much of the money reportedly lavished on handbags.

The woman, named in Sydney media as Malaysian chemical engineering student Christine Jiaxin Lee, reportedly splashed out on luxury apartment rentals, designer bags and other high-end items after her Australian bank gave her an unlimited overdraft on her savings account.

"That's a lot of handbags," magistrate Lisa Stapleton said Thursday, according to Sydney's Daily Telegraph.

Australian police charge a woman with fraud after she allegedly spent US$3.4 million that her bank mistakenly gave her, with much of the money reportedly lavished on handbags Tiziana Fabi (AFP/File)

Police arrested the woman as she attempted to board a flight to Malaysia on Wednesday night.

They said she had been charged with dishonestly obtaining a financial advantage by deception and knowingly dealing with the proceeds of crime.

"Police will allege the woman obtained an illegal financial advantage when she overdrew her account by Aus$4.6 million (US$3.4 million)," they said in a statement.

Reports said that Lee, who has been released on bail, allegedly spent the money between July 2014 and April 2015, and that some Aus$3.3 million had not been recovered.

Stapleton questioned whether the cash could be considered a "proceed of crime", saying "it's money we all dream about".
Myanmar president proposes new ministry for Suu Kyi

Myanmar's president has urged the creation of a new ministry for Aung San Suu Kyi's state advisor position, official media reported on Friday, a move that will deepen her influence and likely rile the powerful army.

Suu Kyi is barred from the presidency by the military-drafted constitution despite having led her pro-democracy party to a landslide victory in November.

She has instead hoovered up a slew of other senior positions, including foreign minister, president's officer minister, and the specially-devised role of state counsellor, which gives her vaguely-defined powers to guide parliamentary affairs.

Myanmar's President Htin Kyaw (R), followed by First Lady Su Su Lwin (in white dress) and State Counsellor and Foreign Minister Aung San Suu Kyi (in green dress), depart for an official trip to Laos, from the Naypyidaw city airport, on May 6, 2016 Aung Htet (AFP)

The broad array of powers across government has helped the veteran activist fulfil a pledge to rule "above" her presidential proxy and close ally Htin Kyaw.

Shortly after taking office she used her role as state counsellor to announce a major political prisoner release in April.

She has also met with a host of foreign dignitaries and on Friday accompanied Htin Kyaw on a trip to Laos, his first international visit as president.

The proposal for a ministry to support her role "is intended to speed up the government's efforts at national reconciliation, internal peace, national development and the rule of law", the English language state newspaper Global New Light of Myanmar reported Friday.

Parliamentary debate on the proposal is set to take place next week.

That discussion will likely feature objections from military MPs who registered strong opposition when the state counsellor position was created specifically for Suu Kyi.

Other MPs expressed bemusement at the plans.

"A new ministry is not really needed for the national reconciliation and peace process. But I won't stand against the proposal," said Ba Sein from the Arakan National Party.

Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy can comfortably pass most of its bills because of its hefty majority.

Myanmar's first civilian government in generations faces formidable challenges in a nation wracked with poverty, corruption and conflict after decades of military domination.

Few concrete policy details have emerged in the administration's initial weeks in power, although it has vowed to streamline the bureaucracy by combining ministries and cutting the number of cabinet posts.

The government also freed scores of political prisoners and those facing controversial trials for rallies against the previous quasi-civilian leadership.
Chinese bug declared world's longest insect

A bug over half a metre long discovered in southern China has been declared the world's longest insect, Chinese state media says.

A stick insect measuring 62.4 centimetres found two years ago in the southern province of Guangxi has broken the record for length amongst the world's 807,625 known insects, the official Xinhua agency said Thursday, citing the Insect Museum of West China.

The previous record-holder was a Malaysian 56.7-centimetre-long stick insect discovered in 2008 and now on display in London's Natural History Museum.

A stick insect (C), declared the world's longest insect, pictured with other smaller ones at the Insect Museum of West China in Chengdu, southwest China's Sichuan province, in an image taken on June 28, 2015 and released to AFP on May 6, 2016

Tipped off by locals about a huge beast half a metre long but as thick as a human index finger, scientist Zhao Li had been on the hunt for the bug for six years before he finally glimpsed and captured one.

"I was collecting insects on a 1,200-metre-tall mountain in Guangxi's Liuzhou City on the night of Aug. 16, 2014, when a dark shadow appeared in the distance, which looked like a tree twig," Zhao said, according to Xinhua.

"As I went near, I was shocked to find the huge insect's legs were as long as its body," he added.

The bug has been dubbed Phryganistria chinensis Zhao in his honour, and a paper about it will soon be published.

More than 3,000 varieties of stick insects have been discovered so far, Xinhua said.
US warns citizens in Afghanistan of 'high' kidnap risk

The United States has warned citizens in Afghanistan of a "very high" kidnapping risk after an American citizen narrowly escaped abduction in the heart of Kabul, and an Australian aid worker was taken last week.

Katherine Jane Wilson, a well-known Australian NGO worker, was kidnapped April 28 in the city of Jalalabad, close to the border with Pakistan.

"The US Embassy Kabul reminds US citizens that the threat of kidnapping and hostage taking continues to be very high," the diplomatic mission said in a statement Thursday.

An Afghan policeman guards a checkpoint near the US embassy in Kabul Shah Marai (AFP)

"The US Embassy continues to take this threat seriously and advises... US citizens to take appropriate security precautions and to avoid predictable travel patterns within Afghanistan."

The statement added that an attempted kidnapping last Monday targeted several expatriates, including a US citizen. It offered no further details.

Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop has said that Canberra is working to secure the release of Wilson, but insisted Australia does not pay ransoms for hostages.

Wilson, said to be aged 60, ran an organisation known as Zardozi, which promotes the work of Afghan artisans, particularly women.

The abduction has set off alarm bells among foreign residents in Afghanistan.

Aid workers in particular have increasingly been casualties of a surge in militant violence in recent years.

In April last year the bullet-riddled bodies of five Afghan workers for Save the Children were found after they were abducted by gunmen in the strife-torn southern province of Uruzgan.
Xarelto Injuries or Fatalities: Can You Sue?

If you were prescribed the anticoagulant, or blood thinner, Xarelto and were injured as a result, you are not alone. If you choose to sue the drug manufacturer, you will also not be the first. Last month, an estate administrator was the latest to file a complaint against Janssen Pharmaceuticals and a slew of other entities in federal court in Louisiana on behalf of a deceased woman who allegedly died from complications associated with the drug.

According to the complaint, Opal Perkins was prescribed the drug to reduce the risk of pulmonary embolisms and died from a blood transfusion necessitated by gastrointestinal bleeding caused by Xarelto. Now her estate is suing the manufacturers, reports The Louisiana Record, arguing that they negligently or fraudulently represented their product to the medical community.

Failure to Warn and More

According to the complaint filed by the Perkins estate, the injuries and damages sustained by the decedent were caused by the defendants' drug. Perkins was prescribed Xarelto for about a year-and-a-half, but over a year into treatment with the drug she started bleeding internally. Ultimately, she died from a blood transfusion, which the estate says was necessitated by the issues and injuries Xarelto caused.

The complaint states that the blood thinner has been insufficiently tested and explored. The plaintiffs argue that Xarelto failed to properly investigate, research, study, and fully define the drug's safety profile, failed to provide adequate warnings, instructions, and dose adjustments, and failed to explain to medical professionals that there is no effective agent to reverse the effects of Xarelto.

The company responded to the complaint in a statement, saying, "Xarelto is an important anticoagulant used to treat and reduce the risk of life-threatening blood clots. After more than three years on the US market, and more than 3 million patients prescribed in the US to date, the benefit-risk profile of Xarelto remains favorable and consistent with clinical trials."

Janssen representatives stated that the company will defend against the claims in the litigation. It also reminded patients that they should not discontinue their use of Xarelto without speaking to a physician first.

Injured?

If you have been taking the anticoagulant Xarelto and were injured as a result of using the blood thinner, meet with a lawyer immediately. Do not delay. Many personal injury attorneys consult for free or a minimal fee and will be happy to assess your case.

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Nigerian oil rebels 'blow up' Chevron facility Delta state

Militants have blown an offshore oil facility operated by US oil group Chevron in southern Nigeria, the navy said on Friday, in renewed violence that could hit exports in Africa's largest oil producer.

"There was an attack on a Chevron facility near Escravos on Wednesday night. The incident happened about four nautical miles from Escravos, near Warri, in Delta state," spokesman Chris Ezekobe told AFP.

Ezekobe said "militants using explosives blew up the Okan platform, a collection facility for offshore oil and gas that feeds the Escravos terminal".

Nigerian militants wreaked havoc on the country's oil sector in the 2000s Pius Utomi Ekpei (AFP/File)

The navy was working with other security agents to track down the culprits, he added.

"A previously unknown group called the Niger Delta Avengers has claimed responsibility for the incident," the spokesman said, confirming a statement on the group's website.

"But we are not ruling out the involvement of former Niger delta militant leaders, particularly Tompolo, who is wanted on fraud charges."

A Chevron official, who asked not to be identified, confirmed the attack and said the facility had been shut down to contain spills.

There was no immediate indication of the volume of crude affected but the official said the attack would affect gas supply to power plants already hit with almost daily outages.

Attacks on oil and gas facilities have increased since January when Tompolo -- whose real name is Government Ekpemupolo -- was declared wanted on multi-million-dollar corruption charges.

The former leader of militants who wreaked havoc in the creeks and rivers of the delta in the 2000s is accused of defrauding the government of more than $175 million (161 million euros).

The offences linked to government maritime security contracts are alleged to have taken place between 2012 and last year, a court in Lagos has been told.

The upsurge in attacks is another security headache for President Muhammadu Buhari, who is battling Boko Haram Islamists in the northeast and an increase in violence between nomadic herdsman and farmers in central and southeast Nigeria.

Tompolo, an ally of former president Goodluck Jonathan, was a prominent leader of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), which demanded a fairer share of oil revenue for local people, most of whom still live in poverty.

The Niger Delta Avengers group is thought to involve Tompolo's supporters unhappy about the charges against him and the winding down of a government amnesty programme that ended the unrest in 2009.

But Tompolo has previously said he is not part of the group.
Pakistani shopkeeper killed dozens with 'revenge' sweets

A Pakistani sweetshop owner has confessed to fatally poisoning at least 30 people by lacing his goods with pesticide in an attempt to take revenge on his older brother, police told AFP Friday.

Khalid Mehmood confessed in a court in central Punjab province that he had poisoned the sweets after his elder brother Tariq, who owned the sweetshop with him, "insulted and abused" him in a business dispute.

"I wanted to teach him a lesson," police investigator Mohammad Afzal quoted him as saying, with the statement confirmed by another senior police official.

A Pakistani sweetshop owner has confessed to fatally poisoning at least 30 people by lacing his goods with pesticide, police tell AFP Arif Ali (AFP/File)

"I was so angry that I mixed the pesticides bottle in the sweets being baked at that time."

The poisoned batch of sweets were bought by a local man who gave them to family and friends celebrating the birth of his grandson.

The baby's father, six of his uncles and one aunt were among the 30 killed. The dead also included five children. Four victims are still in hospital.

Officials had earlier put the toll at 33, but police confirmed Friday it stood at 30.

Police have told local reporters that 52 people consumed the sweets in total.

Both the Mehmood brothers were arrested along with one of their employees.

Investigators initially suspected the poisoning was an accident as a pesticide shop nearby was being renovated and the owner had left his products at the bakery for safe-keeping.

Pakistan has poor food safety standards and hygiene laws are rarely implemented.

The brothers are due to appear in court again on Saturday, Afzal said.
Outcry grows over bombing of Syria camp for displaced

Condemnation mounted Friday over deadly air strikes on a camp for displaced people in northern Syria as the regime and its Russian ally denied involvement amid a fragile truce in Aleppo city.

Women and children were reported to be among 28 civilians killed in Thursday's raids near the Turkish border, which also wounded 50.

The strikes in Idlib province, which is controlled by Syria's Al-Qaeda affiliate Al-Nusra Front and rebel allies, came as a 48-hour ceasefire took hold in the battleground city of Aleppo to the east.

Syrians look at the destruction at a camp for displaced people near the town of Sarmada in Syria's Idblib province, near the border with Turkey, following an air strike on May 5, 2016 STRINGER (AFP)

That truce was due to end early Saturday (2201 GMT Friday) after giving residents some respite from two weeks of fighting that killed more than 280 civilians, even as clashes raged south of the city.

The Aleppo halt in fighting is part of international efforts to revive a landmark February ceasefire and galvanise peace talks to end a five-year war that has killed more than 270,000 people and displaced millions.

Mamun al-Khatib, director of the Aleppo-based pro-rebel Shahba Press news agency, accused "regime aircraft" of firing missiles at the camp in Al-Kammouna village Thursday -- an accusation Damascus denied.

"There is no truth in the information in some media that the Syrian air force targeted the displaced camp in Idlib province," the official SANA news agency quoted the military as saying.

Russia's military insisted no aircraft flew over the camp on Thursday, suggesting Al-Nusra could have shelled it.

"There were no flights by Russian or any other aircraft," spokesman Igor Konashenkov told Russian news agencies.

- UN's Ban 'outraged' -

"The camp may have been shelled either on purpose or by mistake by multiple rocket launchers which are currently being used very actively in this area by terrorists from Al-Nusra," Konashenkov said.

The February 27 ceasefire between the regime and non-jihadist rebels does not include areas where the Islamic State group and Al-Nusra are present.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said he was "outraged" by the attack on the camp and said those responsible must face justice.

A video posted online showed emergency workers covering charred victims with blankets and carrying them away.

Ban demanded once again that the UN Security Council refer Syria to the International Criminal Court so that the tribunal based in The Hague can open up investigations of possible war crimes.

The six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council called on the UN to quickly investigate "this heinous crime".

The United States earlier described the raids as "totally in keeping" with the regime's past operations.

"There's absolutely no justification for attacks on civilians in Syria, but especially on what appears to have been a refugee camp," State Department spokesman Mark Toner said.

UN rights chief Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein said the camp's tents could clearly be seen from the air so it was "extremely unlikely" to have been an accident.

"It is far more likely they were deliberate and amount to a war crime," he said.

Regime aircraft have previously targeted rebels other than Al-Nusra Front and IS.

- Prison assault -

Russia also launched air raids in support of Damascus in September, and a US-led coalition has conducted air strikes against IS in Syria since 2014.

Qatar's Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani met Russian President Vladimir Putin in the Black Sea resort of Sochi "to discuss possible ways to save the political process, to save the civilian population", he told reporters.

South of Aleppo city, clashes between regime forces and jihadists and their allies have killed more than 70 on both sides, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Friday.

Al-Nusra and allied Islamists seized Khan Tuman and surrounding villages in less than 24 hours, according to the Britain-based monitor.

Pro-regime troops had driven the jihadists out of Khan Tuman in December.

In central Syria, regime forces launched an assault against a prison in the central city of Hama aimed at ending a mutiny, the Observatory said.

The mutiny began on Monday after an attempt to transfer inmates to the military-run Saydnaya prison near Damascus.

Human Rights Watch said it had received WhatsApp messages from inmates inside the prison saying that security forces "were attempting to storm their prison block, using tear gas and rubber bullets."

It said the assault "raises major concerns about possible excessive use of force".

As warplanes hit the Idlib camp on Thursday, Syria's regime celebrated its recapture of the ancient city of Palmyra with a concert in its amphitheatre.

A second concert conducted by Valery Gergiev was being staged in the floodlit amphitheatre late Friday.

Before regime troops backed by Russian warplanes retook Palmyra in late March, the theatre was a backdrop for IS executions.

The battle for Aleppo Jean Michel Cornu, Thomas Saint-Cricq (AFP)

The strikes in Idlib province, which is controlled by Syria's Al-Qaeda affiliate Al-Nusra Front and rebel allies, came as a 48-hour ceasefire took hold in the battleground city of Aleppo to the east STRINGER (AFP)

Thousands of civilians have fled fighting in the northern province of Aleppo to camps along the border with Turkey, which refuses to let them cross the frontier STRINGER (AFP)
Hamas says not seeking war but will fight Israeli incursions

Hamas's leader in Gaza said Friday his Islamist movement did not seek war with Israel but would resist incursions into the Palestinian enclave, following the worst cross-border violence since 2014.

Three days of mortar and tank fire between Israel and Palestinian militants, as well as Israeli air strikes, have raised concerns of a new war in the Hamas-run territory.

Ismail Haniya accused Israeli forces of intruding nearly 200 metres (yards) into Gazan territory.

Palestinian Hamas militants take part in a 2015 anti-Israeli protest in the southern Gaza Strip town of Khan Yunis Said Khatib (AFP/File)

"We are not calling for a new war, but we will not under any circumstances accept these incursions," he said in a Friday prayer sermon in the Gaza Strip.

Earlier, Israeli aircraft carried out their fourth air raid on the enclave since Wednesday, attacking sites at Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza and near Khan Yunis in the south, witnesses said.

There were no reports of any casualties.

The Israeli army confirmed just one strike, saying aircraft targeted "a Hamas terror infrastructure" in response to cross-border mortar fire.

Since Wednesday, Hamas and other militant groups have fired at least 12 mortar rounds across the frontier, and Israeli tanks have fired repeatedly at what the army said were Hamas targets.

The Palestinian fire targeted Israeli forces searching along the border, and short distances inside Gaza, for infiltration tunnels leading into southern Israel -- among the most feared weapons of Hamas fighters during the 2014 summer war.

On Thursday, Zeina Al-Amour, a 54-year-old Palestinian woman, became the first fatality of the flare-up after Israeli tank fire hit her home, medics said.

The violence has raised concerns for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, the Islamist rulers of Gaza, that has held since the 50-day war in 2014 left 2,251 Palestinians and 73 Israelis dead.

- Living in fear -

On both sides of the border, residents said they were living in fear of a wider conflict.

"In the night there is the sound of mortars, bombs, planes," said Jehan Berman, a resident of kibbutz Kerem Shalom which is just 40 metres from the border.

"We're tired. We're still recovering from the last war and the next one is already at our door," he told AFP.

Kerem Shalom is close to where the army has uncovered two Hamas tunnels, reportedly stretching into Israeli territory, in recent weeks, with the most recent discovery on Thursday.

Destruction of such tunnels became one of Israel's primary goals during the 2014 war, with more than 30 eliminated, according to the army.

Since the conflict, Hamas has continued to build what it calls "resistance tunnels".

Citing Hamas activities, Israel maintains a tight blockade on Gaza in what human rights groups say is collective punishment against its more than 1.8 million residents.

Ali al-Moghrabi, 40, a tailor from Gaza City's Al-Hanan Zeitun neighbourhood which was bombed on Thursday, said he still had not recovered from the last conflict.

"We do not want war, but the occupier (Israel) never stops," he said.

Hamas has accused Israeli soldiers of incursions into Gazan territory in recent days, saying that this constitutes a violation of the 2014 truce.

The Israeli army admits it has operated inside Palestinian territory but said it was within 100 metres of the border, where it says it has operated since the 2014 war.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu convened his security cabinet on Friday to discuss the latest developments, with his spokesman saying ministers were updated by security officials on the "activities of the past few days and the exposure of the tunnel".

Hamas's armed wing, the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, said on Friday that Israeli forces withdrew from positions inside the border east of Khan Yunis.

A senior Israeli official told AFP he was not aware of any understandings with Hamas regarding ending the exchanges of fire.

Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh ruled the Gaza Strip from 2006-2014 Said Khatib (AFP)

An Israeli tank rolls along the border between Israel and the Gaza Strip on May 6, 2016 as Israeli forces search for infiltration tunnels leading into southern Israel Jack Guez (AFP)
Trump 'surprised' by House speaker's refusal to back him

Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, said Friday he was surprised by the US House speaker's refusal to back his bid for the White House and that the two will meet next week.

In a surprise declaration, Paul Ryan said Thursday he was not yet ready to support the billionaire, signaling a deep rift within the Republican party.

The shock announcement by America's top elected Republican was expected to reverberate throughout the GOP's establishment and its rank and file, amid swirling concerns over whether conservatives will rally around Trump in his expected election matchup against Democrat Hillary Clinton.

Donald Trump won Tuesday's hotly contested Indiana primary, pushing Ted Cruz and John Kasich out of the race and leaving him as the presumptive nominee Brendan Smialowski (AFP)

"I was really surprised by it. And it's fine. He can do whatever he wants to do. But I was surprised by it," Trump told the "Fox & Friends" program.

"He talks about unity, but what is this about unity?"

The billionaire real estate mogul added that he and Ryan would be meeting next week.

"I believe it's Wednesday," Trump said of the get-together.

When asked what the two would be discussing he added: "I have absolutely no idea."

Ryan was the Republican vice presidential nominee in 2012 and is currently second in line to the presidency. He will be co-chairman of the Republican presidential nominating convention in July.

Ryan is the latest in a string of party grandees who have declined to back Trump.

Presidents George H.W. Bush and his son George W. Bush have signaled they will not endorse him, while Mitt Romney, the 2012 nominee, is reportedly declining to attend the Republican convention.

Trump won Tuesday's hotly contested Indiana primary, pushing Ted Cruz and John Kasich out of the race and leaving him as the presumptive nominee.
Russia says no aircraft flew over bombed Syria camp Thursday

Russia's military on Friday insisted no aircraft flew over a Syrian refugee camp the day it was hit by deadly strikes, suggesting Al-Qaeda-linked Al-Nusra Front could have shelled the location.

"We have attentively studied the information from the air space monitoring data in this area for May 4 and 5, 2016. There were no flights by Russian or any other aircraft," spokesman Igor Konashenkov told Russian news agencies.

"Judging by the damage shown in photographs and video, the camp may have been shelled either on purpose or by mistake by multiple rocket launchers which are currently being used very actively in this area by terrorists from Al-Nusra," Konashenkov said.

The deadly attack on the Sarmada camp for displaced people killed 28 Syrian civilians

Syria's military has denied any involvement in the Thursday raids that killed at least 28 civilians in territory controlled by Syria's Al-Qaeda affiliate Al-Nusra and rebel allies.

The United Nations' rights chief said Friday that air strikes on a camp for displaced people in Syria's Idlib province were almost certainly not accidental and likely amounted to a war crime.

Rights chief Zeid Raad Al Hussein said responsibility for the strikes remained unverified but cited "initial reports" indicating that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's forces were to blame.
China to join US-led naval exercise

China will take part in a regular US-led naval exercise starting next month, a top US commander said Friday, despite tensions over Beijing's territorial claims in the South China Sea.

The United States will host multinational naval drills called the Rim of the Pacific Exercise (RIMPAC) -- billed as the world's largest -- off Hawaii in June and July.

Although the Chinese navy has previously joined the exercises, held every two years, the latest drill comes as the country more aggressively asserts its maritime claims in Asia, prompting the US to say in March that it was "reassessing" Beijing's participation.

Chinese military personnel wait as the USS Blue Ridge prepares to berth in Shanghai on May 6, 2016

But Vice Admiral Joseph Aucoin, commander of the US Seventh Fleet, told journalists in Shanghai on Friday: "The PLAN (People's Liberation Army Navy) will participate in an exercise, the largest exercise that we do, in a couple of months."

He was speaking after the arrival of his flagship the USS Blue Ridge in the commercial hub, just days after China denied a port call for a US aircraft carrier in its special administrative region of Hong Kong.

US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said in April that China was still invited to the massive exercises.

"It was really good that we were able to have the PLAN participate in the last Rim of the Pacific, and they're participating also this summer," Aucoin said.

"It's a way to better understand one another, to work together closer, so that we can help one another, especially with things like humanitarian assistance, disaster relief."

China has just announced its own naval combat drills in the South China Sea with three vessels leaving port on Wednesday to join the exercises, according to state media.

It has also built up artificial islands on outcrops in the area.

The United States has sent ships and planes into the strategically vital waters in an attempt to counter what it has described as a threat to freedom of navigation.

Aucoin denied that the US presence in the region was raising tensions, saying the goal was to allow access to sea lanes in international waters, and urging China to cooperate to maintain peace and security.
Afghan forces raid frees 60 from Taliban prison

Afghan special forces backed by helicopter gunships freed more than 60 people held captive in a Taliban prison in southern Afghanistan, officials said Friday, in a major raid against the resurgent Islamist group.

The operation conducted Thursday in Now Zad district in the southern opium-rich province of Helmand comes in the midst of the Taliban's annual spring offensive, expected to be the bloodiest in 15 years.

"Afghan Special Forces liberated over 60 prisoners from an illegally run Taliban prison... during the cover of darkness via helicopter assault," NATO said in a statement.

Afghan security personnel patrol along a street in Lashkar Gah, capital of Helmand province, on October 21, 2015 Noor Mohammad (AFP/File)

"The liberated prisoners were safely transported to Kandahar where they were turned over to... Afghan authorities."

NATO, which backed the mission in a "train, advise and assist" role, added that two insurgents were killed during the operation, and many others were wounded and detained.

Afghan forces, backed by US Special Forces, launched a similar raid in Now Zad in December, freeing more than 40 soldiers and police held in a makeshift Taliban prison.

The raids marks a rare success for Afghan forces struggling to beat back the stubborn insurgency.

The Taliban last month announced the start of their annual spring offensive, vowing "large-scale attacks" across Afghanistan.

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani recently threatened diplomatic reprisals against Pakistan if it refuses to take action against insurgent havens on its soil.

His unusually strong remarks were in response to a Taliban assault on a security services office in the heart of Kabul, which left 64 people dead in what appeared to be the deadliest attack on the Afghan capital since 2001.
Iran filmmaker sentenced to 233 lashes says he's no activist

An Iranian director sentenced to 223 lashes for making a film that has never been officially shown in his homeland said Friday he just wanted to be left alone to work rather than "be turned into a hero".

Keywan Karimi ran into trouble with Iran's powerful Revolutionary Guards over a documentary he shot called "Writing on the City" about graffiti in the capital Tehran.

He spent 15 days in solitary confinement in 2013 and was accused of making "propaganda against the regime" and "insulting religious values".

Filmmaker Keywan Karimi poses for a picture in Iran's capital Tehran on February 20, 2016 - (Handout/AFP/File)

But since then, the young avant-garde filmmaker told AFP, several other "ridiculous" charges have been added including drinking alcohol, having extramarital affairs and making pornography.

"All I was doing was filming what was being written on the walls of Tehran," said the 33-year-old, who comes from the country's Kurdish minority.

Karimi was sentenced to six years in prison in 2015 but after an international outcry in which acclaimed Iranian directors including Jafar Panahi and Mohsen Makhmalbaf rallied to his support, five years of the term was suspended.

The threat of the 233 lashes has not however been lifted, and the prison authorities are now demanding that the punishment be carried out.

- The right to think -

"I am not a political activist," Karimi told AFP in a telephone interview. "I am not being sent to prison because I oppose the regime but because I am a filmmaker."

The police have contacted him several times but have not yet arrested him to bring him to prison to be whipped and serve his sentence, he said.

"Writing on the City" has since been shown at film festivals in France, Spain and Switzerland and in the meantime Karimi has continued working on another film project.

"I am waiting for them to come for me. The support I have received helps break the solitude and solidarity from the film world also warms my heart," he added.

Karimi said that he could have immigrated "quite easily but I want to remain to defend my right to live my life.

"The fact that my artistic activity is seen as an act of political opposition says a lot about the situation in Iran," he added.

"When the (Turkish Kurdish director) Yilmaz Guney won the Palme d'Or at Cannes for his film 'Yol' (in 1982), he said that cinema was a part of his political activism.

"He was an activist who was part of a political organisation. But what I draw from his experience is that making films is also a kind of struggle, a struggle in defence of the courage to think," Karimi insisted.
Qatar FM pushes Putin over Syria fighting

Qatar's Foreign Minister on Friday met Russian President Vladimir Putin in the Black Sea resort of Sochi to pressure Moscow after fighting in Syria's Aleppo threatened to sink peace efforts.

"We came here today to discuss possible ways to save the political process, to save the civilian population," Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani told journalists after the meeting, adding that he had brought a message from the Emirate's leader "on the escalation in Aleppo".

"We all need to unite efforts to bring an end to the crisis and punish the guilty," he said in comments translated into Russian.

Russian President Vladimir Putin (2nd L), accompanied by Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov (L), meets with Qatari Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani (2nd R) at the Bocharov Ruchei state residence in Sochi on May 6, 2016 Pavel Golovkin (POOL/AFP)

Russia has been flying a bombing campaign in Syria to back up the forces of its ally Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad and is seen as one of the key power brokers that can pressure Damascus to accept a negotiated settlement.

Qatar supports Syrian rebels fighting Al-Assad's regime in a conflict which has killed more than 270,000 people since it began in March 2011.

Fighting over the past two weeks in the Syrian city of Aleppo has killed more than 280 civilians after a truce deal between regime and moderate rebel forces unravelled.

A fresh 48-hour ceasefire in the battleground city entered its second day on Friday, allowing residents some respite.

Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that despite the differences between Russia and Qatar over the conflict they both wanted to find a peaceful solution.
Libya, Tunisia eye anti-terrorist cooperation

Neighbours Libya and Tunisia, which have been hit by a string of jihadist attacks, pledged on Friday to cooperate in the fight against terrorism.

"We will conquer terrorism but it will take time and cooperation," Tunisian Prime Minister Habib Essid told a joint news conference in Tripoli hours after his arrival in the Libyan capital.

The head of Libya's new unity government, Fayez al-Sarraj, agreed on the need to bolster bilateral cooperation against jihadists active in both countries.

Tunisian Prime Minister Habib Essid (L) and Libyan Prime Minister of the UN-backed unity government Fayez al-Sarraj (R) give a joint press conference on May 6, 2016, at a naval base in the Libyan capital Tripoli Mahmud Turkia (AFP)

"We spoke about security coordination for the battle against terrorism," Sarraj told reporters.

"What happened yesterday in the Abu Grein area... was very close," he added.

On Thursday jihadists from the Islamic State group advanced on the town of Abu Grein east of Tripoli and overran a key crossroads in an assault during which a suicide bomber killed two policemen.

The crossroads spills onto the coastal highway that stretches further east to the border with Tunisia.

IS launched the assault from their stronghold in Sirte, which they captured last June and where they have set up a training camp for Libyan and foreign militants.

The Libyan news agency LANA said Tunisia and Libya are expected to set up a joint committee tasked with controlling the main Ras Jedir border crossing between the two.

Last year a string of deadly attacks claimed by IS killed dozens of holidaymakers in Tunisia and dealt a devastating blow to its tourism industry.

Officials have said the attacks were planned in Libya.

Tunisia has built a 200-kilometre (125-mile) barrier stretching about half the length of its border with Libya in an attempt to prevent militants from infiltrating.

In March, Tunisia closed two border crossings with Libya for two weeks in response to a deadly jihadist attack on a town near the frontier.

Thousands of Tunisians are believed to have gone abroad to join jihadist groups, many to Libya which plunged into chaos after the 2011 uprising that toppled and killed dictator Moamer Kadhafi.
Obama presses moves against tax evasion

President Barack Obama said Friday that proposed laws to end the use of US-based anonymous shell companies will help fight tax evasion and money laundering.

Obama urged Congress to quickly pass the legislation as part of a global effort that has gained force after the "Panama Papers" exposed just how widespread the use of shell companies to hide wealth can be.

"In recent months, we've seen just how big a problem corruption and tax evasion have become around the globe," he told journalists at the White House.

US President Barack Obama speaks about the economy in the Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House in Washington, DC on May 6, 2016 Nicholas Kamm (AFP)

"We saw what happened with the release of the Panama Papers," he said.

"And we've seen the degree to which both legal practices of tax avoidance, that are still unfair and bad for the economy, as well as illegal practices that in some cases involve nefarious activities, continue to exist and to spread."

On Thursday the White House and the Treasury Department announced new rules for the financial industry along with proposed legislation to stymie the use of front companies within the United States that hide the identities of beneficial owners.

The rules close a loophole that has continued to permit foreigners to open such companies in the United States, enabling money laundering and tax avoidance.

They also now require banks and other financial institutions to identify the beneficial owners, corporate or individuals, of any new accounts.

"One of the main ways that companies avoid taxes or wealthy individuals avoid taxes is by setting up a bunch of shell corporations and making it harder to trace where money is flowing and what taxes are owed," Obama said.

"We say to the financial institutions, you've got to step up and get that information," Obama said.

At the same time, Obama noted, Congress has to change the law to force the identification of all companies' true owners at the creation of the companies.

"Only Congress can fully close the loopholes that wealthy individuals and powerful corporations all too often take advantage of, often at the expense of middle-class families," Obama said.

The move comes amid a rising tide of public and government support around the world for fighting tax evasion and other financial crimes that is enabled by banking secrecy laws.
Saharan Addax antelope faces 'imminent extinction'

The Saharan Addax antelope has been pushed to the brink of extinction by poaching and loss of habitat to the oil industry, the international organisation that tracks threatened species said Friday.

An extensive aerial and on-the-ground survey in the antelope's native region in Niger found only three specimens in the wild, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) reported.

"It is a desperate situation," said Alessandro Badalotti, coordinator for Save Our Species, an IUCN-managed body that provides grants for the protection of highly threatened animals.

A group of Saharan Addax antelope walk across the sands of the Tin Toumma desert near Diffa, Niger on May 6, 2016 Thomas Rabeil (AFP)

"In the current context, the species is doomed to extinction in the wild," he told AFP.

Even if there are actually five times as many specimens still roaming the Niger desert, he added, this is still too few to guarantee a self-sustaining population.

Without genetic diversity, the chances of unhealthy offspring rises dramatically.

"We are witnessing in real time the extinction of this iconic and once plentiful species," said Jean-Christophe Vie, deputy director of the IUCN's Global Species Project.

Male Addax stand up to 115 centimetres (45 inches) tall, and weigh as much as a full-grown man. Females are smaller.

Interestingly, their coats turn pure white in summer, perhaps to reflect the searing heat that pounds the Niger desert.

As recently as 2010, surveys concluded that there were still some 200 Addax in the wild.

But a massive oil-extraction installation set up by the China National Petroleum Corporation has proven a double threat.

Giant lorries and bulldozers have ripped up large swathes of the antelope's habitat, reducing the land on which it forages for sparse shrubs and herbs.

- Poaching for dinner -

But military personnel assigned to protect the oil operation have also been poaching the animals in their last haven, the Termit and Tin-Toumma National Nature Preserve, the IUCN said.

"Eight skulls were found during the survey, some of them near the army encampment," said Badalotti, who conjectured that the soldiers shot them for meat.

David Mallon, who heads the IUCN's Antelope Specialist Group, said that the Addax is "simply unable to cope with the current level of disturbance and illegal killing."

If there is still hope for the species, it lies in coordinated captive breeding programmes in zoos around the world, especially in the United States, Japan and Australia.

They harbour some 600 specimens. In addition, another two hundred roam inside a large nature park in Morocco, south of Agadir, while hundreds more are held in private collections.

The fate of another desert antelope, the Scimitar-horned oryx, could foreshadow what's in store for the Addax.

The large, distinctive oryx -- hunted for its long, gently-curved horns -- was classified "extinct in the wild" in 2000, and had not been seen for many years before that.

As with the Addax, breeding centres house sizeable captive populations, notably one near Abu Dhabi.

But with none in the wild, repopulating their natural habitats will be very difficult.

"These programmes are incredibly expensive as compared to reducing threats in the wild," said Badalotti.

"It is always best to maintain a population in the wild that can be reinforced by captive-bred individuals."
Puerto Rico, a US tax haven in tatters

Strangled by debt and a decade of recession, US territory Puerto Rico is pleading for help from Congress.

But ironically the Congress is partly to blame for the Caribbean island's woes, having helped devise its failed economic strategy of becoming a corporate tax haven, and then allowing that attraction to expire.

The island, which defaulted on a huge bond payment on Monday, is grappling with a massive $70 billion debt and a decade of recession after pursuing for years a growth strategy based on offering tax breaks to investors.

The Puerto Rican flag flies as people protest outside of Wall Street against cutbacks and austerity measures forced onto the severely indebted island of Puerto Rico on December 2, 2015 in New York City Spencer Platt (Getty/AFP/File)

Between 1976 and 2006, Section 936 of the US tax code provided US companies operating in Puerto Rico tax-free income from those operations.

US giants like software maker Microsoft and drug makers Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson were among the companies rushing into Puerto Rico to offset the 35 percent US corporate tax rate, the highest among advanced economies.

The surge in investment boosted Puerto Rican growth, with the expansion hitting a robust 9.8 percent annual rate in 2001.

- Burst bubble -

But when the tax break ended after 30 years, little by little companies deserted the island, draining revenues, shedding jobs, and pushing the economy into recession.

"It created a kind of bubble that burst when the mechanism expired in 2006," said Scott Greenberg, an analyst with the Tax Foundation, an independent tax policy research group, in an interview.

"It didn't create a sustainable growth model for Puerto Rico, because the companies were only investing there because of the tax benefits, and because Puerto Rico failed to capitalize on the business activity to develop its economy," Greenberg said.

The island's government, which had a decade to prepare for the end of the tax benefit, did nothing, said Argeo Quinones-Perez, an economics professor at the University of Puerto Rico.

"No effort was made, no industrial policy was decided, no plans were made," he told AFP.

He said that the island had gotten little in return to support growth for various tax advantages offered to companies since the middle of the 20th century.

"We should have obtained more benefits by requiring job creation or direct investment on the island," he said.

- Tax-free bonds -

Another tax break has aggravated the economic woes of Puerto Rico.

Under a 1917 law that gave Puerto Ricans US citizenship -- but not the right to vote in US presidential elections -- the interest earned on bonds issued by Puerto Rico is exempt from taxes, unlike that for other US states and cities.

That advantage enabled the island to issue huge amounts of debt to hungry US buyers, even as the island's finances and economy deteriorated.

"If their bonds wouldn't have been subsidized by the US tax code, the investors may have stopped buying bonds earlier because their concerns about Puerto Rico's fiscal situation would have outweighed the potential gains from the bond income," Greenberg said.

Bleeding financially, the government of the island of 3.5 million people has recently warned that it can no longer reimburse its creditors, and is hoping that Congress will give it the legal right to restructure the crushing debt.

However, despite the crisis and plunge in revenues, Puerto Rico continues to offer tax incentives, now to lure mega-rich individual investors.

The territory approved a law in 2012 that allows Americans who become tax-domicile residents of Puerto Rico a 100 percent exemption on all capital gains, dividend and interest income.

The governor of Puerto Rico, Alejandro Garcia Padilla, defends the incentive, which has lured managers of investment funds like billionaire John Paulson to the island.

"We need to share wealth, not poverty," he has said.

"These people are bringing wealth to Puerto Rico, that's good for everybody here."

Quinones-Perez criticized the tax-based strategies, saying they were an "exhausted model" that was depriving the island of crucial resources amid its economic crisis.

"The cost of keeping that model running became higher and higher and higher," he said.
Ex-warlord Katanga back on trial for war crimes in DR Congo

Former Congolese warlord Germain Katanga, a convicted war criminal, was in back on trial in his home country Friday before a top military court on charges of crimes against humanity.

Katanga, 38, who was sentenced to 12 years in jail by the Hague-based International Criminal Court two years ago, finished serving a reduced sentence in January in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Instead of being freed however, he remained behind bars as Kinshasa said it wanted to also try him for "other crimes" committed in the DR Congo's mineral-rich but restive northeast Ituri province.

General Germain Katanga sits in the military court in Kinshasa, on February 3, 2016 Papy Mulongo (AFP/File)

That trial, which was interrupted in February, resumed Friday after the ICC last month gave the green light to proceed with the domestic case against Katanga.

Appearing in court along with six co-accused, Katanga is wanted for "war crimes, crimes against humanity and participation in an insurrectional movement" in Ituri near the Ugandan border, where some 60,000 people died in fighting between 1999 and 2007.

"We are not prosecuting general Katanga on the basis of political motivations (but) for serious crimes committed in Ituri" between 2002 and 2006, which are other than those he was convicted of by the ICC, said Major-General Timothee Mukuntu as proceedings got under way Friday.

Katanga "knew when deciding to return to the country... he was running the risk of being prosecuted," Mukuntu added.

The defence however on Friday charged that there were "irregularities" in the legal case against Katanga, saying the ICC's approval should have come before proceedings began.

The high military court promised to rule on whether or not to maintain the case against Katanga at the next hearing, without setting a date.
US mulls selling Nigeria attack planes

The United States is considering selling Nigeria ground attack planes to help fight Boko Haram rebels, officials said Friday, despite concerns over the local military's human rights record.

Nigeria's Western allies have vowed to assist the West African giant in its fight against the brutal Islamist group, but have been cautious of providing arms to troops regularly accused of extrajudicial killings.

Washington is now, however, contemplating selling Nigeria a dozen A-29 Super Tucano ground attack planes of the type US contractors have supplied to Afghanistan to help it strike Taliban guerrillas.

Nigerian President Mohammadu Buhari shakes hand with the US Permanent Representative to the UN Samantha Power in Abuja, Nigeria on April 21, 2016 Philip Ojisua (AFP/File)

US officials would not publicly confirm the plan, as it has not been formally approved or explained to Congress, but said Washington is looking for ways to help President Muhammadu Buhari's government.

Washington has longstanding concerns about Nigeria's rights record and the government is prevented by law, under a 1997 amendment authored by Senator Patrick Leahy, from arming units that act with impunity.

"We are committed to implementing the letter and spirit of the Leahy Law, and will not provide assistance to any unit for which there is credible information of a gross violation of human rights," a senior administration official told AFP.

"We provide training and other assistance to numerous Nigerian security force units not implicated in human rights violations and we believe that assistance has and will have a significant impact on Nigeria's fight to defeat Boko Haram."

Buhari, a former military dictator, was elected to the Nigerian presidency last year, replacing the incumbent Goodluck Jonathan, whose government was widely derided as incompetent and corrupt.

Since Buhari came to office, the United States has sought new ways to help out in the struggle against Boko Haram, but has proceeded cautiously because of the Nigerian military's reputation for brutality.

"As a matter of policy, we do not comment on proposed US defense sales or transfers until they have been formally notified to Congress," said David McKeeby, spokesman for the State Department's bureau of political-military affairs.

"Nigeria is a strategic partner of the United States and we continue to work closely together on security matters," he said.

"We provide a range of assistance to Nigerian authorities, including advisors, intelligence, training, survivor support services and advice on strategic communications."

Boko Haram's insurgency began in northeast Nigeria and has spread to parts of neighboring Niger, Chad and Cameroon -- where French and US forces have been more active in helping local armies fight the rebels.
Rwandan rebel deputy chief transferred to DR Congo capital

The deputy leader of Rwandan rebels blamed for atrocities in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo has been brought to the capital following his arrest, a Congolese minister said Friday.

Leopold Mujyambere, deputy chief of the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), was brought to Kinshasa three or four days after being detained in Goma, the main city in North Kivu province, Minister for the Media Lambert Mende told AFP.

Mende gave no details of the arrest, which follows the detention in March of Ladislas Ntaganzwa, another leader of the FDLR, an ethnic Hutu force including veteran fighters wanted for their suspected role in the Rwandan genocide of 1994.

Miriki, 110 kilometres (65 miles) north of Goma, eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, where 15 people died overnight when Hutu rebels from Rwanda attacked civilians in the latest ethnic killings in the region on January 7, 2016 Kudra Maliro (AFP/File)

Congolese authorities handed Ntaganzwa to staff of a United Nations "residual mechanism" set up in December 2010 to complete the tasks of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, which passed him on to Rwanda itself.

The FDLR established itself in eastern DRC after fleeing across the border when a rebel army led by Rwanda's current President Paul Kagame in July 1994 put an end to three months of massacres, estimated to have claimed 800,000 lives.

The killers are accused of targeting moderate Hutus as well as people from the Tutsi minority and are regularly blamed for serious human rights violations against civilians in eastern DRC.

Rwanda's Justice Minister Johnston Busingye called the arrest of Mujyambere "a step in the right direction" and asked that he be "transferred" to Rwanda to face justice there.

The DRC minister in charge of media relations, Lambert Mende, told AFP that Mujyambere's case would go before a Congolese court "to begin the process of transferring him to Rwanda".

The Congolese army last February announced a broad offensive against the FDLR, not just in North Kivu, but in South Kivu and the northern part of Katanga province in a bid to sweep them clear of national territory.

The Rwandan government, however, charges that DRC authorities are doing nothing to tackle the rebels, whom Kigali presents as a major strategic threat even though the FDLR has not launched a big offensive on Rwandan soil in years.

Kigali has meanwhile backed a succession of ethnic Tutsi uprisings, leading the Congolese government to accuse the Rwandans of seeking to destabilise eastern territory.
China unlocks $1 billion UN fund

China signed an agreement at the United Nations on Friday to begin unlocking a $1 billion fund to support the world body's work in peace, security and development, with a first payment of $200 million.

Chinese President Xi Jinping announced the mega-fund at the UN General Assembly meeting in September, in a move widely seen as showcasing Beijing's status as a global player.

The agreement provides for a contribution of $200 million over the next 10 years. Half of the $20 million annual payment will will go to peace and security, and the remaining $10 million to development.

China's President Xi Jinping (R) shakes hands with United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on November 30, 2015 at Le Bourget, France Loic Venance (Pool/AFP/File)

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is "extremely appreciative of this generous contribution to the UN," said his spokesman Stephane Dujarric.

The fund demonstrates China's "strong commitment" to the goals and activities of the United Nations, he added.
Residents return as truce extended in Syria's Aleppo

Displaced families returned home and schools reopened in rebel-held districts of Syria's Aleppo on Saturday after a truce was extended for 72 hours in the battleground northern city.

More than 300 civilians were killed in two weeks of fighting in the divided city before the truce took hold on Thursday, with regime air strikes on the opposition-held east and rebel shelling of its regime-controlled west.

Residents trickled back into eastern areas of Aleppo, encouraged by a halt in the deadly violence, an AFP reporter said.

Syrian children attend class at a primary school in Aleppo's rebel-held eastern district of Shaar as displaced families return and schools reopen after a truce was extended Karam al-Masri (AFP)

"I decided to come home after relatives told me it was calm," father-of-six Abu Mohammed said.

"We left because it was carnage here. The air strikes were incredible," said the resident of the rebel-held Kalasseh district.

The international community hopes that a drop in fighting can revive faltering peace talks to end a five-year war that has killed more than 270,000 people and displaced millions.

Schools in Aleppo's east reopened Saturday after staying closed for more than two weeks.

"There were many bombings so our parents got scared and stopped sending us to school," one schoolboy told AFP.

A monitor reported rebel shelling of areas in western Aleppo but said there were no casualties.

Russia's defence ministry said the truce had been extended "in order to prevent the situation from worsening" just minutes before an initial 48-hour truce was due to expire.

"The regime of silence in the province of Latakia and in the city of Aleppo has been extended from 00:01 (local time) on May 7 (2101 GMT Friday) for 72 hours," a ministry statement said.

- Night raids -

Violence in Aleppo last month severely threatened a nationwide ceasefire between President Bashar al-Assad's regime and non-jihadist rebels.

Washington has been working with Moscow to pressure the regime to stop the violence and revive the February 27 truce.

"While we welcome this recent extension, our goal is to get to a point where we no longer have to count the hours and that the cessation of hostilities is fully respected across Syria," US State Department spokesman John Kirby said.

But fighting raged elsewhere, said the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Apparent US-led air raids overnight on Islamic State group strongholds in northern Aleppo killed six people, including women and children, as well as four IS leaders, it said.

In the central city of Hama, a raid by Syrian security forces on a prison failed to end a mutiny involving around 800 mostly political detainees sparked by an attempt to transfer inmates to another jail near Damascus where executions have been reported.

The head of Syria's main opposition group, Riad Hijab, on Saturday called for "intervention from the UN Security Council to guarantee the safety of detainees in the Hama prison".

IS and regime forces clashed near the divided eastern city of Deir Ezzor on Friday, the Observatory said, adding that five jihadists and 10 pro-regime fighters were killed.

- Iranian casualties -

Thirteen Iranian Revolutionary Guards advisers have been killed in Syria in recent days and 21 wounded, Iranian media reported on Saturday.

The deaths and injuries occurred in Khan Tuman village southwest of Aleppo which was overrun this week by Al-Nusra front, Al-Qaeda's Syria affiliate.

Syrian troops and allied forces have been battling the jihadists to recapture the village, the Observatory said, adding that since Thursday night 119 fighters have been killed there.

Iranian deputy foreign minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian late Saturday called Khan Tuman's capture a breach of the ceasefire that proves "terrorists and irresponsible armed groups called moderates... have no belief in a political solution".

An international outcry has grown over air strikes Thursday on a camp for the displaced near the closed Turkish border that killed at least 28 people including women and children.

Anti-regime activists have blamed the regime, but the Syrian military has denied the accusation.

Russia suggested Syria's Al-Qaeda affiliate Al-Nusra Front could have shelled it, while the United States said that the circumstances are unclear.

In Madrid, meanwhile, the Spanish Press Federation (FAPE) announced late Saturday that three Spanish journalists kidnapped in Syria about 10 months ago had been freed.

FAPE's president Elsa Gonzalez told AFP the journalists were "in a safe place" and would be landing at an air base on the outskirts of Madrid on Sunday.

Antonio Pampliega, Jose Manuel Lopez and Angel Sastre had last been seen in July 2015 in Aleppo, where they were reporting on fighting.

The battle for Aleppo Jean Michel CORNU, Thomas SAINT-CRICQ (AFP)

Rebel fighters from the Jaish al-Fatah (or Army of Conquest) brigades fire artillery during clashes with Syrian pro-government forces near the village of Om al-Krameel, in Aleppo's southern countryside Omar haj kadour (AFP)

Women and children were reported to be among 28 civilians killed in strikes on camps for displaced people in Syria's Idblib province, near the border with Turkey
Sumner Redstone dismisses ex-lover in court testimony

The ailing media mogul Sumner Redstone said he wants his former companion out of his life, repeatedly using expletives to describe her in videotaped testimony presented in court Friday.

The 92-year-old billionaire, who is the controlling shareholder of Viacom and CBS, said he hated Manuela Herzer, who brought a lawsuit challenging his mental competence after she was ejected from his home last fall.

In a halting 18-minute deposition taken at his Beverly Hills mansion on Thursday, Redstone repeatedly called his former live-in girlfriend names and said she stole from him.

If Sumner Redstone is found incompetent, his associates could push for him to be removed as the controlling shareholder of Viacom and CBS Frazer Harrison (Getty/AFP/File)

"I want Manuela out of my life," he said when asked what he wanted at the end of the trial, adding that he wished his daughter Shari to take over as his health care agent.

Reporters and the public in attendance were cleared from the courtroom while Redstone's deposition was played back as the trial got underway Friday. A transcript was released afterward.

Los Angeles Superior Judge David Cowan appeared swayed by Redstone's testimony after viewing the videotape, describing it as "strong evidence."

He said he would rule on a defense motion to dismiss the case on Monday.

"Your burden is now a hard one," the judge told Herzer's attorney.

- $40 billion media empire -

The testimony of Redstone, who has not been seen in public for nearly a year, is sure to be scrutinized closely.

The trial's outcome could have an impact on his $40 billion media empire, which includes MTV, Comedy Central and Paramount Pictures.

If Redstone is found incompetent, his associates could push for him to be removed as the controlling shareholder of Viacom and CBS, triggering a power struggle across his businesses.

Redstone in February stepped down as executive chairman of CBS, which includes some of the most iconic names in the entertainment business.

Herzer filed her lawsuit claiming Redstone was mentally incompetent when he kicked her out of his home in October and cut her out of his will.

The case has captivated Hollywood and Wall Street as court papers have laid out salacious details about the mogul's private life.

Herzer essentially must prove that Redstone was of sound mind when he appointed her as his health care agent in September 2015, but that he lacked the capacity to revoke the directive a month later.

Her attorney Pierce O'Donnell said during opening statements that Redstone's 62-year-old daughter Shari, his nursing staff and others in his entourage had basically staged a "coup" and "brainwashed" him into dumping her.

"His decision was not that of a sound mind," he said.

He added that Redstone's poor health was apparent during his deposition, during which questions had to be repeatedly reformulated and which was briefly interrupted at one point so his dentures could be adjusted.

However, the mogul's attorney Robert Klieger said that while his client may have trouble communicating, he was of sound mind and had decided on his own to remove Herzer as his caregiver.

"He knew exactly what he was doing," Klieger said. "He didn't want her in that position and he removed her.

"He had the capacity to make that decision and he made it of his own free will."

Stephen Read, a geriatric psychiatrist retained by Herzer, testified on Friday that Redstone had "mild to severe dementia" and appeared "severely impaired" when he examined him in January, media reports said.
Three pigs in this village, situated in the Champhai district bordering Myanmar, were suffering from the disease which caused discoloration of the skin of the pigs, making it look like the pig was suffering from a severe burn.

Veterinary doctors said that the disease was caused by a virus called Staphylococcus hyicus and the victim pigs were now recuperating after being administered direct treatment.

The disease that left more than a thousand pigs in the Mizoram-Myanmar border Champhai district has been identified as Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory Syndrome (PRRS), Animal Husbandry and Veterinary Secretary K. Lal Nghinglova said on Monday.

Members of the Rapid Response Team were sent to Champhai from Aizawl on Monday after laboratory tests confirmed PRRS outbreak in the district.

The district magistrate of Champhai was asked to issue orders stopping inter-village movement of pigs, import of pigs and piglets from Myanmar and to bury all dead pigs immediately, he added.

This kind of disease had been spread out in 2013 at 6 districts in Mizoram and it caused to kill many pigs.
Rapper uses flag and noose to protest Confederate month

JACKSON, Miss. (AP)  A rapper draped herself in a Confederate battle flag and hung a noose around her neck during a performance to protest Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant's proclamation of April as Confederate Heritage Month.

Genesis Be grew up in Biloxi, Mississippi, and she said her April 26 performance was at a music venue called SOB's in New York.

The 27-year-old Be, who is African-American, said Thursday that Bryant's proclamation, which did not mention slavery, was a "slap in the face not only to my ancestors but everyone's ancestors who fought against the Confederacy."

"In my eyes, it is an anti-American heritage," Be said in a phone interview. "The fact that my ancestors were brutalized under these same ideals of putting profit before people was my real motivation."

The governor's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday.

When Republican Bryant issued the proclamation in February to name April as Confederate Heritage Month, his spokesman Clay Chandler said that previous Democratic and Republican governors of Mississippi had issued similar proclamations.

"Gov. Bryant believes Mississippi's history deserves study and reflection, no matter how unpleasant or complicated parts of it may be," Chandler said in February. "Like the proclamation says, gaining insight from our mistakes and successes will help us move forward."

Be moved from Mississippi to New York several years ago to study music and politics at New York University, and she describes the songs she writes as "political satire, parody hip-hop." Be said she ordered the noose, as a prop, online.

"I had trouble finding a Confederate flag," Be said, "which I guess is a good thing."

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Things to know about North Korea's first congress in decades

SEOUL, South Korea (AP)  North Korea's elite are gathered in Pyongyang ahead of their biggest political conference in decades.

The Congress of the Workers' Party of Korea, the seventh of its kind and the first in 36 years, comes after months of animosity and threats following Pyongyang's fourth nuclear test explosion, in January, and a long-range rocket launch, in February.

Foreign experts say leader Kim Jong Un will likely use the meeting, which starts Friday, to push his expansion of a nuclear arsenal over the strong objections of the U.S., the U.N. and North Korea's neighbors, including ally China.

In this Thursday, May 5, 2016, photo, North Koreans walk past the April 25 House of Culture decorated in the colors and flags of their ruling party, Workers' Party, in Pyongyang, North Korea. North Koreas elite are gathered in Pyongyang ahead of their biggest political conference in decades. Foreign experts say leader Kim Jong Un will likely use the meeting, which starts Friday, to push his expansion of a nuclear arsenal over the strong objections of the U.S., the U.N. and North Korea's neighbors, including ally China. (AP Photo/Wong Maye-E)

Another key focus: developing North Korea's weak economy, hit by several rounds of U.N. sanctions over its nuclear program. Kim is also expected to tighten loyalty of a government he inherited after his dictator father's death in late 2011, probably by putting his favorites into key positions.

As usual, the authoritarian country is keeping details secret, but here are several things to know about the conference, which is expected to last several days:

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WHAT IS IT?

The party's highest-level decision-making body will determine key state policies, review past projects, reshuffle top officials and revise party regulations.

All six previous congresses came under the rule of Kim Il Sung, the late grandfather of Kim Jong Un and North Korea's founder, who died in 1994.

The most recent congress was held in 1980, for five days, with delegations from 118 countries, including China, the Soviet Union, Zimbabwe, Guinea and Romania. The fifth congress, in 1970, lasted for 12 days.

South Korea's spy agency said last week that North Korea hadn't invited any major foreign government delegations to this year's congress. There will be scores of Western journalists, though, to cover the heavily stage-managed event.

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WHY THE 36-YEAR GAP?

The Workers' Party is supposed to hold a congress every five years.

But after the 1980 meeting, Kim Il Sung reportedly ordered that the next congress take place only after the government improved public livelihood and its ability to provide its people with rice and beef soup for every meal.

Instead, a devastating famine in the 1990s is estimated to have killed hundreds of thousands. Since then, North Korea has continued to struggle with widespread poverty, malnutrition and a mismanaged economy.

Kim's Il Sung's successor, Kim Jong Il, father of Kim Jong Un, ruled for 17 years but never held a congress. Some analysts say the real reason for the gap was that Kim Jong Il's cherished "military-first" policy withered the party's authority.

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WHY NOW?

Kim Jong Un, believed to be in his early 30s, appears to be modeling his rule on his grandfather. He has adopted his hairstyle, gestures, his penchant for regular public speeches and his party-oriented governing style.

North Koreans may also relish a return to Kim Il Sung's style because North Korea was better off economically during his rule than during Kim Jong Il's.

In recent years, the North has mostly dodged massive natural disasters and the widespread starvation of past years. The country's economic situation is also believed to have improved a bit, in part because of the rise of unauthorized street markets where small-scale capitalism is largely tolerated. South Korea's central bank estimates that North Korea's economy grew around 1 percent annually between 2011 and 2014.

This all may have pushed Kim Jong Un to restart the party congresses, partly as a way to show the world that he rules a more stable country.

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WHAT CAN WE EXPECT TO SEE?

Both Kim Jong Il and Kim Jong Un made their international debuts by taking up various top jobs during big party events  the elder Kim in the 1980 congress and the younger Kim in a 2010 lower-level conference. Those confirmed that they were destined to inherit control of the nation.

Nothing that big is expected from this congress.

Kim Jong Un already has many top posts, including first secretary of the Workers' Party and supreme commander of the North's 1.2 million-strong army, the backbone of his family's dynasty.

Some analysts say Kim may not have yet established the same absolute power enjoyed by his father, but there's little doubt that a series of high-profile executions and purges, including the 2013 killing of his powerful uncle Jang Song Thaek, has left few who would dare challenge him.

South Korean media predict Kim might be promoted to general secretary of the party, a post left to his father "eternally" following his 2011 death. But some analysts say more titles for Kim won't mean much.

Instead, Kim will likely replace some of the party's old guard with younger elites loyal to him, many of them little known to outsiders. There probably won't be that much top-level personnel reshuffling, however, because Kim has already been doing this.

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ALL ABOUT KIM

Get ready for wall-to-wall praise of Kim and his efforts to strengthen the North's nuclear-weapons program, which it says is necessary to cope with U.S. military threats.

Kim has made it his stated goal to bolster nuclear capability while also improving people's livelihoods; he may formally include this policy in party regulations. This would signal something most analysts already believe: that he has no intention of giving up nuclear weapons.

South Korean officials say the North has finished up preparation for a fifth nuclear test that could come any day.

The congress is also expected to announce major policies aimed at reviving the economy. Critics question how realistic those plans could be, given that the country now faces the toughest U.N. sanctions in 20 years, imposed after this year's nuclear test and rocket launch.

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KEY PLAYERS

Kim Yong Nam, an 88-year-old member of the party's powerful Politburo Presidium, may be dismissed from that job because of his age. If so, he could also lose his position as president of the Presidium of North Korea's rubber-stamp parliament, which makes him the country's nominal head of state.

Choe Ryong Hae, who once held membership in the Politburo's Presidium, may regain that lost post. South Korea's spy agency said last year that Choe was briefly banished to a rural collective farm for re-education. Choe was once considered the North's No. 2 following Jang's execution.

Kim Yo Jong, Kim Jong Un's younger sister and currently a vice department director at the party's Central Committee, might be given higher-level jobs, part of a reported push to elevate her to the country's No. 2 power. Believed to be in her late 20s, she frequently appears at her brother's public events, standing out amid elderly male officials.

Kim Won Hong, the North's state security minister, is among a handful of top officials who have survived repeated bloody shifts that purged former Kim intimates. He may get a higher profile after the congress.

Kim Ki Nam, 86, the North's propaganda chief, may lose his posts  director of the party's bureau on propaganda affairs and a secretary of the party's central committee  because of his age.

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Follow Hyung-jin Kim on Twitter at www.twitter.com/hyungjin1972

In this July 27, 2013, file photo, North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un waves to spectators and participants during a mass military parade celebrating the 60th anniversary of the Korean War armistice in Pyongyang, North Korea. North Koreas elite are gathered in Pyongyang ahead of their biggest political conference in decades. Foreign experts say leader Kim Jong Un will likely use the meeting, which starts Friday, to push his expansion of a nuclear arsenal over the strong objections of the U.S., the U.N. and North Korea's neighbors, including ally China. (AP Photo/Wong Maye-E, File)

In this Thursday, May 5, 2016, photo, North Koreans walk past the April 25 House of Culture decorated with the portraits of the late leaders Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il and in the colors and flags of their ruling party, Workers' Party, in Pyongyang, North Korea. North Koreas elite are gathered in Pyongyang ahead of their biggest political conference in decades. Foreign experts say leader Kim Jong Un will likely use the meeting, which starts Friday, to push his expansion of a nuclear arsenal over the strong objections of the U.S., the U.N. and North Korea's neighbors, including ally China. (AP Photo/Wong Maye-E)
10 Things to Know for Friday - 6 May 2016

Your daily look at late-breaking news, upcoming events and the stories that will be talked about Friday:

1. THE SPEAKER HAS SPOKEN

House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan says he's not yet ready to back Donald Trump as the GOP nominee.

Smoke rises as a wildfire burns near Fort McMurray, Alberta, on Thursday, May 5, 2016. An ever-changing, volatile situation is fraying the nerves of residents and officials alike as a massive wildfire continues to bear down on the Fort McMurray area of northern Alberta. The province of Alberta declared a state of emergency. (Jason Franson/The Canadian Press via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT

2. WHO IS BUCKING THE PRESUMPTIVE REPUBLICAN NOMINEE

Trump is struggling in his efforts to unify the Republican Party behind his presidential campaign. Mitt Romney and former President George W. Bush don't plan to attend the party's national convention.

3. PRINCE DOCTORS FACE QUESTIONS

Questions arise about California doctor's response to Prince.

4. WHERE WILDFIRES BURN

More than 80,000 people have emptied an Alberta community in the heart of Canada's oil sands.

5. HOW IRAQ ROUTED IS FROM RAMADI

The cost of expelling the Islamic State group was high: A city destroyed.

6. SERIAL KILLER CONVICTED

A former Los Angeles trash collector is found guilty in 10 "Grim Sleeper" serial killings that spanned two decades and targeted vulnerable young black women in the inner city.

7. A RESCUE AT SEA

A Colombian fisherman is back together with his wife and family after drifting in the Pacific for two months.

8. A RESCUE ON LAND

Four people are found alive after being trapped for six days in the rubble of a building that collapsed in heavy rains in the Kenyan capital.

9. DELAYS QUESTIONED IN AMBER ALERT FOR NAVAJO GIRL

Officials and tribal members are frustrated over the delay in an Amber Alert for an 11-year-old girl who was abducted and killed, while others say issuing it earlier would have made little difference.

10. WHY A TV CHARACTER KEPT CALLING HIMSELF A 'REALTOR'

On ABC's 'Modern Family,' Phil Dunphy explains the difference between a Realtor and real estate agent  in a segment paid for by the Realtors association.

FILE - In this April 27, 2016 file photo,House Speaker Paul Ryan of Wis. speaks in Washington. Paul Ryan is refusing to support Donald Trump as the Republican nominee for president. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik, File)
Trump returns to campaign trail, targets Clinton on coal

CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP)  Republican Donald Trump returned to the campaign trail for his first rally as his party's presumptive nominee on Thursday night, delivering a series of searing attacks against likely rival Hillary Clinton and making clear he has no intention of toning down the rhetoric that drove his spectacular rise.

Trump, arriving to John Denver's "Take Me Home, Country Roads," betrayed a hint of wistfulness about wrapping up the nomination more quickly than he and his aides had expected. Rivals Ted Cruz and John Kasich suddenly ended their campaigns this week, making his visit to West Virginia, which votes May 10, largely symbolic.

"I actually wish the primaries were not over. It's no fun this way," he told the crowd of about 13,000 packed into a Charleston stadium.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump gestures during a rally in Charleston, W.Va., Thursday, May 5, 2016. (AP Photo/Steve Helber)

"I want the primaries to keep going, but everybody's out. I'm the only one left," he said.

Trump even went as far as to instruct his supporters not to bother voting in next Tuesday's primary and focus instead on the race in November.

"You don't have to vote anymore. Save your vote for the general election, OK?" he told them. "Forget this one, the primary's gone."

In his remarks, Trump drilled down on his economic message, vowing to renegotiate trade deals, punish companies for outsourcing jobs and revive the state's waning coal industry. He mugged for the cameras in a hard hat presented by a local coal association and cracked a joke about his famous hair really being his.

And after months of bragging about largely self-funding his own campaign  a decision that was praised again and again by his supporters Trump for the first time acknowledged at a rally that he plans to begin actively soliciting contributions.

Trump notably made no mention of the continued, nagging resistance to his candidacy from some elements of his party, including House Speaker Paul Ryan's announcement earlier Thursday that he's not ready to throw his support behind the business mogul.

Instead, Trump focused his attention on Clinton, criticizing, in particular, a remark she made in a March saying, "We're going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business." Clinton said this week she'd made "a misstatement" while campaigning in the state.

Trump, whose team had passed out signs that read, "Trump Digs Coal," said that, if he's elected, "We're going to put the miners back to work."

"You're going to be working your asses off," he told the miners in the crowd.

Trump also blasted the Clinton family's charitable foundation, to which he has donated, as "a scam." And he hinted at darker attacks to come, targeting Clinton over the infidelities of her husband, former President Bill Clinton.

During his administration, Trump said, Hillary Clinton "was a part of almost everything  almost  I say, not everything," Trump said at one point, drawing jeers from some in the crowd.

"Terrible," he mockingly chastised. "I didn't think the people of West Virginia thought like that. That's terrible. You should be ashamed of yourselves!"
2 weeks after 8 killed in Ohio, no arrests, few answers

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP)  Two weeks have passed since the bodies of eight family members were found on April 22 at four different homes in Ohio. No arrests have been made, and a motive for the Pike County killings remains unclear. Autopsies show the victims were shot, some of them multiple times. Here's a look at the killings and what's known:

THE DISCOVERY

At 7:49 a.m. on April 22, a breathless woman calls 911 saying two people appear dead in a home: "There's blood all over the house." Minutes later, a sheriff's deputy requests "multiple ambulances due to multiple people down at multiple residences." Seven bodies are discovered in three houses. At 1:26 p.m., another 911 call comes in with the report of an eighth body: "All that stuff that's on the news. I just found my cousin with a gunshot wound."

FILE - In this April 22, 2016, file photo, Lt. Michael Preston of the Ross County, Ohio, sheriff's office speaks to reporters on Union Hill Road, after bodies of eight family members were found that day at four homes in Pike County, Ohio. The victims were shot, some multiple times, but no arrests were made in the two weeks after the killings and the motive remained unclear. (AP Photo/John Minchillo, File)

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THE VICTIMS

Members of the Rhoden family found shot to death: 40-year-old Christopher Rhoden; his ex-wife, 37-year-old Dana Rhoden; their three children, 20-year-old Clarence "Frankie" Rhoden, 16-year-old Christopher Jr., and 19-year-old Hanna; Frankie Rhoden's fiancee, 20-year-old Hannah Gilley; Christopher Rhoden Sr.'s brother, 44-year-old Kenneth Rhoden; and 38-year-old Gary Rhoden, a cousin. Hanna Rhoden's 4-day-old baby girl was found unharmed beside her; another baby and a young child were also unharmed.

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THE SHOOTINGS

The Hamilton County coroner says one victim was shot once, with others sustaining multiple gunshot wounds, including two victims shot five times and one victim shot nine times. The report didn't specify which victim had which number of wounds. The coroner's office says some victims showed signs of soft tissue bruising, consistent with the first 911 caller's description of the victims having been beaten. A sheriff's department report says a large amount of blood was found in the living room of the house where the first two victims were found; their bodies were located in a back bedroom.

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THE INVESTIGATION

Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine has assigned multiple officers with the state Bureau of Criminal Investigation to work alongside the Pike County Sheriff's Office. The Pike County prosecutor, the Hamilton County coroner and more than 20 other sheriff's offices and Piketon police are assisting. The FBI and the DEA are providing some assistance on an as-needed basis.

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THEORIES

Numerous theories on a motive abound, including a family rift, a revenge killing by outsiders or something related to drugs. DeWine has confirmed the presence of large marijuana growing operations at three of the four crime scenes. In 2012, DeWine said the seizure of 1,200 marijuana plants in Pike County was related to Mexican cartel activity. He has since downplayed the comment, but it led to speculation that the slayings were part of a drug rivalry. Other law enforcement officials familiar with the region say they doubt the cartel connection, saying there was no evidence of it in past years.

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EVIDENCE

More than 100 items of evidence have been sent to the state crime lab for analysis. More than 450 tips have been received and state and Pike County investigators have spoken with nearly 130 witnesses. On Tuesday, authorities towed vehicles from the properties as part of the investigation.

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FUNERALS

The victims were buried in three separate services. The first, for Gary Rhoden, was held in his hometown of South Shore, Kentucky, on April 28. The second, for Hannah Gilley, the fiancee of Frankie Rhoden, was held on April 30, in Otway, Ohio. The third, for the remaining six victims, was held at Dry Run Church of Christ church in West Portsmouth on May 2, with hundreds in attendance.

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SUSPECTS

Officials haven't announced suspects or even named "persons of interest." That's unusual when it comes to mass killings, in which the perpetrator is often quickly identified. The last time eight people were shot to death in Ohio was in 2011 near Akron. The killer targeted his girlfriend and her relatives and neighbors and fatally shot seven people before killing himself. In the Piketon case, the lack of arrests doesn't mean authorities don't have suspects. University of Dayton criminal law professor Thomas Hagel said, "The fact they have not run out and arrested someone right way is not unusual. They're still building their case."

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Andrew Welsh-Huggins can be reached on Twitter at https://twitter.com/awhcolumbus. His work can be found at http://bigstory.ap.org/content/andrew-welsh-huggins

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This story has been corrected to show the first name of the University of Dayton professor is Thomas, not Charles.

Mourners gather around caskets at Scioto Burial Park during funeral services for six of the eight murder victims from Pike County, Tuesday, May 3, 2016, in McDermott, Ohio. Seven adults and a 16-year-old boy from the Rhoden family were found dead April 22 at four properties scattered across a few miles of countryside near Piketon, about 80 miles east of Cincinnati. . (AP Photo/John Minchillo)

Six hearses depart from Dry Run Church of Christ during funeral services for six of the eight murder victims from Pike County, Tuesday, May 3, 2016, in West Portsmouth, Ohio. Seven adults and a 16-year-old boy from the Rhoden family were found dead April 22 at four properties scattered across a few miles of countryside near Piketon, about 80 miles east of Cincinnati. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)
Bridge reopens a day after wall collapsed onto 2 businesses

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP)  A bridge reopened to pedestrian and vehicle traffic Friday, a day after an adjoining wall and parking lot collapsed onto two businesses below.

The ground supporting the wall adjacent to the Mulberry Street Bridge gave way Thursday afternoon. The collapse sent a car crashing through the roof of a tire warehouse, but no one was hurt.

A Pennsylvania Department of Transportation inspection team on Friday afternoon determined the bridge was safe to use.

Shay Harris, left, and Renee Twyman, both of Harrisburg, walk across the Mulberry Street Bridge after it reopened, Friday, May 6, 2016 in Harrisburg, Pa. A concrete retaining wall supporting a surface parking lot collapsed in Pennsylvania onto two businesses below, authorities said. The ground supporting the wall adjacent to the Mulberry Street Bridge gave way Thursday afternoon in the state capital of Harrisburg. (Dan Gleiter/PennLive.com via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT; MAGS OUT

The McFarland apartment building also reopened to its residents Friday, though its parking lot remained closed, Pennlive.com reported. Eight adults and seven children had to evacuate Thursday night as a precaution.

The tire warehouse and an adjoining motorcycle shop were empty, and all the employees were accounted for. The roof of the motorcycle shop also fell through.

The damaged business, Howard Tire & Auto, remained closed Friday as the owner tried to figure out how to shore up a storage area that was crushed by debris. The car that tumbled down from the parking lot also remains on top of his roof. Howard Henry told Pennlive.com that he hoped to reopen Monday.

PennDOT owns the bridge but says it doesn't own the adjacent wall and contends the agency isn't responsible for the collapse.

The cause is still under investigation.

PennDOT's Mike Keiser said Friday that heavy rainfall might have contributed to the collapse.

Mike Keiser, PennDOT District 8 executive, speaks as Harrisburg Mayor Eric Papenfuse, third from left, holds a media briefing under the Mulberry Street Bridge to announce the reopening of the bridge, Friday, May 6, 2016 in Harrisburg, Pa. A concrete retaining wall supporting a surface parking lot collapsed in Pennsylvania onto two businesses below, authorities said. The ground supporting the wall adjacent to the Mulberry Street Bridge gave way Thursday afternoon in the state capital of Harrisburg. (Dan Gleiter/PennLive.com via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT; MAGS OUT

After engineers inspected the Mulberry Street Bridge, the bridge was deemed safe and has reopened to traffic and pedestrians, Friday, May 6, 2016 in Harrisburg, Pa. A concrete retaining wall supporting a surface parking lot collapsed in Pennsylvania onto two businesses below, authorities said. The ground supporting the wall adjacent to the Mulberry Street Bridge gave way Thursday afternoon in the state capital of Harrisburg. (Dan Gleiter/PennLive.com via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT; MAGS OUT

After the reopening of the Mulberry Street Bridge, Karen Beard, left, visiting from Virginia, her mother Linda Farley, of Harrisburg, and Beard's son Dana Block, 7, look at the scene of a collapse at the McFarland Building, Friday, May 6, 2016 in Harrisburg, Pa. A concrete retaining wall supporting a surface parking lot collapsed in Pennsylvania onto two businesses below, authorities said. The ground supporting the wall adjacent to the Mulberry Street Bridge gave way Thursday afternoon in the state capital of Harrisburg. (Dan Gleiter/PennLive.com via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT; MAGS OUT
Bangladesh professor under 24-hour armed guard after threats

NEW DELHI (AP)  After a Dhaka University professor asked a woman to remove her veil during his class, Muslim extremists called for his death, posting his personal details online along with tips on how to kill. Today, he remains under constant guard by armed police, stays mostly at home and bars his front door.

Azizur Rahman is among a growing number of political moderates and intellectuals seeking protection in Bangladesh, where at least 15 writers, activists, religious minorities and foreign aid workers have been killed in targeted attacks since the start of 2015. Islamic extremists have claimed responsibility for the killings, which have prompted some Bangladeshis to go into hiding, and others to seek asylum in the United States and Europe.

Some of the violence has taken place at Rahman's university in Dhaka, the Bangladeshi capital. Last year, secular writer and blogger Avijit Roy was hacked to death and his wife was critically injured in a savage attack on campus. In 2004, members of a banned Islamist group stabbed poet and linguist Humayun Azad at a campus book fair; he died months later.

In this Tuesday, May 3, 2016 photo, Dhaka University professor Azizur Rahman works on his computer at his home in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Rahman is among a growing number of political moderates and intellectuals seeking protection in Bangladesh, where at least 15 writers, activists, religious minorities and foreign aid workers have been killed in targeted attacks since the start of 2015. Islamist extremists have claimed responsibility for the killings, which have prompted some Bangladeshis to go into hiding, and others to seek asylum in the United States and European countries including Germany, Sweden and Switzerland. (AP Photo)

Rahman, a psychology professor, pleaded with the government for 24-hour armed security outside his classes and at the modest campus apartment where he lives with his wife. Plainclothes policemen follow his every move around the sprawling, tree-filled open campus where he teaches five days a week.

Rahman said in an interview that he had asked the student to remove her veil because "I should know whom I am teaching. ... I told her if you show your face in the (student) identity card, you can also do so in class."

As the girl refused, the exchange was captured on a cellphone video by another student in the class. The next day, it had been uploaded onto the Facebook page of an Islamic extremist group called Salauddiner Ghora, or The Horses of Salauddin  along with a clarion call for its followers to murder Rahman, whom they called "un-Islamic."

With the video, the group also posted Rahman's photograph, personal phone number and Facebook account. It also posted a link to an online blog detailing strategies for killing someone quietly, and links to two videos on YouTube on how to cut with a knife.

Rahman said he believes extremists have had their eye on him for some time, and are "capitalizing on the veil issue."

"Militants and persons belonging to religion-based organizations have carried out a hate campaign against me in a planned manner," he said.

Rahman has been critical of those who opposed Bangladesh's independence from Pakistan, won through a brutal war fought in 1971. The issue has exacerbated tensions between Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's secular government and the country's Islamist opposition since the government set up special tribunal proceedings to prosecute 1971 war crimes. Though some rights groups and foreign governments have called the proceedings flawed, the trials have continued to convict opposition leaders and sentence them to death.

On Thursday, the Supreme Court rejected a petition from the leader of the Jamaat-e-Islami opposition party, Motiur Rahman Nizami, seeking a review of his war-crimes conviction and death sentence. Amnesty International urged Bangladesh to stay Nizami's execution and avoid stoking tensions, noting the court's decision had already triggered countrywide protests. "Taking another life will just perpetuate the cycle of violence," the group's South Asia campaign director, Jameen Kaur, said in a statement.

All 15 attacks on writers, minorities, activists and foreigners have been claimed by the Islamic State group or various al-Qaida affiliates in Bangladesh, but the government denies any involvement by transnational jihadist groups. It blames the political opposition, which denies involvement and says it is being scapegoated.

The Bangladeshi government insists it is working to stop the attacks, but so far it has charged no one in any of the 15 killings since 2015.

Meanwhile, the brutality continues, usually by a handful of young men wielding knives or cleavers to hack their targets to death. On April 30, a Hindu tailor was murdered. The government has advised people at risk to simply lie low and try not to offend anyone.

This week Singapore announced that it had detained eight Bangladeshi workers suspected of planning attacks linked to the Islamic State group in their home country, and Bangladesh detained another five who had been deported back from Singapore for suspected IS ties.

Rahman is not the only Dhaka University teacher to receive death threats, Vice Chancellor A.A.M.S. Arefin Siddique said.

"Threats from unnamed senders are nothing new, but an open declaration to kill the professor is a precise one," Siddique said. He has urged the city's police chief to be proactive in the case by going after those posting threats online.

"The persons calling for murder should be arrested," Siddique said. He added that university officials "are doing everything to ensure (Rahman's) security and safety."

Officer Abu Bakar Siddique, who heads the police station that registered Rahman's complaint, said he had no information about the group that had posted the threatening Facebook post, which had also praised the fatal stabbings on April 25 of two gay-rights activists, including an employee of the U.S. Agency for International Development.

This week, the Facebook account appeared to have been blocked or deactivated and was not accessible.

Among those coming to Rahman's defense is the student who refused to remove her veil.

Taposhi Rabeya, a third-year student, said she was surprised by the threats made against her professor, and that the video posted online did not fairly capture the full exchange Rahman had with his students. She said had worked out an understanding with Rahman that allowed her to continue wearing the veil in class.

"I hope all will realize the truth and uphold the dignity of the teacher, and refrain from further misinterpreting the issue," she wrote.

In this Tuesday, May 3, 2016 photo, Dhaka University professor Azizur Rahman points to a social media post at his home in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Rahman said he had asked the student to remove her veil , as the girl refused, the exchange was captured on a cellphone video by another student in the class. The next day, it had been uploaded onto the Facebook page of an Islamist group called Salauddiner Ghora, or The Horses of Salauddin _ along with a clarion call for its followers to murder Rahman, whom they called un-Islamic. (AP Photo)
Israeli cowboys live frontier life on Syria's doorstep

KIDMAT ZVI, Golan Heights (AP)  With his wide-brimmed hat, Wrangler jeans and ornate belt buckle, Yehiel Alon could easily pass for one of the Montana ranchers he once worked with. But the 53-year-old is an Israeli cowboy on the Golan Heights bordering war-torn Syria, where frontier life takes on a whole new meaning.

"It's probably the only place on earth where you will see cows alongside tanks," he says with a smile, a cigarette dangling from his lips.

Herding cattle in these parts is no job for greenhorns. Alon has got to keep them from stepping on decades-old land mines, wandering into military bases or being shot in nearby firing ranges.

In this Monday, April 11, 2016 photo shows, a cowboy shaped metal gate of a ranch in the Israeli controlled Golan Heights near the border with Syria. The small brotherhood of about 100 cowboys who are responsible for raising the primary source of Israeli domestic beef know well they face a particular set of unique challenges. For starters, they operate on a relatively small patch of land made up mostly nature reserves and military grounds so everything they do has to be coordinated with authorities. Israel captured Golan from Syria in the 1967 war. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)

The tranquility of country life contrasts sharply with Middle East tensions all around. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently drew renewed attention to the Golan Heights by vowing to forever hold the land Israel captured from Syria in the 1967 war and from which an Israeli withdrawal was once considered key to regional peace.

That same week, Alon and three other cowboys on horseback rounded up some 650 head of cattle during a major Israeli military drill, in which helicopters hovered above and explosions were heard in the distance. Just over the ridge lay the greatest threat of all  the Syrian civil war, which has occasionally sent errant fire onto the Israeli-occupied side of the Golan.

The cowboys dismiss the Syrian fighting as background noise and believe Netanyahu was merely stating the obvious  that they aren't going anywhere. But the small brotherhood of about 100 cowboys who are responsible for raising the primary source of Israeli beef acknowledge they face a set of unique challenges.

For starters, they operate on a relatively small patch of land mostly made up of nature reserves and military grounds, so everything they do has to be coordinated with authorities. In summer, their primary role is that of firefighters, putting out blazes caused by negligent hikers and military maneuvers. They've had to euthanize cows that had limbs blown off by stepping on mines, and in last month's cattle drive one cowboy had to physically block a gap in a military base's busted fence to prevent cows from roaming inside.

"Sometimes you can't even focus on the cows because you are so busy with everything else going on," said Shay Zerbib, 43, who has previously worked on ranches in Texas and New Mexico.

For Wafiq Ajami, a 54-year-old Druze cowboy who lives along the Syrian border, the fighting there is far more personal. He has relatives on the other side, and has had to save his own cattle from spillover fire.

"At first I thought it was arson, and I yelled out 'someone is setting fire to the field,'" he recalled. "Then all of the sudden I saw the mortars landing."

Here is a series of photos by Associated Press photographer Ariel Schalit.

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Follow Aron Heller on Twitter at www.twitter.com/aronhellerap

Follow Ariel Schalit on Twitter at www.twitter.com/arielschalit

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In this Thursday, April 21, 2016 photo Israeli cowboy Yehiel Alon rides on horseback as he rounds up some 650 head of cattle in the Israeli controlled Golan Heights near the border with Syria. Alon cuts the figure of a quintessential cowboy. With his wide brim hat, Wrangler jeans and an ornate buckle on his leather belt, he could easily be mistaken for the Montana ranchers he once worked with. But the 53-year-old Alon is a cowboy on the Golan Heights bordering worn-torn Syria and the frontier life takes on a whole new meaning here. "It's probably the only place on earth where you will see cows alongside tanks," he says with a smile, a cigarette dangling from his lips. Israel captured Golan from Syria in the 1967 war. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)

In this Thursday, April 21, 2016 photo, cattle stand in a pond in the Israeli controlled Golan Heights near the border with Syria. The small brotherhood of about 100 cowboys who are responsible for raising the primary source of Israeli domestic beef know well they face a particular set of unique challenges. For starters, they operate on a relatively small patch of land made up mostly nature reserves and military grounds so everything they do has to be coordinated with authorities.Israel captured Golan from Syria in the 1967 war. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)

In this Monday, April 11, 2016 photo, a cow grazes in a military training ground in the Israeli controlled Golan Heights near the border with Syria . The small brotherhood of about 100 cowboys who are responsible for raising the primary source of Israeli domestic beef know well they face a particular set of unique challenges. For starters, they operate on a relatively small patch of land made up mostly nature reserves and military grounds so everything they do has to be coordinated with authorities. Israel captured Golan from Syria in the 1967 war. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)

In this Monday, April 11, 2016 photo shows, A cattle's head in ranch in the Israeli controlled Golan Heights near the border with Syria. The small brotherhood of about 100 cowboys who are responsible for raising the primary source of Israeli domestic beef know well they face a particular set of unique challenges. For starters, they operate on a relatively small patch of land made up mostly nature reserves and military grounds so everything they do has to be coordinated with authorities.Israel captured Golan from Syria in the 1967 war. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)

In this Wednesday, April 20, 2016 photo, a cow grazes in a military training ground in the Israeli controlled Golan Heights near the border with Syria. The small brotherhood of about 100 cowboys who are responsible for raising the primary source of Israeli domestic beef know well they face a particular set of unique challenges. For starters, they operate on a relatively small patch of land made up mostly nature reserves and military grounds so everything they do has to be coordinated with authorities. Israel captured Golan from Syria in the 1967 war. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)

In this Thursday, April 21, 2016 photo, a cow walks past Israeli military APC in the Israeli controlled Golan Heights near the border with Syria. The small brotherhood of about 100 cowboys who are responsible for raising the primary source of Israeli domestic beef know well they face a particular set of unique challenges. For starters, they operate on a relatively small patch of land made up mostly nature reserves and military grounds so everything they do has to be coordinated with authorities. Israel captured Golan from Syria in the 1967 war. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)

In this Thursday, April 21, 2016 photo, Cattle graze by an Israeli military APC in the Israeli controlled Golan Heights near the border with Syria. The small brotherhood of about 100 cowboys who are responsible for raising the primary source of Israeli domestic beef know well they face a particular set of unique challenges. For starters, they operate on a relatively small patch of land made up mostly nature reserves and military grounds so everything they do has to be coordinated with authorities. Israel captured Golan from Syria in the 1967 war. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)

In this Wednesday, April 20, 2016 photo, a horseshoe shaped ashtray sits on a table in a ranch in the Israeli controlled Golan Heights near the border with Syria. The small brotherhood of about 100 cowboys who are responsible for raising the primary source of Israeli domestic beef know well they face a particular set of unique challenges. For starters, they operate on a relatively small patch of land made up mostly nature reserves and military grounds so everything they do has to be coordinated with authorities.Israel captured Golan from Syria in the 1967 war. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)

In this Thursday, April 21, 2016 photo Israeli cowboy Yehiel Alon heads out on his horse to round up some 650 head of cattle in the Israeli controlled Golan Heights near the border with Syria. Alon cuts the figure of a quintessential cowboy. With his wide brim hat, Wrangler jeans and an ornate buckle on his leather belt, he could easily be mistaken for the Montana ranchers he once worked with. But the 53-year-old Alon is a cowboy on the Golan Heights bordering worn-torn Syria and the frontier life takes on a whole new meaning here. "It's probably the only place on earth where you will see cows alongside tanks," he says with a smile, a cigarette dangling from his lips. Israel captured Golan from Syria in the 1967 war. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)

In this Thursday, April 21, 2016 photo Israeli cowboy Yehiel Alon pulls his horse before he heads out on horseback to round up some 650 head of cattle in the Israeli controlled Golan Heights near the border with Syria. Yehiel Alon cuts the figure of a quintessential cowboy. With his wide brim hat, Wrangler jeans and an ornate buckle on his leather belt, he could easily be mistaken for the Montana ranchers he once worked with. But the 53-year-old Alon is an Israeli cowboy on the Golan Heights bordering worn-torn Syria and the frontier life takes on a whole new meaning here. "It's probably the only place on earth where you will see cows alongside tanks," he says with a smile, a cigarette dangling from his lips. Israel captured Golan from Syria in the 1967 war. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)

In this Thursday, April 21, 2016 photo, Druze cowboy Wafiq Ajami, gathers the cattle in the Israeli controlled Golan Heights near the border with Syria. Israel captured Golan from Syria in the 1967 war. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)

In this Thursday, April 21, 2016 photo, Israeli cowboy Yehiel Alon rides on horseback as he rounds up some 650 head of cattle in the Israeli controlled Golan Heights near the border with Syria. Alon cuts the figure of a quintessential cowboy. With his wide brim hat, Wrangler jeans and an ornate buckle on his leather belt, he could easily be mistaken for the Montana ranchers he once worked with. But the 53-year-old Alon is an Israeli cowboy on the Golan Heights bordering worn-torn Syria and the frontier life takes on a whole new meaning here. "It's probably the only place on earth where you will see cows alongside tanks," he says with a smile, a cigarette dangling from his lips.Israel captured Golan from Syria in the 1967 war. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)

In this Thursday, April 21, 2016 photo Israeli cowboy Yehiel Alon and Druze cowboy Wafiq Ajami round up some 650 head of cattle in the Israeli controlled Golan Heights near the border with Syria. The small brotherhood of about 100 cowboys who are responsible for raising the primary source of Israeli domestic beef know well they face a particular set of unique challenges. For starters, they operate on a relatively small patch of land made up mostly nature reserves and military grounds so everything they do has to be coordinated with authorities. Israel captured Golan from Syria in the 1967 war. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)

In this Wednesday April 20, 2016 photo, Israeli cowboy Shay Zerbib pauses after gathering cattle in the Israeli controlled Golan Heights near the border with Syria. "Sometimes you can't even focus on the cows because you are so busy with everything else going on," said Shay Zerbib, 43, who has worked before on ranches in Texas and New Mexico. "For me, this is idealistic work. There is an element of Zionism to it." Israel captured Golan from Syria in the 1967 war. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)

This Thursday, April 21, 2016 photo shows, the remains of a dead cow in the Israeli controlled Golan Heights near the border with Syria. The small brotherhood of about 100 cowboys who are responsible for raising the primary source of Israeli domestic beef know well they face a particular set of unique challenges. For starters, they operate on a relatively small patch of land made up mostly nature reserves and military grounds so everything they do has to be coordinated with authorities. Israel captured Golan from Syria in the 1967 war. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)

In this Thursday, April 21, 2016 photo, Druze cowboy Wafiq Ajami, smokes a cigarette after rounding up some 650 head of cattle in the Israeli controlled Golan Heights near the border with Syria. For Wafiq Ajami, a 54-year-old Druze cowboy who lives along the Syrian border, the fighting there is far more personal. He has relatives on the other side whose been affected and he's had to save his own cattle from spillover fire that has damaged his fields. "At first I thought it was arson, and I yelled out 'someone is setting fire to the field,'" he recalled. "Then all of the sudden I saw the mortars landing." Israel captured Golan from Syria in the 1967 war. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)

In this Thursday, April 21, 2016 photo, Israeli cowboys Yehiel Alon, Shay Zerbib, and Erez Ashtanker round up some 650 head of cattle in the Israeli controlled Golan Heights near the border with Syria. The small brotherhood of about 100 cowboys who are responsible for raising the primary source of Israeli domestic beef know well they face a particular set of unique challenges. For starters, they operate on a relatively small patch of land made up mostly nature reserves and military grounds so everything they do has to be coordinated with authorities. Israel captured Golan from Syria in the 1967 war. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)
'We got him,' victims' father says of 'Grim Sleeper' killer

LOS ANGELES (AP)  By the time police found Alicia Alexander's naked body under a mattress in an alley in 1988, six other young, black women had died similar deaths in the neighborhood known as South Central Los Angeles.

It would take decades for police to make an arrest and a half dozen more years for justice to reach the families of the victims Thursday when a Los Angeles County jury found a former garbage man guilty of 10 murders known as the "Grim Sleeper" serial killings.

The convicted man, Lonnie Franklin Jr., looked unfazed as the verdicts were read and Alexander's parents and other victims' kin in the gallery quietly wept and dabbed their eyes with tissues.

Lonnie Franklin Jr. appears in count in Los Angeles, Thursday, May 5, 2016. The former trash collector in Los Angeles was convicted Thursday of 10 "Grim Sleeper" serial killings that spanned two decades and targeted vulnerable young black women in the inner city. (Barbara Davidson/Los Angeles Times via AP, Pool) MANDATORY CREDIT

"They read it and I said, 'We got him,'" Alexander's father, Porter Alexander Jr., said outside court. "It took all this time, but we got him."

The killings from 1985 to 2007 were dubbed the work of the "Grim Sleeper" because of an apparent 14-year gap that followed an attempted killing shortly after Alexander, 18, was slain. But prosecutors now think he never rested and there were other victims during that span.

Community members complained that police had not investigated the killings thoroughly because of the victims' race and the fact some were prostitutes and drug users during the crack cocaine epidemic.

The slain, including a 15-year-old girl, were fatally shot or strangled and dumped in alleys and garbage bins. Most had traces of coke in their systems.

A task force was assigned to revisit the homicides after the last body was found. Ballistics evidence connected eight victims and DNA, which hadn't been available at the time of the first killings, showed a link to one man, though his genetic profile wasn't in any criminal database.

Police were able to close in when the DNA of Franklin's son, who was arrested for a felony, showed similarities to material left on many of the victims.

Franklin, a onetime trash collector and a garage attendant for the Los Angeles Police Department, had been hiding in plain sight, said Deputy District Attorney Beth Silverman.

An officer posing as a busboy retrieved pizza crusts and napkins with Franklin's DNA while he was celebrating at a birthday party.

It proved a match with material found on the breasts and clothing of many of the women and on the zip tie of a trash bag that held the curled-up body of the final victim, Janecia Peters. She was found Jan. 1, 2007, by someone rifling through a dumpster who noticed her red fingernails through a hole in the bag.

The victims were sisters, daughters and mothers who suffered frailties but had hopes and dreams, Silverman said.

She projected photos of the deceased from happier days, many smiling from headshots that captured their youth and hairstyles of the times. The images were in stark contrast to gory crime scene and autopsy photos also displayed of half-naked bodies sprawled among garbage  images that made family members wince, weep and recoil.

Samara Herard, the sister of the youngest victim, Princess Berthomieux, said there were things she didn't want to see during the trial and held her head down at times, but was elated with the verdict.

"I wanted to remember the sweet little girl who had her whole life in front of her," Herard said.

Defense lawyer Seymour Amster challenged what he called "inferior science" of DNA and ballistics evidence. During his closing argument, he introduced a new theory: a "mystery man with a mystery gun and mystery DNA" was responsible for all the killings.

Silverman scoffed at that notion, saying it was as rational an explanation as a space ship dropping from the sky and killing the women.

A key witness was the sole known survivor, Enietra Washington, who was shot in the chest about two months after Alexander was killed.

Her attack fit the pattern of other killings and showed how the killer carried out the crimes, Silverman said. The bullet removed from her came from the same gun used to shoot Alexander and six others.

Perhaps more telling was a detail she told detectives about how her attacker took a Polaroid photo of her as she was losing consciousness. More than two decades later, police found the snapshot of the wounded Washington hidden behind a wall in Franklin's garage.

Franklin, 63, was also found guilty of one count of attempted murder for Washington's shooting.

Prosecutors will seek the death penalty during the second phase of trial scheduled to start May 12.

Porter Alexander Jr. wants to see the convicted murderer face the same fate his daughter did.

The 75-year-old once wondered if he would live to see the day when Franklin was convicted. He attended court religiously for even the most mundane hearings so Franklin could feel his presence.

"He took a limb from me and every time I look she's missing and can never be replaced," he said. "I don't care how many pictures I have on the wall, or all the things I see around me, doesn't bring her back."

Lonnie Franklin Jr., center, sits in count in Los Angeles, Thursday, May 5, 2016. The former trash collector in Los Angeles was convicted Thursday of 10 "Grim Sleeper" serial killings that spanned two decades and targeted vulnerable young black women in the inner city. (Barbara Davidson/Los Angeles Times via AP, Pool) MANDATORY CREDIT

FILE - In this Feb. 6, 2015 file photo, Enietra Washington pauses to compose her thoughts as she notices serial killer suspect Lonnie Franklin Jr., during a preliminary hearing in Los Angeles Superior Court. Washington is the sole known survivor in 10 "Grim Sleeper" serial killings. Franklin was convicted Thursday, May 5, 2016, of the serial killings that spanned two decades and targeted vulnerable young black women in the inner city. (AP Photo/Nick Ut, File)

FILE - In this May 2, 2016 file photo, a montage of photos of alleged victims is projected on a screen in the courtroom during the during closing arguments in the serial murder trial of Lonnie Franklin Jr., seated at far left, in Los Angeles Superior Court. Franklin was convicted Thursday, May 5, 2016, of 10 murders and one attempted murder in the serial killings that were dubbed the work of the Grim Sleeper because of a 14-year gap in slayings that spanned two decades in South Los Angeles and targeted vulnerable young black women in the inner city. (Mark Boster/ Los Angeles Times, Pool, File)

Lonnie Franklin Jr. sits in count in Los Angeles, Thursday, May 5, 2016. The former trash collector in Los Angeles was convicted Thursday of 10 "Grim Sleeper" serial killings that spanned two decades and targeted vulnerable young black women in the inner city. (Barbara Davidson/Los Angeles Times via AP, Pool) MANDATORY CREDIT

Porter Alexander Jr. and his wife Mary, whose daughter Alicia, 18, was shot and strangled, face reporters in Los Angeles Superior Court on Thursday, May 5, 2016. Lonnie Franklin Jr., a former Los Angeles trash collector, was convicted Thursday of 10 counts of murder in the "Grim Sleeper" serial killings, including Alicia, that targeted poor, young black women over two decades. (AP Photo/Nick Ut)

This undated photo provided by the Los Angeles County District Attorney's office shows Princess Berthomieux, who was strangled and discovered naked and hidden in a bush in an Inglewood, Calif., alley on March 9, 2002. Lonnie Franklin Jr. was convicted of killing Berthomieux and several other women on Thursday, May 5, 2016. (Los Angeles County District Attorney via AP)

This undated photo provided by the Los Angeles County District Attorney's office shows Janecia Peters, who was shot in the back and strangled and found in a trash bag in a trash bin on Jan. 1, 2007. Her body was found in the same alley where Bernita Sparks body was found 20 years earlier. Lonnie Franklin Jr. was convicted of killing Peters, Sparks and several other women on Thursday, May 5, 2016. (Los Angeles County District Attorney via AP)

This undated photo provided by the Los Angeles County District Attorney's office shows Alicia Alexander, who was shot and strangled and found naked under a blue foam mattress in an alley on Sept. 11, 1988. Lonnie Franklin Jr. was convicted of killing Alexander and several other women on Thursday, May 5, 2016. (Los Angeles County District Attorney via AP)
The conference will be held from 2-5 May for four days at BCDC hall in Tahan block, Kalaymyo and many Falam youths are presenting at the conference from various places in order to build better unity and communication among them, said Jesses.

We cant have good communication or network among our youth group as they are located in different places in the state. The main purpose of doing this kind of conference is that they have to know each other very well firstly, for having unity and to active in nationalism, he told to Khonumthung News.

The conference deals mainly with the issues of human rights, protection of environment, civic education, policy and management, and history of Chin; these will be discussed for the four days of confrence.

There are about 100 attendants at the conference and it is used to hold once in three years. The last conference had been held in Falam town in 2013.
Treasure hunter's disappearance still a mystery after months

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP)  Fixated on computer screens and video monitors, an army of volunteers scattered across the country has been painstakingly reviewing hundreds of images and hours of footage recorded over the last four months, desperately hoping to find a single clue to the whereabouts of missing treasure hunter Randy Bilyeu.

The Colorado man disappeared in early January in a remote part of northern New Mexico while searching for a $2 million cache of riches supposedly hidden several years ago by an eccentric antiquities dealer.

From the shadow of a blue heron flying low over the Rio Grande to a scrap of cardboard, nothing has gotten past the volunteers who are looking for Bilyeu.

This June 2015 photo provided by Linda Bilyeu shows her ex-husband Randy Bilyeu during a visit to northern New Mexico. The Colorado man disappeared in early January 2016 while searching for a $2 million cache of gold and jewels in northern New Mexico. The recent discovery of a backpack on a rugged slope at Bandelier National Monument has re-energized the search for Bilyeu. (Courtesy of Linda Bilyeu via AP, File) MANDATORY CREDIT

The group, linked through email and social media, is analyzing every stretch of the rugged canyons and plateaus along the river via drones and telephoto lenses. Some are searching by foot and boat.

Psychics have even reached out and federal authorities say they're checking areas within Bandelier National Monument where it's too dangerous for the public to go.

"Words cannot express the gratitude the family has for all the caring individuals who take time out of their busy lives to help, in one way or another, search for Randy," said ex-wife Linda Bilyeu. "He would be humbled if he knew how many people he has touched."

The family has no intension of giving up the search for Bilyeu, a father and grandfather who would have celebrated his 55th birthday in February.

"However long it takes, we will find Randy," said Linda Bilyeu, as she sorted through dozens of messages while trying to coordinate the hunt from her home in Orlando, Florida.

Pulses quickened last week when, for the first time in months, a clue was discovered  a blue backpack near the top of a rugged, rocky slope at Bandelier. The search was re-energized and park officials began investigating.

Based on what's in the pack, there's a strong indication it belonged to Bilyeu but authorities have yet to make an official determination.

Bandelier Superintendent Jason Lott confirmed this week the search is still active.

As they wait for word, the volunteers are focusing instead on areas outside the park. They launched a canoe trip down the Rio Grande on Thursday and another drone flight is planned this weekend.

Thursday marked four months since Bilyeu set out in his raft in search for the treasure  a bronze box said to be full of gold, jewels and other artifacts.

Bilyeu dreamed of finding the treasure. He moved out West two years go and began researching spots where he believed New Mexico antiquities dealer and author Forrest Fenn hid the loot.

Bilyeu vanished after setting out to raft part of the Rio Grande west of Santa Fe. His raft and dog were found after he was reported missing but there was no sign of him.

He had scouted the area in the weeks leading up to his disappearance. His maps were dotted with notes and references to the cryptic clues laid out by Fenn in his memoire.

"Where warm waters halt ... in the canyon down ... too far to walk ..." The clues have inspired tens of thousands of people to look for the treasure, from Yellowstone National Park to the foothills of the Rocky Mountains.

Fenn dismisses those who suggest the treasure isn't real. It's still out there, he says, while cautioning would-be hunters that it's in a place where an 80-year-old man could hide it.

Some say the treasure hunt should be called off. Even the volunteers are mindful of the dangers of searching  whether it's for the treasure or for Bilyeu.

After four months, the odds have yet to deter the volunteers  a nod to Linda Bilyeu's determination and the efforts of family and friends to keep alive Randy's sense of adventure and humor.
AP Analysis: For Republicans fearing Trump, Ryan offers out

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP)  Within the span of a single hour, Donald Trump gave Republicans wary of his presidential nomination yet another reason to worry  and House Speaker Paul Ryan tried to give them a way out.

In a surprise rebuke, Ryan announced Thursday that he was "just not ready" to support Trump, who became the presumptive Republican presidential nominee this week after a big win in Indiana forced his remaining rivals from the race. Ryan told CNN that his party should have a leader who "appeals to a vast majority of Americans."

Just before Ryan's stunning statement, Trump attempted to make that kind of appeal  in his own eyebrow-raising way. The billionaire businessman sent a tweet from his Trump Tower office featuring a picture of him eating a taco bowl and declaring his affection for one of America's fastest-growing and politically powerful minority groups.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump gestures during a rally in Charleston, W.Va., Thursday, May 5, 2016. (AP Photo/Steve Helber)

"I love Hispanics!" Trump wrote. He noted that he sent the message on Cinco de Mayo, a holiday marking the Mexican Army's victory over the French in 1862.

Trump's ode to the taco bowl may have been sent with good intentions. But it reflected a political tone deafness that worries some Republican leaders as they not only weigh the real estate mogul's prospects in the general election, but also how far they should go in linking themselves to his candidacy.

To some Hispanic leaders, Trump's tweet was offensive and patronizing, the latest stumble from a candidate who has deeply offended many in their community.

"Eating a taco or wearing a sombrero doesn't cut it w/our community in 2016," Janet Murguia, president of the National Council of La Raza, the nation's largest Hispanic civil rights organization, said on Twitter.

Vicente Fox, the former president of Mexico, who has clashed with Trump over his signature proposal to build a wall between the two nations, joked that he saw that Trump is "now having some enchiladas and some Mexican food. I hope that he will not get indigestion."

To be sure, Trump's enthusiastic support from Republican primary voters  they skew whiter and older  is rooted in part in his willingness to cross lines of political correctness and flout traditional campaign decorum. But the voters Trump will face in his November race, likely against Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton, will be far more diverse.

Trump already enters the general election struggling mightily with Hispanics, many of whom strongly oppose his call for building a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border and deporting the millions of people in the United States illegally.

In an Associated Press-GfK poll conducted in early April, 82 percent of Hispanics had an unfavorable opinion of Trump and just 11 percent had a favorable opinion. At least 7 in 10 Hispanics said words including honest, civil, compassionate, competent and likable don't describe Trump even slightly well.

Ryan, a Wisconsin lawmaker and the Republican Party's vice presidential nominee in 2012, has been among the GOP leaders pushing for an overhaul of U.S. immigration laws. He has also supported measures that would give legal status to those already in the country illegally.

Some Republicans see immigration as a threshold issue for Hispanic voters, and say their party stands little chance of having broad appeal with Hispanics unless it addresses the nation's fractured approach to immigration. Mitt Romney won less than 30 percent of Hispanics in his loss to President Barack Obama in the 2012 election.

Those stark political realities pose one of the biggest problems for Ryan and other GOP officials trying to gauge how supporting Trump in the short-term could impact their party  and, of course, their own political futures  in years to come. That's a particular concern for Ryan, who passed on running for president this year but is already being eyed for a run in 2020.

Other prominent Republicans took similar steps to distance themselves from Trump this week, including former Presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush, who both made clear they would not be helping their party's nominee. But as the nation's highest elected Republican, Ryan's words have particular resonance and could give others in his party cover to take a similar stance.

Of course, Ryan may yet come around on Trump; he told CNN "there's a lot of questions conservatives are going to want answers to." One of the first big-name Republicans to back Trump, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, said Thursday: "Donald's got work to do to bring people together. I'm going to reach out to the speaker and see what his concerns are."

But Trump made clear later Thursday that he won't be waiting around.

"I am not ready to support Speaker Ryan's agenda," Trump said. "Perhaps in the future we can work together and come to an agreement about what is best for the American people."

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AP News Survey Specialist Emily Swanson contributed to this report.

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Pace has covered the White House and politics for the AP since 2007. Follow her on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/jpaceDC

A supporter of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump holds a sign during a rally in Charleston, W.Va., Thursday, May 5, 2016. (AP Photo/Steve Helber)
More big-name Republicans abandon Trump; he just shrugs

WASHINGTON (AP)  Big-name GOP leaders piled on Friday against Donald Trump in an extraordinary show of Republican-vs.-Republican discontent over his winning the party's presidential nomination. Trump just shrugged it off, declaring they didn't really matter when compared to all the voters who turned out to vote for him in this year's primary elections.

Trump grudgingly agreed to meet next week with Paul Ryan, the Republican House speaker whose statement a day earlier  he said he was not ready to embrace Trump's nomination  set off the intraparty fireworks. Trump said he had "no idea" if they would patch things up and it wasn't all that important anyway.

"The thing that matters most are the millions of people that have come out to vote for me and give me a landslide victory in almost every state," Trump said moments after Ryan, the nation's highest-ranking Republican officeholder, announced their planned meeting.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks during a rally, Friday, May 6, 2016, in Omaha, Neb. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)

Later in the day, two of Trump's vanquished GOP rivals, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, said they would not vote for him in November. That was a startling rejection by party leaders.

Trump said of Ryan's stance: "I figured, routinely, he would be behind me. The other day, he pulled a big surprise."

He said he was not surprised about Bush's stance and was tersely dismissive of Graham.

Of Bush, he said, "I will not say he's low-energy," reprising a jibe he used frequently during the primary campaign. He mocked Graham's poor primary showing, saying, "Like the voters who rejected him, so will I!"

Ryan said his meeting with Trump would occur next Thursday and that Trump also would meet with other House GOP leaders. Discussions will center on "the kind of Republican principles and ideas that can win the support of the American people this November," Ryan said.

The unlikely back-and-forth came a day after Ryan injected new uncertainty into the turbulent presidential contest by refusing, for now, to endorse Trump. Aides said that, far from seeking to helm an anti-Trump movement, Ryan hopes to exert a positive influence for the general election campaign after a nominating contest that has alienated women, minorities and other voter groups.

Yet Trump's reaction Friday made it unclear what impact Ryan could have.

"With millions of people coming into the party, obviously I'm saying the right thing," Trump said on Fox News Channel. "I mean, he talks about unity, but what is this?"

Democrats are generally steering clear of the Republican infighting, letting the party's leaders tear at each other.

However, President Barack Obama did say when questioned about it at the White House: "This is not entertainment. This is not a reality show," and candidates need to show they have the qualities to lead the world's strongest nation.

As the reality of the GOP divisions sank in Friday, some Republicans were not shy about expressing their displeasure with Ryan. The telegenic Wisconsin Republican served as his party's vice presidential nominee in 2012, was drafted to the high-profile role of House speaker last fall and is seen as having designs on the 2020 presidential nomination himself.

"Yesterday's statement emboldens others to be equally publicly difficult. And that runs the risk of creating a Goldwater kind of moment where the party really does split," former House Speaker Newt Gingrich told The Associated Press, referring to the 1964 Republican presidential nominee whose candidacy divided the GOP and was followed by a big Democratic victory.

"I don't necessarily know that that's his role, to be a sticking point for the Republican nominee," said Rep. Duncan Hunter of California, one of a growing number of Trump supporters in the House. Added Rep. Lou Barletta of Pennsylvania: "The voters of our party have spoken loud and clear, and it's their voice that matters."

Trump has criticized Ryan in the past and renewed his attacks Friday by arguing that Ryan and presidential candidate Mitt Romney, "lost a race that should have been won" in 2012. Trump and Ryan also have disagreements on policy, from immigration to Social Security to trade.

In his latest surprising breach of orthodoxy on Friday Trump questioned whether the U.S. government would make good on its commitment to fully honor Treasury notes, suggesting he might try to get a better deal.

It all comes at a moment when Trump needs to be reaching out to the women, minorities and others who will be crucial for him to triumph in November over Hillary Clinton, the likely Democratic nominee. Trump made what he appeared to believe was an overture in that direction Thursday by tweeting a photo of himself eating a taco bowl in celebration of Cinco de Mayo and declaring his love for Hispanics.

The gesture landed with a thud, and many Latino leaders reacted negatively, although Trump insisted Friday that "People loved it."

Ryan himself said in his initial comments on CNN that he hopes to be able to come around to supporting Trump. He's just not there yet.

"You have to unify all wings of the Republican Party in a conservative movement," he said. "And we've got a ways to go from here to there."

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Associated Press writers Julie Bykowicz in Washington and Jill Colvin in Charleston, West Virginia, contributed to this report.

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Follow Steve Peoples and Erica Werner on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/sppeoples and http://twitter.com/ericawerner

FILE - In this April 19, 2016 file photo, House Speaker Paul Ryan of Wis. speaks in Washington. Donald Trump says he was really surprised by House Speaker Paul Ryan's rebuff of him as the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. But GOP chief Reince Priebus says he understands Ryans reservations. Its going to take some time in some cases for people to work through differences, Priebus says. Priebus says he disagrees with Trump on some issues such as banning Muslims from entering the U.S. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)

President Barack Obama answers a question from a member of the media while speaking in the White House briefing room in Washington, Friday, May 6, 2016, about the economy and new steps to strengthen financial transparency and combat money laundering, corruption, and tax evasion. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)
China seeks global support for South China Sea policies

BEIJING (AP)  China is seeing mixed results in its effort to enlist friendly states in its push to exclude the U.S. and its allies from the festering South China Sea dispute, underscoring the limits of Chinese diplomacy despite its massive economic clout.

Beijing won a major endorsement for its position with remarks by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov last month that players from outside the region should not get involved.

However, its recent announcement of added support from Brunei, Laos and Cambodia drew unusually strong criticism from senior Singaporean diplomat Ong Keng Yong, who said Beijing may be trying to split the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, the regional bloc to which all four nations belong. China's announcement was even questioned by Cambodian government spokesman Phay Siphan, who said no new agreement with China had been reached.

Ouyang Yujing, Director-General of the Department of Boundary and Ocean Affairs of China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, speaks during a press briefing about China's South China Sea policies in Beijing, Friday, May 6, 2016. China is rallying Russia and other friendly states to back a push to exclude the U.S. and its allies from the festering South China Sea dispute, despite its insistence that countries without a direct territorial claim should remain firmly neutral. The words, above, mean "Chinese and foreign media briefing." (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)

Despite the blow-back, China has noted recent statements that "show that the international community has come to understand and support the Chinese government's position on handling the South China Sea issue and the arbitration case brought by the Philippine side," Ouyang Yujing, the head of the Foreign Ministry's Department of Boundary and Ocean Affairs, told reporters Friday.

Ouyang was referring to a case challenging China's South China Sea territorial claims brought by fellow claimant the Philippines before the United Nations Court of Arbitration in 2013. China has refused to join in the legal process and says it won't accept the court's ruling, expected within weeks.

Beijing's approach displays its craving for international respect and desire to avoid isolation over the issue, and provides "an iota of self-satisfaction," said Yu Maochun, an expert on Chinese politics at the U.S. Naval Academy.

Russia's support is particularly significant, both for China and the world at large, because of the growing appearance of an anti-U.S. and anti-Western united front, Yu said.

"This breeds a great potential danger of the world skidding to a formation of big power alliances of opposition, whereby China and Russia act together against a US.-led coalition of democracies," Yu said.

However, the fact China, with the world's second largest economy, has gained the vocal support of only a handful of largely undemocratic, economically dependent states also shows the limits of its push for greater diplomatic influence, said Jonathan Holslag, a professor of international politics at the Free University of Brussels.

"Actually, it is striking how small the number Chinese supporters remains, given the enormous amounts of financial aid that China threw into the scale," Holslag said. "It all shows the limits of China's economic diplomacy."

Although China has called repeatedly for outside states to stay neutral on the issue, it welcomes the expressions of support and sees no contradiction, said Li Guoqiang, a Chinese Academy of Social Sciences researcher and top government adviser on the South China Sea.

Russia and others are "expressing a political stance, they are not interfering in South China Sea matters. On the other hand, other countries are substantively taking a whole series of actions," Li said at a Beijing forum on Tuesday.

The drive to enlist international backing comes as China faces growing scrutiny over its claim to virtually the entire South China Sea along with its reefs and islands.

The U.S. has kept up steady pressure, sending ships and planes to emphasize its rejection of China's assertion that the newly created islands it has built atop coral reefs are entitled to territorial waters and other legal rights.

Washington and its allies, including Japan, say the massive reclamation projects, complete with airstrips and military installations, raise tensions in a strategically vital waterway home to rich fishing grounds and a potential wealth of undersea gas and oil, and through which $5 trillion in global trade passes each year.

China has responded by accusing Washington of endangering peace and stability with its naval activities. On Friday, Beijing reaffirmed its sovereignty claim while issuing a new attack on the court case brought by Manila, calling it illegitimate and vowing never to "accept, participate in, or acknowledge" any subsequent rulings.

"The case brought by the Philippines is nothing but a political farce under the cloak of law," the Foreign Ministry's Ouyang, told reporters. "It is a grave threat to regional peace and stability."

The region could grow more tense if China begins reclamation work, as some speculate it might, on Scarborough Shoal, an uninhabited coral reef near the main Philippine island of Luzon that Chinese government vessels seized in 2012 following a tense standoff with Filipino ships.

China's Defense Ministry has not said whether such a plan exists, but has reiterated China's ownership and right to develop the shoal however it sees fit.

Asked about future developments, Ouyang merely reiterated an earlier government statement that all reclamation work had concluded by the end of June last year.

"I believe you are very clear about the meaning of this remark," he said without elaborating.

Ouyang Yujing, Director-General of the Department of Boundary and Ocean Affairs of China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, speaks during a press briefing about China's South China Sea policies in Beijing, Friday, May 6, 2016. China is rallying Russia and other friendly states to back a push to exclude the U.S. and its allies from the festering South China Sea dispute, despite its insistence that countries without a direct territorial claim should remain firmly neutral. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)

Ouyang Yujing, Director-General of the Department of Boundary and Ocean Affairs of China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, listens to a question during a press briefing about China's South China Sea policies in Beijing, Friday, May 6, 2016. China is rallying Russia and other friendly states to back a push to exclude the U.S. and its allies from the festering South China Sea dispute, despite its insistence that countries without a direct territorial claim should remain firmly neutral. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
Democratic advertising blitz awaits GOP's Trump

WASHINGTON (AP)  Long before Donald Trump swatted away his Republican presidential rivals, his likely Democratic opponent and her allies began laying traps for him.

Priorities USA, the lead super PAC backing Hillary Clinton, has already reserved $91 million in television advertising that will start next month and continue through Election Day. In addition, Clinton's campaign and Priorities USA have both debuted online videos that cast Trump in a negative light  a preview of what voters will see on TV over the next six months.

So far, Priorities USA is the only group on either side that has rolled out such an ambitious advertising plan geared toward the general election. The group's leaders say they're trying to avoid what they see as the core mistake made by Trump's Republican rivals  not pushing hard enough against him until it was too late.

"There's a reason that we have a head start," said Justin Barasky, a Priorities USA spokesman, "and it's that we've taken Donald Trump seriously all along, unlike the Republicans."

The group's ad strategy will test what has been a hallmark of Trump's GOP primary rise: his ability to withstand  even thrive in the face of  tens of millions of dollars in attack ads.

An Associated Press review of Priorities USA's TV buys, collected by Kantar Media's Campaign Media Analysis Group, reveals a formidable 22-week advertising blitz through what the group considers key battleground states: Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, Ohio and Virginia.

In those states, Priorities USA will start ads in major metropolitan areas, then broaden its outreach to smaller cities as the November election approaches. The group will also start ads on satellite TV in September.

According to the CMAG data, Priorities USA plans to spend about $4 million a week through most of June. The group then slows spending through July, taking off the weeks of the Republican and Democratic conventions, when widespread television coverage essentially provides free media time for the candidates.

Priorities USA returns to the airwaves in August and begins unloading $60 million in ads between September and Election Day. The week of the election, Priorities USA plans to spend about $8 million in the seven battleground states.

The heaviest concentration is in Florida, where the group has reserved $23 million in time, mostly in Orlando and in Tampa.

The group also plans to spend about $19.5 million in the traditional presidential bellwether state of Ohio. More than half is for Cleveland, Akron and Columbus.

There's no substantive GOP counterweight to the pro-Clinton effort  partly because Trump has repeatedly trashed big donors and called the outside groups that can raise unlimited money from them "corrupt."

As the presumptive GOP nominee, Trump is now beginning his outreach to donors. But even if he fully embraces outside help, he's far behind: One super PAC backing him, Great America, was almost $700,000 in debt at the end of March.

Another group that was a major player in the 2012 race, American Crossroads, is still "evaluating what our specific role will be," said spokesman Ian Prior.

Television ads are only one part of Priorities USA's strategy. It is putting at least $35 million into online advertising between June and Election Day, Barasky said. Those ads will largely aim to drive up turnout among core Democratic groups: African-Americans, Hispanics, women and younger voters, Barasky said.

Trump is already getting a taste of what some these ads will say.

On Thursday, Priorities USA overlaid audio of Trump talking about "unifying" the Republican Party with images of violence that has erupted inside and outside of his massive rallies. "I think we're going to win in November," Trump says at the end. "NOPE," reads text on the screen. "Vote for Hillary Clinton."

That follows an online video the Clinton campaign put out Wednesday that features clips of prominent Republicans, including his former rivals, bashing Trump in every possible way.

"He needs therapy," says former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush at the end of the spot.

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LGBT community braces for impact of new counseling law

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP)  Roddy Biggs was 13 and depressed, and had been seeing a therapist for six months before he revealed something he had denied even to himself: He was gay.

It took time because he hadn't fully acknowledged his sexuality, but also because he had to trust the therapist, he said.

"Because I didn't want to be gay myself, so I didn't even open up to myself until then," said Biggs, now a 23-year-old college student in Knoxville, Tennessee. It would have been devastating, he said, if the therapist had turned him away and told him to find another counselor.

In this undated photo provided by Lenka Drstakova, Roddy Biggs poses for a photograph in New York City. Biggs was 13 and depressed, and had been seeing a therapist for six months before he revealed something that he had denied even to himself: He was gay. "Because I didn't want to be gay myself, so I didn't even open up to myself until then," said Biggs, now a 23-year-old college student in Knoxville. (Lenka Drstakova via AP)

"I would have felt defeated, and I would have probably actually killed myself," Biggs said.

While it isn't unusual for a teen like Biggs to need time before trusting a therapist enough to talk about his sexuality, some mental health professionals say, it illustrates the potential minefields ahead as Tennessee implements an unprecedented new law allowing counselors to refuse to treat people based on religious reasons or personal principles.

Beyond the war of words about whether the law discriminates against gay, lesbian and transgender people or protects professionals with deeply-held beliefs, it has sparked conversation about what it means for people seeking help.

The outcome could be messy and tragic, opponents say, because counseling requires people to trust someone enough to reveal intimate personal details.

Others question whether the government can force professionals to counsel people when it conflicts with their deepest moral principles and whether that would be in a patient's best interest.

The law signed by Republican Gov. Bill Haslam last week took effect immediately, sending counselors and advocates scrambling to sort through its implications. So far, it hasn't led to the kind of economic backlash that hit North Carolina in response to a law requiring transgender people to use only the bathroom of the gender on their birth certificates.

Tennessee's law allows counselors to refuse to treat people as long as they refer patients to someone else.

The measure conflicts with the American Counseling Association's code of ethics. The ACA says no other state has passed such a law.

Tennessee's law requires all counselors, no matter their personal beliefs, to treat people who are in immediate danger of hurting themselves or others. But because many such people aren't readily identifiable, some wonder how counselors will know.

The law also raises questions about timing.

The therapeutic relationship takes time to build, said Art Terrazas, ACA's director of government affairs. It's not like going to a medical doctor, where patients can quickly describe a cough or a problem joint.

"When you've gone to a few different sessions, and you're getting help and they finally say, 'OK, I don't think I can help you,' that is going to be devastating," Terrazas said. "And they're going to say, 'Well then nobody can help me.'"

The law's advocates see things from the other side  that of the religious counselor with sincerely held beliefs. They say the government can't force people to turn their backs on their values.

Rules still bar counselors from abandoning or neglecting clients or refusing to see them based solely on sexual orientation or gender identity, said David Fowler, president of the Family Action Council of Tennessee, a faith-based socially conservative organization.

A few lawsuits have been filed nationwide over counselors' refusal to treat gay patients. A graduate student sued after she was expelled from an Eastern Michigan University counseling program because she didn't want to counsel a gay man whom she had never treated before over her religious beliefs. She settled with the university.

A year after the settlement, the ACA updated its code of ethics in 2014, barring counselors from referring clients elsewhere, based on personally-held values. The organization says the ethics code had already banned discrimination.

For Mary Beth and James T. "Dale" Berry, who run the Christian-based Ebenezer Counseling Services center in Knoxville, the ACA's 2014 code of ethics  which Tennessee adopted into law  put their moral beliefs in conflict.

They say Tennessee's new law restores the state to where it was with the ACA's older code of ethics, which they found worked fine.

"We value every person  gay, straight, transsexual, male, female, black, white," Dale Berry said. But both say they cannot affirm the actions of patients who do things contrary to their own moral beliefs. They say they wouldn't give sex therapy to an unmarried heterosexual couple. And they say religious therapists shouldn't be forced to counsel terminally ill people who want to end their lives.

Unless it's a person in a mental-health crisis, both say it doesn't serve a patient if the counselor fakes being aligned with the client's values.

"They can tell when we're conflicted," Dale Berry said. "And it's not good to be conflicted with your client; it sends a mixed message, then the client's confused." The client is better served, he said, by being referred to someone else.

Biggs, who went through his own successful therapy, said a counselor must put the patient first.
Spain reports 1st case of Zika-linked microcephaly

MADRID (AP)  Health authorities say they've identified the first case in Spain of the birth defect microcephaly in the fetus of a pregnant woman infected with the Zika virus.

The health department for the northeastern region of Catalonia said the woman traveled to South America some months ago and had contracted Zika and Dengue. In a statement the department said the fetus has several malformations.

The Health Ministry confirmed Friday that it was Spain's first case. It said Spain has identified 105 people infected with Zika, 13 of them pregnant women.

The mosquito-borne Zika virus can cause microcephaly, a severe birth defect in which babies are born with abnormally small heads and brain damage.
Rio Tinto announces long-delayed expansion of Mongolia mine

BEIJING (AP)  Mining giant Rio Tinto on Friday announced the launch of the next stage of a multibillion-dollar gold and copper mine in Mongolia following delays and political tension over revenue sharing and the foreign role in resource industries.

The underground portion of the Oyu Tolgoi mine will go ahead after Rio Tinto, the Mongolian government and another partner agreed on a $5.3 billion investment plan, the Anglo-Australian miner announced. It said production should begin in 2020.

Oyu Tolgoi became a symbol of tense relations between Mongolia and foreign investors. Expansion plans were delayed by disagreements over how to share revenue in the impoverished but resource-rich country between China and Russia.

Critics of government agreements with mining companies complain too little of Mongolia's mineral wealth benefits the general public.

An open pit mine at Oyu Tolgoi opened in 2013 with an investment of $6.4 billion and employs some 3,000 people.

The latest agreement "is a clear demonstration that the country is back to business," said the Mongolian prime minister, Chimediin Saikhanbileg, in a statement issued by Rio Tinto. He said the project will be "a catalyst for further investments that will strengthen Mongolia's economy."

Minerals make up 94 percent of Mongolia's exports. With demand from China weakening as its economy cools, Mongolia's own growth is forecast to fall below 1 percent this year.

In March, some 2,000 protesters who criticized foreign mining concessions gathered in the central square in the capital, UlaanBaatar, to demand parliament be dissolved and a new government formed.

Rio Tinto owns 51 percent of Turquoise Hill Resources. Turquoise Hill owns 66 percent of Oyu Tolgoi and the Mongolian Government owns 34 percent of the mine.

The investment "will transform Oyu Tolgoi into one of the most significant copper mines globally," said Rio Tinto's deputy chief executive, Jean-Sebastien Jacques, in a statement. "This is a long-term partnership, built to create mutual benefit."

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Rio Tinto PLC: www.riotinto.com

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Sister: Chinese activist may be seriously ill and needs care

BEIJING (AP)  The sister of a prominent imprisoned Chinese political activist said Friday she fears her brother is seriously ill and is urging the authorities to allow him access to better medical treatment, in what an international rights group said is the latest example of China routinely denying political prisoners adequate care.

Yang Maoping said her brother, Yang Maodong, looked pale and emaciated during a visit on April 26 and complained of having had blood in his stool for the past year.

Yang Maodong, 49, better known by his penname Guo Feixiong, is serving a six-year sentence in a southern Chinese prison after years of pushing for constitutional rule, media freedom and democracy in China. Before his 2013 detention, Yang was in good health, his sister said.

In this December 2014 photo, Yang Maodong, better known by his penname Guo Feixiong, sits in a detention center in Guangzhou in southern China's Guangdong province. The sister of a prominent imprisoned Chinese political activist said Friday, May 6, 2016, that she fears her brother is seriously ill and is urging the authorities to allow him access to better medical treatment, in what an international rights group said is the latest example of China routinely denying political prisoners adequate care. (AP Photo) NO SALES

"Now, his condition looks extremely terrible, extremely terrible," she said.

Yang said prison authorities had yet to respond to her request that her brother receive a thorough medical exam.

"I have been calling the prison office every day, hoping there is still a glimmer of humanity," she wrote in an online post. "But there's been not a single response over this life-and-death matter."

Zhang Lei, a lawyer for Yang Maodong, said he was only given two minutes to visit Yang in prison on Friday. Though he was unable to thoroughly assess Yang's health or inquire about his condition, the prisoner did not appear to be well, Zhang said, adding that he submitted a request for Yang to be accompanied by a family member to a major hospital for a checkup.

The prison declined to answer questions about Yang's health condition, citing privacy reasons.

Supporters of Yang have started a relay hunger strike to call attention to his deteriorating health and lack of health care.

New York-based Human Rights Watch said Yang's case illustrates China's dismal record on providing medical treatment to political prisoners. It called the denial of care a violation of the United Nations Convention Against Torture, to which China is a party.

"It's bad enough that China sends peaceful activists and journalists to prison for years," Sophie Richardson, the group's China director, said in an emailed statement. "But to deprive them of medical care even to the point of allowing their death is the ultimate in inhumane treatment."

In a separate case, Gao Yu, a Chinese journalist released on medical parole after being imprisoned on a state secrets charge, has been denied medical insurance and, with no income, is struggling to pay for medical treatment, Human Rights Watch said.
Vinyl revival: Czech record maker aims for global dominance

LODENICE, Czech Republic (AP)  As vinyl records make a global comeback, a little-known Czech company is riding the market surge to establish itself as the world's biggest record manufacturer, with plans to expand in North America and Asia.

GZ Media, based in a small town south west of the Czech capital, has made deals with all the major music labels and is running its plant day and night, every day of the year  even on Christmas  to satisfy booming demand.

This summer, in an effort to get closer to the growing American market, it is due to open a new plant in Canada and is finalizing a deal to acquire a majority stake in a factory in the United States.

In this picture taken on Monday, April 25, 2016, Zdenek Vesely checks a master record at vinyl plant in Lodenice, Czech Republic. As vinyl records make a global comeback in popularity, a little-known Czech company is riding the market surge to establish itself as the worlds biggest record manufacturers, with plans to expand in North America and Asia. GZ Media, based in a small town south west of the Czech capital, has made deals with all the major music labels and is running its plant day and night, every day of the year - even on Christmas - to satisfy booming demand. (AP Photo/Petr David Josek)

"Nobody expected the vinyl records production to come back in such a strong fashion," Michal Sterba, GZ Media director general told The Associated Press in an interview.

As a company, it knows something about ups and downs. Previously called Gramofonove zavody Lodenice, it has been making vinyl records since 1951.

But just as the Cold War ended, CDs started taking over the market. The company's output hit a record low of about 300,000 records a year in the mid-1990s. The days of vinyl seemed to be numbered.

Then in 2010 the market began to bounce back. The company's output ramped up dramatically to 18 million last year and an estimated 25 million this year.

That's a big chunk of the world market, which is estimated to have produced between 90 and 100 million records last year, though official figures are not available.

GZ Media's closest competitors are Optimal Media in Germany, which made about 16 million records in the full year to September. And United Record Pressing, based in Nashville, which is estimated to have produced 11 million last year.

"At the moment, we export an absolute majority of what we produce, and about a third of it ends up in Northern America," Sterba said. "It is a logical step for us to open a new factory in North America because we have quite a strong customer base there."

Following a $10 million investment, a new joint venture with a partner in Canada, Precision Record Pressing, will start operating in Burlington, near Toronto, in August. Its production capacity should reach 3 million next year and 5-6 million in three years.

GZ Media also is due to acquire a majority in an existing vinyl plant in the United States with a capacity of 3 million records. Sterba would not reveal details.

"Our main goal is to become No. 1 or 2 on the U.S. market in a couple of years," he said.

According to the Recording Industry Association of America, total sales revenue of vinyl albums soared 32.2 percent last year compared with 2014, for a value of $416.2 million.

Vinyl albums still have only a tiny share of the overall market for music, some 3 percent globally, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry said. The figure is slightly higher, at six percent, in the United States.

But the trend is obvious. Sales in the U.S. reached almost 17 million units last year, putting revenue at the highest since 1988. It's also more than the revenue made by ad-supported, on-demand services like YouTube, free Spotify, and others, RIAA said.

Coping with the demand is a challenge for producers. GZ Media, however, has a competitive edge over newcomers. While new equipment for record printers hasn't been developed in about 30 years, GZ Media has invested in making its own pressing machines.

All the major music labels have deals with GZ media to print their records and album covers  from rock to classical music  as it has become an industry standard to have almost every new album available also in vinyl. On top of that, the classics and collectors' items remain popular.

The company is particularly proud of a deal to make 40,000 pieces of a box set with the Rolling Stones' albums as well as the soundtrack music for "Star Wars" that includes a 3D hologram of a space ship.

Sterba said GZ Media's turnover is expected to grow some 10-15 percent this year to reach some 2.4 billion koruna ($101 million).

"People are fed up with the virtual music. They want the same experience as their parents, to take the record from the cover and put it on a turntable," said Robert Maly, a DJ who owns a vinyl record store in Prague. "The sound is different."

Just as it was hard to predict vinyl's revival, it is hard to say how long it can last.

"I would expect the growth to continue for another two or three years," says Sterba.

In this picture taken on Monday, April 25, 2016, a worker checks a master record at vinyl plant in Lodenice, Czech Republic. As vinyl records make a global comeback in popularity, a little-known Czech company is riding the market surge to establish itself as the worlds biggest record manufacturers, with plans to expand in North America and Asia. GZ Media, based in a small town south west of the Czech capital, has made deals with all the major music labels and is running its plant day and night, every day of the year - even on Christmas - to satisfy booming demand. (AP Photo/Petr David Josek)

In this picture taken on Monday, April 25, 2016, a worker checks a pressed record at vinyl plant in Lodenice, Czech Republic. As vinyl records make a global comeback in popularity, a little-known Czech company is riding the market surge to establish itself as the worlds biggest record manufacturers, with plans to expand in North America and Asia. GZ Media, based in a small town south west of the Czech capital, has made deals with all the major music labels and is running its plant day and night, every day of the year - even on Christmas - to satisfy booming demand. (AP Photo/Petr David Josek)

In this picture taken on Monday, April 25, 2016, a worker adjusts a master record at vinyl plant in Lodenice, Czech Republic. As vinyl records make a global comeback in popularity, a little-known Czech company is riding the market surge to establish itself as the worlds biggest record manufacturers, with plans to expand in North America and Asia. GZ Media, based in a small town south west of the Czech capital, has made deals with all the major music labels and is running its plant day and night, every day of the year - even on Christmas - to satisfy booming demand. (AP Photo/Petr David Josek)

In this picture taken on Monday, April 25, 2016, worker checks a pressed record at vinyl plant in Lodenice, Czech Republic. As vinyl records make a global comeback in popularity, a little-known Czech company is riding the market surge to establish itself as the worlds biggest record manufacturers, with plans to expand in North America and Asia. GZ Media, based in a small town south west of the Czech capital, has made deals with all the major music labels and is running its plant day and night, every day of the year - even on Christmas - to satisfy booming demand. (AP Photo/Petr David Josek)

In this picture taken on Monday, April 25, 2016, a worker washes a master record at vinyl plant in Lodenice, Czech Republic. As vinyl records make a global comeback in popularity, a little-known Czech company is riding the market surge to establish itself as the worlds biggest record manufacturers, with plans to expand in North America and Asia. GZ Media, based in a small town south west of the Czech capital, has made deals with all the major music labels and is running its plant day and night, every day of the year - even on Christmas - to satisfy booming demand. (AP Photo/Petr David Josek)

In this picture taken on Monday, April 25, 2016, a worker checks a pressed record at vinyl plant in Lodenice, Czech Republic. As vinyl records make a global comeback in popularity, a little-known Czech company is riding the market surge to establish itself as the worlds biggest record manufacturers, with plans to expand in North America and Asia. GZ Media, based in a small town south west of the Czech capital, has made deals with all the major music labels and is running its plant day and night, every day of the year - even on Christmas - to satisfy booming demand. (AP Photo/Petr David Josek)

In this picture taken on Monday, April 25, 2016, a worker checks a pressed record at vinyl plant in Lodenice, Czech Republic. As vinyl records make a global comeback in popularity, a little-known Czech company is riding the market surge to establish itself as the worlds biggest record manufacturers, with plans to expand in North America and Asia. GZ Media, based in a small town south west of the Czech capital, has made deals with all the major music labels and is running its plant day and night, every day of the year - even on Christmas - to satisfy booming demand. (AP Photo/Petr David Josek)
Free Burma Rangers, a frontline humanitarian aid agency, has reported that the attacks have led to several civilian casualties including a 60-year-old woman, killed and a 7-year-old girl, badly injured by gunfire.

A Kachin Independence Army official speaking to FBR reported that KIA forces had suffered six casualties in the intense fighting between 17th and 18th of April.

Images provided by FBR showed a village damaged by artillery fire.

The latest attacks reported by FBR began on the 8th of April at around 9am with Burma Army forces attacking a KIA post with mortars and small arms fire. Armed clashes in different areas of Kachin State spread to other areas and intensified from the 17th to the 24th of April.
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Residents at oil field camps north of Fort McMurray, Alberta got a sobering drive-by view of their burned out city as a massive wildfire forced them out on Friday.

A convoy moved evacuees towards the south following the fire that could double in size by the end of Saturday and is expected to last for weeks.

More than 80,000 people have left Fort McMurray, in the heart of Canada' oil sands, where the fire has torched 1,600 homes and buildings.

All intersections along the convoy route have been blocked off and evacuees are not being allowed back to check on their homes.

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More than 80,000 people have been forced out of their homes by a massive wildfire expected to last for weeks in Fort McMurray, Alberta. Pictured, police officers direct traffic under a cloud of smoke on Friday

The fire covers 249,571 acres and could double in size by Saturday, Alberta's manager of wildfire prevention Chad Morrison said. Pictured on Friday, animal rescue workers wait to get entry to Fort McMurray

No amount of resources will put out the blaze and only rain could end it, officials said. The blaze, partially pictured Friday along a highway south of Fort McMurray, has torched 1,600 homes and buildings

Authorities hoped to get 5,500 people to safety by the end of Friday, a day after 8,000 flew out. Another 4,000 were expected to follow on Saturday. Pictured on Friday, Eddie MacDonald fills his truck with gas in Wandering River, Alberta, after evacuating Fort McMurray

About 1,200 vehicles had passed through Fort McMurray by late Friday afternoon despite a one-hour interruption due to heavy smoke. Pictured, residents gather at an A&W restaurant in Wandering River after evacuating

Michael Sadowsky, an evacuee from the Fort McMurray wildfires, is pictured kissing his cat Dexter after they were escorted through Fort McMurray on Friday and arrived in Wandering River

Police and military oversaw the procession of hundreds of vehicles on Friday while the mass evacuation by plane resumed.

Authorities hoped to get 5,500 people to safety by the end of Friday, a day after 8,000 flew out. Another 4,000 were expected to follow on Saturday.

The fire and the ensuing departures have forced a quarter of Canada's oil output offline according to estimates and is expected to leave an impact on the country, which has already been hurt by a dramatic fall in the price of oil.

About 1,200 vehicles had passed through Fort McMurray by late Friday afternoon despite a one-hour interruption due to heavy smoke, authorities said.

Jim Dunstan, who was in the convoy with his wife, Tracy, and two young sons, said it was 'shocking' to see torched cars on the side of the road.

'It made you feel lucky to get out of there,' he added.

Between 4,500 and 5,000 evacuees arrived at Edmonton International Airport on at least 45 flights Friday, spokesman Chris Chodan said.

More than 300 flights have arrived with evacuees since Tuesday, he added.

Volunteers handed out bottled water and directed people as one group arrived late Friday.

Among them was 32-year-old Chad Robertson, a fuel truck driver who was evacuated from Husky Energy's Sunrise project, northeast of Fort McMurray.

'Everyone started panicking' when the fire started even though the flames were relatively far away, he said.

He had plans to go to a friend's house in Edmonton before heading home to Nova Scotia.

Morrison said the cause of the fire hasn't been determined, but that it started in a remote forested area and could have been ignited by lightning. Pictured on Friday, a plane drops fire retardant

More than 300 flights carrying evacuees have arrived at Edmonton International Airport since Tuesday. Pictured, a volunteer directs a group of displaced residents after they get off the plane

Morrison said he expected the fire to expand into a more remote forested area northeast and away from Fort McMurray. Pictured on Friday, a plane drops water on the blaze

No deaths or injuries have been reported and the Alberta provincial government has declared a state of emergency. Pictured on Friday, evacuees rest at a shelter in Lac La Biche

High winds, scorching heat and low humidity have caused the fire to spread rapidly in Fort McMurray. Pictured on Friday, smoke rises in a burned-out neighborhood

Scott Burrell, 42, from Kelowna, British Columbia, was waiting with others in an airport terminal that had been repurposed for evacuees who were resting and waiting for flights.

He was working for a scaffolding company at a plant called Fort Hills when the fire broke out Tuesday.

'We were working overtime and I just saw what looked like a massive cloud in the sky, but I knew it was fire,' he said. 'The very next day was my day to go home. Ends up we weren't going home that day.'

Burrell and others were evacuated by plane Friday, after spending three days with families who arrived at the work camp because they were evacuated from their towns.

He said he and other workers rationed their food to help the families who were coming in, and some offered up their living spaces for them.

Burrell planned to catch a flight back to British Columbia.

The Alberta provincial government, which declared a state of emergency, said Friday the size of the blaze had grown to more than 249,571 acres. No deaths or injuries were reported.

The government said 1,100 firefighters, 110 helicopters, 295 pieces of heavy equipment and more than 27 air tankers were fighting the blaze.

But Chad Morrison, Alberta's manager of wildfire prevention, said the fire covers 249,571 acres and 'there is a high potential that the fire could double in size by the end of tomorrow'.

Morrison said no amount of resources would put this fire out and only rain could put an end to it.

'We have not seen rain in this area for the last two months of significance,' Morrison said. 'This fire will continue to burn for a very long time until we see some significant rain.'

Environment Canada forecast a 40 per cent chance of showers in the area on Sunday.

Morrison said he expected the fire to expand into a more remote forested area northeast and away from Fort McMurray but said extremely dry conditions and a hot temperature of 81 degrees were expected Saturday along with strong winds.

He said cooler conditions were expected Sunday and Monday.

Police officers have helped evacuate residents as the fire tore through Fort McMurray. Pictured, one of them surveys the damage in a deserted street on Thursday

Officials said shifting winds were giving Fort McMurray a break, but that the fire remained out of control. Pictured, Canadian Armed forces members prepare to take off from their base near Conklin

The government said 1,100 firefighters, 110 helicopters, 295 pieces of heavy equipment and more than 27 air tankers were fighting the blaze. Pictured on Friday, police officers direct traffic under a cloud of smoke

Extremely dry conditions and a hot temperature of 81 degrees were expected Saturday along with strong winds. Pictured on Friday, smoke rises about 18 miles south of Fort McMurray

The fire grew from 29 square miles Tuesday to 39 square miles on Wednesday and by Thursday it was almost nine times that  at 330 square miles. Pictured on Friday, a police helicopter flies above the blaze

About 25,000 evacuees moved north in the hours after Tuesday's mandatory evacuation, where oil sands work camps that usually house employees were used to house evacuees. Pictured, a charred swing set remains in a neighborhood destroyed by the wildfire

The bulk of the more than 80,000 evacuees fled south to Edmonton and elsewhere. Pictured, what is left of a motorcycle after the blaze ravaged a residential neighborhood in Fort McMurray

Fort McMurray is surrounded by wilderness, and there are essentially only two ways for residents to get out via road. Pictured, a classic Triumph GT6 destroyed by the fire in Fort McMurray

Dave Wendel (center), his son Colt (right), and his daughter Clieo (left) are among thousands of evacuees who had to leave Fort McMurray. They were left stranded on Friday before authorities escorted them out. They are pictured packing up their trailer in Wandering River

The government has pledged to give money to help evacuees, who are also relying on donations. Pictured, displaced residents look through donated supplies in Lac La Biche

Evacuees need food, clothes, shoes and housing supplies after leaving their homes in Fort McMurray. Pictured, residents sort through boxes of canned food and snacks at a donation center in Wandering River

About 25,000 evacuees moved north in the hours after Tuesday's mandatory evacuation, where oil sands work camps that usually house employees were used to house evacuees.

But the bulk of the more than 80,000 evacuees fled south to Edmonton and elsewhere, and officials are moving everyone south where it is safer and they can get better support services. The convoy was stopped for an hour.

The Alberta government is providing cash to 80,000 evacuees from the Fort McMurray fire to help them with their immediate needs.

Premier Rachel Notley said her cabinet has approved a payment of $967 per adult and $387 per dependent at a cost to the province of $77 million.

She told a briefing in Edmonton that she wants people who were forced from their homes to know that the government 'has their back'.

Police were escorting 50 vehicles at a time, south through the city itself on Highway 63 at a distance of about 12.4 miles south and then releasing the convoy. At that point another convoy of 50 cars begins.

Fort McMurray is surrounded by wilderness, and there are essentially only two ways out via road.

Fanned by high winds, scorching heat and low humidity, the fire grew from 29 square miles Tuesday to 39 square miles on Wednesday, but by Thursday it was almost nine times that  at 330 square miles. That's an area roughly the size of Calgary, Alberta's largest city.

The fire was so large that smoke from the fair is blanketing parts of the neighboring province of Saskatchewan where Environment Canada has issued special air quality statements for several areas.

Morrison, the wildfire prevention manager, said the cause of the fire hasn't been determined, but that it started in a remote forested area and could have been ignited by lightning.

The region has the third-largest reserves of oil in the world behind Saudi Arabia and Venezuela.

Greg Pardy, an analyst with RBC Capital Markets, said that as much as 1 million barrels a day of oil may be offline, based on oil company announcements. That's just over a third of Canada's total oil sands output, Pardy noted.

Environment Canada forecast a 40 per cent chance of showers in the area on Sunday. Pictured, the wildfire glows underneath the Aurora Borealis near Fort McMurray on Saturday

The fire has become so large that smoke is blanketing parts of the neighboring province of Saskatchewan. Pictured on Friday, smoke rises south of Fort McMurray

The Alberta government is providing cash to 80,000 evacuees from the Fort McMurray fire to help them with their immediate needs. Pictured on Friday, volunteers direct evacuees at Edmonton International Airport

Premier Rachel Notley said her cabinet has approved a payment of $967 per adult and $387 per dependent at a cost to the province of $77 million. Pictured Friday, evacuees loo through donated supplies in Lac La Biche

Notley told a briefing in Edmonton that she wants people who were forced from their homes to know that the government 'has their back'. Pictured Friday, a resident looks for a pair of shoe at a shelter in Lac La Biche

Evacuees are not being allowed back to check on their homes in Fort McMurray. Pictured Friday, one of them checks his smartphone at a shelter in Lac La Biche
The Latest: Scottish National Party plans minority gov't

LONDON (AP)  The Latest on elections across Britain (all times local):

2:50 p.m.

Scottish National Party leader Nicola Sturgeon says she will lead a minority government after her party fell short of winning an outright majority in the Scottish Parliament.

Scottish National Party leader Nicola Sturgeon celebrates after retaining her seat at a Scottish Parliament election count in Glasgow, Scotland Friday May 6, 2016. Voters punished the opposition Labour Party in Scotland as the first results rolled for local and regional elections across the United Kingdom. (Danny Lawson/PA via AP) UNITED KINGDOM OUT

The popular Sturgeon told supporters she plans to ask parliament to formally choose her as First Minister of Scotland. She said she does not intend to seek any formal coalition arrangement with any other parties.

She said Friday the pro-independence SNP had won a "clear and unequivocal mandate" in the elections.

The SNP won 63 seats, two short of a majority. The Conservative Party came in second, pushing Labour into third place.

The failure to win a firm majority means Sturgeon will have to seek votes outside her own party to enact its legislative program.

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11:30 a.m.

British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn says his party had a good result in local and regional elections, despite being beaten into third place in its former heartland of Scotland.

Labour once dominated Scottish politics, but gained only 24 of the 129 Scottish Parliament seats in Thursday's poll, behind the Scottish National Party's 63 and the Conservatives' 31.

Corbyn acknowledged Friday that the party had "a lot of building to do" in Scotland. But he said the result in English local elections had been better than expected: "We hung on and we grew support in a lot of places."

The results will do little to quell restive Labour lawmakers who think Corbyn's left-wing policies are a turn-off for many voters.
Romania clears loan to Moldova to pay pensions, salaries

BUCHAREST, Romania (AP)  Romania's president on Friday approved a 150 million euro ($171 million) loan to neighboring Moldova needed to pay state sector salaries and pensions.

President Klaus Iohannis signed off on the five-year loan Friday after Parliament approved it last month. In exchange, Moldova pledged to carry out reforms in the banking and justice sectors and name a new central bank governor. A new governor was appointed in March.

Moldova was hit by months of protests after more than $1 billion disappeared from three Moldovan banks prior to Nov. 2014 parliamentary elections. It had six prime ministers in a year.

Amid the turmoil, Iohannis in November stopped Moldova from receiving the loan over doubts over reforms. In January, Romania gave Moldova emergency food aid.

Moldova is one of Europe's poorest countries, and the average monthly salary is just 220 euros ($250)

Moldova's Prime Minister Pavel Filip says he'll continue reforms and move closer to the European Union. He has also promised an investigation into the missing money and for those responsible to be prosecuted.

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Protestant party sees gains in Northern Ireland election

DUBLIN (AP)  Northern Ireland's major British Protestant party, the Democratic Unionists, appeared on course to retain its leading role in power-sharing Friday as Catholic backing for Irish nationalist parties declined for the first time in decades.

With all first-preference votes declared in Northern Ireland's complex system of proportional representation, the Democratic Unionists won 29.2 percent support, down 0.8 points from the last Northern Ireland Assembly election in 2011.

The major Catholic-backed party, Sinn Fein, retained its dominant position in Irish nationalist districts but saw its vote fall by 2.9 points to 24 percent, an unexpected slide following two decades of relentless gains aided by the 1990s Irish Republican Army cease-fires.

The counting of votes continues at the in Londonderry in the Foyle and East Londonderry constituencies in the Northern Ireland Assembly Elections, Friday May 6, 2016. Ballots are being counted to determine the balance of power in the Northern Ireland Assembly, the foundation for a Protestant-Catholic administration that has governed the British territory in relative harmony for the past nine years. (Niall Carson/PA via AP) UNITED KINGDOM OUT

Sinn Fein had hoped to overtake the Democratic Unionists and gain the top post in Northern Ireland's 9-year-old unity government. Instead it faces a challenge to retain all of its 29 seats in the 108-member assembly.

Democratic Unionist chief Arlene Foster declared she was certain of remaining leader of Northern Ireland's unity government following Thursday's election, with her party likely to increase its seats from the current 38. All winners won't be declared until Saturday because ballots must be counted in several rounds to fill six-seat districts in order of popularity.

First Minister Foster beamed as she topped the vote in her native county of Fermanagh. Foster, 45, became Northern Ireland's first female leader in January after succeeding Peter Robinson as Democratic Unionist leader.

Her Sinn Fein rival atop the government, Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness, faced a longer road to victory in his home city of Londonderry. McGuinness, a former IRA commander, finished the first round of voting barely ahead of a moderate nationalist challenger.

Sinn Fein suffered a shock in its Catholic west Belfast power base, where a young socialist candidate from the upstart People Before Profit party topped the poll.
Widespread flooding not only disrupts the living but sometimes also creates havoc for the dead.

That's what happened in southwest Louisiana's Calcasieu Parish when an overflowing Sabine River  helped by days of heavy rain  recently pushed water inland about four miles, disturbing graves buried in at least five cemeteries in the towns of Vinton and Starks.

The parish Coroner's Office last month completed the recovery of caskets and vaults or lids that floated from their resting places during flooding March 12 and beyond.

Charlie Hunter, a coroner's investigator, said the graves are typically surface vaults, meaning three-fourths of the vault is under ground with the lid only above ground.

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Widespread flooding in Louisiana has displaced more than 88 caskets from cemeteries across the state. Pictured, a casket floats past a road sign in Calcasieu Parish on March 16

Officials said 88 caskets were recovered, most from Niblett's Bluff Cemetery in Vinton. Pictured, photo, caskets float away from a nearby cemetery during flooding from heavy rains in Calcasieu Parish on March 16

'When water is over the top of the grave for extended periods of time, the pressure causes the grave to either pop the lid or float the entire vault,' he said.

By comparison, the graves in New Orleans are above ground because the area is considered below sea level and would fill with water if crews dug too deep.

Officials said 88 caskets were recovered, most from Niblett's Bluff Cemetery in Vinton.

'There was catastrophic damage there,' Hunter said.

The other cemeteries affected were Wimberly in Vinton; Doyle annex, Fountain and VFW all in Starks.

'Some of those vaults affected weighed 1,800 to 2,000 pounds and they were found 100 to 200 yards from the cemetery. People just don't understand the power of water,' Hunter said.

Emily Dalfrey, who lived about 800 feet from Niblett's Bluff, said the graves of nine family members  including her great-grandmother  were disrupted there and she lost her home to the floodwaters.

'It's been very emotional,' she said, a slight break in her voice. 'But the coroner's office has been a tremendous help. They were out there, while the waters were still rising, tying off caskets that had floated away.'

Hunter said because the area previously went through significant storms, like Hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Ike, the parish government had a plan in place to handle grave disturbances.

'We had a good heads up that this was coming, having gone through it before,' Hunter said.

So crews were sent to several cemeteries in the projected flood area before the severe weather to document and photograph where and how many graves might be affected.

Coroner's investigator said because the area previously went through significant storms, like Hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Ike, the parish government had a plan in place to handle grave disturbances

A gentleman swims in the flood waters that caused the festival cancellation at Fair Grounds Race Course on April 30 in New Orleans, Louisiana

A station wagon sits submerged after flooding in the Lake Bistineau area in Webster Parish, Louisiana March 14

'We were able to secure those caskets or vaults to fence posts and in other ways before they floated away,' Hunter said. 'We did the best we could to make sure they would not leave the cemeteries.'

The remains that did get loose have been recovered and placed in refrigerated trucks parked at the coroner's office as investigators begin the identification and re-interment process.

'This has been heartbreaking,' said Shannon Bellard-Amy, 38, of Lake Charles, who had relatives buried at Niblett's Bluff.

'I know they're not [in the grave] but in a sense they are because that's their final resting place.

We came back the day after the water receded and it was like a bomb went off in that cemetery. The devastation was unreal. Vaults were everywhere but most devastating was that there were so many empty spaces.'

Bellard-Amy had 10 relatives' graves disinterred.

'Thankfully, they've all been found and identified,' she said. 'It's been a long process but the coroner's office did a wonderful job. I hope they know how much they're appreciated.'

Zeb Johnson, a retired investigator for the coroner's office who comes back when they need extra help, said they're working diligently, yet with care and compassion for family members.

Cemetery Association President Tina Courville said they're urging families to re-bury remains deeper, at least 6 feet deep, when they are returned to their resting places. Pictured, a high water sign is submerged near Lake Bistineau in Webster Parish

The top of a boathouse is all that can be seen in the flooded area of the Lake Bistineau community in Webster Parish Louisiana March 14

'I'm always mindful of what William Gladstone said years ago. He was an English philosopher. He said, 'Show me the way a community cares for its dead and I will plot with mathematical exactness, the moral values of that community.'

And I think that this is what we're seeing now in this community. These people lost their homes and they're belongings but they care for their dead and they're very concerned about getting their cemeteries back in shape and they're returning that respect to the people of this community,' he said.

Cemetery Association President Tina Courville said they're urging families to re-bury remains deeper, at least 6 feet deep, when they are returned to their resting places.

Courville has said graves at those levels were not disturbed. She also said the cemetery is considering changing its bylaws requiring new burials to be below the ground.

Questions remain about who will pay for the reburials.

Hunter said FEMA is involved and his office, along with the police jury, is working to come up with a workable option.
PICTURED: Russian volunteers recover WWII soldiers' remains

ST. PETERSBURG, Russia (AP)  A group of Russian volunteers searching a river bank outside St. Petersburg found the remains of five Soviet soldiers who had died while defending the city during World War II. There was little left but bones, but among the remains was one corroded dog tag, with a small piece of paper containing the soldier's identification information still rolled up inside.

The volunteers were able to restore the fragile paper note and then track down the relatives of the fallen soldier, Ivan Shagichev, so they could learn where he died and see him properly buried at last.

"I cry and cry," said his daughter, Tamara Zhukova. "I don't know how to explain it. I never saw my father, but it is so important that he was found and I'll have a place to come to speak to him."

In this photo taken on Tuesday, Aug. 18, 2015, remains of a Soviet soldier are uncovered in a buria site l made in 1943, to be reburied in an official cemetery, near Sinyavino, 50 kms (31 miles) east of St. Petersburg, Russia. Volunteer search groups have become increasingly popular in Russia in recent years, attracting people of various ages and professions who spend their weekends and vacations digging for remains on former battlefields. They have recovered and buried the remains of thousands of Red Army soldiers. (AP Photo/Dmitry Lovetsky)

Her father had already left for the front when she was born on Sept. 1, 1941, and he was killed two months later.

Volunteer search groups have become increasingly popular in Russia in recent years, drawing in people of various ages and professions who spend their weekends and vacations digging for remains on former battlefields.

Their work attracts new attention ahead of Victory Day on May 9, when Russia celebrates the 1945 defeat of the Nazis and honors those who fought and died for their country.

The searchers have now recovered and buried the remains of thousands of Red Army soldiers, often placing several together in the same crimson casket. Few, however, have had the intact dog tags that make identification possible.

Many of the searches have focused on the former battlefield of Nevsky Pyatachok, about 50 kilometers (30 miles) southeast of St. Petersburg. As many as 200,000 Soviet soldiers were killed here between September 1941 and May 1943 in fighting to break the Nazi siege of the city, which was then called Leningrad.

After a burial ceremony last fall for 400 soldiers, including Zhukova's father, a team of searchers took her to the place along the bank of the Neva River where they had found his remains. Zhukova sat down at the spot and tried to imagine what her father had seen in the final moments of his life. Nearby, members of another search team continued to dig.

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In this photo taken on Monday, May 2, 2016, Gosha, 10-year-old son of a member of a volunteer group searching for the remains of Soviet soldiers killed during WWII, tries to put on an uncovered WWII Soviet gas mask at at Nevsky Pyatachok near Kirovsk, Russia. Nevsky Pyatachok, an area about 50 kilometers (30 miles) southeast of St. Petersburg, has proved especially fertile ground. As many as 200,000 Soviet soldiers were killed here between September 1941 and May 1943 in fighting to break the Nazi siege of the city, which was then called Leningrad. (AP Photo/Dmitri Lovetsky)

In this photo taken on Friday, Sept. 18, 2015, Zoya Izotova, niece of Ivan Shagichev, Soviet soldier killed in 1941, holds a portrait of her uncle at a coffin with his remains during a burial ceremony in a memorial cemetery at Nevsky Pyatachok near Kirovsk, Russia. Nevsky Pyatachok, an area about 50 kilometers (30 miles) southeast of St. Petersburg, has proved especially fertile ground. As many as 200,000 Soviet soldiers were killed here between September 1941 and May 1943 in fighting to break the Nazi siege of the city, which was then called Leningrad. (AP Photo/Dmitri Lovetsky)

In this photo taken on Tuesday, May 3, 2016, a member of a volunteer group searching for the remains of Soviet soldiers killed during WWII, uncovers a helmet of a Soviet soldier at the yard of a private house at Nevsky Pyatachok near Kirovsk, Russia. Nevsky Pyatachok. The an area about 50 kilometers (30 miles) southeast of St. Petersburg, has proved especially fertile ground. As many as 200,000 Soviet soldiers were killed here between September 1941 and May 1943 in fighting to break the Nazi siege of the city, which was then called Leningrad. (AP Photo/Dmitri Lovetsky)

In this photo taken on Friday, Sept. 18, 2015, Tamara Zhukova, left, and Zoya Izotova, second left, sit at the place where remains of their relatives, Soviet soldiers, were uncovered, at Nevsky Pyatachok near Kirovsk, Russia. Nevsky Pyatachok. The area about 50 kilometers (30 miles) southeast of St. Petersburg, has proved especially fertile ground. As many as 200,000 Soviet soldiers were killed here between September 1941 and May 1943 in fighting to break the Nazi siege of the city, which was then called Leningrad. (AP Photo/Dmitri Lovetsky)

In this photo taken on Tuesday, Aug. 18, 2015, a member of a volunteer group searching for the remains of Soviet soldiers killed during WWII, looks at remains of Soviet soldiers uncovered in a burial site made in 1943, to be reburied in an official cemetery, near Sinyavino, 50 kms (31 miles) east of St. Petersburg, Russia. Volunteer search groups have become increasingly popular in Russia in recent years, attracting people of various ages and professions who spend their weekends and vacations digging for remains on former battlefields. They have recovered and buried the remains of thousands of Red Army soldiers. (AP Photo/Dmitri Lovetsky)

In this photo taken on Monday, May 2, 2016, a member of a volunteer group searching for the remains of Soviet soldiers killed during WWII, shows an uncovered WWII Soviet navy belt buckle at Nevsky Pyatachok near Kirovsk, Russia. Nevsky Pyatachok, an area about 50 kilometers (30 miles) southeast of St. Petersburg, has proved especially fertile ground. As many as 200,000 Soviet soldiers were killed here between September 1941 and May 1943 in fighting to break the Nazi siege of the city, which was then called Leningrad. (AP Photo/Dmitri Lovetsky)

In this photo taken on Sunday, Sept. 20, 2015, members of a volunteer group searching for the remains of Soviet soldiers killed during WWII, dig former trenches to excavate remains of Soviet soldiers at Nevsky Pyatachok near Kirovsk, Russia. Nevsky Pyatachok, an area about 50 kilometers (30 miles) southeast of St. Petersburg, has proved especially fertile ground. As many as 200,000 Soviet soldiers were killed here between September 1941 and May 1943 in fighting to break the Nazi siege of the city, which was then called Leningrad. (AP Photo/Dmitri Lovetsky)

In this photo taken on Monday, May 2, 2016, Gosha, 10-year-old son of a member of a volunteer group searching for the remains of Soviet soldiers killed during WWII, cleans an uncovered WWII Soviet helmet at Nevsky Pyatachok near Kirovsk, Russia. Nevsky Pyatachok, an area about 50 kilometers (30 miles) southeast of St. Petersburg, has proved especially fertile ground. As many as 200,000 Soviet soldiers were killed here between September 1941 and May 1943 in fighting to break the Nazi siege of the city, which was then called Leningrad. (AP Photo/Dmitri Lovetsky)

In this photo taken on Tuesday, May 3, 2016, a member of a volunteer group searching for the remains of Soviet soldiers killed during WWII, digs looking for remains of Soviet soldiers, with an uncovered ammunition belt in front, at the yard of a private house at Nevsky Pyatachok near Kirovsk, Russia. Nevsky Pyatachok, an area about 50 kilometers (30 miles) southeast of St. Petersburg, has proved especially fertile ground. As many as 200,000 Soviet soldiers were killed here between September 1941 and May 1943 in fighting to break the Nazi siege of the city, which was then called Leningrad. (AP Photo/Dmitri Lovetsky)

In this photo taken on Tuesday, Aug. 18, 2015, a member of a volunteer group searching for the remains of Soviet soldiers killed during WWII, holds a dog tag found among uncovered remains near Sinyavino, 50 kms (31 miles) east of St. Petersburg, Russia. Volunteer search groups have become increasingly popular in Russia in recent years, attracting people of various ages and professions who spend their weekends and vacations digging for remains on former battlefields. They have recovered and buried the remains of thousands of Red Army soldiers. (AP Photo/Dmitri Lovetsky)

In this photo taken on Sunday, Sept. 20, 2015 Artem Goryachev, a member of a volunteer group searching for the remains of Soviet soldiers killed during WWII, rolls out a paper found inside a dog tag uncovered among remains at Nevsky Pyatachok near Kirovsk, Russia. Nevsky Pyatachok, an area about 50 kilometers (30 miles) southeast of St. Petersburg, has proved especially fertile ground. As many as 200,000 Soviet soldiers were killed here between September 1941 and May 1943 in fighting to break the Nazi siege of the city, which was then called Leningrad. (AP Photo/Dmitri Lovetsky)

In this photo taken on Monday, May 2, 2016, a woman reads the names of Soviet soldiers whose remains were uncovered at the place and then reburied, at Nevsky Pyatachok near Kirovsk, Russia. Nevsky Pyatachok, an area about 50 kilometers (30 miles) southeast of St. Petersburg, has proved especially fertile ground. As many as 200,000 Soviet soldiers were killed here between September 1941 and May 1943 in fighting to break the Nazi siege of the city, which was then called Leningrad. (AP Photo/Dmitri Lovetsky)

In this photo taken on Tuesday, May 3, 2016, members of a volunteer group searching for the remains of Soviet soldiers killed during WWII, dig to uncover remains of Soviet soldiers at the yard of a private house at Nevsky Pyatachok near Kirovsk, Russia. Nevsky Pyatachok, an area about 50 kilometers (30 miles) southeast of St. Petersburg, has proved especially fertile ground. As many as 200,000 Soviet soldiers were killed here between September 1941 and May 1943 in fighting to break the Nazi siege of the city, which was then called Leningrad. (AP Photo/Dmitri Lovetsky)
Myanmar leader Suu Kyi makes first official trip, to Laos

YANGON, Myanmar (AP)  Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar's de facto leader and foreign minister, visited neighboring Laos on Friday in her first official trip abroad.

Myanmar and Laotian state media reported that Suu Kyi accompanied Myanmar President Htin Kyaw on the visit, which came at the invitation of the president of Laos, Bounnhang Vorachit.

Htin Kyaw was the first head of state to be hosted by Bounnhang, who officially assumed his post just three weeks ago.

Myanmar's foreign minister and de facto leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, left, walks with Commander-in-Chief of the Myanmar Armed Forces General Min Aung Hlaing, right, in the airport of capital Naypyitaw, Myanmar, Friday, May 6, 2016. Suu Kyi and Myanmar's president Htin Kyaw left Myanmar on a one-day official visit to Laos, their first overseas tour since taking over power in March 2016. (AP Photo/Aung Shine Oo)

The Laotian state news agency KPL said the purpose of the visit was to strengthen relations and cooperation between the countries.

It said both sides also exchanged points of view on regional and international issues of common interest, and discussed restarting direct flights between tourist and commercial destinations in both countries.

Suu Kyi, who took office on March 30, already held a meeting with a representative of Myanmar's most important neighbor, when Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi visited the Myanmar capital Naypyitaw in early April.

Suu Kyi holds the post of state counsellor, which was specially created for her, and in that position is the country's real leader. The military-imposed constitution barred her from becoming president, so as leader of her National League for Democracy party she arranged for her close associate Htin Kyaw to become president but defer to her as the decision-maker.

She seems likely to expand her power, as Htin Kyaw on Thursday proposed to Parliament that a Ministry for State Counsellor be created.

According to the state-controlled Global New Light of Myanmar newspaper, he explained that his proposal "is intended to speed up the government's efforts at national reconciliation, internal peace, national development and the rule of law."

Myanmar's President Htin Kyaw waves just before taking off from capital Naypyitaw, Myanmar, Friday, May 6, 2016. Myanmar' s de facto leader Suu Kyi and President Htin Kyaw left Myanmar on a one-day official visit to Laos, their first overseas tour since taking over power in March 2016. (AP Photo/Aung Shine Oo)

Myanmar Foreign Minister Aung San Suu Kyi, center, walks to board a flight as Myanmar's commander-in-chief Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, left, watches in the airport of capital Naypyitaw, Myanmar, Friday, May 6, 2016. Suu Kyi and Myanmar's president Htin Kyaw left Myanmar on a one-day official visit to Laos, their first overseas tour since taking over power in March, 2016. (AP Photo/Aung Shine Oo)
The Latest: Trump calls Sen. Elizabeth Warren 'goofy'

WASHINGTON (AP)  The Latest on the 2016 presidential campaign (all times Eastern):

11:30 p.m.

Donald Trump is railing against Sen. Elizabeth Warren, calling the Massachusetts Democrat "goofy."

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks during a rally in Eugene, Ore., Friday, May 6, 2016. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)

Trump tells supporters in Eugene, Oregon, on Friday evening that his likely rival, Hillary Clinton, has "got this goofy friend named Elizabeth Warren."

Trump is calling Warren a "goofus" and a "basket case," and says "she's done nothing in the United States Senate."

Warren had earlier insulted Trump on Twitter, calling him "a bully who has a single play in his playbook."

Trump's Twitter account responded with: "Goofy Elizabeth Warren, Hillary Clinton's flunky, has a career that is totally based on a lie. She is not Native American."

Warren faced questions about her Native American ancestry during her 2012 Senate campaign after being listed as such at Harvard University.

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10:15 p.m.

Sometimes pitched arguments are breaking out between protesters and supporters of Donald Trump outside a rally in Eugene, Oregon, by the presumptive GOP nominee.

Opponents of Trump are carrying signs with slogans like "Trump Hates Women" and "Be American, Not Partisan," while Trump's supporters are shouting things like "This Is Our Country!"

Eugene is the home of the University of Oregon and a city known for its liberalism.

Trump launched his speech at the Lane Event Center by saying, "Eugene ... what a great place."

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9:30 p.m.

Former Republican presidential nominee Bob Dole is throwing his support behind the party's presumptive candidate, Donald Trump.

The Trump campaign has released a statement in which Dole says: "The voters of our country have turned out in record numbers to support Mr. Trump. It is important that their votes be honored."

In the same release, Trump says the former Kansas senator "is a wonderful man and it is a great honor to have his support."

Dole's endorsement comes as many Republican leaders, including House Speaker Paul Ryan, have declined to endorse Trump.

Dole lost the 1996 presidential election to incumbent Democrat Bill Clinton.

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8 p.m.

Hillary Clinton is telling supporters in Oakland, California, that Donald Trump doesn't care much for women and immigrants.

Clinton says Trump is the GOP's "presumptive nominee" as well as its "presumptuous nominee." She says he doesn't care about equal pay for women "because he doesn't think much of women, it turns out."

She is also warning of Trump's plan to deport millions of immigrants living in the country unlawfully, asking, "Can you imagine the police and military action inside our borders?" She says the authorities would knock on doors, "hauling people out of their beds and their workplaces."

The former secretary of state says she has offered a specific agenda but "we're getting slogans and one-liners on the other side."

Clinton faces Bernie Sanders in California's primary on June 7.

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6:19 p.m.

Donald Trump all but sealed up the Republican presidential nomination three days ago, but he showed little interest in working to rally the party to his side at an event on Friday in Nebraska.

Speaking in an airport hangar, Trump complained about South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham's renewed criticisms and returned to criticizing former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who has been out of the race for months.

Both men said Friday they could not support his candidacy.

Trump is also facing resistance from House Speaker Paul Ryan. He says he's not yet ready to support Trump.

When Trump mentioned Ryan, boos echoed throughout the private air hangar near the Omaha airport.

Trump says he figured Ryan would back his candidacy as a matter of routine. "I don't know what happened," he says.

___

6:01 p.m.

Donald Trump is now encouraging his supporters to vote for him in Tuesday's primaries, even though his Republican rivals have dropped out of the race for president.

The presumptive GOP nominee kicked off a rally in Omaha, Nebraska, on Friday by saying, "We have to go on Tuesday and vote because we're looking to break the all-time record."

It was a change from Thursday night, when he told a crowd in West Virginia not to bother and hold their votes until November. Both states hold their primaries next Tuesday.

___

4:48 p.m.

Donald Trump is unloading on Lindsey Graham, calling the South Carolina senator "beyond rehabilitation" and "an embarrassment" to his state.

A former campaign rival of the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Graham said in a CNN interview Friday that he can't support Trump's candidacy.

Trump responded with a scathing statement that mocked Graham's campaign loss.

He says: "I fully understand why Lindsey Graham cannot support me. If I got beaten as badly as I beat him, and all the other candidates he endorsed, I would not be able to give my support either. He was a poor representative and an embarrassment to the great people of South Carolina."

Trump says he intends to unify the party, but Graham "has shown himself to be beyond rehabilitation."

He adds, "And like the voters who rejected him, so will I!"

___

4:40 p.m.

Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is holding a fundraiser to help Chris Christie pay off his own presidential campaign's debt and to raise money for the New Jersey Republican Party.

The pair will appear at what is being billed as a "New Jersey rally" in Lawrenceville, New Jersey, on May 19.

An email invitation to the event lists the price of attendance as $200 per person. It says all proceeds will benefit Chris Christie for President Inc.

Christie confidant and Republican National Committeeman Bill Palatucci says Trump will also be appearing at a separate event in the same venue benefiting the state party. He says those tickets will cost $25,000.

The New Jersey governor was one of Trump's earliest and most prominent backers and has appeared frequently with him on the campaign trail.

Christie ended his campaign following a disappointing showing in the New Hampshire primary. His campaign account was $250,000 in the red at the end of March.

___

4:37 p.m.

Former Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush says he won't vote for Donald Trump this November  and won't cast his ballot for Hillary Clinton, either.

Bush says on Facebook that Trump has not demonstrated the temperament or strength of character needed to serve as president. Of Clinton, he says the former secretary of state is untrustworthy.

He adds that he's not optimistic either candidate will put the country on a better course. He says he plans to "support principled conservatives at the state and federal levels" this fall.

The former two-term governor of Florida was an early front-runner for the Republican nomination, raising staggering sums of money to support his bid.

But he never caught on with voters in the same way as Trump, who often mocked the brother and son of former presidents as "low energy."

___

3:15 p.m.

With only one candidate left in the race, delegates to the Republican national convention are starting to rally around billionaire businessman Donald Trump  a few at a time.

All nine delegates from the U.S. territory of American Samoa have voted to back Trump. Trump has also picked up seven delegates in Louisiana. Five had been pledged to Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, and two were uncommitted.

In a statement, the Rubio delegates from Louisiana say Trump may not have been their first choice, but he is the choice of millions of voters.

After Trump won the Indiana primary Tuesday, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Ohio Gov. John Kasich suspended their campaigns.

With 1,086 delegates, Trump has 86 percent of the delegates needed to clinch the nomination.

___

1:55 p.m.

Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham says he won't support presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump.

The South Carolina senator and former White House hopeful says in a statement he doesn't believe Trump is a "reliable Republican conservative nor has he displayed the judgment and temperament to serve as commander in chief."

Graham said he won't support Democrat Hillary Clinton either. He said she represents a third term for President Barack Obama.

The senator says he will help to elect down-ballot Republicans and urges people to vote this year. He says no matter what, he will do everything he can to help the next president.

Graham has no plans to attend the Republican convention in Cleveland in July.

___

1:10 p.m.

President Barack Obama isn't ready to urge Sen. Bernie Sanders to get out of the Democratic primary, but he suggested the Vermont senator's prospects are slim.

Asked whether he think Sanders should call it quits, Obama says, "Let's let the process play itself out." But he added, "I think everybody knows what the math is." He said Sanders has done an "extraordinary job" of raising important issues.

Rival Hillary Clinton holds a sizable lead over Sanders with more than 300 pledged delegates and has received about 3 million more votes than Sanders during the primaries. Including superdelegates, Clinton is more than 90 percent of the way to clinching the nomination.

Obama has said he plans to campaign hard for the nominee, once the party has rallied around a single candidate.

___

1:05 p.m.

President Barack Obama says "you have to ask (Paul) Ryan" what it means for the Republican Party that the House speaker won't swing behind Donald Trump as the GOP's presumptive nominee.

Obama says Republican officials and voters will have to decide for themselves whether they feel comfortable with Trump as their representative.

Ryan, in a televised interview Thursday, said he was not yet ready to support Trump as the GOP nominee.

___

12:45 p.m.

In his first remarks about Donald Trump's presumptive nominee status, President Barack Obama has a message for the media: "This is not entertainment. This is not a reality show."

Obama is urging reporters to take Trump seriously and vet him thoroughly. At a brief news conference at the White House on Friday, Obama told reporters to scrutinize the candidates closely, to fact check their policies and to hold them to their past statements.

He says, "emphasizing the spectacle and the circus, that's not something we can afford."

Obama says if reporters do their job and people are well informed "I'm confident our democracy will work."

Asked about Trump's taco bowl tweet Thursday saying "I love Hispanics," Obama said he wouldn't comment on Trump's twitter feed.

___

11 a.m.

Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders is threatening a floor fight over rules and platform planks at the party's summer convention if the Democratic National Committee stacks the committees with supporters of Hillary Clinton.

Sanders writes in a letter to Democratic National Committee chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz that the makeup of the standing committees should reflect the level of support that he and Clinton received in the primaries and caucuses.

He says many of his supporters have not been included and notes Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy will be in charge of the convention's platform committee and former Massachusetts Rep. Barney Frank will run the rules committee. He calls both "aggressive attack surrogates" for Clinton.

Sanders says if the process is unfair, he'll challenge platform planks, electoral reform planks and rules changes.

___

9 a.m.

The Republican party chairman says he supports Donald Trump as the party's presidential nominee. Reince Priebus is breaking with House Speaker Paul Ryan, who said Thursday he's not ready to back Trump.

Priebus says he backs Trump even if he disagrees with ideas like banning Muslims from entering the U.S.

The chairman says a meeting next week will help the party start to unify behind Trump. He says Ryan is "just being honest," that Ryan is "not there yet, but he wants to get there."

Priebus says it will take some time for some people to work through their differences with Trump.

___

8:45 a.m.

Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump says Britain is "better off without" the European Union.

That's in contrast with President Barack Obama, who has cautioned British voters against leaving the EU. Britain will vote June 23 on whether to remain in the 28-nation bloc.

"I would say that they're better off without it, personally," Trump told Fox News on Wednesday.

"But I'm not making that as a recommendation, just my feeling. I know Great Britain very well. I know, you know, the country very well. I have a lot of investments there. I would say that they're better off without it. But I want them to make their own decisions."

Trump said the migration crisis "has been a horrible thing for Europe; a lot of that was pushed by the EU."

___

8:20 a.m.

Former Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson says he was "personally very disappointed" to hear House Speaker Paul Ryan withhold his support for Donald Trump as the Republican presidential nominee.

Carson tells MSNBC's "Morning Joe" show that "if we divide the party, we ensure the victory of the opposite party. And we've got to be more mature than that."

Carson, who is helping Trump decide on a vice presidential running mate, said Friday: "I hope Speaker Ryan and many others, as time goes on, realizes that."

On the vice presidential selection, Carson told an interviewer that if there's a Democrat who subscribes to the Republican Party's beliefs, "let me know."

"This is such an important position," Carson added. "You don't want to exclude anybody just on the basis of one characteristic."

Volunteer Donna Cowan wears a Donald Trump bumper sticker on her leg as she hands out signs before a the start of a rally for the Republican presidential candidate in Eugene, Ore., Friday, May 6, 2016. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, right, smiles next to Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf at Clinton's campaign field office in Oakland, Calif., Friday, May 6, 2016. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks during a rally, Friday, May 6, 2016, in Omaha, Neb. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)

President Barack Obama speaks in the White House briefing room in Washington, Friday, May 6, 2016, about the economy and new steps to strengthen financial transparency and combat money laundering, corruption, and tax evasion. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

Democratic presidential candidate, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., speaks to McDowell county community members and other supporters during a campaign event at Five Loaves & Two Fishes food pantry in Kimball, W.Va., Thursday May 5, 2016. (Christian Tyler Randolph/Charleston Gazette-Mail via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT

House Speaker Paul D. Ryan, R-Wis., talks with a supporter during a campaign rally for U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., during Johnsons U.S. Senate campaign kickoff tour Thursday, May 5, 2016 in Burlington, Wis. (Gregory Shaver/The Journal Times via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT

House Speaker Paul D. Ryan, R-Wis., talks during a campaign rally for U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., during Johnsons U.S. Senate campaign kickoff tour Thursday, May 5, 2016 in Burlington, Wis. (Gregory Shaver/The Journal Times via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT

A supporter of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump holds a sign during a rally in Charleston, W.Va., Thursday, May 5, 2016. (AP Photo/Steve Helber)
South Africa selects uncapped Shamsi, Dale Steyn left out

JOHANNESBURG (AP)  South Africa called up uncapped left-arm wrist spinner Tabraiz Shamsi for next month's triangular limited-overs series in the Caribbean and rested fast bowler Dale Steyn amid concerns over his workload.

Shamsi was the only new player in the one-day international squad announced on Friday, although pace-bowling allrounder Wayne Parnell was recalled for the first time in more than a year.

Head selector Linda Zondi said Steyn was rested for the triangular series against West Indies and Australia to keep him fresh for the test season. South Africa, which lost its No. 1 ranking in tests with a home loss to England in January, has series against New Zealand, Australia and Sri Lanka this year.

Batsman Faf du Plessis was in the ODI squad for the Caribbean despite sustaining a broken finger in the IPL. Du Plessis had surgery on the broken left ring finger this week and should be ready for South Africa's second game of the triangular series against Australia on June 7, team manager Mohammed Moosajee said.

Steyn won't play in the triangular after the 32-year-old quick bowler struggled with a series of injuries at the end of last season. The latest, a right shoulder problem, kept him out of most of the series loss to England.
Colombia arrests alleged big money launderer from Panama

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP)  Colombian authorities have arrested a prominent Panama businessman they're calling the world's most-wanted money launderer and froze assets belonging to dozens of companies linked to him that were allegedly used to hide millions in illegal drug profits.

The coordinated operation was announced Thursday as the U.S. Treasury Department froze assets belonging to 68 companies in this Central American nation and in Colombia under a drug kingpin designation.

On Friday, Colombian police showed videos taken during the arrest of Nidal Waked, who the U.S. has signaled as the co-leader with his uncle, Abdul Waked, of a money laundering network that stretched across an empire of real estate, financial and retail businesses in 14 Latin American nations.

This photo released by Colombia's National Police shows Panama businessman Nidal Waked after he was arrested at the international airport in Bogota, Colombia, Wednesday, May 4, 2016. Waked is sought by the United States and accused of being a leader of an organization that laundered drug profits through a web of companies including a luxury mall, a bank and the duty-free zone at Panama City's international airport. (Colombia National Police via AP)

Nidal Waked, 44, was arrested Wednesday night on a U.S. drug warrant upon arrival to Bogota's international airport from Panama City. Police said he seemed surprised but was cooperative and explained he had traveled to the Colombian capital on business and with a family member who he was accompanying for a medical appointment. Born in the Colombian city of Barranquilla, he's being held in Bogota pending a U.S. extradition request.

A statement from U.S. Attorney's Office in Miami described Nidal Waked as one of "the most significant money launderers and drug traffickers in the world." If convicted, he faces up to 70 years in prison.

The U.S. law enforcement operation has come as a major shock to Panama, which is still reeling from a huge leak of documents known as the Panama Papers detailing how the world's rich and famous used the Central American nation to hide their wealth. On Friday, the Obama administration announced tougher rules and proposed legislation to prevent wealthy individuals, including politicians, from using offshore shell companies to embezzle money or avoid paying taxes.

Panama's tradition for financial secrecy and crossroads location along the path of South American cocaine heading to the U.S. has long made it an attractive money-laundering center.

President Juan Carlos Varela, who was in Washington when the sting took place, said he had instructed his finance minister to work with U.S. authorities to protect the jobs of Panamanians affected by the asset freeze. He said Panamanian prosecutors are also investigating and banking regulators taking action so that depositors and capital markets aren't hurt.

"I want to assure Panamanians that our independent system of justice and regulators are doing their jobs," Varela said in a statement.

Meanwhile, Abdul Waked has taken distance from his nephew's alleged actions, saying that he hadn't conducted any business with his older brother's family since the 1980s.

"He's not my partner and he's never been," Waked told Colombian radio station La W, adding that he was unaware of any money-laundering investigations against his companies until Thursday. "I want to defend myself. My books are open. And I'll do everything to defend my honor, that of my family and my children."

Abdul Waked, who was born in Lebanon and immigrated to Colombia's Caribbean coast, is behind some of Panama's highest-profile investments including a luxury mall, a bank and the country's oldest newspaper, La Estrella de Panama. Grupo Wisa, the family's holding company, employs more than 6,000 people who work at duty-free zones at airports across the Americas, including Mexico City's international terminals.

The base of operation was Panama City's international airport, a major travel hub that has come under U.S. scrutiny before. In 2007, Grupo Wisa along with the owners of Panama's Copa Airlines paid $173 million to run the airport's duty free zone.

A leaked 2009 U.S. diplomatic cable published by Wikileaks described the airport as "tainted by a seamy underside of alien smuggling, money laundering, narcotics trafficking and corruption." Passengers in transit could launder money through the many jewelry, perfume and electronics shops found at every turn and which face little regulatory scrutiny, the cable said.

"The duty-free zone at Tocumen is a good example of the kind of live-and-let live attitude permeating the airport," the cable said.

Grupo Wisa issued a terse statement saying the accusations "are false and unfounded." The company said it had instructed its lawyers to cooperate fully in the investigation announced by Panamanian officials.

It's still unclear who they believe the Waked family was allegedly laundering drug proceeds for.

A law enforcement official, who agreed to discuss the matter only if not quoted by name because he was not authorized to discuss the case publicly, said the family worked with a wide range of drug cartels from Colombia and Mexico as well as independent drug-trafficking organizations.

The indictment unsealed against Nidal Waked and a co-defendant alleges the two conspired to defraud Ocean Bank by misrepresenting transfers into their account at the Miami bank as loans from another financial institution in Panama.

___

Associated Press writer Juan Zamorano contributed to this story from Panama City.

People walk outside the Balboa Bank & Trust Corp. building in Panama City, Thursday, May 5, 2016. Panama authorities took control of the Balboa Bank & Trust Corp. after U.S. officials announced the arrest of a Panama-based businessman who allegedly ran a worldwide money-laundering organization for drug traffickers. (AP Photo/Arnulfo Franco)

Two police officers stand outside of the Balboa Bank & Trust Corp. building in Panama City, Thursday, May 5, 2016. Panama authorities took control of the Balboa Bank & Trust Corp. after U.S. officials announced the arrest of a Panama-based businessman who allegedly ran a worldwide money-laundering organization for drug traffickers. (AP Photo/Arnulfo Franco)
Gayle Smith, the new administrator of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), joined the speech and highlighted the historical moment the country stands in: "I think, we are all aware that there is something bigger than all of us happening here." She also emphasized the importance of freedom of dialog and exchange and insured the country support. Gayle Smith arrived in Myanmar on 30th April and travelled through the country to meet leaders from civil society, government, and the private sector. The people she met had made a great impression on her, she said: "I think, that all the needs for success are inside these borders."

During her first visit to Myanmar, she met with leaders from civil society, government and the private sector from all over the country. At the final stop of her four day tour in Yangon, she emphasized the importance of the agricultural sector for the development of the country: " I have been able to see projects with USAID local partners providing new techniques for agriculture, that demonstrate not only the enormous potential of the agricultural sector here but also enabled me to meet with local farmers and to see the willingness and the ability to organize and bring together those tools that can change the agricultural sector and the situation of the farmers. A change in this sector will not only improve the life of the farmers, but also the economy and the nation at large given to the significant number of people who work in the agricultural sector, she says.

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is the lead development agency of the United States providing development aid all over the world. After years of military rule USAID re-opened its mission in Myanmar in 2012. Gayle Smith took over from her predecessor Rajiv Shah in December last year. USAID supported Myanmar during the election and maintains several projects in the country, including providing farmers technical and financial support to improve their business and fight hunger.

Gayle Smith stressed her willingness to continue with these projects: " Chris Milligan started this mission in 2012 and had a great effect in providing support in development, democratic reform and national reconciliation and we intend to deepen and expand this mission again in partnership with people in the country."
Student accused of owing $2.4M after bank error in Australia

SYDNEY (AP)  A Malaysian student has been charged in a Sydney court with dishonesty offenses after a bank accidentally gave her a 4.6 million Australian dollar ($3.4 million) overdraft four years ago.

Christine Jiaxin Lee was 17 years old and had been living in Sydney for a year when Westpac Banking Corp. made the expensive mistake in 2012, the Waverley Local Court was told on Thursday.

She was arrested at Sydney Airport on Wednesday night as she tried to fly to Malaysia still owing AU$3.3 million spent on what her lawyer described as luxury items including handbags. The rest of the money had been recovered.

An arrest warrant was issued for the 21-year-old chemical engineering student in March for taking advantage of the bank's mistake.

She was released on bail after she appeared in court charged with dishonestly obtaining financial advantage by deception and knowingly dealing with the proceeds of crime. Lee did not enter pleas.

Magistrate Lisa Stapleton questioned whether the latter would stick.

"It's not proceeds of crime. It's money we all dream about," Stapleton told the prosecutor. "She didn't take it from them. They gave it to her."

She is due to appear in court next on June 21.
Irish Prime Minister Kenny re-elected after 70-day deadlock

DUBLIN (AP)  Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny won narrow re-election Friday on his fourth try, ending 70 days of deadlock and forging a novel but fragile minority government containing independent voices.

Kenny received 59 votes, with 49 against, in the 158-member parliament  by far the fewest ever received for a winning premier in Ireland, a nation used to coalition governments with stable majorities. Speculation mounted on how long this government might survive.

In his victory speech, Kenny appealed to opposition lawmakers to "work in partnership together to build a better Ireland. It will be a real test of our democracy, of our character and indeed of this house  a test I am convinced we will pass."

Newly elected Prime Minister Enda Kenny, right, receives the Seal of the Taoiseach and Seal of Government from President Michael D. Higgins at Aras an Uachtarain, Dublin, Friday, May 6, 2016. Prime Minister Enda Kenny won narrow re-election Friday on his fourth attempt, ending 70 days of deadlock caused by an inconclusive election and clearing the way for formation of an exceptionally fragile minority government. (Brian Lawless/PA via AP) UNITED KINGDOM OUT - NO SALES - NO ARCHIVES

Kenny had governed Ireland for the past five years atop a two-party government sporting the strongest majority in Irish history. But voters were angered by several years of austerity that underpinned Ireland's 2013 exit from an international bailout and shifted support to socialist protest parties and maverick independents in the Feb. 26 election.

Kenny's centrist Fine Gael party, though weakened, retained its top position in parliament. But its coalition ally in the left-wing Labour Party was decimated, leaving Kenny without a viable majority partner.

Now, Fine Gael will stay in government only with external support from its age-old enemy, Fianna Fail.

Those parties have never shared power since Ireland's 1920s independence from Britain, when the two took opposite sides in a fratricidal civil war. Fianna Fail rebuffed Kenny's weeks-long effort to form a majority coalition.

Friday's breakthrough became possible once Fianna Fail accepted a compromise plan to support legislative votes from outside government ranks on a case-by-case basis through late 2018.

Kenny had lost three previous leadership votes as Fianna Fail's 44 lawmakers blocked his nomination. This time they abstained, opening the door for Kenny to win a majority of votes cast. Kenny received 50 from his own party and nine from independents, three of whom received Cabinet seats as part of the bargain, another Irish first.

Friday's scheduled "high noon" vote was delayed amid tense behind-the-scenes haggling with independents, several of whom made demands at sharp odds with Fine Gael's pro-business, pro-EU policies. Failure to persuade enough independents to back Kenny would have forced him to call Ireland's first early election since 1989.

Labour's seven surviving lawmakers voted against Kenny. Labour leader Joan Burton, who until Friday was Ireland's deputy prime minister, denounced Kenny's deal with Fianna Fail as "a deeply flawed arrangement."

Kenny later unveiled a new-look 15-member Cabinet that included promotions for four women. Justice Minister Frances Fitzgerald gained the post of deputy premier. An independent, American-born gay rights activist Katherine Zappone, became minister for children.

A particularly outspoken independent, financial commentator Shane Ross, became minister of transportation  a red-hot topic in traffic-choked Dublin. Ross has lambasted successive governments' handling of the 2008 debt crisis that propelled Ireland to the brink of bankruptcy.

Ross' forecasts aren't always correct. In March, as coalition talks foundered, Ross described Kenny as "a political corpse."

Newly elected Prime Minister Enda Kenny, right, receives the Seal of the Taoiseach and Seal of Government from President Michael D. Higgins at Aras an Uachtarain, Dublin, Friday, May 6, 2016. Prime Minister Enda Kenny won narrow re-election Friday on his fourth attempt, ending 70 days of deadlock caused by an inconclusive election and clearing the way for formation of an exceptionally fragile minority government. (Brian Lawless/PA via AP) UNITED KINGDOM OUT - NO SALES - NO ARCHIVES

Newly elected Prime Minister Enda Kenny greets supporters as he leaves Leinster House, Dublin, to go to Aras an Uachtarain, the official residence of the President of Ireland, to receive the Seal of the Taoiseach and Seal of Government, Friday May 6, 2016. Prime Minister Enda Kenny won narrow re-election Friday on his fourth attempt, ending 70 days of deadlock caused by an inconclusive election and clearing the way for formation of an exceptionally fragile minority government. (PA via AP) UNITED KINGDOM OUT
Lawmakers agree to give police more rights to seize guns

PRAGUE (AP)  The lower house of the Czech Parliament has approved a government plan to give police increased powers to seize guns and ammunition, a move prompted by a rare deadly shooting in a small-town restaurant last year.

Friday's 93-35 vote would make it possible for police to seize weapons from legal owners on suspicion that their health condition has changed and they could pose a threat.

Approvals from the upper house and president are still needed.

In February 2015, a gunman entered a restaurant in the southeastern town of Uhersky Brod and opened fire, killing eight people and seriously wounding one before he fatally shot himself.
Morocco arrests suspect linked to extremist group in Libya

RABAT, Morocco (AP)  Morocco's Interior Ministry says a person suspected of ties with an extremist group active in Libya has been arrested.

The ministry statement says the unidentified suspect, who was arrested on Thursday at the Mohammed V Airport in Casablanca after arriving from Libya via Tunisia, had been wanted by authorities since the beginning of the year after he left the country.
Small explosion detected at Cleveland Volcano

CHUGINADAK ISLAND, Alaska (AP)  Scientists have detected a small explosion at the Cleveland Volcano on Thursday night.

The acting coordinating scientist for the University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute says Mount Cleveland is one of the most active volcanos and regularly produces these kinds of eruptions.

David Fee says the explosion, which was detected at 6:44 p.m., lasted only a few seconds. It typically produces a small ash cloud that drifts away.

Officials were not able to confirm the presence of an ash cloud because there were no available satellite images yet.

Fee says the ash cloud would most likely be below cruising altitude for any of the major international airlines.
Kerry stars in Russian adaptation of Robert Burns poem

MOSCOW (AP)  The Russian foreign minister's spokeswoman has lightheartedly riffed on a poem by Robert Burns to comment on the frequent phone calls between her boss and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry.

Maria Zakharova told journalists that since it was Friday she would make a "lyrical diversion." She then read an adaption of "My Heart's in the Highlands" by the Scottish poet:

"His heart is in Moscow. His heart is not there.

FILE - In this April 13, 2016 file photo, Secretary of State John Kerry presents the 2015 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, at the State Department in Washington. Kerry is scheduled to deliver the commencement address at Northeastern University. Kerry will speak to an expected audience of 25,000 students, family members and school officials at the graduation ceremony on Friday, May 6, 2016. ( AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana, File)

His heart is in Moscow, chasing a bear.

Chasing not grizzly, but Kremlinese.

His heart is in Moscow wherever John is."
Spain: Police find 15 migrant youths hidden in junk cargo

MADRID (AP)  Spanish police say they found 15 migrant youths hidden in cargo of junk that was to be shipped from a north African enclave to mainland Spain for processing.

Civil Guard spokesmen said the migrants, all believed to be minors, were discovered late Thursday during an inspection of the cargo load at Melilla port.

The officer, who spoke Friday on condition of anonymity in keeping with police regulations, said the minors were trying to make it to Spain and possibly elsewhere in Europe.

He said none was injured.

The agent said 58 other youths looking to clandestinely board ships headed for Spain were found in the port Thursday.
Candidates asked to unite vs Filipino mayor likened to Trump

MANILA, Philippines (AP)  The Philippine leader Friday made a desperate call on presidential candidates to agree to an alliance to defeat a front-running mayor he describes as a threat to democracy.

President Benigno Aquino III said the 30 percent lead of Mayor Rodrigo Duterte in surveys could be overcome if his trailing rivals, mainly former Interior Secretary Mar Roxas and Sen. Grace Poe, could unite.

Aquino did not elaborate but he was insinuating that some of the candidates trailing Duterte in opinion surveys can back out and support a single aspirant to surmount Duterte's lead.

Presidential candidate Sen. Grace Poe, who is running second in survey polls, answers questions, inside her home in suburban Quezon city, north of Manila, Philippines on Friday, May 6, 2016. Philippine President Benigno Aquino III has called on presidential candidates to agree to an alliance to defeat a front-running mayor, who he says is a threat to democracy and has built a reputation for his profanity-laden speeches. (AP Photo/Aaron Favila)

"Instead of thinking about what shall we do if everything he says is exactly what he tells to do, why don't we remove that problem or that threat or that insecurity by uniting the 70 and defeating the 30?" Aquino told CNN Philippines in an interview.

"The whole point is, any two of them unites... we have more than 40 percent. It defeats the 30 percent," Aquino said.

Five candidates are seeking the presidency in Monday's elections, and the winner will be whoever gets the most votes, even if no one gets a majority.

In a news conference, Roxas called on Poe to agree to meet and discuss unifying, but she rejected outright any arrangement for her to leave the race.

"We can talk anytime," Poe said. "But I'm saying early on that if they're thinking of talking to convince one of us to withdraw, I will not back out."

Roxas called Poe's rejection of his offer to meet and talk about possible unity "unfortunate."

"I repeat, what is at stake here are important: democracy, the economy, jobs and the welfare of our country," Roxas said.

Another candidate, Vice President Jejomar Binay also rejected Aquino's call.

The brash Duterte, who has been compared to Donald Trump in the U.S. presidential race, has caused alarm with his threats, including of closing Congress if lawmakers try to impeach him if he triumphs in Monday's elections.

Known for expletive-laden speeches, Duterte, 71, built his political name with an iron-fisted approach to fighting crime in Davao, where he has been accused by human rights groups of links to extrajudicial killings.

His bold pledge to eradicate crime, especially drug trafficking and kidnappings, in three to six months has resonated with the public, but also sparked alarm and doubts.

The former government prosecutor remained in the top spot in the most recent polls despite a storm of criticism after he remarked recently that he wished he could have been the first to rape an Australian missionary who was sexually assaulted and killed by inmates in a 1989 prison riot because she was attractive.

When the Australian and U.S. ambassadors commented that rape and such brutal death should not be trivialized, Duterte told them to shut up. Reacting to a reporter's question, he expressed openness to severe ties with the U.S. and Australia if the two countries would initiate such a move.

A Philippine senator has filed a corruption complaint against Duterte, alleging that the mayor of southern Davao city hired 11,000 non-existent employees whose salaries cost the government 708 million ($15 million).

Duterte also allegedly kept wealth in a joint bank account with his daughter that he did not declare publicly in 2014 as required by law.

The mayor has denied committing any wrongdoing.

Layers of election campaign posters hang outside a voting center in Manila, Philippines on Friday May 6, 2016. Campaign materials can be seen in almost every corner of the country as it gears up for the presidential elections on Monday. (AP Photo/Aaron Favila)
Prosecutors investigate Deutsche Bank for Italian debt sale

MILAN (AP)  Italian prosecutors are investigating top former Deutsche Bank management on suspicion of market manipulation related to the sale of 7 billion euros of Italian government bonds in 2011.

News agency ANSA reported Friday that financial police have taken depositions and seized documents in Deutsche Bank's Italian headquarters in Milan in recent days.

Deutsche Bank, based in Frankfurt, Germany, said it is cooperating with authorities and that it responded to a related inquiry by market regulator Consob in 2011.
Canadian billionaire sells majority stake in Adriatic marina

TIVAT, Montenegro (AP)  Canadian billionaire Peter Munk has sold his majority stake in Porto Montenegro, one of world's largest marinas for super yachts, to Dubai's sovereign wealth fund for a reported 200 million euros ($228 million).

Mohammed Al Shaibani, the executive director and CEO of Investment Corp. of Dubai, said Friday that the purchase of the marina "presents an opportunity for ICD to access a successful business with significant potential for development expansion, both in the marina and landside."

Munk, the founder of mining company Barrick Gold, owned 52 percent of Porto Montenegro's holding company. Other shareholders include Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska and Lord Jacob Rothschild of the banking dynasty.
He said: If [the Burmese government] wants to immediately implement it [a 21st century Panglong Agreement] just as Daw Aung San Suu Kyi has said, a nationwide ceasefire needs to be immediately declared and the Tatmadaw [Burma Army] needs to accept it.

He pointed out that a year after General Ne Wins revolutionary Council Government staged a military coup in 1962 the Burmese government and ethnic armed groups were able to hold political dialogue, declare a ceasefire and grant an amnesty for all opposition forces.

Nai Hong Tha continued: I want the government, parliament, military, and political parties, and all ethnic armed groups to participate, discuss, and find solutions at a 21st Century Panglong Conference. All the ethnic armed groups including the NCA-signatories and non-NCA-signatories need to participate.

He said that though a 21st century Panglong Agreement would not be the same as the 1947 Panglong Agreement signed between General Aung San and the ethnic groups from the hill regions, he hoped that it would be able to succeed in its main objective of bringing about the building of a federal union.

In an interview with the I.M.N.A, the Shan Nationalities League for Democracy (SNLD)s Chairman U Khun Tun Oo said: Daw Aung San Suu Kyi said the 21st Century Panglong will be held within one or two months. We dont know which methods and format will be used to hold it. We dont know who will support it and who will participate. This is a problem. The biggest problem is that the Tatmadaw needs to be satisfied with it.

Daw Aung San Suu Kyi told the Union Joint Monitoring Committee (JMC-U) on 27 April that she wanted to hold a 21st century Panglong Agreement within one or two months.

Translated by Thida Linn

Edited in English by Mark Inkey for BNI
Brother of Paris attacks ringleader sentenced in Morocco

SALE, Morocco (AP)  A Moroccan court has sentenced a brother of the suspected Paris attacks ringleader to two years in prison.

Official Moroccan news agency MAP reported that Yassine Abaaoud, a younger brother of Abdelhamid Abaaoud, was convicted of being an apologist for terror and failing to report terror-related crimes.

The court in the city of Sale was not convinced by Abaaoud's argument that he was not an extremist militant and was unaware of his brother's deadly projects.

Authorities have identified Abdelhamid Abaaoud as the ringleader of the Nov. 13 attacks in Paris that left 130 people dead and hundreds wounded. He died in a police raid a few days later.
Amid FBI probe, Miami suburb verges on financial collapse

OPA-LOCKA, Fla. (AP)  Amid an FBI corruption investigation, authorities say the Miami suburb of Opa-locka is teetering toward financial collapse.

Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos Gimenez asked Gov. Rick Scott in a letter this week to place the city of 16,000 people under state control.

The Miami Herald (http://hrld.us/1rYf9V7 ) reports the letter warns that without state support Opa-locka's government faces complete shutdown.

State law allows the governor to step in when cities face financial emergencies, including a takeover of services. Opa-locka officials said at a meeting this week the city faces a $1.4 million shortfall plus millions in prior debts.

The letter comes as the FBI continues investigating corruption allegations against Opa-locka's mayor and several other top officials. Earlier this year agents raided city hall looking for evidence, but no arrests have been made.

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PICTURED: Highlights of the 2016 race for the White House

The candidates in the race for the White House are making the case to voters across the country in a fight to win the Republican and Democratic nominations. Here's a look, as seen in images made by Associated Press photographers on the campaign trail.

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See the latest AP photo galleries: http://apne.ws/TXeCBN

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump gestures during a rally in Charleston, W.Va., Thursday, May 5, 2016. (AP Photo/Steve Helber)

The Archive: Top photo highlights from previous weeks: http://apne.ws/13QUFKJ

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Follow AP photographers on Twitter: http://twitter.com/AP/lists/ap-photographers

Follow AP Images on Twitter: http://twitter.com/AP_Images

Visit AP Images online: http://www.apimages.com

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton waves to students campaigns at East Los Angeles College in Los Angeles, Thursday, May 5, 2016. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

Democratic presidential candidate, Sen. Bernie Sanders., I-Vt., speaks and listens to comments and questions from community members at a campaign event at Five Loaves & Two Fishes food pantry in Kimball, W.Va. on Thursday May 5, 2016.(Christian Randolph/Charleston Gazette-Mailvia AP)

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton greets supporters as she campaigns at East Los Angeles College in Los Angeles, Thursday, May 5, 2016. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump puts on a miners hard hat during a rally in Charleston, W.Va., Thursday, May 5, 2016. (AP Photo/Steve Helber)

A group of coal miners wave signs for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump as they wait for a rally in Charleston, W.Va., Thursday, May 5, 2016. (AP Photo/Steve Helber)
Allen Harim promotes new CEO from within

SEAFORD, Del. (AP)  Allen Harim Foods' executive director has been promoted to lead the company following the departure of its CEO.

The Seaford-based poultry company said in a statement that Joe Moran of Ocean View will succeed Steven A. Evans as CEO after having joined the company as its executive director in November.

Evans is departing Allen Harim after less than three years to become the president of Perdue Foods LLC in Salisbury, Maryland.

Moran had previously been a chief operating officer at another Delaware poultry firm, Mountaire Farms.
The Latest: Lawyer says DA correct for ruling out charges

ST. MARTINVILLE, La. (AP)  The latest on a decision by prosecutors in south Louisiana to rule out criminal charges against sheriff's deputies in the fatal shooting of a mentally ill man last year (all times local):

4 p.m.

An attorney for the sheriff's deputy who shot and killed a mentally ill man at his Louisiana home last year is praising authorities for reaching the "correct result" and ruling out any criminal charges against his client.

Attorney Pat Magee says Sgt. Pittard Chapman of the St. Martin Parish Sheriff's Office "had no alternative but to use deadly force" against 32-year-old Michael Noel.

Assistant District Attorney Chester Cedars announced Friday that his office determined charges aren't warranted against Chapman or another deputy who tried to take Noel into protective custody and drive him to a hospital on Dec. 21.

In a memo, Cedars said Chapman was trapped against a door and acted in self-defense when he fired a single shot at Noel.

Magee says Chapman has remained on administrative leave since the shooting at the St. Martinville home that Noel shared with his mother, Barbara Noel.

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10 a.m.

The mother of a mentally ill man who was shot and killed by a sheriff's deputy in south Louisiana last year says she is "furious" that local prosecutors have ruled out any criminal charges over her son's death.

Barbara Noel told The Associated Press that her 32-year-old son, Michael Noel, never posed a threat to the deputies who tried to take him into protective custody and drive him to a hospital on Dec. 21.

Assistant District Attorney Chester Cedars announced Friday that his St. Martin Parish office determined charges aren't warranted after reviewing evidence gathered by State Police investigators. A 20-page memo by Cedars says Noel's shooting was a "reasonable reaction to an extraordinarily intense and volatile situation which was brought on, solely and exclusively, by Michael's conduct."

Barbara Noel says she witnessed the deadly confrontation in the living room of her home and can't understand how investigators can blame her son.

Noel said St. Martin Parish prosecutors didn't inform her of their decision before releasing the memo that outlines their conclusions.

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9:15 a.m.

Prosecutors in Louisiana have ruled out criminal charges in the death of a mentally ill man who was shot and killed during a confrontation with sheriff's deputies last year.

Assistant District Attorney Chester Cedars announced Friday that his St. Martin Parish office determined charges aren't warranted after reviewing evidence gathered by State Police investigators.

A police report said 32-year-old Michael Noel was killed on Dec. 21 during a struggle inside his family's St. Martinville home when he resisted deputies' efforts to take him into protective custody and drive him to a hospital.
Prosecutor in Kosovo charges 2 with Syria terror offenses

PRISTINA, Kosovo (AP)  A Kosovo prosecutor has charged two ethnic Albanians with terror offenses for allegedly joining an Islamic group in Syria.

A statement by the prosecutor's office Friday said the two left Pristina in November 2013 to go to Istanbul, Turkey, and then to the border city of Hatay before crossing into Azaz city in Syria where they were trained and armed by the Nusra Front rebel group.

They are believed to have taken part in fighting until they returned to Kosovo three months later.

It wasn't clear if they have been arrested.

If proved, the charges could lead to up to 10 years imprisonment.
Thousands of migrants still taking Balkan route to EU

BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP)  Thousands of migrants have continued to travel through Hungary on their way toward western Europe, despite fences, border closures and the European Union's deal with Turkey to stop sea crossings to Greece.

Hungarian authorities have briefly detained nearly 11,000 people this year for breaching the razor-wire barriers on its borders with Serbia and Croatia and most of them have later continued their journeys to Austria, Germany and other favored destinations in the EU, the government and aid groups say.

Instead of crossing the sea from Turkey to Greece, some of the new arrivals have come by the dangerous route from Turkey through Bulgaria and then to Serbia, where about 100 people have been arriving daily.

In this Sept. 7, 2015 file photo a migrant runs after he enters the territory of Hungary by crossing the temporary protection fence along the Hungarian-Serbian border as a Hungarian police car approaches at Roszke, 180 kms southeast of Budapest, Hungary. Thousands of migrants have continued to travel through Hungary on their way toward western Europe, despite fences, border closures and the European Unions deal with Turkey to stop sea crossings to Greece. (Edvard Molnar/MTI via AP, file)

While the overall numbers of those reaching Hungary are now a fraction of those flooding into the country at the height of the migrant crisis last year, the continued flow has forced Austria to re-introduce controls on its border with Hungary.

"Putting up a fence in the way of a refugee population is not going to be the answer, it has not solved the problem itself," said Babar Baloch, Central Europe spokesman for the United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR. "Whatever the approach the Hungarian government is taking, it is not helping itself, the refugees or the EU."

However, the Hungarian government still says the fence has been a success.

"The temporary security border seal  commonly called the fence  has lived up to expectations, since after its construction the number of illicit border crossings fell drastically," government spokesman Zoltan Kovacs said.

Police data showed that while nearly 47,000 migrants and refugees were detained entering Hungary in January-April 2015, the number dropped to 10,309 in the same period this year.

The top countries of origin of asylum seekers were Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq, followed by Morocco, Iran, Syria and Algeria. Last year, Syria topped the list, followed by Afghanistan and Kosovo.

At a reception center in the town of Bicske, 43 kilometers (27 miles) west of Budapest, some of the new arrivals were pondering their next steps.

Matiullah, a high schooler from the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad, said he was trying to reach Germany to continue his studies. He did not give his last name, concerned about his family back home, including three younger siblings and his father, a policeman.

"I left with my father's approval because Daesh wanted to kidnap me," Matiullah said, using an Arabic acronym for the Islamic State group. "If I stay in Hungary, I am afraid I will be sent back."

The Urdu-speaking teenager said it took just over a month to reach Hungary as smugglers relayed him on a route through Iran, Turkey, Bulgaria and Serbia.

Bulgaria is considered a more treacherous route than Greece, because it also has a border fence and there have been reports of vigilante "migrant hunters" and police harassment.

The government acknowledged that most of those who apply for asylum in Hungary do not want to stay here. Though the country has received nearly 13,400 asylum requests so far this year, less than 2,300 of the applicants were still in reception centers on May 4.

"While more and more wait until their cases are resolved, a significant number of asylum seekers continue to view Hungary as a transit country," Kovacs said.

That does not surprise aid agencies and refugee advocates.

"Refugees do not believe they have much chance of being granted asylum in Hungary," said Marta Pardavi, co-chair of the Hungarian Helsinki Committee, a human rights group.

Hungary had granted asylum or other kinds of international protection to 154 people by the end of March, according to the latest data available, compared with 508 approvals in all of 2015.

"It is clear Hungary does not want refugees to come here," said Baloch of the UNHCR. "It is trying to shift responsibility rather than sharing it when Europe is still going through a refugee crisis."

Hungary has justified the fence with the need to defend its external borders, while Prime Minister Viktor Orban has characterized the migrant influx as an "invasion" threatening Europe's security and Christian culture.

Orban last year described the migrants as mostly young men who "look more like an army than asylum seekers ... young men from the Arab world who look like warriors."

When the Balkan route abruptly closed in early March, thousands of migrants got stuck in Macedonia and Serbia. And when the EU-Turkey migrant deal came into effect on March 20 many others were stranded in Greece.

The overcrowding at Bicske and other locations made Hungary reopen a reception center last week in the eastern town of Kormend, next to the border with Austria, to accommodate up to 300 people in large tents.

Austria, meanwhile, which re-imposed controls on its border with Hungary in late April, extended patrols to the area, wary of the possible migrant influx.

If the Austrian measures prove effective, the number of asylum seekers stuck in Hungary will rise.

"While Hungarian facilities are full beyond capacity, the situation remains manageable," Pardavi said. "This trend could change if Austria no longer tolerates the irregular entry of the refugees who made their applications in Hungary. There simply will not be any place to put everyone."

Sitting on a bench outside a supermarket in Bicske, Ali Husseini, 22, said he and several friends had left Pakistan three months ago, often relying on smugglers. They had been taken to the Bicske center within three days of being caught at the border with Serbia and were planning to stay in the camp for two weeks to recuperate from their three-month trek.

"We have little money left, so we will probably walk the rest of the way," said Husseini, who hopes to join friends and find work in Italy.

FILE - In this Sept. 9, 2015 file photo migrants and refugees run past the temporary border protecting fence as they enter Hungary from Serbia near the border village of Roszke, 180 kms southeast of Budapest, Hungary. Thousands of migrants have continued to travel through Hungary on their way toward western Europe, despite fences, border closures and the European Unions deal with Turkey to stop sea crossings to Greece. (Sandor Ujvari/MTI via AP, file)

FILE - In this Feb. 22, 2016 file photo migrants walk behind a temporary protective fence at the border between Hungary and Serbia near Morahalom, 179 kms southeast of Budapest, Hungary. Thousands of migrants have continued to travel through Hungary on their way toward western Europe, despite fences, border closures and the European Unions deal with Turkey to stop sea crossings to Greece. (Zoltan Gergely Kelemen/MTI via AP, file)
Sumner Redstone testimony key in mental competency trial

LOS ANGELES (AP)  Videotaped testimony in which media mogul Sumner Redstone says he doesn't want his longtime companion in his life anymore may be enough to end a mental competency trial, a judge said Friday.

"Mr. Redstone's testimony was strong," Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge David J. Cowan said near the end of the first day of the trial.

Cowan said he didn't want to make a rush judgment but wasn't sure that attorneys for Redstone's ex-girlfriend, Manuela Herzer, could prove that the ailing mogul was incompetent.

Redstone referred to Herzer multiple times by a two-word expletive during a 20-minute session with attorneys Thursday that was played in closed session at the outset of the trial.

A transcript of the testimony shows Redstone saying, "I want Manuela out of my life," in response to a question about how he wants the trial to end.

"How can I sit here and say after listening to that video, 'No, you can't have what you want,'" Cowan asked in court.

Herzer's lawyer Pierce O'Donnell told Cowan it was his duty to protect Redstone, who has numerous ailments including a severe speech impediment. Cowan has long said that even if Herzer proves Redstone is incompetent, it doesn't mean he will let her back in his life.

O'Donnell said Cowan should not allow Redstone's daughter, Shari Redstone, to oversee her father's care. The father-daughter have had a rocky relationship and only recently reconciled.

Testimony from one of Sumner Redstone's nurses Friday showed that the caregiver was sending Shari Redstone detailed information about the inner workings of the Redstone mansion.

The nurse and Shari Redstone wanted Herzer out of the home, the emails showed.

The testimony came after opening statements in which attorneys on both sides of the case agreed Redstone was being manipulated in the months before he shunned Herzer.

Redstone's attorneys contend Herzer was kicked out because she repeatedly lied to the businessman. Herzer's lawyers claim Shari Redstone manipulated her father to oust his longtime friend.

A doctor hired by Herzer to evaluate Redstone testified that he believes the mogul has dementia that renders him vulnerable to undue influence. Dr. Stephen Read said Redstone could name all his children and great-grandchildren but couldn't identify basic shapes, colors or perform simple arithmetic.

During questioning by Redstone's attorney Robert Klieger, Read acknowledged that the mogul appeared to understand many questions but had difficulty communicating anything more than a yes or no answer.

Read acknowledged he only asked one arithmetic question and Redstone had difficulty pointing to items on a board due to injuries to his hands.

"He is a living ghost whose mind has tragically become feeble," O'Donnell said during his opening statement.

Klieger said Redstone has trouble communicating but no difficulty comprehending what's going on around him.

If Redstone is deemed incompetent, several changes he has made to his estate plans would be invalidated.

Herzer and another of Redstone's ex-girlfriends received a total of $150 million from the mogul between 2010 and 2015, a court document states. O'Donnell has said Redstone was generous toward Herzer and paid her tens of millions of dollars over the years.

He said Redstone and Herzer ended their romantic relationship in the late 1990s and remained close friends and confidantes until October.

"They were lovers and best friends that transcended intimacy," O'Donnell said. "In the blink of an eye, literally in a 48-hour period, 17 years of friendship evaporated," O'Donnell said.

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Two workers are walking away from the

incomplete buildings of Mawlamyine

Cement Limited (Photo: MNA) Two workers are walking away from theincomplete buildings of MawlamyineCement Limited (Photo: MNA)

Last Friday [April 29], the deputy speaker met with locals, who oppose the coal-fired plant in Kyaikmayaw Township, to discuss the project.

This is about the level of transparency the company has with the locals regarding its project and on what points they [the company] are passable regarding their projects permission. We will evaluate these points again and analyze them. If the Hluttaw [Parliament] decides that the company should not apply for a coal-fired plant, the government and company then will need to find a way to use it, said Dr. Aung Naing Oo, in an interview with MNA.

Dr. Aung Naing Oo added that several major projects and factories constructions were implemented without the wishes of the public not only in the previous governments term, but in the last five years too.

Hluttaw deputy speaker met with us to discuss the letter that we submitted regarding the MCL cement factory. The discussion included matters of electricity and how far into completion the factory actually was, said Nai Shwe Win, a Makro Villager.

MCL, under a 400 million USD investment, will apply coal power to run its factory and is planning to begin the factory operation in mid-2016, according to a MCL official.

We did not know that the locals are opposing the factorys coal power project. We will run the coal power minimally to reduce the risks, said Thawan Mapongpeng, Human Resources Manager of MCL.

MCL would use coal power and bio waste to generate 40 mega watt as well as waste heat generator (WHG),adding 9 mega watts, to produce 49-mega watt electricity to run its factory, according to a statement from the MCL.

On April 25, over 3,800 locals provided their signatures and sent a petition letter to the President, the Mon State Government and other respective government ministries calling to block the use of coal power at MCL.
Immigrants flee 1 violent situation for another in 'Dheepan'

LOS ANGELES (AP)  A trio of Sri Lankan strangers pretends to be a family to flee their war-torn country for France in the drama "Dheepan," which is finally opening in U.S. theaters after winning the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival last year. The film is playing now in New York and opening in Los Angeles next week.

French director Jacques Audiard was inspired by the basic idea of Sam Peckinpah's classic "Straw Dogs" for the story, but decided to set "Dheepan" in France. The setting establishes both cultural and language barriers for his three outsiders who unwittingly find themselves in yet another violent situation  a suburban housing project with a gang presence  despite their efforts to create lives of relative normalcy and peace.

Speaking through a translator, Audiard explained he wanted to give a face and a voice to the immigrant experience without softening the psychological effects of their former circumstances.

This image released by Sundance Selects shows Claudine Vinasithamby, left, and Jesuthasan Antonythasan in a scene from "Dheepan." (Paul Arnaud/Sundance Selects via AP)

"What happens to them when they arrive at a different place carrying the experience of being raped, of being tortured, of living with trauma and violence? How does the subconscious work out this violence?" he said. "To negate the violence that they carry in them is a form of racism. It's denying the experience of violence that they carry with them. In that frame of mind they'd just be poor travelers and they're not."

He settled on Sri Lanka by deduction, mainly wanting a culture that was disconnected from the French colonial experience. The choice made casting a bit trickier.

"In the diaspora of immigrants in France in the Sri Lankan community, there are no actors, really, that are professional," he said.

So he had to think outside of the box and consider nonprofessional actors to keep the casting authentic. In France, he found both his lead actor, author Antonythasan Jesuthasan, a former teenage Tamil Tiger who found refuge in France, and the young girl who becomes his de facto daughter in the new arrangement, Claudine Vinasithamby. He found his lead actress, Kalieaswari Srinivasan, in India. Unlike her co-stars, Srinivasan had a theater background.

Anchoring a film with mostly unprofessional actors speaking in a non-native language proved to be quite an interesting challenge for Audiard, who would sometimes do 20 takes for a scene  quite different from his experience working with stars like Marion Cotillard and Matthias Schoenaerts for his last film, "Rust and Bone."

While "Dheepan" is in some ways a genre film, Audiard says that's also a bit of a Trojan horse. Yes there are guns and violence, but there's also the comedy and heart in this extraordinary situation of strangers living together in a foreign land and deciding whether or not to care for one another.

"At the very heart of it, it's about love. It's about somebody finding that they're able to love and finding someone to love. It's about a family, it's about a fractured family that has a potential there. Underneath the violence, he's fighting for love," Audiard said. "It may sound corny, but in this context that becomes his battle."

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Follow AP Film Writer Lindsey Bahr on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ldbahr
Judge OKs Justice Department's reforms for Newark police

NEWARK, N.J. (AP)  A federal judge has approved a settlement between the federal government and New Jersey's largest city over the way its police department conducts its business, officials announced Friday.

Newark's police department will shift to a more community-focused approach to policing, add more training and submit to federal monitoring as part of a consent decree resulting from a Justice Department probe that found that officers routinely used excessive force and made street stops that disproportionately affected minorities.

District Judge Madeline Cox Arleo approved the agreement Thursday, including the installation of former New Jersey Attorney General Peter Harvey to serve as monitor over the department for the next five years. Harvey served as attorney general when New Jersey's state police department was under a federal consent decree over racial profiling.

"This consent decree, now approved by the court, provides a roadmap for reform in Newark and a model for best practices for police departments across the country," U.S. Attorney Paul Fishman said in a statement. "Implementing the systemic changes outlined in the consent decree will take time, but this is what the city of Newark and the men and women who serve in the police department want and need, and it is what the people of Newark deserve: a first-class police department that keeps them safe and respects their constitutional rights."

The settlement agreement will require Newark police to revise policies and train on the use of force, stops and searches. Newark police will also equip all patrol cars with video cameras and require most officers to wear body cameras.

The Justice Department's three-year investigation, released in July 2014, validated many allegations in a 2010 American Civil Liberties Union complaint that accused police of rampant misconduct, use of excessive force and lax internal oversight.

The investigation also found that over a 3 -year period, 75 percent of pedestrian stops were made without constitutionally adequate reasons, often targeting people who were merely in high-crime areas.

Eighty-five percent of those stopped were black in a city where blacks make up 54 percent of the population.

Among requirements contained in the agreement, all officers will undergo eight hours of training on bias-free policing within six months, and at least four hours annually thereafter. The department also will track and analyze all interactions between police and civilians and note race, age and ethnicity and whether force was used.
The Latest: Slain girl's schoolmates will run in her honor

FARMINGTON, N.M. (AP)  The Latest on developments related to the abduction and killing of an 11-year-old girl in New Mexico (all times local):

1:10 p.m.

Schoolmates of an 11-year-old girl who was kidnapped and killed on the Navajo Nation this week are preparing to run roughly a mile in her honor as part of the Shiprock Marathon.

Pallbearers escort the casket of 11-year-old Ashlynne Mike out of the Civic Center in Farmington, N.M., following a memorial service Friday, May 6, 2016. Thousands of people from surrounding communities gathered at the center and along the procession route in support of the Mike family. (AP Photo/Susan Montoya Bryan)

School and race officials say about 75 students from Ojo Amarillo Elementary School will lead the first wave of 450 children in an honor run Friday evening.

At the end, they'll release 500 yellow balloons. Yellow was one of fifth-grader Ashlynne Mike's favorite colors.

Authorities say she was abducted Monday along her school bus route in an isolated, agricultural community near Shiprock, New Mexico.

Her body was found the next day in the desert about 25 miles away. A 27-year-old man has been arrested in her death.

Local school district spokesman James Preminger says last year, Ashlynne participated in the run that's now being dedicated in her memory.

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12:20 p.m.

Mourners at the funeral of an 11-year-old Navajo girl who was abducted and killed this week wept as a video played showing support for her from across the country.

Images of people releasing balloons, holding vigils and singing in remembrance of Ashlynne Mike flashed on the screen in New Mexico's Farmington Civic Center. Ashlynne was also shown playing the xylophone.

A headstone created for Ashlynne read "our little angel in heaven."

Some 1,600 people attended the service with speeches delivered in Navajo and English and as many people waited outside watching it on monitors.

Ashlynne's parents and siblings sat on stage alongside local, state and tribal leaders.

A funeral escort to the burial site included dozens of motorcycle riders.

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11:30 a.m.

The family of a Navajo girl who was abducted this week on the reservation criticized the delay in issuing an Amber Alert for her.

Older siblings of 11-year-old Ashlynne Mike told a crowd gathered for her funeral Friday that they wish the alert had gone out sooner. The audience erupted into applause.

Authorities were notified around 7 p.m. Monday that Ashlynne and a younger brother were missing. Authorities say the two had been lured into a van by a man offering to take them to a movie.

The brother was freed and showed up at the Shiprock police station around 7:15 p.m. and provided a description of the kidnapper.

An Amber Alert was issued at 2:30 a.m. Tuesday. Ashlynne's body was found later that day south of the monolith known as Shiprock.

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11:15 a.m.

New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez joined thousands of people Friday in mourning a Navajo girl who was abducted and killed this week.

During a funeral Friday, Martinez recalled Ashlynne Mike as a budding pianist and xylophone player who wanted to share her musical talents with the world. The 11-year-old girl was a fifth-grader at Ojo Amarillo Elementary School.

Authorities say she was killed after she and her brother were lured into a van near their school bus stop Monday. Her brother was freed, but Ashlynne's body was found near the Navajo Nation community of Shiprock the next day.

Martinez turned to Ashlynne's brother and thanked him for his braveness in providing authorities a description of the kidnapper and said Ashlynne would be proud.

Tom Begaye Jr. has been charged with murder and kidnapping in Ashlynne's death.

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10 a.m.

Hundreds of people lined up ahead of a planned funeral for an 11-year-old girl who was abducted and killed on the Navajo Nation this week.

More than 1,600 people were expected to pack the civic center in Farmington, New Mexico, on Friday morning to pay homage to Ashlynne Mike, who was abducted after school Monday. Her body was found a day later south of Shiprock. Those waiting outside included families with children, many wearing t-shirts that were yellow, the fifth-grader's favorite color.

Many of those waiting exchanged greetings, hugs and waves.

More than 200 miles away, suspect Tom Begaye Jr. appeared before a federal judge on murder and kidnapping charges in Albuquerque. He waived his right to a preliminary and detention hearing. A judge ordered that he remain in custody.

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2:25 a.m.

Hundreds of mourners will gather Friday to remember an 11-year-old girl who was killed after being abducted along her school bus route on the Navajo Nation.

The funeral for Ashlynne Mike, a fifth-grader who lived with her father and siblings near the eastern edge of the nation's largest American Indian reservation, is set for Friday at 10 a.m. in Farmington, New Mexico. At community gatherings in recent days, her family has remembered her as a quiet girl who loved music and played the xylophone.

Her death has led her tribal community to demand improvements in how law enforcement responds to child abductions on the vast reservation.

More than 200 miles away, suspect Tom Begaye will appear before a federal judge on murder and kidnapping charges during a preliminary hearing in Albuquerque.

This undated photo provided by the New Mexico State Police shows Ashlynne Mike. The air and ground search for the abducted Navajo girl ended tragically Tuesday, May 3, 2016, when authorities found the 11-year-old dead near the towering rock formation that gives the New Mexico town of Shiprock its name. Ashlynne Mike was kidnapped from the Navajo Nation, FBI spokesman Frank Fisher said. (New Mexico State Police via AP)

Thousands of people line the funeral procession route for 11-year-old Ashlynne Mike following a memorial in Farmington, N.M., on Friday, May 6, 2016. Thousands of people from across the Navajo Nation and beyond shared their grief Friday at the funeral of an 11-year-old girl who was lured to her death by a beckoning stranger. (AP Photo/Susan Montoya Bryan)

Gary Mike, center, has his arm around his 9-year-old son Ian as they listen to fellow family members speak about his 11-year-old daughter Ashlynne Mike during her public memorial service in Farmington, N.M., on Friday, May 6, 2016. The girl was killed after being abducted from the Navajo Nation as she and her brother played after school. (AP Photo/Susan Montoya Bryan)
Body of US Navy SEAL killed in Iraq returning to US

SAN DIEGO (AP)  The body of a U.S. Navy SEAL killed during combat in Iraq is returning to the United States.

SEALs spokeswoman Lt. Beth Teach says the body of Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Charles Keating IV will arrive at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware sometime Friday.

Teach says next week Keating's remains will be returned to Coronado, California, near San Diego, where his SEAL team is based.

In this photo provided by the U.S. Navy, Special Warfare Operator 1st Class Charles Keating IV, 31, of San Diego. Navy SEAL Keating was shot and killed Tuesday, May 3, 2016, in Iraq during a gunbattle that involved more than 100 Islamic State fighters. (U.S. Navy via AP)

A funeral will be held in the San Diego area, where Keating's family has asked that he be buried. Details are still to be determined.
No charges for officers in Wisconsin hostage shooting death

NEENAH, Wis. (AP)  Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel said Friday that he won't file criminal charges against two police officers who shot and killed a hostage during a gun battle at a motorcycle shop last year, saying prosecutors wouldn't be able to overcome a likely self-defense argument in court.

The officers mistakenly but honestly believed Michael Funk was a threat because he was armed and they had taken fire moments earlier as they tried to storm the shop, Schimel said.

"They were motivated to protect and preserve life," Schimel said during a news conference. "Any jury would consider their actions were altruistic and would give them the benefit of the doubt."

The state Department of Justice has been investigating Funk's December death, speaking with 40 witnesses and reviewing audio and video recordings of the incident, Schimel said.

Agents believe 46-year-old Brian Flatoff arrived at Eagle Nation Cycles in Neenah, a city of 25,000 people about 100 miles northwest of Milwaukee, on Dec. 5 looking to confront a man he thought had stolen his motorcycle, Schimel said. According to a search warrant affidavit, the shop is a gathering point for the Hell's Lovers, an offshoot of the Outlaws motorcycle club.

Dispatchers received a 911 call reporting a hostage situation at the shop. A person inside left his phone open as the situation continued. As police arrived, dispatchers relayed that the captor had told the hostages that if the person he wanted to talk to didn't arrive within five minutes, he would start shooting.

A team of Neenah officers that included Robert Ross and Craig Hoffer immediately tried to storm the shop, shouting that they were police officers and to get on the ground. They were met with gunfire. Hoffer was hit in his helmet but wasn't seriously hurt. At least one member of the team returned fire before the officers retreated down the alley. The officers told investigators that they began to believe the call was an ambush because the people inside were spread out and seemed too relaxed to be hostages.

Another burst of gunfire came from the shop. Moments later the officers saw Funk come out the door. Schimel said Flatoff had shot Funk in the buttocks as he fled.

Funk drew his own gun, Schimel said. Ross and Hoffer told agents they thought he was looking for targets and was a threat. As he turned toward them they opened fire, hitting him eight times. An autopsy showed Funk died immediately, said Assistant Attorney General Shelly Rusch.

Hoffer told agents that he thought he told Funk to show him hands before firing, but realized after watching Ross' body camera footage that he yelled the warning after Funk was down. Schimel said training standards recommend a verbal warning before using force, but that it's not always possible.

A negotiator eventually talked Flatoff into surrendering. He faces 16 felony counts, including attempted first-degree homicide.

Winnebago County prosecutors left it to Schimel to decide whether to charge the officers to avoid any conflicts of interest.

Investigators recovered a pistol from the alley that they identified as Funk's. But Schimel said that in hindsight the officers were wrong to think Funk was a threat. Still, the attorney general said, the evidence shows their beliefs were reasonable given the situation.

Funk's widow, Theresa Mason-Funk, has filed a $3.5 million claim against the city. Kay Reetz, who wore an Eagle Nation shirt to the news conference, described herself as a friend of Funk's. She called Schimel's decision not to charge the officers "absurd," saying he relied too heavily on officers' statements.

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2 arrests made after student shot dead at fraternity house

NEWARK, N.J. (AP)  Authorities charged two men Friday in the fatal shooting of a college junior during a burglary attempt at his fraternity house as officials insisted students are safe in the state's largest city despite the slayings of two college students in the last month.

New Jersey Institute of Technology student Joseph Micalizzi was killed early Monday at the Tau Kappa Epsilon house in Newark during a burglary attempt that turned violent, Essex County acting prosecutor Carolyn Murray said. The 23-year-old Freehold resident was a mechanical engineering major.

Murray on Friday announced murder, burglary and weapons charges against 18-year-old Nafee Cotman and 22-year-old Taquan Harris.

Tau Kappa Epsilon members of New Jersey Institute of Technology and other students pay tribute to student Joseph Micalizzi, who was killed Monday morning, during a vigil in Newark, N.J., Tuesday, May 3, 2016. Gov. Chris Christie said he was shocked by the shooting death of the student killed during a burglary at the fraternity house near the school. (Marko Georgiev/The Record of Bergen County via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT

Cotman was arrested in Irvington on Thursday, and Harris was arrested there on Friday. They were jailed on $1 million bail each. They couldn't be reached for comment by telephone while jailed, and it was unclear if they had attorneys who could comment on their behalf.

The prosecutor's office also announced charges against suspects in two other slayings that occurred in Newark last week. Newark, a city of 280,000 people, has seen its murder rate rise steadily since it hit a decade low of 67 in 2008. More than 90 people have been killed in the city in each of the last three years, including 111 in 2013.

NJIT President Joel Bloom insisted that the campus is safe and that about half the school's 60-person public safety squad is academy-trained and carries firearms.

"I've been here 25 years, and this is the first time I've had to deal with a murder on our campus," he said.

Murray said Micalizzi was in his bedroom when he was shot. She said Cotman and Harris didn't know him and targeted the fraternity at random because they were seeking cash.

Micalizzi's fraternity is across the street from the Rutgers-Newark campus, near where a Rutgers student was killed in a double shooting last month that left his friend injured. Authorities have charged a Newark man in the April 10 attack.

Public Safety Director Anthony Ambrose said Friday that the city enhanced its presence on the NJIT campus this week.

NJIT is located in downtown Newark and has about 11,000 students who mainly pursue degrees in science and technology.

Democratic Mayor Ras Baraka said the NJIT campus is safe.
Turkish journalist sentenced for revealing state secrets

ISTANBUL (AP)  A Turkish court on Friday sentenced a prominent journalist to more than five years in prison hours after he escaped an attack by a gunman in a trial sharply criticized by international observers.

The Istanbul court found Cumhuriyet newspaper's editor-in-chief Can Dundar guilty of revealing state secrets and sentenced him to five years and 10 months in prison. His colleague, the paper's Ankara representative Erdem Gul, was sentenced to five years behind bars for the same charge.

The case, which is widely viewed as a test for press freedom in Turkey, relates to the pair's reports on alleged government arms smuggling to Syria. The journalists were expected to appeal the verdict and remain free until the end of the appeals process.

Journalists Can Dundar, right, and Erdem Gul, Ankara Bureau Chief of Cumhuriyet newspaper, speak before the start of their trial, hours before the attack on Can Dundar outside city's main courthouse in Istanbul, Friday, May 6, 2016. A man shouted traitor and fired two shots prominent Turkish journalist Can Dundar outside a courthouse where he is on trial accused of revealing state secrets for his reports on alleged government arms smuggling to Syria. Can Dundar, editor-in-chief of opposition Cumhuriyet newspaper, escaped the attack unhurt, but Yavuz Senkal, a journalist working for private NTV television was slightly injured in the leg. (Can Erok, Cumhuriyet via AP) TURKEY OUT

Earlier Friday, a gunman shouting "traitor" fired two shots at Dundar outside the courthouse. Dundar escaped unharmed, but Yagiz Senkal, a journalist working for private NTV television was injured in the leg.

"Today we lived through two assassination attempts," Dundar told reporters after the verdict. "One was armed, the second was judicial."

He said the sentence aimed to silence the Turkish press and insisted journalism is not a crime. "This bullet, this decision will not intimidate us," he added.

Last year, Cumhuriyet published what it said were images of Turkish trucks carrying ammunition to Syrian militants. The paper said the images proved that Turkey was smuggling arms to rebels  a claim the government rejects.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the national intelligence agency, MIT, were plaintiffs in the case.

"The decision to sentence Dundar and Gul to long prison terms for publishing the news shows how courts in Turkey comply with President Erdogan's campaign of revenge against critics," said Emma Sinclair-Webb, senior Turkey researcher at Human Rights Watch. "This has been a political trial from the start and part of the ongoing crackdown on journalism and on reporting on issues the public has a right to know about."

Dundar accused the president of inciting violence by weighing in on the trial.

"The president acted as if he were the prosecutor of this case, he engaged in threats and blackmail, and he paved the way for an armed man to open fire," he said. "I hope that next time he'll think twice."

At the final hearing, prosecutors dropped the charges of espionage and aiding a terrorist organization. On the charges of revealing state secrets, the judges deemed the pair guilty. It acquitted them on charges of planning a coup.

The Committee to Protect Journalists condemned the sentencing as unjust. "What was really on trial was the Turkish criminal justice system, which is guilty of gross misconduct," said CPJ Executive Director Joel Simon.

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Associated Press writers Suzan Fraser in Ankara and Dominique Soguel in Istanbul, contributed.

Journalist Can Dundar, center, and his wife Dilek look on just after the attack on Can Dundar outside city's main courthouse in Istanbul, Friday, May 6, 2016. A man shouted traitor and fired two shots prominent Turkish journalist Can Dundar outside a courthouse where he is on trial accused of revealing state secrets for his reports on alleged government arms smuggling to Syria. Can Dundar, editor-in-chief of opposition Cumhuriyet newspaper, escaped the attack unhurt, but Yavuz Senkal, a journalist working for private NTV television was slightly injured in the leg. (Can Erok, Cumhuriyet via AP) TURKEY OUT

Dilek Dundar, journalist Can Dundar's wife, and his lawyer, 2nd left, overpower a gunman just after the attack on Can Dundar outside city's main courthouse in Istanbul, Friday, May 6, 2016. A man shouted itraitori and fired two shots prominent Turkish journalist Can Dundar outside a courthouse where he is on trial accused of revealing state secrets for his reports on alleged government arms smuggling to Syria. Can Dundar, editor-in-chief of opposition Cumhuriyet newspaper, escaped the attack unhurt, but Yavuz Senkal, a journalist working for private NTV television was slightly injured in the leg. (Can Erok, Cumhuriyet via AP) TURKEY OUT

Dilek Dundar, journalist Can Dundar's wife, and his lawyer, 2nd left, overpower a gunman just after the attack on Can Dundar outside city's main courthouse in Istanbul, Friday, May 6, 2016. A man shouted traitor and fired two shots prominent Turkish journalist Can Dundar outside a courthouse where he is on trial accused of revealing state secrets for his reports on alleged government arms smuggling to Syria. Can Dundar, editor-in-chief of opposition Cumhuriyet newspaper, escaped the attack unhurt, but Yavuz Senkal, a journalist working for private NTV television was slightly injured in the leg. (Can Erok, Cumhuriyet via AP) TURKEY OUT

Dilek Dundar, journalist Can Dundar's wife, and his lawyer, 2nd left, overpower a gunman just after the attack on Can Dundar outside city's main courthouse in Istanbul, Friday, May 6, 2016. A man shouted traitor and fired two shots prominent Turkish journalist Can Dundar outside a courthouse where he is on trial accused of revealing state secrets for his reports on alleged government arms smuggling to Syria. Can Dundar, editor-in-chief of opposition Cumhuriyet newspaper, escaped the attack unhurt, but Yavuz Senkal, a journalist working for private NTV television was slightly injured in the leg. (Can Erok, Cumhuriyet via AP) TURKEY OUT

Dilek Dundar, journalist Can Dundar's wife, and his lawyer, 2nd left, overpower a gunman just after the attack on Can Dundar outside city's main courthouse in Istanbul, Friday, May 6, 2016. A man shouted traitor and fired two shots prominent Turkish journalist Can Dundar outside a courthouse where he is on trial accused of revealing state secrets for his reports on alleged government arms smuggling to Syria. Can Dundar, editor-in-chief of opposition Cumhuriyet newspaper, escaped the attack unhurt, but Yavuz Senkal, a journalist working for private NTV television was slightly injured in the leg. (Can Erok, Cumhuriyet via AP) TURKEY OUT
Penguin that wore a wetsuit and starred in kid's book dies

SAN FRANCISCO (AP)  A San Francisco penguin that once sported a wetsuit after losing his feathers and who starred in a children's book has died at the age of 33, officials said this week.

The California Academy of Sciences announced that Pierre the penguin, the oldest bird in the academy's colony of African penguins, died recently from kidney failure.

In the wild, African penguins have an average lifespan of 15-20 years.

FILE - In this Thursday, April 17, 2008 file photo, Pierre the Penguin, wears his wetsuit at the Academy of Sciences in San Francisco. Pierre, the San Francisco penguin who once sported a wetsuit and also starred in a children book, has died at the age off 33. The California Academy of Sciences announced that the penguin, the oldest bird in the academy's colony of African penguins, died recently from kidney failure. (AP Photo/Eric Risberg)

During his lifetime, Pierre had several mates with whom he produced 16 chicks, 27 grand-chicks, and 11 great grand-chicks. His lineage is represented worldwide. African penguins were classified as an endangered species in 2010 and are at very high risk of extinction in the wild.

In 2007, Pierre's feathers didn't grow back after a difficult molt. Without his waterproof feathers, Pierre had trouble keeping warm and the other birds in the colony began to pick on him.

Biologists designed a neoprene wetsuit for him and he wore the suit for several weeks in 2008 while his feathers grew back.

Shortly after Pierre, his mate Homey, and 18 other African penguins were introduced to their new home in Golden Gate Park, in the rebuilt California Academy of Sciences building where the colony resides today. Two years later, the story of Pierre's wetsuit was published in a children's book titled "Pierre the Penguin, A True Story."

Pierre hatched on February 16, 1983 at The Maryland Zoo in Baltimore and was raised by his parents in Maryland until he was a juvenile. In June 1983, Pierre was sent to the California Academy of Sciences with 15 other African penguins to start the new penguin colony.

The academy's African penguins are part of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums' Species Survival Plan, aimed at maintaining genetic diversity of captive populations through controlled breeding and collaborative exchange of offspring among partner zoos and aquariums, said spokeswoman Kelly Mendez.

FILE - In this Thursday, April 17, 2008 file photo, Pierre the Penguin, wears his wetsuit at the Academy of Sciences in San Francisco. Pierre, the San Francisco penguin who once sported a wetsuit and also starred in a children book, has died at the age off 33. The California Academy of Sciences announced that the penguin, the oldest bird in the academy's colony of African penguins, died recently from kidney failure. (AP Photo/Eric Risberg)
Rival assaults on IS stronghold deepen Libya's chaos

CAIRO (AP)  From east and west, the forces of Libya's rival powers are each moving on the city of Sirte, vowing to free it from the hold of the Islamic State group. The danger is they could very well fight each other as well.

Rather than becoming a unifying cause as the United States and Europe have hoped, the fight against the jihadi group threatens greater fragmentation in Libya, which has been torn apart among rival militias, tribes, governments and parliaments since the 2011 downfall of longtime autocrat Moammar Gadhafi in a NATO-backed rebellion.

Each of the rival powers see capturing Sirte from the militants as a way to gain advantage over the other, seize control of vital oil facilities nearby and gain legitimacy in the eyes of the international community.

FILE - In this Saturday, Oct. 22, 2011 file photo, a general view of buildings ravaged by fighting in Sirte, Libya. From east and west, the forces of Libya's rival powers are each moving on the city of Sirte, vowing to free it from the hold of the Islamic State group. The danger is they could very well fight each other as well. Rather than becoming a unifying cause as the United States and Europe have hoped, the fight against the jihadi group threatens to cause greater fragmentation in Libya, which has been torn apart among rival militias, tribes, governments and parliaments since the 2011 downfall of longtime autocratic ruler Moammar Gadhafi in a NATO-backed rebellion. (AP Photo/Manu Brabo, File)

One of the two rivals is Khalifa Hifter, the army chief based in the east whose forces have been battling Islamic militias the past two years in the eastern cities of Benghazi and Darna. Backed by Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, he is considered a hero in the east. But he is widely despised in western Libya, where his opponents depict him as a would-be dictator along the lines of Gadhafi.

The other power are the militias of Misrata, Libya's third largest city, which have been the dominant force in the west since Gadhafi's fall and are bitterly opposed to Hifter.

"It's now clear Misrata and Hifter will compete over Sirte in order to establish who rules really in Libya," Mattia Toaldo, a Libya specialist at the European Council on Foreign Relations, told The Associated Press in an email interview.

The moves on Sirte threaten to further undermine Fayez Serraj, head of what is meant to be a national unity government envisaged under a U.N.-brokered deal reached after months of negotiations. So far, with only patchy support from some factions, Serraj has been ensconced in a naval base in Tripoli since his return to the country in March, unable to exercise much power beyond his office walls  much like his predecessors.

In a televised speech last week, Serraj condemned any unilateral assault on the Islamic State group stronghold, insisting any move to retake Sirte should be led by his administration. "We will not let the battle to liberate Sirte turn into a political bargaining," he said.

But Serraj has no real forces under his control. So he appears to be aligning with Misrata to thwart Hifter, who rejects Serraj's government because the U.N.-brokered deal requires Hifter's removal as head of the military.

On Thursday, Serraj ordered formation of a command that would nominally lead any Sirte operation, most of them army officers from Misrata.

More than a year ago, Islamic State group militants captured Sirte, located at around the midpoint of Libya's long Mediterranean coast. Though the jihadis  many of whom are from Tunisia  have had little success at expanding their territory, their presence has raised alarm that they could take advantage of Libya's chaos to create a foothold.

The U.S., Europe and United Nations hope the creation of Serraj's administration can unite Libya's factions against IS and provide a legitimate body that can receive foreign military assistance. His government is supposed to replace two rival governments that have fought for two years. One, based in Tripoli, was dominated by Islamist factions. The other is based in the eastern city of Tobruk, backed by Hifter, who commands a force made up of army units and eastern tribal fighters.

While Tripoli militias have supported him, the Tripoli-based government has refused to recognize Serraj's administration. The parliament in Tobruk has been too divided to hold a required vote of confidence in Serraj, in part because Hifter's allies are blocking it.

Whoever succeeds in capturing Sirte would be in a prime position to shape the unity government.

"The race for Sirte is on," the intelligence think tank Stratfor wrote in an analysis last week. "The victor will secure greater bargaining power in the ongoing high-stakes negotiations" to put together the national accord government.

The U.N. envoy to Libya, Martin Kobler, warned of civil war, saying on his Twitter account Thursday, "Libyans must not fight each other, they should jointly fight the common enemy," referring to IS.

Already the two sides have clashed, raising concerns of an all-out fight.

On Tuesday, warplanes from Misrata struck fighters loyal to Hifter who were guarding oil installations in the Zallah area, 300 kilometers (180 miles) south of Sirte. Hifter sent reinforcements that battled with fighters allied to Misrata and drove them out.

The Misrata militias were once the backbone of the Islamist-led government in Tripoli. But Misrata neighbors Sirte and has been highly concerned over IS control there. Because Tripoli's rulers have been reluctant to fight IS, Misrata's politicians and militias have expressed support for the U.N. unity deal as a way to both fight IS and remove Hifter.

Hatred between Misrata and Sirte runs deep. Sirte was the birthplace of Gadhafi and many of its residents were his diehard supporters. Misrata suffered heavily from Gadhafi's crackdown early in the 2011 uprising against his rule. Then when the tide turned and the autocrat was deposed from Tripoli, Misrata fighters attacked Sirte, eventually finding Gadhafi there and killing him along with many of his loyalists.

On Thursday, Islamic State suicide bombers hit three checkpoints manned by the Misrata militiamen south of the city, killing eight and then seizing the area. Misrata warplanes responded with airstrikes, as authorities put Misrata on alert.

Hifter's forces could have a better chance of taking Sirte, since he has supporters there. The general hails from one of Sirte's major tribes, al-Farjan.

His commanders announced Wednesday that his forces were starting to advance toward Sirte.

In a sign of how violence may be further stoked by the assault, mortars hit a rally of hundreds of Hifter supporters in Benghazi on Friday as they cheered the Sirte offensive. Three were killed, including one woman. Suspicion fell on IS pockets in Benghazi.

On route to Sirte, Hifter's forces will likely face clashes with allies of Misrata. Hifter's opponents are convinced he intends to use the Sirte operation to capture nearby oil infrastructure currently in the hands of Ibrahim Jedran, a militia commander who backs Serraj's government.

Hifter's army spokesman Ahmed al-Mesmari said oil infrastructure is not the objective and that the advancing forces would avoid them.

But Jedran's brother, Salem Jedran, who is mayor of Ajdabiya town near the oil terminals, accused Hifter of aiming to control the oil.

"This could end up with a new civil war," he said. "All forces here are waiting for the right moment to attack ... There is no trust among any of the parties."

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Rami Musa contributed to this report from Benghazi, Libya.

FILE - In this March 18, 2015 file photo, Gen. Khalifa Hifter, then Libya's top army chief, speaks during an interview with the Associated Press in al-Marj, Libya. From east and west, the forces of Libya's rival powers are each moving on the city of Sirte, vowing to free it from the hold of the Islamic State group. Hitter, backed by Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, he is considered a hero in the east. But he is widely despised in western Libya, where his opponents depict him as a would-be dictator along the lines of Gahdafi. (AP Photo/Mohammed El-Sheikhy, File)

FILE - In this Saturday, July 26, 2014 file frame grab from video obtained from a freelance journalist traveling with the Misarata brigade, fighters from the Islamist Misarata brigade fire towards Tripoli airport in an attempt to wrest control from a powerful rival militia, in Tripoli, Libya. On Tuesday, May 3, 2016 warplanes from Misrata struck fighters loyal to Khalifa Hifter, the army chief based in the east, who were guarding oil installations in the Zallah area, 300 kilometers (180 miles) south of Sirte. Hifter sent reinforcements that battled with fighters allied to Misrata and drove them out. (AP Photo/AP video, File)

FILE - In this Saturday, July 26, 2014 file frame grab from video obtained from a freelance journalist traveling with the Misarata brigade, fighters from the Islamist Misarata brigade fire towards Tripoli airport in an attempt to wrest control from a powerful rival militia, in Tripoli, Libya. On Tuesday, May 3, 2016 warplanes from Misrata struck fighters loyal to Khalifa Hifter, the army chief based in the east, who were guarding oil installations in the Zallah area, 300 kilometers (180 miles) south of Sirte. Hifter sent reinforcements that battled with fighters allied to Misrata and drove them out. (AP Photo/AP video, File)
An editorial in The American Journal of Public Health, signed by 2,000 MDs, endorses Bernie Sanders' "Medicare for All" single-payer healthcare system.



The doctors point to the failings in Obamacare  namely, that it is still expensive, especially for low-income Americans, and it allows private insurers to cream off enormous profits  and estimates that the proposal could be funded by eliminating the bureaucratic inefficiencies of commercial healthcare insurance and by restoring progressive taxation to the very wealthy.



In an editorial and paper published in the American Journal of Public Health on Thursday, the doctors call out the "persistent shortcomings of the current health care system." They warn about the risks of continuing along the path laid out by the Affordable Care Act: "down this road, millions of Americans remain uninsured, underinsurance grows, costs rise, and inefficiency and the search for profits are abetted." About 12.7 million people are insured through the state and federal marketplaces created by the law, according to data released in February. But the Congressional Budget Office has estimated that about 28 million people will be uninsured in 2026.

2,000 doctors say Bernie Sanders has the right approach to health care

[Carolyn Y. Johnson/Wonkblog]





(via Naked Capitalism)
Pakistan anti-graft body seizes currency, gold from official

QUETTA, Pakistan (AP)  A spokesman for Pakistan's anti-graft body says its officers have seized currency and gold worth 680 million rupees, or $6.4 million, from the residence of top provincial financial official in southwestern Baluchistan province.

Abdus Shakoor says investigators from the National Accountability Bureau, or NAB, arrested provincial finance secretary Mushtaq Raisani in the provincial capital of Quetta on Friday.

He says the arrest on corruption charges was followed by a quick raid at Raisani's official residence, where investigators found bags stuffed with Pakistani and foreign currency, slabs of gold and financial bonds.

Raisani is accused of embezzling public funds during his three years as finance secretary.
Obama calls on Sen. Paul to drop objections to tax treaties

WASHINGTON (AP)  President Barack Obama on Friday called on Sen. Rand Paul to drop his "quirky" objections to pending international tax treaties so they can move forward in Congress.

Obama said the treaties will help U.S. authorities investigate and crack down on offshore tax evasion.

Paul has argued that they would infringe on Americans' constitutional right to privacy because their tax data and personal financial information would be shared with other countries. Treaties cannot go into force unless ratified by the Senate, and the objection of any one senator halts action on legislative business pending in that house of Congress, as Paul has done in this case.

President Barack Obama speaks in the White House briefing room in Washington, Friday, May 6, 2016, about the economy and new steps to strengthen financial transparency and combat money laundering, corruption, and tax evasion. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

"I'm calling on the Senate, in particular Sen. Rand Paul, who's been a little quirky on this issue, to stop blocking the implementation of tax treaties that have been pending for years," Obama said at the White House, while promoting new financial rules to force companies to disclose more information about their owners.

"These treaties actually improve law enforcement's ability to investigate and crack down on offshore tax evasion. And I'm assuming that's not something that he's in favor of," Obama said.

In a response via Twitter, Paul wrote: "Privacy and 4th Amendment rights are not 'quirky.'"

Amendments to existing treaties with Luxembourg and Switzerland have been pending in the Senate since Obama's first term.

In a November 2015 letter to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Paul said he doesn't condone tax cheats but can't support a law that endangers legal foreign investment and "punishes every American in pursuit of a few tax cheats."

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee approved eight tax treaties last November.

"An individual's bank account is the epitome of who they are as a private citizen," Paul wrote McConnell, a fellow Kentucky Republican, adding that the account can reveal where someone shops, where they eat, what medicines they take, who their doctors are and where they travel. "Bulk collection tax treaties are not a policy prescription to U.S. citizens conducting illicit financial transactions in a foreign country."

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The Latest: Suspect charged with murder in wife's shooting

BETHESDA, Md. (AP)  The Latest on the three fatal shootings in the Washington suburbs (all times local):

7 p.m.

Prince George's County Police have charged the federal security officer suspected in three fatal shootings in one of the crimes.

A police officer with his gun drawn runs for cover as Eulalio Tordil, 62, a suspect in three fatal shootings in the Washington, D.C., area is taken into custody nearby, in Silver Spring, Md., Friday, May 6, 2016. Tordil is an employee of the Federal Protective Service, which provides security at federal properties. He was put on administrative duties in March after a protective order was issued against him. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

The department said in an email Friday evening that Eulalio Tordil has been charged with first-degree murder in the shooting death of his estranged wife, 44-year-old Gladys Tordil.

Gladys Tordil was shot and killed Thursday outside a Maryland high school. Eulalio Tordil was arrested Friday in Montgomery County after two shootings left two people dead there.

A man who went to Gladys Tordil's aid was also shot and injured. Tordil is charged with assault in that crime.

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5:05 p.m.

Police say plainclothes officers trailed the suspect in three fatal shootings in the Washington area for an hour after finding him in a shopping center, waiting for the right time to arrest him.

Montgomery County Police Chief Thomas Manger said at a news conference Friday that officers spotted a car linked to a fatal shooting at a high school the night before, then spotted Eulalio Tordil. He walked from store to store, but was arrested when he returned to the car.

The first shooting occurred Thursday at a high school, where police say Tordil fatally shot his wife, Gladys. The second shooting was in a mall parking lot Friday morning and the third was at a shopping center about 5 miles away.

Manger says there's no immediate connection between Tordil and the shooting victims Friday.

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4:35 p.m.

The suspect in three fatal shootings in the Washington area once had to repay the federal government nearly $16,000 after misusing a housing program.

A report by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Office of Inspector General in 2008 says Eulalio Tordil obtained HUD-owned property under a program designed to help law enforcement officers.

The report said Tordil got a $26,500 discount on the property but didn't actually live there, as the program requires. It said he agreed to pay HUD $15,900.

Tordil was an employee of the Federal Protective Service, which provides security at federal properties. He was put on administrative duties in March after a protective order was issued against him.

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4:15 p.m.

Authorities say the federal security officer suspected in three fatal shootings in the Washington, D.C. area had threatened to "commit suicide by cop."

That detail was in a flier the Prince George's County Police Department released Thursday asking for the public's help to locate Eulalio Tordil.

Tordil was taken into custody without incident on Friday.

The first shooting occurred Thursday at a high school. Authorities said Tordil followed his 44-year-old wife Gladys to their children's high school and killed her as she waited in an SUV.

The second shooting occurred in a mall parking lot Friday morning and the third happened about 30 minutes later at a nearby shopping center.

Tordil was an employee of the Federal Protective Service, which provides security at federal properties.

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3:10 p.m.

Documents show the woman police say was killed by her estranged husband outside a Maryland high school had previously told authorities he threatened to harm her if she left him.

According to a protective order obtained by The Washington Post (http://wapo.st/1WOrwyg), Gladys Tordil said Eulalio Tordil once slapped her so hard that her glasses broke on her face.

Eulalio Tordil is suspected in three fatal shootings in the Washington, D.C., area. He was taken into custody on Friday afternoon.

In the protective order, Gladys Tordil said Eulalio, an employee of the Federal Protective Service, subjected their children to "intense-military-like discipline," like pushups and detention in a dark closet.

The Federal Protective Service says Tordil was put on administrative duties in March after the protective order was issued. He was subsequently placed on administrative leave.

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3 p.m.

Authorities say a suspect in three fatal shootings in the Washington, D.C., area has been taken into custody.

Police announced at a news conference Friday that 62-year-old Eulalio Tordil had been taken into custody without incident. Tordil is an employee of the Federal Protective Service, which provides security at federal properties. He was put on administrative duties in March after a protective order was issued against him.

The first shooting occurred Thursday at a high school. The second occurred in a mall parking lot Friday morning and the third happened about 30 minutes later at a nearby shopping center.

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2:05 p.m.

Police say a two people are dead and two others are wounded after two shootings at a mall and a shopping center in the Washington suburbs.

Montgomery County police spokesman Capt. Paul Starks said Friday a man has died following the shooting at the mall.

Police said a woman was shot earlier at a grocery store about 5 miles away. Police later tweeted that the woman has died. It's not clear if the shootings are connected.

Starks says police are still looking at the possibility that the two shootings in Montgomery County are related, and they are also looking at the possibility that they are related to a fatal shooting at a high school Thursday in neighboring Prince George's County.

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1:15 p.m.

Police in Maryland say a woman is dead and three people are injured in shootings at a mall and a shopping center in the Washington suburbs.

Montgomery County Police Assistant Chief Darryl McSwain says three people were shot in the Westfield Montgomery Mall parking lot in Bethesda on Friday morning. He says one person was shot and two others may have been shot coming to that person's aid. He says there's no reason to believe the victims knew the shooter.

McSwain says a woman was shot at a grocery store about 5 miles away. Police later tweeted that the woman has died. It's not clear if the shootings are connected.

McSwain says no one is in custody, but police are looking at a person of interest.

A Montgomery County, Md. Police officer take pictures after a shooting outside the Westfield Montgomery Mall in Bethesda, Md., Friday, May 6, 2016. Police say three people were hurt in the shooting. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

This photo provided by the Maryland Motor Vehicle Administration shows Eulalio Tordil. A manhunt was under way May 6, 2016, after authorities said they were looking into whether three fatal shootings in the Washington area were connected. The first shooting occurred May 5 at a high school. The second occurred in a mall parking lot and the third happened minutes later at a nearby shopping center. Police have identified the school shooting suspect as Tordil, an employee of the Federal Protective Service, which provides security at federal properties. (Maryland Motor Vehicle Administration via AP)

Montgomery County, Md. Police Capt. Paul Starks speaks to the media in the parking lot outside the Westfield Montgomery Mall in Bethesda, Md., Friday, May 6, 2016. A woman was killed and three people were wounded in two shootings within an hour Friday at a mall and a shopping center in the Washington suburbs, police said. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

A Montgomery County, Md. Police officer marks evidence after a shooting outside the Westfield Montgomery Mall in Bethesda, Md., Friday, May 6, 2016. Police in Maryland say three people were hurt after the shooting. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

Montgomery County, Md. Police officers investigate after a shooting outside the Westfield Montgomery Mall in Bethesda, Md., Friday, May 6, 2016. Police say three people were hurt in the shooting. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

A set of leg cuffs is passed to another officer as Eulalio Tordil, 62, center, a suspect in three fatal shootings in the Washington, D.C., area, is taken into custody in Silver Spring, Md., Friday, May 6, 2016. Tordil is an employee of the Federal Protective Service, which provides security at federal properties. He was put on administrative duties in March after a protective order was issued against him. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

Montgomery County, Md. Police Captain Paul Starks speaks to the media in the parking lot outside the Westfield Montgomery Mall in Bethesda, Md., Friday, May 6, 2016. A woman was killed and three people were wounded in two shootings within an hour Friday at a mall and a shopping center in the Washington suburbs, police said. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

Police take Eulalio Tordil, 62, a suspect in three fatal shootings in the Washington, D.C., area into custody in Bethesda, Md., Friday, May 6, 2016. Tordil is an employee of the Federal Protective Service, which provides security at federal properties. He was put on administrative duties in March after a protective order was issued against him. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
Baby box program in Philadelphia encourages safe sleeping

PHILADELPHIA (AP)  Doctors and nurses hope to lower the city's high infant mortality rate by distributing baby boxes that encourage safe sleeping habits for newborns and their caregivers.

Temple University Hospital this week began giving out the cardboard boxes that are lined with a mattress and function like a bassinet. They're meant to discourage parents from sleeping with their babies, which could lead to accidental suffocation.

The program is the largest effort of its kind by an academic health system in the U.S., hospital officials said, though that could not immediately be confirmed. It's based on a successful baby box initiative in Finland that began in the 1930s and lowered that country's infant mortality rate.

Keyshla Rivera smiles at her newborn son Jesus as registered nurse Christine Weick demonstrates a baby box before her discharge from Temple University Hospital in Philadelphia on Friday, May 6, 2016. In an effort to reduce infant mortality the boxes which are functioning bassinets complete with a sheet and mattress as well as essential baby supplies will be given free-of-charge to all mothers who deliver at the hospital. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

At Temple, Brianna Devero received the first box a few days ago after her son, Steven Tonzelli Jr., was born. The boy arrived two weeks early  before her house was ready for the new arrival.

"He loved it because it was like sleeping in the bassinet from the hospital," Devero said Friday. "And it was really just good because it was something that I could use just right then and there, and didn't have to worry about assembling anything."

Philadelphia, which has one of the nation's highest poverty rates, has an infant mortality rate nearly double the U.S. average  11.2 deaths per 1,000 births compared with six per 1,000 nationwide, according to the city Health Department. The rate is even higher in some low-income neighborhoods that Temple serves.

Poor families sometimes don't have the resources or education to properly care for newborns. Temple's box initiative aims to reduce risky behavior associated with infant deaths, such as sharing beds or using unsafe bedding.

The hospital plans to give out 3,000 boxes for free over the next year  one for each woman who gives birth there, regardless of need. The boxes, which include clothing, diapers and educational materials, are worth $80 to $100 and were partly paid for with grants and crowdfunding, officials said.

"We have every hope that our patients will find this a useful tool in caring for their newborns," said Dr. Gail Herrine, medical director of the postpartum unit.

Temple patient Victoria Mack received a box Friday for her son Reign  who also arrived unexpectedly early.

"It's nice to know that you have something that you can go home with ... until when you finally have everything ready to go," she said.

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Follow Kathy Matheson at www.twitter.com/kmatheson

Displayed is baby box at Temple University Hospital in Philadelphia on Friday, May 6, 2016. In an effort to reduce infant mortality the boxes which are functioning bassinets complete with a sheet and mattress as well as essential baby supplies will be given free-of-charge to all mothers who deliver at the hospital. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
Mexican commission calls for reparations in vaccine case

MEXICO CITY (AP)  Mexico's National Human Rights Commission blames the country's public health system for sickening 31 babies in a remote village last year. Two of the infants died.

The commission released a statement Friday saying there was no evidence showing the vaccines themselves were contaminated. But it appeared their administration led to the bacterial infections in May 2015 in the southern state of Chiapas.

The statement called on the Mexican Institute for Social Security to pay reparations to the affected families for violating their human rights.
Head of House Benghazi probe fires back at Pentagon critique

WASHINGTON (AP)  The chairman of the House Benghazi panel fired back Friday at the Defense Department for criticizing the Republican-led investigation into the deadly 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya.

Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., outlined his objections in a letter to Defense Secretary Ash Carter, telling the Pentagon chief that his top assistant for legislative affairs had in recent correspondence intentionally mischaracterized the inquiry.

"It is also riddled with factual inaccuracies, which not only does a disservice to the public but also does a disservice to the women and men who work for the Department of Defense," Gowdy wrote.

Four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens, died during the twin assaults on Sept. 11, 2012. Questions about security at the diplomatic facility have hounded front-running Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, who was secretary of state at the time.

In an April 28 letter to Gowdy, Stephen C. Hedger, assistant secretary of defense for legislative affairs, expressed frustration with what he described as the House Select Committee on Benghazi's potentially futile calls for witnesses and information. He also cited the inquiry's "crescendo" of costly, duplicative and unnecessary requests, including a few based on claims made on Facebook or talk radio.

"This type of questioning poses the risk that your final report may be based on speculation rather than a fact-based analysis of what a military officer did do or could have done given his or her knowledge at the time of the attacks," Hedger wrote.

In his letter to Carter, Gowdy said Hedger's remarks could have been communicated personally to the committee or through all other channels. But, he said, "that would have denied your assistant secretary the chance at an overtly partisan letter, which was both drafted and leaked for said purposes."

Gowdy said Carter's department apparently has a "different definition of burden" depending on who is investigating the department  itself or Congress. He said Hedger's letter cited unrealistic timelines set by the committee, which launched its inquiry in May 2014. Yet according to Gowdy, the department was able to complete an exhaustive review of the bombing of a civilian medical facility in Afghanistan within two months.

"All of this work was completed without the burdens of which the department now complains," Gowdy wrote.

Jennifer Werner, a spokeswoman for the Benghazi committee's Democrats, said Hedger's letter makes clear that the department is "tired of getting jerked around" while trying to fulfill its primary mission of national defense.
The policy divide of the moment is Trump vs. Ryan

WASHINGTON (AP)  A presidential campaign throws policy differences into stark relief and so it is this time, on immigration, spending, trade, foreign affairs  you name it.

In this cockeyed campaign year, though, the divide at the moment is between the country's top two Republicans: the presumptive presidential nominee Donald Trump and House Speaker Paul Ryan, a conspicuous holdout from the candidate's bandwagon and a man once denounced by Trump for producing a "death wish" budget.

Trump the businessman's "art of the deal" may get its first big test in the political world at an expected meeting next week with the speaker aimed at some version of common ground. It will bring together a sober, policy-driven, consensus-seeking conservative and a crowd-rousing improviser with indistinct ideology and a handful of core issues, several of them combustible.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump gestures during a rally in Charleston, W.Va., Thursday, May 5, 2016. (AP Photo/Steve Helber)

Here are some of the contours of the chasm between them :

SPENDING

In December, after Ryan negotiated a plan to ease automatic spending curbs on the Pentagon and domestic agencies, Trump blasted him and other GOP leaders, saying "the elected Republicans in Congress threw in the towel and showed absolutely no budget discipline."

Trump presents himself as a guardian of Social Security and Medicare even as other Republicans, Ryan chief among them, see no choice but to restrain their cost. "He represented cutting entitlements," Trump said this year, recalling Ryan as Mitt Romney's running mate in 2012. "That was the end of the campaign. I said, 'you've got to be kidding.'"

Trump says he can save Social Security by growing the economy, with no increases in the retirement age and or other scale-backs, a contention disputed by many economists.

In Trump's view, Ryan hasn't done right by the country for some years. As a budget leader before he became speaker, Ryan was the driving force behind attempts to control the debt, a mission he still embodies. His 2011 budget plan, heavy with spending cuts and a Medicare overhaul, earned Trump's scorn. "If anyone needs more evidence of why the American people are suffering at the hands of their own government, look no further than the budget deal announced by Speaker Ryan," he said at the time.

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TRADE

Ryan is a leading advocate for free trade and his support for deals negotiated by the Obama administration with Pacific nations and other partners is distinctly at odds with Trump's vow to dismantle or renegotiate such agreements.

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IMMIGRATION AND ISLAM

Silent on the Republican presidential race for much of it, Ryan was moved to speak out when Trump proposed banning foreign Muslims from entering the U.S. until the security of Americans could be assured.

"Freedom of religion is a fundamental constitutional principle; it is a founding principle of this country," Ryan said in response. Trump's plan "is not what this party stands for, and more importantly it's not what this country stands for."

More broadly, Ryan embraced a path to legal status for people in the country illegally, stepping back from previous support for "a path to earned citizenship." He's said he could not imagine how Trump could achieve his plan for the mass deportation of the 11 million people in the country illegally, then the re-entry of the "good ones" through a "giant door" in his Mexico border wall.

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AMERICA ABROAD

Ryan supports an activist foreign policy, not a "fortress America," while Trump's "America First" campaign suggests a retrenchment and a questionable commitment to traditional allies. Ryan has dismissed the notion the U.S. could retreat, as reflected by Trump's demand that allies pay more or America will step back from protecting them.

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PLANNED PARENTOOD

Ryan has supported stripping federal money from Planned Parenthood because of its abortion services. Trump, while criticizing those abortion practices, said the organization does good work for women on other fronts and those parts of its mission should continue to get federal money. He later qualified the remark to suggest the group should not get federal support as long as it provides abortions, while reaffirming his view that "Planned Parenthood has done very good work for millions of women."

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HILLARY CLINTON

On some issues, each is closer to Hillary Clinton than to each other. But their common wish to deny her the White House will be a key reason they come together, if they do.

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Associated Press writers Jill Colvin and Andrew Taylor contributed to this report.
US takes tougher tone on Israeli settlements in new report

WASHINGTON (AP)  The United States will endorse a tougher tone with Israel in an upcoming international report that takes the Jewish state to task over settlements, demolitions and property seizures on land the Palestinians claim for a future state, diplomats told The Associated Press.

The U.S. and its fellow Mideast mediators also will chastise Palestinian leaders for failing to rein in anti-Israeli violence. But the diplomats involved in drafting the document said its primary focus will be a surge of construction in Jewish housing in the West Bank and east Jerusalem.

The U.S. approval of the harsh language marks a subtle shift. Washington has traditionally tempered statements by the so-called "Quartet" of mediators with careful diplomatic language, but the diplomats said the U.S. in this case will align itself closer to the positions of the European Union, Russia and the United Nations, who emphasize Israel's role in the Mideast impasse.

FILE - In this March 31, 2016 file photo, a Palestinian woman inspects a home that was demolished by the Israeli army in the West Bank city of Hebron. Diplomats say the U.S. will endorse a tough new tone with Israel in an upcoming international report. The report would take the Jewish state to task over settlements, demolitions and property seizures on land the Palestinians claim for a future state. (AP Photo/ Nasser Shiyoukhi, File)

The report's release is sure to infuriate Israel, where officials are already bracing for expected criticism. And on the other side, although the mediators will endorse some long-standing Palestinian complaints, the Palestinians are likely to complain the report does not go far enough.

Diplomats acknowledge the report, which could come out in late May or June, will be largely symbolic, requiring no action. It could be unveiled at the U.N. and possibly sent to the Security Council for an endorsement, according to the diplomats, who included three U.S. officials. They all demanded anonymity because they weren't authorized to discuss the unfinished work publicly.

The diplomats said the report is intended to highlight obstacles to a two-state peace agreement  the stated goal of both Israeli and Palestinian leaders  and offer recommendations for restarting negotiations in a process that is stalled.

The Palestinians don't want talks as long as settlement construction continues; the Israelis say they're open to negotiations, but have shown little interest in making any meaningful concessions.

One diplomat said the report would be "balanced" because it would criticize the Palestinians for incitement and violence against Israeli citizens. Near-daily attacks in recent months by Palestinians, mostly stabbings, have killed 28 Israelis and two Americans. Some 193 Palestinians have been killed. Israel says most of these were attackers and the rest died in clashes with Israeli forces.

But the diplomat added that those involved in writing the report understand the focus on Israel will be its most contentious aspect.

Another diplomat said Israel will be put "on notice" that its appropriation of land isn't going unnoticed.

The document won't look only at east Jerusalem activity and West Bank settlement construction, but also at a "problematic trend" of legalizing smaller so-called outposts, the officials said. In addition, it will criticize Israel for a growing backlog of housing block approvals.

In 1972, there were just over 10,000 Israeli settlers, with 1,500 living in the West Bank and the rest in east Jerusalem. Two decades later, by the time of the Oslo peace accords, there were 231,200 Israelis living in the territories. That number rose to 365,000 by 2000, when the second Palestinian uprising began, and 474,000 by the time Benjamin Netanyahu became Israel's prime minister again in 2008.

The settlements are now home to more than 570,000 Israelis, according to the Israeli anti-settlement watchdog Peace Now  370,000 in the West Bank and 200,000 in east Jerusalem. Settlements range from small wildcat outposts on West Bank hilltops to developed towns with shopping malls, schools and suburban homes.

Some 2.2 million Palestinians live in the West Bank, with another 300,000 in east Jerusalem. Israel captured both territories after the 1967 war.

The Quartet, which is supposed to guide the two parties to peace, has been largely irrelevant for the past several years. It was created in 2002 at a low point in the Israeli-Palestinian relationship and in the years since has held sporadic meetings. Most have ended with bland statements condemning violence, criticizing settlements and calling for both sides to improve security and the atmosphere for peace talks.

The new report will repeat those calls, but the diplomats said they hoped the new criticism of Israel, in particular, would jolt the parties into action.

The Palestinians recently put off their push for a new U.N. Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlement activity, in part because of the coming report, the diplomats said. And with anti-Israel sentiment growing in Europe, France may delay a planned May 30 meeting of foreign ministers on the situation.

The French also are talking about hosting a Mideast peace conference this summer. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is expected to discuss the French initiative with Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault while on a trip to Paris next week.

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Josef Federman in Jerusalem contributed to this report.
11-year-old's slaying spreads grief far beyond Navajo Nation

FARMINGTON, N.M. (AP)  She was a budding musician and talented artist, a girl whose death at the hands of a man who authorities say lured her into his van spread grief far beyond her home on the Navajo Nation.

More than 3,000 people turned out Friday for Ashlynne Mike's funeral in Farmington, New Mexico, weeping as images of the 11-year-old girl were displayed overhead and the sounds of her xylophone rang out in the auditorium. A headstone created for her grave read "our little angel in heaven."

The crowd far outnumbered the community of Lower Fruitland, where Ashlynne was raised with her father and siblings. Entire families, hugging each other and their children, sat before her small white coffin. Many wore yellow T-shirts. Navajo Nation Council Speaker LoRenzo Bates said yellow represents hope, strength and resilience, and it was one of her favorite colors.

Pallbearers carry the casket containing Ashlynne Mike, Friday, May 6, 2016 in Farmington, N.M.. Thousands of people from across the Navajo Nation and beyond shared their grief Friday at the funeral of an Ashlynne Mike, an 11-year-old girl who was lured to her death by a beckoning stranger. (John Austria/The Daily Times via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT

New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez called on the mourners to carry on the kindness Ashlynne showed the world.

"I cannot imagine the pain Ashlynne's loved ones feel right now," the governor said. "But even as we mourn her, we should celebrate her life and remember what a beautiful little girl she was, inside and out."

More than 200 miles away in Albuquerque, suspect Tom Begaye Jr. waived his right to a preliminary and detention hearing, and a judge ordered him to remain in custody on charges of murder and kidnapping. Public defender James Loonam was assigned to represent him and did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Begaye, a 27-year-old Navajo who lived down the highway from Ashlynne's home, persuaded her and her 9-year-old brother, who had been playing near their bus stop after school, to climb into his van, an FBI agent's affidavit says. The boy told police that the man took them deep into the desert and then walked off with his sister, before returning alone.

Begaye told investigators he sexually assaulted the girl and struck her twice in the head with a crowbar, and that she was still moving when he left her, according to the affidavit.

Begaye has been cited multiple times by Navajo police since 2006 on suspicion of public intoxication, speeding, theft, disorderly conduct and not having a valid driver's license, tribal records say. Off the reservation, he had been cited for drug possession about three weeks ago.

The slaying has raised tough questions for residents and law enforcement on the country's largest American Indian reservation, which stretches for 27,000 square miles into New Mexico, Utah and Arizona. Eight hours passed between the family's initial missing-persons report and an Amber Alert that went out at 2:27 a.m. Tuesday, urging people around the region to be on the lookout.

Her body was found later that morning, south of Shiprock Pinnacle, just inside the border of the Navajo Nation in the northwest corner of New Mexico.

One of Ashlynne's brothers, Ryan Begay, told the audience at her funeral that he drove around the monolith for hours in the darkness, looking for his sister. He said he asked for an alert at 10:30 p.m. and grew more upset with each passing hour.

"I really wish that this alert went out a lot sooner," he said, prompting strenuous applause.

Ashlynne's younger brother told police that he tried to find his sister after the man left him in the desert. Then he ran for help and was spotted by a couple, Ella and Benny Yazzie, who were driving and took him to police. The boy was so distraught that he couldn't describe what happened with enough detail to focus the search, authorities said.

Navajo families extend far beyond bloodlines, through traditional clan systems that foster kinship among tribal members, and the law enforcement delays didn't prevent about a hundred community members from searching for Ashlynne, driving across the open desert long into the night.

On Friday, his father embraced the boy as the governor praised his bravery and said Ashlynne would have been proud.

Later in the service, images from across the country of people releasing balloons, holding vigils and singing in remembrance of Ashlynne flashed on the overhead screen.

Rick Nez, president of the Navajo Nation's San Juan Chapter, urged people to make sure their families know how much they care about them.

"Don't ever forget to go to bed and rise in the morning and say, 'I love you, my precious child,'" Nez said.

Later Friday, Ashlynne's classmates got the honor of leading hundreds of other children in a milelong race. Then, 500 yellow balloons were released in her memory.

Race organizers also planned to go ahead with Saturday's Shiprock Marathon. The course, along Navajo Route 13, runs about 3 miles from where Ashlynne's body was found. A Christian prayer team and a traditional practitioner blessed the entire route "to bring some peace and healing to the place and to the runners who will be out there," race director Tom Riggenbach said.

"It's hard to know what emotions will be there," Riggenbach said. "I'm sure it will be very pure and raw emotions, but I think the one thing a lot of the kids will understand is that sometimes life is not always easy, it's not always happy, it's not always fair by our standards. But people pull together and can overcome it."

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Fonseca reported from Flagstaff, Ariz.; Associated Press writer Mary Hudetz contributed from Albuquerque, N.M.

Ian Mike, 9, watches as pall bearers fill in the grave site of his sister, Ashlynne Mike, Friday May 6, 2016, in Lower Fruitland, N.M. Thousands of people from across the Navajo Nation and beyond shared their grief Friday at the funeral of an Ashlynne Mike, an 11-year-old girl who was lured to her death by a beckoning stranger. (Steve Lewis/The Daily Times via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT

A young member of the funeral procession expresses her feelings on the way to the burial site ,Friday May 6, 2016, in Lower Fruitland, N.M. Thousands of people from across the Navajo Nation and beyond shared their grief Friday at the funeral of an Ashlynne Mike, an 11-year-old girl who was lured to her death by a beckoning stranger. (Steve Lewis/The Daily Times via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT

Gary Mike comforts his son, Ian Mike during a funeral service for Ashlynne Mike Friday, May 6, 2016 in Farmington, N.M.. Thousands of people from across the Navajo Nation and beyond shared their grief Friday at the funeral of an Ashlynne Mike, an 11-year-old girl who was lured to her death by a beckoning stranger. (John Austria/The Daily Times via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT

Pamela Foster and Gary Mike, Ashlynne Mike's parents, arrive at her burial site Friday May 6, 2016, in Lower Fruitland, N.M. Thousands of people from across the Navajo Nation and beyond shared their grief Friday at the funeral of an Ashlynne Mike, an 11-year-old girl who was lured to her death by a beckoning stranger. (Steve Lewis/The Daily Times via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT

Ian Mike the brother of Ashlynne Mike greaves for his sister during her funeral service, Friday, May 6, 2016 in Farmington, N.M.. Thousands of people from across the Navajo Nation and beyond shared their grief Friday at the funeral of an Ashlynne Mike, an 11-year-old girl who was lured to her death by a beckoning stranger. (John Austria/The Daily Times via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT

The procession of mourners makes its way to the burial site for Ashlynne Mike on Friday May 6, 2016, in Lower Fruitland, N.M. Thousands of people from across the Navajo Nation and beyond shared their grief Friday at the funeral of an Ashlynne Mike, an 11-year-old girl who was lured to her death by a beckoning stranger. (Steve Lewis/The Daily Times via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT

Community members fill the Farmington Civic Centerfor the funeral service for Ashlynne Mike Friday, May 6, 2016 in Farmington, N.M.. Thousands of people from across the Navajo Nation and beyond shared their grief Friday at the funeral of an Ashlynne Mike, an 11-year-old girl who was lured to her death by a beckoning stranger. (John Austria/The Daily Times via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT

Motorcyle riders who were part of the funeral procession pause at the road-side memorial for Ashlynne Mike on Friday May 6, 2016, in Lower Fruitland, N.M. Thousands of people from across the Navajo Nation and beyond shared their grief Friday at the funeral of an Ashlynne Mike, an 11-year-old girl who was lured to her death by a beckoning stranger. (Steve Lewis/The Daily Times via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT

Pamela Foster, the mother of 11-year-old Ashlynne Mike, watches as pallbearers escort her daughters casket following a public memorial service in Farmington, N.M., on Friday, May 6, 2016. Thousands of people from across the Navajo Nation and beyond shared their grief Friday at the funeral of an 11-year-old girl who was lured to her death by a beckoning stranger. (AP Photo/Susan Montoya Bryan)
US website: Images suggest NKorea preparing for nuke test

WASHINGTON (AP)  North Korea may be preparing for a nuclear test in the near future, a U.S. website that monitors the isolated nation said Friday.

The website 38 North said commercial satellite imagery taken Thursday shows vehicles at a command center believed to control the underground explosions, which could be sign that a test is imminent.

The center lies nearly four miles from the test site at Punggye-ri. The website said the level of activity at the test site continues to be low, but vehicles are not often seen at the command center  except during test preparations.

Predicting North Korea's nuclear tests is notoriously difficult. The last test, North Korea's fourth since 2006, happened in January and was followed by a long-range rocket launch, drawing the toughest U.N. sanctions yet against Pyongyang.

On Friday, North Korea began a ruling party congress to cement the authority of its leader, Kim Jong Un.

South Korean officials say the North has finished preparations for a fifth nuclear test and it could happen any day.

A U.S. official said Friday the U.S. has seen activity at the site and wouldn't be surprised if there was a test. The official, who was not authorized to comment publicly and requested anonymity, said the assessments have been mixed.

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Ex-teen bride agrees to $2.75M polygamous-trust settlement

SALT LAKE CITY (AP)  A woman who says polygamous leader Warren Jeffs forced her to marry her cousin when she was 14 has agreed to settle her lawsuit against the sect's communal property trust for $2.75 million, attorneys for both sides announced Friday.

Elissa Wall sued the trust now controlled by the state to hold leaders accountable for abuses such as underage marriage, her lawyer said.

The new governing board of the trust said in a statement they appreciated that she spoke out publicly against Jeffs. Her testimony helped convict him of being an accomplice to her rape in 2007.

In this photo taken Nov. 3, 2009, Elissa Wall, front, with her husband Lamont Barlow, immediately behind her, stand during her lawsuit against polygamous leader Warren Jeffs at Utah Supreme Court in Salt Lake City. Wall, who says Jeffs forced her to marry her cousin when she was 14, has settled her lawsuit against the group's communal property trust for $2.75 million, her lawyer said Friday, May 6, 2016. (Trent Nelson/The Salt Lake Tribune via AP) DESERET NEWS OUT; LOCAL TELEVISION OUT; MAGS OUT; MANDATORY CREDIT

The settlement, which must still be approved by a judge, came after a March decision by the Utah Supreme Court that cleared the way for Wall to sue over the 2001 marriage.

Under the agreement, Wall will get $1.5 million in cash over the next 18 months, said property trust lawyer Jeffrey Shields. She will also receive a house in Hildale, Utah, and a 40-acre piece of property just over the border in Colorado City, Ariz., with a total value of $1.25 million.

"She's done enough for this community, I think she's entitled to a residence," Shields said.

The trust holds nearly all the land, homes and businesses in the home base of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints along the Utah-Arizona border.

Estimated to be worth about $110 million, it was built to fulfill a belief in holding property communally. The Utah attorney general seized the trust in 2005 amid allegations of mismanagement.

Wall wants to be involved in the community where she grew up and as the trust is re-made outside the control of sect leaders loyal to Jeffs, her lawyer Alan Mortensen said.

"The Board of Trustees and Ms. Wall want a community that is focused on families, friendships and growth - rather than divisive feelings, tall fences and secrecy," the two sides said in a joint news release.

The federal government is pursuing the group on multiple fronts, including court cases alleging food stamp fraud and child labor in Utah.

Prosecutors are also calling for the police department to be disbanded after a jury in Phoenix found that the twin polygamous towns denied basic rights to nonbelievers.

Jeffs does not have lawyer, and the sect does not have a spokesman or a phone listing where leaders can be contacted.

The 2007 verdict against Jeffs was overturned on a technicality, but he is now serving a life prison sentence in Texas for sexually assaulting girls he considered wives.

The Associated Press generally doesn't identify people who say they were sexually assaulted, but Wall has spoken publicly and written a book about her experiences.

In this photo taken Sept. 25, 2007, victim Elissa Wall makes a statement to the media in St. George, Utah, after polygamous leader Warren Jeffs was found guilty on two counts of rape as an accomplice for coercing the marriage and rape of a 14-year-old follower to her 19-year-old cousin in 2001. Wall, who says Jeffs forced her to marry her cousin when she was 14, has settled her lawsuit against the group's communal property trust for $2.75 million, her lawyer said Friday, May 6, 2016. (Trent Nelson/The Salt Lake Tribune via AP) DESERET NEWS OUT; LOCAL TELEVISION OUT; MAGS OUT; MANDATORY CREDIT
A pregnant woman walks into a bar: You must serve her in NYC

NEW YORK (AP)  A pregnant woman shows up at a New York City bar and wants to go in and order a drink despite health warnings against consuming alcohol while expecting. Should the tavern serve her?

It's against the law to refuse, under city Human Rights Commission guidelines released Friday. They center on expansive protections for pregnant workers but also say mothers-to-be can't be kept out of bars or denied alcoholic drinks just because they're expecting.

"Judgments and stereotypes about how pregnant individuals should behave, their physical capabilities and what is or is not healthy for a fetus are pervasive in our society and cannot be used as pretext for unlawful discriminatory decisions" in public venues, the new guidelines say.

The drinking and pregnancy warning notice is posted behind the bar at the Mad Dog & Beans Mexican Cantina, in New York's Financial District, Friday, May 6, 2016. Pregnant women can't be barred from New York City bars or refused alcoholic drinks just because they're expecting, under new official guidance on a city rights law. Human Rights Commission officials say they're not saying that expectant mothers should drink, but that such health decisions are up to the woman, not a bartender. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

With that, the city is squarely taking on a touchy subject that stirs conflicted feelings about pregnancy and personal autonomy. It also has sparked at least one complaint: The commission is looking into a case concerning a pregnant woman denied entry to a bar or club, said Lauren Elfant, an agency lawyer. She wouldn't give more detail because the case is open.

Some pregnant women who haven't been refused service say they've felt awkward nonetheless  when a server asks how many glasses to bring with a shared bottle of wine, for example.

It would "come up in conversation as a possibility, a joke: 'Will they serve you, or will they not? ... Will they look down on you, or will they not?'" says Carlota Fluxa, a Brooklynite who gave birth Tuesday to her first child.

She occasionally ordered a glass of wine with dinner during her pregnancy, which wouldn't raise eyebrows in her native Spain. No one ever questioned her order, but she felt that "in general, a lot of people are paying attention to whether you're drinking or not drinking."

How to treat pregnant women who use intoxicants has long been debated in the U.S. Some states allow criminal charges against women who use illegal drugs while pregnant or permit detaining expectant mothers who drink heavily. And a pregnant drinker was portrayed as a moral dilemma on the ABC hidden-camera show "What Would You Do?" which featured bar patrons' varied reactions to an actress who appeared to be pregnant unabashedly guzzling tequila.

The U.S. Surgeon General and major medical associations say women should avoid alcohol during pregnancy. An American Academy of Pediatrics reiterated the admonition last October.

New York City requires restaurants to post warnings that drinking alcohol during pregnancy can cause birth defects. But such health decisions are up to the woman, not the bartender, rights commission officials say.

So does Michael Sinensky, who owns a dozen bars and clubs in and around New York City.

"I wouldn't preach to my staff not to serve pregnant women," says Sinensky, a father of three.

But some other bar owners find the issue trickier.

"I sort of believe that the mother should be responsible," says Dan Warren, owner of West 3rd Common, a downtown Manhattan bar.

But if a pregnant woman ordered multiple drinks, "I'd probably be tempted to say something," says the father of two.

The rights commission guidelines, meant to help people interpret a 2013 city law, mostly address pregnant women's rights in the workplace.

Going beyond federal law, New York City requires all but very small employers to accommodate reasonable pregnancy-related requests  such as minor work schedule changes or letting workers eat at their desks  even if other employees can't do the same without a doctor's note saying they need it. Employers can be excepted if they would be unduly financially burdened, among other reasons.

"Far too often, pregnant employees are denied basic accommodations in the workplace, unnecessarily putting their pregnancy and health at risk," Carmelyn Malalis, Human Rights commissioner and chairwoman, said in a statement.

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Reach Jennifer Peltz on Twitter @jennpeltz.

This photo shows warning labels on alcoholic liquor products, Friday, May 6, 2016, in New York. Pregnant women can't be kept out of New York City bars or refused alcoholic drinks just because they're expecting, under new city guidelines. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews)

The drinking and pregnancy warning notice is posted behind the bar at the Route 66 Smokehouse, in New York's Financial District, Friday, May 6, 2016. Pregnant women can't be barred from New York City bars or refused alcoholic drinks just because they're expecting, under new official guidance on a city rights law. Human Rights Commission officials say they're not saying that expectant mothers should drink, but that such health decisions are up to the woman, not a bartender. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
Records show Vegas stunt plane company had safety concerns

LAS VEGAS (AP)  Before a recent stunt plane crash killed an instructor pilot and student passenger, records show that federal authorities had noted multiple safety issues on similar acrobatic flights offered by a Las Vegas tourism company that allows paying customers  even those without any previous flight experience  to fly and control planes.

Pilot Benjamin Anderson Soyars, 37, of Las Vegas, and Steve Anthony Peterson, a 32-year-old customer from Rohnert Park, California, died in the April 30 accident. The fixed-wing single-engine plane operated by Sky Combat Ace that they were flying in was found crashed in the area west of the dry lake beds near the town of Jean, about 30 miles south of Las Vegas.

The company, which also operates in San Diego, offers aerobatic, air combat and sightseeing flight experiences with package prices ranging from $150 to $2,000, according to its website. Its signature offering allows customers to fly stunt planes with instructors' supervision. The Federal Aviation Administration allows anyone to fly a plane as long as there is a licensed pilot alongside to provide instruction.

A road closure sign is shown along Las Vegas Boulevard near Jean, Nev. after a single engine airplane crashed, leaving two dead, near the area on Saturday, April 30, 2016. (Chase Stevens/Las Vegas Review-Journal via AP) LOCAL TELEVISION OUT; LOCAL INTERNET OUT; LAS VEGAS SUN OUT

Following the recent crash, Sky Combat Ace's parent company, Vegas Extreme Adventures LLC, claimed that it had been "incident-free" in its five years in business.

But records from the FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board identified multiple related safety issues and incidents involving their planes in flight, though none involved injury. Its history was first reported by the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

The FAA on at least three occasions sought or took action against the company or its pilot based on complaints filed. Investigators cited safety violations and risky flight maneuvers.

One incident in March 2015 even involved the same Sky Combat Ace airplane that fatally crashed last week.

After the 2015 incident, the FAA moved to suspend the pilot license and instructor certification of Denis Richard Boissonneault. The agency said Boissonneault had flown in a "careless or reckless" manner that endangered life and property, according to an agency letter on the incident. The case is pending. Boissonneault, who is listed on the tourism company's website, couldn't be reached for comment.

Sky Combat Ace is now prohibited from flying in formation after repeatedly flying too low to the ground. The waiver was suspended in June 2012 and then revoked in August 2012. The latter incident was reported near the Hoover Dam, according to the FAA.

In November 2014, a plane partially lost engine power as it was landing, substantially damaging the right wing. An NTSB report said the wing tanks were empty, although the center fuel tank was nearly full.

Another plane had to make an emergency landing at McCarran International Airport in October 2014. The pilot had lost control while performing a spin maneuver. A rudder cable had separated due to tension overstress, the NTSB said.

Company spokeswoman Megan Fazio didn't respond to questions about the company's "incident free" safety record claims before the recent fatal crash, saying only that there had been no incidents involving injury up to this point.
The Latest: Hundreds attend service for former Sen. Burns

BILLINGS, Mont. (AP)  The Latest on funeral services for former U.S. Sen. Conrad Burns of Montana (all times local):

2:25 p.m.

Former U.S. Sen. Conrad Burns of Montana is being remembered as a personable lawmaker who stirred controversy with his politically incorrect words but consistently delivered for his constituents.

Burns died last week of natural causes at 81. Hundreds of mourners paid tribute to the three-term Republican lawmaker during a funeral service Friday in his hometown of Billings.

Attendees included Gov. Steve Bullock, the Montana congressional delegation, federal judges and elected officials from across the state.

Burns' daughter, Keely Godwin, says her father was most interested in people. She says he would know within minutes of meeting someone where that person grew up and who their parents were.

Burns faced criticism while in office for getting too close to lobbyists.

Former U.S. Rep. Denny Rehberg says Burns considered himself foremost a Montanan.

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6 a.m.

Funeral services for former Montana U.S. Sen. Conrad Burns are scheduled for Friday at Metra Park Arena in Billings.

Burns died Thursday of natural causes at his home in Billings. He was 81.

The former cattle auctioneer and Republican county commissioner was 53 years old when he was elected to the Senate in 1988 over incumbent Democrat John Melcher.

He served three terms, helping shape energy development across the rural West from his post on the influential Senate Appropriations Committee.

Burns lost his seat to former Montana Senate President Jon Tester in 2006 under the specter of scandal due to his close ties to a lobbyist.
Former East German first lady Margot Honecker dies in Chile

SANTIAGO, Chile (AP)  Former East German first lady Margot Honecker, who defended the now-vanished Communist country to the end, died Friday in Chile at age 89, a family friend confirmed.

Honecker had lived since 1992 in Chile, three years after the toppling of the Berlin Wall signaled the impending collapse of the socialist government. Her husband, Erich Honecker, died in 1994 after joining her in Chile.

A family friend and member of Chile's Communist Party confirmed the death.

FILE - In this July 28, 2008 file photo, Margot Honecker visits the German Hospital during her visit to Managua, Nicaragua, where she won a top Nicaraguan honor for her work in a literacy campaign. Honecker, the longtime first lady of East Germany and the communist state's hardline education minister, died in exile in Chile on Friday, May 6, 2016, according to a friend of the family who is a member of Chile's Communist party. (AP Photo/Esteban Felix, File)

Honecker, who remained unrepentant about the country's record of repression, had been education minister and dictated what children in rigidly orthodox East Germany learned for 26 years.

She said youngsters must defend socialism "if necessary with a weapon in the hand," and one of her pet projects was field trips by kindergarten children to military bases.

Born Margot Feist in the eastern city of Halle on April 17, 1927, Honecker grew up in a poor family. She trained as a saleswoman before taking a job as a telephone operator.

She became a member of the Communist Party in 1945, and then rose through the ranks of the communist youth organization, the Free German Youth.

In 1950, at age 22, she became the youngest lawmaker in the fledgling East German parliament. She married Erich Honecker in 1953.

She started work at the Education Ministry in 1955 and rose to become minister in 1963 under then-leader Walter Ulbricht. Erich Honecker, who supervised the 1961 construction of the Berlin Wall, succeeded Ulbricht in 1971.

Margot Honecker resigned shortly before the Wall fell in November 1989, with the communist system in crisis and her husband already ousted as East German leader.

Two months after Germany reunified in October 1990, Berlin authorities charged Erich Honecker with manslaughter for ordering shootings along the heavily fortified east-west border.

The couple took refuge in a Soviet military hospital outside Berlin, and on March 13, 1991, they were spirited to Moscow  an embarrassment to the German government.

In a joint television interview two months later, Margot Honecker complained of a "witch hunt" against the couple and said their names had been "dragged through the mud."

The Soviet Union's collapse sent the couple fleeing again, to the Chilean Embassy in Moscow. The couple had friends in the South American country who had found refuge in East Germany during Chile's right-wing dictatorship.

Erich Honecker left the embassy in July 1992 and returned to Berlin for trial. Margot Honecker traveled to Chile, where their daughter, Sonja, lived. In early 1993 a court halted the proceedings against Erich Honecker because of his spreading liver cancer.

Some Germans demanded that charges be filed against Margot Honecker for allegedly ordering forced adoptions of children from families considered enemies of the state in her time as education minister. But no such charges were filed.

She defended her defunct communist state strongly in 2000 in a series of interviews with Chilean communist Luis Corvalan, published as "The Other Germany."

"For the first time in history, a just and humane order of society was set up in Germany," she said. In East Germany, she said, "there was no unemployment, no homelessness, no property speculation, no rent extortion."

"Proper apartments, fair rents, health, culture, education for all, kindergarten for the young, pensions for the old: all that was reality," she added. "The elections were free, secret and equal."

She was similarly unrepentant in a 2012 interview with Germany's ARD television, in which she appeared to pin the blame for deaths at the highly fortified Berlin Wall on the victims themselves.

She said that, when a young person died at the border, "it didn't have to be  he didn't have to climb over the Wall."

Her words drew criticism from across the political spectrum.

"The comments once again confirm the anger we felt toward Margot Honecker in East German times," said deputy Parliament speaker Wolfgang Thierse, a former East German.

"All students in Germany should see the film, because it shows what dictatorship means and what a treasure democracy is," said Reiner Haseloff, the governor of the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt.

___

Geir Moulson reported from Berlin.
Kazakhstan calls for nuclear free world by 2045

UNITED NATIONS (AP)  Kazakhstan is seeking to encourage a wide ranging discussion of the role of religion in fighting extremism and terrorism and it is calling for a nuclear free world by 2045, the 100th anniversary of the United Nations, as the Central Asian nation makes its first bid for a seat on the Security Council.

Kazakh Foreign Minister Erlan Idrissov spoke at two high level meetings at the U.N. on Friday, laying out his nation's vision for a more peaceful and tolerant global society.

"In the 21st Century more than half of the population of the world will be of Muslim origin. We have to think about that. Therefore we do have to care about this religion as well as other Abrahamic religions. We have to delink them from untrue unbased stories and let them be what they are destined to be. That's the goal," Idrissov told The Associated Press.

He said that groups like the Islamic State group pervert the true meaning of Islam and that psychologists and intellectuals could be used to help "bring true Islam back to life."

Idrissov held up Kazakhstan's peaceful multicultural society, which includes more 100 ethnic communities and some 18 religious denominations, as an example of how sectarian tensions can be managed, saying the country's "domestic harmony gives us a moral responsibility to call for a rapprochement of cultures."

Another area he says where Kazakhstan could lead by example is nuclear weapons. Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev got rid of all the nuclear weapons the country inherited following the break-up of the Soviet Union and is hoping the world will follow his example.

"In the 21st Century, which is considered to be the most advanced century, with the most advanced achievements of human kind in its entire existence we still face the danger of global annihilation. As my president has formulated it, 'the virus of war is still prevalent in the minds of people.' It is unfortunate that this virus of war is prevalent among many political elites," Idrissrov said.

Nazarbayev has long championed denuclearization as a way to avoid destruction and proposes 2045 be set as the deadline for eliminating all nuclear weapons, Idrissov said.
Ex-49er Stubblefield wants prosecutor removed from rape case

SAN FRANCISCO (AP)  A former San Francisco 49er accused of raping a woman described as mentally delayed called on a Northern California district attorney on Friday to turn over prosecution of the case to the state attorney general.

Attorneys for Dana Stubblefield on Friday argued in court papers that Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeff Rosen is using the high-profile case to further his political ambitions for higher office.

Rosen hasn't publicly announced plans to run for another elective office.

Stubblefield's attorney said the district attorney has publicly released "selective" and prejudicial information about the case that threatens the former defensive lineman's right to a fair trial.

The district attorney charged Stubblefield on Monday with raping a woman last year in his Morgan Hill, California, home.

The woman, who was then 31, traveled to Stubblefield's home on April 9, 2015, to interview for a job baby-sitting his children. Investigators say she left after 20 minutes, but she returned when Stubblefield texted her that he wanted to pay for her time.

After raping her, investigators said, Stubblefield gave her $80 and let her go. The woman immediately went to the Morgan Hill Police Department and reported the rape, prosecutors said.

On Tuesday, Stubblefield said the encounter was consensual, and his attorneys denied the woman suffered from any disability that prevented her from consenting.

Stubblefield's attorney said the woman asked him for money several times after the encounter and that he provided her with a small amount for car repairs.

Rosen's office said in a prepared statement Friday that it would respond to the recusal request in court.
The Latest: Union workers protest outside Tropicana casino

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. (AP)  The Latest on a protest by casino workers at the Tropicana (all times local):

7:30 p.m.

Casino workers in Atlantic City have protested outside the Tropicana.

Casino workers protest outside the Tropicana casino in Atlantic City, N.J. on Friday May 6, 2016. Atlantic City casino workers have seen their wages increase by just 80 cents an hour over the last 12 years, and have begun what will likely be their toughest negotiations in nearly four decades as the casinos struggle to recover from the contraction of the gambling industry, and the city itself teeters on the edge of bankruptcy and a state takeover. (AP Photo/Wayne Parry)

Workers from all eight of the city's casinos have seen their salaries increase by only 80 cents per hour over the last 12 years.

They sometimes gave up pay raises to protect health and retirement benefits, but they now fear those will be lost.

The casino workers union has begun what will likely be its toughest contract negotiations in nearly four decades, with the casinos just beginning to get back on their feet and the city itself teetering on the brink of bankruptcy and a state takeover.

Workers from the Local 54 of the Unite-HERE union picketed the Tropicana casino on Friday.

___

6:40 p.m.

Casino workers in Atlantic City, New Jersey, are protesting outside the Tropicana.

Workers from all eight of the city's casinos have seen their salaries increase by only 80 cents per hour over the last 12 years.

They sometimes gave up pay raises to protect health and retirement benefits, but they now fear those will be lost.

The casino workers union has begun what will likely be its toughest contract negotiations in nearly four decades, with the casinos just beginning to get back on their feet and the city itself teetering on the brink of bankruptcy and a state takeover.

Workers from the Local 54 of the Unite-HERE union picketed the Tropicana casino on Friday.

___

1:15 p.m.

Atlantic City's casino workers are making only 80 cents an hour more now than they did 12 years ago.

They chose to secure benefits like health insurance and retirement plans as the casino industry shrunk and four properties went out of business.

But now those workers fear the benefits they sacrificed to preserve could be wiped out as the casinos struggle and the New Jersey city teeters on the brink of bankruptcy and a state takeover.

On Friday, workers will picket the Tropicana casino, whose billionaire owner Carl Icahn also owns the Trump Taj Mahal. Health insurance and pensions were eliminated there before he took over.

Their struggle is one that unions have experienced nationwide in recent decades as companies move to cut costs by reducing or eliminating benefits.
Film scores keep symphonic music alive, says Iron Man 3 composer Brian Tyler

Iron Man 3 composer Brian Tyler has said musical scores for feature films help to keep "symphonic music alive".

The 43-year-old American, who has composed scores for more than 70 films, is conducting his music with the Philharmonia Orchestra at London's Royal Festival Hall.

Talking about the importance of movie music, Tyler said it is a field "bursting" with talented people who are making symphonic music more accessible to the public.

Iron Man 3 composer Brian Tyler, who has said musical scores for feature films help to keep 'symphonic music alive'

"I'm not only friends with, but I really admire Hans Zimmer and Michael Giacchino, who have been doing some fantastic work," Tyler told the Press Association.

"Thomas Newman has the ability to make me cry when he does these beautiful melodies, and James Newton Howard.

"These are people that have found a way to make music that I think transcends the genre."

He added: "Alan Silvestri is another one among so many more. I listen to their work and it's so impressive and so musical.

"I think it's really the modern way of keeping symphonic music alive and in the ears of the public by being associated with movies."

As part of the Philharmonia At The Movies series, Saturday's Brian Tyler Live: Film Music For Stars, Cars & Superheroes will see the renowned composer perform many of his scores.

Concert-goers will hear music from the Fast And The Furious franchise, Avengers: Age Of Ultron, Iron Man 3, Thor: The Dark World, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Now You See Me, The Expendables, Star Trek: Enterprise and Children Of Dune.

Alongside video game music, including that in Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, and several original Tyler works, the Californian will also include a special tribute to multi-award winning composer John Williams.

One of today's musical giants, Williams has written soundtracks for some of Hollywood's biggest films including Schindler's List, E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial and the Star Wars, Harry Potter and Indiana Jones franchises.

Tyler would not be drawn on his exact plans for the tribute to Williams, but he promised attendees a "fun surprise".

He added: "I definitely wouldn't be doing what I do were it not for John Williams and all the wonderful movies he has composed.

"They wouldn't be those movies without his music so I was so inspired to write film music because of him.

"I could not think of a more apt composer to pay homage to and yes, John Williams' music will be ringing through the halls of the Royal Festival Hall."

Tyler began scoring features shortly after he received his Master's degree from Harvard University.

A multi-instrumentalist, in addition to the piano, guitar, drums, bass and cello, he is also proficient in synth programming, GuitarViol, charango and bouzouki, among others.

He showcased many of those instruments for 2013 heist film Now You See Me, starring Morgan Freeman, Jesse Eisenberg, Sir Michael Caine, Woody Harrelson and Mark Ruffalo.

Tyler has also scored the forthcoming sequel, Now You See Me 2.

Although he has been nominated for major awards, such as the Oscars, the Baftas and the Emmys, he is yet to win.

But Tyler is content with his standing.

"It makes me happy that, through so many of the films I've scored being a success, a lot of people are able to hear my music, which is the thing that's most important to me.

"That people hear it, that they enjoy it, and that it becomes part of their lives."
Corbyn survives first major electoral test as Labour leader

Jeremy Corbyn appears to have survived a mauling from voters in his first major electoral test as Labour leader, after apparent victory for Sadiq Khan in the London mayoral contest gave a positive spin to an otherwise dismal set of results for the party.

As Labour crashed into third place in the Scottish Parliament, lost its overall majority in the Welsh Assembly and became the first opposition in three decades not to gain council seats in a poll of this kind, Mr Corbyn's performance was openly criticised by a number of his MPs.

Shadow cabinet member Ian Murray warned that voters do not see the party as a credible party of government under his leadership, while veteran backbencher David Winnick said he should consider his position.

During a visit to Sheffield, where Labour held on to a safe seat in a by-election, Jeremy Corbyn said the party had "hung on" and "grew support" in council elections across England in the face of poor predictions

But there appeared to be little mood among Labour MPs for an immediate move against Mr Corbyn, and the leader himself said the party had "hung on" and he would be "carrying on".

Mr Khan forged what seemed to be an unassailable lead in the first round of voting in London, scooping 44% of first preference votes, to 35% for his Conservative rival Zac Goldsmith. But final confirmation of the result, after redistribution of second preferences, was delayed until midnight or later by "discrepancies" in the count.

Victory in the fractious contest to succeed Boris Johnson at City Hall was a rare bright moment for Corbyn as "super Thursday" results rolled in. The Labour leader jumped the gun to publicly congratulate Mr Khan before official results were announced, saying: "Can't wait to work with you to create a London that is fair for all."

With votes continuing to be counted into the weekend, key results included:

:: Labour lost 13 Scottish Parliament seats, including 11 to the SNP and two to the Conservatives, although Nicola Sturgeon's nationalists lost their overall majority.

:: In Wales, Labour lost its overall majority in the Assembly, with the totemic Rhondda seat falling to Plaid Cymru leader Leanne Wood.

:: In England, Labour lost control of Dudley Council in the West Midlands, but held on to major cities including Birmingham, Newcastle upon Tyne and Sunderland, as well as key southern outposts such as Exeter, Southampton, Crawley and Slough.

:: With results in from 117 out of 124 councils, Labour was down by 18 seats, the Conservatives down 25, Ukip up 25 and the Lib Dems up 32.

:: The Conservatives lost overall control of Worcester but secured an absolute majority in Peterborough.

:: Ukip secured its first representation in the Welsh Assembly, and added seats on councils including Thurrock, Tamworth and Bolton, but its gains were well short of the triple-figure advances made in similar polls over the past three years.

Speaking during a visit to Sheffield, where Labour held onto a safe Westminster seat in a by-election, a smiling Mr Corbyn said: "All across England last night we were getting predictions that we were going to lose councils. We didn't. We hung on and we grew support in a lot of places."

But Mr Murray - Labour's only MP in Scotland - reflected deep unhappiness among MPs opposed to their leader's left-wing agenda when he told the BBC: "I don't think that the public see the UK Labour Party led by Jeremy Corbyn at the moment as being a credible party of future government in 2020.

"That's something, after this week's results, we should reflect on - the leadership of the party should reflect on - and find a way of finding a strategy and a narrative that changes the perception of the UK Labour Party across the United Kingdom so that we can go on and have a real shot at winning in 2020."

Veteran backbencher Mr Winnick called on Mr Corbyn to consider his position in order to give the party a chance of regaining power at the general election.

"The party faces a crisis and the onus is on Jeremy himself. He should decide whether his leadership is helping or hindering the party," he told the Press Association. "I think all the evidence shows that it is not helping."

And Jo Cox, who nominated Mr Corbyn for the leadership, said he should take responsibility for results which were "not good enough". Although she said she neither wanted nor expected a coup, she warned: "The clock is ticking."

Union boss Tim Roache, general secretary of the GMB, said Labour should have been winning hundreds of seats at this stage in the electoral cycle, and gave Mr Corbyn "a year or so" to prove himself.

"It certainly wasn't the disaster for Labour many people were predicting and sadly some in the Labour Party were actually hoping for," Mr Roache told the BBC.

" Let's give it a go for a year or so. Who knows what might happen? Leicester City won the Premier League only the other day. Who knows?"

Mr Corbyn's position was bolstered by Labour's influential deputy leader, Tom Watson, who urged critics to show "patience".

"I think even our opponents who are not members of the Labour Party would say that after eight months it would be very unfair and improper, actually, to hang this set of election results on Jeremy Corbyn's peg alone," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

With the overwhelming majority of grassroots members still strongly behind the leader, his close ally, shadow chancellor John McDonnell, said it was time for the "begrudgers" in the party to "put up or shut up".

Allies of the Labour leader took some comfort from a BBC projection which showed the party narrowly ahead in the share of the national vote - with 31% compared with 30% for the Conservatives - but critics said they should be making big gains if they were to go on and win in 2020.

A jubilant David Cameron hailed a "realignment" in Scottish politics after Ruth Davidson led the Tories to a "historic" result that means the party is now the main opposition to the SNP in Holyrood.

During a visit to Peterborough, the Prime Minister said Labour had "completely lost touch" with the working people it was supposed to represent.

"They are so obsessed with their left-wing causes and unworkable economic policies, they've forgotten that people want jobs, people want livelihoods, people want lower taxes, people want homes they live in and can afford to own," he said.

Jeremy Corbyn hailed Labour's Cardiff Bay result as "excellent", despite the party losing overall control of the Welsh Assembly.

David Cameron said there had been a "realignment" in Scottish politics after Ruth Davidson led the Tories to a "historic" result

The Prime Minister claimed that Labour had "completely lost touch" with working people and was "obsessed" with left-wing causes instead of the issues facing voters.

Volunteers wait to count ballot papers at the Latton Bush Centre in Harlow, Essex

Thumbs up from Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, but his party has suffered a host of election defeats

The elections were seen as the first nationwide verdict on Jeremy Corbyn's leadership of the party

Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson made clear she expected to head the main opposition party at Holyrood

In highly symbolic results, Labour lost the totemic Rhondda seat in the Welsh Assembly to Plaid Cymru leader Leanne Wood

SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon looks pleased as results come in at a Scottish Parliament election count at the Emirates Arena in Glasgow

Scottish Labour leader Kezia Dugdale is laughing, despite failing in her bid to win the Edinburgh Eastern constituency from the SNP

The SNP won 11 seats from Labour

Election staff take a break from counting ballot papers at the Royal Highland Centre, Ingliston

There were signs that the recent row over anti-Semitism had damaged Labour

Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson took the Tories from fourth to first in Edinburgh Central

Monster Raving Loony Party leader Howlin' Laud Hope at the Welsh Assembly election count in Cardiff

Ukip party members celebrate after Hazel Green, centre, wins the seat for Laindon Park ward in Basildon

Ukip leader Nigel Farage said his party was "biting hard" into the traditional Labour vote

Labour won both of the Westminster by-elections held

Lib Dem former minister Norman Lamb said the party's fightback had started with encouraging election results in Scotland

Ukip leader Nigel Farage speaks to broadcasters in Westminster, hailing a night of breakthroughs for the party

Deputy leader Tom Watson urged Labour activists and MPs to "respect the mandate" given to Mr Corbyn

Counting staff at the ExCel Centre in east London sort through ballot papers cast in the elections of the London Mayor and the London Assembly.

Volunteers empty a ballot box in the counting centre at the Titanic Exhibition Centre, Belfast, after elections to decide the make-up of the next Stormont Assembly.

Scottish First Minister and SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon waves from the steps of Bute House in Edinburgh after the SNP won a third victory in the Scottish Parliament election

Scottish First Minister and SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon meets party supporters during a walkabout in Edinburgh

Labour mayoral candidate Sadiq Khan arrives at City Hall in London with his wife Saadiya and campaign team as counting continues on votes for the Mayor of London and the London Assembly elections
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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.
Foreign Secretary condemns deadly air strike on Syrian refugee camp

Britain has condemned an air strike on a refugee camp in north-west Syria which has reportedly left at least 28 dead.

Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond described the attack as "appalling" and accused the regime of President Bashar Assad of showing contempt for international efforts to rebuild a ceasefire.

His comments came as the White House denounced the attack on the camp in rebel-held territory near Sarmada as "indefensible".

Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond has condemned the attack on a refuge camp in Syria.

Spokesman Josh Earnest said while it was too early to say if it was carried out by regime forces, it was thought that no aircraft from the US-led coalition fighting Islamic State (IS) had been in the area.

The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said there were women and children among the casualties.

Earlier the Mariinsky orchestra from St Petersburg staged a concert at the ancient city of Palmyra, recently liberated from IS by Syrian forces backed by air strikes from their Russian allies.

In a statement, Mr Hammond denounced the event as a "tasteless" attempt to distract attention from the country's civil war.

"Reports of the bombing of a refugee camp in Samarda this evening are horrifying. The Assad regime's contempt for efforts to restore the cessation of hostilities in Syria is clear for all to see," he said.

"This attack took place against the backdrop of a concert in Palmyra, a tasteless attempt to distract attention from the continued suffering of millions of Syrians. It shows that there are no depths to which the regime will not sink. It is time for those with influence over Assad to say enough is enough."

A coordinator for the UK disaster relief charity, ShelterBox, who distributed aid to camps around Sarmada including the bombed Kamouna site, said the camp was large and "obviously not military in nature".

Sam Hewett, who was recently in Turkey, said a large number of people have moved to the area because it was meant to be less at risk of aerial attack.
Donald Trump: Britain would be better off out of the EU

Donald Trump has given his backing for Brexit, stating that the UK would be "better off without" the European Union.

The US presidential hopeful said the migration crisis had been a "horrible thing for Europe" and blamed the EU for driving it.

The Republican party's presumptive nominee for the White House said he was not making a "recommendation" but his "feeling" was that the UK should vote to sever ties with Brussels on June 23.

Donald Trump says he feels the UK would be better off out of the EU

His intervention comes after President Barack Obama and Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton expressed support for the UK remaining in the EU.

Mr Trump told Fox News: "I think the migration has been a horrible thing for Europe, a lot of that was pushed by the EU.

"I would say they are better off without it, personally, but I'm not making that as a recommendation, just my feeling.

"I know Great Britain very well, I know the country very well, I have a lot of investments there.

"I would say that they are better off without it, but I want them to make their own decision."

The billionaire business tycoon's comments come after Prime Minister David Cameron said he deserved "respect" for emerging as the Republican presumptive nominee for the US presidency.

Mr Cameron has faced calls from the Trump camp to apologise after he branded the Republican's call for foreign Muslims to be temporarily banned form entering the US as "stupid, divisive, and wrong" in the Commons last December.

At a Downing Street press conference Mr Cameron stood by his comments, but said: "It is a matter for voters in the United States to decide who they choose as their next president.

"I have to say that knowing the gruelling nature of the primaries, and what you have to go through, anyone who makes it through that extraordinary contest to lead their party into a general election certainly deserves our respect.
Labour retains grip on Welsh Assembly as Ukip celebrates successes

Labour will retain their grip on power in a very different Welsh Assembly which sees Ukip join the institution's ranks for the first time.

Carwyn Jones's party will go back into the Senedd with 29 AMs - one fewer than last time around.

Although it is two seats shy of an overall majority, Labour is likely to govern alone and call upon the support of other parties on key votes.

Welsh Labour First Minister Carwyn Jones joins activists and Assembly Members in Cardiff

However, while who is in power remains the same the fifth Assembly will be a stark contrast with its previous incarnation.

As well as new borrowing powers coming on stream, there is the chance Wales may also be given the ability to vary income tax.

Labour will also be without one of its most experienced politicians after Leighton Andrews lost his seat to Plaid Cymru leader Leanne Wood in the only major scalp of the night.

The Welsh nationalists also beat the Conservatives into second place - with the Tories suffering a disappointing campaign - while the Liberal Democrats were reduced to a single seat.

However, the biggest change will perhaps be the arrival of Ukip in the Siambr - with its new AMs Neil Hamilton and Mark Reckless vowing to shake up a "too cosy" Assembly.

Mark Drakeford, who claimed the last constituency seat of the night for Labour, said: "I've heard Ukip say that the Assembly won't be the same - it certainly won't be.

"Having to deal with them is not something I will look forward to."

In the run-up to the election, a YouGov poll had predicted that Labour would still be the biggest party albeit with two fewer AMs.

However, it got off to a flying start winning six out of six as well as seeing off the Conservatives' challenge in the marginal of Cardiff North.

At one stage veteran left wing AM Julie Morgan admitted she was "not confident" about keeping her seat.

Labour's arguably most prized asset and First Minister Mr Jones also retained his seat in Bridgend and newcomer Lee Waters fended off Plaid's advances in Llanelli.

However, the night did give a bloody nose to its candidate in the Rhondda - Mr Andrews.

The former health minister went head-to-head with Plaid leader Ms Wood - and the mother-of-one's gamble to switch from a regional seat to a constituency paid off as she took 50.6% of the vote.

She said: "To win here, in the Rhondda, to win where you've lived all your life and grown up is a real honour.

"A new dawn is about to break in Wales. People have voted for change."

Plaid finished the election with 12 AMs - one more than the Tories.

Ukip, which finished third with seven seats, said it was looking forward to challenging the status quo.

Nigel Farage, whose party was against the Assembly's existence until a policy U-turn in 2013, added: "Many traditional Labour voters look at Jeremy Corbyn and at a Labour party that has gone way, way, way to the left, that is very metropolitan and refuses to engage with issues like immigration - which is the number one issue."

Meanwhile, Lib Dem leader Kirsty Williams will cut a lonely figure in the next Assembly as she now is her party's only AM - after it lost four seats.

However, the mid Wales based politician remained upbeat after drastically increasing her share of the vote.

"It will take a long time to rebuild the party, but I'm really proud that rebuild begins here," she added.

First Minister Carwyn Jones said the result was very good for Labour, given that a number of opinion polls had predicted his party would lose more seats than it actually did.

He said: "We always said this was the toughest Assembly election we had ever faced, and in that context we can be pleased to beat the Tories in every battleground seat. The country has been spared the chaos of a Tory/Ukip coalition.
Wanted fugitive David McDermott extradited to the UK from Ghana

One of Britain's most wanted fugitives, who was captured in Ghana, has been extradited to the UK.

David McDermott, 42, of Ormskirk, west Lancashire, was tracked down to a house in the country's capital, Accra, in March.

He is suspected of being a member of an organised crime syndicate from Liverpool involved in a conspiracy to import and supply 400 kilos of cocaine.

David McDermott was extradited from Ghana (NCA/PA)

The group was believed to be responsible for the failed smuggling operation discovered at Tilbury Docks in May 2013 when officers seized the drugs in a container of frozen Argentinian beef.

McDermott was brought back on a flight to Heathrow Airport on Thursday after he lost his extradition battle, said the National Crime Agency (NCA).
Tom Hiddleston apologises to Camilla who is missing The Night Manager

Tom Hiddleston has apologised to the Duchess of Cornwall for leaving her without any more episodes of The Night Manager to watch.

The TV mini-series, adapted from the John le Carre novel, concluded at the end of March.

Camilla Parker-Bowles, who was visiting Radio 2 headquarters to join Chris Evans on the judging panel of the 500 Words children's creative writing competition, met Evans's breakfast show guests in the studio.

The Duchess of Cornwall with Tom Hiddleston, left, and Chris Evans at BBC Radio 2's headquarters in London

Greeting Hiddleston, she cried out: "Hello Night Manager, how are you?"

She added: "It was brilliant. Everybody sat gripped."

When the Duchess complained about the series having finished, Hiddleston responded: "I apologise unreservedly."

Asked whether he would return for another series, he joked: "You never know, you'll have to ask John le Carre."

But the Duchess was less impressed that Hiddleston has not watched all six episodes, as filming took him abroad. "So you've never seen the whole thing?" she asked. "That's a bit sad."

British actress Sophie Turner, who plays Sansa Stark in Game Of Thrones, found herself blushing after accidentally accepting a compliment that was not given.

The Duchess told her: "Spotted you on the box as well." Turner said: "I'm glad you like it. Well, you never said that you liked it."

The actress, 20, went red as everyone laughed - but blamed her coat for making her overheat and redden, adding: "I put on the coat to look more demure."

The Duchess also greeted Helen George, saying: "I know you from Strictly and Call The Midwife, I followed your progress."

She joked: "It looks as though I spent my whole time watching the television. I don't have time for anything else."

Earlier in the breakfast show, Hiddleston joined in with fellow guests Dexy's Midnight Runners for a performance of their hit Come On Eileen.

He nodded along to the song but did not break into a full-on dance, despite showing off his moves in a dance with Taylor Swift at the Met Gala on Monday.

He told the Press Association: "I've loved dancing as long as I can remember. My mum is a very brilliant musician, she used to play the piano when I was very small, when I was two or three for my sisters.

"We would clear all the sofas to the back wall and she would play for us and we would dance.

"I don't know whether that means I can dance or not, but I've always loved it. And Come On Eileen is a classic."

This was his first time meeting the Duchess of Cornwall, but not his first royal encounter.

He said: "I met the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, they were kind enough to come to the royal premiere of War Horse, so we met then and they're great."

500 Words is a creative writing competition for children aged five to 13, which counts Camilla as an honorary judge.

Evans, who chairs the judging panel, said: "The Duchess, she's a huge fan of children's writing and literature with children. She loves books, she's big into education, and she's passionate.

"Anyone who's passionate and has got a profile - and I think she's got one of those - is very welcome."

Camilla and Evans were joined by children's authors Malorie Blackman, Frank Cottrell Boyce and Francesca Simon, and screenwriter Charlie Higson for the difficult task of choosing winners from the shortlist, which has already been whittled down from 123,436 entries.

Evans said: "The stories are so good this year. I think they're better than ever before."

He added: "I think it's the lack of Harry Potter, because they're influenced by what they're reading. Harry Potter - it's a bit boring and a bit wizard-y."

The judging panel noted an increase in the number of stories about space, which Evans dubbed the "Tim Peake effect".

The winners will be announced during a live broadcast of the Radio 2 breakfast show from Shakespeare's Globe later in the month.

Tom Hiddleston apologised to the Duchess of Cornwall for leaving her without any more episodes of The Night Manager to watch.

Camilla Parker-Bowles, who was visiting Radio 2 headquarters to join Chris Evans on the judging panel of the 500 Words children's creative writing competition, met Evans's breakfast show guests in the studio.
Man accused of stabbing stranger at Tube station and threatening four others

A man who allegedly stabbed a random stranger at Leytonstone Tube station "for Syria" has been accused of brandishing the blade at four more members of the public.

Muhiddin Mire, 30, is charged with the attempted murder of a 56-year-old man who was attacked from behind in front of several travellers on the evening of Saturday December 5.

Much of the assault on the unidentified victim known as Witness A was captured on mobile phone footage and eyewitnesses said the attacker said "This is for Syria".

Police investigated the serious incident at Leytonstone Underground station in east London

Mire, of Sansom Road, Leytonstone, is accused of punching his victim to the ground and repeatedly kicking him before taking hold of the victim's head and cutting a 5in (12cm) wound in his neck. The victim underwent five hours of surgery after the attack.

The defendant also allegedly brandished his knife at other members of the public, aiming it at the throat of at least two of them before being Tasered three times by police.

Mire appeared before Judge Richard Marks QC at the Old Bailey via video link for a plea and case management hearing.

During the hearing, prosecutor Jonathan Rees QC applied for four counts of attempted wounding to be added to the indictment.

They related to his alleged threatening behaviour towards Daniel Bielinski, Serena Valori, David Pethers and Andrius Sabaliauskus.
Huddersfield pile on the misery for struggling Leeds

Huddersfield heaped more misery on Leeds with an emphatic 36-22 Ladbrokes Challenge Cup victory as last year's treble-winners continue to empty their trophy cabinet.

A week after beating the reigning champions 28-20 in Super League, the Giants released their two-year hold on the cup with a masterful performance in an entertaining sixth-round tie at the John Smith's Stadium.

While Huddersfield, who were the last team to beat the Rhinos in rugby league's famous knockout competition in 2013, booked their place in Sunday's quarter-final draw, Leeds - rock bottom of Super League - are destined to finish 2016 without silverware.

Danny Brough scored 19 points for Huddersfield

Centre Jimmy Keinhorst scored two of the visitors' four tries while s tand-off Danny Brough led the points spree for the Giants with a try, six goals and three drop goals as they maintained their resurgence with a third successive home win.

Yet it began so promisingly for the holders as they took the lead with a first-minute try.

A break through the heart of the Huddersfield defence by exciting half-back Jordan Lilley was continued by Ashton Golding and Keinhorst took Brett Ferres' pass to cross wide out.

Lilley curled the touchline conversion between the posts to make it 6-0 but that was as good as it got for the visitors.

Powerful Tonga forward Ukuma Ta'ai proved unstoppable after taking Brough's inside pass 10 metres out to draw his side level and they hit the front six minutes later when Brough and centre Leroy Cudjoe combined to get England winger Jermaine McGillvary over at the corner.

Golding, surprisingly retained at full-back with Zak Hardaker moved onto the wing, proved to be a superb last line of defence but he was powerless to prevent Huddersfield extending their lead three minutes before half-time.

Former Huddersfield second-rower Ferres looked set to score for Leeds only to lose the ball in Sam Rapira's last-ditch tackle and quick thinking by Cudjoe released McGillvary on the free play and full-back Ryan Brierley was in support to finish off the length-of-the-field move for a glorious try.

Brough kicked his third conversion and winger Jake Connor slotted over the ugliest of drop goals on the stroke of half-time to make it 19-6.

To compound Leeds' misery, Ferres was sin-binned by referee Ben Thaler after the try, but despite being a man short, they got themselves back into the contest with the first score of the second half.

It was that man Lilley who set up the position, intercepting Kyle Wood's dangerous pass 15 metres out from his own line, and three plays later Sutcliffe forced his way over from dummy half.

Lilley's second goal cut the deficit to seven points but Cudjoe went through some flimsy defence to put Wood over for a fourth Huddersfield try and Brough kicked a third touchline conversion.

A break by prop Adam Cuthbertson enabled Keinhorst to score his second try on 51 minutes but the home side tightened their grip in the final quarter.
GRAINS-U.S. soybean futures rise as global supplies tighten

By Nigel Hunt

LONDON, May 5 (Reuters) - Chicago soybean prices were higher on Thursday with crop losses in Argentina helping to tighten global supplies while wheat and corn also edged up.

Dealers said the soybean market continued to derive support from last month's crop-damaging heavy rain in Argentina.

Heavy El Nino rains that lashed Argentina's pampas in April have already wiped out 785,000 hectares of this year's soy crop, and another 700,000 are in danger, the Buenos Aires Grains Exchange said on Wednesday.

"We have revised up our soybean price forecasts for 2016 and beyond, as the global market will register a smaller surplus than previously anticipated in 2015/16," BMI Research said in a note.

"Starting in 2016/17, we forecast the global market to register small but consistent deficits."

The most active soy contract on the Chicago Board of Trade was up 0.3 percent at $10.37-1/4 a bushel at 1124 GMT.

CBOT wheat futures were little changed after earlier falling to the lowest level in almost three weeks as a closely watched crop tour forecast above average yields in the U.S. Plains, reinforcing expectations of ample global supplies.

Crop scouts on the second day of the annual three-day tour of Kansas hard red winter wheat fields projected an average yield of 49.3 bushels per acre in the southwestern portion of the state, up from tour findings of 34.5 bushels a year ago.

"The 3-day U.S. Plains crop tour continues to find better than expected potential yields," UK merchant Gleadell said in a daily market note.

CBOT wheat was a marginal 0.1 percent higher at $4.71-3/4 a bushel after earlier dipping to a low of $4.67-1/2 - the weakest since April 15.

The tour, which also found above-average yields on Tuesday in northern Kansas, is scheduled to release a final yield forecast for the country's top wheat producing state on Thursday.

September wheat futures in Paris was off 0.5 percent at 160.50 euros a tonne in thin conditions due to a public holiday in France and Germany for Ascension Day.

Corn futures edged up as China estimated the country's corn planting area will fall by more than a million hectares this year, the first drop in 13 years.
Brazil Supreme Court confirms removal of Speaker Cunha

BRASILIA, May 5 (Reuters) - Brazil's Supreme Court voted on Thursday to uphold an injunction that ousted the speaker of the lower house of Congress, Eduardo Cunha, for obstructing investigation of corruption accusations against him.
Fitch downgrades Brazil, Meirelles calls for credible targets

By Alonso Soto and Aluisio Alves

SAO PAULO, May 5 (Reuters) - Fitch Ratings downgraded Brazil's sovereign debt further into junk territory on Thursday, citing a deeper-than-expected economic contraction and changing fiscal targets that have undermined credibility.

Fitch downgraded Brazil to BB from BB+ with a negative outlook a week before a Senate vote that is expected to lead to the ouster of unpopular leftist President Dilma Rousseff.

Henrique Meirelles, a likely finance minister if Vice President Michel Temer becomes president, said the first step Brazil must take is to establish realistic targets.

"Everyone increasingly needs to know that what is signaled, what is declared a goal or a target, will be achieved," he said during a televised interview with Globo News.

The ratings agency in December had stripped Brazil of its investment-grade status in what was a bitter reversal for Latin America's largest economy, seven years after a commodities-fueled boom helped propel it to the coveted top rating.

Fitch said the outlook had weakened further since December, with a 3.8 percent economic contraction expected in 2016 due to "the high level of political uncertainty" as well as deteriorating labor markets and a slowdown in Brazil's top trading partner, China.

If the Senate votes on May 11 to try Rousseff on charges of allegedly manipulating budget accounts, as expected, she will immediately be replaced by Temer during the six-month trial.

"This (downgrade) is due to lack of fiscal control and the absence of political and economic direction in the country," Andre Perfeito, chief economist with Gradual Investimentos. "The arrival of Temer is not being seen as the solution to the fiscal problems which are very deep given the fall in revenues."

Fitch's Brazil director, Rafael Guedes, said in a phone interview the deterioration of Brazil's economic outlook is similar to that of neighboring Argentina in 2001.

He said, however, the country's debt could be upgraded quickly if the government takes action to reduce a ballooning debt burden.

Meirelles, a former central bank chief, said the country's main challenge is to pass measures that would make public debt levels sustainable. He has repeatedly expressed concern with the trajectory of Brazil's rising public debt.

A spokesman for the finance ministry said it did not plan to comment.
Singapore to fund $1.7 bln Australia military base expansion -source

By Ian Chua

SYDNEY, May 6 (Reuters) - Singapore will fund a A$2.25 billion (US$1.7 billion) expansion of military training facilities in Australia in a deal due to be announced on Friday, according to a government source.

Land-scarce Singapore has long sent troops to Australia for military exercises. The new deal would allow the Asian nation to increase the number of troops it has on rotation in Australia to 14,000, from 6,000.

Under the agreement, Singapore would fund the cost of expanding the Shoalwater Bay Training Area and the Townsville Field Training Area, both in the north of Queensland state.

Both bases lie in electorates critical to the government. The timing of the expected announcement by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull is viewed as a political coup ahead of an anticipated July federal election.
Clause celebre: Taiwan leader must convince China she's no "splittist"

By J.R. Wu

PINGTUNG, Taiwan, May 6 (Reuters) - Tsai Ing-wen becomes Taiwan's first woman president this month when her mission will be to convince giant neighbour China her Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) is not seeking independence, any hint of which could lead to war.

Communist Party leaders in Beijing regard fiercely democratic, self-ruled Taiwan as a breakaway province and have not ruled out using force to bring it under China's control.

A 591-word clause in the DPP's charter begs to differ.

"Based on the principle of national sovereignty, (we) advocate establishing a sovereign and independent 'Republic of Taiwan' and a new constitution that should be decided on by all residents of Taiwan in a referendum," the clause says.

DPP seniors say the clause, written in 1991, is defunct - but to delete it would rupture the party and bring out the "splittist", or separatist, forces that China constantly warns against. Tsai's juggling trick is to convince China the DPP is not seeking independence and to keep the party intact.

"China's attitude on opposing independence is out of touch with the real situation," said independence advocate Koo Kwang-ming. "They really have no way (how to deal) with Taiwan, so they take what has been stated in the past and repeat, repeat and repeat it."

Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalists fled to Taiwan after losing the civil war to the Communists in China in 1949. China, formally known as the People's Republic of China, has pressured the new Taiwan government to stick to the "one-China" policy agreed upon with the outgoing China-friendly Nationalist government.

The policy allows each side to respectively interpret what it means. The Communists say they rule all of China including Taiwan, while the Nationalists maintain the "Republic of China", Taiwan's formal name, is the ruler.

Tsai has said she will maintain the status quo with China under the constitutional order of the "Republic of China". Last month she reiterated her position, saying her policy will be based on democratic principles and transcend party politics.

MOVING ON FROM MARTIAL LAW

China's top Communist Party newspaper said on Thursday that Taiwan stands at a critical juncture of either accepting Beijing's "one China" principle or taking an unclear stance and refusing to abandon support for Taiwan independence.

"The so-called 'maintenance of the status quo' promised by Taiwan's newly elected leader is only empty talk," the People's Daily said. "The responsibility for the consequences caused can only be accepted by the DPP authorities."

The independence clause served a purpose in 1991, DPP seniors say. The island had emerged from martial law only in 1987. It was undergoing major governmental reform and its first direct presidential election was still five years away.

The DPP tried to freeze the clause in 2014, but no decision was made.

"Our goal is not to establish a Republic of Taiwan. It is to be the ruling party," said Ker Chien-ming, one of the first members of the 30-year-old party and its legislative leader. "But to abolish it will cause another dispute. The independence faction will give the party a huge amount of pressure."

Activist Lai Chung-chiang said the clause shouldn't be deleted.

"It would limit our space in deciding our future," he said at a protest with leaders of the 2014 demonstrations that stalled a trade pact with China and were key in toppling the Nationalists from power.

In southern Taiwan's Pingtung County, where Tsai's father was born, it is less about splitting from Communist China than about maintaining a democratic way of life.

"Our expectations are for this Taiwan leader who hails from Pingtung to pay more attention to this relatively remote area and prevent the urban-rural imbalances from widening," Pingtung County magistrate Pan Men-an told Reuters.

Chinese President Xi Jinping said in March China would never allow the historical tragedy of Taiwan being split from the rest of the country to happen again.

Japan ruled Taiwan as a colony for about five decades until the end of World War Two. China's last dynasty, the Qing, had ceded Taiwan to Japan in 1895 after losing the first Sino-Japanese war.

Shirley Kan, a retired congressional researcher and long-time Taiwan watcher, said the DPP now had a record to back its case to maintain the status quo, whereas there was no such record in 1991.

"The facts are that Taiwan is much more entwined with the People's Republic of China and Taiwan cannot avoid cross-Strait engagement," she said, referring to the stretch of water dividing the two sides.
GRAINS-Corn edges higher, but set for biggest weekly loss in 9 months

SYDNEY, May 6 (Reuters) - U.S. corn rose for the first time in four sessions on Friday, but was still set to record its biggest one-week loss in nine months as dry weather forecasts for key U.S. producing regions is set to accelerate plantings. FUNDAMENTALS * The most active corn futures contract on the Chicago Board Of Trade is down nearly 4.5 percent for the week, which would be the biggest weekly fall since July, 2015. * The most active soybean futures are down 2 percent for the week, the first weekly fall in a month. * The most active wheat futures are down more than 5 percent for the week, which would mark the biggest weekly loss in nearly six months. * The Wheat Quality Council estimated the average hard red winter wheat yield in Kansas, the top U.S. producer of the grain, at 48.6 bushels per acre following a three-day tour of the state. Scouts found that crop-saving rains last month should more than offset the impact of an earlier drought. * China has estimated the country's corn planting area will fall by more than a million hectares this year, the first drop in 13 years, as global grain markets brace for the fallout from Beijing's biggest agricultural reforms in nearly a decade. MARKET NEWS * The yen showed signs of fatigue early on Thursday having taken a step back from recent peaks, while the greenback firmed broadly on some optimism the U.S. economy would bounce back after nearly stalling in the first quarter. * Oil prices surged on Thursday after a raging wildfire near Canada's oil sands region curbed output that mainly flows to the United States, before settling off their highs as a rebounding dollar and a huge U.S. stockpile build cut into gains. * U.S. stocks gave up early gains to end flat on Thursday as consumer discretionary shares fell and investors showed caution ahead of the April jobs report. DATA AHEAD (GMT) 0700 France Markit manufacturing flash PMI Apr 0730 Germany Markit manufacturing flash PMI Apr 0800 Euro zone Markit manufacturing flash PMI Apr 1345 U.S. Markit manufacturing flash PMI Apr Grains prices at 0039 GMT Contract Last Change Pct chg Two-day chg MA 30 RSI CBOT wheat 463.00 -0.25 -0.05% -1.65% 478.08 33 CBOT corn 374.50 0.75 +0.20% -1.38% 375.98 38 CBOT soy 1009.50 -2.75 -0.27% -1.99% 971.16 50 CBOT rice $11.30 -$0.07 -0.66% -1.27% $10.61 69 WTI crude $44.23 -$0.09 -0.20% +1.03% $41.29 57 Currencies Euro/dlr $1.140 -$0.009 -0.76% -0.84% USD/AUD 0.747 0.002 +0.23% -0.13% Most active contracts Wheat, corn and soy US cents/bushel. Rice: USD per hundredweight RSI 14, exponential (Reporting by Colin Packham; Editing by Richard Pullin)
Singapore, Australia expand military cooperation in $1.7 bln deal

By Ian Chua and Aradhana Aravindan

SYDNEY/SINGAPORE, May 6 (Reuters) - Australia and Singapore have agreed to jointly develop military training areas and facilities in Australia in a sign of how China's increasingly assertive military presence in the region is encouraging nations to boost their own defence capabilities.

Singapore will fund a A$2.25 billion (US$1.7 billion) expansion of military training facilities in Australia, a government source told Reuters.

Singapore will have enhanced and expanded military training access in Australia over a period of 25 years. The two will strengthen intelligence and information sharing, such as in counter-terrorism, the city-state's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement on Friday.

The move to forge closer military ties between Australia and Singapore comes at a time of rising tensions between much of Asia and China, which has been building military and civilian facilities on its artificial islands in the disputed South China Sea.

"The kind of military relationships that (Singapore) have and types of military ties that they are developing and deepening, they don't have with China," said Richard Bitzinger, a security expert at the S.Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore.

"I am not saying that this is being done overtly to deal with China, but I wouldn't be surprised if that isn't a major driver behind this."

The region is also facing rising risks from Islamic extremists. Earlier this week, Singapore said it had detained eight Bangladeshi men who were planning attacks in their homeland. It deported five others who were arrested by police in Dhaka.

Land-scarce Singapore has long sent troops to Australia for military exercises. The new deal would allow the Asian nation to increase the number of troops it has on rotation in Australia to 14,000, from 6,000.

Under the agreement, Singapore would fund the cost of expanding the Shoalwater Bay Training Area and the Townsville Field Training Area, both in the north of Queensland state.

Both bases lie in electorates critical to the government. The timing of the agreement is viewed as a political coup for Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull ahead of an anticipated July federal election.

"Under our comprehensive strategic partnership, our aim is to elevate our relationship to a level similar to the one we enjoy with New Zealand," Turnbull told reporters in Canberra.

He said the new partnership will also generate a construction boom in North Queensland due to the need for roads, accommodation and facilities for the Singaporean Defence forces.

The agreement makes Singapore the only other foreign country to invest in military infrastructure in Australia besides the United States.

Earlier this week Reuters reported that Singapore will soon pick the winner of a $1 billion tender for military utility helicopters, as it modernises its air force and navy amid rising tensions in the region.

The city-state and Australia also updated a free trade agreement, which includes improved access for businesses to bid for government procurement contracts and allowed for easier movement of people between the two markets.

Singapore is Australia's fifth largest trading and investment partner, with bilateral trade of S$20.2 billion ($14.86 billion) in 2015. The city-state has investments amounting to A$80.2 billion in Australia.
Brazil judge approves Samarco dam burst settlement with government

By Stephen Eisenhammer and Marta Nogueira

RIO DE JANEIRO, May 5 (Reuters) - A Brazilian judge on Thursday ratified the settlement Samarco and its owners, BHP Billiton and Vale SA, signed with Brazil's government in March to cover damages for a deadly dam spill last year, Vale said in a statement.

The move potentially saps some of the energy from a separate $44 billion lawsuit filed by federal prosecutors on Tuesday who criticized the settlement as insufficient.

The agreement will see Samarco, BHP and Vale pay a government-estimated 20 billion reais ($5.6 billion) over 15 years to cover and repair damages. Vale, however, has outlined it expects to pay less than that due to the way the deal is structured, calculating future payments depending on how much work remains to be done.

"It's a very important step because you remove any uncertainty about the agreement's validity," said Marilene Ramos, President of Brazil's federal environment agency Ibama which formed part of the settlement.

"The programs outlined in the agreement can now be implemented by the companies," Ramos added, referring to the environmental reparation plan which includes work on sewage, landfill, reforestation and water treatment.

The settlement has been strongly criticized by federal prosecutors who called it little more than a "letter of intent" in their lawsuit. "It is absolutely insufficient," said Jorge Munhos de Souza, one of the prosecutors working on the case.

Samarco Chief Executive Roberto Carvalho told Reuters the settlement and the lawsuit filed by prosecutors covers the same ground.

"The agreement ratified today already carries all the socio-economic and environmental reparations which this other lawsuit proposes," Carvalho said.

He reiterated that he expects the Samarco mine, closed after the disaster, to restart later this year, and that a return to production is vital for the company to afford the terms of the agreement. The settlement specifies that if Samarco cannot meet its obligations, the cost of doing so falls to Vale and BHP.

BHP said on Friday progress was being made to rebuild the communities worst-hit by the massive spill, and more than 5,2000 people affected in Mariana, Barra Longa and Rio Doce had received emergency support cards.

The people of Bento Rodrigues, the village most devastated by the mudslides, are set to vote on where to rebuild their town, BHP said.

"While we cannot bring back the lives that were lost, we continue to focus on ensuring that the families and communities impacted by this tragedy are supported," Dean Dalla Valle, BHP's senior executive in Brazil dealing with the disaster, said in a statement.

Standard & Poor's said on Friday its credit ratings on BHP, Vale and Samarco had not been affected by the $44 billion lawsuit by Brazil's public prosecutors, as it was too early to say what financial impact it would have.

It said the same court that approved the March settlement would decide on whether the prosecutors' lawsuit would proceed. "The decision will also likely take into account the identified damages and restoration costs that were covered by the agreement," S&P said.

BHP's shares, which have been pounded this week partly due to the lawsuit, rose 1.7 percent on Friday in a weaker broader market.
Philippine fishermen favour strong president to end China's blockade

By Roli Ng and Manuel Mogato

MASINLOC/MANILA, Philippines, May 6 (Reuters) - A 30-foot trawler named "Marvin" lies beached on a grass bank overlooking the South China Sea, idle since China's coastguard began driving away Philippine fishermen after a fierce standoff four years ago.

Its 10-man crew once made their living off the abundant fish stocks of the disputed Scarborough Shoal some 124 nautical miles away. But since Beijing's patrol boats moved in, the fishermen of the west coast town of Masinloc said they had been forced to do odd jobs ashore, or become motorcycle taxi drivers.

The crews yearn to get back into their boats and hope that the Philippine election on May 9 will bring a new president bold enough to stand up to China's assertiveness in the disputed waters of the South China Sea.

It is something they say incumbent Benigno Aquino was hesitant to do, while the frontrunner to succeed him, the hard-talking mayor of Davao city, Rodrigo Duterte, has indicated he may take a tougher line with Beijing.

"We want a tougher president who would make China leave the Philippine Sea," said the Marvin's shirtless captain, Biany Mula, referring to the waters by their Philippine name.

"That area is not their property."

The sentiment is shared by fishermen from Vietnam and Malaysia, as China's fishing fleet and accompanying coastguard armada have expanded within a nine-dash line that denotes Beijing's claims to nine-tenths of the world's most contested waterway.

With a relatively small and under-equipped military, the Philippines wants no confrontation with China, but it has been vocal in asserting its claims to the Spratly islands and its rights to exploit its coastal waters.

It has also angered China by indirectly challenging its claims at the Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Hague. China has refused to recognise the court's authority or abide by the ruling, which is expected soon.

Some Filipino fishermen are optimistic a new leader can find a solution.

"I'll vote because somebody will resolve the issue in the Scarborough Shoal," said Alexander Manzano, fixing a boat moored on a makeshift dock.

"I believe someone will be able to do it. That's why I'll vote."

TOUGH TALK, MIXED MESSAGES

That someone could be Duterte, who is roaring ahead in opinion polls with talk of employing deadly methods to eradicate crime and corruption.

His position on the South China Sea is vague, however, in what has largely been a single-issue campaign.

When the topic came up in debates, Duterte promised not to put the Philippine navy in harm's way, but said he would personally challenge China by riding a jet-ski to the Spratlys to plant a Philippine flag.

For key ally the United States, a Duterte presidency brings much uncertainty. A Washington-based official closely following the election said Duterte's stance on the South China Sea appeared "contradictory", mixing both bellicose and conciliatory messages about dealing with Beijing.

Murray Hiebert, a Southeast Asia specialist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said Duterte's comments did not seem well thought out, including pledging to negotiate with China but only after it agrees the Spratlys belong to the Philippines.

"That's not an opening position that will entice China to the negotiating table," Hiebert said.

Like Washington, Beijing has given no indication who it would prefer as Philippine president.

Its foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei said ties between the two countries were "extremely difficult", but China hoped the next leadership "takes actual steps to improve relations."

The Philippine military is prohibited from discussing the election, but some senior officers privately say they are warming to the idea of Duterte as their commander-in-chief.

His talk of crushing Islamist insurgents behind a lucrative piracy and kidnap business has appeal, they say, as does his promise to take better care of troops and make national security a priority.

Others hope Duterte will pursue a more independent foreign policy through broader diplomatic alliances and new sources of defence hardware to avoid being over-dependent on Washington.

"We're no longer in the Cold War period. We could build our own capability with the help of many allies, not only the U.S." said one officer.

For Joy Topaz, a fish vendor in a Masinloc shanty town, the most pressing issue is to negotiate a deal to get Filipino fishermen back to the Scarborough Shoal.

"There has been talk here about war, but we are afraid of fighting," she said.

"Let us just fish. Let everyone be allowed to fish."
From coal to eggs, China commodities selloff deepens as rally turns to slide

By Manolo Serapio Jr and Ruby Lian

MANILA/SHANGHAI, May 6 (Reuters) - Chinese commodity futures from coal to eggs extended falls on Friday as speculators pulled more money out of markets whose sharp surge two weeks ago unnerved global investors and forced regulators to step in and restore calm.

Commodities linked to China's steel sector, which led the mid-April rally, were the hardest hit, deepening this week's losses as concerns emerged that demand in the world's biggest steel consumer could soon wane. The selloff spread to agricultural products including soybeans, eggs and cotton.

Renewed worries over China's economic health have also weighed on sentiment, breaking earlier perceptions that the world's second-largest economy had stabilized.

The retreat pulled prices of many of the commodities below levels in mid-April when a buying frenzy, pinned on retail investors, bloated volumes and drew comparison with the boom-and-bust cycle in China's stock markets last year.

"It's panic now and capital is flowing out of commodities markets amid a cautious outlook on the economy," said a trader at a fund in Shanghai.

The price declines suggest that Chinese exchanges have succeeded in popping the bubble, at least for now, after commodity platforms in Dalian, Shanghai and Zhengzhou launched measures to curb speculative buying.

Investors have started to lose faith in Chinese steel demand for May and June, triggering falls for steel and its raw materials, said Fu Yang, an analyst with Guotai Jun'an Futures in Shanghai.

A tighter steel market following shutdowns of Chinese mills in the past year and a seasonal pickup in demand helped spur prices in the past two months. But producers have since ramped up output and once-shut plants have also resumed production.

"The steel mills have started to become cautious towards the market after the really crazy rally. At the same time they don't think demand will be sustainable," said Wang Di, analyst at CRU consultancy in Beijing.

The most-traded rebar - or reinforcing bar used in construction - on the Shanghai Futures Exchange fell as far as 2,281 yuan ($351) a tonne, its weakest since April 11. It was down 1.6 percent at 2,318 yuan by the midday break.

Rebar - where traded volume in the most-active contract last month was enough to build San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge more than 15,000 times over - had fallen 17 percent from its April peak.

Iron ore on the Dalian Commodity Exchange fell more than 4 percent to 404.50 yuan a tonne, its weakest since April 18.

Other steel raw materials fell more sharply with coking coal down as much as 6.7 percent and coke falling by the 7 percent limit maximum allowed by the Dalian exchange. Nickel, used to make stainless steel, dropped as much as 5.6 percent.

A stronger U.S. dollar was weighing on the commodities market, said Wang Bing, senior broker with Orient Futures in Shanghai.

"Technical indicators showed that short investors are quite strong now," said Wang.

Other losers on Friday in China included eggs, which fell 3.2 percent, soybeans which slid 2.6 percent and cotton that dropped 1.6 percent. ($1 = 6.5057 Chinese yuan)
Australia to compensate charity wrongly accused over refugees' self-harm protests

By Colin Packham

SYDNEY, May 6 (Reuters) - Australia said on Friday it had agreed to compensate a charity financially for wrongly accusing it of inciting refugees to self-harm in protest at conditions at a detention centre on the Pacific Island of Nauru in 2014.

The government's admission and settlement with Save the Children Australia comes just days after Immigration Minister Peter Dutton blamed unnamed organisations for two people setting themselves on fire on Nauru during the past two weeks.

The historical case involving Save the Children Australia goes back to October 2014, when the immigration department ordered the removal of 10 of the charity's employees from the camp after several refugees sewed their mouths shut, and others made themselves sick by drinking washing powder.

Nine were subsequently deported by the government of Nauru.

Two independent reviews into the affair concluded the Australian government's evidence against the charity workers was unsubstantiated.

The Department of Immigration said it has accepted the recommendations of the most recent independent review, headed by professor Christopher Doogan, and as a result has agreed a confidential financial settlement with the charity.

"The Department also recognises that (Save the Children Australia) has suffered detriment for which - to adopt the words of Professor Doogan - the payment of money cannot be adequate compensation," the department said in a statement.

Conditions at detention camps in the Pacific remain under a spotlight, with reports of harsh conditions and child abuse drawing criticism from inside and outside Australia.

On Monday, a 21-year-old Somali woman set herself alight at the camp in Nauru. She remains in a critical condition.

It was the second case of self-immolation at the camp in a week. A 23-year-old Iranian man died from burns after setting himself alight last week.

Mat Tinkler, director of public affairs and policy at Save the Child Australia, said it was "ironic" that the immigration minister had blamed unnamed organisations for encouraging the latest self-harm protests, after the government had been forced to backtrack over its accusations against his own charity.

Controversies arising from Australia's hardline immigration policy, have become a major headache for Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull during campaigning for likely July elections.
The A-29 Super Tucano aircraft at a glance

May 6 (Reuters) - The administration of U.S. President Barack Obama is seeking to approve the sale of up to 12 A-29 Super Tucano light attack aircraft to Nigeria to help its fight against Boko Haram, the Islamist extremist group that has pledged loyalty to Islamic State.

Here are some facts about the aircraft:

An agile, propeller-driven plane, the Super Tucano is in wide use in Africa, Latin America and elsewhere.

The plane is manufactured by Embraer S.A., a Brazilian aerospace conglomerate. A second production line is in Florida, in a partnership between the privately-held, U.S.-based Sierra Nevada Corp. of Sparks, Nev., and Embraer.

More than 200 Super Tucanos are operated by 10 nations, according to Embraer. The plane is used for training and security, surveillance, reconnaissance and counter-insurgency missions.

The plane can carry a wide array of armaments, including precision-guided munitions, is equipped with advanced avionics, communications and sensors and can operate from remote, unpaved airstrips.

It has a maximum speed of 590 km per hour (367 mph) and a flight ceiling of 35,000 feet (6.6 miles).

Militaries in Afghanistan, Angola, Brazil, Burkina Faso, Chile, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Indonesia and Mauritania fly the Super Tucano. Guatemala, Senegal, Ghana, Mali and Lebanon have ordered the aircraft, according to Embraer.

The first four of 20 aircraft destined for Afghanistan was delivered in 2016.

Colombia has used the aircraft in its long war against leftist FARC rebels.

A Super Tucano operated by the Indonesian Air Force crashed on the island of Java on Feb. 10, killing two crew members and two civilians. The cause of the crash is under investigation.
China, Kazakhstan sign $2 bln in deals as Xinjiang party boss visits

BEIJING, May 6 (Reuters) - China and Kazakhstan signed $2 billion in deals during a trip to the Central Asian country by the Communist Party boss of China's far western region of Xinjiang, state media said on Friday, as China promotes its new Silk Road initiative.

Restive Xinjiang, strategically located on the borders of Central Asia, Pakistan, India and Afghanistan, is a key part of what Beijing officially refers to as its "one belt, one road" strategy to develop trade and transport links across Asia and beyond.

Visiting Kazakh capital Astana and commercial hub Almaty from May 1-4, Xinjiang's party chief and top official, Zhang Chunxian, said Xinjiang and Kazakhstan would both benefit from the new Silk Road, the official Xinjiang Daily said.

China was keen to get more Xinjiang companies to invest in Kazakhstan and was pleased with the warm reception the ones already in Kazakhstan had received, Zhang was quoted as saying.

He also visited the company which oversees the pumping of Central Asian gas into Xinjiang via Kazakhstan, the paper added.

Zhang then oversaw the signing of five energy, agriculture and industrial projects worth more than $2 billion, the report said.

China wants to see prosperity and stability in Central Asia as it tries to tackle unrest in Xinjiang, home to the Muslim Uighur people who speak a Turkic language, many of whom chafe at Chinese restrictions on their religion and culture.

Hundreds have died in unrest in recent years, blamed by China on Islamist militants with links to Central Asia and beyond.

Rights groups and exiles say China's repressive policies are more to blame for the unrest than any cohesive militant threat. China denies abusing anybody's rights in Xinjiang.

The newspaper said Zhang visited a mosque in Astana, where he got a "deep understanding of how Kazakhstan manages religious affairs".

This the second time in a month Zhang has been to one of Xinjiang's neighbours to boost commercial ties.

In April, Xinjiang companies signed deals worth about $2 billion with Pakistan as Zhang visited, seeking to cement ties with an important security partner.
Poland - Factors to Watch May 6

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):

CENTRAL BANK

Poland's president is to announce before midday on Friday his candidate to take over as central bank chief, a source close to the matter told Reuters.

INTEREST RATES

Poland's central bank will announce its monthly interest rate decision, with the market expecting the bank's Monetary Policy Council (MPC) to keep rates unchanged.

SWISS-FRANC LOANS

Poland's government is considering giving up plans to force banks to convert Swiss franc mortgages to zlotys, in favour of laws allowing borrowers to recoup some of the costs of the loans or to walk away from them completely, sources told Reuters.

X-TRADE BROKERS

The Polish online broker is to debut on the Warsaw bourse on Friday.

CONSTITUTION

Poland's finance minister has asked the constitutional court's head to cool its dispute with the government until ratings agency Moody's has made its review of the economy next week, a sign of concern that the row is hurting investors' confidence.

Separately, Economy Minister Mateusz Morawiecki told daily Dziennik Gazeta Prawna that the ongoing dispute is not hurting business climate, as investors are interested mostly in Poland's growth prospects.

CENTRAL BANK

Polish central bank should modernise its tools so that it has the same instruments at its disposal as "mature" countries' central banks, Economy Minister Mateusz Morawiecki told daily Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.

Morawiecki also said that there was no need to introduce any unconventional monetary policy measures as the banking sector's liquidity remained high despite the newly-introduced bank asset tax.

****Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.****
Nikkei stumbles as strong yen, weak earnings outlook take toll

By Joshua Hunt

TOKYO, May 6 (Reuters) - Japanese stocks fell on Friday as caution prevailed ahead of a U.S. jobs report, while investors also worried about the impact of a strong yen on corporate profits.

The Nikkei share average declined 0.3 percent to 16,106.72 in its first day of trade following a three-day closure for national holidays. Japan's benchmark index ended the short trading week about 3.4 percent lower.

During the holiday closure, the yen climbed to a fresh 18-month high against the U.S. dollar, hurting the outlook for exporters and a broad swath of other shares that benefit from a weaker yen.

On Friday, disappointing corporate earnings weighed on Japanese indexes.

Sharp Corp ended 8.5 percent lower after the Nikkei business daily reported it likely posted a net loss of around 300 billion yen ($2.80 billion) for the year through March 2016.

Olympus Corp slid 4.6 percent after the precision instruments company announced a weak profit outlook.

Mitsubishi Motors Corp bucked the weakness, climbing 5.2 percent on strong April sales in North America and analyst comments that the automaker has the cash to pay compensation associated with its rigging of fuel-economy tests for some vehicles it sold in Japan.

The broader Topix edged down 0.1 percent to 1,298.32 and ended the shortened trading week about 3.1 percent lower.
Rebels capture village near Aleppo, 73 killed-monitor

BEIRUT, May 6 (Reuters) - The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights on Friday reported that insurgent groups captured a strategically important village from government forces in fierce fighting south of Aleppo that killed 73 people.
Rio Tinto approves $5.3 bln Oyu Tolgoi copper expansion in Mongolia

SYDNEY, May 6 (Reuters) - Global miner Rio Tinto and its partners on Friday gave the final approval to a $5.3 billion expansion of the Oyu Tolgoi copper mine in Mongolia, paving the way for development of what will become the world's third-largest copper mine.

The expansion into underground mining is regarded as one of the world's best undeveloped copper projects and will drive Rio Tinto's ambitions to become a major global copper producer.
Slovak Republic - Factors To Watch on May 6

BRATISLAVA, May 6 (Reuters) - Here are news stories, press reports and events to watch which may affect Slovak financial markets on Friday. ALL TIMES GMT (Slovak Republic: GMT + 2 hours) =========================ECONOMIC DATA======================== Real-time economic data releases.................. Summary of economic data and forecasts......... Recently released economic data................ Previous stories on Slovak data.......... **For a schedule of corporate and economic events: http://emea1.apps.cp.thomsonreuters.com/Apps/CountryWeb/#/1C/events-overview ========================EVENTS=============================== BRATISLAVA - Slovakia's Central Bank Governor Jozef Makuch will speak at the launch of the IMF Regional Economic Issues report for Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe. Related stories: =========================NEWS=============================== EU: The presidents of Europe's three main institutions on Thursday presented a bleak picture of the European Union, saying the 28-nation bloc lacked leadership and was descending into petty, nationalistic politics. Story: Related stories: ===================PRESS DIGEST=============================== STEEL: The United States Steel Corp wants to sell its Slovak factory, U.S. Steel Kosice, and is in talks with potential buyers, SME daily said quoting company sources. The company declined to comment. Slovakia's Economy Minister Peter Ziga said on Wednesday the government may seek to buy a stake in the plant to prevent its closure. U.S. Steel Kosice is the biggest employer in the country of 5.4 million people. The U.S. company had considered a sale three years ago before the Slovak state offered annual incentives worth up to 15 million euros for 15 years. SME, page 5 For real-time stock market index quotes click in brackets: Warsaw WIG20 Budapest BUX Prague PX Main currency report TOP NEWS -- Emerging markets News editor of the day: Jan Lopatka on +420 224 190 474 E-mail: prague.newsroom@thomsonreuters.com (Reporting by Prague Newsroom)
Greeks strike as new reforms loom on tax and pensions

By Renee Maltezou and George Georgiopoulos

ATHENS, May 6 (Reuters) - Greeks went on a 48-hour nationwide strike on Friday to protest against tax and pension reforms, as Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras appealed to fractious lawmakers to approve the overhaul as part of a multi-billion euro bailout.

Lowering its annual pension bill, one of the most expensive in the euro zone, is a condition for Athens to qualify for a fresh installment of the latest international bailout, worth up to 86 billion euros ($98.3 billion), which it agreed a year ago with its EU partners.

The strike left ships docked at port, disrupted public transport and kept civil servants and journalists off the job. Thousands of protesters with the Communist-affiliated group PAME marched before parliament holding banners that read: "Rise up now!" and "Resist".

Saturday's Greek Cup final between league champions Olympiakos Piraeus and AEK Athens was postponed at the request of police, who did not have resources to oversee the game. No new date was announced..

Major labour unions plan protests outside parliament on Sunday, when the reforms are due to be put to the vote.

Tsipras, who is clinging to a slim majority of three seats in the 300-member assembly, appealed to members of his Syriza party to approve the package. Whether Greece signed up to a bailout or not, he said, reform of the pension system was still needed.

"It was a necessity born from the need to make it viable. Without this intervention, the pensions system would collapse," he said.

In the meantime, the head of the International Monetary Fund, Christine Lagarde, urged euro zone finance ministers to start talks on Greek debt relief together with discussions on reforms, according to a letter published by the Financial Times.

Tsipras has called for debt relief of some form to help Greece as it introduces the reforms.

'NAIL IN THE COFFIN'

Athens hopes the measures will help persuade creditors to approve the release of bailout cash. A tranche of more than 5 billion euros is overdue, after talks faltered over the pace of reforms.

The Eurogroup of finance ministers is due to meet on Monday to discuss the stalemate and the Greek debt relief call.

Greece's largest labour union, the private sector GSEE, said the reforms going before parliament were the "last nail in the coffin" for workers and pensioners who had sacrificed enough after six years of austerity.

"They are trying to prove to the Eurogroup that they are good students but they are destroying Greece's social security system," a GSEE official said.

Greece needs the bailout funds to pay IMF loans, ECB bonds maturing in July and growing state arrears, subject to lenders signing off on a review of its reform progress that includes changes to its tax and pension laws.

The proposed legislation would raise social security contributions, increase income tax for high earners and introduce a new national pension. It would also gradually phase out a top-up pension for low earners.

Worn out by years of austerity, some Greeks fear that the new reforms will push the country further towards the brink.

"We don't have food to eat and nobody asks us how we are," said shopkeeper Anna Papadopoulou, 74, who wept as she spoke.
India to gradually move to gas-based economy - Minister

By Nidhi Verma and Douglas Busvine

NEW DELHI, May 6 (Reuters) - India plans to shift to a gas-based economy by boosting domestic production and buying cheap liquefied natural gas (LNG) as the world's third-biggest oil importer seeks to curb its greenhouse emissions, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan said.

New Delhi has promised to shave a third off its emissions rate by 2030, partly by boosting the use of cleaner burning fuels.

"Gradually we are shifting towards a sustainable gas economy," Pradhan told Reuters in an interview.

Gas accounts for about 8 percent of India's energy mix, while oil accounts for more than a quarter.

India's gas supply deficit is expected to widen from 78 million cubic metres a day (mscmd) this fiscal year to 117 mscmd in 2021-22, according to a government estimate.

India recently negotiated better terms for a long-term LNG deal with Qatar and importer Petronet LNG is in talks with Exxon to renegotiate pricing for gas from Australia's Gorgon project.

"The price should be affordable to us. We respect long-term contracts but everybody has to appreciate the changing scenario," said Pradhan. "In a bigger canvas ... India has the potential of a huge market base".

Pradhan last month visited Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Iran to deepen ties with its main oil suppliers.

"We want to move beyond a buyer-seller relationship," he said, adding that India was offering them stakes in its pipelines, petrochemical complexes and refineries.

India is also in talks with Abu Dhabi National Oil Co and Saudi Aramco to lease strategic oil storage.

GAS GIANT

Pradhan said Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Iran later this month would "certainly" deliver concrete results.

Iran has set aside its Farzad B gas field for development by Indian firms, a move that could result in the building of an LNG plant as India consumes or markets its production share, he said.

Over two years Asian LNG prices have slumped by three quarters to $4.65 per million British thermal units (mmBtu).

Pradhan expects hefty LNG investments worldwide to ensure affordable long-term prices, a trend that "will suit India as a consuming country."

GAS CONNECTIVITY

India is building import terminals on its eastern and western coasts and pipelines to boost industrial use of gas.

In the fiscal year to March, India's gas production declined by about 4.2 percent, while imports rose around 15 percent.

India recently offered better gas pricing to boost domestic output, but its most recent investment in an LNG terminal in the southern state of Kerala has been underutilised since it lacks pipelines to connect to demand centres after farmer opposition caused land acquisition problems.
Islamist rebels seize village near Aleppo, 73 killed-monitor

BEIRUT, May 6 (Reuters) - Rebels seized a village from government forces near Aleppo overnight, a monitoring group and rebel sources said on Friday, gaining important ground near the Syrian city where the United States and Russia are trying to de-escalate the war.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 73 people had been killed in the battle for Khan Touman, some 15 km (9 miles) southwest of Aleppo in a location near the Damascus-Aleppo highway. While multiple rebel sources said it had been captured, a Syrian army source denied Khan Touman had fallen.

The attack was launched by an alliance of Islamist insurgents known as Jaish al-Fatah, including the al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front, which has rejected diplomatic efforts to halt the war and promote peace talks.

The United States and Russia this week brokered a ceasefire in the city of Aleppo itself, where some 300 people have been killed in the last two weeks in government- and rebel-held areas as a result of air strikes and shelling.

"Throughout the night the battles were very intense," said Abu al-Baraa al-Hamawi, a fighter from the Ajnad al-Sham group, one of the factions taking part in the attack. "Areas south of Khan Touman have been liberated," he told Reuters.

The Observatory said 43 of the dead were rebels and 30 were government forces.
Worst may be over for Russia, risks rising in central Europe -IMF

By Marc Jones

LONDON, May 6 (Reuters) - The worst of the economic slump in Russia may be over the International Monetary Fund said on Friday, but warned possible euro zone stagnation and shifting politics made central Europe's prospects increasingly uncertain.

The IMF's twice-yearly regional outlook for Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe (CESEE) said the rise of populist parties in some countries as well as limp global growth and aging populations were all aggravating the strains.

Using forecasts produced last month, it said growth in the central channel from Poland down to Turkey would remain as healthy as 3-4 percent this year, whereas Russia and most of its former Soviet neighbours would stay in recession.

But it is likely to be a period where the balance shifts, with the former group likely to see a slight slowdown going into next year and Russia et al perking up with a return to growth.

"Although there is a strong cyclical rebound in CESEE countries, risks have increased," the IMF said.

"The strongest break on CESEE growth would be a stagnation in the euro zone, the largest trading partner for many CESEE countries."

Mahmood Pradhan, the deputy head of the Fund's European department, said the euro zone economy grinding to a halt wasn't the base-case scenario after its slightly better than expected start to the year, but that it remained "a clear risk".

He said the IMF's economists were also looking into how much of a negative impact there would be if restrictions were put on the EU's borderless travel arrangement, Schengen, to try and control the flood of Syrian and other refugees.

"With these higher risks, supportive monetary policy combined with medium-term fiscal consolidation remains valid policy advice for many economies in the region," the report added.

Pradhan also gave the Fund's first public thumbs up to Ukraine's new government, saying early noises that it plans to stick to reform efforts were "very encouraging".

For experts though the big question for the CESEE region is whether the last quarter of century of convergence towards Western living standards and free-market politics is beginning to reverse as the scars of the financial crisis and regional spats struggle to heal.

Poland's government for example has been vocal in its criticism of some of the EU actions since it came into power last year.

It is also going against economic grain in a similar way Hungary has in recent years, proposing to cut the country's retirement age, increase child benefit payments and make banks swallow costly Swiss franc loans they sold in the past.

"The region faces more pronounced downside risks," said Anna Ilyina chief of the IMF's emerging economies division, who pointed to Turkey as another country where political uncertainty had increased.
Kremlin: oil output 'freeze' negotiations should start anew

MOSCOW, May 6 (Reuters) - Negotiations between leading oil producers on possible production curbs, aimed at propping up weak oil prices, should broadly be restarted from scratch, a Kremlin spokesman said on Friday.

Leading global oil producers, including Russia and Saudi Arabia, failed to come to an agreement on a proposed oil output freeze in Doha last month.

"Of course, a lot should be started from the beginning after the recent failure of this process," Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

"The Russian officials, particularly (Energy Minister Alexander) Novak have repeatedly stressed that the ball is not on our side but on the side of our partners," he said.

Later on Friday Russian President Vladimir Putin will meet Qatari Foreign Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al-Thani in the Black Sea resort of Sochi.
India, Iran agree to clear $6.4 bln in oil payments via European banks - minister

By Nidhi Verma and Douglas Busvine

NEW DELHI, May 6 (Reuters) - The central banks of India and Iran have reached an arrangement to use European banks to process pending oil payments to Tehran, India's Oil Minister Dharmendra Pradhan told Reuters, unlocking $6.4 billion in stalled funds.

Buyers of Iranian oil were prevented from using global banking channels to clear their transactions after sanctions were imposed on Iran in 2011 over its nuclear programme. With the end of those sanctions in January, after an agreement to curb the programme, Iran is finally gaining needed access to the funds.

Iran hopes the money will revive its moribund economy and raise Iranian living standards as well as help to integrate the country into the global economic system.

Indian refiners have been holding 55 percent of its oil payments to Iran after a route to make payments through Turkey's Halkbank was stopped in 2013, although payment of some of those funds was allowed after an initial temporary deal to lift the sanctions.

"There is an agreement between (India and Iran's) central banks. European banks will be the clearing agent. They will be dealing with Iranian banks and we have to pay those European banks," Pradhan told Reuters in an interview.

He did not elaborate further, saying the finance ministry was dealing with the issue.

Also because of the previous sanctions, Indian refiners have been depositing 45 percent of their oil payments to Iran in rupees with India's UCO Bank.

Tehran has been using the funds, currently about 130 billion rupees ($1.95 billion) to import non-sanctioned goods from India.

Indian government sources said during Pradhan's visit to Tehran last month Iran had asked India to consider clearing the oil payments through Europaeisch-Iranische Handelsbank (EIH) of Germany, Central Bank of Italy and Halkbank of Turkey.

One of the sources said the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has ruled out channelling funds through Halkbank.

"Halkbank's Iran-related foreign trade activities with Iran have been carried out since 2004 ... Halkbank will continue its operations in accordance with international law," a senior Halkbank official told Reuters.

No immediate comment was available from EIH and Central Bank of Italy.

The government sources said Indian refiners will remit funds to Iran through state-owned UCO Bank.

UCO Bank's chairman did not respond to calls from Reuters to his mobile phone.

Reserve Bank of India Governor Raghuram Rajan said on April 5 India will make payments to Iran in a staggered manner.

"Oil companies are working out the banking arrangements in coordination with Iranian counterparts and payments will be made by them presumably over time with minimal impact on the market," an RBI spokesperson said on Thursday.

Despite the sanctions, India continued its engagement with Iran and was among a handful of countries that sourced oil from Tehran.
Philippine court halts rare TV attack ad showing kids against Duterte

By Karen Lema

MANILA, May 6 (Reuters) - A court in the Philippines on Friday ordered a major television network to stop airing an attack advertisement that featured small children questioning the morals of presidential frontrunner Rodrigo Duterte, three days before an election.

Though negative political advertisements are common in many countries, they are a rare in the Philippines and unseen in a presidential election.

The 30-second clip on top broadcaster ABS-CBN showed children questioning Duterte's suitability as a president, spliced with video clips of him cursing the Pope, vowing to kill people and joking about rape.

"These advertisements do manifestly oppose a candidate and thus the court cannot allow minor children to be used in such black propaganda," said the ruling by the court in Taguig, southeast of Manila.

It was aired just as the final major opinion poll ahead of Monday's vote was published and showed Duterte, a maverick southern mayor, widening his lead, with 33 percent of respondents in the Social Weather Station survey backing him. Grace Poe was second with 22 percent.

"On the presidential level this is unprecedented," Bong Osorio an academic and public relations expert, said of the commercial. "More than desperation, this speaks of a very close contest."

"There are still undecided, so there are still people who can be swayed," Osorio said.

ABS-CBN, the country's biggest broadcaster, said the advertisement was "legitimate". The network has links to President Benigno Aquino, who is backing the candidacy of his interior minister, Manuel Roxas.

Aquino's sister until March had a regular show on the network, while Roxas's wife has a weekly programme.

Two rival networks issued statements saying they declined to show the commercial because it did not meet their requirements.

It was paid for by Senator Antonio Trillanes, a candidate for the vice presidency. Vice presidents are elected separately from presidents.

He started attacking Duterte a week ago, calling near-daily news conferences alleging he had hid 211 million pesos ($4.47 million) in assets, created fictitious jobs and has ties with Marxist radicals, all of which Duterte denies.

Trillanes says it is his mission to stop him.

Ramon Casiple, head of the Institute for Political and Electoral Reforms, said it was unlikely the advertisement would have an impact on the vote.

"It will not affect his campaign. Too late," he said.

Peter Lavina, a spokesman for Duterte, said vicious attacks were expected, but added "the use of children was foul".
Head of Kazakh state holding company named economy minister

ASTANA, May 6 (Reuters) - Kuandyk Bishimbayev, chief executive of a state financial holding company, was named Kazakhstan's economy minister on Friday following the resignation of his predecessor over public protests against a planned land reform, the ministry said.

Yerbolat Dosayev, whose ministry had helped develop a plan to privatise large swathes of farmland, resigned on Thursday, when President Nursultan Nazarbayev criticised his cabinet for failing to adequately explain the policy to the public.

Hundreds of Kazakhs have taken to the streets over the last two weeks to protest against the land reform, saying they fear it would allow foreigners to take over farmland. Some analysts say the issue is a trigger for the expression of broader discontent.

Nazarbayev on Thursday delayed the reform and promised to shelve it if it failed to win public support.

Bishimbayev, 36, has since 2013 run Baiterek, a state holding company which controls financial institutions such as the Development Bank of Kazakhstan and the Kazakhstan Mortgage Company.
Germany expects Turkey to stick to EU migrant deal after PM resignation

BERLIN, May 6 (Reuters) - Germany expects Turkey to uphold its agreement with the European Union on curbing migration to the bloc despite the departure of the Turkish prime minister who struck the deal, a German government spokesman said on Friday.

Ahmet Davutoglu announced on Thursday he was stepping down as leader of Turkey's ruling AK Party and therefore as prime minister, raising questions about the migrant deal with the EU.

"The chancellor (Angela Merkel) has worked very well with Turkish Prime Minister Davutoglu and all Turkish officials, and we expect this good and constructive cooperation to continue with a new Turkish prime minister," deputy German government spokesman Georg Streiter said.
Philippines' RCBC accepts resignation of its president

MANILA, May 6 (Reuters) - Philippines' Rizal Commercial Banking Corp said it has accepted the resignation of its president, Lorenzo Tan, even as it cleared the official of any liabilities in connection with the $81-million money laundering scandal.

The resignation of Tan took effect on Friday.
Click bait: baby koala bites and scratches his way to stardom

BEERWAH, Australia, May 6 (Reuters) - The first koala joey born at Australia Zoo this season has begun exploring his new surroundings, with his early steps out of the pouch attracting over 100,000 views on social media.

The yet-to-be-named baby boy, the size of a jelly bean when born roughly six months ago, was the first to venture from his mother's pouch out of a zoo-record 13 that arrived this season.

The two-minute video shows the joey scratching himself and his mother Ash, trying to bite a tree branch and climbing back to the pouch. It has been viewed over 104,000 times since being posted on Facebook by the zoo on April 27.

The joey will stay with his mum for at least a year as he learns vital skills, like climbing, before going independent.

Interest in koala activity is always high. The Queensland-based Australia Zoo said koala-inspired tourism was worth A$3.375 billion ($2.49 billion) to Australia each year.

($1 = A$1.35)
Bomb attack kills 7 in Yemeni city Marib - police

CAIRO, May 6 (Reuters) - Seven people were killed and more than 15 wounded by a bomb on Friday in the Yemeni city Marib, east of the capital Sanaa, police told Reuters.

It was not clear who planted the device which went off around midday in the heart of a crowded market where the narcotic leaf qat is sold, they said.

Marib has most of Yemen's oil and gas fields and has long been a battleground between factions including local tribesmen, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) insurgents and other Islamists, and government forces.

On April 24 an air strike from a drone killed two men south of Marib city suspected of belonging to al Qaeda, said local residents.

Saudi Arabia and its Gulf Arab allies have intervened in Yemen's civil war since March last year, fighting in support of Yemen's government after it was forced into exile by the Iran-allied Houthi group.

Renewed fighting across Yemen is threatening to wreck a truce that had largely held since April 10, buttressing a round of U.N.-backed peace talks in Kuwait aimed at ending the conflict.
Portugal sees foreign investment growth unhindered by govt change

By Sergio Goncalves

LISBON, May 6 (Reuters) - Productive foreign investment in Portugal more than doubled last year and investor interest remains strong despite a turbulent government change in late 2015, the head of the state agency for promotion of exports and investment (AICEP) said.

Miguel Frasquilho told Reuters in an interview the pipeline of foreign investment projects for 2016-18 attracted via government channels now amounted to a "fairly strong" total of over 2 billion euros ($2.28 billion), and the outlook was promising after last year's sharp increase to 1.7 billion euros.

Productive foreign investment, defined as money flowing into fixed assets and inventories and excluding cash placed in financial instruments, created 5,000 jobs and helped safeguard another 30,000, he said.

Still, total foreign direct investment, including in the financial sector which is much more volatile, fell 5 percent to 5.4 billion euros last year.

Some analysts have expressed concern that the new left-leaning government's anti-austerity moves will undermine foreign investment. But Frasquilho, who stayed on in his post from the previous, austerity-minded centre-right administration, said: "I have noticed no such thing."

"The investor interest is there, which is visible during roadshows that I've done, and that's excellent news," he said, adding that Portugal was now widely seen as a credible country after recovering from an economic crisis.

"The Socialist government is committed to the European treaties, the budget pact, with the trajectory of deficit reductions," he said. "The fact that this year's budget puts the deficit at 2.2 percent of GDP, the lowest level in our democratic history, is an excellent signal to investors."

He said investors were drawn to a variety of sectors such as aeronautics, carmaking, fashion, technology, pulp and paper, and shared services centres in Portugal.

The agency pins much of its hopes for luring investment on the fact that Lisbon will host the Web Summit for the next three years. The previous host of the global conference, Dublin, brought together thousands of investors and start-ups.

"Portugal is starting to be seen as a technology hub, something that five years ago was unthinkable," Frasquilho said, adding that he saw good prospects for investment from the likes of Amazon, Apple, Google, Facebook and Twitter.

Frasquilho also said he was optimistic that Portugal's exports would continue to rise after last year's record highs thanks to diversification of trade, despite economic problems in key trading partners Angola and Brazil.

"The example of (exports to) the United States in 2015 is extraordinary," he said. Exports there rose more than 20 percent, offsetting a decline in trade with Angola and Brazil. Portuguese exports to the United States have more than doubled in the past five years, he said.
Kenyan businessman shot dead, opposition sees political motive

NAIROBI, May 6 (Reuters) - Kenyan businessman and government critic Jacob Juma was shot dead in his car late on Thursday in Nairobi, the police said on Friday, a killing the opposition said appeared to be politically motivated.

There was no immediate comment from the government, but officials have repeatedly accused the opposition of seeking to stoke tensions with what they say are trumped up accusations against the government ahead of next year's elections.

Police spokesman Charles Owino said the reason for the shooting late on Thursday was not clear. "We cannot get a motive unless we manage to get the killers," he said, adding that the case was being investigated.

Nairobi has a reputation for violent crime, often associated with robbery. But when it involves politicians or business executives, the public often lay the blame on the settling of political scores or commercial rivalries. Many crimes go unsolved.

Kenyan media reported that several shots were fired at Juma's car. They published images online showing the vehicle with shattered glass.

Juma often wrote on Twitter about corruption and accused the government of mishandling public funds. He also voiced support for opposition leader Raila Odinga. His Tweets included suggestions that some officials wanted him dead.

"He was a critic of the government on issues of corruption and mismanagement of public funds," Odinga's spokesman Dennis Onyango said, adding he believed there was a political motive. "It is an attempt to silence (such) voices."

President Uhuru Kenyatta has repeatedly said one of his government's priorities is clamping down on corruption.

Juma was involved in businesses related to mining, real estate and government supply contracts. In 2013, he was embroiled in a row with the mining ministry after it revoked a licence held by Cortec Mining Kenya, in which Juma was a director.

"The assassination of Jacob Juma ... was that - an assassination!" John Githongo, a former government anti-corruption officer, wrote on Twitter.
Land rights at root of palm oil conflict in Liberia, campaigners say

By Matthew Ponsford

LONDON, May 6 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - The lack of tenure over ancestral lands lies at the root of violent clashes on land leased to foreign palm oil producers in Liberia, a leading researcher said.

The eruption of rioting on April 4 on a plantation in northeastern Liberia is the most recent case in more than a decade of conflict over land, with Liberians protesting against big palm oil developments operated by foreign producers.

Ali Kaba, senior researcher at the Sustainable Development Institute in Monrovia, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation that residents of areas leased as concessions to foreign investors are often evicted without rights to compensation.

"If you remove their ownership, you're making them strangers in their own country," Kaba said. "They have no other avenues of survival... you are making refugees of citizens."

According to research by the United States Agency for International Development, in Liberia, more than half the population lives on land held under customary tenure. This provides traditional rights to land but is not secured or recognised by legal title.

But Liberian government policy which would recognise customary tenure has yet to be passed into law. The arrival of foreign investors has fragmented communities that have lived off their lands for generations, said Kaba.

Following the West Africa nation's bloody civil war, which ended in 2003, the government accelerated long-standing policies which granted natural resource concessions to foreign companies.

Foreign concessions for palm oil production were at the centre of reforms which the World Bank has credited for transforming Liberia into a promising place for agricultural producers to invest.

But the land concessions - which now cover more than 45 percent of Liberian territory - have provoked conflict, said Kaba.

In a 2008 report, the Liberia Truth and Reconciliation Commission called land disputes a threat to national peace.

An estimated 90 percent of Liberia's civil court cases are related to land and as many as 63 percent of violent conflicts in Liberia have their root in land rights issues.

Kaba says conflict between Liberians for the remaining land threatens reconciliation in a country where 70 percent depend on agriculture.

Liberia's government under Nobel Peace Prize winner, President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, is credited with helping the country recover from its civil war.

The draft Land Authority Act, which would acknowledge customary rights to land, was submitted to Liberia's Senate in September 2014 but NGOs have criticised its slow progress since. On April 13, the Senate passed the act, which is now awaiting ratification.

CALL FOR ACTION

Representatives of indigenous groups from Indonesia, Peru, and Colombia joined Kaba at a conference in London on Wednesday to call for action by the European Union, the third largest import market for palm oil, against "deadly trade" in the oil.

Half of all packaged food products in supermarkets today contain palm oil, according to the World Wildlife Fund, but only 20 percent of oil is certified as sustainable.

Agus Sutomo, director of Indonesian NGO Link-AR Borneo, said European consumers should be aware that - when ethical standards are not upheld - "what they are consuming is our blood."

Kaba said that he is not an opponent of development and that cultivation of palm oil - which is native to Liberia - could benefit local communities.

"Palm oil is not the problem," he said. "Land rights is the problem."
EU-Turkey deal, complicated by PM's exit, stumbles on terror laws

By Nick Tattersall and Tulay Karadeniz

ISTANBUL/ANKARA, May 6 (Reuters) - European demands that Turkey bring broad anti-terrorism laws in line with tighter EU standards risk undermining their agreement to curb illegal migration, a deal made more fragile by the Prime Minister's departure.

The European Union asked member states on Wednesday to grant visa-free travel to Turks in return for Ankara stopping migrants reaching Europe, but said Turkey still had to change some laws first.

On Thursday, PM Ahmet Davutoglu, who negotiated the deal for Ankara and has largely delivered Turkish compliance with its conditions so far, announced he was stepping down, throwing the agreement into uncertainty.

His departure consolidates the power of President Tayyip Erdogan, who has been highly critical of the EU in the past and who is seen in Brussels as a far tougher negotiating partner.

To win visa-free travel, Turkey must still meet five of 72 criteria the EU imposes on all states exempt from visas, one of which is narrowing its legal definition of terrorism.

In a speech on Friday, Erdogan indicated that would not happen.

Referring to the EU demand to change the law at a time when Turkey was under threat, he said: "We will go our way, you go yours."

Rights groups say Turkey has used broad anti-terror laws to silence dissent, including detaining journalists and academics critical of the government. But Ankara insists the laws are essential as it battles Kurdish militants at home and the threat from Islamic State in neighbouring Syria and Iraq.

"It's not possible to make any revision to the legislation and practices on terrorism while our country continues its intense fight against various terrorist organisations," EU Minister Volkan Bozkir was earlier quoted saying by the Daily Sabah on Thursday.

He said Turkey had already made some changes requested by Europe, including reference to "the concept of immediate and obvious danger that threatens public security".

"However, we don't have the luxury of making (further) changes," he was quoted as telling local reporters in Ankara.

Germany said it expects Turkey to uphold the deal, which was pushed by Chancellor Angela Merkel and which she hopes will shore up support for her conservatives ahead of a federal election next year.

HARD ACT TO FOLLOW?

Erdogan is aware that visa-free travel is for many Turks the biggest benefit of Ankara's deal with the EU, and is unlikely to want to be seen as scuppering a deal which appeared, at least until Thursday, to have largely been secured.

But he bristles at suggestions that Turkey uses its anti-terror laws indiscriminately. He has repeatedly stressed his determination to crush Kurdish militants fighting an insurgency in Turkey's southeast, and is unlikely to sanction Ankara backing down on the European demands.

Much may depend on the ability of whoever replaces Davutoglu, a decision to be made at an extraordinary congress of the ruling AK Party on May 22, to convince European allies that Turkey has already done enough.

Transport Minister Binali Yildirim, a close Erdogan ally, appears to be the president's current preference, according to three senior AKP officials, although they said that could still change.

Government spokesman Numan Kurtulmus and Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag, also Erdogan loyalists, have also been touted, as has Energy Minister Berat Albayrak, Erdogan's son-in-law, sources in the party have said.

The head of the European Commission delegation in Ankara, Hansjorg Haber, also said he expected cooperation to seal the migration agreement whatever the shape of the new government.

"To finish the deal we need continuity... We expect that from any subsequent government," he told reporters.
Syrian rebels threaten to shell government forces over prisoners' revolt

BEIRUT, May 6 (Reuters) - Syrian rebel groups threatened on Friday to shell government forces if Damascus did not meet the demands of inmates staging a revolt in a prison in the west of the country, and the main opposition warned of a "massacre" by troops surrounding the jail.

Inmates in the city of Hama's main prison rioted on Monday and seized a number of guards in protest against the attempted transfer of some prisoners to a military jail near Damascus, and after trials were postponed, a monitoring group said.

Those held in the jail include political and Islamist prisoners, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says. It said on Friday the protest was continuing, and that dozens of prisoners had been released in negotiations.

Government troops had surrounded the jail and prisoners feared they would try to storm it after an initial, failed attempt, the British-based group said.

The Syrian interior ministry has denied "reports ... about Hama central prison", without elaborating.

Insurgent groups including powerful Islamist faction Ahrar al-Sham said in a statement they would shell all the bases of government forces in Hama province if it did not meet the prisoners' demands.

The Observatory said they were calling for fair trials and not to be transferred to Sednaya military prison, north of Damascus. The main Syrian opposition body, the High Negotiations Committee, said they wanted better conditions in jail.

The HNC warned of a "massacre" by government forces which it said were preparing to storm the prison. It said it would hold the international community responsible for any such action.

International rights groups say thousands of detainees are held in Syrian government prisons without charge and many of them are subjected to torture, a claim denied by the authorities.
Hungary should cut spending to make sure debt declines, OECD says

BUDAPEST, May 6 (Reuters) - Hungary needs to cut its budget deficit below current levels and reduce public spending to eliminate more of its public debt, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development said on Friday.

The OECD said in its report on Hungary that economic growth was expected to slow this year to 2.5 percent from 2.9 last year, as the European Union makes less funding available for public investment.

Gross domestic product is likely to rise around 3 percent next year, the report said. Hungary's current account and international investment position have both improved, it said, and the budget deficit declined to 2 percent of GDP last year.

The OECD projects the deficit will come in at 1.9 percent this year but rise to 2.5 percent next year, before the 2018 parliamentary elections. The government targets a deficit of 2.4 percent.

"The government's commitment to gradually reduce the debt-GDP ratio is ... welcome, but ensuring it will, in the medium term, require a lower deficit than today," the OECD said.

It added that Hungary had made less progress in reducing non-performing loans in the country's banks and ensuring the sustainability of economic growth.

"Particular concerns in these areas are the high level of non-performing loans, which rose sharply in the wake of the global crisis, and low productivity," the OECD said.

Banks have improved their capital adequacy ratio to more than 20 percent and the loan-to-deposit ratio has dropped. But the ratio of non-performing loans still represents "a significant risk to the financial system," the OECD said.

Household non-performing loans stood at 18.4 percent, according to an August 2015 central bank report.

The OECD also warned that Hungary's productivity growth has decelerated. Faster growth requires more investment in business and better-trained workers, it said.

Foreign direct investment is concentrated in a few sectors, especially in building cars, the OECD said. To increase investment, Hungary needs to improve policy stability the report said.

It also said the underdeveloped Hungarian capital market did not provide financing to complement bank lending.

The National Bank of Hungary bought a majority stake in the Budapest stock exchange last year. Since the central bank is also the financial market regulator, the OECD said, the purchase might "raise a perception of a conflict of interest.
Saudi identifies suspected Islamic State fighters killed in raid

DOHA, May 6 (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia published the names on Friday of four people it said were Islamic State fighters killed in a raid by security forces outside Mecca, and vowed to protect the country from further attacks by the group.

Security forces shot dead two of the men and two others blew themselves up outside the holy city on Thursday. The raid followed a spate of shootings and bombings against security forces which raised concerns about security in the world's top oil exporter.

Among the four was 46-year-old Saudi national Said Ayed al-Shahrani who orchestrated the bombing of a mosque for security forces in Asir province in August that killed 15 people, state news agency SPA quoted an interior ministry statement as saying on Friday.

"We continue with determination to foil attacks and to guard the security of this nation.. we must stand as one against this criminal group and its terrorist activities," the statement said.

Saudi-owned Al-Arabiya TV reported that explosive devices and pistols had been found after Thursday's shooting and showed images of the four men's faces and dates of birth.

The interior ministry also said gunmen shot and killed a Saudi policeman on duty in a village close to the site of Thursday's raid.

The Islamic State group has claimed responsibility for a string of bombings that have targeted police and mosques of the kingdom's Shi'ite Muslim minority since last year.
Japan ambassador takes veiled swipe at Trump's 'America First' stance

By David Brunnstrom

WASHINGTON, May 6 (Reuters) - Japan's ambassador to the United States weighed in on the U.S. presidential election debate on Friday by arguing against the "America first" stance of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and stressing the importance of the U.S.-Japan alliance.

Without mentioning Trump by name, Kenichiro Sasae told a Washington forum that Japan had come up unexpectedly in the election debate, showing that nothing could be taken for granted in terms of the long-standing U.S.-Japan alliance.

"In the presidential elections, there are arguments whether the United States is going for the isolationist stance," Sasae said. "I don't want to see that kind of United States.

"I want to see the United States to be strong and come with a strong robust position, not really thinking of the United States only," he said.

Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for the Nov. 8 presidential election, has portrayed Japan, a long-time treaty ally of the United States, as a free-rider on security. He has suggested that Tokyo might need nuclear weapons to ease U.S. financial commitment to its defense - anathema to the only country ever attacked by atomic bombs.

"I know that there has to be a debate about how to get this country strong but the question is whether you could be strong without a proper role around the world," Sasae said.

"It is important not to undermine  one, the value of the U.S.-Japan alliance; two, the geopolitical implications of emerging or resurgent powers in the world; three, the capability and strength of the United States."

Sasae also stressed the importance of the 12-nation Trans Pacific Partnership trade deal currently held up in the U.S. Congress, saying its passage was crucial to maintaining U.S. economic leadership in Asia.

Trump outlined a clear "America First" foreign policy in a speech late last month, vowing that if he were elected president, U.S. allies in Europe and Asia would have to fend for themselves if they did not pay more for the U.S. defense umbrella.

In spite of concerns in Japan about the implications of a more isolationist U.S. foreign policy, especially in the face of an increasingly powerful China flexing its muscles in Asia, Japan's prime minister said on Thursday Tokyo hoped to be able would work with whoever becomes U.S. president.
Brazil Senate committee votes for Rousseff to stand trial

By Maria Carolina Marcello and Anthony Boadle

BRASILIA, May 6 (Reuters) - A Senate committee recommended on Friday that Brazil's President Dilma Rousseff be put on trial by the full chamber for breaking budget laws, moving a step closer to the likely suspension of the leftist leader from office next week.

Despite renewed promised by Rousseff on Friday to resist her removal, her chances for staying in office are dimming. Her departure would come at a time when a majority of Brazilians are against Rousseff because of an economic recession and a massive corruption scandal that has exposed wrongdoing by ruling party officials.

The full Senate is expected to vote to put her on trial on Wednesday, which would immediately suspend Rousseff for the duration of a trial that could last six months. During that period, Vice President Michel Temer would replace her as acting president.

The upper house committee voted 15-5 to accept the charges against Rousseff, which involve budget irregularities that critics say masked budget problems while she ran for re-election in 2014, and her opponents are certain to muster the simple majority needed to begin a trial.

"I will resist until the last day," Rousseff said at an event where she announced the delivery of low-cost housing. The president said she would not resign because she committed no crime, and called her looming ouster a "coup d'etat."

If the Senate convicts Rousseff, by a two-thirds majority vote to oust her, Temer would serve out the remainder of Rousseff's second term through 2018.

Local newspaper surveys say the opposition has 50 of the 54 votes needed, with many of the 10 undecided senators likely to favor her ouster.

Rousseff has struggled to survive politically in the face of Brazil's biggest ever corruption scandal and its worst recession since the 1930s. Her removal would mark an end to 13 years of leftist rule by the Workers Party that began in 2003 under her mentor, former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

While Rousseff is not directly accused of corruption, Brazil's top prosecutor has asked for her to be investigated for obstructing justice in the kickback scandal that has engulfed state-run oil company Petroleo Brasileiro SA and fueled Brazil's political crisis.

In a separate initiative launched by the opposition, Rousseff's 2014 re-election campaign is being investigated by an electoral court for alleged funding with bribe money.

At Rousseff's presidential palace Friday, officials had glum faces and appeared resigned to the end of her administration.

One aide denied they were packing up already, but added: "No doubt, we have to start organizing things."

Echoing the sense of an administration that has run out of time, no reporters showed up for a news conference called by Women Affairs Secretary Eleonora Menicucci, a close Rousseff aide. She ended up speaking only to a government television camera.

Rousseff's supporters on the Senate committee have called for annulment of the impeachment proceedings because the man who launched them last year, lower house speaker Eduardo Cunha, was himself removed from office on Thursday by the Supreme Court for obstructing the investigation of corruption accusations against him.

The top court has so far dismissed all government requests to halt the impeachment proceedings.

Workers Party Senator Lindbergh Farias said the ouster of Rousseff was aimed at undoing Lula's work to help the poor, and at rolling back workers' benefits, privatizing state companies and aligning Brazil's foreign policy closer to the United States.
Turkish journalists jailed for five years, hours after courthouse attack

By Ayla Jean Yackley and Melih Aslan

ISTANBUL, May 6 (Reuters) - Two prominent journalists were sentenced to at least five years in jail for revealing state secrets on Friday, just hours after a gunman tried to shoot one of them outside the Istanbul courthouse.

Can Dundar, editor-in-chief of the opposition Cumhuriyet newspaper, who was unscathed in the shooting, was given five years and 10 months. Erdem Gul, the newspaper's Ankara bureau chief, was sentenced to five years. They were acquitted of some other charges, including trying to topple the government.

The case, in which President Tayyip Erdogan was named as a complainant, has brought widespread condemnation from global rights groups and increased fears about freedom of the press in Turkey, a NATO member and EU candidate country.

Hours before the verdict was handed down, an assailant attempted to shoot Dundar. In full public view, before a courthouse, the attack marked an alarming development in a country already grappling with bombings by Kurdish insurgents and spillover of violence from neighbouring Syria.

The man shouted "traitor" before firing at least two shots in quick succession. A reporter covering his trial appeared to have been wounded.

A Reuters witness said the assailant was detained by police. Before the shooting, he had approached reporters, saying he had been waiting since early morning and hoped Dundar would be found guilty. His motives and background were not immediately clear.

"We experienced two assassination attempts in two hours: one by firearms, the other by law," Dundar told reporters following the trial. "There will always be concerns that the orders of the highest office played a role in this ruling."

The two are free pending appeal. The court also decided to postpone a hearing on separate charges of links to a terrorist group until the outcome of a related case.

No one was immediately available for comment at Erdogan's office after the ruling.

Dundar and Gul had faced up to life in jail on espionage and other charges for publishing footage purporting to show the state intelligence agency taking weapons into Syria in 2014.

"HEAVY PRICE"

Erdogan had accused the men of undermining Turkey's international reputation and vowed Dundar would "pay a heavy price", raising opposition concerns about the fairness of any trial.

"We say the incident we covered was a crime, not our coverage," Dundar said. "And for that we were confronted by the president. He acted like the prosecutor of this case. He threatened us and made us targets."

Under the ruling AK Party, which was founded by Erdogan, Turkey has seized control of opposition newspapers and broadcasters and cut the satellite feed of a pro-Kurdish channel, accusing them of terrorism-related activities.

Erdogan has acknowledged that the trucks, which were stopped by gendarmerie and police officers en route to the Syrian border in January 2014, belonged to the National Intelligence Organisation and said they were carrying aid to Turkmen battling both Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and Islamic State.

"This case isn't based on law, it's political," said Mahmut Tanal, a lawmaker from the opposition Republican People's Party.

Gul and Dundar spent 92 days in jail, almost half of it in solitary confinement, before the constitutional court ruled in February that pre-trial detention was unfounded because the charges stemmed from their journalism.

Erdogan said he did not respect that ruling.

Journalists have been targeted in the past. Last month senior Turkish security officials were among 34 defendants put on trial accused of links to the murder of a prominent Armenian journalist, Hrant Dink, a decade ago.
Volvo Cars plans to raise 500 million euros in first bond issue

STOCKHOLM, May 6 (Reuters) - Volvo Car Group aims to raise 500 million euros ($571 million) by issuing the first corporate bond in its 89 year history, the Chinese-owned carmaker said on Friday.

The Sweden-based company, bought by China's Zhejiang Geely Holding Group Co. from Ford Motor Co. in 2010, said it would begin a roadshow for potential investors on May 9.

"The proceeds from the bond issue are being raised for general corporate purposes and are aimed at increasing the company's financial flexibility and diversifying its funding sources," Volvo Car Group said in a press release.

The company swung to a profit in the first quarter, helped by new upmarket models seen as key in its quest to carve out a niche in the premium car market.

Operating earnings rose to 3.1 billion Swedish crowns ($382 million), compared with a loss of 11 million in the same quarter last year.

Volvo Car Group, a small player compared with the likes of Daimler's Mercedes-Benz and BMW, has said it must boost profitability to the level of rival premium carmakers in the coming years, viewing an operating margin of around 8 percent as a benchmark.

The company, one of Sweden's biggest by sales and staff numbers, is banking on a 75 billion crown investment plan in new models and plants to secure a firm foothold in a premium market where it had struggled to make inroads under Ford.

($1 = 8.1271 Swedish crowns)
After Bank of Greece, Cyprus Central Bank also reports cyber attack

ATHENS, May 6 (Reuters) - The website of the Central Bank of Cyprus briefly came under cyber attack, days after a hacking collective said it conducted a similar attack on the Greek central bank's site.

The central bank's website came under "some form of a denial-of-service" attack, a spokeswoman said on Friday, via email.

She did not say when the attack occurred, but several on-line news sites covering cyber security said it came on Thursday. The bank could not be reached to verify the date.

The attack "... resulted in some delays in user connections, but generally the website could handle the anticipated number of users for the day," the spokeswoman said.

Greece's central bank was attacked by the hacking group Anonymous on Tuesday, which disrupted service on its web site, a Bank of Greece official said on Wednesday.

It was not immediately clear whether Anonymous was behind the attack on the Cypriot central bank. But in a video posted on YouTube, the group said the attack on the Bank of Greece marked the start of a 30-day campaign against central banks around the world.
Officer arrested after three killed in Washington-area shooting spree

By Ian Simpson

WASHINGTON, May 6 (Reuters) - Police on Friday arrested a federal officer suspected in a two-day shooting rampage in the Washington suburbs that killed his wife and two apparent strangers and revived memories of the "Beltway sniper" attacks of 2002.

Three others were wounded in the three separate attacks.

Eulalio Sevilla Tordil, 62, a police officer with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's Federal Protective Service, was arrested in a doughnut shop near the site of the second of Friday's two shootings, police said.

He had been suspected of killing his wife and shooting a bystander on Thursday in Prince George's County, Maryland.

When two more shootings broke out in neighboring Montgomery County on Friday, investigators turned their attention to Tordil, who had threatened to commit "suicide by cop," police said.

A plainclothes officer spotted Tordil in a Dunkin' Donuts. Police kept him under watch as he walked in and out of stores, but waited until he returned to his car before arresting him, Montgomery County Police Chief Thomas Manger told a news conference.

"We did not want to have a shootout when he was taken into custody," Manger said.

Surrounded by officers with their weapons drawn, Tordil surrendered without a fight after about five minutes, police said.

Charges should be filed on Friday and Tordil will make a court appearance on Monday, Montgomery County prosecutor John McCarthy said.

The first of Friday's incidents began with a confrontation in a parking lot at Westfield Montgomery Mall in affluent Bethesda, Maryland, where two men and a woman were shot, police said.

One of the men died, the other was in critical condition, and the woman's life was not considered in danger, police said.

The second shooting took place about half an hour later, killing a woman at the Aspen Hill Shopping Center in Silver Spring, some 8 miles (13 km) away.

The victim of Thursday's shooting was Tordil's estranged wife, Gladys, a high school chemistry teacher who was shot as she went to pick up their two daughters from another school.

Tordil was on leave, having surrendered his gun and badge after his wife obtained a protective order to keep him away, an official with the Federal Protective Service said.
Pakistan's tribal councils in spotlight after brutal "honour killing"

By Asad Hashim

MAKOL, Pakistan, May 6 (Reuters) - Shock across Pakistan at the murder of a 16-year-old girl accused of helping a young couple run away and elope has turned to anger over the role played by a "jirga", or tribal council, which police say ordered the punishment.

Jirgas are often convened, particularly in conservative rural areas, to settle local disputes especially between poor families, and although they operate outside the law, their decisions are often honoured and ignored by authorities.

In the case of Ambreen Riasat, who was drugged, killed and burned by a group of men in a so-called "honour killing" in the village of Makol, just 50 km from the capital Islamabad, the mayor questioned whether the jirga was even genuine.

"This barbarity has never happened before," Makol mayor Zardad Khan told Reuters.

Other residents confirmed the village of around 5,000 people had no history of "honour killings", and said in other elopement cases the punishments meted out were relatively minor.

"Everyone in the village is just confused and stunned," said Sardar Naseer Ahmed, 33, a businessman. "There is a sort of fear that I have never seen before."

Whoever made up the group that ordered Ambreen's death, the case has underlined how weak the tentacles of formal Pakistani justice are even close to the centre of government.

Tribal councils, called jirgas in ethnic Pashtun areas and "panchayat" across Punjab and elsewhere, can act to fill that vacuum, and their decisions are usually without controversy.

But events in Makol just over a week ago have highlighted the risks they pose.

Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, chairman of the opposition PPP party and son of Pakistan's only female prime minister, the late Benazir Bhutto, called for a "revolt" against the jirga system after Ambreen's death.

Rights groups say men who run jirgas often barter women and hand down punishments that have included rape and forced marriage of young girls.

FATHER SEEKS REVENGE

More than 500 people are killed in Pakistan each year in so-called "honour killings", usually carried out by members of the victim's family meting out punishment for bringing "shame" on the community.

The fact that the area of Makol had no known history of such abuses, and was so close to the leafy, sophisticated capital, has added to the sense of revulsion.

Most Pakistani newspapers reported Ambreen's death on their front pages, and Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif called for her killers to be swiftly prosecuted.

"Such a barbaric act is not only un-Islamic but also inhuman," he said. "It is not honour killing, its just plain murder."

Ambreen's father called for the culprits to suffer the same gruesome fate as her.

"We want the culprits to be burned alive at the local chowk [village square]," Riasat, a 52-year-old labourer, told a gathering of about 100 village elders held in a local mosque.

Initial reports said that Ambreen was burned alive, but police now believe she was drugged and suffocated before her body was placed in a van and set alight.

The murder took place on April 29, but has only come to light after investigators pieced together what happened.

Riasat said Ambreen had no link to Saima, the young woman who had eloped with another man from Makol.

"If they had to kill someone, why didn't they kill (Saima)? Why my daughter?" he asked, welling up with anger.

The police have arrested 13 of 15 members of the alleged jirga, and paraded them blindfolded and shackled before the media. They also arrested Ambreen's mother, saying she was connected to the jirga.

"How can a mother hurt her daughter? It's a lie," Riasat shouted before the elders, who gathered after Friday prayers to discuss the community's response to the killing.

VICTIM'S BELONGINGS PACKED AWAY

Many Pakistanis are calling again for the passage of an anti-"honour killing" law, which closes a loophole that allows family members to forgive the killers of their daughter. Men are seldom convicted for their role in such murders.

Sharif has promised to speed up the passage of the proposed law after Pakistani director Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy won an Oscar in 2016 for a documentary film about "honour killings", but the law is being opposed by religious parties in parliament.

Obaid-Chinoy told Reuters the intense media coverage of Ambreen's murder "shows that the country is thinking about honour killings and realising that it is a stain on our society".

In Ambreen's modest mud-and-bricks home, her aunt Shehreen struggled to comprehend the murder.
Kerry jabs at Trump, warns against isolationism in Boston speech

BOSTON, May 6 (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry criticized presumptive Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on Friday, warning that isolationist policies would take a toll on the country's well being.

"You are the most diverse class in Northeastern history. In other words, you are Donald Trump's worst nightmare," he jokingly told the 2016 graduates of Northeastern University in Boston.

While he did not mention the billionaire businessman's name again, Kerry alluded to one of Trump's signature proposals - his call to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

"We will never come out on top if we accept advice from soundbite salesmen and carnival barkers who pretend the most powerful country on Earth can remain great by looking inward and hiding behind walls at a time when technology has made that impossible to do and unwise to even attempt," said the former U.S. Senator from Massachusetts, who was the Democratic nominee for president in 2004.
Hezbollah says Saudi Arabia causing collapse of Syria truces

BEIRUT, May 6 (Reuters) - Lebanese Shi'ite group Hezbollah on Friday said Saudi Arabia was causing the collapse of ceasefires in Syria and thwarting peace talks by stepping up support to armed groups fighting against Syria's President Bashar al-Assad.

An escalation of fighting, particularly around the northern city of Aleppo, which has broken up talks to end the five-year civil war, was likely to continue because of Saudi military support and sectarian rhetoric, Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said, warning of "hard months" ahead.

Saudi Arabia and a number of other Sunni Muslim Arab states this year classed Hezbollah as a terrorist organisation.

The group's involvement on the ground in Syria alongside the forces of its main backer, Iran, has been crucial for Assad, whose enemies are mainly Sunni fighters, many supported by regional powers including Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar.

All sides have traded blame for the near-total collapse of a partial ceasefire brokered in February by the United States and Damascus ally, Russia. Attempts at other regional truces recently have mostly failed to hold.

"Saudi is pushing hard towards collapsing all forms of calm and ceasefires in Syria," Nasrallah said in a speech broadcast on Hezbollah's Al Manar television, blaming what he said were Saudi-funded groups for early violations of the wider truce in southern Aleppo province last month.

"On the battlefield Saudi is backing every step in the escalation (in fighting) ... and is working politically to thwart negotiations" hosted by the United Nations in Geneva, he said.

The latest and best-attended round of talks to end the conflict which has killed more than 250,000 people and displaced more than 11 million crumbled in recent weeks as fighting escalated.
Franco-Tunisian woman kidnapped in Yemen appeals for release

CAIRO, May 6 (Reuters) - New online footage shows a Franco-Tunisian woman who was kidnapped in Yemen in December appealing to her Red Cross employers and governments to help free her, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said on Friday.

The 39-second video, shared on Yemeni news sites on Friday, shows Nourane Hawas pleading in French for Yemen's exiled president, Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, and French President Francois Hollande to assist her.

Hawas, wearing a black veil, does not indicate her location or the identity and demands of her kidnappers.

The ICRC confirmed her identity and appealed for her to be freed.

"Since our colleague's abduction, we mobilized all channels possible to secure her release," Rima Kamal, the ICRC's Yemen spokeswoman, told Reuters.

"Over the past five months, we have certainly had some leads. We are, however, unable to share or elaborate on these leads publicly due to the sensitivity of any abduction case. What matters now is Nourane's safe return to her family as soon as possible," she added.

"We would like to request the media and public to refrain from sharing the video further, out of respect and consideration for Nourane's family and loved ones."

The French foreign ministry said in a statement that Hawas had dual nationality and that the country's relevant services were working in support of the ICRC to secure her release.

Unidentified gunmen kidnapped Hawas on Dec. 1 as she was leaving home for work in Sanaa, Yemen's capital, the ICRC said at the time. A Yemeni man who had been with her was later released.

Sanaa is controlled by the Houthi militia, an Iran-allied group which has seized control of much of war-torn Yemen.

Last September, two Yemeni ICRC employees were shot dead in the northern province of Amran by an unknown attacker. In August, gunmen raided the ICRC office in the port city of Aden, forcing the agency to temporarily suspend its activities there.
South African Airways will never be privatised, says Zuma

By Zandi Shabalala and Nqobile Dludla

JOHANNESBURG, May 6 (Reuters) - South African President Jacob Zuma ruled out privatising South African Airways (SAA) on Friday, saying the government would never sell the money-losing national flag carrier.

Many of South Africa's 300-odd state-owned companies, including SAA, are a drain on the government's purse and a team commissioned by Zuma to review them has recommended that some companies should be sold.

SAA has been surviving on state-guaranteed loans and asked the Treasury to extend more guarantees after it used up more than 85 percent of the 14.4 billion rand ($965.50 million) in loans already guaranteed by January this year. Some opposition lawmakers have called for the airline to be privatised.

"The government is very clear, we will never sell this company, no matter what other people say," Zuma said at SAA's offices in Kempton Park, near Johannesburg. "I believe we can turn it around. This in one of the prides of the country, we cannot allow it to wobble."

Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan has said the government was considering selling a minority stake in SAA.

The carrier is in the middle of a turnaround strategy led by Gordhan that will include appointing a new board and chief executive and cutting costs and cancelling loss-making routes.

Last year, it cancelled unprofitable routes to Beijing and Mumbai but Zuma told cheering and clapping SAA staff on Friday that the airline's board should be thinking about adding routes rather cancelling them.

"Once I see a flag at the tail of an SAA (plane), I always have the feeling that: 'Man, we are here, we have arrived'" he said. "Therefore, I wouldn't understand any notion that will say this company must be reduced or its capacity must be reduced. It must be expanded."

The president also said that frequent power cuts in South Africa, which have hurt its economy, should no longer be a problem as state utility Eskom has beefed up electricity generation capacity to meet demand.

"I have been assured by the (Eskom) Chief Executive Officer and the entire management that there will never be load-shedding again," Zuma said during a visit earlier on Friday to Eskom's headquarters.
Shelling kills four at rally in Libya's Benghazi - source

BENGHAZI, Libya, May 6 (Reuters) - At least four people were killed and more than 20 wounded in the Libyan city of Benghazi on Friday when shells were fired at a rally in support of forces allied with the country's eastern government, a medical source said.

Women and children were among the wounded when the shells hit Al-Keesh square. Demonstrators had gathered in support of the Libyan National Army, whose leader General Khalifa Haftar is spearheading a campaign against Islamist militants.

A U.N.-backed unity government in Tripoli is trying to end a conflict between rival factions, one of which took over the capital in 2014 and forced the other to rebase in the east of the country.

The conflict led to a chaotic security vacuum, in which Islamist militants have gained ground.
Egypt gives Italy phone records of union chief - source

ROME, May 6 (Reuters) - Egypt has handed over the mobile phone records of the head of a street vendors union to Italian investigators who are looking into the killing in Cairo of student Giulio Regeni, a legal source said on Friday.

Regeni, who was doing postgraduate research into the union, was last seen by his friends on Jan. 25. His body, which showed extensive signs of torture, was found in a roadside ditch on the outskirts of the Egyptian capital on Feb. 3.

Italy, which has repeatedly complained that it has not received full cooperation from Egypt over the killing, has asked for the phone records of 13 individuals as well as a mass of other information, including video from surveillance cameras.

Earlier this week, the Egyptian authorities sent to Rome the records of five people, including Mohammed Abdullah, the head of the street vendors union, said the legal source, who has direct knowledge of the probe but declined to be named.

The identities of the other four people whose phone data was handed over were not revealed. Italy has not said why it was seeking information about Abdullah.

In the aftermath of the 2011 uprising, vendors were often used by police to attack protesters or acted as informers. Some vendors were also targeted by the police for blocking roads.

Reuters was not able to contact Abdullah or the Interior Ministry on Friday, a weekend day in Egypt. A Foreign Ministry spokesman declined to comment.

The legal source said Italy was also requesting help from Google about Regeni's email account. An email was sent from the account on March 23 and investigators are trying to find out who hacked into it, and why.

Italy last month recalled its ambassador to Egypt for consultations to protest what it said was the slow pace of the investigation and the perceived lack of cooperation. Italian investigators are due to fly to Cairo on Sunday for talks with their Egyptian counterparts.

Human rights groups have said the torture indicated Regeni, 28, died at the hands of the security forces, an allegation Cairo denies.

Three Egyptian intelligence officials and three police sources told Reuters that Regeni was detained by police and then transferred to a compound run by Homeland Security on the day his friends say he disappeared. The Interior Ministry and Homeland Security department denied this, saying Regeni was not held by police or Homeland Security.
Small U.S. military team in Yemen to aid UAE push on al Qaeda

By Phil Stewart

WASHINGTON, May 6 (Reuters) - The U.S. military said on Friday it had deployed a very small number of forces to Yemen to offer intelligence support for the United Arab Emirate's so far successful push on the ground against al Qaeda's most dangerous affiliate.

Around 2,000 Yemeni and Emirati troops advanced into the seaport of Mukalla late last month, taking control of its port and airport and meeting little resistance in what had been a stronghold of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP).

Reuters was first to report UAE's planning for the offensive and its far-reaching request for U.S. assistance.

Pentagon spokesman Captain Jeff Davis told a news briefing the U.S. military had so far provided everything from intelligence support and advice and assistance with operational planning to medical support and aerial refueling.

It was also dedicating airborne intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance assets to support the Gulf ally's push.

"AQAP remains a significant security threat to the United States and to our regional partners and we welcome this effort to specifically remove AQAP from Mukalla and to degrade, disrupt and destroy AQAP in Yemen," Davis said.

Davis declined to say how many U.S. forces were in Yemen but said it was a "very small number." They arrived within the past two weeks and were operating from a fixed location to provide intelligence support, he said.

The amphibious assault ship USS Boxer was also off the coast of Yemen to provide medical facilities if needed.

NEW U.S. STRIKES

U.S. intelligence and military officials view AQAP as a threat to the United States. The group has plotted to down U.S. airliners and claimed responsibility for last year's attacks on the office of Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris.

The Pentagon also disclosed on Friday four new counter-terrorism strikes against AQAP since April 23, killing 10 al Qaeda operatives and injuring another. Davis said the operations were independent of the UAE's Mukalla push.

Despite significant U.S. strikes, including one that killed AQAP's leader last year, U.S. counter-terrorism efforts have been undermined by Yemen's civil war. Prior to the Mukalla offensive, AQAP was estimated to have become more powerful than at any time in its history.

Officials say the U.S. support is a reflection of the U.S. view of the Emirates' capabilities, including its well-trained and resourced special operations forces on the ground.

The conflict forced the evacuation in early 2015 of U.S. military personnel who had orchestrated an anti-AQAP campaign involving Yemeni special forces raids backed by U.S. air power.
Panama Papers source breaks silence, denies being a spy -Sueddeutsche Zeitung

BERLIN, May 6 (Reuters) - Sueddeutsche Zeitung said on Friday that the source of millions of documents leaked to the German newspaper from Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca had sent them a manifesto, saying his motivation was the "scale of injustices" the papers revealed.

The source had never before publicly stated why he leaked the documents, now known as the Panama Papers, said Sueddeutsche Zeitung (SZ), one of Germany's most reputable newspapers.

In an 1,800 word manifesto published on the SZ website on Friday, the source, calling himself "John Doe", praised others who have leaked secret and sensitive documents, such as Edward Snowden, who revealed details of the U.S. government's mass surveillance programme.

"For his revelations about the National Security Agency (NSA), he deserves a hero's welcome and a substantial prize, not banishment," the source wrote.

He also said he would be willing to co-operate with law enforcement agencies.

He called on the European Commission, Britain, the United States and other nations to take steps to protect people who reveal private information about such sensitive issues rather than punishing them.

"Legitimate whistleblowers who expose unquestionable wrongdoing, whether insiders or outsiders, deserve immunity from government retribution, full stop," he said.

The source, who contacted the paper a year ago with an offer of encrypted internal documents from Mossack Fonseca, denied being a spy but said he had recognised the "scale of injustices" described in their contents.

The documents cover a period over almost 40 years, from 1977 until last December, and purport to show that some companies domiciled in tax havens were being used for suspected money laundering, arms and drug deals and tax evasion.

Reuters could not independently verify whether the source was the same person who leaked the original documents. The source's identity and gender is not known.

Sueddeutsche Zeitung spent more than a year, along with other media outlets and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, analysing the huge cache of documents.

On Friday, Sueddeutsche Zeitung introduced the manifesto by saying: "Now 'John Doe', the anonymous source, has sent the SZ a manifesto, which can be read as an explanation of his actions - and as a call to action."

The source welcomed the fact that the leak had triggered a debate on "wrongdoing by the elite" but said not enough action had been taken.

"For the record, I do not work for any government or intelligence agency, directly or as a contractor, and I never have," he said.

The source was critical of banks, financial regulators, tax authorities, the courts, and the legal profession, as well as the media, saying he had offered the documents to several major media outlets that had chosen not to cover them.

"The collective impact of these failures has been a complete erosion of ethical standards, ultimately leading to a novel system we still call Capitalism, but which is tantamount to economic slavery."
Kerry jabs at Trump, warns against isolationism in Boston speech

BOSTON/WASHINGTON, May 6 (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry criticized presumptive Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on Friday, warning that isolationist policies would take a toll on the country's well-being.

"You are the most diverse class in Northeastern history. In other words, you are Donald Trump's worst nightmare," he jokingly told the 2016 graduates of Northeastern University in Boston.

While he did not mention the billionaire businessman's name again, Kerry alluded to one of Trump's signature proposals - his call to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

"We will never come out on top if we accept advice from soundbite salesmen and carnival barkers who pretend the most powerful country on Earth can remain great by looking inward and hiding behind walls at a time when technology has made that impossible to do and unwise to even attempt," said the former U.S. Senator from Massachusetts, who was the Democratic nominee for president in 2004.

Kerry has generally declined to comment on the race leading up to the Nov. 8 presidential election, though he has noted that foreign leaders have raised concerns about statements made by candidates, particularly Trump.

A spokesman told reporters on Friday that Kerry's remarks in Boston were intended to be lighthearted.
Germany to help Jordan, Tunisia buy armoured vehicles

BERLIN, May 6 (Reuters) - Germany plans to give Tunisia and Jordan funds to buy armoured vehicles to help defend their frontiers against Islamic State, Der Spiegel magazine reported on Friday.

Berlin will give Amman 25 million euros ($28 million) to buy "Marder" armoured personnel carriers, Spiegel said without giving sources. Tunisia would get a double-digit million sum.

Jordan neighbours Syria where Islamic State has taken large portions of territory, while the militant group has also doubled its fighters in Libya which borders Tunisia.

Tunisia saw two major attacks by islamist militants last year. Thirty-eight tourists were killed in an asault on a hotel, three months after 21 were killed by gunmen attacking the Bardo National Museum in the capital Tunis.

The German money comes from a 100 million euro fund to strengthen partner states south of the European Union with crisis prevention, Der Spiegel said.

A spokeswoman for the Defence Ministry declined to comment on the report.
Three Red Cross staff kidnapped in Congo are free - ICRC

DAKAR, May 6 (Reuters) - Three Red Cross staff members kidnapped three days ago in eastern Congo in an attack blamed by a rights group on Rwandan rebels, have been released, the Geneva-based organisation said on Friday.

"They are free, they were handed over to the local authorities and they will be back in Goma tomorrow," an International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) spokeswoman told Reuters, giving no further details.

The Congo-based Centre of Studies for the Promotion of Peace, Democracy and Human Rights blamed the kidnapping on the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, a grouping of former soldiers and Hutu fighters behind Rwanda's 1994 genocide.
WhatsApp judge wins little love in Brazil; but respect in his hometown

By Jeb Blount

LAGARTO, Brazil, May 6 (Reuters) - Judge Marcel Montalvao joined some of Brazil's top politicians as one of the country's most-hated public figures when he ordered a 72-hour shutdown of WhatsApp this week, abruptly cutting off the messaging service for some 100 million users.

But none of the young women staring at their cell phones and tapping away on the now-restored WhatsApp in a patch of shade outside Montalvao's courthouse in the small city of Lagarto were among the haters.

Even as the judge prepared to rule on cases involving their loved ones in a courthouse compound that is heavily guarded and sits behind a high, electrified fence, the women expressed understanding for a man known locally as fiercely dedicated to fighting crime.

"It was a pain at first. We use zap-zap all the time," said Marcielle Santana, 26, using the universal slang term in Brazil for Facebook -owned WhatsApp.

"But you have to respect him. He's going after drug gangs, pedophiles. That's more important than a little time without zap-zap."

Montalvao ordered Brazil's main telecom operators to block WhatsApp on Monday for 72 hours after it failed to produce for the court messages supposedly traded between members of Brazil's most powerful drug gang.

In March, he ordered the imprisonment of a Brazil-based Facebook executive for failing to comply with a previously attempted block on WhatsApp. The executive was jailed and freed after a day.

This week, Montalvao's order was lifted by a higher court about 24 hours after it went into effect. A similar temporary block of the messaging service occurred last December after a judge in Sao Paulo state ordered it shut for failing to share information in a criminal case.

WhatsApp officials have repeatedly argued they cannot turn over to judges material that they do not possess. Their encrypted messaging service does not store user-generated content on any servers, they say.

The block of WhatsApp ignited such an outcry in Brazil that a congressional commission on Wednesday recommended a bill that would bar authorities from blocking popular messaging applications.

Facebook Inc's Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg also weighed in, calling on Brazilians to demand that WhatsApp never be blocked again.

Nancy Andrighi, a minister at Brazil's National Council of Justice, a federal watchdog over judges, on Tuesday gave Montalvao two weeks to explain his decision to block WhatsApp. If the council finds the judge abused his power, it could take disciplinary action against him.

Despite all that, Montalvao's reputation in Lagarto and the surrounding area remains positive even after his nearly year-long battle with WhatsApp and Facebook - principally because of his hard-line stance against surging crime, often linked to drug gangs, in the city.

FROM CLASSROOM TO POLICE PROTECTION

Montalvao, the son of shoe shiner, spent 20 years as a schoolteacher in the Sergipe state capital Aracaju, Montalvao. He told a Lagarto radio station last year that he became a judge in 2004 after deciding that teaching was not doing enough to help young people.

Montalvao declined on Thursday to give an interview to Reuters about the WhatsApp case, citing judicial secrecy and the delicate security situation surrounding the arrival that day of eight gang suspects to his court.

The area, part of Brazil's impoverished Northeast, grew rapidly during the two terms of former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, thanks to a commodities boom and surging government spending during his eight years in office that began in 2003.

But crime grew along with the population, as the rural poor flocked to jobs at expanding food processing plants and with the opening of a large medical faculty of the Federal University of Sergipe. Lagarto is now home to 103,000 people, a jump of 25 percent over the 2000 Census.

Not all has changed, though.

Despite the glittering medical campus and neat downtown shops, churches and government buildings, horses graze on roads near the courthouse, which sits beside manioc and coconut fields and overgrown empty lots. Vultures circle overhead in the strong tropical sun.

"We're still in the country, but we aren't the little, dusty northeastern town that everybody has in their mind," said Rilley Guimaraes, Lagarto's municipal secretary of Industry, Commerce and Tourism. "The attacks on Lagarto have been offensive."

Montalvao's willingness to take on criminals, including the PCC, the notorious Sao Paulo-based drugs, guns and extortion cartel, has earned him death threats.

He lives under 24-hour police protection and spends much of his time wearing a bullet-resistant vest, said Eduardo Maia, president of the Lagarto chapter of Brazil's bar association, the OAB.

Maia was partly supportive of Montalvao, saying that the judge was facing the same challenge raised by Apple Corp's refusal to help the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation access encrypted messages on an iPhone used by one of the shooters in an attack in San Bernardino, California.

"Under Brazilian law, Montalvao's order was perfectly legal," Maia said. "WhatsApp and Facebook weren't providing or storing information that our Internet laws require them to keep, and for them to criticize the judge for that is rather arrogant."

The problem, Maia said, is whether that law can be "met by any company, and was the order proportional to the problem the judge was trying to solve?"
Turkish journalists jailed for five years, hours after courthouse attack

By Ayla Jean Yackley and Melih Aslan

ISTANBUL, May 6 (Reuters) - Two prominent Turkish journalists were sentenced to at least five years in jail for revealing state secrets on Friday, just hours after a gunman tried to shoot one of them outside the courthouse in Istanbul.

Can Dundar, editor-in-chief of the opposition Cumhuriyet newspaper, who was unscathed in the shooting, was given five years and 10 months. Erdem Gul, the newspaper's Ankara bureau chief, was sentenced to five years. They were acquitted of some other charges, including trying to topple the government.

The case, in which President Tayyip Erdogan was named as a complainant, has brought widespread condemnation from global rights groups and increased fears about freedom of the press in Turkey, a NATO member and EU candidate country.

Hours before the verdict was handed down, an assailant attempted to shoot Dundar. In full public view, before a courthouse, the attack marked an alarming development in a country already grappling with bombings by Kurdish insurgents and spillover of violence from neighbouring Syria.

The man shouted "traitor" before firing at least two shots in quick succession. A reporter covering the trial appeared to have been wounded.

A Reuters witness said the assailant was detained by police. Before the shooting, he had approached reporters, saying he had been waiting since early morning and hoped Dundar would be found guilty. His motives and background were not immediately clear.

"We experienced two assassination attempts in two hours: one by firearms, the other by law," Dundar told reporters following the trial. "There will always be concerns that the orders of the highest office played a role in this ruling."

The two journalists are free pending appeal. The court also decided to postpone a hearing on separate charges of links to a terrorist group until the outcome of a related case.

In Washington, the U.S. State Department in a statement voiced concern about the verdicts and called on Turkish authorities to "support an independent and unfettered media, which is an essential element of any democratic, open society."

No one was immediately available for comment at Erdogan's office after the ruling.

Dundar and Gul had faced up to life in jail on espionage and other charges for publishing footage purporting to show the state intelligence agency taking weapons into Syria in 2014.

'HEAVY PRICE'

Erdogan has acknowledged that the trucks, which were stopped by gendarmerie and police officers en route to the Syrian border in January 2014, belonged to the National Intelligence Organisation and said they were carrying aid to Turkmen battling both Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and Islamic State.

He has accused the journalists of undermining Turkey's international reputation and vowed Dundar would "pay a heavy price", raising opposition concerns about the fairness of any trial.

"We say the incident we covered was a crime, not our coverage," Dundar said. "And for that we were confronted by the president. He acted like the prosecutor of this case. He threatened us and made us targets."

Under the ruling AK Party, which was founded by Erdogan, Turkey has seized control of opposition newspapers and broadcasters and cut the satellite feed of a pro-Kurdish channel, accusing them of terrorism-related activities.

"This case isn't based on law, it's political," said Mahmut Tanal, a lawmaker from the opposition Republican People's Party.

'SYSTEM' ON TRIAL

The Committee to Protect Journalists condemned the verdict.

"What was really on trial was the Turkish criminal system, which is guilty of gross misconduct," said the New York-based group's executive director, Joel Simon, in a statement.

Journalists have been targeted in the past. Last month senior Turkish security officials were among 34 defendants put on trial accused of links to the murder of a prominent Armenian journalist, Hrant Dink, a decade ago.

Dink, who ran a newspaper serving Turkey's 60,000 Christian Armenians, was gunned down in broad daylight on a busy Istanbul street in 2007.

Gul and Dundar spent 92 days in jail, almost half of it in solitary confinement, before the constitutional court ruled in February that pre-trial detention was unfounded because the charges stemmed from their journalism.
Before massive Bangladesh heist, New York Fed feared such cyber attacks

By Jonathan Spicer and Jim Finkle

May 6 (Reuters) - In the years before hackers stole $81 million from a Bangladesh central bank account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, senior Fed security officials examined the risk of such an attack - but judged the prospect unlikely, bank sources told Reuters.

The Fed managers worried that lax security procedures and outdated technology at some foreign central banks could allow cyber-criminals to commandeer local computers and breach foreign accounts at the U.S. central bank, according to interviews with seven current and former New York Fed officials and a former U.S. government official familiar with the discussions.

Over several years, New York Fed and Federal Bureau of Investigation officials discussed the risk of an attack made using the banking system's communications network, known as SWIFT, according to Fed and government officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

"The New York Fed was concerned with lots of vulnerabilities," said the former government official. "SWIFT was one of them."

But the Fed focused security resources on other priorities, such as preventing money-laundering and enforcing U.S. economic sanctions, officials with knowledge of the bank's security operations told Reuters. Fed officials took some comfort in the fact that SWIFT's security software had never been cracked, the officials said.

The immediate result of the breach for the New York Fed is a claim from the Bangladesh Bank for payment of lost funds and a potential lawsuit. Beyond that, the heist showed that the U.S. central bank long understood a potentially systemic risk to a vital global finance network, but was unable or unwilling to address it.

The New York Fed declined to comment on past security priorities or on whether it had made changes since the heist. SWIFT declined to comment.

Before the heist, some New York Fed officials considered the threat of fraudulent transfers ordered through SWIFT a "fat tail risk" - a statistical term for events with low probability but dire consequences, said one well-placed official with knowledge of the discussions. February's theft from the Bangladesh Bank fit that definition - a bold cyber heist in which thieves attempted to withdraw nearly $1 billion in dozens of requests.

The crime rattled the banking industry because the conduit for the theft was the SWIFT network, an acronym for the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication. A cooperative overseen by 20 of the world's largest central banks, SWIFT connects about 11,000 financial institutions globally that use it to order money transfers.

"What everyone is realizing right now is that no one has ever really appreciated the risk," said the person with direct knowledge of the New York Fed's deliberations.

SWIFT has said that the scheme involved altering SWIFT software on Bangladesh Bank computers to hide evidence of fraudulent transfers. Last week, SWIFT acknowledged that the Bangladesh Bank attack was not an isolated incident but one of a number of recent criminal schemes aimed at its messaging platform. SWIFT has declined to elaborate further.

Two Bangladesh Bank officials have told Reuters they believe both the New York Fed and SWIFT bear some responsibility for the failure to prevent the attack. The officials previously told Reuters that SWIFT gave Bangladesh Bank no prior warning about vulnerabilities, and the New York Fed failed to stop fraudulent orders when they reached New York.

The head of Bangladesh Bank is scheduled to meet next week with New York Fed president William Dudley and a senior executive from SWIFT to discuss the matter. SWIFT has said the attack was related to an internal operating issue at Bangladesh Bank, and the New York Fed has said it has no evidence that its systems were compromised.

Richard Dzina, head of the New York Fed's wholesale product office, in remarks at a banking conference Tuesday said bank workers "acted properly" in releasing the funds. The system was penetrated, he said, because the hackers had acquired valid credentials to order the transfers.

$80 BILLION A DAY

The New York Fed holds trillions of dollars in funds for central banks worldwide. It processes about $80 billion in fund transfers in and out of their accounts each day, according to a New York Fed official.

Security is handled by the New York Fed's Central Bank and International Account Services (CBIAS) division, a closely-guarded operation inside its fortress in lower Manhattan. CBIAS assigns risk profiles to individual countries and regions, assessing government stability, terrorism threats, and organized crime activity when deciding how to dispense cash to central banks and other official institutions, current and former Fed officials said.

In the months before the attack, the security unit was focused on bulking up its anti-money laundering protections, an initiative driven by the Board of Governors at the Fed's Washington, D.C. headquarters, according to two people familiar with the plan. Another priority was protecting the Fed's own Fedwire payments system from cyber attacks, several current and former Fed officials said.

Most transfer requests are approved automatically after computer screening. Only a few of about 2,000 daily transactions are flagged for review by employees, according to a New York Fed official.

One of the officials said automated scanners used for SWIFT payments were effective for preventing money laundering and enforcing economic sanctions - but would not defend the bank against fraudulent money transfers.

"There is a balance here that has to be struck between allowing customers to make new payments and to conduct their business in a timely manner, and also to prevent really obnoxious or obvious cases of fraud," said Shehriyar Antia, a former senior New York Fed policy advisor and analyst in the CBIAS unit.

The CBIAS system specifically checks for typographical errors - and it was a thief's typo, along with an unusually high number of requests for payments to private entities, that alerted the Fed to February's cyber attack, banking sources have told Reuters. Once alerted, the Fed suspended payments on most of the requests coming from the Bangladesh Bank, but not before the thieves extracted $81 million.

The Bangladesh Bank, Bangladesh police and the FBI are investigating the attack.

A Bangladesh police official who heads the department's forensic training institute previously told Reuters that SWIFT servers at Bangladesh's central bank were vulnerable to hackers because of the absence of a firewall and a lack of basic security protocols.

LOOSE CONTROLS

Three former officials said that the New York Fed had recently focused on loose controls over terminals and other access points to the SWIFT network at foreign central banks, where bankers often order withdrawals for hundreds of millions of dollars.

The concerns focused on the possibility that banks would purchase computers implanted with malicious software or that attackers could steal or buy legitimate credentials from employees, said the former U.S. government official. An additional worry, according to two former Fed officials, was the possibility that a corrupt insider - possibly a bank employee - might have access to the SWIFT network and submit a fraudulent payment request.

Years of managing foreign central bank accounts gave some Fed officials concern that certain banks were ill-equipped to handle local security because of a lack of infrastructure investment and other procedural problems. But the Fed does not have the ability to audit the security protocols at correspondent central banks.

"The vulnerability is that central banks, even in developing countries, have a lot of money relative to their level of sophistication," said the official with knowledge of the security concerns. "It's not just Bangladesh."
Convoy leads Canada fire evacuees through burning city to safety

By Rod Nickel and Liz Hampton

WANDERING RIVER, Alberta, May 6 (Reuters) - Convoys of evacuees stranded by a wildfire raging in and around the Canadian oil town of Fort McMurray made their way on Friday through the heart of the devastation on the only highway out of the region, as officials warned that the blaze could soon double in size.

Wind-whipped flames roaring through forests and brush parched by a spring heat wave have engulfed nearly 250,000 acres (101,000 hectares) in western Canada's energy heartland since erupting on Sunday.

The blaze, the largest of 40 wildfires burning across the province of Alberta, has forced some 88,000 residents, the entire population of Fort McMurray, to flee for safety, and has threatened two oil sands production sites south of the city.

At least 10 oil sand operators have cut production due to evacuations and other emergency measures that complicated delivery of petroleum by rail, pipeline and highway.

With winds on Friday pushing the fire's leading edge to the northeast, away from town and into open timber, authorities said the blaze was expected to rapidly expand its footprint even as the threat to populated areas waned.

Chad Morrison, an official with the Alberta government wildfire unit, told reporters in the provincial capital Edmonton, about 270 miles (430 km) to the south, the blaze was likely to double in size by late on Saturday, the end of its first week.

The full extent of property losses in Fort McMurray, has yet to be determined, but authorities said some 1,600 structures were believed to have been destroyed. One analyst estimated insurance losses could exceed C$9 billion ($7 billion).

Earlier in the week most evacuees headed south by car on Alberta Highway 63, the only land route out of the area, in a slow-moving exodus that left many temporarily stranded on the roadside as they ran out of gasoline.

But other residents who initially sought shelter in oil camps and settlements north of the city found themselves cut off in overcrowded conditions. They were forced on Friday to retrace their route back through Fort McMurray on Highway 63 as flames continued to spread.

With parts of the city still in flames, evacuees in some 1,500 vehicles began making the 30-mile (50-km) trip at 4 a.m. in groups of 50 cars.

"It reminded us of a war zone," said Marisa Heath, who spent 36 hours in her truck on the side of the highway with her husband, two dogs, a cat and seven kittens. "Eerie. All you could see was cement foundations of houses."

Helicopters hovered overhead watching for flames, and police set up emergency fuel stations along the highway to keep the line of cars moving. They headed toward safety south of Fort McMurray in towns including Lac La Biche, 180 miles (290 km) away, and Edmonton farther on.

The convoys were halted briefly around midday due to heavy smoke, but officials said the majority of vehicles had already passed through town by then.

Authorities planned to airlift about 8,000 of the 25,000 evacuees who were initially chased north of Fort McMurray.

OIL PRODUCTION CUT

About a third of Canada's oil production has been shut by the conflagration, according to a Reuters estimate.

South of Fort McMurray, CNOOC Nexen's Long Lake oil sands facility and Athabasca Oil's Hangingstone project were in danger of being overrun by flames, emergency officials reported. Both facilities have been evacuated.

Morrison said fire was "at the gates" of the Long Lake installation, but shifting winds would likely spare the facility. He added that many oil facilities in the region had private firefighting forces in place.

BP Plc's Canadian unit has declared a force majeure resulting in the reduction of available Western Canadian Select crude, among other Canadian grades, according to two trading sources familiar with the matter.

There have been no known casualties from the fire itself, but fatalities were reported earlier this week in at least one car crash among the evacuees.

As of Friday, more than 1,200 firefighters were arrayed against blazes across Alberta, backed by more than 100 helicopters and over two dozen airplane tankers equipped to drop water and fire-retardant chemicals on the flames.

But the sheer magnitude and intensity of the Fort McMurray fire mostly defied all efforts to contain it.

Cecil Dickason, a Fort McMurray resident who was part of the convoy, said the battered city looked "awful." Others described the city as dark and smoke-filled, pockmarked with charred and abandoned vehicles and roadside spot fires.

Entire neighborhoods were reduced to ruins, but most evacuees fled without knowing the fate of their own homes. The majority got away with few possessions, some forced to leave pets behind.

In a press briefing on Friday, Alberta Premier Rachel Notley said damage to Fort McMurray was extensive.

"The city of Fort McMurray is not safe to return to, and this will be true for a significant period of time," she said, adding that officers of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police would secure and protect what was left of the town.

The Alberta government has approved emergency funding for wildfire evacuees and will be giving out C$1,250 ($966) per adult and C$500 ($387) per dependent.
U.S. rights official travels to Vietnam ahead of Obama visit

WASHINGTON, May 6 (Reuters) - The State Department's most senior human rights diplomat, Tom Malinowski, will visit Vietnam next week to urge it to make more progress on human rights, the department said on Friday.

Meetings by Malinowski, assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor, on May 9 and 10 will pave the way for a visit to Vietnam by President Barack Obama later this month, the third U.S. president to travel to the southeast Asian nation since Bill Clinton in 2000.

"Among other things, he will urge Vietnam to release political prisoners without condition and encourage further reforms that will help to make Vietnam's laws consistent with its international human rights obligations," the State Department said in announcing Malinowski's visit.

The U.S. eased an arms embargo against its former enemy in 2014 amid a warming of relations saying human rights conditions had improved somewhat. But concerns remain over the communist government's heavy-handedness toward political opponents and treatment of workers.

The country has jailed dissidents, bloggers and religious leaders in recent years, holding them for long periods without access to family or legal counsel and often subject to torture or other mistreatment, according to Human Rights Watch.
Amid confrontation with the BJP-led NDA government at the Centre over AgustaWestland chopper scam and President's Rule in Uttarakhand, the Congress took out a "Loktantra Bachao (Save Democracy) March" from Jantar Mantar on May 6.

Congress president Sonia Gandhi, son Rahul Gandhi and former prime minister Manmohan Singh courted arrest at Parliament Street police station while marching towards Parliament to protest the "murder of democracy" being committed by the Centre under Prime Minister Narendra Modi. However, they were shortly released.

In any case, the march was hardly related to saving democracy, and these are the four reasons why:

1. AgustaWestland chopper scam a strict no-no

Despite the chopper scam being at the centre of all points of confrontation between the Congress and the BJP, it did not find a single mention in the "Save Democracy March". Sonia, Rahul and Singh made speeches before the march started and tried to play victim. But they didn't even utter the "A" of AgustaWestland controversy.

This clearly proved that the Congress is on the defensive and did not want to highlight the scam. It was just like the Bofors days, when the Congress would desist from uttering even the "B" of Bofors scam during Rajiv Gandhi's tenure as PM.

Without naming AgustaWestland scam, Sonia alleged indirectly that the Congress leaders were being threatened and defamed. Their character was also being assassinated. She said the Congress would not succumb to these pressures.

She also claimed the Congress was not fighting the "anti-national forces" for the first time, perhaps alluding to the BJP. She said the Centre was trying to deflect attention from its failures on all developmental fronts in the last two years. But nowhere did AgustaWestland feature in her speech.

The BJP can hardly be held responsible for the AgustaWestland coming back into prominence once again. It was the Italian court which gave judgment and indicted its own citizens. Far from witch-hunting, the Centre has promised a fair inquiry and action into the matter.

2. Raising non-issues

Though the protest march had been named "Loktantra Bachao", the long list of grievances of Sonia, Rahul and the former prime minister did not pertain to stifling of democracy. Either their speeches were full of rhetoric or were not related to the main grievance.

For instance, Sonia dealt with the issues of farmers' suicides and price rise, Rahul spoke of drought, unemployment and farmers' suicides and Singh alleged that the universities and courts were not safe, alluding to the JNU row and the thrashing of JNU Students' Union president Kanhaiya Kumar in Patiala House courts.

Sonia and Rahul, of course, alleged that the RSS and its chief Mohan Bhagwat were having a major "say" in governance.

3. Arunachal and Uttarakhand governments

Among the long list of grievances raised by the three top Congress leaders, the only valid point which related to saving of democracy was the fall of Congress governments in Arunachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand.

All three of them alleged that Centre had toppled the governments and murdered democracy in those two states. However, the BJP cannot be held completely responsible for fall of the two state governments.

First, rebellion within the Congress was responsible for the change in political equation in both the states. The Nabam Tuki-led government of the Congress fell after 30 Congress MLAs in a house of 60 rebelled against him. With the support of two independents and 11 BJP MLAs, Kalikho Pul has formed government. BJP has not even joined power in the Northeastern state.

As far as Uttarakhand is concerned, here too, former chief minister Vijay Bahuguna of the Congress, along with eight other party MLAs, rebelled against his successor, Harish Rawat. The Centre imposed President's Rule amidst attempts by the Assembly speaker to disqualify the nine rebel MLAs, which, in itself, was unconstitutional.

The matter is pending in the courts and the Centre has agreed to hold floor test, to be conducted on May 10, even though the Supreme Court has disallowed the rebel MLAs from taking part in voting. It is a case of the kettle calling the pot black. The Congress' record in toppling democratically elected state governments in the past is also far from satisfactory.

Robert Vadra featured in posters waved about at the Congress rally giving rise to speculation of him joining politics.

4. Robert Vadra
I have long been drawn to China. On my first trip to the country back in 2002, I visited the factory towns of the Pearl River Delta, the epicentre of globalisation where one out of every three pairs of shoes in the world was made.

More recently, I became interested in how the biggest movement of people in human history has affected relations between men and women. Before the mass migration from the countryside, young men could rely on their parents to find them a wife with the help of the local matchmaker. Today, many eligible women have left the village to work in the city.

If competition to find a bride is fierce, there is another inescapable factor - the country's gender imbalance. According to the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, by the end of this decade, 24 million men won't be able to find wives.

A preference for boys and the termination of pregnancies when girls were conceived, has widened the gender imbalance, exacerbated by China's "one child policy".

A former family planning officer reads to two-year-old Liu Siqui. Photo credit: BBC

As one among five sisters, I can't help but take personal interest in this side-effect of strict population control. My mother has recently been ill and spent a long period in hospital.

I have often thought about how hard it would be if I had to deal with everything on my own. Luckily, my four sisters have all helped and brought great solace to my parents.

When China's Communist Party leaders announced they were ending the notorious 35-year-old policy in October last year, I returned for BBC World News to explore what would happen to all the men and women who had been responsible for implementing it.

China has an army of family planning officials stationed in every city, town and village in the country.

At its height, there were 85 million part-time employees at the grassroots level all the way up to half a million full-time staff at the National Population and Family Planning Commission.

Their mission was to drive down birth rates with fines, sterilisations and abortions. At times they used persuasion, at times brutal coercion.

Now that all Chinese couples can have two children, I wondered what would happen to the hated population police.

They are not yet redundant - reproductive rights are still controlled by the state - but their workload is considerably lighter.

Then I heard about an intriguing pilot project in a remote part of Shaanxi Province, central China. A group of 69 family planning officers are being retrained as child development officers.

For my film Our World:China's Family Planning Army I met one of them, Li Bo as he was paying a visit to a two-year old girl in Danfeng County.

The toddler had a stomach ache and was whining on her grandmother's lap.

Undeterred, Mr Li diverted her attention with a squeaky plastic duck and then coaxed her into singing a nursery rhyme.

The 35-year-old enforcer reminded me of a Chinese Father Christmas arriving in the village with a bag full of toys and picture books.

His new job is to teach parents and grandparents how to develop toddlers' minds by talking, singing and reading to them.

"This is a golden period for developing skills", said Mr Li "and what I am doing now is important because it could affect what these children will be able to do in the future."

Only eight per cent of pupils from the countryside go into higher education compared to 70 per cent in the cities, according to a recent study. A third of rural children drop out before they even complete junior high school.

Mr Li's region 700 miles (1,125km) southwest of Beijing is impoverished and more than half the adults of working age have left for jobs in the cities.

A little girl, Liu Siqi, like 61 million of her peers, is a "left-behind" child, being raised by her grandparents. Her mother works in a noodle factory four hours' drive away and cannot visit often. Her father, who has a job in a quarry, only makes it home twice a year.

The Chinese and American academics behind the project hope it can soon be rolled out nationwide. If successful they believe it can achieve two objectives: provide new jobs for the once reviled family planners and raise the life prospects of millions of disadvantaged rural children.

Liu Siqi's grandmother, Chen Huafen, was initially sceptical about the value of reading to such a small child. "I thought it was a waste of time," she laughs. "But she likes the stories and I was surprised by how much she remembers about them."

When Mr Li stepped out to answer the phone, Mrs Chen admitted she also had her doubts about him at first.

She told me her whole village "distrusted and hated" the enforcers, who confiscated property if families couldn't afford the fines.

"They used to come at night and take stuff away from families with more than one child," she says. "Bicycles, sewing machines whatever they could lay their hands on, even our cows and pigs."

Yue Ai, a senior researcher from Shaanxi Normal University, who was accompanying us during the filming, looked a bit nervous at the grandmother's candour.

Then Mrs Chen revealed that she had even greater cause to loathe the family planning workers. They had forced her to abort her second child.

In many rural areas, couples were allowed to have a second baby if their first was a girl -an attempt by the authorities to address the growing gender imbalance.

But Chen's first child was a boy so when she conceived for a second time, she was dragged off to the clinic for a termination. When she got pregnant again she went into hiding and gave birth to a daughter. But she was so afraid of a crippling fine for breaking the rules, the little girl had to live under cover.

"She stayed with my mother in the mountains for 12 years before we managed to get her registered," said the grandmother.

Unauthorised second children ignored by the state are another painful legacy of the one child policy.

Mr Li who had finished his phone call and had come back into the courtyard of Mrs Chen's house, was listening in silence. I saw he was uncomfortable discussing aspects of his old job.

He has a playful, caring side but he is also a loyal Communist party official who believes the state knows best and society's needs are greater than those of individuals.

In some villages, people threw stones at family planning officers' car and he admitted that in many places he was not a welcome guest.

"People didn't swear at us but they probably did behind our backs," he said. "It's natural because we were carrying out the law and they were breaking it so it is just like the clash between a policeman and a thief."

If Mr Li did his best to carry out the law, some family planning officers had no such scruples.

In Shandong province, I met a family still traumatised by their treatment at the hands of local officials in 2013.

They allege that the husband of a woman who was six months pregnant with her second child had been locked up and tortured in a nearby hotel.

"They were kicking my son and slamming him against the floor," said the man's tearful mother. "I just couldn't bear it any more so I called my daughter-in-law to say let's give up the baby."

When I asked the family why they didn't contact the police they told me they had tried but were told that nobody could intervene in the work of family planning officers.

"Those guys are so powerful - they just do whatever they want," said the father-in-law.

So the woman was made to have the late term abortion. As a result, a previously happy family has been torn apart.

The human cost of the one-child policy seems immeasurable.

Whatever the original intentions, the implementation led to heartache, horrific human rights' abuses and,with cruel irony, a chronic shortage of young people which threatens China's future.
When Zahra Haider was in Class 8, she had her first real crush. No, not a celebrity. It was a boy she hung out with her group. He was cute. And intelligent too, or at least she found him to be.

She would get a nice feel whenever he was around. That unexplainable kind of rush. One day the cute boy kissed her. Alas! All the butterflies from her tummy flew away. "All I can remember was feeling uncomfortable rather than happy about it, probably because it was an awkward and unfamiliar experience for me," she remembers.

Haider, whose article "What I learned having sex as a young woman in Pakistan" has kicked up a storm in the virtual world and is facing much social media backlash, insists that if a man had written such a piece, the reactions would have been totally different.

"Isn't sex a basic human function? Can this natural impulse be refuted? How does gender figure in this? Don't we need to be educated on the matter, whether premarital or post? Frankly, I just wanted to use myself as a personal myself as a personal example because that is the best way to be a voice for people who may need to hear it. Believe me, I was tired of the double standards of many South Asians when it comes to sex," laments Haider, who is in her 20s and shifted to Canada from Pakistan before her 19th birthday.

Zahra Haider.

The author, who has talked about her sexual encounters with almost a dozen people before coming to Canada in 2012, stresses that she did expect a major backlash before writing the article.

"However, I had no expectation of the piece going viral and circulating as much as it has. To tell you the truth, I have this ability to remain detached to hateful comments. But hey, I did find some of the comments highly informative - how vile some people can be towards someone they don't even know!"

How did the folks react? She must have shocked the daylight out of them.

"You bet! I hand't told my mother about it at the time but she has been extremely supportive ever since it was published. My father, on the other hand, has disowned me because he claims I have brought shame upon his family. And that's exactly the sort of cultural conditioning I wanted to emphasise on and combat by writing this piece."

The fact that even in today's times people don't refrain from commenting on someone's sexual life doesn't really surprise Haider.

"Look, some people will maintain boundaries and keep away from other people's business - I know I do, usually either out of respect or simply because I don't care. However, everyone is entitled to an opinion and clearly some people feel the need to comment on someone's personal life, which I also respect."

The author may be facing a lot of backlash from Pakistan but she maintains that women's rights issues are a consistent problem all over the world and culture of silence around women's sexuality is not unique to Pakistan. Neither does she think that religion is a dominating factor in everyday life there.

"Where Pakistan is concerned, I mentioned in my article that draconian punishments for premarital sex and adultery stemming from Zia-ul-Haq's dictatorship are slowly dying out but still linger in the mentalities of fundamentalists. I believe it definitely has a lot more to do with cultural aspects (and perhaps religion may influence said aspects) and an ingrained mindset as a result of these traditionalistic values and beliefs."

Observing that men in Canada are much more open and receptive when it comes to discussing a woman's sexual desires, ("a lot of Pakistani men would become defensive when the topic of going down came up"), Haider is however optimistic that one day Asian men will surely "grow up".

"Of course. I have some incredible Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi etc. friends. Sadly, just not the majority of the guys I have had romantic or sexual encounters with."

Doesn't it surprise her that so many women have written such nasty things about her article?

"Yes and no. Quite a number of women can resonate with me on many levels, many of them have suffered through the pain I have mentioned in my article as a result of the lack of sex education. However, many of them are indeed offended because they have assumed I'm representing them and speaking on their behalf when I'm not - my experiences and my opinions are exactly that: mine. I do personally know a handful of South Asian women who have had similar experiences as I have, but I never expected every single Pakistani woman to find my piece relatable."

Haider, who loves spending as much time being at home as going for hikes, now wants to push out of her comfort zone by attempting to pursue socio-political stand-up comedy as a side-project.

So, what about her passions?
LONDON - England - The certain ascension of Donald Trump is indeed a wake up call for globalists simply because a populist away from the Internationalist agenda has most egregiously secured himself a spot on the Republican nomination podium.

Thus, the usually heavily controlled process of nomination in the upcoming U.S. election has been thrown off kilter.

Globalists must understand one thing, and that racial, religious hatreds are ingrained in societies even today in 2016. The world is one of division, of parity, and even though there are some portions of the world living in so-called civilised Western countrys there are others living in areas holding traditions from thousands of years ago.

It should not be racist to suggest that some races of humans are different to others, when they clearly are, scientifically this difference in racial types is frowned upon and the research dusted under the carpet, however there is truth in the matter that over the centuries different racial groups developed in their own unique way.

It is also frowned upon to suggest that different racial groups have varying levels of IQ, although this measure has many variables, there is conclusive scientific evidence to suggest that some races are different to others in intelligence. Within the global community, there is of course a common ground, however it may take many centuries for some cultures and racial groups to reach the level of others.

This is why, the globalists are having such a hard time at the moment, this is a time of consolidation. Of course, the globalists know of the vast differences within the human spectrum, however they seem to think that by putting this unholy soup together in one pot everything will be dandy. They are wrong in this assumption, and one only has to study ancient history to realise that humans have barely evolved since.

Naturally, there are infinite variables to realise when conducting a global exercise in mixing, but one seems to think that there is also a level of hypocrisy in the global agenda. Would the almighty globalist deem him or herself equal to one of the masses, or relative in intelligence to someone who exists in extreme poverty and can only utter a few words? The answer is probably not, and yet, the globalists want to clash the civilisations anyway, and try to somehow make it work.

Globalists must also understand that it is not only racial, cultural, intelligence that divides but religion is the greatest divider of all. Yes, of course they know that already, however, if one is to build a true global community, the divisive nature of religion must be amalgamated maybe into a singular religion or to have all religion erased completely. The time will come when this choice will have to be made.

The European Union is now accepting millions of Muslims from war torn Syria, but what the Muslims entering the EU do not know is that their religion will be watered down, tamed and Europeanised. This is the challenge the EU has set for itself, and it will eviscerate Islam by first taming the religion, to change it from its root and evolve it into something else. The EU itself is a religion, as much as Communism is, it holds the tenets of many religions as it is a man made institution holding allegiance to an almighty state/God.

There are no clear answers to the global agenda, however the future is one that can only be shaped by the few.
The study was published in the journal PeerJ.

London: Leopards, one of the world's most iconic big cats, have lost 75 per cent of their historic range - with habitats across Asia plummeting by nearly 98 per cent, the first global analysis of the elusive animal has found.

The research found that leopards (Panthera pardus) historically occupied a vast range of approximately 35 million square kilometres throughout Africa, the Middle East and Asia.

However, today they are restricted to approximately 8.5 million square kilometres, researchers said.

Scientists, including those from National Geographic Society's Big Cats Initiative, reviewed more than 1,300 sources on the leopard's historic and current range.

The results show that, while the entire species is not yet as threatened as some other big cats, leopards are facing a multitude of growing threats in the wild, and three subspecies have already been almost completely eradicated.

"The leopard is a famously elusive animal, which is likely why it has taken so long to recognise its global decline," said lead author Andrew Jacobson, of Zoological Society of London (ZSL).

"This study represents the first of its kind to assess the status of the leopard across the globe and all nine subspecies," said Jacobson.

The research also found that while African leopards face considerable threats, particularly in North and West Africa, leopards have also almost completely disappeared from several regions across Asia, including much of the Arabian Peninsula and vast areas of former range in China and Southeast Asia.

The amount of habitat in each of these regions is plummeting, having declined by nearly 98 per cent, researchers said.

"Leopards' secretive nature, coupled with the occasional, brazen appearance of individual animals within megacities like Mumbai and Johannesburg, perpetuates the misconception that these big cats continue to thrive in the wild - when actually our study underlies the fact that they are increasingly threatened," said Luke Dollar, programme director of the National Geographic Society's Big Cats Initiative.

"We have discovered the status of the leopard in Southeast Asia is as perilous as the highly endangered tiger," said Philipp Henschel, from Panthera, an international conservation charity.

Leopards are capable of surviving in human-dominated landscapes provided they have sufficient cover, access to wild prey and tolerance from local people.

In many areas, however, habitat is converted to farmland and native herbivores are replaced with livestock for growing human populations.

This habitat loss, prey decline, conflict with livestock owners, illegal trade in leopard skins and parts and legal trophy hunting are all factors contributing to leopard decline, the researchers said.

The study was published in the journal PeerJ.
Mumbai: Nidhi Chaphekar, the 42-year-old Jet Airways crew member whose image sitting bloodied and dazed and her yellow uniform shredded in Brussels airport bombings became an iconic picture of the horror, returned home on Thursday to an emotional homecoming.

The mother of two from Mumbai, Nidhi, who has not yet recovered from the injuries suffered in the deadly terror attack on March 22, arrived here at around 7.30 am on a Paris-Mumbai Jet airways flight and was driven straight to Breach Candy hospital from the airport. She was injured from the force of the first blast of the attack.

Relieved on her return, Nidhi's husband Rupesh Chaphekar said, "We are extremely happy to have Nidhi back home with us in Mumbai after the horrific episode in Brussels."

"Her homecoming is an extremely emotional moment for all of us, especially her two children, who were reunited with her after six weeks as they could not travel to meet with her owing to their studies," he said.

Rupesh said the family has had a harrowing time since news on the brazen strikes trickled in.

On Nidhi's medical condition, he said, "Nidhi has received the best medical care and attention and has now recovered significantly from her injuries."

She will now continue her recovery process at a hospital in Mumbai. The most important thing for us now is that Nidhi makes a full recovery, he said.

Expressing his gratitude to doctors and medical staff in Brussels, Rupesh said, "We would like to thank them for the care they gave Nidhi during her stay in the hospital." He also thanked Jet Airways Jet management for the support they extended, not just to Nidhi but also to the family.

A Jet statement said Nidhi is in good spirits and is very happy to be back with her family. Airline officials said Nidhi has low immunity and doctors have advised her to avoid contact with people.

On March 22, three bombs went off - two at the Brussels airport and one at Mallbeek metro station  leaving 35 people dead, including three suicide bombers. Nidhi was on her way to board a Jet flight for Newark when the explosions took place. She suffered 15 per cent burns and fractured an ankle. Her colleague, Amit Motwani, was also injured and is still recovering at a Brussels hospital.

Nidhi, who was treated at Grande Hospital de Chaleroi, about 40 km from Brussels, was discharged yesterday afternoon and taken to Paris where she boarded the flight to Mumbai.

Nidhi spent about 25 days in medically induced coma at the Chaleroi hospital and underwent extensive skin grafting. Nidhi, who is still wheelchair-bound, was accompanied by her husband and brother-in-law Nilesh Chaphekar, besides the airline's support staff and its chief medical officer on her return. She has been with Jet Airways since August 1996.

A Jet statement said she has made significant recovery from her injuries sustained during the blasts at Brussels airport. Jet Airways continues to provide all the necessary support to Nidhi and her family during this time, it added.
Congres Vice President Rahul Gandhi was addressing the Congress workers at the Jantar Mantar during the 'Save Democracy' march. (Photo: ANi/Twitter)

New Delhi: Asserting that the nation does not belong to a single identity, Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi on Friday alleged one who attempts to counter Prime Minister Narendra Modi and RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat, the two forces presently acting in the country, is falsely implicated by those in power.

"It is a democratic country. It belongs to the people of the nation. This nation doesn't belong to a single identity," he added.

Gandhi, who was addressing the Congress workers at the Jantar Mantar here during the 'Save Democracy' march, lashed out at Prime Minister Modi for destablising democratically-elected governments in Arunachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand.

The Congress vice-president also used the occasion to question Prime Minister Modi's 'stoic' silence over the drought in the country, saying the NDA regime which came with the promise of 'achhe din' is least concerned about the farmers committing suicide across the nation.

"The present NDA Government came with a promise of 'achhe din' and today when the entire nation is reeling under drought with more than 40 percent of the nation facing scarcity of water and the areas like Vidarbha, Latur, Bundelkhand are burning in the scorching heat, Prime Minister Modi is maintaining stoic silence," he said.

Taking a jibe at Prime Minister Modi's 'Make in India' initiative, the Congress vice-president pointed out that only 1.5 lakh people managed to get jobs last year.

"Prime Minister Modi promised jobs for the youth in the country. We keep seeing the advertisements of 'Make in India' programme and the government could only give a mere 1.3 lakh people across the country. This means 'Make in India' could only provide 350 people a job per day," he said.

Congress president Sonia Gandhi and former Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh are leading the 'Save Democracy' march from the Jantar Mantar to Parliament.

The 'Save Democracy' march has been organised amid a face-off between the Opposition and the BJP led-NDA Government at the Centre over various issues, including the AgustaWestland VVIP chopper deal and the Uttarakhand political crisis.
The Minister said the government has succeeded in adoption of June 21 as the International Day of Yoga. (Representational image)

New Delhi: The HRD Ministry has asked all states to make yoga compulsory in school curriculum and the course is expected to start from the coming academic session, Minister of State for Ayush Shripad Yesso Naik said on Friday.

Recently, our HRD Minister has sent a notice to all states asking them to make yoga compulsory (in schools). I think it will be started in all schools from the coming academic session, he said in Lok Sabha during Question Hour.

Naik said so far, Yoga has not been made compulsory in all schools and they were told that those students who wished to enroll themselves in it should be allowed to do so.

We have told them that whoever wants to do Yoga, they should be allowed to do Yoga. Otherwise physical training is adjusted in the same period, he said.

Naik said Yoga has been made compulsory for police personnel and plans are afoot to make it compulsory also for defence personnel.

A scheme titled 'Yoga Training for Police Personnel' has been initiated by the Ministry, he said.

The Minister said the government has succeeded in adoption of June 21 as the International Day of Yoga. The first International Day of Yoga was celebrated in the country in a grand manner on June 21 2015, which was celebrated across the globe involving 192 countries.

Arrangements for celebrating 2nd International Day of Yoga on June 21, 2016 has also started, he said. Meanwhile, a total of 25 universities and 18 colleges are offering Master's Degree in Yoga, the Lok Sabha was informed.

Minister of State for Ayush, Shripad Naik said the Ministry of Human Resource Department has informed that a committee has been constituted by the government on yoga education in universities under the chairpersonship of H R Nagendra, Chancellor, Swami Vivekananda Yoga Anusandhana Samsthana, Bengaluru.
Thiruvananthapuram: Chief Minister Oommen Chandy has said that as many as 685 criminal cases had been registered against various LDF candidates as per the affidavits submitted along with the nomination papers for the Assembly elections.

Mr Chandy said in a statement here on Thursday that this statistics clearly showed who were preaching the politics of violence. A total of 152 cases have been registered against BJP-BDJS candidates while only 106 cases have been registered against UDF candidates. Of these, 617 cases were registered against CPM candidates, but only 79 against Congress candidates, the statement said.

There are six cases against Opposition Leader V.S. Achuthanandan. Of them, five are defamation cases while one is related to the Secretariat siege. However, as per the affidavit, there were no cases against the CM, the statement said.

There are 11 cases against CPM politburo member Pinarayi Vijayan, including the Lavalin cases registered in the CBI court in which he is the seventh accused. Of the other cases, eight are in Thiruvananthapuram first class magistrate court and one each in Payyannur and Thaliparamba courts.

The highest number of cases was registered against CPM candidate in Azhikode, Nikesh Kumar (57). He is followed by CPM candidate in Kazhakuttom, Kadakampally Surendran, with 45 cases and CPM candidate in Thalassery, A.N. Shamseer, with 35 cases.

The other candidates of the CPM with a large number of cases are: K.K. Lathika (Kuttiyadi)-32, V. Sivankutty (Nemom)-31, V. Salim (Aluva)-26, Binoy Kurian (Peravoor)-25, Antony John (Kothamangalam)-24, A.A. Rashid (Aruvikara)-22, E.P. Jayarajan (Mattanur)-21 and M. Swaraj (Tripunithura-20).
New Delhi: A combative Sonia Gandhi on Friday attacked the Modi government for "murdering" democracy and unleashing a campaign of "baseless allegations" against the opposition, as top Congress leaders hit the streets and courted arrest near Parliament.

Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi were taken into custody along with Sonia Gandhi, who predicted that the Government's days were numbered the way it was functioning.

"Do not try to frighten or defame us... life has taught me to struggle, we have faced a lot of challenges. They don't know what we are made of," she said addressing the party's 'Save Democracy' rally at Jantar Mantar.

Asserting that her party will play role of an "alert" opposition with "full vigour" both inside and outside Parliament, she asked partymen to "unmask" the Modi Government.

Read: Cong rally a ruse to divert focus from chopper scam: Venkaiah Naidu

Opposition leader in Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azad, party leader in Lok Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge and others courted arrest at Parliament Street Police station after they were stopped from marching to Parliament. They were released after a short while.

"They should understand very well that when matters would become unbearable, people of India know how to teach them a lesson.... The way the Modi Government is playing a fraud on the mandate, it seems its days are numbered," the Congress president said.

Congress leaders and workers protest outside Parliament street police station after party leadership were detained during their protest march. (Photo: Twitter)

The rally saw Rahul Gandhi and Manmohan Singh also attacking the Modi dispensation over pulling down of Congress governments in Arunachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand.

The AgustaWestland issue appeared to be weighing heavily on her mind as Sonia targeted the Modi dispensation accusing it of starting "this game of leveling baseless allegations against leaders of opposition parties".

"But, I would like tell them they should not commit the mistake of assuming that Congress is a weak force. Congress is never going to bow before injustice. We will play our role of an alert opposition with full vigour in coming days, (both) within Parliament and outside too and combat injustice," she said.

Sonia said that the way the Centre has toppled Congress governments in Arunachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand through "money and muscle power has not only shaken the foundation of democracy, but has murdered it".

She also asked the partymen to reach out to "each corner" of the country and "unmask" the Modi Government through democratic means.

Declaring that the Congress will not allow the ruling party to "destroy" country's democratic set up, she accused it of attempting to divide people on the basis of religion, region, language and eating habits.

She also alleged that minorities were living under fear and the Dalits, women and tribals were being given a raw deal by changes in laws pertaining to Panchayati Raj institutions.

Read: Rahul Gandhi targets Modi, Bhagwat as Congress begins 'Save Democracy' march

Without naming the RSS, the Congress chief also targeted the Sangh Parivar alleging that the NDA Government was being remote controlled from Nagpur.

She said that the Congress would not allow democracy to be "destroyed, whatever might be the diabolic designs" of the government.

Sonia said that the Congress would not succumb despite attempts "to browbeat the opposition and malign it".

Targeting Modi for his "Congress-mukt Bharat" campaign, former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said Congress is "soul of India".

Singh said at a time when democratic institutions, universities and courts are under "tremendous assault", it was the duty of partymen to foil the "designs" of those in power by working together with Sonia and Rahul Gandhi.

He also expressed apprehensions that the Centre was attempting to destabilise duly elected governments led by Congress in Manipur, Mizoram, Meghalaya and Himachal Pradesh. "Congress is like Ganga, no matter how many false allegations are levelled, it will not divert from its path," he added.

Underscoring that her party has been instrumental in creating democratic institution since independence, Sonia said that Congress would not shy away from making any sacrifices for the cause of democracy. "They declare anyone anti-national. Those who dont agree with them are targeted," she said, adding that her party knows how to fight against "anti-national" forces.

Accusing BJP of levelling baseless allegations against leaders of opposition parties to divert public attention from its failure over the past two years, Sonia said it was "their old tactic of spreading rumours and character assassination by spreading lies".

She also flagged the issue of price rise, saying that it has affected women and the poor the most. "They have gained power by showing false dreams. And after gaining power, their hunger for power is only increasing. And that has led to toppling of Congress governments," Sonia added.

She also alleged that fear was being created in the minds of minorities and society was being divided in the name of religion, language and regions, while injustice was being meted out to students.

Launching a scathing attack on Modi and RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat, Rahul said only two people's writ runs in the country and those who stand against them are targeted with "false allegations".

He said around 40 per cent of the country is facing a drought-like situation and "50 farmers were committing suicide everyday", but the Prime Minister "has nothing to say over the issue".

"Modiji promised 'achche din' and today the country is reeling under drought. 40 per cent of the country is reeling under drought. Everyday, 50 farmers are committing suicide. Latur, Vidarbha, Bundelkhand are burning. And Modiji has nothing to say about it," Rahul said in his brief speech.

Making light of 'Make in India' programme, he said that Modi had promised two crore jobs per year after coming to power, but actually a mere 1.3 lakh jobs were generated last year.

Senior Congress leaders and workers led by Sonia later marched towards Parliament street, where they courted arrest at local police station. They were later released.
New Delhi: Congress leaders Sonia Gandhi, Rahul and former Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh courted arrest for violating prohibitory orders and going ahead with their march towards Parliament after holding a anti-government rally on Friday.

However, after a brief while at the police station, they were allowed to drive to Parliament.

Earlier this morning, the Gandhis and Manmohan Singh launched a sharp attack on the Centre at the 'Save Democracy' rally. Congress accused the Bharatiya Janata Party of destablising democratically-elected governments in Arunachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand.

Read: Rahul Gandhi targets Modi, Bhagwat as Congress begins 'Save Democracy' march

"Modi government is trying to destroy roots of democracy," said Congress President Sonia Gandhi at the 'Save Democracy' rally. "Congress will not buckle under any form of injustice and will take detractors head on," she added.

The rally, to be held at Jantar Mantar, is being organised amid a face-off between the Opposition party and the BJP led-coalition government at the Centre over various issues, including the AgustaWestland scandal.

Here are the live updates:

11.20 am: All Congress leaders detained by police released.

11.15 am: The Gandhis and former Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh courted arrest as they defied the police and went ahead with their march towards Parliament after holding a anti-government rally.

Congress leaders and workers protest outside Parliament street police station after party leadership were detained during their protest march. (Photo: Twitter)

10.40 am: Addressing a rally on Thursday, Congress accused the BJP of destablising democratically-elected governments in Arunachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand.

Life has taught me to struggle, we have faced a lot of challenges. They dont know what we are made of, says Sonia Gandhi.

Nothing new for us to fight anti-national elements.

The jungles of Uttarakhand are burning and nothing is being done about it, because the state has no government.

BJP gave the public false dreams just to come to power.

In the blink of an eye, BJP brands anyone and everyone an 'anti-national'.

Congress-led governments in Uttarakhand and Arunachal Pradesh dislodged by Modi regime by use of money power.

10.35 am: Congress is like a flowing river, no matter how many false allegations you level against it, it will not divert from its path,says former Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh.

10.30 am: Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi attacked Prime Minister Narendra Modi saying, "Whoever talks against Modi ji and BJP, false accusations are made on that person."

"BJP destabilized Congress Govt in Arunachal, removed elected leaders and broke all laws," he adds.

9.30 am: BJP leaders sat in protest at the Gandhi statue in the Parliament against corruption of Congress.

9.30 am: Farmers are committing suicide, there is drought in the nation and Modi govt is sleeping. They should wake up and smell the coffee, says Congress leader RS Surjewala.

Setting the tone for the rally, party spokesman Jairam Ramesh accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of "masterminding a conspiracy to implicate" Congress leadership in the AgustaWestland case.

"The cat is out by the manner in which the Prime Minister last night tweeted and hailed Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar's reply in Rajya Sabha on the issue. It shows not only his mindset but his strategy too", Mr Ramesh said.

Yesterday's speech by RM @manoharparrikar in the Rajya Sabha was one of the best speeches, displaying best parliamentary traditions.  Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) May 5, 2016

RM @manoharparrikar rose above politics & placed all relevant facts on the table. Urging you all to hear his speech. https://t.co/2YhvBDqn4o  Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) May 5, 2016

Attacking the Union Defence Minister, the Congress leader said in fact Mr Parrikar's reply was one of the "worst examples in parliamentary history" as instead of responding to issues raised by the opposition, he read out a "catalogue of accusations and charges".

Read: Agusta deal: Take action if you have evidence, don't threaten us, Cong tells govt

He accused Mr Parrikar of not maintaining the dignity of a Defence Minister by "resorting to a political speech". Ramesh said the rally was being organised to also protest against the government's "assault" on central universities as seen in the JNU, Hyderabad and Allahabad.

On whether like-minded parties like JD(U) and the Left have been invited, he said it was a Congress rally.

Read: Agusta rocks August Houses: Who benefitted, asks Parrikar

While party leader Randeep Surjewala had last week said the party would 'gherao' Parliament, Mr Ramesh merely said after the rally the party would take out a march to Parliament. Party leaders have said Friday's march was also to highlight the drought and the agrarian crisis that has led to a spate of suicides by farmers and affected 40 crore people in several states.
State Department Deputy Spokesman Mark Toner said when asked if it is just using Congress as an excuse not to give F-16 to Pakistan.

Washington: The US is not using the Congressional objections as an excuse to deny Pakistan eight F-16 fighter jets at a subsidised rate, the Obama administration has said.

No, thats not true, State Department Deputy Spokesman Mark Toner said when asked if it is just using Congress as an excuse not to give F-16 to Pakistan.

We have made the case for FMF (foreign military finance) funds to be used (towards sale of F-16s to Pakistan), Toner said.

The Administration, he said, has made the case to the Congress that it continue to support proposed sale of these eight F-16s to Pakistan to assist in Pakistan's counterterrorism and counterinsurgency operations.

We believe that these F-16s have supported these kinds of operations to date. We think that they reduce the ability of certain militant groups to use Pakistani territory as a safe haven for terrorism and a base of support for the insurgency in Afghanistan, he said.

But key members of Congress have made it clear that they object to using foreign military financing funds to support this sale. Given these objections, weve told the Pakistanis that they should put forward national funds for the purchase, he said.

Toner said the Administration has argued to Congress why it believes that the purchase of these F-16s is in Americas interest. We'll continue to make that case. In the meantime, we've offered Pakistan an opportunity to purchase these out of their own funds, Toner said.
Rome: German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Thursday urged European leaders to protect EU borders or risk a "return to nationalism" as the continent battles its worst migration crisis since World War II.

As Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi kicked off two days of talks in Rome with Merkel and senior EU officials, the German leader said Europe must defend its borders "from the Mediterranean to the North Pole" or suffer the political consequences.

Support for far-right and anti-immigrant parties is on the rise in several countries on the continent which saw more than a million people arrive on its shores last year.

In Austria, Norbert Hofer of the far-right Freedom Party is expected to win a presidential run-off on May 22 after romping to victory in the first round on an anti-immigration platform.

Merkel told a press conference with Renzi that Europe's cherished freedom of movement is at threat, with ramped-up border controls in response to the crisis raising questions over whether the passport-free Schengen zone can survive.

'Africa Plan'

With over 28,500 migrants arriving since January 1, Italy has once again become the principal entry point for migrants arriving in Europe, following a controversial EU-Turkey deal and the closure of the Balkan route up from Greece.

In previous years, many migrants landing in Italy have headed on to other countries -- but with Austria planning to reinstate border controls at the Brenner pass in the Alps, a key transport corridor, Rome fears it could be stuck hosting masses of new arrivals.

Renzi lashed out at Austria on Thursday, describing Vienna's position as "anachronistic".

"This is the wrong attitude even if there is a migrant crisis," he said.

Italy is pushing for NATO naval patrols off Libya in time for the summer people-smuggling season, and a deal with Libya on the model just concluded with Turkey.

On Thursday, Renzi stressed the need for "a strategy for Africa" to stem the influx from there.

He wants EU aid for African countries that have seen large numbers of migrants set off, in a bid to lessen the poverty that drives many of them to leave home.

"The important thing is to invest in Africa," Renzi said.

But he added that Germany and Italy were in disagreement over how to fund the plan, with Germany against using eurobonds to offer finance to African countries.

'Pope to host talks'

Renzi also hosted European Commission leader Jean-Claude Juncker, EU President Donald Tusk and European Parliament chief Martin Schulz at a debate about the state of Europe on Thursday.

During the discussion, Tusk said the notion of a "fortress" Europe was "absurd", but that the EU had to protect its external borders if it wanted citizens to feel safe. He added that the idea of a single European state was "an illusion".

On Friday, Pope Francis -- who has blasted Western society for its indifference to refugees -- will meet with the European leaders.

Merkel, whose country took in more than a million asylum-seekers last year, on Thursday insisted on the need to "respect the human dignity" of immigrants and to "share the burden" of the influx.

Bulgaria's Prime Minister Boyko Borisov, in an interview with AFP, took a stance unusual among Central and Eastern European leaders in agreeing with her.

He pledged to accept Bulgaria's quota of 1,200 asylum-seekers under an EU plan, saying: "It does not matter if it is 1,200 or 2,000 people -- we have taken a commitment to accept them."

In Austria, far-right presidential candidate Hofer was meanwhile attempting to woo more mainstream voters by saying he believed it was possible to integrate migrants.

"I think that if we do everything we can to make sure the people who are already in Austria integrate themselves, it's still possible," he told APA news agency.
Police said the cell, operating in Gibralter on the south coast of Spain, was trying to recruit radicals and persuade them to attack holiday resorts in Costa Del Sol, a region popular with British holidaymakers. (Representational image)

London: British spies based in Gibraltar, an overseas territory of the UK, have helped smash an Islamic State terror gang which was reportedly planning attacks on holiday resorts in Spain, according to a media report.

They were able to track down the gang after propaganda messages were found online, leading to Spanish police arresting four people on suspicion of spreading extremism online and indoctrinating recruits, the Daily Express reported.

Police said the cell, operating in Gibralter on the south coast of Spain, was trying to recruit radicals and persuade them to attack holiday resorts in Costa Del Sol, a region popular with British holidaymakers.

Armed police carried out a raid in Madrid and the Spanish towns of Pinto and Ciempozuelos earlier this week. Police arrested three Moroccans and one Spaniard who are allegedly part of an organised cell spreading extremist material online.

Video footage of their capture has also been released by the Spanish Guardia Civil police force, the daily said. The group have allegedly made contact with hundreds of people, selecting potential members to be radicalised and indoctrinated using different webpages and instant messaging apps to communicate.

Spain remains on high alert after the anti-terror level was raised in June 2015.

The Spanish Guardia Civil have intensified their investigations into propaganda and recruitment groups.

Almost 20 people have now been detained in the country this year so far in connection with extremism and terrorism.
Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman said women and children were among 28 civilians killed while 50 others were wounded. (Photo: AFP)

Aleppo: Air strikes killed at least 28 civilians Thursday in a camp for the displaced in northern Syria near the Turkish border as a 48-hour ceasefire took hold in Aleppo.

The truce came after fierce violence in and around Aleppo and was made possible as President Bashar al-Assad's regime and rebel forces gave in to mounting diplomatic pressure for a pause.

But as relieved civilians went out onto the streets after two weeks of heavy fighting in the divided city, a key battleground in Syria's five-year civil war, others were attacked further west.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said air strikes struck the camp for internally displaced people near Sarmada, in Idlib province, which is controlled by Syria's Al-Qaeda affiliate Al-Nusra Front.

Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman said women and children were among 28 civilians killed while 50 others were wounded.

Mamun al-Khatib, director of the Aleppo-based pro-rebel Shahba Press news agency, said "regime aircraft" fired missiles on the camp in the village of Al-Kammouna.

"Two missiles fell near the camp causing people to panic and two more fell inside where a dozen tents caught fire," he said.

Online images showed emergency workers putting out fires among damaged blue and white tents.

The US said it has not confirmed if the strikes were carried out by regime forces, but described them "totally in keeping" with its past operations.

"There's absolutely no justification for attacks on civilians in Syria, but especially on what appears to have been a refugee camp," said State Department spokesman Mark Toner.

The European Union called the bombardment "unacceptable", while the United Nations' top aid official demanded an immediate investigation.

"If this obscene attack is found to be a deliberate targeting of a civilian structure, it could amount to a war crime," said Stephen O'Brien, the UN under-secretary general for humanitarian affairs.

US, Russia monitoring

The February 27 ceasefire brokered by the United States and Syrian ally Russia called for an end to fighting between regime forces and rebels nationwide but did not include jihadist-held areas.

Fierce violence in and around Aleppo, which has claimed the lives of more than 280 civilians since April 22, sparked an intense diplomatic push by Washington and Moscow to salvage peace efforts.

Late Wednesday the Syrian army said it had agreed to calls from Russia and the US for a two-day truce in Aleppo that would begin from 1:00 am on Thursday (2200 GMT Wednesday).

An AFP correspondent in Aleppo said Thursday there had been no signs of fresh air raids.

Residents who had cowered indoors for days emerged and some set up tables and chairs on the streets to enjoy the sunshine, drink tea and smoke cigarettes, the correspondent said.

Shopkeepers also reopened their doors while fruit and vegetable markets -- one of which was struck in an April 24 raid that left 12 dead -- were running again.

The local council dispatched bulldozers to remove rubble in stricken areas where water and electrical supplies were also restored, the AFP correspondent said.

After a whirlwind of talks involving diplomats from top world powers and the UN, US Secretary of State John Kerry announced the truce had taken effect and that violence had already fallen off.

He said US officials in Geneva were coordinating with their Russian colleagues on "enhanced monitoring efforts for this renewed cessation".

The Russian defence ministry said its ceasefire monitors had agreed with their US counterparts to oversee this truce until midnight on May 6.

In Aleppo, the head of the local branch of the powerful Jaish al-Islam (Army of Islam) rebel force, Ahmad Sanada, told AFP the group would respect the truce.

The head of Syria's opposition High Negotiations Committee Riad Hijab meanwhile urged the international community to impose "robust measures" to ensure respect for the ceasefire.

Palmyra concert

Diplomats are hoping a nationwide ceasefire can underpin efforts to resolve Syria's five-year war that has already killed more than 270,000 people and forced millions out of their homes.

Mediators hope that UN-backed peace talks could resume later this month in Geneva, although previous rounds have failed to make any major breakthrough with the regime rejecting the opposition's demand that Assad step aside as part of a political transition.

On Thursday, a suicide attack and a car bombing in central Homs province killed at least 12 civilians, the Observatory and state television said.

The twin bombings came amid recent fighting in the area between Islamic State group fighters and regime troops.

IS claimed responsibility for the attacks, according to SITE Intelligence Group.

The area is near Palmyra where on Thursday Russian maestro Valery Gergiev led Saint Petersburg's celebrated Mariinsky orchestra in front of a crowd of Russian soldiers, government ministers and journalists.

Palmyra, a UNESCO world heritage site, was retaken from IS on March 27 with Russian support.
Riyadh, Saudi Arabia: Saudi police shot dead two suspected militants and two others blew themselves up during a raid near the holy city of Mecca on Thursday, the interior ministry said.

"The terrorists started shooting towards security forces, which they responded to", leading to the deaths of a pair of suspects while the others "committed suicide by blowing themselves up with suicide belts", the ministry's spokesman said in a statement.

Police had surrounded the suspects' hideout between the holy city of Mecca and the mountain resort of Taif, about 80 kilometres (50 miles) to the east, on Thursday morning when the shootout occurred.

A simultaneous raid occurred on a hideout in the Red Sea city of Jeddah, where two people were arrested, "and they are being investigated for their involvement in this cell", the spokesman said.

"The security operation is still underway. Explosives are being removed and the area combed. And the suicide belts, explosives and weapons at the first location are being dealt with," the spokesman said.

The raids were part of surveillance and followup, "including to what happened in Bisha on Friday".

At that time, two suspects died in a shootout with security forces who foiled a car bombing in Bisha, southwestern Aseer region.

A third suspect, Iqab Mujab al-Otaibi, fled but was later arrested wearing an explosives belt, the ministry announced last Sunday.

According to the ministry, Otaibi allegedly took part in a deadly shooting at a Shiite mosque in 2014 and a bombing at a mosque inside a Saudi special forces compound in the southwestern city of Abha last August.

Both attacks were among several bombings and shootings claimed by the ISIS of Sunni jihadists since late 2014 in Saudi Arabia.

ISIS also said it was responsible for shooting dead a Saudi police colonel in the Riyadh region last month.

ISIS considers Saudi Arabia's Shiite minority to be heretics.

The ISIS group leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, has reputedly called Saudi Arabia's Sunni rulers "apostate tyrants" and called on Saudis to rise against them.

The kingdom is part of the US-led coalition bombing ISIS in Iraq and Syria, and Saudi political and religious leaders routinely denounce ISIS attacks -- at home and abroad -- as contrary to Islam.

Still, a report last year by the inter-governmental Financial Action Task Force said Saudis comprised the second largest nationality among "foreign terrorist fighters" with ISIS.
Motiur Rahman Nizami was particularly found guilty of systematic killings of more than 450 people alone in his own village home in northwestern Pabna, siding with the Pakistani troops.(Photo: AFP)

Dhaka: Preparations were on Friday underway in Bangladesh for the execution of chief of fundamentalist Jamaat-e-Islami Motiur Rahman Nizami, a day after the Supreme Court rejected his plea to review the death penalty for war crimes, with family members meeting him in prison for the last time.

"Seven members of his family including his wife, two sons, daughter visited him," jailor Nasir Uddin of suburban high-security Kashimpur Central Jail told PTI over phone.

He said the close relatives were allowed to stay for 40 minutes with the top leader of Bangladesh's biggest Islamist party which was opposed to the country's 1971 independence from Pakistan.

Another senior official of the prisons department said the 73-year-old war crimes convict was expected to be executed at Dhaka Central Jail but simultaneous preparations were underway at Kashimpur jail as well.

"The execution is likely to take place in Dhaka Central Jail, but we asked officials at Kashimpur prison to make alternative preparations to carry out the process in two hours' notice, if required," said the official, requesting anonymity.

The Jamaat chief could be executed any time after he on Thursday exhausted his last legal opportunity to overturn the death penalty, with the Supreme Court rejecting his petition to review the death sentence it earlier upheld for committing crimes against humanity during 1971 Liberation War, siding with the Pakistani troops.

He was particularly found guilty of systematic killings of more than 450 people alone in his own village home in northwestern Pabna, siding with the Pakistani troops.

Nizami, a former lawmaker and minister in ex-prime minister Khaleda Zia's cabinet, has been in jail since 2010, when he was arrested to be tried for 1971 war crimes in a special tribunal which handed him down death penalty on October 29, 2014 on charges of mass murder, arson, loot and rape.

Nizami, who headed the infamous Al-Badr special militia force and Jamaat's student wing in 1971, challenged the International Crimes Tribunal (ICT-BD) verdict before the Supreme Court which upheld the original judgment on January 6 this year.

In his last legal efforts to save the neck, Nizami then sought to get the judgment reviewed by the apex court itself, which on THursday dismissed his last appeal, clearing the way for him to walk to the gallows.

Jail officials, however, declined to give details about when they were planning to hang the war crimes convict but said that in line with the procedure, Nizami would be asked if he preferred to seek presidential mercy, acknowledging his guilt, as his last ditch effort to evade the noose.

Attorney General Mahbub-ey Alam earlier said that unlike ordinary death row convicts, Nizami could be hanged anytime as set by the government after the final verdict of the Supreme Court though he would get the chance to seek the presidential clemency.
The fleet will mobilise naval air force, garrison forces in the Xisha and Nansha islands, and forces of the Beihai Fleet along the way to take part in the drill. (Representational image: AFP)

Beijing: China has kicked off military exercises in the disputed South China Sea, east Indian Ocean and West Pacific involving advanced warships, helicopters and "special warfare" soldiers.

Three naval ships of China's Nanhai Fleet left a naval port in Sanya, Hainan Province yesterday, kicking off an annual combat drill in the South China Sea, east Indian Ocean and West Pacific, state-run Xinhua news agency reported. The three ships include missile destroyer Hefei, missile frigate Sanya and supply ship Honghu.

They will later be joined by missile destroyers Lanzhou and Guangzhou, as well as missile frigate Yulin, which are now carrying out other duties.

With three helicopters and dozens of "special warfare" soldiers, the fleet will be separated into three groups that will sail to areas of the South China Sea, the east Indian Ocean and the west Pacific, to conduct varied drills.

The fleet will mobilise naval air force, garrison forces in the Xisha and Nansha islands, and forces of the Beihai Fleet along the way to take part in the drill.

The drill aims to enhance combat readiness and practise coordination between ships and aircraft, and other forces, the navy said.

China claims almost the whole of the South China Sea - a major shipping lane rich in natural resources, resulting in overlapping claims with several other Asian nations like Vietnam and the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei.

They accuse China of illegally reclaiming land in contested areas to create artificial islands with facilities for military use.

Over half of the world's commercial shipping passes through the Indo-Pacific waterways - including one-third of the world's liquefied natural gas.
Asim Hussain and other accused were produced in an accountability court where Judge Saad Qureshi read out the charges against them. They all pleaded not guilty. (Representational Image)

Karachi: A former petroleum minister and close aide of ex-Pakistan president Asif Ali Zardari was on Friday charged along with five others for money laundering and fraud that caused Rs 462 billion loss to the national exchequer.

Asim Hussain and other accused were produced in an accountability court where Judge Saad Qureshi read out the charges against them. They all pleaded not guilty.

The court summoned the prosecution witnesses with direction to record their testimonies in the next hearing of the case on May 14.

Few months after Hussain was arrested by the paramilitary rangers, former President Zardari went abroad and has remained there since.

In references filed against Hussain, the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) charged him with of misusing his authority for getting plots allotted fraudulently and encroaching upon state land for expansion of his Dr Ziauddin Hospital/Trust, illegal gains, kickbacks and money laundering.

Hussain has also been accused of receiving commissions from a fertiliser cartel for an "exploitative price hike".

Another charge related to "black marketing and fraud with the public" in the name of a charity hospital. The NAB said that Hussain while he was federal petroleum minister had deprived the state of Rupees 462.5bn from 2010 to 2013 Rupees 450 billion through the fertiliser scam, Rupees 9.5 billion through land fraud and Rupees 3 billion through money laundering.
The job will be done by "our premier security agency", the official said in a reference to Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). (Photo: Pixabay)

Islamabad: Pakistan Foreign Office has decided to rope in the country's top spy agency ISI against increasing cyber attacks on its website and servers.

The decision comes after Foreign Office (FO) systems have faced three major attacks by hackers over the past 18 months. The FO has sought an allocation of Rs 80 million in the next fiscal year's budget for bolstering cyber security and securing its communications with the country's missions overseas, an official told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee yesterday according to a Dawn report.

The money sought for cyber security is 130 per cent more than the additional expenditure that the FO intends to incur on boosting the physical protection of its premises, which is Rs 35 million.

The job will be done by "our premier security agency", the official said in a reference to Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).

The move comes as the FO strives to counter potential attacks in cyberspace by strengthening its readiness strategy. Paucity of resources has been identified as one of the reasons behind poor security arrangements of FO's IT infrastructure, the report said.

The request for ramping up expenditure on cyber security implies both a renewed resolve to keep hackers out and a realisation that previous efforts proved to be insufficient.

"We have firewalls in place and our staff is regularly monitoring the situation, but we are continuously under cyber attack... our website, our emails, our servers have faced attacks," the official explained to the senators.

"We have our own security system, but it is always good to get help from those who are experts," the official said in response to a query from a member as he acknowledged the inadequacy of the existing internal arrangements.

The FO has already used the services of ISI for the security audit of its IT systems.

The official said that ISI might outsource part of the job to its "security cleared contractors", because they too did not have a complete in-house facility.

But, the FO by itself had never used private firms for this purpose, he added.

Some of the committee members had strong reservations on ISI being given the job.

Trying to address the members' reservations, the official said ISI, despite being given the responsibility for fixing cyber security shortcomings, would only have "limited access".

"They cannot ingress our system, but only check from outside," he maintained, adding the different departments had different encryption codes.




Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi were taken into custody along with Sonia Gandhi, who predicted that the Government's days were numbered the way it was functioning.





"Do not try to frighten or defame us... life has taught me to struggle, we have faced a lot of challenges. They don't know what we are made of," she said addressing the party's 'Save Democracy' rally at Jantar Mantar here.





Asserting that her party will play role of an "alert" opposition with "full vigour" both inside and outside Parliament, she asked partymen to "unmask" the Modi Government.





Opposition leader in Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azad, party leader in Lok Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge and others courted arrest at Parliament Street Police station after they were stopped from marching to Parliament. They were released after a short while.





"They should understand very well that when matters would become unbearable, people of India know how to teach them a lesson.... The way the Modi Government is playing a fraud on the mandate, it seems its days are numbered," the Congress president said.





The rally saw Rahul Gandhi and Manmohan Singh also attacking the Modi dispensation over pulling down of Congress governments in Arunachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand.





The AgustaWestland issue appeared to be weighing heavily on her mind as Sonia targeted the Modi dispensation accusing it of starting "this game of leveling baseless allegations against leaders of opposition parties".





"But, I would like tell them they should not commit the mistake of assuming that Congress is a weak force. Congress is never going to bow before injustice. We will play our role of an alert opposition with full vigour in coming days, (both) within Parliament and outside too and combat injustice," she said.





Sonia said that the way the Centre has toppled Congress governments in Arunachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand through "money and muscle power has not only shaken the foundation of democracy, but has murdered it".





She also asked the partymen to reach out to "each corner" of the country and "unmask" the Modi Government through democratic means.





Declaring that the Congress will not allow the ruling party to "destroy" country's democratic set up, she accused it of attempting to divide people on the basis of religion, region, language and eating habits.





She also alleged that minorities were living under fear and the Dalits, women and tribals were being given a raw deal by changes in laws pertaining to Panchayati Raj institutions.





Without naming the RSS, the Congress chief also targeted the Sangh Parivar alleging that the NDA Government was being remote controlled from Nagpur.





She said that the Congress would not allow democracy to be "destroyed, whatever might be the diabolic designs" of the government.





Sonia said that the Congress would not succumb despite attempts "to browbeat the opposition and malign it".





Targeting Modi for his "Congress-mukt Bharat" campaign, former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said Congress is "soul of India".



Singh said at a time when democratic institutions, universities and courts are under "tremendous assault", it was the duty of partymen to foil the "designs" of those in power by working together with Sonia and Rahul Gandhi.



He also expressed apprehensions that the Centre was attempting to destabilise duly elected governments led by Congress in Manipur, Mizoram, Meghalaya and Himachal Pradesh.



"Congress is like Ganga, no matter how many false allegations are levelled, it will not divert from its path," he added.



Underscoring that her party has been instrumental in creating democratic institution since independence, Sonia said that Congress would not shy away from making any sacrifices for the cause of democracy.



"They declare anyone anti-national. Those who dont agree with them are targeted," she said, adding that her party knows how to fight against "anti-national" forces.



Accusing BJP of levelling baseless allegations against leaders of opposition parties to divert public attention from its failure over the past two years, Sonia said it was "their old tactic of spreading rumours and character assassination by spreading lies".



She also flagged the issue of price rise, saying that it has affected women and the poor the most.



"They have gained power by showing false dreams. And after gaining power, their hunger for power is only increasing. And that has led to toppling of Congress governments," Sonia added.



She also alleged that fear was being created in the minds of minorities and society was being divided in the name of religion, language and regions, while injustice was being meted out to students.



Launching a scathing attack on Modi and RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat, Rahul said only two people's writ runs in the country and those who stand against them are targeted with "false allegations".



He said around 40 per cent of the country is facing a drought-like situation and "50 farmers were committing suicide everyday", but the Prime Minister "has nothing to say over the issue".



"Modiji promised 'achche din' and today the country is reeling under drought. 40 per cent of the country is reeling under drought. Everyday, 50 farmers are committing suicide. Latur, Vidarbha, Bundelkhand are burning. And Modiji has nothing to say about it," Rahul said in his brief speech.



Making light of 'Make in India' programme, he said that Modi had promised two crore jobs per year after coming to power, but actually a mere 1.3 lakh jobs were generated last year.



Senior Congress leaders and workers led by Sonialater marched towards Parliament street, where they courted arrest at local police station. They were later released.

A combative Sonia Gandhi today attacked the Modi government for "murdering" democracy and unleashing a campaign of "baseless allegations" against the opposition, as top Congress leaders hit the streets and courted arrest near Parliament.
US House Speaker Paul Ryan, the highest-ranking elected Republican official of the nation has said that he is "not ready" yet to back his party's presumptive presidential nominee Donald Trump.





"I'm just not ready to do that at this point. I'm not there right now," Ryan told CNN in an interview.



Ryan's stunning statement had its immediate ripple effect inside the party and might have lasting impact on Trump's presidential ambitions, if the division within the Republican establishment are not shorted out soon.



Ryan said the onus for uniting the party now lies on Trump, who after his Indiana primary win and withdrawal from the race by the two opponents - Ted Cruz and John Kasich - is the presumptive presidential nominee of the Republican party.



"And I hope to (support Trump), though, and I want to. But I think what is required is that we unify the party. And I think the bulk of the burden on unifying the party will have to come from our presumptive nominee," Ryan said.



"This is the party of Lincoln, of Reagan, of Jack Kemp. And we don't always nominate a Lincoln and a Reagan every four years, but we hope that our nominee aspires to be Lincoln- and Reagan-esque," the House Speaker said.



He hoped that the candidate "advances the principles of our party and appeals to a wide, vast majority of Americans".



However, Trump fired back immediately.

"I am not ready to support Speaker Ryan's agenda. Perhaps in the future we can work together and come to an agreement about what is best for the American people. They have been treated so badly for so long that it is about time for politicians to put them first!" Trump said.



The tensions between Trump and Ryan go beyond temperament, The Washington Post reported.



"They have philosophical differences about the size and scope of government. Ryan champions free-trade agreements, international military engagement, and sweeping overhauls of Social Security and Medicare, whereas Trump is an avowed opponent of recent trade deals, foreign interventions and proposed changes to entitlement programs," the Post reported.



"The GOP divide over Ryan's decision not to board the Trump Train reflects the broader civil war raging within the Grand Old Party as it prepares to coronate a billionaire real estate mogul and reality TV star with zero political experience and a questionable conservative record," The Hill reported.


Around 150 parents protested outside Delhi Public School, Mathura Road on Thursday against arbitrary fee hike by the school, despite an order by the Directorate of Education.





Parents gathered outside the school at 7 am and held a silent protest outside the school and even presented a bouquet to the principal.



The school has hiked the fee by 17.4 per cent in the new academic session, after which the parents met Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia who ordered the school to roll back the hike.



Awaiting response

As per the order issued by the High Court and the Delhi government, all private unaided schools running on land provided by government cannot increase the fee more than 10 per cent and without the prior sanction of Education department.

The school last week has written to the DoE, explaining their position and are awaiting a response.



The fee hike during the last six years is 200 per cent and there has not been much change in facilities provided. It puts a lot of burden on parents, especially those who have two kids in the same school, said a parent who did not wish to be identified.

Matter pending with DoE.



However, another parent said that the matter is pending with DoE and they are taking time to come to a solution.



The principal told us that the school has already written to the DoE. If the department does not resolve the issue soon, we will do a protest against it also, she said.



School Principal Manohar Lal said that the school has no option but to increase fee as it is burdened by funding the education of students under EWS category.



We have not received a single penny from the last two years from the government for EWS admissions. And if we receive, that amount is very less to meet the expenses of the EWS students. Plus there are other expenses such as arrears under seventh pay commission.



We have also upgraded the infrastructure in last nine months, the principal said.

He explained that though schools on land given by government cannot raise the fee without the permission from DoE, DPS, Mathura Road was allotted land by Land and Development Office (L&DO) in 1960s.



The conditions in the lease given to us were different than those in land given by DDA. There was no such condition of seeking prior approval of DoE, he said.

Recently, private schools were under Delhi government scanner after scores of parents from different schools met Sisodia, who also holds the Education portfolio, to raise the fee hike issue.



Since then at least seven schools have adhered to the order, reversing the hike.


A man was shot at and two others also injured after a car rammed into some motorcycles, triggering a fight with a crowd in east Delhi on Thursday.





One of the accused was overpowered after a chase by local people after the confrontation in Preet Vihar, the police said.



The incident occurred after a speeding Maruti Alto rammed into several parked motorcycles on Kalyan Marg.



An eyewitness, Ashish, told Deccan Herald that he was standing nearby. The car came to a screeching halt after hitting several motorcycles.



The car also hit a 40-year-old man. He escaped with minor injuries, said Ashish.

The car driver tried to flee from the spot, but was confronted by the local people.

A photographer, Sonu, tried to confront the driver, but he was hit when the man reversed the car. He sustained head injuries. Sonu works with his brother at nearby SS Studio.



As the car sped away, 20-25 local people gave chase on their vehicles. The chase started from Kalyan Marg and made its way to Preet Vihar B-Block.



The driver was forced to slow down due to the crowd near State Bank of India at Madhuban Chowk.



Locals chasing the car soon caught up with the driver and thrashed him, Ashish said.



Within five minutes, a friend of the driver arrived at the spot and asked the crowd to let him go.



We refused, on which the friend pulled out a gun and fired a round in the air. Almost half of the crowd dispersed. Then he pointed at the crowd and fired, Ashish said.



The assailant fired two rounds which hit a man named Rahul.



The man with the gun managed to flee, but the driver was handed over to police. The driver was identified as Shivam.



Rahul was taken to Metro Hospital in Preet Vihar, where he is undergoing treatment.

A case of attempt to murder has been filed at Preet Vihar police station.


The New York Times Co, which has delivered newspapers for decades, now wants to help deliver food to people's door steps.





The newspaper publisher has partnered with Chef'd, a meal kit delivery company, to ship boxes of uncooked food based on recipes from The New York Times Cooking site and app.

Customers cook up the meals on their own, using step-by-step recipes that come in the boxes.



The New York Times, which is licensing its brand to Chef'd, said the meals will go on sale this summer. Customers will be able to order meal kits anytime they want, or subscribe to receive weekly boxes. A box that can make meals for two people typically costs around USD 30 on Chef'd.



The deal is another way for The New York Times to boost revenue outside of its print business. The New York company also sells tickets to its conferences and hawks posters, maps and jewelry online.



Revenue from those types of endeavours rose 6.3 per cent to USD 95 million last year, while revenue from advertising fell 3.6 percent to USD 638.7 million. Circulation revenue rose 1 percent to USD 845.5 million.



Meal kits have exploded in recent years as competition heats up. People around the world spent USD 1.5 billion on meal kits last year, with less than half of that coming from the US, according to research group Technomic. The US market is expected to grow to as much as USD 6 billion by 2020, Technomic said.



Blue Apron and HelloFresh are just some of the competitors in the space. Late last year, food writer Mark Bittman left The New York Times to join vegan meal kit company Purple Carrot.



Chef'd, based in El Segundo, California, was founded a year ago. It has similar deals with other publishers, including fitness magazine Men's Health. Bloomberg first reported the deal Thursday.






"Do not level baseless allegations. Answer the questions which we are raising. Supreme Court monitored investigation should happen and its reports should be placed in the House every three months," senior Congress leader Jyotiraditya Scindia said in Lok Sabha during debate on a Calling Attention Motion on the issue.





He said it was practice of the BJP members to level wrong and baseless allegations and through that, they want to create an illusion.





"But we too have taken an oath that we will break that 'mayajaal' (illusion) and place the facts in front of the country and this House," Scindia said.





The reality is that this deal was started during the NDA regime in 1999 and the issue they are talking about bringing down the height of the helicopter from 6000 to 4500 metres, it was done by NDA government in 2003 and not the UPA, he said.





In December 2003, a letter was written from the Prime Minister's Office to change the norms and make it 4500 metres, Scindia said.





The moment the issue came ouot in newspapers, he said the UPA government wrote to the embassy in Rome that investigation should be done as early as possible.





In April 2012, it was in fact the UPA government which ordered CBI to investigate the matter, Scindia said, adding that the contract was cancelled on February 15, 2013 and a notice was served on AugustaWestland and on January 1, 2014, the UPA government cancelled that contract.





In February 2013, the UPA government gave the case to the CBI and within 12 days, a preliminary inquiry was lodged, he informed adding Letter Rogatory too was issued to Tunisia, Mauritius and Italy.





"...24 months have passed of your government, what have you done in 720 days of your government? Have you brought in a single penny? Have you even identified a single person who has indulged in corruption," he asked.





"In March 2013, we in the House had proposed to form a JPC (joint parliamentary committee). Why did the NDA oppose that proposal? People of this country should ask why you opposed that proposal in 2013," the Congress leader said.





He said the banning and blacklisting of companies too was started by the UPA government. The then Defence Minister had stated that no deal would happen with AgustaWestland, Scindia said, adding it was UPA government which had brought Rs 2,063 crore.





Stoutly defending his party President, the Congress leader said nowhere did the name of Sonia Gandhi was mentioned.





"Whenever the name of Sonia Gandhi comes, they start feeling irritated and they are afraid also from her because she is a 'lioness' that is why they (BJP) are afraid of her," he said, adding that the mention about the "family" was of Tyagi's family and not the Gandhi family.





On the term 'AP', he said there are so many people who could have this abbreviation and "we have the Gujarat Chief Minister whose initials are also AP...on such things they are labelling the allegations", he added.





Continuing his tirade against the Modi government, Scindia said "you have not been able to get the responses from those countries in two years time ...It was our Defence Minister who stated that corruption is there in the deal and we will investigate that."





Despite being blacklisted, the NDA government permitted the company to send RFI (request for information) some contracts like in the Naval Utility helicopters.





"Why in the FIPB meeting on October 8, 2015, permission was given to AgustaWestland which was a blacklisted company? Answer this ... why Finmeccanica was invited to participate in a Make in India programme," he asked.





"Your (BJP) party president said that this is a bogus company and you invited a bogus company in Make in India. They have to give the answers to this," the Congress member said.





"Today we have put our balance sheet in front of you. Show us your balance sheet of two years. Tell the country that in two years what you have done," he said.





Moving the calling attention motion, Anurag Thakur (BJP) said the way Defence Minister has put his points, truth will come out about "who all have taken the bribe. Was only Tyagi family involved in this?"



"How much time the Defence Minister will take in this investigation, I want to know. If there is any corruption involved, it should be investigated," he said.



Thakur took on the Congress saying the party has "completely ruined the system" and also indulged in corrupt practices.



In all the defence scams, Congress' involvement is there. "Who are the people involved in the AgustaWestland deal? Why was the company favoured," he asked.



He also asked why an Italian company was chosen for the deal and why the parameters of height changed and "if they were not the original equipment manufacturers, why the contract was given to that company".



Why the field trials happened in a foreign country and not in India, he asked, alleging that people like the SPG chief and the National Security Advisor were given constitutional posts so that they could not be questioned.



Thakur said the contract was given to the company by "going out of way. So what does this mean? It means that people took bribe in this. Those people should be put behind bars."



Raising similar issues, Nishikant Dubey (BJP) also questioned the basis of the previous government gave the contract. "The names which have come should be investigated," he added.

Congress today sought to put the onus on the ruling NDA government about the irregularities in Agusta Westland helicopter deal and demanded a Supreme Court monitored probe in the issue.
Terming the state of medical colleges in the country as "rotten", the Supreme Court today imposed a penalty of Rs 5 crore on an Odisha-based private medical college for raising the number of seats from 100 to 150 in an academic year and "playing with the future of students".





"Costs of Rs 5 crores are imposed on Kalinga Institute of Medical Sciences (KIMS) for playing with the future of its students and the mess that it has created for them. The amount will be deposited by KIMS in the Registry of this Court within six weeks from today.



"The amount of Rs 5 crores so deposited towards costs shall not be recovered in any manner from any student or adjusted against the fees or provision of facilities for students of any present or subsequent batches," a bench comprising Justices M B Lokur and N V Ramana said.



The bench, however, protected the students who were admitted in the year 2015-16 in the courses run by the medical college administration.



"The admission granted to the 50 students pursuant to the order of the High Court dated September 25, 2015 and the provisional permission granted by the central government only on September 28, 2015 shall not be disturbed.



"How the students will complete their course of studies without putting undue pressure on them is entirely for MCI and KIMS and other concerned authorities to decide," it said.



The top court also restrained KIMS from increasing the intake of students from 100 to 150 for the MBBS course for the academic year 2016-17 and 2017-2018.



The order came on an appeal filed by MCI challenging the Orissa High Court's verdict which had permitted KIMS to admit additional 50 students in academic year 2015-16.



The private medical college had moved the High Court, challenging MCI's order disallowing admission in MBBS and BDS streams citing lack of adequate infrastructure.



Referring to the factual aspects of the case, the court said that "this appeal is yet another chapter in the sordid saga of admissions to medical colleges. Undoubtedly, there is something rotten in the state of medical colleges."



"Unless the concerned Ministries in the Government of India take a far more proactive role in ensuring that medical colleges have all the necessary facilities, clinical materials, teaching faculty, staff, accommodation etc the health of the people of our country will take a hit in the coming years due to inadequately educated doctors. Quality in medical education is equally important, if not more, than quantity," the bench said.



Questioning the inspection procedure of medical colleges, the court said Medical Council of India (MCI) should, in consultation with the Centre, prepare a Standard Operating Procedure for conducting an inspection as required by the Medical Council of India Establishment of Medical College Regulations, 1999.



"The Standard Operating Procedure should be finalized within a period of six weeks from today and should be accessible on the website of the MCI.



"To introduce transparency and accountability in the medical colleges, the report or assessment of the Inspection Team should be put on the website of the concerned medical college as also on the website of the MCI so that potential students are aware of what is likely to be in store for them," the bench said.
The Karavali Karnataka Lorry Malakara Sangha has demanded a hike in freight charges for transporting goods.





Speaking to mediapersons, associations office-bearer Varun Chowta said lorry owners have been bearing the brunt of frequent hike in diesel price and other spare parts and are finding the going tough.



He said lorry woners get Rs 980 for per tonne cargo loaded and transported at present. But the maximum limit for loading the cargo is 21 tonnes. If a lorry with 21 tonne weighing goods has to be taken to Bellary, the owner will get only Rs 19,950; in this, Rs 12,000 will have to spent on the diesel. The remaining should be paid to the driver and cleaners salary, bank loan and other expenditures, he explained.



He said the overloading of trucks should be checked. The transport agencies, in a bid to earn profit, overload the goods. The government should direct all the transport agencies not to overload the trucks and if the rules are flouted, the agency should be held responsible, he demanded.



Chowta warned, If the demands of the Sangha are not met, then all the trucks across Karnataka will stay off the road for an indefinite period till the demands are met. This will, in turn, result in the suspension of movement of all goods, including food grains and other essential commodities.



He charged that some transport agencies in harbour weigh the trucks outside and provide the fake bill stating that they were weighed inside harbour area. As per the rules, the weighing of goods and lorries inside harbour is mandatory, he added.



He said that there is 24-hour loading and unloading of goods facility at the Port. In the recent times, the entry of lorries inside the port after 3.30 pm has been stopped. As a result, the lorry drivers have to wait till the following day to load or unload the goods. There is a delay in loading of goods during public holidays. As a result, the owners are incurring losses and there is a need to introduce a system for loading and unloading of goods throughout the day, he demanded.



Chowta said, The transport agencies collect PAN card from the lorry owners. But they failed to issue TDS certificates to the lorry owners while claiming the concession from the government.



Secretary of the association Sachin Kulai said the lorries registered in Karnataka should be used to transport goods within the state as per the rules. But some transport agencies have been issuing duplicate bills for the lorries from outside the state and allowing them to transport the goods. The Carrying and Forwarding (C and F) Agencies have been making the lorries to wait for five to seven days while clearing the goods from the godown. As a result, the lorry owners are incurring losses. There is a need to fix a time frame for clearing the goods and if there is any delay, then the loss incurred by the lorry owners should be borne by the C and F agencies, Kulai said.


When the priests learned to their horror that a woman had somehow slipped into the holy shrine of Shani Shingnapur temple to pray late last year, they immediately began an elaborate purification ceremony, dousing the deity in yogurt and honey.



They then suspended a temple security guard for the laxity that allowed a woman to enter the shrine for the first time anyone could remember in its 350-year history.



The story might have ended there, had it not caught the eye of a 31-year-old activist, Trupti Desai, who to that point had limited her activities primarily to demanding rights for slum dwellers. That the priests would be upset came as no surprise to Desai, a practising Hindu who fasts every Saturday. She was well aware that the Shani temple and many others forbid women to enter the innermost sanctums, believing that they are unclean because they menstruate or that they might disturb the celibate deity and priests.



But something about the frenzied cleansing spurred her outrage. That was intolerable to me, she said. God doesnt discriminate between men and women. Why should religion?



Since that episode in November, Desai has emerged at the forefront of a growing campaign for gender equality in religion, leading bands of women into the holy sanctums of temples, often in the face of violent assaults by priests and others that have been recorded on cameras and broadcast on national television.



The public attention has forced the government in her home state of Maharashtra to enforce a court judgment allowing women into any part of a temple a man can enter. This week, she crossed religious lines to join a peaceful protest with Muslim groups against the exclusion of women from the tomb of the Haji Ali mosque in Mumbai.



Her efforts have also beamed an unaccustomedly bright light on 2 cases before the Supreme Court. One challenges the exclusion of women and girls of ages 10-50 from entering a sacred temple in south India, which Desai said she planned to visit next month and demand to enter. The other concerns the right of Muslim men to divorce their wives by uttering the word talaq 3 times.



Religion is the final frontier in gender discrimination, said Indira Jaising, a senior SC advocate who is arguing both cases. Now, the challenge is coming from the heart of these communities.



The Constitution forbids discrimination, so women have generally received support in the courts. But they have faced tough resistance from traditional male hierarchies in translating those victories into actual rights. That is where Desai comes in. She is hard to pigeonhole. Her traditional Hindu background confuses some longtime feminists who support her campaign but cannot figure out her motivations.



Vidya Bal, 80, a feminist and atheist who for decades has run a group fighting violence against women, said she had met Desai and found her to be a dashing and bold lady. But she said she also found that they did not share the same intellectual understanding of womens issues.



Desai was raised in Pune, a bustling satellite city. She said her father left home for an ashram when she was a toddler, and her mother had to raise her and 2 siblings by herself.

Even as she studied home science in college, Desai was drifting into social activism, fighting with local authorities to ensure that slum dwellers in her area received the government benefits to which they were entitled.



Before long, she became a leader in an anti-corruption protest against a local bank, and in 2010, she formed an organisation called the Bhumata Brigade, or Mother Earth Brigade, to take on a range of issues. Along the way, she married a businessman, and she now has a 7-year-old son. Desai does not speak English, so she spoke in Hindi.



After reading about the episode at the Shani temple, she raised the issue with her Bhumata group, and they immediately supported the idea of a campaign to enter the sacred sanctums of temples.



On December 20, Desai and several women drove 3 hours east to the Shani temple and tried to enter the shrine. They were stopped by security guards, and it immediately drew national attention. When Desai asked local authorities for help, they responded by calling a curfew for 2 weeks and barring the women from the area.



Right to worship

Separately, 2 other women, also from Pune, won a court order directing government officials to ensure women could enter the same places of worship as men. Armed with that order, Desai returned to the Shani temple on April 8, and this time the police escorted her into the inner sanctum, which she entered unimpeded.



Within a week, she was at the Mahalaxmi Temple, dedicated to the goddess of power and dating to the seventh century. The Devasthan Management Committee, which oversees the temple and more than 3,000 others, decided to allow her to enter, said Shubhangi Sathe, 36, the committee secretary.



But the priests had other ideas. They got violent and there was a scuffle between her and them, and they beat her and the other women up, said Sathe, who reviewed television footage of the brawl. She said 5 temple priests and 2 others were arrested.



We were lucky to get out alive, Desai said. Undeterred, Desai continued her journey several days later, driving 5 hours north to the next target, Trimbakeshwar temple, an exceedingly holy place because Lord Shiva is represented there in the Hindu holy trinity, together with Brahma and Vishnu.



When Desai and a handful of other women arrived at the temple before sunrise, they found a contingent of 40 police officers gathered around the ornately carved black stone building. But the officers were there not to block the women but to ensure their entrance.



At the edge of the inner sanctum, a hush fell as Desai and her group waited with a clutch of police and temple officials for the clock to strike 6 am, when they would be allowed into the inner sanctum. Suddenly, voices were raised, and Desai rushed back, with several women in tow. The trustees, sticking to temple rules, had insisted that her clothes be wet before entering.



Within minutes, she returned, her clothes damp, and she stepped through a low rectangular doorway into the tiny sunken room that is the sanctum.



When Desai emerged a few minutes later to a crowd of journalists and police officers, the first rays of sun were lighting up the golden trishul, the spear of Lord Shiva, on the temple roof. I felt the pure joy of being close to God, she said, smiling. That force directly empowers you. Thats why women must get inside.




The Supreme Court on Friday directed release of jailed Sahara chief Subrata Roy for four weeks to perform last rites and other rituals of his mother, who passed away on Friday morning.





A three-judge bench of Chief Justice T S Thakur and Justices A R Dave and A K Sikri allowed the plea of Roy to visit Lucknow.



Besides Roy, the court also granted parole to one of the jailed Sahara directors Ashok Roy Choudhary. The bench, however, said Roy would be under the protective custody of the police with an assurance from his counsel Kapil Sibal that his client would not try to escape or run away.



Roy has been in Tihar jail since March 4, 2014 in relation with a long running dispute with market regulator SEBI.
Mangalore Chemicals and Fertilisers (MCFL) has decided to take legal advise from Ernst & Young on some irregularities and mismanagement related to investments and advances made in Vijay Mallya promoted companies.





Pursuant to the directions of the audit committee at its meeting held on March 9, 2016, the company had engaged Ernst & Young to carry out forensic investigation into investments of Rs 200 crore into Bangalore Beverages by way of subscription to its preference shares and various advances made by the company to United Breweries Holdings of which a sum of Rs 16.68 crore is outstanding as of March 31, 2016, MCFL said in a release to the exchanges.



Upon completion of its investigations, Ernst & Young has made a presentation to the board of directors at its meeting held on May 6 to the effect that the aforesaid transations may have involved irregularities and elements of mismanagement in the company, MCFL said.



The company is taking necessary legal advice in connection with the findings of Ernst & Young, MCFL added.



MCFL was promoted by Vijay Mallya but was taken over by Saroj Kumar Poddar-controlled firm Zuari Fertilisers and Chemicals last year following an intense takeover battle with Deepak Fertilisers.




BJP leader Anurag Thakur on Friday hinted that attempts were being made to influence the AgustaWestland copter scam probe.





Participating in the Lok Sabha debate on the suspended 12 VVIP helicopter deal, the BJP MP from Himachal Pradesh said a Congress MP recently flew abroad and secretly met Christian Michel, the middleman whose extradition India has sought to uncover the bribe trail. "Recently, a senior Congress leader went and met Christian Michel in Dubai... does the Union government know about it?" asked Thakur. He also pointed fingers at the Pilatus trainer aircraft deal done during the previous UPA regime. India had bought 75 aircraft from Switzerland for Rs 4,000 crore to train pilots, Thakur said. Who were involved in this deal? Did corruption take place in this deal as well? asked Thakur.
Congress chief Sonia Gandhi, former prime minister Manmohan Singh and Rahul Gandhi hit the streets and courted arrest on Friday to protest the Modi governments attempts to kill democracy.



As the BJP tried to link Sonia and Rahul to the AgustaWestland controversy, a combative Congress president dared the Modi government to use all its strength against the opposition.



I want to warn the government. They should not think that the Congress is weak. The Congress will never bow down before injustice, Sonia said, addressing the Save Democracy rally at Jantar Mantar here.



While Rahul focussed his brief speech on the unrest at universities and increase in unemployment, Manmohan Singh attacked the Centre for toppling elected governments in Arunachal Pradesh and Uttarkhand.



You must tell the people how Modi is trying to uproot democracy from the country and not let him succeed in his desires, Singh said in an unusually blunt speech.



There was high drama after the rally as Sonia, Rahul and Manmohan Singh led the Save Democracy march towards Parliament. A heavy posse of police personnel stopped the trio and other leaders, while some, including former minister Renuka Chowdhury, were seen attempting to climb a barricade erected by the police.



As police denied permission to the Congress leaders to move towards Parliament, Sonia, Rahul, Manmohan Singh, Ghulam Nabi Azad, Anand Sharma among others courted arrest at the Parliament Street police station. They were released soon after.



At the rally, speakers expressed their outrage against the Modi government over the alleged suppression of free speech at universities, bypassing the parliamentary procedures and levelling false allegations against opposition leaders.


Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar said in the Lok Sabha on Friday that the erstwhile UPA government did everything to ensure that AgustaWestland got the VVIP chopper deal.





The minister described former IAF chief S P Tyagi and Gautam Khaitan, accused in the case, as small people who simply washed their hands in a flowing Ganga (stream of corruption), asserting that the government will track down the main beneficiaries of the scam who received the kickbacks in the Rs 3,600 crore deal for 12 VVIP choppers.



I can guarantee that Tyagi and Khaitan are very small people. They just washed their hands in the flowing Ganga. The Enforcement Directorate is going to ascertain as to where this stream of Ganga was actually reaching. We have to find out big names. We will take action, he said.



The AgustaWestland scam could have been stopped in 2012 itself had the erstwhile UPA government taken immediate action when the reports about the Italian firms corruption began surfacing, he said.



The then Defence Minister, A K Antony, wrote a letter to the Central Bureau of Investigation asking it to conduct a probe into the matter only after the officials of Finmeccanica, the parent company of the AgustaWestland, were arrested in Italy in 2013. Nothing would have been done, if they had not been arrested, Parrikar charged.



He was speaking in the Lok Sabha on a calling attention motion on the chopper deal moved by BJP member Anurag Thakur.



Giving details of the omissions and commissions made during the UPA regime at various stages of the processing of the chopper deal, Parrikar said a single-window situation was created for AgustaWestland.



The ceiling height of the chopper was reduced from 6,000 to 4,500 metre during the NDA regime to expand the vendor base as only four vendors came to participate in the tender process in 1999. Of them, three submitted their quotes and just two reached the final stage.



When the UPA came to power at the Centre later, a mandatory staff qualitative requirement (SQR) of 1.8 metre cabin height was introduced. This virtually threw other vendors out of the race and facilitated entry of AgustaWestland. The vendor base was further reduced with the introduction of 1.8 metre cabin height (for the chopper), Parrikar said.



The field evaluation trial of the chopper had to be conducted in India to test its efficiency here. But, it was done in the UK on vendors demand. The then defence minister had objected to it. But, proposal for field evaluation trial of the chopper in the UK was later approved, he said.



Moreover, the request for proposal (tender) for the VVIP choppers was issued to AgustaWestland, Italy, but the AgustaWestland International Limited, UK received it. This has serious legal implications. They are going to use it in legal battle, the defence minister said.



He further charged the UPA government of having failed to recover the entire money given to AgustaWestland in advance after finalisation of the deal.


Jet Airways flight attendant, Nidhi Chaphekar, who was the face of Brussels attack, returned to Mumbai on Friday.





The 43-year-old jet crew member was immediately shifted to the Breach Candy Hospital for further treatment.



Nidhi Chaphekar, who is an in-flight attendant, had sustained burns over 15% of her body and had fractured her ankle after getting injured in the 22 March blasts at Zaventem International Airport in Brussels, in which 32 victims and 3 suicide bombers were killed, and over 300 people were injured.



The married mother of two children is a resident of Andheri suburbs of Mumbai and her family and friends were eagerly awaiting her return.



The photo of the injured Nidhi was splashed in most of the newspapers and telecast on news channels across the globe.



She landed in Mumbai on Friday morning by Jet Airways fight 9W 123 at around 7.10 am. She was accompanied by her husband Rupesh. She was treated at Grande Hospital de Chaleroi, about 40 km from Brussels, and discharged on Thursday afternoon and taken to Paris where she boarded the flight back to Mumbai.
In a significant verdict, the Bombay High Court on Friday upheld the Maharashtra government's ban on slaughter of cows, bulls and bullocks.





However, the court decriminalised possession of beef from cattle slaughtered in other states.



Relaxing the law, a division bench of the Bombay High Court comprising Justice Abhay Oka and Justice S C Gupte, said: "....if a person from whom beef has been found did not have prior knowledge of the meat, then he cannot be prosecuted. Only conscious possession can be held as an offence..."



The slaughter of cows was already prohibited in the state under Maharashtra Animal Preservation Act, 1976, but bulls and bullocks were allowed only after fit-for-slaughter certificate. The Maharashtra Animal Preservation (Amendment) Act, 1995, which bans the slaughter of bulls and bullocks, along with the earlier ban on slaughter of cows, came into force from February 2015 after President Pranab Mukherjee gave assent. Now only slaughter of water-buffaloes is allowed after strict compliance.



When the BJP-Shiv Sena alliance came to power, Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, besides his senior Cabinet colleagues  Revenue and Agriculture Minister Eknath Khadse and Finance and Planning Minister Sudhir Mungantiwar  followed up and ensured that the bill gets assent. However, there were a series of protests after the ban and the matter also reached the Bombay High Court.



The bench struck down sections 5(d) and 9(b) of MAPA, which criminalised and imposed punishment on persons found in possession of beef of animals, slaughtered in the state or outside, saying it infringes upon a person's right to privacy. "Section 5(c) of the act which criminalised mere possession of beef has been read down to conscious possession of the beef," the bench observed.


Prime Minister Narendra Modi used his maiden election address for the Tamil Nadu Assembly polls as a platform to indicate that those involved in the AgustaWestland scam should be punished.





Addressing a well-attended election rally at Hosur, around 40 km from Bengaluru along the Karnataka-Tamil Nadu border, Modi asked the crowd: Do you have any relatives in Italy?, the people answered in chorus, no. To this, Modi said: I too do not have any relatives there. I have not seen Italy nor I know anybody. So if an Italian court accuses somebody of accepting a bribe in helicopter purchases, what can I do ?



Modi said it was now inevitable that those involved in the scam, whatever their position, should be punished. The AgustaWestland scam has risen political temperatures with the BJP accusing the involvement of Congress president Sonia Gandhi.



Speaking in Hindi (which was translated into Tamil), Modi said the Tamil Nadu polls was not a battle of who will win but whether the state can be saved from the clutches of corruption or not.



The people of Tamil Nadu had only two choices during elections. It was like jumping into the well and the next time into the valley, Modi said, referring to the trend in the state of choosing alternatively between the AIADMK and the DMK, but did not mention the two parties. The prime minister said the people now had a third alternative in the form of the BJP.



He then went on to elaborate on the various schemes launched by the NDA government during the last two years. Farmers used to wait in queue for two days to purchase urea. Today, farmers can get any amount of urea they want. The previous government looted coal to the tune of Rs 1.76 lakh crore. We auctioned the coal and utilised the funds for developmental schemes, Modi said.



Rain no dampener



Modi was an hour late and the threat of rain loomed large with dark clouds hovering in the sky and it even poured when Modi was speaking, but the crowd did not lose patience.



The crowd consisted of a mix of both Kannada and Tamil speaking people and announcements were made in both languages.
More than 250 students of Karnataka State Womens University boycotted their classes on Friday alleging that the negligence on the part of an ambulance driver, cost the life of a student.



Vijayalakshmi Bhavikatti, 22, (in pic), a resident of Nelogi in Gadag district, died of a heart ailment on the university campus on Thursday.



The university had organised a condolence meeting on Friday. The students, who had assembled at the auditorium before the condolence meeting, began the protest saying that Vijayalakshmi died due to the delay caused by the ambulance driver in taking her to hospital.



They said they wont budge from the place till action was initiated against the driver. They also sought 24-hour medical facility on the varsity campus, one more ambulance and appointing residential wardens for the hostels.



The university authorities immediately held a meeting and Vice Chancellor Prof S A Khaji interacted with the students. He assured them of fulfilling their promises within a week. Speaking to Deccan Herald, the VC denied any negligence on the part of the ambulance driver. He said that Vijayalakshmi suffered heart attack around 2.30 pm and she was immediately shifted to Al Ameen Medical College Hospital. The doctor declared her dead at 3 pm and we have records to this effect, the VC said.



The parents of Vijayalakshmi have said that she was suffering from heart ailment since the age of 12 and she was under treatment since then. The body was handed over the parents after the post mortem at district hospital, the VC added.
Chief Minister Siddaramaiah has said that the state government will seek an aid of Rs 11,800 crore from the Centre to mitigate the drought in the state.



Speaking to reporters after chairing a drought review meeting at zilla panchayat auditorium here on Friday, he said, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has convened a chief ministers meeting in Delhi on Saturday. I will impress upon the prime minister of drinking water scarcity and severity of drought situation in the state and will urge him to release a grant of Rs 11,800 crore to ease drought conditions.



Last year, the farmers in the state had suffered Kharif crop loss to the extent of Rs 16,000 crore. As per the NDRF guidelines, there was a provision for a financial assistance of Rs 3,830 crore but the Centre had released only Rs 1,540 crore. The state government has distributed the said amount among the farmers, the chief minister said adding that BJP state president B S Yeddyurappa is not aware of facts and figures and keeps making baseless statements.



The state has suffered losses of Rs 7,000 crore following a poor northeast monsoon. As per the NDRF norms, the state was supposed to get Rs 1,416 crore. But the Centre has said that it would release just Rs 723 crore. Tell Yeddyurappa all this when he visits this region, Siddaramaiah said.



The chief Minister ordered the suspension of veterinary doctor Dr Shivaprakash for not taking steps to provide safe drinking water to cattle at Doddullarthi goshala in Challakere taluk.



He instructed the higher officials to suspend the vet doctor when he found out contaminated water in the tank at the goshala during his visit.
For the first time, the Karnataka State Mango Development and Marketing Corporation Limited (KSMDMCL) will set up mango retail outlets in tech parks in the city during the Bengaluru mango mela to be held in third and fourth week of May.



The aim is to help those working in tech parks to purchase mangoes directly from farmers, said KSMDMCL Chairperson Kamalakshi Rajanna. Talks are on with companies to finalise the venue and timings for setting up the retail outlets.



Details of farmers selling mangoes are being posted on the corporation's website so that techies and other Bengalureans can contact the growers directly and place their orders. The prices of mangoes at the retail outlets will be same as that at the mela.



Techies will have an opportunity to interact with farmers and understand their experiences, she added.



Mangoes from various parts of Karnataka are in high demand across the globe. To increase exports, KSMDMCL had written to the Malaysian government. The Malaysian embassy had shown interest to purchase mangoes.



Following this, KSMDMCL requested the Australian government last week and got a positive response.



On Thursday, an Australian delegation visited Innova Agri Bio Park Limited at Malur in Kolar district to get a first hand information on mango processing.



Rajanna said that the team comprising Bohuelava Zeman, Counselor Agriculture, Australia High Commission, Dr Aishwarya Radhakrishnan, senior research officer, Australian High Commission, Dr D K Ravindra, DGM of Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority (APEDA) inspected the hot water treatment plant, Gamma Irradiation and packaging unit.



They conducted Gamma Irradiation on mangoes and took along with them three cartons, each containing three kgs of Alphanso mangoes. They are likely to place their order in the coming week.



Next in line to visit the Malur plant is a team from the USA. The team will be touring with us from May 9 to 13.



They have shown interest to visit the bio- park, inspect the treatment units, processing and packaging units. They have also shown interest to visit mango orchards before placing their orders, she added.


The Karnataka State Commission for the Protection of Child Rights (KSCPCR) has come to the help of students at Swami Vivekananda School who were not allowed to take the SSLC examination as the school was found to be running without recognition.





The commission has ordered the Department of Public Instruction officials to pay a penalty of Rs 20,000 for the injustice to students. It also sought criminal prosecution of the schools management and staff. The commission intends to donate the money collected by way of fine to the Ambedkar Home for the Aged and Home for Physically Handicapped, Bengaluru. The school is located at Sarai Palya near Nagavara, northeast Bengaluru.



For no fault of theirs, the children were denied the opportunity to take the exams. The officials concerned, the school management and the staff must be held responsible, Kripa Amar Alva, chairperson, KSCPCR, told Deccan Herald.



The commission hasnt stopped at penalising the officials concerned. It wants the students to be given adequate opportunity to take the exam. It says the students must be allowed to take the supplementary exams. If they fail it, they should get another chance. They should get both the opportunities well before pre-university admissions begin.



Every student gets two chances to attempt the exam. It is only fair that these children also get the opportunity, Alva said.


Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar informed the Lok Sabha on Friday that the government will unearth those who took bribe in the AgustaWestland chopper scam, something that was not done in the Bofors scandal.



As Congress MPs, led by president Sonia Gandhi and vice-president Rahul Gandhi, staged a walkout from the Lok Sabha, Parrikar led the BJP governments offensive against the main Opposition party and the erstwhile United Progressive Alliance (UPA) regime over the AgustaWestland deal.



Parrikar said he would ensure that the CBI and the Enforcement Directorate, which are probing the scam, did their job, unearthed the money trail and identified the beneficiaries.



The truth may lead to very unwanted realism. What we could not do in Bofors, maybe, we will do it in AgustaWestland, said Parrikar. The Bofors scam cast a shadow on the then prime minister Rajiv Gandhi and his family, though none were convicted for receiving kickbacks.



We will definitely recover the bribe...We will recover something like Euro 398 million, which is the damage that we are claiming. This process will start now, Parrikar added.

The defence ministers statement came while responding to the MPs who sought certain clarifications on his statement in the Lok Sabha on a Calling Attention Motion on the chopper scam.



Congress MPs strongly defended the partys first family. Congress chief whip Jyotiraditya Scindia hailed Sonia as sherni (lioness) and accused the BJP of levelling baseless allegations and running a misleading campaign to malign her and Rahul.



Congress MPs, led by the partys leader in the House Mallikarjun Kharge, repeatedly interrupted Parrikars speech and demanded a Supreme Court-monitored probe.



Parrikar targets Antony



The defence minister said that the recent judgment by an Italian court established that a criminal conspiracy was involved in the scam.



Parrikar wondered why A K Antony, defence minister under the UPA regime, had in early 2014 permitted Alenia C-27J Spartan aircraft, manufactured by Finmeccanicas subsidiary Alenia Aermacchi, to participate in the bidding for 56 military transport aircraft even after the parent company came under the scanner for bribery in the chopper deal. The minister, however, said that three key files were not destroyed as an officer had kept them away in a drawer in his office.
Blatantly violating every rule against buffer zone constructions, a massive encroachment of the Bellandur Amanikere (valley zone) linking the citys Bellandur lake with Varthur lake is now underway.



Three weeks before the National Green Tribunal (NGT) verdict, the dumping of excavated mud and debris on the zone had intensified, seriously threatening the life of Varthur lake.



The boundary fence built by the Lake Development Authority (LDA) has been breached at several points, indicating a deliberate ploy to take over the valley zone land through which the link canal flows. Round-the-clock dumping by 10-wheeled trucks has already destroyed hundreds of acres of lake land. Vast stretches of the zone, covered by verdant green farms barely weeks ago, have disappeared.



Absolute audacity

Shocking scenes of absolute audacity greeted Deccan Herald as mountains of earth excavated from a nearby building complex site lay dumped all over the valley zone. The approach roads to the zone with the canal, which passed through vegetable farms, bore the marks of heavy trucks ferrying the mud and debris.



The day and night unloading apparently follows a sinister plan. The dumping first started on the private land owned by the local farmers outside the LDA fence. Once the land was raised to over 8 ft, the trucks bulldozed through the fence and began dumping right on the lake / canal land. Long stretches of land on either side of the fence are now at the same height, with the fence caught in between.



Local villagers and activists spearheading a campaign to save Varthur lake say the plan is to eventually bury the fence, banishing every trace of the lake boundary.



The excavated mud from 23 apartment projects coming up in the vicinity are being dumped here. Indications are that a nexus of a few local politicians well connected to a powerful MLA and builders are behind the entire exercise. The daylight violation of the LDA boundary is proof enough, said an activist.



Designed to kill

Observers say the encroachment clearly follows a pattern. Land movers and excavaters are used to level and compact the layers of debris and mud. The exercise appeared well-oiled, determined to maximise the encroachment. Lake activists are convinced that the valley zone with the link canal, so critical to Varthur lakes survival, will soon be endangered as well.



Studies by Indian Institute of Science (IISc) researchers have established that the dumping of debris in wetlands and valley zones alters the natural topography, severely affecting the lake catchment. The natural flow of storm water into the canals and thereafter to the lake gets disrupted, leading to flooding of neighbouring residential areas.


The North America Vishwa Kannada Agara (NAVIKA) will host a two-day cultural event Navikotsava-2016 here starting July 16. This biennial event will witness sessions on Kannada literature and feature cultural programmes.





Renuka Ramappa, president of NAVIKA, said on Friday artistes from 90 countries will perform at the event. She has already written to Kannada organisations abroad requesting them to send a team to perform at the event which is to be held in Ravindra Kalakshetra.



Around 16 organisations have responded to our requests and confirmed sending a team to perform at the event. The final list will be prepared once all the organisations respond to our requests, she said.



Over 2,000 non-resident Indian (NRI) Kannadigas are expected to participate in the event which is jointly organised by the Department of Kannada and Culture, the Kannada Development Authority and the NRI Committee.



Yuvasuchi scheme

The Yuvasuchi scheme, which aims to help and guide students from Karnataka who wish to pursue higher education in the United States of America (USA), will be launched on the inaugural day of th event. NAVIKA has plans to help even distressed Kannadigas in the USA.


Girls have once again outperformed boys in the Class XII Indian School Certificate (ISC) examination and the Class X Indian Certificate of Secondary Education (ICSE), the results of which were announced on Friday.





Mumbais Aadyaa Maddi topped the Class XII exam, while Abineeth Parichha, from Odisha, topped the Class X exam, and Bengalurus Sudarshan R stood second, a spot he shared with three others.



Aadyaa, a student of Lilavatibai Podar High School, scored 99.75% by securing 399 marks, closely followed by Mumbais Jamnabai Narsee School student Mansi Puggal at 99.50% by scoring 398 marks.



Toppers list



Arkadeb Sengupta of Don Bosco School and Kavita Desai of Bhawanipur Gujrati Education Society school, both Kolkata, shared the third slot for scoring 99.25% by securing 397 marks. Abineeth, from Little Flower School in Bolangir, scored 99.2% by securing 496 marks.



Sudarshan of Chinmaya Vidyalaya, Isha Sethi of Mumbais Hiranandani Foundation School, Manan Manish Shah from Childrens Academy in Mumbai, and Jyotsna Srivastava of City Montessori School Inter-College Lucknow all stood second by securing a total of 495 marks (99%).



While the pass percentage of students in Class XII board examinations reached 96.46% this year, up by 0.18% from that of last year, the percentage of Class X board students clearing the examination stood at 98.50%, up by 0.01% from the last years figures.



Schools affiliated to the Council for Indian School Certificate Examinations (CISCE) in the southern region recorded the highest pass percentage in Class XII and Class X exams.



While the pass percentage of Class XII students in the southern region was 99.14%, the pass percentage of students from the western region was pegged at 97.59%, followed by the northern region at 96.36% and the eastern region at 95.90.%

In the Class X exam, the southern region schools recorded 99.68% pass percentage followed by the western region at 99.57%, eastern region 98.30% and northern region 97.70%, the council stated.



All students who appeared in both the exams in centres abroad have been successful.



A total of 72,069 students, including 33,235 girls, appeared in the Class XII exam, while more than 1.68 lakh students, comprising 75,691 girls, took the Class X exam. A total of 13 of 126 students with dyslexia secured over 90% marks in Class XII exam, one out of three visually-challenged students scored over 90% marks and one of the three special students who took the examination from an hospital secured more than 90% marks.



Among the special students securing more than 90% marks in Class X exams, 96 suffer from dyslexia and 10 are visually challenged.


Allu Arjun Trends On Twitter After Refusing To Talk About Pawan Kalyan
The Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information (MIIT) has granted China Broadcasting Network (CBN) the countrys fourth telecoms licence.

Despite CBNs background in broadcasting, the development is not expected to catalyse the convergence of broadcasting and telecoms networks within China. CNB was founded in 2014 by Chinas broadcasting regulator as a means of consolidating the countrys disparate cable TV sector; CBN and several other cable TV firms currently provide broadband services as part of their offering, but do not hold a significant portion of the broadband market.

However, CBNs entry into the telecoms space is unlikely impact the Big Three Chinese operators as has neither the scope nor capital to compete at their level, nor indeed does its licence allow it to offer mobile services. The firms basic telecoms licence allows it to deploy infrastructure and offer domestic internet data transmission. While CBN holds 700MHz spectrum that could technically be used for 4G, the investment required to build out a network and deploy services would make the venture competitively unviable.

Chinas State Council issued its Three-Network Convergence Promotion Plan last September, which is aimed at expediting the complete convergence of the networks used for telecoms, internet and broadcasting. Pilot programmes to encourage this plan have been in place since 2010, but progress has been slow due to the cable TV industrys lack of capital.

There are currently around 230 million cable TV subscribers in China, although as of last year only around 15 million of these subscribed to broadband via their cable provider. The smaller of the Big Three operators, China Telecom and China Unicom, had a combined 180 million broadband subscribers during the same period.
It was not difficult to foresee that Castroism, due to the way in which it had become a reflection of the political practices and personality of Fidel Castro, would slip into a deep crisis when he was no longer in power. His absence, however, was not a result of his death, and his brother, Raul Castro, was placed at the helm of the nation, which has meant a protracted agony for the model, as its deterioration did not take long to become manifest. Late Castroism is this lingering twilight.

As a stage of the general phenomenon, late Castroism is not lacking in new and commonly used rhetorical resources. In this article I take the liberty of suggesting some of these new ones, mainly drawn from the language employed by the official media outlets, President Barack Obama's brilliant speech last March and, above all, the sessions of the VII Congress of the CCP, which finished a few days ago.

Guidelines (lineamientos): This is a novelty of late Castroism, in contrast to the preceding stage. It is a contrivance based on the reasoning that State policies can be determined by "guidelines" lacking Constitutional or legal status. From this point of view, Guidelines represent an intensification of Castroism's traditional contempt for its own legal and political regulations.

"They were discussed with all the people and fall within what is legitimate, as they are to overcome the crisis, and bolster development, even if some measures are not in accordance with the Constitutional framework" (Alina Martinez, "40th anniversary of our Constitution: The framework necessary for our socialism", interview of Marta Prieto Valdes, Trabajadores, Feb. 21, 2016).

The Guidelines, however, have a significant institutional impact. During the VII Congress it was revealed that 22% of them had been fully implemented, while most of them featured some level of implementation, which had entailed "the issuance of 344 new legal regulations, of different levels, the modification of 55, and the abrogation of 684" (Juventud Rebelde April 19, 2016).

But their illegality is not the least attractive of the Guidelines' characteristics. Drawn up with the manifest intention of improving Cuba's economic performance, five years after their issuance, and with a high level of implementation, the results are meager: "Murillo, who chaired the commission, indicated that during the period there were no major changes in the structure of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), with sectors like Agriculture making a paltry contribution ... " (Martha Andres and Jorge Leganoa, "The progress of reform," Trabajadores, April 18, 2016).

However, nothing deserves more attention at a congress than the progress made on the Guidelines. At the Seventh Congress of the PCC discussion of them was assigned to the Third Committee, made up of 312 delegates and 112 guests, making it the event's most important (Martha Andres and Jorge Leganoa, "The progress of reform," Trabajadores, April 18, 2016).

Resistance (Resistencia): The biggest novelty that late Castroism brings to this concept is the emptying of the weak rhetoric that gives rise to it. The diplomatic rapprochement with the US is the root cause of this phenomenon, manifest before, but which lost, with the event, any residual basis.

As a system of masses, in Castroism resistance is reduced to a collective abstraction, a kind of resistance by all to something  most often "imperialism" or "the empire." The notion polarizes social conflicts and renders daily antagonisms irreconcilable, essential aspects of totalitarian control.

Related to sacrifice, the term resistance is wielded in an attempt to associate the heroic character that Castroism attributes to itself with the misery to which it condemns citizens: "We reached that point thanks to the heroic resistance and sacrifices of the Cuban people ..." ( "Central Report to the VII Congress of the CCP" Juventud Rebelde, April 17, 2016).

Historic generation (Generacion historica): This term seeks to mask the grotesque fact that a group of very old men, 90 and 85 years old, who have clung to power for nearly 60 years, are actually talking about renewal and rejuvenation.

"... some will be 75 or 80, and can carry out important tasks, but not hold important leadership positions, for obvious reasons ..." ( "Central Report to the VII Congress of the CCP" Juventud Rebelde, April 17, 2016).

The measure, which was launched at the Seventh Party Congress, to prevent access to the Central Committee by those over the age of 60, and the phasing out of the historic generation, confuses one generation with another and simultaneously bars from power those who have held it for nearly six decades and the next generation, which naturally seemed destined to succeed it.

Thus, the notion of the historical generation was confirmed at the VII Congress not only for marketing purposes, but also as part of a convoluted political stratagem.

Private property (propiedad privada). One of the most notable changes of late Castroism has been its acknowledgement and appreciation of private property. "The recognition of the existence of private property has generated honest concerns among more than a few participants during pre-Congress discussions ... () The idea ... is to call things by their names and not take refuge in illogical euphemisms to hide reality "(" Central Report to the VII Congress of the CCP " Juventud Rebelde, April 17, 2016).

To validate private property late Castroism not only did not hesitate to praise the capitalism contemporary to it, but also the formidable Constitution of 1940, thereby transcending two essential arguments of its ideological discourse: the injustice of the capitalist system and the institutional poverty prior to 1959.

Homero Acosta, the secretary of the Council of State, asserted at the Seventh Congress that: "Private ownership of the means of production must be defined according to its social function (...) in capitalism in its initial stage the owner of property could do whatever he wanted with it. But the development of capitalism, and various historic elements, led to gradual changes in legislation with respect to private property. That is the genesis of the concept of social function. In Cuba the 1940 Constitution recognized the social function of private property "(Alina Perera Robbio, "Enriquecen proyecto de modelo del socialismo cubano", Juventud Rebelde, April 17, 2016).

The acceptance of private property did not occur, however, along with a general recognition of all the prejudices that had been behind its prohibition, but rather elements associated with its success, like the accumulation of capital and property, which were proscribed: "Guideline No. 3, approved by the VI Congress, and which it is proposed to maintain and strengthen in the updated plan, flatly states that "in non-state forms of management the concentration of property will not be permitted," adding that "neither will wealth" (Central report to the VII Congress of the PCC, Juventud Rebelde, April 17, 2016).

Forgetting (olvido): Support for forgetting certain aspects of history in late Castroism entails several difficulties arising from a desire to retain its political control, unchanged, even as the system's economic fundamentals are undone and it is hoped, nevertheless, that no significant changes will occur.

"The introduction of the rules of supply and demand is not incompatible with the principle of planning. Both concepts can coexist and complement each other to benefit the country, as has been successfully demonstrated in the reform processes in China, and renovation in Vietnam, as they describe it. We have called it "updating" because we are not going to change the fundamental objective of the Revolution"("Central Report to the VII Congress of the PCC" Juventud Rebelde, April 17, 2016).

While the socialist intention to overturn the economic procedures identified with capitalism, supposedly due to their unjust and exclusive character, is abandoned in favor of the rules of the market economy, the sole party and the preponderance of the State are maintained, their existence explained only as guarantors of the socialist economic order.

This doctrinal transformation, made in haste and without preambles, marks a significant act of willful forgetting, and not a merely theoretical step. To put an end to private property, now re-established, in the 60s a considerable number of large landowners were pursued, followed by more moderate fortunes and, finally, through the so-called Revolutionary Offensive, in 1968, even small ones. And, to suppress resistance by them, they were converted into enemies of the working class, and absolutely brutal action was taken against them. The restoration of the market economy by those responsible for such aggression makes the calculated forgetting involved in this action a crime.

While in this way late Castroism makes deliberate forgetting an element of its official ideology, it, nevertheless, continues to call for a struggle against it, branding it a ploy of the enemy.

The speech by US President Barack Obama at the Gran Teatro in Havana was an important turning point for the State's renewed criticism of forgetting about the past. The shock suffered by the Castroist political elite, and the widespread enthusiasm sparked by the leaders visit, unleashed waves of criticism of the speech by the official media.

"Now what does Obama want? Let's not forget how successive governments stopped us, through a fierce blockade, from buying food, medicines and other goods to develop and achieve what he calls for today for this poor and suffering people (Alina Perera Robbio, "Thank you, Obama ..." Juventud Rebelde, March 23, 2016).

"This is why we cannot accept, unappalled, his plea to forget history as a way towards progress in our relations" (Yoerky Cuellar, "The white rose and the necessary fertilizer", Juventud Rebelde, March 23, 2016).

The surprising thing is that the President never said that things must be forgotten. This distortion made possible an attack on a brilliant speech, while its most vexing aspects for late Castroism's elite were conveniently avoided.

The contradictions involved in forgetting the past, towards conflicting purposes, do not cease to amaze the official spokesmen themselves. Less than a month before private property was extolled by the official elite for its social value, one of Castroism's ideological minions had stated in an article against President Obama's speech that "Stimulating private initiative Cuba, when, as a Harvard professor, he knows that the greatest truth in the Communist Manifesto is that it is abolished, in practice, for nine-tenths of humanity, is not exactly an act of honesty" (Iroel Sanchez, "Obama in the great theater, or Obama's great theater in Havana? " Juventud Rebelde, March 23, 2016).

It is too much to expect, of course, that the fickle passion of such voices might point out on this occasion the dishonesty of Raul Castro, or Homero Acosta. They will, no doubt, continue to laud late Castroism and their outdated reflections will, like so many other things, be forgotten.
Vodafone will be offering free music downloads, data loans and attractive voice tariffs for its U prepaid users.

Targeting the young prepaid Vodafone users, who keep running out of data packs and talktime, Vodafone has launched a new pack, called U in all circles across India that aims to offer benefits that are most important to the Indian youth, according to Vodafone. The pack provides you with internet, calls, music, and an exclusive app experience designed for Vodafones U users. The pack has already been launched for Vodafone prepaid subscribers across all circles in India and will soon be launching it for its prepaid customers as well. The recharge packs for existing customers are available at Rs.179 and at Rs.289 whereas for the new customers the plans start from Rs.89. You can have a look at the plan details below:

PRODUCT INFORMATION VODAFONE U - Pack A VODAFONE U - Pack B First Time Pack (for first time users of Vodafone) Recharge Pack (for existing Users) Large Small Large Small Price (Rs) 287-339 87-93 Price (Rs) 287-335 177-198 Data -3G/4G (MB) 800 100 Data -3G/4G (MB) 800 300 Night Data -3G/4G (MB) 200 75 Night Data -3G/4G (MB) 200 150 Talk Time (Rs) 15 10 Talk Time (Rs) 15 15 Validity (days) 28 14 Validity (days) 28 14 Special Benefits on both packs Special Benefits on both packs 3 Buddy Lifelines @ 20p/min 3 Buddy Lifelines @ 20p/min Data Loan -3G/4G 60MB Data Loan -3G/4G 60MB Vodafone Music 2 months Free subscription* from MyVodafone App Vodafone Music 2 months Free subscription* from MyVodafone App

One of the main aspects that the pack focuses on is mobile data. The pack comes with separate quotas of 3G/4G data for surfing during the day and the night and in case, if you consume the allotted data, you can take data loan from its app where you will be credited with 60MB of data which will be valid for 2 days. An amount of Rs. 20 will be deducted from your next recharge. To avail this, you can even SMS <DATA LOAN> to 144.

Another feature that comes with this pack is the buddy lifeline. You can add up to 3 numbers to your buddy lifeline list and for calls on these specific numbers will be chargeable at Rs. 20p/min. Now, the only condition here is that your buddies should also be from the Vodafone fraternity. To add your lifeline buddies, SMS ADD<space>FRND<space> <Buddy Mobile> to 199.

Being a part of the U circle also, lets you gives you the advantage to download music from its app, Vodafone Music. You will receive a 2 months subscription to premium services of the My Vodafone Music App along with the U pack wherein you can avail unlimited download offers with data charges being applied.

To attract the young, Vodafone has partnered with Kanan Gill, Raftaar and TVF (The Viral Fever) to promote Vodafone U to the targeted youth of the country. You can download the Vodafone U App from here and check out other details.
Remember when smartphones used to cost a bomb? The time when you would consider them niche products, meant only for the uber rich? Of course you dont. It hasnt happened in a while, and smartphones have been available to the masses for what seems like ages now. You can buy one for as low as...umm...Rs. 251?

Not so long ago, a good camera and fingerprint sensor meant Rs. 50,000, but today, you can get that in as low as Rs. 12,000. But, how are the companies still making money? Of course, economies of scale matters, but given that the growth has also reduced, its more difficult. In a report by the International Data Corporation (IDC) from last month, the organisation noted a growth of only 0.2% globally.

In terms of making money, there are still some margins. Even Xiaomi doesnt sell devices completely at cost, but the Chinese manufacturer had made an important point a couple of years ago. When Xiaomi had first entered India, it stressed on the fact that its an Internet company, and not a smartphone maker. Xiaomi wants to make money off an ecosystem, instead of selling the Mi 5s and Redmi Note 3s.

This ecosystem model has been growing for a while now, and may finally be ready for India. But, ecosystem doesnt mean software alone, and different companies are doing it differently. Heres how.

LeEco

Personally speaking, LeEcos model may be the best suited for India. Sure, it depends a lot on data, but given everything that the government and telcos are doing, it could end up being a minor hassle.

LeEco wants its phones to be content delivery systems. So much so, that the company actually refers to its products as screens. LeEco sells smartphones, TVs and it even has a car, which, hard as it is to believe, is also going to be a part of its ecosystem. The companys brand makeover, from Letv to LeEco, has everything to do with this ecosystem approach.

In its most recent announcement, LeEco announced what it calls the Supertainment package, for India. It has been in China for over a year now, and LeEco wants to make it big in India. The company has tied up with YuppTV and Eros Now to offer content to users. If you buy the LeEco Le 1s right now, you get a one-year subscription to the content services, post which you can pay Rs. 490 per month, or Rs. 4900 per year.

Basically, when you buy a LeEco smartphone now, youll have the Le Vidi and Le Live apps, which give you access to music, movies and even live TV.

To be clear, this is nowhere close to what LeEco offers in China. There, the company has separate screens, called Le View and Le Live, and it creates content exclusively for its own consumers. In fact, subscribing to LeEcos packages in China can get you everything, from Chinese movies to James Bond collections, and even the English Premier League.

LeEco has said that it will do the same for India, but itll take time. In an interview with Digit in February, LeEco COO, Atul Jain, said, Weve started understanding and researching what Indian users need. Since India isnt one country, we cant just say one kind of content for the entire country. So right now were understanding what kind of content is required in what part and the next stage would be to develop it.

Xiaomi

In a lot of ways, Xiaomi was the company that breathed life into the ecosystem model once again. In China, the company has a full ecosystem of products and software services set up. But Xiaomi has been rather slow to get the same into India. Point in fact, the much acclaimed Mi TVs havent been able to make it to India yet, despite being announced when Xiaomi first launched the Xiaomi Mi 3 smartphone here.

Xiaomis ecosystem is a combination of products and services. If you own a Xiaomi phone, youve probably noticed the Mi Store app on it. This gives you access to Xiaomis entire ecosystem of products, which in India comprises merely a few accessories. Xiaomi aims to build a community where its users buy Xiaomi phones, Xiaomi headphones, Xiaomi TVs and Xiaomi everything.

But, thats not where it ends. Theres also the Mi Theme Store inside MiUI, where you can pay money to buy themes. Its not a new concept, but its surprising how people started taking note of it once again when the Mi 3 was launched in India. In fact, since Xiaomi entered India, Samsung has added a theme store to Touchwiz, and so has HTC.

Xiaomis ecosystem ranges from phones to the Ninebot Mini, a two-wheeled, battery powered, electric vehicle that is NOT a hoverboard. Xiaomi even has Mi Air Purifiers and smart Mi LED lights.

Company VP Hugo Barra, and CEO Lei Jun, have often stated that Xiaomi is an Internet company. What they mean is that Xiaomis entire business model hinges on an Internet-enabled ecosystem. It wants you to buy its products, from its own store, and then buy software from it as well. Reminiscent of Apple, anyone? Sure, you can say so, but Xiaomi sells products that are nearly as attractive as iPhones, at less than half of half of half the price.

Samsung

The grizzled veteran in the Android market, Samsung has been focused on Apple for a long time now, but it would be naive to think that the company doesnt notice Xiaomi and others. Samsung has noticed the change in the market, and is trying to adapt. How? Well get to that in a moment.

First, consider the fact that Samsung has been launching more lower priced products recently. Yes, they arent priced as low as phones from OnePlus, Xiaomi and LeEco, but theyre in the upper ends of the same price brackets. That was step one, to have a product in every price segment. Its a strategy that Samsung almost single-handedly created at a time, and now it has simply gone back to the basics.

Step two, for Samsung, is an ecosystem of products. Enter, the Samsung Gear VR, Samsung Gear S2, Samsung SUHD TVs. The Samsung Gear VR is a niche product right now, and works only with Samsung smartphones (no prizes for guessing why). The Gear S2 also gets extra features when you pair it with a Samsung phone, even though it works with most Android devices. The same is the case with the SUHD TVs.

Samsung also makes money from its semi-conductor business of course, but its only just started selling its SoCs to others. In fact, smartphones expected to ship with Samsung SoCs, other than those by the company itself, are still in the production stages, say reports.

Samsungs formula, like many other things to do with the company, is a page out of Apples playbook. Come to think of it, Apple is the first company to have started the ecosystem approach. Yes, it makes a lot of money from selling iPhones, but Apple is the one company that got users to buy its phones, and then its laptops, and eventually, even its utterly useless Apple Watch. Then there are the various apps that Apple makes, and its users, use.

Asus

Asus hasnt really started on its ecosystem right now. The company has been more focused on selling smartphones, and creating its place in the market. That said, in multiple conversations with Asus, the company has hinted to us, that it eventually plans to build bridges between its laptops, smartphones and other devices. So, an Asus device will be able to interact with other Asus devices.

In addition, Asus has also been working on building a community around its Zenfones, which should eventually translate into the ecosystem approach again.

Beware of the ecosystem..

While not every smartphone OEM has taken to the ecosystem approach yet, its clear that many will eventually head to it. In fact, many believe that this is the way to make money in the smartphone market today. As a consumer, it means that the quest to take the most amount of money out of your pocket is fiercer than it ever has been. So, yes, beware of the ecosystem.

It sounds good, and it actually is great, but no matter what they say, there is absolutely no scenario where you, the consumer, saves money. LeEcos Supertainment system will bring you content, but it cant replace your television yet. Thats about Rs. 5,000 a year for TV, and a similar amount for this. You end up spending double of what you were. Smartphones are becoming the medium, instead of the product. Companies are willing to cut costs on the phones, to make much more through other avenues.
The renders of the Sony Xperia C6 Ultra suggest that the device may have a design similar to the Xperia XA, and may come with a 6-inch FHD display with MediaTek Helio P10 SoC.

Renders and specifications of the upcoming Sony Xperia C6 Ultra smartphone have been leaked by French website, Nowhereelse. The renders suggest that the device may come with a design similar to the Sony Xperia XA. The device is tipped to come with a 6-inch Full HD display, and may be powered by a 1.9GHz MediaTek Helio P10 SoC and 2GB of RAM. The phone is expected to come with 16GB of internal storage and Mali-T860 GPU. There may be a 20MP camera at the back, and a 16MP camera at the front. Both the cameras are tipped to come with an LED flash.

Sony may also be working on two more variants of the Xperia C6, standard and compact. Back in January, images said to be of the Sony Xperia C6 had been leaked. The device was tipped to come with a 5.5-inch Full HD display, and may be powered by a MediaTek Helio P10 SoC. A few days ago, two Sony devices were spotted on GFXBench. While both the phones came with 4.6-inch displays, the device with the model number F3216 was listed with a 16MP front facing camera. Hence, the Sony F3216 may actually be the Xperia C6 Compact. As per the listing, the device has a Full HD display, and a 1.9GHz Helio P10 SoC with 2GB RAM. The device is also tipped to have a 21MP camera at the back.
Numis has placed its rating and target price on Interserve under review after the company highlighted contractual issues.

Interserve said expectations for its UK construction division have taken a significant hit due to a further deterioration in its Glasgow energy from waste contract.

As a result of problems relating to the design, procurement and installation of the gasification plant, as well as challenges with the supply chain that will result in further cost overruns and delays, Interserve now anticipates a 70m exceptional contract provision to be taken in the first half of 2016. This will result in a similar level of cash outflow spread across 2016 and 2017.

The FTSE 250 support services and construction group said that taking full account of the cash impact of the contract provision, net debt is likely to be around 35m higher than previously guided at both the half year and the year end.

Yet Interserve said trading at the Support Services business remains robust and in line with expectations, Equipment Services continues to have good momentum and the International Construction business is performing as expected.

Numis said: While disappointing, we believe the provisioning is prudent and will draw a line under these issues but clearly materially impacts 2016 estimates.

The shares will clearly be weak today and we put our recommendation under review for now. However, all other divisions are trading in line with expectations and we regard this as project specific in the current year with no direct relevance to the remainder of the group.

Liberum initiated coverage of Shire at buy with a 4,700p price target.

It said the performance of the shares since August last year suggests investors are clearly worried Baxalta is not the right deal, with concerns focused on haemophilia and tax.

Shire is down 29% since the first deal announcement.

We've done detailed work on Baxalta and conclude that, although we don't like the deal, even with our base case estimates accounting aggressively for the risks, Shire is still cheap, the brokerage said, noting that downside risks are already fully priced and not relevant for another couple of years.

Liberum assumes a 75% hit to inhibitor sales, a 12% hit to haemophilia, an associated margin hit and below-consensus standalone Shire earnings.

Nevertheless, it stills gets to 9% compound annual growth rate core earnings per share growth to 2021, versus 8% for EU large cap peers.

Liberum reckons Shire should trade broadly in line with peers at 14.1x 2017 earnings, getting to a 4,700p price target even on its bearish, below-consensus numbers.

With the current valuation supported on discounted cash flow, we think this is a classic value play with significant asymmetric upside risk, Liberum said.

Analysts at Citi took a knife to their recommendation and estimates for shares of Man Group.

The -13% performance of the company's AHL fund since mid-February was described as "a particular disappointment".

As a result, the broker tore up its previous forecasts for Man's earnings per share in 2016 and 2017, cutting them by between 35% to 40% to stand between 31% and 38% below consensus forecasts.

Even after those revisions, Citi judged the shares to be "fully valued" given how they were trading at a price-to-earnings multiple 17.3 times the broker's profit forecast for 2016.

That P/E multiple compared unfavourably with the shares' 10-year average multiple of 14.3.

Without AHL, the fund manager's performance fee generation ability "looks challenged", Citi analysts Haley A. Tam and Owen E. Jones said in a research report sent to clients.

That was also the main driver behind their decision to slash their estimate for the company's profit before tax performance-fee forecast from $181, to $64m.

In turn, that revision drove their 2016 forecast for profits before tax down by 35% from $361m.

Man's best option for solving "fundamentally subdued" funds under management and improving its outlook for earnings growth at its main franchises was to pursue acquistions.

To that end, the company had about $500m of surplus capital on hand and no share buy-backs were planned for 2016.

"But we see execution as unlikely," the analysts added.

Citi double-downgraded the shares to a 'sell' (from 'buy') and placed a 120p target price on the shares, down from 182p beforehand.
Stocks in London are being called to start the day with slight losses as investors waited on this afternoon's US jobs report.

The US jobs market is thought to be in good shape but the weaker-than-expected results of a private sector survey on hiring conditions released on 4 May had set some tongues wagging about a possible weakening of the labour market, especially given the sharp drop expected in US corporate profits over the first three months of the year.

On the previous Wednesday, private consultancy ADP said its measure of private sector payrolls increased by 156,000 in April, comfortably below the 195,000 which analysts had been anticipating.

Against that backdrop, the Footsie is expected to start the session with a 12 point move lower from Thursday's closing mark of 6,117.25.

Validating some traders' caution, US corporates announced 65,141 job-cuts in the month of April, 35% more than in the previous month, according to a report on Thursday from Challenger, Gray&Christmas.

Redundancy announcements were highest in the energy patch and in computers, precisely two of the sectors forecast to see the sharpest drops in profits during the first quarter of 2016.

Nevertheless, it is not unusual to see heavy job cuts a strong economy. In December 1998, near the height of the dot.com boom, we recorded more than 103,000 planned workforce reductions. The fact is, companies are constantly retooling, and sometimes the best time to do that is when the economy is strong, Challenger said.

Analysts at Pantheon Macroeconomics were of a similar view, telling clients that: "April payrolls likely were solid, despite soft ADP and ISM non-manufacturing employment numbersLook out too for a hefty increase in hourly earnings, after a run of calendar distortions. The downward trend in unemployment remains intact, but the rate of decline is slowing."

Fedspeak overnight was mixed, with the president of the Federal Reserve bank of Dallas reiterating his view that financial markets "well be underestimating how soon we might move next based on what I have seen".

In parallel, his counterpart at the Atlanta Fed told CNBC that: "I think we should keep the option open. But I am very much at the moment sort of on the fence and it will depend on how the data come in."

Easyjet passenger numbers jump in Q1

Passenger numbers grew at easyJet in April, by 6.1% to 6.37 million, the low-cost carrier reported on Friday morning.

Load factor was down 0.4 percentage points over April last year, however, to 90.4%. On a rolling 12 months basis, the FTSE 100 firm flew 71.13 million passengers - a 7.4% improvement on a year ago. Load factor was also up on a rolling 12 months to the end of April, by 0.5 percentage points to 91.5%.

First quarter revenue per available room at Intercontinental Hotels Group (IHG) rose 1.5% against a background of weak oil markets and earlier Easter which impacted hard in the Americas and Europe. IHG said it expected to reverse the Easter effect in the second quarter. Net system size was up 2.7% year on year to 742,000 rooms across 5,028 hotels.
Three-quarters of EU citizens working in the UK would not meet current visa requirements for non-EU overseas workers if Britain left the bloc. The rate would rise to about 81 per cent once new rules, due to come into force in April, take effect, according to research carried out for the Financial Times by Oxford Universitys Migration Observatory.  Financial Times

As President Barack Obama has made clear, the debate about the UKs membership of the EU largely comes down to trade. It is trade, most economists agree, that will determine the economic impact of a decision to leave the bloc  both because of direct effects and the knock-on consequences for foreign direct investment and productivity.  Financial Times

Sir Philip Green has launched a withering attack on the politicians who have led what he has branded a 'trial by media' against him in relation to the collapse of BHS. The Top Shop owner has written to Frank Field MP and Iain Wright MP, chairman of the House of Commons Work and Pensions and Business committees respectively, to tell them that they appear to be "leaping to conclusions" over his conduct during the period he and his family owned the collapsed retailer.  Telegraph

The British high street suffered its heaviest drop in sales last month since the financial crisis panicked shoppers into clamping their wallets shut. Last months bleak weather and nervousness about the health of the economy resulted in a 6.1pc fall in high street shopper numbers  the worst figures since November 2008, according to BDO.  Telegraph

Barack Obama is launching a crackdown on international tax evasion in response to recent disclosures in the Panama Papers revealing the scale of offshore financial activity. In a series of initiatives announced by the White House on Thursday night, the president will take executive action to close loopholes used by foreigners in the US and call on Congress to pass legislation.  Guardian

The Excalibur Steel management buyout has emerged as the frontrunner to rescue Tata Steel UK, although concerns about funding and pensions could still derail the bid. Sources close to the sale process said the proposed buyout, supported by Welsh billionaire Sir Terry Matthews, is the most credible business plan, but questions over funding and the pension scheme need to be resolved.  Guardian

Reckitt Benckiser has become the latest company to suffer a shareholder rebellion over pay, with nearly a fifth of votes at its annual meeting cast against the chief executives 23 million package. Eighteen per cent of voting shareholders in Reckitt, whose products include Dettol and Nurofen, opposed the pay of Rakesh Kapoor yesterday, in the latest sign of defiance among investors relating to executive compensation.  The Times
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Ohio students' test scores down in math, reading: 5 takeaways

Reading and math scores for children across Ohio and the country declined significantly during the COVID-19 pandemic, new national data show.
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A Canadian company, backed by a Japanese metals firm, is spending millions to explore a copper and zinc deposit.



By DAN JOLING

Associated Press

ANCHORAGE, Alaska  In early winter, after most tourists have fled Alaska, another kind of visitor flies in: bald eagles, up to 4,000 of them.

In the world's largest congregation of bald eagles, they gather along the Chilkat River in southeast Alaska to feast on salmon carcasses washed downstream after spawning. Well after other rivers have frozen, the river remains open.





. . .
Foreign investors in Vermont resort discover it was 8-year fraud scheme'

The SEC accuses the owner of Jay Peak ski resort of running a Ponzi-like scheme that misused more than half of the $400 million raised through the EB-5 visa program.



By LISA RATHKE

Associated Press

MONTPELIER, Vt.  Foreigners who had been banking on their investments in a biomedical research facility and a hotel and rental cottage project in northern Vermont to get green cards are scrambling to find a backup now that the project's developers are accused of misusing hundreds of millions of dollars of investors' money in what investigators called a massive eight-year fraud scheme.

Wei Wang and his wife, who are from Beijing and living in Houston after graduate school, had hoped their investment of more than a half-million dollars would lead them down the road to starting a restaurant.

We were doing our business plans for the restaurant when this came up, so we have to change everything, Wang said. It's hard to accept that we may lose all of our almost 600K.

Wang said he recently contacted about 30 other Chinese investors, of the 166 foreigners who chipped in a total of about $83 million in the biomedical research project, to see if they might be able to work together to protect their immigration status and money.

The federal Securities and Exchange Commission and the state of Vermont last month accused Ariel Quiros  owner of Jay Peak, a large ski resort in the state  and the resort's president of misusing in Ponzi-like fashion more than half of nearly $400 million raised from foreign investors for developments through a special visa program. The EB-5 program offers foreign investors a chance at residency for investments in projects that create jobs.

Quiros also is accused in the civil complaints of pilfering $50 million of investor funds for his personal use, including to buy the Jay Peak and Burke Mountain ski resorts, a Trump Place luxury condo in New York, and to pay personal income taxes. Both Quiros and Jay Peak president Bill Stenger have said they will be cleared of wrongdoing.

The case is one of several around the country in which the EB-5 program was allegedly used to defraud hundreds of investors out of tens of millions of dollars.

One investor on Tuesday filed a class-action lawsuit in Miami against Quiros, Stenger, the Raymond James financial firm and Quiros' then-son-in-law who was working at the firm. The lawsuit is seeking to recover funds the investor says were misused, commingled and stolen.

The status of investor funds related to the litigation ultimately will be decided by the courts, the state of Vermont said. The federal receiver overseeing the projects amid the fraud allegations said he is attempting to protect both the investors' immigration status and the investments.

Five of the eight projects connected to Quiros and Stenger have been completed and are operating, including Jay Peak Hotel, an indoor water park, ice arena and golf course; the Jay Peak Golf and Mountain Suites; and the Jay Peak Lodge and Townhouses.

But the biomedical research plant, which was expected to bring 450 jobs, is unlikely to happen, Democratic Gov. Peter Shumlin said last month.

Federal receiver Michael Goldberg expects both Jay Peak and Burke Mountain resorts, including a new hotel at Burke that has not yet opened, to be sold.

Antonius Van Usen, of Utrecht, the Netherlands, said he had several options, including a life insurance company in Seattle and other commercial ventures, but chose to invest in the Jay Peak hotel and water park in 2008 because the Vermont government was in favor of the project and said it would monitor it, he said.

For a layman as me, that gave me confidence, said Van Usen, whose son at the time wanted to study in the U.S. The project was completed, and he had the conditions removed on his visa in 2011. Now he wonders if he'll get a return on his investment.

It's not that we have to eat grass from now on, but I mean I have to work hard for my $500,000, said Van Usen, a builder, who has a property management company and does some real estate.

While EB-5 investors can hope for a return on their investment, there's no guarantee they will receive one, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

The state also has since changed the structure of the EB-5 regional program to provide more financial oversight.

Felipe Vieira, of Brazil, said he decided to invest in the Jay Peak Hotel Suites Stateside project to create a more secure life for his small family. He said he made the decision after vacationing in Stowe, Vermont, when his then-8-year-old daughter said she wanted to stay.

He sold a small farm about two hours outside of Rio and an apartment in the city and moved to Stowe, Vermont, where he loves living but worries that he and his wife and daughter may not be able to stay. They could return to Brazil, he said, but would rather stay in Vermont.

He said he is in contact with other investors so they can communicate their main concerns to officials as a group.

Some investors have expressed interest in chipping in more money to make sure the projects are completed and jobs are created, said Michael Goldberg, the federal receiver. Vieira, who works as a business analyst, said he's out of money to do that.

He said he has expenses of lawyers, moving, housing, and next year his daughter is going to college.

To tell the truth, I don't have money, he said.




More than 400 Air National Guard and Air Force Reserve Airmen from across the country gathered May 2-6 to be certified on the militarys Modular Airborne Fire Fighting System, known as MAFFS, in preparation for the 2016 wildland fire season.Airmen from four ANG wings, together with the AF Reserves 302nd Airlift Wing

, took part in classroom-based briefings and training as well as C-130 flying operations. Military flight instructors trained alongside U.S. Forest Service aircrew flying in mountainous terrain over simulated fire lines, while ground crew members honed their skills servicing the aircraft and reloading the MAFFS units at the tanker base located at Channel Islands Air National Guard Station in Port Hueneme, California. Military and civilian agencies synchronize and coordinate during this training in order to ensure fluid processes during firefighting operations.

Col. Scott Sanders, MAFFS Air Expeditionary Group commander, said the training had gone well for aircrews this year.MAFFS is an inter-agency partnership. We train as we fight-together. It is far and away one of our most satisfying missions, said Sanders, who is assigned to the 153rd AW, Wyoming ANG. One of the reasons we enjoy flying it is to see the immediate results of our efforts."Throughout certification week, 80 C-130 aircrews will have flown approximately 200 training sorties, performing targeted water drops in the mountains of Southern Californias Angeles National Forest. Once flying operations end, it's estimated that 1.5 million gallons of water will have been dropped.Kim Christensen, National Interagency Fire Center deputy assistant director of operations for fire and aviation management, said the wildland fire potential for 2016 was normal, significant.The 2016 fire season prediction for the country has been pegged at a normal, significant fire potential, Christensen said. There are two areas that are pointing to above average fire potential out West, including the Great Basin in Nevada and areas throughout Southern California.In previous years, requests for MAFFS support has increased. The average fire season, according to California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, has increased by 64 to 72 days.During an activation to support wildland fire suppression, MAFFS units can drop up to 3,000 gallons of retardant per run on wildfires. Retardant is dropped ahead of a fire in an effort to slow its spread, giving ground crews a critical edge in gaining the upper hand on the blaze. The retardants bright red color also helps aircrews determine the accuracy of their drops.MAFFS is a partnership between federal land management agencies and the Air Force to provide supplemental air tankers to assist in fire suppression efforts nationwide during times of high fire activity. The system itself is a portable fire retardant delivery system that can be easily inserted into the C-130 Hercules, converting the vessel into an air tanker when civilian fleets have been fully committed.The Air Force's MAFFS aerial firefighting fleet is supported by the AF Reserve's 302nd AW, based in Colorado Springs, Colorado., and the ANG's 153rd AW, located in Cheyenne, Wyoming.; the 146th AW, based at Channel Islands, California.; and the 145th AW in Charlotte, North Carolina. Recently, the National Guard Bureau selected the 152nd Airlift Wing with the Nevada ANG in Reno to replace the 145th AW as the North Carolina-based unit begins its transition to the C-17 Globemaster III.
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.
A campaigner who believes cannabis should be legalised sparked up what appears to be a joint outside Dundalk Courthouse during a court session last week.

The remarkable moment was caught on camera and features Castletown Road Dundalk resident Mark Fitzsimons lighting up what he claims to be a joint.

Fitzsimons challenged gardai to arrest him and shouted into the court building at the Crowe Street entrance to the courthouse.

The video has been viewed over 2,700 times on video sharing website YouTube.

Fitzsimons can be heard shouting into the courthouse: This is a medical issue not a criminal issue. Stop making criminals out of people for using a harmless plant.

He goes on to say: Why are people being criminalised for using their medication?

Known locally as 'Blind Mark' - Mr Fitzsimons has raised the issue of cannabis legalisation with the Irish justice system before.

He made national headlines a several years ago when he handed himself in to Dundalk Garda Station in order with a quantity of cannabis and demanded that he be arrested.

When the case came before a judge he told the court he began to use cannabis to alleviate the pain caused by his glaucoma symptoms, which caused great pressure on his optic nerves, as he was collapsing from prescription medication and ended up getting pain-killing injections in casualty.

His defence barrister argued that legislation allows for the drug to be delivered into the custody of a person lawfully entitled to take possession of it and there was no doubt the Garda Siochana are lawfully entitled to receive it as it's their job.

Mr Fitzsimons - who is also a disability advocate - has also criticised the structure of Dundalk District Court in recent months, due to the lack of wheelchair access to some of the courts.

The former European election candidate interrupted the court list at Dundalk district court in January to claim that the court was sitting illegally.

Mark Fitzsimons told Judge Flann Brennan that under legislation that came into force on 31 December last all public buildings must be accessible to members of the public.
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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.
Outside of work, we all use Mothers Day as an opportunity to reflect on and be thankful for everything our mothers do for us. But with Mothers Day approaching, it is important that we appreciate the contributions and commitment mothers make in the workplace as well as in the home.

Working mothers often juggle their careers with being the primary carer and home keeper. Attracting and retaining female talent is essential to business success and employers need to recognise and realise the needs of working mothers, especially with ongoing skills shortages and diversity high on the agenda of many corporate leaders.

Indeed, we are shifting towards a workplace culture where results, rather than time at a desk, indicate the performance of an employee. There is evidence to support that many mums in the workplace perform above and beyond expectations  often working after hours or operating with maximum efficiency due to their shorter-time frames.

But more work needs to be done in order to properly integrate working mothers into the workplace, and then ensure that theyre getting the right career development opportunities so that their skills can be put to best use. At SeventeenHundred, we see three key areas in which businesses that are genuine about enabling their working mothers suggests are focusing on.

Firstly, a good business needs to understand the value of and need for working mothers in the workplace, and being aware that when an employee becomes a parent, that it can be a normal part of a womans career journey rather than a career impediment.

Three trends are driving growth in this area:

Greater career ambition; Economic factors where dual income is now critical for most families to survive; Improved childcare offerings means there is a higher likelihood of integrated working mothers and part-time roles.

In addition, for many mothers and carers, balancing career and family requires some degree of flexibility. There is evidence that supports real benefits for all employees as well as parents, and additional advantages for businesses. Agreeing on goals and employers loosening the reins results in workers unlocking their full potential, which increases employee retention, delivers great returns for employers, and improves the long-term success of the business.

Finally, working mothers have a number of responsibilities and often achieve successful outcomes due to their tireless dedication. The perception can be the contrary, with some women reporting attitudes that imply they are less productive because they leave early or work part-time. Acknowledging the significant contribution of working mothers in the workplace and the skills they have gained from becoming a parent is important.

There is certainly still a bias that holds working mothers back in many businesses in Australia. Our culture, to an extent, still expects mothers to stay at home with their children, even when this is simply not practical or desired for the typical Australian family nor is it an attitude we should accept, as it dismisses the invaluable perspectives and skills that women bring to the workforce. Lets celebrate all mothers who are hard-working both at home and in the workplace this Mothers Day.

About the author

Fiona Hitchiner, VP Innovation & Partners, SeventeenHundred
Sussex News

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Yesterday, Tony wrote about the racist impacts of Michigan House Republicans so-called plan to resolve the devastation caused by years of disinvestment in the Detroit Public Schools (DPS). I thought it would be worth a deeper look to reveal just how odious the plan is.

There are several elements that show that House Republicans have no intention of making DPS and the students in the system whole. First of all, there is insufficient funding for their plan to even work. Heres what the Editorial Board at the Detroit Free Press had to say about it:

When is $500 million worth nothing? When you throw it away on a plan designed to fail, to prove an ideological point that has nothing to do with helping children. Fifteen hours Michigan Republicans spent, pulling an all-nighter on Wednesday, to work out a plan to save Detroit Public Schools. The outcome? A package of bills that provides the framework necessary to execute Gov. Rick Snyders proposed reforms  absent the cash required to make the plan work. Its a set-up, one that allows state legislators to swear that they really tried to help DPS, while all but ensuring that the district will continue to fail. Where to lay the blame for this legislative failure? Votes on the package broke down largely on party lines. And that means our gaze is focused sharply on Republican House Speaker Kevin Cotter, a leader under whose guidance of that chamber has produced little of value, and whose rhetoric grows more cloyingly sanctimonious by the day. The Houses plan allots DPS just $467 million to pay down its deficit  thats not nearly enough to leave the district on firm financial footing.

The House plan also cancels all union contracts and forces DPS teachers to reapply for their jobs. Not only that, it would allow uncertified teachers to teach in DPS schools and non-instructional staff jobs could be outsourced to private contractors. And, just to be sure that teachers are fully screwed, it would institute a merit pay system that ties pay to student standardized test scores for all new hires.

One wonders if uncertified teachers would be acceptable in the schools where the House Republicans children or grandchildren go. Im guessing probably not. But for poor, mostly-African American kids in Detroit, the GOP says thats fine.

As Tony said, its racist and dehumanizes the poor kids trapped in a situation they have no control over.

Finally, the House version of the bills, which are dramatically different from the better-but-not-great Senate bills, dont include the creation of the Detroit Education Commission (DEC) which would restore local control over DPS. The DEC would oversee policy and would include oversight of Detroits many charter schools.

Given the DeVos familys nearly single-minded goal of destroying our public school system in favor of their for-profit charter model, its no surprise that their bought-and-paid-for legislators in the House want nothing to do with the DEC or anything like it.

The American Federation of Teachers and Detroit Federation of Teachers released this statement regarding this utterly terrible package of legislation:

The partisan bills forced through in the dead of night by Speaker Kevin Cotter are some of the most despicable anti-student, anti-public school, anti-teacher provisions weve seen in America. Make no mistake: These bills discriminate against Detroits childrenwho are overwhelmingly economically disadvantaged children and children of colorand are designed explicitly to punish teachers who speak up on behalf of their students and themselves. Many of the so-called teacher-related provisions have failed and been rejected when used in other jurisdictions. It is increasingly clear that the Michigan House has turned its back on the students of Detroit and would rather punish teachers than give kids a chance to succeed. We call on Gov. Snyder to declare that he will veto the House bill, should it reach his desk. Under state-controlled emergency management, indifferent politicians abandoned Detroits students to learn in under-resourced schools with deplorable conditions. Through it all, our teachers and school employees have been the glue that has held the schools together. They have taught without textbooks, they have inspired in overcrowded classrooms, and they have provided hope in computer labs without the internet. By eliminating teacher voice, House Republicans strip away our ability to advocate for children, who have been failed by our leaders in Lansing. Its past time for the House to get serious and stop the political games. We urge Gov. Snyder to veto this bill, and ask the House to take up the bipartisan Senate bill that, while not perfect, gives Detroits schools a fair chance and offers hope to our students, families, educators and staff.

AFT and DFT are calling on Gov. Snyder to veto the House version of the bills should they reach his desk. You can sign their petition in support of this veto HERE.

Make no mistake: there are better ways to do this.

Michigan State University Professor David Arsen has created a thoughtful video explainer about where we are with respect to solving the intractable problems in Detroit schools and offers his thoughts on the best path forward. In it, he details the abject failure of the policy of Emergency Management in Detroit both from a financial perspective  DPS is deeper in debt now than it was before thanks to Emergency Management  and in terms of academics. Here is Prof. Arens video brief:

Thankfully, Senate Republicans along with Gov. Snyder appear to be unified with Democrats in rejecting the DPS legislation put forth by House Republicans. Be sure youre heard by speaking with your own legislators and let them know you stand with Detroit school children and their teachers and demand that they find a solution that will ensure Detroit kids get the same education opportunities as kids in any other Michigan school district. Email your legislators or call them (313-466-8238) and tell them to vote NO on House Bills 5383, 5384, and 5387 today.

If we fail Detroit kids, the failure will be on every one of us.
Adblock Plus, which has been in the forefront of online ad blocking, this week announced the beta of Flattr Plus, a joint project with micropayment site Flattr, which promises no less than to revolutionize Web monetization.

Users decide how much money they want to have distributed among their favorite sites, and the Flattr Plus algorithm automatically divvies up the proceeds among the sites they engage with the most.

The beta will launch at the end of the month.

Websites and publishers wishing to participate are required only to sign up  they wont get tags or logos placed on their site.

The full version of Flattr Plus will be launched at the end of the year.

Fine Points

Adblock Plus and Flattr together will get 10 percent of whats donated, said Adblock Plus spokesperson Ben Williams.

Consumers have to provide a method of payment  their credit card number or bank account number, for instance  and specifiy how much they are willing to contribute to their favorite sites, he told the E-Commerce Times. They can choose whether to make a one-off donation or regular payments.

Details involving cancellation and renewal procedures will be ironed out in the beta with user feedback, Williams said.

Currently, Flattr just lets you set an amount, and you decide how much your monthly budget is, he explained. If someone budgets too much, wed certainly let them pull out  but again, this is a question for the beta.

Opposition to Ad Blockers

Its unfortunate to see yet another attempt to paint ad blocking as anything other than a dangerous technology that erodes the foundations of the free Internet, commented Dave Grimaldi, EVP of public policy at the Interactive Advertising Bureau.

No matter what new angles ad blockers employ to appear more conciliatory to content creators, preventing advertising on websites means less funding to keep them alive, he told the E-Commerce Times.

Its worth noting that Flattrs founder, Peter Sunde, is no friend of copyrights, Grimaldi said, adding that he has no respect for content, and was convicted and sentenced to prison on serious infringement charges.

Sunde was a spokesperson for The Pirate Bay, which he cofounded  a BitTorrent site that facilitates the sharing of files, especially movies. A Swedish court convicted the founders in 2009 of assisting in copyright infringement.

Publishers Battles

The conflict between online publishers and ad blockers has escalated of late.

Wired earlier this year began preventing people using ad blockers from accessing articles on its site, offering them alternatives to ad blocking if they wanted to view the content.

Forbes and The New York Times have been testing various approaches to fight back against ad blocking.

The IAB in March released an ad-blocking primer outlining tactics publishers are using successfully to persuade users to stop deploying ad blockers.

Tactics include paying ad-blocking companies to whitelist a site, revenue-sharing with readers, and reinserting ads into their websites even when users run ad blockers.

Ads help fund journalism, the publishing industry argues.

Meanwhile, ThinkPrivacy CEO Alexander Hanff has launched a website for people to report sites detecting or circumventing ad blockers, and he plans to file complaints with national regulators across the EU against publishers that block ad blockers.

Can Flattr Plus Succeed?

Dont believe all the hype around ad blocking, advised Adblock Plus Williams. Weve been sued five times in the United States and have won every case.

Adblock Plus has tens of millions of users who have voted with their devices against the status quo with ads, he continued. Besides, all the publicity might actually help the product succeed.
A hacker dubbed The Collector turned over 272 million stolen email credentials in his possession, Hold Security announced Wednesday.

The hacker bragged online about the stash, which included usernames and passwords, the firm said. It got a copy of the data  which the hacker was peddling for 50 rubles, or less than US$1  after giving him a shout-out in the forum.

We found a post on one of the Russian dark Web forums from a hacker alleging collecting hundreds of millions of credentials, said Alex Holden, chief information security officer at Hold Security.

After further private conversations, he shared 1.17 billion records which contained 272 million unique user ID and password pairs, he told the E-Commerce Times.

Multiple Breaches

The company realized the haul was the result of a number of different breaches, especially since 42.5 million, or 15 percent of the credentials, it had never seen on the black market before, Holden said.

Hold Security knows the vectors of the attacks, but most of the data is unattributed and too mixed to identify exactly how all of it was accessed.

The stolen credentials in that group included unencrypted passwords. In addition, most of the credentials were being traded on the black market but not widely shared, Holden said.

Hold Security isnt the only company that may have seen this information. We make no illusion that this data was only shared with us, he said. Given the ease with which it was given away, it was likely shared many times by the hacker, who he estimated to be between 18 and 25 years old.

The breached data included 57 million Mail.ru accounts, 40 million Yahoo accounts, 33 million Hotmail accounts and 24 million Gmail accounts.

The company is still trying to nail down the exact time frame, but the breaches definitely took place within the past year, it said.

A victim of this type of breach is vulnerable to all forms of activity, as the login credentials can be used to breach additional accounts and gain information about an email client, Holden warned.

Your user ID and password are like your house keys, he said. Once you lose a key, it is best to change the locks right away.

Underground Exchange

Underground dark Web forums operate in some ways similar to traditional social media networks, with hackers posting profile pages and exchanging goods and services to enhance their online reputation, according to Sasha Hellberg, a threat researcher at Trend Micro.

Forums are made and broken by the number of active users and likes they have, she told the E-Commerce Times. They link to their friends and their wares, and they promote each other and their capabilities.

Email credentials can be accessed using several methods, including publicly leaked breaches, credential theft botnets, brute-force attacks and phishing, said Cameron Sabel, intelligence analyst atFireEye.

Corporate accounts tend to be the most valuable to hackers as they are often used to breach corporate networks, he told the E-Commerce Times.

Secondary Breach?

More alarmingly,GreatHorn has traced a security breach that may be directly linked to the Russian credential dump, CEO Kevin OBrien said.

An account belonging to a prominent U.S. venture capitalist began sending a credential-stealing cloud document to GreatHorn and many of its clients, but it was not a spoofed message, had no malware or blacklisted URLs, and bypassed security gateways and made it directly into user inboxes.

Based on our analysis, we believe this was a result of this attack, OBrien told the E-Commerce Times. GreatHorn has seen logins to Europe that the attack compromised.

The clear value of credentials to hackers is that they allow them to not only gain illicit access to the private data of the victims, but also use those same email accounts to move east-west  that is, to laterally attack other trusted contacts, he said.

Unfortunately, there are places on the Internet where leaked and stolen credentials are posted, and when we come across these or someone sends them to us, we act to protect customers, a Microsoft spokesperson in a statement provided to the E-Commerce Times by company representative Molly Terrell. Microsoft has security measures in place to detect account compromise and requires additional information to verify the account owner and help them regain sole access to their account.
Crafting an Online Strategy, Part 2: Where to Sell What You Make

If youre just starting to sell your crafts or other handmade items online, one of the first decisions youll need to make is how to accept payments from your customers.

There are a variety of choices for payment processing, and many crafters end up using several. The methods you choose will depend ultimately on the needs of both your business and your customers.

PayPal It

One of the most common payment methods for small businesses, including many crafters and designers, is PayPal. Its popularity makes sense: Its easy to set up, its user-friendly, and it gives your customers a range of payment options.

Its ubiquity and flexibility mean that you can offer it on your own website in addition to accepting payments through places like Facebook sales groups and from individual buyers.

Crafters processing payments with PayPal dont have to pick and choose what payment methods they accept, said Dan Leberman, general manager of PayPals North American small and medium business unit. PayPal enables businesses to accept credit cards, debit cards, bank account, PayPal balance and PayPal Credit.

With more than 179 million users in 203 countries, it gives small businesses access to customers around the world.

Crafters and other small businesses open themselves up to millions of new customers by enabling their shoppers to check out with PayPal, Leberman told the E-Commerce Times.

PayPal also is evolving constantly, in order to better serve the changing needs of small craft businesses and their customers, he noted.

Were always working on new and exciting solutions for our small-business partners, said Leberman. Weve recently redesigned our merchant tools to make managing PayPal merchant accounts more intuitive, in addition to making invoicing more flexible. As PayPal is an agnostic, open payments platform, were able to implement new technologies as they become available, so crafters can focus on creating and not on how they will accept new forms of payment.

For businesses like Bondhu, which sells handcrafted items made by women in Bangladesh, Nepal and India on sites likeEtsy andPoshmark, having PayPal in the mix of payment options makes sense.

Bondhu accepts PayPal, as well as all credit cards, usingSquare and other methods, said Molly Celaschi, Bondhus owner.

PayPal takes a small percentage, but you can transfer funds into your bank account whenever you want, she told the E-Commerce Times.

Branching Out

In addition to PayPal, you also might want the option of processing payments on your own website. That is where payment-processing companies likeStripe come in.

We want to make it easier to start and run a global online business, said Cristina Cordova, Stripes head of business development.

While the Internet is theoretically borderless, thats not yet true when it comes to financial transactions. Payments are still largely hemmed in by geographic boundaries. By building tools that make it easier to start and run an Internet business and accept money from anywhere in the world, Stripe aims to empower more people to participate in the Internet economy, she told the E-Commerce Times.

Stripe emphasizes its practicality for businesses of all sizes, including small craft and design businesses.

Regardless of a merchants size, Stripe gives them the payments sophistication of a multinational company, said Cordova. They can accept payments in over 130 different currencies immediately, from anyone in the world, and their preferred currency just arrives automatically in their bank account.

Because of its ease of use and customization capabilities, Stripe is useful especially for artistic and design-related businesses, she added.

The less time it takes someone to get up and running accepting payments, the more time they can devote to their actual craft, said Cordova.Similarly, given the creative nature of their work, they should pick a payments solution that fits their style and the needs of their particular website or app. Using Stripe, businesses can start accepting payments in as little as five minutes, and they have complete control over the look and feel of the purchase experience they provide to their customers, she said.

The Big Picture

Once you get your payment-processing methods set up, youll want to monitor them to make sure theyre continuing to serve your needs and the needs of your customers. Dont be afraid to make changes, add new options or tweak existing options. That is all part of running a successful and responsive business.

While youre at it, make sure to keep an eye on other financial and customer relations matters, as well.

I highly recommend small-business owners check outCredit Karma, a free app to monitor your credit rating and send disputes easily, andAcorns, a free app that will round purchases to the nearest dollar and invest the change automatically for you, Bondhus Celaschi said. Both are great to build savings and excellent credit while operating and growing a business.

Stay tuned for Part 4: Online Marketing and Branding Strategies.
UPDATE May 6, 3.20 p.m. ET: Eulalio Tordil, 62, the suspect in Friday's shootings in Maryland has been arrested. Tordil is believed to be behind the shooting of his estranged wife on Thursday at High Point High School in Beltsville, as well as the shootings at Westfield Montgomery Mall in Bethesda, Maryland, and a Giant store in Silver Spring. One man has died and two others (one man and one woman) were injured in Friday's mall shootings. One woman was killed in the Silver Spring grocery store shooting.

It has been reported that Torrid was placed on administrative duties and stripped of his gun and badge from his law enforcement job at the Federal Protective Service in March 2016 when a civil court issued a protective order against him for alleged abuse.

The protective order was filed by Gladys Tordil in Prince George's County District Court, and alleged that Eulalio Tordil subjected her children to "intense-military-like discipline" and physically abused one child over the course of a decade.

The order also alleged he threatened to harm his wife if she left him. It has been revealed that Tordil had a .40-caliber hand gun, a .45-caliber hand gun, an M-4, a revolver and a "hunting gun" at home.

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(WUSA9 screen shot) A police car is seen responded to a shooting at Montgomery Mall in Bethesda, Maryland.

Three people have been shot at Westfield Montgomery Mall in Bethesda, Maryland on Friday morning, and as of 1 p.m. ET the suspected shooter has still not been found. The Westfield Montgomery Mall shooting was soon followed by another shooting at a nearby grocery store, where a woman was fatally shot in a Giant store. Authorities have not yet determined whether the shootings were connected in any way.

Local police responded to 911 emergency calls of a shooting at 11 a.m. in Bethesda, and soon found one person shot in the Westfield Montgomery Mall parking lot.

Authorities have said that two other people that came to help that first victim were also shot. Among the three shooting victims, two were male and one was female. Medical care is being given to the three victims but no updates as to their conditions were immediately released.

Montgomery County Assistant Police Chief Darryl McSwain has said that no suspect has yet been taken into custody, but there is a "person of interest and hopefully we can capture him in the near future."

He said they had "no reason to believe the victims knew the suspect" in the mall shooting.

Police are also investigating whether the mall shooter is the same suspect they've been hunting in relation to another shooting last night at High Point High School in Beltsville. In that incident, police have said a man fatally shot this estranged wife, who was at the high school to pick up her children. The suspect, Eulalio Tordil, 62, as of Friday morning had not yet been located.

The shooting at a Giant grocery store took place soon after the mall shootings, and took place at the Aspen Hill branch store, which is about eight miles from the shopping mall.

Due to the active nature of the shootings, Montgomery school officials placed a total of 13 schools on shelter as part of their response to the alarming developments in the area.
(Photo: REUTERS / Hosam Katan)A general view of the Bab Al-Salam refugee camp in Azaz, near the Syrian-Turkish border, October 27, 2014.

GENEVA - World Council of Churches general secretary Rev. Olav Fykse Tveit has expressed outrage at an air strike on a Syrian refugee camp urging the international community to put an end to the "culture of impunity" in the beleaguered country.

The May 6 statement from the WCC leader came after reports from Syria of an air strike that targeted the Kammouneh Syrian refugee camp, killing at least 28 people and severely injuring dozens of others.

"This outrage can in no way be considered as a military operation targeting armed groups, but clearly amounts to a war crime," said the WCC leader.

Earlier U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein also lashed out at the bombing of the refugee camps in a statement from Geneva saying they probably amount to "war crimes.".

"I unreservedly condemn yesterday's bombing of two camps for displaced people in Sarmada, close to the border with Turkey in north-western Syria.

"Given these tent settlements have been in these locations for several weeks, and can be clearly viewed from the air, it is extremely unlikely that these murderous attacks were an accident. It is far more likely they were deliberate and amount to a war crime."

He said that according to early reports by first responders, some 30 civilians, including children, were killed in the attack, and dozens of other civilians were injured, and many tents were completely destroyed.

'ATROCITY' FOLLOWS ESCALATION OF ALEPPO VIOLENCE

Zeid said, "This atrocity follows a tragic escalation of violence in Aleppo, where six hospitals have reportedly been deliberately shelled, leaving hundreds of people killed and wounded - among them babies, children, doctors and medical personnel."

Mamun al-Khatib, director of the Aleppo-based pro-rebel Shahba Press news agency, accused Syrian "regime aircraft" of firing missiles at the camp in Al-Kammouna village, an accusation denied by Damascus, Agence France-Presse reported.

"There is no truth in the information in some media that the Syrian air force targeted the displaced camp in Idlib province" on Thursday, the official SANA news agency quoted the military as saying.

The WCC stressed its "long-held belief" that all governments have an obligation to protect the lives and dignity of their citizens, and to protect their human rights and fundamental freedoms.

"This escalation of extreme violence is ethically unconscionable and condemnable especially when so many innocent and vulnerable people are targeted in this way," reads the statement.

"The World Council of Churches, together with the churches in our fellowship, prays that our Lord receives all the victims in Syria in His mercy, and keeps their families and beloved ones in His Love, granting them courage and patience in their grieving. "
WASHINGTON  Hyundai Motor America is recalling 33 vehicles in the U.S., including the 2015-'16 Hyundai Sonata and 2017 Hyundai Elantra, because the driver's airbag may not deploy in a crash, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

One 2016 Hyundai Sonata Hybrid is included in the recall.

"In these vehicles, the driver's frontal airbag may be missing a chemical enhancer required for the second stage airbag deployment, resulting in the second stage not deploying in certain crashes," said NHTSA in its recall summary. "The primary stage will deploy as intended. An airbag that does not inflate increases the risk of injury."

There are no accidents or injuries linked to the recall, Hyundai told federal safety regulators.

The affected Sonatas were built from May 29, 2014 to February 11, 2016. The affected Elantras were built from January 12, 2016 to February 22, 2016. The 2016 Hyundai Sonata Hybrid was built on October 15, 2015.

Hyundai dealers will replace the driver's front airbag module. The recall is expected to begin sometime in May. Owners can contact Hyundai customer service at 1-855-371-9460.

Edmunds says: Owners of these vehicles should be prepared to make a service appointment soon with their Hyundai dealer.
Local safety experts offer advice for keeping Trick-or-Treat fun for everyone

As families prepare for fun night of Trick-or-Treating, local safety experts are offering some tips on how to stay happy and healthy this Halloween season.
Ely, Cambridgeshire is best known for its majestic cathedral dubbed the 'Ship of the Fens' because it dominates the flat landscape. The city, which is the second smallest in England, is about 14 miles north-northeast of Cambridge and about 80 miles by road from London.

12:27, 24 OCT 2022
Plans in place for first mountain bike skills area

Plans are in place to build the Isle of Man's first dedicated mountain bike skills area in Foxdale.

The Department of Environment, Food and Agriculture, which owns the land, is working with the Manx Mountain Bike Club to progress the idea in South Barrule Forest.

It would see raised boardwalks and natural stone paths created so that people who are learning to ride can hone their skills.

The department says the application falls in line with its objectives to make the area a 'recreational hub' - it will be determined by the Council of Ministers and is currently pending consideration.
The Reserve Bank says a further rating downgrade of South Africa could lead to capital outflows.

Releasing the Financial Stability Review on Tuesday, the central bank said for more than a year credit rating agencies have been concerned about South Africas rating.

In March, Moodys Investors Service visited South Africa for its annual review. Earlier in that month, the ratings agency had placed South Africas long and short term ratings of Baa2 and P-2, respectively, on review for a possible downgrade.

The impact of a further ratings downgrade on the South African economy and financial system could manifest in the form of capital outflows and potential spill overs to rand-denominated South African government debt, said the Reserve Bank.

The review - which aims to identify and analyse potential risks to financial system stability - said the persistent weak economic fundamentals, the current account deficit, budget deficit and other structural constraints led to a downgrade in the economic outlook for the country to negative.

The publication said although the 2016 Budget Speech ensured the continuation of fiscal discipline, rating agencies are still concerned about the implementation of the measures outlined in the speech.

Rating agencies will closely monitor other factors, including economic growth, said the bank.
Menlo Park, Calif. -- A number of important biological processes, such as photosynthesis and vision, depend on light. But it's hard to capture responses of biomolecules to light because they happen almost instantaneously.

Now, researchers have made a giant leap forward in taking snapshots of these ultrafast reactions in a bacterial light sensor. Using the world's most powerful X-ray laser at the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, they were able to see atomic motions as fast as 100 quadrillionths of a second -- 1,000 times faster than ever before.

Further, "We're the first to succeed in taking real-time snapshots of an ultra-fast structure transition in a protein, in which a molecule excited by light relaxes by rearranging its structure in what is known as trans-to-cis isomerization," says the study's principal investigator, Marius Schmidt from the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee.

The technique could widely benefit studies of light-driven, ultrafast atomic motions. For example, it could reveal:

How visual pigments in the human eye respond to light, and how absorbing too much of it damages them.

How photosynthetic organisms turn light into chemical energy - a process that could serve as a model for the development of new energy technologies.

How atomic structures respond to light pulses of different shape and duration - an important first step toward controlling chemical reactions with light.

"The new data show for the first time how the bacterial sensor reacts immediately after it absorbs light," says Andy Aquila, a researcher at SLAC's Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS), a DOE Office of Science User Facility. "The initial response, which is almost instantaneous, is absolutely crucial because it creates a ripple effect in the protein, setting the stage for its biological function. Only LCLS's X-ray pulses are bright enough and short enough to capture biological processes on this ultrafast timescale." The results were published today in Science.

High-speed X-ray Camera Reveals Extremely Fast Biology

The team looked at the light-sensitive part of a protein called "photoactive yellow protein," or PYP. It functions as an "eye" in purple bacteria, helping them sense blue light and stay away from light that is too energetic and potentially harmful.

The researchers had already studied light-induced structural changes in PYP at LCLS, revealing atomic motions as fast as 10 billionths of a second. By tweaking their experiment, they were now able to improve their speed limit 100,000 times and capture reactions in the protein that are 1,000 times faster than any seen in an X-ray experiment before.

Both studies followed a very similar approach: At LCLS, the team sent a stream of tiny PYP crystals into a sample chamber. There, each crystal was struck by a flash of optical laser light and then an X-ray pulse, which took an image of the protein's structural response to the light. By varying the time between the two pulses, scientists were able to see how the protein morphed over time.

Since LCLS's X-ray pulses are extremely short, lasting only a few quadrillionths of a second, they can in principle probe processes on that very timescale - but only if the optical laser also matches the tremendous speed. For the new experiment, the team replaced the old optical laser with a new one whose pulses were 100 quadrillionths of a second long -- 100,000 times shorter than before and much closer to the X-ray pulse length.

The researchers also applied better timing tools to measure the relative arrival time between the optical and X-ray laser pulses, enhancing the ability to precisely track ultrafast events.

"These improvements allowed us to see what no one has ever directly seen before," Schmidt says.

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Other institutions involved in the study were: Center for Free-Electron Laser Science/Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron, Germany; Imperial College, UK; University of Jyvaskyla, Finland; Arizona State University; Max Planck Institute for Structure and Dynamics of Matter, Germany; State University of New York at Buffalo; University of Chicago; Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory; and University of Hamburg, Germany. Funding sources included: National Science Foundation; National Institutes of Health; Helmholtz Association; German Federal Ministry of Education and Research; Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council; Academy of Finland; and the European Union.

SLAC is a multi-program laboratory exploring frontier questions in photon science, astrophysics, particle physics and accelerator research. Located in Menlo Park, Calif., SLAC is operated by Stanford University for the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science. For more information, please visit slac.stanford.edu.

SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory is supported by the Office of Science of the U.S. Department of Energy. The Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States, and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit science.energy.gov.
Scientists at the Gladstone Institutes have discovered how the major genetic risk factor for Alzheimer's disease causes memory impairment. A specific type of brain activity important for memory replay is disrupted in mice with the E4 version of the apolipoprotein E (apoE4) gene, which may interfere with memory formation.

The apoE4 gene creates a protein of the same name that markedly increases a person's risk for Alzheimer's disease and occurs in 65%-80% of people with Alzheimer's disease. In the new research, published in Neuron, the scientists found that the apoE4 protein changes the activity of neurons in the hippocampus -- an important memory center in the brain that is severely affected by Alzheimer's disease. In this region, apoE4 decreases two types of brain activity that are important for memory formation: sharp wave ripples (ripples) and coincident slow gamma activity. During the ripples, prior experiences are replayed numerous times to help preserve the memory of them, and the slow gamma activity that occurs during the ripples helps to ensure that the replay of those memories is accurate.

"When we experience something new, cells in the hippocampus fire in a particular order. Later, these same cells fire over and over again in the same order to replay the event, which helps consolidate the memory so we don't forget it," explained first author Anna Gillespie, PhD, a former graduate student in the Huang lab at Gladstone. "Slow gamma activity that occurs during the ripples organizes the firing of these cells. If this activity is disrupted, the playback will be disorganized, compromising the memory."

Mice with apoE4 had fewer ripples than mice with the normal apoE3 protein, and they had less slow gamma activity during the ripples. Based on these results, the scientists questioned whether these differences in activity affected the ability to form and replay memories.

To answer this, the researchers tested mice that expressed apoE4 in all cells except inhibitory neurons in the hippocampus. From earlier research, the scientists knew that these mice showed no signs of inhibitory neuron death in the hippocampus, and their ability to learn and form memories was not impaired. In the current study, the mice showed normal slow gamma activity despite having fewer ripples. Thus, slow gamma activity--the coordination of cell firing during playback -- appears to be a critical factor in memory consolidation, rather than the number of replay events from the ripples.

"Our research suggests that disrupted slow gamma activity during ripples is a major consequence of apoE4 expression that likely impairs memory consolidation," said senior author Yadong Huang, MD, PhD, a senior investigator at Gladstone. "With this knowledge, we can now work toward correcting or restoring slow gamma activity in the hippocampus to prevent or alleviate memory loss in Alzheimer's disease."

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Other Gladstone scientists on the study include Emily Jones, Yuan-Hung Lin, Seo Yeon Yoon, Leslie Tong, Philip Nova, and Jessie Carr. Loren Frank and other researchers from the University of California, San Francisco also contributed to the research.
A team of Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) investigators has developed a device with the potential of shortening the time required to rapidly diagnose pathogens responsible for health-care-associated infections from a couple of days to a matter of hours. The system described in the journal Science Advances also would allow point-of-care diagnosis, as it does not require the facilities and expertise available only in hospital laboratories.

"Health-care-associated infections are a major problem that affects more than 600,000 patients each year, more than 10 percent of whom will die, and incurs more $100 billion in related costs," says Ralph Weissleder, MD, PhD, director of the MGH Center for Systems Biology, Thrall Family Professor of Radiology at Harvard Medical School (HMS) and co-senior author of the report. "Rapid and efficient diagnosis of the pathogen is a critical first step in choosing the appropriate antibiotic regimen, and this system could provide that information in a physician's office in less than two hours."

While considered the gold standard for diagnosing bacterial infections, traditional culture-based diagnosis can take several days and requires specialized equipment, trained laboratory personnel and procedures that vary depending on the particular pathogen. Emerging genetic approaches that identify bacterial species by their nucleic acid sequences are powerful but still require complex equipment and workflows, restricting such testing to specialized hospital laboratories.

The system developed by the MGH team, dubbed PAD for Polarization Anisotropy Diagnostics, allows for accurate genetic testing in a simple device. Bacterial RNA is extracted from a sample in a small, disposable plastic cartridge. Following polymerase chain reaction amplification of the RNA, the material is loaded into a 2-cm plastic cube containing optical components that detect target RNAs based on the response to a light signal of sequence-specific detection probes. These optical cubes are placed on an electronic base station that transmits data to a smartphone or computer where the results can be displayed.

In this proof-of-principle study, the team used a prototype PAD system containing four optical cubes to test clinical samples from nine patients and compared the results with those acquired by conventional microbiology cultures. Testing for the presence of five important bacterial species -- E. coli, Klebsiella, Acinetobacter, Pseudomonas, and Staph aureus -- and for factors indicating the virulence and antibiotic resistance of specific strains produced identical results with both procedures. But while PAD provided results in less than two hours, the bacterial culture process took three to five days. The team has now designed probes for more than 35 bacterial species and virulence factors, and the overall cost of running the PAD assay should not exceed $2.00.

"This prototype still needs several improvements, including building a self-contained system housing all functions, further reducing the current assay time to less than one hour and expanding the panel of probes to even more pathogens and resistance factors," says Hakho Lee, PhD, of MGH Center for Systems Biology (CSB), co-senior author of the report and an associate professor of Radiology at HMS. "But we can see three immediate applications for a system that can provide such rapid and accurate results - quickly diagnosing a patient's infection, determining whether antibiotic-resistant bacteria are present in a group of patients, and detecting bacterial contamination of medical devices or patient environments."

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Ki Soo Park, PhD, and Chen-Han Huang, PhD, of the MGH-CSB are co-lead authors of the Science Advances report. Additional co-authors are Kyungheon Lee, PhD, and Cesar M. Castro, MD, MGH-CSB, and Yeong-Eun Yoo, Korea Institute of Machinery and Materials. Support for the study includes National Institutes of Health grants R01 HL113156, R01 EB004626, R01 EB010011, and T32 CA79443; and Department of Defense Ovarian Cancer Research Program award W81XWH-14-1-0279.

Contact for today (Monday, May 2): Sue McGreevey, smcgreevey@partners.org, 617 724-2764.

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."
When you see how difficult it is to get even next week's weather forecast right, you can imagine the challenges researchers are faced with when it comes to predicting the weather decades from now.

Climatologists need good models to predict climate change over time, but to predict how the Earth's climate is changing, they also need to understand how water droplets behave.

"Now, we are capable of describing the transfer of heat and mass across both planar (flat) and curved water interfaces," says ivind Wilhelmsen, a research scientist at SINTEF Energy Research. SINTEF is Scandinavia's largest independent research institute.

Wilhelmsen's research relates to nonequilibrium thermodynamics, and deals with an extension of the theories of the Norwegian Nobel Prize winner Lars Onsager. Most of us will find his research quite difficult to understand. However, it is of fundamental importance, not just for predicting tomorrow's weather, but also for understanding how weather and climate are going to change in the years to come.

It turns out that the water cycle and precipitation are among the largest uncertainties in current climate models.

How water droplets grow

"Water evaporates all the time from oceans, rivers and lakes. Then, clouds form in the atmosphere. Tiny droplets form in the clouds and eventually fall down as rain when they have grown large enough. How quickly these processes occur, how large the clouds become and when the rain falls all depends on how fast mass and energy are transported across water interfaces," says Wilhelmsen.

Some of the uncertainty in current weather forecasts and climate models lies in our fundamental lack of understanding of these transport processes.

"How water droplets grow depends on their interface transfer coefficients, which Wilhelmsen has calculated," says Professor Signe Kjelstrup from the Department of Chemistry at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU).

The research was part of Wilhelmsen's doctoral thesis, for which Kjelstrup was a supervisor, along with Professor Dick Bedeaux.

Many scientific fields can benefit from the research.

"This research is very general, and the results allow us to describe a wide range of processes across many scales, from evaporation from large lakes to the growth of water droplets that are only a few nanometres in size," says Bedeaux.

Scientists can use the results to better understand natural processes, through weather forecasts and climate models. However, the findings also have industrial relevance, and are useful in industrial processes that involve evaporation or condensation of water. One important example is steam turbines, which are the most widely used equipment to generate electricity on a worldwide basis.

"For many years, this has been a missing piece of the puzzle for several important processes, both in nature and in industry," explains Wilhelmsen.

"The findings are useful in a large number of applications, and we would like to see the results put to use," says Kjelstrup.

Started with little

The researchers began with only scattered fragments of a description of how droplets behave. Their first task was to connect the right pieces. There was no satisfactory description even for completely flat water interfaces.

"Now we are even able to describe curved interfaces," Kjelstrup says.

Water is special, and its peculiar properties are one of the reasons why life was able to evolve on Earth. These same properties posed huge challenges, however.

"We had to use all the tools at our disposal--experiments at low temperatures, molecular dynamics simulations at high temperatures, and advanced new theory to make everything fit together. This would not have been possible ten years ago," says Wilhelmsen.

Part of the challenge lies in fact that the relevant experiments can only be conducted at low temperatures. At high temperatures, researchers were able to use nonequilibrium molecular dynamics simulations, where they could mimic on a computer how real water molecules interact with each other in a simulated volume. These simulations allow researchers to capture the anomalous properties of water quite precisely.

At lower temperatures however, the simulations became so computationally demanding that they were impossible to carry out, even on the most powerful supercomputers available today. The scientists then had to use advanced theory to pull the pieces together.

How the curvature of water droplets influences weather and climate

When water droplets first form in the atmosphere, they are very small. They then grow almost a million times in size before they eventually fall as raindrops. If we can determine exactly how fast water droplets grow under certain conditions, we can more easily predict when and how much it is going to rain.

"Since the water droplets are very small when they first form, the curvature of their interfaces affects how fast they grow," says Wilhelmsen.

The water droplets first grow by absorbing water from the atmosphere, and they are almost spherical in shape during this process. When they have become big enough, two water droplets can also collide and merge, or coalesce, into a bigger drop.

"We are now, for the first time, capable of describing how the transport of heat and mass occurs across water interfaces as two water droplets are coalescing. Here, the geometry and the curvature become more complicated," says Professor Bedeaux.

"Water droplet coalescence is an important mechanism in precipitation (as rain) in the tropics," says Wilhelmsen.

Fundamental research

The scientists want to emphasize that their work is fundamental research that provides a new understanding of processes that we have known about for a long time. But at the same time, the consequences of the findings can be substantial.

"We have now figured out a new piece of the puzzle. This piece can be used in climate models and weather forecasts to improve our understanding--not only of how the weather will be like tomorrow, but also of how weather and climate will evolve in the future. It is important to reduce the uncertainty in current climate models because this will allow us to convince more people that it is super-important to act as quickly as possible to do something about the global warming," says Wilhelmsen.

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The research has been published in Physical Review E and was undertaken in collaboration with the Institute of Fluid Mechanics at the Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg in Germany. Wilhemsen's co-authors are D Thuat T. Trinh, Anders Lervik and Vijay Kumar Badam, along with Kjestrup and Bedeaux.
In a dramatic show of physician support for deeper health reform - and for making a decisive break with the private insurance model of financing medical care - 2,231 physicians called today [Thursday, May 5] for the creation of a publicly financed, single-payer national health program that would cover all Americans for all medically necessary care.

Single-payer health reform, often called "Medicare for All," has been a hotly debated topic in the presidential primaries, thanks in part to it being a prominent plank in the platform of Sen. Bernie Sanders. The new physicians' proposal is strictly nonpartisan, however.

The proposal, which was drafted by a blue-ribbon panel of 39 leading physicians, is announced today in an editorial titled "Moving Forward from the Affordable Care Act to a Single-Payer System" published in the American Journal of Public Health. The editorial links to the full proposal titled "Beyond the Affordable Care Act: A Physicians' Proposal for Single-Payer Health Care Reform" and the names of all the signers, and it appeals for additional physicians to add their names as endorsers. The proposal currently has signers from 48 states and the District of Columbia.

"Our nation is at a crossroads," said Dr. Adam Gaffney, a Boston-based pulmonary disease and critical care specialist, lead author of the editorial and co-chair of the Working Group that produced the proposal.

"Despite the passage of the Affordable Care Act six years ago, 30 million Americans remain uninsured, an even greater number are underinsured, financial barriers to care like co-pays and deductibles are rising, bureaucracy is growing, provider networks are narrowing, and medical costs are continuing to climb.

"Caring relationships are increasingly taking a back seat to the financial prerogatives of insurance firms, corporate providers, and Big Pharma," Gaffney said. "Our patients are suffering and our profession is being degraded and disfigured by these mercenary interests."

Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, a co-author of the editorial and proposal who is a professor of public health at the City University of New York's Hunter College and lecturer at Harvard Medical School, commented: "We can continue down this harmful path - or even worse, take an alternative, 'free-market' route that would compound our problems - or we can embrace the long-overdue remedy that we know will work: the creation of a publicly financed, nonprofit, single-payer system that covers everybody. Today we're saying we must quickly make that shift. Lives are literally at stake."

Dr. Marcia Angell, a co-author of the editorial and proposal, co-chair of the working group, member of the faculty of global health and social medicine at Harvard Medical School and former editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine, said: "We can no longer afford to waste the vast resources we do on the administrative costs, executive salaries, and profiteering of the private insurance system. We get too little for our money. It's time to put those resources into real health care for everyone."

Under the national health program (NHP) outlined by the physicians:

Patients could choose to go to any doctor and hospital. Most hospitals and clinics would remain privately owned and operated, receiving a budget from the NHP to cover all operating costs. Physicians could continue to practice on a fee-for-service basis, or receive salaries from group practices, hospitals or clinics.

The program would be paid for by combining current sources of government health spending into a single fund with modest new taxes that would be fully offset by reductions in premiums and out-of-pocket spending. Co-pays and deductibles would be eliminated.

The single-payer program would save about $500 billion annually by eliminating the high overhead and profits of insurance firms, and the massive paperwork they inflict on hospitals and doctors.

The administrative savings of the streamlined system would fully offset the costs of covering the uninsured and upgraded coverage for everyone else, e.g. full coverage of prescription drugs, dental care and long-term care. Savings would also be redirected to currently underfunded health priorities, particularly public health.

The "single payer" would be in a strong position to negotiate lower prices for medications and other medical supplies, yielding additional savings and reining in costs.

Surveys show strong, rising support for single-payer national health insurance among physicians. A 2008 survey of physicians found that 59 percent supported "legislation to establish national health insurance," up from 49 percent five years earlier.

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"Moving Forward From the Affordable Care Act to a Single-Payer System," by Adam Gaffney, M.D.; Steffie Woolhandler, M.D., M.P.H.; David U. Himmelstein, M.D.; Marcia Angell, M.D. American Journal of Public Health, June 2016, Vol. 106, No. 6, online first May 5, 2016, 1 p.m. Eastern. Includes link to full Physicians' Proposal. Article available at this link: http://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/abs/10.2105/AJPH.2015.303157

The full, six-page Physicians' Proposal with reference citations and 2,231 signatures (titled "Beyond the Affordable Care Act: A Physicians' Proposal for Single-Payer Health Care Reform," written by a 39-member Working Group on Single-Payer Program Design) is also accessible at the following link: http://www.pnhp.org/nhi

PNHP's summary of the Physicians' Proposal is available here: http://www.pnhp.org/beyond_aca/Physicians_Proposal_Summary.pdf

PNHP's fact sheet on U.S. health care is here: http://www.pnhp.org/beyond_aca/Physicians_Proposal_Fact_Sheet.pdf

Physicians for a National Health Program is a nonpartisan, nonprofit research and education organization founded in 1987. It includes physicians in every state and medical specialty. For local physician contacts or other information, contact PNHP's headquarters in Chicago at (312) 782-6006. PNHP had no role in funding the articles described above.
LAWRENCE -- In a study to be published this week in the journal Science, researchers describe unearthing a "mother lode" of a half-dozen fossil primate species in southern China.

These primates eked out an existence just after the Eocene-Oligocene transition, some 34 million years ago. It was a time when drastic cooling made much of Asia inhospitable to primates, slashing their populations and rendering discoveries of such fossils especially rare.

"At the Eocene-Oligocene boundary, because of the rearrangement of Earth's major tectonic plates, you had a rapid drop in temperature and humidity," said K. Christopher Beard, senior curator at the University of Kansas' Biodiversity Institute and co-author of the report. "Primates like it warm and wet, so they faced hard times around the world -- to the extent that they went extinct in North America and Europe. Of course, primates somehow survived in Africa and Southern Asia, because we're still around to talk about it." Because anthropoid primates -- the forerunners of living monkeys, apes and humans-- first appeared in Asia, understanding their fate on that continent is key to grasping the arc of early primate and human evolution.

"This has always been an enigma," Beard said. "We had a lot of evidence previously that the earliest anthropoids originated in Asia. At some point, later in the Eocene, these Asian anthropoids got to Africa and started to diversify there. At some point, the geographic focal point of anthropoid evolution -- monkeys, apes and humans -- shifted from Asia to Africa. But we never understood when and why. Now, we know. The Eocene-Oligocene climate crisis virtually wiped out Asian anthropoids, so the only place they could evolve to become later monkeys, apes and humans was Africa."

The paper is the product of a decade's worth of fieldwork at a site in southern China, where the primates likely sought warmer temperatures. Beard and his colleagues Xijun Ni, Qiang Li and Luzhou Li of the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology describe the six new species from jaw and tooth fragments, which survived the ages due to their tough enamel surfaces and serve as "fingerprints" to identify ancient animals.

"The fossil record usually gives you a snapshot here or there of what ancient life was like. You typically don't get a movie," Beard said. "We have so many primates from the Oligocene at this particular site because it was located far enough to the south that it remained warm enough during that cold, dry time that primates could still survive there. They crowded into the limited space that remained available to them."

Like most of today's primates, the KU researcher said the ancient Chinese primates were tropical tree-dwellers. One of the species, which the research team has named Oligotarsius rarus, was "incredibly similar" to the modern tarsier found today only in the Philippine and Indonesian islands.

"If you look back at the fossil record, we know that tarsiers once lived on mainland Asia, as far north as central China," Beard said. "The fossil teeth described in this paper are nearly identical to those of modern tarsiers. Research shows that modern tarsiers are pretty much living fossils -- those things have been doing what they do ever since time immemorial, as far as we can tell."

Beard said that if not for the intense global cooling of the Eocene-Oligocene transition, the main stage of primate evolution may have continued to be in Asia, rather than transitioning to Africa where Homo sapiens eventually emerged. Indeed, the team's findings underscore a vulnerability to climate change shared by all primates.

"This is the flip side of what people are worried about now," he said. "The Eocene-Oligocene transition was the opposite of global warming -- the whole world was already warm, then it cooled off. It's kind of a mirror image. The point is that primates then, just like primates today, are more sensitive to a changing climate than other mammals."

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ANN ARBOR--A pioneering study of worldwide sleep patterns combines math modeling, mobile apps and big data to parse the roles society and biology each play in setting sleep schedules.

The study, led by University of Michigan mathematicians, used a free smartphone app that reduces jetlag to gather robust sleep data from thousands of people in 100 nations. The researchers examined how age, gender, amount of light and home country affect the amount of shut-eye people around the globe get, when they go to bed, and when they wake up.

Among their findings is that cultural pressures can override natural circadian rhythms, with the effects showing up most markedly at bedtime. While morning responsibilities like work, kids and school play a role in wake-time, the researchers say they're not the only factor. Population-level trends agree with what they would expect from current knowledge of the circadian clock.

"Across the board, it appears that society governs bedtime and one's internal clock governs wake time, and a later bedtime is linked to a loss of sleep," said Daniel Forger, who holds faculty positions in mathematics at the U-M College of Literature, Science, and the Arts, and in the U-M Medical School's Department of Computational Medicine and Bioinformatics. "At the same time, we found a strong wake-time effect from users' biological clocks--not just their alarm clocks. These findings help to quantify the tug-of-war between solar and social timekeeping."

When Forger talks about internal or biological clocks, he's referring to circadian rhythms--fluctuations in bodily functions and behaviors that are tied to the planet's 24-hour day. These rhythms are set by a grain-of-rice-sized cluster of 20,000 neurons behind the eyes. They're regulated by the amount of light, particularly sunlight, our eyes take in.

Circadian rhythms have long been thought to be the primary driver of sleep schedules, even since the advent of artificial light and 9-to-5 work schedules. The new research helps to quantify the role that society plays.

Here's how Forger and colleague Olivia Walch arrived at their findings. Several years ago, they released an app called Entrain that helps travelers adjust to new time zones. It recommends custom schedules of light and darkness. To use the app, you have to plug in your typical hours of sleep and light exposure, and are given the option of submitting your information anonymously to U-M.

The quality of the app's recommendations depended on the accuracy of the users' information, and the researchers say this motivated users to be particularly careful in reporting their lighting history and sleep habits.

With information from thousands of people in hand, they then analyzed it for patterns. Any correlations that bubbled up, they put to the test in what amounts to a circadian rhythm simulator. The simulator--a mathematical model--is based on the field's deep knowledge of how light affects the brain's suprachiasmatic nucleus (that's the cluster of neurons behind the eyes that regulates our internal clocks). With the model, the researchers could dial the sun up and down at will to see if the correlations still held in extreme conditions.

"In the real world, bedtime doesn't behave how it does in our model universe," Walch said. "What the model is missing is how society affects that."

The spread of national averages of sleep duration ranged from a minimum of around 7 hours, 24 minutes of sleep for residents of Singapore and Japan to a maximum of 8 hours, 12 minutes for those in the Netherlands. That's not a huge window, but the researchers say every half hour of sleep makes a big difference in terms of cognitive function and long-term health.

The findings, the researchers say, point to an important lever for the sleep-deprived--a set that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is concerned about. A recent CDC study found that across the U.S., one in three adults aren't getting the recommended minimum of seven hours. Sleep deprivation, the CDC says, increases the risk of obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, stroke and stress.

The U-M researchers also found that:

Middle-aged men get the least sleep, often getting less than the recommended 7 to 8 hours.

Women schedule more sleep than men, about 30 minutes more on average. They go to bed a bit earlier and wake up later. This is most pronounced in ages between 30 and 60.

People who spend some time in the sunlight each day tend to go to bed earlier and get more sleep than those who spend most of their time in indoor light.

Habits converge as we age. Sleep schedules were more similar among the older-than-55 set than those younger than 30, which could be related to a narrowing window in which older individuals can fall and stay asleep.

Sleep is more important than a lot of people realize, the researchers say. Even if you get six hours a night, you're still building up a sleep debt, says Walch, doctoral student in the mathematics department and a co-author on the paper.

"It doesn't take that many days of not getting enough sleep before you're functionally drunk," she said. "Researchers have figured out that being overly tired can have that effect. And what's terrifying at the same time is that people think they're performing tasks way better than they are. Your performance drops off but your perception of your performance doesn't."

Aside from the findings themselves, the researchers say the work demonstrates that mobile technology can be a reliable way to gather massive data sets at very low cost.

"This is a cool triumph of citizen science," Forger said.

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The work is funded by the Army Research Laboratory, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research and the National Science Foundation.
PHILADELPHIA - An implantable brain device that literally melts away at a pre-determined rate minimizes injury to tissue normally associated with standard electrode implantation, according to research led by a team from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. The researchers describe online in Nature Materials a new class of technology that provides greater resolution for measuring electrical activity in space and time that matches or exceeds existing methods.

"Dissolvable silicon electronics offer an unprecedented opportunity to implant advanced monitoring systems that eliminate the risks, cost, and discomfort associated with surgery to extract current devices used for post-operative monitoring," said senior co-author Brian Litt, MD, a professor of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Bioengineering. Litt co-led the study with long-time collaborator John A. Rogers, PhD, a material scientist from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. "This study tested the usefulness of temporary, dissolvable monitoring systems capable of providing continuous streams of data for guiding medical care over predetermined periods of time -- from days to months -- before dissolving."

The device is made of layers of silicon and molybdenum that can measure physiological characteristics and dissolve at a known rate, as determined by its thickness. For example, the team used the device to record brain waves in rats under anesthesia, as well as voltage fluctuations between neurons (EEGs), and induced epileptic spikes in intact live tissue. A separate experiment demonstrated a complex, multiplexed array made from these materials that could map rat-whisker sensing capabilities at high resolution.

These electrophysiological signals were recorded from devices placed at the surface of the brain cortex (the outer layer of tissue) and the inner space between the scalp and skull. Chronic measurements were made over a 30-day period, while acute experiments demonstrated device operations over three to four hours.

The type of neurophysiologic features measured by the new device are commonly used for diagnosing and treating such disorders as epilepsy, Parkinson's disease, depression, chronic pain, and conditions of the peripheral nervous system. "These measurements are critically important for mapping and monitoring brain function during and in preparation for neurosurgery, for assisting in device placement, such as for Parkinson's disease, and for guiding surgical procedures on complex, interconnected nerve structures," Litt said.

Other applications include post-operative monitoring and recording of physiological characteristic after minimally invasive placement of vascular, cardiac, orthopaedic, neural or other devices. At present, post-operative monitoring is based on clinical examination or interventional radiology, which is invasive, expensive, and impractical for continuous monitoring over days to months.

Comparative studies showed that the new sensor performed as well or better relative to conventional electrodes used in the clinic, with regard to tissue reactivity as measured by tissue pathology, as well as cellular and immune staining after the studies' end.

The team sees many uses for this new technology. "We also want to develop this implant to monitor post-operative seizures and recovery of brain function after surgery," Litt said.

"Recent evidence suggests that up to three months of intracranial recording may be required to adequately locate seizures before epilepsy surgery or device placement. This is a period of time that is prohibitively long for existing in-hospital approaches. Using our dissolvable electrodes for this situation would eliminate the danger and cost of removing electrodes."

These devices could also be used by heart and brain surgeons for such applications as aneurysm coiling, stent placement, embolization, and endoscopic operations. These new devices could monitor structures that are exposed during surgery but are too delicate to disturb after initial operations to remove devices. Currently, monitoring after many procedures is done remotely from surgical sites, with variable results.

The team next plans to develop more complex devices that include flow, pressure, and other measurement capabilities, in addition to electrical recording, and test them in animal models of disease, before moving into human testing.

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This work was funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Penn Medicine Neuroscience Center, a T32- Brain Injury Research Training Grant (5T32NS043126-12), the Mirowski Family Foundation, and by Neil and Barbara Smit.

Co-authors are Ki Jun Yu, Duygu Kuzum, Suk-Won Hwang, Bong Hoon Kim, Halvor Juul, Nam Heon Kim, Sang Min Won, Ken Chiang, Michael Trumpis, Andrew G. Richardson, Huanyu Cheng,Hui Fang, Marissa Thompson, Hank Bink, Delia Talos, Kyung Jin Seo, Hee Nam Lee, Seung-Kyun Kang, Jae-Hwan Kim, Jung Yup Lee, Younggang Huang, Frances E. Jensen, Marc A. Dichter, and Timothy H. Lucas.

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.
(BOSTON) - An international, multi-institutional team of researchers led by synthetic biologist James Collins, Ph.D. at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University, has developed a low-cost, rapid paper-based diagnostic system for strain-specific detection of the Zika virus, with the goal that it could soon be used in the field to screen blood, urine, or saliva samples.

"The growing global health crisis caused by the Zika virus propelled us to leverage novel technologies we have developed in the lab and use them to create a workflow that could diagnose a patient with Zika, in the field, within 2-3 hours," said Collins, who is a Wyss Core Faculty member, and Termeer Professor of Medical Engineering & Science and Professor of Biological Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)'s Department of Biological Engineering.

Building off previous work done at Harvard's Wyss Institute by Collins and his team, along with collaborators from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, Harvard Medical School (HMS), University of Toronto, Arizona State University (ASU), University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW-Madison), Boston University (BU), Cornell University, and Addgene joined their efforts to quickly prototype the rapid diagnostic test and describe their methods in a study published online May 6, 2016 in the journal Cell, all within a matter of six weeks. Collins is the paper's corresponding author.

Emerging innovation during the Ebola health crisis

In October 2014, Collins' team developed a breakthrough method for embedding synthetic gene networks -- which could be used as programmable diagnostics and sensors -- on portable, small discs of ordinary paper.

Stirred by the then-ongoing Ebola outbreak in Africa, they demonstrated a proof-of-concept color-changing diagnostic that could screen for Ebola by embedding in paper a novel kind of synthetic biomolecular sensor designed to screen for specific RNA sequences. These RNA sequences can mark not only the genetic signatures of Ebola but also other RNA viruses including Zika, SARS, measles, influenza, hepatitis C, and West Nile fever. The team believed that one day, the method could be applied in the field to identify viruses with blood, urine or saliva samples.

However, until recently, the team's paper-based technology has been challenged by the extremely low concentration of virus that is normally found in blood, urine and saliva. Now, using blood samples from monkeys infected with Zika virus as well as virus recovered from cells infected in the laboratory, the team has validated a next generation technique that overcomes this problem.

A leap for paper-based diagnostics, urged by the Zika outbreak

"The vivid images in the news stemming from the ongoing Zika crisis are heartbreaking," said Keith Pardee, Ph.D., one of the study's co-first authors and an Assistant Professor in the Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy at University of Toronto, who was formerly a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Wyss Institute and BU. "We hope a tool like this can help reduce the impact of the outbreak until a vaccine can be developed."

With field use in mind, Collins' team designed a simple modular workflow comprising three steps: amplification, Zika detection, and CRISPR-Cas9-aided strain identification. CRISPR-Cas9, a gene editing mechanism derived from the immune systems of bacteria, can be used to search entire sequences to find exclusive genetic markers. Leveraging CRISPR-Cas9's talent for sequence recognition, the third part of the team's system uses a CRISPR-Cas9-aided paper-based diagnostic to discriminate between strains whose genetic profiles differ by as little as one nucleotide.

Once a sample's RNA has been amplified using a mixture of enzymes and "primers", DNA sequences that trigger replication, a drop is administered to paper discs that are freeze-dried containing a mixture of cellular components and biological proteins. The droplet of amplified RNA activates the freeze-dried components so that the discs will change color to indicate a positive result for Zika virus. While the result can be read with the naked eye similar to a home pregnancy test, a specially designed electronic reader can also be used to get faster results and could, one day, quantify the amount of viral load in a sample.

If Zika is detected, the third step involves mixing a sample with a freeze-dried CRISPR-Cas9 cocktail and then using that mixture to wet another set of color-changing paper discs. Depending on the type of Zika strain contained in the sample, these discs undergo another set of visible color changes. Although synthetic biologists and genetic engineers usually put CRISPR-Cas9 to work inside living cells, Collins' team discovered that it functions just as well - and even better in some cases -- when freeze dried.

"We have tested our diagnostic systems against closely-related strains of the Dengue virus and found that within the first two steps, our system can readily distinguish Zika from Dengue," said Alexander Green, Ph.D., co-first author on the study and an Assistant Professor in the Center for Molecular Design and Biomimetics at ASU's Biodesign Institute and School of Molecular Sciences, who was formerly a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Wyss Institute and BU. "The addition of the third CRISPR-based step - deploying Cas9 on a paper-based platform for the first time - only enhances the accuracy of detection. As we prepare this technology for translation, we plan to validate our system against dozens or even hundreds of clinical samples."

Combatting future pandemics

All components of the diagnostic system can be freeze-dried for storage and transport while retaining their efficacy. The ability to pinpoint a strain-specific diagnosis in the field could prove valuable to national and global health organizations for tracking the spread of a viral outbreak in real time and for preparing containment strategies and treatment plans.

The diagnostic system developed by Collins' team could be tailored to identify a range of pathogens, and is an extremely cost effective diagnostic platform given its paper-based nature. What's more -- the method is robust and could be used to quickly respond and develop new diagnostics in the face of emerging outbreaks.

"In response to an emerging outbreak, we envision a custom-tailored diagnostic system could be ready for use within one week's time," said Collins. "We are currently pursuing multiple opportunities to secure private and public funding in order to commercialize this diagnostic system and make it available to the world's health responders."

"The ability to recapitulate the genetic machinery of living cells in ordinary freeze dried paper provides a way to develop revolutionary sensors and diagnostics in a fraction of the time and with higher sensitivity and specificity than more conventional assays. These inexpensive paper-based tests also can be easily transported out of the laboratory and distributed virtually anywhere around the world. The potential for applications in health and environmental screening, particularly in low resource areas, is huge," said Wyss Institute Founding Director Donald Ingber, M.D., Ph.D., who is the Judah Folkman Professor of Vascular Biology at Harvard Medical School and the Vascular Biology Program at Boston Children's Hospital, and also Professor of Bioengineering at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

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In addition to Collins, Pardee, and Green, additional authors on the May 6, 2016 Cell paper ("Rapid, low-cost detection of Zika virus using programmable biomolecular components") include: co-first author Melissa K. Takahashi, MIT's Institute for Medical Engineering & Science (IMES); co-first author Dana Braff, Wyss Institute, MIT's IMES, and Boston University (BU)'s Department of Biomedical Engineering; co-first author Guillaume Lambert, Wyss Institute and Cornell University's School of Applied Engineering and Physics; co-author Jeong Wook Lee, Wyss Institute; co-author Tom Ferrante, Wyss Institute; co-author Duo Ma, Center for Molecular Design and Biomimetics at Arizona State University (ASU)'s Biodesign Institute and the School of Molecular Sciences; co-author Nina Donghia, Wyss Institute; co-author Melina Fan, Addgene; co-author Nichole Daringer, MIT's IMES; co-author Irene Bosch, MIT's IMES; co-author Dawn Dudley, Wisconsin National Primate Research Center and Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW-Madison); co-author David O'Connor, Wisconsin National Primate Research Center and Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at UW-Madison; and co-author Lee Gehrke, MIT's IMES and Department of Microbiology and Immunobiology at Harvard Medical School, and Harvard-MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology.

The work was supported by the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, MIT's Center for Microbiome Informatics and Therapeutics, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, Arizona State University (A.G.), and the National Institutes of Health AI100190 (L.G.).

PRESS CONTACTS

Kat J. McAlpine

katherine.mcalpine@wyss.harvard.edu

1-617-432-8266

Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University

Kira Jastive

kjastive@bu.edu

1-617-358-1240

Boston University

Skip Derra

skip.derra@asu.edu

1-480-254-6534

Arizona State University

Caroline LaManna

caroline.lamanna@addgene.org

1 617-225-9000

Addgene

MULTIMEDIA CONTACT

Seth Kroll

seth.kroll@wyss.harvard.edu

1-617-432-7758

Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University

The Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University uses Nature's design principles to develop bioinspired materials and devices that will transform medicine and create a more sustainable world. Wyss researchers are developing innovative new engineering solutions for healthcare, energy, architecture, robotics, and manufacturing that are translated into commercial products and therapies through collaborations with clinical investigators, corporate alliances, and formation of new startups. The Wyss Institute creates transformative technological breakthroughs by engaging in high risk research, and crosses disciplinary and institutional barriers, working as an alliance that includes Harvard's Schools of Medicine, Engineering, Arts & Sciences and Design, and in partnership with Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston Children's Hospital, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Massachusetts General Hospital, the University of Massachusetts Medical School, Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital, Boston University, Tufts University, Charite - Universitatsmedizin Berlin, University of Zurich and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Boston University , founded in 1839, is an internationally recognized institution of higher education and research. With more than 33,000 students, it is the fourth-largest independent university in the United States. BU consists of 17 schools and colleges, along with a number of multi-disciplinary centers and institutes integral to the University's research and teaching mission. In 2012, BU joined the Association of American Universities (AAU), a consortium of 62 leading research universities in the United States and Canada.

The Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University works to improve human health and quality of life through its translational research mission in health care, energy and the environment, global health and national security. Grounded on the premise that scientists can best solve complex problems by emulating nature, Biodesign serves as an innovation hub that fuses previously separate areas of knowledge to serve as a model for 21st century academic research. By fusing bioscience/biotechnology, nanoscale engineering and advanced computing, Biodesign's research scientists and students take an entrepreneurial team approach to accelerating discoveries to market. They also educate future generations of scientists by providing hands-on laboratory research training in state-of-the-art facilities for ASU.

Addgene is a 501(c)3 nonprofit biorepository dedicated to facilitating scientific discoveries by operating a plasmid library for researchers. The repository contains over 45,000 plasmids contributed by 2,700 research labs around the world. Over a half million plasmids have been distributed to 85 countries by Addgene -- with 11,000 plasmids currently shipping each month. By authenticating, storing, archiving, and distributing plasmids and their associated data, Addgene is creating a lasting resource for research and discovery scientists around the world.
In a newly published law review article, Darwins Poisoned Tree: Atheistic Advocacy and the Constitutionality of Teaching Evolution in Public Schools, attorney and former Discovery Institute research coordinator Casey Luskin examines the way courts have struck down the teaching of alternatives to evolution because of their historical associations with religion. At the same time, he notes that courts typically ignore anti-religious historical associations with Darwinism.

As Luskin documents, these associations are prevalent and well known. The result is a double standard, as courts hold alternatives to evolution unconstitutional to teach, but evolution constitutional.

Luskin notes that the solution to this problem is not removing evolution from schools. He vigorously opposes having evolution declared unconstitutional. Instead, he argues that religious associations of scientific views on origins science should not be constitutionally fatal, but rather should be considered an incidental effect. This interpretation would have implications for the constitutionality of teaching of intelligent design. While Discovery Institute opposes mandating intelligent design in public school curricula, we do think that it should be considered legal to teach in public schools.

Lets see how courts approach the teaching of origins science, applying different legal tests when evaluating evolution and alternate theories.

When considering the teaching of origins science, courts typically apply the Lemon test (named for the case Lemon v. Kurtzman) to determine constitutionality under the Establishment Clause. The Lemon test states that, First, the statute must have a secular legislative purpose; second, its principal or primary effect must be one that neither advances nor inhibits religion finally, the statute must not foster an excessive government entanglement with religion.' Under this rule, only a primary effect that advances religion can cause a government policy to be declared unconstitutional; secondary or incidental effects are not constitutionally fatal. According to Luskins argument, historical associations between a scientific viewpoint and religion should be considered secondary or incidental effects compared to the primary effect of advancing scientific knowledge.

As Luskin explains, the first two prongs of the Lemon test have been meshed with Justice Sandra Day OConnors endorsement test. The endorsement test asks if a statute conveys a government endorsement of religion. Merged with Lemon, this means that courts often ask, Is the purpose of the government to endorse religion with this statute? Or is the primary effect of the statute to convey government endorsement of religion? Courts examine these questions through the perspective of the objective observer  someone in the community who would be familiar with the full context in which the statute was enacted. They also ask whether the policy creates outsiders  those who may feel they are not full members of the political community, says Justice OConnor, due to their beliefs or non-beliefs.

In cases concerning teaching alternatives to evolution, courts have employed the endorsement test and considered this hypothetical objective observer to be familiar with the history of Christian fundamentalism. Multiple courts have invalidated the teaching of alternatives to evolution because they are said to have a historical connection to this fundamentalism. Using the endorsement test, courts have found that these historical associations would cause an objective observer to feel that the government is endorsing religion when teaching such alternatives.

Yet, while courts have found religious historical associations of opposition to evolution to be grounds for declaring teaching these views unconstitutional, they have not considered evolutions anti-religious historical associations germane to the discussion.

The district court noted in Selman v. Cobb County School District,In light of the historical opposition to evolution by Christian fundamentalists and creationists[,] . . . the informed, reasonable observer would infer the School Boards problem with evolution to be that evolution does not acknowledge a creator. Although this court ruling was remanded, it was quoted in Kitzmiller v. Dover, and demonstrates how courts have considered teaching opposition to evolution in public schools as unconstitutional endorsement of religion. Other decisions taking this approach include Epperson v. Arkansas, McLean v. Arkansas Board of Education, and Edwards v. Aguillard.

But what about evolution? Are courts evaluating neo-Darwinism objectively? In a future post, I will discuss the history of anti-religious activism associated with evolution advocacy.

Flag pole outside U.S. Supreme Court Building, by USCapitol [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.
After a splendid show by the India operations of the MullenLowe Group at the Effie Awards 2016 earlier this year, it is now the turn of its Sri Lanka operations to soak in the accolades

After a splendid show by the India operations of the MullenLowe Group at the Effie Awards 2016 earlier this year, it is now the turn of its Sri Lanka operations to soak in the accolades.

At the 2016 Sri Lanka Effie Awards ceremony held last week, MullenLowe Sri Lanka was declared the Agency of the Year. The ceremony, which was held at the Waters Edge, saw the global network agency win across several diverse categories. MullenLowe Sri Lanka bagged honours for Marmite, Knorr, LOLC, Fair and Lovely Vaseline and Vim.

Creativity has only one purpose in advertising and that is effectiveness. And no agency network believes in this more than MullenLowe. Proof of that is the fact that we have been the highest ranked in the Global Effie Index consistently for the last few years. So it is a matter of great pride and honour that we have been recognized for effectiveness in Sri Lanka as well. We would like to thank all our client partners who have supported and encouraged us on this journey, said Hari Krishnan, Chief Executive Officer, MullenLowe Sri Lanka.

MullenLowe Sri Lanka won a Gold Effie in the Packaged Food category for Marmite, a Silver Effie in the same category for Knorr, a Bronze Effie in the Finance category for LOLC and three Black Effies for Fair and Lovely, Vaseline and Vim. The agency was also the secondary agency in the Media category for Sunlight which won a Gold Effie.

It is a tremendous honour to be named Agency of the Year. We try hard to make our campaigns engage meaningfully with consumers and influence their psyche. Therefore, these awards are a recognition of the tireless efforts we put into each campaign and a validation of our creativity and effectiveness, said Dilshara Jayamanna, Senior Vice President / Executive Creative Director, MullenLowe Sri Lanka.

A global symbol of achievement with award programs honoring effective marketing communications in 42 countries and 6 regions, the Effie Awards have been held in Sri Lanka in partnership with the Sri Lanka Institute of Marketing (SLIM) since 2008.

Concludes Joseph George, Regional President South & South East Asia, MullenLowe Group, MullenLowe Sri Lanka (formerly called Lowe LDB) became a 100% IPG agency last year. The agency has witnessed robust new business growth and momentum ever since; and this Effie honour further reinforces our belief in the market, the agency, its leadership and its talent."

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The rights of hundreds of thousands of British expats living in Europe would be thrown into doubt if the country votes to leave the European Union in the June referendum, according to a House of Lords Committee.A number of key issues affecting expats, including access to health care, social security, residence rights and employment rights would need to be negotiated and that could take some time, says a report from the Lords European Union Committee.It believes that these rights would be a key element of the withdrawal negotiations which would be a complex and daunting task and could take longer than the two years allowed under Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty with no guarantee that an extension would be permitted.We don't take a view on whether the UK should leave the EU or not. But it is clear that if that's what people decide, withdrawal would mean difficult and lengthy negotiations, said Lord Boswell, the chairman of the committee.It is not possible to predict exactly how long it would take but comparable international trade deals have taken on average between four and nine years, he added.There would also have to be a review of the entire corpus of the EU as it applied in the UK and the devolved nations, with the Government having to assess which laws it wished to retain, another process which could take years to complete, the committee said.The report also point out that the European Council has stated explicitly that the changes to the terms of the UKs membership of the EU, agreed in February 2016, will automatically fall in the event of a vote to leave on 23 June.Also, while the UK would remain a full member of the EU over the course of the withdrawal negotiations, its credibility as a member would be severely undermined, the report suggests.However, Roland Smith, a fellow at the Adam Smith Institute, a free market think tank, does not believe there will be long and protracted negotiations should the UK decided to leave the EU as the argument is based on the presumption that it will do so in a complex and daunting way, attempting to unpick many treaty obligations and partially replace them with a trade deal.This is very unlikely to be the case. The Conservative government, the majority of whom have declared for Remain, are not about to cut off from the EU in a lengthy and complex way. Equally the EU is unlikely to offer anything other than the off the shelf EEA deal, similar to Norway and Liechtensteins, and will make a tailored deal for Britain impossible to discourage other members from leaving, he pointed said.The EEA option would have almost no effect on expats, or much else, because Britains single market participation and the four freedoms would stay intact at exit, he added.
The state of Texas has agreed to trade its $4.4 million claim against Palmaz Scientific Inc. for a sizable stake in a new company bidding on the bankrupt medical technology firms assets.

The state would receive the same amount in shares of Vactronix Scientific Inc., a company founded by Amalia Palmaz, assuming the bid wins. Her husband, famed inventor Julio Palmaz, founded Palmaz Scientific. The companys main assets are about 250 issued patents and 150 or so pending patents.

The assets are tentatively scheduled for auction June 10. Vactronix is expected to make a $22.6 million bid for the assets, Bill Kingman, a lawyer for Palmaz Scientific, said at a bankruptcy hearing Thursday. Its considered a stalking-horse bid, or first bid.

The Texas Emerging Technology Fund is San Antonio-based Palmaz Scientifics largest unsecured creditor. It had made a $3 million secured loan to the company in 2010, but the debt became unsecured when the state received company shares in 2011. With interest, the amount owed to the state has climbed to nearly $4.4 million.

If Vactronix is the winning bidder and the court approves the sale, the state would receive about 4.4 million in preferred shares, or 15.2 percent of the outstanding shares, according to Houston attorney Andy Taylor, who also represents Palmaz Scientific. The deal is essentially a dollar-for-dollar swap of the principal and interest Palmaz Scientific owes the state.

The bottom line is that theyre a huge, powerful creditor and the state of Texas represents over 30 million people, Taylor said. So finding a path forward where the state would be on board, as opposed to strongly opposing whats going to happen, is a very positive thing.

A spokeswoman for the Texas attorney generals office didnt respond to a request for comment.

Casey Roy, a lawyer in the attorney generals office, who appeared at the hearing by phone, confirmed the state has reached an agreement in principal regarding the treatment of (its) unsecured claim.

The states stake in Vactronix will be diluted over time if Vactronix is successful in raising money from investors, Taylor said.

Vactronix has until June 3 to revoke its bid under the sales process outlined at the court hearing. If Vactronix bails out, then the assets would be sold at a so-called naked auction with no established minimum price. A request for the court to approve the bid procedures is expected to be filed by the end of next week.

Palmaz Scientific filed for Chapter 11 reorganization on March 4 after essentially running out of money. Palmaz, inventor of a heart stent credited with saving millions of lives, started Palmaz Scientific with the idea of developing the next-generation of stents.

But the company never had any recurring revenue. It has been fending off fraud allegations from some investors, who have demanded to know whats happened to more than $40 million raised by the company in stock sales. At the time of the bankruptcy filing, the company said its ability to ability to attract capital investment and continue its business operations has been seriously impaired by a negative campaign of false information disseminated by certain individuals.

Voter Guide: What to know for the midterm election Your guide to the Texas and San Antonio races and candidates on the Nov. 8 ballot.

The plan to auction the assets has support from some of the companys major non-insider equity holders including those whose lawyers had previously raised concerns about a Palmaz-related entity getting the assets at a discount and a committee of unsecured creditors.

Its a good deal under some difficult circumstances, said San Antonio attorney Raymond Battaglia, who represents Arlington attorney John Foster, the companys largest independent shareholder. Foster invested $4 million.

Jason Brookner, a Dallas lawyer for some of the investors, said a litigation trust would be created for the benefit of investors. The trust would receive most of Palmazs legal claims. That includes a 2014 lawsuit against Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP of Washington, D.C., and Houstons Baker Botts LLP regarding their representation of Palmaz and his companies in a dispute. They have sought more than $10 million in actual damages and an unspecified amount in punitive damages against the law firms. The trust also would receive any potential claims on Palmaz Scientfics directors and officers liability insurance policy.

Investors will have the opportunity to decide whether they want to go along with establishing the litigation trust.

Vactronix would receive Palmaz Scientifics claims against Susan Harriman, an Austin investment banker that Palmaz Scientific has accused of defamation. Harriman has her own defamation claims in the Dallas case, which has been put on hold because of the bankruptcy.

pdanner@express-news.net

Twitter: @AlamoPD
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After more than 50 years, Pedro Friedeberg is pretty tired of his iconic creation, the hand-chair, but the Mexican surrealist artist and designer cant seem to, well, shake it.

Ive told (my assistant) many times: Please, no more chairs, but nobody pays attention to me, said the 80-year-old artist with a slight shrug.

Indeed, there are two mahogany hand-chairs  one covered in gold leaf  in his latest show, Praise of Folly now on view at Ruiz-Healy Art.

Since 1962, thousands of copies of the sculptural piece have been sold. As art critic Dan Cameron points out in the exhibition catalog, it is a classic case of an artwork that for a majority of viewers may be more famous than its maker.

If that irks Friedeberg, it doesnt show when he is asked to take a seat in one for a photograph. A dapper figure in a neatly pressed blue checked shirt, khaki slacks and a straw fedora, he eases himself into the palm, reclines against the fingers that form the back of the chair and lets the camera click.

Many (artists) become known for one (thing), because people need an anchor, said Friedeberg, his voice gravelly and low. Like Tamayo was very well known for his watermelons. Duchamp is, of course, well known for his pissoir. Miro is known for his amoebas. And, of course, Botero is known for his fat people.

Born in Florence, Italy, to German-Jewish parents, Friedeberg grew up in Mexico. He was studying to be an architect when he met artist Mathias Goeritz, who encouraged him to pursue art. Friedeberg became part of an influential group of surrealist artists that included painters Remedios Varo and Leonora Carrington. He had his first solo exhibition at the age of 22.

His work is in the collection of more than 50 international museums, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Musee dArt Moderne de la Ville de Paris and the Los Angeles Contemporary Museum of Art. There has been renewed interest in Friedebergs work in recent years, thanks in part to a retrospective at the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City in 2009.

Friedebergs work continues to influence younger artists, said gallerist Patricia Ruiz-Healy.

He (was) a multidisciplinary artist before it was a trend, she said. And by that I mean he has been involved in architecture, with theater design, with ballet design, besides being a visual artist.

Praise of Folly reflects the eclecticism of his career with a mix of works that includes handwoven textiles, paintings, sculptures and prints.

Roughly half of the pieces in the show were created within the past three years, including an assortment of paintings and prints characterized by dizzying, interlocking geometric patterns that create a shadowbox-like frame for architectural structures and abstract forms. A prolific artist, Friedeberg works on multiple paintings at a time.

Usually the pattern is I start one painting, and then it bores me or I forget it, and I put it away and start a new thing, he said. I have about 25 started paintings, like less than halfway done. But I think thats the best way to paint. Sometimes the great idea doesnt come until you have put it away.

A collage he created for an exhibition at the Museo de Filatelia in Oaxaca, Mexico, features a pyramid, the levels made out of strips of stamps from different countries. It is surrounded by images of serpents and rifles.

I hate guns, but as an abstract shape, I like it, Friedeberg said. Its very striking. Anybody can identify it.

The sculpture in the exhibition includes a clock with hands to mark the time, the number of fingers on each corresponding to the hour, and, of course, the hand-chairs.

Well, because people like them, Friedeberg said.

lsilva@express-news.net
City and local fire union attorneys sparred Thursday in state District Court over whether City Manager Sheryl Sculley, Mayor Ivy Taylor and other officials should be deposed.

Outside the courtroom, Chris Steele, president of the San Antonio Professional Firefighters Association, invoked the name of a legendary rock star to make his point that depositions should be taken quickly.

The union is seeking to depose several high-ranking officials for its pending countersuit against the city, filed in response to a lawsuit by the city that asked the courts to find the collective bargaining agreements with the fire and police unions in violation of the Texas Constitution. The fire union alleged in its countersuit that the citys lawsuit constitutes bad-faith negotiating.

After the hearing, Steele argued that as time passes, deposing pertinent officials becomes more difficult. As he is apt to do, Steele combined typical and unconventional examples, referencing both former Mayor Julian Castro and recently deceased Prince, to explain why the courts should allow the union to depose local officials.

There was a time when we had a mayor named Castro, and nobody even knew, and all of a sudden, hes in D.C. Politics at the national level is heating up, theres rumors everywhere, so we dont know whats going to happen, Steele said. Then, theres Prince, my favorite guy. He just died all of a sudden. So we dont know whats going to happen here.

After chiding attorneys on both sides for not informing her of the time they would need from the outset, District Judge Antonia Toni Arteaga encouraged the city and the union to consider mediation. Ultimately, she said, she would need time to read and pray before making her decision.

Last week, the 4th Court of Appeals ordered the city and the San Antonio Police Officers Association to nonbinding mediation, at the citys request.

But theres a key difference with the fire union: Its officials have never begun negotiations, whereas the city and the SAPOA had nearly reached a deal when talks broke down and the city filed its lawsuits.

Dan Pozza, the lead attorney for the city, argued that the union had filed its countersuit a year before the city ultimately sought a resolution to its case, and had time actually been the issue, the union would have done depositions with Sculley, Taylor, Deputy City Manager Erik Walsh and others.

Ricky Poole, the unions attorney, and Steele both said the union had hoped the city would drop its lawsuit, making their countersuit a moot point. The judge asked Steele whether he had attempted to solve the problems at hand by working directly with the mayor, leaving the lawyers out of it. Steele responded that the issue is complicated, but that he and others are working directly with Taylor.

Afterward, Steele accused Sculley of preventing a resolution.

We have been reaching for some common ground, and lets try to resolve this, and so I think that the judge is correct: that thats the proper way to do it, he said. But Sheryl Sculley will not allow it to happen. And thats why weve been asking the mayor, Ivy Taylor, to put her down in the corner and make it happen.

Jeff Coyle, the citys chief spokesman, said Thursday that the city is still prepared to push its case to the Texas Supreme Court.

We are more than willing to be deposed and talk about the facts surrounding the unsustainable and unaffordable fire union contract. But people should understand that the fire unions action is a publicity stunt; the case is in the appeals court, which will ultimately decide whether or not it is constitutional to have a union contract continue for 10 years after it expires, he said. The union knows this well and that their chances of winning in the courts diminish the higher we go. We are prepared to go to the Texas Supreme Court to change this excessive union contract.

jbaugh@express-news.net

Twitter: @jbaugh
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One week after horrified Bexar County Sheriffs deputies found a sister and brother, ages 3 and 4, tied up like animals outside a Northeast Bexar County home during a storm, and charged the mother of six other children found inside, investigators are weighing further charges against her and other adults who might have known about the abuse.

Sources with knowledge of parallel investigations by the Sheriffs Office and Child Protective Services provided details of a level of mistreatment that shocked even veteran detectives. Speaking on condition of anonymity, they said the boy, 4, was found fastened to the ground outside the rent house on Chipping Drive with a tight dog chain around one ankle. His pants were down around his feet as he attempted to relieve himself and several piles of human feces were nearby.

About 10 feet away, his younger sister was tied with a dog leash attached to a garage door, her wrists bound above her head. Doctors later determined her right arm was fractured in two places. Dehydrated, cold and hungry, the kids had scrapes to their legs, backs, wrists and ankles that investigators believe happened over a two-week period.

The house, located in the Camelot II subdivision, had only a couch for furniture and reeked with the stench of backed-up toilets. Clothes were strewn across the floor. No parent was home. The pregnant mother of six children who were found unharmed inside arrived during the night and was arrested.

Porucha Denise Phillips, 34, has been charged with two felony counts of injury to a child by omission. The state has temporary custody over all eight kids and hearings have been set for next week to update a judge on their status and determine whether CPS can continue to hold them.

Deputies spoke to the father of Phillips three youngest children, Deandre Jerome Dorch, 36, the night they found the children, but did not arrest him.

Sheriffs spokesman James Keith said Thursday that both children are still in the hospital but are recovering nicely and will be soon released back to state custody. He acknowledged that initial information provided to news media included incorrect ages for some of the children.

Yolanda Valenzuela, vice president of Child Advocates San Antonio, has said all the children likely would be assigned to a CASA volunteer who will work to make sure their food, health, educational and psychological needs are met.

Two court-appointed attorneys are separately assisting Phillips with the criminal and CPS cases. Her criminal defense lawyer, Alan Futrell, said he had briefly spoken to his client in jail Monday.

Shes just trying to figure out what happened, just like I am and the police, said Futrell. Its too early to say anything. He said he was not sure she would be able to post bond for the $150,000 bail set last week.

David Willis, her other lawyer, did not immediately return phone calls. Phillips children, five girls and a boy, range in age from 11 months to 10 years.

The mother of the two abused children, a California resident who has another child, 2, has not been charged with any crime and has cooperated with investigators, Keith said. Authorities have said the woman, 30, is a friend of Phillips who knew her from Sacramento, California, where they both lived for an unknown period of time.

It is unclear how long Phillips and Dorch, also from California, have been living in San Antonio. One source said California Child Protective Services had received child neglect reports involving Phillips, though Mary Walker, a spokeswoman for the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, said she could not confirm that. A California CPS official said the agency could not comment on any aspect of the case.

There is no CPS history of them in Texas, Walker said Thursday.

Walker said CPS and law enforcement routinely communicate and share information during such investigations.

The agencies are going to have the exact same goal that we have, that these children are cared for, protected, that nothing happens to them. she said. We all want the same thing. We want to make sure that these children are safe and they are getting eveything they need, helping them get over the trauma and providing them with what is necessary.

Three of Phillips children attend elementary school in the Northeast Independent School District, district spokesman Aubrey Chancellor has said.
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FREDERICKSBURG  Drawing on increased state funding to fight invasive aquatic species, a coalition led by the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department is targeting thickets of a tall cane, Arundo donax, found along streams and rivers in the Hill Country.

The fast-growing grass, originally from Asia and known as Carrizo cane or giant reed, displaces native vegetation and animals in riparian areas, increases the risk of brush fires and also diverts, obstructs and diminishes water flows, officials say.

It seems like the harder we try to control it, the faster it grows, Clinton Bailey, Fredericksburgs public works director, said Thursday at a briefing on the new effort to purge the cane from the Pedernales and Blanco rivers and their tributaries.

The plant grows in dense stands that can top 30 feet in height. It has proliferated across the country since being introduced in the 19th century and is common around Houston and along the Rio Grande. But theres still time to beat it back in the Hill Country, where it only has a foot in the door, said Katherine Romans of the Hill Country Alliance.

This is the epicenter of the infestation. If we can tackle it here, were hoping we can make headway on the rest of the (Pedernales) river, Romans told roughly 25 locals gathered at Frantzen Park in Fredericksburg for a demonstration on eradication efforts.

Arundo cane breaks were denuded there and on several neighboring private lots on Barons Creek with a highly diluted herbicide applied last September. At least one more treatment is needed to finish off the stubborn invader.

They did a great job, said Karen Kemp, one of the local landowners who allowed workers of Sprayco Weed Control on her land.

Partners in the Healthy Creeks Initiative are now seeking permission from other area property owners to treat roughly 300 patches identified in aerial surveys along the Pedernales between Fredericksburg and Johnson City.

Arundo is not going to go away on its own, Romans said. Through partnerships with landowners, hopefully well make some progress controlling it.

State officials contacted about 225 landowners in Arundo-infested areas about the initiative, asking them to email their willingness to participate to healthycreeks@tpwd.texas.gov

The program is fueled by a $6.6 million legislative allocation to TPWD to fight invasive aquatic species for the two-year budget period that ends in 2017, up from $1.1 million in the previous two years, agency spokesman Tom Harvey said.

Besides the state, city and alliance, the Nature Conservancy and the Southeast Aquatic Resources Partnership also support the initiative.

Harvey called Arundo a big drinker, noting each acre of the plants consumes 48 acre-feet of water a year. Its thickets choke out deep-rooted native vegetation that naturally anchors the soil, leaving it prone to erosion and negatively affecting water quality, he said.

Officials cautioned landowners against mowing or cutting Arundo because each severed piece could take root wherever it winds up.

A lot of mechanical (control) methods just spread it around, said Monica E. McGarrity, TPWDs aquatic invasive species team leader. You dont want to make it mad.

Resident Mike Eckert, who signed up for the program, said the cane is growing so thick on his property along Barons Creek that a helicopter might be required to apply the herbicide.

We need some help, definitely, said Eckert, 79, who attested to the flamability of the weed  he was burning hay when the Arundo burst into barely controllable flames, popping like popcorn.

McGarrity said plans call for hand-application of aquatic-approved herbicides  glyphosphate and imazamox  to minimize the impact on other plants and wildlife.

Roughly $175,000 has been allocated for the Healthy Creeks Initiative through 2017, she said.

That includes some money for the Blanco River, she said, where severe flooding a year ago has left it vulnerable to Arundo colonization.

Landowners will be encouraged to pull any new post-spray shoots that surface and to and reintroduce native plants where necessary.

Wade Moore, who owns Arundo-infested land in Stonewall, said hes inclined to join the attack.

If theyve got a program to get rid of it, I dont want to be the guy in the middle holding out, said Moore, 75, a resident of Hico.

Another person at the briefing, Joe Johns of the bed-and-breakfast Barons Creekside, agreed with the need to gain the upper hand on Arundo.

I thought it stayed around the creeks, but now its even up in the flatland, he said. Its really taking over.

During the test program, some property owners resisted having their Arundo killed because it served as a hedge, blocking wind and views, Sprayco President George Pylant said.

They enjoy the privacy that Arundo provides, not realizing the plant is going to destroy that beautiful creek, he said Friday. It will become a monoculture, because the only thing that can compete with it are large established trees.

In Houston, where hes based, he said, Its everywhere you look.

zeke@express-news.net
The Pentagon on May 5 revealed it had altered the way it interpreted retaliation complaints from victims of sexual assault  a decision that dramatically lowered the number of complaints, prompting criticism from victim advocates.

The military, utilizing a voluntary, anonymous survey it called the first to assess sexual assault survivors experiences with the legal process, said it discovered victims may misinterpret acts of assistance as revenge, such as relocating someone to a new base against their will. After an analysis, the Pentagon reduced the number of retaliation complaints by a third.

Critics pounced on the news, saying it was an attempt to put a positive spin on years of dismal reports that show men and women have been assaulted  and frequently retaliated against  with a relative handful of suspects prosecuted.

It is quite disturbing to see the Department of Defense try to reclassify retaliatory and vengeful behaviors into something positive, veteran litigator and victims advocate Susan Burke said. This suggests that the department prefers to spin the facts rather than stop the ongoing and rampant retaliation.

More Information Department of Defense Annual Report on Sexual Assault in the Military | http://sapr.mil/public/docs/reports/FY15_Annual/FY15_Annual_Report_on_Sexual_Assault_in_the_Military.pdf See More Collapse

Read Twice Betrayed, our three-part special report on sexual assaults in the military

The Pentagon announced its survey in the latest annual report on sexual assaults in the military. It said 6,083 sexual assault reports were filed in fiscal year 2015, a drop of 1 percent from 2014.

Most of those incidents took place in 2015, but some were from past years. Despite the relatively unchanged number of complaints, the Pentagon said that sexual assault reporting was sustained at the high level the department witnessed in recent years.

The report for the 2015 fiscal year ending Sept. 30 also found that no one accused of retaliation, which is a crime, had gone to trial. Two service members were given non-judicial punishment, but the problem isnt new. Six in every 10 victims reporting sexual assaults since 2010 say they were retaliated against. In 2015, the Pentagon said it had seen no improvement in the percentage of retaliation incidents over the past five years.

Judy Patterson, CEO of the advocacy group Service Womens Action Network, noted that in revealing little change in the number of sexual assaults, the armed services had yet to play an effective role in reducing them.

The problem of sexual assault has been a dismal front for a military that has become increasingly open to women. A 2014 Pentagon Workplace and Gender Relations Survey of active-duty troops, the most recent available, found that around 20,000 service members said they had been objects of unwanted sexual contact  slightly higher than the 2010 mark. About 5 percent of women and 1 percent of men in the military report their assaults.

The figure for 2014 was down from an estimated 26,000 incidents in 2012. There were thousands of identified suspects, but prosecutions ending in trial are rare, with 255 of 543 service members convicted of a sex offense last year. Two years ago, 234 of 588 defendants were convicted of a sex offense at trial, while the number for 2013 was 197 of 484.

It isnt known how many were convicted of a sex crime in 2012, when 302 defendants went to military courts.

A scandal at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland, which helped launch a congressional investigation, has seen 35 basic training instructors investigated for misconduct with 69 recruits and technical training students since 2011.

The San Antonio Express-News documented repeated cases of retaliation against assault victims, failure to provide legal and medical support for them, and dismissal from the service on dubious grounds after they reported abuse.

The Pentagon report released Thursday used what it called a new measure of retaliation that is better aligned with department policy and law that addresses the issue. The department said 68 percent of respondents reported at least one negative experience associated with their report of sexual assault.

However, once the context of those negative experiences was assessed, the 2015 Military Investigation and Justice Experience Survey stated, only 38 percent of the respondents responses were consistent with the kinds of circumstances that military law prohibits concerning reprisal, ostracism and maltreatment, the report stated.

Sexual assault advocates said they were stunned by the revelation.

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-New York, pointed to the reports admission that the Military Investigation and Justice Survey recruited a small sample of respondents and results of the study are not representative of the entire population of survivors. The survey, which focuses on military members who made a formal report of sexual assault and had a closed case, relied upon 323 respondents, most filing over the Internet.

Gillibrand, who has sought to institute sweeping changes in the military legal system, accused defense officials of undercutting their own findings from last years report on the massive retaliation problem against service members who reported being sexually assaulted with a survey that their own report calls not representative.

Retired Col. Don Christensen, president of the advocacy group Protect Our Defenders and once was the Air Forces chief prosecutor, said they were desperate to find  a good-news story, and also trying to redefine retaliation to hide the scope of the problem.

Pointing to a phone conversation prior to the reports release, he added, Contrary to Pentagon claims that retaliation is down, a senior defense official admitted this afternoon on a conference call that retaliation has not in fact decreased.

Most of last years victims were women, but nearly one in every five were men, a number the department said was up. The report said the military was able to take disciplinary action against 72 percent of those accused in sexual assault and harassment cases, but added that 28 percent escaped punishment due to lack of evidence or other legal factors.

The active-duty services and National Guard bureau fielded 657 sexual harassment reports. Of those, 91 have not been resolved while another 315 were substantiated. Another 251 were unsubstantiated.

Three in every four sexual harassment complaints occurred while the victim was on duty, with 94 percent filed by enlistees. Four in every 10 offenders proven to have sexually harassed someone served in enlisted grades 5 and 6  sergeants and petty officers.

Victims tended to hold the lowest ranks. The Pentagon said the largest single grouping of sexual harassment complaints by gender and pay grade were females serving as privates, corporals, senior airmen and petty officers second class.

Defense Secretary Ash Carter last month unveiled a new strategy to combat retaliation. It included standardizing the definitions of retaliation, improving data collection and analysis, building supportive systems of investigation and accountability, providing comprehensive support to victims and what the department called creating a culture intolerant of retaliation.

Wherever sexual assault occurs  whether its on the front lines or here at home  it not only undermines our values, it undercuts our ability to execute our mission, which is to protect our people and make a better world for our children, he said.

sigc@express-news.net
SAN ANTONIO  Police arrested a man Thursday afternoon after a lengthy pursuit that spanned much of the city and included a carjacking, an officer-involved shooting and the father of the suspect begging police to spare his son's life.

SAPD Chief William McManus said the pursuit began around 10:40 a.m. on the South Side at School Street and Monroe Street after officers spotted the suspect, who has not yet been identified, in a car pointing a handgun at his passenger.

Officers tried to pull the man over, but he took off and managed to break away from police for a short time, sparking a chase.

McManus said the suspect tried to stop at a few gas stations to fill up during the chase, but was unable to do so. Officers were almost able to take him into custody at a gas station in the 2500 block of Southeast Military Drive, but he managed to carjack a man nearby and make another getaway.

As the man fled, he attempted to run over an officer who drew his service weapon and fired a round at the suspect's vehicle, McManus said.

The man continued driving until he crashed on a North Side dirt road shortly after noon near Northwest Military Highway, north of Loop 1604.

When officers took the man to custody, the man had what appeared to be a gunshot wound. He is expected to face a litany of charges including evading arrest and aggravated assault against a police officer.

The suspect's father, Manuel Gregory Martinez, said in an interview with mySA.com that he realized his son was the man police were chasing after he heard descriptions of the suspect and the vehicle he was driving on police scanners.

Martinez, who works as a bounty hunter in Atascosa County, said he called police to identify his son as the suspect and ask the police not to kill him. He followed officers as they chased his son until he crashed.

Martinez said that he believes someone other than police shot his son during the incident.

McManus said investigators are not 100 percent sure whether the suspect's apparent bullet wound was from an officer or not.

The officer who fired at the man will be placed on administrative duty, as is required by department protocol.

Text "NEWS" to 72727 to sign up for breaking news from mySA

mdwilson@express-news.net

Twitter: @MDWilsonSA
In some ways, the moment that best captures the Ted Cruz campaign was his video frying bacon on a machine gun. Remember that?

It was beautifully calculated, but utterly myopic. It spoke to his base, but no one else, and thats why voters have written him out of this story. But he was never the person to stop Donald Trump.

With nearly 1.5 million views on YouTube, Making Machine-Gun Bacon with Ted Cruz counts as an Internet hit. Maybe the spectacle of Cruz wrapping bacon around the muzzle of a gun and popping off some shots in the name of a Texas breakfast inspired his base, but it was obviously unnecessary. No one has ever doubted Cruzs commitment to gun rights, or his bases commitment to him, or Americas love for bacon.

Chewing on bacon cooked on the tip of a gun came at a cost, and not just cholesterol. It was noticeably hardly presidential in a year that has hardly been presidential. It was also incredibly narrow. You can love guns and the Second Amendment but still be concerned about gun violence, right?

Instead, Cruz took a gun and turned it into a camping stove. What kind of message is that? One that says no compromise.

No compromise is the rallying cry for a true conservative such as Cruz. But the problem with being a true conservative is that not everyone is one. Not everyone wants to eat bacon from the tip of a gun. Some prefer using frying pans, and that doesnt make them lesser Americans.

Cruz never could escape this dynamic. His message was limited to certain evangelicals and the Heartland. He preached to this base expertly, prayerful and certain, but he gained few converts with his brand of smug righteousness.

Much has been made about how hated Cruz is in establishment Republican circles. Cruz is Lucifer in the flesh, former House Speaker John Boehner famously said. Sen. John Cornyn, the other Texas senator, never endorsed Cruz, a statement in itself.

Maybe that disdain doomed him. But the uncomfortable reality for those looking for a Trump alternative is that Cruzs stances on Muslims and Mexican immigrants are as ugly as Trumps. He wasnt much of a Plan B.

His Invasion campaign video, with images of white-collar workers trampling over the border, played on xenophobic fears and stereotypes; and he, too, has championed building a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

He called for a religious test for Syrian refugees, saying we should only let Christian refugees enter the country. Later, he called for the policing of Muslim neighborhoods, whatever those look like.

If the goal of the Never Trump movement was to distance the Republican Party from Trumps hostile and bigoted comments, how was Cruz really a better alternative?

Besides, he once loved Trump.

When it comes to Donald Trump, I like Donald Trump. I think he's terrific, I think he's brash, I think he speaks the truth," Cruz said this summer.

But that was when Trump was still a long shot, hardly taken seriously, and Cruz was making his own move in the polls. It didnt matter if Trump was a good or a bad candidate, it was just a matter of what was good for Cruz.

That brings us to Cruzs sudden choice of Carly Fiorina as his vice presidential pick, a move that in some ways mimicked his Making Machine-Gun Bacon video. It didnt expand his base, and came across as a cheap stunt, a product of pure calculation. And then Fiorina fell from the stage in Indiana. The video is a bit jarring. One second shes up, the next shes down. Cruz keeps shaking hands with supporters.

Maybe he didnt see her. Maybe he knew she was fine and just kept going. But the video feels off. At a moment when you would expect a hand out, Cruz goes for the handshake. Maybe it was just a bad moment at the end of an exhausting campaign and not the big symbol others have made it out to be. But like cooking bacon on the tip of a machine gun or calling for the policing of Muslim neighborhoods, it was hardly presidential.

jbrodesky@express-news.net
#CowsOnTour, which consists of a group of enthusiastic NFU Cymru members and Wales YFC will be heading to this months Royal Welsh Spring Festival to explain, in a fun way, to younger visitors about how food is produced.

The initiative, first created two years ago by Glamorgan farmer, James Hanks, with the help of Glamorgan NFU Cymru County Chairman, Abi Reader, is best known for visiting primary schools with a recent return visit to a school in London city centre.

Abi Reader, NFU Cymru Glamorgan Chairman said: "#CowsOnTour aims to get children to understand where their food comes from and the journey from farm to plate  in a fun way.

"This project is an opportunity to showcase what we as farmers do in terms of food production whilst delivering environmental benefits, and we will highlight the importance of the agricultural sector to the general public."

The #CowsOnTour farmers will be working with Wales YFC at the Royal Welsh Spring Festival and will be based next to the event main ring in the Wales YFC area.

Vicky Hope, Wales YFC Chairman said: "We are pleased to welcome #CowsOnTour to the Wales YFC Centre. Wales YFC is a firm believer that the younger children become connected with where their food comes from the better being tomorrows shopper.

"The Spring Festival is a great family day out, full of fun have-a-go educational activities, says Kay Spencer, Honorary Spring Festival Director.

"We are delighted that the innovative #CowsonTour is coming along to this years event to give our visitors, young and old, a fun and informative way to find out where their food comes from."
The Clydesdale and Yorkshire Bank has been announced as a new supporting company of The Princes Countryside Fund.

The bank has donated 100k to the charity, which works to secure a brighter future for the countryside through grant giving and advocacy.

Since it was established in 2010, The Princes Countryside Fund has distributed over 6.7 million in grants and emergency funding directly benefiting more than 210,000 people who live and work in rural areas.

Their work focuses on improving rural service provision, helping more young people pursue careers in the countryside, as well as providing support and advice for farmers and other rural professions.

David Hannon, Head of Agriculture at Clydesdale and Yorkshire Bank said: "Farming communities across the UK are under continual pressure, and we are keen to support grassroots projects that provide much needed support for the people that live and work in the rural areas we operate.

"There is great talent and potential to be fostered and encouraged, and through this partnership we will be able to support many important projects that help to create a prosperous future for our rural communities such as training and career development for our farmers of the future and business support and advice for rural enterprises."

Claire Saunders, Director of the Fund, said: "I am delighted with the opportunities that this new partnership with The Clydesdale and Yorkshire Bank will provide, working together to support the people that live and work in rural areas and create a brighter future for the countryside and our rural economy."

Established by the Prince of Wales in 2010, The Princes Countryside Fund exists to improve the prospects of family farm businesses and the quality of rural life.

Through our partnerships and events such as National Countryside Week we celebrate and promote the value of the countryside.
Unions have today urged horticultural crop growers to look seriously at the creation of a producer organisation (PO).

Recognised by the European Commission, producer organisations improve the bargaining power of farmers.

Ulster Farmers' Union President Barclay Bell said that in the difficult conditions the industry is experiencing, ways need to be found to ease the squeeze on margins.

Mr Bell was speaking after producers came together to discuss the merits of a PO in Northern Ireland.

The industry, with support from the UFU and CAFRE has set up a task force to see if a case can be made for pressing ahead.

"Whilst it is recognised producer organisations are not a new phenomenon, Northway a flagship PO on our doorstep built on mushrooms and with the addition of the strawberry sector adding to Northways portfolio illustrates the PO model can and does deliver success," said Mr Bell.

Producer organisation's are strong across Europe. Guest speaker, Ad Klaassen, the secretary general of the Dutch Producers Association, explained structures, rules, benefits, opportunities and discipline required to make them successful.

Northway communicated how growers and packer/processors can do business that delivers a better deal for the benefit of all.

"Having the confidence and support to plan ahead and being part of a cohesive group builds momentum and bargaining power along the supply chain," said Mr Bell.

He also urged producers to support the task force considering a PO here, and to see it as something that could help ease the constant margin pressure from the major supermarkets and other buyers.
Highly pathogenic avian influenza has been confirmed in a commercial layer flock in northern Italy.

A total of 17,000 birds have been lost in t outbreak in the Ferrara region of the country.

Some 600 birds died in the outbreak; the rest were culled following confirmation that avian influenza was involved.

The OIE (World Organisation for Animal Health) has reported that the affected birds were free range or organic layers.

Italian authorities say that the outbreak involved a highly pathogenic H7N7 strain of bird flu. This is the same strain involved in the outbreak in Lancashire last year.

Nearly 200,000 birds were lost  a mixture of cage and free range hens  when avian influenza hit Staveleys Eggs near Preston in Lancashire.

H7N7 was also involved in an earlier outbreak in Hampshire, although this case  at a commercial chicken breeding farm at Upham in the Meon Valley  was a low pathogenic version.

Defras Animal and Plant Health Agency (APHA), which has issued a statement about the new case in Italy, says there have been a number of outbreaks of H7N7 in Europe in the last two years.

"H7 viruses have been detected in outbreaks in poultry several times in Europe in the past few years where an incursion of LPAI has mutated to HPAI," said the statement, which was issued by Professor Ian Brown and Dr Helen Roberts.

"This is more frequently detected in poultry layer farms, which may be due to a combination of the age of the birds and other risk factors arising from the nature of the production system, such as increased frequency of contact with the environment and increased indirect contact with wild birds affecting the selection pressure for mutation to HPAI."

High path incursion of the virus

APHA said it was not yet clear whether the Italian case started as low path AI and mutated to high path, although this was most likely.

"The most probable explanation is that there has been an undetected incursion of LPAI H7N7 virus which has mutated to HPAI as it spread through the flock," APHA said.

"The Italian authorities suggested that very sudden onset of increased mortality and drop in egg production, may suggest a high path incursion rather than a mutation from low path.

"If this is a wild bird strain of H7N7 which causes HPAI infection in poultry, as opposed to a mutation from an LPAI strain to an HPAI strain in poultry, then this would be concerning and novel."

"However, it will be important to await full laboratory and epidemiological findings before drawing firm conclusions.

"It is possible there is an as yet undetected H7N7 HPAI virus circulating in poultry or captive birds elsewhere, which has not caused clinical signs."

"If this was the case, this would reinforce the need to enhance surveillance through early reporting systems where signs were not suggestive of AI. This would involve the use of testing for exclusion schemes like the one used in the UK.

Reminder to maintain high standards of bio-security

"We would like to remind all poultry keepers to maintain high standards of bio-security, remain vigilant and report any suspect clinical signs promptly and, in addition, using the testing to exclude scheme for avian notifiable disease where appropriate for early safeguard."

APHA said it would continue to monitor developments in Italy. Meanwhile, they said the risk level for the UK remained low, although it was heightened.

The OIE said that restriction zones had been put in place around the affected premises in Italy.

A protection zone of three kilometres and a surveillance zone of 10 kilometres had been established around the farm, according to a notification report, which was based on information provided by the chief veterinary officer in Rome.

APHA said that two other cases of AI had been reported in Italy shortly before this latest case.

Both involved low path bird flu. One was a case of H7N7 amongst ornamental birds. This was also in the Ferrara region. The other was an outbreak of H5N2 at a poultry breeder unit in Pordenone.

APHA said that Italian authorities had reported the low path outbreaks as "phylogenetically distinct" from the latest high path outbreak on the Ferrara layer unit.

The full assessment report can be read here.
McDonalds is to tour agricultural events around Britain with a roadshow that uses virtual reality to bring people closer to the fast food chains supplier farms.

'Follow our Foodsteps' will pioneer the latest in virtual reality technology and 3600 video to tell its UK food story through the eyes of the people who grow, produce and prepare food for its UK menu.

Follow our Foodsteps forms part of Farm Forward, McDonalds UKs long-term programme to address the challenges facing the sector.

The campaign launches as industry statistics show the UK food and farming industries are hungry for fresh talent across a vast array of areas including farming, horticulture, engineering and food development.

According to the Food and Drink Federation, there is a need to attract 109,000 new recruits into the food industry by 2022 as the UK population is projected to rise by 4.4 million in the next decade.

McDonalds UK brought together a collective of tech developers, young farmers and food experts, challenging them to use technology to give the public a real-life glimpse of how the food on its menu is made and where it comes from.

The resulting experience, which embarks on a journey across the UK from today, will transport consumers behind the scenes on some of McDonalds UKs flagship farms, factories and restaurants  all without having to physically be there.

New research, conducted by YouGov among 2,000 consumers, reveals that the publics love of eating out hides underlying questions about food sourcing and production, which is fuelling a skills gap across the food and farming industries:

 Three quarters of people (74%) want to know more about where their food comes from.

 One in five people cant explain any process behind food production.

 Two in five people (41%) have never set foot on a working farm.

 83% of people have never been given careers advice about the food and farming sectors.

 60% of people have never considered a career in food and farming.

Starting today, the Follow our Foodsteps experience will begin a 2,000 mile journey across the UK.

The experience traces the three key stages of food production from provenance (farmers and farming), to production (suppliers and process), right through to preparation and cooking (restaurants and crew).

All of the farmers, food developers and experts featured in the immersive experiences form part of McDonalds own leading UK supply chain.

Visitors will be transported behind the scenes through the following experiences:

Top of the Crop virtual reality challenge

An Oculus VR headset will invite users to test their skill behind the wheel of a tractor during a potato harvest as they are judged on speed, accuracy and the quality of the successfully harvested crop.

Samsung Gear VR headsets with immersive 3600 video

This series of immersive videos will transport visitors to an organic dairy farm in South West England and a free-range egg producer in Cumbria, before giving them the chance to look around one of the two dedicated production facilities that make McDonalds 100% British and Irish beef patties.

Immersive cinema experience for a crew-eye view

People will step into an immersive cinema and follow McDonalds crew as they take an order and prepare food in a busy restaurant kitchen.

Guess my Job food and farming skills challenge

This experience includes a food and farming skills challenge, developed by McDonalds in collaboration with leading agricultural university Harper Adams, the Agricultural and Horticultural Development Board and McCain Foods UK.

Follow in the footsteps of farmers and suppliers

Connor McVeigh, Director of Supply Chain, McDonalds UK, said: "As a nation, we have never been more food-focussed.

"The eating out market is growing but this passion for food is masking a lack of understanding around how food is produced and the vital role our farming and food industries play in growing, sourcing and producing quality ingredients.

"As one of the biggest customers of British and Irish farming, we want to lift the lid on the passion and skills that exist at every stage of the process, from farm to front-counter.

"Over the last decade we have invited people behind the scenes of our own supply chain on a number of occasions but we wanted to take this even further.

"By bringing together tech developers with farmers and food experts, we have created an immersive virtual reality experience that will allow people to follow in the footsteps of farmers, suppliers and our crew, bringing the best of UK food production from the countryside to communities across the UK.

"Our hope is that it will help build pride in British and Irish farming, challenge outdated stereotypes and celebrate the best of food and farming in the UK today."

Environment Secretary, Elizabeth Truss said: "As a nation we are now far more plugged into where our food comes from.

"Projects like this that link field to fork, or in this case fingers, not only supports our farmers but educates our children too.

"With 3.8 million people employed in the food chain it is vital for our economic future that we make British food and farming all it can be.

"By embracing the latest technology we will foster the next generation of entrepreneurs."
NFU Cymru members have expressed their concerns regarding a potential trade deal between the EU and South America, which could have a damaging impact on the Welsh beef industry.

These concerns were raised during a recent NFU Cymru Livestock board meeting, where the implications of such a deal were discussed at length.

A trade deal with the Mercosur bloc could see 78,000 tonnes of non-tariff beef imported into the EU, from countries such as Argentina and Brazil.

This would be in addition to the 180,000 tonnes of meat that they already have a preferential access agreement for.

So far, 13 member states have opposed the proposals, with the UK NFUs Brussels office asking the EU Commission to withdraw agricultural products from the negotiations until a full impact assessment has been undertaken.

'Negative impact for specialist beef production in Wales'

NFU Cymru Livestock board Chairman, Wyn Evans said: "At a time when Welsh beef prices are already under pressure, a trade deal which could see thousands of tonnes of beef imported into Europe could have a negative impact for specialist beef production in Wales.

"Welsh farmers produce prime quality beef to world leading standards, can we be sure that the same standards are adhered to in the Mercosur bloc?

"NFU Cymru working with the other UK NFUs and COPA, are calling on the European Commission to undertake a full impact assessment before any further progress is made, to ensure that the ramifications of such a deal on the European livestock market is fully understood."

During the meeting, board members also held a round table discussion with representatives from the red meat processing sector and meat promotion body HCC, to consider the challenges and opportunities facing the sector over the coming months.

Wyn Evans said: "The discussions were frank and forthright, with the focus being on; prospects for the beef and lamb market over the coming months, changes to carcass specifications and how the industry can work together to ensure that all parts of the supply chain can be profitable.

"The key message was the need for good communication across the whole supply chain, to ensure we are all working together to deliver a range of products that meet the requirements of the marketplace, thus delivering a growing demand for PGI Welsh beef and lamb."
With the Single Application Form (SAF) deadline looming, NFU Cymru is urging its members to complete and submit the form as a matter of urgency.

The 2016 SAF is only available by accessing Rural Payments Wales (RPW) online, no paper forms are available in 2016.

Completion of the form ensures access to farm support under the new Basic Payment Scheme (BPS) and land based rural development payments including Glastir Entry, Glastir Advanced, Glastir Organic and Glastir Woodland schemes.

NFU Cymru President, Stephen James, said: "With only a short amount of time to go until the deadline, farmers should ensure that the completion of the forms is top priority.

"The Single Farm Payment and a number of Rural Development schemes cannot be secured without submitting a Single Application Form so this is one of the most crucial forms farmers will complete."

Once the SAF form has been submitted a formal acknowledgement will be sent out electronically. NFU Cymru is advising farmers to check this through thoroughly to ensure that the form is correctly completed.

Should there be any errors inform Rural Payments Wales immediately if you want to make a change in order to avoid possible penalties.

The following are some key areas to make sure you have completed correctly:

 Checked you meet the eligibility criteria as detailed in the Single Application Rules booklet

 Indicated which fields and/or crops you wish to claim for each scheme

 Submitted the appropriate supporting documents by 16 May, some of these documents must be submitted by post /in person

To ensure that you do not incur a financial penalty the absolute deadline for Welsh Government to receive the Single Application Form and supporting documents is Monday, 16 May 2016.

Applications received between 17 May and 10 June 2016 will be accepted but will incur financial penalties. Applications received after Monday, 10 June 2016 will be completely rejected.
With so many sheep breeds, crosses and composites in the UK, believed to be more than any other country in the world, an effective information network for the numerous breed societies is essential, says the National Sheep Association (NSA).

Each year the NSA plays its part in this by organising a Breed Society Forum, holding the 2016 event yesterday (Thursday 5th May) in Somerset and Devon.

All NSA-affiliated breed societies were invited to attend the one-day event, which was split into two halves.

The morning session near Taunton, Somerset, saw six speakers provide updates on industry topics and encourage debate among the group.

Phil Stocker, NSA Chief Executive, provided an industry update to the NSA Breed Society Forum

In the afternoon, a number of delegates went on to tour the pedigree breeding and commercial sheep enterprises ran by Philip Derryman and his family at Yarcombe, Devon.

Joanne Briggs, NSA Communications Manager, reports: "There is a lot going on currently that sheep breed societies need to be aware of, particularly in terms of changing EU regulations and UK plans for a sheep gene bank.

"The forum was the perfect opportunity to discuss these, as well as share information on current industry trends and NSA activity.

"As does the regional structure that NSA operates in the UK, the NSA Breed Society Forum has an important role to play in the two-way communication flow between office holders and farmers.

"Be it the concerns of pedigree breeders or the challenges of commercial producers, being aware of what is happening on farms is essential to steer the direction of our activity on behalf of the sheep sector."

The theme of the NSA Breed Society Forum 2016 was finding solutions to industry challenges, be they emerging diseases (such as bluetongue) or existing ones (such as maedi visna).

Speakers from NSA, AHDB Beef & Lamb, the Animal and Plant Health Agency (APHA), Rare Breed Survival Trust, SAC Consulting and the Farm Animal Genetic Resources Committee (FAnGR) covered a range of these and led the discussion among the group.

Mrs Briggs continues: "Sharing information is essential in tackling these challenges. We know pedigree breeders with high value stock, particularly those lambing early, are most likely to vaccinate against bluetongue  so gauging the likely uptake of vaccine was one of the topics we discussed with APHA.

"SAC Consulting provided some eye-opening information on maedi visna, a disease increasing in incidence that can only be tackled by raising awareness among breeders and commercial producers.

"The forum was an enjoyable and important event to debate these topics at, and receive updates on current industry trends and NSA activity."

Breed societies represented were: Bleu du Maine Sheep Society, Bluefaced Leicester Sheep Breeders Association, British Charollais Sheep Society, Devon & Cornwall Longwool Flockbook Association, Dorset Down Sheep Breeders Association, Dorset Horn & Poll Dorset Sheep Breeders, Hampshire Down Sheep Breeders Association, Herdwick Sheep Breeders Association, Jacob Sheep Society, Kerry Hill Flock Book Society, Lleyn Sheep Society, North Country Cheviot Sheep Society, Romney Sheep Breeders Society, Ryeland Flock Book Society, Sheep Improved Genetics, Shetland Sheep Society, Southdown Sheep Society, Swaledale Sheep Breeders Association, Texel Sheep Society, White Face Dartmoor Sheep Breeders Association and Zwartbles Sheep Association
South West rural insurance company Cornish Mutual has scooped a national award for its work in raising awareness of farm safety.

Cornish Mutuals 'FarmSafe' campaign won Best Campaign in the Public Interest at the third annual Public Interest Awards, run by the Chartered Insurance Institute (CII) and held at Londons Christ Church.

The BBCs Jeremy Vine presented the award after judges praised Cornish Mutual for FarmSafes success in informing and benefiting the insurers Members, as well as the wider farming community.

Cornish Mutual beat off strong competition from two insurance industry giants to pick up the award, having been shortlisted alongside Ageas UKs Road Safety Campaign, and former winners Axa Business Insurance for its campaign; Everyone Makes Mistakes.

'Health and safety on farms an important issue'

Alan Goddard, Managing Director for Cornish Mutual, said: "Health and Safety on farms is such an important issue for us, a rural insurer, as well as for our Members and their friends and families, for whom accidents can have truly devastating consequences.

"It is good to have the issue itself and Cornish Mutuals work in this area recognised at a national level, but we wont be resting on our laurels.

"It is clear from the number of people that took part in FarmSafe that there is an ongoing demand for events and practical demonstrations to help keep farmers up to speed with changes in the law, new regulations and, most importantly, to share their experiences and best-practice."

At the heart of the FarmSafe campaign was a series of free farm Health and Safety workshops which aimed to support and educate the South West rural community which Cornish Mutual serves.

These were part of ongoing efforts to reduce serious injury and death in farming, the highest risk industrial sector according to the Health & Safety Executive.

The insurer worked with farming organisations and groups across the South West, as well as the local media and agricultural press, to increase awareness.

The campaign was also backed-up by a targeted social media and digital campaign. The company also used the events to help train and engage its own employees in the issues and to understand farmers' concerns and needs.

The company is currently delivering a series of Health and Safety workshops across the South West, with events welcoming over 60 attendees on average.

Cornish Mutual has more than 24,000 Members across Cornwall, Devon, Dorset and Somerset, and is the only general insurer based in the South West offering insurance to farms, businesses and individuals.

In 2015, the rural insurers Field Force team visited over 12,000 Members across the South West, with a combined travel distance of 240,000 miles.
Voting in the Scottish Parliamentary elections has brought a new dynamic to Scottish politics for the five years ahead.

The vote saw SNP secure 63 seats; Scottish Conservatives 31 seats; Scottish Labour 24 seats; Scottish Green Party 6 seats and Scottish LibDems 5 seats. The vote left SNP just short of an overall majority.

NFU Scotland President Allan Bowie said: "This Scottish Parliamentary election has fallen at an unprecedented time for Scottish farming.

"The sustained downturn in farm incomes across all sectors and the failures encountered when implementing a new agricultural support system means that farmers and crofters are justifiably asking how the Scottish Government plans to address our pressing issues.

"These were the key themes at NFU Scotlands hustings roadshows held in recent weeks and attended by hundreds of members across the country.

"With agriculture, rural affairs, land reform, environment and food policy being devolved to the Scottish Parliament, there are key decisions to be taken by this new crop of MSPs which will be extremely significant for NFU Scotland members over the next five-year term.

"NFU Scotland has enjoyed strong and positive links with parliamentarians of all colours since the Scottish Parliament was established, and we look forward to continuing this engagement in the new parliamentary term.

"We congratulate all new and returning MSPs on their election and will shortly extend invitations to them to meet with NFUS members across the country  either on farms throughout the summer or at upcoming agricultural shows, including the Highland.

"We pass on our very best wishes for the future to those MSPs and candidates who are not returning to the Scottish Parliament.

"Several of those have been vocal and keen advocates for Scottish farmers and crofters since the start of the Scottish Parliament and some have been heavily involved in rural issues debated at Holyrood in recent times.

"Looking ahead, the Union mapped out its vision for Scottish farming and crofting in our manifesto document for this election and as the new parliament beds in, these are items we will be seeking to progress.

"We want to see action that delivers a food chain which shares the risks and rewards and allows farmers and crofters to prosper.

"It is important that, at this time of uncertainty and volatility in the agricultural industry, we have strong voices within Scottish Government that represent Scottish farmers and crofters and look to build on a food and drink sector success that has yet to connect with the farm gate.

"And there is much unfinished business to be done in delivering outstanding support payments to all farmers before the payment window closes in June.

"As a Union, we will be looking for the new Government to provide a guarantee that there will not be the same debacle and any repeat of the IT delivery failings seen in 2015.

"A clear timetable for support payment delivery in the future must be set and adhered to and proper accountability needs to be established.

"We understand that over the coming days key Cabinet appointments will be made, and we will ask meet with those ministers at the earliest possibility to seek solutions to the unique challenges currently facing our industry and develop the solutions that can return our sector back to profitability.

"With the ink barely dry on ballot papers, focus will quickly turn to the European referendum on 23 June with the Unions debate on EU membership, involving Commissioner Hogan and the Brexit campaign taking place at Ingliston on 19 May.
Stakeholders in the beef sector are attending a Union meeting this Monday, 9 May, to discuss the Beef Efficiency Scheme (BES) to encourage an industry-wide uptake.

With only a few weeks left to apply, NFU Scotland is seeking clarity on important questions about the 45 million scheme, which was launched on Friday 29 April and is aimed at Scottish suckler producers.

The scheme aims to improve efficiency, sustainability and quality of the beef herd whilst helping producers increase the genetic value of their herd and reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.

These aspirations will be delivered through a focus on cattle genetics and management practice.

The meeting to be held at Ingliston, Edinburgh, will seek to gain answers to the outstanding questions, whilst looking at ways to increase the schemes uptake across the country by beef producers.

Misunderstanding of the rules

NFU Scotlands Livestock Committee Chairman Charlie Adam commented: "The sector has been given 45 million from Scottish Government and at times like these, we cannot afford to let this slip out of our hands.

"A lot of the concern about the scheme is due to possible misunderstanding of the rules and requiring further information.

"Whilst there is a lot of information available, some farmers have been too busy with spring work to get to grips with what is being asked within the scheme.

"The clock is ticking and we need to pull together to ensure farmers gain a better understanding of what BES stands for ahead of the deadline for submissions on 31 May.

"This will include getting some robust answers to the Unions questions.

"The Union believes that uptake would increase if Scottish Government would commit to any underspend being allocated to years four and five.

"Opportunities like this do not come along very often for the beef sector but farmers still need to know what they are getting themselves into.

"We will continue to press for answers and to ensure the scheme in communicated to producers."
EU biggest customer of Scottish red meat as trade rebounds to 80m
Becky Moreland talks agriculture with farm visitors

By Diego Flammini

Assistant Editor, North American Content

Farms.com

A Missouri farm mom opened up her familys operation to visitors to engage in discussion about agriculture.

Becky Moreland and her husband Matt run a farm in Cass County, Missouri with Matts family. It consist of about 150 dairy cows, fields of corn and soybeans, and a small operation of cow-calf beef cattle.

On top of that, they run an agritourism operation called Red Barn Ranch where visitors can pick their own fruits and vegetables.

Moreland says many visitors come from Kansas City and a main topic of discussion is agriculture.

I never realized how interested people were in how farming works until we opened our pumpkin patch, she told Missouri Farmer Today. They had really great questions and wanted to learn.

Moreland is involved with CommonGround, a group of more than 100 women farmers who address food concerns that consumers have. She participated in a video called Ask a Farmer, where she and other farmers approached consumers in a grocery store to speak with them about agriculture and the labels that appear on foods.

It gets really intimidating because they dont know what all that means, she said. They cant help what they dont know.
"The success I want to be measured on is not how much of taxpayers' money I spend, but how well it is spent, how well we protect the industry and how we support the industry to grow and prosper and be sustainable in the long-term."
Bragg soldiers say barracks they're being relocated to also have mold

Some Smoke Bomb Hill soldiers say barracks they're being relocated to are just as bad as the ones that were deemed substandard.
Official White House Photo by Pete SouzaThe Obama Administration Thursday announced a series of actions to end the use of anonymous corporations in the United States and require disclosure of beneficial owners when foreigners deposit money or buy assets in this country.

The White House said the Panama Papers  more than ten million leaked documents from the Mossack Fonseca law firm  revealed the use of anonymous offshore shell companies and put the issues of illicit financial activity and tax evasion in the spotlight.

Transparency International-USA has led calls to end the use of anonymous corporations in the United States.

Secret companies allow corruption to flourish, Shruti Shah said last month. Shes a contributing editor of the FCPA Blog and the Vice President of Programs and Operations at TI-USA.

The White House said the actions will include:

Final Treasury regulations on Customer Due Diligence that enhance transparency and protect the integrity of the financial system by requiring financial institutions to know and keep records on who actually owns the companies that use their services.

New Treasury/IRS tax rules closing a loophole allowing foreigners to hide assets or financial activity behind anonymous entities established in the United States.

New legislative proposals to strengthen tools to fight corruption and money laundering.

Increasing transparency into the beneficial ownership of companies formed in the United States by requiring that companies know and report their true owners.

Adding law enforcement tools to combat corruption and money laundering.

These efforts are critical to preventing criminals from using the global financial system to launder proceeds from corruption or other illegal activities, finance criminal activity or even terrorism, evade international sanctions regimes, or evade taxes, the White House said.

Last month, a TI-USA campaign mobilized people to contact their Senators and Representatives and urge support for bills to end anonymous companies in this country.

Anonymous companies are used for dirty-money transactions and schemes that support drug traffickers and terrorists, defraud government agencies and cheat U.S. citizens, and undermine U.S. institutions, TI-USA said.

Next week, UK Prime Minister David Cameron will host the UK Anti-Corruption Summit. Cameron has put the fight against corruption at the top of the international agenda.

He said in a Huffington Post article last year that for too long, corruption has lined the pockets of those on the inside but has been met with little more than a reluctant sigh from politicians.

World leaders simply cannot dodge this issue any longer, Cameron said. We have to show some of the same courage that exposed FIFA and break the taboo on talking about corruption.

In its statement Thursday, the White House said the United States was the first country to criminalize money laundering and the U.S.s Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) provided the model for the OECDs Anti-Bribery Convention and other efforts globally.

* * *

The Administration said Thursday it will:

Issue the Treasury Departments final rule to require financial institutions to obtain and verify the identity of beneficial owners of a company, including individuals who control or own more than 25 percent.

Support a bill to require U.S.-formed companies to disclose the beneficial owners at the time of formation or ownership transfer.

Require single-member limited liability companies and other foreign-owned U.S. entities to obtain a tax identification number and share ownership and transaction data with the Internal Revenue Service.

Expand jurisdiction of prosecutors to pursue money launderers for acts committed in other countries.

Allow use of high-speed administrative subpoenas in money-laundering cases rather than grand jury subpoenas.

Increase access to U.S. bank records located abroad and expand admissibility rules for the records.

Give foreign governments up to 90 days to show probable cause why assets located in the United States should be frozen and ultimately forfeited under the Kleptocracy Asset Recovery Initiative.

Allow U.S. prosecutors in kleptocracy cases to use foreign business records in civil asset recovery cases after the records meet a certification test.

_____

Richard L. Cassin is the publisher and editor of the FCPA Blog. Hell be the keynote speaker at the FCPA Blog NYC Conference 2016.
Having completed and now releasing my Sci-fi novel Retaliation, I have compiled a list of the top ten most important things that you have to consider when writing in this genre. Some of this will spill over to other genres as well and all of it is fairly common sense, but it doesn't hurt to keep it in mind.

Retaliation

Use your own ideas - This is number one because it is that important, there are so many concepts out there it's hard to know if you are the first person doing it, but it is highly unlikely that any two people will write exactly the same book. To be safe though, don't try to re-tread the work of someone else, use your own concept, then when asked you can say how you came up with the idea and it will be clear that you wrote an original story. More importantly you will have so much more fun bringing your own ideas to life.

Use believable characters - we might be basing our story in fantasy but reader need to connect with characters on a real level. If the character is too good and has no flaws then the audience will not buy in to them, if they are too powerful and can't be defeated then you lose the respect of the reader. Characters can be efficient, strong, powerful, weak, evil, good or annoying but they can't be flawless. Try and give them a back story too, everyone came from somewhere and it can help to show the reader how they arrived at who they are now.

Draw your ships - what I mean is that you have to immerse yourself in the world/universe that you are creating, if you are on a space station, then draw it see what it looks like. If like me you are having lots of space battles, draw them, the ships, the battles, who will get destroyed, who will fire the final shot. It doesn't matter where your story is based, draw it the best you can, then you can write about it like it's actually happened. I am not an artist, my drawings are terrible, but they do help me get into my universe.

Find your own terminology - this was a hint given to me by a good friend, try not to get stuck with the same old phrases, warp speed, faster than light drive, tractor beam. This is your world, give it its own identity.

Throw out the rules - Somewhere someone has drilled into us that certain rules apply in these fantasy worlds, vampires cannot come out in daylight, ships can't fire weapons at warp speed, Jedi need midi-chlorians to use the force. I will say it again, this is your universe, your fantasy, what you say goes, even if it is against the tide of popular fiction or science, just do what you need for your story.

Write for you - sometimes there can be a fight between what you want to have happen and what you think a reader might want to see. It is your story, if you want the lead character to die at the end of the book then do it. If you want to switch main characters mid-way through the story then why not, you have to write the story you want to otherwise you may regret never letting the audience see the picture you had when you started writing.

Continuity - 'Danger Will Robinson, Danger!' we are all sci-fi geeks and as such we have an uncanny ability to spot mistakes, a date, a time, an amount of decks on the ship (see Star Trek First Contact) or a character name (I accidently changed my female leads name half-way through the book and almost didn't realise). If you set off on your mission 18 months ago then make sure when you timeline anything you keep that in mind, check and re-check technical data because it will come back to bite you if you get it wrong.

Realism - not just characters, but your universe has to make sense, in Star Wars we see a 60ish year timeline where the ships change, become more advanced but not massively, a good mix of relics and modern which works with the period of time. Andromeda had the one of the most advanced ships in the galaxy become frozen in a black hole then get pulled free 303 years later and it was still the most advanced ship in the galaxy. There had been enough time passed for any dominant species to have evolved their own technology past that point. Keep it real, fantasy is good, but we still have to buy in to it.

The only limit is your imagination - I once read that the show-runners for Dr Who were running out of ideas for storylines, we are talking a about a man who can travel to anywhere in the universe at any point in time that he wants to, how can you be short of ideas? This is your universe, go where you want, do what you want, as long as it makes sense there is no limit to what you can do. Don't be penned in by a lack of imagination.

Have fun - writing is the best job in the world, because you get to lose yourself in the world that you created for yourself, you get to tell stories, use your imagination and build something that others could only dream of. If you aren't having fun with this then you're doing it wrong.
If you are looking for comedy on the big screen this weekend, then Bad Neighbours 2 could be the film for you.

Bad Neighbours 2

The movie is released today and it sees Seth Rogen reunite with Rose Byrne and Zac Efron as they reprise the roles of Mac and Kelly Radner and Teddy Sanders.

Bad Neighbours 2 comes two years after the success of the first film and sees Nicholas Stoller back in the director's chair.

If you are heading out to see Bad Neighbours 2 this weekend, we have a trio of great clips for you to take a look at:

Chloe Grace Moretz is the big new addition to the cast list as she takes on the role of Shelby, Selena Gomez, Dave Franco, Kiersey Clemons, and Lisa Kudrow complete the exciting cast list.

Now that Mac (Rogen) and Kelly Radner (Byrne) have a second baby on the way, they are ready to make the final move into adulthood: the suburbs. But just as they thought they'd reclaimed the neighbourhood and were safe to sell, they learn that the new occupants next door are a sorority even more out of control than Teddy (Efron) and his brothers ever dreamed of being.

Tired of their school's sexist, restrictive system, the unorthodox ladies of Kappa Nu have decided to start a house where they can do whatever the hell they want. When Shelby (Moretz) and her sisters, Beth (Kiersey Clemons) and Nora (Beanie Feldstein), find the perfect place just off campus, they won't let the fact that it's located on a quiet street stand in their way of parties as epic as the guys throw. Forced to turn to the one ex-neighbour with the skills to bring down the new Greeks next door, the Radners - alongside best friends Jimmy (Ike Barinholtz) and Paula (Carla Gallo) - bring in charismatic Teddy as their secret weapon.

If he can infiltrate the sorority and charm his way through it, the thirtysomethings will shutter the Kappas' home. But if they think that their neighbours are going down without a fight, they have severely underestimated the power of youthful ingenuity and straight-up crazy.

Bad Neighbours 2 is out now.

by Helen Earnshaw for www.femalefirst.co.uk

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Sing Street is set to be one of the unmissable movies this summer as John Carney returns to the director's chair. And two great new clips from the film have been unveiled.

Sing Street

Carney is no stranger to this genre of film as he has already brought us Begin Again and the critically acclaimed Once in recent years - I am excited to see what he delivers this time around.

As well as being in the director's chair, Carney has also penned the film's screenplay.

Sing Street is set to hit the big screen later this month and we have two terrific clips to whet your appetite. Take a look:

The director has assembled a fantastic cast of established talent and up and coming stars as Ferdia Walsh-Peelo, Lucy Boynton, Jack Reynor, Maria Doyle Kennedy, and Aidan Gillen are all set to star.

Sing Street takes us back to 1980s Dublin where an economic recession forces Conor out of his comfortable private school and into survival mode at the inner-city public school where the kids are rough and the teachers are rougher. He finds a glimmer of hope in the mysterious and uber-cool Raphina, and with the aim of winning her heart he invites her to star in his band's music videos.

She agrees, and now Conor must deliver what he's promised -calling himself 'Cosmo' and immersing himself in the vibrant rock music trends of the '80s, he forms a band with a few lads, and the group pours their hearts into writing lyrics and shooting videos.

Sing Street premiered at the Sundance Film Festival at the beginning of the year, where its charm won over critics and audiences. It really is set to be a film that's not to be missed this May.

Sing Street is released 20th May.

by Helen Earnshaw for www.femalefirst.co.uk

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Its natural to be uncomfortable with the thought of divorce, especially when youre preparing to say I do. But Dr Minnu Bhonsle, psychotherapist and relationship counsellor, believes its a good idea to discuss the subject. Bitter divorces take place because of a couples inability to negotiate settlements that are mutually acceptable, she explains. Thats possibly what celebrity couple Karishma Kapoor and Sunjay Kapoor are dealing with now.



Sure, talking prenups might make you feel like youre accepting divorce as an eventuality or like youre expecting your marriage to fail, but thats not really how it plays. Ever heard of parents who travel on separate flights? They do it to make sure that, in the off chance of a plane crash, their kids dont lose both parents. You know theres a pretty good chance the plane isnt going to crash, but you want to safeguard your kids from that possibility anyway. Think of your prenup the same wayits meant to safeguard your future from unforeseen harm.



Its a healthy discussion to have. Although it may seem like a prenup presupposed mistrust of each other, it actually builds trust. After all, youre openly sharing details of your finances with each other. The divide between your money and my money vanishes, bringing you closer together.



So if he wants to discuss a prenup, go for it. Draw up your finances to protect your future, in the unlikely chance that you may want a divorce later. Sign the dotted line and rest easy, because your future will be a happy one.

Next Story : These Edible Artworks By Prachi Dhabal Deb Have Our Heart
Canadian basic family apparel supplier, Gildan Activewear has signed an agreement to acquire Alstyle Apparel, the apparel division of Ennis, for $110 million in order to further expand in the markets of US, Canada and Mexico.

Alstyle manufactures and distributes t-shirts and fleece. Its assets include large-scale textile manufacturing facility and cut-and-sew facilities in Mexico, as well as distribution centres located in the United States, Canada and Mexico.

The acquisition is expected to complement Gildan's position in western US, to enhance its market position in Mexican printwear and retail sector and to take advantage of trade agreements with South America. Additionally, Gildan will also be benefitted in logistics and input costs.

Gildan Activewear has signed an agreement to acquire Alstyle Apparel, the apparel division of Ennis, for $110 million in order to further expand in the markets of US, Canada and Mexico. The transaction, subject to customary closing conditions, is expected to close by June 2016. Gildan is expected to reap benefits from this acquisition by 2017 and 2018.#

The transaction, subject to customary closing conditions, is expected to close by June 2016.

Gildan is expected to reap benefits from this acquisition by 2017 and 2018. (MCJ)

Fibre2Fashion News Desk - India
Garment exporters body Apparel Export Promotion Council (AEPC) believes there is there is market for simple but stylish apparel products to tap in Iran following the removal of economic sanctions against the country AEPC Chairman Ashok G Rajani who recently led a delegation of the Council to Iran for an exploratory visit said, The warmth and positive attitude towards India among the members of the trade associations and government representatives augurs well for trade promotion between the two countries. Although the economy and trade is still recovering from the impact of the sanctions, there is market for simple but stylish apparel products, which AEPC plans to tap.

Garment exporters body Apparel Export Promotion Council (AEPC) believes there is there is market for simple but stylish apparel products to tap in Iran following the removal of economic sanctions against the country. AEPC Chairman Ashok G Rajani who recently led a delegation of the Council to Iran for an exploratory visit said, The warmth and positive#

India's share in Iran's RMG import was 2.5 per cent in 2015, which means there is very real possibility for India to capture the growing Iranian market.Iran's RMG import from around the world has shown a growth of 43.3 per cent in 2015 which has increased to $825.9 million in 2015 from $ 576.2 million in 2014. Although it is small market at present, there is scope for growth in the immediate future and we want India to be an important partner in this growth, said Rajani. The Council has drawn up its export promotion programme for the year 2016-17 with a view to achieve an export performance of $18750 million in the year 2016-17.The APEC delegation held meetings with the Iran Textile Export Association, Tehran Chamber of Commerce and Tehran Textile Union on how to reduce tariffs and facilitate market access.Iran has seen a progressive reduction in tariffs from 300 per cent during sanctions to the present 55 per cent. The high tariffs had resulted in unofficial imports being over 10 times the volume of official imports. Hence, the trade associations have been working with the government for reduction in import duties to international levels. This is also necessary as Iran wants to be part of WTO and hence align to WTO's tariff levels.AEPC is hoping that the visit will boost Indian RMG exports, particularly after General Director of Textile & Clothing, Ministry of Industries Mrs. Nasrollahi said India has a lot to offer and could complete the apparel value chain in Iran.The AEPC delegation also met Indian Ambassador Saurabh Kumar who reiterated the opportunities that can open up in the coming years in Iran. (SH)

Fibre2Fashion News Desk  India
Kate Spade & Company, owner of two globally recognised lifestyle brands  Kate Spade New York and Jack Spade, reported a rise of 14.5 per cent in its net sales to $274 million in the first quarter of 2016, ending April 2, as compared to $255 million in the corresponding period last year.

Kate Spade North America reported net sales of $219 million in the first quarter of 2016, a rise of 17.1 per cent as compared to $196 million in the previous year. Net sales for Kate Spade International stood at $49 million in this period as compared to $47 million, a rise of 3.2 per cent.

Adelington Design Group reported net sales of $7 million in Q1 of 2016, a rise of 23.8 per cent as compared to the corresponding period of 2015.

Kate Spade & Company, owner of two lifestyle brands  Kate Spade New York and Jack Spade, reported a rise of 14.5 per cent in its net sales to $274 million in the first quarter of 2016, ending April 2, as compared to $255 million in the corresponding period last year. The company expects net sales in the range of $1.38-1.41 billion in 2016.#

Commenting on the results, Craig Leavitt, CEO of Kate Spade & Company said, Our first quarter results reflect the stronger, refocused Kate Spade & Company and underscore the effectiveness of our differentiated strategy.

We continue to focus on our powerful multi-channel approach, especially fueled by the robust performance of our global e-Commerce business, which helped drive our industry-leading comparable sales growth of 19 per cent, he added.

The company expects net sales in the range of $1.38-1.41 billion in the full-year 2016. (MCJ)

Fibre2Fashion News Desk - India
Swedish fashion retailer, MQ Holding has completed the acquisition of Joy AB, a fashion retailing company for womenswear, for an expansion in the Nordic region.

The announcement for acquisition was made on March 17, 2016, and the acquisition was made for a purchase price of SEK 38.5 million.

All the conditions for the transaction have been met, including an approval from the Swedish Competition Authority and consent from for the change in ownership from both the parties.

Swedish fashion retailer, MQ Holding has completed the acquisition of Joy AB, a fashion retailing company for womenswear, for an expansion in the Nordic region. The announcement for acquisition was made on March 17, 2016, and the acquisition was made for a purchase price of SEK 38.5 million. All the conditions for the transaction have been met.#

Commenting on the acquisition, Christina Stahl, CEO of MQ Holding said, We are pleased to announce the completion of acquisition, and that Joy is now a part of MQ. With its 55 stores and online sales in Sweden, Joy adds an established retail chain brand for ladies fashion to the MQ Group.

Joy caters to midlife women and thereby adds a new, interesting and affluent customer group with a keen interest in fashion to the MQ Group. Women in the 50+ age group account for more than half of the Swedish womenswear market, and are today the market's fastest growing customer group, she added. (MCJ)

Fibre2Fashion News Desk - India
European and US negotiators for the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) deal concluded their 13th round of talks in New York last week, with both sides reiterating their wishes to conclude an agreement this year, so long as it does not force a compromise on substance, the International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development (ICTSD) has said on its website.Meanwhile, a public debate has escalated over the TTIP's potential content, particularly in the wake of a leak of alleged trade deal texts by a Greenpeace.

European and US negotiators for the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) deal concluded their 13th round of talks in New York last week, with both sides reiterating their wishes to conclude an agreement this year, so long as it does not force a compromise on substance, the International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development#

The US has been pushing to reach a completed deal this year if possible before President Barack Obama leaves office. Ratification, however, is not expected in 2016, even if an agreement is concluded.At the level of market access, the two sides are aiming to make progress in TTIP under three main pillars: goods, services, and government procurement.On goods, the US and EU exchanged second offers on tariffs last October, which they noted at the time had put them on comparable levels in terms of tariff line coverage.Discussions on tariffs continued during this round, officials said, specifically on the 97 per cent of tariff lines covered in the latest offers.We had agreed earlier to eliminate tariffs on 97 per cent of tariff lines, and at this round, we worked to increase the number of those tariff lines that would be zeroed out upon entry into force of the agreement, said US chief negotiator Dan Mullaney at the closing press conference.EU chief negotiator Ignacio Garcia Bercero confirmed that the three percent of tariff lines not covered in each side's offer  the most sensitive  were not discussed during the New York meeting.The TTIP cast its shadow over the talks just days after the conclusion of the round, with the Netherlands branch of the Greenpeace environmental group releasing a series of documents which it claims are leaked versions of deal's consolidated texts, dated prior to this latest negotiating round. The release has fuelled a media frenzy in itswake.Greenpeace also made a series of allegations based on its analysis of the texts, arguing that the documents they have seen appear to indicate EU compromises on areas such as the precautionary principle and a lack of explicit mentions on climate protection.In response, EU Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom released a statement the same day which, she said, was needed to respond to some of the misconceptions that appear to exist about these supposed leaks being reported in media outlets.She also pledged that the EU will never sign on to a trade deal that would require changes to laws on genetically modified organisms (GMOs) or force less stringent environmental protections, nor would they limit the 28-nation bloc in making rules aimed at protecting consumers and the environment.I am simply not in the business of lowering standards, said Malmstrom.However, in the wake of the leak, French President Francois Hollande said that, at this stage of the negotiations, TTIP would be unacceptable for his country . (SH)

Fibre2Fashion News Desk  India
Fine Japan zone, a pavilion formed by a number of leading Japanese suppliers, will be debuting at the Intertextile Pavilion 2016, an international fair for apparel fabrics and accessories, which will be held from July 7-9, in Shenzhen, China.

A range of high-quality cotton and man-made fabrics for womenswear and causalwear with quick delivery service will be featured in the zone.

Apart from Japan, Taiwan Pavilion, organised by the Taiwan Textile Federation (TTF), and the Korea Pavilion, organised by the Korea Fashion Textile Association (KFTA) and Daegu Gyeongbuk Textile Industries Association (DGIA) will be participating in the fair.

Fine Japan zone, a pavilion formed by a number of leading Japanese suppliers, will be debuting at the Intertextile Pavilion 2016, an international fair for apparel fabrics and accessories, which will be held from July 7-9, in Shenzhen, China. A range of high-quality cotton and man-made fabrics for womenswear and causalwear with quick delivery service will be#

The exhibition is expected to provide new opportunities and benefit the growing garment manufacturing industries in South China.

Wendy Wen, senior general manager, Messe Frankfurt Hong Kong, said, Guangdong province's garment production output has been growing rapidly over the last year. In 2015, a total of 6.5 billion units of clothing were produced there, representing a 2.5 per cent growth compared to 2014. Because of this, the demand for apparel fabrics and accessories in the South China market has been steadily increasing.

At the event, 700 exhibitors will showcase an array of high-quality fabrics for womenswear, casualwear, lingerie, swimwear and suiting, the latest silk, jacquard, print, wool, cotton, functional, man-made, spun, denim and knitting fabrics, as well as accessories, lace and embroidery, leathers and furs, yarns and fibres and design and testing products and services. In addition to this, the 16th China International Brand Fair Shenzhen and a fashion show will take place concurrently. (HO)

Messe Frankfurt
Prime Source Forum concluded on a successful note in Hong Kong cementing its position as one of the most influential gatherings in the apparel and footwear supply chain industry. The event witnessed the participation of more than 300 executives and senior stakeholders.

We are exceptionally delighted with the calibre of speakers, depth of discussion and the overwhelmingly positive feedback we received from the delegates. We look forward to hosting another successful Prime Source Forum in March 2017, said Martin Keil, managing director of Yeh Shen, the organiser of Prime Source Forum.

The event was officially opened by Gregory So Kam-leung, secretary for commerce and economic development, the government of Hong Kong. Participating companies included organisations, such as Adidas, Coats, Clarks, Cotton Council, Columbia, EastMax, Covestro, Crocs, Dassault Systemes, Groz Beckert, H&M, InvestHK, Metro, Kiabi, Komar, Kopenhagen Fur, LF Sourcing, Michael Kors, New Balance, Primark, Quiksilver, Ralph Lauren, SAC, Sears, Target, Tesco, the UN and VF Corporation.

Prime Source Forum concluded on a successful note in Hong Kong cementing its position as one of the most influential gatherings in the apparel and footwear supply chain industry. The event witnessed the participation of more than 300 executives and senior stakeholders. We are exceptionally delighted with the calibre of speakers, depth of discussion and#

The final keynote address was delivered by Arkebe Oqubay, minister and special advisor to the prime minister of Ethiopia. Arkebe discussed Ethiopia's rapid emergence as a competitive global sourcing hub and highlighted mega developments and Ethiopia's highly competitive and fast growing labour force.

Delegates attend Prime Source Forum to stay abreast of trends and hot button issues, network with peers and make business contacts. From new technology, sustainability frameworks for collaboration, trade policy and the transparency agenda, this year's forum focussed on the issues that matters most to decision makers in the sector, concluded Keil. (NA)

Fibre2fashion News Desk - India
Coimbatore based Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International School of Textiles and Management (SVPISTM) will now offer a three-year B.Sc Textiles programme and an MBA programme in Textiles, Apparel and Retail Management.

Coimbatore based Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International School of Textiles and Management (SVPISTM) will now offer a three-year B.Sc Textiles programme and an MBA programme in Textiles, Apparel and Retail Management. SVPISTM has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Central University of Tamil Nadu (CUTN) to collaborate in the domain of #

SVPISTM has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Central University of Tamil Nadu (CUTN) to collaborate in the domain of textiles and management education.

Coimbatore based Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International School of Textiles and Management (SVPISTM) will now offer a three-year B.Sc Textiles programme and an MBA programme in Textiles, Apparel and Retail Management. SVPISTM has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Central University of Tamil Nadu (CUTN) to collaborate in the domain of #

The eligibility for the undergraduate (UG) course is a pass in 12th standard with a minimum score of 65 per cent, with Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics as subjects. The students will be selected through the Central University Common Entrance Exam (CUCET). The B.Sc programme would have 40 seats this year. It would contain theory and practical courses spanning the entire textile range from fibre to fashion.

Coimbatore based Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International School of Textiles and Management (SVPISTM) will now offer a three-year B.Sc Textiles programme and an MBA programme in Textiles, Apparel and Retail Management. SVPISTM has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Central University of Tamil Nadu (CUTN) to collaborate in the domain of #

Eligibility for the MBA programme is a graduate degree. Live support for project and entrepreneurial activities will be provided by academic and industrial experts. Practical sessions will be conducted in NTC, Mumbai, Textile Committee Lab, NIFT and in in-house laboratories. Admissions for the MBA programme will open on 10.05.16. Candidates with eligible MAT score or Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel Management Aptitude Test (SVP-MAT) score, with any graduate degree will be admitted based on merit. The degrees will be awarded by CUTN. Academic activities will be conducted in SVPISTM, Coimbatore.

Coimbatore based Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International School of Textiles and Management (SVPISTM) will now offer a three-year B.Sc Textiles programme and an MBA programme in Textiles, Apparel and Retail Management. SVPISTM has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Central University of Tamil Nadu (CUTN) to collaborate in the domain of #

Apart from UG/PG courses, research, consultancy, vocational courses and skill development activities will be initiated by the school in the textiles sector, director SVPISTM Dr C Rameshkumar said. He added that SVPISTM has excellent infrastructure including textile laboratory, auditorium, library and other facilities at par with leading institutions in the country

Coimbatore based Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International School of Textiles and Management (SVPISTM) will now offer a three-year B.Sc Textiles programme and an MBA programme in Textiles, Apparel and Retail Management. SVPISTM has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Central University of Tamil Nadu (CUTN) to collaborate in the domain of #

The MoU was signed and exchanged between Rameshkumar and CUTN registrar Dr Bhuvaneswari, in New Delhi. (RKS)

Coimbatore based Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International School of Textiles and Management (SVPISTM) will now offer a three-year B.Sc Textiles programme and an MBA programme in Textiles, Apparel and Retail Management. SVPISTM has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Central University of Tamil Nadu (CUTN) to collaborate in the domain of #

Fibre2Fashion News Desk  India
Yes people you read it right! Our favourite bachelor Salman Khan will soon tie the knot with the Romanian beauty Iulia Vantur. The Bollywood heavyweight, who turned 50 in December last year, is planning to bid goodbye to his bachelorhood by the end of 2016. But not because he is madly in love with Iulia but because of his ailing mother, Salma Khan.

According to a blind item in Mumbai Mirror, ''So the not-young and single superstar may well be married by the year's end. The forever bachelor has decided that nuff's nuff. We hear his current girlfriend, a foreigner, may soon end up being the most powerful woman in the film biz. Not an enviable spot we assure you, for it isn't her love that will make him pop a ring. Rather it's his ailing mum, who wants to see her baby boy well taken care of. Oh, the more things change.''

Click On VIEW PHOTOS OF Salman & His Soon-To-Be Bride Iulia

And guys this is not rocket science! We can very well understand that the 'single superstar' is Salman Khan and the foreigner girlfriend is Iulia Vantur. The two have been spotted together, on many occasions and it seems like Salman is very serious about Iulia.

Also Read: Katrina Kaif Has Grabbed Anand L Rai's Next Film With Shahrukh Khan

Salman Khan met Iulia Vantur when he was shooting for his film Jai Ho with his brother Sohail Khan. The two became friends and started dating later.

Well, we are super excited about Salman Khan's marriage with the very beautiful Iulia Vantur! What about you readers?
In the previous episodes, we saw Sid(Ravi Dubey) arriving in Delhi to meet Ragini Desai, the CEO of Mauve Magazine. She is shown to be a complete hitler.

It is also revealed that Ragini is Roshni(Nia Sharma).

When Sid gets to know about Ragini, he is curious to meet her, as she seems to be a deadly combination of Roshni and his mother-in-law, DD(Achint Kaur).

He comes to meet her at her office. He is about to meet her, but just misses her! In fact, he also hears her voice, and strongly feels that Roshni is nearby.

He meets Anya, who happens to be his previous employee. She looks upset and Sid tries to console her.

On the other hand, Roshni remembers her mother's accidental death and misses her mother till no end. She apparently hates Sid and blames him for her mother's death.

Kesar chacha comes to meet her and compliments her, on her success. He confronts on her decision about moving back to Mumbai as Sid lives there; she replies by saying that she doesn't care about it anymore and Mumbai is a big city and chances of meeting him again, are rare.

Meanwhile, Sid is waiting for Ragini. His flight gets preponed and he leaves. He decides to fix a meeting with her in Mumbai as he gets to know from Anya that Ragini is shifting to Mumbai.

Roshni arrives in office at the same time. This time, Sid and Roshni are in the same corridor, but they do not meet again.

Ragini is furious to know the client(Sid) left without even meeting her and calls him unprofessional. She leaves for the airport.

Here comes an interesting track. Sid and Roshni are coincidently travelling by the same flight to Mumbai and they have been alloted the adjacent seats.

Will they ever meet at the airport? Or do we need to wait longer for the couple to re-unite?
Star Plus's soap opera Dahleez starring Harshad Arora and Tridha Choudhury will unravel a lot of mysteries in the forthcoming episodes.

On one hand we see Adarsh-Swadheenta's engagement preparations going on.

Suhasini(Meghna Malik) pretends to be happy with Adarsh-Swadheenta's relationship and gives a green signal for the wedding.

Actually, she isn't happy with Swadheenta's family background and wants to prove to Adarsh the same, thinking that he is completely blind in love.

Meanwhile, Manohar, Adarsh's dad who is also a senior bureaucrat, secretly visits Central jail with his eldest son, Jaidev to meet terrorist Allan Broad.

Allan alerts them that he will attack the city and also tells Manohar, that the government is after a hefty amount of 700 Crores(illegal).

On the other hand, Adarsh accompanies Swadheenta's family for shopping. In the mall, he spots Asad's friend Arvind in a different look and doubts him. Arvind who is on a mission takes a packet given to him by a shopkeeper and walks away.

Adarsh and Swadheenta are extremely happy that finally their wedding is going to take place. Mr. Ramakrishnan, Swadheenta's father takes them for lunch and asks Adarsh to keep Swadheenta happy and Adarsh happily agrees.

In the upcoming episodes, there will be a lot of stories to unfold as Adarsh tries to find out the truth about Arvind.

Will Adarsh get to know about Arvind's truth and prevent the terrorist attack? Will Adarsh-Swadheenta's wedding take place?
Citis retiring head of Southeast Asia, Michael Zink, shares key insights he picked up in a career that saw him work across the world.

My wife Betsy and I have been on a marvellous journey through ten countries across four continents, and, after more than 27 years overseas, we have decided this is the moment to return to the US. As I retire from Citi, I reflect on lessons from my international career.

Believe in people and your faith will be rewarded

In January 1994, I arrived in Moscow as part of the start-up leadership team that re-established Citis presence in the Russian Federation after 77 years. The most strategically important decision we made was to hire only people in their 20s with no banking experience. They were bright, educated, ambitious, and anxious to succeed. The job of training them added to the burden of the handful of experienced bankers, but those young people rose to the challenge and became the core of one of our most successful businesses. In fact, two of those early hires became country heads for Citi, in Kazakhstan and Vietnam. We expressed belief in them and our faith was rewarded.

Create a leadership team that reflects your employee and client base

Diversity of all sorts is in our interest. We believe a banking license is a privilege, an expression of trust granted by the societies we seek to serve. To bring the best of Citi to the task of earning that trust, in a manner acceptable to each local market, we strive to create leadership teams that reflect the employee base we lead and the client base we serve. Most societies are half male, half female. Our clients are a mixture of local and global companies. Unless our leadership teams have a similar profile, we will lack perspectives necessary for commercial success. In Singapore, we have come close to this goal. Our heads of investment banking, private banking, commercial banking, operations and technology, compliance, and finance are all female and Asian, four Singaporean. Our consumer banking, corporate affairs, legal affairs, and security services heads are also Singaporean. We succeed together, because we have diverse perspectives.

Zink picks up an FA award

Make yourself useful and you will rise

There is a belief that millenials are different. They want to do meaningful work, learn constantly, do many different things. Well, I was born in the 1950s and all that applies to me as well, and to most successful people I know. Some advice for young people - seek to make yourself useful and those other things will follow. Early in my career I was assigned, to run a small branch in Port Gentil, the oil centre for Gabon. (To locate it, find the intersection of the Equator and the coast of West Africa.). I had no experience managing a branch or a team, and I foolishly resisted until the head of Africa called the smart-aleck younger me directly. I told him I knew nothing about running a branch. He agreed... which deepened my confusion. But there had been trouble at that branch and he needed someone to sort it out... he needed me to make myself useful in solving a problem. So I went, and it was one of the most intense, meaningful experiences of my career. That put me on a new trajectory because I had demonstrated a willingness to take over and sort out a difficult situation. In short, I made myself useful... and people took notice.

Seek mentors but be guided by role models

I have always been ambitious, but about ten years into my career I was trying to work out just how ambitious. All four of our children had been born and we were already working in our fifth country. My biggest concern was balancing career ambitions with my commitment to family, so I asked a very senior person in Citi to point out a role model - someone still happily married to his first spouse, who had thriving children, and who was successful. In the end he came up with one or two. They became my role models, examples that showed it was possible to keep family as True North but also be a successful banker. My only regret is that I never thanked them before they retired. You need mentors to help navigate your career but you need role models to navigate life. Understanding the difference is one of the great insights of corporate life.

The world is fascinating. Embrace it. Have the courage to cross a border, cross a boundary, take a chance. Carpe Diem. I now stand on the threshold of another boundary, voluntarily calling time on a wonderful career because my intellectual curiosity is propelling me onward to the next, unknown chapter. You can do the same. All you need do is listen to yourself... and believe.
CVC Capital Partners said on Thursday it had sold Chinese education counsellor Education International Corporation (EIC) as more Chinese students enrol at overseas institutions.

CVC sold the firm to a consortium led by NLD Investment, a Chinese private equity fund, in partnership with the management and the founder of EIC. Financial details of the transaction were not disclosed.

CVC decided on a sale to another fund rather than conduct an IPO in Hong Kong.

EIC is Chinas largest overseas educational counselling service provider, with a 13% national market share. Since its inception in 2000 EIC has placed over 120,000 students to overseas education institutions. In 2014, EIC helped over 18,500 students enrol at an overseas education institution, of which approximately 45% enrolled at one of the top 50 globally ranked universities.

Since the initial investment in December 2013 from Asia Fund III, CVC has helped strengthen the management team with key senior hires, including the appointment of Isa Wong, a 20 year education industry veteran from Pearson, as CEO in 2014.

In the same year, CVC also led the strategic acquisition of New Pathway, a US-focused test preparation and college counselling company with a strong online technology platform. This enhanced EICs US market position and gained the company an immediate presence in the online and mobile space.

Hans Wang, Partner at CVC in Hong Kong, said: EIC is now well positioned to capture future opportunities in the rapidly expanding overseas education industry.
Yadea Group Holdings, a manufacturer and seller of electric motorcycles and bicycles, is targeting as much as HK$1.86 billion ($240 million) from an initial public offering in Hong Kong officially launched on Thursday.

The Huizhou, Guangdong-headquartered company is set to be the first pure-play electric vehicle manufacturer listed in Hong Kong, so will offer some welcome diversity to an equity capital market that has been skewed towards financial institutions so far this year.

The citys two largest IPOs year-to-date are China Zheshang Banks $1.69 billion and Bank of Tianjins $948 million floatations, which involved very limited participation from international money managers and regular equity investors, according to one ECM banker.

Offering a potential tonic to the evident investor fatigue, Yadea offers a unique equity story by operating in a niche market that has grown steadily over the past years.

According to Yadeas prospects, it was the largest electric scooter manufacturer and second-largest electric bicycle manufacturer by revenue last year in China, the worlds largest consumer market of electric two-wheeled vehicles.

Retail sales of electric two-wheeled vehicles grew at a compound annual growth rate of 5.3% between 2010 and 2015, according to Frost & Sullivan, which expects the growth rate to pick up slightly to 5.6% over the next five years.

While some independent research institutions are upbeat about the sector, some analysts highlighted one policy risk as the Chinese government could potentially expand a motorcycle ban to more cities.

Currently, the use of motorcycles is banned in nearly 200 Chinese cities, including Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen, where they were blamed for high accident rates and illegal commercial rides.

In addition, industry competition is fierce because there were about 250 manufacturers with annual revenues of at least Rmb200 million ($30 million) by the end of last year. Syndicate analysts, however, believe Yadea could outperform its competitors due to its bigger scale and could potentially benefit from industry cosolidation, which has been ongoing since 2010.

The nitty gritty

A source familiar with the situation said the order book on the Yadea IPO will open until May 12, with listing scheduled for May 19.

The offering features the sale of 750 million shares in a 96:4 primary/secondary spilt, representing 25% of its enlarged share capital. There is also a standard 15% greenshoe of 112.5 million new shares.

Indicative price guidance was given at HK$1.72 to HK$2.48 per share. Based on the projected net earnings of Rmb494 million next year, the implied valuation will range between 8.7 to 12.5 times price-to-earnings on a pre-shoe basis, or 9 to 13 times post-shoe.

At the low end of the pricing range the company will have a market capitalisation of HK$5.2 billion, or a discount of 28.6% to the syndicates fair value estimate of HK$7.2 billion. At the high end it will be valued at HK$7.4 billion and the discount will tighten to 14.5% compared with fair value estimate of HK$8.7 billion.

The company has brought in two cornerstone investors  Keenway International ($20 million) and Hong Kong Kunsheng Investment ($10 million)  who took up approximately 18% of the deal at low end pricing.

Joint bookrunners of the deal are JP Morgan, China Securities International, Huatai Securities and Alliance Capital.
UBS has appointed Damien Brosnan and Peihao Huang as co-heads of its equity capital markets business in Asia with immediate effect, according to an internal memo seen by FinanceAsia on Friday.

Their official title will be co-heads of ECM Solutions, which includes both deal origination and syndication responsibilities and suggests the Swiss bank is officially integrating the two operations at a senior level.

Although UBS has separate equity origination and syndication teams, it has already brought the two teams closer by sharing resources. A number of junior bankers, for example, have worked for both teams since last year, according to a source familiar with the situation.

The new appointment means Brosnan is taking on multiple roles, given his existing responsibilities as head of equity syndicate and head of equity-linked origination in Asia.

Brosnans syndication role will be shared by Peihao Huang, who was an executive director mainly responsible for Greater China deal origination before the promotion. She will assume more of the investor-facing responsibilities previously held by Brosnan.

Damien Brosnan

Brosnan and Huang will also take over secondary placement and block trade origination after Pascal Guttieres, former head of block trading in Asia ex-Japan, moved away from UBS to join event-driven fund Segantii earlier this year, according to a source familiar with the situation.

UBS was FinanceAsias Best Equity House in 2015. It was ranked first out of all the non-Chinese investment banks in the Asia ex-Japan ECM league table last year and helped its clients raise $15.6 billion from 57 deals, according to Dealogic.

However, the Swiss bank slipped out of the top 10 in the first quarter of 2016 as overall deal volumes shrank.

Still, the bank remained active in equity-linked issuance. It was involved in two of the three internationally marketed deals so far this year, including CRRC Corporations $600 million and China Railway Construction Corp's $500 million H-share convertible bond offerings.

Deals UBS has in the works include Vodafone India's $2 billion listing, Cikarang Listrindos $300 million Indonesia IPO and Fullerton Healthcares $300 million Singapore IPO.
Uday Saddam Hussein al-Tikritti was the eldest son of the late Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. Uday had a nasty reputation of torture, murder, and jealousy. He once killed a valet driver of an Egyptian government official with an electric carving knife because the official had introduced his father to a younger woman that Saddam would later make his second wife. Uday was also known to torture Iraqi athletes that didnt perform up to his standards. The man was by no means a humanitarian. Uday Saddam Hussein was killed in 2003 by members of the United States Army in Mosul. Before his death Uday has reportedly amassed a car collection that was believed to hold over 1,000 cars from all over the world.

Ferraris, Porsches, Rolls Royces, Chevrolets, Lamborghinis, and Plymouths were just some of his flock. Many of the cars in the collection were damage in the U.S. bombings of the Iraq. Others were destroyed and looted by angry Iraqis. The United States Army blew up one of his seized collectables to demonstrate how car bombs worked. That vehicle was a super rare Lamborghini LM-200. Many pieces of Udays collection are yet to be found. The country of Iraq is littered with underground bunkers and hidden facilities that many of the lost vehicles may take years to be uncovered.

15. Lamborghini LM-200

There were only 328 of this Lamborghini SUV made. It was given the nick name Rambo Lambo. This isnt the exact LM-200 Uday owned. His was blown up by the US Army in a demonstration on car bombs.

14. Ferrari Testarossa

Uday had a love of Ferraris. They made up a large part of his collection. This Testarossa was found locked away behind a gate at one of Udays compounds.

13. A Fleet of Mercedes Limos

The son of Saddam had a fleet of Mercedes Limousines. Why in the world someone would need a fleet of limos is beyond me but then again I dont have the money that the Husseins did.

12. Drop Tops for Days!

Uday Hussein loved his convertibles. Part of his collection that has been found contains old european roadsters and Plymouth Prowlers.

11. Gemballa M635 CSI

Heres one of Udays BMWs. This one in particular was originally a M635 CSI that was modified by Gemballa. When these cars were being transformed by the company the price tag was twice of the original cost of the car.

10. V-12 Love

One thing Uday loved and coveted more than Ferraris was V-12 engines. When they happened to be in Ferraris it was a double bonus for him. Here are two of his V-12 Ferraris that were found covered in dust and sand.

9. A Wide Range of Vehicles

This picture proves the wide extent and diversity of Udays collection. A Porsches, a Range Rover, and a Chevrolet Suburban sit wasting away amongst other makes and models.

9. A Wide Range of Vehicles

This picture proves the wide extent and diversity of Udays collection. A Porsches, a Range Rover, and a Chevrolet Suburban sit wasting away amongst other makes and models.

7. Investments Turned to Junkyards

Many of Udays prizes have been looted and torn to pieces. This example shows the extent of the dismantling many of his pieces met.

6. BMW 520i

The BMW 520i was once a highly sought after car in the United States and Europe. Uday was rumored to have several of these in his collection. This one was left to rust away in a field.

5. Spare Ferrari Parts Anyone

Im not quite sure as to why Iraqi people would steal parts off this Ferrari that was part of Udays collection. I doubt there is a big used Ferrari parts market in Iraq.

.

4. Ferrari F40

It was rumored that Uday had two of the high powered Ferraris in his collection. To this day only one has been found.

3. So Many TestarossasSo Little Time

This US solider takes a photo op in one of Udays Ferrari Testarossas. How did one man find time to drive or ride in all of these cars?

2. Burn Baby Burn

Here we see another of Udays classic collection that has been torched. This car had the potential to be sold for so much money that many Iraqis needed. What a waste.

1. Cars Werent The Only Things Found in His Collection

Uday was a connoisseur of more than just cars. A large and wide ranging collection of gold platted guns were seized at one of his compounds. The evil and rich get all the cool toys!
Regulatory News:

United Company RUSAL Plc (Paris:RUSAL) (Paris:RUAL):

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.

UNITED COMPANY RUSAL PLC

(Incorporated under the laws of Jersey with limited liability)

(Stock Code: 486)

CONTINUING CONNECTED TRANSACTIONS

PURCHASE OF RAW MATERIALS FOR PRODUCTION

Reference is made to the announcements of the Company dated 20 January 2016 and 5 April 2016 in relation to the Previously Disclosed 2016 Purchase of Raw Materials Agreements for Production.



The Company announces that on 5 May 2016, UC RUSAL TH, as buyer, entered into the Purchase of Anode Blocks Agreement with OJSC "EPM-CheEP" with the associate of Mr. Blavatnik.

THE PURCHASE OF ANODE BLOCKS AGREEMENT WITH OJSC "EPM-CheEP"

The Company announces that on 5 May 2016, UC RUSAL TH, as buyer, entered into a purchase of raw materials agreement with Open Joint Stock Company "ENERGOPROM Chelyabinsk Electrode Plant" ("OJSC "EPM-CheEP""), an associate of Mr. Blavatnik, as seller, pursuant to which UC RUSAL TH agreed to purchase and OJSC "EPM-CheEP" agreed to supply anode blocks in the estimated amount of 36,000 tons for the year ending 31 December 2016, for an estimated total consideration of approximately USD15,323,143 (the "Purchase of Anode Blocks Agreement with OJSC "EPM-CheEP""). The term of the contract is up to 31 December 2016.

Under the Purchase of Anode Blocks Agreement with OJSC "EPM-CheEP", the payment of the consideration is to be made within 30 calendar days upon delivery and is to be satisfied in cash via wire transfer.

THE AGGREGATION APPROACH

Pursuant to Rule 14A.81 of the Listing Rules, the continuing connected transactions under the Purchase of Anode Blocks Agreement with OJSC "EPM-CheEP" and the Previously Disclosed 2016 Purchase of Raw Materials Agreements for Production are required to be aggregated, as they were entered into by the Group with the associates of the same connected persons or with parties connected or otherwise associated with one another, and the subject matter of each of the contracts relates to the purchase of raw materials by members of the Group for the purpose of the Group's production.

THE ANNUAL AGGREGATE TRANSACTION AMOUNT

Based on the terms of the Purchase of Anode Blocks Agreement with OJSC "EPM-CheEP" and the Previously Disclosed 2016 Purchase of Raw Materials Agreements for Production, the annual aggregate transaction amount that is payable by the Group to the associates of Mr. Blavatnik for the financial year ending 31 December 2016 is estimated to be up to approximately USD27.28 million.

This annual aggregate transaction amount is estimated by the Directors based on the amount of raw materials to be supplied for the purpose of the Group's production and their contract price.

The consideration payable under the Purchase of Anode Blocks Agreement with OJSC "EPM-CheEP" is calculated by multiplying the unit price by the volume.

Under the Purchase of Anode Blocks Agreement with OJSC "EPM-CheEP", the relevant price per ton of the anode blocks is approximately USD426.

The consideration has been arrived at after arm's length negotiation by reference to market price and on terms no less favourable than those prevailing in the Russian market for raw materials of the same type and quality and those offered by the associates of Mr. Blavatnik to independent third parties. For the Purchase of Anode Blocks Agreement with OJSC "EPM-CheEP", the Company invited several organizations to take part in the tender in relation to the purchase of the anode blocks and chose the seller offering the best terms and conditions (taking into account the price and quality offered by the seller and the proximity of the seller) and then entered into an agreement with the chosen seller. Accordingly, the Purchase of Anode Blocks Agreement with OJSC "EPM-CheEP" was entered into.

REASONS FOR AND BENEFITS OF THE TRANSACTIONS

The Directors consider that transactions under the Purchase of Anode Blocks Agreement with OJSC "EPM-CheEP" are for the benefit of the Company, as the seller offered a competitive price and the raw materials to be supplied by the sellers meet the technical specification for the Group's production.

The Directors (including the independent non-executive Directors) consider that the Purchase of Anode Blocks Agreement with OJSC "EPM-CheEP" has been negotiated on an arm's length basis and on normal commercial terms which are fair and reasonable and the transactions contemplated under the Purchase of Anode Blocks Agreement with OJSC "EPM-CheEP" are in the ordinary and usual course of business of the Group and in the interests of the Company and its shareholders as a whole.

None of the Directors have a material interest in the transactions contemplated by the Purchase of Anode Blocks Agreement with OJSC "EPM-CheEP", save for Mr. Blavatnik, a non-executive Director, who is interested in more than 30% in OJSC "EPM-CheEP". Accordingly, Mr. Blavatnik did not vote on the Board resolutions approving the Purchase of Anode Blocks Agreement with OJSC "EPM-CheEP".

LISTING RULES IMPLICATIONS

Mr. Blavatnik, a non-executive Director, indirectly holds more than 30% of the issued share capital of OJSC "EPM-CheEP. OJSC "EPM-CheEP" is therefore an associate of Mr. Blavatnik and hence a connected person of the Company under the Listing Rules.

Accordingly, the transactions contemplated under the Purchase of Anode Blocks Agreement with OJSC "EPM-CheEP" constitute continuing connected transactions of the Company.

The annual aggregate transaction amount for the financial year ending 31 December 2016 of the continuing connected transactions under the Purchase of Anode Blocks Agreement with OJSC "EPM-CheEP" and the Previously Disclosed 2016 Purchase of Raw Materials Agreements for Production is more than 0.1% but less than 5% under the applicable percentage ratios. Accordingly, pursuant to Rule 14A.76 of the Listing Rules, the transactions contemplated under these agreements are only subject to the announcement requirements set out in Rules 14A.35 and 14A.68, the annual review requirements set out in Rules 14A.49, 14A.55 to 14A.59, 14A.71 and 14A.72 and the requirements set out in Rules 14A.34 and 14A.50 to 14A.54 of the Listing Rules. These transactions are exempt from the circular and shareholders' approval requirements under Chapter 14A of the Listing Rules.

Details of the Purchase of Anode Blocks Agreement with OJSC "EPM-CheEP" and the Previously Disclosed 2016 Purchase of Raw Materials Agreements for Production will be included in the next annual report and accounts of the Company in accordance with Rule 14A.71 of the Listing Rules where appropriate.

PRINCIPAL BUSINESS ACTIVITIES

The Company is principally engaged in the production and sale of aluminium, including alloys and value-added products, and alumina.

OJSC "EPM-CheEP" is principally engaged in the production and sale of graphite electrodes, anode blocks, carbon materials, structural graphite, carbon fiber materials, products made from the above materials and carbon mass by-products.

DEFINITIONS

In this announcement, the following expressions have the following meanings, unless the context otherwise requires:

"associate(s)" has the same meaning ascribed thereto under the Listing Rules. "Board" the board of Directors. "Company" United Company RUSAL Plc, a limited liability company incorporated in Jersey, the shares of which are listed on the main board of the Stock Exchange. "connected person(s)" has the same meaning ascribed thereto under the Listing Rules. "continuing connected transaction(s)" has the same meaning ascribed thereto under the Listing Rules. "Director(s)" the director(s) of the Company. "Group" the Company and its subsidiaries. "Listing Rules" the Rules Governing the Listing of Securities on The Stock Exchange of Hong Kong Limited. "Mr. Blavatnik" Mr. Len Blavatnik, a non-executive Director. "percentage ratios" the percentage ratios under Rule 14.07 of the Listing Rules. "Previously Disclosed 2016 Purchase of Raw Materials Agreements for Production" the agreements/addendums/additional agreements entered into between UC RUSAL TH as buyer and the associates of Mr. Blavatnik as sellers in relation to the purchase of raw materials for the year ending 31 December 2016 for the purpose of the Group's production, as previously disclosed in the Company's announcements dated 20 January 2016 and 5 April 2016. "Stock Exchange" The Stock Exchange of Hong Kong Limited. "USD" United States dollars, the lawful currency of the United States of America.

By Order of the Board of Directors of

United Company RUSAL Plc

Aby Wong Po Ying

Company Secretary

6 May 2016

As at the date of this announcement, the executive Directors are Mr. Oleg Deripaska, Mr. Vladislav Soloviev and Mr. Stalbek Mishakov, the non-executive Directors are Mr. Maxim Sokov, Mr. Dmitry Afanasiev, Mr. Len Blavatnik, Mr. Ivan Glasenberg, Mr. Maksim Goldman, Ms. Gulzhan Moldazhanova, Mr. Daniel Lesin Wolfe, Ms. Olga Mashkovskaya and Ms. Ekaterina Nikitina, and the independent non-executive Directors are Mr. Matthias Warnig (Chairman), Dr. Peter Nigel Kenny, Mr. Philip Lader, Dr. Elsie Leung Oi-sie, Mr. Mark Garber and Mr. Dmitry Vasiliev.

All announcements and press releases published by the Company are available on its website under the links http://www.rusal.ru/en/investors/info.aspx, http://rusal.ru/investors/info/moex/ and http://www.rusal.ru/en/press-center/press-releases.aspx, respectively.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160505006237/en/

Contacts:

United Company RUSAL Plc
REDMOND (dpa-AFX) - Microsoft (MSFT) said it would end the free Windows 10 upgrade offer on July 29. After July 29th, users will be able to continue to get Windows 10 on a new device, or purchase a full version of Windows 10 Home for $119. As it nears the one year anniversary of the availability of Windows 10, the company noted that that Windows 10 is now running on 300 million active devices around the world. 'With the highest customer satisfaction of any version of Windows, we want everyone to enjoy the benefits of Windows 10. We continue to see awesome new Windows 10 devices becoming available - at a price point for everyone. And, today, we want to remind you that if you haven't taken advantage of the free upgrade offer, now is the time. The free upgrade offer to Windows 10 was a first for Microsoft, helping people upgrade faster than ever before. And time is running out,' Yusuf Mehdi Corporate Vice President of Microsoft's Windows and Devices Group said in a blog post. 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.
CAMARILLO, California, May 5, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

All amounts are in U.S. Dollars unless otherwise indicated:

FIRST QUARTER HIGHLIGHTS

Average production for the first quarter of 2016 was 1,352 BOEPD, an increase of 8% compared to 2015 production of 1,249 BOEPD due to the completion of the fracture stimulation operations on the previously drilled Nickel Hill 36-3H well and the Emery 17-1H well in mid-2015

In the quarter, the Company continued to reduce its costs. G&A expenses decreased by 31% and per barrel operating costs decreased by 11% in the first quarter of 2016 compared to the first quarter of 2015

Cash flow from operating activities was $1.5 million in the first quarter 2016 compared to $1.3 million in the first quarter of 2015

in the first quarter 2016 compared to in the first quarter of 2015 Net loss for the first quarter of 2016 was $1.3 million compared to $0.8 million for the first quarter of 2015 most of which is due to a non-cash unrealized loss of $0.8 million from hedged commodity contracts in the first quarter of 2016

compared to for the first quarter of 2015 most of which is due to a non-cash unrealized loss of from hedged commodity contracts in the first quarter of 2016 Revenue, net of royalties was $2.1 million in the first quarter of 2016 compared to $3.2 million for first quarter of 2015, a decrease of 35%, as average prices declined by 41% between the quarters

in the first quarter of 2016 compared to for first quarter of 2015, a decrease of 35%, as average prices declined by 41% between the quarters Average netback per barrel for the first quarter of 2016 was $12.29 , a decrease of 47% from the prior year first quarter due to lower prices in 2016. If the commodity contract hedges are included in the computation, the average netback per barrel increases over 111% to $25.89 , a decrease of only 17% from the first quarter 2015 amount

, a decrease of 47% from the prior year first quarter due to lower prices in 2016. If the commodity contract hedges are included in the computation, the average netback per barrel increases over 111% to , a decrease of only 17% from the first quarter 2015 amount In February 2016 , the Company started the shutdown of the Poland operations by relinquishing the Slupsk concession which was its last remaining concession in Poland

, the Company started the shutdown of the operations by relinquishing the Slupsk concession which was its last remaining concession in Cash totaled $2.9 million and working capital totaled $8.0 million at March 31, 2016

and working capital totaled at In April 2016 , the Company made a voluntary $1.8 million pay down on its credit facility

BNK's President and Chief Executive Officer, Wolf Regener commented:

"Our first quarter 2016 production increased by 8% from the prior year first quarter to 1,352 BOEPD. The Company's existing production continues to perform well and we remain in a ready to drill state, with all the planning for the next wells complete. Our intent is to work with our lender and utilize our existing cash flow to begin drilling again when the pricing warrants.

"The Company continues to succeed in its cost cutting efforts. In the first quarter of 2016 a reduction of general and administrative expense of 31% was achieved over the first quarter of 2015 and our operating expense per barrel was reduced by 11% to $4.49/barrel compared to the prior year first quarter. These continued cost savings partially offset a 41% decrease in average prices compared to the prior year quarter and contributed to the Company generating positive cash flow from continuing operations of $1.5 million in the first quarter of 2016.

"The Company's hedging position has continued to allow us to realize higher prices than current market levels for a portion of our production. The Company's commodity contract hedges generated $1.7 million in realized gains during the first quarter of 2016 with about 73% of our oil production hedged. We expect a comparable level of hedging going forward on our forecasted existing production for the remainder of 2016.

"Average netbacks for the first quarter of 2016 were $12.29, a decrease of 47% compared to the prior year due to lower prices. If we include the impact of the realized gains from the commodity contracts, our average netbacks for 2016 would be $25.89, which is a decrease of only 17% compared to the first quarter of 2015."

"In the first quarter of 2016, the Company generated a net loss of $1,250,000 compared to $760,000 in the first quarter 2015. Oil and gas revenue, net of royalties was $2.1 million in the first quarter of 2016, a decrease of $1.1 million, or 35%, compared to the prior year quarter.

"The Company continues to evaluate alternatives for its Spain operations including continuing its efforts to partner with another company or reducing or ceasing its operations there. With the recently announced shutdown of Poland, we expect our European costs to be substantially reduced from prior years.

"In April, the Company made a voluntary $1.8 million pay down of its existing credit facility to reduce its ongoing interest payments, which amount remains available to the Company under the credit facility."



1st Qtr 2016

1st Qtr 2015

% Net loss:









$ Thousands $(1,250)

$(760)

(64) $ per common share assuming dilution $(0.01)

$(0.00)

-











Capital Expenditures $131

$4,318

(97)











Average production per day (Boepd) 1,352

1,249

8 Average Product Price per Barrel $21.69

$36.62

(41) Average Netback per Barrel $12.29

$23.33

(47) Average Price per Barrel including Commodity Contracts 35.29

44.37

(20) Average Netback per Barrel including Commodity Contracts 25.89

31.08

(17)













3/31/2016

12/31/2015



Cash and Cash Equivalents $2,885

$1,666



Working Capital $7,950

$7,298





First Quarter 2016 versus First Quarter 2015

Oil and gas gross revenues totaled $2,669,000 in the quarter versus $4,117,000 in the first quarter of 2015. Oil revenues decreased $1,553,000 or 43% as average oil prices decreased $15.89 per barrel or 34% to $30.24 in addition to a 14% decrease in oil production per day to 744 boepd. Natural gas revenues decreased $75,000 or 20% to $299,000 as average natural gas prices decreased $1.04/mcf or 35% to $1.93 which was partially offset by a 22% increase in natural gas production of 305 cubic feet per day (mcf/d) to 1,702 mcf/d. Natural gas liquids (NGL's) revenues increased $180,000 or 126% as NGL production increased 117% to 324 boepd while average NGL prices increased 3% to $10.96.

Average first quarter 2016 production per day increased 8% from the first quarter of 2015 due to the production from the previously drilled Nickel Hill 36-3H well and the Emery 17-1H well which were completed in the second quarter of 2015.

Production and operating expenses decreased slightly to $552,000 and the per barrel production and operating costs decreased by 11% to $4.49/barrel due to the Company's cost cutting efforts.

Depletion and depreciation expense decreased $140,000 or 8% due to an decrease in the reserve base in 2016.

General and administrative expenses decreased $637,000 or 31% due to cost cutting efforts which included reduced salary and benefits expense and legal, accounting and consulting costs.

Share based compensation decreased $138,000 or 77% due to the timing of stock awards granted to employees.

Finance income decreased $373,000 in the first quarter of 2016 compared to the prior year quarter primarily due to prior year unrealized gains on commodity contracts.

Finance expense increased $614,000 in the first quarter of 2016 compared to the prior year quarter primarily due to unrealized gains on commodity contracts and the interest expense on the credit facility.

Capital expenditures of $131,000 were incurred in the first quarter of 2016 relating to the US operations.

BNK PETROLEUM INC. CONDENSED CONSOLIDATED STATEMENTS OF FINANCIAL POSITION (Unaudited, Expressed in Thousands of United States Dollars) ($000 except as noted)





March 31

December 31





2016

2015











Current Assets

$2,885

$1,666

Cash



Trade and other receivables

2,853

2,905

Other current assets

811

906

Fair value of commodity contracts

3,988

4,459





10,537

9,936











Non-current assets

134,680

136,233

Property, plant and equipment



Exploration and evaluation assets

835

835

Fair value of commodity contracts

2,481

2,802





137,996

139,870











Total Assets

$148,533

$149,806











Current Liabilities

$2,587

$2,638

Trade and other payables







2,587

2,638











Non-current liabilities









Loans and borrowings

24,001

23,961

Asset retirement obligations

725

788





24,726

24,749











Equity









Share capital

279,859

279,859

Contributed surplus

21,522

21,471

Deficit

(180,161)

(178,911) Total Equity

121,220

122,419











Total Equity and Liabilities

$148,533

$149,806

BNK PETROLEUM INC. CONDENSED CONSOLIDATED STATEMENTS OF OPERATIONS AND COMPREHENSIVE LOSS (Unaudited, expressed in Thousands of United States dollars, except per share amounts)

($000 except as noted)

Three months ended March 31, ($000's) 2016

2015







Oil and gas revenue net of royalties $2,064

$3,191 Other income 6

3

2,070

3,194







Exploration and evaluation expenditures -

32 Production and operating expenses 552

572 Depletion and depreciation 1,671

1,811 General and administrative expenses 1,408

2,045 Share based compensation 42

180

$3,673

$4,640







Finance Income 1,680

2,053 Finance Expense (1,324)

(710)







Net loss and comprehensive loss from continuing operations $(1,247)

$(103) Net loss and comprehensive loss from discontinued operations (3)

(657) Net loss (1,250)

(760) Net loss per share $(0.01)

$0.00

BNK PETROLEUM INC. FIRST QUARTER 2016 Unaudited, expressed in Thousands of United States dollars, except as noted)





Quarter Ending March 31,

2016

2015 Oil revenue before royalties $2,047

$3,600 Gas revenue before royalties 299

374 NGL revenue before royalties 323

143 Oil and Gas revenue 2,669

4,117 Cash flow provided by operating activities 1,544

1,282 Capital expenditures (131)

(4,318)























Statistics:





Average oil production (Bopd) 744

867 Average natural gas production (mcf/d) 1,702

1,397 Average NGL production (Boepd) 324

149 Average production (Boepd) 1,352

1,249







Average oil price ($/bbl) $ 30.24

$ 46.13 Average natural gas price ($/mcf) 1.93

2.97 Average NGL price ($/bbl) 10.96

10.68







Average price per barrel $21.69

$36.62 Royalties per barrel 4.91

8.24 Operating expenses per barrel 4.49

5.05 Netback per barrel $12.29

$23.33







Average price per barrel including commodity contracts $35.29

$44.37 Royalties per barrel 4.91

8.24 Operating expenses per barrel 4.49

5.05 Netback per barrel including commodity contracts $25.89

$31.08

The information outlined above is extracted from and should be read in conjunction with the Company's unaudited financial statements for the three months ended March 31, 2016 and the related management's discussion and analysis thereof, copies of which are available under the Company's profile at www.sedar.com.

NON-GAAP MEASURES

The Company's Non-GAAP Measures are described and reconciled to to GAAP measures in the management's discussion and analysis which are available under the Company's profile at www.sedar.com.

Cautionary Statements

In this news release and the Company's other public disclosure:

(a)

The Company's natural gas production is reported in thousands of cubic feet ("Mcfs"). The Company also uses references to barrels ("Bbls") and barrels of oil equivalent ("Boes") to reflect natural gas liquids and oil production and sales. Boes may be misleading, particularly if used in isolation. A Boe conversion ratio of 6 Mcf:1 Bbl is based on an energy equivalency conversion method primarily applicable at the burner tip and does not represent a value equivalency at the wellhead. Given that the value ratio based on the current price of crude oil as compared to natural gas is significantly different from the energy equivalency of 6:1, utilizing a conversion on a 6:1 basis may be misleading as an indication of value.





(b)

Discounted and undiscounted net present value of future net revenues attributable to reserves do not represent fair market value.





(c)

Possible reserves are those additional reserves that are less certain to be recovered than probable reserves. There is a 10% probability that the quantities actually recovered will equal or exceed the sum of proved plus probable plus possible reserves.





(d)

The Company discloses short-term production rates. Readers are cautioned that such production rates are preliminary in nature and are not necessarily indicative of long-term performance or of ultimate recovery.

Caution Regarding Forward-Looking Information

This release contains forward-looking information including information regarding the Company's commodity contract hedges, anticipated results from the Company's cost reduction measures, the proposed timing and expected results of exploratory and development work including production from the Company's Tishomingo field, Oklahoma acreage, availability of funds from the Company's reserves based loan facility, the effect of design and performance improvements on future productivity, the Company's European projects, planned capital expenditure programs and cost estimates, planned use and sufficiency of cash on hand and cash flow from operations and the Company's strategy and objectives. The use of any of the words "target", "plans", "anticipate", "continue", "estimate", "expect", "may", "will", "project", "should", "believe" and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements.

Such forward-looking information is based on management's expectations and assumptions, including that the Company will achieve a comparable level of hedging going forward in respect of its existing production, that the Company will achieve the results anticipated by management from its cost reduction measures, that the Company's geologic models will be validated, that indications of early results are reasonably accurate predictors of the prospectiveness of the shale intervals, that previous exploration results are indicative of future results and success, that expected production from future wells can be achieved as modeled, declines will match the modeling, future well production rates will be improved over existing wells, that rates of return as modeled can be achieved, that recoveries are consistent with management's expectations, that additional wells are actually drilled and completed, that design and performance improvements will reduce development time and expense and improve productivity, that discoveries will prove to be economic, that anticipated results and estimated costs will be consistent with managements' expectations, that all required permits and approvals and the necessary labor and equipment will be obtained, provided or available, as applicable, on terms that are acceptable to the Company, when required, that no unforeseen delays, unexpected geological or other effects, equipment failures, permitting delays or labor or contract disputes are encountered, that the development plans of the Company and its co-venturers will not change, that the demand for oil and gas will be sustained, that the Company will continue to be able to access sufficient capital through financings, credit facilities, farm-ins or other participation arrangements to maintain its projects, that funds will be available from the Company's reserves based loan facility when required to fund planned operations, that the Company will not be adversely affected by changing government policies and regulations, social instability or other political, economic or diplomatic developments in the countries in which it operates and that global economic conditions will not deteriorate in a manner that has an adverse impact on the Company's business and its ability to advance its business strategy.

Forward looking information involves significant known and unknown risks and uncertainties, which could cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated. These risks include, but are not limited to: any of the assumptions on which such forward looking information is based vary or prove to be invalid, including that anticipated results and estimated costs will not be consistent with managements' expectations, that the Company will not achieve a comparable level of hedging going forward in respect of its existing production, that the Company's geologic and reservoir models or analysis are not validated, that the Company will not achieve the results anticipated by management from the Company's cost reduction measures, the risks associated with the oil and gas industry (e.g. operational risks in development, exploration and production; delays or changes in plans with respect to exploration and development projects or capital expenditures; the uncertainty of reserve and resource estimates and projections relating to production, costs and expenses, and health, safety and environmental risks, including flooding and extended interruptions due to inclement or hazardous weather conditions), the risk of commodity price and foreign exchange rate fluctuations, risks and uncertainties associated with securing the necessary regulatory approvals and financing to proceed with continued development of the Tishomingo Field and other shale basins in the United States and Europe, the Company or its subsidiaries is not able for any reason to obtain and provide the information necessary to secure required approvals or that required regulatory approvals are otherwise not available when required, that unexpected geological results are encountered, that completion techniques require further optimization, that production rates do not match the Company's assumptions, that very low or no production rates are achieved, that the Company is unable to access required capital, that funds will not be available from the Company's reserves based loan facility when required to fund planned operations, that occurrences such as those that are assumed will not occur, do in fact occur, and those conditions that are assumed will continue or improve, do not continue or improve and the other risks identified in the Company's most recent Annual Information Form under the "Risk Factors" section, the Company's most recent management's discussion and analysis and the Company's other public disclosure, available under the Company's profile on SEDAR at www.sedar.com.

Although the Company has attempted to take into account important factors that could cause actual costs or results to differ materially, there may be other factors that cause actual 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. The forward-looking information included in this release is expressly qualified in its entirety by this cautionary statement. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking information. The Company undertakes no obligation to update these forward-looking statements, other than as required by applicable law.

About BNK Petroleum Inc.

BNK Petroleum Inc. is an international oil and gas exploration and production company focused on finding and exploiting large, predominately unconventional oil and gas resource plays. Through various affiliates and subsidiaries, the Company owns and operates shale gas properties and concessions in the United States and Spain. Additionally the Company is utilizing its technical and operational expertise to identify and acquire additional unconventional projects. The Company's shares are traded on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the stock symbol BKX.





For further information: Wolf E. Regener, President and Chief Executive Officer, +1 (805) 484-3613, Email: investorrelations@bnkpetroleum.com, Website: www.bnkpetroleum.com




CANBERA (dpa-AFX) - The Australian dollar weakened against the other major currencies in the Asian session on Friday. The Australian dollar fell to more than a 2-month low of 1.0771 against the NZ dollar and a 2-month low of 0.7382 against the U.S. dollar, from yesterday's closing quotes of 1.0839 and 0.7463, respectively. Against the euro and the yen, the aussie dropped to near 3-month lows of 1.5446 and 79.07 from yesterday's closing quotes of 1.5272 and 80.04, respectively. The aussie slid to a 3-day low of 0.9506 against the Canadian dollar, from yesterday's closing value of 0.9589. If the aussie extends its downtrend, it is likely to find support around 1.06 against the kiwi, 0.71 against the greenback, 1.58 against the euro, 78.00 against the yen and 0.94 against the loonie. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
- The First Affiliated Hospital of Zhejiang University reports on CAR-T clinical trials results for the treatment of leukemia

HANGZHOU, China, May 6, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- At the 2016 Haematogenic Immunity Summit held in Hangzhou from April 22 to 24, 2016, Professor Huang He from the First Affiliated Hospital of Zhejiang University presented on the results for ten clinical cases that used CAR-T cell therapy for the treatment of leukemia. This is the first time that the complete data set from the clinical trials was made publicly available.

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160506/364519

The trial, jointly conducted by the hospital and the company Innovative Cellular Therapeutics (ICT), obtained clinical ethics approval and enrolled its first patient in June 2015. By April 2016, the tenth patient achieved complete remission.

During the 10 months of the trial, the research team finished CAR-T cell reinfusion and conducted preliminary evaluation of ten patients suffering from relapsed or refractory B lymphoblastic leukemia.

The clinical trial was conducted in strict accordance with clinical ethical standards and monitored independently by a third-party clinical research organization. All patient expenses incurred by the CAR-T trial were reimbursed by ICT. Nine out of the ten patients achieved complete remission, and the minimal residual disease (MRD) in 8 patients turned negative, a significant indication of curative effect. Both the complete remission rate of 90% and the MRD-negative rate of 80% out-performed the best results recorded worldwide to date.

All ten patients, ranging in age from 17 to 57, suffered from relapsed or refractory B lymphocytic leukemia and were expected to live only several months. The tenth and final patient is a 17-year-old female who enrolled in the CAR-T clinical trial in March of this year. After collecting her blood, researchers performed a genetic transformation of her common T-cells to express a molecule called Chimeric Antigen Receptor (CAR). Similar to GPS, CAR can guide specific T-cells to track, identify and kill malignant tumor cells. Through the application of this technology, common T-cells were transformed into "cancer fighting" CAR-T cells.

In early April 2016, the transformed CAR-T cells were infused into the body of the patient, and the 'cytokine storm' took place as the research team had expected. As the CAR-T cells rapidly proliferated in the patient's body and released a large number of cytokines, the patient experienced symptoms that included fever, muscle pain and hypoxemia. These symptoms indicated that the introduction of CAR-T cells was having a positive effect. The subsequent test results showed that she was in complete remission and she was identified as MRD-negative.

Innovative Cellular Therapeutics, in collaboration with the First Affiliated Hospital of Zhejiang University, achieved success in the evolution of CAR-T therapy. ICT is conducting clinical trials on relapsed and refractory acute lymphocytic leukemia in seven other hospitals across China and has completed the trial and initial data collection of 23 patients suffering from an advanced stage of the disease. Twenty patients, or 87% of the total trial population, enjoyed complete remission of leukemia.

Before the trial, only three firms in the world (Novartis, Juno and Kite Pharma), all based in the U.S., have developed similar levels of CAR-T therapy for leukemia. ICT, a Chinese firm, has now joined that distinguished group to become one of the global leaders in the application of CAR-T therapy.

Based on the success of its leukemia trial, ICT will next set its sights on a new clinical trial for the treatment of lymphoma. Looking ahead, ICT will focus its R&D efforts on solid tumors including colorectal cancer, breast cancer, gastric cancer and esophageal cancer.

CAR-T cellular therapy is rapidly gaining the attention of doctors, researchers, patients, and the public at large as the most promising tumor precision therapy in the world and it is expected to benefit more patients afflicted with tumors in the future.
DUBLIN, May 6, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

A federal judge in San Francisco has ruled against a motion by Facebook to dismiss claims that the company unlawfully collected and stored users' biometric data. The dispute is over Facebook's photo-tagging system, which automatically matches names to faces on photos uploaded to the social media website. The three Illinois residents say Facebook violated their privacy by not asking for permission to use their faces as biometric identifiers.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160330/349511LOGO )



The usage of social media among employees and customers for various purposes such as shopping, image search, and data sharing has increased the focus of organizations toward image recognition technology usage in social media. The image recognition market is projected to be worth $29.98 billion by 2020. Facebook launched its photo-tagging tool in 2010, and argued that it is disclosed in its terms and conditions that users can opt out at any time.

The Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act of 2008 requires companies to get consent from consumers before collecting or storing biometric data. Facebook argued that its user agreement stipulates that disputes must be resolved under the laws of California, where it's based. California happens to be one of the 47 states without laws regulating biometrics or facial recognition. However, the judge rejected that argument.

Earlier in 2016, Google's photo-tagging system was the subject of a lawsuit under Illinois law. These cases could have a negative impact on the growing facial recognition and biometric markets. Enterprises have been implementing multimodal biometrics in a number of sectors, such as healthcare, BFSI, transportation, automotive and government.

For further information on this topic, and a full list of all related documentation, please visit the Biometrics section at http://www.researchandmarkets.com/rm/OKJP.

About Research and Markets

Research and Markets is the world's leading source for international market research reports and market data. We provide you with the latest data on international and regional markets, key industries, the top companies, new products and the latest trends.

Source: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-05-05/facebook-must-face-privacy-claims-over-biometric-photo-database



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Research and Markets

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press@researchandmarkets.com



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Notice is hereby given that on the initiative and by the resolution of the Board of AB Klaipedos Nafta, legal entity code 110648893, with the registered office at Buriu g. 19, Klaipeda (hereinafter, the Company), from 6 May 2016, an extraordinary General Meeting of Shareholders of the Company will be held on 30 May 2016 at 1:00 p.m. The meeting will be held in the Company's office at Buriu st. 19, Klaipeda, in the administrative premises of the Company (in the hall of the meeting on the 2nd Floor).Agenda of the meeting:1. Regarding the amendment of 25 August 2015 decision "Regarding the approval of the decision of AB Klaipedos Nafta's Board to implement oil terminal expansion investment project" item No 1.The shareholders will be registered from 12.00 a.m. to 12.55 a.m. The persons intending to participate in the meeting shall have a personal ID document (an authorised representative shall have additionally a proxy approved under the established procedure. The natural person's proxy shall be notarised. A proxy issued in a foreign state shall be translated into the Lithuanian language and legalised under the procedure prescribed by laws).A shareholder or his proxy shall have the right to vote in writing in advance by filling in a general ballot paper. At the request of the shareholder, the Company shall send a general ballot paper to the shareholder by registered mail free of charge at least 10 days before the meeting. The filled-in general ballot paper and the document attesting the voting right shall be submitted to the Company no later than until the meeting, sending by registered mail or providing them at the address of the registered office of the Company indicated in the notice.The shareholders who hold shares carrying at least 1/20 of all the votes may propose additions to the agenda of the general meeting of shareholders by submitting with every proposed additional item of the agenda a draft resolution of the general meeting of shareholders or, when no resolution is required, an explanation. Proposals on addition to the agenda shall be submitted in writing or sent by e-mail. Written proposals shall be submitted to the Company on business days or sent by registered mail at the address of the registered office of the Company indicated in the notice. Proposals submitted by e-mail shall be sent to the following e-mails: info@oil.lt and a.kasparas@oil.lt. The agenda shall be supplemented if the proposal is received no later than 14 days before the extraordinary general meeting of shareholders. If the agenda of the general meeting of shareholders is supplemented, the Company shall notify on the additions no later than 10 days before the meeting in the same ways as in the case of convocation of the meeting.The shareholders, who hold shares carrying at least 1/20 of all the votes, at any time before the general meeting of shareholders or during the meeting, may propose new draft resolutions on items which are or will be included in the agenda of the meeting. The proposals may be submitted in writing or sent by e-mail. Written proposals shall be submitted to the Company on business days or sent by registered mail at the address of the registered office of the Company indicated in the notice. Proposals submitted by e-mail shall be sent to the following e-mails: info@oil.lt and a.kasparas@oil.lt.The shareholders shall have the right to submit to the Company in advance questions relating to the items on the agenda of the meeting. The shareholders may submit their written questions to the Company on business days or send by registered mail at the address of the registered office of the Company indicated in the notice no later than 3 business days before the meeting. The Company will reply to the questions by e-mail or in writing before the meeting, except the questions which are related to the Company's commercial (industrial) secret, confidential information or which have been submitted later than 3 business days before the meeting.The Company does not provide the possibility of participating and voting at the meeting by means of electronic communications means.The Shareholder shall have the right to authorize through electronic communications means another person (natural or legal) to participate and vote in the meeting on behalf of the shareholder. No notarisation of such authorization is required. The shareholder must confirm the proxy issued through electronic communications means by an electronic signature developed by a secure signature-creation device and approved by a qualified certificate effective in the Republic of Lithuania. The shareholder shall inform the Company on the proxy issued through electronic communications means to the following e-mails: info@oil.lt and a.kasparas@oil.lt no later than until the last business day before the meeting at 1:00 p.m. The proxy and the notice must be issued in writing. The proxy and the notice to the Company shall be signed with the electronic signature but not the letter sent by e-mail. By submitting the notice to the Company, the shareholder shall include the internet address from which it would be possible to download software free of charge to verify the shareholder's electronic signature.The record date of the meeting shall be 23 May 2016 (only those persons who will be shareholders of the Company at the close of the record date of the general meeting of shareholders or their authorised persons, or persons with whom an agreement on assignment of the voting right has been executed, may participate and vote at the general meeting of shareholders).The shareholders of the Company may familiarise with the draft resolution of the meeting and the form of the general ballot paper under the procedure prescribed by laws in the registered office of the Company at Buriu st. 19, Klaipeda (tel.: 8 46 391636), or on the Company's website at http://www.oil.lt/. The following information and documents shall be provided on the abovementioned internet website of the Company:- the notification on convocation of the meeting;- total number of the Company's shares and the number of shares with voting rights on the convening day of the meeting.Enclosed:1. Draft decision of the General Meeting of Shareholders.2. General voting ballot paper of the General Meeting of Shareholders.Marius Pulkauninkas, Director of Finance and Administration Department, +370 46 391 763.Attachment:https://cns.omxgroup.com/cds/DisclosureAttachmentServlet?messageAttachmentId=560613
WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Salesforce (CRM) said it will invest more than $40 million over the next 10 years to expand its regional headquarters in Indianapolis. As part of the new investment, Salesforce plans to add 800 new jobs over the next five years. The company also announced it will move into a new regional headquarters location at 111 Monument Circle, which will be known as Salesforce Tower Indianapolis. Salesforce noted that it will begin moving into Salesforce Tower Indianapolis in early 2017. Plans for the building include a renovated lobby and dedicated space where guests can experience interactive, hands-on demonstrations of the Salesforce Customer Success Platform. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
LONDON, May 6, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Available to purchase from EE, O2, Three, Vodafone and Carphone Warehouse

Today, Huawei Consumer Business Group announces that the Huawei P9, co-engineered with Leica Camera, is now on sale across all major UK channels, available to purchase from EE, O2, Three, Vodafone and Carphone Warehouse, setting a new standard in smartphone photography.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160506/364549LOGO )

The Huawei P9 is the first smartphone co-engineered with the iconic global brand, Leica Camera AG. The P9's dual-lens camera takes smartphone photography to the next level, allowing people to capture both vivid colours and striking black and white images.

Reinventing smartphone photography

Key to the P9's superlative imaging capabilities is a dual lens camera design, which has been subject to the industry's most stringent quality screening requirements. The RGB camera on the P9 specialises in capturing colour, while the monochrome camera is outstanding at acquiring picture detail.

The two rear cameras of the P9 work in tandem to enable users to create images of superior detail, depth and colour. The P9 truly excels in low-light conditions, as the dual-camera design guarantees that more light and detail can be captured.

Each picture taken by the P9 carries the unique emotional resonance and timelessness that are the hallmarks of Leica, as users may choose between three film modes: Standard, Vivid Colours and Smooth Colours, depending on their personal preferences. With meticulous calibration of the P9's camera parameters, each film mode faithfully renders the authentic colour and style of Leica. By selecting the monochrome mode, P9 users can shoot with their devices as a true monochrome camera to capture powerful and evocative black and white images of superior quality.

Deploying Huawei's Hybrid Focus technology, the P9 captures images with superior speed, accuracy and stability. The P9 supports camera focusing based on three methodologies - laser, depth calculation and contrast - and automatically selects the one that yields the best result in any given environment.

The wide-aperture photography feature on the P9 allows users to experiment with innovative visual effects to create unique images and content. The P9 makes it easy to adjust the camera aperture to create bokeh and other depth-of-field effects, while keeping the main object in sharp focus.

James Jie, Managing Director of UK&I, Huawei Consumer Business Group, comments: "This is the first Huawei device to be ranged across all of the major UK sales channels and we look forward to seeing great take up from consumers. With the P9, in collaboration with Leica, we are looking to firmly establish the Huawei brand within the high-end, premium sector in the UK. We have challenged the norm with this device, reinventing smartphone photography, and we see it as the next step in a visual revolution, which we are sure our customers will value."

Oliver Kaltner, CEO, Leica Camera AG, commented: "Leica and Huawei share an uncompromising commitment to imaging excellence, and our partnership will put outstanding photography into the hands of more consumers around the world. We are deepening our collaboration to give users a more optimal smartphone photography experience."

Premium build and design

The P9 is a masterpiece of state-of the-art industrial design, with the same minimalist design DNA as earlier products in Huawei's acclaimed premium flagship P-series. Each P9 device is a perfect construct of superior-grade 2.5D glass and an aerospace-class aluminium, with diamond-cut edges rounded out by carefully balanced curvatures.

The P9 sets new industry standards in industrial design, with the use of techniques including brushed hairlines and metal polishing at micron-level precision to create a translucent metal surface.

Power and performance

The P9 is equipped with the power, connectivity and speed that today's high-end smartphone user expects from Huawei. With a 5.2-inch 1080p display, the P9 is powered by the new Kirin 955 2.5GHz 64-bit ARM-based processor for leading-class mobile performance. The 3,000mAh high-density battery offers P9 users outstanding mobility and battery life.

The P9 also protects users' privacy with Huawei's world-leading biometric fingerprint recognition technology. The enhanced fingerprint sensor allows users to personalise and safeguard their devices by significantly lowering the possibility of fraudulent or accidental device access, while also ensuring users can quickly and securely access their smartphone.

For further information, search OO.

Pricing and availability

The Huawei P9, which goes on sale today, can be purchased here:

http://consumer.huawei.com/uk/mobile-phones/p9

The Huawei P9 will be available in Mystic Silver and Titanium Grey. It comes with an RRP of 449 (3GB + 32GB) and will be free on contract, subject to tariff, available from EE, O2, Three, Vodafone and Carphone Warehouse.

Please see below details on the colours each channel will be offering

EE - Titanium Grey

O2 - Titanium Grey

Three - Mystic Silver, Titanium Grey

Vodafone - Mystic Silver, Titanium Grey

Carphone Warehouse - Mystic Silver, Titanium Grey



P9 3GB+32GBGBP449





Notes to Editors:

About Huawei Consumer BG

Huawei's products and services are available in more than 170 countries, and are used by a third of the world's population, ranking third in the world in mobile phone shipments in 2014. Sixteen R&D centers have been set up in the United States, Germany, Sweden, Russia, India, and China. Huawei Consumer BG is one of Huawei's three business units and covers smartphones, mobile broadband devices, home devices and cloud services. Huawei's global network is built on 20 years of expertise in the telecom industry and is dedicated to delivering the latest technological advances to consumers around the world.

Huawei P9 key features

The 5.2 inch full HD display included in the P9 uses the Hollywood movie colour gamut, allowing the display to cover 96 percent of the colour spectrum.

movie colour gamut, allowing the display to cover 96 percent of the colour spectrum. The dual-lens 12MP camera features RGB and BW sensors, as well as laser-assisted focus. This makes the camera 200 per cent more sensitive than predecessors and allows it to provide 300 per cent more detail.

The P9 is powered by Huawei's latest Kirin 955 chipset, which is based on the TSMC 16nm FinFET Plus chip technology. CPU performance is 100 per cent faster than the P8 and 3D graphics are improved by 125 per cent.

Running Android Marshmallow 6.0, the P9 uses the Huawei Emotion UI 4.1 interface, adding hundreds of user experience tweaks and improvements.

The P9 supports the latest reversible USB Type-C Connector technology.

Efficient Conferencing

The P9 features "Super Hands-Free 3.0" technology, which enables hands-free operation of the phone in a variety of locations. Whether you're in the car, a conference room or at a crowded party, users can enjoy clear conversations from up to three meters away. With a 120-degree range of audio pick up and directional noise reduction, conference calls are crisper and clearer than ever before, no matter where they take place.


WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - In the latest sign of the Republican establishment's reluctance to get behind presumptive presidential nominee Donald Trump, House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., is holding back on supporting the real estate tycoon.



'I'm just not ready to do that at this point. I'm not there right now,' Ryan said in an interview on CNN's 'The Lead with Jake Tapper' on Thursday.



Ryan said he hopes to eventually be able to back Trump but suggested the billionaire needs to do more to unify the GOP before earning his support.



'I think what is required is that we unify the party,' Ryan said. 'And I think the bulk of the burden on unifying the party will have to come from our presumptive nominee.'



The House Speaker argued that the Republican presidential candidate needs to advance the principles of the party and appeal to a vast majority of Americans.



Ryan's reluctance to support Trump reflects an ongoing divide in the GOP even after Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Tex., and Ohio Gov. John Kasich dropped out of the race and cleared the path for Trump to secure the nomination.



Former Republican Presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush have also recently indicated they will not endorse Trump.



Trump countered Ryan's comments with a statement indicating that he is 'not ready' to support the Wisconsin Congressman's agenda as Speaker.



'Perhaps in the future we can work together and come to an agreement about what is best for the American people,' Trump said. 'They have been treated so badly for so long that it is about time for politicians to put them first!'



Trump also dismissed Ryan's remarks suggesting that he 'inherited' the Republican Party, declaring that he won the GOP with millions of voters.



Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

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WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - A documentary feature film on the rise and fall of the Olympic hero turned convicted murderer Oscar Pistorius will be introduced to distributors in Cannes next week. The film, titled Pistorius, is directed by Vaughan Sivell. The South African, also known as the Blade Runner, made history in 2012 by becoming the first double-leg amputee to compete at the Olympic Games. But within months, he fell from grace as on Valentine's Day in 2013, Pistorius was arrested and charged for the murder of his girlfriend, South African model Reeva Steenkamp. The film will seek to discover whether the image we have of them both is the truth, said Content Media Corporation, which has won the international sales rights to the film. 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.
VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA -- (Marketwired) -- 05/03/16 -- First Mining Finance Corp. ("First Mining") (TSX VENTURE: FF)(OTCQB: FFMGF) is pleased to annou nce that it has entered into a definitive share purchase agreement (the "Agreement") with Chalice Gold Mines Limited (ASX: CHN)(TSX: CXN) ("Chalice"). Under the Agreement First Mining has agreed to acquire Cameron Gold Operations Ltd., a wholly-owned subsidiary of Chalice (the "Transaction") which owns the Cameron Gold project located in Ontario in exchange for 32,260,836 common shares of First Mining (the "Consideration Shares"). Chalice will also retain a one percent net smelter royalty over certain mining claims within the Cameron Gold project which are not encumbered by pre-existing royalties.

On completion of the Transaction, which is subject to Chalice shareholder approval, Chalice will hold approximately 8.1% of the issued and outstanding shares of First Mining. The parties to the Transaction are at arm's length. Pricing for the Transaction was based on the 20-day VWAP of the First Mining shares as of April 6, 2016.The deemed value of the Transaction is approximately $13,000,000.

CAMERON GOLD PROJECT

The Cameron Gold project is an advanced-stage resource project located in the highly mineralized Kakagi Lake Greenstone Belt of the Archean-aged Superior Province located in southwestern Ontario, approximately 80 km south-east of the town of Kenora. The project consists of a total of 154 unpatented claims, 24 patented claims, seven mining licences of occupation (MLO) and four mining leases for a total land package of 31,673 hectares. In December, 2015, Chalice filed a Technical Report (the "Report") entitled "Technical Report on the Cameron Gold Deposit, Ontario, Canada". The Report included a resource estimate for the Cameron Gold project which, at a cut-off grade of 0.50 g/t gold, is estimated to have Measured and Indicated Resources of 7,824,000 tonnes grading 2.26 g/t gold (569,000 Au ounces) and Inferred Resources of 14,464,000 tonnes grading 1.92 g/t gold (894,000 Au ounces).

To the best of First Mining's knowledge, information and belief, there is no new material scientific or technical information that would make the disclosure of the mineral resources in the Report inaccurate or misleading.

Dr. Chris Osterman, P. Geo., Chief Executive Officer of First Mining, a Qualified Person for the purposes of National Instrument 43-101 has reviewed the Report on behalf of First Mining and has approved the scientific and technical content of this news release.

SUMMARY OF PROPOSED TRANSACTION

Under the terms of the Agreement, on closing First Mining will issue an aggregate of 32,260,836 common shares of First Mining to Chalice. In addition, First Mining will grant a net smelter royalty of 1% to Chalice on certain mining claims within the Cameron Gold project which are not encumbered by pre-existing royalties. First Mining will retain the right to repurchase 0.5% of the net smelter royalty for $1,000,000. Following the completion of the Transaction, Chalice will hold approximately 8.1% of the issued and outstanding shares of First Mining.

The Consideration Shares will be subject to a statutory resale restriction in Canada for a four-month period from completion of the Transaction. In addition, Chalice has agreed to further provisions, restricting the sales of shares, to not more than approximately one eighth of the total Consideration Shares per month over the following eight months except where the sale is in a single block to a purchaser acceptable to First Mining.

The Transaction is subject to approval of the shareholders of Chalice and to receipt of applicable regulatory and stock exchange approvals and the satisfaction of certain other closing conditions customary in transactions of this nature.

Keith Neumeyer, Chairman of First Mining, stated: "The acquisition of the Cameron gold project further enhances First Mining's position in Ontario and adds to our portfolio an attractive property with a significant established resource and a very large land package with significant exploration upside. This accretive acquisition increases our global Measured and Indicated in-situ gold resources to over 6.8 million ounces and our total Inferred in-situ gold resources to over 3.5 million ounces."

Chalice is expected to hold a shareholder meeting to approve the Transaction on or about June 17, 2016, and closing is expected to occur shortly thereafter.

ABOUT FIRST MINING FINANCE CORP.

First Mining is a mineral property holding company whose principal business activity is to acquire high quality mineral assets with a focus in the Americas. First Mining currently holds a portfolio of 26 mineral assets in Canada, Mexico and the United States with a focus on gold. Ultimately, the goal is to continue to increase its portfolio of mineral assets through acquisitions that are expected to be comprised of gold, silver, copper, lead, zinc and nickel.

ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD OF FIRST MINING FINANCE CORP.

Keith Neumeyer, Chairman

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

This press release includes certain "forward-looking information" and "forward-looking statements"(collectively "forward-looking statements") within the meaning of applicable Canadian and United States securities legislation including the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. All statements, other than statements of historical fact, included herein, without limitation, statements relating the future operating or financial performance of First Mining, are forward-looking statements.

Forward-looking statements are frequently, but not always, identified by words such as "expects", "anticipates", "believes", "intends", "estimates", "potential", "possible", and similar expressions, or statements that events, conditions, or results "will", "may", "could", or "should" occur or be achieved. Forward-looking statements in this press release relate to, among other things: anticipated benefits of the Transaction to First Mining; the pro rata shareholdings of Chalice in First Mining; the timing and receipt of required shareholder and stock exchange and regulatory approvals for the Transaction; the ability of First Mining and Chalice to satisfy the other conditions to, and to complete, the Transaction; the anticipated date of the Chalice shareholder meeting; and the anticipated date of closing of the Transaction. Actual future results may differ materially. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate, and actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Forward-looking statements reflect the beliefs, opinions and projections on the date the statements are made and are based upon a number of assumptions and estimates that, while considered reasonable by the respective parties, are inherently subject to significant business, economic, competitive, political and social uncertainties and contingencies. Many factors, both known and unknown, could cause actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from the results, performance or achievements that are or may be expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements and the parties have made assumptions and estimates based on or related to many of these factors. Such factors include, without limitation: satisfaction or waiver of all applicable conditions to closing of the Transaction including, without limitation, receipt of all necessary shareholder, stock exchange and regulatory approvals or consents and lack of material changes with respect to the parties and their respective businesses, all as more particularly set forth in the Agreement. Readers should not place undue reliance on the forward-looking statements and information contained in this news release concerning these times. Except as required by law, First Mining does not assume any obligation to update the forward-looking statements of beliefs, opinions, projections, or other factors, should they change, except as required by law.

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Contacts:

First Mining Finance Corp.

Patrick Donnelly

President

604-639-8854



First Mining Finance Corp.

Derek Iwanaka

Vice President, Investor Relations

604-639-8824

www.firstminingfinance.com




WINNIPEG, MANITOBA -- (Marketwired) -- 05/06/16 -- Readers are referred to the disclaimer regarding Forward-Looking Statements and Additional IFRS Measures at the end of this Release.

IGM Financial Inc. (IGM or the Company) (TSX: IGM) today announced earnings results for the first quarter of 2016.

Net earnings available to common shareholders for the three months ended March 31, 2016 were $167.0 million or 69 cents per share compared to net earnings available to common shareholders of $200.3 million or 80 cents per share for the comparative period in 2015.

Revenues for the three months ended March 31, 2016 were $722.8 million compared to $760.9 million a year ago. Expenses were $512.3 million for the first quarter of 2016 compared to $503.2 million a year ago.

Total assets under management at March 31, 2016 were $132.9 billion compared to $148.4 billion at March 31, 2015. Mutual fund assets under management at March 31, 2016 were $127.1 billion compared to $131.5 billion at March 31, 2015.

Shareholders' equity at March 31, 2016 was $4.8 billion, unchanged from March 31, 2015. Return on average common equity for the three months ended March 31, 2016 was 14.3% compared to 17.1% for the comparative period in 2015.

Investors Group Operations

"The continued success of our new Maestro Portfolios, which incorporate dynamic asset allocation, contributed to our overall first quarter sales result. Assets in the Maestro Portfolios were at $1.6 billion at March 31, more than double the $720 million level at December 31, 2015," said Murray J. Taylor, President and Chief Executive Officer of Investors Group Inc. "As I finish my twelve year tenure as Investors Group's CEO, I am pleased to reflect on our strengthened Consultant network through continual development of our financial planning focus and a 66% increase in size to a new record high of 5,321."

Mutual fund sales for the first quarter of 2016 were $2.3 billion, a decrease of 4.1% compared to $2.4 billion in the prior year. Mutual funds net sales for the first quarter of 2016 were $467 million compared to net sales of $588 million a year ago.

The twelve month trailing redemption rate (excluding money market funds) was 8.7% at March 31, 2016, unchanged from December 31, 2015.

Mutual fund assets under management at March 31, 2016 were $75.2 billion compared to $76.5 billion at March 31, 2015.

Mackenzie Operations

Mutual fund sales for the first quarter of 2016 were $1.8 billion compared to $2.0 billion in the prior year. Mutual fund net redemptions for the first quarter were $198 million compared to net redemptions of $106 million a year ago.

Total net redemptions for the first quarter of 2016 were $387 million compared to total net sales of $569 million a year ago.

"Investment performance strength in the quarter led to three of our funds, including our largest fund, Mackenzie Ivy Foreign Equity, being upgraded to a five star Morningstar(1) rating," said Jeffrey R. Carney, President and Chief Executive Officer of Mackenzie Financial Corporation. "Sales were led in the quarter by the global equity category, which was up 10% compared to last year."

Mackenzie's total assets under management at March 31, 2016 were $60.7 billion compared to $74.6 billion at March 31, 2015.(2) Mutual fund assets under management at March 31, 2016 were $47.6 billion compared to $50.9 billion a year ago.

Dividends

The Board of Directors has declared a dividend of 56.25 cents per share on the Company's common shares and has declared a dividend of $0.36875 per share on the Company's 5.90% Non-Cumulative First Preferred Shares, Series "B". The common share dividend is payable on July 29, 2016 to shareholders of record on June 30, 2016. The preferred share dividend is payable on August 2, 2016 to shareholders of record on June 30, 2016.

(1) Morningstar and the Morningstar Ratings are trademarks of Morningstar Inc. (2) During the second quarter of 2015, MD Financial Management ("MD") re- assigned sub-advisory responsibilities on four fixed income mandates (totalling $10.3 billion) advised by Mackenzie. The impact on Mackenzie's pre-tax earnings from these mandate changes is not meaningful. Following the changes, Mackenzie continues to advise MD on a number of fixed income, balanced and equity mandates.

Forward-Looking Statements

Certain statements in this Release, other than statements of historical fact, are forward-looking statements based on certain assumptions and reflect IGM Financial's current expectations. Forward-looking statements are provided to assist the reader in understanding the Company's financial position and results of operations as at and for the periods ended on certain dates and to present information about management's current expectations and plans relating to the future. Readers are cautioned that such statements may not be appropriate for other purposes. These statements may include, without limitation, statements regarding the operations, business, financial condition, expected financial results, performance, prospects, opportunities, priorities, targets, goals, ongoing objectives, strategies and outlook of the Company, as well as the outlook for North American and international economies, for the current fiscal year and subsequent periods. Forward-looking statements include statements that are predictive in nature, depend upon or refer to future events or conditions, or include words such as "expects", "anticipates", "plans", "believes", "estimates", "seeks", "intends", "targets", "projects", "forecasts" or negative versions thereof and other similar expressions, or future or conditional verbs such as "may", "will", "should", "would" and "could".

This information is based upon certain material factors or assumptions that were applied in drawing a conclusion or making a forecast or projection as reflected in the forward-looking statements, including the perception of historical trends, current conditions and expected future developments, as well as other factors that are believed to be appropriate in the circumstances. While the Company considers these assumptions to be reasonable based on information currently available to management, they may prove to be incorrect.

By its nature, this information is subject to inherent risks and uncertainties that may be general or specific and which give rise to the possibility that expectations, forecasts, predictions, projections or conclusions will not prove to be accurate, that assumptions may not be correct and that objectives, strategic goals and priorities will not be achieved.

A variety of material factors, many of which are beyond the Company's and its subsidiaries' control, affect the operations, performance and results of the Company, and its subsidiaries, and their businesses, and could cause actual results to differ materially from current expectations of estimated or anticipated events or results. These factors include, but are not limited to: the impact or unanticipated impact of general economic, political and market factors in North America and internationally, interest and foreign exchange rates, global equity and capital markets, management of market liquidity and funding risks, changes in accounting policies and methods used to report financial condition (including uncertainties associated with critical accounting assumptions and estimates), the effect of applying future accounting changes, operational and reputational risks, business competition, technological change, changes in government regulations and legislation, changes in tax laws, unexpected judicial or regulatory proceedings, catastrophic events, the Company's ability to complete strategic transactions, integrate acquisitions and implement other growth strategies, and the Company's and its subsidiaries' success in anticipating and managing the foregoing factors.

The reader is cautioned that the foregoing list is not exhaustive of the factors that may affect any of the Company's forward-looking statements. The reader is also cautioned to consider these and other factors, uncertainties and potential events carefully and not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements.

Other than as specifically required by applicable Canadian law, the Company undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances after the date on which such statements are made, or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events, whether as a result of new information, future events or results, or otherwise.

Additional information about the risks and uncertainties of the Company's business and material factors or assumptions on which information contained in forward-looking statements is based is provided in its disclosure materials filed with the securities regulatory authorities in Canada, available at www.sedar.com.

Additional IFRS Measures

This release contains additional IFRS measures. Terms by which additional IFRS measures are identified include "earnings before income taxes" and "net earnings available to common shareholders". Additional IFRS measures are used to provide management and investors with additional measures to assess earnings performance. These measures are considered additional IFRS measures as they are in addition to the minimum line items required by IFRS and are relevant to an understanding of the entity's financial performance.

The Consolidated Financial Statements and Management's Discussion and Analysis (MD&A) of operating results are available on IGM Financial Inc.'s website at www.igmfinancial.com.

IGM Financial Inc. is one of Canada's premier personal financial services companies, and one of the country's largest managers and distributors of mutual funds and other managed asset products, with approximately $132 billion in total assets under management as of April 30, 2016. Its activities are carried out principally through Investors Group, Mackenzie Financial Corporation and Investment Planning Counsel. IGM Financial Inc. is a member of the Power Financial Corporation group of companies.

Media Note: A live webcast of IGM's Analyst conference call for the First Quarter 2016 will be held on Friday May 6, 2016 at 3:30 P.M. (ET) at www.igmfinancial.com. Media and interested parties may alternatively choose to listen to the live analyst teleconference call by dialing 1-866-223-7781 or 416-340-2216.

IGM FINANCIAL INC. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Consolidated Statements of Earnings (unaudited) Three months ended March 31 (in thousands of Canadian dollars, except shares and per share amounts) 2016 2015 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Revenues Management fees $ 483,836 $ 509,111 Administration fees 100,350 102,236 Distribution fees 94,968 94,533 Net investment income and other 15,877 29,081 Proportionate share of affiliate's earnings 27,808 25,902 ------------------------------ 722,839 760,863 ------------------------------ Expenses Commission 261,515 266,867 Non-commission 227,867 213,622 Interest 22,913 22,750 ------------------------------ 512,295 503,239 ------------------------------ Earnings before income taxes 210,544 257,624 Income taxes 41,368 55,065 ------------------------------ Net earnings 169,176 202,559 Perpetual preferred share dividends 2,213 2,213 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Net earnings available to common shareholders $ 166,963 $ 200,346 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Average number of common shares (in thousands) - Basic 243,127 251,211 - Diluted 243,211 251,421 Earnings per share (in dollars) - Basic $ 0.69 $ 0.80 - Diluted $ 0.69 $ 0.80 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- IGM FINANCIAL INC. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Financial Highlights As at and for the three months ended March 31 (unaudited) 2016 2015 Change ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Net earnings available to common shareholders ($ millions) $ 167.0 $ 200.3 (16.6)% Diluted earnings per share 0.69 0.80 (13.8) Return on equity 14.3% 17.1% Dividends per share 0.5625 0.5625 - ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Total assets under management(1) ($ millions) $ 132,913 $ 148,388 (10.4)% Investors Group Mutual funds 75,223 76,497 (1.7) Mackenzie Mutual funds 47,627 50,944 Sub-advisory, institutional and other accounts 13,063 23,660 Total 60,690 74,604 (18.7) Counsel Mutual funds 4,229 4,126 2.5 . ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- For the three months ended March Investors 31, 2016 Group Mackenzie Counsel Total (2) --------------------------------------------------------- Mutual Funds Total Mutual Funds and Institutional Sales ($ millions) Gross sales $ 2,267 $ 1,841 $ 2,683 $ 262 $ 4,672 Net sales (redemptions) 467 (198) (387) 79 66 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- (1) Total assets under management excluded $7.2 billion of assets sub- advised by Mackenzie on behalf of Investors Group and Investment Planning Counsel ($6.8 billion at March 31, 2015). (2) Total Gross Sales and Net Sales for the three months ended March 31, 2016 excluded $540 million and $93 million, respectively, in accounts sub-advised by Mackenzie on behalf of Investors Group and Investment Planning Counsel.

Contacts:

Media Relations:

Ron Arnst

204-956-3364

ron.arnst@igmfinancial.com



Investor Relations:

Paul Hancock

204-956-8103

paul.hancock@igmfinancial.com




ABUJA, NIGERIA -- (Marketwired) -- 05/06/16 -- The Sir Emeka Offor Foundation, a non-governmental, philanthropic organization focused on health, youth employment, women's empowerment, education and tropical disease eradication, will launch its 2016 book distribution initiative in Katsina, Katsina State today. The announcement coincided with a formal signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the Foundation and Katsina State Government.

Governor Aminu Bello Masari executed the signing of the MOU on behalf of the State. Sir Emeka Offor signed on the Foundation's behalf. Extensive discussions preceded and followed the execution of the MOU.

The MOU calls for a total of two 40-foot containers of books, reading materials and computers to be distributed to Katsina State with a value of approximately 800,000 dollars. The State's Ministry of Education will coordinate and supervise the book distribution to ensure it complies with the highest standards of equity and transparency. The goal is to bring adequate supplies to those schools most in need.

"We are here to support the Katsina State Government, having seen their good works under the leadership of his Excellency, the Executive Governor of Katsina State, Aminu Bello Masari," said Sir Emeka Offor, founder of the Sir Emeka Offor Foundation and Executive Vice Chairman of The Chrome Group. "We will support him in numerous ways, beginning with educational institutions, spanning primary, secondary, and tertiary/higher education institutions."

Beyond educational support to Katsina, the Foundation plans to assist the State in setting up a 'skills acquisition center' to promote job opportunities, reduce unemployment in the State, and improve the standard of living for families in Katsina State. The facility will train and equip Katsina citizens to provide unique skills such as welding, scaffolding, among others. Additionally, the Foundation will assist women in the State to become independent and self-sustaining by creating co-operatives and granting them access to microfinance. The Foundation follows this model in Anambra State with great success.

"What Sir Emeka is doing in Katsina State in the area of educational is more than words can express," said Governor Masari. "You can call this an endless journey, because it is knowledge that will be acquired and passed through generations. If you develop the individual, institutions naturally will be developed, and that [is] part of where we are. Over time... we will continue to rebuild especially with the massive assistance of people like Chief Sir Emeka Offor who has a social conscience to look back and appreciate what God has done for him, and also share with other people irrespective of their religious, ethnic or regional background."

Today's book distribution will set in motion an annual national drive by the Sir Emeka Offor Foundation. It will bring books, educational materials and computers to libraries and educational institutions across Nigeria's six geo-political zones. The initiative is one of the central objectives of the Foundation, which has promoted education and literacy throughout the continent of Africa since 2006.

During the ensuing decade, the Sir Emeka Offor Foundation, in partnership with Books For Africa, a U.S.-based non-governmental organization, has successfully facilitated the supply of more than $22 million of books, reading materials and computers. The supplies, which outfitted schools and libraries, have benefited countless students and adults in over 18 countries throughout the continent, especially in Nigeria.

About the Sir Emeka Offor Foundation

The Sir Emeka Offor Foundation is a philanthropic organization based in Abuja, FCT and Oraifite, Anambra State, Nigeria. The Foundation seeks to alleviate the sufferings of the less privileged through philanthropy, and focuses primarily on giving support and hope to those in need irrespective of tribe, creed, religion and nation. The Foundation has affected the lives of many Nigerians through its domestic programs and projects, which include youth empowerment, Widows Cooperative, education, and health services and infrastructural development. For more information, visit http://sireofforfoundation.org or like us at https://www.facebook.com/siremekaofforfoundation.

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Contact:

Dr. Edwin Ndukwe

The Chrome Group

Business Development & Head Communications

+234 903 945 8888

Email Contact




PETAH TIKVAH, ISRAEL -- (Marketwired) -- 05/06/16 -- Cellebrite, the leading developer and provider of Mobile Lifecycle solutions, today announces that it is supporting the launch of the new HTC 10 by offering fast, secure in-store content transfer for new owners of the industry's latest smartphone.

Via Cellebrite's in-store platforms, retail associates will be able to transfer a customer's content from their old device to their new HTC handset, as well as wiping all content from their previous mobile, all within a few minutes after purchasing the phone. As part of the device lifecycle, operators and retailers will also be able to provide diagnostics and software updates for the new device.

The new handset, which launched today, is one of some 7,000 mobile devices which Cellebrite can provide point-of-sale transfer solutions for. Cellebrite technology empowers retail associates to deliver fast, consistent service across more than 150,000 retail service points globally.

Miki Hakak, Vice President Business Development, Mobile Lifecycle at Cellebrite, comments: "We are dedicated to making mobile device care easier and more efficient for operators and retailers, including equipping sales associates with the tools they need to support new HTC owners from day one."

The new device will also be supported by Cellebrite's Hybrid Content Transfer whereby productivity essentials, such as contacts are immediately transferred at the point of sale, while the more time-intensive task of moving large volumes of multimedia data is subsequently completed via Cellebrite's self-service mobile app. This allows retail sales associates to meet each customer's needs and effectively manage in-store traffic, especially during peak periods expected around the launch of the new HTC device.

Hakak adds: "Cellebrite leverages its deep partnerships with multiple mobile ecosystem players, including operators, retailers and device manufacturers to ensure sales associates are ready to provide a high level of service for new device owners from day one. Furthermore, we integrate certified device manufacturers' technology to ensure the fastest resolution to customer requests, regardless of the device make or model."

About Cellebrite

Cellebrite is a world leader in providing Operators, Retailers and Aftermarket Service (AMS) Providers, with advanced mobile lifecycle solutions to enhance the customer experience, increase revenue, improve satisfaction, and reduce cost. With delivery channels in-store, on-device, and over the web, mobile retailers can take advantage of Cellebrite's full suite of mobile lifecycle solutions: diagnostics, phone-to-phone content transfer, backup, restore and wipe, automated phone buyback, and application and content delivery. In addition, Cellebrite offers retailers monitoring, statistics and analysis of all activities. Cellebrite's global leadership is demonstrated through its deployment of over 150,000 units at more than 200 mobile operators and retailers globally, representing well over 100,000 stores handling hundreds of millions of transactions per year.

Founded in 1999, Cellebrite is a subsidiary of the Sun Corporation, a publicly traded Japanese company (6736/JQ).

Contacts:

Cellebrite

Jeremy Nazarian

CMO

+1(973) 941-7200

jeremy.nazarian@cellebrite.com




LAVAL, Quebec, May 6, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

/NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION TO U.S. NEWS SERVICES AND NOT FOR DISSEMINATION IN THE UNITED STATES/

Alimentation Couche-Tard Inc. (TSX:ATD.A, ATD.B) announced today that it has issued 750 million principal amount of 1.875% senior unsecured notes due 2026.

The Notes are direct unsecured, unsubordinated obligations of Couche-Tard and rankpari passuwith all other outstanding unsecured and unsubordinated indebtedness of Couche-Tard.

Couche-Tard intends to use the estimated net proceeds of the offering of approximately 746.4 million to pay down a portion of amounts outstanding under its Senior Credit Facilities and for other general corporate purposes.

The Notes were offered in Europe pursuant to a Subscription Agreement with HSBC Bank plc, Mitsubishi UFJ Securities International plc, Cooperatieve Rabobank U.A. and National Bank Financial Inc., each acting as Lead Manager, and Scotiabank Europe plc, SMBC Nikko Capital Markets Limited, Wells Fargo Securities International Limited and Desjardins Securities Inc.

This press release does not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy the Notes in the United States. The Notes have not been and will not be registered under the U.S. Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "U.S. Securities Act"), and may not be offered or sold in the United States unless registered under the U.S. Securities Act or pursuant to an available exemption from the registration requirements of the U.S. Securities Act.

Profile

Couche-Tard is the leader in the Canadian convenience store industry. In the United States, it is the largest independent convenience store operator in terms of number of company-operated stores. In Europe, Couche-Tard is a leader in convenience store and road transportation fuel retail in the Scandinavian and Baltic countries with a significant presence in Poland.

As of January 31, 2016, Couche-Tard's network comprised 7,979convenience stores throughout North America, including 6,560stores offering road transportation fuel. Its North-American network consists of 15business units, including 11 in the United States covering 41states and four in Canada covering all ten provinces. About 80,000people are employed throughout its network and at its service offices in NorthAmerica.

In Europe, Couche-Tard operates a broad retail network across Scandinavia (Norway, Sweden and Denmark), Poland, the Baltics (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) and Russia. As of January 31, 2016, it comprised 2,218 stores, the majority of which offer road transportation fuel and convenience products while the others are unmanned automated fuel stations. Couche-Tard also offers other products, including stationary energy, marine fuel and chemicals. Couche-Tard operates key fuel terminals and fuel depots in sixEuropean countries. Including employees at franchise stations carrying its brands, about 19,000people work in its retail network, terminals and service offices across Europe. Since its acquisition of Topaz Energy Group Limited on February 1st, 2016, Couche-Tard also operates a convenience and fuel retailing network comprised of 444 service stations in Ireland as well as a significant commercial fuels operation, with over 30depots and two terminals.

In addition, around 1,500stores are operated by independent operators under the Circle K banner in13 other countries or regions worldwide (China, Costa Rica, Egypt, Guam, Honduras, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Macau, Malaysia, Mexico, the Philippines, the United Arab Emirates and Vietnam).

For more information on Alimentation Couche-Tard Inc., please visit:http://corpo.couche-tard.com.

Forward Looking Statements

The statements set forth in this press release, which describes Couche-Tard's objectives, projections, estimates, expectations or forecasts, may constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of securities legislation. Positive or negative verbs such as "believe", "could", "should", "intend", "expect", "estimate", "assume" and other related expressions are used to identify such statements. Couche-Tard would like to point out that, by their very nature, forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties such that its results, or the measures it adopts, could differ materially from those indicated or underlying these statements, or could have an impact on the degree of realization of a particular projection. Major factors that may lead to a material difference between Couche-Tard's actual results and the projections or expectations set forth in the forward-looking statements include the effects of the integration of acquired businesses and the ability to achieve projected synergies, fluctuations in margins on motor fuel sales, competition in the convenience store and retail motor fuel industries, exchange rate variations, and such other risks as described in detail from time to time in the reports filed by Couche-Tard with securities authorities in Canada and the United States. Unless otherwise required by applicable securities laws, Couche-Tard disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. The forward-looking information in this release is based on information available as of the date of the release.

Investor Relations: Claude Tessier, Chief Financial Officer, Tel: +1-(450)662-6632, ext. 4607, investor.relations@couche-tard.com; Media relations: Karen Romer, Director Global Communications, Tel: +1-(514)603-4505 / +47-950-74-950, karen.romer@couche-tard.com
TORONTO, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 05/06/16 -- As Alberta deals with the devastating fires in northern Alberta, banks in Canada are helping those affected, and they are doing that in a number of ways including: making special accommodations for customers affected by this tragedy; collecting donations in branches for Canadian Red Cross relief efforts; and making corporate donations directly to the Red Cross.

"The destruction from these fires in and around Fort McMurray is truly heartbreaking and our thoughts are with the people in the region. And our thanks go out to the first responders, fire fighters and aid workers who are on the ground helping with relief efforts," said Terry Campbell, President of the Canadian Bankers Association. "Bankers live and work in these communities too and are committed to doing whatever they can to help those affected, so please talk to your bank."

The steps that banks are taking to assist the people of Alberta include the following:

Special accommodations for customers affected

Banks are putting financial relief programs in place for customers impacted by the fires. Customers are encouraged to contact their bank at a branch, by phone or online for advice and assistance. Some accommodations banks may be able to make include deferring payments and providing some fee relief. Banks can also address the needs of commercial and small business clients on a case-by-case basis.

Collecting public donations for the Canadian Red Cross in branches

Banks have long supported Canadian Red Cross appeals and the fires in Alberta are no exception. Banks are accepting cash donations from the public in their branches until June 6 to support the Canadian Red Cross relief efforts in Alberta. The participating banks are:

-- BMO Financial Group -- Canadian Western Bank -- CIBC -- HSBC Bank Canada -- Laurentian Bank of Canada -- National Bank -- PC Financial - cash donations can be made in-store at Loblaw and banner stores -- RBC -- Scotiabank -- TD Bank Group -- Tangerine Bank - starting May 7, donations can be made online directly from customer accounts

Some banks have also made significant corporate donations directly to the Canadian Red Cross appeal.

Both the Alberta and Canadian governments have announced that they will match public donations made to the Canadian Red Cross. Donations can be made at the banks listed above or to the Canadian Red Cross online at www.redcross.ca/albertafires, by calling 1-800-418-1111 or by contacting a local Canadian Red Cross office.

Banking services remain available

Banks have extensive business continuity plans in place to deal with events such as the fires in Alberta and these plans are now being invoked where necessary. Some branch service has been disrupted in the hardest hit areas, including those that are under evacuation orders.

Core banking technologies remain fully operational and customers are still able to bank online or by mobile device or telephone.

If you plan to visit a branch in one of the affected areas, contact your bank first.

About the Canadian Bankers Association

The Canadian Bankers Association works on behalf of 59 domestic banks, foreign bank subsidiaries and foreign bank branches operating in Canada and their 280,000 employees. The CBA advocates for effective public policies that contribute to a sound, successful banking system that benefits Canadians and Canada's economy. The Association also promotes financial literacy to help Canadians make informed financial decisions and works with banks and law enforcement to help protect customers against financial crime and promote fraud awareness. www.cba.ca

Follow the CBA on Twitter: @CdnBankers

Watch videos: Youtube.com/CdnBankers

Follow the CBA on LinkedIn

Contacts:

Kate Ballotta

Media Relations and Communications Specialist

Canadian Bankers Association

(416) 362-6093, ext. 219

Cell: (416) 587-7733

kballotta@cba.ca




WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - While a number of Republicans have been reluctant to endorse Donald Trump, former Texas Governor Rick Perry has announced his support for the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. Speaking by telephone with CNN's Dana Bash on Thursday, Perry admitted that Trump is not his ideal choice but argued that the country cannot afford the policies and character of Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton. 'He is not a perfect man,' Perry said of Trump. 'But what I do believe is that he loves this country and he will surround himself with capable, experienced people and he will listen to them.' Perry, who previously endorsed Texas Senator Ted Cruz, R-Tex., acknowledged Trump was not his first or even his second choice but said he believes in the Republican presidential nominating process. 'I believe in the process, and the process has said Donald Trump will be our nominee and I'm going to support him and help him and do what I can,' the former governor said. Perry also indicated that he would be willing to serve as Trump's Vice President, a position some other leading Republicans have rejected. 'I am going to be open to any way I can help,' Perry said when asked if he would consider being Trump's running mate. 'I am not going to say no.' The interview with Perry came the same day House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., told CNN he is 'not ready' to support Trump. 'I'm just not ready to do that at this point. I'm not there right now,' Ryan said in an interview on CNN's 'The Lead with Jake Tapper' on Thursday. Ryan said he hopes to eventually be able to back Trump but suggested the billionaire needs to do more to unify the GOP before earning his support. (Photo Credit: Michael Vadon) 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.
Planview will demonstrate new offerings for enterprise architects during the 2016 Gartner Enterprise Architecture Summit, North America, taking place May 11-12 in National Harbor, Maryland.

Jeff Ellerbee, Planview's solution marketing manager for Troux, will present the Planview Solution for Enterprise Architecture (http://www.planview.com/solutions/enterprise-architecture/?utm_source=press&utm_medium=release&utm_campaign=ea). This solution adds the project collaboration, work management and document sharing features of Projectplace, as well as the demand and idea management features of Planview Ideation Management, to the core Troux capabilities. This solution is ideal for organizations looking to adopt a proactive approach to enterprise architecture and to collaborate with business stakeholders to facilitate rapid digital transformation.

Speaker:

Jeff Ellerbee, solution marketing manager for Troux: Ellerbee has spent more than 14 years holding product management, engineering, consulting and sales positions at Troux. He has been directly involved in hundreds of deployments of Troux in companies across the U.S. and Europe. Ellerbee is passionate about sharing what he has learned over the years with customers and helping them achieve value quickly.

Date and Time:

Thursday, May 12 at 1 p.m. EDT

Registration:

http://www.gartner.com/events/na/enterprise-architecture#!registration

Planview is a Silver sponsor of the Gartner EA Summit and will be located at exhibit booth 208.

Social Media:

Follow the conversation on Twitter at @Planview and use the hashtags Entarch and GartnerEA.

About Planview

Planview enables organizations to get the most out of their resources and achieve their goals. We are the global leader in solutions that optimize resources and work, spanning strategic planning, portfolio and resource management, project collaboration, and enterprise architecture. From small teams to large enterprises, companies in every industry use Planview's products: Planview Enterprise, Projectplace, and Troux. Headquartered in Austin, Texas, our 600 employees worldwide serve more than 1,000 enterprise customers and one million users. For more information, visit http://www.planview.com.

This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160506005526/en/

Contacts:

Planview

Per Holmlund

per.holmlund@projectplace.com

+46-8-586 302 00
MISSION, KS -- (Marketwired) -- 05/06/16 -- (Family Features) Light, refreshing flavors are the perfect solution for a summer meal. As temperatures heat up, take your summer entertaining to the next level with a secret ingredient that is as pretty as it is tasty.

Alone or in a recipe, grapes from California are a deliciously healthy way to bring refreshing flavor to the summertime table. Delightful as a cool snack, grapes are also a great choice for your entertaining menu because they pair well with so many other ingredients.

You may be surprised by all of the combinations of flavors and textures you can achieve, from main dishes to sides and even desserts. Impress your guests with this mouthwatering lineup featuring grapes that includes a grilled flank steak, an extra fresh classic salad and an unexpectedly sweet but savory sorbet.

Find more refreshing recipes for summer entertaining at GrapesfromCalifornia.com.

Grilled Flank Steak with Grapes and Stilton Servings: 6 1 flank steak (2 pounds) kosher salt freshly ground black pepper 1 1/2 tablespoons red wine vinegar 1 tablespoon chopped shallot 1/4 teaspoon Dijon mustard 1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil 2 bunches (8 cups) watercress, trimmed 1/2 cup crumbled Stilton or other blue cheese 2 cups red California grapes, halved

Heat grill to high and oil grates.

Sprinkle steak with salt and pepper.

In small blender or food processor, combine vinegar, shallot, mustard and olive oil to make dressing. Season with salt and pepper, and puree until smooth.

Grill steak until it reaches 130 F for medium-rare, about 6-7 minutes per side. Transfer to cutting board and let rest 5 minutes.

In large bowl, combine watercress, salt, pepper and enough dressing to coat. Thinly slice steak across the grain and transfer to platter. Top with watercress, Stilton and grapes, and serve with additional dressing.

Nutritional information per serving: 376 calories; 29 g protein; 10 g carbohydrates; 24 g fat (57% calories from fat); 8.5 g saturated fat (20% calories from saturated fat); 73 mg cholesterol; 299 mg sodium; .8 g fiber.

Grape and Spinach Salad with Raspberry Balsamic Dressing Servings: 8 8 cups fresh baby spinach, washed 4 1/2 cups California grapes 1 1/4 cups mandarin orange segments (drained, if using canned) 1/3 cup thinly sliced red onion 3/4 cup bottled light balsamic vinegar and oil dressing 1/4 cup orange juice 3 tablespoons raspberry jam 3/4 cup crunchy chow mein noodles

Place spinach in large salad bowl. Top with grapes, oranges and onion.

Whisk together dressing, orange juice and jam. Pour over salad and toss until greens are coated with dressing. Top with crunchy noodles.

Serving suggestion: Add noodles just before serving to maintain crunchy texture.

Nutritional information per serving: 166 calories; 3 g protein; 32 g carbohydrates; 4 g fat (22% calories from fat); .71 g saturated fat (4% calories from saturated fat); 0 mg cholesterol; 350 mg sodium; 3 g fiber.

Savory Black Grape Sorbet Servings: 4 1 1/2 pounds (4 cups) black California seedless grapes, washed and stemmed 1/4 cup sugar 2 tablespoons vodka 2 tablespoons lemon juice 8 large basil leaves pinch of salt

In food processor or blender, puree grapes and sugar until smooth. Pour into small saucepan and bring to boil over high heat. Reduce heat to a simmer and cook until mixture has reduced by about one-third, about 15 minutes. Stir in vodka, lemon juice, basil and salt then let cool to room temperature.

Pour mixture into shallow pan and freeze until hard, 3-4 hours. Transfer to food processor or blender and process until smooth and creamy, and lightened in color. Serve immediately.

Nutritional information per serving: 184 calories; 1 g protein; 44 g carbohydrates; 0 g fat; 0 mg cholesterol; 151 mg sodium; 2 g fiber.

Grape Basil Martini Servings: 1 3 basil leaves, torn, plus additional for garnish 5 green California grapes, halved, plus additional for garnish 2 ounces gin 1/4 ounce Essencia 1 ounce lemon juice 1 ounce simple syrup ice

In cocktail shaker, muddle basil and grapes with gin. Add Essencia, lemon juice and simple syrup, and shake gently. Strain into rocks glass filled with ice. Garnish with basil leaf and float two grapes on top. Serve.

Nutritional information per serving: 229 calories; 0 g protein; 24 g carbohydrates; 0 g fat; 0 mg cholesterol; 1 mg sodium; 0.3 g fiber.

Easy Ideas for a Summer Party

Plan the perfect summer party with these easy entertaining tips:

Create cozy seating arrangements complete with cushions and ample shade so guests can laugh and chat in comfort until the sun sets and beyond.

Be sure to create pops of color with your tableware and food. Available in three vibrant hues -- red, green and black -- grapes make a beautiful centerpiece and colorful addition to any menu offering.

When you need a simple appetizer, grapes are as easy as it gets. Ripe and ready when you bring them home, give them a rinse, place them in a pretty bowl and you've got an edible centerpiece in seconds.

As day gives way to night, keep the festive mood strong by adding some ambient light. Whimsical paper lanterns or strings of white or colored Christmas tree lights lend a playful touch to parties after dark.

About Family Features Editorial Syndicate

This and other food and lifestyle content can be found at http://editors.familyfeatures.com. Family Features is a leading provider of free food and lifestyle content for use in print and online publications. Register with no obligation to access a variety of formatted and unformatted features, accompanying photos, and automatically updating Web content solutions.

Image Available: http://www2.marketwire.com/mw/frame_mw?attachid=3003849



Michael French

mfrench@familyfeatures.com

1-888-824-3337

http://editors.familyfeatures.com




VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA -- (Marketwired) -- 05/06/16 -- Editors Note: A photo for this release will be available on the Canadian Press picture wire via Marketwired.

Northern Gateway and the 31 Aboriginal Equity Partners, as represented by four Stewards, filed a request today with the National Energy Board for a three-year extension to the sunset clause to allow the Project the time needed to receive legal and regulatory certainty and to continue important discussions with First Nations and Metis communities. Importantly, more time is required to advance dialogue with coastal communities in northwest British Columbia. The sunset clause is a condition on the Project that stipulates when construction must begin. Northern Gateway, the Aboriginal Equity Partners and other Project proponents are fully committed to building this critical infrastructure at a time when Canada needs it the most.

Statement from John Carruthers, President, Northern Gateway:

"Northern Gateway believes projects like ours should be built with First Nations and Metis environmental stewardship, ownership, support and shared control. Based on collaboration with First Nations and Metis peoples we are building a project partnership in a way and on a scale that has never been done before. This is a true partnership between industry and First Nations and Metis peoples.

Northern Gateway has changed. We are making progress and remain open to further changes. We believe this is the right course of action for Northern Gateway and the right thing to do as Canadians. We know this process requires time and we are committed to getting it right.

Our priority is to continue to build respectful relationships with First Nations and Metis communities. From the beginning, Northern Gateway should have done a better job of building relationships with First Nations and Metis communities, particularly on the west coast of British Columbia. While we had the right intentions, we should have done a better job of listening and fostering these critical relationships and developing our plans together as true partners."

New Partnership with First Nations and Metis Peoples:

Since receiving approval for the Project, Northern Gateway has worked with the Aboriginal Equity Partners and a number of non-equity partner communities where negotiations are advancing, including a number in Coastal British Columbia, to achieve the following improvements to the Project:

-- First Nations and Metis environmental stewardship and monitoring using traditional science -- Shared ownership and control with First Nation and Metis communities which will see: -- Enbridge and Project proponents reduce their ownership in order to increase total available First Nation and Metis ownership from 10% up to 33% -- A joint governance structure where Project proponents, First Nations and Metis owners, and Enbridge have an equal voice -- Enhanced benefits - doubling from $1 billion to $2 billion for First Nations and Metis communities -- Northern Gateway is seeking to jointly design with coastal First Nations and governments a global best practice spill response capacity that reflects the unique nature of British Columbia's North Coast making it safer for all vessels -- Advancing dialogue and negotiations with several terrestrial and coastal First Nations communities

Statement from the Aboriginal Equity Partner Stewards (Bruce Dumont, President, Metis Nation British Columbia; David MacPhee, President, Aseniwuche Winewak Nation; Chief Elmer Derrick, Gitxsan Nation Hereditary Chief; Elmer Ghostkeeper, Buffalo Lake Metis Settlement):

Today, as the Stewards of the 31 Aboriginal Equity Partners, we affirmed our support for the Northern Gateway Project and jointly signed the formal request to the National Energy Board for a sunset extension. This is the first time a project certificate holder has made a joint application to the National Energy Board with its First Nations and Metis partners. This is a reflection of the new partnership that we are building together.

The Aboriginal Equity Partners is a unique and historic partnership that establishes a new model for conducting natural resource development on our lands and traditional territories. We are owners of the project and are participating in Northern Gateway as equals. This ownership ensures environmental stewardship, shared control, and negotiated business and employment benefits. Collectively, our communities stand to benefit from more than $2 billion directly from this Project.

There is a misconception that there is no First Nations and Metis support for Northern Gateway. This is not true. In fact, support for our Project has grown from 26 to 31 communities over the past two years and is continuing to grow.

Our communities need the economic and business benefits that Northern Gateway can bring. We are focused on ensuring our communities benefit from this Project and are actively involved in Northern Gateway's decision making so we can protect both the environment and our traditional way of life through direct environmental stewardship and monitoring. With our influence and guidance, Northern Gateway is changing and we are taking a leadership role. The process of change based on First Nations and Metis collaboration will continue.

Our goal is for Northern Gateway to help our young people to have a future where they can stay in their communities with training and work opportunities. We remain committed to Northern Gateway and the opportunities and responsibilities that come with our ownership. We also remain committed to working with our partners to ensure our environment is protected for future generations.

Link to Northern Gateway documents filed with National Energy Board:

http://gatewaypanel.review-examen.gc.ca/clf-nsi/hm-eng.html

Backgrounder: Northern Gateway and Request for Extension to Sunset Clause

Northern Gateway has requested that the National Energy Board extend the time for commencement of construction from December 31, 2016 to December 31, 2019.

NEB Condition #2 of the 209 for Northern Gateway project states:

"Unless the (National Energy Board) otherwise directs prior to 31 December 2016, the certificate will expire on 31 December 2016 unless construction of the pipeline or the Kitimat Terminal has commenced by that date."

What is a Sunset Clause?

A sunset clause is a condition placed on most regulated major projects in Canada. It identifies a date when construction is required to start to ensure that the facts presented during the regulatory proceedings remain current and relevant. If the project does not start by such a date, the "sun will set" on the certificate and the Project will no longer be able to proceed unless an extension is granted.

Why did Northern Gateway request an extension to our sunset clause?

Rather than be driven by a construction schedule, Northern Gateway is committed to the process we have followed over the last two years to build trust, engage in respectful dialogue, and build meaningful partnerships with First Nations and Metis communities, stakeholders, and communities along the Project route. An extension to the sunset clause will also allow Northern Gateway time to receive outstanding legal and regulatory clarity.

How will Northern Gateway boost Canada's economy?

-- Create over 4,000 construction jobs and 1,000 long-term jobs -- Spend $2 billion in local communities with at least $1 billion going to First Nations and Metis owned businesses -- Contribute $98 billion in total tax revenue to local, provincial, and federal governments over the 30-year economic life of the Project that can be directed to education, environment, health, infrastructure and other community needs

Backgrounder: The Aboriginal Equity Partners

-- We are the 31 First Nations and Metis communities who are owners of Northern Gateway. We currently have: -- 18 First Nations and Metis communities in Alberta -- 13 First Nations and Metis communities in British Columbia -- The Aboriginal Equity Partners (AEP) were established in September 2013. Our role is to protect our traditional way of life and the environment both along the pipeline corridor and in marine operations while ensuring our people and communities benefit from long-term economic benefits and jobs. -- Collectively, First Nations and Metis communities stand to benefit over $2 billion directly from this project. -- The AEP has a separate governance structure with four AEP Stewards providing leadership. -- An AEP Steward sits on Northern Gateway's Management Committee which represents the ownership group and has members from Enbridge and the Project proponents. -- On May 3, 2016 we had an AEP All-Leaders Gathering in Vancouver where the Assembly of First Nations National Chief Perry Bellegarde attended and spoke. -- The AEP have senior level meetings with the Governments of Canada, British Columbia and Alberta. We will work collaboratively with any government on this critical Canadian infrastructure that will bring our natural resources, the backbone of our economy, to tidewater and access to new markets overseas. -- The AEP Stewards have met with the Honourable Marc Garneau, Federal Minister of Transport in January 2016 and vigorously communicated our position that we expect to be consulted on the proposed BC coast crude oil tanker ban under Section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982 which ensures the duty to consult and our inescapable economic interests. -- In February 2016, we launched our website www.aepowners.ca, twitter (@AboriginalEP) and Facebook (facebook.com/AboriginalEquityPartners).

For more information:

media@aepowners.ca

To view the photo associated with this press release, please visit the following link: http://media3.marketwire.com/docs/1053691.jpg

Contacts:

Media contacts:

Ivan Giesbrecht

Northern Gateway

604-379-8328

ivan.giesbrecht@northerngateway.ca



Katherine Coutinho

Aboriginal Equity Partners

604-694-7759

kcoutinho@aepowners.ca




MOSCOW, May 6, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

President of Russia Vladimir Putin appointed the chairman of the State Corporation Bank for Development and Foreign Economic Affairs (Vnesheconombank) as Russia's representative in BRICS Business Council.

BRICS is an informal group of states comprising the Federative Republic of Brazil, the Russian Federation, the Republic of India, the People's Republic of China and the Republic of South Africa. The BRICS Business Council is one of the most important mechanisms for BRICS cooperation aimed at promotion and strengthening business, trade, and investment ties amongst the business communities of the five BRICS countries. Seven working groups in the areas of Infrastructure, Manufacturing, Financial Services, Energy & Green Economy, Skills Development, Agribusiness and Deregulation have been formed under the aegis of the BRICS Business Council.

About Sergey Gorkov

Sergey Gorkov (48) became the head of state corporation "Bank for Development and Foreign Economic Affairs (Vnesheconombank) in February 2016. Prior to that, he worked as deputy chairman of the board of Sberbank, where he supervised the work of the international operations unit. Mr Gorkov has been awarded the Medal of the Order of Merit for Services to the Fatherland, 2nd class and the Certificate of Honour of the Government of the Russian Federation.

About BRICS

The acronym "BRICs" was initially formulated in 2001 by economist Jim O'Neill, of Goldman Sachs, in a report on growth prospects for the economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China - which together represented a significant share of the world's production and population.

Russia was the side that initiated the creation of BRICS. In 2006, the four countries started a regular informal diplomatic coordination, with annual meetings of Foreign Ministers at the margins of the General Debate of the UN General Assembly (UNGA). This successful interaction led to the decision that the dialogue was to be carried out at the level of Heads of State and Government in annual Summits. As of the First Summit, held in Yekaterinburg in 2009, the depth and scope of the dialogue among the Members of BRICs - which became BRICS in 2011 with the inclusion of South Africa - was further enhanced. More than an acronym that identified countries emerging in the international economic order, BRICS became a new and promising political-diplomatic entity, far beyond the original concept tailored for the financial markets.
Alliance Trust PLC 6 May 2016 Directorate Change As previously announced, John Hylands retired as a Director of the Company from the conclusion of the Annual General Meeting held today. Enquiries: George Renouf Alliance Trust PLC Telephone: 01382 321022 This announcement is distributed by GlobeNewswire on behalf of GlobeNewswire clients. The owner of this announcement warrants that: (i) the releases contained herein are protected by copyright and other applicable laws; and (ii) they are solely responsible for the content, accuracy and originality of the information contained therein. Source: Alliance Trust PLC via GlobeNewswire [HUG#2010368] B11V7W9R41 Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
TORONTO, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 05/06/16 -- Denison Mines Corp. ("Denison" or the "Company") (TSX: DML)(NYSE MKT: DNN) is pleased to report that the nominees listed in the management proxy circular for the 2016 Annual Meeting of Shareholders ("Annual Meeting") were elected as directors of the Company. Detailed results of the vote for the election of directors held at the Annual Meeting yesterday in Toronto are set out below.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Nominee Votes For % For Votes Withheld % Withheld ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hyung Mun Bae 191,998,867 99.07% 1,806,059 0.93% ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- W. Robert Dengler 192,199,179 99.17% 1,605,747 0.83% ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Brian D. Edgar 177,008,307 91.33% 16,796,619 8.67% ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ron F. Hochstein 174,557,736 90.07% 19,247,190 9.93% ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Lukas H. Lundin 191,419,672 98.77% 2,385,254 1.23% ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- William A. Rand 192,319,620 99.23% 1,485,306 0.77% ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Catherine Stefan 191,290,833 98.70% 2,514,093 1.30% ----------------------------------------------------------------------------

About Denison

Denison is a uranium exploration and development company with interests focused in the Athabasca Basin region of northern Saskatchewan. Including its 60% owned Wheeler River project, which hosts the high grade Phoenix and Gryphon uranium deposits, Denison's exploration portfolio consists of numerous projects covering over 350,000 hectares in the eastern Athabasca Basin. Denison's interests in Saskatchewan also include a 22.5% ownership interest in the McClean Lake joint venture, which includes several uranium deposits and the McClean Lake uranium mill, which is currently processing ore from the Cigar Lake mine under a toll milling agreement, plus a 25.17% interest in the Midwest deposit and a 61.55% interest in the J Zone deposit on the Waterbury Lake property. Both the Midwest and J Zone deposits are located within 20 kilometres of the McClean Lake mill. Internationally, Denison owns 100% of the Mutanga project in Zambia, 100% of the uranium/copper/silver Falea project in Mali, and a 90% interest in the Dome project in Namibia. Denison has recently entered into an agreement with GoviEx Uranium Inc. (CSE: GXU) to sell its African interests, with an expected closing date in May, 2016.

Denison is also engaged in mine decommissioning and environmental services through its Denison Environmental Services division and is the manager of Uranium Participation Corp., a publicly traded company which invests in uranium oxide and uranium hexafluoride.

Contacts:

David Cates

President and Chief Executive Officer

(416) 979-1991 ext. 362



Sophia Shane

Investor Relations

(604) 689-7842



Follow Denison on Twitter

@DenisonMinesCo




DALLAS, TX--(Marketwired - May 06, 2016) - Binswanger has been named exclusive agent by Albertson's, LLC for the sale of their magnificent 194,836 sq. ft., single-story freezer/cooler warehouse and distribution facility on approximately 14.29 acres. An adjacent 14.1 acres along the eastern boundary of the property is available separately. The property is located at 200 Freedom Drive in Roanoke, Texas.

Constructed in 2010, the building contains a 54,972 sq. ft. cooler space maintaining a temperature of 36 and a 35,885 sq. ft. freezer space maintaining a temperature as low as -30. The facility is constructed of 6" reinforced concrete floor, concrete tilt walls and 60 mil mechanically fastened TPO roof; ceiling heights ranging from 34'8" to 36'6"; steel columns spaced 40' x 45' and up to 73'6" in the staging area. Key features include 100% wet and dry pipe sprinkler system; combination of T-5 and T-8 lighting; all utilities; 29 - 9' x 11' dock-high doors equipped with 40,000 lb. SERCO levelers, dock seals and lights; paved parking 90 cars; 38 trailer staging spaces; 18,190 sq. ft. of office space featuring private offices, conference rooms and break rooms and Union Pacific rail line adjacent to the property with the possibility to extend a rail spur to the site.

The facility is ideally located in the Alliance of Texas Industrial Park, located just off I-35W and Texas Highways 114 and 170. It is less than 20 minutes from Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport and less than five minutes to Alliance Airport. Its centralized US location is equally close to the five largest business centers in North America: New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Mexico City and Toronto.

Just under nine miles from the property in Haslet is the Alliance Intermodal Facility which connects with the BNSF Railway -- a class I rail carrier along the western half of the US with transportation routes spanning over 32,000 miles from Houston to Vancouver, San Francisco to Chicago.

Binswanger is aggressively marketing the property to retail grocery companies; refrigerated/food type companies including food processing and food distributing providers; as well as wholesale trade -- drugs/druggist sundries, apparel, grocery/related products, beer, wine and distilled alcohol; retail trade -- food and beverage stores, specialty food stores; transportation and warehousing; food services and drinking places; and third-party logistics prospects.

Headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Binswanger is an international full-service real estate organization with offices worldwide throughout the United States, Canada, Latin America, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia.

CONTACT:

Laurie Goldstein

215-448-6014

Email contact





Holmes Davis

972-663-9494

Email contact


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.
THIS NOTICE IS IMPORTANT AND REQUIRES THE IMMEDIATE ATTENTION OF

SENIOR NOTEHOLDERS. IF SENIOR NOTEHOLDERS ARE IN ANY DOUBT AS TO THE ACTION

THEY SHOULD TAKE, THEY SHOULD SEEK THEIR OWN FINANCIAL AND LEGAL ADVICE,

INCLUDING AS TO ANY TAX CONSEQUENCES, IMMEDIATELY FROM THEIR STOCKBROKER,

SOLICITOR, ACCOUNTANT OR OTHER INDEPENDENT FINANCIAL OR LEGAL ADVISER.

NOTICE OF RESULTS AND ADJOURNED MEETING OF THE HOLDERS OF THE OUTSTANDING

Series 1 Class A1 Asset Backed 8.369 Per Cent. Premium Yield Notes due 2058

(ISIN: USG34346AA77; Common Code: 7518471)

(the "Series 1 Class A1 Notes")

Series 1 Class A2 Asset Backed 8.569 Per Cent. Premium Yield Notes due 2058

(ISIN: USG34346AB50; Common Code: 7518498)

(the "Series 1 Class A2 Notes")

Series2 Class A Asset Backed Variable Rate Notes due 2058

(ISIN USG34346AE99; Common Code 7518536)

(the "Series 2 Class A Notes")

issued by

FINANCE FOR RESIDENTIAL SOCIAL HOUSING PLC

(the "Issuer")

On 26 March 1997

The Series 1 Class A1 Notes, Series 1 Class A2 Notes and Series 2 Class A Notes are each a "Class" of Notes and together referred to as the "Senior Notes".

Capitalised terms used but not otherwise defined in this Notice shall have the meanings set out in the trust deed (the "Trust Deed") dated 26 March 1997 (as amended from time to time) and entered into between the Issuer and Royal Exchange Trust Company Limited as trustee (such role now being performed by Capita Trust Company Limited under power of attorney) (the "Trustee") and the bank agreement (the "Bank Agreement") dated 26 March 1997 (as amended from time to time) and entered into between the Issuer, The Royal Bank of Scotland plc ("RBS") (formerly National Westminster Bank plc) (the "Account Bank" and the "Administrator") and the Trustee.

The Trustee has not been involved in the formulation of the matters set out in this Notice, including, without limitation, the matters set out in section 1 (Background to the Extraordinary Resolution) (the "Proposal") and, in accordance with normal practice, the Trustee expresses no opinion on the merits of the Proposal (which it was not involved in negotiating) or the Extraordinary Resolution and no opinion on whether Senior Noteholders would be acting in their best interests voting for or against the Proposal or the Extraordinary Resolution but on the basis of the information contained in this Notice has authorised it to be stated that it has no objection to the Extraordinary Resolution being submitted to Senior Noteholders for their consideration. The Trustee makes no representation that all relevant information has been disclosed to Senior Noteholders in connection with the Proposal, the Extraordinary Resolution and this Notice. The Trustee is not responsible for the accuracy, completeness, validity or correctness of the statements made in this Notice or omissions from this Notice. Nothing in this Notice should be construed as a recommendation to Senior Noteholders from the Trustee to vote in favour of, or against, the Proposal or the Extraordinary Resolution. The Trustee recommends that Senior Noteholders take their own independent professional advice on the merits and the consequences of voting in favour of, or against, the Extraordinary Resolution and the Proposal.

No person has been authorised to make any recommendation on behalf of the Issuer, the Trustee or the Principal Paying Agent as to whether or how the Senior Noteholders should vote pursuant to the Proposal. No person has been authorised to give any information, or to make any representation in connection therewith, other than those contained herein. If made or given, such recommendation or any such information or representation must not be relied upon as having been authorised by the Issuer, the Trustee or the Principal Paying Agent.

This Notice is issued and directed only to the Senior Noteholders and no other person shall, or is entitled to, rely or act on, or be able to rely or act on, its contents.

Each person receiving this Notice must make its own analysis and investigation regarding the Proposal and make its own voting decision, with particular reference to its own investment objectives and experience, and any other factors which may be relevant to it in connection with such voting decision. If such person is in any doubt about any aspect of the Proposal and/or the action it should take, it should consult its professional advisers.

Senior Noteholders should refer to section 3 (Voting and Quorum) of this Notice for details concerning methods of voting in respect of the Extraordinary Resolution and Proposal described in this Notice and quorum provisions in respect of the Adjourned Noteholders' Meeting.

NOTICE IS HEREBY GIVEN to the holders of the Senior Notes (the "Senior Noteholders") that at separate meetings of the Senior Noteholders (each a " Noteholders' Meeting") convened by the Notice of Meetings and held on 6 May 2016 at the offices of Fieldfisher LLP, Riverbank House, 2 Swan Lane, London EC4R 3TT:

the required quorum was achieved for the Noteholders' Meetings for the Series 1 Class A1 Notes and the Series 1 Class A2 Notes and was not achieved for the Series 2 Class A Notes; and the Extraordinary Resolution was duly passed by the holders of the Series 1 Class A1 Notes and the Series 1 Class A2 Notes.

NOTICE IS HEREBY GIVEN to the Senior Noteholders that pursuant to Condition 13 of the Terms and Conditions of the Series 2 Notes and the provisions of the Ninth Schedule of the Trust Deed a meeting of the Senior Noteholders of the Series 2 Class A Notes (the "Original Noteholders' Meeting") convened by the Issuer at the offices of Fieldfisher LLP, Riverbank House, 2 Swan Lane, London, EC4R 3TT on 6 May 2016 at 11.00am was adjourned through a lack of quorum and that a separate adjourned Noteholders' Meeting (the "Adjourned Noteholders' Meeting") convened by the Issuer will be held at the offices of Fieldfisher LLP on Wednesday 11 May 2016 at 10.00am (London time) in respect of the Series 2 Class A Notes for the purpose of considering and, if thought fit, passing the resolution which will be proposed as an Extraordinary Resolution at the Adjourned Noteholders' Meeting in accordance with the provisions of the Ninth Schedule of the Trust Deed.

Background to the Extraordinary Resolution Pursuant to the terms of the Bank Agreement, the Account Bank shall be an entity which has its short term unsecured, unsubordinated and unguaranteed debt rated at least A-1 by S&P and its long term unsecured, unsubordinated and unguaranteed debt rated at least A3 by Moody's or such other rating which is consistent with the relevant published criteria of the relevant rating agency from time to time (the "Account Bank Required Rating"). Following the downgrade by S&P of the short-term credit rating from A-1 to A-2 (the "RBS Downgrade") of The Royal Bank of Scotland plc ("RBS"), RBS ceased to meet the rating requirements required to fulfil certain of its roles under the Trust Deed, the Administration Agreement and the Bank Agreement. Pursuant to the Bank Agreement, in the event that the Account Bank no longer has the Account Bank Required Rating, the Account Bank shall either: deposit the Balance of the Collection Account in an account in the name of the Issuer with an institution that has the Account Bank Required Rating within 30 days of such downgrade, provided that such entity shall agree to enter an agreement and mandate on terms substantially similar to the terms of the Bank Agreement; or the Bank will be required to ensure that its obligations are guaranteed by an institution that has the Account Bank Required Rating within 30 days. RBS has provided the Issuer and the Trustee with draft documentation (the "Documents") prepared by RBS's legal counsel for the purpose of implementing a proposal (the "RBS Proposal") to mitigate potential credit rating linkage determined by the Rating Agencies between RBS's current credit rating and its role as the Account Bank through its provision of collateral to support its obligations under the Bank Agreement. The Documents are as follows: an amendment deed to the Bank Agreement and Cash Management Agreement (the "Amendment Deed") between the Issuer, the Trustee and RBS (as Account Bank, Administrator and Cash Manager) which amends certain provisions of the Cash Management Agreement and the Bank Agreement to enable RBS to provide additional support for the rating of the Notes in its role as the Account Bank in accordance with the RBS Proposal; a collateral agreement (the "Collateral Agreement") between the Issuer, the Trustee and RBS (as Account Bank and Cash Manager) pursuant to which RBS as Account Bank may, in certain circumstances, post cash and/or securities to support its obligations to the Issuer; and a custody agreement (the "Custody Agreement") between the Issuer, the Trustee, RBS and Bank of New York Mellon appointing Bank of New York Mellon as the custodian (the "Custodian") of any securities deposited by RBS for safekeeping and to hold any cash received for deposit for the account of the Issuer.

RBS shall pay to the Custodian such fees and charges as agreed between RBS and the Custodian in respect of the services of the Custodian pursuant to the Custody Agreement and reimburse the Custodian for out-of-pocket expenses that are a normal incident of the services provided under the Custody Agreement. RBS shall also indemnify and hold harmless the Custodian and BNY Mellon affiliates from all losses incurred by such parties other than as a result of their own negligence, wilful misconduct or fraud pursuant to the Custody Agreement.

The Custodian shall be subject to non-petition provisions in the Custody Agreement.

RBS shall, upon demand, pay to the Issuer the amount of any and all (a) reasonable costs (including reasonable legal costs and expenses) which the Issuer may incur in connection with the administration of the Collateral Agreement and (b) costs (including legal costs and expenses) which the Issuer may incur in connection with the exercise or enforcement of any of its rights under the Collateral Agreement.

Pursuant to the terms of the Custody Agreement, in certain circumstances, the Custodian may credit the Issuer's cash account with cash equal to the amount of any payment which the Custodian anticipates will be received by the Custodian or depository prior to actual receipt by the Custodian of final payment of such amount. Such advance credit shall be regarded by the Custodian as an extension of credit to the Issuer. As the Issuer is prohibited from incurring indebtedness under the terms of the Trust Deed without the prior written consent of the Trustee, the Issuer requests that the Senior Noteholders direct the Trustee to consent to the Issuer incurring such potential indebtedness if it enters into the Custody Agreement. It is not the intention of the Issuer to become voluntarily indebted pursuant to the terms of the Custody Agreement.

RBS has discussed the RBS Proposal with Moody's Investors Service ("Moody's") and Standard and Poor's Rating Services ("S&P" and, together with Moody's, the "Rating Agencies"). The Rating Agencies have confirmed that they have no further comments on the RBS Proposal. It is RBS's expectation, based on RBS's understanding of the relevant criteria published by the Rating Agencies, that:

the RBS Proposal is in accordance with S&P's counterparty criteria and as a result the ratings of the Notes will no longer be constrained at the long-term issuer credit rating of RBS (BBB+), and the RBS Proposal will have no impact on the Moody's ratings of the Notes.

The Issuer wishes to seek a direction from the Senior Noteholders pursuant to an Extraordinary Resolution the form of which is set out in paragraph 2 below (the "Extraordinary Resolution") passed at a meeting directing it and the Trustee to implement the RBS Proposal and enter into the Documents.

The Documents are available to Senior Noteholders upon request from the Issuer or the Principal Paying Agent subject to receipt by the Issuer or the Principal Paying Agent of satisfactory proof of holding of Senior Notes. The relevant contact details of the Issuer and the Principal Paying Agent are set out below.

RBS has issued a letter of intent to the Issuer confirming that, should the Extraordinary Resolution be passed by the Senior Noteholders, then it is RBS's intention to duly execute the Documents in the form made available to Senior Noteholders and thereafter to deliver collateral to satisfy the collateral posting remedy under 3(c) of Schedule 1 of the Amendment Deed within 7 business days from the date that the documents are executed.

Form of Extraordinary Resolution

"THAT this Adjourned Noteholders' Meeting of the holders of the Series 2 Class A Notes presently outstanding of Finance for Residential Social Housing plc (the "Senior Notes" and the "Issuer", respectively) constituted by a trust deed dated 26 March 1997 (as amended from time to time) (the "Trust Deed") each made between the Issuer and Royal Exchange Trust Company Limited as trustee (such role now being performed by Capita Trust Company Limited under power of attorney) (the "Trustee") as trustee for the holders of the Senior Notes (the "Senior Noteholders") hereby by Extraordinary Resolution resolves:

to approve the terms of each of the Documents; that the Trustee is hereby authorised, directed, requested, ratified, sanctioned, instructed and empowered to consent to the Issuer incurring indebtedness with the Custodian in certain circumstances in accordance with the terms of the Custody Agreement; that the Trustee is hereby authorised, directed, requested, ratified, sanctioned, instructed and empowered to concur to the Documents and, in order to give effect thereto and to implement the same, forthwith to execute the Documents and to concur in, execute and do all such other deeds, instruments, acts and things as may be necessary or appropriate to carry out and give effect to this Extraordinary Resolution; to waive, and hereby authorises, directs, requests, ratifies, sanctions, instructs and empowers the Trustee to waive any breach or potential breach of any provision of any Transaction Document that has occurred or may occur as a result of the RBS Downgrade; to hold harmless, discharge and exonerate the Trustee from all liability for which it may have become or may become liable under the Trust Deed, the Notes, the Bank Agreement or any other Transaction Document or otherwise in respect of any act or omission for which the Trustee may become responsible in connection with the Documents, or by reason of the implementation of, or the Trustee acting in accordance with, this Extraordinary Resolutionor making any determination or exercising (or, as the case may be, not exercising) any other power or right conferred pursuant to, or arising out of this Extraordinary Resolution; that the Trustee is hereby authorised, directed, empowered, requested, ratified, sanctioned and instructed without the need for any further consent or approval to take (or refrain from taking, as the case may be) all such actions and things as may be required, necessary or desirable to implement and to give effect to this Extraordinary Resolution, including without limitation the execution of any documents, declarations, certificates, agreements, deeds or instruments (howsoever described) to give effect to this Extraordinary Resolution; and to sanction every abrogation, modification, compromise or arrangement in respect of the rights of the Noteholders against the Trustee involved in or resulting from this Extraordinary Resolution. Capitalised terms in this Extraordinary Resolution shall, except where the context otherwise requires or save where otherwise defined herein, bear the meanings given in or incorporated in the notice convening this Adjourned Noteholders' Meeting dated 6 May 2016." 3. Voting and Quorum

The provisions governing the convening and holding of the Adjourned Noteholders' Meeting are set out in the ninth Schedule to the Trust Deed.

For the purposes of the Adjourned Noteholders' Meeting, a "Senior Noteholder" shall mean, in the case of the Senior Notes held though Clearstream Banking, societe anonyme ("Clearstream, Luxembourg") and/or Euroclear Bank S.A./N.V. ("Euroclear"), each person who is for the time being shown in the records of Clearstream, Luxembourg and/or Euroclear as the holder of a particular principal amount of the Senior Notes and, in the case of the Senior Notes held though the Depository Trust Company ("DTC"), each person who is shown in the records of DTC as the holder of a particular principal amount of the Senior Notes on 14 April 2016 (the "Record Date"). Transferees of the Senior Notes after the Record Date will not be entitled to vote on the Extraordinary Resolution.

Quorum

Each person who is the owner of a particular nominal amount of the Senior Notes, as shown in the records of Clearstream, Luxembourg and/or Euroclear as the holder of a particular principal amount of the Senior Notes and in the case of the Senior Notes held though the DTC, each person who is on the Record Date shown in the records of DTC as the holder of a particular principal amount of the Senior Notes or their respective accountholders ("Accountholders"), (a "Beneficial Owner") should note that they are not the registered holders of the Senior Notes for the purposes of the Adjourned Noteholders' Meeting and will only be entitled to attend and vote at the Adjourned Noteholders' Meeting in accordance with the procedures set out below in "Procedures for Voting". On this basis, the only Senior Noteholder currently able to vote at the Adjourned Noteholders' Meeting with respect to the Senior Notes represented by the Global Note Certificate will be the registered holder of the Global Note Certificate, which is Citibank, Brussels, as nominee for the common depositary of Euroclear and Clearstream. However Citibank, Brussels may grant proxies to the Beneficial Owners to attend and vote at the Adjourned Noteholders' Meeting. Alternatively, Beneficial Owners who hold their interests through a clearing system and who do not wish to attend and vote in person may convey their voting instructions by contacting the relevant clearing system (or through the relevant Accountholder, if applicable) and arrange for votes to be cast on their behalf. See "Procedures for Voting" below.

The quorum required at the Adjourned Noteholders' Meeting is at least two or more Voters whatever the proportion of the Notes which they represent provided however that for so long as the Relevant Fraction of the Principal Amount Outstanding of the relevant Class of Notes is represented by a Global Note, a single Proxy representing the holder thereof shall be deemed to be two Voters for the purposes of forming a quorum. If a quorum is not present within 15 minutes from the time fixed for a meeting so adjourned, the meeting shall be dissolved.

Procedure for Voting

The holder of a Bearer Note may obtain a Voting Certificate from the Principal Paying Agent or require the Principal Paying Agent to issue a Block Voting Instruction by depositing such Note with the Principal Paying Agent not later than 48 hours before the time fixed for the Adjourned Noteholders' Meeting. A Voting Certificate, Block Voting Instruction or a Proxy authorised in such Block Voting Instruction shall be valid until (in the case of a Voting Certificate) the earliest of (i) the conclusion of the Adjourned Noteholders' Meeting; and (ii) the surrender of such Voting Certificate to the Principal Paying Agent and (in the case of a Block Voting Instruction and a Proxy authorised thereunder) the earlier of (i) the conclusion of the Adjourned Noteholders' Meeting and (ii) the surrender to such Paying Agent, not less than 48 hours before the time fixed for the Adjourned Noteholders' Meeting (or if the Adjourned Noteholders' Meeting has been adjourned, the time fixed for its resumption), of the receipt for the deposited Senior Notes and notification thereof by the Principal Paying Agent to the Issuer and the Trustee of the deposited Senior Notes to which it relates. So long as a Voting Certificate or Block Voting Instruction is valid, the bearer thereof (in the case of a Voting Certificate) or any Proxy named therein (in the case of a Block Voting Instruction) shall be deemed to be the holder of the Senior Notes to which it relates for all purposes in connection with the Adjourned Noteholders' Meeting. A Voting Certificate and a Block Voting Instruction cannot be outstanding simultaneously in respect of the same Note.

A holder of a Registered Definitive Note may by an instrument in writing in the form for the time being available from the specified office of the Registrar in the English language signed by the holder (or, in the case of joint holders, the first named) or its duly appointed attorney or, in the case of a corporation, executed under its seal or signed on its behalf by its duly appointed attorney or a duly authorised officer of the corporation and delivered to the Registrar not later than 48 hours prior to the time for which such meeting or adjourned meeting is convened, appoint any person to attend and act on his or its behalf in connection with any meeting or proposed Adjourned Noteholders' meeting.

Any holder of a Registered Definitive Note which is a corporation may by resolution of its directors or other governing body and the delivery of an executed or certified copy of such resolution (or, if such resolution is not in English, a certified English translation thereof) to the Registrar not later than 48 hours prior to the time for which such meeting or adjourned meeting is convened, authorise any person to act as its representative in connection with the Adjourned Noteholders' Meeting.

Only Voters, representatives of the Issuer and the Trustee, the financial advisers of the Issuer and the Trustee and the legal counsel to the Issuer, the Trustee and such advisers may attend and speak at the Adjourned Noteholders' Meeting.

Every question submitted to the Adjourned Noteholders' Meeting shall be decided in the first instance by a show of hands. Unless a poll is validly demanded before or at the time that the result is declared, the Chairman's declaration that on a show of hands a resolution has been passed, passed (or not passed) by a particular majority or rejected shall be conclusive, without proof of the number of votes cast for, or against, the Extraordinary Resolution.

A demand for a poll shall be valid if it is made by the Chairman, the Issuer, the Trustee or one or more Voters representing or holding not less than one fiftieth of the aggregate Principal Amount Outstanding of the Senior Notes of the relevant class. The poll may be taken immediately or after such adjournment as the Chairman directs. A valid demand for a poll shall not prevent the continuation of the Adjourned Noteholders' Meeting for any other business.

On a show of hands every Voter has one vote. On a poll every person who is present has one vote for each 100,000 of Registered Definitive Notes of the relevant Class of which he is a holder or in respect of which he is a proxy or representative or in respect of each Unit of Bearer Notes of the relevant Class so produced or represented by the voting certificate so produced or in respect of which he is a proxy. The holder of a Global Note shall be treated as having one vote for each 100,000 principal amount of Senior Notes represented by such Global Note. Without prejudice to the obligations of proxies, a person entitled to more than one vote need not use them all or cast them all in the same way.

In case of equality of votes the chairman shall both on a show of hands and on a poll have a casting vote in addition to any other votes which he may have.

To be passed at the Adjourned Noteholders' Meeting, the Extraordinary Resolution requires a majority of at least 75 per cent of the votes cast.

If passed at the Adjourned Noteholders' Meeting, the Extraordinary Resolution will be binding on all the Senior Noteholders of the relevant Class, whether or not present at the Adjourned Noteholders' Meeting and whether or not voting, and upon all Couponholders.

Any Extraordinary Resolution passed by the Senior Noteholders shall also be binding on the Mezzanine Noteholders and the Series 3 Noteholders.

Principal Paying Agent

Citibank, N.A., London Branch

Citigroup Centre

Canada Square

Canary Wharf

London E14 5LB

Tel: +44 (0)20 7500 2017

Email: kris.chung@citi.com

Trustee

Capita Trust Company Limited

4th Floor

40 Dukes Place

London

EC3A 7NH

Fax: +44 (0)20 3170 0246

Email: corporatetrusts@capita.co.uk

Account Bank and Administrator

The Royal Bank of Scotland

280 Bishopsgate

London

EC2M 4AA

Tel: +44 (0)20 7085 3781

Email: liability.management@rbs.com

Attention: Liability Management

Subject to the Extraordinary Resolution being passed by the Senior Noteholders and all relevant documents being executed, the Amendments set out above shall be become effective and the Noteholders will be notified thereof in accordance with the Conditions.

This notice is given by:

Issuer

Finance for Residential Social Housing plc

4th Floor

40 Dukes Place

London

EC3A 7NH

Fax: +44 (0)20 3170 0246

Email: spvservices@capitafiduciary.co.uk

Dated 6 May 2016
BRUSSELS (dpa-AFX) - The Swiss stock market returned to action Friday, following yesterday's Ascension Day holiday. The market was under pressure in early trade and slipped beneath 7,700 points following the release of the U.S. employment report. A recovery followed, on investor hopes that the Fed will keep rates unchanged in June, but the market still finished in negative territory. Employment in the U.S. climbed by much less than expected in April, the Labor Department revealed on Friday. Non-farm payroll employment rose by 160,000 jobs in April compared to economist estimates for a jump of about 200,000 jobs. The Swiss Market Index decreased 0.22 percent Friday and finished at 7,735.60. The SMI ended the trading week with an overall loss of 2.8 percent. The Swiss Leader Index dropped 0.23 percent Friday and the Swiss Performance Index lost 0.10 percent. Credit Suisse declined 1.3 percent. After rival UBS disappointed investors with its quarterly report, investors were reluctant to take positions in Credit Suisse ahead of its report on Tuesday. UBS rose 0.5 percent, but Julius Baer dropped 1.6 percent. Kuehne + Nagel weakened by 3.2 percent, after it began trading on an ex-dividend basis and LafargeHolcim fell 1.7 percent. The luxury goods companies were also under pressure due to comments from Goldman Sachs. Swatch surrendered 0.9 percent and Richemont dropped 1.1 percent. Among the index heavyweights, Roche dropped 1.1 percent and Novartis fell 0.8 percent. However, Nestle ended the session with a gain of 0.7 percent. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
TORONTO, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 05/06/16 -- North American Palladium Ltd. ("NAP" or the "Company") (TSX: PDL)(OTC PINK: PALDF) released today the final voting results of its 2016 Annual General Meeting of Shareholders ("AGM") held on May 6, 2016 in Toronto, Ontario. The following matters were voted on:

1. Election of Directors

The following five nominees were appointed as Directors of the Corporation to serve until the next annual meeting of shareholders of the Corporation, or until their successors are elected or appointed. The results were as follows:

---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Name of Nominee Votes For Percent Votes Withheld Percent ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- J. Peter Gordon 53,533,425 99.96% 22,814 0.04% ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- David J. Nowak 53,533,901 99.96% 22,338 0.04% ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- John W. Jentz 53,535,203 99.96% 21,036 0.04% ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dean R. Chambers 53,535,196 99.96% 21,043 0.04% ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Gregory P. Fauquier 53,534,988 99.96% 21,251 0.04% ----------------------------------------------------------------------------

2. Appointment of Auditors

KPMG LLP, Chartered Accountants, were reappointed as auditors of the Corporation to hold office until the next annual meeting, and the Directors were authorized to fix their remuneration. The results were as follows:

---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Votes For Percent Votes Withheld Percent ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 53,941,124 99.89% 57,366 0.11% ----------------------------------------------------------------------------

The formal Report on Voting Results with respect to all matters voted upon at the AGM will be filed with the Canadian securities regulatory authorities shortly.

About North American Palladium

NAP is an established precious metals producer that has been operating its Lac des Iles mine ("LDI") located in Ontario, Canada since 1993. LDI is one of only two primary producers of palladium in the world, offering investors exposure to palladium. The Company's shares trade on the TSX under the symbol PDL and on the OTC Pink under the symbol PALDF.

Contacts:

North American Palladium Ltd.

Investor Relations

416-360-7374

IR@nap.com




PUNE, India, May 6, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

ReportsnReports.com adds "Cochlear Implants - Medical Devices Pipeline Assessment, 2016" to its database. The report provides comprehensive information on the pipeline products with comparative analysis of the products at various stages of development. The report reviews major players involved in the pipeline product development. It also provides information about clinical trials in progress, which includes trial phase, trial status, trial start and end dates, and, the number of trials for the key Cochlear Implants pipeline products.

Complete report on Cochlear Implants Medical Devices Pipeline Assessment with 46 market data tables and 5 figures, spread across 47 pages is available at http://www.reportsnreports.com/reports/533739-cochlear-implants-medical-devices-pipeline-assessment-2016.html .

Cochlear Implants Companies and Product Overview discussed in this research include those of Advanced Bionics, LLC, Ceragenix Pharmaceuticals, Inc., Hannover Medical School, Labyrinth Devices, Northwestern University, Oticon Medical AB, OtoKinetics, Sonova Holding AG, Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center, Trinity College Dublin and University of Michigan Pediatric Device Consortium.

Scope of this report provides extensive coverage of the Cochlear Implants under development, details of major pipeline products which includes, product description, licensing and collaboration details and other developmental activities, major players involved in the development of Cochlear Implants and list all their pipeline projects, coverage of pipeline products based on various stages of development ranging from Early Development to Approved / Issued stage, key clinical trial data of ongoing trials specific to pipeline products as well as recent developments in the segment / industry

The report enables its readers to formulate significant competitor information, analysis, and insights to improve R&D strategies for Cochlear Implants, identify emerging players with potentially strong product portfolio and create effective counter-strategies to gain competitive advantage, identify and understand important and diverse types of Cochlear Implants under development, develop Cochlear Implants market-entry and market expansion strategies, plan mergers and acquisitions effectively by identifying major players with the most promising pipeline as well as in-depth analysis of the product's current stage of development, territory and estimated launch date.

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Another newly published market research report titled on Digital X-ray Systems - Medical Devices Pipeline Assessment, 2016 provides comprehensive information on the pipeline products with comparative analysis of the products at various stages of development. The report reviews major players involved in the pipeline product development. It also provides information about clinical trials in progress, which includes trial phase, trial status, trial start and end dates, and, the number of trials for the key Digital X-ray Systems pipeline products. Digital X-ray Systems Companies and Product Overview mentioned in this research are Carestream Health, Inc., CMT Medical Technologies Ltd, EssentialMed Foundation, FUJIFILM Medical Systems USA, Inc., Konica Minolta Medical & Graphic, Inc., PerkinElmer, Inc., Philips Healthcare, Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., Schaef Systemtechnik GmbH, Simon Fraser University, Toshiba Medical Systems, Tribogenics, Inc., University of Waterloo Pipeline Products & Ongoing Clinical Trials and XLV Diagnostics Inc. Digital X-ray Systems Pipeline market research report of 92 pages is available at http://www.reportsnreports.com/reports/533743-digital-x-ray-systems-medical-devices-pipeline-assessment-2016.html .

More reports on Medical Devices.

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VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA -- (Marketwired) -- 05/06/16 -- Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada

The Honourable Kirsty Duncan, Minister of Science, announced $4.8 million dollars in awards today for 43 recipients to be supported by the PromoScience program, which enables science outreach across Canada. The announcement was made at the Canadian Association of Science Centres annual conference in Vancouver, British Columbia. The program provides funding to science centres, day camps, after-school programs, science outreach organizations, networks and more to support youth engagement in science

Minister Duncan, along with Dr. B. Mario Pinto, President of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), made the announcement at the start of Science Odyssey, a 10-day national celebration of science-based activities and events across Canada. The focus of Science Odyssey is to showcase the wonders of Canadian science, technology, engineering and math to youth and the public at large.

Quotes

"Initiatives like Science Odyssey and the PromoScience program help young Canadians and their families explore science right in their own communities. Programs such as these also inspire a sense of curiosity among our youth and may encourage them to pursue a life in science."

-The Honourable Kirsty Duncan, Minister of Science

"It is my pleasure to launch this national celebration as fostering science culture in Canada is one of NSERC's top priorities. PromoScience recipients are excellent examples of organizations raising the profile of natural sciences and engineering. Through Science Odyssey, many of them will be taking science out of the labs and directly to Canadians, helping make science part of the conversation around the dinner table."

-Dr. B. Mario Pinto, President, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada

Quick Facts

-- Science Odyssey is 10 days of discovery and innovation from Friday, May 6, to Sunday, May 15, 2016. -- Activities range from science in the streets, visits to labs, science fairs, talks and conferences, school field trips, encounters with researchers and scientists, special exhibits at museums and science centres, scientific events at community organizations, online activities, and much more. -- Science Odyssey replaces the National Science and Technology Week as Canada's celebration of STEM activities. -- PromoScience provides financial support for organizations working with young Canadians to promote an understanding of science and engineering (including mathematics and technology).

Associated Links

Science Odyssey

PromoScience

PromoScience Grant Recipients 2015

Where NSERC Invests and Why

A Vision of NSERC in 2020

Follow Minister Duncan on social media.

Twitter: @ScienceMin

Instagram: sciencemin

Contacts:

Veronique Perron

Press Secretary

Office of the Minister of Science

343-291-2600



Martin Leroux

Media and Public Affairs Officer

Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada

613-943-7618

media@nserc-crsng.gc.ca




START OF RELEASE

Shell International Finance B.V. and Royal Dutch Shell plc

May 6, 2016

Appointment of Ernst & Young LLP

On August 21, 2015, Shell International Finance B.V. issued CHF 800,000,000 0.375 per cent. Guaranteed Notes due August 21, 2023 (the 2023 Notes) and CHF 525,000,000 0.875 per cent. Guaranteed Notes due August 21, 2028 (the 2028 Notes, together with the 2023 Notes, the Notes) under the Multi-Currency Debt Securities Programme established by Shell International Finance B.V. (the Issuer) and Royal Dutch Shell plc (the Guarantor) described in the Information Memorandum dated 11 August 2015 as supplemented by the first supplement dated 24 August 2015, the second supplement dated 29 October 2015, the third supplement dated 15 February 2016, the fourth supplement dated 10 March 2016, the fifth supplement dated 3 May 2016 and the sixth supplement dated 4 May 2016 (as so supplemented, the "Information Memorandum"). The Notes have been admitted to trading on the SIX Swiss Exchange.

Pursuant to a decision by the Board of Royal Dutch Shell plc ("Shell"), on April 11, 2016 Shell appointed Ernst & Young LLP, registered office at 1 More London Place, London SE1 2AF ("E&Y"), as auditor. Subsequently, on April 25, 2016, the Board of Shell International Finance B.V. ("Shell Finance") appointed E&Y as auditor. E&Y replaces PricewaterhouseCoopers as auditor of Shell and of Shell Finance, respectively.

In accordance with the Swiss Directive on Regular Reporting Obligations, a copy of this announcement is also available on Shell's website at:

http://www.shell.com/global/aboutshell/investor/financial-information/euro-medium-term-note-programme.html

Other content available on Shell's website and the content of any other website accessible from hyperlinks on Shell's website is not incorporated into, and does not form part of, this announcement.

Enquiries:

Shell Media Relations

International, UK, European Press: +44 (0)207 934 5550

Shell Investor Relations

Europe: + 31 70 377 4540

DISCLAIMER - INTENDED ADDRESSEES

Please note that the information contained in the Information Memorandum may be addressed to and/or targeted at persons who are residents of particular countries (specified in the Information Memorandum) only and is not intended for use and should not be relied upon by any person outside these countries and/or to whom the offer contained in the Information Memorandum is not addressed. Prior to relying on the information contained in the Information Memorandum, you must ascertain from the Information Memorandum whether or not you are part of the intended addressees of the information contained therein.

This publication does not constitute an offering of the securities described in the Information Memorandum for sale in the United States. This is not for distribution in the United States. The securities have not been, and will not be, registered under the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "Securities Act") or under any relevant securities laws of any state of the United States and are subject to U.S. tax law requirements. Subject to certain exceptions, the securities may not be offered or sold within the United States or to or for the account or benefit of U.S. persons, as such terms are defined in Regulation S under the Securities Act. There will be no public offering of the securities in the United States.

Your right to access this service is conditional upon complying with the above requirement.
TORONTO, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 05/06/16 -- Metals Creek Resources Corp. (TSX VENTURE: MEK) ("Metals Creek" or the "Company") is pleased to announce that, further to press releases dated April 5, 2016 and May 3, 2016, the non-brokered private placement (the "Private Placement") has been further increased by an additional $100,000 or 800,000 flow-through units (the "FT Units") at a price of $0.125 per FT Unit. Including the 2,640,000 flow-through units (the "FT Units") and 866,666 non flow-through units (the "Hard Units") already issued for gross proceeds of $434,000, as disclosed in an April 22, 2016 press release, the aggregate gross proceeds from the Private Placement are expected to be up to $816,250 resulting in the issuance of up to 5,330,000 FT Units and 1,250,000 Hard Units.

Each FT Unit will consist of one flow-through common share (the "FT Shares") and one-half of one non flow-through common share purchase warrant (the "Warrants"). Each Hard Unit will consist of one non flow-through common share and one Warrant. Each whole Warrant will entitle the holder to purchase one additional non flow-through common share of the Company at an exercise price of $0.18 per common share for a period of 24 months from the date of issue. The FT Shares will entitle the holder to receive the tax benefits applicable to flow-through shares, in accordance with provisions of the Income Tax Act (Canada).

Further details about the securities being issued pursuant to the Private Placement can be found in the Company's press release dated April 5, 2016. Terms of the Private Placement discussed in this press release remain unchanged from the terms described in the April 5, 2016 press release.

All securities issued in the Placement are subject to a four month hold period and closing of the Private Placement remains subject to approval of the TSX Venture Exchange.

The Company would also like to clarify certain information previously disclosed in the April 22, 2016 press release announcing the closing of tranche one of the Private Placement. Delbrook Capital Advisors Inc. is not the beneficial holder of the FT Units acquired through it, and is therefore not an insider of the Company. It follows that the Private Placement is not considered to be a Related Party Transaction as defined under Multilateral Instrument 61-101.

About Metals Creek Resources Corp.

Metals Creek Resources Corp. is a junior exploration company incorporated under the laws of the Province of Ontario, is a reporting issuer in Alberta, British Columbia and Ontario, and has its common shares listed for trading on the Exchange under the symbol "MEK". Metals Creek has earned a 50% interest in the Ogden Gold Property, including the former Naybob Gold mine, located 6 km south of Timmins, Ontario and has a 8 km strike length of the prolific Porcupine-Destor Fault (P-DF) that stretches between Timmins, Ontario and Val-d'Or, Quebec. The Company has also entered into a JV with Benton Resources on Metals Creeks Staghorn Gold Project in Newfoundland. Metals Creek has also made a new gold/silver discovery in the "White Gold District" on the Squid East project in the Yukon and is engaged in the identification, acquisition, exploration and development of other mineral resource properties, and presently has mining interests in Ontario, Yukon and Newfoundland and Labrador. Additional information concerning the Corporation is contained in documents filed by the Corporation with securities regulators, available under its profile at www.sedar.com.

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Contacts:

Metals Creek Resources Corp.

Alexander Stares

President and CEO

(709)-256-6060

(709)-256-6061 (FAX)

astares@metalscreek.com

www.MetalsCreek.com



Twitter: www.Twitter.com/MetalsCreekRes

Facebook: www.Facebook.com/MetalsCreek




VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA -- (Marketwired) -- 05/06/16 -- Euromax Resources Ltd. (TSX VENTURE: EOX): ("Euromax" or the "Company") is pleased to announce that a draft Environmental Impact Assessment ("EIA") for its Ilovica copper-gold project in the Republic of Macedonia ("Ilovica Project") was submitted on 26th April to the Ministry of Environment and Physical Planning for approval.

The EIA is an assessment of the potential environmental and social impacts of the Ilovica Project. It is based on the recently published Ilovica Project Feasibility Study project design and detailed environmental and social surveys and baseline studies, which have been conducted since September 2013. It meets all Macedonian national regulations and is part of the application package required by the Macedonian authorities for the issuance of a full Exploitation Permit for the Ilovica Project. The EIA benefits from a more detailed level of project design and baseline information than the Environmental Impact Study already approved in October 2012.

The Non-Technical Summary is available on the MOEPP website while the full EIA documentation is available on Euromax

websites and at various physical locations in Macedonia for a review period of 30 days, during which stakeholder comments are invited. During this period, various meetings will be held with local stakeholders to explain the project, its effects and to answer stakeholder queries. After the review period, and a formal Public Hearing, all comments will be addressed and incorporated into a final version of the EIA.

Additional work is continuing on an Environmental and Social Impact Assessment ("ESIA") as an expansion of the national EIA in order to meet financing needs under the EBRD Performance Requirements and Equator Principles.

Commenting on the completed EIA, Pat Forward, Chief Operating Officer, said:

"The completion of the environmental and social baseline work and subsequent EIA for the Ilovica Project, based on the Feasibility Study design demonstrate that we will be operating in a safe and socially and environmentally responsible way. The environmental and social studies team comprised Golder Associates and Schlumberger Water Services who worked closely with local specialists and experts in each field and the Euromax team to ensure that the EIA study meets both national and international guidelines for responsible construction and operation from the point of view of all stakeholders"

About Euromax Resources Ltd.

Euromax has a major development project in Macedonia and an exploration services company in Bulgaria. We are focused on building and operating the Ilovica copper-gold project in Macedonia, as well as profitably deploying the wealth of exploration experience within our Bulgarian Exploration Services subsidiary.

Forward-Looking Information

This news release contains forward-looking statements including but not limited to statements regarding the completion and submission of the Environmental Impact Assessment for its Ilovica project.

In making the forward-looking statements in this release, the Company has applied certain factors and assumptions that are based on information currently available to the Company as well as the Company's current beliefs and assumptions made by the Company, that the key assumptions and parameters on which such environmental studies are based are reasonable, that the Company will be able to obtain the necessary supplies, equipment, personnel and any financing required to carry out its planned activities, the objectives concerning the Ilovica project can be achieved and that the Company's activities will proceed as expected.

Although the Company considers these assumptions to be reasonable based on information currently available to it, they may prove to be incorrect, and the forward-looking statements in this release are subject to numerous risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause future results to differ materially from those expressed or implied in such forward-looking statements. Such risk factors may include, among others, that that mineral resources are not as estimated, unexpected variations in mineral resources, grade or recovery rates, actual results of exploration activities will be different than anticipated, data and assumptions underlying the geological interpretations may prove to be inaccurate, incomplete or to have been incorrectly interpreted, that the Company will not be able to obtain the necessary supplies, equipment, personnel and any financing required to carry out its planned activities. Readers are also encouraged to review all Company documents filed with the securities authorities in Canada, including the Management Discussion and Analysis in respect of the Company's recent financial statements under the heading "Operational and Other Business Risks", which documents describe material factors and assumptions and risks that apply to the forward looking statements in this release. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. The Company does not intend, and expressly disclaims any intention or obligation to, update or revise any forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by law.

Patrick Forward, a technical consultant to the Company and a Qualified Person as defined by NI 43-101, reviewed and approved the information contained in this news release.

Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) has reviewed or accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

For more information, please visit www.euromaxresources.com.

Contacts:

Patrick Forward, COO

+44 (0) 20 3667 2970

pforward@euromaxresources.co.uk




WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - President Barack Obama has maintained a positive approval rating for three straight months, according to the results of a new CNN/ORC International poll. Fifty-one percent of Americans said they approve of the way Obama is handling his job as president, while 46 percent disapprove. Three percent said they have no opinion. Obama's latest approval rating is unchanged from March but up slightly from a positive 50 percent to 46 percent in February. CNN noted Obama's approval rating had previously largely been negative after turning lower in mid-January of 2013. The improvement in Obama's approval rating comes amid an increase in the percentage of Americans saying things in the country are going well. Forty-nine percent said things in the country are going very or fairly well, up from 42 percent that said the same in January. However, 51 percent continue to say things are going very or pretty badly. The poll showed a significant partisan divide in opinions about the country, with Democrats far more likely to say things are going well than Republicans. Examining opinions about federal appeals judge Merrick Garland's nomination to the Supreme Court, the survey found that a majority continue to favor a Senate vote in favor of his confirmation. Fifty-two percent of Americans said the Senate should vote in favor of Garland, while 33 percent said he should not be confirmed. The overall numbers are unchanged compared to March, although CNN noted support for Garland's nomination has dropped among Democrats but increased among Republicans. The CNN/ORC survey of 1,011 adults was conducted April 28th through May 1st and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points. 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.
WINNIPEG, MANITOBA -- (Marketwired) -- 05/06/16 -- In accordance with the Toronto Stock Exchange Company Manual, IGM Financial Inc. (TSX: IGM) is issuing this news release to disclose that the nominees listed in its management proxy circular dated February 29, 2016, with the exception of two who did not stand for election at the Annual Meeting of Shareholders, were elected as its directors. The detailed results of the vote at its Annual Meeting of Shareholders held earlier today in Winnipeg, Manitoba are set out below.

On a show of hands, the Chairman declared that each of the following nominees was elected as a director (figures noted have been calculated based on the number of shares represented by proxies received):

For Withheld ---------------------------------------------------- Percentage Number Percentage Number ---------------------------------------------------- Marc A. Bibeau 99.74% 200,018,477 0.26% 516,773 Jeffrey R. Carney 90.57% 181,620,382 9.43% 18,914,868 Marcel R. Coutu 99.49% 199,520,920 0.51% 1,014,330 Andre Desmarais 83.48% 167,405,674 16.52% 33,129,576 Paul Desmarais, Jr. 82.51% 165,457,177 17.49% 35,078,073 Gary Doer 99.96% 200,451,731 0.04% 83,519 Claude Genereux 90.50% 181,488,539 9.50% 19,046,711 Sharon Hodgson 99.90% 200,332,642 0.10% 202,608 Daniel Johnson 99.40% 199,325,468 0.60% 1,209,782 Susan J. McArthur 99.41% 199,342,707 0.59% 1,192,543 John McCallum 99.39% 199,309,134 0.61% 1,226,116 R. Jeffrey Orr 86.68% 173,832,098 13.32% 26,703,152 Jacques Parisien 84.36% 169,174,301 15.64% 31,360,949 Henri-Paul Rousseau 88.04% 176,549,304 11.96% 23,985,946 Susan Sherk 99.38% 199,294,482 0.62% 1,240,768 Gregory D. Tretiak 90.18% 180,844,609 9.82% 19,690,641

Total votes cast by Proxy

82.68%

IGM Financial Inc. is one of Canada's premier personal financial services companies, and one of the country's largest managers and distributors of mutual funds and other managed asset products, with approximately $132 billion in total assets under management. Its activities are carried out principally through Investors Group through a network of approximately 5,300 Consultants, Mackenzie Financial Corporation through a diversified network of third-party financial advisors and Investment Planning Counsel through a network of financial planners who are dedicated to serving the needs of their clients.

A MEMBER OF THE POWER FINANCIAL CORPORATION GROUP OF COMPANIES.

Contacts:

Media Relations:

Ron Arnst

204-956-3364

ron.arnst@igmfinancial.com



Investor Relations:

Paul Hancock

204-956-8103

investor.relations@igmfinancial.com




Technavio has announced the top eight leading vendors for the global fresh fish and seafood marketin their latest research report. This report also lists 17 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 retail sales of fresh fish and seafood in terms of volume sold through various distribution channels such as supermarkets and hypermarkets, wholesalers, open markets, fish shops, and traditional grocery stores.

Request sample report: http://bit.ly/1pIVZk6

"Currently, e-commerce accounts for approximately 12% of the world's retail trade, and its share is likely to increase further during the forecast period. Online and e-commerce channels support both B2B and B2C operations. Given the thriving nature of the market, B2B platforms like Ocean Executive are anticipated to play a key role in connecting stakeholders in the fresh seafood market across the supply chain, from fishermen, processors, and wholesalers to grocery stores and large restaurant chains," said Vijay Sarathi, one of Technavio's lead analysts for food and beverages

"Customers prefer to shop online and pay for their orders with credit or debit cards, which helps them avoid time-consuming journeys and checkout lines. This trend has prompted many fish and seafood vendors to focus on internet-savvy customer segment and venture into the new online retail format," added Vijay.

Top eight leading vendors in the global fresh fish and seafood market:

HIRO

HIRO is headquartered in Mie Prefecture, Tsu, Japan. The company operates as a wholesaler of fresh and live fish and food services.

The company has been associated with various banks, such as Shoko Chukin Bank, Hyakugo Bank, Senshu Ikeda Bank, Sumitomo Mitsui Bank, and The Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ, for advisory and audits. The company acts in the fresh fish and seafood market as a wholesaler that sells and transports fresh fish to the market.

LEE FISHING COMPANY

The company was established in 1951 and is headquartered in Tin Can Bay, Queensland, Australia. It functions as a fully integrated organization involved in the retailing, processing, and catching of fresh seafood. The company also has trawlers, which operate in the coastal regions of Queensland. The products are processed and packaged by the company under the Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service.

Leigh Fisheries

The company was founded in 1957 and is headquartered in Auckland, New Zealand. The company operates as a distributor of seafood for end markets such as supermarkets, restaurants, and wholesalers.

Marine Harvest

Marine Harvest was established in 1965 and is headquartered in Bergen, Norway. The company produces and markets farmed seafood products worldwide. They are the world's largest producer of farmed salmon, processed salmon, and other processed seafood. In FY2014, the company's total revenue was USD 4.06 billion. As of December 2014, the company employed 11,715 people worldwide. As of December 2015, the company had 61,000 employees. The company reported net revenue of USD 22.83 billion in FY2014 and USD 23.25 billion in FY2015.

Morrisons

Morrisons was founded in 1899 and is headquartered in Bradford, UK. The company specializes in in-store and online grocery retailing. The company offers multichannel options that help consumers avail products through convenience and online stores. The company sells its product through different channels such as supermarkets, Morrisons M local, online stores, and distribution centers.

In 2015, the total stores were 68, out of which 57 were convenience stores. The number of consumers visiting the stores per week was 12.1 million in 2015, and it received close to 1.1 million online orders.

Seattle Fish Company

The company was established in 1918 and is headquartered in Denver, Colorado, US. It is one of the largest wholesale distributors of frozen and fresh seafood. The company also supplies fresh and frozen seafood products to supermarkets. In 2015, the company employed more than 140 employees. The company obtains and processes more than 10 million pounds of fish annually for their customers in the Rocky Mountain region.

Tesco

The company is the largest retailer in the global market and employs more than 480,000 people. It is headquartered in Cheshunt, UK. On June 18, 2014, the company launched its healthy food range My Fit Lifestyle.

The company's UK subsidiary accounted for a major share in overall group revenue. The company employs more than 310,000 people across 3,500 stores. This subsidiary also acts as a multichannel provider, offering a wide range of products through online and physical store formats. The company also provides the option of click and collect services.

True World Foods

True World Foods operates as a supplier of fresh seafood products. The company is headquartered in Rockleigh, New Jersey, US. It provides a wide and diverse range of premium products with a particular focus on Asian dishes, which include frozen seafood and non-seafood items, gourmet meats, fresh produce, dry grocery products, and a full line of restaurant tools, supplies, equipment, and tableware.

The company offers its food products to restaurants, hotels, country clubs, cruises and ships, and specialty retail markets.

Browse related reports:

Fish and Seafood Market in Europe 2016-2020

Global Fish and Seafood Market 2016-2020

Global Frozen Fish and Seafood Market 2016-2020

Purchase these 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/20160506005036/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
NEW CASTLE, DE--(Marketwired - May 06, 2016) - Denise Zabelski Westbrook, Dean of the Wilmington University College of Health Professions (COHP), and Angela Steele-Tilton, Program Chair of the RN to BSN program at the University, will receive honors as nurses at the top of their fields by Delaware Today Magazine and 302 Health Magazine on May 19 at Bella Vita in the Cavaliers Country Club in Newark, Delaware. Both publications are sponsors of the "Excellence in Nursing Awards," at which time the recognition and honors will be publicly announced. Delaware Today Magazine also includes both women in its "Top Nurses" feature in the May issue.

Westbrook received two honorable mentions last year from members of the Delaware Nurses Association (DNA) as both a nursing educator and for her service to the community thanks to her involvement in the Man and Woman of the Year competition benefiting the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society of Delaware. Her honors this year are for "Excellence in Service" and "Education." The voting took place between February and March of this year and the results were tabulated by the publisher of Delaware Today and 302 Health.

"It's always such an honor, even to be nominated," said Westbrook. "These awards are recognition by my peers within what I feel is the most supportive nursing community in the entire country. Last year, the voting took place within the membership of the DNA. This year, the voting was open to all nurses in Delaware. I'm thrilled to be honored again as a nurse educator. And I was surprised to also receive recognition for service excellence. Both honorable mentions are acknowledgement that hours spent in the classroom and in the community have a very real and positive impact on the nursing profession and in Delaware's communities."

For Program Chair Angela Steele-Tilton, 2016 marks her first recognition by Delaware nurses. She received an honorable mention as an "Academic Educator."

"This is the first time I've received an honor such as this from the greater network of my nursing peers," said Steele-Tilton. "I'm the person who is content to be behind the scenes ... I never really thought that anybody saw what I do. But being mentioned and acknowledged means more than most would realize. I deeply appreciated being nominated; to actually receive the honorable mention was certainly beyond my expectations.

"I'm looking forward to the 'Excellence in Nursing' awards dinner because I'll have the opportunity to socialize with nurses from across the entire state. It's camaraderie with fellow nurse professionals and it's a celebration of the entire profession as much as the individual accomplishments," she added.

"This year marks the fourth annual state-wide celebration of nurses and nursing in Delaware and we are proud once again to create a platform for recognition of these dedicated and hard working healthcare professionals," said Rob Martinelli, publisher of 302 Health Magazine and Delaware Today Magazine. "Nurses are important in every aspect of healthcare, from acute patient care to management and administration and beyond. They are deeply involved in the practices and policies that make up healthcare nationally today. Delaware nurses are some of the finest in the country and we are honored to help them celebrate their profession and each other."

Friday, May 6, is National Nurses Day. It marks the beginning of National Nurses Week, which was started in 1953 when Dorothy Sutherland, an employee at the U.S. Department of Health, sent a letter to President Dwight D. Eisenhower proposing a national day in honor of nurses. While there was no official proclamation, many began to celebrate National Nurses Day and the week on their own.

In 1981, a state's resolution for an annual recognition day for nurses ultimately resulted in the designation of May 6 as "National Recognition Day for Nurses" by the United States Congress. President Ronald Reagan signed the proclamation. In 1990, the ANA board officially expanded the celebration to one week for nurses and the nursing profession. The celebration ends every year on May 12, which is the birth date of Florence Nightingale, the founder of modern nursing.

About Wilmington University

Wilmington University is a private, nonprofit institution committed to providing flexible, career-oriented, traditional and online associate, undergraduate, graduate and doctoral degree programs. Ranked as the second fastest growing doctoral institution in America 2003 - 2013 by The Almanac of The Chronicle of Higher Education, affordable tuition, academic excellence and individualized attention are hallmarks of the University that enable greater student success in their chosen careers. For more information, contact Wilmington University at 302-356-INFO (4636), via email at infocenter@wilmu.edu, or visit our website: www.wilmu.edu.

Image Available: http://www.marketwire.com/library/MwGo/2016/5/6/11G097088/Images/national-nurses-day_5.6.16-5fd6c542bf7b96b2b1989e4e8d3a7b81.jpg

Image Available: http://www.marketwire.com/library/MwGo/2016/5/6/11G097088/Images/Angela_Steele-Tilton-ec0f6e6d6d3eae49a32683bdb3cb4467.jpg

Image Available: http://www.marketwire.com/library/MwGo/2016/5/6/11G097088/Images/Denise_Westbrook-Dean_COHP-e97d6b058b34828aa824b37118228477.jpg

Contact:

Laurie Bick

(302) 650-0900
KINGSTON, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 05/06/16 -- The Correctional Service of Canada (CSC) is inviting the media to tour Collins Bay Institution, a federal correctional institution. The tour includes a visit of the following areas:

-- Minimum, medium and maximum-security units; -- Private family visiting area; -- Common area; -- Programs area; -- Dining hall; and -- CORCAN facilities.

Two tours will be offered at:

-- 9:00 a.m. & 1:00 p.m.

(i) The tours require a minimum of two hours to complete.

Tuesday, May 10, 2016

Please arrive at 8:30 a.m. for the morning tour

Please arrive at 12:30 p.m. for the afternoon tour

Collins Bay Institution 1455 Bath Road Kingston, Ontario

Parking available in the visitor parking of the Institution.

All media will be required to provide government issued identification.

Access to Collins Bay Institution is strictly under escort only.

Advance registration is required. Please confirm your attendance by 9 a.m. Monday, May 9, 2016 to esther.mailhot@csc-scc.gc.ca.

Be sure to specify which tour you wish to attend.

Specialized tours will be offered in the upcoming months on the following:

-- Segregation; -- CORCAN; -- Women Institution; -- Treatment Centres; and -- Intake process.

More details will follow.

Contacts:

Media Relations

Correctional Service Canada

613-992-7711

media@csc-scc.gc.ca




WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., revealed Friday he will not vote for either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton in the presidential election this year. 'It's hard to believe that in a nation of more than 300 million Americans Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump will be our choices for President,' Graham said. Graham, who unsuccessfully ran for the Republican nomination, has been a frequent critic of Trump and said he could not support the real estate tycoon in good conscience. 'I do not believe he is a reliable Republican conservative nor has he displayed the judgment and temperament to serve as Commander in Chief,' Graham said of Trump. The Republican Senator also said he would absolutely not support Clinton, who he argued would represent of third term of President Barack Obama's failed policies. Graham said he would focus his time, energy and effort on raising resources and advocating for maintaining Republican majorities in the House and Senate. Regardless of who wins, Graham claimed he would do everything possible to help the new president deal with the many challenges facing the nation. 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.
DUBLIN, May 6, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Research and Markets has announced the addition of the "3D Printing Materials Market by Type (Plastics, Metals, Ceramics, and Others), Form (Filament, Powder and Liquid), Application, and by Region - Global Forecasts to 2021" report to their offering.

The global 3D printing materials market is projected to grow from USD 530.1 Million in 2016 to USD 1,409.5 Million by 2021, at a CAGR of 21.60% during the same period. The high growth of the market is due to the adoption of 3D printing technology in the U.S., Germany, and developing countries such as South Korea, Brazil, and China. The growing aerospace & defense, medical & dental, and automotive industries in these countries are driving the 3D printing materials market.

The major applications of 3D printing materials are aerospace & defense, medical & dental, automotive, and consumer goods. Other applications include fashion, electronics, art & sculpture, jewelry, food, and architecture. Aerospace & defense is estimated to be the fastest-growing application of the 3D printing materials market during the forecast period. Titanium-based 3D printing materials offer high strength and stiffness, resulting in greater demand in the medical and aerospace & defense applications.

The 3D printing technology has a wide range of applications in the consumer goods industry that is expected to drive the 3D printing materials market. In the 3D printing industry, mass customization is one of the latest developments that enable the designing of materials made by using either plastics or metals for various applications. Jewelers, watchmakers, and gadget manufacturers generally operate in regions where the technology is used extensively.

Since the evolution of 3D printing technology, new 3D printing materials are continuously added. With the growing technology and demand, the availability of materials in different forms from various suppliers is increasing rapidly. Powder is the major form used in the 3D printing technology that accounts for the largest share of the 3D printing materials market.

Companies Mentioned:

Arcam AB

Arkema S.A.

CRP Group

EOS GmbH Electro Optical Systems

Envisiontec GmbH

Exone GmbH

LPW Technology Ltd.

Royal DSM N.V.

Stratasys Ltd.

Report Structure:

1 Introduction

2 Research Methodology

3 Executive Summary

4 Premium Insights

5 Market Overview

6 Industry Trends

7 3D Printing Materials Market, By Type

8 3D Printing Materials Market, By Form

9 3D Printing Materials Market, By Application

10 Regional Analysis

11 Competitive Landscape

12 Company Profiles

13 Appendix

For more information visit

http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/dg39pl/3d_printing

Media Contact:

Research and Markets

Laura Wood, Senior Manager

press@researchandmarkets.com

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ROUYN-NORANDA, QUEBEC -- (Marketwired) -- 05/06/16 -- Radisson Mining Resources Inc. (TSX VENTURE: RDS) ("Radisson") announces that it has closed first tranche of private placement opened on Red Cloud Klondike Strike's platform ("RCKS") for gross proceeds of $402,510.30.

Under the terms of the offering, the corporation issued 2,683,402 units at a price of $0.15 per units. Each Unit consists of one class A share of the share capital of Radisson and one half-share purchase warrant ("1/2 Warrant"). Each full Warrant entitles its holder thereof to purchase one class A share at a price of $0.20 until November 6, 2017. In accordance with Canadian securities laws, the securities issued and issuable in the first tranche of this private placement are subject to a four-month hold period expiring on September 7, 2016.

Three directors made contribution to the private placement for a total amount of $85,000.05 representing 566,667 units.

In connection with this first tranche of the private placement, Radisson paid a cash commission in the amount of $19,600 and 170,338 agent warrants entitling RCKS to acquire one class A share of the share capital of Radisson at $0.15 until November 6, 2017.

The net proceeds of the offering will be used for exploration and development of the O'Brien project and for general administrative and corporate expenses. On April 20, 2016 Radisson announced results of four first holes completed in the 2016 drill program including an intersection of 12.73 g/t Au over 1.0 metre in Pontiac Group sedimentary rocks south of current mineral resources at the O'Brien project. (See Press release)

Closing of final tranche of the private placement will occur on or before June 7, 2016.

The closing of this first tranche of private placement is subject to final acceptance by the TSX Venture Exchange.

As a result of the private placement, there are currently 91,044,598 class A shares of Radisson issued and outstanding.

About Radisson Mining Resources Inc.

Radisson is a Quebec-based mineral exploration company. The O'Brien project, cut by the regional Larder-Lake-Cadillac Fault, is Radisson's main asset. The former O'Brien Mine, is considered to have been the Abitibi Greenstone Belt's highest-grade gold producer during its production (1,197,147 metric tons at 15.25 g/t Au for 587,121 ounces of gold from 1926 to 1957; InnovExplo, April 2015).

Facebook: Like us on facebook

Twitter: @RDSMining

For more information on Radisson, please visit our website at www.radissonmining.com.

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.

This news release does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy any of the securities in the United States of America. The securities have not been and will not be registered under the United States Securities Act of 1933 (the "U.S. Securities Act") or any state securities laws and may not be offered or sold within the United States or to U.S. Persons (as defined in the U.S. Securities Act) unless registered under the U.S. Securities Act and applicable state securities laws, or an exemption from such registration is available.

Forward-Looking Statements: This press release may contain certain forward-looking information. All statements included herein, but other than statements of historical fact, is forward-looking information and such information involves various risks and uncertainties. There can be no assurance that such information will prove to be accurate, and actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such information. A description of assumptions used to develop such forward-looking information and a description of risk factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from forward-looking information can be found in Radisson's disclosure documents on the SEDAR website at www.sedar.com.

Contacts:

Radisson Mining Resources Inc.

Mario Bouchard

President & Chief Executive Officer

819-277-6578

mbouchard@radissonmining.com




MONACO --(Marketwired - May 06, 2016) - Scorpio Tankers Inc. (NYSE: STNG) (the "Company") announced today that the Company has received a commitment from NIBC Bank N.V. for a loan facility of up to $44.0 million. The loan facility will be used to refinance the existing indebtedness on two MR product tankers (2013 built), has a final maturity of five years from the signing date and bears interest at LIBOR plus a margin of 2.50% per annum. The availability can be used to finance the lesser of $22.0 million and 67.5% of the fair market value of the respective vessels. The loan facility is subject to customary conditions precedent and the execution of definitive documentation.

About Scorpio Tankers Inc.

Scorpio Tankers Inc. is a provider of marine transportation of petroleum products worldwide. Scorpio Tankers Inc. currently owns 78 product tankers (20 LR2, 14 Handymax, and 44 MR tankers) with an average age of 1.6 years and time charters-in 12 product tankers (two LR2, one LR1, four MR and five Handymax tankers). The Company has contracted for 11 newbuilding product tankers (eight MR and three LR2 tankers). The three LR2s are expected to be delivered in 2016 (one per quarter), and the eight MRs are expected to be delivered throughout 2017. The Company has also reached an agreement to sell two of its 2014 built MR product tankers. Additional information about the Company is available at the Company's website www.scorpiotankers.com, which is not a part of this press release.

Forward-Looking Statements

Matters discussed in this press release may constitute forward-looking statements. The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 provides safe harbor protections for forward-looking statements in order to encourage companies to provide prospective information about their business. Forward-looking statements include statements concerning plans, objectives, goals, strategies, future events or performance, and underlying assumptions and other statements, which are other than statements of historical facts. The Company desires to take advantage of the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and is including this cautionary statement in connection with this safe harbor legislation. The words "believe," "anticipate," "intends," "estimate," "forecast," "project," "plan," "potential," "may," "should," "expect," "pending" and similar expressions identify forward-looking statements.

The forward-looking statements in this press release are based upon various assumptions, many of which are based, in turn, upon further assumptions, including without limitation, our management's examination of historical operating trends, data contained in our records and other data available from third parties. Although we believe that these assumptions were reasonable when made, because these assumptions are inherently subject to significant uncertainties and contingencies which are difficult or impossible to predict and are beyond our control, we cannot assure you that we will achieve or accomplish these expectations, beliefs or projections. We undertake no obligation, and specifically decline any obligation, except as required by law, to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

In addition to these important factors, other important factors that, in our view, could cause actual results to differ materially from those discussed in the forward-looking statements include the failure of counterparties to fully perform their contracts with us, the strength of world economies and currencies, general market conditions, including fluctuations in charter rates and vessel values, changes in demand for tanker vessel capacity, changes in our operating expenses, including bunker prices, drydocking and insurance costs, the market for our vessels, availability of financing and refinancing, charter counterparty performance, ability to obtain financing and comply with covenants in such financing arrangements, changes in governmental rules and regulations or actions taken by regulatory authorities, potential liability from pending or future litigation, general domestic and international political conditions, potential disruption of shipping routes due to accidents or political events, vessels breakdowns and instances of off-hires and other factors. Please see our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission for a more complete discussion of these and other risks and uncertainties.

Scorpio Tankers Inc.

212-542-1616
BANFF, ALBERTA -- (Marketwired) -- 05/06/16 -- The Fairmont Alberta properties, including the Fairmont Banff Springs, the Fairmont Chateau Lake Louise, the Fairmont Jasper Park Lodge, the Fairmont Hotel Macdonald, and the Fairmont Palliser, have committed to providing the Canadian Red Cross with a $25,000.00 donation towards the relief efforts for those affected by the devastating effects of the Fort McMurray wildfire.

These funds are made available through the Fairmont CAREs community assistance initiative created to represent a robust source of giving that reflects the broader range of projects our properties undertake to ensure their presence is felt within their communities in times of need.

In addition, the Fairmont Banff Springs, the Fairmont Chateau Lake Louise, the Fairmont Jasper Park Lodge, and the Fairmont Palliser are offering a Fort McMurray Residents room rate of $99.00 plus tax per night available for the next two weeks based on availability. The Fairmont Hotel Macdonald is offering a 30% discount off lowest available rates. Proof of Fort McMurray residency must be provided on check in.

Our thoughts and support are with the people of Fort McMurray, surrounding area, and first responders, and as such we hope to be of service in the most effective way possible through supporting the Canadian Red Cross.

About Fairmont

Fairmont Hotels & Resorts connects guests to the very best of its destinations, providing travelers with memorable travel experiences, thoughtful and attentive service and luxury hotels that are truly unforgettable. Each Fairmont property reflects the locale's energy, culture and history through locally inspired cuisine, spirited bars and lounges and distinctive design and decor. With more than 65 hotels globally, and many more in development, the Fairmont collection boasts some of the most iconic hotels in the world, including The Plaza in New York, The Savoy in London, Fairmont Peace Hotel in Shanghai and Fairmont Le Chateau Frontenac in Quebec City. Fairmont is owned by FRHI Hotels & Resorts, a leading global hotel company that operates more than 125 hotels and branded residential properties under the Raffles, Fairmont and Swissotel brands.

For more information or reservations, please visit www.fairmont.com.

Contacts:

Fairmont Hotels & Resorts

Angela Moore

Regional Director, Public Relations,

Fairmont Canada's Western Mountain Region

M +1 403 431 1381

angela.moore@Fairmont.com




VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA -- (Marketwired) -- 05/06/16 -- Tree Island Steel Ltd. ("Tree Island" or the "Company") (TSX: TSL) announced that all matters put forward for consideration at its 2016 Annual General Meeting of Shareholders (the "Meeting") received requisite shareholder approval. Results of the voting for the director elections at the Meeting are described below, and additional information regarding the full results of all matters voted on at the Meeting may be found in the Company's filing on SEDAR.

Board of Directors

All nominees listed in the management proxy circular for the Meeting were elected as directors of Tree Island. The seven director nominees proposed by management were elected by a show of hands. Detailed results of the votes received by proxy for the election of directors held at the Meeting are set out below:

Nominee Votes For % Votes Withheld % ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Amar S. Doman 16,214,989 95.3% 797,796 4.7% Sam Fleiser 16,765,585 98.5% 247,200 1.5% Michael Fitch 16,815,385 98.8% 197,400 1.2% Theodore A. Leja 16,214,189 95.3% 798,596 4.7% Harry Rosenfeld 16,165,189 95.0% 847,596 5.0% Peter Bull 16,921,585 99.5% 91,200 0.5% Dale R. MacLean 16,320,989 95.9% 691,796 4.1%

The sum of individual percentages may not equal 100% due to rounding.

About Tree Island Steel

Headquartered in Richmond, British Columbia, since 1964, Tree Island Steel, through its five operating facilities in Canada and the United States, produces wire products for a diverse range of industrial, residential construction, commercial construction, agricultural, and specialty applications. Its products include bright wire; a broad array of fasteners, including packaged, collated and bulk nails; stucco reinforcing products; concrete reinforcing mesh; fencing and other fabricated wire products. The Company markets these products under the Tree Island, Halsteel, K-Lath, Industrial Alloys, TI Wire, True Spec and Tough Strand brand names. Tree Island Steel also owns and operates a China-based company that assists the international sourcing of products.

Contacts:

Tree Island Steel Ltd.

Ali Mahdavi

Investor Relations

amahdavi@treeisland.com

www.treeisland.com




Singapore, May 5 (PTI) The erstwhile promoters of Ranbaxy

Laboratories, the Singh brothers and family have been asked to pay damages of Rs 2,562.78 crore to Daiichi by an arbitration tribunal here for concealing and misrepresenting information during their stake sell to the Japanese firm.

Malvinder Singh, currently the Chairman of Fortis Healthcare, and family including his brother Shivinder Singh, had sold their entire stake of about 35 per cent in Ranbaxy for $2.4 billion in 2008 to Daiichi Sankyo.

However, in 2013, the Japanese pharmaceutical major had filed an arbitration case in Singapore accusing the Indian promoters of concealment and misrepresentation of facts after Ranbaxy paid $500 million to the US Department of Justice as settlement for misrepresenting facts.

The arbitration tribunal has issued an award by a majority of 2:1 in favour of the claimant for damages of an amount of Rs 2562.78 crore, RHC Holding Pvt Ltd said in a statement.

RHC Holding Pvt Ltd is among the sellers of shares of erstwhile Ranbaxy Laboratories along with Oscar Investments, which have been named as respondents in the arbitration suit by the claimant, Daiichi Sankyo.

The statement added the damage amount to be paid include "quantified interest, costs and expenses of the arbitration till the date of award and interest on above until date of payment, against all the respondents jointly and severally".

Commenting on its future course of action, RHC Holding said: "The company is exploring further legal options to challenge the majority award."

It, however, declined to share details stating "all the parties to the arbitration are bound by confidentiality obligations as a part of the arbitration proceedings."

When contacted Malvinder Singh declined to comment.

After buying out the erstwhile promoters, Daiichi spent a total of around Rs 22,000 crore to gain a majority stake in Ranbaxy. Later on, the Japanese firm exited Ranbaxy following a $4.2 billion merger deal between Sun Pharma and Ranbaxy.

Last April, Daiichi Sankyo sold its entire stake of around 9 percent in Sun Pharmaceutical Industries for over Rs 20,420 crore, which it received after merger of Ranbaxy in the Indian firm, ending its seven years of tumultuous experience in the country.
The BJP-led government and the Congress are locked in a battle over the controversial Rs 3,600-crore AgustaWestland VVIP chopper deal, the AAP leaders on the other hand have trained their sights on Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

While the prime minister is particularly proud of his humble beginnings and stories of his chaiwallah days had managed to strike a chord with the voters in the 2014 Lok Sabha election, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and his party members have claimed that Modi's college degrees are fake.

If their tweets are to be believed, then the Aam Aadmi Party have launched a full blown attack on Modi and they are not ready to let go of the issue anytime soon.

Modi ji must realize that he is indeed setting a dangerous trend by not furnishing his degree.#12PassModi pic.twitter.com/GsYTjhSozP  Aam Aadmi Party- AAP (@AamAadmiParty) May 6, 2016

     ,        "     " pic.twitter.com/M1HBsu430E  Sanjay Singh AAP (@SanjayAzadSln) May 6, 2016

It is not necessary to be highly educated to be a good administrator.But integrity is a quality that can't be compromised upon#12thPassModi  Manish Sisodia (@msisodia) May 6, 2016

Kejriwal on Thursday asked the Delhi University (DU) to make Prime Minister Narendra Modi's BA degree public. AAP leader Ashutosh has filed an RTI requesting Delhi University and Gujarat University to provide details of Modi's graduation and post graduation degree.

I have filed RTI yesterday requesting DU/GU to provide more details about MODI's BA/MA degree. I have asked 8 new queries.  ashutosh (@ashutosh83B) May 6, 2016

Modi's election affidavit in the 2014 General Election claimed he had undergraduate and postgraduate degrees. According to the affidavit, he completed a distance education course from DU in 1978. His subject was Political Science. His election affidavits for the 2012 and 2007 Gujarat Assembly polls too made the same claim.

Referring to the election affidavits, Kejriwal in a letter to Vice-Chancellor Yogesh Tyagi, requested him to put up all the documents related to Modi's education on the university website.

"The people of this country have a right to know how educated their prime minister is," Kejriwal wrote.

On 4 May, three AAP leaders alleged that the DU refused to share details regarding Modi's BA degree and told them to approach the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) instead. The Central Information Commission (CIC) had on 29 April directed the universities of Delhi and Gujarat to respond to the RTI application regarding Modi's educational qualifications.

Earlier, the Delhi University declined to give information related to Modi's BA degree despite RTI requests.

According to Scroll, a video clip have been doing the rounds on social media with Modi claiming to have studied till 12 standard during an interview with Rajeev Shukla.

Modi himself accept that he didn't study beyond 10th. But these bhakts are adamant to prove that he has MA degree. pic.twitter.com/KsXG6MFfjX  Hope of India (@myindianhope) May 1, 2016

However, if you watch the full interview, Modi says though he has never been to college, he got his degrees as an external student.

The row over college degree started when Neeraj Saxena, on behalf of NGO Maulik Bharat Trust, moved the Delhi High Court alleging that Kejriwal had submitted incorrect details in the election affidavit and had violated its provisions, according to the DNA. Saxena had claimed that Kejriwal had provided the wrong residential address, the Delhi CM had then furnished a document stating change of address.

In a letter to the CIC, Kejriwal wrote that while he is willing to share his records with the public, but the Prime Minister should do the same and make information of his college degrees public, the report said.

"There are allegations that Narendra Modi does not have any degree. The people of the country want to know the truth. Despite that, you have refused to make records regarding his degree public. Why did you do this? This is wrong," Kejriwal said in the letter.

Controversies around college degrees tend to remain in the news cycle though in most cases there is no actual outcome. Take for instance, the HRD minister Smriti Irani's 'five-day Yale degree.' If not staging dharnas, AAP government fight against Modi and the Centre has kept them in the news. Whether this has anything to with the education bills  the Fee Regulation Bill and amendment to the Delhi Education Bill  and what is touted as the "AAP's Education Revolution" is pure conjecture.
DHAKA Bangladesh's Supreme Court on Thursday rejected a final appeal by the leader of the top Islamist party against a death sentence for atrocities committed during the 1971 war of independence, lawyers said, meaning he could be hanged at any time.

The Supreme Court in January upheld the death penalty for Motiur Rahman Nizami, head of the Jamaat-e-Islami party, for genocide, rape and orchestrating the massacre of top intellectuals during the 1971 war.

Nizami, 73, a former legislator and minister under Khaleda Zia when she was prime minister, has been in jail since 2010, when he was charged with war crimes by a tribunal set up by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina that year.

The war crimes tribunal has sparked violence and drawn criticism from opposition politicians, including leaders of Jamaat-e-Islami, that it is victimising Hasina's political opponents.

"All the legal battles are over," Nizami's lawyer, Khandaker Mahbub Hossain, told reporters. "Now it is up to him, whether he will seek clemency from the president, or not."

Hundreds of people flooded the streets of the capital, Dhaka, to cheer the verdict, but there has been no report of violence, although Jamaat called a nationwide strike for Sunday in protest.

Authorities have deployed additional security forces in Dhaka and elsewhere as similar previous judgments triggered violence that killed around 200, mainly Jamaat activists and police.

No Peace Without Justice, a non-profit body based in Italy, has called the tribunal's proceedings "a weapon of politically influenced revenge whose real aim is to target the political opposition".

The government denies the accusations.

The verdict comes as the Muslim-majority nation suffers a surge in militant violence in which atheist bloggers, academics, religious minorities and foreign aid workers have been killed.

In the last month alone, five people, including a university teacher, two gay activists and a Hindu have been hacked to death by suspected Islamist militants.

The government has blamed the increase in Islamist violence on Jamaat-e-Islami, but the group denies any link to the attacks.

Four opposition politicians, including three Jamaat-e-Islami leaders, have been convicted by the war crimes tribunal and executed since late 2013.

About 3 million people were killed, official figures show, and thousands of women were raped, during the nine-month war, in which some factions, including the Jamaat-e-Islami, opposed the break from what was then called West Pakistan.

But the party denies that its leaders committed any atrocities.

(Editing by Nick Macfie and Clarence Fernandez)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
Salem: Five persons have died due to a blast at a fireworks manufacturing unit at Taramangalam village in the district, police said.

The blast that had taken place on 4 May night, about 20 km from Salem, killed four persons, including an 18-year-old boy and left two seriously injured.

Two injured women were admitted to hospital and one of them died on Thursday, police said.

The workers had been making crackers when the explosion occurred, triggering a fire in the unit.

The factory owner, who had been absconding after the explosion occurred, was arrested, police said.
Anpum (Arunachal Pradesh): Washed out bridges, absence of roads and uncertainty of reaching destinations deep in the forest, do not come in the way of ASHA workers in their effort to provide precious health services to ethnic tribes in Arunachal Pradesh.

Till a decade ago, un-staffed Public Health Centers (PHCs) in this corner of India often led to the deaths of two-three tribesmen of the Adi clan every week.

But the situation started improving after the state government handed over 11 of its PHCs to the Karuna Trust, an NGO, under the public-private partnership model to ensure better health services around six years ago.

Now, the entire task of providing healthcare at the PHCs has been entrusted to the efficient hands of trained ASHA (Accredited Social Health Activist) workers. And the results are visible.

Such has the dependence on ASHA workers grown over the years, that their absence could possibly push the tribes inhabiting the Anpum forested area of Arunachal Pradesh back to what existed earlier.

Everytime ASHA worker Kenjir Perme (name changed) is tasked with immunising children in a far off village, she prepares herself to tackle the tough hurdles she has to overcome to reach her destination.

Covering miles on foot through muddy roads that pass through deep forests full of wild animals, waiting for hours to cross a river on boat, and then uncertainty of being able to return home, is what she has to confront every time.

The presence of an ambulance at the PHC meant for taking ASHA workers to their destinations hardly matters, as often unexpected downpours play foul. Once stuck in the deep muddy roads, the ASHA workers have to wait for hours before being rescued by a tractor, a rarely available transport here.

"This is a regular phenomenon here and we are quite used to it. Just because there is virtually no mode of transportation we cannot afford to ignore the health of the vulnerable tribespersons living in this forest area, and providing them medical services on time," Perme, who is among a few ASHA workers at the Anpum PHC operated by Karuna Trust, told the visiting IANS correspondent.

Though the PHC also has two other sub-health centers, at a distance of at least 15-20 km, the task of ASHA workers remains the same -- delivering health services, including immunisation and drug delivery and reproductive and child health programmes, to all the villages in the area.

Locals say the healthcare has got a new lease of life after the PHC was handed over to the Karuna Trust.

"Earlier, our people would die of minor health problems, due to lack of medical care at the PHCs. But now, we are happy at the healthcare being provided," Robin Tayeng, a local Adi tribesperson, told IANS.

With an area of 83,743 sq km and a population of 14 lakh, Arunachal Pradesh has one of the toughest geographical terrains in India. Even today about 70 percent of its area is inaccessible and it takes days to reach from state capital Itanagar.

In the initial years Karuna Trust also received funds from the Population Foundation of India to strengthen its medical care facilities in the PHCs.

"To reach some of our PHCs one has to trek, walk on foot for miles as no roads are available. But we have trained our ASHA workers to overcome all such hurdles," Annop Sarmah, co-ordinator for Karuna Trust NE, said.

The state's tribal population has benefited immensely from the handing over of the PHCs to the NGO, and they are now provided with services like family planning and immunisation. Today ASHA workers under Katuna Trust ensure that all the newborns are immunised against all major diseases.

Efforts of the ASHA workers has helped bring down the Total Fertility Rate to 2.1, from a previous high of over 3.

PN Thungon, Mission Director, National Health Mission, told IANS: "The ASHA workers are our lifeline. They have made the impossible, possible. Looking at the way Karuna Trust is training its ASHA workers to disseminate health services against all odds makes us feel that we can hand over some more government PHCs to it.
New Delhi: The moment Congress president Sonia Gandhi appeared on the dais to address a large gathering comprising mostly party workers at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi on Friday, a wave of hope, cheer and enthusiasm traversed through the crowd.

High decibel sloganeering began as she launched a scathing attack on the BJP by saying, Fighting anti-national forces is nothing new for the Congress. The party knows how to stand up to those, who threaten harmony and brotherhood in this country. BJP doesnt know what Congress is made up of. Life has taught me to struggle, and weve faced a lot of challenges.

The Congress party didnt want to lose any opportunity to defend itself on the AgustaWestland case, especially since its demand for a Supreme Court monitored probe was rejected on Wednesday in the Parliament, and hence held a Save democracy march. They went on the counter-attack against the Narendra Modi government by highlighting the alleged failures of the NDA government in keeping its promises.

Using the platform of Save democracy march, Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi said, Mohan Bhagwat of RSS and Prime Minister Modi are ruining the country. Where are the two crore jobs that the PM had promised to give?

Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was the third arrow in the Congress quiver to attack the BJP.

The march conducted by the top Congress leadership from Jantar Mantar up to Parliament Street police station  where the leaders were detained and later let-off after completion of formalities  charged up the Youth Congress cadre and party workers at large, who started sloganeering on the streets, displaying party flags and banners.

For them it was a show of strength as they felt that the party leadership, which is already on a back-foot due to fierce attacks from the BJP on the AgustaWestland issue, has succeeded in giving a befitting reply and conveying its stand to public.

Across the party lines, the senior leaders and workers termed the consistent attack on their top leadership by the BJP as political vendetta and high-handedness of the Modi government.

During the rally, Firstpost spoke with a cross-section of Congress leaders and workers. Heres what they said:

Has the BJP intentionally targetted the top Congress leadership?

Sandeep Dikshit (Former MP from East Delhi): India is a democratic country and the government is by the Constitution. The government has failed on several fronts and as a cover up it has intentionally targeted the top leadership of the Congress.

Rashid Alvi (Former MP and leader): Its BJPs government at the Centre and PM Narendra Modi is its head. So, it is conveniently using its majority in the Parliament in targetting our president Sonia Gandhi and vice president Rahul Gandhi. There is no proof against our leaders involvement in the AgustaWestland case.

Pranav Jha (Congress member): Theres so much anarchy across the country, and the Centre has failed to deal with it. Since Congress has raised these issues in the Parliament, so to divert the attention of the common public, ours leaders have been targeted.

Do you think its a political vendetta?

Sandeep Dikshit: The manner in which the Narendra Modi government has leveled charges against the Congress and are trying to frame its top leadership in AgustaWestland issue, it smells of political vendetta. There is no iota of evidence of involvement of our president and vice president in the entire episode.

Rashid Alvi: Its a clear case of political vendetta, as the BJP has been trying to crush Congress by any means, which of course, they would never be able to do. Why was our demand for a Supreme Court monitored probe turned down?

Vidya Ratan Jindal (Congress worker and trader): The BJP is into vendetta politics, which is clear from the manner it has been targetting Sonia ji and Rahul ji. Its time for the Modi government to have a check on itself.

Has the Congress rally succeeded in getting its message across to the common man?

Anil Dhantori (Ex-MLA, Murukshetra): At present, people have been feeling cheated by the NDA government. We need to save the country from fascist forces and Congress is the only alternative. Through this rally our party president and vice president have conveyed this message successfully.

Pranav Jha: The response of todays rally is itself a proof. The people are with us.

What do you have to say on BJPs dream of making a Congress-Mukt Bharat?

Anil Dhantori: PM Modi should stop acting as a dictator and stop his undemocratic ways of destabilising elected state governments.

Himmat Singh (Youth Congress general secretary, Ambala): Its a wild dream of the BJP. They tried to dislodge the elected governments in Arunachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand. Now people want RSS-BJP mukt Bharat.

Do you think Congress party will make a comeback?

Sandeep Dikshit: Absolutely. Itll come with a roaring majority in the Parliament in 2019 and also in the states. Bihar election has proved it. Congress has performed well in Gujarat civil polls as well. Just wait and watch.

Pranav Jha: People of this country are gradually getting disenchanted with the BJP government. The Congress will be back with full majority.

Prakash Nidhi Garg (UPCC secretary & in-charge, Mathura): Were working hard in every election and definitely Congress will make a comeback.
If elections were held today for Lok Sabha and state Assemblies, it is quite likely the Congress would lose badly and become a marginal force in politics. Not much has changed politically since democracy destroyed the Congress in a series of elections between 2013 and 2014. The party has the same set of national leaders  the family  and almost the same faces in the states where it was routed in Assembly elections. There has been no change in its policies or politics, it raises the same old tired slogans and looks every bit the moribund outfit thrashed by voters in the past two years.

So, it is ironic the Congress is marching to save democracy. Beware, democracy is actually a threat to the Congress.

Rushing to the streets of Delhi to flaunt their support for the dynasty could be great exercise in sycophancy for Congress workers. But, it doesn't amuse voters anymore. Indians can't help noticing that the rage of the Congress spills over on the streets only when the family is in trouble. They are amused by this spectacle.

The Congress workers won't flood the streets of Marathwada when it is struggling with a severe drought. No, not even a symbolic donation of labour (shram daan, as the Congress used to call it earlier), where workers try and deepen ponds, feed fodder to cattle or donate packets of food and water to farmers. But their blood will boil when the Gandhis have to appear in a court in the National Herald case or face tough questions about the AgustaWestland deal.

Unfortunately, the strategy of marketing Saving Private Rahul as Saving Democracy just won't work in today's India.

Instead of dedicating itself to the seemingly altruistic pursuit of saving the democracy, the Congress should first focus on saving itself from certain ruin. The party's current heft in politics is because of its numbers in the Rajya Sabha, where it has so far managed to block key legislation to ensure the Narendra Modi government is not able to deliver what it had promised.

But, it is fast losing governments in states  only Karnataka would be a major government in its bag after 19 May  and politicians of stature to poachers. Since its stock is falling, donations have dried up and the party's coffers are beginning to dry out fast. During the march on Delhi's streets on Friday, the lack of enthusiasm and energy in its workers was palpable. In their weary steps and effete voices, you could read their despair. You could see that the loyal soldiers had gathered in Delhi to save the dynasty, but without much conviction or hope.

The problem with the Congress is that long ago it degenerated into a family-controlled conglomerate  you can call it India's G Company  that deals in politics instead of a people's movement or a democratic outfit.

It became answerable only to its owners and dedicated itself to the pursuit of their survival. During the past two decades, the only political upheavals within the party of any significance  the ouster of Sharad Pawar and later Sitaram Kesri  were aimed at restoring the hegemony of the dynasty.

The Gandhis can survive only if they take care of the interests of those who serve them: loyalists, darbaris and workers. The entire Congress ecosystem depends only on the amount of power and its fruits the dynasty can disburse to people in the political food chain. Since any threat to the existence of the dynasty is a threat to the chain of Congress beneficiaries, they still come out, though in diminishing numbers, to support the Gandhis.

Greed and fear have become the defining emotions of the Congress, a far cry from the mottos of idealism and rashtra seva it once espoused.

It is marching to its slow but certain end.
New Delhi: Stepping up the attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi over the issue of his educational qualifications, the Aam Aadmi Party on Friday claimed it has scanned Delhi University's records from 1975 to 1980 but could find no evidence that he was awarded a Bachelor of Arts degree by the varsity.

The party, however, said there was a degree awarded to one Narendra Kumar Mahavir Prasad Modi, a resident of Alwar, and not to Narendra Damodardas Modi.

"We checked the records of Delhi University from 1975 to 1980 at our level and have figured out that there is no person with the name Narendra Damodardas Modi who was awarded any degree," AAP leader Ashish Khetan claimed.

"There was a person who did his graduation from 1975 to 1978 but that was Narendra Kumar Mahavir Prasad Modi. He is a resident of Alwar in Rajasthan with October 19, 1958 as his date of birth," he alleged.

Referring to details of Narendra Modi's degree in a newspaper, Khetan said that the information does not match the one available with Delhi University.

He said this was for the first time that any Prime Minister's academic qualification was under the scanner.

"Our investigations show that the degree is fake. This is a very serious crime and amounts to forgery," AAP leader Ashutosh said, adding that they also fear that the varsity records could be tampered with.

Khetan said that Modi should be dealt with in a way similar to former AAP Minister Jitendra Singh Tomar was treated. Tomar was a Law Minister who was sacked over fake degree allegations and arrested.

"Police should take him to Delhi University and ask him to show the hall in which he appeared for exams. Everyone is equal before law. They should also follow a similar procedure the way it was adopted in the case of Tomar," Khetan said.

AAP leaders Ashutsoh and Sanjay Singh have also filed an RTI with Delhi University seeking copy of Modi's application form, copy of enrollment form in Modi's handwriting, copy of relevant register, copy of his marksheet of each year, copy of convocation list of 1979 and announcement list during convocation.
New Delhi: Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Friday alleged that some media houses were asked "not to touch" the controversy over Prime Minister Narendra Modi's degree.

In a series of tweets, Kejriwal also named a few TV news channels and their bosses.

Kejriwal tweeted:

Some media houses have told their reporters not to touch PM degree issue. Other than known Modi-channels, list includes ABP n NDTV(1/2)  Arvind Kejriwal (@ArvindKejriwal) May 6, 2016

Mr Aveek Sircar? Busy wid Mamta bashing? Dr Pranoy Roy? Sir, didn't expect this from u (2/2)  Arvind Kejriwal (@ArvindKejriwal) May 6, 2016

On Wednesday, the AAP leaders said Delhi University refused to share the details of Modi's Bachelor of Arts degree and told them to approach the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) instead.

The Central Information Commission (CIC) had on 29 April directed the Universities of Delhi and Gujarat to respond to a letter from Kejriwal, which it treated as a Right to Information application on Modi's educational qualifications.

Earlier, Delhi University declined to provide information regarding Modi's BA degree despite several RTI requests.

The university cited its inability to get the information without a roll number as the reason for the denial.
Purna A Sangma is an honourable man. He and his family are loved by the people of Meghalaya so much that no one can defeat his family members from the Tura constituency. Sangma is a regional satrap who lost his way due to his transparent ambition and amazing political naivete. Now he wants to be President.

He is back in the national news after getting an endorsement as candidate for President from two strong potential regional allies of the NDA, the BJD of Orissa and Jayalalithaas AIADMK (see Firstpost article here). For the last six months Sangma has been making a noise about a tribal leader becoming the President of India with the intention of placing himself there. He has been lobbying various parties and finally two of them, who do not benefit at all by backing him, have surprisingly endorsed his candidature., shocking the MPs of both parties. In both these parties the chief ministers have dictatorial powers and do not consult party members.

Sangma is still member of Sharad Pawars NCP which, however, is very cold to his candidature. This could be because Pawar knows that Sangma is unpredictable and is a man bereft of high thinking and low cunning, two crucial ingredients in the making of a great politician. If his own party does not support him it will be no surprise.

Pawar and others who know him well can figure out that Sangma has the political naivete a person who holds high office should not have. That is why the former Speaker of the Lok Sabha has been in the political wilderness in the last decade when he could easily have been a top functionary of both UPA governments. As Speaker of the Lok Sabha he performed well by all accounts. But that was the limit of his achievements.

His political naivete can be seen from the fact that in May 1999 he joined up with Pawars rebellion against Sonia. While Pawar had enough reason to split the Congress, what was Sangmas stake in such a rebellion when all he had to do was remain where he was? How did it matter to Sangma in any way that Sonia was a foreign national, since he, unlike Pawar, could never be the Prime Ministerial candidate of the Congress under any circumstance? Basically he let himself be used because of his lack of shrewdness. Pawars rebellion succeeded and Sangma was dispatched to the boondocks. He had 10 years to mull over his incredible folly and realise that political wilderness can be a very lonely place.

Now lets recall that famous letter signed by Pawar, Sangma and Tariq Anwar, then an MP. Mind you not a single Maharashtra MP signed that letter though it was a Maharashtra Congress battle to assert their supremacy within the party. The letter stated in strong words that it was not possible that a country of 980 million...can have anyone other than an Indian born of Indian soil to head the government..." and that "it was an issue which affects not just the security, the economic interest and the international image of India but hits at the core pride of every Indian.

All very fiery and revolutionary. Only that Sangma has lived to regret that letter every day of his life since then. Till 10 years later, when he got the chance to apologise personally to Sonia Gandhi, who in an act of extreme grace unseen in Indian politics where vengeance is the operative word, allowed Sangmas daughter to be in the cabinet, when with a flick of her finger, Agatha Sangma also could have been dispatched to the backbenches.

Father Sangma was humbled into submission and was almost in tears. These were tears not just of joy at seeing his 26-year-old daughter as a central minister but that of a man humbled by the magnanimity of a person. Coming out of Sonia Gandhis house he told the press:  I have said sorry to her for what I have done. 

In the annals of political apologies, this will rate high. But at least Sangma had the courage to apologise and then be frank about it. Pawar, on the other hand, had no reason to apologise for the letter but he is still very close to Sonia Gandhi.

Even as a political leader, Sangma just could not read the political winds that whizzed past Vijay Chowk. This was the main reason that Pawar could find no role for him even after his apology. Sangma, meanwhile, misread every political situation. In January 2004 he said:  I cannot be part of any tie-up with the Congress under Sonia Gandhi. It goes against my self-respect and the very principles on which the NCP was formed, he told NDTV.

The Congress came to power and Sangma was again reassigned to the boondocks while Pawar and the NCP happily shared power with the Congress. Sangma could easily have been a senior minister but yet he put up this anti-Sonia argument.

Now he is back in the hunt for a top post without the help of Pawar. And without the support of the Congress or the BJP. By doing so Sangma is trying to split both the NDA and UPA by presenting them with a fait accompli. His dream will be that all the small constituents of either front and the Third Front will back a tribal candidate. It is on similar dreams that Sangma ruined what could have been a perfect political career. The first time it ended in political tragedy. The second time it will in all likelihood end in disaster. Coming from a person who sought out the desert of oblivion from a forest of opportunities, this move is no surprise.
WASHINGTON The top elected U.S. Republican, Paul Ryan, said on Thursday he was not ready to endorse Donald Trump, a sign of the challenges the party's presumptive presidential nominee faces rallying the Republican establishment behind his White House bid.

Ryan, the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, said conservatives wanted to know if Trump shares their values.

"I hope to support our nominee, I hope to support his candidacy fully," Ryan said on CNN. "At this point, I'm just not there right now."

In a statement after Ryan's remarks, Trump responded: "I am not ready to support Speaker Ryan's agenda. Perhaps in the future we can work together and come to an agreement about what is best for the American people."

Other Republicans grappled this week with whether to support Trump, who has shunned the party line on trade and upset the party establishment with offensive comments about women and immigrants. Trump on Thursday announced a new campaign finance chairman in response to questions about his readiness for a general election race.

Trump's remaining rivals in the Republican race dropped out this week, clearing his path to be picked as the presidential nominee. He will likely face Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton in the Nov. 8 general election.

"Suppose Trump loses overwhelmingly. Would you want to have been siding with the captain of the Titanic, or maybe seen as someone who was begging the captain to watch out for icebergs?" said Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia's Center for Politics.

Ryan criticized Trump in December for proposing to temporarily ban all Muslims from entering the United States and knocked him in March for failing to denounce white supremacist groups during a television interview.

The House speaker, who was the running mate of Republican 2012 presidential nominee Mitt Romney, a harsh Trump critic, said he hoped the party would be unified by this summer but that the pressure was on Trump to do that.

He won fair and square," Ryan said of Trump, acknowledging his own policy differences with the New York billionaire businessman. He added: "If we dont unify all wings of the party, were not going to win this election."

Ryan repeatedly denied interest in running this year despite attempts to draft him by some in his party. He has been putting together a policy plan for House Republicans to campaign on, which he says will be released before the convention in July.

CAMPAIGN FUNDRAISING

Trump on Thursday began shifting focus from the bruising primary campaign to the general election. He has largely used his own money for his primary fight but plans to follow the more typical path of raising money from outside sources for the general election to succeed Democratic President Barack Obama.

He named his campaign finance chief on Thursday - Steven Mnuchin, a former Goldman Sachs partner who is chief executive of private investment firm Dune Capital Management and with whom Trump worked in a business capacity in the past.

Mnuchin has a long history of political donations, including to Clinton. Since 1998, Mnuchin has given about $71,000 to Democrats, compared with about $37,000 to Republicans. Republicans have questioned Trump's loyalty to the party because he also donated to Democratic candidates in the past.

Trump is hiring staff to equip his campaign for the months ahead and making contact with lawmakers. A Republican congressional aide said there had been discussions about Trump visiting Capitol Hill soon.

U.S. Representative Renee Ellmers, a Republican from North Carolina who has endorsed Trump, told Reuters the campaign would begin raising money for the party.

"They are going to start understanding and realizing that in order to grow this operation, they will need to grow funds, not only for him and for the campaign to beat Hillary Clinton, but for the Republican Party itself," Ellmers said.

Historically, political parties have depended on their nominees to raise money in order to fund their other operations, including working to elect members of the House of Representatives and Senate.

One key worry for Republicans has been that their candidates for Congress and other elective positions could suffer with the divisive figure of Trump at the top of the ticket.

Ron Bonjean, a Republican strategist, said Ryan gave lawmakers in his party cover to steer clear of Trump in their re-election campaigns.

"He is positioning the Republican conference and giving Republicans a message they can hold onto," Bonjean said.

(Additional reporting by Doina Chiacu, Megan Cassella, Jason Lange, Ginger Gibson and Richard Cowan in Washington, and Richard Leong in New York; Writing by Emily Stephenson; Editing by Peter Cooney)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
WASHINGTON The U.S. military received about 6,000 reports of sexual assault in 2015, similar to the number in 2014, the Pentagon said in an annual report on Thursday, but such crimes are still underreported.

The Defense Department's report said there were 6,083 reports of sexual assault against a service member in 2015, compared with 6,131 the year before. Those numbers were a sharp jump from 2012 when 3,604 cases were reported.

Officials have said the figures showed troops were more confident about reporting the crime but sexual assault still is likely underreported, said Nate Galbreath, senior executive adviser for the Pentagons sexual assault prevention office.

Only about 40 percent of female victims and 10 percent of male victims are reporting instances of assault, he said.

Major General Camille Nichols, who leads the Pentagon's sexual assault prevention and response office, told reporters it was unclear whether the number of sexual assaults reported had peaked.

Nineteen percent of sexual assault reports in 2015 were from men. Galbreath said that sexual assault against men was more likely to occur during duty hours.

"In addition to that, they are less likely to have situations that involve alcohol and they are more likely that when there's a threat of penetration or when penetration occurred, to experience injury," Galbreath said.

The report said that 68 percent of those who reported sexual assault experienced negative behaviour from colleagues or leadership.

However, in only 38 percent of reported sexual assaults did the victim face retaliation that amounted to a violation of military law, the Pentagon report said.

According to a 2014 survey by the RAND research group, 62 percent of sexual assault victims had faced some form of retaliation.

(Reporting by Idrees Ali; Editing by Bill Trott)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
WASHINGTON The top elected U.S. Republican, Paul Ryan, said on Thursday he was not ready to endorse Donald Trump, a sign of the challenges the party's presumptive presidential nominee faces rallying the Republican establishment behind his White House bid.

Ryan, the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, said conservatives wanted to know if Trump shares their values.

"I hope to support our nominee, I hope to support his candidacy fully," Ryan said on CNN. "At this point, I'm just not there right now."

Other Republicans grappled this week with whether to support Trump, who has shunned the party line on trade and upset the party establishment with offensive comments about women and immigrants. Trump on Thursday announced a new campaign finance chairman in response to questions about his readiness for a general election race.

Trump's remaining rivals in the Republican race dropped out this week, clearing his path to be picked as the presidential nominee. He will likely face Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton in the Nov. 8 general election.

"Suppose Trump loses overwhelmingly. Would you want to have been siding with the captain of the Titanic, or maybe seen as someone who was begging the captain to watch out for icebergs?" said Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia's Center for Politics.

Ryan criticized Trump in December for proposing to temporarily ban all Muslims from entering the United States and knocked him in March for failing to denounce white supremacist groups during a television interview.

The House speaker, who was the running mate of Republican 2012 presidential nominee Mitt Romney, a harsh Trump critic, said he hoped the party would be unified by this summer but that the pressure was on Trump to do that.

He won fair and square," Ryan said of Trump, acknowledging his own policy differences with the New York billionaire businessman. He added: "If we dont unify all wings of the party, were not going to win this election.

CAMPAIGN FUNDRAISING

Trump largely used his own money for his primary fight but plans to follow the more typical path of raising money from outside sources for the general election to succeed Democratic President Barack Obama.

He named his campaign finance chief on Thursday - Steven Mnuchin, a former Goldman Sachs partner who is chief executive of private investment firm Dune Capital Management and with whom Trump worked in a business capacity in the past.

Mnuchin has a long history of political donations, including to Clinton. Since 1998, Mnuchin has given about $71,000 to Democrats, compared with about $37,000 to Republicans. Republicans have questioned Trump's loyalty to the party because he also donated to Democratic candidates in the past.

Trump is hiring staff to equip his campaign for the months ahead and making contact with lawmakers. A Republican congressional aide said there had been discussions about Trump visiting Capitol Hill soon.

U.S. Representative Renee Ellmers, a Republican from North Carolina who has endorsed Trump, told Reuters the campaign would begin raising money for the party.

"They are going to start understanding and realizing that in order to grow this operation, they will need to grow funds, not only for him and for the campaign to beat Hillary Clinton, but for the Republican Party itself," Ellmers said.

Historically, political parties have depended on their nominees to raise money in order to fund their other operations, including working to elect members of the House of Representatives and Senate.

One key worry for Republicans has been that their candidates for Congress and other elective positions could suffer with the divisive figure of Trump at the top of the ticket.

Ron Bonjean, a Republican strategist, said Ryan gave lawmakers in his party cover to steer clear of Trump in their re-election campaigns.

"He is positioning the Republican conference and giving Republicans a message they can hold onto," Bonjean said.

(Additional reporting by Doina Chiacu, Megan Cassella, Jason Lange, Ginger Gibson and Richard Cowan in Washington, and Richard Leong in New York; Writing by Emily Stephenson; Editing by Peter Cooney)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
NEW YORK U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump celebrated Cinco de Mayo on Thursday by tweeting a photo of himself with a taco bowl and the caption: "I love Hispanics," but the gesture was not to everyone's taste.

"Happy #CincoDeMayo!" tweeted Trump (@realDonaldTrump). "The best taco bowls are made in Trump Tower Grill. I love Hispanics!"

Cinco de Mayo commemorates the Mexican defeat of the French during the Battle of Puebla in 1862.

The posting angered, baffled or amused some social media users, including Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton, Trump's likely opponent in the Nov. 8 election.

"'I love Hispanics!' Trump, 52 minutes ago," Clinton (@HillaryClinton) tweeted. "'Theyre gonna be deported.' Trump, yesterday."

Trump has struggled to gain the support of Latino voters since launching his presidential campaign last year with comments accusing Mexico of sending rapists and drug runners across the U.S. border.

He has also vowed to deport all the illegal immigrants living in the United States and build a wall along the border with Mexico and have that country pay for it.

"Trump Tower Grill" began trending on the microblogging platform after Trump's tweet, as social media users weighed in on the post.

"Trump sources confirm that in fact, Mexico paid for the taco salad," tweeted Tom Watson (@tomwatson).

Others found the tweet offensive and argued it relied heavily on crude stereotyping.

"Now officially waiting for a photo of Trump eating some Church's Chicken (or Bojangles) with a thumbs up and a 'I love the blacks!' " tweeted Slate chief political correspondent Jamelle Bouie (@jbouie).

"Trump and matzah ball soup on Jewish New Year... You can count on it," tweeted Harry Enten (@ForecasterEnten).

(Additional reporting by Alana Wise in Washington and Gina Cherelus in New York; Editing by Peter Cooney)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
WASHINGTON The State Department's most senior human rights diplomat, Tom Malinowski, will visit Vietnam next week to urge it to make more progress on human rights, the department said on Friday.

Meetings by Malinowski, assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labour, on May 9 and 10 will pave the way for a visit to Vietnam by President Barack Obama later this month, the third U.S. president to travel to the southeast Asian nation since Bill Clinton in 2000.

"Among other things, he will urge Vietnam to release political prisoners without condition and encourage further reforms that will help to make Vietnam's laws consistent with its international human rights obligations," the State Department said in announcing Malinowski's visit.

The U.S. eased an arms embargo against its former enemy in 2014 amid a warming of relations saying human rights conditions had improved somewhat. But concerns remain over the communist government's heavy-handedness towards political opponents and treatment of workers.

The country has jailed dissidents, bloggers and religious leaders in recent years, holding them for long periods without access to family or legal counsel and often subject to torture or other mistreatment, according to Human Rights Watch.

Relations, however, have improved over maritime security and Vietnam is a member of the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact that includes countries such as Japan and Australia.

(Reporting by Lesley Wroughton; Editing by James Dalgleish)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
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Indian Railways, RailTel and Google have launched free WiFi in three more stations  Vijayawada (Andhra Pradesh), Kachiguda (Telangana) & Raipur (Chhattisgarh) in India. It was launched at the Mumbai Central station earlier this year and was expanded to 9 more train stations last month.

To access the internet with RailWire, you need to connect to RailWire network from your WiFi settings, go to railwire.co.in from your browser, enter your mobile number in the WiFi login screen and request for OTP SMS. Once you have received the 4-digit OTP code, enter it in the login screen and press Done. You will see a checkmark and will be connected.

It will be launched soon in 14 more stations  Allahabad, Bhopal, Pune, Ranchi, Ernakulum Jn. (Kochi), Jaipur, Patna, Guwahati, Ujjain, Vishakhapatnam, Lucknow, Lucknow Jn (NE), Gorakhpur & Sealdah. Google already said that 100 stations will get free WiFi by the end of 2016, connecting more than 10 million people who pass through every day. The project will be eventually rolled out to cover 400 train stations across India.

Commenting on the launch, Minister of Railways, Suresh Prabhu, said:

Digitalization and technology is one of the prime requirements of any country or organization to bloom fully. This facility at Kacheguda, Raipur and Vijayawada stations will enable the thousands of passengers commuting through these stations to enjoy high speed Wi-Fi service. Affordable smartphones have made it possible for the commonmen to experience the power of Internet and thus users will be able to easily stream a high definition video while theyre waiting, search their destination, download a book or a new game to enjoy the journey. The Railway is soon going to launch Wi-Fi at 14 more stations & will cover 100 stations by the end of this year.
After its pilot project in Mumbai, OnePlus has stared its pilot for door step pick up and drop service in Chennai, Delhi and Kolkata in India. This service is free of cost for the OnePlus users, which lets them get their damaged OnePlus smartphone fixed easily without searching for a service centres in their city.

Several companies have started offering doorstep pick up and drop service facility in India. Motorola launched Moto Xpress, a pilot project offering a similar service in Delhi, Gurgaon and Noida. Xiaomi launched PickMi door step pick up and drop service across India last October. But this is the first time a company is offering the service for free. It is not clear if it would charge for the service when expanding the service across India, after the pilot project is over.

You can schedule a pickup and drop by calling the OnePlus customer care number  1800 102 8411. Mode of payment for fixing the damaged phone is only through Net Banking, which is not collected in advance, so you can pay after the phone is fixed. The company plans to launch it pan India soon.

Regarding the after-sales service, OnePlus on the official forum, said:

We are always stressing on improving our after-sales services and this is just a small step from our side. We still have a long way to go. Trust us, this is just the beginning. There are oodles of wonderful things awaiting our for you guys in near future.
Every year, tens of thousands of shareholders, journalists, and fans descend upon Omaha, Nebraska, to attend the Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A 2.01%) (BRK.B 1.89%) annual meeting. Each year, its chairman, Warren Buffett, and his partner Charlie Munger, answer questions from shareholders, journalists, and stock analysts for at least five hours. Dubbed the "Woodstock for capitalists," it's an event worth attending at least once in your life.

Here are three interesting things you may have missed from the meeting this year.

Selena Maranjian

Unless you actually attended the 2016 Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting, you missed out on one of the most popular parts of it -- the annual movie. It's produced by Buffett's daughter Susie and lasts about an hour. It's not something you can just look up on YouTube, because as Buffett explains each year, many TV and movie stars and other celebrities agree to appear in segments for free, and due to agreements with the participants and copyright issues, it's meant to be viewed only at the meeting.

So what's in it? Well, it's structured similarly every year. It features some standout TV commercials for various Berkshire subsidiaries or holdings, such as Coca-Cola, GEICO, etc. It also has some special segments produced just for the movie, featuring the aforementioned celebrities and often playing off some aspect of popular culture. This year, for example, there was a brief animated parody of the movie Trading Places, some footage of Buffett negotiating with Walter White and Jesse of Breaking Bad over Buffett's high-quality peanut brittle, and a skit of Buffett and Munger vying to be Arnold Schwarzenegger's next Celebrity Apprentice, among other bits. There was also a short feature on how Berkshire Hathaway Energy's wind turbines are installed and a classic Saturday Night Live skit criticizing professional money-managers.

One segment appears in every year's movie: A clip of Buffett testifying before Congress in 1991 about Salomon Brothers, the investment bank that he was called upon to oversee for a while after a scandal. It includes Buffett repeating what he told Salomon employees: "Lose money for the firm, and I will be understanding; lose a shred of reputation for the firm, and I will be ruthless." Finally, as always, the movie ends with a long shot of the managers of Berkshire's many subsidiaries scrolling by, accompanied by music.

This was the first year that Buffett permitted the meeting to be webcast so that people around the world could watch without being in Omaha. That might help you experience much of the meeting, but to see the annual movie, you'll need to do some traveling.

Sean Williams

The Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting is the bonanza of all annual shareholder events. In fact, it's so big that the events planned for shareholders typically stretch across many days. While the primary highlight is hearing Warren Buffett and his sidekick Charlie Munger speak about the performance of Berkshire Hathaway and their outlooks on the stock market and the U.S. economy in general, a little-known fact about the initial Q&A session is that a third of the roughly 50 questions asked of the Oracle and his sidekick come from shareholders in attendance. Given that Buffett and Munger claim to have no prior knowledge of these questions, this results in some candid and honest responses.

Here are some of the questions Buffett and Munger fielded from the public this year:

"Why doesn't Berkshire Hathaway have a AAA credit rating?"

"What are IBM 's competitive advantages?"

's competitive advantages?" "Should the price of oil influence the actions of the Federal Reserve?"

Munger's response to the question regarding Berkshire's less-than-perfect credit rating was classic: "Because they're wrong." It's hard to argue with that opinion, considering that Berkshire's quarterly free cash flow tends to hover between $3 billion and $5 billion.

When it came to IBM, Buffett decided not to get into the specific analysis of what prompted him to buy (and continue to buy) Big Blue in the first place. Buffett has previously suggested that Berkshire's investment could prove incorrect, but we've also seen IBM complete turnarounds throughout its storied history before.

Lastly, Buffett argued that low oil prices would actually be good for the U.S. economy as a whole, noting that the U.S. economy has strengthened even as oil has declined. It was Buffett's way of telling the room packed with shareholders that the Federal Reserve probably shouldn't allow oil prices to influence its decision-making.

It's questions like these that make this unscripted Q&A so worthwhile.

Tim Green

Buffett is well known for making deals quickly and decisively. The deal to stream the annual meeting, for example, was a simple one-page contract devoid of the legal jargon that typically accompanies such things. One of the most interesting questions Buffett and Munger received during the meeting was about the duo's approach to acquisitions.

Buffett admitted to making plenty of mistakes during his decades at the helm of Berkshire Hathaway, but he insisted that the problem was always an incorrect assessment of the acquisition's future and the economics of the industry. It never came down to a small detail that only could have been uncovered by a deep dive. Buffett's insistence on a substantial margin of safety allows him this room for error.

The quality of the management that stays to run each company that Berkshire acquires is the most important factor, according to Munger, and Berkshire has a long record of retaining top-notch managers. Berkshire's approach to deal-making is unique, and it saves the company a boatload of money that would otherwise be spent on consultants and advisors.

The thorough approach to evaluating acquisitions that other companies use doesn't typically work so well. According to Decisive, a book about decision making, 83% of corporate mergers and acquisitions fail to increase shareholder value. Despite Buffett's occasional mistakes, his record is well above average.
Former Mexican President Vicente Fox apologized to Donald Trump for his comments earlier this year, where he adamantly stated Mexico would not pay for a wall on its border with the United States.

Fox, who served as Mexicos 55th president, explained the motivation for his apology comes from his belief that quality leaders know how to admit when they've been wrong or wronged someone.

Weve been working peacefully in very strong partnership with the United States, with United States citizens, with the United States corporate world, he told the FOX Business Networks Deirdre Bolton. Fortunately, weve been creating the jobs in Mexico and fortunately now the trend of migration has reversed.

The former president of Mexico said he still thinks Trump is a racist, and that the world doesnt need leaders with that type of belief.

The United States and the whole world needs compassionate leaders, Fox said. Leaders that really worry about your neighbor; leaders that really work for improving the situation.

Fox also shared a warning about what could happen if the U.S. cedes its leadership role in the world.

Very bad things are going to happen. We need that leadership not only in security; we need it in the economy. But, also U.S. citizens are going to be paying for the mistakes and the errors that hes [Trump] proposing.
During an interview with FOX Business Networks Charles Payne, West Virginia Coal Association Vice President Chris Hamilton discussed why he is endorsing presidential candidate Donald Trump and why he stands against both Hillary Clinton and President Obama.

We believe that Donalds the right choice to lead our country and our energy industry forward. There is no question about it, he said. Obviously he wants to bring West Virginia mining back as well as our other energy industries. So were fully supportive of that and really appreciate the mission he is on.

Hamilton pointed out how President Obama has hurt the coal industry.

Weve lost half of our mining jobs about 12 to 13,000 mining jobs and another 40 to 50,000 indirect jobs around our state. The same is true for southwest Virginia and southeast, eastern Kentucky. So he has carried out the mission as you have correctly pointed out, he said.

Hamilton also stated that Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton would only follow in President Obamas footsteps.

[She] has indicated very publicly and clearly that shes going to double down and carry through on President Obamas energy programs, he said.
General Motors (NYSE:GM) and Lyft are moving forward with plans to create self-driving taxis. The companies expect to launch a test service within a year, raising the bar as Detroits Big Three automakers increase their investments in autonomous cars.

In multiple news reports, Lyft Product Director Taggart Matthiesen revealed that the ride-hailing company is moving quickly to bring autonomous, on-demand taxis to public roads. The test program, which will launch in an unnamed U.S. city, will give consumers the choice of hailing a self-driving GM vehicle, possibly the all-electric Chevrolet Bolt. Previously, GM executives have indicated that initial programs with Lyft would keep someone in the driver seat.

Lyft didnt immediately respond to a request for comment from FOXBusiness.com. GM said Friday it didnt have anything specific to announce regarding the rollout of vehicles and technologies.

GM continues to make progress on our previously announced plans related to an integrated on-demand autonomous network with Lyft, GM said in a statement. Similarly, we have said the Chevrolet Bolt EV is the ideal platform for ride sharing solutions. We believe electrification blends perfectly with autonomy when it comes to technology integration.

The plans were first reported by The Wall Street Journal, which said GM will likely utilize technology from Cruise Automation, a San Francisco-based firm that GM agreed to buy in March. The Detroit News said Cruise Automation has a license to test autonomous vehicles in California, so the Golden State is a logical choice for a test service.

Akshay Anand, an analyst at Kelley Blue Book, said companies like Lyft and Uber have long pursued autonomous vehicles, which could reduce costs by eliminating the need for drivers.

I think [Lyfts test program] is also significant because most people think Uber is in the lead. But with this kind of partnership and testing, its a good thing for Lyft as a company, Anand said. In theory, theyre the first ones testing autonomous cars. They have that chip on their side.

GM initially laid out plans for an autonomous on-demand network when it announced its $500 million investment in Lyft, which is second to Uber in the ride-hailing business. The idea is to eventually allow users of the Lyft mobile app to hail a self-driving car.

Ticker Security Last Change Change % GM GENERAL MOTORS CO. 35.00 +1.56 +4.67% F FORD MOTOR CO. 12.19 +0.42 +3.57% FCAU n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a.

Also included in the partnership, GM is opening rental hubs for Lyft drivers. GM and Lyft recently opened one of those hubs in Chicago. The program, Express Drive, currently offers Chevrolet Equinox crossovers.

GM has touted the Chevrolet Bolt as a good fit for ride-hailing services, thanks to its 200-mile range and slimmed-down seats that provide extra leg room for back-seat passengers. The 2017 Bolt is scheduled to arrive in Chevrolet dealers later this year with a starting price of $37,500 before tax credits.

Beyond its Lyft partnership, GM plans on testing self-driving 2017 Chevrolet Volt plug-in hybrids at its GM Warren Tech Center campus. Similarly, Ford (NYSE:F) has about 30 autonomous Fusion hybrids undergoing tests in California, Arizona and Michigan. Ford was the first car company to bring autonomous cars to the University of Michigans Mcity, a 32-acre urban environment built by the school.

With the GM-Lyft developments and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (NYSE:FCAU) new partnership with Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL), it has become even more evident this week that Detroit automakers are in a race to lead the industry in self-driving technology.

Its interesting. It almost feels like the domestics are leading the charge, Anand said. But we also know that all these other companies probably have stuff up their sleeve. The battle is fascinating. What GM and Ford are doing speaks to how much they are looking into the future.

Fiat Chrysler officially announced an agreement this week with Alphabets Google, whose self-driving car project will use 2017 Chrysler Pacifica minivans for testing purposes. According to the Associated Press on Friday, Fiat Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne said autonomous cars could arrive in five years.
Despite a disappointing April jobs report released on Friday that showed job growth in the United States slowing, Secretary of Labor Thomas Perez said he is optimistic about the future and not concerned about minimum wage impacting employment.

Using The Evergreen State as an example, Perez told FOX Business Networks Liz Claman: If the rest of the nation had Washington States job growth numbers over the last 20 years, our economy would be even better off. So this [minimum wage hike] hypothesis has been debunked with regularity.

Perez said while 70% of [U.S.] GDP growth is consumption, Americans making the minimum of $7.25 per hour wont be able have enough money to spend on products.

However, the labor secretary said he remains optimistic about employment and job growth.

Long-term unemployed as the percentage of the overall unemployment rate is now the lowest its been in seven years, Perez said. Two thirds of the reduction, roughly, in the unemployment rate over the last year had been from the ranks of the long-term unemployed For me thats very heartening because that tells me that labor markets are tightening. That gives leverage for workers and that means well continue to move in the right direction.

Perez also addressed speculation that he could be Hillary Clintons potential choice for vice president.

I have not spoken to anybody about that and I deal in the reality that I have 259 days until the weekend. Im not counting the days. I want to make every day count.
Mothers Day is the biggest day of the year for flowerseven beating out Valentines Day.

According to a new report by the National Retail Federation, consumer spending is expected to reach $21.4 billion--with $2.4 billion of that going towards flowers.

While its big business, Juan Pablo Montufar, who grew up on a rose farm says theres a lot of labor issues surrounding the industry.

There have been instances of farms where unfair labor conditions are practiced: long hours without overtime pay, improper safety and security equipment, juveniles working the fields, and unfair wages, Montufar, co-founder of Bouqs tells FOXBusiness.com.

The majority of flowers sold in the United States (estimates as high as 90%) come to the U.S from South America, where Colombia and Ecuador provide the largest amount of cut flowers.

Montufar grew up in South America, where he lives today and runs his flower startup called Bouqs, a tech platform connecting farmers directly with customers, cutting out the middlemen and extra costs.

If you dont know where your flowers come from, those farms that are the exception could provide your flowers while operating in a way that damages the earth through rainforest deforestation, use of red label chemicals, or treating their labor in ways that are not humane, he says.

The other problem is freshness. The industry average is that consumers get their flowers up to 20 days after their cutwhich means flowers will only last a few days.

1-800-Flowers CEO Jim McCann recently told FOX Business Networks Maria Bartiromo that theyve been pushing for more domestic production of flowers in the U.S. for nearly a decade and are having real good success.

But McCann says theres been a shift with many U.S flower growers who are now tempted by the huge revenue returns from growing cannabis instead.

There are a few states now, I havent seen it impact us yet, but we are concerned because some growers with enormous greenhouse facilities in California or Colorado or perhaps in Oregon are saying, Is this the best crop I can grow, these flowers for all these florists around the country? Maybe I can switch to cannabis and get 10 times on the revenue line. Thats a big concern of ours, McCann told Bartiromo.

According to the U.S. floral industry, the retail sales of flowers continue to grow each year. In 2002, the overall flower industry generated $24.3 billion and in 2015, that number reached $31.3 billion.
During Small Business Week in May, FOXBusiness.com is running a special Growing Your Business series. Here is expert advice and insight for entrepreneurs from Greg Creed, chief executive officer of Yum! Brands.

My favorite principle is believe in all people and be your true self, said Greg Creed, chief executive officer of Yum! Brands. I firmly believe we will all perform at our best when we are authentic, and the organization will be most successful when each and every person can be his or her true self.

Creeds leadership ideals help set the tone at Yum, where he brings more than 30 years of experience in packaged goods and restaurant brand marketing and operations to the table. He has worked for Yum! Brands for two decades, and he now leads the companys strategies, structures, people development and culture worldwide. Yum operates nearly 43,000 KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell restaurants in 130 countries and is opening more than six new restaurants outside of the United States every day.

FOXBUSINESS.COM: What are your top tips for small business owners and entrepreneurs?

Creed: Leverage culture to fuel results. What got you here wont always get you there. And less is more.

FOXBUSINESS.COM: How can less be more?

Creed: Some business owners ... believe that in order to grow, they have to add more things onto whatever the idea is. When you have less, the real identity of your product or service is clearer to the customer. ... I visited Apple in the Steve Jobs era while I was president of Taco Bell and showed some people the latest restaurant design at the time. Their comment was that we had too much going on and had lost the brands essence. As a result, we took a step back and simplified Taco Bells restaurant design and other elements so our customers would have a clearer view of our brand.

FOXBUSINESS.COM: And what about understanding that what got you here wont always get you there?

Creed: People sometimes fall into the trap of repeating past decisions. Yet were all worked in situations that require us to think differently and make decisions weve never had to make before. If you believe what youve always done in the past will deliver results, your business is more likely to underperform or become irrelevant to your customers. Sometimes you have to make courageous decisions and go where youve never been to set your business up for the future. At YUM, this concept is more relevant than ever as we undertake the separation of our China business in order to create two powerful, independent, focused growth companies by the end of this year  Yum! China and Yum! Brands. We came to this decision by embracing radically new thinking about our business and concluded that a separation transaction provides the right corporate structure to unlock significant value for our shareholders.

FOXBUSINESS.COM: What is one piece of advice entrepreneurs and small business owners should keep in mind every day?

Creed: Leaders must define reality and offer hope. You have to define what is truly happening around you, not the reality you or your employees want it to be. Be honest and transparent with your employees about the state of your business, which in some instances, requires a lot of courage. However, you also have to offer the hope that through your culture, strategy and structure, you can deliver the growth potential of whatever business youre running.

FOXBUSINESS.COM: What is one of the biggest mistakes you see small business owners making, and how could they address this error?

Creed: From a leadership standpoint, a lot of leaders are good at telling people what they want and how they want it, but they dont tell people why. My experience has shown leaders who share more of the why build an amazing emotional connection with employees, who in turn deliver amazing results. Im convinced that if youre clear on what the objective is, spend all your time on why and avoid telling people how, youll get a better outcome.

FOXBUSINESS.COM: If you could recommend one book to a small business owner or entrepreneur, what would it be and why?

Creeed: Its Your Ship by Michael Abrashoff is a story about how he took command of his first warship, the USS Benfold. Within months, Abrashoff transformed the underperforming ship with a dysfunctional crew into one of the best in the U.S. Navy. There are very simple yet powerful management principles in the book that can apply to any leader or business. Without the option to change his crew, Abrashoff knew first he had to improve his own leadership skills before he could improve his ship. He spent time getting to know each of his 300 crew members, built an emotional connection with them and ultimately created an empowered team of problem-solvers.
Are you ready for a driverless Lyft? GM and Lyft are gearing up to test a fleet of self-driving Chevrolet Bolts in a U.S. city within a year, according to a new report. Image source: General Motors.

Curious as to what it would be like to ride in a self-driving car? You may have a chance to find out soon: The Wall Street Journal is reporting that General Motors and ride-hailing service Lyft will team up to test a fleet of self-driving taxis on public roads within a year.

If the report is accurate, it means both Lyft and GM will have jumped ahead of rivals seen as better-positioned.

The latest move in GM's aggressive, high-tech push2016 has already been a busy year for GM on the bleeding-edge-technology front. It announced a $500 million investment in Lyft back in January, and then in March, it said it would buy San Francisco self-driving start-up Cruise Automation for a yet-to-be-disclosed sum. It also revealed the production version of its new electric car, the Chevrolet Bolt, which will go into production later this year.

All of those things are relevant to today's news. Apparently, the technology GM is acquiring in the Cruise Automation deal has sped up its efforts to build self-driving technology into the Bolt, which GM engineers have said will be a "platform" for advanced capabilities.

According to the Journal's report, which it attributed to Lyft executives, GM and Lyft will put a fleet of self-driving Bolts into service as taxis in an unnamed U.S. city sometime in the next year. A Lyft executive characterized the project as a way for GM, Lyft, and Cruise to test and refine the autonomous technology ahead of a broader rollout.

GM and Lyft are leapfrogging key competitors For Lyft, this is a way to challenge its much bigger rival, the extremely well-funded Uber. Uber is believed to be working on a self-driving system of its own, and it may have attempted to order a fleet of self-driving cars (for delivery in 2020 or thereabouts) from Mercedes-Benz earlier this year.

For GM, it's a way to show that its self-driving technology is nearly ready for market -- and perhaps to steal some limelight from Alphabet's Google self-driving cars project. The Google team announced a deal with Fiat Chrysler earlier this week in which FCA and Google engineers would work together to build a fleet of self-driving test cars based on FCA's new Chrysler Pacifica minivan.

It's also a way for GM to steal back some electric-car thunder from Tesla Motors ahead of Tesla's planned launch of its "mass-market" Model 3 sedan. The sleek Model 3 has been characterized by some observers as a rival that outclasses the more homely Bolt, and GM may be eager to prove that its electric car is more advanced than those observers presently realize.

It's also a way for GM to put its new Bolt to work. Teslas aside, low gas prices have kept demand for electric cars modest. GM and Lyft have already announced a program under which Lyft drivers will be able to lease Bolts at an affordable rate, and GM may see Lyft as a way to demonstrate its technology (and keep the Bolt's assembly line busy) even if retail demand for the new electric Chevy turns out to be modest.

Long story short: This could be a coup for all concernedLyft, of course, will be delighted to steal the technical lead from its much larger rival. As for GM, after all of the hype about Google and Tesla, it would be deliciously ironic if Americans' first taste of a self-driving taxi came courtesy of a Chevrolet. GM is determined to show that its technology is as good as anyone's -- and if this program pans out, it will have a very strong case. Stay tuned.

The article Could General Motors End Up Leading the Self-Driving Revolution? originally appeared on Fool.com.

Suzanne Frey, an executive at Alphabet, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. John Rosevear owns shares of General Motors. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Alphabet (A and C shares). The Motley Fool recommends General Motors. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Copyright 1995 - 2016 The Motley Fool, LLC. All rights reserved. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Image: Envestnet.

Serving the financial industry can be lucrative for businesses, and Envestnet has reaped its share of rewards for helping to provide investment advisors with the back-office support and management systems they need to concentrate on their own business activities. Coming into Thursday's first-quarter financial report, Envestnet investors had expected that, despite ongoing strong sales growth, earnings would likely take a hit.

Although the company's decline on the bottom line wasn't as extensive as feared, Envestnet's future guidance created new concerns about the impact of the recent turbulence in the financial markets. Let's take a closer look at what Envestnet said, and whether it can get moving back in the right direction in the future.

Envestnet deals with a setbackEnvestnet's first-quarter results weren't bad, but they didn't replicate the unqualified success that some investors have gotten used to seeing. Adjusted revenue rose 37%, to $132 million, almost exactly meeting the expectations of those following the stock.

However, the company posted a 7% drop in adjusted net income, and that produced adjusted earnings of $0.18 per share. That was $0.03 better than the consensus forecast among investors, but it was still almost 20% lower than the year-ago quarter's results.

Looking more closely at Envestnet's operating metrics, the provider still recorded some positive results. Assets under management and administration were up 18% year over year, to $303 billion. The company has brought on more than 400,000 new fee-based accounts during the past year, hitting the 1.4 million mark. Almost 36,000 advisors are now using the asset platform, and another 14,000 or so are taking advantage of Envestnet's licensing platform.

Gross sales came in at $26.5 billion, and net inflows amounted to almost $10.6 billion. Favorable markets added $2.7 billion to assets under management.

The newly acquired Yodlee unit also kept ramping up. Adjusted revenue amounted to $28.9 million for the quarter. The business produced adjusted EBITDA of $3 million.

CEO Jud Bergman was pleased with Envestnet's progress. "First-quarter results reflect ongoing support and growth among our advisors and financial institutions," Bergman said, "adding over 2,000 advisors to the platform and increasing subscription and licensing revenue." The CEO also pointed to the company's product development teams in their efforts to make its platforms more valuable to customers.

Can Envestnet get its earnings to rise?In particular, Envestnet is pushing for more innovations to bring value to investors. As Bergman sees it, the company has been "fully engaged on the integration of data aggregation and financial planning capabilities into the Envestnet platform portals." By doing so, Envestnet hopes that its customers will have a full picture of their clients' assets and financial information.

Yet some will find issue with Envestnet's view of what's ahead for the company. In its financial outlook for the second quarter, the company said that revenue will likely end up between $84 million and $85 million, with more than half of that coming from subscription and licensing revenue sources. Adjusted net income of $0.20 to $0.21 per share would be below the consensus estimate among investors, and more importantly, it would also represent a decline from year-ago figures. That won't come as welcome news to those who want to see Envestnet get back on its feet.

Envestnet shares have benefited from the rise in the overall stock market lately. However, as long as market-environment challenges remain for the company, the potential for its stock to lag the broader market is fairly high. Until the financial industry gets past the recent volatility, and finds ways to feel comfortable with changing market conditions, Envestnet investors might not be able to rely on the pace of growth that they've seen from the company in the past.

The article Envestnet Guides Toward Further Weakness as Earnings Fall originally appeared on Fool.com.

Dan Caplinger has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool recommends Envestnet. 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.
GoPro's HERO4 Session enjoyed surprisingly strong sales in Q1, Credit: GoPro.

GoPro released first-quarter 2016 results Thursday after the market close. As expected, the action-camera specialist suffered a precipitous drop in sales from the same year-ago period. But it wasn't quite as bad GoPro had initially feared

Specifically, quarterly revenue declined 49.5% year over year, to $183.5 million. Based on generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP), that translated to a net loss of $107.5 million, or $0.78 per share.

On an adjusted basis, which excludes items like stock-based compensation and restructuring costs, GoPro's net loss was $86.7 million, or $0.63 per share. Adjusted gross margin fell 1,220 basis points, to 33%. And adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBTIDA) came in at a loss of $86.8 million.

By comparison, GoPro's guidance called for significantly lower revenue of $160 million to $180 million, and a wider adjusted EBITDA loss of $96 million (plus or minus $2.5 million), but alsohigher adjusted gross margin of 36% (plus or minus 100 basis points). To GoPro's credit, these results also include $8 million in charges related to legacy products for excess purchase commitments, inventory writedowns, and marketing development funds, the exclusion of which would have brought gross margin to 36.8%.

GoPro's founding CEO Nick Woodman elaborated,

More specifically, GoPro estimates that unit sell-thru fell less than 10% from the same year-ago period despite last year's benefit of the HERO4 launch. As such, unit sell-thru exceeded unit sell-in by roughly 50%, allowing global channels to significantly reduce a troublesome inventory glut. In fact, net inventory declined 25.8% from the end of 2015 to its lowest level since Q3 of 2014.

But Woodman also followed with some bad news: "[W]hile we had to make the difficult decision to delay our drone, Karma, the upside is that Karma's launch should now benefit from the holidays."

Unfortunately, GoPro's prepared remarks didn't provide any clarity surrounding its decision to delay Karma, which the company previously targeted for a first-half 2016 launch. During the subsequent conference call, however, management noted that the majority of revenue they expected Karma to generate was included in their second-half projections, anyway. As such -- and as long as Karma is still delivered in time for the crucial winter season -- I suspect the market will be willing to shrug off the delay given the relative strength in GoPro's core business.

According to NPD retail tracking, and keeping in mind that last quarter, GoPro decided to narrow its camera-device offering to its three highest-end models, GoPro commanded four of the top-five products on a unit basis in the combined digital camera/camcorder category in the United States -- which must include one of its now-discontinued models. That includes the No. 1 spot, as the HERO4 Silver remained the segment's best-selling device on both a unit and dollar basis. Meanwhile, HERO4 Session moved to the No. 2 spot -- up from No. 8 last quarter -- on a unit basis, as it effectively plugged the hole left by the absence of GoPro's lower-end HERO and HERO+ LCD models.

NPD data also showed GoPro's first-quarter combined digital camera/camcorder unit share in the U.S. rose 150 basis points year over year, to 20.9% -- albeit a sobering statistic that, combined with GoPro's falling revenue, serves as an indication of the decline of GoPro's core market. International sales represented more than half of total revenue in the quarter, as GoPro held six of the top-10 camcorders in Europe on a unit basis, and China remained a top-10 market for the company.

GoPro's decision to narrow its product line had another positive effect: Average selling prices of camera units shipped fell only slightly on a year-over-year basis, and ASPs climbed 16% sequentially from last quarter excluding price-protection charges related to previous price decreases for the HERO4 Session. Also as expected, higher-priced, higher-margin HERO4 Silver and HERO4 Black units represented more than 50% of units shipped.

Meanwhile, GoPro's mobile app was downloaded another 2.8 million times in Q1, bringing cumulative downloads to nearly 27 million. GoPro's Studio was also installed nearly 1.5 million times, bringing cumulative installs for the editing software to 16.5 million.

Average daily video exports grew 33.5% year over year, to 52,000, during the quarter. During the subsequent conference call, GoPro also revealed that its previous acquisitions of leading mobile-editing apps Splice and Replay were completed for cash of slightly more than $100 million.

Finally -- and despite its top-line beat to start the year -- GoPro reiterated its previous 2016 guidance for revenue in the range of $1.35 billion to $1.5 billion, or a 12% decline from 2015 at the midpoint.

In the end, this report may not have contained everything GoPro bulls had hoped to hear -- less bad is, after all, still notgood.And the delay of Karma arguably gives established competitors in the burgeoning drone space that much more time to cement their market-leading positions.

But GoPro also made notable progress handling its inventory problem, and its strategic decision to narrow its capture-device product line appears to be having the desired effect. While GoPro investors may not be completely satisfied, I would argue they should feel just a little better about where the company stands today.

The article GoPro, Inc. Records a Top-Line Beat, Delays Its Drone originally appeared on Fool.com.

Steve Symington has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends GoPro. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Copyright 1995 - 2016 The Motley Fool, LLC. All rights reserved. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Source: Microsoft

According to some tech cognoscenti, a data storage crisis lies on the horizon.

The amount of data we create as a society has absolutely exploded in recent years. What's more, the rise of the Internet of Things promises to only exacerbate the continued growthof the torrents of data we now produce.

However, a recent initiative led, in part, by tech giant Microsoft could help to prevent a crisis from ever manifesting.

Microsoft to revolutionize data storage?Late last month, Microsoft reached a deal with San Francisco-based start-up Twist Bioscienceto purchase 10 million strands of DNA. No, that is not a typo.

Though you might never have considered it, DNA has been found remarkably suitable for data storage, and companies like Twist are developing methods to encode and decode stores of data onto DNA strands. Extremely resilient and capacity-dense, DNA's potential memory capacity per unit of mass is orders of magnitude greater than even advanced storage techniques today. For example, one gram of DNA can theoretically store 1 zettabyte of data, or 1 billion terabytes-- simply a mindboggling amount of data.

What's more, DNA is remarkably long-lived, lasting hundreds and even thousands of years. At a commercial level, it is currently believed the DNA strains Microsoft bought could support binary code at a commercial scale for at least 500 years.

Though functionally far superior to current disk-based storage methods, encoding and reading DNA strands remains prohibitive for mainstream adoption today. Companies like Twist and others reportedly charge $0.10 to sequence a single DNA base, though it seems the cost should eventually fall closer to $0.02 per strand.

Something's gotta giveThis might seem like a bizarre, improbable storyline, but it's also a necessary one. Though the problem receives scant attention in the media, current data storage technologies simply won't be able to efficiently support the mind-boggling volumes of data society creates today.

According to IBM research, our modern, connected world creates 2.5 quintillion bytes of data each day. This absolute explosion in the amount of data produced means that roughly 90% of the world's data was created in the last two years alone. What's more, Twist sees the amount of data collected doubling every twoyears as well. Thetechnology Microsoft and Twist are developing doesn't figure to be commercially viable for some time.However, the potential to store so much in so little a space offers obvious commercial applications.

Source: Microsoft

This storyline also highlights Microsoft's prestige as a corporate researcher. Like other technology giants, Microsoft annually plows billions of R&D dollars into projects traversing the technological spectrum. Though IBM has long dominated corporate R&D rankings in terms of patents granted, Microsoft also consistently cracks the top 10 in terms of its research output.

Many of its inventions will never find their way into mainstream products, but technologies developed by Microsoft's scientific research division lie at the heart of a few noteworthy products in recent years. Two such examples are Microsoft's Cortana voice assistant and the Xbox's Kinectmotion-sensing attachment. So while this storyline won't come close to affecting Microsoft's financial performance any time soon, investors should still take note because of its big-ticket commercial potential and, well, because it's just plain cool to boot.

The article Microsoft + DNA: How the Tech Giant Plans to Revolutionize Data Storage originally appeared on Fool.com.

Andrew Tonner has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of Microsoft. 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: Novo Nordisk.

Novo Nordisk released earnings on Friday, with sales hitting the upper end of the drugmaker's 2016 guidance as the company highlighted recent positive clinical trial results.

Novo Nordiskresults: The raw numbers

Metric Q1 2016 Actuals Q1 2015 Actuals Growth (Decrease) YOY Net sales $4,017 million $3,808 million 5% Operating profit $1,917 million $2,094 million (13%) Net profit $1,396 million $1,492 million (6%)

What happened withNovo Nordiskthis quarter?

Victoza was the biggest contributor to growth with an increase of 15% in local currencies and 16% in Danish kroner even in the face of competition from Eli Lilly 's competing GLP-1 drug, Trulicity.

's competing GLP-1 drug, Trulicity. Sales of Novo Nordisk's newest insulin are off to a good start, increasing117% in local currencies, but it's building from a small base with just 1.4% of the U.S. market share after launching stateside in January.

Earnings were down year over year because of thepartial divestment of itsIT services business. Adjusting for the divestment, net profit and diluted earnings per share increased by 20% and 23%, respectively.

In March, Novo Nordisk announced positive data fromLEADER, the cardiovascular outcome trial for Victoza. Full data will be presented at theAmerican Diabetes Association meeting in June.

Also on the clinical trial front, Novo Nordisk announced positive results from SWITCH 1 and SWITCH 2 showingTresiba had lower risk ofhypoglycemia -- low blood sugar level -- thanSanofi's Lantus.

What management had to sayPresident and CEO Lars Rebien Sorensen brushed off the competition from Eli Lilly'sTrulicity, pointing out that while it's losing market share to Eli Lilly, the GLP-1 market is expanding, allowing Novo Nordisk to capture a smaller piece of a much larger pie. "It is correct that Trulicity is doing well and this means that we're losing share in Victoza. But we're growing our volume with a double-digit growth rate so we're satisfied with this expansion,"Sorensen said.

And of course, Novo Nordisk can take some of that market share back from Eli Lilly with itsonce-weekly GLP-1 therapysemaglutide now that it's completed the clinical trials required for approval. "With the completion of SUSTAIN 5 and 6, we're now on track for submitting semaglutide for approval before year end," said Executive Vice President and Chief Science Officer Mads Krogsgaard Thomsen.

Looking forwardManagement is sticking with its 2016 guidance for sales growth between 5% to 9% measured in local currencies. Adjusted operating profit for the year is also expected to fall in the 5% to 9% range in local currencies.

With a rash of positive clinical trial data for Victoza, Tresiba, and semaglutide, Novo Nordisk looks well positioned to grow sales in upcoming years as well.

The article Novo Nordisk A/S Injecting Future Sales originally appeared on Fool.com.

Brian Orelli has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool recommends Novo Nordisk. 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.
Sierra Wireless' RV50 Gateway continued to gain traction within Enterprise Solutions in Q1, IMAGE SOURCE: SIERRA WIRELESS INC.

Sierra Wireless announced first-quarter 2016 results Thursday after the bell. And though revenue declined as expected from the same year-ago period, you won't find the Internet of Things pure play complaining about where it stands today.

More specifically, quarterly revenue fell 5.1% year over year, to $142.8 million, or slightly above the midpoint of Sierra Wireless' guidance for $135 million to $145 million. Adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization fell 40.8% year over year, to $6.7 million.

Based on generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP), that translated to net income of $0.7 million, or $0.02 per diluted share compared to a net loss of $9.7 million, or $0.30 per share in last year's first quarter. In addition, Sierra Wireless began to utilize its recently approved"Notice of Intention to Make a Normal Course Issuer Bid" -- think of it as a sort of controlled share-repurchase program -- using $6.1 million to repurchase and cancel 549,583 shares during the quarter.

On an adjusted (non-GAAP) basis, which means excluding items like stock-based compensation and acquisition expenses, net income declined 63.9%, to $2.6 million, or $0.08 per diluted share. This, too, came in above guidance for adjusted earnings to be "slightly positive to slightly negative."

Sierra Wireless' profitability was alsopositively affected by its receipt during the quarter of a $2.3 million legal settlement with a supplier related to a component-quality issue. Excluding that settlement, adjusted EBITDA would have been $4.4 million, and adjusted earnings would have been $0.03 per share.But even then, Sierra Wireless would have still exceeded its earnings guidance.

"Revenue and non-GAAP earnings in the first quarter were slightly better than expected," explained Sierra Wireless CEO Jason Cohenour, "and we continue to expect our business to gain strength over the course of the year as new customer programs move into production and we introduce new leading-edge IoT products and solutions."

Sierra Wireless' three reportable segments each continued to demonstrate relative strength and stability. Within its OEM solutions segment, revenue declined9.1%, to $120.9 million, as expected softness from certain automotive customers was only partially offset by contributions from new programs. Meanwhile, OEM continued to rack up new design wins, including its new LTE Cat-1 embedded module being selected by Sagemcom for smart-meter deployments in the Netherlands, while its HL Series embedded modules were chosen by Parkeon for use in global smart-parking deployments.

Next, enterprise solutions revenue climbed 9%, to $15 million, helped by increased traction for Sierra Wireless' new AirLink RV50 LTE gateway, and new customer wins across the public safety, energy, and transit sector. The company also offered a solid base preceding plans for additional gateway launches during the next three quarters.

Meanwhile, Sierra Wireless enjoyed a 92% increase in sales from the new cloud and connectivity services segment, to $6.9 million, driven by new customer wins in the payment, energy, and industrial sectors across the EMEA, U.S., and Latin American geographies. Cloud and connectivity services successfully launched a new Smart SIM for QoS and global network coverage during the quarter, and commenced the upgrade of its LTE core network to boost its global footprint and service capability for wholesale operators.

Looking ahead -- and in keeping with management's previous hope -- demand from Sierra Wireless' existing customers is starting to normalize, and contributions from new customers are still expected to increase as the year progresses, with more than 40 customer programs set to launch. Sierra Wireless is also poised to introduce new gateway models to round out its portfolio.

Sierra Wireless anticipates revenue in the current quarter of $150 million to $160 million, with adjusted earnings per share of $0.09 to $0.17. Both ranges are roughly in line with analysts' consensus estimates(although we don't lend much credence to Wall Street's near-term demands).

Finally, for the full year 2016, Sierra Wireless reiterated its previous guidance for revenue of $630 million to $670 million, and adjusted earnings per share of $0.60 to $0.90. And that's fair enough, especially as Sierra Wireless' first-quarter performance was "only" slightly better than its original prediction.

In the end, even putting aside the slight bottom-line boost it received from its supplier settlement, Sierra Wireless performed just as management said it would. Assuming Sierra Wireless continues to do so as its business gains strength as the year wears on, I think patient investors willing to watch this growth story play out will be more than happy they held on.

The article Sierra Wireless, Inc. Delivers a Beat, Looks Forward to the Second Half originally appeared on Fool.com.

Steve Symington has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Sierra Wireless. 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.
Drug developer Pfizer has a storied history of delivering game-changing drugs to consumers, but it's been a long time since it's delivered a quarterly report that knocked Wall Street's socks off. Arguably, Pfizer's first-quarter earnings report, released before the opening bell on Tuesday, did exactly that.

Pfizer's Q1, by the numbers For the quarter, Pfizer reported $13 billion in revenue, a 20% improvement from the prior-year period, but 26% better than the previous year if operating results are all we consider (essentially stripping out currency moves). Adjusted income improved nearly $1 billion to $4.16 billion as adjusted EPS catapulted higher to $0.67 per share, a 32% year-over-year jump. Comparatively, Wall Street has been expecting a full $1 billion less in quarterly revenue and only $0.55 per share in EPS. Pfizer absolutely blew the lid off Wall Street's estimates.

Looking forward, Pfizer also boosted its full-year guidance in a big way. Having previously forecast $49 billion to $51 billion in full-year sales and $2.20 to $2.30 in adjusted EPS, Pfizer's new forecast calls for between $51 billion and $53 billion in revenue and $2.38 to $2.48 in adjusted EPS. Based on these headline figures alone, Wall Street seems quite appeased. But, it's what in the details of Pfizer's report that's truly impressive. With the exception of one small blemish, Pfizer delivered an exceptional quarter.

Image source: Pfizer.

Oncology shines The clear standout for Pfizer in Q1 continued to be its oncology franchise, led by advanced breast cancer drug Ibrance. In clinical trials, Ibrance led to a near-doubling in progression-free survival, and both physicians and patients appear to be taking to the drug like a duck to water. I'd suggested earlier this week that 20% sequential quarterly growth would have been phenomenal. Instead, Ibrance delivered $429 million in Q1 sales, representing sequential quarterly growth of 36%! This puts Ibrance on pace for $1.7 billion in 2016 sales, and if it can keep up its torrid pace of growth, could give the drug an outside chance at $2 billion in full-year sales. It may be time to up Ibrance's peak annual sales estimates, assuming it manages to expand its label, beyond $5 billion.

We also witnessed strong growth from Xalkori, a drug targeting a small percentage of ALK+ non-small cell lung cancer patients, and Sutent, a drug designed to treat kidney and pancreatic cancer. Operationally, Xalkori sales jumped 29%, with Sutent revenue rising 22%.

The Hospira acquisition bears fruitAnother key component to Pfizer's Q1 success has been its melding of Hospira's businesses into the fold. Although Hospira's developing biosimilar programs could be the real gem for Pfizer, Hospira's legacy injectable franchise added $1.2 billion in revenue during Q1.

Furthermore, commentary from CEO Ian Read in the company's Q1 press release notes that cost-savings from the Hospira acquisition are both higher than expected and presumably ahead of schedule. Initially, Pfizer anticipated annual cost-savings of $800 million. Now, Pfizer believes it can achieve $1 billion in expense reductions by 2018. Investors much prefer to see growth driven by demand, but with Pfizer facing one hellish decade filled with patent expirations, cost-cutting has become a critical cog to its success.

Image source: Pfizer.

A Prevnar surprisePfizer's management team has been cautioning Wall Street and investors for months that growth in pneumococcal vaccine Prevnar 13 was slated to slow down considerably in the U.S. in 2016. Pfizer has been benefiting from a recommendation issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in September 2014 that adults aged 65 and up get the Prevnar 13 vaccine. Sales of the drug jumped in a big way last year, and Pfizer's management had assumed that it'd grabbed all of the so-called low-hanging fruit (i.e., people regularly getting a pneumococcal vaccine).

The data from Q1 showed that global Prevnar family sales grew by 19% on an operating basis to $1.51 billion, once again placing it on track to surpass the $6 billion in sales mark in 2016. What was remarkable was that U.S. growth of 22% outpaced overseas operating sales growth of 13% despite management suggesting that international markets represent its greatest source of future growth for the Prevnar franchise. As with Ibrance, it might be time to up our peak annual sales expectations for Prevnar 13.

Shareholder yield in focusInvestors also received a reaffirmation in Pfizer's Q1 results that improving shareholder yield is important.

Similar to the first quarter of 2015, Pfizer announced that it had entered into an accelerated share repurchase agreement with Goldman Sachs, effectively retiring 136 million shares of common stock for a cost of $5 billion. Inclusive of dividends, Pfizer has been returning upwards of $12 billion to its shareholders since 2011, which is a testament to its exceptional free cash flow and its focus on shareholders. Between the beginning of 2011 and the end of 2015, Pfizer returned nearly $78 billion to its shareholders via dividends and stock buybacks.

Image source: Pfizer.

One blemish remains, albeit a minor one in Q1Even Pfizer's global established products (GEP) business delivered exceptional results in Q1, albeit with no help from products that have recently come off patent, such as Celebrex, Zyvox, and Lyrica in select overseas markets. Peri-LOE products, which is how Pfizer categorizes its drugs that have lost exclusivity, saw sales decline 24% year-over-year, or 18% operationally, to $1.09 billion. Now representing less than 9% of total quarterly sales, the assumption is that this lone blemish in Pfizer's otherwise fantastic report will be minimized further in the coming quarters.

The remainder of Pfizer's GEP legacy products performed quite well. Even though sales dipped 2% as a whole, on an operating basis its legacy GEP delivered a 7% improvement in sales, mostly a result of the Hospira acquisition, as well as growth from EpiPen and Tikosyn within the United States.

Is Pfizer back on your radar? Following its breakout quarter, it might be time to add Pfizer back onto your watchlist, or to dig deeper and give this drug giant serious consideration as an addition to your portfolio.

Pfizer is arguably just touching the tip of the iceberg in its next growth cycle with its oncology franchise, and to a lesser extent its innovative product portfolio, leading the charge. Throughout the remainder of the decade it'll be looking to introduce biosimilar products that could give blockbuster branded therapies a run for their money, as well as (hopefully) bring cancer immunotherapy avelumab, which is being developed with Merck KGaA, to market. At 13 times forward earnings and a 3.7% dividend yield, Pfizer is looking as attractive it's been in many years.

The article 1 Minor Blight Aside, Pfizer's Q1 Results Blew the Lid Off Wall Street's Expectations originally appeared on Fool.com.

Sean Williamshas no material interest in any companies mentioned in this article. You can follow him on CAPS under the screen nameTMFUltraLong, track every pick he makes under the screen name TrackUltraLong, and check him out on Twitter, where he goes by the handle@TMFUltraLong.The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. Try any of our Foolish newsletter servicesfree for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe thatconsidering a diverse range of insightsmakes us better investors. The Motley Fool has adisclosure policy.

Copyright 1995 - 2016 The Motley Fool, LLC. All rights reserved. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
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Hard-drive makers Western Digital and Seagate were both recently pummeled after reporting dismal third-quarter earnings. Both companies were hit hard by a slowdown in PC sales and the cannibalization of HDDs (hard-disk drives) by SSDs (solid-state drives).

Image source: Pixabay.

Shares of WD and Seagate have both declined more than 60% over the past 12 months, which boosted their dividend yields to historic highs. But does that make either stock an attractive income-generating value play?

How bad were the numbers?During the first quarter, WD's revenue fell 20.6% annually to $2.82 billion, which missed forecasts by $40 million. Seagate's revenue dropped21.9% to $2.6 billion, which matched estimates. Both companies' revenues have been falling ever since 2013 and aren't expected to bottom anytime soon.

Source:YCharts.

WD's hard drive shipments declined 21% annually to 43.1 million as sales into notebooks, desktops, consumer electronics, branded devices, and enterprise products all weakened. Seagate's shipments declined 22% to 39.2 million, with enterprise and client computing drive sales falling but consumer electronics and branded shipments slightly rising.

Both companies' non-GAAP gross margins narrowed. WD's declined from 30.5% a year ago to 28.1%, while Seagate's fell from 28.9% a year ago to 22.7%. That decline caused WD's non-GAAP net income to fall 26% annually to $283 million, or $1.21 per share, missing estimates by $0.07. Seagate's non-GAAP net income plunged 82% to $66 million, or $0.22 per share, which came in $0.15 below expectations. The long-term chart also reveals a clear downtrend in earnings growth.

Source:YCharts.

Pivoting toward new marketsWD is trying to offset its losses in HDDs by pivoting toward SSDs and flash memory. It's doing this inorganically through the acquisitions of Hitachi's hard drive business, SSD maker STec, enterprise storage company Virident Systems, storage software maker Velobit, flash storage array maker Skyera, and flash storage giant SanDisk . After the SanDisk deal closes, WD will control around 14% of the global SSD market, making it the second largest vendor after market leader Samsung.

WD also expects the full integration of HGST (Hitachi Global Storage Technologies) -- which was cleared by Chinese regulators last October -- to generate $800 million in cost savings by the end of 2017, up from its prior guidance of $650 million.

Seagate spent a lot of money consolidating the fragmented HDD market over the past decade, but it's spent a lot less money on SSDs and flash memory. The company's main foothold in that market is a multi-year NAND supply and enterprise SSD alliance with Micron , which controls around 10% of the SSD market. It also produces SSHDs (solid-state hybrid drives), which boot up faster than an HDD but cost much less than an SSD. Like WD, Seagate will generate some cost savings from its full integration of Samsung's HDD operations, whichwas also approved by Chinese regulators last year.

But investing in SSDs might not be enoughWD and Seagate are trying to counter the cannibalization of their core HDD businesses by diversifying into SSDs, but both companies could merely be shifting from one commoditized market into another.

DRAMeXchange claims that 2.5" SSDs cost 11 times more than HDDs on a dollar per GB basis in 2012, but they now only cost about 6.5 times as much. The company expects that gap to narrow to 2.8 times in 2017 and potentially achieveprice parity a few years later. If this happens before WD and Seagate diversify enough of their business away from HDDs, their core businesses could collapse.

Valuations and dividendsWD trades at 9 times earnings, and Seagate has a higher P/E of 18, but both ratios remain lower than the industry average of 23 for data storage companies. Looking ahead, analysts expect WD's earnings to fall 1.5% annually over the next five years, while Seagate's earnings are expected to decline 6%.

WD's forward dividend yield of 5.1% looks sustainable with a payout ratio of 44%, but the company suspended buybacks to pay off debt related to the SanDisk acquisition. Meanwhile, Seagate's forward dividend yield of 13% looks completely unsustainable with a payout ratio well over 200%.

The better value play: Western DigitalWD and Seagate are both in bad shape, but WD is clearly the better pick. Its margins are higher, its valuations are lower, its dividend is sustainable, and it's better invested in the future through its acquisition of SanDisk. Seagate must make big changes to keep up -- otherwise it could be left in the dust by WD, Samsung, and other major storage players within the next few years.

The article Better Value Play: Western Digital Corp. or Seagate Technology PLC? originally appeared on Fool.com.

Leo Sun has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of Western Digital.. 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.
Nursing could be a big growth driver for DeVry for years to come.

What: Shares of for-profit higher education companyDeVry Education Group are up 22.9% at 2:18 p.m. EDT on May 6, following the after-hours release of the company's third-quarter financial and operating results on May 5.

So what: DeVry reported solid profits in the quarter, with earnings per share of $0.81. Even when adjusting for restructuring and asset sale gains, earnings per share of $0.71 came in ahead of most Wall Street analyst estimates. But at the same time, revenue continues to decline as enrollment at the company's flagship DeVry University, as well as Carrington College. Revenue fell 3.2% in the quarter.

Operating cash flow and adjusted operating income both increased in the quarter, an indication that steps management is taking to improve DeVry's cost structure and strategy are working.

Now what: Despite challenges at DeVry University and Carrington College, the company is seeing strong demand for its nursing and healthcare programs, and especially strong demand at DeVry Brasil, which saw total enrollment increase 35% in the March semester, to over 79,000 students.

If DeVry can maintain the steady growth in Brazil and continue to leverage the growing demand for healthcare professionals -- don't underestimate the impact of the millions of Baby Boomers retiring over the next decade years as a major driver in this area -- the future could look pretty bright for DeVry.

However, DeVry still has a pending Federal Trade Commission lawsuit hanging over it. DeVry has filed a motion for the case to be dismissed and is "maintaining an open dialogue with the FTC and the Department of Education to explore potential resolution," even as the suit moves its way through the court. Until that's resolved, the company facessome financial risk, though it's unclear how significant it is at this point.

Put it all together, and DeVry makes for an interesting stock to consider. Shares aren't exactly "cheap" on a trailing basis, but with a forward price to earnings multiple in the high single digits, the stock could be in value territory if the business results continue to improve as they did last quarter. Factor in a clean balance sheet with no debt and $330 million in cash, and it looks like the worst may be in the past for DeVry.

The article DeVry Education Group Inc Stock Up 23% on Earnings: Here's What You Need to Know originally appeared on Fool.com.

Jason Hall has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Copyright 1995 - 2016 The Motley Fool, LLC. All rights reserved. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Image source: Air Methods.

Thanks to a sneak preview last week, investors already pretty much knew what to expect fromAir Methods' first-quarter performance.The air medical transport company announced its full first-quarter results after the market closed on Tuesday. Here are the highlights.

Air Methods results: The raw numbers

Metric Q1 2016 Actuals Q1 2015 Actuals Growth (YOY) Sales $269.4 million $238.3 million 13.1% Net income from continuing operations $20.5 million $12.6 million 62.7% Earnings per share $0.50 $0.32 56.3%

Data source: Yahoo! Finance.YOY = Year over year.

What happened with Air Methods this quarter?Air Methods turned in a solid performance in the first quarter. Lower fuel costs served as a major factor in the positive numbers. The company said that air medical services fuel costs dropped $1.2 million from the prior-year period, with fuel expense per flight hour down 35.9% year over year. For Air Methods' tourism segment, fuel expense per flight hour decreased 26.5%.

Other highlights from the first quarter included:

Air medical services revenue jumped 14.2% year over year, to $235.2 million.

Community-based patient transports in the company's air medical services segment increased 22.6% year over year, to13,852.

Net revenue per patient transport dropped slightly from $11,651 to $11,623 in the prior-year period.

Tourism segment revenue fell to $27.2 million -- a 3.5% decline from the first quarter of 2015.

United Rotorcraft external revenue increased 67.8% over the prior-year period, to $6.9 million.

What management had to sayAaron Todd, CEO of Air Methods, liked what he saw during the first quarter. Todd said:

Looking forwardAir Methods might face intensified competition if rivals look to lessen their dependence on revenue from oil and gas customers. PHIis one company that seems to already be making a shift in this direction.

The Louisiana-based helicopter-services company generated 39% of total revenue from its air medical segment in 2015, up from 32% just two years earlier.PHI's stock has outperformed Air Methods so far in 2016, at least in part because of weather issues hurting Air Methods' first-quarter results.

Air Methods stock might be in for good news in the second quarter, though. The company said that total community-based transports in April were 6,142 -- a 21.2% jump from the same quarter last year. Same-base transports during the month increased by 216 over the prior-year period. Weather cancellations were down by 280 compared to April 2015.

That's a good start. If fuel costs remain under control, Air Methods could have even bluer skies ahead.

The article Lower Fuel Costs Help Air Methods Corp. Soar in Q1 originally appeared on Fool.com.

Keith Speights has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool recommends Air Methods. 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.
Main Street Capital reported generally OK results in the first quarter. The company worked out one troubled investment it shares with Gladstone Investments , among other business development companies, while reporting a mixed bag of ups and downs in its portfolio.

This quarter by the numbersA BDC's net income is equal to its operating income plus its capital gains or losses. I like to break these two measures apart, as I think the separate statistics give investors a better understanding of how a company performed in terms of recurring operating income and more volatile below-the-line gains and losses.

Metric (figures per share) First quarter 2016 First quarter2015 Operating income (net investment income) $0.54 $0.51 Capital gains or losses -$0.21 $0.26 Net income $0.33 $0.77 Net asset value (book value) $21.18 $21.87

Source: Company IR, SEC.

A simple rule is that operating income serves as a good measure of earnings and dividend-paying power over the short-term, but over the long haul, a BDC's capital gains and losses are just as important. Like many BDCs, Main Street recently felt the impact of investment impairments on its book value, which fell about 3% per share year-over-year.

Movers and shakersWe're getting further along in the credit cycle, and BDC balance sheets are starting to show it. Where non-accrual rates were once near zero, they are now creeping up into the low single digits. A handful of Main Street's smaller investments are showing some issues, just as others rise in value, partially picking up the slack.

This quarter brought some more certainty to portfolio company Targus, a small investment on Main Street's books, but a frequently appearing stain on balance sheets across the industry. Gladstone Investments' filings note that Targus was restructured in the first quarter, resulting in new debt and equity securities for creditors which included Gladstone and Saratoga, in addition to Main Street Capital.

Some of Main Street's lower middle-market investments are headed in the wrong direction. The combined valuations of Mid-Columbia, Houston Plating, L.F. Manufacturing, and Gulf Manufacturing fell by about $6 million (or roughly $0.12 per Main Street Capital share) this quarter. This group was previously identified by looking at the dividend income laggards in Main Street's full-year 2015 results, and will be important to watch going forward.

But just as some companies were marked down, others were written up. Portfolio companies GRT Rubber and Travis Acquisition enjoyed a combined $5.3 million increase to their carrying values this quarter, or about $0.11 cents per share.

The ups and downs acrossMain Street's entire 198-company portfolio net out to about $0.26 per share in realized and unrealized capital losses this quarter.As for its outsize positions in energy-related investments, it appears the easy losses have been accounted for, though it remains something of a wait-and-see issue as to whether those just barely hanging on can live long enough to see higher energy prices return.

Big win: More low-cost capitalMain Street Capital makes its money primarily from the spread between what it pays to borrow, and what it charges its own borrowers. Thus, reducing its funding costs are every bit as important as maximizing its investment returns.

The company announced getting the green light to add a third Small Business Investment Company (SBIC) license under its umbrella, which will enable it to borrow up to $125 million in 10-year debt financing at rates that were as low as 2.5% in March. That's the benefit of being on the good side of the Small Business Administration, whose SBIC program is a boon for BDCs that invest in small businesses. (Believe it or not, 10-year money from the SBIC is actually less expensive than what Main Street is currently paying on its bonds that mature in less than four years.)

Main Street Capital earned its dividend from net investment income, and reported relatively minor changes in its portfolio value during the first quarter. Given worse performance from many of its peers over much longer time frames, its first quarter performance was simply good enough to keep investors happy.

The article Main Street Capital Earnings: Good Enough originally appeared on Fool.com.

Jordan Wathen 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.
Germany's top health regulator reported this week that the country will pass sweeping medical marijuana legislation that will allow Germans with illness access to the drug. Separately, momentum is building in Canada for pro-pot legislation that will allow for recreational use. Since these advances in the marijuana movement could influence decisions here in the U.S., let's learn more about what's going on.

Overcoming obstaclesCurrently, Germans with AIDS can be prescribed marinol, a drug derived from the cannabinoid THC, and MS patients who suffer from muscle spasticity can be prescribed GW Pharmaceuticals' Sativex, a spray formulation of THC. Soon, many more patients who suffer from a variety of otherwise un-treatable ailments may also be able to get their prescriptions filled for dried marijuana buds.

According to Germany's Health Minister Hermann Grohe, legislation has been sent to Germany's parliament that would allow patients to purchase medical marijuana at pharmacies. That medical mariijuana would be grown at specially licensed plantations in Germany, and health insurance will be required to cover the cost of a prescription.

Germany's legislation doesn't go as far as recreational users might like, but it could help break down barriers that could lead to further reform later on. That's what happened already in the United States. Prior to passing their recreational marijuana laws, Colorado, Oregon, Washington, and Alaska all had medical marijuana laws on the books first.

Germany's parliament could still say no to Grohe's legislation, but if they pass it, medical marijuana could become a reality in 2017.

North of the borderIn Canada, it's already OK for people to use medical marijuana under licenses granted by Health Canada. That privilege could expand significantly next year if Health Minister Jane Philpott's plans pan out.

Philpott says that recreational marijuana legislation will be put forth early in 2017 that makes good on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's promises to legalize the drug. In December, Trudeau reiterated his pro-pot stance in a speech to Canada's parliament.

At a special United Nations general assembly meeting on drugs recently, Philpott explained Canada's pro-pot position. By regulating the market, she believes they can keep marijuana out of the hands of children while also keeping criminals from profiting from the drug. Decriminalization will also reduce the burden that is put on prisons by enforcing the country's existing anti-marijuana laws.

Multiple frontsThe global grass-roots movement in support of marijuana legalization comes at the same time that drug developers are making strides in scientifically proving that marijuana can help patients.

Although the company suffered a high-profile disappointment when a study of THC in cancer pain failed in 2015, GW Pharmaceuticals reported earlier this year that its Epidiolex, a CBD derived medicine, significantly lowered the number of seizures experienced by people suffering from a form of epilepsy.

Specifically, GW Pharmaceuticalsstudyshowed that patients with Dravet syndrome who were treated with Epidiolex experienced 39% fewer seizures per month.

Increasing media coverage of scientific advances in the evaluation of marijuana as medicine may be helping tear down long-standing stereotypes. According to recent polls, Americans are more willing than ever to support marijuana legalization. Nationally, a poll conducted by Gallup revealed that 58% of Americans support legal marijuana. Similarly, polls in states considering approval, such as Florida, where medical marijuana is being considered, also tilt in favor of approval.

Looking aheadThere's considerable momentum to take a different approach to marijuana than has been taken in the past. An approval of medical marijuana in Germany and passage of recreational marijuana in Canada could further that momentum. If it does, then the global market for marijuana could look much different in a few years than it does today.

The article Marijuana Gains Global Support With Approvals On The Horizon In Germany and Canada originally appeared on Fool.com.

Todd Campbell has no position in any stocks mentioned.Todd owns E.B. Capital Markets, LLC. E.B. Capital's clients may have positions in the companies mentioned. Like this article? Follow him onTwitter where he goes by the handle@ebcapitalto see more articles like this.The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Copyright 1995 - 2016 The Motley Fool, LLC. All rights reserved. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Image: South Jersey Industries.

Local utility South Jersey Industries isn't all that unusual a company in the utility sector, serving a relatively small part of the country, and focusing on serving its core customer base. Coming into Friday's first-quarter financial report, South Jersey investors expected that the company would see its earnings fall somewhat from year-ago levels.

South Jersey's results confirmed that expectation, but the utility thinks that, by shifting away from the solar market and concentrating more on its regulated utility unit, it can maximize its potential. Let's take a closer look at South Jersey Industries, and why investors aren't buying the bullish argument that the utility is trying to sell.

South Jersey Industries bridges the GAAPUnderstanding South Jersey Industries' first-quarter results requires a closer look at how the utility accounts for its business. On a GAAP basis, income from continuing operations jumped by more than a quarter, to $68.2 million, and that produced a solid gain on earnings per share. However, using the company's preferred economic earnings metric, the level of economic net income fell about 3%, to $57 million. That produced economic earnings of $0.80 per share, exactly matching the consensus forecast among investors, but falling from last year's $0.86 per share figure.

The key to the drop in economic earnings lies in the way that South Jersey handles derivatives. Economic earnings is an important concept because, under GAAP accounting rules, a company has to claim the gain or loss on a derivative contract during the period. However, the rise or fall in the value of a derivative now is offset by the changes in the future costs that the transaction was designed to hedge in the first place.

For instance, if you enter into a futures contract to buy natural gas to generate electricity at $2 per million BTUs, and the price rises to $3, you'll have an immediate profit from the contract. However, you'll suffer the higher cost in the future of potentially paying $3 for the natural gas when you need it. The concept of economic earnings offsets that element, and that explains most of the difference between GAAP and economic earnings for South Jersey this quarter.

Looking more closely at South Jersey's numbers, the regulated South Jersey Gas unit enjoyed a 4% rise in net income, with strong customer growth helping to add to contributions from various program investments. Nearly 6,600 new customers have come onboard in the past year, bringing its total to above 375,000. South Jersey also believes that the warmer winter will reduce its uncollectible account balances this year compared to previous periods, which should help in the future.

South Jersey's other businesses enjoyed success, as well. In the South Jersey Energy Group, efforts to use storage and transportation assets as efficiently as possible helped send economic earnings upward by more than half from year-ago levels, and the company has several contracts coming online both this year and in the future to produce ongoing growth. Meanwhile, the South Jersey Energy Services unit saw economic earnings also disappear, with the company saying that the phase out of investment tax credits from solar development weighed on its overall results.

CEO Michael Renna summed up the results nicely. "Robust performance in our utility," Renna said, "complemented by a 56% year-over-year increase in earnings from our commodity business and improved operations from our energy production business, nearly offset an $8.5 million year-over-year planned reduction in investment tax credits."

What's ahead for South Jersey Industries?Looking forward, South Jersey remains excited about its utility business. The gas utility unit should amount to 67% to 70% of overall earnings. That will likely come at the expense of SJ Energy Services and its solar development exposure. Core business growth should offset the shrinking solar revenue, and South Jersey expects to spend more than $600 million on investments in 2016 and 2017.

In the long run, that strategy could pay off well. As a five-year goal, South Jersey wants to post $150 million in economic earnings by the year 2020. That's ambitious, but not unattainable, especially if overall conditions change for the better.

South Jersey investors didn't respond well to the news, as the stock fell 3% by late in the trading day following the announcement. Longer term, though, South Jersey Industries has the potential to ride the strength of its regulated utility unit to more successful growth for years to come.

The article South Jersey Industries Stays Steady on Utility Gains originally appeared on Fool.com.

Dan Caplinger has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool recommends South Jersey Industries. 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.
What happened

Shares of Sierra Wireless, Inc. (NASDAQ: SWIR) were up 29% as of 12:30 p.m. EST on Friday after the Internet of Things pure play reported strong fourth-quarter 2016 results.

So what

Quarterly revenue climbed 12.5% year over year, to $163 million, and translated to adjusted net income of $8.8 million, or $0.27 per share. That's up from $2.5 million, or $0.08 per share, in last year's fourth quarter. For perspective, Sierra Wireless' guidance called for Q4 revenue of $157 million to $166 million, and adjusted earnings per share in the range of $0.13 to $0.19. Sierra Wireless management credited their outsized profitability to a combination of higher revenue, strong gross margin, and the company's continued focus on cost-management initiatives.

Image source: Sierra Wireless.

Perhaps most notably within Sierra Wireless' top line, original equipment manufacturer solutions revenue climbed 11.2% year over year, to $163 million, reflecting continued contributions from new programs, and normalized demand from key existing customers and programs -- as management promised last quarter. Revenue from the enterprise solutions segment also climbed 27.1%, to $21 million, while the smaller cloud and connectivity services' segment revenue was flat, at roughly $6.8 million.

Now what

In addition, Sierra Wireless issued guidance for first-quarter 2017 revenue of $152 million to $161 million, which should translate to adjusted earnings per share of $0.13 to $0.20. Analysts, on average, were looking for revenue slightly below the midpoint of that range, with significantly lower adjusted earnings of $0.12 per share.

In short, this was a strong quarterly beat from Sierra Wireless, followed by solid guidance indicating more of the same going forward. With Sierra Wireless positioned well to take advantage of the burgeoning Internet of Things market opportunity, it's no surprise to see shares trading near a fresh 52-week high today.

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Steve Symington has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Sierra Wireless. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
United Continental shares sank last month on weak Q2 guidance.

What: Airline giant United Continental has taken investors on a wild ride in 2016. The stock plummeted in January along with the rest of the stock market, but bounced back in a big way during February.

However, a big decline in unit revenue during Q1 and a disappointing Q2 outlook tripped up the stock again last month. United Continental shares plummeted 23.5% during April, according to data provided by S&P Global Market Intelligence.

United Continental YTD Stock Performance, data by YCharts.

So what: Airlines have been buffeted by a weak unit revenue environment since early 2015, and United Continental has been among the worst hit. United has the most international exposure of any U.S. airline, and international routes have underperformed recently due to the impact of the strong dollar, falling fuel surcharges, and weak economic conditions in key markets like Brazil.

Last month, United Continental reported that passenger revenue per available seat mile (PRASM) fell 10.5% year over year during Q1 for its international routes. Even in the domestic market, United posted a mid-single-digit PRASM decline, driven by rising competition and weak demand in Houston, the energy capital of the United States.

United Continental still produced margin expansion last quarter, thanks to a sharp reduction in its fuel costs. However, it won't benefit from nearly the same level of fuel savings in the second half of 2016. That's worrisome for investors, because United's unit revenue still shows no signs of turning a corner.

Now what: The sharp drop in United Continental stock since the end of March has left it trading for less than six times the company's projected 2016 earnings. This indicates that a substantial earnings decline is already baked into the share price.

United's management has stated that unit revenue trends look a lot better for the summer and fall due to a combination of targeted capacity cuts, easier comparisons, and new revenue-boosting initiatives. By Q4, the company expects unit revenue to be roughly flat on a year-over-year basis except in the Pacific region.

If United can meet that goal, its stock should recover. However, airline executives have repeatedly underestimated the depth of their revenue challenges over the past year. As a result, United Continental shares will likely remain under pressure until the company can show tangible progress in its revenue recovery.

The article Why United Continental Holdings, Inc. Shares Plunged 23.5% in April originally appeared on Fool.com.

Adam Levine-Weinberg owns shares of United Continental Holdings. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Copyright 1995 - 2016 The Motley Fool, LLC. All rights reserved. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Image source: Zayo.

Zayo Group Holdings has wholeheartedly adopted the business of giving companies the communications infrastructure they need to get connectivity and cloud services is a business. Given all the interest in moving technology and telecommunications into the cloud, Zayo has been able to capitalize on the opportunity to deliver the necessary pieces for enterprise customers seeking ways to connect as efficiently and expeditiously as possible. Coming into its fiscal third-quarter financial report on Thursday, Zayo investors had expected modest profits on solid revenue growth. Zayo's top-line performance was strong, but net losses marred the picture somewhat for the company.

Let's take a closer look at Zayo Group Holdings and what it said about its past performance and prospects for the future.

Zayo Group sees red (ink) Zayo Group's fiscal third-quarter results didn't live up to the expectations investors had for it. Revenue was up by about 40% to $478 million, but the lion's share of that growth came from the company's integration of its Zayo Canada unit into its results. On a pro forma organic basis, sales were up just 6% from year-ago levels. Moreover, the company posted a net loss of $19.3 million, which was much worse than the $10.8 million loss from last year. That worked out to $0.08 per share in losses, and that was a dime less than the modest $0.02 per share gain investors were hoping to see.

From an operational standpoint, Zayo's ongoing addition to its growing network continued during the quarter. Zayo spent $185.1 million on capital expenditures, including $11.1 million from its Canadian unit. The Allstream acquisition was a major component of growth during the period, adding about 15,000 route miles and 3,000 buildings to the overall network. All told, Zayo boosted its network length by 16,515 route miles, and 4,077 buildings came online for the company as well, accelerating its pace of growth from recent quarters.

Looking more closely at Zayo's results, recent acquisitions and consolidations make comparing figures across years fairly difficult. However, the fact that growth in operating costs and expenses outpaced revenue growth was the reason operating income stayed almost flat compared to year-ago levels. In particular, general operating costs jumped almost 70%, dwarfing gains in depreciation, amortization, and general overhead expenses that climbed at roughly half that rate.

In order to help give the company more liquidity, Zayo entered into a couple of major transactions. In January, Zayo negotiated a $400 million increase to its term loan facility, priced at the variable London Interbank Offering Rate plus 3.5 percentage points. In April, Zayo went further, making a private offering of $550 million in nine-year notes. The deal essentially refinances existing Zayo debt, with part of the proceeds going toward repaying part of the company's secured loan facility, and the rest redeeming outstanding debt that would have been due in 2020. By doing so, Zayo secured five more years to repay debt.

Growing by acquisitionZayo hasn't stopped looking for ways to grow. In April, the company bought Clearview International, a provider of colocation and cloud-infrastructure services based in Texas. The purchase price was just $18.9 million, but by adding data centers in Dallas and Waco, the company boosted its presence in a key market and expects to take advantage of growth in the greater Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area.

Zayo's efforts to boost its stock price also continued during the quarter. The company used more of its repurchase program, raising the amount spent under its $500 million repurchase program to almost $72 million. It would take a dramatic ramp-up in buyback activity to use up the authorization, which expires on Monday, but the potential for further return of capital to shareholders is also encouraging.

Zayo shareholders weathered the net loss well, and the stock rose 3% at midday following the news. With so much going on in the cloud-computing space, Zayo has the potential to keep growing and finding ways to take advantage of business opportunities well into the future.

The article Zayo Group Posts More Red Ink originally appeared on Fool.com.

Dan Caplinger has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool recommends Zayo Group. 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.
President Barack Obama urged Congress on Friday to take actions that would help the U.S. economy, including raising the federal minimum wage, passing new trade agreements and simplifying the tax code.

"Only Congress can fully close the loopholes" that wealthy individuals or corporations can take advantage of, Obama said in a statement.

Obama said new U.S. regulations announced on Friday on requiring the financial industry to identify the real owners of companies "are going to make a difference." He called on Congress to pass legislation that would help law enforcement investigate and prevent financial crimes.

(Reporting by Jeff Mason and Susan Heavey; Writing by Doina Chiacu; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)
The newly crowned Miss USA, Rima Fakih, explained on Fox & Friends Thursday why she was photographed on a stripper pole in 2007.

The photos were released by the Detroit morning radio show "Mojo in the Morning" less than 24 hours after Fakih beat out Miss Oklahoma, who lost the title after answering a question about illegal immigration.

FOX411: The 'Pole Dancing' Photo That Started the Scandal.

"It wasn't pole dancing," Fakih said of the photos. "It was more of a ... promotional event."

"Have you ever done those pole dancing classes?" she asked the show's hosts. "That's what it was. My friend who was a DJ at the station said 'Why don't you get up there?'"

VIDEO: Miss USA Rima Fakih's Complete 'Fox & Friends' Interview.

Fakih, 23, said she complied, "and a few pictures were snapped, and, of course, they don't look the best angle as I normally [do]."

When asked how she would have answered the question posed to Miss Oklahoma, Morgan Woolard, on illegal immigration, Fakih said she would have taken a "neutral" stance, "being from a family that are immigrants to this country."

SLIDESHOW: All 50 Miss USA Contestants Pose in Skimpy Lingerie.

Woolard said on the live Miss USA telecast that she thought Arizona had the right to enact a law that allowed police to ask people who they suspected to be illegal immigrants to produce proof of citizenship.

Fakih, who was born in Lebanon and immigrated when she was seven, also said she hoped her background would help her in the Miss Universe contest in August, where she will be representing the United States.

"I think [the U.S.] have the ethnic background this time [to get to the finals]," she said.

Miss USA contestants have not traditionally fared well in the international pageant.
Rima Fakih is believed to be the first Muslim to win the title of Miss USA when she was crowned the winner in 2010.

Now, the beauty pageant winner has converted to Christianity, recently sharing a verse from Philippians on Twitter.

Philippians 4:13 I can do all things through him who strengthens me pic.twitter.com/RSTZ9IJD3Z  Rima Fakih (@RimaFakih) March 30, 2016

Fakih converted to Christianity last month in preparation for her marriage in Lebanon next week to Wassim Salibi, a wealthy Christian music producer, Christian Today reports.

At the time of winning the Miss USA title, Fakih said, "I'd like to say I'm American first, and I am an Arab-American, I am Lebanese-American, and I am Muslim-American."

According to the news site Albawaba, Fakih only connected to her Muslim roots in college.

"When I went to the University of Michigan, because there's more of a Muslim community, my dad wanted me to learn more about Islam," she said. "I didn't know much about Ramadan and other holidays, and my dad wanted me to take that opportunity and learn."

After winning Miss America, Fakih was involved in some controversy when photos surfaced of her participating in a radio station's "Stripper 101" contest. She was also convicted of drunk driving in 2012.
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A little girl in Ohio who nearly a year ago was on the brink of losing her life due to a severe heart condition is approaching her first birthday, thanks in part to her mothers intuition.

Ten days after giving birth to twins Evie and Ada Vavra, Amy Vavra noticed one of her newborns Evie, who weighed only 4 pounds wasnt eating. After calling their pediatrician, Amy and her husband, Brian Vavra, learned their little girl had a low temperature of about 94.3. Evie was rushed by ambulance to the emergency room, where doctors observed that her heart was abnormal.

The amount of doctors who rushed into the room was terrifying, Brian Vavra told the Cleveland Clinic, where Evie was treated.

Doctors diagnosed Evie with a severe coarctation of the aorta, a heart defect marked by the narrowing of the large blood vessel leading to the heart. The condition meant Evies aorta had closed, which in turn restricted blood flow to her lower body and placed excessive stress on her little heart.

Within a couple more hours, her organs would have started suffering permanent damage, Brian said, and if wed waited overnight  she would have died.

Medication helped restore Evies blood flow for the time being and allowed her heart to relax. In the following seven months, she underwent a handful of proceduresthe last being a surgery to cut the blocked portion of her aorta.

We felt that the best thing for her, for her whole life, so she wouldnt have blood pressure problems which can lead to higher risk of having heart disease or even strokes later in life was to fix this while she was little, Dr. Robert Stewart, interim chair of pediatric and congenital heart surgery and surgical director of congenital heart transplantation at Cleveland Clinic Childrens said.

Today, Evies family is preparing for her and her twin sisters first birthday. Doctors expect her to live a long, happy and healthy life.

I just feel so lucky to have both of them, [and] have them here and healthy, Amy Vavra said in the release. Its been the hardest year of my life and also the best year of my life, and I just feel like I have so much to be grateful for this Mothers Day.


When an 18-year-old arrived at a London emergency room with severe abdominal pain, no appetite, and a fever, doctors recognized the symptoms of appendicitis and scheduled an emergency surgery.

They were in for a shock. Once the teen had been cut open, doctors at North Middlesex University Hospital were "very surprised to see blood coming from the liver," while his appendix seemed just fine, Dr. Joshua Luck tells Live Science. They were so surprised, in fact, that they thought they might have nicked a blood vessel. What the teen had failed to mention: Two days earlier he'd been hit in the abdomen by two paintballs during his first attempt at the sport, reports ABC News. Though the paintballswhich can travel up to 300 feet per seconddidn't leave a bruise near his liver, it's not uncommon for "seemingly innocuous events to cause internal injuries," Luck says.

The August 2015 incident "represents the first report of paintball-related blunt traumatic injury to the liver," researchers explain in BMJ Case Reports. While eye injuries are from paintball are "well recognized," solid organ damage from paintballs has only been reported in three prior cases: one involving the kidney and two involving the penis/scrotum.

Doctors were able to stop the bleeding and confirmed weeks later that the teen's liver was functioning well. "Whether he'll try (paintball) again is yet to be decided," Luck says.

(This guy burst his bladder in an odd way.)

This article originally appeared on Newser: Teen Plays Paintball for First Time, Suffers Unheard Of Injury

More From Newser
Now that we know who the Republican nominee will be, its time to put away the calculators, and all that delegate math we learned when we thought this whole thing was going to a contested convention. However, should we forget what we learned from the process? I say no way.

We learned every state is different in how they award delegates.

For example, in Colorado, constituents don't even vote in a primary or caucus anymore. They just elect delegates.

We learned in Pennsylvania, most of the delegates -- no matter who wins the state -- aren't bound to that winner.

The most important thing we learned is that the will of the people, and the votes they cast don't always determine the final result. So my question to you today is this: what are we going to do with that information? Should each state re-analyze the way they pick their delegates? Should we streamline the way states choose delegates, or does that take too much power away? Whatever the case, I don't think we should disregard this conversation just because we have an apparent nominee. We've always been told our voice counts when we vote -- but don't you want to make sure?


Programming alert: Watch "Beauty and the Beast: When Kate Met Chapo" Saturday, May 7 at 8p ET and 11p ET and Sunday, May 8 at 9p ET and 12a ET.

Joaquin Guzman, better known as El Chapo is the billionaire drug kingpin whose Sinaloa Drug Cartel is largely responsible for the terrible scourge of Heroin and Fentanyl flooding the United States.

Sinaloa-provided dope smuggled across our southern border is killing thousands of Americans and creating an unprecedented crisis in regions like New England and the upper Mid-West. These are suburban and rural communities that have never experienced anything of the magnitude of the current epidemic. In tiny New Hampshire, for example, there were 400 overdose deaths in both 2014 and 2015, and 2016 is on track to match those terrible years.

A savage murderer, El Chapo ruthlessly used graphic violence to cement his control over the Mexican drug trade. He is known by the DEA and Mexican authorities as the Usama bin Laden of the Drug Trade. When he used an elaborate mile long tunnel to escape from Altiplano Maximum Security Prison outside Mexico City last July, he was the most wanted criminal on earth. The U.S. government placed a $5 million bounty on his head, which was matched by the Mexican government.

Despite everything, when he was on the lam hunted by the full force of the Mexican government with active assistance from our DEA, El Chapo risked everything to communicate with flirty text messages with Kate Del Castillo, the object of his apparent obsession.

Kate starred in a popular prime time soap opera called La Reina del Sur (The Queen of the South). El Chapo loved the character she played, a ruthless drug queen-pin, the female version of himself.

Through a series of actions that I describe in my special report on the Fox News Channel, "Beauty and the Beast," this weekend, they became pen pals.

El Chapo wanted nothing more than to meet her in person. She wanted to meet him to sell him on the idea of a movie, TV series or documentary about his life. He agreed, wanting to be as notorious as Pablo Escobar whose life is being portrayed in the Narco series on Netflix.

Kates producers suggested that Sean Penn might be interested in participating in her project. Kate asked El Chapo if she could bring Sean along to their secret jungle rendezvous. He agreed although Kate says that at the time, he had no idea who Sean Penn was.

Can you imagine a sane fugitive, who was being actively hunted by hundreds of soldiers and agents allowing this high-profile party to visit him in his jungle hideaway?

He did it, I submit, because of his obsession with Kate. Nothing mattered as much as meeting her. When they were finally alone in the jungle after a long meeting that included Sean Penn and the other producers, Chapo told Kate tenderly that their rendezvous made it the best day of his life.

Chapo then disappeared into the jungle in Kates telling, leaving her unmolested. The raids on their location began just hours after the actors left. The pursuit finally ended in January 2016 with El Chapos recapture after several bloody shootouts.

But for his obsession with Beauty, the Beast might still be at large.
Do the rights of boys who identify as girls trump the rights of girls who are born girls?

That question is at the heart of a lawsuit filed by dozens of Illinois parents after the Obama administrations Department of Education strong-armed their school district into allowing a transgender student the right to use all girls locker rooms.

Click here to join Todds American Dispatch: A must-read for conservatives!

The girls are mortified, said Alliance Defending Freedom attorney Jeremy Tedesco, a religious liberty law firm representing some 50 families. They are in a constant state of fear that their bodies are going to be exposed to a male in these settings. Its a constant state of stress and anxiety for them.

At least one of the plaintiffs, a female student at the high school, was harassed and bullied because she is uncomfortable changing in the same locker room with a biological boy.

While she was in the changing stall, other girls who were in the locker room began calling her names, including transphobic and homophobic, the lawsuit states.

The DOE has yet to respond to the lawsuit.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois told the Chicago Tribune the lawsuit is a sad development by groups opposed to fair and humane treatment of all students, including those who are transgender.

In 2015 the DOE warned the Township High School District 211 in Palatine that unless they gave a biologically male student unfettered access to the girls locker rooms  they would revoke $6 million in federal funding.

In other words, the Obama administration committed a de facto act of extortion.

Every school district in America has gotten the message, Tedesco told me. The DOE is starting to enforce it through threats of revoking funding. We get calls every week from parents and school administrators asking what can we do? They are caving because they know the federal government is going to come after them.

Alliance Defending Freedom alleges the Department of Education has been using Title IX to bully and intimidate school districts across the country by redefining what the term sex means.

Title IX is a federal statute created in 1972 and amended in 2015 that reads:

No person in the United States shall on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.

Tedesco tells me that what the DOE is doing is completely unlawful.

They are effectively redefining a clear and unambiguous term in a federal statute, he said. The term is sex. For the 40 years of that statutes history  sex has always meant male and female. But they redefined the term to include gender identity.

The lawsuit filed May 4th in federal court alleges the DOEs actions have (among other things) violated the girls right of privacy.

Every day these girls go to school, they experience embarrassment, humiliation, anxiety, fear, apprehension, stress, degradation, and loss of dignity because they will have to use the locker room and restroom with a biological male, the lawsuit states.

Alliance Defending Freedom says the districts new policy has already had a profoundly negative effect among female students.

? One girl started wearing her gym clothes underneath her regular clothes all day, so she only has to peel off a layer instead of exposing her unclothed body in the presence of a biological male in the locker room;

? Some girls actively avoid locker rooms all day;

? Other girls wait as long as possible to use the restroom  so they wont have to share it with a biological male.

The ACLU of Illinois was especially offended that Alliance Defending Freedom referred to the transgender student as he in the lawsuit.

Its pretty offensive that they dont even fundamentally acknowledge that our client is a girl, ACLU spokesman Ed Yohnka told the Tribune. If you dont understand enough about what it means to be transgender to get that, I dont know how you even begin to opine on this.

In other words, in todays America  your gender identity is based on feelings rather than your God-given plumbing and parts.

Fox Business anchor Trish Regan asked a profound question on her show this week regarding the transgender bathroom controversy that has gripped the nation.

What about the civil rights of women who dont want men in their bathrooms, she asked. Do their rights matter at all?

Im afraid the answer to that question is no  the rights of women do not matter.

And any woman or young girl who complains about sharing locker rooms or shower stalls or bathrooms with a biological male -- risks being labeled a transphobic bigot.

Sorry ladies  your civil rights just got double-flushed.
Former 2016 presidential candidate Jeb Bush announced late Friday he will not support Donald Trump for president, joining South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham and other GOP figures giving the presumptive nominee the cold shoulder.

Trump, meanwhile, said hes getting endorsements left and right and brushed off the comments of party figures and ex-candidates speaking out against his bid.

Of Graham, he said in a statement: "I fully understand why Lindsey Graham cannot support me. If I got beaten as badly as I beat him, and all the other candidates he endorsed, I would not be able to give my support either.

Bush announced his formal opposition to Trump on Facebook. The former Florida governor congratulated the billionaire businessman for wrapping up the nomination but went on to say: Donald Trump has not demonstrated that temperament or strength of character required to lead the nation.

He has not displayed a respect for the Constitution. And, he is not a consistent conservative. These are all reasons why I cannot support his candidacy, Bush said.

He also said Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton is an untrustworthy liberal politician and so, In November, I will not vote for Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton, but I will support principled conservatives at the state and federal levels.

Bush, early in the Republican primary race last year, had been considered the candidate to beat only to get hammered by Trump in the debates and, later, in the primaries themselves. He, along with former candidate Graham, eventually dropped out.

Graham voiced similar sentiments in his statement, saying he will not support Clinton or Trump.

I absolutely will not support Hillary Clinton for President.  I also cannot in good conscience support Donald Trump because I do not believe he is a reliable Republican conservative nor has he displayed the judgment and temperament to serve as Commander in Chief, Graham said.

He added he does not plan to attend the Republican convention in July.

Other former primary rivals have gotten behind Trump, including retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, now involved in the running mate selection process, and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.

Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, a former critic of Trump, also now says he'd be willing to work in a Trump administration, even as vice president.

Trump has made no such public overtures to the longtime Texas governor, who acknowledged he hasn't spoken to Trump in months.

"If Donald Trump says, `Perry, let's talk about you helping in this role,' I'm open to it," Perry said Friday.

Trump tweeted "Thank you Rick!" after Perry's endorsement.

Trump also has been sparring from afar with House Speaker Paul Ryan, who on Thursday said hes not ready at this point to support Trump. However, the two plan to meet next week.

Also supporting Trump is former Vice President Dick Cheney, who told CNN that he has always supported the GOP nominee, as well as former Kansas senator and 1996 Republican presidential nominee Bob Dole.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign reportedly has begun courting big-money donors to Jeb Bush's 2016 run, claiming that the Democratic front-runner is a preferable choice for them to presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump.

Politico reported Thursday that Clinton supporters have kept a list of top donors to Bush and other unsuccessful GOP candidates for months, but refrained from contacting them until Trump's convincing win in this week's Indiana primary all but locked up the Republican nomination.

Two Bush donors told the website that they had received multiple calls from Democratic friends pushing them to support Clinton. Both declined to do so.

"Its smart that they are doing it but I dont know how much it will work," one of the donors said. "As much as Jeb hates Trump, and he really does hate Trump, he doesnt want to help Hillary."

The Politico report specifically named former Jeb finance chairman and New York Jets owner Woody Johnson, as well as top Bush fundraiser Jack Oliver, as targets who could be persuaded to support Clinton.

An early favorite for the Republican nomination, Bush's campaign was sidetracked by running verbal battles with Trump. The former Florida governor quit the race after three contests, finishing no higher than fourth in any of them.

"There's no official outreach from the campaign but I would not be at all surprised if our supporters are doing it on their own," Clinton campaign spokesman Josh Schwerin told the website.

The report came a day after spokesmen for former presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush said they would not play any part in this year's general election campaign and will skip this summer's GOP convention in Cleveland.

Click for more from Politico.
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Buzz Cuts:

 Dems, not GOP hold key for Trump in November

 Power Play: Hillarys costly pivot delay

 Favorability gap favors Hillary

 Huma and the G-men

 No editor could refuse this story

DEMS, NOT GOP HOLD KEY FOR TRUMP IN NOVEMBER

On his way to a 4-point popular vote loss in 2012, Mitt Romney won 93 percent of Republican voters, about the same as President Obama did among Democrats.



Romney won among independents too, besting Obama by 5 points.



Romneys problem was simple: Too many Democrats. Exit polling showed the blue team made up 38 percent of the electorate, 6 points more than the red team, and 9 points more than independents.



Given the anguish within many precincts of the Republican Party today, it is safe to say Donald Trump will not get 93 percent of the Republican vote. The most recent USA Today/Suffolk University poll showed Trump with 80 percent of the Republican vote against Hillary Clinton, compared to 90 percent of Democrats who favor their partys presumptive nominee.



Provided there is no conservative third-party alternative on offer, both Clinton and Trumps numbers will improve among members of their parties. But the gap will certainly persist. Add in the fact that Trump trails Clinton among independents by 6 points, and you have the makings for a bad beatdown.



House Speaker Paul Ryan and other Republican leaders have a solution in mind for Trump: Change his substance and style in a bid to unite the GOP.



What a predictably terrible idea.



There are more Democrats in America than there are Republicans, and given the astonishing Obama turnout machine and the historically high Democratic intensity against Trump, there is no reason to believe this election will be different.



While there are some questions about the intensity and party loyalty of African-American voters  13 percent of the electorate in 2012  one suspects that the jaw-dropping anti-Trump intensity among Hispanic voters would likely make up for any slack in the Democratic coalition.



Just as it was a cultural signifier for black Americans to vote for Barack Obama, it seems likely that Hispanic Americans will see a vote against Donald Trump in the same way. Taco bowl or no taco bowl.



We know that its state results not national polling that matters, but if Trump trails Clinton by anything like 10 points overall you can skip the state drilldown. Youre looking at a rout.



But the states can instruct us as to where Trump should be looking for his voters. One of the most discussed targets for a potential Trump flip is Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania is not very Republican; just 35 percent in 2012 and only 20 percent independent.



If Trump really is going to be competitive in the Keystone State it would mean cracking into the 45 percent of the electorate that identified as Democrats last time around.



It is a good rule of thumb to say that the more unified party always wins, but given Trumps attitudes and views, he will have to find another way.



Lets say Trump could push his share of the Republican vote 10 points higher, he would still lose to Clinton. And thats assuming that GOP turnout stays relatively high, no guarantee in an election year thats about as pleasant as amoebic dysentery on a mule train.



And so, Ryans threat to Trump to withhold resources and support rings a little hollow. Trump is right to say that he probably doesnt necessarily want their support. He needs money, but would do better hitting up his fellow billionaires and grass-roots donors than flogging an unwilling GOP donor base anyway.



What Trump really needs is to give Hillary Clinton the same headache hes got.



Trumps general-election focus of bashing free trade, calling for a foreign-policy pullback and increased domestic spending are all sweet music to the Bernie Bros. Yes, it is possible that Trump could lose more ground among the Republicans, but he needs the electorate to look very different to have a chance anyway. If Trump keeps trying to break up the Democratic coalition, it might work, or it might end up in a crash-and-burn season finale.



But Ryans call for a more conventional Trump candidacy would produce a predictable loss, though perhaps at a smaller margin. That would do Trump no better, but it would help Ryan and his party prevent down-ballot disasters.



As the negotiation between Trump and the GOP leadership plays out, Trump derives considerable leverage from the fact that he cant win with them, but just might be able to win without them.



POWER PLAY: WHAT WILL TRUMP PAY FOR GOP MONEY?

Donald Trumps stances have made him popular with voters, but many donors are hesitant to come to his side. But he needs the cash to take on Hillary Clinton. Will that be enough incentive for big money Republicans to open their wallets? WashExs David Drucker and National Journals Josh Kraushaar explain to Chris Stirewalt. WATCH HERE.



[Watch Fox: For all your latest political news and analysis tune into Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace Check local listings for broadcast times in your area.]



WITH YOUR SECOND CUP OF COFFEE

Staten Island Advance: In 1874 Captain Edgar Wakeman, partially paralyzed and suffering from fainting spells, arrived at Sailors Snug Harbor [on Staten Island] seeking help writing his autobiography. The man he had asked for help was Mark Twain. Twain had first met Wakeman aboard the steamship America on a voyage from San Francisco to New York City in 1866. Twain was fascinated by the gregarious old salt and featured him as a character in several of his books, often under the name Captain Stormfield. Wakeman first came to national attention in 1849 by hijacking the steamship New World, then under police guard at an East River dock [he] forced the deputies overboard at Staten Island for a wet three mile slog back to the ferry. The manhunt for Wakeman continued for years with multiple narrow escapes.



Got a TIP from the RIGHT or the LEFT? Email FoxNewsFirst@FOXNEWS.COM



POLL CHECK

Real Clear Politics Averages

General Election: Clinton vs. Trump: Clinton +6.5 points

Generic Congressional Vote: Democrats +2.3



POWER PLAY: HILLARYS COSTLY PIVOT DELAY

The Democratic primary was pretty much over before it started, but Hillary Clinton still cant put it away with Bernie Sanders hanging around forcing her to put off her Trump attacks a bit longer. How far will Sanders continue to push Clinton and can she make her general election pivot to Trump without angering Sanders coalition? WashExs David Drucker and National Journals Josh Kraushaar explain to Chris Stirewalt. WATCH HERE.



FAVORABILITY GAP FAVORS HILLARY

FiveThirtyEight: Clintons average strongly unfavorable rating in probability sample polls from late March to late April, 37 percent, is about 5 percentage points higher than the previous high between 19803 and 2012. Trump, though, is on another planet. Trumps average strongly unfavorable rating, 53 percent, is 20 percentage points higher than every candidates rating besides Clintons.  No major party nominee before Clinton or Trump had a double-digit net negative strong favorability rating. Clintons would be the lowest ever, except for Trump. In previous cycles, the nominees of each party almost always had a strongly favorable and unfavorable rating within 10 percentage points of each other.



[Liberal filmmaker Michael Moore joined Megyn Kelly Thursday warning that Trump needs to be taken seriously. Watch here.]



HUMA AND THE G-MEN

LAT: Huma Abedin, a close aide to Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton, was questioned last month by FBI agents investigating whether classified material was mishandled on the private email server used by the former secretary of State and her aides, according to a person familiar with the investigation. Abedin was interviewed for about two hours at the FBIs field office in Washington on April 5, according to the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing.



WITHIN EARSHOT

Youve been hearing me say its a rigged system, but now I dont say it anymore because I won  And the only way I won was I won by such big margins because it is a rigged system. But the only way you can do it, its like a boxer, you got to knock them out then you dont got to worry about the judges. But its true.  Donald Trump campaigning in West Virginia.



RACE NOTES

After the convention, Trump will likely start receiving intelligence briefings - NYT



Some state GOP officials say Never Trump, Never Hillary - Time



Former House Speaker John Boehner is set to attend the GOP convention - WashEx



Liam Donovan argues against magical thinking about Trump - National Review



Peggy Noonan says Trump is a spark not a fire - WSJ



NO EDITOR COULD REFUSE THIS STORY

ClarksvilleNow [Clarksville, Tenn.]: Montgomery County Animal Care and Control (MCAC) is investigating after a dog bit an individual at a house party Wednesday evening. The human was not the only victim, however. According to officials, the dog was also bitten by an unknown personThe woman who owns the dog was attending the birthday party and got into an altercation with the man who was celebrating his birthday. The woman allegedly grabbed the mans glass, slammed it down, poured out his liquor, and brandished a butter knife at him. The homeowner then asked the woman to leave. She refused, so he reportedly grabbed her arm to escort her out. The womans dog (described by the complainant as a pit bull named Killa) then bit the homeowner in what officials believe was an effort to protect the woman.



Chris Stirewalt is digital politics editor for Fox News. Sally Persons contributed to this report. Want FOX News First in your inbox every day? Sign up here.
EXCLUSIVE: The State Department missed its own target date last year for the establishment of a special unit to review Benghazi documents, documents obtained by Fox News show.

The previously unpublished documents, generated by the House select committee that is investigating the 2012 terror attacks, detail how Rep. Trey Gowdy, the panels Republican chairman from South Carolina, began working behind the scenes early last year to help the department secure over $4 million in reprogrammed funds set aside by Congress for such a unit.

According to agreements worked out between Republican staff on the committee and top aides to Secretary of State John Kerry, including chief of staff Jonathan Finer, the document review unit was supposed to be operational in June 2015.

Yet the State Department, prompted by inquiries from Fox News, now acknowledges it missed that target date. The Congressional Document Production unit began staffing up in mid-2015, said State Department spokesman Mark Toner in an email late Thursday, and is now fully operational.

The records obtained by Fox News also show repeated refusals by Kerrys aides, including Finer, to account for what happened to the appropriated funds when Gowdys staff made repeated inquiries about the matter back in mid-2015.

The State Department disputed this reading of the documents, saying it was wholly inaccurate to suggest that top officials, including Finer, had withheld information from congressional staffers. The State Department has been more than forthcoming with the committee about the congressional document production unit, Toner said in an email on Friday.

Toner also said the unit was intended to respond to various congressional panels, not just the Benghazi committee, and that despite indications in the correspondence between State and the Benghazi committee that the department promised to stand up the unit by last June, no deadline was established for the unit to be operational.

Gowdy told Fox News he sought the additional funding so they could speed up document production to Congress and we could finish the investigation faster.

Top administration officials, including white House spokesman Josh Earnest, have accused the committee of prolonging the investigation for political reasons  specifically, to try to damage Clintons presidential candidacy.

In his email to Fox News, Toner acknowledged that Gowdy and his staff had indeed supported the request for additional funding.

This prompted Gowdy, in an emailed statement of his own, to say he appreciates the Obama administration finally confirming the Benghazi Committee went the extra mile to complete its investigation as soon as possible by helping the State Department get extra funding.

According to the internal committee files, the State Departments document review unit was supposed to encompass twelve full-time employees, including at least three lawyers, case managers to oversee responses to specific document requests, and an IT professional.

The State Department conveyed to the committee last year that it intended to use some of the U.S. personnel evacuated from Yemen last year to staff the unit, according to the documents.

On Thursday, Toner said the use of the personnel from Yemen was never necessary  but did not spell out why the evacuated personnel were considered superfluous when the department was having trouble meeting its own target date of mid-June for the unit to become operational.

Asked at Wednesdays press briefing if he could attest that the reprogrammed funds had actually been spent for the intended purpose, Toner said he was fairly certain that they would have been.

Co-chaired by Rep. Elijah Cummings, the Democrat from Maryland, the Benghazi committee has spent two years investigating the terrorist attacks on U.S. facilities on September 11, 2012 that killed Americas ambassador to Libya at the time, J. Christopher Stevens, and three other Americans.

The committee unearthed the fact that then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, now the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination, used a private email server for all of her official email correspondence. Among the emails subsequently made public was one that showed Clinton giving her daughter an account of the attacks that differed sharply from the false narrative about them that the secretary of state, and other top administrations officials, were pressing publicly.

Toner noted that the department has already provided close to 100,000 pages of documents to the committee, which is expected to produce its final report next month.

Washington-based attorney Mark Paoletta, who spent a decade as the Republican chief counsel to a House investigating subcommittee, told Fox News the Obama administration is notorious for slow-rolling investigative panels like the Benghazi committee. He cited Clintons private email server as evidence of this pattern.

How can you seriously say that youre being transparent, Paoletta said in an interview with Fox News, when the secretary of state is running a private server and has deleted over 30,000 of those documents before anyone even knows that its in existence?
An ObamaCare insurance exchange once viewed as a steady ship in a sea of glitch-plagued websites is now running into problems of its own  adding to a new mess of health industry complications under the Affordable Care Act, including premium hikes, jittery insurers and failing co-ops.

Your Health Idaho (YHI), the Idaho marketplace that was one of the better-run systems when the law went into effect, was late getting thousands of state residents critical tax forms this year. One recent report said the call center also has struggled to answer customer calls, directing them instead to send requests by email -- and the system has taken months to enroll some people after they signed up.

We saw this coming years ago. We were promised that by having a state exchange, the customer would have a far superior experience compared to the federal level, and thats proven to be false, said Wayne Hoffman, the CEO of the Idaho Freedom Foundation who has opposed the Idaho state exchange from the start. He said they were warned that under the federal exchange, customers might have to wait months and months for forms to be returned to them, yet, that is exactly the same experience people in Idaho are having today.

Your Health Idaho, meanwhile, is blaming Washington -- saying the reason for the delay in tax forms was faulty information they received from the federal government.

The problems in Idaho mark the latest turbulence for the health care overhaul. UnitedHealth, the nations largest health insurer, is projecting millions in losses and recently announced it plans to cut participation in the insurance exchanges to just a handful of states next year; many of the so-called co-ops established under the law have gone belly up; and insurers now are expected to seek steep premium increases for next year to offset financial problems.

The state-run exchanges, meanwhile, did not all suffer the high-profile embarrassment brought by the troubled roll-out of the federal HealthCare.gov. Some, like Idahos, previously performed relatively well. Overall, $4.86 billion was awarded to the states for planning and establishing their own state exchanges.

Yet, a number of state-run exchanges  now including Idahos  have run into operational and technological issues. Oregons exchange reportedly came under federal investigation over allegations the state showed the federal government a misleading website demonstration to ensure the continued flow of federal money.

The FBI would not confirm to Fox News whether an investigation into Oregons system, which later switched over to the federal exchange, is ongoing.

There are moderate successes that you can attribute to some of these exchanges where people can purchase plans, but generally speaking, its a flawed system, Charles Siler, media relations director of the Foundation for Government Accountability, told Fox News. It is nearly impossible to make it work in the long-term.

In Idaho, the exchange enrolled about 100,000 people for 2016. But, as first reported by the Idaho Statesman, the exchange was late in sending thousands of residents their tax-subsidy statements.

The exchange has admitted there was a delay in processing customers 1095-A forms  while blaming the federal government for bad information. Approximately 5,000 people experienced delays in their 1095-A forms, but YHI was able to get their consumers the correct forms ahead of the federal tax filing deadline.

According to Your Health Idaho, their marketplace technology is now running smoothly.

Your Health Idaho built an exchange that has and will continue to give Idahoans choice for health insurance and keep maximum control in our state, Executive Director of Your Health Idaho Pat Kelly told Fox News. We regret any trouble this caused our customers.

YHI has the second-highest enrollment per capita of all the state exchanges, and, as a predominantly conservative state, Idaho is working to maintain maximum control and avoid transitioning to the federal marketplace.

The decision to pursue a state exchange at all was made after the states governor in 2012 appointed several people to a panel to formally evaluate whether the state should create an independent exchange. Idaho was ultimately granted $69 million in federal funding for their exchange.

You have the same problems you would have at the federal level  just with Idaho bureaucrats instead of Washington, D.C., bureaucrats, Hoffman, who was on that panel and opposed the exchange, said.

Kelly told Fox News that funding is not a concern, and they currently have $5 million in reserves, saying: We will continue to dedicate the necessary resources to adequately address our customers needs.
A "small number" of U.S. forces have been on the ground in Yemen for the past two weeks helping Yemeni and Emirati forces, led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, battle Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula fighters, the Pentagon announced Friday.



Their presence marks the first time U.S. troops have been on the ground in Yemen since March 2015, when the U.S. military pulled the last of its special operations forces as a civil war raged.

Capt. Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, said the U.S. forces are providing "intelligence" support to Arab allies fighting AQAP for a "short term."

He declined to offer a more specific timeline or provide the size of the detachment of U.S. forces, characterizing the group as a small number.

Davis said there have been four airstrikes against AQAP since late last month. In March, the U.S. military conducted an airstrike in Yemen against the affiliate, killing 70 fighters. The military used jet fighters and drones in the operation, according to officials.

Davis said the U.S. Navy also has positioned the amphibious assault ship USS Boxer and two escort ships, USS Gravely and USS Gonzales, both guided-missile destroyers, off the coast of Yemen. The 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit is headquartered aboard the USS Boxer and has over 2,000 U.S. Marines under its command ready to go ashore if needed.

Two weeks ago, Yemeni and Emirati forces pushed AQAP militants out of the port city of Mukalla, about halfway down Yemen's coastline in the Gulf of Aden.

The civil war in Yemen has drawn support from Middle Eastern countries along sectarian lines since fighting broke out last year.

Iran-backed Houthi rebels have been fighting Yemeni troops loyal to President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi. AQAP has taken advantage of the chaos to expand its control over large portions of the country.

The State Department closed its embassy in Yemen in February 2015. U.S. Marines protecting the embassy were forced to destroy their weapons before boarding a private charter from Oman during the evacuation.
Republican National Committee Chair Reince Priebus said Thursday that presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump and House Speaker Paul Ryan would meet next week in an effort to clear the air after Ryan said he was "just not ready" to back Trump in the general election this fall.

"I think it's going to work out," Priebus told Fox News' Sean Hannity. "In some cases people are not going to be instantly on board, and I now that can be frustrating for some people. But i think everyone has to ... allow a little bit of the steam to get out and get everybody settled down. And I think this is going to come together."

Priebus spoke hours after Ryan confirmed CNN that he was "just not ready" to support or endorse Trump. The Wisconsin Republican suggested that he wants the real estate mogul to do more to unify the party first, but added that he hoped to support Trump.

Trump fired back in a statement, saying, "I am not ready to support Speaker Ryan's agenda."

"Perhaps in the future we can work together and come to an agreement about what is best for the American people," the statement continued. "They have been treated so badly for so long that it is about time for politicians to put them first!"

Preibus told Hannity he had spoken to both Trump and Ryan Thursday and said both men were "committed to sitting down and actually talking this out."

As the highest-ranking Republican lawmaker, Ryan's reluctance to offer his full-throated support signifies the immensity of the task ahead for Trump in unifying the party, especially considering Ryan will serve as chairman of the GOP convention in Cleveland.

Democratic front-runner Hillary Clintons campaign also has been eager to point out any rifts in the party, and quickly blasted out a message claiming Ryan had joined the growing list of conservatives rebuking Trump."

Also Thursday, the Associated Press reported that Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner will not endorse Trump in the general election and will not attend the convention. Sen. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., who is expected to face a tough re-election fight against Democratic Rep. Tammy Duckworth, has said he is also skipping the convention.

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican chief executive in a traditionally Democratic state, declined again Thursday to endorse a GOP candidate, despite the departures this week of Ted Cruz and John Kasich that left Trump the last man standing.

"I said I was not going to get involved, and I would not endorse any candidate and that I was going to stay focused on Maryland," Hogan told reporters, according to The Washington Post. "And Im not going to take any more stupid questions about Donald Trump."

By contrast, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, who endorsed Cruz ahead of this week's primary, has said he will back Trump, telling TV station WTHI "I look forward to supporting our presumptive nominee. I think Donald Trump will do very well in the Hoosier State."

Fox News confirmed Thursday that 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney  a vocal Trump critic -- has no plans to attend the convention, while former Presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush both have confirmed they will not attend either. A source close to former Senator and 1996 Republican nominee Bob Dole said he would briefly attend the convention but primarily to attend a lunch hosted by his law firm.

"This was a very contentious primary," Priebus said. "I think it's going to take a little bit of time, but I think for the most part this is going to come together. Maybe not 100 percent, but i think we're going to get very close to that and i think people will fall in line."

Fox News Mike Emanuel and Serafin Gomez contributed to this report.


EXCLUSIVE: The Romanian hacker who says he easily breached Hillary Clintons personal email server also claimed, in a series of interviews with Fox News, that he spoke with the FBI at length on the plane when extradited from Romania to Virginia last month.

"They came after me, a guy from the FBI, from the State Department," 44-year-old Marcel Lehel Lazar, who goes by the moniker "Guccifer," told Fox News during a jailhouse phone interview. He said the conversation was "80 minutes ... recorded," and he took his own notes.

A government source confirmed that the hacker had a lot to say on the plane but provided no other details. Lazar was flown to the U.S. to face separate cyber-crime charges.

In addition to the apparent conversation with the FBI on the plane, Fox News has learned a meeting was expected as early as this week at the Alexandria, Va., detention center where hes being held involving Guccifer, the FBI, the U.S. attorney and the defendants court-appointed lawyer.

These officials have not commented on his clams or detention.

An intelligence source close to the investigation, speaking with Fox News last month, questioned the timing of Lazars extradition to the U.S., coming amid the Clinton email probe. As for what was discussed on that plane, Lazar said he told a State Department representative on the plane about "hot" data, some of which was hidden in Google drives, and other data that was too sensitive and deleted. The hacker, who offered no proof for his claims, said cryptically that he could not say more.

"I can't tell [you] now. I can't tell because I want to talk to the FBI. It is a matter of national security. Yeah," he said. Pressed by Fox News, Lazar seemed to indicate the data was not connected to the ongoing FBI criminal probe of Clinton's server.

Fox News recently met with Lazar in the secure visitor center in Alexandria, then followed up with a series of phone calls which he gave permission to be recorded. Separated by reinforced glass, Lazar was polite and methodical as he explained how he allegedly accessed the Clinton server in early 2013, by using her longtime confidant Sidney Blumenthal's AOL account as a stepping stone.

Fox News was first to report the hacker's claims of accessing the Clinton server, which he said was easy.

Lazar said he got into the Blumenthal account by correctly guessing his security question, after doing extensive research on the web. He said his hacking always followed a "four step process": identify the target, do extensive web research on the target, access the target's account to harvest data, and send it out to the media.

Lazar said he was puzzled by the American media. He said he sent the Blumenthal emails, which is how the Clintonemail.com account first came to light, to many large news organizations in 2013, and it was The Smoking Gun that picked it up. Lazar said he started his "Guccifer archive," releasing materials in October and November 2012, and it ended "like August 2013."

Three cybersecurity experts said they found Lazar's explanation for accessing the Clinton server plausible but had questions.

Cybersecurity expert Morgan Wright explained how the FBI could marry up available evidence, including forensics or the configuration of the server and its folders, to assess his claims. "So we're going to map these things together, and if those things match up together, they're going to say yes, this was compromised, then it means it was open to other people to compromise as well," he said.

Since Fox News reported on Guccifers claims Wednesday, anonymous sources have reported that a review of the Clinton hard drives does not appear to indicate a breach. However, Wright and other experts warned that Clinton IT specialist Bryan Pagliano was the server's administrator and not principally a cybersecurity specialist  and may not have installed an adequate detection system for a Cabinet secretarys email.

If you have a bank and you have one video camera when you need 20, then you missed it, Wright said. If they weren't capturing all the activity, their security logs may say they didnt see anything."

Asked about Lazars claims at Thursdays press briefing, State Department spokesman Mark Toner also said hes not aware of such an incident.

We dont have any reason to believe that it might be true, he said.

At the same time, Toner repeatedly stressed he did not want to comment on the security of the server, citing ongoing investigations. Asked if hes in a position to even know whether Lazars claims are true, Toner again said he did not want to comment. The Clinton campaign has rejected Lazars claims, calling them baseless and emphasizing he is a convicted hacker.

Other cyber specialists like Bob Gourley with Cognitio warned there will always be uncertainty and ambiguity with hackers like Guccifer. But he said: One thing I would say with certainty however -- if this computer were in a well-managed facility, where everything was being monitored and watched, we would have more information and ground truth."
Donald Trump said Friday he was really surprised by House Speaker Paul Ryan declining to endorse him, telling Fox News he has brought millions into the party and is getting endorsements left and right  except from Ryan.

Despite the presumptive Republican nominees claims, he still faces resistance from some senior GOP figures, including Ryans 2012 running mate Mitt Romney, a vocal Trump critic who plans to skip the July convention.

But Trump, speaking on Fox & Friends, took a shot at the Romney-Ryan ticket, saying the 2012 election was a race that should have easily been won. As for Ryans reservations about him, the presumptive nominee said he plans to meet with Ryan next week.

I was very, very surprised [by his comments], Trump said. He talks about unity but what is this about unity?

Ryans office later put out a statement saying hes invited Trump to meet with House GOP leaders in Washington next Thursday to begin a discussion about the kind of Republican principles and ideas that can win the support of the American people this November. The statement said Ryan also will meet separately with Trump, along with Republican Party head Reince Priebus.

Ryan, speaking earlier on CNN, said Thursday hes not ready at this point to support or endorse Trump. He suggested he wants the billionaire businessman to do more to unify the party first, while leaving himself wiggle room to endorse Trump later on.

Trump swiftly fired back in a statement, saying, "I am not ready to support Speaker Ryan's agenda."

Ryans remarks could also cause friction with Trump supporters on Capitol Hill.

Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions told Fox Business Network Ryans stance is a big mistake.

Republican National Committee Chairman Priebus told Fox News on Thursday that he thinks its going to work out in the end.

"In some cases people are not going to be instantly on board, and I know that can be frustrating for some people. But I think everyone has to ... allow a little bit of the steam to get out and get everybody settled down. And I think this is going to come together."

The Ryan comments, though, underscored the lingering tensions within the GOP over Trumps presumed primary victory, with some continuing to question his conservative credentials and at times taking issue with his tone.

Speaking with Fox News on Friday, Trump did, however, put to rest speculation that he might look outside the party and choose a Democrat for running mate. Trump said he would not do that.

We want to have a great ticket. The Democrats have been in there for a long time, the economy is terrible, Trump said. Im going to pick a great Republican, and were going to have a tremendous victory.

Trump was asked about whether he might look outside the party for a VP choice after former 2016 candidate Ben Carson  who is involved in the search process  initially told The Wall Street Journal that Trump could look at Democrats and independents.

A spokesman later clarified that Trump plans to pick a Republican.
The U.S. military has sent a platoon of Marines to bolster security at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad following recent protests led by firebrand Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

Twenty-five U.S. Marine infantrymen arrived late Thursday night, a U.S. defense official told Fox News.

The move comes amid the Sadr-led protests against the rule of Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, which escalated last weekend with protesters storming the Green Zone in Baghdad where the embassy is located.

The additional Marine platoon is part of a quick reaction force established after the 2012 Benghazi attack to reinforce embassies worldwide should more protection be needed.

The protests did not materialize in Baghdad on Friday. Weather may have been a factor, as scattered thunderstorms kept protesters away, according to the U.S. official.

A U.S. Marine rifle company of more than 150 Marines, in addition to private security contractors, has been protecting the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad and will continue to do so.

The U.S. official described the additional Marines as a precautionary measure.
Marine archaeologists in Rhode Island are looking to raise funds to find out more about a ship at the bottom of Newport Harbor that could be Capt. Cooks famous HMS Endeavour.

Cook sailed on the Endeavour when he discovered Australia. The Rhode Island Marine Archaeology Project (RIMAP) says that Endeavour, which was renamed Lord Sandwich and used as a troop transport, is one of 13 ships scuttled in Newport Harbor in 1778 during the American Revolution.

RIMAP used a grant from the Australian National Maritime Museum to locate documents in London that identify the groups of ships in the 13-vessel fleet, and where each group was scuttled. One group of five ships included the Lord Sandwich, according to RIMAP, which says it knows the general area of Newport Harbor where the five ships were scuttled and has already mapped four of the sites.

Related: Captain Cook's ship Endeavour 'found' in Newport Harbor

With a further review of RIMAP's remote sensing data, there is a promising area where the 5th site might be, and the planned 2016 fieldwork should determine if she exists, the group explained, in a report posted to its website Wednesday. So if that 5th site is found, there will have a 100% chance that the Endeavour is still there. If that last one isn't found, then there is still an 80% chance that she exists among the 4 we have already mapped.

RIMAP, which issued the report following a public meeting in Providence, R.I. to discuss the project, outlined the next stages of its research.

Next RIMAP will have to do the very expensive work to determine which site is which ship, and possibly determine which one is the Lord Sandwich ex Endeavour, it said, in its statement. That means comparing the historical materials assembled about each vessel with what is seen in the archaeological sites.

Related: Titanic treasures sold at UK auction

RIMAP also needs a lab for managing and analyzing artifacts. That will be an even bigger expense than the cost of supporting the fieldwork to study the sites, it said. So at the same time RIMAP is pursuing its various research investigations, there is also a capital campaign to develop its facility.

The group acknowledges that raising the vessel will be particularly costly. Some have asked if there is a plan to raise the vessel, but that is an even more expensive proposition, not only the technical challenges to get it up and the greater expenses for the preservation, study, and presentation of the object, but whatever planning is done must include the fact that it will be a perpetual responsibility.

Marine archaeologists have made a number of fascinating finds in recent years. Last year, for example, treasure said to belong to the infamous pirate Captain Kidd was found by divers in the waters of the Indian Ocean off Madagascar.

Related: Titanic treasures sold at UK auction

Earlier this year the 500-year old wreck of a Portuguese ship piloted by an uncle of explorer Vasco da Gama was found off the coast of Oman.

Follow James Rogers on Twitter @jamesjrogers
Like watching lightning? Book your next vacation for Venezuela. NASA has determined that country's Lake Maracaibo is the new lightning capital of the world. Using 16 years of data from the satellite-based Lightning Imaging Sensor (LIS), scientists determined Lake Maracaibo averages about 233 lightning flashes per square kilometer every year; during its peak rainy season, it can experience 28 strokes per minute.

The researchers published their findings in February, and NASA discussed the results in a press release this week. The previous record-holder, Africa's Congo Basin, averaged approximately 160 flashes per square kilometer per year, the International Business Times reports.

Lake Maracaibo's high amount of lightning activity is due to its "unique geography and climatology." Various breezes meet over the warm lake waters, causing thunderstorms around 297 nights a year.

Despite being unseated from the top spot, Africa still has more lightning than any other continent. The most lightning-heavy spot in the US is the Florida Everglades near Orangetree, Florida.

But it's doesn't rank very high overall: It's No. 14 on North America's list, and 122nd globally. "Better understanding of lightning activity around the world enables policy makers, government agencies, and other stakeholders to make more informed decisions related to weather and climate," says Richard Blakeslee, an LIS project scientist for NASA.

(These lightning-struck teens were saved by holding hands.)

This article originally appeared on Newser: The World Has a New Lightning Capital
A California couple said Wednesday they were kicked off their flight out of Utah for alerting an Allegiant airline attendant that their son had a peanut allergy.

Kyson and Sara Dana told Fox 13 Now they were flying out of Provo Monday, along with their 2-year-old son, to go back to their Oakland home.

Kyson Dana told the station that his wife alerted a flight attendant about their sons peanut allergy. He said he asked the attendant if there was anything the staff could do to accommodate them, like avoid serving peanuts in their area.

Their son went into anaphylactic shock over the weekend after he accidentally swallowed an almond, the pair told Fox 13 Now. The couple said they had an epinephrine pen and sanitation wipes with them just in case of an issue.

Kyson Dana said the Allegiant attendant told the couple that she didnt recommend them flying on the plane. After continuing to their seats and brushing off a possible conflict, Dana said another attendant came up and asked passengers around them to avoid eating peanuts and everyone seemingly agreed to it.

Dana said he thought the situation resolved until another issue came about.

He told Fox 13 Now that the flight team told the family that they consulted with a medical professional and decided it wasnt safe for them to fly. The family then stepped off the plane and missed their flight home.

"I think they were being unreasonable, Dr. Kay Walker, an allergist, said about Allegiant Air.

Walker said even though she wasnt aware of the entire situation, the family appeared to take the same steps she advises her clients to take.

On behalf of the entire Allegiant team, please allow me to offer my sincere apology for the inconveniences this incident has caused for you and your family, the airline said in a statement to the Dana family after a complaint.

We regret that you were denied boarding due to any misunderstanding regarding the severity of your childs peanut allergy. I realize that medical issues can be highly challenging. We just wanted to make sure you arrived home safely."

Fox 13 Now reported that the family did make it home on time. A Provo Airport worker helped them get a new flight with a different airline out of Salt Lake International Airport at no cost. The worker also drove the family to the Salt Lake City Airport.

The Dana Family said it hopes to see some sort of changes regarding how to handle passengers with allergies.

Click for more from Fox 13 Now.
A stranger who lured 11-year-old Ashlynne Mike into his van with promises of watching a movie instead walked her into the hills of a remote area of the Navajo Nation, a place known for its breathtaking views and a monolithic rock outcropping that stands as a beacon for miles.

As the sun faded, the man returned alone, with a crowbar tucked in his jacket. The girl was nowhere to be seen.

The girl's 9-year-old brother, who had jumped into the van hoping to protect her -- was now distraught and scared. The man drove him toward a highway, and then told him to get out.

Alone in the desert, the boy started to run, and kept running, toward the lights of a distant car, until a passer-by scooped him up and took him to police.

His sister's body wasn't found until the next day, her head bloodied and bashed with a crowbar, according to a federal affidavit released Wednesday as Tom Begaye, a 27-year-old Navajo man from Waterflow, New Mexico, appeared in court on charges of kidnapping and murder.

The case has raised questions about the capacity of authorities to respond to abductions in remote areas of the Navajo Nation. Word of the girl's disappearance sparked a frantic air and ground search, but the immediate hunt was focused on the opposite side of a highway from where authorities needed to be looking, and the 9-year-old struggled to describe just where he last saw his sister.

#FBI announces Tom Begaye, 27, of Waterflow, N.M., arrested in abduction and death of 11-year-old Ashlynne Mike. Court appearance tomorrow.  FBI Albuquerque (@FBIAlbuquerque) May 4, 2016

"He was so tired and just crying and crying for his sister. It was really hard for the FBI to get any information from him," said the children's aunt, Darrell Foster-Joe, as she recounted what the boy eventually told authorities.

The siblings were abducted after being dropped off at a bus stop after school, about a quarter-mile from their home Monday afternoon. The brother and another boy -- their cousin -- said no to the movie offer, but Ashlynne was somehow lured into the van.

Not wanting his sister to go alone, her brother jumped in too.

Tips flooded in from across the reservation that spans parts of New Mexico, Arizona and Utah. Authorities said the kidnapper was driving a maroon van with a luggage rack but no hubcaps. About 100 people from the community turned out to help look for her.

Begaye made his first court appearance Wednesday at the Municipal Courthouse in Farmington, New Mexico, shuffling into the courtroom with shackles on. He remained quiet as the victim's relatives and other community members watched the reading of the murder and kidnapping charges.

According to the affidavit, Begaye told investigators he removed the girl's clothing, preparing to sexually assault her, and that he hit her twice in the head with a crowbar because she was crying and begging to be taken home.

He also said that the girl was still moving when he left her for dead in the desert, the affidavit says.

U.S. Magistrate Judge B. Paul Briones told Begaye he could face life in prison if convicted of the murder charge.

As he was taken away in an SUV after the hearing, people outside the courthouse yelled "bastard" and "go to hell."

Shawn Mike, Ashlynne's cousin and the father of the boy who stayed behind, said he didn't believe the family knew Begaye. The 9-year-old called him a stranger. Waterflow is a community of about 1,600 people, just a few miles west of the girl's home in Fruitland.

Mike said the man who took the children tried twice to get his son to climb into the van along with them.

"My son said he just waved," he said. "He said the vehicle just sped off, and as it was driving off he just saw Ashlynne waving toward him."

Community members who heard about the abduction via radio and social media congregated to join in the search Monday around 9 p.m. and again Tuesday morning, said Graham Binaal, a Shiprock resident who joined the effort. "Once someone put it out there that there was this missing child, then the word just spread from there," he said.

An Amber Alert for Ashlynne wasn't issued until about 2:30 a.m. Tuesday.

It wasn't clear why it took hours for authorities to get word out about the abduction, and FBI Special Agent in Charge Terry Wade declined to answer related questions during a news conference.

A tribal official, public safety director Jesse Delmar, said Tuesday that "every protocol was followed" in the New Mexico State Police's issuance of the Amber Alert. However, tribal President Russell Begaye said in the same statement that the tribe "needs to implement an effective response system in which modern technology is utilized more effectively."

Begaye is a common name among the Navajo, and the defendant is no relation to the tribal leader.

Heartbroken, the community paused Tuesday night for a moment of silence. Hundreds of residents packed the Navajo Nation's San Juan Chapter House, a tiny community hall south of Shiprock, while hundreds more stood outside of the building in support of Ashlynne's family.

Her father sat silently in the front as the girl's principal remembered her as a kind child who was a part of the school band, and local leaders offered condolences. Ashlynne was fifth-grader at Ojo Amarillo Elementary School in Fruitland. She played xylophone, and had a performance just last week, Mike said after the vigil.

"As a dad, you would like to see your daughter grow up and see her have a family of her own one day. And unfortunately, Ashlynne won't experience any of this," Mike said.
A Columbia University student who drew widespread attention after converting his dorm room into a restaurant last year has been told that he will have to leave university housing as of May 31.

Senior Jonah Reider told The Wall Street Journal that he received an email from his landlord, a professor, saying "conditions hazardous to all tenants in a faculty building" obliged the termination of his lease.

Reider opened his four-seat restaurant, Pith, this past September in Suite 4-B of the university's Hogan Hall. The subsequent media attention (and lengthy waiting list) also drew the notice of New York City's Department of Health, which told Columbia that dorm kitchens couldn't be used for commercial activity.

"They've chilled out," Reider told The New Yorker in October, "but at the moment Im not allowing people who arent my homies or Columbia people in."

On Thursday, Reider told the Journal that most university officials were uncomfortable with Pith's continued operation.

"I had university administrators on my wait list that were totally trying to come through, he said. Theyd also be, like, 'please find a new place.'"

Reider told the Journal that his sublease was supposed to run through Aug. 31, despite the fact that he is graduating later this month. He added that he hopes to serve a few last meals at Pith before finding work as a chef.

Click for more from The Wall Street Journal.
Like people, great start-ups often grow from humble roots. When youre just getting started and dollars are tight, you may need to play bigger than you are in order to be taken seriously and grow to the next level.

This doesnt mean misrepresenting your business or making promises you cant keep. It means accentuating early milestones, rather than the behind-the-scenes daily scramble required to make it all work. Here are four essential tips to put forward your company's best face.

1. Make your dollars count.

Think critically about what your business truly needs to move ahead and prioritize spending accordingly. In 2009, AirBnB was close to going under, with revenue stagnant at $200 a week. As the three cofounders maxed out their credit cards and struggled to find a plan, they realized that the quality of the listing photos was a determining factor in customer response. The trio immediately hopped on a flight to New York City and invested in beautiful listing photography, a non-scalable gamble that changed the course of their business.

Related: Use these four tips to put forward your company's best face

What does your business need to break out? There are plenty of areas to pinch pennies -- office space, expensive marketing -- but dont cut corners in the ways that are mission-critical to your companys success. Playing big requires a great deal of spending discipline.

2. Whos behind the curtain?

During the early days of launching Gilt.com, co-founders Alexandra Wilson and Alexis Maybank wore pretty much every hat imaginable. For CEO Maybank that included working shifts in the storage warehouse or personally handling customer service calls. It wasn't glamorous, but given the size of their team, it was necessary. Not to mention, customer service directly connected her to the experience of Gilt shoppers to learn what was and wasnt working.

The lesson: Playing bigger in the early days often requires doing the work of many. Expect that youll be doing plenty of tasks that fall outside of your job description. It's all part of the process. Adora Cheung, co-founder and CEO of house-cleaning website Homejoy, took the sites first cleaning jobs herself and for several years continued to work at least one cleaning job per month.

Related: 5 Books to Read Before Starting Your Business

3. Define your purpose.

Saying that the purpose of a company is to make money is like saying that your purpose in life is to breathe, said Jim Barksdale when he was CEO of Netscape. While breathing is critical to life -- and making money is critical to a successful business -- you need more than that. Yahoo famously offered Mark Zuckerberg a billion dollars for Facebook while it was still an exclusive site that not everyone could join, but he passed. His mission to connect as many people as possible wasnt complete. Theres a case where putting mission over money ended up being a highly lucrative decision.

For early startups, taking time to define the driving mission is important as it will enable you to recruit and inspire the best team and the right investors. In what small or big way will your business change the world? While its important to focus on revenue and other growth milestones, communicating your startups greater purpose will allow you to play bigger in early days.

4. Stay on track.

One of the most common mistakes made by startups? Chasing too many ideas without committing to a real strategy. Founders of a young company will come up with hundreds of new ideas every day (I know because my co-founders and I do), says Matt Salzberg, founder and CEO of Blue Apron. While most of these ideas are sure to be good ones, weve learned that we need to be thoughtful and selective about which to move forward with in order not to overwhelm ourselves and our employees. We all have limited time and resources, which is why we need to focus and prioritize.

Related: How Much Time Should You Devote to Starting Your Business?

While it's important to stay open-minded and be able to pivot, don't spend your time chasing every idea. It'll prevent any strategy from gaining adequate traction and hold your startup back from real success.
It hasnt all been glamorous, public moments for media mogul Arianna Huffington. There have been plenty of messy, painful, private moments. And her daughters, Christina, 27, and Isabella, 24, have had a front row seat to all of it.

You see the blooper reel as well as the highlight reel, and I think with a lot of well known people, we only look at the highlight reel so we think that things were always easy for them," says Isabella, on the phone with Entrepreneur. She watched her mother found and run the Pulitzer Prize-winning website Huffington Post, which was sold to AOL in 2011 for more than $300 million.

Isabella says her intimate awareness of the full spectrum of her mothers life during this period of what was perceived from the outside as wild success served as a guidepost. "We were very much able to see my moms entire life, which has been helpful when we are planning our own careers, says Isabella.

For example, the day that the Huffington Post launched in 2005, it was met with some fairly intense vitriol. Christina and Isabella were both teenagers at that time.

Its really important, especially for two young girls, to really watch their mother be brave and be vulnerable and fail and get back up again, because we were really able to watch her career trajectory," Isabella says. "If something doesnt work out in my life, I know things that my mom has done that havent worked and she didnt say, Oh that didnt work, I am done. Or someone would criticize her, and she didnt give up, so I think that has been really important to both of us.

When you watch someone go through an entire career, you can see that things arent always perfect, Isabella adds.

Related: 5 Essential Skills New Working Moms Need to Know to Keep Their Career in High Gear

The result of seeing their mothers persistence in the face of struggles and criticism is that both Christina and Isabella are more fearless to pursue a profession with an uncertain future, Arianna says.

Both of my children are doing things that another parent might say are risky, says Arianna, 65, who is also the author of 15 books. Both my children are doing something entrepreneurial and they have my full support because that is how my life has been, both before Huffington Post and after.

Isabella lives with her mother in a New York City apartment. When Christina, Ariannas older daughter, moved out, Isabella turned her bedroom into her painting studio. She's now a full-time artist.

Christina is producing a video series, Talk To Me, which chronicles conversations between celebrity parents and their children. But it didnt take a video series for Arianna and her daughters to start an honest conversation. Arianna and Isabella both say that they make it a priority to share their struggles with each other.

Related: Secrets to Being Both an Executive and a Mom

As a mother, you may want to shield your children from difficult times you may be going through, but my daughters have always encouraged me to share everything with them and that has been amazing," says Arianna. "They are really my best friends, and I think that it is great when you see that transformation from you being the mother and the protector, which in many ways you always remain, to also the relationship changing to being best friends."

Hearing firsthand about the struggles that go into success is empowering for Ariannas daughters.

Its incredibly meaningful for parents and mothers especially to share when they are going through something difficult with their children, especially if they are successful, because its incredibly important to see no matter what life you are in, there are going to be ups and downs," says Isabella. "And I think that builds grit in your children just because they are able to see that you were able to overcome, that it wasnt smooth sailing, to show your vulnerable side, your human side -- and not have to be Superwoman.

Ariannas experience as an entrepreneur has affected the way she parents, but being a mother has also affected the way she handles being an entrepreneur. Having children grounds her and keeps her connected to a sense of purpose outside of her work.

Related: Reality Check: You Need to Care About More Than Your Business

In my life as an entrepreneur, there were a lot of ups and downs. There were hard moments, like the day we launched the Huffington Post to terrible reviews, including one that said, The Huffington Post is the movie equivalent of Gigli, Heaven's Gate and Ishtar all rolled into one," Arianna says. "But for me, my children were my foundation of my existence, so whatever else happened could never shake me.

Having children didnt come easily for Arianna, who was recently named the 61st most powerful woman in the world by Forbes. She was born in Athens, Greece, and grew up in London where she went to Cambridge for school. In London, Arianna fell deeply in love with journalist and writer Bernard Levin. Levin, however, didnt want to have children, says Arianna, who had always known that she wanted to be a mother. After all, her mother had been the foundation and the absolute center of her life.

When she turned 30, she left Levin and London and moved to New York. She married at 35. Her first baby was delivered stillborn. She finally gave birth to Christina when she was 38 and Isabella at 40. For all of Arianna's life, after the age of 11, when her mother left her father, family had been three women: her mother, younger sister Agapi and herself. Now, its Arianna, Isabella and Christina.

Related: Great Entrepreneur, Lousy Lover?

Arianna Huffington learned a voracious resilience from her mother, which helped guide her over her life. When she was in middle school, living in a one-bedroom apartment in Athens with her mother and her sister, Arianna found a picture in a magazine of Cambridge University and decided that was where she wanted to go to school. Ariannas single mother, with hardly enough money to make ends meet, was fearless in her response to Ariannas dream, despite the fact that Arianna spoke no English and everybody else in the community chided the ambitious girl. Dont be ridiculous. You cant go there. You dont speak English, you have no money, and its hard even for English girls. Ariannas mothers response was, Oh! Lets see how you can go there.

That sums up my mom -- it was the combination of Yes, you can go for your dreams, and, If you fail, it doesnt matter, I wont love you any less' and 'Dont let failure define you. Which is kind of a great entrepreneurial approach, says Arianna.

Indeed, that encapsulates Ariannas mother -- and it summarizes Arianna as a mother herself, too.
The body of a U.S. Navy SEAL killed during combat in Iraq is returning to the United States.

SEALs spokeswoman Lt. Beth Teach says the body of Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Charles Keating IV will arrive at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware sometime Friday.

Teach says next week Keating's remains will be returned to Coronado, California, near San Diego, where his SEAL team is based.

A funeral will be held in the San Diego area, where Keating's family has asked that he be buried. Details are still to be determined.

Keating was shot and killed Tuesday during a gunbattle involving Islamic State fighters. He's the third U.S. service member to be killed in combat in Iraq since U.S. forces returned there in 2014.
A man fatally shot his estranged wife while she was waiting to pick up their children outside a suburban Washington high school Thursday afternoon and wounded a man who tried to intervene, police said.



Officers were still looking for Eulalio Tordil, 62, of Adelphi, Md., on Thursday night, Prince George's County Police said in a news release.



Police said an early investigation indicates Tordil followed 44-year-old Gladys Tordil into the parking lot of High Point High School in Beltsville and confronted her as she sat in her SUV waiting for her children.



Another man tried to intervene and was shot in the shoulder before the gunman shot Gladys Tordil several time as she sat in her vehicle, police said. The wounded bystander was expected to survive.



Police said Tordil is an employee of the Federal Protective Service, which provides security at federal buildings and properties. Maryland court records show a permanent no-contact order had been issued against him March 17 in a domestic violence case.



No students were harmed in the shooting, which occurred more than an hour after school was dismissed for the day, county Superintendent Kevin Maxwell said. Some students were on campus for after-school activities and were held there until police said they could be released to their parents.



The shooting was captured on school security cameras, Police Chief Hank Stawinski III said at a news conference.



"This was a sad, sad event," Stawinski said.




A woman who was found murdered last month in a Texas church received a "creepy and strange" message days before her death, according to a search warrant.

Terri "Missy" Bevers, 45, was found dead early on the morning of April 18 at the Creekside Church of Christ in Midlothian. She had gone there to prepare to lead an exercise class and her body was found by several of her students. Authorities said Bevers had suffered multiple puncture wounds to her head and chest.

Surveillance video showed an unidentified person wandering through the church in SWAT gear in the moments before the murder.

According to an affidavit, Bevers had shown a friend a message that had been sent to her on LinkedIn, a business networking social media site. The document said that neither Bevers nor her friend knew the man who sent the message and both agreed that it was "creepy and strange."

Police said Bevers' friend did not remember the name on the account that sent the message.

The affidavit also reveals that Bevers and her husband Brandon had been struggling with marital and financial problems. Police said Bevers had been receiving "flirtatious and familiar" LinkedIn messages from another man since January.

Police told FOX 4 the man messaging Missy has been cooperating with investigators and is not considered a suspect or a person of interest.

The affidavit seeks access to Terri and Brandon Bevers' phone records, as well as those of seven other people. Police reportedly believe Bevers had been in contact with her assailant. The documents state it is possible that Bevers' killer had a cell phone on him or her, and may have used it to document the murder.

"I loved my wife," Brandon Bevers said in a statement Thursday. "My children will always know that as well. The children are my greatest concern right now given the information they will eventually receive in one form or another. This is concerning to all of us."

Click for more from Fox4News.com.

Click for more from The Dallas Morning News.
Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel says two police officers who shot and killed a hostage during an incident at a motorcycle shop won't face criminal charges.

Schimel said during a news conference at Neenah City Hall on Friday that prosecutors wouldn't be able to overcome a self-defense argument in court.

The state Department of Justice has been investigating the Dec. 5 shooting for months.

According to prosecutors, 46-year-old Brian Flatoff went to Eagle Nation Cycles in Neenah to confront a man about a motorcycle and took hostages. One hostage, Michael Funk, escaped but officers fatally shot him outside the shop. Neenah police say Funk ignored orders to drop the gun he was carrying. Videos appear to show officers gave Funk no warning before opening fire.

Neenah is about 100 miles north of Milwaukee.
The annual father-daughter dance at a South Carolina public elementary school was canceled this year after a few parents complained it wasnt inclusive.

Brockman Elementary School in Columbia chose to scrap the May 13 dance in response to complaints about its inclusiveness from fewer than 10 parents, who apparently ignored a flyer for the dance that stated that all were invited, WIS-TV reports.

There were a few parents that did not think the father-daughter dance was inclusive, when actually at all times it was never an event that was exclusive to only fathers and daughters, Karen York, a spokeswoman the Richland One school district which includes Brockman. Mothers and anyone else who wanted to show up at the dance were certainly welcome to attend.

The dance was a fundraiser for Brockmans Parent Teacher Organization. It had been held for five years, raising over $2,000, the station reported.

This years dance already raised $1,000. The school chose to refund the money after canceling the dance, WIS reported.

There are father-daughter dances that are held at other schools, have been held at Richland One, and other districts here in Columbia, as well as across the country, York told the station. In this particular instance at Brockman, there were some parents, fewer than 10, who raised concerns about (the) father-daughter dance.

Brockman has an enrollment of 320 students in grades pre-kindergarten to five and a faculty of 25 teachers, according to the news outlet ProPublica.

Parents upset over the cancellation said they still want to hold a dance on May 13. They're working on holding it themselves, WIS reported.

Brockman also hasn't ruled out a May 13 dance. But instead of calling it the father-daughter dance, the school may call it the Brockman Ball, the station reported.
A Pittsburgh-bound flight from Punta Cana had to be diverted to Florida after four crew members and three passengers were injured from unexpected turbulence.

Some passengers were tossed from their seats, and one flight attendant hit her head on the ceiling of the Allegiant Airlines flight on Thursday.

The flight from the Dominican Republic hit the turbulence over the Bahamas, and the plane was diverted to Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport.

The airline says the charter flight operated for Apple Vacations had 137 passengers and six crew members.

The Broward County sheriff's office says the injuries weren't life-threatening. The most seriously hurt was a flight attendant who had head injuries.

The airline arranged other flights for the passengers, but some opted to drive home.
Police announced Friday they caught a federal officer wanted in connection with three shootings in Maryland that killed a total of three people, including his estranged wife, ending a hunt that left many people in the suburbs of Washington, DC on edge.

Officers arrested 62-year-old Eulalio Tordil, who was wanted on a first-degree murder charge, after they spotted him in his car in an Aspen Hill parking lot. Investigators said Tordil, an officer working for the Federal Protective Service, shot and killed his wife, a chemistry teacher, outside their children's school in Beltsville Thursday.

Then on Friday morning, two more shootings unfolded -- one at a mall parking lot in Bethesda, and one outside a supermarket in Aspen Hill roughly 30 minutes later. Police said they had "reason to believe" Tordil was the gunman in those shootings as well. They also warned he'd threatened to "commit suicide by cop."

Tordil ate lunch "calmly" at a Boston Market in Aspen Hill for about an hour after the Friday shootings, a witness told WJLA. Police said they had him under surveillance and caught him in his car after he left a Dunkin' Donuts not far from the supermarket shooting scene. TV news cameras showed him walking out of the car with his hands up.

Initially, one person was shot outside Westfield Montgomery Mall after some kind of confrontation, Montgomery County Assistant Police Chief Darryl McSwain said. He added that two others were shot after they rushed to the first person's aid. Paramedics rushed the three people shot -- two men and one woman -- to nearby Surburban Hospital, which briefly went on lockdown.

One of the men died in the hospital. The other man was in critical condition, and police said they expected the woman who was shot to survive.

Tow truck loading suspects car right now pic.twitter.com/RLQAJ6LDmn  Matt Ackland (@mattacklandfox5) May 6, 2016

The shooting near the Giant Food supermarket in Aspen Hill left one woman dead. Investigators said it was unclear whether the suspect knew any of the people shot on Friday. "It's tragic we were not able to intervene before other individuals were harmed," Prince George's County Police Chief Hank Stawinski told reporters.

Police said Eulalio Tordil followed his wife, 44-year-old Gladys Tordil, to High Point High School and shot her Thursday, also wounding a man who tried to intervene. Officials said the bystander had injuries that were not life-threatening.

Gladys Tordil had filed a protective order against her husband in March, claiming he abused one of her children and forced others to endure "intense-military-like discipline" including detention in a dark closet, The Washington Post reported. The wife also reportedly accused her husband of slapping her so hard that her glasses broke on her face, saying he kept as many as five guns at home.

The Federal Protective Service said it put the officer on administrative duties after a civil court issued that protective order. His duty weapon, badge, and credentials were taken. He was subsequently placed on administrative leave.

The Federal Protective Service provides security at federal properties.

A witness at the mall, Jose Mauricio Gomez, told the Post he heard six to eight shots. He said an officer rushed to the woman who was wounded. Thats when blood shot out of the hole in her shoulder and he sat her back down.

Police closed off large parts of the mall's parking lot, with clothing and other debris strewn on the ground outside the Macy's there.

All Montgomery County schools and recreation centers went on lockdown for part of the day, Fox 5 reported. However, some parts of the mall remained open.

The grocery store in Aspen Hill is a few hundred feet from a Michaels craft store that was first target by D.C. sniper John Allen Muhammad in 2002. Muhammad's shot into the store did not hit anyone, but he killed a man about a mile away less than an hour later, kicking off a three-week killing spree that left 10 dead.

Fox News' Jake Gibson and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Click for more from Fox 5.
Two black female college students who claimed to be victims of an assault by a group of white men and women reportedly were expelled from the University at Albany.

University at Albany President Robert J. Jones said in an email to The Albany Times Union Thursday that Ariel Agudio and Asha Burwell were dismissed from the college. A third student, Alexis Briggs, was suspended for two years.

Agudio and Burwell were charged with misdemeanor assault and falsely reporting an incident and Briggs was charged with misdemeanor assault in February stemming from a January bus incident. News 10 reported Wednesday all three women pleaded not guilty to the charges.

The women, all 20 years old, claimed they were attacked early on the morning of Jan. 30 while riding a bus. They claimed they were called racial slurs and were physically attacked while bystanders looked on.

Investigators say a review of multiple videos of the incident showed no evidence the women were victims of a crime or subjected to racial slurs. In fact, police said the women were the aggressors, assaulting a 19-year-old white woman.

Police said surveillance and cellphone video, as well as eyewitness testimony, contradicted the women's account. The white men Agudio, Burwell and Briggs claimed assaulted them were actually trying to break up the fight.

According to the newspaper, the decision to expel the students came from a student disciplinary board, which is separate from the criminal justice system. The students didnt appear for their March 9 hearing with the student conduct board, claiming a conflict of interest because the school served as judge in the board hearings and a witness in the criminal case.

The Times-Union, citing a confidential letter recapping the hearing, reported that two witnesses to the incident spoke in the students absence.

University Police Inspector Paul Burlingame testified in the hearing that the women started the fight. He said there was no evidence to corroborate Burwells story that she was assaulted. He also said because the incident was reported as hate crime the alleged victims didnt come forward about the assault in fear for their safety.

Burlingame testified that they only came to the police once they learned there was video of the assault.

The schools vice president of communications and marketing, Joseph Brennan, was the other witnesses who testified at the conduct hearing, according to the paper. Brennan said the students actions caused reputational harm to the university.

Frederick Brewington, Burwells lawyer, told the Times Union that the testimony against his client was filled with so-called Trumpisms. He said those at the hearing werent given evidence to possibly contradict Burlingames account and his client was unable to defend herself.

At the Albany County Court arraignment Wednesday, prosecutors said the women were the perpetrators in the assault on the bus, not the victims.

One supporter still contended that the bus video couldve been doctored.

News 10 reported that the women refused to make a public apology and the case is now in the hands of a grand jury.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Click for more from the Albany Times Union.
Iranian officials turned to the United Nations Thursday to accuse the U.S. Supreme Court of violating international law by ruling that nearly $2 billion in frozen Iranian assets can be paid to victims of attacks linked to the country.

In an attempt to punish and isolate the United States, Iranian Ambassador to the U.N. Gholamali Khoshroo released a communique from the UNs 120-nation Nonaligned Movement headed by Iran to Secretary General Ban Ki-moon that claims the practice by the U.S. defies international law.

The NAM called the U.S. waiver of "the sovereign immunity of states" a violation of America's international and treaty obligations. It called on the U.S. government "to respect the principle of state immunity" and warned that failing to do so will have "adverse implications, including uncertainty and chaos in international relations."

Last week, Iranian Foreign Minister Zarif accused the U.S. Congress and judicial system of authorizing the confiscation of nearly $1.8 Billion of assets belonging to the Central Bank of Iran" in a separate complaint to the U.N.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled last month that Iran must pay almost $2 million in compensation to relatives of the 241 Marines killed in the 1983 barracks bombing in Beirut. The ruling also opened the way for victims of other Iranian-orchestrated attacks.

In 2012, Congress passed a law that granted victims of attacks linked to Tehran to be paid for losses from frozen assets tied to Irans Markazi central bank.

The State Department said last week it believes U.S. courts "comport with international law."

The Iranian state Fars News Agency reported Sunday that Iran had filed a lawsuit against the U.S. at the International Court of Justice to force Washington to release its frozen assets.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has weighed in on the dispute saying at a cabinet meeting in Tehran, That a court or judiciary in a corner of the world wants to decide about the Iranian nations rights and properties is fully illegal and against international law and the central banks legal immunity, according to Fars.

In Thursday's letter, Ambassador Khoshroo used the backing of NAM, which often takes on anti-Western positions.

Fidel Castro, one of NAMs greatest advocates, said in 1979 the group ensures the national independence, sovereignty, territorial integrity and security ofcountries as they struggle against imperialism, colonialism, racism, and all forms of foreign aggression, occupation, domination, interference or hegemony.

Zarifs letter of complaint to the U.N. Secretary General came nine days after the Iranian foreign minister met U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry to discuss implementation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, also known as the Iran nuclear deal.

At the time, Kerry said I want to emphasize we lifted our nuclear-related sanctions, as we committed to do, and there are now opportunities for foreign banks to do business with Iran.

In 2003 a U.S. federal judge ruled that the Islamic Republic of Iran not only helped create Hezbollah, the terror organization blamed by the U.S. and France for carrying out the Marine barracks bombing, but also provided the militant Shiite group with financial and logistical support for the deadly attack.

In the attack, which took place during Lebanons civil war on October 23, 1983, terrorists drove two trucks loaded with explosives into housing buildings for U.S. Marines and French paratroopers. A total of 58 French servicemen, six civilians and the two suicide bombers died along with the Marines.

In 2004, the Iranian government erected a monument in Tehran that commemorates the bombing, calling the terrorists who carried out the attack martyrs. It was the worst loss for U.S. Marines since the battle over Iwo Jima in World War II.

Fox News' Jonathan Wachtel and the Associated Press contributed to this report
A coalition of Syrian rebels and jihadists seized a strategic village from pro-government forces outside the contested city of Aleppo on Friday as a new high of 60,000 people were stranded at the border with Jordan, trying to escape the fighting.

The capture Friday signals the reemergence of a powerful, ultraconservative insurgent coalition on the opposition's side in the Syria conflict.

Renewed fighting erupted around the village of Khan Touman hours after opposition fighters took the position from pro-government forces, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported. Fighter jets, presumed to belong to either Syria or its powerful ally Russia, were launching strikes on opposition positions.

At least 43 insurgents and 30 fighters on the government side have been killed in the fighting since Thursday afternoon, according to the Observatory.

The offensive was commanded by the Jaish al-Fatah, or Army of Conquest, coalition, an ultraconservative group led by Al Qaeda's Syria affiliate, the Nusra Front, and the jihadist militias Jund al-Aqsa and Ahrar al-Sham. The Observatory said other non-jihadist rebels fought for Khan Touman on the side of the coalition, as well.

Along Syrias border with Jordan, more than 5,000 people arrived at makeshift camps in the three days alone after a roughly 300-mile journey to escape the violence engulfing Aleppo, The Telegraph reported Thursday.

Aid groups have been begging Jordan to let the Syrians through, noting that the U.N.-run Azraq camp in northern Jordan is mostly empty and could accommodate tens of thousands of refugees.

But Jordan has been hesitant, saying the displaced are a security risk since they come from areas under the Islamic States control and not properly have been vetted.

It is clear we are not terrorists, we are with our families, Ibrahim, a 24-year old who fled his hometown of ISIS-controlled Deir Ezzor along with his two young cousins, told The Telegraph. We just want peace in Jordan away from Daesh and the bombing, but I am giving up hope.

Aid agencies in the region say they are not allowed access to people waiting on Syrian side of the border  and the growing numbers are putting a strain on resources.

The Army of Conquest  who took part in the Friday raid of Khan Touman -- seized Idlib, a strategic and symbolically important provincial capital, from government forces last year and threatened to make advances towards strongholds on the Mediterranean coast and toward Damascus. Russia intervened military on the side of the government partly in response to that threat.

But the coalition of rebels and jihadists is internally divided over who it considers enemies and how it rules areas under its control.

"The suicidal Jund al-Aqsa brigade is ideologically close to Daesh," said Britain-based Syrian activist Asaad Kanjo, using the Arabic acronym for the Islamic State group. "Aqsa said it didn't want to fight Daesh and withdrew from the coalition that was suggested."

Kanjo followed the coalition's politics when he was living in Saraqib, near Idlib.

A partial cease-fire this spring between the government and certain rebel factions revealed further divisions in the Army of Conquest.

Aqsa and Nusra fighters suppressed popular demonstrations across Idlib province against the black Jihadist flag, and moderate rebel factions seized on the discontent to try to sideline the jihadists within the opposition. The political shifts split the allegiances of the internally-divided Ahrar al-Sham group. Nusra and Ahrar al-Sham are two of the country's most powerful militias.

But the recent collapse of the cease-fire and resumption of hostilities in April appears to have reunified the anti-government opposition.

The return to peace would fragment the Army of Conquest coalition once again, Kanjo said.

Khan Touman is just 4 miles from Aleppo, Syria's largest city and onetime commercial capital. It overlooks the main route between Damascus and Aleppo, parts of which remain under opposition control.

"It is part of the government's defensive line in south Aleppo," said Observatory head Rami Abdurrahman.

Aleppo-area opposition media activist Bahaa al-Halaby said the insurgents took control of Khan Touman around 7 a.m. Friday morning.

Meanwhile, jihadist websites published photos said to be taken from the Shaer gas field district in central Homs province showing Islamic State militants helping themselves to a large government weapons cache, including tanks and military vehicles.

The vital gas fields, which were in government hands, fell to the extremist fighters Wednesday.

Russia and a Syrian military official also denied that they carried out any operation against the Sarmada refugee camp Thursday. Air strikes on the camp, in a rebel-held area near the Turkish border, killed at least 28 civilians, including women and children. The official spoke to AP in Damascus on the condition of anonymity.

Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said on Friday in remarks carried by Russian news agencies that the Russian military had closely studied data from an air space monitoring system and determined that no aircraft had flown over the Sarmada camp on Wednesday or Thursday.

Konashenkov says the destruction seen on photographs and videos suggested that the camp could have been shelled, whether intentionally or by mistake, from multiple rocket launchers that the Nusra Front has been using in the area.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Mexico's federal Education Department is recommending local officials be fired for not preventing sex abuse at a Mexico City school for young children.

The department says city education officials didn't act quickly enough after a complaint was filed in early December.

Another half-dozen complaints by parents surfaced, but the school wasn't hit with a closure order until April.

The department says in a statement Friday that "it is clear authorities acted with laxness, and a lack of speed, diligence and skill in responding to the complaint."

Parents of the students aged roughly 3 to 5 say their children told them they had played sexually oriented games with the husband of the school's director.

The department said the school should be closed permanently.

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Officials in Saudi Arabia say a security officer has been shot and killed in the holy city of Mecca, just hours after a raid there targeting suspected Islamic State militants.

Police announced on Friday that the shooting happened Thursday night outside of a police station. They say an investigation has begun into Cpl. Khalaf Lafi al-Harithi's killing.

The raid marked the first time Saudi officials have acknowledged targeting the kingdom's Islamic State affiliate near the city home to the Kaaba, the holy cube-shaped shrine of Islam toward which its faithful pray. It comes ahead of this year's hajj pilgrimage in September.

Earlier, authorities said two militants were shot dead in Thursday's, while two others blew themselves up. Security forces say they also arrested two other suspects in Jiddah.
A renowned Russian conductor led a triumphant concert Thursday in the ruins of the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra, once terrorized by ISIS, even as an airstrike on a refugee camp in the north left at least 28 people dead and dozens wounded, including many children.

The performance in the same ancient amphitheater where ISIS militants carried out widely publicized killings  and called "A Prayer for Palmyra"  was intended to send a message that Russia's presence in Syria would bring hope and stability.

But even as strains of Bach and Sergei Prokofiev's First Symphony echoed through the Roman theater packed with an audience that included Russian servicemen, Syrian government ministers and children in colorful native dress, the war raged elsewhere.

Images posted on social media of the aftermath of the airstrike that tore through the Sarmada camp in rebel-held territory close to the border with Turkey showed tents burned to the ground, charred bodies, and bloodied women and children being loaded onto a pickup truck.

It was not immediately clear who carried out the attack on the camp in Idlib province where some 2,000 internally displaced people had taken shelter from the fighting in nearby Aleppo and Hama provinces over the past year. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 28 people were killed while the Local Coordination Committees, another activist group, said more than 30 died.

The White House called the strike "indefensible." There was "no justifiable excuse" to target civilians who had already fled their homes from violence, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said, calling the situation "heartbreaking."

Earnest said it was too early to say whether Syrian President Bashar Assad's forces carried out the attack, but he said he had no knowledge of any U.S. or coalition aircraft operating in the area.

U.N. Humanitarian Chief Stephen O'Brien called for an independent investigation, saying that if the camp was deliberately targeted it "could amount to a war crime."

The footage of charred bodies and desperate men pouring buckets of water to try to douse the flames was in stark contrast to the concert at the UNESCO world heritage site of Palmyra, where renowned conductor Valery Gergiev led a performance by the Mariinsky Symphony Orchestra from St. Petersburg.

The world-famous archaeological site was badly damaged by the ISIS militants who held Palmyra for 10 months before Syrian forces backed by Russian airstrikes retook it in March. During the concert, which was broadcast live on Russian television, images of the military action were shown, as well as footage of the destruction of monuments and ISIS militants marching residents to their deaths.

Among those in the audience were Russian sappers who have been carrying out demining in the town to remove bombs left by the ISIS militants.

In opening remarks, Gergiev, a supporter of Russian President Vladimir Putin, said that with the concert, "we protest against the barbarians who destroyed monuments of world culture." In a video linkup, Putin also addressed the audience, saying he regards the concert "as a sign of gratitude, remembrance and hope."

The upbeat tone was at variance with the violence elsewhere in Syria, where a double-suicide bombing in central Homs province killed at least 10 civilians and a fierce rebel assault on a government position in the north overshadowed a shaky cease-fire imposed over the city of Aleppo.

At least 49 people were wounded in the attacks on a village 28 miles east of Homs, Syria's third-largest city, according to state media and the regional governor, Talal Barrazi.

A car bomb first exploded in the main square of the village of Mukharam al-Fawkani. As people gathered to help the victims, a suicide bomber riding a motorcycle detonated explosives nearby. Four children and three women were among those killed, according to Syrian state TV.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility but ISIS has carried out several similar deadly attacks in Homs province. The area is close to where Syrian troops and ISIS gunmen have been fighting for control of the vital Shaer gas field, which fell to ISIS on Wednesday after the extremists overran 13 government checkpoints and captured a Syrian soldier. The Observatory said 34 government troops and 16 militants have been killed in three days of fighting there.

Meanwhile, relative calm prevailed in the deeply contested northern city of Aleppo, the center of the worst recent violence, following a truce announced Wednesday by U.S. officials in agreement with Russia. The Syrian military said the truce would last only 48 hours.

But a Lebanese TV station embedded with the Syrian army said Syrian rebels were waging an offensive on a government-held village south of Aleppo.
From Restauranteurs to Entrepreneurs: How Did These Minuteman Press Franchise Owners in Southern California Do It?

In the restaurant business, late nights, long weekends, and holiday shifts are non-negotiable. For Rob Overstreet and Julian Rosado, there had to be a better way to earn a living in Southern California. They found it with Minuteman Press.

May 02, 2016 // Franchising.com // SAN DIEGO & EL CAJON, Calif.  Ask Minuteman Press franchise owners Rob Overstreet and Julian Rosado about what it was like to work in the restaurant industry and their answers echo millions of others who work relentlessly at all hours of the night, including weekends. It was tough, says Overstreet, who worked as a restaurant manager for Ruths Chris Steak House. Rosado, who owned the local Mexican restaurant in Escondido called Hacienda de Vega, adds, To log that many hours on that many nights, it just became something I didnt want to do anymore.

As a restaurant owner for 11 years, Julian Rosado was actually a long-time Minuteman Press customer before he decided to own his own franchise. I enjoyed visiting the Minuteman Press center, and the owners Roy and Sue were always so relaxed and accommodating. The fact that they could work normal business hours Monday through Friday and do well without the stress of being overworked made me jealous... I knew I needed a change.

Tired of working during other peoples leisure time

Monday through Friday business hours also appealed to Rob Overstreet, who was working the typical life of someone knee deep in the food industry. He comments, The schedule I was keeping was simply unsustainable. Not only was I tired, but I was tired of working during other peoples leisure time.

Overstreet saw an opportunity to franchise with Minuteman Press, and after looking at the business-to-business model and taking a tour of existing franchises to speak with current owners, he knew this was his chance to leave the restaurant industry behind for good. As a restaurant manager, I already had the skillset to manage employees and provide a high level of customer service. What Minuteman Press offered me was the ability to be fully trained in a new industry, to have ongoing support from their corporate staff, and to work Monday through Friday on top of all that.

Easy Transition from Restaurant to Print

Because the Minuteman Press franchise is designed to accommodate people from all walks of life with a wide variety of professional backgrounds, the transition from restaurant life to the print industry was easy for Overstreet and Rosado. Overstreet reiterates, Minuteman Press gave me everything I needed to make the transition as easy as possible: Training, setup, and ongoing support whenever I need it.

The change to their schedules was a welcome respite from their previous endeavors, as are the types of products they are selling. In the restaurant industry, you are working with perishable items that last but a moment, says Rosado. The inventory with print is much easier to manage and I love working with something non-perishable that our clients will use over and over. Overstreet adds, Just like everyone needs food, anyone can be a potential Minuteman Press client because everyone needs print.

Visit Rob Overstreets Minuteman Press franchise in Scripps Ranch at 9919 Hibert St., Suite C; San Diego, CA 92131; call Rob and his team at 858-271-7315 or visit their website: www.scrippsranch.minutemanpress.com.

Visit Julian Rosados Minuteman Press franchise in El Cajon at 1654 Pioneer Way; El Cajon, CA 92020; call Julian and his team at 619-588-2206 or visit their website: www.elcajon.minutemanpress.com.

Learn more about Minuteman Press franchise opportunities at www.minutemanpressfranchise.com.

SOURCE Minuteman Press

Contact:

Chris Biscuiti

Minuteman Press

(631)249-1370

cbiscuiti@mpihq.com

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Booster Juice Is Offering Free Smoothies and Food to Those Affected by the Fort McMurray Fires

EDMONTON, ALBERTA - (Marketwired - May 6, 2016) - Booster Juice locations in the Edmonton and area would like to offer our support to the families affected by the forest fires in Fort McMurray.

From May 6, 2016 to the end of business on May 13, 2016 the Edmonton and area locations will be offering those with a valid Fort McMurray drivers license a free food item and/or any size Smoothie at no cost. We encourage everyone in the community to spread the word so we can provide support to those who have been negatively affected.

"Our hearts go out to everyone who is having to deal with such an immediate impact on their lives. We have so many wonderful vendors, Franchise Partners, and customers who are wanting to help in any way that they can," comments Dale S. Wishewan, President & CEO of Booster Juice.

In addition, any Booster Juice in Edmonton and the surrounding area will serve as a drop off location for those looking to donate supplies to the fire relief efforts in Alberta. These donations will be delivered to Edmonton Emergency Relief Services (EERS) on May 14, 2016. We encourage community members to bring in any gently used clothing items or new supplies such as diapers, wipes, toiletries, socks and pillows.

SOURCE Booster Juice

Contact:

Lindsey Allan

Marketing Lead Western Canada

780-485-8693

lallan@boosterjuice.com

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Scooters Coffee Expands Nebraska Presence

National Franchise Announces New Franchise Agreement for Scottsbluff

May 03, 2016 // Franchising.com // Omaha, NE  Scooters Coffee, the Midwest-based coffee franchise that has experienced tremendous growth over the past year, announced a new franchise agreement for the Scottsbluff, NE market.

Its thrilling to see the Scooters brand continue to grow and thrive in our home state of Nebraska, said Don Eckles, co-founder and Chairman of Scooters Coffee.

Scooters Coffee signed the agreement with Gary Rimington. Im thrilled to join the Scooters family, he said. Ive always wanted to franchise with a coffee concept. Rimington went on to add that he believes Scottsbluff is ripe for the picking for Scooters Coffee.

As weve seen Nebraskans welcome and embrace their home-grown brand of Scooters Coffee, were excited to expand into another community of our great state, said Eckles. Im very confident Gary will see tremendous success in this new market.

This new franchise agreement marks the latest move in the companys extraordinary growth. With more than 135 stores in soon-to-be 15 states, Scooters recently signed a large Area Representative Agreement in Phoenix, along with several other Multi-Unit Agreements in Florida, Oklahoma and Arkansas. In late 2015, the company opened its first location in Roswell, Georgia (Atlanta metro) and plans to build several more stores in the Atlanta area. At the same time, Scooters will continue to build locations in the Midwest region, with several stores slated to be opened in Nebraska, Kansas, Iowa, South Dakota and Missouri.

The company also added depth to its product profile in 2015, with the release of its toasted gouda cheese ciabatta and bagel breakfast sandwiches, along with the Southwest Breakfast Burrito. Scooters, which hand-crafts its pastries and roasts its own 100% shade-grown coffee (sourced through the Arbor Day Foundation), at their Omaha headquarters, will add several innovative items to the menu in 2016, including a comprehensive iced tea program and more breakfast options.

About Scooters Coffee

Founded in 1998 by Don and Linda Eckles in Bellevue, Nebraska, Scooters Coffee roasts only the finest coffee beans in the world at its headquarters in Omaha, Nebraska. Scooter's success over 18 years of history is simple: stay committed to the original business principles and company core values. The Scooter's mantra, often recited to franchisees, customers and employees is: "Amazing People, Amazing Drinks...Amazingly Fast! It represents the company's business origins from 1998 and reflects a steady commitment to providing an unforgettable experience to loyal customers.

For more information, visit scooterscoffee.com or Facebook.com/ScootersCoffee.

SOURCE Scooters Coffee

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The Joint Chiropractic Opens In Mint Hill, NC

Revolutionary Concept Makes Chiropractic Care More Convenient And Affordable In Mint Hill, NC

May 06, 2016 // Franchising.com // Mint Hill, N.C. - The Joint Chiropractic is now open in Mint Hill at 6820 Matthews-Mint Hill Rd., Ste 202. The clinic officially opened on May 2, 2016.

The Joint offers an innovative, patient-friendly approach that allows people to get affordable, quality chiropractic care on their terms. Appointments are not necessary, the clinic has extended hours, and insurance is not needed as The Joints membership plans and packages mean visits are often less costly than most insurance copays.

The full-time doctor at The Joint in Mint Hill is Marcia Chafins, D.C. Dr. Chafins obtained a Doctor of Chiropractic (D.C.) degree from Life University College of Chiropractic in Atlanta in 2014. Originally from Kentucky, she is passionate about helping people of all ages through holistic chiropractic care.

Regular chiropractic adjustments can help treat and prevent the aches and pains which result from the repetitive activities of everyday life. These symptoms include back pain, headaches, and text neck resulting from mobile device use. Consumers who take 15 minutes out of their week for a regular adjustment are able to more fully participate in the activities they enjoy and lead an active, healthier life.

The Joint Chiropractic - Mint Hill is open six days a week: Monday through Friday from 10:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. and Saturday from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.

For more information, please call (980) 229-2528 or visit the new clinic at 6820 Matthews-Mint Hill Rd., Ste 202, Mint Hill, NC 28227. [Directions].

About The Joint Corp. (NASDAQ: JYNT)

Based in Scottsdale, Arizona, The Joint is reinventing chiropractic by making quality care convenient and affordable for patients seeking pain relief and ongoing wellness. Our no-appointment policy and convenient hours and locations make care more accessible, and our affordable membership plans and packages eliminate the need for insurance. With 330+ clinics nationwide and more than 3 million patient visits annually, The Joint is an emerging growth company and key leader in the chiropractic profession. For more information, visit www.thejoint.com, follow us on Twitter@thejointchiro and find us on Facebook, You Tube and LinkedIn.

Business Structure

Dr. Eric Nocera is principal owner of North Carolina Chiropractic PC and is the Chiropractic Medical Director responsible for the chiropractors for Joint locations across North Carolina. The Joint Chiropractic is the business management company for all of North Carolina Chiropractic PCs chiropractic practices in North Carolina.

SOURCE The Joint Corp.

Media Contact:

Marcia Rhodes

Amendola Communications

mrhodes@acmarketingpr.com

(480) 664-8412 ext. 15

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In Captain America: Civil War, Anthony Mackie reprises the role of Sam Wilson, aka the winged superhero Falcon, for the third time. The actor would like you to know that the big scene everyone will be talking abouta massive superhero brawl on the tarmac of the Leipzig airport in Germanymight be a blast to watch, but it was miserable to shoot.

Were filming in Atlanta, where its 95 degrees and 90 percent humidity, Mackie said during a visit to Miami to promote the film. Youre wearing this heavy costume and you have three layers of clothes on. Youre a grown, 40 year-old man running around dressed like an idiot. So no, it was no fun at all.

So if playing a superhero is no fun, why does Mackie keep coming back for more?

Because we have a lot of fun together, he says about his co-stars, particularly Chris Evans, who plays Captain America, Falcons partner in crime-fighting. The two actors met on the set of the 2011 comedy Whats Your Number? several years before Mackie joined the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Even though they didnt share any scenes, the two became fast friends.

Between Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Avengers: Age of Ultron, they co-starred in another comedy, Playing It Cool. So by the time the storyline of Civil War forced the Marvel Cinematic Universe to pick sides between Captain America and Iron Man, there was no question where Falcons loyalty would lie.

Being friends in real life definitely makes it easier, Mackie says about the characters on-screen rapport. It helps make the character-based humor in the movie funnier. All the stuff on the screen between Chris and I comes out of your friendship. Its fun when you can go to work and you know the other guy has your back.

Born in New Orleans, Mackie, 37, landed his first starring role in Spike Lees She Hate Me in 2004 and hasnt stopped working since. He had sizable roles in The Hurt Locker, Pain and Gain, Million Dollar Baby and The Night Before. He will next be seen playing Martin Luther King in the HBO drama All the Way, about the relationship between the civil rights leader and President Lyndon B. Johnson (Bryan Cranston), which premieres May 21.

Theres a huge sense of responsibility when youre playing the most iconic and recognizable figure in the world, he says. When I was preparing for the role, I decided I wouldnt try to impersonate him, because I dont look like him or sound like him. It was more about capturing his essence and giving the audience an opportunity to learn about this period in his life.

Mackies ability to leapfrog through film genres and land so many radically different roles is a testament to his talent. But the actor humbly gives the credit to his agents, saying half of the battle to snag good parts in Hollywood roles isnt waged by actors.

My father used to tell me that the smartest man in the room is the one who knows hes the dumbest man in the room, Mackie says. So I let other people take care of that aspect of my career. I know a lot of actors who are much better than I am, but they dont get the best jobs because they dont have the best reps. Youre only as good as the people who represent you, and I am lucky to have some pretty great ones. Then when its time to work, you just have to show up and deliver.
NEW YORKAs The Good Wife comes in for a landing after seven seasons, it finds its namesake heroine, Alicia Florrick, facing the same dilemma as when it began: defending her husband, now the governor of Illinois, who is mired in a scandal that could send him back to prison.

Will this crisis reunite Alicia (played by Julianna Margulies) with Peter (Chris Noth), from whom shes been estranged as he awaits a jurys verdict? Or will she finally divorce the man who, in the series 2009 premiere, was the disgraced Chicago-area states attorney heading to prison for corruption involving prostitutes? After all these years as a dutiful lawyer, mother and wife, what will be Alicias future path?

All presumably will be revealed when The Good Wife concludes Sunday at 9 p.m. on CBS.

A legal drama and much more, The Good Wife has been that rare program on a mainstream broadcast network that could stand alongside the cable-network exotica certifying televisions new golden age.

But even more remarkably for a medium that traffics in crazes and clones, The Good Wife has always been genre-defying, neither a copy of anything that came before or, thus far, tempting any programmer to try to copy it.

How could that be?

As Robert and Michelle Kingthe shows creators and executive producerscontinue to occupy what had been its Brooklyn offices but now is home for Braindead their upcoming CBS summer series, this husband-and-wife team recently mused on what made The Good Wife so good. Their edited comments follow:

ROBUST CHARACTERS

Its really tricky to maintain, said Michelle. You tell serialized stories with not just your core cast, but with ancillary characters who arent regular, and you dont have access to those actors on a regular basis. But we wanted to be able to tell whats going on not only with Alicia, say, but also with her mom (Stockard Channing) and her brother (Dallas Roberts), just two of the shows countless recurring characters. It becomes a real challenge for everyone in the production to juggle all those actors schedules.

SPLENDID ACTORS

The writing sets a tone for the actors and then gets out of the way, said Robert. For instance, in our fourth-ever episode we needed an antagonist, but instead of a mean and angry male lawyer, we thought, What if its a pregnant woman, and what if she uses her pregnancy to break up depositions whenever she wants to: I feel a pain!

Then we brought in Martha Plimpton, who sent that idea into the stratosphere. THEN we needed to have her back, because we wanted to know more of who this character is and more of what Martha would do with it.

SOAPY SOPHISTICATION

The narrative digs deep. At the same time, it snacks on melodrama as viewers join the shows creators in having their cake and eating it too.

We want the actors to have real reactions, even to ludicrous events, Robert said. In the beginning, viewers were commenting on how the lawyers kept winning cases, which is not very realistic. So in the third season, we decided they would start getting prosecuted for (possibly) bribing judges. The more you can hang a lantern on any ludicrous elements, the more you can then make the characters respond realistically: We even had Diane Lockhart wondering, How ARE we winning so many cases?!

COMEDY MEETS DRAMA

We deliberately included comedy just to keep us from being EARNEST, said Michelle. And we have really benefited from getting actors with comic chops.

The shows slate of guest stars with comic roots is vast, including Michael J. Fox, Nathan Lane, Matthew Morrison and Carrie Preston, who was unforgettably hilarious in her handful of appearances over six seasons as madcap hotshot lawyer Elsbeth Tascioni.

And among the regular cast, the Kings cited Christine Baranski (who plays a fellow lawyer of Alicia), Alan Cumming, Matt Czuchry and the departed Josh Charles for their comic skills, as well as the actress in the center square: One of the things that originally sold us on Julianna was her amazing comedic work as a guest star on Scrubs, said Robert.

ONLINE SMARTS

CBS airs a LOT of procedurals with a lot of cases, Robert noted, and early on we realized that one of the ways to distinguish ourselves was to explore the digital world.

From search engines (the law firms client ChumHum) to social media to a vast surveillance effort penetrating our heroes phones and computers, the series rose to the challenges of the rapidly unfolding digital eraseizing on many breakthroughs even before the audience did (bitcoin, anyone?).

This brave new world served the shows storytellers well, along with its viewers.

We had one episode with a case we wanted to end. And we have trouble with endings, said Robert. But it turned out the judge had inadvertently friended a person on Facebook who was on the jury. Bingomistrial!

NO PREACHING

We made an effort to be respectful of both sides of any argument, said Michelle, and to never dismiss a character who had a different point of view as being stupid or evil.

LICKETY-SPLIT PACING

Our scripts, said Robert, go from 60 to 64 pageswhere the rule of thumb is a minute per pageand these episodes are supposed to be 42 minutes. So we had to try to shrink-wrap our stories.

We have great actors, added Michelle. If we didnt, they wouldnt be able to get all the words out of their mouths.

RACINESS WITH DECORUM

If you want to have adult relationships, Michelle said, you have to figure out how to show whats going on, without getting yanked off the air. Especially when its on CBS in the heart of prime time.

But we felt that what was sexier than showing what was going on with people making love was to show it on the faces, said Robert. That, we could showour actors are very goodand get away with a helluva lot.

SHREWD MUSIC

The original score in recent seasons took a chamber-music turn, imparting elegance, energy and a touch of irony in a manner Michelle calls Rossini crossed with Jason Bourne.

Meanwhile, the licensed needle-drop song selections played an organic role in the action.

A memorable sequence in Season 3 found Kalinda (Archie Panjabi) bashing the windows of a parked car with her baseball bat to the beat of a 20-year-old pounding rock tune.

We find the piece, explained Robert, then we edit based on it. And, in that case, they even souped up the song with the rhythmic bleating of the battered cars alarm.

IDEAS, NOT VIOLENCE

The courtroom murder of Will Gardner (Josh Charles) in Season 5 became the grand exception that proved the rule. The show had its share of clashes, betrayal and intriguebut no blood sport.

Said Robert, On our show, no ones really shooting at each other. Their words are the guns.
To save part of the Revolutionary War battlefield where a Virginia general died, two New Jersey lawmakers are asking to confer this week with the board of Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study.

State Sen. Christopher "Kip" Bateman and Assemblyman Reed Gusciora requested the meeting with representatives of the IAS board of trustees, which is meeting on the institute campus in Princeton, N.J., as the Princeton Packet reported Thursday.

In a letter they had hand-delivered to IAS on Thursday morning, Bateman and Gusciora sought conversation with the institute in an ongoing dispute over its plans to build faculty housing on Maxwell Field, part of the land where troops led by Mercer and Gen. George Washington defeated the British in the Battle of Princeton on Jan. 3, 1777. Their surprise victory was a turning point in the war, boosting American morale and chastening the enemy.

As members of the New Jersey Legislature, we believe it is in the interest of the state of New Jersey as well as the Institute for Advanced Study to find a solution that both preserves this unique historic treasure and enables IAS to build the faculty housing elsewhere, they wrote Charles Simonyi, chairman of the IAS board.

A meeting "would be a natural first step toward finding a solution and developing a partnership" with IAS on the issue, Bateman and Gusciora wrote. [W]e sincerely hope you will take us up on our offer to meet. We all have so much to lose if we cannot find common ground ...

The IAS has broken ground on its development, and rejected offers from the nonprofit Civil War Trust to buy the land. The Princeton Battlefield Society is suing to block the project.

"There is no question about the historic importance of the property," Bateman and Gusciora wrote Simonyi.

They said the institute hasn't acknowledged its acreage is a historically significant part of the battlefield. "In taking this stance, the institute is doing itself and the local community a disservice," Bateman and Gusciora wrote.

The battlefield, they said, is a place to "educate and inspire future generations of Americans."

Earlier, the two lawmakers had urged the IAS to stop its excavation of the site, which adjoins Princeton Battlefield State Park.
The odds that youve seen a doctor in the last year vary quite a bit depending on where you livebut so far, the way your state has implemented the Affordable Care Act doesnt seem to have much to do with it, government data show.

A new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention finds that 17.3 percent of American adults did not have a home base for their medical care in 2014, and 34 percent had not seen or talked to a doctor in the last year.

But those figures ranged considerably from state to state.

Residents of Vermont had the best access to medical care: 84.1 percent of them had visited or been in touch with a doctor in the past year, and 97.2 percent said they had a place to go if they needed medical attention.

In four other statesDelaware, Massachusetts, Wisconsin and Hawaiiat least 90 percent of residents had a medical home, and in two other statesDelaware and Virginiaat least 75 percent of residents had seen or talked with a doctor in the past year.

At the other end of the spectrum, in three statesNevada, Idaho and Texasmore than 25 percent of residents didnt have a regular place to receive medical care. In three other statesMontana, South Dakota and Alaskamore than 45 percent of people had gone more than a year without seeing or talking to a doctor.

Although access to medical care varied greatly by state, the researchers found little difference when they grouped states according to their response to the ACA (also known as Obamacare).

Among the 25 states (plus the District of Columbia) that expanded their Medicaid programs in the wake of the federal law, 66.7 percent of residents had seen or spoken with a doctor in the last year, on average. In the other 25 states that did not expand Medicare, the figure was 65.2 percenta difference too small to be considered statistically significant.

The researchers did find a slight but real difference in residents likelihood of having a usual place of care: 83.4 percent had a medical home in states that expanded Medicare, on average, compared with 81.8 percent in states that didnt.

Many factors likely influence rates of healthcare utilization, and rates may change as the length of time since ACA implementation increases, the report authors concluded.

The findings are based on adults ages 18 to 64 who participated in the CDCs National Health Interview Survey. The report was produced by the agencys National Center for Health Statistics.
More than 140,000 untested rape evidence kits across the country are collecting dust in crimedenying justice for rape survivors waiting for the results and allowing rapists to commit more sexual assaults.

Virginia has joined a handful of states that have taken legislative action to end the backlog by adopting a law to ensure that the commonwealths untested kits will be processed quickly beginning July 1.

Thats when Senate Bill 291, sponsored by Sen. Richard Black, RLeesburg, takes effect. Under the legislation, the more than 2,000 untested rape kits in Virginia must be tested immediately. In addition, after a doctor examines someone who has been raped and collects evidence of the crime with a rape kit, the kit must be tested for DNA within 60 days.

When Gov. Terry McAuliffe signed the legislation into law, the ceremony was attended by a rape survivor whose handwritten pamphlet prompted the General Assembly to act. Natasha Alexenko said she hopes other states will follow suit.

This initiative will change America, she said.

In 1993, Alexenko, then a 20-year-old college student in New York, was violently raped and robbed at gunpoint by an unknown assailant while returning to her apartment. She underwent a rape exam but would wait nearly 10 years for the results.

New York had a backlog of nearly 17,000 untested rape kits in 1999, according to the website EndTheBacklog.org. New York authorities then worked on the problem and cleared the states backlog entirely in 2003.

While waiting for the results of her rape exam, Alexenko become a vocal advocate for sexual assault awareness. Among other things, she made informational pamphlets and distributed them wherever she could.

In 2014, one of Alexenkos pamphlets, which highlighted the national backlog of untested rape kits, found itself on Blacks desk.

Black admitted he was surprised to learn about the backlog. I thought, What are you talking about  untested rape test kits? 

To understand the status of the issue in Virginia, Black initiated a statewide audit in 2015, with permission from the governor and conducted by the Virginia Department of Forensic Science. The audit revealed that Virginia had nearly 3,000 untested rape kits sitting in forensic labs  some dating to 1988.

Rape exams are physically intrusive and taken at a time when the victim typically is traumatized, Black said. Its an undertaking for a woman to undergo it, and then to have it (the evidence kit) just sit up on a shelf is a terrible thing.

Compounding the ordeal is that, before undergoing the exam, rape victims must refrain from bathing, showering, using the restroom, changing clothes, combing hair and cleaning the area where the assault happened, according to the Rape Abuse Incest National Network.

A rape exam can take hours as a forensic practitioner collects hair, oral, anal and vaginal samples, in addition to taking photographs for visual evidence, explained Eileen Davis, who has worked as a forensic nurse in Virginia.

She said the failure to test rape kits not only is an insult to the rape survivors but also has allowed more rapes and other crimes to happen, Davis added. According to EndTheBacklog.org, a project of the nonprofit Joyful Heart Foundation, there are at least 144,000 untested rape nationwide, including 20,000 in Texas and more than 10,000 in Michigan, Florida and Ohio.

When evidence goes untested, predators are not identified and arrested, Davis said. DNA from a rape kit taken in 1998, for example, often matches DNA from more recent exams.

Alexenkos case reflects that reality. Victor Rondon, the man who raped her in 1993, roamed free until he was arrested on assault charges in 2007 in Las Vegas. In 2008, Rondon was found guilty of eight counts of violent assault and two counts of rape, Black said. Rondon was eventually convicted and sentenced to 44 to 107 years in prison.

Serial rapists pose the greatest danger, Black said. Not only for rape, but some of these people flip over into murder, as we have seen with the Hannah Graham case.

Graham was a University of Virginia student who disappeared in 2014. In March, Jesse Matthew, a 34-year-old Charlottesville man, pleaded guilty to her murder. Previously, Matthew had been accused of sexual assault at two other Virginia colleges.

Serial rapists are repeat offenders, Black emphasized. To prevent future crimes, he said, it is critical to test rape kits for the perpetrators DNA quickly.

At the bill signing, McAuliffe said the state budget will provide $900,000 annually to clear the backlog of untested rape kits and to ensure that from now on, kits are tested within 60 days after the rape exam has been performed.

Attorney General Mark Herring, who attended the signing, said, Once we get the backlog cleared out, this new bill should ensure that Virginia never finds itself in that situation again.

It is our responsibility, McAuliffe said, to provide certainty and ease the pain for women who are haunted by the fear that their attackers could still be out there and could still be free.
The teacher crisis is real, and were not going to work our way out of it simply by making it easier to hire teachers.
Our optimism is fueled, in part, by curative strategies were already using at Fred Hutch  especially harnessing the immune system to fight cancer. Immunotherapy holds the brightest potential in modern cancer research. Its roots lie in Fred Hutchs pioneering work in bone marrow transplantation. Its proof is evident in the revived lives of patients enrolled right now in our clinical trials  93 percent of patients with an advanced leukemia who received an experimental, living immunotherapy as part of a Fred Hutch study experienced sustained remissions. Vice President Joe Biden recently toured our immunotherapy labs to view this stunning progress firsthand.

Push the pace of progress

Indeed, immunotherapy can be a central driver of Vice President Bidens Cancer Moonshot initiative. With about 4,500 children and adults diagnosed with cancer each day in the U.S., we must accelerate our pace. If ever there was a moment to double down on our national cancer-research investment, the time is now.

Last year, President Obama requested a $1 billion budget increase for the National Institutes of Health. In response, Congress authorized a $2 billion increase  a welcome boost that will improve the current and future health of all Americans. At Fred Hutch, nearly 90 percent of our competitively awarded, sponsored research projects are funded by NIH and other federal sources.

Under that NIH umbrella, the National Cancer Institute serves as the principal U.S. agency supporting cancer science, including much of investigation and innovation. In 2016, the NCIs annual budget is $5.1 billion. If we were to double that NCI expenditure, imagine how much larger and quicker our collective steps will be toward closing the gap on curing cancer. Imagine what we can accomplish on this crucial front with an annual investment of $10 billion for 10 years.

This money would allow us to build needed scientific infrastructure, recruit additional researchers to the cause, run more clinical trials and develop better cures for additional patients across the country. That means expanding  and further hastening  the vast gains weve freshly notched on immunotherapies.

Huge return on investment

Such bold investments already have spurred massive rewards and saved thousands of lives. At Fred Hutch, $260 million in NIH money drove the Womens Health Initiative study that found a link between hormone replacement therapy and breast cancer. The human payoff: there are about 20,000 fewer cases of breast cancer occurring each year in the U.S. The math: That $260 million investment yielded a $37.1 billion return in direct medical costs saved.

During the past decade, the U.S. cancer mortality rate has decreased by about 2 percent each year. That means some 20 percent fewer people are dying of cancer annually compared to 10 years ago. Imagine how much more we can shrink that death rate by doubling our federal investment into cancer research.

Victories in cancer science have come through a better understanding of how to prevent the disease, through improvements in early diagnosis and through our gains in therapies and treatments  all hard-won achievements reaped through years of dogged research.

Our hope is high

These dividends, in turn, have buoyed our hope for whats next. As NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins has said, we now sit at the century of biology, and other countries are now reading our playbook on how to thwart cancer.

Yes, these have been long-term wins. And thats an important point when it comes to funding. In the private sector, investors demand quick results, making it hard to cultivate bucks for a one-decade campaign. But in the public sector, we can better envision and attain those more-distant, most-ambitious vistas. Like reaching the moon in 1969.

Each day, I feel a growing sense of urgency to develop and disseminate more curative therapies. This is because I know we now have the science. We just need the additional resources.

Lets push cancer to its long-dreamed conclusion. Lets quicken our pace of exploration and our rate of discovery. Lets double down on federal funding. The time is now.

Dr. Gary Gilliland is the president and director of Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle.
Think Perform Releases Free Lean Training Resources

The informational resources are aimed at helping business owners evaluate their own waste and learn how they can save time and money in their operations, reports http://www.thinkperform.com.au/,

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Think Perform, a premier Melbourne-based business consulting firm, has announced the release of several free lean training resources for business owners. Available on their website, the purpose of this release is to help business owners evaluate their operations chain and see where they may be wasting time and money. The resources will also help business owners identify the best way to go about eradicating this waste and streamlining their business processes.

Andrew Henderson, a spokesperson for Think Perform, stated "If an organisation wants to stay competitive in today's markets, they need to figure out how to produce top-quality goods and services in a timely manner for the least amount of money. Unfortunately, many businesses are unable to achieve this simply because of unidentified waste, which is any activity that does not add value to the business. The free resources that we are giving away to business owners will help them better understand what waste is and how lean training can help them get rid of it, saving time and money without cutting corners on quality."

One of the free resources that Think Perform is offering to business owner is an infographic that clearly spells out 8 wastes of lean that neither business owners nor their employees are usually aware of. In addition to helping entrepreneurs identify 8 common areas of waste, the team at Think Perform has also released a free eBook showing business owners why most lean training fails to actually improve business waste and what they can do to ensure their success in applying lean methodology to their business practices.

As Henderson goes on to say, "Whether it is a case of overproduction or simply not using employees to their full potential, waste costs businesses precious time and money that they cannot afford to lose. We encourage every business owner to take a look at our free resources and see how they can help them create a long term plan for sustainability in just about any market."

Those who would like to take advantage of the free resources or inquire about Think Perform's Brisbane lean training course should visit the company's website at www.thinkperform.com.au.

About Think Perform:

Think Perform commenced operation in February 2011 with a specific aim to assist businesses in becoming more competitive and sustainable by improving their operations through Lean training targeted at the operational (shop floor) level. Think Perform is part of The Leadership and Performance Group with over 40 years' experience assisting organisations with their training and development requirements. The company operates as a Registered Training Organisation nationally throughout Australia.

For more information about us, please visit http://www.thinkperform.com.au/

Contact Info:

Name: Andrew Henderson

Organization: Think Perform

Address: Glen Iris, VIC, 3146

Phone: 0398221301

Source: http://marketersmedia.com/think-perform-releases-free-lean-training-resources/113888

Release ID: 113888

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Perth's Pottier Homes Announces Special New Home Upgrade Offer

For a limited time, $5,000 entitles clients to over $35,000 in upgrades for homes based on popular Shoalwater or Colorado designs, Pottier Homes reports

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Pottier Homes, one of the area's leading home builders, announced the details of a special new offer. For a limited time, Pottier Homes clients can pay $5,000 to receive a collection of home upgrades normally valued at over $35,000, including the choice between a package that includes a reverse-cycle air conditioning system or one that comes with high-end carpets and slimline blinds. With an array of standard home designs that can be modified or simplified as wished and a commitment to delivering the utmost in quality with every project, Pottier Homes focuses on turning the vision of each client into reality. The new special offer is good on homes built to the company's popular Shoalwater and Colorado designs; includes attractive upgrades like 20 millimeter Essa stone counter-tops, a solar hot water system, and others; and is described in full at http://pottierhomes.com.au/.

"We've worked very hard to build a reputation as one of Perth's most accommodating and quality-focused home builders," Pottier Homes Managing Director Chris Pottier said, "With so much going on in the area, we're proud of how we've been able to stand out from all the competition. Even so, we feel that we also deliver a tremendous amount of value to every client. Our new special offer highlights this in a dramatic way, conveying over $35,000 in upgrades for only $5,000, as detailed at http://pottierhomes.com.au/. We're excited to be able to extend this opportunity, and we hope that many of our clients will make use of it."

Having shattered a 25-year-old record for housing starts just two years back, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, Perth is still the scene of plenty of residential building. Even so, many who had held off through the frenzied activity of recent years are now preparing to put their own projects in motion, with a slight moderation of pace signaling to investors and would-be homeowners alike that the time has become right.

When they do so, they will be confronted with an industry populated by providers of all kinds, from low-profile shops with little background to massive operations that emphasize the volume of their output. For many in the area, Pottier Homes stands out as an especially attractive choice by emphasizing both capability and personal, service tailored to best address the goals of each individual client.

With a range of well-considered one- and two-story designs that can be accepted as-is, modified however might be desired, or left aside entirely in favor of fully custom work, Pottier Homes consults with clients to create the home each dreams of. Always aiming to go far beyond the ordinary, Pottier Homes regularly employs the most innovative of techniques and design approaches to achieve this important goal.

With the company's new special offer now being available, gaining access to this highly regarded level of service becomes even more affordable. For an additional charge of only $5,000, Pottier Homes clients will receive upgrades worth over $35,000 on select Shoalwater and Colorado homes. Details of the new offer can be found at http://pottierhomes.com.au/.

About Pottier Homes:

Driven by a serious passion for turning dreams into reality, Pottier Homes is one of Perth's leading home builders, offering a full range of design and consultation services, never shying from any challenge, and always striving for results that go far beyond the ordinary.

For more information about us, please visit http://pottierhomes.com.au/

Contact Info:

Name: Chris Pottier

Organization: Pottier Homes

Address: 1/467 Scarborough Beach Rd Osborne Park, WA 6017 Australia

Phone: (08) 6365 6244

Source: http://marketersmedia.com/perths-pottier-homes-announces-special-new-home-upgrade-offer/113880

Release ID: 113880

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Stairlift Company Reviews Offers New Service to North Dakota Dealers

Stairlift Company Reviews is making waves with a new mini website service that lets North Dakota dealers launch customized online information and sales outlets

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StairliftCompanyReviews.com sits at the top of the online independent stair lift information pyramid with all the statistics showing it is the best and largest website in the field. Their recently launched free dedicated mini website service is welcome news for all those North Dakota dealers who would like online stairlift buyers to see their product information and imagery, and their business profiles and positive customer reviews. Besides providing vital information about the stair lift dealer and their products and services the mini-websites offer potential customers contact details and an easy way to buy online. Those dealers without their own website/digital capability should be first in the rush to take up this attractive offer.

Yale Lipshick, Co-Founder of StairliftCompanyReviews.com says, "These mini websites are designed to introduce North Dakota dealers to a new market for their products and services. With little effort they can personalize the mini-website so that it accurately mirrors their desired business image. The end result is that the prospective stairlift consumer benefits from a wider choice of dealers, and the dealer make their own distinctive impression on this expanding internet market. We are committed to guiding dealers regarding the imagery to use in the mini-websites, and the best e-commerce practices for making a positive impact on this new platform."

Stairlift Company Reviews has received very encouraging feedback from local stairlift dealers who appreciate how the website has given them access to an informed and highly interested demographic for stairlifts. North Dakota stair lifts dealer Rebecca Evans wrote, "Full marks to StairliftCompanyReviews.com for all their assistance. Now are name has become known to a hub of understanding consumers whose recognition of quality products brings us many more online inquires and sales. With our initial lack of website knowhow we would not have been able to get this far without the amazing help of StairliftCompanyReviews.com."

As StairliftCompanyReviews.com looks forward to expansion in their North Dakota market, they are already preparing new service/product rollouts. For more information please visit www.stairliftcompanyreviews.com.

About StairliftCompanyReviews.com

StairliftCompanyReviews.com is the internet's largest single source of stairlift information. We connect stairlift shoppers with the best local stairlift dealers, installers, and servicers who represent the most popular brands in the industry. Chair lift customers can quickly and easily get price quotes from all major brands on all new and pre-owned models from manufacturers like Acorn, Stannah, Hawle and Bruno. Consumers who use StairliftCompanyReviews.com receive competitive quotes from only prescreened, trusted dealers and service representatives for new and pre-owned stairlifts.

For more information about us, please visit http://www.stairliftcompanyreviews.com

Contact Info:

Name: Yale Lipschik

Email: info@stairliftcompanyreviews.com

Organization: Stairlift Company Reviews

Address: 500 Mamaroneck Avenue

Phone: 1-888-507-2015

Source: http://marketersmedia.com/stairlift-company-reviews-offers-new-service-to-north-dakota-dealers/113463

Release ID: 113463

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East Midlands Mobility Scooter Firm Terrain Hopper Won Medilink Innovation Award

The Lincolnshire-based Terrain Hopper was honored with the prestigious Innovation award in the Medilink East Midlands Business Competition, for its innovation success in the mobility vehicles segment and subsequent impact on local job and wealth creation.

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The prominent Lincolnshire-based mobility vehicles company, TerrainHopper, was announced as the winner of the highly coveted Innovation award in the Medilink East Midlands Business Competition.

More information is available at http://terrainhopper.com.

The prestigious Medilink East Midlands Innovation award, recognising Terrain Hopper's success in innovation and subsequent impact on local job and wealth creation, was collected during the Innovation Day awards dinner at the Radisson Blu Hotel, East Midlands Airport.

The business launched in 2010 to develop pre-production prototypes of an off-road mobility product by Sam and Deborah Dantzie who since then self-financed the opening of a manufacturing facility, patented and launched the TerrainHopper and are into their second production run, has also automatically secured a place in the Medilink UK National Awards.

Sam Dantzie explains that "our products are generating worldwide interest and this prestigious award recognises the innovative nature of our product. We manufacture in Lincolnshire and are currently expanding into new premises and creating new skilled jobs. Medilink East Midlands and iNet have been very supportive, showing confidence and interest in our amazing off road mobility product and we look forward to continuing with this valued relationship".

The Innovation Award is sponsored by Potter Clarkson LLP and the partner Helen Johnstone revealed that "Potter Clarkson is proud to have presented the Innovation Award to TerrainHopper, whose off road vehicle has enabled many people with mobility difficulties to have fun by participating in a wide range of outdoor activities across difficult terrain".

The Potter Clarkson LLP partner explains that "as an East Midlands-based company, we are very pleased to see companies from this region developing and commercialising such cutting edge products and obtaining intellectual property rights to protect their valuable innovations".

The Chief Executive of Medilink East Midlands, Dr. Darren Clark, explained how "TerrainHopper is an excellent example of innovative design meeting a real need. The fact that the company is also manufacturing the vehicles in the region makes this a worthy award winner. We congratulate them on their early success and look forward to helping them as they expand".

In addition to TerrainHopper, four other companies were honored with Medilink awards, including Francis Lamont Innovations for 'Best Start-up, Spirit Healthcare for 'Partnership with the NHS', Quadralene Group for 'Export Achievement' and Scientific Laboratory Supplies for 'Outstanding Achievement'.

The award ceremony followed the Medilink East Midlands Innovation Conference on "Revolutionizing Healthcare - What part will you play?", supported by the Healthcare and Bioscience iNet project - part-financed by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), that attracted over 200 of the region's leading businesses and academics in the sector.

For more information about us, please visit http://www.terrainhopper.com/

Contact Info:

Name: Sam Dantzie

Organization: Terrain Hopper

Address: Unit 9, Yule Baron Development, Manby Middlegate, Manby, LN11 8EB. UK

Phone: +44 (0) 1472 566 566

Release ID: 113912

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Dallas Apartment Locators Announces Official Launch of New Website Design On May 6th 2016

Dallas Apartment Locators will debut their brand new website design on May 6th, creating an even better experience for all their current and potential clientele.

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May 3, 2016 - Dallas, TX - The city of Dallas is home to some of the most stunning properties in America, and its apartments are known for having some of the best interior design in the country, competing with the major coastal centers with its very own unique style. Gaining access to these exclusive properties can be a real challenge, as they are often snatched up quickly or priced outside the majority of the market.

Dallas Apartment Locators is a specialized service helping people find the best apartments for their needs in premier areas of town. As part of their commitment to delivering superior client experience, the firm has announced a complete website redesign which will be officially unveiled on May 6th.

The new website will feature the latest in cutting edge, dynamic design, using a fully responsive framework to ensure that it loads seamlessly and can be easily navigated on any device. The website will feature stunning imagery, multimedia video content, and clear and comprehensive descriptions of the neighborhoods and services available.

The newly developed site will also feature a simple, user-friendly contact form that will allow individuals to itemize their requirements, including everything from the number of rooms they require to their preferred neighborhoods and ideal price ranges. The firm's experienced agents will then use this information to shortlist a set of apartments for rent in Dallas which cater to their clients' precise needs and preferences.

A spokesperson for Dallas Apartment Locators explained, "We're excited to launch the new website, which will enable us to serve our clientele better than ever before. We can offer great deals on apartments of all sizes, and help people find the Dallas property of their dreams. This new and improved website is going to dramatically improve the level of service we are able to provide, making it a better experience for everyone. It's truly an exciting time for our business, and one that we're hoping will have a positive impact on the future of property searches. It's definitely a step in the right direction."

About Dallas Apartment Locators

Dallas Apartment Locators is a top rated property locating agency, dedicated to finding clients the best deals on luxury apartments in Dallas and the surrounding areas. Their website is regularly updated with the latest featured deals, and provides comprehensive listings using imagery, video and detailed descriptions. Their expert real estate agents will stop at nothing to deliver the best and most exclusive properties on the market.

For more information about us, please visit http://dallasapartmentlocators.co

Contact Info:

Name: Janna Hudson

Email: info@dallasapartmentlocators.co

Organization: Dallas Apartment Locators

Phone: 214-999-1161

Source: http://marketersmedia.com/dallas-apartment-locators-announces-official-launch-of-new-website-design-on-may-6th-2016/113910

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Big deals, people moves and voting were among the key themes across the adviser industry this week.

This is FTAdvisers round-up of what you need to know about this week:

The long-predicted platform market consolidation appeared to begin in earnest on Tuesday (3 May), as Standard Life announced a deal to buy Axas Portfolio Services, known to most advisers as Elevate.

The French insurer confirmed rumours it is on the way out of the UK life and savings market, with discussions underway over the sale of its remaining assets, namely direct protection business SunLife and non-platform investment and pension divisions.

Standard Lifes head of adviser and wealth manager propositions David Tiller denied consolidation in the platform industry limits choice and promised to invest in Elevates technology and governance.

However, ex-Cofunds boss and James Hay chief executive Alastair Conway predicted a return to the old world of restricted salesforces following the deal.

Somewhat overshadowed was an even bigger transaction - at least in terms of money - which saw Aegon buying BlackRocks UK defined contribution platform and administration business, worth 12bn of assets and 350,000 customers.

The deal will create a 30bn platform-based workplace savings business within Aegon while BlackRocks 65bn UK defined contribution business will focus on investment management.

While these deals were sealed, Sanlam pulled out of a deal to buy a stake in UK advice network Caerus and its investment management business Caerus Portfolio Management.

2) People moving

Nutmeg saw change at the top this week, as founder Nick Hungerford moved to a non-executive role in order to let recently-appointed Martin Stead become chief executive.

Under Martins leadership, Nutmeg 2.0 will transform financial advice and the relationship that Europeans have with their money, stated Mr Hungerford.

Both AIG and Axa Investment Managers were also at it, the former hiring Mark Anders as partnerships director and moving Vicky Churcher to intermediary director, while the latter appointed Rogge Global Partners Michael Ganske as its head of emerging markets fixed income.

Meanwhile, Leeds Building Society is looking for a new head of intermediary distribution, as Louisa Sedgwick announced she will leave in the summer; news that came as the lender also announced a merry-go-round of senior staff.

Finally, a couple of big names are set to leave the industry. Columbia Threadneedle European equities head Leigh Harrison is to retire in the summer, prompting a senior reshuffle at the fund house, while over at Jupiter, head of marketing Richard Wilson has resigned.

3) To the polls

Yesterday (5 May) saw voting across the country, for parliament in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, English councils and police commissioners.

FTAdviser covered both the Scottish election and London mayoral vote from the perspective of housing policy, so it will be interesting to see which pledges become reality in the coming months and years.
Direct to consumer term assurance sales soared 216 per cent last year, stealing market share from banks where sales halved.

Data compiled by Swiss Re for its annual Term and Health Watch showed the number of UK life insurance policies sold without an intermediary jumped to 115,633 last year, up from 36,586 in 2014.

At the same time, sales of the policy via banks plummeted 48 per cent.

In 2014 bancassurance advisers sold 234,278 new policies, which fell to 122,250 last year.

Swiss Re reported around 25,000 of the direct to consumer sales are accounted for by the reports authors redefining its distribution channels when collecting the data.

But Ron Wheatcroft, technical manager at Swiss Re, said overall the figures show direct to consumer propositions are appealing to more of the life sectors potential customers.

The vast majority of life cover is still sold via intermediaries, however, with around 1.1 million policies sold by directly authorised, tied or bancassurance advisers last year.

While most term assurance business is still placed through traditional distribution channels, it is good to see that direct to consumer propositions are appealing to more of our potential customers, Mr Wheatcroft said.

This is a very good start: our challenge will be to extend this to more complex areas such as protection against disability risks if consumers wish to buy in that way.

He said technology will help grow the industry, but added life companies and advisers needs to speak to consumers in plain and jargon-free language.

Otherwise, people will just step away.

The report also found new term-only policy sales rose slightly to be up 2.4 per cent, while term with critical illness sales decreased by 9.7 per cent, mainly a result of lower mortgage-related product sales.

This resulted in a decline in total new term assurance sales for 2015 of 1.8 per cent.

Decreasing term assurance sales, with and without critical illness cover, fell by 10.5 per cent from 471,044 in 2014 to 421,756.

Income protection sales grew by 10.7 per cent, and guaranteed acceptance whole life sales increased by 7.4 per cent from 261,137.

New underwritten whole life sales increased by 6.9 per cent from 30,810 in 2014 to 32,937.

Maxine Udall, marketing and research manager at Swiss Re and author of the report, said: It is great to see new sales of pure term life, income protection and whole life cover increasing.

People need to take action to protect their mortgage commitments against financial shocks. This will lead to greater consumer resilience and a better-protected mortgage book for lenders.

While consumers now go through a more rigorous approach when taking out a mortgage loan, circumstances can change and the industry owes it to customers to point this out. Protecting income commitments for so-called Generation Rent is just as important.

Mark Dennison, principal at intermediary LightBlue UK, said he was pleasantly surprised by the findings.

He said: It is encouraging to see a rise in income protection sales, which bucks the trend of previous years. Maybe it reflects a sign of the uncertainty in the workplace some people are feeling, combined with the fact providers are definitely promoting income protection more.
How many of us have had experience of being quoted x by an online car purchasing facility for that Ford Mondeo were selling?

Okay, okay, were in financial services so perhaps selling the Jaguar.

We get the quote, then find any eventual blemish, dent, scuff, or tyre wear is used as a gradual reduction from the enticing pull-in price  hold this thought.

Presently the consolidator market is a busy place. By definition consolidator simply means anyone wanting to by an IFA firm looking to exit the market (or, in individual terms the adviser retiring/de-authorising).

It would be busy of course. Despite being told the average age of the financial population is decreasing Im not unconvinced this means everyone is being included in the calculation, such as paraplanners, administrators, etc.

Thats a good thing but the CF30 adviser audience still seems old and, importantly they hold the value.

Consolidators fall into two groups: those wanting to buy you for cash, or those agreeing to pay an ongoing percentage of any recurring income. The first thing a seller suddenly realises is actually all the cash doesnt arrive at once

There are pros and cons to both, with Nexus in the latter camp.

In the former camp where there is a cash sale, the first thing a seller suddenly realises is actually all the cash doesnt arrive at once.

Its normally paid over three years  the buyer is making sure what was being bought on day one still looks the same one or two years hence.

If an IFA feels he can sell his 100,000 recurring income for 3x and therefore expect 300,000, then hes in for a shock when he receives 100,000 in year one, less in year two and even a bill in year three.

Its the same pull-in price principle, with the buyer then looking for as many blemishes, dents and scuffs as possible to reduce the year one and two payments.

I recently heard a suggestion that a solution to the problem is to be quoted a guaranteed price. Its a lower price of course but is this really a solution?

Someone offering a guaranteed price of anything less than 300,000 is simply admitting to the seller that a valuation which starts at 3x was never likely to materialise.

Too many scuffs and dents again, you see.

Ian McIver, development director for Nexus IFA
Story Highlights Americans' negative image of socialism is little changed since 2010

Small business has an almost universally positive image

60% are positive about capitalism; 85% about free enterprise

PRINCETON, N.J. -- Even though Bernie Sanders, a self-described "Democratic socialist," has generated strong support for his presidential campaign, Americans' image of socialism is no better now than it was six years ago. Thirty-five percent of Americans have a positive view of the term socialism, similar to what was found in 2012 and 2010. The 60% who have a positive view of capitalism is also unchanged from six years ago.

Just off the top of your head, would you say you have a positive or negative image of each of the following? % Positive May 2-4 , 2016 % Nov. 18-19 , 2012 % Jan. 26-27 , 2010 % Small business 96 95 95 Entrepreneurs 87 86 84 Free enterprise 85 89 86 Capitalism 60 61 61 Big business 53 58 49 The federal government 44 51 46 Socialism 35 39 36 Gallup Daily tracking

Americans retain very positive images of small business, entrepreneurs and free enterprise. A little more than half have a positive view of big business, and less than half have a positive view of the federal government.

These seven terms were measured May 2-4 using Gallup Daily tracking, updating previous measurements taken in November 2012, just after that year's presidential election, and in January 2010.

The rank order of positive reactions has been the same at each of the three time periods, with only minor fluctuations in the percentage of Americans holding a positive image of each concept. Positive views of big business, for example, are down a little from 2012 but remain higher than in 2010. Views of the federal government are also slightly less positive than three-and-a-half years ago but are now about where they were in 2010.

Democratic presidential candidate Sanders focused his campaign on criticism of big business and promoted the value of a bigger role for the federal government in economic and social life, including his proposals for a "Medicare for all" federally funded healthcare system. At the same time, the presumptive Republican nominee, Donald Trump, is himself a businessman who has, along with many of the other Republican challengers, focused on criticizing the government while saying that he would run it more like a business. However, none of this has apparently made a major difference in the ways in which Americans think about these economic terms.

As would be expected, Republicans and Republican-leaning independents are somewhat more positive about big business, free enterprise and capitalism than are Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents.

Democrats, on the other hand, are much more positive than Republicans about the federal government and socialism. Notably, Democrats have a more positive image of socialism than they do of big business, and their images of socialism and capitalism are essentially the same. These broad patterns are similar to what was found in 2012.

Just off the top of your head, would you say you have a positive or negative image of each of the following? % Positive, by party ID (including leaners) Republicans/Republican leaners % Democrats/Democratic leaners % Small business 97 96 Entrepreneurs 91 86 Free enterprise 92 83 Capitalism 68 56 Big business 57 48 The federal government 30 59 Socialism 13 58 May 2-4, 2016 Gallup Daily tracking

Younger Adults More Positive Than Older Adults About Socialism

Young Americans, aged 18-29, have more positive views of both the federal government and socialism than older Americans do. Young adults' ratings of the federal government, capitalism, big business and socialism are similar -- between 55% and 58% positive for each.

Older Americans' views of capitalism are more positive than those of Americans under 50 years of age, and older Americans' views of socialism are more negative than those who are younger. Overall, Americans across most age groups see capitalism more positively than socialism. The exception is among those aged 18-29, who are equally positive about both.

Just off the top of your head, would you say you have a positive or negative image of each of the following? % Positive, by age 18-29 years % 30-49 years % 50-64 years % 65+ years % Small business 98 94 96 93 Entrepreneurs 90 87 87 83 Free enterprise 78 84 89 91 Capitalism 57 54 69 63 Big business 57 49 52 53 The federal government 58 43 38 40 Socialism 55 37 27 24 May 2-4, 2016 Gallup Daily tracking

Implications

These results show the presidential campaign has not changed Americans' images of a number of commonly used political and economic terms. Americans react almost universally positively to the term small business and also have very positive reactions to free enterprise and entrepreneurs. Overall reactions to capitalism are also positive and significantly more so than views of socialism, which is the least-liked term of any tested.

Americans are mixed in their reactions to big business and the federal government, with slightly more positive views of the former than the latter. Notably, Americans are less positive about capitalism and big business than they are about free enterprise and small business, highlighting the different ways in which these terms resonate with the public.

The results show that several of these terms are politically charged. Republicans and Democrats diverge in their reactions to capitalism, big business, socialism and the federal government, with the biggest differences seen on the latter two terms. Sanders' strong challenge to Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination is a testament to the fact that his self-labeling as a "Democratic socialist" is not a strong negative among Democrats. His and Clinton's more positive views of the federal government and its role in society as espoused on the campaign trail also seem to fit with those of rank-and-file Democrats, the majority of whom are positive about the government.

It is notable that young Americans constitute the only age group that does not view the term socialism more negatively than capitalism. Older Americans' much more negative reactions to socialism could be based on different historical or conceptual references than is the case for young people. Americans being much more positive about the term free enterprise than capitalism also suggests that labels used to describe an economic system carry different connotations.

Historical data are available in Gallup Analytics.

Survey Methods

Results for this Gallup poll are based on telephone interviews conducted May 2-4, 2016, on the Gallup U.S. Daily survey, with a random sample of 1,544 adults, aged 18 and older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. For results based on the total sample of national adults, the margin of sampling error is 4 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.

View complete question responses and trends.

Learn more about how the Gallup U.S. Daily works.
Move Over Siri: Former Apple Employees To Revolutionize Consumer AI Through Viv?

Apple's Siri reign is about to be threatened. The artificial intelligence assistant Viv will be launching officially on Monday. All eyes are on the start-up, Viv Labs, as they attested to a larger-than-life concept for AI assistants and that is expected to be showcased in the highly anticipated event.

According to Engadget, Viv will arrive as an open system that will democratize access to the AI. Unlike Siri, users can expect Viv to focus its assets on the aspect of availability and non-exclusivity. The brand-new AI assistant will aim to set itself apart from Siri by being more open to other applications and having a bigger yet comprehensive "brain."

The Washington Post also reported that the faces behind Viv are former Apple employees that also helped develop Siri. In pursuit of the bigger picture post-Siri, Dag Kittlaus, Adam Cheyer and Chris Brigham quietly devoted all their time and energy until Viv is finally ready. They first tested their intelligent technology by ordering a pizza and the AI assistant interacted rather well and even asked about how they like their toppings.

Showtime next week after 3.5 years of work. https://t.co/s0i6gfu4BX  Dag Kittlaus (@Dagk) May 4, 2016

It was the longest wait of their lives until the pizza arrived to the victorious cheers of the team. According to Apple Insider, the main objective of Viv is to streamline users' connection to business and services without depending so much on an application. Capable of linking multiple amounts of data, its appeal will rely heavily on being an all-around artificial but intelligent assistant that can heed instructions and basically do everything for you with just one push of a button.

However, Viv is seen as just the tip of the iceberg for the bigger things planned for the complete digitalization of e-commerce through the evolution of smart technologies. Seen as a rather prolific area of technology, Silicon Valley icons such as Google and Facebook are looking to invest in the technology and buy Viv. But no official announcements are made on whether Viv Labs will pursue or sell it to the tech companies.
"Construction is underway but additional steps are being taken and discussed to mitigate the spread of the avian flu," said Public Works spokeswoman Joy Contreras.
March for Babies

set for Saturday

The March of Dimes' annual Linn-Benton March for Babies is scheduled for Saturday and will start at the Corvallis Kmart, 400 N.E. Circle Blvd.

Registration for the 5K walk will start at 8 a.m. and the walk starts at 9.

In addition to the walk, the event will include coffee for Starbucks, lunches and the Home Depot Kids Clinic.

The March for Babies is the March of Dimes' premiere fundraising event. Proceeds benefit research and other programs designed to help ensure healthy babies.

Altrusa Jewelry Sale

scheduled at church

The third annual Altrusa Jewelry Sale is scheduled from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday at the First United Methodist Church Community Building, 12th and Jackson streets in Corvallis.

The sale features a number of categories, including vintage, Southwest, ethnic, artisan and fine jewelry; all the items were donated for the sale.

Coordinator Mary Lou McLocklin said prices will range from $1 to $100 and noted that among the sale items is a ring that has been appraised at more than $6,000.

All proceeds will support Altrusa community service projects, such as literacy, scholarships, the Career Closet, Drug Court, the Educational Opportunities Program at Oregon State University, Habitat for Humanity and College Hill High School. For information, call 541-760-6016.

Forum to get update

on Eugene Airport

A Eugene Airport executive will offer an update on the regional airports plans at the next Corvallis Chamber of Commerce luncheon forum.

Casey Boatman, who handles public relations and tenant relations for the Eugene Airport, will discuss the facilitys master plan, passenger growth trends and construction activities.

The event will take place from noon to 1:30 p.m. May 11 at the Corvallis Country Club, 1850 S.W. Whiteside Ave. The cost to attend is $15 for chamber members or $25 for nonmembers.

Register online at http://www.corvallischamber.com/.

Free oil changes

for single moms

AAMCO Corvallis, 805 N.W. Fifth St., will do free oil changes for up to 50 single moms on Saturday.

The Corvallis Business Network, a chapter of the Business Networking International, is hosting the Mothers Day-themed event.

AAMCO has 50 reservation-only spots for single mothers in Linn and Benton counties to receive the complimentary oil change and vehicle safety inspection. To reserve a spot, call 541-757-1223.

For a complete list of BNIs participating businesses and upcoming community events, go to http://corvallis.business.

Bill Clinton pays

visit to Portland

PORTLAND (AP)  Former President Bill Clinton was in Portland after visiting Bend to campaign for his wife and Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton.

His Thursday afternoon Portland visit drew hundreds of people near downtown, marking his second Oregon campaign stop ahead of the state's May 17 primary.

Hillary Clinton so far hasn't made a campaign stop in Oregon, where she's clinched several of the state's 13 superdelegates, although support for her opponent Bernie Sanders is strong in Oregon. Sanders came to the state for a third time last week.

Bill Clinton's Thursday visit comes the day before presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump's rally in Eugene, which will be his first campaign appearance in Oregon.
Welcome to my genealogy blog. Genea-Musings features genealogy research tips and techniques, genealogy news items and commentary, genealogy humor, San Diego genealogy society news, family history research and some family history stories from the keyboard of Randy Seaver (of Chula Vista CA), who thinks that Genealogy Research Is really FUN! Copyright (c) Randall J. Seaver, 2006-2021.
Apple loses trademark lawsuit over 'iPhone' name in China News oi -GizBot Bureau

Apple Inc has lost a trademark lawsuit in China, with a court here allowing a leather goods- maker to sell wallets and handbags flashing the world's biggest technology giant's exclusive 'iPhone' name.

The Beijing Municipal High People's Court ruled in favour of Xintong Tiandi Technology (Beijing) limited, which sells a number of leather products such as smartphone cases and handbags under the name 'IPHONE', state media reported.

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In 2002, Apple applied for the 'iPhone' trademark for its electronic goods in China, but it was not actually granted until 2013. Xintong Tiandi filed for its own 'IPHONE' trademark in China in 2007, the same year the first generation of Apple's iPhone was launched in the US.

In order to obtain the exclusivity on the use of the 'iPhone' trademark in China, Apple first took the case to the Chinese trademark authority in 2012, but it failed as the agency claimed Apple could not prove the name 'iPhone' was a well-known brand prior to Xintong Tiandi's registration in 2007.

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Apple then filed a lawsuit in a Beijing court. The court, however, ruled against it and Apple appealed to the Beijing Municipal High People's Court. The court said the company did not sell the iPhone in China until 2009.

The final judgement means Xintong Tiandi could continue to use the trademark to sell its products, state-run China Daily reported yesterday. Apple did not comment on the ruling. The ruling comes as Apple's latest quarterly earnings showed a 13 per cent drop in revenue as sales of iPhones.

China was a particular weak spot as the sales in China fell 26 per cent to USD 12.49 billion due to weak demand for iPhones. Xintong Tiandi confirmed the court ruling on its website and said the decision represented a victory for free consumer markets.

James Yan, a Beijing-based analyst at Counterpoint Technology Market Research said, "The failure of the trademark fight would not have a great impact on Apple's brand and image but it might confuse consumers as they do not know whether these products are made by Apple or some producers copy Apple's name when they are buying leather products embossed with the 'IPHONE' brand".

Yu Televentures to launch Yutopia successor this month

Zhu Dalin, an analyst at Beijing-based Internet consultancy Analyses International said the influence of Xintong Tiandi is very minor which would not pose a threat to Apple anyways as Apple mainly focuses on electronic devices such as smartphones and iPads.

Source PTI

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'Feels Like Home Season 2' offers something real and tangible to think about; takes home a pertinent point - if your intentions are good, there is nothing in life that isn't achievable.
Military Strikes Continue Against ISIL Terrorists in Syria, Iraq

From a Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve News Release

SOUTHWEST ASIA, May 5, 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 yesterday's strikes, noting that assessments of results are based on initial reports.

Strikes in Syria

Attack and fighter aircraft conducted three strikes near Mar'a in Syria, striking an ISIL logistics facility, an ISIL vehicle bomb-making facility, and an ISIL ammunition storage center.

Strikes in Iraq

Ground-attack, fighter, bomber, and remotely piloted aircraft conducted 15 strikes in Iraq, coordinated with and in support of Iraq's government:

-- Near Baghdadi, a strike destroyed an ISIL vehicle bomb.

-- Near Beiji, a strike destroyed two ISIL tunnel entrances.

-- Near Fallujah, six strikes struck three separate ISIL tactical units and destroyed four ISIL fighting positions, an ISIL heavy machine gun, an ISIL anti-aircraft artillery system, three ISIL tunnel entrances, an ISIL mortar system, an ISIL vehicle bomb, an ISIL weapons cache, and four ISIL bed down locations.

--Near Kisik, a strike struck a large ISIL tactical unit and destroyed two ISIL fighting positions, two ISIL heavy machine guns, three ISIL mortar positions, and four ISIL assembly areas.

-- Near Mosul, two strikes destroyed two ISIL fighting positions, one heavy machine gun, 10 ISIL mortar systems, three ISIL rocket rails, and suppressed an ISIL heavy machine gun position.

-- Near Sultan Abdallah, three strikes struck an ISIL tactical unit and destroyed an ISIL fighting position, an ISIL heavy machine gun, an ISIL mortar system, an ISIL vehicle, and suppressed an ISIL heavy machine gun position and an ISIL mortar position.

-- Near Tal Afar, one strike struck an ISIL weapons facility.

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. Ground-based artillery fired in counterfire or in fire support to maneuver roles is not classified as a strike.

Part of Operation Inherent Resolve

The strikes were conducted as part of Operation Inherent Resolve, the operation to eliminate the ISIL terrorist group and the threat they pose to Iraq, Syria, the region, and the wider international community. The destruction of ISIL targets in Syria and Iraq further limits the terrorist group's ability to project terror and conduct operations, officials said.

Coalition nations 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.

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Senior Official Outlines U.S. Forces' Missions in Afghanistan

By Terri Moon Cronk DoD News, Defense Media Activity

WASHINGTON, May 5, 2016  U.S. forces in Afghanistan conduct missions to train, advise and assist Afghan forces as part of a larger NATO role, and conduct a unilateral U.S.-counterterrorism mission, Army Brig. Gen. Charles H. Cleveland, the Resolute Support mission's deputy communications chief, said today.

Following the April 29 release of an investigation's results involving a mistaken U.S. airstrike on a Doctors Without Borders trauma facility in Kunduz City, Afghanistan, last October, Cleveland addressed Pentagon media by teleconference to describe ongoing U.S. missions in the country.

Numerous questions have risen since the release of the report, he said.

Some 16 service members were disciplined after the attack by an AC-130 aircraft led to the deaths of 42 people, according to earlier DoD News reports.

Reiterating U.S. missions, Cleveland said the train, advise and assist effort is to help the Afghans build an enduring, sustainable, security capability.

Afghans Must Defend Their Country

The No. 1 goal is for Afghans to be able to defend their own territory and address transnational and transregional terrorist organizations that "oftentimes will base in this region and then try and strike the West," he said.

How to fire weaponry, fly aircraft and other essential skills are part of the hands-on training U.S. forces provide, Cleveland said.

Advising involves the coalition working with the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces in scenarios where Afghans make decisions based on their training, Cleveland said.

The assistance segment is based on financial or material support, he added.

"We conduct this TAA mission at the ministerial level; then at an operational corps and then police-zone level; and then finally we execute it at the tactical level," Cleveland said.

Special Operations Training

Additionally, NATO has the authority for special operations capabilities in its efforts with an Afghan special operations force, he said.

"About 75 percent of the Afghan [special operations forces'] missions are conducted completely independent, with no coalition assistance whatsoever," Cleveland said.

"Out of that remaining 25 percent, a percentage of that, we're not going into the field with them," he said. "We're just essentially helping them with planning, intelligence, advising and those types of things."

Counterterrorism Component

While the second component is the U.S. unilateral counterterrorism mission, forces have had the mission to disrupt, dismantle and defeat al-Qaida for quite some time, Cleveland said, while also preventing the terrorist group's use of Afghanistan "as a launching pad from which to launch [an] attack against the West."

The authority to also target the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant was granted in January, and he described the counter-ISIL campaign as an aggressive effort.

"We believe we really have arguably the best counterterrorism forces on the planet  here in Afghanistan," Cleveland said.

Aggressive pursuit of al-Qaida and ISIL targets has resulted in about 100 counterterrorism strikes the first three months of this year, he said.

In April, "we've taken just under 19 counterterrorism strikes. The majority of those have been focused on [ISIL], but there have been still a few al-Qaida targets," Cleveland said.

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U.S. Department of Defense

Press Operations

News Transcript

Presenter: Brigadier General Charles H. Cleveland, deputy chief of staff for communications, Resolute Support Mission May 05, 2016

Department of Defense Press Briefing by Brig. Gen. Cleveland via teleconference from Kabul, Afghanistan

(JOINED IN PROGRESS)

CAPTAIN JEFF DAVIS: -- your comments.

BRIGADIER GENERAL CHARLES H. CLEVELAND: Thank you very much, Jeff.

And good morning to everybody. I want to thank you all once again for taking the time. I know that there's an awful lot going on, so I am appreciative of it.

What I would really like to do again today is similar to last week. I want to be able to provide a couple of opening comments and hit on one specific topic. And then open it up to your questions. And I certainly do welcome them, and we'll spend as much time as you need.

Since the release of the 15-6 about a week or so ago, our headquarters has actually received an awful lot of questions about, again, what is the mission and what are U.S. troops doing over here, and what are the roles. And so while I think some of you already know this, I just want to reestablish the baseline and talk about the mission that U.S. soldiers are doing.

And specifically, there's two missions. Right now, we are conducting the first mission, which is a train, advise and assist mission, that is nested and is a part of a much larger NATO train, advise and assist mission. The second mission, again as we discussed last time, is the unilateral U.S. counterterrorism mission.

But starting with the train, advise and assist mission, the real purpose of it is to help the Afghans build a sustainable security capability. And we want it to be enduring. So it's not just about winning a battle tonight or it's not just about winning the battle next month. What we want to be able to do is have this capability that's enduring through this year, through next year and through the future years.

And ultimately, what we want the Afghans to be able to do is be able to defend their own territory, number one. And then number two, be able to address these transnational and trans-regional terrorist organizations that oftentimes will base in this region and then try and strike the West.

So, it really is what it sounds like. It's a train, advise and assist. On the training side, we actually do have NATO and NATO partner nation people out physically doing hands-on training. That's everything from how to fire weapons, how to fly an aircraft, how to call for fire -- those types of things. The training does occur here in Afghanistan, but it also occurs in Europe. And then in some instances, it occurs back in the United States.

The advise piece is really having the coalition be able to put people into specific locations within the ANDSF and have them provide that specific advice: Okay, we have been down the following path before; I see you're about to make this decision; perhaps you ought to consider the following factors.

And so there is an advise aspect to it.

And then the assistance aspect of it really does come in the form of either financial support or material support. And that can be as large as aircraft, as we talked last time, some of the A-29s, the ND-530s, those types of things. And it can go all the way down really to small arms capability and other types of capabilities out there.

So it really comes in three forms for the coalition as well. We conduct this TAA mission at the ministerial level; then at an operational corps and then police zone level; and then finally we execute it at the tactical level.

So at the ministerial level, what we've been able to do is embed advisers into both the ministry of interior and the ministry of defense here in Kabul. And so what we're trying to assist them with is the institutional work to really work on human resources and operations and intelligence and logistics, and to really set up the institution, because it's our view that if you can't man, train, equip and then employ your force, then at the end of the day you're really not going to have a security institution.

The second level, again, is the corps or police zone level. And one is -- the corps, of course, are with the MOD, the police zones with the MOI. And what we're trying to do with that is the corps serve as that tire, that bridge between the strategic-level intent, as well as the strategic-level resourcing, and the actual tactical fight.

So at the corps level, what we're trying to do is help them be able to maneuver large formations, and then also be able to look out across multiple provinces, identify threats, commit parts of their force to address that threat, be able to commit and employ low-density assets and capabilities.

But we also want them to be able to do the operational logistics side as well, be able to forecast how much ammunition they're going to need, forecast how much fuel they're going to need, and then be able to move those types of things to and from their troops.

We're currently doing this at four permanent locations -- and again, when I say "we," this is the larger NATO mission. But we're doing it at four permanent locations. We have a train, advise and assist command based out of  Laghman, focused on the northeast part of Afghanistan. We've got one focus down in -- based out of Kandahar, focused on the southeastern portion.

We've got one out west, and that's focused -- or based in Herat, focused in the west. And then finally, we've got one up north, based in Mazar-e-Sharif, but focused on the largest north.

We also, then, have a couple of expeditionary advisory capabilities, so these are not permanent, but just based on what we have seen as a need, we've been able to put one of these capabilities down in Helmand to assist the core that's fighting down in Helmand. And then one is based out of Ghazni and it's really focused on the Paktiya, Paktika, Khost and Ghazni area.

So, that's kind of the core level. The final piece is the tactical level, and NATO does have the authority to have NATO's SOF capabilities and people out at a very tactical level, and literally going into the field with the Afghan SOF, be it on the MOD side, or on the MOI side with the police.

And obviously, I can't give you all the details on where those SOF elements work, but by and large, the -- each corps has a habitual relationship with a certain element of the SOF.

And so, on any given day, you can look and you will find SOF -- Afghan SOF out operating some place within the corps' area of responsibility. And then because of that, on any given day, it's possible that you could have a coalition SOF or a NATO SOF element out moving with that particular Afghan SOF piece.

But just to kind of give you a little sense of how frequent that is, about 75 percent of the Afghan SOF missions are conducted completely independent, with no coalition assistance whatsoever. Out of that remaining 25 percent, a percentage of that, we're not going into the field with them, we're just essentially helping them with the planning and intelligence and advising and those types of things.

And then again at times, we are sending coalition and NATO partners SOF out into the field with these Afghan SOF elements. And the way we kind of determine that is first off, based on the overall complexity of the mission. And second off, based on the payoff and how important we think a particular mission is. And then finally, based on the risk. And so, those are the types of factors that we use to try and determine whether or not NATO and partner SOF will go out with the Afghan SOF.

The final aspect -- and it's a bit of a hybrid -- but we also have a train, advise and assist command that's focused on the air. And they kind of span from ministerial, and determining how do you bring in more aircraft and what are the right frames to choose, all the way down to the tactical, where we have our airmen out helping train the Afghans on how to fly aircraft, how to employ their aircraft, what's the best approach to a helicopter landing zone, those types of things.

So, that really is, again, the train, advise and assist mission. It is a NATO mission, and the purpose of it is to build the sustainable security capability, so that the Afghans are ultimately able to not only defend their borders, but be able to address these trans-national and trans-regional terrorist organizations that base out of this area.

The second component of the U.S. mission is the U.S. unilateral counterterrorism mission, and we talked about this last time. And I think most of you are familiar with it. But again, we have long, for quite a while of course, had the mission to disrupt, dismantle and defeat Al Qaida and prevent their use of Afghanistan as a launching pad from which to launch attacks against the West.

So, we have been pursuing Al Qaida. In January, of course, of this year, we were given authority to begin targeting Daesh, and we have been doing that aggressively.

As I think you're aware, I can't still get into a whole lot of discussion about the types of capabilities that we have, but suffice it to say we believe that we really have arguably the best counterterrorism forces on the planet that are here in Afghanistan.

They are aggressively pursuing these targets. I think the last time we talked, I gave you some statistics from the first of January until the first of March of just under about 100 counterterrorism strikes or so. Since that time, so during the month of April, we've taken just under 19 counterterrorism strikes. The majority of those have been focused on Daesh, but there have been still a few Al Qaida targets.

And I know that's probably still not entirely satisfying. My guess is you're probably looking for more information. At this point, though, we're still trying to figure out the best way to answer those information needs that I think you all have, while also trying to protect the capabilities that we have as well as the operations. And without trying to tip our hand really over to the enemy on where we're focused, and the percentage of work that we're focused on with that.

So, Jeff, let me go ahead and pause there. And again, I welcome everybody's questions.

CAPT. DAVIS: Sure. I think the first hand I saw was Kasim Ileri from -- Anadolu news agency in Turkey.

Q: Hi, general. This is Kasim Iseri with Anadolu news agency.

My question is related to the condolence payment that General Votel announced last week. Under the Resolute Support mission, was it the first time that you paid condolence payments to the, you know, for the civilian casualties? Or has there been any other cases where you paid condolence payments or reparation payments for the properties of civilians or the civilian lives that have been, you know, lost during the operations that you conducted?

GEN. CLEVELAND: Yes, we have paid condolence payments before here in Afghanistan. And it's happened in different locations around the country as well as at different times.

Q: So is it possible if you could just provide us with a list? Or it may not be today, but later on, a list of the kinds of payments or, you know, in these cases before?

GEN. CLEVELAND: Sure. What I'd like to be able to do for you is essentially provide kind of some broad numbers for you. There is a privacy aspect to some of this and frankly, there's also a security aspect to these condolence payments, because oftentimes some of the recipients don't necessarily want to advertise that they have received some type of condolence payments. But we'll be happy to try and get you as much information as we possibly can about that.

CAPT. DAVIS: Next is Laurent.

Q: Hello, general. Laurent Barthelemy from Agence France Presse. Thanks for doing this.

I wanted to ask you, could you give us a sense of when General Nicholson will give his assessment on what U.S. forces will be needed next year?

GEN. CLEVELAND: Sure. Thank you for the question.

I think as you're probably aware, General Nicholson was given 90 days, or was told to execute a 90-day assessment. That 90-day assessment will be concluded, or that 90-day timeframe will be concluded the end of May, beginning of June. I don't have the exact date.

But General Nicholson does continue to work the assessment very aggressively and he will have it complete before the conclusion of the 90 days. So, again, I think you can anticipate that General Nicholson will begin formally sharing that with his chain of command by the end of May, beginning of June.

(CROSSTALK)

Q: Hey, sir, it's Carlo Munoz, the Washington Times.

I just have a few quick questions. One, I wanted to get your thoughts on reports coming out of Kabul that President Ghani is actually -- has picked General Habibi to be the defense minister, and Stanekzai will be moving over to NDS. I wanted to get your thoughts on that.

And also, how difficult has it been to coordinate missions with the ANDSF or coordinate operations with the ANDSF with this sort of power vacuum up top, not really having a defense minister to kind of wind things up?

And I have a follow up question regarding TAC North.

GEN. CLEVELAND: Yeah, sure. Thanks, Carlo.

Let me start with your second question first. To be honest with you, it hadn't been difficult at all. Minister Stanekzai, although he has clearly been in an acting capacity for quite a while, has been very effective. He has been very receptive to our outreach, and he is certainly -- spent a lot of time outreaching to us.

And so, to specifically answer you, there has not been any issue at all from the Resolute Support perspective on being able to engage with Minister Stanekzai, simply because he was in acting capacity.

In terms of the rumors, we -- I have heard several rumors about that, and that's been ongoing for a bit of time. Bottom line, is that does -- and that is an Afghan internal decision that they will make. We will obviously, gladly work with anybody that President Ghani chooses and that parliament does confirm.

But Minister Stanekzai has been a very strong partner, and he continues to do really some incredible things for the ministry of defense.

Q: And sir, just a quick follow up regarding TAC North. Wanted to kind of see how the command posts up there and those down in Kabul have sort have taken lessons learned from last September's attack in Kunduz, having the city briefly being recaptured by the Taliban.

What were some of the big sort of factors that kind of popped up to you as far why that happened and what sort of efforts you can take to sort of mitigate that.

And also, regarding activity in the north. Can you give me an update as far as what some of the activities have been regarding IMU in Badakhshan and some of the foreign fighters coming in. And also, wanted to see if there was any -- has there been any further interaction between U.S. or NATO forces with some of the militias belong to first Vice President Dostum and others up there?

GEN. CLEVELAND: Yeah, thanks, Carlo. Starting with your first question about the lessons learned by TAC North and by Kabul. And I think the real point on this speaks to the lessons learned by the ANDSF, and obviously, again, our role is to support them, and so, the lessons and the implementation of those lessons has really come with the ANDSF.

And I think their first big lesson is the need to get out of these defensive position and not wait for the enemy to attack them. I think their biggest lesson has been that they have got to take the fight to the enemy and they have got to aggressively project that combat power, and really, get the fight away from Kunduz.

And so, as you may be aware, Carlo, you know, into February, beginning of March, the ANDSF actually launched a nation-wide offensive called Operation Shafaq. They did not put a whole lot of press out about it, because frankly, they were still trying to work the peace issues, they were still trying to reach out to the Taliban, bring them to the negotiating table as part of a quadrilateral coordination group.

But once it became clear that the Taliban had said no to the negotiation, they launched their own offensive Op[eration] Amari and then they also launched that terrorist attack here in Kabul a few weeks ago. The government really started aggressively pushing it.

And so, even prior to the Taliban -- the recent attacks up in Kunduz, the ANDSF had been launching attacks up into northern Kunduz, and they have been hitting Taliban locations where they have been trying to mass and prepare for their offensive.

And so, we think that had some real effect. When the actual Taliban offensive started in Kunduz, and they started engaging the city, by and large, the ANDSF was pretty successful. They were able to defend Kunduz, although they did take some hits, and at times, they lost a little bit of terrain. They had been able to recover that terrain, and since that time, they've been able to clear the lines of communication again between Kunduz and Takhar, and some of the other locations out there.

So again, I think the biggest lesson that the ANDSF learned out of it was that they just can't sit and wait in the defense. They've got to aggressively start targeting the Taliban and push that combat power out further away from some of their main areas.

Your second question, IMU in Badakhshan -- obviously, Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. We have not seen a tremendous amount of IMU influence up in the north recently. There was a time four or five years ago where that was much more of a concern.

Really, where we've seen the IMU migrate, and this has been, you know, really kind of back to Nangarhar, in an effort to kind of join Daesh. And so, we think one of the components that now make up Daesh are really disaffected IMU members. There are always sporadic reports, of course, that the IMU is of course trying to carve out some space up in the north so that they can project up into Uzbekistan. But we haven't seen a whole lot of that.

And then in terms of the question about, you know, the NATO and the work with Dostum and those types of things, you know, I really would refer you to the government of Afghanistan for that. Dostum has been up north. He's been working some of those elements. And we really don't have a direct tie to what he and those elements that are with him right now are doing.

Did that kind of answer the question, Carlo?

Q: Yes, sir.

CAPT. DAVIS: Next, we'll go to Paul McCleary from FP.

Q: Hey, general.

I was wondering if you could describe a little bit your assessment of how strong or how large Al Qaida is in Afghanistan, and ties that they have to the Taliban? Are they working with the Taliban, helping to train them or equip them? Or -- what -- how does it go back and forth there?

GEN. CLEVELAND: Thanks, Paul.

So, I don't -- I don't want to overstate this by any stretch of the imagination. And so let me give you a couple of thoughts, and then, you know, come back and -- and try and reconfirm that I've provided you some useful information.

You know, bottom line is there is still an Al Qaida presence here in Afghanistan. As you're probably well aware, there are two components of Al Qaida. There's first off core Al Qaida someplace in the Pakistan-Afghanistan region with Ayman Zawahiri still really running their global operations.

And then their newest franchise is Al Qaida in the Indian Subcontinent, or AQIS. We think both of those elements do have some type of presence here in Afghanistan. And when I say "some type of presence," probably in the range of 100 to 300 Al Qaida personnel. And again, that's a SWAG. And it's obviously not a very specific head count. But we think that they still maintain some type of presence up in Kunar. They occasionally are in Ghazni. And at times, we've seen them down in Kandahar as well, and a few other isolated locations.

In terms of the threat that they pose right now, by themselves we don't think that they pose a real threat, a real significant threat to the government of Afghanistan. But because we think that they are beginning to work more with Al Qaida, the threat that they pose is they can serve as an accelerant -- I'm sorry. Al Qaida, beginning to work more with Taliban, they can present a bit of an accelerant for the Taliban. So they can provide capabilities and skills and those types of things.

In terms of where we see them right now, again last fall, not long after Mullah Mansour kind of took control of the Taliban, Zawahiri, of course, came out and very publicly said that he swore allegiance to -- to Mullah Mansour and that piece.

Since that time, we have seen more interaction. We have seen them working more together. But the real thing and real reason why we continue to watch Al Qaida is, I think as we've all seen before, although they have been significantly diminished, they do have the ability to regenerate very quickly, and they still do have the ability to pose a threat.

And so what we want to do is be able to keep a very close eye on them and put constant pressure on that network, so that they are not able to regenerate and pose an additional threat.

So, again, a bit -- maybe a long winded answer, but to kind of summarize of it, we think the numbers of Al Qaida are small. We think that their specific threat to the government of Afghanistan is not huge. We think they are working more with the Taliban than they previously have.

But the real piece is, we are concerned that if you let them go unchecked, and you don't focus energy and effort, and you don't constantly pressure that network, they've got the ability to regrow.

Does that kind of answer the question, Paul?

Q: Yes. A quick follow-up. I mean, so would you characterize them as a growing threat? And you know, some of the airstrike, the CT strikes, you said that they hit Al Qaida.

How do you differentiate them from the Taliban in some of those strikes? Is there any blurring of lines?

GEN. CLEVELAND: Yeah. So, the growing threat piece, I don't know that I would characterize them as a growing threat. I think in some ways, they certainly have the potential. And if we see them continue to work more closely with the Taliban, that is always a possibility.

I think their threat really remains about the same that we have seen over the last six months or so, where they are -- they are a threat, they do pose the potential again, to come up with some type of a surprise that we're not expecting.

But day in and day out, we don't think that they're the biggest threat based here in Afghanistan, but we do still want to focus a lot of attention on them.

And I -- I missed the second part of your question, Paul. Can you ask that one more time?

Q: Some of the CT strikes, I mean, is there -- is it difficult at times to differentiate between Al Qaida and the Taliban? I mean, are they working that closely?

GEN. CLEVELAND: Well, they are working closely in some instances. But by and large, I think as you know, Paul, we've got a number of intelligence capabilities that does allow us to identify those specific Al Qaida members.

And so, in terms of -- of separating the two, the bottom line is, not only does the Taliban work with Al Qaida, but they certainly work with the Haqqani network, they work with the LeT. They work with a number of organizations. And I think just a general problem, or a general challenge is these organizations just don't neatly divide into specific geographic locations or specific operations.

That's one of the things that -- that makes this situation somewhat opaque, is at times, we see all of these organizations working and working together, maybe sharing terrain, maybe conducting in operational acts together. Other times, they operate independently and conduct autonomous acts.

And then as sometimes we know, sometimes they'll fight. And again, you know, the examples of that, of course, are with Daesh and the Taliban, Al Qaida and Daesh. Those types of instances.

So, it can be a challenge to, you know, put your finger on exactly what you're looking at at a given time, but before we take any type of unilateral or U.S. counterterrorism strike, we do confirm, we do make sure that those are Al Qaida targets.

CAPT. DAVIS: Next to Lucas Tomlinson of Fox News.

Q: General, has the U.S. military changed its policy regarding bombing the Taliban in examples where they mass? And -- or is that something you are still considering?

GEN. CLEVELAND: Yeah, Lucas. So, the policy has not changed. Right now, General Nicholson has got the ability to approve -- and the forces here have the ability to defend themselves as needed.

And so, if there is a Taliban organization that is either in direct contact with -- with U.S. forces who are actively out conducting their train, advise and assist mission or anything else, we do have the ability to defend ourselves and take those force protection strikes.

There are different types of force protection, if you will, at different levels. Obviously, I can't go into all of the rules of engagement; we simply don't want to, you know, tip the Taliban off as to when we can fire and when we can't fire.

But by and large, I think the command here is satisfied right now that we've got the ability to defend ourselves.

Does that kind of answer that, Lucas?

Q: I just have a follow-up. Why do you have to wait until you're attacked to be able to strike the Taliban?

GEN. CLEVELAND: Well, again, because the fact of the matter is we are not in -- necessarily in direct combat with the Taliban. What we are doing is we're providing the train, advise and assist to our Afghan partners. And so as we design these missions, we are not trying to go out and close with and destroy the enemy.

So it really becomes an Afghan role to be able to provide these fires. And so if you get to a point where U.S. forces or coalition forces, NATO forces as well, feel threatened, then they can defend themselves. But as a starting point and as a general rule, the expectation is that the Afghans are fighting the Taliban. We are here to help them. And the Afghans should be the ones that are -- that are conducting those engagements.

Q: U.S. forces are in Helmand right now. And have they seen any combat in the last few months?

GEN. CLEVELAND: Yes. Again, going back to the initial discussion about the various levels where we're providing the train, advise and assist. So, we do have a U.S.-led train, advise and assist capability, you know, based out of the old Bastion Leatherneck compound. Those guys are by and large on the compound, and they are not finding themselves being placed in any type of combat situation that I'm aware of.

That said, we do have NATO and NATO partner nation SOF elements that are out maneuvering with Afghan SOF forces. And so while the mission for our guys is not combat, they have found themselves in combat situations where they have to defend themselves. They have to call for fire. They have to call for other enablers to help themselves -- to help them out.

Q: How many U.S. troops are in Helmand right now, General?

GEN. CLEVELAND: I don't have the specific number. The -- the element, the advisory, the expeditionary advisory capability is somewhere in the number of 700 to 800 down there. But there are also coalition forces down there. I don't have an actual head count on -- at my fingertips on how many Americans are in Helmand right now. But the expeditionary advisory capability is somewhere in the nature of 700 to 800.

Q: How has this banner poppy crop in Helmand impacted both the Taliban and your forces?

GEN. CLEVELAND: Too early to tell, Lucas, but we -- we are concerned about it. As I think most know, the poppy crop is really the engine that provides all the money that fuels the Taliban. And I think some would probably argue, you know, that Mullah Mansour, who again does not have really religious credentials, he really doesn't have military credentials -- his background with the Taliban was more the drug smuggling and the drug -- the opium production and the taxing of all that.

Clearly, there is a concern that with this very good poppy crop that they had this year, it is going to result in the Taliban being able to turn that into money for their efforts. And again, almost take them further down the path of being focused on the narcotic trade and the narcotics industry.

In the short term, you know, so Lucas, what we have seen over the last month-plus there's been a bit of a lull in the fighting in Helmand. And we think that's because so many people have been engaged in trying to harvest the poppies. As the harvest really concludes here, and we think it concludes really as soon as this week, we do expect to see an uptick in the Taliban efforts to attack the ANDSF.

And so in response to that, the ANDSF over the last month have been trying to do, as we described up north, they've been trying to conduct more offensive operations.

So I guess the short answer to your question is, number one, we are concerned about the potential windfall of money that can come into the Taliban based on this poppy crop. Number two, though, we have seen a bit of a lull in the fighting over the last month-plus, really because we think that a lot of the Taliban fighters have been out harvesting the poppy.

CAPT. DAVIS: Right. Next to Thomas Gibbons-Neff, from the Washington Post.

Q: Hi general, thanks for doing this. And I actually wanted to go back to the poppy crop that Lucas brought up.

More off that, I mean, having a banner year, 2015 wasn't that good because of the climate. This year appears to be a lot better down south.

What does that kind of say about the security situation down there? Does that mean that Taliban holds, you know, a majority of Helmand province, which we've seen in the past? Or is this an indication that the ANSF and the coalition have kind of abandoned going after the poppy crop that was a big part of our operations for the last X amount of years.

I just kind of want to see if that's something we're still actively pursuing, getting rid of the poppy trade, or we have just kind of let that go to the wayside?

GEN. CLEVELAND: Thomas, let me take the second part of the question first. So, you know, from a Resolute Support standpoint, we are not actively involved in dealing with the poppy crops, and again, you probably remember the ISAF days where that was a component of the campaign plan.

But right now, our real focus is indirect. And so, our role is to, again, help train, advise and assist the cohorts down there, the 215, as well as the police zone, and some of the other organs of the ministry of the interior to help advise them on best ways to go after it.

So, from a Resolute Standpoint, we're not actively engaged in countering the poppy crop.

That said, I wouldn't say we've quite abandoned. And as you -- I think you probably know from her firsthand experience, you know, Helmand is a big, vast area. Most of it is unpopulated. And so, as the government of Afghanistan really tries to identify priorities on what they are going to focus on, they've got to balance, you know, the cost of putting additional capabilities down, you know, further south into Helmand or into that Central Helmand area, versus some of the other things that they want to try and get accomplished.

In terms of -- and I think the first part of your question was the, you know, the majority of Helmand. I don't think the majority of Helmand is under the control of the Taliban. I think it would be safe or fair to say that a fairly, you know, a sizable portion, more than we would want of Helmand is absolutely contested.

And so, if you could kind of imagine an arc that really starts really in kind of central Marja, goes up north into the Nawzad area, and then cuts to the east, you know, southern Kajaki, north of Sangin -- those are the areas that the Taliban is really able to contest the most right now.

Now, the good news from our perspective, I think probably in part because we didn't see as much fighting in the last month, month and a half, the 215th Corps down there, they have been able -- starting in Lashkar Gah -- to clear that highway, 611, up along the eastern side of Helmand and going up into Sangin.

And so, we think that's a positive development; they've also had the ability now to pull some of their Kandaks off the line, go through retraining, and they're starting to reinsert those Kandaks back into the fight.

So, let me pause here, Thomas. Does that -- does that answer the question for you?

Q: Yeah, it does, and just kind of a broad follow-up.

I mean, what kind of combat power does the Taliban have these days? I feel like we've kind of just talked about them in generalities. Like, is -- you know, what kind of numbers do they have on the battlefield, and what can they kind of use for offensive operations?

GEN. CLEVELAND: Yeah, Thomas. We -- I would tell you, we're still, in my view -- I don't, again, have real specific numbers. The generality that I would tell you is we typically believe there's probably about 30,000 or so Taliban fighters out there.

I know you've been following this story for a while, so you've probably heard that term before. We don't have any reason to think that it has significantly changed.

In terms of the combat power, you know, as we look at Operation Omari, you know, again, their initial focus was up in Kunduz. Although it's still very early in the fighting season, we're optimistic about the way that the ANDSF performed up there, and we think to some degree they had some success against the Taliban up there.

They really did push them out of the central Kunduz area and, as I mentioned earlier, they've been able to reopen several lines of communication.

As you look to the south, we think that that will be the next big Taliban push. We think it will come in Helmand. The other area right now where they're able to project some real combat power is in the Oruzgan area.

So we don't think Tarinkot is at serious risk right now. But really, the districts to the east and to the west Deh Rawud to the west in particular, the Taliban are contesting that. And again, there have been reporting in the press, you know, over the last few days about the road from Sha Wali Kot in Kandahar, up to Tarinkot as well, that that had been contested and that the Taliban had been able to pressure that area.

So those are the areas right now where we see the Taliban and where we think that they're -- they're going to head towards.

CAPT. DAVIS: Next to Idrees Ali from Reuters.

Q: General, the Pakistani military started its operation up in its north, you know, a few years ago. And there were reports at the time about the flow of fighters into Afghanistan as a result. Has that flow at all changed or stopped or increased?

GEN. CLEVELAND: Well, I don't know that -- I think that it has continued. And I, you know, you raised a really good point. One of the challenges that the ANDSF had at the beginning of 2015 was not only did we have a real reduction in the number of NATO forces here; not only did they then assume the security responsibility for themselves for the first time. But at the same time, the Pakistanis were conducting their offensive operations in the FATA. And that was pushing a number of really terrorists across the border on this side.

I think the real impact has been kind of the establishment of Daesh. And our view right now is that certainly a sizable portion of Daesh really is disaffected TTP that were kind of pushed across the border. Also, some disaffected IMU that again previously, you know, had their home in the FATA, and then were pushed across the border.

So we think that those are some of the impacts of those -- those Pakistani offensive operations.

As I think you're probably aware, too, you know, General Raheel recently announced that I think the Pakistani offensive operations have concluded in the FATA. And they certainly did make progress. But it does leave, again, this -- a bit of an ambiguous question as to whether or not those that were pushed across the border will try and migrate back into Pakistan.

Q: And are you doing anything to make sure that they don't cross back into Pakistan?

GEN. CLEVELAND: Well, what we're trying to do is, again, work with the ANDSF and switch them from a defensive posture where they were last year, to the offensive posture so that they can offensively really start targeting anybody that's a threat.

Now, all of that said, I think what everybody out here would believe is that in order to really solve the problems of Afghanistan, it's got to be a regional solution. And so there clearly has got to be a Pakistani role associated with what the Afghans are doing. And there is -- there is coordination between the two militaries, and Resolute Support does also engage with the Pak mil.

But that said, there's probably still work to be done to better influence some of those terrorists that really live in that -- that border area.

Q: Just the one last follow-up. I mean, specifically talking about the Haqqani Network, how strong are they along the border region?

GEN. CLEVELAND: You know, we think the Haqqani Network is pretty strong. They historically have been the most lethal and, frankly, the most competent terrorist organization in this area. The P2K area - again Paktiya, Paktika, Khost -- clearly has been Haqqani's traditional area where they have -- they have done the most fighting, if you will. That transitions of course over into North Waziristan where we believe a lot of the Haqqani leadership was based.

The other aspect is that the Haqqanis, of course, have historically been responsible for the high profile attacks that have hit Kabul, that have hit Jalalabad, that have hit some of the other major urban areas. And the concern is that they're lethal, they're effective but they're also indiscriminate.

And they don't appear to have any qualms or compunctions about, you know, really killing innocent children, men, women and just setting off these bombs as we saw with this Kabul high-profile attack a few weeks ago.

The final component, as you're probably aware, Siraj Haqqani, has been named the number two for the Taliban. And we think that he is increasing really, his day-to-day role in terms of conducting Taliban military operations. And we think that he is trying to exert more influence really, on the leadership with some of these shadow governors in some of these other places.

So, the relationship between the Haqqani and the Taliban, again, has always existed. At times, the Haqqanis have been autonomous than others. But we do have concerns about the Haqqanis branching out from their traditional area and then focus more on these high profile attacks.

CAPT. DAVIS: Next to Jamie McIntyre, the Washington Examiner.

Q: General, I wanted to go back to what you said at the very opening of your comments. One thing that we learned from the CENTCOM investigation into the mistaken attack on hospital in Kunduz is that the special operations commander on the ground invoked his force protection authority to call in a strike that the investigators later concluded was really more offensive in nature, not a defensive strike.

Because we don't have an accounting of air strikes in Afghanistan the way we do in Iraq, how do we know that this kind of occurrence isn't more common? That U.S. commanders essentially bend the rules a little bit to try to help their Afghan partners.

GEN. CLEVELAND: Yes, Jamie, thanks again for the question. And I did hear you ask General Votel a similar question. And I think his response probably is the authoritative response, which is, you know, he wouldn't allow it as his level.

I think General Nicholson absolutely feels the same way, that if he had a sense or a suspicion that commanders were abusing that force protection authority, he would jump in immediately. And at this point, I don't believe that he had any sense at all that commanders are abusing that and really trying to get around the rules of engagement.

Q: One quick follow-up. You earlier made again a difference between U.S. troops being in combat and in a combat situation. Is that an important nuance to understand or is that in some ways, a difference without much of a distinction?

GEN. CLEVELAND: Well, I think the overall topic is important and I'm sure you're all very familiar with the Secretary's comments last week and the Chairman's comments in front of the Senate Armed Services Committee. And so, that really still stands as the authoritative description of what you're describing.

As it pertains Afghanistan, in the course of conducting these train, advise and assist missions, as well as in the course of conducting counterterrorism missions, U.S. soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, do find themselves in combat. But the real key, or the real change -- it may be a nuance. It may be more significant and I would really defer to you that I kind of characterize that.

But the real the distinction is, in 2014, before the conclusion of ISAF, really the com -- U.S. forces were in a combat role. Their mission was close with and destroy the enemy. So they would go after objectives and they would go after specific targets.

Starting in '15, we moved out of that combat role. And so the primary mission for us here is the train, advise and assist and then the counterterrorism mission.

Again, there are times where our forces, while conducting those missions do end up in combat situations. But the overall mission remains the same, which is to train, advise and assist the Afghans and then conduct these counterterrorism missions.

Q: Follow-up. You mentioned that General Nicholson would be submitting his recommendations end of the month or early next month. Is there any consideration of requesting additional authority to provide close air support for the Afghan partners who are confronting the Taliban, similar to what's going on in Iraq, which would be a change of authority closer to what was happening back in 2014?

GEN. CLEVELAND: Yeah, Jamie. So, General Nicholson, frankly, his assessment is pretty broad and comprehensive.

It -- as you would expect, it's covering everything from the current situation and the threat environment, to the mission he has been given, to the current operations and operations plans, and into the resources, to include authority.

So, he is really looking at all of that as one package. And then, once he comes to his conclusions, he'll either decide to make recommendations or not.

So, that is -- frankly, Jamie, it's still to be determined at this point.

CAPT. DAVIS: Next to Courtney Kube, NBC News.

Q: Hi, general, you've pretty much covered all of my questions, but I'll ask one more numbers one for you.

What's the latest update on the number of ISIS fighters believed to be in Afghanistan?

GEN. CLEVELAND: Yeah, Courtney. It's very consistent with what we discussed last month.

And unfortunately, I still don't have a real good, specific number, but we think the number is, again, somewhere between 1,000 and 3,000. We think it is on the lower end, because I think, under any standard and looking at it objectively, the operations in Nangarhar have been successful.

And so, the ANDSF has put a lot of pressure on Daesh, as -- and the U.S. unilateral counterterrorism strikes have put some pressure on Daesh, too.

So, we think it's probably between 1,000 and 3,000, probably closer to 1,000. But the real way we look at them again, and really, kind of the metric we try and track is how much terrain do they hold. It is, as I think you know, that's -- of course, one of the fundamental tenets of Daesh is holding terrain to support their idea of this caliphate.

And right now, we think from a terrain standpoint, again, probably present within two to three districts within Nangarhar. Could be less. We have seen some effort by Daesh to move up into Kunar to the north, or perhaps down to Ghazni in the south.

We don't think, though, that's because they've got extra capacity and they're trying to expand. We think that's really because they've been put under pressure in Nangarhar.

Q: And then, the CT strikes -- the airstrikes that the U.S. has the authority to take, those don't apply to the Haqqani network, do they?

GEN. CLEVELAND: That's correct; they do not.

Obviously, if a member of the Haqqani network is -- is posing a threat to coalition or specifically, U.S. forces, we do have the ability, again, to defend ourselves. But we do not have the ability or the authority to target Haqqanis, in the same way that we can target Al Qaida and Daesh.

Q: Just again, you know, you've laid out these pictures of these grounds today, you know, 30,000 Taliban and Haqqani being the biggest threat right now, and then these relatively small numbers of Al Qaida and ISIS -- and those are the only two groups that you can target with counter terror strikes from the air, when we all know that -- as General Dunford even reiterated on his recent trip that the Afghan air force just really doesn't have the ability to conduct much.

You know, if one of the lessons learned out of Kunduz was that the Afghans need to more offensive or more aggressive against the Taliban, don't we think there's a strong argument to be made that the U.S. could help with that by being able to make -- to do those counter -- those airstrikes, and provide counter terror airstrikes against the Taliban?

I mean, wouldn't that -- I guess I -- it doesn't -- it seems like this cognitive dissonance between why you can take strikes against 100 to 300 Al Qaida and not 30,000 Taliban, especially if they're partnering with Al Qaida now in some capacity.

GEN. CLEVELAND: Yeah, sure, Courtney. And thank you again, for the question.

I think the fundamental difference is -- and overall, you're really referencing a larger policy question that, of course, we don't determine out here.

So I think you can probably get your best answer, you know, from -- from the beltway there.

But I think really the fundamental difference is that Al Qaida and Daesh, in particular, provide this transnational threat to the West and to the homeland specifically. And so the U.S. CT mission is really out here to prevent strikes against the homeland. And again, we know that obviously these organizations have the ability to plan. They have the ability to execute, and they have the ability to potentially push those threats towards the West and specifically the U.S. homeland.

So, when you look at some of the other organizations -- again, Taliban, the Haqqani Network -- regardless of how lethal or dangerous they are, probably don't pose the same type of threat to the U.S. homeland that you would find from Al Qaida and Daesh. And so therefore, we're focused on Al Qaida and Daesh at this point.

Q: Thank you.

CAPT. DAVIS: (inaudible) -- Tony Capaccio with Bloomberg.

Q: (inaudible) -- what's the status of the A-29 Super Tucano? When do they enter combat? I know a number of them -- the first one was delivered in December. When do they enter combat?

GEN. CLEVELAND: Yeah, Tony. So there were two phases of delivery. Phase one was four A-29s delivered in early January. They achieved their initial operating capability on the first of April. So they are now being employed by the Afghans, and they are providing close-air support.

The second group of four A-29s arrived right about the same time, beginning of April timeframe that the first four were going online. And so they are now going through their paces and they are going through their training effort right now. We expect to see them become operational and we don't have a hard date for it, but we think probably the June timeframe. But I would refer you to the -- to the Ministry of Defense here and the Afghan air force and they can give you more specifics on that.

Q: (inaudible) -- aggressively has the Pakistan military targeted the Haqqani Network? There's questions among lawmakers here in Washington who are linking additional F-16 sales to Pakistan more aggressively targeting Haqqani. What is your professional judgment right now of how hard Pakistan has actually been targeting this lethal group?

GEN. CLEVELAND: Yeah, Tony. Again, our focus really is on Afghanistan. And so, there are probably others at U.S. CENTCOM or there in the Pentagon that can probably give you a more coherent and authoritative answer, if you will, on what the Pakistani military has been doing against the Haqqanis.

That said, of course, we still believe that the Pakistanis have a huge role in being in the success of certainly Afghanistan and this region. And so we absolutely do believe that the Pakistanis, you know, need to be engaging and targeting any of these terrorist organizations. But for the specifics, I would refer you to U.S. CENTCOM or really to those in the Pentagon.

Q: As the most lethal of the groups, one could infer that the Pakistanis aren't aggressively targeting them. Is that illogical? Or does that make sense?

GEN. CLEVELAND: Well, I -- again, I just -- our real focus and our real area of expertise, if you will, is what's happening on this side of the border. There's no doubt that the Haqqanis have historically had their leadership across the border in the FATA. And there's no doubt that they've been able to conduct operations from there. But it really is up for the Pakistanis, as has been stated several times, to be able to take some type of action against it. And I just don't have a good sense or a good sight picture, if you will, on exactly what the Pakistanis are doing against the Haqqani Network.

CAPT. DAVIS: (inaudible) -- next to Jeff from Voice of America.

Q: General, thanks very much.

I wonder if we could bring this back to the poppy crop, and also Islamic state. There have been some reports this past week out of Nangarhar that Islamic state has said they're trying to profit now from the poppy crop -- (inaudible) -- targeting it, burning some of the crops, trying to arrest or take into custody some of the farmers who've been growing it.

What have you seen in terms of the -- how much of that has taken place? The reason for the shift, and also, what type of impact is that having in that area? Is it hurting the Taliban or other groups?

GEN. CLEVELAND: Yeah, I saw the same press reporting that Daesh was beginning to burn poppy crops and arrest others. I don't -- I have not seen any independent reporting, so I -- this is not going to answer your question. And it's not that I'm trying to hide something. We just have not seen a lot of evidence in that. Or I have not seen a whole lot of evidence of that.

So I don't really have a good sense as to whether or not it's happening. If it is happening, why it's happening and, and really what the impact is on the larger crop.

CAPT. DAVIS: Yes, I believe we have a follow-up from Kasim.

Q: Thanks. I want to have two follow-ups with respect to questions asked by Lucas and also by Courtney again. You said that -- while you're not directly targeting, you know, Taliban and other groups, but you're targeting ISIS or Daesh over there.

How -- you know, we know that with respect to the Resolute Support mission, the role of the United States forces have changed over that. So you're not directing the command, control and so on. But how do you situate targeting Daesh in the southern part of the country, into a Resolute Support mission?

Because, you know, yes.

GEN. CLEVELAND: I'm sorry to interrupt you, but again, it's hard to hear Daesh is not a part of the Resolute Support mission. So, and again, it can be a little bit nuanced and confusing. But the Resolute Support mission is a NATO mission. And the NATO mission, again, is to train, advise and assist.

The targeting of Daesh falls under the U.S. Unilateral Counterterrorism mission, and so Resolute Support does not target Daesh. The United States, under this U.S. unilateral mission, does target Daesh.

Q: And the other question, with respect to Pakistan, to what extent does the U.S. support or cooperate with the Pakistanis when they target Haqqani network or the other terrorist groups in the northern part of the country, bordering with Afghanistan?

GEN. CLEVELAND: Well, of course, I really can't get into any real detail on kind of the intelligence or information sharing agreements, if you will, between be it the U.S. and the Pakistanis, or the Afghans and the Pakistanis. But bottom line is we do maintain a relationship and an open line for a lack of a better term to the Pakistan mil.

We do try and keep each other informed of the various operations that are ongoing. But, unfortunately, I just can't give you a whole lot of detail about the level and depth of the intelligence sharing.

CAPT. DAVIS: Anyone else? Last call?

Thank you general. We appreciate you taking the time to see us today and we look forward to seeing you again.

GEN. CLEVELAND: Okay. Thanks again Jeff.

And for everybody else, I do appreciate your time and if we can help you out or maybe provide some additional information, please feel free to reach out to us and we'll be happy to respond as quickly as we can. Have a great weekend.

http://www.defense.gov/News/News-Transcripts/Transcript-View/Article/752763/

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U.S. Department of Defense

Press Operations

News Release

No. NR-165-16 May 05, 2016

Navy to Christen Littoral Combat Ship Manchester

The Navy will christen its newest Independence-variant littoral combat ship, USS Manchester (LCS 14), during a 10 a.m. CST ceremony Saturday, May 7 in Mobile, Alabama.

Manchester, designated LCS 14, honors the city of Manchester, New Hampshire.

Thomas Oppel, chief of staff to the secretary of the Navy, will serve as the principal speaker. New Hampshire Senator, the Honorable Jeanne Shaheen, will serve as the ship's sponsor. The ceremony will be highlighted by Shaheen breaking a bottle of sparkling wine across the bow to formally christen the ship, which is a time-honored Navy tradition.

"The christening of the future USS Manchester represents another step forward as we continue to grow our fleet and serves as a reminder of the importance of our Navy's partnership with the highly-skilled and dedicated shipbuilders of our nation's industrial base," said the Honorable Ray Mabus, secretary of the Navy. "It is because of the important work done by these men and women that the Manchester will represent our Navy and the people of New Hampshire with distinction, around the world, for years to come."

The future USS Manchester is the second naval vessel to honor New Hampshire's largest city. The first, a light cruiser, was commissioned Oct. 29, 1946. During nearly ten years of commissioned service, the ship completed numerous deployments, including three combat deployments in support of operations during the Korean conflict. The ship was decommissioned June 27, 1956 and stricken from the Navy list April 1, 1960.

The LCS class consists of two variants, the Freedom variant and the Independence variant, designed and built by two industry teams. The Freedom variant team is led by Lockheed Martin (for the odd-numbered hulls, e.g. LCS 1). The Independence variant team is led by Austal USA (for LCS 6 and the subsequent even-numbered hulls) and was originally led by General Dynamics, Bath Iron Works (LCS 2 and LCS 4).

The LCS seaframes will be outfitted with reconfigurable payloads, called mission modules (made up of mission systems and support equipment), which can be changed quickly. These modules combine with crew detachments and aviation assets to become complete mission packages, which will deploy manned and unmanned vehicles and sensors in support of mine countermeasures, anti-submarine warfare, or surface warfare missions.

Media may direct queries to the Navy Office of Information at 703-697-5342. For more information about the littoral combat ship class: http://www.navy.mil/navydata/fact_display.asp?cid=4200&tid=1650&ct=4

http://www.defense.gov/News/News-Releases/News-Release-View/Article/752663/

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Opposing sides in Yemen conflict discuss key issues in direct talks: UN

Iran Press TV

Thu May 5, 2016 9:15PM

Representatives of Yemen's Houthi Ansarullah movement and delegates from the administration of resigned president, Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, have exchanged viewpoints over major political and security issues in direct talks aimed at putting an end to a 14-month-long conflict in the impoverished Arab country.

United Nations Special Envoy for Yemen Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed said during the talks in Kuwait City on Thursday, the warring sides also discussed the release of prisoners and detainees.

The delegations, however, traded accusations of violating a ceasefire that took effect on April 11.

"We have learned that ceasefire violations were committed in the past two days and this is a disturbing development," the UN envoy said.

Ould Cheikh Ahmed further called on those involved in the peace negotiations not to allow the ceasefire violations to influence the talks.

He said a joint UN-sponsored ceasefire monitoring committee is due to look into clashes on the ground and submit detailed reports to the world body.

Earlier on Thursday, Abdulmalek al-Mikhlafi, the head of Saudi-backed and pro-Hadi delegation, accused the Ansarullah movement of firing artillery rounds at the southwestern Yemeni city of Ta'izz. He warned that shelling of Ta'izz would "have serious consequences on the peace process" unless the international community shores up the fraying ceasefire.

Ansarullah spokesman, Mohammed Abdessalam, however, dismissed the allegations, accusing Saudi-backed forces of bombing residential areas and violating the truce in Ta'izz.

The Saudi-backed representatives suspended their participation in the peace talks on Sunday in protest at Ansarullah's recent takeover of a military base in Yemen's northwestern province of Amran.

Yemen has seen almost daily military attacks by Saudi Arabia since late March 2015, with Yemeni sources putting the toll from the bloody aggression at more than 9,500.

The Houthi Ansarullah fighters took state matters into their own hands after the resignation and escape of Hadi, which threw Yemen into a state of uncertainty and threatened a total security breakdown in the country, where an al-Qaeda affiliate is present.

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Yerevan Sends Draft Bill To Parliament On Recognizing Nagorno-Karabakh

May 05, 2016

by RFE/RL

Armenia's government has approved a bill drafted by opposition lawmakers that calls for Yerevan to recognize the independence of Azerbaijan's breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region.

The draft bill was sent to lawmakers on May 5 for debate.

In the past, the Armenian government has blocked previous proposals. But analysts say the government gave the green light this time mainly as a warning to Azerbaijan following a recent flare-up in fighting.

Deputy Foreign Minister Shavarsh Kocharian said the legislation would only be brought to a vote if Azerbaijan launched new attacks.

A parliamentary session to discuss the issue was called for May 10.

Azerbaijan condemned the Armenian initiative, which it said was aimed at scuttling international peace talks.

The Kremlin said on May 5 that it was monitoring the situation closely.

"We as before are counting on both sides of the conflict to avoid any steps that could destroy the rather fragile cease-fire and lead to an escalation of tensions in Karabakh," presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

Baku and Yerevan have been locked in a standoff over the breakaway region for more than two decades.

On April 2, Nagorno-Karabakh saw its worst violence since a shaky cease-fire was reached in 1994 between Azerbaijan and the Armenian-backed separatists.

About 75 soldiers from both sides were killed in April, along with several civilians.

A fresh Russian-brokered cease-fire deal went into effect on April 5 but has increasingly been violated since late April.

And there are fears of a possible escalation, with Turkey strongly backing Azerbaijan and Russia obliged to protect Armenia by a mutual security pact.

Armenia-backed separatists declared the region's independence and seized the mainly ethnic-Armenian-populated region during a war in the late 1980s and early '90s that killed about 30,000 people.

But Nagorno-Karabakh's independence has never been recognized by any country.

Peace talks under the auspices of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe have dragged on for two decades without producing any tangible results.

With reporting by AP, TASS, and Interfax

Source: http://www.rferl.org/content/armenia-draft- recognizing-nagorno-karabakh/27717385.html

Copyright (c) 2016. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.

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Oil Facility Attack in Nigeria Raises Fears of Renewed Militancy

by Chris Stein May 05, 2016

Nigeria's navy said Thursday that militants attacked an offshore facility belonging to multinational petroleum company Chevron, the latest in a spate of attacks in the petroleum-rich Niger Delta region.

The attack raises fears of a renewed militancy in the delta, which was the site of an insurgency by communities demanding a greater share of oil wealth that was quelled only when the government started paying off militants in 2009.

Nigeria navy spokesman Chris Ezekobe told VOA the attackers dynamited a facility that collected oil and gas near the major Escravos export terminal in Delta State Wednesday evening.

There were no casualties, Ezekobe said. He didn't know if any oil had spilled.

"It's not completely shut down, but its ability to pump crude and gas has been highly degraded and that also has affected the production of Escravos itself," Ezekobe said.

On its website, a group calling itself the Niger Delta Avengers took responsibility for the attack. The group has previously taken credit sabotaging a handful of oil pipelines and facilities in the Niger Delta.

Despite being home to most of Nigeria's oil wealth, the Niger Delta remains poor and underdeveloped. That has fueled high levels of crime and kidnapping along with a spate of thefts and sabotage targeted at oil facilities.

President Muhammadu Buhari said last month that his administration would deal with oil saboteurs the same way they deal with the Islamist extremist group Boko Haram, which has spent years fighting the military and terrorizing Nigeria's northeast.

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Uganda Bans Media From Covering Opposition

by Lizabeth Paulat May 05, 2016

Uganda's government says journalists reporting on the activities of the opposition FDC party will lose their licenses and could be subject to arrest. Tensions have been high in Uganda since the February 18th presidential poll, which saw President Yoweri Museveni elected to a fifth term in office.

Thursday was supposed to be a day of protest for the FDC officials and supporters who are demanding an independent audit of the results of the February presidential poll.

However, heavy police presence kept people off the streets. Opposition leader and presidential candidate, Kizza Besigye, remains under house arrest.

The inspector general of police and the information minister held a press conference Thursday to announce that the media is banned from covering what the government is calling the FDC's "defiance campaign."

They said journalists are prohibited from airing live broadcasts of FDC events, covering their press conferences or inviting FDC members on talk shows.

Robert Ssempala, the national coordinator with the Human Rights Networks for Journalists in Uganda, said this is a worrying sign.



"The profession is very clear about balancing our stories about giving a fair platform to those in power and those outside of power that have alternative views," he said. "This is what the media is all about. So now you're de-toothing the media only to crusade for the government and government policies? That is not what the media is supposed to do."

The government says it must preserve stability and security, but Ssempala says advocacy groups are considering challenging the media restrictions in court.

"We've seen journalists being arrested before even without this ban," he said. "So it's just going to be a continuation of a further crackdown. We certainly think they will devise any means to scare the media to intimidate the journalists and harass those who are strong willed."

Social media has not been shut down as it was during the vote in February, but an official with the Uganda Communications Commission says it will be monitored for those promoting the FDC.

Last week, Deputy Chief Justice Steven Kavuma banned all FDC activities for one month. These included the FDC's weekly prayers which on Tuesday were interrupted by police, who arrested several participants.

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Putin To Discuss Kurile Islands Dispute With Japanese Leader

May 06, 2016

by RFE/RL

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin in the Black Sea resort of Sochi to deepen ties and try to resolve a long-running territorial dispute.

Tokyo-Moscow relations have been hampered for decades by a dispute over the Kurile Islands, which Soviet troops seized at the end of the World War II.

Lingering tensions over the islands have prevented Japan and Russia from ever signing a peace treaty to formally end the war.

"This is a complex, multifaceted issue that can only be resolved in a manner acceptable to both sides through an even deeper partnership between the two countries," Putin's chief foreign-policy adviser, Yury Ushakov, said.

Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida said last month that the two countries had agreed to start negotiations on signing a peace treaty.

His Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, said Russia wanted to "move forward" in relations, but was not prepared to budge on the "result of World War II."

In signs Russia is not about to cede control over the Kuriles, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev last year visited one of the islands, home to some 19,000 Russians, and Moscow recently built new compounds for troops stationed there.

Still, Putin said during a public phone-in last month that he thinks "a compromise could be found at some point -- and it will be found" on the territorial dispute.

"Immediate serious progress" is unlikely at the Sochi meeting, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, but Moscow hopes it will establish a "constructive atmosphere in bilateral relations."

Tensions have also risen more recently as Japan joined Western states in imposing sanctions on Russia over its aggression in Ukraine.

The Japanese press reported that U.S. President Barack Obama earlier this year asked Abe not to go through with the visit with Putin because of the sanctions and related Western efforts to isolate Moscow.

But Abe noted that European and U.S. leaders had maintained contacts with Moscow despite the sanctions, so he will too.

"I am going to Russia, with which I want to build the relations that would make it possible for us to cope with various international problems together," he said.

The White House had no comment on the matter this week.

Putin said last month he appreciated Abe's willingness to visit despite "pressure from partners, particularly the United States."

The leaders are expected to discuss a repeatedly postponed visit by Putin to Japan this year. Japanese media reported that Abe may invite the Russian leader to his home prefecture of Yamaguchi.

Moscow plans to invite Abe to take part in its Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok on September 2-3.

The Kremlin said they were also set to discuss economic ties. Moscow says trade turnover between Russia and Japan last year fell 31 percent due to low oil prices.

Abe will later this month host a summit of the Group of Seven advanced industrial countries. Russia was essentially kicked out of what was once the Group of Eight because of its annexation of Crimea.

With reporting by AFP and TASS

Source: http://www.rferl.org/content/putin-discuss-kiril-islands- dispute-japanese-leader-abi-sochi-visit/27718876.html

Copyright (c) 2016. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.

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Philippine Presidential Race Heats Up Days Before Vote

by Simone Orendain May 06, 2016

With the race for Philippine president shaping up to be one big popularity contest between the four main contenders, the economic gains, security alliances and foreign policy of the current administration hang in the balance.

In national surveys of the past two weeks, controversial Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte has pulled into a double-digit lead over his rivals who had all been one to five percentage points apart throughout the three-month campaign period leading up to the May 9 elections.

On a recent Tuesday night inside an airless, packed Manila-area school gym, Duterte, the foul-mouthed 71 year old, took the stage and launched into a rambling speech. He railed against corruption and elicited wild applause whenever he swore.

Duterte, a self-professed killer of criminals, has run on the promise of getting rid of criminals within his first six months in office. And he has garnered much of his support from voters who want to see the return of the death penalty.

His popularity did not wane after he called the pope a "son of a bitch," nor after his remarks about wishing he had been first in line in the gang rape of an Australian missionary killed during a Davao City jail riot in 1989.

The remarks drew criticism from both the Australian and U.S. ambassadors to the Philippines.

On the campaign trail, Duterte fired back that both diplomats should "shut up" and keep out of Philippine elections, lest they show bias.

US relations

A week before the controversy, reporters asked how he saw relations with the U.S.

"We are allied with the West, see? So we allowed the military forces of the U.S. here in this country. So it would give you an idea, where we go, down the road," he said.

The two countries have started to implement an agreement that would see more U.S. troop visits and their use of local bases as staging points.

Leftist groups have said this signaled the return of U.S. bases in the country after a groundswell of nationalistic fervor forced their closure in 1991. The agreement does not include permanent U.S. bases.

This time around, the public has expressed a stronger preference to have the Americans around, especially in the face of an ever more assertive China, which claims practically the entire South China Sea.

South China Sea claims

Earlier in the campaign, Duterte said he would seek U.S. help in dealing with China over Philippine claims in the disputed sea, locally called the West Philippine Sea.

But more recently he vowed to ride a jet ski to one of the contested outcroppings, Scarborough Shoal, plant a Philippine flag there and expect to die a hero at the hands of the Chinese.

His closest rival, Senator Grace Poe, who has traded the number one and two spots with him throughout the campaign period, takes a more pragmatic approach to the sovereignty dispute with China.

"It's true, we have a fight in the West Philippine Sea," said Poe in a Manila-area speech. "True, we've got problems with crime and drugs. So what would I do as president? I'll be honest, I'm not going to shoot the gun myself. But I will make sure that the police who go to all these places will be sensible."

Poe, a U.S.-educated junior senator, wants more support for the Philippine Coast Guard to better patrol the country's territorial waters and help safeguard Philippine fishermen who have been all but kept out of Scarborough by the Chinese.

Furthermore, Poe's foreign policy advisor, Tony LaVina, said the senator, whose movie star father ran for president in 2004 but lost by a close margin, sees a need to have the U.S. around as a deterrent to China.

"Keep that close relationship, but at the same time be able to keep our options open with respect to the country itself. Being able to engage with China, with our neighbors on a strategy that's based really on our national interest, not the interests of the U.S. or any other country."

Candidates court lower class voters

Poe has amassed solid support among the lower classes who admired her father, the late action-star Fernando Poe Jr. Some told VOA that she showed the same concern for them that he had during his run for president.

Alfonzo Artates, Jr., an out of work janitor was at a Labor Day rally to which Poe was invited. He said he likes the 47 year old.

"The way we see it, she is a great supporter of the poor. She supports all the needs of the poor. She loves them and has claimed them. So if she becomes president, perhaps there will be fewer poor people and there won't be any thieves in society."

Under the current administration of President Benigno Aquino, the economy has posted steady growth above six percent over the past six years, earning the country investment grade status for the first time. But some of the candidates have argued the poor have not felt the benefits.

Seventy-three-year-old Vice President Jejomar Binay, who is running on the platform of helping the poor, has promised a new day for this segment of the population. In a speech in Metro Manila, the 20-year mayor of Makati, the country's highest tax revenue-generating city, ticked off a list of qualities that he said voters could expect from him.

"A leader that respects the dignity of women. A leader that sets a good example for children. A leader that helps and serves the poor. And I will not brag about killing my fellow man."

Farther from home, Binay has said he would lead the Philippines to closer ties with China, proposing a joint project in the disputed outcroppings in the resource rich South China Sea, while also affirming Manila's territorial claims. His vice presidential running mate, Senator Gregorio Honasan told foreign correspondents last month that a Binay administration would entertain the possibility of permanent U.S. bases.

The candidate most expected to stay the course on foreign policy is Manuel Roxas, former interior secretary of the current administration of President Benigno Aquino.

Roxas, 58 and a former U.S. investment banker with 20 years in Philippine public service, led the country's emergency response after super typhoon Haiyan struck the central part of the country and killed more than 6,300 in 2013.

"I've given my all in everything that I've done. And we've attained quite a bit. We've come so far. We've accomplished many things. And in that respect I put my record up against all the others."

A spokesman said as president, Roxas would continue with the "basic policy of the Aquino administration" of maintaining independence while honoring alliance commitments with Washington.

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Top US Official: Washington Seeking THAAD Dialogue With Beijing

by Li Bao May 05, 2016

A top U.S. official says Washington still hopes to hold a dialogue with Beijing on the possible deployment of an advanced missile defense system, known as THAAD, in South Korea.

At an Air Force Association policy seminar Thursday in Washington's Capitol Hill neighborhood, Assistant Secretary of State Frank Rose reiterated the assertion that THAAD would be deployed solely to defend against growing nuclear and missile threats from North Korea.

"As long as North Korea continues to develop, test and deploy ballistic missiles, we will work with allies and friends in the region to defend against that threat, including through the deployment of an effective missile defense," he said.

U.S. officials say the anti-missile system manufactured by Lockheed Martin is equipped with a radar that can track targets some 2,000 kilometers away. The system's ability to intercept enemy missiles fills a gap in the current missile defense system deployed on the Korean Peninsula.

Chinese opposition

The deployment, however, has encountered strong opposition from China, which is concerned that THAAD will undermine the strategic deterrence of China's long- and mid-range missiles, as well as the regional military balance.

Rose also said the United States understands China's concerns, and has always hoped to explain that the deployment will not affect China's strategic deterrent.

"THAAD's single-stage interceptors deployed in [South Korea] would not have the range or capability to intercept Chinese ICBMs headed to the United States," he said. "It is pure physics."

According to some Chinese security experts, Beijing is more concerned about THAAD's X-band radar system, which they believe will cover a large area of China and hurt China's strategic ability to fight back.

Ross said the new missile defense system will not affect the U.S. ability to detect Chinese strategic nuclear missiles, since "the United States already has two similar radars in Japan, and we have a number of other sensor capabilities in the region, including the sea-based X-Band Radar, and the Cobra Dane radar in the Aleutian Islands."

Rose also says the U.S. has been seeking dialogue on the issues with China, but China has continued to decline the offer.

China, Russia cooperation

Meanwhile, Beijing and Moscow announced a joint missile exercise this month, a move widely viewed to be their response to the possible THAAD deployment in South Korea.

"The possibility of Chinese and Russian strategic force cooperation against the United States is a real possibility, and the United States needs to start preparing for such possibility," said Richard Fisher, an Asian military affairs expert at Washington-based International Assessment and Strategy Center.

U.S. officials said that, at present, the United States missile defense system is mainly directed against missile threats from rogue states such as Iran and North Korea, and its size and capabilities are not sufficient to resist the strategic missile threats from China and Russia.

This report was produced in collaboration with VOA's Mandarin Service.

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US Watching as North Korea Opens Biggest Political Meeting in Decades

by Nike Ching May 05, 2016

North Korea has opened one of its biggest political meetings in 36 years, as the 7th Workers' Party Congress began meeting Friday in Pyongyang.

However, foreign journalists who traveled to Pyongyang for the event were not immediately allowed inside.

The United States is in close consultation with its Asian allies to monitor the situation on the Korean Peninsula during the high-level meeting of party representatives, which is expected to result in a reshuffling of some top officials.

North Korea is scheduled to have its 7th Workers' Party Congress on Friday. It's a high-level meeting of party representatives and is expected to result in a reshuffling of some top officials.

Washington also is anticipating the isolated regime may take this occasion to launch a missile or conduct a nuclear test.

"We will continue to look at ways we can apply and increase pressures on them, at the same time as we ensure that the security of the peninsula is kept ironclad," said State Department spokesman Mark Toner on Thursday.

Pyongyang has carried out a few ballistic missile tests in recent months, as well as its fourth nuclear test in January. Toner said the United States would welcome any signs of de-escalation by the North Korean regime.

The U.S. Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, arrived in Seoul earlier this week. He met with South Korea's Defense Minister, Han Min-koo, and discussed security issues, according to South Korea's Yonhap News Agency.

The possibility of another nuclear test from North Korea was also discussed.

"Kim Jong Un will need to deliver a report that summarizes the Korean Workers' Party's accomplishments since the last congress in 1980 and present new policy directions. As for the new policy directions, I expect him to highlight the Byungjin line," James Person of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington told VOA on Thursday.

The "Byungjin line" is the policy of the simultaneous development of the nuclear program and the consumer goods industries.

But Person does not expect any new major policy directions in economic development because North Korea's Workers' Party Congress meetings are usually "scripted affairs" and typically do not offer major policy announcements.

While anticipating more provocations from North Korea, including a fifth nuclear test, senior U.S. officials have warned of "additional steps" to punish Pyongyang and to defend Washington and its allies.

"Despite all the saber-rattling, I don't think the North [Korea] is under any illusions about the consequences of attack," Assistant Secretary of the State Daniel Russel said Tuesday at an event hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Washington has begun formal discussion with Seoul on potentially deploying a top missile defense system in South Korea, the so-called Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD.

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Pyongyang kicks off rare political event in 36 years

Iran Press TV

Fri May 6, 2016 5:29AM

North Korea has kicked off the first congress of its ruling party in 36 years, in a move believed to be aimed at getting approval for leader Kim Jong-un's ideology of developing the economy and nuclear weapons.

The 7th congress of the Workers' Party kicked off in Pyongyang on Friday, with nearly 3,000 party members attending the rare political gathering.

Speaking ahead of the event, Kim said it will "lay out the brilliant blueprint that will advance the final victory of our revolution."

It is believed that Kim is seeking to obtain formal approval for his new ideology, "Byongjin," which will replace the "Songun," or "military first," policy of his late father, Kim Jong-il, whom the young leader succeeded in 2011.

Byongjin is the policy of simultaneously developing the economy and nuclear weapons.

Foreign journalists were present to cover the congress, but were not allowed inside the April 25 Palace, where the congress is held.

The congress will likely last four to five days. The last such meeting was held in 1980, when the country's founder and Kim's grandfather, Kim Il-sung, was still in power.

The young Kim is reportedly scheduled to make a speech at the gathering about the country's nuclear capabilities. He is expected to announce that Pyongyang will continue with its controversial nuclear tests.

Pyongyang declared itself a nuclear power in 2005 and carried out four nuclear weapons tests  in 2006, 2009, 2013 and 2016.

In March, the United Nations Security Council unanimously approved the toughest sanctions on North Korea in two decades over its missile and nuclear tests.

South Korea, the North's immediate neighbor and traditional adversary, is concerned about the nuclear and missile activities of Pyongyang.

Relations between North and South Korea have been turbulent for years. Seoul and Pyongyang fought a war in the early 1950s, and have been at odds ever since.

Tensions have escalated further recently over joint military exercises by Washington and Seoul.

North Korea accuses the US of plotting with its regional allies to topple the government in Pyongyang. The country describes its nuclear capabilities as a deterrent against hostile US policies.



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North Korea Bars Foreign Media from Party Congress

by Brian Padden May 06, 2016

After inviting hundreds of international journalists to cover its first ruling party congress in 36 years, North Korea barred the media from entering the actual event.

The Workers' Party Congress is the biggest political convention held in North Korea in generations and is expected to bolster young leader Kim Jong Un's power and formalize his "Byongjin" policy to push simultaneously for economic development and nuclear capability.

The last party congress was held in 1980, before Kim Jong Un was born, and was staged to legitimize his father Kim Jong Il as the heir apparent to the North's founding ruler Kim Il Sung, the grandfather of the current leader.

Kim was expected to address the opening session of the party congress that is supposed to last for four days, but that part of the event was closed to the media and not broadcast on state-run television.

Broadcasting live nearby

The Washington Post Tokyo bureau chief Anna Fifield was actually able to broadcast live over the internet outside the April 25 House of Culture where the event is taking place, but was not allowed inside.

The Washington Post reporter used the Periscope mobile phone app to send live video, showing groups of reporters and their North Korean government appointed escorts waiting across the street from the event.

Periscope viewers sent in questions asking her how she was able to access the internet in a country that supposedly strictly limits access to information from the outside world.

Fifield explained she was able to set up a VPN - virtual private network - that bypassed the restrictions on her North Korean mobile phone service.

The international media were later sent back to the press center in their hotel and allowed to watch live coverage of the congress over closed circuit TV.

International media

North Korea invited about 100 foreign journalists to cover the congress, although their movements have been closely managed and much of the country and its people remain off-limits to outsiders.

VOA, which broadcasts news into North Korea over medium and short wave radio frequency transmissions, was not invited to join in the international coverage of the event.

Leading up to the congress the invited journalists were taken on carefully controlled tours of schools and farms to showcase a content and prosperous society.

Hunger still an issue

Poverty and malnutrition in the North, however, are still believed to be widespread, even though agriculture reforms and the emergence of some private markets have reportedly improved conditions for many.

The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said in a February report that the North Korean people are suffering a significant food shortage.

Reuters correspondent James Pearson, who covers North Korea, noted that conditions in the capital seem to be improving. He said there are "more taxis and private cars on the streets, more goods in shops, and more buildings under construction that attest to growing prosperity and consumption among Pyongyang residents."

Press restrictions

BBC's Seoul Correspondent Steve Evans said relations between the journalists and their government handlers have been at times tense and they were often restricted as to what they could see and who they could talk to.

Human rights activist Phil Robertson with Human Rights Watch also criticized the orchestrated political spectacle in Pyongyang for not addressing the widespread and systematic atrocities in the country, documented by the United Nations, that include a network of political prisons, murder, enslavement, torture and rape.

"Kim Jong Un talks a lot about improving the lives of North Koreans, but we'll only know if he's serious, if he takes action to end human rights abuses," he said.

There is also speculation that North Korea is preparing another nuclear test to coincide with the congress in defiance of the tough new international sanctions imposed on Pyongyang after its last nuclear test in January.

Since Kim took power after the death of his father in December 2011, North Korea has carried out two nuclear tests and two space rocket launches that were widely seen as disguised ballistic missile tests.

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Salehi: Amano presents positive report on Iran

IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency

Vienna, May 5, IRNA -- Head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran Ali Akbar Salehi declared that Secretary General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Yukiya Amano has presented a good report on implementation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

'We also reiterated that the IAEA should base its comments merely on the JCPOA and not certain interpretations,' Salehi told reporters after his meeting with Amano in Vienna on Thursday.

'Mr. Amano presented good report and we also discussed our own issues,' the AEOI chief added.

He underlined that the JCPOA is an agreement comprising many pages and paragraphs as some of which might be interpreted differently, and said, 'For the same reason we insist that the IAEA should prepare its reports in accordance with the paragraphs not on the basis of what might come with different interpretations.'

'Our relations with the IAEA is good, the works are proceeding wall and Mr. Amano and his colleagues are reviewing the issues and commenting on them with seriousness,' Salehi added.

'We reviewed the issues clearly while trying to reduce its political load and instead add up to its technical and legal load,' the AEOI went on to say.

'We will see the outcome of this meeting in the future,' he added.

Commenting on his visit to Czech Republic and Slovakia, Salehi said that he had had good meetings with senior Czech and Slovakian officials.

'Czech and Slovakia are both advanced countries in nuclear issues and we discussed projects that can be implemented independently,' he added.

2050**2050

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Iran's Salehi, IAEA's Amano meet, discuss JCPOA implementation

Iran Press TV

Thu May 5, 2016 12:11PM

The head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) and the chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) have discussed the implementation of Iran's nuclear agreement with world powers.

On Thursday, Ali Akbar Salehi and Yukiya Amano met at the IAEA headquarters in the Austrian capital of Vienna, where they discussed the implementation of Iran's nuclear agreement known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

During the meeting, Amano welcomed regular dialog between Iran and the IAEA to "ensure good monitoring and verification of nuclear-related commitments under the JCPOA."

He also welcomed further Iran-IAEA "discussions on issues of common interest."

Salehi, for his part, said parties to the JCPOA need to comply with the exact text of the JCPOA.

"Things have been going on  very well and we will have to really stick to what is exactly written in the JCPOA and not leave it to any interpretation," Salehi said.

"The [JCPOA] language is so clear and so lucid and vivid that it doesn't need any different interpretations on the same subject," he added.

Following the meeting, Salehi also told Press TV that they reviewed fulfillment of obligations by both Iran and the IAEA as stipulated in the nuclear agreement.

"The meeting that we had with Mr Amano was to review what we have done in the past three months  things that we were supposed to implement and what the IAEA had to do in terms of its responsibility as a verifying body by sending their inspectors, by having continuous surveillance of our nuclear sites," Salehi said.

"We reviewed all the matters just to make sure that we are on the same path and that we don't have divergent views," he added.

Iran and the five permanent members of the UN Security Council  the United States, France, Britain, China and Russia  plus Germany signed the JCPOA on July 14, 2015 following two and a half years of intensive talks.

The two sides started implementing the JCPOA on January 16.

Under the JCPOA, all nuclear-related sanctions imposed on Iran by the European Union, the Security Council and the US would be lifted. Iran has, in return, put some limitations on its nuclear activities.



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Iraqi PM urges pro-reform protesters to 'respect law'

Iran Press TV

Thu May 5, 2016 5:34PM

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has urged pro-reform demonstrators to "respect the law" ahead of a fresh protest rally planned to be held outside the fortified Green Zone in the capital Baghdad.

In televised remarks on Thursday, Abadi signaled that security guards may take a harder line should the protesters make a new attempt to storm Baghdad's Green zone, which is home to key government buildings, foreign embassies and media organizations.

"Those who want reform must respect the law," said the Iraqi premier, stressing that "plans have been put in place to protect the constitutional institutions and prevent what happened recently from being repeated."

He made the comments on the eve of a new pro-reform gathering less than a week after hundreds of outraged protesters broke into the restricted Green Zone.

The demonstrators want government reforms amid allegations of corruption and nepotism.

Many of the demonstrators were supporters of the prominent cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. The protesters left the parliament building late on Saturday. They withdrew from the Green Zone peacefully later on Sunday.

On Wednesday, Abadi sacked Staff Lieutenant General Mohammed Ridha, the commander of Special Forces in the Green Zone, after last weekend's violent protest rally.

The appointment of a new security chief for the area may indicate that security forces will take tough action against them if they attempt to re-enter the Green Zone.

The protests broke out after lawmakers failed to approve new ministers proposed by Abadi last month in a number of consecutive parliamentary sessions.

Abadi wants to replace the current cabinet of party-affiliated ministers to be replaced by a government of technocrats, but he has faced stiff opposition from powerful political parties seeking to maintain their grip on ministries for patronage and funds.

The crisis in Iraq's political scene comes at a critical juncture as the country is engaged in heavy fighting with Daesh Takfiri terror groups controlling swathes of Iraqi land since 2014.

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Kazakh President Postpones Land Privatizations Until 2017

May 05, 2016

by RFE/RL

Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbaev has postponed a controversial plan to privatize state-owned agricultural land, as ministries tied to the plan were rocked by resignations and reprimands.

The government had recently announced that just under 2 percent of the country's agricultural land would be put up for auction beginning on July 1. But amid the ensuing outcry over the prospect of corruption and foreign ownership of Kazakh land, Nazarbaev conceded that the issue requires more discussion.

"I have made a decision today to announce a moratorium to the implementation of the land law amendments regarding land ownership until next year," Nazarbaev said at a special cabinet gathering in Astana. "We do not need laws that our people do not like."

He said the plan would be implemented in 2017 and announced the formation of a government commission to oversee land reforms.

"We have to do everything to explain to our people the legislation on land privatization via the commission's work," Nazarbaev said.

Nazarbaev's announcement on May 5 follows nearly two weeks of demonstrations across the country. Many participants expressed concern that the plan would allow foreigners to own Kazazkh agricultural land.

On April 26, Nazarbaev defended the plan, promising to "punish provocateurs" who spread the idea that foreigners would be able to purchase the land. The government stressed that while foreigners would be able to rent farmland for up to 25 years, they would not be able to own land or participate in the planned auctions.

Demonstrators have also expressed concern that the land auctions would not be done in a transparent way, and that the country's elite, rather than farmers, would end up owning the land.

Just before Nazarbaev said the plan would be postponed, the official who announced the auction plan on March 30, Economy Minister Erbolat Dosaev, resigned, along with his deputy.

In addition, Agriculture Minister Asylzhan Mamytbekov was reportedly reprimanded by the president for not being fully fit for his post.

Source: http://www.rferl.org/content/kazakhstan-nazarbaev- delays-land-privatization/27717597.html

Copyright (c) 2016. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.

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Nusra terrorists kill 15 villagers in northwest Syria

Iran Press TV

Thu May 5, 2016 10:18AM

Members of al-Qaeda's branch in Syria, al-Nusra Front, have reportedly executed more than a dozen civilians in Syria's northwestern province of Idlib.

Local sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, said on Wednesday that the extremists killed 15 people, among them four children, in Khween Village the previous night, Syria's official SANA reported.

The sources further said that the Nusra Front militants also destroyed a number of residential buildings in the village.

Fighters from pro-government defense groups later closed in on Nusra Front Takfiris, driving them out of Khween.

At least 25 militants were killed in the process; and three vehicles, two heavy machine-guns plus a considerable amount of munitions were confiscated afterward.

Meanwhile, at least three people have been killed and nine others injured in separate rocket attacks by foreign-sponsored Takfiri militants against residential areas in the city of Aleppo.

A security source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said three civilians lost their lives and five others were injured when several rockets fired by Takfiri Nusra Front militants struck the Salahuddin and Khalidiyah neighborhoods of the northwestern Syrian city.

The projectiles also caused substantial damage to several houses and public properties at the targeted areas.

Separately, four civilians were injured in a terrorist rocket attack on Sulaymaniyah neighborhood of Aleppo.

Syria has been gripped by foreign-backed militancy since March 2011. UN Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura estimates that over 400,000 people have been killed in the conflict, which has furthermore displaced over half of Syria's pre-war population of about 23 million.

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Syrian Regime Accused of Bombing Refugee Camp, Killing 30

by Jamie Dettmer, Pamela Dockins May 05, 2016

Only hours after Russian and Syrian officials confirmed a cease-fire had been extended to Aleppo, opposition politicians said warplanes  either Syrian government or Russian  carried out a deadly airstrike 30 kilometers from Syria's one-time commercial capital on a refugee camp close to the border with Turkey.

The airstrike killed at least 30 people and wounded dozens at the Kamouna camp near in northern Syria's Idlib province, according to the Local Coordination Committees (LCC), a network of anti-Assad activists.

Another activist monitoring group, the U.K.-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, put the death toll lower at 28, including women and children, but warned their numbers would likely rise.

Activists say two missiles hit the camp.

Photographs posted by LCC activists on social media sites showed tents destroyed at the camp.

"These individuals are in the most desperate situation imaginable, and there is no justification for carrying out military action targeting them," Josh Earnest, U.S. President Barack Obama's spokesman, said of the refugees.

Seeking details

At the U.S. State Department, officials said they were seeking more details.

"We have seen the reports, including accusations that these were regime strikes," said U.S. State Department spokesman Mark Toner. "We are looking into them to try to get more details on what happened, but there is absolutely no justification for attacks on civilians in Syria.

"We have said this many times, unfortunately, over the last week or so, but especially on what appears to have been a refugee camp, so really targeting the most vulnerable citizens in Syria," Toner said.

Asked whether the airstrike bolsters the argument that rebels and Turkey have made for months that safe and no-fly zones need to be established to protect the more than 100,000 internally displaced Syrians in northern Syria, Toner said: "We don't want to set up specific no-fly zones. What we are working toward and what we are trying to get in place here is a nationwide cessation of hostilities that we believe can endure and be strengthened over the long haul."

Activists remained adamant the regime was behind the airstrike  not the first time Syrian government warplanes have been accused of attacking refugee camps.

But they said they could not tell whether the fighter-bombers were from the Syrian Air Force or Russian warplanes. Photographs of the aftermath of the strike showed fires burning and the charred remains of blue tents.

Telegram to Moscow

The Syrian National Coalition, the Western-backed opposition group, also blamed the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, who sent a telegram Thursday to Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

Syrian state media said the message thanked Moscow for its military support and vowed to accept nothing less than outright victory. Assad said the army was set on "attaining final victory" and "crushing the aggression."

The government-owned Syrian Arab News Agency ran no report on the airstrike on the camp for internally displaced Syrians, focusing instead on Assad's congratulatory message to Moscow, sent on Russia's Victory Day, the anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany.

The Syrian president noted in his cable that Aleppo has become like Stalingrad, promising that "despite the brutality and cruelty of the enemy, and the great sacrifices and pains, our cities, towns, people and army will not be satisfied until they defeat the enemy and achieve victory serving the interests of Syria, the region and the world."

The Syrian regime has pledged to abide by a temporary truce when it comes to Aleppo.

The "regime of calm," as Damascus prefers to describe it, came into effect at 1 a.m. (2200 GMT on Wednesday) for 48 hours, after two weeks of the most intense fighting the city has seen in more than a year.

State Department spokesman Toner held out hope that the Aleppo truce would be extended.

"They have given it a 48-hour time limit," he said. "We will let that time limit proceed, but what we would like to see is obviously this [cease-fire] continue and be as open-ended as possible."

Kamouna camp

Syrian army spokesmen accused al-Qaida affiliate Jabhat al Nusra and Islamist factions of violating the temporary truce in Aleppo, which was brokered by Washington and Moscow, accusing them of continuing indiscriminate shelling of government-held districts. But locals reported that overnight clashes had eased and shops started to open in the calm.

But Kamouna camp, which shelters more than 2,000 refugees, was anything but that when two warplanes struck it.

The camp is far from any major towns or cities.

Mamun al-Khatib, director of the Aleppo-based pro-rebel Shahba Press news agency, accused the Syrian government of the attack.

"Two regime aircraft fired four missiles on the camp," Khatib said. "Two missiles fell near, causing people to panic, and two more fell inside where a dozen tents caught fire."

A purported video of the scene uploaded to the Internet by activists shows women wailing over the scorched bodies of children. "White Helmet" emergency workers can be seen trying to put out fires.

Idlib province is mainly controlled by Jabhat al Nusra and the Islamist faction Ahar al-Sham.

Damascus and Moscow say both groups are terrorists. Al-Qaida's affiliate is excluded from a cease-fire agreed on in February, also brokered by Russia and the U.S.

Russian artillery units

On Wednesday, before the partial truce came into effect, Russian artillery units participated for the first time in ground fighting in Aleppo, which has suffered two weeks of blistering government airstrikes.

And dozens were killed in the city as rebels advanced into Syrian government-controlled western districts, according to political activists. The insurgents were forced to withdraw after several hours of intense fighting.

The rebel assault was mounted to disrupt regime forces, say rebel commanders who have long warned of a major offensive in the coming weeks to wrest back the battered insurgent-held districts of a city that remains a key battlefield prize for the government.

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Turkey's Davutoglu confirms won't seek new term as AKP head

Iran Press TV

Thu May 5, 2016 12:55PM

Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu has defended his term in office as a 'success', saying he will no longer stand for the leadership of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP).

In a speech on Thursday, a day after AKP announced its decision to hold an extraordinary congress to pick a new leader, Davutoglu said he will not seek a new mandate in the party's top role and would resign as prime minister.

"I have no sense of failure or regrets in taking this decision," Davutoglu said, adding, "The changing of chairs is more proper; I do not want to be a candidate at the congress."

He said the congress for leadership election in the AKP will be held on May 22, adding that he would certainly not stand as a candidate in the absence of a consensus among the party members.

According to AKP party rules, the party chief and premier are always the same person.

He said after leaving office, he will continue to carry out his duties as a member of parliament representing Konya in central Anatolia.

Davutoglu called his time in office a success in terms of investment and struggle against terrorism.

The Turkish PM ruled out rumors about growing differences between him and President Recep Tayyib Erdogan, saying his loyalty to and friendship with AKP's most influential man will remain as before.

Erdogan is pushing for establishment of a presidential system instead of the current parliamentary system in Turkey. Davutoglu has, however, asserted that such a system would eat away at his authority.

The two men sat for a special meeting in the presidential palace on Wednesday, with reports saying Davutoglu had asked for an extraordinary congress of the AKP to be convened.

Erdogan hailed the move and offered congratulations to Davutoglu on his decision, according to Turkish media reports.

This comes as Erdogan had previously criticized Davutoglu for remarks he made about Turkey's potential amendments to the presidential system, saying Davutoglu should not forget how he became prime minister.

The AKP infighting comes as Turkey is in the midst of its battle against militants of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in the southeast while security has been fragile in border regions with Syria with regular rocket attacks by the Takfiri group Daesh keep claiming civilians.

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Turkey opposition dubs PM resignation 'palace coup'

Iran Press TV

Thu May 5, 2016 2:2PM

Leader of Turkey's main opposition has slammed the ouster of Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu as a "palace coup" aimed at consolidating the president's power.

"Davutoglu's resignation should not be perceived as an internal party issue, all democracy supporters must resist this palace coup," Kemal Kilicdaroglu, who heads the Republican People's Party (CHP), said at a Thursday presser.

Earlier, Davutolgu said at a news conference that he would not seek a new term as prime minister and head of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP).

The announcement came after a gathering of the party's central executive committee amid months-long rumors of tensions between Davutoglu and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The premier, however, stopped short of criticizing the Turkish president and stressed his loyalty to Erdogan, who is the AKP's founding father and most influential figure.

He also ruled out the rumors of uneasy relations with the president and pledged to remain an AKP lawmaker.

Davutoglu added that he would step down after an extraordinary meeting of party leaders, which is expected to be held on May 22.

Among the potential successors to the prime minister are Transport Minister Binali Yildirim and Energy Minister Berat Albayrak, both close to Erdogan.

The developments come as Erdogan has long been under fire by critics for pushing to replace the current parliamentary system of government with a presidential one, and thus, change his ceremonial role into an executive chief.

Opposition parties do not support the presidential system envisaged by Erdogan, fearing he is pushing Turkey to the brink of authoritarianism.

Erdogan set for tighter grip on power

Erdogan had previously criticized his ally Davutoglu for remarks he made about Turkey's potential amendments to the presidential system, saying he should not forget how he became prime minister.

On Thursday, the opposition Cumhuriyet newspaper criticized the Thursday summit for failing to find a solution to the party row, while "Erdogan put a full stop to the conflict between them."

Soner Cagaptay, director of the Turkish Research Program at the Washington Institute, said the move was the next stage in a "hollowing out" of Turkish institutions by Erdogan, who already controls the army and parliament.

"It shows how much power has been massed in one person's hands," said the analyst, adding that Erdogan was now seeking tighter grip on power than anyone in the country's modern democratic history.

The shake-up comes at a critical time as Ankara is engaged in heavy battles with Kurdish militants in the southeast as well as Iraqi soil. Turkey is also grappling with an influx of Syrian refugees into its borders.

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Turkey's PM Resigns as Erdogan Shows Who's Boss

by Dorian Jones May 05, 2016

Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said he will step down as his ruling AK Party announced an extraordinary congress to elect a new leader. Davutoglu's decision comes amid reports of his growing differences with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

In a carefully worded statement to the country's media, Davutoglu said he would be stepping down at the AK Party congress to be held on May 22. He claimed his premiership has been a success, underlining his landslide victory in last November's election. But alluding to growing differences over his leadership, he said he was stepping down for the sake of unity and consensus in the party.

But the prime minister was careful to reaffirm his loyalty to the president.

"I feel no reproach, anger or resentment against anyone," he said. "No one heard, or will ever hear a single word from my mouth, from my tongue or my mind against our president."

But in the past few months there have been reports of growing differences between the prime minister and Erdogan. Supporters of the president have accused Davutoglu of opposing Erdogan's ambitions of replacing Turkey's current parliamentary system with a presidential one, while Davutoglu has tentatively voiced concerns over an ongoing crackdown on critics of the president.

On Monday, Erdogan loyalists in the AK Party stripped the prime minister of his power to appoint regional party heads, while the president this week issued a thinly-veiled warning to Davutoglu, saying he should remember who appointed him.

Davutoglu met Wednesday with Erdogan to resolve their differences, but Cengiz Aktar, a political scientist at Istanbul's Suleyman Sah University, said the prime minister's fate was already sealed.

"For some time, he was growing in his position and that is unacceptable to Mr. Erdogan. He is and he was his [Erdogan's] creation and started to become independent, developing new ideas, etc. And this didn't please Mr. Erdogan and ... he pushed him [Davutoglu] out."

One of the prime minister's initiatives was to craft a deal with the European Union, whereby Turkey accepted migrants returned from Greece in exchange for a series of concessions, including visa-free travel to Schengen-zone countries in the European Union. This week, the European Commission gave a conditional green light to visa-free travel.

While Brussels has made little secret of the fact that it would rather deal with Davutoglu than Erdogan, who is increasingly accused of authoritarianism, observers say Davutoglu's removal sends a message that Erdogan is the only person who wields power in Turkey.

Kemal Kilicdaroglu, leader of Turkey's main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP), called the prime minister's resignation a "palace coup."

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Cellnex has agreed to sell 1,100 sites in the UK to Wireless Infrastructure Group (WIG) as part of its plans to buy 6,000 passive infrastructure sites in the UK from CK Hutchison for US$4 billion.
New U.K. Treasury chief Jeremy Hunt has reversed most of an economic package announced by the government just weeks ago, including a planned cut in income taxes. Hunt said Monday he was scrapping almost all the tax cuts announced last month by the Conservative government of Prime Minister Liz Truss, and also signaled that public spending cuts are on the way. It was a bid to soothe turbulent financial markets spooked by fears of excessive government borrowing. The move raises questions about how long the beleaguered prime minister can stay in office, though Truss insisted she has no plans to quit. She vowed to lead the Conservatives into the next general election, but many in the party want her gone.
VANCOUVER, May 6, 2016 - Sutter Gold Mining Inc. (TSX VENTURE:SGM)(OTCQX:SGMNF) ("Sutter" or "the Company") - The Company has been informed that its principal lender and shareholder, RMB Australia Holdings Limited ("RMBAH"), has engaged Primary Capital Inc. of Vancouver to assist in the potential sale of its debt and equity interests in Sutter.RMBAH owns approximately 47% of the Company's shares and as of December 31, 2015 has debt totaling approximately $46.5M, secured by the Company's assets. The Company has not been involved in any discussions to date, but is facilitating Primary Capital's engagement by providing access to information under confidentiality to approved, interested parties.Sutter will provide additional disclosure as required. There can be no assurances that any transaction will result from these matters and the Company will apprise shareholders of any developments.

Primary Capital (www.primarycapital.ca) is a privately owned exempt market dealer with offices in Toronto and Vancouver that finances and provides M&A advice with a focus on public companies that are active worldwide.





About Sutter



Sutter currently holds a number of precious metals properties in California, USA, including the permitted Lincoln underground mine near Sutter Creek, California, as well as a new, permitted processing facility, located near the entrance to the Lincoln Mine. In March 2014, the project was put on care and maintenance while certain mineral processing issues are being evaluated and the Company reduced costs due to capital constraints.





Forward-Looking Statements: This news release contains "forward-looking information" under Canadian securities law. Any information that express or involve discussions with respect to predictions, expectations, beliefs, plans, projections, objectives, assumptions or future events or performance (often, but not always, using words such as "expect", "anticipate", "believe", "plans", "estimate", "scheduling", "projected" or variations thereof or stating that certain actions, events or results "may", "could", "would", "might" or "will" be taken, occur or be achieved, or the negative of any of these terms and similar expressions) are not statements of historical fact and may be forward-looking information. Forward-looking information relates to, among other things: the price of silver and gold; the accuracy of mineral resource and mineral reserve estimates; the ability of the Company to finance its operations and capital expenditures; future financial and operating performance including estimates of the Company's revenues and capital expenditures and estimated production.



Forward-looking information is subject to a variety of known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual events or results to differ from those reflected in the forward-looking information, including, without limitation, risks relating to: fluctuating commodity prices; calculation of resources, reserves and mineralization and precious and base metal recovery; interpretations and assumptions of mineral resource and mineral reserve estimates; exploration and development programs; feasibility and engineering reports; permits and licenses; title to properties; recent market events and conditions; economic factors affecting the Company; timing, estimated amount, capital and operating expenditures and economic returns of future production; operations and political conditions; environmental risks; and risks and hazards of mining operations. This list is not exhaustive of the factors that may affect any of the Company's forward-looking information. Forward-looking information about the future is inherently uncertain, and actual achievements of the Company or other future events or conditions may differ materially from those reflected in the forward-looking information due to a variety of risks, uncertainties and other factors. Although the Company has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially, there may be other factors that cause results not to be as anticipated, estimated, described or intended. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements or information. The Company's forward-looking information is based on the assumptions, beliefs, expectations and opinions of management as of the date of this press release, and other than as required by applicable securities laws, the Company does not assume any obligation to update forward-looking statements and information if circumstances or management's assumptions, beliefs, expectations or opinions should change, or changes in any other events affecting such statements or information. For the reasons set forth above, investors should not place undue reliance on forward-looking information.



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



Sutter Gold Mining Inc.

Amanda Miller, Chief Financial Officer

303 238 1438 ext. 223

amiller@suttergoldmining.com

www.suttergoldmining.com


Vancouver British Columbia / TheNewswire / May 6 2016 -- New Carolin Gold Corp. (the "Company" or "New Carolin") (TSXV: LAD / OTC PK: LADFF) The Company is pleased to announce that it has entered into an agreement with Mr. Ron Cooper, to assist the Company with its capital market plans.

Mr. Cooper graduated from the University of Memphis with a B.Sc. in finance in 1980. After working for several years at a Vancouver brokerage firm as a compliance officer, Ron has spent the past 28 years as a marketing consultant to private and public companies. Over this time he has arranged financing and provided marketing services to over 80 companies, several of which have become major corporations.

The contract fee is $6300 per month for an initial 6-month term, and upon mutual consent will continue on a month to month basis thereafter.

Robert Thast, New Carolin CEO commented: "The Company is fortunate to have Ron join our team to help increase exposure through his many contacts within the financial community in North America. Ron has helped numerous junior resource companies to mature over the years and we look forward to working with him".

The agreement includes a contract fee of $6,300 per month for an initial 6-month term, which upon mutual consent will continue on a month-to-month basis thereafter. Additionally, he has been granted 500,000 incentive stock options priced at $0.085, vesting as to 25% per quarter for a period of one year.

About New Carolin Gold Corp.

New Carolin Gold is a Canadian-based junior company focused on the exploration, evaluation and development of our 100% owned property consisting of 144 square kilometers of contiguous mineral claims and crown grants, collectively known as the "Ladner Gold Project" (Project). The Project is located near Hope, BC in the prospective and under-explored Coquihalla Gold Belt, which is host to several historic small gold producers including the Carolin Mine, Emancipation Mine and Pipestem Mine, and numerous gold prospects.

For additional information, please visit the Company's website at www.newcarolingold.com or call toll-free 1-855-891-9185.

ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS

"Robert L. Thast"

President & Chief Executive Officer

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or the accuracy of this press release.

Caution concerning forward-looking information

This news release may contain forward-looking statements that are based on the Company's expectations, estimates and projections regarding its business and the economic environment in which it operates. These statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve risks and uncertainties that are difficult to control or predict. Therefore, actual outcomes and results may differ materially from those expressed in these forward-looking statements and readers should not place undue reliance on such statements. Statements speak only as of the date on which they are made, and the Company undertakes no obligation to update them publicly to reflect new information or the occurrence of future events or circumstances, unless otherwise required to do so by law.

Copyright (c) 2016 TheNewswire - All rights reserved.
Steamed bao filled with chicken kaarage and lotus chips. Photo: Bradley Kanaris

The Jungle Giants drummer Keelan Bijker has joined the number of Brisbane musos getting into hospitality, opening Spring Hill venue Two Donkeys. Other musicians slinging coffee and beer around the city include Powderfinger bassist John Collins at The Triffid in Newstead, and Patience Hodgson and John Patterson from The Grates, who own Southside Tearoom and Death Valley in Morningside.

"All we do on tour is hang out in cafes and bars and I'd worked in hospitality before, so when this came up, I decided to go for it," Bijker says. The Jungle Giants are taking a six month break and, with "quiet time" until Splendour in the Grass festival in July, Bijker says he has time to get the Astor Terrace venue, formerly Plan B cafe, running smoothly.

Two Donkeys will operate as a cafe and a bar, Bijker says, with a breakfast and lunch menu, and drinks until 6pm; with possible extended hours once they've hit their stride.

Keelan Bijker named the cafe in honour of his childhood pet donkeys. Photo: Bradley Kanaris

An all-day breakfast menu features standards such as potato roesti and French toast with mascarpone and poached fruit, while a simple lunch menu has a choice of bao filled with kaarage chicken or Chinese-style pork, as well as fried lotus chips.

Four taps include beer from Newstead Brewing, a house brew and a rotating guest beer, while coffee comes from Gold Coast roaster Blackboard and bread is from Newmarket local Crust & Co.

The music connection continues with the bar and facade built by Sam Sargent, a drummer in Brisbane bands The Belligerents and Moses Gunn Collective, and head barista Spencer White plays in multiple bands.

Bijker behind the coffee machine. Photo: Bradley Kanaris

Bijker says the name comes from his former childhood pets; two donkeys named Poppy and Lucy.

Open daily 6am-6pm.

76a Astor Terrace, Spring Hill, 0420 407 993, twodonkeys.com.au
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Long lines as TSA, Congress deny blame

By Alan Levin, Mary Schlangenstein And Michael Sasso, Bloomberg News (TNS)

WASHINGTON  There is broad agreement that U.S. airports will not be a pleasant place this summer as security screening lines swell and officials warn that delays will trigger missed flights and may even harm the economy.

Where there is disagreement is how we got here.

Lawmakers say the Transportation Security Administration is to blame for poor use of resources and failing to anticipate growing traffic levels. The agency says it is doing the best it can within budgetary limits imposed by Congress and the "current threat environment."

"This stare-down match or game of chicken that they are engaging in now is maybe adorable to some, but the chickens will come home to roost once summer travel season begins," Jonathan Grella, executive vice president for public affairs at the U.S. Travel Association, said in an interview. "We're incredibly concerned about this communications gap."

Growing numbers of airline passengers, a decrease in TSA employees and an agency reeling from criticism last year that its security wasn't adequate has created dysfunction at the nation's airports.

Staffing authorized by Congress for the TSA, which operates security at airports across the country, has fallen from 47,147 full-time employees in 2013 to 42,525 this year, a decrease of almost 10 percent, according to agency data. At the same time, the volume of passengers rose from 643 million to an estimated 740 million this year, or 15 percent, according to TSA.

The result: In one week during peak spring travel in March, almost 6,800 people traveling on American Airlines missed flights due to delays at TSA checkpoints, airline spokesman Casey Norton said in an interview.

"We consistently have lines longer than an hour in some airports," Norton said. "Some airports have had lines longer than three hours."

While wait times at Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport weren't bad midday Wednesday, frequent business traveler Jeff Truhlar said he endured a three-hour wait on the day before Thanksgiving last year at his home airport, Jacksonville International in Florida.

That experience prompted him to apply that day for a program known as PreCheck, allowing streamlined screening for people who agree to a background check. "The line was so long I filled out the whole application," Truhlar said. The improvement since joining PreCheck has been like "night and day," he said.

Given the time it takes to hire and train TSA screeners, some disruptions this summer may be inevitable, Kevin Burke, president of the Airports Council International-North America trade group, said in an interview.

"There's not enough time between now and this holiday season to be able to fix it," Burke said. "The real question is how do we avoid this again."
BELOW: Meet Team Cap: Falcon (Anthony Mackie, from left), Ant-Man (Paul Rudd), Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner), Captain America (Chris Evans), Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen) and Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan).

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New Captain America film is a cut above

By Katie Walsh, Tribune News Service (TNS)

Every summer, a Marvel superhero film sweeps into theaters like a breath of fresh air, a standard-bearer. This May, that's "Captain America: Civil War," directed by Joe and Anthony Russo. There's political commentary, emotional stakes and plenty of action, but with a lighthearted quality, zingers and jokes littered throughout to brighten up the atmosphere. There's a hopefulness that maybe some "enhanced individuals" do the right thing because they still believe in that.

That's not the only way to do a superhero comic book movie, but it's dependable, reliable, comforting  like ordering at a chain restaurant. You know what kind of meal you're going to get every time, and you'll most likely enjoy it.

"Civil War" centers around the ramifications of the events from "Avengers: Age of Ultron," wherein the fictional nation of Sokovia was leveled, as well as a mishap in Lagos during an Avengers mission early in the film, which results in the loss of many lives. It's almost as if there needs to be some regulation on a band of superheroes romping about the globe, intervening in international affairs willy nilly.

That's what Secretary of State Ross (William Hurt) believes, and Iron Man/Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) is inclined to agree with him, taking a more liberal, pro-government stance. Not quite in agreement is Steve Rogers/Captain America (Chris Evans), the libertarian type who is resistant to government intervention and remains staunch in his beliefs that he knows what's right and wrong. His stance is exacerbated when his old buddy Bucky/The Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan) is framed for a bombing during a U.N. meeting to ratify the Sokovia accords.

The film is refreshingly open to debate on this topic. Rather than pushing an oppressive or undisputed ideology, there's discussion about the nuances of the right way to do the right thing, that maybe there are many different ways to be right  you can follow the rules, or follow your beliefs.

The action here is refreshingly human-scaled, rather than the skyscraper-obliterating disasters of other films. We're introduced to T'Challa Wakanda/Black Panther (Chadwick Bozeman), and his muscly feline prowess is a welcome addition to the team. As is the chipper teen enthusiasm of Peter Parker/Spider-Man (Tom Holland). Though much of it can seem like crashing action figures together, the matchups between the heroes of different powers are thrilling, and executed with humor and smarts. However, as the film crosses the two-hour mark, the endless punching becomes relentlessly dull.

Marvel's marketing campaign has exhorted fans to choose #TeamCap or #TeamIronMan. Within the movie, this question becomes a debate between science and emotion, protocol and friendship. Neither is the wrong way, necessarily. The Avengers have always been powered by their shared collective power, so the friendship theme is important, but hammered home again and again in Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely's screenplay.

This is a Captain America movie, so the choice would seem clear  why then does the #TeamIronMan choice seem more sensible? America's brawny sweetheart puts on the nice guy airs, but he's loathe to see outside of his perspective, change his ways, or compromise. His old-fashioned, Greatest Generation schtick isn't quite as charming (or effective) this time around. As an Avengers movie, "Civil War" is a cut above the rest, but unfortunately, our relationship to the titular hero is tarnished in the process.
Alejandro Castanon removes a painting Wednesday in preparation of the upcoming Nude Art Show at Vino Dipinte Art Gallery, 602 Orient St. The opening reception is 6-10 p.m. Saturday. Yfat Yossifor/Standard-Times

SHARE Yfat Yossifor / Standard-Times Alejandro Castanon hangs a painting Wednesday in preparation of the upcoming Nude Art Show at Vino Dipinte Art Gallery, 602 Orient St. The opening reception is 6-10 p.m. Saturday.

By Ngan Ho of the San Angelo Standard-Times

The human body, stripped down to the skin and flesh, will be celebrated via 33 works of art featured in Vino Dipinte Art Gallery's fifth annual Nude Art Show.

The artworks, presented in 2-D and 3-D, can make the flesh on a canvas come alive and quiver, said Alejandro Castanon, gallery owner.

Submissions for the show poured in from local artists as well as artists from New York, Georgia, California and Florida, Castanon said. They will be unveiled in an opening reception Saturday.

Castanon created the Vino Dipinte Art Gallery in 2011 on a whim after moving to San Angelo and learning there weren't many artists and galleries in town.

Castanon said he invested in the gallery despite not having any experience or education background in the arts.

He then created the Nude Art Show in 2012 with a vision to stray from traditions and conventions of West Texas, he said.

"I'm trying to explore ideas that some people probably are interested in seeing but maybe a little too reserved to express and tell their friends and family about," he said. "We were interested in doing some out-of-the-box type of shows, not anything normal that you would see."

The show received some backlash from the community, with people asking why this kind of show needed to exist in San Angelo, he said.

However, Castanon said he kept pressing forward until the gallery was able to break down barriers.

"I like change," he said. "I love when things change. It kind of brings out a different side of people. You see how they adapt to it, how they receive change. Doing nude art was kind of one of the reasons why I wanted to see that happen. I thought it might change other things in the art community by people being exposed to it.

"If I did flowers and more contemporary West Texas type of stuff, that would have been great and there's a lot of artist that do that here, but it wouldn't cause any change."

The nude art show has gained popularity over time and is the only nude art show of its kind in West Texas, Castanon said.

The opening reception, 6-10 p.m. Saturday, is for ages 18 and older only. The event is free to the public and free drinks will be provided.

This year the exhibit is extending into the courtyard, where two food trucks will serving gourmet burgers and barbecue.

Castanon said last year the gallery had the biggest crowd with about 75 to 100 people, with ages 25 to 35 being the biggest demographic.

Art pieces are for sale, and a live nude art exhibit also will be on display.

"We were very careful about the type of nudes that were submitted. I had a few submissions this year that were more sexual-oriented nudes. And I don't want to introduce that to a city that is still getting used to nudes in general," he said. "I didn't want to blur the line between nudity and sexuality. I think that puts a bad spin on it. So we're very careful about the ones we accept and which one we turned away."

Castanon said he also accepted submissions that celebrated nudity rather than pieces that criticized it.

People who miss the show Saturday can make an appointment to see it, then the show will run for 30 days before the pieces are taken down, he said. Sales of the artwork will go to support the artists and the gallery.

"This whole journey contrasts my whole life beforehand," he said. "If you had asked me what would (I) be doing in 10 years 10 years ago, I would say I would be close to retirement in the Air Force. Art and drawing was completely out of my mind, it was just something I did as a child. Every day I just can't believe that I'm even doing this."

IF YOU GO

What: Fifth annual Nude Art Show opening reception

When: 6-10 p.m. Saturday

Where: Vino Dipinte Art Gallery, 602 Orient St.

Cost: Free

What else: Opening reception is for ages 18 and older only

Contact: 361-237-9358, vinodpipinte.com or vinodipinte@hotmail.com
Amber Craker and Damian Cate

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By Titus Falodun of the Abilene Reporter News

ABILENE - Damian Cate and Amber Craker were indicted by a Taylor County grand jury Thursday in connection with the death of their baby girl in January.

Cate and Craker were indicted on counts of first-degree felony murder and second-degree felony tampering with/fabricating physical evidence with intent to impair a human corpse.

Craker, 18, was found incompetent to stand trial last month.

According to a court order signed by 350th District Judge Thomas Wheeler on April 7, Craker is now committed to the North Texas State Hospital, a mental health facility, for no longer than 120 days.

Cate, 22, remains in the Taylor County Jail in lieu of bail totaling $300,000, despite a few attempts by his attorney to get him released.

The infant suffered at least three stab wounds over the neck and chest and small sharp-force injury on the upper left side of the back, according to the preliminary autopsy report.

Cate allegedly told police that he held the baby as the mother stabbed her Jan. 18, according to a court document.

He reportedly said he also assisted in putting the baby in the trash can and cleaning up lots of blood.
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Comes now the latest Democratic effort to wake "the sleeping giant" in Texas politics, the rapidly growing Latino population.

The congressional half of San Antonio's politically hot Castro twin-brother team, Joaquin, is recruiting volunteers to sign up Latinos in Texas to vote.

His name tops an email for the Democratic organization Battleground Texas about the new effort, called Movimiento Texas.

Joaquin was elected to the Texas House of Representatives in 2002, at age 28. A decade later, he advanced to the U.S. House.

Joaquin says the rapidly growing Latino population in Texas has a big opportunity to affect political leadership in Texas.

"In 2014, just 4.7 million people cast ballots to determine the next governor of Texas," Castro pointed out. "With 4.8 million Latinos who are eligible to vote, we know we have the power to decide who wins in future elections  from the Governor's Mansion to the White House.

"We just have to engage and register other Latinos to do it," Castro continued. "That's why we need to empower Latinos like you to become leaders who motivate their friends and families to take action."

Battleground Texas tried in 2014 to expand the Democratic base enough to return Texas to blue state status after a 20-year drought.

But the sleeping giant's alarm failed to go off. Battleground's organization and the governor's campaign of pro-choice filibuster star, state Sen. Wendy Davis, got wrapped around each other's axles. Davis lost to Republican Attorney General Greg Abbott by 20 points.

Castro's email asks readers to "Take the first step in becoming a leader  attend a free Latino leadership training hosted by Battleground Texas, and get the skills you need to motivate your community to make their voices heard."

Some of Texas' most qualified political organizers will be at the May 14 all-day workshop in San Antonio, including the twins' mom  keynote speaker Rosie Castro, a veteran of San Antonio political battles.

There's a reason the articulate identical twins, now 41, are making their marks in politics. They grew up watching and helping in Mom's political efforts.

Joaquin now is a frequent guest on national Sunday morning political talk shows.

Julian became the youngest-ever San Antonio city councilman in 2001, at 26, and mayor, on his second try, in 2009. In 2014, President Barack Obama named him secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Julian has been campaigning for Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton, and is on her short list for a running mate.

We'll learn in November what impact the efforts of Joaquin, and maybe Julian, and Battleground Texas will have.

Voter ID

Ironically, Joaquin Castro's invitation went out Friday, April 29  the same day the U.S. Supreme Court said Texas could keep its voter ID law for now, while the full Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals rehears it.

But the high court also said that if the Fifth Circuit hasn't ruled by July 20, the plaintiffs are invited to reopen their effort to block the voter ID law before the November elections.

The law requires showing a photo ID to vote: a Texas driver's license, or personal ID card, issued by the Department of Public Safety; a Texas concealed handgun permit; a U.S. military ID card; a U.S. passport; or a Texas election certificate, a new form of state photo ID created under the law.

Minority group challengers argued that Republicans designed it to make voting difficult for minorities, the poor and elderly  more than half a million Texans.

Oral arguments before the full Fifth Circuit Court are set for May 24 in New Orleans.

Dave McNeely is a longtime Texas political columnist. Contact him at davemcneely111@gmail.com.
Transgender students across Oregon should be able to use the bathrooms, names and pronouns they want, according to unprecedented guidelines released Thursday by the Oregon Department of Education.In a sweeping 15-page document the department issued what are likely to be controversial suggestions for Oregon educators -- directing them to allow transgender females to play girls sports, for example, and transgender men to wear tuxedos to prom.They also suggest school leaders use transgender students' preferred names, even if that differs from a legal name, on all transcripts and diplomas. And they say the state will require no proof before changing a student's gender in Oregon records."A student who says she is a girl and wishes to be regarded that way throughout the school day should be respected and treated like any other girl," the document reads. "So too with a student who says he is a boy."Oregon joins a handful of states that have issued similarly explicit recommendations, issuing its guidelines amid an increasingly heated conversation over transgender identity and discrimination. On Wednesday, the federal Justice Department warned North Carolina that it cannot bar transgender people from using the bathrooms that match their gender identities.Districts across the country, including many in Oregon, are seeing students come out for the first time. School leaders nationwide have wrestled over decisions about which locker rooms and bathrooms transgender students should use.Though the federal government has sided with transgender students in two recent cases, Oregon educators have told state leaders that they were unsure how to navigate the cultural shift.In February, Dallas School District Superintendent Michelle Johnstone wrote Gov. Kate Brown to ask for help.The small town west of Salem has been embroiled in a civil rights debate since last fall, when Dallas High School's principal agreed to let a transgender male use the boys locker room.Parents and other students were outraged. They demanded the student be barred from the boys locker room. The district's lawyer warned the board that they would be sued -- and likely lose the suit -- if they caved to community pressure. Residents contacted other lawyers who said the district's counsel was wrong."There appears to be conflict regarding the intent of the Oregon Equality Act," Johnstone wrote to Brown, referencing a state law that bars discrimination on the basis of sex.The document released Thursday is a response to requests such as those.To create the statewide recommendations, a group of Oregon Department of Education employees studied cases across in the country. Last November, for instance, the U.S. Department of Education ruled that an Illinois school district violated federal Title IX regulations when administrators prevented a transgender female from using the girls' facilities.Then, in April, the U.S. Court of Appeals ruled in favor of a transgender male student who wishes to the use the boy's bathroom at his rural Virginia high school.Oregon's document does not lay out punishments for districts that ignore its suggestions, but U.S. Department of Education regulators have warned schools in other states that they could lose federal funding if they discriminate against transgender students.Connecticut, Massachusetts and New York's departments of educations have released similar guidelines.Though bathrooms have garnered much of the national debate about transgender students, Oregon's document reaches far beyond those gendered facilities.Under Oregon's guidelines, transgender students should be allowed to change their names and pronouns, even if they have no proof that they intend to transition. The state says also educators should use the name a transgender student prefers -- even if it does not match their legal name."There is no need for the student to prove their new gender," the report says. "The student's declaration of their gender is acceptable."That means school leaders should issue new badges and keep a transgender student's legal name confidential. The student's chosen name should appear, instead of a legal name, on attendance sheets and gradebooks.When transgender students graduate, the department says schools should give them two transcripts and diplomas -- one with their legal name and one with their preferred name.The guidelines also clarify state leaders' position on bathrooms: Though students can ask to use unisex bathrooms or locker rooms, school leaders should not force them to use those facilities. Instead, transgender students should be allowed to choose which facilities they use.The state group also says transgender students should not be barred from participating in any activities, physical education or sports. If a student tells the principal that she identifies as female, she should be able to play female sports.Lori Porter, a spokeswoman for Beaverton-based Parents Rights in Education, said her group disagrees with the education department's reading of state and federal laws."Federal law is clear," the group said in a statement, "that there are no legal grounds to require school districts to open up their bathrooms and changing rooms to members of the opposite biological sex."But LGBTQ activists said the state had spent a lot of time crafting "thoughtful" guidelines."This is a wonderful first step for the Oregon Department of Education to really give guidance to these school districts to ensure that all transgender students have access to safe and affirming environments," said Andrea Zekis, a policy director for LGBTQ advocacy group Basic Rights Oregon."There are transgender students throughout the state of Oregon," she continued. "Providing a place of privacy and safety ensures students can grow up to be an adult who can participate in all aspects of life. They should have same opportunities as everybody."
A New Trend in Pension Funding?

Cities Go After Lenders

Pensions Collect Tolls

Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin signed a bill into law this week that establishes a rainy day fund for the states pension system. Called the Pension Improvement Act , the law creates a fund that the state can use to help with its annual pension costs. There are no rules for when to put money in the fund, but the law does say money can only come out via legislative appropriation. It also says that money can only be used to help the state pay its full pension bill in tough economic years or to help fund cost-of-living increases for public employees.Oklahoma isnt the only state this year to create a separate fund to help with pension costs. Last month, Kentucky lawmakers started a $125 million permanent fund , which is similarly expected to help the state afford its annual pension payment. The state has asked for independent audits to help determine when the fund should be tapped.Many states have rainy day funds to help supplement their budgets in years when revenues fall short. Theoretically, those funds could also help with paying a states pension bill. But the reality is that pension payments are often the target of cuts in tough economic times. What's more, pensions also lose money from investment losses during economic contractions. To be truly helpful, a pension rainy day fund needs to be more substantial than a few hundred million dollars when states pension payments are often more than $1 billion annually. How Oklahoma and Kentucky manage these funds and their funding policies will be key in the coming years.The foreclosure crisis certainly hurt the millions of homeowners who lost their houses during the Great Recession. But it hurt localities, too. They lost tax revenue. And in a case of cause and effect, they watched as the suddenly vacant houses led to blight, which in turn led to spikes in crime because governments at the time couldnt afford to invest more in their police forces.So now cities are testing whether they can sue banks for damages under the Fair Housing Act. Los Angeles; Miami; Oakland, Calif.; and Providence, R.I.; have all filed lawsuits against lenders seeking reparations. The lenders are arguing that the act applies to people, not governments. The question of whether cities have the standing to sue is before the U.S. Supreme Court.If the court rules that cities dont have standing to sue, it would add to the view that financial institutions are not being held accountable for their role in the 2008 crisis. As The Atlantic noted this week , the people who were most damaged by the foreclosure crisis -- those who lost their homes -- typically dont have the resources to bring lawsuits. Most of the civil suits have been brought by investors who bought bad home loans. In their quest, cities likely represent the last group to try to punish lenders for their practices during the mid-2000s.The California Public Employees Retirement System, or CalPERS, now owns a 10 percent stake in Indianas privately operated toll road. The nations largest public pension fund already invests in other infrastructure properties -- like Heathrow Airport in London -- but the toll road is its first U.S.-based investment.IFM Global Infrastructure Fund, which purchased the Indiana Toll Road in 2015, announced the deal with CalPERS Wednesday. The concession company runs the 157-mile highway under a multi-decade contract with the state.Pension funds outside of the U.S. commonly make direct investments in infrastructure. Australian and Canadian pension funds tend to be leaders in this area. But its an investment category that has yet to really take off here. Infrastructure investments tend to be attractive to institutional investors because they have a long lifespan, which is something long-term funds like to have in their portfolios. CalPERS has already distinguished itself for its direct investments in infrastructure abroad. Perhaps now it will look to do the same at home, spurring other plans to follow.
As this fading gambling mecca reels on the edge of bankruptcy, its finances scrutinized by a host of auditors, some objectionable expenses have bobbed to the surface. But none have drawn such broad resentment as the realization that Atlantic City pays about $1 million a year to provide pensions for retired lifeguards.In much of the Northeast, lifeguard stands are the province of youth, teenagers and college students making the most of a break between semesters. But members of the Atlantic City Beach Patrol return year after year, lured by the prospect of turning a summer on the sand into a lifetime of payouts.Some, like Norman Draper, 69, are collecting $15,000 or more annually for stretching a temporary beach job into a second career  a modest sum, but still an unusual amount for seasonal work. In Mr. Drapers case, the gig lasted for 51 summers.But the dedication of weathered veterans like Mr. Draper has not earned much sympathy from those trying to save Atlantic City from economic ruin.The president of the New Jersey Senate, Stephen M. Sweeney, is calling for the repeal of an 88-year-old statute that created the pension system for Atlantic Citys lifeguards. Senator Sweeney, a union leader who generally supports generous pay and benefits for workers, said providing pensions for what is generally considered part-time summer work was ludicrous.
In a surprise change of heart, Cook County State's Attorney Anita Alvarez dropped her opposition Thursday to a special prosecutor in the killing of Laquan McDonald and said her office would withdraw from the bombshell case.Alvarez denied her office had a conflict of interest as critics had alleged in calling for a special prosecutor, but she said her recusal was "the best and most responsible decision" because of her resounding re-election loss in the Democratic primary in March.With Alvarez set to leave office after the November general election, she said a special prosecutor would "provide continuity in the handling of this very important and complicated case."In seeking a special prosecutor, a coalition of Alvarez critics, attorneys and community groups had accused the state's attorney of having a cozy relationship with the Chicago police union, creating a conflict of interest that should disqualify her from prosecuting Officer Jason Van Dyke in McDonald's killing.Kim Foxx, who made Alvarez's handling of the McDonald killing the centerpiece of her winning primary campaign against the incumbent, applauded Alvarez's move, saying in a brief statement that "this is clearly the appropriate decision in this case."Later Thursday, Van Dyke's lawyer issued a statement calling on Alvarez to reduce the first-degree charges, saying she had "overcharged and exploited" the case "in an attempt to win her re-election.""The husband and father of two young children now faces a minimum of 45 years in prison if convicted because he was sacrificed as a political pawn in an unsuccessful attempt to save someone's career," said attorney Daniel Herbert.During the campaign, Alvarez had rejected calls that an outside prosecutor be appointed to handle the high-profile case. At the time, she called the timing of the coalition's request just weeks before the hard-fought primary "more than a little coincidental."The dashboard camera video of Van Dyke shooting McDonald has caused a crisis for the city and Police Department, leading to calls for major reforms amid a U.S. Justice Department investigation of police practices.The McDonald shooting took place in October 2014, but the officer wasn't charged until late November 2015, hours before a judge ordered the release of police dashboard-camera video that showed Van Dyke shooting McDonald 16 times as he walked away from police with a knife in his hand.Alvarez said she had decided to charge Van Dyke weeks earlier but was hoping to do so at the conclusion of both her work and that of federal authorities, who are still probing whether officers engaged in a cover-up at the scene that night. When she learned the video would be released, she decided to act earlier in "the interest of public safety," she said at the time.On Thursday, after prosecutors revealed in court her change of heart on the special prosecutor, Alvarez issued a statement saying she believed "that the results of the recent election and the impending transition of this office make this the best and most responsible decision."The coalition of some 25 community groups, prominent attorneys, a member of McDonald's family and some of Alvarez's biggest critics had filed the petition seeking a special prosecutor be appointed to not only investigate McDonald's shooting but also police officers whose reports contradicted what the video showed.Their petition also alleged that Alvarez failed when it came to charging police officers who committed crimes and that when her office brought cases, the trials were often botched.The Rev. Jesse Jackson also filed a separate petition seeking the appointment of a special prosecutor in the Van Dyke case. He, too, pointed out the alleged conflict of interest and said that the public's trust in her office was at a low point.Judge Vincent Gaughan, who is presiding over the Van Dyke case, must still approve Alvarez's recusal.In court Thursday, Assistant State's Attorney Alan Spellberg said if Gaughan opts to appoint a special prosecutor, the law requires that the judge first reach out to the attorney general's office and the Illinois office of the state's attorney appellate prosecutor to see if they have attorneys available to take on the case.Locke Bowman, an attorney who represented the coalition seeking a special prosecutor, told reporters he hopes neither agency will handle the prosecution, saying both historically have been closely aligned with Cook County prosecutors in their reluctance to prosecute police officers.Legal experts said Gaughan is free to appoint any competent private attorney he desires. The county will pick up the tab for the special prosecutor, even if Gaughan appoints the attorney general's office, a Cook County spokesman said.In court, Bowman asked the judge for the opportunity to suggest a slate of possible lawyers to be appointed as special prosecutor. The judge said he would hear such proposals June 2."The decision about how to proceed forward after the recusal is just as important as Alvarez's decision to recuse," Bowman told reporters later in the lobby of the Leighton Criminal Court Building. "This prosecution needs to be handled superbly, it needs to be handled with fairness, it needs to be handled with a view not just to doing justice with respect to Mr. Van Dyke but also with respect to other officers who were involved in the cover-up."Bowman said he was not yet prepared to name any candidates but that the judge should appoint "a person of stature, great integrity and fierce prosecutorial zeal."G. Flint Taylor, another attorney involved in seeking a special prosecutor, said the lawyer "needs to be from, and responsive to, the community."A spokeswoman for Attorney General Lisa Madigan said the office could not comment on the matter.The attorney general's office is rarely called upon to prosecute major criminal cases but is currently handling the downstate prosecution of convicted killer Drew Peterson, a former Bolingbrook police sergeant, on charges he put out a hit on Will County State's Attorney James Glasgow.Earlier Thursday, Herbert, Van Dyke's lawyer, said he was ambivalent about a special prosecutor being appointed."We're going to be ready to try the case no matter who's on the other side of the courtroom," he said.Herbert said he expects the case to go to trial next year, even with delays while a special prosecutor is appointed.Whoever is appointed to prosecute the case will have to get up to speed with a sprawling court file encompassing thousands of pages of documents.Herbert said in court that federal authorities recently turned over some 10,000 pages of material from their ongoing investigation into McDonald's killing.Also Thursday, Judge Gaughan said he has privately worked out a plan to ensure Van Dyke's safety as he enters and exits the county's main criminal courthouse for appearances on his case.Gaughan said he held an unannounced meeting last week with prosecutors, Van Dyke's lawyer and sheriff's officials at which the group hammered out an unspecified "security plan.""It's unconscionable that we would compel an individual to appear at a court date without ensuring his security," Gaughan said. "Mob rule will not happen in this courtroom."Since he was charged in November in the on-duty killing, Van Dyke has had to maneuver through rowdy protests outside the courthouse during several early court appearances.No protesters were on hand outside the courthouse Thursday or at his previous appearance.Herbert asked a judge in March to allow Van Dyke to skip routine court appearances, citing concerns about his safety because of public protests outside the courthouse over the high-profile case. Van Dyke, who has been suspended without pay, is free on $1.5 million bond while awaiting trial.But in his latest filing, Herbert also suggested that sheriff's deputies guard the officer as he enters and exits the courthouse on Chicago's Southwest Side.Prosecutors have said the judge should not allow Van Dyke to skip court, arguing that to do so would create a perception of preferential treatment and create a "slippery slope" for other defendants in highly publicized cases. But in their court filing last month, prosecutors suggested Gaughan could order sheriff's deputies to protect Van Dyke when protesters are present or allow him earlier access to the courthouse than the general public.
On Friday, in the morning, at Government House, His Excellency the Honourable Paul de Jersey AC and Mrs Kaye de Jersey hosted an Investiture Ceremony for residents of Queensland, recipients of Australian honours and awards announced on 30 March 2015 and 19 August 2015.

In the afternoon, at Government House, His Excellency the Honourable Paul de Jersey AC and Mrs Kaye de Jersey hosted an Investiture Ceremony for residents of Queensland, recipients of Australian honours and awards announced on 30 March 2015 and 19 August 2015.
News / Africa

by Staff reporter

Johannesburg - Almost 100 illegal immigrants were rounded up by police in a special operation in Germiston on Thursday.Ekhurleni Metro Police spokesperson Lieutenant Colonel Wilfred Kgasago said that 96 undocumented foreign nationals had been detained."In its earnest effort to search, identify and apprehend those who are in the country illegally, the EMPD Bumper to Bumper special operation was launched on Thursday and booked in ninety-six illegal immigrants at Germiston police station," he said."The campaign swooped on the Germiston CBD, aimed at crime-ridden areas in Ekurhuleni where crimes are suspected to be committed by some of the illegals, who are difficult to trace in the event they are wanted," he added.Kgasago said that the arrestees are aged between 19 and 52-years-old and hail from Nigeria, Somalia, Ethiopia, Mozambique and Zimbabwe."Six were females and ninety males. The streets from which the arrests were made are Railway, Jack, Jonas, Plantation, President, Knox, High, Meyer and Victoria," he said.
Description

GIS - 06 May, 2016: A one-day workshop on Digital Economy as part of the public consultations for the National Budget 2016-2017, opened this morning at the BPML Conference Hall, Cyber Tower I, in Ebene. A one-day workshop on Digital Economy as part of the public consultations for the National Budget 2016-2017, opened this morning at the BPML Conference Hall, Cyber Tower I, in Ebene.

An initiative of the Ministry of Finance and Economic Development, the workshop is serving as platform to bring under one umbrella the various stakeholders evolving in the Information and Communication Technology sector both in the public and private sector. The aim is to discuss and come up with concrete proposals for the forthcoming budget in view of transforming Mauritius into a Digital Economy as outlined by the Prime Minister, Sir Anerood Jugnauth, in its Economic Mission Statement to achieve the set targets of Vision 2030. Moreover, the deliberations will eventually serve towards charting an Action Plan in view of transforming the country into a Digital Economy.

In his opening remarks, the Financial Secretary, Mr Dev Manraj, emphasised the importance of transforming Mauritius into a Digital Economy which he said is the prerequisite in helping Mauritius attain the level of a high income and modern economy. He appealed to the various participants to make the most of the one-day workshop and come up with fruitful deliberations and outcomes which will not only serve for the budget but also in drafting an Action Plan for the implementation of a Digital Economy.

According to the Financial Secretary, Mauritius has the intellectual capacity, the energy and the drive to create yet another platform so as to reach consensus on a holistic plan to embark on a Digital Mauritius concept. He also highlighted that during the deliberations focus must be laid on the challenges in both the domestic and international economy while reiterating the vision of the Prime Minister who through the Economic Mission Statement had set the parameters for a modern economy by 2030.

He further stressed that the most important is to know how the Digital Economy can be used to achieve the set goals of the Vision 2030. He concluded by stating that we should not rest on our laurels but come up with ideas for a better Mauritius while finding ways and means to increase the countrys visibility on the international front with particular emphasis in tapping the African Continent.

It will be recalled that the Ministry of Finance and Economic Development is conducting a series of consultative meetings with the various stakeholders in the different sectors of the economy in view of the forthcoming budget. The objective is to gather recommendations on major policy orientation for incorporation in the budget in addition to promoting Government and Citizen relationship to explore ways in which citizens can serve as active agents rather than be passive recipients of policy-making.
Description

GIS 06 May 2016: A pilot PhD Programme of 10 scholarships, aiming to provide direct support to Mauritian scientists/researchers as part of the effort to promote science, technology and innovation as key drivers of growth and development, was launched today at the State House, Le Reduit.

During a Press Conference the President of the Republic, Dr Ameenah Gurib-Fakim, elaborated on the PhD Programme, which is being jointly financed by the Planet Earth Institute (PEI) and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Initiative in partnership with the African Academy of Sciences ( AAS).

The right signal is being sent out, said President Gurib-Fakim via the PhD Programme, that science matters for the African continent, as well as capacity building and adding value to talents. Speaking about the colonial history of the continent, she observed that even if most African countries have 50 plus years of independence not enough emphasis has been put on science, technology, engineering and mathematics and yet this is what is important to address the development needs of the continent.

According to the President, many countries have not been able to invest in the sciences which means that the percentage of investment is still under 1% of the GDP across the continent. Since there has not been enough investment, it means that the best talents from Africa have systematically left the continent so we have seen a lot of brain drain and countries have not created an enabling environment to retain this competence, said Dr Gurib-Fakim.

The President emphasised that the continent now needs to have talents to address developmental needs in research, technology and innovation to face the challenges of climate change and food security. The ten scholarships being offered will address the immediate needs of the continent and this again a very important message because we are addressing our needs, she added.

The pilot PhD Programme

The initial grants during the pilot phase in 2016 will be open only to applicants from Mauritius and this can be either a Mauritian citizen or a citizen from an African nation currently residing in Mauritius. Moreover, the Programme is aiming to expand across Africa to award 10 000 PhD Scholarships in the coming decade. The objective is to help equip Africa with the critical mass of scientific leaders it needs to become a continent of knowledge-based and sustainable economies.

The areas of research eligible for the pilot PhD Programme are those that will have to underpin the sustainable development of Mauritius and Africa and boost the local capacity of scientists to answer the great challenges ahead for the continent. Research areas of focus are: water and sanitation, energy, agri-business, health and blue-sky research.

The programme will be offered by the PEI and the AAS with the assistance of private sector partners. This will help ensure that research is industrially relevant and that researchers develop hands-on experience to ensure employability.

The PEI

It is recalled that the PEI, an international NGO and charity working for the scientific independence of Africa, was officially launched in Mauritius on 23 November 2015. The President of the Republic of Mauritius has been appointed Vice-Chairperson and Trustee of the Institute.
Description

GIS - 06 May, 2016: The winners of three competitions focused on Energy Efficiency launched by the Ministry of Energy and Public Utilities in collaboration with the Energy Efficiency Management Office (EEMO) and the United Nations Development Programme in January 2016 were rewarded during a prize giving ceremony held yesterday at Flying Dodo in Bagatelle. The winners of three competitions focused on Energy Efficiency launched by the

Launched as part of the EEMOs awareness raising activities , the competitions provided students with an opportunity to demonstrate their understanding of energy efficiency and energy saving, investigate related issues and propose solutions.

The competitions were: Live Painting competition for Standard V students of primary schools; Junior Energy Auditing competition for Lower/Upper VI college students; and Website Design competition for tertiary students. A shield, certificate and cash prize were awarded to the winners in the three categories.

For the live painting competition, the first prize was awarded to a student from the Rajcoomar Gujadhur Government School. The team from France Boyer de la Giroday SSS won the first prize in the Junior Energy Auditing Competition while the team from University of Mauritius bagged the first prize for the Website Design competition . A cash prize of Rs 15 000 went to the winner of the live painting competition, while the winning teams for the Junior Auditing exercise and Website Design competitions were awarded Rs 50 000. The second and third prize winners received cash prizes as well.

The Vice Prime Minister and Minister of Energy and Public Utilities, Mr Ivan Collendavelloo who was present at the ceremony, said that people need to change their mindset about adopting energy efficient measures especially the youth. He pointed out that the government is providing incentives that would encourage people to engage in clean energy and energy efficient practices. According to him, the Central Electricity Board and the Central Water Authority produce enough electricity and water respectively but half of these resources are wasted. Hence the need, he said, to adopt a healthy policy as regards wastage.

Speaking about the energy efficiency competitions, Mr Collendavelloo highlighted that the aim is to change behaviours on energy use and promote its efficient use. He expressed confidence that the youth will be able to contribute to the required change in the mindset of the population.

For his part, the Chairman of the EEMO, Mr Kendall Tang, congratulated the students who have participated in the competitions. Their participation means that the Mauritian youth is reflecting on pertinent issues and how to address them in our daily lives.

He recalled that energy efficiency means producing more with less energy. Being energy efficient is therefore important as it enables us to lessen emission of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere and protect the environment, he added.
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Further to the Official Communique issued by the Prime Ministers Office on 19 September 2013, members of the public and travel agencies are once again reminded that Mauritian nationals travelling to the United Kingdom (UK) should strictly abide by the existing rules and regulations governing the application of a visa for the UK and that they should fulfill the requirements of the UK immigration authorities.

Mauritian nationals travelling to the UK have to fully comply with the present UK Immigration laws and the issuance of a UK visa allowing their stay in the UK, and that they have to leave the UK territory before the expiry of their visa.

Members of the public proposing to travel to the UK should recall that:

Mauritian nationals travelling to the UK for a period of less than 6 months as a tourist or family visitor do not require a visa and may avail themselves of the visa free regime, provided they fulfill the UK immigration requirements; Although Mauritian passport holders do not need a visa to enter the UK for short visits, yet they are subject to an examination by British Immigration Officers at the UK port of entry on each travel to the UK. If the immigration officer is not satisfied that the person is a genuine visitor, he/she may be refused entry in the UK; Mauritian nationals wishing to stay in the UK for more than 6 months should apply and obtain a proper visa prior to proceeding thereto; Mauritian nationals already in the UK and intending to extend their tourist visa should apply for an extension prior to the expiry of their initial visa; Mauritian nationals who intend to study in the UK should have a valid confirmation for studies and a valid student visa issued by the British High Commission in Port Louis prior to proceeding to the UK; and Mauritian nationals who have previously been refused a visa or refused entry in the UK as a visitor should imperatively obtain a visa prior to undertaking their next travel to the UK.

Mauritian nationals, who breach the rules and conditions of their entry in the UK or those who abuse the visa free regime and stay illegally in the UK, run the risk of being repatriated and face a ten (10) year ban entry in the UK.

Moreover, the UK authorities have recently expressed serious concern regarding the present UK visa exemption regime, which is not functioning efficiently and some Mauritian nationals visiting the UK under this regime, are committing severe immigration abuses and offences.

Information on the application for a visa for the UK may be obtained on the UK Border Agency (UKBA) website:

http://www.ukba.homeoffice.gov.uk/visas-immigration/visiting/general/documents/

Alternately, Mauritian nationals are requested to contact the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Regional Integration and International Trade, Port Louis, and/or the Mauritius High Commission in London, as hereunder, in case they have any doubt, or in case they need any additional information/clarification.

Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Regional Integration and International Trade

11th floor,

Newton Tower

Sir William Newton Street

Port Louis

MAURITIUS



Telephone : (230) 405 2500

Fax : (230) 208 8087, (230) 212 6764

Email : mfa@mail.gov.mu

Mauritius High Commission London

14 Basil Street

Knightsbridge

London SW3 1AJ

UNITED KINGDOM



Telephone : + 44 203 402 4825 and + 44 203 402 4840

Fax : + 44 203 402 5725

Email : londonhc@mail.gov.mu

Download Communique
(TNS) -- City Council President John Michitson wanted the city to fight to become a proving ground for fiber optic broadband Internet.Michitson said convincing Verizon New England to choose Haverhill would give the city a chance to lure high-tech businesses, creating jobs and boosting the economy.But the road to convincing Verizon that Haverhill is a worthy guinea pig  similar to a recent deal struck between Verizon and the city of Boston, which will receive $300 million in fiber optics investments over the next six years  is turning out to be a difficult one.Michitson said top-speed Internet is critical for businesses in Haverhill and for future manufacturing companies looking to move here.But in an email from Donna Cupelo, New England regional president for Verizon, Michitson learned the company has no plans to expand outside Boston with fiber optic broadband service. That is a major blow to Michitson's plan to convince Verizon to invest in Haverhill as a "small city prototype."Michitson said he is not giving up. He is setting his sights on the possibility of Haverhill adopting fiber optic Internet service as a municipal service similar to what some Massachusetts cities do with lighting.His plan would have the fiber-optic service start in the city's downtown Transformative Development District and business parks, where there are high numbers of businesses.The plan would eventually benefit resident directly, he said."With upload and download speeds of up to 500 megabits per second, it's the fastest Internet and Wi-Fi available," Michitson said, adding the arrival of fiber optics would increase competition with Comcast, Haverhill's sole cable provider, and drive down the costs of broadband Internet and TV services.For businesses, Comcast offers 100 megabits per second by 20 megabits per second for $189 per month. The company offers Enterprise Fiber at speeds of 100 megabits by 100 megabits for between $1,500 and $3,000 per month.Story continues below video"With next generation FiOS broadband, 100 megabits by 100 megabits per second will cost about $99 per month," said Michitson. "That shows you right there the cost advantage for businesses in the city."Michitson said Boston Mayor Martin Walsh began negotiating with Verizon to improve his city's Internet service when he took office in 2014. While he received rejections early on, Walsh persisted, developed a plan and enlisted the help of New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft to help him entice Verizon."It took two to three years, but they have a deal moving forward," Michitson said.For Haverhill to develop the high-speed Internet plan on its own would require a "large upfront investment" for the city, Michitson said, but said it is something large cities such as Chattanooga, Tennessee. and rural Massachusetts towns like Leverett are adopting.Michitson said he is looking into how Chattanooga was able to procure broadband Internet and establish it as a public utility."They appear to be the gold standard with this," he said. "I want to know what they built, how they built it, what it cost and whether it's feasible for us."Despite Leverett's size  fewer than 2,000 people  Michitson said he intends to contact their officials as well to see how they were able to implement it."Is it going to be $50 million? $100 million? $150 million? How do we get the funding?" he said. "That is going to be a tough road, as well."
(TNS) -- Though many residents would welcome a MARTA commuter rail expansion into Gwinnett County, some local officials may be warming to a mass transit alternative that could cost substantially less: bus rapid transit.As The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has reported , a 2015 poll found half of likely Gwinnett voters would pay a 1-cent sales tax to bring MARTA to Georgias second-largest county. It was a popular topic at some recent public meetings on the countys future transportation needs.Gwinnett officials have been cool to recent calls for a public vote on MARTA. But they have touted bus rapid transit as an alternative  without actually endorsing it.In her state of the county speech in February, County Commission Chairwoman Charlotte Nash offered a vision of Gwinnetts future that included artist renderings of a bus rapid transit system serving Infinite Energy Center, Gwinnett Place and Lilburn. On Tuesday commissioners got a briefing that showed Gwinnett could build a bus rapid transit system for a tenth of the price of a MARTA expansion.Bus rapid transit mimics passenger rail service: Commuters board at transit stations, and the buses usually travel in dedicated lanes.Currently, there are no bus rapid transit systems in Georgia. But Cobb County plans a $500 million BRT system along U.S. 41, and cities elsewhere  including Los Angeles, Cleveland and Raleigh  have embraced it.At Tuesdays briefing, Gwinnett Transportation Director Alan Chapman provided cost estimates for mass transit systems stretching from the Doraville MARTA station along I-85 to the Mall of Georgia and along Ga. 316 to Lawrenceville. A bus rapid transit system would cost about $660 million, light rail would cost nearly $3.4 billion and MARTA-style heavy rail would cost more than $7 billion.Chapman said the estimates are very rough, based on the average cost per mile of projects elsewhere. They dont include operating costs.He also said building a bus rapid transit system could take five to nine years, while a rail system could take substantially longer.Some commissioners expressed skepticism about an investment in rail at a time when transportation technology  think driverless cars  is evolving rapidly.Youre talking 30 years to put some of this on the ground, said Commissioner Tommy Hunter. You have to spend $1.7 billion to find out you didnt need it.But none of the commissioners endorsed bus rapid transit, either. Even Nash has not said shed support such a system.Im holding out for teleportation, she said Tuesday.Meanwhile, Gwinnett continues to solicit public input on its future transportation needs. You can express your own opinion by taking an online survey here
(TNS) -- BOSTON  Getting past airport security or inside a federal building may require a U.S. passport unless the Legislature moves ahead to create a federally compliant state driver's license.The 2005 Real ID Act forces states to impose tougher requirements for proof of legal residency before issuing licenses. The law addressed national security concerns raised after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.Gov. Charlie Baker filed a bill last year to bring Massachusetts drivers licenses and ID cards into compliance. But lawmakers have yet to act on his proposal. Two weeks ago, the state House tacked a similar provision onto the upcoming state budget.Efforts to comply with the federal rules have found pushback from immigrant advocates and civil liberties groups that call the changes costly, unnecessary and a violation of privacy.New licenses, which would be marked with a yellow star, would require applicants to show proof of citizenship or lawful status in the country. Currently, new applicants for a state driver's license only need present a Social Security card and proof of residency such as tax forms or bills.By comparison, applicants for Real ID-compliant licenses must submit a birth certificate, evidence of U.S. legal status and other proof of identity.Immigrant advocates criticize Baker's bill for relying on the federal definition of lawful status. It could deny some legal residents driver's licenses or ID cards, said Amy Grunder, legislative director for the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition.Last October, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security gave the state a one-year extension to comply with the act.Baker has warned lawmakers that getting another extension this October requires the state to show progress toward compliance, and that means legislative action."If we don't do anything ... it would be likely that people would have to start bringing their passport to go to federal buildings or an airport, which we'd really like to avoid," he said last month.A legislative committee held a hearing in December, and House and Senate leaders gave the committee an extension to act until this week. But nothing has happened.The state has more than 4.3 million licensed drivers, according to the Registry of Motor Vehicles.Originally states were supposed to comply with the Real ID law by the end of 2009. Federal authorities have repeatedly pushed back the deadline to give states time to change their procedures and update technology. The deadline for all states to comply is now 2020.More than 20 states, including Connecticut and Vermont, and the District of Columbia have met the standards, according to the Department of Homeland Security.Massachusetts is one of 23 states with extensions that allow existing licenses to continue to be used.New Hampshire has a waiver that expires in June unless lawmakers there pass legislation allowing for a federally compliant license, at which time the waiver will be extended until a five-year license renewal cycle is complete.Lawmakers in some states, including Missouri and Minnesota, have passed laws specifically prohibiting them from complying with the Real ID law.Civil liberties groups say the law would turn state drivers licenses and ID cards into a national identity card, cost billions of dollars to implement and unfairly burden applicants  while doing nothing to protect against terrorism."There is no proof that more burdensome and stringent identification requirements prevent terrorism," said Laura Rotolo, an attorney and community advocate at the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts. "Even where a person is known to be a threat, determined terrorists will always be able to obtain fraudulent documents."Rotolo said issuing federally-approved ID will cost the state and its residents millions of dollars."This is money that could be spent on schools, housing, fixing our ailing public transit system, major infrastructure repairs, and other things that Massachusetts urgently needs," she said.
(TNS)  Pennsylvania moved a step closer to regulating popular ride services such as Uber and Lyft Wednesday when a state House committee approved a Senate bill that now heads to the floor for consideration.Senate Bill 984, which passed the Senate in November, was introduced by state Sen. Camera Bartolotta, R-46, Carroll Township, Washington County, in October.So-called transportation network companies such as Uber and Lyft operate in parts of Pennsylvania under a temporary two-year authority from the state Public Utility Commission.The companies use their websites and mobile apps to connect riders with drivers using their own vehicles.Bartolotta has said the bill would expand that approval statewide and create regulatory parameters ranging from insurance and vehicle safety requirements to driver standards, as well as a zero tolerance for drug and alcohol use by drivers.It would also prohibit people from driving if they have been convicted of certain crimes, such as burglary, robbery and sexual offenses.On Wednesday, the House Consumer Affairs Committee voted 23-2 to approve the bill with amendments. The only no votes came from two Delaware County Republicans, state Reps. Nick Miccarelli and Stephen Barrar.Committee members from southwest Pennsylvania include state Rep. Rob Matzie, D-16, Ambridge; state Rep. Pam Snyder, D-Greene County; and state Rep. Pete Daley, D-Washington County, the minority chairman.State Rep. Gene DiGirolamo, R-Bucks County, said he was concerned with small businesses and taxi drivers who have followed the rules for a long, long time only to see companies such as Uber and Lyft given preferential treatment and not held to the same standard.My concern is the trust. Right now, I have very, very little trust in Uber and Lyft, DiGirolamo said. Uber and Lyft come in and it just appears that they havent been following any of the rules and regulations.But, state Rep. Eli Evankovich, R-Westmoreland County, said technology marches on and leaves outdated methods behind, just as MP3 players replaced compact discs which replaced cassettes and tractors replaced horse-drawn plows.Its just the way that this world works, he said.While saying he had compassion for taxi drivers and their families, Evankovich said, We cant let that stand in the way of a technology that is just besting the existing system.Last month, the PUC fined Uber $11.3 million for operating without its approval in 2014, but state officials, including Gov. Tom Wolf, have said the fine should be reduced.The amendment also passed 23-2 with Miccarelli and Barrar voting against it. State Rep. Robert Godshall, R-Montgomery County, the committee chairman, said the amendments tightened background and driver history checks, and vehicle standards.Crafting the bill, Godshall said, was a total bipartisan effort.Negotiations had been contentious concerning the ride-sharing firms in Philadelphia, where the Philadelphia Parking Authority has blocked them from operating.If the bill passes the full House then it would have to go back to the Senate for concurrence on the amendment.
Ducati can start with a small advantage at Le Mans, having already tested the new rear tyre brought by Michelin. Contrary to expectations, this is a tyre with the softer carcass, created after the problems suffered at Jerez.

Dovizioso doesn't give too much away: the new tyres should be a mix of those that we tested - he explains - During the tests sensations were good, I got on well.

Also because he needs to react after the negatives of the last race.

It's important to get back to the front, and we can do it because we're competitive - he underlines - Only the track can tell us what our level is.

Once agai, he considers the tyres.

We've seen the first races, no-one could make predictions - he recalls - But now we have to wait and see, because everything changes with each GP.

Andrea Iannone has the same objectives, also satisfied after testing at the Tuscan track. The tests didn't go badly, and I have to say that the tyre that gave us problems at Jerez seemed like a different tyre at Mugello - he says - I hope it's the same here.

Iannone doesn't want to point the finger at Michelin.

Improving isn't so easy in MotoGP, how to find the perfect package from the start. I appreciate their work - he says - I don't know whether more test days are needed, also because it would be hard to fit them into such a packed calendar. In the end, we all start in the same conditions and you just have to adapt quickly.

This is what he wants to do at Le Mans.

We can do well here and our acceleration will be of help. The potential is there, he assures us.
News / Local

by Staff Reporter

UKHOZI FM's former motivational speaker, Pastor Lungisani Mafu (30), has apologised for raping and murdering a woman in 1999.Daily Sun reported that the pastor and four others were convicted and charged with the rape and murder of Chantal Pienaar.Chantal was 20 years old when she bled to death after being raped and stabbed between railway lines near Fynnlands in Durban.Mafu was sentenced to 15 years in prison but was released on parole in 2010.On Friday, he opened up about the incident while filming a motivational DVD at Ethekwini Community Church in Durban."I killed an innocent young woman in cold blood."I was dead drunk and I have little recollection of what happened that day."When I woke up in the morning my clothes were still soaked in blood."I went into hiding but the cops eventually nabbed me," Mafu told the audience."I used to do drugs and carried an okapi knife."All this happened because my parents died when I was very young," he said.Mafu said he has always wanted to apologise to the victim's family, but couldn't trace them."I am publicly apologising to the family and all those people that I've wronged."Wherever they are, they must know I'm very sorry for my actions," he said.Mafu was previously in the spotlight when he was accused of impregnating a young woman from his church.There was also controversy when he claimed to Daily Sun that his wife was abusing him.
Eric Boullier has hit back at suggestions the 2017 regulations could actually hurt formula one.

Part of Mercedes' opposition to the wider cars with bigger wings for next year was the argument that more downforce will just make overtaking more difficult.

"I disagree with some comments made by our rivals in the media," Boullier, McLaren's team boss, said.

The 2017 changes are backed primarily by Red Bull - whose Dr Helmut Marko has hit out at Mercedes chief Toto Wolff's "paranoia" - as well as McLaren-Honda.

It is actually McLaren's concept that was the basis of the 2017 chassis rules.

Boullier is quoted by Spain's El Confidencial as pointing out that while the new cars will have more downforce, the wider tyres will produce more "mechanical grip".

"This should not affect the amount of overtaking," he insisted.

"Additionally, the influence of the front wing will be lower, since the floor and the diffuser will generate more downforce, allowing more overtaking," said Boullier.

(GMM)
Red Bull is waiting until Canada before turning its attention to the future of its deal with engine supplier Renault.

After a tumultuous semi-works relationship came to a head last year, the former world champion team agreed a one-year customer deal with Renault for 2016 involving the re-branding of the 'power units' as Tag-Heuer.

In the meantime, the French carmaker bought Lotus and is back at full works status this year, with Red Bull officials saying that renewed focus has resulted in a definite step forward as regards the quality of the engine.

Nonetheless, Red Bull is waiting for a further performance step from Renault - expected in Canada next month - before deciding if it wants to extend the deal into 2017.

"Before deciding on the future with Renault, we await their developments," Dr Helmut Marko, a leading Red Bull official, told Italy's La Gazzetta dello Sport.

"But for the moment we are very satisfied. It is a completely different situation than in 2015," he added.

(GMM)
Dr Helmut Marko says moving back to Toro Rosso will reduce pressure that Daniil Kvyat was struggling to cope with so far in 2016.

Opinions are divided over Red Bull's shock decision this week to promote teen sensation Max Verstappen to the senior team, resulting in the demotion of Kvyat.

The timing of the news was interesting, given 22-year-old Kvyat's controversial multiple crashes with Sebastian Vettel recently at Sochi.

And the Russian had also argued with Ferrari's Vettel after an incident in China.

One wild theory was that Ferrari might have pushed Red Bull to punish Kvyat.

"We have not been in contact with Red Bull," a spokesman for the Maranello marque insisted, according to Russia's Sportbox.

Marko did at least admit that the decision was taken after Kvyat's disastrous home grand prix last weekend.

"The decision was taken after Russia," he told Germany's Sport Bild.

"It was increasingly obvious that Daniil was not coping with the pressure with Daniel Ricciardo. We wanted to remove him from the line of fire and help his career, not harm it.

"I don't think it's a demotion," Marko insisted. "This year Toro Rosso is at a very high level and at the end of the year we can reshuffle the cards again.

"This also applies to Carlos Sainz, who has a chance of improving," he added.

Marko also said the move will be tough for Dutchman Verstappen.

"Max must now contend with Ricciardo, who is now at an incredibly high level," said the Austrian.

(GMM)
News / Local

by Ngoni Dapira

THE Mutore family from Vumba is failing to come to terms with the brutal murder of their relative who was allegedly lured into neighbouring Mozambique by a friend before meeting his fate.The late Trymore Mutore (25) was allegedly slain last month for ritual purposes in that country's Magaka area.Members of the family approached The Weekender on Tuesday and narrated their ordeal.Manica Post reported that an aunt of the deceased, Pfungwa Mutore, said they were suspecting that the case was being swept under the carpet and want investigators from Zimbabwe to also look into the matter.She said on April 9, Denford Mhangere (28), a friend to the late Trymore came to collect him at their Vumba residence around 3am."They went to Mozambique after illegally crossing into the country's Magaka area through Zonwe River in Burma Valley."On the same day, the accused, Denford, came back around 12-midnight with the news that Trymore had drowned in Zonwe River on their way."My brother, Solomon (the father of the late) refused to accept the news as it was unbelievable. Denford then came to my residence, which is nearby in Vumba to break the news of Trymore's death and seek my backing. We gathered as a family and decided that the next day (April 10) we would go with the accused to the drowning scene," she said.The family and other neighbours who escorted the search party failed to find the body after combing the area the whole day.
News / Local

by Letwin Mubonesi

A ZIMUNYA man escaped an eight-month jail term and was ordered to perform 140 hours of unpaid work after he was found guilty of bedding a minor.Aleck Mundonde (24) of Manzununu Village under Chief Zimunya appeared before Mutare senior magistrate, Sekai Chiundura pleading guilty to sleeping with a young person as defined in Section 7 of The Criminal Law (Codification and Reform) Act.Representing the State was Fletcher Karombe.The court heard that during the period extending from January to March 2016, Mundonde slept with Chipo Manyoka several times on different occasions."In October last year, Mundonde proposed love to the minor and she agreed. He then slept with her consent on January 6, 2016 at Manzununu Village. On January 9, they started staying together as a married couple and slept together on several occasions."The matter came to light after the complainant's father lodged a police report that Mundonde was co-habiting with a minor leading to his arrest. The minor was then referred to Mutare Provincial Hospital where she was medically examined," said Karombe.When asked to explain why he had acted in the manner he did, Mundonde told the court that they had agreed and she had lied to him that she was no longer a minor."She never told me she was still a minor and she is now my wife," said Mundonde.Chiundura then sentenced him to eight months imprisonment which were wholly suspended on condition that does not commit a similar offence in the next five years. She, however, ordered him to do 140 hours of unpaid work.
The Central Carolina Bridge Association, Unit 169, is sponsoring a sectional duplicate bridge tournament May 13-15 at the Greensboro Shrine Club, 5010 High Point Road in Greensboro.

Stratified open and 499er pairs games begin at 10 a.m. and 2:30 p.m. May 13-14.

Sundays Open and 499er Swiss Teams begin at 10 a.m. with lunch included.

The tournament is open to the bridge-playing public.

There is a fee charged to play in each session with a student discount for those younger than 25.

Those who need a partner or a team should contact the partnership chairman, Mary Leger, at (336) 327-6357.

For information, visit www.centralcarolinabridge.org.

Support for law enforcement

by displaying something blue

The Greensboro Police Department is encouraging residents, businesses, academic institutions, and places of worship throughout the city to show their support for law enforcement by displaying something blue on their property during National Police Memorial Week, May 15-21.

In 1962, President Kennedy proclaimed May 15 as National Peace Officers Memorial Day and the calendar week in which May 15 falls, as National Police Week. Established by a joint resolution of Congress, National Police Week pays special recognition to those law enforcement officers who have lost their lives in the line of duty for the safety and protection of others.

To show support for police officers, Police Chief Wayne Scott is asking people to display a blue porch light, blue ribbons, or blue balloons throughout the week.

For information, call (336) 373-2636 or visit www.gsopd.org.

Guilford County students to attend free science camp

The Joint School of Nanoscience and Nanoengineering and Canterbury School are partnering to offer a second summer of the Canterbury Summer Science Academy, a one-week, all-day summer camp that is free for Guilford County Schools students. The camp is July 18-22.

Last summer, 10 Guilford County Schools ninth-grade students attended the first year of the Canterbury Summer Science Academy. That group will return this summer, and the camp will welcome 14 rising ninth-grade students. The camp is designed for each group of campers to return every summer until they graduate from high school.

Campers begin the day at Canterbury learning broad scientific knowledge, skills, and practices with hands-on projects. The students eat lunch at Canterbury then go to the JSNN Building at the Gateway University Research Park on East Lee Street to work with graduate students on their own research questions and problems.

Students are chosen based on academic merit. Applications are available at https://www.canterburygso.org/canterbury-summer-science-academy. In addition to 14 spots for rising ninth-graders, there are a few openings for rising 10th-graders.

Applications are due May 15.

For information, contact Nicole Schutt at schuttn@canterburygso.org.

Nash is guest speaker at Arc of Greensboro banquet

The Arc of Greensboro will hold its annual Business and Awards Banquet from 6 to 8 p.m. May 17 at St. Paul the Apostle Catholic Church, 2715 Horse Pen Creek Road in Greensboro.

John Nash, the executive director of the Arc of North Carolina, is the guest speaker.

The Arc of Greensboro is an organization of and for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities and their families, promoting and protecting their human rights and actively supporting their full inclusion and participation in the community throughout their lifetimes.

To register, call (336) 373-1076.
The Asheville Citizen-Times reports that Jackson County received a 911 call Thursday from an unknown caller who said there was a bomb located at either the Jackson County Courthouse, the Cherokee Tribal Courts or the Swain County Courthouse. The caller said the bomb was in place and set to go off within the next 72 hours, and authorities would have to figure out where it was located.
Annoyed commuters who spent their morning idling on North Carolina's I-77 can blame 50,000 pounds of runaway taters . Emergency cleanup crews in the Charlotte area had to close the roadway for hours after an 18-wheeler collided with the center divider so forcefully that it ripped the trailer apart, launching a literal truckload's worth of edible cargo onto the roadway. If only the local oldies station had been blasting some drive-time James Brown

Police say the driver accidentally fell asleep at the wheel, and that hes recovering just fine in the hospital. Photos suggest, however, that he was probably driving way over the spud limit:

[STORY] I-77 @ I-277 shut down for hours after tractor-trailer crashes, spills potatoes  https://t.co/5l8IUvvaRn pic.twitter.com/NSXpKtJQd5  WBTV News (@WBTV_News) May 6, 2016

50,000 pounds of potatoes spilled on I-77! pic.twitter.com/5xnVAD3T70  Gina Esposito (@GinaWSOC9) May 6, 2016

WATCH: Bobcat scooping up and loading dump truck with potatoes. #WatchWBTV More news/weather/traffic NOW at 6:30am pic.twitter.com/YL41rkc1Jc  WBTV News (@WBTV_News) May 6, 2016

[WSOC]
Perfect proportions, smooshing technique advanced. Photo: Jed Egan

Here, the top Cuban sandwiches (a.k.a., Cubanos), ranging from an old-school classic that calls for minimalist restraint to another that swaps out Swiss for bandage-wrapped Cheddar and artisanal fromage from the Loire Valley.

The Absolute Best 1. La Flor de Broadway

3395 Broadway, at 138th St.; 212-926-4190 Its pretty generally agreed that a Cuban sandwich in its ideal form consists of sugar-cured ham, roast pork marinated in the garlic-citrus sauce called mojo, Swiss cheese, sour pickles, and Cuban bread slicked with butter or, depending on the lunch counter, margarine. Mustard is up for debate  some say the juice and tang from the sour pickle is all you need by way of condiments and accessories. You layer the ingredients on the bread, close it up, and smoosh it on a plancha until the outside is as smooth and glossy as the pages of a magazine. (What you dont do is use a panini press or a George Foreman grill or anything that leaves grill marks, which is considered to be a terrific faux pas, like wearing socks with sandals, or cowboy boots and a suit outside of Texas.) While gussied-up Cubanos abound in New York, this classic model has become rare. But there is an excellent holdout up in Harlem at La Flor de Broadway. Its relatively thin and practically airy. The balance and proportion are perfect, the smooshing technique advanced. No one ingredient outshines another. Its a whole-is-greater-than-the-sum-of-its-parts sandwich, an eloquent argument in favor of authenticity. The bread, sourced from a Bronx bakery, is key. Its built wide and rectangular for sound construction, and has a paper-thin crust that when properly planchad achieves a profound crispness. Also key is Luis Pantaleon, whos manned the sandwich station at La Flor (here and at the restaurants previous location up the block) for more than 25 years. Pantaleons modus operandi is to approach his Cubanos the way Thanksgiving cooks approach turkeys, lavishly basting and generally babying the things so that the flavors meld harmoniously and each sandwich stays crunchy outside and steamy within down to the last bite.

2. Margon

136 W. 46th St., nr. Sixth Ave.; 212-354-5013

This bustling old Latin luncheonette (bright red counter, bright yellow menu board) dishes up good cheer and soulful chow in equal measure, and also smooshes the citys second best Cubano. Unlike La Flors version, its on the sloppy, sluicy side thanks to a no-holds-barred approach to lubrication that calls for garlic sauce, hot sauce, and  most controversially  mayo. More controversy: In addition to slices of roast pork and ham, they toss on salami the way they do in Tampa, Florida, the city that much to Miamis consternation claims the Cubano as its own invention.

3. Porchetta

110 E. 7th St., nr. First Ave.; 212-777-2151

Tampa sandwich scholars theorize that the Cubano is actually a culinary mash-up, a mulligatawny soup of a sandwich, reflecting the ethnic diversity of that city circa the late 19th century. In other words, its Spanish ham, Cuban pork, Jewish pickles, and Italian salami, all pitching in and doing their part. That sets a precedent of sorts for Sara Jenkinss terrific interpretation, which consists of smoked ham from the Ukrainian butcher down the block, housemade porchetta, Jarlsberg, Israeli pickles, Dijon mustard, and Kewpie mayo  essentially a tasty United Nations of East Village foodstuffs well pressed on a Sullivan St Bakery ciabatta roll.

4. The Spotted Pig

314 W. 11th St., at Greenwich St.; 212-620-0393

If it wasnt restricted to lunch, April Bloomfields upscale-ingredients supersize Cubano (confit pork shoulder, prosciutto, Gruyere, pickled chiles, chopped cornichons, arugula salad on the side) might be as popular as her Roquefort burger. It takes as long to make as a La Grenouille souffle. It costs $20. And you may have to eat it while perched like a shoe salesman on one of the restaurants notorious footstools. Worth it, though, for forward-thinking Cubano gobblers.

5. Bunk

740 Driggs Ave., nr. S. 2nd St.; 347-763-0434

Bunks Cuban sandwich strikes a nice balance between innovation and tradition. Modernists will like the Frankenpork fusing of two cuts of roast pig (belly and butt) into a single slab, while classicists can get behind its streamlined good looks, if not the addition of mustard and hot sauce.

6. Casellula Cheese & Wine Cafe

401 W. 52nd St., nr. Ninth Ave.; 212-247-8137

On paper, this is a Cubano purists worst nightmare. It has two types of cheese, Fiscalini Cheddar from California and the French Fol Epi from the Loire Valley, not to mention Ricks Picks bread-and-butter pickles and aioli. (Putting aioli on a Cuban sandwich is considered a criminal act in certain parts of Florida.) To be fair, they dont dare call it a Cubano but rather a Pigs Ass Sandwich, alluding to the two types of pork butt (a.k.a. shoulder) they cram into the thing  one thats been brined and glazed with maple syrup like a baked ham, the other one rubbed with a slew of spices and Peets coffee then slow-roasted. But what can we say? Its in the Cuban-sandwich ballpark, and its damn good.
Shaken, not blended, and just the right amount of trashy. Photo: Melissa Hom

A pina colada is not the first cocktail you think of in New York, but when made right its one of the worlds great drinks. Here are the seven spots that make the best in New York:

The Absolute Best 1. Fort Defiance

365 Van Brunt St., at Dikeman St., Red Hook; 347-453-6672

A bartenders bartender and one of the citys grand bon vivants, Fort Defiance owner St. John Frizell is also a pina colada savant. The version he serves at his Red Hook bar is based on the original recipe: El Dorado five-year rum; Coco Lopez, which is just the right degree of trashy; a significant amount of pineapple; some heavy cream, often excluded these days; and a hit of lime, a welcome addition that helps cut through the drinks richness. Thats all then shaken, not blended, creating a surprising texture thats almost fluffy.

2. Suffolk Arms

269 E. Houston St., at Suffolk St.; 212-475-0400



One way to upgrade almost any pina colada: Add a floater, maybe some overproof rum or a nice liqueur. Or, in the case of the so-named Improved Pina Colada at this Lower East Side bar, the bitter Italian aperitivo Campari. Its weird, but it works. The Campari amplifies the sweetness of the other ingredients  including passion fruit and spiced Sailor Jerry rum  while also cutting through the drinks richness.

3. Donna

27 Broadway, at Dunham Pl., Williamsburg; 646-568-6622



Head bartender Jeremy Oertel once admitted that it would be his head if he dared take the Brancolada off the menu. The Branc in the name refers to Branca Menta, the decidedly un-Caribbean, bracingly minty amaro that tastes not unlike fancy mouthwash. But in Donnas slushie machine, it melds with the Appleton V/X rum and coconut cream to create a delicious drink thats eerily reminiscent of a tropical riff on mint-chocolate-chip ice cream. Have another.

4. Old Stanleys

226 Wyckoff Ave, nr. Menahan St., Bushwick; no phone



Its custardy thick, packs a wallop of rum, is just a little sweet, and sets you back a mere $8. The pina colada at this Bushwick faux dive is also dispensed from somewhere under the bar  a point of origin that becomes even less clear as you get a few more drinks into the night. No matter. The most important thing to know is that its also far better  and more consistent  than versions that sell for twice as much in fancier establishments.

5. The Rum House

228 W. 47th St., nr. Broadway; 646-490-6942



Despite this midtown bars name, theres no pina colada on the menu. And if you order one, the bartender will tell you that the drink they serve isnt really a pina colada at all. Do not be deterred. All it means is that theres lime in this recipe, and that its served in a goblet, poured over four oversize ice cubes. So its not a proper pina colada. Yet the drink, with smooth El Dorado rum serving as the base, is excellent  no matter what you want to call it.
Google launched the Android One program back in 2014 with an aim to bring smartphones to the masses. It's 2016 now, and to say the least, the initiative has not been the kind of success the company would have hoped for.

However, that doesn't mean Google is giving up on its Android One efforts. According to Mike Hayes, Director, Business Development, Android & Chrome Partnerships, the initiative is still drawing interest from several OEMs around the world.

He also said that the company is taking a broader view of its hardware business, with Android One becoming a part of it. "So you should expect to see a position around what we are doing on low-end devices all the way through," he said.

On existing Android One associations, Hayes said, "We still continue to support a number of OEMs (original equipment makers) that partnered with us on the programme. However, speeds at which the devices are coming to the market are completely dependent upon the OEMs."

He also said that more Android One devices are expected to hit the market in the future, although no exact time-frame was revealed.

Source
Pre-ordered the HTC 10? You'll be glad to know that shipments have already begun. However, there's one more good news: your HTC 10 unit will be shortly followed by a "small token of appreciation" from the Taiwanese company.

Only those who placed their pre-orders on HTC's official website are eligible for the surprise. Sadly, at the moment, HTC isn't revealing what the gift would be, although the wait isn't long as the company says the package will be delivered in the next couple of weeks.

So, are we looking at those High-Res headphones that HTC has already confirmed aren't coming to the US and Canada? What do you think?

Source
Today Verizon has started selling a new Samsung smartphone. We're talking about the Galaxy J3 (2016), a device that should also reach AT&T tomorrow, and has been out at Sprint's prepaid brands since January.

Big Red has managed to be faster than its main competitor, however. It's offering the phone for fans of prepaid plans, so there's no long-term contract to sign when you buy the J3.

It's priced at $109.99, which isn't bad considering its specs. The Galaxy J3 (2016) has a 5-inch 720p Super AMOLED touchscreen, a 5 MP rear camera with f/2.2 aperture, a 2 MP selfie shooter, the Spreadtrum SC8830 chipset with a 1.2 GHz quad-core Cortex-A7 CPU, 1.5GB of RAM, 8GB of expandable storage, and a 2,600 mAh battery. It runs Android 5.1.1 Lollipop.

Source | Via
News / National

by Stephen Jakes

Pumula Zanu PF MP Godfrey Malaba has accused Bulawayo City Council for not fully utilising the ZINARA allocation of $870 000 and only had an uptake 55% of those funds yet the roads are deplorable state."My question is, the roads in Bulawayo are in a deplorable state. I am talking about the roads in the eastern and western suburbs. They are terrible despite the fact that Bulawayo was given funds by ZINARA to rehabilitate the roads," Malaba said."Therefore my question to the Minister is, who now supervises the usage of those funds? Is it ZINARA or the Ministry? Last year Bulawayo City Council was given $870 000.00 by ZINARA and the uptake was only 55% of those funds yet the roads are in a deplorable state. Who is policing the City Council and ensuring that they are properly utilising the money to rehabilitate those roads?"Minister of Transport Jorum Gumbo said he did not know about stage-managing but what he knew was that he visited work in progress when he got to Bulawayo not just in Mzilikazi but across the town both the low and high density areas."I can also confirm that we were also given a list of some of the very bad roads in Bulawayo. I agree that the City Council cannot maintain all the roads at the same time. It is a process that has to take a long time," he said. "The important thing that everybody knows and most people have been to the Trade Fair, just facts and nothing else. BCC has got the best roads in the country and I believe they are using the money that we disburse to them correctly. I am urging all urban authorities to emulate what Bulawayo is doing. Harare is also trying and I cannot expect them to have rehabilitated all the roads at the same time. Let us accept that work is being done."He said whilst he might have a place in Bulawayo that has not been attended to, it does not mean that they are not doing their work."Bulawayo City Council are doing their best and will continue to do their best because we also disburse funds after they have acquitted what we will have allocated to them. We also have a process of verifying that the money has been properly utilised, that is the supervision that we do," he said."So, ZINARA cannot supervise and the while ZINARA supervises through audits, we also ensure that the money has been properly utilised by making follow-ups," he said.
News / National

by Stephen Jakes

HE Minister of Environment, Water and Climate Oppah Muchinguri Kashiri has said Zimbabwe government has partnered with the Parks Authority and the Frankfurt Zoological Society of Germany in the management of Gonarezhou National Park."On the 12th of July, 2010, the government through the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources entered into a 10-year Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Frankfurt Zoological Society (FZS) for the management of Gonarezhou National Park (GNP). The agreement therefore terminates in July, 2020," Muchinguri Kashiri said."FZS is a Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO), registered in Germany (Registration Number VR 5228), with its headquarters at Alfred Brehm Platz 16, D-60316 Frakfurt 1, Germany. It is also registered in Zimbabwe in terms of the Private Voluntary Organisations Act [Chapter 17:05]. It is specifically dedicated to the conservation of wildlife and the natural environment, including the practical conservation of wild flora and fauna, landscapes, water, soils and other natural resources."She said the objectives of the MOU were to, among other things, develop, implement and monitor natural resources conservation and protection programmes in the GNP and to jointly develop, ratify, implement, monitor and periodically revise a General Management Plan for GNP which forms the basis of all conservation activities therein."The General Management Plan was adopted by the Ministry in 2011. The support of FZS included logistical support to GNP, especially land, water and air transport, radio communication, supply of field equipment, supply of uniforms and office equipment; provision, where appropriate, of technical expertise, i.e. professional staff, technical advisors and consultants; applied research,She said. "Conserving and protecting the natural resources, including wildlife of GNP and the Greater Limpopo Trans-Frontier Conservation Area; infrastructure development and maintenance; natural resource assessment and monitoring, including animal numbers and vegetation change."She said before the expiration of the MOU, the parties decided that the money coming into GNP by means of the MOU was not enough to ensure self-sustainability of GNP."It was noted that the MOU did not provide for the real unlocking of the full potential of the park and there was need to come up with a system or model that would ensure that more money would come to the park through joint efforts by the parties and other funders," she said."After consultations and further negotiations, a new partnership model for GNP was agreed upon in the form of a Conservation Trust with Parks and Wildlife Management Authority (PWMA), with FZS being the founders. The objectives of this partnership are; delivery of effective and efficient management of GNP Building financial sustainability of GNP through the development of additional revenue streams and further investment, e.g tourism, which was not covered in the original MOU," she said."The new partnership involves PWMA and FZS jointly setting up a Trust, the Gonarezhou Conservation Trust (GCT) and transferring the management mandate to the Trust. The Trust is an independent entity, capable of suing and being sued in its own name. The Board of Trustees consists of members seconded from both parties. The GNP will be managed by a management committee which consists of employees seconded from the PWMA. The Trust has a lifespan of 20years from date of signature. On termination of the Trust, any assets left will remain for the use of GNP."Muchinguri Kashiri said the Trust will raise more than US$40 million for the GNP during the period of its existence. Conservation is an expensive undertaking that ordinarily requires Government funding due to the social nature of research and community service activities.She saidparks therefore requires funding that is sustainable, hence the need to transform the nature of the agreement with FZS in order to attract commercial revenue."There are no policy constraints delaying the signing of the Trust. However, due diligence has to be undertaken to ensure that the Authority is not in any way short-changed so that the new model benefits the country," she said."The communities are not involved in the forming of the Trust as G NP is administered by PWMA. The communities are already benefitting through Malipati Safari Area, which PWMA has leased to them for hunting purposes through the Community Areas Management Programme for Indigenous Resources (CAMPFIRE).""The communities will however benefit from the Trust. It is envisaged that the development of the park will increase the participation and benefit surrounding communities as follows; communities will continue to receive revenue from hunting conducted in Malipati area and Sengwe, which are currently under the Chiredzi Rural District Council; increased employment opportunities; harvest of thatching grass projects, reduced human-wildlife conflict; development of Private-Public-Community Partnerships with respect to key future tourism developments in the Park and adjacent communal lands, generating direct financial benefits to communities as well as stimulating job creation and skills development," she added."Improved natural resource management initiatives in adjacent communal lands and development of structured, sustainable resource use partnerships between the park and communities, resulting in enhanced food security and livelihoods options; Implementation of targeted conservation education initiatives for schools, community groups and traditional leaders; reduction of human-wildlife conflict through implementation of cost-effective mitigation plan, making use of a range of mitigation measures and techniques; and development of the GNP in order for it to fulfill its potential to become a significant economic driver in the South East Lowveld."




Haiti - Health : Political hands behind the strike in hospitals ?





Thursday, Levy Milot Felix, President of the Federation of Health Workers, lamented the deaths the previous day of a pregnant woman at the entrance to the Hospital of the State University of Haiti, for lack of care due to the strike by resident physicians https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-17361-haiti-health-irresponsible-strike-in-hospitals.html



He denounces a political hand close to the former regime, encouraging the strikers to continue their movement until May 14 in order to put pressure on President a.i. Privert. In addition, he accused the strikers of being manipulated and being guilty of non-assistance to a person in danger.



For their part, resident physicians reject accusations that they would be manipulated by hidden political hands and say their claims, including better working conditions and a salary adjustment for all health personnel, have nothing to do with political crisis affecting the country.



At the same time, the Haitian Medical Association (AMH) in a statement "welcomes the determination of Physicians in hospital residency, the Physicians public servant and caregivers in general in our public hospitals on the occasion of their denunciation of unacceptable conditions to practice their profession in our public hospitals [...]

shows solidarity respectively to their request for salary adjustment of all care providers and their demand for better working conditions."



By cons, AMH, is very careful not to attribute responsibility for this situation to the government in power and hopes that the administrative bodies and political concerned and duly mandated, engage with stakeholders in a constructive dialogue in the search for a consensus solution. AMH stresses that an official MoU with a timetable and signed by stakeholders should allow the resolution of the crisis and recovery in emergency of functioning of hospitals and public health centers.



However, the agreement between the parties is far from being concluded, on Wednesday, Dr Brunel Delaunay deplored again the intransigent behavior of striking doctors "who rejected all proposals made to them."



See also :

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-17361-haiti-health-irresponsible-strike-in-hospitals.html



S/ HaitiLibre






















Haiti - News : Zapping politics...





Senator Steven Benoit protests against the "bad elected"

Senator Steven Benoit does not intend to participate Monday, May 10, at the closing session in National Assembly, of the first regular session of the legislative year. Decision to protest against the presence at the 50th legislature, of several parliamentarians who were elected according to him, in irregular conditions.



Names of judges and lawyers of BCEN

The hearings of the National Office of Electoral Disputes (BCEN) started Friday (in the West) https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-17357-haiti-municipal-elections-beginning-of-appeal-before-the-bcen-west.html

The list of judges and lawyers to constitute the 3 chambers of BCEN for disputes related to municipal, was also published. They are the judges Eddy Darang, Durin Duret, Jean Julien and Gabrielle Pierre Domingue, and for lawyers: Kenedy Berandoive, Jean Berjemane Berette, Francois Joassaint, Joseph Briel Latice, Lewis Pierre, Robinson Pierre-Louis, Wisny Saint-Vil and Frantz Saurel.



New director at the General Hospital

This Thursday, on strike background, Fednel St-Vil was installed as a new director of the General Hospital. He takes over from Duplessy Lambert.



See also :

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-17374-haiti-health-political-hands-behind-the-strike-in-hospitals.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-17361-haiti-health-irresponsible-strike-in-hospitals.html



Cybersecurity and Cybercrime

Thursday held a workshop on Cybersecurity and Cybercrime in the premises of the National Council of Telecommunications (CONATEL) in which were presented legal texts on cybercrime, interception of communications, electronic transactions and electronic evidence. A report of this workshop will be made available shortly.



Forum on prolonged pretrial detention

Thursday at the Hotel Montana, President a.i. Jocelerme Privert, accompanied by the Minister of Justice (MSPJ) Me Camille Edouard Jr., officially opened the forum on prolonged pretrial detention. The Protector of Citizens also took part in the launch of the two-day forum, organized by the Ministry.



Speech of the Minister of Justice and Public Security :







On the Agenda of Thursday, May 6

The Prime Minister, Enex Jean-Charles met, Thursday, May 5, 2016, to the Primature r, the Ambassador of Brazil Fernando Vidal. During the meeting several issues were on the agenda. After the exchange, the holder of the Primature reiterated the commitment of his government to strengthen the Haitian-Brazilian cooperation;



The President of the Republic, Jocelerme Privert met the organization "Fanm Angaje" at the National Palace, this Thursday, May 5, 2016;



A tripartite meeting behind closed doors bringing the CEP, the Parliament and the Presidency was held at the Hotel Kinam around the elections and institutional continuity after May 14;



The Prime Minister, Jean-Charles, accompanied by several ministers and the Secretary General of the Primature, paid a courtesy visit to the Faculty of Law and Economics (FDSE);



A third meeting of the Working Committee about the State Examination was held on the issue of budgetary restrictions and the assessing of learning achievement, the correction of copies and staff recruitment.



HL/ HaitiLibre


















The Westhampton Beach Performing Arts Center has been a hub of the Hamptons since 1998, with the building dating back even further. The building has been part of Westhampton Beach for over three generations, first opening as a movie theater before the building was later purchased by United Artists and changed to a single-theater movie house. Then, in the mid-1990s, a group of village residents and business owners purchased the theater and started the movement to create a performing arts space.
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Harlow is a former New Town in Essex with a population of 86,000. Located in the upper Stort Valley, it was built in the decades after the Second World War to ease overcrowding and London and provide homes for people bombed out during the Blitz. It includes Britain's first pedestrian precinct and first modern residential tower block, The Lawn. Old Harlow, the historic part of the town, was mentioned in the Domesday Book. David and Victoria Beckham's former home, Rowneybury House, nicknamed 'Beckingham Palace', is nearby.

15:16, 24 OCT 2022
News / National

by Stephen Jakes

Finance and Economic Development Minister Patrick Chinamasa has expressed ignorance over how much the Premier Service Medical Aid Society (PSMAS) owes employees after he was questioned by a house of assembly member as to what the government was doing concerning what the institution owes the employees.MP Paul Chimedza has asked the minister in parliament over the issue."I would like to find out from the Minister of Finance and Economic Development, Hon Chinamasa, when the debt to PSMAS will be paid up. We understand that now there is a new CEO at PSMAS but government, from 2014 and before, owes PSMAS $94 million. From 2015 to date, contribution for employees amounting to $15 million is owed and owed employee contribution is $60 million. So the bulk debt that government owes PSMAS is $169 million," he said.Chinamasa said he was aware that government owes PSMAS employee contributions but was not aware of the exact amount."So, I cannot confirm or deny whether Government owes the $169 million. As to when it will be paid, we have now started meeting the contributions from March and I think that these payments will be sustained," Chinamasa said.
News / National

by Elita Chikwati

THE government supports the production of quail birds (izigwaca in isiNdebele or zvihuta in Shona) as this improves nutrition and livelihoods of people, Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa has said. He said the government had never banned the production of the quails but was against poaching of the wild birds and eggs.Responding to questions in Parliament on the reported banning of the production of quail birds on Wednesday, Mnangagwa said people had misunderstood Environment, Water and Cimate Minister, Oppah Muchinguri Kashiri."When the government has put in place legislation on something which is or is not permissible, there's a procedure that is followed. When the government bans something, it's gazetted. There's no policy that's publicised only through the media, government policy is in written form," he told MPs."There're some who were moving around the wild taking away quail birds' eggs, we're not happy about that. It's illegal. There's a way of rearing quail birds commercially, carrying out your quail birds project and selling to hotels, but we don't allow people to poach quail birds in the national parks."Mngangagwa said there was no policy that had been put in place to ban projects on quail birds. "The birds are very delicious, we enjoy the quail birds," he said.Officiating at a livestock field day at Mountain Home Farm in Mazowe yesterday, Agriculture, Mechanisation and Irrigation Development Deputy Minister responsible for livestock, Paddy Zhanda, said domestication of quail birds was under the division of the Livestock Production Department.He said the government supported production of the birds and this was in line with the national economic blueprint, ZimAsset. "We encourage production of the quail birds as this boosts nutrition and also improves livelihoods. Zimbabwe has been lagging behind other countries that are producing the birds. The birds are good in terms of nutrition," he said.There had been an outcry in the country as a result of the supposed ban of the quail birds.The birds became popular with some people claiming that they had medicinal properties, which Muchinguri said was thoroughly misleading. The supposed ban made the birds popular especially on social media where the bulk of the jokes that have been circulating this week concerned the quail birds.
News / National

by Staff reporter

Zimbabwe People First (ZimPF) has made sensational claims that it has inside information on how Zanu-PF rigged elections particularly the disputed 2008 and 2013 polls.ZimPF official Retired Brigadier-General Agrippa Mutambara, who for 21 years was an ambassador and close to President Robert Mugabe, made the disclosures during a roundtable discussion in Harare yesterday.Mutambara, who represented ZimPF spokesperson Rugare Gumbo at the discussion, said Zanu-PF had lost support and was now engaging in violence and curtailing freedom of expression by other political parties.
ichigan-based teacher says shes been unfairly fired for discussing the female anatomy in her middle-school art class  specifically, paintings depicting vaginas.



Earlier this month, substitute teacher Allison Wint was leading an art history lesson which focussed on Georgia OKeeffe, famous for her abstract paintings which often represent female genitalia and flowers simultaneously.



"Imagine walking into a gallery when [O'Keeffe] was first showing her pieces, and thinking; 'Am I actually seeing vaginas here, am I a pervert? I'm either a pervert or this woman was a pervert, Wint recalled saying the class.



Wint said she was trying to spark an insightful conversation with her teenage students and while she admitted to using the word vagina about 10 times, she stressed it was never in a vulgar way.



Now, shes insisting officials from Harper Creek Middle School deemed the word inappropriate for 14-15-year-old ears and dismissed her.



The school, however, is contesting this claim  it says Wint was fired for failing to seek approval on a controversial topic.



"She was not terminated due to uttering the word 'vagina'," a statement said. "We do not shy away from controversial issues. We work very diligently to ensure that all students, staff and contracted personnel are treated fairly with respect and privacy."



Wint says she was never informed about the need to seek approval and defended her choice, saying she hadnt want to use a euphemism which turn send her lesson into a joke.

"I don't think [vagina] is a word you should be afraid of," she said.


Blue Ridge Women in Agriculture, in collaboration with Watauga County Cooperative Extension, is opening a food storage hub in the lower level of the Agricultural Services Center on King Street in Boone.

Watauga County approved use of a storage space in the Ag Center to assist our farmers, and construction is nearing completion. The food hub will provide farmers with storage space and will include walk-in freezers for storing beef, pork, & chicken, a walk-in cooler for products requiring refrigeration, like vegetables and other produce, and shelving for storing dry goods such as honey, molasses and grains.

Area farmers will be able to rent space for a nominal fee. Preference for renting the space will be given to Watauga County farmers. The Food Hub is expected to open June 1. There is a survey for local farmers to help us assess interest in storage space and anticipated uses.

If you may be interested in cooler, freezer, or storage space for your agricultural products, please contact Blue Ridge Women in Agriculture at (828) 386-1527, or the Watauga County Cooperative Extension at: (828)264-3601.or simply come by the Ag Center on King Street in Boone.

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Fresh off the heels of their first-ever nonprofit food vendor appearance at MerleFest, Hospitality House announces an expansion of services into Wilkes County.

As a resident of Wilkes County, I have been looking for additional opportunities to assist the ever-increasing number of homeless individuals and families in my home county, states Hospitality House executive director Tina Krause. We started this process nearly three years ago, engaging several concerned citizens and local congregations; to see it coming to fruition moves us another step forward.

As the only twenty-four hour homeless service agency in the seven-county region of Wilkes, Ashe, Avery, Watauga, Alleghany, Yancey and Mitchell, Hospitality House has been serving Wilkes since 1995. During 2015, Hospitality House provided a total of 35,725 nights of food, shelter and supportive services, with Wilkes County residents making up fourteen percent of that total.

The fifty-two Wilkes County residents supported by Hospitality House last year, equates to one person per week being transported to Boone for assistance.

Says Wilkes County native and Hospitality House board member Gary Newman; Being able to assist folks, right here on the ground in Wilkes County, has been of goal of mine since joining the board of directors in 2014.

The physical expansion into Wilkes will begin with two Scattered Site Housing locations that will serve families and individuals living with a disabling condition. This program facilitates independent living for residents in the community, while also providing supportive services and intensive case management.

Several prominent businesses, individuals and churches have been instrumental in making this extension of services a reality.

Its really exciting for all of us to partner with you, and the local churches, to do something to help you expand services here in Wilkes County, states a representative from a local firm that wishes to remain anonymous. From what we have learned about Hospitality House, it seems clear that the housing needs in our region are great. I hope this can be the beginning of a long chapter in your story.

Hospitality House, a proud member of the Wilkes Chamber of Commerce, continues to work in partnership with several local church congregations and mission teams and is closely aligned with the Wilkes County Department of Social Services, Wilkes County Schools, Wilkes Regional Hospital, The Health Foundation, h.o.p.e. Ministries and United Way of Wilkes.

For additional information, please contact Todd Carter at [email protected] or 828.264.1237 ext. 107.

To learn more about Hospitality House, visit them online at www.HospHouse.org, follow them on Twitter @HospHouseBoone or on Facebook at www.Facebook.com/HospHouse

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*Release from Mountain View Speedway:

Lets go racing.

On May 6, 2016 the Honorable Resident Superior Court Judge Gary Gavenus denied the Town of Boones Motion for a Temporary Restraining Order against the Speedway operators.

When this decision was handed down it was welcome news for race fans of all ages who are anxiously awaiting the exciting dirt track action at the Speedway this Saturday, May 7.

It is unfortunate that the Town of Boone continues its vendetta against the Speedway but the Speedway and race fans are thrilled that the Courts of Watauga County handed down this fair and just decision. On Saturday the gates open at 6 p.m.

All race fans are encouraged to bring a can good that will be donated to the Hospitality House of Boone, and if race fans bring this can good they will receive a dollar off the admission price. In addition a portion of the Speedways proceeds goes to Camp New Hope in Ashe County which is a camp for kids with special needs.

Next Saturday night, May 14, 2016 the fifty-fifty raffle proceeds will be donated to Ryan Possum Mullis so mark your calendars and be sure to attend to help support Mr. Mullis and his financial need due to medical reasons.

Most importantly come on out and support the only racing in the High Country and let the Speedway and the drivers know how much you appreciate their family friendly activities and excitement every Saturday night.

The Speedway is located on Roby Greene Road.

See you at the Races.

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By Jesse Wood

U.S. Congresswoman Virginia Foxx addressed the Kiwanis Club of Banner Elk and the Rotary Club of Avery County at a joint meeting on May 3. With the redrawing of North Carolinas 5th District, Congresswoman Foxx addressed the members of the two clubs as her constituents for the first time.

Foxx represents the county where she grew up for the first time.

North Carolinas 5th Congressional District now consists of Alleghany, Alexander, Ashe, Avery, Forsyth, Surry, Stokes, Watauga, Wilkes, and Yadkin counties. This district was amended prior to the 2016 primary by the N.C. General Assembly after the courts ruled that the 2011 redistricting was unconstitutional.

Because of the timing of the court ruling, the congressional primaries were pushed back to June 7.

Foxx is one of five people  three Democrats and two Republicans  running for the 5th Congressional District of North Carolina in the U.S House.

Virginia Foxx of Banner Elk is seeking her seventh term as the representative for the 5th Congressional District.

In announcing her 2016 candidacy Foxx said, Our nation is at a historic crossroads. President Obama and his liberal allies have tried to take us down a road of government coercion, higher taxes and soul-crushing regulation. North Carolina voters from all walks of life tell me virtually every day that we cannot go any farther down that road.

They are rightwhich is why Im running for Congress.

Each week, the Kiwanis meets on Tuesdays over the lunch hour on the campus of Lees-McRae College.

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News / National

by Staff reporter

The one million men march being organised by the Zanu-PF youth league members has been slated for the 25th of this month.Zanu-PF Deputy Secretary for Youth Affairs Kudzai Chipanga says the march is being held to reaffirm the youth league's support to President Robert Mugabe as the party's presidential candidate in the 2018 general elections.Addressing a media briefing in Harare in the company of other Zanu-PF national youth executive members, Chipanga says the march is going to coincide with Africa Day."The one men million men march is going to be held under the theme: 'Youth March in Solidarity with Visionary and Iconic Leadership of President Mugabe' and all progressive Zimbabweans are welcome to participate," said Cde Chipanga.President Mugabe has already been endorsed as the Zanu-PF presidential candidate for 2018 by all the 10 provinces in the country.Delegates who attended the party's 15th annual National People's Conference in Victoria Falls, Matabeleland North province in December last year also unanimously endorsed Mugabe's candidature.
When it comes to weight loss, salmon probably isnt the first food you think of. Many people eat
(Reuters) Hedge funds increased their net long positions in Brent and WTI derivatives by 7 million barrels to a record 663 million barrels in the week ending April 26.

Even though oil prices have already risen by roughly $20 per barrel (70 percent) from their low in January, hedge funds are more bullish than at any time since oil prices started slumping in the summer of 2014.

To read this article:
The national broadcasting company reported earlier this week that public support for the Finns Party has halved since the parliamentary elections of 2015, after falling by another one percentage point to 8.5 per cent between March and April.

Timo Soini, the chairperson of the Finns Party, has expressed his disappointment with the results of a recent poll by YLE .

I was expecting better poll numbers. The latest ones leave no room for explanations. They are awful and the main responsibility lies with the chairperson, Soini writes on his personal blog.

Centre no longer the largest party - The Social Democratic Party has overtaken the Centre Party as the largest political party in Finland. - Support for the Social Democrats rose by 1.2 percentage points month-on-month to 21.5 per cent, while that for the Centre fell by 1.3 percentage points to 20.4 per cent in April. - The National Coalition remains the third largest party in the country despite seeing its support rating drop by 0.1 percentage points to 17.0 per cent. - The Green League saw its support rating rise by 1.0 percentage points to an all-time high of 13.5 per cent. - The Finns Party and Left Alliance are neck and neck in fifth place with a support rating of 8.5 per cent. - The Swedish People's Party saw its support rating drop by 0.2 percentage points to 4.5 per cent. - The Christian Democratic Party clung on to its support rating of 3.6 per cent. Source: YLE

The Finns Party, he reminds, remains the second largest party in the Parliament and cannot reverse its fortunes with sudden turnarounds. The Finns Party will not give up. I will not give up. We will hold our nerve. What we need now is a long fuse. We will rise yet again like mist from a slough. We are indeed in a slough, he says.

YLE also reported that support for the ruling three-party coalition as a whole has plummeted by more than 11 percentage points to 45.9 per cent since the parliamentary elections.

We have paid a price for the decline in the popularity of the Government. We must be able to withstand that. Our edge and endurance have been put to the test. We must have faith in our own platform and stand up straight. Get out to the field, to the people. Give answers and challenge, analyses Soini.

The Finns Party must according to him put more pressure on the opposition parties, which have seen their combined support creep up by more than 11 percentage points to 51.6 per cent over the past 12 months. The Social Democratic Party has consequently overtaken the Centre Party as the most popular party in Finland, while the Green League has seen its support rating climb to an all-time high of 13.5 per cent.

We have to take aim at these two parties, says Soini. I can tell from my experience that they do not cope well with pressure. The stumble they suffered in the final stretch of the previous elections is still fresh in my memory. Sympathy does not quite translate to votes, reminds Soini.

Aleksi Teivainen  HT

Photo: Heikki Saukkomaa  Lehtikuva

Source: Uusi Suomi
Oil tankers moving out of city soon

Railroad tankers west of Seventh Avenue will be gone soon, City Manager John Connet told the Hendersonville City Council.

The railroad tankers that moved last month from Flat Rock to Hendersonville will be gone entirely in the weeks ahead, City Manager John Connet told the Hendersonville City Council on Thursday.

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Connet responded after Hyman Heights resident Michael Balin expressed concern about the black tankers, calling them an eyesore.

I had a conversation with Watco, the rail line owner, Connet said in response. They are the same rail cars that were in Flat Rock. They moved them because the owners of the tankers is in the process of putting them back in service.

Watcos Asheville-based marketing manager told Connet that the railroad company is moving eight to 10 out at a time. They couldnt give me an exact time when they would all be gone, he said. Unfortunately, it is their rail line and were limited in what we can do.

The Hendersonville Lightning reported last month on neighbors concerns in Flat Rock and East Flat Rock. Watco, a Kansas-based shortline operator that does business here as Blue Ridge Railroad, responded to those concerns and moved the cars to the tracks west of Seventh Avenue. The owners of the tankers paid Blue Ridge to store the cars on the Hendersonville line until they were needed again. A glut of oil and slowdown in fracking and other domestic production idled thousands of tankers nationwide.
News / Press Release

by Mkhululi Zulu

Member of Zanupf Politburo Kembo Mohadi's threat that he or they will go to war if the national pledge is rejected cannot go unchallenged although really it is one of his most ridiculous speeches from a man of his age and political history. Zimbabweans are no longer afraid of wars on them by the Zanupf ministers or government. They have been living under such threats for decades so this one or its implementation is not new nor is it the last one until the people themselves say enough is enough. And people were created by God. They will say no to war mongering ministers one day.But exactly what will this man do? Send the militia to kidnap the BICC Bishop and other church leaders just for pointing out that it is against the constitution to force fellow Zimbabweans to do something against their conscious? Or will he go to the bush, mobilize the peasants force them to kill their chicken, their goats and their cattle to feed him while he is waging a war? That is the only war that he knows. Or will he deploy policemen in schools, every school nationwide in the morning to see that teachers literally compel children to recite what they do not like, in fact what they hate? Is he talking of mobilizing army battalions, armoured vehicles and helicopters to attack, but attack who, the entire population just for saying this pledge has religious and political connotations that most us as fellow citizens do not believe in? Or will we hear of charges by the courts where certain members of the community including Zimta leaders will be arrested tortured only to be released without trial? So desperate is the man that he wants to go to war like he did against Ian Smith just for the national pledge? Is it only a national pledge or something else?War against unarmed, poor and starving opponents must be very sweet indeed. One can just go and start firing no matter how at people who have no arms, who do not even intend to fight back because they just want to live peacefully. It is however very absurd to talk of war against families and their children who are pointing out at what they believe is unconstitutional.The old man can go to war. People cannot stop a Minister who fights the defenceless and impoverished. He has nothing to offer, not even a simple debate on a deliberate breech of the constitution except these unwarranted threats of war. But for how long? Really until when? How long shall we as a people be subjected to persistent threats of war from our own government ministers?
A visually-impaired homeless woman has urged Dublin City Council not to close two hostels until new services have been provided and more rough-sleeper beds are available.

"The council simply does not have the beds. They need to open services before closing services down," said Rosemary Fearsaor Hughes.

"There's no space, it's just crazy. They knew this was coming. They knew they were closing it down. Why did they not set up a moving-on place?"

Inaccessible

The John's Lane West hostel and the Bru Aimsir hostel, which house around 130 people each night, are due to close at the end of this month.

Ms Hughes (32), who has lived between Britain and Ireland and has a guide dog named Quilla, has been staying at the John's Lane West hostel for the past six weeks.

She said the alternative acc- ommodation offered to her had too many stairs, making it inaccessible. She said she will happily accept anywhere that is accessible.

Focus Ireland arranged for her to return to the John's Lane West hostel last night.

"There's a high likelihood that I'll be sleeping rough again," she said.

"There's part of me that's really, really frustrated because it's like, 'Oh, we need to do this and we need to do that', and it's like, well, get off your backside and do it, because talk is cheap.

"I've always had problems getting hostel beds because I'm sight-impaired.

"There have always been issues, but the freephone system to find a place to sleep is woefully inadequate.

"It just doesn't work. You could be holding the line for an hour and then you'll get cut off and then you'll be number 50 in the queue again.

"Someone who's homeless actually wants to express to a person what they're going through."

The Dublin Region Homeless Executive (DRHE), which co- ordinates homelessness services, was unable to comment on individual cases but provided information on the imminent hostel closures.

"The council entered into a temporary lease arrangement with the Digital Hub Development Agency, with the specific purpose to have additional capacity over the winter period as a humanitarian response to the major challenge of rough sleeping," a spokeswoman said.

Weather

"In that regard, it was never intended that Bru Aimsir would be a permanent facility.

"Its use has been extended until the end of May because of the cold weather. It will close on May 31. All Cold Weather Initiative beds will have been withdrawn at that stage."

The John's Lane West hostel was also an "interim provision", and alternative accommodation is being sought for those living there.

Thirty-one new housing units are to be built on the site of the hostel and must be completed by the end of next year.
A 16-year-old boy has been given a six-month sentence and become the first person to be jailed for taking part in violence at the Jobstown protest.

Tanaiste Joan Burton and her entourage were allegedly trapped in a car on November 15, 2014, at An Cosan education facility in Jobstown, in Tallaght.

An anti-Irish Water charges demonstration was held that delayed her for about two hours.

Gardai alleged protesters surrounded the car, tried to "get in at" the Labour leader and there were a number of violent incidents during which officers were pushed and missiles thrown.

The boy, now aged 16, but who was 15 at the time of the incident, appeared at the Dublin Children's Court with his mother and a grandparent.

He had pleaded guilty to criminal damage to the rear window of unmarked garda car which he jumped on, and violent disorder charges.

The court heard he had prior convictions for theft and had already served a sentence that finished in January.

Finalising his case, Judge John O'Connor imposed a six-month detention sentence on the boy who cannot be named because he is a minor.

It makes him the first person to be jailed in connection with the controversial protest that has led to more than 20 people, including TD Paul Murphy, coming before the courts.

Initially the boy, who was not politically motivated when he joined in the violence, expressed regret and in November he had shown a willingness to engage with the Probation Service.

Guilty

However, since then the boy repeatedly refused to work with the Probation Service calling it "a load of b*****ks".

He also picked up a new charge of unlawfully interfering with car in Tallaght on February 11 last.

He pleaded guilty to that as well as connected breach of the peace and possessing gloves for use in a theft.

Paul Murphy TD and 18 other people are awaiting Circuit Court trial.

They face a variety of charges, including false imprisonment, violent disorder and criminal damage.
Dublin District Court heard gardai were called to Dunnes Stores on Henry Street last August 16 to find that Toure had urinated on baby wipes on display in the shop (Stock picture)

A chef from a leading Dublin hotel who destroyed 164 worth of baby wipes by urinating on them in a supermarket aisle has received a suspended sentence.

Abou Bacar Toure (32) was arrested for criminal damage after he urinated on the wipes, which had to be thrown out.

Judge John Cheatle gave him a two-month suspended sentence and put him on a probationary supervision bond after hearing he had a drink problem.

Toure, with an address at Mountjoy Square, Dublin 1, pleaded guilty to offensive conduct by urinating on stock in a supermarket aisle.

He also admitted criminal damage and separate multiple counts of theft of bottles of wine.

Dublin District Court heard gardai were called to Dunnes Stores on Henry Street last August 16 to find that Toure had urinated on baby wipes on display in the shop.

He had two stolen bottles of wine worth 17 on him when store detectives stopped him.

He was arrested and taken to Store Street Garda Station.

The court heard on September 13 last year that Toure went to The George bar and stole an iPhone worth 400.

Culprit

He returned 20 minutes later and was stopped by security, who called gardai.

Toure also went to Marks & Spencer on Mary Street three times and stole bottles of wine. He stole two bottles of wine on one day, August 20.

He returned the next day and was caught stealing another two bottles of wine. Gardai viewed CCTV and were satisfied he was the culprit.

The wine was recovered in the second theft but not in the first.

The accused is originally from Ivory Coast and had an Irish-born child with his partner, his solicitor Tony Collier said.

He had claimed asylum and was now working as a hotel chef in the south city centre.

Toure had applied himself well to his responsibilities and had been off alcohol for several years, but then drank again and "picked up these charges over a period of time", said Mr Collier.

He was not drinking now and was doing well, and did not commit offences when not drinking.

Judge Cheatle remarked that the accused was a hard-working man who had "succumbed to drink and had a theft spree".

He suspended the sentence for a year.
Opinion / Columnist

"Nothing that isn't a real crime makes a man appear so contemptible and little in the eyes of the world as inconsistency," noted Joseph Addison (1672-1719), an English essayist and politician.That piece of advice can be very helpful to the MDC-T leader, Mr Morgan Tsvangirai whose record on flipping back and forth on policies has not only injured his brand but that of his party too.Imagine asking someone to give a yes or no answer and that person keeps switching between the two choices. Leaders of such disposition lose credibility, for they cannot lead when they are not trustworthy. Interestingly, authorities in the discipline of leadership, aver that inconsistency delays development. For instance, if a leader keeps on vacillating on a policy position, people will be left with no choice but to wait for the next change.Having made abrupt reversal on several policies and decisions, stakeholders in the MDC-T are left with no option but to wait for the next change. Last week, this writer wrote on how Mr Tsvangiai flip-flopped on his position on election boycott and the so-called grand coalition. Such vacillation shows that there is a grave and personal great controversy within the MDC-T leader on issues of election and coalition.The MDC-T leader will never cease to amaze people on his sudden about faces. Inconsistency is the only thing that Mr Tsvangirai is consistent. This time around, he tried to use the Constitution to mask his endorsement of homosexuality."I only want to say that I will not prosecute or persecute gays because in the Constitution they are given that right. There is freedom of sexual orientation in the current Constitution of Zimbabwe. Why should that clause be violated," Mr Tsvangirai briefed journalists at the Bulawayo Press club recently.It is not an issue of violating the Constitution but a matter of condemning those who smuggled the gay issue into the Constitution. One does not need to be clever to know the culprit. That clause was a product of compromise during the Constitution making process. Mr Tsvangirai and his party fought nail and tooth for the inclusion of that clause in the charter. It was a clause coming out of their strong conviction, for one cannot fight for something that he does not hold dear.But then, what is the real position of Mr Tsvangirai on homosexuality? The nation wants to know since the MDC-T leader has been oscillating ever since the subject was put on the national agenda. Mr Tsvangirai is on the horns of a dilemma. He knows that both sides of the coin have merits and demerits. Thus, he would rather play his cards cautiously and cunningly on the gay issue. He leaves people second-guessing him, with an escape room for the hackneyed I was misquoted' excuse, familiar with many politicians.Mr Tsvangirai knows for sure that the Zimbabwean society abhors homosexuality. He knows that his explicit support for gays will cost him politically in the political home ground. Zimbabweans across the religious, cultural and political divide have ethics that are incompatible with homosexuality. This is the reason why Mr Tsvangirai has not been overtly supporting the practice.However, he also knows that the issue of homosexuality is at the heart of his benefactors from West. Since his party is stone broke, he knows that embracing homosexuality comes with rewards. He has been studying the situation in the region where some countries were threatened with aid withdrawal for not embracing same sex marriage. Some were even rewarded for embracing same. Prime examples are Malawi and Mozambique.Malawi had to overturn a ban on homosexuality after the West, particularly the US, the Sodom of our time threatened to cut aid. Two Malawian men, who had been sentenced to 14 years in prison in 2010 for gay marriage, had to be pardoned.In 2015, Mozambique succumbed to western pressure and eventually decriminalized same sex marriage. According to AFP, the US became the biggest bilateral donor to Mozambique, trading in $382 million worth, mainly in energy and tobacco in 2013. Up until last year, foreign aid paid for over half of Mozambican public expenditure with gay activists urging all those who contribute aid to African nations, to redirect a huge chunk of it to Mozambique.This is the same dollar that has pressed Mr Tsvangirai to warm up to the issue of homosexuality today, more so with the dire financial status of his party. He, however, needs to weigh his options and see if it is politically viable for him to embrace the abominable practice to attract the nauseating foreign funding and lose the local vote which loathes the practice.Mr Tsvangirai now has a mammoth task to convince the West that he means his word this time around; having flip-flopped several times before on the same issue. Mr Tsvangirai must unequivocally state his position on homosexuality. President Mugabe's position on same is well documented globally. He is on record branding gays as worse than pigs and dogs. What about Mr Tsvangirai?In March 2010, Mr Tsvangirai expressed his distaste for homosexuality. "I totally agree with the President. Nyaya yekuti umwe murume anofemera mugotsi meumwe murume haina kunaka," said Mr Tsvangirai, adding that the issue was not for discussion during the Constitution making process. However, the issue was discussed and included in the Constitution, which Mr Tsvangirai is citing today.In 2011, the same Mr Tsvangirai made a volte-face. "My attitude is that I hope the Constitution will come out with freedom of sexual orientation, for as long as it does not interfere with anybody. To me it's a human right," said Mr Tsvangirai in an interview with BBC. The issue which he said was not up for discussion is the same issue that he, a year later, was now viewing as a human right.Zimbabwe's constitution proscribes the practice but in a very equivocal manner. It is high time that constitutional amendments are effected on section 78(3) of the constitution that only states that "Persons of the same sex are prohibited from marrying each other."This section stands accused of using vague, ambiguous and open-ended language that is subject to manipulation. Gays can argue that the constitution only outlaws same sex marriage but not same sex relationships. With this ambiguity, homosexuality is subtly entrenched in the constitution. It's time it should be amended in line with the national ethos.
Taxi driver Noel Fairman had a knife put to his throat during the attempted carjacking (INM)

A Dublin taxi driver said he feared for his life when a passenger pushed a knife against his throat and demanded his keys and money.

Noel Fairman, from Swords, recalled the frightening journey as his attacker, Sean Ducque (32), was sentenced to five years in jail for the harrowing attack.

Mr Fairman told the Herald he believes Ducque, who has 39 previous convictions, should have been handed more serious charges, considering the physical and psychological injuries he suffered.

Guilty

Ducque, of no fixed abode, pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to the attempted unlawful seizure of Mr Fairman's car on March 26, 2013, at Terrace Place, Dublin, and to producing a knife during the attack.

"I was driving through Ballymun and it was only around 8.30pm when a couple flagged me down and sat into the back seat. There was the usual casual chat on the way into town and I didn't really suspect anything," Mr Fairman said.

"But when I stopped where they asked I suddenly felt something being put up to my throat from over my right shoulder and I instinctively grabbed it.

"It was a blade, and the more I tried to pull it away from my neck the more he tried to press it to my throat.

"I thought I was going to die. I was struggling with the blade but he wouldn't let it go.

"He was roaring for the keys and money and I said 'this has all gone wrong, cut your losses and go'," he added.

The victim received three serious cuts to his hand as a result of the struggle with the knife.

Ducque eventually left the car with the woman passenger, but was later picked up by gardai. DNA analysis of blood on his clothing matched that of Mr Fairman.

He told Judge Patricia Ryan that he hated his job now.

"I saw my life in front of me," he said, adding that he had undergone several life-saving operations over the previous years and had received stent implants for his heart.

He said during the attack he thought his heart might burst or that his throat may be slit.

Judge Ryan imposed an eight-year sentence, but suspended the last three years on condition that Ducque engage with any addiction programmes run by the Probation Services.

Ducque's 39 previous convictions include robbery, burglary, drug-dealing and a number of theft and road traffic offences.

Addiction

Lawyers for Ducque said that, up to 2007, he had worked as a painter and decorator, but he developed a drug addiction and became homeless.

His convictions arose from his poly-substance abuse, which included heroin.

Last December, Judge Ryan imposed a five-year sentence with two suspended on Ducque after he admitted carrying out a robbery on Greenville Street, Dublin on April 5, 2013. He was charged with the carjacking offence last November.

Mr Fairman expressed satisfaction with the sentence, but said his life will never be the same again since the attack.
"He regrets his foolish decision to get involved in this enterprise," said defence solicitor Matthew Kenny Stock photo: Getty

A teenager had 400 worth of cocaine in a schoolbag when gardai stopped a car in which he was travelling, a court heard.

Landscaper Andrew Lynch (19) was told he can avoid a criminal record if he donates two weeks' wages - 600 - to charity.

Lynch, of Pace Avenue, Clonee, pleaded guilty to poss- ession of cocaine with intent to sell or supply. He also admitted a related charge of simple possession.

The incident happened at Damastown Road, Mulhuddart, last December 29.

Sgt Maria Callaghan told Blanchardstown District Court that gardai on patrol at 3.40am stopped a car and got a strong smell of cannabis when it was opened and they spoke to the occupants.

They searched the vehicle and a schoolbag was discovered on the back seat.

This contained cannabis with a street value of 400, said Sgt Callaghan.

Foolish

Lynch took responsibility for the drugs and was cooperative when interviewed.

He had no previous convictions of any kind.

"He regrets his foolish decision to get involved in this enterprise," said defence solicitor Matthew Kenny.

To his credit, he had no previous convictions and has not come to the attention of the gardai since.

The court heard Lynch was currently working as a landscaper.

Mr Kenny asked Judge John Lindsay to consider adjourning the case to give his client time to pay compensation to avoid a conviction.

He said a lot of "doors would be closed to him for ever" if he were convicted.

Sgt Callaghan said the gardai had no difficulty with this.

Judge Lindsay adjourned the case to a date next month and said he would strike the charge out if the charity donation to MS Ireland is paid.

The defendant, who did not address the court during the hearing, was remanded on continuing bail.
Ryanair is likely to feed passengers to the Aer Lingus long-haul network as part of what would be an unprecedented formal agreement between the two former arch rivals, according to IAG chief executive Willie Walsh.

The two airlines have held high-level talks at various stages over the past year or more on a so-called interlining model.

It could see Ryanair feeding passengers from its extensive network at Dublin to Aer Lingus routes serving North America.

Speaking yesterday en route to San Jose in California, as British Airways launched an inaugural flight to the city from Heathrow, Mr Walsh said that while nothing concrete has been agreed between Aer Lingus and Ryanair, a feeder agreement is almost certain to be inked at some stage.

Talks

"I'd be surprised if we don't reach agreement with them at some point," said Mr Walsh.

"There were very advanced talks with Aer Lingus at a high level. I briefly discussed it with Michael (O'Leary), but we had senior people in Aer Lingus discuss it with senior people in Ryanair. We've no objection to working with them. If customers want to connect from a Ryanair flight, we're very happy to do that. There were some commercial issues, but I think it's workable."

IAG, which also owns British Airways, Iberia and Vueling, acquired Aer Lingus last year for 1.36bn. Ryanair had tried three times to buy the rival airline but was blocked by Brussels.

Mr Walsh said IAG remains open to the feeder idea and that there's "no objection to it".

"It would be more of an option for Aer Lingus (than BA or Iberia) because of the Ryanair network at Dublin Airport," he said. "If we can reach a commercial agreement with Ryanair, and if customers want to do it: absolutely, no problem.

"Ryanair has an interesting network into Dublin from cities not served by Aer Lingus, and unlikely to be served by Aer Lingus. So, anything that improves the connectivity onto our transatlantic (network) is something that would be attractive for us."

Mr Walsh said Ryanair is likely to only provide feeder passengers to other airlines "where it's convenient for Ryanair".

Stunning

"They're not going to change their schedule or their modus operandi to facilitate someone else," he said.

Mr Walsh added that Ryanair's change to its customer service model has been "stunning".

The IAG chief executive said he doesn't agree with Mr O'Leary's prediction that legacy carriers such as British Airways or Lufthansa will eventually cull their short-haul networks.

Last month, Mr O'Leary said Ryanair will trial interlining at London Stansted and Barcelona later this summer.

He said that would allow passengers travelling from cities that may not have a major Ryanair route network, such as Belfast, to connect to other Ryanair services at Stansted to onwards destinations.
LOS ANGELESModelCentro has announced a CamCon campaign that includes the use of its newly released crowdfunding functionality.

Models using ModelCentro as their membership site platform can now enable a widget that helps them raise money toward attending CamCon, the upcoming webcam conference in Miami that ModelCentro is sponsoring.

ModelCentro said it would like to give two models "the CamCon 2016 Model experience." Those models who raise the most funds via the new widget, even if short of the necessary amount to attend, will be fully covered and attend the event with the help of ModelCentro. For details about the CamCon campaign, visit modelcentro.com/mc-blog.

CamCon is a great event with which to start off this functionality, said Natalie Ray, ModelCentro project manager. Models will be able to use this feature with other events and other fundraising endeavors. The CamCon Campaign is easily enabled on the model's admin interface, so we encourage all models to give crowd-funding a try.

ModelCentro is the platform that enables models to create and run their own membership site without having to manage billing and hosting.
LOS ANGELES, CA  Bespectacled brunette Dava Foxx is featured in another new release, which streeted this week. She is featured prominently on the cover of Reality Kings Moms Lick Teens 2.

Foxx's scene, originally released online at MomsLickTeens.com co-starred a then-18 year-old Liza Rowe. Foxx tries to teach her lazy stepdaughter some responsibility, so she hires Rowe to work for her private company. Foxx teaches Rowe exactly how she expects her to take care of her high-end clients, with very hands on training.



"It was a lot of fun to take Liza's GG v-card. She was great to work with," said Foxx.



The DVD also includes scenes starring Veronica Avluv and Cherie DeVille, among others.

Visit Davas official website, TheDavaFoxx.com.
Several Republican lawmakers from the Mountain Empire said Thursday they support New York businessman Donald Trump as the partys likely nominee for president after he won the Indiana primary Tuesday.

After a long primary process, I am glad the Republicans have a presumptive nominee, said U.S. Rep. Phil Roe, R-Johnson City. As I've said from the beginning, I will support our nominee. It's time for Republicans to unite, and I am enthusiastically supporting Donald Trump. I look forward to helping him in any way that I can to take back the White House in November.

Across the state line in Virginia, U.S. Rep. Morgan Griffith, R-Salem, said he also supports Trump.

Having four more years of policies like those of [President] Barack Obama is damaging to our country and our region, Griffith said.

Tennessee Rep. Jon Lundberg, R-Bristol, admitted that Trump was not his first choice.

But I have warmed up to him, said Lundberg, who is running for state Senate to replace Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey, R-Blountville, who chose not to seek re-election.

Lundberg added that in recent memory, those representing the two parties always say theyre going to bring change to Washington, but they never do. He believes Trump will bring change.

Ramsey has been a vocal supporter of Trump since he won the states Republican primary in March.

Our choice is clear, Ramsey said in a statement. The time for hesitation is over. All doubts must be removed. After eight years of Barack Obama, America simply cannot afford Hillary Clinton in the White House.

Clinton, the frontrunner for the Democratic Party, must be stopped, Ramsey said, and Trump can stop her.

Trump has given voice to frustrated and alienated voters who had all but given up on the political process, Ramsey said. He is building a coalition that can defeat Hillary Clinton and make America great again, but only if all Republicans and conservatives unite with him.

Ramsey congratulated the more than a dozen other candidates who sought the Republican Partys nomination.

Outside the Mountain Empire, the Associated Press reports that a number of Republican politicians have said they will not or are not ready to endorse Trump, including former GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney and current Speaker of the House Paul Ryan.

Susan Swecker, chairwoman of the Democratic Party of Virginia, issued a statement after Trump became the likely nominee.

Donald Trump is the most dangerous person who has ever been nominated by a national party, Swecker said. He cannot be trusted with our military, nuclear weapons and diplomatic relations. Donald Trump is not suited to be commander in chief of the United States of America. His policies would drive our economy into ruin, subvert the status of women in the United States, and cause irreparable damage to the international world order.

She added that Trump is dangerous, not fit to be president and Democrats are united to defeat him.

In Tennessee, state Democratic Party Chairwoman Mary Mancini also said Trump is dangerous.

Donald Trump has built his campaign on fear, stoking the embers of racism, sexism, and xenophobia that still remain in this country, but that hasnt stopped the Tennessee Republicans from endorsing and actively campaigning for him, Mancini said.
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP)  North Carolina's prized public universities could be the biggest losers as state leaders defend a new law limiting the rights of LGBT people.

The 17-university system, which includes the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and North Carolina State University as well several historically black colleges, risks losing more than $1.4 billion in federal funds if the Republicans who run the Legislature don't reverse the law. The U.S. Justice Department wants an answer by the end of business on Monday.

That deadline was set in letters this week to University of North Carolina leaders, Gov. Pat McCrory and the state's public safety agency, warning that the law violates civil rights protections against sex discrimination in education and employment.

If the DOJ follows through on its enforcement threat, tens of thousands of students also could lose around $800 million in federally backed loans that cannot be borrowed to attend institutions that violate Title IX of the federal Civil Rights Act, UNC spokeswoman Joni Worthington said Thursday.

"It's a very big stick," said Katharine Bartlett, the former law school dean at nearby Duke University. "The federal government is giving funds under certain conditions."

State legislative leaders vowed to resist what they describe as Washington's bullying, but it remains to be seen how far they'll go to defend a position compromised by a federal appellate ruling in Virginia last month.

The North Carolina law requires transgender people to use bathrooms and locker rooms conforming with their birth certificates, rather than their gender identity, and leaves LGBT people out of a statewide anti-discrimination code that also bars local governments from providing additional protections.

UNC President Margaret Spellings is two months into her new job, having succeeded Tom Ross, who was pushed out last year after the university system's governing board was overhauled by the state's ascendant Republican leaders. They have been eager to revamp a system that many consider the state's leading bastion of liberal thinkers.

Now, the former Education Secretary to President George W. Bush has found her leadership tested as she steers the UNC system between the conservatives who just appointed her and the federal agency she once led.

Spellings was criticized by LGBT student groups for not doing more to lobby against the law before it was approved in a daylong special session in March. She declared that while the UNC system is obligated to follow the law, campuses need not make any significant changes to comply with it. The law lacks any enforcement mechanism, and the schools will not venture to impose one on their own, she said.

She also said she hoped legislators would change the law, and in yet another statement, she acknowledged that UNC students, faculty and staff are "hurt, angry and even afraid" as a result of the law.

She said the UNC administration's "factual guidance on the requirements of the law has been misinterpreted by many as an endorsement. ... Nothing could be further from the truth."

"This law is sending a chill throughout the University of North Carolina," she continued, harming recruitment and retention, prompting alumni to take back donations, and major conferences to be delayed, canceled or moved out of state.

None of these statements prevented the Justice Department from declaring that UNC remains in violation of federal law  a determination that she said she takes seriously.

It seems unlikely that state and federal authorities will allow the impasse to continue to the point where UNC actually loses this money. While the Education Department has in the past withheld federal funds due to a Title IX violation, in the past decade the agency has reached settlements instead, spokeswoman Dorie Nolt said in an email.

"It's not really in anybody's interest that North Carolina loses," Bartlett said. "Who loses from that? All the children and young adults involved in the education system of North Carolina. A lot of people get hurt."

The DOJ letters cited the appellate ruling protecting a Virginia high school student's right to use bathrooms aligned with his new gender identity, which also applies to North Carolina and other states in the Fourth Circuit.

A similar case in suburban Chicago was settled after the Education Department threatened the loss of millions in federal funding, but a group of parents in that district, in Palatine, Illinois, sued Wednesday to challenge the Obama administration's interpretation of Title IX to include gender identity.

This interpretation is "just beginning to be tested in court," said John Dinan, who teaches about state-federal relations at Wake Forest University.

The conservative legal group that filed the Illinois lawsuit says the Obama administration's position is flawed.

"Title IX is very clear in its plain language that schools can maintain restrooms and locker rooms based on biological sex because this is the only logical way to protect the rights of all students," said Kelly Fiedorek, a lawyer with Alliance Defending Freedom. What the federal agencies are "trying to say is that sex should be interpreted to include gender identity, which is very fluid."
CHATSWORTH, Calif.Elegant Angel has begun shipping Lesbian Workout 2, which will arrive in stores on Monday, May 9. The all-girl feature, directed by Pat Myne, is a followup to the 2012 debut of the series, which featured adult star Sunny Leone on the cover.

But director Pat Myne is pretty darn pleased with the cast of the new volume. "Starring Abella Danger and A.J. Applegate, the rest of this hot lesbian sex-ercise cast also includes Eva Angelina, Adriana Sephora, Vanessa Veracruz, Abigail Mac, Valentina Nappi and our very own SlutWoman, Aidra Fox. These beauties don't just work out their incredible bodiesthey go even harder on each other. This title is surely one of the hottest lesbian movies we've ever produced!" said the veteran helmsman.

Elegant Angel's Jerry E summed it up: "We all love to watch how women work out in the gym. In Lesbian Workout 2, we undoubtedly take the workout genre to the next level!"



Retailers can catch a glimpse of the box cover and trailer here.

For sales, contact Jerry at [email protected] or (818) 576-9464.

For broadcast and foreign inquiries, email him at [email protected]

For more information on Elegant Angel, visit ElegantAngel.com, the Elegant Angel blog or follow on Twitter.
ATLANTAAward-winning performer and Penthouse model Kelly Shibari recently served as a reference figure model for Pam Poovey from Archer.

The hit animated series from FX featured an action sequence highlighting the popular character in its most recent episode, and the shows senior illustrator reached out to Shibari to help out in a pinch.

Im so incredibly thrilled! says Kelly. Not only am I a huge fan of the show, Im a fan specifically of Pam  she will always be Shiro Kabocha to me! To have the shows senior illustrator ask me to send him a photo sequence of poses, so he can create my favorite character in a fight sequence, is a dream come true. It definitely was a lot of fun to watch it on screen, and very difficult to keep this under wraps the past few months.

Shibari posed for action poses for the episode Bel Panto: Part II, where Poovey is disguised as an evil clown during a Die Hard-esque hostage situation, which naturally gets out of control.

We received a note asking for a more dynamic pose for Pam in this particular scene, says Floyd County Productions/Archer Senior Illustrator Stephen Slesinski. The animators were working against a tight deadline so we needed to get them new assets quickly. Unfortunately, our regular Pam model had already gone home for the day. Because of the realistic style of the show, the illustration department needs to work from photo reference to keep proportions and action consistent. I reached out to Kelly to see if she was available to lend us a hand on short notice."

Archer is an American animated comedy series for the FX network. The first four seasons are set at the International Secret Intelligence Service and surround suave master spy, Sterling Archer, as he deals with global espionage; a domineering, late middle-aged mother/boss, Malory Archer; his ex-girlfriend, Agent Lana Kane; accountant Cyril Figgis; and a less-than-masculine code name"Duchess.

The current (seventh) season premiered on March 31, changing its setting to Los Angeles and following the main characters as they run the Figgis detective agency in Hollywood.

To view the latest episode of Archer, visit FXNetworks.com. A trailer for the episode can be seen at YouTube.com; the show airs Thursdays at 10 p.m. PST/EST on FX.

Fans may follow the highly accessible Penthouse model at Twitter and Facebook.
Halloween is coming! Here's when to trick or treat in your town
CYBERSPACEBusty British performer Lexi Lowe has triumphed in April's Dogfart Girl of the Month contest, which has garnered her the $2,000 grand prize.

"I'm so happy I won #DogfartGOTM," Lowe said. "I loved my time in America and shooting for Dogfart was one of the highlights of my trip. I love my scenes and I'm glad my fans do too!"

Katrina Jade, Shawna Lenee, Priya Price and Dee Siren round out the top 5 contestants, and each will take home a cash prize of $250.

According to Dogfart, due to the increasing popularity of the DogfartGOTM contest, voting will now start on the 10th of each month. A Dogfart rep explained, "Every day, new members are added to the Dogfart Network. And we decided to lengthen the contest voting period in order to give more members, who were unaware of the contest, the opportunity to vote."

Voting for the next Dogfart Girl Of The Month contest will start on May 10. The social media competition awards cash prizes to the top five girls whove had their fans tweet I Vote (@Username) for #DogfartGOTM. Any female performer who has shot for Dogfart is eligible.
What you need to know about Powerball and the $610 million jackpot
Two representatives of the Jewish Federation of Greater Orlando joined more than 200 participants from seven countries who gathered April 10-12 in Baltimore for the 8th Annual PJ Library Conference.

Jennifer Cohen, JFGO's director of Outreach and Engagement, and Aleah Mathews, volunteer co-chair of JFGO's Shalom Families committee, represented Greater Orlando at the conference.

PJ Library, a program of the Harold Grinspoon Foundation that is administered and subsidized locally by the Jewish Federation, delivers free age-appropriate Jewish books and music each month to families with children ages 6 months to 8 years. Shalom Families is a Federation outreach program that engages young families in regular events that incorporate PJ Library books and lessons.

The goal of the April conference was to share knowledge, make connections, grow local programs and build friendships - all with the purpose of creating stronger bonds among Jewish families in local communities and around the world.

The conference kicked off with a warm welcome from Harold Grinspoon, the founder and visionary of PJ Library, and foundation President Winnie Grinspoon. Since its inception eight years ago, PJ Library has sent 13,940,728 books to families raising Jewish children. The Grinspoon Foundation estimates that at least 1 million people (children, siblings, parents, grandparents and caregivers) will have had contact with the 435,695 books sent out in April alone.

In Central Florida, about 500 families receive PJ Library books and music each month. This fall, Orlando's PJ Library program will celebrate its 6th birthday-and its 25,000th book delivered.

At the conference, Cohen and Mathews had the opportunity to meet and share ideas with representatives of other PJ Library communities in various networking groups. The opening session culminated with a presentation by keynote speaker Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg, author of the book "Nurture the Wow: Finding Spirituality in the Frustration, Boredom, Tears, Poop, Desperation, Wonder, and Radical Amazement of Parenting."

Cohen said the conference offered opportunities to learn and engage at virtually every turn, through workshops, strategy sessions and more.

"Every minute of the day was spent learning-even during meals," she said. "The meal table sessions gave us the chance to speak with various program professionals in very small groups on a wide range of topics-everything from social media to grant applications."

Cohen said her experience at the conference confirmed that the Orlando Federation's PJ Library/Shalom Families program is doing an effective job of building meaningful, lasting relationships among families.

"Aleah and I certainly came away with some wonderful new ideas, but it was also great to see how far our local PJ/Shalom Families program has progressed," Cohen said.

One impact that the Orlando PJ community is having at the national level, Cohen said, is that PJ Library is now featuring photos of Orlando's local programs and PJ Library families in their marketing collateral.

"The national PJ Library program highlighted our community in their December issue of PROOF Magazine, and when you visit the PJ Library website at PJLibrary.org, you'll see photos of some of our local children and families," Cohen said.

Mathews said the national conference was both rewarding and motivating.

"Attending this conference was an absolutely energizing experience," Mathews said. "Grasping the scope of how absolutely vast this organization is was truly eye-opening. PJ Library connects with so many Jewish families in so many countries, and I loved witnessing the amazing talent of so many connected to PJ Library."

See more on the PJ Library Orlando Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/PJLibraryOrlando.
The endorsements of Chiune Sugihara and Jan Zwartendijk, the Japanese and Dutch consuls, respectively, in Kovno, Lithuania, appear on the Leidimas, or travel document, that allowed Isaac Lewin and his family to escape Lithuania in 1940. Nathan Lewin, now a prominent attorney, is the 4-year-old boy in the arms of his mother, Peppy Sternheim Lewin.

(JTA)-The story of Chiune Sugihara-the Japanese consul in Kovno, Lithuania, who disobeyed his government's orders in 1940 and issued transit visas through Japan to thousands of Jews seeking to flee war-torn Europe-wasn't widely known until 1985, when Yad Vashem, Israel's Holocaust memorial authority, honored him as one of the Righteous Among the Nations.

But I grew up hearing Sugihara's story because he saved my father's life. My father, the attorney Nathan Lewin, is a Sugihara survivor.

I also have a family connection to something that few others have known until very recently-the answer to a long unsolved mystery surrounding Sugihara's rescue of an estimated 6,000 Jews.

Why did the Dutch consul in Kovno, Jan Zwartendijk, begin issuing the "Curacao visas"-the Dutch endorsements that appeared to permit travel to the island of Curacao, Holland's territory off South America upon which Sugihara relied when issuing visas? Why did Zwartendijk begin writing in Jewish passports that a visa was not needed to travel to Curacao?

The answer: my late grandmother. Peppy Sternheim Lewin, the recipient of the first Curacao visa, is the "missing link" in the story.

My grandmother was a Dutch citizen, raised and educated in Amsterdam. After she married my grandfather, Dr. Isaac Lewin, she moved to his home country, Poland. When the Nazi army invaded Poland in September 1939, my grandmother's parents and her brother were visiting her in Lodz, my father's birthplace. My great-grandfather promptly flew back to Amsterdam to take care of his business. He later perished at Auschwitz.

My grandmother's mother, Rachel Sternheim, and her brother, Leo Sternheim, were smuggled with my grandparents and my father, who was then 3 years old, over the border into Lithuania.

In Lithuania, my grandmother sought help from the Dutch diplomats because her mother and brother were Dutch citizens and because she had been a Dutch citizen prior to marrying my grandfather. She initially asked Zwartendijk, who was in Kovno, if he could issue her a visa to the Dutch East Indies, which included Java and Sumatra. He refused. So she wrote to the Dutch ambassador in Riga, L.P.J. de Decker. He also turned down her request for a visa to Java or Sumatra.

Refusing to be discouraged, my grandmother, who was then in Vilna-a short trip from Kovno-wrote to de Decker again and asked him whether there was any way he could possibly help her family because it included Dutch citizens. The ambassador replied that the Dutch West Indies, including Curacao and Surinam, were available destinations where no visa was needed. The governor of Curacao could authorize entry to anyone arriving there.

My grandmother again wrote to de Decker asking whether he could note the Curacao or Surinam exception in her still-valid Polish passport. She asked the envoy to omit the additional note that permission of the governor of Curacao was required. After all, she pointed out, she really did not plan to go to Curacao or Surinam.

de Decker replied, "Send me your passport." So she did.

On July 11, 1940, de Decker wrote in her passport in French, "The Consulate of the Netherlands, Riga, hereby declares that for the admission into Surinam, Curacao, and other possessions of the Netherlands in the Americas, no entry visa is required."

My grandmother then showed Zwartendijk what the Dutch ambassador had written in her passport and asked him to copy it onto my grandparents' Leidimas-the temporary travel document they had been issued by the Latvian government after the existence of Poland was officially nullified by the Nazi invasion. On July 22, 1940, Zwartendijk agreed and wrote de Decker's notation on my grandparents' travel papers. That is how my grandparents and my father received the very first Curacao visa.

Relying on Zwartendijk's notation, Sugihara agreed to give my grandparents (and my grandmother's mother and brother, who were still Dutch citizens) transit visas through Japan on their purported trip to Curacao. Sugihara issued their visas on July 26, 1940. The Japanese consul kept a list of the names of the individuals to whom he issued visas. My great-grandmother, Rachel Sternheim, is No. 16 on the list; my grandfather, whose Leidimas included my grandmother and my father, is No. 17, and my great-uncle, Levi (Leo) Sternheim, received Sugihara's 18th visa.

The number of visas Sugihara issued jumped exponentially on July 29, 1940, when hundreds of Jews who had escaped to Vilna learned of my grandmother's successful effort. They crowded outside the Japanese consulate in Kovno (Kaunas in Lithuanian) hoping Sugihara would issue them a visa. Sugihara worked around the clock for a month, issuing 2,139 visas, including to whole families. These enabled the refugees to take the trans-Siberian railroad from Moscow to Vladivostok, and then travel by boat from Russia to Japan, supposedly en route to Curacao.

The story of Sugihara and his rescue is told in a feature film, "Persona Non Grata," that had its premiere in October and is now making the rounds at Jewish film festivals across the country. It screened recently at the Washington Jewish Film Festival and was shown again in Washington, D.C., last month as part of CineMatsuri, the Japanese Film Festival in the Nation's Capital. Although my grandmother's role is one of the unsolved mysteries in the film, my father was asked to share his mother's tale after a CineMatsuri screening.

There are perhaps 100,000 descendants of Sugihara survivors alive today. It is humbling to think that it was my grandmother's initiative and perseverance that opened up this travel route to safety for so many.

Alyza D. Lewin is a partner at the Washington, D.C., firm of Lewin & Lewin, LLP, where she practices law together with her father.
ISRAEL21c-Two guys walk into a New York City bar in 2003 and meet a couple of Brazilian women.

"What do you miss most from home?" the men ask. "Agua de coco," the women answer. Coconut water.

In 2004, the two men found Vita Coco, which takes off like wildfire as consumers everywhere seek alternatives to sugary soft drinks.

Today, Vita Coco is the global market leader in coconut water, the clear nutritious liquid inside young green coconuts. The company has 10 manufacturing facilities in eight tropical countries, which altogether utilize two million coconuts daily.

"In the US we have 45 to 50 percent of the market share. Coconut water sales in the US are $1.2 billion per year and $1.9 billion globally," says Ira Liran, the Israeli-born member of the founding duo, who followed his love to Sao Paulo.

Celebrity investors including Madonna, Demi Moore, Rihanna, Matthew McConaughey and Anthony Kiedis of the Red Hot Chili Peppers love the drink and Vita Coco's social initiatives in communities where the coconuts are sourced, ranging from scholarships for farmers' children to sustainable farming programs.

"I never dreamed it would be this successful. My original plan was to sustain my life in Brazil," Liran tells ISRAEL21c during one of his frequent trips to visit family in Israel. "But we knew we had something special on our hands."

For full story go to israel21c.org
David Harel's paternal grandparents, Bertha and Gustav, are shown here in May 1939 with two of their six children: Irma, left, and Resha.

By Hillel Kuttler

The "Seeking Kin" column aims to help reunite long-lost relatives and friends.

(JTA)-"If only," it's the most common regret expressed by "Seeking Kin" interviewees, and by genealogists generally.

David Harel has dug into his family's history impressively, but second-guesses himself for never asking his late father, Yaakov Halberstadt, key questions before Halberstadt died at 96 in 2010, or for not pressing to address other mysteries.

Harel, 74, who lives on Kibbutz Yavne, near Israel's Mediterranean coast, wants to locate relatives who settled in the United States more than a half-century ago. Where they settled, he doesn't know.

The relatives are the descendants of Itta (or Ida) Hermann, nee Rothschild, and her husband, Sigmund. Itta was the sister of Harel's paternal grandmother, Bertha Halberstadt. They had three other siblings: Hedwig, a 2-year-old who died in 1873; Bernard, born May 15, 1872; and Lina, born on Dec. 3, 1874, and died on April 1, 1923.

In about 1935, the Hermanns immigrated to Johannesburg, South Africa, from the German village of Hochst an der Nidda, near Frankfurt. At some point-Harel thinks in the 1950s or '60s-the Hermanns all moved to the United States with their daughters Bertel and Selma and sons Ernst and Julius.

Harel hasn't a clue where they lived in America, in what professions they worked, the names of the children's spouses or the names of anyone in the next generations. He knows Bertel was married on Oct. 2, 1937, but doesn't know her married name.

Bertha and her husband, Harel's grandfather Gustav Halberstadt-his Hebrew name was Gershon-were murdered in the Holocaust. Gustav had run a business selling farm equipment.

Yaakov and his five siblings (another sister, Frieda, died in infancy) had fled from Germany-the three boys settled in prestate Israel, the three girls in Manchester, England-within about a year of Kristallnacht, the orchestrated pogroms across Germany and Austria in early November 1938. During Kristallnacht, Yaakov's two brothers-his twin Leo and Irving-along with Gustav were arrested and detained in Dachau and Buchenwald before being released.

From South Africa, the Hermanns wrote to Bertha regularly, with each person contributing a paragraph or two. Bertha passed along some snippets or the whole letters when she wrote to Yaakov, who had moved to prestate Israel in 1936. The correspondence yielded rich information about Harel's grandparents' struggles during the Nazi period, along with facts about the South Africans.

Harel knows that one of the latter's Johannesburg addresses was on David Street, in 1937; another was 123A Terrace Road, in 1938.

Oct. 10, 1937: "Through your Aunt Itta, we today bought only 15 pounds of meat, including bones, because she sent less [money] than usual," Bertha wrote to Yaakov.

Jan. 2, 1938: "We received a letter today from Itta. Selma has gotten engaged. They moved residences to a further-out suburb."

Jan. 15, 1939: "Your Uncle Julius, in South Africa, sent me 18 [German] Marks. Aunt Itta is not feeling well."

March 30, 1939: "Aunt Itta in South Africa has died."

These quotations come from the more than 100 of Bertha's letters that Yaakov saved. Whenever David and his sister Rachel asked about the letters, Yaakov wasn't forthcoming.

"When I die, you'll find them," he'd say.

Shortly before Yaakov's death, Harel noticed a box atop a cabinet in his father's apartment on Rabbi Chaim Berlin Street, in Jerusalem's Rechavia neighborhood. David and Rachel found the letters inside after Yaakov died. They figured he'd moved the box there so it'd be found.

David photocopied the letters and donated the originals to Israel's national archive. He hired someone to translate them from German, but still, "the text is filled with question marks of what I don't know."

A retiree of the kibbutz's hatchery, Harel took five of his grandchildren in September to his ancestral village, which he'd already visited six times, including twice with his parents. So small was the place that its Jewish population consisted of two extended families-nearly all the men being kohanim, members of the traditional priestly class.

That's why, he said, Hochst an der Nidda was dubbed Kfar Hakohanim, or priests' village.

"I wanted to show them the places, the buildings, the synagogue structure, the cemetery. If I didn't take them, who would?" Harel said. "When my soul returns to the Holy One, blessed be He, no one will know where these places are. It was important to me that my grandchildren know."

UPDATE:

On Oct. 12, Yad Vashem bestowed the honor Righteous Among the Nations upon Angele Larose, the late Belgian woman who hid Tova Lowenbraun during World War II.

Tanya Klein's application to the Holocaust-commemoration institution on behalf of Lowenbraun, her mother, was the subject of a "Seeking Kin" column in 2014. Larose and her daughter Marguerite had hidden Lowenbraun on the elder Larose's farm in the village of Villers-Poterie.

Klein, a Baltimorean, attended the ceremony along with Lowenbraun, who lives in a Jerusalem nursing home. They also flew in Angele's nephew, Andre Larose, and his wife, Veronique, from Belgium.

"I'm so happy," Klein said. "I have such a sense of completion that the mission I started five or six years ago-to find the people who saved my mother and thank them-has now ended with their names being preserved for posterity, eternally inscribed at Yad Vashem for everyone to see."

She added, speaking of "Seeking Kin": "It's all thanks to you. You said, 'You should call Yad Vashem and get this going.' So I did, and look what happened!"

Please email Hillel Kuttler at seekingkin@jta.org if you know the whereabouts of the Hermann clan with roots in Hochst an der Nidda, Germany. If you would like "Seeking Kin" to write about your search for long-lost relatives and friends, please include the principal facts and your contact information in a brief email. "Seeking Kin" is sponsored by Bryna Shuchat and Joshua Landes and family in loving memory of their mother and grandmother, Miriam Shuchat, a lifelong uniter of the Jewish people.
Amy Schumer Tries Out Tinder On A Stranger's Account

Trending News: Amy Schumer Took Over A Stranger's Tinder Account. Hilarity Ensued

Why Is This Important?

Because you should never, ever, let someone in a relationship swipe for you on Tinder.

Long Story Short

Amy Schumer hijacked a stranger's Tinder account and got some matches, but they didn't work out so well.

Long Story

If you're a Tinder user, here's a lesson for you  do not, whatever you do, let anyone in a relationship know you have Tinder on your device. What they'll do is pretty much what Amy Schumer did to this Vanity Fair associate during a photo shoot for the magazine's front cover (as seen via The Daily Mail).

Claiming to have never used the dating app before, Schumer asked Andrea Cuttler, the owner of the Tinder account she just hijacked, which way to swipe if she likes the guy (right is correct).

Schumer proceeded to swipe through guys, rejecting them for silly and crude reasons that are probably not that different from how everyone swipes, but just said aloud and with Schumer's signature style of humor.

The comedian's first match is a guy named Michael. "Michael you're 35 like I'm 25," she said, even though Cuttler is actually 31."'A guitar in a picture is a big red flag. That is the clearest you are just trying to get p***y at a party move."

She goes on to rip a guy named Nevada who is topless in his profile photo. "If you're not wearing a shirt in your profile photo, stop."

Good to know eh guys?

When she does finally get a match, with a 38-year-old New York City Firefighter (a gimme job on Tinder) named Thomas.

"How bout lightin my fiya?'" she wrote, assuring Andrea that he probably won't respond. But he did.

"Sure, I'd love to! How are you?" said Thomas.

It was a good response, but Schumer was over it.

She proceeded to say she's "bloated and hemorrhaging," which would be sure to lose any guy, but Thomas keeps on, saying: "Ha. Well. Good to Know."

The conversation didn't go far from there.

Watch the full video below:

Own The Conversation

Ask The Big Question

Was Schumer being particularly harsh for the cameras, or is this a good example of how some women swipe on Tinder?

Disrupt Your Feed

That wasn't funny, like at all.

Drop This Fact

Schumer took her boyfriend Ben Hanisch to the Met Gala in New York this week and posted a photo of them on Instagram with the caption: "I'm glad I Met his Balls"
A monthly update on current issues from the Jewish Federation of Greater Orlandos Jewish Community Relations Council

Hello, and welcome to the first monthly column from the Jewish Community Relations Council! We look forward to sharing news, information, and action items on how you can make a difference in Central Florida and beyond.

For our first column, we want to simply introduce ourselves and tell you what we do. As part of the Jewish Federation of Greater Orlando, the mission of the Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC) is to live our Jewish interests and values by engaging in public affairs and public policy through advocacy, education and social action with a unified, accurate and informed voice.

We are one of about 125 JCRCs around the country, most of which are part of Federations, and we are fortunate to have an outstanding umbrella agency, the Jewish Council on Public Affairs, which provides us with briefings from top government and issue experts, helps connect us to speakers and stands ready to answer our questions.

JCRC has three primary areas of focus: Israel advocacy, community relations, and tikun olam (repairing the world), all of which are undergirded with the values of mutual respect and fostering understanding. As a nonpartisan, nondenominational group, JCRC is mindful that we represent a diverse community, and recognize that we must, to the best of our ability, recognize All Jews, all views. We aim to serve as the convener of all Jewish organizations, agencies and religious institutions around issues relevant to the Jewish community.

JCRC ensures that the Jewish community is represented when and where important decisions are made in Central Florida. For example, JCRC members now serve as school board liaisons to the Orange and Seminole County school boards, attending meetings and reporting back any issues. We serve as a rapid-response team when issues of separation of church and state, anti-Semitic or anti-Israel bias or ignorance surface within Central Florida; most recently, JCRC members contested the content of several billboards displayed locally by a national anti-Israel group. We work to strengthen and promote a better understanding of Israel by both the Jewish and non-Jewish communities through advocacy and education, like our February session on the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, our outreach to academic and church conventions that may have BDS on their agendas, and the BDS resources on our website.

JCRC impacts city, state and federal policy through interaction with legislative leaders on issues of concern and importance to the Jewish community, most recently calling on our various members of Congress to reauthorize the Lautenberg Amendment for persecuted religious minorities. We provide the opportunity for community members to learn about various political processes, such as last summers forum with U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson on the Iran nuclear deal and an upcoming discussion with Dr. Steven Windmueller on the Jewish vote in the 2016 election. We develop positive and supportive relationships with interfaith and interethnic communities across the region, who may then become allies on issues of concern and importance to the Jewish communitywe are pleased to be co-organizing an event with the Interfaith Council and the Orlando Diocese on religious dialog this fall. And we hope to promote tikun olam through our involvement with the Central Florida Coalition for the Homeless, collecting toys and books on Community Mitzvah Day, and creating a volunteer hotline so that our community members are aware of opportunities offered by our agencies and synagogues.

We look forward to seeing you here in this space again next month! In the meantime, should you have any questions, please contact JCRCs staff director, Marli Porth, at mporth@jfgo.org.
TEL AVIV (JTA)-The Israeli Supreme Court decision on Jewish conversion changes almost nothing. But down the line, it could change a lot.

Under the March 31 ruling, the state of Israel must recognize Jewish conversions performed in private Orthodox conversion courts not run by its Chief Rabbinate. A network of such courts, called Giyur Kahalacha, or "conversion by Jewish law," began operating last year.

The ruling concerned whether three people who had converted in non-Rabbinate courts could gain Israeli citizenship. Previously, Jews by choice could only gain Israeli citizenship if they converted through the Rabbinate, or if they converted outside of Israel and lived in a Diaspora Jewish community. Foreign conversions do not need to be Orthodox.

Now, according to the ruling, those who convert in any Orthodox court in Israel may gain citizenship.

"The Jewish nation is indeed one nation, but it is spread out across the world, and is composed of communities, layers and sub-layers," the court's decision read. "Oversight of legitimate conversions is not limited to the one and only possibility" of the Rabbinate's courts.

The decision affects only a handful of people, and affords them no additional rights or privileges. It does not force the Chief Rabbinate to recognize the private conversions, nor does it require the Rabbinate to allow the converts to marry in Israel.

But advocates for religious reform say the ruling, in conferring legitimacy on private conversion, delivers yet another blow to the Rabbinate's monopoly on Jewish rites in Israel.

Rabbi Shlomo Riskin, a judge on Giyur Kahalacha courts, plans to conduct weddings for his converts. A subsequent Supreme Court case, he said, could force the Rabbinate to recognize those marriages, using Thursday's ruling as proof of the conversions' legitimacy.

"From my point of view, I have every right to marry" those who convert under his supervision, said Riskin, rabbi of the West Bank settlement of Efrat. "I'm an Orthodox rabbi, and I was told by this ruling that this conversion is a valid conversion."

A future court case, some speculate, might pave the way for more substantial change.

"This says we recognize you as part of the Jewish collective," said Rabbi Seth Farber, a founder of Giyur Kahalacha. "That has symbolic meaning. Until now, [the Rabbinate] said we can't marry someone who the state doesn't recognize as Jewish."

The decision's immediate impact is small. Israel already recognizes Orthodox conversions performed outside its borders, and Giyur Kahalacha courts have converted only about 150 people.

Those converts will still not be able to marry or divorce in Israel because those rituals are run by the Chief Rabbinate, which has vowed not to recognize the private conversions. In a statement Thursday, Chief Rabbi Yitzchak Yosef called the court ruling a "scandal."

"It is inconceivable that the private conversion industry, which is unsupervised by any government body, would be recognized as official," Yosef's statement read. "This recognition, in practice, will bring the destruction of the state's government conversion system."

This is the second time in two years that Israeli conversion policy has been subject to change. A 2014 government decision allowed any of the 30-some city rabbis in Israel to convert people-expanding authority for conversion beyond the Rabbinate's four courts.

That decision would have made conversion more flexible for approximately 400,000 Israelis-mostly Russian-speaking immigrants-with no official religion. But the decision was repealed when haredi Orthodox parties reentered the coalition last year.

If Riskin is right, and Thursday's ruling ends up allowing non-Rabbinate converts to marry, it will essentially restore the 2014 reform. For now, Israel's haredi Orthodox establishment is holding its ground. Haredi politicians have vowed to pass legislation overriding the ruling.

Israel's haredi establishment already was on the defensive before the ruling. The government voted in January to expand a non-Orthodox prayer space at the Western Wall. In February, a Supreme Court decision required state mikvahs to allow non-Orthodox conversions.

But haredi lawmakers have persuaded Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to reopen the Western Wall plan for debate. And last month, a bill overriding the mikvah ruling passed an initial vote.

No matter what happens, the Chief Rabbinate still won't accept non-Orthodox converts. Nor will Israel recognize non-Orthodox Jewish weddings, which a large majority of Israeli Jews supports. So while some activists hope the ruling will create a domino effect in Israel's religious establishment, others say the only answer is wholesale reform of government policy.

"The pressure needs to be on extending recognition that will allow civil marriage in Israel," said Uri Regev, founder of Hiddush, a religious pluralism advocacy organization. "There is no chance to get the Rabbinate to recognize these conversions."
While many Jews were shopping, cleaning, preparing a guest list and shopping list, several senior living communities in town were doing just the same for their Jewish community. Early in April, Jewish Pavilion volunteer Cathy Swerdlow led a Lunch 'n Learn at Oakmonte Village discussing the history of Pesach and its true meaning. Residents adore Swerdlow for her passion for Judaism and warm kindness. Bagels and Lox were served at this bi-monthly luncheon co-sponsored by Jewish Pavilion and Oakmonte Village.

As the month grew closer to Erev Pesach, and with the support, knowledge and coordination of the Jewish Pavilion program directors, seniors and their families enjoyed many Passover seders together.

Children of Congregation Ohev Shalom presented a few mini seders for their friends at Springhills Lake Mary and Oakmonte Village Assisted Living in Lake Mary. The laughter, smiles and singing lit up the faces of dozens of seniors who treasure the rich memories of this holiday. You might say, children and the elderly go together like matzah and butter.

Judy and Pauline with COS girls.

On the first night of Passover close to 100 people gathered at Oakmonte Village to enjoy a seder led by Swerdlow. Oakmonte served a delicious kosher-style meal while Swerdlow retold the story of our history in a way everyone could enjoy.

On the second night of Pesach, from the moment the doors opened until the final wine glass was cleared, Paul Stenzler and Terri Fine entertained a large crowd of people at Brookdale Island Lake in Longwood. Paul was on guitar and Terri held the mic with young Jason Tillman leading the candle lighting blessings for all. It was joyous event with delicious kosher-style Passover favorites and music for all to sing and clap along to.

In addition, there were dozens of other sederim taking place all over town for the many Jewish elders living in our community.

Next year in Jerusalem...

Follow Jewish Pavilion on Facebook for photos and updates and visit us at http://www.jewishpavilion.org.
(JTA)-A British Parliament member who in a 2014 Facebook post called for relocating the entire State of Israel to the United States has been suspended from the Labour Party.

Naz Shah, who is Muslim, was suspended Wednesday by Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn a day after she resigned from her post as private secretary to the Parliament's shadow chancellor. Pending an investigation, Shah is "unable to take part in any party activity," a Labour spokesman was quoted as saying in the Jewish News.

Shah published an apology in the Jewish News on Wednesday after previously apologizing for any offense she had caused with her post.

Her suspension comes amid increasing complaints about anti-Semitism in the Labour Party. It also comes a week after Malia Bouattia, a Muslim woman who is fiercely critical of Israel, was elected president of Britain's national student union.

Shah was elected to represent the Bradford West region in Parliament last year and, according to the New York Times, has been "considered a rising star in the Labour Party." In August 2014, during Israel's war with Gaza, she shared on Facebook a graphic of a map of Israel superimposed on a map of the United States with the text: "Solution for Israel-Palestine Conflict-Relocate Israel into United States" and the comment "problem solved."

The post noted that the U.S. had "plenty of land" to make Israel a "51st state," thereby permitting Palestinians to "get their life and their land back." The Guido Fawkes website publicized the post earlier this week along with another post in which Shah compared Israeli policies to policies of Nazi Germany.

In her apology, which was published before her suspension, Shah said, "I understand that referring to Israel and Hitler as I did is deeply offensive to Jewish people for which I apologise."

She explained that during the August 2014 war, "feelings were running high across the world," and she is now "shocked myself at the language I used in some instances during the Gaza-Israel conflict."

Jeremy Newmark, chair of the Jewish Labour Movement, told the Jewish News, "In suspending Naz, the party has acted fairly and consistently." Shah's "contrition over the past day seems to be genuine and sincere," he said, adding, "We are optimistic that she will now take steps to deepen her understanding of Jewish identity.

"We do not ask or expect her to mute her criticism of the actions and policies of the Israeli government. We do ask and expect her to build upon her apology and contrition with a program of education and action that includes standing up to anti-Semitism on the left and within the Palestine Solidarity Movement."

Labour Friends of Israel chair Joan Ryan told the Jewish News: "This incident underlines yet again the need for the Labour Party to take urgent action to combat anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism in all its forms."

In her Jewish News apology, Shah noted that as a member of Parliament, "I have made conscious efforts in areas around integration, building bridges and community development, in particular around Muslim and Jewish relations. Indeed one of my very first visits was to my local synagogue.

Shah noted that last week, she attended an interfaith Passover seder that included the Reform movement's senior rabbi, Laura Janner-Klausner, and the vice chair of Conservative Friends Of Israel, Andrew Percy, at Janner-Klausner's home.

"We all read from the Haggadah and learnt more about Passover," she said.
Iowa on Wednesday became the latest U.S. state to pass legislation designed to undermine the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. In a 38-9 vote with three excused absences, the Iowa Senate passed one of the strongest anti-BDS bills in the country. While all nine "no" votes came from Democrats, that party controls the State Senate with a 26-24 majority.

The prospective law would prohibit both investment and contracting by the so-called "Hawkeye State" with companies participating in BDS, either against Israel or "territories controlled by Israel." The bill also prohibits secondary boycotts by extending its ban to boycotters of those who do business in Israel or the "territories."

"This bill ensures the State of Iowa will not support those that participate in campaigns fueled by intolerance and anti-Semitism-like the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. The passing of this new law sends a clear message against the bigotry and discrimination of the BDS movement," said Peggy Shapiro, central region director of the pro-Israel education and advocacy group StandWithUs. "We welcome the fact that Iowa is joining Illinois, South Carolina, Florida, Arizona, and almost 20 states which have either passed or introduced similar legislation which rejects the boycott campaign."

Shapiro credits numerous community organizations for providing grassroots support for the Iowa bill, and particularly the Israel Allies Foundation for its leadership on the issue.

Speaking in favor of the bill, State Senate floor manager Jeff Danielson (D-Black Hawk) noted that BDS "is a movement that hopes to economically destabilize Israel and the Middle East," and that no Iowa assets should be involved in such an effort. The bill was also sponsored by State Rep. Quentin Stanerson (R-District 95), who also acted as its Senate floor manager.

"There's no scenario where we reach peace in the Middle East where Israel is economically unstable," Danielson said.

Danielson remarked on his own military service in the region with the U.S. Navy, the time and treasure that the U.S. has spent trying to maintain peaceful economic relations in the Middle East, and the high proportion of Iowans who serve in the military and have contributed to that effort.

The debate in the Iowa legislature had followed patterns reminiscent of the BDS debate in other states, with some opponents of the bill claiming that it infringed on free speech rights. Danielson explained that the bill in no way prevents private individuals from investing or conducting business as they would normally do, or from advocating for whatever foreign policy they prefer.

When Danielson introduced the bill to the Senate floor on March 3, he said that Iowa has a tradition and an interest in supporting countries with rule of law, democratic decision-making, and positive economic exchanges-all as pathways to peace. Israel, he said, meets those criteria. At that time, he also praised those who opposed the bill for their commitment to universal human rights, but disagreed with their rationale that it is necessary to economically penalize Israel in order to achieve that goal.

State Sen. Herman Quirmbach (D-Story), an opponent of the bill, claimed that forcing divestment from index funds by state university pension plans-whose holdings are directed by the plans' individual members but are held by the universities-would create an excessive administrative burden. Such broad indexes might, at some point, include among their holdings companies that participate in BDS. In other U.S. states where such bills have passed or where divestment policies have been implemented, the measures do not apply to index funds. Iowa already has divestment policies in place with respect to Iran and Sudan.

Quentin Stanerson (R-District 95)

Quirmbach, who is also an associate professor of economics at Iowa State University, argued, "In all the substantial discussion [of the bill], I have yet to hear even one member tell me how this would move us even one inch closer to peace in the Middle East." Yet immediately before the final consideration of the anti-BDS bill, the Iowa Senate unanimously passed a resolution of support for Israel that also called for negotiations leading to a permanent Israeli-Palestinian peace settlement and a Palestinian state. That resolution-sponsored by State Sen. Robert Hogg (D-Linn) on April 18-was seen as a symbolic move to balance the nature of the anti-BDS legislation with a more dovish sentiment, making it easier for some lawmakers to support it.

Quirmbach spoke in favor of the Israeli-Palestinian peace resolution, arguing that even friends like Israel need to hear tough criticism from time to time.

The anti-BDS legislation now heads to the desk of Iowa Governor Terry Branstad, who is expected to sign it.
As recently as the 1940s, anti-Semitism was so common in the United States that even the president privately told offensive jokes about Jewish immigrants in a faux New York Jewish accent.

Yet in the past few months, a candidate who is the son of Jewish immigrants and has a pronounced New York Jewish accent has won 18 presidential primaries and caucuses, and more than 6 million votes. He has received donations from more than 4 million Americansthe largest number of individual contributors to any political campaign in U.S. history.

Have American public attitudes toward Jews changed so drastically? And if so, how did it happen?

Anti-Semitism reached record levels in the U.S. in the 1940s. Polls found that more than half of all Americans considered Jews greedy and dishonest. More than one-third felt Jews had too much power. Nearly one-fourth regarded Jews as a menace to America.

Not even president Franklin D. Roosevelt was immune. He once joked privately that relatives might suspect his fifth child was Jewish, in view of what he said was the babys slightly Hebraic nose.

FDRs eldest grandson, Curtis Roosevelt, has recalled hearing the president tell mildly anti-Semitic stories in the White House, in which the protagonists were always Lower East Side Jews with heavy accents. Historians have uncovered a number of additional instances in which Roosevelt made unfriendly remarks about Jews.

That was 75 years ago. Anti-Semitism in the U.S. has not vanished in the interim, but if measured according to public opinion surveys, it certainly has decreased significantly since the World War II era. The Anti-Defamation League estimates that only about 10-15 percent of Americans still subscribe to prejudices about Jews being selfish or having too much influencein other words, less than half of the number during the Roosevelt years.

There are many factors that explain this shift in attitudesand may help explain the improbable rise of Democratic presidential contender Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.). One has to do with Jewish characters in pop culture. A number of sympathetic Jewish characters appeared in television shows, films, plays, and novels beginning in the 1970s. The influence of TV situation comedies is especially important in this context, both because of the frequency with which they appeared (every week) and because many of their Jewish characters were, like Sanders, from the older generation. The image of the older Jew as alien and off-putting began to crumble as tens of millions of Americans welcomed an array of appealing, older Jewish sitcom characters into their living rooms week after week.

The first was Rhoda Morgensterns mother, Ida, who appeared both in The Mary Tyler Moore Show (which aired from 1970-1977) and in Rhoda (1974-1978). She was difficult and meddlesome, to be sure, but ultimately she was lovable as well.

Then there was Jerrys Uncle Leo, in Seinfeld (1989-1998); Frans mother Sylvia in The Nanny (1993-1999); and Graces mother Bobbi in Will and Grace (1998-2006). Sometimes they made us cringe, but they almost always made us laugh.

Recurring older Jewish characters on Saturday Night Live should also be mentioned. An entire generation of American television audiences grew up with Jon Lovitzs Hanukkah Harry (introduced in 1989) and, especially, Mike Myerss wildly popular Linda Richman, hostess of the faux radio show Coffee Talk (1991-1995).

Bernie Sanders does not possess the youthful appearance or slick presentation that one might assume a presidential candidate requires to attract a substantial number of voters, especially from the younger generation. With his rigid ideological positions and preachy speaking style, Sanders has sometimes been described as an overbearing Jewish uncle.

That, however, is just the point. There was a time when an overbearing Jewish uncle was widely perceived as foreign, unpleasant, and worthy of derision. But for the generation that grew up with Linda Richman and Uncle Leo, Sanderss personality traits are not just tolerablethey are familiar and even endearing.

Sanders will not be the Democratic nominee for president. But his unexpected achievements as a candidate illustrate a remarkable transformation in public attitudes that has taken place, in which the cranky old Jewish socialist of yesteryear is now viewed affectionately through the prism provided by Saturday Night Live and Seinfeld.

Dr. Rafael Medoff is founding director of The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies and author of 16 books about Jewish history.
Every group of people has its betrayers. And if Jews needed a reminder of that adage, 11 Jewish law students and alumni at Harvard Law School just might have provided it. Indeed, the surprise was that it was only 11.

These students and alumni became witting apologists for Husam El-Qoulaq, the Harvard law student and Palestinian activist who invoked the anti-Semitic stereotype of the smelly Jew, when he hurled a question at former Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni as to why she was so smelly.

Livni was a panelist at a law school-sponsored forum and a guest of the university. As such, she was entitled to the norms of civility and decency that govern such discussions. Harvard has rules against personal harassment which this clearly was.

El-Qoulaq chose not to contribute to the discussion, but to sling a personal insult worthy of a gutter snipe. In an anonymously rendered apology for an incident at a public and recorded event, El-Qoulaq denied that he knew of the stereotype of the smelly Jew, albeit he offered neither justification nor regret for the insult of Livni.

But leave it to his Jewish apologists to do it for himjustification that is. Indeed, reading their open letter published in the Harvard Crimson, one expected all but to learn that indeed Livni was smelly and El-Qoulaq was only making an observation.

There is testimony that El-Qoulaq is not an anti-Semite. This requires suspension of disbelief, as El-Qoulaq has been active in Students for Justice in Palestine, a group widely denounced by Jewish organizations for its annual Israeli Apartheid Week, which is considered nothing less than an anti-Semitic hate fest.

But the apologists really outdo themselves when they say they are adding context to the incident. Here is their disingenuous and naive rationale in their own words: To add some context that has gone largely unreported, the target of Husams protest that day was Tzipi Livni, a former Israeli foreign minister. Livni played a key role in Operation Cast Lead, a 23-day military operation that was condemned by the U.N. and other credible organizations for the brutality it visited upon Palestinian civilians. In 2009, a British judge even issued a warrant to arrest Livni on allegations of war crimes for her involvement in that operation.

Yes, Livni did play a key role Operation Cast Lead, a defensive military operation launched after Israel absorbed more than 10,000 rockets and missiles, including advanced Iranian Grad missiles, from Gaza. In the southern Israeli town of Sderot, the dragon in the elementary school playground is not just a piece of playground equipment but a bomb shelter. Sderot, constantly in the eye of Hamas terrorists in Gaza, has one of the highest rates of PTSD among children anywhere in the world. The appropriate question about Operation Cast Lead is not that it was launched, but what took the Israelis so long to defend their citizens.

When it comes to Israel, the U.N. is hardly a credible organization. It routinely condemns Israel for offenses real and imaginary while ignoring far and away more egregious offenses by the worlds dictatorships. In 2015, the U.N. had passed 20 resolutions against Israel and three against the rest of the worlds nations. If Arab delegates sponsored a resolution saying that Israelis had horns and worshipped the devil, they would get at least 70 votes.

As for Livnis warrant, it happened because the United Kingdom had the only legal system in the Western world in which activists could go before a sympathetic judge and obtain an arrest warrant without prosecutorial intervention, judgment, or discretion.

Palestinian activists in the U.K. used this kind of jihadi lawfare against Israeli officials with such frequency that it became a source of national embarrassment. As our Jewish defenders of El-Qoulaq undoubtedly know, but did not take the trouble to mention in their letter to the Harvard Crimson, the U.K. had enough of this lawfare and modified the warrant law in 2011. This was in direct response to the Livni warrant two years earlier and the laws abuse.

Distinguished Jewish scholar Daniel Gordis noted on his Facebook page that we are a sick people, and the letter in defense of El-Qoulaq confirms it. We do have among us people who seem to have found a need for identifying with their aggressors.

Abraham H. Miller is an emeritus professor of political science at the University of Cincinnati and a distinguished fellow with the Haym Salomon Center.
I returned to the UK for Passover having been out of the country for about six months. Living in Florida had shielded me from the anti-Semitic goings on in the mother country, that is, until I landed.

It is not uncommon for the far right or far left in politics to heap scorn on the State of Israel or indeed for moderates to criticize its policies; the opposition party in the democratically elected country is very good at leading the charge. I have no issue with people expressing opinions with which I may not agree on the state of the Palestinian conflict, the building of settlements or even the supposed maltreatment of the minority Israeli-Arab population and I would expect nothing less from those who have never had anything good to say about Israel as par for the course. However, when a Member of Parliament (akin to a Congressman) says that Israel should be relocated to America or a former mayor of London espouses that Hitler was a Zionist wanting to send all the Jews to what is now Israel, the time to see what is really going on has arrived.

The main opposition party in the UK, the Labour Party (the party of the working people as they like to tell us and with strong historical Jewish support and funding), currently has no less than eight separate enquiries being carried out into members of its party in various senior positions both national and local resulting from anti-Semitic comments and even the deputy leader of the party has come out and said that we [the Labour Party] will get a grip on anti-Semitism. So what is going on?

The BBC is currently running an article which is high ranking on its website (www.bbc.co.uk) about the difference between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism. It is worth reading and concludes that agreement on how the two relate remains elusive. Really?

Just because someone is Jewish, it does not make them a Zionist although it should be said that the majority of Jews support the state of Israel albeit there is much debate on their policies inside the Jewish world. There are several UK Jewish groups that campaign vigorously for Palestinian rights and, while they are a small minority, they are a voice. They do not call for Israel to be relocated or wiped out and that is the point at which the blur between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism becomes clearer.

When the rhetoric changes to doing away with Israel it is not a big leap before the foul cries of Death to the Jews and Hitler was right is heard albeit wrapped up in a more politically correct manner. The old stereotypical retorts of Jews being too powerful, controlling the world and the like come into play and Jews go on the defensive arguing for their very existence against bigots whose views have not changed over two millennia and will not change now. When this becomes mainstream and questions are raised on the front pages of national newspapers asking whether the Labour party is anti-Semitic, we have reached a whole new ball game.

There are in the region of 250,000 Jews in the UK out of a population drifting toward 60 million. This simple fact seems to be as overlooked as the fact that in the world population 0.2 percent (or about 16 million Jews) are to be found, with the USA having the second largest gathering of Jews at fewer than six million. When I ask my non-Jewish friends to guess the number of Jews in the UK, the most common answer I get is about five million. Therein, lies the problem: ignorance.

The Jewish world and Israel have lost the public relations war so that in the minds of the common man Israel is a mighty political and military force in the Middle East and Jews are vast in number and are successful all over the world. Yet Jews do not blow themselves up or seek to take over the world; they merely contribute vastly to the countries in which they live and seek nothing in return, save for a peaceful existence and a right to be free: no more and no less than any other democratic-minded person. Yes, Jews proportionate to their population can be considered successful in medicine, politics, finance, law and the arts and are certainly not categorised as a minority group when it comes to positive discrimination but this benefits the societies in which they live. They do not seek to do any more than integrate into their countries and become worthwhile and patriotic citizens quite often to the detriment of the religion as so many Jews now have married out with assimilation becoming perhaps the greatest threat to the continuance of the Jewish people.

As I write this, I notice I have slipped into that common mistake of apologizing for the Jewish people and if someone has to apologize for something by implication, they must have done something wrong. And so the wheel turns.

The Jewish people need to stand tall and proud but to continue to play their part in both their chosen country of domicile and the world. Anti-Semitism will not go away anytime soon, if ever, even if Jews cured cancer or brought world peace; it is historical and deep rooted. What is more concerning is that it is becoming more mainstream and has reached the heart of the political establishment in the UK not in a covert way but so openly that the whole of the country is now discussing it. This might just be the opportunity to deal with all the ignorance that now exists and put the positive case forward whilst not being apologetic for being a Jew. The positivity about being Jewish starts now and it seems it starts in the mother country. Ironically it may be that we as Jews should be thanking the Labour Party for giving us this opportunity.

Lloyd Green is a member of Ohev Shalom and emigrated to Florida from the UK in July 2012. He lives in Heathrow and takes an active role in Jewish matters in the Central Florida area.
Loud voices of fair but not biased countries, members of the UN, and well informed but not at all anti-Semitic private citizens can be heard almost daily demanding the establishment of a Palestinian state.

Why is it not established yet?

Of course the answer of those who hate the Jewish people and Israel is: Its Israels fault.

Really?

What prevented Palestinian Arabs from accepting the UN partition plan of November 1947, which allocated to Jews a miserably small portion of the historic Jewish land (lately conveniently called Palestine), but which was nevertheless accepted by the Jews? What made Palestinian Arab leaders say no to the recognition of Israel as a Jewish state and to peace with Israel? They said no after numerous negotiations, some with the participation of U.S. presidents, and they said no after being offered to share Jerusalem, twice, and despite the settlement freeze in 2009.

The reason given by some experts is that Muslims, and Arabs in particular, have an ideological Islamic principle that land which was under their rule for some period of time must belong to them forever.

But is this the main reason?

Arabs see Israel with its 6,335,000 Jews as a drop in the ocean compared to the Arab population of the world, numbering 367,400,000, or compared to the worlds 1.6 billion Muslims. Incidentally, the total Arab population in Israel proper, Gaza and the West Bank is 6,177,000almost equal to the Jewish population of Israel.

So in many Arabs minds, there is a hope that, sooner or later, by the sheer force of their overwhelming numbers, they will be able, in their typically humane way, to throw the Jews into the sea. All that they need is just to be patient. And, being historically people of a desert, patience they have.

The actions of Hamas, encouraged by its Iranian patrons, are certainly guided by such hope. And so, instead of bettering the lives of the Gazan people, Hamas spends large portions of the resources provided by its Muslim supporters to prepare and commit terrorist acts against Israel.

Regarding the West Bank, after pushing out the Jordanian army, Israel did a lot to improve the lives of the local Arab population, in terms of economic and democratic changes.

Those who choose to call the Israeli military presence in some areas of the West Bank an occupation somehow choose to overlook the strange nature of this occupation, where the occupied have their own government, their own security forces, are free to act in the international arena, are free to run education the way they choose, are free to have elections, are free to introduce Palestinian citizenship passports, and so on.

Israel did and should do as many humane things as possible for people of the West Bank. But one thing was an obvious mistake: to allow the brainwashing and propaganda of hatred in the West Banks schools and media.

Now what is on the minds of the Israelis?

Granted, many Jews would prefer that Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) would become part of the Jewish state and that the Arabs who live there would relocate to some Arab country. But Jews are unwilling to resort to force to make this happenor adopt any sentiment similar to the idea of throwing people into the sea or the nuclear extermination with which Iran, Americas partner in nuclear negotiations, is threatening Israel.

Recognizing the realities of the existing situation of two people living on the same piece of land, Israelis (excluding a small number of Jewish extremists) are willing to accept a Palestinian Arab state in the West Bank, which would recognize the Jewish state of Israel and will be established with all necessary guarantees for Israels security.

Those loud voices demanding the establishment of a Palestinian state, no matter what, ignore Israels understanding and experience that this would turn the West Bank into one more Gaza.

With regard to the fairness of many UN members, why dont we hear the same loud voices about many similar conflicts around the world? For example, why arent there more demands that Turkey allow 16 million Turkish Kurds to establish a country of their own?

France recently came up with an initiative calling for peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. It seems that the only hope for a positive outcome is: (1) that during these negotiations Palestinian Arabs give up the idea of getting rid of Israel and recognize Israel as Jewish stateIsraels government has declared many times its willingness to recognize a Palestinian Arab state, and (2) that both sides come to the negotiations with a willingness to compromise.

Arkady Mamaysky lives in Harrison, N.Y.
Technology and healthcare have always gone hand in hand, and with the health of the world in crisis at the moment through the
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It is a sensitive matter, initiative must come from the community. Since my student days, leaders have been using this alibi for not reforming Muslim law. Which section of Muslims do they expect to come forward with an initiative? When Hindu law was reformed and codified between 1955 and 1956, the rulers faced resistance from religious circles but they were firm about leading the community out of its medieval-age traditions.

When the Christian divorce law of 1869 was liberalised by Parliament in 1991, was the proposal not opposed by church leaders? Why, then, this special treatment for the Muslims? Have there been no saner voices among them advocating necessary reforms?

Read | Muslim personal law based on Koran, judiciary cant change it: Clerics

In 1970, eminent jurist Asaf Ali Asghar Fyzee published his monograph Reform of Muslim Personal Law in India suggesting measures for necessary changes in the professedly divine law on polygamy and divorce, and ending with the remark where the human conscience is moved by rank injustice it is for us to find a solution and to bring our law into line with every other system of jurisprudence, giving justice to those to whom it is denied. Late Asghar Ali Engineer spent a life time in pressing for necessary legislative reform to ensure justice to those deprived of it in the name of a sacred law.

In 1972, former Chief Justice Mohammad Hidayatullah concluded his introduction to DF Mullas book Principles of Mahomedan Law observing that If the injunctions of the Quran and Hadith are not lost sight of, it is possible to make changes by legislation in a widening area. The lead is coming from the Muslim countries and it is to be hoped that in the course of time the same measures will be introduced in India also.

Read | Muslim women take on clergy, demand ban on triple talaq, polygamy

In the judgment in the cause celebre known as the Shah Bano case of 1985, Chief Justice YV Chandrachud honoured me by citing from one of my works my appeal to the Muslim community to display by their conduct a correct understanding of Islamic concepts on marriage and divorce. When Muslim religious circles demanded supersession of the Shah Bano ruling by legislation and the government seemed to be favourably disposed to it, former Chief Justice Hameedullah Beg (then chairing the minorities commission) advised: Although we may make some compromises with mulla-led Muslims yet we have to try to lead them out of darkness into light and not allow them to lead us into darkness.

Women have not been lagging behind. There is a long list, from Lucknows Qudsia Aizaz Rasool of the 1960s to Sadia Dehlavi of our times, pressing for social reform to free Muslim women from the shackles of the Indo-Anglican misinterpretation of Islamic law. The Lucknow-based Muslim Womens Personal Law Board and the Mumbai-based Muslim Mahila Andolan have been highlighting the plight of victims of a distorted view of Muslim law and demanding legislative action.

Read | MP: Muslims can start movement to free Waqf properties, says Heptullah

In the Sarla Mudgal case of 1995, finding that under the shelter of Islamic law on bigamy as popularly misunderstood married non-Muslims were indulging in it after sham conversion to Islam, the Supreme Court applied brakes on the fraudulent practice. Justice RM Sahai spoke of the need to codify Muslim law and advised the government to entrust the responsibility to law commission which may in consultation with minorities commission examine the matter and bring about the comprehensive legislation in keeping with modern-day concept of human rights for women Chairing the minorities commission the next year, I reminded the government of the judges advice, and repeatedly again in 2007-2009 as the only full-time member of the 18th law commission. Each time I was silenced by the powers that be citing sensitivity of Muslims about their personal law.

Two important matters concerning Muslim law are currently before the Supreme Court  a PIL on gender discrimination in Muslims law registered suo motu, and Shayara Banos case challenging constitutional validity of triple talaq. A large number of Muslim men and women, old and young, have supported favourable decisions by the court.

Do these voices in favour of reform made year after year not qualify to be taken as initiatives from the community? What are the custodians of State authority waiting for? Who do they expect to come forward asking for reform  the Deoband seminary, or the All India Muslim Personal Law Board? If so, the Muslims will have to remain content with their caricatured personal law till the Day of Judgment.

Tahir Mahmood is a professor of law, former chair of National Commission for Minorities

The views expressed are personal
The Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK)-Congress alliance kicked off the final phase of their campaign for the upcoming assembly elections in Tamil Nadu on Thursday with an alliance party meet in Chennai.

Sharing a stage for the first time in five years, Congress president Sonia Gandhi and DMK president spoke to a rapt, but a relatively small crowd of approximately 1,500 people at Island Grounds in the north of the state capital.

The number of people here shows the faith and confidence you repose in our alliance, Gandhi said.

You have gone through immense suffering, the Congress president added, referring to the devastating floods that engulfed Chennai last year.

But did the AIADMK help you? The people of Tamil Nadu came together. I salute their courage, she concluded, her voice drowned out by cheers from the crowd.

DMK supporters during the rally at Island grounds, Chennai. (Aditya Iyer/HT Photo)

Karunanidhi, for his part, spoke in his usual poetic Tamil. The 90-year-old leaders voice was hoarse as he slammed the ruling AIADMK party and current chief minister J Jayalalithaa on a humid May evening, with his speech being held by an aide.

The DMK chief began by announcing the final Congress and DMK candidates for Chennai, including MG Mohar in Anna Nagar and veteran leader Anbarasan in Alandur.

He criticised the government over the Tamil Thai, or Mother Tamil project, a Rs 100 crore statue in Madurai that has yet to even begin.

That money has been paid to the government. Where is it now? the veteran Dravidian leader asked.

DMK supporters at Island grounds during a party rally. (Aditya Iyer/HT Photo)

Karunanidhi promised that, if elected, the alliance would create jobs and increase the number of the states educated workforce with measures like granting 27% reservation at the Trichy National School of Technology.

From 2005 we have seen 7,567 murders, 2,792 rapes and 6,429 caste-related atrocities, he said. Is this the mark of a good government?

Karunanidhi ended his speech by saying that the combined DMK-Congress front was the only way Tamil Nadu would regain its economic growth and prestige.

Conspicuous by their absence were senior Congress leader P Chidambaram and party vice-president Rahul Gandhi. Chidambaram was reported to be planning rallies in the western districts.

The fact that his partys state president EKVS Elangovan, who was hosting Sonia Gandhi, has in recent years become a bitter critic of the former finance minister may have also been a factor.

Tamil Nadu is set to go to the polls on May 16.

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Bharti Airtel Africa on Friday said it will sell 950 mobile towers in the Congo to telecom infrastructure company Helios Towers Africa, but did not disclose the deal size.

The agreement is in line with our stated philosophy of divesting passive infrastructure and promoting sharing of towers to enhance operational efficiencies. Airtel remains committed to DRC and will continue to invest in its operations, Bharti Airtel International Netherlands BV (BAIN) executive chairman Christian De Faria said in a statement.

The divestment under the agreement between the two companies also includes towers currently under construction in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

The deal will significantly reduce Airtels capital expenditure on passive infrastructure and also mitigate the proliferation of towers through enhanced sharing, the statement said.

With this deal, Airtel will complete the sale worth over $2.5 billion (about Rs 16,500 crore) of mobile tower assets in Africa. The net debt of the company stood at Rs 83,888.3 crore as on March 31.

Bharti Airtel has decided to exit the tower business in Africa where it had around 14,000 towers.

Helios has also acquired its tower assets in Congo B. Airtel sold its mobile tower to ATC in Nigeria and another deal in Tanzania is in process of regulatory approval. The telecom major sold its mobile tower to Eaton in Kenya, Ghana, Uganda and Burkina Faso and to IHS in Rwanda and Zambia.

This deal will expand HTAs tower coverage in Africa to over 6,500 owned towers.

Airtel will have full access to the towers from HTA under a long term lease contract, the statement said.

The agreement is subject to statutory and regulatory approvals in the respective countries.

HTA is proud to be chosen by Airtel as its partner for the ownership and management of its existing infrastructure, HTA chief executive officer Kash Pandya said.
It started to rain bad news about start-ups a bit back. Now its pouring.

At the end of February, a mutual fund managed by Morgan Stanley marked down the value of its holding in Flipkart by 27%. In April, T Rowe Price reduced the value of its holding in the ecommerce star by 15%. Two days ago, two more of its mutual fund investors marked their holdings down by more than 20%.

In between, Jabongs parent got funding at a third of its last years valuation, and scores of others failed to get funding. In general, the scenario is different from a year or so ago, when funding rounds of $100 million were being related to the inside pages of newspapers. Now they have become infrequent enough to come on the front page, such as, the one raised by OYO Rooms, though it remains unconfirmed.

This is in keeping with the events elsewhere. Morgan Stanley did not single out Flipkart; it meted out a similar treatment to the Silicon Valley star, data crunching company Palantir Technologies, and marked it down by 32%. It also marked file storage company Dropbox down by 25%. Fidelity slashed the value of its stakes in Dropbox, Snapchat, and Zenefits. T Rowe price cut the value of its holding in Dropbox by more than 50%.

It isnt just the funds. The overall environment seemed to demand a fresh look at start-ups and the way they were being funded. On April 1, Mary Jo White, the head of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, the markets regulator, warned the technology community and investors to be wary of unicorns, the epithet given to start-ups valued at more than $1 billion.

The term unicorn was first thought of because such highly-valued start-ups were thought to be as rare as the mythical, one-horned, horse-like animal. Now that they have become common, they also appear less precious.

The concern is whether the prestige associated with reaching a sky-high valuation fast drives companies to try to appear more valuable than they actually are, said Mary Jo White. There is a worry that the tail might wag the horn.

So Firm Truths sought out Rajat Tandon, who runs Nasscoms 10,000 start-ups programme, and tried to make him squirm. Are they renaming the programme to make it sound more rational? What about 1,000 start-ups, or  to be a tad more realistic  100 Start-ups? How many entrepreneurs can they really hope to help, given the gloom setting in?

To this columns disappointment, Tandon laughed. Nothing of the sort, he said, its normal. That should not come as a surprise if you peep into his past. Tandon once had a start-up of his own. It failed, and to date he regrets not putting the failure on his CV with pride.

He thinks the current rationalisation is par for the course. Isnt it established globally that only one in 10 start-ups succeeds? It is. In fact, as he points out, even in manufacturing, 70% start-ups fail. The failure rate in technology start-ups is therefore just 20 points higher, and everyone knows that.

In fact, Tandons team spoke to a range of venture capital firms and entrepreneurs and asked them what they would say to the disturbing question: Is the party over? Here, in a nutshell, is what they said.

This is very different from the dotcom crash of the early 2000s. That crash happened because of flimsy business models. Todays start-ups solve real problems. More to the point, this is not a crash.

Investors still care more about growth than profits. The only thing is that entrepreneurs need to be more judicious in how they are spending their money.

Lets not dread the bust. In a business cycle, there is a boom and there is a bust, and there is a need to make mid-course corrections. What is not there is the need to panic.

The Indian eco-system is too robust to allow a crash. All those millions of smartphones, all those young people filled with aspiration, all the talent of the founders, and all the social acceptability of entrepreneurs will not allow a crash.

There indeed seems little panic among entrepreneurs. Flipkarts Sachin Bansal, speaking at a recent event in Gurgaon, coolly said that the mark-down of his company was a theoretical exercise because it was not based on a transaction. The valuation, he said, had not really changed, only a shareholders opinion had. If Flipkart is not raising funds, the markdown is irrelevant. If it really needs to raise money, it will do so at whatever is the best valuation available.

In the long term, things will take care of themselves. Good times do not last forever and bad times dont either. Things will keep changing and the learning we should take from this is, when the good times come again -- and they will -- we should not fool ourselves thinking that it will remain constant, and remember a downturn will come again, Business Standard newspaper quoted Bansal as saying.

That may be the biggest difference from the dotcom crash. Back then, nobody sounded so level-headed.

@suveensinha

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Akshaya Tritiya, considered an auspicious day to buy gold, is likely to be lacklustre this time as jewellers are expecting negative to marginal growth compared to last year, on the back of rising gold prices, which is ruling at over Rs 30,000 per 10 grams.

During Akshaya Tritiya (which falls on May 9) we are expecting marginal growth in sales compared to last year as the prices are ruling very high and due to the present dry weather conditions in the country, All India Gems and Jewellery Trade Federation (GJF) chairman Sreedhar G V said.

He said even as the overall market sentiment is positive, the surge in gold prices is likely to put a halt on consumer demand for heavy jewellery and people might go for small ticket size items, chains and bangles.

Gold is currently ruling at Rs 30,050 per 10 grams in domestic market. In February first week, it was at Rs 26,930.

Echoing a similar view, former GJF chairman Bachhraj Bamalwa said in terms of volume, the consumer demand might witness a negative growth of about 10%, but in value terms it is likely to be at par with last years sales.

There will be buying as people will purchase a token small-ticket size jewellery, or coin, for the festival and they will hesitate to go for heavy pieces due to high prices, he said.

As for wedding jewellery, he said, usually consumers book for bridal jewelleries before one month for which most of the bookings were already done just after the strike ended.

Bridal and wedding jewellery takes time so we usually get most of the bookings before one month. We got most of the wedding jewellery bookings just as the strike ended, he said.

However, the World Gold Council (WGC) MD Somasundaram PR felt that there will be sharp hike in demand during Akshaya Tritiya, where wedding jewellery as well as investment-related items like coins, bars will also move fast.

The industry has been facing a challenging time as people were waiting for the Budget expecting a cut in import duty, Somasundaram said.

However, the jewellers went on strike after the announcement of excise levy. The industry is gearing up to meet the pent-up demand which will be witnessed during this Akshaya Tritiya, he said.
The ammunition that an Italian courts verdict in the Agusta scam provided to the Modi government strengthened it in two different battles. First, of course, it placed the Congress directly in the line of attack. But less noticed was how it provided fortuitous covering fire for the governments near-under-the-radar shift in its Pakistan policy. The media has been so distracted decoding the ABC of the acronym-littered money trail in the helicopter scandal that a written Parliament reply by Union minister General VK Singh almost slipped through the cracks.

Ironically the former army chief who had tweeted about disgust and the obligations of duty when he was chosen to be the governments representative at a Pakistan high commission reception  also attended by Kashmiri separatists was now informing his colleagues that the secessionist Hurriyat conglomerate was made up of Indian citizens who were thus free to meet representatives of any country. Yes, the caveat that there was no room for them at a dialogue table between India and Pakistan was reinforced. But there was no missing the fact that what was once touted as a red line that only a tough leader like Narendra Modi could draw had been effectively erased.

Read | BJP ally Shiv Sena slams Centres U-turn on Hurriyat

Some of us would call this belated wisdom, or the victory of pragmatism over polemics. The decision to cancel talks twice with Pakistan  once the foreign secretary dialogue and another time the scheduled meeting of the two national security advisers because of the Pakistani insistence on meeting the Hurriyat  did not eventually end up weakening the separatists. In fact, it had the very opposite impact. It refocused media attention on the pro-azaadi groups and revived their relevance in the Kashmir discourse by making them a national debating point. Further it was an unsustainable position and sooner or later New Delhi was going to discover that it had locked itself into a corner by taking a stand it wasnt going to be able to stick to.

The BJP couldnt even point to the weak romanticism of Manmohan Singh to explain how this was a departure from business as usual. It was the previous NDA government under AB Vajpayee that had shown much more flexibility and initiative in engaging the Kashmiri separatists than any Congress leader ever had.

When LK Advani  the proclaimed Iron Man of the party  was deputy prime minister he met with the Hurriyat at his North Block office. (In todays times, hed be called anti-national.) So it was peculiar to see the Modi government make the separatists such a key factor in whether dialogue with Pakistan would take place or not. When Sartaj Aziz was due to visit Delhi, three Hurriyat Conference members were even kept under house arrest briefly, presumably to stop them from arriving in Delhi to meet the Pakistani delegation. From the point of view of the BJPs more hawkish supporters, all of this was meant to infuse a dose of muscular nationalism into a foreign policy they thought had been steered by wimps. Except  as the quiet admission in Parliament now shows  there was no great benefit to India from this position. In expending this much energy on the separatists, Kashmir was unwittingly centre-staged as the most intractable issue between the two countries, instead of terrorism  just what India did not want.

Read | In their own country, Kashmiri students are under attack

Smart diplomacy is all about adapting to shifting circumstances and contexts and so I would not condemn the government at all for this U-Turn. In fact if it helps in defter navigation of a road that is almost always littered with minefields, I would say: Why Not? Lets welcome it.

But then I possibly dont represent the sentiments of the BJPs Twitter troopers  its more hardline base which has very different expectations of the Modi government. And it is here that Modis Pakistan policy is symptomatic of its existential confusion.

The PM must decide whether his policy will reflect the tough-guy machismo of the leader with the 56-inch chest or the deft and soft agility of a statesman keen to build a foreign policy legacy. What got him elected may have been the former; what he needs to do in government is the latter.

There have been several signs that he was quite ready to leave behind the jumlas of his high-voltage electoral campaign and recast himself in a different mould. The unannounced visit to Lahore to meet Nawaz Sharif and the mature handling of the Pathankot terror attack aftermath are indicative of a more reflective, less chest-thumping approach to Pakistan. But every now and then, perhaps guided by the need to balance the political books, the paradoxes erupt; the Hurriyat impasse was one such. The challenge for the Modi government is now to carry along those of its supporters who are fulminating over this quiet parliamentary admission.

Read | First draft of a new Hurriyat policy

In any case, in the first-ever official confirmation of a poorly kept secret the former R&AW chief AS Dulats memoir says that successive governments in Delhi have engaged Kashmir separatists and even militants not just politically, but also financially. Unruffled by the storm that followed his revelation he told me: So whats wrong? Its done the world over, sharing details of how the Indian government had quite often paid for air fares and medical treatment of even hardened pro-Pakistan separatists. Corrupting someone with money is more ethical and smarter than killing him, the top spook said wryly.

That these words came from someone who knows should take care of the populist outrage factor that obstructs so many government policies these days. The parliamentary statement is also a prompt; stop paying so much attention to the external dialogue with Pakistan; its an internal peace process within the Kashmir Valley that needs your attention.

Barkha Dutt is consulting editor, NDTV, and founding member, Ideas Collective

The views expressed are personal

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A bullet lodged deep in the neck of Delhi governments transport minister, Gopal Rai, 17 years ago, was successfully removed in a surgery at a city hospital on Friday morning.

Rai was admitted to Indraprastha Apollo Hospital on May 5 for a planned surgery.

He suffered a gunshot wound in his neck in 1999 in Lucknow University, reportedly during a student agitation. He had suffered complete quadriplegia (neck down paralysis) for more than a year.

A close aide of Rai said the bullet was not removed back then because doctors told them that the surgery could have turned fatal given the sensitive nature of the injury.

Gradually, his limb movements started coming back, and after three years of getting shot, he recovered enough to walk and become independent.

The gunshot wound caused severe spinal cord injury, and the recovery is miraculous as direct gunshot wound to the neck leads to complete irreversible quadriplegia in most cases, say doctors.

He has had the bullet in his neck from 1999, which lodged at the back of his neck and over time had migrated to burrow under the skin at the back of the upper thoracic spine. However, after assessing the bullet location, it was found that the projectile was easy to access and could be removed under anaesthesia. The decision, hence, was made to remove the lead bullet, read an official statement by Apollo.

The surgery was performed successfully and the bullet removed without complications.

The minister will go to the Apollo Hospital at Hyderabad for upper limb rehabilitation and later will be moved to Apollo Hospital Chennai for gait training, the statement further read.
A South African national was arrested at Delhis Indira Gandhi international airport for allegedly carrying cocaine worth Rs 3 crore hidden in a chocolate date box.

The woman passenger travelling with Emirates from Dubai arrived at the IGI Airport on Wednesday when Customs officials stopped her for checking based on a specific input.

Detailed examination of her baggage and a personal search resulted in recovery of a white crystalline powder suspected to be cocaine. It was concealed in an octagonal box of Nadiya brand luxury chocolate dates in the form of pellets covered with transparent plastic tape, said Sanjay Mangal, commissioner of customs.

The recovered white crystalline powder weighing around 595 gms is believed to be cocaine with an estimated value of approximately Rs 3 crore in international market, he said.

An official said the passenger was arrested and further investigation was in process.

In a separate case, a passenger from Muscat was arrested for smuggling gold. According to an official, the passenger was stopped for checking after he crossed the green channel.

Five gold chains weighing 1105 gms was recovered from his pocket. A case has been registered, said an official. The value of the seized gold is over R 33 lakh.
Delhi power minister Satyendra Jain will meet the chairman of National Thermal Power Corporation Limited (NTPC) on Saturday to resolve the dispute between BSES discoms and the corporation.

The NTPC on Wednesday threatened to suspend supply of electricity to the two BSES discoms - - BSES Rajdhani Power Ltd and BSES Yamuna Power Ltd -- in Delhi if they fail to pay Rs 1,300 crore dues by May 10.

The discoms could face 2,027 MW reduction in power from May 9. When compared to the peak demand of 4,600 MW, this means an over 40% reduction in electricity.

A senior official of the power department said on Friday that the state government and the Delhi Electricity Regulatory Commission officials were in touch with the NTPC over the issue.

The power minister will meet the NTPC chairman. We are hopeful of finding a solution, the official said.

The State Load Despatch Centre under Delhi Transco Limited has also written a letter, a copy of which is with HT, to the NTPC asking it to withdraw the notice to the discoms.

The NTPC meets nearly 65% power requirement of the BRPL. If the NTPC regulates the power, the balance 35% will still be scheduled for Delhi from central and state generators. The load will remain constant, but supply will be limited, which will lead to imbalance in the grid It will affect the power supply of TPDDL, NDMC and MES, the letter states.

The grid collapse will result in the disruption of power supply to strategic installation and institutions of national importance.

The NTPC moved the Supreme Court in March, seeking its intervention to recover the dues from BSES Rajdhani and BSES Yamuna. It argued the discoms had not paid the corporation since November 2015. With mounting dues, the NTPC argued it had become difficult for them to pay fuel suppliers. The matter is still pending in the Supreme Court.

In its notices served to both the discoms, the NTPC said BSES Rajdhani and BSES Yamuna owe the corporation Rs 892.30 crore and Rs 409.93 crore, respectively. The NTPC says this payment was due for supplying 2,027 MW of electricity to the discoms.

On Thursday, however, the discoms wrote to the power generator asking it to withdraw the notices.

The letter, written by BSES director Gopal K Saxena, stated that 100% regulation of power is unjustified and unwarranted and, will cause extreme hardship to the residents of Delhi besides disturbing the law and order .

The two BSES companies distribute power to 70% of the capital in east, west, south and central Delhi.

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Scientists who studied pollution in the Capital were surprised to find the presence of fly ash in the air given that Delhi doesnt have any big thermal power plants.

Fly ash is a powdery component released on combustion of coal, especially from thermal power plants. Burning of coal in the open also releases the harmful toxin.

The Badarpur thermal plant is the only functional plant in Delhi.

The Delhi government said it would shut down the Rajghat and the Badarpur power plants, after the IIT Kanpur report said fly ash was a prominent pollutant in Delhis air in summers. The former was shut but the latter is partially functional.

The Delhi government wrote to the National Thermal Power Corporation to shut the plant in Dadri, Gautam Budh Nagar. A senior Delhi government power department official said the Uttar Pradesh government was unresponsive. We have written to the UP government thrice but there is no response from them yet, the official said.

Two units in the Badarpur plant have been allowed to operate as their pollution levels have been brought down to permissible limits, the official said.

The Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), however, called for the closure of the plant entirely.

It is surprising that Delhi has a problem of fly ash. Next to the plant, a fly ash pit spread over an area of 767 acres is growing, said CSE chairperson Sunita Narain.

Also read: Landfills or pollution bombs? Delhis garbage dumps spewing toxic gases

The IIT Kanpur report said that one particular source of fly ash has not been identified but Delhis power plants are part of the problem.

In summer, coal and fly ash contribute to about 30% of PM10. Unless sources contributing to fly ash are controlled, one cannot expect significant improvement in air quality. It appears that these sources are more fugitive in nature than regular point sources, the report said.

It also said that the two large power plants in city are also important sources of flyash. Probably the major part is re-suspension of fly ash from fly ash ponds (in use or abandoned) which are not maintained properly and become dry in summer. Fly ash emission from hotels, restaurants and tandoors also cause large emissions and requires better housekeeping and proper fly ash disposal, the report said.

Unregulated industries such as pottery that rely on combustion of coal are also to blame. Potters use coal and wood to bake their products. Potter families in Sarojini Nagar were forced to stop their baking activity because of the pollution from their units.

Illegal industries in northeast Delhi also continue to thrive. The Delhi Pollution Control Committee conducts raids to shut polluting units but the problem persists.

These are small units that burn coal to produce heat. Blast furnaces and potteries come under DPCCs prohibited list of industries but some of them are hidden in peoples homes or are in the outskirts. They function furtively and keep shutting and reopening. We have shut many in the past, said a senior DPCC official.

According to IIT Kanpur scientists, the best way to avoid fly ash from entering the air is to keep the fly ash pond moist by maintaining a millimeter-thick layer of water over it.

We cant open our windows

For six long years, residents of Sukhdev Vihar have been waging a battle against the waste-to-energy plant that stands a few hundred metres from their home.

Umesh Bahri (63) has been running from pillar to post, attending court hearings and meeting various people to discuss how the plant affected their life.

Bahri is joined by several others in the neighbourhood who feel that the plant should be shifted.

According to Bahri, the plant emits ash and, sometimes, a foul smell. Opening windows is nearly impossible.

Dr Umesh Bahri is waging a battle against a waste to energy plant at Sukhdev vihar in New Delhi. (Arun Sharma/Hindustan Times)

Others in the area agree.

Our battle is ongoing. We have written to several people, a case is ongoing at the National Green Tribunal. There are people who have shifted out because of the problems. We cannot open our windows as white or grey ash gets deposited on every surface possible, said Ranjit Devraj, a resident.

Deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia also visited the plant last year after complaints. He ordered a thorough check and said all measures must be followed to make sure there is no pollution.

While the Delhi Pollution Control Committee said that the emissions from the plant are now under control, residents disagree.

If that were the case, why would any court still be entertaining us? said Devraj.
A group of government school principals, who recently returned from IIM-Lucknow, after being trained under, have outlined various ways of improving the education system of the city.

The group, consisting 60 principals, were sponsored for the training program at IIM-Lucknow as part of the Delhi governments teachers training initiative.

The principals, who participated in a feedback meeting with deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia and officials from the directorate of education on Thursday, underlined conducting regular meetings with parents to sensitize them about women safety and making subject committees to focus on teaching as two important plans to improve the education system of the Capital.

We need to know whatever the teachers learnt after their training programme. We will communicate the feedback to IIM-Lucknow and to teams from IIM-Ahmedabad and Cambridge University who will be in Delhi soon to hold more training sessions, said Sisodia. He encouraged principals to be critical while giving their feedback.

He also asked principals to tell about the concrete steps they have taken in their schools, motivated by the programme.

Mothers of girl students will be called for meeting at regular intervals for interaction with us. We will try to educate them about issues around women safety, said Sarita Batra, principal of girls senior secondary school BC Block, Sultanpuri.

Another principal said that her school would focus on key performance indicators and improve them. We are trying to put to use whatever we learnt during our training. I will conduct subject committee meetings to improve academics and focus on performance indicators, said Kavita Rana, principal Sarvodaya Vidyalaya, Vasant Vihar.

Another principal said that her school will focus on creative ways of teaching, including encouraging students to read more books and teach using story telling.

The government, which has dedicated this year to focus on teachers training, will also be sending principals to Cambridge University for training exercise next.

Recently the Delhi government allocated `10,690 crore  22.9% of the total budget outlay for 2016-17  to the education sector by focusing on training programmes and physical infrastructure. The government also allocated `102 crore for international training of principals and teachers in the budget.

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JNU student union president Kanhaiya Kumar, who was taken to the AIl India Institute of Medical Sciences (Aiims) with low blood pressure and glucose levels on Thursday, was diagnosed with ketosis, a condition where the body burns fat faster in the absence of solid food over long durations.

Doctors however said his condition was stable and improving, and could likely be discharged late on Friday.

For the past nine days, Kumar has been on a hunger strike to protest against his university administration, accompanied by 24 other JNU students.

On Thursday evening, he was rushed to the Aiims emergency ward after bouts of vomiting and drowsiness.

Kanhaiya Kumar is stable, said a senior doctor at Aiims, requesting anonymity.

He was brought to our emergency on Thursday evening, with ketones level on the higher side and mild dehydration. Ketones start rising when the body starts metabolising fat to get energy when the person has not been eating for long, the doctor said.

He has been put on a saline drip to restore his electrolyte imbalance.

Also read: As hunger strike enters day 8, Kanhaiya taken to health centre, BP drops

The 29-year-old was initially taken to the health centre at JNU in a semi-conscious state on Thursday. He had low blood pressure and his glucose levels had also dropped drastically. Though put on saline drip, his condition didnt improve and in fact got worse. He was then transferred to Aiims.

WHAT IS KETOSIS

It is a condition in which the body burns more fat for energy after days of no solid food. Due to the higher fat metabolism, people develop symptoms such as nausea, headaches, exhaustion and fatigue.
The software and services industry body on Friday went to Supreme Court seeking a modification of the recent order that banned diesel cabs from plying in Delhi and NCR, saying it crippled their business.

The National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM) said staff movement became almost impossible as sufficient cabs were not available. Nasscoms counsel requested the court to allow cabs that ferry BPO employees to be exempted.

BPOs are a $25-million dollar industry in India, of which the NCR contributes $5billion. The sector employs 250,000 people in the NCR ferried mostly by diesel cabs.

Senior advocate Shyam Diwan mentioned Nasscoms application before a bench headed by Chief Justice TS Thakur and urged him to hear the body out on May 9 when the court will take up Delhi government and Centres plea on the order. The bench allowed his request.

Also read: Diesel cab ban has hurt BPO sector, says Centre

On May 3, the AAP government asked for more time to phase out diesel cabs as the ban had led to a law and order problem in the Capital. Solicitor general Ranjit Kumar had on Thursday asked SC to modify its order in the wake of Nasscoms concern.

He said the ban had hit the flourishing BPO sector, which was concerned about the security of its employees. Kumar contended if the ban continued, BPOs might move out of the country, affecting the countrys economy. Both Delhi government and Centre have to give a detailed roadmap on phasing out of the diesel cabs to the SC on Monday.

In its application, Nasscom said the industry saw poor staff attendance since the ban was imposed and reduced quality of BPO service for their overseas customers. This, NAsscom said, is a severe threat to local business because the work might go to competitor locations such as Philippines.

In his brief submission on Thursday the solicitor told the SC the court order had given rise to security concerns as women employees need to be dropped at night.

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It had a scare, but Nepals Prime Minister KP Olis government will survive for now. The uncertainty stemmed from Maoist chairman Prachanda expressing an intent to withdraw support from the government on Wednesday. He positioned himself as the next PM, and the opposition Nepali Congress  in order to oust Mr Oli  decided to support the Maoists.

But overnight, Prachanda turned around and decided to stick to the Left alliance. Mr Oli and Mr Prachanda signed a new deal, which provided assurances to the Maoists that war time cases would not be pursued against them and hinted at blanket amnesty for war crimes. Kathmandus political bazaar is rife with other rumours to explain the turnaround. One has it that Mr Oli has offered to support

Mr Prachanda as PM, after he presents the budget later this month. Others speculate that China  which has traditionally remained a detached observer of domestic politics  encouraged the two leaders to stay together.

Read | Opposition parties join hands to topple Oli govt in Nepal

Irrespective of Mr Prachandas motives, the developments in Kathmandu only depict that Nepals political elites are operating as if it is business as usual. The country has had over 20 governments in 25 years. Mr Olis government too is fragile  and so his only interest is survival and power-maximisation, including through undemocratic means. There are disturbing reports of how he has influenced judicial appointments and expanded the partys control over the bureaucracy. There is also a clampdown on free speech; a Canadian resident was deported on flimsy grounds because he tweeted on politics.

There has been little progress on three fronts crucial for Nepals future. The first is resolving the Madhesi issue. The Tarai remains restive; Madhesi parties are warming up for another agitation; the governments mechanism to revise federalism remains dysfunctional; and Mr Olis language remains hostile. The second issue is post-quake reconstruction. The first anniversary of the quake just went by and it is now well established that the government has done little for the survivors, who stare at a second monsoon in misery. The third is the task of governance and employment generation. Over 1,000 Nepalis leave the country every day for jobs in India, Gulf and Malaysia; almost 30% of the GDP comes from remittances; yet Mr Oli  or his predecessors  have done nothing to create employment.

Read | Welcome PM Oli, but dont forget what India wants from Nepal

Mr Oli needs to deliver on these issues instead of stoking ultra nationalism and signing unholy deals to stay in power. India should continue engaging with all actors in Nepal, nudge them to address constitutional issues soon, speak up for a democratic and inclusive Nepal and build international opinion around the message.
The Supreme Court will on Friday afternoon hear the Centre on whether states can be allowed to conduct separate Common Entrance Tests (CET) to medical colleges and if this years students will be admitted on the basis of these marks.

Students faced uncertainty after the top court made appearing for the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET), conducted by the Medical Council of India (MCI), mandatory from this year.

The courts decision hinges on the fact that students undergo multiple CETs across different states to secure a college admission.

A bench headed by Justice AR Dave is expected clarify which scores will be relevant for admission this year  CET or NEET after solicitor general Ranjit Kumar appears before court at 2 pm.

The bench had earlier clarified that private medical colleges cannot hold their own exams, upholding the Madhya Pradesh legislation that permitted states to conduct a CET to level the testing field. It also said state governments would be exempted from NEET for the 2016-17 academic year.

Read more: Uncertain about NEETs validity, 4 lakh aspirants write MH-CET

The court is hearing petitions from various states and private medical colleges associations seeking stay of the order that allowed NEET for this academic year.

The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), which conducts NEET, will also appear in court with its response on whether 6.5 lakh students, who appeared for the first phase on May 1, can sit for the second phase on July 24. The bench had on Thursday asked the board to explore the possibility after complaints poured in that students did not have enough time to prepare for the first phase.

Kumar told the bench NEET-1 was for 15% seats. Those who did not appear or had applied but did not write the test could participate in NEET-2, he said, adding students would be competing for the remaining 85% of seats.

The solicitor general said the Centre favoured medical admission this year through NEET-2 and that states must follow the mandate. He rejected their submission that students could likely face trouble answering questions since the paper will in Hindi and English, and not in a vernacular language.

His contention was that MCI regulations required a medical aspirant to study English in class 12, with a minimum 50% score.

As per CBSE, the second phase of NEET will be on July 24. It will give an opportunity to over 2.5 lakh students who could not take the first phase of the exam. The combined results will be declared on August 17.

The SC recalled its 2013 judgement that had declared NEET illegal and unconstitutional on April 11, saying the verdict was delivered without a proper discussion between the bench members.

On April 29, the SC had cleared the decks for holding NEET for admission to medical and dental colleges. The ruling came two days before CBSE was scheduled to conduct the All India Pre-Medical Test (AIPMT), which was rechristened as NEET.
Self-financed courses continue to be a hit in city colleges but the question remains whether they are indeed useful to students or not.

Courses such as Bachelor of Mass Media (BMM), Bachelor of Management Studies (BMS), Bachelor of Accounting and Finance (BAF) and Bachelor of Banking and Insurance (BBI), introduced in 2000, were touted as programmes tailored to meet the career needs of students.

Even as many colleges under the University of Mumbai (MU)offer these programmes, the jury is out on whether they are making students more employable or not. Some colleges said students in self-financed programmes, which are also called unaided courses because they are not subsidised by the university, have an edge over standard Bachelor of Arts (BA) or Bachelor of Commerce (BCom) courses.

Principals said the student numbers in a class for self-financed courses is limited to 60 pupils, whereas the strength of regular undergraduate classroom consists of 120 students, so students get more attention from their teachers. We are able to experiment several teaching methodologies such as role-play and seminars, said Dinesh Panjwani, the principal of RD National College, Bandra.

Madhavi Pethe, the principal of Dahanukar College in Vile Parle, said, The curriculum of self-financed courses is definitely better linked to the industry compared to regular courses. It includes several practical programmes. She added that the students in specialised courses tend to have better employment opportunities, with banking firms preferring BBI graduates and angel broking firms hiring BAF students. However, others believe that a majority of students opting for self-financed courses is deprived of the supposed benefits of the programmes because of a lack of competent teachers, poor infrastructure in colleges and shortcomings of the curriculum.

Read more: Career courses prove a big hit

In self-financed courses, most of the teachers are appointed on temporary basis. They have little industry exposure and, as a result, the curriculum lacks sufficient practical aspects, said Khoj Agarwal, who has taught at several city colleges.

Agarwal argued that, during college placements, the recruiters generally dont make any distinction between regular and specialised course students. Many of the BAF and BBI students dont get jobs in their respective areas of expertise, he said.

A member of the commerce faculty at MU suggested that older colleges, with necessary infrastructure and resources, are able to do justice with these courses but the situation in new colleges is far from encouraging. The self-financed courses involve project-based learning. However, many colleges dont have information and communication technology (ICT) and other resources in place. So, they run these courses just like regular BCom, he said.

He added that while the university has been sending local inquiry committees to take stock of the situation in colleges, it has failed to follow up on the committee reports.

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Bihar registered a pass percentage of 99.61% in the Class 12 examination conducted by the Council for the Indian School Certificate Examinations (CISCE). In Class 10, the state registered a pass percentage of 98.79%.

The CISCE declared its Class 10 (ICSE) and Class 12 (ISC) results on Friday.

In Class 10, girls of the state outperformed the boys by registering a pass percentage of 98.87%, as against the boys pass percentage of 98.74%. In Class 12, however, it was the boys, who, with a pass percentage of 99.63%, outshone the girls, whose pass percentage was recorded at 99.55%.

Altogether, 4,306 students, including 2,452 boys and 1,854 girls, appeared in the Class 10 examinations of CISCE, which were conducted from February 29 to March 31. In the Class 12 examinations, 762 students appeared from the state, which included 224 boys and 538 girls.

Read more: ICSE, ISC 2016 results declared, check them here

The number of unsuccessful students in Class 10 and 12 were 52 (31 boys and 21 girls) and 3 (one boy and two girls), respectively.

Based on the result provided by the CISCE, Shruti Priya of Mount Assisi School in Bhagalpur was the state topper of Class 12. A student of the science stream, Shruti secured 97.75%, which was calculated by taking her marks in English and best three subjects.

In Class 10, there was a tie for the top spot. By securing 98.4%, both Mohammad Taay Hannan and Vishisht Priyadarshi from St Xaviers High School, Patna, were state toppers of Class 10.

Read more | ICSE results 2016: Deoghar boy tops in Jharkhand

The Class 10 examinations were conducted in 63 written subjects, comprising 22 Indian languages, 13 foreign languages and 1 classical language. The Class 12 examinations were conducted in 50 written subjects, comprising 15 Indian languages, six foreign languages and 1 classical language.

Additionally, 133 Scheduled Caste (SC) candidates, 64 Scheduled Tribe (ST) candidates and 1341 Other Backward Classes (OBC) candidates appeared in the Class 10 examination from the state securing a pass percentage of 98.5%, 96.88% and 99.33%, respectively.

Read more | ICSE 2016: Lucknows Jyotsana and Radhika bag all-India honours

In Class 12, 21 SC students, 28 ST students and 205 OBC students appeared and secured 100% pass percentage.
The Supreme Court on Friday said medical colleges in the country were in a rotten state and fined a private medical college in Odisha Rs 5 crore for increasing the number of seats from 100 to 150 in an academic year.

Costs of Rs 5 crores are imposed on Kalinga Institute of Medical Sciences (KIMS) for playing with the future of its students and the mess that it has created for them. The amount will be deposited by KIMS in the Registry of this Court within six weeks from today.

The amount of Rs 5 crores so deposited towards costs shall not be recovered in any manner from any student or adjusted against the fees or provision of facilities for students of any present or subsequent batches, said Justices M B Lokur and N V Ramana.

This appeal is yet another chapter in the sordid saga of admissions to medical colleges. Undoubtedly, there is something rotten in the state of medical colleges.

Unless the concerned Ministries in the Government of India take a far more proactive role in ensuring that medical colleges have all the necessary facilities, clinical materials, teaching faculty, staff, accommodation etc the health of the people of our country will take a hit in the coming years due to inadequately educated doctors. Quality in medical education is equally important, if not more, than quantity, the court said.

The bench, however, protected the students who were admitted in the year 2015-16 in the courses run by the medical college administration.

The admission granted to the 50 students pursuant to the order of the High Court dated September 25, 2015 and the provisional permission granted by the central government only on September 28, 2015 shall not be disturbed.

How the students will complete their course of studies without putting undue pressure on them is entirely for (Medical Council of India) KIMS and other concerned authorities to decide, it said.

The court restrained KIMS from increasing the intake of students from 100 to 150 for the MBBS course for the academic year 2016-17 and 2017-2018. The order came on an appeal filed by MCI challenging the Orissa High Courts verdict which had permitted KIMS to admit additional 50 students in academic year 2015-16.

KIMS had moved the High Court, challenging the Medical Council of Indias order disallowing admission in MBBS and BDS streams citing lack of adequate infrastructure.

Questioning the inspection procedure of medical colleges, the court said MCI should, in consultation with the Centre, prepare a Standard Operating Procedure for conducting an inspection as required by the Medical Council of India Establishment of Medical College Regulations, 1999.

The Standard Operating Procedure should be finalized within a period of six weeks from today and should be accessible on the website of the MCI.

To introduce transparency and accountability in the medical colleges, the report or assessment of the Inspection Team should be put on the website of the concerned medical college as also on the website of the MCI so that potential students are aware of what is likely to be in store for them, the bench said.

The Supreme Court on Friday said medical colleges in the country were in a rotten state and fined a private medical college in Odisha Rs 5 crore for increasing the number of seats from 100 to 150 in an academic year.

Costs of Rs 5 crores are imposed on Kalinga Institute of Medical Sciences (KIMS) for playing with the future of its students and the mess that it has created for them. The amount will be deposited by KIMS in the Registry of this Court within six weeks from today.

The amount of Rs 5 crores so deposited towards costs shall not be recovered in any manner from any student or adjusted against the fees or provision of facilities for students of any present or subsequent batches, said Justices M B Lokur and N V Ramana.

This appeal is yet another chapter in the sordid saga of admissions to medical colleges. Undoubtedly, there is something rotten in the state of medical colleges.

Unless the concerned Ministries in the Government of India take a far more proactive role in ensuring that medical colleges have all the necessary facilities, clinical materials, teaching faculty, staff, accommodation etc the health of the people of our country will take a hit in the coming years due to inadequately educated doctors. Quality in medical education is equally important, if not more, than quantity, the court said.

The bench, however, protected the students who were admitted in the year 2015-16 in the courses run by the medical college administration.

The admission granted to the 50 students pursuant to the order of the High Court dated September 25, 2015 and the provisional permission granted by the central government only on September 28, 2015 shall not be disturbed.

How the students will complete their course of studies without putting undue pressure on them is entirely for MCI and KIMS and other concerned authorities to decide, it said.

The court restrained KIMS from increasing the intake of students from 100 to 150 for the MBBS course for the academic year 2016-17 and 2017-2018. The order came on an appeal filed by MCI challenging the Orissa High Courts verdict which had permitted KIMS to admit additional 50 students in academic year 2015-16.

KIMS had moved the High Court, challenging the Medical Council of Indias order disallowing admission in MBBS and BDS streams citing lack of adequate infrastructure.

Questioning the inspection procedure of medical colleges, the court said MCIshould, in consultation with the Centre, prepare a Standard Operating Procedure for conducting an inspection as required by the Medical Council of India Establishment of Medical College Regulations, 1999.

The Standard Operating Procedure should be finalized within a period of six weeks from today and should be accessible on the website of the MCI.

To introduce transparency and accountability in the medical colleges, the report or assessment of the Inspection Team should be put on the website of the concerned medical college as also on the website of the MCI so that potential students are aware of what is likely to be in store for them, the bench said.
The ICSE-ISC exam results are out and students of little-known schools in small towns and cities are holding their own with their counterparts from premier schools of the country.

It is only natural that the good schools will have a good result. But this year we are happy to see that the not-so-well-known schools too are doing very well, said Gerry Arathoon, chief executive and secretary of the Council for the Indian School Certificate Examinations, which conducts the ICSE and ISC exams. We not only have toppers from small town schools, like one of the ICSE third rank holder from the St Pauls School in Rourkela, but the overall result of the schools too have improved.

The performance of these smaller schools is not surprising though.

Read more: ICSE, ISC 2016 results declared, check them here

In order to ensure that the students have better understanding of their lessons and their answer scripts get properly evaluated, the council has been offering extensive training to the teachers of our affiliated schools, he said. And [the] result is the reflection of the countless training sessions organised by us.

The training sessions ensured that teachers not only understood the syllabus but also had a better appreciation of the scope of the syllabus. The scope of the syllabus explains what the child exactly needs to be taught and guides the teacher on how that should be implemented. The training sessions ensured that the teachers understood this.

Again just teaching well and ensuring that the students understood the topic is not enough unless they are evaluated properly. That too was taken care of, Arathoon added.

Read more: ICSE, ISC: Girls outsmart boys, Abineet Parichha is Class 10 topper

The cumulative effect of such initiatives is visible as lesser-known schools in Kolkata such as St Joans School, The Aryans School, The Bhawanipur Gujrati Education Society School, National English School and St. Marys Convent School in Howrah are basking in glory this year.

Kavita Desai from Bhawanipur Gujrati Education Society School is the national third rank holder in ISC and the joint topper in Bengal.

86 students appeared for ICSE from our school. The school topper got 95.4% and we have 10 students who scored above 90%. On an average, our students have secured 80% marks, said Brij Bhushan Singh, who heads the secondary section of the school. This year the result has been exceptional.

Read more: ICSE, ISC 2016 toppers are from Mumbai

Similar sentiments were expressed by students of Methodist School in Dankuni. The topper of our school has secured 97.4% and is from humanities, the science topper has got 96% and on an average the ISC score has been 87%, said Rahul Roy, a student. I have got 86% and am happy with it.
Actor Anne Hathaway will produce and star in an upcoming movie adaptation of playwright George Brants celebrated play Grounded.

In 2015, Hathaway appeared in a New York production of the single-actor drama (directed by Julie Taymor) at the Public Theatre. At the time, Hathaway was so enthusiastic about the material that she got the film rights before her first performance, reports variety.com.

Watch a trailer for Julie Taymors adaptation of The Tempest

Read: Anne Hathaway gives birth to baby boy. And his name is...

Grounded tells the story of a conflicted American Air Force pilot tasked with operating an unmanned drone.

Brant is adapting his script for the screen. The stage portrayal earned Hathaway a nomination for a Critics Circle Award.

Read: Anne Hathaways bikini pic is the best pregnancy announcement ever

Hathaway can next be seen reprising her role as the White Queen in Alice Through the Looking Glass.

Watch Anne Hathaway in a clip from the first Alice movie

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When you ask people about their first jobs, you hear a lot of similar answers: newspaper delivery boys, lawn mowers, checkout cashiers.

But when we queried a few of the worlds foremost filmmakers for tales from their working pasts, we got some startlingly original responses for this latest installment in Reuters monthly First Jobs series.

Just perhaps, their unique beginnings helped fashion the plot for the creative lives they lead today.

Amma Asante

Director, Belle

First job: Child actress

I went to a stage school in London, and my first job was actually a video for the band Culture Club, Ill Tumble For Ya. I was around 12 at the time, and a bunch of us from that school - including Naomi Campbell, by the way - auditioned for it, and they picked the dozen best dancers.

Culture Club was huge at the time. I remember I had to wear shiny blue hot pants, and dance in front of a fake New York City backdrop. Every once in a while, that video gets posted on Facebook, and I have to relive it all over again.

It was pretty wonderful, actually. What could be better for a first job, than to dance to one of your favourite bands? I remember they paid us around 30 pounds a day, which is about $45 in todays dollars. It was pretty gruelling - a very hard, long day.

Boy George was so kind. A couple of my fellow dancers in that video were such huge fans that they used to hang out where he lived, just trying to catch a glimpse. My job was basically to help them get through that day without passing out.

Frank Miller

Director, Sin City

First job: Janitor

I was 16 at the time, and worked as nighttime janitor at my fathers office in Montpelier, Vermont. Unfortunately for them, I was horrible at the job.

I used their stationary and pencils to draw comic books, and their photocopier to print copies of the amateur comic books I drew. I used to fold and staple them into comic books, which I then sold at my school for 5 cents apiece.

My own father fired me, because I was constantly distracted and using office equipment to self-publish. I believe I am the only employee my father ever fired.

Paul Feig

Director, Bridesmaids, Ghostbusters

First job: Army surplus store

When I was growing up, my dad owned a store called Ark Surplus in Mount Clemens, Michigan. So at a very young age, from around 5 years old all the way until I moved away from Detroit at around 18, I was forced into labour by my father.

I hated every minute of it. I was always given the worst job, like doing inventory for boxes of 10,000 screws. I also had to fold things constantly because some jackass would always come through the store and paw through everything and tear apart all my hard work. I cleaned bathrooms for 13 years.

Eventually, they put me behind the knife counter. This was in a real working-class part of Detroit, so I was selling knives to the scariest dudes Id ever seen in my life. Every day Id be standing one foot away from bikers holding giant Bowie knives. Just one thrust forward from any of those guys, and Id be dead.

I always knew that I wanted to be an artist, though, and finally I got the big opportunity to do a TV commercial for the store. The local station sent out a crew, which was basically one guy with a camera. I wrote, and directed, and starred in it; I think it might still be online somewhere. After that, I thought I was a big local celebrity.

Read: Is the female-driven Ghostbusters the riskiest blockbuster of 2016?

Mira Nair

Director, Monsoon Wedding, The Namesake

First job: Mannequin

The first thing I ever earned money for was literally to just stand there, for a designer named Ritu Kumar in Calcutta. Apparently, my body size was just what she needed, so my job was to stand while a couple of young Italian girls went around and pinned various fabrics on me.

For that, I got a princely sum of rupees - around $1,000 a month. Remember, this was back in 1974 when I was 17, so that was really unbelievable money. I would do that for five hours during the day and then go do political street theatre at night, so I was inhabiting completely different worlds.

What did I spend that money on? It must have been books. In India during the 1970s, for some reason, we had all these subsidized books from Russia. Russian classics like Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Tolstoy, for like 5 cents each. It was fantastic.

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The Indian Railways sent out more than 350 tweets between 10am on Thursday and 7.00am on Friday, assuring users that its ticketing system had not been hacked and user data was safe.

IRCTC website has not been hacked. Enquiry is being conducted regarding data theft, read each tweet from @IRCTC_Ltd.

@bewithjitendra IRCTC website has not been hacked. Enquiry is being conducted regarding alleged data sale.  IRCTC Ltd. (@IRCTC_Ltd) 5 May 2016

The Railways had to respond after news broke that the IRCTC had been hacked into and Twitter users began demanding answers about their data.

#irctc data theft is really a big scam,if someone used it then its #terrible.If you can't protect ur customer's data then ur site is useless  Rohit Gund (@Rohit_Gund) 5 May 2016

IRCTC Website Was Hacked And The Personal Data Of 1 Crore Users has Been Stolen. #Shocking  Immanuel Moses (@mosesimmi) 5 May 2016

@krishashok tweeted asking for steps to control the alleged damage.

Any specific details on the IRCTC hack? What kind of data has been stolen? Should people be blocking their cards etc?  Ashok (@krishashok) 5 May 2016

IRCTC has a user base of 39 million and gets 50 million visitors daily, according to the statistics listed on the website. According to a report in a leading national daily, personal data of about 1 crore people is feared to have been stolen from the IRCTC server.

Dear @IRCTC_Ltd , isnt data theft more worrying than site getting hacked? https://t.co/X021nUZkJg  Shahnawaz Khan (@shahnawazk) 5 May 2016

Dharmesh Dixit (@theDDixit) commented on the irony of the situation.

#IRCTC website hacked? Oh My Digital India.  Dharmesh Dixit (@theDDixit) 5 May 2016

Twitter wits made most of the hacking.

Hope we find the guy who hacked the #IRCTC website. So that we can contact him the next time we need a Tatkal ticket.  Ramesh Srivats (@rameshsrivats) 5 May 2016

#IRCTC was hacked? How did he even get the page to load in the first place? read a tweet by @SahilBulla.

Even the captcha code on #IRCTC is begging for it's life back. pic.twitter.com/Yj7FYI7ydO  Sahil Shah (@SahilBulla) 5 May 2016

Dear #IRCTC Hacker,



Please Put That Stolen Data On A Different Website That Loads Faster. You Might Get A Bharat Ratna. ;)  Sir Ravindra Jadeja (@SirJadeja) 5 May 2016

The public relations officer of IRCTC, Sandeep Dutta, said that the data breach rumours are just that- rumours. There is no hacking nor any leakage of IRCTC ticketing website and everything is safe. My team is working relentlessly reaching out to everyone we can. Im personally supervising everything. This news is just rumours started by a few media organisations.

If the alleged hack turns out to be true, it could be the biggest data breach in the countrys internet history.

Along with handling this situation, the PRO said their team is also addressing regular concerns of users. Our regular working has not been affected. We have been responding to queries and assuring everyone at the same time. Once we get data from the cyber cell, a proper verification will be initiated. IG Maharashtra police cyber cell has informed IRCTC about data theft from its website but the details of the said data are still to be shared with IRCTC, said Dutta.

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For the Congress-led UDF government in Kerala, the timing of the brutal rape and murder of a young law student in poll-bound state could not have been worse. Political parties are using the incident, which has been compared to the 2012 Delhi gangrape, to attack the ruling combine.

The 29-year-olds body was found by her mother in their one-room house on April 28. Autopsy reports confirm she had 38 big and small wounds on her body and her intestines had been pulled out using a sharp-edged weapon. The gruesome details emerged four days after the incident triggering an outrage across the country. Though the police rounded up three men for questioning on Wednesday and released a suspects sketch, no arrests have been made.

Read | Kerala rape and murder case: Cash cannot make up for justice

The states law and order machinery has failed, a BJP delegation told the Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) in Delhi a day after the issue echoed in the Rajya Sabha where members demanded exemplary punishment for the culprits. On Thursday itself, three leaders  Union social justice minister Thawar Chand Gehlot, SC/ST commission chairman RL Punia and National Womens Commission chairperson Lalitha Kumaramagalam  met the traumatized mother admitted in a hospital in Perumbavoor near Kochi. As others make a beeline to meet the aggrieved woman, there is strong speculation that Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who will begin a tour of the state on Friday, will also call on her.

Read | Kerala Dalit rape case: CPI(M) slams Cong, demands probe

In fact, such has been the rush that the superintendent of Perumbavoor government hospital had to issue a statement for VIPs to restrict their visits. The Ernakulam district collector, Raja Manickam  who opened a joint bank account with the victims mother to help her build a house  used Facebook and requested visitors to not use the incident as a photo opportunity.

But the well-intentioned pleas fall far from the political arena where parties are using the crime to slam the government for its failure to nab culprits even after a week.

The Left Democratic Front has announced a series of protest marches and rallies across the state till the assailants are booked.

Read | Kerala: Two migrant labourers detained in law students rape case

The Congress-led UDF is not giving protection to vulnerable women in society; criminals are thriving under the present government, said CPI(M) senior leader Pinarayi Vijayan blaming the police for not taking action against those who threatened the family earlier.

The Congress, on the other hand, is making impassioned requests to not politicize the incident and divert the attention from the crime. The murder has shocked the entire nation. Police officials are probing the case with all seriousness required, said Kerala chief minister Oommen Chandy who announced solatium of `10 lakh for the mother and promised a job for the elder daughter.

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The BJP said the save democracy march of the the Congress in Delhi Friday was meant to save the (Gandhi) dynasty and divert public attention from the AgustaWestland chopper deal.

If a case of corruption is being probed honestly, then how does it become anti-national? The fight is not with your (Gandhi) family but corruption. Congress should answer why does trail of all corruption cases lead to you? A series of scams has become a benchmark of Congress government, said Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad.

Every attempt was made to put obstacles in the AgustaWestland probe. Regardless of what Congress says, this government is going to prosecute (accused) in a fair manner. Probe will be done in a fairest manner and promptly, Prasad said at a press conference.

The Congress partys march was a save family campaign of Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi, he said.

Union minister Rajiv Pratap Rudy, separately, said rather than giving the slogan of Save Democracy, the opposition party should have given the slogan of save democracy from Congress.

Till now, we saw posters of Congress chief Sonia Gandhi and vice president Rahul Gandhi. But today, we even saw her son-in-law Robert Vadras posters. These are all tactics to divert the attention of the people.

Another union minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi said the Congress was protecting corrupt people.

Investigation is on in the chopper deal and action will be taken against those involved in the scam, he said.

Its an irony that the Congress is calling it a march for democracy. The Congress should be calling it is a dynasty march. If one looked around the march venue, there were only hoardings and posters of a single family. Definitely, it was a march to save the dynasty from extinction, BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra said.
Consuming, selling or possessing beef in Maharashtra is not illegal if the meat is from outside the state, the Bombay high court ruled on Friday but upheld a ban on slaughter of cows, bulls and bullocks.

The court struck down two provisions of a controversial slaughter ban law that prohibited the import of beef and criminalised its possession, saying the statutes violate the right to privacy and choice of food guaranteed under the Constitution.

The state cannot intrude into his home and prevent a citizen from possessing and eating food of his choice, said a division bench of justice Abhay Oka and justice SC Gupte.

The state cannot prevent a citizen from possessing and consuming a particular type of food which is not injurious to health or obnoxious.

The Maharashtra government said it will seek legal opinion on challenging the order as officials said permitting beef from outside the state made it difficult for enforcing agencies to prove a crime.

We will consult our legal advisors and decide the next step. We are considering the option to approach the Supreme Court, said chief minister Devendra Fadanvis.

Last year, the BJP state government extended a 1976 law that banned cow slaughter and beef possession to bulls and bullocks, making sale or consumption punishable with a five-year jail term and Rs. 10,000 fine.

This triggered a fierce debate on rising intolerance and freedom of choice with activists saying the ban unfairly targeted Muslims  the biggest players in the beef industry and violated constitutional rights.

Petitioner Harish Jagtiani said restaurants will be allowed to sell imported beef again and that the court ruled in favour of peoples right to eat the food they want, wherever they want.

Were thrilled. Its a total vindication, Jagtiani said.

The bench said section 5D of the Maharashtra Animal Preservation Act, 1976 that prohibited cow, bull or bullock meat possession infringed on a citizens rights.

The state cannot control what a citizen does in his house, which is his own castle, provided he is not doing something contrary to law, said the bench. The court also said the section had no rational nexus with the object sought to be achieved to protect cow and progeny from slaughtering within Mahharashtra.

The court also scrapped section 9B that criminalised beef possession, saying only conscious possession of cow, bull or bullock meat  procured from Maharashtra  will invite penal action. The burden of proving this would be on the state and not on the individual, the court said.

As far as the choice of food was concerned, the citizens were required to be let alone especially when the food of their choice was not injurious to health, the judges said.

Both provisions were added by a 1995 amendment  brought in by the then Shiv Sena-BJP government -- and enforced 20 years later  in March 2015.

Senior state animal husbandry department officials said the government will have to completely evolve the system if it doesnt challenge the verdict.

Anyone can claim the flesh was brought from outside the state and proving the crime will become a tough task, said a senior official.

The reverse burden of proof might also create hurdles for the police, home department officials said.

The bench upheld provisions extending the slaughter ban to bulls and bullocks primarily in view of the fact that the Supreme Court upheld the validity of a similar Gujarat law.

It also considered the material supplied by Maharashtra to prove its argument that the ban was necessary to sustain the predominantly agriculture economy of the state.

The bench also turned down petitioners who said the ban infringed on the religious rights of Muslims guaranteed under the Constitution. The challenge said poor Muslims --who cannot afford goats  sacrifice bulls, cow or bullocks during Bakr-i-Eid. But the court ruled that such sacrifice wasnt an essential religious practice of Islam, citing a Supreme Court bench that ruled the same.

Since the BJP stormed to power in the Lok Sabha elections two years ago, cow slaughter has emerged as a hot button topic.

Several Hindu groups and BJP leaders demand a nationwide ban on cow slaughter, citing scriptures that describe the cow as the mother of civilisation. But activists and Opposition say the proposed ban is used by the ruling party to fan communal feelings for electoral benefit.

In the past two years, Hindus and Muslims clashed repeatedly over suspected incidents of bovine slaughter with vigilante cow protection groups mushrooming all over north India.

The simmering tensions exploded last year when Mohammad Ikhlaq was lynched by a mob in Uttar Pradesh after rumours spread that he killed a calf for its meat.

(With agency inputs)

Read: Ban on Indias Daughter, beef shows our hypocrisy
Radha, Radhika, Shama, Rani and many more are set to walk the ramp for a beauty pageant in Haryana. But before you book your tickets, know that these pretty names dont depict beautiful ladies, but beautiful cows. The state is all set to host a cow show at International Institute of Veterinary Education and Research in Bahu Akbarpur village of Rohtak district on May 6 and 7. As many as 250 cows were registered till Thursday, while the event organisers said they were expecting a strength of more than 500 to participate in the show, which will also have a competition of milk-yielding.

Registrations are on in full swing and the ramp where cows will walk is set. But, only desi breeds of cows are allowed, which include Hariana, Sahiwal, Tharparkar, Rathi, Belahi and Gir. The reason cited by the Haryana government was that it wants to promote desi breeds and flare up their prices in the market compared to foreign ones. Cattle owners from different parts of the state have started thronging the venue with their colourful cows, decorated to look beautiful and win various cash rewards.

Cattle owners have started thronging the venue. (Manoj Dhaka/HT)

I have come from Karnal with 12 cows. My strong contender for the beauty contest, Radha, a Sahiwal cow, has won several contests in Punjab and Haryana, Rajbir Singh, a cattle owner, said. Another contender from Mahendragarh, Mustaq Khans cow Amba yielded 19.5 litres milk in a recent contest in Muktsar. Im hopeful she will make me proud again, he said.

Arrangements have been made for cows and their owners at the venue, which include food and shelter. A panel of scientists expert in the breeds of the cows will judge them on the basis of their ideal features. Scientists from veterinary institutes and universities have been called as judges, Prem Singh, nodal officer of the event, said. A winner will be announced in each category and the cow owners will reportedly be awarded Rs 2.5 lakhs.

The mind behind the show, Haryana animal husbandry and dairying minister, Om Prakash Dhankar told HT the idea behind starting this event: All women are beautiful, but still the world organises beauty pageants for them. Whoever wins, suddenly becomes famous. Similarly, we want to organise beauty pageant for desi cows so they also get the limelight which they deserve and it flares up their market value. This will promote adoption of desi cows which are now being forgotten by Haryana farmers, Dhankar said. Besides, why should milk brands come and take away the earnings which our local farmers can get? he asked.

Arrangements have been made for cows and their owners at the venue, which include food and shelter. (Manoj Dhaka/HT)

Earlier scheduled for February 27 and 28, the event got postponed because the law and order situation in the state was not conducive after the state witnessed an unprecedented violence and arson.

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The Congress is organising a Save Democracy march on Friday morning in protest against the NDAs alleged all-out attack on opposition-ruled state governments, universities, students and parliamentary institutions.

Coming amid an escalating confrontation over the AgustaWestland chopper scam in Parliament, the party is expected to talk about NDAs alleged campaign of deceit and deliberate lies against the opposition. The march is also expected to highlight the drought and agrarian crisis which has led to a spate of suicides by farmers and affected 40 crore people in 10 states.

The Congress president Sonia Gandhi, former prime minister Manmohan Singh and party vice-president Rahul Gandhi among others will address the gathering at Jantar Mantar. Sonia will later lead the march to the Parliament House.

Read | Sonia, Rahul Gandhi to lead Congress gherao of Parliament

Fridays march follows several issues, including the legal tussle the NDA and Congress are locked in over the imposition of Presidents rule in Uttarakhand. Congress Harish Rawat led-government was deposed while the government in Arunachal Pradesh was ousted. They also allege the BJP is attempting to destabilise the party rule in Himachal Pradesh.

The Congress has mobilised leaders and party workers from Delhi, Haryana, Rajasthan and western Uttar Pradesh for the march. Leaders will reportedly address the BJP and NDA governments assault on JNU, Hyderabad and Allahabad universities and students. They are also expected to touch upon parliamentary committees being overlooked.

Read | How did Swamy get access to Agusta files: Congress wants to know

The Congress held a similar march last year on March 17 to protest the controversial land acquisition bill. Sonia had led opposition leaders to Rashtrapati Bhavan against the bill the party had dubbed anti-farmer and pro-corporate. This was followed by a rally at Ram Lila grounds on April 19.

Also read | AgustaWestland deal: Top 5 points made by govt and Congress

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The Bombay high court ruled on Friday that it will no longer be illegal to consume or keep imported beef but upheld the Maharashtra governments ban on slaughter of cows and bullocks in the state.

A division bench of justice Abhay Oka and justice SC Gupte struck down two provisions of the Maharashtra Animal Preservation Act, 1976, which prohibit the import of beef and criminalise its possession, saying they violate the right to privacy and the right to choice of food that is guaranteed under Article 21 of Constitution.

Last year, the Maharashtra government enforced a complete ban on beef and made the sale or consumption of the meat punishable by a five-year jail term and Rs. 10,000 fine, sparking a raging debate over the right to choice.

A number of petitions were filed in the high court challenging the constitutional validity of various provisions of the Maharashtra Animal Preservation Act, 1976, which were introduced by an amendment, but brought into force 20 years later in March 2015.

The original 1976 act banned slaughter of cows, but the amendment also prohibited slaughter of bulls and bullocks and possession and consumption of their meat.

There is no reason for the state of Maharashtra to be worried as to whether there are enough cows, bulls and bullocks in Ireland or for that matter some other country or some other state in India, senior advocate Aspi Chinoy, who represented one of the petitioners, said.

The senior advocate had also pointed out that there was a ban on the slaughter of cows, bulls and bullocks in several other states, but there was no ban on import of beef from other states or other countries. He said section 5(d) curtails the fundamental right of choice of food of citizens, covered under the right to liberty guaranteed by Article 21 of the Constitution of India.

He said reasonable restrictions can be imposed on fundamental rights, but such restrictions must be justified on the ground of some compelling public interest.

The state government, on the other hand, contended that the amendment has not been enacted to harass beef eaters, but to prohibit slaughter of cows, bulls and bullocks in the larger interest of the agrarian society.

Lets not look at the act as something done to harass people, advocate general Shrihari Aney said.
It was an eventful Friday in Delhi as the BJP and Congress acrimony spilled from the Parliament on to streets in the form of party protests.

While the Congress took out a Save Democracy march from Jantar Mantar, MPs of the NDA staged a dharna in front of the Gandhi statue outside the Parliament building.

Read | Save Democracy march: Sonia, Rahul, Cong leaders detained, then freed

If the opposition Congress was protesting the deceit and deliberate lies being spread by the saffron party, the ruling BJP counter them on the issue of corruption citing the AgustaWestland chopper deal as a case in point.

Read | Congress to lead protest march today over NDA targeting Opposition

Debates on the chopper scam have thrown Rajya Sabha sessions out of gear this week, with the BJP alleging that top Congress leaders received bribes paid by the Italian firm to ensure the contract was awarded to them.

NDA leaders also raised slogans against the Congress leadership and claimed that people in Delhi were worried with the judgment of an Italian court.

The protests come ahead of a debate on the AgustaWestland scam slated in Lok Sabha on Friday in which defence minister Manohar Parikkar is expected to reply to a calling attention motion.

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Dr Pranav Pandya, head of the All World Gayatri Pariwar, on Friday declined his nomination to the Rajya Sabha after watching the proceedings of the House on Thursday.

After being nominated, I watched proceedings in the Upper House the whole day on Thursday but I found that one is not even allowed to properly speak there. The atmosphere is not good there. What will I do after becoming member of the Rajya Sabha? I have informed the ministry of home affairs and BJP president Amit Shah about my decision, Dr Pandya told HT.

He said that he will not reconsider the decision. I spoke to Amit Shah three-four times today but I will not change my decision. Rather, I will devote my time outside the Rajya Sabha, where I can impact on the lives of millions of people for their betterment, said Dr Pandya.

A home ministry spokesman didnt offer any comments.

Dr Pandya, an MD in medicine, was nominated to the Rajya Sabha on May 4 by President Pranab Mukherjee following a recommendation by the government. He was the seventh person to be nominated by the Modi government. After the nomination, he had tweeted: Thanks to all who sent their congratulations for my nomination to rajyasabha. I will try to inculcate yugnirman sutras among our MPs.

Before him, the government on April 22 had nominated Subramanian Swamy, Narendra Jadhav, Navjot Singh Sidhu, Suresh Gopi, Swapan Dasgupta and Mary Kom as the new RS members.


A Panaji trial court on Friday sent Goa legislator Atanasio Monserrate to three days of police custody for buying, drugging and raping a 16-year-old girl in a case which will be closely watched by anti-slavery activists as the country moves to crackdown on human trafficking.

Monserrate was detained on Thursday after the teenager told police she was sold to him by her mother and another woman.

The former Goa education minister may be one of the first Indian lawmakers to be charged under recently enacted human trafficking legislation, said police on Friday.

We have charged him with various offences. These include drugging, sexual assault of a minor and trafficking, a police officer involved in the investigation told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone from Panaji, Goas capital.

I dont have the figures, but yes, this could be one of the first MLAs (Member of the Legislative Assembly) charged under Section 370 which deals with human trafficking.

The crime branch officer, who did not wish to be named, said Monserrate, a former member of main opposition Congress Party, has denied the charges and says conspiracy against him has been hatched by his political opponents.

The girl, who is from St Cruz - the constituency which Monserrate represents - told police her mother sold her to work for him, but that he kept her confined, gave her drinks laced with drugs and raped her several times.

Police did not disclose the amount she was sold for, but local media reported the teenager had cited a figure of five million rupees ($75,000) in her statement to police.

Her mother has also been charged under the human trafficking law and is currently being questioned and a search is on for the second woman, said police.

PALM-FRINGED BEACHES

India is home to more than 14 of the worlds 36 million victims of slavery, ranging from bonded labour to prostitution, according to the 2014 Global Slavery Index.

Activists in Goa estimate thousands of women and children from Nepal, Bangladesh, Thailand and from other Indian states are duped by traffickers into the western coastal state, famed for its palm-fringed beaches and night life.

Many end up being exploited in brothels fronted by hotels, beauty salons, spas and bars or used in forced labour such as domestic work or in the hospitality industry.

Section 370, which was enacted after the fatal gang rape of a young woman on a New Delhi bus in December 2012, broadens the definition of trafficking to include the buying or selling of a person as a slave and carries a jail term of up to 7 years.

National Crime Records Bureau data shows that in its first year, 720 cases out of a total of 5,466 human trafficking-related cases were registered under Section 370 in 2014.

But activists say this is a gross under-estimation of the scale of the problem and have welcomed government moves to draft more comprehensive legislation by the end of the year.

This will not only unify several existing laws including Section 370, but also raise penalties for offenders and provide victims with rehabilitation and compensation.

The legislation also provides for the establishment of a central investigative anti-trafficking agency to coordinate and work between states as well as special courts to hear cases.

Activists said they would closely follow this case.

Certainly this case is a test case because the person is a powerful politician. The investigation should be very precise and rely more on scientific and circumstantial evidence, said Ravi Kant from Shakti Vahini, a Delhi-based anti-trafficking charity.

Protection to witnesses in this case will be a big challenge for the prosecution. It has been seen that in cases involving powerful people, the victim and other witnesses can turn hostile.

(with inputs from IANS and Reuters)
A 21-year-old man allegedly trespassed into the high-security Hindon air base in Ghaziabad on Friday, triggering widespread panic and questions about the drill followed by defence establishments.

Officials said Sonu Jatav entered the air base through an under-construction security perimeter boundary wall early on Friday. He was spotted near the technical area around 1.30am and injured a soldier before being found more than five hours later.

The man  Sonu Jatav - seems to be insane and says he hails from Indrapuri near Loni. This is not a case of any terror-linked activity, but a case of trespass, said senior superintendent of police at Ghaziabad, Dharmendra Singh.

The sensitive airbase houses C-130 Super Hercules special operations plane, C-17 heavy lifters and Mi-17 transport choppers. The air base is vital as it provides cover to the Capital.

Officials feared a repeat of the January attack on the Pathankot air base in Punjab, when six militants entered the premises and killed seven soldiers. India says Pakistani terror group Jaish-e-Mohammed is behind the ambush.

Since the Pathankot strike, the air force issued shoot-on-sight orders against intruders at more than 20 of its front-line bases, including Hindon, in the western sector. All air bases have also been put on high alert after the Indian Air Force carried out a comprehensive security audit of its vital installations.

The alleged infiltration caused panic as authorities shut down two schools operating on campus and pressed aircraft into service as part of the standard operating procedure. Several police teams were also rushed to the air base.

We activated SOPs even as the case turned out to be that of a trespass. The police and the army were also called in. We immediately sanitised the entire premises and even schools were ordered closure as part of procedure, said Group Captain Sandeep Mehta, public relations officer of the western air command.

The incident came two days after police arrested three suspected JeM operatives from Delhi and Uttar Pradesh, recovering explosives that were being possibly used to plan for blasts in the Capital.

Sonu is arrested at Sahibabad police station following a written complaint by air base officials. During the incident, he injured a Defence Security Corps jawan inside the base, said Ashish Srivastava, circle officer (border).

Jatavs mother Shanti Devi told officials her son went missing on Wednesday.

I kept on searching for him night and day. He works as a barber. He is mentally unstable and gives abrupt replies when questioned, she said.

Neighbours said they told the family to file a police complaint when Jatav went missing.

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Senior Congress leaders, including party chief Sonia Gandhi, vice-president Rahul Gandhi and former prime minister Manmohan Singh, on Friday courted arrest after they were stopped from going to Parliament House as part of their Save Democracy March.

The Congress leaders started their march from Jantar Mantar but were stopped by police as section 144 had been imposed in the area. They later went to the Parliament Street police station to court arrest and were released after some time.

(Arvind Yadav/HT Photo)

(REUTERS)

(AFP)

(Vipin Kumar/HT Photo)

(Sanjeev Verma/HT Photo)

(Raj K Raj/HT Photo)

(Vipin Kumar/HT Photo)

Read | Day of protests: Congress-BJP?take AgustaWestland fight to Delhi streets
The Jet Airways attendant, who was wounded in the Brussels attacks and whose image was published in newspapers around the world, returned to Mumbai on Friday after spending more than 40 days at a Belgium hospital.

Sources said Nidhi Chaphekar arrived on a Jet Airways flight at 7am and was taken to the Breach Candy Hospital from the airport. Her husband and brother-in-law accompanied her back home.

In a statement, Jet Airways said Chaphekar has made significant recovery from her injuries sustained in the blasts at Brussels Zaventem Airport.

She is in good spirits and is very happy to be back with her family. Nidhi will now undergo treatment in Mumbai as part of the next phase of her recovery programme outlined by doctors, the airlines said.

Jet Airways continues to provide all the necessary support to Nidhi and her family during this time. Our priority is to ensure that she continues to receive the best medical care and attention so she can resume her normal life at the earliest possible, it added.

A photograph of a dazed Chaphekar taken right after the two massive suicide blasts that hit Zaventem Airport on March 22 became an iconic image of the attacks.

Read | Family of Jet Airways employee in blast photo will fly to Belgium

The photograph, shared by millions on social media, taken by local photojournalist Ketevan Kardava showed the 40-year-old mother of two in the tattered remains of her yellow Jet Airways uniform, missing a shoe and with blood running down her face.

Chaphekar was being treated at Belgiums Grande Hospital de Charleroi Hospital for 15% burns and a broken foot with medically approved sedation for a painless recovery.

Her children would meet her for the first time since she was injured in the attacks, a relative said.

Three bombs had ripped through Brussels airport and a city metro station, leaving over 30 people dead and more than 250 wounded in coordinated strikes that came days after the prime suspect in the November Paris attacks was arrested in the city.

Also read | Hugs, selfies and tears after Indians stranded in Brussels return home
JNU students union president Kanhaiya Kumar, who is on a hunger strike, was discharged from AIIMS after his health on Friday improved even as the varsity administration asked students to not invite outsiders saying it might vitiate the academic atmosphere and peace on campus.

While five students on Thursday withdrew their fast against the punishment by the university in connection with the February 9 event during which anti-national slogans were allegedly raised, 15 others continued with the hunger strike which entered ninth day on Friday.

Kanhaiya, who is out on bail after his arrest in a sedition case, was on Thursday admitted to AIIMS in a semi-conscious state. He was discharged on Friday after treatment for mild dehydration and ketosis.

Kanhaiya has been discharged from AIIMS. He has been advised bed rest for few days. He has to undergo some medical tests too but he will continue with the strike, a JNUSU statement said.

The ketone level of the fasting students is high and the BP is low, according to the test reports from the health centre.

On the other hand, JNU issued fresh advisory for the students and teachers to avoid inviting outsiders to the campus. The administration also asked the students to refrain from using direct or indirect coercive measures and come forward for dialogue and discussion.

The administration requests all the teachers and students to avoid inviting people from outside the campus for any gathering or activity to press their demands, which could undermine peace and security in the campus, JNU Registrar Pramod Kumar said in an appeal.

Thousands of students on the campus are busy preparing for or writing their end semester examinations and also writing their dissertations. Continuing hunger strikes and escalation of it through involvement of outsiders may further enhance the stress level in the campus and affect the career of those students, he added.

While members from civil society joined the protests today, alumni of the university will gather tomorrow to express solidarity by fasting for a day.

In a separate notice, the Registrar asked the students to not use the Public Address System without permission and around the administration block, which has been the venue of protest ever since the sedition row broke out.

It has come to our notice that the Public Addressal It has come to our notice that the Public Addressal System has been used without prior permission and disturbing peace in residential area. Use of the system is strictly prohibited in and around the administration block and can be used only after permission from the authorities, it added.

25 students had gone on hunger strike last week. While five members of ABVP called off their fast on Wednesday claiming they have an assurance from the JNU administration that their demands will be considered, five members of the Left-affiliated groups withdrew from the stir yesterday citing deteriorating health.

JNU VC Jagadesh Kumar had earlier this week appealed to students to put forward their demands using constitutional means and asked them to come for a dialogue to resolve the matter.

Two other students --Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya -- were arrested along with Kanhaiya in the sedition case.

While Kanhaiya has been slapped with a penalty of Rs 10,000 on grounds of indiscipline and misconduct, Umar, Anirban and a Kashmiri student, Mujeeb Gatoo have been rusticated for varying durations.

Financial penalty has been imposed on 14 students. Hostel facilities of two students have been withdrawn and the university has declared the campus out of bounds for two former students.

Saurabh, who is the lone ABVP member in JNU Students Union, has also been slapped with a fine of Rs 10,000 for blocking traffic.
Three people have been arrested on Friday in connection with the gangrape of a 19-year-old Dalit nursing student at Varkala.

Those arrested are in the age group of 20-25 years, police said.

The victim, a second year BSc nursing student, was raped allegedly by an autorickshaw driver and two of his friends near Ayanthi bridge in Varkala, about 50km from Thiruvananthapuram, on May 3.

Read | Kerala horror: Student raped by auto driver, his friends

A case under IPC 376 (2) (g) (gangrape) was registered against them.

Medical examination of the victim had confirmed that she had been gangraped.

The victim had gone with the autorickshaw driver, who was known to her, in his vehicle on the day of the incident.

Read | Kerala woman raped and killed, intestines ripped out in attack

Two of his friends got into the vehicle later. They took the autorickshaw to a deserted spot and allegedly raped her, police said.

The incident comes days after a 30-year-old Dalit law student was raped and murdered at Perumbavoor in Ernakulam district.

Read | All parties in race to exploit brutal Kerala rape, murder
Rajya Sabha Deputy Chairman PJ Kurien asked Bharatiya Janata Party member Subramanian Swamy to produce documents he quoted from in the AgustaWestland debate by 6 pm Friday to avoid expunction of his comments.

The issue was raised by Congress leader Jairam Ramesh. I want to know have the papers been authenticated? he asked.

To this, Kurien said: I have given the direction... He has to do that otherwise all what he quoted will be deleted. If he is not doing by 6pm today (Friday) all he has quoted will be deleted.

A day after a high-voltage debate on the AgustaWestland chopper deal issue, Swamy was on Thursday targeted in the Rajya Sabha by Congress members who wanted to know how he got access to sensitive and secret files of the CBI and ED and whether he had authenticated the documents quoted by him.

Swamy, a newly-nominated member, had said on Wednesday he was quoting Italian courts documents to allege that a bribe of 30 million euros was paid in the Rs 3,600 crore deal for 12 VVIP choppers. Out of this, six million euros went to IAF personnel, 8.4 million euros to bureaucrats and Rs 125 crore to AP, Swamy had said.

Targeting Congress president Sonia Gandhi, Swamy said the CBI can, as per the law, question the person mentioned as the driving force behind the AgustaWestland deal.

Swamy said that although the Indian Air Force in 2004 said the VVIP choppers must be able to fly up to 6,000 metres for safety reasons, the Agusta choppers could not fly above 4,500 metres altitude.

He alleged that conditions were manipulated by the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government to egg out the rest of contenders.

The BJP leader also alleged that while the original proposal was to buy eight choppers, the number was later raised to 12 once AgustaWestland won the contract.
The Congress organising a Save Democracy march on Friday morning in

Protesting against the NDAs alleged all-out attackon the Congress-ruled state governments, universities, students and parliamentary institutions, the Opposition party organised a Save Democracy march on Friday from Jantar Mantar to the Parliament.

Congress president Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi launched a scathing attack on the ruling BJP party, saying those who stand against them, speak against them face false allegations.

Here are the live updates from the march as it happened

11:45 am: All the Congress leaders detained are let off after completion of formalities.

11:30 am: More than 12 leaders including Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi, Manmohan Singh, Ahmad Patel, AK Antony, Sachin Pilot and Scindia, detained under section 65 DP act.

11:10 am: Congress begins its Save Democracy march from Jantar Mantar to Parliament.

10:55 am: Fighting anti-national forces is not a new thing for the Congress. The party knows how to stand up to those who threaten harmony and brotherhood in the country says Sonia Gandhi.

10:45 am : BJP doesnt know what Congress is made of. Life has taught me to struggle, we have faced a lot of challenges, says Congress president Sonia Gandhi.

The forests of Uttarakhand are burning and there is no government to take care of the situation, she adds.

10: 40 am: Where are the 2 crore jobs that PM Modi offered, asks Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi.

- RSS Mohan Bhagwat and PM Modi are ruining India, Rahul Gandhi adds.

10: 30 am: Congress is like a flowing river,no matter how many false allegations you level against it, it will not divert from its path, said former prime minister Manmohan Singh

- By destabilising Congress govts in Uttarakhand, AP, PM Modi has attacked democracy. Now they are eyeing other Cong govts adds the former PM.

Coming amid an escalating confrontation over the AgustaWestland chopper scam in Parliament, the Congress is expected to talk about NDAs alleged campaign of deceit and deliberate lies against the opposition. The march is also expected to highlight the drought and agrarian crisis which has led to a spate of suicides by farmers and affected 40 crore people in 10 states.

The Congress president Sonia Gandhi, former prime minister Manmohan Singh and party vice-president Rahul Gandhi among others will address the gathering at Jantar Mantar. Sonia will later lead the march to the Parliament House.
A poor farmer single-handedly digs up a well in 20 days on his land in Madhya Pradesh to give his drought-hit village water for irrigation and daily use.

The feat, his fellow villagers are now comparing with that of Dashrath Manjhi who single-handedly chiseled a path through a mountain in 22 years to give his fellow villagers a shortcut to better medical facilities.

But, it wasnt easy for Bhagwan Singh, 38, of Nevari village in Agar district. He owns two bighas (about.8 acres) of farm land on the outskirts of the village. Watching him dig a well, almost everybody thought he had gone crazy after suffering crop losses for two years due to water paucity. However, all his critics have now become his fans after he dug a 90-foot deep well in just about 20 days and gave 650-odd villagers access to the well.

Father of three daughters and a son, Bhagwan, who never went to school due to financial crunch, said, Somewhere I heard, where there is a will there is a way and I strongly believe in this--If Dashrath Manjhi can make a way for his people through a mountain, why not me. He said he felt like hitting a goldmine by digging a well for people.

But, what made him undertake the feat?

All the villagers who laughed at the efforts of Bhagwan are now fetching water from his well. (HT Photo)

Bhagwan said, There is no source of water for irrigation in our village, which is about 16km from Agar. My farm land is useless as I cant even grow crops there for want of water. Our village has a couple of hand pumps. But, they arent enough to fulfil the requirement of 650 villagers. This gave him the idea to dig a well himself and he began digging about three weeks ago. Everybody doubted me. But thanks to my wife and children who were always by my side, he said, adding now others too could dig wells on their pieces of land and combat drought.

His friend Shankar said even those, who laughed at him, were now fetching water from his well.

Village sarpanch Rajendra Singh said Bhagwans efforts had drawn the district administrations attention too, which hopefully would now help villagers fight drought their way.

Agar sub-divisional magistrate (SDM) Milind Dhoke appreciated Bhagwans efforts and said he would personally meet him and extend him financial help. The Agar district administration has allowed farmers to dig well at their farm land.

However, Indore and other big cities have stopped giving fresh permission for digging up bore wells. The restrain shall continue till June 30 there.


Minister of State for Urban Development Babul Supriyo was admitted to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) after suffering minor injuries in a road accident in New Delhi on Friday.

Supriyo, who was admitted with hand and chest injuries, is in stable condition, doctors said.

The accident happened near Rao Tula Ram flyover in south Delhi at around 5.30 pm in the evening. Supriyos office said that the parliamentarian was on his way to the domestic airport to receive his daughter.

The ministers personal assistant told HT that Supriyo was riding a bike and his staff followed him in a car.



As soon as we climbed the flyover, a Toyota Innova car, which was in front of us applied brakes. The bike hit the car. We rushed him to the hospital. He has sustained injuries on his hand and chest. Contrary to some rumours, let me clarify that he was wearing a helmet, said one of Supriyos personal assistants.

The official also said that the minister did not press any charges saying it was an accident and that the driver did not stop the car deliberately.



A police team later visited AIIMS Trauma Centre. They did not receive any complaint.

The ministers close associates said that he had planned a surprise for his daughter who was coming from Mumbai.

Doctors at the AIIMS said his condition is stable. Babul Supriyo was brought to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) Trauma Centre on Friday evening, after he met with a road traffic accident, said a doctor at the Trauma Centre.

He sustained minor injuries on hand and chest. He is stable and currently under observation. His vital parameters are fine and he is oriented, he added.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi will address an election rally in Palakkad on Friday as the saffron party looks to end its political drought in Kerala in the assembly polls.

Arriving from Coimbatore on a helicopter, Modi will head to the venue close to Palakkad Fort where around a lakh workers are expected to attend his maiden poll rally.

We are upbeat. Many seats are witnessing a tough three-cornered fight. With the visit of Prime Minister, the poll scene will electrify further, BJP state chief, Kummanam Rajesekharan said.

This is the first of five rallies the PM will address in the state that goes to polls on May 16. Elaborate arrangements have been put in place, with security being tightened in Palakkad and surrounding areas.

While the Congress, tainted by scams, is battling to continue its run in the government, the Left is plotting its resurgence. The BJP though is hoping to open its account in the state, with many central ministers making a beeline for the state during the campaigning.

The party is strongly pitched in at least 25 constituencies where a tough tri-polar contest is unfolding.

As was the case in the 2014 general elections, the BJP is being powered by its ideological progenitor, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, in the electoral battle. Of the 140 seats, the party is contesting 97 while its partner, the fledgling Bharat Dharma Jana Sena, a political outfit of backward Ezhavas, has put up candidates for 37. The rest have been given to smaller parties.

Though BJP only scored 10.4% of the votes in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, the party notched its winnings up to 14% in the local body elections held six months ago. If the party adds another three to four per cent of votes, political equations will dramatically change, analysts note.

The saffron partys steady growth is not good news for the Congress-led United Democratic Front and the Communist Party of India (Maoist)-backed Left Democratic Front.

What makes the Congress-CPM tussle a weak link for both parties is their alliance in West Bengal, which is also voting in assembly polls.

It is time to weed out two corrupt and inefficient dispensations. Both (Congress and CPIM) are friends in Bengal. They should explain why they are arrayed against each other here, BJP party chief Amit Shah said during his two-day visit.

Modi is also expected to talk about this unholy alliance.

As voter bases polarise, the BJP has been appealing to caste outfits and sulking political partners for some time. The latest addition to their camp is Adivasi leader CK Janu, who is contesting from Wayanad in north Kerala.

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The Lok Sabha witnessed a fiery debate on the VVIP chopper deal on Friday with the ruling party fielding defence minister Manohar Parrikar and three other MPs to launch a concerted attack on the Congress, which fought back tooth and nail.

The oppositions chief whip Jyotiraditya Scindia gave a point by point rebuttal of the allegations against Congress leaders, including party chief Sonia Gandhi who he described as a lioness of whom the BJP is scared.

Parrikar, who seemed off-colour during the debate on this issue in the Rajya Sabha on Wednesday, looked confident in the BJP-dominated Lok Sabha on Friday. The minister described suspects like former air chief SP Tyagi and Gautam Khaitan as small people who washed their hands in the flowing Ganga and said that the strings of the scam were pulled by more powerful people in the then government, an allusion to Congress leadership. He described former defence minister AK Antony as bechara whose hands were tied and he feared that his sainthood would be disrobed.

Scindia, however, put up a strong defence of party leaders and dwelt at length about how the UPA government swung into action after the scam surfaced, ordering CBI inquiry, scrapping the contract and recovering Rs 2,063 crore from the company.

He extensively quoted the Italian court judge, middleman Christian Michel and Italian official Peter Hullet, to underline how there was no evidence whatsoever against Sonia Gandhi. Sherni hai sherni, he said about Gandhi, adding that the BJP was scared of her.

Scindia, who was congratulated by both Sonia and Rahul at the end of his speech, engaged with BJPs Anurag Thakur, Nishikant Dubey and Parrikar, vowing to rip apart their mayajaal. Why in the FIPB meeting on October 8, 2015, was permission given to AgustaWestland, which was a blacklisted company? Answer this ... why Finmeccanica was invited to participate in a Make in India programme, he asked.

Your (BJP) party president said that this is a bogus company and you invited a bogus company to Make in India. They have to give the answers to this, the Congress member said.

Scindia quoted from a news report and claimed that middleman Michel has said he was pressurised to incriminate the Gandhi family in return of charges against him being dropped. He also referred to another report that claimed, quoting Michel, that PM Modi had offered Italian government the freedom of its two murder accused marines in return of evidence linking Sonia in the scandal.

When Parrikar countered saying that this had already been denied, the Congress chief whip retorted, asking how it was correct for the ruling side to quote Michel and wrong if he exposed the governments nefarious designs. Scindia sought to know from the BJP why it opposed the setting up of a joint parliamentary committee when the ruling UPA proposed it in March 2013.

The ruling party MPs earlier made several allegations leading to sharp exchanges with the opposition benches. Anurag Thakur alleged that a senior Congress leader went to Dubai to meet Michel. Opposition MPs dared him to name the leader, but Thakur refused.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi waded into the raging AgustaWestland corruption row on Friday, appearing to attack Congress chief Sonia Gandhi and demanding punishment for those who received bribes from middlemen in the deal.

Modi, at an election rally in Tamil Nadus Hosur, criticised the opposition party and said his government couldnt be blamed for alleged corruption in the Rs 3,727 crore agreement.

Do you have any relatives in Italy? I dont have any relative in Italy. Then why I am being asked about the doings of the Congress? Modi said, an apparent reference to Gandhis Italian roots.

AgustaWestland VVIP chopper scam culprits must be punished.

AgustaWestland, a subsidiary of Italian defence major Finmeccanica, allegedly paid around Rs 375 crore as bribe to bag a deal for supplying 12 VVIP helicopters to the Indian Air Force.

In pics: Sonia, Manmohan, Rahul court arrest to save democracy

I have never been to Italy; havent met Italians. Even then if the Italians held them guilty, what do we do? Modi said, referring to a recent Milan court judgment where documents showed middlemen naming top Congress leaders including Gandhi and former prime minister Manmohan Singh.

The graft charges forced the then UPA government to scrap the deal before the general elections in 2014.

Should those stealing in the VVIP chopper deal not be punished? Should there not be legal action against them?... Thats why I am fighting against corruption, he said.

The allegations have sparked fireworks in the ongoing budget session of Parliament where the government repeatedly accused the Congress of colluding with middlemen to illegally benefit AgustaWestland.

The Opposition party denies all allegations, pointing out that it was the then NDA government led by BJP stalwart Atal Bihari Vajpayee that decided to change helicopter specifications in 2003, benefitting AgustaWestland.

The Milan appeals court recently sentenced former bosses of Finmeccanica and its AgustaWestland unit to jail terms for false accounting and corruption in the Indian defence deal.

READ MORE | Unlike Bofors, wrongdoers in Agusta case will be punished: Parrikar

Modis stinging attack came days before Tamil Nadu goes to the polls with incumbent chief minister J Jayalalithaa hoping to buck trend and come back to power. The Congress has tied up with principal opposition party DMK.

The PM offered the BJP as an alternative to the two Dravidian parties in the state, reminding the people about the 2G spectrum allocation scam in which DMK leaders are accused.

Earlier 2G,3G and how many Gs happened. God knows even the wind they did not spare. It is not about who will win but who will save Tamil Nadu, he said.
Defence minister Manohar Parrikar fired the Bofors barb at the Congress on Friday, declaring the governments intent to catch the VVIP helicopter scam beneficiaries unlike the tainted howitzer deal of the 1980s in which the accused were not captured.

What we could not do in Bofors, maybe we can do it in AgustaWestland, he said, wrapping up a high-decibel debate in the Lok Sabha.

He was referring to a 1986 defence deal with Swedish gunmaker Bofors. The Congress had lost the 1989 election because of the scam and political rivals dragged former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhis name into the scandal, though the judiciary cleared him in 2004.

Parrikars remarks were in response to Congresss attempt to turn the tables on the government over the AgustaWestland helicopter scandal. The opposition party accused the government of trying to create an illusion through baseless allegations but doing nothing to identify the culprit or recover the money.

Read | Cong walks out of LS after govt says UPA did everything to help Agusta

What have you done in 720 days of your government? Have you brought in a single penny? Have you even identified a single person who has indulged in corruption, asked Congress chief whip Jyotiraditya Scindia.

He demanded a Supreme Court-monitored investigation, with a mandate to submit its reports in Parliament every three months.

The defence minister rejected the Congresss demand, saying he will personally monitor the investigations progress.

Parrikar, who looked a bit off colour in the Rajya Sabha on Wednesday, was confident in the BJP-dominated Lok Sabha, calling his predecessor AK Antony a bechara - meaning helpless - who feared his sainthood would be disrobed. He alleged that some people in the UPA government were the real beneficiaries while former air chief SP Tyagi, on whose watch AgustaWestland got the contract, received a chillar or small change from the scam.

Also, he referred to a mysterious fire in the air force office where important documents were kept.

He said he will ask the CBI to investigate if it was an act of arson or accident. If anyone deliberately tried to start a fire, his attempt was unsuccessful as the AgustaWestland file was among the three that were not gutted.

AgustaWestland, the British arm of Italian defence giant Finmeccanica, allegedly paid Rs 360 crore as bribe to Indian agents to secure a Rs 3,727-crore contract to supply a dozen helicopters for VVIPs.

The previous UPA government scrapped the deal over charges of kickbacks but the controversy resurfaced this April after an Italian court found two company executives guilty of corruption. Since then, the ruling BJP and opposition Congress have been trading charges.

The main opposition party staged a walkout from the Lok Sabha after Parrikar remarked that the Congress-led UPA government did everything to award the contract to AgustaWestland. He said some people from the other side- pointing towards the Congress benches in the House - made money from the deal.

Besides Parrikar, the BJP fielded parliamentarians Anurag Thakur, Nishikant Dubey and Kirit Somaiya to corner the Congress on Friday.

Scindia, one of the two speakers from the opposing side, dismissed the BJPs allegations point-by-point. He put up a stout defence for Congress president Sonia Gandhi, saying her name did not figure in the authenticated documents and the Italian court too stated there was no evidence against her.

He said the BJP gets irritated the moment her name crops up since she is a sherni (lioness).

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A day after tragedy struck at the Simhastha Kumbh in Ujjain, things were back on track on Friday with lakhs of pilgrims taking a holy dip in Kshipra on the occasion of Vaishakh Krishna Amavasya.

Seven people were killed and more than 50 injured when heavy rains accompanied by squall flattened and uprooted makeshift tents of pilgrims in the mela area.

While many pilgrims faced hardships on Thursday evening after the tents were damaged and electricity supply was cut off, things limped back to normal on Friday morning.

Except for muddy roads, I did not face any problem in approaching the Ram Ghat for taking a dip, Raghav Singh, a pilgrim from Uttar Pradesh, told HT.

15-20 lakh pilgrims visit Kshipra ghat

Huge rush of pilgrims at around 8 am prompted the police to put up barricades at the main intersections and stop the vehicular traffic on the approach roads to the ghat. While no official estimates are available, 15-20 lakh pilgrims visited Kshipra ghat on Friday, about 5 lakh more than the first day of shahi shan. The main reason for the rush was that it was the last day of Panch Kroshi yatra when the devotees return to Ujjain to take a holy dip in Kshipra.

Devotees who had faced some problems in procuring food on Thursday evening had lunch at the Bhandara (community kitchen) of various Akharas on Friday. A number of kiosks selling snacks and other eating joints were also open for business.

However, the district administration had come in for flak on Thursday evening after a drainage line burst at the Ram ghat and dirty water flooded into Kshipra. Many pilgrims and sadhus also had difficulty in getting food and other amenities as the power supply was cutoff as a precautionary measure to prevent incidents of electrocution.

When HT visited the pandals of sadhus on Friday morning, some of them were angry at the mismanagement. Nobody from the administration has come to ask about our well being. The least they could have done was provided tea as our rations have become wet after yesterdays rainfall, said a sadhu belonging to Madhavdas Tyagi ashram in Mangal Nath area.

District collector Kavindra Kiyawat said, the administration is working full time to ensure that the damaged tents are repaired and all the pilgrims get the basic amenities.

Angry sadhus stage road block

A section of sadhus in Mangal Nath area staged road block and overthrew police barricades to protest against the delay in repair works of the damaged tents. The sadhus were upset that instead of carrying out repair works of the main gate and the tents, the police had put up barricades in front of the ashram that was preventing the people from visiting the ashram.
The death of at least seven pilgrims and the injuries to dozens at Simhastha due to thunderstorm come at a time when the administration is grappling with a low turnout at the religious spectacle.

Questions are being asked why despite repeated warnings by the meteorological department, the administration failed to issue any warning or take pre-emptive steps to avert the disaster. The quality of tents also raises questions about the administrations foresight in allowing such structures to come up at the venue.

Pilgrims are having a tough time as the Simhastha venue is filled with slush and mud. Mud was splashed all over the tents as water inundated several places at the venue. Uprooted modular toilets only added to the mounting challenges for the administration. Vehicles refused to move ahead as their wheels sank in mud. The front gates bore a tattered look.

Over 500 saints and disciples take food at the campthe entire stock of wheat got wet. Now we will have to depend on others for meals, Mahant Rajkishore Das in Mangalnath area said.

A strange and eerie silence pervading the venue only added to the overriding sense of tragedy.

From the beginning, the word had spread that this Simhashta was being held under the evil shadow of Guru Chandal Yog. It will not be an overstatement to say that devouts will now think twice to undertake the pilgrimage to Ujjain.

The administration and the ruling party at large are already under pressure because of the low attendance at Simhastha. While the administration claimed that more than one crore people would attend the first Shahi Shan, less than 10 lakh devouts turned out for the event.

To ensure better attendance, the BJP had swung into action and targets given to each and every party leader to ensure greater participation for the second Shahi Shan on May 9. All that preparations may now come to naught because of the tragedy that struck the religious congregation.

However, Bhupendra Singh, in-charge minister of Simhastha Kumbh, remains confident and hopes that the mela will gather strength again in the next two-three days and the second Shahi Snan will be a grand event. Singh rejected apprehensions that pilgrims would now avoid coming after the disaster that struck Simhastha on Thursday.
Four persons were injured and three vehicles were damaged when a unipole along Grand Trunk Road near river Hindon fell on Thursday morning.

Those injured were passing by the advertisement board when the incident took place. A car and two autorickshaws were crushed by the heavy iron pole.

Four persons were injured and three vehicles were damaged when a unipole along Grand Trunk Road near river Hindon fell on Thursday morning. (Sakib Ali/HT Photo)

The four victims suffered head injuries and were rushed to the MMG district hospital. The police later shifted three of them to GTB Hospital in Delhi.

(Sakib Ali/HT Photo)

My seven-seater auto was crushed under the iron pole. I got trapped inside the auto and suffered severe head injuries. Passersby pulled me out. I bought the second-hand auto three years ago for Rs 2 lakh. It is completely damaged now. There was no heavy wind in the morning that could have led to the incident, said Ajay Kumar, an auto driver injured in the mishap.

My seven-seater auto was crushed under the iron pole. I got trapped inside the auto and suffered severe head injuries. said injured auto driver Ajay Kumar. (Sakib Ali/HT Photo)

My brother (32-year-old Sabir Khan) and his 35-year-old brother-in-law Pappu suffered severe injuries and were shifted from the MMG hospital to GTB Hospital in Delhi. They hail from Sundar Nagri in Delhi and were going to Ghaziabad in an NCR auto that was crushed. The driver of the auto is known to us. He had bought the three-wheeler a month ago, said Salim Khan.

The auto driver is the fourth victim.

(Sakib Ali/HT Photo)

As soon as they received information about the incident, traffic police officials rushed to the spot and roped in cranes to remove the metal pole from the road.

(Sakib Ali/HT photo)

The traffic crane could not lift the pole. Even the bigger crane was not able to move it. We took more than an hour to cut the big pole and remove it from the road. It is clear negligence on the part of the agencies that do not pay attention to the specifications needed to install such poles. The incident caused damages and led to an hour-long jam, said Anil Kumar, a traffic inspector.

It took the traffic police more than an hour to remove the unipole from the road. (Sakib Ali/HT Photo)

Family members of the injured submitted a complaint at the Sihani Gate police station.

We have received the complaint and will lodge an FIR. In their complaint, the victims have not named anyone. Four persons were injured. Three of them were shifted to Delhi, said Manish Mishra, circle officer (city).

The mishap led to an hour-long jam. (Sakib Ali/HT Photo)

Officials of the Ghaziabad development authority denied giving permission for the installation of any unipole at the spot.

No permission was given by the GDA for the installation of this unipole, said Ravindra Godbole, secretary and officiating vice-chairman of the GDA.

(Sakib Ali/HT Photo)

DK Sinha, deputy municipal commissioner of the Ghaziabad municipal corporation, said he had no information about the unipole.

However, a staff of the corporation, on the condition of anonymity, said, The road from Mohan Nagar to Thakurdwara has been allotted to a private firm for maintenance and installation of unipoles. We are yet to find out if the pole was installed by the private firm. We are carrying out a drive to remove all illegally installed unipoles. So far, nearly 60 such poles have been removed.

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In a bid to make prohibition more effective, the Bihar government now plans to have its own scanning machines installed at six key railway stations and the two main airports at Patna and Gaya.

Principal secretary, department of registration, excise and prohibition, KK Pathak, has written to civil aviation and railway authorities in this regard.

Both railway and civil aviation authorities have agreed in principle to provide space. We are soon going into the tendering process for procurement of luggage scanners. We hope to complete the process in the next two-three months, he added.

Pathak said as soon as space is made available at the two main airports in Patna and Gaya, the scanners would be installed at state governments cost. We will have our own men stationed there. Anyone caught carrying liquor bottles in luggage will be reported to the nearest police station for action as per law, he added.

Though passengers have to get their luggage scanned during departure, they dont need to go through any security check on arrival and can leave the airport without any security check, except at international airports where smuggling is suspected.

Read | Bihar claims steep decline in murders, rapes post booze ban

During a recent meeting with the divisional railway managers of Danapur, Sonepur, Mughalsarai, Maldah and Samastipur, Pathak had sought space at the six big stations in Patna, Muzaffarpur, Gaya, Bhagalpur, Dehri-on-Sone and Samastipur for installing scanners.

According to a letter written to the railway authorities, the scanners would be used for random check of luggage/cargo on suspicion or on specific tip off due to huge traffic flow by trains. The Bihar government would bear the cost of installing scanners, which would be operated by state police personnel with the cooperation of railway.

The excise department has also embarked on an exercise to strengthen its intelligence wing with the creation of more posts and induction of policemen. On the borders, we are keeping close eye on those returning after consuming liquor. People are also keeping tabs on new liquor joints across the state boundaries, said a senior department official.

He said, there is daily monitoring of the number of arrests made by the police, rail police and the excise officials. Besides, the number of persons granted bail is also being monitored and the reasons looked into. The feedbacks will help incorporate new provisions in the law to make prohibition more effective, he added.

In view of the huge stock of Indian manufactured foreign liquor (IMFL) with the Beverage Corporation, the department has also decided to refund the duty paid on the supplies and allow the manufacturers to sell the products with a changed label in other states.

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An interview he gave to a Punjabi TV channel this week to plead his innocence in the 1984 anti-Sikh riots, has landed senior Congress leader Jagdish Tytler in fresh trouble.

In the interview telecast on ABP Sanjha on Thursday, Tytler is heard saying he wrote a letter to the Akal Takht, the highest temporal body of the Sikhs, to clarify his position.

The Akal Takht has, however, denied receiving any letter from Tytler.

Aam Aadmi Party leader and senior Supreme Court lawyer HS Phoolka, who has been fighting cases of 1984 anti-Sikh riot victims, too went on air on Thursday, saying he had sought an appointment with Akal Takht jathedar Giani Gurbachan Singh to present proof against Tytler.

However, speaking to HT over phone on Friday, Tytler denied having written any apology letter. Two years ago, at the behest of a Sikh gentleman from California, who told me I should clarify my position to the Akal Takht, I handed him a letter addressed to the Akal Takht explaining I was not guilty. I had written that I belong to a Sikh family and was in Amethi the day former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated. The next day I was with her body for several hours when people were paying their last respects and it was telecast on Doordarshan, he said.

Being investigated by the Central Bureau of Investigation for his role in leading mobs that attacked Delhis gurdwara Pulbangash on November 1, 1984, in which three Sikhs were burnt alive, Tytler accused Phoolka of spreading white lies.

He is doing it to bolster his prospects to become the Punjab chief minister. I had agreed to be interviewed by a Punjabi news channel to clear my name and said only if I am proved guilty, will I seek forgiveness, Tytler claimed.

Phoolka, on his part, contends that Tytler himself mentioned about writing to the Akal Takht in his interview to ABP Sanjha. The promos showed him saying he is ready to seek forgiveness, to which I had reacted. I dont know the contents of the letter. I had sought time from the Akal Takht head and was told I could meet him today (on Friday) in New Delhi. But it was cancelled and I have been informed that I would be given time to meet him at Amritsar next week, Phoolka said.

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The Border Security Force (BSF) seized 18kg of heroin in the area of Karnail Singh Wala border outpost (BOP) in Tarn Taran district, which falls in Ferozepur border sector, on Friday morning.

A plastic pipe used to push the heroin and a pair of shoes made in Pakistan were also seized.

Inspector general, Punjab frontier, Anil Paliwal, said around 5.15 am, Pakistani smugglers were trying to pass the heroin towards the Indian side through a pipe in the border fence.

Jawans of 87th Battalion of the BSF noticed their movement and challenged them. On this, the smugglers left the pipe and fled from there. A search operation ahead of the border fence was carried out by the BSF during which 18 packets of heroin were recovered, he added.

The IG said keeping in view the vulnerability of the border due to heightened activities of smugglers, top BSF authorities had issued operational guidelines to all sectors under the Punjab frontier to further strengthen border patrol to check any infiltration attempt and activities of anti-national elements.

According to sources, the BSF has so far recovered around 91 kg heroin on the Punjab border this year.
Border Security Force (BSF) troops on Friday seized 18 packets of contraband, suspected to be heroin, near the Ferozepur sector.

The estimated cost of the recovered contraband is said to be Rs 90 crore as per international rates. Also, a plastic pipe used to pass heroin and a pair of shoes made in Pakistan have also been seized.

Anil Paliwal, inspector general (Punjab frontier), said that at around 5.15 am, the smugglers were caught trying to pass the contraband towards India, through a pipe in the border security fence.

Jawans of the 87th battalion sensed their movement. After hearing voices of the BSF jawans, the smugglers fled. Subsequently, a search operation was carried out during which 18 packets were recovered in between the International Border and border security fence , he added.

The deputy inspector general (DIG) said, keeping in view the vulnerability of the border, due to heightened activities of smugglers, top BSF authorities have issued operational guidelines to all the sectors under the Punjab frontier to effectively check any infiltration attempt and anti-national activities.

BSF officials further said they would continue to enhanced vigil to prevent the smuggling of narcotics.

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Hours after the high court directed the Punjab government to re-shift final-year students of Chintpurni Medical College in Pathankot on the basis of a fresh merit list, Baba Farid University of Health Sciences on Friday called these students for counselling on May 10.

The counselling will be held at auditorium of the Guru Gobind Singh government medical college in Faridkot.

The courts directions came after bunch of petitions raised objection to the initial shifting criteria adopted by the department of medical education and research. As many as 141 students were shifted to 8 medical colleges across the state last month after a two-year long legal battle.

The petitions were primarily filed by those shifted to the Gian Sagar Medical College in Banur and Adesh Institute of Medical Sciences, Bathinda, as they were unhappy over not being shifted to government colleges.

Hearing all parties, the high court on Friday directed the medical education department to make a fresh merit of all students who were recently shifted and submit a status report on May 12.

Medical education secretary Hussan Lal said as per the court directions, the merit will be prepared based on their selection in the Chintpurni college.

Those admitted under the government quota seats will be given preference in government colleges, while those admitted under the management quota will be considered for private colleges in the fresh list, he said.

The number of students to be shifted has increased to 150 from 141 after nine remaining students also got permission from the medical council of India for the same.

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In an exemplary punishment, a local court on Thursday sentenced a politically connected deputy superintendent of police (DSP) and an assistant sub-inspector (ASI) to four-month imprisonment for repeatedly failing to appear in court to record their statements in a murder case.

The court of judicial magistrate Sukhwinder Singh pronounced the sentence on Fatehgarh Sahib DSP Karan Sher Singh Dhillon and ASI Harminder Singh on complaint of additional district and sessions judge Rajinder Aggarwal who had asked for initiating proceedings under section 174 (non-attendance in obedience to an order from public servant) of the Indian Penal Code. The court has also slapped Rs 1,000 fine on the duo.

DSP Dhillon is believed to be close to the Badals. He hails from Badal village and is son of chief minister Parkash Singh Badals close associate. Senior Badal had visited Dhillons house in Patiala when he was in-charge of Tripuri police station to enquire about the health of his ailing father before his death. The chief minister had even attended the bhog.

According to the compliant, the DSP and the ASI were legally bound to appear in the court to depose in their official capacity in a murder case. The duo, however, didnt appear on at least five dates fixed by Rajinder Aggarwal. As a result, the trial was delayed.

Wilful disobedience is liable to be punished under section 174 of the IPC. Its a ground of contempt of court. Taking into account, the totality of facts and circumstances, the court finds that the accused DSP and the ASI intentionally didnt the court proceedings, observed the court.

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Showing concern towards diminishing population of indigenous cow breed in the Punjab, the state animal husbandry department under the central governments Rashtriya Gokul Mission has started promoting Punjabs indigenous cow breed Sahiwal among farmers.

The statical department of state animal husbandry shows that of total 24 lakh cows in the state there are only around 39,000 of Sahiwal breed while the major chunk is of Holstein Friesians (HF) breed. Sahiwal breed is mostly concentrated and reared in Fazilka, Muktsar, Ferozepur, Bahini Sahib and Nurmahal.

To motivate farmers to rear this breed, the animal husbandry departments of the state are giving special benefits to the owners of this breed.

Benefits to farmers owning Sahiwal

The farmers having cows with higher lactation will be given incentives according to the production of milk.

The cows producing milk between 2,000-2,500 kilograms and 2,600-3,000 kilograms milk during lactation period will be given Rs 1,500 and Rs 2,500 respectively while the cow producing above 3,000 kilograms milk will be awarded Rs 5,000.

Besides, this the cow producing more than 3,000 kilograms will be purchased by the animal husbandry department for further breeding of excellent breeds.

The department will also purchase male calves of cows producing more than 3,000 kilograms milk to make hit bull and get quality semen to produce elite class cows. The other facilities to farmers owning Sahiwal breed includes first two artificial inseminations at free of cost while next will be provided at a minimum price of `50, free of cost deworming facility and mineral mixture for one year, free medical test within `200 and 25 percent subsidy on standard quality feed. With an aim that the endangered indigenous breed Sahiwal do not get extinct, the state government has also proposed to set up the Sahiwal Traditional Centre in Patiala to preserve the original breeds.

As per the information, elite cows and bulls purchased from farmers will be kept in the centre and elite animals will be produced.

Why farmers dont rear Sahiwal?

The only reason behind most of the farmers stopped rearing Sahiwal and other indigenous breeds were lack of milk production as compared to foreign breeds.

Experts said on an average, Sahiwal produces only 9-10 kilograms of milk as compared to 25-30 litres by HF cows.

Farmers are now purchasing cross-breed animals of foreign and indigenous breeds to get the higher productivity of milk and earn more profits, they said.

Experts said that though the indigenous cows produce less milk, but the quality of milk couldnt compete with the HF cows of which milk have 3 percent fat while Sahiwals milk have 5 percent fat.

Moreover, indigenous breeds are endowed with qualities of heat tolerance, resistance to diseases and the ability to thrive under extreme climatic stress, they added.

Dr Sanjiv Kumar Khosla, deputy chief executive officer (CEO) Punjab livestock development board when contacted said that their main motive behind preserving the Sahiwal breed is that Punjabs traditional breed would not get extinct.

All the animal husbandry departments of the state have started promoting the Sahiwal breed among farmers and we are giving incentives to farmers to motivate them to rear indigenous breeds, he added.

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A Punjab and Haryana high court bench has found a noble way to contribute towards increasing the green cover and get the court orders implemented by officials.

The bench of justice Rajesh Bindal has disposed of two contempt petitions and discharged the contempt rule against them after the officials told the bench that they would plant saplings in the coming rainy season.

Contrary to this, last month, justice Bindal had held two senior Haryana IAS officers guilty of contempt of court. They are secondary education director ML Kaushik, who was held guilty in a matter related to appointment of schoolteachers; and additional chief secretary Vijai Vardhan, who was held guilty in a matter of recruitment of assistant professors in state colleges.

However, the bench on Wednesday discharged the rule against an executive engineer of Punjab State Power Corporation Limited (PSPCL) as the Ludhiana-based officer told the court that he would plant 200 saplings in the vicinity of the PSPCL office in Ludhiana.

What social service you are going to offer for the country if contempt proceedings are dropped against you, the bench is learnt to have asked the officer. When he replied that he would plant 200 saplings and implement the order on the promotion of the employee, the bench accepted his submissions and discharged the contempt rule against him. He was accused of blocking the monetary benefits and promotion of an employee under departmental promotion. During the hearing, petitioners counsel PK Goklaney told the court that he would also plant 50 saplings in the rainy season. Appreciating the move, the bench termed it as the advocates social responsibility.

In the second case, the bench is learnt to have told a Haryana higher education department official, who had also failed to comply with the court orders, to plant saplings.
As Chandigarh gears up to host Prime Minister Narendra Modi on International Yoga Day on June 21, the citys students are also preparing for the big day.

Over 10,000 students from various schools and colleges of the city are being engaged for the event. Besides 5,000 school students who would be doing yoga asanas with the PM at the designated venue, students will also be asked to do the asanas on their respective school premises.

Director school education (DSE) Rubinderjit Singh Brar said students who wish to volunteer to take part in the event can perform yoga on the school campus. All students will also be given participation certificates, he said. A couple of meetings have been held in this regard, in which, education department officials guided the programming officers of private and government schools regarding the upcoming yoga training camps. Schools are encouraging NSS volunteers of each school to take part in the event. While the Isha Foundation instructors will officially begin the training session next week, some schools have already started yoga camps. Students, mostly above the age of 12, will take part in the event.

Besides, holding sessions in May, before students head for summer vacation, candidates, including students and teachers, will be told to come for rehearsals around June 17 to get ready for the final event on June 21,depending on the requirement, said Bikram Rana, state liaison officer, NSS.

While shirts with the Intl yoga Day logo will be provided by the government, students are expected to arrange their own lowers for the event. Around five schools will practice the exercises together at different venues during the last few days. We want to ensure that students who are physically fit take part in the event so that there are minimal chances of heat strokes, Rana added. Principal of Government Model Senior Secondary School, Sector 16, Anujit Kaur, said, We started a two-day camp in our school on Thursday. The education department also confirmed that the training session will begin at Government College of Yoga Education and Health on Friday, in which 100 students from both private and government schools will get trained for about three hours between 7am and 10am. Instructors from Brahmrishi Yoga Training College are also being roped in.

500 differently-abled people to be trained

With an aim to make International Yoga Day celebrations more inclusive, the UT administration has decided to train differently-abled people to perform yoga during the main event in the city.

Sources said the administration is targeting to get around 500 differently-abled persons of the city and train them to perform yoga asanas under the guidance of trainers. Special yoga training sessions will be held for UT administration staff. Members of different yoga institutions will be given an orientation and training in yoga as per protocol next week.

The administration officials held a meeting with bank heads and told them that each branch should contribute for the day. While the administration is busy carrying out preparations for the day, the local BJP unit is also gearing up for the big day. President of local BJP unit Sanjay Tandon said, We will be holding camps for the party workers and supporters and teaching them yoga asanas.

The UT administration has decided to make the Sukhna Lake the second major venue for performing yoga. The venue for the main event is likely to be the Capitol Complex, however, it is yet to receive clearance from the PMO.

Booklets and DVDs containing yoga postures to be performed at the event have already been circulated among different yoga institutions. The booklet contains about 17 asanas to be performed at the event, which will last around 45 minutes in the morning from 7am to 8 am.

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The Nakodar Sadar police have booked three people on charges of killing a Canada-based NRI. Station house officer (SHO) Davindar Singh said they are Avtar Singh, Tejindar Singh alias Gagan, and Manjidar Singh alias Manga, all residents of Lohar Nangal village.

Surindar Kaur, a Canadian citizen and native of Dhaliwal village and wife of deceased Teja Singh, complained to police that her husband went to his fields near the village on Thursday evening, which were being cultivated by one Suleiman, as they wanted land back from him. She said her relative Avtar Singh was instigating Suleiman not to give possession of the land.

Kaur, in her statement, alleged that the accused also reached there and started abusing Teja Singh, assaulted him and threatened him with dire consequences. She said her husband started feeling uneasy. She said they rushed Teja Singh to a private clinic at Jandiala village where the doctor declared him brought dead. Kaur held the three accused responsible for her husbands death.

The SHO said a case under sections 304 (culpable homicide not amounting to murder) and 14 (every member of unlawful assembly guilty of offence committed in prosecution of common object) of the IPC has been registered against the accused. No arrests have been made and raids are being conducted to nab the accused. HTC
Two people were injured after an over-speeding bus of Jujhar Bus Company allegedly hit their motorcycle at Bharat Nagar Chowk around 11am on Thursday. The bus driver fled from the spot, leaving behind the victims critically injured.

The injured, identified as Abhimanyu (50) and Jagdish Prasad (38) of Janta Nagar, were on their way to the new court complex for hearing of a case.

The passers-by, with the help of 108 ambulance, rushed the injured to a civil hospital, where the left leg of Abhimanyu had to be amputated.

The Division Number Police 5 police have seized the bus and lodged an FIR against bus driver Narinder Singh.

The police have registered a case under Sections 279 (reckless driving), 337 (causing hurt by act endangering life or personal safety of others), 338 (causing grievous hurt by act endangering life or personal safety of others) and 427 (mischief causing damage to the amount of fifty rupees) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) against Narinder.

The police have launched a manhunt to nab the accused.

The bus belongs to Gurdeep Singh Jujhar, who is said to be a close aide of chief minister Parkash Singh Badal.

Sub-inspector Pawan Kumar, additional station house officer (SHO) at Police Station Division Number 5 said the incident occurred in the morning when the duo was going to the new court complex. He added that traffic was also disrupted in the area for some time.

Local shopkeepers said the driver fled from the spot after the accident and left behind the bus. They said that in the race of carrying more passengers, the bus drivers often drove recklessly, adding that such mishaps were a routine affair here due to the competition between the bus operators.
An email from a 36-year woman in the UK, stating that she was raped while studying in India, has landed her 60-year-old uncle in jail for seven years.

Additional sessions judge Harpreet Kaur, on Wednesday, sentenced Sukhwant Singh Sidhu, who was living in Rani Bagh locality, to seven years in jail, a police official said.

The convict, who was out on bail at the time of the verdict, has been arrested.

Officials of the NRI Police Station here said the complaint was lodged with them through email sent from the UK in which the victim wrote to the inspector general of police (IGP) that she was repeatedly raped by her uncle at home for many years.

The victim, who was born in 1980, was left with her uncle by her mother for the purpose of her study. But she was raped since she was 9-year-old and she did not tell anyone about it due to fear, the police official said.

But soon after going to the UK after completing her MBBS, she wrote an email to the Punjab Police and subsequently a case of rape was registered in the NRI Police Station on May 5, 2014 and Sukhwant was arrested on July 7 the same year.

During the pendency of the case, she visited India and along with her mother recorded their statements before the police and court.
Sigmund Freud is notorious for how many of his theories have been proven wrong by modern psychology but at least he got this one thing right - the human mind can block out bad memories.

A Dartmouth- and Princeton-led brain scanning study showed that people can intentionally forget past experiences by changing how they think about the context of those memories.

The findings have a range of potential applications centered on enhancing desired memories, such as developing new educational tools, or diminishing harmful memories, including treatments for post-traumatic stress disorder.

Read: The more friends you have, the easier it gets to tolerate pain

Researchers designed a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) experiment to specifically track thoughts related to memories contexts and put a new twist on a centuries-old psychological research technique of having subjects memorize and recall a list of unrelated words. They showed participants images of outdoor scenes, such as forests, mountains and beaches, as they studied two lists of random words, manipulating whether they were told to forget or remember the first list prior to studying the second list.

Kate Winslet and Jim Carrey movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind was also based on a similar subject.

Our hope was the scene images would bias the background, or contextual, thoughts that people had as they studied the words to include scene-related thoughts, noted lead author Jeremy Manning. We used fMRI to track how much people were thinking of scene-related things at each moment during our experiment. That allowed us to track, on a moment-by-moment basis, how those scene or context representations faded in and out of peoples thoughts over time.

The study has two important implications. First, memory studies are often concerned with how we remember rather than how we forget, and forgetting is typically viewed as a failure in some sense, but sometimes forgetting can be beneficial, too, said Manning.

Read: Did you just unfriend someone? Well, they may annoy you beyond FB

The second implication is more subtle but also important. Its very difficult to specifically identify the neural representations of contextual information, added Manning. If you consider the context you experience something in, were really referring to the enormously complex, seemingly random thoughts you had during that experience. Those thoughts are presumably idiosyncratic to you as an individual, and theyre also potentially unique to that specific moment.

A doodle by Google to commemorate the neurologists 160th birthday.

Manning continued, So, tracking the neural representations of these things is extremely challenging because we only ever have one measurement of a particular context. Therefore, you cant directly train a computer to recognize what context looks like in the brain because context is a continually moving and evolving target.

In our study, we sidestepped this issue using a novel experimental manipulation - we biased people to incorporate those scene images into the thoughts they had when they studied new words. Since those scenes were common across people and over time, we were able to use fMRI to track the associated mental representations from moment to moment, he said.

The study appears in the journal Psychonomic Bulletin and Review.
Weaving between tables at a seaside restaurant in Libyas capital bearing freshly baked rosemary bread, Abdelmuttaleb Twigiri shuttles between the wood-fired oven and his customers in a blur of hospitality.

Its the opening night of his brainchild Toucan, a Mediterranean fusion eatery that Twigiri hopes will give residents of once-bustling Tripoli a rare taste of normality amid political chaos.

Read: US invasion in Libya and Barack Obamas mea culpa

If I think of a government that could provide everything I need, Id risk waiting a very long time, the 46-year-old tells AFP. Its only thanks to the people that life goes on.

Libyans eat at Toucan, a newly-opened Mediterranean fusion restaurant in the Libyan capital Tripoli. (AFP)

The North African nation has been mired in unrest since the 2011 NATO-backed ouster of longtime dictator Moamer Kadhafi, with militants fighting for power and a piece of Libyas vast oil reserves.

A militia alliance swept into the capital in August 2014, setting up its own parliament and forcing the internationally recognised administration to flee to the remote east.

Although a new, UN-backed unity government has gradually asserted its authority in the capital, Tripoli residents have grown used to fending for themselves. It is in keeping with Tripolitans do-it-yourself spirit that Twigiri created Toucan. There are enough people in distress, he says. But now we want to live.

Libyan chefs cook in the kitchen at Toucan in the Libyan capital Tripoli. (AFP)

His establishment is one of several cafes and restaurants to spring up in the past three months along a 15-kilometre (nine-mile) stretch of road linking several neighbourhoods in western Tripoli. They are braving an economic crisis marked by a dramatic cut in oil revenues, spiralling living costs, late wages and a recent liquidity shortage.

Entrepreneurs hope the unity government can calm some of the chaos befalling Libya, particularly security in a country that is increasingly a haven for extremists including the Islamic State group.

Once people feel safe, they invest, explains Abdelqader al-Kanuni, president of a local charitable fund. Tripoli remains dogged by sporadic violence but even a near-total breakdown of daily routine has failed to sap one passion all of its residents agree on: a love of coffee.

Several cafes and restaurants have sprung up in the past three months along a 15-kilometre (nine-mile) stretch of road linking several neighbourhoods in western Tripoli. (AFP)

Libyans drink the stuff morning, noon and night, according to Mohamad Aguili, who two months ago opened his Harley Davidson Cafe on Tripolis western fringe. - You need courage -Coffee is often imported from former colonial power Italy along with clean, modern machines with which to make it.

In straitened times such as these, import costs could impair Libyans coffee intake, but Aguili says there are still cafes to suit every pocket. Nevertheless, he is fully aware of the economic and security risks involved in the business.

Read: MEA warns against non-essential travel to Libya

You need to have courage, he says in his coffee shop, which each afternoon is flanked by several chrome motorcycles that give the spot its name. You have to throw yourself out there. Then its make or break. In the family section of Cafe Veranda, a renowned patisserie which despite the odds has maintained its reputation after its Italian chef fled in 2011, immaculately manicured cousins Hind, Mira and Lamaan struggle to make themselves heard above the hubbub.

Bikers sit at the Harley Davidson Cafe. They are braving an economic crisis marked by a dramatic cut in oil revenues, spiralling living costs, late wages and a recent liquidity shortage. (AFP)

Pastimes are limited in Tripoli, says Mira, a 23-year-old pharmacy student. There are cafes, hours spent on Facebook, or both at the same time. Hind, 25, says the capitals cafes and restaurants are a good way of giving them the feeling of a social life. If they are open then everything is fine. Even during bombings or economic crises, people will always drink coffee.

For Twigiri, whose restaurant looks out over date palms planted to replace a wall built by Gadhafis sons to block access to the beach, Tripolis cafe culture is a symbol of a people unbowed by turmoil.

Tripolitans bend -- they dont break, he says.
After a Dhaka University professor asked a woman to remove her veil during his class, Muslim extremists called for his death, posting his personal details online along with tips on how to kill.

Today, he remains under constant guard by armed police, stays mostly at home and bars his front door.

Azizur Rahman is among a growing number of political moderates and intellectuals seeking protection in Bangladesh, where at least 15 writers, activists, religious minorities and foreign aid workers have been killed in targeted attacks since the start of 2015.

Islamic extremists have claimed responsibility for the killings, which have prompted some Bangladeshis to go into hiding, and others to seek asylum in the US and Europe.

Some of the violence has taken place at Rahmans university in the capital Dhaka. Last year, secular writer and blogger Avijit Roy was hacked to death and his wife critically injured in a savage attack on campus.

In 2004, members of a banned group stabbed poet and linguist Humayun Azad at a campus book fair; he died months later.

Rahman, a psychology professor, pleaded with the government for 24-hour armed security outside his classes and at the modest campus apartment where he lives with his wife. Plainclothes policemen follow his every move around the sprawling, tree-filled open campus where he teaches five days a week.

Dhaka University professor Azizur Rahman points to a social media post at his home in Dhaka. Rahman said he had asked a student to remove her veil , and as the girl refused, the exchange was captured on a cellphone video by another student . The next day, it was uploaded to the Facebook page of an Islamist group called Salauddiner Ghora, or The Horses of Salauddin, along with a call for its followers to murder Rahman, whom they called un-Islamic. (AP)

He said in an interview he had asked the student to remove her veil because I should know whom I am teaching...I told her if you show your face in the (student) identity card, you can also do so in class.

As the girl refused, the exchange was captured on a cellphone video by another student in the class. The next day, it had been uploaded onto the Facebook page of a group called Salauddiner Ghora, or The Horses of Salauddin  along with a clarion call for its followers to murder Rahman, whom they called un-Islamic.

With the video, the group posted Rahmans photograph, personal phone number and Facebook account. It also posted a link to an online blog detailing strategies for killing someone quietly, and links to two videos on YouTube on how to cut with a knife.

Rahman said he believes extremists have had their eye on him for some time, and are capitalising on the veil issue.

Militants and persons belonging to religion-based organisations have carried out a hate campaign against me in a planned manner, he said.

Rahman has been critical of those who opposed Bangladeshs independence from Pakistan, won through a brutal war fought in 1971.

The issue has exacerbated tensions between Prime Minister Sheikh Hasinas secular government and the countrys opposition since the government set up special tribunal proceedings to prosecute 1971 war crimes. Though some rights groups and foreign governments have called the proceedings flawed, the trials have continued to convict opposition leaders and sentence them to death.

On Thursday, the Supreme Court rejected a petition from the leader of the Jamaat-e-Islami opposition party, Motiur Rahman Nizami, seeking a review of his war-crimes conviction and death sentence.

Amnesty International urged Bangladesh to stay Nizamis execution and avoid stoking tensions, noting the courts decision had already triggered countrywide protests. Taking another life will just perpetuate the cycle of violence, the groups South Asia campaign director, Jameen Kaur, said in a statement.

Rahman is not the only Dhaka University teacher to receive death threats, vice chancellor AAMS Arefin Siddique said.

Threats from unnamed senders are nothing new, but an open declaration to kill the professor is a precise one, Siddique said. He has urged the citys police chief to be proactive in the case by going after those posting threats online.

The persons calling for murder should be arrested, Siddique said. He added university officials are doing everything to ensure (Rahmans) security and safety.

The Bangladesh government insists it is working to stop the attacks, but so far it has charged no one in any of the 15 killings since 2015.

Meanwhile, the brutality continues, usually by a handful of young men wielding knives or cleavers to hack their targets to death. On April 30, a Hindu tailor was murdered. The government has advised people at risk to simply lay low and try not to offend anyone.

The government says the political opposition orchestrated the attacks to stir chaos, though the opposition denies it and says it is being scapegoated. The government denies any involvement by transnational jihadist groups, though all 15 attacks have been claimed by the Islamic State group or various Al Qaida affiliates in Bangladesh.

This week Singapore announced it had detained eight Bangladeshi workers suspected of planning attacks linked to the Islamic State group in their home country, and Bangladesh detained another five who had been deported from Singapore for suspected IS ties.

Officer Abu Bakar Siddique, who heads the police station that registered Rahmans complaint, said he had no information about the group that had posted the threatening Facebook post, which had praised the fatal stabbings on April 25 of two gay rights activists, including an employee of the US Agency for International Development.

This week, the Facebook account appeared to have been blocked or deactivated and was not accessible.

Among those coming to Rahmans defense is the student who refused to remove her veil.

Taposhi Rabeya, a third-year student, said she was surprised by the threats made against her professor, and the video posted online did not fairly capture the full exchange Rahman had with his students. She said she had worked out an understanding with Rahman that allowed her to continue wearing the veil in class.

I hope all will realise the truth and uphold the dignity of the teacher, and refrain from further misinterpreting the issue, she wrote.
India-born former Goldman Sachs director Rajat Gupta, a free man now after a two-year jail term on insider trading charges, has approached a US court to overturn his conviction, arguing that there is no evidence to show that he received even a penny for passing confidential boardroom information to his friend.

In an exhaustive brief filed in the Second Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday, 66-year-old Guptas team of lawyers argued that the judgement of the Manhattan district court finding Gupta guilty of insider trading should be reversed and his conviction should be vacated.

Guptas appeal comes on the back of a landmark ruling by the Manhattan appeals court that for an insider trading conviction prosecutors must show that a defendant received a personal benefit for passing illegal tips.

Guptas lawyers have cited the ruling that led to the reversal of insider convictions of hedge-fund managers Todd Newman and Anthony Chiasson in December 2014.

As this Court has noted, not every disclosure of corporate information violates the insider trading laws. Given the stakes in a criminal case, and the apparently boundless use being made of the securities laws by prosecutors, this Court in Newman imposed a clear rule: The tip must be shown to have been part of a quid pro quo agreement, the lawyers wrote in the brief.

Gupta was severely prejudiced by the erroneous instruction. The government lacked evidence showing Gupta received even a penny from his alleged wrongdoing. There was no quid pro quo, they said.

Gupta was convicted in 2012 of passing confidential boardroom information to now jailed hedge fund founder Raj Rajaratnam.

He walked a free man in March this year after completing his two-year prison term in a Massachusetts facility.

He is currently subject to a term of supervised release.

His lawyers argue in the court papers that in the wake of the Newman ruling, the looser standard that Gupta would have shared confidential company information with Rajaratnam because of a friendship or good relationship is no longer valid.

The government tried this case and the district court instructed the jury on that prior basis. Rajat Gupta was convicted on that prior basis  and served the entirety of his prison sentence for conduct that is not criminal. Accordingly, the judgement of the district court should be reversed, and Guptas conviction should be vacated, they said.

The lawyers said no rational jury would have found Gupta guilty had it been properly instructed that it should take into account the financial benefit Gupta received for tipping Rajaratnam.

Instead the jury was erroneously instructed that it should convict Gupta because he would have tipped him since he maintained a good relationship with Rajaratnam.
A former CIA station chief in Pakistan, who presided over the May 2011 raid that killed al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden, is believed to have been poisoned by the ISI, a media report said on Friday.

Mark Kelton was removed from Islamabad two months after the raid on bin Ladens compound in Abbottabad, citing health concerns.

Mark Kelton retired from the CIA, and his health has recovered after he had abdominal surgery. But agency officials continue to think that it is plausible  if not provable  that Keltons sudden illness was somehow orchestrated by Pakistans Inter-Services Intelligence agency, known as the ISI, The Washington Post said in an exclusive investigative report.

A spokesperson of the Pakistani Embassy in Washington, however, described the report as fictional.

According to The Post, Kelton, declined multiple requests for an interview, but in a brief exchange by phone he said that the cause of his illness was never clarified. He said that he was not the first to suspect that he had been poisoned.

The genesis for the thoughts about that didnt originate with me, he was quoted as saying. The Post said such a disclosure is a disturbing postscript to the sequence of events surrounding the bin Laden operation five years ago and adds new intrigue to a counterterrorism partnership that has often been consumed by conspiracy theories. Even if the poisoning suspicion is groundless, the idea that the CIA and its station chief considered the ISI capable of such an act suggests that the breakdown in trust was even worse than widely assumed, The Post said.

According to the daily, current and former US intelligence officials said that the ISI has been linked to numerous plots against journalists, diplomats and other perceived adversaries and that the spy agencys animosity toward Kelton was intense. Meanwhile, A CIA spokesperson said there is no evidence that Pakistani authorities poisoned a US official serving in the country.
The Indian embassy in Kabul on Friday warned Indian citizens in Afghanistan to review their security and to avoid areas frequented by foreigners because of the possibility of terror attacks and hostage-taking.

The advisory came days after the US embassy in Kabul issued two separate alerts on Wednesday and Thursday, warning of possible suicide and coordinated attacks or attempts to kidnap foreigners.

The embassy advises all Indians in Afghanistan to live and work with adequate security precautions. All should review their personal security plans, take appropriate steps to enhance personal safety, remain aware of surroundings, monitor local media for updates, and maintain a high level of vigilance, the alert from the Indian mission said.

All Indians residing in Afghanistan and Indian travellers to Afghanistan are advised that the security situation in Afghanistan remains highly volatile. Terrorist attacks have taken place in many parts of the country against a variety of targets including foreigners and are expected to continue, it said.

There is also the risk of kidnapping and hostage-taking throughout the Afghanistan.

The Indian mission said all non-essential movements, especially during peak commuting hours may be avoided, as also unknown areas and establishments frequented by foreigners.

The movement of Indian citizens should not have a predictable pattern and vehicles should be parked in secure premises, it added.

The US embassy had earlier said an attempted kidnapping had occurred in Kabul on May 2, targeting several expatriates including a US citizen. It said the threat of kidnapping and hostage-taking continues to be very high.

Afghanistan has witnessed a spike in violence since the Taliban launched their spring offensive last month. Sixty-four people were killed and more than 300 injured in a Taliban suicide attack on April 19 that targeted a security team which protects VIPs.
Nepal President Bidhya Devi Bhandaris official visit to India, which was to begin from Monday, has been cancelled after the countrys cabinet failed to endorse it.

Bhandari was to undertake the five-day trip, her first foreign visit after getting elected last October, at the invitation of President Pranab Mukherjee.

She was scheduled to meet Mukherjee, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj and leaders from political parties, besides signing three agreements.

The sudden development comes after this weeks attempt to topple Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli by the Maoists, a key partner in the ruling coalition. The move fizzled out on Thursday when the Maoists backtracked.

Nepals foreign secretary Sankar Das Bairagi informed Indian ambassador Ranjit Rae on Friday that the Presidents visit has been cancelled.

The move came following a meeting in the morning between Oli and deputy prime minister Kamal Thapa, who is also the foreign minister. Sources said the cabinet had not endorsed the visit.

We were informed the visit has been cancelled for three reasons  lack of preparations by the Nepali side, no agreements are to be signed and because the budget session of parliament is underway, a senior Indian diplomat said on condition of anonymity.

The cancellation of the visit surprised New Delhi, as all preparations had been completed and Bhandari was to sign an agreement related to a letter of credit, a MoU between Radio Nepal and All India Radio and another to set up an India chair in a Nepal university.

Bhandari herself was looking forward to the trip and had discussed it during an informal chat with journalists at her official residence Shital Niwas earlier this week.

It will be a goodwill visit and will focus on strengthening bilateral relations, she had said.

Bhandari had dinner with the Indian ambassador on Thursday night, when she expressed hope the cabinet would approve the visit on Friday.

There was speculation the visit was cancelled as certain sections of the ruling coalition believe the move to remove Oli was orchestrated from New Delhi.

The Maoists decided to topple Oli and replace him with their chairman, Pushpa Kamal Dahal Prachanda, after getting assurances of support from the Nepali Congress, the main opposition party.

But Olis foreign affairs adviser, Gopal Khanal, told Hindustan Times: I dont think there is any other reason besides lack of preparation for the postponement or cancellation of the Presidents visit to India.

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Nepal-India ties are set to dip again as Prime Minister KP Olis government cancelled a scheduled visit of the countrys president to its southern neighbour and recalled its ambassador in New Delhi on Friday.

The developments come a day after the Oli government managed to retain the support of an ally, the Maoists, and survive a power struggle.

No official explanations were offered for the moves but Kathmandus establishment hinted India was somehow behind efforts to topple the government and the visit was cancelled as a snub. Indian sources see this as entirely irrational and an effort to deflect blame to external actors for internal churning.

President Bidya Bhandari was to arrive in India for a five-day visit on May 9, with a trip to the Kumbh Mela in Ujjain.

But on Friday morning, Oli and foreign minister Kamal Thapa decided to call off the trip. This followed a political crisis.

On Wednesday, Maoist chairman Prachanda had decided to walk out and form a government under his leadership. The opposition Nepali Congress backed Prachanda. But he changed his mind and stuck to the Left alliance the next day. Oli and Prachanda signed on Thursday night a new agreement that wartime cases would not be pursued against Maoists.

Olis aides alleged the initial Maoist decision was guided by the South while Prachanda has rebutted accusations that his moves had Indian support.

Sources said Nepalese ambassador Deep Upadhyay told Oli that cancelling the presidential visit would not be right at this 11th hour.

He reminded the prime minister that the Nepalese government itself had taken the initiative and sought the Indian invitation for the president. Upadhyay told Oli that since the political crisis was resolved, the visit should go ahead.

Oli was not pleased with the advice and rebuked the ambassador, who has been a Nepali Congress leader in the past.

By Friday evening, Nepals foreign ministry recalled Upadhyay, charging him with acting without the governments approval.

Indian officials believe the governments track change was driven by domestic drivers.

They see Olis latest moves as efforts to stir up ultra-nationalism again, while ignoring the remaining constitutional grievances of the Terai region.

Sources said the Indian leadership is not pleased at being dragged into Nepals internal battles and were intrigued by Kathmandus unnecessary and unprovoked signals.

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SpaceX successfully landed the first stage of its unmanned Falcon 9 rocket on a floating platform in the Atlantic Ocean early on Friday after launching a Japanese communications satellite into orbit.

Shouts of USA, USA, USA and applause from the ground control crew greeted the feat, only the second time it has been accomplished by the company headed by internet entrepreneur Elon Musk.

The Falcon 9 rocket blasted off from Florida to put the communications satellite into orbit and made a swift return to land on the ocean platform. The mission was webcast live.

Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, intends to offer cut-rate launch services by reusing its rockets.

Woohoo!! Musk wrote on Twitter after the landing. May need to increase size of rocket storage hangar.

SpaceX successfully landed a rocket on a floating landing pad in April after four failed attempts. Another Falcon rocket had touched down on a ground-based landing pad at Cape Canaveral in December.

Before Fridays launch, SpaceX had downplayed expectations for the rockets successful return.

The rocket flying on Friday was traveling twice as fast as the one that landed last month so it could deliver a hefty television broadcast satellite into an orbit more than 32,200 km beyond that of the International Space

Station, which is about 400 km above earth.

The 23-storey tall rocket lifted off from a seaside launch pad at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at 1.21 am EDT. Perched atop the booster was the JCSAT-14 satellite, owned by Tokyo-based telecommunications company SKY Perfect JSAT Corp, a new customer for SpaceX.

About two-and-a-half minutes after launch, the rockets first stage shut down, separated, flipped around and headed toward a so-called drone ship stationed more than 650 km off Floridas east coast in the Atlantic Ocean.

The rockets second stage continued flying to deliver the 4,700-kg JCSAT-14 satellite into orbit. The satellite, built by Space Systems Loral in Palo Alto, California, a subsidiary of MacDonald Dettwiler and Associates, is designed to provide television, data and mobile communications services to customers across Asia, Russia, Oceania and the Pacific Islands.

Fridays launch was the fourth of more than a dozen flights planned this year by SpaceX, which has a backlog of more than $10 billion worth of launch orders from customers, including Nasa.

Last week, SpaceX won its first contract to launch a US military satellite, breaking a 10-year monopoly held by United Launch Alliance, a partnership of Lockheed Martin Corp and Boeing Co.
A Donald Trump supporter does have a worldview  and its largely that Americans are better off without the world.

The Pew survey on Americas Place in the World, released on Thursday, shows a supporter of the Republican presidential front-runner is more likely, even when compared to other Republicans, to feel the US should trade and invest less with the outside world and, in particular, do less economically with the developing world.

Curiously, Trump supporters are seemingly terrified about refugees flowing out of Syria and Iraq  ranking them second only to the Islamic State as a threat to the US.

Two-thirds, or 65%, of Trump supporters say US involvement in the global economy is a bad thing. The figure is less than half for Trumps former rivals for the Republican presidential nomination, Ted Cruz and John Kasich.

Read: Poll says US voters back Trump as they dont want Hillary to win

Those who like Trump, now almost certain to be the Republican candidate for the US presidency, have a particular animosity to developing countries, with just 32% supporting the import of more goods from developing countries, and nearly four-fifths opposing more foreign aid and 63% opposing US firms investing overseas.

In comparison, Cruz and Kasich supporters were evenly split on most of these issues, and were about 10 to 15 percentage points less opposed to foreign aid.

A remarkable 85% of Trump supporters see a major threat in the West Asian refugee crisis. This is about 10 percentage points more than a Cruz supporter and some 25 points more than a Kasich supporter.

At the other end of the spectrum, barely 34% of supporters of the Democratic socialist candidate, Bernie Sanders, were worried about refugees.

Given the US has agreed to accept only 10,000 Syrian refugees, this paranoia seems misplaced.

Most Trumpites support the US remaining part of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, a cornerstone of the post-war US foreign policy consensus. Trump has called for Nato to be abolished. However, they are still twice as more likely to support Trumps line than other Republicans.

In other areas, the survey indicates, Trump supporters largely adhere to mainstream Republican foreign policy views. They worry about the decline of US power, even while believing America is still the worlds most powerful nation, and call for greater defence spending.

However, like most Americans, they do not see China or Russia as major threats to the US.

The surveys broader conclusion is that a preference for a US withdrawal from the world is pervasive in the country, irrespective of political affiliation. A majority, 57%, of Americans want the US to deal with its own problems, while letting other countries get along as best they can.

The survey notes: Just 37% say the US should help other countries deal with their problems. And more Americans say the US does too much (41%), rather than too little (27%), to solve world problems.

In his outlining of a foreign policy where regional powers will have to do more heavy-lifting in solving global problems, Trump at least is in sync with the larger US population.

Read the full Pew survey.
The Scottish National Party (SNP) emerged victorious in Scotland and Labour just about retained its ground in Wales as results were awaited on Friday for the key contest for the next London mayor between Labours Sadiq Khan and Conservative Zac Goldsmith.

Khan, who is of Pakistani origin, is tipped to win the London mayoral election, whose result is expected to be declared later in the evening.

By Friday afternoon, SNP was declared a clear winner though it did not get a majority in the 129-member Scottish Parliament. It was the largest party with 63 seats, ahead of Conservatives on 31 and Labour on 24  a rise for the Tories and a downslide for Labour.

The result means that though the SNP will be in office for the third consecutive term, its enthusiasm for a second independence referendum will be tempered by the need to enlist support from the Conservative or Labour parties, both of whom are against another referendum.

Labour remained the dominant party in the Welsh assembly, bagging 29 out of 60 seats, but falling short of a majority. The biggest gain was for the UK Independence Party, which won seven seats.

Labour held on to most of its seats in local councils but returned a poorer result compared to the last round of local elections in 2012, prompting renewed carping in party ranks against leader Jeremy Corbyn.

Shadow chancellor John McDonnell admitted last weeks anti-Semitism row had damaged the party in the polls, but senior leader Ken Livingstone, who was suspended for his remarks about Adolf Hitler, rejected the claim and instead repeated his controversial comments.

Corbyn claimed Labour had done far better than predicted, while deputy leader Tom Watson said he would not support a coup against Corbyn, who has been party leader for about eight months.

Pleased with some results, Corbyn said: We never set a bar for this election. Weve achieved a swing to Labour since a year ago. Well continue that campaign, and Im very pleased with many of the results weve achieved, but theres a lot more to come today. We are defending seats that were last fought in 2012.

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China on Friday said it will continue to exercise its sovereignty over the South China Sea regardless of the outcome of the ongoing case in a UN-appointed tribunal, which is widely expected to deliver its verdict favouring the Philippines.

It dubbed the arbitration as political farce and an attempt to negate Chinas claims over the disputed South China Sea. The judgment is expected to be pronounced later this month.

No matter what the outcome is, China will not recognise the award. It is a political farce, said Ouyang Yujing, a top Chinese foreign ministry official.

It will not waver Chinas determination to uphold its sovereignty and claims, said Ouyang, the director-general of Chinese Foreign Ministrys Department of Boundary and Ocean Affairs, in an interaction with foreign media here.

He also warned that Chinas global criticism over the issues will worsen the tensions, likening his country to a coiled spring which, he said, could rebound if pressured much.

Chinas expansive claims over South China Sea, contested and mirrored by the Philippines, Brunei, Vietnam, Malaysia and Taiwan have triggered concerns globally, with the US sending its naval warships in the disputed waters.

We are willing to take on board constructive comments and criticism by the relevant countries, Ouyang added.

But if they are aimed at putting pressure on China or blackening its name then you can view it like a spring, which has an applied force and a counter-force. The more the pressure, the greater the reaction, he added.

The Philippines has reached the UN-appointed tribunal, the permanent court of arbitration (PCA) in The Hague that adjudicates in international disputes over maritime territory.

China has called the arbitration illegal as, it says, the Philippines has violated the agreement with China which talks of resolving disputes bilaterally.

Of late, the war of words between China and the US has escalated over the maritime rights in the waters. The US has sent its warships in the South China Sea, calling it its freedom to navigate.

China has also been building infrastructure on the islands in the Sea and conducting naval patrols.
Although decades of research supports the idea that newborn babies can imitate facial and hand gestures, facial expressions and sounds beginning from their first weeks of life after birth, a new study suggests that very young infants are not capable of imitation after all.

"Numerous studies from the 1980s and 90s indicated no imitation by newborns, while others claimed it was there," said Virginia Slaughter, a researcher from the University of Queensland in Australia and senior author of the study. "We wanted to clear up the confusion because the 'fact' that newborns imitate is widely cited, not just in the fields of psychology, neuroscience, and pediatrics, but also in popular sources for parents."

Slaughter suggests that earlier work that pointed to imitation capabilities in newborn babies presented them with a limited number of gestures that were highly likely to be enacted even in the absence of imitation.

"If infants also increase their tongue protrusions when an adult models a happy face or finger pointing, then it's not a case of imitation, but probably excitement at seeing an adult do something interesting," she said. "We eliminated this problem by assessing infants' responses to a wide range of different models."

The team presented 106 infants with nine social and two non-social models and scored their responses to the behaviors at one, two, six and nine weeks of age. The results revealed that infants did not imitate any of the behaviors that they observed and were just as likely to produce a different gesture than one that matched adult behavior.

The University of Queensland study suggests that imitation isn't an innate behavior that exists even shortly after birth, but a learned one that the babies acquire in the months following birth. Slaughter even suggests that babies might learn the act of imitation by observing other people imitate them.

"Infants aren't born with the ability to copy what other people do, but they acquire that skill during the first months of life," she said. "One possibility is that being imitated plays a role in this acquisition. In another study from our lab, we found that parents imitate their babies once every two minutes on average; this is a powerful means by which infants can learn to link their gestures with those of another person."

The findings were published in the May 5 issue of Current Biology.

@ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Two Holloman Airmen helped overcome assigned logistics challenge downrange.

Master Sgt. Shobha Non-Commissioned Officer in Charge of Passenger Travel and Personal Property and Staff Sgt. Isaiah, Freight Apprentice, 49th Logistics Readiness Squadron, Holloman Air Force, N.M., deployed to the 379th Expeditionary Logistics Readiness Squadron assisted other Transit Shipping Point personnel in removing 550 square tons of war reserve material and scrap metal from Al Udeid Air Base, Qatar in March.

The AUAB team filled 80 containers of excess stock for other units and agencies throughout the area of responsibility.

The removal of WRM assets and scrap metal is beneficial to other government agencies within the U.S. Air Force Central Command; for reutilization to occur the assets have to be exported out of Qatar via sealift to the Defense Logistics Agency in Southeast Asia, said MSgt Shobha, 379th ELRS Transit and Shipping Point section chief.

The previous rotation began working the 13-year backlog issue, which allowed the current team to finally export the materials. The TSP team and a host of others moved the 550 square tons of supplies via trucks and seaport vessels.

Like all projects there were challenges to make sure all the components were in place within a timely manner. The shipments were monitored, booked and met the water port five days prior to movement requirements, Parker said.

Another challenge was making sure everything was organized logistically to ensure the movement flowed smoothly, said SSgt. Isaiah, 379th ELRS sealift coordinator. The project was exciting, because I received an opportunity to experience different things, like dealing with Qatari customs and escorting the trucks to the seaport here with the assistance of our Qatari Military Police and the U.S. Army Military Police partners. The mission took approximately 30 days to accomplish.

There were outside organizations that helped us with the move and everyone lent a hand, Shobha said. Without the collective efforts of the Host Nation Coordination Cell staff, Defense Logistics Agency in Southeast Asia, Qatar Surface Deployment and Distribution Command, 338th Transportation Detachment, ASG-QA S-3, Qatari Military Policy/SECFOR, 379 Expeditionary Contracting Squadron, 379 ELRS, and the Traffic Management Office, this epic task would not have been possible.
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
Following the success of The Global Tourism & Hospitality Conference held in 2014, The 2nd Global Tourism & Hospitality Conference will be hosted and organized by the School of Hotel and Tourism Management of The Hong Kong Polytechnic University on 16-18 May 2016 in Hong Kong. It will be held concurrently with the 15th Asia Pacific Forum for Graduate Students Research in Tourism (APF). This two-in-one conference will serve as an important networking platform for education, students and industry practitioners to exchange insights related to innovations, trends, opportunities and challenges of global tourism and hospitality.

For more information please contact Pauline Ngan

+852 3400 2634
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After weeks of low level negotiations, it looks as if Ireland finally has a government.

Enda Kenny has been voted Taoiseach. It is the first time in the history of the State that a Fine Gael leader, having been Taoiseach, has immediately returned to power after an election.

However, far from representing a personal victory for the long-standing Mayo TD, the news will come as a complete anti-climax, given Fine Gaels less than impressive performance in the election. Kenny was elected at 2.30 this afternoon, with 59 in favour and 49 against. Fianna Fail abstained in the vote, thus facilitating the formation of a minority government.

Following his election, the Dail was adjourned for three hours to allow the newly-elected old Taoiseach to travel to Aras an Uachtarain. In his acceptance speech, the Fine Gael leader promised to oversee the implementation of the programme for government that had been agreed between the various political forces. He acknowledged that the new situation would be a major challenge for all of the members of the houses of the Oireachtas. He also promised to oversee political reform.

There was no surprise when Kenny was supported by Katherine Zappone and Michael Lowry. His election was also supported by Waterford TD John Halligan, Longford-Westmeath TD Kevin Boxer Moran, Dublin Rathdown TD Shane Ross, Galway East TD Sean Canney and Dublin Bay North TD Finian McGrath, as well as two of the 'rural alliance' TDs  Roscommon-South Leitrim TD Denis Naughten and Clare TD Michael Harty.

Michael Fitzmaurice, Noel Grealish and Maureen O'Sullivan abstained in the vote.

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Outgoing Tanaiste Joan Burton informed the Dail that the Labour Party would be voting against the election of Mr Kenny as Taoiseach. She added that, during the course of the new Dail, Labour would, on a case-by-case basis, support proposals as they see fit.

Hot Press understands that Fine Gael will offer three Cabinet seats and a super junior minister to the Independents, with Denis Naughton, Katherine Zappone, Shane Ross and Finian McGrath the most likely beneficiaries.

It will be very interesting to see who is given the Arts portfolio, Hot Press editor Niall Stokes said. The hope is that it will go to someone with a real passion and enthusiasm for the arts and for culture. It will be important to have strong voice around the cabinet table, in what could yet prove to be a very difficult period politically."
There are four independents in all in the new expanded cabinet, with Denis Naughten, Katherine Zappone and Finian McGrath joining Shane Ross (pictured) at the cabinet table.

The new cabinet has been announced by the Taoiseach, Enda Kenny. There will be some relief that the Minister for the Arts, Heather Humphries, has retained that role. However, the Arts and Culture element has arguably been downgraded by the addition of Regional Development and Rural Affairs to the brief of what is now a somewhat sprawling ministerial portfolio.

Others to retain their Ministries include the Minister for Justice, Frances Fitzgerald; Minister for Finance Michael Noonan; and Minister for Foreign Affairs, Charlie Flanagan.

Among the new faces at the cabinet table are four independents. Katherine Zappone has been given responsibility for Children; former Fine Gael-er Denis Naughton replaces Alex White as Minister for Communications; Shane Ross has been appointed Minister for Transport; and Dublin independent TD, Finian McGrath, has been appointed as Super Junior Minister. He will attend Cabinet meetings and have special responsibility for disability.

Other interesting appointments include that of the Dun Laoghaire TD, Mary Mitchell OConnor, who is the new Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation  a crucial role, given the importance of maintaining job creation. She replaces Richard Bruton, who  in what might be seen as a demotion of sorts  has been appointed Minister for Education and Skills.

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Leo Varadker is also on the move, shifting from the poisoned chalice of Health to Social Protection. Meanwhile, Pascal Donoghue is the new Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, replacing Brendan Howling of the Labour Party; and Simon Harris takes on the burden of Health. The full cabinet is as follows:

Justice - Frances Fitzgerald

Finance - Michael Noonan

Public Expenditure and Reform - Paschal Donohoe

Social Protection - Leo Varadkar

Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation- Mary Mitchell O'Connor

Agriculture - Michael Creed

Health - Simon Harris

Foreign Affairs - Charlie Flanagan

Education & Skills - Richard Bruton

Children - Katherine Zappone

Housing - Simon Coveney

Communications - Denis Naughten

Transport - Shane Ross

Regional Development, Rural Affairs and Arts and Culture - Heather Humphreys

Defence - The Taoiseach, with Paul Kehoe as Minister of State with Special Responsibility for Defence

Finian McGrath has been appointed as Super Junior Minister. He will attend Cabinet meetings and have special responsibility for disability.
Sketches will be sent off in style next weekend

The Henry Girls will launch their new EP in Whelan's next weekend.

The Donegal sister-act will send Sketches off into the wider world in style, with Jaime Nanci, Leila Jane and Jem Mitchell as special guests. Jack Cody and Cian O Maonlai supply the support, on a night that's really set to test the backstage capacity of the Wexford St. venue.

Tickets for the May 13 gig are on sale now.
When you release two albums in as many years, youre probably making trouble for yourself.

The Shoos burst out of the traps in 2011 with Rescue Room; the following years Panic Slowly indicated a group with designs on making their rise an altogether quick one.

Frontman Steve Fallon  known to all and sundry as Tex  grins. Were not lazy, is basically what were trying to say! At times it felt like ages, given the way things change so quickly in this industry. We were itching to get back out there, but we really were really focused on nailing it. We stopped ourselves from rushing the album until it was right.
Disappointing earnings results are crushing the stock of Gastar Exploration Inc (NYSEMKT:GST, GST message board) big time. The hit is all the more devastating because this stock more than trippled its market value over the last 10 weeks or so. Halfway through the current session, GST has already lost a whopping 40% in value to $1.29 per share, and the decline shows no signs of slowing down. So how bad is it, really?

Having scheduled the earnings call for May 5, Gastar's managers acquainted investors with the current condition of the company after market close, which is why the market reaction is taking place today. As it is, Gastar closed Q1 with a net loss of $0.97 per share, including various impairment charges amounting to a total of $48 million. By contrast, GST's loss on a per-share basis reached $0.04 in the same quarter in 2015.This is bad, no doubt, as it indicates grave deterioration. Taking into account GST's results in Q2, Q3, and Q4 of 2015, however, we see much bigger losses amounting to $1.52, $2.47, and $2.07 per share, respectively. Altogether, GST closed FY2015 with a per-share loss of $6.11 because the company had to incur $430 million in asset impairment.

Going back to Q1, 2016, it cannot be denied that by announcing this figure, GST practically missed analysts' forecasts for the fifth time in a row. Apparently, Gastar's continual inability to beat estimates is likely to result in a handful of downgrades and negative revisions. Looking at the news, a few downgrades have already become reality.

How the current situation will impact insiders and shorters remains to be seen. In the event of positive insider activity, outisders'confidence in the stock could be restored to a certain extent. Until then, however, the number of investors betting against the stock might as well continue to rise.

Gastar Exploration is an oil and gas enterprise that got hammered by continually low commodity prices deriving from the ever increasing global supply glut. The latter plagued each and every oil and gas company in the industry throughout 2015 and continues to this day. With the benefit of hindsight, investment decision could become more informed, if not easier.
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When a pipe gets clogged under 1,000 feet of water, things quickly get expensive.

Drillers can't tell exactly where the pipe is blocked or what's stopping the flow of oil and gas, which makes it difficult to come up with a fix. And shutting down to find out can mean halting production - a costly move for producers already hurt by low oil and gas prices.

Enter Tracerco, a British company that invented a 4-foot ring containing a scanner that clamps on the outside of the pipe and provides an image of what's going on inside. Introduced in 2014, the undersea MRI is already keeping pipes flowing in the Gulf of Mexico.

Tracero's device is just one of many new technologies showcased at this week's Offshore Technology Conference as oil and gas companies seek new ways to become more efficient, cut expenses, and compete with lower-cost shale drillers during a period of cheap oil and gas.

The oil industry - both onshore and offshore - cut spending by $220 billion last year and is projected to slice another $139 billion this year, according to Lars Eirik Nicolaisen, a partner at consultancy Rystad Energy in Oslo.

Offshore drilling has taken the hardest hits. Only 24 rigs were at work in the Gulf of Mexico last week, according to oil service company Baker Hughes, down from 33 in the same week last year. Further declines are expected.

The offshore industry needs oil prices to rise to $50 a barrel to make money, said Martijn Dekker, a vice president with global oil energy company Royal Dutch Shell. But with prices hovering between $40 and $45 a barrel recently, Dekker said, "we probably want to go lower," he said.

Closing that gap means lowering the costs of drilling. And many companies view technology as the way to get there.

Nearly three out of four OTC attendees considered technology issues as the most pressing facing the industry, according to a survey by British business services group Lloyd's Register. Those priorities were reflected in booths in the exhibit halls. Most featured large digital displays. The hottest new gadget: virtual reality goggles.

"It's a natural evolution," OTC chairman Joe Fowler said. "It's kind of like how we didn't use to do email or texting. Those are much more efficient than calling on the phone and leaving a message."

Not all of the high-tech gadgets were small, though. At GE Oil & Gas, a manufacturer of high-tech equipment for undersea drillers, engineers won recognition from OTC for a new undersea control system. The control system, about 20 feet high, is a collection of valves and levers that regulate fluids that flow through the blowout preventer and other equipment stacked on the sea floor.

Traditionally, these control valves are a cash-consuming problem for producers. When they fail, they have to be pulled to the surface, bringing production to a halt. The cost of a repair can be as much as $10 million in downtime and other expenses, money that offshore drillers can ill afford to spend when oil prices are so low.

GE's engineers attacked the problem by building backups into the system, so if one value stops working, another takes over so the control system doesn't have to be pulled to the surface, said David Kindt, an engineer at GE Oil & Gas. The controls they've designed fail only one-third as often as the industry average, Kindt said.

"We're trying to reduce downtime as much as possible," he said, to save offshore producers time and money.
NEW YORK - Consumer backlash is growing against Target's stance on what type of bathrooms its transgender customers and employees can use.

Two weeks ago, the Minneapolis-based discounter issued a statement that said customers and employees can use the restroom or fitting room that "corresponds to their gender identity." The move made Target the first major retailer to take such a prominent position on the issue, and it won praise from supporters of transgender rights. But Target's position has also sparked criticism on social media.

One online petition started by The American Family Association, a conservative Christian advocacy group, calls for a boycott of Target stores. And customer surveys from two research firms separately show that Target's reputation has taken a hit.

Still, analysts say it's hard to gauge the impact - if any - the backlash has had on Target's business.

Target spokeswoman Molly Snyder declined to comment for the story, only saying the retailer stood by its earlier statement. She also declined to say whether the backlash has affected sales.

Target's statement comes amid a national debate over whether to restrict transgender people to using public bathrooms that match the sex listed on their birth certificate. North Carolina is facing heat for its recent ban on local anti-discrimination ordinances. Still, other states are considering legislation similar to that adopted by North Carolina.

By catapulting to the front lines of a highly polarized debate, Target shows the difficulties companies face when they weigh in on issue of gender or sexuality.

"Brands need to be sensitive to public opinion, but this is a tough one because it is a no-win situation. Either way, you are going to turn off customers to the brand," said Robert Passikoff of Brand Keys, a consumer research firm, which saw Target's reputation fall 10 points to 74 over the past two weeks. A score below 70 means that a brand is in trouble.

However, Ken Perkins, president of Retail Metrics, a retail research firm, says that in the long run, Target's stance could help it, creating some good will.

Wal-Mart, the nation's largest retailer, has remained silent on the restroom issue. But CEO Doug McMillon was among a group of CEOs who last year opposed the so-called religious freedom laws that allow faith-based groups to deny services or jobs based on sexual orientation. Wal-Mart's outsized influence was credited for pressing the governor of Arkansas, the home of Wal-Mart's headquarters, for signing an amended version.
Landreaux Iron, the Ojibwe protagonist of Louise Erdrich's dark new novel, "LaRose," is about to become the catalyst of every parent's worst nightmare. But when he goes hunting in the woods of the North Dakota reservation where he lives, he doesn't know that he's seconds away from causing a tragedy. He isn't thinking about his wife, Emmaline, and their five children; or the drinking problem he has struggled to conquer; or his Caucasian brother-in-law, Peter Ravich, who lives adjacent to the reservation with Emmaline's half-sister Nola and their two children. Landreaux's only thought, as he stands amid the chokecherries with a rifle against his shoulder, is to finally shoot the buck he's been stalking all summer.

When the buck pauses on the reservation line to look at Peter's cornfield, Landreaux, a skilled hunter, pulls the trigger. But the bullet misses his prey. It kills Dusty Ravich, Peter and Nola's 5-year-old son, who had been sitting on a branch of a nearby tree.

Each family has the predictable reactions, but the beauty of "LaRose" lies in the unexpected directions in which Erdrich takes her story, set in the years immediately before and after the start of the Iraq War. One of the many themes of this novel is, not surprisingly, the desire for retribution. But Dusty's death is only the most dramatic event to engender grief and resentment. "LaRose" is a subtle examination of the sadness that families inflict upon one another and the pull of tradition when facing life's cruelest vicissitudes.

As Peter, Nola and their 10-year-old daughter Maggie grieve, Landreaux and Emmaline seek guidance from the reservation's priest, Father Travis, an ex-Marine who teaches martial arts. After their meeting, the Irons give LaRose, their 5-year-old son, to the Raviches, in keeping with the tradition of the Ojibwe, an indigenous people with communities in the United States and Canada. "Our son will be your son now," Landreaux says.

Based on this shocking gesture, you might think that LaRose would be a large part of the narrative. That's not the case. Although LaRose is the main link between the families, Erdrich focuses more attention on the ramifications of Dusty's death and the existing tensions that the tragedy further exposes.

One of the many conflicts is the animosity between Nola and Emmaline. Their relationship, already strained, worsens after the accident, to the extent that Nola rejects every further offering Emmaline brings her, from a quilt she stitches to LaRose's favorite frybread. One wishes there were more to Nola than her grief, although Erdrich shrewdly makes her a not-entirely-likable character, as when Nola shows conflicted feelings toward Maggie: "She had raised a monster whom she hated with all the black oils of her heart but whom she also loved with a deadly confused despair."

Then there's Romeo, a grifter with skulls tattooed around his neck who collects both gossip and, in a lucrative side gig, discarded medications. He has known Landreaux since childhood and has many grievances against him, including his contention that Landreaux stole Emmaline from him. In part to get back at Landreaux, Romeo accepts a job as a hospital maintenance man, where he has access to medical records he thinks reveal an uncomfortable and unknown fact about the circumstances of Dusty's death.

More Information 'LaRose' By Louise Erdrich. Harper, 384 pp., $27.99. See More Collapse

In the midst of all of this is LaRose, the fifth generation of LaRoses in Landreaux's family. Erdrich intercuts the narrative with scenes of the first LaRose, an 11-year-old girl who, through adventures in the 1830s with a trader and his clerk, demonstrates an ability to connect with the spirit world that has been passed on to Landreaux and Emmaline's young son.

The families ultimately share LaRose out of concern for his well-being. But he ends up caring for them as much as they care for him. When Maggie says she fears Nola may harm herself, LaRose assures her he can prevent her self-destruction. "I got some spirit helpers," he says. He also has martial-arts skills learned from Father Travis, skills he's determined to use against four boys who committed a vicious injustice against Maggie.

The novel's pacing occasionally flags, and some may find the modern-day LaRose too sweet and selfless to be believable. But most of "LaRose" is a powerful evocation of two families' struggle to overcome misfortune. Father Travis sums up the novel's central theme best. While exercising one day, he remembers a bomb explosion from his time in the Marines. He remembers rubble falling on him and hands pulling him out. That episode taught him the lesson that Erdrich's characters, one way or another, are forced to confront: "Getting blown up happened in an instant; getting put together took the rest of your life."

Michael Magras is a member of the National Book Critics Circle. His work has appeared in Minneapolis' Star Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle, Philadelphia Inquirer, Chicago Tribune and The Iowa Review.
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The victim and a gunman who died in a workplace shooting Wednesday morning in west Harris County have been identified.

The shooting happened about 8:45 a.m at Knight Transportation, 20400 Franz Road, across the street from Morton Ranch High School in the Katy area, according to the Harris County Sheriff's Office.

Officials said a recently terminated employee, identified as Marion Guy Williams, pulled up in front of the building and went inside with a shotgun and a pistol.

Inside the building a worker heard Williams say, "You all ruined my life." It was unknown if he was speaking to anyone in particular.

Officials said Williams then shot a supervisor, identified as Mike Dawid, 34, before turning the gun on himself. Dawid is survived by his wife, Ellie Dawid, and a 2-year-old son, Noah.

Two other people were slightly injured by flying debris from the gunshots.

In a statement, Knight Transportation said: "Our deepest sympathies are with the family during this difficult time."

The Phoenix-based trucking company said the shooting "was the action of a lone former employee, who also died as a result of today's events."

A GoFundMe account has been set up to help with expenses for Dawid's family.

"Mike was awesome," one of the posts on the GoFundMe page said. "We had a blast cracking jokes together in high school. And even a few times after school. I wish I would have kicked it with him more."

Another post said, "I enjoyed working with Mike through the years over the phone and at several corporate events. Mike was always good for a joke and a smile. I have been entrusted to take care of Mike's drivers until a permanent plan can be made.

"It won't be easy holding up the high standards of the drivers that worked with Mike. They all enjoyed him both as a manager and as a person. Its been emotional but I feel blessed with being able to hear the wonderful stories of those that cared for him. Prayers for all of his family."
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In a community where half the adults lack a high school degree or its equivalent, the need to improve access to education is obvious and compelling.

With this in mind, the board of the East Aldine Management District instructed its staff in 2011 to find a location where the Lone Star community college system could establish a workforce training program. It would provide an affordable way for the children of immigrants and blue-collar workers to learn a marketable skill after graduating from high school. Forty percent of the households in East Aldine earn $25,000 a year or less, putting a four-year university out of reach for all but the most gifted students who might earn full scholarships.

"I worry about the thousands of kids in my community that are helpless," says state Rep. Armando Walle, a Houston Democrat who grew up in East Aldine and still lives there. "They have no aspirations."

Nurturing aspirations

Finding a site for the workforce center - a place to nurture aspirations - was not difficult. Vacant land is abundant in this unincorporated community of 50,000 people in northeast Harris County, where new development has been inhibited by poverty, limited services and inadequate infrastructure - issues I explored in Tuesday's column. The management district, a surrogate for local government, acquired a 60-acre site on Aldine Mail Route, a commercial thoroughfare whose name explains its origins.

That's more land than the college system needed, but the district is making good use of the rest. It picked up some valuable partners: the Harris County Sheriff's Office, which has agreed to move its 911 call center to the site, and Neighborhood Centers Inc., Houston's largest nonprofit, which raised $20 million to develop an "economic opportunity center" modeled on its nationally acclaimed Baker-Ripley campus in the Gulfton area of southwest Houston.

The call center will provide an estimated 175 jobs when it opens and perhaps more later. Neighborhood Centers will offer many of the same programs that have flourished at Baker-Ripley: tax preparation, retail training and employment opportunities, a health center, a play area for kids, and more.

Advantages lacking

Some neighborhoods need more help than others to achieve the elusive goal known as "revitalization," a word that can cover everything from utility system improvements to displacement of the poor. Houston's Midtown area, for example, was an urban wasteland until market forces and demographic trends helped it to blossom. Young professionals and empty-nesters wanted walkable urbanism close to downtown; Midtown was the right place for it.

A place like East Aldine lacks these organic advantages. It's too far from downtown, and has too many problems, to attract a lot of infill development - the kind that has flourished in Midtown. Yet it also lacks the vast, empty greenfields that suburban developers need for new master-planned communities.

Neighborhood Centers had encountered similar conditions in Gulfton, and in East Aldine it applied the same strategy that helped it succeed with Baker-Ripley: Identify community assets, then support and strengthen them.

The nonprofit spent months meeting with residents to learn about their needs. Its researchers dug deeply into the neighborhood, generating data like the income and educational figures I cited earlier.

"We go where we are invited," Angela Blanchard, the president and CEO of Neighborhood Centers, told me over lunch recently. "We do what we are asked to do."

Blight, or survival tools?

In East Aldine, Neighborhood Centers found independence and resourcefulness. Scenes that an outsider might regard as markers of blight - a mobile home next to a single-family house, or a rusting, long-idle car - are, from another perspective, survival tools.

"We can put a trailer in our backyard when our family expands," says Blanchard, in the voice of a hypothetical resident. "We can have two cars in the driveway - one that runs and one for parts."

Anibeth Turcios, 32, who grew up in East Aldine and seems to know the history of every beauty shop and taqueria in the community, says the entrepreneurship classes provided by Neighorhood Centers will help small business owners who want to expand.

"There haven't been those classes that will take them to the next level," Turcios says.

Construction on the town center is expected to begin this summer, with all components open by 2018. A long-overlooked community is waiting.
Electronic cigarettes, the purportedly healthier alternative to traditional smoking, soon will be regulated the same as tobacco products, federal authorities said Thursday.

The Food and Drug Administration's far-reaching regulation, effective in 90 days, will ban sales of e-cigarettes to anyone under 18 and require manufacturers to apply for government approval of their products. The move likely will be too costly for thousands of small retailers of the products and force them to close, a national trade group for e-cigarette makers said.

Under the new rules, the FDA must approve the sale of all tobacco products introduced after 2007, including e-cigarettes and cigars, which are not currently regulated. E-cigarettes, which Texas last year barred for sale to users under 18 and required producers to sell in child-resistant packaging, have become increasingly popular with teenagers and adults.

"We have more to do to help protect Americans from the dangers of tobacco and nicotine, especially our youth," U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell said in announcing the new rules. "Today's announcement is an important step in the fight for a tobacco-free generation - it will help us catch up with changes in the marketplace, put into place rules that protect our kids and give adults information they need to make informed decisions."

Burwell added that the "drastic leap" in e-cigarette and other nicotine-product use in teenagers is "creating a new generation of Americans at risk of addiction."

Will regulation help?

However, one e-cigarette user in Houston warned that the regulations may turn out to be counter-productive.

"Through this action, the FDA is putting e-cigarette users in a situation where most will have no alternative but to start smoking again," said Milton Wilson, a contractor who credits vaping for ending his 20-year-long, two-pack-a-day tobacco smoking habit. "I'm committed to continuing to use e-cigarettes, but it'll raise prices and might make me an outlaw."

The FDA's action comes one day after California made 21 the minimum age to buy electronic and traditional cigarettes. Hawaii earlier this year became the first state in the nation to raise its legal smoking age to 21, following the lead of more than 100 cities including San Francisco, Boston and New York.

E-cigarettes - battery-powered devices that heat flavored, nicotine-laced liquid and turn it into a vapor the user inhales, or "vapes" - have been soaring in popularity in the U.S. since coming from China as a smoking-cessation aid in the early 2000s. Recent studies have found that up to 15 percent of high school students report vaping at least once in the past 30 days, a proportion more than 10 times higher than it was five years ago. They also have found that young adults who try vaping are more likely to start using conventional cigarette products.

There are an estimated 9 million adult e-cigarette users in the United States, while 40 million adults smoke traditional cigarettes. Schell Hammel, head of the Texas chapter of the Smoke-Free Alternatives Trade Association, said there are "thousands of vape shops in Texas," and more continue to "pop up so fast."

The FDA rules also will extend long-standing restrictions on traditional cigarettes to a host of other products, including pipe tobacco, hookah and nicotine gels.

The action was widely hailed by public health and cancer care officials, from the American Medical Association to the American Association of Poison Control Centers to the American Cancer Society.

Dr. Ronald DePinho, president of MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, called the new rules "an important component of a needed Normandy-invasion-like assault on cigarette use, which is responsible for a third of cancer deaths. Including e-cigarettes within the FDA's regulatory authority will provide a much-needed scientific evaluation of their safety and help limit youth exposure to these products that may lead to lifelong dependency."

Industry opposition

The announcement drew a decidedly opposite reaction from the e-cigarette industry.

"This is going to cause a modern-day Prohibition of products that are recognized worldwide as far less hazardous than cigarettes," said Gregory Conley, a spokesman for the American Vaping Association, a trade group. "Absurdly, ex-smokers will face the prospect of having to purchase products that help them remain smoke-free on the black market."

Conley estimated the true cost of a pre-market FDA application for e-cigarettes will likely exceed several million dollars, "affordable to Big Tobacco companies, but not to small and medium-sized business." He predicted that thousands of small businesses will close in two to three years and that "America's largest cigarette companies will become entrenched."

Jason Hanna, general manager of Smoke Dreamz in Houston, said there's "no way a small vaping business could afford to pay" the figures being cited. He said he expects the ruling will affect his shop - the availability, the prices - but thinks "he's a step ahead" of other shops because the store's liquids are made in a facility already approved by the FDA.

The FDA action faces resistance from some Republicans in Congress. A House spending committee in April approved industry-backed legislation to prohibit the FDA from requiring retroactive safety reviews of e-cigarettes already on the market.

Europe's approach differs

Thursday's action was five years in the making. The agency first announced its intent to regulate e-cigarettes in 2011, then proposed draft regulations in 2014. The FDA's authority to regulate them came from a 2009 law that gave the agency broad jurisdiction over a wide range of tobacco products.

The FDA's rules require that producers of cigars and e-cigarettes register with the agency, provide it with a detailed accounting of the ingredients in their products, and disclose manufacturing processes and scientific data. They also prohibit companies from giving out free samples.

Companies have two years to submit their information to the FDA and another year while the agency reviews it. During that time, they can keep selling their products. Government officials said the reviews are critical to taming the "Wild West" of the e-cigarette marketplace.

Meanwhile, in Europe, television advertisements for e-cigarettes are being banned, following a ruling earlier this week by the EU's highest court that vaping devices could serve as a gateway to smoking.

The European Court of Justice said tough new laws were necessary to protect non-smokers - particularly children - from using e-cigarettes. The ruling was issued despite a recent report by a British physician group that said e-cigarettes are much safer than smoking tobacco.
Federal officials opened three mobile disaster recovery centers Thursday in the Houston area, beefing up efforts to get aid to those affected by last month's floods.

The mobile centers, which are essentially recreational vehicles, will be stationed at Foundry United Methodist Church and Lone Star College-University Park in northern Houston, and at Katy Park in Katy. Practically, they are equivalent to the four disaster recovery centers that officials opened Monday. Those centers have registered more than 12,500 people for aid in the county.

Since the floods, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has doled out more than $22 million in grants to flood victims, mostly in Harris County, county officials said Thursday. The mobile centers will likely add to that total as federal, state and local officials continue to scour the vast affected territory.

"That's really why we have these mobile (disaster recover centers) is to go into areas that may not be conducive to having an office building or a community center" serve that purpose, said FEMA spokesman Darrell Habisch.

The announcement of the mobile centers comes a day after four more counties were added to a presidential disaster declaration. Now residents in eight counties in Texas can apply to FEMA for grants: Harris, Fayette, Grimes, Parker, Austin, Colorado, Waller and Wharton. Montgomery County officials have urged that their county be included, too.

Federal and local officials continued to push victims of mid-April's flood - which dropped up to 18 inches of rain in parts of the county and was one of the most devastating storms since Tropical Storm Allison 15 years ago - to register for aid with FEMA, a process that can be complicated.

People can register by going to DisasterAssistance.gov, calling 800-621-3362, or visiting one of the seven disaster recovery centers. FEMA also has teams canvassing neighborhoods.

At the centers, agency representatives will help people register flood damage, apply for aid, and answer recovery-related questions. Aid is available not only for house repairs but also for temporary housing, medications, funeral expenses and transportation, among other needs.

FEMA officials have said that being disqualified for a FEMA grant does not mean flood victims can't get aid through other sources. For example, the U.S. Small Business Administration can provide low-interest loans to homeowners - spokesman Susheel Kumar said 37 home loans totalling almost $1.5 million had been approved as of Thursday - as well as to businesses.

Even if people were initially sent notices that they do not qualify for aid, they should appeal, officials said. In many cases, denials may have been based on incomplete information in the application, which can be fixed.
The Houston school board on Thursday unanimously approved a school funding plan that would send more money to schools serving the most students from low-income families.

Under the plan, Houston schools will receive $179 less for each student they teach next year than they did this year. The cut could translate to more than $500,000 for some of the district's biggest schools.

District schools receive additional funding per student for various factors, including for students who are English language learners and those who are from low-income families, so much of the $179 cut will be made up elsewhere. Overall, this per-student reduction equals about $40 million in cuts across the district.

Much of those cuts will be offset by a new funding plan that would redirect $21 million in federal funds to schools based on how many students from low-income families they serve. Schools with the highest student poverty rates would receive as much as $455 in additional funds for each qualifying student, the district said. About 20 of HISD's 280 schools would not qualify for the funding because their low-income population is below 35 percent.

This is one part of an effort to cut $95 million from HISD's budget as the district is set to send about $165 million back to the state for the first time because it's designated a property wealthy district. Under the state's education funding system, HISD is considered a wealthy district, despite 80 percent of Houston students coming from low-income families. HISD is one of many districts challenging that finance system in court.

"Today's unanimous vote makes clear our commitment to doing all we can to shield classrooms from these deep budget cuts," interim HISD Superintendent Ken Huewitt said. "It's beyond time for the Texas Legislature to scrap this broken school finance system that cannot justify taking $165 million in local tax dollars from schools serving our neediest children."

HISD had used the federal funds it now plans to spend at the lower-income schools to fund the district's full-day pre-kindergarten program, because the state only covers half day pre-K classes. Under the new spending plan, the district will use additional state and local money to fund daylong pre-K classes.

The rest of the budget trimming will be done in the coming weeks, with the HISD budget set to be approved in June. The plan does not include cutting funds for gifted and talented students as had previously been proposed. The superintendent last month rescinded that proposal amid concerns from parents and board members.

"This is about funding the needs of our kids," Glenn Reed, general manager of budgeting for the school district, said after a budget workshop last month.

Huewitt has proposed several budget cut items, including ending the $10 million bonus program for teachers and other school staff, and jettisoning $11 million in contracts with outside vendors. He also would eliminate the $19 million that went to help a few dozen low-performing schools, as part of former Superintendent Terry Grier's "Apollo" reform program.

Additional cuts of about $15 million still need to be identified, the district said.
Acrid plumes of black smoke blanketed parts of west Houston for hours Thursday as a raging warehouse fire forced one school to evacuate and residents to shelter in place amid concerns of possible environmental contamination from chemicals stored on the property.

Runoff from the firefighters' efforts sent vivid red streams of chemical additives flowing into Spring Branch Creek, and authorities warned residents to avoid the water there and in nearby ditches and culverts until it could be tested. Results are expected on Friday.

More than 170 firefighters spent hours containing the four-alarm blaze, which caused massive explosions that sent balls of fire shooting skyward.

"It was like throwing bombs in the air," said Sasha Martinez, 21, who gathered with others to watch just a few streets away from her home in the Spring Branch area.

Despite the ferocity of the blaze, no one was injured, authorities said.

Gary Coronado/Staff

Hours after firefighters extinguished the conflagration, arson investigators pored through the tangled mess of waterlogged debris and ash-stained wreckage at the Custom Packaging and Filling Company in the 1700 block of Laverne Street near Spring Branch Drive. Blackened barrels - many of which were marked with labels warning they contained chemicals that posed environmental hazards - could be seen amid the detritus.

Company representatives could not be reached for comment by the Chronicle, but a company manager working with investigators identified the contents as petroleum-based additives and pesticides, said Houston Fire Department Capt. Ruy Lozano.

Firefighters dropped foam on the fire and tried to cut off its air supply to minimize runoff, but they could not completely stop the flow into Spring Branch Creek, which feeds into Buffalo Bayou. Fire officials later said that high waters in the creeks and bayous will help dilute the contaminants.

The company serves industrial customers and handles various hazardous substances, according to its website and records of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. It has no record of environmental violations with TCEQ or the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and has not been inspected by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration in the last five years, records show.

Started in garage area

The fire began after 10 a.m. in a garage area behind a home where cars were being repaired; the flames spread quickly, residents said.

David Nagy, who runs Associated Installation Services nearby, said his employees rushed into his office to tell him about the fire. They walked down the street and saw flames ripping through the auto-repair yard, sparking explosions as the fire reached the vehicles' gas tanks.

Extinguishing the blaze was made more complicated by the close proximity of other warehouses, which easily could have ignited, Lozano said.

Authorities issued a shelter-in-place order for residents near the fire, specifically in areas north of Westview, west of Bingle, south of Hammerly and east of Blalock. Residents were told to turn off their air-conditioning systems to avoid drawing in potentially dangerous air.

Officials lifted the order about 2 p.m., but continued to urge people to stay away from the area if possible.

Tar on cars

About 650 children and 80 staffers at nearby Spring Branch Elementary School were evacuated to Don Coleman Coliseum at 1050 North Dairy Ashford, Spring Branch Independent School District officials said.

Lelina Cantero, a fifth-grader, said she was scared when the students were loaded onto buses to leave the school.

"Some kids were crying because they were worried about their brothers and sisters," she said.

Javier Chavez, 34, who lives about three blocks from where the fire started, said he got to the coliseum before noon to pick up his 6-year-old son, who is a kindergartner at the school. He said he was relieved to find his son safe.

"You can see the smoke and the black tar all over the cars," he said. "It's a bit of a concern because we're not sure what the company is that's burning right now."

Still, Chavez remained concerned. He works for Rice University in the Department of Chemistry in shipping and receiving.

"I work with hazardous chemicals constantly, so I completely know what the outcomes of some of these things can be," he said.

CORRECTION: A gun shop near the warehouse fire did not burn, as was previously reported in this article. The Freer Gun Shop is still open for business, owners said.

Carol Christian, Mark Collette, Matt Dempsey, Craig Hlavaty and Dale Lezon contributed to this report.
A Houston man believed to be a member of one of the nation's largest white supremacist prison gangs turned himself in this week in Channelview.

Danny Ray Ferguson Jr., 39, an Aryan Circle gang member, was wanted for parole violation. He was named last month as one of Texas' 10 most wanted fugitives. The arrest was not the result of a tip so the reward of up to $7,500 will not be paid, authorities said.
The Texas General Land Office, after months of research, will not seek ownership of the 38,000 items in the Alamo library collection that has been at the center of a legal battle with the Daughters of the Republic of Texas.

According to a recent filing in a lawsuit initiated last year by the DRT, the Land Office has determined it is not claiming state ownershipover any of the items in the library collection except for perhaps a handful of specifically identified items for which GLO has has not yet made a determination. The DRT has insisted it owns materials the Daughters accumulated during their 110 years at the Texas shrine.

A court record lists nine items still in dispute, including a printed copy of the Texas Declaration of Independence from 1836 belonging to Samuel Maverick, a signer of the declaration, and other documents and books related to Maverick and his family. A book, The Works of Dr. Benjamin Franklin, published in 1846, also is among the items in question.

The case had been set for a trial to begin Thursday, but has been reset for a June 9 court date, said Brittany Eck, Land Office press secretary. The Texas attorney generals office, representing the state in the case, said in an April 25 motion that the Land Office and DRT have been in detailed settlement discussions.

The AGs office has asked that the lawsuit be dismissed, arguing that the Land Office has sovereign immunity and did not commit an unlawful action, as it had not claimed ownership of any specific items in the collection. It also has argued the Land Office has not done anything that would require compensating the DRT.

Dr. Betty Edwards, DRT President General, said in a release that the group welcomes the Land Offices newfound respect for private property. But she said it came in the form of a failed attempt to avoid facing a judge to answer for the state agencys attempted takeover of the collection.

The fight to defend our historical DRT Library collection from the states over-reaching grasp has proven to be an expensive one. But the Daughters are committed to standing up to bureaucratic bullying, Edwards said.

Lamont Jefferson, the lawyer for the DRT in the case, said there still could be an abbreviated trial to resolve remaining property issues and the matter of the DRTs attorney fees.

A settlement would bring closure to a transition at the Alamo that began in 2011, when the Land Office assumed custodianship of the state-owned Texas shrine, site of a 1700s mission and famous siege and battle in 1836. The DRT had previously been custodians since 1905, and then the sites operations contractor for the Land Office, until Land Commissioner George P. Bush terminated the DRT contract in July 2015.

The DRT has spent more than $100,000 in legal costs so far, and is said to be ardently opposed to any claim by the state to the Maverick copy of the declaration  a rare document. Judge John D. Gabriel, 131st District Court, is assigned to the case.

The Land Offices decision not to claim ownership of most of the family papers, maps, paintings, archival photos and other documents is a major victory, said David B. Gracy II, a former state archivist who has sided with the DRT in the case. The Land Office had assigned two employees to examine the collection for four months.

Im delighted that the Land Office is abandoning claims to the material, Gracy said. If they drop all claims, theres not an issue.

In a 2013 review of 3,668 purchased and donated library items, the Land Office concluded about 13 percent belonged to the DRT, while nearly 80 percent had inconclusive documentation. Gracy countered in a 2014 report that the state unfairly applied modern documentation standards  such as deed of gift forms that only have been common since the 1990s  to a collection the DRT began accumulating at the Alamo in 1945.

The DRT hopes to move the collection to Texas A&M University-San Antonio. Gracy said it would be an ideal location, since many of the items are tied to San Antonio and South Texas, and are not Alamo-specific. It would be more accessible than the historic Alamo complex downtown, he said.

According to the Big Give SA website, the DRT had raised about $10,000 late Wednesday to support transfer of the collection to the university.

shuddleston@express-news.net

Twitter: @shuddlestonSA
WASHINGTON - In an extraordinary rebuke of his party's presumed nominee, House Speaker Paul D. Ryan, the nation's highest-ranking elected Republican, said Thursday that he was "not ready" to endorse Donald J. Trump for president.

Ryan's announcement represented a split among Republicans not seen in at least a half-century, and it came only two days after Trump said he would unify the party after essentially clinching the nomination with his victory in the Indiana primary.

As the chairman of the Republican National Convention, Ryan has repeatedly said he would support his party's nominee as Republicans tried to regain the White House and solidify control of Congress.

But the combination of Trump's at times outrageous remarks - insulting women, Hispanics and Muslims - and his broad rejection of many core Republican policies proved too toxic a brew for Ryan as he defended his majority in the House, the reputation of his party and his own viability.

Within an hour, Trump offered a biting rejoinder, saying in a statement that he was "not ready to support Speaker Ryan's agenda."

"Perhaps in the future we can work together and come to an agreement about what is best for the American people," he said. "They have been treated so badly for so long that it is about time for politicians to put them first!"

Effect uncertain

Ryan, who made his remarks in an interview with CNN, said Republicans want "a standard-bearer that bears our standards."

"I think conservatives want to know: Does he share our values and our principles on limited government, the proper role of the executive, adherence to the Constitution?" he said. "There's a lot of questions that conservatives, I think, are going to want answers to."

Ryan's ambivalence toward Trump adds another layer of division in a party torn by the billionaire developer's ascent, placing him at odds with his fellow Wisconsinite, Reince Priebus, the party chairman, who pronounced Trump the likely nominee and said Republicans should fall in line. Priebus was not aware Ryan was going to make the statement, his spokesman, Sean Spicer, told CNN.

Although Ryan said he had expected the race to run at least a few more weeks, he had spent the last day honing his position, aides said, even as others, like Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, voiced unequivocal if not effusive support for Trump. While Ryan's defiance put him in line with a number of other prominent Republicans, Trump has defied convention throughout the campaign, so the long-term effect was at best uncertain.

In a campaign that has delivered a daily dose of head-shaking moments of awe, Trump on Thursday continued the trend, in a manner that made some Republicans cringe. In honor of Cinco de Mayo, Trump posted a photo on Twitter of himself digging into a taco bowl - made in the Trump Tower food court, of course - and included in the caption "I love Hispanics."

A party nominee has never failed to gain the support of a House speaker or majority leader from his party in modern times. In 1896, Speaker Thomas Brackett Reed ran against William McKinley and made it known he would not serve as vice president, but ended up backing the nominee.

In 1964, Sen. Barry Goldwater had to wait a bit uncomfortably for the endorsement of Sen. Everett Dirksen of Illinois, but Dirksen gave it and thus ended the stop-Goldwater movement.

'Burden' on Trump

While Ryan's remarks caught Republicans off-guard, it also gave them essentially a permission slip to go their own way on Trump's candidacy. Had Ryan issued a forceful endorsement, it would have put pressure on fellow House Republicans to follow his lead, a step many have been unwilling to take.

"I'm not there right now," Ryan said. "And I hope to, though, and I want to. But I think what is required is that we unify the party, and I think the bulk of the burden on unifying the party will have to come from our presumptive nominee."

Trump, who once said Ryan would "pay a big price" if he did not support him, knows that the speaker and other opponents did not have great sway over primary voters. But Ryan, who has helped raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for Republicans, may well be a more notable voice in a general election.
PESHAWAR, Pakistan - More than a dozen leaders of a small village in northwestern Pakistan were arrested Thursday and charged with burning a teenage girl to death because she helped one of her friends elope, security officials said.

The crime, which is renewing attention on Pakistan's horrific record in regard to protecting women and children from abuse, took place on the outskirts of Abbottabad in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

Khurram Rasheed, police chief for the northern district of Abbottabad, said Thursday that the charred body of 17-year-old Ambreen Riasat was found in a burned van in the tourist resort of Donga Gali on April 29, the Associated Press reported.

A graphic photo of the teenager's charred remains quickly circulated online. It appeared as if the girl's arms had been bound before she was set on fire.

Saeed Wazir, the regional police chief in Abbottabad, announced Thursday that the murder was a "preplanned act" involving 14 village leaders. Wazir said the entire village council had sanctioned the act to send a message to other minors.

"They said she must be burnt alive to make a lesson for other girls," Wazir said.

In act of defiance against Pakistan's strict Islamic and paternal customs, Wazir said the victim had helped one of her friends secretly marry her boyfriend. After the new bride's father found out, he requested that village elders investigate the matter. In many parts of Pakistan, females are expected to get their father's consent before marriage.

The village elders called a local meeting, which is referred to as a jirga. Under Pashtun culture in Pakistan and neighboring Afghanistan, such gatherings are often held to try to reach consensus on how best to resolve local disputes. At times, the meetings also stray into a form of street justice.

According to Wazir, the village elders tasked with investigating the marriage quickly discovered that the victim had helped her friend evade her father's will. The elders then decided the victim needed to be punished for not disclosing her role in the marriage.

Several men then dragged the teenager out of her house and tied her into the van, Wazir said.

"Despite the requests and pleas from her parents, villagers forcibly brought her out and set her afire while roping her to the seat of the vehicle," Wazir said.

Both the leader of the jirga and the father of the newlywed girl were arrested, Wazir said. A dozen other men who participated in the jirga were also charged, he added.
Most Americans understand that slavery isn't just a problem in history. It persists, and its most common form today is human trafficking. Still, many Americans believe modern slavery afflicts only countries "over there."

"We think of human trafficking as a far-off problem in a third-world country," says U.S. Rep. John Culberson, a Republican who represents the Houston-area 7th Congressional District in Texas. "We can no longer do that: these are real victims suffering real harm at the hands of real criminals - and it's happening in our town."

The awareness among political leaders like Culberson has led to important new laws, like the Trafficking Victims Protection Act and its subsequent reauthorizations. Yet human trafficking remains the fastest growing criminal enterprise in the world, raking in $150 million in yearly profits. The International Labor Organization estimates that today there are 20.9 million trafficking victims in the world. Houston is located along Interstate 10, a main route for transporting human trafficking victims. More broadly, Texas is the second-highest in the nation for number of calls to the National Human Trafficking Resource Center.

Labor trafficking is more prevalent, but sex trafficking accounts for about two-thirds of the criminal profits, and an estimated 83 percent of sex trafficking victims in the United States are American citizens. Even more tragic, many victims of sex trafficking in the United States - half, according to some estimates - are children.

While there are various reasons for the growth of this horrific human rights problem, one stands out above the rest: insufficient government resources. The U.S. government spends more money in the War on Drugs in a month than it has spent combating trafficking in the last fifteen years. Worldwide all governments and NGOs, or non-governmental organizations, have spent an average of only $124 million a year combined fighting trafficking.

With these limited funds, law enforcement agencies simply don't have the resources to crack down on traffickers, who operate with near impunity. According to the 2015 State Department Trafficking in Persons report, there were only 4,443 convictions for trafficking globally in 2014, and only 184 in the United States.

Services for victims are essential, but we also need to ensure that there are fewer victims. Unless we greatly heighten the legal risk for traffickers, they will continue to replace rescued victims with new ones.

Now the House subcommittee headed by Rep. Culberson has a chance to begin to set the U.S. government on a new course by appropriating sufficient funds for the Department of Justice's Human Trafficking Prosecution Unit. The centerpiece of the U.S. government's domestic anti-trafficking enforcement, the HTPU partners with police and prosecutors to coordinate investigations. Crucially, it also leads 12 Anti-trafficking Coordination Teams, which enhance collaborative efforts with the Departments of Homeland Security and Labor. The teams generated a 119 percent increase in investigations in their districts last year.

Over the past five years, the number of cases handled by the HTPU has increased by 62 percent. Yet funding from Congress has remained flat since 2010, at $5.3 million. The HTPU reports that with just a modest increase in funding - $2.8 million - it could increase the number of trafficking suspects charged by 49 percent. This would be a wise investment and a long overdue down payment on ending human slavery in our communities.

Thanks to the work of anti-trafficking advocates and their allies in Congress, we're beginning to understand what works in the fight against trafficking. The Human Trafficking Prosecution Unit works. I respectfully urge Rep. Culberson and his colleagues to give it the resources it needs to succeed.

Retired Rear Adm. Guter, JAGC, U.S. Navy, is president and dean of South Texas College of Law and serves on the board of advocates for Human Rights First.
The day after the mass shooting in Newtown, Conn., I started a Facebook page aimed at uniting American mothers in a fight against gun violence. Married and living in suburban Indianapolis, I was a stay-at-home mom of five and not in any way political, aside from voting. But I'd seen the difference the women of MADD made around drunken driving. Why, I wondered, couldn't we do the same?

I was wholly unprepared for the blowback headed my way.

Within hours of speaking out about our nation's lax gun laws, I received my first threats of sexual violence and death. Over the next several months, my phone throbbed with angry texts and phone calls, often in the middle of the night. My fledgling Twitter feed - which I didn't really know how to use yet - was on fire. I started getting letters mailed to my home, complete with cut-outs from magazines to spell out threats to my life.

My email was hacked; my Facebook photos were downloaded and distributed publicly; my phone number and home address were shared online; my children's social media accounts were hacked and the names of their schools shared online.

The underlying message: Stop talking about guns, or we'll harm you or someone you love.

And as Moms Demand Action began to grow and win in statehouses and boardrooms, the threats and outrage from gun extremists grew more intense. I had to block so many of them on social media that #ImBlockedByShannonWatts actually trended on Twitter.

Even the National Rifle Association got in on the misogyny, publishing a magazine article parodying me as a 1950s housewife. It questioned whether I was a "real" mom - simply because I had had a career before choosing to stay home with my kids.

At first, this bullying shocked and scared me. It was overwhelming to wake up every day to more venom. But as I spoke to our volunteers in chapters across the country, I found out that I wasn't alone in my experience.

The intimidation via emails, texts, calls and online was happening locally, too. But the harassment wasn't just coming from behind a computer screen - extremists, almost always men, were showing up at our events with loaded long guns to try to silence our voices. Whether our volunteers were rallying in public, holding an event in their homes or simply having lunch at a restaurant, extremists were showing up - or threatening to show up - with guns. In fact, just weeks ago, a meeting of Moms Demand Action volunteers in a Kentucky public library was crashed by men who openly carried guns, waltzed in and sat in the front row.

Despite the constant harassment, the bottom line for me and the other Moms Demand Action volunteers is this: If we lose our children, we have nothing left to lose. We will not succumb to intimidation. We will not kowtow to bullies. We will not be silenced. Not after Sandy Hook.

We refer to ourselves as "one tough mothers." In fact, several volunteers have turned that phrase into a tattoo - a visual and constant reminder of why we fight for gun safety: because our children's lives are at stake. And that motivation is more powerful than threats and intimidation.

We are the most organized and passionate counterweight the gun lobby has ever seen - it isn't surprising that we scare the trolls. And we are relentless because we know the lives we're working to save may be our own children's.

After Sandy Hook, women and mothers and other outraged Americans rose up, refusing to accept that our gun-violence epidemic was unstoppable. The fight isn't finished, but these tough mothers are moving forward. And all of the trolling, threats and misogyny in the world cannot stop us.

Watts is the founder of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America and a mother of five children. She wrote this commentary for the Washington Post.
It has been more than two months since the Texas party primaries, so you can be forgiven if you've forgotten about the races where no candidate earned a majority of the vote. Early voting in these runoffs run from Monday, May 16 through Friday, May 20. Election Day is Tuesday, May 24. You can participate in the runoff even if you didn't cast a ballot in the primary. However, you can't switch parties if you voted earlier this year.

Republican

Member, Railroad Commissioner: Gary Gates

This race embodies a common trend in these runoffs: Two unqualified candidates plucked from an otherwise reasonable field. Texas Republicans have a choice between businessman Gary Gates or former state Rep. Wayne Christian to be their candidate for Railroad Commission. That three-member body regulates the oil and gas industry in Texas, in addition to mining and other industries. Gates made his fortune in owning and operating apartment complexes. Christian, who represented Center, Texas, was repeatedly named one of the worst legislators in Austin by Texas Monthly. Republicans deserve a serious candidate, and Christian has already proven that he's not up to the task.

Judge, Court of Criminal Appeals, Place 2: Mary Lou Keel

The Court of Criminal Appeals serves as the final word on criminal law in Texas, and the nine-judge panel should be filled with experts in that field. Mary Lou Keel is the only qualified candidate in this runoff. Keel has served as judge in Harris County's 232nd Criminal District Court for more than two decades. Before her election, Keel served in the Harris County District Attorney's Office in both trial and appellate divisions. She graduated from the University of Houston Law Center and is board-certified in criminal law. Her opponent, Ray Wheless, is a judge in the Collin County 366th district court. His career is more oriented towards civil law than criminal law.

Judge, Court of Criminal Appeals, Place 5: Scott Walker

Texans should be disappointed that Republican Primary voters selected someone other than Sid Harle to be their candidate for this position on the Court of Criminal Appeals. Harle is one of the most respected legal advocates in the state. He came in last place.

In this runoff, Republicans have a choice between Scott Walker, a solo practitioner who specializes in criminal law, and Brent Webster, an attorney in the Williamson County prosecutor's office who focuses largely on civil law. Webster is largely campaigning on abortion issues that aren't within this court's purview. Walker isn't campaigning at all. We encourage Republicans to go with Walker, who has more experience in Texas' criminal courts.

Democrats

Member, Railroad Commission: Cody Garrett

The spectre of a Donald Trump presidential nomination is raising hope against hope for down-ballot Democratic success, but don't put it past the Texas Democratic Party to somehow blow it. A perfect example would be the nomination of perennial candidate Grady Yarbrough as the Democratic choice for Railroad Commission.

Democrats should instead vote for Cody Garrett, a former print and television journalist who has worked as a staffer for the Texas Legislative Council. He's also helped manage other candidates' political campaigns.

Like their Republican counterparts running for this seat, neither Democratic candidate is particularly qualified to serve on the Railroad Commission. Garrett at least has some political chops.

Member, State Board of Education, District 6: R. Dakota Carter

Democrats should elect R. Dakota Carter as their candidate for the State Board of Education, which sets curriculum standards for public schools.

Carter, a psychiatrist with specific focus on childhood development, aims to reduce Texas' reliance on standardized testing and ensure that class curricula matches kids' developmental levels.

His opponent, Jasmine L. Jenkins, has a doctorate in education policy from the University of Houston and works at a private tutoring company.

State Representative, District 139: Kimberly Willis

Willis has earned our endorsement in this race to fill Mayor Sylvester Turner's former seat in the Texas House. A former legislative policy analyst and current social worker for the Harris County Juvenile Probation Department, Willis has placed a specific focus on criminal justice reform. She faces off against Jarvis D. Johnson, a former city councilman who has faced allegations of unethical and illegal behavior.

Judge, 11th Civil District Court: Kristen Hawkins

Democrats should back Kristen Hawkins, a former Harris County tax master who nearly won this race without a runoff. Hawkins, who graduated magna cum laude from the South Texas College of Law, can be found on plenty of top lawyer lists, including the 2014 National Trial Lawyer Top 40 Under 40. Her opponent, Rabeea Collier, is a skilled litigator and would make an able jurist as well.

Judge, 61st Civil District Court:Fredericka Phillips

Fredericka Phillips, a South Texas College of Law graduate, should be the Democratic candidate in this race. Phillips has been practicing law for over 15 years with an emphasis on civil litigation and property law. She narrowly led the vote count in the primary election in March, and Democrats should give it to her in the runoff. Her opponent, Julie Countiss, is an assistant county attorney in the Harris County Attorney's Office.

Judge, 215th Civil District Court: JoAnn Storey

This is an easy one. Democrats should vote for JoAnn Storey, a summa cum laude graduate of South Texas College of Law who has 35 years of experience representing clients in civil trials and on appeal./p>

Democrats should not vote for incumbent Judge Elaine Palmer, who has been sanctioned by the Texas Ethics Commission and has one of the lowest ratings in the Houston Bar Association's judicial candidate qualification poll.

Sheriff:Ed Gonzalez

Former City Councilman Ed Gonzalez is the obvious choice to be Democratic candidate for sheriff. Gonzalez served three terms as councilman for District H and worked in the Houston Police Department for 18 years, where he was a homicide investigator and hostage negotiator. While on Council he served as mayor pro tem and chaired the Public Safety and Homeland Security Division. In that position he spearheaded the creation of the Houston Center for Sobriety, which allowed police officers to divert people who otherwise would be booked for public intoxication.

Gonzalez is opposed by Jerome Moore, who has 17 years experience in law enforcement.

Justice of the Peace Precinct 1, Place 1: Eric William Carter

Eric William Carter, a graduate of South Texas College of Law, is our choice to be the Democratic candidate in the race for this important seat. While his opponent Tanya Makany-Rivera would bring a strong skill set to bear on the job, when we talked to Carter he had a great pitch line: He said he was the only one in the race with a law degree. Texas law doesn't limit this judicial position to lawyers, but voters should.

Justice of the Peace Precinct 7, Place 1: Cheryl Elliott Thornton

Cheryl Elliott Thornton earned our endorsement in the primary, and Democrats should make her their nominee in this runoff against incumbent Judge Hilary H. Green. Thornton currently serves as an assistant county attorney and has 30 years experience practicing law, including time as an administrative law judge and general counsel for Texas Southern University. Allegations arising out of Green's divorce from former Controller Ron Green have brought her judgment into question.

Constable, Precinct 2: Christopher (Chris) Diaz

Incumbent Constable Chris Diaz is running for reelection after a narrow victory in 2012, and Democrats should make him their candidate. He's added deputies to contract patrols and worked with other law enforcement agencies to fight human trafficking. Diaz told the editorial board that he supports implementing civil service.

Constable, Precinct 3: Sherman Eagleton

Democrats should back Sherman Eagleton, who has worked for 23 years in Precinct 3 and currently serves as a sergeant. He earned our endorsement during the primary because of his insightful critique of the current office's inefficient management.

His opponent, Michel Pappillion, has more than two decades experience in law enforcement.
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Air Canada has been hit with a wave criticism on social media, with people accusing the airline of hiking prices as a fire continues to rage around Fort McMurray, Alta.

There's just one problem: Air Canada didn't hike prices amid the wildfire. But it admitted Thursday that people did see higher prices due to the airline's online booking system.

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"It is not correct that we raised fares in response to this devastating situation," Air Canada said in a statement.

"In some cases, customers booking last minute on May 3 and 4 on flights from Fort McMurray and Edmonton have paid premium fares. This was a result of Air Canada's computerized revenue management system, which automatically manages fares."

Air Canada said it wasn't able to adjust flight prices in time, and that it will partially refund customers who had to pay premium rates.

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The statement comes after a series of social media posts that suggested the airline had raised its prices.

@SupermanRob2914 Hi there, this is not correct. Please read our most recent statement here: https://t.co/IqjsHSRH7W. /nw  Air Canada (@AirCanada) May 6, 2016

The airline has offered its "lowest available fares" to people who have been impacted directly by the Fort McMurray wildfire, spokesman Peter Fitzpatrick told CTV News.

Air Canada has also added over 1,000 more seats worth of space on flights going to Alberta to help move people and supplies, and provided chartered planes for oil workers.

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It also donated $50,000 to the Red Cross, CTV News noted.

But Air Canada isn't the only airline that has chipped in as a wildfire ravages the oilsands hub.

WestJet has expanded an existing arrangement with Shell and Suncor by offering flights out of oilsands work camps, spokeswoman Lauren Stewart told CTV News.

She estimated that the airline would have as many as 70 flights in and out of camps between Thursday and Friday.

Also on HuffPost
Springtime is here, our farmers are in their fields,

Assessing the moisture, gauging their yields.

When rain is sparse and times are tough,

And the price of hay is especially rough.

As Conservatives we understand,

It takes hard work to till the land.

Alberta NDP passed a law for working on Prairie farms,

More expensive food, don't care who it harms.

They said, "John Deere, we want your food,

But only feed your cows when we're in the mood."

No overtime or you'll pay the price,

Beef and pork will cost more than twice.

We're standing up for farmers, feeding cows 'till nine.

We're standing up for farmers working overtime.

You eat their beef, you sit on leather,

Your feet are shoe'd in stormy weather.

Without their food, life would be grim,

Unless you plan to be awfully thin.

Family farms are getting fewer,

Once they're gone, we're in deep manure.

Don't egg me on, the yolks on you,

If farmers leave, what will we do?

Bottom line: You want to eat?

Support our farmers. Buy their wheat.
What's the best way to advance gender equality in the workplace?

If you're Bloomberg, you measure it.

The financial news and services company has devised the Bloomberg Financial Services Gender-Equality Index.

It's a tool that evaluates companies for their efforts to promote gender-positive policies, products and other measures as part of their work to ensure workplace equality.

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"While more and more firms are focused on addressing gender equality in the workplace, we've lacked a holistic set of data to better understand the issues facing companies, employees and clients," Bloomberg head of strategy and corporate development Angela Sun said in a statement.

"The BFGEI gives investors an important new decision-making tool by providing objective, concrete data around difficult-to-measure areas like policies and products."

The first BFGEI saw Bloomberg single out 26 companies that scored highly for "strong commitments to gender equality, including dedicated social disclosure policies and practices."

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CIBC was one of two Canadian banks named in the index.

In a news release, the bank noted that its female executives were listed among Canada's most powerful women 14 times in the past 10 years.

CIBC also pointed out its support for Catalyst Canada, a non-profit that seeks to create more opportunities for women and business across the country.

Bank of Montreal (BMO) was also singled out.

In a separate news release, BMO highlighted actions such as its Women in Leadership Fund, which invests money in companies for whom women make up at least a quarter of board members.

BMO also noted that it had made $2 billion in credit available to female entrepreneurs back in 2014.

Women make up one-third of BMO's board of directors and they also represent 39.3 per cent of senior leadership roles there.

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"We've lacked a holistic set of data to better understand the issues facing companies, employees and clients."

The index comes amid increasing awareness of gender issues such as the wage gap.

The Canadian Women's Foundation (CWF) says women earn 72 cents for every dollar that men draw in the Great White North.

So there's still work to do. But Canadian companies are certainly being recognized for the work they've done.
A clever new invention is changing the way blind children learn and play.

Braille Bricks is a set of 26 Lego-style blocks that represent each letter of the alphabet. The toy was made for children who are blind or visually impaired so that they can be included at playtime and learn while having fun. Not only can kids build structures with the blocks, but they can also form words.

Watch the ad above to see how Braille Bricks is changing the lives of kids with blindness.

Brazil-based non-profit Dorina Nowill Foundation for the Blind and the Lew'Lara\TBWA ad agency worked together to create this new toy for kids. So far, the organization has only made 300 sets, but they are working to make them available worldwide.

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Voce pode fazer a diferenca na vida de criancas cegas do mundo inteiro! https://t.co/rHbsoUDWjt#BrailleBricksForAllpic.twitter.com/tMd27nuqCX  BrailleBricks (@BrailleBricks) April 27, 2016

In an effort to make this happen, Dorina Nowill Foundation has released their toy designs under a Creative Commons license. This means that the design is free for anyone to use, share or adapt. The non-profit is hoping the designs will be picked up by a manufacturer.

Our idea is to find a global toy company with the potential to produce it in a global scale to help blind kids around the world, said Ricardo Barros, of Lew'Lara\TBWA ad agency.

Tiramos pinos de blocos de montar para colocar alegria na educacao de criancas cegas. #BrailleBricksForAllpic.twitter.com/vSE9sKefrP  BrailleBricks (@BrailleBricks) April 29, 2016

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While these Braille Bricks seem like a natural evolution from Lego, the Danish company has never adapted its designs, despite launching an initiative to support visually impaired kids in the past.

Now that Braille Bricks are here, the public has been sharing the new invention on social media with the hashtag #BrailleBricksForAll. Many are praising the clever idea in hopes Lego will take notice.

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Lets hope Lego catches on real soon.

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Conservatives are once again pouncing on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for using taxpayer money to pay for two personal nannies.

On Thursday, iPolitics reported that the cost of Trudeau's child care is on pace to hit almost $100,000 a year  not including expenses sustained by having the nannies travel with the Trudeau family.

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Conservative MP Candice Bergen rose in question period Friday to bemoan what she called the "Liberals' unbelievable sense of entitlement."

Marilou Trayvilla, one of two women employed to take care of the Trudeau children, is seen at left as she joins Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and family upon their arrival to Rideau Hall for the swearing-in ceremony in Ottawa on Wednesday, November 4, 2015. (Photo: Sean Kilpatrick/CP)

Bergen  never one to mince words when it comes to Trudeau  got personal.

"Let's be honest, the prime minister has never actually needed to work a day in his life yet he feels it's completely acceptable to take money from hard-working moms and dads and get special privileges," she said, sparking some grumbling from the Liberal benches.

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Bergen wondered how the prime minister can justify Canadian families shelling out $100,000 a year for his child care while having to cover the costs of their own.

Kevin Lamoureux, parliamentary secretary to the Government House leader, read a prepared response.

Tory MP Candice Bergen rises in the House of Commons Thursday February 18, 2016 in Ottawa. (Photo: Adrian Wyld/CP)

"Like all families of the prime ministers, a small number of staff provide assistance," he said. The Trudeaus employ two household staffers who "act as secondary caregivers" to their children  Xavier, 8, Ella-Grace, 7, and Hadrien, 2  while performing other duties around the household, he said.

Lamoureux also reminded the House that Trudeau's family situation is different than that of his predecessor. Stephen Harper's children, Ben and Rachel, were 10 and six when he became prime minister in 2006.

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But Bergen shot back that, on the campaign trail, Trudeau said "millionaire families like his did not need taxpayer-funded child care." Once he won, she said, Trudeau "stripped" families of their Universal Child Care Benefit and took care of himself, his family, and "Liberal buddies."

"The prime minister has never actually needed to work a day in his life yet he feels it's completely acceptable to take money from hard-working moms and dads."  Candice Bergen

That salvo gave Treasury Board President Scott Brison the room to talk about how the Liberals' revamped Canada Child Benefit, introduced in the March federal budget, will actually mean more money for those who need help the most.

Controversy has quieted

The issue of Trudeau's nannies sparked plenty of chatter late last year, but things have largely dissipated since then.

The prime minister faced jabs from the left and the right in December. Interim Conservative Leader Rona Ambrose publicly called on Trudeau to pay for his child care out of his own pocket. NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair noted how Liberals opposed his party's plan for universal daycare.

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Trudeau pledged at the time that he would operate within the "same family budget" as the previous prime minister, but shuffle it around to meet the priorities of his wife and kids.

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With three Tennessee Supreme Court Justices and seven intermediate appellate judges facing retention elections, along with 15 trial judges and a number of local judges on the ballot in August, the Tennessee Bar Association is renewing its effort to assure fair and impartial judicial elections by asking judges to subscribe to the Tennessee Fair Judicial Campaign Code of Conduct."?Judicial elections are different,"? said TBA President Bill Harbison. ? "Judges are not permitted to make promises or pledges about how they will rule because we expect them to proceed case by case to apply the law to the facts and come to fair and impartial decisions.The code helps to ensure this impartiality by committing the judges not to make pledges, promises or commitments on how they will rule in cases.?"In the 2014 election cycle, where all judges and judicial officers were on the ballot, more than 116 judges subscribed to the code. Letters to all known judges and judicial candidates on the ballot are being issued this week. For more information and to view the code of conduct, visit http://www.tba.org/node/83222
Thank you Thank you Thank you Being in a nursing home and getting informations about reactions all over the world,means a lot for her.In 80's she become a star .She is grateful,She loves you and She have message for you :"THERE ARE NO UGLY WOMEN ,ONLY LAZY ONES ! " @teaflego #teaflego #glammaa And yes ,special thanks to @hudabeauty #allmodernmakeup#howtomakeup#makeupaddiction#makeuponfleek#makeupobsessed#makeupguru#hudabeauty#shophudabeauty#wakeupandmakeup#brian_champagne#makeuptutorialsx0x#vegas_nay#makeuplook#makeupjunkie#makeupaddict#opvlashes#hudakattan

A photo posted by makeupbyteaflego (@teaflego) on May 2, 2016 at 5:46pm PDT
Donald Trump Jr. thinks it is "nonsense" that NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair labelled his father a fascist.

The executive vice-president of The Trump Organization and son of the presumptive Republican presidential nominee sat down with The Huffington Post Canada in Vancouver this week, where he was asked to respond to Mulcair's insult.

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In late March, the NDP leaked a video of Mulcair blasting Donald Trump and criticizing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for, in his view, shrugging his shoulders whenever he's asked about the GOP front-runner.

Donald Trump, Jr. speaks as Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump listens during a campaign stop April 27, 2016, in Indianapolis. (Photo: Darron Cummings/AP)

Mulcair pointed to Trump's pledge to temporarily ban Muslims from entering the United States and to build a wall along the Mexican border to crack down on illegal immigration.

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"When you say you say you want to keep people out [who are] of a certain religion, if you want to build walls to keep people out, this is an appeal to the lowest feelings in human nature," Mulcair said at the time.

"I'm sorry, if a fascist becomes president of the United States, I want to be on record as having opposed it long before that election."

'It's actually disgusting'

While he did not mention Mulcair by name, Trump Jr., 38, told HuffPost on Thursday that such remarks "do a big disservice to people who are actually affected by racism." He said "everyone on the left" tries to play the "race card" when it comes to his dad's campaign because they are losing the argument.

"That's a problem when they throw it out there so haphazardly," he said.

Trump Jr. noted that some have equated his father to a Nazi.

"It's actually disgusting that you'd even make the comparison and that they'd actually make that comparison at that high a level," he said.

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NDP Leader Tom Mulcair takes part in a debate on the federal budget in the House of Commons on Tuesday, April 12, 2016. (Photo: Adrian Wyld/CP)

Trump Jr. blamed the media for creating "faux outrage" just to chase headlines and fill a 24-hour news cycle. He suggested his father isn't concerned about the petitions being signed by people sitting at home with "nothing to do."

The businessman added that it has been "pretty special" to see how his father has brought once "taboo issues" into the mainstream.

"He's actually opened up a real dialogue rather than pretending that real issues aren't issues and sticking your head in the sand like most politicians do," he said.

Trump presidency will be good for Canada-U.S. relations

Trump Jr. told HuffPost that Canadians can expect good things if his dad makes it all the way to the White House.

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"We don't have any issue with Canada," he said. "We don't have an issue with, frankly, any countries."

He said his dad's main focus will be on creating a robust economy in the United States and putting people back to work.

"I think that benefits everyone, especially our closest neighbours," he said.

But Trump has also vowed to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement, if elected, to ensure the U.S. gets a better deal. He has also been critical of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement.

On the proposed Keystone XL pipeline  an issue that in many ways defined the relationship between U.S. President Barack Obama and former prime minister Stephen Harper  Trump is on the record saying he's "not in love" with taking Canadian oil.

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The likely GOP nominee has said he would reject Keystone if the U.S. can't score "a big chunk of the profits."

Trump easily won the Indiana Republican primary Wednesday. His path to the party's nomination became unobstructed after his only remaining rivals  Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Ohio Gov. John Kasich  dropped out.

With files from Rhianna Schmunk, The Canadian Press

Also on HuffPost
Kyrstyn Mrochuk/Google

When Kyrstyn Mrochuk heard how large the wildfire in Alberta's north had grown, she couldn't comprehend it.

Officials said Thursday that the fiery behemoth raging in Fort McMurray had grown to 85,000 hectares. It has prompted the largest fire evacuation in the province's history, with more than 80,000 people forced out of the city.

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Mrochuk told The Huffington Post Alberta she wanted a better perspective on the size of the wildfire, so she used Google Maps to overlay the size of the fire over Edmonton where she's lived her whole life.

"So I placed that area on top of my home and was just ... astonished," she wrote in a Reddit message. "My entire city, wiped out."

The area of the Fort McMurray wildfire over a map of Edmonton. (Kyrstyn Mrochuk/Google)

To help others who might not understand the scale of the blaze, Mrochuk did the same for different cities worldwide.

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"What would happen if all of Tokyo was under fire instead? It's quite chilling to me," she said.

(Kyrstyn Mrochuk/Google)

She posted a collection of different images to Reddit's Canada section, where it is now the top post. Many commenters, Mrochuk said, asked for an overlay with their own city or town.

"Everyone seems speechless by the amount of impact that kind of fire could have anywhere in the world," said Mrochuk, who has friends and family in Fort McMurray.

"And I think it humbled some people to realize that this isn't just a tiny town of 200 people going up in flames, but an entire city of people's lives being burned to the ground."

Check out more of Mrochuk's maps below:

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(Kyrstyn Mrochuk/Google)

(Kyrstyn Mrochuk/Google)

(Kyrstyn Mrochuk/Google)

(Kyrstyn Mrochuk/Google)

(Kyrstyn Mrochuk/Google)

(Kyrstyn Mrochuk/Google)

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(Kyrstyn Mrochuk/Google)
A Canadian brewery is providing relief to Fort McMurray evacuees by giving them the chance to crack open a cold one  of water, that is.

Labatt Breweries announced Wednesday that it will be donating over 200,000 cans of emergency drinking water for firefighters and victims of the northern Alberta blaze.

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The company is immediately donating 69,000 cans, with over 131,000 ready to go out later this week if necessary.

"At our Edmonton brewery and across the country, the people of Labatt are alarmed and deeply concerned by the devastation of the wildfire that has overtaken Fort McMurray. Our priority is to shift into high gear with our Disaster Relief Program and do everything we can to help," said Labatt's vice president of corporate and legal affairs Charlie Angelakos in a release.

Labatt workers prepare flats of canned water as part of the Labatt Disaster Relief Programme. (Photo: Labatt Brewery)

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"Labatt is one of Canada's founding businesses and oldest brewers and we're grateful to be able to give back to this country by leveraging our strengths and resources to get safe drinking water to Canadians in need."

This is the fourth time in four years the company has mobilized to bring safe drinking water to Canadians.

In 2013, Labatt made its first donation to help victims of the Alberta flood. It has since brought aid to flood and wildfire victims in B.C., Saskatchewan and Manitoba.

We're grateful to be able to give back to this country by leveraging our strengths and resources to get safe drinking water to Canadians in need."

The donation comes as firefighters work to contain a massive wildfire that has engulfed much of Fort McMurray. As of Friday morning, the fire had consumed over 100,000 hectares of land.

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The province of Alberta has activated a state of emergency in response to the situation.

Here are some resources for Fort McMurray evacuees: Alberta Red Cross 1 888 350 6070

Fort McMurray evacuee help on Facebook and Twitter

Let your friends and family know you're safe with Facebook Safety Check

Wood Buffalo RCMP 780 788 4000

@511Alberta on Twitter for road closures and travel advisories

Also on HuffPost
The Trump International Hotel and Tower in Vancouver has been setting residential sales records, despite the political backlash that's rained down on the family business during the U.S. presidential campaign.

According to the project, 214 luxury units have been sold at an average $1,610 per sq. ft.  the highest such rate in Canada. The sub-penthouse alone closed for $6.74 million.

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And Donald Trump Jr. isn't the least bit surprised.

Speaking in Vancouver on Thursday, Trump Jr. shrugged off any negative publicity that has surrounded the luxury 63-storey skyscraper set to open this summer.

Weve done it time and time again  when you combine a great location with incredible architecture and incredible amenities  its sort of a formula for success," the executive vice-president of the Trump Organization told The Huffington Post B.C. "Its what my fathers been doing for 40 years in our buildings all over the world.

Real estate investor Donald Trump, right, speaks while his children Eric Trump, from left, Ivanka Trump and Donald Trump Jr., listen during an event in Vancouver on June 19, 2013. (Photo: Bloomberg via Getty)

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His father, Donald Trump, is the likely Republican presidential candidate in the U.S., who last year called for "a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States."

That led to some Vancouverites, including the mayor, calling for Trump's name to be stripped from the tower, which is being developed by The Holborn Group. The Trump Organization is in charge of managing the hotel section.

"To have this  a tower named after this bigot in the middle of our city is a real insult," Coun. Kerry Jang told HuffPost Canada at the time.

(Photo: Diego Saul Reyna/Facebook)

In April, a construction worker hung a Mexican flag atop the Vancouver tower in response to Trump's idea of building a giant wall across the U.S.-Mexico border.

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The worker, Diego Saul Reyna, wanted to point out that many Mexican construction workers are part of Trump's real estate projects.

Theres always going to be negative publicity," Trump Jr. said on Thursday. "I point to the 10,000-plus people that applied for 300 jobs that were creating. Those are people of all demographics from all walks of life, and guess what? They had no issue with it.

"I think today we live in a world of faux outrage, where everyones looking to create an issue, and people sign onto a petition 'cause they're sitting at home with nothing to do. But you know, we broke every sales record  so it cant be too much of an issue."

To hear Donald Trump Jr. speak more about his father's presidential campaign and the family business, watch the video above.

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The Trump Tower will be the second-tallest building in Vancouver upon completion this summer.

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Robert Deutschman via Getty Images A girl is sitting on a park bench thinking.

If you are a woman in business, you would be well served to reclaim your power from the relentless voice in your head. In fact, this action alone may be the single biggest contributor to the future success of your career. Much like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, you will find that though the voice means well, it is actually full of tricks masquerading as the wizard from behind the silk curtain.

The voice in your head so badly wants to be the all-knowing wizard that it labels, judges, exaggerates and takes things personally, all in an effort to control. Labeling and judging people and circumstances makes us feel as though we have a handle on them and so the voice obliges, evaluating, slotting and categorizing.

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The sad result is that instead of enjoying the new office that came with the promotion the voice is busy pointing out all that is wrong with it. Soon, neither the office nor the promotion feel special at all. Listening to it is not only distracting, even immobilizing, it is an obvious drag on your business performance.

With the busy, busy voice talking all of the time, it is easy to read too much into everything. It is easy to take things personally, and ultimately to become paranoid. Your supervisor doesn't respond to your email because she is in meetings all day but instead of considering that possibility, the voice announces, that she read your email and thought your ideas were stupid. The voice goes on to say that you'll never get anywhere with her as she clearly doesn't like you.

This hyperbole continues in its inevitable downward spiral, exaggerated and larger-than-life until at last the voice arrives at the conclusion that your colleagues probably don't like you either. It then makes the next obvious deduction and suggests that maybe it is time to start looking for another job. All this histrionic confusion from an unanswered email? It is crazy-making.

It is a fickle master, though, that voice. One minute it is stating categorically that your supervisor doesn't like you, and yet moments later when she drops by your office to seek your opinion, it will exultantly exclaim with glee that you are loved. The voice simply adjusts its viewpoint and keeps nattering away, even when proven wrong.

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If you can see yourself in these scenarios, consider using one of the following approaches to quiet the relentless voice in your head:

Script a Different Story

I recently heard a highly accomplished business woman describe a situation where she had a lightbulb moment about the voice in her head. She was very passionate about a charitable cause to which she devoted copious hours and expended huge amounts of energy. While describing a project to the CEO of her company, she thought and the voice concurred, that he rolled his eyes. She was incensed for the remainder of the day and later that evening went on to indignantly describe the event to her husband. After listening to her retell it, her husband nonchalantly responded with a shrug, "Maybe he just had something in his eye."

Upon consideration, she decided that her husband's version was just as likely to be the correct account of the encounter as hers was, and that the alternate conclusion was both were true -- far more pleasant to believe, with the additional benefit of providing great relief.

Rather than listening to the negative prognosis that comes from the voice, determine to consciously make up a positive story as to why things could be happening the way that they are. For example, perhaps the guy that just cut you off in traffic had to get his mother to the hospital and so there is no need to waste valuable energy being angry at him!

Watch Your Life as You Would a Movie

Spiritual gurus suggest that to remain objective you should observe your life from a distance as though you were watching the latest film on the silver screen. Look at the situation, contemplate, and try to take it in without becoming overly involved or attached.

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It can be very illuminating to recognize that, like a movie, life will happen regardless of what the voice has to say about it. In fact, much as it would have you believe otherwise, the voice has no effect on events that occur in the external world. Take the opportunity instead, to sit back, relax and eat your popcorn!

When Dorothy painstakingly made her way to the Emerald City and discovered that the Great Wizard of Oz was, in fact, a mere mortal, she said, "Oh, you are a very bad man." To which he replied, "Oh no my dear, I am a very good man, I am just a very bad wizard."

You are not the voice in your head any more than the little man was the wizard. The only power that it has is that which you give it and there is little benefit from listening to it.

Like Dorothy, you will come to realize that you are capable of getting yourself back to Kansas in spite of the voice that tells you that it is not possible. Pull back the curtain, take back your power and give the relentless voice in your head a rest. It will be one of the best things you can ever do for your career.

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Dave and Les Jacobs via Getty Images Mixed race woman working in florist shop

Having a florist for a Mother means I get to see the other side, the business side, of all the major holidays that seem to whiz by us faster and faster every year.

Valentine's Day, Easter, and Christmas have all sparked a whirlwind of anxiety and stress in my Mom as she spends her time trying to organize and prepare her little shop named Euro Flowers. She sells flowers in Mississauga, a suburb of Toronto, and although Valentine's Day might seem like it'd be the biggest holiday, it sometimes pale in comparison to Mother's Day.

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Mother's Day is when people around the world who are living abroad, like I do, stampede to e-commerce sites to send their mothers something, anything, that says, "Hey I know I'm 4000km away, but I still love you and thanks for everything."

One of the best parts of helping my mom out from time to time with the internet side of her business is seeing all the sweet notes that ex-pats send over to their moms. Most of them are just a short and quick, "I love you!", but some are quite deep and make me realize how much I miss my own mom.

Funnily enough, when asked what they want for Mother's Day, the number one answer was "something homemade." Most Mom's said they'd take that over flowers. Still consumers in the U.S spend $1.9 billion on flowers during Mother's Day.

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Unfortunately for Moms around the world, most of us don't have time to harken back to our kindergarten arts and crafts days and bring home a big pile of love disguised as super glue, popsicle sticks and glitter.

I think what fuels the "industry" of Mother's Day for the most is just the practicality of sending a card or flowers over making something homemade. You still get to tell your Mom, "hey I promise I didn't forget that you raised me, and look I can even afford flowers, so you don't have to worry about me!" Although in reality, that arrangement might leave you eating ramen for the rest of the week. But still, she doesn't need to know that, and besides it's only once per year.

The thing I realized when I delivered flowers for my mom years ago during Mother's Day is that at the end of the day, your Mom is just happy that you remembered. The smile on every woman's face when she answered the door and I stood there holding a pile of freshly cut flowers was truly heartwarming. Mom's love us so much, and unconditionally, and ask for so little in return.
The Lee University Department of Behavioral and Social Sciences held its sixth annual Ollie J. Lee Symposium. Anthropology, psychology, and sociology students presented their original research at the event, held to honor Dr. Ollie J. Lee, Distinguished Professor of Sociology.

The symposium is a spectacular venue through which many dedicated students present their culmination of research to their peers, said Jed Foster, an anthropology student. I was immensely honored to share my own project with some of the most brilliant minds at Lee.

More than 70 students presented oral or poster exhibitions at the symposium. There were 13 displays from anthropology students, 17 displays from psychology students, and 11 displays from sociology students.

"Our students are taking research to the next level, raising the bar, challenging past research, and producing more impactful studies that have real-world implications, said Dr. Bryan Poole, assistant professor of psychology. They should be proud of the work they have done. We, their faculty mentors, are immensely proud of them and cannot wait to see what they do next.

Presentations included topics such as homelessness, pornography use, immigration, job satisfaction, eating behaviors, body dysmorphia, and religious points of view of God and womens health.

The symposium fosters an atmosphere that unravels the passions, questions, and research of students who deserve to be heard, said Dylan Dixon, a sociology student.

For some students, this year marked their first time of presenting at the symposium.

Coming into the Ollie J. Lee Symposium for the first time, I was very nervous, but once we started talking, the nerves faded and I started to get excited about sharing our research with others, said Gabrielle Oechsle, a psychology student. It was a lot of fun presenting as well as seeing others present. I look forward to going next year.

Dr. Lee joined the Lee faculty in 1967 and has served in numerous roles, including vice president of Academic Affairs, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, and chair of the Department of Behavioral and Social Sciences.

According to Dr. Carolyn Dirksen, director of the Center for Teaching Excellence, Dr. Lee was influential during the period when Lee was beginning the transition from Bible college to liberal arts institution. He helped prepare for the accreditation review of Lee faculty. He also chaired the committee that wrote Lee Universitys mission statement and formulated the institutional goals.

Since that time, Dr. Lee has been instrumental in helping further the academic and professional life of the university. He has served as chair for the General Education Core Task Force that redesigned core requirements and the committee that directed academic aspects of the transition from college to university.

The quality and quantity of undergraduate research on display in this symposium is remarkable, said Dr. Jeffrey Sargent, Chair of the Department of Behavioral and Social Sciences at Lee. The symposiums success is a result of my colleagues commitment to mentoring our students.

For more information about the Lee University Department of Behavioral and Social Sciences, contact Sargent at jsargent@leeuniversity.edu or 614-8125.






Daniel Ehrenworth via Getty Images Person Holding Tray of Butter Tarts

Canadians catch a hard time for their funny accents, overly-polite demeanors, and of course, Justin Bieber, but those who are in the know do not tease them about their food. Canadians enjoy an abundance of dishes that many of their neighbours south of the border never get to taste -- and they're missing out.

The following are 10 unmistakably Canadian dishes that must be tasted on any visit to the Great White North.

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1. Peameal Bacon

Peameal bacon is one of the few traditional Canadian foods that others around the world have tasted; however, it's never prepared quite the same as it is in Canada. Peameal bacon, or Canadian bacon as it's known in the United States, is brined pork loin rolled in cornmeal. Once pan-fried or grilled, peameal bacon is crispy on the edges and twice as delicious as any "Canadian bacon" you'll find at the supermarket south of the border.

2. Poutine

Photo credit: Yuri Long

Poutine is arguably Canada's most famous dish. You can even find it at Wendy's restaurants across the Great White North. However, it's suggested that you forego the Wendy's variety and taste poutine at a Canadian diner or one of many annual poutine festivals. The dish, composed of french fries topped with squeaky cheese curds and a savory meat-based gravy, is an easy-to-love twist on fries and ketchup.

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3. BeaverTails

Photo credit: fw42

BeaverTails is a Canadian-based sweet treat chain that serves stretched, fried dough pastries resembling the shape of a beaver's tail. BeaverTails can be topped with anything from carmel to oreos, sugar, and a variety of other candies and sweet options. The BeaverTails chain was founded in 1978 in Killaloe, Ontario, but the stores or "cabins" can now be found across the country.

4. Montreal Smoked Meat

Photo credit: Calgary Reviews

No trip to Canada is complete without tasting Montreal smoked meat. The meat's closest comparable cousin is pastrami, but you'll find that it's even more flavorful than the New York favorite. The meat is all brisket that is marinated, spiced, and smoked perfectly to create a stringy, soft, and less-fatty texture than the American kind. It's best to taste this smoky, flavorful meat at one of Montreal's famous delis, like Schwartz's or Reuben's, but you'll find it in other parts of the country as well.

5. Nanaimo Bars

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Every meal should finish with dessert, and that's when it's time to choose a Nanaimo bar. This common Canadian dessert features layers of crushed cookies, vanilla custard, and melted chocolate cut into decadent squares. The recipe is said to date back to 1952, but you'll notice that many restaurants apply their own flair to the traditional favorite.

6. Montreal-Style Bagels

Photo credit: Heidi De Vries

If you're traveling with New Yorkers, Montreal-style bagels may be a difficult sell. However, few who taste these sweeter, denser, and slightly smaller rounds argue that they're not delicious. Montreal-style bagels are carefully hand-prepared, poached, and cooked in wood-burning ovens. The recipe is coveted and the standards are strict, so you know you're getting a top-quality breakfast (or anytime) treat every time.

7. Bannocks

Photo credit: Karen Neoh

A bannock is a variety of round, flat, griddled bread that takes on countless forms. It can be sprinkled with sugar and sweet treats similar to a BeaverTail, sliced and used as sandwich bread, or tossed in a basket and served alongside extravagant entrees. Traditionally, bannock is an extremely simple bread consisting of flour, water, sugar, salt, and baking powder, but be prepared to try it in its many new, more innovative forms.

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8. Tourtiere

The French Canadian dish tourtiere is said to date as far back as the 1600s. The traditional holiday meat pie flavored with onion, herbs, and spices is most commonly enjoyed on Christmas and other major holidays, but it's not difficult to find at Quebecois supermarkets year-round. Newer takes on the ancient dish include fish or veal (instead of pork) as well as a variety of vegetable fillings.

9. The Bloody Caesar

Photo credit: elsie_hui

You can't eat all of these hearty Canadian treats without a refreshing cocktail on the side. Canada is the home of the Bloody Caesar, or simply Caesar, Clamato-based cocktail. It tastes similar to a Bloody Mary, but Mott's Clamato juice is used in place of the European version's tomato juice. Vodka, Worcestershire sauce, and a salted rim are the other key ingredients. The cocktail has been a Canadian brunch necessity since it was created by the Calgary Inn's Walter Chell in 1969.

10. Butter Tarts

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Photo credit: Nick Harris1

The name alone will make your mouth water. Butter tarts are rich, sugary treats that are flaky on the outside and oozing buttery sweetness on the inside. Raisins or nuts are also often added to the recipe, and numerous restaurants and bakeries have created their own twists on the traditional butter, sugar, and egg filling. Try them at just about any bakery in the country or venture to Kenilworth, Ontario, to stop by the Butter Tart Trail's 18 bakeries that specialize in the sweet treat.

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Mark Blinch / Reuters Evacuees from the Fort McMurray wildfires use the sleeping room at the

As I write this Fort McMurray, Alberta is burning. My twitter and Facebook feeds are full of images of terror and heartbreak, as a wildfire tears through the community and tens of thousands of people (currently estimated at 80,000) are displaced. It breaks my heart and it has me (along with many of you) wondering, how can I help?

The reality is that our compassion and zeal to lend a hand can often cause more harm than good. I love how our communities rally and step up to provide in a time of need, please take a moment to consider how you can best direct your efforts.

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I have been fortunate to be able to assist on the ground with disaster relief in communities across Alberta including the Slave Lake fire in 2011 and the Calgary floods in 2013, and I've learned that cash donations, even small ones, are by far the most effective way to help those recovering from a disaster.

The Real Need

Right now the true needs are unknown. We look at the images coming through the media and our minds tell us, these people have lost everything. Unfortunately, we won't know the true status for a few weeks to come, and the areas of need are often much different then we perceive. Our compassion tells us we need to help these people get back on their feet, replace the things they've lost. So we start collecting food, clothing and household items for them.

We don't realize that it could be two years before they have a place to put them. We don't realize that someone will have to sort, warehouse and distribute what we collect. We don't realize that for heath and safety reasons a lot of what we collect cannot be distributed. This often leads to our own heartbreak when our hard work is turned away. In these first few weeks emergency shelters are equipped to provide the necessities of life: food, clothing, and shelter. Regardless of whether you are staying in a shelter or not, you can go there to gain access to these basic services.

An example of unforeseen need is that during a wildfire, electricity to the community is lost. This means that even if a home was not affected by the fire, every single fridge and freezer will need to be replaced. We are talking tens of thousands of appliances. This is not something that can be donated, shipped, sorted and tested. It takes extreme buying power, manufacture negotiations and logistical coordination at a global scale. This is why organizations like the Red Cross, in cooperation with government, are powerful tools in times of disaster.

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No one wants to make the decision to throw away a community's good will.

Lessons From Our Past

Unfortunately, in recent years Alberta has seen more than its fair share of disasters. In 2011 a wildfire in northern Alberta forced the evacuation of Slave Lake, Alberta and dozens of smaller communities. In true Canadian fashion the support was enormous and donations started pouring in, but what happened next could surprise you.

"They tried to give the excess donations to local charities, but none would take them. They eventually gave them to a local waste collection company to hand out to local groups. But there were so few takers that the company eventually dropped them off at a landfill." National Post, August 11, 2011

During the Slave Lake fire response, many good willed organizations and trucking companies loaded up truck after truck with donated goods to be delivered to the community, only to find out there is nowhere to take them. If Calgary was overwhelmed with goods 550 km away from Slave Lake, you can imagine the impact on the community itself. No one wants to make the decision to throw away a community's good will.

Why organizations don't accept physical goods

This may have you wondering why more organizations don't accept physical goods. Here are a few reasons why:

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Warehousing and sorting donated goods is a logistical nightmare

Individuals affected often don't have anywhere to store donated items

The majority of donated items are not fit for redistribution for health and safety concerns

Costs for shipping and storing donated items often outweigh the cost of buying new

Donations rarely fill the actual need at the moment

NGOs such as the Red Cross have pre-existing agreements in place to fulfill the basic needs of food, shelter and clothing

The collective buying power of an NGO can stretch your dollar further

If you are going to donate physical items the best avenue is to donate them to an organization you usually would on an individual basis. These organizations are well networked and will help to fulfill the need where needed, but are often not equipped to receive truckloads at a time.

How You Can Help

1. Make a financial donation to an NGO involved in the relief effort

We always have a hard time with when it comes to giving financially to an organization but this is the absolute best thing you can do. The Canadian Red Cross does need assessments on every individual and endeavours to provide for their specific needs. This includes getting them back to work by providing items like work boots and specialty items such as prescription eyewear or medical aids. Their support often stretches out for years and when you donate to a financial appeal the money is earmarked for that and only that.

The Canadian Red Cross has setup a financial appeal for the Alberta Fires and you can donate here

The Salvation Army also has an appeal here.

2. Help others on an individual basis

If you see a direct ask or need from a family or individual and you have the means to provide it, please do so. Just be cautious about spreading the word and collecting more then they need.

3. Volunteer

This can be tricky as everyone wants to help but in these times skilled and highly trained individuals are required. Keep an eye our for calls for volunteers from reputable organizations and remember that volunteers will be needed for months to come.

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4. Thank the Volunteers

I can tell you from personal experience that volunteering during a disaster is extremely taxing. You work long hours, get very little sleep and being there for people affected means you also carry their emotional burden. Volunteers may not always be willing to talk about their experiences but taking the time to thank them for their service can provide much needed energy and prevent burnout. During the Slave Lake fires comedian Tracy Morgan invited volunteers to attend his show free of charge and it gave me the mental break I needed to push through another week.

Thank you for your support!

Your compassion and desire to help shows the best of humanity. No matter how you choose to give, you will make a difference in someones life, you will make it better. Thank you for choosing to be amazing.

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mindscanner via Getty Images Word Cloud with Business Ethics related tags

With all due respect to Senator Mike Duffy, headline writers got it wrong when they pronounced him vindicated by the recent court ruling that acquitted the former political journalist on 31 criminal charges for fraud, breach of trust and bribery related to his expenses. While Duffy was found not guilty of legal wrongdoing, he still clearly failed Canadians by allowing others to convince him that it was okay to creatively milk the tax-funded Senate system.

My point here is not to argue that Duffy is a bad guy. In fact, the purpose of this blog is to highlight the fact that many good people -- too many -- fall into the trap of simply accepting that it is appropriate to use technicalities and loopholes to break the principles behind rules when they think they can get away with it or if someone else says they can get away with it.

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According to Andrew Fastow, this is a problem approaching epidemic proportions. He sees principle breaking everywhere -- in business deals, political fundraising, tax avoidance, etc. And as the former chief financial officer of Enron, he knows what he is talking about.

In 1999, a 37-year-old Fastow received a CFO Magazine award for capital structure work at Enron. Back then, people inside and outside of the infamous Houston-based company, including stock analysts and credit-rating experts, were falling over themselves to say good things about Enron's spectacular transformation from domestic pipeline business to fully integrated global energy company.

At the time, Fastow's unique financing techniques were being called ground breaking. And he was extremely proud to have helped Enron increase its market capitalization from about US$3.5 billion in 1990 to around US$35 billion in 1999 without issuing a whole lot of equity. "We've increased shareholder value, grown the balance sheet, maintained a stable outlook from the rating agencies, and achieved a low cost of capital," he told CFO Magazine.

Simply put, for a long time, Fastow felt like a creative corporate hero, not a criminal. That changed in 2002, when he was indicted on multiple counts of fraud, money laundering and conspiracy.

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Fastow, of course, went to jail for bending accounting rules to the point where a court of law saw his actions as criminal -- something the married father-of-two did not imagine possible. As he recently told me when I interviewed him for Ivey Business Journal: "The fact that I did not see what I was doing as fraud, and the fact that I was not thinking that what I was doing could hurt people, doesn't mitigate what I did. It indicts me further for lacking the character required to identify those things."

When Fastow studied business, corporate governance as we see it today was not big on the agenda. As he recalls, the word "stakeholder" wasn't even used. "When I was in business school," Fastow says, "there was only one word -- shareholder. And I thought what I was doing was good for shareholders and employees, so I thought I was doing my fiduciary duty."

As IBJ notes, Fastow was a good kid from a good home, who received a good education from good schools, and still inadvertently ended up a willing participant in one of the largest corporate frauds in U.S. history. As a result, the former all-star executive's story (read it here) is a highly educational cautionary tale, one that Fastow is actively spreading around the world, hoping to teach future business leaders the lessons he learned the hard way.

As Executive Director of the Ian O. Ihnatowycz Institute for Leadership, I recently helped organize, with the support of my academic colleagues, a presentation by Fastow for students at Western University's Ivey Business School, where I teach. The goal was to raise awareness of the fact that leaders often operate in grey areas loaded with ethical traps.

Business education has come a long way since Fastow got his MBA. And leadership character is big on the agenda at Ivey. Nevertheless, business students are smart and ambitious individuals who may eventually be tempted to cross the line, compromise principles and make ethically challenged decisions under intense pressure to perform from bosses, peers and stakeholders/shareholders.

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So it is imperative that they develop an awareness of the need to internalize a core set of principles by which to live and lead and develop the courage required to ask hard questions and challenge coworkers. And hearing Fastow's story helps students sustain this awareness when they enter the marketplace.

Before hearing Fastow's tale, Ivey HBA student Yohann Cooper told me that he never really understood just how hard it can be "to draw a line between what is wrong and what is necessary to compete." Like other students, he could imagine having graduated and using Enron-like loopholes to his advantage without questioning the justifications. Now he won't. In fact, Cooper says he is now more intent than ever before on studying the micro and macro implications of the actions taken by governments and companies every day. "My long term career goal is to work on improving the rules and making a fairer system," he says.

And that's why -- whether you can forgive Fastow or not -- we should all thank the former CFO of Enron. Simply put, he sends future leaders a message that they are not getting from politicians involved in the Duffy affair.

AUTHOR BIO: Gerard Seijts is a Professor of Organizational Behaviour, holds the Ian O. Ihnatowycz Chair in Leadership, and is Executive Director of the Ian O. Ihnatowycz Institute for Leadership at Ivey Business School at Western University in London, Ontario. He can be reached at gseijts@ivey.uwo.ca

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The Islamic Republic of Iran has mounted a full court press to persuade the global financial community to overlook its long rap sheet of financial crimes. In recent weeks, two of the Islamic Republic's most savvy diplomats were on the offensive to persuade the Obama administration to green light Iran's access to U.S. dollar transactions.

Last month, Secretary John Kerry and Foreign Minister Javad Zarif met in New York to discuss ways to ensure the Iranians "get the benefits that they are supposed to get," as Secretary Kerry put it. He emphasized that Washington does "not stand in the way of foreign banks engaging with Iranian banks and companies." These global banks hit with billions of dollars in U.S. fines for their role in processing illicit financial transactions have been hesitant to return to Iranian markets.

Meanwhile, Central Bank Governor Valiollah Seif traveled to Washington to lobby for Iran's reentry into the global economy. Seif publicly criticized the U.S. for "not honor[ing its] obligations" and explicitly called for the U.S. to change its laws to allow Iran to access the U.S. financial system. He touted Iran's new anti-money laundering laws and dismissed concerns about Iran's support for terrorism and provocative ballistic missile launches as artificial "Iran-phobia."

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Seif and Zarif deliberately sidestepped Iran's record of illicit financial activities and the central role of the Central Bank of Iran (CBI) in these efforts. Between 2006 and 2011, as the U.S. sanctioned Iranian banks, the CBI facilitated transactions for designated banks involved in proliferation and terror financing and, according to Treasury, helped them evade sanctions. As a result, Treasury took the unprecedented step in November 2011 of designating Iran and its entire financial sector - including its central bank - a "jurisdiction of primary money laundering concern."

The following year, Congress statutorily designated the CBI for its support of nuclear and missile proliferation, terrorism, and money laundering, and banned all transactions with it beyond limited crude oil sales and humanitarian trade. In its most recent statement, in February, the Financial Action Task Force warned that Iran's "failure to address the risk of terrorist financing" poses a "serious threat ... to the integrity of the international financial system."

Meanwhile, the CBI continues to deny its role as Iran's central bank for terror finance. The bank had appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the seizure of nearly $2 billion of its assets to settle outstanding judgments won by victims of Iranian-backed terrorism. When the Supreme Court issued its ruling last month affirming the lower court's decision to award the funds to these victims, Iran denounced it as a theft of Iranian property. Tehran still owes other terrorism victims another $40 billion in outstanding judgments.

Seif himself is no stranger to illicit finance, having served in leadership positions in Bank Mellat, Bank Saderat, Bank Sepah, Bank Melli, and Future Bank, all of which Treasury later sanctioned for proliferation or terror financing after his tenure ended. He was CEO of Bank Karafarin when Treasury listed it in July 2012 as a banned Iranian financial institution. (The bank was delisted as part of the nuclear deal.) A year later, and four months after Seif assumed the top position at the CBI, Karafarin was accused, in a Turkish prosecutor's report, of financial crimes on behalf of the Turkish-Iranian businessman Reza Zarrab, charged in a New York federal court last month with sanctions evasion for conducting hundreds of millions of dollars in transactions for the Iranian government.

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Despite this record, Seif is demanding Iran receive more sanctions relief than what it was promised under last summer's nuclear deal. Under that agreement, President Obama waived statutory sanctions on the CBI to permit foreign financial institutions to transact with it under specific conditions.

But Iran wants more. Members of Congress from both parties have increasingly voiced concerns that the administration is exploring workarounds to allow Iran to "dollarize" transactions without directly accessing the U.S. financial system. These workarounds include allowing foreign financial institutions to enable Iranian dollarized transactions using offshore clearing, intra-bank book transfers and conversions, or similar dollar-enabled mechanisms.

These dollarized transactions would require a unilateral concession from Washington that Tehran forgot to negotiate explicitly in the nuclear deal. Given its post-deal record of missile activities, hostage taking, terrorism, regional aggression, and illegal arms deals, as well as a financial sector that remains rotten to the core, Tehran is hardly in a position to complain that the "spirit" of the deal now requires more American generosity.

Instead of bending to Iranian demands, Washington and its partners should be pushing Tehran to end the many illicit activities that cast doubt on whether Iran's entire financial sector, including the CBI, can ever clean up its act.

Mark Dubowitz is executive director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, where he focuses on Iran and directs its Center on Sanctions and Illicit Finance. Follow him on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

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Annie Fixler is a policy analyst at FDD's Center on Sanctions and Illicit Finance. Find her on Twitter: @afixler
In this photo taken on Friday April 8, 2016, a sign warns people not to enter the town of Ozersk, Chelyabinsk region, Russia, which houses the Mayak nuclear facility. Mayak is a nuclear complex that has been responsible for at least two of the country's biggest radioactive accidents. (Photo: AP Photo/Katherine Jacobsen)

For years now, we have been warned by our governments, the international media and the terrorists themselves about the threat of a nuclear attack that would destroy our civilization as we know it. As an Iranian-born American, the fear of a nuclear attack by a rogue state or a terrorist is more than a story in the media for me.

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So I decided to go to Russia, a country with approximately 8,000 nuclear warheads, which has a larger nuclear arsenal than the rest of the world combined. My plan was to discover how hard it would be for a non-state individual, a would-be terrorist, to gain access to enough nuclear material and technology to pose a real threat.

In Moscow, I learned about Russian nuclear closed cities, collectively known as Z.A.T.O., built after the Second World War to create the Soviet Union's nuclear-weapon program.

To keep their locations secret from the enemy, the closed cities were vanished from the maps for decades to come and their names were often changed.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, most of the secret cities were shut down. Among those still in existence is City 40.

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Since its founding, the city has been surrounded with double barbed-wire fences and monitored by armed guards.

Today known as Ozersk, City 40 is considered the founding place of the Soviet Union's nuclear weapons program, where the first Soviet plutonium-based bomb, known as "First Lightning," was made.

Built in 1947 around the Mayak nuclear factory, City 40 has a population of approximately 100,000 today. It is located in the industrial region of Chelyabinsk in southern Urals. In the past, the city was also known as Chelyabinsk 40 and Chelyabinsk 65. The digits are the last digits of the postal code, and the name is that of the nearest city of Chelyabinsk.

Since its founding, the city has been surrounded with double barbed-wire fences and monitored by armed guards.

From 1947 to 1954 the residents were forbidden to leave or have contact with the outside, including with their family and friends. Since 1954 to present day their movements to and from the city are tightly controlled. Foreigners and non-resident Russians are prohibited from entering the city without special permission. And under Russian law, filming in the area is strictly forbidden. With the help of several locals, the crew and several cameras were smuggled inside the forbidden city.

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In this photo taken on Thursday, April 7, 2016, an old man fishes in a lake that connects to the nearby Techa River, near the village of Muslyumovo, Chelyabinsk region, Russia, which is polluted with radioactive waste from Mayak nuclear plant. (Photo: AP Photo/Katherine Jacobsen)

We learned that a majority of the residents live near and work for Mayak. We were told that the Mayak Nuclear Complex is where almost all of fissile material in Russia is stored today. Meanwhile, the factory continues to produce components for nuclear weapons and the Russian military.

Meanwhile for over half a century, Mayak has been dumping nuclear waste into the environment. Initially, it was discharging high-level radioactive waste into a nearby river, which was taking waste to the River Ob, flowing northward to the Arctic Ocean. But soon, Mayak's dumping of nuclear waste expanded to other lakes and rivers in the region. As a result, Ozersk and its surrounding areas have become some of the most contaminated places in the world, and referred to by many as the "graveyards" of the earth.

Inside, we found a city similar to a prison house, and its residents living in exile. We learnt about personal tragedies, lethal landscapes and massive environmental catastrophes its citizens were born to bear.

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Despite grave personal risks, several brave citizens decided to break their silence and talk about their invisible city. They told us about their parents and grandparents who were relocated there by the order of the Soviet Party to build the atomic bomb. They were told that they were the "nuclear shield" and "saviors of the world," and that everyone on the outside was an enemy. This ideology is what keeps them running to this day.

Behind the barbed wire fences, we witnessed paradoxes between the natural and the extraordinary; the everyday and the tragic; the individual and the universal; life and death. Workers who did not want to starve to death earning poisoned bread knowing that it would kill them.

A several polar contrasts formed among the serenity of the area's beautiful nature. The perfume of flowers and the heavy smell of death. Water and soil, symbols for life, heavily contaminated, now cause death. The air was fresh, but full of disease. Mother Nature turned into a massive graveyard -- an ominous comment on the government's indifference turning its back to nature, truth and action. As a result people's activities were their answers for ways of living under the sentence of death.

We realized that beside lives, there were values that were being annihilated, and that townspeople were divided into two groups 1) those who had succumbed 2) those who were running after hope. At the same time, everyone seemed to be doubly imprisoned: within City 40 and within themselves; and this double-barred atmosphere of each man was new and menacing for us looking in from the outside.

What had started as an investigation into the possibility of a nuclear threat by a non-state individual or terrorist group evolved into a film about the tragic human and environmental cost of the nuclear power.

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It also became a political narrative about the formation of the personal and collective identity of a group within manufactured spaces living in fear and ruled by a totalitarian regime.

In the final analysis, City 40 is a microcosm of Russia today and an environmental catastrophe in the making.

CITY 40 had its world premiere at the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Film Festival in Toronto.

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Chris Wattie / Reuters Local children stand on the shore as the Coast Guard ship Des Groseilliers sits in the waters near the Arctic community of Pond Inlet, Nunavut August 23, 2014. Picture taken August 23, 2014. REUTERS/Chris Wattie (CANADA - Tags: MILITARY POLITICS)

As the weather warms up and the flowers start to bloom, most Canadians are starting to think about planting crops, firing up the barbecue and planning summer vacations. Nothing could be further from our collective minds than the far North, which we almost invariably picture as a beautiful and forbidding snow- and ice-covered world.

In reality, spring has also sprung in northern Canada. North of the Arctic Circle, although residents are still venturing out to gauge the number of weeks before the snow is completely gone, by late June it will be a balmy five-to-ten degrees, with 24-hour daylight.

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Despite the change in weather, northerners continue to face the same problems that they experience during the winter months -- including extraordinarily high food prices. According to the most recent federal government data, it costs almost $450 a week for a family of four to eat well in isolated northern communities. This is more than double the cost of food in southern Canada.

Canada's approach to addressing northern food security is disjointed, disorganized and incomplete.

One in Five Northerners Don't Get Enough Food

In the territories, nearly one in five households has trouble getting enough food to eat. In Nunavut, this figure rises to half of all households -- a truly staggering number. This situation is the result of many factors, including the high cost of food and very high rates of poverty, particularly within indigenous communities. The effects of the residential school trauma, decreasing access to traditional foods, and the high cost of hunting add complexity to the problem.

Across the territories and northern provincial regions, there are a number of government initiatives meant to address these issues. While there are a few standout programs -- Manitoba's Northern Healthy Foods Initiative and the James Bay Cree Hunters and Trappers Income Security Program come to mind -- Canada's approach to addressing northern food security is disjointed, disorganized and incomplete.

The Federal Government Can Do More

The leading federal response to the issue -- Nutrition North Canada -- is a shipping subsidy for retailers that, while useful, has not succeeded in significantly decreasing the price of food. While the federal government is planning to expand this program into more communities, this improvement is only a partial solution.

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If we are going to truly address food access in the north, we need to put relevant, well-resourced programs in place.

Food Banks Canada has proposed a number of changes to Nutrition North Canada, as well as other policy changes that we believe will increase northerners' access to healthy, nutritious food. These include increased support for hunting and fishing, and amplified attention to building traditional knowledge among indigenous youth.

Low Income is the Key Driver of Northern Hunger

Perhaps most importantly, while food in the north costs more than twice what it does in the south, jobless benefits are uniformly low across Canada. In northern communities without road access, it costs a family of four about $23,000 to eat well for a year. In a region where jobs can be very hard to come by, that same family would receive between $21,000 and $33,000 through social assistance -- leaving very little left over for all other expenses.

If we are going to truly address food access in the north, we need to put relevant, well-resourced programs in place. We also need to address deep and widespread northern poverty, which is why the current push for a regionally-variable basic income is so important. Adequate incomes are at the root of food security, and we will never achieve one without the other.

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Written by Elisa Krovblit

Where do you put an entire city when a wildfire displaces 88,000+ residents? Alberta has seen more than its fair share of disaster in the past few years, but this is a tragedy of epic proportions and the whole country is looking on, helplessly, trying to figure out what they can do to for the people of Fort McMurray. In fact, according to the Red Cross, "People have been forced to leave their homes in more than 12 northern communities, including Fort McMurray."

Tuesday May 3rd started out as an ordinary day. There were reports of a wildfire that had been detected on May 1st. That, in itself, isn't entirely unusual -- but the fire quickly spread out of control, and by early afternoon the evacuations has begun. By 6.30 p.m. the entire city was ordered to leave. Highway 63 was jammed, traffic flowed out steadily, past walls of fire and through the haze of smoke.

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Dry conditions caused the fire to rage out of control very quickly. With over 100 firefighters, 16 air tankers, 12 helicopters and more to come from across the country, they're still working hard to contain it. With an expected 10,000 hectares to be lost, nobody in the area is escaping without some loss.

Many watched as their homes became engulfed, as their worlds were ignited and all their worldly possessions set aflame.

It was nothing short of heartbreaking when the CBC reporter asked evacuee Faye Drew what she'd left behind and Drew responded "Everything."

But for now, the most pressing issue is, where do you put close to 90,000 displaced residents? The camps used to house oil workers are being filled up with evacuees, and many have also opted to travel to stay with family in other parts of the province, and across the country.

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When the fire comes under control and the smoke clears away, some people may have a home to return to, but for a vast number, there won't be anything to go back to. Many watched as their homes became engulfed, as their worlds were ignited and all their worldly possessions set aflame. They made their way out knowing there was no return.

It's been astounding to see Albertans come together. It's a community that shows care, strength of character, community pride. People are opening their homes, donating time, donating money, even donating apartments. Landlords and property management companies in several surrounding communities including Edmonton and Calgary are donating vacant apartments to those in need of rehoming, rent free.

The Red Cross is also an exceptional resource during this period of urgency. "Families and individuals who have been evacuated can call with inquiries or to register. The toll-free number is: 1-888-350-6070. Registering helps reconnect family members and enables response agencies to mobilize resources." Beyond this, they're also coordinating donations and facilitating distribution of them.

The Red Cross has offered these instructions: "Canadians wishing to help are encouraged to make a financial donation to the Alberta Fires Appeal online here, by calling 1-800-418-1111 or by contacting their local Canadian Red Cross office. Donations could provide relief for those affected in the form of emergency food, clothing, shelter, personal services and other necessities that assist with recovery and resiliency."

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The five things you need to know on Friday May 6, 2016

1) COUP DAY TAT

In England at least, Labour has done well enough for Jeremy Corbyns allies to argue that talk of a coup is now so much tat. Plotter chatter is far from over, but it seems that some of the critics overreached themselves in predicting the loss of key councils.

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The expectation management game is always a dangerous game and the retention of Southampton, Crawley, Exeter, Hastings, Norwich helped Team Corbyn fend off claims that their man was toxic in the South. Redditch and Harlow were good results too. In fact, some Jezza supporters say he may have benefitted from attracting back disillusioned left voters, Lib Dems and certainly Greens in some southern seats. He certainly looked relaxed as he left home this morning (that's him above, looking very Zen).

As expected, Tom Watson has been out on the breakfast media round, doing what deputy leaders do. Watson kept to the line that it was too soon to expect Corbyn to make dramatic progress so soon after the huge 2015 defeat and that what mattered most was Labour was moving in the right direction. On the key issue of JCs future, our members lead the Labour party now, he told the Today programme. After eight months it would be very unfair and improper to hang this set of election results on Jeremy Corbyns peg alone. That word alone caught my ear though.

And the critics arent giving up. One member of the Shadow Shadow Cabinet tells me: He has until this time next year to prove he wont hand 2020 to the Tories on a plate, which currently seems the case from these results.

The threat posed by UKIP to Labour is still evident too, and its hard to see what answer the Corbynistas have. Andy Burnham's 10pm announcement that he's considering quitting as Shadow Home Secretary to run for Mayor of Manchester is not exactly a vote of confidence in Labour's chances for 2020.

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Losing control of Dudley wasnt great news, neither was the loss of seats in that general election bellweather of Nuneaton (the 11% swing to the Tories was even worse than 2015). With a Tory government beset by splits over Europe, U-turns on everything from tax credits to disability cuts to refugees, some Labour MPs say its just not good enough to be the first Opposition leader in decades not to make council seat gains. One Labour source tells me the message on the low turnout doorsteps across the north was Im not voting for HIM. Expect more Labour councillors today to express unease with the leadership.

Emma Reynolds, Neil Coyle (who had a spat with Corbyn in the voting lobby only last week) and Jo Cox were among the most critical. Cox expressed the view of many in the PLP that Corbyn is now on probation: the clock is ticking. Which if you think about it is another way of reading Watsons call for patience. But note that Watson was quick to hit back at Cox on the BBC with this: Ill say to her, lookshe nominated Jeremy to be leader, you know. She must have patience with the candidate she supported now. Cox and Coyle both nominated JC.

It may well be that although Labour is good at digging in and defending what its got in some places, it is still failing to show any effective ground offensive against the Tories. And dont forget it needs gains, and lots of them, to have a hope in 2020. The coup day isn't today, or Monday. It may not even now be in July. But a challenge will "definitely" happen at some point, one MP tells me.

2) DYA KEN ME NOW?

In Scotland, however, the picture for Labour is nothing short of disastrous. SkyNews are projecting the Tories are due to come second following a superb performance by Ruth Davidson (who won a stunning victory). Moderate Labour types say that the results prove that you just cant outflank the SNP from the Left and that Trident and anti-austerity messages just didnt work. Despite that, the left may now seize the moment to knife Kezia Dugdale, with Neil Findlay tipped as a replacement.

In Wales, Labour looks like holding onto power. But the party is certainly not giving London any credit. First Minister Carwyn Jones - who had kept Corbyn away last week - was asked about the Livingstone row: Its not helped. Im not going to pretend otherwise. The lesson is that its really important for politicians in London not to say things that are not helpful to colleagues in the UK. Assembly minister Leighton Andrews, who lost his seat, said UK issues were a factor.

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The Welsh soft left are certainly as worried about Corbyn as the moderate wing of the party. Not for nothing did Peter Hain pop up overnight, saying his leader hasnt shown anything like an ability to win the centre ground votes we need to win an election. Earlier in a Prospect magazine interview, Neil Kinnock warned that Corbyn and his supporters are "an impediment to getting the kind of support that we need".

And the Ken effect was on display in other areas. In Bury Souths Sedgley ward, Labour lost for the first time ever after a 22% swing - in a ward with a substantial Jewish population. In the GLAs Barnet and Camden seat, with Britains biggest Jewish community, Andrew Dismore is waiting nervously to find out if the Tories have taken the seat. No wonder John McDonnell (reviving his GLC-era differences with Ken) said last night there's no doubt the Livingstone row had set us back.

3) BOFF BIFFS ZAC

The big result many are waiting for of course is tonights London mayoral contest. That talk of Sadiq Khan refusing to have Corbyn at his side for any victory celebration tonight - or even tomorrow - has caused real consternation among the leaders allies (Corbyn, after all, is a London MP).

But last night there was another key development. And it was a Tory development. Senior London Tory Andrew Boff took to Newsnight to say that the partys decision to smear Khan and religious Muslims as extremists had done real damage to the Conservatives in London. I dont think this sounds like authentic Zac Goldsmith, he said.

Some muttered that Boff was bitter because he was not put as high on the Assembly list as hed have liked. But he echoed something Ive been saying for a while: that Khans more vulnerable flank is on his flip-flopping on policy and the thinness of some of his programme.

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We chose to use this particular policy meme as the centre of the campaign, it was ridiculous, Boff said. Im not alone. We dont shout about it during the campaign. I did bring it up during the campaign to Zacs team. I thought this was a mistake for the future integration of London.  And several London Tories sent me exactly that message last night too. But either Zac really did endorse the tactics or he failed to stand up for himself to No10 and CCHQ: neither is a good look.

Lets see just what impact the negative tactics have had. There are reports across London of low turnout, though its unclear if that will help the Tories as much as they hope. The results are due after 9pm but with the cock-up in Barnet it could be later.

BECAUSE YOUVE READ THIS FAR

Watch an alligator try to ring a doorbell.

4) TALKING TURKEY

The Telegraph has a report that Jeremy Corbyn has been forced to abandon plans to make a speech in Istanbul later this month, when he was expected to call for Turks to be allowed to join the EU.

Theres one particularly angry Labour insider, who describes the original Corbyn plan as "malicious, naive and incendiary. Why? Because his speech would have come on the same day the Labour Remain campaign is due to begin a week of campaigning on border security and immigration ahead of the EU referendum in June.

Anti-Corbyn MPs have been warning for a while that Brexit could trigger their own coup attempt IF there had been any hint their leader had undermined support for the In campaign. Pro-Corbyn supporters think this is just another excuse to have a go at him and that in fact restating Labours official policy of support for Turkish EU membership is being twisted. Then again, its still official Government policy too, apart from the fact that the PM this week said it should take decades.

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5) PHIL YER BOOTS

Sir Philip Green (and boy does he hate it if you dont use the Sir) has finally broken his silence over Parliamentary criticism of his role in the BHS affair. Hes called for Frank Field to step down as chairman of the Work and Pensions Select Committee for suggesting he be stripped of his knighthood.

The billionaire also accused MPs on both the BIS Select and DWP Select of leaping to conclusions and said there has been "much inaccurate and misleading information" about his dealings with the retail chains collapse and its pension fund.

Field had told the FT he would recommend stripping Green of his knighthood if the retail tycoon did not put up funds to pay off the 571m pension fund deficit. Field said: I hope that I reflect the anger of BHS pensioners. Green, in more tit for tat, said: I think Mr Field needs to stand down from the inquiry immediately as he is clearly prejudiced.

Green said this was an outrageous outburst but Field (one of the few to stand up to Gordon Brown) is no shrinking violet. Still, with the hearings starting on Monday, many will be getting their popcorn ready.

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One of my favourite truisms about rail travel is that the only way to guarantee you don't miss your train is to just miss the one directly before the one you actually wanted to catch.

I like trains and certainly, when possible, prefer them to planes. In fact my parents, who travelled extensively in Europe, never flew, so I well remember the excitement of long rail journeys, and looked forward to Tom Chesshyre's account of 49 "unusual train journeys" around the world.

"Trains are wonderful" says one of his fellow Amtrak passengers in the USA. "On a train, people can talk: they're going somewhere but they're not going anywhere. They have the time."

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Indeed, as Chesshyre himself observes: "Trains seem to rattle out stories, as though the motion of the track acts to shake up thoughts and loosen tongues."

His tongue was certainly loosened up when he missed one train after an announcement that it was running late, and protested to an Amtrak official: "Where I come from, if a train is delayed, it does not usually become un-delayed."

Although his witty and entertaining book is dedicated "to all train lovers" I was relieved to find that Chesshyre is not a train spotter (aka "a self-employed train historian") as such. More of a "casual train lover".

And being a train spotter, we learn - especially in this digital age - is not just about collecting train numbers. On a rail journey between Pristina and Peja in Kosovo, a fellow traveller tells him: "I just take photographs. I must have taken hundreds of thousands." After checking his camera, he announces: "In the past two days I've taken one thousand three hundred and eighty. I'm click-happy. I'll make no bones about it."

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In Turkey, Chesshyre meets another man who can't resist taking endless photos of trains. After yelling out "A train! A train!" he rushes off with his camera. "The funny thing is" says the man, "I have thousands of pictures but I never look at them It's like a woman with handbags".

Crossing the border into Iran on the country's first chartered tourist train, things start to get really interesting for the multi-national passengers. "In order to avoid mass arrest on arrival, all alcohol must be consumed before reaching the border" writes Chesshyre. "In the next five hours, we are to drink the bar dry or else dispose of bottles." Fittingly, on a train to Macedonia, another train enthusiast seems to Chesshyre to be "like a master sommelier assessing a rare wine. He seems to savour the whole experience, as though assessing the very essence of the train."

He gets around, does our Tom. In China (on a train, of course) he learns there's a saying that "a socialist train coming with a delay is better than a capitalist one that comes on time".

In India, as the Shatabdi Express sets out from Delhi to Agra, the intensity of human activity reaches near fever pitch. "Everywhere there are people" writes Chesshyre, "hanging out washing, scolding children, striding towards corner shops, gossiping, leaning against trees, scooping food from bowls, lying flat out, fastening bags, washing clothes, placing towels on heads (for protection against the sun), squatting cross-legged in doorways, gesticulating, pontificating, arguing, smiling, waving, gazing, letting time slip by."

On the Trans-Siberian Railway, Chesshyre resolves to keep himself occupied by reading the first page of War and Peace. This obviously tires him because he almost immediately pulls out the fold-down bed, thinking: "Only 1,357pages to go. My aim is to finish the novel of all novels by Beijing."

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It must have been hard to sleep, because "this is the noisiest train yet".

Says Chesshyre: "Brakes, squeal, wheels judder, horns wail - almost constantly. Coat hangers on hooks jiggle against the cabin wall."

Chesshyre is always good in his descriptive passages, and his use of the present tense helps. On an Australian train, he writes: "A water tower advertises Kalgoorlie Beer. Old electricity and telegraph poles stand with twisted wooden fittings and wires hanging down. Rickety barbed-wire fences divide fields. A farmer with his head down, ignoring the train, inspects a crop. Jet-black crows peck in ditches. Light fades in a fusion of peach and purple as darkness descends, clouds parking quietly for the night above the tiny town of Cerrabin. Silos stand in silhouette. Long shadows stretch beyond the train, catching the shape of the wheels. Billabongs reflect the stillness of the sky. This is what trains in Australia provide: a glimpse of life on the ground that you just don't get on planes."

Sadly Chesshyre never does quite finish War and Peace.
Javier Camara and Ricardo Darin give an acting masterclass in 'Truman,' Cesc Gay's superb bitter sweet comedy - Terrence Malick's almost Messianic intro to 'Knight of Cups' leads into a glance at the banality of modern life - Make of it what you will, 'Evolution,' Lucile Hadzihalilovic enigmatic and assured follow up to 'Innocence' is a film of its own - 'Arabian Nights:The Enchanted One' is Volume 3 of Miguel Gomes' original, powerful and personal response to political reality.

Director: Cesc Gay. Ricardo Darin, Javier Camara. Drama, Comedy. Spanish with English subtitles. Spain 2015 110 mins. (15) ****

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Ricardo Darin and Javier Camara take Cesc Gay and Tomas Aragay's superb screenplay and offer an acting masterclass in 'Truman,' a low key, character driven buddy movie laced with black humour and emotion. It's a gem, one of those movies that distributors slot into limited release. Catch it if you can.

Tomas (Javier Camara), a teacher in Canada returns to Madrid to spend 4 days with his old friend Julian (Ricardo Darin), an actor diagnosed with terminal cancer. So much to catch up on and so little time. Long chats in bars and restaurants fill the days. Laughter, tears, regrets and unfolding intensity as two friends reflect on their lives, mortality and their future. It's full of wonderful moments. Julian apologises to his pal Luis (Eduard Fernandez) for sleeping with his wife and wrecking their marriage which ironically did Luis a favour. Veteran actor Jose Luis Gomex adds a perfect comic touch to his cameo role as a theatre producer tasked with sacking Julian, a spur of the moment trip to Amsterdam to see his son Nico (Oriol Pla) whom he thinks is unaware of his illness is beautifully played and Julian's sister Paula (Dolores Fonzi) fussy and protective and ex-wife Gloria (Elvira Minguez), still loving. And what of Truman, the sad-eyed boxer dog who's the centre of Julian's life and up for adoption ?

A wonderful screenplay, superb cast, cinematographer Andreu Rebas catches the fun of Madrid's bars and restaurants and Truman melts your heart. A bitter sweet comedy that's a joy. Don't miss it.

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Released 6th May

Director: Terrence Malick. Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett, Natalie Portman, Brian Dennehy. Drama, Romance. USA 2015 118 mins. (15) ***

A John Guilgud radio excerpt from 'The Pilgrim's Progress, the aurora borealis seen from outer space and Christian Bale wondering in the desert almost offers a Messianic intro to Terrence Malick's take on the banality of modern life. You can dig around for something profound but our lost hero's father grabs the best line - 'My son, you can't figure your life out.'

Successful Hollywood script writer Rick's (Christian Bale) not a happy man. A sense of guilt for his brother Billy's death hangs over him, his father Joseph (Brian Dennehy) carries guilt for Billy's death and a surviving brother Barry (Wes Bentley) who's just moved to LA is down on his luck. Rick's problem is women and there's a few around - Della (Imogen Potts) who tags along for the ride, Helen (Freida Pinto) with the model looks, guilt ridden Elizabeth (Natalie Portman) who's pregnant, Karen (Teresa Palmer), a stripper from Vegas, Isabel (Isabel Lucas) and ex-wife Nancy (Cate Blanchett). Nothing works, Rick's lost. The buzz has long gone from party time, the who's who of Hollywood has lost its appeal, as though it had any in the first place.

A loose script, an ever present voice over with each chapter in the story divided by Tarot cards, ever willing Hollywood faces pop up as Emmanuel Lubrezki's camera tracks the landscape with long takes and Terrence Malick's lost hero reminisces on the women he's known. Who wouldn't be p..... off in a soulless concrete geometrical LA build, showy mansions with a tasteless input, perma tans, botox ever ready and in demand shrinks on call. Get the hell out. Ask your dad, Rick. He's got the answer.

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Interesting but quite some way from 'The Thin Red Line' and 'Tree of Life.'

Released 6th May

Director: Lucile Hadzihalilovic. Max Brebant, Roxane Duran, Julie-Marie Parmentier. Drama, Horror, Mystery. French with English subtitles. France 2015 81 mins. (15) ***

'Evolution,' writer-director Lucile Hadzihalilovic's follow-up to 'Innocence' continues her exploration of growing up. Assured, enigmatic, beautifully shot by Manuel Decosse, a mixture of sci-fi, horror, the surreal and a dash of sensuality. Make of it what you will, it's a film of its own.

On a remote volcanic island there are only women and young boys. 10-year-old Nicholas (Max Brebant) likes to sketch while the other boys play and while swimming sees a dead boy with a bright red starfish on his stomach. 'The sea makes you see all kinds of things,' his mother (Julie-Marie Parmentier) assures him and offers him worm-like gruel and ink coloured medicine. Something's wrong, are the boys human, why do the women gather on the beach at night and what are they rubbing over their bodies?

Nicholas has an appointment at the hospital where boys are regularly taken for treatment and Stella (Roxane Durane), a nurse befriends him?

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A surreal, dark, dream-like fantasy.

Released 6th May

Director: Miguel Gomes. America Silva, Carloto Cotta, Jing Jing Guo. Drama. Portugese with English subtitles. Portugal, France, Germany 2915 126 mins. (PG) ****

Audacious, ambitious, imaginative, unique and radical, Miguel Gomes's 'Arabian Nights' takes the classic Arabian Nights and adapts the beautiful young Scheherazade's tale after tale to keep her murderous husband from killing her, with real life stories that reflect Portugal's politics and the hardships suffered by ordinary people during the years of economic chaos. Shot between 2013 and 2014 and filmed as three separate volumes over 6 hours,'Arabian Nights' stems from Miguel Gomes' anger at seeing the collapse of Portuguese society and concludes with Vol. 3 'The Enchanted One' - working men train birds to sing in a chaffinch singing competition and Scheherazade meets a wild genie and a daft suitor.

Original and powerful, a mixture of fact, fiction, fantasy and the surreal, 'Arabian Nights' is a unique, personal cinematic response to political reality.

Released 6th May

Recommended Blu Ray/DVDs

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Janis:Little Girl Blue

Director: Amy J. Berg. Janis Joplin, Chan Marshall. Documentary. USA 2015 107 mins. (15) ****

An engrossing tribute to Janis Joplin, a talent that possessed the stage and echoed the Woodstock generation.

Released 9th May

The Lesson

Director: Kristina Grozeva and Petar Valchanov. Margita Gosheva, Ivan Burnev, Ivanka Bratoeva, Ivan Savov, Deya Todorova, Stefan Denolyubov. Drama

Language: Bulgarian with English subtitles. Bulgaria, Greece 2014 105 mins.(15) ****

Cruel twists of fate lead to extraordinary acts of desperation, in Kristina Grozeva & Patar Valchanov's gripping neorealist debut feature.

Released 9th May
When Glenda Whelcher started saving more than $100 on her utility bill after making changes she learned from a Basic Energy Efficiency Workshop hosted by green|spaces program Empower Chattanooga, she was able to buy necessities for her family but also able to keep her gas tank full. With a full gas tank, she was able to provide rides for her friends and neighbors to important doctor appointments, to the grocery store; putting her savings to work for a good cause.



My utility bills in the winter averaged $250, so when I got my bill this past February for $67 I was not only happy to see how much I saved, but I knew that with this blessing I wanted to help others, said Ms. Whelcher.



Save it Forward, is a campaign that focuses on one of the many benefits of saving money on utility bills - the ability to pass along a kind deed.

green|spaces is challenging all residents of Chattanooga to set a goal to save money on their own utility bills by using the Empower free energy savings checklist and community services like ESCORE, which can be found at www.greenspaceschattanooga.org/about. Residents can then donate a portion of their utility savings to green|spaces to educate more families like Glenda.



The goal of green|spaces Empower program is to help residents and organizations in a community consider how energy use and affordability of utilities affect broader challenges. If utility bills are high, less money is available for other necessities, like gas for a car, officials said.



One of the ways Empower does this is through Basic Energy Workshops. Held once a month in four different locations in Empowers target neighborhoods, these workshops teach residents about low-cost and no-cost ways to save money on utility bills. "In many households, the money saved on utilities will ease tight budgets for families that currently are forced to make trade-offs between healthy food, home payments, utilities, and health care. Furthermore, every dollar saved in energy efficiency goes straight back into the neighborhood, improving economic opportunities," officials said.



green|spaces is also challenging local businesses to Save it Forward as well. Office Furniture Warehouse is the first business to partner with the Save it Forward campaign.



We want to see an unfortunate cycle broken, and for these communities to regain control of their expenses, retain disposable income, and improve the quality of life within, said OFW Owner John Jerman. Thats why OFW is helping to Save it Forward.



"Due to program sponsors, it only costs an additional $8 for Empower to provide education for one household. Businesses and individuals can help in many ways and an easy, low-cost way would be to take $8 that was potentially saved on a utility bill, and save it forward by donating. For meeting information on the Basic Energy Efficiency Workshops, see below," officials said.



Basic Energy Efficiency Workshops are held:



- First Monday of the month at Glass House Collective 6:-6:30 p.m.,



June 6, Aug. 1, Oct. 3, Nov. 7, Dec. 5



- First Tuesday of the month at Chattanooga Library South Chattanooga Branch 6-7 p.m.,



June 7, July 5, Aug. 2, Sept. 6, Oct. 4, Nov. 1, Dec. 6



- Second Thursday of the month at Chattanooga Library Downtown Branch 6-7 p.m.,



May 12, June 9, July 14, Aug. 11, Sept. 8, Oct. 13, Nov. 10, Dec. 8



- Last Saturday of the month at Sacra Coffee Shop 10-11 a.m.,



May 28, June 25, July 30, Aug. 27, Sept. 24, Oct. 29



"Studies have shown that residents in these neighborhoods use over 40% more energy than the average home in Chattanooga. Residents may be willing and eager to make changes to their homes to improve energy efficiency, but just dont know where or how to start, or where to get the money to do it. These workshops are the perfect way learn about and connect with energy efficiency and other quality life programs," officials said.



We have been excited to see Empower in action over the past year. Glenda is just one of many families who have started to save money every month on their utility bills. With Save it Forward, we look forward to helping many more, said Sam Fulbright, Empower Chattanooga program coordinator.



Officials said, to date Empower Chattanooga has:



- Assisted over 1,000 people with low cost and no cost ways to reduce utilities;



- Hosted over 40 Free Energy Savings Workshops;



- Sponsored three clean up days on Glass Street & East Lake Duck Pond;



- Partnered on six Community Fairs;



- Participated in National Night Out Safety Events;



- Assisted with creation of Avondale Block Leaders; and



- Provided Free Energy Savings kits to ANYONE regardless of income or location.



"Empower is key to our mission of progressing the way we live, work and build in Chattanooga as we work towards regional sustainability and we are proud of our progress so far, said Mr. Fulbright.



Empower is also able to schedule the basic energy workshop with other organizations including neighborhood groups, churches, and social organizations within the neighborhoods. For more information on the workshops or to schedule one for your group, contact Mr. Fulbright at 423-648-0963 or email info@empowerchattanooga.org.
Today's results show a continuing massive anti-Trident majority in the Scottish parliament. The SNP, Scottish Labour and Greens all have clear anti-nuclear policies, together with the Lib Dems who will vote against Trident replacement even though national policy hesitates around alternatives. In party terms this adds up to 98 out of 129 seats. Even taking into account a tiny handful of MSPs who may vote against party policy, this is a reaffirmation of the overwhelming anti-Trident sentiment in Scotland.

In effect, support for nuclear weapons is being reduced down to the Conservative Party, and this is a process being seen in Westminster too. At CND's recent Stop Trident rally in London, Scotland's First Minister, together with the leader of the Labour Party, Leanne Wood from Plaid Cymru and Caroline Lucas for the Greens, demonstrated the emergence of a new political consensus against Trident. In Northern Ireland too, both SDLP and Sinn Fein oppose Trident replacement.

Of course, the Labour leader's personal opposition to nuclear weapons does not yet translate into Labour Party policy. A decision on that is likely later this year but it is of huge significance that Labour is undergoing a genuine, open and rigorous Defence Review which includes party policy on nuclear weapons. Gone are the days when the government can claim that policy on the 'deterrent' as they like to call it, transcends party politics and is a no-brainer in terms of the national interest. Even within Tory ranks there are those who think that national security will be better served by spending on conventional weaponry instead of nuclear.

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Those in Labour who remain wedded to replacing Trident - often because they mistakenly believe that scrapping it would be a vote loser - need to look at the reality of public opinion, particularly amongst young people, and those who have massively boosted Labour membership over the last few months. Labour hasn't crashed and burned in these elections. The results are patchy but there are significant bright spots and there is no evidence to suggest that Jeremy Corbyn's anti-nuclear position has led to the loss of council seats. Labour needs to seize this opportunity for a twenty-first century defence policy that doesn't rely on increasingly expensive and redundant old technology.
Last month when Samaritans received an award of 3.5million from Libor, it signalled a renewed commitment to prevention of suicide among service personnel and veterans - something we whole-heartedly welcome.

The new funding will enable us to supplement existing services for armed forces and veterans. We will focus on helping servicemen, women and veterans to help each other, as well as developing digital services. As the planning for this work begins, it's the right time to look in more detail at suicide amongst UK armed forces and veterans. In this post I will examine what we already know and what additional information may help us, and the many other organisations and groups providing crucial services, reduce deaths by suicide.

Suicide in the military - what we already know

When examining suicide in the UK military, it's useful to look at the situation on the other side of the Atlantic too. Although there are many differences between the US and UK armed forces, there is little doubt that suicide has a devastating impact and requires concerted action in both countries.

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Until eight years ago, it was generally accepted that serving members of the armed forces were at lower risk of suicide than civilian populations. But in 2008, for the first time, suicide rates in serving members of the US army exceeded those of the general US population. This has been true there every year since.

In recent years the US government has shown significant commitment and investment in suicide prevention amongst the military and its veterans. As a result their military and veteran suicide data and research is world-class.

Here in the UK less detailed information about suicide amongst serving personnel is available. Although the existing evidence suggests that serving military personnel in the UK remain at lower risk of suicide than civilians, there is no routinely collected data on suicide deaths amongst veterans.

On top of that, UK research into suicide in serving personnel and veterans remains piecemeal. We urgently need to know more about how to identify those at highest risk of suicide and about the difficulties they may be facing.

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There are some important studies though and there appear to be a few emerging themes - including the importance of addressing stigma around suicide and mental health in the military, the role of alcohol abuse in suicide, and the increased risk of suicide and self-harm among young servicemen, women and veterans. All of these areas require further research.

Spotlight on suicide in serving armed forces

In March the Ministry of Defence released its annual figures for suicide in UK regular armed forces. They showed that 332 servicemen and 17 servicewomen serving in the Naval Service, Army, Royal Air Force died by suicide in the last 20 years. This equated to a suicide rate of nine suicide deaths per 100,000 personnel. In 2015 (the most recent year for which data is available) five servicemen died by suicide. All were currently serving in the British Army. No servicewomen died by suicide that year.

In the US, the sheer number of military personnel who die by suicide is shocking. Time Magazine first brought this issue to public attention in 2012 by featuring this poignant cover story:

2012 remains the worst year ever for suicide in the US military. There are many theories about why this might be.

The latest figures from the US show that 269 active service personnel along with 249 reservists and 89 members of the National Guard died by suicide in 2014. The overall suicide rate was highest in the US reserve force (at 21.9 deaths per 100,000). The suicide rate was slightly lower (at 19.9 deaths per 100,000) in all actively serving US troops combined - almost double that of suicide in serving UK military personnel. Although suicide rates in our serving military personnel seem to be lower than rates in US servicemen and women comparing across countries is notoriously difficult. More on this later.

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The US picture looks even bleaker when you consider that the Time magazine story is about serving personnel only - it not does not include suicide deaths among veterans. The most recent estimates suggest that 22 veterans die by suicide in the US every day.

More information and research urgently needed

Here in the UK, while we have information about the numbers of serving personnel who die by suicide each year, we do not yet have the same data for military veterans or reservists. The Ministry of Defence annual report on suicides includes deployed reservists, but the majority of reservists are not actively deployed at any one time. For them, and non-reserve veterans, suicide data is not routinely recorded or reported. This is something that we at Samaritans would like to see change.

One of the best research studies in this field examined suicide rates in UK veterans from 1996 - 2005. Unfortunately more recent data about suicide in this group is lacking. Without this information, we cannot know the full scale of suicide in the UK military and veterans and it makes it difficult to provide the best possible tailored support. That's why Samaritans is calling for suicide deaths for veterans and all reservists to be routinely collected and included alongside suicide deaths for personnel in active service.

Comparing suicide in the armed forces with the general population

Recent UK data suggests that the overall suicide rate in currently serving personnel remains lower than that of the general UK population. In 2014, the suicide rate stood at 9 per 100,000, with suggestion of a declining trend since the 1990s. This compares to a suicide rate in the general UK population in the same year of 10.8 per 100,000. (You can read more about the latest suicide statistics in the general UK population in my blog from February and here.

Comparing suicide rates across groups is notoriously difficult though. Groups need to be matched by age, gender and social background to make meaningful comparisons - and this is not always possible. The lower suicide rates in serving UK personnel compared to the general population are likely to be at least partly explained by military selection criteria - people with many physical and mental health conditions are not eligible to serve in the armed forces.

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Looking at trends in suicide rates in different groups can give us important extra clues. In 2008 suicide rates in the US army exceeded those in the civilian population. They have stayed like that ever since. Despite recent increases in suicide rates in the general US population, suicide rates were still higher in both reservists and actively serving troops than in civilians in 2014.

Prevention is key

As the scale of suicide in the US military and its veterans became apparent, significant and continued financial commitment has been made to strengthening prevention and support services such as Veterans' Crisis Line.

Here in the UK, there are numerous hard-working charities, individuals and groups - both inside and outside the forces - providing services and support for military personnel and veterans.

At Samaritans we believe that suicide is preventable. We believe that the new funding to Samaritans represents an important opportunity for suicide prevention. By working with others, we hope this will help lead to improved knowledge about suicide in UK armed forces and veterans and the supplementation of support services for those who need them most. Above all, we hope and believe this will help us achieve our vision that fewer people die by suicide.

At Samaritans we offer a listening service to help you find a way though your problems. You don't have to be suicidal to call us. Whatever you're going through, call us free, anytime, from any phone, on 116 123

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This is the tale of four girls whose lives are being torn apart by climate change and the impacts of El Nino.

Two of them live in a world of water.

The other two are desperate for the rains to come.

Flooding is causing Amina, 12, and Aasia, 10, in Bangladesh to go hungry.

In Somaliland, teenagers Nimah and Hibak struggle to eat because drought is killing livestock and harvests.

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Despite living thousands of miles apart they are grappling with the same devastating impacts of extreme weather.

But young women living on the margins face risks that go beyond hunger.

Backbreaking work

A dozen steps from Aasia's hut lies a murky green-grey river that stretches as far as the eye can see.

It formed when salty water from the Bay of Bengal came flooding into her village, ruining crops and farm land.

Now the 10-year-old goes into that river every day, dragging a heavy net to catch fish.

It's tiring work and Aasia's young body feels the strain.

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"Sometimes my arms get sore," she said. "When that happens I tie the rope around my waist and then I pull the net. When my waist starts to hurt I swap back to pulling with my arms. Sometimes I wake up and I don't want to do this work."

Like thousands of Bangladeshis, Aasia's parents have lost their land and livelihoods to floods. As sea levels rise, exacerbated by climate change, the problem is set to worsen.

"When the water rises the trees and plants go rotten and die," said Aasia. "We can't plant any trees. There are no trees or plants around our home."

Scientists estimate that the production of staple foods could drop steeply by 2050 because of soil salinity.

Child marriage

Amina's hut has been destroyed four times by storms and floods.

Her brother died during a cyclone in 2007.

Now extreme weather could claim her childhood as well.

Amina, who also goes fishing to feed her family, has overheard her parents talking about arranging marriages for their daughters.

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"My parents are worried," said the 12-year-old. "Sometimes they say if they could marry me or one of my sisters off it would be a relief for them."

But the prospect of marriage is deeply troubling for Amina, who has two sisters. She told me of her ambition: it's to finish school and get a job in Bangladesh's new industries.

"I don't want to marry young," she said. "I want to study, grow big and then I want to marry."

Bangladesh has one of the world's highest rates of child marriage, according to the United Nations.

Laily Begum, 39, an elected councillor in southern Bangladesh campaigns against child marriage. The mother-of-three is also part of an ActionAid funded women's group. She said climate change is placing a huge financial strain on already poor families.

"We can't grow anything. Children can't go to class. When this happens parents start to see their children as burdens," said Laily. "They think, 'If I can marry one of the daughters off it will be good.'"

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Dropping out of school

A severe drought is sweeping across the Horn of Africa and affecting states such as Somaliland.

More than two years of failed rains have caused harvests to fail and livestock to die.

It has also forced Hibak, 18, to drop out of school.

As conditions intensified the teenager stopped going to school because her family needs her to walk further and further afield to find water for their cattle.

"I used to go to school, but not now," Hibak told me. "Because of the drought, I have to take the livestock to a far place. So I haven't got time to go to school."

Although Hibak knows that education is important, survival right now is dependent on keeping the family's livestock alive.

"I would like to go back to school because you are learning and gaining knowledge," said Hibak who wants to be a teacher. "But I won't be able to go back if the drought continues."

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The United Nations has warned of an alarming malnutrition situation in the drought affected region. More than 300,000 children are already acutely malnourished. That figure could rise as the El-Nino driven drought drags on.

Fighting over food and land

Nimah walks for two hours to fetch water for her family because the wells near her home have dried up.

On those long journeys she has noticed neighbours arguing over grazing land.

This is something new to her because villagers are usually happy to share what they have.

"There is not enough grass here and I've seen neighbours arguing if someone else's livestock tries to eat their grass," said the 15-year-old.

"If the drought continues there may be fights over grass and animals."

Nimah's family has lost 25 of their 35 sheep to the drought. If the remaining sheep are lost it could tip the family into destitution. Without livestock they will have nothing to eat or trade with.

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This prospect makes Nimah fear for her younger siblings.

"I worry about my brothers and sisters if we run out of food," said Nimah, who has five siblings, the youngest of whom is aged eight. "The young children may die too, if there is nothing to eat."

The teenager has heard of children dying from malnutrition in the Guban plateau, which is several miles east of her village.

Last month, 12 malnutrition related deaths were reported in the Adwal region in western Somaliland.
Young people, just like me, often get a bad rap, written off as 'hooligans' or self-centred people who lack drive. Is this fair? The answer is simply: no! Throughout my Scouting journey, from a Beaver Scout (6-8 years) right up to the Scout Network (18-25 years), I've seen the power we as young people have to drive change locally, nationally and internationally, as well as the sheer determination to break down barriers, connect communities, and through all this, leave the world a little better than how we found it.

The Scout Association has recently launched a new community impact campaign, A Million Hands; a youth-led project that helps enable Scouts to change society by working together on issues we feel strongly about. One of the issues we're taking action on is clean water and sanitation - we want everyone, everywhere to have access to these basic human rights.

In Madagascar, local Scouts are making great progress on this issue through their brilliant partnership with WaterAid, working together to educate communities about good hygiene, and to campaign for water and toilets for all. So, with fellow Scouts from the UK, Becky and Hannah, I made the journey out there to link up with our Malagasy Scout family to learn from their fantastic example, while also seeing first-hand what life is like without clean water and toilets.

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We joined sessions at the Scout camps on ensuring clean water, good sanitation and hygiene, and also joined them as they built facilities such as 'tippy taps' - a really easy way to wash hands where there is no piped water available. This is just one of many ways Scouts in the UK can take practical action to learn about the issue before they go on to create change. From speaking to their MPs about why we need to take action on clean water and hygiene, to linking up with a Scout group abroad, the possibilities are endless!

We saw how Scouts passed on these important lessons and raised awareness of the issue to the wider community through performances and presentations at a 'Dobodoboka' - a festival they organised with WaterAid in the marketplace. It was great to see just how trusted and valued the Scouts were in their community, and how successful they were at driving change. The event was attended by journalists, the Mayor and other influential people, sending a ripple effect of change throughout the community. In Madagascar Scouts are known as 'change makers' because of the impact they are having.

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We saw why the work of WaterAid and the Scouts is so vital when we visited Ambonidobo, a village that relies on water collected from a small dirty pond teeming with bugs. We joined Noeline and her friends as they carried their heavy jerry cans up a steep hill, which becomes a mudslide during the rainy season. I was incredibly inspired by how the girls faced their daily struggle with such strength, hope and optimism, and am thankful that WaterAid will be working in the community soon to introduce clean water and sanitation.

The difference these facilities will make was so apparent when we visited Manakasina, where WaterAid has already helped build water points and toilets. These simple changes have completely transformed the community. Speaking to local people, they told us how there has been less disease since clean water was introduced, and more time for young people to play, stay in education and have a childhood. This filled me with optimism that the young people there will reach their dreams of becoming doctors, teachers, and all the other amazing roles they spoke about with such pride and enthusiasm.

Across the world, one in ten people live without safe water and one in three people have no access to improved sanitation. As a result, 900 children die every single day from diarrhoeal diseases. By working together, we can help to end this global crisis.

Taps and toilets, things we so easily take for granted, really do transform lives. I'm so proud that Scouts in the UK have chosen to take action on this important issue. In just one week, we learned so much about how we can join together with our Scout family in Madagascar, and across the world, to help get clean water and toilets for everyone, everywhere.

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'[W]hat are the rules of telling someone else's story when they come from a world so very different from our own?' This is the tagline for Stowaway, the play I saw at HOME, Manchester, last night (Thursday 6th May). Stowaway is the story of an Indian man who gets trapped in a labour camp in Dubai. He attempts to escape by stowing away in the wheel well of a flight bound for Heathrow. When the plane comes in to land, his frozen body comes loose and he falls into the car park of a B&Q store in London. The horrific scene is witnessed by Andy, a rather jittery and inarticulate dad from Richmond. All that is left are unanswered questions. For the remainder of the play three of the four actors, who are on stage throughout, tell his disjointed story. Often it feels like hearsay, sometimes it feels like it's coming from the horses mouth. But the stowaway's life is a mystery, his true story going to the grave with him.

The play deals with some large topics. There were attempts to highlight race relations, poverty, corruption, modern slavery, people trafficking... the list goes on. But one question stood out for me: what are the implications of telling stories about people who are different from oneself? One of the other characters, Lisa, is a crime writer. She takes it upon herself to visit Dubai. She wants to tell the stowaway's story. But she is ridiculed. She has to answer the question of why she, as a 'privileged white woman', thinks that she can tell the story of an Indian man whose life of hardship has lead him to an early grave.

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Now, if you've ever attended any kind of creative writing workshop or tried reading a book or article about releasing that inner voice we're all supposed to have, you may have been told to "write what you know" or something a little more vague like "be true to yourself". Both of these instructions make creativity synonymous with concepts of authenticity. To be creative, you must be, on some levels, writing about yourself or something that you've seen. But why does it have to be that way? Surely the whole point of being a creative person is that you should be free to explore the extent, and the variety of human histories and experiences, despite not having first-hand experience of everything there is? Isn't there something valuable about imagining events we will never directly see? I think new and varied perspectives enhance what we know about the world we live in... past, present and future.
Dare to be different. Capitalise on every opportunity on this God-given Earth. Be true to yourself and your principles, but never so narrow-minded that you forget that the essence of life is the fruit of debate.

That's what my parents have told me throughout my childhood. I had to challenge what people wanted me to be. Born with facial palsy - meaning the left side of my face was paralysed - I was repeatedly dismissed as someone to be pitied. A female in a Pakistani community, my parents were told that celebrating my birth was unnecessary. They celebrated anyway. My parents told me to harness education as use it as a tool to empower myself to the same platform as those world leaders, even when people were saying it's a bad idea to "let" me go to university.

Why were they so afraid of my achievements? Because I routinely proved that you could challenge the limiting expectations of those around you and succeed.

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On Saturday 23 April 2016, I did just that. I stood up in front of President Obama, and I told him about the inequalities faced by non-binary people, and held him to account over why transgender people in the US are being discriminated against. With bated breath, I waited as the world media watched me challenge Obama on why countries like the UK don't recognise the existence of non-binary people. I can't tell you how good it felt to breathe again after this weight lifted off my shoulders, when the President told me he was proud of me and people from around the world started an international conversation on gender norms. But the bravery is in the change yet to come.

It's estimated that about a quarter of a million people in the UK are non-binary; that is, they do not identify with the socially-accepted ideas of man and woman. They employ a pluralistic approach to gender, regarding it as a spectrum, and understand that some people do not feel they have a gender at all. In addition, your gender is entirely separate from your biological sex, be that male, female, or intersex. So really, anyone could be non-binary, and they don't have to be androgynous in dress sense to be so.

People quizzed me on why I wore earrings, looked like "a girl", and spoke with a "feminine" voice. Well, there is much more to a person than their chosen appearance. In fact, that's the first step in making the world more tolerant. Don't judge someone based on how they look. Take time to talk to the person, educate yourself, and show them the same respect you would afford yourself.

When you're being criticised because you don't fit people's expectations, keep going. If you don't stand up and break out of the confines people set for you, you won't be able to do yourself justice.

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Recognise that you are powerful, that you are valuable, and that you have every right to live your truth, much like those who hold you back. Sign petitions to get non-binary gender legally recognised in the UK, speak to your family, and go Google things you don't understand so we can strive towards acceptance.

So much change is needed in the fight for equality, be that recognising gender; increasing citizenship education on how to overcome socioeconomic barriers; or fighting for human rights of those who have no voice in society. It starts with you, the reader, asking yourself to challenge your assumptions and support others in fighting inequality.

In the words of Obama, "We are the change that we seek".
In George Orwell's classic dystopian novel, "1984", residents of Oceania are monitored in their own homes with telescreens. The screens record speech and behaviour and can transmit messages from Big Brother.

Dystopian novels excel at this kind of horrific future where the government knows everything about where we are, what we are doing, and with whom, but we are closer to the dystopia than most people realise. Our laws on privacy are built for an era before the Internet and are barely fit for purpose today.

Consider what happened in Brazil this week with the Facebook-owned messaging application WhatsApp. A small-town judge managed to order a national three-day suspension of the service because Facebook failed to comply with a police request to read messages between suspected drug traffickers.

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On the surface it seems simple - if Facebook has messages between criminals then of course they should release that data to the police so the villains can be apprehended. But life isn't so simple. WhatsApp is a messaging platform with built-in encryption from the person writing a message to the recipient. Even if Facebook marshals a conversation, they can't read the content because it is encrypted.

Practically the ban on WhatsApp was futile because other encrypted messaging services, such as the Russian app Telegram, can offer the same service. The Brazilian legal authorities acknowledged this by retracting the suspension after only one day.

But this is what worries me. The commentators don't understand that society requires a redefinition of privacy. Are we suggesting that the government should have the ability to monitor every word we utter?

One response to this is that if you have nothing to hide then you have nothing to fear from surveillance. The extent of NSA monitoring revealed by whistle-blower Edward Snowden showed that democratic and supposedly "free" governments do already attempt to monitor us. The scale of monitoring required is vast, but the technology is catching up.

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There are two technological changes that are taking place at present that I believe will fundamentally change our approach to privacy:

Wearable and implanted technology; we think of our relationship with computers today as mainly being via the smart phone or laptop and text as the main way to communicate with the device. However tools such as Apple Siri and Amazon Echo are showing that voice will soon be the main way we communicate with devices - just like in Star Trek.

Quantum Computing; IBM has already made a quantum computer available to the public. As quantum technology advances we will see computers that are immeasurably faster than what we know at present, with the ability to scan vast amounts of data exploring patterns and connections.

These two shifts create a perfect storm for privacy. Private corporations and governments will have the ability to monitor any activity on any communication channel, no matter how many millions of updates take place each day. In addition our devices will be capturing, recording, and transmitting our location, every word, and potentially every thought. Why does it matter?

Half a million British motorists now voluntarily give real-time data on their location and driving behaviour to their vehicle insurance company in return for a better price on their policy. What happens when all insurance companies decide this information is mandatory? What happens when your health insurance company, or even your local GP, refuse to admit you as a patient unless you supply data 24/7 from a health monitor? What happens when your new employer insists on tracking your location and health status? Can you afford to refuse the job or will you just sign the contract and accept these terms hoping they don't notice that you like to indulge in ecstasy once or twice a month?

If you have a portable device similar to Google Glass capturing every word you say and a device similar to Amazon Echo inside your home then the potential for everything you ever say to be recorded, transmitted, and analysed exists.

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Will babies soon receive a health implant at birth? If so, who owns the data? Can individuals retain any control over our own privacy or will it be lost to governments and vast communication networks?

The general misunderstanding about WhatsApp in Brazil is just step one on this journey. The legislators and talking heads are all looking back to a John le Carre world where surveillance meant phone taps. Facebook is obviously looking to the future and assuming that the public will give away all this information about their lives voluntarily.
Recently, a Polish friend in her second year of an arts degree complained that people at her university blanked her when she tried express any scepticism about the left. Far from being a raging Conservative herself, she was simply pointing out that Socialism in practice could be far removed from the theory - her family experience in Socialist Poland was a proof of that. She said their response felt like when "there are people in the room that have cancer, so no one jokes about anything serious, though the cancer case is different as people are being differently motivated".

It seems like their reaction is typical of the increasingly close minded attitude among students. From Rhodes Must Fall to the campaign against Germain Greer at Cardiff University, we seem to be engaged in a constant effort to silence those we don't agree with. Don't get me wrong, I am not in favour of European colonial exploitation or biologically defined gender, but there are better ways of opposing their views. Letting Greer come, but not turning up to her speech and putting up a plaque to contextualize Rhodes seem a good bet. Taking away their freedom of opinion and expression does not. So why do we feel the need to silence others?

Maybe it's because we like to feel that we're right. But if this is the case, we need to be careful that we don't end up eliminating democracy in the process. Since democracy relies on everyone's ability to challenge those in power. And how can we do that, if people are shamed into keeping their views to themselves?

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Now, I'm not saying that all students are a power-crazy bunch trying to take over the world. But, it is inevitable that by silencing others we are making a statement that some views should not be expressed. Think of those students (and I'm sure there were some) who wanted to hear Greer speak for example, if she was banned they would have been effectively forced to closet their views? This is a real problem, especially when it comes politics. The Guardian ran an article in the aftermath of the General Election last year, blaming Tory shaming for inaccurate opinion polls. Now, in the ran up to the EU referendum, I'm often surprised that my friends, who never speak out against the EU in public, say that they're voting OUT. It makes me wonder how do we actually know that our views are correct if we never let anyone disagree?
So the Government's largest 30 free hours pilot has been boycotted by more than 30 childcare providers.

This week, nurseries and childminders from all over York, including many NDNA members, voted against taking part in the early implementer pilot.

Their reason is simple. The funding rate of 3.95 offered is unsustainable - particularly as money for the first, existing 15 free hours will remain at 3.38, a figure that has been frozen for four years now.

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The pilot in York is one of eight trials of the 30-hour offer due to run from September, ahead of nationwide rollout of the scheme to working parents of three and four-year-olds from 2017.

It is the largest pilot and seen as key, as it is the only council area that will include all eligible children in all types of childcare, including nurseries, childminders, pre-schools and schools.

The Daily Mail this week described York nurseries' move as a 'major blow' for the Government.

Childcare sector publication, Nursery World, always authoritative and measured and not given to sensationalism, has gone further, calling the situation a 'crisis'.

Eyes are now on the rest of the pilot areas to see whether providers in other parts of the country will also say: "I'm out."

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Many parents understand the dilemma that nurseries are facing - that the sums aren't adding up.

But sadly, I've seen comments here and there from members of the public on this week's news stories claiming that 'greedy' nurseries are only interested in profits.

That is absolutely, categorically not the case. No-one wanting to make big money would set up a nursery. People who run nurseries are passionate about children and early education.

All they want to do is to balance their books without constantly edging up fees for paying parents to subsidise the Government's free places that they offer.

A Department for Education spokesman told the Mail that more money is being invested in childcare than ever before and that the pilot rate may not be the same as its offer at the point of full roll-out.

I've been telling the media this week that this is a clear early warning signal to the Government that funding levels must be sufficient for 30 free hours to work. Actually, it's the latest in a long, long line of early warning signals from NDNA and the sector.

We first raised the need to get the money right as the 30 free hours policy was dramatically announced by the Conservatives in the weeks before the 2015 General Election and we welcomed the subsequent commitment to funding reform.

Consultation on funding followed and George Osborne's funding review pledged extra millions for childcare in November last year.

But at the time we pointed out that the important thing was the hourly rate that a provider could expect. As we're seeing in York, this is still unacceptable and unworkable.

We've warned and warned about funding, over and over, in Government policy meetings and on working groups as well as in the media.

Perhaps now childcare providers are voting with their feet, and the sector's predictions are coming true, the Government will see that there is a serious and valid point being made.

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The York nurseries have indicated that they were looking for a fixed rate for all 30 hours of 4.50.

I understand that York City Council is due to meet with Department for Education officials to try and resolve the standoff.

Our fingers are crossed. Nurseries want to offer families the help that the Government is pledging but they can't do so if low funding rates threaten their ability to stay in business.

NDNA truly wants 30 free hours to be a success, for the Government and the sector to work together to find solutions and for families to get their free hours.


Photo: Pixabay

In the words of Evelyn Waugh, "the tourist is the other fellow". We like to make a distinction between "tourists" and "travellers", identifying ourselves as travellers who go off the beaten path and explore the world in a deeper, more meaningful way. Travellers are inherently superior, as they go backpacking in Thailand or give up their jobs to become "digital nomads", while tourists are the sheep who do conventional sightseeing in mainstream cities, and walk around with their eyes glued to the map.

We want to believe that travel is life-changing. Even those of us who sneer at Eat, Pray, Love want to have our Eat, Pray, Love moment. But is there anything inherently meaningful about travel? Does the traveller in India have more profound, life-changing experiences than the tourist in Times Square?

These days, everyone travels. With cheap flights and a wealth of information on the internet, travel is easier and more accessible than ever before. We're all travellers. Our Facebooks and Instagrams are a diary of our travels - photos of the Colosseum, street scenes in Asia, sunsets on far-flung beaches. We read a list entitled "30 places to visit before you're 30", which tells us to go to Thailand, so then we read "The 10 best beaches in Thailand" and "5 Thai dishes you must try". We go to Thailand. We visit the beaches, we eat the food, we post the photos on Instagram, and then we add it to our own list - "countries visited". 20 countries becomes 21, and then 22. We become so well-travelled, so knowledgeable about the world, that we consider quitting our jobs, selling our belongings, and launching new careers as digital nomads.

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Having the opportunity to travel is something that should never be taken for granted. The whole world is within our reach, and our ancestors would be amazed if they could see us jetting off for a weekend in Paris, or spending a month travelling around south east Asia. Our ancestors would be even more amazed if they could experience it for themselves. For people living in England in the early 19th century, even countries as close as France and Italy would have seemed foreign and exotic.

When the poet John Keats moved from London to Rome in 1821, the journey took nearly three months. When I moved from London to Rome in 2013, the journey took a few hours. It was Keats's first time abroad. Rome was considerably less foreign for me, as I'd already travelled widely in Europe, and Italy was the fourth country (and third continent) I'd lived in.

I sometimes try to imagine Rome through the eyes of Keats, or other nineteenth century travellers - how incredibly foreign it must have seemed, in an age before photography and the internet, when any trip abroad was considered a risk and an adventure. With the exception of the tourists who have been scared off by the possible threat of a terrorist attack, few people these days consider a trip to Rome risky, or even particularly adventurous. It's a mainstream travel destination, a city that we've seen in countless films, photos and postcards before we ever set foot outside the airport.

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When I see tourists (or travellers) stand in front of the Colosseum, selfie stick in hand, I wonder how they're feeling. Are they genuinely experiencing any sense of wonder or awe? Has the sight of the Colosseum created any long-lasting emotion or memory, beyond the photo they've just posted online? After a couple of days in the city, some tourists will say that they've "done Rome", and never feel the need to return, while bloggers will write authoritative-sounding guides on the best things to see, do and eat in Rome, while en route to their next destination. They may have had an enjoyable trip, but it probably wasn't awe-inspiring, life-changing, or any of the things that we tell ourselves travel should be.



Photo: Through Eternity

A friend of mine recently came to Rome on holiday, and visited the Palatine Hill. She enjoyed the experience, but beyond that, she didn't seem to be particularly impressed. I asked her if she knew what the Palatine was, or why it was important, and she admitted that she didn't know. Without context, the Palatine is just a pretty hill with some nice views of the city centre. When you know the history - the Palatine's role in the myth of Romulus and Remus, the House of Augustus, the assassination of Caligula - the Palatine is instantly transformed. The hill with a history is much more impressive than the hill that's just a hill.

In the age of the internet and cheap travel, we're losing the wonder of travel. It's hard not to take travel for granted when it's just so easy, and when we feel like we've seen everything before. Instead of making it our aim to travel more, setting targets and ticking off countries, maybe we should travel less, and travel more mindfully.

If we're travelling several times a year, it inevitably becomes less exciting. One solution could be to travel less frequently, staying in places for longer periods of time. Before a trip, you could read up on the history and culture of the place you're visiting. That way, when you're standing in front of a famous monument, it's easier to enjoy the moment. As you catch your first glimpse of the Parthenon or the Hagia Sophia, stop for a moment to admire the building and reflect on its history and cultural significance, rather than instantly whipping out your iPhone. Take the time to learn a bit of the language and chat to the locals, instead of endlessly taking photos and blogging about a city you barely know.
A 30-hour Limited Residential Contractor Licensing class will be offered at the Kimball Site, 2100 Main Street, by Chattanooga States Economic and Community Education Department for two consecutive weeks on Fridays (June 3 & 10) and Saturdays (June 4 & 11) from 8 a.m.  5 p.m. Cost is $449 and class size is limited to 20 students.

The course includes the license application process, international building codes, an introduction to Tennessee construction laws, legal and financial issues, accounting practices, loans, liens, and insurance. Participants will learn to read blueprints, build to specifications and adhere to codes and regulations.

Successful completion of this class exempts applicants from taking the contractor-licensing exam if they want to obtain a limited residential contractor license (BC-A/r). Upon completion of the course, the individuals will have basic knowledge to own and operate a small construction company.

For more information call the Economic and Community Education Department at 423-697-3100, or email continuinged@chattanoogastate.edu.
There are many online players in United States who take online poker very seriously and this has become one of the favorite pastimes for many. This is a very important part of finance and one should be concerned about this part of finance as well. As I love to analyze different parts of finance to provide an overall idea covering all the borderline of finance, I thought that I should put some light on this gray area of finance as well. As I am not a law expert, I decided to research on the matter if Americans online players would like to go for legalization of online poker.

To do my research I personally spoke with some serious online players and try to read their minds. It is true that legalized online poker will not be a disaster and it would be good thing that government can monitor everything related to this game if legalized. But I am afraid that many American players will not like this idea. Yes, there are many pitfalls associated with the legal part of online gaming and this is the reason many Americans don't want legalized online poker. Here I am going to elaborate these reasons further:

Let's check the history: Before 2006 people were not much optimistic about any legislation related to online poker. But with enactment of Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act or UIGEA few regulations came to act. But after that as well all leading online poker sites were operating in many states in United States. And then came that awful day called Black Friday in American poker history when the most famous poker sites collapsed over night leaving millions of online players shocked and shattered. Many of these players got their deposits frozen and didn't have any clue to recover the money. After these many changes took place, at present people are not much in position to go for legalization of this process again.

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Government management is not much reliable: If this entire matter goes legalized then U.S. government body will manage the entire thing. This is the least thing people really want. In past, people had some bitter experience with the management tactics handled by government. At present without any government interference they are pretty much free to play according to their will. But many players feel if online poker goes legalized then government will not be able to manage entire thing smoothly taking care of the interest of the players.

Not sure about the after effects: This is the one of the major reasons that people don't want online poker to be legalized as they are not much sure about the consequences. There are people who are using specific online gaming sites and they are much accustomed with their rule regulation and are comfortable playing there. The question is, if these famous sites are going to get license when this become legalized. This is not sure at all. If not, then people need to switch platforms and need to give it an all new start from the very beginning. It is not that bad, but people don't like to go out of their comfort zone much.

Financial calculation: People generally play online poker to gather some extra money. Financial calculation becomes a crucial part of the entire scenario. Taxes are the major concerns for both government and players. If this becomes legalized, then government will look for some good revenue in the form of taxes. At present there are few rules and legislation regarding taxes related to poker. One needs to declare about all earnings through online gaming in Form 1040 to IRS. As currently people are playing through online websites they are having many choices regarding tax issues. If government takes in charge then people will have fewer choices.

Player's biggest concerns: There are many issues if you see this from the point of view of the players. First of all people do not feel much comfortable playing with legalized websites due to few issues. So, the number of players will decrease considerably in comparison to non legislated websites. Another concern is offshore playing option will not be available any more. These are few reasons which make regular players a bit hesitant about legalization of online poker.

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The bond between mother and child is one of the strongest connections in nature. Every child wishes to fulfill their mother's dream and give her all the happiness of this world. On this Mother's Day, I have these awesome travellers from around the world who have shared their dream destinations where they wish to take their mother one day for a perfect getaway. Sit, relax and enjoy these dream destinations for mother - daughter/son perfect getaways from the eyes of these 21 awesome travellers!

1) Maui, Hawaii, USA

By Rachel Jones from Hippie in Heels

My mom and dad went to Hawaii for their anniversary some years back and my mom (who doesn't travel that much) really loved it and even said she'd want to move there! Later, I went for a month with my boyfriend and also loved it. I wish I could go back there and take her with me. Instead of a hotel, it'd be nice to rent an Airbnb so we can cook at home too. I would definitely make her try surfing. She used to snowboard with me all the time, so I'm sure she'd be able to to surf! It would be the perfect vacation.

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2) Zanzibar, Tanzania

By Anne-Sophie from City Cookie

If I could take my mother anywhere, it would be Zanzibar. For as long as I can remember, my mother has wanted to visit this little piece of paradise off the coast of East Africa. I can just imagine the two of us going on a spice tour, walking around historical Stone Town, and sipping cocktails on the beach. We could go on day trips to see the red Colobus monkeys and giant tortoises.

3) Trinidad, Cuba

By Hannah Lukaszewicz from Getting Stamped

I would love to take my mother to Trinidad, Cuba. I know she would love everything about Trinidad. Trinidad is a gorgeous old Spanish colonial town we could just get lost wondering down all the old cobblestone streets and stopping for some tasty mojitos every so often. We could jump in old classic car and head to gorgeous beach of Playa Ancon only 10 minutes away. Sounds like a perfect mother-daughter trip.

4) Casablanca, Morocco

By Joy from A Jaunt With Joy

A trip to Morocco would be the ultimate vacation for my mom. Having parents that raised her in the military lifestyle, she was born in Casablanca and moved away after her birth. She's always dreamt of going back to take it all in and to get to know the area where she was born. I, however, have dreamt of filling suitcases with Moroccan decor to take back with me!

5) Vatican City

By Lavina Dsouza from A Capricious Compass

My mom is religious and visiting Vatican City is at the top of her bucket list. She's always wanted to go, but money and responsibilities never made it possible. As we come from Goa, she also loves the sea and seafood. Rome would definitely be an excellent location as it's in close proximity to the sea and I'm pretty sure the Italians would dish up an amazing fare! It would be her dream comes true!

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6) Meteora, Greece

By Ratisha Goyal from The Thinking Lounge

The bountiful greens spanned at the feet of sky-piercing rock pillars, and at the pinnacle, devout men praise the divine glory - this is Meteora, in the heart of intriguing Greece, where my mother once said that my castle could find ground on the clouds. I remember, how we would read about the place, its pristine beauty, its geology, its history, its monasteries and never did it fail to spellbound us. Together with my mom, I want to witness the fantasy coming to life!

7) Tokyo, Japan

By Matilda Geroulis from The Travel Sisters

I really want to take my mom to Tokyo! She loves cosmopolitan cities and also appreciates quirky adventures so Tokyo is the best of both worlds. From the celebrated Sakura (cherry blossoms) in the spring to the delicious sushi to catching a sumo match to visiting a bunny cafe, there is no shortage of activities I know my mom would enjoy.

8) Louvre, Paris

By Vyjay from Voyager

My mom was special for me as I guess all mothers are for their offspring. She always had a smile on her lips, much like a photo that hung in her room. She loved the photo and it was one of her prized possessions. The framed photo was that of a copy of Mona Lisa. If I could, I would love to take my mom with me to the Louvre in Paris and watch her beautiful smile as she looked at the original masterpiece of Leonardo Da Vinci - The Mona Lisa. This is a dream which would remain so as my mom has traveled out of this world.

9) Istanbul, Turkey

By Vivian Lee from Miss Happy Feet

Istanbul remains as my favorite destination to date. After the last visit, I brought home a box of Turkish delight for my mom and she absolutely loved it! I enjoy telling my mom all my travel stories and the beam that glows from her eyes makes me want to bring her to all the places I've been lucky enough to visit. Hence, let's start with my favorite. I believe she would love it as much as I do.



10) Kauai, Hawaii, USA

By Shandos Cleaver from Travelnuity

Peaceful and relaxed, my mom would love the holiday vibe on Kauai, the greenest and most laid-back of the Hawaiian Islands. In particular, I would treat her to a seat on a scenic flight. With its rugged coastlines, deep canyons and countless waterfalls, the best way to truly experience Kauai is from the air.

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11) London, England

By Rashmi & Chalukya from Go Beyond Bounds

Since my nursery days, my mom had been rehearsing me those rhymes on London Bridge falling and the Pussycat visiting the London Queen. Little did I know that she had been nursing a quiet dream inside to visit the dream city herself? When I had been to Switzerland on onsite, I made sure to tour Paris and Switzerland with her but due to lack of time could not make it to London though I visited later with my wife and kid. Like all other moms, she is content seeing my pictures of London but I wholeheartedly wish I could click those 'dream come true' pictures with her.

12) New Orleans, Louisiana, USA

By Claire Shefchik from Princess of Pirates

My mom is a country girl and loves to party. In New Orleans, Louisiana, we'd visit the voodoo queens of the French quarter, then hope the Natchez riverboat for pints of Abita at an Algiers Point pub, glimpse the Creole town-homes and moss-covered oaks of the Esplanade, then feel the heat with jambalaya from Johnny's Po Boys. Lastly, sip Sazeracs, collect beads, and listen to the Bourbon Street jazz bands.



13) Toronto, Canada

By Tracey Pictor from Journal of a City Girl

I would love if my mother could simply visit me in Toronto. My husband and I live semi-nomadic lives and every 3 years we move to a new city for work. My mom and our family was born and raised in South Africa and every time I talk about how different life is here, and even the simple things like walking the streets at night, alone, is so incomprehensible to her. Canada is not exactly a cheap or a quick place to get to from South Africa and there is a real possibility that our time here may pass and my mother may never get the opportunity to visit.

14) Ayana Resort, Bali, Indonesia

By Aileen from I am Aileen

If there's one place that I would love to take my mom to, it would be to Ayana Resort in Bali, Indonesia! It's a very special place that is equally fitting for the most special woman in my whole life. Besides, the comfort, luxury, and relaxation that this place offers can equal to that of being pampered in paradise -- and this is exactly what I'd want my mom to experience!

15) The Colosseum and Roman Forum, Rome, Italy

By Liz from Dream Discover Italia

My Mom worked hard to keep us occupied during school holidays. But we weren't a sporty family and lived miles from the beach. So our holidays were packed with trips to archaeological sites, stately homes and working museums with mom instilling her love of history into us along with a picnic lunch of banana sandwiches and crisps! Two places that became firm favorites were the local towns of Chester and York, both founded by the ancient Romans. We were fascinated that the Romans had built amphitheaters and huge city walls nearly 2000 years before we were all born. But despite her passion for history, Mom has never seen where it all began. So for Mother's Day I'd love to treat her to a trip to the Eternal City of Rome, especially to the Colosseum and Forum. And this time I'll make the banana sandwiches!

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16) Germany & Switzerland

By Jennifer Aspinwall from World On A Whim

I would love to take my mom to Germany and Switzerland as she has had a fascination with World War II her entire life. Her father, my grandfather, liberated Dachau and also spent time in Switzerland during the war. My mom has spent the past six months compiling a book recreating his journey through the war via his personal handwritten letters and other keepsakes that she has saved. Since I have been to both Germany and Switzerland, I think it would be incredibly significant to take my mom and allow her to retrace her father's steps.

17) Rome & Pompeii, Italy

By Purba Mazumdar from Four Blissful Feet

My travel journey began with my parents, who were travel enthusiasts themselves. Most of our trips were road trips with the family. My mom's interesting lessons on history of each place we visited (she was a history teacher herself), made me passionate about uncovering hidden stories and destinations. I would love to take her to Rome and Pompeii in Italy, as they are living relics of the ancient days, and every nook and corner has a story to tell!

18) Las Vegas, Nevada, USA

By Rosirma Corney from Rosiecapes

My mom has requested for years to take her to Las Vegas, but I said no. She loves to gamble. But my sister and I decided to surprise her with a trip to Las Vegas for her 67th birthday. This past January, my mom was so excited when she received an envelope with Las Vegas airplane tickets. She had a blast. She took picture with Elvis, at the Vegas sign and of course gambled. After the trip, she wore her Las Vegas t-shirt for one month.



19) Leavenworth, Washington, USA

By Bobbi Gould from 1FUNGRLTRAVELS



Photo Credit: Gary Giddens on Flickr

For Mother's Day, I'd like to take my mom to an enchanting and lesser known gem in the state of Washington called Leavenworth that would transport us to a Bavarian village one could only dream of. We could partake in outdoor activities, explore the farmers market, and take a simple stroll to capture the scenery. Photography is, after all, one of my favorite pastimes with her. I'm dreaming of the day already!

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20) Antarctica

By Patti from The Savvy Globetrotter

The one place I'd love to take my mom is Antarctica. It may not be the best spot for luxury or pampering but it ticks the boxes for things that make my mom happy- adventure, beautiful landscape and Penguins. She is a one of a kind mom who deserves a one of a kind trip and I'm confident she would have a smile on her face the entire time.



21) Orlando, Florida, USA

My (Ana's World) dream destination for mother-daughter trip

My mom has never been to any theme park. Therefore my dream is to take her to Orlando - the dream destination of theme parks. I'd love to see the smile on her face when she'll see the colossal display of Disney's larger than life celebrations and fireworks at Magic Kingdom. I want her to experience the Wizarding World of Harry Potter and walk through the Diagon Alley and Hogsmeade Village at Universal Studios. I want to take her to Sea World to meet Shamu - the Killer Whale, dolphins and penguins. In order to get her the Floridian vibes, I'd take her to all my favorite breathtaking beaches in Florida and am sure she will love it!
I'm now blonde, and I'm having more fun. Well, sort of blonde. My normally black hair is now many shades lighter, with a warm undertone and a noticeable amount of yellow. Instead of going to a salon, I did it myself a couple weeks ago after putting it off for quite awhile. My friends have been super friendly and enthusiastic about the change, but almost everyone has recommended I use special shampoo to lift it lighter and "balance the color". "Why not go totally white or grey?", they offer. "Why not more true blonde or platinum?" I'm a professional makeup artist and work with some of the best hairdressers in New York, so I know their suggestions are well founded, and to some people, this would make it look "better".

However, I find myself resistant to their advice. I told several people that I didn't buy the specific shampoo they recommended because I didn't like the chemical ingredients on the label. This was a half-truth. I told others that I was giving my hair and scalp a chance to recover before doing a second round of bleaching. Also true, but still not the whole story.

Whenever I'm creating makeup looks for clients or a beauty editorial shoot, I try to be forward thinking. Much of my process involves first considering the trends that I've grown bored with, and then working to create the polar opposite. For example, I've built a career on creating gorgeous bronze smoky eyes. But instead, I'm currently working with more grungy blacks and grays. With "anti-trends" being among my favorite makeup looks, it might make sense that I wouldn't want a cooler, more polished looking hair color like the platinum, pastel, and white shades that have been so popular in the last year or two. But I don't believe this is the only reason that I am being so defiant.

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Resistance is Futile

While shopping at Duane Reade a few months ago, I saw the extra lightening L'Oreal Feria Kit, with a box of steely blue grey color next to it. I initially resisted buying the kits, citing a potential opportunity I had to go on live TV the morning following the Academy Awards. I needed to look like my head shots and told myself, "I'll buy the kits. If I don't book the TV gig, I'm coloring my hair as a consolation prize."

The TV job fell through, but the kits still sat on my coffee table. I convinced myself that I was waiting because the next TV opportunity was just around the corner. Fortunately it was, and I told myself that it was better not to stray from the conservative look I thought most Americans would be "comfortable" with (whatever that means). No one has ever told me that I needed to have my hair a certain color for work, but I have a tendency to put successful people I admire on pedestals and try to emulate them. As a result, allowing myself creativity with my look is not something I've been particularly open to recently. And I am a professional makeup artist. I make people look different every day. Why is it so scary to allow myself to do the same?

Whenever I see friends and colleagues, they usually say, "You're doing such awesome things! I've been following you on social media." Like most of us, my public persona is a well-edited and thoroughly polished version of myself. The truth is that I'm constantly battling voices in my head that scare me off from pursuing opportunities I know are out there. These voices tell me to look a certain way. They tell me that I'll never be as talented as makeup artists like Beau Nelson, Troy Surratt, or Anastasia Durasova, and that I'll never look as good looking or be considered as credible as television personalities like John Gidding or Kyan Douglas (all of whom who are among the nicest people you'll ever meet). I was letting the voices get in my way. I needed some kind of change, to shake things off, to move things forward.

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As I washed the bleach out of my hair a few weeks ago and looked in the bathroom mirror, I saw myself in a way that I hadn't in a long time. I saw the rebel. I saw my past when my hair was brassy. I saw the same warm shade of do-it-yourself blonde my friends helped me create when I went to a musical theater summer college program as a teenager. I remembered at least three different shades of blonde, yellow, and rusty looking hair from the coming of age film The Edge of Seventeen that I first watched when I was the only openly gay person in my high school, and was looking for inspiration from the future I knew was out there. I remembered the first time I'd seen photos of fashion designer David Blond with a gold tan and pouty lips, staring at the paparazzi with "come fuck me" eyes on the red carpet. I remembered the side of me that's resourceful, hardworking, and frankly, just not so serious. I remembered what it felt like to be a little irreverent.

I didn't change my hair color to try and look hot. I didn't do it to try and look original or artistic. I didn't do it to fit a trend. I did it because I wanted to, but more importantly, I did it because I needed to give in and let go. My whole attitude has since changed. I've been more productive. I've stopped holding on to the emotional rut I'd been in after three difficult breakups in a row and yet another New York winter.

A Little Wrong, and So Right

Ultimately, this fleeting and untrendy shade of "baby duck yellow" (as one friend described it) reminds me to more readily embrace change, or at least face it head on and be more open-minded. Astrologist Susan Miller once told me, "If you're holding on to what you have with a clenched fist, your hand isn't open to receive what's coming next. Now that I've loosened my grip on what I think I'm "supposed to look like", what other changes will I allow into my life?

If you ask any fashion designer, on the record, where they get their inspiration from, they'll probably tell you about where they grew up or about the references for their most recent collection. If you ask any fashion designer, off the record, where they get their inspiration from, they'll tell you it can come from anywhere, and not necessarily where you usually look.

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Keep your eyes open, and maybe start in the mirror.

All photos by Andrew Sotomayor via Instagram
Today, May 5, Dilma Rouseff, President of Brazil inaugurated the Belo Monte Dam in the Brazilian Amazon, about five months after its first reservoirs began to fill.

The most important project of President Dilma Rousseff's energy program is also a monumental example of how energy should not be produced in the 21st century. In addition to its high price tag (nearly $9 billion USD), the dam is associated with corruption and massive human rights violations due to its social and environmental impacts.

Last September, Norte Energia, the consortium building Belo Monte, demolished Antonia Melo's house in Altamira, Para. Antonia leads Movimiento Xingu Vivo para Sempre, a community organization that defends the rights of the inhabitants of the Xingu River basin, a key tributary of the Amazon.

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Antonia's family was one of nearly 3,000 displaced by a dam that will gravely impact the lives of as many as 40,000 people, many of them indigenous. Although more than 2,600 homes have been provided to displaced families, they have come with complaints of structural defects, lack of public transportation, and absence of essential services. In addition, the homes are not connected to the sewer system, one of the conditions of the dam's license.

When complete, Belo Monte will be the third-largest dam in the world. Constructed in northwest Brazil, it will produce on average only a third of its maximum capacity. It is now flooding a 200-square-mile portion of the Amazon rainforest (roughly the size of Chicago), taking with it rich biodiversity, arable land and urban neighborhoods in the city of Altamira.

Since 2011, when construction began, various indigenous communities have suffered serious harms to their health, integrity, territory and culture. These have only worsened with the approach of the dam's operation. Public services, including health centers and childcare, have collapsed. Violence has grown exponentially: murders have doubled, traffic accidents have increased 144 percent, and sexual violence and prostitution have escalated, affecting children and adolescents. Citizen complaints are ignored.

Corruption has long enveloped Belo Monte. According to the confessions of executives from construction firms Camargo Correa and Andrade Gutierrez, millions in bribes were paid for the project's construction. That issue is now part of the largest anti-corruption investigation in Brazil's history.

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"The government and Brazilian society do not and will not tolerate corruption," said President Rousseff before the United Nations General Assembly last September. "Brazilian democracy is strengthened when authorities take the limit of the law as their own limit. Many of us fought for just that when our laws and rights were violated during the dictatorship." She also spoke of including "indigenous issues" in the country's climate commitments.

Rousseff's speech starkly contradicts reality. She may have been a victim of the dictator, but she now uses the resources of that regime to build Belo Monte. Brazil's Federal Public Ministry has presented more than 20 lawsuits against the project, and judges have ordered the suspension of its work on at least six occasions. Those rulings were annulled at the request of the Rousseff government by applying a legal instrument that was, ironically, created by the dictatorship.

On November 24, 2015, Brazil's environmental authority authorized the operation of Belo Monte--despite the project's failure to comply with vital socio-environmental conditions, and despite the fact that it ignored the opinions of environmental technicians and the authority for the protection of indigenous peoples.

The project was halted again in January, when the Federal Justice of Altamira suspended the filling of reservoirs for failure to comply with conditions mandating protection of indigenous communities. The ruling was overturned just weeks later.

For years, the impacts of Belo Monte have been denounced before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) and the United Nations. Responses have been slow or non-existent. In April 2011, the Commission urged Brazil to suspend construction for the lack of free, prior and informed consent of indigenous communities.

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Brazil's reaction was blunt: it withdrew its candidate to the Commission and its ambassador to the Organization of American States; withheld its annual contributions to the organism; and began a process of "strengthening" the Inter-American System, which ended up reforming the rules of the Commission.

In response, the Commission stopped requesting the suspension of works, and focused on requesting urgent actions to protect affected indigenous communities. In 2011, those affected communities brought a case against Brazil. Four years later, in December 2015, the Commission opened the case for processing. The Commission now has the power to prioritize the case, make a decision quickly, and prevent any further damage.

As Antonia often says, the fight continues.

Brazil still has a chance to show that they care about human rights and the environment; and that the rules will be enforced and justice implemented.

The Commission and other authorities have the historic opportunity to demand respect for human rights, and help countries achieve development that does not come at the expense of people. But they must act soon, because Belo Monte was just inaugurated and its already causing dire impacts.

@AIDAorg, @astridpuentes
I can only imagine what Winston Churchill would have made of Daniel Berrigan. I do find it rather poignant to recall Father Berrigan, the Jesuit priest and peace activist, who died last Saturday at 94 and whose funeral Mass is today in New York City, descending on Chartwell Booksellers, my little Winston Churchill bookshop, in April 1988 to read from his then-just-published memoir, To Dwell in Peace. Given Churchill's initial feelings about Gandhi ("a...half-naked... fakir"), I would hazard that his gut take on Berrigan would not have been appreciative. At first. But Churchill did admire persons of action and conscience and Berrigan certainly was both. I bet they would have enjoyed each other.

Father Berrigan arrived at Chartwell Bookseller on the evening of April 4, 1988 in the company of two celebrity supporting guest readers, the actors Martin Sheen and Edward Hermann. Berrigan had become quite a celebrity himself protesting the Vietnam War in the 1960s and 70s -- stoking huge anti-war rallies, appearing on the cover of Time magazine, and getting himself arrested with gaudily theatrical acts of civil disobedience, in tandem with his brother Philip, like the napalming of draft records at a Catonsville, Maryland draft board in 1968. By the 1980s, though, the Berrigans were retreating from celebrity to focus on smaller (however still noteworthy) protests opposing nuclear armament and advocating for peace.

Chartwell Booksellers was barely five years old in 1988 and, in my mind, still very much a general interest bookstore. The impending arrival in the marketplace of the behemoth Barnes & Noble superstores, followed by the behemoth itself, Amazon, would soon divest me of this illusion, making it crystal clear that focusing on Winston Churchill as a singular specialty was the only way to assure Chartwell Booksellers' survival.

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In the store's formative years, however, I enlisted "celebrity" in the service of literature as a means of promoting my new enterprise. In our second year of existence, I created a reading series that I called "First Readings at Chartwell Booksellers: A Fanfare for New Fiction," bringing in distinguished actors to read from newly published novels and short story collections. Elizabeth McGovern (best-known today as Cora Crawley on Downton Abbey) was our first guest reader on April 1, 1986. She delivered a riveting performance and a suitably big crowd for Bobbie Ann Mason's magnificent post-Vietnam-era novel, In Country. Judd Nelson (then of "The Brat Pack"), Brooke Adams, Kate Nelligan, Judith Ivey, David Alan Grier and a newbie Alec Baldwin, were just a few of the big names who drew throngs to Chartwell Booksellers in those first years.

I came to Father Berrigan by way of Martin Sheen, not the other way around. Sheen was set to open in a New York Shakespeare Festival production of Julius Caesar, playing Brutus to Al Pacino's Antony and Edward Hermann's Cassius, when I approached him about doing a Chartwell reading. Sheen readily agreed but specified that the book he wanted to read was Daniel Berrigan's new memoir... alongside the author himself. Sheen's history as a member of Berrigan's Catholic activist flock ran deep. He had been arrested in a demonstration with Berrigan in New York City in 1986 and would be arrested with him again in the future.

I had already begun experimenting with Non-Fiction "First Readings" in our series. The prospect of a Berrigan and Sheen non-fiction evening was sweetened by Ed Hermann's offer to join the proceedings. The turnout, unsurprisingly, was tumultuous.

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Protesters call for a ban on fracking and a phasing out of oil development in California, in Santa Barbara, California, United States, May 21, 2015. As much as 2,500 barrels (105,000 gallons) of crude oil, according to latest estimates, gushed onto San Refugio State Beach and into the Pacific west of Santa Barbara when an underground pipeline running parallel to a coastal highway there inexplicably burst on Tuesday morning. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson

California is supposedly the nation's green trailblazer, but it's also the third largest oil-drilling state, with Los Angeles having more urban wells (over a thousand) than of any other U.S. city.

Warren E & P drill site, smack in the middle of homes in Wilmington, South Los Angeles. Photo credit: Liberty Hill Foundation

Five-million-plus Californians - the rich and not so rich - live within a mile of a well. It's our dirty little backyard drilling secret. Only it's not so secret anymore.

The easy oil is long gone. What's left gets extracted by highly-toxic and water-intensive well stimulation treatments (WST) - hydraulic fracturing or acidization. An oil derrick in the backyard is one thing, but when hazmat-suited workers use large amounts of hydrofluoric acid to access out-of-reach oil deposits alongside homes, schools and hospitals, it's time to worry.

Residents living cheek-by-jowl with WST operations complain of nosebleeds, nausea, headaches, skin rashes and high rates of asthma.

Last July the independent California Council on Science and Technology (CCST) concluded the chemicals used in WST are hazardous and poorly understood. The council recommended establishing "science-based setbacks, or human health buffer zones to protect residents."

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However, eight days before the CCST published its government-commissioned fourteen-hundred-page report, California state officials jumped the gun by proudly announcing the nation's toughest (and first) fracking regulations (based solely on their own less exhaustive in-house impact assessment).

Americans Against Fracking co-founder, David Braun claims this timing overlap (and the fact the CCST disclosed other facts, such as serious water contamination risks from fracking because of California's shallow aquifers) meant CCST's report was intentionally buried by the special interest of Big Oil.

How hydraulic fracturing contaminates aquifers

For Braun and many environmentalists, the oil industry wields way too much political clout in the Golden State, spending an estimated $22 million annually lobbying legislators, including our illustrious green leader - Governor Brown.

As it turns out, while first-time-round 1970's Governor Brown may have been the greenest Governor of them all, millennial Brown walks both sides of the fossil fuel divide.

Yes, though our Governor can claim his "zeal has been intensified to a maximum degree" when it comes to reducing the state's petroleum use, he's extremely friendly to oil extraction and production.

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It's as if 77-year-old Brown operates in simultaneous parallel universes. This past December at the UN Paris Climate Change Conference COP21, there was eco-warrior Brown, describing in biblical proportions the catastrophes that will/are accompanying climate change - plagues of beetles, powerful wildfires, mass exoduses of climate refugees. That Governor Brown exhorts other nations to leave fossil fuel reserves in the ground.

While back home the other Brown promotes fracking as the most efficient way to retrieve the states remaining oil. He's also been loathe to regulate WST - even when addressing the vital importance of water conservation in our drought-plagued state.

For Braun, it boils down to the revenue stream big oil generates that helps balance California's unwieldy budget, and pay for Governor Brown's pet projects: The Delta twin-tunnels, and the state's high-speed rail.

But as Braun calls it, "If you're a climate leader you don't enable the worst climate polluters, that's the bottom line."

A sentiment shared by fellow anti-fracking activist and actor, Mark Ruffalo. One of Ruffalo's suggestions to deter oil production is "taxing oil extraction in California and using the money to transition to all-electric vehicles."

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David Braun and Mark Ruffalo, co-founders of Americans Against Fracking

Such a tax would've worked nicely with the part of SB 350 that aimed to halve California's gasoline use by 2030. It was the most ambitious renewable energy increase for the state so far. However heavy resistance from oil companies meant Brown lacked enough support even inside his own party, and the gasoline reduction part of the bill was defeated last October.

Speaking at Pepperdine University in Malibu last month, leading U.S climate change activist, Bill McKibben, says when it comes to getting the world off fossil fuels "the resource that matters most is political will."

It's the lack of a consolidated political movement that allows fracking and acidizing to continue unabated in California, according to Ruffalo. He believes when Californians rise up and declare enough is enough, it will embolden our Governor to say no to the oil industry.

And any day now would not be a moment too soon.

McKibben warns while human beings cope best with the kind of incremental change California is using to adapt to climate change, at the rate our planet is warming there's no time for anything but a rapid and drastic shift from fossil fuels.

Spelling it out, McKibben says it would take 400 Hiroshima bombs dropping daily to melt the Arctic ice-sheet as fast as it's currently melting.

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For the Learning Boats program, we will not be finished until we reach our initial goal of providing 1,000 boats, 1,000 restored livelihoods, 5,000 mouths fed, and 100% kids back in school. We've also been partnering with other non-profit organizations to further our efforts of providing financial education to the parents. We are launching our first financial literacy series with ThinKids, an organisation based out of Spain, in August 2016. We're also working with Kaya Co. With them, we will be creating research opportunities for Filipinos with the hopes that they identify with being Filipino and eventually stay in the Philippines to further our cause.
CAMBRIA, Calif.- Standing on the ridge overlooking her central California farm, new widow Teri McCall sees her husband Jack nearly everywhere. There, atop the highest hill, is where the couple married in 1975- two self-described "hippies' who knew more about how to surf than farm. And over there, surrounded by the lemon, avocado and orange trees Jack planted, sits the 800-square-foot house the young Vietnam veteran built for his bride and a family that grew to include two sons and a daughter. Solar panels Jack set up in a sun-drenched stretch of grass power the farm's irrigation system.



And down there, clasped in the cusp of the velvet green valley sits the century-old farmhouse Jack and Teri eventually made their permanent home. Jack installed a stained glass window featuring a heart and flowers over the front door.

"Literally hundreds of times a day, something reminds me of him," McCall says, as she and a visitor strolled through the orchards on a recent sunny spring morning. "That's part of why it's so hard to believe... I can never see him again."

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Anthony 'Jack' McCall, 69, died Dec. 26 after a painful and perplexing battle with non-Hodgkin lymphoma. The loss is certain, fixed forever into his family's heartbreak. But questions about why and how he was stricken - a man who never smoked, stayed fit and had no history of cancer in his family - are part of what some legal experts see as a potential landmark legal claim against one of the world's largest agrichemical companies, Monsanto Co.

McCall shunned pesticide use on his farm, except for the herbicide called Roundup - marketed by Monsanto as having extremely low toxicity. He used Roundup regularly, spraying it himself around the farm to drive back worrisome weeds. He even recommended Roundup to friends, telling them it was supposed to be much safer than alternatives on the market, and touting its effectiveness.

But now in his death, McCall is one of several plaintiffs in more than a dozen lawsuits that claim the active ingredient in Roundup - a chemical called glyphosate - gave them cancer, and that Monsanto has long known glyphosate poses "significant risks to human health, including a risk of causing cancer."

The lawsuits, brought by plaintiffs in California, Florida, Missouri, Delaware, Hawaii, and elsewhere over the last several months, claim Monsanto has hidden evidence, and manipulated regulators and the public into believing in the safety of glyphosate, which annually brings in about $5 billion, or a third of total sales, for the agribusiness giant. Like McCall, many farmed, or worked in agricultural jobs in which they regularly were using or exposed to glyphosate.

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The claims come at a critical time for Monsanto and its signature product as regulators in the United States and other countries evaluate whether or not to continue to allow glyphosate herbicides. Last year the World Health Organization's cancer experts classified glyphosate as a probable human carcinogen. That team, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), said glyphosate shows a "positive association" for non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

The outcomes of the legal battle and the regulatory reviews could have broad implications. Glyphosate is the most widely used herbicide on the planet, sprayed on fields for row crops like corn, soybeans and wheat, as well as a variety of fruits, nuts and vegetable crops such as almonds, apples, cherries and oranges.

That ubiquitous role played by glyphosate means the litigation, plaintiffs' lawyers say, marks the beginning of a potential wave of legal actions against Monsanto. Teams of attorneys have been criss-crossing the country lining up potential plaintiffs who they say will likely number in the hundreds and possibly thousands. It's a time-tested practice by plaintiffs' attorneys who have brought similar mass actions in the past against tobacco, pharmaceutical and chemical industries.

"Monsanto has deliberately concealed or suppressed information about the dangers of its product," said environmental and chemical pollution attorney Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is assisting in litigating glyphosate cases. "This is big. It's on every farm in the world."

Kennedy predicts glyphosate liability litigation will become as widespread as has been decades of litigation over asbestos, which is seen in legal circles as the longest-running mass tort action in U.S. history. Asbestos was used for years as a safe and effective flame retardant in the construction industry but has been tied to lung diseases and cancers, and spawned hundreds of millions of dollars in legal claims.

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The glyphosate litigation partly mirrors courtroom battles Monsanto has been fighting for years involving the polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs it once manufactured. Plaintiffs in those cases also claim PCBs caused them to fall ill while Monsanto hid the risks. Monsanto claims plaintiffs cannot definitively link illnesses to PCB exposure.

AMONG THE SAFEST OPTIONS

Patented by Monsanto and commercialized in 1974, glyphosate herbicide has long been considered among the safest pesticide options on the market. The weed-killer came off patent in 2000 and is now used in more than 700 products around the world, beloved by farmers, homeowners, and groundskeepers. The chemical is the world's most widely used herbicide with an estimated 1.8 billion pounds applied in 2014, up 12-fold from 1994, according to recently published research.

But as use has grown, concerns about safety have also mounted. Residues have been documented by public and private researchers in waterways, air, food and in human bodily fluids. Several scientific studies tied the chemical to cancers and other health problems before the March 2015 classification by IARC.

Lawyers for plaintiffs in the glyphosate cases say that among the evidence that glyphosate's toxicity has long been known is an EPA memo detailing how glyphosate was classified by agency scientists as a possible human carcinogen in 1985 before classified in 1991 as a having "evidence of non-carcinogenicity" for humans. The classification was changed despite the fact that some peer review members did not concur. The lawsuits also cite evidence of fraud at laboratories used by Monsanto to perform toxicology studies of glyphosate, and point to fraud convictions of executives at those labs.



St. Louis-based Monsanto, a global agrichemical and seed powerhouse, cites its own evidence to counter both the validity of the allegations in the lawsuits, as well as the IARC findings. Last year, the company hired a team of experts to review the safety of glyphosate, and said that team found no cancer links.

"Comprehensive long-term toxicological studies repeated over the last 30 years have time and again demonstrated that glyphosate is unlikely to pose a cancer risk in humans," Monsanto states on its website. 'Regulatory authorities and independent experts around the world have reviewed numerous long-term/carcinogenicity and genotoxicity studies and agree that there is no evidence that glyphosate... causes cancer, even at very high doses."

Monsanto attorneys have been seeking to dismiss and/or delay several cases thus far filed, asserting that federal law and approvals by the Environmental Protection Agency for labels on Roundup herbicide products protect Monsanto from the claims in the lawsuits. In recent arguments in U.S. District Court in Northern California, for example, lawyers for Monsanto argued that "EPA repeatedly has concluded that glyphosate is not a carcinogen." But in April a federal judge in California ruled that Monsanto was not protected from liability by the EPA registration and approved labels.

In a Missouri case that Monsanto also was unable to get dismissed, discovery is starting, and plaintiffs' lawyers are eagerly awaiting what they hope will be a treasure trove of evidence for their clients.

The legal claims come at the same time that European and U.S. regulators are conducting their own assessments of the safety of glyphosate and considering restrictions, processes that have become fraught with infighting and accusations of bias from both fans and foes of glyphosate. The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) said in November that evidence shows glyphosate is unlikely to be carcinogenic. But the European Parliament has said the herbicide use should be reined in with a ban on non-professional use and around parks and playgrounds because of the health worries.

The EPA was due to release a fresh risk assessment on glyphosate nearly a year ago, but has stalled the process amid the uproar. And in an odd twist to the saga, on April 29, the agency posted an internal document to its website, showing that the EPA's cancer assessment experts have determined that glyphosate is "Not Likely to be Carcinogenic to Humans."

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On May 2, EPA withdrew the memo from its website and said it was not supposed to have been released because the cancer assessment is ongoing. But Monsanto heralded the release of the document as proof of what it has been saying about glyphosate's safety.

Wall Street is keeping a wary eye on the litigation. But generally market watchers care less about Monsanto's risk from potential liability payouts and more about any potential long-term revenue hit if regulators were to restrict or ban glyphosate, said Piper Jaffray analyst Brett Wong, who tracks Monsanto's business strategies and financial health. The courtroom battles could influence regulators, he said.

"There are obviously a lot of lawsuits," Wong said. "They aren't intrinsic to impacting their business but there is always some sentiment pressure on investors. If it were to impact the regulatory structure and glyphosate was banned... that could obviously have an impact."

Legal experts with experience defending the chemical industry are watching the cases with interest, and many say given a lack of regulatory support for the cancer linkage, plaintiffs' attorneys have an uphill climb to make such claims stick.

"The evidence to support the claims isn't there, said one prominent lawyer, declining to be quoted by name. "It's not mothers' milk by any means. I wouldn't mix it in my drink, but it's one of the safest chemicals out there," he said.

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Attorney Brent Wisner, who is representing the McCall family, said he is confident in the strength of the evidence against Monsanto. "It's going to be a fairly large litigation when it's all said and done. We're confident we'll be able to show that Monsanto controlled research and suppressed science," he said.

Back in Cambria, Jack McCall's son Paul McCall is running the farm in his father's place. His eyes tear quickly when asked about his father's diagnosis in September 2015 and death only three months later, the day after Christmas. He doesn't want to talk about the lawsuit, other than to say he has no use for glyphosate now, and wants to warn others away from it.

"This is a battle that has to be fought," he said.
TAO TAO HOLMES shares her experience as a perceived insider and perspective as an outside observer in Xinjiang.

When I walked past storefronts in China's far west Xinjiang region, I would sometimes catch shopkeepers pointing and mouthing the words "Weiwu'er." At security checkpoints, I would be treated more rudely and roughly than China's majority Han people, at least until I dug into my pockets and flashed my navy blue passport. When I walked into Han restaurants, a hush would often fall upon the room, guests eyeing me warily from above their bowls of noodle soup.

"My Mandarin isn't great... I'm American," I would publicly announce in Chinese. "Could you recommend me something tasty off the menu?" Instantaneously, the tension in the air would disperse, smiles lighting up guests' faces. A moment later, someone would always declare, "We thought you were Uighur." Other guests would nod along. "You really resemble a Uighur."

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Among Uighurs, my ambiguity was a privilege. Among Han, it was a liability.

Uighurs are a Turkic group of people with a look distinctly different from Han Chinese--there are Uighurs who are redheads, who look Slavic, some with very angular features, and others who look more conventionally Chinese. Historically, they were rivals of the Han, and most were eventually driven further west; today, people in Turkey can easily understand the Uighur language. Xinjiang, after all, is ancient Silk Road terrain, home to different bloodlines mixing over the millennia. Today, however, it is a region best known for terrorism and ethnic unrest--between when I accepted my teaching post and when I arrived in the region, there were two reported terrorist attacks in northern Xinjiang.

I spent most of last year at a university in Shihezi, a small, predominantly Han city out in the desert, a two-hour drive north-west of Urumqi, Xinjiang's capital. There, I taught a variety of graduate and undergraduate courses alongside two other Americans through the Princeton in Asia Fellowship. I think my students were less excited to have a foreign teacher resembling the local oppressed minority rather than a character from Friends, even if she did go to "Ye lu" University.

I identify as half white New Englander and half Beijing Chinese, meaning that I am tagged by Chinese as a hunxue ("mixed blood") and have the privilege of passing through the world with racial ambiguity. My facial features have oriental undertones and European overtones; in the past, I have been mistaken for Filipino, Portuguese, and Kazakh, but never have I fit into a racial fabric so seamlessly as I did in Xinjiang.

In Xinjiang, I looked distinctly Uighur, yet was also distinctly American, making me both an insider and an outsider--treated kindly by local Uighurs, racially profiled by Han Chinese, and protected by the power vested in me by an American passport. Among Uighurs, my ambiguity was a privilege. Among Han, it was a liability.

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***

Xinjiang is China's elephant in the room. It is the largest Chinese province, making up one fifth of the nation's geography--the size of Great Britain, France, Spain, and Germany combined--and a region different from "mainland" China in almost every conceivable way. People in Xinjiang use the term nei di, or "inner land," to refer to China's other provinces, and the rare foreign travelers you meet passing through the region will tell you they landed a great deal: entry to a seemingly different country, without the need for another visa.

It is a land made up of contrasts. Geographically, it is split between snow-capped mountains and desert basins. It borders eight countries--Mongolia, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, and the disputed territory of Kashmir. Culturally, it is split between the Uighurs (45%) and Han Chinese (40%), with other minorities contributing to a medley of forty different ethnic groups. Religiously, it is divided among atheists, Buddhists, and Muslims. Linguistically, it is split between government-mandated Mandarin, and Uighur, a Turkic language that uses an Arabic-derived script. Most places have both a Uighur and Chinese name. For example, the ancient city outside of Turpan is known as Yar in Uighur and Jiaohe in Mandarin.

Xinjiang is often referred to as China's Wild West; the name "Xinjiang" itself translates to "new borders." But Xinjiang as a "Wild West" is more desolate than romantic. During China's Qing Dynasty, thousands and thousands of convicts and other prisoners were exiled to the region. Soon after, regular civilians followed. Today, Xinjiang still feels like both an outlier and an outsider.

***

The first thing every Shihezi cab driver always asked me was: "What ethnicity are you?" Or to cut straight to the chase, "Are you Uighur?"

The answer, "I'm American," prompted the same response every time: "Oh, I thought you were Uighur," often followed by, "Then why would you come to Shihezi?!"

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I had a choice to come live in Xinjiang. Uighurs do not--the government makes it nearly impossible for them to get the paperwork they need to leave the region, not to mention the country. And the Uighurs--whether they genuinely desire independence from China, or simply want a modicum of human rights--are silenced and swept under the rug, away from the eyes and ears of international media.

As with many native peoples, the Uighurs are being steadily disenfranchised. Their land is being taken, their language repressed, their religion suppressed, and their customs increasingly policed and restricted.

With the escalation of the last few years, there have been different forms of repression--no beards, no burqas, no Korans in public. With tight curbs and high risk of punishment on both local and foreign journalists, less than five percent of clashes in Xinjiang are reported, according to Shohret Hoshur, a Uighur journalist and political exile. And in the global games of realpolitik and power balancing, feigning ignorance of realities on the ground is often in the best interest of foreign countries and their companies. With current murmurs about Uighur recruitment by ISIS, foreign powers continue to turn away.

Since the 1950s, the Xinjiang Production and Military Construction Corps (XPCC), better known in Chinese as the bingtuan (brigade), has been the main institution behind Han migration, reclamation, and resettlement in the region. XPCC soldiers were the first to colonize Xinjiang after the region was officially incorporated into the People's Republic, an event that has been politically branded as the "Peaceful Liberation of Xinjiang." From the 1950s to 1970s, tens of thousands of Chinese citizens from major cities like Shanghai were given clothes, food, and tickets to Xinjiang, many of them migrating involuntarily, leading to swift economic growth and urbanization.

One of these citizens was Uncle Jia, my building's 70-year-old garbage man. He arrived in Shihezi in 1960 at the age of 16; his father and three sisters had died of hunger back in their home province of Henan. Uncle Jia worked in a coal mine for most of his life, and he now has two daughters and a son who also live in Shihezi. His grandchildren are starting to head off to university in the "inner land."

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When I passed in and out of Beijing--2,000 miles to the east and a four-hour flight--over the course of the year, everyone I met there was shocked to hear that I was living in Xinjiang, a place of unrest and historical exile, beyond the boundaries of the "inner land." Older women and men alternately viewed my willingness to live and teach there as either brave and daring or foolhardy and illogical. Why go to Xinjiang when you could go to so many other places in China? The same word came up again and again to describe the region: luan, or chaotic. "Xinjiang is too chaotic," Beijingers would say, shaking their heads.

***

The land that is now Xinjiang has a history of being tugged back and forth. Under control of Chinese dynasties at different points in history, from Genghis Khan to the Qing, it wasn't until 1955, after several decades of shifting leadership and allegiances, that the landmass was established as an "Autonomous Region." At that time, the Chinese government's policies towards Xinjiang's minorities were relaxed and accommodating, the XPCC having just begun laying out its initial groundwork. Then, in the late 1990s, China's increased economic investment in Xinjiang, and consequent growth and development spurred increasing economic inequality between Hans and other groups. In the city of Karamay, for instance, the oil rigs only employ Han workers, while Uighurs are publicly pushed to the fringes.

Years of economically infused ethnic tensions came to a head on July 5, 2009, when Uighur riots in Urumqi led to the deaths of an estimated 200 people. The event became known in colloquial parlance as "qi wu" or "seven-five." Ever since qi wu, the city's security has been ramped up: there are military tanks outside all of the major bus and train stations, guarded by stone-faced personnel holding machine guns and long, baton-like spears, and security checkpoints everywhere.

Nowadays, Han migrants to the province are brought in not by coercion but by the potential for better economic prospects. If you ask Han folks of any age in Shihezi or Urumqi why they came all the way to Xinjiang, many of them will say fewer people, less competition, and thus better odds of making money.

***

There's still great disparity between the north and south of Xinjiang. The northern half of Xinjiang has been much more diluted by Han populations, Shihezi being the best example. The south, however, is still very much Uighur, despite being plastered with abundant government propaganda--messages about loving China and professing loyalty towards the Communist Party. In Kashgar, the biggest city in the south, far less Mandarin is spoken. For foreigners, it's best to stick to English; Mandarin, the state language, is unwelcome, a cue for repression. The south, too, is where conflict goes unreported. You might hear whispers of a village being massacred or officials being murdered. Yet our university administrators insisted that southern Xinjiang was perfectly safe. For us, it was all very odd and disconcerting, and with a closely controlled press, there was never any way of confirming, denying, or substantiating the rumors.

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I asked "Professor Lee" what he saw for the future of Xinjiang. He sighed. "It's going to go the same way as it did for the Navajo in America."

Most of my time in Xinjiang was spent within a distinctly Han community of students, teachers, and Shihezi residents, though with regular visits to Uighur restaurants. It was only on a trip to Turpan that I got a real sense of Uighur life. A mostly Uighur city a few hours south of Urumqi, Turpan felt altogether different from the many Chinese cities that I've passed through over the years: more relaxed, more carefree. Encountering us foreigners, Uighurs in Turpan were friendly but unflustered, outgoing rather than diffident. The city felt equally lively and relaxed, with all its raisin sellers, kebab stands and the mixed array of hair colors, eye colors, and cheekbones.

When I returned to the US from Xinjiang, I met up for coffee with a local college professor. A number of years ago, he had penned an essay on mistreatment of Uighurs that went into a published book, and thanks to that, he had been banned, like many academics, from re-entering China. We chatted for nearly two hours, his memories and descriptions of life in Xinjiang animated and infused with passion. He told me that he would love to go back, if he could. He loved the Uighur people and the region's physical beauty. He also told me that if I were to mention him in any form of writing, that it'd be in my best interest to give him a pseudonym, "for your sake, not mine." He suggested the name Professor Lee. Associating myself with his name, he said, might flag unwanted attention.

I asked "Professor Lee" what he saw for the future of Xinjiang. He sighed. "It's going to go the same way as it did for the Navajo in America." Lee said the treatment of Uighurs in China and of Native Americans in the US holds uncanny parallels, which he says does not bode well for the Uighurs' future. As with many native peoples, the Uighurs are being steadily disenfranchised. Xinjiang's natural resources are being exploited by Chinese companies and oil wealth funneled away. Their land is being taken, their language repressed, their religion suppressed, and their customs increasingly policed and restricted.

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***

I'll never forget a certain winter afternoon at the Urumqi bus station, where I and my two fellow American teachers were waiting in a clump of people to get inside and buy our tickets back to Shihezi. Any semblance of order was already a lost cause, yet a male policeman looked over and barked at me to get in line. I did the best I could, pushed up, penguin-like, against the people in front of me.

Suddenly and out of nowhere, the policeman leaned forward and shoved me in the chest, sending me backwards. "Get in line!" He repeated. Flustered, I continued to do my best to merge with the crowd. A moment later, the man stepped forward and shoved me in the chest--again. This second time, his touch shook me to the core, and an uncontrollable eruption of English expletives burst forth, showering over him.

He looked surprised. I realized later, that I don't think he expected me to speak English. I think he felt entitled to treat me like livestock because he assumed I was Uighur.

A female police officer nearby told him to back off. He withdrew, and the three of us proceeded through the security checkpoint and over to the ticket counter. I was stiff with disbelief that a figure of authority had just indulged in using physical force, choosing to single me out. Patiently standing among more than 15 others, I had been viewed a fair target.

It was the moment in Xinjiang that I felt the most Uighur.
The Refection Riding Arboretum & Nature Center will celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act by getting to know why many birds that migrate.

Birds of a Feather will be held Saturday from 10 a.m.-2 p.m. and is the second event in the Wild Chattanooga series co-presented by the Tennessee Aquarium and Reflection Riding Arboretum and Nature Center. To register click here.

Participants will have the opportunity to take part in bird walks, banding demonstrations and presentations on tracking migration patterns.

Schedule of Activities

Walks:

10:30 a.m. - Kevin Calhoun  Tennessee Aquarium Ornithology Specialist  Reflection Riding Bird Walk

12 p.m. - Kevin Calhoun  Tennessee Aquarium Ornithology Specialist  Reflection Riding Bird Walk

2 p.m.  Bob Butters  Naturalist  Nickajack Dam Bird and Nature walk (meet at Reflection Riding at 2 p.m.)

Presentations:

10:45 a.m.  Corey Hagen  Reflection Riding Education Director  Birds of Prey

1:30 p.m.  Corey Hagen  Reflection Riding Education Director  Birds of Prey

1 p.m.  John Diener and Lissie Diener  Avian Technicians for the Tennessee River George Trust - Where Migratory Birds Winter and How They Navigate to These Locations

Demonstration:

10 a.m.-12 p.m.  Dr. David Aborn  UTC Professor  Bird Banding Demonstration
ANASTASIIA ILINA examines the relationship between women's organizations and the Chinese authorities.

On April 13, 2015, the world sighed in relief as five female activists, later referred to as the "Feminist Five," were released from prison after a 37-day detention. Their offense? On the eve of International Women's Day, they were caught planning to hand out leaflets protesting sexual harassment on public transportation services. During their detention, Wei Tingting, Li Tingting, Wu Rongrong, Wang Man and Zheng Churan received support from public figures and international media. The support was not only coming from abroad. Women all around China posted photos in support of the "Feminist Five." Although the feminist movement in China is still fragile, feminist activists are gaining ground through a variety of channels that seek to negotiate a hostile institutional environment constructed by the Chinese authorities.

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Feminism in China does not consist of a Chinese woman with bands on her arms and posters in hand, ready to publicly protest. Chinese feminists are fighting a calculated battle so well-planned that authorities may see their actions as politically destabilizing and therefore subject to crackdown. Unlike the planned demonstration by the Feminist Five, most organized feminist activism operates within small circles on social media platforms such as Sina Weibo or WeChat. Vera Peneda is a journalist and author running the online project Feminism in China, a cause that grew out of a university task force and that has developed into a portal raising awareness about women's issues in China. "Feminism is not widely discussed, while feminists have a hard time and are looked down upon," she commented.

Feminist organizations in China are certainly not new. The first official NGOs advocating women's rights were established in the late 1970s following the Chinese government's enshrining of gender equality in its 1950 Marriage Law. In March 1995, Beijing hosted the Fourth World Conference on Women, attracting over 50,000 delegates and feminist NGOs to draft the Platform for Action, a pledge to advance gender equality for all women in the world.

Despite their visible presence in civil society since the late 1970s, feminist organizations have faced limited success in advancing the goals outlined during the Fourth World Conference. According to a special issue on women's organizations published by China Development Brief in 2015, the main concerns facing women include equal participation in the workforce, domestic violence, prostitution, and sex trafficking. In fact, according to a 2009 report from Peking University's Center for Women's Law and Legal Service, 1 in 4 women in China has been denied a job due to her gender. While the Communist Party of China officially upholds gender equality, claiming to support cooperation with civil society actors on legislating new governmental policy, these NGOs derive their true influence on the government by raising public awareness of women's issues, relying on public pressure to capture the attention of China's legislative body.

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Domestic violence is a concern that clearly illustrates the constrained power of feminist activists while working under unfriendly conditions fostered by the government. The All China Women's Federation reports that 25 percent of women in China have experienced domestic violence in their homes yet only forty thousand to fifty thousand complaints have been registered. The Anti-Domestic Violence Network (ADVN) was the only NGO in China centered on domestic violence issues, but it was forced to close in 2014, taking down affiliated organizations such as Peking University's Women's Legal Aid Centre this past January. Both organizations experienced management issues as some of its leading members were scholars and opinion leaders who may not have made the organization's work their top priority. Sustainable funding also became more difficult after the 2009 global financial crisis with the main funding sources of the ADVN dropping off significantly in the years leading up to its closing.

Lack of external support in the face of an unresponsive government brings women to voice their concerns through personal campaigns such as the 'Blood Brides.' In 2012, two members of the later-known "Feminist Five" walked down the streets of Beijing in wedding gowns stained with blood while distributing anti-domestic violence pamphlets. Although it was one of many demonstrations, the strong public reaction they provoked combined with a significant number of recently reported domestic violence cases bore its first results. On March 1, 2016, China passed its first ever law against domestic violence.

Female workforce participation is another issue that Chinese feminist organizations have been limited in addressing due to institutional inaction. Although more women have taken on professional careers since the late 1970s, female labor force participation still lags far behind that of men. A survey published in the Harvard Asia Pacific Review reveals that 63.4% of female graduates become employed straight after university compared to 72.1% of male graduates. In the absence of governmental legislation for bolstering women's presence in the workforce, women unite in support groups to help each other climb the career ladder. Charlotte Xu Han, one of the co-founders of the first Lean In circle in Beijing, an international initiative first introduced to China in 2013, shares that group members aim to encourage "women in China to achieve their own definition of success and happiness through leadership, mentorship and mutual support." In less than three years, the organization has grown to have chapters in 16 cities and 40 colleges in China.

While the Chinese government has undertaken some institutional initiatives to aid and support women, their effectiveness as well as intentions are questionable. The All-China Women's Federation (ACWF), an organization whose leadership has always included Communist Party members, was first established in 1949. The Federation sponsors affiliates such as Women of China magazine, a news source for issues concerning Chinese women as well as a media platform for promoting ACWF. Jane Willborn, a journalist working for Women of China, observes that although the Federation "sponsors events and charity organizations to get women training, at the same time they have to follow the Party line and they are not going to say anything radical." In fact, the China Development Brief identifies the ACWF as the most dominant yet the least Party-independent women's rights organization. The publically influential position of ACWF creates a uniquely complex relationship between itself and other feminist civil society actors. The ACWF's strong social presence, thanks to official Party support, may minimize the importance of other non-Party affiliated feminist organizations, giving the public the wrong impression that women's issues are already being adequately addressed by the government. Strong Party ties and the ability to mobilize mass media attention, however, may make the ACWF a valuable ally for feminist grassroots organizations, providing them a political channel through which they can exert pressure on government policy-makers.

Unfortunately, much of the power to resolve these issues is still vested in the government.

In early April, China's state-regulated microblogging site Weibo suspended all user accounts and denied new registrations that contained the words "women's rights" (nu quan). While a New York Times report from the United Nations' Global Leaders' Meeting on Gender Equality and Women's Empowerment in September 2015 quotes Xi Jinping as vowing to "reaffirm China's commitment to women's rights", his promise rings empty as long as unofficial channels through which feminists voice their concerns are cut off. In order for the Chinese Dream to be truly realized by all, men and women included, greater operational freedom must be granted to feminist organizations.
CAMILIA RAZAVI and DANIEL KHALESSI take an in-depth look at China's growing footprint in Iran.

In 138 BC, a Chinese imperial envoy named Zhang Qian set out to traverse the dangerous plains of Central Asia on horseback, ultimately entering the Persian Empire. On January 30th, 2016, Chinese President Xi Jinping descended from his airplane in Tehran, marking the continuation of a two-thousand-year-old relationship between the two civilizations.

"Iran has historically been one of China's most significant trading partners," says Dr. Lu Yang, Professor in the Department of History at Peking University. "For centuries, Persia and China engaged in trade over land and sea. During the Tang Dynasty, Persia transferred important technology for sea travel to China."

Today, Chinese leaders and entrepreneurs are reinvigorating the history of close economic ties between the two countries. President Xi became the first foreign head of state to visit Iran in the aftermath of the recent nuclear deal and the suspension of international sanctions against Iran. After a series of meetings between President Xi and Iranian leaders--namely Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, President Hassan Rouhani, and the Majlis (Iran's parliament) -- the two governments ambitiously agreed to increase bilateral trade from $55 billion to $600 billion over the next decade. In September 2015, only a few months after the P5+1 finalized the nuclear deal, a single Chinese businessman Sheng Kuan Li invested $200 million in a steel mill in Zarinabad, even bringing laborers from China to work at the facility.

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"Iran and China have become natural allies because of practical necessities and not certainly due to ideological compatibility," says Monshipouri. "Iran is a stable country in a region of political instability and has a great deal of resources that China needs."

President Xi's decision to increase bilateral trade with Iran, however, coincides with recent economic problems in China. Last year, China's 6.9 percent increase in GDP marked its slowest growth rate in a quarter century. Likewise, the economic activity of China's manufacturing and services sectors experienced a slowdown. Despite these challenges at home, China has continued to place a high value on its increased trade and investment in Iran.

China's greater involvement in Iran can also be viewed as a means of strengthening its strategic and economic foothold in the Middle East. "Chinese officials frequently emphasize their interest in maintaining a balance of power in the region," says Paul Haenle, Former China Director on the National Security Council staffs of the Bush and Obama administrations and Founding Director of the Carnegie-Tsinghua Center. "China sees Iran as a Middle Eastern partner in ensuring the United States is not dominant in the Middle East." Moreover, China's partnership with Iran and the recent multilateral negotiations over Iran's nuclear program may have been mutually reinforcing.

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Despite receiving little media attention, the economic relationship between China and Iran played an important role in the outcome of the nuclear negotiations. "During the P5+1 negotiations, China was able to offer Iran the prospect of greater bilateral economic cooperation that would benefit Iran's stressed economy if an agreement was reached," says Mr. Haenle. Indeed, China argued that the suspension of sanctions would create immense economic advantages for Iran. According to Mr. Haenle, "China repeatedly called on Iran to take advantage of the opportunity to lift the economic burden caused by international concerns about its nuclear program and reap subsequent economic benefits, including Chinese investment and joint infrastructure development."

While many experts and policymakers discuss the merits of an American pivot to Asia, China is pivoting to the world, starting with Iran.

Before this agreement however, sanctions prevented European countries from accessing Iranian oil markets, allowing China to purchase oil from Iran and invest in Iran's energy production sector. Indeed in 2014, China doubled its quota for infrastructure investments in Iran. As reported in the Chinese newspaper Xinhua, President Xi stated that China and Iran would be "natural partners" in his One Belt, One Road Initiative, which attempts to promote greater economic connectivity between China, Central Asia, and the Middle East.

Some scholars, however, point out that the partnership between the two countries is more likely grounded in pragmatism than political ideology. "Iran and China have become natural allies because of practical necessities and not certainly due to ideological compatibility," says Mahmood Monshipouri, Visiting Professor at UC Berkeley and Middle East expert. "Iran is a stable country in a region of political instability and has a great deal of resources that China needs." The proxy wars and conflicts between Iran and Saudi Arabia can increase regional instability and pose risks to China's ease-of-access to Iran's resources.

Despite tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia, it is important to note that President Xi visited both nations during his Middle East tour. The simultaneity of President Xi's economic diplomacy with the two geopolitical rivals of the region could potentially allow China to serve as a third party mediator in the event of a conflict. According to Monshipouri, the rationale for these strategic visits might be to show the world that China is "keen on maintaining stability in the region and has worked assiduously and diligently to have bilateral relationship with all key countries in the region." Greater regional stability, in turn, can strengthen the confidence of Chinese investors as they contemplate new ventures in the Middle East.

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The trade and investment trends emerging in the aftermath of the Iran nuclear deal provide a valuable window into China's possible strategic ambitions in the Middle East. In the midst of economic challenges at home and brewing tensions in the Middle East, President Xi's historic visit to Iran and the new $600 billion trade deal may be part of China's larger strategy of sustaining a balance of power against the United States while reaping the economic benefits of a more globally integrated Iranian economy. While many experts and policymakers discuss the merits of an American pivot to Asia, China is pivoting to the world, starting with Iran.

Camilia Razavi is a Middle East analyst, graduate of UC Berkeley, and former intern at the White House Domestic Policy Council. Contact her at crazavi@berkeley.edu.
JACKSON TSE analyzes the impetus behind the creation of the Asia Infrastructure and Investment Bank and its implications for the future.

Initiating operations in January 2016, the Asian Infrastructure and Investment Bank (AIIB) is a Chinese-conceived multilateral institution aimed at financing infrastructure projects in the Asia Pacific region. The AIIB was established to "complement and cooperate with the existing MDBs to jointly address the daunting infrastructure needs in Asia," an annual shortfall which the Asian Development Bank pegs at approximately $800 billion. So far, 57 countries have signed onto the Bank's Articles of Agreement, providing it with an authorized capital stock of $100 billion.

While this sum may not seem momentous, measuring two-thirds of the Asian Development Bank's budget and half that of the World Bank's, the establishment of a Chinese-led multilateral institution in and of itself is significant. As recent as 2013, Georgetown University Professor David Shambaugh wrote that China remains "a partial power," a power that remains isolated, whose reach remains decidedly "shallow." Assessed alongside the "One Belt, One Road" initiative, increasing activeness in the South China Sea, and blossoming trade deals through the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the Bank accentuates China's increasing desire to seek a leadership role in the Asia Pacific. In light of these developments, how does China see itself?

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Following the Cultural Revolution, China viewed itself as a politically weak, economically poor country. In 1978, Deng Xiaoping asserted that "as a socialist country, China shall always belong to the Third World and shall never seek hegemony." To belabor this point, Deng advanced the taoguang yanghui strategy - that China should "hide [its] capacities and bide [its] time; be good at maintaining a low profile; and never claim leadership."

Such a policy made geopolitical sense. Before China initiatived market reform in 1978, China's GDP per capita measured a mere $165. In 1981, close to 85 percent of the populace lived under the poverty line of $1.25/day. Since Reform and Opening, however, China has undergone a dramatic transformation. The country's annual average growth rate has exceeded 10 percent. GDP per capita has risen to $7,590, and close to 600 million people have been lifted out of poverty.

At present, there have been differing opinions amongst China watchers as to the continued relevance of Deng's "low profile" dictum. Paul Haenle, Director of the Carnegie-Tsinghua Center for Global Policy, argues that Deng's policy is "increasingly irrelevant... [given the] active and muscular approach to foreign affairs [adopted by] President Xi Jinping." Normatively, however, Haenle states that "there is still an active debate as to China's desired end-state." Scholars like Yan Xuetong argue that Beijing should assume greater leadership on the world stage by establishing military alliances, pursuing a more aggressive foreign policy, and preparing for greater competition vis-a-vis Washington. Others, like Ambassador Wu Jianmin have asserted the need to continue "maintaining a low profile" and focusing efforts inwardly at domestic development.

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The debate around the AIIB captures this division. Most scholars argue that while the Chinese leadership continues to prioritize itself via internal development, it has sought out a more active role in the surrounding region - for good or for bad. According to Andrew Nathan of Columbia University, the AIIB serves as a means by which China can not only park its vast exchange reserves, but also to "enhance influence with neighbors and thus improve security in both the economic and the military senses." This facilitates the leadership's attempt to "maintain peace and stability domestically, in the periphery, and globally - but also at the same time, to use China's gradually increasing clout... to build out toward increased security and global influence." Similarly, former Rear Admiral Yang Yi highlighted that the AIIB is part of Chinese efforts in "bringing a better life for its own people" and strengthens China's position in "[creating] a harmonious world [and] making countries wealthy, secure, and friendly."

The Bank's modus operandi further reflects this duality. China possesses the largest voting share at roughly 26 percent, and holds a 30.34 percent stake in the Bank. Yun Sun, a fellow of the Brookings Institute, notes that this governance structure gives China power over the voting process on issues that require a supermajority, such as the board, the President, capital increases, and other significant policies, leading some to believe that the AIIB is a tool the Chinese government is using to seek personal benefits. As Haenle stresses, "the worst outcome is that China uses AIIB to soak up its own industrial capacity and give contracts to state-owned enterprises, [demonstrating] that Chinese external initiatives are in reality a vehicle to address its own domestic challenges."

At the same time, the regional and non-regional distribution of capital shares - 75 percent regional and 25 percent non-regional - means that now, more than ever, Asian countries, especially smaller ones, are better positioned to vocalize their developmental priorities and demands. Indeed, the fact that China has given up veto power over day-to-day operational issues has convinced many countries like the United Kingdom and Germany that Beijing is willing to make the AIIB line up with international norms.

Consequently, Asian countries have assumed a range of positions when dealing with the AIIB and, more broadly, China. While Japan has adopted a "wait and see approach" to membership and has engaged in what many see as soft balancing by announcing a $100 billion package deal for "high quality and innovative" infrastructure development, Vietnam has acquiesced relatively quickly to joining the Bank. The Philippines has taken a middle position, joining the Bank, but only after an extended period of consideration in which it voiced its unease.

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All share a recognition of China's immense economic clout and the need for engagement, as well as a distrust of Beijing's geopolitical intentions. Time will tell as to whether these apprehensions are justified.
YIFU DONG reviews One Child, a new book about China's One-Child Policy by journalist Mei Fong.

I have always wanted siblings. This longing crept up when I was eleven, the year my family spent in the US Before and after that, my Beijing schools were packed with only children, but in the US, nearly all of my classmates and friends had siblings. Quite naturally, I grew jealous and was certain that having a sibling would be a plus in my life.

But before I was eleven, I had already known exactly why I couldn't have a sibling. The reason was China's One-Child Policy. This policy was proposed in the late 1970s and formally adopted in 1980. It stipulates that every family can have only one child, though certain exceptions apply. Violators of the policy are subject to heavy fines and other administrative punishments.

Although the policy has had a direct impact on my life, I have come to realize that I am one of the more fortunate victims after reading One Child: The Story of China's Most Radical Experiment. In her latest book, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Mei Fong reveals the human cost of China's One-Child Policy.

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Despite the fact that the One-Child Policy was abolished at around the same time One Child was published in late 2015 to give way to a Two-Child Policy that allows families to have up to two children, Fong suggests that the impact of the One-Child Policy will reverberate for years to come.

Fong, an ethnically Chinese woman and the youngest daughter born to a family that desperately wanted a son, pays a visit to her family village in China and personally testified to the gender discrimination: the family tree recorded very few births of girls.

If given some brief hints, perhaps even a first grader can tell that the One-Child Policy--two parents producing only one child--will lead to a gradual decline in population. This decline can be startling. According to Fong, even with the Two-Child Policy now in place, most parents are wary of the cost of bringing up a second child. If this trend continues, China's population will peak between 2020 and 2030 but will shrink to a mere 500 million, back to the 1950 level, by 2100. This "disappearance" of around one billion people will be the largest population reduction in human history, more than the mass deaths China has constantly witnessed in times of war and famine throughout centuries. Despite the excessive force used in its enforcement, the One-Child Policy is not outright mass murder, but it takes away people's rights to reproduce and prevents the creation of hundreds of millions of lives.

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A common rationale for the One-Child Policy is that fewer people make larger economic growth possible. Fong corrects this misconception in the prologue by pointing out China's economic miracle depended on a mass, cheap labor force. Indeed, China's current economic downturn is partly due to a shortage of workers, and this problem will likely remain for years to come due to the expansive three decades of time the One-Child Policy lasted.

Fong exposes the unscientific and radical nature of the policy but does not go as far as some Chinese intellectuals in displaying the calculus from the perspective of the Chinese Communist Party. Even though it is obvious that allowing two children for each family is healthier and more sustainable in the long run, the Communist Party only focused on its short-term survival in the 1970s. The disastrous policies of the Mao era killed millions and left the living in abject poverty. By the logic of the Chinese authorities, the main reason for famines and poverty was that there was not enough food to feed everyone. Therefore, the fewer the mouths to feed, the better the economy would be. In official propaganda, people are encouraged to have fewer children and raise more pigs and plant more trees. Liu Junning, a famous Chinese liberal intellectual, once commented regarding the One-Child Policy, "It seems that if China has one person and hundreds of millions of pigs, it will become the richest nation in the world."

Fong makes a convincing case by showing readers the radical origin, heavy-handed implementation and potentially severe consequences of the One-Child Policy, leaving no stone unturned.

The apparent flaw in the authorities' reasoning, as Liu and other critics of the policy have pointed out, is that human beings are seen solely as a burden to the regime, not creators of wealth and contributors to society. The One-Child Policy, put simply, represents a fundamental disrespect for the value of human life. Fong does not explicitly make this point, but she shows the negative impact the policy has on different groups of individuals, echoing this broader critique of the policy.

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The impact the policy has on the whole of society, Fong reveals, includes a rapidly aging population and a huge gender imbalance. Given Chinese culture's preference for boys to girls and the One-Child rule, many families abandon newborn girls or choose abortion if they find out the fetus is female. Fong, an ethnically Chinese woman and the youngest daughter born to a family that desperately wanted a son, pays a visit to her family village in China and personally testified to the gender discrimination: the family tree records very few births of girls. This obsession with boys is also ominous for boys, for China will have 30 to 40 million surplus men by 2020. Fong visits spontaneous marriage markets in major parks across Chinese cities, with parents putting their own sons and daughters in ads. She even attends a dating fair herself, where relationship and marriage have become mere commodities. Fong also explains the increasing expense of caili (the dowry the husband pays the wife's family) and also leads readers to a sex doll factory. Together with these new social phenomena, Fong also helpfully introduces popular newfangled Chinese idioms such as kubi, diaosi and zhainan. Throughout the book, twinges of sadness are behind the commoditization of sex and marriage, the anxiety of parents, the plight of surplus men and the discrimination facing women.

Besides ramifications of the general trends, Fong focuses on the anomalies, also vivid illustrations of the effects of the One-Child Policy. The book begins with the deadly 2008 Sichuan earthquake that killed thousands of only children and left parents in despair, an event that prompted Fong to further investigate the One-Child Policy. Since the One-Child Policy, in essence, is more an order from the Communist Party than merely a law, local government officials were pressured to adhere to the policy at all costs. Fong reports the trauma of women who underwent late-term abortions as well as government employees who strictly enforced the policy. Fong's investigation also goes beyond China's borders, with stories of Chinese adoptees and their American parents, as well as Chinese parents and their American surrogate mothers.

When I first saw the title of the book, I doubted whether calling the One-Child Policy the most radical experiment in China was an overstatement. But overall, Fong makes a convincing case by showing readers the radical origin, heavy-handed implementation and potentially severe consequences of the One-Child Policy, leaving no stone unturned. However, the significance of the book goes beyond the One-Child Policy itself: it documents just how many individuals in China bear the cost of policies from the top.

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Yifu Dong is a junior at Yale University and a co-managing editor of the magazine. Contact him at yifu.dong@yale.edu.
XIAOYING ZHOU examines a changing political climate in Taiwan.

Hundreds of Chinese faces sprouted up the second I walked in. The auditorium of Minuteman Regional High School in Lexington, Massachusetts was packed, inundated in a sea of red for the celebration of Chinese New Year. As I sat down next to my landlady Stella, a Taiwanese expat in her eighties, she observed with a smile that I hadn't changed at all.

Taiwanese separatists, she said, have forgotten that "blood is thicker than water."

Two weeks before the celebration, Taiwan had elected its first female president in history, Tsai Ing-wen, chairwoman of the island's pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), commonly known as the "Green Party." Tsai won by a landslide with 56.12% of the votes.

I asked Stella what she thought about the election. She shook her head in disapproval at the victory of the DPP. Taiwanese separatists, she said, have forgotten that "blood is thicker than water," quoting an old Chinese saying that urges people to always remember blood ties. "We all belong to the same people," she said. "Why fight with each other?"

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The daughter of a Chinese Nationalist officer, Stella left the Mainland for Taiwan when she was nine, after the Communists forced the Nationalists off the Mainland in China's civil war in 1949. She spent her formative years in Taiwan, before moving to the United States with her husband. For Stella and many Taiwanese with Nationalist ties, both the Mainland and Taiwan are home. Since the civil war ended more than half a century ago, they believe, the Nationalists and the Communists should work together to unify the Mainland and the island of Taiwan, like East and West Germany in 1989. But as the generation of Nationalist immigrants gets older, their children have started to regard Taiwan as their only home, identifying as Taiwanese rather than Chinese.

The generational divide is not the only reason for Taiwan's rising nationalism. Like in the United States, Taiwanese politics has been plagued by strong partisanship in the last two decades. In a sense, the DPP's victory in the 2016 presidential election is but an indicator of Taiwanese dissatisfaction with the Nationalist Party (KMT), or "Blue Party," as it's more commonly known today.

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Thanks largely to the KMT government, Taiwan saw much political turmoil in the latter half of the twentieth century. In 1947, the KMT took control of Taiwan following Japan's defeat in WWII. After fifty years of Japanese colonization, many in Taiwan thought they were finally liberated. But they were soon proven wrong. During the so-called "228 Incident" in 1947, the KMT regime brutally repressed an anti-government uprising, killing tens of thousands of Taiwanese civilians. In 1949, Chiang Kai-shek, the first president of the Republic of China (ROC) and then-chairman of the KMT, imposed martial law in Taiwan, beginning a period that would last for 38 years. During this time, known in Taiwan as the "White Terror," the KMT government killed thousands of political dissidents and intellectuals.

In the 1980s, Chiang Ching-kuo, son of Chiang Kai-shek and third President of ROC, was more tolerant of political dissent and opened up Taiwanese internal politics by inviting non-Chinese to join the KMT and non-KMT to join the government. In 1988, Lee Teng-hui became the first ethnically non-Chinese person to be elected President in Taiwan. After Chen Shui-bian became Taiwan's first DPP president in 2000, the KMT redefined itself as the explicitly pro-reunification party, reaching a rapprochement with its former enemy, the Mainland's Communist Party of China (CCP). While the KMT reclaimed the presidency in 2008, its recent policies have been regarded as a failure. A proud member of the "Four Asian Tigers" in the 1970s, Taiwan today is beset with economic stagnancy, which many attribute to the pro-China policies of KMT president Ma Ying-jeou. The youth unemployment rate is high: about 12 to 13 percent, according to a 2014 report by Taiwan Today. In retrospect, Ma's policies, which promised economic growth by opening up to the Chinese market, are now seen to have benefited only big corporations and elites.

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But beyond the divide between Blue and Green, there is also a third force developing in Taiwan that seeks to surpass the partisanship on the island. Ketagalan Media, founded three years ago by two Taiwanese-Americans interested in informing and inspiring the "movement of ideas and trends" in Taiwan, is one example of the many new media outlets that have established themselves as moderate voices in Taiwan today. In a recent piece published by Ketagalan, for example, author Calin Brown discussed the subtle but pernicious racism that exists in Taiwan, drawing attention to the unresolved issue of the status of South Asian immigrants and other ethnic minorities on the island. New political groups and parties have emerged as well. For instance, Taiwan's third largest party in terms of legislative seat count, the New Power Party (NPP), draws many of its leaders from the "Sunflower Student Movement," which staged protests after the KMT negotiated a new trade pact with the Mainland in 2014, during Ma's presidency.

"What we need is not one small party after another calling themselves the Third Force. What we need is to build Taiwan's new post-war political society."

Rebellious and idealistic, the NPP represents a sizable portion of Taiwan's disaffected youth. "I'd like to think that they distinguish themselves from the other parties because they never play dirty," said Chen, a college student and supporter of the NPP. "The NPP may need to mature as a political party, but overall their current existence is proof of a better balance and greater diversity among those in power," argued Pai, a Taiwanese-American student living in the United States.

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While the NPP shares the DPP's pro-separatist position, it has set its sights on loftier goals, advocating for human rights and the expansion of civil and political liberties. The NPP has also sought to move past the partisan hang-ups that have plagued Taiwan for decades. Recently in Ketagalan Media, former political activist Jou Yi-cheng called for leaders of small parties such as the NPP to look beyond empty political slogans and focus on rebuilding Taiwanese society. After nearly seventy years of first authoritarian and then partisan rule, young Taiwanese are looking to transcend not only the policies of a given party, but also what they view as a broken political system. As Jou wrote, "What we need is not one small party after another calling themselves the Third Force," referencing the NPP's popular nickname. "What we need," he continued, "is to build Taiwan's new post-war political society." Whether Tsai Ing-wen will use her mandate to eclipse partisanism and collaborate with the hopeful architects of Taiwan's new political society, only time will tell.
APRIL DAN FENG presents the pros and cons of China's Supply-Side Reform policy.

On November 10, 2015, during the Chinese Communist Party Working Conference on Economic Policies, President Xi Jinping introduced a series of policies to stimulate Chinese economy known as the Supply-Side Reform. Of the numerous policies, Xi emphasized the importance of cutting the state-owned enterprises' (SOEs) sprawling over capacity and announced that the government would start ordering mergers of SOEs by pooling together their resources to obtain bigger market shares and more efficient operating structures. In short, the bigs are getting bigger, per government's request.

Over the years, China's SOEs have become less profitable, especially when compared with private enterprises. According to a national survey conducted in March 2015 by the National Bureau of Statistics, total profits of SOEs decreased by 37 percent compared to the year before, whereas profits of their private counterparts increased by 9.1 percent. However, SOEs continue to occupy a major share of markets and resources and overproduce under such inefficient privileges. In the steel and coal industries especially, almost half of the world's yield is attributed to the overproduction of Chinese SOEs. Since the Deng Xiaoping administration, the Chinese Communist Party has been gradually reforming China's economic structure by actively supporting private-owned firms through various policy combinations like transferring ownership of state-owned assets and setting up a budget system for managing state capital. The efforts on behalf of strengthening the private sector have definitely bore fruit. According to a report by the World Bank, growth of the private sector has steadily increased since the 1980s. In 2003, the private sector had grown to employ 74.7 million people, surpassing, for the first time, the 74.6 million employed by SOEs. Under such a trend, China's economy has achieved unprecedented growth over the past thirty years.

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However, Xi's proposal of merging SOEs seems to flip the focus from empowering private enterprises to strengthening the state-owned sector. The president confidently argued that such efforts could further advance the efficiency of the market and provide benefits to consumers. But could it really?

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Although the proposed supply-side reform could conceivably lower costs through merging, it cannot drive down prices without creating a more competitive market for the SOEs. In other words, these firms would have the resources but not the incentives to provide lower pricing.

In fact, mergers of SOEs inevitably reduce market competition by concentrating the market share of state-owned monopolies and raising the barrier to entry for private enterprises. On December 30, 2014, China's two largest state-owned rail companies, China CNR Corporation Limited (CNR) and China South Locomotive & Rolling Stock Corporation Limited (CSR) announced that under government order from Beijing, they would merge to form China Railway Stock Corp. (CRRC). The newly merged company controls over 90 percent of China's industry with a market value of $26 billion and a combined annual revenue of $32.3 billion, making it virtually impossible for smaller private enterprises like the Shenzhen China Technology Industry Group Corporation Limited to survive in the industry.

Since merging SOEs will almost inevitably reduce the number of competitors in specific industries and stymie competition between the private and the state-owned sectors. It is unlikely that the newly merged SOEs will lower prices. Thus, such a policy might end up hurting consumers--a problem that China, if it hopes to expand its domestic demand, should be wary of.

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As the Chinese SOEs gain more say in both the domestic and the global markets, they face less competition in their respective industries and gain more bargaining power in setting prices at their will.

How can the Party address the long-lasting issue of SOEs slowing down market efficiency then? Professor Eva Dziadula from the University of Notre Dame provides an insight into the problem, "The reform should encourage competition and needs to be more market oriented. If you want to create incentives for growth, then benefits such as preferential tax treatments should also benefit the private enterprises." Essentially, as Dr. Dziadula points out, the reform indeed should be on the supply-side, but the Chinese government has targeted the wrong suppliers. To truly benefit the consumers, it is best to help private companies thrive instead of equilibrating the market with the giant SOEs.

The key to solving the slowdown of market growth is to help private enterprises by ending the government-provided preferential treatments that SOEs receive. Since the 1960s, Chinese SOEs have enjoyed preferential treatment from the government in areas such as licensing, government contracting, and financing--ultimately securing an unfair competitive edge over private enterprises. Many leaders of SOEs have been found guilty of corruption and collusion with government officials. According to the official Xinhua News Agency, 115 business leaders of SOEs were arrested and charged with corruption in 2014 alone. Lack of market competition and corruption have worsened the SOEs' efficiency. Only by ending the preferential treatments to SOEs can the government really achieve the important goal of allocating capital and resources fairly across different market sectors on the supply side. The new market structure would push some SOEs to merge and will increase the likelihood that they lower prices proportionally to their actual costs.

What are the motives behind the government's proposal then? One guess is that such moves form national champions that can better compete overseas. Since the policy was first raised in December last year, there had been rumors of mergers of some of the biggest SOEs in the railway, telecom, steel and airline industries. According to the Wall Street Journal, a merger of China Railway Group and China Railway Construction will create a combined revenue of 1.2 trillion yuan, giving China a much greater say in the global market. The combined company of China Unicom and China Telecom has an annual revenue of 609 billion. A merger of Wuhan Steel and Baosteel would create the world's No. 2 steel company by production. A merger of Air China and China Southern Airlines would create the world's largest air carrier by fleet size. However, as the Chinese SOEs gain more say in both the domestic and the global markets, they face less competition in their respective industries and gain more bargaining power in setting prices at their will.

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As the bigs go bigger, Beijing tightens its grip on key parts of world industry. In the next few years, however, under this shadow China casts on the global economy, the domestic consumers and private enterprises will still likely be struggling in the dark.



April Dan Feng is a junior at the University of Notre Dame. Contact her at dan.feng.13@nd.edu.
ZIYU YVONNE YAN explores the meaning behind novel expressions on the Chinese Internet.

"The True Story of Ah Q," a novella by the famous early twentieth-century Chinese writer Lu Xun, is a classic in Chinese literature. The protagonist, Ah Q, is a poor peasant living at the bottom rung of Chinese society. When the son of his landlord Zhao passes the Imperial Examination, Ah Q celebrates with his landlord's family and presents himself as a "Zhao." Landlord Zhao retorts, "You think you are also worthy of the surname Zhao?"

Since Lu Xun wrote the novel in 1923, the idiom "Ah Q Spirit" has become popularized, used commonly to refer to a disadvantaged person who denies reality and tends to think optimistically. Starting December of last year, however, a new, more cynical Lu Xun-inspired metaphor has outshined "Ah Q Spirit," and become viral on the Internet --"Zhao Family," or Zhao jia ren.

Behind the rise of the phrase "Zhao Family" is a growing divide between social classes, a divide fueled by Party-led political favoritism. "Zhao Family" is an explicit reference to the wealthy and the powerful in Chinese society today, typically "princelings," the well-connected offspring of Mao-era revolutionaries who utilize their social connections with large state-owned companies to gain support for their financial ventures.

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Although "Zhao Family" is typically used in a light-hearted and sarcastic way, underlying political, economic, and cultural connotations of the phrase highlight serious fissures in Chinese society today. Frequent references to "Zhao Family," be it in daily conversations at dinner or on online microblogging platforms like Weibo and WeChat, indicate a rising wave of cynicism. Jokes, jingles and literary references have become an outlet for people to express their political discontent and frustration with the Chinese authorities.

There are many other examples of online slang that, like "Zhao Family," reveal popular frustration with the growing economic divide in Chinese society. "Compare fathers," Pin Die, for example, literally meaning "dad fight," has become popular in recent years. The phrase is used by teenagers and young adults who believe that the socio-economic status of their families is a crucial determinant of their future success. "Compare Fathers," now used as a term to criticize this generation's foul play with money and political power, reveals a clear resentment for those who use powerful familial connections to get ahead.

Another phrase that has become popular is ni guo, "your country." This phrase emerged in response to use of the phrase wo guo, "our country", by Chinese media outlets in official statements announcing China's recent achievements. For example, a CCTV reporter on the nightly news or a headliner on People's Daily often says, "Our country's economy has been looking positive." The use of the possessive pronoun in state-regulated mediums indicates a sense of shared pride and dignity resented by a public that feels that it is not truly being represented by its government. The separation between "my country" and "your country" indicates a growing disillusionment with the government in present-day China, a desire to separate one's personal identity from the national identity dictated and imposed on its citizens by the Chinese government.

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Wang Jun, a Chinese ping shu artist familiar with the folk slang that appears frequently in traditional stories, explains that "folk slang originates from people's dissatisfaction and even resentment, yet they often don't have specific and effective suggestions for the sources of their discontent to improve." This is evident in the now commonly used phrase zhuan jia, or "brickspert", used to describe experts who downplay economic, health, and safety problems in the face of government pressure. The witty yet ironic replacement of the first character in the Chinese word zhuan, meaning "expert", to another homophone meaning "brick" conflates bricks and China's supposedly erudite scholars. "Brickspert" has become the customary word that netizens use in response to any professional comments that seem politically orchestrated. Most people don't have their own suggestions for solving the problems, yet they nevertheless ridicule the experts for whatever they say as an outlet for their discontent.

This frustration with the authorities also stemmed from former president Hu Jintao's call for a "harmonious society." To achieve harmony, government censors "harmonize" the community by stifling free online discourse. From online blogging to even TV dramas, Xi Jinping's administration has further strengthened the state's control over various media sources. Results for phrases like "Zhao Family" on search engines such as Baidu are partially or fully blocked with an explanation that some of these results violate "relevant laws, regulations, and policies." Nevertheless, the widespread usage of phrases like "Zhao Family" calls to attention class differences and social inequality in China. More importantly, such popular online slang rallies those who don't belong to the "Zhao Family" against the elites that are responsible for such the deeply inequitable society China is today. Introducing new ideas and new mindsets, Internet slang has tremendous potential to facilitate an online dialogue that pushes for a social order that doesn't just belong to the "Zhao Family."
Quebec, Canada

As Christians, we seem to have become obsessed with pointing out the perceived faults, failures and heresies in churches other than their own. Too quickly we share our opinions on how Christians who do not agree with our own biblical, theological or social perspectives are misguided in their thinking and Christian practice. Such behavior has significantly hindered the work of the Church.

It has become clear to me, after 16 years of being involved in campus ministry, that Christians have often done more in teaching about what divides churches than teaching about how Christ unites us despite our differences. When young people leave their homes and churches to go away to college, they usually have to step out of their theological bubble and interact with other Christians (not to mention people of many other faiths).

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Talk to any campus minister and they will share examples of how students will not participate in certain worship services for reasons such as, "communion is served every week," "they do not do music like my church," "it is too formal," "it is too contemporary," "there are too many fundamentalists," "there is a woman preacher," "there are too many mainliners," and the list could go on. I often joke that my role as a campus minister involves disappointing students on a regular basis due to our weekly services not being exactly like those of their home church.

I am trying to help students see first the beauty in churches other than their own. This can best happen when they have genuine friendships with those from other churches and choose to worship together with them. While we all may decide not to join a certain church for theological or other reasons, we still have much to learn from other Christians and churches.

Seeing the faults and failures in other churches is easy. It takes a spiritual maturity deeply rooted in our love for Christ and His Church for us to see and affirm the beauty in churches other than our own.

A humbling moment happened in my life recently when I realized that I, too, often fail in first seeing the beauty in other churches. My family and I had the opportunity to worship in a Pentecostal church. It was the first time my children (ages 14 and 10) experienced Pentecostal worship. The service was over two hours on a hot August day and the exuberance displayed in the worship of some in attendance was different than what my children were used to. On the ride home, all they were able to focus on was how long the service was and how the way some people were worshipping was a little strange to them.

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In the past, I may have affirmed their points of view by saying, yes, we believe/worship differently and then discuss why. This time I asked, what were the great things about the service? There was a long pause, before my daughter eventually said, "they sang a Rend Collective song!"

That day I realized my primary responsibility was to teach my children about the beauty of the Pentecostal church. We talked about the beauty of Pentecostals trusting in the work of the Holy Spirit and explained how that was portrayed in their corporate worship. We talked about the beauty of them being deeply committed to prayer and how that specific congregation had been praying for the Chaplain search at Colgate University over several months, so in fact, they had been praying for our family!

Most recently we have had the opportunity to visit small country churches in central New York. Many say these churches are "dying," and in fact, some will soon be closed. But the Good News of Jesus Christ is being proclaimed and lived out in many of these small country churches. We believe it is important for our children to see the beautiful aspects of these churches and worship with the people who have called it their church home for decades.

Certainly we will have conversations when we explain why we choose to attend one church over others, but we can do so in way that does not put down or dismiss other churches. While there are some churches that proclaim a message that seems to be more rooted in hate than love, I do believe that most churches strive to faithfully proclaim the Good News of Jesus Christ and call their people to live as Christ.

A prayer for my children and the students who call me their Chaplain is that they see all the beauty within the Body of Christ, which no one church or denomination can fully capture by itself.

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It starts with your screensaver at the office. If it's not a picture of your family, lover, cat or a bikini-clad female, it's most likely a picture of untouched tropical paradise. When work gets tough and you want to punch your boss or coworker in the face, staring at the talcum sand and turquoise waves soothes your soul. You might think, "I need to go there now." Out of curiosity, you decide to research flight prices...just to see. The website is pulled up and the flight search asks you to input a destination. You go blank for a moment. "Where can I find this place," you wonder, as the surreal beach scene glows on your monitor. "Where can I find a beach with no internet, no people and no ritzy resorts?"

I bet the majority of those mesmerizing screen saver photographs hail from Southeast Asia. Tourists flock to the famed beaches of Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia and the Philippines every year for subliminal nature and insanely cheap prices for food, transportation and accommodation. Yes, many of these destinations are overdeveloped, but rest assured- there are still beach towns that have managed to stave off the crowds and investors...for now.

If you can find these hidden gems, you'll be rewarded with little tourism, prices that are even lower than the hot spots and the most tell tale sign that you'll be disconnected from life- WiFi is complete shit. It's a beautiful thing. Check out these 6 beach towns, and instead of just browsing flight prices for fun, hit the 'book' button and make that flight a reality.

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Canggu, Bali, Indonesia

Head to the South coast of Bali and you'll run into laid back beach town Canggu. Unlike Bali beach favorite Kuta, Canggu still retains that classic beach town vibe, although development increases as travelers discover its charm. You won't find sardine-packed dance clubs with blaring dance music and bar girls. Instead, Canggu's reputation for consistent surf mixed with a burgeoning hipster scene offers travelers plenty of salt, sun, sand and an eclectic mix of bars and restaurants to enjoy. Don't miss out on Bali's world renowned sunsets; Don't miss out on Bali's world renowned sunsets; you can read more about where to go for the best view points in my original post Things to Do in Canggu, Bali.

Jungle Beach, Vietnam

Jump on a motorbike and head down the coastline of Vietnam and you'll be astounded by the number of open beaches with no tourism, only traditional fishing villages. Skip on Nha Trang and head to the bamboo resort Jungle Beach in Ninh Thuan province. Jungle Beach's out-of-the-way location keeps it low key. You won't even feel like you're at a typical resort with it's simple yet comfortable bamboo huts. Stroll along the empty stretch of beach where you'll see no one else save for other Jungle Beach guests or fishermen out in their woven bamboo basket boats. Three fresh cooked meals are provided each day. Lunch and dinner are enjoyed family style at a specific time, with all guests seated together at one table.

Kampot, Cambodia

OK, so I lied about six beach towns, because this one is a river- Kampot's tranquil Praek Tuek Chhu river, that is. This quirky, colonial town provides a sanctuary for off-the-beaten-track enthusiasts, with thick jungle hugging the river banks and rugged mountain views in every direction. Stay at Arcadia Backpackers built right on the river bank. You'll lose track of time lounging in a hammock all day, or hit the river in a tube and let the gentle currents cool your body. Kampot is quiet, the local people are friendly and the history is colorful. Remnants of 1920s French colonialism is still evident in the town's architecture. Rent a scooter and drive up Bokor Mountain for sunrise. The kaleidoscopic view mixed with the sun's beams and misty clouds makes you feel like you're on another planet. Explore the abandoned church and casino that lurk in the mist at the top of the mountain. This was a Khmer Rouge stronghold during the 1970s, and the old church carries permanent battle scars as a reminder of a war-riddled past.

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Nacpan Beach, Philippines

I thought I knew what a beach was, until I visited El Nido, Palawan in the Philippines. You can sit for hours on any beach in El Nido and pinch yourself several times over, convinced you are dreaming. Travelers usually have El Nido at the top of their list when exploring the Philippines, but if you rent a scooter and drive 40 minutes North of El Nido town, you'll stumble upon Nacpan Beach. You won't find modern buildings or resorts here. Nacpan is a small beach village with palm frond huts clustered in one spot on the sand, along with some fishing boats and a tasty local restaurant (some of the best lechon I've ever tasted). It's popular for travelers to spend the day in Nacpan then return to El Nido by evening. If you stay overnight though, you're in for a treat. With barely any artificial lighting and development, the beach is pitch black at night, and millions of stars are visible; the Milky Way vibrant and clear. There is also an abundance of bio-luminescence, a natural phenomenon, which you can read more about in my post A Memoir of Nacpan Beach.

Trincomalee Beach, Sri Lanka

Skip the bustling Southern beaches and head to the Northeast coast of Sri Lanka to Trincomalee town with Uppuveli beach and Nilaveli beach. You'll find yourself hurtled back in time to pristine beaches complete with white sand, light blue water and the occasional herd of cows. Trincomalee has dodged the travel limelight due to long civil war in the region and heavy destruction from the 2004 tsunami. Its tumultuous history has left the stretches of beach and coral reefs well-preserved, but as more travelers head to this island nation, who knows how long it will last. Visit nearby Pigeon Island, snorkel the coral reefs and go out for some whale watching. With some luck, you might glimpse the world's largest mammal; the blue whale.

Koh Chang, Thailand

Though it's the second largest island in Thailand, Koh Chang is the more mysterious, quiet neighbor to backpacker infested Koh Pha Ngan and Koh Tao. Nestled 20 minutes offshore Trat Province in the Gulf of Thailand and close to the Cambodian border, Koh Chang is blanketed in misty jungle with sparse development. On Lonely Beach, you'll find a string of reggae-esque bars complete with a few token fire performers and overflowing alcohol, as Koh Chang tries to promote the same full moon party vibe as its gulf neighbors. But, the party scene has been slow to pick up speed, as Koh Chang draws travelers that seek the opposite. Rent a scooter and explore the twists and turns of the island, where you can find stretches of untouched beach and relaxed bars and restaurants.


Photo by Terry Tollefsbol, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service recently proposed removing endangered species protections for Yellowstone grizzly bears. When the bear was first placed on the Endangered Species list 40 years ago, the population was less than 140 bears. Now in 2016, due in large part to endangered species protections, the grizzly bear population is estimated to be about 700 bears in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.

Unfortunately, such a rebound in the bear numbers is overshadowed by significant threats that remain to the recovering bear population. These must be addressed before grizzly bears are stripped of endangered species protections. One is the sharp decline of whitebark pine nuts due to climate change. Another is a drop in cutthroat trout . Whitebark pine and trout have been primary food sources for bears, and their loss has driven grizzlies to find other food sources, like garbage, hunter-killed elk carcasses or livestock, that often bring them into conflict with people.

Yellowstone's grizzly bears also face other challenges. They remain isolated from other bear populations, a disconnect which leads to inbreeding and all the problems associated with a lack of genetic diversity. They also face hostile state policies which focus on reducing bear numbers instead of implementing proven coexistence measures, and would allow sport trophy hunts of grizzly bears.

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Hundreds of thousands of people from across the country have asked the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to not remove grizzly bears from the endangered species list.

Among them is a group of esteemed scientists, writers, and actors who recently sent a letter to the Obama administration urging the continued protection of Yellowstone grizzly bears. Chief among the concerns raised by the letter is the failure of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to recognize the threat of climate disruption to grizzly bears in the Yellowstone region.





Any decision about the bear's future should be put on hold until independent scientific review can explore potential impacts to bears from climate change. We strongly suspect that America's great bears face a dire future, even with the continued protection of the Endangered Species Act.





Additionally, more than 50 Native American tribes, who view grizzlies as sacred, have passed formal resolutions opposing delisting. To many, the great bear symbolizes the very spirit of the earth itself. The GOAL tribal coalition has vocally opposed plans to remove grizzly protections.

National leaders, including Representatives Raul Grijalva (D-AZ), Debbie Dingell (D-MI) and Peter DeFazio (D-OR) also joined the chorus calling for continued conservation efforts for grizzly bears at a special briefing at the U.S. Capitol. (Watch a moving message from Jane Goodall to briefing attendees or view the briefing live stream.)

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Attorney General Herbert H. Slatery III on Friday announced that Tennessee reached an agreement in principle to settle allegations against Wyeth, a wholly owned subsidiary of Pfizer, Inc. The settlement will resolve allegations that Wyeth knowingly underpaid rebates owed under the Medicaid Drug Rebate Program for the sales of Protonix Oral and Protonix IV between 2001 and 2006. Under the settlement Wyeth agreed to pay $784.6 million to the United States and the States. Over $371 million of this amount will go to the Medicaid Program. Tennessee will receive an estimated $30.4 million under the settlement.

When companies knowingly attempt to game the system, there are consequences, Attorney General Slatery said. Our office will continue to work with our state and federal partners in pursuing those who seek to profit at the expense of Tennessee taxpayers.

The settlement stems from two whistleblower lawsuits, U.S., al., ex rel. Kieff v. Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, Inc., Civ. No. 03-cv-12366, and U.S., , et al., ex rel. William St. John LaCorte v. Wyeth, Civ. No. 06-cv-11724 which were filed in the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts. The United States, 35 states and the District of Columbia intervened in the lawsuits.

Wyeth, Inc. was a Delaware corporation with its headquarters in Madison, N.J. Pfizer, Inc. is a Delaware corporation headquartered in New York, N.Y. Pfizer acquired Wyeth, Inc., in 2009, after the conduct alleged in the lawsuits. At all relevant times, Wyeth distributed, marketed and/or sold pharmaceutical products in the United States, including Protonix Oral and intravenous Protonix IV. Protonix Oral and Protonix IV are in a class of drugs called Proton Pump Inhibitors which inhibit the production of gastric acid.

The Medicaid Prescription Drug Rebate Program was enacted by Congress in 1990 as a cost containment measure for Medicaids payment for outpatient drugs. The Medicaid Drug Rebate Program requires participating pharmaceutical manufacturers to pay quarterly rebates to State Medicaid programs for each of its drugs sold to pharmacies that were reimbursed by Medicaid. The quarterly rebate was determined from each pharmaceutical manufacturers reported Best Price, or the lowest price for which it sold a covered drug in a particular quarter.

In their court filings, the government plaintiffs alleged that during the third quarter 2001 through 2006, Wyeth sold Protonix Oral tablets and Protonix IV to hospitals at discounted prices. The governments alleged that Wyeths contracts with the hospitals created a bundled sale under the terms of the Medicaid Drug Rebate Agreement by linking discounts available to participating hospitals for Protonix IV to discounts on Protonix Oral tablets. However, Wyeth did not treat the sales of those drugs as bundled within the meaning of the Medicaid Drug Rebate Program and therefore failed to properly allocate the discounts available under the contract. As a result of this failure, Wyeth falsely reported its Best Prices causing the Unit Rebate Amount for Protonix Oral tablets and Protonix IV, which is used to determine the quarterly rebate to pay the State for each drug, to be understated. The governments alleged that Wyeth concealed, avoided or decreased its obligation to pay Medicaid Drug Rebates to the State for Protonix Oral tablets and Protonix IV.

Our Medicaid Fraud Control Unit is designed to protect Tennesseans from fraud and abuse, said TBI Director Mark Gwyn. When there is abuse in the system that wastes taxpayer money, we pay attention, and work with our federal and state partners to hold these parties accountable for their actions.

Because the Medicaid program is jointly funded by the federal and state governments, Pfizer will pay in excess of $413 million of the $784.6 million to the United States. The state settlements were negotiated by a team of states led by representatives from the Office of the Attorneys General for New York, North Carolina, Indiana and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts working with the Department of Justice, the United States Attorneys Office for the District of Massachusetts, and the United States Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General.






Russia and Israel have a long history of diplomatic and military collaboration in the Middle East, dating back to the Arab-Israeli war of 1948, when Israel's triumph over its neighbors was largely attributable to Moscow's military support. Following the Arab-Israeli war of 1967, Israel established itself as a key U.S. ally, as the Soviet Union partnered with a host of Arab nations -- most importantly, Syria. Yet, despite their history of having been on opposite sides for much of the Cold War, since the Soviet Union collapsed, the Russian Federation has pursued an increasingly pragmatic foreign policy with Israel.

As Russia reasserts a robust footprint in the tumultuous Middle East, the state of Russian-Israeli relations is naturally complicated, but it is arguably true that the bilateral relationship has never been stronger. In 2005 Russian President Vladimir Putin was the first Russian leader to visit Israel. Putin has since referred to Israel as a 'special state' to Russia, based on their shared interests and long collaborative history. The foundation the two nations have established is being tested, as their positions on Iran and Syria weigh heavily on their ability to move forward collaboratively.

Russia's growing coordination with Iran and Hezbollah on the Syrian battlefield has made more complicated Israel's views of Putin's agenda in the Middle East. Although an important player in the P5+1 nuclear negotiations with Iran, Russia is also now in the process of providing S-300 anti-aircraft missiles to Tehran. Russia and Iran's common cause in the Levant is increasingly at odds with Israel's stance on numerous issues. While Moscow and Tel Aviv remain committed to their cordial relationship, they are also finding it increasingly difficult to justify prioritizing that relationship at the expense of their grander regional strategic objectives.

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Russia's support of President Bashar al-Assad is not necessarily an issue for Israel. The Israeli government appear to prefer that Assad's regime survives, given the risks of Islamist extremists seizing control of Damascus and/or large swathes of territory near Israel and the Golan Heights. What is potentially a real problem for Israel, however, is the S-400 anti-aircraft missiles that Russia has sent to Syria. If these were either successfully provided to Hezbollah for its use, or if Russia were for some reason chose to use them against the Israeli air force, Israel's strategic advantage against Hezbollah would be severely compromised. This subject was no doubt discussed when Putin met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in April.

Moscow views Hezbollah as a more effective fighting force against the Islamic State (and other Sunni Islamist extremists) -- fighting in tandem with the Syrian Arab Army and elite Iranian forces. Putin's dilemma is to increase Assad's chances of continuing to retake lost ground and remaining in power while maintaining the status quo between Israel and Hezbollah. Israel is very sensitive about the risk that the Golan Heights would be overtaken by Hezbollah or other Islamic extremists, and it remains on constant alert regarding Hezbollah's ongoing receipt of weaponry from Iran. Israel has repeatedly attacked convoys suspected of delivering heavy weaponry to Hezbollah and will no doubt continue to do so - especially if it suspects that S-400s or similar weapons are among them.

Mr. Netanyahu must continue a delicate diplomatic dance - maintaining good relations with the Russians without further alienating the U.S. -- an issue that will outlive Barack Obama's presidency. The same may also be said about Mr. Putin: eventually, he will presumably want a warmer relationship with the U.S. When that time comes, what compromises will he need to consider vis-a-vis Iran, Syria, Hezbollah, and Israel in order to achieve that objective? At this juncture, Putin holds many cards, and both the Americans and Israelis know it.

But by the same token, either Russia or Israel has the ability to disrupt the existing status quo with respect to Syria and Iran, because either could choose to ramp up their military engagement in a variety of ways. Russia may do so by sending its armed forces back into Syria at will, by directly arming Hezbollah, or by arming other Iranian proxies elsewhere in the region. Israel may do so by choosing to become directly engaged in Syria, by re-engaging Hezbollah in Lebanon (or Syria), or in the longer term, making good on its threat to bomb Iranian nuclear sites - particularly if Iran were to make egregious violations of the P5+1 Agreement without any meaningful penalty from the West -- or if the Agreement were to expire and Iran were to ramp up its nuclear program. Any of these actions would serve to significantly disrupt the status quo ante in the Middle East.

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While Israel will never have the 'special relationship' with Russia that it does with America, the two nations clearly have some similar objectives, such as not wanting the reach of Islamic extremist groups to spread, and keeping Mr. Assad in power (at least, until such time as there is viable non-extremist alternative). Mr. Putin must also realize that while Hezbollah serves an important objective in the near term in Syria, it cannot be in Russia's long-term interest for Hezbollah to gain a permanent foothold in Syria - something Iran surely would like to see. In that regard, Mr. Putin is playing a dangerous game, and, from the Israeli perspective, equally dangerous by delivering missiles, rockets, and other types of weaponry to Hezbollah, which can be used against Israel.

It would be in Moscow and Tel Aviv's long-term interest to coordinate their movements and align their long-term objectives. In the end, they will find that they may have more in common geo-strategically than differences. With the latest round of peace talks in the process of failing, and the fighting ramping up again in Syria, now is a good time for the two countries to re-assess where they are going, and how they are going to get there. Iranian influence in Syria is unlikely to be part of the long-term mix for either of them. For that reason it would be better for Mr. Putin to establish some boundaries vis-a-vis Tehran in Syria that are also in accordance with Israel's objectives. Otherwise, things will get even messier, and the foundation of their bilateral relationship could be at risk.
"If you, O Lord, kept a record of sins, O Lord, who could stand? But with you there is forgiveness."

--Psalm 130: 3-4.

Believing in sin can be good for body and soul.

The desire to live up to divine standards can help many religious individuals cultivate successful, lasting relationships and avoid harmful addictions, some research suggests.

But too great an emphasis on the fallen nature of humankind can lead to fear, distrust and prejudice, research also indicates. In some individuals, the perceived inability to please a distant and demanding divinity can lead to overwhelming guilt and neuroses.

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It is not easy to walk around life feeling condemned.

So how can believers buffer the negative effects of an unhealthy preoccupation with transgressions while benefiting from sin's appeal to humility in being able to accurately assess one's own strengths and weaknesses?

Forgiveness may be one good place to start, according to a new study.

Americans who reported experiencing being frequently forgiven by God were far less likely to show symptoms of depression and other mental health ills associated with strong beliefs in the fallen nature of humankind.

"Theological beliefs don't exist in isolation," said Baylor University sociologist Jeremy Uecker, lead researcher.

If someone has a strong view of sin, "It's clear from these findings that those who don't feel forgiven by God are pretty bad off in terms of mental health."

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Faith and health

Prayers for divine assistance to avoid sin and to seek forgiveness for failing to live up to moral standards are a staple of many faiths, including Judaism, Islam and Christianity.

On Sundays, for example, Catholics around the world begin Mass with a penitential rite calling to mind their sins and asking the Lord for forgiveness.

In general, religious beliefs and practices are associated with several beneficial outcomes, from personal happiness to a greater commitment to lives of service.

But some religious beliefs taken to extremes can be damaging, particularly when fear and judgment crowd out love and mercy.

A new study published in the latest issue of the Review of Religious Research found "striking" results associating belief in human sinfulness with impaired mental health. The study analyzed data from the Spirituality & Health 2004 National Study of Religion and Health.

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The more respondents expressed strong beliefs in human sinfulness on a scale that ranged from human nature is basically evil to human nature is basically good, the greater the likelihood of mental health issues including anxiety, depression, hostility, obsessive-compulsive disorder and paranoia.

Add in forgiveness, however, and the equation changed dramatically.

The study found the more frequently individuals felt they were forgiven by God, the less likely they were to report symptoms of several mental health issues.

Looking at the beliefs in tandem, the study found that greater divine forgiveness diminished the negative association of belief in human sinfulness in seven of the eight mental health outcomes studied.

"Believing in human sinfulness is not necessarily harmful if it is accompanied by belief in having experienced divine forgiveness," the researchers found.

However, the opposite approach, believing in human sinfulness and never experiencing divine forgiveness, "is a noxious combination for mental health."

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What to do

The good news is most human beings are complex, and are able to sustain beliefs in both sin and forgiveness.

Less than 1 percent of the more than 1,500 respondents in the national study had the highest beliefs in human sinfulness and experienced God's forgiveness fewer than "many times."

Yet one takeaway remains that the more the balance tips toward belief in human sinfulness and away from forgiveness the greater the potential for mental health problems.

In practical terms, this adds to several research findings suggesting that therapists may find it of value to be aware of how the spiritual beliefs of patients may be helpful to both understand their issues and offer avenues for effective treatment.

Spiritual counselors in particular may serve people they work with who are obsessed with sin and punishment by helping them become more aware of aspects of their faith professing mercy and forgiveness.

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Many religious groups focus on the religious teaching encouraging members to forgive those who have trespassed against them.

But it is not a one-way street.

"Forgiving others is important," Uecker said. "But it is also important to experience forgiveness."
White Catholic voters have provided crucial assistance to Donald Trump's bid for the GOP presidential nomination. The clearest sign of that came during the recent primaries held in five northeastern states, which Trump swept on the strength of his white Catholic supporters. Victories there provided him with the momentum needed to win decisively in Indiana this week, thereby knocking out Trump's last two rivals for the GOP nomination (Ted Cruz and John Kasich).



What explains the strong appeal of a nominal Presbyterian such as Trump to white Catholics? In part this has to do with where Trump is from. He grew up in Queens, a heavily Catholic borough within New York City. When he was growing up there during the 1950's and '60's, Queens' Catholic population was heavily white, not Latino. And so part of Trump's ability to establish a connection with white, Catholic voters stems from the simple fact of familiarity; he grew up around a lot of them.



Strengthening that sense of connection was the nature of his father's business. Fred Trump's construction firm during Donald's childhood made a lot of money building middle-class apartments in Brooklyn, the Bronx and Queens. Many, perhaps most, of those apartments housed young families of veterans, either of World War II or Korea. These families were often white Catholic ones of upper-working-class or lower-middle-class background. Donald Trump learned the construction business by working for his father, which brought him into contact with lots of white, Catholic families of that sort. All the indications are that the Trumps liked them, and related well to them. Even Donald Trump's vision of the good life now that he is very rich seems to be a kind of lower-middle-class city kid's vision of wealth more than an old-money one. In that sense, billionaire Trump has kept his connection to the families his father served even as Donald has moved into the more rarefied world of elite Manhattan.



Helping establish and maintain that rapport was the nominal nature of the Trumps' Presbyterian affiliation. They occasionally attended Marble Collegiate Church in the 1950's and '60's, but there is no sign that Presbyterianism as such was something central to Donald Trump's life. Instead, he seems to have gone to church the way so many kids did then, which was out of his parents' sense that some exposure to religion would help ground the Trump children in morally traditional ways. Donald Trump's lack of familiarity with biblical texts, while disconcerting to many strongly religious people, sends a different kind of message to more secular white Catholics - that he is a nominal Protestant who pays little attention to denominational differences among Christians.



And then there is Donald Trump's strongly positive message about the era in which he grew up, which also resonates with many white Catholics. Trump is nostalgic for that time, when Americans of ordinary income residing in major metropolitan areas (which describes most white Catholics then) could still afford to live comfortably. That nostalgia for the 1950's and '60's also extends beyond strictly economic considerations. The popular culture of that era was also much more in sync with white Catholics then. Movies, radio and television were tightly regulated then in terms of content, which tended to produce a picture of the world that reinforced rather than undermined what morally traditional white Catholic parents were teaching their children about values and behavior.



That had implications, too, for crime and attitudes toward authority more generally. The urban police forces of the 1950's and '60's tended to be heavily composed of white Catholics, who emphasized crime control and respect for law and order much more than the protection of the rights of those accused of wrongdoing. That set of policing priorities tended to contribute to a low level of street crime in white Catholic urban America then. Strengthening that feeling of neighborhood safety among urban white Catholics was strict residential racial segregation.



The 1950s and '60s was also an era more influenced by white Catholics politically. Having long been active in American politics but in a second-tier role, Catholic politicians finally broke through to the top during Donald Trump's childhood. The election of the nation's first Catholic president in November 1960 was the clearest signal of that change.



And then there is the immigration issue, which has been so central to Donald Trump's presidential campaign. Trump's nostalgia for the 1950's and '60's includes a fondness for an era when immigration was low, and whites of southern and eastern European background, many of them Catholic, became steadily more assimilated into the rest of the country's white majority. It was a time when tensions among whites based on ethnicity and religion declined, as more and more of them entered an ever bigger and more economically secure middle class. That was especially true in New York City, which historically had been the biggest single receiver of immigrants to the USA. Perhaps the best illustration of just how different that era can be seen in the simple matter of language. The fraction of New York City residents who spoke English as a native language was probably higher then than at any other time in modern U.S. history. Another telling indicator is economic competition for lower-wage jobs from immigrants. There was probably less of that in the New York City of the 1950s and '60s than at any other time in the twentieth century.



Of course, not everything about Donald Trump appeals to white, Catholic voters. His multiple marriages bother more morally traditional Catholics, as does his at-times uncouth remarks and his palpable lack of humility. Partly compensating for those flaws, though, is Trump's overtly patriarchal style, which resonates well with many American Catholics, and older male ones especially. Trump is a man's man, of a sort, and the image of masculine strength that he projects is refreshing to many Catholic males who are tired of images in the popular culture of doofus dads and "boy men."



Donald Trump's appeal to white Catholic voters has implications well beyond his successful quest for the GOP presidential nomination. Although historically a heavily Democratic group, white Catholics since the 1970's have emerged as a major swing demographic in the American electorate. Since 1980, white Catholic voter preferences have tended to predict accurately the outcome in presidential elections. And so whether Donald Trump can compete against Hillary Clinton successfully this fall will likely depend in no small measure on his ability to keep connecting with that kind of voter.
The Devil is reputed by some to have had all the best tunes. But those claiming to be on the side of the angels can often have the better technique.

Sometimes, though, they will employ that advantage in what amounts to an abuse of power bordering on the devilish.

The abuse I'm reporting on here this week (and also on PBS television, see below) has its roots in a business technique that's become common throughout the financial world. It's the growing practice - among organizations of all kinds - of turning to the process of arbitration as a means of dealing with any grievance that customers, employees or others might have against them.

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This dubious technique also involves insisting, from the beginning of any commercial relationship, that aggrieved parties waive their legal rights to sue in court for redress. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the aggrieved all-too-often end up being the losers.

Earlier this year the New York Times culminated a year's deep investigative work with a series of exposes demonstrating abuse after abuse being attempted, and often achieved, by unscrupulous companies and institutions who use arbitration as a way to avoid legal responsibility in disputes. In the US Congress, Senators Patrick Leahy and Al Franken, as well as Representative Hank Johnson of Georgia on the other side of the Capitol's Rotunda, have proposed legislation to rein in what Franken has called the "epidemic of forced arbitration". Leahy has described arbitration as "denying us our constitutional right to protect ourselves in a court".

And only this week the nation's consumer watchdog, the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau issued proposals for new regulations, aimed especially at banks. "Many banks and financial companies avoid accountability by putting arbitration clauses in their contracts, said Richard Cordray, director of the Bureau.



But why do I invoke devils and angels in relation to all this questionable though very human subterfuge, and the various efforts to control it?

Well ... there is a somewhat arcane but growing subsection of the arbitration phenomenon called "Christian Arbitration". It can be seen as roughly akin to Jewish rabbinical courts, and Muslim communities' sharia tribunals.

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Christian institutions, and interestingly purely secular businesses as well (though often owned and operated by professing Christians), are increasingly requiring their employees, customers and clients to sign a waiver giving away their legal rights, and to agree instead to undergo a dispute-resolution process presided over by a Christian Arbitrator. (That's a specialty role with rules drawn up by the Colorado-based Institute of Christian Conciliation.)

My television exploration of this intriguing procedure appears at various times this weekend on PBS - where I interview such a Christian Arbitrator, as well as aggrieved individuals who have lost the opportunity to be plaintiffs in court, and a jurisprudence professor, one of the country's rare legal experts monitoring the process.

The aggrieved include the mother of Nick Ellison (pictured above) who died aged 20 after entering a Christian drug rehab. She wanted to sue for her son's wrongful death - but was reluctantly forced to undergo Christian Arbitration instead - to her great dissatisfaction.

View my report here:

Or see it at PBS.org
In an announcement that received wide media coverage, James H. Shelton this week was named the first head of the education component of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, a new corporation, dedicated to charitable ventures, that is funded by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Dr. Priscilla Chan. According to Zuckerberg's announcement of Shelton's appointment, "Jim will bring all of his own experience in improving personalized learning and helping underserved communities."

It was unclear whether that description was meant to include Shelton's current service on the corporate board of directors that oversees troubled for-profit college Kaplan University. In January 2015, Shelton left his job as the U.S. Deputy Secretary of Education in the Obama Administration, which had been engaged in increased scrutiny of the for-profit college industry. In November 2015, Shelton joined the board of Graham Holdings, whose Kaplan Inc. subsidiary includes Kaplan University.

By the time Shelton joined the Graham Holdings board of directors, Kaplan University had been accused of a range of questionable acts, with many former students, often from low-income backgrounds, claiming they were misled by Kaplan and left worse off than when they started.

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Graham Holdings directors receive $150,000 in annual compensation.

Kaplan has been getting as much as $1.5 billion annually in taxpayer-funded federal student grants and loans. Yet its schools have often been bad actors in the for-profit college industry, charging sky-high prices for the kinds of programs that are often much more affordable at state and community colleges, tallying high dropout and loan default rates, and sometimes engaging in deceptive and coercive recruiting and other abusive practices.

I know from talking with dozens of people inside Kaplan schools that there are good teachers in Kaplan programs. Some of the students get good training and good jobs. But there also have been far too many cases of students being misled, overcharged, and under-credentialed.

An award-winning 2015 Miami Herald investigation of the industry led with the story of a Florida mom, Sara Pierce, who says she was misled by a recruiter for Kaplan into signing up for an online bachelor's degree program in Nutrition Science. Pierce thought the program would directly qualify her to be a licensed nutritionist, when in fact it was not accredited by the appropriate agency. When, near the end of her studies, a professor let Pierce know that the degree would not make her eligible for the job she sought, and she complained, the school pointed her to fine print in a Kaplan manual. But it stands to reason that had Pierce actually known the low value of the degree, she would not have enrolled.

And there are other instances of Kaplan students feeling similarly misled -- in Kaplan's dental assistant program in Charlotte, in Kaplan's online Concord law school -- and left deep in debt, without the useful degree they sought.

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Last year, Massachusetts attorney general Maura Healey announced settlement of an investigation of Kaplan for unfair and deceptive student recruiting practices. Kaplan agreed to pay $1.375 million to former students.

According to Healey, Kaplan Career Institute, which had campuses in Charlestown and Boston's Kenmore Square, got students to enroll "with harassing sales tactics and misleading representations in its recruitment materials concerning its educational program and employment." Healey found that Kaplan's website and its recruiters claimed job placement rates for Kaplan's Medical Assistant and Medical Billing and Coding programs as above 70 percent when in fact the rates were significantly lower. Kaplan also promised to help students find jobs, but students told Healey's office "that the job listings provided by Kaplan were from publicly available resources and that Kaplan did not provide any special services or programs to assist students and graduates in their job search." Accordingly, Healey said in her court filing, "Kaplan unfairly or deceptively induced students to enroll..."

In the settlement papers, Healy noted that Kaplan no longer operates any Kaplan Career Institute schools in Massachusetts. Under the settlement, Kaplan must give the attorney general's office notice "before attempting to open or re-open any for-profit school campuses in Massachusetts."

Kaplan admitted no wrongdoing in the Massachusetts settlements, and it publicly denied Healy's allegations.

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Graham Holdings was formerly called The Washington Post Company, before it sold its flagship newspaper to Jeff Bezos. The company chairman is Donald Graham, who has been an aggressive lobbyist in Washington against efforts by the Obama Administration to hold for-profit colleges accountable for waste, fraud, abuse, and bad student outcomes.

Graham's status as an elite Washington insider has led many influential people in the capital to assume that Kaplan is "one of the good ones." In reality, Kaplan's record of misleading students is not too far removed from the notorious, now-shut down Corinthian Colleges, in which Graham's company also owned a major stake.

Kaplan has been under investigation by at least four other state attorneys general in the past few years. It agreed last year to pay about $1.3 million under a settlement with the Justice Department to resolve whistleblower allegations that it employed unqualified instructors at its campuses in Texas.

In December 2015, after Shelton joined the Graham board, the Department of Education placed Kaplan University on "provisional certification status" through September 2018, which means that Kaplan must obtain prior approval of the Department to open a new location, add an education program, acquire another school, or make any other significant change. In an SEC filing this week, Kaplan says the shift to provisional status was "in connection with" an ongoing review of its programs by the Department but that the Department "has not notified Kaplan University of any negative findings."

As the for-profit college industry has become controversial for predatory practices and mounting law enforcement investigations, it has regularly hired prominent leaders as validators and lobbyists.

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UPDATE 05-06-16 5:50 PM: I remembered but then neglected to include a relevant fact -- Donald Graham and Mark Zuckerberg are not exactly strangers. Graham served on the Facebook board of directors from 2009 until last year and was the company's lead independent director. Graham reaped tens of millions of dollars from the Facebook initial public offering.

UPDATE 05-16-16 4:30 pm: A Graham Holdings SEC filing today states: "On May 12, 2016, James H. Shelton announced his decision to resign from the Board of Directors of Graham Holdings Company (the "Company") effective immediately and not to stand for reelection to the Board of Directors at the Company's 2017 annual meeting of stockholders. Mr. Shelton's decision to resign is for personal reasons and not a result of any disagreement with the Company on any matter relating to the Company's operations, policies or practices."

A source had told me on May 6 that Shelton would be resigning from the Graham board and other boards in connection with joining Chan Zuckerberg. But Shelton may be taking an additional prize before he goes: According to the same SEC filing, on the same day that he announced his resignation, Shelton was re-elected, at Graham Holdings' May 12 annual meeting, to director of the company as one of the board's "Class A Common Stock Nominees."

It's good that Shelton will not serve simultaneously as head of the Chan Zuckerberg education project and as a director of a company that operates predatory for-profit colleges. But Shelton's resignation doesn't change the fact that he traded on his reputation and experience in the Obama Administration to validate and support the work of a company that has been under law enforcement investigation for abuses of students. I hope Shelton can redeem this questionable course by being a strong leader for educational opportunity and innovation going forward.
Pink and blue figures on different coin stacks. Concept for gender pay gap.

My mother is still alive. And I love her.

I also love my wife and daughter to the moon and back.

But I don't love Mother's Day. In fact, I think it should end.

Women don't deserve such a day of honor.

They deserve much, much more.

Americans will spend $22 billion on Mother's Day this year. $22 billion. That's $258 for each of the 85 million U.S. moms.

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Why not just give them the money. Even though it won't make a dent in the disparity of income between moms and dads, at least it's something. They deserve it, right?

And you know what else they deserve?

They deserve to represent more Congressional seats than 20 out of 100 (20 percent) in the Senate and 84 out 435 (19 percent) in the House.

They deserve to represent more than just 5 percent of CEOs.

They deserve more help with cooking, cleaning and laundry as men contribute less than half the time that women contribute to such tasks.

They deserve more than 30 per cent of news media camera time.

They deserve more parity when it comes to consumer purchases that cost more for them than men, including mortgages, cars, clothing and personal care products.

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They deserve more protection from sexual assault in the military as they suffer five times the number of incidents of male counterparts. And they deserve far more protection and support from sexual violence overall since 1 in 5 is raped during her lifetime.

They deserve more than a retirement in poverty, in light of the fact that they earn 32 percent less than men in benefit income and are more than twice as likely to wind up impoverished, based on significantly less work income throughout their lifetimes.

And speaking of earning less, women deserve more than 78 percent of what men earn, especially since they represent 51 percent of the nation's professional and technical workforce.

All of this is a carnival of the absurd. An outrage. An abomination. And it must end.

74 percent of American citizens say it's harder to raise children because more women have entered the workforce. Doesn't that just say it all? Those poor, poor men who now have to actually help women get the kids ready in the morning, make breakfast, clean up, go to work, come home late, make dinner, clean up again, get the kids settled in, pay bills, plan for the week and the future, and do it all over again and again and again. But don't you worry, men, because even if you have to buck up at home, you still get to earn bigger bucks at the office, regardless of the fact that women work just as hard as you, or that more women graduate college and grad school than you or that women are more emotionally intelligent than you. On average, women will still annually make $12,000 less than you in New Jersey or $11,000 less in Pennsylvania or $10,000 less in Virginia or $8,000 less in California.

My wife is everything and one hundred times more than I am. And she is the outright breadwinner in this household. Not to mention, she is unconditionally kind and thoughtful and generous and selfless and steadfast in sustaining all of these virtues, even as she fights cancer and even as she manages her idealistic, hair-brained, dreamer-of-a-husband and her relentlessly demanding and devilishly defiant daughter. Sure, she may shed tears deep into night when the world quiets around her and words such as "mastectomy" and "chemotherapy" do a dark dance behind her eyes. But she never fails to awaken the next morning with a heart of gold and a smile a mile wide.

I'm sorry, men, but most of us are just not built that way. Most of us are not worthy of 20 percent more of anything. Most of us owe our wives, mothers, sisters and female comrades and coworkers a whole helluva lot more than we have afforded to date.

Fortunately for me, I am lucky to be in the company of so many male friends and family members who more than tow their load on the familial front and beyond. In fact, most of them have assumed the role of daily care-giver while their wives commute, work and financially anchor the household. Nonetheless, their wives are remarkable souls who, like my wife, engineer a work-life balance with the agility of a tightrope walker.

Let's face it. The only reason that women have earned far less than men and assumed far fewer roles of authority than men is because men have ruled the world with an iron fist since the dawn of time. The only reason women continue to earn and elevate less today is because men remain supremely disquieted about losing their stronghold and therefore forge ahead unrepentant and unrelenting in their petrification of gender roles.

But what would this nation, let alone the world, look like were it not primarily mined and managed by men who have, undeniably, masterminded our greatest disasters to date?

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Crime. Men commit 90 percent of all homicides. Women are the victims of 23 percent of those homicides. Women commit 25 percent of all crimes, mostly property, drug / alcohol-related and minor offenses. On the flip side, why is it that women represent just 12 percent of the nationwide police force? Research shows more women on patrol is more than likely to decrease police brutality, but then what would a host of their male counterparts do when they just want to club an innocent protestor or do far worse to a young, black male? After all, 84 percent of cops have "witnessed fellow officers using more force than necessary."

War. We've never experienced a woman President nor a woman-dominated Congress, but we sure have experience over 100 armed conflicts since our nation's founding. In fact, the U.S. has been engaged in one war or another for over 90 percent of its history. Boys sure like to play with guns and tanks and battleships. And rabid torture and killing, even of civilian women and children, in the name of further empire-building.

Economy. Women represent 54 percent of the finance ("Wall Street") workforce but less than 16 percent of its executive decision-making body, the same beloved lads who burned down our economy with their criminal casino games. So how did we punish these men? By mandating that the middle class (51 percent of which is female), pick up their bar tab to the tune of over $700 billion bucks. How fitting it is that since the 2008 bailout, the poor got poorer and the rich got so rich that their paychecks had to be printed on scrolls.

Education. The previous 8 of 10 Secretaries of Education were men who ruled the office for 34 of the last 40 years. During such time, women comprised 75 percent of public school teachers but only 14 percent of school superintendents. Is this dearth of women leaders and education policy framers the reason why the self-described "greatest nation on earth" is a flat-out flunky when it comes to A-B-Cs, 1-2-3s and general common sense? The U.S. ranks 17th in overall education, 27th in math, 20th in science (15-year-olds), 24th in literacy and next to last in general ignorance concerning social issues.

Government. Is it not interesting that, of the nation's 20 women Senators, 70 percent are Democrats, and of its 84 Congresswomen, 74 percent are Democrats? Though the Democratic party is not exactly a vast bastion of female representation, what does that say about the Republican Party whose women represent six percent of Senators and five percent of Congresspersons? What it says is, "boys club." What it says is, as long as we can keep women in the kitchen with their bathrobes and fuzzy slippers, we can keep them in their place and out of our policy-making.

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Technology. Silicon Valley is like Oz. For men, that is. Because, men pull most of the strings in hi-tech as they seemingly do everywhere else. Men hold 74 percent of tech jobs overall. Darlings of digital, Google, Facebook, Twitter and Microsoft, are gracious enough to allow about 10-15 percent of women on tech teams. Those women who are gifted such an honor are far outnumbered when it comes to executing leadership decisions that influence the products and services we use every minute of every day. That's right, 70-80 percent of tech management and executive roles are awarded to men, or should I say very young men who must look better than women do in hoodies, over-sized glasses and wrinkled jeans, otherwise, none of them have come up with a proper algorithm that proves why they get to run the show.

Healthcare. Surprise, surprise. Men comprise 67 percent of our physicians. And though the number of women physicians has significantly grown since the 70s, their pay hasn't. Women physicians make at least 25 percent less than their male counterparts. Reason? Apparently, none of their male physicians care to offer a diagnosis. Because there isn't one. Women also comprise only 43 percent of medical management positions and achieve CEO status at a rate of just 63 percent of their male counterparts. Only 6 out of the last 22 United States Secretaries of Health and Human Services have been women, over a 50-year period nonetheless. Under Obama and Kathleen Sebelius, nationwide healthcare reform was enacted. (See what a man and woman can do together?) But health policies and support services remain anathema at best. For instance, 66 percent of informal (non-professional) caregivers are women. And their care services equate to upwards of $150-$200 billion dollars in annual value. Yet somehow, women who are family caregivers are 2.5 times more likely than non-caregivers to live in poverty. And let's remember that women live longer than men, so they have less to lean on in their retirement years, especially when it comes to caring for themselves.

Conservative men despise government intervention except when it comes to a government that mandates how women must bear babies or suffer the consequences of electing not to, through anti-abortion and anti-contraception and anti Planned Parenthood legislation. Ironically, these same men refuse to offer paid maternity leave for obeying their commands. After all, the U.S. and Papua New Guinea are the only two developed nations out of 185 that do not guarantee paid maternity leave. And if that's not vomit-inducing enough, 36 of 41 Republican Senators voted against the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009. The only Republicans that supported such fair pay for women were all four female Senators and Arlen Specter.

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So, let's recap, shall we? Women work just as hard as men. Women are just as intellectually intelligent as men. Women are more emotionally intelligent than men. Women handle far more home responsibilities than men. Women handle far more parenting responsibilities than men. Women handle far more educational responsibilities than men. Women are far less violent than men. Women are becoming far more financially supportive to men. Women are the only gender that can give birth to men. And women take care of men through their lives and into their twilight years.

By contrast, men are six inches taller than women. Men are 40 pounds heavier than women. Men have more muscle mass and cardiovascular reserve than women. Men can lift, push or pull more than women, throw farther than women and run faster than women. And men heal faster and fertilize longer than women.

And that, folks, is why men deserve to earn more, attain more, obtain more and ultimately rule the whole damn universe. This is the world according to men.

Perhaps a woman's fatal flaw is her willingness to have children with a man who thinks her less worthy in any capacity. Hence, creating more of such men does not bode well for preservation of the human race, to say the very, very least. On the other hand, a woman's greatest asset might just be her ability to outgrow such men who clearly turn a blind eye toward evolution. After all, women develop fewer infectious diseases and antisocial disorders. Women maintain lower blood pressure. Women can give birth. And... women live longer than men!

Therefore, women must rally, women must rebel, and women must resort to an all-out affront on history as written by men.

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Since women earn 20+ percent less than men, it is time for them to make up the difference in an unyielding manner. If women are relegated to such an inexplicable disparity in income, they should demand 20 percent more time off from work so that men can wholly comprehend the absolute magnitude of their impact. Or perhaps that isn't quite enough. Perhaps all 160 million women should walk out of their classrooms or operating rooms or boardrooms or courtrooms or retail stores or research facilities or manufacturing plants or community centers or call centers or public transit vehicles or Capitol Hill offices and refuse to return until their paychecks get printed properly -- with all the same digits for all the same work that all those pathetically impious men do.

Once and for all, pay women what they deserve, afford them the opportunities they deserve, treat them with the dignity and respect they deserve, and support them with the kindness and generosity they deserve.

And then, and only then, will there be a Mother's Day worthy of any celebration.
First Day in Haiti

May 6, 2016

Dr. Jane Aronson

The Haiti I Love and Revere

Hard to believe that it has been almost a year since I was last in Haiti. I used to visit every few months. 16 visits under my belt. The team is strong and though the program managers come to visit from time to time, there is no need to be on top of the Haitian youth team. They are independent and they are capable of managing themselves. They just need our love and devotion.

We had the usual day of travel that one has on the way up the mountain to Kenscoff, Haiti. Though the flight is only 3  hours, the travel is somewhat laborious with heavy traffic and the usual stops to equip ourselves for the adventure ahead. We stop for lunch at Visa Lodge and endure the usual sketchy servers, but the food is tasty; then to Delma 34 to visit with Monley Elysee, now 12 years of age, a young boy saved in the earthquake 6 years ago after 9 days in the rubble of his crushed home where his parents were killed. His uncle, Gary, has relocated to Miami with Monley's grandmother and his grandfather, Antoine, who is 82 yo, is now managing the family in Port au Prince. The house is clean and neat and we spent time talking to Monley and his brothers, Moises and Christopher after they arrived home from school. They are very grown up and tall...one of them now taller than me.

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I decided to interview Monley about his memories of the earthquake. He actually spoke quite articulately about his memory. He told us that he remembered the rumbling sound and that his father told him that the sound was a big truck. Then all he remembers was the sunlight that he saw when people were digging him out. When I asked him if he thought he was going to die, he said "no". He has come a very long way. For years, Monley was not very talkative and had very disruptive behavior in school. He never smiled and was unable to concentrate. These were all as a result of his trauma from the earthquake. He lost his parents and he likely suffered a near-death experience.

We asked about school and looked at some report cards for all three boys. It looks like Monley is doing alright, but his older brothers have academic potholes. We will delve into this more and see what we can do to help them. I am anxious about what will happen to these kids once they finish high school. Can they go to university? Are there job training programs available? Or will they become aimless and unemployed for the rest of their lives like many young people in Haiti where unemployment is a way of life?

Then we go to Giant supermarket for our treats and then up the mountain to a guest house on 10 Rue de Godet where we have stayed for the last 6 years. The supermarket is fun in that we can purchase Oreos, Frosted Flakes, 7 up, and other recognizable food items that we have in the US, so we can feel at home. The streets of Port au Prince still have evidence of the earthquake....rubble and rebar abound and crushed buildings never fixed are still here and there. No tent villages in sight and many rebuilt buildings are part of my awareness...though we still have a tent village up in Kenscoff where we serve many of their children and adults.

The trip up to Kenscoff which is 15 km is a passing game for trucks and tap taps (painted cars that are Haitian taxis) which carry many commuters packed in like sardines. There are no public buses...just tap taps which are very dilapidated cars and trucks with inscriptions about Jesus and God. The words are poetic and protective for the Catholic Haitians who believe in God and Voodoo.

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All those who have not been to Haiti are stunned by the verdant terraced mountains and the wildly lively culture of the towns and markets along the way. We go through Fermathe, Thomasson, and then Kenscoff and then to Bellecour, the guest house. We pass truckloads of produce and witness hundreds of beautiful women clad in festive modern garb with baskets of goods balanced perfectly on their heads. The traffic is just enough to whet our appetites for Haiti, an overpopulated impoverished country that has no government and yet seems to flourish with the excitement and vitality of a culture that is rich and enduring. It is all inexplicable and puzzling and yet magical and addictive for the traveler. How does it all work? Why don't we understand this country? I am here 6 years since the earthquake and I love Haiti, but never have much common sense to explain it.

I only know one thing.... WWO does understand the children and adults we serve and we are devoted to them. We have built a very intimate approach to serve the orphans and vulnerable children in Kenscoff and we have statistics/metrics to show that our intervention, Element of Play, which includes Toy Libraries, sport, recreation, art, music, dance, storytelling, camp and homework support works to strengthen the souls of kids we serve. We are successful in building capacity in youth who run the programs and we hope to do more all over Haiti. We want to create a play revolution here.

Last night we sat as a team and ate dinner and got to know one another. We ate barbequed chicken, scalloped potatoes, rice and beans and even had chocolate mousse as dessert. Everyone sat in the living room and made God's eyes under the supervision of Kris, who hopefully will play her ukulele for us today. We have a very eclectic group of young people who are the junior board of WWO in Los Angeles. They are serious professionals who have done service before in other settings and love WWO. I know some of them a long time and love them. I also brought a long a guest from Orange, New Jersey, Dawan, who is in his early thirties, graduating from Rutgers shortly and an eager advocate in his own backyard to help change the world he has known since he was a child. He has endured trauma and yet has compassion and understanding for his life.

I will introduce you to all the service rangers over the next couple of days: Ed, the photographer, Danielle, Noah, Matt, Kris and Dawan. They are sweet and caring and have a zest for adventure and service. I adore them.

I went to bed late last night reading the adoption files of a Taiwanese baby who was exposed to heroin during the pregnancy and a deaf 6 yo from China who looks perfectly adorable. I continue to be devoted to reviewing pre-adoption abstracts. Though international adoptions are in small numbers these days, it is so exciting to help parents adopt those children who likely are living in institutions that are not served by organizations like WWO.

Off we go this morning to a pre-school where WWO is working to help children be ready to learn. Thanks to the youth of WWO Haiti for taking such good care of the children and us when we arrive to visit.
By Durba Ghosh, Ph.D.

In Delhi, India in February, the government arrested the student president of India's largest university for engaging in what the government considered seditious speech. The law used by the government to detain him was a colonial-era law, section 124A of the Indian Penal Code, enacted by the British to suppress any speech that could incite public disorder. Widely used by the British colonial government in India in the 1920s and 1930s to jail figures such as Mohandas K. Gandhi, the democratically elected Indian government has resorted to a colonial-era law to suppress political dissent.

After a century and a half, it is time to abandon sedition and security laws that suppress political dissent and withdraw civil liberties from citizens. Laws once used to keep colonizers in power over a subject population that had few legal rights are now being used to buttress the authority of elected officials over populations that are entitled to rule of law and human rights. Modern nations should not behave as colonizers.

No longer considered "extraordinary," emergency laws that call for enhanced security measures such as increased surveillance of particular ethnic and religious groups have become commonplace. Part of a global phenomenon to increase the power of military and police, as well as the executive authority of the government, emergency laws that were once accused of undermining democracy under colonialism are now being used in postcolonial states.

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India is not alone in using colonial laws to restrict the rights of its citizens. After a series of attacks left more than 100 dead in Paris last November, the French National Assembly voted overwhelmingly to extend a state of emergency that allowed the government to censor the press, raid homes without warrants, and monitor those suspected of planning terrorist conspiracies.

In spite of protests and widespread reports that police and security officials had wrongly detained thousands of Muslims, France's state of emergency has been extended for another three months.

The state of emergency in France relies on the force of a colonial-era law passed in 1955 at the start of France's battle against Algerian independence. Now due to expire at the end of May 2016, France, like several other democratic nations, is using colonial-era laws to police its populations.

Student protests are raging against the government in Delhi and citizen protests across France have challenged the extension of the state of emergency, colonial-era laws are experiencing a troubling revival.

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In short, laws to "protect" France from Algerians in the late 1950s are now allowing France to protect itself against a Muslim minority that threatens to commit acts of terrorism. In India, a law enacted by the British government to control anticolonial political speech is now being used by a political regime hoping to hold onto its majority in parliament.

9/11 marked the beginning of a global crisis of terrorism and subsequently multiple nations passed laws to restrict the movements and activities of populations most associated with terrorism, such as Muslims.

In the United States, the National Security Entry/Exit Registration System required Muslim men from nearly two dozen countries to register with the government at designate facilities. In use from 2002 until 2011, the act followed the movement of Muslims from Middle Eastern countries such as Iran, Iraq, Libya, Sudan, Syria, Saudi Arabia, to Asian nations with large Muslim populations such as Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Indonesia.

Reminiscent of earlier American laws to restrict the movement of Chinese, Japanese, and Indian laborers into the United States, NSEERS reminded Americans that in a time of crisis, certain groups were targeted as threats to the nation.

Yet, 9/11 was not the beginning of anti-terrorism laws of states of emergency. A system of laws to suppress anti-state violence has been in use throughout the twentieth century. Used in areas that were colonized, the French and British enacted states of emergency to control colonized populations who were defined as insufficiently civilized for the kind of civic society that could lead to democratic behavior.

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Inspired by the Defense of the Realm laws used in Britain and Ireland at the start of the first World War, the Defence of India Act of 1915 detained those suspected of terrorism against the state. Rationalized as a wartime measure that was intended to contain the threat posed by subjects who sympathized with the Axis powers, the Defense of the Realm and other related laws targeted particular populations.These groups including communists, Irish republicans, and Muslims who wanted to reinstate the caliph in Istanbul. They were subjected to increased police surveillance, press censorship, and detention in specially built camps to keep them from spreading radical and militant political ideas.

Nearly a hundred years later, these laws, considered extraordinary in their time, are deemed essential for regimes that were attempting to control populations who were considered poorly prepared for democracy, such as Muslims. Colonial officials defended these laws as temporary measures to protect the process of civilizing the natives, believing that colonialism existed to educate colonized subjects in the norms of civil and democratic behavior. Modern officials defend these laws as part of their armature against terrorism.

Nationalists in India, Ireland, Egypt, and South Africa in the early part of the twentieth century were roundly opposed to emergency laws because they suspended the rule of law and damaged the possibility of democratic engagement.

Challenging the British government's actions to suppress political dissent, leaders such as Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister of India argued that emergency laws that limited the freedom of speech, assembly, and association would impede the process of creating a just and equal civil society.

Yet, many independent nations, particularly India, inspired by the terms of the British Defence of India Act of 1915, adopted anti-terrorism laws such as the Preventive Detention Act (1950), another Defence of India Act (in 1962), and eventually a series of Prevention of Terrorism acts and ordinances after it became independent. The passage of the Maintenance of Internal Security Act (MISA) allowed Prime Minister Indira Gandhi to declare a state of emergency for 16 months in the 1970s, marking a tragic interruption in India's nearly 70 years of democracy.

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The recent invocation of another colonial-era law, section 124A of the Indian Penal Code, to arrest and detain the president of a student union demonstrates that colonialism is alive and well, even in nation-states that define themselves as modern and democratic. It is ironic, that in a nation whose founders protested sedition law, that its postcolonial leaders have embraced them.

In balancing tensions between enhanced security and suppressing the legal rights of citizens, it's essential we work to break the bonds of colonial relationships, particularly those embedded in outdated colonial laws. As events unfold in the aftermath of the attacks in Brussels, we need to take care that terrorist acts do not result in limiting the civil liberties of ordinary citizens.

As we collectively move toward securing democracy against acts of terrorism, we should rely on laws that allow political dissent to thrive without resorting to state violence.
Oregon State University researchers claim that conservatives' denial of human-induced climate change can be reversed by linguistic and visual manipulation. All that is necessary to sway conservative minds, the researchers say, is to couch climate change in terms of patriotism accompanied by a photo of a bald eagle and American flag.

Given their extensive investigation, I'll take Oregon State researchers at their word. But there is a more potent way to lure recalcitrant conservatives into the environmental fold.

Just don't make the mistake of trying to win converts by raising the prospect of the end of the world, or of saving animals and plants from extinction. Such approaches won't work on individuals who view regulation of greenhouse gas emissions as a ploy to facilitate redistribution of wealth to the Democratic Party's base.

A promising methodology to change the minds of conservatives is to bring climate change and other environmental protection issues right to their front doorsteps. Frame environmental concerns in terms of personal health and economic impacts. That is a language that even the most ideologically rigid conservatives can understand, and just as importantly, appreciate.

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A slew of scientific studies document that it would cost far more to repair (when possible) the damage from environmental degradation than to prevent it in the first place.

For example, the International Energy Agency issued a report in which it was calculated that a $44 trillion investment to decarbonize the world would result in $115 trillion in fuel savings, which when scaled down to the individual's level, would be significant.

Taking everything into account, anti-pollution regulations are projected to cost households an extra $45 annually by 2020. That should be a mere pittance for even most low income families, especially when offset with the monetary benefits from improved public health.

It is true that in a sense, a price tag cannot be put on good health, given it is so elemental to our existence that it is priceless. But costs can be tabulated for poor health in terms of medical expenses, lost work time, and unrealized income because of shorter life spans.

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In a study published in Health Affairs, climate change-related ozone pollution was linked to $6.5 billion in health costs during the first decade of this century.

Moreover, when environmental protection is marketed skillfully in terms of health benefits, opponents lose steam. An example is the experience of William Ruckelshaus, the first administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. He broke new ground in guiding regulation through a bureaucratic maze back in the early 1970s.

"It was easier politically to get things done, he said, "when an environmental problem was presented as a health problem because the latter was less abstract, less politically charged."

Thus, health and economics are likely to surpass photos of eagles in causing conservatives to shift in favor of a green agenda, in practice if not in name.
Stakeholders in the energy sector are focused on the ongoing legal battle over the Clean Power Plan, the potential rules on methane emissions and the latest energy bill moving through the Senate. But taking a longer view, what big issues will dominate the energy industry for the next 10 years?

While government policy will be a factor, technology and the marketplace will influence long-term trends. Moreover, the energy sector will continue to be influenced by the ongoing effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and the world's carbon footprint.

This makes the crystal ball particularly foggy. But there are a few issues that we know will drive key policy debates over the next decade.

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(1)Clean Coal -- Will the decline in coal continue?

The legal challenges of the Clean Power Plan will be hashed out in the next year or two, but the debates over greenhouse gases and climate change will rage for at least the next decade. Carbon emissions will be a driving factor in our energy landscape for the foreseeable future and there is no sector more strongly impacted than coal.

Coal has been hammered over the past decade. Ten years ago, coal generated more than half of the electricity in the United States. In 2015, that share had fallen to about one-third. Low natural gas prices and increased environmental regulation have contributed to this sharp decline. There is a fundamental question about whether coal can ever make a come-back.

Technology is the real wild card here. If researchers can find a way to make coal cleaner in a cost effective way, the industry will see a domestic resurgence.

So far, those research efforts have not borne fruit and without a breakthrough, the coal industry will continue to struggle. But there is significant ongoing research activity, and both government and industry have an interest in finding a way to reduce the carbon footprint of coal so that it can be an environmentally sustainable way to help power the nation - and the world.

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(2)Infrastructure Fights -- Is controversy the "new normal"?

Historically, energy infrastructure has not garnered much of a quarrel. But in recent years there has been increased controversy over pipelines and transmission lines. The Keystone pipeline is the poster child for infrastructure battles, but there are others.

In April, Kinder Morgan announced its decision to cancel the Northeast Direct pipeline following opposition from local communities. The Sabal Trail natural gas pipeline in Georgia, Florida and Alabama has become controversial and the Clean Line transmission line in Arkansas has also ignited a firestorm of opposition.

Even when the infrastructure is ultimately sited, the wrangling increases uncertainty and lengthens the timeframes for energy suppliers, raising the cost of investments that are already expensive.

Blocking or delaying infrastructure projects could have a significant impact on efforts to bring clean power to regions like the Southeast that don't have readily accessible wind or solar. It could also hamper initiatives to increase the use of natural gas to regions like New England that still rely on home heating oil and other, dirtier fuels.

Ironically, environmental groups, both locally and nationally, have latched on to this approach since they have had some success with it. Unless that dynamic changes, conflict may be the new normal for new infrastructure.

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(3) Transportation - How will innovations in the transportation sector impact the energy industry?

Even with low gasoline prices, people are driving less; millennials are buying fewer cars than previous generations, vehicles are getting more efficient and fuel economy standards continue to increase. Given that most of the oil consumed in the world is used in the transportation sector, these new technologies have the potential to impact the oil industry as well.

This question is particularly difficult to answer because in many cases the technology exists - think electric cars - and so the uncertainty lies in consumer behavior. Will electric cars ever catch on? Similarly, if autonomous vehicles come to market in the timeframe most developers expect, does that increase vehicle miles traveled?

Also, trends in the transportation sector here in the United States may not translate worldwide. Oil markets are world markets, so while shifts in the American transportation sector have an impact, it is international trends that really change the equation.
Mowing up to the shoreline? You should reconsider. Allowing trees and other vegetation to grow along shorelines helps maintain water temperatures, prevents erosion and supports aquatic life.

On any given Saturday, along the banks of Little Tennessee River (or any other Tennnessee River tributary river, stream, creek or reservoir truth be known), you can see them: the grass mowers, the weed whackers, the tree choppersall doing their best to make the shoreline look nice and tidy. This, in America, is what weve come to think of as aesthetically appealing: a well-manicured, tamed version of nature with weeds, grass and rogue trees all under control.

Trouble is, whats good for our sense of propriety is sometimes bad for nature. Keeping the shoreline trimmed like a lawn robs it of its natural riparian bufferthe fringe of plants and trees that hold soil in place to control erosion, shade the stream to help control water temperature and provides a source of food for aquatic animals of all sorts, including bugs and fish.

When riparian buffers are lostthrough mowing or weed-whacking, development, agricultural use or industrystreams grow stressed. Water temperatures warm up, and quality goes down. Silt begins to fill in the spaces where bugs like to live and the fish spawn. These animals respond by becoming unhealthy, relocating or even dying.

The easiest, least expensive thing anyone can do to improve water quality and support aquatic habitat is simply to re-establish a riparian buffer, says Shannon OQuinn, TVA Water Resources specialist. Mr. OQuinn is working on a exciting project called Shade Your Stream, a cooperative effort between TVA and Mainspring Conservation Trust and other partners in North Carolina designed specifically for the purpose of reinforcing shorelines in the most natural wayby encouraging private property owners along shorlines to let trees, shrubs and other native plants back in, so they can do their jobs. (Find out more at shadeyourstream.org.)

Make Plans to Plant

A large focus of the project, just getting its feet wet (so to speak), is to encourage the planting of native trees and shrubs, the mainstay of any riparian buffer. Trees and shrubs act as filters so that runoff doesnt flow directly into the stream or reservoirso that all the sediment and pollutants are trapped in the plants around the roots and dont make it into the water where they can become a threat to critters of all sorts, OQuinn says, from the simplest bugs to the most sophisticated fish, such as the sicklefin redhorse, now a species of concern in the far eastern reaches of the Valley.

Trees and shrubs also stop erosion, so that there is no need for rocks and baskets to reshape lost shoreline, he continues. You dont have to do a lot of restabilization work if you let the vegetation do it for you.



Any landowner can take action and plant a tree and shrub or three; good choices for shoreline stabilization include natives such as:



Black cherry

Rhododendron

Winterberry

River birch

Silverbell

Silky dogwood

Sycamore

Spicebush

Alder

Paw-paw

Black willow

Once the trees are in, let plant life grow wild around them, Mr. OQuinn suggests. Resist the urge to prune or cut them againgive them time to get established.

When they do, the benefits will far outweigh the sight of a shaggy shoreline. In fact, once you know what youre doing, youll begin to see that the shoreline is not yours to groom at allit belongs to nature. A stream owns more than just the channel it flows through, says Bill McLarney, Ph.D., senior scientist and aquatic specialist with Mainspring Conservation Trust. Protecting the streamside surrounding is he best way to keep it healthy.

And isnt that, truly, beautiful?
By: Jennifer Robinson





Image Source; Barrel

When networking, most people fail in the follow-up. You know how it is; you collect some cards and have a few great conversations at an event. Then you find the cards in a pocket or a purse and don't recall who these folks are or why you have their cards. Or maybe you followed up timely and connected with them on social media after meeting them at an event. If you did, you get a gold star. You've done what most don't do.

But now what?

Once you have followed up and connected, how do you cultivate that relationship?

Here are some ideas to help you out:

1. The First 30

Within the first 30 days of meeting someone new, think about who in your network you can connect them with and make a virtual introduction. Explain to both parties why you wanted to connect them. People will really appreciate the fact that you took the time to help them build their network and offered something helpful. A lot of people will follow up in the first 30 days with emails about their own services and what they need. Distinguish yourself by helping them and not looking for what you can gain from a new relationship. Remember, you don't have any currency in this relationship yet. It is not about you.

[Related: You Made the Connection, Now What? Tips on Building a Networking Relationship]



2. Take a new contact out

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Most commonly this could be for a coffee meet-up or a meal. But think outside the box and invite someone to another networking event you think they might enjoy, invite them to volunteer with you somewhere or even invite them to go get a manicure or take an exercise class together. The idea is to get to know someone on a more personal level.

3. Make sure you have a system

Besides having a system for immediate follow-up, think about how you will continue to reach out to new contacts. Set reminders for yourself at timed intervals of 30 or 60 days to check in with new contacts. See what projects they have going on and how you might be of service. Listen to the challenges they might be having with their business and see if there is anyone you can refer them to that might be able to help. It may be they need help with something unrelated to business. For example, a recommendation for a great nanny or a good contractor. This is where having a strong network yourself can be a real asset. Just make sure you have vetted providers before you recommend them to others.

4. Recognize milestones

Whether it is a birthday, a birth, a work anniversary or something else, reach out to your network with a call or a handwritten card or note. If someone is sick, lost a loved one or generally could just use some cheering up because they have been struggling, reach out with a card or call as well. When someone is recovering from surgery, for example, I like to send them an eAmazon gift card so they can purchase a book to read at home or something else that might help them out. And they can do it right from their couch since they are homebound.

[Listen: From Captive to Conqueror: How to Make the Most Out of Your Next Networking Event]



5. Schedule a party

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Do you have a storefront or workplace? Can you accommodate a group at your home? Schedule a party to bring people in your network together. They can network with each other and it provides an opportunity for you to follow up with a number of people at once as well. People will remember that you were the person who brought them together and that is always a good thing.

--



Jennifer Lynn Robinson, Esq. is a litigator turned entrepreneur following a life changing accident. She conducts speaking engagements and workshops for universities, companies, conferences, non-profits and groups on issues surrounding networking and relationship-building. She also works one on one with people to help them be more comfortable and confident with their networking efforts. Jennifer lives just outside Philadelphia, PA with her husband and three rescue dogs. Follow her @AreYouNetworked and visit purposefulnetworking.com.


Al Gore joined New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman (center) at a news conference announcing more AGs will investigate ExxonMobil for fraud.

With several state attorneys general now investigating whether ExxonMobil misled its shareholders and the public about climate change risks, it was more than a little ironic when the company recently cried foul.

"Collaboration, collusion, conspiracy," charged ExxonMobil Media Relations Manager Alan Jeffers, "pick a word."

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Pick a word? How about nonsense? If anyone could be accused of collusion and conspiracy, it's ExxonMobil. But more on that later.

What prompted Jeffers' ludicrous allegation was a meeting that took place on March 29. My colleague Peter Frumhoff, lead climate scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, and environmental attorney Matt Pawa briefed a handful of state attorneys general, including New York's Eric Schneiderman, who launched an investigation of ExxonMobil last November. Later that day, Schneiderman and 16 other attorneys general joined former Vice President Al Gore at a press conference to declare their support for more aggressive government action on climate change. During the event, AGs from the U.S. Virgin Islands and Massachusetts announced that they, too, would initiate investigations of ExxonMobil.

On April 15, Reuters broke the story that Frumhoff and Pawa had met behind closed doors with the state prosecutors before the press conference. The news organization had obtained emails disclosing the meeting through an open records request filed by a group called the Energy & Environment Legal Institute (E&E Legal).

"The previously unknown level of coordination with outside advisers offered a glimpse behind the scenes in an increasingly pitched battle between Exxon and environmental groups," Reuters reported. "Exxon has said it has been unfairly singled out and that climate activists are conspiring to rally public opinion against it."

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Unfortunately, not only did the Reuters story fail to adequately identify E&E Legal, it also mischaracterized what amounted to a routine meeting in an ongoing legal investigation.

Confidentiality is Standard Operating Procedure

Reuters described E&E Legal, a small, three-person nonprofit, as a "free-market think tank with ties to the Competitive Enterprise Institute [CEI], whose website says it opposes U.S. Environmental Protection Agency regulation of greenhouse gas emissions." What it didn't mention is that E&E Legal -- which could hardly be called a think tank -- is at least partly funded by the coal industry and has repeatedly harassed prominent climate scientists, including Katharine Hayhoe and Michael Mann, by filing intrusive open records requests that have tied them up for weeks and wasted hundreds of thousands of public university dollars.

What's more, the story didn't explain that the group's connection with CEI is through CEI staff attorney Chris Horner, who handles E&E Legal's open records filings. CEI has been peddling lies about climate science on behalf of fossil fuel interests for decades, and Horner is associated with other climate science denier groups as well as the coal industry, a relationship that was recently revealed by coal company bankruptcy filings.

More important, Reuters failed to clarify that the attorneys general were merely doing their jobs. By their very nature, legal investigations can entail gathering information privately from a wide variety of sources.

This is a key point. State attorneys general have the authority to meet with anyone they choose -- be it a scientist, an environmental lawyer or a corporate official -- in the course of an investigation on a confidential basis. In other words, there was no hint of collusion or conspiracy. Meeting privately with experts is part of the legal discovery process. Moreover, in New York -- under the state's Martin Act -- the attorney general can initiate a completely confidential investigation of potentially fraudulent practices.

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But that didn't stop FoxNews.com, the Daily Caller, the Washington Examiner and the Washington Times -- the climate science denial echo chamber -- from providing ExxonMobil and E&E Legal a platform to make bogus charges about "collusion" and "conspiracy" in subsequent stories.

ExxonMobil's Disinformation Network

Schneiderman's investigation -- and one launched in January by California's attorney general -- followed the release of documents by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) and reporters at InsideClimate News and Columbia Journalism School revealing that Exxon scientists conducted cutting-edge climate research decades ago and warned top management of the potentially catastrophic risks posed by global warming. Schneiderman's staff is now reviewing the company's statements to investors regarding those risks to see if they contradicted what it was hearing from its own scientists.

The New York AGs office also is taking a close look at ExxonMobil's support for a network of think tanks and advocacy groups that has been spreading disinformation about climate science for nearly 20 years. Here is where questions about "collusion" and "conspiracy" come into play.

That network was exposed back in 2007 when UCS documented that ExxonMobil had spent at least $16 million between 1998 and 2005 on more than 40 climate science denier groups. The group that got the most money? CEI, which received more than $2 million. Despite the fact that it had no scientists on its staff, CEI established itself as the go-to group to provide "the other side" of a manufactured scientific debate. It is perhaps best remembered for reassuring Americans that global warming is nothing to worry about in a TV commercial extolling the virtues of carbon dioxide. The spot's unforgettable tag line: "They call it pollution. We call it life."

ExxonMobil publicly ended its direct support for CEI in 2005, but the company continues to spend millions of dollars annually on denier groups and congressional climate science denier political campaigns. CEI, meanwhile, may have lost ExxonMobil as a benefactor, but according to the most recent available tax records, it is still receiving money from billionaire industrialist Charles Koch, co-owner of the coal, oil and gas conglomerate Koch Industries.

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In any case, it is difficult to determine just where CEI gets its funding these days. Much of it comes from a secretive, pass-through foundation called Donors Trust and its affiliate Donors Capital Fund. Since 2002, the intertwined funds have laundered more than $457 million from anonymous corporations, foundations and individuals and distributed that money to hundreds of anti-regulation groups, including the American Enterprise Institute, the Heartland Institute and, of course, CEI.

The First Amendment Doesn't Protect Fraud

As one of ExxonMobil's top climate science denier grantees, CEI now finds itself in the hot seat. U.S. Virgin Islands Attorney General Claude Walker not only launched an investigation of ExxonMobil for defrauding investors and the general public, he also subpoenaed communications between ExxonMobil and many of its denier network groups. He specifically asked CEI for all its climate change and energy policy materials, as well as its donor lists, over a 10-year period beginning in 1997.



CEI has filed to quash the subpoena and pushed back in an April 23 op-ed in the Washington Post. CEI President Kent Lassman and his general counsel, Sam Kazman, insisted that their organization and ExxonMobil are being unfairly harassed for exercising their First Amendment rights. A week later, the Wall Street Journal editorial board chimed in, calling Walker's subpoena of CEI documents "a form of harassment" and "a dangerous turn for free speech."

Of course, the real issue is not CEI's or ExxonMobil's First Amendment rights. CEI, which has been exercising its right to mislead the public about climate change for quite some time, is being investigated to determine the extent to which it functioned as ExxonMobil's paid surrogate. ExxonMobil, meanwhile, is being investigated to ascertain if it is guilty of fraud. And, as Attorney General Schneiderman has noted, "The First Amendment, ladies and gentlemen, doesn't give you the right to commit fraud."
My mum sent me this photo the other day. That's her on the left. Sixteen and barefoot on the beach, no husband or kids on the horizon just yet. Dreaming of travel abroad, maybe art school in Paris or studying the Italian Masters in Rome. Young, happy and carefree. A bright shining girl.

She recently flew up and joined us for the end of our family holiday in Byron Bay. She arrived for dinner, waving a bottle of champagne, to a jubilant chorus of cheers and shouts. It was a boisterous night of laughter and happiness ringing out on the warm night air. I needed it. I needed her. I've lived a 1000 kms away in a different city for over a decade now but I still miss having her there, ready to pop over for dinner with a bottle of wine under her arm at a moment's notice.

It was hard to leave her a few days later, I felt that tug in my chest. I wanted to relinquish control and dissolve into her, let her take care of everything like she used to. When I was plagued by nightmares as a child, she would lift the quilt without a word and I would slip beneath her arm and into the relief of a dreamless sleep, nightmare instantly banished. She wielded such power.

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But I'm the one lifting the quilt now to an anxious child in the middle of the night. I'm the one taking care of things, the one others dissolve into. So instead I kissed her goodbye and drove away, with my own noisy clan in the backseat, the miles stacking up between us once more.

Is it possible to inhabit a place where your mother doesn't exist? My own mother was such a vivid presence in my childhood that I cannot fathom it. Mind you, at that age I just accepted her there as a fait accompli; Mum was Mum, she was there purely to orbit my star at the centre of the universe. She called me her Botticelli angel, sang songs to me in the bath, told me stories about the Vikings and listened to my plaintive woes.

I didn't see the isolation and loneliness of an exhausted young mother. I didn't see her frustration and despair for her own dreams while she was elbows deep in dishes and weighed down by domesticity. I didn't see the woman, ahead of her time in so many ways, wrestling with her own ambivalence about motherhood, striving to make her marriage work, fighting to reclaim her lost sense of self and express the creativity that burned inside her.

At times she was hard to reach, a faraway look clouding her eyes as she slipped away to the sanctuary of her easel and etchings and jars of oily brushes. I can still see her ink-stained fingers wiping on her apron, her air of distracted concentration as she moved from easel to table and back again in slow meditative communion. There was a hushed reverence in her studio like that inside a church, a sense of magic and ritual. I am loathe to interrupt her when she is working even now.

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Regardless of what was raging elsewhere in her life, what tempest rattled the windows and pounded the door, that space and her time in it was always non-negotiable. It was, and remains, as essential to her as food and air and a good glass of red. It may have taken her 15 years to complete her Fine Arts degree, putting it all on hold with the arrival of each of my two sisters and I, but she always went back. Every time.

Dad, to his credit, has always understood this, and seems to have been perpetually building her a space to work, wherever they have lived. I often think of his tireless effort and care to create it exactly to her requirements, the right number of shelves and a niche for her plan drawers here, enough natural light coming in over there, as an expression of his love and devotion to her.

But a funny thing happens as you get older. Once the blinkers of youth and self-absorption fall away, you begin to see things differently and an entirely new appreciation of one's parents is often one of them. It's a rite of passage that takes time; it ripens with age and experience, and even more so with the coming of children. When that parental baton is passed into your own hand, your perspective zooms into sudden sharp focus.

I can see my mother now as the perfectly flawed human being she is, and it must be said, one with absolutely no grasp of the concept of time. She is stubbornly, chronically, resolutely late to everything much to the hair-tearing exasperation of everyone around her. Mum simply waves a hand and carries on.

Without doubt though, my mother is the light at the centre of our family, the beacon guiding us all back to a safe harbour. She is the warm hug, the big laugh, the distracted artist, the patient teacher, the vagabond grandparent who ran away to Italy and the tenacious visionary who has always pushed our family forward.

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Watching her gently fold and metamorphose into her own mother, my beloved Grandma, there is a sense of us all moving around the circle of life. Her shoulders rounded and shaking with mirth, the squawk of giggles and irreverent delight, the sing-song self-talk as she potters in the kitchen, the random impulse purchases defended with "Well Grandma was definitely there whispering in my ear, because before I knew it I was choosing a divine new faux fur collar for my jacket".

I always felt the two of them were soul mates, they had a closeness and a connection that went far beyond this mortal realm. Two peas in a pod. When Grandma was diagnosed with cancer, it was Mum who cared for her right through to her final breath. She flew up to Sydney from Melbourne, moved into Grandma's little flat with a view of the harbour and stayed with her till the end.

And now I see both of them in my own impish daughter. Even more so looking at that photo of Mum barefoot on the beach. And I am fiercely glad. What a lineage of strong, impressive, fearless women she descends from. Women who get things done. Women who are brave enough to change their course in life. Women with big hearts and bright eyes, with magical thoughts and adventurous feet.

So in acknowledgement. The top 20 things I've learned from my mum.

1. Time is irrelevant.

2. Keep the creative fire alive.

3. Make time and space for art, especially your own.

4. Be curious. There is magic in the detail.

5. Loyalty in love will carry you far.

6. You can't bury your pain or carry the pain of others without hurting yourself.

7. The light, the light, the light.

8. A good glass of red never hurt anybody.

9. Nothing starts a day like tea and toast brought to you in bed by a handsome man.

10. Travel is vital for the mind and soul.

11. You're never too old to run away.

12. A summer in Italy can cure all ills.

13. The little roadside stopping area on a highway is called a layby.

14. Embrace change, keep moving forward.

15. Be brave enough to live differently, however you choose.

16. Let go. Surrender to the chaos.

17. Seek joy.

18. Listen to your inner voice, she knows you best.

19. Be thankful and appreciative of where you are right now.

20. Love is everything.
Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie warns of the "danger of the single story," and while she focuses most on how this impacts our ideas about countries and cultures, she makes clear that this danger exists everywhere.

Our national and local conversations about K-12 education are no exception. (Her TED Talk on this is a must-watch.)

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The problem with the single story is that it creates stereotypes and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story.

Jennifer Berkshire, aka Edushyster, is a huge fan of the single story.

The recent piece on her site written by Emily Kaplan, is nothing more than an exercise in single stories, one about urban charters and one about affluent suburban schools. I was dumbfounded reading the sweeping generalizations about both kinds of schools but was particularly struck by the implication that suburban schools are some sort of panacea for special education students and their parents; if this writer had only taken the time to seek out authentic voices and listen, she would have learned that there are countless parents in the suburbs desperate for special education services. She would have heard how they've spent more than $2,000 of their own money to have their children tested for learning disabilities by an outside provider because the district was unwilling to test or unwilling to provide services. I certainly heard these stories as an elected school committee member in my suburban town.

I could have talked with her about a system that allowed more senior special educators to bump less senior ones out of their positions, essentially pulling the plug on longtime teacher/student relationships that were, after much hard work, leading to exciting progress for kids. In an instant, that relationship was gone. In the suburbs.

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I also could have shared with her the stories of charter families whose children have flourished and whose special education services have exceeded their expectations, where the special educator was surprised with an award (on TV!) because of a nomination letter written by a special needs mom.

I recently wrote about Thornton Elementary School in Johnston, Rhode Island. Perhaps to some, their single story would be that they are a full Title I neighborhood school. But that would ignore their principal, Louise Denham, who has been with them for eight years and declares proudly that she'd send her own children, and grandchildren, to her school. It would ignore their unique and remarkable achievement last year in being the only district school whose low income population exceeds 40 percent (they have 70 percent) to beat state averages on PARCC in both math and reading. Their whole story deserved to be told.

Success Academy in New York has also found itself in the cross-hairs of the power of the single story. The New York Times video of Charlotte Dial berating a student and ripping up her paper became a symbol for many of all that is wrong with the Success Academy schools (and even the charter sector as a whole). I too have written written about my concerns about that incident and the larger issue of discipline, but it would be unfair for me to ignore all the other stories that make Success Academy what it is. We can't ignore their 22,000 applications for next year, the testimony of parents whose children attend the school and have spent a full year in class with the teacher in the video, and the observations of journalist Abby Jackson who went inside the school and saw joy, dancing, and wiggle breaks on her visit. Unlike Jennifer Berkshire who only wants to hear from the parents with negative things to say, a journalist would want to hear from all the parents because all of their stories deserve to be heard.

Central Falls, a one mile by one mile city in Rhode Island just minutes from where I live, became a national story in 2010 when the Superintendent fired all the district's teachers. But that difficult moment can't be the single story of district that has seen graduation rates rise, maths scores double, and teacher attendance improve. That single and painful story doesn't include The Central Falls/Rhode Island College Innovation Lab, described as a "unique first-in-the-nation collaboration that has the potential to provide a PK-12 and post secondary urban education model that offers a new paradigm for state and national replication."

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There are countless examples of people on all sides of education debates who cling to the single story to prop up their side or their preferred narrative. Single stories play perfectly into the gotcha strategy that plagues most public discourse today, including how best to educate America's children.

But here's the problem.

No school is a single story. No district is a single story. No charter network is a single story. No school governance model is a single story. No teacher is a single story. No parent is a single story.

And most importantly, no student is a single story.
Young woman sleeping

After reading the Sleep Revolution post by Arianna Huffington on LinkedIn, I wondered: are we depriving ourselves of sleep intentionally or is loss of sleep outside of our control?

Here is another interesting question: When was the last time you slept like a baby? I mean deeply, peacefully, restfully?

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Humans have a biological clock that regulates our bodily functions, of which one is sleep. We need sleep; it's vital to survive. We can't do without it. A friend of mine and I were discussing sleep habits and I asked him how much sleep we really need. He stated that 8 hours is the recommended time we needed to be truly rested. Some people say they need only 5 hours, some others need 9. Sleeping is a physiologic mechanism that we normally can't control...now, reality is quite different.

Due to their profession, some groups of people are familiar with sleep deprivation. These are often people in the military, law-enforcement, medical field, etc. However, their familiarity with sleep deprivation does not mean they do so intentionally. They do their job for our everyday safety and we must thank them for their service.

Sleep deprivation is a public health issue. Choosing colleges to spread the pro-sleep movement is great, because the alarm must be raised at a very early stage of life. Moreover, I think, before entering the working world, everyone should learn healthy habits.

Campuses are temples of endless partying. As I learned it, every university in each state in the U.S. has its own special brand of celebration. And colleges even compete with one another to be known as the best place to party! College partying is an institution, and if you are not in, then you're out. Young adults live life to the fullest and become careless of the negative impacts on their health. Now, I am not condemning anything - I used to party too.

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My poor sleep habits began in high school. I would stay up all night studying for my exams and I passed. The hard work and bad habits paid off.

Several years later, in my thirties, I went to a nightclub and caught myself sleeping. I understood in that moment that staying up the whole night partying was no longer good for me. I needed to slow down and find some healthier outlets.

Today, I write. The fact is, inspiration often comes very late at night. I am more efficient from midnight to three a.m. But, on the whole, I am not very well-organized so I work late.

Here in France, a study was conducted about teenagers having problems with sleep because of today's numerous new technologies for information and communication. The fact that these devices are easy to use cause teenagers to carry them in bed, very late in the night thus sleep deprivation occurs.

Severe personal consequences



My health suffers as I observe physiologic damages due to sleep deprivation.

My cognitive functions are less accurate. I am a less agile thinker.

I have difficulties speaking. Bad moods take over, and I find myself less motivated. To sum it up, I don't fully reenergize. Those are only some of the symptoms of sleep deprivation I have experienced.

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Remedies?

Stress and overthinking occasionally lead to sleep disorders like insomnia, causing some individuals to lose sleep. Coffee and caffeinated drinks are not helpful at all; if you don't feel like partying all night, be courageous enough to speak your mind and tell your friends. Put your health first!
It is hardly unusual to find government power in the hands of regulators who have the opportunity and the incentive to use that power solely to benefit themselves. But that doesn't mean that judges should rubber-stamp such arrangements when their constitutionality is challenged in court. In holding that the Constitution forbids Amtrak from having a part in making laws that regulate railroad companies with which it competes for scarce track, a three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia affirmed a vital principle of limited government.

Amtrak is a unique beast. It is a for-profit, publicly funded entity that was created by the government and exercises government power, to the end of "provid[ing] efficient and effective intercity passenger rail mobility." In 2008, Congress passed the Passenger Rail Investment and Improvement Act (PRIIA), which gave Amtrak and the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) joint authority to issue "metrics and standards" addressing the performance and scheduling of passenger railroad services. In 2013, the Association of American Railroads (AAR) brought suit, claiming that it was unconstitutional for Congress to allow a private company to regulate its competitors. The AAR made two arguments that are related but distinctive. First, the AAR argued that Article I of the Constitution prohibits Congress from delegating its legislative powers to a private entity. Second, the AAR argued that regardless of whether Amtrak is a government entity or a private entity, it is a self-interested economic actor, and the Fifth Amendment's Due Process of Law Clause forbids institutional arrangements that allow self-interested economic actors to exercise the government's coercive power over their competitors.

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Let's break down the "nondelegation" claim. Under the Constitution, "We the People" are the ultimate source of all political authority--we delegate limited powers to our agents in government in order to better secure our rights. The Constitution expressly gives "all legislative powers" to the people's representatives in Congress "consist[ing] of a Senate and House of Representatives," and to them alone. Implicit in this grant is a prohibition against subdelegating those powers to other entities whose members are not chosen by and accountable to the people in the same way. For Congress to hand its delegated powers over to a private entity would necessarily be a prohibited subdelegation, argued the AAR, and Amtrak was such an entity.

The due process of law claim focuses on the impact of the subdelegation on the companies that Amtrak is authorized to regulate. The Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process of Law Clauses are, at their core, guarantees of lawful rule--requirements that the government's coercive power be exercised in accordance with rational, public-oriented principles rather than the beliefs and desires of particular individuals or groups. The AAR argued that the PRIIA creates an intolerable risk of rule by will rather than by law by giving a for-profit corporation regulatory power over its competitors.

In 2013, a three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit determined that Amtrak was indeed a private entity and that Congress had unconstitutionally subdelegated its regulatory authority to Amtrak. The Supreme Court reversed, deciding that Amtrak was a public entity, not a private one, for the purposes of evaluating the issues at stake. It then remanded the case back to the D.C. Circuit to consider the due process question.

Judge Janice Rogers Brown, writing the panel, framed the core question thus: "Whether an economically self-interested entity may exercise regulatory authority over its rivals." She drew upon the Supreme Court's decision in Carter v. Carter Coal Co. (1936), in which the Court invalidated a statute that prohibited the United States or any other contractor from purchasing bituminous coal from any mine that did not comply with wage and hour requirements set by "the producers of more than two-thirds of the . . . tonnage production for the preceding calendar year" and "more than one-half the mine workers employed." The Court determined that the provision subjected the minority producers "to the will" of the majority producers and so deprived those minority producers of due process of law. It reasoned that because the majority producers "may be and often are adverse to the interests of others in the same business," they could not be presumed, as official bodies are, to be impartial, and subjecting others to their will effectuated "an intolerable and unconstitutional interference with personal liberty and private property." From Carter Coal, Judge Brown extracted a principle: "The power to self-interestedly regulate the business of a competitor is, according to Carter Coal, anathema to... the very nature of governmental function." Thus, in the instant case, if Amtrak was (1) self-interested and (2) had regulatory authority over its competitors, the PRIIA effectuated a deprivation of due process of law.

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Judge Brown examined Amtrak's obligations under the statute that created it, as well as the powers conferred upon it by the PRIIA. Amtrak is obligated "to be operated and managed as a for-profit corporation." It is required to "to make agreements with the private sector and undertake initiatives that are consistent with good business judgment and designed to maximize its revenues." By way of incentivizing Amtrak to maximize its revenues, Amtrak's officers receive pay greater than "the general level of pay for officers of rail carriers with comparable responsibility" for any year in which Amtrak does not receive federal assistance. Amtrak's self-interest, concluded Judge Brown, is "readily apparent." So, too, is its power to regulate its competitors. The PRIIA requires freight operators to incorporate the metrics and standards issued by Amtrak and the FRA "to the extent practicable" and grants authority to Surface Transportation Board to investigate freight operators in the event the metrics and standards are not satisfied. "Ordinarily," Judge Brown noted, "one party doesn't face statutory pressure to acquiesce in the other's demands 'to the extent practicable.'"Judge Brown concluded: "Because PRIIA endows Amtrak with regulatory authority over its competitors, that delegation violates due process."

While Amtrak is unique, the principle that serves as the lodestar of Judge Brown's analysis can and should be used to evaluate institutional arrangements that are common at both the state and federal level. To take but one example, consider the Connecticut Dental Commission, which regulates the practice of dentistry in Connecticut and is mostly composed of... practicing dentists. Teeth-whitening services that are performed by non-dentists are increasingly popular at spas, salons, and shopping malls. In 2011, the Dental Commission issued a ruling that only licensed dentists were allowed to provide certain teeth-whitening services and threatened non-dentist teeth whiteners with fines and jail time. Several teeth-whiteners who sold over-the-counter teeth-whitening products and provided clean, comfortable environments in which customers could apply them to their teeth, filed a lawsuit, arguing that this prohibition served only to protect dentists from competition. Only after the lawsuit was filed did the Dental Commission adopt an interpretation of its initial ruling that effectively transformed it from a flat ban on non-dentist teeth-whitening to a requirement that only licensed dentists can position low-wattage light-emitting-diode (LED) lamps in front of customers' mouths during teeth-whitening procedures. That this ruling had nothing to do with protecting customer safety is evident in the fact that customers were free to shine LED lights into their own mouths.

The Second Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the Dental Commission's ruling. Senior Judge Guido Calabresi, writing for a three-judge panel, acknowledged the possibility that the ruling was designed only to serve the interests of licensed dentists--but he went on to conclude that pure economic protectionism is a legitimate government interest. The contrast between Judge Calabresi's analysis and that of Judge Brown, which rests upon the premise that the mere possession of regulatory power by self-interested economic actors is constitutionally problematic, could not be more stark.

Judge Brown's approach is the correct one. The Constitution is not designed to facilitate a Hobbesian war of all-interest-groups-against-all, in which those who emerge triumphant can use the government's coercive power as an instrument of mere will. Its guarantees of due process of law safeguard Americans against not only the imposition of mere will but institutional arrangements that lend themselves to such imposition. It will take careful, impartial, context-sensitive review of particular institutional arrangements of the kind performed by Judge Brown to enforce those guarantees. Only through such judicial engagement can the rule of law be maintained.
Woman walking alone on a misty beach

I have often lived at opposite ends of the scale, which is rare for most people to experience. It seems unique to experience both ends of the spectrum. When you think about being born Muslim and being raised Catholic, it is intriguing. I would like to ask questions to a person in that situation. The funny thing is, when I bring this up during a dinner party -- especially when there are people of different religions around my table -- there usually is a minute of total silence...

I went from being in an orphanage to suddenly living with a family in a diverse environment with certain privileges, including a good education that would grant me benefits. On the opposite end of the scale is the yearning for your lost culture and your people on one side, along with the knowledge that the new life offered may be better than what you have left on the other.

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Having one foot in the West and one foot in the East meant that I was constantly defending myself. When I was in the Netherlands, I was bullied and called ugly names for having a specific skin color. Later, when I was with Indians or Asians, they were not always very kind either. They did not accept me as I was. They did not understand my lack of knowledge of my origins and called me "a fake." Which I suppose is very true! Sad, but very true in their eyes and even in mine. They have no idea how I long to know more, but I have no idea where to start or who to ask. After all, it is our parents who teach us such things. Pieces of culture are passed on from generation to generation: family recipes, family sayings, family jokes.

But I have finally embraced this end of the scale as well. It was about time, as I realize I can fit not just in those two cultures, but in many more. I learned to fit in the worlds of India and Pakistan, as well as North America and Europe. And that gave me an extra edge. Because I have an openness that most do not have, I can be more accepting of other cultures and minorities. I can relate to them in such a way that they will let me into their inner circle. Whether they are Japanese or French, they welcome me in, as they know I accept them as they are.

Being able to seamlessly glide in and out of different environments and cultures has become a true gift for me. It opens up my world and I get to see that we all experience the same pain, the same sadness, the same joys, and the same concerns
By Katherine Hahn for GalTime.com

Ever wondered why the cutie architect from Match never answered your message? Why the law student who liked fishing didn't take the bait with your Hinge opener? Well, really, who knows... the world of online dating is a crazy place. One thing is clear, though: If you are a crappy speller or even a worse grammar-er, it is time to up your game if you want to catch -- and keep -- your online crush.

Dating site Zoosk recently conducted a survey, and a whopping 72% of respondents reportedly consider poor spelling and grammar to be a deal breaker.

YEP, nearly three-quarters will delete, ignore or swipe left if you are messy with your messages.

Is that you're biggest pet peeve to? ( The errors are killing us!)

Emily Bartz of NextAdvisor.com has studied patterns in online dating and says it makes sense . "Poor spelling and grammar give off a sense of carelessness", she says. You may seem lazy, or like you don't really care enough to even proofread. "While a few slip-ups may not seem like a big deal, online daters should remember that this is their first impression with a potential match, which means their match is likely paying attention to every last detail."

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Digital body language

Bartz equates bad spelling and grammar to poor body language on a date. "You wouldn't sit across the table from someone with your arms crossed and your eyes down because it might give off the impression that you are uninterested or bored."

Most common mistakes

According to Bartz, the biggest error is a lack of precision. "Just as in traditional, real-life dating, each comment and question you add to your conversation with a match should be thoughtful and well-crafted," she says. "Taking the time to form well thought-out questions and comments that specifically pertain to the person you're connecting with and editing them to the best of your ability will pay off in the end."

Battles of the (spell-checking) sexes

Is one sex judg-ier than the other? Only by a smidge. Grammarly reviewed 10,000 eHarmony matches, and 75% of men and 88% of women say they judge a person by their use of grammar; many rate grammar higher than confidence. So, what to do if spelling is simply not your strong suit? I mean, that doesn't mean you can't be a killer date, right?

Clean up your act

Spell-check is your friend. Um, you just have to actually use it! "Doing a quick run through of your profile and messages with a spell checker is a great way to make sure you haven't made any careless mistakes."

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Skip 'text talk': Dump acronyms and any slang that may be negatively misconstrued.

Second opinions: Have a trustworthy friend look over what you've written to make sure it makes sense.

Talk to yourself: Reading the messages out loud can catch pesky mistakes.

Bottom line: No one is perfect, but you do have to get to the in-person date in order to show off your shining personality to its fullest. That means taking out a dictionary, thesaurus and calling your high school English teacher, if necessary, during those early chats. LOL.

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There's only one Democratic candidate not linked to an ongoing FBI investigation, and his name is Bernie Sanders. Vermont's Senator will become Democratic nominee for many reasons, but a cyber hacker named "Guccifer" just solidified the fact only one candidate can type an email without scandal. Superdelegates exist so that Republicans like Donald Trump won't use FBI investigations and foreign hackers against a Democratic nominee.

Forget about foreign hackers for a moment, and listen to the words of Defense Secretary Robert Gates. These words are highlighted in a Hill article titled Ex-Pentagon chief: Iran, China or Russia may have gotten to Clinton server:

Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates says he believes foreign countries like Russia, China and Iran may have hacked the private email server Hillary Clinton used while secretary of State. "...I think the odds are pretty high," he said Gates said he agreed with former acting CIA Director Mike Morell's claim that the server had probably been hacked by either Russia, China or Iran. He added that the fact that classified intelligence has been found on the server was "a concern for me." "I never used email when I was head of CIA or head of the Department of Defense," Gates said.

Gates believes other nations most likely compromised Clinton's server. If you don't trust the recent statements of a Romanian hacker (I believe him), do you trust the views of President Obama's former Defense Secretary?

Furthermore, imagine if anyone else had endured a year-long FBI criminal investigation. As The Wall Street Journal stated in March, "The criminal investigation into Mrs. Clinton's email setup is clearly progressing, leaving some officials hopeful the case could wrap up in a matter of months."

If a foreign hacker claimed to have hacked into Senator Barack Obama's emails in 2008, Clinton would have won the election that year. Similarly, if Bernie Sanders owned a private server as Vermont's Senator, there's no doubt the Clinton campaign would have labeled him a modern-day Aldrich Ames. I addressed this phenomenon, and why Hillary Clinton is able to dodge endless political controversy, during this appearance on CNN New Day.

First, it's important to note that Hillary Clinton has not been cleared by the FBI. In fact, the FBI hasn't made any statements, nor has the DOJ issued a verdict on potential indictments. The Daily Banter recently reported that "according to an exclusive CNN report, sources familiar with the FBI probe of Clinton's private e-mail server are saying that as the investigation nears the end, so far 'investigators haven't found evidence to prove that Clinton willfully violated the law.'"

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However, "sources familiar with the FBI probe" does not mean the FBI.

It simply means the same anonymous sources Fox News quotes (saying Clinton will end up in jail after this investigating is over) have been asked their opinion. "Sources familiar" with Saddam Hussein helped Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld justify the Iraq War, so we know why this type of journalism leads to chaos. Ultimately, the only recent facts that can't be disputed involve Huma Abedin and other top Clinton aides being interviewed by the FBI.

Again, if the top aides of Obama in 2008, or Sanders in 2016, were interviewed by the FBI, just imagine the political fallout.

Also, the future Commander in Chief according to the smartest people in the room didn't "willfully" violate laws, so this means Clinton is qualified to run the country. What they ignore is the reality that owning a server for "convenience" is almost certainly an outright lie. Every defender of Hillary Clinton's email use, including the unnamed sources "close" to the FBI investigation, assume Clinton's server was only used for convenience.

In addition, not "willfully" breaking laws doesn't mean no laws were broken. It's a sad day for American democracy when supporters of a presidential candidate are proud that no laws were "willfully" broken. Nonetheless, even if Clinton seriously believed a private server was convenient, and there was no political motive, "gross negligence" is enough to prosecute under the Espionage Act.

Hillary Clinton deleted 31,830 emails, and most likely, not all of them were about yoga. Any government records deleted, and that's a crime.

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Then there's the recent claims of a Romanian hacker named Marcel Lehel Lazar, also known as Guccifer. His statements are addressed in an NBC News article titled Hacker Guccifer Claims He Got Into Hillary Clinton's Server:

The Romanian hacker who first exposed Hillary Clinton's private email address is making a bombshell new claim -- that he also gained access to the former Secretary of State's "completely unsecured" server. "It was like an open orchid on the Internet," Marcel Lehel Lazar, who uses the devilish handle Guccifer, told NBC News in an exclusive interview from a prison in Bucharest. "There were hundreds of folders." ...As political opponents charged that national security was compromised and the FBI launched an investigation, Clinton maintained that the server was safe and there were no security breaks. "It was a lie, clearly," Lazar said. NBC News asked Chris Tarbell, who broke open the Silk Road case, to review Lazar's explanation of how he got into the server. "It's plausible," Chris Tarbell said, adding that Lazar's conviction for hacking in Romania showed he had the know-how to carry it out. Tarbell added that he could not imagine why Lazar would make up a claim that could get him in very hot water. "To go on television and admit to a felony you didn't commit seems a little silly," he said.

Guccifer is likely telling the truth, and former FBI agent Chris Tarbell states "To go on television and admit to a felony you didn't commit seems a little silly."

Most importantly, didn't Clinton ever expect to send or receive Top Secret intelligence as Secretary of State? I explain here why America's national security was likely compromised by Clinton's server and why Guccifer just handed the nomination to Bernie Sanders.

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But this is H. A. Goodman, it's hyperbole!

When you evaluate Guccifer's claim, alongside the viewpoint of Secretary Gates, a former FBI agent, and the head of Obama's Defense Intelligence Agency (who believes Clinton should "drop out"), then also remember the 22 Top Secret emails. These emails are highlighted in a CNN piece from January titled State Department will not release 22 'top secret' Clinton emails:

The State Department announced Friday that it will not release 22 emails from former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton because they contain "top secret" information, the highest level of government classification...

If another Guccifer somewhere in the world accessed these emails, would he or she have publicized their findings?

Guccifer's relevance in 2016 is enormous. Touching upon this impact, The Daily Beast has a brilliant article by Shane Harris titled Hillary's Secret Email Was a Cyberspy's Dream Weapon:

The private email address for Hillary Clinton, which became the talk of Washington this week and created her first major speed bump on her road to the White House, has actually been freely available on the Internet for a year, thanks to a colorful Romanian hacker known as Guccifer. On March 14, 2013, Guccifer--his real name is Marcel-Lehel Lazar--broke into the AOL account of Sidney Blumenthal, a journalist, former White House aide to Bill Clinton, and personal confidante of Hillary Clinton. Lazar crowed about his exploits to journalists, disclosing a set of memos Blumenthal had written to Clinton in 2012, as well as the personal email address and domain she's now known to have used exclusively for her personal and official correspondence... Her email account was the ultimate hacker's lure. It's a common technique to impersonate a trusted source via email, in order to persuade a recipient to download spyware hidden inside seemingly innocuous attachments.

Since hackers often "impersonate a trusted source via email," there are so many ways Clinton's private server could have been compromised.
Airplane flying from San Juan to island of Culebra at Puerto Rico.

The Wall Street Journal recently published an opinion piece entitled, Puerto Rico's Debt Portent: The refugee exodus builds and will add to the U.S. dole.

It immediately created a pandemonium and state and island-based Puerto Ricans joined in condemning the WSJ while signing petitions demanding that the news outlet retracted from these comments.

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Can Puerto Ricans be considered refugees if they are U.S. citizens moving across U.S. territories? Isn't a refugee someone who flees to a foreign country to escape danger or persecution? The answers to these questions are "Yes" and "Yes again." But unlike most of my friends and colleagues I do not want the WSJ to retract its comments. In fact, I want those comments to stand.

I agree with the WSJ, PUERTO RICANS JOINING THE EXODUS ARE IN FACT REFUGEES. But not for the reasons the article's author had in mind.

The WSJ is just another piece in a media campaign designed to portray Puerto Ricans negatively, as incompetent, untrustworthy aliens who may bring economic and social ruin to the United States. The article starts by asserting that Puerto Rican "refugees" will add to the U.S. dole. Of course! What else could Puerto Ricans moving to the contiguous United States want but to live off the hard work of true Americans, to live off welfare?

The WSJ is so negative and misleading that right off the bat states that "Puerto Rico Made good on its THREAT to default" referring to Puerto Rico's Government Development Bank defaulting on most of a $422 million debt payment that came due this past Sunday. The key word here is THREAT.

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The WSJ ignores all the austerity measures taken by the past and current Puerto Rican administration. It ignores the cuts in services, the shutting down of schools, new taxes to increase revenue, the gutting of pensions, and the decimation of the public labor sector. Instead, the WSJ portrays Puerto Rico's government inability to make the payment as a threat, a ruse, as if it were hiding money from its creditors.

And finally, the WSJ warns its readers that these "refugees" will also be able to vote in important states such as Florida, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Ohio; and that may tip the elections in favor of the Democrats. Apparently, immigration laws were changed overnight and refugees now arrive to the United States fully vested with U.S. citizenship, welfare forms in hand, and ready to vote Democrat.

The WSJ's article may sound incoherent, a collection of non sequiturs forced together in the wee hours of the night as a struggling author tried to make a deadline. But there is a beauty to it. This article manages to weave several right wing imagined fears into one piece. It plays on the fear that terrorists may be coming to the United States disguised as refugees. It pushes the debased theory that migrants (and Puerto Ricans) come to the U.S. to live off welfare while contaminating the social fabric of American society. And it wants you to believe that this is a type of Democrat plot to stay in power. It makes sense, if you don't think about it.

But they article is right about something. Puerto Ricans are refugees. Let me explain. Island-born Puerto Ricans have been U.S. nationals since 1900 and U.S. citizens since 1917. However, to this day many state-based Puerto Ricans and those joining the Diaspora feel and are treated as aliens in the U.S. mainland.

That Puerto Ricans are treated as foreigners is not simply due to the ignorance of a large sector of the American public with regard to Puerto Ricans. Opinion makers like the WSJ and even more balanced outlets play a big role on this. Remember when Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor was called "the daughter of Puerto Rican immigrants"?

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But the cherry on top muddling our understanding of who and what exactly are the Puerto Ricans and what the hell are they doing in the United States, is a series of decisions by the Supreme Court at the beginning of the past century.

A number of cases brought before the supreme court in 1901, known as the insular cases, testing the relationship of Puerto Rico (and Hawaii and the Philippines) and the U.S., as well as the status of Puerto Ricans, resulted in decisions that affirmed that Puerto Rico was Foreign in a Domestic Sense!

Simply put, in these cases the he Supreme Court held that full constitutional rights do not automatically extend to all places under American control. This meant that inhabitants of unincorporated territories (like Puerto Rico) may lack some constitutional rights, even if they are citizens. These cases also established that Puerto Rico belonged but was not part of the United States. In short, the constitution does not follow the flag.

Does it sound like colonialism? You betcha. But we are talking about 1901 when "benevolent imperialism" was in vogue. Hence, among the many arguments presented in these decisions we found that: democracy and colonialism are not incompatible; that there is no wrong when a democracy governs other subjects who do not participate in the democratic process; and finally, not all people are created equal, some races are superior to others and the superior races should carry the "white men's burden" to mold inferior others in their image and to govern them until the superior race deems necessary.



I recently participated in a conference at John Jay College, CUNY, where Efren Rivera Ramos, Dean of the School of Law at the University of Puerto Rico, explained the meaning of Congress plenary powers over Puerto Rico. He said, that the government of a state of the union derives its powers from the people of the state, whereas the government of a territory owes its existence wholly to the United States He added that in essence, in these cases the Supreme Court gave Congress a tool for colonialism. Light, subtle, colonialism but colonialism nonetheless. Thus the U.S. government can exert an extraordinary amount of power that it can't exert over the states.

These decisions are important because they established that American citizens living in Puerto Rico do not necessarily enjoy all the protections extended to U.S. citizens in the states. And perhaps more importantly, it makes evident that Puerto Rico, even to this day, is not sovereign in any way, shape or form which cripples the ability of any incumbent to effectively deal with the debt crisis.

But let's go back to "simpler" issues. If Puerto Rico is foreign in a domestic sense, then the now hundreds of thousands of island-based Boricuas who have joined the Diaspora are in fact domestic refugees. After all the definition of a refugee is someone who flees to a foreign country to escape danger or persecution. They are believed to be, and are treated as aliens. And many get to feel like foreigners in a country that should be welcoming them- after all, in 1898 Puerto Ricans did not cross the frontier, the frontier crossed Puerto Rico.

Many of the now hundreds of thousands of Puerto Ricans who have left the island since the crisis started would've preferred to stay in the island. They left under duress, seeking a better future, leaving their homes, their friends and extended family behind. And you may find them in what some have called Forced Exile, cramped in cheap motels in Orlando trying their best every day to find work that may allow them to provide for their families.
Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) today said at the opening of the Collections Preservation Center that the new facility is great news for everyone who loves the Great Smoky Mountains and the history of the park. He credited a successful public-private partnership with getting the project funded and finished: Alexander welcomed Interior Secretary Sally Jewell to the Smokies in March 2014 to announce construction of the new facility.

Those of us who grew up and live in the backyard of the Smokies have adopted the park as our home and feel like we own it because many of our families did, Alexander said. I have tried to imagine how hard it must have been for many of those families to be uprooted and moved from their homes so future generations could enjoy the new national park. The Collections Preservation Center honors the sacrifice and contribution of those families and their descendants.

Alexander continued, The opening of the new collection facility is great news for everyone who loves the Great Smoky Mountains and the history of the park. This facility, which Interior Secretary Sally Jewell approved after only a year in office, demonstrates how much interest there is in preserving Tennessees cultural heritage and stories for generations to come.

The Collections Preservation Center, near the Townsend entrance to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, will preserve 418,000 historical artifacts and 1.3 million archival records, including land records, oral histories, historic photos and park records. It will also house items such as clothing, vintage weapons, logging equipment, farm tools and other possessions used by people who lived on the farmsteads of the Southern Appalachians before the park was founded.

Alexander has championed construction of the facility since 2009. The facility cost approximately $4.2 million. More than half of the funds were provided by private donations, including almost $2 million from the Friends of the Smokies and the Great Smoky Mountains Association. The Great Smoky Mountains Heritage Center also donated the 1.6-acre parcel of land where the facility is located.

In fiscal year 2010, $1.5 million in federal funds were directed towards building the new facility.

Records and artifacts from four other federal parks and recreation areas, including the Andrew Johnson National Historic Site, Big South Fork National River and Recreation Area, Cumberland Gap National Historic Park and Obed Wild and Scenic River, will also be preserved in the new facility.
Standing approximately 8 meters tall and spanning 439 kilometers in length, the separation wall, which runs primarily through the West Bank, poses great difficulties for the Palestinian people as it threatens our inherent freedoms; freedom of movement, education, and economic prosperity.

According to the European Commission, "the construction of the separation barrier has impoverished Palestinians at an estimated rate of 2-3% GDP per year, and the recovery of the Palestinian economy will largely depend on whether it can escape its political and financial isolation." With the planned addition of another 212 kilometers to the wall and the ongoing enforcement of severe isolation policies, how will the Palestinian people ever be expected to rise out of poverty? The answer is social entrepreneurship.

Over the past few years, social entrepreneurship has revolutionized the nonprofit sector by incorporating for-profit solutions that aim to create sustainable and scalable change at the systemic level.

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Social entrepreneurship has launched a disruptive change-based platform that leverages both public and private resources to establish cost-effective solutions to the world's most pressing social problems. This movement plays a very significant role in the social, political, and economic spheres of many regions throughout the world, focusing on issues such as health, education and poverty. The essential need to find solutions for these very same issues ultimately brought the concept of social entrepreneurship to the Palestinian youth, with the launch of the Hult Prize in the Holy Land.

With growing food insecurity, restricted access to quality healthcare, an unemployment rate over 25%, and an alarmingly high percentage of the population living in severe poverty, who better than the Palestinian youth to tackle this year's Hult Prize challenge of doubling the income of people living in poverty in crowded urban spaces?

From our very first "Hult Prize Palestine" information session in Abu Dis, it was evident that we had triggered a spark. What had started as a brief introductory session quickly turned into a prolonged exchange of actionable ideas among passionate individuals, ready to delve into the world of social enterprise to bring the change they so desperately needed. Rather than leaving societal needs to the government or business sectors who had selective interests in the matter, they were convinced that they were the key to transforming the system in order to achieve a better standard of living.

Like wildfire, word quickly caught on, and soon enough, "Hult Prize Palestine" began to gain momentum. From Birzeit to Nablus to Jerusalem, the excitement among the youth was contagious. This social movement represents hope. Hope for better opportunities, hope for a better life, and most importantly, hope that change was finally coming. And so, while the politicians were busy talking amongst each other, the youth were busy establishing this new-found platform of change.

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"Hult Prize Palestine" created a medium through which Palestinians from all over the country can come together with the sole focus and purpose of creating lasting solutions for the everyday problems we face.

Sixteen Palestinian teams were chosen to participate in the local finals held in Ramallah. Each of these teams presented unique ideas that sought to create more job opportunities, economic growth, and most importantly, transform the lives of many people. The ideas ranged from beekeeping on urban rooftops to using a combination of hydroponics and vermicomposting to double the production of crops while reducing water usage.

In partnership with the Palestinian American Cultural Center, four of these teams went on to compete in the global regional finals for a chance to win $1,000,000 to fund their startup ideas. While many see the cash sum as the ultimate prize, the real prize was the change based platform that was launched in the heart of Palestine.

Perhaps one of the most distinctive and significant aspects of social entrepreneurship is that it has the ability to break down traditional geographic borders that often constrain many communities. Thanks to globalization and the increased access to information through channels like social media, the potential of the newly-established wave of Palestinian entrepreneurs is no longer defined by their geographic disposition. The Hult Prize helped create a virtual network of entrepreneurs whose connections extended beyond artificial or tangible boundaries. This movement of social entrepreneurship has helped ignite the flame within the Palestinian youth to see the potential within themselves to grow beyond their circumstances - the potential they possess that extends far beyond the concrete wall.
Let's say you are sitting in your living room watching, I don't know, Fox News. Suddenly you break out into a sweat, there is a tightness in your chest, and you can barely breathe. You think that you are having a heart attack. You dial 911 and an ambulance is deployed. A small team of heroic people arrive soon after, load you into the ambulance, and race you to the hospital where doctors surround the gurney and whisk you to the safety of the emergency room.

That is similar to how the 'environmental emergency response system' works. However, the 911 call sounds more like "reefs are bleaching at unprecedented rates" or "deforestation and illegal wildlife trade threatens the endangered (insert the name of any number of charismatic fauna here)." Conservation responders rush in and carry a patient, in this case a species or an ecosystem, to a protected area.

The problem is that in the above scenario, the real Emergency Medical Service's (EMS) response is much more nuanced and significantly more sophisticated. If a cardiac event is called into 911, a small team of heroic people are deployed, arriving at the scene in an insanely short amount of time, often less than 3 minutes and, on average, no more than ten minutes. The responders begin a very thorough yet astoundingly rapid assessment using finally honed diagnostics. They will ask you how you are feeling. The responders will simultaneously hook you up to equipment that, at a minimum can give a detailed analysis of what is going on with your heart and often has the capacity to wirelessly transmit information from various aspects of the heart's function to predesignated hospitals to figure out not only whether or not you should go to the hospital but which hospital you should go to. This process not only reduces the time until you receive life-saving treatment but allows doctors and first responders to coordinate efforts during your transportation, reduces mistakes, and allows the entire team to make mid-course corrections as necessary. Importantly, the EMS industry has worked rigorously over the past five decades to grow an organized, systematic response to every conceivable catastrophe with coordination and diagnostics as the cornerstone of success.

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While the conservation scenario is also more nuanced and complicated, the suite of solutions developed by the environment community is astounding limited both in terms of tools used and the process by which those tools are deployed. While the EMS industry has evolved and progressed over the past fifty years, the environmental movement has effectively stalled out due to bickering and lack of coordination, failure to develop and deploy rapid diagnostic and response systems, failure to innovate and the inability to step back and honestly evaluate strategy and expenditures against outcomes.



Interestingly, EMS and Environmentalism began at roughly the same time in the United States. In 1865, the first horse drawn ambulances were deployed in Cincinnati. Seven years later, Yellowstone was established as the first National Park. Both EMS and Environmentalism remained largely unorganized, nebulous activities for roughly a hundred years. In the early 1970's EMS became regulated and the environment movement coalesced into a more organized force. For a few decades, the environmental movement experienced tremendous success using a variety of tactics effectively and efficiently. Legislation such as the Clean Water Act reversed the decline of thousands of waterways throughout the country. Harmful pesticides were shelved (or exported), smog was decreased, species were protected, and progress was made. These successes are noteworthy because they didn't rely on establishing protected areas but rather relied on rudimentary diagnostics followed by targeted solutions. Unfortunately, the ability to diagnose and then rapidly respond to that information has failed to improve over the years in order to handle more complex scenarios.

A recent article in by Jeremy Hance highlights the ongoing controversies that have plagued environmentalism for over half a century. The question should not be 'old conservation' (based on intrinsic value and protected areas) vs 'new conservation (addressing drivers and other loosely defined interventions). "Environmental Response Services" should not be a binary choice. The ecological world is wonderfully complex, the threats are diverse, and the set of solutions should be appropriately robust. The fact is, EMS services are prepared to respond not only to cardiac events, but rather a dizzying array of emergencies. Environmentalists should be equally as prepared.

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There is, possibly, a silver lining. In recent years a few spectacular examples have emerged of a more nuanced approach to environmentalism that will, literally, make all the difference in the world. Some of those examples come from traditional conservation actors. For example, in the Great Lakes region, The Nature Conservancy has been experimenting with "Precision Conservation" where they work with the folks who show up to conservation meetings, but more importantly, they work with the folks who do not show up to the meetings. Environmental Investigation Agency uses a little known environmental law called the Lacey Act with amazing precision to tackle environmental degradation around the world. It is the equivalent of doing brain surgery with a laser as opposed to a sword. Oceana's Global Fishing Watch program remotely monitors illegal fishing vessels and has tremendous potential to reduce illegal, unregulated and unreported fishing. The Ocean Conservancy is tackling what is likely one of the century's most devastating environmental catastrophes, ocean plastic pollution, by using a detailed analysis of waste management infrastructure to help build an innovative partnerships to stem inputs. There are also some new, if unlikely players at the conservation table. Heifer International, a development organization, provides livelihoods for poor people including those living in ecologically vulnerable areas, thereby reducing reliance of communities on natural resources. Freedom Fund recognizes that human trafficking and environmental degradation are linked and is working to solve both issues at once in part because the issues are so intimately interconnected. The trick for environmentalists is to find these successes, learn when and why they are successful, and coordinate the deployment of them.
May is Mental Health Awareness Month and one of the important things to remember is that mental health is a family affair for many reasons. First, it is crucial that people understand that many mental illnesses are genetic disorders and knowing the brain health history through the generations in a family can be very helpful for prevention and treatment.



Another reason mental health is a family affair is because holistic health in a family is a major factor in contributing to the care of a person living with these types of health challenges. Being open and supportive within a family creates a foundation for health that can have a positive impact. The question of "nature vs. nurture" can be a debate, but we know that it is both genetics and environment that deserve equal attention in helping someone manage their mental health.



We were so pleased that the focus of the recent Didi Hirsch "Erasing the Stigma" event was on mental health in families. This is a topic that is usually on the top of family "secrets" list which made it all the more powerful to hear inspiring stories from celebrities and families who had benefitted from treatment at Didi Hirsch. Among the celebrities were Melissa Rivers and Ronda Rousey, who both shared what it was like to lose a father to suicide.



The night started off with emcee Eva LaRue sharing a touching story about growing up with a mother with mental illness. It's an experience that many people can relate to all too well. A young Eva played around her home, while her mother ran around with her, exuding verve stronger than Eva's. As a child, her mother's extreme energy bursts were fun, but the older she got the more Eva realized it was like "having another child running around the house." Her mother was later diagnosed with severe Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Everything made sense, and Eva described the news as a relief and commended her mother for her courage.



Eva's story was the catalyst for the stream of inspiration and authenticity that continued throughout the night. Stories from those like AnnMaria De Mars, mother of Ronda Rousey (UFC Women's Bantamweight Champion) who spoke about her daughter's struggle with a speech disorder as a child, as well as her father's suicide, and bulimia. Ronda channeled her experiences to help others and focuses her activism on "Don't Throw Up, Throw Down" fundraising events for mental health.



The strength and resilience of the people who spoke was admirable, and the stories were reminders of the mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, cousins, aunts, uncles, who all live with mental illness and those caregivers who are closest to them and are often affected as well.



Director, writer, and producer Maya Forbes talked about her turbulent childhood and the challenges she had dealing with her late father, who had bipolar disorder. She learned to accept her father's illness and used her first hand knowledge to create the film "Infinitely Polar Bear," portraying an entire family's experience. Her father's openness about his illness made it easier for Maya to understand and work through it as a family and she described her father's encouragement as "like throwing a door open and saying come on in". When she asked him what the worst part of his illness was, he said "loneliness."



Loneliness and isolation with these issues is common and very toxic. This is where the importance of conversation and awareness intersect. One of the many quotes that encompassed the night was from Dr. Kita Curry reciting John Donne: "When we work together we are so much healthier than when we try to do everything alone." Creating a safe and comfortable space to talk about mental health is the first step to acceptance and getting treatment. Every time someone shares a new story, a plank is added, widening the platform for discussion that is healing and in some cases life-saving. Cheers to the team at Didi Hirsch for paving the way for so many families to heal, feel included and #flawless!
WASHINGTON, DC - APRIL 04: Andrew Sullivan, editor of The Dish, leads a discussion with Michael Lewis, a financial journalist and author, in the Newsmaker Series of talks at George Washington University on April 4, 2014 in Washington, DC. Lewis's latest book, 'Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt,' tells the story of the Canadian banker who uncovered the underhanded and illegal practices carried out by some high-frequency traders on Wall Street. (Photo by T.J. Kirkpatrick/Getty Images)

I haven't checked to see who in the chattering classes is ooh'ing and ahh'ing over Andrew Sullivan's yuuge (and yuugely read) anti-Trump jeremiad,

"Democracies End When They Are Too Democratic: And right now, America is a breeding ground for tyranny."

But since HuffPost has featured Sullivan's piece, too, here's an assessment of it, adapted from my post yesterday in AlterNet. Like Tony Blair's equally magisterial rhetoric about the villains of 9/11, Sullivan's slightly Tory-ish rhetoric (he grew up a British Catholic conservative) about Trump is pitched perfectly for its nervous, would-be upper-middle-class New York magazine readers who probably swooned over the Royal Wedding and Downton Abbey and snarked at Occupy Wall Street in Zuccotti Park five years ago.

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These readers include a few wavering Trumpsters, and Sullivan will make them think twice by blaming Trump's rise on "too much democracy"--and not, as he should, on the kind of elitism that drives "the people" toward a mobocracy and then turns up its nose at them while pretending to keep its hands clean. While there are compelling half-truths about this right-wing populism in Sullivan's argument, there are a few things dangerously wrong in it. Beyond just defeating Trump, strengthening the American republic against his successors will depend on correcting Sullivan's misrepresentations about the role of money in elections and the role of Bernie Sanders in this one.

Sullivan edited several of my articles for The New Republic in the 1990s; his Daily Dish blog kindly referenced some of my writing elsewhere and I have no reason to accuse him of bad faith here. I've had my say about the tragedy of right-wing populism in my own yuuge essay on Trumpism and in the interview it prompted on NPR. I won't repeat that here, but I do want to emphasize that, although I'll vote for Hillary Clinton in November, neoliberal elites in her corner who not-very-secretly despair of democracy have lost the ability and credibility to govern even themselves, let alone the people they've actually helped to degrade and about whose desperation and myopia they're now shaking their heads, just like Sullivan.

Whether out of cupidity or cowardice, the Democratic Party establishment and its enablers have done as much as Republicans to saddle Americans with arrangements that have produced Trumpism, with a regime of casino-like financing and predatory, degrading marketing that is illegitimate, unsustainable, delusional, and destructive in all the ways unfolding now before our eyes. Say what you will about the inevitability of disruptive globalization and technological revolution, our elites have been surfing these currents instead of navigating and even channeling them with anyone in mind but themselves. Their double tragedy is that now they're paying the price in Trump.

Sullivan nevertheless claims, as these neoliberals do, that "the past few presidential elections have demonstrated that, in fact, money from the ultra-rich has been mostly a dud" -- i.e. a non-factor. And he writes that, "Those still backing the demagogue of the left, Bernie Sanders, might want to reflect that their critique of Clinton's experience and expertise -- and their facile conflation of that with corruption -- is only playing into Trump's hands."

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Not even half-right on both counts. Regarding campaign financing, has Sullivan forgotten that in 2008 Obama -- who he says "was propelled by small donors and empowered by the internet [and] blazed the trail of the modern-day insurrectionist" -- actually turned down public campaign financing in order to raise huge donations from elite neoliberals who adored him for perverse reasons that always push neoliberals toward conscience-easing gestures? I esteem Obama for reasons too numerous to mention, but a corrector of corrupt capitalism he was not, either in his 2008 fundraising or in his appointments of Timothy Geithner and Lawrence Summers.

More important, Sullivan doesn't mention that the ultra-rich, such as the Koch brothers, fund a lot more than presidential elections, with far darker consequences; even before Citizens United opened the floodgates for them, they were virtually writing laws that facilitate the illegitimate arrangements I've just mentioned. Their consultants draft bills for bought-and-paid-for state and federal legislators, sometimes literally sitting in committee rooms where the bills are finalized.

A few years ago, a propane deliveryman installing a new tank to replace an old rusted one told me the new one was really junk because the government had written substandard regulations on its size and composition. "Who do you think really wrote those regulations?" I asked. "Your own employer wrote them, through a national association of propane dealers." A fleeting look of surprise and then understanding crossed his face. He'd probably been watching too much Fox News. But what had neoliberal Democrats done to prevent such corruption?

Sullivan is also wrong to dismiss Bernie Sanders as a demagogic counterpart to Trump as he does at one point, for telling the truth about the Democratic establishment as well as the Republican. Yes, truth can be hard, and maybe one must be young and not-yet-fully bound up in the system to hear it fully. Even New York magazine readers who fear Trump may not want to face the whole truth about their own unwitting but objective complicity in what spawned him -- a complicity I explain in my essay about him. To suggest that telling the unpleasant truth about Clintonite corporatism plays into his hands is a truism in politics: Democratic socialists who told the truth about Stalinism were accused of strengthening McCarthyism, as perhaps they did. Should they have left it all to Senator Joe?

Clintonite neoliberalism won't work any better than conservative Republicanism has done because both enable the go-go economic growth that grows inequality, destroying civic trust and hollowing out and hardening hearts. Nor will neoliberal diversity grace notes work. Clinton's vows to break glass ceilings and curb racist and xenophobic policies are absolutely necessary to our society's renewal, but they're also insufficient: Breaking glass ceilings (cue Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, CEO Carly Fiorina, Governor Sarah Palin, French right-wing party leader Marine Le Pen) doesn't improve a building's foundations and walls unless wholly different challenges are posed to the structure itself.

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Nothing in Clinton's record proves she can or will work to curb the national-security mania, the militarist juggernaut and the predatory marketing and lending that have trapped us like flies in a spider's web of 800-numbered, sticky-fingered pick-pocketing machines that are pumping so much heartsickness and violence into our daily lives.

Trump is the terrifying consequence of what both party establishments have done to this country. Sanders is quite right to have steered clear of them, even while working with them strategically, as a mayor and in Congress. Even as a Democratic candidate, he has kept telling truths that Trump won't tell about our national-security mania, militarist juggernaut, and predatory marketing and lending, which are dissolving our republican virtues and even sovereignty almost mindlessly instead of using whatever remains in the United States' power to reconfigure these arrangements, in concert with others.

Finally, speaking of reconfigurations, Sullivan invokes Plato's skepticism about democracy to buttress his argument. I much prefer Edward Gibbon's account of how the Roman republic fell into the arms of the wily Augustus, and I summarized that account tellingly here.
File-This July 25, 1973, file photo shows Rev. Fr. Daniel Berrigan and some friends participating in a fast and vigil to protest the bombing in Cambodia, on the steps of St. Patrickas Cathedral in New York City. The Roman Catholic priest and Vietnam war protester, Berrigan has died. He was 94. Michael Benigno, a spokesman for the Jesuits USA Northeast Province, says Berrigan died Saturday, April 30, 2016, at a Jesuit infirmary at Fordham University. (AP Photo/Ron Frehm)

Peacemaking is biblical, theological, and political. Sojourners has certainly learned that over the years. But peacemaking is also personal -- and a personal commitment at the heart of the gospel.

When we lose a Christian peacemaker like Daniel Berrigan, it gets very personal for many of us. To our readers from a generation who may not know of him, I implore you to read some of the best historical accounts of Daniel Berrigan's life as a Jesuit priest, renowned poet, incredibly prolific author, and continual offender as a peacemaker.

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My colleague Rose Berger, in the accompanying Sojourners piece today, shares her story as a Catholic peacemaker and how Daniel Berrigan influenced her life. Berrigan shaped and motivated a Catholic peace movement that became a fundamental and foundational influence on Sojourners -- and one of the core constituencies of our work from the earliest days.

As you know, I was raised not Catholic, but evangelical. Here is how Daniel Berrigan shaped me.

My Eisenhower Republican and evangelical family was certainly influenced, as was the whole nation, by World War II, where my father served as a Navy officer. Virtually all of my family and church friends had dads who came home from the war to start their new families, and support for the war was universally assumed.

Then came my generation -- and Vietnam.

Some of you know my personal story of how I was pushed out of my white evangelical church by the issue of race in my hometown of Detroit. After leaving my home church and childhood faith, I joined the civil rights and student movements of my time. As students, we went deeply into the history of Indochina and the facts of the war in Vietnam and found our nation's policies to be based on lies. The government stopped sending their people to debate on college campuses because they lost all the debates. We organized -- and at Michigan State University, where I went, we could bring 10,000 people into the streets in a few hours.

I had left my church and faith behind, and didn't even know any Christians were against the war. Friends were drafted, others feared they would be next, and the war consumed the attention of an entire generation. But then I heard one name: Berrigan. Daniel and Phillip Berrigan -- and the small group of Christian protestors they were inciting -- were the only Christians I could see or hear about who were against the war in Vietnam.

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The name Berrigan helped keep the possibility of coming back to my Christian faith alive. Just like the black churches that took me in, here were some Christians who were saying and doing what I thought the gospel said that nobody in my white evangelical world was. I believe the witness of the Berrigans literally helped keep my hope for faith from dying altogether.

African-American Christians fighting for justice and that Berrigan handful of Christians fighting for peace paved the way for my return to faith out of the student movements of my generation. When Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. came out against the war in Vietnam at his famous Riverside Church address in 1967, linking racism, militarism, and materialism (the "giant triplets") -- it all came together for me. Ironically, the black scholar and activist who helped Dr. King write that speech was Dr. Vincent Harding, who later became a primary mentor for me and Sojourners. If Vincent were still with us today he would be mourning the death of Daniel Berrigan and celebrating his life among us.

When our rag-tag group of seminarians at Trinity Evangelical Seminary put together the first issue of our tabloid publication The Post-American, which later became Sojourners, our opposition to the war in Vietnam leapt off almost every page -- with our call to Christians to be peacemakers after the clear gospel instruction of Jesus, "Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called the children of God." One of the first calls we got was from one of the few evangelicals against the war -- Oregon Senator Mark Hatfield. He said please come to Washington; I need some friends! That led to our first trip to Washington, D.C.

I remember our very first speaking engagement to a national conference of evangelical student leaders from across the country, held that year at Oral Roberts University. I had been asked to speak but had little idea what the gathering would be like. I vividly remember walking into the auditorium during the speech of a national evangelical leader who spoke strongly in support of the war in Vietnam. I remember asking myself what I had got myself into but decided I need to strongly address the Vietnam War and call evangelical Christians back to the gospel of peacemaking. I did the next day, and got a standing ovation from a new generation of evangelical leaders who talked constantly to me over the next two days. It was a defining moment for our work:-- to speak prophetically for peace to the church, as Daniel Berrigan had done.

Another one of those moments came when a group of us from our early Chicago days went down to Dallas for a Campus Crusade for Christ event at the Cotton Bowl. During their Flag Day military salute to the war, a little group of us peacemakers held a banner high at the top of the huge stadium that read "Cross or Flag" and chanted "Stop the War!" I had never before been booed by 100,000 people. And I still remember Dan Berrigan's smile when I told him about it. He knew the feeling well. The headline on the front page of the Dallas Evening Times the next day read "War Vs. Peace at Explo '72."

Daniel and Phillip Berrigan rose to national prominence after they and seven others burned 378 personal draft files with homemade napalm at a draft board in Catonsville, Md., on May 17, 1968. What followed was jail time for the Berrigan brothers and the group, and eventually books and a play about the "Catonsville Nine" that I recommend people see again now as a celebration of Dan's life.

One of the most famous stories about Daniel Berrigan, which prompted wide news coverage at the time and a LIFE magazine feature, was when he was arrested on Block Island, while hiding at the home of his friend William Stringfellow, after being sentenced to prison for Catonsville.

"On an ominous morning in August, with a fierce nor'easter blowing up black clouds and spattering rain over the harbor, Daniel Berrigan lay asleep in a manger [a little shed outside the Stringfellow house] on Block Island, R.I.," wrote Lee Lockwood in the May 21, 1971 edition of LIFE. "... Berrigan's Block Island routine was to rise late and breakfast lightly on coffee and a piece of bread. Afterward, with books, paper and pen, and dressed 'in some outlandish headgear,' he would disappear below the crest of the Mohegan Bluffs until nightfall. Reappearing then for drinks, dinner and conversation ..."

On August 11, 1970, FBI agents, posing as birdwatchers on the island, found and apprehended Berrigan and took him off to a correctional facility in Danbury, Conn., where he had been sentenced for three years. When asked about his own potential prosecution for harboring a federal fugitive, Stringfellow said "I don't fear persecution. I know we are in jeopardy, but everyone in this country is in jeopardy."

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When asked why he had taken in Berrigan, Stringfellow replied, "Where does a person in this situation turn, but to his friends?"

Bill Stringfellow, who also became a dear friend, elder, and primary mentor for me, decided to build a small cottage for his imprisoned companion on the back of his property overlooking the Atlantic Ocean on Berrigan's beloved Mohegan Bluffs named after a local indigenous tribe -- to give Dan a place to rest, retreat, and write after he returned from jail. The Stringfellow Spring Street House and Berrigan cottage were to become my primary retreat and only vacation destination in the years to follow, and the place where Dan and I had our most personal conversations -- on long walks along the beach or paths around the island, or on his porch overlooking the Atlantic. I still clearly remember many a long meal with Bill and Dan, around Bill's dining room table or at the cottage, for some of the best theological and political conversations of my life. Watching a presidential debate together, once, after food and drinks, became one of the most hilarious nights I can ever remember with likely the best moments of political and spiritual satire I've been part of.

Dan, members of his family, and personal friends came to that cottage for years after Bill died, and it became a sacred space for many of us. I even proposed to my wife Joy Carroll on Block Island, and we have taken our two boys there regularly for many years. On the cottage wall, Dan had inscribed this poem.

Where this housedaresstandat Land's Endand the seaturns in sleepponderous menacingand our spirit fails and runs--landward seaward askelter--we pray Youprotectfrom the Law'sclawedoutreachfrom the second deathfrom envy's toothfrom doom's great knellAll who dwell here

Then he kindly listed some of our names at the end of the poem.

I was always very moved and grateful for the way Daniel Berrigan consistently made the connections between peace and justice. In his testimony at the Catonsville trial, for the public burning of draft records, he said:

"Our apologies, good friends, for the fracture of good order, the burning of paper instead of children, the angering of the orderlies in the front parlor of the charnel house. We could not, so help us God, do otherwise.... We act against the law at a time of the Poor People's March, at a time moreover when the government is announcing ever more massive paramilitary means to confront disorder in the cities....The war in Vietnam is more and more literally brought home to us. Its inmost meaning strikes the American ghettos; in servitude to the affluent. We must resist and protest this crime...."The time is past when good men can remain silent, when obedience can segregate men from public risk, when the poor can die without defense."

This is where the vocation of Daniel Berrigan becomes clear. His critics always accused him of disorderliness, disruption, creating drama, and causing discomfort -- all of which were true. That's because he was not only a priest and a poet -- Daniel Berrigan was a prophet, in the biblical tradition of all those who caused such trouble on behalf of what they believed God was trying to say to us. It is in that prophetic tradition that Sojourners has tried to stand -- and Daniel Berrigan, for all his controversy and confrontational style, has helped us to stand there. Whether we were Catholic or evangelical or anything else, Dan Berrigan always gave us comfort, encouragement, support, and courage. We loved Daniel Berrigan, and know he will always be with us.

Dan and Phil, along with their communities, took on the nuclear arms race early, as Sojourners did, with their Plowshares actions, named after the Isaiah injunction to beat swords into plowshares by actually pounding hammers on nuclear weapons. I remember sitting on the benches at the WWII museum with my father near the end of his life, when he told me the story of how his naval ship was one of the first to visit Hiroshima after the first atomic bomb had been dropped there. A 5-year-old girl had come out of the rubble and walked up to him, all alone, with nothing but rags falling off her body, and obviously soon to die of radiation. Fifty years later, in tears, my father told me. "She had nothing to do with the war; and meeting her turned me against war ever since." Berrigan always told us to look at the faces of war.

I cannot help but end with one of Daniel Berrigan's most prophetic challenges -- even to those of us who believe we are called to be Christian peacemakers. It's a quote I have always been most struck with from Berrigan's best-selling book No Bars to Manhood. It is about the cost of peacemaking versus to the cost of war-making -- and the problem that war-makers are usually willing to pay a higher cost for war than those of us peacemakers are willing to make for peace. The prophetic words of Berrigan will remain with us:
Armored military tanks - Turkish army

As Turkey slouches toward dictatorship, purging enemies and former allies, Recep Tayip Erdogan has a cheering section, in the form of the AKP, the ruling party in Turkey. But as I learned in a discussion with the Alliance for Shared Values, the AKP is next on the Erdogan's list to be exterminated. And the first step came with the forced resignation of Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu.

When I visited Turkey during last year's summer election, I met a number of enthusiastic AKP members, eager to support their candidates and principles. Flags in orange, blue and white, the party colors, could be found hanging everywhere. A couple that enthusiastically talked up the party to me even dubbed me "English John," because they found my attempts to speak Turkish more fitting of a European than an American for some reason.

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It's sad that soon they, and anyone else connected with the AKP, will join those who have been arrested, and even killed, in this dying Middle East democracy.

How is that possible, you think, if you've been following Turkish politics? Doesn't Erdogan need a ruling party to stay in power? And aren't they his friends? Don't they love him?

Like a story from George R. R. Martin, modern Turkish politics is a sad tale of backstabbing and selling out one's friends, as any Game of Thrones binge-watcher can attest to. It's not how much one loves another, but whether their mere existence serves as a threat, and needs to be eliminated.

First of all, we should look at what happened to his former friends, the Gulenists. They loyally supported Erdogan because they thought they shared some common values, when in reality, the only thing the Prime Minister at the time cared for was himself.

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When Gulen allies uncovered his corruption, Erdogan's vengeance was swift. Businesses were shut down and people are constantly being arrested, apart from the uncaring eyes of the Americans and Europeans, eager to have someone they can think of as a Middle Eastern ally.

"When Erdogan purged the generals, and secularists, we did not stand up to him as we should," the Alliance for Shared Values, linked to Gulen, told me. "We should have seen the writing on the wall."

Gulenists are hardly the only victims. AKP coalition partner the MHP was downsized in the Fall 2015 election in favor of the ruling party. Remember when Erdogan was going to create peace with the Kurds? That worked, until their political party won enough votes to block Erdogan from redoing the constitution to his liking, and the war on the Kurds began.

Since he was elected more than a decade ago, Erdogan has dominated Turkey under a parliamentary system. The AKP gives him blind loyalty. So why would he move against them?

Why move the country from a parliamentary system to a presidential system, one should ask. In both cases, we can find the capacity for dictatorship. But in the latter, the political party can be easily dispensed with.

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There's only one organization that can stand up to Erdogan as he seeks to dominate Turkey the way Putin controls Russia. There's only one group that can block his ambitions for a hereditary dynasty, and can make all kinds of deals with anyone. It's the AKP.

And it won't take long after he gets his presidential system that the party is in a rush to give him the reigns to a strong presidency that's effective enough to take out the group that put him in power, and the only one capable of removing him, in a parliamentary system.

Now Prime Minister Davutoglu has been ousted, after having been stripped of power. And Turks told me that they though he was too much of an Erdogan loyalist anyway. How much more of a patsy does the Turkish President want?

"We do not have any side to take or otherwise there is no sides," wrote Yusuf Serce, from Milat Gazetesi, in a reply to my email question about what's happening in Turkey. "Erdogan just does routine presidency lapping. Everything is in order and %100 lawful. My personal opinion still stands same 'we need full Presidential System' for our democracy.'"

Yusuf could be in for a real surprise soon.

The AKP members better watch their step. Their cheers as they hand more power to Erdogan and create an autocratic constitution will be met with cries of dismay, as the "ceremonial" Turkish President uses the new reins of power to destroy the one group that can block his ambitions.

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The AKP celebrated stripping power of immunity from legislators, so they can go after the Turkish-Kurdish HDP parliamentarians. They didn't even realize they were stripping themselves of power. It will be easier for Erdogan to purge the AKP now. It echoes the story of the German who does not stand up to Hitler when Jews, gypsies and others are dragged away. Then the German sadly laments that no one will stand up for him when the Nazis drag him away. How do we know it can happen? It's already happened before. It will be the same sad story, with a different set of unsuspecting victims.
Especially in a week when we have observed Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day) - when the hugs and the warmth and the welcome and the tranquility and the togetherness of Shabbat are that much more sweet - it can be difficult to acknowledge that there is any aspect of our own tradition that has ever persecuted, stereotyped, ostracized, demonized, bullied, branded, and even in some ways erased within our own family, among our own number.

Seeing a pink triangle next to a yellow star marked Jude, we comfortably include prejudice against the gay and lesbian in the rubric of our enemies' evil, as part of a set of attitudes that we rightly deem mind-boggling, incomprehensible, and foreign to what is good in ourselves, in our heritage.

It is all too easy to occlude the ways and the situations in which those who are out as LGBTQ in our own community - not to mention those who fear they cannot be - still in some ways go about marked and talked about, pointed at, and pinned to a particular aspect of identity as a constant tag, or even a caveat with regard to being fully and comfortably and without reservation and in all contexts considered legitimate and in good standing, rightful inheritors of every blessing of love and family we hold up as essential. And let's go ahead and mention the fear of being relegated to a suspect sub-category.

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In a brilliant short story titled "The Verse," Jay Michaelson vividly and with hilarious and heartrending plausibility imagines the reactions of various people in various communities and households on an impossible Sabbath-eve, at exactly this point in our cycle of Torah-readings, when the whole Jewish world wakes up to discover that the passage in Leviticus read for centuries as banning homosexuality has miraculously vanished from every Torah-scroll in every synagogue everywhere. ("The Verse," Jay Michaelson, Blithe House Quarterly) I highly recommend the read.

True, we live in a time when there finally exist emphatic Jewish blessings of LGBTQ pride and matter-of-fact inclusion. Consider, for example, the following liturgy, composed by Rabbi Ayelet Cohen - for over a decade one of the spiritual leaders of Congregation Beit Simchat Torah, the LGBTQ synagogue in NYC (which holds its enormous High Holiday services in the Javits Convention Center), and now Director of the Center for Jewish Living at the JCC of the Upper West Side - a prayer for Pride composed on the model of the narrative miracle-blessings recited traditionally on Chanukah and Purim:

"We thank You for the miraculous deliverance, for the heroism, and for the triumphs in battle of our ancestors in other days, and in our time. In the wake of the civil rights movement lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, and transgender people began to organize for the dignity and justice that all of us are due as human beings on this earth. Those who profane your name, claiming that they hate us in the name of God rose up to criminalize us, pathologize us, brutalize us, and erase us. And You in Your great mercy stood with us in the time of our troubles. You fought alongside us, vindicated us, gave us the courage to stand together, to open our eyes and the eyes of the world around us, to see that the freedom and the right to love belongs to all of Your creations. You have given us the strength to witness and create wonders, to be who are and to love whom we love not only in the safety of our homes but outside in the light of the world, to live as Jews in the embrace of community, to sanctify our unions and celebrate ourselves before each other and before You. The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. May we never know shame again."

Consider a blessing composed for Rabbi Cohen's sister's wedding:

"Blessed are You, our God, Source of Life, who frees us from fear and shame and opens us to the holiness of our bodies and their pleasures. You guide us to entwine our hearts in righteousness, justice, lovingkindness and compassion. Blessed are You, who sanctifies Israel through love that is honorable and true."

I highly recommend Rabbi Cohen's article about this blessing. ("Birkat Eirusin: A Blessing for Holy Sexuality," Rabbi Ayelet Cohen, Sh'ma: A Journal of Jewish Sensibilities )

However, we also live in a time when such blessings, and the people who go with them, are still tagged by some as inauthentic, as erasures rather than expressions of Torah, as destined to echo only as transient artifacts of a confused age. Dennis Praeger, for example, recently ranting against the idea of a transgendered rabbi in his greater Los Angeles Jewish community, writes, "By dropping the Torah and substituting compassion as standards, we are creating a Brave New World in which definitions of male and female no longer have meaning, are regarded as subjective and are completely interchangeable. If you think this a better world, the Torah is indeed essentially useless as a guide to life. If, however, you think we are playing with fire and that future generations will pay a big price for this unprecedented experiment, the Torah will have, once again, proven itself indispensable."

I'd like to pause right there for a moment and remember that the entire rabbinic system of compensatory damages - a whole, huge realm of sacred tort-law - is justified by way of an ancient un-reading of a biblical verse, a Talmudic interpretation of "eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot" (Exodus 21:24) as meaning "for eye and tooth and foot, that which is given from hand to hand, namely monetary compensation." (Babylonian Talmud, Bava Kama 84a)

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Similarly to reverence a problematic verse - I can imagine a much less tortuous and much closer-to-plain-sense reading of our notorious passage in Leviticus 18:22, the words traditionally understood as banning homosexuality, "Ve'et-zachar lo tishkav mishkevei ishah," as practically meaning "And one affined to the male shalt thou not forcibly cause to lie down with women." If you're looking for something to abominate.

Reading like that is pretty much what our ancient rabbis meant by "revealing aspects in the Torah that are contrary to established law," a sin punishable by forfeiture of one's share in the World to Come. But who wants a share in a coming world built on bigotry? Let's dare, by way of Torah, to imagine and bring about a better world built on love.

Responding beautifully to Dennis Praeger, Rabbi Sharon Cohen Anisfeld, Dean of Hebrew College's Rabbinical School, and once a rabbi here at Harvard Hillel, writes about transgendered students she (and I) have known, "They have taught me deeply about what it means to be a descendent of Jacob - wrestling through the night with fears from within and without, with the mysterious presence of the divine in our lives, with the legacy of the past and the promise of the future - and emerging from the encounter at dawn, bruised but blessed."

And, finally for now, lest we think such wrestling with sexuality and the sacred is only a phenomenon of our own times, consider Shemuel HaNagid (Samuel ibn Nagrillah), tenth century Spanish Jewish poet in the time of Moorish rule in Iberia, assistant Vizier of State to the Berber king, playing in his poignant poetry on a biblical moment in which Moses looks up from the sacred story and challenges God, if God cannot accept things as they are, to "erase me from this book that you have written." (Exodus 32:32) -

My God, invert the heart of that dear chick

Who stole my rest,

And let him give my eyelids back a little sleep.

A beloved who came in Your name,

And gave me his heart's love,

Without forcing, as a gift -

Betrayed, and so does every fawn betray.

And now, if You will but bear his sin -

Or, if not, erase me.

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The armed men who burst into the house of Honduran Indigenous leader Berta Caceres on March 3 had a simple plan: find her, kill her, and leave.

What they didn't expect, however, is for Gustavo Castro, a human rights activist working with Friends of the Earth Mexico and a close friend of Berta's, to be in the next room.

"I was working on a presentation when I heard a loud bang," said Gustavo, who is now in Mexico. "I thought something had fallen, but when Berta screamed, 'Who's there?', I knew it was bad, that it was the end."

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When they heard him, one of the armed men rushed to Gustavo's room. He pointed a gun at his face, shot him and ran.

"Everything happened so quickly, I didn't have time to think," said Gustavo. "When the hitman arrived, I covered my face. He was three metres away. I moved as he fired, and the bullet passed my ear. He thought he'd killed me. It's a miracle I survived."

When the gunmen left, Gustavo hurried to Berta's room. She was on the floor, bleeding heavily, barely able to talk but calling out for him.

"I felt helpless, there was nobody around," said Gustavo "I tried to help her. I asked her to stay with me as I started making calls on my cellphone but everything happened too fast."

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Berta died just after midnight on March 3, minutes after being shot. Her murder shines a spotlight on the risks faced by thousands of people who work to defend human rights and the environment in Honduras. According to the organization Global Witness, Honduras is the deadliest and most dangerous country in the world for environmental activists -- 109 of whom have been killed between 2010 and 2015.

The leader and co-founder of the Council of Indigenous Peoples of Honduras (COPINH), Berta Caceres had spent decades campaigning against projects that threatened local communities and their rights.

More recently, she was one of the most vocal voices opposing the construction of the Agua Zarca dam in Rio Blanco. The proposed dam threatens the flow of the Gualcarque river, which is sacred to the Lenca Indigenous community and provides them with food and drinking water. COPINH says that if built, it would force the community to relocate as life in the area would be virtually impossible.

Berta led a campaign against the dam, to complain against the fact that the community was never properly consulted over it. She helped the community organize peaceful protests, file complaints, and tell the world what was happening.

But their vocal and peaceful activism didn't sit well with the authorities nor those with interests in the project. The opponents of the project reported being harassed and threatened with death. However, the authorities failed to offer the activists with effective protection.

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'A disaster waiting to happen'

Gustavo arrived in La Esperanza a day before Berta's murder. He was meant to take part in a meeting with local leaders and community members to discuss alternatives to the hydro-electric project in the area.

"We had a great meeting with around 80 members of local communities," he said. "Our dream is to build a different world, to generate life amid so much violence and death, but they do not even allow us to do that."

After the meeting, Berta suggested Gustavo stay with her for the night, as her place had a better internet connection than his accommodation. They had dinner with Berta's mother, as well as a chance to catch up on the work they had been doing and on the many death threats Berta had received in the preceding weeks.

"It was clear that Berta was going to be killed at some point," Gustavo said.

They ate rice and beans, talked, debated. Then Berta suggested they leave for her house. It was late, and they were not in an area where you would want to walk around after dark.

Gustavo remembers warning Berta she was not safe as they arrived at her three-bedroom house, a small building with nothing but a thin mesh protecting it from uninvited guests. But Berta reassured him, telling him she did not always stay at the same place.

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Gustavo had a couple of cigarettes outside as they talked, before each went to their room, excited about their plans for the following day.

But tragedy struck that night, killing a human rights defender and dimming the hopes of the communities that have been campaigning for their rights.

Gustavo says Berta's murder was a disaster waiting to happen. He describes her as the latest victim of a country that does nothing to protect those who dare confront the powerful.

'I felt like a scapegoat'

The brutal murder of his friend was only the beginning of Gustavo's ordeal.

The Honduran authorities failed to offer him adequate protection, despite the danger he faced as the sole witness to Berta's murder, and despite having narrowly escaped being killed himself.

Instead, he was paraded through ministries and court houses, ordered to tell his story over and over again. He was prevented from leaving the country for a month and effectively treated as a suspect in the case.

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"After a month, the judge in charge of the case suspended my lawyer. They violated all my rights. I was very scared every day. I thought that something could happen to me at any time. I felt like a scapegoat."

Nearly two months have passed since Berta's murder, but the authorities have done little to find those responsible or to set up measures to effectively protect other human rights defenders at risk like her, who are at the frontlines of an unequal fight.

On Monday, authorities in Honduras arrested four men in relation to Berta's murder - one of them has links with the company in charge of the construction of the dam. The four will be taken in front of the judge on Monday.

Neither Berta's relatives nor their lawyers were informed of the arrests and said the investigation is not being transparent.

Many suspect that Berta was murdered because she was campaigning against the dam. The Agua Zarca project issued a statement denying any involvement in the crime. The authorities focused their initial investigation into members of Berta's organization. It took a month after her murder for them to announce they had carry out a search into DESA's offices and take testimonies from the company's employees 10 days after Berta was killed.

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Gustavo says the solution lies in generating mechanisms that can "guarantee justice" and "protect human rights defenders and the best interests of the people across Honduras", independently of economic interests.

And he recalls one of Berta's favorite expressions: "They are afraid of us because we are not afraid of them."
The North Carolina legislature recently passed, and the governor signed, a bill requiring transsexuals to use the bathroom corresponding to their gender as listed on their birth certificate.

To be clear what we're talking about, transgender people are those whose gender identity does not coincide with their anatomy at birth. So let's see what would happen without this law. There are two cases to consider.

First, suppose a person with the anatomy of a woman, but identifies as a man enters the men's bathroom. There are both urinals and stalls available. But urinals are useless to such a person. So they use a stall, and nobody is the wiser.

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Second, suppose a person with the anatomy of a man, but who identifies as a woman, enters the women's bathroom. Here there are only stalls, so that's what the person uses. Again, nobody is the wiser.

At first blush, it seems that the North Carolina government has undertaken to solve a problem that isn't a problem.

Now let's think about how this law is to be enforced. Will there be a monitor in front of every bathroom in North Carolina? Will potential users of that bathroom be required to display their genitalia to such monitor in order to use the bathroom? Or will everyone in North Carolina be required to carry their birth certificate with them at all times in order to be able to use bathrooms? This seems like an incredible intrusion on peoples' lives.

The proponents of the law claim that it is aimed at preventing assaults in bathrooms. That is certainly a worthy goal. However, it must be pointed out that such assaults can (and do) occur regardless of the gender of the perpetrator and the victim. There is no reason to think that transgender people are more likely to be a perpetrator than anyone else.

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So what is the North Carolina government aiming to accomplish? It seems that the goal is to stigmatize this small group of people. Perhaps it is because such people are unusual and upsetting to some. But this bathroom law seems unrelated to any real problem any real person may have.
Over the last year, anytime a Captain America: Civil War commercial or trailer would play, I'd wonder why Bucky Barnes was being so violent. I understood he was probably experiencing some PTSD and was in a battle with Team Iron Man, but there were some serious anger issues he needed to deal with. But Captain America: Civil War is so well made, those trailers we've been watching (stalking) just come together to make an entertaining powerhouse of a film worth the price of all the movie tickets for your family.

"You think you're right. That makes you dangerous."~Spider-Man

In Captain America: Civil War, we find our house divided because each party believes in their side of the disagreement. Tony Stark is of the opinion that superheroes need to be kept in check -- that a legitimate organization like the United Nations should be in charge of who they fight, what types of battles they take on, and where they can go. So many innocent lives have been lost. So much catastrophe has torn through people's homes, and the public has noticed. Steve Rogers, on the other hand, wants to maintain the freedom to right the wrongs as he sees fit. Even if he and other enhanced aren't always the best choice, it is his belief that they are the right choice for the moment.

"Compromise where you can. And where you can't, don't. Even if everyone is telling you that something wrong is something right, even if the whole world is telling you to move. It is your duty to plant yourself like a tree, look them in the eye and say, no. You move."~ Peggy Carter

Steve receives an awful message that the love of his life, Peggy Carter, has passed away in her sleep. He and Sam travel to the funeral and there, find out that Sharon Carter is Peggy's niece. Sharon Carter's eulogy reminds Steve of the strength he could always find with Peggy at his side and the way she could always guide his moral compass. He knows what he must do.

"Conflict breeds catastrophe."~ Vision

Meanwhile, the members of the team who are willing are at the United Nations to sign the Sokovia Accords. Suddenly, an explosion kills many innocent people, including King T'Chaka of Wakanda, who was speaking at the event. The race is on to find Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes, aka The Winter Soldier, who was caught on film near the site of the attack. The United Nations has given shoot to kill orders. Captain America isn't going to cooperate, but he'll be competing with the new King of Wakanda T'Challa who wants vengeance for his father.

Now Steve is on the run to find Bucky and bring him home and help prove his innocence. Well, at least he hopes Bucky's innocent. And if he isn't, Steve is certain it will be because he's still brainwashed. Meanwhile on that front, our villain of the day Zemo (nothing like the comic book version to be clear) has put together an evil plan to activate the Winter Soldier. Although this character was terribly disappointing, it was important to concentrate on the superheroes being the villains as well. So although there was a bad guy with a thumb twiddling evil plot twist (an impressive one at that), it was really just a catapult for a new act in the movie.

"I can do this all day."~ Steve Rogers/Captain America

The reason Captain America: Civil War is receiving great reviews and high marks is that it delivers the whole package. The Russo brothers are a fan favorite. With shows like Community under their belt, they've got wit and banter on point. This third installment in the Captain America franchise was undoubtedly the funniest. Tony Stark, Scott Lang, Sam Wilson and Peter Parker are all characters that can carry a scene, but put them together and movie goers are rolling in the aisles. The writers, Steve McFeely and Chris Markus, gave these characters a lot to bounce off one another. They chose the quips carefully and doled them out to the right characters. The fight scenes were believable for a superhero movie, unlike some recent superhero movies. Kicks and punches weren't two feet off and stunt people weren't evident from down the block. The explosions and other catastrophes were over the top, but I wouldn't really expect much otherwise, especially with the film's subject matter. And speaking of subject matter, although the movie didn't follow the Captain America: Civil War comic book, it was one of the first times over the past five years I realized I didn't care. I wasn't rolling my eyes half the time thinking, "That would never happen," or, "It didn't happen that way."

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You can check Captain America: Civil War out for yourself on Friday May 6th. Take my advice and don't wait on this one. Read my 10 Can't Miss Captain America: Civil War Movie Moments on My Sentiment ExactLee.

Follow Lee Allport on her blog: MySentimentExactLee

Follow Lee Allport on Facebook: facebook.com/mysentimentexactlee.com
Bill Miller was a co-worker of mine at one of the several poster companies here in Chattanooga. Bill was a jovial person, always fun to be around and had a quick wit that could brighten a bad day instantly. He had been a graphic artist all his working life before I knew him, and the Tivoli Theater had been his second home for years. He knew every inch of the place and all the details inside that building which you would never dream of. He called this second home, the "Big House".

The Tivoli building had a full staff of expert tradesmen and craftsmen who kept the building in tip-top shape at all times. Engineers,electricians, painters, and air-conditioning specialists worked constantly at "preventive maintenance" to help insure that no equipment broke down unexpectedly, especially during show-times. Bill Miller was in charge of all the considerable graphic art inside the building.

In a telephone interview with his daughter, Marilyn, she has just given me a great description of Bill's life there. As a child, and with at least one other sibling, she had watched her dad enlarge small negatives into gigantic display pictures which could be seen a mile away. She and her brother had gotten to help Bill post those enlarged pictures in the specially designed glass display cases as a kind of weekly family activity. This was a lot of fun for young children and they admired their dad. Bill's darkroom where he did the enlargements was deep down under the sound stage where the huge speakers were housed.

In the poster company, (where I knew him), Bill worked at his artist's desk across from mine and would frequently reminisce out loud about his good old days spent at the "big house". He would describe how it was the first building in town to be air-conditioned, and how the a/c feature was an attraction all by itself as many a street-weary person would buy a ticket for the first show of the day, and remain inside in the cool air all day. In those days, shows were continuous and the screen never went blank. A person could buy one ticket and stay all day - perhaps buying some snack food at the concession stand for lunch. Marilyn told me how her father had both designed and built that concession booth. Bill also used to tell how the a/c was so strong that when you opened the street door the jet of cold air would almost prevent the door's closing again.

Other items I remember in the lobby were two small "fairy-tale" type houses, about three or four feet square, that were located near the walls on the wide entrance hall. There were two small planting urns which stood empty in front of each house. Mr. Emmett Rogers, theater owner, liked such features as these little houses, thinking that they added a bit of atmosphere to make the theater-goer feel like he was entering a special wonderland. For whatever reason, I had remembered those two little houses with the orange lights inside and Bill Miller told a story - years later - about them. An innebriated person, it seems, had "used" one of the little urns, and it was Bill's unpleasant duty to do the cleanup. Theater life could be full of surprises!

I had never been able to see all the ornamentation inside the Tivoli until one of my the high school graduation of one of my grandsons a few years ago. With the lights on, It is far more ornate than I had realized, and it was the in-house staff's job to keep it pristine. Much of the design is Italianate, and downstairs in front of the men's room door is a kind of smoking room - with seats around the perimeter. An ornate plaster plaque bears one enigmatic word, "Sebilla", and I never knew the significance or meaning of that word. In a very general way, the decoration of the Tivoli's interior is reminiscent of the New York City subway stations which were decorated by imported Italian craftsmen over a hundred years ago. Traces of those hand-laid mosaics have been preserved. The small oblong dome above the Tivoli's main floor seating was always one of my favorite bits of decoration - like an architectural element which might be found in Florence, Italy. Fine original oil paintings, framed and under glass, hung on one of the long interior walls at the entrance to the auditorium.

But Bill Miller, our Tivoli "insider," is interesting in his own right. He was in the U.S. Navy during WW2 and was always using Navy nomenclature for everything: a "wall" was a "bulkhead", a "hallway" was a "gangway", and when he expected our boss to be angry about something, he would ominously (but tongue-in cheek) say, "stand by for a ram"! Bill related how the ship on which he was stationed carried supplies to the beaches of Normandy, off-loading them at a safe place before turning around and heading back to the USA only hours before the big Invasion! Bill saw duty not only in the Atlantic and Mediterranean (Gibraltar), but in the Pacific as well. He would also tell us about working for Mr. Rogers at the much newer Rogers Theater and how he had started out in the Display Department at Miller Brothers department store. That is where he learned to do brush lettering, qualifying him for the later theatrical work. Bill's abilities with the brush led him to inadvertently design Miller Brother's last logo; the company bosses liked the swashes he put into the initials "M" and "B" so well that they adopted it for all their advertising.

The mention of the name "Bill Miller" never failed to bring a smile to the faces of all who knew him. ("Our" Bill was of no known relation to the founders of Miller Brothers department store, however).

(Chester Martin is a native Chattanoogan who is a talented painter as well as local historian. He and his wife, Pat, live in Brainerd. Mr. Martin can be reached at cymppm@comcast.net )
RIYADH - DECEMBER 22: Kingdom tower on December 22, 2009 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Kingdom tower is a business and convention center, shoping mall and one of the main landmarks of Riyadh city

Late last month, President Barack Obama made his fourth, and likely his last, trip as U.S. president to Saudi Arabia in an attempt to ease growing tensions and reaffirm America's longtime friendship with the kingdom.

His trip, however, turned out to be mostly thorny, revealing gaping rifts in a relationship between two allied nations that share several common strategic goals, but possess sharply differing views on many critical issues impacting the safety, well-being and stability of the Persian Gulf region, including Iran, human rights and how to combat terrorism.

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Saudi Arabia, an authoritarian regime, remains one of our strongest allies in several respects, but it's a country that has never shared our most deeply held values, as evidenced by its ongoing repression of human rights, stifling of political dissent and support for many extreme religious views. And while our relationship has always been uneven, today it is as beleaguered and brittle as it has been for several decades. The chilly reception Obama recently received in Riyadh, coupled with a steady drumbeat of criticism of the Saudis coming out of Congress over their alleged involvement in the 9-11 terror attacks and failure to contribute more in the Middle East in the fight against ISIS, have led several foreign affairs analysts to characterize the U.S.-Saudi relationship as a "broken marriage."

More broadly, though, the tensions between our two nations underscore the difficulty of conducting American foreign policy in the 21st century. Indeed, our strained relationship with the Saudis suggests what I believe is a new norm for U.S. foreign policy engagement across the world. Increasingly, we struggle to find elements of common ground with our allies, and our non-allies, as the challenges facing the global community (terrorism, climate change, nuclear proliferation) grow more complex and dire.

Presently, Saudi Arabia is a country that finds itself in the midst of changing leadership and with an economy that, in recent years, has lagged, largely due to a major depression in oil prices. Facing a growing budget deficit, Saudi leaders have begun laying out a vision for the future of the kingdom that centers on a number of economic reforms designed to stimulate its financial sector and decrease the nation's deep dependence on oil production. These reforms include, among others, cutting spending; drawing down foreign currency reserves; shedding government subsidies for critical resources such as water, electrical power and gasoline; raising taxes; and privatizing a number of state-owned industries. These reforms, and more, are required if this dysfunctional country is to better serve all its people.

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We've heard the song and dance about systematic change from the Saudis before, of course, and I, personally, remain skeptical about their ability to carry out the plan they've set forth. Their rhetoric on economic reform is moving in the right direction at least, but there's been far too little action inside the country on societal and cultural changes that an entrenched Saudi monarchy continues to resist.

During his recent visit, President Obama pointed out several of the key areas in which we would like to see the Saudis make greater progress. They include more rights for women and expanded protection for religious minorities, as well as reductions in the repressive nature of Saudi society and its support of some of the country's fundamentalist clerics, who continue to contribute to many of the most extreme views held in parts of the Islamic world.

However, we still tend to soften our criticisms of the Saudis, despite our deep concerns over their lack of democracy and their human rights abuses. President Obama's recent chiding aside, we traditionally talk far less about democracy and human rights in Riyadh than in other parts of the world, weighing any issues we might have against Saudi repression against the importance of building our alliance against terrorist groups such as ISIS and Al Qaeda. Without question, security continues to serve as the dominant strain in America's relationship with Saudi Arabia. The financial reality also remains. The U.S. may be the leading producer of oil in the world, but Saudi oil production is still hugely important to our economic interests.

For their part, the Saudis have been unhappy with the U.S. over a number of different issues, including our failure to back longtime ally Egypt when President Mubarak came under pressure to resign in 2011 and, more recently, our engagement last year with Iran over our historic nuclear reduction agreement. They were particularly stung during last month's summit, when President Obama criticized them for an unwillingness to accept Iran's role in the world and to co-exist with their greatest rival in the region.

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I've kept close tabs on the U.S.-Saudi relationship for several decades, often wondering when the dam would break in Riyadh and a suppressed population would rise up against the nation's rulers. It's still possible, of course, but such a revolt hasn't happened because of the effectiveness of the Saudi's harsh internal security system. The government shuts down dissent and represses the population, and whenever a local protest does spring up, Saudi security forces put it down promptly. The government has also been skillful in cultivating the support of religious leaders, whose extreme views they tolerate. And though the country is undergoing a change in leadership, it's clear that the monarchy continues to dominate.

Some foreign policy analysts suggest the U.S.-Saudi relationship is headed toward divorce, but I do not anticipate such a dramatic split. I believe that our two nations will continue to work through our rocky relationship and work around our differences. The fact is that we still need each other. Our economies are intertwined. We are allies in the fight against ISIS and Al Qaeda. The Saudis need our military support, and we need their contributions to stability in the region. Our shared security challenges have long defined the relationship. Together, we provide a powerful check against Iran, which remains an adversary of the West and a serious threat to stability in the Middle East.

The Saudis will continue to object to our 'foreign interference' in their internal affairs, and our support of democracy, free expression and assembly. Frictions between our two nations will surely persist. Our shared security concerns in the region will, as they have in the past, prevail over any stresses in our relationship.

As this relationship vividly illustrates, it becomes extremely hard, if not impossible, for the U.S. to consistently support and advocate our democratic values in American foreign policy. Our relationship follows a classic pattern in American foreign policy, in which our strong security interests and our democratic values clash. Security usually wins out.
Friday, May 6th 2016 is the National Military Spouse Appreciation Day. What is the best way to show appreciation for our nation's military spouses? I don't think there is one answer because everyone sees appreciation from a slightly different view. What I can tell you is appreciation for a professionally minded military spouse is an opportunity to have a career. It's knowing a company will hire you regardless of where the military sends you because they appreciate you and value the contributions you provide.

I just moved to Germany and the first two conversations I had with other military spouses pertained to career opportunities. It wasn't because of my role as CEO of America's Career Force, in fact one spouse didn't even know about my company when she told me her story about her struggle to find work. You know this is an important issue when it's one of the first things discussed upon meeting someone new.

One conversation went something like this, "I moved to Germany two years ago. I have a Master's Degree but have been unable to find any opportunities." There are countless military spouses out there in these exact same shoes, highly educated but unable to find a career to have alongside their active duty spouse.

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The next military spouse I spoke to told me she had a phone interview for a job and was being interviewed by a very senior military official for the position. Great news! Success, right?! The interview went extremely well and she was told she was an excellent candidate. The next line of questioning was shocking but not unexpected. It was shocking, not because it actually happened because on some level all military spouses have encountered similar situations but it was shocking because it was so overt. The spouse was asked why she was moving to Germany and she replied in a vague manner so as to avoid any military family discussion. He pushed further and asked more pointed questions and she finally had to tell him that she was in Germany because her husband would be working in Germany. This military official continued to ask questions and realized her husband would be taking a certain job in Germany and then said to her, "Oh, so you will only be here for two years." At that point the conversation took a different direction and she knew that he was no longer considering her for the position because the interviewer knew she would only be there for two years.

This is a snapshot of our Nation's Military Spouses and their real life experiences. People are working together to resolve this known issue but a disconnect still remains. One way to show your appreciation for a military spouse is to offer them a remote career. A career that will follow them wherever the military takes them.
Something surprising is happening today in the boardroom: CEOs are stepping out as vocal advocates for social and environmental justice.

Corporate responsibility is nothing new, of course, but the level of CEO advocacy is increasing rapidly, and just in time. For many years, people looked to government to drive social and environmental change. When governments failed to advance progress at scale, we put our trust in NGOs. Today, we're seeing business leaders step up with unprecedented action and advocacy. CEOs are using their buying power, networks, media platforms and political sway to tackle the most pressing issues we face today, from climate change to inequality.

It's true that we have corporate responsibility stalwarts in CEOs such as Paul Polman (Unilever), Eileen Fisher (Eileen Fisher) and Howard Schultz (Starbucks). And visionary founders such as Yvon Chouinard (Patagonia) and Ben Cohen/Jerry Greenfield (Ben & Jerry's) have been towing the line of activist leadership for years. The problem, however, has been a lack of fast-followers. Until now.

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Today, we're seeing business leadership ignite in exciting ways. Let's look at a few examples.

Last month, some 100 companies came together in solidarity to express their support for the Paris Climate Agreement. The companies called for the swift implementation of the Clean Power Plan - the main contribution of the U.S. to the post-COP efforts - which is currently being held up by the Supreme Court. CEOs from Ikea, Mars, PG&E and The Kellogg Company, among others, called on U.S. political leaders for an investment in the low-carbon economy at home and abroad to give financial decision-makers clarity and to boost investors' confidence.

On the social side of things, we're seeing hundreds of companies such as Apple, Walmart, Bank of America and Dow Chemical express their dissatisfaction with anti-gay discrimination in states such as Indiana, Georgia and North Carolina. CEOs have banded together to wield the power of their economic impact (jobs, conferences, etc.) to drive meaningful social justice.

We're also seeing CEOs such as Marc Benioff (Salesforce) take aim at gender-pay inequality. When Mr. Benioff learned that many of his female employees were being paid less than their male peers, he spent $3 million on salary increases for about 1,000 employees. Now he's asking other CEOs to address pay inequality in their businesses. Benioff went so far as to surprise Tesla Motors Inc. founder Elon Musk at a Dinner for Equality, asking him on the spot for a pay-equality commitment. Musk responded, "I'll look into that."

These CEOs are getting involved because they believe it's the right thing to do. They also understand that their employees and consumers expect business to play a role in improving lives and protecting the environment.

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Let's be clear, it's not always easy for a CEO to step in to an activist role. There are at least three things that are important for any leader to consider before she/he leans in to social or environmental advocacy.

Always remember that what you say must reflect what you do. No one expects your business to be perfect, but be sure you are aligning external advocacy in areas where you also have established internal values, vision and impact.

Be sure you're in it for the long haul. Sustainable social and environmental change requires passion but it also requires tenacity, collaboration and a willingness to invest in the difficult business of helping to build movements over time.

Finally, jump in with an understanding that activism is not always easy. Sometimes it's going to get a little ugly because these issues provoke emotions and they poke at entrenched interests that may be loath to change.
It's no secret MerleFest fans have made the annual trek for the past 29 years to North Carolina's Wilkes Community College during the last weekend of April to hear their musical folk heroes perform live.

What's less obvious is the musicians themselves look just as forward to the annual event honoring the music of the late, great Doc and Merle Watson because it gives them the chance to rub elbows, possibly jam or even get discovered by their own musical heroes.

"This is ground zero for music," said David Howley of We Banjo 3, a popular Irish quartet that played MerleFest 2016 for the first time thanks to a little help from their friends, Scythian. "This is where it all goes down, this is where new tunes are written, new songs, new friendships happen, and new bands are discovered. This is like creative heaven."

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It's also where Doug Seegers, better known by the moniker "Duke the Drifter," experienced a shock of a lifetime, while attending and performing at his first MerleFest.

"I was having dinner at a local restaurant and my tour manager ... said Peter Rowan wanted to meet me and record one of my songs today," he said during a press conference. "I was in shock. I went up that hill and met Peter Rowan for the first time. I never dreamed of chance to have him sing harmony on one of my songs. I thought: 'Did I die and wake up on another planet?' "

Seegers explained Rowan had been one of his idols since back in late 70s. He sang one of Seegers' gospel tunes, "Will You Take the Hand of Jesus." "What a treat, what an honor. It was just a wonderful, wonderful experience," Seegers added.

John Oates, yes that Oates who more than occasionally still performs with the TV star of "Live at Darryl's House," was also new to MerleFest. He credited his friend and mandolin virtuoso Sam Bush (who hasn't missed a MerleFest) with helping him finally get to play there. "It's been a long journey," said Oates, who played with Doc a few times in Oates' hometown of Philadelphia in the 70s. "It's a festival I wanted to play for a long time and thanks to Sam, I am here."

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And Bush, also known as the father of "Newgrass," who's played with just about everyone on every stage over the years, added, "Right here at MerleFest I've gotten to play with people I'd never thought I'd meet and I want to keep meeting new musicians here."

Oates was "thrilled" to play with The Waybacks on this year's Hillside Album Hour tribute to The Eagles Greatest Hits 71-75. After jamming with The Waybacks' James Nash on "Witchy Woman," Oates said, "What a great band, James Nash is so talented, so clever ... I was just happy to do it. I hope I get invited back." Scythian members and brothers Dan and Alex Fedoryka have been playing at MerleFest for a decade. "This is our festival, this is our family," Dan explained during a press conference.

Scythian asked the festival to let their buddies, We Banjo 3, join the family this year. And Howley and his bandmates are more than thrilled to become members.

"We're so thankful to MerleFest for giving us this opportunity," Howley said. "The bands are not competing with each other. We are all family and we help each other out and I think that's what's really special about this place."

There is such a high level of musicianship at MerleFest it can be overwhelming to stand on the Watson Stage where so many greats have played before, Howley added. "You're standing on stage where 100s of other amazing musicians have played and you realize some of them are listening to me and it's terrifying."

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The Fedoykas credit some of those musicians with changing the musical trajectory of Scythian. "When we came here, we were playing primarily Irish tunes," Alex explained. "The whole spirit of jamming was foreign to us. We were so blown away by the different styles and we knew we wanted to play more Americana music. We were jamming around campfires, staying up all night and meeting random fiddlers. It's such an electric atmosphere."

Dan added, "One of the most charming aspects of MerleFest is that it makes festival attendees feel like owners. We took the MerleFest model and applied it to our own Appaloosa festival. It's from the roots up. It's built on family and it's very organic."

Indeed. All of the bands that come to MerleFest "are like family to us," explained Chelsea Kilgore, while eating lunch backstage with her husband and son. The 23-year-old is Doc's great-grandaughter, Merle's granddaughter and Richard's niece. "It's like a family reunion for us because they share all of their memories with us."

Old Crow Medicine Show leadman Ketch Secor's credits Nancy Watson bringing her dad down from his home in Deep Gap to hear the band play outside of Boone Drug as the biggest break OCMS ever had. "I don't think we would have made it if we hadn't met Doc and played MerleFest," he says.

His bandmate of nearly two decades, Critter Fuqua agrees. "Meeting Doc was the real lynchpin and the key. Meeting him and seeing him it was something supernatural. We wouldn't have been the band we are now. I would have been a manager at Subway in Boone."

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As a 79-year-old woman, I grew up in the 1950s before women had access to safe, legal and affordable birth control. I remember well how women were often terrified of a pregnancy that would force them to stop working when they could not afford to do so, or wanted to further their education or their career. Sometimes a pregnancy meant more children than they could care for or afford. I remember the extreme and often illegal measures a woman would take to end an unintended pregnancy, even if it threatened her health or life.

Thankfully times have changed.

Women are now better able to direct their lives and control the timing of when, how many, or if they will have children. The Affordable Care Act recognizes that affordable contraceptive coverage is essential if women are truly to be equal and independent members of our society. It should be noted that an expert panel at the Health and Medicine Division of the National Academies identified contraception as one of eight key preventative health services that should be made more accessible to women. For all these reasons, the ACA requires health insurance plans to include comprehensive contraceptive coverage, without copays or other added costs for the women.

Over the last few weeks, the US Supreme Court accepted additional briefing in the case of Zubik v. Burwell. This case considers whether an accommodation given to religious non-profits that allows them to opt out of the coverage requirement respects the religious freedom of non-profits which object to birth control on religious grounds. One of the objecting non-profits -- and a plaintiff in this case -- is the Little Sisters of the Poor, which operates the Mullen Home for the Aged here in Denver.

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Under the accommodation, the employer need only notify its third-party insurer of its religious objections to contraception, or notify the US Department of Health and Human Services, and then it is relieved of the coverage requirement. The third-party insurer must separately provide this benefit directly to the woman without the employer's participation.

The non-profits in this case argue that the opt-out provision violates their rights under the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act. Eight of nine federal courts of appeals have rejected such a claim, finding that this accommodation is consistent with safeguarding the religious liberty of the objecting non-profits.

Serving as a reminder of just how much courts matter, the US Supreme Court ruling in Zubik may make a woman's ability to access birth control dependent on the religious views of her employer. No employers should be allowed to impose their personal religious views on their workers. Religious liberty means that a worker should be able to make reproductive health care decisions on the basis of her own faith, beliefs and circumstances, no matter where she is employed or the religious beliefs of her employer.

In addition to contraceptive access being a matter of personal decision making -- for each woman to decide for herself -- it is a key component of women's health. It is also a matter of equality. Access to contraception is critical to a woman's equal participation in society. Her access to these services should not depend on her employer's religious beliefs.

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When the Dag Hammarskjold Library at the United Nations announced its most checked out book for 2015 was a doctoral thesis on how heads of state and government officials could be charged in foreign courts, many were taken aback that within an institution making peace its mission, criminal accountability for leaders generated greatest interest. Accountability is not the most popular subject for leaders and heads of state. Institutions, such as the International Criminal Court (ICC) are particularly unpopular. Cases like Prosecutor v. Uhuru Muigai Kenyatta demonstrate the difficulties in holding leaders accountable, the politicization of justice processes, restraint in targeting the largest perpetrators, and a strategy of focusing on smaller rather than larger power blocs in seeking accountability.

When Richard Wilson, Professor of Law and Anthropology at UConn Law School and founding director of the Human Rights Institute at the University of Connecticut, came on April 8 to speak at the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at NYU School of Law (chrgj.org), he elicited our examination of accountability. Accountability is in the terrain of his upcoming book Propaganda on Trial: The Law and Social Science of International Speech Crimes (2016, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), exploring how international tribunals hold individuals accountable for inciting genocide and crimes against humanity.

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Wilson began the discussion with a look at the use of historic evidence in trials. In his research, Wilson found that prosecutors often called historians first at international trials. Whereas in national trials, take a murder trial in Miami as an example, calling a historian to testify might seem absurd. In propaganda trials, where there have been 8-10 convictions at the ICC, low-level employees like maintenance worker Joseph Serugendo at Radio Television Libre des Mille Collines (RTLMC) were held accountable, reworking Hannah Arendt's banality of evil to the banality of maintenance. In delving into the subject, Wilson saw the ICC's attempts to pursue propaganda as an issue. He then began to ask questions as to where the strategy worked and where it hadn't. These questions included: how did prosecutors bring hate speech experts to ICTY and ICTR trials and why did judges admit their expertise or exclude it? How have international tribunals handled experts brought by the prosecution and the defense? What criteria do international courts use to evaluate the value of expertise?

Wilson looked to the court of the land. Though the United States Supreme Court stated in Daubert its preference for science and evidence that is falsifiable, Justice Rehnquist honestly admitted he didn't really understand what falsifiability meant. It's the same for SCOTUS as it is for international tribunals; as much as these lawyers and judges may like science, in theory, being neither scientists nor mathematicians, can they actually understand it? Or further yet, can they successfully apply it?

As for allowing the field to speak for itself, in the Ngudjolo case, the ICC decided that scientific evidence is objective, "even if the expert was appointed by only one party or by the Court". Moreover, the experts used widely vary. In the United States, for example, the police are the most common experts called at trials, not scientists. The picture at the ICTY in the Hague looks different, where social scientists are in third place for those most called at trials, and the police at sixth place, the same rank as human rights experts. Not only are social scientists called more frequently, but they are also cited a lot more. Finding that international tribunals prefer qualitative research to quantitative, Wilson examines why that is so in his work, utilizing two specific cases: the Prosecutor v. Nahimana, Barayagwiza and Ngeze in the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) and the recent Seselj case in the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) heavily critiqued in the press.

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Published with permission from Dr. Richard Wilson

In Prosecutor v. Nahimana, Dr. Mathias Ruzindana, an expert linguist, was called in to provide context for the "Media Trial" in Rwanda. He was able to show that though the accused, RTLM radio owner Ferdinand Nahimana used euphemisms in his speech, it constituted direct incitement to genocide since ordinary Rwandans knew what the words meant: extermination of the Tutsi minority. Ruzindana determined that gukora "to work" in Rwanda at the time meant "to kill". He also determined that both Inkotanyi "warriors" and Inyenzi "cockroaches" referred to Tutsis and the Icyitso "accomplices" referred to Hutu moderates. The Tribunal's primary concern was ascertaining what ordinary Rwandas understood by such terms and the concern served as a test for the case. The judges relied on Ruzindana due to his qualitative and not quantitative expertise and Ruzindana himself approached the judges with the vested knowledge to speak to them as lawyers rather than scientists.

However, in the Vojislav Seselj case at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, the prosecution's approach was different. Though Seselj was not a military leader and his followers were not under his official military command, Seselj was a nationalist politician who had gone to conflict zones to provoke Serbian troops just as they were to set off on missions by telling them of incoming reports of Serbian children massacred by non-Serbs. Seselj then sent off riled-up Serbian soldiers armed with lies to commit war crimes themselves in retaliation. At his own trial, more a circus than a legal process, Seselj went so far in his speech as to say that should Kosovo gain independence, the result would be rivers of blood. He also utilized direct speech in calling Croatians poisonous snakes, in stark contrast to the Rwanda media case were such speech was more indirect.

Yet, how did the judges evaluate the expert witness for the prosecution in each case? Wilson shows when expert sociologist Anthony Oberschall was asked by the Tribunal what specific speech caused what specific act, he was unable to show such specificity, stating that hate speech increased the probability that the crime would be committed. Judges were hostile to the answer, unwilling to quantify "beyond a reasonable doubt", preferring rather to answer causation questions with the common sense of the ordinary man. Therein Ruzindana succeeded where Oberschall floundered; Ruzindana utilized non verbose, non-technical language. Oberschall utilized specific numbers. Ruzindana did not discuss causation. Oberschall did.

Published with permission from Dr. Richard Wilson

For Wilson, the legal notions of direct causation are flawed when applied to cases of incitement, where speech is one factor among many and theories of multiple and indirect causation are more appropriate. Therefore Wilson proposes inciters be charged with aiding and abetting an accessorial liability rather than direct instigation which requires that a speech act directly cause a criminal offence.

For Wilson, the judges' standards required unrealistic fact patterns that ignore foreseeability. When I asked Wilson his views on hate speech, he replied that his work pushed him personally towards a very low tolerance for hate speech in the media, but legally speaking, he still leaves open the question of how it should be criminalized, explaining that when members of ethnic, religious, and racial minority groups are persecuted, hate speech creates conditions in which hate and even violence are more likely to be morally justified. If we were bombarded with hate speech for two weeks, would there be physiological effects on us? Would we be more likely to be aggressive upon encountering the target of that hate speech? When speech like that of Donald Trump escalates and we see a presidential candidate who promises to deport 11 million Latin Americans, where does accountability for incitement lie?
US Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks during a rally May 5, 2016 in Charleston, West Virginia. / AFP / Brendan Smialowski (Photo credit should read BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP/Getty Images)

The one day a year when we honor our mothers is once again upon us. On Sunday, millions of moms will get flowers and candy, a gift or two, along with sticky pancakes or burnt toast lovingly prepared by husbands and kids turned cooks-for-a-day.

As individuals, we're pretty fond of our mothers. But as a nation we don't value motherhood all that much. We lag far behind Europe in granting leave for the birth or adoption of a child, for example. Our system of unpaid leave applies only to those who work for the largest corporations, and most new mothers (or fathers) can't afford to take it anyway. CEOs and their lap-dog lawmakers say paid leave, the norm in most of the rest of the developed world, would cost too much. Guess it would. After all, we have to save money -- for wars, corporate bailouts, and tax breaks benefitting the same employers that don't provide any family benefits.

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No president has had the guts to propose a comprehensive, federally subsidized child care program since Richard Nixon vetoed such a plan, calling it the "sovietization of American children."

President Obama's proposed Fiscal Year 2017 budget does include $2.2 billion to support the creation of state paid leave programs and $1 million for state paid leave research. Even if it were $50 billion and had a snowball's chance of getting through a hostile Congress, why should paid leave depend on the state where you live? We need a federal program, period.

Hillary Clinton has upped the ante, calling for universal preschool and promising to unveil a comprehensive child care program. She knows most moms are now in the paid work force out of economic necessity -- but still make only 79 cents to a man's dollar -- so they can't afford private child care that can run $5-$16 thousand per year per child. The result is that we're going on three generations of children characterized by a phrase unknown to our grandparents -- latch-key kids.

On the other side of the aisle, Donald Trump says he "loves women," but never mentions the problems of working mothers. And why should he? He has a ten-year-old son at home, and a stay-at-home wife. They no doubt also have servants to provide a 24-7 backstop for the times neither parent can be home. No worry about their kid, no financial stretch to pay for care, no scrambling for somebody to provide love and chicken soup in case of illness.

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Would that all working moms could have such marvelous help to take up the slack when they can't be with their children. Or at least be able to take a day off when somebody is sick, or find decent day care at a price that doesn't rival the mortgage payment. But it's not likely to happen in the good ol' U. S. of A. unless we can elect a president that will lead on the issue, and a Congress with the courage to put their support behind it.
Dear Mom,

I came to you as a foster child on Nov. 22, 2013. At first, living with you seemed easy, but then the anger and problems I had held onto throughout my life came out.

There were times when we both thought things were just not going to work out. But, God knew better. We had times when we snapped at each other and times where we both thought, "I can't do this." But God knew more.

He had a plan for our relationship and our growth as a family. Looking back now, it seems to me He wanted a broken girl like me with countless troubles to find a mother like you who would care for her, love her and make her a part of a healthy family. That's exactly what happened.

If you had given up on me, there is no telling where I would be now. I imagine I would still be in foster care, fighting everyone and refusing to accept help. Sometimes, when I think of my past and where I'm heading now, it still feels like a dream.

Having you in my life and the things you have taught me has allowed me to build a better relationship with the Lord. And through that, you and I have built a better relationship with each other.

You took me in, fed me, gave me a safe home and spent countless hours talking to me. But most importantly, you called me your own. By adopting me, you gave me a place to call home forever, your last name and a family I love and who loves me. You gave me a chance at a different life full of hope and possibilities.

Thank you for never giving up on me, no matter how hard it got. No matter how bad I treated you, you stood by my side and became my mother. Please know that for all those moments when I don't act like I love you because we're arguing over something, I still love you.

Knowing I have a mother who is there for me and will take care of me until I can take care of myself is the greatest gift I could imagine. You're my mom, my hero and my best friend.

Thank you for being there when no one else was. Thank you for believing in me and helping me accomplish my goals. Thank you for accepting me as your child. I love you.

Your daughter
Oil and gas fracking rig in Alberta, Canada. (Please see my portfolio for similar video files).

The future of the coal and fracking industries and jobs in these industries has been in the news a lot these past days. While we must be mindful of the people who currently depend on these industries for their livelihoods, the fact remains that this work is harmful. People are losing their health, the quality of their lives, the safety of their children, the value and sanctity of their homes, the clean water they need to drink and the healthy air they need to breathe. The cost of continued dependence on fossil fuels is far too great to support any longer. While we must support new jobs for fossil fuel workers, these jobs cannot be in the continued use or expansion of fossil fuels and its infrastructure.

The research on this issue is clear.

The shale gas extraction industry - an industry dependent upon drilling and fracking -- is an industry that devastates the communities where it is happening. The process contributes to greenhouse gas emissions responsible for dangerous storms like the ones we have experienced as recently as this past week. Fracking contaminates drinking water supplies (260 confirmed cases in PA alone), and risks the health of people of all ages (e.g. children of mothers living within 10 miles of gas wells are 30 percent more likely to be born with congenital heart disease and twice as likely to have a neural tube defect.)

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The hazards of coal mining to health and safety of workers, coupled with its climate changing pollution emissions, are well recognized.

Communities experiencing the rapid proliferation of pipelines, compressors, oil trains and expanding fossil fuel infrastructure have found their property rights stripped, businesses undermined, and communities put at risk from accidents and explosions. (Most recently, a man was critically burned fleeing a pipeline explosion in Pennsylvania.)

For those that think pipelines are getting safer, think again. Research shows that pipelines built since 2010 have incident rates higher than those installed pre-1940s.

It is time for us to transition to clean energy now, and to leave our remaining fossil fuels in the ground. Study after study demonstrates we can make this transition by 2050 if we start today.

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Unfortunately, it is undeniable that the jobs dependent upon fossil fuels will be lost in this transition. Still, this change is also an undeniable necessity if we are going to save our communities from the health, economic and devastating storms that result from fossil fuel pollution and operations. It serves no one to try to hide this essential truth. Instead, we must focus on developing new solutions for energy and for those affected in this period of change.

If we transition now, we will be able to preserve our water, air, health and environment while at the same time ensuring that we create good clean energy jobs. Without this immediate transition, many working in the fossil fuel industry will still find themselves jobless in the near future. As the Post Carbon Institute's Drilling Deeper report fully documents, the shale gas and oil industries have a short life, one that is only a few decades long. In addition, if we fail to make this transition, then in 2050 when the fossil fuels are gone, our country will truly be dependent on foreign sources of energy -- but this time it will be a dependence on the clean energy options that other nations like China and Germany are racing to lead. And so we are all better served making this change now.
Supporting hand for grandfather with Alzheimer's disease.

Reviewing financial affairs, paying bills and submitting tax returns for a parent or loved one who can no longer handle those chores themselves can be quite stressful. However, at the same time, with my father having died last year and being appointed his executor, I simultaneously have been required to deal with the legal and moral obligations that come with settling and closing out the family estate. Along with searching through old records and receipts I am regularly reminded of other pressing items when mailings in my father's name arrive forwarded to my new Delaware address alongside a stream of emails that continue to appear in my inbox from our family accountant and attorney. (Ironically, these all come along with a hospice notice reminding our family to take time to grieve).

Settling the affairs of a parent who recently has died presents a family with emotional and practical challenges. Primary among those is attending to the family finances. While this epilogue is a trying exercise, nothing quite compares to the past several years when my sisters and I had to come to terms with the fact that our father was becoming less independent. As he declined both physically and cognitively, we realized he might soon be incapable of managing his financial affairs. Intensifying the situation, as we witnessed his mobility deteriorate, we had to come to grips with the reality that our father, the Patriarch of our family, might not be able to live alone for much longer. A proud WWII veteran approaching 90 years of age, he was steadfast in his determination not to move from the home that he had lived in with my mother for decades. So our goal became to allow him his wish to "age in place."



Balancing Personal Health, Safety and Finance

With my mother having died three years earlier, we believed that my father's assets, which constituted all of my parent's savings, should be earmarked to make his life as comfortable as possible. We understood that this would require care-giving services, as well as other health care expenses, well beyond what we could provide as a nuclear family. But here was the dilemma: how could we do this without my father realizing that we were spending his savings on his health care. Despite the need for such care, we were quite sure he would have protested. Unfortunately, he had lost the ability to understand and make informed decisions for his personal health and safety and his finances. This is a predicament we -- as are millions of families in America and around the world each year -- were faced with. He no longer possessed the cognitive skills to understand and calculate costs involved for services or products or how to read monthly billing statements or engage in the mechanics of a purchase -- save for the simplest of transactions like paying with his credit card at the hardware store -- and even that often proved a harrowing experience.

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Fortunately, my father lived in a community in Connecticut where there was a large senior population that seemed only matched in numbers by a large group of local store owners, shop keepers and cashiers who exhibited an unheralded humanity and kindness by keeping watchful eye over the elderly patrons -- monitoring and guiding them through their transactions.



Protecting the Elderly's Assets

But for our family, we needed to come to terms with the bigger financial picture: how to plan to effectively spend his savings to pay for caregiving and if possible, as a family agree on such a plan. It's a conundrum many families encounter and it can be a delicate and sensitive affair. Advanced planning for this possibility can help alleviate some of the burden.



In March I attended a program at Philadelphia Federal Reserve entitled "Meeting the Financial Needs of Older Adults," where that that very point was emphasized. I attended this program as a representative of George Washington University, where I've been developing an online course on Baby Boomers and retirement, which in part considers how the Boomers are struggling to cope as the "sandwich" generation -- placed in the middle of caring for older parents while also still supporting their own grown children.



Age-Friendly Banking

The Fed meeting was an a complement to a roundtable group of leaders of non-profits, government agencies, and the financial community that have convened under the auspices of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition (NCRC) during the past year to work on a concept known as "Age-Friendly Banking." Philadelphia participants included senior representatives from several of the nation's largest banks including Bank of America and PNC Financial Group. Significantly, a number of government officials from northeastern states also attended including Delaware's Secretary for HHS Rita Landgraf, Pennsylvania's Secretary for Department of Aging Teresa Osbourne, and Laura Otterbourg of New Jersey's, Division of Aging Services. All spoke about their individual states' efforts to address the needs of an aging population. The discussion focused on older adult economic security issues, including financial fraud and senior financial abuse and advocacy for this vulnerable population of aging Americans. Many, if not all of the participants underscored the point that it will take such a large coalition of non-profit advocacy groups, government agencies, along with the financial services industry working together, to tackle what now appears to be an impending societal and economic disruption of immense proportions that faces an aging America if action is not taken.

Placing this all in perspective: the two largest cohort groups in the US are 60 + and 85 +; and every day until 2029, 10,000 Baby Boomers will turn 65. Research published by Brandeis University Institute on Assets and Social Policy calculates that 75% " of all senior households are one major financial shock - such as a medical or personal crisis -- away from losing everything. Two particular points were made that stayed with me: First, as we age, one of the first abilities to be impaired is that of managing money. Cognitively, understanding finances and coping with transactions becomes difficult.

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Second, the elderly population is often targeted and taken advantage of -- financial exploitation and outright theft is rampant among this demographic group. The numbers are shocking. Met Life reported in 2011 that financial exploitation of the senior population amounted to $2.9 billion a year. In 2015 True Link Financial, a San Francisco-based company that works to protect assets of the elderly, estimates that all types of financial loss incurred by older adults -- loss attributed to both cognitive decline and decision-making, along with exploitation from family, caregivers, telemarketers, or housing and lottery scams, is estimated to be an astronomical and sinful $36.5 billion.

Protecting the Elderly from Financial Exploitation

Many policy makers, state and federal agency officials and private sector businesses have already begun to intensely focus on this serious national social issue. As a FDIC and Consumer Financial Protection Board (CFPB) publication Money Smart for Older Adults notes: "Elder financial abuse can result in the loss of the ability to live independently; decline in health; broken trust and fractured families."

Bankers, especially community and local branches, can often serve as a first line of defense. They have a unique vantage point to observe family financial transactions and interactions. (Last month the CFPB issued an advisory and report for financial institutions on preventing elder financial abuse). Trusted attorneys and accountants can also play an important role.



Family Planning and Securing Power of Attorney

In my own family's case, I've come to learn how fortunate we were to agree on a course of action for managing my father's financial and medical affairs. Perhaps inspired to a degree by self-preservation, it was a way to help ensure that no one sibling was held responsible or suspected of mismanagement of funds. Taking a proactive stance after our mother died, we hoped for the best but prepared for the worst - expecting that my father might soon follow since he was 87 years old at the time and more serious health issues were developing.

We were able to develop a plan because we had addressed several legal aspects years earlier. After my father's last living sibling died, I had insisted that we review and update my parents' living wills, and other important decisions and papers including Power of Attorney and health care decision proxies. We convened a family meeting. My parents seemed suspicious -- as is the case with many elderly, who are beginning to face their mortality and worry about having resources to provide for themselves or worry that someone will start to take control of their "independence," which often takes the form of gaining access to financial resources.
Cleveland State Community College is hosting an Open House for its new Welding Lab on Thursday, May 12 from 7:30-9:30 a.m. in the Technology Building on the Main Campus.



Employers have asked us to help them develop high quality certified welders so they can grow their businesses, stated Dr. Denise King, Vice President for Academic Affairs. We've hired new faculty with expertise in Welding instruction, and thanks to the help from a number of partners, are ready to open this newly designed Welding lab. The doors are now open. We are ready to offer training beginning immediately.



Although CSCC has offered welding courses for many years, a newly proposed welding certificate packaging these welding technology courses along with other pertinent industrial technology courses designed to match industry needs will provide students with skills needed in todays job market. The establishment of a new state-of-the-art welding lab on the main campus will allow Cleveland State to offer day, afternoon and evening welding courses. Cleveland State has been utilizing two high schools over the years for an evening welding program and will continue to use those sites in addition to the on-campus facility. This welding lab was established in response to industry demand for qualified, educated and skilled welders.



The opening of our new Cleveland State Community College Welding Technology Lab is very exciting to our faculty and students, stated Technology Instructor Jonathan King. The hands-on training and certifications that we will be able to offer our students and industry partners will help fill the gap for much needed welding skills in our service area and community. The new Welding Lab has already opened up a wide variety of dual credit and dual enrollment agreements, as well as additional opportunities for industry training through OneSource.



CSCC plans to offer welding and technology courses at the main campus, as well as Sequoyah High School and CSCCs new Monroe County Center in Vonore. With these offerings, CSCC will have these courses available to students at both ends of the CSCC service area.



We believe by packaging the courses as a certificate, industry will recognize our graduates as being equipped to perform jobs in high demand, stated Susan Webb-Curtis, Dean of Business and Technology. A number of industries throughout our service area have been very pro-active in our development of the welding lab, serving in an advisory capacity, writing support letters and providing donated materials and equipment. We believe these industries will also drive their multi-craft technicians toward these classes and certificate.



In addition to the credit courses in welding, CSCC is also offering non-credit courses. Introduction to Welding, Basic Welding and Advanced Welding will all be available to students as non-credit opportunities.



For more information on the Open House or the credit opportunities in welding, contact Kathy Stutzman at (423) 473-2439. For more information on non-credit opportunities, contact Lee Ann Lowe, Continuing Education Coordinator, at (423) 473-2270.
silhouette of man looking out window with flare

This weekend I attended a retreat in Santa Fe led by Father Richard Rohr, a world- renowned Franciscan priest, called Awakening Identity. It gathered a dynamic group of people to discuss all manner of challenging spiritual and theological topics and invited us to sit in Contemplative Practices. Contemplative Practice is the act of sitting in silence, quieting the mind and awakening consciousness to the whole of existence. It is the act of being instead of doing.

Contemplative practice has been a part of my path for many years now. Muslims call it "fikr" and Buddhists call it meditation. I believe it was an integral part of the life and message of Muhammad, upon him be prayers and peace.

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What a contemplative practice like fikr does is that is moves the center of understanding to somewhere between the mind and the heart. The eye (or third eye) of true sight opens when this happens. Muhammad became the prophet after hermitage which he spent in meditation and contemplation in the cave of Hiraa. Father Richard says in his book, The Naked Now, "Jesus was the first non-dual religious teacher of the West, and much of the reason we have failed to understand his teaching, much less follow it, is because we tried to understand it with a dualistic mind." Father Richard spoke about the moment when Jesus became the Christ and on to the Cosmic Christ and Christ Consciousness. This type of consciousness is what Muslims call "taqwa."

Throughout the weekend, there was nothing that he said that I disagreed with as a Muslim. It crystalized and polished the understanding that Muhammad and Jesus were brothers who carried the same message. Father Richard's message was that it is non-dualistic thinking that can help us to all make this same discovery.

On the first day, at the very first session, I wondered what my presence at this retreat would do to and for the others in attendance. What did it look like to them that a devout, practicing Muslim woman stepped out of her comfort zone and was attending a very Christian retreat? What did it feel like for them? What were their perceptions of me? Were they made uncomfortable by my presence? What opportunities did they see brought by my presence and what challenges were felt? I wondered about all these questions that first evening at dinner. These thoughts were swirling around in me like the fancy wine in their glasses.

Something snapped me out of my inner monologue and a conversation started about my husband, Sebastian and my #AskAMuslim project. The banter soon turned to more lighthearted topics and eventually we were all laughing deep belly laughs as we finished our entrees. We got to talking about music, health, relationships and a story of the prophet Muhammad came to mind. Someone asked the prophet what his favorite dish was and he said, "the one with the most hands extended towards it." He loved people and enjoyed food because he enjoyed those who were dining with him. The breaking of bread which breaks down false barriers that we build up in our minds was a sort of transcendence for me.

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It is indeed the very same message that I carry with me whenever I speak and teach. It is the grounding Earth that I am planted in, that which has grown me into what I am now. I have roots that grow into the depths of the Earth of my tradition and even beyond into the Earth of the unknown where labels, lines and divisions become muddied and in some cases nonexistent. Like the tree, I have branches that stretch out into the sky, begging me to see beyond what my eyes can, calling on me to use my heart's imaginative power to know the beyond. And so the idea of being small isn't worrisome. Non-duality through contemplative practice connects me to everything, the micro and the macro.

At one point Father Richard went around the room and pointed a finger at each one of us and said, "There lives the face of God," and moved to the next person, "There lives the face of God." He said when we stop thinking with our binary minds we can truly live and that is when we could never even imagine hurting another. My cells contain the very micro the sky calls for me to witness and which only my heart's imagination can comprehend. The micro is inside me. The macro is inside me. I know the sky calls me to see that which is beyond my physical sight and yet, I can visit the multiverse and see it and know it because it exists inside of me.

Like Ali (the cousin of the Prophet Muhammad and 4rd Caliph) said, "You think you are a small entity, but within you is enfolded the entire Universe". When I comprehend that I am both the micro and the macro, when my heart rests in that truth, I know I am truly present and alive. It is that truth that allows me to feel the pain of another. to feel the pain and cries of the Earth and what we have done to it.

Father Richard was born to German, Catholic parents and so he is Catholic. And I was born to Syrian Muslim parents, and so I am Muslim. Are these differences meaningful? I truly feel that we are humans with morphic fields for souls that intermingle and interconnect always. It it our minds that grapple with our essence and our interconnectedness. That first evening of the retreat, my questions were quieted when my heart opened and I became present to the others around me - when I opened myself to more than myself. Contemplative practice makes this a way of life instead of just moments of connection and minor enlightenment.
The music industry is inundated with manufactured hip hop but its true roots are alive and growing. A new generation mixed with a classic vibe is emerging from the hip hop scene which offers familiar beats with a futuristic style. Coming from Chicago is producer Bryan Ford and New York-bred Wu Tang alum, Killah Priest who have joined forces for the new album, For The Future of Hip Hop which is released on Revolutionary Music today (Friday, May 6th).

The album features an East Coast lyrical style over futuristic productions which creates a unique sound that stands out in the world of hip hop. Chicago emcees Pugs Atomz and Awdazcate are guests on the LP adding some Midwest flavor to the East Coast lyricism. The first single and title track, "For The Future of Hip Hop" has an accompanying music video that features Killah Priest, Pugs Atomz and Awdazcate immersed in dark and tripped out scenery. Reminiscent of the past with Blade Runner-esque undertones, the video is a synthesis of past, present and future.

Decorated in moments of psychedelia, Killah Priest introduces himself as "coming down from the Cosmos and landing in Chicago...hip hop astronaut, like acid drops," lending to a galactic trip of radioactive flows and cosmic beats. Pugs Atomz references space-time travel and relativity visualized, taking hip hop to a new level beyond the stratosphere, something Stephen Hawking might even appreciate.

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The future of hip hop, however, is not all about the space-time continuum and sci-fi aesthetics, but rather it is a movement into a new frontier and this frontier can take on any number of facets. The Flamenco-influenced "Just Me and My Girl" opens with the sweet sounds of classical guitar played by Ford, as nylon strings dance and twang through our ears. As a soothing beat is introduced, Pugs and Awdaz's soulful vocals carry the listener through this melodious track. "The song pretty much wrote itself," explains Ford. "It was one of those magic studio moments where it all just came together."

"Just Me and My Girl" show's Ford's musical range and skill and how he is truly reshaping the future of hip hop. Having been producing since the late '90s under the names Lake Street Project, B. Ford, and Terry Swank, he has mastered the guitar, bass, keys and drums. He plays all of his own instruments, including the drums in "For the Future of Hip Hop" and even in his samples. "Typically when I sample, it's when I sample myself," says Ford. Though he has dabbled in electronic music, he always returned to his true love: hip hop.

When Ford discovered that Killah Priest, one of his favorite emcees, was in Chicago, he invited him to the studio to collaborate on a track. That one track turned into an entire album, The Future of Hip Hop, when they discovered their musical chemistry. "The kid has no limits in music," says Killah Priest, who is now living in Los Angeles, of working with Ford. "The more I think, the more he can do!" The album is diverse yet well-rounded, speaking volumes of hip hop's new trajectory. Bryan Ford, Killah Priest, Pugs Atomz and Awdazcate are redefining the genre while staying loyal to its roots. The true future of hip hop is diverse and limitless and artists like Ford are the pioneers in exploring this freedom.
In Colorado municipal courts, justice is often hard to come by if you're poor. ACLU of Colorado client Shawn Hardman found that out the hard way when he was jailed for nearly three months by the Colorado Springs Municipal Court for panhandling - "flying a sign" asking people for help.

Here's the thing: Shawn was completely innocent. Holding a sign asking for help is not a crime in Colorado Springs. And the ordinance he was charged under is punishable only by fine and not by jail. But Shawn never had access to a lawyer. No one was there to counsel him and advise him on his rights. Without a lawyer, Shawn pled guilty in court. Then his fines were converted to jail when he couldn't afford to pay - an unconstitutional practice that no lawyer was there to stop.

Here's what Shawn had to say about the ordeal:

"It's hard to live on the street, to get by without a home, a bathroom, or safety in your belongings. The City of Colorado Springs made living on the street even harder when they kept ticketing me for just holding my sign asking for help, and then locking me up for almost three months when I didn't have any money to pay those tickets. I was trapped in a cell that it seemed like I could never get out of. I was told over and over that I either had to pay or go back to jail. Without a home or a job, the cycle kept repeating."

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To its credit, Colorado Springs agreed to end the unconstitutional debtor's prison practices that led to Shawn's incarceration and to pay a $103,000 settlement to compensate Shawn and others who spent time in jail for non-jailable offenses.

But Shawn's story is not unique. The ACLU of Colorado has discovered that across the state incarcerated municipal defendants often plead guilty without counsel at first appearance to crimes they did not commit.

In state and county courts, an attorney is available at that critical first appearance to advocate for the release of jailed defendants and to advise those defendants on pleas when jail is a possible sentence. But that counsel is denied in municipal courts, where jailed defendants must face the judge alone at first appearance, must make arguments for release alone, and must decide how to plead alone. This is especially troublesome for indigent defendants who are stuck in jail because they can't post bail. Those inmates face a terrible choice: either plead guilty without counsel in the hope of a prompt release on "time served," or ask for counsel and go back to jail to wait usually more than a week for the next court appearance.

This choice is particularly cruel because, unlike in state and county courts, the bulk of municipal defendants are charged with minor ordinance violations that pose no threat to public safety, such as park hours violations, sleeping in a car, or having a dog off leash.

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As a result of their uncounseled pleas, municipal defendants often go on to experience dire consequences -- including obstacles to employment, housing, and government benefits -- that were never explained to them, due to the lack of counsel.
Iran's President Hassan Rouhani smiles during a session at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos January 23, 2014. REUTERS/Ruben Sprich (SWITZERLAND - Tags: POLITICS BUSINESS TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY)

Iran's conservative parliament just had a significant makeover -- and it's one worth taking note of. It all started back in 2013 with the election of President Hassan Rouhani, a moderate politician who eased relations with the West through careful negotiations and ended a decade of tension and isolation for Iran. Now his once shaky political path appears to be in full swing. In the final round of parliamentary elections held on April 29, moderates won big, conservatives came second, independents came third and radical conservatives with close ties to former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad were mostly voted out. This is a departure from the previous two parliaments, which were dominated by conservatives who challenged the new presidential administration. And it means that Rouhani -- and the moderates of Iran -- will now have more power and can make a stronger footprint.

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The highly contested runoff election was the second in Iran since the historic nuclear deal struck with world powers. In the first round of parliamentary elections in February, a little over three-quarters of the parliament -- 222 members -- were elected. Those candidates who did not win the required minimum 25 percent of the votes had to compete again for the remaining 68 seats in the 290-seat chamber. One hundred and thirty-six candidates competed in 21 provinces this time around. In the second round, there were no minimum votes required and those with the highest votes simply won. The election saw a continuation of the pattern from the first round, with moderates having the upper hand and hard-liners being eliminated by voters.

Key to this upper hand was an unprecedented coalition between the moderates and reformists who came together under the slogan "second step," referring to President Rouhani's 2013 victory as the "first step" toward a path of moderation. This group produced a unified "List of Hope" for the parliamentary elections back in February that became a unifying force against hard-liners. Paramount to the success of the previous election, the campaign brought together supporters, using social media and celebrities to help attract voters to the cause. The List of Hope was victorious once again last week. Moderates have now scored a total of 143 seats, which though just short of the majority still makes them the largest fraction in the parliament, or Majlis. They will now have the upper hand after over a decade of a conservative-dominated Majlis.

From opposing the nuclear negotiations to impeaching key ministers, parliament made it increasingly difficult for Rouhani to fully realize his moderate political agenda -- until now.

Meanwhile, conservatives won a total of 86 seats. Most of them were centrists with fewer hard-liners. Members of the outgoing hard-line faction have been staunch opponents of the nuclear deal. In the past three years they made every effort to derail negotiations and prevent the final agreement. Losing this power could mean their efforts to thwart the deal will now bear less weight than in the past. The remaining 61 seats went to candidates who ran as independent, including five reserved seats for religious minorities. The exact numbers have been fluctuating among different media and political parties because there had been overlap among the lists.

"What made these parliamentary elections unique was the high number of independent candidates," Ali Jamali, a board member and campaign manager of a prominent reformist party in Tehran, told me. "These are moderate conservatives who are scared to associate with the conservative party because hard-liners have destroyed the image of conservatism in the society."

Jamali sees these new independent members of parliament eventually siding with the administration of President Hassan Rouhani and in turn giving him support for his moderate domestic and international policies.

A look at Iran's governmental structure in light of the April 29, 2016 parliamentary election. (Reuters)

Highest Number of Females

Another important change resulting from these elections is the high number of female members slated to be a part of Iran's parliament. Iranians elected a total of 18 women -- or 17 according to the hard-liners -- to represent them. This is the highest number in the history of the Islamic Republic of Iran, breaking the record of 14 in a previous reformist parliament and double the number of female members in the outgoing conservative parliament. Fourteen women were elected in the first round in February and four others were just elected in the runoff. Most of these women were on the List of Hope and the rest ran as independent. No hard-line female candidates were able to win. That includes those from the outgoing parliament who were all eliminated by the voters.

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Though exciting to see the increase in women in prominent government roles, the change has not been without controversy. One reformist woman who won in the first round, 30-year-old Minoo Khaleghi from Isfahan, was later eliminated by the conservative Guardian Council, the group whose purpose is to confirm or deny eligibility of candidates before elections. But the reformist camp, together with the moderate administration, is standing up to the conservatives, fighting to keep her in the parliament. President Rouhani's parliamentary aide recently rejected her disqualification and announced that from the president and administration's viewpoint, the new parliament has 18 female members. He congratulated these 18 women, adding that this is not enough and if not half the parliament, at least one-third of the next parliament should be female.

"These women are very different from the previous parliament's female members," a 30-year-old female engineer from Tehran who lives in the U.S. and wishes to remain anonymous for security reasons, told me. "These are respectful women who have worked hard to get to this level. A few of them are very young, just about my age. That is a success for the entire society, and I hope they will make women's issues among their priorities and bring real change."

An Iranian woman casts her ballot for the parliamentary runoff elections in a polling station about 12 miles west of Tehran, Iran. (AP Photo, File)

Lowest Number of Clerics

There were only 16 clerics elected to the new parliament, less clerics than all nine parliaments of the Islamic Republic. Since the 1979 revolution, clerics have played a central role in Iranian politics and governance. But that has changed over time, at least in the elected sections of the government. There were 164 clerics in the first parliament, including current leader Ali Khamenei, former President Akbar Rafsanjani and former head of parliament Ali Akbar Nategh Nouri. That number was reduced to 153 clerics in the second parliament, which included current President Hassan Rouhani and 2009 presidential candidate Mehdi Karroubi, who challenged the election results and has since been put under house arrest. The number of clerics in parliament kept shrinking and went down to 85, then 67, 53, 44 and finally 27 clerics in the 9th parliament. Now with only 16 clerics, the Majlis will start its second decade with more women than clerics for the first time. This symbolizes an important shift in the political path of Iranian society, transitioning from the traditional and religious starting point after the 1979 revolution towards more modern and technocratic governance.

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"Unfortunately people's view of clerics has diminished over the years, especially compared to the first decade of the Islamic Republic," the son of a prominent Shia cleric in the religious city of Qom who wants to remain anonymous for his safety, told me in response to the election. "Obviously that is because of the poor track record of the clerics themselves," he added.

Iranian clergymen vote in the parliamentary and Experts Assembly elections at a polling station in Qom. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)

What's Next?

The changes that these elections bring to Iran are especially significant considering the high levels of friction that have existed between the current parliament and President Rouhani. Since coming to power, the Rouhani administration has faced many challenges to its moderate policies, both domestic and international, as a result of the governing body. From opposing the nuclear negotiations to disapproving and impeaching ministers, the legislature made it increasingly difficult for Rouhani to fully realize his moderate political agenda -- until now.

The next step is to choose the speaker of the new parliament, which has historically been the top winner of the majority fraction. In this case, that would be Mohammad Reza Aref, a reformist candidate who served as the vice-president under President Mohammad Khatami. With 1.6 million votes from Tehran, he became the top winner in the country who will lead the majority fraction and most likely the entire parliament.

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The new Majlis -- which starts work at the end of this month -- will be more in tune with the progressive policies of President Rouhani and his cabinet.

Aref's popularity comes from the 2013 presidential election, when he ran as the only reformist candidate and was later convinced by President Khatami to drop out in favor of Rouhani. His endorsement rallied young and progressive voters behind Rouhani who won in a landslide. Aref, who made an unprecedented political sacrifice for a bigger cause, became a national hero.

The new Majlis -- which starts work at the end of this month -- will be more in tune with the progressive policies of President Rouhani and his cabinet. Rouhani has had a difficult time fulfilling his campaign promises to the voters in the past three years. He has been going head to head with conservative elements in the Iranian political structure, especially the parliament. Hard-line MPs have been very vocal in criticizing the nuclear negotiations and Iran's negotiating diplomats, for example Mehdi Kouchakzadeh reportedly called Foreign Minister Zarif a "traitor" in this famous argument caught on camera. Kouchakzadeh did not win enough votes in these elections and his fate symbolized a strong message sent from the voters to the hard-liners -- people want change.

Iranians take a selfie after voting in a second round of parliamentary elections, in Shiraz, Iran on April 29, 2016. (Farsnews.com/Handout via REUTERS)

Why These Elections Were Notable

What do these elections mean and why do these results matter? Should the West take note of the makeover and watch to see where it goes next?

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Jamali, the reformist campaign manager, said the focus should now be on Rouhani and what kind of momentum he is able to keep following these elections.

"Now Rouhani has one year to make real change in domestic politics," he said. "He must take bigger risks and really transform the economy."

It's about time, many Iranians say, that Rouhani takes it up a notch.

Jamali's views are not unlike those of many other reformists scattered across the country. Rouhani has a chance to impress, and it's important that he engages effectively. The positives and negatives are huge, but it's about time, many Iranians say, that Rouhani takes it up a notch.

The new parliament will give Rouhani a much needed boost in the last year of his first term. He has been known throughout his political career to be a moderate and a pragmatist. But people have been waiting long to see this and his time is not unlimited. It is now up to him to take full advantage of this new opportunity before he gears up for re-election in 2017.

Earlier on WorldPost:
As an anthropologist who has studied the human condition for more than 35 years, I've learned that there is a thin line that separates humor from horror, tolerance from bigotry, and order from chaos. If you don't pay careful attention to the social forces that shape your world, it is very easy to suddenly find yourself in a space in which humor has been transformed into horror, tolerance has been exchanged for bigotry and order has changed into chaos.

In America we find ourselves teetering on that thin line. Donald Trump, a real estate billionaire and the reality television star of The Apprentice is one step from the Presidency of the United States. Having meandered our way onto a profound social, political, economic and climatic precipice, we may soon find ourselves slipping into a fetid, chaotic and all-encompassing social swamp.

How did we get to this point?

When it comes to the rise of Mr. Trump, there is no shortage of knee-jerk commentary, emotional hand wringing, and over-the-top bloviating. Writers have decried Mr. Trump's ignorance of the US Constitution, his obliviousness to the social and cultural complexities of foreign and domestic policy, his penchant for linking politics to conspiracy theories that make President Obama a Muslim born in Kenya and Rafael Cruz, Senator Ted Cruz's father, a co-conspirator in President Kennedy's assassination. Let's add to that ample evidence of Mr. Trump's sexism, his homophobia, his insensitivities to the physically challenged, his racism and his Islamophobia. In a world of Trick or Trump all Muslims become dyed-in-the-wool terrorists and Mexicans are feared as killers and rapists. In a world of Trick or Trump filthy, infectious others must be swept away like garbage. In that world, we must purge America of the immigrant scourge. Ban Muslims from entering the US. Build a wall to keep Mexicans on their side of the border and have the Mexican government pay for it. Keep the zombies out!

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How has Mr. Trump managed to ride the wave of this know-nothing rhetoric to become the presumptive presidential nominee of the GOP? For me, there are four elements--some obvious, some less obvious--that have produced Trick or Trump in America.

1. The Impact of Income Inequality: Once the foundation of our economy, the middle class is shrinking. People are fed up with a political system that Wall Street and special interests control, resulting in policies that have increased income inequality.

"They don't care about us and now we don't care about them."

"They" are corrupt politicians who say one thing and do another--all in the interest of enriching themselves. Millions of Mr. Trump's supporters like the fact that he is not a career politician.

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"He tells it like is," they like to say, especially when he talks about how bad trade deals have resulted in the loss of millions of good American jobs. Mr. Trump connects with this hurting population of working class and lower-middle class Americans.

2.The Power of Celebrity Culture: In a previous blog, I suggested that Mr. Trump owes much of his success to the ubiquity of celebrity culture in America. Our society worships at the temples, among many others, of Brad Pitt, Angelia Jolie, Kim Kardashian and Kanye West. Mr. Trump understands the allure of celebrity in contemporary culture and knows how to put on a show--his political rallies are organized to manipulate the myth of celebrity to create messages that extend his political reach. In contemporary American society you cannot underestimate the political power of celebrity culture..

3.Business is the answer: In the wake of more than a generation of Reaganomics, many Americans believe that the key to any kind of success can be found through no-nonsense business models. Private is good. Public is bad. These days many public officials believe that you can apply business models to solve any and all social problems--poverty, heath disparities, and unemployment. In America business models are now used to shape both private and public higher education. From my vantage as a educator in the classroom, these models do not fit higher education. As a consequence they are eroding the intellectual quality of university life, transforming our institutions into trade schools that process people rather than train young minds for critical thought. For his part, Mr. Trump describes himself as the ultimate business success--he is rich, lives rich, and has investments all over the world. He knows how to make deals. He knows how to get things done. He is competent and says our elected public officials are incompetent. He says he will make America great again.

Any superficial analysis of the claim that business models are panaceas for our social and economic ills quickly reveals that these assertions are bogus. In Trick or Trump social life, a society in which artfully constructed myths create false realities, the world is turned upside down. It doesn't matter that Mr. Trump's business record is uneven--to be charitable--or that his Mexican border wall will never be built, let alone paid for by the Mexican Government. In a Trick or Trump world people want to believe in fantasy; it makes them feel better--so much so that millions of citizens have voted for Mr. Trump. Having no antidotes for the mythic poisons that Mr. Trump has willingly spread, his GOP rivals have fallen by the wayside and The Donald is now the presumptive GOP nominee for President of the United States.

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4.Educational Failure: The rhetoric of Mr.Trump can only take hold in a society that is ill informed, a society in which a sizeable percentage of the population lacks the tools that enable them to separate fiction from fact and fantasy from reality. Last year students at Texas Tech University produced a video in which they asked their fellow students if they could name the Vice-President of the United States. Most of them didn't know that Joe Biden has been our Vice-President for more than seven years. When asked to provide details about Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, however, they quickly provided detailed and nuanced answers. Our college students, who are the core of our social future, usually don't read too much and are sometimes ignorant about the whys and wherefores of current events. And yet, they too, are subject to the allure of celebrity. Given our celebrity-focused orientation to the world, is it any wonder that millions of Americans support the candidacy a person who skillfully suggests that Mexicans are rapists, that President Obama is a foreign born Muslim and that Raphael Cruz was a co-conspirator in the assassination of John F Kennedy?

Xenophobia, misogyny, Islamophobia, crude behavior, walled borders, and The Art of the Deal will not magically restore what 45 years of failed social and economic policies have produced in America: expanded economic inequality, the spread of racism, the ongoing presence of dysfunctional government, and the life-threatening specter of climate change.

In these troubled times, we need nothing less than an education revolution in which we learn again to respect the search for the truth, in which scholars, freed from the shackles of business-modeled universities, help our young people to train themselves to seek knowledge. So trained they will be able to separate fact from fiction and reality from fantasy. So trained they will be able to not only find a good paying job, but also embark on a path toward wisdom.

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If we fail to invest significantly in our educational institutions, if we fail to respect the pursuit of knowledge, we ensure the ascendancy of people like Mr. Trump. We also sentence our children and grandchildren to the misery of the social swamp.
Female passenger walking through the airport security checkpoint

My receipt printed with an X. My husband's did not.

We had just returned to the U.S. after a relaxing beach vacation abroad, our delayed honeymoon, and we were waiting at Customs.

We went through the passport express kiosk, where individuals scan their passports and answer a few questions. My receipt printed with an "X," as it always does. My husband, who is a white man, received a receipt without an X. We were directed to the (much longer) line for X's.

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I was curious about what this X meant, so when it was our turn to go through immigration, I asked the Customs and Border Protection agent.

His response left me speechless, upset and deeply saddened.

"There's a lot of reasons why," he said. "You have a common name..."

He paused.

"...That's probably on a list," he continued.

I wasn't sure how to respond, so I kept quiet.

"Priya." he said my first name out loud. "That's common in India."

"Yeah," I said, uncomfortable about where this was going.

"Well, there must be a lot of bad people with that name," he said casually.

It is difficult for me to articulate just how offended I was by this. The long version is that I was stunned. I wanted to think he was joking, but nothing in his demeanor suggested humor. Not to mention how deeply unfunny such a joke would be considering that the advocacy organization South Asian Americans Leading Together (SAALT) has crowdsourced at least 43 instances of xenophobic rhetoric and at least 69 instances of backlash against South Asians, Sikhs, Muslims, and Arabs since last fall.

I didn't want to believe the agent was intentionally being racist, but I admit that I was afraid to ask any more questions at the risk of further drawing out the immigration processing. I also didn't want to believe that a human who represents the power and position of the United States government felt completely comfortable saying that brown people are bad.

In short, I was insulted.

My ethnicity is Indian, and I was born and raised in the United States. I am an American citizen, and this country is my home. I resented the agent's sarcasm and his insinuation that something as simple as my name links me to "bad people."

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Unfortunately, this type of judgment has become depressingly common, with far greater consequences.

On April 6, UC-Berkeley student Khairuldeen Makhzoomi was removed from a Southwest flight after another passenger heard him speaking Arabic on a cellphone. Makhzoomi told the Daily Californian that security officers and FBI agents questioned him and that one one "publicly searched his genital area." Makhzoomi is an Iraqi refugee.

One week later, Hakima Abdulle was removed from a Southwest flight without "any reasonable explanation." Abdulle had apparently asked another passenger to swap seats when a flight attendant said she could not remain on the plane. Abdulle, who lives in Maryland, is of Somali descent and wears the traditional Muslim headscarf known as the hijab.

Makhzoomi and Abdulle were publicly humiliated for no apparent reason besides their ethnic and religious identities. Their experiences have rightfully attracted media attention, and a petition is calling for Southwest Airlines to stop discriminating against Arab and Muslim passengers.

My brief moments of anger and embarrassment in front of a Customs and Border Protection agent pale in comparison to their ordeals. Yet microagressions such as the one I experienced are not acceptable either. Sure, there are probably "bad people" named Priya, but there are also bad people named Dylan and Ted and Robert. I am not asking that Dylans and Teds and Roberts be marked with an X. But I am asking that I not be.

No one, let alone individuals in positions of authority, should let prejudice determine their actions. Speaking the Arabic word "inshallah," wearing a headscarf, or being named Priya are not markers of malice.

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I sent a complaint to the Customs and Border Protection Agency and was promised a response within a few weeks. I told the agency that words matter, and that everyone, particularly individuals who represent the U.S. government, should be expected to treat others with dignity and respect. I'll update this post if I hear back, that is, if Customs considers my complaint as noteworthy as my name.
I have written extensively about the failure of religion, in my view, to be an agent of change in a world which is content to put capitalism, political ideology and, yes, racism, sexism and homophobia, among others, in front of the apparent dictate given by God to "do to others as you would have them do to you." The so-called "Golden Rule," which is found in the Christian Bible in both the books of Matthew and Luke, is rather universally ignored.

But there is another failure which is as sad and as dangerous as is the lapse of Christian values within Christianity, and that is, authentic, unbiased reporting. I had always thought that journalism was supposed to be the vehicle of and for truth. Journalists were charged to be "objective" and to leave their personal feelings out of the truth they were supposed to seek.

For years, however, journalism has fallen short in my view, - choosing in too many cases to support this country's government's tendency to support racism. While great evangelists, such as the Rev. Billy Graham and others ...could have made a serious dent in the Christian acceptance and support of white supremacy and its teaching that segregation was the will of God, they didn't; history shows that they either supported racism, using theology as their justification, or they simply remained silent. Speaking out against racism was too dangerous; those who believe in racism from the core of their beings have also been bullies and have threatened life and limb of those who oppose them.

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Perhaps it is that same fear of being bullied that has kept too many journalists either silent or complicit in keeping white supremacy as part of the value system of America. It has just been easier to go along just to get along.

But the excuse is not acceptable, especially given the values of journalism. Journalist objectivity is supposed to be the reason there can and will be truth in the midst of lies, why there can be a jolt to complacency when injustice and wrongdoing is clearly evident.

These thoughts came to me as I watched the clip of Rob Reiner on the "Morning Joe" show on Thursday. Reiner and the Morning Joe crew were discussing Donald Trump's ascendancy to the position of the presumptive GOP nominee for president, and Reiner said that many of Trump's supporters were racist.

Reiner's rant began when he said, "The words that have been flung out from his mouth are insane. If he was not a celebrity, if Donald Trump was not a celebrity, the words that come out of his mouth, you'd see a guy in the park, a lunatic in a park on a soapbox, and you'd walk right by him. But the fact that he is a celebrity, all of a sudden, we're all interested."

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Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski didn't like that so much, saying that they'd "tried" to pin Trump down in interviews which had proved to be difficult, an argument which did not hold much water with me. I have seen Scarborough and Brzezinski back down as Trump has cut them off, seemingly giving up trying to get Trump to be accountable for his outlandish statements. So, yes, they defended themselves at Reiner's suggestion that perhaps they had not lived up to their responsibilities as journalists, but had, instead, gotten caught up in his celebrity.

But it was when Reiner said the "r" word that everyone on that program tightened up. Mark Halpern, Willie Geist, Scarborough and Brzezinski, all of them, all expressed their disagreement and incredulity that Reiner would say such a thing. Their denial of the truth of Reiner's words stuck, in spite of the fact that Trump has the backing of the Ku Klux Klan and David Duke, and in spite of how he is drawing widespread support of white supremacists.

No television journalist yet, to my knowledge, has had the journalistic authenticity to challenge Trump on his xenophobia. Nobody has made him admit his own racism, which shows in the way he has referred to Mexicans, to illegal immigrants, and to Muslims. Black people he seldom mentions at all. The statement "We're going to make America great again," is a dog whistle, a call to white Americans to fight against the changing of the face of America.

It is getting too ...non-white ...and everyone knows it, but no journalist will admit it or make Trump own up to it.

In an NPR "Morning Edition" interview with Pat Buchanan, who himself ran for president twice, the former GOP presidential candidate said the world has changed for the worse. The interviewer recalled words that Buchanan wrote in that "if we don't get control of our borders, Americans of European descent will be in the minority in a country their ancestors built." He said "I look at Europe ...and I see people... at each other's throats over issues of ethnicity and identity...He bemoaned the fact that there are too many people in the United States. He decried the fact that too many people in this nation do not speak English. "In half the homes in California, people speak a language that is not English in their own homes." He said that a country with no ethnic and linguistic core ...cannot survive. The interviewer asked Buchanan if he understood how his language might be offensive to some and he said he didn't care. (http://www.npr.org/2016/05/05/476844409/pat-buchanan-on-why-he-shares-trump-s-ideas-on-foreign-policy)

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He in so many words said it - and the interviewer made him say it - that what he wants is the America he grew up in - a predominantly white country, where most people speak English. That is what Donald Trump is saying and is part of the reason his widespread support.

No television journalist - to my knowledge - has pushed Trump on this. America wants to be a white country, Trump is saying that - but journalists have not been willing to push him on the issue. They have instead appeared to be shocked when the "r" word is used, and have been defensive about their reporting and about the populace which forms the base of most of Trump's support.
In just a few days the 69th Annual Cannes (that's pronounced CAN) Film Festival will kickoff with another great lineup of independent films from around the globe.

While Cannes is often seen as another playground for celebrities, it's also one of the most prestigious film festivals in the world. Some films showcased at this festival are by seasoned directors', while others are making their directorial debut.

Four of the twenty two films in the Official Selection are from the US ; two directed by familiar faces.

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Woody Allen's latest romantic comedy, Cafe Society is the opening film this year. "Cafe" is about a young New Yorker who moves to Hollywood to find work in the film industry in the 1930s. Allen casts several favorites including Steve Carrell, Kristen Stewart, Blake Lively, Parkey Posey and Jesse Eisenberg.

Sean Penn made his directorial debut in 1991 at Cannes, and is back this year with The Last Face. Charlize Theron (Penn's former girlfriend) and Javier Bardem bring this drama to life as they face the challenges of humanitarianism and life with civil unrest in Africa.

While there are 22 films to see in the Official Selection, there are numerous other Out of Competition films presented around town. They vary from documentaries, short films, comedies, dramas and more. Here is a sneak peak of just a few...

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Scribblings: First time filmmaker, Oscar Barbay (writer and director) offers this short psychological thriller about a struggling writer who takes in a sexy lodger to help pay the bills. The lodger slowly starts to move in on his life and their relationship begins to spin out of control. It first opened in festivals and Kenya, Nigeria and Johannesburg and has finally made its way to Cannes.

Finding My Lebanon: An interesting film about seasoned director Mark Abouzeid's personal discovery of finding his Lebanese roots.

After the death of his father, Abouzeid was determined to learn more about his heritage. He traveled to Lebanon to learn more about the country, it's culture and it's church, as seen through the eyes of his father.

Abouzeid has traveled the world, living in over 30 countries. He's spent the last 15 years of his life capturing the living culture and intangible heritage of people around the world. He has exhibited in numerous museums and is considered one of the top 21st century artists by various media channels.

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Black Movie Night: Sterling Milan's film touches on the recent protests of the Oscars.

First time actor Akintola Jiboyewa and Sheria Irving (The Good Wife, Romeo & Juliet) decide to celebrate a night of black cinema instead of the Oscars and are caught between their right to protest the lack of diversity, and their own ambitions. Everyone can follow his or her dreams with this film.

My Forelove: Another debut for filmmaker/actress Mor Dovrat.

The story revolves around the two main characters meeting for sex without knowing anything about each other or the life of the other person. The plot is unique not only as an original take on a traditional love story but also because it combines facts from the real lives of the cast and director and blends them with fictional elements. Dovrat leaves it up to the viewer to determine which aspects of the film are fact...and which are fiction.

Interesting note: Forelove is not an English word, but is a literal translation from the German word "Vorliebe" meaning preference or liking.

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Finally, the serious subject of child trafficking is the focus of Surviving International Boulevard

"Surviving" follows one woman's plight to get her daughter off the streets in Oakland, California. The film packs and abundance of raw truth and emotion into every single scene that allows it to leave a heavy impact on its viewers like a full-length documentary film would. This also marks Sian Taylor Gowan's debut in directing and in production.
For railroad buffs, it doesn't get much better than seeing a Big Boy - the world's largest steam locomotive. These 132-foot long behemoths weighted more than 1,250,000 pounds and were designed to pull massive freight trains over the Wasatch Mountains between Wyoming and Utah at speeds up to 80 miles per hour. When they said Superman was more "powerful than a locomotive," this is the locomotive they were talking about. It was, in its day, the most powerful moving engine on earth.

Only 25 of the monsters were ever made, all of them during World Word II. Today only 8 remain. Seven are in static displays in railroad museums and parks, including Big Boy No. 4004 located in Holliday Park in Cheyenne, Wyoming. But the eighth Big Boy, No. 4014, is also in Cheyenne, sitting side by side with Challenger locomotive No. 3985, which is currently the largest operating locomotive in the world. The two gigantic engines are usually locked away in the private Union Pacific Steam Shop, where both are being restored to someday pull excursion trains.





For 363 days a year, the Steam Shop is strictly off limits, but on May 21-22, 2016, visitors to Depot Days in Cheyenne will have an opportunity to enter the most famous machine shop in railroading history, and also see Union Pacific's historic roundhouse.

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Depot Days in Cheyenne

Depot Days is Cheyenne's three day celebration of railroading. Not only can visitors see rare locomotives, but they can also enjoy a wide variety of train events, some so popular they attract visitors from across the nation and even from Germany and the U.K. There's a Model Railroad Show where you can meet Harry Brunk, one of the most respected craftsmen of model railroading. Harry worked on his model railroad, the Union Central & Northern, for 30 years. It has been featured in more than 100 magazine articles and is considered to be one of the best model railroads ever constructed. However, because it was in his private home, hardly anyone ever saw it in person. Today, the setup has been relocated and rebuilt into Cheyenne's Union Pacific Depot. It's a kick to see little locomotives pulling dozens of cars pass over the Georgetown Loop and chug into incredibly authentic and detailed models of Central City, Black Hawk, and Idaho Springs, Colorado.

During Depot Days, the annual Rail Art Show & Sale showcases some of the top train paintings, drawings, sculptures, photography and handcrafted models, all available for sale. The Depot Museum has exhibits on building the Union Pacific railroad and the history of Cheyenne. Then of course, you can finish off the afternoon with one of 20 craft beers at the Cheyenne Brewing Company. The brewpub sits trackside in the Union Pacific Depot with large picture windows where you can watch the 75-100 trains that pass through Cheyenne every day.

All of this is very fitting in a town that wouldn't exist without the railroads.

Cheyenne's Wild West History

When the first transcontinental railroad was being built across America in 1867, there was nothing at the future location of Cheyenne but rolling grasslands. Major General Grenville Dodge, the chief engineer of the Union Pacific, decided Wyoming was as far west as the railroad could get before winter, so he picked out a place to build a fort to provide protection against Indians. Following practices that said no liquor could be sold within four miles of a fort, he laid out a town exactly four miles away.

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Welcome to Cheyenne. Within weeks, the "town" of Cheyenne had 90 saloons and gambling halls, mostly in large portable tents, as well as 400 "ladies of the evening," 4,000 residents and 23 hangings. Cheyenne boosters will tell you this is where Cheyenne got its nickname, "Magic City of the Plains," because the city just sprang up overnight like magic. But at the time, most people referred to it by its other name: "Hell on Wheels."

When the railroad moved west in the spring, Cheyenne should have moved with it, but by then, the Union Pacific had built its historic railroad roundhouse and a substantial city had grown up around it. This is part of the roundhouse, railyards and machine shop complexes that you can enter during Depot Days.

Later, Cheyenne became a cattle town and it was said that because of rich cattle barons, Cheyenne was the wealthiest town in the world on a per capita basis. Many of the mansions on Cattle Baron Row still survive.



Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, Bat Masterson, and "Calamity Jane" all called Cheyenne home, and the legendary murderer Tom Horn was hanged right downtown - the last man hanged in Wyoming (at least legally). The famous Deadwood Stage started in Cheyenne, covering the 300 miles to the gold fields in South Dakota in three days of bouncing on rough dirt tracks through outlaw and Indian country.

Old West history is everywhere in downtown Cheyenne - in the western wear shops, galleries, museums, and architecture. But make no mistake, Cheyenne knows how to have fun, too. Wyoming was the last state to ratify prohibition and prostitution was legal until 1938.

Today in compact Cheyenne, there are two outstanding breweries and a dozen bars, several with live music. Bring the bikes and there are 37 miles of trails, many of which weave through historic neighborhoods of great old wood mansions, especially in the Rainsford Historic District, where there are dozens of homes and mansions all designed by architect George Rainsford. Rich cattle barons loved his creative porches and roofs with towers covered by decorative "fish scale" shingles. It's an easy ride to Holliday Park with is gorgeous lake and Big Boy 4004.

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Downtown Cheyenne has the best collection of western stores on the Front Range. Wrangler is the place for hats, boots and belts; Wyoming Home has western furnishings, rugs, jewelry and gifts; and Just Dandy has women's western-wear fashions. There are dozen other western galleries, bookstores and souvenir shops.

If you want to stay overnight, the historic 1911 Plains Hotel, across the plaza from the Union Pacific Depot, has welcomed guests including Harry Truman, Ronald Regan, Ted Kennedy and Richard Nixon. Now there's a crew! That would be some party if they were all there together. The lobby is filled with historic Western paintings and sculptures and offers rooms starting at $99.
"Is the abortion issue important? Yes. But we have also got to focus on the struggles of working people to put food on their table," the senator said.
Georgia Northwestern Technical College (GNTC) students donned their caps and gowns as family and friends gathered at the Forum in Rome to watch them walk across the stage and turn their tassels at GNTCs Spring Commencement Ceremony on Thursday, May 5.

The college awarded graduates with associate degrees, diplomas, and certificates during the ceremony, which honored approximately 230 graduates.

Invocation was led by Brittny Burns, instructor of Business Technology at GNTC. Burns was selected as the 2016 Rick Perkins Instructor of the Year at GNTC and was also named as a regional finalist for the Technical College System of Georgias 2016 Instructor of the Year award.

C. Pete McDonald, president of GNTC, began the evenings proceedings by welcoming everyone.

Tonight we recognize our graduates and offer appreciation to their families and friends who have encouraged them to complete their chosen career education pathway, said McDonald.

Al Hodge, president and CEO of the Greater Rome Chamber of Commerce, was the keynote commencement speaker for the evening. Hodge praised the graduates for their achievement and said their chosen programs of study are important to the development of the community.

I am happy to say that here in our community, and throughout northwest Georgia, our employers are ready for you, said Hodge. Part of the reason why I am so confident about your future is that Georgia Northwestern Technical College leads the way in making certain that the knowledge, skills, and relevant curriculum is in place for you.

Stuart Phillips, vice president of Student Affairs at GNTC, recognized High Honor and Honor graduates. A special recognition for graduates who are veterans also was led by Phillips.

Melinda McCannon, vice president of Academic Affairs at GNTC, presented graduates with associate degrees, diplomas, and certificates as they crossed the stage. All graduates were congratulated by McDonald.

Listed are graduates that participated in the 2016 Spring Commencement Ceremony showing (from left to right) the graduates name and program of study:

Associate of Applied Science OF APPLIED ASSOCIATE OF APPLIED SCIENCESCIENCE

Jenna E. Ables, Radiologic Technology

Marte B. Andrews, Occupational Therapy Assistant

Jennifer Angel Early, Childhood Care and Education

Jessica Marie Antion, Diagnostic Medical Sonography

Kimberly C. Ashley, Respiratory Care

Peyton Ballew, Radiologic Technology

Richard C. Barnette, Fire Science Technology

Corrine Jennifer Barrett, Health Information Management Technology

Ariel G. Bellamy, Health Information Management Technology

Juanita M. Black, Radiologic Technology

Ashley D. Blankenship, Radiologic Technology

Lindsey B. Boatfield, Vascular Technology

Crystal G. Brazelton, Social Work Assistant

Hallie Brooke Broom, Vascular Technology

Jimmy L. Burchett, Business Management

Rachel Elizabeth Burdette, Early Childhood Care and Education

Christopher Haakon Cabe, Radiologic Technology

Amy S. Caley, Occupational Therapy Assistant

Haley Nicole Carroll, Respiratory Care

Jonathan Harris Carter, Radiologic Technology

Shannon Carter, Radiologic Technology

Cayla A. Casaletta, Echocardiography

Jessica Richelle Case, Neuromuscular Therapist

Rebekah D. Casteel, Radiologic Technology

John S. Castleberry, Occupational Therapy Assistant

Yesenia G. Cisneros, Vascular Technology

Morgan Brittany Clark, Early Childhood Care and Education

Christopher R. Collins, Radiologic Technology

Melanie R. Collins, Occupational Therapy Assistant

Tabitha D. Cothren, Accounting

Tameka Leann Covington, Business Management

Tiffany N. Cowart, Paramedicine

Candice E. Cox, Vascular Technology

Derek S. Craig, Health Information Management Technology

Rebekah Bell Crawford, Occupational Therapy Assistant

Rosa C. Cruz, Business Technology

Marlene Damys, Echocardiography

Cynthia M. Daniel, Health Information Management Technology

Jason Todd Davidson, Radiologic Technology

Jackie L. Davis, Vascular Technology

Chelsea L. Dennison, Business Management

Thomas B. Dial, Web Site Design/Development

Crystal Denae Duke, Occupational Therapy Assistant

Selena H. Dupree, Business Management

Traci Dupree, Echocardiography

Esther Elimian, Health Information Management Technology

Kayla M. Ellison, Pharmacy Technology

Mary A. Farrell, Criminal Justice Technology

Karen Ann Ferranti, Diagnostic Medical Sonography

Darlene Stacy Fonseca, Respiratory Care

Amanda S. Frazier, Business Management

Anthony B. Freeman, Industrial Systems Technology

Bryan D. Frenya, Respiratory Care

Chayram E. Galvez, Industrial Systems Technology

Ashley Witt Gilbreath, Health Information Management Technology

Barandi J. Goodson, Criminal Justice Technology

Rebecca Alane Gray, Echocardiography

Noatia J. Harris Early, Childhood Care and Education

Christopher Dakota Harwell, Radiologic Technology

Christopher Hatfield, Health Information Management Technology

Justin Randall Hazelwood, Paramedicine

Chad W. Hendrix, Fire Science Technology

Autumn Lauren Hester, Social Work Assistant

Ashley Hogue, Diagnostic Medical Sonography

Sondra R. Huether, Respiratory Care

Rachael E.S. Hunton, Business Management

Kayla M. Ingle, Business Technology

Nesbit M. Isham, Occupational Therapy Assistant

Dale Curtis Jackson, Business Technology

Ashley N. Johnson, Pharmacy Technology

Kelly Elang Johnston, Business Management

Leah R. Jordan, Respiratory Care

Zachary A. Joslyn, Business Management

Jacob D. Keith, Business Management

Kayla Jane King, Marketing Management

Lisa Gail Kirk, Respiratory Care

Julie Lynn Kubin, Occupational Therapy Assistant

Dana Sha Liles, Radiologic Technology

Brandy R. Little, Echocardiography

Regina F. Loveless, Occupational Therapy Assistant

Jennifer Rena Lyles, Occupational Therapy Assistant

Jonathan Marquez, Business Management

Ryan B. Marshall, Criminal Justice Technology

Siderika N. Maze, Vascular Technology

William J. Millholland, Respiratory Care

Morgan A. Moore, Paramedicine

Courtney Morris, Radiologic Technology

Stacey Edwards Murphy, Respiratory Care

Olivia C. Nalley, Radiologic Technology

Justina Uzoma Okoro, Health Information Management Technology

Matthew E. Osbourn, Occupational Therapy Assistant

Yuri Bianay Padilla, Neuromuscular Therapist

Ashley E. Patty, Occupational Therapy Assistant

Lakeisha Lakel Pelzer, Respiratory Care

Heather Michelle Phillips, Diagnostic Medical Sonography

Heather L. Plemons, Diagnostic Medical Sonography

Taryn Hall Roberts, Business Management

Adrian A. Rodriguez, Business Management

Montana Diane Sabyan, Vascular Technology

Heather Nicole Salvador, Occupational Therapy Assistant

Ronald J. Satterwhite, Respiratory Care

Waseem Sheikh, Industrial Systems Technology

Lauren Sherwood, Respiratory Care

Margaret Shiflett, Diagnostic Medical Sonography

Tammara Y. Simmons, Echocardiography

Chelsea M. Skidmore, Occupational Therapy Assistant

Kayleigh Smith, Diagnostic Medical Sonography

Lauren Renee Stephens, Occupational Therapy Assistant

Julie M. Stites, Vascular Technology

Megan M. Swinney, Criminal Justice Technology

Todd William Taylor, Occupational Therapy Assistant

Ashley Tefft, Neuromuscular Therapist

Scott Marshall Thacker, Accounting

Ashleigh Rae Thomas, Criminal Justice Technology

Angela M. Trammell, Health Information Management Technology

Joshua Scott Triplett, Health Information Management Technology

Haley Lauren Ware, Diagnostic Medical Sonography

Justin Adam Weaver, Computer Support Specialist

Travis H. West III, Respiratory Care

Summer R. Westmoreland, Respiratory Care

Hannah Brooke White, Radiologic Technology

Lauren Wiley, Social Work Assistant

Amber Annette Winslett, Early Childhood Care and Education

Shaun D. Witt, Industrial Systems Technology

Taylor Brandt Wooten, Criminal Justice Technology

Brittany N. Worthy, Marketing Management

Russell A. Wright, Occupational Therapy Assistant

Susan Lynn Wyatt, Business Management

Kasie A. Yates, Echocardiography

Leticia Garcia Zamora, Accounting

Associate of Science in Nursing

Emily Barker

Shannon Grace Boyd

Candace Rachelle Clark

Kelsey Nichole Curtis

Patricia A. Evans

Kelli Ann Gard

Heather Nicole Jackson

Brandi Roxanne Johnson

Rebekka Sofia Elizabeth Lackey

Christina M. Lyons

DeAnna L. Maddux

Jasmin Marie Sabbag

Hannah N. Scott

Debra C. Shirley

Andrea Lynn Ernest Smith

Sipapha Souvanna

Tonya Renee Sullivan

Selena Lee Tate

April J. Torres

Monica M. Trotter

Katherine R. Veach

Diploma

Julia L. Barnes, Practical Nursing

Shannon A. Breeden, Criminal Justice Technology

Alyssia Byrd, Practical Nursing

Rebecca Shay Caudill, Practical Nursing

Steven D. Coker, Welding and Joining Technology

Farrah Poole Creek, Business Management

John A. Cross, Welding and Joining Technology

Demarcus LaRay Daniel, Neuromuscular Therapist

Trina M. Dean, Neuromuscular Therapist

Jennifer Lynelle Ellison, Paramedicine

Joshua D. Faires, Automotive Technology

Kyla S. Feenstra, Welding and Joining Technology

Derrick C. Ferguson, Automotive Technology

Quiota D. Ferrell, Business Technology

Keysa N. Garrett, Neuromuscular Therapist

Jennifer L. Gonzalez, Practical Nursing

Austin B. Greeson, Paramedicine

Augusta E. Hallowell, Practical Nursing

Kent L. Hand, Air Conditioning Technology

Tracey L. Hawkins, Computer Support Specialist

Julie K. Honea, Practical Nursing

Yvonne Jones, Practical Nursing

Fatmata H. Kanu, Practical Nursing

Carren Patricia Laing, Practical Nursing

Sarah B. Laymon, Paramedicine

Kristie Grider Long, Practical Nursing

Donna Janine Lowe, Neuromuscular Therapist

Fredy Martinez, Automotive Technology

Pauline K. Meshida, Practical Nursing

Luther N. Parker II, Welding and Joining Technology

Jessica L. Payton, Neuromuscular Therapist

Joel Perez, Automotive Technology

Stephen Adam Ratzmann, Automotive Technology

Tyler Jordan Roberts, Automotive Technology

Hannah Christine Robinson, Practical Nursing

Adriana H. Silva, Practical Nursing

Natasha Lynn Stanley, Practical Nursing

Sharronda D. Thompson, Early Childhood Care and Education

Jacob Todd, Automotive Technology

Penny Walden, Business Management

Sharon R. Walker, Practical Nursing

Bertha I. Wesson, Business Technology

Brandon M. Williams, Horticulture

Tonya Lynn Williamson, Paramedicine

Technical Certificate of Credit

Briska Page Bailey, Health Care Assistant

Miranda E. Barnes, Early Childhood Care and Education Basics

Briana R. Bates, Administrative Support Assistant

Jacob M. Bowers, Technical Specialist

Chelsey N. Bradley, Shampoo Technician

Kelsey S. Brock, Medical Front Office Assistant

Brittany R. Callahan, Medical Front Office Assistant

Amy E. Connell, Patient Care Assistant

April Nicole Cook, Medical Front Office Assistant

Hailey M. Crump, Phlebotomy Technician

Kayla L. Dooley, Health Care Assistant

Amanda Brooke Eaker, Medical Coding

Stephen Wayne, Early Health Care Assistant

Quanecia Foster, Phlebotomy Technician

Miguel Garcia, Operations Management Specialist

Aaliyah R. Harris, Health Care Assistant

Brittany S. Houser, PC Repair and Network Technician

Courtney M. Jackson, Phlebotomy Technician

Haley Jarnagin, Phlebotomy Technician

Kimberly Kelly, Health Care Assistant

Mary G. Mashburn, Medical Front Office Assistant

Guadalupe Miranda, Phlebotomy Technician

Brandy Michelle Moorehead, Addictions Specialist

Brittany Danielle Orr, Health Care Assistant

Agustin Ortiz Valladares, Human Resource Management Specialist

Theresa Gayle Powell, Infant/Toddler Child Care Specialist

Chiara L. Robinson, Early Childhood Care and Education Basics

Marie B. Sherfesee, Medical Coding

Kimberly Ann Sims, Phlebotomy Technician

Jannah Lindsay Sorrell, Health Care Assistant

Faith Eileen Trammell, Health Care Assistant

Heather Tucker, Early Childhood Care and Education Basics

Jennifer Nicole Wadsworth, Medical Coding
Sleep researcher Ernest Hartmann, while a psychiatrist at Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston in the 1980s, found that people seeking therapy for nightmares were not necessarily more fearful or anxious, but rather had a general sensitivity to all emotional experience. He concluded that sensitivity is the driving force behind intense dreams. Heightened sensitivity to threats or fear during the day results in bad dreams and nightmares, whereas heightened passion or excitement may result in more intense positive dreams. And both these forms of dreams may feed back into waking life, perhaps increasing distress after nightmares, or promoting social bonds and empathy after positive dreams.

The effects go further still. Hartmann realised that this sensitivity spills over into perceptions and thoughts: people who have a lot of nightmares experience a dreamlike quality to their waking thoughts. And this kind of thinking seems to give them a creative edge. For instance, studies show that such people tend to have greater creative aptitude and artistic expression. Jess and Chris [two of Carr's research subjects] scored highly on a test to measure this, called the boundary thinness scale, and both are artists: Jess is a painter and photographer, Chris a musician.
Excerpted from my newest book - Water Oak: The Happiness of Longing - A Memoir

August 1969 - Long Beach, Mississippi

My dad is sitting on an old wicker chair on the screened porch facing the sea, a bottle of Barq's root beer, foamy and wet, on the floor beside him, legs crossed gracefully, one foot kicking a soundless rhythm, long thin fingers deftly weaving nylon fishing line through a tiny hole he just made at the top of a hollow branch of sugar cane cut fresh from our lot next door; he reaches over occasionally to the ashtray on the floor beside him to take a drag on his Viceroy, "It's a new fishing pole for Tom," he says, thin blue smoke curling from his mouth as he exhales, "we'll use it later when the weather clears. I'll make you one too."

"Okay daddy," I answer without looking up from my book. I'm down the porch from him, on the old wooden swing, the one Grandpa built years ago, hung from the ceiling so we could all sit together on the humid evenings, catching a soft breeze from the water, mosquitos buzzing against the screens while we jumbled on top of each other, arms and elbows everywhere, singing along to his favorite tunes; Take me out to the ballgame, take me out with the crowd, buy me some peanuts and cracker jacks, I don't care if I never get back.

I'm reading Franny and Zooey again, loving the sound of the drizzle, steady and percussive on the wooden roof, loving the way it contains us in the house, pulls us in from the beach to watch the squalls move across the distant water in front of the house, the low lazy sweep of shallow that we were all just playing in, running from sandbar to sandbar to chase the minnows; almost beat Russell to the deep water markers just hours ago, waves once gentle now whipped into foamy rolling white caps.

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Dad keeps glancing up at those waves and the distant sparks of lightening on the horizon, a contented smile on his face, inhaling deeply from his Viceroy, shaking his head at the sound of my two brothers fighting over a game of Parcheesi in the house, the smell of my Grandma's fresh crab gumbo, rich and peppery, rolling towards us from the kitchen far back inside the house. My dad loves these squalls, always brings me to the porch to sit with him on stormy afternoons; Sue, you can smell the pine trees on Cat Island; inhaling deeply, closing his eyes to listen to the rush of whitecaps rolling towards the beach, pointing out the fierce billowy grey clouds skimming across the horizon. We both sit quiet, occupied, happy. From next door, a loud bang like someone slamming against a wall, then Aunt Bee Dee's shrill voice rising, urgent, scolding my cousins Russell and Davis, telling them to settle down, stop fighting, read their comic books or they'll get a spanking.

The screen door swings open and Grandpa joins us on the porch, stopping to adjust the squeaky spring, fiddle with the hinge, mumbling about how he just oiled it yesterday, turning to look long and hard at the distant water, quiet, thoughtful, "Tommy we need to bring the boats in today, before you all leave tomorrow." My dad nods, "Okay dad," he says, his voice is low and gravelly with smoke.

Then facing me, pausing for a moment, Grandpa's Irish blue eyes bright, amused, his weathered face cracks into a big grin: "Hot damn, Sue Ellen, always with a book. You'll be a writer someday, won't you," he comes to sit beside me on the swing, his white cotton pants deeply wrinkled, his white shirt showing signs of dark grease from the boat engine he was just working on in his tool shed behind the house; not a tool shed really, more like a church, his altar - where dozens of meticulously cleaned and polished tools hang in their precisely outlined places along the weathered walls; instead of incense, the air is filled with the pungent scent of motor oil, thick and spicy as the Chinaberry tree outside the entrance.

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On sweaty summer afternoons, I love visiting him in his cool orderly sanctuary, tiptoeing carefully across the rusted sheet of iron salvaged from his ferry boat that flanks the drainage ditch around the shed; always hoping to surprise him, enter soundlessly to watch him work, but never quite able to prevent the noisy clang of bending metal at the door, the gong that alerts him of visitors; his surprised smile welcoming and unconditional, his hands still on the wheel of the sander or holding a well-oiled bolt just selected from his collection inside a used cigar box, its lingering tobacco aroma rising to mingle with the persistent scent of turpentine.

Today, sitting beside me on the swing, he smells of engine grease, Chinaberries, and Dr. Tichenor's minty cure-all that he rubs into his swollen hands every morning.

"You're not really going away to college, are you?" he asks, teasing. "Yes sir," I answer awkwardly, never sure what to say, smiling at him. "In two weeks," I add, hoping to keep him talking and sitting on the swing beside me. He pats my knee, clumsy and brief, but somehow sentimental; his way of showing affection, unable to say the words, but the wide smile, the moist eyes, giving him away. He is after all, the tough Irish ferry-boat captain Ralph Peter Nolan the "man of the river," as he's known in New Orleans.

"She's going to Missouri," says my dad from across the porch, looking up from his fishing line, briefly smiling at me as he takes a swig of foamy root beer.

"Why so far?" says Grandpa shaking his head back and forth; It's not a question to be answered, just a comment, and feeling shy and awkward as always I say nothing; just smile, happy to sit beside him as he pushes the swing back and forth with his feet.

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He looks over at the water again, studying the thick clouds to the east and west. "I think it's going to be a big storm," he says. "We're due. But we're fine here, no hurricane has ever hurt us, these homes are built strong." I nod and say, "Yes sir," having heard these stories so many times, the way his father John Peter Nolan bought this land at the turn of the century, built these two sturdy homes for the Nolan clan, side by side, separated by an oyster shell driveway with ancient water oaks reaching protectively over each house, gracing the long driveway with silvery moss.

From as far back as I can remember, dad filled my head with Long Beach. Instead of nursery rhymes to send me to sleep, his bedtime tales were of childhood summers and long weekends "across the lake" playing all day in the warm Mississippi water with his two older brothers; hauling Grandpa's hand-made nets to the rock pile to catch jumbles of blue claws for Grandma's spicy gumbo, chasing minnows in the shallow pools, finding cold freshwater springs bubbling up impossibly through the sandbars, good enough to drink. And when the afternoon high tide rolled back in, launching their sailboats and dinghies to race each other, capsizing in the summer squalls, sometimes making it all the way to Cat Island.

I hungered for these stories; tell me more, I pleaded, about when there wasn't a beach and the water came right up to the sea wall; or how your mom got mad because Grandpa named the skiff Salty Dog instead of Ruth, or how you and your brothers would beg and plead in the back seat on the way home to New Orleans until Grandpa stopped for chocolate malts at Little Man's.

Dad would acquiesce, lighting up another cigarette, leaning back against the headboard, happy to have an audience; describing how he couldn't pay attention in class because all he thought about was getting back to the warm shallow Gulf, the earthy smell of mossy oaks, the wooden dinghy he was helping his brothers build; all of it dreamy and true, yet somehow too good, too impossible; a place to long for.

He found his soul in Long Beach, he told me, felt God's presence in the moonlight streaming through the windows, luminous stars reflected on the foamy waves, sugar cane swaying and cracking in the lot next door; Long Beach was holy ground for my father who once dreamed of becoming a priest.

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It had become my altar too, confessing my darkest adolescent desires, guilty Catholic sins, to the brilliant stars above the pale sand; climbing high into the water oak at the top of the yard; its trunk so wide we could play tag around it, branches twisted and majestic; it held Russell and I safe no matter how high we climbed, no matter how big we grew; straddled beside each other on its rough and knotted limbs to survey the miles of silver beach, pointing out white sails dotting the flat horizon, mesmerized by the endless flow of shallow waves along the shore, the distant outline of tall trees on Cat Island; calculating how far away the afternoon squalls were by counting seconds between the distant flash of lightning and the slow rumbling heavy thunder, holding our arms tightly around the Oak branch where we sat as the wind kicked up; daring each other to stay even when electric flashes lit the air around us. This land was my goddess, my Holy Communion, my respite from Mobile.

And there were ghosts of course, the spirits of departed Nolans walking the creaky floors at night; all of us kids gathered around Grandpa as he told stories of seeing his dead father, John Peter, walking through the bedrooms, making us laugh and scream with delight, afraid to go to bed; but I'd seen him too, the bodiless white cotton shirt floating across our rooms in the dark; sweet and benevolent, making sure we were safe.

But the spirits I felt in the house most often were the never-mentioned daughters; my dad's only two sisters, Muriel and Ruthie, born long before he was, both of them suddenly ill in their adolescence, doctors not knowing why, putting them in wheelchairs to spend their last summers in Long Beach hoping for a cure, until they both died before the age of 18; my father, the youngest, having no memory of them, their names rarely mentioned in the family.

I felt their presence most when dad sent me back to the house alone at night to get salt for our watermelon or buns for the hotdogs, all of us sitting jumbled and happy along the concrete sea wall that led down to the beach, sharing thick curved slices of watermelon, chewing down to the rind, chins dripping with sweet red nectar, spitting the dark seeds at each other; my Grandpa hauling dead branches out from the woods behind our house to build the tallest bonfires we'd ever seen, taller than my dad, so we could wave sparklers, shoot fire crackers, punch each other late into the night under the stars on the warm sand, barefoot since sunrise; tiptoeing back towards the house obedient, alone, afraid; seeing Muriel and Ruthie's faces in the tiny attic window above the porch; singing as loud as I could to alert them, tell them I was there; a kind of permission I needed to enter their dark sanctuary, knowing in my bones how they loved this house, this land; their spirits never leaving for heaven, no reason to go, this was, after all, better than anywhere.

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Grandpa stands up now, walks the length of the porch, studying the sky above the water, "We'll have a break in the storm this afternoon, Tommy, let's get ready to go," he says, something in his voice anxious, worried, a twisting I feel in my gut, a sudden dropping of the stomach for no reason, a thing unknown, or known but not spoken. Grandpa slowly turns to go back into the house, smiling over at me one last time, those brilliant sapphire eyes framed in delicate round glasses, his stark white hair strangely luminescent in the rainy light; this image becoming one of my strongest memories from that day.

"Run and get Warren and the boys," says my dad gently, putting his cigarette out in the metal ashtray, laying the cane pole carefully along the edge of the porch. "Yesssir," I answer eagerly, closing my book, relieved to have a task, to feel included.

For the rest of the stormy wind-whipped day, my dad, his brother Warren, my brothers Tom and Jim, my cousins Russell and Davis and myself all wrestle with the odd collection of wooden boats anchored in the salty shallows needing to be hauled back to the house for winter; including the ancient skiff named Salty Dog and Uncle Warren's slick new racing yacht, The Indigo, that he and Russell sailed over from New Orleans earlier in the summer.

Uncle Warren sends Russell and me out to where the Salty Dog is anchored, the old wooden skiff rocking crazily in the waves. We gladly obey, trudging side by side against the whitecaps until the water reaches our chests and I'm jumping up on tiptoe to keep my head above each wave. Russell glances over, "Stay here Sue Ellen," he orders as he makes the final steps to the boat. But I don't listen, wanting to be there when he reaches up for the side of the skiff and heaves himself over, losing balance briefly in the waves, then grinning down at me and reaching over to pull me up with one arm; both of us grinning, chuckling, nervous, excited by the wind, the silvery color of the air.

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We're the same age, born months apart in side-by-side duplexes Grandpa bought on Canal Boulevard in the heart of New Orleans, right on the streetcar line; friends since our mothers bundled us together in carriages to stroll through Audubon Park, or take the little train around the zoo. Russell carries the Irish blood of our Grandpa, fair skin freckled by the sun, straight dark hair cut short against his head, sky-blue eyes reflecting light even on rainy afternoons; I'm dark eyed and olive skinned, deeply tanned from the first day of summer.

"Get the oars ready, Matey!" he barks, from the front of the boat - assuming the voice of a crusty sea captain, dreaming of a future in the Navy like his dad.

He leans over the bow, the choppy water rocking us side to side as he pulls up the thick frayed rope that leads to the anchor, the boat facing into oncoming waves, salt spray peppering our faces; he heaves the rusted anchor aboard and yells at me from over his shoulder to start rowing. I try to get the bulky wooden oars coordinated against the waves but to no avail and the sea knocks us sideways, pushing us closer to shore, nearly capsizing us in the swells until he secures the anchor, grabs the oars from my hands, and without much effort, turns our boat to face the rock pile, rowing us steadily across the turbulent surf; both of us wind whipped, soaking wet and grinning, loving the cold drizzle on our cheeks, the thrill of lightning in the distance, the air charged with fear and anticipation until we arrive at the rock pile and Uncle Warren tosses us a rope.

It's a windy day, squalls moving in and out, Grandpa's white hair pushed straight up whenever he faces the horizon, delicate eyeglasses dotted with sea water, an anxious expression on his face, yelling orders at Warren, who then yells them at us; bring me that rope, secure that line, help me carry this anchor; all of us struggling to get our tasks done in the chaos, to hear his voice above the thunder, the sound of Davis yelling that he is tying the knot correctly, Russell shouting over at Davis, Uncle Warren calling someone stupid, my dad yelling at everyone to stop fighting; the men now a chorus of angry shouting that rises sharp and disturbing through the pounding rain. I feel stupid, inept, unable to handle the heavy oars, help carry the anchor, be important enough to get yelled at.

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The next day when dad finishes packing our station wagon with suitcases and fishing gear, Jim, Tom and I stand nervously by the car, not wanting to pile in, picking up oyster shells from the driveway to bring home in our pockets for the long drive along Highway 90 to Mobile.

Grandpa and Grandma give us quick hugs, my Grandma moist with perspiration in her long cotton dress, low heels, smelling of brushed powder, rich and fruity. Grandpa tells my dad not to worry, that they'll only stay in Long Beach one more day before heading back to New Orleans for their flight to California to visit their oldest son Pete who moved there a decade ago to become a naval architect.

Standing beside our car, Uncle Warren and Russell argue about whether to drive back to New Orleans tomorrow with Aunt BeeDee and Davis or to sail their boat home; not sure if it might be safer to sail into Gulfport for the pending storm; stopping their argument long enough to look into our car windows, Russell smiling over at me, "Bye cuz, be good at college." "You too," I answer, "Send me a postcard if you have time," I yell out the window as our car backs down the driveway.

Davis stands on the highway median to wave good-bye like always, lighting a firecracker and tossing it high into the air for our farewell; Russell, Uncle Warren, and Aunt BeeDee walk alongside our car, closing the gate behind us as we pull out onto the road.

From the back seat, windows down, we wave and yell good-bye, throwing kisses as the car pulls away, already beginning to cry as we pass the old St. Thomas church on the corner, sick with regret that summer is ending, that we're heading home to Mobile where school is about to start and mom awaits with our younger sister Beth.

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In the gloomy quiet of the back seat, I dream of our annual Easter weekend returns to Long Beach; how we run outside early in the morning right after mass at St. Thomas Church to find our hand-dyed Easter eggs hiding in Grandpa's rose bushes or in the cavernous roots of the Oak tree; the younger kids screaming and pushing each other out of the way to grab the jelly beans and gold nugget candy bars before we change into bathing suits to spend the day racing on the warm sand, chasing minnows between the sand bars, building our first sand castle of the year.

But none of this is ever true again.

What Grandpa senses happens in the next few days, after he and Grandma have flown to California to visit Uncle Pete; and even though none of us are lost in the hurricane, it changes him, eats away at his insides when he returns to see our land scraped clean of any trace of us, dish towels hanging from the tops of oak trees.

Everyone is found safe after the storm, even though Uncle Warren and Russell stayed another night to secure their boat, tried to sleep as the water began to rise, electrical explosions from the neighbor's house waking them to stand on the porch and see the Gulf of Mexico rolling into our yard. They'd somehow made it inland to higher ground at the Anderson's bicycle shop until the waves retreated in the morning and they stumbled back to find the land unrecognizable, too stunned to speak, hanging onto each other, sobbing like children.

That day of leaving for summer's end in 1969 is the last day we ever stand around the oyster shell driveway, hugging and fighting, watching Davis light the farewell firecracker, waving at Grandpa at the gate, eyes moist, arms crossed, shaking his head.

As we drive the long wordless trip to Mobile, Hurricane Camille is already gathering strength in the Atlantic, making its predicted turn into the Gulf of Mexico, stalled by the warm water; furious clouds spinning waves into a frenzy from three feet to 30 feet high by the time they roll through our yard, slice limbs from the Oak trees, scatter the oyster shell driveway, lift Grandpa's sturdy homes from their concrete foundations and smash them angrily on the railroad tracks two blocks inland; Grandpa's tool shed vanished completely, leaving only the metal sheet that once noisily marked its entrance.

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Back home in Algiers, Grandpa is never quite the same; rising in the mornings to fumble with his white cotton shirt, telling Grandma to wake up "it's time to drive across the lake;" his memory, his mind as smashed and scattered as his once sacred tools. He dies a few years later from a stroke.

More than a week after the storm, when the roads have been cleared of enough debris that dad can finally drive us over, we find one rusted wrench from Grandpa's tool shed laying on the ground where the Chinaberry tree once stood; my dad climbs silently through piles of splintered branches, steps carefully over a shattered kitchen table leg and across an oddly bent piece of wood from the porch swing to find it; saying nothing, shaking his head and turning to walk away from us.

It marks the end of most good things for a very long time. Russell leaves for college a week after the storm, joins ROTC, trains to be a navy pilot, is sent to Vietnam. His younger brother Davis, troubled and searching, takes off for parts unknown to become a musician.

My dad drives over to Long Beach by himself on weekdays, secret detours from his business trips, taking Polaroids of the disheveled land; filling our family albums with pages of devastation.

I leave for my freshman year at University of Missouri the next week; haunted by images of Long Beach floating away; startled awake each night as the 30 foot wall of water tumbles towards me; grieving for what I've just lost - not fully understanding yet that it was everything.

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Long Beach is never rebuilt; property values plummet after the storm; insurance companies refuse to pay for water damage. Our lots stand empty and forlorn well into the early 90s when they're divided up and sold to condo developers.

Later Hurricane Katrina sweeps in and restores grace; clears away the soulless condos and leaves our land vacant and sacred, the battered and hollowed remnants of our two majestic water oaks standing guard.
In the summer of 2014 I visited Plum Village in France, founded by Thich Nhat Hanh, a spiritual leader, poet, and peace activist known throughout the world for his teachings and writings on mindfulness and peace. During my week there, I was fortunate in that I was able to hear this inspiring man speak on a variety of subjects, one of which still provides strength to me as family holidays are celebrated.

One perspective shared by Thay, as followers often refer to Hanh, is that we never lose those who have passed away. To illustrate this point, consider anything you see in nature. Say, a flower. The flower begins as a seed, grows into a flower and, in some style, reproduces through pollination and the spreading of its seeds, until it finally wilts and dies. But, that flower left a part of itself in our world. That next flower, and all that follow the first, are a part of that first flower...proof that it ever existed.

Is that not the same as with people? I started as the perfect union from the union of my parents. I was born and grew through the different stages of life: baby; toddler; childhood; adolescence; and adulthood, where I am now. I looked different, acted differently, and had different abilities and possibilities through each stage, but I was always ME. One day, never knowing when that will be, I, too, will pass on, but, like that flower, there will still be parts of me to see. Proof that I ever was.

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Just as I am a product of both nature and nurture, the nurturing something my parents did very well, so will be my children, and their children, and every following generation.

I make it no secret that my first marriage ended in divorce, but that first marriage was a blessing in so many ways. Not only did I learn lessons that helped me grow into the person I am today (some lessons being easy to learn, and some definitely learned the hard way), but I would not have my children, or their spouses and their children, my grandchildren, were it not for that first marriage. I would never know the partners my children found as their soulmates. And, just as with my parents creating me, without those same, exact people involved, my children and his or her partners, there would never be those grandchildren we love so much today, and who bring us untold amounts of pleasure.

So, as Mother's Day, Father's Day, birthdays, and other family times come and go, I think my time will be best spent appreciating that I even had the parents I had, rather than spending my time being sad missing them. I was, after all, one of the lucky ones who had wonderful parents who were able to provide me with an atmosphere of safety, love, and protection. I will appreciate all the time spent in that first marriage, and be happy that, while it wasn't perfect, it taught lessons, and resulted in children who are blessings in my life. And I will rejoice that I found the man I now call my husband, the five children and seven grandchildren we share together, and the lessons I continue to learn.

Thank you, Thay, for helping me find a new way to think about those who have been dear to me but are no longer on this earth. As you said, they are there; maybe not physically, but they are present with us at all times.

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Is motherhood bad for a woman's career?

Even as "Lean In" has become this generation's rallying cry, and women with children head up Fortune 500 corporations, women who take an off-ramp -- i.e., voluntarily leave their careers for a period of time -- find the path to re-entry full of potholes or blocked altogether.

Center for Talent Innovation's research on off-ramps and on-ramps quantifies the motherhood penalty among highly qualified women: Although the vast majority (93 percent) of off-ramped women want to resume their careers, only 74 percent manage to get any kind of job at all and just 40 percent successfully return to full-time work.

Even a relatively short interruption can entail a heavy financial cost. The average off-ramp lasts 2.7 years, although nearly three-quarters of women are ready to pick up their careers after less than two years. And what's worse is that a one-to-two year timeout slashes 14 percent from their salary and at three years, the salary gap compared to those who stay on track rises to a staggering 46 percent.

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Money isn't the only thing that women lose. Our research shows that career interruptions lead to a downsizing of aspiration as well as income: 38 percent of women who have never off-ramped describe themselves as very ambitious while only a third of their off-ramping peers say the same. In the wake of an off-ramp, many women lose heart and redefine what they expect of themselves. They downsize their dreams.

Sustaining ambition is key to keeping women on track in their careers. Women often cut back their career goals in response to a "push" from their workplace rather than a "pull" from outside forces. Over two-thirds (69 percent) of women say they wouldn't have off-ramped if their companies had offered flexible work options, such as reduced-hour schedules, job sharing, part-time career tracks or short unpaid sabbaticals. Lack of support from senior colleagues -- 89 percent of survey respondents don't have a sponsor to move them forward in their careers, 68 percent lack mentors and 61 percent lack role models -- further diminishes women's career ambitions.

The result: Companies lose out on top talent both coming and going. High-potential women who off-ramped can't find an on-ramp to steer them back on their career track. And younger female talent who anticipate off-ramping at some point observe the lack of on-ramps and look for a job elsewhere.

What can companies do to address this brain drain of experienced and eager female talent?

There's promising news. This week, the New York Times noted that a growing number of businesses are now targeting this pool of educated workers with midlife internships that will help them rebuild their resumes.

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The idea took root nearly 10 years ago when the financial services industry began to create a series of "returnships" -- the term was coined by Goldman Sachs -- to help develop women professionals who were looking to restart their careers after an extended absence from the workforce. Goldman Sachs' Returnship program was one of the first such official on-ramps; launched in 2008, the paid, ten-week program offers returnees opportunities in a variety of divisions and the chance to explore a new area of expertise and learn new skills. It proved to be a rousing success; today, Returnship is being offered globally in five offices in North America, as well as in Bangalore and Hong Kong.

Additionally, according to iRelaunch, a website specializing in return-to-work opportunities, there are now some 20 active programs in the financial services industry worldwide to support and engage women who are looking to return to full-time roles after an extended career break. These range from Bloomberg Women's Returner Circle, offered in New York, London and Tokyo, to Credit Suisse's Real Returns, which runs in the U.S., the U.K., India and Switzerland.

"On-ramping women have a unique value," says Carol Fishman Cohen, the chief executive and co-founder of iRelaunch. As quoted in a New York Times article, she points out that they bring the enthusiasm of a just-out-of-college new hire, the experience of years in the workplace and the added bonus of having moved past the stage of needing future career breaks.

We've noticed that even the tech field, a notable laggard in welcoming women back, is also changing its tune. The male-dominated SET culture is famously unfriendly to women, as we documented in our report Athena Factor 2.0: Accelerating Female Talent in Science, Engineering & Technology. A recent article in the International Business Times noted that it's long been considered "career suicide" to take a break. The article reports, "In Silicon Valley, this is a major reason why women hold just 18 percent of tech positions and just 33 percent of all jobs in the tech industry, according to an analysis of company reports provided by 500 Miles."

But with the spotlight on the need to attract and retain more women in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), companies in these fields are increasingly working to strengthen the connections with their off-ramped female talent. With women comprising greater numbers of customers and users, tech giants are realizing that having a workforce that matches the market is a potent source of innovation and are building bridges back to work. Last year, the Society for Women Engineers inaugurated the STEM Re-Entry Task Force, whose seven partnering companies offered mid-career internships in 2015 and 2016, with plans to expand.

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In addition to offering flexible and reasonable work hours that accommodate women with families, the programs offered by IBM, Intel and Paypal, among others, teach upgraded technology skills, provide multiple mentors for each returnee, and work with managers to see a timeout as an opportunity rather than a penalty. "Have you taken some time away from the tech world for personal reasons?" asks the description of Intel's Return to Tech program. "At Intel, we believe you have a unique way of looking at the world."
Almost a year back from today I started my journey of being a 'public' blogger and propelled into the unreal realms of the putting your heart out into the internet with a post on Huffington Post. It was on the 2012 Delhi gang rape, and how that incident had served as an ultimate precipice for me. I received overwhelming support following the post and hundreds of emails resonating, but also comments that scarred and scared me, further strengthening my resolve to keep writing for the cause.

I read about how I was lying, exaggerating and destroying India's image on international media for money and fame! Women are worshiped in India, treated much better than anywhere else in the world, and what I was blowing up was 'a single incident'. Worse things happen all over the world - I needed to look at the stats.

I was hard for me to answer accusations so bewildering. I wasn't being paid by anyone, but yes I did submit to Huffington Post to publicize my post and find a forum for my frustrations. I had long wanted to scream from a roof top begging people in India to forget about Nationalism, Salman Khan being arrested, or whether or not temples get rebuilt, and take to the streets again for implementation of the Indian Penal code reforms of 2013, until consequences preventing perpetrators from these horrendous acts of gender violence (rape and acid attack) were widespread and established. I wanted every woman abused to come forward and report so that when I looked at the stats and found solace in India being lower than the US in number of 'reported' incidents, I could trust that solace to be real. I wanted to draw International attention to the problem that HASN'T been solved in India. No, I wasn't overreacting. And yes, I wanted to invoke shame in ourselves: for looking away for too long and then shifting our glances too soon.

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If all what I have stated is perceived as embarrassing India (or some Indians?) then I will try again. If writing about this is seeking fame for self, then I will continue to seek fame and my catharsis will come only when I will no longer have anything left to seek fame with.

But today unfortunately is not that day. Not yet. Another woman has been brutally raped and killed, with horrifying similarities to the 2012 incident. We are happy to call her 'Kerala's Nirbhaya' and will forget, consumed with issues more important than women's lives, until Nirbhaya is birthed again. In another state, another city.

So I write on the issue again, this time with brilliant and poignant Lopa Banerjee. The excerpt below is from her book-length work of narrative nonfiction and is in response to the 2012 gang rape in India. Our writing this piece, is not to seek whatever it is you think we seek, but is to show the scars that run so deep that 'a single incident' is all that is needed to break the weir. What you call overreaction - we identify as culmination. Our motherland is our pride and our activism is to purge her of the wounds inflicted on her.

And 'this possibly happening at other parts of the world' doesn't make a difference to what we want for her and the rest of the world.

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To Ravaged Nymphs: A Journey through Blood, Bruises and Tears

Dec 2012. Inside a private bus in New Delhi, India, a 23 year-old woman, a paramedical student is brutally gang-raped, a rod inserted inside her vagina, merciless beating results in injuring her intestines. She had boarded the bus along with her friend at 10 o'clock in the night, as both were about to return home after watching a movie. The media and the judiciary express their outrage over the event, demanding the death penalty for the criminals. Days following her hospitalization, a huge volume of people from all parts of the city, including young girls and woman of all ages gather in rallies of protest, while political parties make it a steaming issue and a fodder for their respective agendas. A week after the attack, the woman (the Indian media names her 'Damini', or 'Nirbhaya', real name undisclosed) dies an excruciatingly painful death.

Every other minute, a woman's body turns to cement and stone as she is beaten, raped and molested inside the four walls of her home, out there in the crazy streets, in the hollow darkness of the subways. Every other minute, I keep on stumbling upon these news stories, reminding myself that I am a woman, a being with a tempting body, with the fullness of my curves, meek and powerless with each masculine stroke and whip that pierces me. Every other minute, I succumb to a powerful, masculine world whose flesh and blood rejoice with my surrender.

Sipping my morning coffee inside the cozy confines of a home that has shielded me for all these years, I can still smell the caustic odor of beasts, inflicting wounds as they race up the woman's body in their quest to prove the power, the sheer superiority of the male organ.



October 1983: The house is crowded with guests, invited friends and family and curious, uninvited onlookers cheering at the firecrackers, the lamps brightening up the rooms and the sheer merriment of festivity. It is Diwali, the festival of lights, and a very young girl of 5 or 6, sleeps in a silent bed tucked away from this frenetic midnight world, snuggling her favorite doll. Way past midnight, she suddenly writhes in unexplained discomfort in the midst of deep sleep, her tongue parched and hands tied. She feels the maze of a stupor that embraces her senses inside the pale blue mosquito net wrapping the corners of the bed, while coarse hands work their way up to her pants. They are a group of grown up men, unknown to the little girl, cheering at their exploration of the girl's mouth, her tender lips, her tongue, her private parts. They tremble at the sound of a loud, elderly cough that interrupts their expedition, and quickly, stealthily move out of the room.

At the lunch spread that followed the next day of the festival, they faced the girl, trembling, sweating, as they relished the bones and flesh of the sacrificial goat meat served to them in a platter. "Oh, the fun we had, though it wasn't complete...don't you dare say anything about it to any one you know, girl, or else you know what we can do to you!" One of them whispered to her, while the others jeered.

April 2003. Inside a crowded compartment of a train that locally commutes from Ghaziabad to New Delhi, there are a couple of working women in their 20's, trying to push their way into the seats, most of them already occupied, crossing the reeking odor of human sweat, cheap alcohol and the lusty look of men co-passengers. One of them, a docile, petite young woman wraps her nose with the corners of her scarf and pushes herself towards the seats. While she walks out of the train, she notices a white, sticky stain in her scarf, the sure remnants of male ejaculation. In sheer disgust, she throws up, while still in the station.



Every minute, I die a thousand deaths. From the windows of my far-away home dressed with heavy, dark curtains, my eyes stretch out to soak in the burning flames that devour the bodies of young girls and women, demolished for the sheer offense of their sex. Once again, I try to look into the dripping blood and tears of these nymphs ravaged by the sheer image of destruction that the word 'rape' connotes. In popular films and adult talks while in my teens, I have tried to grasp the meaning of 'molestation' and the loss of female modesty. Every other day during my teens and also later, I have secretly crushed myself to pieces as I could never reveal to anyone in my family how it felt as a thumb-sucking child when adult male hands raced up my tiny body to uncover my private parts. Years later, as my curious feminine thoughts were gradually building up a world of desire and lovemaking with a man, I could never reveal to anyone the sheer contempt at the sight and odor of unknown semen.



Dec 30, 2012. Bhaskar News. A friend of mine at Facebook shared the news of a woman scientist's reactions to the Delhi gang-rape victim. The woman, an agriculture scientist, a secretary of the Lion's club in Madhya Pradesh, India states that the Delhi victim should have meekly submitted to the rape. She accused the victim and her boyfriend for being there in the streets too late at night. She adds that surrendering to the rape would at least save her intestines. Asserting that the police cannot give protection to irresponsible citizens in extreme situations like this, she defiantly states: "Women instigate men to commit such crimes."

For a long time, I have believed in the magic and solace of the bonds shared between women. In my childhood, I had believed in the epic tales depicting the plight of pure, innocent, modest wives and daughters that my mother and grandmother had taught me. For a long time, I have had extreme faith in resting in my mother's shoulders when I felt a need to be shielded. I have had unthinkable solace in the sweet talks of my female school friends, batch mates and colleagues as I had confided in them. All these years, living in a tattered world in danger, such beliefs and dreams are ripped apart. I have seen myself as part of a world in which men and women join hands to coax her to self-surrender , punish and judge women on how she would look, dress, behave and react to a man's world that offers her words of caution and wisdom based on masculine whims and desires. I have publicly shared the shock and disbelief with my female friends as they have shared this woman's reactions as a viral story over the World Wide Web. In my mind, I have once again tried to reach out to the thumb-sucking girl of five or six that I once was, who knew nothing about modesty, virtue and decorum, who knew nothing about how society tells a girl she has lost these, as unknown men have touched her private parts. I have once again tried to reach out to my docile, petite self, ten years back in time, who tried to wash off the stains of a drunk co-passenger's lustful body from her favorite scarf she wore at the office every day.

I open up the virtual world of Facebook again. There are spam messages coming from all my real and virtual friends to sign an online petition. There is growing demand for strong laws against rape cases and rapists, while certain sections of the public are attempting to mobilize the thought through the tool of social networking. I don't know for sure, how long these voices of protest and reform will live and be heard. In the world outside, plenty of women like the unfortunate Delhi victim, like the hapless little girls molested at a tender age, will either die, or live their lives with the flickering flame of shame and anguish. I, a sister to their wounds and tears, will continue to wipe their blood stained sheets with the 'modesty' and 'virtue' that have long ago been erased from my own life.

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March 2015: There is yet another uproar in the broadcast and social media. Several friends of mine in Facebook post and share the sensational news of BBC broadcasting an interview with Mukesh Singh, one of the perpetrators of the New Delhi gang rape in prison. Snippets of the interview, the reactions of the interviewer, a journalist and documentary filmmaker, the reactions of the intelligentsia, politicians are shared in all media outlets, where the convict accuses the victim for being responsible for the brutal sexual assault that led to her death. I watch the TV footage, the quotes and the newsfeed, which go viral in a matter of seconds. Will the convicts ever be hanged? Will there be any major serious law enforcement system to stop them from raping? Will there ever be any permanent remedy to the vicious psychology of a criminal? I don't know the answers. All I know right now is that a death-row convict has opened his filthy mouth and disrobed a woman again, verbally.

"In an interview from jail, Mukesh Singh says women who go out at night have only themselves to blame if they attract the attention of gangs of male molesters".

"A girl is far more responsible for a rape than a boy....A decent girl won't roam around at 9 o'clock at night.

--Mukesh Singh"

The Telegraph, March 4, 2015

Responses from friends from all parts of the world pour in, through social media posts, comments and debates ensuing seamlessly.

"Friends, Isn't he accusing all the males when he says that women provoke men by their explosive dressing? Agree that there are some who crosses decency in dressing. But how many males gets turned on to the extent of raping?"

(Facebook post by a friend in a writers' group)

The responses, heated and stoical, brimming with anger, disgust and helplessness evaporate in the thin air of the night as we switch off our TV screens and laptops, as more smothering, cussing, shoving, kicking, rape and bloodshed continue within the brick walls of homes, and in the naked city streets. The pestilence of death continues to hover, with ragged, rickety moaning.

'Nirbhaya', the fearless twenty-three year old, rechristened by the nation, has long ago been a rotten corpse and burnt away. In the deadly wind that fills the wee hours of the night with its sordid revelry, I can feel her arid spirit roaming, her unseen footsteps crushing the dark night's crevices. She bleeds every night, deep inside, wandering in the dark underbellies of cities and towns, whispering her story in crinkled corners, shouting her heart out as she sees women breaking into million shards every passing day. Nobody listens. Her cries fade out, and resound.



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'Nirbhaya incidents' don't happen suddenly. They might be rare escalations, but they start with a society valuing an woman's honor more than her life. They germinate with each incident left unpunished.

So let's take to the streets again, and every national or international forum available. Let's forget the discomfort of embarrassment, the importance of keeping up appearances, and raise hell. This time, we won't look away too soon.

For more discussions and feedback, visit www.thoughtsandrights.com

Co-author of this piece, Lopa Banerjee, is a poet, author, translator and blogger based in Dallas, Texas. Please visit her blog www.mistressandhermuse.wordpress.com for more information on her.

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Inspired by her father's stories, a young Saudi Arabian girl moves closer toward her vision for herself, her community, and the world.

By Razan Alaqil





My father always told me about the day he would take me on a summer trip to the United States. The land of opportunities sounded like a magical world through my father's stories. The image of New York City, with its skyscrapers and busy streets, was engraved in my mind through his words. Now that I have been living here for almost two years, I have my own story to tell about the country that not only gave me new hope, but which also offered me more things to dream about. Here I am, writing from New York City after attending the United Nations Youth Assembly. A dream that always lived within me has become a reality these past few days.

I arrived to New York on a delayed flight and I had forty minutes to drive from JFK to midtown Manhattan to get my ID to enter the UN. That was impossible according to my taxi driver. But luckily I was there within exactly 39 minutes and I managed to meet with the staff of the event and receive my ID with instructions for the big day. My excitement was indescribable upon reading the

agenda, and I was truly happy to be standing beneath all of these skyscrapers. Right there, I realized, one my dreams was coming true. When I was 15, I saw some ads about the Youth Assembly at the United Nations, and it simply sounded like a "cool" idea for me to go and attend. But now, it's actually real. It's my time to meet with people, ask questions, bring my voice to the hall that shaped our present, past, and future. Now, I can actually start making a difference by

learning and bringing all those lessons back home to make an influence and start changing something. My dream came true, and it was my time to live it and make the most out of it.

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I woke up early on the Assembly's first day. I walked to the United Nations Headquarters knowing that I wanted to leave that building with something that would help me change my community. The flags of hundreds of nations flying outside the UN in the blue sky and clear air reminded me that each nation fought for its unity and independence somehow. We are free today because of everything our ancestors did for us. And I was standing there that morning with a lot of pride in my heart for that green flag that I was about to represent.

We gathered outside the Great Hall of the UN and I met different young people with the same interests as me. Each person came to the assembly with a goal and a lot of hope to make a difference. There were 70 countries participating and over 300 delegates who traveled just so they could attend the event. Imagine young people, from different parts of the world, different countries, different colors, different religions, all uniting together to make this world a better place. Our dreams of a greater future brought us together under one roof.

We entered the majestic General Assembly Hall and I thought to myself that that is where world leaders came together to discuss world problems and solutions. I was actually walking in their footsteps. Gandhi once said "There's no path to peace, peace is the path." I put this statement in mind, took a seat, and started the assembly. We had different speakers and each one was extremely passionate about his or her job. Their words engaged us in the UN's work. Young people, fresh minds, a lot of hope, and one future for all. When I glanced around the room, there was nothing but positivity for a better tomorrow.

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The UN has 17 Sustainable Development goals that are set to be accomplished by 2030. They asked us "How do you see the world at that time?" Some said peaceful, green, equal, safer, and there were 100 other responses. This is our world, if we want to make it better, then we have to start working on these 17 goals of transforming it to the world we want. We have generations coming after us, and we have the future awaiting us. There's a lot that can be done, but with

cooperation and work, we can actually make a difference.

My two-day trip to New York City is an accomplishment not just for me, but to girls and youth back home in Saudi Arabia and around the world. We can make a difference in this universe, and we can bring our country's voice to this global platform. If we believe in ourselves, then we will succeed. We've been developing a lot in the last few years, so let's continue leaving our positive

footprints wherever we go. Peace is what Islam means, so let's walk this path and accomplish a lot for humanity and mankind. Gandhi also said "I am who I am because of who we all are." My participation at the Youth Assembly is for all of us back in the Middle East. We are the youth of today, so let's work together to accomplish the UN's 17 goals and make our present great, and our future a bright one.

Besides the UN, I took back with me new memories of New York City to add to my father's tales. He was with me through it all. He taught me all about self-independence and leadership. He showed me through his acts what it really means to be a loyal citizen to my country. I will work on the present to make a better future because that is exactly what he would have wanted me to do. My favorite quote says "We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give." Let's all live based on this, because if we unite together for the good, then our lives will be rich in happiness.


By Stephen Solomon

Paul Revere: The Silver Smith

When John Singleton Copley painted a portrait of Paul Revere in 1768, he depicted an idealized image of one of Boston's leading artisans. Revere, then in his mid-thirties, sits behind a polished table that shows none of the scars and discolorations of an artisan's workbench. He is dressed informally in an open, full-sleeved white linen shirt with a blue-green waistcoat that he left unbuttoned. He cradles his chin in his right hand, while his left holds a round teapot whose surface is smooth and unadorned, awaiting the finishing decorations. His engraving tools lie at his elbow and ready to use.

Paul Revere was poised that year, 1768, to begin participating in the activities that would lift him into the orbit of the best-known patriots of the Revolutionary period. Still seven years ahead of him was the midnight ride to Lexington to warn of the march of British troops out of Boston the ride immortalized by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's now familiar line, "Listen, my children, and you shall hear, of the midnight ride of Paul Revere . . ." Important though the ride was, it was the delicate-looking engraver's tools depicted in Copley's portrait that would define Paul Revere's most vital contribution to the patriot cause. The engraving tools look much like pens, and Revere used them to make political cartoons that circulated widely and that proved as effective as written words.

Paul Revere by John Singleton Copley. Image is in the public domain via Wikimedia.com

Paul Revere's skills in copper and silver owed much to his father's influence. Apollos Rivoire had come to America in 1715 after boarding a ship in the harbor of Saint Peter Port in Guernsey, an island in the English Channel off the coast of Normandy. Dropped off by his uncle at the dock, Rivoire surely felt the profound uncertainty of what lay ahead of him. Less than a week from his thirteenth birthday, he was embarking alone on an uncertain journey across the ocean to Boston, where he would try to make a go of it without much more than his own adolescent bravado to guide him. The young Rivoire landed in Boston and took up an apprenticeship with a local silversmith. When the silversmith died seven years later, Rivoire bought freedom from his indenture and set up his own shop.

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He changed his name from Rivoire to Revere to make it easier for the local people to pronounce and married the daughter of a Boston merchant. Paul Revere, his son, was born in 1734 and grew up on the narrow crooked streets of the North End. The water that lapped at the docks just a few blocks away made an overpowering allure. Young boys like Paul spent much of their free time playing as the dockworkers unloaded the heavy cargo. They dove off the wharves into the cold water of the bay and climbed into the riggings of the sailing ships. More serious business called them as well. The young Revere served as an apprentice to his father, watching him use hammers to pound silver until it took the finished shape of cups and spoons.

Gradually, he learned how to work with silver, copper, and brass. Paul went to the North Writing School, a two-story school building where boys destined for the artisan trades received the most basic education, learning writing on one floor and reading on the other.

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Paul proved as self-reliant as his father, too. At just nineteen, he inherited the business and supported his family when Apollos died. Gradually over the years, Revere acquired the connections that would make him familiar in colonial politics. He served in the militia during the French and Indian War, and his growing reputation as a skilled silversmith attracted attention. Revere saw his business prosper, and he came to know more and more of the Boston radicals like Samuel Adams as his customers.

He made connections at the New Brick Church, where he went on the Sabbath, and on various civic committees. Gradually, Paul Revere moved into the ranks of the radicals themselves. He joined them for drinks at the Salutation Inn and often retired to a private room used for meetings of the North Caucus, a group of Whig activists whose membership counted many artisans and seamen. Along with a few other such groups, they discussed political affairs and put forward candidates for election at the Boston town meetings. Samuel Adams and John Adams were members.

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Paul Revere's immersion into politics deepened in 1765 as he joined the Sons of Liberty in its protest against the Stamp Act. Again and again, he contributed his special talents as a silversmith to the cause of liberty. In 1766, when it repealed the Stamp Act, Parliament passed the Declaratory Act asserting its power to enact tax and other laws over the colonies "in all cases whatsoever." The following year, Parliament began passing the Townshend Acts to raise revenue by imposing duties on goods imported to America such as tea, paper, paint, and glass. The Massachusetts House of Representatives sent its Circular Letter, written by Samuel Adams, to the other colonial assemblies in 1768, asking them to join Massachusetts in opposing the new taxes. Acting on instructions from London, Massachusetts governor Francis Bernard ordered the assembly to rescind the letter or he would dissolve the body. When the lawmakers refused to rescind by a vote of ninety-two to seventeen, Bernard carried out his threat.

An eight pence bill engraved and printed by Revere in 1778. By Paul Revere - Image by Godot13. Image is in the public domain via Wikimedia.com

The assembly's refusal to rescind the Circular Letter caused a sensation in Boston and throughout the colonies. And it motivated Paul Revere to turn his considerable skills as an engraver and silversmith to help the colonial cause. Commissioned by the Sons of Liberty, Revere celebrated the ninety-two lawmakers by making a silver punch-bowl in their honorthe Sons of Liberty Bowl that would become an American national treasure.

Paul Revere engraved on the bowl the names of fifteen Sons as well as an inscription to John Wilkes, the British member of Parliament who was a hero in the colonies because he was jailed on charges of seditious libel for criticizing the king. Around the sides of the bowl he engraved a variety of decorative elements, including a liberty cap, flags, references to the Magna Carta and the (English) Bill of Rights, and an inscription to the lawmakers "who, undaunted by the insolent Menaces of Villains in Power . . . Voted not to rescind."

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Paul Revere was not finished. He had plenty of venom for the remainder of the lawmakers, those who had complied with Bernard's demand to rescind the Circular Letter. On a copper plate he engraved a political cartoon for printing and distribution far and wide. Calling the engraving "A Warm PlaceHell," Revere heaped scorn on the rescinders. Two devils with pitchforks prod the lawmakers into the cavernous jaws of a fearsome dragon that breathes fire and represents the Puritan idea of a forbidding Hell. A snake writhes at their feet. The engraving makes some of the rescinders, who are dressed in colonial garb, identifiable to citizens of Boston.

At the bottom of the engraving is a stanza: "On brave rescinders! To yon yawning Cell, seventeen such Miscreants will startle Hell."

Many years later, when he had reached the age of eighty, Paul Revere remembered that he had done the engraving when he "was a young man, zealous in the cause of liberty when he sketched it."

Read more ancient, medieval, modern, contemporary, and military history articles, interviews, insights at The History Reader.











STEPHEN D. SOLOMON is the author of REVOLUTIONARY DISSENT: How the Founding Generation Created the Freedom of Speech and an associate professor at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at New York University. A graduate of Georgetown University Law Center, he teaches First Amendment law to graduate and undergraduate students. He has written for numerous national publications including The New York Times Magazine, Fortune, and The New Republic, and has been recognized with the Gerald Loeb Award and the Hillman Prize. His last book, Ellery's Protest, told the story of the Supreme Court's controversial decision forbidding state-sponsored prayer and Bible reading in public schools.

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Days after a six-story apartment building collapsed in Huruma -- killing scores, injuring hundreds and causing millions in damages -- President Uhuru Kenyatta ordered the arrest of one Samuel Kamau, the (building's) owner. The collapse was triggered in part by another tragedy that vividly illustrates the real and true cost and impact of corruption, incompetence and impunity in Kenya: the recent floods in Nairobi.

Both events revealed a city whose growth has been poorly planned and managed; a city whose infrastructure has not been maintained; left instead to the vagaries of its well-connected and rapacious city fathers and the cartels they control -- since independence.

Let me state categorically that with adequate systems and oversight, the sub-standard constructions and overwhelmed infrastructure/storm drainage system are preventable, at least mitigatable.

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Like clockwork, the now demonstrably incompetent and unaccountable Governor of Nairobi Mr. Evans Kidero offered his post-mortem of the flooding by blaming past governments for the "City in the Sun's" less-than-sunny response to the floods. The former Managing Director of the bankrupt Mumias Sugar Company went on to offer a "Top 11 List" of excuses why the city cannot cope with heavy rains even though its residents pay taxes and a potpourri of fees for city and county services ostensibly to prepare it for such eventualities.

Taken together and juxtaposed with the intolerable traffic, the portmanteau "Nairobbery" and the inexorable and widespread corruption, it is a wonder Nairobi continues to "function" at all; that it has not ground to a halt. It is equally surprising that Nairobians have not run Mr. Kidero and the county council out of town or strung them up and demanded back their tax shillings as a condition for being unstrung and lowered down!

Likewise, given the litany of tragedies and miscues that have befallen Kenya and can be directly tied to President Uhuru Kenyatta's incompetence and poor leadership, it is a wonder Kenyans continue to believe anything the man says: That they have not staged their own "Kenyan Spring" and run the man affectionately and aptly known as "Kamwana" or "Little One" out of office!

President Kenyatta and Governor Kidero, the two political leaders respectively at the helm of the tormented country and city have both demonstrated erratic, paranoid and haphazard responses to gross malfeasance and incompetence that is simply unacceptable. Both individuals, supposed students of politics AND management have been literally deaf and blind to the cries and needs of their constituents.

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While President Kenyatta displays a disarming and beguiling bonhomie that has endeared him to many; frankly insulated him from the many missteps he has had throughout his term, Mr. Kidero's gruff personality and temperament is legendary as one Rachel Shebesh found out early in the governor's first term in office.

His personal charm aside, the President has repeatedly offered an assortment of lame, churlish and convenient non sequiturs re: WHY he cannot take direct and punitive action against gross malfeasance, incompetence and suspected illegalities perpetrated by his appointees including those working in the Office of the President:

That he "is constrained by the Constitution" or hindered by an opposition that "engages in negative politics". These are responses that turn on its head the signature mantra of competent and accountable leadership:

The buck stops with the person in charge.

And far from being a characterization that is one's opinion, the president's incompetence in the wake of the collapsed six-story structure has been evidenced by revelation that he issued a directive in January 2015 (after the last collapsed building), received recommendations for specific actions aimed at mitigating recurrence and a year later, not one of recommendations had been enacted! It also does not help when the president himself is accused of "repeated interference on various issues" related to enforcement of demolition edicts.

It shouldn't be a surprise that the same president who has not acted -- visibly, fairly and consistently -- on recommendations of the Ndungu Commission (on land reforms) or Truth, Justice & Reconciliation Commission (TJRC) Report (on the 2007/8 post-election violence) has not acted on recommendations of the National Construction Authority aimed at alleviating sub-standard constructions.

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Similarly, Gov. Kidero, in this latest illustration of a rudderless county government, opted to offer a listing of WHYs and WHO to blame for the clogged storm drainage system, uncollected trash and nightmare traffic -- 3 years into his governorship. The same governor who responded "swiftly" (and violently) when Ms. Shebesh's "violated his personal space"; who then went on to become the nation's laughing stock because his organization thought newly-planted "Kidero Grass" would flourish and blossom in time to beautify the city for the visiting US President Barack Obama has not been able to ensure that his constituents receive consistent trash pick-up or unclogged storm drains even after repeated flooding AND three years of tax revenue receipts.
Muslim women worldwide wear the hijab -- Islamic head covering -- in various ways, and often incorporate elements of their own culture to create a head scarf style that is native to their region. The many different styles is a testament to the rich diversity of Muslim women who wear it. It's both an expression of self as much as of love.

Sometimes, the hijab is portrayed primarily as a full-length garb echoing styles that are commonly found in parts of Iran, Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan. But we know this foreignizing depiction of the headscarf is one dimensional.

Show us how you wear your hijab along with a short description of what it means to you to help us illustrate the vibrancy and diversity of women who don it. Tag your photo with #HijabToMe on Instagram, Facebook or Twitter, and we'll showcase it in The Huffington Post.

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The Huffington Post is covering the rise in anti-Muslim discrimination and those who are working to combat it. Why? Because hate and bigotry are toxic for everyone. Share your story and send to islamophobia@huffingtonpost.com and we'll consider including it in the Islamophobia Tracker.
Most people see Iraq as a battleground. They've seen it that way for many years now. A place where the local death toll from war over the past 15 years is uncertain but numbers in the hundreds of thousands, with survivors living to see their country devastated economically, politically, and socially, ravaged by wars. Iraq is all of that, but it is also so much more.

A few weeks ago, I took a journey to Iraq, which houses sites of spiritual significance to many Muslims around the world, especially those in the Shia sect of the faith. Some of the cities are home to the tombs of several important historical figures, including Prophet Muhammad's son-in-law, Ali ibn Abu Talib, a man many Shias see as defying any single characterization. He's revered as a spiritual and political leader, warrior, legislator, intellectual, and family man. Millions make their way to Iraq to visit his grave and the graves of many others who made history and, even after death, continue to influence history.

Iraq is also home to the living - millions of people, families, and hopes and dreams. During my trip, I was fortunate to encounter a young man who also defies characterization. He has forever changed my perspective on Iraq.

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At age 26, Mansour is a tall, lean, bearded guy, with his thick black hair and beard shorn short, forming a perfect frame for his warm, unassuming smile. When I think of him, it's him standing with his shoulders pushed up in a slight shrug, hands tucked in his pockets, head slightly askew and topped with a cap to block out the spring sun. That's when he managed to stand still, anyway.

I met Mansour because his temp job was as a helper to a tour group of folks like me, who had journeyed to Iraq for a spiritual pilgrimage. He lugged about our bags, pushed the wheelchairs of handicapped folks, answered our questions about directions, and otherwise generally stayed to himself, trying to catch a few hours of sleep in between.

Mansour was born in Najaf as one of four brothers and blessed with two sisters. His siblings are all married, and one brother works as a photographer and the other as a construction worker.

In 2014, while Mansour was studying at the University of Kufa, ISIS started making some serious gains in Iraq. Alarmed by the gains and ISIS' hateful and divisive ideology, rhetoric, and violence, thousands of everyday Iraqis were compelled to act; ordinary, untrained men left behind livelihoods, families, and homes to voluntarily take up a fight that impacts all of us, even thousands of miles away.

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ISIS is often perceived as hating the West, but ISIS also regards Shia Muslims as "infidels" and has wanted to expand its reach into Iraq's Shia-populated areas and destroy sites of spiritual and historical significance.

So, while Mansour studied, his youngest brother, Ahmed, a 19-year old teenager, announced to his family that he was going to join the fight against ISIS. Mansour's family struggled between wanting to talk Ahmed out of his decision and encouraging him to do what their faith compelled them to do, namely, fight against injustice and threats to humanity. They ultimately respected Ahmed's wishes and saw him off to war. Ahmed was sent off to the front lines.

Somewhere on a battlefield that stretched from Samarra to Tikrit, Ahmed was shot in the neck. He was hospitalized in Baghdad. After battling against ISIS, Ahmed was fighting once again, this time for his life. His family traveled from Najaf to Baghdad, almost 100 miles away, to spend as much time as they could with him.

Thirty-five days later, Ahmed passed away. A year later, his brother is sitting across from me, telling me his story.

Each time I have traveled to Najaf, I have been jarred by the sight of processions of plain wooden coffins being carried in and out of the shrines by loved ones who want their fallen to have the opportunity to pay their final respects at these revered shrines before burial. Many are men and boys who fell fighting ISIS, answering the call of their faith to fight against injustice and protect all of humanity against it. A year ago, Ahmed's coffin was brought this same way to pay its final respects, draped in an Iraqi flag, and joining this seemingly endless procession. These are fathers, sons, brothers that are no longer here and their stories remain largely unknown and untold. They leave behind widows struggling to support themselves and their families, and far too many - and yet sadly still not enough - orphanages lining the streets of Iraq.

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Somehow, even as he grieved alongside his family, Mansour managed to graduate in the summer of 2015 with a degree in English literature. He described English as a language that grows with you and allows you to communicate with many people around the world. When I asked if he dreamt of living abroad, Mansour was resolute about staying and helping rebuild his country and investing in its future. He hopes to teach English one day. He took this temp job on, in part, to practice his English. He admitted he wasn't getting as much practice as he hoped, but he was happy with the job anyway because he saw a spiritual reward in being of service to folks coming to Iraq for spiritual pilgrimages. Mansour is a believer.

He is also far more informed about international relations and politics than many people I know. He said that the war in Iraq unseated Saddam, but it also destroyed the legal underpinnings of Iraqi society, leaving a power vacuum, growing corruption, and a lack of institutions to right the destabilized country.

Mansour told me a popular saying in Iraq: "Before, we had one Saddam, today we have many Saddams." He said that Saddam was a reviled figure, but he was the evil everyone knew. It is harder to identify the dangers today, as Iraq continues to reel from the devastation of one battle after another.

My conversation with Mansour also showed an appreciation for embracing complexities and nuance. He does not see America's foreign policies as reflective of the entire country's citizenry's opinions. He says if more people had more information about what was actually unfolding, the funding behind the forces laying waste to Iraq, and how chaos in the Middle East benefits some world powers and groups, then they would better understand what's really happening and why it's happening.

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I wish we, as a nation, could return the favor of not clumping entire populations together, and instead live up to his hope that we set out to better understand what's happening in different parts of the world. But, as a nation, we tend not to question our sources of information and we tend to shy away from complexities; we are nuance-averse. We want simple truths and simple answers; we don't want to face, much less address the complex realities facing the world today.

Mansour worried a lot about how I would tell this story. He didn't want his people further villainized or painted as one-dimensional figures. He worried about Iraqis being seen just as fighters.

I worry about that too. I worry that when we all hear about Iraqis being killed, we assume that refers to ISIS forces being killed. I worry that we think of Iraqis (and Syrians and really all males in war-torn countries) as faceless, nameless people. We do not think of Ahmed. We do not think of Mansour, the English Literature major whose favorite movie is 13th Warrior, favorite book is Persuasion by Jane Austen, and favorite music is by Adele.

Sincere, thoughtful, believing, observant Mansour who told me at the end of our talk that he, too, was planning to follow in his younger brother's footsteps and take up fighting against ISIS. I had a lot going through my mind when he told me, but the question I blurted out in confusion was why he wasn't there already. His mother's still-raw grief over losing her youngest was one factor, the other was what he summed up by saying he was waiting for the tawfiq to do it - a word that implies the intersection of God's will in granting one the capacity and opportunity to do something and succeed at it.

Weeks after leaving Mansour and his world behind, I often think back to our talk and everything he told me about himself, his life, and his family. It seems fitting to me that with his brothers working to capture people's special moments and rebuild the country, one home at a time, Mansour ended up working to help me communicate stories about those people, moments, and homes with the world.

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A $1000 Wacker Science Award scholarship was presented last night to Suzanna Liner, a graduating senior at Cleveland High School.

We were pleased to honor Suzanna with this award to recognize her academic excellence and accomplishments, said Konrad Bachhuber, vice president and site manager at Wacker Polysilicon North America. She was an excellent match for this scholarship, as she exhibits a great aptitude for science, a passion to inspire others and an aspiration to protect the environment.

Bachhuber presented the scholarship to Liner at the schools senior night on May 5 at North Cleveland Church of God.

In addition to the scholarship, Liner received a plaque and a copy of the CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics by William M. Haynes (editor). Liner is also eligible for an internship at Wacker Polysilicon North America during her Junior or Senior year at college as part of this award.

Liner plans to study biology and environmental studies at the University of Memphis.

It is our goal with the Wacker Science Award to support and encourage students who demonstrate a strong aptitude and passion for science, added Bachhuber.

The Wacker Science Award is a scholarship, applied directly to college tuition, for the most eligible student who submitted an essay which best answered the following question: Why do you wish to pursue science or engineering after high school?

Since June 2009before the company broke ground on their site in Charleston, Tenn.Wacker Polysilicon has awarded scholarships each year to high school seniors in Cleveland/Bradley County. To date, the company has awarded $21,000 in local scholarships.

Recently the company officially opened its new polysilicon production site in Tennessee. In the coming months, Wacker will gradually ramp up production, and expects to reach Charlestons full capacity of over 20,000 metric tons per year in the third quarter of 2016. Currently, the site has about 600 employees and, when fully operational, should have approximately 650.
Binoo John

THALASSERY, KERALA -- Bhargavi sways rhythmically as she packs bundles of beedis into neat packets of tens and twenties, with deft fingers and an easy confidence acquired over the years. On a given day, she seals more than 1,000 such packets with maida (refined flour) paste and flicks it into the brimming sack next to her. Her fingers move deftly as she wraps the famous Dinesh Beedi wrapper around big and medium bundles.

"I joined here in 1980. I will retire next year. I survived with this low salary all these years," she says, suggesting perhaps this reporter could do something about her daily pay out of Rs 190, far below Kerala's minimum daily wage of around Rs 350.

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In a dimly-lit hall at one of the branches of the Dinesh Beedi Cooperative where she sits with five other women beedi packers, there is a discernible sense of gloom. Started by Marxists leaders like A.K. Gopalan in 1969, the cooperative reached an annual revenue of Rs 100 crore in the 1970s, making it the number one beedi brand in the country, long before other beedi companies came up.

"Today, sales have fallen due to the campaign against smoking and our annual revenue will only how be around Rs30-40 crore," said Valson, the secretary of the one of the branches of the beedi cooperative in Pinarayi, the native village of Communist Party of India (Marxist) leader and its potential chief minister candidate, Pinarayi Vijayan.

The dark hall doesn't have an electric bulb, even to counter the reality of bleak prospects, or a fan to cool the sweat on the brows of its women beedi packers, working in the scorching 40-degree heat. This is what Dinesh Beedi Cooperative, a once-proud organization that hoped to become a alternative template of economic production to the limited liability company structure hated by the communists, has been reduced to.

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In its search for a vision for the future, the cooperative has found a new avenue for diversification: manufacturing biryani, beloved to the coastal malabar region. Valson points to the van waiting outside to transport packets of biryani to restaurants and other patrons. The ageing cooperative is executing a market pivot, more typical of teething venture-capital-funded startups, in the hope that the malabari's unending love affair with biryani will fuel the economic demand it desperately needs.

In the late 1970s and 1980s, Dinesh Beedi Coop Society had a work-force of 42,000, forming an economic backbone that sustained numerous poor families in the northern Kerala districts of Kannur, Kasargode and Malappuram. This was home to many instances of communist uprising and street battles, but they also found a way to sustain some hope through such cooperatives.

The ageing cooperative is executing a market pivot, more typical of teething venture-capital-funded startups, in the hope that the malabari's unending love affair with biryani will fuel the economic demand it desperately needs.

Here, many trend-setting cooperative moments emerged with the backing of the Communists: Apart from beedi, the coffee cooperative which runs the Indian Coffee House chain across the country, had a strong presence in Malabar. With the success of this model, several banks and colleges emerged as well. The vision and the execution were heroic and daring--these enterprises proved that an alternative model of economic production that placed a premium on employee welfare, can be viable. Through them, the region began to see hope and emerged into a new future, confident and aspiring.

Today the colleges, the bank and the Indian Coffee House are soldiering on, albeit with their own problems and a perennial shortage of funds. But it is Dinesh Beedi that is looking totally out of tune with the times. The new generation has turned its back to beedis--some in favour of cigarettes and others due to greater awareness of its ill effects. A rise in religiosity, which some attribute to the influence of Wahhabi Islam, imported from Saudi Arabia, where many thousands of Malabar's young work, is also a factor. There is also the rising taxes on tobacco.

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A couple of decades ago, nobody could have fathomed that Dinesh Beedi would see such days.

Till the turn of the millennium, Dinesh was a byword for beedi in the state. The pungent smell of beedi smoke was ubiquitous in the Malabar air--it filled office rooms, hall ways in colleges, bus stops and most public places. It was with the pink Dinesh beedi packet tucked into the fold of the mundu or the lungi that thousands of men in Kerala and later across south India set out for their day's work, or trouble-making.

Dinesh beedi then stood for both a sense of deliberate under-achievement and also the spunk to take on any adversity. A Dinesh beedi always smouldered, dangling from the lips of the heroes and villains of Malayalam movies from that time. They flung it out menacingly after drawing a deep puff, before mouthing idealistic dialogue or pouncing on the enemy and beating him to pulp. Dinesh Beedi was everywhere.

A Dinesh beedi always smouldered, dangling from the lips of the heroes and villains of Malayalam movies from that time.

Today it is fighting a battle for survival. The age of the beedi is past us. Malabar's brave sons, materially better off, prefers the big packets of cigarettes, preferably bought from an airport duty-free store.

Outside the Dinesh Beedi Regional Centre's Pinarayi office, the walls are plastered with a long sequence of posters telling the life story of Pinarayi Vijayan. In one poster, he is seen by the side of the iconic Marxist leader A.K. Gopalan, (founder of the Dinesh Beedi Cooperative) as he spoke to a crowd without a mike just after the Emergency was imposed.

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As CPM's powerful state secretary, Vijayan is within touching distance of the big job as Kerala chief minister. The workers of the Dinesh Beedi cooperative will be hoping, even as they immerse themselves in the Biryani experiment, that he will not lose sight of the state of the old dreams that he and his leaders once nurtured.

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Ajay Verma / Reuters A Railway Police personnel peeps out from the door of a special passenger train at a railway station in Chandigarh, India, February 22, 2016. REUTERS/Ajay Verma

Siddhartha Debs profile of Narendra Modi for The New Republic has generated a predictable Twitter storm among predictable camps.

But one portion jumped out for me. It was not about Hindutva or Muslims or 2002, the usual trigger points for outrage.

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Deb writes:

Government officials seen as loyal to Modi, and under whose watch some of the worst killings took place, were rewarded with promotions and cushy posts. Those who provided evidence that raised questions about his role in the massacres found themselves subject to disciplinary measures, legal prosecution, threats, and scandals.

He then gives examples.

Police officers who gave the National Commission of Minorities a transcript of a public speech by Modi where he called camps for displaced Muslims baby-producing centres were summarily transferred. R Sreekumar, a senior police officer, who testified to a commission set up to investigate the train fire and massacres was denied promotion and charged with giving out classified information. Police officer Rahul Sharma who gave the commission records allegedly proving the killers had been in touch with politicians and police was himself charged with violating the Official Secrets Act.

Thats bad news about police. Heres some good news, the other side of the coin.

In West Bengal, the Assembly elections are being hailed as an example of the local police finally discovering their spine. Lack of spine is a degenerative disease. It does not happen overnight. Its a long and systematic process. While everyone else was congratulating the police and Election Commission for a largely free and fair phase of polling in Bengal, an irate Mamata Banerjee was slamming the newly energized police for going beyond the call of duty.

The police are safe as long as they toe the party line. Otherwise they are seen cowering beneath their desks as a mob led by angry Trinamool activists rampaged through Alipore station in Kolkata.

"The Trinamool government described itself as the government of 'Maa, Maati and Manush' (Mother, land and people). But neither Maa, Maati nor Manush is safe. No one is safe in Bengal. Even police are not safe here, said Home Minister Rajnath Singh earlier this year.

The police are safe as long as they toe the party line. Otherwise they are seen cowering beneath their desks as a mob led by angry Trinamool activists rampaged through Alipore station in Kolkata. When police officer Damayanti Sen cracked the Park Street rape case which the CM had dismissed as sajano ghatana (fabricated incident) she was promptly transferred. Calcutta commissioner Ranjit Pachnanda was also shunted out when he refused to dilute the FIR against a Trinamool leader implicated in the murder of a sub-inspector.

And politicians have no interest in having it any other way. Soumen Mitra, the Election Commission-appointed police commissioner in Kolkata apparently told his demoralized forces Do your job. I am there and they lived up to it. But Mitras pro-active stance drew a barb from the CM otherwise eager to bask in any successful Bengalis glory.

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If someone thinks that have received responsibility for 15 days, hell be awarded a golden crown, then hes mistaken, said Mamata at a rally signalling Mitras days are numbered. While ordinary citizens were happy the police rediscovered their spine, Mamata called them bhitoo or cowards bending to the orders of masters other than her. A brave police force apparently is one that reacts with promptness in hauling in a Jadavpur University professor who forwards a cartoon mocking the CM.

For the first time, Im able to move about with my head held high. Suddenly everybody has started respecting me and my uniform.

For the first time, Im able to move about with my head held high. Suddenly everybody has started respecting me and my uniform, a sub-inspector who joined the force in 2011 tells The Times of India. Until now, an officer-in-charges main duty seems to be to wait for orders from higher ups if anyone associated with a ruling party is to be charged with any crime.

The great tragedy of Indian politics is politicians do not care about this or only care about it in an opposition-ruled states. Thus Rajnath Singh will stand up for the police in West Bengal. But in reality all of them want the police at their beck and call and completely pliant. India Today reported in 2015 that since the Samajwadi Party came to power in 2012, there had been 622 incidents of goons attacking policemen in the state.

Minister Azam Khan admitted that such incidents were on the rise. Meanwhile the UP police showed great alacrity in responding to Khans missing buffalos and arresting a student for a Facebook post about him. In Delhi the police has been part of a political turf war between the Home Ministry and Arvind Kejriwals government with the police commissioner refusing to take orders from the CM in 2013.

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A Human Rights Watch report in 2009 said Many Indians avoid any contact with the police, believing not only that they will not receive assistance but that they risk demands for bribes, illegal detention, torture, or even death.

Its not like we are not aware of the problem. In 2006, the Supreme Court directed central and state governments to enact new police laws to reduce political interference. They gave seven binding directions. Alok Prasanna Kumar at the Vidhi Center for Legal Policy writes in EPW this year Ten years after these directions were issued by the Supreme Court, most state governments have not implemented them, seeking, on the other hand, modifications to these to suit their needs.

Our lack of faith in our own police force is one of the greatest failings of Indian society today. The assumption that police are puppets controlled by politicians corrodes the very notion of a civic society.

The governments of Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra argued in 2013 that the SC directives violated the Constitution interfering with their prerogative when it comes to police appointments and transfers even though that prerogative has been abused over and over again. The Congress-NCP government in Maharashtra was accused of punishing a traffic police sub-inspector by transferring him to the police training academy for asking an MLA to pay a fine for speeding.

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Our lack of faith in our own police force is one of the greatest failings of Indian society today. The assumption that police are puppets controlled by politicians corrodes the very notion of a civic society. But politicians, focused on short term gain, do not care at all and in fact, are more intent on tightening their control.

Deb concludes in his New Republic profile that in Gujarat, Modi engineered a hybrid vigilante-police state, one in which the righteous were punished and perpetrators rewarded.

What is truly chilling here is that this might be the real Gujarat success story that other leaders are happy to emulate, irrespective of party affiliation.

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PRAKASH SINGH via Getty Images Former Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh (L) and Congress Party President Sonia Gandhi (C) take part in the 'March for Democracy' protest against the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government led by the Bharatiya Janata Part's (BJP) Narendra Modi in New Delhi on May 6, 2016. Former Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh, Congress Party President Sonia Gandhi and party Vice-president Rahul Gandhi were briefly arrested at a police station and later released during a 'Save Democracy' protest march against the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). / AFP / PRAKASH SINGH (Photo credit should read PRAKASH SINGH/AFP/Getty Images)

NEW DELHI -- Congress Party President Sonia Gandhi, former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, and Congress Party Vice President Rahul Gandhi today courted arrest while leading senior leaders and thousands of workers from their party in a march from Jantar Mantar towards Parliament Street.

Congress Party staged its "Save Democracy" rally at a time when the BJP is accusing its leaders of accepting bribes during the purchase of 12 helicopters from the British-Italian company AgustaWestland for Rs. 3,600 crores.

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Last month, an Italian court ruled that bribes were paid to seal the deal.

In her speech targeting the "anti-democratic" Modi government, Sonia Gandhi raised several issues including the Jawaharlal Nehru University row, the drought, water shortages, while accusing the Centre of trying to destabilize its governments in Arunachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand.

"No matter what attempts made to scare us to defame us, we will not bow down," said she said.

Referring to the Jawaharlal Nehru University row, Gandhi said, "They are persecuting students. In the blink of an eye, they call someone a traitor."

Lawmakers from the BJP and the Congress Party continued to debate the AgustaWestland bribery case in Parliament today.

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The late Rajesh Pillais final feature film, Traffic, appears to be this weeks most interesting Hindi release. A remake of his 2011 Malayalam thriller of the same name, which was a great critical and commercial success, it uses the conventions of hyperlink cinema to present an intriguing premise: how can an ambulance carrying a heart that can save another life cover 160 km in about two and a half hours while driving through city traffic?

This premise is inspired by an incident that occurred in Chennai eight years ago, wherein the heart of a young man who died in a motorbike accident was successfully transported to another hospital for the treatment of a dying young girl in 11 minutes, over a traffic-jammed route that wouldve otherwise taken 45 minutes. In this film, the setting has been changed to Mumbai and Pune, the journey longer, and filled with more obstacles and drama.

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It is a solid set-up for a nail-biting thriller and this version of Traffic  which features dependable actors like Manoj Bajpayee, Prosenjit Chatterjee, and Parambrata Chatterjee (credited as 'Parambrata Chattopadhyay') in key roles  has all the ingredients to be a well-crafted, engaging film.

However, the ride isnt as smooth as it should be, never mind what theyre showing on screen. Right from the beginning, I found the films aesthetic  a frantically cut, pulsating thriller in the vein of several South Indian films and something thatd be directed by, say, a Neeraj Pandey in Hindi  quite jarring.

The young man at the heart of it all (completely unintended) is Rehan (TV actor Vishal Singh), a trainee journalist who is in a relationship with a young divorcee and nervous about conducting his first big interview. He is riding pillion, helmet-less, on a motorbike being driven by his best friend Rajeev (Amol Parashar) when a car jumps a red light and sends them flying. The shot of him landing on his head in slow-mo looked realistic enough to make me wince. The camera never shows us how the car manages to get away.

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Rehans parents, played by Sachin Khedekar and Kitu Gidwani, arrive at a Mumbai hospital and learn soon enough that their son cant survive. At the same time, at a hospital in Pune, Dev Kapoor and his wife (Divya Dutta) are told that their daughter, suffering from a heart defect, needs a transplant as soon as possible. The idea of the loss of one life giving an opportunity for another is a hefty one, and requires gradual build-up and well-rounded character development. Thats exactly what the recent Bengali film Shankhachil (also starring Prosenjit), which presents a similar race-against-time medical treatment scenario, does, taking enough care to set up characters so that we live with them and understand them.

But Traffic has many other characters to introduce and melodrama to deliver. Suresh Nairs screenplay is in as much of a tearing hurry as the police car depicted in the film, sacrificing depth and believability  of characters as well as situations  for pace. Recurring time-stamps make the film feel like a thrilling strategy game, which definitely commands your attention, but gives little insight into how characters are feeling.

For instance, we are told that Rajeev, who seemingly feels guilty for having survived the accident, is insistent on coming along on the journey. Under the directions of a senior traffic commissioner (Jimmy Sheirgill), routes are cleared out for the police vehicle that tainted constable Ramdas Godbole (Manoj Bajpayee) has volunteered to drive. However, soon, unforeseen circumstances force them off their route, and time is in short supply. When a moral dilemma confronts them, with the clock still ticking, the way the characters react  not their actual reactions, to be clear  to the situation is too pat and unrealistic. Rajeev, in particular, is more inert and presented in too black-and-white a manner to be digestible.

A film like this should have been about the moments and emotions the characters feel during the journey. But the screenplay chooses filmi twists  including one slightly twisted narrative whose resolution is unbelievably tame  over these.

Some scenes couldve done with more dialogue to convey internal conflicts; others revel in exposition and say too much. A set-piece towards the end is well-conceived and thrilling, but also depends on happenstance.

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The aforementioned seasoned actors turn in largely stiff, wooden performances that belie their actual abilities. Bajpayee underplays but puts on a questionable Marathi accent (for the second time this year after Aligarh) and, crippled by inadequate character development, delivers a nothing performance. Bengali star Prosenjit, who was absolutely marvelous in Shankhachil, is a shadow of his usual self here as a star named Dev Kapoor. Chattopadhyaya, playing the surgeon Dr Abel, another passenger on the journey, plays a badly-written-but-complex character in a bland sort of manner. Dutta is wasted in a weepy, TV-serial-ish role that gives her precious little to do. Sheirgill is annoyingly sincere and is responsible for what I thought was the film's most unintentionally hilarious moment: when he punches the air and says "The mission is on!" in the clunkiest, most half-hearted manner.

A film like this should have been about the moments and emotions the characters feel during the journey. But the screenplay chooses filmi twists  including one slightly twisted narrative whose resolution is unbelievably tame  over these. It isnt reason enough to hate the film, which is largely well-intentioned, but enough to sadly conclude that the film promises a great deal more than it delivers.

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May is ALS Awareness Month, an annual grassroots effort led by the ALS community and The ALS Association to raise awareness about amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and move people to action in advancing the search for effective treatments and a cure. The Tennessee Chapter requested a Proclamation by Governor Bill Haslam to recognize May as ALS Awareness Month in Tennessee. The request was approved!

ALS is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and the spinal cord. Eventually, people with ALS lose the ability to initiate and control muscle movement, which often leads to total paralysis and death within two to five years of diagnosis. For unknown reasons, veterans are twice as likely to develop ALS as the general population. There is no known cause or cure. Currently, there is only one drug approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) that modestly extends survival. Proactive, expert community-based and clinical care has proven to improve quality and extend life by three times as much.

As an important part of ALS Awareness Month, hundreds of people from across the U.S. will travel to Washington, D.C. from May 8-10 to urge lawmakers to advocate for more ALS research funding and to advance policies to help people living with the disease at The Associations National ALS Advocacy Day and Public Policy Conference.

Help us amplify our message during this years National ALS Advocacy Day and Public Policy Conference by encouraging family and friends to communicate and utilize Facebook & Twitter to share their ALS story with Members of Congress.

Since almost every member relies on social media to gauge issues that are important to their constituency, we have a great opportunity to leverage not only our time with representatives when we meet with them in their offices, but also their attention to social media, urging them to do more to help fund ALS research and priorities important to the entire ALS community.
DA plans new diversion program for first-time felony drug possession

Change in law that allows Community Correction officers to oversee cases of those placed on diversion makes program possible.
TransCard, a fintech company that specializes in providing innovative, cloud-based payment solutions to financial institutions and corporations throughout the U.S., announced the expansion of its leadership team, with the addition of John Haddock as its new chief financial officer, Ed Kelley as vice president of financial institutions and Ann Evans as vice president of corporate solutions.

The wealth of knowledge John, Ed and Ann bring to the team puts TransCard in a great position to grow and expand our footprint within the financial and corporate disbursement industries, said Greg Bloh, president of TransCard. Given their track records of success, this move to bring them on board will undoubtedly make an immediate impact on TransCard and help us more effectively deliver our innovative solutions.

As a key member of the executive team, Mr. Haddock will be responsible for overall financial management as well as evaluating merger and acquisition opportunities and overseeing investor relations and strategic planning. Prior to joining TransCard, he served as executive vice president and chief financial officer for First Security Group and FSG Bank. In his banking career, he gained extensive expertise in M&A, investor relations and regulatory compliance, including a $96 million capital raise in 2013 and the 2015 sale of First Security Group to Atlantic Capital Bancshares for $171 million.

As TransCards new vice president of financial institutions, Mr. Kelley will draw on 16 years of experience in the payments and banking industries to ensure market-leading service of the companys financial institution clients, helping them to alleviate regulatory, time and cost burdens and achieve positive outcomes for their shareholders and customers. He previously served as partner at a leading banking software provider.

Ms. Evans brings two decades of management, sales and business development experience to her role as vice president of corporate solutions, as well as in-depth knowledge of the financial services industry. She will be responsible for development of TransCards client base in the corporate and insurance sectors by effectively demonstrating how TransCards Paynuver platform can generate new revenue streams for corporations looking to move to an innovative, virtual payments system. Prior to joining TransCard, Evans served as vice president of business development at a payments technology company.
At the same time as announcing the general availability of SharePoint Server, Microsoft has announced a new app, SharePoint Mobile, that will be on iOS by the end of June and Android and Windows 10 Mobile later this year.

The new SharePoint mobile app is designed to allow users to access and stay connected to the content on their business intranet while on the go.

In this video SharePoint principal engineer, Andy Haon walks through the key elements of navigating sites and portals, and accessing important content, information and people in the new cloud-focused, mobile-first landscape.

Alongside the new apps, Microsoft is also providing access to SharePoint Online document libraries in OneDrive mobile apps, and the ability to copy from OneDrive to SharePoint. Microsoft is also planning to release a One Drive Universal Windows app by the end of June.

According to the SharePoint road map unveiled at yesterday's Future of SharePoint event in San Francisco, other file sharing and collaboration capabilities rolling out this quarter are:

Access to SharePoint Online document libraries and Office 365 Group files from the OneDrive mobile app.





Intelligent discovery of documents from both OneDrive and SharePoint.





Copy from OneDrive to SharePoint in the OneDrive web experience.

Microsoft Flow, a new tool for businesses to create automated workflows that connects services like Twitter, Slack, Google Drive, Dropbox, and Office 365, is going to be integrated into SharePoint by the end of the year, together with PowerApps.

The PowerApps service, which is designed to allow business users and business analysts to create custom native, mobile, and Web apps that can be shared simply across their organizations has recently gone from limited review to public preview. Examples of apps users can create using PowerApps include simple cost estimators, budget trackers, and site-inspection reports.

For developers, Microsoft has announced the SharePoint Framework, a page and part model that enables fully supported client-side development, with easy integration to the Microsoft Graph and support for open source tooling. It will be released to Office 365 customers in First Release this summer. Web parts built with the framework can be added to modern pages and experiences and to existing pages.

According to Jeff Teper, Microsoft's corporate vice president for the OneDrive and SharePoint teams, writing on the Office Blogs:

The SharePoint Framework is an evolutionary step in SharePoint extensibility that delivers a new client-side rendering framework leveraging open source JavaScript technologies. The client-side development framework will allow developers to use modern JavaScript and web templating frameworks across cloud and on-premises SharePoint.

The SharePoint Framework embraces the tools, frameworks and open source initiatives that developers rely on today, and it extends the scope of solutions that can be built on SharePoint, in the cloud and on-premises.

Looking further ahead, the third quarter of 2016 is expected to bring:

The Files API on Microsoft Graph

SharePoint Webhooks (preview)

Client-side web parts for existing pages (preview)

Followed by the end of 2016 with:
Weeks after UnitedHealthcare announced it would no longer be offering Obamacare policies in the majority of state markets, another of the countrys leading insurers has taken the first steps in following suit.Officials with Humana Inc. said Thursday that the insurer plans to exit markets in at least two states to stem financial losses. As of 2017, the insurer wont sell Affordable Care Act plans in Alabama and Virginia.Elsewhere, Humana will pull off-exchange, ACA-compliant plans from Tennessee and withdraw some of its offerings in Colorado.The announcement comes one day after Humana said it would evaluate each state and decide whether to continue selling plans through the ACA or directly to consumers. The move is expected to save the company money, following another disappointing financial performance  first-quarter earnings for Humana fell 46%, dogged by both the exchange plans and its direct-to-customer Medicare Advantage plans.Over the next few weeks, we will continue working with state and federal regulatory agencies to finalize these decisions prior to the open-enrollment period this fall, said Humana spokesperson Tom Noland.The insurer currently sells plans in 15 states, and has about 554,300 individual members from the exchange.A potentially larger exit would not affect as many markets as UnitedHealths withdrawal will, but it could further limit options for consumers in more rural parts of the country  particularly in the South, where it overlaps with UnitedHealth in Alabama, Georgia and Tennessee.The withdrawal is not a surprise for some industry observers; thanks to new ACA enrollees who have medical costs 22% higher than the average American, insurers lost money in the individual markets of 41 states during 2014. With those figures, even more companies may begin pulling out.Anthem, another leading insurer, has already said it continues to have serious reservations about the state of the market and has reserved the right to pull out if necessary in the future.That signals uncertainty ahead, some say.If you thought it was going to get fixed in a year or two, youd stick around, said Robert Laszewski, who runs Health Policy and Strategy Associates. The implications of that are that the program just isnt working in its current form.But not all of the countrys Big 5 health insurance companies feel this way. Last week, Anthem Chief Executive Officer Joseph Swedish reaffirmed the companys commitment to the ACA markets, saying Anthem had more customers on the exchanges than it had anticipated this year.More than 184,000 new members signed up for coverage under Anthem through the first quarter, and executives of the company say Anthem will at the very least break even, and possibly hit small profit margins of 3% to 5%.Swedish said the companys pending acquisition of Cigna Corp. will put it in an even better position to remain competitive and perhaps even expand into more markets.
In a world where no one is safe from death, dismemberment, or destitution, who would be willing to extend life insurance coverage to some of the most powerful members of the ruling class?Thats the question Allison Longdon sought to answer when she considered the costs of insuring some of the characters in HBOs popular series, Game of Thrones.Longdon, head of product at life insurance provider Staysure, assessed some of the risks and calculated the costs in a light-hearted look at underwriting the May issue of Wired.Here are some of her findings:"Daenerys would need to take out some cover for herself in case one of her beloved dragons turns on her, as well as psychiatric cover if she succumbs to the Targaryen madness," says Longdon.The 21-year old's biggest risks were noted as dragons and regicide. The rightful Queen of the Andals has proven her resilience and was estimated to cost $55 a month to insure."I would recommend that Lannister should go for a private health-insurance policy with full inpatient cover for injuries and a worldwide travel option while he's in Meereen," says Longdon.Tyrion's lifestyle of vice was seen as a greater risk, and Longdon estimated it would cost $88 a month to cover him. The exiled heir to Lannisport faces great danger in a foreign land  and health complications related to his frequenting of brothels."Cersei should look for private health insurance with access to the exclusive hospitals in King's Landing," Longdon suggests. "She should add Jaime on to it, though they'll need reminding he can't be listed as her spouse."Cersei's greatest risk comes from possible assassination attempts. While she has survived this long, it would be inadvisable to sell her life insurance for her family members.Longdons other findings are available to subscribers of the Wired magazine.
Several insurance trade groups that oppose the Department of Labors finalized fiduciary rule have increased their political spending in order to better communicate their grievances against the legislation to lawmakers.According to records filed with the Federal Election Commission as of March 31, the American Council of Life Insurers (ACLI) has donated $734,000 to Congress towards funding its campaigns. During the 2014 cycle, the group spent a total of $663,600.The ACLI is still considering whether to file a suit against the new rule. The group is also involved in efforts to pass legislation that halts the rule and replaces it with a fiduciary standard written by lawmakers.Another trade group, the Insured Retirement Institute (IRI) hasto datespent $131,700 in the 2016 cycle. Last cycle, the group spent $139,300.Obviously, the DOL fiduciary rule represents a significant change for the industry, and we dedicated more resources as we worked to communicate our concerns to policymakers about the proposed rule's impact on consumers, stated IRI spokesman Andrew Simonelli.Simonelli noted that the IRI has also collaborated with legislators on retirement security policies, providing the group with a greater campaign presence.Other trade groups have noticeably increased their spending as well. The National Association of Insurance and Financial Advisors paid $1.4 million during the 2016 cycle. The Investment Company Institute provided $1.6 million, the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association pledged $529,250, and the Financial Services Institute has spent $161,500 for campaigns.The Investment Adviser Association has spent $30,000 so far in the 2016 cycle, when it had spent $34,000 in total last year. The Financial Planning Association has spent $42,000 for this year.Spending for lobbying in Congress has followed similar trends, reported investmentnews.com. Groups representing the insurance and brokerage industries have paid the most funding, according to filings with the U.S. House Clerk's office.
Morning Briefing: Sales down at international insurer amid life unit changes
On joining RSG, Pecci said, Our business approach will be customer centric, dedicated to offering tailor made solutions and superior added value services. I am excited to join the RSGUM family because they represent the future of the specialty lines space with an authentic focus on providing unparalleled solutions to the customer. Further, I am delighted to be joined by Ray who is a world class marine executive with unique relationships in the marketplace and a leading yacht underwriter.

Safe Waters will initially have locations in Florida and New Jersey with Latin American operations expected soon.

Pecci most recently was the AIG marine regional executive for the Americas. He began his career in insurance with AIG in 1993, working in a variety of marine managerial positions. He holds an LLM in maritime law from the London Metropolitan University / Lloyds Maritime Academy (UK), a post graduate diploma in marine surveying (DipMarSur) from the University of Greenwich (UK) and a major in maritime transportation & deck officer License from the World Maritime University (Argentine branch). Before beginning his career in insurance, Pecci served at sea in the Merchant Marine for over a decade ending his oceangoing career as Master Mariner.

Ryan Specialty Group, LLC is a global holding company which includes a wholesale brokerage, highly-specialized underwriting companies and specialty services designed specifically for agents, brokers and insurers.
Williams Senior Awarded Journalism Fellowship

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass.  Williams College senior Elizabeth Jacobsen has been awarded the Jeffrey Owen Jones 66 Fellowship in Journalism. The $10,000 grant is intended to assist a graduating senior in starting a career in journalism, whether in traditional or new media.



The Jones Fellowship was established in 2009 to honor Jones, who passed away from lung cancer in 2007. Jones was an Emmy-award winning writer, producer, and film professor at Rochester Institute of Technology. While a student at Williams, Jones was editor of the school newspaper, The Williams Record.



A fellowship committee gathers each spring to consider project proposals. The committee aims to select a student who displays the qualities for which Jones was admired: integrity, talent, independence of mind, wit, strength of character, skepticism of authority, and concern for others. This years committee members were Peter Richardson 66; John Kleiner, professor of English; and Mary Dettloff, director of media relations.



Jacobsen, a double major in English and biology from Saint Paul, Minn., plans to pursue a masters in science writing at Johns Hopkins University next fall. She will use the fellowship to travel to science-writing conferences for networking and educational purposes, also to pursue stories for her two science blogs, The Adventures of a Tree Climber and I Love You, Trees, and start a new blog exploring the interface between science and religion.



Jacobsens interest in becoming a science journalist started during a study abroad semester in New Zealand in the fall of 2014. While doing biology research, she kept a blog about her experiences.



I found myself being drawn more and more toward writing about the scientific side of the natural world around me, she said. I wanted to share each discovery with people who could not see it for themselves. It was a path that felt right, a path I would later discover had a name: science journalism.


Mayor Linda Tyer, state Rep. Tricia Farley-Bouvier and Reid Middle School students 'plant' a ceremonial tree on Friday. Four other trees were planted on the lawn in front of the school. Students from the21st Century program and a crew hired by DCR wait for the event to begin. Urban Forester Mathew Cahill, right, gets everyone in position. The students helped plant another tree after tossing in the ceremonial dirt. Mollie Freilicher, left, Cahill, Farley-Bouvier, Tyer and Bob O'Connor pose with the students. PreviousNext

A Tree Grows in Pittsfield: 2,399 More to Go

PITTSFIELD, Mass.  Reid Middle School students pitched in with state and local officials on Friday to set the first of some 2,400 trees that will be planted in targeted neighborhoods in the city as part of the state's "Greening the Gateway Cities" program.



The ornamental lilac tree will grow to be about 20 feet high, along with four other trees planted on the lawn in front of the school through the Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs.



"We can all appreciate how the beauty of trees enhances our neighborhoods and makes our environment a special place to experience," said Mayor Linda Tyer. "But trees are so much more than that. In fact, Greening of the Gateway Cities is all about using trees to provide energy efficiency, such as saving on heating and cooling costs across an entire neighborhood, because trees lower wind speeds and shade buildings."



Thousands of 6- to 8-foot tall trees will be planted on private and public grounds over the next three years.



The program identified two neighborhoods as "environmental justice areas" in need of trees: Morningside and West Side. The targeted area also encompasses a part of the downtown. (The city's website will have a map available delineating the area.)



Residents in those neighborhoods who would like a tree can leave a message at 617-626-1515 and the local forester will contact them to set up an appointment to discuss plantings. Urban Forester Mathew Cahill said the state is procuring some 40 different species to ensure the best fit for each location.



The project grew out of efforts to bring shade trees back to Chelsea and in Worcester, where the Asian long-horned beetle had forced the destruction of thousands of urban trees.



Bob O'Connor, the state's director of land and forest conservation, said the urban greening project had been successful in planting 1,200 trees in Chelsea despite its "very small yards and a lot of pavement."



The loss of trees in Worcester has had a significant effect on energy use, he said. Studies of electricity use for one neighborhood of about 750 homes prior to the trees being taken down showed the summer electricity rate jumped 37 percent after they were gone. Another study in Minnesota showed similar results during the winter with the loss of trees as wind breaks.
Dr. Kris Barton had a keen ability to see a peoples strengths and the positive influence they were making on Dalton States campus.

He never hesitated to encourage and compliment that strength or positive influence. It left those around him feeling appreciated and noticed.

Its how Dr. Barton led in his role as chair of the Department of Communication. And its how he taught in the classroom.

Dr. Barton died unexpectedly this week, leaving the Roadrunner community in mourning just days before graduation. He was 39. He leaves behind a wife, Gina, and son, Wyatt, in addition to hundreds of students, faculty, and staff who admired and respected him.

Kris was one of those extraordinary individuals who simply radiated excellence, said Dr. Mary Nielsen, dean of the School of Liberal Arts. He took the time to make the faculty and staff feel appreciated and valued. He publicly recognized the contributions and success of others. As one faculty member mentioned recently, Kris had a tendency to catch one doing something right and then bring it to that persons attention. Thoughtful, good natured, patient, and approachable, he was everything one could ask for in an administrator. He led by example, had a delightful and sometimes quirky sense of humor, and was a productive scholar and outstanding teacher. His workand successwith student research was inspiring. Our loss is simply too great.

Dr. Barton pushed students to do their best, gave them opportunities to publish and present their research at conferences, and served as a mentor.

Meagan Standridge, who graduates Saturday with a degree in interdisciplinary studies with a concentration in communication, has a paper being published in an academic journal thanks to Dr. Barton.

Dr. Barton was a tremendous influence on me, said Ms. Standridge. I want to be like him one day  teach and find the strengths in each student and foster that. When he handed back one of my papers I was excited to see the red marks because I knew it was beneficial constructive criticism that would help me grow.

In 2013, he received the Dalton State Foundations Award for Faculty Excellence in Scholarship and Professional Development. He was known for his research on mass medias influence on society, but also his love for TV and movies. He had published and edited many books and articles about different aspects of the medias influence on people.

Jerry Drye, associate professor of communication and friend of Dr. Bartons, had worked with him for the last seven years. Three of those years was with Dr. Barton serving as communication chair.

If you were building the perfect prototype in a lab, it would be Kris Barton, Mr. Drye said. He was a wonderful teacher in the classroom, a great supervisor, a good friend, a good family man. He figured out how to have a good balance of work, family, and self-care that so many of us strive for. He had such a passion for his work. He grew up in a time when people watched a lot of television. He went from being a consumer of it to being a real analyst of it. He wanted to know, what is it about TV that draws us in? Why do we want to watch these people put on a show for us? He immersed himself in it. He loved science fiction and trivia. He cared. He cared deeply. He wasnt just going through the motions of life. He continued to grow and learned a lot.

At the time of his death, Dr. Barton was working with six students he selected on a trivia book to commemorate the Colleges 50th anniversary. Dr. Barton also organized a trivia fundraiser for the Department of Communication.

Dr. Barton sought out Jose Gonzales, who graduates this semester with a degree in psychology, and asked him to consider taking the course and helping with the book.

Most of the people in that class were communication people and had taken several courses with him, Mr. Gonzales said. I had only had one. I dont know how he saw that I would be an asset to the book. None of us in the class except Dr. Barton had any experience publishing. He led us through the process and taught us a lot as we went. He was quick to give us encouragement and make it a team effort. I think the focus of the book will shift and will be dedicated to him now. Well have to add something more about Dr. Barton. He hadnt meant for this to be his last project. He mentioned wanting to work on more similar to this.

Dr. Margaret Venable, president of Dalton State, quickly recognized Dr. Barton as a leader among the faculty when she came to campus.

He was well respected by students and his peers as an excellent teacher, scholar, department chair, and friend, she said. Most recently I asked him to serve on the search committee to identify our next vice president for Academic Affairs. I chose him thoughtfully because I wanted someone who had the respect of his colleagues and would devote the care and attention needed for such work. He did not disappoint me. The loss of our friend Kris has left a tremendous void at Dalton State.

Dr. Barton left a void not only at the College, but in the lives of so many he had touched through the years, Mr. Drye said.

If there was a Kris Barton Fan Club, Id be the president, he said. He was a man of great respect, admiration, and adoration.

Dr. Barton wrote in an essay published in the Dalton State magazine in May 2013. It was also the theme of a keynote address given at the Georgia Communication Associations 82nd Annual Convention and of his Last Lecture.

Like most people, Ive contemplated my time on this earth and when Ill be taken from it, and in looking back, it seems my concerns about death stem from issues of the unknown, but not the unknown of what lies beyond this mortal coil and existential questions on the existence of God, he wrote. What Ive always been worried about is missing out on the media landmarks of our time. My concerns selfishly stemmed not from what happens in the next part of my journey, but what I will miss out on in this one.

The essay points to his desire to see the Star Wars saga end, the Harry Potter books conclude, and the final season of Arrested Development. He lived long enough to see two of those come to an end.

Though he recognized too much media was detrimental, he argued there is much to learn from the media as well, such as Talent is luck. The important thing in life is courage. Its a quote from Woody Allens character Isaac in Manhattan.

We should all just enjoy the media for what they are and what they do, Dr. Barton wrote. There are always going to be inherent dangers with anything thats such an ingrained part of our lives, but failing to look past their faults makes us blind to all the wonderful things they can offer.

He also pointed toward Tracey Morgans character, Tracey Jordan, on the NBC show 30 Rock, who said Live every week like its Shark Week!

Its exactly how Dr. Barton lived.








Williamstown Seeking Third Half-Day Section to Preschool

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass.  Williamstown Elementary School officials plan to add a third half-day section to its Side-By-Side preschool program, a move they hope will ease some of the concerns that have riled the community in recent weeks.

Superintendent Douglas Dias said on Friday that the decision to add the third section was driven by a desire to accommodate all families who had applied for the program.

"It came out of us doing a lottery at the beginning of the week, and we saw a handful of kids didn't make it in the lottery," Dias said. "We said, 'What can we do to make this happen?' "

In announcing the expansion of the program for the 2016-17 school year, Dias, Principal Joelle Brookner, Director of Pupil Personnel Services Kim Grady and School Committee Chairman Dan Caplinger co-signed a three-page news release that gives the most detailed explanation to date of why the district decided to eliminate a full-day preschool option.

That decision set off a firestorm on social media, where school officials have been accused of being incompetent and "crazy" to consider changing the preschool.

Friday's news release explains that the program is and always has been designed to serve children with special needs. The target ratio for classrooms is one special needs student for each "typically developing" peer.

But as the number of special needs dropped, that ratio ballooned to as high as 1-to-4.5.

The school officials also pointed out that the existing Side-By-Side model has led to inequity of educational opportunity because enrollment for general education students has been used to fund the program (special needs children are enrolled free of charge).

"In an effort to mitigate this reliance on reserve funds, the school admission of typically-developing peers in the full-day program assumed, from a budgeting perspective, that most could afford to pay full tuition," the news release reads. "Such a practice is counter to the intent of an inclusive program."

In a telephone interview on Friday, Dias emphasized again the need for equal opportunity in the preschool program. He also said the state had raised concerns about the disproportionality of the Side-By-Side classroom.

To address the financial equity issue, Dias hopes to have an admission policy in place in which children whose families qualify for half-priced school lunches get half-priced tuition and children whose families qualify for free school lunches have their tuition waived.

"That lines up with the mission of the school and equity," he said.

And it costs money. Dias said the district on Friday afternoon was still trying to figure out just how much.

On Monday, district officials will meet with the Williamstown Finance Committee in a 7:30 meeting at Town Hall. Although the School Committee will not have a chance to consider and vote on a revised budget request until its May 11 meeting, Dias said he consulted with the Fin Comm chair and decided it was important to tell the town body that a new request was coming.

"The town has been very supportive of the school in the past, and I don't want to give the impression that we are not appreciative of what they've already given," Dias said. "We're giving them a heads up at their meeting and then going to the School Committee."

Dias said Friday that the move to add a third half-day section could be perceived as a concession to critics. And while he did not agree with that perception, he did say he hopes the move will "de-escalate the anger so we can focus on the [school's] other 430 kids."

"There will be people who say we still want a full-day program," Dias said. "I can respect that, but the needs of the students with special needs comes first.  If we go to three sections, with a ratio of 1-to-2.5 in all of the sections, I know that is better than we currently have ratio-wise, and we'd be able to include everyone who applied.

"I think it's a recognition that we have an opportunity to include all of the kids, and if we can remove the impediments for those kids who applied and cannot afford it, I support that."

The full letter released to the school community:

May 6, 2016



To the Williamstown Community:



Much has been said about the Side-by-Side program in the past few months. Let us state unequivocally: Side-by-Side is not closing. There has never been any discussion to that effect.



The purpose of this document is to clarify the current status of the program, to respond to concerns that have been raised, and to introduce a plan that is in line with the core mission of the school: "To inspire in all students a love of learning and challenge them to grow in heart and mind." This statement embodies a core value of equity and access for all students.



The community is fortunate that outside of the Williamstown Elementary School's Side-by-Side program, we have three high-quality preschool options in place, including the Children's Center at Williams, Pine Cobble, and the Williamstown Community Preschool. In fact, Williamstown voted in 2011 to allocate $250,000 in Community Preservation Act funds to support the role played by the Community Preschool. We fully endorse the town's commitment to early education.



Unlike the other preschools in town, Side-by-Side is a program designed for students with special needs. In consultation with the state's Department of Elementary and Secondary Education and Early Education division, we've continued to review the structure of our Side-by-Side program. In doing so, our program will be registered with the State Quality Rating and Improvement System (QRIS), which will enable access to future grant opportunities.



Given the number of students currently requiring special education services and placement, and their level of need, it made sense to maintain the Side-by-Side structure with two sections, one in the morning, and one in the afternoon. This model continues to give students, when required through their Individual Educational Program (IEP), the ability to access a cohesive full-day program, including rest period and lunch, with typically developing peers. By doing so, the program would truly be "side-by- side" in compliance with the State's guidelines. Close to half of the students in each class would require special education services, and the other "side" would consist of students without special needs. This differs from the current and past years, in which the percentage of students with special needs was significantly lower than for those without.



What is public pre-K in Massachusetts?



School districts in Massachusetts are required to provide services and/or programs in accordance with federal and state mandates for special education. Pre-K in Massachusetts is designed to meet the needs of special education students ages 3-4. The decisions regarding programming and/or related services are determined through the IEP process, where parents, educators, and specialists determine how to meet the specific learning needs of the child.



What is Side-by-Side?



Side-by-Side is Williamstown Elementary School's Pre-K program. Side-by-Side was established as an inclusive program in 1989 to serve children with disabilities alongside typically developing peers, or "side by side." Ideally a target ratio of students with special needs to typically developing peers would be 1:1. The program expanded to include a full-day model as the needs of the community deepened with the enrollment of a cohort of children that were medically fragile and had intensive special needs.



What are the current demographics of Side-by-Side?



Since the launch of the Side-by-Side program, the population of students with intensive special needs has declined dramatically. As a result, the number of typically-developing peers in the program has grown, resulting in a disproportionate number of typically developing students populating the program. Specifically, the current enrollment in both the full and half-day sections consists of three or fewer students with disabilities, alongside eight to nine typically developing peers. This mix of students has expanded the ratios away from a target of 1:1 to 1:4.5 and 1:3 respectively for each section. (The variation from 4.5 to 3 is due to students attending the full-day classroom for less than a full day.)



How is the current pre-K Special Education need determined?



Side-by-Side has not been financially sustainable for some time. The practice has been to subsidize the program with school choice reserves, which is not viable in the long-term as this reserve fund has been spent down on other needs as well. In an effort to mitigate this reliance on reserve funds, the school admission of typically-developing peers in the full-day program assumed, from a budgeting perspective, that most could afford to pay full tuition. Such a practice is counter to the intent of an inclusive program.

There has never been any doubt that the special education needs of the community have been fully met by our side-by-side classes. However, the lack of equitable access for those in the community who do not need special education services and cannot afford the tuition charged by our public school has been a major area of concern.



How do we achieve both equity and access?



Based on further review and hearing members of the community's desire to benefit from WES's Side-by-Side program, we are proposing a third half-day section be added to the two sections already in place. This third section would allow us to accommodate all students who have submitted applications for next year, while retaining the desired Side-by-Side ratio of between 1:1 to 1:2, depending on final enrollments.



A third section also allows for ready access should any students with disabilities move to the community during the school year as there will be more open slots. This will only be feasible in providing equity and access if the town can provide us the necessary funding for this additional section while ensuring we can accept students regardless of their ability to pay. At the same time, we will need funds to ensure the program is accessible to all who are enrolled through the availability of the mid-day bus.



We will work with the town to make sure that the financial challenges of applicants to Side-by-Side can be consistently accommodated. In doing so, we will be creating a needs-based structure to allow fair and equitable access for parents wishing to enroll their children in the program.



How will we address the need going forward?



The number of sections offered each year will be determined by the number of students with special needs being placed in the program. Again, we will be moving to a target ratio in the range of 1:2 to 1:1. We will continue to refine the enrollment process for typically-developing peers to ensure that financial ability to pay tuition is not a consideration for any applicant.



Summary



By requesting that a third section, in the morning, be added to the current budget proposal, in addition to restoration of the midday bus and a sliding scale for those that have applied for our program, we will be able to accept all students who have submitted applications for 2016-2017 to our Side-by-Side program. This is in keeping with our mission statement and the educational needs of the community, and is a solid footprint as we look towards the future.



Sincerely,



Dr. Douglas Dias, Superintendent

Dan Caplinger, School Committee Chair

Kimberley Grady, Director of Pupil Personnel Services

Joelle Brookner, Principal

This story was updated to emphasize that the school officials' decision to add a third half-day section is subject to School Committee consideration at its May 11 meeting. The School Committee will have to vote on this version of the budget.
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
UChicago's Annual Scav Hunt Is Back To Up Chicago's Whimsy Levels

By Rachel Cromidas in Arts & Entertainment on May 5, 2016 8:44PM



Flickr user Avi Schwab

The world's wackiest and most open-to-interpretation scavenger hunt is back for another year on the University of Chicago's Hyde Park campus this week, to kick the city's Relative Whimsy Level through the roof (more on that in a minute).

the annual Scav Hunt pits teams of students, alumni and other Chicagoans against each other to solve a 284-plus-item list that typically calls for more engineering knowledge than scavenging skills. This year's massive, 18-page list was released at midnight, and the teams have until Sunday morning to present their items to the hunt's judges.

As in past years, the list contains a mix of unusual demands, self-referential references to ongoing Scav Hunt activities and a one-day Scav Olympics that this year includes such challenges as beard-waxing and corn-on-the-cob chomping. There are also a few uniquely Chicago items, which should perplex the hell out of anyone who happens to be in the right place at the Scav time this year. A select few, including items that call for teams to besiege Chicago-area bars, skateparks, and the Kenwood diner Valois with their nonesense:

111. To the tune and in the linguistic style of the original Schnitzelbank, conduct a Chicago-area bar in singing about the topic of your choice. The non-Animaniacs version with a poster accompaniment is preferred. 113. Using two (2) fake giant fingers and one (1) real normal-sized skateboard, pull at least three (3) classic Tech DeckTM tricks at one (1) of Chicagos many free skateparks. Please note that legs dressed to look like fingers will earn you zero (0) points. 126. Talk about a two-way twister! Lets share the love with our municipal fambam. Hit up as many of Chicagos sister cities as you can, and be sure to commemorate each visit by performing the Sister, Sister theme song in front of a local landmark. [3 points per official international sister city included] 247. After rumblings of widespread dissatisfaction in Chicagos Relative Whimsy Level (RWL) were reported, the city government decided to transform Chicagos Loop into its very own loop-de-loop! Do your part in improving our citys RWL by bringing a scale model of Wabash Streetincluding a functional loop-de-looping train line of your choiceto Judgment. [37 points for a functional loop-de-loop,

a photo-accurate train, and more than five identifiable Wabash Street buildings] 24. Your music video for the Quiet Riot classic Come On Feel Valois. Must feature big hair and Valois being rocked to its very core by the power of your metal. [This one goes to 11 points]

Other list items with a high RWL (in our opinions) include calls for a butt-plug "lovingly" carved to look like Theodore Roosevelt, the recreation of favorite Animorphs book covers, and a life-size Neko Atsume yard where human players dressed as cats can take pictures and distribute mementos. Teams that are reading: We are so down to join you.
New Scholarships Will Help Queer Women Learn To Code, In Chicago And Beyond

By Rachel Cromidas in News on May 6, 2016 6:57PM



(Photo by Matt Cardy/Getty Images)

Queer women in tech and queer women aspiring to be in tech, take note: A new scholarship for LGBTQ-identified women to attend coding bootcamps and pursue careers in tech is now open to applicants.

The scholarship is run by the San Francisco-based Lesbians Who Tech, and meant to help people who are trying to switch careers into the seemingly ever-growing tech sector. Anyone in the U.S. can apply, and the scholarships could be used at some of Chicago's own coding schools. One in particular, Dev Bootcamp, is partnering with Lesbians Who Tech to donate $100,000 to the scholarship fund, named after lesbian tech pioneer Edie Windsor.

Coding bootcamps are expensive; a typical session costs $9,000+ for weeks of immersive, day-long trainings. The scholarship fund will cover half the tuition for at least 10 women to attend a coding school of their choice, and Dev Bootcamp's contribution will fund half the tuition costs for 10 women to attend one of their schools in Chicago, SF, New York, San Diego, Seattle, Austin or D.C. Dev Bootcamp has been a part of Chicago's coding scene since 2012, teaching groups of students with a range of ages and backgrounds how to code over 19-week sessions. In Chicago, the tuition is $12,700.

Dev Bootcamp is one of a handful of local immersive, bootcamp-style coding schools that are not necessarily affiliated with a traditional college or university. They include General Assembly, which teaches coding for web development or user experience design, and Mobile Makers Academy, which teachers mobile app development.

The number of Chicago scholarship recipients will all depend on the quality of the applicants, Dev Bootcamp spokesman Chris Nishimura told Chicagoist. And because there are no geographic restrictions on the application process, winners who don't live in Chicago could also use the scholarship to fund a session in Chicago.
National Inventors Month: You Can Make It If You Try!

Washington, DC - Depending on whom you ask, May (or August or April, it would be great if someone were to standardize this  were going with May) is National Inventors Month. Lots of people have dreams of being a famous inventor. Even Ive had ideas for inventions before.

For instance, back in the 1990s, after finally finding my keys in the refrigerator more than once and spending more time looking for the remote than I care to admit, I thought it would be great if I could build a little alarm that you could attach to such easily misplaced items that would beep incessantly until you were able to find them.

Owing partly to the technological limitations of the day, but mostly to my own lack of skill (and a good deal of old-fashioned laziness), that idea never became reality.

I understand that some genius somewhere finally did build one, though. Congratulations!

Anyway, while I still have the occasional crackpot idea, I dont think theres any danger of you seeing me on any of the many inventor-themed reality shows on television today  provided you can find your remote.

NIST is literally littered with people who, most unlike me, are actually inventive. In celebration of National Inventors Month and Public Service Recognition Week, which also happens to be in May, Id like to introduce you to Jacob Rabinow (1910-1999), one of the most creative and prolific inventors ever to work for the United States government.

Rabinow was born in Kharkov, Ukraine, in 1910. During the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, he and his parents fled first to Siberia and then to China in 1919. When his father died in 1921, the family immigrated to New York.

After earning a masters degree in electrical engineering from the City College of New York, Rabinow joined NIST as a junior mechanical engineer. At NIST, his inventive genius found a nurturing and supportive environment.

Rabinow played critical roles in the development of NIST wartime inventions such as the non-rotating proximity fuze and the Bat guided missile. He received his first patent in 1947 for a camera able to record the flight path of airplanes. By the end of his life he held 230 U.S. patents and 70 foreign patents.

Among these were:

mechanisms for the automatic regulation of clocks and watches;

an automatic letter-sorting machine for the U.S. Post Office;

the magnetic particle clutch, which is used in automobiles, airplanes, servo-mechanisms, and many other machines;

the worlds first magnetic disc memory;

the best-match principle in optical and magnetic character reading machines; and

the straight-line phonograph.

In addition to his technical work, Rabinow delivered hundreds of talks on technologies and inventions. He was a Regents Lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley, a frequent guest on radio and television programs, and an author of many papers. His full-length book, Inventing for Fun and Profit, was published in 1989 by San Francisco Press.

The Jacob Rabinow Applied Research Award, an annual internal NIST award first presented in 1975, is granted to employees for outstanding achievements in the practical application of the results of scientific engineering research. NIST chemical engineer Richard Gates, who wrote Mondays blog, was the 2015 recipient of this prestigious award for his work with the U.S. Mint.

And, as I said, NIST is brimming with other inventive people as well, just look at all the technologies we have available for licensing.

Since that first great innovator discovered the secret was to bang the rocks together, we have, as a species, been defined by our inventiveness. In fact, being without much in the way of speed or claws or teeth, our inventiveness has often been cited as one of the key reasons were still around. Maybe thats why so many people want to be inventors  they want to be part of that legacy. That drive to innovate is what let us master the rock and many other things.

So, to all you inventors out there, it doesnt matter if you succeed or fail, keep dreaming, keep doing, and know that you are keeping company with some of the greatest minds in history. We cant all be Jacob Rabinow or Richard Gates, but youll never invent anything unless you keep trying.

Happy National Inventors Month!
U.S.-Tunisia Joint Economic Commission

Washington, DC - Under Secretary of State for Economic Growth, Energy, and the Environment Catherine A. Novelli will lead the U.S. delegation to the first meeting of the U.S.-Tunisia Joint Economic Commission on Friday, May 6, in Washington, D.C. The Tunisian Government delegation will be led by Tunisian Minister of Vocational Training and Employment Zied Ladhari.

In November 2015, the United States and Tunisia announced they would convene this inaugural meeting to supplement the U.S.-Tunisian Strategic Dialogue. Tomorrows discussions will focus on ways to support initiatives that advance Tunisias economic reform agenda, competitiveness, and overall growth through both policy discussion and formulation of assistance programming. The United States already enjoys an important economic relationship with Tunisia, and the Joint Economic Commission will facilitate further growth.
Man Shot On Lake Shore Drive Drove Himself To The Hospital

By Mae Rice in News on May 6, 2016 2:22PM



Photo via JJ on Flickr

A man driving on Lake Shore Drive near the Gold Coast early Friday morning was shot in the arm by an assailant in another vehicle.

The victim, 22, was headed north at 12:18 a.m. when a car pulled up and fired at him in the 1100 block of North Lake Shore Drive, police said.

The victim suffered a graze wound to the arm and drove himself to the hospital, according to police, where he was listed in good condition.

No one is in custody, and the investigation is ongoing.


Department of State Announces New Partner Institutions for Diplomacy Lab

Washington, DC - The U.S. Department of State announced today that it has welcomed eight new partner institutions to the Diplomacy Lab. The University of Pittsburgh, Georgia Institute of Technology, Georgetown University, Tufts University, Indiana University Bloomington, Gettysburg College, Stockton University, and Wilbur Wright CollegeDiplomacy Labs first community college partnerwill join the 20 existing university partners for the programs fall 2016 semester.

Launched by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry in 2013, Diplomacy Lab is a public-private partnership that enables the State Department to course-source research and innovation related to foreign policy by harnessing the efforts of students and faculty at universities across the country. Diplomacy Lab is designed to address two priorities: engaging the American people in the work of diplomacy and broadening the State Departments research base in response to a proliferation of complex global challenges. There are now a total of 28 partner universities participating in Diplomacy Lab.

Teams of students participating in Diplomacy Lab explore real-world challenges identified by the Department and work under the guidance of faculty members who are authorities in their fields. This initiative allows students to contribute directly to the policymaking process while helping the State Department tap into an underutilized reservoir of intellectual capital.
Final Results of the Presidential Elections in the Republic of Chad

Washington, DC - The United States notes the announcement by Chads Constitutional Council that President Deby Itno won re-election for a fifth term, and we applaud the Chadian people for their strong commitment to democracy as evidenced by the historic voter turnout. Their continued peaceful involvement in the political process is vital to the development of democratic institutions in the Republic of Chad. We also congratulate the political parties for their active and full participation during this election cycle and look forward to their continued involvement leading up to next years legislative elections.

The United States welcomes the technical improvements to the electoral process this year, including the introduction of biometric voter identification cards, and encourages the government to correct remaining deficiencies. We further call on the government to demonstrate its commitment to democracy by opening more civic and political space, which will bring greater credibility to future elections.

We are concerned about reports of abuse and kidnapping targeting opposition supporters and urge the Chadian Government to fully investigate and account for these allegations. Those found responsible for any misconduct or abuses should be brought to justice through a credible, transparent process in accordance with the laws of the Republic of Chad.
Notice Asking Women Advocates Not to 'Arrange' Hair in Open Court in Pune Sparks Outrage
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Warm weather, tree blossoms, allergies (to pollen and tourists)  all harbingers of spring in New York. But nowadays something else tells us that winters hibernation is over  the rising on an island in the East River of a giant white marquee that for a few days only becomes the joyous point of pilgrimage for creators and disciples of contemporary art from all around the world.

As it opened its doors, or flaps, on Thursday for its fifth iteration on the American East Coast, Frieze New York, could almost claim now to have become a New York ritual. Preview day on Wednesday produced a familiar hum of anticipation and muttered criticism as the invitation-only guests roaming the 250,000 square feet of space  it is the biggest contiguous tent in the world  competed for attention with the art being shown by 200 international galleries.

We like it because it is good mainly for the conversation, for exchange, offered Adele, who with her partner of indeterminate gender, Eva, wandered the tent for the second year running, both with shaved heads and in identical, eye-catching garb down to the red handbags, their names embroidered on them. It wasnt clear whether she meant conversation as in humans networking  of which there is plenty  or less literally as in between pieces and installations.

A handmade woolen carpet, titled 'Osho' (2015) by Faig Ahmed

Although who can say what the Frieze donkey might have to say either to the crystal chandelier hanging over his head or to the four round glass sculptures weighing 1,700 pounds each by Roni Horn a few stands away. If he had asked how much he would have to pay to take one of them home he probably wouldnt have got an answer. This reporter tried and failed. Even at Frieze, which considers itself the more playful of art fairs, a whiff of snoot and elitism lingers.

The donkey  more normally engaged, according to his carer, appearing on episodes of The Knick and in productions of La Boheme at the Met Opera  was on hand as the moody star of a restaging of Maurizio Cattelans first ever show in the United States, Warning! Enter at Your Own Risk. Do Not Touch, Do Not Feed, No Smoking, No Photographs, No Dogs, Thank You, which was originally held at Daniel Newburg Gallery in SoHo in 1994 before it closed.

On the other hand he might have trotted down to the Gagosian Gallery stand and to the goat whose less fortunate fate was to have been encased in a glass tank by  of course  Damien Hirst. Speaking of wildlife, white dogs with mechanically wagging tails pop up at different spots at the fair this year, some with bodies sliced in half by high definition television screens.

Just as when the fair lands in Londons Regent's Park every autumn  with both Frieze London and Frieze Masters  there are mixed motives for exhibitors and visitors in New York. Its about showing and buying first, of course. Thus preview day opened with representatives of no fewer than 130 museums arriving by boat and limousine for breakfast and a first run though the booths. Among those sampling croissants, Cecily Brown and Erwin Wurm on Wednesday was Sir Nicholas Serota, director of Londons Tate galleries and museums. The well-heeled gaggle with him were members of the Tate's US advisory committee which spends the year scouring the fifty states for possible new acquistions. For them, Frieze New York is an agreeable annual works' outing.

If some among the visitors go to Randalls Island to be seen by their peers, the same is true of many of the galleries and the artists they represent. It is about selling but for many of them it is also about being seen on the international stage, sometimes for the first time, offered a spokeswoman for the fair, noting that a prize awarded for the best stand on preview day had been shared between the Instituto de Vision at the fair for the first time from Bogota, Colombia, and the more established Cologne-based dealer, Galerie Gisela Capitain, showing work by Martin Kippenberger and Gillian Carnegie.

Big Polvo Color Wheel set (2015) by Adriana Varejao

For potential buyers, meanwhile, whether they are from the worlds big museums or representing private collectors, a few hours at Frieze, means that they really feel that they are at the coal face, of whats going on in the world of contemporary art, the spokeswoman suggested. That is how an art fair works. Frieze, which grew out of the London magazine of the same name, has graduated to become one of the worlds top-tier fairs with Art Basel arguably the only competitor commanding similar respect and attention.

Frieze New York offers a fantastic cultural experience  from presentations by the best galleries from around the world, to newly commissioned works and innovative public programs, to the natural light that sinuses our unique bespoke space, offered Victoria Siddall, the Frieze director.

She and her colleagues are doubtless aware that the sheer size and density of Frieze  exhibitors have come this year from 31 countries  can be overwhelming, especially to the more casual visitor. Thus this year, there has been an attempt to create a few destination areas within the general sprawl, for example its Frame section which brings together galleries that are eight years old or younger. There's also Spotlight, populated by solo artist presentations mostly from emerging countries, and supervised by Clara Kim, just appointed by Sir Nicholas to be a curator at the Tate Modern.

If it still all becomes too much, there are, as usual, pop-up versions of some of New Yorks edgier eateries, like Cosme and Morgensterns Finest Ice Cream from Manhattans lower east side. And then there is the donkey, wisely silent amidst all the chattering of the fair.
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Move over Brie Larson, Jacob Tremblay has a new Hollywood mum.

The 9-year-old actor has been cast opposite Julia Roberts in the film adaptation of moving mother and son story Wonder by author RJ Palacio.

Tremblay will play facially-deformed fifth-grader Auggie Pullman, who finally enters mainstream schooling after a lonely life being taught at home by his mum.

Recommended Read more Jacob Tremblay makes May the 4th bid for a role in Star Wars 9

Palacio wanted to write the 2012 bestseller to raise awareness among children of how people with deformities are treated in society. She was inspired after visiting an ice-cream shop with her three-year-old son and worrying how he might react to a child with a facial deformity in the queue.

Palacio told NPR that Auggie really doesnt dwell on his physical features. What he looks like, in a sense, is very incidental to him, she said. What he dwells on is the reaction that people have to him because all he wants is to be an ordinary kid. But he really cant because hell always have people staring at him and reacting to him in a certain way.

Youre really rooting for the kids who stand up for Auggie . Ultimately, it's a feel-good book because it is a meditation on kindness and the impact of kindness.

Stephen Chbosky, known for The Perks of Being a Wallflower, is directing from a script by Steve Conrad.
Meet The Chicago Satanist Looking For A Satanist Roommate On Craigslist

By Mae Rice in News on May 6, 2016 2:00PM



Photo via liz west on Flickr

Update, June 17: More than a month later, our Satanist is still seeking a roommate. The latest listing says if you sent an inquiry previously and it went unanswered, "EITHER YOU WEREN'T CLEAR ON YOUR LOVE OF SATAN or... I just missed it."

---

The Ad

On April 28, an ad for a cheap room in a four-bedroom Ukrainian Village apartment went up on Craigslist. The available room was listed as 100 square feet, the monthly rent as $400 plus utilities, and the number one roommate requirement as "You must love Satan." Two men, ages 25 and 34, already live in the apartment, according to the ad, and they are "actively involved in non-theistic Satanism."

Clocking in at 800+ words, the post lists nine roommate requirements, ten desired roommate attributes and some motley information about the apartment itself. On first read, the most unusual lines stand out.

Exhibit A, listed under "Requirements":"You must be willing to actively raise a pig. This means if home letting it go shit outside, making sure it's fed. It's important we raise our pig-beast the right way; with Satanic values."

Exhibit B, listed under "Desired": "Okay with the occasional BDSM act in the house or at least hearing it happen behind closed doors. Perhaps you are good with a videocamera?"

Exhibit C, listed under "Desired": "Fellow Transhumanists that have RFID's implanted in their hands or would like one."

On second read, though, it's the most normal lines that stand out, the lines we have all seen in Craigslist ads. Both roommates are allergic to cats, so "NO CATS!!!!!" Neither roommate want drugs in the apartment. "I have a grown up job and can't go in smelling like whatever you might introduce," the post reads.

The ad as a whole felt half fake, half real. We reached out to the person who posted it.

The Man Behind The Ad

The poster, who told Chicagoist he was 34, spoke with us via email and phone. He's "loosely affiliated" with the Satanic Temple (registered but not card-carrying, because cards cost extra), he said. He's also affiliated with the Church of Satan (which cost him a $200 registration fee, though he insisted we note he holds no official position within the church). "Although the [Church of Satan] denounces all other satanic organizations, I see purpose for both," he explained via text.

This man goes by Happy Endings, he said, declining to give his real name. However, his Facebook at least indicates connections with Satanism and Chicago.

As of Tuesday, Happy Endings said, he'd only received two "decent" responses to his ad. One he thought "was my friend [Zack] pulling my leg as his last name was really similar." Happy Endings said he sent this person a cartoon of his friend Zack giving a blow job, captioned "Zack Blows." Otherwise he "just tried making small talk" with that applicant. A woman also responded to Happy Endings' ad by sending him her FetLife profile, he said, but he hadn't had a chance to look at it.

Happy Endings seconded his Craigslist post's sentiment that finding the "right fit" was a higher priority than filling the room immediately. "Were [sic] really in no hurry and more focused on decorating," he wrote in an email. That decorating, he clarified by phone, includes hanging up red LED lights so the apartment glows red, and spray-painting Satanic imagery on a shower curtain.

It also involves getting that pig mentioned in the Craigslist ad. Happy Endings doesn't yet own a pet pig, but he plans to get one. The problem, he said, is that most pigs he's found are pot-bellied pigs, and he wants an American Guinea hoga rarer breed that's black, as befits a Satanist.

Once Happy Endings gets his pig, he hopes to ride around with the pig in the back of an open-bed truck. He'll keep a grill in the truckbed, too, to freak out vegansand anyone else who notices him, for that matter. He doesn't actually want to harm the pig or any animals (his Craigslist post specifies that "we love critters" and prohibits animal sacrifice), but he deplores vegans. "You must not be vegan; no thanks," his Craigslist post says. "Your irrational logic isn't something we want to deal with." Funnily enough, this comes from a guy who said he doesn't eat red meat. He was even pescatarian for a while.

In any event: If you're looking for a place to live and you love Satan (mandatory), this room is still open. and Ukrainian Village is supposedly the hottest neighborhood in the country. You're in luck.

How Real Is This?

Happy Endings' story is impossible to completely verify. He declined to provide photos of his apartment, ostensibly because he and his roommate are still decorating; he declined to give his real name; he also declined to forward the responses he allegedly got to his ad. We never met this man face to face or saw his apartment firsthand. Anything is possible.

Still, we think the odds are that we spoke with a real-life Craigslist Satanist. Happy Endings knew a lot of verifiable facts off the top of his head on the phonefacts about the pricing of Satanic Temple membership cards, and the age of the Church of Satan. (It's 50 this year!) Asked about where Satanists hang out in Chicago, he mentioned Exit, a real bar where Satanists credibly could hang out. He also explaining, slightly less credibly, that Satanists are "everywhere." Still, on the whole, we believe him.

Happy Endings has no authority to speak on behalf of the Satanic Temple or the Church of Satan. We have put this disclaimer here per his request.
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In a Polish cafe in New Cross near their rehearsal studio, INHEAVENs bassist and vocalist Chloe Little is explaining the DIY zines she puts together, as we pore over our favourite details from the autobiographies of Patti Smith, Kim Gordon and Viv Albertine.

The bands first song came out a year ago but before then INHEAVEN spent a year penning material, with the aim that theyd build up enough to tour with. During this time Little began collecting images and photos, and curating them into short films, which her bandmate James Taylor would then watch and use as songwriting inspiration.

(Press image (Press image)

Little says she moved to London to study for a film degree, but I was more focused on being in a band and getting a gig at the Lexington she laughs. When we started the band I made a 15-second video, the first Id ever made, and thats how the song "Regeneration" (released on Julian Casablancas Cult Records) came around.

"I was really interested in the editing aspect of film because I felt it was closely linked with music. At the start Id put little songs I wrote to a visual to distract from the fact that they were maybe incomplete but now weve got really good songs," she grins. They're planning a tour in September where she wants to bring the visuals to the live performance.

The band all had full-time jobs until recently. But a gritty determination and genuine talent means theyre growing a loyal and engaged fanbase and can now devote themselves to their music. They released two EPs, "Regeneration" and "Baby's Alright", last year to critical acclaim, and will be playing a number of festivals this summer.

While its not unusual for bands to release an EP or two before going for a full album, the format in general is growing in popularity as even established bands drift toward it as a way to push out new music to satisfy hungry fans in between albums. "Especially fans online," Little nods. "They consume so much and want so much all the time. If it were up to me Id spend six months on each one getting the visuals really nice and everything, but they want it now.

"The original idea before we started being a proper band was to put out a song a week to cater to that demand, but then James and I just said lets not blow it all, lets really think about how were really going to present it to people."

"We've definitely hit our stride," she adds. "We're hoping to get an album out early next year, and I'm doing a video next week for "Meet Somebody", a "Baby's Alright" B-side that's only available on vinyl  through Flying Vinyl, a record company that works with new artists to send out 7" releases to subscribers each month, as well as giving copies to the band's themselves so they can give them out to fans. It's brilliant."

We head back to the studio to meet the rest of the band and, wonderfully of them, they put on a mini-gig so I get a preview of their summer shows.

Taylor is clearly a superb frontman with a clarion-call voice. The band are tight and play songs that feel anthemic without being oppressively "big", while Littles lilting vocals are barely heard beneath Taylors but lift them perfectly: "Bitter Town", a personal favourite, comes after Babys Alright with its sunny Americana hooks, laced with Sonic Youth-esque fuzz.

Apparently its the first time theyve played to one person, and likely the last. INHEAVEN are set to soon play a swathe of gigs and festivals, which you can find out more about here. You'll be glad you did.
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Despite the Met Office trying to tell us it would snow on the hottest day of the year so far (an unfortunate but gloriously British error), summer is fast-approaching which means its time, if you havent already, to decide which music festivals youre heading out to this year.

Outside of the biguns - Glastonbury, Reading & Leeds, Isle of Wight, etc. - there are a few other UK festivals that require less hard cash and definitely less queuing in line for the toilet.

The Great Escape

Where: Brighton

When: 19 - 21 May

How much: Weekend pass - 65.50

Over 400 up and coming artists will rock up to Brighton for this years TGE, so many that all the official website can do is list them in alphabetical order.

As well as appearances from Skepta, Oh Wonder, Band Of Skulls and Craig Davids TS5 set; acts you shouldnt miss include Khruangbin, Lady Leshurr, Milk & Bone, Rationale, Prose, Otherkin, Royce Wood Junior, Will Joseph Cook and Catholic Action.

Sound City

Flaming Lips on the Atlantic Stage, Liverpool Sound City 2015 (Michelle Roberts)

Where: Liverpool

When: 28 - 29 May

How much: 2nd release 2-day pass - 82.50 including booking fee or 46.20 for a day ticket

Sound City returns to Bramley-Moore Dock for 2016 with a thrilling lineup of fresh new acts.

Bigger names include The Coral, Sleaford Mods, Pete Doherty, a DJ set from Hot Chip, The Dandy Warhols and Band of Skulls, while just some of the up and coming acts appearing to watch out for are: Holy Esque, InHeaven, Eliza and the Bear, Sky Valley Mistress, Neon Waltz, She Drew The Gun, and Kagoule.

The venue itself is set a do-able walk or short taxi ride out of the city centre and just five minutes from the rather grand Atlantic Hotel. There were a few issues with sound bleeding around the cluster of smaller tents and stages last year but not enough to distract from the performances.

Field Day

Where: London

When: 11 - 12 June

How much: Weekend pass - 94 or 54.50/54.50 for Saturday or Sunday day tickets

Field Day has been knocking it out of Victoria Park for a good few years, and this time round is no different. After Patti Smith performed Horses in full for 2015 youd think theyd struggle to come up with fresh ideas but nope.

This years headliners are James Blake and PJ Harvey, plus performances from John Grant, Mystery Jets, Beach House, Fat White Family, Roots Manuva, Parquet Courts, Skepta and The Thurston Moore Group. Newer acts you shouldnt miss, to name but a few, are Little Simz, Fakear, DIIV, Blossoms and Loyle Carner.

Music festivals guide 2016 Show all 20 1 /20 Music festivals guide 2016 Music festivals guide 2016 Horizon Where: Bansko Ski Resort, Bulgaria When: 12-17 March Price: From 175 Line Up: Ame, Goldie, Nina Kraviz, John Talabot, Lady Leshurr, Craig Charles Music festivals guide 2016 Live At Leeds Where: Leeds, UK When: 30 April Price: 32.50 Line Up: Jess Glynne, Circa Waves, Mystery Jets, Band of Skulls, We Are Scientists Music festivals guide 2016 Primavera Sound Where: Barcelona, Spain When: 1-5 June Price: 175 Line Up: Radiohead, LCD Soundsystem, Sigur Ros, PJ Harvey, Tame Impala, Beach House, Suede, The Last Shadow Puppets Primavera Music festivals guide 2016 Best Kept Secret Where: Hilvarenbeek, The Netherlands When: 17-19 June Price: 147.50 Line Up: Beck, Editors, Two Door Cinema Club, Beach House, Bloc Party, Caribou, Half Moon Run Best Kept Secret Festival Music festivals guide 2016 Glastonbury Where: Worthy Farm, Somerset When: 22-26 June Price: 220 Line Up: Coldplay, Muse, Jeff Lynnes ELO, PJ Harvey, Jess Glynne (TBC) Music festivals guide 2016 Roskilde Where: Copenhagen, Denmark When: 25 June-2 July Price: 2,020 DKK Line Up: LCD Soundsystem, New Order, PJ Harvey, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Foals, Tame Impala, Savages, Skepta, Tenacious D Simon Frsig Christensen / Roskilde Festival Music festivals guide 2016 Hideout Festival Where: Zrce Beach, Croatia When: 26-30 June Price: From 152.90 Line Up: The Martinez Brothers, Joris Voorn, Waze & Odyssey Hideout Festival Music festivals guide 2016 Bilbao BBK Where: Bilbao, Spain When: 7-9 July Price: From 69 Line Up: Arcade Fire, Pixies, Tame Impala, Foals, New Order, Hot Chip, Father John Misty, Years & Years, Wolf Alice Music festivals guide 2016 Open'er Where: Gdynia, Poland When: 29 July-2 August Price: From 130 Line Up: Bastille, Florence + the Machine, Foals, LCD Soundsystem, Red Hot Chili Peppers, The 1975, The Last Shadow Puppets, Wiz Khalifa Open'er Festival Music festivals guide 2016 Electric Love Where: Plainfeld, Austria When: 7-9 July Price: 119 Line Up: Alesso, Zedd, Tiesto, Chase & Status, Steve Aoki, Knife Party Music festivals guide 2016 Melt! Where: Ferropolis, Germany When: 15-17 July Price: From 136 Line Up: Two Door Cinema Club, Disclosure, Jamie xx, Sleaford Mods, Skepta, Jamie Woon Music festivals guide 2016 Sziget Where: Budapest, Hungary When: 10-17 August Price: From 215 Line Up: Bastille, Bloc Party, M83, Sigur Ros, Bring Me the Horizon Music festivals guide 2016 Flow Where: Helsinki, Finland When: 12-14 August Price: 165 Line Up: Sia, New Order, The Last Shadow Puppets, Jamie xx, M83, Chvrches, Four Tet, Stormzy, Daughter, The Kills Flow Festival / Jussi Hellsten Music festivals guide 2016 Rock En Seine Where: Paris, France When: 26-28 August Price: From 119 Line Up: TBC Music festivals guide 2016 Oasis Where: Marrakech, Morocco When: 16-18 September Price: From 110 Line Up: Bicep, Derrick May, Tale of Us, Dixon, Dusky, Hunee Music festivals guide 2016 Latitude Where: Henham Park, Suffolk When: 14-17 July Price: 205.50 Line Up: The Maccabees, The National, New Order, John Grant, Beirut, Father John Misty, Chvrches, Grimes Music festivals guide 2016 Bestival Where: Robin Hill, Isle of Wight When: 8-11 September Price: 190 Line Up: The Cure, Major Lazer, Hot Chip, Fatboy Slim, Craig David, Years & Years, Wolf Alice, Tourist, Katy B Music festivals guide 2016 Isle of Wight Where: Newport, Isle of Wight When: 9-12 June Price: From 186 Line Up: Queen + Adam Lambert, Stereophonics, Faithless, Iggy Pop, Adam Ant, Buzzcocks, Sigma, Jess Glynne Music festivals guide 2016 Citadel Where: Victoria Park, London When: 17 July Price: From 54 Line Up: Sigur Ros, Caribou, Lianne La Havas, Nathaniel Rateliff & the Night Sweats Music festivals guide 2016 End of the Road Where: Larmer Tree Gardens When: 2-4 September Price: 195 Line Up: Joanna Newsom, The Shins, Animal Collective, Bat for Lashes, Teenage Fanclub, Devendra Banhart, Savages, Cat's Eyes Sonny Malhotra

Set in the expansive grounds of Victoria Park, Hackney, Field Day has decent transport links (bus routes are a mess late in the evening), an impressive offering for food and drink provided youre not unwilling to fork out 7 for a (very good) burger or a bowl of mac n cheese. Last year the weather was absolutely stunning - fingers crossed for more of the same this June.

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Parklife

Parklife festival (Parklife festival/Twitter/Gary Brown)

Where: Manchester

When: 11 - 12 June

How much: Weekend bundle inc. travel pass - 119 or 54 for a day ticket

Parklife caused something of a stir this year thanks to a headline announcement for Chemical Brothers, not to mention crowdpleasers like Years & Years, Stomzy, De La Soul and Circa Waves.

In between the bigger names make sure you check out Ady Suleiman, Jamie Woon, Venum Sound, WSTRN, a DJ set from Floating Points, and Black Coffee.

2000trees

Cleft on the main stage at 2000Trees Festival 2015 (Joe Singh)

Where: Cotswolds

When: 7 - 9 July

How much: Full adult weekend - 95 + booking fee

Some stellar rock acts are making their way to this years festival set in the rolling Cotswold hills, and then some. With a teeny capacity of just 5,000 people, expect a friendly atmosphere plus some great food, drink and an easy path to the front of the crowd.

Twin Atlantic, Refused and Mallory Knox are headlining - also check out The King Blues, Lonely The Brave, Brother & Bones, Demob Happy, Heck, Kagoule and Arcane Roots.

Festival goers enjoy the atmosphere at Green Man Festival (Gary Wolstenholme/Redferns via Getty Images)

Where: Wales

When: 18-21 August

How much: Full adult pass - 175 + booking fee

With a reliably excellent lineup each year and plenty to explore away from the music, Green Mans 2016 event in the Brecon Beacons looks as promising as ever.

Main acts include James Blake, Belle & Sebastian, Wild Beasts, Warpaint, Jagwar Ma, Cate Le Bon, Floating Points, Ezra Furman, Unknown Mortal Orchestra and Julia Holter. Theres also a horde of up and comers in the shape of Kevin Morby, Mothers, Meilyr Jones, Baba Naga and I See Rivers.

Festival No.6

(Festival No.6 (Festival No.6)

Where: Wales

When: 1 - 4 September

How much: Adult weekend camping Thursday arrival - 195 or 185 for a Friday arrival

A bespoke banquet of music, arts and culture - The No.6 lineup, along with the absolutely stunning surroundings of Portmeirion, will definitely make your mouth water.

Main stage appearances arrive in the form of Noel Gallaghers High Flying Birds, Hot Chip and Bastille plus Super Furry Animals, Echo & The Bunnymen, Lucy Rose, and Broken Social Scene, plus a special David Bowie tribute and a DJ set from the irrepressible Craig Charles.

In between that musical smorgasbord you should check out JP Cooper, This Is The Kit, Welsh boys Yysgul Sul, Leon Vynehall, Rationale and Teen Canteen.
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As the world's biggest social network, Facebook already holds masses of data about hundreds of millions of people across the world - but privacy advocates are growing increasingly worried about what the company does with this information.

A group of American Facebook users are now taking the social network to task, suing it over allegations that it harvests information about individual users' faces without their consent.

In a California court, the social media giant lost the first round of a court battle against a group of users who sued the company for allegedly storing their biometric data unlawfully.

Facebook tried to get the case thrown out, but District Judge James Donato denied the request. It now looks set to continue..

Biometric data is information about your physical characteristics, and its commonly used by tech companies as a form of identification. For example, many smartphones use biometrics to verify users' identities through fingerprint scanners.

As Reuters reports, the plaintiffs in the latest Facebook case allege the company broke the law by collecting and storing this type of data from photographs of their faces, building up a database which was used to identify them across the site.

They claim that Facebook didn't obtain their proper consent to store facial data, which is used to identify users in pictures so they can be 'tagged' more easily by their friends.

Gadget and tech news: In pictures Show all 25 1 /25 Gadget and tech news: In pictures Gadget and tech news: In pictures Gun-toting humanoid robot sent into space Russia has launched a humanoid robot into space on a rocket bound for the International Space Station (ISS). The robot Fedor will spend 10 days aboard the ISS practising skills such as using tools to fix issues onboard. Russia's deputy prime minister Dmitry Rogozin has previously shared videos of Fedor handling and shooting guns at a firing range with deadly accuracy. Dmitry Rogozin/Twitter Gadget and tech news: In pictures Google turns 21 Google celebrates its 21st birthday on September 27. The The search engine was founded in September 1998 by two PhD students, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, in their dormitories at Californias Stanford University. Page and Brin chose the name google as it recalled the mathematic term 'googol', meaning 10 raised to the power of 100 Google Gadget and tech news: In pictures Hexa drone lifts off Chief engineer of LIFT aircraft Balazs Kerulo demonstrates the company's "Hexa" personal drone craft in Lago Vista, Texas on June 3 2019 Reuters Gadget and tech news: In pictures Project Scarlett to succeed Xbox One Microsoft announced Project Scarlett, the successor to the Xbox One, at E3 2019. The company said that the new console will be 4 times as powerful as the Xbox One and is slated for a release date of Christmas 2020 Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures First new iPod in four years Apple has announced the new iPod Touch, the first new iPod in four years. The device will have the option of adding more storage, up to 256GB Apple Gadget and tech news: In pictures Folding phone may flop Samsung will cancel orders of its Galaxy Fold phone at the end of May if the phone is not then ready for sale. The $2000 folding phone has been found to break easily with review copies being recalled after backlash PA Gadget and tech news: In pictures Charging mat non-starter Apple has cancelled its AirPower wireless charging mat, which was slated as a way to charge numerous apple products at once AFP/Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures "Super league" India shoots down satellite India has claimed status as part of a "super league" of nations after shooting down a live satellite in a test of new missile technology EPA Gadget and tech news: In pictures 5G incoming 5G wireless internet is expected to launch in 2019, with the potential to reach speeds of 50mb/s Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures Uber halts driverless testing after death Uber has halted testing of driverless vehicles after a woman was killed by one of their cars in Tempe, Arizona. March 19 2018 Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures A humanoid robot gestures during a demo at a stall in the Indian Machine Tools Expo, IMTEX/Tooltech 2017 held in Bangalore Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures A humanoid robot gestures during a demo at a stall in the Indian Machine Tools Expo, IMTEX/Tooltech 2017 held in Bangalore Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures Engineers test a four-metre-tall humanoid manned robot dubbed Method-2 in a lab of the Hankook Mirae Technology in Gunpo, south of Seoul, South Korea Jung Yeon-Je/AFP/Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures Engineers test a four-metre-tall humanoid manned robot dubbed Method-2 in a lab of the Hankook Mirae Technology in Gunpo, south of Seoul, South Korea Jung Yeon-Je/AFP/Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures The giant human-like robot bears a striking resemblance to the military robots starring in the movie 'Avatar' and is claimed as a world first by its creators from a South Korean robotic company Jung Yeon-Je/AFP/Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures Engineers test a four-metre-tall humanoid manned robot dubbed Method-2 in a lab of the Hankook Mirae Technology in Gunpo, south of Seoul, South Korea Jung Yeon-Je/AFP/Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures Waseda University's saxophonist robot WAS-5, developed by professor Atsuo Takanishi Rex Gadget and tech news: In pictures Waseda University's saxophonist robot WAS-5, developed by professor Atsuo Takanishi and Kaptain Rock playing one string light saber guitar perform jam session Rex Gadget and tech news: In pictures A test line of a new energy suspension railway resembling the giant panda is seen in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China Reuters Gadget and tech news: In pictures A test line of a new energy suspension railway, resembling a giant panda, is seen in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China Reuters Gadget and tech news: In pictures A concept car by Trumpchi from GAC Group is shown at the International Automobile Exhibition in Guangzhou, China Rex Gadget and tech news: In pictures A Mirai fuel cell vehicle by Toyota is displayed at the International Automobile Exhibition in Guangzhou, China Reuters Gadget and tech news: In pictures A visitor tries a Nissan VR experience at the International Automobile Exhibition in Guangzhou, China Reuters Gadget and tech news: In pictures A man looks at an exhibit entitled 'Mimus' a giant industrial robot which has been reprogrammed to interact with humans during a photocall at the new Design Museum in South Kensington, London Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures A new Israeli Da-Vinci unmanned aerial vehicle manufactured by Elbit Systems is displayed during the 4th International conference on Home Land Security and Cyber in the Israeli coastal city of Tel Aviv Getty

The 'tag suggestions' feature is available in the US, but was axed in the EU in 2012 after privacy regulators raised objections.

The plaintiffs claim that Facebook's data storage practices break Illinois' 2008 Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA), which requires companies to get consent from customers before collecting and keeping this data.

Facebook argued for the case to be thrown out, claiming the plaintiffs had agreed for their legal dealings with the company to be governed by California law when they signed up to Facebook's user agreement. It also claimed BIPA does not apply to the tag suggestions feature.

However, the court ruled that Illinois law still applies, and said the BIPA claim can go ahead.

Writing in his ruling, Donato said: The Court accepts as true plaintiffs' allegations that Facebook's face recognition technology involves a scan of face geometry that was done without plaintiffs' consent.

As USA Today reports, Shawn Williams, one of the lawyers representing the plaintiffs, said they were pleased with the court's well-reasoned decision.

The Independent has contacted Facebook for comment.
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Toby Young has said that he didn't realise how difficult it was going to be to run a school ahead of his departure as CEO of a flagship Free School.

The Tory columnist and broadcaster said he had been arrogant to presume schools could improve just by having high expectations and admitted he regrets criticising teachers, state schools and local education authorities.

He set up the West London Free School trust in 2011 as part of Michael Goves controversial project which allowed unqualified leaders to set out schools outside of local authority.

Mr Young stepped down as CEO of the school, which was opened by Boris Johnson five years ago.

In an interview with Schools Week, he said: There are lots of things I regret. I was very critical of Englands public education system under the last Labour government, and I hadnt grasped how difficult it is to do better, and to bring about system-wide improvement.

 English State schools to become academies by 2022

He added: "There is no question that it was arrogant of me to believe that just having high expectations and believing in the benefits of a knowledge-based education for all, that those things alone would be enough to create successful schools.

The writer, who authored How to Lose Friends and Alienate People, said he plans to spend more time as a journalist but will stay on as a director for the trust in a voluntary role.

Recommended Read more Tories abandon forced academies plan in major embarrassment

He added: As someone coming into education from the outside, the bits you see of other schools are only the tip of the iceberg. You think, well, I could do better than that, as you are pointing to the tip of the iceberg, without realising how much more there is to it.

Since opening the secondary school with 120 children, the West London Free Schools Trust has expanded across three additional schools and a sixth form.

Mr Young added in a blog post that he remains an advocate for free schools and he was standing down as CEO because the trust is expanding and it needed a more "seasoned chief executive" in charge
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A new Han Solo has reportedly been found in the form of American actor Alden Ehrenreich.

After much speculation, with Deadline reporting he had been chosen for the role several weeks ago, Variety has cited sources close to the film confirming he will play the part.

The as-yet untitled Star Wars spin-off project will centre around Han Solo. It is currently thought to be in pre-production and the first photo from the set was posted on Thursday by co-director Christopher Miller. The prequel is expected to hit cinemas in 2018.

But who is Ehrenreich, the man who will be filling the shoes of Harrison Ford?

Discovery

As far as discovery stories go, this one is pretty impressive. A 14-year-old Ehrenreich was stumbled upon by Steven Spielberg at a Bat Mitzvah where he acted in a comedy video to mark his friend's celebration at age 14.

Recommended Read more Alden Ehrenreich to play Han Solo in prequel film

Discussing the video with Rolling Stone, he said: Its a piece of sh*t. I mean there wasnt a script: We would go and just film whatever made us laugh.

This discovery led him to television roles in programmes like CSI before auditioning for Francis Ford Coppolas Tetro in 2007.

Every lightsaber in Star Wars history (films) Show all 12 1 /12 Every lightsaber in Star Wars history (films) Every lightsaber in Star Wars history (films) General Grievous The general played a big part in the Clone Wars, collecting dead Jedi's lightsaber's along the way and using them to do a crazy spin-attack. Unfortunately, they all get cut off by Obi-Wan just a little too quickly. Every lightsaber in Star Wars history (films) Qui-Gon Jinn Obi-Wan's master really didn't have too much time on screen, but his battles with Darth Maul will go down as some of the best in Star Wars history. Every lightsaber in Star Wars history (films) The Emperor It was a little weird seeing The Emperor, at this stage Palpatine, getting out a lightsaber and battling Jedi. Much better when just using Force lightning! Every lightsaber in Star Wars history (films) Anakin Skywalker/Luke Skywalker/Finn Now, this one really does have some history, travelling down the generations of Skywalkers, and briefly using by Finn in The Force Awakens. Of course, **Spoiler** someone else also uses the saber after it calls to them, could they be a Skywalker to? Every lightsaber in Star Wars history (films) Darth Vader The first red-lightsaber we ever saw on screen: the definition of evil and an iconic weapon. Every lightsaber in Star Wars history (films) Yoda Again, a little odd seeing a character from the Original Trilogy using a saber, especially when he was jumping around after putting down his walking cane. Ah well, doesn't stop Yoda being a brilliant mentor to Luke. Every lightsaber in Star Wars history (films) Mace Windu Samuel L. Jackson managed to someone get George Lucas to give him a purple lightsaber, just to stand out from the rest of the crowd. That's one bad*ss motherlightsaber. Every lightsaber in Star Wars history (films) Obi-Wan Sure, Obi-Wan managed to lose his saber on countless occasions throughout the prequels, but at least he had it in A New Hope when going against Vader. Because that went well... Every lightsaber in Star Wars history (films) Darth Maul Maul's double ended lightsaber may have been the best thing about Phantom Menace. Scratch that, he was the best thing about that film! The last battle between Maul, Jinn and Obi-Wan was phenomenal, just a shame Maul didn't last until the next film (of course, he came back in The Clone Wars TV show, but that will take a little too long to explain here) Every lightsaber in Star Wars history (films) Kylo Ren At first, the cross lightsaber was mocked by the Internet for being impractical. Yet, when seen in the movie, it's ferocious, spitting out light due to be unstable, much like it's master. Every lightsaber in Star Wars history (films) Count Dooku Now, Dooku's character wasn't in the films for very long, feeling hugely underutilised, especially considering it was the great Christopher Lee, who took on the role as he was a trained fencer. It was still hugely impressive for an 80-year-old to be the best sword fighter in the galaxy. Every lightsaber in Star Wars history (films) Luke Skywalker Luke's second saber, after the one he inherited from his father, was originally going to be blue as well. Yet, due to not standing out against the Tatooine landscape, it was changed to green - which is why in early posters his saber is blue.

Acting

The 26-year-olds career so far has been marked by collaborations with high-profile directors. Aside from being discovered by Spielberg and then working with Coppola, he may be recognisable from his recent role in the Coen Brothers Hail Ceasar!

Ehrenreich played Hobbie Doyle in the film alongside a few famous faces including George Clooney, Channing Tatum, Ralph Fiennes and Scarlett Johansson.

Ehrenreich also starred in Blue Jasmine in 2013, which was directed by Woody Allen.

In the same year he starred alongside Viola Davis, Emma Thompson and Jeremy Irons playing the lad role of Ethan in Beautiful Creatures.

Background and education

Ehrenreich was born and educated in Los Angeles before moving to New York to attend NYU. There, he took acting classes as well as journalism and philosophy classes but didnt finish his degree.

The aspiring actor set up a theatre company and performed in bars and theatres across the city, something he labelled one of the most rewarding experiences I had when I was in New York.

With the latest news, he likely has many more rewarding experiences ahead.
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The presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump is storming ahead with his charm offensive after months of offending the people he hopes to serve. Unfortunately, his attempts at wooing seem to be having the opposite desired effect - particularly on those he upset the most deeply during his campaigning.

On Thursday, Trump shared a picture of himself eating a taco bowl on his Twitter and Facebook feeds alongside a caption declaring his "love" for Hispanics.

The billionaire business magnate was honouring Cinco De Mayo day - which many mistakenly believe is Mexicos Independence Day - by sharing a picture of himself eating the taco bowl from a cafe in Trump Towers. Happy #CincoDeMayo! The best taco bowls are made in Trump Tower Grill. I love Hispanics! he wrote alongside the picture of himself, fork in hand, with a tight smile.

Somewhat bizarrely, an image poking out from underneath his dinner bowl of a bikini clad-woman sparked speculation Trump was reading a feature about his ex-wife Marla Marples.

Trump's caption was met with ridicule, with some asking if his post was perhaps satire in light of his repeated claims that rapists and criminals are crossing the border from Mexico into the US, and his promises to build a big beautiful wall on the border.

What do this taco bowl and Donald Trump have in common...? asked Kevin Eli Bock. There is nothing authentic about either of them.

 10 of the scariest things Donald Trump has ever said

This is just a publicity stunt, wrote Menina D'Amours Fortunato. If he really was honouring CINCO DE MAYO, he would know that it is a MEXICAN holiday to commemorate the Battle of Puebla between the French & Mexicans. It is not a 'Hispanic' holiday."

But there was one response that caught everyone's attention: Too bad a taco bowl isnt Mexican, the Trump Tower Grill isnt either, youre not eating taco bowls from New York because youre in WV today, Cinco De Mayo isnt a Hispanic holiday its a Mexican one, and you are the same colour as the taco bowl shell. But I digress!

Donald Trump's most controversial quotes Show all 14 1 /14 Donald Trump's most controversial quotes Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On Isis: "Some of the candidates, they went in and didnt know the air conditioner didnt work and sweated like dogs, and they didnt know the room was too big because they didnt have anybody there. How are they going to beat ISIS?" Getty Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On immigration: "I will build a great wall  and nobody builds walls better than me, believe me and Ill build them very inexpensively. I will build a great, great wall on our southern border, and I will make Mexico pay for that wall. Mark my words." Reuters Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On Free Trade: "Free trade is terrible. Free trade can be wonderful if you have smart people. But we have stupid people." PAUL J. RICHARDS | AFP | Getty Images Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On Mexicans: "When Mexico sends its people, theyre not sending their best. Theyre sending people that have lots of problems. Theyre bringing drugs. Theyre bringing crime. Theyre rapists." Getty Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On China: "I just sold an apartment for $15 million to somebody from China. Am I supposed to dislike them?... I love China. The biggest bank in the world is from China. You know where their United States headquarters is located? In this building, in Trump Tower." Getty Images Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On work: "If you're interested in 'balancing' work and pleasure, stop trying to balance them. Instead make your work more pleasurable." AP Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On success: "What separates the winners from the losers is how a person reacts to each new twist of fate." Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On life: "Everything in life is luck." AFP Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On ambition: "You have to think anyway, so why not think big?" Getty Images Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On his opponents: "Bush is totally in favour of Common Core. I don't see how he can possibly get the nomination. He's weak on immigration. He's in favour of Common Core. How the hell can you vote for this guy? You just can't do it." Reuters Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On Obamacare: "You have to be hit by a tractor, literally, a tractor, to use it, because the deductibles are so high. It's virtually useless. And remember the $5 billion web site?... I have so many web sites, I have them all over the place. I hire people, they do a web site. It costs me $3." Getty Images Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On Barack Obama: "Obama is going to be out playing golf. He might be on one of my courses. I would invite him. I have the best courses in the world. I have one right next to the White House." PA Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On himself: "Love him or hate him, Trump is a man who is certain about what he wants and sets out to get it, no holds barred. Women find his power almost as much of a turn-on as his money." Getty Images Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On America: "The American Dream is dead. But if I get elected president I will bring it back bigger and better and stronger than ever before and we will make America great again." GETTY

Her comment was liked over 18,000 times before it disappeared from the page. Ms Mucino told Buzzfeed she did not delete it.

I found it pretty disconnected from the Hispanic population [in the US], she said.

I think its pretty funny that [Trump] kept all of the awful messages on his picture but [kicked one off] that was kind of a joke.

Trump was in West Virginia later that day and it is not clear when the picture was taken.
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Khloe Kardashian has received criticism for posing in front of a monument dedicated to Fidel Castro while holidaying in Cuba.

Kardashian is in the Cuban capital Havana, along with her sisters Kourtney and Kim and her brother-in-law Kanye West, to film scenes for Keeping up with the Kardashians. Also keeping with Kardashian convention, they've been updating their social media profiles along the way.

However, Kardashians post on Thursday attracted the wrong kind of attention after she was branded disrespectful and ignorant for posing in front of the former leader Fidel Castros name in a post shared on Instagram.

Khloe please take this down!! Do you not see all of the hurt that you have caused? Fidel Castro is one of the worst people in history, posing in front of a wall with his name on it is one of the last things that celebrities who claim to fight for human rights should be doing, one commenter wrote.

Several Instagram users called for the post to be taken down: This needs to be taken down. It's offensive. He is a vicious communist dictator. This is not about glamour, she is beautiful and can take a glamorous photo anywhere that doesn't include the name 'Fidel' in huge letters, wrote one.

Khloe, you are one of the fortunate tourists who has access to internet in Cuba (most Cubans do not, and when they can save up and log on their surfing is censored) use it to delete this awful, hurtful and disrespectful photo and issue an apology, said another.

Other commenters said they were of Cuban descent and found the photo personally offensive.

My family is Cuban and they have suffered because of the Castros. They had no choice but to leave after they took everything from them [] Did she help anyone on her trip? Did she meet the Cuban people suffering? Did she extend a hand and offer help to the kids who go to bed hungry?, wrote one.

Educate yourself [] before you take a picture. Fidel did and still does a lot of damage to the Cuban people and if you thought this was cool I'm sorry but it isn't it's disrespectful, said another.

Pictures of everyday life in Cuba Show all 20 1 /20 Pictures of everyday life in Cuba Pictures of everyday life in Cuba A man rides his modified bicycle past a vintage American car in Havana Getty Images Pictures of everyday life in Cuba A taxi sits parked by Ancon Beach waiting for returning bathers in Trinidad Getty Images Pictures of everyday life in Cuba Afrocuban carnival group "Los componedores de batea" performing in the streets of La Habana Vieja Rex Pictures of everyday life in Cuba Pastel colours for an ice-cream place and a vintage American car in Cienfuegos after sunset Rex Pictures of everyday life in Cuba A man on the phone in a bookshop in Old Havana (Habana Vieja) selling books and displaying propaganda poster of the Cuban Revolution Rex Pictures of everyday life in Cuba Street Musicians in Santiago De Cuba Rex Pictures of everyday life in Cuba A man works to repair his classic American car after it broke down along the Prado, a wide avenue that runs from Parque Central to the Malecon seafront highway, in Havana Getty Images Pictures of everyday life in Cuba Members of the 'Ladies in White,' a group founded by the partners and relatives of jailed dissidents that regularly protests against the Cuban government, demonstrate on the streets of Havana Getty Images Pictures of everyday life in Cuba Street vegetables vendor in Havana Getty Images Pictures of everyday life in Cuba The sun setting through the palm trees and creates long shadows on the pool deck at this resort in Cuba Varadero Rex Pictures of everyday life in Cuba General view of a street in Havana Getty Images Pictures of everyday life in Cuba A girls plays on a street in Havana Getty Images Pictures of everyday life in Cuba Girls walk past graffiti art along the Paseo de Marti, the wide boulevard that runs through the heart of the historic Old Havana neighborhood in Havana Getty Images Pictures of everyday life in Cuba A woman smokes her Havana cigar Getty Images Pictures of everyday life in Cuba A man harvests tobacco leaves for drying at a tobacco drying house on a co-op plantation in Pinar del Rio Getty Images Pictures of everyday life in Cuba Men play chess on a street in Havana Getty Images Pictures of everyday life in Cuba Locals take part in a gay parade in Havana Getty Images Pictures of everyday life in Cuba Scene of the Memories Paraiso Azul resort in Santa Maria Key Getty Images Pictures of everyday life in Cuba Beach on the Bay of Pigs, Zapata Peninsula Pictures of everyday life in Cuba Divers swimming above coral reef in Caribbean Sea Rex

There are over one million Cubans living in the US. Over 40,000 Cubans claimed asylum in the country last year. Many travel to the US by sea but thousands have died in their attempt.

 Seven of the most odd and draconian laws abroad

Fidel handed over power to his brother Raul in 2008. His role in the Cuban revolution is controversial due to the former leaders poor human rights record including curbs on freedom of speech (such as a ban on the internet), capital punishment by firing squads and the ban of democratic elections. However, some communist party supporters remain faithful to the former leader and view him as a freedom fighter.

The 89-year-old, who is believed to have survived over 600 CIA assassination plots during his lifetime, recently told loyal communist supporters he could die soon. Soon I will be 90 years old, he said. Soon I will be like all the rest. Everybodys turn comes.

The Independent has contacted a representative for Kardashian for comment.
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As North Korea embarks on its first party congress in 36 years, 'supreme leader' Kim Jong-Un is set to announce a number of economic reforms and tighten his iron-clad grip on power.

It is likely to be accompanied by mass choreographed fist-pumping rallies and spectacles. Although, this being North Korea, nobody is entirely sure what to expect.

While the congress might be the biggest political highlight of the fresh-faced dictator's career so far, it is a very different day for the North Koreans stiffly marching in unison as Mr Kim looks on.

North Korea is unlike anywhere else on Earth. Located in East Asia in the northern part of the Korean Peninsula, it is the most secretive and isolated regime in the world. According to the UN, the overwhelming majority of its 25 million citizens endure starvation and live with the threat of the Gulag, forced labour camps and public execution.

While it can be easy to laugh at the country's state-sanctioned haircuts and dismiss Mr Kim a comedy figure, it remains one of the most feared dictatorships in the world.

Everyday life in North Korea - in pictures Show all 10 1 /10 Everyday life in North Korea - in pictures Everyday life in North Korea - in pictures 'Ordinary life' in North Korea A man cuts the hair of a young boy at an apartment building in Pyongyang. High rise apartments are a common form of accommodation for people living in the capital city AP Photo/Dita Alangkara Everyday life in North Korea - in pictures 'Ordinary life' in North Korea North Koreans pause to give way for passing vehicles as they cross a road in Pyongyang. AP Photo/Dita Alangkara Everyday life in North Korea - in pictures 'Ordinary life' in North Korea North Koreans wait for public transportation at a bus stop in Pyongyang AP Photo/Dita Alangkara Everyday life in North Korea - in pictures 'Ordinary life' in North Korea A woman and her daughter walk past a North Korean flag hung on a utility pole as part of celebrations of the Liberation Day in Pyongyang AP Photo/Dita Alangkara Everyday life in North Korea - in pictures 'Ordinary life' in North Korea People attending the conference for national reunification as they observe their 70th anniversary of Korea's liberation, marking the end of World War II, in Panmunjom AFP PHOTO / KCNA via KNS REPUBLIC OF KOREA OUT Everyday life in North Korea - in pictures 'Ordinary life' in North Korea A man looks at items at a stamp shop in Pyongyang AP Photo/Dita Alangkara Everyday life in North Korea - in pictures 'Ordinary life' in North Korea North Koreans participate in a closing event for its celebration of the 70th anniversary of Korea's independence from Japan's 1910-45 colonial rule, at the truce village inside the demilitarized zone (DMZ) that divides the two Koreas in Panmunjom, North Korea. The country changed it's timezone on the occasion. North Korea introduced 'Pyongyang time' and pushed back its clocks by half an hour on 15 August, the same as before the Japanese occupation when the standard time used by the Korean empire was eight and a half hours ahead of GMT, instead of nine hours, which is Tokyo time EPA/KCNA SOUTH KOREA OUT Everyday life in North Korea - in pictures 'Ordinary life' in North Korea People attending the conference for national reunification as they observe their 70th anniversary of Korea's liberation, marking the end of World War II, in Panmunjom AFP PHOTO / KCNA via KNS Everyday life in North Korea - in pictures 'Ordinary life' in North Korea Youths and students attending an evening gala at the Kim Il-Sung Square in Pyongyang to celebrate the 70th anniversary of Korea's liberation, marking the end of World War II AFP PHOTO / KCNA via KNS REPUBLIC OF KOREA OUT Everyday life in North Korea - in pictures 'Ordinary life' in North Korea North Korean leader Kim Jong Un visits the Kumsusan Palace of the Sun to mark the occasion of the 70th anniversary of Korea's liberation REUTERS/KCNAATTENTION EDITORS

Jihyun Park has firsthand experience of the "hermit kingdom". Born in North Korea, she lived through the famine of the late 1990s.

Three and a half million North Koreans died of famine in this period. It is no exaggeration to say that this was a massacre, she tells The Independent.

I lived only worrying about what I would eat that day, and then the next day. My family died from starvation. My uncle lived alone in a rural area and because of food shortage and problems with food distribution he starved.

Unable to afford a coffin, Ms Jihyun says her family wrapped his corpse with rice straws and carried him on an ox cart to be buried. According to Ms Jihyun, stories such as these are common in North Korea.

Indoctrination

Education in the totalitarian state was wholeheartedly centred around and devoted towards Mr Kim. You learn maths, science, biography, music, art and more but the most important subject is the life story of the Kim family, she explains.

The words of the Kims - both father and son  are on the walls of the classroom and we have to memorise them. Such mantras are repeated by every teacher, every hour.

This indoctrination transcends the classroom. Jihyun says that in the 1990s, a poem written about former leader Kim Il Sung was ordered to be hung on the walls of every single home.

Everyone, man, woman and child, had to learn the poem by heart, she recalls. Such ridiculous things happen in North Korea. There are children who learn about the dictatorship before they learn the value of their family, or before they remember their mother or fathers names.

People of all ages are dying, but they are expected to learn the leader's New Years speech, study the annual work plans and focus on learning Kim Jung Ils writings."

Ms Jihyuns cultural life was also massively restricted.

There are no independent newspapers, Radio or TV in North Korea," she said.

"We never listened to Western music. Before the Soviet Union collapsed we watched Chinese movies once or twice a week but after that it was gone.

(AFP/Getty)

A long departure

It was during the famine of the 1990s that Ms Jihyun eventually decided to try and flee the country. Her brother had been caught illegally dealing in gold and government officials were after him.

My father was shocked and secretly told me to leave with my brother, she recalls. Leaving my father lying on the cold room, I left for a journey that would never bring me home."

At the age of 30, Ms Jihyun and her brother escaped to China from her hometown Chongjin by the border to China. Although she had been promised a well-paid job once there, she was instead brought to a trafficking establishment.

My brother was captured and repatriated a year later, and I still do not know if he survives, she explains. Between 1998-2004, I spent six years in northeast China as a slave to a Chinese man. I gave birth to a son".

Detention camp

But everything suddenly changed when she was arrested and repatriated back to North Korea and her son remained in China. There she spent a year in one of the country's most harrowing detention camps.

Although I fled the North due to economic reasons, my crime was considered political betrayal," she said.

"I was imprisoned, tortured, and re-educated for six months, after which I could no longer work because of severe malnutrition, and an injury in my leg was so bad that I was released on sick bail to have it amputated."

After a year she escaped yet again to China and there she took her son from the father's family. She then travelled to Mongolia, and against all odds, arrived in Manchester with her son in 2008. On the way she met her husband, a fellow North Korean defector, in China.

In pictures: Kim Jong Un goes on a Christmas tour Show all 15 1 /15 In pictures: Kim Jong Un goes on a Christmas tour In pictures: Kim Jong Un goes on a Christmas tour North Korean leader Kim Jong Un givesfield guidance to the August 25 Fisheries Station under KPA 313 Unit Reuters In pictures: Kim Jong Un goes on a Christmas tour korea-9.jpg Kim Jong un laughs as he inspects the August 25 Fisheries Station under KPA 313 Unit Reuters In pictures: Kim Jong Un goes on a Christmas tour North Korean leader Kim Jong Un stands in the August 25 Fisheries Station under KPA 313 Unit Reuters Reuters In pictures: Kim Jong Un goes on a Christmas tour North Korean leader Kim Jong Un arrives in the August 25 Fisheries Station under KPA 313 Unit Reuters Reuters In pictures: Kim Jong Un goes on a Christmas tour North Korean leader Kim Jong Un inside the August 25 Fisheries Station under KPA 313 Unit Reuters Reuters In pictures: Kim Jong Un goes on a Christmas tour North Korean leader Kim Jong Un visits the bier of Kim Kuk Thae, member of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea and expressed deep condolences over his death in Pyongyang Getty Images Getty Images In pictures: Kim Jong Un goes on a Christmas tour North Korean leader Kim Jong Un inspecting the Masik Pass Hotel, ski service and lodging buildings and rest areas in the skiing courses of the Masik Pass Ski Resort in Kangwon province Getty Images Getty Images In pictures: Kim Jong Un goes on a Christmas tour North Korean leader Kim Jong Un walks through the Masik Pass Hotel, ski service and lodging buildings and rest areas in the skiing courses of the Masik Pass Ski Resort in Kangwon province Getty Images Getty Images In pictures: Kim Jong Un goes on a Christmas tour North Korean leader Kim Jong Un inside a room in the Masik Pass Hotel, ski service and lodging buildings and rest areas in the skiing courses of the Masik Pass Ski Resort in Kangwon province Getty Images Getty Images In pictures: Kim Jong Un goes on a Christmas tour North Koreans gather together on the steps of Mansu Hill to lay flowers at the base of statues of the late leaders, Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il, in Pyongyang AP AP In pictures: Kim Jong Un goes on a Christmas tour North Korean soldiers gathered at Kumsusan memorial palace in support of their leader Kim Jong-Un in Pyongyang Getty Images Getty Images In pictures: Kim Jong Un goes on a Christmas tour North Korean People's Army soldiers take part in a rally to swear allegiance to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un ahead of the second death anniversary of former leader Kim Jong Il at the Kumsusan Palace of the Sun in Pyongyang Reuters Reuters In pictures: Kim Jong Un goes on a Christmas tour North Korean soldiers gathered at Kumsusan memorial palace in support of their leader Kim Jong-Un in Pyongyang Getty Images Getty Images In pictures: Kim Jong Un goes on a Christmas tour North Korea soldiers stand guard on the banks of the Yalu River which separates the North Korean town of Sinuiju from the Chinese border town of Dandong Getty Images In pictures: Kim Jong Un goes on a Christmas tour China has lost its key North Korean interlocutor with the purging of Kim Jong Un's uncle, but analysts say the young leader's tightening grip on power may be welcomed by Beijing, which prizes stability in its wayward nuclear-armed ally Getty Images Getty Images

Resettling in Manchester

She now lives in Manchester with her husband and their three children. Jihyun has no contact with her family back in North Korea.

This is a combination of cost (it can cost up to 1,000 to talk for just a few minutes) and to keep her family safe. It is prohibited for North Koreans to speak to anyone in the outside the country.
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Ruth Davidson stormed to victory in the elections overnight, taking the Edinburgh Central Seat from the hands of the SNP in the best ever Scottish Parliament result for the Tories.

The Scottish Conservative leader has promised to serve to the very best of her ability and "hold the SNP" to account as the leader of the main opposition to Nicola Sturgeons party.

Ms Davidson has long been tipped as a potential successor to David Cameron. A recent poll by Conservative Home found her to be more popular than any other Cabinet member in its league table, a result cemented by her success in the Holyrood election.

But in November, she insisted she had no designs on the Tory leadership. Running a G7 country is not for faint hearted. I don't think I'm up to it, I don't want it and I don't want the impact that it would have on my life and all of the people that I love.

Recommended Read more Labour set for third place in Scotland amid shock Tory Edinburgh win

Her ascent to the top

Ms Davidson has risen rapidly through the ranks of her party to lead it in Scotland. She was a ubiquitous presence during campaigns in 2015, with Ms Davidson appearing in virtually any photocall going, no matter how offbeat.

When the nation is swooning over other leaders, you sometimes have to make more of an effort up here, she told The Guardian. So I may have been a slight photo tart when it came to the election.

Elections 2016: Agony and ecstasy for candidates as results pour in Show all 10 1 /10 Elections 2016: Agony and ecstasy for candidates as results pour in Elections 2016: Agony and ecstasy for candidates as results pour in SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon waves after winning her seat Glasgow Southside in the Scottish Parliament elections at the Emirates Arena in Glasgow Getty Images Elections 2016: Agony and ecstasy for candidates as results pour in Leader of the Scottish National Party (SNP), Nicola Sturgeon embraces Margaret Ferrier (L), and Janet Doris (R) as her husband Bob Doris (unseen) speaks to the audience at the Emirates Arena in Glasgow EPA Elections 2016: Agony and ecstasy for candidates as results pour in SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon reacts as results come in at a Scottish Parliament election count at the Emirates Arena in Glasgow PA Elections 2016: Agony and ecstasy for candidates as results pour in Labour Party members celebrate after David Burton Sampson (centre) wins the Labour seat for St Martin's ward during the election count for Basildon at the Sports Village in Basildon, Essex PA Elections 2016: Agony and ecstasy for candidates as results pour in Scottish Labour leader Kezia Dugdale, who failed in her bid to win the Edinburgh Eastern constituency from the SNP, at the count at the Royal Highland Centre, Ingliston, Renfrewshire PA Elections 2016: Agony and ecstasy for candidates as results pour in Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson is congratulated after she won the Edinburgh Central seat at the count at the Royal Highland Centre, Ingliston, Renfrewshire PA Elections 2016: Agony and ecstasy for candidates as results pour in Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson speaks after winning the Edinburgh Central seat at the count at the Royal Highland Centre, Ingliston, Renfrewshire PA Elections 2016: Agony and ecstasy for candidates as results pour in Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson arrives at a Scottish Parliament election count at the Royal Highland Centre, Ingliston, Renfrewshire PA Elections 2016: Agony and ecstasy for candidates as results pour in SNP supporters react as their party wins another seat at a counting centre in Glasgow Reuters Elections 2016: Agony and ecstasy for candidates as results pour in Vaughan Gething of Labour retains his seat for Cardiff South and Penarth during the National Assembly for Wales election count at the Sport Wales National Centre in Cardiff, Wales Getty Images

Background

Aged 37, she was the youngest ever party leader and has used her age in interviews to distance herself from the legacy set by Margaret Thatcher, who was in power while she was still a baby.

Ms Davidson's background differs greatly to those of the Etonians who overwhelmingly populate her party: she grew up in a working-class family, spending most of her adult life in Glasgow.

She worked as a BBC journalist and signaller in the Territorial Army (before becoming an Army Reservist) before going on to study at Glasgow University, eventually entering politics in 2009.

Recommended Read more SNP loses overall majority in Scottish Parliament

Sexuality

Like Ms Sturgeon and Mhairi Black, she is sharp, straight-talking, and interviews variously describe her as agreeable, convivial and funny. Like Ms Black and the Scottish Labour leader Kezia Dugdale, she is also openly gay and speaks publicly about her relationship with her partner, Jen Wilson. Her background, sexuality, and openness form part of her broad appeal and she has gone out of her way to present herself as the politician everyday people can relate to.

The self-described tough old bird has used her steely disposition and dedication to tackling abuse and homophobia to set herself apart from her peers.

I do call out and will challenge or retweet or draw attention to it when people make homophobic remarks about me, she once told the BBC, because I've got a lot of young followers on Twitter, and I think they have to see that it is OK to say, 'That's not acceptable language. I do not have to accept this.'

Beliefs

A practising Christian, she struggled with her sexuality for years before eventually deciding not to "live a lie".

I thought I was destined for the big white wedding and the chap on my arm and all the rest of it, and then it wasn't to be, she told BBC Radio Scotlands Stark Talk. I didn't come out until my mid twenties. I'd known for a few years before that.

It took time for me to come to some sort of peace with myself about it. It's something I struggled with. I didn't want to be gay  I'm not sure how many people do, and it's been amazing the difference even in my lifetime how things have changed.
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Mosques using a literal interpretation of the Qu'ran to restrict women's rights are becoming more common in the UK, a former imam has said.

The comments, from a leading Islamic expert, follow revelations that some British mosques are commanding women not to go out without a male chaperone, not to wear jeans and to avoid Facebook.

Dr Salah al-Ansari, a senior researcher in Islamic studies at the Quilliam Foundation, said this misinterpretation of Islam, which take the Prophet Mohammed's words on the role of women out of their proper social and historical context, was "very irritating to moderate Muslims."

"This literalist interpretation has been on the increase since the 1970s onwards," he told The Independent.

"And even if it is not being published, it is being said behind closed doors, which is actually the more likely scenario. It is serious."

The Blackburn Muslim Association is one of the groups which has published orthodox rulings, including one on women not travelling more than 48 miles without a male chaperone.

Womens Mosque of America Show all 10 1 /10 Womens Mosque of America Womens Mosque of America mosque10.jpg A mother and daughter sit in the mosque Reuters Womens Mosque of America mosque9.jpg Women arrive at the mosque, many have travelled from different states and cities to attend Reuters Womens Mosque of America mosque2.jpg Donna Auston, waits for the prayer service to start at the Women's Mosque of America Reuters Womens Mosque of America mosque3.jpg A worshipper takes a picture Reuters Womens Mosque of America mosque5.jpg Before the service Reuters Womens Mosque of America mosque1.jpg Women chat before the service at the Women's Mosque Reuters Womens Mosque of America mosque8.jpg Sana Muttalib, Co-President, and M. Hasna Maznavi, Founder and Co-President of the Women's Mosque of America Reuters Womens Mosque of America mosque7.jpg Nia Malika Dixon opens up the prayer service at the Women's Mosque of America Reuters Womens Mosque of America mosque4.jpg Nia Malika Dixon takes the prayer service at the Women's Mosque of America Reuters Womens Mosque of America mosque6.jpg Women arriving at the mosque Reuters

Dr al-Ansari, who is a former imam at the London Central Mosque, said that rules on women's clothing were not written anywhere in the Q'uran.

Instead the rule was part of the hadith, which are a collection of stories told about the Prophet's actions that traditionally are held to be flexibly interpretable.

In the historical setting in which they were spoken and written, women often took a male chaperone with them because they were genuinely unsafe, Dr al-Ansari said. "In another story, the Prophet says he imagines a time when a woman can travel from Yemen to Mecca only with the presence of God.

"What we are criticising are these literal interpretations, they are not fitting with the modern day."

The Croydon Mosque and Islamic Centre also published a document entitled "Advice for the husband and wife," since taken down from the group's website, which said a woman should seek her husband's permission before leaving the house and "should not do so without his knowledge".

According to The Times, another article described modelling and acting as "immoral acts."

"If we follow this literalist interpretation, we actually risk making the Prophet say contradictions," Dr al-Ansari said.
China is driving a boom in New Zealand seafood exports which hit a record 1.71 billion NZ dollars (1.17 billion U.S. dollars) in the year to the end of March, the Seafood New Zealand industry group said Friday.

Exports were up 11.4 percent year on year and the strong export growth had accelerated in the first quarter of this year, Seafood New Zealand chief executive Tim Pankhurst said in a statement.

"Month on month growth of 18 percent in January over the previous year was even higher at 23 percent in March," Pankhurst said.

China accounted for almost a third of total seafood export value, and had driven up the average per kilogram value for highly-prized lobsters by 6 percent so far this year.

China demand, particularly around the Chinese New Year, had cemented rock lobster as New Zealand's most lucrative export species, followed by mussels.

The second most valuable market was Australia followed by the United States, Japan, Hong Kong, South Korea, Spain, France, Germany and Thailand.

"The fact a wide variety of species across a range of markets are in demand and consequently attracting increased returns bodes well for the medium and long term outlook for the seafood sector," said Pankhurst.

The government's Quota Management System for commercial fish catches, now in its 30th year, had ensured stocks were sustainably managed, he said.
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A blanket ban on legal highs will come into force in England and Wales within weeks, the Government has confirmed.

The Psychoactive Substances Act will be enacted on 26 May, banning any substance intended for human consumption that is capable of producing a psychoactive effect.

The legislation is intended to cover all substances which imitate illegal drugs, such as mephedrone, but was dismissed as a blunt tool by drug experts, who called for more emphasis on education.

Recommended Read more Legal highs ban delayed by ministers amid worries it is unenforceable

The act will ban the production, supply and movement for human consumption of legal highs, which the government said were linked to the deaths of at least 140 people in the UK in 2014.

But research by the Office for National Statistics found that in 60 per cent of the fatalities connected to legal highs between 2004 and 2013, the deceased had also ingested other substances.

Under the new legislation, dealers will face up to seven years in prison and people found possessing them will face up to two years in prison  the same as a custodial penalty for possession of a class C drug. New powers will also be handed to the police to search for and seize and destroy the substances.

 Footage of some of the people in Newcastle city centre under the influence of legal highs

Police will be able to gain prohibition and premises orders, allowing them to shut down online suppliers and 'head shops' that sell drugs paraphernalia, while owners will face prison time of up to two years if they fail to comply.

However, senior drug experts have criticised the bill. Dr Adam Winstock, a consultant addiction psychiatrist and founder of the Global Drug Survey, believes a more nuanced approach is needed: just as illegal drugs are regarded differently, so should the new substances in their potential for harm.

In particular, the varying types of synthetic cannabis have the potential to be extremely harmful and are more likely to send people to A&E than any alcohol or other traditional drugs.

This act will almost certainly decrease access to these substances, but will likely push people back towards illegal drugs, which in some cases might not be a totally bad thing, Dr Winstock told The Independent.

For example, natural cannabis is safer than synthetic cannabinoids.

World's 10 deadliest street drugs Show all 10 1 /10 World's 10 deadliest street drugs World's 10 deadliest street drugs Whoonga Whoonga is a combination of antiretroviral drugs, used to treat HIV, and various cutting agents such as detergents and poisons. The drug is widely available in South Africa due to South Africas high rate of HIV sufferers, and is believed to be popular due to how cheap it is when compared to prescribed antiretrovirals. The drug is highly addictive and can cause major health issues such as internal bleeding, stomach ulcers and ultimately death Getty World's 10 deadliest street drugs Scopolamine Scopolamine is a derivative from the nightshade plant found in the Northern Indian region of South America (Ecuador, Colombia and Venezuela). It is generally found in a refined powder form, but can also be found as a tea. The drug is more often used by criminals due its high toxicity level (one gram is believed to be able to kill up to 20 people) making it a strong poison. However, it is also believed that the drug is blown into the faces of unexpecting victims, later causing them to lose all sense of self-control and becoming incapable of forming memories during the time they are under the influence of the drug. This tactic has reportedly been used by gangs in Colombia where there have been reports of people using scopolamine as way to convince victims to rob their own homes World's 10 deadliest street drugs Heroin Founded in 1874 by C. R. Alder Wright, heroin is one of the worlds oldest drugs. Originally it was prescribed as a strong painkiller used to treat chronic pain and physical trauma. However in 1971 it was made illegal under the Misuse of Drugs Act. Since then it has become one of the most destructive substances in the world, tearing apart communities and destroying families. The side effects of heroin include inflammation of the gums, cold sweats, a weak immune system, muscular weakness and insomnia. It can also damage blood vessels which can later cause gangrene if left untreated World's 10 deadliest street drugs Crack cocaine Crack cocaine first came about in the 1980s when cocaine became a widespread commodity within the drug trafficking world. Originally cocaine would have attracted a high price tag due to its rarity and difficulty to produce, but once it became more widespread the price dropped significantly. This resulted in drug dealers forming their cocaine into rock like shapes by using baking soda as a way of distilling the powder down into rock form. People were doing this because it allowed for them to sell cocaine at a lower quantity and to a higher number of people. The side effects of crack cocaine include liver, kidney and lung damage, as well as permanent damage to blood vessels, which can often lead to heart attacks, strokes, and ultimately death World's 10 deadliest street drugs Crystal meth Not just famous because of a certain Walter H White, but also because it is one of the most destructive drugs in the world. First developed in 1887, it became widely used during the Second World War when both sides would give it to their troops to keep them awake. It is also believed that the Japanese gave it to their Kamikaze pilots before their suicide missions. After the war crystal meth was prescribed as a diet aid and remained legal until the 1970s. Since then it has fallen into the hands of Mexican gangs and has become a worldwide phenomenon, spreading throughout Europe and Asia. The effects of crystal meth are devastating. In the short-term users will become sleep depraved and anxious, and in the long-term it will cause their flesh to sink, as well as brain damage and damage of the blood vessels World's 10 deadliest street drugs AH-7921 AH-7921 is a synthetic opioid that was previously available to legally purchase online from vendors until it became a Class A in January 2015. The drug is believed to have 80% of the potency of morphine, and became known as the legal heroin. While there has only been one death related to AH-7921 in the UK, it is believed to be highly dangerous and capable of causing respiratory arrest and gangrene World's 10 deadliest street drugs Flakka Flakka is a stimulant with a similar chemical make-up to the amphetamine-like drug found in bath salts. While the drug was originally marketed as a legal high alternative to ecstasy, the effects are significantly different. The user will feel an elevated heart rate, enhanced emotions, and, if enough is digested, strong hallucinations. The drug can cause permanent psychological damage due to it affecting the mood regulating neurons that keep the minds serotonin and dopamine in check, as well as possibly causing heart failure World's 10 deadliest street drugs Bath salts Bath salts are a synthetic crystalline drug that is prevalent in the US. While they may sound harmless, they certainly arent the sort of salts you drop into a warm bath when having a relaxing night in, they are most similar to mephedrone, and have recently been featured throughout social media due to the zombification of its. The name comes from the fact that the drug was originally sold online, and widely disguised as bath salts. The side effects include unusual psychiatric behaviour, psychosis, panic attacks and violent behaviour, as well as the possibility of a heart attack and an elevated body temperature World's 10 deadliest street drugs Purple Drank One of the more unusual drugs around at the moment, purple drank was popularised in 90s hip hop culture, with the likes of Jay Z and Big Moe all mentioning it in their songs. It is a concoction of soda water, sweets and cold medicine, and is drunk due to cold medicines high codeine content, which gives the user a woozy feeling. However it can also cause respiratory issues and heart failure World's 10 deadliest street drugs Krokodil Krokodil is Russias secret addiction. It is believed that over one million Russians are addicted to the drug. Users of krokodil are attracted to the drug due to its low price; it is sold at 20 a gram while heroin is sold for 60. However, krokodil is considered more dangerous than heroin because it is often homemade, with ingredients including painkillers, iodine, lighter fluid and industrial cleaning agents. This chemical make-up makes the drug highly dangerous and likely to cause gangrene, and eventually rotting of the flesh

These drugs present the biggest problems for young and vulnerable drug users and have the potential to compound problems for the most marginalised users, according to Dr Winstock.

He continued: Enforcement is possible, but who is going to do it? The police budget is being cut, and who is going to pay for the expert analysis of these substances?

The Government has given no consideration to developing credible education to build around an honest dialogue and there has little detail on how they will assess what the impact of this legislation will be.

New drugs offered the chance to start a new conversation about drugs, one that treats people who use drugs as adults, who want to keep themselves, their loved ones and community free from harm. There are other ways to reduce drug regulated harm - banning alone is a blunt tool.

I think honesty remains the best drug policy, but I guess it doesn't get you elected.

Despite this, the Government has defended the policy.

Psychoactive substances shatter lives and we owe it to all those who have lost loved ones to do everything we can to eradicate this abhorrent trade, said Karen Bradley, Minister for Preventing Abuse, Exploitation and Crime.

This act will bring to an end the open sale on our high streets of these potentially harmful drugs and deliver new powers for law enforcement to tackle this issue at every level in communities, at our borders, on UK websites and in our prisons.

The message is clear  so-called legal highs are not safe.

The legislation was originally due to come into effect April 6 but was subject to delays over concerns whether it was enforceable and the definition of psychoactive.
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Eight police forces have launched investigations into an allegation of electoral fraud relating to the 2015 general election, amid claims the Conservative Party broke electoral spending rules.

The party faces claims it failed to record accommodation costs for bussing activists to key constituencies as part of candidates' spending, instead recording them as part of national campaign spending.

Up to 29 Conservative candidates are thought to have benifitted from the Tory "Battlebus" campaigns.

General election 2015: Polling day Show all 16 1 /16 General election 2015: Polling day General election 2015: Polling day General election 2015 Nuns arrive to vote at a polling station at St John's Church in Paddington, London General election 2015: Polling day General election 2015 A voter leaves the White Horse Inn in Priors Dean, also known as the 'Pub with no name', which is part of the East Hampshire constituency and acts as a local polling station on the day of the election General election 2015: Polling day General election 2015 General view of inside the White Horse Inn in Priors Dean General election 2015: Polling day General election 2015 People cast their votes as a man uses a punch bag in the East Hull Boxing Academy, which is being used as a polling station in Hull General election 2015: Polling day General election 2015 Penny Higbee waits to greet voters at her home in Routh, East Yorkshire, which is being used as a rural polling station General election 2015: Polling day General election 2015 Voters in Ironbridge, Shropshire, arrive to cast their vote at The Iron Bridge Tollhouse General election 2015: Polling day General election 2015 A voter arrives at the North West Ambulance Service Station at Milton Green, Cheshire, which is being used as a polling station as Britain goes to the ballot box General election 2015: Polling day General election 2015 A polling station has been installed in a launderette in Oxford General election 2015: Polling day General election 2015 SNP candidate for the Gordon constituency and Former First Minister Alex Salmond with first time voter Nicki Falconer, and her family, (L-R) Mackenzie, Nicki, Skye, Alex Salmond and Keiran at their local polling station in the Gordon constituency in Ellon, Scotland General election 2015: Polling day General election 2015 Prime Minister David Cameron and wife Samantha after casting their votes at Spelsbury Memorial Hall, Witney General election 2015: Polling day General election 2015 Liberal Democrat leader and Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg and his wife Miriam Gonzalez Durantez arrive at Hall Park Hill Community Centre to cast their votes, in Sheffield General election 2015: Polling day General election 2015 Labour Party leader Ed Miliband and his wife Justine Thornton leave the polling station at Sutton Village Hall in Sutton after casting their votes in the 2015 general election in Doncaster General election 2015: Polling day General election 2015 First Minister of Scotland and leader of the SNP Nicola Sturgeon, votes with her husband Peter Murrell in Glasgow, Scotland General election 2015: Polling day General election 2015 Ukip leader Nigel Farage arrives to cast his vote for the South Thanet constituency in Ramsgate General election 2015: Polling day General election 2015 Plaid Cymru leader Leanne Wood arrives at a polling station in Penygraig, Rhondda, Wales General election 2015: Polling day General election 2015 Green Party leader Natalie Bennett after casting her vote at Ossulston Tenants' Hall, London

A series of police forces have said they will launch investigations into the allegations, including Gloucestershire Police, Devon and Cornwall Police, Cheshire Police and West Yorkshire police.

Derbyshire Police, Greater Manchester Police, Northamptonshire Police and Staffordshire Police are also actively investigating allegations, the BBC reported.

The BBC also reports a further four forces are awaiting further information.

 The best calamities and gaffes of Election 2015

The investigation comes after the Electoral Commission met with police and prosecutors on Wednesday to ensure they did not run out of time to launch possible criminal investigations into the Conservative's 2015 general election campaign funding.

The Commission believes its ongoing probe into alleged breaches of reporting obligations will take at least another month - potentially taking it past the one-year time limit for launching criminal proceedings.

Tory anti-corruption "tsar" Sir Eric Pickles, a former party chairman, said the Conservatives were confident everything during the 2015 election was "above board" and said he had "complete confidence" in the team who organised the submission of expenses.

"I'm told that the party is confident that it will be able to successfully demonstrate that everything was above board but I have no inside knowledge inside the party on this," the former Cabinet minister told BBC Radio 4's The World At One.

"These are matters that are quite normal in politics, I don't have any inside knowledge, I don't know, I haven't seen how the forms were filled in, but I know the people that did this and they are very professional and I've got complete confidence in them."

Additional reporting by Press Association
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Labour under Jeremy Corbyn is not seen as a "credible" party of government by voters, a member of the shadow cabinet has said.

In elections that represented the first verdict of the electorate on Corbyns leadership, Labour suffered a disastous result in Scotland where they were pushed into third place by a resurgent Tory party.

And though Labour's Sadiq Khan beat Zac Goldsmith in the London mayoral race, it was a rare bright spot on an otherwise poor performance.

Recommended Read more Sadiq Khan wins London mayoral race in victory for Labour

Critics of Mr Corbyn were quick to point out that such a result was nowhere near good enough to win a general election, while the Labour leader himself admitted that they had hung on.

"I don't think that the public see the UK Labour Party led by Jeremy Corbyn at the moment as being a credible party of future government in 2020, Labours shadow Scottish secretary Ian Murray said.

That's something, after this week's results, we should reflect on.

Veteran backbencher David Winnick called on Mr Corbyn to take responsibility and consider his position in order to give the party a chance of regaining power in 2020.

"The party faces a crisis and the onus is on Jeremy himself. He should decide whether his leadership is helping or hindering the party," he said. "I think all the evidence shows that it is not helping."

Recommended Read more Corbyn strikes defiant tone after Labour slumps to third in Scotland

The election results were mixed for other parties too. Nicola Sturgeon was deprived of an overall majority in Scottish Parliament with six fewer MSPs than in 2011, lessening the prospect of another independence referendum.

While the Tories celebrated their best-ever result north of the border they lost 34 councillors in England and had a smaller share of the vote than at the general election.

Ukip made a breakthrough in Wales, securing seven Assembly seats, mainly at the expense of Labour.

Among those elected was the disgraced former Tory MP Neil Hamilton who won 25,000 votes to be elected as assembly member for Mid and West Wales.

But the party only won 57 council seats, far below its success in previous local elections.

The Lib Dems meanwhile made modest gains in council elections  but there was little evidence of any widespread resurgence for the party which a year ago was in Government.

 PM: Labour's "lost touch"

On a visit to Sheffield  where Labour won a Parliamentary by-election - Mr Corbyn admitted the party had "a lot of building to do" in Scotland but brushed aside suggestions that he should stand down. I'm carrying on. I'm fine. I'm very happy," he said

But Labours deputy leader Tom Watson admitted that the party had a mountain to climb if it was to stand any chance of being competitive at the next General Election.

I don't have all the answers, but I understand the seriousness of the task ahead, he said, when questioned on Labour's huge losses in Scotland.

But he gave Mr Corbyn a stay of execution from his backbench critics, adding: After eight months it would be unfair and improper to hang this result on Jeremy Corbyn's peg alone".

Tim Roache, general secretary of the GMB union, which broadly supports Mr Corbyn, said the results were a very mixed bag and gave Mr Corbyn a year to turn things around.

Would I have wanted better? Absolutely, he said.

We're at the stage when we should be winning hundreds of seats. But I don't think that's just about Corbyn. People won't vote for a divided Labour Party.

He added: Let's give it a go for a year or so. Who knows what might happen.

Among the other highlights from the day's results:

The Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson secured a seat at Holyrood on the first past the post part of the election by winning Edinburgh Central from the SNP. But the Scottish Labour leader Kezia Dugdale was left relying on the top-up system for a seat as she failed to take Edinburgh Eastern.

The Liberal Democrats also made a small resurgence north of the border with their leader Willie Rennie returning to Holyrood in North East Fife, while the party also took Edinburgh Western from the SNP and held on to the Orkney and Shetland islands. The Lib Dems also made modest gains in local council elections.

With results in from 115 out of 124 councils declared, Labour was down by 25 seats, Ukip up 26, the Conservatives down 33 and Lib Dems up 36.

Labour lost control of Dudley council in the West Midlands, but held on to major cities including Birmingham, Newcastle-upon-Tyne and Sunderland, as well as key southern outposts like Exeter, Southampton, Crawley and Slough.

Responding to claims that Labour is not doing as well as it should be, Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell told the BBC: "We are laying the foundations for a four-year programme."

"If you compare, from when Jeremy took over to now, we are on a clear path of improvement. That's exactly what our strategy is all about."

He said in Scotland the picture was "complex" and Labour was "at the early stages" of rebuilding support, having been "wiped out" in 2015.

David Cameron, on a visit to Peterborough, where the Tories secured an absolute majority on the council, said Labour had "completely lost touch" with the working people it was supposed to represent.

They are so obsessed with their left-wing causes and unworkable economic policies, they've forgotten that people want jobs, people want livelihoods, people want lower taxes, people want homes they live in and can afford to own," he said.
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Britain has woken up to two new MPs today following by-elections in Sheffield Brightside and Hillsborough and Ogmore, South Wales.

Labour comfortably held both constituencies which have been historic safe seats for the party.

The Sheffield Brightside and Hillsborough election was triggered following the death of MP Harry Harpham from cancer. His widow Gill Furniss has been elected to the seat with 14,087 and a majority of 9,580 votes.

In Ogmore, the by-election was called when sitting MP Huw Irranca-Davies resigned in order to contest a seat in the Welsh Assembly. Labour's Chris Elmore has been elected to serve as his successor. Following the result, he tweeted that he was a "little overwhelmed and totally honoured".

Vote counting is continuing across Great Britain following yesterday's election. Counting is due to begin in Northern Ireland and the London mayoral election shortly.

In pictures: Local elections 2016 Show all 10 1 /10 In pictures: Local elections 2016 In pictures: Local elections 2016 Mayor of London Boris Johnson and wife Marina leave after casting their votes at a polling station in Islington, north London PA In pictures: Local elections 2016 Northern Ireland First Minister, Arlene Foster (C), Rhonna McMahon (R) and Paul Robinson leave after casting their vote for the Assembly Election, at Brookeborough Primary School in Enniskillen, Northern Ireland Reuters In pictures: Local elections 2016 Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn arrives to cast his vote at a polling station in Islington, north London PA In pictures: Local elections 2016 David Cameron and Samantha Cameron cast their votes in the London Mayoral Election in London Getty Images In pictures: Local elections 2016 Labour Party Mayoral candidate Sadiq Khan and his wife Saadiya pose outside The Richardson Hall St Alban's Church Centre in Streatham after casting their votes in London's Mayoral and Assembly elections Getty Images In pictures: Local elections 2016 Britain's Conservative party candidate for Mayor of London Zac Goldsmith and his wife Alice leave after voting at a polling station in the Barnes suburb of south west London AP In pictures: Local elections 2016 George Osborne casts his vote in the London Mayoral Election in London Getty Images In pictures: Local elections 2016 SNP supporter Trish Traynor outside a polling station at St Ninian & Triduana RC Church in Glasgow as the polls open in the Scottish Parliament election PA In pictures: Local elections 2016 Scottish Labour leader Kezia Dugdale (right) with partner Louise Riddell outside a polling station in Edinburgh after casting her vote in the Scottish Parliament election PA In pictures: Local elections 2016 SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon with her husband Peter Murrell after casting her vote at Broomhouse Community Hall polling station in Glasgow as Scotland goes to the polls in the Scottish Parliament election PA

Ukip has seen a rise in support, gaining seats in Thurrock, Tamworth and Bolton and is expected to win its first seat in the Welsh Assembly. In Scotland, Labour has sustained a number of losses and a bounceback in support for the Liberal Democrats has occurred.

With additional reporting by PA
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Ukip has made a major breakthrough in Wales securing its first ever seats in the Assembly.

According to Nigel Farage, the party has gained support from left-leaning voters disillusioned by a metropolitan Labour party that doesnt look very patriotic.

The anti-EU party gained at least 20 council seats, as well as a minimum of five seats in the Assembly.

Ukip also took second place to Labour in two Westminster by-elections for seats in Ogmore and Sheffield Brightside and Hillsborough.

Ukip support is still growing, its growing predominantly at the expense of the Labour party, the Ukip leader told Sky News.

Many traditional labour voters look at Mr Corbyn and at a Labour party that has gone way, way, way to the left, that is very metropolitan and which under Mr Corbyn doesnt look very patriotic and completely refuses to engage with issues like immigration which is the number one issue in their lives.

The party secured its Welsh Assembly seats via the regional voting system, with candidates Nathan Gill and Michelle Brown among those selected for the North Wales region.

Elections 2016: Agony and ecstasy for candidates as results pour in Show all 10 1 /10 Elections 2016: Agony and ecstasy for candidates as results pour in Elections 2016: Agony and ecstasy for candidates as results pour in SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon waves after winning her seat Glasgow Southside in the Scottish Parliament elections at the Emirates Arena in Glasgow Getty Images Elections 2016: Agony and ecstasy for candidates as results pour in Leader of the Scottish National Party (SNP), Nicola Sturgeon embraces Margaret Ferrier (L), and Janet Doris (R) as her husband Bob Doris (unseen) speaks to the audience at the Emirates Arena in Glasgow EPA Elections 2016: Agony and ecstasy for candidates as results pour in SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon reacts as results come in at a Scottish Parliament election count at the Emirates Arena in Glasgow PA Elections 2016: Agony and ecstasy for candidates as results pour in Labour Party members celebrate after David Burton Sampson (centre) wins the Labour seat for St Martin's ward during the election count for Basildon at the Sports Village in Basildon, Essex PA Elections 2016: Agony and ecstasy for candidates as results pour in Scottish Labour leader Kezia Dugdale, who failed in her bid to win the Edinburgh Eastern constituency from the SNP, at the count at the Royal Highland Centre, Ingliston, Renfrewshire PA Elections 2016: Agony and ecstasy for candidates as results pour in Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson is congratulated after she won the Edinburgh Central seat at the count at the Royal Highland Centre, Ingliston, Renfrewshire PA Elections 2016: Agony and ecstasy for candidates as results pour in Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson speaks after winning the Edinburgh Central seat at the count at the Royal Highland Centre, Ingliston, Renfrewshire PA Elections 2016: Agony and ecstasy for candidates as results pour in Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson arrives at a Scottish Parliament election count at the Royal Highland Centre, Ingliston, Renfrewshire PA Elections 2016: Agony and ecstasy for candidates as results pour in SNP supporters react as their party wins another seat at a counting centre in Glasgow Reuters Elections 2016: Agony and ecstasy for candidates as results pour in Vaughan Gething of Labour retains his seat for Cardiff South and Penarth during the National Assembly for Wales election count at the Sport Wales National Centre in Cardiff, Wales Getty Images

The party could gain more seats as further regional results are announced. Some polls have predicted up to 11 seats.

Ukip has suffered from internal divisions in recent months and has faced accusations of being sidelined in the EU referendum Leave campaign.

But Mr Farage said that on the basis of the elections, the party could still claim the support of millions of people.

More to follow
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The Conservative party has scored major victories at the ballot box, winning new seats on English councils despite internal party divisions over the EU referendum and public anger over cuts, and securing second place in Scottish Parliament elections for the first time.

David Cameron said Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson had won an historic result for the party in Scotland, where it had trailed well behind Labour since the Thatcher-era.

And with 80 of 124 English councils declared, the Tories had gained 10 seats and held on to every council under their control. By contrast, Labour have lost 26 seats, and also lost overall control of Dudley Council.

The results for Labour in England were, however, better than expected, and despite the humiliation of sinking to third place in Scotland, the party is expected to win the London mayoralty.

The mixed outcome makes an imminent challenge to Jeremy Corbyns leadership unlikely  a result which will be welcomed by many Tory strategists, who doubt Mr Corbyns chances of leading Labour to a general election victory in 2020.

The Conservative leadership will be relieved that - despite a bruising few months for the party, with deep divisions over the EU referendum, the resignation of Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith over cuts to disability benefits and a damaging dispute with junior doctors  councillors avoided the kind of mid-term wipe-out experienced by governing parties in the past.

Chancellor George Osborne paid tribute to Tory councillors.

What an achievement to be winning seats after six years in power, he said.

Conservatives make progress when we deliver as a team: more jobs, lower taxes, a national living wage and the promised EU referendum.

Elections 2016: Agony and ecstasy for candidates as results pour in Show all 10 1 /10 Elections 2016: Agony and ecstasy for candidates as results pour in Elections 2016: Agony and ecstasy for candidates as results pour in SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon waves after winning her seat Glasgow Southside in the Scottish Parliament elections at the Emirates Arena in Glasgow Getty Images Elections 2016: Agony and ecstasy for candidates as results pour in Leader of the Scottish National Party (SNP), Nicola Sturgeon embraces Margaret Ferrier (L), and Janet Doris (R) as her husband Bob Doris (unseen) speaks to the audience at the Emirates Arena in Glasgow EPA Elections 2016: Agony and ecstasy for candidates as results pour in SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon reacts as results come in at a Scottish Parliament election count at the Emirates Arena in Glasgow PA Elections 2016: Agony and ecstasy for candidates as results pour in Labour Party members celebrate after David Burton Sampson (centre) wins the Labour seat for St Martin's ward during the election count for Basildon at the Sports Village in Basildon, Essex PA Elections 2016: Agony and ecstasy for candidates as results pour in Scottish Labour leader Kezia Dugdale, who failed in her bid to win the Edinburgh Eastern constituency from the SNP, at the count at the Royal Highland Centre, Ingliston, Renfrewshire PA Elections 2016: Agony and ecstasy for candidates as results pour in Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson is congratulated after she won the Edinburgh Central seat at the count at the Royal Highland Centre, Ingliston, Renfrewshire PA Elections 2016: Agony and ecstasy for candidates as results pour in Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson speaks after winning the Edinburgh Central seat at the count at the Royal Highland Centre, Ingliston, Renfrewshire PA Elections 2016: Agony and ecstasy for candidates as results pour in Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson arrives at a Scottish Parliament election count at the Royal Highland Centre, Ingliston, Renfrewshire PA Elections 2016: Agony and ecstasy for candidates as results pour in SNP supporters react as their party wins another seat at a counting centre in Glasgow Reuters Elections 2016: Agony and ecstasy for candidates as results pour in Vaughan Gething of Labour retains his seat for Cardiff South and Penarth during the National Assembly for Wales election count at the Sport Wales National Centre in Cardiff, Wales Getty Images

The Prime Minister, meanwhile, tweeted his congratulations to Ms Davidson, praising her as a leader who will stand up to the SNP and give Scotland strong opposition.

According to analysis by the BBC, the partys vote share in England was down by around four per cent on 2012, the last time these seats were contested.

There will also be disappointment that Labour were able to retain control of a number of key battleground councils in the south of England, including Southampton, Crawley, and Hastings.

The party also lost three seats in the Welsh Assembly elections, slipping to nine assembly members with 56 of the 60 seats declared.

And while the overall gains and the result in Scotland will be an encouragement to Mr Cameron and Mr Osborne, they still face a major threat to their leadership if Britain votes for Brexit in June, with MPs and party activists likely to back a Eurosceptic leadership challenger.

The party also faces recriminations over Zac Goldsmiths campaign for the London mayoralty, which was criticised for focusing on attempts to link Labours candidate, and likely victor, Sadiq Khan, to Islamist extremists.

A senior London Conservative called Mr Goldsmiths campaign outrageous. Andrew Boff, the Conservative group leader on the Greater London Assembly, told BBCs Newsnight the campaign had done real damage and blown up bridges between the Tory party and the Muslim community.

I dont think it was a dog whistle [campaign] because you cant hear a dog whistle, he said.

Everybody could hear this. It was effectively saying that people of conservative religious views are not to be trusted and you should not share a platform with them. Thats outrageous."
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The Welsh Assembly has elected its first ever openly LGBT politicians.

Labour candidate and former LGBT Labour co-chair, Hannah Blythyn, has won the Delyn constituency. She won the seat with 9,480 votes, giving her a majority of 3,582.

Jeremy Miles has also won the Neath constituency.

Shortly after her victory was announced, Ms Blythyn tweeted: "Thank you to all those who have put their faith in me- it will be a privilege to serve you as your assembly member."

Ms Blythyn has previously described how lesbians in the workplace face a "double glazed glass ceiling".

LGBT+ rights around the globe Show all 9 1 /9 LGBT+ rights around the globe LGBT+ rights around the globe Russia Russias antipathy towards homosexuality has been well established following the efforts of human rights campaigners. However, while it is legal to be homosexual, LGBT couples are offered no protections from discrimination. They are also actively discriminated against by a 2013 law criminalising LGBT propaganda allowing the arrest of numerous Russian LGBT activists. AFP/Getty LGBT+ rights around the globe Brunei Brunei recently introduced a law to make sodomy punishable by stoning to death. It was already illegal and punishable by up to 10 years in prison AFP/Getty LGBT+ rights around the globe Mauritania Men who are found having sex with other men face stoning, while lesbians can be imprisoned, under Sharia law. However, the state has reportedly not executed anyone for this crime since 1987 Alamy LGBT+ rights around the globe Sudan Both male and female same-sex sexual activity is illegal under Sudanese law. Men can be executed on their third offence, women on their fourth Getty LGBT+ rights around the globe Saudi Arabia Homosexuality and gender realignment is illegal and punishable by death, imprisonment, whipping and chemical castration Getty LGBT+ rights around the globe Yemen The official position within the country is that there are no gays. LGBT inviduals, if discovered by the government, are likely to face intense pressure. Punishments range from flogging to the death penalty Getty LGBT+ rights around the globe Nigeria Both male and female same-sex sexual activity is illegal and in some northern states punishable with death by stoning. This is not a policy enacted across the entire country, although there is a prevalent anti-LGBT agenda pushed by the government. In 2007 a Pew survey established that 97% of the population felt that homosexuality should not be accepted. It is punishable by 14 years in prison Reuters LGBT+ rights around the globe Somalia Homosexuality was established as a crime in 1888 and under new Somali Penal Code established in 1973 homosexual sex can be punishable by three years in prison. A person can be put to death for being a homosexual Reuters LGBT+ rights around the globe Iraq Although same-sex relationships have been decriminalised, much of the population still suffer from intense discrimination. Additionally, in some of the country over-run by the extremist organisation Isis, LGBT individuals can face death by stoning Getty

Stonewall Cymru Director Andrew White was among those who tweeted their congratulations to Ms Blythyn following her election.

Shortly after he added "You wait 17 years for an openly gay Assembly Member, then two come along in an hour! Congrats Jeremy Miles."

In 2000, Plaid Cymru's Jaci Taylor became the first openly lesbian mayor in Wales.
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Ken Livingstone has denied comments he made about Adolf Hitler harmed Labour's election results, as more incendiary remarks made by the former London mayor emerged in which he said the creation of the state of Israel was "a great catastrophe".

Mr Livingstone, who was suspended from the party last week after suggesting Adolf Hitler supported Zionism before he "went mad", returned to the airwaves on election day blaming "far right" Labour MPs for stoking up division in the party.

Questioned on the fallout from his comments, he told Sky News: "The simple fact is, so many people have gone on to the internet now, they have seen Joseph Finkelstein's brilliant interview.

"A lot of people, it's a shock to discover there had been that relationship between a small section of the Jewish community in Germany and Adolf Hitler but it's historically true.

"And the simple reality of all of that is we shouldn't be ashamed about some of the mistakes our government has made in the past and I don't think the people of Israel, don't need to be ashamed of what happened 80 years ago."

HIs comments followed the emergence of a new interview in which he said that creating Israel was "fundamentally wrong".

In an interview with Arabic TV station Al Ghad Al Arabi filmed on 20 April and broadcast on Wednesday, he said: The creation of the state of Israel was fundamentally wrong, because there had been a Palestinian community there for 2,000 years.

In the clip, translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute, Mr Livingstone suggested some tensions in the Middle East could have been avoided by Jewish people being resettled in the UK and America after the Second World War.

The creation of the state of Israel was a great catastrophe, he said.

We should have absorbed the post-Second World War Jewish refugees in Britain and America. They could all have been resettled, whereas 70 years later, the situation is still very tense, and there is potential for many more wars, potential for nuclear war,

 John Mann MP call Ken Livingstone MP a 'Nazi apologist'

"The simple truth is that the situation in Iraq today is worse than what it was under the rule of Saddam Hussein.

"All the Western interventions in the Middle East had nothing whatsoever to do with introducing democracy."

He also said he chose to boycott Israeli products such as dates.

"I believe that the endorsement of double standards in the Middle East was one of the causes that led to the development of the terrorist Islamic groups today," he said.

Labour antisemitism row: What Livingstone said Show all 14 1 /14 Labour antisemitism row: What Livingstone said Labour antisemitism row: What Livingstone said On Israel and Palestine The simple fact in all of this is that Naz made these comments at a time when there was another brutal Israeli attack on the Palestinians; and theres one stark fact that virtually no one in the British media ever reports, in almost all these conflicts the death toll is usually between 60 and 100 Palestinians killed for every Israeli. Now, any other country doing that would be accused of war crimes but its like we have a double standard about the policies of the Israeli government Labour antisemitism row: What Livingstone said On Antisemitism in the Labour Party As Ive said, Ive never heard anybody say anything antisemitism-Semitic, but theres been a very well-orchestrated campaign by the Israel lobby to smear anybody who criticises Israeli policy as antisemitic. I had to put up with 35 years of this Labour antisemitism row: What Livingstone said On Naz Shah Its completely over-the-top and rude, but who am I to denounce anyone with all of that. It was wrong. I dont think she is antisemitic, it was incredibly rude but I dont believe she is an antisemite. When the NEC investigation is finished they'll say it was rude and over the top but they wont find any evidence that she actually hates Jews. Weve got to investigate all these charges and the context in which they are made. If she is antisemitic like the other three or four members weve found who are antisemitic, shell be expelled Labour antisemitism row: What Livingstone said On other alleged antisemites in Labour That is part of the classic antisemitic thing about an international Jewish conspiracy  that is the reason we need to have an investigation. Ive got an open mind. Ive seen nothing to suggest to me that she is antisemitic. I wouldnt have supported her if I [thought] she was antisemitic Labour antisemitism row: What Livingstone said On whether what Hitler did was legal, as stated by Naz Shah Thats a statement of fact  Hitler, Im sure, passed all those laws that allowed him to do that  its history  literally, Hitler was completely mad, he killed six million Jews. Shes not saying its legal to kill six million Jews: what they were doing in that country allowed them not just to kill six million Jews, kill all the communists, kill all the leftists like me, my father almost died when a Nazi sub sank his boat. I have no sympathy with Hitler Labour antisemitism row: What Livingstone said On another alleged antisemite in Labour No, that is, and thats why shes been suspended or expelled. What Ive said is that in 47 years of the party in all the meetings Ive been in Ive never heard anyone say anything antisemitic. There are bound to be in a party of half a million people youll have a handful of antisemites, youll have a handful of racists. Youve managed to dig out virtually every antisemitic comment that Labour members have made out of half a million people. Ive never met any of these people. Theres not a problem. Youre talking about a handful of people in a party of half a million people. Jeremy Corbyn has moved rapidly to deal with them Labour antisemitism row: What Livingstone said On Jeremy Corbyns response to the allegations He met with Naz and she agreed she would stand down while the investigation is going on. He called her in to see her. Theres been a huge investigation of virtually everything that anybody put on the internet  many of these people are quite new and recent members of the party that joined in the big influx. 300,000 new people came in Labour antisemitism row: What Livingstone said On his meeting a man accused of antisemitism in London This is the man who called for Muslims around the world to donate blood after the attacks of 9/11 when he came to London I went with him to the Regents Park mosque where he said no man should hit a woman and you should not discriminate against homosexuals. So I cant equate what I heard him say he made no antisemitic statement while he was here in London. I dont investigate people. Ive simply said what I believe to be true which is that Naz was not antisemitic. She was completely over the top, very rude, but that does not make her an antisemite Labour antisemitism row: What Livingstone said On John Manns comments He went completely over the top. I was actually doing a radio interview at the time that he was bellowing that Im a racist antisemite in my ear. Ive had that with John Mann before a few weeks ago screaming that I was a bigot down the phone. Im not an apologist for anyone who makes antisemitic statements. What Im saying is dont confuse antisemitism with criticism of the Israeli government policy Labour antisemitism row: What Livingstone said On calling a Jewish journalist a concentration camp guard whilst Mayor of London I cant tell if a journalist is Jewish or Catholic or anything. If a journalist is chasing you down the street at nine of clock at night you might be rude to them. Some people might have hit him! He said he was just doing his job. We went all the way to the High Court and the judge opened his judgement by saying I hope no one here is going to suggest that Mr Livingstone is antisemitic. We won the case Labour antisemitism row: What Livingstone said On claims about Hitler and Zionism I cant tell if a journalist is Jewish or Catholic or anything. If a journalist is chasing you down the street at nine of clock at night you might be rude to them. Some people might have hit him! He said he was just doing his job. We went all the way to the High Court and the judge opened his judgement by saying I hope no one here is going to suggest that Mr Livingstone is antisemitic. We won the case Labour antisemitism row: What Livingstone said On John Mann Id simply say to John Mann go back and check. Is what I say true, or is it not? The BBC, youve got a huge team of researchers, it will take just an hour or two to go back and confirm. I was asked a question, I answered it. I have never in 45 years since I won my first election, I have never lied. I have always answered the question Labour antisemitism row: What Livingstone said On raising the issue if Hitler It lays you open to people smearing and lying about you. Ive always answered the questions put to me and that simple fact is weve had a handful of people saying antisemitic things in the Labour Party, theyve been suspended, some of them are on their way to being expelled, some of them have been expelled already Labour antisemitism row: What Livingstone said On people calling for him to be suspended All my usual critics  but the simple fact is I agree with them; there is no place for antisemitism in the Labour party. For them to suggest I am antisemitic is a bit bizarre considering we worked with Jewish groups and put on exhibitions about the scale of the holocaust, we worked with Jewish groups to tackling the scale of antisemitism back in the 1970s. Ive always opposed every form of racism whether its against black people or Jews. Im going to stay in the Labour party and continue to fight against all forms of racism and discrimination as I have my entire life

"We imposed harsh sanctions on Iran for over a decade, because we believed that it was developing nuclear arms [...] On the other hand, Israel has possessed nuclear arms for 40 years. It is the first country to introduce nuclear arms to the Middle East.

"But we have still not acknowledged that, and not imposed sanctions upon it."

Al Ghad Al Arabi has been broadcasting from London since 2013. The station was also launched in Cairo in November 2015, with a ceremony attended by Tony Blair.

Mr Livingstone is one of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn's oldest political allies, but Mr Corbyn was forced to move against him after his attempt to defend the Labour MP Naz Shah backfired, leading to the former London mayor himself being accused of racism.
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Conservative election strategist Lynton Crosby has been knighted for his service to politics  almost a year to the day since he helped the party secure a shock victory at the General Election.

It comes as Zac Goldsmiths Conservative campaign for mayor of London  run by Mr Crosbys communications firm CTF Comms  faces intense criticism for its negative campaigning and attempt to link Muslim rival Sadiq Khan's to Islamist extremists.

Mr Goldsmith's attempt to succeed Boris Johnson looked to have come unstuck after polls put Mr Khan well in the lead, with the results due late on Friday.

According to the Press Association, after receiving his knighthood from Prince Charles at Buckingham Palace, the Australian strategist refused to comment on whether Mr Goldsmiths campaign had been too negative.

Instead he said in a written statement: "I am truly honoured to receive this award in recognition of my service to politics in the UK and especially proud that my family can rightly share in and enjoy the recognition.

"It is also recognition for the thousands of candidates, campaign staff, activists, volunteers and my company's professional colleagues who I've had the great fortune to work alongside in the UK - across elections over the past decade.

"It is their hard work and commitment in fighting for a cause they believe in and unfailing faith in focusing on the people that matter - the voting public - that have contributed to the achievement of politics and campaign successes."

There is no suggestion that Mr Crosby played any personal role in the Mr Goldsmith's campaign.

Labour MP David Lammy posted on his Twitter account: Hours after polls close in the ugliest and most divisive campaign I can remember, Lynton Crosby receives knighthood for political service.

Former adviser to Ed Miliband, Stewart Wood, said: Lynton Crosby gets his knighthood on the day Tory recriminations about his dog-whistle London mayoral campaign begin.

Additional reporting by Press Association
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This election is the first one in which Northern Irelands so called peace babies or children born in the year of the Good Friday Agreement can vote. The generation currently turning 18 has become a symbol of hope in the region as they enjoy new opportunities in peacetime which their parents could scarcely have imagined in the Troubles and with knowledge of the conflict coming only from anecdotes and textbooks rather than first-hand experience. As the teenagers cast their votes in ballot boxes across Northern Ireland yesterday, many saw the milestone as a moment to take stock of whether Northern Irish politics and peace process structures have reached an age of maturity as well.

This election suggests that while the Catholic-Protestant divide continues to be the primary feature in Northern Irish politics, its influence is waning, especially among younger generations. Exit polls suggest increased support for smaller parties, mixed religion parties and more liberal or left wing parties.

Younger generations are increasingly voting for non-traditional parties away from the core Protestant parties the UUP and DUP and core Catholic parties the SDLP and Sinn Fein. There is little doubt that these four will remain the four largest parties, but their vote share is slowly trickling outwards to other smaller parties after decades of stagnation. Crucially these parties seldom have strong focuses on religion and the constitutional question. Instead, younger voters appear more likely to vote based on a partys stance on Northern Irelands abortion ban, or same-sex marriage ban, austerity or education policy.

The generational divide in Northern Irish politics has been recently heightened by a number of controversial moves by Stormont. Stormont remains largely Christian, male and conservative in outlook. The DUP recently blocked marriage equality being extended to same-sex couples; a source of growing frustration among younger voters. The parliament also recently voted to keep the countrys abortion ban, despite a high court ruling that to do so breached international human rights legislation, prompting large protests by young women in Belfast city centre following the prosecution of a 21-year-old who was convicted of taking abortion pills.

Younger voters are increasingly demanding more of their politicians than a stance on whether Northern Ireland should be part of Ireland or the UK. As they find dissatisfactory answers among existing politicians and parties, they are turning elsewhere to previously niche or side line parties.

One of the biggest winners anticipated in this election is the cross community Alliance party which holds as a core philosophy the need to end sectarianism in Northern Ireland. The party campaigns against the current education system which sees Catholic and Protestant children and schoolteachers educated separately. They have also been vocal in criticising the on-going practice of different communities marking their territory by hanging British or Irish flags from lamp posts and called for council housing to be mixed religion in a bid to strengthen relations between the two communities. The party expects to see a measured but significant increase at the expense of other traditional unionist or nationalist parties.

Results so far indicate growing support for the Green Party, although it remains to be seen if this increase is significant enough to transfer to an increase in seats under the proportional representation system.

A number of anti-austerity parties with no religious affiliation or strong focus on the constitutional question also look set to make significant gains. People Before Profit, a hard-left party which describes its focus as standing up for working class communities, has won a seat in Gerry Adams old stronghold West Belfast, topping the poll with more than 8,000 votes.

The hegemony of traditional parties in Northern Ireland is slowly weakening and younger generations in the region come of age and reject the politics of their parents and grandparents. While the parties around Stormonts executive table in this parliament are expected to be the same which have been in place for almost every parliament so far, a significant number of politicians taking seats in the chamber represent a considerable challenging to the old politics which have dominated for so long even if their presence if too limited to hold much sway over legislation. Even as side line voices the new or alternate parties can represent a significant force for change as they shape how Stormont governs by forcing them to look beyond traditional religious divisions.

In a parliament where the almost exclusive focus since inception has been Northern Irelands constitutional status, focus on other social issues could have a homeopathic effect which spreads throughout the language, agenda and style of Northern Irish politics, regardless of whether it changes the content of statute books.
A retired doctor in south China's Guangdong Province was stabbed in a knife attack by a former patient on Thursday afternoon.

Police authorities in Yuexiu District of the provincial capital Guangzhou said they first received the report of the attack at the home of Chen Zhongwei, former director of the stomatology department of the Guangdong General Hospital at 5:20 pm.

The doctor, who suffered life-threatening injuries, was then immediately rushed to the hospital. Dozens of medical experts were being involved in the emergency treatment.

After the stabbing, the male attacker jumped from the balcony of Chen's home and fell to death, the initial police investigation showed.

Police are further investigating the identity of the attacker and his motive.

The hospital confirmed that the man received medical treatment from Chen 25 years ago and had a history of mental disorder. The hospital strongly denounced the violent attack against medical staff and was assisting the police investigation, a hospital official said.
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Sadiq Khan is poised to emerge victorious over Zac Goldsmith in the London mayoral race as counting for the contest closes.

The Labour candidate has been hotly tipped to succeed Boris Johnson, despite controversy over allegations of links to extremists made by his rival.

With verification of the votes now complete, Mr Khan has extended his lead over Mr Goldsmith, with the pair's rivals lagging far behind. All that remains is final adjudication.

The Green Party's candidate Sian Berry was in third place, followed by Lib Dem Caroline Pidgeon, Ukip's Peter Whittle, Sophie Walker from the Women's Equality Party, George Galloway for Respect, Paul Golding from Britain First, Lee Harris of Cannabis is Safer than Alcohol (Cista), BNP's David Furness, independent Prince Zylinski, and Ankit Love, from the One Love Party.

A live tracker on the counts progress can be found on the London Elects website here.

Mr Goldsmiths campaign drew criticism from opponents, as well as some members of his own party.

Andrew Boff, the Conservative group leader on the Greater London Assembly, said the outrageous tactics had blown up bridges built with London's Muslim communities.

 Nastiest moments in the London mayoral election

I mentioned that I thought this was a mistake for future integration in London. If you are a London politician this is just a bizarre thing to do, he said.

It was effectively saying that people of conservative religious views are not to be trusted and you shouldn't share a platform with them. That's outrageous.

Speaking before the count started, a Labour source said Mr Khan's team was optimistic about his chances but did not believe the large leads shown by previous polls.

The final survey, carried out as voting started on Thursday, showed the Labour campaign ahead by 43 per cent to Mr Goldsmiths 32 on first preference.

Mayor of London 2016 - the candidates at a glance Show all 7 1 /7 Mayor of London 2016 - the candidates at a glance Mayor of London 2016 - the candidates at a glance Sadiq Khan - Labour The MP for Tooting, Sadiq Khan says the mayoral election will be a 'referendum on the Tory housing crisis'. He has also pledged to freeze fares until 2020. Son of a bus driver, and doesn't let anyone forget it. His Conservative opponent has made claims about people who he has previously associated with - but attacks so far have failed to stick Mayor of London 2016 - the candidates at a glance Zac Goldsmith - Conservative The MP for Richmond, Zac Goldsmith is a longstanding campaigner against the expansion of Heathrow airport. Despite his environment credentials - he once edited The Ecologist magazine - the Tory candidate has said he would 'rip out' Boris Johnson's cycle lanes if they don't work. A very wealthy man, his campaign has been dogged by accusations of racism against Sadiq Khan Mayor of London 2016 - the candidates at a glance Sian Berry - Green Party A councillor in the London Borough of Camden, Sian Berry is campaigning on improving homes for renters, cleaning up London's air pollution, and flattening fare zones to help Londoners. She previously ran as the party's mayoral candidate in 2008. In 2012, the Green Party came in third place Mayor of London 2016 - the candidates at a glance Caroline Pidgeon - Liberal Democrat A Liberal Democrat London Assembly member for eight years, Caroline Pidgeon has a strong record on the Assembly's transport committee standing up for commuters and cyclists alike. She wants to set up a 2 billion housing investment fund and make all the capital's buses zero emission Mayor of London 2016 - the candidates at a glance Peter Whittle - UKIP UKIP hasn't fared so well in London in previous elections, but is hoping for a breakthrough this time. Peter Whittle has been UKIP's culture spokesperson for two years. He tends to focus on the impact of immigration on London's housing crisis Mayor of London 2016 - the candidates at a glance George Galloway - RESPECT George Galloway has made a habit of defying the odds and pulling off stunning victories when standing for Parliament. His campaign - based on the slogan 'a London for all' has so far failed to make headway in the polls - has his luck run out? Mayor of London 2016 - the candidates at a glance Sophie Walker - Women's Equality Party A journalist, Sophie Walker is campaigning for the little-known Women's Equality Party. She is pledging to make 'equality and diversity the fuel that drives our nation's capital' with measures to increase women's representation in enterprise, more affordable homes and flexible childcare

In the final run-off, according to the YouGov poll for the Evening Standard, Mr Khan was heading for a victory that would make him the capitals first Muslim mayor by a 57 to 43 margin.

Since YouGovs last survey a fortnight ago, Mr Khans lead has fallen from 16 points to 11 points on first preferences, and is down from a landslide 20 points in the run-off to 14.

A win for the Labour politician, who has been the MP for Tooting since 2005, would be a boost for his party after a disastrous performance in Scotland.

Jeremy Corbyn said he would work to re-build support north of the border after Labour lost 13 seats in the Scottish Parliament, being pushed into third place by the resurgent Scottish Conservatives.

It maintained control of the Welsh Assembly, where Ukip took seats for the first time, and has lost one English council so far.

Additional reporting by PA
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London has elected its first Muslim mayor, with Sadiq Khan delivering a resounding victory for Labour and ending eight years of Conservative rule at City Hall. As the results were finally announced well after midnight on Saturday morning, Mr Khan said: "This election has not been without controversy. I am so proud that London has chosen hope over fear and unity over division. I hope we will never be offered such a stark choice again."

Mr Khan lead his Conservative rival Zac Goldsmith by a total of 315,529 votes when the second preference votes were counted and reallocated. He received 1,310,143 votes, higher than for any previous London Mayor. This amounted to 57 per cent of the total final votes to Mr Goldsmith's 43 per cent (994,614 votes). Turnout was 45.6 per cent, up from 38 per cent in 2012.

A tired Sadiq Khan speaks at City Hall after being confirmed as the new London Mayor - with Paul Golding, to his left, turning his back (AP)

Mr Khan capped an assured campaign with a convincing triumph, while Goldsmith faced a growing backlash over a campaign which critics described as divisive and dependent on dog whistle politics.

Mr Khan said that he was "deeply humbled" by the trust that voters had put in him. He also paid tribute to his mother, and his late father, saying: "My dad would be so proud that the city he chose to call home has chosen one of his children to be Mayor."

Referring to the often contentious campaign, Mr Khan said: "Fear does not make us safer - it only makes us weaker. And the politics of fear is simply not welcome in our city."

Mr Goldsmith's campaign faced criticism for focusing on attempts to link Mr Khan to Islamist extremists, with whom he had in the past shared platforms or represented during his work as a lawyer. The campaign was also criticised for sending letters to voters targeted according to their ethnic group.

At the announcement, Mr Goldsmith paid tribute to Mr Khan, and said: "I wish him well as he sets out to build on the successes that we've seen under Boris Johnson and to take it even further."

As the outcome of the race became clear, senior Conservatives joined the backlash against the Goldsmith campaign.

 Nastiest moments in the London mayoral election

Sayeeda Warsi, the former party chairman and the first Muslim woman to attend Cabinet said the appalling dog whistle campaign had lost us the election, our reputation and credibility on issues of race and religion.

Lady Warsi, the former Conservative party chairman, described it as "appalling".

Recriminations even extended even to Mr Goldsmith's own family, with sister Jemima, a journalist and campaigner, tweeting that she was sad her brothers campaign did not reflect who I know him to be  an eco-friendly, independent minded politician with integrity.

Steven Norris, a former MP and mayoral candidate, insisted it was "no use having a dog whistle when everybody can hear it".

And Andrew Boff, Conservative group leader on the Greater London assembly, said: It was ridiculous I do believe its going to affect Conservatives at the sharp end, especially in those parts of London where there is a high Muslim population. I mentioned that I thought this was a mistake for future integration in London. If you are a London politician this is just a bizarre thing to do.

Former minister and Labour MP for Tottenham David Lammy said voters had reacted against a campaign that he called divisive and laden with smear.

Right across London, black, white and brown have gone out and voted for unity, he told The Independent. This is the first time an ethnic minority politician has been given a mandate from millions of people, he added.

"Its an extraordinary moment, one we can all delight in whatever our political party Right across the world they will be talking about this election result. Its a global moment.

New Yorks mayor Bill de Blasio tweeted his congratulations to Mr Khan, calling him a fellow affordable housing advocate and said he was looking forward to working with his new counterpart.

In pictures: Local elections 2016 Show all 10 1 /10 In pictures: Local elections 2016 In pictures: Local elections 2016 Mayor of London Boris Johnson and wife Marina leave after casting their votes at a polling station in Islington, north London PA In pictures: Local elections 2016 Northern Ireland First Minister, Arlene Foster (C), Rhonna McMahon (R) and Paul Robinson leave after casting their vote for the Assembly Election, at Brookeborough Primary School in Enniskillen, Northern Ireland Reuters In pictures: Local elections 2016 Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn arrives to cast his vote at a polling station in Islington, north London PA In pictures: Local elections 2016 David Cameron and Samantha Cameron cast their votes in the London Mayoral Election in London Getty Images In pictures: Local elections 2016 Labour Party Mayoral candidate Sadiq Khan and his wife Saadiya pose outside The Richardson Hall St Alban's Church Centre in Streatham after casting their votes in London's Mayoral and Assembly elections Getty Images In pictures: Local elections 2016 Britain's Conservative party candidate for Mayor of London Zac Goldsmith and his wife Alice leave after voting at a polling station in the Barnes suburb of south west London AP In pictures: Local elections 2016 George Osborne casts his vote in the London Mayoral Election in London Getty Images In pictures: Local elections 2016 SNP supporter Trish Traynor outside a polling station at St Ninian & Triduana RC Church in Glasgow as the polls open in the Scottish Parliament election PA In pictures: Local elections 2016 Scottish Labour leader Kezia Dugdale (right) with partner Louise Riddell outside a polling station in Edinburgh after casting her vote in the Scottish Parliament election PA In pictures: Local elections 2016 SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon with her husband Peter Murrell after casting her vote at Broomhouse Community Hall polling station in Glasgow as Scotland goes to the polls in the Scottish Parliament election PA

The win represents a major boost for Labour, which had suffered the humiliation of slipping to third place in Scotland, once a stronghold for the party.

But Mr Khan, a former human rights lawyer, has distanced himself from Corbyn throughout his campaign, particularly over the party leadership's handling of allegations of antisemitism within Labour ranks.

In Wales, Labour lost control of the Welsh Assembly after the totemic seat of Rhondda fell to the Plaid Cymru leader Leanne Wood.

But in English council elections, the party faired less badly than many pundits had expected  losing only 25 seats of the 1,200 it was defending.

Zac Goldsmith

The party also retained control of key councils such as Crawley, Southampton, Norwich and Hastings, where its vote had looked vulnerable.

But critics of Mr Corbyn pointed out that such a result was still nowhere near good enough to win a General Election, while the Labour leader himself admitted that they had hung on.

 Boris' message to next mayor

"I don't think that the public see the UK Labour Party led by Jeremy Corbyn at the moment as being a credible party of future government in 2020, Ian Murray Labours shadow Scottish secretary admitted.

That's something, after this week's results, we should reflect on.

Among the other highlights from the day's results:
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The Labour party is braced for a humiliating slump to third place in Scotland after the Conservatives pulled off a shock win in Edinburgh.

Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson unexpectedly won the Edinburgh Central seat with a huge swing against Labour and the SNP  after her party came in fourth place in 2011.

The result comes as it appeared the Tories may finish up ahead of Labour for overall second place in Scotland, with the race going down to the wire.

In many other seats the Tories have doubled their vote share  largely at the expense of previously dominant Labour.

Ms Davidson had been expected to be elected by the regional top-up list, which the Tories have previously relied on to win Members of the Scottish Parliament.

Visibly ecstatic, she told the election count in Edinburghs Highland Hall that voters were sending a message to the SNP  who are still expected to win an overwhelming victory and form the next government.

"I feel ready personally, I feel ready to serve as the leader of the official opposition, ready to take on Nicola Sturgeon," she said.

"I think that we'll have a team behind me that can make me confident that we can do a good job.

Elections 2016: Agony and ecstasy for candidates as results pour in Show all 10 1 /10 Elections 2016: Agony and ecstasy for candidates as results pour in Elections 2016: Agony and ecstasy for candidates as results pour in SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon waves after winning her seat Glasgow Southside in the Scottish Parliament elections at the Emirates Arena in Glasgow Getty Images Elections 2016: Agony and ecstasy for candidates as results pour in Leader of the Scottish National Party (SNP), Nicola Sturgeon embraces Margaret Ferrier (L), and Janet Doris (R) as her husband Bob Doris (unseen) speaks to the audience at the Emirates Arena in Glasgow EPA Elections 2016: Agony and ecstasy for candidates as results pour in SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon reacts as results come in at a Scottish Parliament election count at the Emirates Arena in Glasgow PA Elections 2016: Agony and ecstasy for candidates as results pour in Labour Party members celebrate after David Burton Sampson (centre) wins the Labour seat for St Martin's ward during the election count for Basildon at the Sports Village in Basildon, Essex PA Elections 2016: Agony and ecstasy for candidates as results pour in Scottish Labour leader Kezia Dugdale, who failed in her bid to win the Edinburgh Eastern constituency from the SNP, at the count at the Royal Highland Centre, Ingliston, Renfrewshire PA Elections 2016: Agony and ecstasy for candidates as results pour in Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson is congratulated after she won the Edinburgh Central seat at the count at the Royal Highland Centre, Ingliston, Renfrewshire PA Elections 2016: Agony and ecstasy for candidates as results pour in Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson speaks after winning the Edinburgh Central seat at the count at the Royal Highland Centre, Ingliston, Renfrewshire PA Elections 2016: Agony and ecstasy for candidates as results pour in Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson arrives at a Scottish Parliament election count at the Royal Highland Centre, Ingliston, Renfrewshire PA Elections 2016: Agony and ecstasy for candidates as results pour in SNP supporters react as their party wins another seat at a counting centre in Glasgow Reuters Elections 2016: Agony and ecstasy for candidates as results pour in Vaughan Gething of Labour retains his seat for Cardiff South and Penarth during the National Assembly for Wales election count at the Sport Wales National Centre in Cardiff, Wales Getty Images

"There are people right across Scotland who are sending the SNP a message - the voices and the decision we made as a country will not be ignored.

"Nowhere is that more evident than Edinburgh Central, where we were coming from fourth position."

She won 30.4 per cent of the vote  less than a third  in a four-way race. The SNP came narrowly behind on 28.6 percent, Labour on 22.1 per cent, and the Green Party on 13.6 per cent.

The result came minutes after Labours leader Kezia Dugdale failed in her bid to be elected to the Edinburgh Eastern seat. She will likely be elected to the Scottish Parliament on the proportional list vote, where she is also standing.

As of 4.45am Labour have lost 11 seats in Scotland  nine to the SNP and two to the Conservatives.

The elections come amid a better than expected result for Labour in the local elections in England. As of the early hours of the morning the party has lost some seats, but not as many as it was expecting to.

Jeremy Corbyns party retained key councils in the south of England including Southampton and Harlow.
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The SNP has lost its overall majority in the Scottish Parliament as a resurgent Conservative Party made gains and Labour was hammered.

On a disastrous night for Labour north of the border, the party slumped to third place, and although the SNP won by a large margin, it unexpectedly lost its overall majority in the Holyrood parliament and will have to rely on the support of other parties to pass legislation.

Labour ended the night with just 24 MSPs, shedding 13 from its 2011 election results  while the Tories became the largest opposition party with 31 seats, up 16.

The SNP won 63 seats, slightly down on its previous result despite long bookies odds of just 8/1 on it losing its majority.

In a humiliating turn of events for already struggling Scottish Labour, the partys leader Kezia Dugdale failed in her bid to win a constituency seat in Edinburgh and was forced to enter parliament through the regional list.

By contrast, Conservative leader Ruth Davidson pulled off a shock victory in Edinburgh Central, taking her party from fourth place to first there and ousting the areas SNP representative.

 SNP wins third term but loses majority

Ms Davidson was visibly ecstatic, telling the count at Edinburghs Highland Centre that voters across Scotland had sent a message to the Scottish National Party.

She featured heavily in the Tory campaign, with the partys Conservatives branding practically absent from literature, replaced by the slogan Ruth Davidson for a Strong Opposition.

The leader said after the result that she had been elected to do a very specific job  hold the SNP to account.

I fully recognise and understand there are many people that have given us their vote for the very first time, not because they're true blue Conservatives, but because there's a job of work they want us to do, she said.

Ms Dugdale told a dwindling crowd who had stayed up for her election via the list at the Edinburgh count that the contest was always going to be tough for Scottish Labour.

UK Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said there was "hard work" to do north of the border, but that he would support the Scottish party.

"We are going to be with you. We are going to walk hand in hand with the party in Scotland to build that support up once again so that the Labour tradition in Scotland will be established once again," he said.

Despite losing its majority the SNP was still the undisputed winner of the night  although it will now face the choice of either going into coalition government, operating as a minority government, or doing a formal deal with another party.

The two maps below show how Scotland's political outlook has changed in the five years between this years Holyrood elections and those in 2011 (

The SNP captured all nine seats in Scotlands largest city, Glasgow, wiping out the remaining four Labour constituencies there. Across the country Labour gained just one seat from the SNP  in Edinburgh Southern.

The partys leader Nicola Sturgeon told supporters that they had made history with the result. She also said the party would not seek a formal deal with any other party and would instead function as a minority government.

"We won a clear and unequivocal mandate and I secured the personal mandate I sought to implement the bold and ambitious programme for government that I asked the country to vote for," she said after the result became clear.

"I can confirm that when it reconvenes in the coming days I will ask the Scottish Parliament to formally re-elect me as the First Minister of Scotland. It will then be my intention to form and to lead an SNP government.

Elections 2016: Agony and ecstasy for candidates as results pour in Show all 10 1 /10 Elections 2016: Agony and ecstasy for candidates as results pour in Elections 2016: Agony and ecstasy for candidates as results pour in SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon waves after winning her seat Glasgow Southside in the Scottish Parliament elections at the Emirates Arena in Glasgow Getty Images Elections 2016: Agony and ecstasy for candidates as results pour in Leader of the Scottish National Party (SNP), Nicola Sturgeon embraces Margaret Ferrier (L), and Janet Doris (R) as her husband Bob Doris (unseen) speaks to the audience at the Emirates Arena in Glasgow EPA Elections 2016: Agony and ecstasy for candidates as results pour in SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon reacts as results come in at a Scottish Parliament election count at the Emirates Arena in Glasgow PA Elections 2016: Agony and ecstasy for candidates as results pour in Labour Party members celebrate after David Burton Sampson (centre) wins the Labour seat for St Martin's ward during the election count for Basildon at the Sports Village in Basildon, Essex PA Elections 2016: Agony and ecstasy for candidates as results pour in Scottish Labour leader Kezia Dugdale, who failed in her bid to win the Edinburgh Eastern constituency from the SNP, at the count at the Royal Highland Centre, Ingliston, Renfrewshire PA Elections 2016: Agony and ecstasy for candidates as results pour in Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson is congratulated after she won the Edinburgh Central seat at the count at the Royal Highland Centre, Ingliston, Renfrewshire PA Elections 2016: Agony and ecstasy for candidates as results pour in Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson speaks after winning the Edinburgh Central seat at the count at the Royal Highland Centre, Ingliston, Renfrewshire PA Elections 2016: Agony and ecstasy for candidates as results pour in Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson arrives at a Scottish Parliament election count at the Royal Highland Centre, Ingliston, Renfrewshire PA Elections 2016: Agony and ecstasy for candidates as results pour in SNP supporters react as their party wins another seat at a counting centre in Glasgow Reuters Elections 2016: Agony and ecstasy for candidates as results pour in Vaughan Gething of Labour retains his seat for Cardiff South and Penarth during the National Assembly for Wales election count at the Sport Wales National Centre in Cardiff, Wales Getty Images

But University of Strathclyde political scientist Professor John Curtice said the nationalists had possibly been the victims of exaggerated expectations at the elections  with a widely predicted majority not materialising.

The dark horses of the election were the Liberal Democrats, who also made unexpected gains from the SNP in Edinburgh Western and North East Fife, where the partys leader Willie Rennie was elected.

The Scottish Greens, too, had a strong showing in the Glasgow Kelvin constituency, where its leader Patrick Harvie came second to the SNP.

Overall, the left-wing environmentalists tripled their representation from two MSPs to six, all elected under regional lists. As the only other pro-independence party in the Scottish Parliament its members are now prime candidates to cooperate with the SNP-led minority government  as they did after the 2007 elections.

Recommended Read more Corbyn to face renewed pressure after Scotland and Wales setbacks

The Greens backed that government, which was led by Alex Salmond, in exchange for a Climate Change Bill and Green MSPs on a key parliamentary committee.

There still still a majority in favour of Scottish independence in the Scottish Parliament, though the Greens have said they would only consider a second independence referendum in the event of a petition of a million signatures being handed in.

Smaller parties RISE, Solidarity, and the Womens Equality Party failed to make an impact.

Turnout in Thursdays elections was around 55 per cent, marginally up on 2011.

Labour had a better night in Englands local elections, where it exceeded expectations by retaining control of key councils in the south  Harlow in Essex, Crawley in Sussex, and Southampton on the south coast.

It had a mixed night in Wales, losing the Rhondda to Welsh nationalists Plaid Cymru, but keeping an overall strong first place.
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The SNP has claimed a historic third victory in the Holyrood elections, but failed to secure its overall majority in the Scottish Parliament as the Tories made surprise gains and Labour devastating losses.

The SNP won 63 seats  two short of the majority it enjoyed in last parliament, while the Conservatives became Scotlands second largest party taking 31 seats.

Labour had a dismal night however, losing 13 seats and making them Scotland's third largest party.

The two maps below show how Scotland's political outlook has changed in the five years between this years Holyrood elections and those in 2011.

Credit: Louis Dore/CartoDB

Credit: Louis Dore/CartoDB

In 2011, the SNP broke the system winning a majority with 69 seats, which was widely regarded as impossible in a semi-proportional parliament.

Polls suggested the party, headed by First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, would be on course for as many as 71 seats this year, however they failed to gain 65, the number needed for a majority.

Despite public polls putting Tory leader Ruth Davidson neck-and-neck with Labour, the Conservatives crushed their rivals with 32 MSPs - 25 up on 2011. Conversely, Labour lost 13 seats reducing them to 24.

Ms Davidson also pulled off a shock victory in Edinburgh Central, ousting the areas SNP representative and dramatically raising her party from fourth to first place.

In 2011, the Lib Dems retreated to their strongholds in the Northern Isles with just two constituencies in Orkney and Shetland. In that year, list MSPs made up the numbers giving them a total of five.

This year, the party have remained consistent with five seats, but this time they have won four constituency seats and just one list seat.

Elections 2016: Agony and ecstasy for candidates as results pour in Show all 10 1 /10 Elections 2016: Agony and ecstasy for candidates as results pour in Elections 2016: Agony and ecstasy for candidates as results pour in SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon waves after winning her seat Glasgow Southside in the Scottish Parliament elections at the Emirates Arena in Glasgow Getty Images Elections 2016: Agony and ecstasy for candidates as results pour in Leader of the Scottish National Party (SNP), Nicola Sturgeon embraces Margaret Ferrier (L), and Janet Doris (R) as her husband Bob Doris (unseen) speaks to the audience at the Emirates Arena in Glasgow EPA Elections 2016: Agony and ecstasy for candidates as results pour in SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon reacts as results come in at a Scottish Parliament election count at the Emirates Arena in Glasgow PA Elections 2016: Agony and ecstasy for candidates as results pour in Labour Party members celebrate after David Burton Sampson (centre) wins the Labour seat for St Martin's ward during the election count for Basildon at the Sports Village in Basildon, Essex PA Elections 2016: Agony and ecstasy for candidates as results pour in Scottish Labour leader Kezia Dugdale, who failed in her bid to win the Edinburgh Eastern constituency from the SNP, at the count at the Royal Highland Centre, Ingliston, Renfrewshire PA Elections 2016: Agony and ecstasy for candidates as results pour in Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson is congratulated after she won the Edinburgh Central seat at the count at the Royal Highland Centre, Ingliston, Renfrewshire PA Elections 2016: Agony and ecstasy for candidates as results pour in Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson speaks after winning the Edinburgh Central seat at the count at the Royal Highland Centre, Ingliston, Renfrewshire PA Elections 2016: Agony and ecstasy for candidates as results pour in Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson arrives at a Scottish Parliament election count at the Royal Highland Centre, Ingliston, Renfrewshire PA Elections 2016: Agony and ecstasy for candidates as results pour in SNP supporters react as their party wins another seat at a counting centre in Glasgow Reuters Elections 2016: Agony and ecstasy for candidates as results pour in Vaughan Gething of Labour retains his seat for Cardiff South and Penarth during the National Assembly for Wales election count at the Sport Wales National Centre in Cardiff, Wales Getty Images

The SNP captured all nine seats in Scotlands largest city, Glasgow, abolishing the remaining four Labour constituencies there. Across the country Labour gained just one seat from the SNP  in Edinburgh Southern.

In a further blow to the Scottish Labour, leader, Kezia Dugdale, failed in her bid to win a constituency seat in Edinburgh and was forced to enter parliament through the regional list.

Speaking of the result in Sheffield, Mr Corbyn struck a defiant tone: "All across England we were getting predictions that Labour would lose councils - we didn't - and we hung on and we grew support in a lot of places, and there's a lot more results to come today.

"I want to send this message to our party in Scotland - well done on the campaign you fought, well done on the determination you've shown. There is a lot of building to do in Scotland.

"We will be with you, we will be walking hand-in-hand with the party in Scotland to build that support once again."

In another surprise, the Conservatives doubled their vote share in Glasgow from 6 per cent in 2011 to 12 per cent in 2016.

Additional reporting by Press Association
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The Green Party has overtaken the Liberal Democrats to become Scotlands fourth party amid a strong result on councils across England.

The Scottish Greens won six seats in the Scottish parliament, while the Liberal Democrats won five.

Earlier this month, party leader Natalie Bennett said that she hoped that this election would build on what she called the Green surge at the General Election.

Last year, a million people voted Green - a record number of votes for the party, which increased its number of councillors to 166 in 2015.

According to the results so far, we have gained in councils right across England. Obviously a big result for us overnight was the Scottish parliament, said a spokesperson for the Green Party.

The party is still hoping for gains in Sheffield, Bristol and Stroud.

We seem to be doing well, in the West Midlands especially. Its a good sign, were doing well in places that arent seen as traditional Green areas, he said.

A Green councillor has been elected for the first time in Weymouth and Portland, while council seats were held by the party in Shipley, Leeds and Coventry among others.

Green candidate Jon Orrell claimed victory in the Weymouth East ward with 55.3% of the vote. He said that his win represented a big step forward for the Green Party in Dorset.

The Conservative party has lost overall control of Worcester City Council, as Green candidate Louis Stephen defeated former Worcester mayor and Conservative David Tibbutt.

Mr Stephens surprising win, combined with Labours successful hold on its Worcester City Council seats, caused the Conservatives to lose their majority - leaving the way open for a potential pact between Labour and the Greens.

West of Scotland Green Candidate Ross Greer (PA / Danny Lawson)

Ross Greer became the youngest ever Member of the Scottish parliament at 21 after being elected in the West of Scotland region.

He joined the Scottish Green party at 15 and was part of the successful campaign to grant 16 and 17-year olds the vote in the Scottish independence referendum.

There were no Green wins in Wales, but deputy leader Amelia Womack tweeted that it looks like we closed a gap, which is really positive.

Sian Berry: Will the woman described as 'environmental Viagra' turn us on to the Green Party? Show all 4 1 /4 Sian Berry: Will the woman described as 'environmental Viagra' turn us on to the Green Party? Sian Berry: Will the woman described as 'environmental Viagra' turn us on to the Green Party? 25467.bin Sian Berry: Will the woman described as 'environmental Viagra' turn us on to the Green Party? 25468.bin Sian Berry: Will the woman described as 'environmental Viagra' turn us on to the Green Party? 25469.bin Sian Berry: Will the woman described as 'environmental Viagra' turn us on to the Green Party? 25470.bin

Sian Berry, the Greens candidate for the London mayoral elections, is on course to come in third place after Sadiq Khan and Zac Goldsmith.

Currently the only Green MP in Westminster is former party leader Caroline Lucas, who last year increased her majority in the Brighton Pavillion constituency by 11%.

The Green party are campaigning for Britain to remain in the European Union.
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Labour's humiliating third place in the Scottish Parliament elections is even worse than it looks. It makes Labours English problem more acute. Now that its once-solid pillar of support in Scotland has crumbled, Labour will almost certainly need to win a majority of seats in Conservative-dominated England to regain power at the 2020 general election.

True, the Scottish National Party, after another four years in power, might not sweep the board north of the border in 2020. But the SNP is a formidable election machine, and so Labour can't bank on any meaningful recovery in Scotland by then. Thursdays elections showed no positive Corbyn effect in Scotland, dashing his allies hopes when he became party leader on an anti-austerity ticket. A left-wing platform, including a 1p in the pound rise in income tax, did not work.

Labour has a different problem in Wales, another former stronghold. It went backwards in the assembly elections, with Ukip and Plaid Cymru making gains, but held on to power in Cardiff. Wales will be able to contribute less to a Labour general election victory than in the past because, under parliamentary boundary changes, the number of Welsh seats will be cut from 40 to about 30. Again, this raises the scale of Labours challenge in England.

The council election results in England were not as bad they might have been for Jeremy Corbyn -- or as bad as his Labour critics privately hoped. But they are cause for relief rather than celebration. His party is merely treading water, when the Opposition should be making gains against a governing party which brought in a disastrous Budget and advertises its bitter EU split daily.

Corbyn now looks set to avoid the immediate leadership contest that catastrophic results might have sparked after the 23 June EU referendum. A challenge next year is more likely. The council results will strengthen the hand of those critics who do not want move against him this year; they believe grassroots members will gradually lose patience because of his lack of competence and be prepared to install another leader before 2020. "We should let events take their course, one frontbencher said today (Fri).

Recommended Read more The key points from the UK election results explained

At last years general election, the Tories won 41 per cent of the vote in England (and 318 MPs) to Labours 32 per cent (206 MPs). To win a majority in 2020, Labour would need to be about 12 percentage points ahead of the Tories in England and secure a uniform swing of about 10 per cent inslightly more than Tony Blair won in his landslide 1997 victory. Labour would need to gain about 60 English seats, including some it has never won such as Portsmouth South, Canterbury and Basingstoke.

The other bad news for Labour is that Ukip showed on Thursday that, even if the public votes to remain in the EU in June, Nigel Farages party is not going to curl up and die. Ukip won seats in Wales and remains on course to threaten Labour in its northern heartlands. It came second to Labour in 44 seats last year. Even if it does not win them in 2020, Ukip could scoop up enough working class votes to deny Labour victory in some.

 2016 Election results round-up

There is no sign from Thursdays results that Labour will do any better in 2020 than last year, when Tory warnings about a minority Labour government in the pockets of the SNP played brilliantly for David Cameron in England. Under Corbyn or another left-wing leader, Labour would probably seek to build a progressive, anti-austerity alliance by appealing to Liberal Democrats and Green voters. But Ed Miliband tried such a 35 per cent strategy from 2010-15 and failed. He banked on scooping up disenchanted 2010 Lib Dem voters but some voted Tory last year.

If Labour went for the same approach in 2020, it would allow the Tories to re-run last years scare stories about a Lab-SNP coalition or a chaotic rainbow coalition, contrasting that with the stability of continuing Tory rule.

Does Labour get England? Some of its MPs think not. Surveys suggest that Labour members are more likely than the public to think of themselves as British rather than English. John Denham, the former Labour Cabinet minister who is now director of the Centre for English Politics and Identity at Winchester University, believes Labour needs to develop a progressive patriotism. He said: The problem is that Labour cant win in England without extending its political appeal to voters to feel their identity strongly.

In pictures: Local elections 2016 Show all 10 1 /10 In pictures: Local elections 2016 In pictures: Local elections 2016 Mayor of London Boris Johnson and wife Marina leave after casting their votes at a polling station in Islington, north London PA In pictures: Local elections 2016 Northern Ireland First Minister, Arlene Foster (C), Rhonna McMahon (R) and Paul Robinson leave after casting their vote for the Assembly Election, at Brookeborough Primary School in Enniskillen, Northern Ireland Reuters In pictures: Local elections 2016 Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn arrives to cast his vote at a polling station in Islington, north London PA In pictures: Local elections 2016 David Cameron and Samantha Cameron cast their votes in the London Mayoral Election in London Getty Images In pictures: Local elections 2016 Labour Party Mayoral candidate Sadiq Khan and his wife Saadiya pose outside The Richardson Hall St Alban's Church Centre in Streatham after casting their votes in London's Mayoral and Assembly elections Getty Images In pictures: Local elections 2016 Britain's Conservative party candidate for Mayor of London Zac Goldsmith and his wife Alice leave after voting at a polling station in the Barnes suburb of south west London AP In pictures: Local elections 2016 George Osborne casts his vote in the London Mayoral Election in London Getty Images In pictures: Local elections 2016 SNP supporter Trish Traynor outside a polling station at St Ninian & Triduana RC Church in Glasgow as the polls open in the Scottish Parliament election PA In pictures: Local elections 2016 Scottish Labour leader Kezia Dugdale (right) with partner Louise Riddell outside a polling station in Edinburgh after casting her vote in the Scottish Parliament election PA In pictures: Local elections 2016 SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon with her husband Peter Murrell after casting her vote at Broomhouse Community Hall polling station in Glasgow as Scotland goes to the polls in the Scottish Parliament election PA

But Corbynistas recoil at the thought of chasing Ukip votes by toughening Labours line on immigration and say Corbyn is not going to do a Blair in Middle England.

Patrick Diamond, a former Downing Street policy adviser to Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, said today (fri): Labour is in the grip of the same English problem which demolished Ed Miliband's hopes of victory in 2015. Not only is the party still not trusted on the economy; too many voters no longer see Labour as 'their' party. Mr Corbyn's policies and appeal are redolent of Britain in the 1970s, not Britain in the early 21st century. As long as Labour is seen as a party of the past rather than the future, it will struggle to make any sustained breakthrough in the towns and suburbs of England.

Labours electoral mountain in England has just got even bigger. Sooner or later, the party will need to address its English problem if it is serious about regaining power.
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A bad night for Labour in Scotland and Wales but better news for the party in England where it held onto many of the councils it was predicted to lose.

The best news for the Conservatives was in Scotland where the party pushed Labour into third place  its best result ever. However less good news in England with the partys share of the vote down by around four per cent since the General Election.

Plaid Cymru saw surprising gains in the Welsh Assembly elections where Ukip also picked up seven seats.

Recommended Read more Sadiq Khan wins London mayoral race in victory for Labour

Scotland

Labour has lost 13 Scottish Parliament seats, including 11 to the SNP and two to Conservatives. The Conservatives have gained 16 while the SNP lost six and the Greens gained four.

The Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson secured a seat at Holyrood on the first past the post part of the election by winning Edinburgh Central from the SNP. However Scottish Labour leader Kezia Dugdale failed to gain her seat of Edinburgh Eastern relying on the top-up system.

The Liberal Democrats appear to be bouncing back north of the border with their leader Willie Rennie returning to Holyrood in North East Fife, while the party also took Edinburgh Western from the SNP and held on to the Orkney and Shetland islands.

Wales

Labour are the largest party in the Welsh Assembly but dont have an overall majority and will need the backing of another party to govern. It also suffered a blow after one of its senior politicians was defeated by Plaid Cymru leader Leanne Wood.

Ms Wood's gamble to go head-to-head against cabinet minister Leighton Andrews paid off taking 50.6 per cent of the vote and bringing a massive 21.1 per cent swing in the process.

In terms of seats Labour lost one, Plaid gained one, the Tories lost three, Ukip gained seven while the Lib Dems lost four.

Councils

With results in from 111 out of 124 councils declared, Labour was down by 23 seats, the Conservatives down by 28 Ukip up by 29 and the Lib Dems up by 27.

Labour has lost control of Dudley council in the West Midlands, but held on to major cities including Birmingham, Newcastle-upon-Tyne and Sunderland, as well as key southern outposts like Exeter, Southampton, Crawley and Slough .

Ukip has gained seats in Thurrock, Tamworth and Bolton councils. It has also come second in two by elections.
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Zac Goldsmith's own sister has critcised his London mayoral campaign saying it did not reflect the type of person she knows him to be.

Jemima Goldsmith tweeted that her brother was an "eco-friendly, independent-minded politician with integrity" and his campaign, which has been widely criticised for using "dog-whistle racism", did not reflect this.

Labour candidate Sadiq Khan's victory in the race for City Hall was finally announced just before 12.30am on Saturday morning, following a delay in counting the second preference votes. With all votes allocated, he received a total of 57 per cent, well ahead of Goldsmith's 43 per cent.

She praised Mr Khan as a "great example to young Muslims" - in contrast to her brother's campaign which was accused of being divisive.

Mr Goldsmith has denied claims he ran a racist campaign saying he sincerly believed Mr Khan gave "platform, oxygen and cover to extremists".

 Mayor of London vote - Final result graphic

Senior Conservatives have attacked the campaign for attempting to "smear" Mr Khan.

Andrew Boff, Conservative leader in the London Assembly, said the campaign's "outrageous" tactics had "blown up" bridges built with London's Muslim communities in an interview on the BBC's Newsnight on Thursday after the polls had closed.

He said: I mentioned that I thought this was a mistake for future integration in London. If you are a London politician this is just a bizarre thing to do.

In pictures: Local elections 2016 Show all 10 1 /10 In pictures: Local elections 2016 In pictures: Local elections 2016 Mayor of London Boris Johnson and wife Marina leave after casting their votes at a polling station in Islington, north London PA In pictures: Local elections 2016 Northern Ireland First Minister, Arlene Foster (C), Rhonna McMahon (R) and Paul Robinson leave after casting their vote for the Assembly Election, at Brookeborough Primary School in Enniskillen, Northern Ireland Reuters In pictures: Local elections 2016 Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn arrives to cast his vote at a polling station in Islington, north London PA In pictures: Local elections 2016 David Cameron and Samantha Cameron cast their votes in the London Mayoral Election in London Getty Images In pictures: Local elections 2016 Labour Party Mayoral candidate Sadiq Khan and his wife Saadiya pose outside The Richardson Hall St Alban's Church Centre in Streatham after casting their votes in London's Mayoral and Assembly elections Getty Images In pictures: Local elections 2016 Britain's Conservative party candidate for Mayor of London Zac Goldsmith and his wife Alice leave after voting at a polling station in the Barnes suburb of south west London AP In pictures: Local elections 2016 George Osborne casts his vote in the London Mayoral Election in London Getty Images In pictures: Local elections 2016 SNP supporter Trish Traynor outside a polling station at St Ninian & Triduana RC Church in Glasgow as the polls open in the Scottish Parliament election PA In pictures: Local elections 2016 Scottish Labour leader Kezia Dugdale (right) with partner Louise Riddell outside a polling station in Edinburgh after casting her vote in the Scottish Parliament election PA In pictures: Local elections 2016 SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon with her husband Peter Murrell after casting her vote at Broomhouse Community Hall polling station in Glasgow as Scotland goes to the polls in the Scottish Parliament election PA

It was effectively saying that people of conservative religious views are not to be trusted and you shouldn't share a platform with them. That's outrageous.

Last week, Baroness Sayeeda Warsi criticised Mr Goldsmith after an article he wrote for the Daily Mail attacking Mr Khan's record was published next to an image of a bus destroyed in the 7/7 attacks.

She said: "This is not the Zac Goldsmith I know".

Mr Khan will be the first Muslim mayor of a major European city.

Paris Mayor, Anne Hildalgo congratulated Mr Khan on Twitter saying she was "convinced your humanism and your progressivism will benefit Londoners".

Katie Hopkins, who had vowed to "run naked" down Regent Street with a "sausage" up her bottom if Sadiq Khan won, tweeted suggesting that she would go through with her stunt.

The turnout for the election has been reported as 45.6 per cent, up from 38.1 per cent in 2012.
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President Obama commuted the sentences of 58 inmates Thursday as part of his ongoing initiative to release federal prisoners who have received severe mandatory sentences for non-violent drug offenses.

With this latest round of commutations, Obama has granted clemency to a total 306 inmates, 110 of whom were serving life sentences. Obama has said he will continue granting commutations during his final months in office to inmates who meet certain criteria set out by the Justice Department.

Of the inmates granted clemency Thursday, 18 had been sentenced to life without parole. One was Fulton Wash Washington, of Compton, Calif., who was convicted on PCP charges. At his sentencing, the judge lamented that harsh mandatory minimum sentences were not meant for offenders like Washington, but he had no choice. His daughter, who is 31, was 10 years old when Washington was sent to prison for the rest of his life.

 How President Obama's reaction has changed to mass shootings in the last three years

I was able to tell both Wash and his daughter today that he is coming home, said attorney James E. Felman. His daughter just broke down and started screaming and crying with hysteria. Its just unbelievable. Im still in tears.

In a posting on Medium.com, Obama said he has been inspired by the stories of the inmates who have already received clemency, several of whom he met with last month.

Each of their stories was extraordinary, Obama wrote.

Since the Obama administration launched its high-profile clemency initiative two years ago, thousands of inmates have applied. More than 9,000 petitions are pending.

Here are the names of the 58 prisoners who most recently received commutations, according to the Justice Department:

Jasmine Allen  Bunnell, Fla.

Offense: Conspiracy to distribute 50 grams or more of cocaine base; manage or control a residence for the purpose of unlawfully manufacturing, storing and distributing a controlled substance; distribution of five grams or more of cocaine base; Middle District of Florida

Sentence: 235 months imprisonment; five years supervised release (Nov. 5, 2008); amended to 188 months imprisonment (Feb. 29, 2016)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire on Sept. 2, 2016.

Timothy Antjuan Augustus  Hampton, Va.

Offense: Conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute and to distribute cocaine base and cocaine; Eastern District of Virginia

Sentence: 210 months imprisonment; five years supervised release (March 1, 2007)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire on Sept. 2, 2016.

Shannon Lee Blake  Phoenix, Ariz.

Offense: Conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute and to distribute methamphetamine; possession with intent to distribute methamphetamine; District of Wyoming

Sentence: 240 months imprisonment; 10 years supervised release; $1,000 fine (July 2, 2007)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire on May 5, 2018.

Steven Bernard Boyd  Augusta, Ga.

Offense: Conspiracy to distribute and to possess cocaine and cocaine base with intent to distribute; distribution of cocaine hydrochloride (three counts); possession of cocaine and cocaine base with intent to distribute; Southern District of Georgia

Sentence: Life imprisonment; 10 years supervised release (Sept. 29, 1998)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire on Sept. 2, 2016.

Donald Brooks  West Point, Ga.

Offense: Conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute at least five kilograms of cocaine and at least 50 grams of cocaine base; Northern District of Georgia

Sentence: Life imprisonment; 10 years supervised release (Oct. 18, 2002)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire on Sept. 2, 2016.

Eddie Brown  D.C.

Offense: Unlawful possession with intent to distribute 50 grams of cocaine base; District of Columbia

Sentence: Life imprisonment (Sept. 20, 1990)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire on May 5, 2017.

Charles C. Brown  Providence, R.I.

Offense: Conspiracy to distribute and possess with intent to distribute more than 50 grams of cocaine base; possession with intent to distribute more than 50 grams of cocaine base, aiding and abetting; possession with intent to distribute more than five grams of cocaine base; District of Rhode Island

Sentence: Life imprisonment; 10 years supervised release (May 20, 2004)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire on Sept. 2, 2016.

Aundra Coats  Cleveland

Offense: Distribution of cocaine base; Northern District of Ohio

Sentence: 240 months imprisonment; 10 years supervised release (June 21, 2005)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire on Sept. 2, 2016.

Jacob George Colbert  Richmond, Calif.

Offense: Conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute in excess of 50 grams of cocaine base; District of Minnesota

Sentence: 235 months imprisonment; five years supervised release (Dec. 8, 2005)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire on May 5, 2018.

Dwayne Berman Cooper  Miami

Offense: Conspiracy to possess cocaine with intent to manufacture cocaine base; possession with intent to distribute cocaine base; possession of cocaine with intent to manufacture cocaine base; Middle District of Florida

Sentence: Life imprisonment; 10 years supervised release (Aug. 27, 1996)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire on Sept. 2, 2016.

Marion Clarence Cooper  Miami

Offense: Possession with intent to distribute a controlled substance and aiding and abetting; District of South Carolina

Sentence: Life imprisonment; 10 years supervised release (Nov. 12, 1996)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire on Sept. 2, 2016.

Vernon Copeland  Smyrna, Ga.

Offense: Conspiracy to distribute cocaine; laundering of monetary instruments (three counts); Northern District of Georgia

Sentence: 360 months imprisonment; five years supervised release (May 19, 1992)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire on Sept. 2, 2016.

Wade Cutchen  Newport News, Va.

Offense: Conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute and distribute heroin and cocaine; possession with intent to distribute heroin; Eastern District of Virginia

Sentence: 324 months imprisonment; five years supervised release (Sept. 15, 2000); amended to 262 months imprisonment (May 19, 2015)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire on Feb. 2017.

Roberto Antonio Davila  San Antonio, Tex.

Offense: Conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute marijuana; distribution of marijuana and aiding and abetting said offense; Western District of Texas

Sentence: Life imprisonment; three years supervised release (Feb. 28, 1995)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire on Sept. 2, 2016.

Efrem Rahoman Douglas  Knoxville, Tenn.

Offense: Possession with intent to distribute 50 grams or more of cocaine base; Eastern District of Tennessee

Sentence: 300 months imprisonment; 10 years supervised release (Sept. 19, 2005)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire on Sept. 2, 2016.

Thomas Farmer  Cincinnati, Ohio

Offense: Possession with intent to distribute cocaine base; Eastern District of Kentucky

Sentence: Life imprisonment (Dec. 7, 1995)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire on May 5, 2017.

Roy Geer  Tavanier, Fla.

Offense: Conspiracy to import cocaine; attempt to import cocaine; conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute cocaine; attempt to possess with intent to distribute cocaine; Southern District of Florida

Sentence: 252 months imprisonment; 10 years supervised release, $8,500 fine (May 24, 2004)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire on Sept. 2, 2016.

Christopher Gulley  Pensacola, Fla.

Offense: Conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute cocaine and cocaine base; Northern District of Florida

Sentence: Life imprisonment; 10 years supervised release (June 12, 1996)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire on Sept. 2, 2016.

Jamal Hanson  Temple Hills, Md.

Offense: 1. Distribution of 50 grams or more of cocaine base; District of Columbia. 2. Possession of contraband in federal prison; District of New Jersey

Sentence: 1. 262 months imprisonment; five years supervised release (Aug. 2, 2002); 2. Eight months imprisonment (July 16, 2004)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire on Sept. 2, 2016.

Antonio Nicholas Hill  Taylors, S.C.

Offense: Possession with intent to distribute 50 grams or more of cocaine base; District of South Carolina

Sentence: 240 months imprisonment; 10 years supervised release (June 15, 2006)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire on Sept. 2, 2016.

Carla Yvette Holte  Largo, Fla.

Offense: Conspiracy to distribute 50 grams or more of cocaine base; conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute five kilograms or more of cocaine; distribution of five grams or more of cocaine base (two counts); possession with intent to distribute 500 grams or more of cocaine; Middle District of Florida

Sentence: 262 months imprisonment; five years supervised release (Nov. 2, 2001)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire on May 5, 2018.

Corey D. Howard  Indianapolis

Offense: Conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute and to distribute in excess of five kilograms of cocaine (mixture); Southern District of Indiana

Sentence: 240 months imprisonment; 10 years supervised release; $2,000 fine (Feb. 9, 2005)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire on Sept. 2, 2016.

George Howard Jones  Raleigh, N.C.

Offense: Conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute and distribute cocaine base and cocaine; Eastern District of North Carolina

Sentence: Life imprisonment; 10 years supervised release (Aug. 22, 1996)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire on Sept. 2, 2016.

Joseph John Jones  Tarpon Springs, Fla.

Offense: Conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute five kilograms or more of a mixture containing cocaine and 50 grams or more of cocaine base; Middle District of Florida

Sentence: 240 months imprisonment; 10 years supervised release (Aug. 6, 2007)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire on Sept. 2, 2016.

Twaine Jones  Washington Park, Ill.

Offense: Possession with intent to distribute cocaine; possession with intent to distribute cocaine hydrochloride; possession with intent to distribute marijuana; Southern District of Illinois

Sentence: 360 months imprisonment; five years supervised release, $5,000 fine (Nov. 6, 2000); amended to 324 months imprisonment (Oct. 29, 2008)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire on Sept. 2, 2016.

Abbas Rauf Kareem  Daytona Beach, Fla.

Offense: Possession with intent to distribute cocaine base; Middle District of Florida

Sentence: 240 months imprisonment; 10 years supervised release (June 12, 2008)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire on May 5, 2018.

Kenneth W. Kemp  Guttenberg, N.J.

Offense: Conspiracy to distribute and possession with intent to distribute cocaine and cocaine base; distribution of cocaine base (three counts); did cause interstate travel in aid of racketeering (two counts); possession with intent to distribute cocaine; distribution of cocaine; Eastern District of Virginia

Sentence: Life imprisonment; five years supervised release (April 11, 1994)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire on Sept. 2, 2016.

Tomma Jean Kent  Des Moines

Offense: Conspiracy to distribute methamphetamine; Southern District of Iowa

Sentence: 240 months imprisonment; 10 years supervised release (Sept. 21, 2007)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire on May 5, 2018.

Rick Lee Lamere  Bellingham, Wash.

Offense: Conspiracy to possess methamphetamine with intent to distribute; District of Montana

Sentence: 460 months imprisonment; 10 years supervised release (Jan. 13, 2005); amended to 320 months imprisonment, 10 years supervised release (Jan. 11, 2007)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire on May 5, 2018.

Ohara Linear Laws  Houston

Offense: Possession with intent to distribute 50 grams or more of cocaine base; Southern District of Texas

Sentence: 282 months imprisonment; 10 years supervised release (Sept. 19, 2003); amended to 240 months imprisonment (May 8, 2008)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire on Sept. 2, 2016.

Larry Lewis  Pensacola, Fla.

Offense: Conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute cocaine and cocaine base; possession with intent to distribute cocaine; possession with intent to distribute cocaine base; Northern District of Florida

Sentence: 360 months imprisonment; 10 years supervised release; $1,000 fine (Oct. 20, 1999); amended to 324 months imprisonment (June 18, 2006); amended to 262 months imprisonment (July 2, 2015)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire on May 5, 2017.

Trevis Love  Harriman, Tenn.

Offense: Conspiracy to distribute and possession with the intent to distribute five kilograms or more of cocaine; Eastern District of Tennessee

Sentence: 240 months imprisonment; 10 years supervised release (June 27, 2005)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire on Sept. 2, 2016.

Leonard Mason  Claymont, Del.

Offense: Conspiracy to distribute five kilograms or more of cocaine; distribution and possession with intent to distribute cocaine; Eastern District of Pennsylvania

Sentence: 240 months imprisonment; 10 years supervised release; $2,500 fine (Feb. 2, 2011)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire on Sept. 2, 2016.

Christopher Dale Masters  Broken Bow, Okla.

Offense: Maintaining a place for purpose of manufacturing, distributing, and using methamphetamine; Eastern District of Oklahoma

Sentence: 240 months imprisonment; three years supervised release (March 10, 2005); amended to 235 months imprisonment (Feb. 29, 2016)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire on Sept. 2, 2016.

Stanford Mathis  Valdosta, Ga.

Offense: Distribution of more than 50 grams of cocaine base; Middle District of Georgia

Sentence: 240 months imprisonment; 10 years supervised release (Dec. 18, 2003)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire on Sept. 2, 2016.

Maurice Matthews  Katy, Tex.

Offense: Distribution of 50 grams or more of cocaine base; Eastern District of Louisiana

Sentence: 240 months imprisonment; 10 years supervised release (April 29, 2009)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire on Sept. 2, 2016.

Michael Tyree Mays  North Las Vegas, Nev.

Offense: Possession with intent to distribute cocaine; Central District of California

Sentence: 360 months imprisonment; eight years supervised release (May 13, 1999)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire on May 5, 2018.

Javier Mendoza  Pharr, Tex.

Offense: Conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute more than five kilograms of cocaine; possession with intent to distribute 1,264 kilograms of cocaine; Southern District of Texas

Sentence: Life imprisonment; 10 years supervised release (Aug. 25, 1998)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire on May 5, 2018.

Jerome Lee Menefee  Montgomery, Ala.

Offense: Possession with intent to distribute cocaine base; Central District of California

Sentence: 240 months imprisonment; 10 years supervised release (Oct. 24, 2005)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire on Sept. 2, 2016.

Michelle Miles  Brooklyn, N.Y.

Offense: Conspiracy to distribute and possess with intent to distribute heroin and cocaine base; distribute and possess with intent to distribute cocaine base; Eastern District of New York

Sentence: 360 months imprisonment; five years supervised release (March 24, 2000)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire on Sept. 2, 2016.

Troy Lamar Morton  Iron Station, N.C.

Offense: Conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute cocaine, methamphetamine, and marijuana; Western District of North Carolina

Sentence: 240 months imprisonment; 10 years supervised release (Nov. 18, 2003)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire on May 5, 2018.

Cintheia Denise Parra  Memphis, Tenn.

Offense: Possess with intent to distribute in excess of 500 grams of methamphetamine; Northern District of Mississippi

Sentence: 235 months imprisonment; five years supervised release (Sept. 21, 2006); amended to 188 months imprisonment (March 18, 2015)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire on Sept. 2, 2016.

Gerardo Gilberto Rivera  Brownsville, Tex.

Offense: Possession with intent to distribute 11.02 kilograms of methamphetamine; Southern District of Texas

Sentence: 235 months imprisonment; five years supervised release (June 8, 2005)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire on Sept. 2, 2016.

Jessie Lee Robinson  Jefferson City, Mo.

Offense: Distribution of cocaine base (two counts); possession with intent to distribute cocaine base; Western District of Missouri

Sentence: Life imprisonment; 10 years supervised release (Nov. 15, 2005)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire on May 5, 2018.

Alberto A. Rosales Sr.  Miami, Fla.

Offense: Continuing criminal enterprise; importation of marijuana; attempted importation of marijuana; possession with intent to distribute heroin (three counts); Southern District of Florida

Sentence: 85 years imprisonment; three years special parole (March 29, 1989); amended to 70 years imprisonment (Oct. 28, 1992)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire on Sept. 2, 2016.

Artrez Nyroby Seymour  Chicago Heights, Ill.

Offense: Narcotics conspiracy; Northern District of Illinois

Sentence: 300 months imprisonment; 10 years supervised release (Sept. 21, 2005); amended to 240 months imprisonment (March 3, 2016)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire on Sept. 2, 2016.

Larry Simmons  Savannah, Ga.

Offense: Conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute and to distribute more than 50 grams of crack cocaine; distribution of more than five grams of crack cocaine (two counts); Southern District of Georgia

Sentence: Life imprisonment; 10 years supervised release (April 21, 2003)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire on Sept. 2, 2016.

Lavelle Span  Milwaukee

Offense: Conspiracy to distribute cocaine base; distribution of cocaine base (two counts); Western District of Wisconsin

Sentence: 372 months imprisonment; five years supervised release (May 26, 1999)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire on Sept. 2, 2016.

Jerome Clarence Sumral  Los Angeles

Offense: Conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute 50 grams or more of methamphetamine; District of Hawaii

Sentence: 20 years imprisonment; 10 years supervised release (June 20, 2005)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire on Sept. 2, 2016.

Golden Sutton  Henderson, Ky.

Offense: Conspiracy to manufacture, possess with intent to distribute in excess of 50 grams of cocaine base; possession of cocaine with intent to distribute; Southern District of Indiana

Sentence: 300 months imprisonment; 10 years supervised release (Oct. 28, 2002)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire on Sept. 2, 2016.

John Herbert Talley  Chattanooga, Tenn.

Offense: Conspiracy to possess with the intent to distribute and distribute cocaine base; use of a communications facility to wit: the telephone, to facilitate the commission a felony (two counts); Eastern District of Tennessee

Sentence: Life imprisonment; 10 years supervised release (Dec. 4, 1995)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire on Sept. 2, 2016.

Derrick Terry  Chicago, Il.

Offense: Possession with intent to distribute cocaine base; Northern District of Illinois

Sentence: 262 months imprisonment; five years supervised release (Jan. 29, 2003)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire on Sept. 2, 2016.

David Anthony Trotter  Pensacola, Fla.

Offense: Conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute cocaine base; Northern District of Florida

Sentence: Life imprisonment; 10 years supervised release (Oct. 15, 1993)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire on Sept. 2, 2016.

Jedrek W. Underwood  Houston

Offense: Possession with intent to distribute 50 grams or more of cocaine base and aiding and abetting; conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute 50 grams or more of cocaine base; Southern District of Texas

Sentence: 240 months imprisonment; 10 years supervised release (March 8, 2004)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire on Sept. 2, 2016.

Chela H. Urbina  Boynton Beach, Fla.

Offense: 1. Conspiracy to import cocaine; importation of cocaine; possession with intent to distribute cocaine; possession with intent to distribute a mixture containing cocaine (Southern District of Florida); 2. Conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute narcotics (Southern District of New York)

Sentence: 1. 360 months imprisonment; five years supervised release (Nov. 14, 1995); 2. 27 months imprisonment (concurrent); three years supervised release (May 1, 1997)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire on Sept. 2, 2016.

Fulton Leroy Washington  Compton, Calif.

Offense: Conspiracy to manufacture phencyclidine; possession of piperidinocyclohexane-carbonitrile with intent to manufacture PCP; attempt to manufacture PCP; Central District of California

Sentence: Life imprisonment; five years supervised release (Oct. 10, 1997)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire on Sept. 2, 2016.

Bill Westcott  Candler, N.C.

Offense: Conspiracy to distribute and possess with intent to distribute five kilograms or more of cocaine; Middle District of Florida

Sentence: Life imprisonment; 10 years supervised release (Dec. 19, 1991)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire on Sept. 2, 2016.

Wayland Thomas Wilson  Dallas

Offense: Conspiracy; use of a communication facility (three counts); money laundering and aiding and abetting; Northern District of Texas

Sentence: 444 months imprisonment; three years supervised release; $25,000 fine (Nov. 12, 1993)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire on Sept. 2, 2016.

 Washington Post
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A lawyer has warned the sale of baby gender test products on WeChat, a popular mobile social networking app run by Internet giant Tencent, is against Chinese law, local newspaper City Times reports.

Baby gender test paper is sold on WeChat. (File photo)

Advertisements on WeChat claim tests can determine a baby's gender in five minutes using only a sample of morning urine from a mother pregnant over six weeks.

A search with keywords "fetus gender test" on WeChat turns up many public accounts that tout these products.

One seller said there are a number of test strips made in China and abroad to choose from, with prices ranging from 80 yuan ($12) to 300 yuan.

The results, based on hormone concentrations, can be 99 percent accurate, higher than an ultrasound exam, the promotion claims.

But medical experts urge parents to be wary of online marketers that claim to be able to figure out fetal gender using just a woman's urine.

Zhang Zhen, a lawyer with Ruizhen Law Firm in Yunnan Province, said China has banned non-medical baby sex determination in the hopes of reducing gender-based abortions.

The law levies fines from 5,000 yuan to 30,000 yuan on those who assist in non-medical sex determination.

It certainly violates the law if the test leads to more gender-based abortions, Zhang warned.

Chinese society has traditionally preferred boys to girls.

A woman in Kunming, capital of Yunnan, said she gave up the idea of the test due to objections from her family.
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More than 2,000 physicians announced their support Thursday for a single-payer national health care system, unveiling a proposal drafted by doctors that appears to resonate with Bernie Sanders' call for "Medicare for All."

In an editorial and paper published in the American Journal of Public Health on Thursday, the doctors call out the "persistent shortcomings of the current health care system." They warn about the risks of continuing along the path laid out by the Affordable Care Act: "down this road, millions of Americans remain uninsured, underinsurance grows, costs rise, and inefficiency and the search for profits are abetted."

The future of health reform has been widely discussed in the presidential campaign, and for years health reform has sparked a raging and divisive political debate among politicians. The proposal, however, is endorsed by hundreds of physicians who have an inside view of the effects of the law on patients and medical care. It grew out of discussions in late 2014, when a small group of physicians began to assess the effects of health reform and found it coming up short.

"Those discussions led us to feel that we needed to put out in public, first of all, a clear statement that problems havent been solved," said David Himmelstein, an internist who practices in the South Bronx and a professor at the City University of New York School of Public Health at Hunter College.

Himmelstein and his colleagues call the right to medical care "a dream deferred," despite health reform.

About 12.7 million people are insured through the state and federal marketplaces created by the law, according to data released in February. But the Congressional Budget Office has estimated that about 28 million people will be uninsured in 2026.

On top of that, Himmelstein said he began to notice insured patients having more trouble paying for and accessing care, as their plans have been designed with narrower networks of physicians and growing deductibles -- issues that Himmelstein argues are ripple effects of the law. That's because the insurance policies sold through the marketplaces cover less than traditional employer plans did previously, "and we're seeing employers race to the bottom, once the Affordable Care Act says that's what coverage consists of," Himmelstein said.

Jeffrey Flier, the dean of Harvard Medical School, said the proposal is "massively backward," adding that the one thing it points out correctly is that health reform has been unable to deliver on its promise of affordable health care.

"I don't think it's a very meaningful contribution," Flier said. "It conjures up five-year planning by Stalinists."

The new single-payer proposal doesn't get into many specifics of how it would be funded, other than to estimate that the increase in government health care spending would be balanced by shrinking administrative costs and reductions in the cost of health care services and drugs. The doctors argue that a progressive tax, aimed at reducing income inequality would be an attractive way to fund the system.

"Frankly, there's so much fat in the U.S. health care system -- we're wasting so much money -- that we can afford to give everyone in this country everything that we know is useful without restriction," Himmelstein said.

Kenneth Thorpe, a professor of health policy at Emory University who has been critical of the feasibility and expense of Sanders' single-payer plan, said that the new proposal would cost more than the status quo. It overestimates the administrative savings that would be possible from a single-payer system, Thorpe argues.

"You cant do what theyre talking about doing with the same amount of money that were currently spending," Thorpe said.

He said in addition to a switch to single-payer being disruptive, it's likely to be politically unpalatable. Thorpe's analysis has found that 71 percent of people with private insurance would pay more in a single-payer system than they currently do because taxes would outpace savings from premiums and other health care costs.

However, he noted that many of the ideas embedded in the proposal -- such as new payment models -- are already being experimented with today, under the current system.

Himmelstein said that today, hospitals must collect their operating budget "Band-Aid by Band-Aid and aspirin tablet by aspirin tablet, fighting with hundreds of different insurance plans." The physicians propose funding hospitals with a lump sum to cover all operating expenses, bypassing the large billing departments that today accrue hospital income piecemeal. But Thorpe pointed out similar ideas are already being tested in Maryland hospitals.

"We dont need to completely blow the system up and disrupt it to generate the savings," Thorpe said.

Copyright Washington Post
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A US college has been accused of failing to properly investigate the rape of one its students by a man who said she was "too cute to be a lesbian".

A Kenyon College graduate wrote an open letter to the school in Gambier, Ohio, saying his younger sister - who was also a student there - had been raped in her dorm room while "drifting in and out of consciousness".

Michael Hayes, 23, wrote how his nineteen-year-old sister Chelsie, who had wanted to attend the college since she was a little girl, had initially believed the campus authorities would support her.

He said she had documented her own injuries and told the authorities about her blood stained bed, her sexual orientation and how much alcohol she had consumed on the night of the incident in November last year.

But in April the college had decided there was insufficient evidence to conclude that it was more likely than not that the colleges policy on sexual assault had been broken at all.

The colleges code on sexual assault says: The College is committed to fostering a climate free from sexual and gender-based discrimination, harassment and violence, intimate partner violence and stalking through clear and effective policies, a coordinated education and prevention program, and prompt and equitable procedures for resolution of reports of conduct prohibited under this policy.

But Mr Hayes said he no longer believes those words are true after his sister's complaint and subsequent appeal were dismissed.

He said: We used to walk around campus when we were younger, both separately and together, because it is the most beautiful and relaxing place I know. It feels so safe.

More than once, I crashed graduation just to see a famous speaker (John Kerry!) or to try to spot a celebrity parent in the audience (Sharon Stone! Jamie Lee Curtis!).

I noticed that there were some graduates who had their hoods affixed to their robes by a family member just before they walked across the stage, and I learned eventually that it was a tradition and privilege for family members who had also graduated from Kenyon to do so.

When I learned that Chelsie was going to attend Kenyon, I thought with the proudest anticipation of what an incredible feeling it would be to stand there with her right before she went on stage to get the diploma that I also have.

But that will never happen, because now my little sister is leaving Kenyon. And it feels as though we have both lost one of our oldest and closest friends.

He believes the ruling is particularly absurd because his sister is gay.

He said the college had concluded it implausible she was sufficiently incapacitated not to consent as the accused man had gone to tell his friends he was about to hook up and had got a condom - yet thought it was plausible that she would consent to heterosexual sexual activity for the first time in her life.

He told ThinkProgress: I believe, both as a member of the LGBTQ community myself and an employee at a gay rights legal organisation, that my sisters sexual orientation has not been adequately considered in much of this discussion.

As it pertains to consent in particular, I find that it defies reason to conclude that my sister would consent to heterosexual sexual activity for the first time in her life.

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A spokeswoman for the university said their programme for sexual assault prevention did include provision for the LGBT community

She said: Under federal privacy law, I am not permitted to share information about specific cases without the express consent of the parties involved. However, I can share with you that we have reached out to the LGBTQ+ community in a variety of ways.

We have met with student groups that represent or advocate for LGBTQ+ students, specifically to talk with them about the intersection of Title IX and gender, gender expression, gender identity, sexual orientation and gender stereotypes.
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A number of Hillary Clintons most senior aides, including her longtime adviser Huma Abedin, have reportedly been interviewed by the FBI as part of its probe of her use of a private email server. The investigation has apparently yet to find any evidence the former secretary of state willfully broke the law.

CNN said that in recent weeks, multiple aides had been interviewed, among them some of those closest to Ms Clinton. While a date has not yet been set for the investigators interview with the Democratic frontrunner, it is expected to happen in the next few weeks.

The network said that Ms Abedin, a long-time aide to Ms Clinton and her deputy chief of staff at the State Department, has cooperated with the probe, officials said. Lawyers for Ms Abedin have declined to comment.

Ms Abedin has been cooperating with investigators, according to reports (AP)

The federal officials said the interviews of Ms Clinton and her aides would be a routine part of an investigation like this.

The probe remains focused on the security of the server and the handling of classified information and has not expanded to other matters, the officials said. Spokesmen for the FBI and Justice Department declined to comment. The Clinton campaign has also yet to comment.

The investigation was launched after it emerged that Ms Clinton had used a private email server at her upstate New York home while she was secretary of state. He has always denied that any classified information was at risk of being hacked.

FBI officials overseeing the probe now expect to complete their work in the next few weeks and then turn over the findings to the Justice Department, which will make a final decision on whether to bring charges against anyone.

One of the final and most anticipated steps in the probe is an interview of the former secretary of state. The fact that Ms Clinton is a presidential candidate active on the campaign trail presents some logistical challenges for the FBI, which has been quietly bringing witnesses into an FBI office without drawing attention.

Ms Clinton's security is provided by the Secret Service and she's typically followed by a corps of campaign reporters. The FBI plans to coordinate her interview with her lawyers and security to try to ensure it can be done privately.
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More than 400 inmates on death row could have their sentences commuted to life in prison, as a high level court in Florida considers whether the system is unconstitutional.

Earlier this year, the US Supreme Court in Washington DC, ruled that Floridas death sentencing system gave too much deference to judges, rather than juries.

As a result of this, lawyers for convicted Timothy Lee Hurst have argued before the Florida state supreme court, that his sentence should be reduced, given that the system that sentenced him to death had been found to be in breach of the constitution.

I represent Timothy Hurst. As for him, he should get a life sentence. Im going to leave it to the Supreme Court and other lawyers to sort out how much retroactivity it gets, Hursts lawyer, David Davis, told the court on Thursday, according to the Associated Press.

Hurst was convicted of the 1998 murder of his manager at a Pensacola Popeye's restaurant. A jury voted 7-5 in the favour of death, and the judge agreed and imposed the sentence.

The Florida Supreme Court did not immediately rule on Mr Davis request, and will use the arguments to help decide whether to reduce Hursts sentences, and perhaps those of the state's 389 death row inmates.

Two executions have been halted since the Supreme Courts ruling in January, and lawyers for those inmates have asked the court to impose life sentences for all inmates sentenced to death under the state's old system.

Florida Assistant Attorney General Carine Mitz argued that Hurst should not receive a life sentence. She said the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling didn't declare the death penalty unconstitutional, just the sentencing process.

According to the news agency, she said that if Hursts death sentence was dismissed, he should get a new penalty trial.

The debate was the second round of oral arguments in Hurst's case, an extremely rare move for the court that shows the gravity of its forthcoming decision, said University of Florida Levin College of Law professor Teresa Reid, a death penalty expert.

If the court accepts Hursts interpretation of [Florida law], then Hurst and others on death row would have their cases remanded and life sentences imposed, she said.

Since Januarys US Supreme Court ruling, Florida passed a new law that requires at least 10 of the 12 jurors to recommend execution. Under the new law, prosecutors must also explain to jurors why the death penalty is the appropriate punishment before a murder trial begins, and the jury has to decide unanimously if at least one aggravating factors justifies it.

Nancy Daniels, who is Leon Countys public defender, said she thought that the state has conceded that 50 prior cases were going to need to be remanded for life sentences, but added that she did not know what those cases were and that great uncertainty remains after the Florida Legislature passed new sentencing schemes for the death penalty.

Thats one of the hardest thing about the whole situation because the new statute says it is prospective only and that leaves a gap on what all the pending cases should be. We thought there might be more discussion on that today, she said.
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The serial killer known as the Grim Sleeper has been found guilty by a jury in Los Angeles, more than 30 years since his first victims were murdered. Lonnie Franklin, 63, was convicted of killing 10 women aged between 15 and 35, in a long but sporadic spree that lasted from 1985 to 2007.

The victims were all shot or strangled, and their bodies dumped in alleyways close to Franklins home in South Los Angeles. One of dozens of witnesses at the three-month trial was Enietra Washington, 57, who testified that Franklin had sexually assaulted and shot her, snapping her picture with a Polaroid camera before he dumped her from his vehicle during the attack in 1988. Franklin was also found guilty of Ms Washingtons attempted murder.

Franklin claimed his early victims amid the violent crack cocaine epidemic that overtook Los Angeles and other US cities in the 1980s and 1990s. A 2014 documentary by British filmmaker Nick Broomfield, Tales of the Grim Sleeper, speculated that the authorities were insufficiently concerned with the lives of his alleged victims, some of whom worked as prostitutes, many of whom were addicts, and all of whom were black.

Police failed to connect the slayings at the time, in part because at least three serial killers were active in South Los Angeles during the same period. Chester Turner was convicted of killing 14 women in 2007. Michael Hughes, convicted of seven murders, was sentenced to death in 2012. Both remain on Californias death row. Franklin proved to be particularly elusive, earning his sinister nickname because his murders appeared to cease between 1988 and 2002.

More than two dozen detectives investigated the original spate of Grim Sleeper killings in the 1980s, but only closed in on a suspect after DNA advances in the 2000s helped to develop new leads. When Franklins son Christopher was arrested on firearm and drugs charges, his DNA proved a match for that found on several of the victims.

A former rubbish collector who at one point was mechanic for the LAPD, Franklin was finally arrested in July 2010, after a police officer posed as a waiter at a restaurant where he was attending a birthday party. The officer harvested the crucial DNA samples from a napkin, a drinking glass, and an uneaten pizza crust.

The penalty phase of the trail begins on Monday, when jurors will hear further evidence to determine whether the married father-of-two should face the death penalty, or be sentenced to life in prison. Prosecutors are expected to show them evidence that Franklin was in fact the killer of at least five further women, but escaped being charged for their murders.
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Three people are dead and two others injured in three separate shooting incidents in Maryland. Police have arrested a federal law enforcement officer they believe is connected to the string of shootings.

Montgomery County police responded to reports of an 11 am shooting outside Westfield Montgomery Mall in Bethesda. According to Assistant Police Chief Darryl McSwain, one person was shot, and two people who rushed to their assistance were also shot; they were reportedly rushed to the hospital. Police say one of the male victims was pronounced dead at the hospital, another male victim is in "grave" condition, and the woman has "non-life-threatening" injuries.

AP

Eight miles northeast of the mall, in Aspen Hill, a woman was shot outside of a Giant Food grocery store less than an hour after the mall shooting. Police say the woman died from her injuries.

Police announced that they apprehended their primary suspect, Eulalio Tordil, 62, "without incident" Friday afternoon. He was taken to Montgomery County police headquarters for further questioning. Police say there is "no immediate connection" between the alleged shooter and the victims.

Mr Tordil is a Federal Protective Service employee who had already been listed as a suspect by Prince Georges County police for allegedly shooting and killing his estranged wife in a Bethesda high school parking lot. He also allegedly wounded a man who came to her assistance.

Law enforcement were able to locate Mr Tordil based on vehicle descriptions consistent with those communicated with them from Prince George's County police. State Attorney John McCarthy told reporters that the suspect will face charges for all three incidents.

Mr Tordil had been placed on administrative leave from the FPS - which is a division of the Department of Homeland Security that supplies security for federal facilities - after a protective order had been issued against him in March, according to CNN.

Maryland County schools ordered students and teachers to shelter in place. One hospital in the area had issued a total lockdown.

Mr Tordil will be arraigned in a Maryland court Monday afternoon.
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I thought, The planes going down, and Im going to die. It was like the planes falling out of the sky.

So spoke Malachi Witt, one of the passengers on board a flight from Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic which had to be diverted after encountering after severe turbulence that caused numerous injuries.

Allegiant Air Flight 7001, which was bound for Pittsburgh, made an emergency landing at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport around 3.43pm on Thursday after officials were told that a number of passenger were hurt.

The plane was experiencing normal turbulence when the passengers felt a jolt that pulsated through the aircraft. Then followed a second, bigger jolt that threw people from their seats, Mr Witt told the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.

Heather Osborne, another passenger, told WTAE: We were flying normal, I was actually sleeping and I heard a little jolt and then all of a sudden a big jolt and I looked over at my mum and she was like flying up in the air. I actually had my seat belt on. My mom didnt.

Amanda Kuhn, who was bruised, said: I have peoples blood on my feet.

After the flight was diverted, seven people on board were transported to the local hospital, the newspaper reported.

Three were passengers, and four were flight attendants. None of their injuries were life-threatening.

Mike Jachles with the Broward County Sheriffs Office told reporters: The injuries range from bruises, lacerations, facial fractures, to a head injury.

In total, there were six crew members and 137 passengers on the charter flight at the time of the turbulence. The flight eventually landed in Pittsburgh at 11pm.
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North Korea has begun its biggest political gathering for a generation, in which leader Kim Jong-un is expected to showcase his leadership and assert his nuclear ambitions.

The countrys information committee confirmed the congress, which is then seventh of its kind, was underway on Friday morning. The event will see thousands of delegates meet to showcase the countrys supposed stability and unity under Kim's leadership.

Kim is officially presiding over the congress, however few details about the event have been announced and much of what it will entail is shrouded in secrecy.

Life in North Korea captured with a mobile phone Show all 30 1 /30 Life in North Korea captured with a mobile phone Life in North Korea captured with a mobile phone Farmer works in a field Getty Images Life in North Korea captured with a mobile phone Women soldier walk on the street Getty Images Life in North Korea captured with a mobile phone A female soldier guards railway Getty Images Life in North Korea captured with a mobile phone A general view of platform of Pyongyang Railway Station Getty Images Life in North Korea captured with a mobile phone Students stage a protest against South Korea and the US in Pyongyang Getty Images Life in North Korea captured with a mobile phone Students rehearsal for celebrating the 70th birthday of Workers' Party of Korea Getty Images Life in North Korea captured with a mobile phone People enjoy the cool at the carriage door Getty Images Life in North Korea captured with a mobile phone A general view of countryside Getty Images Life in North Korea captured with a mobile phone Korean People's Army soldier rest on the rail 2015 Getty Images Life in North Korea captured with a mobile phone A little boy begs food on the platform in Hamhung Railway Station in Hamhung 2015 Getty Images Life in North Korea captured with a mobile phone Children swim in a river in noon Getty Images Life in North Korea captured with a mobile phone People cross a railway crossing 2015 Getty Images Life in North Korea captured with a mobile phone A boy collects corn cob beside a railway Getty Images Life in North Korea captured with a mobile phone A customs officer is seen on the train No.100 from Moscow to Pyongyang at Tumangang railway station in Tumangang Getty Images Life in North Korea captured with a mobile phone A customs officer checks a passenger's mobile device on the train to Pyongyang Getty Images Life in North Korea captured with a mobile phone A railway station in Tumangang Getty Images Life in North Korea captured with a mobile phone A general view of the railway station in Tumangang Getty Images Life in North Korea captured with a mobile phone Kids pass by Tumanggang railway station in Tumanggang 2015 Getty Images Life in North Korea captured with a mobile phone A general view of Tumangang Getty Images Life in North Korea captured with a mobile phone A general view of Tumangang - a small town located at North Korea and Russia border Getty Images Life in North Korea captured with a mobile phone A train carriage on it's way to Pyongyang is delayed for a day and half due to military transportation in Tumangang Getty Images Life in North Korea captured with a mobile phone A customs officers talks to a passenger at Tumanggang railway station in Tumanggang Getty Images Life in North Korea captured with a mobile phone A little girl walks on the street in Tumanggang 2015 Getty Images Life in North Korea captured with a mobile phone An elderly man is seen in Tumangang Getty Images Life in North Korea captured with a mobile phone Kids go to school in morning in Tumangang 2015 Getty Images Life in North Korea captured with a mobile phone Life in North Korea captured with a mobile phone Life in North Korea captured with a mobile phone Life in North Korea captured with a mobile phone Life in North Korea captured with a mobile phone

Around 100 foreign journalists have been invited to cover the event, but so far none have been allowed inside the venue - the April 25 House of Culture in Pyongyang  which is lined with guards and covered in the colours of the ruling Workers Party.

Preparations for the congress have been colossal including a number of drastic measures to step up security ahead of the event. Temporary measures put in place include banning weddings, funerals and free movement in and out of Pyongyang in an attempt to minimise the risk of mishaps at the event.

The congress follows a 70-day loyalty drive which has seen members of the countrys workforce put in extra hours to increase productivity and show their devotion to the leader and the Workers Party of Korea.

The dictator is expected to confirm his nuclear plans, with speculation rife that a fifth nuclear test could be carried out, as well as promising economic improvements to boost the nations standard of living.

Foreign journalists are seen filming the April 25 House of Culture, the venue for the 7th Congress of the Workers' Party of Korea (AP)

A policewoman controls the traffic near the venue of the Workers' Party of Korea (WPK) congress in Pyongyang, North Korea (Reuters)

Hours before the ruling party's congress, the North's state-run Korean Central News Agency boasted of the country's military achievements following its nuclear test and long-range rocket launch earlier this year.

Predominantly, the congress will cement Kims leadership, who has yet to travel abroad or meet any world leaders, and will be a forum to express loyalty to the dictator.

The congress is the first event of its kind in 36 years. All six previous congresses came under the rule of Kim Il Sung, the late grandfather of Kim and North Korea's founder, who died in 1994.

People walk in front of a banner announcing the Workers' Party of Korea (WPK) congress (Reuters)

April 25 House of Culture, venue of the Workers' Party of Korea (Reuters)

The Workers' Party is supposed to hold a congress every five years, however after the last meeting in 1980, Kim Il Sung reportedly ordered the next congress would only take place after improved public livelihood was seen in the county. Instead, a devastating famine in the 1990s is estimated to have killed hundreds of thousands and North Korea has continued to struggle with widespread poverty, malnutrition and a mismanaged economy.

Kims revival of the event appears to cement suggestions he is modelling himself after his grandfather. He has adopted his hairstyle, his preference for regular public speeches and his party-oriented governing style.

The event could also see new leaders put in place, with many analysts expecting Kim to replace the partys old guard with younger elites.

 North Korea to hold first ruling party congress in decades

Another key focus is predicted to be the development of North Korea's weak economy, which has been hit heavily by several rounds of UN sanctions over its nuclear program.

In March, the UN Security Council approved its toughest sanctions yet on the nation, with an aim to withhold funds being used to finance the states nuclear and ballistic missile programmes, following a series of military tests this year.

It is unclear how long the event will run for, the last congress was held in 1980 lasted for five days.

Additional reporting by Associated Press
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A teenage girl was kidnapped, drugged, put in a van and set alight in an alleged "honour killing" by a tribal council in a Pakistani village after helping a friend elope, police have said.

At least 13 elders in the village near the north-western city Abbottabad have been arrested over the death  along with the girls mother, who is said to have agreed to the sentence.

The traditional jirga assembly of elders ordered the girl be put to death last week as punishment for helping a couple leave the village to marry.

The jirga "took her to an abandoned place outside the village and made her unconscious by injecting her with some drugs", district police chief Saeed Wazir said.

Then they seated the girl in a van in which the couple had escaped. They tied her hands to the seats and then poured petrol on her and the vehicle.

I hadn't seen such a barbaric attack in my whole life."

According to police, the teenager, known only as Ambreen, was set alight in the van that was used to help her school friend flee the village to marry of her own free will. The couple appear to have escaped.

Some media reports suggest the young woman was strangled by members of the jirga before she was burned.

Pakistani police officers escort members of a local tribal council, who have been arrested for burning a girl alive, outside a court in Abbottabad, Pakistan, on Thursday (AP)

The arrested members of the jirga appeared in a local anti-terrorism court on Thursday on charges of murder and terrorism.

In many societies around the world, women and girls, including rape victims, are killed by their relatives for engaging in premarital sex, as this is seen as an affront to the familys honour.

According to district police officer Khurram Rasheed, the punishment in this case was devised to be so severe that no girl would dare run away from the village in future.

The UN estimates around 5,000 women worldwide are the victims of these so-called honour killings each year. However, many cases go unreported.

And a report by Pakistans independent Human Rights Commission said nearly 1,100 women and 88 men were killed in Pakistan last year for dishonouring their families.

Mr Rasheed told AFP police were able to trace the accused through mobile phone data.

The accused confessed during the investigation that a few months back Saima, a schoolgirl from the same village and tribe, eloped with her boyfriend and Ambreen facilitated their frequent meetings and later their elopement, he said.

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According to the BBC, a local official who brought the girl's body to the morgue said: We went to the place and found three vehicles parked next to each other that were burned.

In one of them we saw a body. We couldn't recognise her then. But found a few bangles on one of her arms establishing that this was a woman's body.

In February, a Pakistani film telling the story of a survivor of an attempted honour killing, A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness, won an Academy Award for best short documentary.

Pakistan is currently ranked 147th out of 188 countries on the UN Gender Equality Index.

This is largely due to its poor record on women's health, education, political empowerment and economic status.

Punjab, the largest region in Pakistan, passed a new law in February known as the Punjab Protection of Women Against Violence Bill, to protect women from crimes of physical, financial and psychological abuse.

But more than 30 religious groups have spoken out against the bill, equating womens rights campaigns with the promotion of obscenity and the destruction of the countrys traditional family system.
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An American citizen who was imprisoned for more than two years in a North Korean gulag has spoken out about his experience.

Kenneth Bae, a Christian preacher, ran religious tours into the Hermit Kingdom, but was accused of attempting to overthrow the government.

He served 735 days of hard labour, but was released in 2014 following pressure from US President Barack Obama.

In his first public comments since his release, Mr Bae told CNN that during his imprisonment he had worked in the field, doing farming, labour, carrying rocks and shovelling coal. All those things were physically very demanding and were very difficult.

"I worked from 8am to 6pm at night, working on the field, carrying rock, shovelling coal."

North Korea is known to have a number of secretive work camps, where summary executions, starvation, torture and forced abortions are all alleged to occur.

Life in North Korea captured with a mobile phone Show all 30 1 /30 Life in North Korea captured with a mobile phone Life in North Korea captured with a mobile phone Farmer works in a field Getty Images Life in North Korea captured with a mobile phone Women soldier walk on the street Getty Images Life in North Korea captured with a mobile phone A female soldier guards railway Getty Images Life in North Korea captured with a mobile phone A general view of platform of Pyongyang Railway Station Getty Images Life in North Korea captured with a mobile phone Students stage a protest against South Korea and the US in Pyongyang Getty Images Life in North Korea captured with a mobile phone Students rehearsal for celebrating the 70th birthday of Workers' Party of Korea Getty Images Life in North Korea captured with a mobile phone People enjoy the cool at the carriage door Getty Images Life in North Korea captured with a mobile phone A general view of countryside Getty Images Life in North Korea captured with a mobile phone Korean People's Army soldier rest on the rail 2015 Getty Images Life in North Korea captured with a mobile phone A little boy begs food on the platform in Hamhung Railway Station in Hamhung 2015 Getty Images Life in North Korea captured with a mobile phone Children swim in a river in noon Getty Images Life in North Korea captured with a mobile phone People cross a railway crossing 2015 Getty Images Life in North Korea captured with a mobile phone A boy collects corn cob beside a railway Getty Images Life in North Korea captured with a mobile phone A customs officer is seen on the train No.100 from Moscow to Pyongyang at Tumangang railway station in Tumangang Getty Images Life in North Korea captured with a mobile phone A customs officer checks a passenger's mobile device on the train to Pyongyang Getty Images Life in North Korea captured with a mobile phone A railway station in Tumangang Getty Images Life in North Korea captured with a mobile phone A general view of the railway station in Tumangang Getty Images Life in North Korea captured with a mobile phone Kids pass by Tumanggang railway station in Tumanggang 2015 Getty Images Life in North Korea captured with a mobile phone A general view of Tumangang Getty Images Life in North Korea captured with a mobile phone A general view of Tumangang - a small town located at North Korea and Russia border Getty Images Life in North Korea captured with a mobile phone A train carriage on it's way to Pyongyang is delayed for a day and half due to military transportation in Tumangang Getty Images Life in North Korea captured with a mobile phone A customs officers talks to a passenger at Tumanggang railway station in Tumanggang Getty Images Life in North Korea captured with a mobile phone A little girl walks on the street in Tumanggang 2015 Getty Images Life in North Korea captured with a mobile phone An elderly man is seen in Tumangang Getty Images Life in North Korea captured with a mobile phone Kids go to school in morning in Tumangang 2015 Getty Images Life in North Korea captured with a mobile phone Life in North Korea captured with a mobile phone Life in North Korea captured with a mobile phone Life in North Korea captured with a mobile phone Life in North Korea captured with a mobile phone

The North Korean authorities arrested Mr Bae as he led a tour in the country in 2012. He was found to possess a hard drive containing prayers and images of starving North Korean children, CBS reported. Hard drives and USB sticks have been used by activists to smuggle anti-regime propaganda into the country.

Religion is banned in North Korea, as is anything which could be considered critical of the absolute rule of Kim Jong-un. Since his arrest, Mr Bae said he tried to do missionary work in the authoritarian state.

 North Korea party congress

He said the authorities really took prayer as a weapon against them, and was told he had attempted to overthrow the government through prayer and worship.

He told the broadcaster: One of the prosecutors told me that I was the worst, most dangerous American criminal they had ever apprehended since the Korean War. I said, Why? and they said, Because not only [did you come] to do mission work on your own, you asked others to join.

He also faced the psychological torment of not knowing when he would see home again  a fear exploited by officials.

There was one prosecutor assigned to my case for the last year of my imprisonment, Mr Bae said. He came to me almost every week, and he said to me, No one remembers you. You have been forgotten by your people, your government. Youre not going home any time soon. Youll be here for 15 years. Youll be 60 before you go home.

However, he said he never lost faith his country would try to bring him home, even though he was pretty much living one day at a time.

His faith was what helped him pull through: I found my way adjusting to life in the North Korean prison, just depending on God, he said.

I certainly hoped when I was in North Korea ... that someday I'd be able to come home and celebrate with the friends and family that have been praying, rooting for my release.
[By Zhai Haijun/China.org.cn]

When we lack confidence, we tend to seek it from any trivial change. China's macro economy statistics of the first quarter are fit to play such a part. It comes when we need it most.

China's gross domestic product increased 6.7 percent year-on-year in the first three months of 2016. Many people describe it as "a good start," a term that has disappeared for a long time in China's economic discourse. Some people cannot wait to declare that China's economy has entered a recovery period that could lead to a new round of fast growth.

But the main driving force in the first quarter was the rise of housing prices and the restart of large-scale infrastructure construction. In other words, what brought about the growth is what we have been trying to get rid of over the past years.

Indeed, both the real estate industry and infrastructure investment brought what the Chinese economy needed including jobs and output, if not confidence. It also seems that the government can keep the economy on the right track simply by making a few minor policy adjustments.

Even so, we should not forget the consensus that overreliance on the housing industry and infrastructure investment is not a sustainable model. The Chinese economy needs restructuring, but not stimulation. The problems and difficulties of the Chinese economy will not be eased after the recent good start, as the fundamental aspects of the economy remain unchanged.

To begin with, restructuring the economy takes a long time. In the last round of growth, the industries that absorbed funds are reaching overcapacity and are debt-ridden today. The government must be cautious of the collapse of these enterprises and the chain reaction it may incur.

In the clothing, household appliance, electronics and a number of other light industries that China heavily relied on for its exports, many enterprises are disappearing, which is a result of their lack of innovation and rising production costs.

Follow China.org.cn on Twitter and Facebook to join the conversation.
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North Korea's elite are gathered in Pyongyang for their biggest political conference in decades.

The Congress of the Workers' Party of Korea, the seventh of its kind and the first in 36 years, comes after months of international animosity following Pyongyang's fourth nuclear test explosion, in January, and a long-range rocket launch, in February.

Kim Jong Un will use the meeting to push his expansion of a nuclear arsenal over the strong objections of the US, the UN and North Korea's neighbors, including ally China.

Kim is also expected to tighten loyalty of a government he inherited after his dictator father's death in late 2011, probably by putting his favorites into key positions.

As usual, the authoritarian country is keeping details secret, but here are several things to know about the conference, which is expected to last several days.

The party's highest-level decision-making body will determine key state policies, review past projects, reshuffle top officials and revise party regulations.

All six previous congresses came under the rule of Kim Il Sung, the late grandfather of Kim Jong Un and North Korea's founder, who died in 1994.

South Korea's spy agency said last week that North Korea hadn't invited any major foreign government delegations to this year's congress. There will be scores of Western journalists, though, to cover the heavily stage-managed event.

1. So why the 36-year gap?

The House of Culture, 3venue of the Workers' Party of Korea (WPK) congress in Pyongyang (Reuters)

The Workers' Party is supposed to hold a congress every five years.

But after the 1980 meeting, Kim Il Sung reportedly ordered that the next congress take place only after the government improved public livelihood and its ability to provide its people with rice and beef soup for every meal.

Instead, a devastating famine in the 1990s is estimated to have killed hundreds of thousands. Since then, North Korea has continued to struggle with widespread poverty, malnutrition and a mismanaged economy.

Kim's Il Sung's successor, Kim Jong Il, father of Kim Jong Un, ruled for 17 years but never held a congress. Some analysts say the real reason for the gap was that Kim Jong Il's cherished "military-first" policy withered the party's authority.

2. Why now?

Pyongyang has been telling its people it is a global military and nuclear power (EPA)

Kim Jong Un, believed to be in his early 30s, appears to be modeling his rule on his grandfather. He has adopted his hairstyle, gestures, his penchant for regular public speeches and his party-oriented governing style.

North Koreans may also relish a return to Kim Il Sung's style because North Korea was better off economically during his rule than during Kim Jong Il's.

In recent years, the North has mostly dodged massive natural disasters and the widespread starvation of past years. The country's economic situation is also believed to have improved a bit, in part because of the rise of unauthorized street markets where small-scale capitalism is largely tolerated. South Korea's central bank estimates that North Korea's economy grew around 1 percent annually between 2011 and 2014.

This all may have pushed Kim Jong Un to restart the party congresses, partly as a way to show the world that he rules a more stable country.

3. What can we expect to see?

A 2012 exhibition in Pyongyang shows the Bright Star satellite launch (AP)

Both Kim Jong Il and Kim Jong Un made their international debuts by taking up various top jobs during big party events  the elder Kim in the 1980 congress and the younger Kim in a 2010 lower-level conference. Those confirmed that they were destined to inherit control of the nation.

Nothing that big is expected from this congress.

Kim Jong Un already has many top posts, including first secretary of the Workers' Party and supreme commander of the North's 1.2 million-strong army, the backbone of his family's dynasty.

Some analysts say Kim may not have yet established the same absolute power enjoyed by his father, but there's little doubt that a series of high-profile executions and purges, including the 2013 killing of his powerful uncle Jang Song Thaek, has left few who would dare challenge him.

South Korean media predict Kim might be promoted to general secretary of the party, a post left to his father "eternally" following his 2011 death. But some analysts say more titles for Kim won't mean much.

Instead, Kim will likely replace some of the party's old guard with younger elites loyal to him, many of them little known to outsiders. There probably won't be that much top-level personnel reshuffling, however, because Kim has already been doing this.

4. All about Kim:

Kim Jong Un runs a cult of personality in North Korea

Get ready for wall-to-wall praise of Kim and his efforts to strengthen the North's nuclear-weapons program, which it says is necessary to cope with U.S. military threats.

Kim has made it his stated goal to bolster nuclear capability while also improving people's livelihoods; he may formally include this policy in party regulations. This would signal something most analysts already believe: that he has no intention of giving up nuclear weapons.

South Korean officials say the North has finished up preparation for a fifth nuclear test that could come any day.

The congress is also expected to announce major policies aimed at reviving the economy. Critics question how realistic those plans could be, given that the country now faces the toughest U.N. sanctions in 20 years, imposed after this year's nuclear test and rocket launch.

5. Key players:

Delegates applaud during the congress in Pyongyang (AP)

Kim Yong Nam, an 88-year-old member of the party's powerful Politburo Presidium, may be dismissed from that job because of his age. If so, he could also lose his position as president of the Presidium of North Korea's rubber-stamp parliament, which makes him the country's nominal head of state.

Choe Ryong Hae, who once held membership in the Politburo's Presidium, may regain that lost post. South Korea's spy agency said last year that Choe was briefly banished to a rural collective farm for re-education. Choe was once considered the North's No. 2 following Jang's execution.

Kim Yo Jong, Kim Jong Un's younger sister and currently a vice department director at the party's Central Committee, might be given higher-level jobs, part of a reported push to elevate her to the country's No. 2 power. Believed to be in her late 20s, she frequently appears at her brother's public events, standing out amid elderly male officials.

Kim Won Hong, the North's state security minister, is among a handful of top officials who have survived repeated bloody shifts that purged former Kim intimates. He may get a higher profile after the congress.

Kim Ki Nam, 86, the North's propaganda chief, may lose his posts  director of the party's bureau on propaganda affairs and a secretary of the party's central committee  because of his age.

6. What is it?

North Korean soldiers march on Kim Il-Sung square during a military parade marking the 60th anniversary of the Korean war armistice in Pyongyang (Getty)

The party's highest-level decision-making body will determine key state policies, review past projects, reshuffle top officials and revise party regulations.

All six previous congresses came under the rule of Kim Il Sung, the late grandfather of Kim Jong Un and North Korea's founder, who died in 1994.

The most recent congress was held in 1980, for five days, with delegations from 118 countries, including China, the Soviet Union, Zimbabwe, Guinea and Romania. The fifth congress, in 1970, lasted for 12 days.

South Korea's spy agency said last week that North Korea hadn't invited any major foreign government delegations to this year's congress. There will be scores of Western journalists, though, to cover the heavily stage-managed event.
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A judge in Cologne has dismissed charges of sexual assault against an Algerian man in connection with the New Year attacks.

Dr Frank Altpeter acquitted the unnamed 26-year-old as it "could not be proven" that he had taken part in the sexual assault.

The victim in the case heard at the court on Friday could not be sure that the two men in the dock were the ones who attacked her, German media reports.

The man and another Algerian, 23, were handed six-month suspended sentences over handling stolen goods - relating to the mobile phone of a victim which was found on them - and breaking into a car on a separate occasion.

A court spokesman said the men were currently in detention awaiting deportation from Germany.

It was the first case of sexual assault from New Year's Eve to come before the court.

Germany was shocked by the string of sexual assaults and robberies against over 1,000 women in the city.

The victims reported gangs of men of "Arab and North African appearance" surrounding them before groping, assaulting and robbing them.

Over 1,000 incidents of sexual and robbery were reported in Cologne during the New Year's Eve celebrations (Getty Images) (Getty)

The incident provoked an intense backlash against German Chancellor Angela Merkel's open-door policy towards the Syrian refugees who were flooding over land borders and the Mediterrnean sea to escape the brutality of Isis and the Syrian civil war.

Far-right group Pegida staged a rally in Cologne calling for Germany to close its borders after an estimated 1.1m refugees arrived in the country in 2015.

A subsequent investigation found that of the 159 men arrested in connection with the allegations, although some were asylum seekers, only three people had recently arrived from war-torn regions of Syria and Iraq.

Recommended Read more Germany moves to tighten rape laws in wake of Cologne attacks

The head of the police inquiry, Detective Superintendent Thomas Schulter said of the men being investigated in connection with the attacks, two-thirds were of Algerian or Moroccan origin.

Police were accused of attempting to cover up the attacks after initially reporting that the New Year's Eve celebrations had passed without incident.

The local police chief, Wolfgang Albers, was suspended over his handling of the incident in January but allegations surfaced in April that the police had been ordered to remove the word "rape" from their report by the interior ministry of the state government.

Germany reacts to Cologne New Year's Eve attacks Show all 13 1 /13 Germany reacts to Cologne New Year's Eve attacks Germany reacts to Cologne New Year's Eve attacks Women protest against sexism outside Cologne Cathedral on 5 January after the assaults Oliver Berg/EPA Germany reacts to Cologne New Year's Eve attacks Women protest against sexism in Cologne following the rash of sex attacks on New Year's Eve Wolfgang Rattay/Reuters Germany reacts to Cologne New Year's Eve attacks Police initially failed to mention the assaults in report the following morning EPA Germany reacts to Cologne New Year's Eve attacks Police officers patrol in front of the main station of Cologne, Germany AP Germany reacts to Cologne New Year's Eve attacks German far-right supporters demonstrate at Cologne`s train station (Reuters) Reuters Germany reacts to Cologne New Year's Eve attacks Supporters of anti-immigration right-wing movement Pegida in Cologne, Germany, January 9, 2016. Reuters Germany reacts to Cologne New Year's Eve attacks Police used pepper spray to control supporters of Pegida, Hogesa (Hooligans against Salafists) and other right-wing populist groups as they protested against the New Year's Eve sex attacks on 9 January, 2016 in Cologne, Germany Reuters Germany reacts to Cologne New Year's Eve attacks Police use a water cannon during a protest march by supporters of anti-immigration right-wing movement Pegida in Cologne, Germany, January 9, 2016 Reuters Germany reacts to Cologne New Year's Eve attacks Police use pepper spray against supporters of anti-immigration right-wing movement Pegida, in Cologne, Germany, January 9, 2016. Reuters Germany reacts to Cologne New Year's Eve attacks Artist Mira Moire protests naked in Cologne against the mass sex attacks on New Year's Eve AP Germany reacts to Cologne New Year's Eve attacks A demonstrator holds a sign in German that reads 'No violence against women' during a demonstration in the wake of the sexual assaults on New Year's Eve, outside the cathedeal in Cologne, Germany, 09 January 2016. EPA Germany reacts to Cologne New Year's Eve attacks Counter demonstrators hold up a sign reading "Against sexism, against racism" as they protest against a demonstration of the islamophobic movement PEGIDA at the train station in Cologne, Germany, on January 9, 2016. AFP/Getty Images Germany reacts to Cologne New Year's Eve attacks Demonstration by a womens group on Saturday (AP) AP

Cologne newspaper Express published a letter supposedly from a policeman named Joachim H who was on duty that day and described his colleague getting an order to remove the word "vergewaltigung" - or "rape" - because it was the "wish of the state interior ministry".

Police ultimately refused the request but the allegations put more pressure on North Rhine-Westphalia interior minister, Ralf Jager, over his handling of the crisis.

He denied a cover-up but confirmed there had been "professional discussions" over the "classification" of the New Year's Eve assaults.
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Turkey's president has told the EU his nation will not reform its anti-terrorism laws for the sake of visa-free travel to Europe.

"We'll go our way, you go yours," President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said. "Go make your agreement with whoever you can."

The EU had asked Turkey to revise its harsh terrorism legislation as a condition for allowing Turkish citizens to travel to Europe for short stays without visas.

 EU and Turkey on standoff over refugee deal

But Mr Erdogan wants Turkish law to impose a broader definition of terrorism, at a time when the country faces the twin threats of renewed conflict with Kurdish militants in the southeast and increasing attacks carried out by Isis.

"The EU at the moment is saying, 'you will change your anti-terrorism law for visas,"' the president said during a speech in Istanbul.

Addressing European leaders, he countered: "You allow terrorists to set up tents next to the European Parliament. Why don't you change your mindset?"

His comment is a reference to tents set up by the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, near the EU parliament in Brussels.

Ahmet Davutoglu speaks during a news conference in Ankara (Reuters)

The president's statement came a day after prime minister Ahmet Davutoglu, who had negotiated the deal, stepped down.

The premier's resignation has been perceived as a result of a difference in opinion on key questions with the president, including the possibility of resuming peace talks with Kurdish militants, press freedom, and more importantly Mr Davutoglu's lukewarm support for reshaping Turkey into a presidential system.

"In order to be strong, we need to rapidly present a presidential system which is the guarantee of stability and trust to the approval of the people," Mr Erdogan said.

World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. 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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. 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There has been little uproar inside Turkey over the possibility it could be sliding toward dictatorship.

Analysts suggest that's because the president continues to enjoy a high degree of popularity. They also point to the long history of electoral success by Mr Erdogan and the Justice and Development Party (AKP).
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A gunman shouted "traitor" before firing two shots at a prominent Turkish journalist outside a courthouse in Istanbul, where he is on trial accused of revealing state secrets.

Can Dundar, editor-in-chief of opposition newspaper Cumhuriyet, escaped the attack unhurt, but another journalist was slightly injured in the leg.

Mr Dundar was heading towards a cafe with his wife after speaking to journalists who were covering his trial when the attack occurred.

The attacker was subdued and quickly detained by police outside the courthouse.

Video footage shows plain-clothed police forcing the man to lift his jacket to check he had no other weapons.

He was then ordered to lie face-down on the ground.

A handout picture provided by Cumhuriyet newspaper shows Dilek Dundar (L), wife of Can Dundar, and opposition party CHP lawmaker Muharrem Erkek try to capture Murat Sahin (R) he attempted to attack Can Dundar in front of the Courthouse in Istanbul, Turkey, 6 May, 2016 (EPA)

The gunman has been identified as Murat Sahin, 40, by Dogan news agency.

Last year, the Cumhuriyet newspaper published purported images of Turkish trucks carrying ammunition to Syrian militants.

The paper said the images proved Turkey was smuggling arms to rebels - a claim the government rejects.

A handout picture provided by Cumhuriyet newspaper shows a policeman point his gun at Murat Sahin after he attempted to attack Can Dundar in front of the Courthouse in Istanbul, Turkey, 6 May, 2016 (EPA)

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan filed a criminal complaint, and now the preisdent and the national intelligence agency MIT are plaintiffs in the case, which is widely seen as a test for press freedom in Turkey.

Mr Dundar and Cumhuriyet's Ankara representative, Erdem Gul, have now been sentenced to at least five years in prison for revealing state secrets.

They were acquitted of some charges, including trying to topple the government. The court separated charges of links to terrorist organisations to await a verdict in a separate trial.

"I don't know who the attacker is but I know who encouraged him and made me a target," Mr Dundar said, in a comment which appeared to be aimed at the Turkish president and others who have called for the journalists to be punished for the arms smuggling reports.

Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the leader of the main opposition party who has supported the journalists, echoed his words.

"Those who turn journalists into targets by using hate speech are responsible for the attack on Can Dundar," he said.
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A world-renowned orchestra has played a concert in the ruins of Palmyra as Russia put on a triumphant display for servicemen, officials and journalists a month after Isis was driven from the city.

The concert was staged in a Roman amphitheatre that was used as a backdrop for the mass execution of 25 prisoners just months before.

Vladimir Putin watched via video link as one of his supporters, Valery Gergiev, conducted St Petersburgs Mariinsky Symphony Orchestra in a performance shown live on Russian television.

Vladimir Putin delivers a speech via live video feed during a concert by the Mariinsky Symphony Orchestra in Palmyra , Syria, 5 May 2016 (EPA)

In opening remarks, Mr Gergiev told the audience: We protest against the barbarians who destroyed monuments of world culture."

In a separate address broadcast to the crowd, Mr Putin called the concert an amazing humanitarian act, adding: "I see it as a sign of gratitude, of remembrance, of hope."

Another of his allies, cellist Sergei Roldugin, played a solo in the concert as a scandal continues to rage over his appearance in the Panama Papers leak.

Thursdays concert came amid accusations that the Syrian regime made a deal with Isis to hand back the symbolic city, as well as continued civilian deaths in air strikes blamed on Russias ally Bashar al-Assad.

Called A Prayer for Palmyra, it was part of a concerted PR effort by Russian officials, who invited journalists to witness the signing of a peace agreement in Hama province.

Russian soldiers and invited guests listen the Mariinsky Symphony Orchestra concert at Palmyra amphitheatre on 5 May 2016 (AP)

Camera crews arrived to see a crowd gathered in Kawkabs main square waving photos of Assad with hearts on them and chanting Allah, Bashar al Assad and Syria forever.

A man said to be the villages sheikh then signed a truce with government forces and a group of masked young men said to be rebels handed over guns in what officials claimed was a formal surrender.

It was impossible to verify what group, if any, the men were from and a Sky News correspondent present likened the signings to a scene from George Orwell's 1984.

Mr Putin launched Russia's intervention in support of the Syrian regime in September, insisting intensive air strikes would only target "terrorists" despite mounting evidence of civilian deaths.

As strains of Bach and Prokofiev rang out in Palmyra, there were fresh accusations of possible war crimes by the Syrian government, following an air strike that killed at least 28 people at the Sarmada refugee camp.

Images of the aftermath of the bombing showed tents burned to the ground, charred bodies, and bloodied women and children being loaded on to a lorry.

The scene shortly after the air strike on Thursday afternoon in Sarmada, near the border with Turkey (Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently/Twitter)

It was not immediately clear who carried out the attack on the camp in Idlib province, where al-Qaedas Jabhat al-Nusra group is among the rebel groups holding territory.

Around 2,000 internally displaced people had taken shelter there from the fighting in nearby Aleppo and Hama provinces over the past year.

The White House called the strike indefensible and said there was no justifiable excuse to target civilians who had already fled their homes from violence.

The US-led coalition said it had no aircraft operating in the area but Syrian and Russian forces also denied involvement.

Zeid Ra'ad al Hussein, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said the attacks were almost certainly a deliberate war crime, adding: Initial reports suggest the attacks were carried out by Syrian Government aircraft, but this remains to be verified.

In pictures: Aleppo bombing Show all 14 1 /14 In pictures: Aleppo bombing In pictures: Aleppo bombing Bombing in Aleppo Smoke rises after airstrikes on the rebel-held al-Sakhour neighborhood of Aleppo, Syria April 29, 2016. Reuters In pictures: Aleppo bombing Bombing in Aleppo A Syrian family runs for cover amid the rubble of destroyed buildings following a reported air strike on the rebel-held neighbourhood of Al-Qatarji in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo, on April 29, 2016. AFP/Getty Images In pictures: Aleppo bombing Bombing in Aleppo A man reacts as he stands on blood stains at a site hit by airstrikes in the rebel held area of Aleppo's al-Fardous district, Syria, April 29, 2016. Reuters In pictures: Aleppo bombing Bombing in Aleppo The damage of the airstrikes in the rebel-held area of Aleppo on April 28 Reuters In pictures: Aleppo bombing Bombing in Aleppo The damaged the Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF)-backed al-Quds hospital after it was hit by airstrikes, in a rebel-held area of Syria's Aleppo Reuters In pictures: Aleppo bombing Bombing in Aleppo Syrians evacuate an injured man amid the rubble of destroyed buildings following an air strike on a rebel-held of Aleppo on April 29, 2016. AFP/Getty Images In pictures: Aleppo bombing Bombing in Aleppo People inspect the damage at a site hit by airstrikes, in the rebel-held area of Aleppo's Bustan al-Qasr AP In pictures: Aleppo bombing Bombing in Aleppo A man leads a woman in tears and child out of the scene after airstrikes hit Aleppo AP In pictures: Aleppo bombing Bombing in Aleppo Civil defence members search for survivors after an airstrike at a field hospital in the rebel held area of al-Sukari district of Aleppo Reuters In pictures: Aleppo bombing Bombing in Aleppo A Syrian boy is comforted as he cries next to the body of a relative who died in a reported air strike in the rebel-held neighbourhood of al-Soukour in the northern city of Aleppo Getty Images In pictures: Aleppo bombing Bombing in Aleppo A Syrian family walks amid the rubble of destroyed buildings following a reported air strike in the Bustan al-Qasr rebel-held district of the northern Syrian city of Aleppo Getty Images In pictures: Aleppo bombing Bombing in Aleppo Syrian civil defence volunteers and rescuers remove a baby from under the rubble of a destroyed building following a reported air strike on the rebel-held neighbourhood of al-Kalasa in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo Getty Images In pictures: Aleppo bombing Bombing in Aleppo Syrians help a wounded youth following an air strike on the Fardous rebel held neighbourhood of the northern Syrian city of Aleppo Getty Images In pictures: Aleppo bombing Bombing in Aleppo Syrian civil defence volunteers evacuate people from a damaged building following a reported airstrike in the rebel-held neighbourhood of Tareeq al-Bab in the northern city of Aleppo

But the Syrian air force said there was no truth in reports it had targeted the camp and Russian military spokesperson Igor Konashenkov said no Russian aircraft or drones had overflown the site.

He turned suspicion to Jabhat al-Nusra, saying they could have deliberately or accidentally shelled the camp during battles, although there are no major frontlines nearby.

The cessation of hostilities agreed in February has disintegrated in parts of Syria, with hundreds of civilians killed in weeks of shelling by regime forces and rebel groups in Aleppo and a double suicide bombing killing at least 10 people in Homs.

The atrocity was blamed on Isis, which has carried out similar attacks in the area while battling to control the Shaer gas field.

As a 48-hour truce largely held in Aleppo city on Friday, the Islamist Jaysh al-Fatah rebel alliance launched an assault on a government-held village to the south.

Additional reporting by agencies
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Scores of people have been killed in fighting near the Syrian city of Aleppo, observers have said.

Seventy-three people were killed at Khan Touman, a village just four miles from embattled Aleppo and part of the Syrian governments southern defensive line of the city.

The fighting has signalled the re-emergence of a powerful, ultraconservative insurgent coalition, who claim to have siezed control of the village. However, government sources denied it had fallen to the opposition.

Forces loyal to the government of President Bashar al-Assad fought Jaish al-Fatah, or Army of Conquest, an umbrella group of hard-line jihadist factions, including the al-Qaeda affiliated Al-Nusra Front, Ahrar al-Sham and the suicidal Jund al-Aqsa. These groups have not participated in the attempted peace negotiations. The Free Syrian Army denied involvement in the attack.

At least 43 opposition fighters and 30 government soldiers fighters were killed in the fighting, according to the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which closely monitors the Syrian Civil War and has numerous contacts in the country.

In pictures: Russian air strikes in Syria Show all 19 1 /19 In pictures: Russian air strikes in Syria In pictures: Russian air strikes in Syria Syrian boys cry following Russian air strikes on the rebel-held Fardous neighbourhood of the northern embattled Syrian city of Aleppo Getty In pictures: Russian air strikes in Syria Russian defense ministry spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov speaks to the media in Moscow, Russia. Konashenkov strongly warned the United States against striking Syrian government forces and issued a thinly-veiled threat to use Russian air defense assets to protect them AP In pictures: Russian air strikes in Syria Syrians wait to receive treatment at a hospital following Russian air strikes on the rebel-held Fardous neighbourhood of the northern embattled Syrian city of Alepp Getty In pictures: Russian air strikes in Syria Russian Deputy Defense Minister Anatoly Antonov speaks at a briefing in the Defense Ministry in Moscow, Russia. Antonov said the Russian air strikes in Syria have killed about 35,000 militants, including about 2,700 residents of Russia AP In pictures: Russian air strikes in Syria Jameel Mustafa Habboush, receives oxygen from civil defence volunteers, known as the white helmets, as they rescue him from under the rubble of a building following Russian air strikes on the rebel-held Fardous neighbourhood of the northern embattled Syrian city of Aleppo Getty In pictures: Russian air strikes in Syria Civil defence members rest amidst rubble in a site hit by what activists said were airstrikes carried out by the Russian air force in the town of Douma, eastern Ghouta in Damascus, Syria Reuters In pictures: Russian air strikes in Syria A girl carrying a baby inspects damage in a site hit by what activists said were airstrikes carried out by the Russian air force in the town of Douma, eastern Ghouta in Damascus, Syria Reuters In pictures: Russian air strikes in Syria Civilians and civil defence members look for survivors at a site damaged after Russian air strikes on the Syrian rebel-held city of Idlib, Syria Reuters In pictures: Russian air strikes in Syria Civilians and civil defence members carry an injured woman on a stretcher at a site damaged after Russian air strikes on the Syrian rebel-held city of Idlib, Syria Reuters In pictures: Russian air strikes in Syria Volunteers from Syria Civil Defence, also known as the White Helmets, help civilians after Russia carried out its first airstrikes in Syria In pictures: Russian air strikes in Syria The aftermath of Russian airstrike in Talbiseh, Syria In pictures: Russian air strikes in Syria Smoke billows from buildings in Talbiseh, in Homs province, western Syria, after airstrikes by Russian warplanes AP In pictures: Russian air strikes in Syria Russian Air Forces carry out an air strike in the ISIS controlled Al-Raqqah Governorate. Russia's KAB-500s bombs completely destroy the Liwa al-Haqq command unit In pictures: Russian air strikes in Syria Caspian Flotilla of the Russian Navy firing Kalibr cruise missiles against remote Isis targets in Syria A TASS/ITAR-TASS Photo/Corbis In pictures: Russian air strikes in Syria Russia claimed it hit eight Isis targets, including a "terrorist HQ and co-ordination centre" that was completely destroyed In pictures: Russian air strikes in Syria A video grab taken from the footage made available on the Russian Defence Ministry's official website, purporting to show an airstrike in Syria In pictures: Russian air strikes in Syria A release from the Russian defence ministry purportedly showing targets in Syria being hit In pictures: Russian air strikes in Syria Russia launched air strikes in war-torn Syria, its first military engagement outside the former Soviet Union since the occupation of Afghanistan in 1979. Russian warplanes carried out strikes in three Syrian provinces along with regime aircraft as Putin seeks to steal US President Barack Obama's thunder by pushing a rival plan to defeat Isis militants in Syria In pictures: Russian air strikes in Syria Caspian Flotilla of the Russian Navy firing Kalibr cruise missiles against remote Isis targets in Syria, a thousand kilometres away. The targets include ammunition factories, ammunition and fuel depots, command centres, and training camps A TASS/ITAR-TASS Photo/Corbis

"Throughout the night the battles were very intense," Abu al-Baraa al-Hamawi, a fighter from Ajnad al-Sham group, told Reuters. "Areas south of Khan Touman have been liberated."

Fighting began on Thursday afternoon and opposition media activists said the insurgents took control of Khan Touman early on Friday morning. The clashes reportedly included strikes on the opposition fighters by fighter jets.

The Army of Conquest group has struggled to remain united in times of relative peace, according to activists, but the recent collapse of the cease-fire and resumption of hostilities in April appears to have reunified the anti-government opposition. Non jihadist factions also took part in the attack on Khan Touman.

But the Army of Conquest is internally divided over who it considers enemies and how it rules areas under its control.

"The suicidal Jund al-Aqsa brigade is ideologically close to Daesh," said UK-based Syrian activist Asaad Kanjo, using the Arabic acronym for Isis. "Aqsa said it didn't want to fight Daesh and withdrew from the coalition when that was suggested."

However, Mr Kanjo believed a return to peace would once again fragment the Army of Conquest coalition.

The fighting comes just one day after the Sarmada refugee camp, near the Turkish border, was hit by air strikes, killing at least 28 civilians. The UN denounced the attack as a possible war crime, but Syrian regime sources have denied involvement.

Press Association contributed to this report.
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The whistleblower behind the massive Panama Papers data leak has broken their silence to explain how injustice drove them to release the information.

The leaker - whose identity remains a secret - wrote a column for German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung explaining their reasoning and insisting they were not a spy.

In April, the leak of 11.5 million documents from the offices of Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca caused a massive worldwide scandal which led to the resignation of the Icelandic Prime Minister.

Allies of Russian President Vladimir Putin, Prime Minister David Camerons father and several top Fifa executives names appeared in the financial documents stretching back 40 years.

The majority of the files document legal activity - but critics have accused worldwide elites of hoarding their wealth in offshore tax havens while ordinary people have been hit by recession, austerity and the increasing cost of living.

The source wrote: Income inequality is one of the defining issues of our time. It affects all of us, the world over.

 What are The Panama Papers?

Shell companies are often associated with the crime of tax evasion, but the Panama Papers show beyond a shadow of a doubt that although shell companies are not illegal by definition, they are used to carry out a wide array of serious crimes that go beyond evading taxes.

I decided to expose Mossack Fonseca because I thought its founders, employees and clients should have to answer for their roles in these crimes, only some of which have come to light thus far. It will take years, possibly decades, for the full extent of the firms sordid acts to become known.

The source criticised the legal profession in particular, saying they helped Mossack Fonseca set up tens of thousands of shell companies in offshore tax havens - more than half of which were based in the British Virgin Islands.

View of a sign outside the building where Panama-based Mossack Fonseca law firm offices are placed in Panama City on April 3, 2016. (AFP/Getty Images)

They said their decision to share the files with Suddeutsche Zeitung and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) was not for any specific political purpose but because I understood enough about their contents to realise the scale of the injustices they described.

The leaker said they did not work for a government or intelligence agency as a member of staff or as a contractor and they never had.

In their 1,800-word manifesto they claimed the Conservative party had been shameless about concealing their own practices involving offshore companies.

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

They called on the European Commission, the British Parliament, the United States Congress, and all nations to take swift action not only to protect whistleblowers, but to put an end to the global abuse of corporate registers.

They said they UK Government needed to do more and called for it to introduce public registers of offshore companies which would show who benefits from them.

The UK still has a vital role to play in ending financial secrecy on various island territories, which are unquestionably the cornerstone of institutional corruption worldwide, they explained.

The source expressed their admiration for NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden - who revealed in 2013 that the US and UK government routinely spy on their own citizens.

Mr Snowden is currently living in Moscow after being charged with espionage by the US.

They said: For his revelations about the NSA, he [Snowden] deserves a heros welcome and a substantial prize, not banishment.

The source ended their manifesto on a positive note.

They said imbalances of power in the past had led to revolutions and military might was needed to subjugate people whereas now curtailing information access is just as effective.

Despite this: We live in a time of inexpensive, limitless digital storage and fast internet connections that transcend national boundaries.

It doesn't take much to connect the dots: from start to finish, inception to global media distribution, the next revolution will be digitised.

Or perhaps it has already begun.

Mossack Fonseca has said it was hacked by servers based abroad and has filed a complaint with Panamanian authorities.

It told the BBC the information has been had been misrepresented and it had not acted illegally.
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The University of Oxford has been seen to reject a petition which called for the institution to take action against controversial law student, Ntokozo Qwabe, on the grounds that all students have the right to free speech.

The petition, which launched on Monday, had gathered over 42,000 signatures after Mr Qwabe was criticised for boasting in a Facebook post that he, and his friends, had reduced a waitress to tears after refusing to tip her until white residents in South Africa return the land to black residents.

Recommended Read more Oxford law student calls for ban on French flag after Paris attacks

Despite an Oxford spokesman saying the institutions duty of care to all members of the university means it does not discuss individuals, in a statement, he added: Oxford is a place where non-violent speech, however objectionable, can be expressed and challenged.

Our students may voice opinions which others believe to be misguided, or which they find offensive. They have a right to do this but, in exercising it, we expect them to respect other people and the law.

One of the co-founders of the Rhodes Must Fall in Oxford movement, Mr Qwabe, himself, has received the Rhodes Scholarship, despite campaigning to have a racist statue of the former 19th Century colonialist, Cecil Rhodes, removed from Oriel College.

 8 questions you could face

The petition, which had been started by London-based social worker, Jan Hendrik Ferreira, sought to highlight two of the criteria candidates must uphold in order to be eligible for the scholarship.

Truth, courage, devotion to duty, sympathy for and protection of the weak, kindliness, unselfishness and fellowship is one, according to the website, while the other reads: Moral force of character and instincts to lead, and to take an interest in, ones fellow beings.

Addressed to Oxfords vice-chancellor, Louise Richardson, Mr Ferreira wrote: Mr Qwabe and friend(s) violated a persons dignity, publicly degraded and humiliated her, and created a highly offensive situation which Mr Qwabe has since taken great pleasure in narcissistically boasting over her reaction across social media.

Student news in pictures Show all 34 1 /34 Student news in pictures Student news in pictures South Korean policemen detain a student demonstrator during a protest against South Korean President Park Geun-Hye EPA Student news in pictures South Korean policemen detain student protestors during a protest against South Korean President Park Geun-Hye outside the National Assembly in Seoul, South Korea. The protesters demanded that the parliament takes steps to impeach President Park Geun-Hye EPA Student news in pictures Filipino demonstrators face off with anti-riot police during a protest near the US Embassy in Manila, Philippine EPA Student news in pictures Hundreds of protesters including Indigenous People, students and militant groups marched towards the US Embassy to protest against the presence of US military troops and condemning the violent dispersal which left at least forty people hurt including twenty police officers and three people who were run over by a police van EPA Student news in pictures A federal judge in Mexico has ordered that a once-fugitive police chief be held on charges of kidnapping in the disappearance of 43 students Student news in pictures A man holds up a photograph of a missing student with a caption reading 'We are missing 43,' during a meeting marking the 25-month anniversary of the disappearances of 43 students in the southern state of Guerrero, in Mexico City. A federal judge in Mexico has ordered that a once-fugitive police chief be held on charges of kidnapping in the disappearance of 43 students AP Student news in pictures Miguel Perez, an intern student from the University of Puerto Rico School of Medicine, puts away his cell phone before walking into the operating room at the Dr. Isaac Gonzalez MartInez Oncological Hospital in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Once they complete their general surgery training, many residents are moving to the United States in search of better wages, one of the main factors linked to the current shortage of specialists in the Island Student news in pictures Fewer EU students have applied to start university courses in the UK next autumn. There was a 9% fall in the numbers who had applied for courses, according to admissions service UCAS. PA wire Student news in pictures University students protest against President Nicolas Maduro, in Caracas, Venezuela. Masses of protesters jammed the streets of Venezuela's capital on the heels of a move by congress to open a political trial against Maduro, whose allies have blocked moves for a recall election AP Student news in pictures University students protest against President Nicolas Maduro, in Caracas, Venezuela AP Student news in pictures Thousands, most of them high school students, march during a demonstration in Madrid, Spain, on a one day strike to protest about the country's education law that increases the number of annual exams AP Student news in pictures Students gather on the west mall to confront the Young Conservatives of Texas student organization over a controversial bake sale on The University of Texas campus in Austin, Texas. The Young Conservatives of Texas chapter at the University of Texas-Austin sparked the protest with an affirmative action bake sale. The club encouraged students to buy a cookie and talk about the disastrous policy that is affirmative action Student news in pictures Donald Parish Jr, right, confronts Electrical and Computer Engineering senior Dewayne Perry over a controversial bake sale on The University of Texas campus in Austin, Texas. The Young Conservatives of Texas chapter at the University of Texas-Austin sparked the protest with an affirmative action bake sale. The club encouraged students to buy a cookie and talk about the disastrous policy that is affirmative action AP Student news in pictures Brigham Young University announced that students who report sexual assault will no longer be investigated for possible violations of the Mormon-owned school's strict honor code that bans such things as alcohol use AP Student news in pictures Students of secondary education march to protest against the final examinations and LOMCE (The Improvement Quality Education Law) law, after a call by trade unions, in Murcia, Spain EPA Student news in pictures South African police have used stun grenades and rubber bullets to disperse hundreds of protesters who had marched to the parliament building to call for free university education, where the finance minister was giving a budget speech AP Student news in pictures Police break up student protests outside the parliament in Cape Town, South Africa Reuters Student news in pictures South African Policemen fire rubber bullets at student protestors in Cape Town, South Africa AP Student news in pictures A student protestor is hit by a rubber bullet in Cape Town, South Africa AP Student news in pictures An injured student is helped by colleagues during protest outside the parliament during South African Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan's medium term budget speech in Cape Town, South Africa Reuters Student news in pictures Plaintiffs and bereaved families of elementary school students killed in the tsunami that followed a major earthquake in northeastern Japan in 2011, show banners that say 'victory in a suit filed with the Sendai District Court' in Sendai. A Japanese court ordered municipalities to pay $13.7 million dollars to families of school children who were swept away to their deaths by the 2011 tsunami Getty Student news in pictures A group of student at Ewha Womans University calls for a thorough investigation into those involved in years of engagement with state affairs backstage by Choi Soon-sil, a personal confidante of South Korean President Park Geun-hye, at the school's front gate in Seoul, South Korea EPA Student news in pictures Students raise placards during a strike action called by the student union, in Madrid against university entry exams Getty Student news in pictures Libyans throw a newly graduated student into a fountain as they celebrate during the graduation ceremony for students from the Faculty of Pharmacy at the Al-Arab University in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi Getty Student news in pictures Libyans celebrate as they attend the graduation ceremony for students from the Faculty of Pharmacy at the Al-Arab University in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi Getty Student news in pictures Libyans celebrate as they attend the graduation ceremony for students from the Faculty of Pharmacy at the Al-Arab University in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi Getty Student news in pictures Thousands of Thai Catholic students take part in mourning tributes and in singing the Thai Royal Anthem to honour late Thai King Bhumibol Adulyadej at Saint Dominic School in Bangkok, Thailand EPA Student news in pictures Students of Silpakorn University paint portraits of the late Thai King Bhumibol Adulyadej at the university campus in Bangkok Getty Student news in pictures A student of Silpakorn University paints a portrait of the late Thai King Bhumibol Adulyadej at the university campus in Bangkok Getty Student news in pictures St Andrews University students take part in a foam fight known as Raisin Monday in the Lower College Lawn behind St Salvator's Quadrangle following the Raisin Weekend PA wire Student news in pictures St Andrews University students take part in a foam fight known as Raisin Monday in the Lower College Lawn behind St Salvator's Quadrangle following the Raisin Weekend, an annual tradition where student 'parents' inflict tasks on the unfortunate first-years they have adopted as 'children' as part of a mentoring scheme PA wire Student news in pictures Students at the Cuba's National Ballet School (ENB) in Havana, Cuba Reuters Student news in pictures Students at the Cuba's National Ballet School (ENB) take part in a practice in Havana, Cuba Reuters Student news in pictures Students at the Cuba's National Ballet School (ENB) wait in line to enter a classroom in Havana, Cuba Reuters

He also added how Mr Qwabe does not uphold the values expected of an institution such as Oxford, and continued: His actions have ultimately brought your educational establishments image into disrepute.

We ask the university to consider the irony that Mr Qwabe is pursuing a career in law when his personal conduct in this situation is highly questionable.

The statement from the university has largely been criticised, with hundreds of comments being posted to the petitions site.

A supporter of the petition wrote that Mr Qwabes speech is far from non-violent, while one other user said: I would have applauded Oxford Uni had they expelled him but now this is a disgrace and a mockery.

Another has written: It would appear that Oxford University is failing dismally at instilling a sense of respect in this particular individual.

One user has even called for a separate petition to the Home Office which, he said, should be established to have his entry and all further entry refused on public good grounds. His suggestion has, so far, received more than 700 likes.

The Independent has contaced Mr Qwabe for comment. However, according to South African news site, Sowetan, he said: To all media outlets wanting to speak to myself...here is a message: WE WILL ONLY ENGAGE THE WHITE MEDIA WHEN WE HAVE THE LAND BACK.

This isnt the first time Mr Qwabe has stirred up controversy. In December last year, the student sparked outrage after calling for a ban on the French flag at universities after Novembers terrorist attacks in Paris.

Comparing it to the Nazi swastika, he accused France of having terrorised innocent lives in the past, and said: You can miss me with the buffoonery of changing Facebook profile pictures to violent imperial flags & hashtaging [sic] prayers for Paris. I will silently pretend to but not kneel to carry out.
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

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Walcot Hall is a fabulous and little known country estate, perfectly placed for exploring the beautiful Shropshire Hills, and a great place to stay in its own right, with a Georgian house at its heart, and, in addition to a number of comfy self-catering apartments, a variety of quirky camping and glamping opportunities dotted around its sumptuous grounds.

Its the sort of place to head for if you not only want to get right away from it all but you're also keen to stay somewhere really different, and very private. They have a wide range of options  three yurts, a gypsy caravan, a shepherd's hut in Walcot Hall's very own Arboretum, two 'showman's' caravans, a fire truck, and, perhaps our favourite, the wonderful 'Dipping Shed'  a two-bedroom open-plan apartment converted from a hunting lodge, which is a good ten-minute walk from the main house.

Some of these have their own facilities, the yurts share a converted henhouse loo, others use a 'long-drop' earth toilet in the woods; there is a gas-powered shower in a caravan, and you can also use the toilet block of the Walcot Hall campsite on the same site.

There's a pub in the village  the Powis Arms  and you're just a short (ten-minute) drive from Bishops' Castle, where there are shops, good pubs and a couple of great places to eat, including the restaurant at the excellent Castle Hotel. In the other direction, The Kangaroo in Aston-on-Clun is a proper locals joint serving good food  one of our favourite pubs hereabouts.

Martin Dunford is the Publisher of Cool Places, a new website from the creators of Rough Guides and Cool Camping, suggesting the best places to stay, eat, drink and shop in Britain (coolplaces.co.uk)
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From Hillary Clinton to Mexicans, many have cause to be scared of Donald Trump.

Now confirmed as the Republican Party nominee, the billionaires unique style of politics is set to take even greater prominence than previously thought possible.

His manner of intimidating competition and upsetting large groups of people is well documented, yet some quotes stand out as particularly scary.

Perhaps none more so than the time he appeared on The View with his daughter Ivanka.

If Ivanka werent my daughter, perhaps Id be dating her (The View, 2006)

What The Donald surely thought was the highest possible compliment turned out to be one of the creepiest things a father could say.

(AP)

Trump was quick to set out his controversial immigration policy that included building a great, great wall to keep out anyone seeking a new life from Mexico.

I would build a great wall, and nobody builds walls better than me. Believe me. And Ill build it very inexpensively. Ill build a great, great wall on our southern border and I will have Mexico pay for that wall. Mark my words. (Campaign Launch 2015)

Appealing to the xenophobic yet frugal voter, his divisive stall was set out early during his campaign launch.

Not too shabby for Donald Trump celebrating New York landslide (AP)

A quote from the Trump-written How To Get Rich is rather revealing about the 69-year-olds views on women.

All of the women on The Apprentice flirted with me  consciously or unconsciously. Thats to be expected. How To Get Rich (2004)

Its either telling about the way he does business or the way he thinks of women, neither being very flattering.

People who will flee America if Donald Trump wins Show all 8 1 /8 People who will flee America if Donald Trump wins People who will flee America if Donald Trump wins Miley Cyrus 'God he thinks he is the f***ing chosen one or some shit!  Honestly f*** this sh*t I am moving if this is my president! I dont say things I dont mean!' Jemal Countess/Getty Images People who will flee America if Donald Trump wins Whoopi Goldberg 'I dont think thats America. I dont want it to be America. Maybe its time for me to move you know' People who will flee America if Donald Trump wins Samuel L. Jackson 'If that mother**er becomes president, Im moving my black ass to South Africa' People who will flee America if Donald Trump wins Raven Symone 'My confession for this election is, if any Republican gets nominated, Im gonna move to Canada with my entire family. Is that bad? I already have my ticket. I literally bought my ticket, I swear' People who will flee America if Donald Trump wins Cher 'If he were to be elected, I'm moving to Jupiter' People who will flee America if Donald Trump wins Neve Campbell 'Im terrified. Its really scary. My biggest fear is that Trump will triumph. I cannot believe that he is still in the game ... [I'll] move back to Canada' People who will flee America if Donald Trump wins Jon Stewart 'I would consider getting in a rocket and going to another planet, because clearly this planets gone bonkers' People who will flee America if Donald Trump wins Randy Blythe 'He could just be a clown. If he is the president, though, I am leaving America 'till he's gone'

To further his stance on immigration, Trump chose to clarify any suspicions Americans may have had about the Mexicans hoping to cross their southern border.

When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best. They're not sending you. They're not sending you. They're sending people that have lots of problems, and they're bringing those problems with us. They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people." (Campaign Launch 2015)

Unsurprisingly, virtually the whole of Mexico was offended by these remarks. Trump might assume some were not.

 Mexico: Terrifying Trump masks a Halloween hit in Mexico

A further insight into Trumps perception of women arrived as he took to a red carpet.

I mean, we could say politically correct that look doesnt matter, but the look obviously matters like you wouldnt have your job if you werent beautiful.(The Strip View 2014)

Another day, another journalist and/or woman insulted by Trump.

 Megyn Kelly v Donald Trump

The insight continues with a barb aimed at his likely competition for The White House, Hillary Clinton.

"If Hillary Clinton can't satisfy her husband what makes her think she can satisfy America?" (Twitter, 2015  later deleted)

Yes. Sexual prowess has always directly correlated with a political competence.

Donald Trump isn't expected to hold back in his attacks on Hillary Clinton (AP)

The immigration controversy continued after the San Bernardino shootings when Trump saw the actions of two radicals as cause to ban an entire religion from entering the US.

Donald J Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States, until our countrys representatives can figure out what the hell is going on. (2015)

Not one to let a tragic event hinder the campaign steamroller, Trump continues to support this policy.

Donald Trump is the presumptive Republican nominee after his 3 May win in Indiana Getty

But what about tackling the root of the problem? Can we expect a more practical approach to preventing tragedies like this in the future?

I would bring back waterboarding and I'd bring back a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding." Republican Presidential Debate, ABC News 2016)

It might be worth deciding whats included in a hell of a lot worse and have the Geneva Convention to hand while doing so.

Mr Trump has made major changes to his closest team as he battles for New York (AP)

Trump has long suggested that Europe will regret its stance on refugees, concerned over the potential of a Trojan Horse strategy from Isis.

What I won't do is take in two hundred thousand Syrians who could be ISIS (Face the Nation, CBS  2015)

This may not be a concern should Trump ever enter the White House as President, being rather unlikely that refugees will choose the US as their preferred choice of sanctuary.

Donald Trump's most controversial quotes Show all 14 1 /14 Donald Trump's most controversial quotes Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On Isis: "Some of the candidates, they went in and didnt know the air conditioner didnt work and sweated like dogs, and they didnt know the room was too big because they didnt have anybody there. How are they going to beat ISIS?" Getty Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On immigration: "I will build a great wall  and nobody builds walls better than me, believe me and Ill build them very inexpensively. I will build a great, great wall on our southern border, and I will make Mexico pay for that wall. Mark my words." Reuters Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On Free Trade: "Free trade is terrible. Free trade can be wonderful if you have smart people. But we have stupid people." PAUL J. RICHARDS | AFP | Getty Images Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On Mexicans: "When Mexico sends its people, theyre not sending their best. Theyre sending people that have lots of problems. Theyre bringing drugs. Theyre bringing crime. Theyre rapists." Getty Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On China: "I just sold an apartment for $15 million to somebody from China. Am I supposed to dislike them?... I love China. The biggest bank in the world is from China. You know where their United States headquarters is located? In this building, in Trump Tower." Getty Images Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On work: "If you're interested in 'balancing' work and pleasure, stop trying to balance them. Instead make your work more pleasurable." AP Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On success: "What separates the winners from the losers is how a person reacts to each new twist of fate." Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On life: "Everything in life is luck." AFP Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On ambition: "You have to think anyway, so why not think big?" Getty Images Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On his opponents: "Bush is totally in favour of Common Core. I don't see how he can possibly get the nomination. He's weak on immigration. He's in favour of Common Core. How the hell can you vote for this guy? You just can't do it." Reuters Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On Obamacare: "You have to be hit by a tractor, literally, a tractor, to use it, because the deductibles are so high. It's virtually useless. And remember the $5 billion web site?... I have so many web sites, I have them all over the place. I hire people, they do a web site. It costs me $3." Getty Images Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On Barack Obama: "Obama is going to be out playing golf. He might be on one of my courses. I would invite him. I have the best courses in the world. I have one right next to the White House." PA Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On himself: "Love him or hate him, Trump is a man who is certain about what he wants and sets out to get it, no holds barred. Women find his power almost as much of a turn-on as his money." Getty Images Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On America: "The American Dream is dead. But if I get elected president I will bring it back bigger and better and stronger than ever before and we will make America great again." GETTY

Perhaps the scariest of all these quotes is the last.

I have no intention of ever running for president. (TIME Interview 1987)

The world has certainly changed since 1987 but this may the finest indicator of how unpredictable, volatile and undependable a Trump presidency could be.
 Flash

Chinese tourist clashes with Vietnamese border inspection staff at Nha Trang Airport.(Photo from Weibo)

On May 4, the Consulate General of China in Ho Chi Minh City made representation on the issue of Chinese tourists being asked to pay tips to border inspection agents at Nha Trang Airport. The consulate demanded that the results of the investigation into the incident be broadcast.

The Vietnamese representative said that local government has already asked the relevant departments for a detailed report on the event, and has strengthened supervision on border exit and entry procedures. The inappropriate behavior of border inspection staff has been rectified and the offending employees will be punished for their actions, the representative promised.

The Chinese consulate pushed the Vietnamese side to seriously investigate the incident, punish relevant personnel and guarantee the legal rights of Chinese tourists.

According to a local news report on May 5, several border inspection agents at Nha Trang Airport have now been suspended.

According to various media reports, a group of Chinese tourists were asked to pay "tips" to border inspection staff at Nha Trang Airport on May 2. Some employees even said in Chinese: "10 yuan, 10 yuan." An "uncooperative" tourist was pushed over and threatened with an electric shock device. Then the whole group was required to pay 30 yuan each as a penalty. At that time, about 800 to 1,000 passengers were in the vicinity, mostly Chinese tourists bound for Chengdu, Chongqing and Shanghai.
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In northern Syria carnage alternates with ceasefires as the Syrian air force pounds the rebel-held eastern side of Aleppo in a bid to drive out the remaining civilians. Rebel artillery replies in kind against government areas in the west of the city, but cannot match the firepower used against their enclave. Airstrikes on Thursday killed at least 28 people in a refugee camp close to the Turkish border.

The purpose of the Syrian governments air and artillery attacks has remained the same over the last five years and is to separate opposition fighters from the civilian population. This is the same classic counter-insurgency strategy that was used by the French in Algeria and the US in Vietnam, says Fabrice Balanche, an expert on Syria at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Syrian government forces target rebel-held zones and essential infrastructure such as hospitals and markets so whole districts of cities like Damascus and Homs are reduced to rubble.

In Iraq, the US led coalition is more careful about avoiding civilian casualties, but even so 70 per cent of Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province, has been destroyed and surviving houses have been turned into death traps by booby traps and IEDs planted by Isis. In both Syria and Iraq, inadequate numbers of ground troops  Syrian army, Syrian Kurds, Iraqi Kurds, Iraqi army - claim great victories but in reality act as mopping up forces that can only advance after a devastating aerial bombardment.

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The Syrian, Russian and US-led air campaigns have all had their successes, but they have their limitations. Dr Balanche says that the population of opposition-held east Aleppo may be down to as low as 100,000 because of airstrikes, while the much safer government-controlled west of the city still has a population of two million. The US and the coalition have carried out 8,067 air strikes in Iraq and 3,809 in Syria which have inflicted heavy casualties on Isis and interrupted their communications. But strict rules of engagement, intended to avoid civilian casualties, mean that Isis and al-Nusra fighters can stay safe by taking over one floor in a five storey building and leaving the other four floors occupied by ordinary families. While the term human shield is much abused, the armed opposition in places like Mosul, Raqqa and Eastern Ghouta forbid civilians from leaving, so terrified people must balance the possibility of being killed by air strikes against that of being murdered or detained by salafi-jihadi checkpoints.

 Palmyra before ISIS

Bombs and drones weaken Islamic State, but probably not as much as is hoped in Washington and European capitals. Isis fighters have generally not being fighting to the last man for cities like Ramadi and Palmyra, but pulling back and resorting to guerrilla warfare. In the last few days they claim to have captured the important Shaer gas field in the desert not far from Palmyra. Isis and al-Nusras many enemies are divided and pursue different goals. The US and its allies want to defeat Isis, but do not want the Syrian army or the Iraqi Shia militias to be the instruments which inflict that defeat. Syrian and Iraqi Kurdish leaders detest each other, but they are at one in fearing that their value to the West will lapse once Isis is defeated and they will be left to the mercy of Turkey and resurgent regimes in Baghdad and Damascus.

This probably wont happen for some time. The US is pressing for a swift attack on Mosul and may be deceiving itself about the real military strength of the Iraqi Kurds and the Iraqi Army with the result that US Special Forces get sucked into the fighting when their local ally falters. US military aid is now very extensive. The Pentagon recently announced that US artillery will support the Iraqi ground offensive against Mosul and the United States will provide up to $415 million to the Kurdish Peshmerga. There is a small but politically significant trickle of US casualties including a Navy SEAL killed by Isis fighters in a surprise attack north of Mosul last week.

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Isis is battered and on the retreat, but is unlikely to be defeated this year. It is losing territory but it is important to keep in mind that much of this is desert or semi-desert. More important is its progressive loss of access to the Turkish border which has been largely sealed off by the advance of the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia assisted by a US air umbrella. The increasingly narrow corridor between Aleppo and the Euphrates that links the self-declared Caliphate to Turkey is under threat from the YPG and their Arab proxies in the east and the Syrian army in the west. If this gap is closed then Isis will have great difficulty receiving foreign volunteers or dispatching terrorists to carry out attacks abroad.

If Isis and al-Nusra are defeated, what will be the impact on the political geography of this part of the Middle East? Sunni Arabs in Iraq make up 20 per cent and in Syria 60 per cent of the population but there is really only one battlefield, so, if the salafi-jihadis lose, so too will the Sunni Arabs as a whole in the band of territory between the Iranian border and the Mediterranean. In Iraq the war is destroying the Sunni population, says Professor Joshua Landis who heads the Centre for Middle East Studies at Oklahoma University, pointing out that most of those displaced in the fighting in Iraq over the last two years are Sunni Arabs and the Sunni had already been driven out of much of Baghdad in the sectarian slaughter of 2006-7. A prolonged struggle for Mosul would reduce the last great Sunni stronghold in the country to ruins. We Sunni in Iraq are going to end up like the Palestinians, predicted a Sunni Arab from Ramadi last year before the city was partly destroyed.

President Bashar al-Assad said last week that he would fight on to recapture all of Syria and he might go a long way to achieving this. But it would be the triumph of a minority government that could only maintain its authority by terror and military force. It would resemble Saddam Husseins Sunni-dominated regime in Iraq after he had crushed the rebellions of the Shia and Kurds, together with 80 per cent of the population, in 1991.

Recommended Read more How Isis shocked the world by advancing on Baghdad

It may not come to this. Not all the news is bad. The most hopeful sign in Syria is that Russia and the US are on occasion acting in unison and have been able for the first time in five years to prod their allies into agreeing ceasefires however shaky and short term. The lesson of the last five years in Syria and the last 13 years in Iraq is that it is very difficult for any single army, government, militia, party, sect or ethnic group to fight successfully for a long period without the support of a foreign power or powers. They may not want to compromise but they may be forced to do so if the alternative is the loss of this essential outside backing. Given that the Assad and anti-Assad forces hate each other, want to kill each other and have no intention of sharing power in future, such compromises are likely to be grudging and short term.

The real test over the coming months will be the extent to which the US and Russia have the desire and capability to enforce a ceasefire or at least a de-escalation of the fighting. A state of permanent war has suited both the government in Damascus and its extreme fundamentalist enemies, because many Syrians who do not like Assad feel that the only alternative to his regime, as the French Algerians used to say, is the suitcase or the coffin. Anti-Assad Syrians are likewise faced with a black-or-white choice between a murderous government and murderous Islamists. Only a de-militarisation of Syrian politics might open the way to other alternatives and a distant prospect of permanent peace.

Patrick Cockburn is the author of Chaos and Caliphate: Jihadis and the West in the Struggle for the Middle East, published by OR Books, price 18. Readers can get a 15% discount by using the code INDEPENDENT
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Although very nearly national, that is UK-wide, in their coverage  with Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland, London and many county and other local authorities electing fresh administrations and police chiefs, and with a couple of Westminster by-elections thrown in  such is the nature of our developing devolved democracy that each set of elections yields its own individual tale. There were few features that were truly uniformly national, and even the generalised weakness of the Labour Party was balanced, crucially, by Sadiq Khans triumph in London  hardly a fringe territory.

Mr Khans victory, which owed little to some of the people nominally on his own side, such as Ken Livingstone and a range of more obscure, but even more stupid, mayors, councillors and MPs, reinforces the fact that London is not a naturally Tory city. He has hard act to follow in Boris Johnson, but evidently Zac Goldsmith found it still more difficult to thrive in the vast shadow of Boris.

Then again, Scotland has been far from naturally Tory  but just look at what happened there. Nowhere is the variance in fortunes for any of the parties more pronounced than in the case of the Conservatives. In much of England and Wales the party suffered a mild case of the blues, suffering for its foolish policies on welfare and pension reform, but also benefiting from its decisions to abort those plans. The steel crisis in Wales, especially, and the dispute over doctors pay and conditions in the NHS also turned voters away, as must the spectacle of Conservative cabinet ministers openly insulting one another and, in the case of former leader Iain Duncan Smith, resigning in bitter disgust.

Nor has the economy continued to come good, as it was this time last year when David Cameron led his party to such an unexpected victory. Given all that, the Tories in England and Wales did comparatively well  but nowhere near as well as they did in Scotland. Political pundits are vying to claim who recognised the campaigning potential of the Conservatives Scottish leader, Ruth Davidson, as well they might, and more than a few in her own party are thinking aloud about her leadership potential at Westminster. For now, though, she must be more than content with overtaking Labour as the official opposition to the SNP at Holyrood, and becoming the leading Unionist politician in her own country.

She may be needed by the Conservatives at Westminster, but the Union of Scotland and the rest of the UK needs her rather more, at least for the time being. Scottish politics needs an effective opposition, and if anyone can stand up to the juggernaut of Nicola Sturgeon and the dominance of the SNP it is the brave Ms Davidson. Slowly but surely she is rebuilding her partys traditional strengths in the borders and parts of the rural North, though the orange vote that gave them working class support across the central belt is, mercifully, unlikely to return.

Scotland also needs an effective government, and, despite slipping and losing their overall majority, the Sturgeon administration will face little problem in getting its legislation through  the opposition is far too fractured to pose a serious threat. However, it is also the case that her mandate for a second independence referendum is that much weaker as a result of her setback  a good thing for supporters of the Union (providing the EU referendum confirms Britain in Europe). And the longer Ms Sturgeon stays in power the more that she and her party will become the establishment, with all the disappointments and setbacks that implies. Who will benefit as she and her government run into unpopularity is much more difficult to predict. A further Conservative revival should not be discounted entirely.

Labour, meanwhile, can add London to Wales as its major elected power base across the UK, and its record in these elections will not be sufficient to prompt any sort of coup against Jeremy Corbyn. Even if it had, the partys membership, who after all propelled him so unexpectedly into office only last September, would not have countenanced change at this stage. Labours continuing melting in Scotland, approaching near irrelevance, may be one of the great political stories of this or any other time, but it is not enough to unseat Mr Corbyn. Like much else about these elections, the earthquakes happened last May; these are merely the aftershocks. Plus, Mr Corbyn may be doing a better job than his many critics concede, even though he seems as far away from Downing Street as his immediate predecessors were.

The aftershocks are still unpleasant, though, for the Liberal Democrats, whose very modest showing in Scotland and pockets of the rest of the country is hardly enough to spark dreams of government again. What has happened here is that the party has been supplanted by a variety of alternatives as the natural party of protest or opposition, In the West Midland and Wales, for example, the Greens, Plaid Cymru and Ukip have capitalised on their weakness; in Scotland it is the Conservatives who are reclaiming territory; and so on. Given also the sui generis system of politics in Northern Ireland  where elections to a devolved assembly, whatever their complications are rather better than the alternative  it can be said on 2016 that the UK, more than over, does not have party system but rather a collection of regional and national varieties, ones that have never been more different. Proportional representation has done much to foster that; but so also has an electorate increasingly willing to try new parties and break decades-old voting habits and party loyalties. Not a bad thing for democracy.
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Does anyone remember the Liberal Democrats?

It was never going to be a great night for them, and the results so far confirm that - a gain of a handful of seats on last time. It is, I grant you, the right direction, but the plight of what we used to call the radical centre is still beyond dire.

In pictures: Local elections 2016 Show all 10 1 /10 In pictures: Local elections 2016 In pictures: Local elections 2016 Mayor of London Boris Johnson and wife Marina leave after casting their votes at a polling station in Islington, north London PA In pictures: Local elections 2016 Northern Ireland First Minister, Arlene Foster (C), Rhonna McMahon (R) and Paul Robinson leave after casting their vote for the Assembly Election, at Brookeborough Primary School in Enniskillen, Northern Ireland Reuters In pictures: Local elections 2016 Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn arrives to cast his vote at a polling station in Islington, north London PA In pictures: Local elections 2016 David Cameron and Samantha Cameron cast their votes in the London Mayoral Election in London Getty Images In pictures: Local elections 2016 Labour Party Mayoral candidate Sadiq Khan and his wife Saadiya pose outside The Richardson Hall St Alban's Church Centre in Streatham after casting their votes in London's Mayoral and Assembly elections Getty Images In pictures: Local elections 2016 Britain's Conservative party candidate for Mayor of London Zac Goldsmith and his wife Alice leave after voting at a polling station in the Barnes suburb of south west London AP In pictures: Local elections 2016 George Osborne casts his vote in the London Mayoral Election in London Getty Images In pictures: Local elections 2016 SNP supporter Trish Traynor outside a polling station at St Ninian & Triduana RC Church in Glasgow as the polls open in the Scottish Parliament election PA In pictures: Local elections 2016 Scottish Labour leader Kezia Dugdale (right) with partner Louise Riddell outside a polling station in Edinburgh after casting her vote in the Scottish Parliament election PA In pictures: Local elections 2016 SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon with her husband Peter Murrell after casting her vote at Broomhouse Community Hall polling station in Glasgow as Scotland goes to the polls in the Scottish Parliament election PA

The conditions were propitious; a divided and unpopular Tory government and a divided and unpopular Labour opposition leaves the goal wide open. But now there are new homes for disaffected voters, such as Ukip and the Greens. The Lib Dems have not yet found a distinctive enough message of their own to make them a natural or compelling home for the protest, let alone creating a constituency that has a positive basis for its support. More than that, the electorate isn't interested in what they have to say after the great tuition fees fiasco and coalition with the Tories. It will take a few years for memories of all that to fade.

Maybe the most worrying challenge for Tim Farron and his crew has been the position in Scotland. With the south west and the soft underbelly of the Tories along the south coast and the English suburbs, Scotland was also something of a bastion. Time was when the Lib Dems could quietly count on Scotland delivering a decent crop of Westminster MPs, had a share in government at Holyrood in coalition with Labour, and Scotland even gave the party two of its leaders - Charles Kennedy and Ming Campbell. Now Scottish leader Wille Rennie, a very likeable figure as well as an effective campaigner, has managed to win a few constituency seats too in the Scottish parliament and has at least kept them in business in their most difficult territory. Some hope for them there.

Since the Liberal Democrats were decimated at the general election, party membership numbers have increased from around 45,000 to 62,000 (Getty)

Some years ago the Lib Dems were going through a torrid local election night and Charles Kennedy was their TV spokesman. Tony Blair was carrying all before him as a fresh new leader of the opposition and "New Labour" was hammering John Major's Tories in a way Jeremy Corbyn can but dream about. On and on and on the BBC presenter went, banging away at how dismal and disappointing the Lib Dem performance had been, how there was no hope and how dare Kennedy even show his face in public. Charlie made no attempt to deny the problems, but, eventually exasperated, he turned on his persecutor with words to the effect "what do you expect us to do? Pack up and go home?" After a night when there was no spectacular revival in fortunes, that is still the right response. The Lib Dems, at any rate, have not forgotten what they are for.
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The need to be hard is holding men back, according to Grayson Perry, in the first part of his insightful series about masculinity on Channel 4 this week. Perry starting by talking to cage fighters in the North-east, where 80 per cent of the suicides are male and there are 14 deaths a month. An inability to express emotion must be one of the reasons that suicide is now the biggest killer of men under 45, along with a fear of failure.

Machismo and mouthy bravado is not just confined to tattooed cage fighters or city traders - ugly posturing has moved into politics. In the former mining communities where Grayson filmed, many men seemed to have lost their way- no longer the breadwinner, and the traditional roles in the household have been reversed. One man admitted that fighting made him feel betterit calms me down, as if it was the only way to express his inner turmoil.

 Anti-Semitism dominates PMQs

An inability to express your emotions in a non-confrontational way is not confined to the working class. David Cameron started his career as a PR man, paid to use his charm and people skills paid to smooth things over and promote his clients- so whats happened? Over the past couple of years in office, hes morphed from a touchy-feely politician photographed with huskies, a man who cried when talking about his disabled son, to a red-faced belligerent shouter, displaying appalling manners at Prime Ministers Questions. Hes stooped to the kind of cock-fighting bravado worthy of an episode of Peaky Blinders. Forget Calm down, dear  one of his early ill-judged putdowns to a female MP - hes ramped up the invective in recent months as hes coped with a narrow majority in the House, divisions in his party over the EU and falling popularity ratings.

To deal with all this, the well-mannered charmer has left the building and been replaced by a suited cage-fighter. Cameron described Donald Trump as stupid when the prospective Republican candidate called for Muslims to be banned from entering the US. As Trumps campaign has gathered momentum, in spite of attacks from the left, minorities and women, the PM has refused to apologise. This week he softened his stance fractionally, acknowledging that anyone who has gone through the primaries deserves respect. How can you respect a man you think is stupid? That inconsistency insults voters. Trump may be a lot of things, but hes not dumb.

Camerons rage at PMQs this week was directed at Jeremy Corbyns refusal to apologise for once describing Hamas and Hezbollah as friends. Is this a major policy issue like the NHS or tests for schoolchildren? I think not. Corbyn may not look like macho-man in his ghastly tracksuits, but (in his own pig-headed way) hes just as inflexible. The Labour leader wont apologise for Ken Livingstones recent remarks; he has simply ordered an inquiry.

Voters are repulsed by the shouting match that politics has become. Even the mild-mannered Zac Goldsmith slagged off Sadiq Khan in Londons mayoral election, playing the race card in order to try and discredit his opponent. Boris Johnson was no better when he brought up Barack Obamas part-Kenyan heritage in a political column. If thats not dog whistle racism Im a chipolata - and yet the PM didnt call for Johnson to withdraw his remarks or offer an apology.

 Boris and Cameron unite

The turnout for the local and mayoral elections this week was low, and yet there were some excellent candidates. The Womens Equality Party and the Greens, for example, operated under the old-fashioned rules where manners matter and policies are explained. What do the main parties actually stand for? The EU referendum has hijacked any serious discussion about policies as both sides promote a campaign of fear to bully us into voting for them. Post-referendum, what will the Tories actually stand for? I have no idea.

This week, the government reversed their position on accepting child refugees - a very small sign of flexibility. In politics, unlike real life, changing your mind is seen as a sign of weakness, whereas women have known for years that compromise is a way of getting things done and moving forward. Modern party politics are mired in machismo, and its turning voters off.
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Well done Britain. After a year of disastrousness and disillusionment  junior doctors strikes, teachers voting for strike action, parents pulling their pupils out of schools, U-turns on the doctors contracts, U-turns on working tax credits, U-turns on taking in refugee children from Europe, an overall inadequate and uncompassionate response to the refugee crisis, failures to meet self-imposed targets in the Budget, a trailing economy, investigations into benefit claimants suicides, a mayoral campaign that focused primarily on slyly using terms like terrorist sympathiser and dangerous extremism against Labours Muslim candidate, the gradual disappearance of womens refuge centres for domestic violence victims, the health secretary told off for playing on his phone in Parliament during a debate on cutting nurses bursaries, the dramatic resignation of Iain Duncan Smith, and the slow but steady erosion of the NHS  weve sent out a really strong message. Weve gone to the ballot boxes and expressed our dissatisfaction with a result about as clear as dishwater.

Its true that Labour has managed to hold in most of the north so far and even more surprisingly in the southern coast. But this was a moment for the electorate to take decisive action and send a message to David Cameron that nothing about the past few twelve months was acceptable. At a time when even life-long Tories are deserting the nasty party, this wasnt the moment for apathy from the left.

Those who lined up this morning to kick Corbyns Labour for catastrophic losses have had to hold their tongues, but even the most optimistic socialist isnt going to jump for joy at the UKs failure to send a strong message to the Conservatives. Labour has been relegated to third place in Scotland and it looks like theyll fall just short of a majority in Wales. People are pointing out how it could have been worse, especially across the south of the England. But the point is that it could have been so much better.

 2016 Election results round-up

Again and again, it feels like the Tories get away with it. It was a disappointment when the slippery PR execs we now call our government managed to convince the country they should take the helm a year ago. But after every catastrophic blunder, miscalculation and act of downright cruelty thats come to pass, its nothing short of a travesty that they werent punished proportionately by the public theyve been making a mockery of all year.
The expansion of Aer Lingus transatlantic services will be slowed if Dublin Airport doesn't deliver infrastructure improvements to alleviate aircraft congestion there, IAG boss Willie Walsh has warned.

"The business is there. It would be a shame to lose out on the opportunity to expand the business simply because the infrastructure isn't in place," said Mr Walsh.

Mr Walsh said that Aer Lingus is likely to launch at least one new transatlantic route from Dublin in time for summer 2017, as well as possible capacity increases on existing routes, but said that expansion plans are tempered by what he said are infrastructure issues at the airport.

"You can't keep putting aircraft in there," he said, conceding that Aer Lingus would probably have planned more expansion at Dublin Airport for 2017 if there were no aircraft congestion issues. It's launching three transatlantic routes this year, to Los Angeles, Newark, and Hartford, Connecticut.
A farmer has died after a quad bike accident in Co Meath.

The man, who is in his 70s, was discovered at 9.30pm last night submerged in water on farmlands at Ballinderry, Enfield Co Meath.

He was pronounced dead at the scene and his body was taken to Navan Morgue where a post-mortem will take place today.

The scene has been preserved and the Health and Safety Authority (HSA) has been notified.

It is the second death on Irish farms this week and the fifth this year.

On bank Holiday Monday John O'Connor (65) was adjusting the stabilising bars at the rear of his tractor when it rolled back and killed him.

His wife and daughter raised the alarm when he failed to appear for breakfast.
Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). Photo: Reuters

Irish shares rose marginally yesterday, as traders capitalised on improving sentiment in the global economy.

By the close in Dublin the ISEQ Overall Index had risen 0.33pc, or 19.87 points, to close at 6,026.25. That was the index's first positive day in more than a week.

The market was driven by bellwether stocks tied to the global economy, which offset a difficult trading day for the banks.

Smurfit Kappa Group gained 1.95pc to close at 23.05.

The paper and packaging company will release first quarter results this morning at its annual general meeting.

Construction material giant CRH added 1.2pc to close at 24.76, snapping a four-day losing streak. The company, which makes up nearly a quarter of the ISEQ Index, was buoyed by stronger earnings reports in the US - a key market for CRH.

IRES Reit added 0.9pc top hit 1.11. The biggest private landlord in the country released a positive IMS after markets closed on Wednesday that showed the company was on track to hit its targets for 2016.

While one stock fell for every one that rose yesterday, most of the laggards were smaller firms. The banks endured a difficult day, with all three falling sliding in unison. Bank of Ireland dipped 2pc, AIB slid 0.6pc and Permanent TSB fell 0.6pc.

The gains in Ireland were reflected across Europe. The Stoxx Europe 600 Index rose 0.3pc, while the FTSE 100 in London was little changed. The Dax Index in Frankfurt gained 0.24pc but the CAC 40 Index in Paris slid 0.1pc.

"We're advising clients these are good opportunities to make money," said William Hobbs at Barclays Wealth Management. "The world is growing and is likely to grow a bit quicker as we go through the year."
India's Supreme Court has told tobacco companies they must adhere to a new federal rule requiring much larger health warnings on cigarette packs, in a major setback for the $11bn (9.6bn) industry that opposes the new policy.

The rules make India's health warning rules the toughest in the world, along with Thailand's.

The Supreme Court turned down a plea to stay implementation of the new rules introduced from April 1, which require health warnings to cover 85pc of a cigarette pack's surface, up from 20pc earlier.

In a packed court room in New Delhi, a two-judge bench rejected the industry's plea to extend a stay it had obtained from a court in Karnataka but agreed to a request to move the rest of the appeals to the Karnataka court.

"You have duty towards the society," the judges told a team of industry lawyers on Wednesday, which included some of the most expensive advocates in the country. The industry "should not violate any rule prevailing as of today", they said.

The Supreme Court also directed the high court of Karnataka state to hear dozens of pleas filed against the new rules in several Indian courts and decide on the matter within six weeks.

Shares in India's biggest cigarette maker ITC, part-owned by British American Tobacco, pared gains after the court ruling. US-based Philip Morris International's India partner Godfrey Phillips also fell.

ITC, Godfrey and the industry lobby group Tobacco Institute of India did not respond to requests seeking comment.

The Supreme Court's ruling can leave the industry in limbo.

It was not immediately clear whether it will start complying with the new rules or sell old stock while it waits for the Karnataka court to decide. When the rules came into force last month, the industry shut down factories in protest for days.

India's traditional hand-rolled cigarette makers also joined in the protest. The rules were initially supposed to come into force on April 1, but were delayed.

Smoking kills more than a million people a year in India, according to BMJ Global Health. The World Health Organisation says tobacco-related diseases cost India $16bn annually.

The tobacco industry filed 27 cases against the federal rule in several courts around the country, according to lawyers involved in the case.

ITC has said it had obtained at least one judgment that allowed it to resume production with older warnings, and one that allowed it to sell old stock, which it then tried to use to circumvent the federal government's orders.

In a letter, dated April 26, seen by Reuters, ITC cited the two rulings to press a regulator who had seized its cigarette stock worth billions of rupees. Ranjit Kumar, solicitor general of India, told the court that the government was committed to the new rules and opposes any stay on their implementation.

It hasn't been a good week for the tobacco industry globally. The European Union's highest court has also upheld a tough EU law that will standardise cigarette packs, ban menthol flavouring and restrict e-cigarette advertising, paving the way for its adoption this month and dealing a blow to Big Tobacco.

The European Court of Justice's rejection of a legal challenge brought by Philip Morris International and British American Tobacco (BAT) could weigh on profits for the industry. (Reuters)
The biggest buyer of soured real-estate debt in Europe says disposals of non-performing loans from the region's banks and governments will continue until at least 2021.

Cerberus Capital Management, which acquired more bad loans in Europe, including from Ireland, than any of its peers in the past two years, expects the market to remain busy, said John Snow, inset, the private equity company's chairman and former US Treasury Secretary for President George W Bush.

The US private equity firm purchased 2bn of the debt last year, including mortgages from failed UK lender Northern Rock sold by the British government, according to Cushman & Wakefield.

"I expect that the opportunity to buy European NPLs will last at least another five years," said Mr Snow. (Bloomberg)
Retired Supreme Court judge Fidelma Macken, Chair of the Irish Centre for European Law and a former European Court of Justice Judge; Ibec CEO Danny McCoy; and Anne Heraty, the CEO of Cpl Resources, at yesterdays Ibec conference. Photo: Gary ONeill

A customs frontier between Ireland and the UK is unavoidable in the event of a British withdrawal from the European Union, a conference heard yesterday.

Brussels-based solicitor Dr John Temple Lang of Cleary Gottlieb also said there would no longer be a common travel area between the two jurisdictions as there would be an "immigration frontier".

The conference, jointly organised by business body Ibec and the Irish Centre for European Law on the legal implications of a Brexit, was also told that Irish businesses are delaying investment decisions because of the uncertainty surrounding the vote on June 23.

"There is going to be a customs frontier between this country and the United Kingdom," Dr Temple Lang said.

"You can, I think, assume that there will be no customs duties or tariffs on the trade in goods, but there will still be a customs frontier. That is unavoidable."

He said it was "particularly unfortunate" that there would be a customs frontier for agricultural products.

"The reason for that is not because there will be duties or tariffs but because the United Kingdom will have to adopt a whole new agricultural policy about which we don't know anything," he added.

"Whatever that agricultural policy will be, it will involve different treatment from what now occurs when you export or import across the notional frontier between Ireland and the United Kingdom."

Earlier, Ibec director general Danny McCoy said the depth of the investment decisions that could unravel as a result of a Brexit vote is "unknowable".

He said businesses are already delaying decisions. He said there were knowable consequences for Ireland.

Blanaid Clarke, professor of corporate law at TCD, spoke of the impact on the financial services sector.

Prof Clarke pointed out that Irish banks have a sizeable and largely property-related exposure to the UK economy. She said the five retail banks have a total loan exposure of 64bn.

Former Attorney General Paul Gallagher said the UK was "sleepwalking" into the vote, and that a Brexit would cause immense damage to the EU.

Meanwhile, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe cautioned Britain that a vote to leave the European Union would make Britain less attractive for Japanese investors.

His intervention comes less than two weeks since US President Barack Obama bluntly warned Britain that it would be "in the back of the queue" for a trade deal with the United States if it dropped out of the European Union.

"Japan very clearly would prefer Britain to remain within the EU," Abe said during a visit to London. "Many Japanese companies set up their operations in the UK precisely because the UK is a gateway to the EU."
Irish Life contributed 37.5m in profits to its Canadian parent company in the first quarter of this year, a 34pc decline on the 57m contribution it made in the same three-month period last year.

The financial services company, which has acquired Aviva Health and taken full ownership of Glo Health, has been part of the Great-West Lifeco group of companies since July 2013. Great-West, which acquired Irish Life for 1.3bn, saw its Irish subsidiary contribute some 204m in profit last year, up 11pc on 2014. David Harney, chief executive of Irish Life, said that the company had generated "strong results" in the first three months of the year due, in part to the continued success of the Multi-Asset Portfolios (MAPS), a range of risk rated funds.

Great-West reported sales of 32.7bn in the first quarter, up 73 per cent on the same three month period in 2015.

Consolidated assets under administration at the end of March were approximately CAD$1.2 trillion, a decrease of CAD$26 billion from the end of December.
At least 42,000 Irish e-mails with ".ie" domains are included in a massive data breach that has seen both logins and passwords traded amongst criminals in Russia.

The accounts are part of an enormous hack that includes the credentials of 272.3 million email accounts across the world.

The breach was uncovered by US information security firm Hold Security, which said it has returned the credentials to its rightful owners.

Hold Security chief information security officer Alex Holden said there may be more than just the 42,000 ".ie" e-mails from Ireland.

"There are over 42,000 credentials from the .ie domain in the recovered data. However, please keep in mind that some of the users of popular email services (i.e. Gmail, Yahoo) may not be easy to identify by country," Mr Holden told independent.ie.

The company said a large chunk of the accounts came from Russian e-mails but that there were also Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft accounts included.

When asked whether or not Irish accounts had been compromised Google said it is "still investigating" and had no further comment to add.

The credentials were recovered from what Holden said was a "kid from a small town in Russia".

Credentials are acquired by hackers and are then bought and sold. However it is understood that logins don't hold a lot of monetary value with many hackers preferring online kudos in its place.

The hacker asked Hold Security for just 50 roubles or the equivalent of a dollar for the entire set of data. However, the hacker released the information after the firm left positive feedback in hacker forums.
Smurfit Kappa boss Tony Smurfit sees the US as a potential hunting ground for acquisitions.

He said the company could spend between 200m and 400m on acquisitions per annum without overly stretching its balance sheet.

We took a small position [in the US], we bought a number of assets over the last 18 months there, but its still a relatively small position for us. So we would see ourselves growing there if the values are correct.

Mr Smurfit said a potential Brexit isnt affecting the business yet and that demand cross most areas of the business is good or strong.

He said he was comfortable, based on the year so far and subject to any major macro-economic issues, with analysts projections that the companys earnings before interest, depreciation, tax and amortisation would rise to between 1.25 and 1.3bn, up from 1.18bn last year. A potential Brexit hasnt affected the business yet, he added.

Operating profits at the paper-based packaging firm increased by 8pc to 179m in the first three months of the year.

In a trading update issued to shareholders on Friday the company posted improved year on year revenue of 2bn as well as increased earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortisation (EBITDA) of 281m.

Basic earnings per share at the firm increased by 26pc to 38.8c while return on capital employed remained flat at 15.3pc.

Net debt at the end of March increased by 3pc to 3.03bn.

Mr Smurfit said solid year on year growth was driven by improved operating performance and the positive impact of acquisitions made in 2015.

Our well invested, geographically diversified and vertically integrated operations will continue to provide us with a resilient platform to drive earnings and free cash flows.

During the quarter, currencies had a distorting effect which on a like-for-like basis had a negative translation effect of almost 10 million on EBITDA, Mr Smurfit said.

Shares at the companys primary listing were up 2.63pc to 18.72 (23.67).

Smurfit Kappa changed its primary listing to London last month. The move cleared its path to enter the FTSE indices.

Goodbody analyst David OBrien said the companys first quarter results represented a solid start to 2016.

The reiteration of guidance will ease any potential concerns around full year forecasts and highlights the benefit of Smurfit Kappas integrated business model, Mr OBrien said.

Davy analyst Barry Dixon said demand remains strong for the group and that the company remains strongly cash generative.

It remains the cheapest stock in the sector which does not make sense given the quality of its earnings and the potential equity value enhancement from its cash flow, Mr Dixon said.

The Smurfit boss went on to say, following a 380m splurge on acquisitions last year, its intention for 2016 is to integrate the new businesses.

Mr Smurfit took over the role of chief executive at the firm from Gary McCann last year.

Over the course of the year executives at Smurfit Kappa were paid over 10m. The Smurfit chief executive was paid a total of 1.5m in 2015, with an additional total benefit of 1.8m under the groups long-term incentive plan (LTIP).

The firm splashed out 186m on two South American businesses in January as part of its first foray into Brazil.

Operating profits at paper-based packaging firm Smurfit Kappa increased by 8pc to 179m in the first three months of the year.

In a trading update issued to shareholders this morning the company posted improved year on year revenue of 2bn as well as increased earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortisation (EBITDA) of 281m.

Basic earnings per share at the firm increased by 26pc to 38.8c while return on capital employed remained flat at 15.3pc.

Net debt at the end of March increased by 3pc to 3.03bn.

Smurfit Kappa chief executive Tony Smurfit said solid year on year growth was driven by improved operating performance and the positive impact of acquisitions made in 2015.

"Our well invested, geographically diversified and vertically integrated operations will continue to provide us with a resilient platform to drive earnings and free cash flows.

"We continue to see good levels of demand for packaging across almost all of the markets in which we operate. During the quarter, currencies had a distorting effect which on a like-for-like basis had a negative translation effect of almost 10 million on EBITDA," Mr Smurfit said.

The Smurfit boss went on to say following a 380m splurge on acquisitions last year, its intention for 2016 is to integrate the new businesses.
Alan Cox, CEO, Core Media, with Liz Hughes, head of ACCA Western Europe and Ireland, at yesterdays forum in Dublins Westbury Hotel. Photo: Mac Innes Photography

Many Irish boards seriously underestimate the impact of advertising to the detriment of their companies, a group of accountants heard yesterday.

Cuts to advertising budgets have serious implications for a company's market share and profit, the head of Ireland's biggest marketing communications group told the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants' (ACCA) Business Leaders Forum.

"There can be scepticism among the boards of Irish businesses, particularly finance directors, about the importance of advertising.

"It is often viewed as an expense rather than an investment," said Alan Cox, chief executive of Core Media.

"That is a serious mistake. Innovation and marketing are the two most important things a company can invest in.

"When the going gets tough, marketing is often the first thing that gets cut.

"That is a short-term decision with long-term consequences."

A study by consulting group Data2Decisions found that if a company stopped all marketing spending for just one year, it would take five years for sales to recover.

The world's best brand-builders, Mr Cox added, do not make the mistake of neglecting advertising, even when sales are squeezed.

Coca-Cola spends $3.5bn (3.07bn) per year on advertising, some 6.9pc of sales.

Spending on advertising fell dramatically among Irish companies in the wake of the recession but has recovered significantly in recent years.

Core Media' billings rose from 115.9m in 2009 to 194.2m in 2015.

The industry is worth around 5.3bn a year to the Irish economy, according to a study by Deloitte.

It has been a major contributor to the Irish economy's recent recovery, Mr Cox said.

"We are beginning to see real signs of recovery in tandem with the regeneration of advertising which indicates the power of the industry.

"The economic impact of advertising is profound. It is a major driver of economic growth and multiple studies prove it."

A study by McKinsey found that advertising fuelled 15pc of growth in GDP for G20 economies between 2002 and 2010, though it only accounted for 2pc of economic spend.

Despite the value of advertising, many marketers are still in the dark about the impact of their efforts, the ACCA Business Leaders Forum heard.

Just 0.2pc of advertising budgets are spent on analytics, Mr Cox said.
Here are the main business stories from today's papers:

Irish Independent

* Ryanair is likely to feed passengers to the Aer Lingus long-haul network as part of what would be an unprecedented formal agreement between the two former arch rivals, according to IAG chief executive Willie Walsh.

The two airlines have held high level talks at various stages over the past year or more on a so-called interlining model.

* Growth in Ireland's services sector has slowed to over a two-year low, with political instability at home and Britain's EU referendum being blamed.

And there are further signs of the impact of the crucial Europe vote in Britain, with UK services growth slowing to a three-year low.

* Pay packages for Kingspan executive directors were rejected by nearly a third of shareholder votes at the company's agm yesterday.

Chief executive Gene Murtagh said a mid-year change to a bonus scheme had been flagged with the company as a bone of contention.

The Irish Times

* Ibec chief executive Danny McCoy said a British exit from the EU (Brexit) is the biggest threat to Irish business in a generation.

According to a report in The Irish Times, the Ibec boss believes a deal between the UK and the EU means the world will change for businesses whether it's a yes or no.

* RSA Insurance Group has seen its capital commitment into its Irish arm exceed half a billion euros after it made some 90m available to it to strengthen its balance sheet.

The 90m was made available to the Irish arm under new insurance capital rules called Solvency II.

* The newly drafted Government programme suggests the next government will increase public spending by a further 3.18bn in the years to 2021.

According to a report in The Irish Times, the money will be set aside to deal with Ireland' ageing and growing population with an eye on health service, education and disability services.

Irish Examiner

* Fianna Fail has pledged to reintroduce a bill to quickly allow mortgage lenders to cut their home loan rates following further government talks.

According to a report in the Irish Examiner, Fianna Fail's finance spokesman Michael McGrath has indicated the bill will be tabled within weeks.

* Building products group Kingspan has invested 72m in two new firms as it continues to invest in the UK despite a looming Brexit vote.

According to a report in the Irish Examiner, the firm has bought two new firms over the past week or so with one of the companies based in the UK and the other rooted in Australia.

* Ireland is missing out on attracting financial technology (FinTech) firms here despite having a strong name internationally for being a technology hub.

According to a report in the Irish Examiner, Ireland is losing to other European countries in terms of attracting FinTech firms with London and Germany amongst the biggest European markets for it.
The Canadian parent of the company that provides Ireland's search and rescue helicopter service has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in Texas, saying it has been a victim of the dramatic slump in oil prices.

CHC Group said that weakness in oil prices and uncertainty in the energy market has "led to decreased customer demand and an increase in idle aircraft."

CHC Ireland operates search and rescue services (SAR) for the Irish Coast Guard from four main bases here - Dublin, Shannon, Sligo and Waterford.

However, CHC Ireland Ltd is not included in the administration of its parent company and is not impacted by the drastic move.

CHC Ireland was awarded a 10-year, 500m contract by the Government in 2012 to operate the life-saving service. The Air Corps had traditionally provided Ireland's search and rescue capability.

CHC Group said reorganisation under bankruptcy protection is expected to help it strengthen its financial position by reducing long-term debt and allowing it to operate its fleet of aircraft.
If at first you do succeed, give em the same thing again. Bit clunky, that one, but hey, thats the way they do things in Hollywood  especially when it comes to the funnies.

Call it a modus operandi; call it a sneaky way to earn a fast buck. Either way, every box-office conquering, goofball comedy eventually gets the sequel treatment. 21 Jump Street, Ride Along, Paul Blart: Mall Cop  the list goes on (and the films get worse).

Sometimes, it all works out just fine (Jump Street is now a bona-fide franchise, would you believe). Sometimes, it doesnt (we dont have enough time or space to compile a list).

Whatever the case, the second instalment is almost always a carbon copy of the original, with extra plot sprinkled on. Plus, they usually repeat the best gags from the first one. Bad Neighbours 2 is no exception.

A speedily assembled follow-up to 2014s Bad Neighbours, a surprisingly enjoyable romp in which Zac Efrons hard-drinking, head-wrecking fraternity crew set up shop in suburbia and went to war with the less-than-hip couple next door (Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne), BN2 tears up the happy ending of its predecessor (everyone made up) and hits the ground running for another vodka-splashed round of neighbourhood mayhem. More characters, more story, more everything.

But wait, theres a twist. Lets just excuse the fact that BN2 boasts the combined, er, talents of five screenwriters. Its also sort of cheap-looking in places. Nevertheless, its the first comedy weve seen in yonks that actually has something of an important message at its centre. Which is that women usually get the raw end of the stick, not just at sleazy college parties, but also, in Hollywood comedies  and that s*** simply isnt going to fly in 2016.

Enter the increasingly reliable Chloe Grace Mortez as Shelby, an 18-year-old college fresher who, frustrated with and, indeed, appalled by, the behaviour of both fraternity and sorority houses in America, decides to set up her own sorority party with the main goal being to, well, party.

No sleaze, no dopes, but lots and lots of weed-smoking and choons. All of which happens to take place in the house that Zac Efrons Teddy (suffering something of a quarter-life crisis here) used to live.

A lost and lonely Teddy agrees to get in on the action, moving in with Shelby and her mates and showing them the ways of the force (ie. how to have as much fun as humanly possible). Oh, and Seth Rogen (Mac), Rose Byrne (Kelly) and their toddler, Stella, still live next door.

Mind you, they are having a bit of meltdown of their own, and young Stella seems to be obsessed with her mums pink vibrator, but its all good. In fact, Kelly is expecting the couples second child, and the family is in the final stages of selling their house  provided, of course, that nothing goes wrong, and the buyers arent scared off by, say, a gang of plastered teens running riot in the neighbourhood. You can see where this is going.

Yep, its another round of young people vs slightly older young people, and the results are surprisingly funny. Dont even bother asking yourself why it is that only one household in the entire neighbourhood in which this film is set bothers to complain about those pesky college kids. Dont even waste your time worrying about how a ripped Teddy finds the energy to go to the gym. Whats important is that there is, more or less, a semi-decent comedy at work here.

Video of the Day

A ridiculously handsome and suitably cock-sure Efron channels his inner Rob Lowe (and, to an extent, Channing Tatum), putting his wonderful comic timing to use for another rib-tickling lesson in faux self-deprecation. He also removes his shirt a lot. Stand him next to a manic Rogen, and sparks fly.

Rose Byrne, meanwhile, rises above the both of em. The laughs just about make it through to the second half, and though it really should be sharper (seriously, five bloody screenwriters, folks), it is, at least, encouraging to see that BN2 largely avoids the gross-out route, clocking in at a tidy 92 minutes, to boot.

Parties are thrown, plans are hatched, airbags are toyed with, families reach breaking point, and college kids eventually learn a few life lessons  its actually sort of grand.

Read More

Indeed, despite its relentless use of the word party, there is a sweet and, occasionally, charming side to all those d*** and tampon jokes. Listen, it could have been a lot worse. It could have been Ride Along 2.
After a stellar first episode and a slightly disappointing second one, telly lovers waited with baited breath for last nights episode of First Dates Ireland but they should have renamed the show THE FRIEND ZONE because for the most part, there was no bloody romance! Lets recap

First in to the restaurant of lurve was Stacey from Cabra in Dublin, single after a six-year relationship and raging shed had his name tattooed on her wrist. She said she was looking for the love of me life, but had one rule right off the bat  no funny business with her extensions, right?

Her match was Neil, a carpenter turned personal trainer from Tallaght. Twitter didnt like his soul patch, but thankfully it disappeared between his interview and the actual date. Neil said his biological clock was ticking, and he was going to propose to his ex but never quite got around to it.

Stacy is a woman that knows what she wants right off the bat, ordering the wine and telling him what to have for his dinner. Was that fear in his eyes or appreciation?

They seemed to have a good time, and Stacey was quite the smitten kitten by the end, loving Neils teeth and eyes. However, despite her being a birra craic, Neil wasnt in to it in a romantic way and just wanted to be friends.

Video of the Day

It turns out that he didnt like her taking over the date, but sure didnt he flirt with her anyway. Stacey blamed Dublin men and their game playing  perhaps shell be back to meet a nice country lad?

Next up was Jordan the hairdresser and Barry from Ratoath, where hes one of only four other gays in the village. However poor oul Jordan didnt cop that Barry was his date right off the bat, presuming he was straight.

Barry revealed it was his first date ever at 22, and that he googled what to talk about with men in such a scenario.

The lads soon bonded and were high-fiving over Adeles sex anthem.

However, again it was another case of friend zoning, because Barry didnt think Jordan was the type of man to bring home to his mammy. Eh Barry, you missed out on a good one there, dude.

South African Kirk entered the restaurant with an announcement about loving pens -

but not the clicky ones, mind. His date Carolyn is easily bored in love, and looking for a guy with manners that can make her laugh.

Straight away Carolyn as unimpressed with Kirks date etiquette because he had the audacity to need a wee during the starter. And she would not. Let. It. Go.

Kirk let it known that he isnt in to ladies who give it up too early oooookay.

Despite seeming to hate either other, Carolyn actually fancied Kirk despite her opinion of his manners.

But she was also friend zoned despite Kirk having an all right time. What is with these guys?!

The next dater Sunita said she loves an element of mystery and intrigue in a man. She also carries crystals in her bra for happiness and sexiness.

Her date Tony is not in to sex on the first date. After losing his mum to suicide, he now campaigns for mental health awareness, which the two soon bond over. Things seem to be going well

But while Sunita thought Tony was totally husband material, she didnt feel the raw animal attraction she was looking for, and the friend zone was entered once again.

However, she did have eyes for the hunky bearded Canadian bar man something tells us to watch this space.

And last but thankfully not least was birthday boy Sean and student teacher Lucy. Sean falls in love too easily, but hes not been put off dating. God loves a trier, Sean.

Lucy normally goes for fit lads with super high standards, and thinks shes unlucky in love. I feel like Cupid sees me coming and shoots his arrows in the opposite direction. Ah, pet.

Lucy says shes not your typical flirty Bertie, but she was delira that Sean was ginger and she must have done a good job because in the end, cupids arrow struck!

All is not lost! THANK GOD FOR SEAN AND LUCY!

First Dates Ireland is back next week at 9.55pm
Michael Barr, who was shot dead in the Sunset House, Dublin last week

Michael Barr's coffin is draped in the Tricolour at the funeral in Strabane.

Fifteen men were arrested at the funeral of a dissident Republican shot dead in Dublin as part of an ongoing bloody gangland war.

Michael Barr (35) was gunned down in the Sunset House in inner-city Dublin last Monday night week in a killing linked to the Hutch/Kinahan feud. The dissident's funeral took place yesterday morning amid a strong republican display.

The funeral cortege was flanked by dozens in paramilitary uniform with berets and sunglasses as it made its way to the mass which was held at St Mary's Church, Melmount in Strabane.

A tricolour was also draped over Barr's coffin. It is believed the Co Tyrone native was gunned down by members of the Kinahan cartel, after they suspected he supplied weapons used in the Regency Hotel shooting in February.

A close associate of Barr is suspected of being the flatcap-wearing gunman who was one of the shooters.

Members of the PSNI did not intervene during the funeral service, but later 15 men were arrested under the Terrorism Act.

Speaking at a press conference following the service, Superintendent Mark McEwan, District Commander, described the funeral as a "paramilitary-style display".

"We have had some public commentary that the deceased was allegedly a member of the violent dissident republican grouping known as the New IRA and that the funeral would take place in line with that.

"What we saw on the streets of Strabane was to all intents and purposes a paramilitary-style display and as a result of that the policing operation have arrested 15 men in connection with suspected terrorist-related offensives.

"Every police operation has to be developed and policed in the context of the wider community impact," he said.

"Where we suspect a criminal offence has taken place we will move to act, the public would expect us to act.

"Sometimes it is more appropriate that we take an evidence gathering approach and seek to follow that up with arrests and potential prosecutions at a later date, but in the situation that presented itself, it was appropriate, necessary and proportionate that we would take those steps, so subsequently 15 men were arrested," he added.
Suspects on bail will be subject to electronic tagging for the first time under a new law being proposed by the incoming Government.

Acting Justice Minister Frances Fitzgerald said gardai would have the power to request a suspected offender wear a tag as part of their bail conditions.

The minister also signalled that the dispersal of Garda stations would be reviewed by the new Policing Authority amid "deep concerns" about rural crime. The moves come against the backdrop of spiralling burglary rates across the country, with much of the crime being attributed to repeat offenders.

Although widely used in the North, electronic tagging has operated only ever on a pilot basis in the Republic, where it has been limited to a small number of criminals out on temporary release.

Ms Fitzgerald said provisions allowing for the electronic monitoring of suspects on bail would be included in the forthcoming Bail Bill "to reduce re-offending".

She said the bill would also allow for refusal of bail for repeat serious offenders and would strengthen Garda powers to deal with breaches of bail.

Officials in the Department of Justice have been examining the possibility of extending the use of electronic tagging throughout the past year.

However, exactly how the system will work, how much it will cost and who will conduct the monitoring has yet to be disclosed.

A spokesman for the department said that while there were "significant legal and technical issues" involved, it believed the targeted use of electronic monitoring would improve compliance with bail conditions in appropriate cases.

In the North, where around 1,200 people a year are tagged, the system is operated on behalf of authorities by private security firm G4S.

The system used there since 2009 can tell whether a person on bail is complying with conditions regarding where they stay at night. It is not used to track their each and every movement, but it can tell when an ankle bracelet has been removed or damaged.

According to an Oireachtas briefing document, it costs 6.45 per day to operate the equipment used on the pilot scheme for monitoring prisoners on temporary release.

However, the manpower and IT costs of monitoring the tags have not been disclosed.

Costs

The costs of operating such systems can vary greatly from country to country. In Norway, where tagging is used for prisoners on early release, the daily cost of operating a piece of equipment and monitoring is 100.

In comparison, the system used in Belgium has a daily cost per tag of 29, covering equipment and staff. In Denmark, it costs 56 per day for equipment and supervision.

Meanwhile, Ms Fitzgerald said she accepted "the very real concerns that exist in rural communities" following Garda station closures.

Speaking in the Dail, the acting Justice Minister said she was firmly of the belief that tackling crime was "not just about the bricks and mortar of garda stations".

However, she said concerns over the geographical distribution of stations and potential inefficiencies in Garda district boundaries would be referred for review to the new independent Policing Authority.

Ms Fitzgerald also said there had been "an overwhelming response" in terms of applications for the new Garda Armed Support Unit for Dublin.

The 55-strong unit was promised in February in the aftermath of the Regency Hotel murder and subsequent gangland feuding in the capital, but has yet to be put in place. Ms Fitzgerald said recruitment was "progressing".

She also said there was no question of any reduction in the resources or overtime available to gardai to combat gang crime.
A worker at Aer Linguss Gold Circle in Dublin Airport has lost her claim for constructive dismissal. Photo: Bloomberg

A worker at Aer Lingus's Gold Circle in Dublin Airport has lost her claim for constructive dismissal.

The Employment Appeals Tribunal (EAT), heard that Kristina Malinovska was suspended after a plastic bottle containing alcohol was found in her handbag on January 27, 2015.

Ms Malinovska was employed by OCS One Complete Solution Limited T/A Ocs Outsourced. She told the tribunal that she had brought the bottle with her, and it was for meeting friends after work.

Ms Malinovska was suspended but later told that "no sanction was applicable". She was told she would not be returning to the Gold Circle but to cleaning duties in the food court.

An operations manager for the firm at the time said the moving of employees was commonplace.

He said that here was no ambiguity - Ms Malinovska was a cleaner.

In its determination, the EAT stated that Kristina Malinovska was afforded every opportunity to return to work, an opportunity she refused to avail of.

Ms Malinovska also brought an action against Aer Lingus but the EAT dismissed the case after stating that Aer Lingus was not her employer.
A body lay undiscovered for several weeks in a city centre apartment, an inquest heard.

The body of Daniel Curtain of OBrien Hall, Gardiner Street, Dublin 1 was found in a badly decomposed state in an apartment next door on September 18 2014.

The deceased was a hoarder, whose apartment was so full of rubbish that he often slept outside, according to a neighbour.

Dublin Coroners Court heard that 53 O'Brien Hall became vacant in July 2014. The front door could be pushed open as it had been broken in by Dublin Fire Brigade responding to an emergency call.

Neighbour Edward Lynch who lives directly below Number 53 raised the alarm when maggots began infesting his apartment.

On September 17 Mr Lynch found maggots falling from the ceiling. He went upstairs and noticed maggots coming from under the door of Number 53. A day later Mr Lynchs apartment was completely infested with maggots and he called Dublin City Council (DCC).

Staff entered the apartment directly above and found a badly decomposed body.

When we went in I saw a badly decomposed body lying face down on the floor in the bathroom, Garda Patrick Dunne said.

Garda Dunne contacted the US embassy, followed by Interpol, in a bid to identify the body and notify relatives.

He found that Mr Curtain was originally from New Jersey and had an ex-wife and son from whom he was estranged. He spoke to the mans sister, Maura McGreevy, resident in Iowa. She said she wanted nothing to do with the identification process.

DNA analysis matched the body with a profile specimen from a toothbrush taken from Mr Curtain's apartment. At autopsy, a Visa and social services card belonging to Daniel Curtain were found in the pockets of clothing on the body.

Medical records found that Mr Curtain had collapsed at Starbucks on College Green and was treated in hospital on August 18.

He was last seen alive on August 22 by DCC caretaker Derek Kelehan.

A post mortem report found the cause of death was undetermined due to decomposition. Coroner Dr Brian Farrell returned an open verdict. Clearly the deceased had been dead for some time and may have died on or about August 22, the coroner said.
Adele King, better known as Twink, hopes to be able to resume full monthly mortgage repayments on her home which is under threat of re-possession by a bank, a judge was told today.

Barrister Shaula Connaughton-Deeny told the Circuit Civil Court that a solicitor on behalf of Ms King and her estranged husband, musician David Agnew, had contacted the bank with proposals to renew full repayments.

Ms Connaughton-Deeny, who appeared with Clodagh Buckley of solicitors Ivor Fitzpatrick and Co for the bank, said Ms King indicated she was agreeable to the name of Bank of Scotland, on possession proceedings against her and her husband, being changed to Start Mortgages which had taken over the mortgage debt.

The court has been told that the couples mortgage on their former home, Idrone House, Idrone Avenue, Knocklyon, Dublin 16, remains in both their names.

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Following difficulties in serving Agnew with the legal proceedings Judge Jacqueline Linnane last year granted leave for him to be served at his place of work, the DIT Conservatory of Music and Drama, at 163 Rathmines Road, Dublin.

Ms Connaughton-Deeny told Judge Linnane today that Ms King had contacted the banks solicitors on Wednesday of this week with proposals to deal with the outstanding arrears.

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The proposals have been made in writing and the bank is considering them at the moment. Ms King hopes she will be able to return to making full repayments at a later date, Ms Connaughton-Deeny said.

She has agreed to the adjournment of the Civil Bill for possession and is not objecting to the change of bank name.

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Ms Connaughton-Deeny said both respondents were on notice of todays proceedings and, while it would appear that no solicitor intended to come on record for either Mr Agnew or Ms King, there is a line of communication in existence.

Neither of them appeared in court.

Judge Linnane adjourned the possession proceedings against the couple until October and directed that Start Mortgages be substituted as the plaintiff bank in the proceedings. She directed that full information including updated arrears be provided to the court by then.

In documents lodged earlier in court it was stated that as of August 2013 the bank was owed 244,000 including just over 11,600 arrears at that time.

Twink has revealed on television that she was embarking on an autobiography to raise funds to keep the home she shares with daughters Chloe and Naomi.

Its not that I particularly want to do it. I put off the offer for years. I tell you its a little matter of a costly divorce and trying to keep my house and I finally decided I would say yes, she said on the Brendan OConnor Saturday night chat show.

Mr Agnew moved out of the family home in 2004 after the couple ended their 21-year marriage.

In 2006 Ms King and Mr Agnew were ordered in the Circuit Court to pay a joint judgment for 19,000 after being sued by property firm Ballyview Builders which carried out redevelopment work on their home.

The builders claimed an unpaid debt of 26,577 but the court was told the case could be struck out following agreement on a settlement of 19,000.
Audreys daughter, Amy Fitzpatrick, who went missing in Spain in 2008.

A 45-year-old Dublin man has been found guilty of the manslaughter of his stepson.

A jury of six men and six women in the David Mahon trial delivered the verdict at the Central Criminal Court today.

The case has been adjourned until May 30th and David Mahon has been remanded in custody.

The jury began deliberating at 12.43pm on Wednesday on whether Mr Mahon murdered his stepson, Dean Fitzpatrick (23), or whether his fatal stab wound was the result of an accident or possible suicide.

On Friday afternoon, the judge ruled that the court would accept a verdict of ten, rather than the unanimous twelve.

Mr Mahon had pleaded not guilty to murdering the father-of-one on May 26, 2013.

Dean Fitzpatrick was the older brother of missing teenager Amy Fitzpatrick who went missing in Spain in 2008.

The 23-year-old received a single stab wound to the stomach outside the apartment his mother Audrey shared with Mr Mahon at Burnell Square, Northern Cross in Malahide.

In his closing argument, Defence counsel, Sean Guerin SC said that Deputy State Pathologist Dr Michael Curtis had accepted in his evidence that Mr Fitzpatrick's injury could have been "accidental self-impalement" or a deliberate stabbing.

Mr Guerin also said that Dr Curtis had "no difficulty in reconciling Mr Mahon's account of what happened with the science".

He told the jury that David Mahon was asked by gardai if Mr Fitzpatrick's death was his fault, and he said that it was.

"If Mr Mahon had not taken the knife out of his pocket Dean Fitzpatrick wouldn't be dead, and he has admitted that", Mr Guerin said.

"Mr Mahon has admitted that taking the knife out was a very, very stupid thing to do and had tragic consequences", he added, saying "he and Audrey will have to live with the knowledge of knowing that he was at fault."

However, he said the jury had to decide "does Mr Mahon bear criminal responsibility for Mr Fitzpatrick's death", and the onus is on the prosecution to prove this beyond a reasonable doubt.

David Mahon and Deans mother Audrey Fitzpatrick were married last year, two years after his death.

The family had moved to Spain in 2004, where the family had business interests. But Amy went missing four years later.

The court heard that by 2013, Mr Fitzpatrick was in a relationship and had a two-year-old child. He had mental health difficulties and also had a difficult relationship with Mr Mahon.

Both men were members of the Northwood Gym in Santry and Mr Mahons bicycle was interfered with outside the gym on May 24 that year, the court heard.

CCTV footage suggested that it was the deceased who had done so, taking a part off it.

The jury was told that Mr Mahon was annoyed and sought to have his stepson barred from the gym. He also spent much of the following day trying to contact the deceased. Witnesses would say he was not in a good mood and had been drinking heavily.
A former school principal turned environmental activist is on her way to Mountjoy prison this evening after being arrested for non-payment of fines.

Maura Harrington, (62), spokesperson for the Shell to Sea campaign, was arrested outside a bank in Bellmullet, Co Mayo around 3pm today, according to her brother Sean Harrington.

The retired school teacher was arrested on foot of a warrant for non-payment of a 300 fine, he said.

The fine was imposed after she was found guilty at Belmullet District Court for a public order offence on August 1, 2012, when she used her car to obstruct the path of a crane driver who was delivering equipment for the Corrib Gas project. She was also banned from driving for two years and given six months to pay the fine.

Gardai confirmed that a woman has been arrested on an outstanding warrant for non-payment of fines and is being escorted by gardai to the Dochas womens wing of Mountjoy prison this evening..

Its not the first time that Ms Harrington has been jailed for non-payment of fines.

A number of Shell to Sea protesters held a demonstration outside the prison back in June, 2010 when Ms Harrington was also jailed for non-payment of fines for a previous offence.

She has 13 previous convictions - including eight under the Public Order Act, three under the Road Traffic Act, and one each for assault and criminal damage.

But her brother, who is also a member of the Shell to Sea campaign which is opposed to the offshore natural gas project, said his sisters arrest came out of the blue as she was going about her business.

It was a very unusual and unexpected situation, he told Independent.ie.
Conaire Whyte (19) is to appear in court later this month charged with rape after DNA tests were conducted by police

This is the teenager accused of raping a 12-year-old girl and fathering her baby son.

Conaire Whyte (19) is to appear in court later this month charged with rape after DNA tests were conducted by police.

The PSNI launched an investigation last year after the girl, who is now 13, became pregnant.

The west Belfast mum gave birth to a boy last month, making her one of the youngest ever mothers in the UK.

Whyte, from West Belfast, was arrested in the Lenadoon area in October after police were advised about the young girl's pregnancy.

It is understood that he denied he was the father of the child. He was released on police bail.

Police waited until the baby was born, however, and then carried out DNA tests. When the results came back last week, police charged Whyte with rape. The results of the DNA tests are understood to form part of the case against him.

The Belfast Telegraph also understands that Whyte fathered another child by a different woman earlier this year.

He is believed to have been in a relationship with the child's mother, but they have since broken up. The PSNI confirmed that a 19-year-old man is expected to appear at Belfast Magistrates' Court on May 24 charged with rape.

The family of the young mother are understood to have been left deeply shocked by the schoolgirl's pregnancy when it came to light last year.

According to recent statistics, 98pc of teenagers who gave birth in 2014 were over 16. The youngest mother in the UK is thought to have became pregnant when she was still in primary school at the age of 11.

The girl, from London, gave birth in April 2014 aged 12 years and three months. In summer 2014, a north Belfast woman became Britain and Ireland's youngest known grandmother at 29 when her 15-year-old daughter gave birth.

The age of sexual consent in Northern Ireland has been reduced from 17 to 16.

It is a criminal offence to engage in any sexual activity with any child, with a maximum penalty of 14 years' imprisonment. Where the sexual activity involves rape, the maximum penalty is life imprisonment.

The number of teenage girls to give birth here has been steadily decreasing in recent years. Statistics from the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency showed that in 2014, 839 children were born to teenage mothers.
Dave Mahon had "no motive to kill" his stepson Dean Fitzpatrick, a jury was told in closing arguments at a murder trial.

"In fact, he had every reason not to kill Dean - his love for Audrey, the mother of the victim. He had every reason not to do harm", said Sean Guerin SC.

Mr Fitzpatrick was stabbed to death outside Mr Mahon's apartment at Burnell Square, Northern Cross, on the Malahide Road. Mr Mahon (45) has denied murdering the 23-year-old on May 26, 2013. The deceased was the brother of Amy Fitzpatrick who went missing in Spain in 2008.

In her charge to the jury last night, Ms Justice Margaret Heneghan said the prosecution case was that Mr Mahon murdered Mr Fitzpatrick by stabbing him in the abdomen.

The defence case is that it was accidental self-impalement. The judge said the jury must also consider suicide as a possibility.

Ms Justice Heneghan told the jury they must look at the evidence in a "cold, clear and dispassionate way" and the onus was on the prosecution to prove their case.

In his closing address to the jury yesterday, Mr Guerin said the prosecution claims Mr Mahon told a "tissue of lies" to gardai during interviews.

He said the jury knew Mr Mahon left the scene and threw away the knife.

However, he said Mr Mahon rang Coolock Garda Station before 9.30am the next morning and was there 20 minutes later.

Mr Guerin said Mr Mahon "gave gardai everything they wanted". He provided fingerprints and DNA, ignored the advice of a solicitor not to say anything and answered all the questions from gardai.

Mr Guerin said Mr Mahon "speaks freely and speaks his mind" to gardai.

He also said there was no attempt by him to give a "rose-tinted account of his relationship with Dean Fitzpatrick", telling officers 'he was a b****d but he did not deserve this'."

Mr Guerin told the jury Mr Mahon has always said Dean's death was an accident and he impaled himself on a knife.

Claims he "gutted" his stepson, which were made by the prosecution, were "a gross exaggeration" and were an attempt to portray Mr Mahon as a "butcher" or "savage", he said.

Mr Guerin said the prosecution case was full of "hyperbole, hysteria and hypocrisy".

The jury must decide "does Mr Mahon bear criminal responsibility for Mr Fitzpatrick's death", and the onus is on the prosecution to prove this beyond a reasonable doubt.

Mr Guerin said the prosecution claims the biggest lie told by Mr Mahon was that he did not know how injured Dean was. He asked the jurors to put themselves in Mr Mahon's position, asking them: "Would you have known you had caused a serious injury?"

Mr Guerin said Mr Fitzpatrick ran away, down four flights of stairs, and there was only a small drop of blood on the knife.

Mr Guerin asked the jury to see what happened as a "tragic accident" and he asked them to find Mr Mahon not guilty.

Ms Justice Heneghan will finish charging the jury tomorrow morning and the jury will then begin its deliberations.
A retired US surgeon with dementia who fell victim to a phishing scam which culminated in him bringing 100,000 of cocaine into Dublin Airport has gone home after avoiding a jail term.

Dr Carlos Cruz Soriano (76), inset left, began responding to phishing emails after becoming isolated following his retirement from a "glittering career", Dublin Circuit Criminal Court heard. The scammers told him a long lost relative had died and he could inherit US$2.3m. They gained Soriano's trust over a number of years, including sending him on a "dry run" to Hong Kong, before flying him to Colombia where he was given paperwork as well as a "gift" in a red bag for Irish banking officials.

Soriano, of Cove Circle, Riverview, Florida, pleaded guilty to possession of cocaine valued at 107,000 inside the red bag in the arrivals hall at Dublin Airport on September 1, 2015.

Judge Melanie Greally said Soriano's mental health had contributed to him being susceptible to manipulation by "sinister forces". She imposed a fully suspended five-year sentence on condition Soriano leave the country within 24 hours.
Barrister Suzanne Walsh told Judge Jacqueline Linnane in the Circuit Civil Court that Niall Daveys personal injuries case had been settled and could be struck out with an order for his legal costs. Photo: Getty

A Swedish House Mafia fan, who was one of a number of people stabbed and beaten up at the group's infamous concerts in the Phoenix Park four years ago, has settled his 60,000 damages claim against the organisers.

Barrister Suzanne Walsh told Judge Jacqueline Linnane in the Circuit Civil Court that Niall Davey's personal injuries case had been settled and could be struck out with an order for his legal costs.

She did not disclose the amount of the settlement.

Mr Davey claimed anti-social behaviour by a group of males, who kicked mud in people's faces, went on for two hours at the July 7 concert before two security men tackled them but had been forced to retreat.

A short time later he had been attacked and viciously assaulted, beaten and stabbed in the back.

Mr Davey, of Castleknock Drive, Castleknock, Dublin, had sued MCD Productions, Dun Laoghaire; Swords Risk Services Limited, Tuam Road, Galway; Eventsec Limited, Queen's Way, Belfast; Michael N. Slattery & Associates Limited, Lower Pembroke Street, Dublin; and PBM Productions Limited, trading as Diffusion Events, Dun Laoghaire.
A 16-year-old boy has been given a six-month sentence for taking part in violence at a protest in Jobstown.

Tanaiste Joan Burton and her entourage were allegedly trapped in a car just after midday on November 15, 2014 at An Cosan education facility in Jobstown, Tallaght, Dublin.

An anti-Irish Water demonstration was held which delayed her for about two hours.

The boy, now aged 16, but who was 15 at the time of the incident, appeared at the Dublin Children's Court with his mother and a grandparent.

He had pleaded guilty to criminal damage to the rear window of an unmarked garda car which he jumped on, and violent disorder charges. The court heard he has prior convictions for theft and has already served a sentence which expired in January for his other offences.

Finalising his case yesterday, Judge John O'Connor imposed a six-month detention sentence on the boy - who cannot be named because he is a minor.

Judge O'Connor had told the teen earlier that the purpose of violence towards women was to humiliate them and erode their dignity.

He said violence directed at women in politics "is to limit their effectiveness in the political process, to alienate them and to state they are not welcome in politics".

"It should also be pointed out that this particular attack on the elected Tanaiste of Ireland is an attack on the Irish State," he had said, adding that it was also an attack on gardai who were protecting Ms Burton.

Initially the boy, who was not politically motivated when he joined in the violence, expressed regret - and in November he had shown a willingness to engage with the Probation Service.

Theft

The judge had then told the boy, who has "significant behavioural" problems, that if he continued to co-operate, he would be sentenced to a period of probation supervision. Failure to do so would result in a custodial sentence, he had been warned.

However, since then the boy repeatedly refused to work with the Probation Service, calling it "a load of b****ks" and saying he wanted to be sentenced.

He also picked up a new charge of unlawfully interfering with a car in Tallaght on February 11. He pleaded guilty to that, as well as a connected breach of the peace and possessing gloves for use in a theft.

Defence solicitor Michelle Finan had said psychological and welfare assessments described him as "most vulnerable".

The solicitor had said the boy "got caught up in the excitement of what was going on and lost the run of himself".

A welfare report stated he had "significant emotional and behavioural difficulties" prompting mental health concerns. Judge O'Connor had said the teen's other issues included negative peers, anti-social incidents, involvement with pro-criminal gangs and drug issues.

Five other juvenile males have been before the Children's Court in connection with the protest.
A teenager arrested over an assault on the son of a well-known medical professor over the Bank Holiday weekend has been charged.

Gardai charged the 16-year-old in connection with the serious assault that occurred at the junction of Dame Lane and Trinity Street, Dublin 2 in the early hours of Monday morning.

He is due to appear before the Childrens Court in Smithfield this morning.

Gardai said that the altercation occurred between 1.01am and 1.10am at the junction of Dame Lane and Trinity Street.

Andrew Clark, the son of Professor Stephen Cusack, a well-respected expert on emergency medicine at UCC, suffered serious injuries in the incident and was taken to St Jamess Hospital for treatment.

Investigating gardai in Pearse Street arrested a 16-year-old male yesterday morning. He was detained at Pearse Street Garda station under Section 4 of the Criminal Justice Act 1984, and remains in Garda custody.

Gardai in Pearse Street are appealing for witnesses to the incident.

In particular they are looking for a number of people who approached the ambulance as the injured male was receiving treatment to contact them.

Anyone with information is asked to contact gardai on 01 6669000, the Garda Confidential Line on 1800 666 111 or any garda station.
Secondary teachers could be 31,000 worse off if they withdraw from 33 non-teaching hours, according to the Department of Education

Secondary teachers could be 31,000 worse off if they withdraw from 33 non-teaching hours, according to the Department of Education.

It warned the loss could come over a four-year period for long-serving teachers, with new teachers facing 26,000 losses in the same period.

The department listed a number of effects on teachers if they withdrew from the Croke Park hours, as it would reject the Lansdowne Road Agreement.

Teachers represented by the Association of Secondary School Teachers in Ireland (ASTI) will be balloted over the next two weeks on whether they favour a withdrawal from the hours.

The potential losses indicated by the department are based on an increment freeze up until 2018, a withdrawal of improved pay scales for new entrants and a withdrawal of supervision and substitution allowances.

After meeting late last night, the ASTI insisted it provided members with information on the implications of withdrawing from the hours.

A spokesperson said a newsletter was sent to members last week, while all 56 branches had been asked to hold information meetings to ensure they could make an informed decision.
Independent TD Mattie McGrath described yesterday's talks in which he had "stand-up row" with Minister Paschal Donohoe as "frustrating".

Mr McGrath said issues would have to be further discussed delaying a vote for Taoiseach today.

"Yesterday we were told we'd get a draft document done by 10am and we'd get out by 4pm," said Mr McGrath outside Leinster House.

"We didn't get it until 2.30pm. I was incensed by that."

Mr Donohoe said "out of resepect for the Independents" he would not predict how many would additional TDs vote for Enda Kenny as Taoiseach.

"The vote will go ahead as scheduled today at 12, he said.

"This process has to come to an end today."

Meanwhile, Education Minister Jan O'Sullivan said the Labour Party would meet to decide this morning whether it would vote for Mr Kenny.

She declined to comment further.
Enda Kenny has become the first Fine Gael leader to be elected Taoiseach for a second consecutive time.

It has ended 70 days of political impasse that saw the country come close to a second election on a number of occasions.

Sources say that Katherine Zappone, Shane Ross and Denis Naughten are favourites for the Cabinet positions, with Finian McGrath is likely to get a super junior ministry, which would allow him to sit at Cabinet but not to have voting rights.

Once re-elected as Taoiseach, Mr Kenny can also reshuffle many of his existing Fine Gael ministers and introduce a number of new faces to his frontbench team.

A source said Leo Varadkar, Simon Coveney, Richard Burton and Paschal Donohoe could all be moving portfolio, while junior minister Simon Harris is in line for promotion.

Justice Minister Frances Fitzgerald is expected to remain in her department and take on the role of Tanaiste.

The make-up of the Government departments is also to change in order to facilitate two new positions: a Minister for Housing and a Minister for Rural Affairs.

The Department of the Environment is to place an extra emphasis on climate change.

A number of the Independents were annoyed last night when the acting Taoiseach decided to force a fourth vote on his nomination shortly after providing them with a draft programme for government.

However, a senior Fine Gael source said: "It is time. The country has waited long enough. More time has been spent working on this document with the Independents than on any previous programme for government."

The programme, called 'A Partnership for a Fairer Ireland', sets out a five-year plan, even though Fine Gael's agreement with Fianna Fail for the facilitation of a minority government is subject to review at the end of 2018.

The programme states that health and housing are the key challenges facing the new Government.

It promises to meet a target of 25,000 new homes every year by 2020 and to end homelessness.

The percentage of patients waiting longer than six hours in emergency departments is also to drop from the current rate of 32pc to less than 7pc by 2021.

The new government also plans to spend "at least 6.75bn more on public services by 2021 compared to 2016".

Reflecting the influence of rural Independents who are set to back Mr Kenny, a substantial proportion of the funding available will be spent on projects in the regions.

A number of rural garda stations are to be reopened, there are specific commitments on broadband, a 50pc increase in funding for local and regional roads and a recognition that "domestic turf cutters have a traditional right to cut turf".

A citizens' convention will be set up to examine the Eighth Amendment, which gives equal rights to a mother and her unborn child.

The programme for government notes that the new 'partnership' between Fine Gael and members of the Independent Alliance, Rural Alliance and other Independents is "unlike any other established in Ireland since the foundation of the State".

"In forming the government, the traditional rules no longer applied."

It adds that the 32nd Dail is "diverse but not fragmented" and those involved in government will be "united in our common cause to make life better for every citizen in every part of Ireland".

However, the new Government also accepts that it does "not have a monopoly on good ideas" and promises "greater openness, improved accountability and delivery and more effective public participation".
A FARCICAL situation developed in the Dail today with the nomination for Taoiseach beginning without any of the Independents due to vote for Enda Kenny actually present.

Last minute talks aimed at securing their support were ongoing in Government Buildings while TDs from all of the House are given speaking time.

The move was seen as a delaying tactic while senior ministers Simon Coveney and Michael Noonan attempted to convince all members of the Independent Alliance to back Enda Kenny.

The Independents returned to the Dail shortly after 1.45pm, almost two hours after the Dail proceedings had begun.

Fianna Fail leader Michael Martin confirmed to the Dail that his party will abstain when eventually the vote takes place this afternoon.

However, the Labour Party has completely severed its links to Fine Gael, with outgoing Tanaiste Joan Burton take huge swipes at her former coalition partners.

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Dublin TD Noel Rock nominated Enda Kenny for Taoiseach for a fourth time since the election shortly after noon, telling the Dail: The urgency of now is to great to lose. It has been 70 days.

There was laughter in the chamber as Mr Rock took to his feet to once again propose the Fine Gael leader as Taoiseach.

Expand Close Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin gives the party's response to the deal between Fine Gael and Fianna Fail at Leinster House. Pictures:Arthur Carron / Facebook

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Whatsapp Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin gives the party's response to the deal between Fine Gael and Fianna Fail at Leinster House. Pictures:Arthur Carron

He said: We need a Taoiseach to match the challenges we have ahead. We need a Taoiseach to master the opportunities which we face.

That can harness the great capabilities of this parliament. And always, always put this country first.

He said Enda Kenny had led the country during the last five years of need and was now ready to take on the next challenge.

We have capacity, we have opportunity, we have the ability to the best country in the world but we also have challenges, he said.

Mr Rock described the Irish nation as a ship without a captain.

The ship cannot go on without a captain, he said.

Expand Close Frances Fitzgerald Photo: Tom Burke / Facebook

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Also backing the candidature of Enda Kenny for Taoiseach, Junior Finance Minister, Simon Harris, said the Irish people had shown patience over the past 10 weeks of government negotiations.

The Wicklow Fine Gael TD said he was very hopeful there would be a government finally elected today.

"Today I hope we will see the creation of a new kind of partnership government," Mr Harris said. He said the Government's aim must be to create a strong economy and a fair society.

Deputy Harris added that the minority coalition will be made up of diverse political views. But he stressed that unity can come out of political diversity.

Micheal Martin told the Dail that Fine Gael talks with Independents show how a Fianna Fail Coalition with Mr Kenny's party would be about sharing the spoils of power.

The Fianna Fail leader reiterated his party's right to criticise the government in the confidence and supply agreement he secured with Mr Kenny.

This potentially represents, and I say potentially noting the absence of the Independent Alliance but that may change in the next few minutes, a new beginning, he said.

During his speech Mr Martin took credit for the suspension of water charges but added: Water policy is not the most important policy facing the country and has taken too much time.

To laughter he hit out at the Labour Party for continuing to argue that charges should remain, saying: Alan Kelly suffering from the withdrawal of the drug of his choice.

He also took a swipe at Sinn Fein saying: The very people who have condemned us for allowing Fine Gael back into government spent two months trying to force us into government with them.

He said Gerry Adams and his deputies believe in finding problems to exploit. We believe in finding problems to resolve.

In his Dail speech Gerry Adams was hugely critical of the deal done by Fine Gael and Fianna Fail.

Never was so much negotiated for so long, for so little, he said.

In a sarcastic tone, the Sinn Fein leader described the deal as a wonderful job of work.

He also hit out at the Enda-dependents who he said were the most vocal opponents of Fine Gael and Labour and yet here they are prepared to back Mr Kenny.

Mr Adams described Sinn Fein as the real leaders of the Opposition.

The Labour Party is set to vote against Enda Kennys re-election as Taoiseach, with outgoing Tanaiste Joan Burton describing the deal between Fine Gael and Fianna Fail as a tawdry one that puts at risk the progress made since Fianna Fail collapsed the economy.

Ms Burton said she had been part of governments with both Fine Gael and Fianna Fail that had a unity of purpose but without trust the government really has a very limited prospect.

This coalition of convenience if very, very different, she said.

Fianna Fail will effectively have their boot on the throat of the Taoiseach meaning they can push through whatever they like and collapse the arrangement whenever they choose.

She said the only reason Fianna Fail had signed up to a minority government deal with Fine Gael was to protect your political hide from Sinn Fein.

Anti-Austerity Alliance TD Ruth Coppinger said she has never seen an incoming Taoiseach look so unhappy.

Ms Coppinger said there will be collective groan from people around the country who did not want Mr Kenny to return as Taoiseach.

She said the suspension of water charges was not due to pressure from Fianna Fail but rather down to the anti-water charge movement.

No show

Meanwhile, Independent Alliance has not shown up in Dail chamber for the crucial fourth vote for Taoiseach.

The alliance led by Shane Ross is still locked in government formation talks with Fine Gaels negotiation team with a vote expected by 1.30pm.

Roscommon Galway TD Michael Fitzmaurice has at the last minute decided not to vote for Mr Kenny as Taoiseach.

A source close to Mr Fitzmaurice said: hes out.

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It remains unclear if the other five members of the alliance will vote for the Fine Gael leader later today.

The other members of the alliance are Sean Canney, Kevin Boxer Moran, John Halligan and Finian McGrath.

Mr Moran earlier today said the alliance would vote as a group.

The political grouping is thrashing out the final details of the programme for government with acting Agriculture Minister Simon Coveney and Mr Kennys economic advisor Andrew McDowell.

Acting Government chief whip Paul Kehoe told the Dail the spokespeople of all the main political parties and groupings will be given time to speak before a vote for Taoiseach

The move was seen as a time buying exercise as the government negotiations continued in Government Buildings.

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Kerry TD Michael Healy Rae is understood to be abstaining in today's vote for Taoiseach.

Mr Kenny needs to win the support of six Independent TDs.

Meanwhile, its emerged Tipperary TD Mattie McGrath has confirmed that he will not be voting for Enda Kenny during todays Dail sitting.

The Tipperary TD thanked the Fine Gael negotiating team, saying: We achieved a lot but not enough.

I said I would come and engage and try get a fairer system of government for the people of Tipperary as well as the whole country.

We have had a huge input into the Programme for Government. Something I never thought Id achieve, he told Tipp FM.

He was particularly critical of Fine Gaels commitment to hold a citizens convention on the future of the Eighth Amendment, saying it was a talking shop to chip away at us legislators.
A senior official in the Office of Public Works (OPW) has admitted it can never fully solve the country's flooding crisis.

Taoiseach Enda Kenny established the state task force on flooding following last year's winter storms, which caused devastation along the 10,000 square mile River Shannon catchment.

But Head of the Flood Risk Management Division at the OPW, Mark Adamson, has said: "We won't be able to stop entirely the kind of floods that we saw last winter or in 2009. The volumes of water which come down the Shannon are colossal," he told the Shannon Flood Risk State Agency Co-ordination Working Group open day.

Sources in the ESB, which is another of the state body's key stakeholders, have also said nothing could hold back the type of flooding seen in 2015.

"The Shannon catchment is about 10,000 square miles, so with 100mm of rain falling in Storm Desmond over a 24-hour period - that would give you a billion tonnes of water falling on the Shannon catchment," the source added.

Clare McGrath, Chairperson of the OPW, said the group had identified 66 communities along the River Shannon catchment at "greatest risk" of flooding.

She said it was acknowledged by all parties involved, that implementing flood relief schemes was "not straightforward".

Ms McGrath said the working group is currently examining what the best methods of preventing flooding are.

The open day was attended by representatives of the farming community, who expressed "concerns" that the Shannon Flood Risk State Agency Co-ordination Working Group is not actively tackling its task.

Chief Executive of the ESB, Pat O'Doherty, described the closed meeting with the Irish Farmers' Association (IFA) in Athlone as "frank discussions".

He said there was "no silver bullet" to tackling the flooding crisis. "The IFA made their views known, and we listened," Mr O'Doherty said, following the meeting.

"It brought back the sheer devastation that was caused ... I think there was a recognition in the room that (flooding) is a complex problem. There is no single quick fix that is going to alleviate flooding end-to-end on the Shannon."

Speaking after the meeting, IFA Flood Project Team Chairman, Tom Turley, said he was "concerned" the working group was not meeting up again until after the Catchment Flood Risk Assessment and Management report, which is due to be published in three months' time. "That doesn't sound to me like an active group getting to grips with their responsibilities," he said.

Mr Turley said if the stakeholders on the working group did not yield results, they should be sacked.

Meanwhile, Mickey Dunning and his wife Gerty, from Athlone, lost their flood insurance after their home and farm was flooded in 2009. Last year, the deluge again destroyed everything. Mr Dunning (66), said he was eligible for "humanitarian aid" funding, but "one-third" of the money would be taken in VAT and other taxes.
Certain factors can impact upon people's timing when it comes to returning to work after maternity leave. For UTV news anchor Claire Brock, the impetus was the election in February, that saw her back on screen on Ireland Live at 10, six months after she gave birth to Pearse, her son with husband, former Leinster rugby player, Trevor Hogan.

The time, she said, was right. "In terms of the whole transition with the minder and all of that, it was fine. I was a bit nervous as to how Pearse would adapt, how we'd adapt. There are a lot of things going on at six months as well, Pearse was switching over to solids and I'd stopped feeding him myself but once that all bedded in, it's worked out really well."

The 35-year-old broadcaster is a familiar face on TV screens. She was with TV3 for seven years, where her roles included researcher, reporter and news anchor before she joined fledgling station UTV Ireland in 2014. "We are a young channel in its second year on air, and it's nice to be part of starting with a new team - and I'm enjoying all that goes with that," she says of the move. But arguably the most significant change in her life recently has been the arrival of Pearse, now nine months old and who she says is "flying".

"He's getting to that phase now where he's full of smiles, and he's a really good natured baby so we're really lucky in that way. We're getting a lot of fun out of him at the moment," she says.

Claire and Trevor, who met when they were both studying journalism in DCU, dated for 10 years before getting married in Wicklow in 2013. Trevor completes his postgraduate masters in education (formerly known as the HDip) this month and will be a qualified secondary school teacher. When it came to Claire's return to UTV Ireland, and the balancing of that with family life, the couple sat down and figured out what was going to work best for them. Her schedule means that on Mondays to Thursdays, she's unlikely to be home until around 11.30pm.

"I work in a newsroom where we have the main news show going out at 10pm so I knew I was going back to nights, and I did think it was going to be hard for us but Trevor is doing a brilliant job and we're really pulling together," she says. "I think a lot is made about how mums juggle it all, but really it's how we work together as a family and so far, so good. I know that men generally don't get asked that question but we are working it out together.

"I'm lucky enough in that I have day parental leave as well so that gives us a nice long weekend and plenty of time together, and I suppose that the fact that I'm working late hours - and that might seem like tough going - gives me more time with Pearse in the mornings, so I really enjoy that."

The couple both sing off the same hymn sheet when it comes to parenting - almost always. "I think that initially, you know, little things I had in my head - I won't rock him to sleep, I'll get him straight down while he's still awake and all that, and something somehow gets missed in the communication. I'll spot Trevor has been ages in that room and he says: 'I was just winding him down to sleep' and I'm like: 'In your arms? What? Put him down immediately! How long has this been going on for?' But generally we are [in agreement]."

In many ways, working nights suits both mum's and baby's schedules. "Because of the nature of the gig, I'm a bit wired when I get home anyway so I might be up until 1am or 1.30am so if he wakes at all during that time, that's no problem at all, I'm all in favour of that," she explains. She also thinks it's possibly evened out the division of labour in their household.

"In the early days, it's full on and you're exhausted and it's tough, and it's tough on partners - they're trying to do as much as they can as well but it is you getting up at 2, 3, 4am," she says. "But I have found that having turned that corner in me going back to work, and going back to the hours I'm doing, then bedtimes are falling to Trev and drop-offs on occasional mornings are falling to him as well so it's been really good for us. If we weren't forced into our working hours, maybe our evening would have rolled on from what we had, and I'd be putting the baby down to bed in the evenings, not through anyone's fault but just because that's the way it was. I feel it's provided great balance there."

Expand Close Claire Brock and Trevor Hogan pictured after their wedding at Rathsallagh House. Picture: Damien Eagers / Irish Independent / Facebook

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Whatsapp Claire Brock and Trevor Hogan pictured after their wedding at Rathsallagh House. Picture: Damien Eagers / Irish Independent

She admits to overthinking things, especially in a work environment but tries to take a more relaxed approach when it comes to her son.

"I see that he's doing alright, and that's grand, but I don't really become over consumed with it. But it's funny, when I get home from work, if I haven't seen him late at night, I'm just creeping into his room, to look at him in his cot"

From the outset, she'd intended to be a mother who 'goes with the flow' but of course, life can get in the way of that. "You underestimate how completely overwhelming it is and people don't maybe tell you how all-consuming and crazy it is in the early days or if they do, you don't really get it until you're there in that moment, just trying to keep everything together," she says.

"We also don't talk about the physical toll, post-birth, and all of that is pretty major - you need to look after you, and you need to take all the help you can get and don't assume you can do everything. Luckily, in that I thought I'd be relaxed, I didn't go in with hard and fast rules as how I wanted to do things, and I'm really glad I didn't because I think that would have given me more stress."

She's very familiar with the potential dangers of Googling when you're anxious about your baby. "I read so many articles, probably at 4am dream feeds, and what was that, where did that information come from? But then you fall into your own thing and it is true, maybe it's a cliche, but whatever works for you. But you do fall into what works best and what keeps everyone sane."

Her mum, who lives close by in Glenageary, Co Dublin, is a great source of support for her, as is her brother and sister-in-law, whose son Hugo is three months older than Pearse. She also joined a breastfeeding group at her local health centre. "I tentatively went in and thought 'Look, what harm' and there was actually a group of us and all our babies were born around the same time, and since then, we've moved on to meeting for coffees on a Monday morning and it's been really nice. They're a great bunch of women and it's just generally reassuring to know that there is somebody else who has already been through it," she says.

News journalism's loss could have been graphic design or advertising's gain, both careers that attracted her in her early days. Or she might even have indulged her thespian inclinations. "I was into acting when I was younger so I guess I carry on the performance element of it to a small degree - although it is in a news journalism capacity. I think working on TV, you need to be able to switch on. I'm really happy where I am," she says. "It's that interesting kind of work arrangement where you're working up to your busiest time at the very end of the day so you're conserving your energy from 10 in the morning when you get up with the baby, to ten o'clock at night when you really have to be switched on. That is a challenge but it's working out."
The weather is most certainly calling for salads for supper. The summer seems to be creeping back into our collective consciousness, thanks to a sunny spell last week. It's always a surprise to find ourselves at the May bank holiday weekend, which marks the beginning of the summer months.

Grapefruits evoke sunnier climes, particularly the pink variety. White grapefruits are thought to have originated in Barbados, as a hybrid of the Jamaican sweet orange and the Indonesian pomelo.

They were eventually given the name grapefruit, in reference to the way the fruit grows in clusters on their tree. It's thought that the grapefruit was introduced to Florida in the early 1800s. In 1906, the Atwood Grapefruit Company discovered the first pink grapefruit growing on one of their trees. The appearance of the juicy, sweet pink grapefruit is sometimes referred to as nature's million dollar mistake, as it was an unplanned hybrid that led to a very economically fruitful fruit.

With my grapefruit salad, I'm pushing the boundaries of acidity by adding a squeeze of lime juice to our dressing. It's a balancing act with the lime and the honey, but a rewarding one when you get it just right.

With a hunk of warm, crusty baguette by its side, this salad is a nourishing summer supper. It also works really well with a few slices of roast chicken or a good piece of steak on the side.

Pink grapefruit and feta salad

Serves 2

Prep Time: 15 minutes

INGREDIENTS

2 pink grapefruits

Half a small cucumber

50g of feta cheese

Handful of fresh mint

Pinch of chilli flakes

For the dressing

3 tablespoons of rapeseed or olive oil

1 tablespoon of red wine vinegar

1 tablespoon of runny honey

1 lime wedge

Pinch of salt and pepper

METHOD

1. Start by slicing the grapefruit into rounds. Use a sharp knife to remove the rind from the circular slices, without damaging the shape. If you prefer, you can slice the grapefruits into segments or finely dice them for this salad. I like the look of the circles on the plate, so it's purely an aesthetic decision.

2. Slice the cucumber into long, thin strips or bite-sized pieces. Crumble the feta cheese with your fingers.

3. Arrange the grapefruit circles on two salad plates. Top with the cucumber pieces and crumbled feta. Pick the leaves from the fresh mint and scatter over the plates. Sprinkle with a pinch of chilli flakes.

4. Make the dressing by mixing together the oil, red wine vinegar and runny honey. Add a squeeze of lime juice and a pinch of salt and pepper. Give it a taste and add a little more honey if it's too tart. You want the dressing to be quite sweet to balance the acidic grapefruit, but not too sweet that you lose the lime juice.

5. Drizzle the salad with your dressing. Serve with some crusty bread on the side, or even some honey-roasted chicken legs.

This week's storecupboard essential:

Broighter Gold rapeseed oil: I've recently become very fond of this golden rapeseed oil, especially when used as a salad dressing. Owned by Richard and Leona Kane, this oil is produced in Myroe on the outskirts of Limavady in Northern Ireland. Find out more about this family business at broightergold.co.uk.

Photo: Mark Duggan
Hazelbrook Square, a new scheme of family houses in Churchtown launching this weekend, is being developed on the former site of the factory that produced HB ice cream, one of Ireland's most iconic brands.

HB stands both for Hughes Brothers, after James, George and William Hughes, who used their dairy to start making ice cream in 1926, and also for Hazelbrook, the name of the farmhouse that William Hughes and his wife Margaret built in 1896 in Rathfarnham.

The site was partially developed by Capel Developments with apartments just as the property market was collapsing. Following the appointment by Nama of Simon Coyle from Mazars as the receiver, a lower-density plan for three and four-bed houses was designed for the HB site.

The Carey Group, a family business from Tipperary founded in 1969, was then hired to build Hazelbrook Square.

The new housing scheme is located off the Whitehall Road and Nutgrove Avenue and is close to Nutgrove Shopping Centre. Given that few residential estates of any significance have been built in Dublin 14 in recent years, Hazelbrook Square is likely to attract a lot of interest from buyers in the locality who are keen to stay in the area, according to the selling agent.

The first phase will be made up of 25 three and four-bed houses and there will be 69 in all when it's complete. Most of the houses are terraced or end-of-terrace properties, though there are a number of semi-detached houses available.

Depending on the option chosen, sizes of the three-beds go from 1,260 sq ft to 1,400 sq ft and the properties are priced between 450,000 and 475,000. The four-bed homes measure between 1,668 sq ft and 2,130 sq ft, with prices ranging from 575,000 to 695,000.

Designed by Brazil & Associates, the exteriors have a mix of red brick and render facades, complemented by reconstituted granite windowsills, porthole windows, zinc-effect canopies and zinc-effect metal roofs to the dormer and bay windows.

While the exteriors are contemporary in style, the internal layouts are relatively traditional. There is a formal living room to the front of the house and a large open-plan kitchen/dining/family room to the rear. The three-bed houses are arranged over two floors and the four-beds are laid out over three storeys. There are also some double-fronted end-of-terrace house types for sale off plan.

The bespoke handmade painted kitchens feature classic shaker-style doors, soft-close drawers, tongued and grooved panelling, Velstone worktops and fully integrated appliances.

The living rooms have been fitted with a flame-effect, energy-efficient electric fire with stone surrounds, while the bathrooms and ensuites come with Villeroy & Boch sanitary ware with Kludi mixer taps.

The heating is provided by an A-rated gas-condensing boiler and there are controls for the Climote system throughout the properties. Extra eco-friendly touches include PV solar panels and heat recovery ventilation systems.

Churchtown itself is just a few minutes' walk from Dundrum Town Centre and the Windy Arbour and Dundrum Luas stops. Hazelbrook Square is about 8km from the centre of Dublin and can be reached by bus routes 14, 14c, 17, 61 and 75. Hazelbrook Square is close to University College Dublin and nearby schools include Wesley College, Alexandra College and Mount Anville.

The first public viewing at Hazelbrook Square will be held tomorrow and Sunday. There are two four-bed showhomes available for viewing, between 2pm and 5pm, as well as detailed floor plans for the three-bed properties.

Enquiries to: Sherry FitzGerald New Homes (01) 6671888.
The second phase of Kirvin Hill in Rathnew, a village 3km outside Wicklow Town, will particularly appeal to first-time buyers priced out of the Dublin housing market.

The development is a 45 minute drive to the capital and prices start at 260,000.

After the first phase of 19 homes at Kirvin Hill sold out within six weeks, Sherry FitzGerald Catherine O'Reilly and developer Broomhall Estates launched a subsequent phase.

These 12 three-bed semi-detached homes and four bungalows are being sold off the plans and are scheduled to be completed by the middle of the year.

While prices for the 1,077 sq ft three-bed semi-detached dwellings are priced from 260,000, the three-bed bungalows, which measure 1,215 sq ft, cost from 345,000.

There is also a single four-bed detached dormer bungalow available and it has a price tag of 350,000 and extends over 1,507 sq ft.

The prices include finishes such as flooring, kitchens and bathroom suites. The Kirvin Hill properties were designed to have a building energy rating of A3 and come with energy- saving features such as an air-to-water heat-recovery system and rainwater harvesting.

Enquiries to: Sherry FitzGerald Catherine O'Reilly (0404) 66466.
The Boeing 767 is seen atop a barge as it makes its journey up the Shannon Estuary. Photo: Fusionshooters

A decommissioned Boeing 767 became one of the most unique cargo shipments ever to sail on Irish waters as it embarked on a 36-hour journey by sea from Shannon Airport to Co Sligo.

Sligo entrepreneur, David McGowan, spent thousands moving the 159-foot-long aircraft, which weighs 50 tonnes, to his 'Quirky Nights Glamping Village' in the seaside town of Enniscrone.

The Boeing 767-216(ER) jet was previously flown by the now defunct Transaero, which was Russia's second largest airline, and was purchased by Mr McGowan last year.

Mr McGowan expects to be able to 'beach' the barge in Sligo on Saturday morning where, he said: "There will now be a part of Clare in Enniscrone, Co Sligo."

The jet will form the centrepiece of McGowan's glamorous camping (glamping) village that will also feature train carriages, boats and London black cabs.

All of the trains, planes and automobiles will be refitted to offer luxury accommodation to the 'glampers'.

Mr McGowan, an undertaker by profession, has been planning and coordinating the transportation of the jet for the past year.

It was a mammoth task, with Mr McGowan enlisting the help of Shannon Airport employees.

The first stage of the operation involved removing the aircraft's wings and loading it onto a truck.

The second phase - which began at dawn yesterday - saw a 750-tonne crane hoist the aircraft onto a waiting barge on the Shannon Estuary.

"We hope to reach the bay in Enniscrone at 3.00am tomorrow," Mr McGowan said.

"Then we will beach the barge and begin the job of transporting the jet to its final home."

Hundreds of social media users along the west coast of Ireland were bemused to spot a 159ft long Boeing 767 sail by yesterday on its voyage from Shannon to Enniscrone.

Hundreds of images were shared on Facebook yesterday, as locals along the west coast spotted the Transaero plane at various points on its way to Enniscrone, and were curious to why it was being towed.

That moment when an aeroplane passes by.... getting towed, wrote Ellen Butler from Kerry.

When you look out your front window and see a PLANE travelling along the water, wrote Sorcha DeBrun.

The excitement around the place is something else, wrote Gary Egan.

Ciara McMahon Flavin: This is definitely something we wont see again.

Mr McGowan thanked staff at Shannon Airport for their support. However, he was disappointed to discover he was unable to follow the barge in a tug boat.

"It has really ruined the day for us," he said.

It's understood Mr McGowan and a camera crew were prevented from travelling because they didn't have the necessary paperwork.
Alan Shatter was forced to resign in May 2014 after a sustained campaign against him based on a variety of accusations that three reports, including the leaked but so far unpublished OHiggins report, have found to be false. Photo: Frank Mc Grath / Irish Independent

Since Alan Shatter resigned as Justice Minister in May 2014 following the publication of the Guerin Report, he has been fighting a lonely battle to vindicate his reputation. That is both unfair and unjust. As subsequent reports have shown, he did not deserve the battering he received from almost all quarters in the weeks and months leading up to his resignation.

He stood accused of three main 'crimes'. The first is that when Gsoc conducted an investigation into whether or not they were under surveillance by members of An Garda Siochana, Shatter strongly sided with the latter and put the Garda Ombudsman under undue pressure.

The second is that he lied about when he received a letter from former Garda Commissioner Martin Callinan concerning the discovery of possibly illegal Garda taping of telephone calls in various Garda stations around the country.

The third is that he ignored complaints of Garda corruption and Garda investigation failures made by Sergeant Maurice McCabe.

Shatter was adjudged by almost the entirety of Leinster House (either directly or by their silence), by most of the media and therefore by the public, to be guilty as charged.

In fact, subsequent reports, the latest being the leaked but as yet unpublished O'Higgins report, have found him innocent of all the charges but it is very likely that not many members of the public know this and therefore in the public mind he remains guilty. This is why his treatment has been so unfair and so unjust.

As mentioned, what precipitated his resignation two years ago this month was the publication of the Guerin report. This report was the outcome of an investigation into Sgt McCabe's allegations against the gardai that had been highlighted in particular by Micheal Martin in the Dail. The investigation was conducted by criminal lawyer Sean Guerin.

It ruled that the McCabe allegations had not been properly examined.

Shatter resigned because he probably felt he had no choice. The pressure on him at this stage was huge. The local and European elections were coming up and he did not want to be an issue and a distraction for the government during those.

But he did not accept the findings of the Guerin report and he was rightly angry that he was not invited to testify on his own behalf.

However, one of the recommendations of the Guerin report was that a fuller, statutory investigation take place and this was one chaired by retired High Court judge Kevin O'Higgins. That is the report sitting on the desk of Frances Fitzgerald, awaiting publication.

Shatter fears that it might be released as the new government is being formed and the media's attention is elsewhere. That really would be a miscarriage of justice because to judge by the leaks so far, the report vindicates him and former Garda Commissioner Callinan.

According to the leaks, the O'Higgins report finds that Shatter took the allegations made by Sgt McCabe very seriously and displayed an active concern in relation to them.

In respect of Martin Callinan, it finds that there is "not a scintilla of evidence" to substantiate the accusation of corruption made against him.

When the O'Higgins report finally comes out it deserves the fullest possible coverage. Whether it gets it or not is another question entirely because two previous reports, that also cleared Alan Shatter of the worst allegations made against him, did not get the coverage they deserved.

The first was the Cooke report published in June 2014, only weeks after Shatter's resignation. This was a non-statutory inquiry headed by retired High Court Judge John Cooke, into whether or not Gsoc was in fact under electronic surveillance. It found no evidence of such surveillance, much less by members of An Garda Siochana.

Some politicians seized on the statement in the report that it was impossible to categorically rule that certain electronic "anomalies" were not evidence of surveillance, but given the sophistication of modern surveillance technology, it is probably impossible to completely discount the possibility that any given person or organisation is under surveillance.

This was a very thin reed on which to base an indictment against Shatter.

The other report published was the Fennelly Interim Report in September of last year. This one was authored by retired Supreme Court judge Nial Fennelly and looked at whether or not Shatter had lied when he said he first knew about a letter from Martin Callinan about telephone recordings at Garda stations.

Shatter said he did not know about the letter until four hours after the forced retirement of Callinan, and not two weeks before as had been alleged, and Fennelly determined that this was the case.

So Alan Shatter has been found innocent of all of the charges laid against him.

However, unless this gets coverage that is sufficient to counter the damage done to him by the accusations that led to his resignation in the first place, justice in the proper sense will not be served.

What has happened to Alan Shatter is actually a perfect illustration of how Leinster House and the media can sometimes hunt in a giant pack to bring someone down regardless of the evidence.

A narrative about a person develops either in the media first, or in Leinster House first, and is presented to the nation as a fact.

That person is then adjudged guilty and it subsequently becomes enormously difficult for that person to clear their name. Too many people are invested in the guilty verdict, and evidence to the contrary will be downplayed.

In the case of Alan Shatter, who in the Dail is going to defend him? Fianna Fail won't because he is not one of their own and because Micheal Martin helped to lead the anti-Shatter posse in the first place.

Nor will Sinn Fein or anyone else on the left because they despise him, partly because he is so pro-Israeli.

But no one in Fine Gael is going to defend him either because their leader threw him to the dogs in the end rather than defend him robustly.

This means Alan Shatter has been left to defend himself. No-one who is in fact innocent of the charges made against them should ever be put in that position and it is a very poor reflection on the Irish body politic that Alan Shatter has been put in exactly that place.
In the old days, most politicians wanted to be in government. For Fianna Fail, government was the norm. Fine Gael, always in second place ahead of Labour, fluctuated in popularity depending on its leader. Labour held up the rear, distinguishing itself by vigorous opposition to successive Fianna Fail administrations, particularly in the Spring era.

The Progressive Democrats were newcomers who, despite their size, upended the entire pecking order by making up the numbers with Fianna Fail, thereby 'breaking the mould' in Irish politics. This came about not out of idealism, but from pragmatism. Fianna Fail overcame its distaste for coalition so as to rule. For the Progressive Democrats, being in government was the only place to be to bring about reforms.

This new alliance was disastrous for Fine Gael and Labour. The Progressive Democrats were not only propping up the old enemy Fianna Fail, but were also blocking the opposition parties from getting into power when Fianna Fail's electoral star was waning. Independents were rare as unicorns. The far left were ideological loners. In the main, Irish politics was dominated by those four parties.

How things have changed. The Dail is altogether a more toxic place. There seems to be little sense of collective pride in being a TD, and little cross-party camaraderie. Exchanges are bitter and humourless. The members' restaurant is underused, most people opting to grab a sandwich or fast food. Some wear scruffy clothes, the dress code no longer enforced by the powers-that-be.

In the old days, an usher would politely tap a deputy on the shoulder if he or she was jacketless or without a tie. Nowadays anything goes. T-shirts, jeans, trainers. As a former Whip and member of the Committee of Procedure and Privileges, I enquired about this sartorial decline - and learned that the Whips don't want to make a scene about dress code when there are so many offenders. To do so would only hand them ammunition for further protest.

And boy are they good at protest. In fact, some of the Anti-Austerity Alliance claim they were "elected to protest". One recently quipped with pride when referring to the climbdown on water charges that "what can be legislated for in the Dail can be undone on the street."

Where will this all go? A TV interview this week with Paul Murphy about the agreement that would see Fianna Fail supporting a Fine Gael minority government was instructive. With multiple references to the victory of street protest over Irish Water, Murphy said the same forces would be employed on issues such as housing, low pay and abortion rights. So that is what we have to look forward to over the next while. Mobilisation of angry people, some of whom are willing to break the law, in street disturbances, blockades and intimidation aimed at unravelling government policy and fomenting disorder. This suggests we need a review of policing for political street protest given the ugly scenes experienced last year.

Most people were baffled that Mr Murphy will be entitled to legal aid in defending charges relating to a protest in West Dublin, even though he earns a Dail salary of more than 87,000 plus expenses. Because he was able to show that he gifted most of his salary to his party for political activism and lived on 1,800 per month, the taxpayer is to foot his legal bill. What sort of precedent does that set? Since Sinn Fein deputies claim to gift most of their salaries to the party, does the same rule apply to them when it comes to legal aid? That a person gifts most of his or her salary to a cause is neither here nor there when it comes to assessing income in my view, and raises questions about equality before the law.

Not surprisingly, the row on Irish Water rumbled on this week with confusion about whether people should discharge outstanding bills or be entitled to refunds now that charges have been suspended.

The whole thing is a mortifying mess of bad governance, which still has the capacity for discord down the line with both parties reserving the right to take different positions on whatever emerges from the Commission process.

Fianna Fail negotiator Jim O'Callaghan, who, like all barristers, can ably defend the indefensible, was anxious to stress that the party had managed to get a significant amount of its policy into the deal - on tax, mortgage relief and suspending water charges. And it is true they extracted maximum concessions while staying in opposition. They are having it both ways and are openly lording it over a weakened Fine Gael.

But most people can see the fudge on Irish Water is bad politics, expensive and populist. Proper politicians, particularly the Greens and Labour, should continue to articulate the need for massive investment in water and sewage infrastructure. The truth is that unless people pay for it, the billions required will have to come from other vital spending budgets such as health, education and housing.

Fianna Fail will claim a victory for brokering a hike of 15pc in rent supplement. This is an expensive concession, costing an estimated 55m per year on top of the 267m paid in rent supplement allocated for 2016.

But experts argue that a blanket increase on rent limits will not address the underlying issue of supply, which is the main problem in Dublin and other urban areas.

The Department of Social Protection had been using a targeted approach in paying above the rent limits on a case-by-case basis and more than 7,500 households had been helped in this way to retain or acquire rented accommodation. Due to the chronic shortage in the private rented market, this extra Exchequer spending is unlikely to deliver the extra accommodation needed.

The as-yet-unknown shopping list of the Independents will be more difficult to satisfy.

If Enda Kenny makes it over the line in the vote for Taoiseach, few will begrudge it to him personally. But it will be a pyrrhic victory - he will be presiding over an inherently unstable administration subject to a temporary licence to govern.
It is remarkable how a country that is so good at business, science, the arts and just about everything else, can be so bad at politics. There are now 318 million Americans, including many of the world's most creative and brilliant people: the US electorate ought by rights to be spoilt for choice when it comes to choosing its president.

Yet from this immense talent pool, the American political system has managed to narrow the race down to two supremely flawed human beings, neither of whom remotely deserves to be in the White House.

On the one hand we have Hillary Clinton, a scandal-ridden, uninspiring candidate whose left-wing policies would destroy what is left of US exceptionalism; on the other is Donald Trump, a demagogue who specialises in whipping up hate and threatening cataclysmic trade wars.

This depressing choice comes at the worst possible time for the US: the country is bitterly divided, faith in the American Dream and US constitution is receding, and many would like nothing better than to shut themselves off from the world. Meanwhile, the threat of terrorism remains as high as ever.

For the prosperous parts of the east and west coasts, all is great, at least for the middle-aged and for those with Ivy League degrees; but the rest of the population is in its worst funk since the Seventies, in desperate need of a strong, competent, reformist leader who will begin to fix its economy and restore its mojo.

There were problems when I first visited the US in the early Nineties, but nothing like today. It is no exaggeration to say that the very fabric of US democracy is being tested.

Thirty-five years ago, the saviour was Ronald Reagan, who announced that it was, once again, morning in America, and who liberated the economy; in 2016, tragically, the choice is between two dinosaurs seemingly intent on precipitating their country's own demise.

Neither George Bush nor Barack Obama tackled the real threat to the American way of life. For much of the post-war era, the average US worker used to enjoy a real-terms pay rise every year, and there were plenty of good, well-paying jobs even for those without much of an education. This is no longer true: wages for tens of millions of Americans have been under pressure for years. Surging healthcare, higher-education and housing costs have gobbled up what little productivity gains there have been for those workers.

The country needs a skills and educational revolution if it is to create well-paid jobs for the many, not just the few, as well as comprehensive tax and regulatory reform to unleash a new entrepreneurial revolution across the country, not just in Silicon Valley. This would require a unifying, visionary candidate of the sort that is tragically absent from the political scene.

For the moment, at least, the opinion polls are clear: Clinton would easily defeat Trump. The demographics are against him: it is almost impossible for a Republican to win without Hispanics, and he has angered them with his sickening rhetoric.

But it would be madness to underestimate Trump: with the Republican nomination in the bag, he has already started to moderate his language and recruit more high-level advisers.

Republican big-hitters will gradually endorse him, and he will doubtless jettison some of his most deranged and offensive policies, such as his obscene proposed ban on all Muslims travelling to the US. He will switch to wooing the centrist vote, doubtless with some success.

Trump's opportunity is that the modern Democratic Party, even more so than Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party in Britain, has been taken over by an elite class of highly educated professionals.

Such folk, who can afford to be left-wing, can barely camouflage their contempt for the American poor's suburban lifestyles, the fact that many still go to Church, their patriotism, the kinds of cars they drive, even the food they eat. This has pushed many into the Republicans' arms, and Trump hopes to grab even more such voters.

Yet because the Grand Old Party is rightly supportive of the free market and low taxes, chunks of the working class remained with the Democrats.

Trump, who is happy to say anything to get elected and has no problem bashing the capitalist system that made him rich, is not encumbered in the same way by principle. His protectionism, opposition to migration and contempt for supposedly faceless corporations mean that he is ideally positioned to scoop up even more disgruntled middle-class voters.

His foreign policy will also go down well with Middle America, including many blue-collar democrats. It will be a different kind of disengagement than the one pioneered by Obama, but the results will be the same.

Even if he were to abandon his planned trade war with China and the worst of his other ideas after winning office, the world's great crises would continue to fester dangerously under a Trump White House.

If a Hillary presidency were to be a rerun, in policy terms at least, of the last time she was in the White House, albeit as First Lady, many Republicans might actually decide that she would make an acceptable compromise. But in reality, she would be far worse than her husband ever was.

Partly because it was kept in check by Newt Gingrich's Republicans, Bill Clinton's administration represented the last hurrah of the centrist, pro-market Democrats. In a series of reforms that would be unthinkable under Hillary, Bill signed Nafta, cut spending, sought to balance the budget and introduced revolutionary welfare reforms.

Since then, the Democrats have veered to the left in a major way.

The party will nominate Hillary but its heart is with Bernie Sanders, the socialist firebrand. In any case, the only way that Hillary will be able to compete with Trump is by launching ever more extreme attacks on business and the wealthy. She could yet also be felled by her mounting legal troubles, which have the potential to spiral out of control.

I love America, a very special nation. But I'm glad I'm not a US citizen, and that I won't be asked to choose between these two appalling candidates on November 8. There will be no good outcome, so it is time for the world, as well as America itself, to begin preparing for four years of purgatory. ( Daily Telegraph London)
Just how effective electronic monitoring is in terms of reducing re-offending is a topic of much debate. Studies carried out in different countries have pointed to varying rates of success.

This is perhaps unsurprising, given that the type of offender being tagged and the period when monitoring is used - be it pre-trial, during early release or at some other point - can vary from country to country.

Successive empirical studies in North America and the UK over the past 15 years had found modest or minimal reductions.

The practice has proved much more effective in Europe, especially in Scandinavia.

Two main systems are in use internationally, one using radio frequencies and the other using GPS.

Both systems have been used as part of a pilot project in Ireland which was limited to a small number of prisoners on early release.

It remains to be seen which system the Department of Justice will ultimately favour.

Using GPS is significantly more expensive, but allows for the continuous tracking of tag wearers.

In comparison, systems based on the transmission of a radio frequency are more limited. They are generally focused on one specific location and are used to enforce home curfew, house arrests or to verify a person is present, rather than tracking their general movements.

Both systems allow for active and passive monitoring.

Active monitoring means each tag is monitored in real time, while in passive monitoring information relayed by the tag may not be analysed straight away and might only be checked at a particular point in a day.

The use of electronic monitoring is widespread around Europe, but the category of offender tagged varies from country to country.

In Germany, for example, some states use it as a pre-trial bail condition, for early release and for post-release supervision. It is most commonly used in some German states for people with convictions for fraud, theft and burglary.

Finland uses it for early release and monitoring in prison for crimes such as drunk driving.

Scotland uses it for early release, but also on juvenile criminal justice schemes.

An Oireachtas research paper on the issue indicates electronic monitoring works well in some scenarios and very poorly in others.

For example, a study involving violent prisoners in the US state of Georgia in the mid-1990s found no long-term impact on the levels of repeat offending.

The exact opposite was seen in a more recent study in Florida, conducted between 1998 and 2002.

It involved people convicted of serious offences, such as violent, property and drug-related crime, and showed an almost 95pc reduction in re-offending compared with offenders who were not given tags.
To read the executive summary of the new Programme for Government, you'd wonder was the author abroad on holidays for the past 70 days. It suggests the 'New Partnership Government' is about to "embrace the opportunity presented" by the electorate on February 26.

Not many people in Fine Gael saw what happened on Election Day as an opportunity. The phrase more commonly used was "disaster".

But whatever you might think of Enda Kenny, he has managed to win over some unlikely characters.

At 156 pages, 'A Partnership for a Fairer Ireland' is more than double the size of the Fine Gael/Labour coalition's effort five years ago. It paints a picture of an Ireland reborn.

Few expect this government to last five years - but they are planning for it, and there is something for everybody and every challenge.

The most pressing issues, the document says, are housing and health.

It insists we can look forward to a suite of "measures to revitalise all of Ireland" so that the benefits of the recovery are felt "inside every doorstep and in every community".

At the same time as the recovery sweeps the countryside, there will be "targeted investment" to "regenerate our urban centres".

Old people will get pension hikes and be able to "live independent and active lives in their communities". And policies will be introduced "that can improve the life outcomes of children".

In this new Ireland, criminals will be subjected to tougher sentencing and the doors of rural garda stations will swing open once again.

Fine Gael and the Independents see agriculture as the "heartbeat of the rural economy" and want the next generation of farmers to make Ireland "the highest quality food producing nation in the world".

That will be achieved while creating an image of the country as "the green island" that has a low-carbon footprint.

This will be the most wonderful place to live with "thriving communities in urban and rural Ireland".

Setting out an aim no government in Irish history has ever achieved, the programme says: "We want an Ireland that looks after its people from the time they come into the world to the time they leave." That sounds like an Ireland we all want. The plan will be difficult to deliver without busting the national coffers again - but it appears this is what we voted for.

Voters kicked Fine Gael, banished the Labour Party, offered Fianna Fail a road to redemption and made Independents the kingmakers.

Perhaps the most telling paragraph in the whole document is this: "We realise that to govern is a great responsibility, but equally a great gift. We are humbled by the opportunity and will give all we have to creating a Fairer Ireland."

Humbled, no less. Maybe this could be a positive day for Ireland.
Danny Healy-Rae: 'God above is in charge of the weather and we here can't do anything about it' Photo: Gareth Chaney, Collins

Danny Healy-Rae's much-derided demolition of climate change has at least got people talking about something that has an impact on all but is understood by very few.

While plenty will scoff and tut-tut about Mr Healy-Rae's expressed scepticism, the doubts he raised are shared by too many, and that is something that needs to be examined.

However, there's no denying that our stewardship of the planet has been anything but responsible - we have been derelict in our duties in just about every regard imaginable.

There have been enough scientific studies on the subject to account for the disappearance of at least one rainforest. Global warming is an unwelcome fact of 21st-century life.

The Kerry TD had misgivings about our footing the bill through carbon taxes, and he pointed to patterns of climate change going back over the millennia, well before mankind had a hand in wreaking havoc. Where he falls down is in failing to appreciate the difference between climate change, which is a consequence of our actions, and weather variations, which are natural. The dawning of the industrial age has had a devastating impact. Mr Healy-Rae may argue that God controls the weather, but his agents here on earth are courting catastrophe by getting their hands on the thermostat. Even the Pope is on record as saying that doomsday predictions can no longer be dismissed with disdain. Climate change is a reality that will not simply go away just because you do not believe in it.
I am struggling to see how I can take Fianna Fail and Fine Gael seriously as candidates for running this country.

Micheal Martin and his party were preparing the introduction of water charges as far back as 2010. In the recent elections, however, they decided to oppose water charges in an attempt to gain votes and claimed they would abolish Irish Water. When they didn't get enough votes they went into negotiations about forming a government with the claim that they would scrap water charges for five years. Then they backed down to only postponing the charges for nine months. In other words, they keep changing their position, doing whatever it takes to get back into power.

Enda Kenny and his party spent the past few years doing everything wrong they could possibly do wrong with the introduction of water charges, starting with calling it a water charge in the first place. Throughout the election they kept saying they were behind the flawed system they had introduced. When they didn't get enough votes, all of a sudden they were prepared to talk about winding down Irish Water. Just like Fine Fail, doing whatever it takes to stay in power.

Oh and, of course, while they were busy making a total mess of Irish Water, they forgot about their promise to overhaul health insurance, which no doubt was a reason for many people to vote for them five years ago.

Both these parties are proving that politics has nothing to do with the best interest of the country. Politics is all about getting and staying in power.

Ronald Vallenduuk

Address with editor

Politics, as you like it

Politics has now become more a theatre of frolics, more conducive to Vaudeville then real life. What emerges is a nasty game of back-biting and name-calling.

One could compare a school game of ring-a-ring-o'roses and 'do you wanna be in my gang?' or 'I won't play with you!' An expensive waste of space which belongs in Jurassic Park.

Back here in the real world, anyone with half a brain knows governments are run behind the curtain by faceless Eurocrats, and these politicians are merely puppets whose strings are yanked by their masters for a bit of craic.

Elections are more like stand-up comedy, and not to be taken seriously. William Shakespeare, in my view, wrote this quote expressly for politicians.

"All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts... Last scene of all, That ends this strange eventful history, Is second childishness and mere oblivion, Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything."

Politics for politicians, as they like it.

Anthony Woods

Ennis, Co Clare

Martin changes tune on water

The history of the water charge issue and Micheal Martin's role in it is interesting.

It was in the December 2009 budget speech that Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan announced that preparations for water charges were being made. That was followed by the National Recovery Plan in 2010 which included the installation of meters in 1.2 million homes connected to the public water mains supply.

The 85bn EU-IMF bailout in November 2010 said that water charges will be introduced in 2012 or 2013 and the responsibility for water will be transferred from local authorities to a new water utility.

The bailout was necessary because the country had gone bankrupt due to the decisions of a small number of its most powerful citizens during the pre-2009 boom years. Among that small number was Micheal Martin. Among the people who supported the introduction of water charges in 2009 and 2010 was Micheal Martin.

He has played a role in creating the conditions in which water charges were thought necessary, played a role in setting them up and has recommended that they be paid.

Given all that, his recent decision to oppose water charges and to make their suspension a condition of his support for a minority government is ironic.

A Leavy

Sutton Dublin 13

Group schemes to pay twice

An early 'thank you' to all those on group water schemes who pay water charges. Now that water charges are to be abolished (suspended), funding will have to be found through increases in income tax.

Those on group schemes will also pay the income tax increases so a big 'thank you' for subsidising our public water system.

Mick Hannon

Clones, Co Monaghan

Enda's N-word gaffe

Your political correspondent wrote (May 4) on Gerry Adam's N-word gaffe: "If this was the leader of any other political party, senior colleagues and grassroots members would be quick to distance themselves from his statement".

He may have forgotten that the leader of Fine Gael, Enda Kenny, did use the N-word while entertaining his company in some hilarious situation. No senior members of the party distanced themselves from the gaffe; no party members went on record to distance themselves from the N joke.

Furthermore, the Irish Independent wrote no editorial condemning the incident, nor did it waste columns of print from their correspondents, political or otherwise.

Brendan Ryan

Ferbane, Co Offaly

I don't know if it's the naked trampolining with his dog or the sleeping with Teddy which might be having such a hilarious effect, but Gerry Adams is what we would call in the old days a man who, whatever he says, should just say nothing.

Robert Sullivan

Bantry, Co Cork

Recently Mary Lou McDonald told us all she was "scarlet for Micheal Martin". I wonder what colour she is for Django Gerry this week - puce, perhaps?

Anthony O'Leary

Portmarnock, Co Dublin

Roll-out of...home offices?

I am an IT worker from Galway city. My home is relatively small and with three children I don't have space for a separate home office.

It is my opinion that people in rural areas are unfairly advantaged space-wise and us urban dwellers are being left behind in this high-tech age because we do not have access to home offices.

I personally think it is an absolute disgrace that the government has not rolled-out home offices to people in urban areas who do not have space to do essential IT work from home. My hands are tied here.

I mean, it's not like I chose to live where I did, is it?

Colm Lohan

Galway city
There's nothing to beat a good book and that's why Carl O'Flaherty had writer's cramp on Sunday evening.

Carl has just written 'Dingle Before Fungie Came to Town', a collection of stories about the people and events that gave a special character to the town he knew growing up in the 1960s and '70s. But it wasn't writing the book that caused the cramp; it was the hours of signing copies before, during and after the launch O'Flaherty's bar on Sunday afternoon.

People spilled out onto the street from the packed pub where eager buyers heaved a path through the crush to get their hands on a copy of the book that will be read and re-read with delight at the stories and the telling of them.

"Keep buying the book; he needs the money," Carl's brother Fergus told the throng as he struck up a tune with their sister Mazz and cousin John Benny Moriarty. Another cousin, former senator Joe O'Toole, was waiting for a lull so that he could find space to stand up, make a speech, and declare the book officially launched. The lull never came so he just got on with the job anyway, describing the book as "irreverent, bawdy but always entertaining a fine piece of work that will stand the test of time".

Time was on Carl's mind also when he got up to speak. Explaining that it was written out of love of place and as a record of the people and events that Dingle a special to grow up in, he said: "I don't see it as a book for today; I see it as a book for 40 or 50 years' time."

Despite the long maturation date, Carl's audience clearly felt an immediate investment was essential and as soon as he sat down he was back at the signing while Fergus headed off to the kitchen for another box of books.

He was still signing books later in the evening and word has it that he had the biro out again the following day. They could be heading for a second edition shortly but in the meantime the book is available for 15 from O'Flaherty's bar in Dingle or send 20 to Carl O'Flaherty at Dun an Oir, Kilsallaghan, Swords, Co Dublin and he'll put one in the post.

Alan is ready to hit the road

This Friday, May 8, Alan Creedon will begin walking from his home in Manchester to his native Dingle in memory of his sister Aoife who died five years ago.

The month-long trek will include crossing the Irish Sea by kayak in mid-May.

"My plan is to head southwest through the Cheshire countryside and on to Wales, staying with friends and camping as I go. I'm hoping to reach Anglesey by the middle of May," he told The Kerryman this week.

"I'll be meeting up with Mike Armstrong, Senior Instructor with the Outward Bound Trust over here, who volunteered to help me cross the Irish Sea in a double kayak. Mike is descended from Grace O'Malley (Granuaile) and loves sea kayaking along the Mayo coast.

We spent five hours kayaking along the Welsh coast last weekend. It was really challenging at times but we got through it!," he added.

The sea crossing from North Wales to Dun Laoghaire is expected to take around 20 hours. The kayak will have GPS tracking, VHF radio, charts and a satellite phone for coverage in VHF blackspots.

"The whole idea behind this challenge is to raise funds for two charities, Manchester Mind and the Dingle Camphill Community. We held a ten-hour fund-raising concert and dance in a community hall in Manchester last week with three excellent bands who played for free. There was plenty of food and drink and it was a great community occasion," Alan said.

Alan's sister, Siun, flew in from Prague to help out at the event which raised almost 1,000, bringing the total raised so far for Manchester Mind to over 4,000. Donations on the website www.walkforaoife.com for the Camphill Community have almost reached 1,000.

Alan will be interviewed on Irish TV's weekly programme 'Out and about in Manchester'. "I will be posting updates on the website as I go and there is also a Walk for Aoife Facebook page which people can view for updates," he said.

Ursulas memory lives on in Be Fabulous fundraiser

On Thursday last in the G Hotel in Galway the vibrancy of a beautiful woman was celebrated as the Be Fabulous Fund handed a cheque for 10,000 to further research into Multiple Myeloma Cancer.

Be Fabulous was set up in memory of Ursula Flannery from Goat Street who was diagnosed with Multiple Myeloma in 2003, aged 38. At diagnosis, her prognosis was poor but advances in treatment options and her own fighting spirit allowed her to live with Multiple Myeloma for nine years before she died in October 2012.

The Be Fabulous fund was established by members of Ursula's family to raise money to directly fund research into Multiple Myeloma, its cause and more importantly, treatment options for those diagnosed.

The NUIG research foundation in Galway, are at the forefront of this research, not only in Ireland but worldwide. Headed by Professor Michael O'Dwyer, the team have made valuable findings which have led to new treatment options and improving the quality of life of those going through treatment. Prof Dwyer's work has been shared with the Dana Faber Institute in the US who are the leading experts of this type of cancer said Irene Flannery.

In Europe the incidence of Myeloma is higher than in other parts of the world and the incidence along the western seaboard of Ireland the incidence is the highest of all. Myeloma represents one per cent of all the cancers in Ireland, at the same time it is seriously underfunded, according to Irene.

"So important is his work", said Irene of Professor O'Dwyer, "that the Galway University Foundation matched our 10,000 with another 10,000, giving a total of 20,000 directly into his department. He is passionate, hard-working and determined to find a lasting treatment for Multiple Myeloma and these funds will make a significant contribution to his work"

Philip Tracey, international milliner and long-time friend of Ursula, has designed a hat specifically on the theme of Be Fabulous to celbrate Ursula's vivacity. The hat will be raffled during this year's Galway Races to help the research fund.

Contributions to the fund can also be made to:

Account Name: Be Fabulous

Sort Code: 93 62 86

Account No: 08041097

Allied Irish Bank, Main St., Dingle, Co.Kerry.
The search is over for the new face of Friends and family turned up in their droves to support each of the 10 contestants who took to the catwalk in the hope of securing the incredible package of prizes including a trip to New York, a modelling contract with Catwalk Model Agency, a portfolio with Eve Mazurek and a selection of Wazp jewellery.

With tasteful attire and a unique blend of professional and amateur models, it was a refreshing opportunity for aspiring figures in the industry to bestow their knowledge upon the contestants.

It was no easy feat for the adjudication panel which consisted of former Rose of Tralee, Maria Walsh; Annburys own Danny Leane and Mandy Maher from Catwalk Model Agency.

Now, the music producer will be taken under the highly experienced wing of Mandy Maher who is renowned for nurturing and developing the careers of up and coming male and female models. Advertising and Marketing Manager, Siobhan Murphy, who spearheaded the event, said that the extravaganza was a fashion show with a twist and an excellent opportunity for local businesses to advertise their merchandise.

"The local businesses drove the event and the feedback from all the clothes was incredibly positive. It was an opportunity for those who wouldn't usually attend a fashion event like this to realise what is actually available to them in Tralee," she said.

MD John Feerick, commended the contestants for grasping the unique opportunity presented to them, especially the SFAM winner who was a crowd favourite.

"What made the night a real thriller was that we held the competition for both male and female contestants which kept the crowd on their toes throughout," he said. "We are so proud to give Damien the opportunity to pursue a career in the fashion industry and we are sure that this won't be the last we see of him," he added. The event was also used as an opportunity to raise funds for a charity which is close to the hearts of all at The Kerryman.

All proceeds from a raffle offering spot prizes such as a Don ONeill hand painted scarf and a 300 voucher for Debenhams, will be donated to the Build 4 Life Charity which supports those who suffer from Cystic Fibrosis.
Kerry students have once again proved their writing abilities, claiming two coveted finalist positions in the prestigious Write Here, Write Now competition.

Pobalscoil Inbhear Sceine student, Aoife Gallogly has been shortlisted in the second level category, while Fenagh Mahoney of IT Tralee earned her final spot in the third level section.

The competition, run by Hot Press Magazine, will see the two battle to obtain an internship position with the acclaimed Hot Press magazine in the respective categories. The overall winners will also have their submitted work published in the magazine and will be rewarded with a 250 cash prize.

Kenmare student Aoife wrote a short inspirational article named 'Slots' which aptly points out the strains on younger and older people alike as they travel through stereotypically-minded societies in Ireland.

Fenagh, who studies Creative Writing for Digital Media in Tralee, submitted an insightful write-up on life as a young impressionable Irish emigrant in New York called, 'It's not a Rebel Song, It's an Emigrant One'.

The judging panel consists of award-winning Irish writers Glenn Patterson, Joe O'Connor and Christine Dwyer Hickey, as well as Hot Press Deputy Editor Stuart Clark and Editor, Niall Stokes and Lia Mills, author of Fallen, the Dublin-Belfast: Two Cities, One Book Choice for 2016.

Supporters of the talented Kerry duo can vote for the local finalists in the special Write Here, Write Now Readers' Award at www.hotpress.com/writeherewritenow.
Users of the Kerry Cork Health Link Bus are to benefit from a cash injection of 3,000 thanks to the staff at Killorglin-based company, Promed.

The funds were raised by the staff of the online medical and dental supplier, through various fundraising events throughout the year. Promed have been a great supporter of the charity and Kerry Cancer Support Group are very proud to be associated with the company.

"Kerry Cancer Support Group want to thank management and staff at Promed for their support and their efforts in raising the money.," a spokesperson said.

"It is through donations such as these that the charity is able to continue bringing its services to the people of Kerry and Cork."

The Kerry Cancer Support Group started in 2010 with a 14 seater minibus and as demand quickly grew so did this vital bus service. Now the bus (purchased in 2013) travels every day to Cork University Hospital, with the free service is offered on a confidential basis.

In order support the service users on their cancer journey, the charity has secured a block booking with CUH which means that those travelling on the bus are scheduled together and do not have to endure long delays waiting for appointments.
A Tralee psychiatric nurse has been struck off the register by the Nursing and Midwifery Board of Ireland after she was found guilty of professional misconduct arising from the theft of money from an elderly patient.

The NMBI's decision to cancel the registration of Edel Maria Fitzgerald was confirmed by the High Court on April 16.

At a fitness to practice hearing last November she was found guilty of professional misconduct relating to the theft of money from a 97-year-old wheelchair bound woman whom she had been providing with home help through a privately engaged company.

The fitness to practice hearing heard that the ongoing thefts were discovered after the elderly woman's daughter noticed a large sum of money missing from her mother's purse.

Secret cameras were placed in the elderly woman's room and these subsequently captured footage of Edel Maria Fitzgerald taking 50 sums from the woman's purse on a number of occasions.

After the family made a complaint to gardai Edel Maria Fitzgerald was arrested and - the NMBI hearing heard - she made a statement admitting the thefts.

She subsequently repaid 3,800 to the elderly woman's family who subsequently dropped their legal complaint against the nurse.

However when the family discovered that Ms Fitzgerald - who had quit her job with the private healthcare company - had found new employment in a HSE run facility they filed an official complaint with the nursing board.

Ms Fitzgerald's previous employers believed she had left their employment due to getting inadequate hours and they were unaware of the serious allegations against her, as were the HSE.

The victim of the thefts has since passed away.
Motorists from all over Ireland, and further afield, converged yet again on Killarney to take part in the Cartell.ie Rally of the Lakes for 2016. Now in its 37th year, the rally is one of Ireland's - and the world's - most famous circuits due to its challenging routes requiring optimum driver skill.

"The rally was a major success and the competitors were happy with the circuits and spectators enjoyed the stages," said Clerk of the Course, Anthony O'Connor. "The feedback from the town is very positive and I'd say the businesses are extremely pleased at how the weekend went," he added.

Public order offences were also down on previous years and Killarney District Superintendent Flor Murphy praised the Gardai's enforcement strategies. "We had no major incidents as our operations in relation to the roads and town centre went off very well. There were just 30 arrests between 3pm Friday, to 3pm on Monday, but these arrests would also include incidents taking place outside of Killarney. Thankfully there were no headline incidents."

Flor continued. "There's always extra resources put in place as it's a major event. In terms of anti-social behaviour and roads, it requires a lot of extra resources and we're pleased that our presence on the ground paid dividends."

The rally is estimated to be worth up to 10 million to the local economy and reaches audiences in over 38 countries, making it a truly international spectacle. A special ceremonial event took place on the streets of Killarney on Friday night, setting the perfect tone for the weekend with a chance to meet the drivers in a family atmosphere.

There was also plenty of music and comedy acts organised over the three days, making the weekend much more than just a motoring extravaganza. The weekend's finale took place on Sunday evening at the Gleneagle Hotel when popular GAA pundit and rally enthusiast, Michael Lyster, made the presentations. The prestigious John Mullane Cup went to father and son combination of Charlie and Johnny Hickey, while the international category went to Donagh Kelly and Conor Foley.
Tralee Rowing club held its official opening of its New Stat of the art Boat house over the weekend located on the Tralee Ship Canal Tralee Co Kerry. Pictured at the opening were - Jimmy Deenihan officially opened Tralee Rowing Club John OShea Boathouse". Photo: Domnick Walsh

A treasured member of Tralee Rowing Club who passed away suddenly last year has been immortalised by his friends and club mates who dedicated the club's new boathouse to him at its official opening on Saturday.

The John O'Shea was instrumental in organising a host of fundraisers to help construct a permanent boathouse for the club, and on Saturday afternoon the boathouse was officially opened in front of John's friends and family.

Large crowds turned out for the momentous occasion, where Minister Jimmy Deenihan officially opened the ne facility in front of representatives from Rowing Ireland, members of Kerry county council, Mayor of Tralee Municipal district Tom McEllistrim, Deputies Michael Healy Rae TD and Martin Ferris, Councillor Sam Locke and former and present members and friends of Tralee Rowing Club.

"For several years, Tralee Rowing Club operated out of a container at the canal so the club has been fundraising for several years for a permanent boathouse," said club PRO Eileen Nagle.

"John was the backbone of that fundraising drive, and of the club, and was a valued member so we wanted to honour him. It was a wonderful day."
Collooney-based equipment systems engineering firm, SL Controls has announced 20 new jobs.

The company currently employs 14 people at their headquarters in Collooney Business Park, Sligo.

The new jobs are for qualified equipment systems engineers and graduates who will support the company's growing Irish operations and expansion into Europe.

The positions will be created across SL Control's five operating centres in Sligo, Limerick, Galway, Dublin and Birmingham.

Managing Director Keith Moran said: "As part of our client engagement and recruitment strategy, we now operate five offices across Ireland and the UK. The decision to base our headquarters in Sligo has been one of our biggest and best investments allowing us to recruit and retain top engineering talent and graduates from the area, who are keen to live near their home towns and families. We are currently in a period of rapid expansion, having welcomed our 51st team member this week, and look forward to recruiting another 20 engineers by early 2017."

The company work closely with IT Sligo and regularly attend their careers events from which they actively recruit new members to the SL Controls' team.

SL Controls has expanded into Europe with sights set on new territories and markets in the Food, Med Device and Pharma markets.

The company's turnover is on target to grow to 4.2 million by the end of 2016.
Three college lecturers are celebrating after their app idea to enrol and retain foreign students has secured funding from Enterprise Ireland's Competitive Start Fund.

Declan Sweeney founded StudyBundles to develop the CampusConnect app in Sligo.

It is customised to each university or IT and aims to encourage the international student to choose the college with which they have connected.

CEO Declan took part in the Enterprise Ireland start-up programme New Frontiers at IT Sligo when he moved back to Ireland with his family last year. The other two founders, John O'Hagan and Daniel Hinkley, are still based in London and Manchester. "Winning the Enterprise Ireland Competitive Start-Up Fund was fantastic for StudyBundles," said Declan.

"It is a significant milestone, not only for raising finance, but also in terms of recognising our potential and deomsontrating that companies from the North west can compete on a national and international level," he said.

The fund is designed to help companies reach key commercial milestones and StudyBundles is already undergoing its first round of investment.

CampusConnect has been adopted by the University of Limerick, Maynooth College University and Letterkenny IT. Other universities in Ireland and the UK are also in talks to take on the app.
David McGowan (right) on the steps of the jumbo hes floating to Enniscrone beach this week

It's on its way! A Boeing 767 after almost 30 years of transatlantic flights is making its final journey to Sligo where it will become a central part of a new proposed glamping site in Enniscrone.

It was the brainchild of local funeral undertaker and Easkey native, David McGowan who never gave up on his dream of bringing the jet from Shannon Airport to Sligo.

A team of engineers have been working on the 70 tonnes 159ft long x 158ft wide passenger aircraft in Shannon Airport since early 2015 getting it ready for its transportation to the proposed glamping site 'Quirky Nights Glamping.'

It will be reassembled in Enniscrone and its interior transformed into eight units of spacious double bedrooms.

It is expected to have its first 'passengers' stopover in Summer 2016. The site will also hold other converted forms of transport- train carriages, boats, buses and taxis.

There has been much media attention focused on Mr McGowan's attempts to bring the jet from Shannon to Sligo.

Bringing it by road was ruled out initially after he failed to get permission from the various local authorities along the route before Mr McGowan hit on the idea of bringing it by barge along the Atlantic.

The project is being filmed for a six-part documentary programme.

Mr McGowan bought the former Russian owned jet from Shannon airport for 20,000.

He revealed that he became fascinated by the growing trend of glamping and wanted to create unusual accommodation to boost tourism in West Sligo.

"I have a 15 acre site there of marshy field and I was wondering what I could do with it. Whatever I was going to do with it, it had to be to do with tourism because we're on the Wild Atlantic Way. I looked at different types of accommodation and unusual places to stay. I saw that glamping was a modern type of camping that was spreading throughout Europe.

"I got the idea that I might like a plane. There are so many planes that have been decommissioned that have gone out of service. I rang around the three different airports, Dublin, Cork and Shannon and only Shannon got back to me and said they had one but that it was no good to me. They said it was too big."

A hoverbarge has been brought over from Liverpool for the journey from Knockbeg Point in Shannon to Enniscrone.

"The site is just across the road from the beach in Enniscrone so once we get there it should be okay," he said. Speaking to The Sligo Champion yesterday David who has worked tirelessly on the project for months now said he is hopeful the end game is finally in sight.

"The jet is at the port, we moved it from the airport and what a sight that was - it was a slight to be seen on the truck."

The plane is now ready to be transported up the Atlantic but the crew has to wait for favourable conditions. David explains: "We need more water and less wind at the moment. We were hoping to be landing in Enniscrone by Friday morning but that could be pushed back to Saturday morning at this stage. It will take eight hours to tie the jumbo down onto the hoverbarge. We will start this process at 5.30 on the Wednesday or the Thursday morning - it is weather dependent."

"I've a meeting with a group of expert engineers now to try to decide the best course of action to take."

Today FM has taken a particular interest in this West Sligo story with the Anton Savage show planning an outside broadcast by the beach in Enniscrone as the jumbo is set to arrive in. They had hoped to hit the airwaves live on Friday but that now remains to be seen.

David has been talking to presenter Anton every week for the past few months giving him regular updates on the saga that is moving a decommissioned jumbo jet from the runway in Shannon all the way to the strand at Enniscrone.
The main parties have been taught a lesson on water charges according to Councillor Declan Bree.

Speaking at the annual May Day ceremony in Sligo Cllr Bree said the successful campaign against the water charges clearly illustrated the power that ordinary people have when they mobilised "against unjust policies," The event, organised by People First, was held at New Street near the former home of the founder of the Sligo labour movement John Lynch.

"The politicians in Fine Gael, Fianna Fail and Labour who promoted water charges and who sought the privatisation of our water resources have certainly been thought a lesson," he said.

Cllr Bree continued: "We have every reason to celebrate today. As a nation we have never seen anything like the unity of purpose and the determination of ordinary citizens to stop a government imposing an unacceptable tax.

"The abolition of water charges is just a beginning. We must now stop the waste on metering and we must seek a referendum to ensure that public ownership of our water services is enshrined in our constitution."

Trade unionist and local political activist, Brian Scanlon, said: "It is fitting that we remember John Lynch as we celebrate May Day 2016.

"In 1913 the year of the famous Sligo Dock Strike, Lynch organised one of the few units of the Irish Citizen Army established outside Dublin.

"The following year he was one of the main speakers at an Anti-Partition rally in Dublin - the rally marked the first occasion on which the Citizen Army carried its new flag "the Plough and the Stars".

"It was also in 1915 that Lynch was first elected to the National Executive Committee of the ITGWU. After the 1916 Rising and the execution of Connolly and the turmoil that followed, Lynch was one of the most active members of the Executive in re-organising the union. He was prominent in the struggle for national independence.

"A thorn in the side of the then British administration, imprisoned on numerous occasions but he was never willing to compromise on his socialist politics." said Mr Scanlon.

Floral tributes were laid by Ms Sinead Costello on behalf of People First and by Ms Brenda Barr on behalf of the Connolly Forum.
Cloonacool GAA club is taking a step back in time for its Centenary celebrations at the end of the month. There's been reams of old match reports and photographs divulged for a special book tracing the last one hundred years of the South Sligo club. Brian McIntyre, who was involved with the research, explained: "There is a lot of material and plenty of digging done over the last year or so! People should enjoy the book, there's a good bit of interesting content there.

"The old photographs too are great, we have one from the Cloonacool GAA team of 1911. The club had been in existence for a few years before it became officially affiliated with the GAA. It was a local TD by the name of Jack Brennan who was responsible for this. Some of Jack's relatives are still in the area as Brennan is a popular name here. He basically affiliated the club with the GAA in 1916 making it official.

"GAA is really at the heartbeat of the community here," Brian added. The book is being launched over the course of a weekend's celebration, starting Friday, May 27.

"We've the book launch that night in the Community Centre, then on the Saturday there's afternoon games, including the '97 and '99 teams playing each other which should be fun. There's also a townlands competition to enhance some rivalry, while we expect lots of people living away coming home for the weekend. Everyone's looking forward to it," Brian said.
Some of the Old Mutual mountaineers ready to tackle the stairwells in aid of Sligo Cancer Support

If you're terminally ill with cancer and your life insurance company suddenly contacts you out of the blue, you'd normally start to worry a tad.

But when retired schoolteacher turned mountaineer Peter Milne discovered why Old Mutual in the UK emailed him, he got a very pleasant surprise.

The firm read his 'Big Interview' with The Sligo Champion online and were so inspired by his Four Peak Mountain Challenge to raise money for Sligo Cancer Support Centre last year that they decided to do something about it.

They wondered whether they could match it but realised that climbing the four highest peaks in the British Isles - Carrauntoohill in the Macgillycuddy Reeks, Snowdon in Wales, Scafell Pike in the Lake District of Cumbria and Ben Nevis in the Scottish Highlands - was logistically too difficult.

Not to be put off, they decided to climb the equivalent height of the four peaks in the company's stairwell in Southampton.

"They did it just before Easter. I couldn't believe it," he told The Sligo Champion.

Head of Customer Service at Old Mutual Andy Mason rallied the troops and over one hundred employees ended up taking part in the challenge.

"Some only got as far as Big Ben while others got half way up Everest," said Peter.

They initially raised 1,700 and the company said they would match it, bringing the total so far to 3,500, or 4,500 approximately.

The funds will all go to the Cancer Support Centre on Wine Street which helped Peter so much after his diagnosis last year.

"It's so unlooked for, it's really amazing," he said.

The UK Insurance firm are taking things one step further.

They're paying for Andy Mason and another colleague to come over to Sligo and join Peter for a climb of Benbulben on Satuday June 18th.

Peter raised almost 7,000 for the charity through his four peak challenge last year and climbed Benbulben afterwards to involve the community.

This year's climb is also is open to the community and a bucket will be passed around on the day to fundraise for the Cancer Support Centre.

"If the weather is bad in June I'm sure we can find some stairs for them to climb the height of Benbulben," he said.

"It was Peter Milne's story which caught people's imagination," said Andy told this newspaper.

"We read The Sligo Champion article online and that's what inspired us to do it. The response of our colleagues was fantastic," he said.

"There were some people who managed from the bottom to the top once, while others were more energetic and ran up and down from 11-4pm," he said.

"We're coming over now in June to present the cheque to Peter personally and we're going to tackle Benbulben as well while we're there.

"We've just booked our flights for that weekend so we're really looking forward to coming to Sligo and meeting Peter there," he added.
"Descendants of the Sun" star Song Joong Ki's popularity has reached the whole Asia. That was proven when he was welcomed grandly by his fans and overcrowded the Thailand airport on Wednesday.

Song left Korea for Thailand for his fan meeting tour. The Hallyu star arrived at the Suvarnabhumi Airport where thousands of fans had already gathered to greet him.

Thailand's broadcasting station PBS has captured the scene exclusively reporting the popularity of the 30-year-old Korean star.

Fans screamed on top of their lungs as soon as they saw Song Joong Ki. The star has showed appreciation as he bowed and waved to his fans.

Though "Descendants of the Sun" is already over, it is very clear that Song Joong Ki's popularity is still on the rise.

Watch the video below which was taken by a fan during his arrival:






Syrian president Bashar Assad's military operations against insurgents have focused on the northern city of Aleppo (AP)

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon has said there must be serious consequences for whoever is responsible for a "seemingly calculated attack" on a refugee camp in Syria in which at least 28 people died.

Mr Ban said he was outraged by Thursday's attack in Syria's Idlib province, which could constitute a war crime.

In a statement, he said the UN was working with humanitarian partners on the ground, to assess the needs and mobilising a response for those who fled the makeshift camp for displaced persons fearing further attacks.

Earlier Russian and Syrian officials denied that their aircraft struck the camp in an air strike.

The denials came as activists said a coalition of rebels and militants, including Syria's al Qaida branch, seized a strategic village from pro-government forces near the contested city of Aleppo.

According to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, some 73 fighters - 43 on the opposition side and 30 pro-government troops - have died since Thursday afternoon in the battle for the village of Khan Touman.

The advance signals a re-emergence of a powerful, ultraconservative coalition on the opposition's side in the Syria conflict.

A Syrian military official denied the army had carried out any operation against the Sarmada refugee camp, where the 28 died, including women and children, and dozens were wounded. The official said all reports about the attack are false.

A Russian military official said that no Russian or any other aircraft made flights over the camp in Sarmada, home to about 2,000 internally displaced people who fled the fighting from the surrounding Aleppo and Hama provinces over the past year.

Defence Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said in remarks carried by Russian news agencies that the Russian military had closely studied data from an air space monitoring system and determined that no aircraft had flown over the camp on Wednesday or Thursday.

Mr Konashenkov said the destruction seen on photographs and videos suggested the camp could have been shelled, whether intentionally or by mistake, from multiple rocket launchers that the Syrian al Qaida affiliate, known as the Nusra Front, has been using in the area.

Meanwhile, renewed fighting broke out on Friday around the village of Khan Touman, the observatory reported. Fighter jets, presumed to belong to either Syria or its powerful ally Russia, were launching strikes on opposition positions.

Leading the opposition side was the coalition known as Jaish al-Fatah, or Army of Conquest, an ultraconservative group led by the Nusra Front, and the jihadi Jund al-Aqsa and Ahrar al-Sham. The observatory said other non-jihadi factions were fighting at Khan Touman on the side of the coalition, as well.

The Army of Conquest seized Idlib, a strategic and symbolically important provincial capital, from government forces last year and threatened to make advances towards government strongholds on the Mediterranean coast and toward the capital, Damascus. Russia intervened militarily on the side of the government partly in response to that threat.

But the coalition is internally divided over who it considers enemies and how it rules areas under its control.

Khan Touman is just four miles from Aleppo, Syria's largest city and one-time commercial capital. It overlooks the main route between Damascus and Aleppo, parts of which remain under opposition control.

"It is part of the government's defensive line in south Aleppo," said observatory's chief, Rami Abdurrahman.

Aleppo-area opposition media activist Bahaa al-Halaby said the opposition fighters took control of Khan Touman around 7am on Friday morning.
Donald Trump appears on stage with Jeb Bush during a Republican debate in the early stages of the campaign in August 2015. Below: George W Bush. Photo: AP

THE Bush family has delivered an unprecedented and shocking snub to Donald Trump by refusing to endorse the Republican presidential nominee.

It came as Mr Trump struggled to find a vice-presidential running mate, with his first three choices  including two women  turning him down.

In another slight, Mitt Romney, the 2012 Republican nominee, announced that he would not attend the partys convention in July.

The developments show the extent of the division and rancour engulfing the Republican movement, and the daunting task Mr Trump faces to unify the party after its most contentious primary contest in living memory.

Hillary Clinton, the probable Democratic nominee, sought to capitalise by releasing a television advertisement that showed Mr Trump being denounced by fellow Republicans.

It featured Marco Rubio calling him the most vulgar person ever to aspire to the presidency and Jeb Bush saying that Mr Trump needs therapy.

During the nomination process, Mr Trump called Mr Bush low energy and an embarrassment to his family.

Mr Bushs father, former president George HW Bush, had enthusiastically endorsed the Republican nominee in each of the five elections since he left the White House, but his spokesman said he would not do so this time. And Freddy Ford, a spokesman for former president George W Bush, said he does not plan to participate in or comment on the presidential campaign.

The Rolling Stones also weighed in against Mr Trump, trying to ban him from using their music at political rallies. The British rock band, of which Mr Trump is a fan, said they had requested that he cease all use immediately.

Meanwhile, Mr Trump said he would no longer be self-funding his campaign. Self-funding had been a central plank of his appeal to voters, allowing him to portray himself as an outsider.

Mr Trumps run for the White House will cost about $1bn and he will now start inviting large donations as he attempts to outspend Ms Clinton.

He will court long-time Republican donors but is likely to face reluctance from many, especially those who have connections to the Bush family.

To determine who his running mate should be, Mr Trump set up a vetting committee. An early shortlist was released and consisted of Nikki Haley, the governor of South Carolina; Susana Martinez, the governor of New Mexico; and Rob Portman, an Ohio senator.

But they ruled themselves out along with others including Rick Scott, the governor of Florida. Mr Trump then floated the unlikely possibility of picking Texas senator Ted Cruz, his rival for the nomination. The billionaire said: Teds certainly a capable guy, so its something we can think about.

Mr Trump said he would also consider John Kasich, the Ohio governor who dropped out of the presidential race this week. Those who have expressed interest in being Mr Trumps running mate include New Jersey governor Chris Christie; former House speaker Newt Gingrich; Jeff Sessions, an Alabama senator; and Oklahoma governor Mary Fallin. ( Daily Telegraph, London)

Telegraph Media Group Limited [2022]
Donald Trump's social media post to mark a Mexican celebration day has gone viral, spawning criticism from some Latino groups who found it offensive.

Mr Trump took to Twitter and Facebook to mark Cinco de Mayo with a picture of himself eating a taco bowl and the caption: "Happy Cinco de Mayo! The best taco bowls are made in Trump Tower Grill. I love Hispanics!"

The post generated tens of thousands of retweets and seemingly as many jokes, but not everyone found it amusing.

Janet Murguia, president of the National Council of La Raza, the nation's largest Hispanic civil rights organisation, tweeted a short time later that the Republican presidential candidate's post was "clueless, offensive and self-promoting".

"Eating a taco or wearing a sombrero doesn't cut it w/our community in 2016," she tweeted.

Mr Trump's poll numbers among Latinos have been consistently poor since he began his campaign by promising to build a border wall to prevent "killers" and "rapists" from coming to the US from Mexico.

A Gallup poll released last month showed 77% of Hispanics had an unfavourable opinion of Mr Trump, while only 12% viewed him favourably.

The Latino Victory Fund, a left-leaning political group, released a statement that said: "Donald Trump is doubling down on his racist, anti-immigrant, anti-Latino and anti-Mexican rhetoric."

Vicente Fox, the former president of Mexico who has clashed with Mr Trump over the proposal to build a border wall, joked to Fox News that Mr Trump is "now having some enchiladas and some Mexican food - I hope that he will not get indigestion".

Democrats also seized on the post, suggesting it highlighted Mr Trump's weakness with Latinos. Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton's campaign tweeted a video - with Spanish subtitles - recounting his past comments supporting mass deportations of illegal immigrants.

Cinco de Mayo originally commemorated the Mexican Army's victory over French forces at the Battle of Puebla on May 5 1862. In the United States, it has since been transformed into a celebration of Mexican culture and food.

The taco bowl - an American creation - is sold at the Trump Grill, but the Trump Cafe in the candidate's namesake tower offers a "Taco Fiesta".

Ms Clinton said later that Mr Trump wants to create a "deportation force to round up millions of people", warning a largely Hispanic audience about the presumptive Republican nominee.

She said the "best way to prevent that from happening is to make sure he never gets near the White House".

The Democratic front-runner said she will push for a comprehensive overhaul of immigration laws and end "raids and round-ups" of immigrants.

Ms Clinton was heckled by some protesters at the Cinco de Mayo event at East Los Angeles College in Monterey Park, California, prompting the crowd to chant her name.
This photo from the Insect Museum of West China shows the world's longest insect (centre) compared with other smaller insects at the Insect Museum of West China in Chengdu, southwest China's Sichuan province. Photo: AFP/Getty Images

The stick insect measuring 62.4 centimetres found two years ago in the southern province of Guangxi has broken the record for length amongst the world's 807,625 known insects, the official Xinhua agency said, citing the Insect Museum of West China. Photo: AFP/Getty Images

The pictured insect is one of six offspring from a stick insect measuring 62.4 centimetres found two years ago in the southern province of Guangxi which broke the record for length amongst the world's 807,625 known insects, according to the official Xinhua agency. Photo: /AFP/Getty Images

Scientists in China believe that they have discovered the world's longest insect  which measures over half a metre.

The new species of stick insect measures 62.4 centimetres precisely and belongs to the genus Phryganistria, the scientists say.

Zhao Li from the Insect Museum of West China, who discovered the insect, said he had been hunting the insect for years.

Local farmers had told him of a "huge insect" as thick an adult's index finger.

"I was collecting insects on a 1,200-meter-tall mountain in Guangxi's Liuzhou City [when] a dark shadow appeared in the distance, which looked like a tree twig," Zhao told Xinhua.

"As I went near, I was shocked to find the huge insect's legs were as long as its body, he told Chinas state media outlet Xinhua.
Police examine the scene at the Westfield Montgomery Mall in Bethesda (AP)

A man wanted by police in connection with three fatal shootings - including that of his estranged wife in the car park of a high school - has been arrested.

Police in the Maryland suburbs of Washington DC said 62-year-old Eulalio Tordil had been taken into custody without incident.

They identified Tordil as an employee of the Federal Protective Service, which provides security at federal properties. Tordil was put on administrative duties in March after a protective order was issued against him.

Police said he followed 44-year-old Gladys Tordil to their children's Beltsville's High Point High School on Thursday and shot her. He also shot and wounded a man who tried to intervene.

At the Westfield Montgomery Mall in Bethesda, about 10 miles northwest of Washington, one person was initially shot and two others may have been shot coming to that person's aid, said Montgomery County Police Assistant Chief Darryl McSwain.

A man died and another one is in critical condition, said Montgomery County police spokesman Captain Paul Starks said. A woman has injuries that are not life-threatening.

About a half an hour later, police were called to a shooting at a Giant Food store in Aspen Hill, about five miles away. Police later tweeted that a woman died after that shooting.
Scotland went to the polls yesterday to elect its next batch of MSPs to the Scottish Parliament.

The Holyrood election comes a year after the SNP, led by Nicola Sturgeon (right), won 56 out of 59 seats at the UK general election, and there are no signs the party's momentum is slowing.

Polls suggest the SNP is in line to take the largest share of seats, after its landslide victory in 2011 created the first Holyrood majority government.

But all eyes will be on the race for second place, with the Conservatives hoping to unseat Labour as Scotland's second biggest party.

Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson has been increasingly optimistic in the days leading up to the election, insisting polling and canvassing returns indicate her party is "well on course" to be Scotland's main opposition.

Scottish Labour leader Kezia Dugdale has brought in a raft of new faces this year after Labour was decimated in the 2015 general election, returning just one MP in a land where it had dominated politics for nearly half a century.

Ms Dugdale has acknowledged she still has work to do to rebuild the party into a force capable of unseating the SNP, but she has stated her intention to take Labour back into government.

Scotland's constitutional future remains a key election battleground after 45pc voted for Scottish independence in September 2014, and a recent survey suggested half of Scots will not vote for a party that disagrees with their views on independence.

The referendum led to a surge in support for the Scottish Greens, with its membership quadrupling since then as many Scots apparently look for a pro-independence alternative to the SNP.

The nationalist left is also represented by newcomers Rise, which has earned the support of former SNP deputy leader Jim Sillars, and Solidarity - which is led by former Scottish Socialist MSP Tommy Sheridan.

Polls indicate the Greens could be in line for as many as eight MSPs, if their strategy of focussing largely on the regional list pays off.

Eurosceptic party Ukip has followed a similar strategy, and is hoping to emulate its success in the 2014 European Parliament election when David Coburn became the party's first Scottish parliamentarian.

Liberal Democrat leader Willie Rennie is hoping Scotland has forgiven his party for going into coalition with the hitherto unpopular Conservatives in the UK government in 2010.
The UK Labour party has suffered heavy defeats in Scotland and setbacks in Wales and England, pointing to a dip in support that could challenge the authority of the party's leader Jeremy Corbyn.

The Scottish National Party leader Nicola Sturgeon has declared that her party has won a "historic" victory in the Holyrood election with the Conservatives expected to the lead the opposition.

Labour looks set to slump to third place in the the Scottish Parliament polls - losing more than nine points in its share of the vote.

It is unclear if the SNP, who pulled off a clean sweep of seats in its one-time stronghold of Glasgow, will reach the 65 seats necessary to win a majority in the 129-seat parliament.

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In Wales, Labour also suffered losses including thetotemic Rhondda seat in the Welsh Assembly to Plaid Cymru leader Leanne Wood.

While Labour held on to two safe seats in Westminster by-elections and losses in English councils were less deep than some predicted, frustrations with Mr Corbyn's leadership bubbled to the surface.

Backbench MP Neil Coyle warned the party was "moving away from government" under the veteran left-winger, while the leader of the Labour group on Portsmouth Council, John Ferret, denounced him on BBC Radio as "incompetent" and "incapable of giving the leadership we need".

Bassetlaw MP John Mann said third place in Scotland would be "cataclysmic" for Labour.
Wood also famously had a threesome with footballer Rooney and friend Jennifer Thompson in 2010 ahead of the South Africa World Cup.

The editor of a US tabloid, who exposed a celebrity at the the centre of a Dublin affair with a well-known prostitute, has vowed to continue naming celebrities who attempt to gag the Press.

The American publication has already made international headlines by naming the entertainer PJS, who used the law to cover up an extra-marital threesome.

And earlier this week the magazine named a married actor accused of paying 245 to a high-profile escort, five years after he won a gagging order in London.

Helen Wood, who famously exposed Wayne Rooney for hiring her, has told the publication that the TV actor, who cannot be named in the British press, paid her 245 for the session in Dublin.

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Even the name of the US tabloid, and the identity of its editor, cannot be published in England and Wales because to do so risks leading readers to the US coverage and breaching the injunctions obtained by the entertainer and the actor.

The editor said: The [name of magazine] has never shied away from publishing or tackling very serious issues and we will continue to pursue stories in Britain.

We believe our readers have the right to know about the professional and personal lives of these types of celebrities and we are not going to shy away from that.

The notion that a celebrity can seek an injunction to prohibit material from being published in traditional material when it is available in new media is ridiculous.

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Asked if his tabloid was planning further stories exposing British figures who currently hold an injunction protecting their anonymity, the editor said: Watch this space.

Told that he or his publication could not be named in England and Wales, he said: That highlights the absurdity of the situation.

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Mark Stephens, a media law expert from the law firm Howard Kennedy, said: I think this US tabloid is going to continue to play an important role in injunction law.

Any celebrity with an international profile who has obtained an injunction is going to be looking at this with some nervousness, because their own lawyers have effectively painted a target on their backs.

It has emerged that more than 15 celebrities who have won gagging orders face having their secrets exposed, including a Premier League manager, several well-known actors and sportsmen.

The Supreme Court is due to decide this month whether PJS and his married partner YMA can be named after the Court of Appeal overturned the injunction because it had been rendered pointless by international publicity.

The names in the PJS case were widely repeated online after being published by the US tabloid.

A Sunday newspaper in Scotland, where the injunction did not apply, also disclosed the identities last month.

In the latest case, a well-known British actor asked former sex worker Helen Wood, 29, to use a sex toy on him, the US magazine reported, with Miss Wood adding that he was "disgusting" at kissing.

Telegraph Media Group Limited [2022]
Health authorities in Spain say they have identified the first case of the birth defect microcephaly in the foetus of a pregnant woman infected with the Zika virus.

The health department for the north-eastern region of Catalonia said the woman travelled to South America some months ago and had contracted Zika and dengue. In a statement the department said the foetus has several malformations.

The Health Ministry confirmed on Friday that it was Spain's first case. It said Spain has identified 105 people infected with Zika, 13 of them pregnant women.

The mosquito-borne Zika virus can cause microcephaly, a severe birth defect in which babies are born with abnormally small heads and brain damage.

The phenomenon was first detected in Brazil, where experts say there are nearly 1,200 confirmed cases of microcephaly.
A man is ordered to lay down just after an attack on Turkish journalist Can Dundar outside the main courthouse in Istanbul (Can Erok, Cumhuriyet via AP)

A prominent journalist has been sentenced to more than five years in jail, hours after he escaped an attack by a gunman at a Turkish court.

The Istanbul court found Cumhuriyet newspaper's editor-in-chief Can Dundar guilty of revealing state secrets and sentenced him to five years and 10 months in prison.

His colleague, the paper's Ankara representative Erdem Gul, was sentenced to five years behind bars for the same charge.

The case, which is widely viewed as a test for press freedom in Turkey, relates to the pair's reports on alleged government arms smuggling to Syria. The journalists were expected to appeal the verdict and remain free until the end of the appeals process.

Earlier, a gunman shouting "traitor" fired two shots at Dundar outside the court building. Dundar escaped unharmed, but Yagiz Senkal, a journalist working for private NTV television was injured in the leg.

"Today we lived through two assassination attempts," Mr Dundar told reporters after the verdict. "One was armed, the second was judicial."

He said the sentence aimed to silence the Turkish press and insisted journalism is not a crime. "This bullet, this decision will not intimidate us," he added.

Last year, Cumhuriyet published what it said were images of Turkish trucks carrying ammunition to Syrian militants. The paper said the images proved that Turkey was smuggling arms to rebels - a claim the government rejects.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the national intelligence agency, MIT, were plaintiffs in the case. Mr Dundar accused the president of inciting violence by weighing in on the trial.

"The president acted as if he were the prosecutor of this case, he engaged in threats and blackmail, and he paved the way for an armed man to open fire," he said. "I hope that next time he'll think twice."

At the final hearing, prosecutors dropped the charges of espionage and aiding a terrorist organisation. On the charges of revealing state secrets, the judges deemed the pair guilty. It acquitted them on charges of planning a coup, the Dogan news agency reported.
North Koreans carry bouquets of decorative flowers as they wait in the rain at Kim Il Sung Square in Pyongyang (AP)

Diners watch a broadcast of the 7th Congress of the Workers' Party of Korea, where North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is seen delivering a speech (AP)

North Korea has opened the first full congress of its ruling party since 1980 with leader Kim Jong Un speaking behind closed doors to thousands of cheering delegates.

The congress is a major political milestone for the young North Korean leader, who was not yet born when the previous congress was held 36 years ago.

Kim, who stood as he read the prepared speech to the more than 3,400 delegates, was interrupted repeatedly by cheers and applause as he declared the congress open and laid out accomplishments since he took power in 2011 - including what the government says was its first hydrogen bomb test in January.

Officials portrayed the meeting as a showcase of the country's stability and unity under Kim despite international criticism and tough new sanctions over its nuclear and missile programmes.

North Korea's information committee bused more than 100 foreign journalists to the congress venue for a look, but only from the outside, at the ornate April 25 House of Culture, draped in red party banners and flags.

Officials had another surprise as the day wore on for the news-hungry media guests - brought in to give the congress a global audience - who were then taken not to the meeting, but to a wire factory.

In preparation for the congress, Pyongyang has been spruced up and large groups of students and workers could be seen around the capital as a light rain fell on Friday preparing for parades and rallies that are to be held in conjunction with the congress.

North Korea has held other big meetings of its ruling Workers' Party since the 1980 congress - notably in 2010 and 2012 - but all six previous congresses came under national founder and "eternal president" Kim Il Sung, who died in 1994.

This one could provide a major opportunity for Kim, who is still largely a mystery to the outside world and has yet to travel abroad or meet any world leaders, to step out of the shadows of his grandfather, Kim Il Sung, and father, Kim Jong Il.

Kim Jong Un has patterned himself more closely after his charismatic grandfather than his notoriously reticent father, who almost never spoke in public. He spoke at length before a huge military parade last October. Kim Il Sung spoke on the first day of the 1980 congress.

But, like so much else in North Korea, how the congress will play out still remains a mystery.

As of Friday evening, the government had not announced an itinerary, or even when it is to end.

The congress is the party's highest-level decision-making body, though the real decisions are made by Kim and his inner circle. The delegates at the congress - there were about 3,000 in 1980 - will be there more to endorse than debate.

If the state media are any guide, the focus will be on praise of Kim and his successes on the nuclear front, along with improvements since he assumed power to boost the nation's standard of living - themes the media hit hard as the congress approached and trumpeted again loudly on Friday.

The congress will also be coloured by the anti-US bravado that marks so much of North Korea's world view - that it is an underdog forced to pursue nuclear weapons in defence against the Goliath that is Washington.

"Now we are greeting the new era of Marshal Kim Jong Un," said Pyongyang resident Choe Un Su, a 75-year-old retiree. "We should make the American soldiers get out of South Korea and under the leadership of our marshal we can open up the path of reunification."

North Korea's government has made clear it has no intention of backing down in its nuclear development programme.

Hours before the start of the congress, the state-run Korean Central News Agency boasted of the country's military achievements that followed its nuclear test and long-range rocket launch earlier this year, including claimed advancements in developing nuclear warheads, missile re-entry vehicles and long-range rocket engines.

It said the congress would be a historic celebration because Kim Jong Un's guidance has elevated the country into a "nuclear, space power" and pushed it into the "absolute prime" of its efforts to build a "thriving nation".

The gathering will likely provide some insights into what Kim's other priorities are and who he wants to help him carry them out.

The economy is certainly high on Kim's list, but his "byongjin" guns-and-butter policy of developing North Korea's nuclear weapons while also building its domestic economy is seen by many outside economists as unlikely to succeed because of the heavy price the nuclear programme brings in international sanctions that keep the country's economy from growing.

Kim is expected to replace the party's old guard with younger elites loyal to him and may formally elevate his younger sister, Kim Yo Jong, to a position that would essentially make her his second-in-command. Believed to be in her late twenties, she is currently a vice department director at the party's Central Committee and frequently appears at her brother's public events.
Clemson doctoral candidate, Xiaoxia Wang of Beijing, is draped with a doctoral hood as a symbolic gesture to honor her attaining the highest level of formal education available during the Clemson University Doctoral Hooding Ceremony on Thursday May 5, 2016 in Clemson.

SHARE Clemson doctoral candidate, Jacquelyn Lorraine Blakley of Anderson, is draped with a doctoral hood as a symbolic gesture to honor her attaining the highest level of formal education available during the Clemson University Doctoral Hooding Ceremony on Thursday May 5, 2016 in Clemson. Clemson doctoral candidate, Theresa Patricia Atkinson of Baton Rouge, is draped with a doctoral hood as a symbolic gesture to honor her attaining the highest level of formal education available during the Clemson University Doctoral Hooding Ceremony on Thursday May 5, 2016 in Clemson.

By Mike Eads of the Independent Mail

CLEMSON  Graduate students, some from as far away as Kosovo and others from as near as Pendleton, became Clemson University Ph.D.s at Thursday's Doctoral Hooding Ceremony.

The new doctors and their supporters packed into the Brooks Center for the Performing Arts for the midday event.

Jackie Blakley worked on her Ph.D. for over five years all while serving as Dean of the Business and Public Services Division at Tri-County Technical College. Blakley's dissertation looked into the motivations of black women who pursue engineering studies at community colleges, a subject no doubt related to her day job.

"A lot of young women focus on engineering because of things their parents had done, while a lot of the older ones had life experiences and they decided they wanted to go back to school and do something better," Blakley explained.

Blakley, an Anderson native, is a 1984 graduate of Westside High School who went on to get her bachelor's degree from the University of Georgia and master's from Clemson. She's focused right now on her public services duties at Tri-County, but she wouldn't rule out using her new degree to pursue work elsewhere within the technical college system or at a four-year university.

Albina Balidemaj took time off from teaching psychology at the American University in Kosovo to pick up her doctorate, which she earned online through a Clemson partnership with Marin Barleti University in Tirana, Albania.

The program, run through the university's Institute on Family and Neighborhood Life, identifies doctoral candidates in the Balkans. Balidemaj and her family fled Kosovo's war with Serbia in 1999 and settled in Minnesota, where she later attended college. She returned to her homeland  now administered by the United Nations  eight years later and was teaching when she heard about Clemson.

"I met with Dr. Jim McDonnell, we discussed the program, and I found it interesting because I got my bachelor's and master's degrees in clinical psychology," said Balidemaj, 33, whose dissertation looked at the naturalization process for Albanians in the United States.

"She is the first graduate of our program (in the Balkans) and we're very proud of her," McDonnell said.

Provost Bob Jones started the hooding ceremony last December as a way to recognize the rigor and commitment show by the doctoral candidates, and to do that in a more intimate setting they could share with friends and family.

Faculty advisers accompany the new doctors as a way to recognize the partnerships that develop in the process.

"They spend thousands of hours (together), creating new knowledge and sharing it with the academic community," Jones said.

Recipients were announced, given their diplomas and greeted by the faculty members who supervised their dissertations. The faculty members draped the hoods  which reflected the recipients' particular academic disciplines  on their shoulders, the new doctors strolled over to be congratulated by Jones and other top administrators and proceeded off the stage.

Duke, Northwestern and many other universities with large graduate programs do similar ceremonies every spring and fall.

Master's degree recipients will go through Clemson's general graduation ceremony at Bon Secours Wellness Arena in Greenville on Saturday. The first session, set for 9:30 a.m., will include presentation of an honorary Doctorate of Humanities to General Electric CEO, Jeff Immelt.

Follow Michael Eads on Twitter @MikeEads_AIM.
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By Nikie Mayo of the Independent Mail

One man is dead and another has serious burns after a pair of Anderson County house fires occurred within hours of each other late Thursday.

A 73-year-old man was rescued from the first fire, which happened on Wilton E. Hall Road in Starr shortly after 4 p.m.

The second fire happened Pamela Drive in Williamston around 7 p.m. A 48-year-old man was dragged out of his home there, but was pronounced dead after being rushed to AnMed Health Medical Center.

Both fires remain under investigation.

Lt. J.D. Robinson of Flat Rock-Bowen fire station said 25 to 30 firefighters responded to the first blaze, including some from Starr and Iva, but the old, single story home was already fully engulfed in flames by the time they got the call. 

"We think there were four to five people in this home, including some of the elderly man's adult children," Robinson said. "The man's son pulled him out of the fire and everyone was out and talking when we got here. But the flames were shooting through the windows and the roof."

The single-story home was soon gutted, with smoke pouring from its innards and yellow tape stretched across the yard to keep curious onlookers from getting too close.

The house is in rural Anderson County, surrounded by fields and woods. A part of the road surrounding the house was blocked for several hours as firefighters remained at the scene dousing hot spots.

The survivor, whose identity was not disclosed, was initially taken to AnMed. He was later transferred to the Joseph M. Still Burn Center in Augusta, Georgia, for treatment of his injuries, according to Greg Shore, the owner of Medshore Ambulance Service.

Three hours later, Anderson County firefighters responded to the blaze in Williamston. Shore, who is also Anderson County coroner, said a man was discovered unresponsive in a home there.

"His girlfriend went to check on him around 7 p.m.," Shore said. "As soon as she went in the door, she could see that the house was filled with smoke."

Shore said there was extensive fire damage in the kitchen. The man was found in a nearby bedroom.

Shore said the man's girlfriend and a passer-by dragged him out of the house.

The man was rushed to AnMed in cardiac arrest, Shore said. He was pronounced dead at the hospital. Shore said he believes the man died of smoke inhalation. An autopsy is scheduled for Friday.

Follow Nikie Mayo on Twitter @NikieMayo
The city of Warwick approved a controversial ordinance Monday night clearing the way for the use of license plate readers in the city. The move comes a year after the city of Cranston made a similar move and is touted by officials as a way to improve safety by alerting police officers if a certain license plate is detected. Critics of the ordinance, including the Rhode Island chapter of the ACLU, expressed concern over the use of such cameras, expressing concerns over privacy, how data would be used and who they might target. Do you support the use of license plate recognition cameras in your community? Why or why not? Let us know in this week's poll question below.

You voted:
Result Highlights: (Rs. in crore)

Reported Results IIFL Estimates Variance (%) Standalone Revenue 515.06 510 0.99 Standalone Net Profit 66.97 74.66 [10.30]

Pfizer Ltd, world's premier biopharmaceutical, reported standalone net profit of Rs. 66.97 crore for the quarter ended March 31, 2016, registering growth of 56.91% yoy and 66.01% qoq. The companys revenue stood at Rs. 515.06 crore, up 11.22% yoy and 1.86% qoq.Its standalone core operating profit of Rs. 123.03 crore for the quarter, declined by 1.4% yoy but clocked growth of 50.04% qoq. Operating profit margin for the current quarter at 23.89% contracted by 305 bps yoy but expanded by 767 bps qoq.For the year ended March 31, 2016, the company reported standalone net profit of Rs. 222.78 crore, growing by 219.08% yoy. Its standalone revenue for the period stood at Rs. 2,017.02 crore, registering growth of 8.83% yoy.Pfizer Ltd's core operating profit stood at Rs. 430.98 crore, recording growth of 12.54% yoy. Operating margin for the current period at 21.88% expanded by 122 bps yoy.Standalone EPS for the quarter stood at Rs. 14.64.Bloomberg estimated the companys standalone net profit at Rs. 67.40 crore.Pfizer has recommended a dividend of Rs. 15.00 per Equity share of Rs. 10/- each (150%) for the financial year ended March 31, 2016. The said dividend, if declared at the ensuing Annual General Meeting of the Company, shall be paid on July 20, 2016.Pfizer Ltd is currently trading at Rs. 1779.9, up by 34 points or 1.95% from its previous closing of Rs. 1745.9 on the BSE.The scrip opened at Rs. 1758 and has touched a high and low of Rs. 1817 and Rs. 1758 respectively. So far 92045(NSE+BSE) shares were traded on the counter. The current market cap of the company is Rs. 7987.1 crore.The BSE group 'A' stock of face value Rs. 10 has touched a 52 week high of Rs. 2724 on 22-Sep-2015 and a 52 week low of Rs. 1611 on 21-Mar-2016. Last one week high and low of the scrip stood at Rs. 1780 and Rs. 1715.2 respectively.The promoters holding in the company stood at 63.92 % while Institutions and Non-Institutions held 12.57 % and 23.51 % respectively.The stock is currently trading above its 200 DMA.
MADISON  If you are willing to join me in stipulating that education is important and will further stipulate that good schools are preferable to mediocre or poor ones, then we have some priorities to rearrange because America is no longer even close to providing the best education in the world.

The road to an improved U.S. education system is long and winding, but the following four steps would be a good way to start the journey:

1. Keep state and national politicians as far away from schools as possible.

Its a crying shame it has come to this, but the less education is pondered on Capitol Hill and in state capitols, the better off our schools will be. Restoring local community control of schools needs to be Job One.

2. Stop testing kids to tears.

All the incessant testing done nowadays doesnt help students, it hurts them by cutting deeply into the time devoted to actual teaching and learning.

The politicians testing fetish grew out of a desperate desire to do an end-run around a reality they find intolerably uncomfortable: Even the very best educators will almost always fail when they work in inadequately equipped schools and are tasked with teaching profoundly disadvantaged students.

Rather than try to eliminate or at least diminish the disadvantages, the politicians look for an easier route. Nonstop testing gives them someone to point fingers at. It produces a plentiful supply of scapegoats but does little or nothing to help struggling students learn better or all students learn more.

3. No more save our schools referendums.

Funding schools by public referendum is proving unsustainable in Wisconsin and elsewhere around the country. The worst thing about putting schools in the position of having to repeatedly get voter approval just to be able to sustain basic programs and keep up facilities is how it aggravates educational inequality.

School officials in communities that are struggling economically are understandably reluctant to ask their neighbors to raise their own taxes. When they feel they have no choice but to seek funding, they ask for less than officials in affluent areas where people can more easily afford to say yes.

Local elected school boards need to be trusted to put together responsible budgets and manage resources wisely, and state and federal school aid needs to be distributed in a way that equalizes funding across districts and provides adequate and equitable funding for all schools.

4. Align expectations with investments.

Excellence doesnt come cheap. It is no coincidence that the best performing schools are consistently found where education spending is highest. But this is another reality that politicians find intolerably uncomfortable, which is why they are forever in search of the scholastic equivalent of fairy dust and why American education is so prone to fads.

A quarter of a century ago, school choice was promoted as a miracle cure for what ailed American education. The 25-year experiment has done nothing to boost student achievement. The only thing it has done is prop up private schools experiencing steady enrollment loss.

As it became increasingly clear that taxpayer-subsidized private schooling had no magical powers, the school accountability movement took hold. It enriched the standardized testing industry but has done little else. Yesterdays school to work and todays STEM education fixations havent prevented the American education system from continuing to slip toward mediocrity internationally, but have driven teaching of the arts and civics to the brink of extinction.

One strategy that has proven effective over the years is class size reduction. But having smaller classes means hiring more teachers and that costs money. Replacing the industrial-age factory model of schools and the mass-production, assembly-line approach to instruction with a more personalized, flexible and interactive approach can reverse the decline of U.S. educational performance, but it requires smaller classes and smaller schools and that gives politicians the willies.

As a society, we have decisions to make and priorities to set. If we expect excellence, we need to act like thats what we want. If we can live with diminished international competitiveness that comes with increasing educational mediocrity here at home, then fads and fairy dust will do just fine.
Result Highlights: (Rs. in crore)

Reported Results IIFL Estimates Variance (%) Standalone Revenue 2456.30 2744.5 [10.50] Standalone Net Profit 184.11 155.05 18.74

Titan, World's fifth largest watch manufacturer, reported standalone net profit of Rs.184.11 crore for the quarter ended March 31, 2016, registering decline of 14.4% yoy and 18.28% qoq. The companys standalone revenue stood at Rs. 2,456.30 crore, down 1.6% yoy and 28.31% qoq.Its standalone core operating profit of Rs. 210.09 crore for the quarter, declined by 22.22% yoy and 32.21% qoq. Operating profit margin for the current quarter at 8.55% contracted by 227 bps yoy and 50 bps qoq.For the year ended March 31, 2016, the company reported standalone net profit of Rs. 705.85 crore, declining by 14.24% yoy. Its standalone revenue for the period stood at Rs. 11,264.53 crore, registering decline of 5.37% yoy.Titan Company Ltd's core operating profit stood at Rs. 945.49 crore, recording decline of 18.02% yoy. Operating margin for the current period at 8.42% contracted by 127 bps yoy.Standalone EPS for the quarter stood at Rs. 2.07.Bloomberg estimated the companys standalone net profit at Rs. 179.83 crore.Titan Company Ltd ended at Rs. 364.1, up by 4.7 points or 1.31% from its previous closing of Rs. 359.4 on the BSE.The scrip opened at Rs. 364 and touched a high and low of Rs. 368 and Rs. 354 respectively. A total of 1743319(NSE+BSE) shares were traded on the counter. The current market cap of the company is Rs. 31907.53 crore.The BSE group 'A' stock of face value Rs. 1 touched a 52 week high of Rs. 392 on 26-Nov-2015 and a 52 week low of Rs. 303 on 29-Feb-2016. Last one week high and low of the scrip stood at Rs. 369.2 and Rs. 353.3 respectively.The promoters holding in the company stood at 53.05 % while Institutions and Non-Institutions held 25.32 % and 21.63 % respectively.The stock traded below its 100 DMA.
Oberthur Technologies (OT), a leading global provider of embedded security software products, services and solutions announced a key partnership with Telefonica Spain for their migration to the new generation of SIM Over-The-Air (OTA) platform.

In order to continuously leverage new technological developments, OT supports Telefonica Spain and upgrades their SIM OTA platform to benefit from the latest standards and functionalities. The migration allows improvements in new service deployments such as:

Maintaining accurate network settings at any time

Deploying & activating new services on SIM cards with a short time-to-market on a massive scale after issuance

Reaching 100% success rate of the OTA update operations

Simplifying campaign management and reducing maintenance costs.

This solution provides real effectiveness in updating roaming data (SIM always up-to-date) in order to offer customers a reliable experience, both in their country or when traveling abroad. It also allows operators to streamline operations (inventory management, customized profiles, etc.).

OTs role is to offer comprehensive and innovative solutions to accelerate its customers development while placing data security at the heart of their deployments.OT has been providing OTA services to Telefonica Spain for more than a decade, and is now proud to enhance the agreement with the deployment of a new generation platform, said Armand Lecorche, Connectivity Business Line Director at OT.

ABOUT OBERTHUR TECHNOLOGIES

OT is a world leader in embedded digital security that protects you when you connect, authenticate or pay.

OT is strategically positioned in high growth markets and offers embedded security software solutions for end-point devices as well as associated remote management solutions to a huge portfolio of international clients, including banks and financial institutions, mobile operators, authorities and governments, as well as manufacturers of connected objects and equipment.

OT employs over 6 300 employees worldwide, including almost 700 R&D people. With a global footprint of 4 regional secure manufacturing hubs and 39 secure service centers, OTs international network serves clients in 140 countries. For more information: www.oberthur.com

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All you need to know about the latest trends of the Mobility world, available on AppStore and Google Play

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View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160407005986/en/
Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited (BHEL) has added another coal-based power plant to the grid by successfully commissioning a 500 MW thermal unit in Jharkhand. The unit has been commissioned by BHEL at Bokaro Thermal Power-A Station of Damodar Valley Corporation (DVC) in Jharkhand.



BHEL has executed the contract of setting up the 500 MW coal-based unit on Engineering, Procurement & Construction (EPC) basis. With this, BHEL has supplied 84% of the total coal-based power generating capacity installed by DVC.

BHEL-make sets of 500/520 MW rating class today form the backbone of the Indian power sector and have been performing much above the national average as well as international benchmarks. BHEL has already established its engineering prowess in the past through successfully delivering higher rated units such as 600 MW, 660 MW, 700 MW and 800 MW thermal sets having a high degree of indigenization. In Jharkhand, BHEL sets contribute a significant 87% to the total installed power generating capacity of the state. In addition, BHEL is presently executing a supercritical project of 3x660 MW rating at North Karanpura for NTPC in Jharkhand.
Indraprastha Gas Ltd (IGL), the city gas distributor in the National Capital Region (NCR), said on Thursday that its CNG compression capacity of over 70 lakh kg per day is more than enough to meet the growth in demand for the fuel after the Supreme Courts decision banning diesel taxis in the city.

While the current average daily CNG sale of IGL is over 25 lakh kg per day, the existing refueling infrastructure is enough to dispense over 35 lakh kg per day through a comfortable fueling experience to our customers, IGL's MD Narendra Kumar has been quoted as saying.

IGL also said that 73 new CNG filling facilities have been set up at retail outlets of oil marketing companies (OMC) such as IOC, BPCL and HPCL since January 2016.

The company provides fuel to more than 8.5 lakh vehicles in NCR.

While 52 out of these fueling facilities are located in the Delhi, 21 are in the nearby towns of Greater Noida and Ghaziabad, IGL said in the statement.
ABG Shipyard Limited, Adhunik Metaliks Limited, Alstom T&D India Limited, ANG Industries Limited, Birla Cotsyn (India) Limited, Entegra Limited, Ess Dee Aluminium Limited, Everonn Education Limited, First Winner Industries Limited, GTL Infrastructure Limited, HCL Technologies Limited, IPCA Laboratories Limited, Jaypee Infratech Limited, Jindal Stainless Limited, Jyoti Structures Limited, KDDL Limited, Kemrock Industries and Exports Limited, KSS Limited, Paras Petrofils Limited, Provogue (India) Limited, Rainbow Papers Limited, Radha Madhav Corporation Limited, Shri Aster Silicates Limited, Sterling Biotech Limited, Surana Corporation Limited, TCI Finance Limited, Visesh Infotecnics Limited, Visagar Polytex Limited, Zee Learn were some of the notable stocks to record new 52-week low.

The Indian equity market closed almost at the same point where it too off from in the morning. Negative vibes from the US and the Asian markets compelled stock market in India to open with a gap down. However, after slipping below the 7700 mark, the Nifty staged a smart bounce back.IT, healthcare, capital goods and energy index on the BSE ended with losses. On the other hand, telecom, auto, banking, oil & gas, power and utilities index ended with smart gains. The midcap index garnered half a percent while smallcap index marginally slipped lower.GAIL, BHEL, Eicher Motors, Tata Power, ACC, Asian Paints, Ambuja Cement and SBI were among the gainers on NSE, whereas Dr. Reddy's, Adani Ports, Wipro, HCL Tech, Tech Mahindra and L&T were among the losers today.Hero MotoCorp slipped 1% to Rs.2,872 on BSE. The company reported standalone net profit of Rs. 814.16 crore for the quarter ended March 31, 2016, registering growth of 70.85% yoy and 2.31% qoq.Commenting on Hero Motocorp results, Amar Ambani, Head of Research, IIFL said, "Revenues witnessed growth of 10.6% yoy and 3% on sequential basis. Volumes were higher by 9.3% yoy and 1.8% qoq. Realizations were higher by 1.2% yoy and 1.2% on qoq basis, increase was on the back of a favorable product mix and also on account of sharp jump in spare part sales. Margins at 15.7% were in line with our expectations, margins were higher by 331bps yoy owing to sharp decline raw material costs on the back of falling commodity prices."Finally, the BSE Sensex ended with a loss of 34 points at 25,228. The BSE Sensex opened at 25,224 touched an intra-day high of 25,260 and low of 25,058.The NSE Nifty closed with a loss of mere two points at 7,733. The NSE Nifty opened at 7,718 hitting a high of 7,739 and low of 7,678.The India VIX (Volatility) index was down 1.12% at 16.9775. The BSE Midcap index ended up 0.37% and Smallcap index down 0.20%.On the global front, China's Shanghai Composite index and Hang Seng ended 2% lower.In Europe, the FTSE 100 is trading lower by 0.67%. DAX and the CAC 40 are trading down 0.7% each.The Indian Rupee was trading down 3 paise at 66.57 per US dollar.Out of 1,392 stocks traded on the NSE, 748 declined and 576 advanced today.ABG Shipyard tumbled 20% to Rs.30.65 on BSE. Reports stated that the promoters of the debt-laden ship-maker may have to give up control of the company after they failed to bring in an investor, yet again.Diamond Power jumped 9.9% to Rs.44.85 after the company has announced that its board is likely to consider re-organisation of business after consulting its investors. The company will authorise a committee to offer stake up to 51% to a strategic investor.Xchanging Solutions hit 20% upper circuit to Rs.60.10 on the BSE after the company engaged in information technology (IT) services business announced voluntary delisting plan.Hindustan Composites rallied 14.4% to Rs.1055 on BSE. the company reported 135% growth in net profit at Rs 18.9 crore for the quarter ended March 2016 compared with Rs 8 crore in the same quarter last fiscal.Talwalkars Better Value surged 3.8% to Rs.202.10 after the company reported 13 per cent year-on-year rise in its consolidated net profit at Rs 20.20 crore for the quarter ended March 2016.J. Kumar Infraprojects jumped 3.2% to Rs.245.15 on BSE. The company has secured LOA and work order from MCGM of worth Rs.195.14 crore.Syndicate Bank climbed 3.6% to Rs.68 on BSE. The bank has allotted Rs.9.5 crore equity shares of face value of Rs.10/- each for cash at an issue price of Rs. 77.79 determined in accordance with Regulation 76 (1) of SEBI (ICDR) Regulations aggregating to Rs. 740 crore on preferential basis to Government of India.Bank of India gained 1% to Rs.86.75 after the bank has allotted 10,14,82,527 equity shares of Rs. 10/- each to Government of India at a price of Rs.113.32 per share; 1,60,00,000 equity shares of Rs. 10/- each to Life Insurance Corporation of India at Rs.96.03 per share.Procter & Gamble slipped 3.2% to Rs. 6,199. The company posted a net profit of Rs. 973 mn for the quarter ended March 31, 2016 compared with Rs.868.9 mn for the quarter ended March 31, 2015.Aarti Drugs cracked 4.3% to Rs. 464. The company reported a consolidated net profit of Rs.18.6 crore as against Rs.17 crore in the same period last year.Jindal Steel & Power dropped 2.7% to Rs.64.25 on BSE. JSPL will sell certain steel and mining assets and will expand its power business portfolio into renewable energy and transmission and distribution (T&D), CEO Ravi Uppal has been quoted as saying by a business daily.A total of 17 stocks registered a fresh 52-week high in trades today, whereas 29 stocks touched a new 52-week low on the NSE.Allsec Technologies Limited, Capital First Limited, Cholamandalam Investment and Finance Company Limited, Equitas Holdings Limited, Indiabulls Real Estate Limited, Kakatiya Cement Sugar & Industries Limited, KRBL Limited, Meghmani Organics Limited, Omaxe Limited, Parrys Sugar Industries Limited, Petronet LNG Limited, Sathavahana Ispat Limited, Texmo Pipes and Products Limited, TPL Plastech Limited, Upper Ganges Sugar & Industries Limited, UPL Limited, V-Guard Industries were some of the prominent stocks to log a fresh 52-week high.
Union Power Ministry is in process of preparing a framework for hydropower development in India and the same would soon be taken to the highest level in the government, a top ministry official said at an ASSOCHAM event held in New Delhi today. Theis in process of preparing a framework for hydropower development in India and the same would soon be taken to the highest level in the government, a top ministry official said at an ASSOCHAM event held in New Delhi today.

We are preparing a framework for hydro development in this country, very soon we will take it up to the highest level in the government, so the focus is going to be back on hydro, said Mr B.P. Pandey, additional secretary (Hydro), Ministry of Power while inaugurating a conference on Hydropower @Crossroads, organised by The Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (ASSOCHAM).

He said that in totality hydropower comes out a much cleaner, greener and sustainable option while adding that water security is an issue in India and there is a need for storages as well.

Highlighting that reducing the costs is one of the major challenges in hydro sector, he suggested for financial restructuring together with use of innovative financing instruments.

How do we bring down costs or tariff of hydro projects, can we overcome and remove some of the long-drawn clearance processes taking into account environmental safety as well and basin studies, can we also devise some innovative financing models in our instruments which may help to restore the investor confidence which as of now has gone down and people are really not investing apart from PSUs, said Mr Pandey.

In his address at the ASSOCHAM conference, Mr Kalikho Pul, chief minister of Arunachal Pradesh which accounts for over one-half of one lakh megawatt (MW) untapped hydropower potential in India will provide single window clearance to all power developers from both central public sector undertakings (CPSUs) and private sector.

We will provide all support to private developers for installing and commissioning of hydropower plants with facilities of single-window clearance, said Mr Pul. All requirements of local coordination will be fast tracked and we will ensure that there are no barriers to investors.

The Arunachal Pradesh chief minister also said that state government was examining various options available for funding the equity participation of state including the option to exit from the same.

We wish to create a win-win situation for the country, the people of the state, the state itself along with its ecological system, hydro- power developers, and entrepreneurs in many fields who would be attracted by such growth and change, he added.

Suggesting that both solar and hydropower should simultaneously be promoted, Mr Pul said that projects between 50-100 MW should be promoted and taken up under the Ministry of Non-Renewable Energy and there is need to source subsidy funding for the same.

With a view to raise the share of hydropower in electricity-mix of the country, the Ministry of Power may set up a green energy corridor to evacuate hydropower generation from Arunachal Pradesh and north-eastern region, he said further.
Q4 Highlights:

Consolidated revenues for the quarter grew 0.9% sequentially to Rs.684.7 Crores and operating profits improved by 2% sequentially to Rs.126.1 Crores.

Growth during the year came on the back of increased international business and growth in BFSI sector, said Mr. Arvind Thakur, Chief Executive Officer, NIIT Technologies Ltd. Operating Margins improved through the year and this trend continued in Q4 with margins expanding by 20 bps during the quarter, he added.

BFSI grew 29% during the year, increasing the revenue share to 38% from 33% last year. Travel and Transportation contributed to 35% of revenues. Manufacturing/Distribution share of revenues stood at 8% and Government at 4% of revenues for the year.

Americas had a robust growth of 17%, representing 46% of total revenue mix. EMEA grew by 8% during the year resulting in 34% contribution to the revenue. APAC contributed to 10% of total revenue mix. India revenue share reduced to 10% declining 14% YoY as a result of reduced focus on Government business.

The quarter witnessed robust growth in BFSI expanding 6% sequentially contributing to 40% of revenues while Travel and Transportation contributed to 32% of total revenues. Other segments of focus like Manufacturing/Distribution and Government contributed to 8% and 4% of the revenue mix respectively.

Fresh orders of USD 120 Mn were secured during the quarter leading to USD 301 Mn worth of orders executable over the next 12 months.

The order intake includes a new multi-year large transformational outsourcing engagement with an insurance client in Europe and another multimillion dollar new insurance logo acquired in the US, said Mr. Sudhir Chaturvedi, Chief Operating Officer, NIIT Technologies Ltd.

4 new clients were added during the quarter 2 each in Americas and APAC.

The company has posted a net profit of Rs.1940.10 mn for the year ended March 31, 2016 compared with Rs.1475.80 million for the year ended March 31, 2015. Total income increased from Rs.13685.10 mn for the year ended March 31, 2015 to Rs.15089.10 million for the year ended March 31, 2016.
Cognizant Technology Solutions Corporation, a leading provider of information technology, consulting, and business process services, today announced its first quarter 2016 financial results.

Cognizant Logo

HighlightsFirst Quarter 2016

First quarter revenue of $3.20 billion was up 10.0% from the year-ago period and down 0.9% sequentially.

GAAP diluted EPS was $0.72, up from $0.62 in the year-ago period.

Non-GAAP diluted EPS was $0.80, up from $0.71 in the year-ago period.

Net headcount addition for the quarter was approximately 11,300.

Revenue for the first quarter of 2016 was $3.20 billion, up 10.0% from $2.91 billion in the first quarter of 2015. GAAP net income was $441.2 million, or $0.72 per diluted share, compared to $382.9 million, or $0.62 per diluted share, in the first quarter of 2015. Non-GAAP diluted earnings per share was $0.80 compared to $0.71 in the first quarter of 2015. GAAP operating margin for the quarter was 17.3%. Non-GAAP operating margin for the quarter was 19.9%, within the Company's target range of 19-20%. Reconciliations of non-GAAP financial measures to GAAP operating results and diluted EPS are included at the end of this release.

"Overall, our first quarter results were in line with our expectations and guidance. Client demand for our digital expertise, services and technologies remains strong," said Francisco D'Souza, Chief Executive Officer. "We continue to see positive returns from our extensive strategic investment in disruptive technologies, new digital business models and best-in-class delivery capabilities. We believe our strong fundamentals have positioned us well to be the transformation partner of choice for our clients."

"As anticipated, during the first quarter we saw softness in our healthcare segment due to M&A activity, as well as softness in our banking segment due to financial market volatility," said Gordon Coburn, President. "As we move into the second quarter, we are quite pleased with our momentum with new and existing clients, which we expect to drive sequential revenue growth in the second quarter of $140 to $200 million. To support this expected growth, we significantly accelerated hiring during the first quarter and increased our global headcount by 11,300 employees."

2016 OutlookSecond Quarter and Full Year

The Company is providing the following guidance:

Second quarter 2016 revenue expected to be in the range of $3.34 billion to $3.40 billion.

Second quarter 2016 non-GAAP diluted EPS expected to be in the range of $0.80 to $0.82.

Fiscal 2016 revenue expected to be in the range of $13.65 billion to $14.0 billion.

Fiscal 2016 non-GAAP diluted EPS expected to be in the range of $3.32 to $3.44.

"Based on first quarter results and our visibility on deals ramping up throughout the year, we have tightened our 2016 revenue guidance range to $13.65-$14.0 billion, representing approximately 10-13% growth year-over-year," said Karen McLoughlin, Chief Financial Officer. "Our balance sheet and cash position remain healthy. We repurchased 4.3 million shares in the first quarter at a total cost of $244.6 million, reflecting confidence in the strength of our business and our commitment to drive shareholder value."
Piyush Goyal, Minister of State (IC) for Power, Coal & New and Renewable Energy in a written reply to a question in the Lok Sabha today. Most of the investment in renewable energy come from private sector. Total estimated investment in renewable energy power projects during last three years is around Rs. 86,000 crore. As per inputs provided by Central Electricity Authority (CEA), around 15,400 MU has been generated through solar energy during the last three years and it has met the energy requirement to that extent in the country. This was stated by Shriin a written reply to a question in the Lok Sabha today.

The Minister further stated that Government is promoting solar energy by providing fiscal and promotional incentives such as capital and/or interest subsidy, tax holiday on the earnings for 10 years, generation based incentive, accelerated depreciation, viability gap funding (VGF), financing solar rooftop systems as part of home loan, concessional excise and custom duties, preferential tariff for power generation from renewables, and foreign direct investment up to 100 per cent under the automatic route.

Under grid connected solar power schemes, the developer is decided through open and transparent bidding system. Under off grid solar programme, organisations who are interested in working in the sector can be empanelled as Channel Partners. The Ministry has empanelled Channel Partners for grid-connected roof-top, off-grid and solar water heater categories. The Government has revised the target of solar power from 20 GW to 100 GW by 2022.

The Minister further added that however some developers are also importing solar cells, modules and other components. Technology is changing from time to time with new research. India is encouraging new and better technology.
The wheels are in motion in Indiana to create a new state exam that will replace the problem-plagued ISTEP after 2017.

Last week, state lawmakers and policymakers made their final appointments to a new committee that will explore testing options for Indiana and make recommendations to the legislature by Dec. 1. The committee will meet throughout the summer and fall to consider everything from what skills the exams should test to how often they should be given.

But first, teachers have a few requests.

Chalkbeat spoke with several teachers in Indianapolis about what they want state officials to keep in mind as they get ready to research new test options. The new exam will represent the third major testing change for Indiana students since the state left Common Core and its associated exam in 2014.

Heres what teachers say they want from the new exam:

1. Enough time to prepare

When tests change frequently, teachers and students are often left to deal with the fallout. Teachers say they need more time not just to prepare their students for what might change, but to also prepare themselves.

Beth Shaffer-Scott, a veteran Indianapolis Public Schools teacher at School 70: Theres not enough information or prep when they switch models. I feel like weve got the kids to about where the bar is, and  you think youre going to be OK, and then all of a sudden the state comes in and raises the bar.

Megan Parker, a third- and fourth-grade special education teacher at Tindley Renaissance Academy:

I want to know as much before hand so I can prepare my students for it. Change is going to happen  theres nothing we can do about it. We may not have control over things that are happening, but we do have control of our reaction to it. I tell that to my students.

2. Feedback thats useful for teachers

Many educators say state test results that come late and consist of a pass/fail score dont tell them anything they dont already know.

Shaffer-Scott: The only data I get back from state testing is (that a student is) at-risk for failing ISTEP, but its like, OK, then what? It needs to be a little more prescriptive.

We need to get meaningful testing  and meaningful to kids, not testing to evaluate schools, not testing to evaluate teachers  but testing needs to evaluate children, and it needs to be a useful tool, and I dont think it is that anymore.

Robin Clark, a math teacher at Indianapolis Emmerich Manual High School: I dont need their test to tell me how my kids are doing. I can give my own tests, I can be cognizant on a daily basis, and I can tell you who knows what. I feel like most teachers feel that way.

Jane DeVoe, a longtime teacher who now volunteers at IPS School 43: We have got to be committed to getting those test results back and using a vendor and an administrator that, No. 1, can provide the service for the millions of dollars that we have paid.

(ISTEP) was never meant to punish children, it was never meant to punish teachers, it was never meant to punish schools. Now weve become this high-stakes testing place, and when you look at whats happened last year when teachers hardly have the data  whats the point?

3. Less time devoted to testing

Teachers said the tests are too long and emotionally draining for kids, and theyre usually complicated by computers that make kids even more nervous because they dont necessarily get much computer time outside of testing days.

Parker: Its a lot, and it takes its toll on students to be testing all the time. They just shut down. I had a few students who just put their heads down.

My prayer for Indiana is that we get shorter tests that are more effective at measuring student growth and student progress, because I would really like to do more of my job than spending a lot of time testing. I love to teach, but Im not a teacher, Im a test administrator, Im a proctor. It just really stinks for us and for the kids when we cant do what were good at.

4. A voice for teachers

Teachers said they want a say in what happens, because they know their students best.

Clark: Its troubling that more people dont come to us and ask about some of these questions. I would like input, or I would like some of my colleagues to have input.

Shaffer-Scott: They just need to look at what theyre measuring. Is it measuring what its supposed to measure? Is it valid and is it reliable? Are there educators actually helping to write to this test?
Naina Kataria is a writer in Delhi and her understanding of men's perceptions of female beauty is very different.

Naina Kataria

She took to Facebook where she wrote her poem 'When a man calls me beautiful', about the true beauty of women that men often fail to see.

"The idea of this poem sprang up when I went out for a movie with a guy. We were watching this ad or razors for women when I remarked that celebrities shouldn't endorse such products because it sends out a message that one HAS to buy them to look beautiful. He replied by saying "OMG you're too much of a feminist." Which made me ponder over two things - one, about the unrealistic standards that we've set for beauty. They keep saying that it's optional, but I believe otherwise because these norms are something that are just ingrained into us. If a girl, at the imperssionable age of 13-14, seeing everyone, including her mom, her sister, her favorite celebrities (who usually are our role models), getting all these things done to look groomed, she is likely to do the same. She is likely to follow their footsteps and get these things done to match their definition of beauty.

The second thing that hit me was how much we hide all these things from men. Women go through excruciating amounts of pain to look merely presentable and men don't even have an idea of what it's like. So when I thread my eyebrows and wax almost every part of my body raw, I ought to not believe a man who says that I'm beautiful, because he's clearly not complimenting me, he's complimenting all the torturous efforts that I have gone through to match an unsaid yet mandatory standard. I am pretty sure he wouldn't appreciate me the same with bushy eyebrows and hairy legs, which is why his appreciation for my looks is a delusion.

confusedsandals.com

The sad part is that it has been ingrained into us and that we find nothing wrong in it. There have been times when I faced rejection because I never looked pretty. At least not according to the norms. I refused to get my upper lips and eyebrows done till I couldn't take the rejection anymore. It may sound stupid in this age of IDGAF, but as a teenager I sought an unspoken acceptance, a validation from people around me to love me for who I was and not for what I looked like. I finally got the harvesting done when the rejection and the comments became unbearable and felt better. I felt included. People didn't make fun of me anymore. To a 14-15 year old, that meant a lot, trust me.

So I forgot about my troubles and incorporated this in my life. However, I recently joined Tinder and had men telling me how beautiful I looked and all the other things they'd do to woo a pretty girl, and I just stood there wondering whaaaaa? Are they talking to the same person who considered herself ugly all these years?"

Naina's poem reads:

When a man tells me

Im beautiful

I dont believe him.

Instead, I relive my days in high school

When no matter how good I was

I was always the girl with a moustache

He doesnt know what its like

to grow up in your maternal family

Where your body is the only one that

Proudly boasts of your fathers X

While your mothers X sits back and pities

Its unladylike-ness

He doesnt know the teenager

Who filled her corners with

Empty consolations of

Being loved for who she was- someday.

He doesnt know hypocrisy.

He doesnt know of the world that

tells you to be yourself

and sells you a fair and lovely shade card

in the same fucking breath

He doesnt know of the hot wax and the laser

whose only purpose is to

replace your innocent skin

with its own brand of womanhood

He doesnt know of the veet and the bleach

That uproot your robust hair

in the name of hygiene

Hygiene, which when followed by men

makes them gay and unmanly

He doesnt know how unruly eyebrows are tamed

and how uni brows die a silent death

All to preserve beauty

And of the torturous miracles that happen

Inside the doors marked

"WOMEN ONLY"

So when a man calls me beautiful

I throw at him, a smile; a smile that remained

After everything the strip pulled away

And I dare him

To wait

Till my hair grows back.

Her poem which she published in her Facebook page Infinite Entropy got several likes, shares and comments from many other women.

Facebook

Facebook

Facebook

Facebook
pixgood

Locals at the Babasaheb Ambedkar Airport in Nagpur were taken by surprise when Aamir Khan walked out on Wednesday night accompanied by Marathi stage and film actors, Reema Lagoo, Anil Bhatkal, Sai Tamhankar and Anil Barwe. They were there to take part in a contest on water conservation conducted by the state government. Aamir is the brand ambassador of CM Devendra Fadnavis's project "Jal Yukta Shivar".

The reason Aamir handpicked the village of Wathoda was because the locals had begun to save water, and his Paani Foundation which will train villagers from 120 villages in water harvesting, wanted to applaud their efforts.

"When we arrived at 6 am, the collector, sarpanch, many MLAs and villagers had already started working. We joined in the 'shramdaan'," said Reema Lagoo, recalling studying water harvesting in school. "It was time to take the practises to the fields as "dripping therapy" and "sosh khadda" can help save water."

at Wathoda

The actors dug for four hours, followed by an interaction between Aamir, Satyajit Bhatkar and the villagers. "The villagers wanted to know what other methods of water conservation could be made available to them and Aamir ji answered all of them," Reema said. Realising the infrastructure was collapsing too, Aamir announced the building of a new road. Sai believes this is the best way to make Maharashtra drought-free: "Not only is this a superhuman cause but also a campaign that is helping us redeem ourselves."

When Aamir met Fadnavis in mid-February, three drought-hit talukas were selected for water conservation through public participation. They were Warud in Vidarbha's Amravati district, Ambejogai in Beed of Marathwada, and Koregaon in Satara district.

Aamir instituted a "Satyameva Jayate Water Cup" and invited over 20 celebs, including Riteish Deshmukh, Atul Kulkarni, Sunny Leone, Kangana Ranaut, Rajkumar Hirani to join the initiative. He also set up a contest for the best worker in water conservation and on April 15, he took off to Beed for his first water harvesting campaign. "116 villages that next in line. Groups of us are going to visit each of them in the coming months and work hard to help. This is just the beginning, things are not going to change overnight. Aamir ji and us have a long way to go," Reema signed off.
Todays Gurgaon is a corporate hub where professionals from across India stay and work. But most people dont know that the city known for glossy buildings, high-rises, broken roads and chaos also houses a village named after former US President Jimmy Carter.

Carterpuri, the erstwhile Daulatpur Nasirabad is a village situated in the heart of HUDA sector - 23(A). It became Carterpuri in 1978 when the US President Jimmy Carter visited this place in January 1978.

If conjectures are to believed, the reason why Jimmy Carter visited this place along with his wife Rosalynn Smith Carter on January 3, 1978 is that Carters mother, Bessie Lillian used to visit the place frequently as a nurse during the second world war.

Last year, when Obama came to India in January, Carterpuri once again hoped that he would visit the village; but after Carter, nobody bothered.

Bill Clinton gave it a thought during his visit in 1998, but dropped the plan at the last minute. After Clinton, George W Bush and Barrack Obama have visited India, but a visit to Carterpuri never came about.

One can easily see multi-storey houses with luxury cars parked inside. But in reality, this village despite being in the middle of HUDA sector doesnt have basic amenities like proper roads or sewage.

Despite having a date with arguably worlds most powerful man, Carterpuri hasn't seen much change. Then, there was nothing. No roads, no pucca houses or any other souvenir of modernisation. Today too, the village hasn't changed much.

The villagers too have this regret because Carter had wished to adopt this village and develop it into a modern one. But the then PM Morarji Desai declined his offer and promised that Indian government will develop it on lines of modernisation.

But the promise wasnt kept. Today Carterpuri looks like unauthorised colony. People have become rich, but the administration didnt develop the village to cater to the increasing population.

Carterpuri is now home to migrant population from UP, Bihar and Bengal because the rent is cheap. With the visit of every US President, the village dreams for a turn of fortunes; but that is yet to happen.
A punishment which would benefit the people and the environment at large - this could be the apt way to describe a recent Punjab and Haryana High Court order.

pgstatic

Pulling up a top Haryana education official for defying previous orders the court did not impose any fine or jail term, but ordered him to plant 5,000 tree saplings.

Haryana's director of elementary education R S Kharab, will now have to plant these saplings in middle-level schools by the beginning of monsoon and then submit a report to the court.

squarespace

Haryana Advocate General clarified that the punishment was a "corrective measure" and Kharab was not held "guilty of contempt".

Kharab was pulled up by the court after he failed to implement a 2012 order by the HC to promote some drawing teachers in government school as elementary school headmasters.
A massive wildfire in the Canadian province of Alberta left more than 90,000 people displaced when the entire town of Fort McMurray was evacuated. When Rita Khanchat, a Syrian refugee in Calgary, got to hear of it, she immediately posted a message on her Syrian refugee self-help group.

Facebook

Having lost their country and their loved ones, the members of the refugee group could completely relate to the loss of those affected. Members of the group began donating towards the drive while families offered sums between $5 and $20 to purchase relief supplies.

JENNIFER FRIESEN / FOR METRO





Using those donations, the group has purchased toiletries and everyday essentials, such as toothpaste, pillows and diapers.

JENNIFER FRIESEN / FOR METRO

The items will be delivered to a group called 99 Hampers of Hope, which provided aid for the Syrian refugees when they first arrived in Canada.

news.nationalpost.com
Inspiring New Xulon Book Encourages Young Christians to Embrace Their Identity Shaun Campbell pens thought-provoking book to help today's youth discover why they cannot and should not be like everyone else



... Christian readers will be inspired and encouraged to discover their purpose ...



Contact: Shaun Campbell, 403-975-7792, shaunus_campbell@Hotmail.com



MAITLAND, Fla., May 6, 2016 /Christian Newswire/ -- Shaun Campbell's new book, You Are Not Normal  Dare To Be Different, ($11.99, paperback, 9781498469593) tells young readers that it is okay to be different because the call of God upon a person's life dictates that he or she be different from the rest of the world. He stresses that God is calling his followers to something greater than the norm of the world and even greater than the church. Readers will be encouraged to embrace what makes them different from everyone else  and to discover the divine purpose that God created them to have. This book challenges all to embrace their unique identity in Christ and discover why  "You Are Not Normal."



"My hope is that Christian readers will be inspired and encouraged to discover their purpose and to do everything in their power to fulfill it," states the author.



Shaun Campbell was born and raised in the UK as a member of Bethel United Church of Jesus Christ (Apostolic) UK. He served his local church in Birmingham as a teacher in the Sunday School Department and also the New Converts Class. He has also served the Youth Department on a local, district, and national level. He has a passion for young people and a desire to see them excel in God.



Xulon Press, a division of Salem Media Group, is the world's largest Christian self-publisher, with more than 15,000 titles published to date. Retailers may order You Are Not Normal  Dare To Be Different through Ingram Book Company and/or Spring Arbor Book Distributors. The book is available online through xulonpress.com/bookstore, amazon.com, and barnesandnoble.com.

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Were excited to announce that indmin.com is now part of fastmarkets.com.

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The Nigeria Labour Congress NLC had recently proposed N56, 000 as minimum wage for Nigerian workers on 1st May, which marked workers day worldwide. INFORMATION NIGERIA in this piece brings you 3 points think of the demand, that we like you to ponder on

-Many Nigerian states cant even pay the existing sum and Nigerian workers are asking for a raise, which isnt a bad idea but do you think Nigeria can truly afford it, as we stand as a nation now???

 The Nigerian economy is so bad that the value of the wages of the average worker means nothing, therefore increasing what an average Nigerian worker should earn could be a step in the right direction but shouldnt working on making the economy better, a better alternative such that what they earn or whatever eventually comes to be added to it, could mean something no matter how little???

-The NLC could make a stand against waste and corruption to ensure the funds for infrastructural development are properly channeled. For instance, eliminating of ghost workers, blocking of financial leakages, abolishing extravagant spending, using direct labour on minor repairs, maintenance and even simple construction works, avoiding over-staffing are some of the things that the NLC could clamour for to make life easier for everyone.

What do you think???
A final appeal by the leader of Bangladeshs largest Islamist party against a death penalty for involvement in a 1971 liberation war has been rejected, his lawyers said, clearing the way for his hanging. The Supreme Court on Thursday passed the order against Motiur Rahman Nizami, head of the banned Jamaat-e-Islami party, which opposed the war for independence from Pakistan.

The 73-year-old, who was also given life sentences for four other war crimes convictions, has exhausted all legal options and only a presidential pardon could now save him. Jamaat called a 24-nationwide strike for Sunday in a response published on its website.

The Supreme Court in January upheld the death penalty for Nizami on convictions of genocide, rape and orchestrating the massacre of top intellectuals during the war. The Jamaat leader, in jail since 2010, was originally handed the death sentence by a war crimes tribunal in 2014. Bangladeshi authorities say about three million people were killed and more than 200,000 women raped during the conflict. The former East Pakistan broke away to become Bangladesh after the war.

The tribunal has sparked violence and drawn fierce criticism from opposition politicians, including Jamaat-e-Islami, who say it is victimising Prime Minister Sheikh Hasinas opponents.

Aljazeera.
A former Minister of Aviation and chieftain of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Chief Femi Fani-Kayode, has raised the alarm over the siege laid to his residence in Abuja by armed operatives of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission.

The siege to the former ministers residence came on the heels of the formal invitation extended to him by the EFCC today to appear at its Abuja headquarters on Monday, May 9.

Mr. Fani-Kayode, in a statement through his lawyers, said he would honour the invitation and cooperate with investigators.

However, shortly before 5 p.m., Fani-Kayode sent out another statement claiming the operatives were trying to keep him under house arrest throughout the weekend.

Today the EFCC invited me to come to their office on Monday. I have their letter. I agreed to be there. Now they have surrounded my house.

The letter of invitation was served this morning and it was dated 6th May. They said I should report on the 9th.

Can someone please tell me why they are at my gate? They cant even wait because they want to detain me so badly and keep me away for the weekend.

I never refused their invitation. Why all this? I leave them to God, he said.


President George W. Bush to be Given the 'Family and Democracy' Award at World Congress of Families X, Tbilisi, Georgia (May 15-18) Contact: Levan Vasadze, Chairman, World Congress of Families X, 815-997-7106, media@worldcongress.org



TBILISI, Georgia, May 6, 2016 /Christian Newswire/ -- Former U.S. President George W. Bush will be honored with the "FAMLIA ET CIVITAS (Family and Democracy)" Award at the World Congress of Families X in Tbilisi, Georgia, May 15-18 (www.worldcongress.ge). The theme of the Tenth Jubilee, World Congress of Families X is "Civilization at The Crossroads: The Natural Family as the Bulwark of Freedom and Human Values."



World Congress of Families unites leaders worldwide in defense of family, faith, and freedom (www.worldcongress.org) by affirming the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights and defending the dignity and sanctity of every human life.



This award comes more than a decade after Georgians celebrated and honored President Bush, by naming the road to the Tbilisi international airport "George W. Bush" Highway in recognition of the former President.



President Bush has greeted previous World Congress of Families events, including the World Congress of Families III held in Mexico City in 2004 which was also addressed by Mexican First Lady, Mrs. Martha Fox.



President Bush commended the efforts of the World Congress to "recognize the importance of families in our society. Around the world, families are the source of help, hope, and stability for individuals and nations. As one of the pillars of civilization, families must remain strong and we must defend them during this time of great change. Your work improves many lives and makes the world better," declared Mr. Bush. Here is the full text of Mr. Bush's greeting, worldcongress.ge/george-w-bush.pdf.



President Bush is the first sitting U.S. President to visit Georgia and his visit in 2005 to Tbilisi's Freedom Square was enthusiastically received by the Georgian people. "Georgia is a beacon of liberty for this region and the world," Mr. Bush said. "The path of freedom you have chosen is not easy, but you will not travel it alone ... the American people will stand with you."



World Congress of Families X Chairman Levan Vasadze commented, "As Georgians, we have a special connection to President Bush as he was the first U.S. President to visit our great homeland, one of the oldest Christian nations on earth. Mr. Bush won a place in our hearts as he danced to Georgian music and declared our nation to be a beacon of liberty and freedom for the world. He gave us hope that we could maintain our Georgian traditions of family, faith, and freedom while partnering with America and the West."



WCF Tbilisi 2016 will be the first World Congress of Families in the Eurasian and Caucasus region (on the Old Silk Road to China) and the first in an Orthodox Christian country. WCF X conferences and concerts will be held in multiple venues in Tbilisi including the opening ceremony in Tbilisi's State Philharmonic Concert Hall, the Radisson Blu Iveria Hotel, and the closing ceremony in the historic Rustaveli National Theatre in Tbilisi. WCF X will be broadcast on Georgian TV stations and various international channels to more than 250 million viewers.



Previous Congresses have been held in Prague (1997), Geneva (1999), Mexico City (2004), Warsaw (2007), Amsterdam (2009), Madrid (2012), Sydney (2013) and Salt Lake City (2015). The Tenth Jubilee, 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 worlds largest network of pro-family leaders, parents, youth, lawmakers, scholars, religious leaders, and advocates united to support the natural family. WCF X is 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.



Free press pass registrations are available for news media and reporters at:

www.eventbrite.com/e/world-congress-of-families-x-tbilisi-republic-of-georgia-may-15-18-2016-tickets-22669828066?aff=es2.



Free Student/Emerging Leader Registrations also available at:

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.

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The Chairman of Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, in Cross River State, Ntufam John Okon, was yesterday arrested by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) in connection with the alleged N23.29 billion election bribery scandal.

Also interrogated on the matter are Senator Chris Anyanwu and a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, SAN, Mike Ahamba.

The trio allegedly received a payment of N1.2 billion.

A breakdown of the figure indicates both Anyanwu and Ahamba received N700m each while Okon, who has being detained by the EFCC and may be charged to court soon, got N500 million.

The Nation reports that some of the suspects fingered in the election bribery scandal have absconded abroad.

Prominent among those who have fled the country in a bid to evade arrest are some oil industry chiefs believed to have been used by former Minister of Petroleum Resources, Mrs. Diezani Alison-Madueke to raise cash to bribe officials of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to alter the results of last years presidential election.

The oil barons reportedly contributed $88.35million of the $115million (N23.29b) sent to Fidelity Bank by the ex-minister.

According to a top source in EFCC, Anyanwu and Ahamba were interrogated at the EFCCs zonal office in Enugu on Wednesday.

But the source said they were released on administrative bail and asked to return for interaction on a scheduled date.

The source said: Following the ongoing screening of the distribution list of the N23.29b cash, we discovered that N700million was paid to Anyanwu and Ahamba at Fidelity Bank in Ikenegbu Layout branch in Owerri.

The payment was effected by the detained Head of Operations of Fidelity Bank, Martin Izuogbe, based on the directive of the MD of the bank.

We have invited and interrogated Anyanwu and Ahamba at our Enugu Zonal Office on how they came about the cash, for what purpose and how the remittance trickled down  if it did.

They have been granted administrative bail, but they were asked to come back on a scheduled date.

Okon was arrested in Calabar, the Cross River State capital for collecting N500million of the money.

Investigations by the EFCC showed that Okon collected the money on 26th March, 2015 at a branch of Fidelity Bank in Calabar.

The source, who is close to the investigation and pleaded not to be named due to what he termed sensitivity of the matter, said The money was placed in the transit account at the Corporate Headquarters of Fidelity Bank but cash was made available to Okon in the Calabar branch of the bank.

Okon is in the custody of the EFCC and would be charged to court soon, he added.

Of the oil barons involved in the scandal, the source said: Some of these oil barons who contributed to the $115million poll bribery cash have shifted base abroad but we have located their whereabouts.

They have forgotten that the law can catch up with them anywhere. And their arrest is easier abroad than at home, which they are afraid of.

And since a huge chunk of the $115million was sourced from stolen crude, so many people were parties to the deal and with diligent investigation, we can track all these shady activities.
The federal government has condemned in strong terms the attack on Chevron Valve Platform in Warri South-West Local government area of Delta state by militants, saying the act is an avoidable self-inflicted agony.

A group known as the Niger Delta Avengers (NDA) claimed responsibility for the attack just as it also bombed pipelines supplying the Warri and Kaduna refineries with crude oil on Friday.

Speaking to journalists in Abuja on Friday, the Special Adviser to the President on Niger Delta and Coordinator of the Presidential Amnesty Programme, Brig.-Gen. Paul Boroh (retd.), while decrying the negative impact of destruction of oil and gas pipelines on the economy and environment, said government was open to dialogue, no matter the grievances of the group.

Pipeline vandalism is an avoidable self-inflicted agony. It is unreasonable to engage in such criminal activity not only because of the resultant economic effect on the country but particularly as it also negatively affects the Niger Delta environment, Boroh said.

He continued: The act of vandalising pipelines is counter-productive apart from it being a crime against the state. Those involved in this nefarious activity are economic and environmental saboteurs. It will do well for them to refrain from it, as my office is always open to dialogue regardless of their grievances.

The federal government already has in place a well-structured reintegration programme for youths of the region, which has helped in maintaining the peace and stabilising security of the region. The Amnesty Programme has made militancy unattractive in the region mainly because of the governments sincerity and commitment to the programme. The proper thing is for those behind such activity to embrace dialogue.

Commending security agencies for their commitment to ensuring peace in the region, the amnesty boss warned that his office would not hesitate to delist and bring to book any beneficiary of the programme that engages in criminal activity in the Niger Delta.
A prosecution witness for the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, Abubakar Umar, yesterday told the Federal High Court in Abuja that former governor of Benue State, Gabriel Suswam, instructed that N3.11bn be paid into his bank account.

Umar, a bureau de change operator, who was being led in evidence by EFCCs counsel, Rotimi Jacobs (SAN), said the ex-governor used to bring foreign currencies for him to change in 2014.

In August 2014, I was in my office when Suswam called me on a mobile phone with number 08180505050. My phone number that he called is 08062666661. He said I should come and meet him in his Maitama residence and I went to the house and he connected me with one woman. He told me to give her my account number that they would deposit money into my account, Umar said.

The witness said N413 million was first deposited into his account for the purpose of exchanging it into dollars on behalf of Suswam.

In August 2014, Suswam asked me to change the money into dollars and bring it to Government House and that was not the only money that was sent to my account. Money was sent into my companys account (Famfash Limited) six times; on Sept. 12, 2014, N633m was paid into my account, after two hours, N637m was paid.

He further said that N1bn was paid into the account.

On October 13, 2014, N630m was paid into my account, after one hour, N8.16m was transferred into my account. In October 17, 2014, N1.68bn was paid into my account and all the lodgments were made on the directive that I should convert the money into dollars for Suswam. The total sum of the monies was N3.111 billion, he said. (NAN)
A 40-year-old man has been accused of beating his ex-wifes four-year-old son to death after she had revealed that the child wasnt his. The suspect identified as Jean-Charles Artaban, had reportedly killed the victim identified as, Matheo, who he had once thought was his son, before decapitating him and feeding his head to dogs, then burning the remaining parts of his body at his home on Jean Robert Street in Beaulieu in Saint-Benoit, Madagascar on June 17, 2013.

According to Scoop, Arteban had reportedly committed the crime after he had been told by his ex wife, Yasmin that Matheo wasnt his, and the gruesome scene had only been discovered by the emergency services when Yasmin had called them in a panic, begging for them to save her son s life. The suspect is reported to have taken a strain of cannabis, called zamal in the local creole dialect, on the fateful evening when the gruesome events had taken place.

The reports further reveal that during the Police interrogation following his arrest, Artaban had said he didnt remember what had happened that night. Arteban revealed that he remembered beating Yasmine after she had told him Matheo wasnt his and remembered that she had run away, leaving the boy behind but that was all he could remeber. Arteban was reportedly found guilty of murder, acts of torture, and barbarity following his arrest and court trail, bagging life imprisonment.

This case becomes the first incident of a life sentence being handed down in the French island of Reunion, off the coast of Madagascar, since 2003. Psychiatric experts reportedly reveal that Arteban is incapable of showing any regret or any empathy, adding that, throughout the two-day trial, he had simply remained still and unmoved in the dock.
The Federal Governments effort to increase the countrys local crude oil refining capacity suffered a setback on Friday as the newly formed Niger Delta militia group, the Niger Delta Avengers, blew up pipelines supplying the Warri and Kaduna refineries.

The latest attack came about 24 hours after the militant group blew up Chevrons platform at Escravos.

The Niger Delta Avengers said the attacks were in keeping with its threat to wreak havoc on the countrys economy by blowing up oil and gas pipelines.

In a statement by its spokesperson, Mudoch Agbinibo, the group claimed responsibility for blowing up crude line feeds that links Warri and Kaduna refineries respectively.

It also claimed to have damaged the gas line that feeds the Lagos and Abuja electricity power supply.

With this development, the Warri and Kaduna refineries will be shut down and all cities that depend on the gas line for power will all be in total darkness like the creeks of the Niger Delta, the Avengers added.

The group recalled that on Thursday, its Strike Team 7 blew up Well D25 in Abiteye  a major gas facility owned by multinational oil company, Chevron.

It said the team also blew up major pipelines in Alero, Dibi, Otunana and Makaraba flow stations, which feed the Chevron tank farm, putting it out of operation.

The destruction has crippled Chevrons operations in the Niger Delta.

The group boasted that it is undeterred by heavy military presence in the area, noting that it carried out the bombing about 100meters away from the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) pipeline, where a military houseboat is stationed to protect the pipelines.

We want you public to know that despite the heavy presence of military operatives, our activities cant stop and it just waste of funds and time to let the Nigerian military protect oil installations, the group bragged.

The statement also warned the people of the Niger Delta, especially those who speak out against its activities, to desist or risk incurring the wrath of the Avengers.

This is a clear warning to all Niger Delta politicians, traditional rulers, community leaders and the likes of Tompolo to mind their business and leave the liberation of the Niger Delta people to the Avengers. Those who believe taking sides with the federal government to fight Niger Delta is the best option, Avengers are here on the ground. Neither you nor the federal government can stop us. If you dont stay clear and let us carry out our activities, we will bring the fight to your individual doorsteps. Our major goal is to cripple the Nigeria economy, the group warned.

It also called on all Niger Deltans to attack oil installations in their communities, urging them to see the war as theirs.
The Nigerian Navy said Thursday that militants attacked an offshore facility belonging to multinational petroleum company Chevron, the latest in a spate of attacks in the petroleum-rich Niger Delta region.

Nigeria navy spokesman Chris Ezekobe told VOA that the attackers, using dynamite, blew up the facility that collected oil and gas near the major Escravos export terminal in Delta State Wednesday evening.

There were no casualties, Ezekobe said. He also said he was not sure whether any oil had spilled.

Its not completely shut down, but its ability to pump crude and gas has been highly degraded and that also has affected the production of Escravos itself, Ezekobe said.

A group calling itself the Niger Delta Avengers took responsibility for the attack on its website. The group has previously taken credit sabotaging a handful of oil pipelines and facilities in the Niger Delta.

The incident raises fears of a renewed militancy in Niger Delta.
A police officer, Dominic Jato has reported how his daughter, Halita Dominic Jato was allegedly kidnapped and renamed Hafsat by her abductors, who were identified as Ismail Mohammed and Mallam Adamu Kasarawa of Gidan Igwai area within Sokoto state metropolis.



Jato cried out that nothing has been done to set his daughter free from her abductors despite several complaints to the State Police Command.

He said, I have been following every legal means to secure the release of my daughter for about two years now.

This is just because we are in Sokoto to serve our nation. For two years, my daughter has been taken away from me. What my colleagues did to me in Sokoto I am still in shock.

The State Police Public Relations Officer, PPRO, in Sokoto, Al-mustpaha Sani, when contacted denied being aware of the issue.

Sani said, I dont know anything about it. You know I am the PRO but I may not know everything that happens. If I get to the office, I will check the files. Is the girl a policemans daughter?

If a suspect admitted to an offence, the police will not allow it to linger for two years.

But Pulse gathered that one of the men who abducted the 14 year-old teenager is a relation to a senior officer in the Sokoto State Police Command.

Jato, who said he had lodged all necessary complaints at both the Divisional Level, Sokoto State Police Command and at the office of the AIG Zone 10, added that he keeps seeing the people who abducted his daughter moving freely in Sokoto.

He asked, Do we have some persons that are above the law in Nigeria?

Jato, in the complaint letter he presented at the office of the AIG Zone 10, noted that his daughter was taken away when she was 14 years and eight days old.

He explained, I am writing this letter in order to complain against Ismail Mohammed and Mallam Adamu Kasarawa for kidnapping my daughter, named Halita Dominic Jato. She was born on 1st, July 1999 and was kidnapped and abducted on the 9th, July 2014.

I conducted a search for her whereabouts among her friends, neighbours and the entire neighbourhood and I found out that she was kidnapped and abducted by Ismail Mohammed in Gidan Igwai area of Sokoto.

The letter added, I reported the case to the Police Divisional Head Quarters, Kwanni and the said Ismail Mohammed was invited by the police for questioning. He confessed that the girl Halita Dominic Jato was kidnapped and abducted by him.

He confessed that, he has moved the girl to the house of Mallam Adamu Kasarawa to be converted to Islam. And he was mandated to bring the girl back to the Police Station to be handed over to me but up till now, the girl has not been handed over to me nor the police.

He said that when he lodged another complaint to the office of the Police Commissioner in Sokoto, the suspect were invited for questioning, and I was asked again to wait for the outcome of the investigation but up till now, no clear clue of what the police have done tentatively concerning the case.

Jato who said the matter has lingered for about two years now because he is going through due process, added that he has exhausted every possible means within his power, but could not secure the release of his daughter.

He added, Secondly, there was threat to my life and that of my entire family.

Source:Dailypost
The corrected version of the 2016 budget was, yesterday, handed over to the Presidency through the Special Assistant to the President on National Assembly Matters Senate (Senator), Ita Enang.

The final conclusion and onward transmission of the corrected version of the budget, which had suffered delay, was disclosed by the Deputy Chairman of House Committee on Media and Public Affairs, Jonathan Gaza, while briefing journalists at the assembly complex.

While fielding questions from journalists on the position of the budget, Gaza said: It is the same media that has kept the whole country abreast. Dont forget that we are equally Nigerians and it is our desire for the country to move forward.

A committee was set up, which was in the papers and was headed by the deputy speaker. Members from the Senate as well as the executive arm looked at the budget and I believe the resolutions have been transmitted or rather the resolutions have been submitted to the President.

I am quite optimistic and I enjoin all other Nigerians, including yourselves, to be as optimistic as me that in the very near future, this budget will be signed into law.

On when the budget was submitted and whether it was an amendment that was submitted, the House Deputy Yusuf Lasuns spokesman said: Well, I honestly believe that we have to be quite careful with our choice of words.

Over time, there have been differences and both arms of government had sat down to look at what those issues are. Most importantly, what we want is to see our country and our economy moving forward.
The Nigerian Army on Thursday inaugurated a Special Court Martial to try two of its officers for undisclosed offences.

The Judge Advocate, Ibrahim Musa, a colonel, administered the oath on the president of the Special Court Martial, James Gbum, an Air Vice-Marshal, and three others.

Mr. Musa said the purpose of the special court was to try two army officers, Ibrahim Sanni and Patrick Falola, both Major-Generals.

Reading the conveying order for the court from the Chief of Army Staff, Mr. Musa said by the power conferred on me by Lt.-Gen. Tukur Buratai, I hereby convey this speech to every one of you in this Special Court.

This court is saddled with the responsibility of trying the two officers.

On behalf of the special court members, Gbum promised that they would discharge their duties in accordance with the 1999 Constitution as amended.

He said that the court would also take the Armed Forces Act, Service Evidence Act, Military Law and Rule of Procedure for trials into cognisance.

The president assured of speedy dispensation of justice, acknowledging that justice delayed is justice denied.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the officers offences were however, not stated but lead counsel to the Nigerian Army, Ukpe Ukpe, said that the trial would commence on Monday.

Ukpe, a colonel, appeared with five other counsels for the army, while two accused officers were represented by two counsels.

(NAN)
The Minister of Transportation, Rotimi Amaechi, says he divulged a letter which a former Central Bank of Nigeria Governor and now Emir of Kano, Alhaji Muhammadu Sanusi, wrote to former President Goodluck Jonathan on oil revenue theft in order to check corruption.

President Muhammadu Buhari, yesterday, in Abuja, said the process of recovering stolen funds had become tedious..

CHAIRMAN residential Advisory Committee on war against corruption, Prof. Itse Sagay (SAN), yesterday, declared that Nigeria would have completely become a failed state like Zimbabwe and disintegrated had former President Goodluck Jonathan won the 2015 presidential election.

Thisday

The Minister of Finance, Kemi Adeosun has said that the N165 billion civil service monthly wage bill is over-bloated and can no longer be sustained by the federal government.

Daily Times

A young Nigerian prophet and head of a white garment Spiritual Movement  Motailatu Church of Christ Worldwide in Okeira, Ogba area of Lagos has unveiled that President Muhammadu Buhari has a four-point divine mandate from God to salvage, recover, restructure and save Nigeria.

Daily Trust

The battle for the soul of the South-West Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) took a new twist yesterday, when some key stakeholders of the party, who earlier engaged themselves in public over the national chairmanship position of the party, closed ranks.
home World Christian pastor who helped defectors killed by North Korea agents, activists say

A Christian pastor who had helped defectors from North Korea flee to China was murdered by North Korean agents, according to activists in Seoul, South Korea last Monday, May 2.

The Chinese national who is identified only by his surname, Han, has been a supporter of defectors from North Korea since 1993. Han's body was found dead at the border between a town in the northeastern part of China and North Korea.

Defectors relayed the story to Choi Sung-yong, the head of the group of families for South Koreans abducted by North Korea, saying that three agents from North Korea had been sent to the northeastern part of China just before the murder happened.

The said agents have already fled back to North Korea, says Choi.

Han served in one of the churches in Changbai, a Chinese county where may Koreans of ethnic origin live in. According to Choi, as reported by Korea Herald, Han's church was being suspected by North Korea as a hideout of many North Korean defectors.

Han's murder is now under investigation.

The murder happened after a massive defection of 13 North Koreans. The group included 12 female employees and 1 male manager. These people worked in a North Korean restaurant in the city of Ningbo, a Chinese eastern port.

North Korea reportedly accused South Korea of kidnapping the group and plans to retaliate by kidnapping huge numbers of South Koreans. The accusations have been denied by South Korea but as response to the threat made by North Korea, they are taking measures to protect their nationals abroad.

However, the plans of retaliation are not only for South Korea. Choi told Yonhap News Agency that North Korea is also planning to kidnap religious leaders in the neighboring Chinese towns at their borders.

Another church leader and deacon, identified as Kim, has also been missing since March 28 but it has yet to be confirmed whether has was abducted by the North or not.
Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has described as unnecessary, the superiority tussle among Yoruba monarchs, saying the trend is a distraction that could lead to setbacks.

Rather than engaging in such contests, Mr. Obasanjo advised the traditional rulers to make good governance and welfare for their subjects the foundation of their reign.

The ex-president, who spoke when he played host to the new Olubadan of Ibadan, Oba Saliu Adetunji, at his hilltop mansion in Abeokuta, the Ogun State capital yesterday, harped on mutual respect for one another instead of claiming superiority.

Hierarchical struggle, according to Obasanjo is a distraction which could result in setback.

I think that what is more important is to give good governance to the citizens and also have mutual respect for ourselves, he said.

In his response, Oba Adetunji commended the ex-president for his role in his emergence as the 41st Olubadan.
The National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Chief John Odigie-Oyegun, will lead a delegation of APC officials to China to interact with their Chinese Communist Party counterparts.

The development was sequel to an invitation extended to the Oyegun-led National Working Committee by the outgoing Chinese Ambassador to Nigeria, Gu Xiaojie, when he paid a courtesy visit to the APC national secretariat in Abuja, yesterday.

Mr. Oyegun expressed optimism that the trip would enable the party officials learn how China dealt with the menace of corruption.

He said that the relationship between Nigeria and China was improved during the tenure of the outgoing ambassador.

On the recent trip embarked by President Muhammadu Buhari to China, Oyegun said: I must say that the result of the visit of our president is something that has given us a lot of joy because substantial agreements were recorded. In the next few months, knowing China as a very serious country, they make commitment and fulfill them, as soon as our budget comes on stream, we will be able to see the practical results on the ground, particularly in the areas of infrastructure and agriculture.

Earlier, the outgoing ambassador, Xiaojie, said that the Chinese Communist Party expressed its readiness to work with the APC in areas like capacity building.

According to the outgoing ambassador, the Chinese leaders appreciated the policy initiatives of Nigerias government on anti-corruption, economic development, peace and stability.

He said the Chinese government and its people were ready to work closely with Nigeria in implementing the initiatives between the two countries.

We may identify areas like the exchange of views on governance and party to party relations between the APC and the Communist Party of China as well as some other areas of economic aspect like agriculture and energy sectors, he said.

These are areas the Chinese government and the Chinese business community will be working on here in Nigeria. Im very impressed in the achievements we have recorded in the last two years.

It would be recalled that in January this year, the APC signaled its intention to enter into partnership with the Communist Party of China after a meeting between the APC National Secretary, Mai Mala Buni, and a Chinese government delegation, led by the charge daffaires of the Chinese Embassy in Nigeria, Qin Jian.
A 53-year-old woman was killed and several others wounded in air strikes on the Gaza Strip as Israel and Palestinian armed groups engaged in one of the worst exchanges of fire since the 2014 Gaza war. Gaza Strip Health Ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qedra said that the woman, identified as Zeina Al Omor, had been killed and several others injured by shrapnel in the southern Gaza city of Khan Yunis.

Israel launched the first strikes in southern Gaza late on Wednesday in response to mortar attacks on Israeli troops along the border. Early on Thursday, it launched strikes on four targets in northern Gaza and another four in the south later in the day. On Thursday, the Islamic Jihad group claimed responsibility for firing five mortar shells at the Israeli ground troops operating near the Gaza-Israel border fence.

It said it was the first time since the 2014 Gaza war that it had done so. The Israeli military said that during ongoing searches along the Gaza-Israel border, it had found a tunnel running underneath the southern Gaza border at a depth of 27-29 metres. It was not yet clear how long it was, but the military said it probably reached far into Israel.

Since the 2014 war, Hamas, the movement in de facto control of the Gaza Strip, had tolerated Israeli troops entering 100 metres into the Gaza Strip while clearing the border area, an Israeli military spokesman said. But this time, Israeli troops digging there came under mortar fire, Lieutenant-Colonel Peter Lerner said. It was the second tunnel uncovered by Israel in one month.

One target struck by Israel early on Thursday was a goldsmith workshop in southern Gaza City, residents said. Israel says it has intelligence indicating that workshops are used to produce weapons.

Aljazeera.
Delta State Governor Ifeanyi Okowa, on Thursday, said the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) is set to win all the states of the federation in the 2019 general elections.

Speaking in Owa, Ika North-East local government area of Delta State, while addressing PDP members after the local government congress in the area, the governor said, though Delta State was the home of PDP, the peaceful ward and local government congresses were clear evidence that the reconciliation and consensus efforts of the party was effective.

I congratulate the chairman and those who were elected into the executive committee of the party at the local government areas, including the national delegates. I must thank our party leaders because what we witnessed today, shows unity and strength, Okowa said.

We had very peaceful congresses not only in Ika North-East but the 25 local government areas of Delta State. We have engaged in the process of reconciliation and building consensus and the peace we are enjoying in our party today is a product of hard work.

Because we worked hard, we had a peaceful congress and we have seen a wonderful showing that we love ourselves and the consensus we have built is good for us.

Okowa observed that the PDP was getting stronger all over the country. We are confident that going into the future, we will win all the states of the federation we must continue to build consensus, we must be able to build friendship and ensure that every voice is heard. We have always won elections in Delta State but we cannot go to sleep.
The Republican party is facing a divide, with party leader Paul Ryan refusing to support Donald Trump as the partys presidential nominee, insisting that the businessman must do more to unite the party. Appearing on CNNs show The Lead, Ryan, the speaker of the House of Representatives, said on Thursday that many Republicans wanted to see a standard-bearer who bears our standards and unifies all the wings of the Republican Party.

Im just not ready to do that at this point. Im not there right now, the Wisconsin Republican said.

It comes two days after Trump essentially clinched the nomination with a commanding win in Indiana that forced his last two opponents  Ted Cruz and John Kasich  from the race. Trump, who has become partys presumptive presidential nominee, responded by saying he is not ready to support Ryans agenda either. Perhaps in the future we can work together, the billionaire businessman added.

Ryan is not the only one to have aired opposition to Trump. Former Presidents George H W Bush and George W Bush and several other senior Republicans have refused to back the real estate mogul. But Indiana Governor Mike Pence and former Texas Governor Rick Perry threw their weight behind the presidential nominee.
Members of the Senate yesterday May 4th, agreed to facilitate the process of enacting a law that will prescribe death penalty to anyone found guilty of kidnapping. At the house plenary, the senate prevailed on state governors to also enact laws that will prosecute anyone found guilty of kidnapping.

Speaking during the debate, Deputy Senate President, Senator Ike Ekweremadu, supported the motion and also narrated his personal experience with kidnappers

Just recently, one of my relations also was kidnapped. So, I believe I am talking as an expert or an experienced person in kidnapping. I know the psychology of kidnappers because I stayed for two days with them. These are normal human beings who are sometimes looking for money and also afraid of security agencies. I think there are three types of kidnappers. There are some who kidnapped either to make a statement or to intimidate the government, like the Boko Haram people and the Niger Delta militants. Then there is another type of kidnappers, these are just normal armed robbers. Sometimes, they just kidnapped you, put you in the boot and they can even use the vehicle as an escape or they use it to rob. Such kidnappers, once they succeed, its either they take away the vehicle, use it or they dump their victim. But the third type, which is very dangerous, is the professional kidnappers, who kidnapped for money and that is the one we are focusing on this afternoon. We have encouraged this type of kidnapping because we panic and pay money most times. This kind of kidnappers, when they take you, they put you somewhere else and they can refer you to negotiate so that they can set you free and go for another business. Most times, our people are reluctant to delay or endure the inconvenience or the hardship and then they quickly negotiate and if we can discourage this kind of kidnappings, the only way forward is to insist that you will not pay.

Also speaking during the deliberation, Senator Dino Melaye said firing squad should be adopted for any suspected kidnapper that is found guilty.

Source:TalkOfNaija
The extended family of late Musa YarAdua, yesterday held a special prayer session to commemorate the death of their father, Musa YarAdua and his children, late Gen. Shehu YarAdua and late President Umaru YarAdua.

The sixth anniversary of the death of late President YarAdua was yesterday, May 5.

The prayer session, which took place at the residence of late Shehu YarAdua in Katsina, was attended by a few close family friends. There were no federal or state government officials at the event.

Speaking on behalf of the family, a member of the family, Zubair Gafai, decried the neglect of the family by both federal and state governments.

It was Umarus efforts that made Masari the Speaker of the House of Representatives and even the former Umarus SSG who is also the current SSG of Katsina State, he said, adding that such roles had not been appreciated.

Both present and successive governments as well as friends and associates of the former leaders have deserted the family. We are deeply worried by this, he said, but added, We are consoled that the common man is with us. Despite our predicaments we believe that the Nigerian masses and the citizens of Katsina are offering their prayers for Umaru Musa YarAdua for the good work he did for Katsina.
The leader and chairman, Association of Fulani Chiefs of south west of Nigeria, Alhaji Muhammed Bambado, has cautioned against labelling all criminal-minded persons as Fulani herdsmen.

He made the call against the backdrop of allegations that armed Fulani herdsmen were behind massacres in some communities across the country.

Bambado, who also doubles as Seriki Fulani of Lagos State, in a statement yesterday, condemned the quick blaming of poor and innocent herdsmen for any crime committed at any corner of the country even before any attempt, no matter how feeble is made at unveiling the identity of the perpetrators.

In serious countries, when a crime is committed, the first set of people allowed access to the crime scene are forensic experts, who will comb the entire crime scene, take DNA samples, physical evidence and the murder weapons for lab examination and in less than 24hours, names and pictures of suspects will be all over TV stations.

But here in Nigeria, the main suspect is usually a whole tribe and the first thing we do is to carry a very big proverbial brush and paint a whole tribe, blame a whole tribe, demonize and criminalise a whole tribe and to them, the usual suspects are the Fulani herdsmen!

Twenty four hours, one year and 10 years after the said crime, we will continue with the blame game and running in circles, while the criminals grow wings and strike again and again, the statement read in part.

The Seriki Fulani Lagos State further lamented that, months after the Agatu attacks in Makurdi, all we have achieved is to label the attackers Fulani Herdsmen, and if you ask any police man investigating the crimes of Agatu, he will also tell you we are on top of the situation, we are on the trail of the Fulani herdsmen, making thousands and millions of Fulani herdsmen out there suspects!

Bambado expressed further worry that, after the Enugu attacks, we are hearing the same tales of Fulani herdsmen even after the commissioner of police in Enugu State has said the attackers are not Fulani herdsmen but hoodlums (another vague generalization).

The Fulani leader insisted the attack on Nimbo community, Uzo-Uwani local government area of Enugu State was not perpetrated by Fulani herdsmen, but criminals with bodies, souls and identities.
Finance Minister, Mrs Kemi Adeosun, said, yesterday, that there were no quick solutions to Nigerias problems.

Adeosun, who spoke on Channels Television breakfast programme, Sunrise, in Lagos, was reacting to assertions by the former Education Minister, Oby Ezekwesili, that President Muhammadu Buharis economic policies were archaic.

Ezekwesili had, as a guest on Platform, a programme organised by The Covenant Christian Centre last Monday, advised the President to review his policies, saying they were not benefitting the masses.

However, speaking on the television programme, Adeosun dismissed Ezekwesilis position, maintaining that the federal government had plans to revitalise the economy, noting, however, that there were no quick solutions to the nations current economic woes.

I disagree with Mrs Ezekwesili , Adeosun said. The present government does not operate a command-and-control economic system as alleged by the former minister.

What we are now trying to do is reset the economy so that we never end up in this situation again; and how do we do that? We have to have a more diversified economy, a more diversified revenue base.

If you look at oil, its only 13% of our GDP but it represents 70% of governments revenue, which means if anything happens to oil, it affects everybody.

The question we are trying to now resolve is: The remaining 87% of GDP, why is it contributing so little to governments revenue? If we are able to have those other revenues, which are much more stable, predictable and less volatile, then if the oil price goes down, well be able to maintain some level of stability.

We have looked at what government has been spending money on; only 10% was spent on capital, while 90% was spent on recurrent items as salaries, travelling, training and so on and those things dont grow the economy; capital (expenditure) is what grows your economy.

This budget that is being finalized has a 30% commitment to capital and we have said we want to maintain that commitment.

There are no quick solutions to the current economic woes. We are going to pump N350 billion into the economy until we see growth. The job will be done painstakingly, and we will come out of it better, Adeosun said.
Salah Abdel Sadeq, head of the State Information Service, has blamed the spread of violence and extremism in the Arab world on Tom & Jerry cartoons and video games. In a speech at the conference, Media and Culture of Violence at Cairo Universitys Mass Communication Faculty on Tuesday, he explained that the generations-old American cartoon condones violence, among other bad habits, for viewers.

People  particularly young men  now spend long hours playing video games too, he continued. They get enjoyment from killing and shedding blood while playing. So when these young gamers are faced with social pressures in the real world, they resort to violence because it has become normalized for them as a response.

He highlighted the intrinsic link between what is circulated within a country and the image that country projects abroad. Sadeq also indicated the powerful influence of multimedia on Egyptian society. During the first Ramadan after the January 25 Revolution, he cited as an example, the television business single-handedly projected an image of the police as corrupt, thieving and thick. It took Egyptian radio 30 years to reach 50 million listeners; the figure reached in subscribers to multimedia in only four years, he pointed out.

Meanwhile, Vice-President of Cairo University for Higher Studies and Research Affairs, Amr Adly, said that the media should be a mirror for reality with all its positives and negatives. When talking about the influence of violence on behavior, he pointed to bigger reasons behind the trend, like a lack of attention to the issue taken in the law.

Egypt Independent
home Faith Knights of Columbus raises awareness of Christian persecution in Middle East, Syrian archbishop pleads for help

Archbishop Jean Clement Jeanbart from Syria had asked people at New Haven, Connecticut to help the people in his country. Speaking at an event co-sponsored by the Knights of Columbus on May 1, he shared with the more than 350 people present what is happening to his home in Aleppo.

"They have destroyed the whole city," he said, according to Fox61. "When I think about all that it (Aleppo) was and all that it is now, you may be sure that I cry in my heart."

Around 20 percent of Aleppo is under the control of the Islamic State aka Daesh terrorists, he said, and they intend to erase Christianity in the Middle East. Jeanbart emphasized the need to help the Syrian Christians whose history and ancestry dates back to the time of the Biblical Paul.

"What is important is to help and to save this original group of Christians," he said, as quoted on the Knights of Columbus website. "The Lord wants that. They have been living for 2,000 years among hardships, difficulties and persecutions, and they continue."

Following Secretary of State John Kerry's confirmation that genocide is being committed against Christians and other religious minorities, the Knights of Columbus is helping to raise awareness on the issue. In April, they released a television ad that centers on the needs of Middle Eastern Christians.

"Persecution of Christians in the Middle East has been declared as genocide," the TV commercial says, "but the attacks continue. Christians are still being kidnapped, killed and sold into slavery. Relief efforts are sorely needed a your help is sorely needed."

According to Knights of Columbus CEO Carl Anderson, they have raised around $10.5 million for ad campaigns that put into focus the plight of Christians in the Middle East.

"Are we willing to allow these communities which go back to the time of Christ and the time of the Apostle Paul to become extinguished?" he said. "It is a struggle between humanity and the enemies of humanity. So, we can't make this a secondary issue."

According to non-profit organization Open Doors, the persecution level in Syria is extreme, and the main cause is Islamic extremism. Since the start of the war in 2011, 7.6 million Christians have been displaced. The BBC reported that as of August 2015, the United Nations estimated at least a quarter of a million Syrians have died, while 4.5 million have fled and 6.5 million were internally displaced. Fox16 says that at last 1,000 people were killed last year simply because they were Christians.
The government's use of warrantless searches and secret requests for information is exploding, and recent court actions have greatly expanded the reach of legal searches. The digital age is presenting challenges to our Fourth and Fifth Amendment constitutional rights in ways the Founding Fathers could never have foreseen.

A transparency report released this week from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) -- the president's appointee who manages the U.S. spy agencies -- shows warrantless searches on Americans doubled between 2013 and 2015. That's a conservative estimate, too.

The intelligence community vacuums up millions of communications from Internet backbones running in and out of the United States, as well as information collected by tech giants like Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, YouTube, and others. That data is contained in a massive NSA database approved under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (hence known as the 702 database).

More Americans subject to warrantless searches

The NSA is ostensibly authorized by Section 702 to target "each non-U.S. person reasonably believed to be located outside the United States who possesses, or who is likely to communicate or receive, foreign intelligence information." But the DNI report showed the number of NSA queries using "search terms concerning a known U.S. person" went from 2,100 in 2013 to 4,672 last year.

"The number of backdoor searches doubling since last reported shows that warrantless Section 702 surveillance is a significant and growing problem for Americans," Jake Laperruque, privacy fellow at the Constitution Project, told The Intercept.

Searches of Americans' metadata -- information about who's talking to who, rather than specific content searches -- also exploded. In 2013 the NSA conducted approximately 9,500 queries on Americans' metadata, while the DNI reported 23,800 such searches in 2015.

These figures don't include statistics about searches conducted by the CIA or FBI. While the 702 database was ostensibly created to track foreign security risks, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) has ruled that because the database only "incidentally" collected information about Americans, the FBI can conduct as many warrantless searches as it wants.

The warrantless searches we don't know about

The USA Freedom Act surveillance reforms passed last year exempt the FBI from having to disclose how often it searches the 702 database, and the agency has never released estimates. "There is every reason to believe the number of FBI queries far exceeds those of the CIA and NSA," the Project on Government Oversight wrote last year.

Lawmakers like Senator Ron Wyden and Representative Thomas Massie have denounced these kinds of "backdoor" searches on Americans. "If intelligence officials are deliberately searching for and reading the communications of specific Americans, the Constitution requires a warrant," Wyden said.

Lawmakers have been asking -- fruitlessly -- for years for more details about the FBI's activities. Next year the surveillance programs authorized under Section 702 -- namely, PRISM and Upstream -- will be up for renewal in Congress. Fourteen members of the House Judiciary Committee sent a letter to Director of National Intelligence James Clapper last month, asking for at least a rough estimate of how many "United States persons are subject to Section 702 surveillance on an annual basis."

The Fourth Amendment: Kiss it good-bye

The DNI report also identified that 48,642 requests for information, known as National Security Letters, were made to American companies. The companies are forbidden to talk about these requests, which are made without a court order.

"To many, what has been made legal is a severe violation of American's constitutional rights, from the right to privacy to the requirement for due cause for government intrusion to the Fourth Amendment prohibition against unreasonable search and seizure," InfoWorld's Galen Gruman writes.

Microsoft last month sued the government over the gag order that prohibits Microsoft from notifying customers -- even long after the fact -- when their data has been accessed. The company claimed that not only were the Fourth Amendment rights of its customers being violated, but also Microsoft's First Amendment right to speak to its customers.

Warrants without borders

On top of all that warrantless snooping, the FBI now has a license to legally hack into computers anywhere in the country -- and perhaps the world. The Supreme Court approved a controversial change to criminal procedures last week that allows a judge to issue a warrant to remotely hack into computers whose locations are concealed using anonymity technology. Previously, judges could only issue a warrant for the FBI to employ "network investigative techniques" on a computer located within their jurisdiction.

"There are serious ongoing problems with government hacking that this change will only exacerbate. So much of this is in the dark," Joseph Lorenzo Hall, chief technologist for Center for Democracy and Technology, told TechCrunch.

The new rules even allow the FBI to hack into computers of people it knows are innocent of wrongdoing.

"Let's say [the FBI] is trying to track a botnet or whatever, some type of cyber crime. [The FBI] can get a search warrant to go after 10 or 20 or 50 computers," Neema Singh Guliani, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, told Gizmodo. "This new rule allows one judge to say 'yeah, here's a search warrant, go after those 50 computers and those computers can belong to victims [of cyber crime].'"

As Gizmodo says, "The new rule would allow the FBI to infect innocent people's computer with malware in order to investigate cybercrime -- even if their only connection to the crime is that they're the victims. What could go wrong?"

Google and privacy advocates oppose the rule change and argue it infringes Americans' Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable searches. Civil liberties groups like Open Technology Institute are calling on Congress to block the changes before they take effect on Dec. 1.

"The Justice Department is now trying to quietly circumvent the legislative process by pushing for a change in court rules, pretending that its government hacking proposal is a mere procedural formality rather than the massive change to the law that it really is," said OTI Director Kevin Bankston.

Senator Wyden says he plans to introduce legislation to reverse the change. "One warrant from one judge can, in effect, reach millions of computers," Wyden said. "This is really a big issue when you're talking about expanding the government's hacking and surveillance authority."

There goes the Fifth Amendment as well

The FBI's fight to force Apple to break into the San Bernardino terrorist's iPhone ended in a draw, but federal officials won a different kind of encryption battle last week in Los Angeles. Authorities obtained a search warrant that compelled the girlfriend of an alleged gang member to offer up her fingerprint to unlock her iPhone.

Susan Brenner, a law professor at the University of Dayton, told the Los Angeles Times that the act of compelling a person in custody to press her finger against a phone breached Fifth Amendment protections against self-incrimination. It forced the defendant to testify; by moving her finger and unlocking the phone, she authenticated its contents, Brenner said. "Much of [the contents of that phone] will be about her, and a lot of that could be incriminating."

All in all, it hasn't been a good couple of weeks in the fight to preserve privacy in the digital age.
U.S. presidential candidates should embrace encryption and narrow government access to Internet users' data as part of a comprehensive technology agenda, IT trade groups say.

While the FBI and some lawmakers have pushed in recent months for encryption workarounds in criminal investigations, presidential candidates should "recognize encryption as a critical security tool," 13 tech trade organizations said in a set of tech policy recommendations released late Wednesday.

By narrowly targeting governments' access to consumer data, the next president can promote global trust in digital goods and services, said the groups, representing hundreds of tech companies. Trade groups signing the letter included the Telecommunications Industry Association, the Consumer Technology Association, and BSA.

The letter suggests presidential candidates haven't spent enough time talking about tech-related issues. "The technology sector is eager to see robust engagement on, and ultimately support for, the issues that matter most to our nation," the letter says.

The groups will work to make sure innovation issues are "infused" into the presidential campaign, said Dean Garfield, president and CEO of the Information Technology Industry Council. "The issues we have outlined are too important to be ignored or treated like bumper sticker slogans," he said in a statement.

The letter offers candidates ideas on how to improve the U.S. economy, added Heather Greenfield, communications director for the Computer and Communications Industry Association, another group signing on.

"As candidates talk about growing the economy, this list offers some low-cost and even no-cost ideas that help our entire economy," she said by email. "As the candidates fine-tune their policy proposals, we hope to show how the tech industry can offer not just innovative products for consumers, but smart strategies for economic growth for the country."

Top tech priorities for the presidential candidates should also include promoting best practices for cybersecurity, welcoming skilled immigrants, and investing in science and technology training programs, the groups said.

So far, the U.S. presidential campaign has largely stayed away from technology issues, with illegal immigration, worker wages, and other issues dominating the campaign. Businessman and reality TV star Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the likely Democratic nominee, have spent little time talking about tech issues.

Trump has talked about shutting down parts of the Internet as a way to block communication between terrorists.

Clinton has talked about cybersecurity issues in some recent speeches, and her website includes a short policy statement on cyberattacks.

Clinton will encourage the public and private sectors to work together "to strengthen security and build resiliency for economy and infrastructure," her website says. "Our country will outpace this rapidly changing threat, maintain strong protections against unwarranted government or corporate surveillance, and ensure American companies are the most competitive in the world."

Clinton and Trump have both raised concerns about the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade agreement that many tech groups have pushed for. The candidates worry about the trade deal taking jobs away from U.S. workers, while tech companies see it as opening up new markets for their products.
Windows Live Mail 2012 users are on notice: Switch to a modern email client or lose access to any Microsoft email accounts they have.

As noted in a blog post from Outlook VP Javier Soltero, if you have a Microsoft mailing address -- @outlook.com, @hotmail.com, @live.com, or @msn.com -- you won't be able to use the Windows Live Mail 2012 email client after June 30. If your email address is woody@msn.com or woody@outlook.com, for example, you won't be able to use Windows Live Mail to work with your email after June 30.

Soltero blames the new Outlook.com software rollout and describes the fallout this way:

To provide you an email experience with enhanced performance, security and reliability, the new Outlook.com has been built upon our latest Office 365 infrastructure. Because the Windows Live Mail 2012 email application doesn't support the protocols used by this new infrastructure, you will not be able to send or receive Outlook.com email from Windows Live Mail 2012 after your account is upgraded. This means the time has come for you to upgrade to a new email application.

Outlook.com is Microsoft's latest name for its email hosting service, similar to Google's Gmail and Apple's iCloud. Microsoft has been reworking its Exchange, Office 365, and Outlook.com back ends to be more compatible across email clients and to use the same APIs internally, so it can roll out the same functionality across Exchange, Office 365, and Outlook users. Those current differences explain why, for example, Mac Outlook users can't create shared calendars but Windows users can.

Microsoft's goal is to have a consistent set of APIs for not only Microsoft's email clients and services to use, but also third-party clients like Apple's and Google's email and calendar clients, Microsoft has told InfoWorld executive editor Galen Gruman.

It appears that Microsoft won't be updating Windows Live Mail 2012 to work with that new back end. Instead, Microsoft is telling users to switch to a more current email client, preferably the Mail client that comes with Windows 10.

Ironically, Gmail users will be able to still access the Windows Live Mail 2012 client -- that service operates with the older protocols supported in Windows Live Mail. The retooled Outlook.com service does not.

Microsoft has previously telegraphed abandonment of Windows Live Mail. You may recall back in December there were problems with Windows Live Mail patch KB 3093594. Microsoft distributed that patch through a link in an email message -- one that looked a lot like a phishing message. The email message said, in part:

In a few weeks, we will be making some changes to our email services that might impact your @outlook.com, @hotmail, @live, or @msn email account. Those changes will prevent your email from being delivered to the Windows Live Mail 2012 application you use. In order to continue using Windows Live Mail 2012 to send and receive email for your account, you need to install the latest update.

That quickly went to perdition in a picnic basket, as the proffered patch, KB 3093594, froze Windows Live Mail on every Windows 10 computer and tanked many Win7 and 8.1 machines, as well. MessengerGeek Jonathan Kay described the situation at the time:

Although not officially mentioned in the message, Windows Live Mail 2012 uses the DeltaSync protocol to send and receive email for Outlook.com/Hotmail accounts, so it can be assumed that they are discontinuing this protocol. Prior to DeltaSync's creation, Outlook Express used WebDAV, which itself was shut down in 2009. With the patch linked in the email, KB3093594, Microsoft seems to have elected to continue to support Live Mail 2012 by replacing the DeltaSync protocol with Exchange ActiveSync. However, ... the Exchange ActiveSync support is extremely rudimentary and fixes none of the existing issues with mail notifications.

That patch quickly brought down most of the Windows Live Mail community, and it was replaced on Dec. 17 by a second version, which also crashed right and left. Nonplussed, Microsoft released a third version -- which turned out to be identical to the second version -- on Jan. 8. That version crashed as surely as the first two.

As I said back in January:
INDU ( $YM_F ) Forecasting The Rally After 3 Waves Correction Elliott Wave Forecast - 58 minutes ago Hello fellow traders. In this article were going to take a quick look at the Elliott Wave charts of $YM_F, published in members area of the website. As our members know INDU ended cycle from the 34288...

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Does WTI Crude have enough to take out resistance? TradeGuidance - 1 hour ago We analyze the current back-and-forth price action with WTI Crude Oil CLZ22 : 84.51 (-0.63%)

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Bank of America ($BAC) Perfect Reaction Lower from Blue Box Area. Elliott Wave Forecast - 1 hour ago Good day Traders and Investors. In todays article, we will look at the past performance of 4 Hour Elliottwave chart of Bank of America ($BAC). The decline from 08.16.2022 high is unfolding as a 5 swings...

Mixed Hog Trade for Monday Barchart - 1 hour ago So far the lean hog futures market is mixed within a dime of UNCH. December is the exception with a midday loss of 85 cents. The USDA National Average Base Hog Price for Monday morning was $85.88, with... HEZ22 : 87.925s (-1.35%) HEJ23 : 93.900s (+0.05%) KMZ22 : 97.775 (-0.23%)

Triple Digit Weakness for Midday Cotton Barchart - 1 hour ago Cotton is trading with midday losses of 169 to 291 points. Crude oil CL*1 is off the lows for midday, but still down by 58c/bbl. Chinese Customs data had 90k MT of cotton imported during September. That... CTZ22 : 76.13 (-3.79%) CTH23 : 75.62 (-3.73%) CTK23 : 75.46 (-3.44%)

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home US Missouri State University faces lawsuit from student kicked out of program over his Christian beliefs

A former student of Missouri State University (MSU) filed a federal lawsuit against the school for dropping him out of a master's degree program in 2014 because of his Christian beliefs.

The student, Andrew Cash, said the trouble began years ago when he said he would not counsel same-sex couples because of his religious convictions. The lawsuit says that because of this, he was "targeted and punished for his Christian worldview."

In 2011, Cash underwent his internship at a faith-based organization called Springfield Marriage and Family Institute, according to a report from the News-Leader. During a class presentation, Cash invited W.K. Boyce, his supervisor at the organization, to speak. Cash's classmates asked Boyce if the organization he represented counseled people from same-sex relationships, and he said he personally doesn't because of his beliefs.

A few days later, Kristy Perryman, the school's internship administrator, talked to Cash about the incident, and he told her he also will refuse to counsel gay couples but will refer them to other counselors.

According to the lawsuit, Cash told Perryman that he would counsel based on his "core beliefs, values and Christian worldview." Cash explained to her that gay couples would benefit most from the counsel of those "sharing their core value system and core beliefs."

Perryman said Cash's beliefs contradicted with the American Counseling Association's code of ethics and told him to transfer to a different organization for his internship. However, in 2014, he was dropped out of MSU's master's program.

Tom Olp, Cash's attorney, said Perryman "took offense at his religious beliefs."

American Counseling Association chief professional officer David Kaplan said Cash's lawsuit against MSU is not the first of its kind. In fact, he said, students from other states have filed lawsuits against their schools for the same reason as Cash's.

"You are entering a profession," Kaplan explained. "People we serve are more important than we are. Our client's need to be accepted is more important than our need to discriminate."

Olp said MSU's treatment of Cash is "extremely intolerant."

"We have this very dangerous trend toward allowing the government to shut down religious expression," Olp said. "That is contrary to the First Amendment. A democracy requires vibrant expression of various points of view and it really needs robust religious expression."

He said his client wants to be taken back to the master's program.
When Hurricane Katrina devastated the U.S. Gulf Coast in 2005, it provided an unintentional gift for prominent education reform advocates and the funders who support them: the chance to test their ideas on a citywide scale. More than 10 years and tens of millions of dollars later, a growing body of research-based evidence suggests mixed results.

By most conventional measures of educational success, the news is good. Student test scores and graduation rates have increased, and many studies suggest the reforms enacted after Katrina are largely responsible. However, less quantifiable measures, such as parent and community engagement, tell a different story. Plus, the independence of the research itself has been questioned in some quarters.

In 2005, Katrina not only wreaked havoc on the Louisiana and Mississippi coasts, it virtually wiped out the New Orleans public school system. At the time, New Orleans public schools were among the lowest-performing in the nation. In addition, the school district itself had become almost synonymous with mismanagement and corruption.

After the storm destroyed all but a handful of the districts schools, the state placed nearly all of New Orleans schools under the control of the state-created Recovery School District (RSD), the entity established previously to take over the states lowest-performing schools. Under pressure to reopen schools as quickly as possible, RSD turned the operations of most schools over to charter management organizations to operate the schools as charters. The school board in Orleans Parish, meanwhile, fired nearly all of the districts employees.

In came the charter operators, education reformers, and reform-minded funders. For these groups, the storm-induced reset of New Orleans public education handed them an historic opportunity to show the entire country that their brand of K-12 reform provided the answers to improve public schooling, especially in poor urban areas. This ushered in a wave of market-oriented reforms, such as expanded school choice, greater autonomy for charter schools, and a reliance on nonprofits such as Teach for America (TFA) and the New Teacher Project as sources of new teachers.

Over 10 years later, more than 90 percent of New Orleans school children attend a charter school, by far the highest charter enrollment rate in the nation. Detroit, where 55 percent of students are enrolled in charters, is a distant second.

Funders supporting the changes in New Orleans are among the most prominent education reform advocates in the country, especially those who favor market-oriented reforms such as charter schools and new teacher preparation pipelines. Funders who bankrolled the changes in the Big Easy include the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation, the Walton Family Foundation, the Gates Foundation, the Doris and Donald Fisher Fund, and the Laura and John Arnold Foundation. These and other funders have poured millions into the growth of charter schools in New Orleans.

Whether these efforts have borne fruit in terms of student success has important implications, not only for New Orleans but for the entire K-12 landscape, as some of these funders have actively funded similar reforms in other cities and states and hope to take these changes wider. Broad, for example, wants to expand charter schools in Los Angeles. Walton is the most enthusiastic funder of the charter school movement and announced a commitment to spend $1 billion over the next five years to grow new charter schools and help existing ones expand. Walton, Arnold, and Fisher are among the most prominent supporters of Teach For America.

Many studies on the outcomes of the New Orleans reforms have come from the Tulane University-based Education Research Alliance for New Orleans, led by Tulane economist Douglas N. Harris. The latest study by Harris and his team, released in February of this year, suggests that positive changes have occurred over time. The changes were small at first, but appear to have increased over time as the reforms implemented after the hurricane took hold.

The study also addresses the question of whether the increases in student achievement are the result of the reforms themselves, other factors such as a change in pre- and post-Katrina demographics, or a combination of these. Harris and his team noted that the shutdown of New Orleans largest public housing projects could have resulted in fewer low-income students, thus changing the composition of the student enrollment. In addition, improved achievement could reflect the influence of schools the students attended elsewhere before returning to New Orleans.

While not discounting these entirely, the study concludes that these and other factors unrelated to the reforms had limited impact at best and that most of the gains can be attributed to the reforms themselves. The alliances work compared New Orleans students with those from other school districts affected by the hurricane and found that test scores in the former increased significantly relative to the latter.

Skeptics, however, may caution those who trumpet these findings to follow the money. One of the biggest funders of the Education Research Alliance is the Arnold Foundation, which has backed the pro-charter New Schools for New Orleans and other pro-charter reforms in the Big Easy. This space reported in 2015 that Arnold awarded the alliance $3 million for the specific purpose of evaluating the impact of philanthropic-led reforms to New Orleans public education.

Other studies have also shown positive results similar to those found by the Education Research Alliance. The news, however, is not all good. While a growing number of students are passing state standardized tests and graduating from high school, other studies have found that ACT scores in the Big Easy averaged only 16.4 in 2014, well short of 21, which ACT considers the benchmark for college readiness.

Additional concerns have lingered, as well. Charter schools  not only in New Orleans but nationwide  have been criticized for providing a lack of adequate resources for special education students and English Language Learners.

Another concern centers on a perceived lack of transparency in the open enrollment process used in New Orleans charter schools. The Education Research Alliances own work raised issues of questionable enrollment practices, finding that at least one-third of schools that were studied engaged in creaming, the practice of selecting students considered most likely to be successful and counseling out others, or not advertising open seats in schools as a way of limiting the types of students who enroll. Such practices benefit higher-achieving students and the parents who are the most engaged in their childrens education.

Parent and community engagement is another area in which critics claim the reforms backed by pro-charter groups and funders have fallen short. The widespread firing of teachers  many of them African-American women with many years of classroom experience  did not sit well with many in the community. Their replacement by younger, often white, TFA interns did little to soothe tensions. Others complain that parents and communities have scant voice in the overhaul of public schools in New Orleans.

This uncovers a persistent issue that surrounds philanthropy in public education. In contrast to government-funded work, philanthropy does not require public input and approval. Philanthropic priorities are set by wealthy donors and boards of directors, often in places far removed from the areas they attempt to serve. These concerns about a lack of public input should not be dismissed out of hand. A lack of public engagement, after all, was one factor that doomed the funder-driven reform project in Newark.

Do the gains in New Orleans vindicate what school choice and pro-charter advocates have been saying? Do they provide a model for the nation? Not so fast, the Education Research Alliance cautions. Its latest study is quick to point out that the population served and the intensity with which the reforms were implemented are important considerations. The reforms targeted a low-income, mostly African American population with some of the lowest academic performance in the nation. In addition, the reforms were implemented with a nationwide outpouring of support that included a large supply of ambitious, talented young teachers. Scaling these reforms to the state or national level would be far more challenging.

A lesson here for funders is to manage their own expectations if similar reforms implemented more broadly in multiple cities and states do not show the kinds of results we have seen in New Orleans.
Highland Development Ventures LLC, a New York-based real estate developer and investment company specializing in self-storage and student-housing conversions, intends to convert the warehousing space in the back of a Franklin, Wis., Hobby Lobby store into 80,000 square feet of self-storage. The warehouse portion of the building would feature drive-in, climate-controlled space, while up to three new storage buildings and outdoor boat and RV storage could be developed around it, according to the source.

The building once housed an Ashley Furniture store, which used the front as a showroom and the rear of the structure for warehousing. Hobby Lobby uses only the front of the property. If the project is approved, Highland Development would buy the warehouse portion and surrounding paved area, the source reported.

Traditional retail uses of the building are problematic because its shielded from view in its South 27th Street location, Adam Hird, managing partner for Highland Development, told the source. Neighboring residents have also complained about truck noise from the loading docks of a nearby Walmart, which makes commercial warehousing also an issue. You have a site with very little visibility from the road, Hird said. If they also want something that is not disruptive to the neighbors, [self-storage] may be the best bet.

To help with the visibility limitations, one of the new storage structures would be built as tall as the Hobby Lobby building with exterior signage, according to Hird.

The planning commission is scheduled to hold a public hearing on the proposal on May 19. If approved, Highland Development could begin construction this summer or in the fall, Hird said.

The developer is converting two other Milwaukee-area buildings into self-storage that will open this summer. The company is negotiating to acquire two additional sites in the area that would operate under the Extra Space Storage brand, according to the source.

For us, having mass is important, Hird said. Were looking to grow to at least eight facilities, preferably 12, in the next year or two.

Based in White Plains, N.Y., Highland Development Ventures is a real estate development and investment firm with interests throughout Canada and the United States. Its primary focus is the adaptive reuse of older buildings and small urban sites, specializing in self-storage and student-housing projects, according to the company website.
StorageMart, a Columbia, Mo.-based self-storage operator with more than 165 facilities in Canada and the United States, is offering 30 days of free storage to victims of the wildfire in Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada. The participating facilities are in Edmonton, which is about 270 miles from the blaze. They are:

8401 18 St. N.W.

10710 214 St. N.W.

13303 Fort Road N.W.

21508 115 Ave. N.W.

Edmonton self-storage is a resource for those who need somewhere to store the belongings they have rescued from their homes, said Cris Burnam, president. Our staff will help people find the right storage unit for their belongings so they can move in quickly and spend time with family and friends, and deal with the wildfires effects.

The fire, which began Tuesday, has led to the evacuation of more than 88,000 people, the largest to date in Albertas history. It has torched 328 square miles and at least 1,600 structures, according to several sources. The blaze spread quickly through the outskirts of Fort McMurray, an urban-service area in the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo. Its in the middle of the Athabasca oil sands and surrounded by a boreal forest.

The cause of the fire is still under investigation, however, record heat, dry conditions and heavy winds have helped the inferno spread quickly. Traveling has been difficult for those attempting to flee, and gasoline is no longer available in Fort McMurray, Grasslands or Wandering River, a source reported.

Were thankful to hear that there have been no fatalities nor serious injuries reported at this time, Burnam said. Were grateful to the Canadian Red Cross for providing staff and volunteers to help with immediate needs, like food and shelter.

Founded in 1999, StorageMart serves more than 75,000 self-storage customers. The company operates in Chinese, English, Punjabi, Quebecois French and Spanish.
Thanks to local giants like Facebook and Uber, Silicon Valley is the epicenter of the new, technology-driven era. That prowess has caught the attention of British hedge fund billionaire David Harding, whose Winton Capital Management is mining the Bay Area for scientists to help it make better investment decisions.

Its been pleasantly surprising to speak to engineers and people in data science on the West Coast who seem to intrinsically understand the logic of investing systematically, Harding  founder, executive chair and CEO of $34.5 billion Winton  tells Institutional Investor at this weeks Milken Institute Global Conference in Beverly Hills, California.

Quantitative commodity trading adviser Winton recently opened a San Francisco location that will serve as a data science center. The office, which has been up and running for about three months, houses six scientists focused on expanding Wintons proprietary data sets and exploring new applications for its expertise in pattern recognition and statistical inference. This outpost will also support Winton Ventures, the London-based firms venture capital arm, which invests in data and other tech start-ups. Over time, Winton says, the team will probably grow to between 30 and 40 data scientists as the firm takes advantage of Silicon Valleys talent pool.

The San Francisco office represents the next wave for Harding when it comes to capturing new data and finding new ways to refine Wintons research and investment programs. The work done there will complement research and strategy development in London.

Harding, 54, who launched Winton in 1997, is something of a data scientist himself. After earning a physics degree from the University of Cambridge in 1982, he started his career at London-headquartered Sabre Fund Management, one of the first futures traders, where he designed trading systems and began to hone his research-driven approach to systematic investing. In 1987 he founded Adam, Harding & Lueck, a London-based quant CTA, with Michael Adam and Martin Lueck. AHLs 1994 acquisition by U.K. alternative-investment titan Man Group led to the creation of systematic-trading firm Man AHL. Keen to freely pursue his own investment methods, Harding left Man in 1996 to start Winton.

The firm now has offices in six countries, including Australia, China, Japan and Switzerland. Winton runs three core strategies: the flagship Winton Diversified Program, an $18.5 billion long-short vehicle that invests in global futures, forwards and cash equities; the $13.3 billion Winton Futures Program, a long-short global futures and forwards strategy; and the $2.2 billion Winton Long-Only Equity Program.

Data interests me because a lot of it is incorrect, and once we are able to put it together we are able to look at a range of different research premises that can impact how we allocate capital, says Harding, whose eyes light up at the prospect of finding new ways to evaluate companies and markets.

Rather than cast about for already created data sets, Winton wants to develop its own to track metrics that may not yet be assembled. For example, Ive always been interested in the eternal debate over organic growth versus acquisitions, he says. Its not just the research question that matters. There is a lot of money at stake too.

By creating a database that looks at career histories, for instance, Winton could extrapolate a handful of research questions to assess companies. Among the possible queries: whether gender diversity among senior management has an impact, how compensation relates to performance and if companies benefit from splitting the CEO and chair roles.

Compiling the data could be the key to determining how any of these single factors affects a business, Harding contends: Increasingly, instead of the idea coming first and the data second, we gather the data first and let the ideas flow from that.

Harding knows that his firm can tackle those research questions at greater speed and depth than those that might be working from a more academic perspective or as part of the rash of financial technology start-ups that are trying to monetize data. We have over 100 people on our data team, he says. Academic research in this field inevitably isnt able to bring to bear the level of resources that a successful corporation can. For them it is a bit like going up against the U.S. Army with a peashooter.
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With several of its existing funds solidly in the black this year, the quant giant has raised money for a new macro fund.
Testing is well underway for self-driving cars in Canada  but some industry experts are concerned a hands-off approach to the wheel could mean hanky-panky in the drivers seat and some more exotic claims for carriers.Federal officials working on a regulatory framework for autonomous vehicles in Canada expressed concern to Transport Minister Marc Garneau this week that self-driving vehicles could lead to increased distracted driving in Canada  especially of the non-PG variety.Recent videos of drivers brushing their teeth and reading the newspaper while driving Teslas semi-autonomous Models S and X reportedly stoked their fears. Drivers tend to overestimate the performance of automation and will naturally turn their focus away from the road when they turn on their auto-pilot, stated a briefing note to the minister.While it remains to be seen just what drivers will turn on, one industry expert agrees self-driving vehicles may lead to salacious behaviour at your local intersection. I am predicting that, once computers are doing the driving, there will be a lot more sex in cars, stated Barrie Kirk, co-founder and executive director of the Canadian Automated Vehicles Centre for Excellence. Thats one of several things people will do which will inhibit their ability to respond quickly when the computer says to the human, Take over.'However, Kirk maintains that driverless cars will ultimately provide a safer option  with deep implications for insurers. Driverless cars will be safe, he said in an interview with Insurance Business Canada. More-so than human-driven cars. This will lead to a contraction in the insurance industry  if claims go down, payments will go down (and profits). Though in essence, it gives insurers the opportunity to compete with the OEMs (original equipment manufacturers).He foresees personal car ownership decreasing altogether, with driverless taxi fleets to take their place, and a general shift from personal auto policies to commercial.The future of fully autonomous cars may have yet to be realized, but todays manufacturers, insurers and lawmakers are faced with establishing a framework to govern entirely self-driving vehicles. Questions around safety and liability remain at the forefront of the issue.Recently, in efforts to clear barriers to market, Volvos President and Chief Executive Officer Hakan Samuelsson stated the automaker would assume all liability for accidents their self-driving cars are involved in when the autonomous feature is engaged.Testing for self-driving cares is slated to begin in Ontario this year, requiring a human drivers behind the wheel at all times. The federal Liberals first budget in March included investment for Transport Canada to develop a framework on autonomous vehicle design.
The wildfires ravaging Canadas oil hub in northern Alberta have rapidly spread to an area bigger than New York city, prompting the air lift of more than 8,000 evacuees as firefighters seek to salvage critical infrastructure.

The inferno around Fort McMurray has destroyed homes, forcing more than 80,000 people to flee, disrupted Western Canadas oil-sands operations and may become the costliest catastrophe in the countrys history with insurance losses potentially reaching C$9.4 billion ($7.3 billion).

Responders Thursday were concentrating efforts on protecting key facilities such as the airport and the water treatment plant after the blazes grew to 850 square kilometers (328 square miles), ten times the size of Wednesday, Alberta Premier Rachel Notley said at a press briefing.

Thats where a lot of work has been going on to ensure the recovery can go along faster if the key infrastructure pieces are still in play, she said. That ultimately has a major impact on the recovery costs down the road between the various levels of government and insurers.

Oil Sands

The wildfire is the latest blow to a province already grappling with the economic toll of a two-year oil price slump in one of the worlds most expensive places to extract crude. More than 40,000 energy jobs have been lost in Canada since the price crash began in 2014.

Royal Bank of Canada estimated that as much as 1 million barrels a day of production was shut because of the blaze, or about 40 percent of oil sands output, as companies including Suncor Energy Inc., Cnooc Ltd.s Nexen, Royal Dutch Shell Plc, and ConocoPhillips reduce production and open work camps to residents escaping blazes in the Albertas biggest-ever evacuation. Inter Pipeline Ltd. shut part of its system in the province. The disruptions pushed up the price of oil sand crude.

Major oil sands sites are near Fort McMurray and are concentrated to the north while the fire is to the south. Fire danger to their operations is likely to be minimal.

More Evacuations

Eighty percent of the oil sands are located deep underground and can only be extracted through an in-situ drilling process, Chelsie Klassen, a spokeswoman for the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, said in an e-mail. The remaining twenty percent is minable from the surface and predominantly located north of Fort McMurray. Hydrocarbons can burn under the right conditions, however oil sands would burn at a much slower pace considering its composition with sand.

Changing weather patterns prompted Albertas provincial government Wednesday evening to evacuate two communities more than 35 kilometers (22 miles) south of Fort McMurray  Anzac and Gregoire Lake Estates  as well as Fort McMurray First Nation, according to a tweet by the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo.

All Gone

My house and everything I own is gone, Mike Marchand, a crane operator for Suncor, said in a phone interview from Edmonton, where he evacuated with his family after the trailer park where he lives in Fort McMurray went up in flames. Ive never had anything like this happen.

No deaths or injuries have been reported although 1,600 buildings have been damaged. Conditions remained extreme with a total of 49 fires burning and seven considered out of control, according to a government statement Thursday. More than 1,110 firefighters, 145 helicopters, 138 pieces of heavy equipment and 22 air tankers are fighting the fires.

A total of 25,000 residents of Fort McMurray, about 700 kilometers northeast of Calgary, fled north to nearby sites where companies are flying out workers and making room for evacuees. Shell has shut its 255,000 barrel-a-day Albian Sands mine and Suncor, Syncrude Canada Ltd. and Connacher Oil & Gas Ltd. have also reduced output from the region.

The firefighters efforts have managed to prevent major damage at the citys airport when it was threatened by the blaze Wednesday, officials said. The airport is now being used to help to coordinate response efforts. The same efforts were underway at the water treatment plants, hospitals and major transportation coordinators, said Notley, who marked her one year anniversary of being elected to office Thursday.

Insurance Losses

There is no timeline for when residents might be able to return to their homes or estimates of the cost of the damages. The one hopeful sign was that the wind had shifted Thursday so it was blowing the flames away from the community, officials said.

Insurance losses could reach that high if nearly all homes, cars, and businesses in the Fort McMurray area were destroyed and owners filed a claim to insurers, according to a research note to clients from Bank of Montreal analyst Tom MacKinnon. He said its more likely that one-quarter to half of assets would be damaged, leading to total insurance industry losses of C$2.6 billion to C$4.7 billion, as much as quadruple the costliest Canadian natural disaster, flooding also in Alberta three years ago.

Unpredictable Fire

The annual wildfire season in Western Canada started early this year after a dry winter and low spring rainfall. Officials have yet to identify a direct cause for the inferno, which quickly strengthened Tuesday afternoon and caught emergency responders by surprise.

An out-of-control blaze in 2011 caused an estimated C$700 million ($545 million) in damage after burning 47 kilometers and forcing some oil and gas operations to shut around Slave Lake, also in northern Alberta. Oil sands operations belonging to Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. and Cenovus Energy Inc. were disrupted last year by a blaze near Cold Lake.

The current evacuation has been hindered by the unpredictability of the fire, which on Tuesday afternoon breached Highway 63, the main road in and out of Fort McMurray, south of the community.

Canadas Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale pledged federal support for Alberta, while the national government dispatches military planes to the region. Fort McMurray faces a long road ahead to rebuild, Goodale said at a briefing. The recovery from this situation is going to take a considerable amount of time.

Disaster Movie

Videos posted to Twitter as residents were trying to escape showed vast tracks of trees being swallowed by fire along Highway 63, the forest floor engulfed in flames and the sky thick with smoke. Helicopters flew overhead on their way to fight the fire.

Sheldon Dahl, a 36-year-old husband and father of three, braved flames that lapped at the sides of Highway 63 as he headed south through a sky of orange in his minivan, smoke seeping into the vehicle for the worst five-minute stretch of the drive leaving Fort McMurray.

It felt like I was in a disaster movie, Dahl said. It was surreal.

Related:

Copyright 2022 Bloomberg.

Topics Catastrophe Natural Disasters Profit Loss Wildfire Energy Oil Gas Canada
Reinsurance broker JLT Re has launched a new operation in North America  JLT Re Global Mortgage Solutions  to offer insurance and reinsurance to government-sponsored entities, mortgage insurers, mortgage lenders and builders.

Steve Rance has been appointed executive vice president of this new offering, which is part of JLT Re (North America) Inc. Prior to joining JLT in 2008, Rance was managing director for Structured Transactions at Genworth Mortgage Insurance and European managing director at Radian, a U.S. mortgage insurer. According to the announcement, Rance has more than two decades of experience in mortgage risk management and insurance. He delivered NewBuy, the UKs first government-backed mortgage indemnity program that JLT still manages.

Rance will be working with Gregg Holtmeier, who leads JLTs western region.

Whilst todays U.S. mortgage marketplace benefits from improved macroeconomic factors, following the global economic decline of 2007 to 2010, the GSEs are working to share credit default risk through the capital markets and the (re)insurance markets to support liquidity and stability in the U.S. housing market, said Rance.

We have been working for many years with a diverse range of (re)insurers across Europe, Asia and around the globe that are now looking for intelligent ways to support the U.S. mortgage insurance and housing market.

American International Group (AIG), which recently reported profit rose 12 percent to $163 million at its mortgage insurance unit United Guaranty for the first quarter, is planning an initial public offering to sell a stake in its mortgage insurer.

Source: JLT Re

Related:

Topics USA Trends Reinsurance Market New Markets
Delaware Gov. Jack Markell is pledging his support for a bill to toughen penalties for texting or otherwise using a handheld phone while driving.

After experiencing a virtual reality demonstration May 3 of the potentially fatal consequences of texting while driving, a somber Markell said he would sign the bill no matter how high the penalty is increased.

As currently written, the bill increases the penalty for a first offense from $50 to $100. It also increases the penalty for subsequent offenses from between $100 and $200 to between $200 and $300.

Also the bill calls for points to be assessed on a persons drivers license for second or subsequent offenses.

A companion bill creates a special license plate urging motorists not to use electronic devices and drive.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Personal Auto
A new report says more than 60 Massachusetts workers died on the job in 2015  a number that soars when deaths by occupational injuries and illnesses are included.

The report released last week by the Massachusetts Coalition for Occupational Safety and Health and the Massachusetts AFL-CIO found that 63 Massachusetts workers lost their lives while at work last year.

That number climbs to 630 when deaths caused by occupational injuries and job-related illnesses are included.

Transportation incidents were the leading cause of fatal injuries, contributing to the deaths of 23 workers.

Six workers were murdered on the job in 2015, with occupations ranging from doctor to sous chef.

The average fine assessed to an employer with safety violations resulting in the death of a worker was $18,513.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Trends Talent Massachusetts
Abuse of assignment of benefits (AOB) from water loss claims has become a full-blown Florida insurance crisis that will mean higher insurance rates next year and for the foreseeable future for every Florida policyholder, according to Citizens Property Insurance Corp. CEO Barry Gilway and Chief Risk Officer John Rollins.

We are going to have a round of rate increases from private carriers, said Rollins. South Florida will definitely have a rate increase. The question is more open in the rest of the state, but the trends are very disturbing.

Private insurer executives have echoed the warning and say hikes of as much as $1 billion will be needed.

The issue now most commonly referred to as just AOB took center stage at the Florida Association for Insurance Reforms conference on April 28. Several industry experts said AOB is no longer just a problem for Citizens, the state-backed property insurer, and maintained the impact will go far beyond rates if the crisis isnt addressed. The overall Florida market will also suffer, especially if the state is hit by a serious catastrophe.

What you've seen is a situation where a flu in South Florida is turning into a pandemic for the rest of the state.

[AOB] is also trickling into the reinsurance pricing, Bruce Lucas, chairman & CEO of Heritage Insurance said at the FAIR event. The number one question asked of us by reinsurers is, What are you doing about AOB? because after a storm, it could be a big issue.

Citizens, which has seen AOB claims skyrocket, was the first to highlight the issue in its rate filing last summer. Now the insurer is re-tooling its efforts to combat the AOB abuse in light of Florida lawmakers failure to enact a legislative solution.

By law, Citizens can only raise rates by up to 10 percent per year. But in parts of the state where AOB abuse has been rampant  namely the tri-county area of Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties  Citizens said actuarially sound rate increases should be as high as 189 percent. In other parts of the state Citizens had expected to decrease rates by about 10 percent, but that is no longer the case.

Gilway said private carriers that are also experiencing a significant rise in AOB claims have more options than Citizens has. Private insurers options include raising rates by as much as 15 percent without Office of Insurance Regulation (OIR) approval, or withdrawing from or eliminating zip codes where the abuse is rampant  such as in the tri-county region.

If that happens, Gilway and Rollins said the result would be a market availability crisis, and the depopulation efforts that have brought down Citizens policy count in the last several years will be completely reversed.

The implications of that for us are huge. We are statutorily required to write business in tri-county, so if no one else is writing it, those policies come to us, Gilway said.

Carrier executives on a panel at FAIRs recent conference echoed the sentiments that this is no longer just a Citizens problem.

We will be raising rates by about 5 percent this year because of AOB, said Locke Burt, chairman and president of Security First Insurance.

This is a $1 billion issue  a billion dollars in rate increases this year to the consumer. We can write against it, we can shut down zip codes, we can take action. Citizens cant do that, said Lucas of Heritage Insurance.

Education efforts by Citizens, as well as industry and consumer groups, are helping to raise awareness of the issue but may be having a negative impact in the short term. Severity of claims and AOB lawsuits are still increasing, Gilway said. In fact, Citizens had 1,000 suits in March alone  the highest monthly number over the last two years.

It appears to be a run on the bank scenario with the attorneys saying, I need to get my suit in now, Gilway said. We were seeing about 620 suits a month in the last two years. During that same period our policy count dropped by two-thirds, so you would expect to see a decrease in the number of suits.

Gilway said private insurers are having similar results  with some reporting 12 to 14 new suits a day. As of right now the problem is getting worse and not better, he said.

Results of a data call performed by OIR earlier this year found that frequency of water loss claims has increased by 46 percent and severity has increased by 28 percent since 2010. OIRs report concluded that water loss claims, exacerbated by assignment of benefits, are driving higher rates in South Florida and increasingly across the state.

Outgoing Florida Insurance Commissioner Kevin McCarty emphasized the effects the AOB issue is having on the Florida insurance market, and ultimately on consumers.

This is a true victimization of homeowners  now everyone else is going to have increased costs. Thats exactly where we dont want to be, McCarty said. We have to have a broad public policy conversation on what can be done.

Legislative Response

Rollins and Gilway agree a legislative solution is the only way to really stop the abuse. However, the effort put forth in the just-ended Florida session fell apart for the fourth year in a row.

Gilway said the reason for that was twofold: lobbying efforts by water remediation companies and contractors, as well as law firms currently benefitting from the AOB provision; and the insurance industrys inability to reach a consensus on what needs to be done to combat the problem.

We got out-lobbied, there is no question. But the other issue is the industry itself  we are not on the same page, Gilway said. There is a lot of work to be done to pull the industry together.

Specifically, Gilway said, State Farm walked away because the insurer said Floridas one-way attorney fee shifting statute blamed for the AOB abuse was not being corrected. Floridas statute allows policyholders, or in the case of an AOB by a policyholder, to recover their attorney fees upon the successful completion of coverage litigation.

Because its a one-way fee shift, if an insurer wins a claim suit it cannot collect its legal fees from policyholders. In other words, claimants have nothing to lose by filing suit. Gilway says State Farm didnt want the Legislature to pass a bill unless it was a comprehensive reform measure that addressed the statute.

As long as you have a statute in place that basically says any contractor on behalf of the insured can sue the insurance company, and when that happens if we pay $1 dollar more than the original estimate the insurance company is responsible for all of the attorney fees, its a no-lose proposition for the trial bar, Gilway said.

There may be hope for next year. State Senator Jeff Brandes said his colleagues are finally recognizing AOB abuse as a crisis. What started as water claims in one part of the state is now spreading to roofing claims in other areas, and what is meant to be a consumer protection is now having the opposite effect.

What youve seen is a situation where a flu in South Florida is turning into a pandemic for the rest of the state, Brandes said. Its risen to the level now where lawmakers are starting to hear that policies are going back into Citizens and that companies are simply not writing in the tri-county area. You are going to see a substantial shift now in policymakers thinking.

Brandes said ideas that have generated some support involve moving towards a managed repair model, that would be similar to the health insurance market where consumers can choose between an HMO or PPO. In this case, policyholders would have a contractor list to choose from for a water loss claim to get a lower rate on their policy.

It might be a solution that drives down costs and allows consumers to have a choice, Brandes said. At the end of the day, this is really a contract between insurance companies and the consumer, so to have a lower rate you would have a defined list of contractors to choose from, and thats a choice the consumer is making. As long as it is well-disclosed and people are upfront about it, its a fair way to do it.

The AOB issue really highlights the need for a discussion of what the future of Florida insurance looks like and I think the HMO/PPO model really creates an interesting discussion, he added.

Brandes said he doesnt know yet if he will sponsor legislation around the issue in the next session, but before anything can happen the industry needs to come together on a solution.

They need to sing it as a chorus, but [so far] theres been a lot of solo acts, Brandes said. At the end of the day, we are hearing the coalescing around a number of ideas that we can begin to support.

Whether that will translate into action next session, however, remains to be seen.

In the Meantime

Citizens launched a policyholder education campaign earlier this year called Call Citizens First to encourage policyholders to reach out to the insurer or their agent when water loss first occurs. Gilway said that today, the average claim comes in 33 days after the event, making it very difficult for the insurer to adequately assess the claim and leading to increased costs. He said by the time Citizens is made aware of a water loss claim in those cases, 90 percent of them already have representation.

Rollins said the severity of the cost of the claim at least doubles when it is litigated.

If you are on the other side of this process as a plumber, water remediator or attorney, you are potentially generating four times the marketplace for yourself by taking a natural claim that is maybe $8,000 and making it a $35,000 claim, Rollins said.

CITIZEN FORM CHANGES To ensure that Citizens has the opportunity to confirm coverage and inspect damage, additional permanent repairs can only begin after the earliest of: 72 hours after Citizens is notified, after Citizens inspects the damage, or after Citizens approves (either verbally or in writing) the repairs. Note that these policy contract changes DO NOT require that a loss be reported within 72 hours.

Permanent repairs performed earlier than 72-hours after Citizens is notified of the loss, earlier than the time of loss inspection by Citizens, or earlier than the time of other approval by Citizens will not be covered, except in the case for reasonable emergency measures.

Reasonable emergency measures are defined as measures policyholders must take to prevent further damage to their property.

Reasonable emergency measures may not exceed the greater of $3,000 or 1 percent of the Coverage A limit, unless the policyholder receives approval from Citizens first

Under Coverage C  personal property of water or steam is not covered

Replacement of water in a swimming pool is covered when there is a covered loss or damage to the swimming pool

Collapse coverage more explicitly states that coverage for collapse of a building does not include coverage for collapse of plumbing that results from age, deterioration or maintenance

Language clarifying what perils are insured against, including additional details to better describe collapse when addressing collapse coverage

Clarifies that coverage is provided for necessary access to repair only the portion or part of the plumbing system that caused a covered loss in the event of accidental discharge of water or steam

Citizens has no duty to provide coverage if failure to comply with duties after loss is prejudicial to Citizens. *The form changes have been updated from an earlier version of this story.

The insurer recently implemented other changes in an attempt to curb the problem. OIR has approved form filings by Citizens that includes new policy language as related to water loss reporting (see box).

In his last interview with Insurance Journal as the Florida Insurance Commissioner, McCarty said OIR worked with Citizens to refine the language in its policies so what has always been intended is spelled out in the contract. It is important to note that this is not a cutting of benefits, he said.

McCarty said OIR has been encouraging other insurers in the state to look at the Citizens filings and submit their own changes. As of the end of April, 13 other companies had done me too filings.

McCarty said OIR is not requiring insurers to make a rate filing to accomplish this form change. We dont see this as a rate change, he said at the recent FAIR conference. We are making sure the insurance company has the ability to do what its responsibility is to do under the contract, which is to inspect the claim.

Communication between the policyholder, insurer and agent is key, Gilway and Rollins said, and they say Citizens has to do a better job ensuring that happens.

Its focus now is making policyholders aware of the form changes and the importance of contacting the insurer when a claim occurs, but Gilway said the company needs help from the more than 8,000 agents it has in the state. He said right now most agents are not involved when a policyholder has a water loss and AOB, and are as surprised as Citizens when a suit is filed.

Agents, he said, have to play a much more significant role in getting the word out.

Rollins said the involvement of the agent community will be the difference between success and failure with Citizens current efforts.

They are the ones policyholders turn to, he said. We need a ground game to succeed and thats where the agents come in. We all have to get on the same page.

Related:

Topics Lawsuits Carriers Florida Legislation Agencies Claims Profit Loss Contractors Property Market
More than 50 automakers, state transportation agencies and other groups urged the White House and other federal policymakers on Thursday not to open a portion of the wireless spectrum reserved for connected vehicles in the near future.

The letter was signed by major auto trade groups representing nearly the entire auto industry, including Toyota Motor Corp, Ford Motor Co, General Motors Co , Volkswagen AG and Honda Motor Co. It came a week after a cable industry trade group and some tech companies, including Qualcomm Inc, and public interest groups urged the White House to take quick action to open the spectrum to more wireless devices.

Automakers and companies seeking to use the 5.9 GHz unlicensed spectrum band for wireless devices have been sparring for several years.

In January, U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx sent a proposed regulation to the White House that would require all new cars to be equipped with vehicle-to-vehicle technology that could eventually prevent up to 80 percent of crashes in which alcohol is not a factor. The proposal will not be final until approved by the White House and opened for public comment.

The technology, which involves cars repeatedly sending wireless signals to each other, could help alert drivers if an oncoming vehicle may disregard a traffic light. It can detect threats from hundreds of yards away and indicate whether vehicles can, for example, pass safely or make a left turn.

One of the most  if not the most  significant advances in vehicle safety is now coming into existence. We urge you to stay the course and complete the action your administration has undertaken to improve the safety of drivers and passengers on Americas roadways, said the letter, signed by the auto and auto parts trade groups as well as the Michigan, California and Arizona state transportation departments and the National Safety Council and National Sheriffs Association.

Automakers say vehicle-to-vehicle technology could also help speed self-driving cars to the roads.

Last week in a separate letter to the Obama administration, the National Cable and Telecommunications Association and other groups said the president needs to act quickly because as connected device use continues to skyrocket, the spectrum resources that power our devices are perilously insufficient.

The groups urged speedy action. We must act now to find more unlicensed spectrum, they wrote.

Michael Calabrese, director for wireless policy at New Americas Open Technology Institute, said the auto industry ignores the fact that their unused band has enough spectrum to deploy  and protect  both crash avoidance safety applications and next generation Wi-Fi.

Dave Sullivan, an analyst at AutoPacific, said automakers have a lot at stake and have made significant investments in the technology. Its imperative that this spectrum not be encroached on, he said.

In 1999, the Federal Communications Commission allocated 75 megahertz of spectrum in the 5.9 GHz band for highway safety. But critics say the technology has not progressed much beyond the testing phase.

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, U.S. Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker and Foxx agreed in January to conduct testing on whether the spectrum can be shared with wireless devices.

The government officials said it is imperative to ensure the future automotive safety and efficiency of the traveling public that testing be completed before they make any decisions on sharing the spectrum.

(Additional reporting by Bernie Woodall in Detroit Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Dan Grebler)

Topics Auto Tech
Arkansas Insurance Commissioner Allen Kerr announced two recent guilty pleas resulting from separate criminal investigations of insurance fraud.

On May 2, Becky Brand, 34, of Lonoke entered a guilty plea to one count of Criminal Attempt  a Class A Misdemeanor  for presenting a fake insurance card to the Arkansas Department of Motor Vehicles in order to register her vehicle last November. She was sentenced to one year of probation, a $1,000 fine, and $345 in court costs.

In a separate case, 63-year-old Troy Ward of Texarkana entered a guilty plea on April 25 to one count of Theft of Property (C Felony).

In July 2014, Ward filed a police report claiming that his 2008 Cadillac Escalade had been stolen the day before. Ward also filed an affidavit with his insurance company about the alleged theft, eventually receiving a payment of $14,035.13.

Wards vehicle was subsequently recovered from an impound lot in Wenden, Ariz., by an Arizona State Trooper. The owner of the lot said Ward left the car at the lot to be fixed, but never came back for it.

Ward was sentenced to five years of probation, a $1,500 fine, court costs, and ordered to pay restitution.

Source: Arkansas Department of Insurance

Topics Auto Fraud Arkansas
Mississippi victims of March flooding now have more time to file their required Proof of Loss form, according to a statement from the Mississippi Insurance Department.

Mississippis Commissioner of Insurance Mike Chaney announced that Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has granted a request for an extension to the usual 60-day proof of loss deadline.

With this extension, flood victims from flooding that occurred between March 7 and March 19, 2016, and who had difficulty filing claims within the normal period because they were unable to access National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) insured buildings because of damage to infrastructure or high water will now have a total of 120 days from the date of loss to file. For example, an NFIP policyholder who suffered a loss on March 7, 2016 now has until July 6, 2016 to file their form.

Mississippi flood victims will now have some relief during the difficult times that come with flood recovery, Chaney said. This extension is much needed and serves as a strong reminder how important it is for every Mississippian to consider flood insurance.

Filing the Proof of Loss is necessary even after filing a claim for flood damage. The Proof of Loss is a sworn statement of the amount a policyholder is claiming including necessary supporting documentation. The form must contain specific details required by the standard flood insurance policy. This document substantiates the insurance claim and is required before the NFIP can make payment.

Source: Mississippi Insurance Department

Topics Profit Loss Flood Mississippi
A North Carolina law limiting protections to LGBT people violates federal civil rights laws and cant be enforced, the U.S. Justice Department said Wednesday, putting the state on notice that it is in danger of being sued and losing hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding.

The law, which requires transgender people to use public bathrooms that conform to the sex on their birth certificate, has been broadly condemned by gay-rights groups, businesses and entertainers. Some have relocated offices or canceled shows in the state. Several other states have proposed similar laws in recent months limiting protections to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.

In a letter to Gov. Pat McCrory, the Justice Department said federal officials view the state law as violating federal Civil Rights Act protections barring workplace discrimination based on sex. Provisions of the state law directed at transgender state employees violate their anti-discrimination protections, the letter said.

The State is engaging in a pattern or practice of discrimination against transgender state employees and both you, in your official capacity, and the state are engaging in a pattern or practice of resistance of their rights, the letter said.

The DOJ notification appeared to be an attempt by President Barack Obamas administration to extend a new requirement involving which bathrooms and locker rooms transgender people will be allowed to use, McCrory said.

This is no longer just a North Carolina issue, because this conclusion by the Department of Justice impacts every state, McCrory said during a forum with the states chamber of commerce. The move represented something weve never seen regarding Washington overreach in my lifetime.

McCrory, who signed the bill into law in March, has defended the law and said he didnt think it would have any financial impact, either on the economy in general or on federal school funding in particular.

But shortly after it was passed, PayPal reversed plans to open a 400-employee operation center in Charlotte, Deutsche Bank froze expansion plans near Raleigh and convention officials reported some meetings were avoiding the state. Nearly 200 corporate leaders from across the country, including Charlotte-based Bank of America, have urged the laws repeal, arguing its bad for business because it makes recruiting talented employees more difficult.

House Speaker Tim Moore, who helped pass the law known as House Bill 2, said he would speak with McCrory and Senate leader Phil Berger about the states legal options. Moore told reporters that the letter was an attempt by the Obama administration to continue its radical left agenda in his final months in office.

This is a gross overreach by the Obama Justice Department that deserves to be struck down in federal court, Berger said in a news release.

The Justice Department said in a separate letter to the 17-campus University of North Carolina system that the state law violates Title IX of the Civil Rights Act, which bars discrimination in education based on sex. That could lead to North Carolina losing hundreds of millions of dollars in federal school funding.

The letter effectively serves as a warning to the state to proceed at its own peril or risk being sued. Civil-rights groups and several individuals sued in North Carolina federal court in late March seeking to overturn the law.

McCrory and GOP legislators were warned about these dire consequences, but they ignored the law and the North Carolinians it would harm and passed the bill anyway, said a statement from the American Civil Liberties Union and Lambda Legal, which helped filed the lawsuit.

It has not been uncommon during the Obama administration for the Justice Department to weigh in on hot-button civil rights issues. In March, the department sharply discouraged state court administrators from jailing defendants who cant pay court fines for petty offenses. The letters to North Carolina dont have the force of law, but it puts the state on notice that its actions are being watched and run afoul of federal civil rights laws.

The letters seek confirmation by Monday that people can access bathrooms and other facilities consistent with their gender identity.

The government could file a lawsuit to protect state employees from discrimination, the letters said.

The Justice Departments intervention could affect similar laws passed in other states.

Mississippis House Bill 1523, which becomes law July 1, says government and business workers can deny services to people by citing their own religious beliefs that marriage should only be between a man and a woman and that a persons gender is set at birth and is unchangeable.

The day after Republican Gov. Phil Bryant signed the bill, Democratic U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi sent a letter to Attorney General Loretta Lynch, asking her to block what he called the overreaching, unconstitutional, and blatantly discriminatory piece of legislation. Thompson told The Associated Press in a text message Wednesday that he had heard about the Justice Departments letter to North Carolina.

I would expect a similar letter to be sent to Mississippi in the near future, Thompson said. The circumstances in both states are closely aligned. Discrimination in the name of religion is illegal.

Officials from Bryants office and the Mississippi attorney generals office said they had not received a letter from the Justice Department by Wednesday.

Mississippis law prevents state agencies and political subdivisions from punishing employers that opt to have gender-specific standards for employees dress or restroom use, Bryant spokesman Clay Chandler said. This law does not establish or mandate a specific policy for restroom facilities.

___

Emily Wagster Pettus contributed to this report from Jackson, Miss.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics USA Mississippi North Carolina
The Florida Cabinet has selected David Altmaier to be the states new insurance commissioner.

Altmaier, 34, is currently a deputy commissioner within the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation. He will replace Kevin McCarty, who is stepping down after 13 years on the job.

Altmaier was one of three candidates, all OIR employees, interviewed at a special Cabinet meeting today.

He was selected after members of the Cabinet could not agree at previous meetings or at todays on other candidates including Rep. Bill Hager; Jeffrey Bragg, a former federal insurance official; or Belinda Miller, who is OIR chief of staff.

Florida law requires that the governor and CFO must agree on the choice of an insurance commissioner, who can then be hired with the support of at least one other Cabinet member.

Attorney General Pam Bondi and Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam joined Gov. Rick Scott and CFO Jeff Atwater in supporting Altmaier.

The selection appears to end weeks of politics and a standstill between Scott and Atwater over the selection.

More than 70 people submitted applications for the position.

Altmaier, who at age 34 will be one of the youngest state regulators, will be paid $165,000. McCarty will remain with OIR for a two month transition period.

Who Is Altmaier?

Altmaier is a property/casualty specialist who has been with the Florida OIR since 2008. A Kentucky native, he is a 2004 graduate of Western Kentucky University where he majored in mathematics. He spent two years working in a Tallahassee insurance agency (Peggy Browning Insurance Agency) in customer service before joining the Florida OIR in September 2008 as an examiner in the property/casualty financial oversight unit. He has risen in the ranks in that department to become chief analyst in 2012 and director in 2014. Last March he was named OIRs deputy commissioner for P/C.

He has served on various committees of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, including chairing the P/C Risk-Capital Working Group and the Capital Adequacy Task Force.

Over the past seven years working at OIR, he said he has developed a deep base of knowledge regarding Floridas property/casualty market. In his application, he cited his specific areas of expertise as including catastrophe reinsurance, reinsurance buying trends, residual markets, insurer accounting and reporting requirements, insurer capital requirements and insurance company examinations.

In addition to the knowledge I have obtained through my experience at the OIR, I have also developed skills and abilities as both a regulator and leader, he wrote in his application, citing his ability to communicate with senior level members and staff of the OIR and with elected officials.

My wide variety of experiences related to insurance regulation allows me to view complex problem from multiple perspectives and make regulatory decisions in a fair, appropriate, and deliberative manner, Altmaier wrote.

As part of his work at OIR, he spearheaded development of tools to monitor the resiliency of the states property insurance market in light of its exposure to catastrophic hurricanes.

In particular, the Offices development of these tools under my leadership resulted in the creation and implementation of one of the only catastrophe stress tests of its kind in the United States, he wrote.

In his cover letter with his application, the new commissioner said that through his work at OIR, he has developed a deep appreciation for the role insurance plays in the daily lives of Floridians.

Topics Florida Legislation Property Casualty
A newspaper reports that at least three patients died last year at a Southern California hospital in a bacterial outbreak suspected to have been caused by tainted medical scopes.

Officials at Huntington Hospital in Pasadena confirmed in August that three patients were sickened but declined to say more about their condition.

The Los Angeles Times reported Thursday that officials later told Olympus Corp., the scopes manufacturer, of the deaths. The revelation came in the companys report to federal regulators, which was obtained by the Times.

Hospital officials said this week that they believed patient privacy laws prevented them from telling the public that the unnamed patients had died.

Contamination of duodenoscopes, lightweight tubes threaded through the mouth into the top of the small intestine, has been linked to bacterial outbreaks that sickened dozens of patients in hospitals around the country.

Related:

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics California
Lattacco di mercoledi sera allUniversita americana, finora non rivendicato, e stato il 23esimo attentato avvenuto da inizio gennaio 2016 a Kabul. Gli attentati hanno ucciso nella capitale oltre 279 persone e provocato quasi 900 feriti. Lo scrive oggi lagenzia di stampa Pajhwok. In base a calcoli fatti dalla stessa agenzia, 14 dei 23 attentati  in maggioranza rivendicati dal gruppo terrorista islamico dei talebani  hanno visto luso di kamikaze i quali hanno provocato il 93% delle vittime.

Lepisodio piu cruento degli ultimi 15 anni  riporta ancora Pajhwok  e avvenuto il 23 luglio sulla piazza Deh Mazang, dove un folto gruppo di manifestanti, per lo piu sciiti, chiedeva al governo di non modificare il tracciato di un progetto di linea di distribuzione dellenergia elettrica che passava nella provincia di Bamyan. In quelloccasione, alcuni kamikaze dellIsis  gruppo estremista sunnita  hanno causato la morte di 81 persone ed il ferimento di altre 231.

Il secondo attacco piu sanguinoso e avvenuto in precedenza, il 20 aprile, quando un camion-bomba e stato fatto esplodere nelle vicinanze di una unita di elite delle forze di sicurezza afghane. Lo scoppio, causato da centinaia di chili di esplosivo, ha provocato un bilancio di 64 morti e 347 feriti.

Il terzo episodio con il maggior numero di vittime in questa lunga scia di sangue e avvenuto meno di un mese prima, il 30 giugno, quando un convoglio di autobus proveniente dalla provincia di Maidan Wardak con a bordo cadetti della polizia appena formati e stato colpito da un attentatore suicida che ha provocato la morte di 37 agenti ed il ferimento di altri 40.

Lultimo, in ordine di tempo, e quello di mercoledi al campus dellUniversita americana di Kabul (Auaf). Lattacco, durato undici ore lattacco, si e concluso alle 6 di ieri con un bilancio di 15 morti (sette studenti, cinque membri delle forze di sicurezza e tre militanti) e 44 feriti. Il capo della polizia della capitale, Faridoon Obidi, ha sottolineato che nel loro intervento le forze di sicurezza afghane hanno tratto in salvo 700 studenti, decine di professori ed impiegati.
Way back in December 2013, many American families experienced a serious holiday letdown: The gifts they had ordered through online retailers, including Amazon, didn't arrive on time. Crushed by the volume and hampered by bad weather, the shipping companies failed to deliver, literally.

Since then, Amazon has spent an estimated $37 billion to fix the problem. In the process, it has become the fourth-largest shipping company in the U.S., after FedEx (FCX), UPS (UPS), and the United States Postal Service.

By late 2020, Amazon was delivering 67% of the goods it sold directly to consumers, up from about 50% in 2019.

Amazon's Delivery Mix

Amazon's logistic mix still includes FedEx, UPS, and the USPS. Since June 2018, it has also built an entrepreneurial delivery network, Delivery Service Partners. This is in addition to its expanding network of Amazon Flex crowdsourced drivers.

Amazons delivery system is a key point of interest for the company, its stakeholders, and the logistics industry overall. Amazon keeps its partners on close watch.

As the company expands its delivery services, it has more latitude to adjust its relationships with its partners. In December 2019, Amazon briefly suspended its relationship with FedEx Ground, citing poor performance. It lifted the ban just in time for that year's holiday rush.

In April of 2020, Amazon announced it would end its specialty business-to-consumer shipping business, Shipping with Amazon, which accounted for a small portion of deliveries and competed directly with other carriers.

Regardless, Amazon has an enormous logistics and delivery presence, shipping its own warehoused items worldwide with its fleet of nearly 70 cargo planes and almost 20,000 vans, along with about 20,000 distribution trailers. Building out its delivery has been a big push since 2013.

Key Takeaways Amazon directly handles 67% of its deliveries.

The company is already the nation's fourth-largest package delivery service.

It still shares the load with FedEx, UPS, and USPS.

How Amazon Works

Amazon has a variety of shipping options for its own products and those sold by its retail partners.

Amazon prime members gets priority with no shipping fees and fast delivery. There were 200 million Prime members in 16 countries as of 2020.

Amazon drivers and Delivery Service Partner affiliates make one-hour, same-day, and one to two-day drop-offs. Sellers have the option of using FedEx, UPS, USPS, or a combination of shippers.

Kiva

The logistics work begins long before the products get onto a delivery truck, After purchasing Kiva Systems, Amazon leveraged the companys robotics and distribution systems to improve efficiency in its warehouses.

Products at Amazon are not shelved in any particular order, nor are they continually displaced and reorganized like books in a library. Products are stored where they fit and robots and human pickers fetch the products for packaging.

Delivery Service of Choice

Amazon fulfills most of the orders that are available in its own warehouses, strategically located around the U.S. and abroad and stocked with its biggest-selling items.

When a package is ready to go out the door, it may be loaded in one of several ways. In a handful of cities, Amazon contracts couriers to deliver parcels to customers within an hour or on the same day (depending on the option chosen by the customer).

In other situations, Amazon may use FedEx or UPS. Moreover, Amazon has opened sort centers across the U.S. where millions of parcels are sorted by zip code and then delivered to local post offices for delivery by the USPS.

Sellers that dont house their goods in an Amazon warehouse have the responsibility of managing their own shipping and delivery. These sellers generally turn to UPS, FedEx, or USPS.

A drone delivery service has been years in the testing stages.

The U.S. Postal Service made a $1.6 billion profit delivering for Amazon in 2019, according to internal documents seen by GeekWire.

The Distribution System

In operational distribution, Amazon has upped its independent delivery power with a jet fleet. Amazon Air currently has about 85 planes flying mostly within the United States. The company has two main hubs for the air service, at Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport and Textron Aviations Cessna Sky Courier.

Being able to move packages from warehouse to warehouse quickly and easily has big benefits for Amazon. The company can have smaller warehouses and less stock in most locations, and ship in goods as needed, packaged and ready for delivery.

Speculators estimate that Amazon has another plan. If Amazon has spare cargo space in its own planes, it could profitably fill them and operate daily flights between each city in which it has a distribution center.

A Slippery Slope

Amazon has been ramping up its own delivery services but is still heavily dependent on its delivery partners.

The company continues to see increases in sales volume. In 2019, it delivered 1.9 billion packages in the U.S. alone, a 155% increase over the previous year.

With that, it has set a high bar. Amazon wants to guarantee shorter delivery times and deliver 24 hours a day seven days a week. It is building out Amazon Air to help improve its operational distribution. It is also hiring to make sure every angle of the business is equipped for service.

It wants to have more control over its own delivery system but until it gets to nearly full ownership it will have to schmooze its delivery partners into helping it fulfill its lofty goals. As Amazon moves forward, it will be interesting to watch how the delivery strategies integral to its success evolve.
As president of the United States, Donald Trump was likely the wealthiest individual to inhabit the White House and his net worth remains a topic for debate.

In 2015, Donald Trump claimed in a press release that he was worth more than $10 billion, however, his net worth as of 2022 is estimated at $3 billion.

Key Takeaways Donald Trump is the founder of The Trump Organization, a private entity.

He is required to submit a financial disclosure document each year, although numbers are self-reported and dont provide an accurate estimate of his net worth.

Forbes estimates Donald Trump's net worth at $3 billion although Trump has claimed the value at $10 billion.

The Trump Organization

Since 1976, Donald Trump grew his wealth through global commercial, resort, and residential real estate development under the umbrella of The Trump Organization. As a private entity, The Trump Organization is not required to publish financial statements in the same manner as a publicly-traded company.

Donald Trump famously refused to publish his tax returns, which would show his annual income and taxes paid or owed. Although The New York Times published abbreviated information from Trump's tax returns on Sept. 27, 2020, the disclosure failed to provide details about his actual net worth.

As a former president, Trump completes a required annual financial disclosure to the U.S. Office of Government Ethics. Government financial disclosures may list assets and investments but in estimates and broad value ranges. In 2021, many of Trump's properties were valued at "over $50 million," however, these estimates are self-reported, unaudited, and also differ from numbers The Trump Organization has reported to state and local tax officials.

71 The number of properties in the portfolio owned and operated by The Trump Organization. This total includes commercial and residential real estate, golf courses, hotels, and personal estates.

Assets

In May 2022, Forbes estimated Trumps net worth at $3 billion, falling short of the $10 billion estimates that Trump suggested while running for office in 2015.

Forbes' numbers marry with the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, which placed the former presidents net worth at $2.97 billion in August 2020.Forbes has attempted to break down Trump's net worth by assets.

Net Worth The value of all assets minus liabilities.

Much of Trumps wealth is tied to multi-use buildings in Manhattan, including retail real estate in the busy Midtown district. His highest value asset is a 30% stake in the office and retail space at 1290 Avenue of the Americas, valued at $2.2 billion, with a debt value of $950 million on the property.



The Trump Organization owns several exclusive golf properties estimated at $730 million, including clubs in Scotland and Dubai. Trump's private golf club in Palm Beach, Fla, Mar-a-Lago, is valued at $350 million.

Trump holds approximately $275 million in cash and liquid assets. Other personal assets include three Florida homes and his 11,000-square-foot residence in New York City, the Trump Tower penthouse. Residential units throughout the United States and around the globe have an estimated value of $340 million. This includes hotels and residential locations in Chicago, Las Vegas, San Francisco, Europe, Asia, and South America.



Donald Trump announced in October 2021 that he was creating his own social media platform. Truth Social, held through Trump Media, garnered Donald Trump $430 million from investors. The Donald Trump brand, including his licensing and management business, is valued at just over $50 million.

Trump holds roughly $275 million in cash and liquid assets. Other personal assets include three Florida homes and his 11,000-square-foot residence in New York Citythe Trump Tower penthouse.



Trumps vast real estate empire includes approximately residential units throughout the United States. This includes hotels and retail locations in Chicago, Las Vegas, and San Francisco.

What Are Donald Trump's Estimated Liablities? Trump has a lengthy financial record which includes corporate bankruptcies and lawsuits. In 2021, Trump Organization owed $590 million in debts due within four years by 2025.



What Prominent Real Estate Locations in New York City Has Donald Trump Owned? Donald Trump has owned and sold many buildings in New York including the Plaza Hotel, the St. Moritz Hotel, now the Ritz Carlton on Central Park South, and the land under the Empire State Building.

What Is Considered One of Trump's Bad Investment Decisions? In 2014, Donald Trump partnered with an Azerbaijani family that U.S. officials called notoriously unethical. The building, a five-star hotel, and residence called the Trump International Hotel & Tower Baku in Azerbaijan has never opened.

The Bottom Line

Donald Trump's net worth has ranged in estimates from $3 billion to $10 billion. With his private firm, The Trump Organization, and its limited public disclosures, it has been difficult to capture the true net worth of his global commercial, resort, and residential real estate as well as his licensing and social media ventures.
Whether you dream of flip-flops and shorts or packing up your skis and snowboards and heading for the slopes, there are many great destinations in the U.S. where you can escape from or enjoy winter. Here are six to considerthree in warm climates and three in cold.

Key Takeaways Like migrating birds, many people who live in northern latitudes seek the warm of the south during the cold winter months.

Others, those who enjoy the snow, often seek out locations in the mountains near the ski slopes.

Here, we highlight six places to consider for a winter home, whether you're a snow bunny or a beach bum.

1. Anna Maria Island, FL

This barrier island in South Florida is just 7 miles long and 1.5 miles wide. Ron Smedley, who lives in Cincinnati, OH, and bought a vacation house there in 2007, says, Anna Maria Island is the perfect place to escape the hustle and bustle of our busy lives and rest our toes in the sand. The island is what Old Florida used to be."

There is an ordinance that no structure can be built higher than the tallest palm trees, so you dont have huge high-rise condos dotting the beach, just great views of the crystal-clear water. Numerous restaurants offer seafood right off fishermens boats.

When Smedley and his family visit, they spend most of their time at the beach, where, he says, Its not surprising to see manatees, dolphins, stingrays, and plenty of other wildlife while were looking out at the water.

According to Zillow, the median home value for Anna Maria Island is $1.41 million as of June 30, 2021, and home values have gone up more than 24% over the past year.

2. Beaufort, SC

Beaufort (pronounced Byew-fort, and not to be confused with Beaufort, NC, pronounced Bow-fort) is a great destination for anyone looking for a temperate climate during the winter. Located in South Carolina Lowcountry, the "winters are very mild and allow for plenty of outdoor recreationinshore fishing is popular as are trips to the nearby beaches, golf, biking, and tennis, says Edward Dukes, a lifelong resident and managing partner in Lowcountry Real Estate.

Chartered in 1711, Beaufort sits on the Intracoastal Waterway between Charleston and Savannah, each just a short drive away. Hunting Island, 15 miles from town, offers an amazing beach, bike paths, and a canal for kayaking, paddle-boarding, and fishing, says Dukes.

He recommends buying a vacation house right in the town, which is rich with history and Lowcountry architecture and culture and an easy walk to dinner, shopping, and the USCB Center for the Arts. You can also buy properties in nearby gated golf and beach communities and, if you like boating, you can buy in a neighborhood with a community dock.

Homes in Beaufort have a median value of $262,764 as of June 30, 2021, on Zillow. Home values have risen 11.8% over the past year, making the market very hot, according to Zillow.

3. Phoenix, AZ

Encompassing Scottsdale, Paradise Valley, and Mesa, the Phoenix area makes outdoor living in the middle of winter easy and fun with plenty of sunshine, little rain, and mild temperatures. Combine golfing, hiking, tennis, biking, and swimming with visits to the Phoenix Art Museum or the Heard Museum dedicated to Native American art and history, or to a performance by the Phoenix Symphony, Ballet Arizona, or the Arizona Opera.

Phoenix was hit hard during the housing crisis, but the housing market has now fully recovered. According to Troy Reeves, owner of the Reeves Team, "While housing prices have had growth at a slightly faster than average pace over the last few years, it is mainly fueled by the fact that prices previously were too low and we have been catching up to where we need to be all along."

The median home value in Phoenix is $350,077 as of June 30, 2021, and values have gone up 27.4% over the past year, according to Zillow.

4. Jackson Hole, WY

Jackson Hole Mountain Resort took first place in the Ski Magazine list of top ski resorts in 2019, and the magazine continues to heap praise on the town. It also makes frequent appearances at the top of Forbes' annual rankings of Top 10 Ski Resorts in North America.

But downhill skiing is only one choice for getting outside: You can ski cross-country on groomed tracks or into the national parks and forests, snowmobile around nearby Yellowstone National Park, take a sleigh ride through the National Elk Refuge, dogsled, helicopter ski, snowshoe, and ice skate. Because 97% of Jackson Holes land is currently permanently protected from development, properties on the remaining 3% are pretty scarce. As a result, dollar volume and transactions are extremely high.

Kelli Ward, an associate broker at Jackson Hole Real Estate Associates and Christie's International Real Estate, says that Wyoming is one of the friendliest states in the U.S. for people relocating for the purposes oftrusts and overall asset protection. But that is just a bonus to some who want to be in Jackson Hole for the beauty of the land.

That is apparent as soon as you fly into the area airport: It is the only airport in the U.S. located in a national park, and passengers get a look at huge views of the Tetons, which are absolutely breathtaking even before their plane has landed, says Ward.

As of June 2021, the median home value listed in Jackson Hole is $2.1 million, trending up 55.6% year-over-year, according to Realtor.com.

5. South Lake Tahoe, CA

Lake Tahoe is huge71 miles aroundwith ski areas on its north end (in Nevada) and its south end (in California). The South Shore is the livelier of the two, according to Dan Spano, who went there to ski 30 years ago and never left. According to Spano, a broker with Sierra Sotheby's International Realty, the south end is also somewhat more affordable.

People are attracted to Lake Tahoe because its one of the most beautiful places on Earth and the winters are mild compared to resorts in the eastern part of the U.S., says Spano. At the Heavenly Mountain Resort area, you can ski two states in one day and enjoy what Spano says is the best snow-making equipment in the area.

The real estate market in Tahoe is very strong, says Spano. San Francisco Bay Area residents doing well financially are buying second or even third homes before prices go out of sight.

The median home value in South Lake Tahoe is $624,632 as of June 30, 2021, up 40.8% over the past year, according to Zillow.

6. Okemo Mountain Resort, Ludlow, VT

Okemo is routinely included in OnTheSnow.com's Best Family Resort in America rankingsso if youre looking for a family vacation destination, this might be it.

According to Bonnie MacPherson, director of public relations at the resort, Okemo gets this top rating because the family who owns the operation understands that families are looking for activities they can enjoy together on and off the slopes.

The resort boasts options for skiers of every level, available from the top of each chair with 46 miles of trails, 667 skiable acres, and thanks to snowmaking equipment that covers 98% of the mountain, a weatherproof ski vacation. Okemo is a three-hour drive from Boston and just under five hours from New York City.

According to Zillow, the median listing price in Ludlow, Vermont, is $376,021 as of June 2021, trending up 10.4% over the past year.

The Bottom Line

Whether you like to escape the snow or have fun in it, there are many great destinations to find the perfect winter home. In addition to price, climate, and activities, decide if you will rent out your home when youre not there. If so, it's a good idea to consider destinations that have plenty to offer year-round.
Certificates of deposit, or CDs, are savings products that pay the customer interest in exchange for agreeing to leave their deposit with the bank or credit union for a fixed period of time.

Most depository institutions offer a variety of CDs with different maturity dates; typically, the shortest ones will last three months while the longest ones range up to ten years, though five years is the longest term at most institutions. In theory, the longer the duration of the deposit, the higher the rate the institution is willing to offer.

CDs are considered safe, conservative investments because their rate of return is pre-determined and guaranteed to remain locked for the full term. In addition, virtually all CDs are offered by FDIC-insured banks, or by credit unions insured through the NCUA. As a result, deposits of up to $250,000 are protected, even if the financial institution faces liquidity problems.

Most CDs don't allow you to add funds after the initial deposit, making it a less favorable savings vehicle for those who wish to make periodic contributions. But CD accounts are well-suited for parking cash you won't need for a while and that you want invested reliably and essentially risk-free.

Usually, CDs are set to automatically renew at maturity. But you'll be notified of the maturity date in advance and given the opportunity to tell the bank you'd like to do something different with the money, such as withdraw it or transfer it to another institution. Fortunately, if you miss the maturity date by a few days, most banks and credit unions afford a grace period of a few days during which you can still withdraw your funds without penalty.

It's important to note that CD rates can vary significantly from one bank or credit union to another. Indeed, the top certificate rates nationwide are typically three and five times the industry average for a CD of the same duration. So it's critical you shop around.
Real estate investment companies are using new U.S. crowdfunding rules to raise additional capital for new vehicles that are generating superior returns.

Fundrise's REIT Expansion

Fundrise, one of the pioneers of the online real estate crowdfunding industry, introduced this week, three new funds to their family of eREITs, which essentially are a public but non-traded REIT. The additions are the Fundrise West Coast Opportunistic REIT, Fundrise Midland Opportunistic REIT, and Fundrise East Coast Opportunistic REIT. Until now, Fundrise managed two REITs, one being income-focused and other being focused on growth, that both made investments throughout the country. However, the new REITs will each target specific geographic locations in the U.S. Income and growth will be their main investment objectives.

Fast Fundraising

Fundrise says that it has raised over $84 million from individual investors since debuting its first REIT in December 2015, and its second one a little more than five months ago. The company says it's on track to raise a total of $250 million in a little over 12 months. (See also, Is Fundrise's New eREIT Right for You?)

Strong Returns

Fundrise's Growth eREIT investors are earning an approximate 8% annualized dividend, while Income eREIT investors earn approximately 11.25% gross annualized, Jordan Sale, director of marketing at Fundrise, told Investopedia. (See also, How To Analyze Real Estate Investment Trusts.)

RealtyMogul.coms MogulREIT I is another crowdfunded REIT that was launched this year. Like Fundrise's REITs, the MogulREIT makes debt and equity investments in various types of commercial property with an aim to distribute a steady stream of income. The REITs NAV is currently fixed until September 2017 at $10 per share, and its first dividend payout was distributed to investors earlier this month, which equates to an approximate 8% return on an annualized basis.

To put those returns into perspective, last year the FTSE NAREIT Composite increased by only 2.05%.

Crowdfunding's Driver

Equity crowdfunding has been on the rise ever since Regulation A+ was finalized and adopted by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) early last year. It essentially exempts companies from the need to register certain small issues of securities, and also allows them to offer those securities to non-accredited investors, helping to attract funds.
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Being left out of a will is not a situation most people want to be in. But sometimes when a person dies and their will comes to light, its contents throw survivors for a loop. The will can exclude people who had assumed they would be included, or in some cases, who were told that they would be included. If you are left out of a will, there are some time-sensitive steps you should take to at least clarify what has happenedand perhaps contest it. In most cases, you must prove coercion, diminished mental capacity, or outright fraud to have a will's terms dismissed.

Key Takeaways If you are left out of a will and believe that you should contest it, prepare to face an uphill battle to get a portion of the estate.

Be certain that contesting the will makes financial sense, and that the potential gain will far outweigh the legal costs.

Also make sure that contesting the will makes emotional sense as the process is a long and often stressful one involving multiple steps.

To succeed, you must prove coercion, diminished mental capacity, or outright fraudall difficult to prove, no matter your personal convictions.

Talk with your attorney about how realistic your chances are of getting the will invalidated and other alternatives that may exist.

Judge the Costs

Before you put a retainer on a lawyer, engage in some sober second thought. If you are not family and were never named in a previous will, you have no standing to contest the will. If the testator (the deceased) discussed an inheritance with you previously, write down as much as you can remember. Using this, estimate the dollar value (whether money or possessions). If it was never discussed but was implied, you will need to give a high and a low estimate on what you could have reasonably received based on your knowledge of the testator's estate.

If this amount isn't enough to cover the cost of a consultation with an estate lawyer, walk away. Even if it is twice as much as the retainer, walking away may still be the better course as some of the worst estate fights cost more in legal fees than the inheritance. So, think carefully before you lawyer up.

Make sure contesting a will is a winnable and financially smart battlebeing left out of a will is terrible, but wasting time, money, and emotions fighting a losing battle is worse.

Get a Copy of the Will

Anyone who creates a will has the final say in who is and isn't in the will. If you believe the will has changed, perhaps under duress or diminished mental capacity, then you can hopefully find out the how and why. Ask the executor for the current will, any previous versions, and a list of assets.

A good executor will usually compare copies of the will and will note any significant changes. So it is possible that a notice from the executor will be your first clue that you were removed from the will. If you are not told before the will enters probate, you will be able to get a copy from the probate court. You will also be told how long you have to contest the will. States have different rules and timelines. You, so you may want to have a lawyer help you get the copy and file the contest sooner rather than later.

Lawyer Up

Remember when you calculated whether it was worth the legal fight? Now it's time to pay up. If you managed to get a copy of the will without a lawyer, you should now find one. Show the lawyer the will and state your reasons for wanting to file a legal challenge.

Basically, the testator has the right to disperse the estate according to whatever whim catches their fancy. To contest the will, you need a valid reason. These are fairly straightforward. You need to reasonably prove the testator lacked the mental capacity to understand what was going on when the current will was signed, they were pressured into changing it, or the will failed to meet state regulations and is thus not legal.

Your lawyer will be able to tell whether it is a winnable challenge on these grounds. If you don't have grounds, there is still the possibility you can make a claim on the estate. An example would be if you did unpaid work for the testator that you can claim costs for. Again, you would have to consider the value of the claim against the costs of making it.

File a Contest

If you have grounds, your lawyer files a contest against the will. The goal of this legal proceeding is to invalidate the current will and enforce a previous will that lists you as a beneficiary. If you have been left out of several revisions of the will, your chances will be slimmer because multiple wills must be invalidated. The burden of proof will also fall on you, so be prepared for a difficult fight.

Consider Mediation

Rather than fighting it out in an all-out court battle that will deplete you and the estate in legal costs, your lawyer may be able to guide the estate to mediation. Mediation may be able to get you closer to a resolution than a prolonged court battle.
Welcome to Iowa Central Community College and the Iowa Central Residence halls.

We plan to provide you with an environment that is conducive to educational and social growth. The residence hall staff needs your cooperation and participation to help make this a great year for everyone.

This website will provide information that will help all residents understand

what their individual responsibilities are and how to promote their own educational and social growth.

We hope you will begin your responsibility by thoroughly reading and familiarizing yourself with the website.

For those of you thinking of attending Iowa Central, I hope this site will help answer many of the questions you may have. For your convenience an online application is available.

Again, welcome to Iowa Central and our Residence Halls. With your cooperation and participation this year can be a very positive one for everyone.

Have a great year!
In the heart of Dublins north city center, where many emigrants would have left Irelands shores, a one-of-a-kind digital museum is opening today dedicated to the Irish Diaspora around the world, their influence and, most importantly, their stories.

The extraordinary museum, EPIC Ireland, uses state-of-the-art technology to tell the stories of 10 million journeys and the roots of 70 million people. From missionaries to those who left Ireland due to hunger and oppression or those who left to trade and expand their horizons the museum is filled with hundreds of Irish stories. Having worked on this Irish American website for six years and having been among the diaspora for some time I came across many emigrants and tales I had never heard of before.

This Friday, May 7, the interactive exhibition, designed by Event Communications  those responsible for Titanic Belfast  opens its doors to the public. Early this week Neville Isdell, the man who bought the impressive CHQ (Custom House Quay) building just three years ago, invited a lucky few to preview the exhibition and I was lucky enough to be among them.

Isdell, the former CEO of Coca Cola, was born in Downpatrick, County Down, but moved away from Ireland at the age of 10 to Northern Rhodesia. He told the visitors to EPIC that in the past 18 frenetic months of production he has kept three points in mind for what he wanted from his new digital Diaspora museum.

Firstly, that the museum must capture how special it is to be Irish. As he was speaking to the crowd of visitors Isdell recreated a conversation which any Irish abroad will recognize  the one where a stranger reacts with delight when you utter the words Im actually from Ireland.

I believe very deeply and I believe that this is a story that was not being told, said Isdell. I believe there's a little too much coverage, in all honestly, about the difficulties in the Irish people's history. So heres also about a celebration of the Irish people who lived.

The second important factor was where the museum was housed and the CHQ building seems entirely apt. The former dockside bonded warehouse is nearly 200 years old and is filled with history, making a beautiful juxtaposition to the super-modern exhibition in the vaults. Isdells last requirement for EPIC was that it be world-class, and its certainly that.

Visitors enter through departure gates where they are issued with a passport to be stamped in each room they visit. This passport acts as a guide for the museum and also provides a surprise at the end of the tour.

Organized into the themes of migration, motivation, influence and connection, the exhibition is spread throughout 20 immersive galleries telling the stories of Irish communities overseas  past, present and future.

It explores the stories of adventure and tragedy that have shaped the narrative of Irish emigration. From why people through the ages have left Ireland, the extraordinary influence of the Irish abroad in politics, business, science, sport and the arts, and how the technology of today has changed the emigrant experience.

Speaking before the launch Conal Harvey, EPIC Irelands Managing Director, said the vision and objective of EPIC Ireland is to tell untold epic stories in a unique, highly entertaining and informative way.

He said, EPIC Ireland provides the opportunity to celebrate and enhance the connectivity between Ireland and those who left, but benefited from being Irish. It will also enable those with no connection to Ireland or its diaspora to have the opportunity to understand this story of the Irish people and why emigration looms so large in the Irish consciousness both in the past and today.

Included in the center will be a state-of-the-art genealogy center, operated by Eneclann, Irelands leading genealogical services provider. As well as extensive research facilities they will offer the latest DNA testing to help visitors trace their Irish roots.

For more information and tickets visit www.epicirelandchq.com or follow them on Facebook here.
An amateur historian from County Wexford and his friend in Omaha, NE believe they have proven that one of the men identified in the iconic photo, "Raising of the Flag on Iwo Jima," is not who the Marine Corps said he is.

"Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima" is the most widely printed image from World War II. Iwo Jima is an island 660 miles south of Tokyo and was the site of a 36-day battle between about 70,000 Marines and 18,000 Japanese soldiers. The photo depicts United States Marines and a United States Navy hospital corpsman, or so people thought, raising a US flag.

In the summer of 2013 Stephen Foley, from County Wexford, an employee at a building supply company, had noticed the discrepancies in the picture while he was laid up recovering from a hernia operation. He turned to Eric Krelle, in Omaha, for help. Krelle runs a website dedicated to the Marines 5th Division.

Have studied footage and other photographs of the men taken on that day Foley noticed discrepancies.

The man identified as John Bradley in the famous photo wore uncuffed pants but other photos of Bradley from that day show him with tightly cuffed pants. In the iconic photo you can see the man has a cap underneath his helmet, but this is not visible in any other shots of Bradley. Lastly the man in the photo is wearing a cartridge belt with ammunition pouches and wire cutters. Navy corpsman Bradley would have been issued with a sidearm and not an M-1 rifle and he would have had no use for a wire-cutters.

In November 2014 Krelle told the Omaha World Herald, People can hold onto what they have always known in the past. But to me, the photos are the truth.

Even Bradleys own son, James Bradley, the author of the book Flags of our Fathers, admits that the evidence is clear and he does not believe that his father is included in the image of the six servicemen. John Bradleys son said he believes that the Marine Corps had identified his father to be among the men who had erected the flag earlier during the day, but that he agrees is father is not in the famous, iconic photo.

He told the Associated Press, My father raised a flag on Iwo Jima.

"The Marines told him way after the fact, 'Here's a picture of you raising the flag.' He had a memory of him raising a flag, and the two events came together."

Here's a short TV section on John Bradley's career:

According to Foley and Krelle the marine, who had been identified as Bradley, was more than likely Harold Henry Schultz, another marine, who died in 1995.

On Monday the Marine Corps issued a statement saying they will launch an investigation into the photo. They gave no timeline on this plan.

Their statement read:

Rosenthal's photo captured a single moment in the 36-day battle during which more than 6,500 US servicemen made the ultimate sacrifice for our Nation and it is representative of the more than 70,000 US Marines, Sailors, Soldiers and Coast Guardsmen that took part in the battle.

We are humbled by the service and sacrifice of all who fought on Iwo Jima.

The Omaha historian Krelle declined to comment on the statement saying that he had signed a confidentiality agreement with a third party.

It seems that back in Feb 1945 Joe Rosenthal, an Associated Press photographer, took the photo but not the names of the men. As the photo was immediately celebrated upon its publication the Marine Corps was asked to provide the names of the men. They gave John Bradleys name as one of the six.

Three of the Marines depicted  Harlon Block, Franklin Sousley, and Michael Strank  were killed in action over the following few days. The three surviving flag-raisers were Marines Rene Gagnon, Ira Hayes, and Navy hospital corpsman John Bradley, who it seems was never in the shot. However, they did become celebrities after the photo became famous. That year the photo broke a record by winning a Pulitzer Prize during the year it was taken.

As well as now being an iconic image of US servicemen the image was also later used by Felix de Weldon to sculpt the Marine Corps War Memorial, near Arlington National Cemetery. The sculpture was dedicated in 1954 to all Marines who died for their country past and present.
As the years have passed, the number of people and organizations claiming credit for involvement in the Irish peace process has increased dramatically. There is an entire discipline in academic studies now aimed at understanding how the process happened.

I have heard dead people praised for their roles, organizations that only jumped in when it was very safe, individuals claiming credit, including many politicians who did little more than cheer-lead.

Facts are, many of the fine day soldiers had nothing to do with the white heat of the process when the fat was in the fire despite the claims.

Which is why it was such a pleasure to have lunch last week with 89-year-old Bill Flynn, former chairman and CEO of Mutual of America who most definitely played a huge role in the process.

Bill has absorbed health blows and personal tragedies since the days of the peace process, but his extraordinary optimism and sharp insights are there as much as they have ever been.

It is time to put the actual record straight. Bill Flynn had more to do with the huge breakthrough that the first Gerry Adams U.S. visa in 1994 brought about than almost anyone else.

Despite the fact that he was chairman of a major company, Flynn never spared in his efforts to bring peace to his ancestral land, the land where his folks came from  counties Down and Mayo.

He was a member of the Connolly House Five, as I was, the group that negotiated on behalf of the Clinton administration, though with no formal title or links (read Conor O'Clery's brilliant book "Daring Diplomacy").

Read more: Bill Flynn's Irish heritage

After one trip Bill Flynn, Ciaran Staunton  an Irish American activist and later my brother-in-law  and I gathered in a pizza place on Third Avenue as we wanted to stay out of Irish haunts. (Little did we know the pizza parlor was the hub of a Mafia drug-selling plot and everything said there was likely taped!)

The question was, what should the Connolly House group do next? The IRA had held a 10-day ceasefire during our most recent visit and we had to get the White House to reciprocate.

Question was, would we try for an envoy (who later became George Mitchell) or an Adams visa which had been turned down on several occasions.

We decided on the visa and that a prestigious invitation was necessary, not just from any Irish organization.

Flynn had the solution: a well known foreign policy think tank called the National Committee on American Foreign Policy which he chaired would extend the invitation.

Even better, he would book the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel and put a full page ad (which cost around $30,000) in The New York Times pushing the conference.

Nancy Soderberg, deputy national security advisor in the White House, said the invitation from the group was a huge factor in securing the visa, as was the full page ad.

I personally believe the issue was very finely balanced. The British, apoplectic with rage at Clinton, pulled every string to head off the visa. Secretary of State Warren Christopher threatened to resign, forming a massive counter effort which included the State Department, the FBI, CIA etc.

All looked won and lost on several occasions over that weekend in January 1994, and then came a big break, an editorial in The New York Times approving the idea of the visa and recalling Americas commitment to free speech to all.

Read more: Gerry Adams and the infamous n-word tweet  lets put it in context

I was never off the phone and worried as hell, especially after a bogus British dirty tricks operation occurred when a British store in San Diego received a bomb threat, but Flynn was remarkably cool and calm throughout. It was that sense of calmness that always impressed me.

The visa finally came through and I told an astonished Adams who, with good reason, doubted it could be achieved.

Bill Flynn played the major role, let's not forget that. He deserves all our gratitude.

At age 89 his recall and insight on those life-changing events for Ireland remains perfect. He is a true Irish American hero.
The Dail, the main house of the Irish parliament, is scheduled to vote on the position of Taoiseach, or prime minister, when it meets at 12 noon, Irish time, today.

The only candidate is Enda Kenny and if, as expected, he gets a majority of those voting, the politician from County Mayo will become the first leader of the Fine Gael party to hold the office of taoiseach after two successive general elections.

The main opposition party, Fianna Fail, has agreed to abstain in the vote for Taoiseach, but Fine Gael will still need seven or eight extra votes from Independent members of the Dail to secure a majority. Two TDs from the Green Party are likely to abstain.

Talks between Fine Gael representatives and Independents were still taking place last night but a lengthy draft document called Programme for Partnership of 150 pages had already been compiled and a positive outcome was expected.

If Kenny is successful in today's vote he will go to the official residence of President Michael D. Higgins, Aras an Uachtarain in Dublin's Phoenix Park, to receive his seal of office.

It is expected that he will then return to the Dail to announce the members of his new cabinet despite previous suggestions that that the names would not be announced until Tuesday.

Some of the Independents are said to be upset by the manner in which a Dail vote on the office of Taoiseach was announced before negotiations with Fine Gael had finally concluded.

However, it is understood Fine Gael took the view that postponing the Dail vote until next week would expose the Independents to local pressures in their constituencies and further complicate what has been a very difficult and protracted negotiating process.

Read More: Ireland had an election over two months ago and still has no government

There is much speculation as to the allocation of ministerial portfolios when Taoiseach-elect Kenny announces his new cabinet.

Veteran politician Michael Noonan is expected to remain in the key position of Finance Minister, where he is widely seen as having performed well. The position of Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform formerly held by Labour's Brendan Howlin may go to one of Noonan's Fine Gael colleagues such as Richard Bruton or Paschal Donohoe.

Frances Fitzgerald is expected to become Tanaiste or deputy prime minister to Enda Kenny while also holding onto her current job as Justice Minister. She is seen as a possible successor to Kenny in the future, although Simon Coveney and Leo Varadkar are also regarded as likely contenders for the leadership.

Varadkar is currently Minister for Health, but may be in line for a move to a different job such as Minister for Foreign Affairs. Coveney has been to the fore in the recent negotiations on government formation and may be given another role instead of his current position as Minister for Agriculture and Defence with speculation that implementing government policy on climate change might be part of his new portfolio. If Coveney is moved to another cabinet post, current Arts Minister Heather Humphreys is expected to get the Agriculture portfolio.

New positions as Minister for Housing and Minister for Rural Affairs are expected to be created. Three Independent TDs are expected to get senior ministerial jobs. US-born Katherine Zappone was one of the first to declare her support for Kenny as Taoiseach and is likely to be rewarded with a cabinet post such as Minister for Education or Minister for Children.

Another leading Independent, Shane Ross is tipped for a cabinet post such as Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation. Denis Naughten, formerly of Fine Gael but now an Independent TD for Roscommon-Galway, may become Minister for Rural Affairs.

Deputy Finian McGrath from Dublin Bay North is forecast to become a "super-junior" minister for disability who can attend cabinet meetings but will not have a vote. Kevin "Boxer" Moran, a first-time Independent TD for Longford-Westmeath may be appointed to the important position of junior minister at the Department of Finance with responsibility for the Office of Public Works.

Fine Gael TDs tipped for promotion include Simon Harris who is currently junior minister for finance, Regina Doherty, Marcella Corcoran Kennedy and Mary Mitchell O'Connor.
Christian bakers at the centre of the so-called "gay cake" discrimination battle have said they are praying for justice ahead of next week's appeal hearing.

The McArthur family, who run Ashers Baking Company, are seeking to overturn a judgment which found their refusal to make a cake with a pro-gay marriage slogan was unlawful.

Daniel McArthur, 26, the firm's general manager, said they had been buoyed by the level of support.

He said: "It has been a long and difficult road, but we have been sustained every step of the way by the word of God and by the many thousands of people who have supported us.

"Many share our beliefs about marriage. Many more defend our freedom to hold those beliefs. As a family we are simply hoping and praying for a just outcome so that our ordeal in court next week will be our last."

The North's most senior judge Lord Chief Justice Declan Morgan and two other top judges are due to the case at Belfast High Court on Monday - exactly two years after the controversial order was placed at Ashers' city centre branch on May 9 2014.

It is expected to last several days.

The Norths Equality Commission, which monitors compliance with the region's anti-discrimination laws, took the landmark civil action on behalf of Gareth Lee, a gay rights activist and member of the LGBT advocacy group Queer Space.

Mr Lee had wanted a cake featuring Sesame Street puppets Bert and Ernie with the slogan Support Gay Marriage for a private function marking International Day Against Homophobia in May 2014.

Gareth Lee.

He paid the 36.50 (46.35) in full but was telephoned two days later and told the company could not fulfil the order.

The high profile case was heard at Belfast's County Court over three days last March.

Giving evidence, Ashers' owner Karen McArthur said as a born again Christian, she knew in her heart she could not make the cake but had taken the order to avoid a confrontation in the shop.

Daniel McArthur told the court his family could not compromise their religious beliefs, despite the legal ramifications, while Mr Lee claimed he was left feeling like a lesser person.

Delivering her findings, District Judge Isobel Brownlie said the bakers had breached equality legislation and had directly discriminated against Mr Lee.

Ordering Ashers to pay agreed damages of 500 (634.86), the judge said religious beliefs could not dictate the law.

An appeal had been scheduled for February but proceedings were dramatically halted after a last minute intervention from North's Attorney General John Larkin QC, who advises Stormont politicians on legal matters.

Ashers Baking Company has six branches employing over 80 people and delivers across Ireland and the UK.

Throughout their legal battle they have been supported by The Christian Institute which has organised public rallies and garnered financial backing for the case.

Simon Calvert: "We have a strong case and are looking forward to being able to put that case in court next week.

"We know there are huge numbers of people around the country who, even if they don't support the McArthurs' beliefs on marriage, do not think they should be compelled to promote views that go against those beliefs.

"We're hopeful that the Lord Chief Justice and his colleagues on the bench will take the same view."
The Dail has been suspended as Enda Kenny travels under Garda escort to Aras an Uachtarain to receive his seal of office from the President.

Update 4.48pm: Michael Healy-Rae has defended his decision to abstain in todays vote for Enda Kenny as Taoiseach.

I did so after spending 70 days trying to ensure that many of the issues and problems that are facing the people of Kerry and all of rural Ireland were going to be addressed in the programme for Government, he said.

I believe that the final document is not perfect but I did succeed in making sure that many of the issues which are of concern to the people of Kerry and all of rural Ireland are to be dealt with if the new Government implements the programme in full as they have promised.

To have voted against today would have meant voting against all the work that was put into the programme.

I will continue to pursue Government to address the problems that we have in Rural Ireland, as the last Government was totally anti-rural.

I am glad that there will be a new Ministry for Regional Development and Rural Affairs to finally address the imbalance between our centres of population and rural Ireland.

Taoiseach Enda Kenny arriving at the Phoenix Park pic.twitter.com/DTZVBtnHNa  Micheal Mac Suibhne (@MicMacSuibh) May 6, 2016

Enda Kenny shakes hands of supporters on grounds of Leinster House after being returned as Taoiseach #dail #iestaff pic.twitter.com/elEzqgYbkK  Juno McEnroe (@Junomaco) May 6, 2016

Cheers and handshakes for their re elected leader pic.twitter.com/Z1AYLjffd0  Claudia Headon (@Claudia_Journo) May 6, 2016

Update 2.23pm: The Dail has approved Enda Kenny as Taoiseach by a margin of 59 votes to 49.

By 59 votes to 49 Enda Kenny is re-elected Taoiseach, the first FG leader ever to have that honour #iestaff  Daniel McConnell (@McConnellDaniel) May 6, 2016

The Country has a Taoiseach pic.twitter.com/NBim69qQpr  Joe Carey TD (@joecareytd) May 6, 2016

Update 2.21pm: Kevin Boxer Moran, John Halligan and Katherine Zappone have voted in favour of Enda Kenny becoming Taoiseach.

Grealish (rurals), Fitzmaurice (IA) and Maureen O Sullivan all abstain, while Michael Collins (rurals) has voted against #iestaff #ge16  Fiachra O Cionnaith  (@Ocionnaith) May 6, 2016

Update 2.08pm: Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny will likely be re-elected Taoiseach in the coming moments after last minute talks between his party and Independents concluded, writes Fiachra O Cionnaith, Political Reporter.

It is understood five of the Independent Alliance will support Mr Kenny.

However, the group's sixth member Michael Fitzmaurice will abstain because he was unable to secure a turf cutting deal due to EU regulations tying the Government's hands.

The move means Fine Gael will have the support of at least 60 TDs in the vote when it occurs in the coming minutes.

This is based on 50 Fine Gael TDs, unaligned Independents Michael Lowry and Katherine Zappone, five of the Independent Alliance and three of the five rural Independent TDs.

The Fine Gael-Fianna Fail deal was based on the fact Fine Gael needed at least 58 TDs to back Enda Kenny.

Some FG sources think 59 votes now for Kenny. Fitzmaurice may abstain #Dail #iestaff  Juno McEnroe (@Junomaco) May 6, 2016

as it stands, Kenny looks like he will get 59 votes, which is just one more than the minimum required for deal to work #iestaff  Daniel McConnell (@McConnellDaniel) May 6, 2016

John Halligan delayed entering Dail chamber to speak on local radio, all Ind Alliance now in the chamber #turf #ge16 #iestaff  Elaine Loughlin (@Elaine_Loughlin) May 6, 2016

Update 2.04pm: A vote on Enda Kenny becoming Taoiseach has now begun in the Dail.

Update 2pm: A deal may have been reached to approve Enda Kenny as Taoiseach.

After hours of last-minute talks, Independent Alliance TDs and Fine Gael negotiators Simon Coveney and Michael Noonan have now returned to the Dail chamber.

Deal appears to now be done, with five Ind Alliance members backing Enda Kenny and Michael Fitzmaurice abstaining #ge16  Fiachra O Cionnaith  (@Ocionnaith) May 6, 2016

Last tweet means FG has backing of at least 60 TDs, two more than the 58 FF said were needed (50 FG, Lowry, Zappone, 5 IA, 3 rurals) #ge16  Fiachra O Cionnaith  (@Ocionnaith) May 6, 2016

John Halligan and Michael Fitzmaurice did not appear in the Dail chamber with other members of Ind Alliance #turf #iestaff #ge16  Elaine Loughlin (@Elaine_Loughlin) May 6, 2016

Ind Alliance to get one Senior ministry, one super ministry and two juniors say sources #iestaff  Daniel McConnell (@McConnellDaniel) May 6, 2016

Update 1.53pm: Fine Gael negotiators Simon Coveney and Michael Noonan have returned to the Dail chamber, prompting speculation that a vote on Taoiseach may be imminent.

Kevin Boxer Moran has returned to the chamber also.

Update 1.45pm: A 30-minute period for extra speakers has begun in the Dail, with no vote for Taoiseach expected until after 2pm at the earliest.

Kevin Boxer Moran in the Dail chamber now #Dail

Min Coveney and Noonan too  Juno McEnroe (@Junomaco) May 6, 2016

Mary Lou McDonald: We're still Waiting for Godot. But this isn't so much Beckett as Flan O Brien in quality of its absurdity #iestaff #ge16  Fiachra O Cionnaith  (@Ocionnaith) May 6, 2016

@DenisNaughten and Noel Grealish were due to get calls from Kenny this morning and never did..'lads are pissed off' says source #iestaff  Daniel McConnell (@McConnellDaniel) May 6, 2016

Disagreement between rural TDs and FG over ministerial job offers, negotiation sources confirm #Dail #iestaff  Juno McEnroe (@Junomaco) May 6, 2016

Brendan Howlin: we still do not know the number of Independents involved "22 minutes before we are expected to vote" #iestaff #ge16  Fiachra O Cionnaith  (@Ocionnaith) May 6, 2016

Update 1.02pm: The Dail debate on a Taoiseach nomination vote is being taken up by apparent filibustering amid ongoing crisis talks between Fine Gael and the Independent Alliance writes Fiachra O Cionnaith and Elaine Loughlin.

Ruth Coppinger of the AAA-PBP said that she has never seen an incoming Taoiseach looking "so unhappy".

She added that 75% of people did not want Mr Kenny returned as Taoiseach.

"The traditional rules apply, because the two traditional parties had to come to an agreement.

"This isn't a grand coalition, but it's certainly a first cousin of a grand coalition," she adds.

Eamon Ryan: "We're not all going to turn into Swedes overnight." Mama-mia, there he goes again (my my, how can we believe him?) #ge16 #abba  Fiachra O Cionnaith  (@Ocionnaith) May 6, 2016

.@RoisinShortall "The people gave their verdict but the irony is that the party which was rejected will get to lead the next Gov."  Social Democrats (@SocDems) May 6, 2016

Clare Daly says she is ready for a second General Election, calling for an end of this farce #iestaff  Daniel McConnell (@McConnellDaniel) May 6, 2016

There is still no sign of Independent Alliance in the Dail chamber as crisis background talks continue.

Independent Alliance source: We are still operating on an all or nothing basis.. they are standing full square behind Fitzmaurice #iestaff  Daniel McConnell (@McConnellDaniel) May 6, 2016

Dail Ceann Comhairle Sean O Fearghail gave Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin, Sinn Fein's Gerry Adams and Labour's Joan Burton extra time to speak in the debate as the six key Independent have yet to emerge from negotiations.

Just a thought, If opp as so against FG gov surely their best tactic would be to say nothing in Dail to force vote now & not later? #ge16  Fiachra O Cionnaith  (@Ocionnaith) May 6, 2016

In pointed references to the growing tension, all three Opposition leaders pointedly noted the Independents have yet to enter the Dail chamber.

Mr Martin said he "notes the non-attendance of the Independent Alliance".

While criticising the "Enda-dependents" for supporting Mr Kenny, Sinn Fein's Gerry Adams said despite their concern about Fine Gael parties "here they are [supporting them], or here they're not. Where are they?"

No costings. Little real detail. Never was so much negotiated for so long, for so little.. Not even a section on health. @GerryAdamsSF  Sinn Fein (@sinnfeinireland) May 6, 2016

In a string of references to the situation, Labour's Joan Burton repeatedly said a deal will be struck "if talks ever finish at some stage".

She also confirmed the widely expected view that her party will vote against Mr Kenny's vote for Taoiseach.

Fianna Fail will effectively have their boot on the throat of the Taoiseach, meaning they can push through whatever they like-@joanburton  The Labour Party (@labour) May 6, 2016

Describing the Fine Gael-Fianna Fail deal as "tawdry" and allowing Fianna Fail to put its boot on Fine Gael's neck and pull down the government whenever it chooses, she said the current deal is wrong for the country.

The situation, and an apparent level of filibustering in the Dail to delay the vote before a deal is done with the Independents, AAA-PBP TD Ruth Coppinger simply said:

Acting Finance Minister Michael Noonan and acting Defence Minister Simon Coveney are currently holding ongoing talks with the Independent Alliance in the nearby Government Buildings.

Update 12.47pm: Labour leader Joan Burton confirms that her party will be voting against Enda Kenny's nomination for Taoiseach.

Referring to the Independent Alliance, who have still not appeared in the Dail chamber 40 minutes after business began, Ms Burton said: We dont know where they are yet but presumably they will show up."

Ruth Coppinger says she has never seen an incoming Taoiseach looking so unhappy. Ouch #Dail #iestaff  Juno McEnroe (@Junomaco) May 6, 2016

45minutes into Dail speeches on nomination for Taoiseach and Ind Alliance have not turned up, more drama than fair city #turf #iestaff #ge16  Elaine Loughlin (@Elaine_Loughlin) May 6, 2016

Update 12.38pm: Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams has just finished his speech after the Ceann Comhairle granted additional time for speeches ahead of a vote for Taoiseach.

And the Enda-Dependents, who have almost signed up for this, many of them were among the most vocal opponents of Fine Gael and Labours policy agenda,  he said.

And yet here they are, or indeed, here theyre not. Where are they?"

The most Irish ticker tape ever. pic.twitter.com/K2ivYo8LP8  Joe Leogue (@JoeLeogue) May 6, 2016

Kerry TD Michael Healy-Rae said earlier that he will abstain, Mattie McGrath claims he won't vote for Enda Kenny and will stay in opposition, while the Social Democrats will vote against Mr Kenny instead of abstaining as they did the last time.

Update 12.25pm: The fourth Taoiseach nomination vote since the General Election has begun despite the Independent Alliance still holding talks with Michael Noonan and Simon Coveney over whether they will enter Government, writes Fiachra O Cionnaith, Political Reporter.

The six-strong Shane Ross-led group is currently meeting in Government Buildings with the Finance Minister and Environment Minister.

However, despite ongoing difficulties in agreeing a deal over turf cutting being pushed by Independent Alliance member Michael Fitzmaurice, just yards away the vote for Taoiseach has already begun.

While the actual ballot is unlikely to take place until after 1pm, speeches nominating Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny to become Taoiseach have already started.

Drama is all away from the chamber, with Independent Alliance still in talks with FG in a last ditch bid to reach agreement. #ge16 #iestaff  Elaine Loughlin (@Elaine_Loughlin) May 6, 2016

To muffled laughter in the Dail, Dublin North West TD Noel Rock nominated Mr Kenny for yet another time since the election, joking: "Fourth time's the charm".

"Fourth time is the charm" - Laughter in the Dail as Enda Kenny is nominated for Taoiseach again by @NoelRock #iestaff  Daniel McConnell (@McConnellDaniel) May 6, 2016

Quoting Irish revolutionary Michael Collins, he said "a ship cannot go on without a captain" and that Mr Kenny "has the abilities" to lead.

Fine Gael chairwoman Catherine Byrne told the Dail "we have no time to lose" 70 days on from the February 26 vote.

In a noticeably longer speech by junior minister Simon Harris, which some have suggested was designed to delay the vote and give space to the ongoing talks, the Fine Gael TD said Ireland needs a Government.

Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin subsequently responded by stressing his party "sought to replace" Fine Gael but was turned down "point blank" by other TDs.

Turning to the empty chairs in the Dail caused by the ongoing talks taking place in the nearby Government Buildings, he pointedly said he "notes the non-attendance of the Independent Alliance".

Update 12.05am: TDs are now taking their seats in the chamber of Leinster House ahead of a vote for Taoiseach which is due to take place in the coming minutes.

However, there is still doubt as to whether the Indpendent Alliance will back Enda Kenny with some issues still unresolved.

Independent Alliance have yet to make their way into the chamber as nomination for Taoiseach begin #touchandgo #ge16 #iestaff via Elaine_L  Irish Examiner (@irishexaminer) May 6, 2016

Update 11.58am: Independent TD Michael Collins has confirmed he will not be voting for Enda Kenny in the now imminent Taoiseach nomination vote writes Fiachra O'Cionnaith.

The Cork South West politician and member of the five-strong rural TDs group announced the widely expected move to the Irish Examiner newspaper this morning.

The decision not to back the Fine Gael leader means just three members of the five-strong group - Noel Grealish, Michael Harty and Denis Naughten - are expected to back Mr Kenny.

Breaking: The Labour Party will vote against Taoiseach Enda Kenny #iestaff  Daniel McConnell (@McConnellDaniel) May 6, 2016

The situation makes it even more necessary for Fine Gael to resolve ongoing issues on turf with the Independent Alliance.

I will not be voting for Enda Kenny this afternoon and will issue a full statement on my involvement in the talks... https://t.co/ty5EBVX1p0  Mattie McGrath TD (@mattiemcgrathtd) May 6, 2016

Earlier: With just 15 minutes before the Taoiseach is due to enter the Dail, the Independent Alliance have yet to reach agreement.

There are still major problems on the issue of turf cutting with Michael Fitzmaurice locked in talks with Fine Gael on the issue.

At 11.40am he confirmed that there had been no deal on bogs and turf cutters turf cutters rights.

The Independent Alliance had previously said that they would only go into Government if all members of the group agreed.
The short-term negative impact is playing out already.

GDP growth slowed to just 0.4% in the first quarter of 2016 and the year-on-year growth rate declined to 2.1%, which compares to 2.6% a year ago.

While global economic and financial turbulence would have taken their toll in the early months of the year, it is clear that Brexit uncertainty did contribute.

This week, an index of economic uncertainty produced by Stanford University in California showed that economic uncertainty has hit its highest level in Britain in 19 years, which is saying something.

Industrial activity is at its lowest level since 2013; commercial real estate transactions are reported to be down 40% in the first quarter; and the Bank of England has warned that many UK companies are putting business decisions on hold until after the referendum on June 23.

For Ireland, any semblance of economic slowdown and uncertainty in the UK is not good news.

The reality is that despite the trade diversification that has occurred since 1999 and the advent of the euro, the UK is still a very important trading partner for Ireland, and particularly for indigenous exporters.

Last year exports of goods to the UK totalled 15.5bn, and service exports were roughly the same.

The food and beverage sector is particularly exposed, as the UK accounts for over 41% of exports from the sector.

We imported 17.8bn worth of goods from the UK, and 10bn worth of services.

The EU is based on the creation of a zone where there is free movement of goods, people and capital.

If the UK were to leave the EU, there would be a significant question mark over the future of all free movement, particularly goods.

Of more immediate concern, however, would be a further slowdown in the UK economy and a further weakening of sterling.

Both would damage Irish exports to the UK, increase imports, and damage the attractiveness of Ireland as a destination for UK tourists.

Since November, sterling has lost almost 15% of its value against the euro. If the risk of Brexit were to increase or materialise, sterling could easily fall another 15%.

This would not be good news for Ireland. Other issues of uncertainty would include the land border with Northern Ireland, the all-island energy market, the future stance of UK corporation tax policy and the loss of a sensible ally around the EU table.

There is a possibility that if the UK left the EU, it could pursue a much more aggressive policy on corporation tax, thereby challenging Irelands undoubted primacy in that area.

I also believe, that if Britain leaves the EU, Ireland would become much more vulnerable in its efforts to stave off the pressure from France and Germany to increase the 12.5% rate.

On the upside, with the exception of Malta, which is not a serious competitor of Irelands on the FDI front, Ireland would become the only English speaking country in the EU, which could boost investment from the US.

However, in the short-term Brexit poses many more risks than opportunities for Ireland.

Longer-term, the impact would be heavily determined by what sort of trading agreement is reached between the EU and the UK.

It would not be possible for Ireland to negotiate bilateral trade deals with the UK, unless every EU member state was to agree.

That could be problematic, because the remaining EU countries might not adopt a very conciliatory approach to the UK.

Of course, Ireland would adjust and adapt in the longer term, but in the short term the risks are clear.

The best outcome would obviously be a vote to stay in, but it might be hoped that in the event of such a vote, the EU would actually reform itself and address the many shortcomings that the flawed EU structure obviously has.

In the event of a UK vote to leave, similar reform would be necessary to offset the possibility of other countries following the UK out.
Despite having a seat at the top table of financial technology (FinTech) internationally, Ireland is failing to attract a sufficient share of investment in the area, according to KPMG Ireland partner Anna Scally.

From an Irish perspective, Im very keen to see more money going into Irish FinTech companies because when I look at where the money is going in Europe its going into London and after that its going into Germany and I want to see the big bucks going into Ireland, Ms Scally said.

Despite being internationally recognised given the success of its indigenous FinTech companies, competition is very hot, she added.

London, in particular, she described as an incredible competitor.

Europe is, in turn, losing out in comparison with the US and Asia which are enjoying greater success in the field.

Asia has emerged strongly in the past 12 months adding further pressure to European companies.

There is shed loads of money being spent in FinTech but actually if you look at it probably 75%-80% of it is actually being spent in the States.

It was 80% in 2014, it went to 70% at the end of 2015 and the reason why is that more money is being spent in Asia. So Europe is still lagging very far behind in the amount of money thats actually being invested in FinTechs.

It lags behind the investment in FinTech companies in now, Asia, and certainly the last number of years in the US and thats something that we really need to get to grips with and to make sure that Europe continues to remain relevant in that area, Ms Scally said.

Speaking as part of a panel discussion on the sector at the European Tech Summit, Deloitte partner David Dalton echoed Ms Scallys comments.

In Ireland, venture capital firms perhaps lack specialised knowledge in the area which is stunting the sector while there is also a lot of capital sitting on the sidelines here, he added.
Newly filed accounts for TNT Express (Ireland) show the firm recorded a pre-tax loss of 266,775 in 2015, down from a profit of 2.1m in the previous year.

The Irish division went into the red despite increasing revenues by nearly 3% to 40.1m on the back of new business wins.
Concerns over the scale of the challenge faced by Rolls-Royce to deliver on forecasts sent shares in the maker of aircraft engines down 6% at one stage.

The fall in the stocks value yesterday followed its 22% rise since mid-February when it maintained its 2016 forecast, giving investors confidence that it had turned a corner.
Research commissioned by the HSE Organ Donation and Transplant Ireland (ODTI) found that more than a third of people (36%) carry an organ donor card  a 12-point increase since 2003.

The study of public support for organ donation in Ireland in February last year found that 44% of those who said they would donate their organs carry an organ donor card.

It shows that 81% of people are willing to donate their organs, a 17% increase since 2009. However, most (92%) would be happy to receive an organ.

An increased willingness to donate extends to the organs of close family members  85% said they would agree to donate organs from a deceased close relative, if asked in a hospital, compared to 58% in 2009.

While only half those who participated in the Ipsos MRBI survey had discussed organ donation or transplantation with their family, just 40% had talked about it in 2009.

Those aged 25 to 44 (57%), those who were better off (61%) and college graduates (58%) were most likely to have discussed organ donation.

Of those unwilling to donate, almost a third (31%) were unable to give a reason. However, scared of manipulation of the human body (14%) and distrust of the system (11%) were the two main reasons given.

Just under a third of people (31%) knew someone who had benefitted from an organ donation, compared to 25% in 2003. Almost three quarters (73%) felt they were well informed about organ donation.

The survey was included in the ODTI 2015 annual report, published yesterday.
It would have been better if the barcode on the tin of Ronseal had not been on the lid which meant Wendy Delaney, aged 68, had to turn it upside down to scan it, Mr Justice Michael Hanna remarked in the High Court.

Ms Delaney, a community worker from Newlands Rd, Clondalkin, Dublin, sued B&Q Ireland in the High Court over the accident in its Tallaght store on May 30, 2009.

She said she was covered from head to toe by varnish which she cleaned off afterwards in the stores staff bathroom.

She later had to be treated for injuries to both eyes but also suffered a depressive reaction, the court heard.

Mr Justice Hanna said Ms Delaney was a qualified nurse who left nursing to work in full-time community care in the area of womens rights and education.

She and her daughter went to the B&Q Belgard Rd store to buy some varnish and chose a 2.5-litre tin of Ronseal.

She decided to use the self-service checkout and had to invert the tin when the lid fell off and she dropped it causing significant personal injuries, the judge said.

Ms Delaney and her daughter, as well as a manager from B&Q, gave their evidence impeccably and fairly and it was a pleasure to listen to them, the judge said.

While there was no CCTV evidence, through no fault of B&Q, and no other witnesses, there was evidence from engineers on both sides as to what may happen if a tin of varnish slipped in this way.

What was known about what happened and as one who does not frequent the darkest corners of DIY stores, the judge said it was clear varnish is less viscous than paint and if it was going to fall out, it was going to splash like a liquid and spill in every direction. The barcode was on the lid and it seemed to the judge the safe place to have it would be on the base or on the side but life does not work like that.

He found there was no issue of contributory negligence by Ms Delaney.

She received treatment in the eye and ear hospital and after a couple of weeks, she was on the mend although she now needs to lubricate her eyes if she intends to read or look at a screen for a long time, he said.

The more serious aspect of her injuries was that she suffered a depressive reaction and while her doctor said she was pre-disposed to this reaction, the incident had increased the risk, he said.

She had also been unable to complete a Masters degree as a result though she hoped to do so in the future, he said.

In the circumstances, she was entitled to recover significant though not enormous damages which he assessed at 85,000, including 20,000 special damages.

He granted a three-week stay to Finbarr Fox, counsel for the defendant, in the event of an appeal.
Thats according to director of the school Darina Allen after new accounts confirmed another bumper year. Accounts show the Ballymaloe business enjoyed tasty profits of over 140,000 last year.

Its accumulated profits increased by 140,609 from 2.43m to 2.57m in the 12 months to the end of August last.

The companys cash reserves during the year increased from 682,350 to 780,109.

The school has been operating since 1983. The main driver of the success is the cookery course that costs entrants 11,395.

Running three times yearly, it can generate revenues of 2m per annum.

Ms Allen said yesterday there are people from 12 countries taking the course.

The course helps spread the good story of Irish food and helps to dispel the myth we are a land of corned beef and cabbage, she said, adding there was a waiting list for the course.

Along with the intensive course, the Cookery School offers a range of other courses including Fast and Fabulous Meals with Rachel Allen, and Autumn Foraging with Darina Allen.

Darina said yesterday: There is a change in the air in the country, and everything is much more positive and we hope that manifests itself in more students here.

I am really relieved that the economy is recovering and that there is a general air of optimism. Everyone is more hopeful.

The school employs around 55 people and staff costs last year totalled 1.23m.
Dan McCarthy, who owns the Classes Lake pharmacy near Ballincollig, Co Cork, was also directed to make a contribution to the States legal costs, with Judge James McNulty stating that white-collar offenders could not be seen to be dealt with any differently to anyone else.

McCarthy, who pleaded guilty, appealed against the severity of penalties imposed. A bond of 10,000 was fixed.

Bandon District Court heard McCarthy faced two charges, that between January 1 and February 11, 2011, he had impeded an authorised officer of the department in that he removed veterinary prescriptions from the premises; and, further, on February 15, 2011 he failed to produce veterinary records.

A parallel investigation by the Pharmaceutical Society had resulted in McCarthys company receiving a conviction.

Alice Fawsitt, prosecuting, said the department officer had attended the Classes Lake pharmacy seeking veterinary records in respect of named customers.

The information was not there and he left a list of what was required, but when he returned on February 15 no records were made available.

The officer had also sought prescription records for the previous month of January and had been informed by a staff member they had been removed from the premises.

Solicitor Barry Creed said the records had been removed due to an audit that was taking place and had not been returned as quickly as they could have been.

He said the records were subsequently provided to the Pharmaceutical Society, while Ms Fawsitt said the department received one copy of one prescription.

Mr Creed said his client had had no interaction with the department since then and had not been the subject of any complaint over the same period.

He said McCarthy employs 26 people and a conviction could have catastrophic effects professionally, and a knock-on effect for employment.

The court heard that conviction on the charges carry a penalty of fines up to 5,000 and/or up to six months imprisonment.

Judge James McNulty noted that McCarthy had pleaded guilty, had no previous convictions, and had a record of professional and personal achievement.

However, Judge McNulty said there was a responsibility on government to oversee and regulate the use of pharmaceutical products in the agricultural sector so as to ensure the integrity of Irish food produce.

He said McCarthys dual qualifications were to his credit but also to his detriment in that he should have been doubly aware of his statutory obligations, particularly with regards to regulatory supervision and inspection.

The court takes these matters very seriously, said Judge McNulty, referring to them as grave matters.

The court cannot extend leniency to this man to any great degree, he said.

At times there is a perception that white-collar crime is different and where an offender is professional, he gets off light. That should not be so.

The court heard legal costs of some 15,000 had been accrued in the case on the States part and Judge McNulty said the defendant would help pay that to defray the costs of prosecution.

The one striking feature of this case is this man is an employer, a leader of his team, and his conduct ought to have been exemplary, and it was not, said the judge.

He said McCarthy was fortunate not to be taken away today.
Garda Sergeant Fergus Twomey told Cork City Coroners Court yesterday that an extensive garda file in relation to the killing in 2010 of Gerard Staunton, who was shot dead in front of his partner and two children outside their home in Wilton, had been submitted to the DPP for consideration.

However, the DPPs office has now directed that there be no prosecution at this time in relation to the death, the sergeant told city coroner Myra Cullinane.

The decision clears the way for a full hearing of the inquest, which Dr Cullinane had listed for August.

While the circumstances of the killing, responsibility for which was claimed by the Real IRA, will be outlined at the inquest, it is understood that elements of the garda investigation will not be disclosed.

Speaking afterwards, Supt Charlie Barry, who is leading the extensive garda probe, said the case is still open and their investigations were continuing.

Gardai launched a major murder investigation after the shooting and spent thousands of man hours following several lines of enquiry.

Detectives arrested up to a dozen people for questioning, viewed thousands of hours of CCTV footage, and conducted many searches of property in Cork city and county. However, no-one has ever been charged in connection with the killing.

If new evidence is uncovered or emerges, we will resubmit a file to the DPP for further consideration, Supt Barry said.

Gerard Topper Staunton, aged 41, who was originally from Kilkieran Close, Hollyhill, on the northside of the city, was shot by a lone gunman armed with a double-barreled sawn-off shotgun as he was getting into his car outside his rented house at Westlawn, off the Sarsfield Rd in Wilton, just before 8pm on January 20, 2010.

The convicted drug-dealer, who was known to gardai, was blasted in the chest at close range.

A bullet entered the back seat of the car close to where the children were sitting.

The gunman fled along Sarsfield Rd in a red 92 C-registered Toyota Liteace van with distinctive bull-bars, which was found burned out at around 8.30pm in a field at Castlewhite, near Waterfall, about 6km away.

Gardai later traced the van to Carrigaline, where it had been bought 24 hours before the shooting.

Days before, leaflets had been distributed across Cork city by the 32 County Sovereignty Movement threatening to kill drug-dealers.

A week after Mr Stauntons killing, the 32 County Sovereignty Movement issued another statement in which the Real IRA claimed responsibility for the killing, and threatened further action against drug dealers.

We warned them that our actions would speak louder than a thousand words and last week was testament to that, it said.

For those who still have a chance to stop today, we ask you to embrace this opportunity or run the risk of suffering the same fate.

This was not a one-off and we would like to reiterate that we will strike when we are ready and not when it is expected of us.

When we do strike, it is not vigilante or gangland activity but military action.
Barrister Suzanne Walsh told Judge Jacqueline Linnane in the Circuit Civil Court yesterday that Niall Daveys personal injuries case had been settled and could be struck out with an order for his legal costs.

Mr Davey, of Castleknock Drive, Castleknock, Dublin, had sued MCD Productions, Dun Laoghaire, Co Dublin; Swords Risk Services Limited, Tuam Rd, Galway; Eventsec Limited, Queens Way, Belfast; Michael N Slattery & Associates Limited, Lower Pembroke St, Dublin, and PBM Productions Limited, trading as Diffusion Events, Dun Laoghaire.

Pat Purcell, who appeared with Ms Walsh for Mr Davey, told Circuit Court president, Mr Justice Raymond Groarke, at the call-over of cases that he wished to present a Garda investigation report on incidents at the concerts which ran over three days in July 2012.

Paul ONeill, counsel for all of the defendants, told the court he would have to take his clients instructions on this development and the case was put back to be heard by Judge Linnane.

Ms Walsh, instructed by solicitors Hennessy and Perrozzi, later told Judge Linnane that as a result of inter-party talks, the case had been settled. She did not disclose the amount of the settlement which was made jointly and severally against all defendants.

Mr Davey claimed antisocial behaviour by a group of males, who kicked mud in peoples faces, went on for two hours at the July 7 concert before two security men tackled them but had been forced to retreat.

A short time later, he had been attacked by a member of this group and viciously assaulted, beaten and stabbed in the back. Several others had kicked and punched him about the head.

He had been treated at the emergency department of Blanchardstown Hospital where he had been X-rayed and his wounds explored, cleaned, and stitched. His consultant believed he had suffered concussion.
Professionals working in reproductive medicine who attended a meeting at the department last summer were shocked that plans for the proposed legislation were at such an advanced stage.

Irish Fertility Society president John Waterstone said the meeting was merely a window dressing exercise.

Dr Waterstone, the medical director of the Cork Fertility Centre, said the society wrote to the department last November expressing their concern about the situation.

We are frustrated. We feel that having waited so long for the legislation there is really no excuse for not seeking our views, he said.

The letter was merely acknowledged. We dont want window dressing; we want to be involved so the department knows the problems and the concerns of the IVF community.

In February last year, the cabinet gave Health Minister Leo Varadkar outline approval for legislation proposals on assisted human reproduction. He admitted there was little chance of legislation becoming law in the lifetime of the government.

The bill would provide a regulatory framework for a range of practices for the first time, including surrogacy, embryo donation and screening, sperm and egg donation, and stem cell research.

A department spokesperson said yesterday that drafting of the general scheme of a bill for assisted human reproduction is ongoing.

Dr Waterstone said scientists in Britain who had kept human embryos alive outside of the womb for more than 13 days could potentially increase understanding about the early stages of human embryo development.

He pointed out that during routine IVF treatment, embryos are not kept in an artificial environment any longer than the blastocyst stage  day five or six.

At that stage, the human embryo, normally in nature, would implant inside a womb, he explained. Even then, sometimes it can be a struggle because you are keeping them in an artificial environment. We really want to get them into the womb as soon as we can.

The work by two teams of researchers in Britain and the US puts scientists into direct conflict with a decades-old law that prohibits donated embryos from being grown in a laboratory for more than two weeks.

Andrea Mulligan, a lecturer in law and bioethics at Trinity College Dublin, said that, in theory, scientists in Ireland could do anything with an embryo because the area is unregulated.

We are caught by general European legislation for the quality and traceability of human cells, but there is no specific regulation of embryos in this country, Ms Mulligan told RTE radio.

She pointed out that 14 days is the international ethical rule, based on a primitive streak, or structural change seen when the embryo becomes individualised. Ultimately, embryos would generally be destroyed after research because they would not be considered viable, she said.

The Pro Life Campaign said while some of these procedures do not necessarily involve the deliberate destruction of the human embryo, it is important to remember everyone was once a human embryo and that the dignity and human rights of every human being should be respected and protected.
The results of the study by the Centre for Psychological Health at Trinity College Dublin, were presented to the annual Chief Fire Officers Association annual conference in Killarney.

The survey authors had not anticipated how much of a dominant role camaraderie and the informal cup of tea, or meal out, or going for a drink and having a relaxing conversation had among the fire service, said Dave Hevey, one of the authors.

All fire authorities provide Critical Incident Stress Management (CISM) services. However, the CISM systems vary by providers across local authority fire services nationally.

The National Directorate for Fire and Emergency Management commissioned the review to establish key issues in relation to Fire Service personnel.

Some 3,000 questionnaires were sent out and close to one third responded. Interviews also took place.

Respondents included fire fighters as well as control centre staff  the people who took the phonecalls from people screaming and upset at what they were encountering  because their perspective was important, Prof Hevey said.

From the moment they joined the service, fire service personnel were trained to expect to encounter stress because of the nature of their daily work. The current flexible approach of informal as well as formal, immediate, and longer-term psychological supports worked very well and people were happy by and large with the CISM systems.

What people find most helpful immediately after an event is sitting around, having a cup of tea and chatting  for the vast majority its their colleagues they draw on, Prof Hevey said.

Some fire brigades, such as the Dublin Fire Brigade, have a peer support system whereby fire service personnel are available to talk to the team after an incident.

By and large, the vast majority did not need additional supports from mental health professionals, it found.

However, the surveyors had not anticipated just how dominant a role camaraderie played in the fire service in dealing with the fallout from suicides, road traffic accidents, fires, and other serious incidents.

To preserve the general health and wellbeing, as well as dealing with traumatic events, the current flexible approach was important.

Given the value placed on colleagues in both the literature and the present survey and interview data, the role of colleagues should be integral, it said.

The fire service appreciated the range of supports they had  such supports were only now being put in place for groups such as gardai, Prof Hevey said.
Junior minister Simon Harris, Fine Gael TD Regina Doherty, and Independent TDs Shane Ross, Denis Naughten, Katherine Zappone, and Sean Canney look set to be among the new faces at Cabinet after today.

Dublin Bay North TD Finian McGrath looks set to be named a super junior minister with responsibility for disabilities.

After 70 days of talks since the general election, Enda Kenny is on course to be finally re-elected Taoiseach at the fourth time of asking.

Late last night, last minute talks were continuing to secure the support of the six Independent Alliance TDs, at least three of the so-called rural five, as well as Kerry TD Michael Healy-Rae.

Roscommon Galway TD Michael Fitzmaurice of the Independent Alliance appeared to be waivering as to his position, due to a major disagreement over turf cutting rights.

One source put Mr Fitzmaurices chances of supporting the deal at less than 50:50.

Waterford TD John Halligan, who had been on the verge of withdrawing, last night secured a funding agreement from Finance Minister Michael Noonan for cardiac services at Waterford Hospital.

He signalled that he was likely to support the deal as a result.

But speaking to the Irish Examiner, Mr Halligan said the Independent Alliance will be demanding at least two Cabinet ministers and two junior ministers in return for their support.

A Fine Gael minister last night said his party will offer Independents at least two full cabinet positions, two super junior posts and a number of junior ministerial roles.

The minister said Independent Alliance TD Shane Ross may be offered the transport or public expenditure and reform portfolios.

He also said rural five member Denis Naughten is a near certainty to be offered the rural affairs ministerial position.

In Government Buildings, Mr Kenny was up until midnight involved in intensive one-to-one discussions with the Independent TDs in a bid to shore up their support.

There was outrage in the Independent ranks even before Independent TDs received the 160-page draft programme for government.

It is understood there were strong words exchanged by Noel Grealish and Michael Collins when Paschal Donohoe told Independents that they would have less than two hours to study the document before indicating whether they could support Mr Kenny or not.

Likewise, Simon Coveneys message that a nomination for Taoiseach would go ahead today led to an expletive-laden row shortly after 4pm with members of the Independent Alliance.

According to the draft document, two new senior ministries will be created, including one looking after the area of housing.

A new court is to be set up to help struggling mortgage holders while the government will establish a help to buy scheme for those hoping to get on the property ladder.

An overhaul of the judicial appointments system, the reopening of garda stations, and a new Public Defender System for citizens will be introduced under draft plans for the new government.

It commits to additional spending on public services of 6.75bn between now and 2021, but spending that is based on sound public finances and a broad tax base. The deal commits that public spending and tax cuts will occur on a 2:1 ratio between now and 2021.

The plan also includes a commitment to immediately proceed to the design phase for a cystic fibrosis unit at Dublins Beaumont Hospital, with building starting next year.

In addition, the emergency department trolley crisis will be addressed by unspecified increases in GP and hospital bed funding.

Mr Harris has been linked to the Department of Social Protection and the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, but it is believed current Transport Minister Paschal Donohoe could pip him for that post.

Current Justice Minister Frances Fitzgerald looks set to be appointed Tanaiste while remaining on as Justice Minister.

It is understood that the Department of the Environment will be split and a new Department of Housing and Local Government will be formed and be housed at the Customs House.

The vote to see Mr Kenny re-elected Taoiseach will commence when the Dail convenes at 12pm.
That was the evidence given by Detective Garda Caroline Keogh at Cork Circuit Criminal Court yesterday, where the accused man was remanded in custody for sentencing on June 7.

The accused, who is now aged 21, pleaded guilty to a charge of sexually assaulting the 16-year-old girl when he was aged 19.

He told the court that he would pay her 10,000 compensation.

Detective Garda Keogh outlined the background to the attack which occurred on April 29, 2014.

The victim had been the ex-girlfriend of the accused at the time of the crime but despite this they arranged to meet and go for a spin in his car.

There was a second man in the car as well.

They drove about from lunchtime on that date through the afternoon, before travelling out to a garage a few miles outside Cork city.

The three of them met again at 6pm, having arranged to do by text.

They again drove around and went back out to the garage and down a laneway, Det Garda Keogh told the court.

They pulled into a field. [The accused] got out of the car and got a Coke bottle with alcohol and got into the back of the car with [the injured party].

He told her to drink the bottle or he would kill her or he would leave her there and drive back.

The 19-year-old then sexually assaulted the 16-year-old when she was extremely drunk.

She was unable to stay awake and she was getting sick.

He took off her clothes except for her top and he took off his clothes except for his shirt.

He tried to have sex with her. She kept falling over. She was extremely intoxicated, Det Garda Keogh said.

He tried on numerous occasions to have sex with her. She passed out. The other male in the car also sexually assaulted her.

The court heard the second male has since fled and gardai have been unable to locate him.

They drove to a couple of other locations in Cork, Det Garda Keogh said.

At around 8pm, he pulled her out of the car on to the footpath [not far from where she lives]. She was unconscious. He took her shoes and various items of her clothing and threw them on top of her.

Det Garda Keogh told the court a number of people soon came to the assistance of the victim who regained consciousness and became hysterical.

The defendants car was clearly identified after being caught on CCTV and he was later identified.

He admitted in the course of an interview that he tried to have sex with her but denied forcing her.

Consent could not arise as an issue in legal terms as she was deemed to be a child at age 16.

The girl had been in a relationship for a short period previous to this incident.

The injured party prepared a victim impact statement to be handed to the judge but she did not want it read in court.

Alice Fawsett, defending, said: When the child was found the car was immediately identified.

He said she asked for sex. The defendant admits the sexual assault.

There are differences in relation to the surrounding circumstances. What he admitted to is different to the allegations made.

She was very drunk, he tried to have sex with her, he brought her back, he dragged her out of the car and left her on the side of the road.

He accepts all of that.
Irmantas Paulauskas, aged 38, of no fixed abode, has pleaded not guilty before Galway Circuit Criminal Court to the robbery of 208 diamond rings and 32 Rolex watches from Richard Hartmann, 29 William St, Galway, on February 11, 2015.

He also denies a second charge of having an imitation pistol with a silencer fitted, in his possession with intent to commit robbery on the same date.

Nora Lee, from the Forensic Science Laboratory, told the jury she was given the clothes Mr Paulauskas was wearing on the date of his arrest, which was less than an hour after the robbery.

Ms Lee was also given samples of glass taken from the interior doors of the window display units from Hartmanns, which had been shattered with lump hammers in the robbery.

She said she examined Mr Paulauskas clothing and found four small fragments of glass; one on his trousers, two on a scarf he was wearing that day, and one on a glove, also found in his possession that day.

None of these matched the glass samples from Hartmanns. The glass recovered from his clothing did not come from Hartmanns Jewellers, she said.

The third day of his trial heard evidence from exhibits officer Garda Dominic McPartland, who said he found a pair of silver handcuffs in the pocket of a jacket, taken from Mr Paulauskas while he was being processed at Galway Garda Station, less than a hour after the robbery.

Garda Jason Kelly gave evidence that he ran after the other two men down a laneway from Middle St, which led onto Merchants Rd. Members of the public on Merchants Rd told him they saw two men ride away on bicycles.

The trial continues next week.
Economy And Reform

Daniel McConnell

This document, A New Partnership Government for a Fairer Ireland, commits to progressing a strong social economy and a fair society, with thriving communities in urban and rural Ireland.

It commits to additional spending on public services of 6.75bn between now and 2021 but spending that is based on sound public finances and a broad tax base.

It commits that budgets will be done on a 2:1 split basis between spending increases and tax cuts.

In terms of tax, the document commits to the continued phasing out of the USC, the removal of PAYE tax credits for high earners, higher excise on cigarettes and a levy on sugary drinks.

The social economy will, they say, also be delivered through supporting enterprise, investing in economic, regional and social infrastructure and creating a just and decent society.

The document commits to working with the Central Bank to review its mortgage lending limits and develop a help-to-buy scheme to help young couples buy their first home.

The State will not sell more than 25% of its stake in any of the bailed-out banks before 2018, and will cease to appoint public-interest directors to the banks and reform the appointment process.

It commits to the full implementation of the Lansdowne Road Agreement and establish a Public Service Pay Commission and continue to repeal the Financial Emergency legislation.

Reform

The economy: Additional spending on public services of 6.75bn.

The document commits to the establishment of a new independent, fully- resourced Budget Office within the Oireachtas available to all members. This is to allow costings to be provided for measures under consideration for an upcoming budget.

The document also lays out a detailed road map for greater pre-budget scrutiny by the Oireachtas in a bid to end the yearly kiteflying associated with the budgetary process.

A series of Dail reforms are being developed which will see greater speaking time for the Opposition, a fast-track system for urgent bills, and a new process to resolve issues between the Dail and the Government.

Ministers will, however, still be bound by confidential collective decision-making, as has operated to date.

Crime and Justice

Juno McEnroe

An overhaul of the judicial appointments system, the reopening of garda stations and a new Public Defender System for citizens will be introduced under draft plans for the new government.

The document commits the Government to reform the judicial appointments system, through the Judicial Appointments Advisory Board. New legislation will reduce its membership, there will be an independent chairperson and a lay majority, including independent people with specialist qualifications.

The numbers of external candidates for vacancies will be reduced to five. The Governments discretion to appoint judges from outside the list will also be removed.

A new judicial council and board will also be set up to promote high standards.

The programme commits the government to increasing garda numbers by 15,000, to double the numbers in the garda reserve and to free up more gardai by putting more citizens in roles.

Under existing capital agreements, intelligence-led policing, an upgrade in information and communications technology, and investment in the garda fleet are all committed to again.

The plan also says there will be new and refurbished garda stations throughout the country.

Existing proceeds of crime legislation will be reviewed and resources will be assessed for the Criminal Assets Bureau. A smaller CAB will be set up to target regional criminal assets.

The Government will also examine the potential for a new public defender system which will report to the relevant Oireachtas Committee and government within six months.

A review of the boundaries of garda districts and the spread of garda stations is also committed to. Deployment and rostering of gardai will also be examined.

A pilot scheme will reopen six garda stations, but it does not say where.

Special garda units targeting gangland crime will be fully resourced, the document says. A new dedicated armed unit for the Dublin area is also pledged.

An Oireachtas Committee will consider the introduction of mandatory sentencing for robbery. The deal says there will be co-operation with Britain on cracking down on bogus asylum seekers. It also says new evidence which comes to light about the fire at the Stardust in 1981, in which 48 people died, will be given regard.

Housing And Homelessness

Elaine Loughlin

Housing: Court is to be set up to help mortgage holders in difficulty

A court is to be set up to help mortgage holders, while the Government will establish a help-to-buy scheme for those hoping to get on the property ladder.

The document, which features an entire chapter on ending the housing shortage and homelessness, has also committed to establish a national service to help struggling homeowners.

A newly appointed Minister for Housing will publish an action plan for housing within the first 100 days.

The document states that the Government will protect the family home and introduce additional long-term solutions for mortgage arrears cases.

This includes establishing the Debt Resolution Scheme to standardise the supports available to borrowers in mortgage arrears.

A dedicated new court will be set up to sensitively and expeditiously handle mortgage arrears and other personal insolvency cases.

A help-to-buy scheme will be set up within a year to assist first-time buyers get on the property ladder by ensuring availability of adequate, affordable mortgage finance or mortgage insurance.

The document also provides details on the provision of social housing. The draft programme promises to accelerate the delivery of the committed 3.8bn Social Housing Strategy, with local authorities now delivering new hosing in two phases.

Under this, an extra 18,000 homes by the end of 2017 and a further 17,000 by the end of 2020 are promised.

In the first year of government, Nama will also be consulted and encouraged to be more ambitious in its commitment to deliver 20,000 residential units by 2020.

A new rural resettlement scheme is proposed for the first year of government to promote the advantages of rural living and ease of housing pressures in high demand areas.

This will be coupled with a root-and-branch review of the planning system to reduce the uncertainty and length of the planning process. As previously outlined in the Fianna Fail/ Fine Gael agreement water charges will be put on hold pending a commission looking into Irish Water and the controversial charges.

Education

Fiachra O Cionnaith

Education: Controversial use of prefabs will be eliminated

Defence Forces places will be made available for secondary school pupils, no small school will be closed against the wishes of parents, and the use of prefabs will be phased out under the next governments education plans.

The deal drawn up between Fine Gael and some Independents outlines the new policies as part of measures attempting to reform the education system.

Under the plans, the next government will ringfence 30 to 40 Defence Forces places every year for pupils who will otherwise be unable to break out of a cycle of disadvantage.

The plan will also commit to ensuring no small school is closed without the express permission of parents while a review of the needs of schools with four or less teachers will be implemented within three months of government formation.

The controversial use of prefabs will also be eliminated under the Fine Gael-led minority government, the deal claims, in addition to a new school-excellence fund being set up to help improve achievement levels in the education system.

The plan has also set a target of 400 multi-denominational and non-denominational schools by 2030 to help strengthen and promote choice and diversity, while still safeguarding the right of parents to denominational schools.

Under the programme for government deal, school management boards are also due to be told any extra funding will be tied to usage of the buildings outside normal hours for groups trying to help the local community.

This is understood to relate to after-school clubs and creches, a move it is hoped will lower the costs of the latter.

The long-stated second free pre-school year will be introduced alongside plans to increase the mandatory schooling age to 17 and the creation of a new school completion strategy.

By 2021, the plan will also invest an extra 500m in school-support services such as speech and language therapy, psychologists and guidance counsellors.

Class sizes will be reduced under previously stated plans, while there will be additional investment in third level education..

Agriculture And Rural Affairs

Elaine Loughlin

Rural affairs: The draft programme says 85% of premises will have access to high- speed broadband within two years

A new cabinet minister, promises on broadband, protection of small schools, the reopening of six garda stations, and a review of post offices are among the commitments made on rural Ireland. Agriculture and rural affairs were major issues for many of the Independents and this is reflected in the amount of space given up to them in the document.

The delays in the provision of rural broadband had been a major sticking point for many involved in negotiations and the document now promises that: No town, village or parish will be left behind under the National Broadband Plan.

The draft programme states that 85% of premises will have access to high- speed broadband within two years, with 100% access in at most five years. The Government aims to create 200,000 jobs by 2020, with 135,000 outside Dublin.

Turf-cutting was a major issue for a number of Independents, including Michael Fitzmaurice. There issue was still being debated last night as the Government only committed to draft legislation on dedesignating 46 Natural Heritage Areas in the first 100 days.

In a bid to help smaller farmers, the Government will fight at EU level to lower the cap on basic farm payments from 150,000 to 100,000.

They will also carry out a review of the Farm Assist Scheme, recognising the challenges facing farmers on low incomes.

Fishing will also be promoted and, through the development of the blue economy, it is planned to deliver 29,000 extra jobs by 2020.

Money will be allocated to road and rail networks to ensure communities isolated by inadequate national primary roads, have direct access to ports and airports.

There will be a review into the cost benefit analysis and review of the Western Rail corridor between Athenry and Claremorris. All of these commitments will be implemented by the new cabinet minister for Regional Development and Rural Affairs.

When it comes to supporting the rural economy a three-year tax relief for certain start-up companies will be kept until the end of 2018 and 100m will be set aside to take the Wild Atlantic Way to the next level.

A new model of community banking will be introduced via post offices and credit unions.

Health

Fiachra O Cionnaith

Health: A decade-long funding model for health to tackle the ongoing problems

All Dail parties will be asked to sign up to an agreed decade-long funding model for health by the next government in a bid to end the perennial crisis in the system.

The Fine Gael and Independents draft programme for government has earmarked the move as an essential way to ensure repeated hospital crises can finally be tackled.

Throughout Irelands non-stop health problems in recent years, doctors and nurses have repeatedly said the constant U-turns on policies from politicians has damaged the long-term reform of the system.

However, under the proposed decision to set up an Oireachtas all-party committee to agree a single long- term vision for healthcare over a 10-year period, with consensus on healthcare planning.

The draft document also includes controversial plans for a new performance management unit for hospitals, which will have a ring-fenced budget and be asked to assist hospitals with bringing their budgets under control.

Should the facilities fail to do so, the document states they will have to cut funds in their own budgets or seek the financial help of private- sector providers.

The plan also includes a commitment to immediately proceed to the design phase for a cystic fibrosis unit at Dublins Beaumont Hospital, with building starting next year. A cath-lab heart diagnostics system for Waterford University Hospital has also been included, while an extra 50m will be set aside to address chronic waiting lists.

In addition, the emergency department trolley crisis will be addressed by unspecified increases in GP and hospital bed funding.

Long-stated plans of a review of ambulance services, including calls to potentially treated patients outside hospitals; an independent Patient Advocacy Service; and a tax on sugary drinks are also stated.

A review on how to ensure cancer patients can readily access medical cards and a commitment to give 10,000 of the supports to children in receipt of domiciliary care is also outlined. Fine Gaels hopes to introduce free GP care for under 18s and over 70sand to create 100 GP places by 2021 and open 80 more primary care centres.
Thomas Hanrahan, aged 25, told the gardai he had acquired the Chinese-made air rifle through a website and got it to protect himself and his father.

On searching his house at Sean Heuston Place, gardai also found a can of pepper spray and three containers of lead pellets.

Hanrahan pleaded guilty at Limerick Circuit Court to illegal possession of the rifle and pepper spray.

Garda Eoghan Linnane said that while he was on duty on March 9, 2012, with Garda Barry Manton, they were alerted by the communications room at Henry St of shots being fired at Sean Heuston Place.

On arriving at the Hanrahan house, the father of the accused allowed them in and Thomas Hanrahan showed them the rifle, which he took out from behind a fridge.

They found containers of pellets and pepper spray.

Hanrahan took full responsibility for the rifle, the pellets, and the pepper spray.

The accused said he got the rifle to protect himself and his father.

Hanrahan told gardai he had been doing target practice with the rifle, firing at cans and bottles on a back shed.

The can of pepper spray was capable of discharging a noxious liquid which caused severe irritation and a burning sensation resulting in temporary incapacitation.

Gardai accepted that the accused did not acquire the rifle for any sinister purpose and while he had a number of previous convictions, these did not involve crimes of violence.

Patrick Whyms, defending, said yesterday that the accused had engaged in target practice in a built-up area.

Mr Whyms said that this was a ridiculous thing for him to do, as people would be alerted to the sound of rifle fire and alert the gardai.

Mr Whyms said Hanrahan did not have the gun and pepper spray with any nefarious intentions and the accused now realised what he was doing was not acceptable.

Judge Tom ODonnell put back sentencing for Hanrahan to July 26.
Matthew Gralton, aged 22, had pleaded not guilty to the murder of Christy Daly, aged 47, on a remote bog lane in Kilbride, Clara, Co Offaly between December 29, 2013, and January 7, 2014.

The murder charge against Mr Gralton, of Mt Prospect, Co Roscommon, was dropped following several days of legal argument at the Central Criminal Court.

Patrick Marrinan, prosecuting, told the jury that he was entering a nolle prosequi. Justice Patrick McCarthy told the jury that matters had been dealt with in their absence and that the prosecution had decided to discharge Mr Gralton but that the trial of Ross Allen will continue.

Mr Allen, aged 25, with addresses in Carrickmines, Co Dublin, and Clara, Co Offaly, has pleaded not guilty to Mr Dalys murder.

The prosecution called Mr Graltons wife, Niamh Heffernan, to give evidence. Ms Heffernan told Mr Marrinan that she remembers the events of December 29, 2013, the last day Mr Daly was seen alive.

She said that she was at a house in Esker in Co Offaly with Mr Allen, another local man she knew, and two men from Dublin she did not know. She said one of the Dublin men was referred to as Fly. The local man gave Mr Allen 100 and told him to buy clothes from Tesco. She agreed that he had said not to buy good clothes.

I knew something was going on, she said, and she asked to be taken to her mothers house. She left at about 7pm.

Later that night, she came back to the house in Esker and she said the two Dublin men were snorting cocaine. Mr Allen was not there.

She agreed with Blaise OCarroll, defending, that she heard one of the Dublin men saying shots had been fired and she asked her then boyfriend, Mr Gralton, what had happened.

She said he was upset. She went to bed and awoke at about 5am. The two Dublin men were still doing cocaine but when she awoke again at about 7am they were gone.

Mr Marrinan told the jury that the prosecution has presented all the evidence.

The trial will continue today.
David Porter, aged 43, originally from Belfast, pleaded guilty to stealing the wine from the church in Kinsale, Co Cork, last month.

Bandon District Court heard that Garda David Barrett was on duty in Kinsale when he received a report at 7.05am on April 14 that there had been a burglary at the Carmelite Friary Church in the town.
The High Court was hearing continuing arguments in the test case by the woman and child aimed at securing backdated payments. They claim the boy is entitled to payments from either his birth in late 2007 or when benefit was first sought in early 2008.

The State disputes any entitlement to child benefit before May 2012, when the parents applications for subsidiary protection were granted.
The Irish Nursing and Midwives Organisations director of industrial relations yesterday told the annual delegate conference in Killarney, Co Kerry, that the INMO would dispute government claims it had recruited 1,000 nurses.

Phil Ni Sheaghda said two thirds of nursing appointments are existing staff moving within the public service and are not new recruits.

The acute hospitals division tells us, that of the entire number they manage to recruit, 66% of them are already public servants. They are either working in a voluntary hospital or somewhere else within the system.

Ms Ni Sheaghda said the problems with staffing levels are exacerbated by the systems inability to retain nurses. Figures from the acute hospitals division show 74 fewer staff nurses working in February 2016 compared to December 2014.

She said a snapshot taken last September showed while there were 1,624 nurses due to start a new job, 1,287 were leaving their existing role.

With agency figures taken into account, she also said there are 1,272 nursing vacancies that should be filled. That figure rises to 1,722 when a new maternity hospitals agreement, seeking to have one midwife per 29.5 births, is considered. The unions general secretary Liam Doran described the figures as shocking.

Meanwhile, the INMO has called on the Government to adopt a zero tolerance approach to anyone who verbally or physically abuses a nurse.

Delegates heard of one Cork nurse who has not worked for two years having been assaulted by a patient.

Margaret Frahill of the INMO executive council told delegates the nurse suffered head and neck injuries after she was pushed over by a female patient. This nurse has suffered greatly, is in constant pain, and is having weekly reviews with a physiotherapist and pain specialist. The nurse has not worked since and is not likely to work again for a very long time.

She is married with children and her life has changed totally, and so has her familys.

The only support available to this nurse now is to fight for her rights and entitlement through the civil courts.

Delegate Martin OCealleagh highlighted legislation in Australia that sentences anyone found guilty of assaulting a nurse to up to 14 years in prison.

There was a unanimous show of hands when Mr OCealleagh asked how many delegates had experienced verbal or physical assault in the workplace.

We dont have the knowledge base to appropriately address the violence being directed at us, said Mr OCeallaigh.

We need that support and those structures in place.
Michael Barr, aged 35, from Strabane, Co Tyrone, had been shot dead in a Dublin bar last month. He was hit up to three times when two gunmen burst into the Sunset House pub in the Summerhill area of the city.

He died at the scene. His murder is believed to be linked to the bloody power struggle between the Kinahan and Hutch families and their associates.

There are conflicting reports as to whether Mr Barr was the intended target or if a Hutch family member was in the pub at the time.

Meanwhile, parish priest Fr Michael Doherty, who officiated at the funeral, sent a message of support to those living in fear of gangland crime. He said the community of Strabane is behind those facing the violence on the streets of Dublin City.

Around 500 people had turned out for Mr Barrs funeral Mass at St Marys Church in the Melmount area of Strabane yesterday.

Around a dozen men, dressed in paramilitary-style uniform, accompanied the cortege towards the church.

Black flags were placed on lamp posts along part of the route while a black beret and gloves were placed on top of the coffin, draped in a Tricolour. There was a significant police presence on both sides of the border ahead of the funeral.

The PSNI said 15 men had been detained under the Terrorism Act.

At the time of his death, Mr Barr was due to be sentenced at the Special Criminal Court for handling stolen electrical equipment.

He had pleaded guilty to the offence at Finnstown House Hotel on July 18, 2014, where a bomb had been found in a car two months earlier. Republican supporters described him as an ex-republican POW.

He had lived in Poppintree in the Ballymun area and also in Finglas before moving to the north inner city since taking over the Sunset House pub in the last year.
The call comes following an incident in Midlands Prison on Tuesday when four staff were attacked by convicted rapist Lovemore Dube, aged 28. It is understood the prisoner attacked four staff members, biting them on the hands and arms. One prison officer suffered a broken finger after being bitten through to the bone.

Assistant general secretary of the Irish Prisoner Officers Association (IPOA) Gabriel Keaveney said the attack demonstrated the need for better protection for officers.

Prison officers in this situation have no protective equipment whatsoever. The director general has refused to issue us with batons, notwithstanding advice from his own internal expert group.

So we have to go into these situations with no pepper spray, no batons, no conflict resolution dogs and we have spoken about this many times before, he told RTE radio.

Mr Keaveney said dogs had been in use for a period but were taken out of service without consultation.

However, a spokesperson for the Irish Prison Service said dogs were discontinued in 2014 as they had only been deployed on a small number of occasions.

Conflict-resolution dogs are used for crowd disturbance situations and it would be very unlikely that they would be used to respond to an incident involving one prisoner, he said.

He also said the use of personal protective equipment for prison staff is considered by an advisory committee and that the IPOA is represented on this committee.

Therefore to suggest that the POA have not been consulted in this regard is wrong.

The use of items such as batons and pepper-spray has and is being considered by this committee. Batons are now available for prison staff on high-risk escorts and the introduction of a standard prison issue baton is still being considered.

The use of pepper spray is also being considered and researched and the Prison Service is liaising with An Garda Siochana who have introduced same.

However, the decision to equip staff with such items is not taken lightly by management of the Irish Prison Service, he said.

The State Claims Agency is currently completing a comprehensive review of the risks associated with prisoner on prison officer assaults in accordance.

The final report is expected this month.
James McDonagh, a brother of Martin McDonagh, the inmate at the centre of the incident at the new 45m Cork Prison, said his family had feared for Martins safety.

It was a very cold night. He could have been found dead in the yard the next morning, James McDonagh told The Opinion Line on Corks 96FM yesterday.

They have 300 cameras in the prison. They have to know where a prisoner is. They have dogs, security alarms, and cameras. They should have noticed.

The jail opened in January, replacing the facility on nearby Rathmore Rd. The Irish Prison Service (IPS) hailed its improved security arrangements, its sophisticated network of CCTV cameras, and its new internal exercise yards which were designed to minimise the risk of contraband being thrown over the external prison walls.

Martin McDonagh, aged in his 20s, is serving a jail term for several counts of burglary, trespassing and criminal damage. He was in custody on February 29 and made a court appearance on March 1.

When he was returned to the prison that day, he was given access to one of the internal exercise yards.

It is understood that his return was not communicated during a staff handover, and prison staff on lockdown duty that night were under the mistaken impression that he had not returned from the court appearance.

As a result, when a head count was done on the cells that night, Martin McDonaghs absence was not flagged as unusual.

He spent the night locked outside in a small exercise yard, and had to do star-jumps to keep warm.

Despite waving frantically at CCTV cameras and shouting for help, he was not discovered until around 7.30am. He was taken to another court hearing in Tralee that day.

The IPS said that new operational procedures have since been introduced to ensure such a mistake cannot happen again.

Its internal investigation is focusing on the communication breakdown and on how the exercise yards are monitored overnight.

A spokesman said the probe is ongoing and, once complete, it will be up to the governor of Cork Prison to decide whether staff should face disciplinary action.
We caught up with third-year Cork city students Claudia Sheehan, 14, from Fairhill, and Nicole Alcock, 15, from Gurranabraher who were - as you will see - still buzzing from their performance of a lifetime.

Claudia and Nicole were among a choir of seven Irish students who performed with The Edge during his historic acoustic set in Vatican City.

Attending Terence McSwiney Community College, the pair who are now preparing for their Junior Cert exams said they will remember the gig forever.

It was just unbelievable  the whole experience was surreal. I still cant quite comprehend it and it took a while to realise just how unbelievable it was, Nicole said.

Claudia, who described it as an amazing experience, said: Its still sinking in. But Edge told us to be yourself and, that if you work hard, you can do what you want to do in life.

Edge became the first artist to stage a contemporary music concert inside the Sistine Chapel on Saturday as part of a conference on regenerative medicine.

The U2 guitarist, who described the Popes chapel as the most beautiful parish hall in the world, performed a short acoustic set, including U2s Walk On, Yahweh, and Ordinary Love, and was backed by the choir for a cover of Leonard Cohens If It Be Your Will.

The choir was specially formed for the gig with students Abbie Kelly, Cillian Dooley, Katie Brennan and Joe Jennings from Carlow, Naoise Hughes from Mayo, and Claudia and Nicole from Cork, selected from certain U2 co-funded Music Generation music education programmes around the country.

They spent nine weeks rehearsing with musical director and arranger Dawn Kenny and performed with The Edge before an audience of some 200 doctors, scientists, researchers, and philanthropists, who were attending the conference.

Nicole and Claudias principal Phil OFlynn said The Edge was extremely generous with his time, and chatted to all the students for ages.

These girls have extraordinary vocal talents and they were a credit to themselves, to the school, to the Music Generation programme, and to the country, she said.

Music Generation has uncovered so much amazing talent that had never been tapped into. It has helped build confidence and encouraged students to express themselves, she said.

Music Generation national director, Rosaleen Molloy congratulated the choir members on their stunning performance.

Truly they have done both Music Generation and their country proud. We look forward to following their bright musical journeys over the coming years, she said.
It follows An Bord Pleanala dismissing the appeal lodged by Mrs Pat Desmond against the Dublin City Council decision granting planning permission to Ms Reihill to proceed with a 1,650 sq ft basement plan that has a much larger floorspace than an average three bedroom semi-detached home.

Ms Reihill is married to London based financier Shane Reihill. The Reihills purchased St Peters, Ailesbury Road last year for 2.9m.

However, the Reihills last October looked to substantially increase the size of their trophy home on millionaires row after lodging plans for the basement that comprises two en-suite bedrooms, a playroom and plant room accessed via a lift.

The plan also includes the demolition of an existing two-storey extension above ground and its replacement.

The proposal will allow the Reihills increase the floorspace of their home, a protected structure, to 7,502 sq/ft.

Dublin City Council gave the plan the go-ahead in December. However, plans were put on hold after Mrs Desmond retained top planning consultant, Simon Clear to lodge the appeal to An Bord Pleanala against the decision.

Ailesbury Rd Residents, as observers lodged a submission with the appeals board, concurring with Mrs Desmonds grounds of appeal.

In a comprehensive appeal lodged on behalf of Mrs Desmond, Mr Clear argued the basement is likely to penetrate the ground water level and displacement of flooding will occur into adjoining properties.

He stated: Given these circumstances, worst case scenarios should be assessed before any decision to grant permission is made. As has been seen throughout the country in December 2015, it is too late to react after planning permission has been granted and put into effect. Therefore, the precautionary principle should apply."

Mr Clear added: Particularly, a residential basement should not be tolerated under any circumstances and no basements should be allowed in residential conservation areas or near protected structures.

In the appeal, Mr Clear further stated "the proposed development is unacceptable in the absence of a revised flood risk assessment".

But planning inspector Hugh Morrison ruled the the proposal would not be subject to any appreciable flood risk.

However, in its formal order, the appeals board has found the Reihill plan would not seriously injure the visual or residential amenities of the area and would be in accordance with proper planning and sustainable development.

The board made its decision having regard to the policies and provisions of the Dublin City Development Plan 20112017; the planning history of the site; the nature and scale of the proposed development and the established character and pattern of development in the vicinity of the site.

At appeal stage, the Reihills consultants carried out site investigations and confirmed that there was no stream underneath the site and that displaced ground water would flow to the River Dodder while also finding that any increase in the ground water level would be negligible.
NEXT Wednesday marks the 13th anniversary of the death of Noel Redding, who played bass with the Jimi Hendrix Experience and settled down at Dunowen House, Ardfield, West Cork, with Carol Appleby.

Here, drummer Les Sampson, who played in various bands with Redding, including a Friday night residency at De Barras Folk Club, remembers his friend.

On first meeting Redding, at a pub in the English countryside around 1968: Were sitting there talking about things, enjoying a pint of bitter, and this apparition turns up on a Honda 50 motorbike and it was Noel Redding. He came into the pub and bought everyone a beer and we played darts. He was so different to everybody else, he just looked totally different, covered in bright colours.

Noel had parted company with Hendrix, theyd had a row  although Noels mum Margaret was still very friendly with Hendrix. Hed only seen me playing a couple times but he liked what he was seeing and thought we could do something. I was finishing an apprenticeship as a plumber, engaged to be married  and he told me to forget all that and play music. So to everyones shock and horror, thats what I did.

The Hendrix fame: Most of his life, no one could let him get out of that period of his life and he was stuck in this time warp of being famous for being with Hendrix and he got to resent it towards the end of his life, because he had no other life.

Touring the US: We were doing a tour once and the promoters son had found out the promoter had booked Noel and hes such a Hendrix admirer that he booked the rest of the hotel so he could move all of his friends in and be close to Noel. There was constant Hey man do you want to party? It was like, Bloody hell mate weve just finished rehearsing, chill out.

Reddings first meeting with Carol Appleby: There was a dinner one night with the head of Motown Records, Berry Gordy, and a bunch of friends. Carol was a blind date for me, they thought wed get on really well. I went to this dinner, I was talking to somebody else, she met Noel and they got talking. I was introduced to her but I didnt see her again for the rest of the evening. They hitched up from that.

Redding comes to West Cork: I was somebody with Noel, I was just part of Noels entourage as some people saw it, if they even worried about me  they were so busy gazing at Noel all the time. But then he decided to retire.

So one minute were in Hollywood, then we get on a plane and were in Rosscarbery in West Cork, in the mist. He just stuck a pin in a map and it ended up in West Cork.

On Reddings legacy: Its always been a really good tradition of music in West Cork. Everywhere you go, theres always someone whos gonna have a go at it. I think Noel just brought a massive centre of it all when he came to Ireland. He made a lot of opportunities inadvertently, brought in a lot of interest, just because of who he was.

Les Sampson plays at De Barras in Clonakilty on Saturday and Sunday with a variety of other musicians to celebrate the life and music of Noel Redding

One minute were in Hollywood, then we get on a plane and were in West Cork, in the mist

Set in stone?

The Noel Redding Memorial Committee has been formed with the aim of delivering a statue to Clonakilty commemorating the late musician.

The seven-person committee has secured funding from the West Cork Municipality of 5,000 towards an estimated goal of 40,000.

Chairman Ray Blackwell said: The statue will acknowledge Noel Reddings cultural contribution to Clonakilty and to West Cork.

It will reinforce Clonakiltys international identity as the music centre of Munster and inspire future generations of musicians and visitors in the area.
You cannot get better healthcare anywhere in the world than in the US  if you can afford it. And, faced with what is by far the most expensive healthcare system in the world, affording it is no small feat. Indeed, US healthcare spending, half of which is private, will reach $10,651 (9,350) per capita this year alone, the equivalent of 18.4% of GDP.

Despite the progress, president Barack Obamas Affordable Care Act  so-called Obamacare  has made in expanding health-insurance coverage, many Americans still lack sufficient access to modern diagnostics and treatment.

Bernie Sanders made this a central plank of his campaign for the US presidency, and seems certain to keep pushing the idea on Hillary Clinton, now the Democratic Partys likely nominee. Unfortunately, while the appeal of his proposal for universal mandatory health insurance  or Medicare for all  is certainly understandable, his plan is not economically convincing.

In all modern countries, the provision and financing of basic healthcare are, to some extent, excluded from private market mechanisms. After all, if medical services are allocated via private markets, their provision will be based on a patients economic capacity, not his or her medical needs. That conflicts with globally accepted fundamental ideas of justice.

But, in the US, that market exemption is very limited. Indeed, the US stands out among its developed-country peers in the extent to which the quality of health care depends on a patients personal financial solvency. That is what Sanders wants to change, by introducing a single, compulsory, and tax-funded insurance plan that would provide all US residents with the same access to basic healthcare.

In terms of health economics, Sanders proposal makes sense. But, beyond the reality of broad political resistance to a single-payer health system in the US, Sanders scheme has not been reliably cost-accounted. All of the assumptions underpinning his claim that the reform is financially viable are dubious. For example, the plan assumes an average annual growth rate of more than 5% over the next 10 years  far higher than the 2% predicted by the politically impartial Congressional Budget Office. Sanders also expects a substantial increase in the average wage and a halving of the poverty rate.

At the same time, to limit the costs of the programme, Sanders argues that the government would be able to negotiate deep discounts from the pharmaceutical industry, securing the lower drug prices found in other countries. Medical personnel would also be paid less than they are from the private insurance scheme.

Even if Sanders fanciful economic projections were realised, and the cost-cutting measures worked out, the programme would be too expensive to cover at the current tax rate. That is why Sanders advocates a substantial increase in the top marginal income-tax rate and the introduction of a tax on financial transactions. But if those revenues went towards financing universal healthcare, how would Sanders pay for his promised ambitious education reform, infrastructure-modernisation programme, or efforts to combat climate change?

Yet the problems with Sanders healthcare proposal run deeper than funding. In his effort to eliminate the injustices of a market-based healthcare system, the proposal eliminates all competition, much like what Britain has done with its NHS. The result would be a slow and inefficient system that delivers a lower standard of care.

The problem is that Sanders seems to conflate competition with the market. But they are not the same. On the contrary, competition  a control mechanism that maximises economic efficiency  is universal and works outside profit-oriented markets.

The reality is that if any healthcare system is to provide cost-effective, high-quality medical services efficiently, competition is vital. Fortunately, Germany and a few other Western European countries provide a useful example of how a tripartite competitive model can enable countries to deliver such services to all.

Under this model, political bodies define the list of services to be provided by not-for-profit health insurers, which cover their costs with income-based or flat-rate contributions  irrespective of individual payers risk of illness  as well as government subsidies. In price and quality negotiations with doctors, pharmaceutical companies, and hospitals, the insurance companies represent their clients.

The risk of losing clients to competitors gives the insurers substantial motivation to secure the best possible terms. The option to enter into individual agreements with healthcare providers and to experiment with different service and remuneration models augment that motivation. And, to mitigate insurers temptation to compete for low-risk clients, such as young people, a risk-adjustment scheme, which largely compensates for the differences in the financial burdens resulting from an unequal allocation of the risks of illness, has been introduced.

Sanders is right about one thing: All people, not just the wealthy, deserve access to quality healthcare. But a single-payer system will not give it to them. A system based on competition among health insurers, which are funded through risk-independent contributions and tax subsidies, would be more patient-friendly, more efficient, and, most important, it would deliver a higher standard of care.

Bert Rurup is a former chairman of the German Council of Economic Experts and a former professor of economics at Darmstadt University of Technology. He is currently president of the Handelsblatt Research Institute.
Seventy years after the Nuremberg trials, something truly extraordinary happened in a German courtroom last week. Reinhold Hanning, a 94-year-old former Auschwitz guard, who will go down in history as one of the last of Hitlers perpetrators to be charged for his role in the Third Reich, offered an apology.

Hanning declared he was sincerely sorry and ashamed that he had belonged to a criminal organisation that committed mass murder and countless atrocities, and that he had never done anything to prevent such actions.

In todays world, that hardly sounds like a startling admission. But it is almost unprecedented for those who have been charged with carrying out the Holocaust and other Nazi crimes since the end of the Second World War. To say this is a case of too little too late is a vast understatement. Nonetheless, this does not diminish the significance of Hannings remarks.

They matter particularly because there are only a dwindling number of Nazi war criminals still alive. For the Nazi hunters  the government investigators and prosecutors along with the freelance operatives who have tracked and exposed the perpetrators  this magnifies the role of these remaining court cases.

Reinhold Hanning

They offer a last chance for confronting not just the legal but the moral issues that the perpetrators have so consistently tried to dodge in the past. And for providing the also rapidly dwindling number of Holocaust survivors the chance to face their tormenters.

Right from the beginning, most Nazi war criminals never apologised for anything. At age 27, Benjamin Ferencz was the chief prosecutor in the Nuremberg trial of the commanders of the Einsatzgruppen, the special squads that conducted mass killings of Jews, gypsies and other civilian enemies on the Eastern Front before the killings shifted to the gas chambers in the camps.

As Ferencz told me during an interview for my book The Nazi Hunters, he still vividly recalls the protestations of Otto Ohlendorf, one of those condemned to death, that he was only doing his duty. After his sentencing, Ohlendorf told him: The Jews in America will suffer for this.

Even one of the most notorious architects of the Final Solution, Adolf Eichmann, organiser of the mass deportation of Jews to Auschwitz and other concentration camps, portrayed himself as a mere functionary who had no animosity towards his victims.

He told the Israeli police investigator who questioned him after the Mossad abducted him from Argentina in 1960: I had nothing to do with killing Jews. Ive never killed a Jew. And Ive never ordered anyone to kill a Jew. That gave him a certain peace of mind, he added, although he was under no illusions about his ultimate fate. He was the only top Nazi to be tried and hanged by the Israelis.

For Germanys most famous Nazi hunter, the behavior of those relatively few mass murderers who were ever held to account for their crimes was exasperating for another reason. Fritz Bauer, a German prosecutor from a secular Jewish family who had spent most of the Nazi era in exile, returned after the war determined to make his countrymen face up to the horrors committed in their name.

To that end, he orchestrated the Frankfurt trial of 22 former Auschwitz personnel in the 1960s  not the big bosses, but the people who had tortured and killed prisoners on a daily basis.

During a trial that featured a procession of survivors who testified in agonisng detail about their ordeals, Bauer vented his frustration. In an interview, he pointed out that the prosecution had been waiting for one of the defendants to address the witnesses who had survived and had their whole families annihilated with one humane word it would have cleared the air.

Leon Schwarzbaum

That never happened.

Ferencz, now 96, pointed out that right after the war, this refusal to admit guilt or show any compassion to the victims was widespread.

I never had a German come up to me and say Im sorry, all the time I was in Germany, he told me. That was my biggest disappointment; nobody, including my mass murderers, ever said Im sorry. That was the mentality.

Germany has come a very long way since then. The Holocaust and other wartime atrocities are routinely taught in schools; as a whole, the country now has a commendable record of facing the darkest chapter in its history and seeking to atone for it. That is in large part the product of the efforts of Nazi hunters like Ferencz, Bauer, and others who pushed for such trials, not allowing the past to be buried along with its victims. But those who were most directly involved in the machinery of death were largely immune to any appeals to conscience.

Jesus said when he was crucified: Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.

The Nazi criminals knew all too well what they were doing. It is only now that at least one is admitting as much.

Andrew Nagorski, a former Newsweek foreign correspondent and editor, is the author of The Nazi Hunters, which will be released on May 10.
It was the day the big bad boys in Fine Gael ran out of patience with those pesky Independents and pulled their guns on them.

Enough was enough. It was time to lay down the cards and say whether they were in or out.

After three weeks of dealing with Fianna Fail, Fine Gael ministers, including Simon Coveney, Paschal Donohoe, and Simon Harris, had had enough.

After a long night of drafting by Fine Gael policy officers Mark Carpenter, Clare Mungovan, and Matt Lynch, the document was readied.

However, after giving the Independents little or no time to see a draft of the final agreement, Donohoe told they would have to decide by 4pm as the Dail would need to be told.

Galway Independent Noel Grealish is said to have been quite irate at the attempt to bounce them into the deal. A considerable amount of effing and blinding ensued.

Things were made worse when the document leaked to the media, including our own Elaine Loughlin, within minutes of it coming off the printers.

Waterford TD John Halligan cried foul and accused Fine Gael of leaking it deliberately in order to make the deal harder to walk away from.

Waterford TD John Halligan

Speaking to the Irish Examiner, Halligan said that, contrary to the spin, a deal was not yet done on University Hospital Waterford. He expressed annoyance that the name of the hospital was wrong in the draft document.

Halligan said he and other members of the Independent Alliance are disappointed that the draft programme for government was leaked to the media before they had a chance to read it.

He said it was outrageous and unprofessional, and no way to do business.

Two hours later, at about 4.15pm, in a meeting with the Independent Alliance, Coveney informed Lord Ross of Enniskerry and his merry men that Paul Kehoe was on his way to the Dail to inform it a vote for taoiseach would take place today.

They went berserk.

How fucking dare you do that, said one Alliance member.

Is this how it is going to be for the next five fucking years? yelled another.

Coveney said the die was cast and the vote was going to happen.

Simon Coveney

The Alliance said they were prepared to work through the night but could not guarantee their ability to support the vote.

Lads, you have gone off on a flier but we wont be taken for a ride, said Ross.

According to one source, so many expletives were flying round there was talk of needing a junior minister to catch them all.

Shane Ross

At 4.30pm, Kehoe simply sought agreement from the Dail to sit today at 12pm in order to accept nominations for a taoiseach, in accordance with the Constitution.

There was no agreement.

Meanwhile, in the battle of Government Buildings, a break in hostilities occurred and tempers were allowed cool, and when the teams reconvened, significant progress was made as they talked late into the night.

By 9pm, Halligans hospital demands had been met. He had secured a letter confirming funding from Michael Noonan and was happy.

Halligan , however, has to get the OK from his core group of supporters early this morning before he can give his final backing to the deal.

But as Halligan was going in, trouble was brewing around Michael Fitzmaurice over the issue of designation of bogs.

Fitzmaurice was less than pleased with the wording of the document and was threatening to withdraw altogether.

Some saw this as inevitable, given Denis Naughten, his constituency rival, being a sure thing to become the new Minister for Rural Affairs.

One of the greatest mysteries of the day was what Kerry TD Michael Healy-Rae would do.

Kerry TD Michael Healy-Rae

By tea time, it appeared he had hitched his wagon to Naughtens rural star.

As we went to print he was heading into another meeting, but had not yet made up his mind to do a deal.

He said he would make his mind up this morning.

After 70 days, we will finally get a government today.

Probably.
At first sight, that objective sounds fair and reasonable as it will ease the burden on frontline member states such as Greece, Italy, and Malta, who have had to cope with tens of thousands of refugees arriving on their shores.

However, there is one major flaw, in that the UK will be able to continue to operate the current rules under the Dublin Regulations that allow member states to send back refugees to the EU country where they first arrived.

It can hardly be a coincidence that such a derogation is being allowed within weeks of the EU membership referendum in Britain.

Nothing will be forced on the UK?.?If it wants to continue on the existing system, it can, Frans Timmermans, commission vice-president, said in Brussels as he unveiled the first serious attempts to reform the Dublin system, which was agreed more than two decades ago.

The derogation has all the hallmarks of a desperate attempt by Brussels to ensure that the UK remains within the EU. It has already been greeted gleefully by senior government figures in London.

Yesterday, the Financial Times quoted a British government source who said: These new plans give Britain the best of both worlds by retaining the right to remove asylum seekers to EU countries  but without opting in to the Schengen areas burden-sharing scheme.

The new policy represents a reform rather than a scrapping of the Dublin rules, an important distinction as it allows specially agreed opt-outs already built into EU treaties for Britain, Ireland, and Denmark, that allow those member states to choose whether to participate or not in EU rules on border checks, asylum and immigration.

Britain has already made it clear that it will not operate the new rules and, in such circumstances, it is hard to imagine how any Irish government could operate them either, given the free movement of people between the UK and Ireland  particularly between the Republic and the North.

In any event, the new rules are as much a cop-out as an opt-out in that, far from burden sharing, they will force poorer countries such as Poland and Hungary to implement them as, unlike Ireland and the UK, they do not enjoy special arrangements under EU treaties.

The sanction proposed by the commission is also grossly unfair to less wealthy member states. Failure to comply with the new rules would result in fines of 250,000 per refugee, described as a solidarity contribution to those EU states that agree to take their allotted quota.

This brutal sanction takes no account of a member states ability to pay. It must also be legally dubious.

Although the European Court of Justice routinely issues fines to countries that breach EU law, introducing fines for not taking refugees is bound to be challenged.
The wind-whipped flames were being kept from the citys central area thanks to the Herculean efforts of firefighters, said Scott Long of Alberta Emergency Management Agency. No injuries or fire-related fatalities have been reported.

The fire appeared near the airport late on Wednesday where crews were on site. All commercial flights in and out of Fort McMurray have been suspended.

Unseasonably hot temperatures combined with dry conditions have transformed the boreal forest in much of Alberta into a tinder box. Fort McMurray is surrounded by wilderness in the heart of Canadas oil sands  the third largest reserves of oil in the world behind Saudi Arabia and Venezuela.

Danielle Larivee, Albertas minister of municipal affairs, said the fire was burning in residential areas with more than 250 firefighters battling the blaze. The Municipality of Wood Buffalo later said the fire was continuing to raze homes and had destroyed a new school.

There were haunting images of scorched trucks, charred homes, and telephone poles, burned out from the bottom up, hanging in the wires like little wooden crosses.

Alberta premier Rachel Notley flew to the area to survey the situation, while officials in the evacuation centre had to flee to the south of the city as flames edged closer.

Notley tweeted pictures of the fire from above, saying: The view from the air is heartbreaking.

The blaze effectively cut Fort McMurray in two, forcing about 10,000 people north to the safety of oil sands work camps.

The other 70,000 or so were sent streaming south in a bumper-to-bumper line of cars and trucks that stretched beyond the horizon down Highway 63. Some vehicles sat in ditches, the victims of engine trouble or a lack of petrol.

Firefighters were working to protect critical infrastructure, including the only bridge across the Athabasca River and Highway 63  the only major route to and from the city.

Public safety minister Ralph Goodale said it was one of the largest fire evacuations in national history, if not the largest. Its a community of 88,000 people thats been totally evacuated, he said. This is going to take a while to recover.

Prime minister Justin Trudeau called it absolutely devastating with a loss on a scale hard to imagine. He said he had offered the province his governments full support and encouraged Canadians to support friends and donate to the Red Cross.

Trudeau noted climate change was contributing to an increase in extreme weather and fires, but said it was difficult to establish a direct link.

Most oil sands projects are well north of the community, while the worst of the flames were on the citys south side. Allen said he was not aware of any threat to oil facilities but called the fire a moving animal.

Notley said about 10,000 evacuees moved north where oil sands work camps were being pressed into service to house evacuees. The bulk of the evacuees fled south to Edmonton and elsewhere, and officials said they eventually would like to move everyone south.

Shell said it has shut down production at its Shell Albian Sands mining operations, nearly 100km north of the city, so it could focus on getting families out of the region. Suncor, the largest oil sands operator, said it was reducing production at its regional facility  about 25km north of the city.

Chelsie Klassen, spokeswoman for the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, said all large oil sands facilities have emergency crews and plans for forest fires, noting all staff would be evacuated and plants would be shut properly to minimise the damage.

She said 80% of the oil sands was located deep underground and can be extracted only through a drilling process. The remaining 20% can be mined from the surface and predominantly located north of Fort McMurray.

She said it could burn under certain circumstances, but oil sands would burn at a much slower pace considering its composition with sand.

City resident Breanna Schmidt said evacuating almost felt like an apocalypse.
In a trading update, the company said: Although The New Day has received many supportive reviews and built a strong following on Facebook, the circulation for the title is below our expectations.

As a result, we have decided to close the title on May 6, 2016. While disappointing, the launch and subsequent closure have provided new insights into enhancing our newspapers and a number of these opportunities will be considered over time.
No-one was injured. A police report gave no explanation as to why the perpetrator came away with such a small amount of money.

First-class freebies

USA: Cruise ship passengers have been hanging out at an Alaska homeless shelter to get free coffee and a bite to eat, but few have bothered making a donation, said one of the nonprofits board members.

Tourists in Ketchikan often stop by looking for a restroom, and some decide to stay longer, First City Homeless Services chairwoman Evelyn Erbele told the Ketchikan Gateway Borough Assembly on Monday.

If we have a snack, theyll take the snack and theyll sit there and watch TV, Erbele said. Its called audacity, isnt it?

Chris Alvarado, the shelters services manager, said he sees why tourists come to the shelter, which is open from 8am to 4pm six days a week: Sometimes some of the stores are not open really early, (so) sometimes people will come up here and get coffee and just hang out, Alvarado said. While few of them donate to the shelter, Alvarado said it doesnt bother him.

We are for the homeless, but were also for the community, for anybody who needs a safe place to stay, he said.

Prickly situation

ENGLAND: A Conservative MP has recalled when a hedgehog he brought into the House of Commons did something terrible in his hand before scurrying away.

Michael Fabricant said his decision to bring a hedgehog into the chamber was completely out of order, adding he believed the then speaker Betty Boothroyd would not have approved.

He told MPs about the incident as he urged ministers to protect the prickly mammal from being eaten by badgers.

Breakfast of champions

ENGLAND: Weetabix should be served for breakfast at all international trade conferences organised by one of the governments departments, British ministers have been told.

Conservative Philip Hollobone labelled the food as a great British breakfast cereal, adding it should also be served at all early morning meetings held by the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs.

High and mighty

ENGLAND: UK astronaut Tim Peake has told school children he has grown up to three centimetres during his time on the International Space Station (ISS).

Major Peake also revealed that there is a secret drawer of sweets and sugary treats on the station, as he spent 10 minutes being quizzed by youngsters from Ashfield Primary School in Otley, West Yorkshire, while he flew above them at 28,000km/h.

Unwelcome visitor

USA: An alligator wandered through a residential part of South Carolina and on to the front porch of a house before climbing up the front door and appearing to reach for the doorbell. The visit in Moncks Corner, near Charleston, was captured on video by Gary Rogers.

The alligator, which was several feet long, hung around for about an hour before it wandered back into the woods on its own.

Pole position

AUSTRIA: The last firemans pole in Vienna has been removed, marking the demise of a spectacular but potentially dangerous tradition. Firefighters spokesman Lukas Schauer told state broadcaster ORF that the only remaining remains in the Austrian capitals firefighters museum, adding: Stairs are safer.
An international team of scientists and historians will analyse evidence from paintings, drawings, and notebooks touched by the Italian polymath.

They are seeking permission to look for DNA traces in dust from the painting Adoration of the Magi, currently undergoing restoration in Florence.
Major General Yair Golan, speaking at a Holocaust remembrance day ceremony at a kibbutz in central Israel, said: If there is something that frightens me in Holocaust remembrance, it is ghastly trends that took place in Europe in general, and in Germany specifically, 70, 80 and 90 years ago, and finding a sign of them here among us, today in 2016.

Education Minister Naftali Bennett called on Golan to correct his statement. Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked said he was confused.

The Israeli military said Maj Gen Golan did not intend to compare Israel and its army to the horrors of Germany 70 years ago.

This is an absurd and baseless comparison that he never would have made and it was never his intention to criticise the Israeli government, the Israel Defence Forces said in a statement. The IDF holds itself to high standards of conduct and holds the value of human life as a guiding value.

Israel was marking its annual Holocaust remembrance day, in memory of the six million Jews killed by Nazi Germany and its collaborators.

Ceremonies were held around the country, including a main ceremony at Jerusalems Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial that Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu attended.

Maj Gen Golan spoke at the Massuah Institute for the Study of the Holocaust, a museum and seminar centre dedicated to discussing the significance of the Holocaust in contemporary society and culture.

He made reference to a case in March in which a soldier was charged with manslaughter for shooting a Palestinian attacker as he lay wounded on the ground in the West Bank, saying not everything we do is right but that Israels army does not cover up problematic activity.

Centre-left opposition leader Isaac Herzog called Maj Gen Golan brave. This is what ethics and responsibility sound like, he said.
The airstrikes near Sarmada, a town in Idlib province left the camp in ruins, with one witness describing a scene of horror, with tents on fire and body parts strewn around the area.

We dont know yet if its Syrian or Russian aircraft, but they struck in the middle of the camp and many of the tents have been burned, said Alaa Fatraoui, a journalist in the area who visited the scene after the attack.
I decided that for the unity of the (ruling party) a change of chairman would be more appropriate. I am not considering running at the May 22 congress, Davutoglu told the nation.

The decision is not effective immediately. The party will hold an emergency convention on May 22 to select a new party leader who would also replace the premier.
Christine Jiaxin Lee received the extended overdraft four years ago, but failed to report the error to Westpac bank.

Instead the 21-year-old spent the money on handbags and other luxury goods, it is claimed.

The chemical engineering student was attempting to leave for her native Malaysia when she was stopped by police and arrested at Sydney Airport on Wednesday night.

She allegedly owes $3.3m to her bank. Lee appeared in court charged with dishonestly obtaining financial advantage by deception and knowingly dealing with the proceeds of crime.

It is alleged she failed to notify the bank that she was not entitled to the money.

Fraud experts began investigating in 2012, but a warrant for Lees arrest was only issued in March this year.

The court heard she knew police were attempting to make contact with her and she obtained an emergency Malaysian passport in order to leave the country.

However, Lees lawyer said she was simply going to visit her parents, who were unaware of her arrest in Australia.

Lee claimed to have obtained the emergency passport because she had lost her original.

Magistrate Lisa Stapleton, granting bail, told the court: Its not proceeds of crime. Its money we all dream about.

The student allegedly spent the money on a luxury shopping spree She didnt take it from (the bank). They gave it to her.

She added that if this is what happened, the student would owe the money she had spent but would not have broken the law.

Under the terms of her bail, Lee is not allowed to enter any international airport or port and has to report to police twice daily.

She is also not allowed to apply for another passport.

Lee has lived in Australia for five years.

She is three years through her four-year chemical engineering degree but has deferred her final year.

She is due to appear in court on June 21.
Asia North Korea Kicks Off Rare Party Congress With Miraculous Results

North Korea kicks off the first congress of its ruling Workers Party in 36 years, with Kim Jong-un expected to further consolidate his control.

PYONGYANG, North Korea  North Korea kicked off the first congress of its ruling Workers Party in 36 years on Friday, with Kim Jong-un expected to further consolidate his control over a country that has grown increasingly isolated over its pursuit of nuclear weapons.

Ahead of the event, secretive North Korea trumpeted miraculous results and said advances in nuclear and ballistic missile developments were the greatest gifts for the rare party congress, but little of substance was revealed.

On Friday morning, foreign journalists invited to cover the event were not permitted inside the April 25 House of Culture, the stone-built structure draped in red party flags where the congress was expected to run for several days.

Thousands of delegates from around North Korea were expected to attend the first congress since 1980, before 33-year-old Kim was born. Security guards dressed in suits and ties surrounded the venue and dozens of empty buses were parked outside.

Foreign analysts expect the third-generation leader of the Kim dynasty to formally adopt his Byongjin policy of simultaneously pursuing nuclear weapons and economic development, and to further consolidate his power.

Byongjin follows Kims fathers Songun, or military first policy, and his grandfathers Juche, the Norths home-grown founding ideology that combines Marxism and extreme nationalism.

North Koreas state television began its daily broadcast earlier than usual on Friday, with special programming heralding the feats of its leaders.

State radio said the 7th Workers Party congress would unveil the brilliant blueprint to bring forward the final victory of our revolution, according to South Koreas Yonhap news agency.

North Korean state media has trumpeted a 70-day campaign of intensified productivity in the run-up to the congress, and Pyongyang has been spruced up for the event.

The state-run KCNA news agency cited advances in nuclear and ballistic missile development, crediting military scientists and engineers for accomplishments that are the greatest gifts for the party congress.

Miraculous results were produced, KCNA said, touting production in the industrial sector that achieved 144 percent of target and electricity generation 110 percent, although the actual targets were not given.

The congress opened on a rainy morning. Covers were hung over the giant portraits of Kims grandfather, Kim Il-sung, and father, Kim Jong-il, that adorn Kim Il-sung square in the capital, apparently to keep them dry.

Under Kim Jong-un, an informal market economy has been allowed to grow, although it has not been officially adopted as government policy.

However, more taxis and private cars on the streets, more goods in shops, and more buildings under construction attest to growing prosperity and consumption among Pyongyang residents.

Kim has also aggressively pursued nuclear weapons and ballistic missile technology. In March, the UN Security Council adopted the latest in a series of resolutions toughening sanctions against North Korea, which conducted its fourth nuclear weapons test in January.

South Korea has been on alert in anticipation that the North could conduct another nuclear test to coincide with the congress.

North Koreas founding leader Kim Il-sung spoke for more than five hours at the last party congress. Kim Jong-il, who almost never spoke in public, did not hold a party congress.
Burma As Conflict Reignites, TNLA Claims Gains at Shan Armys Expense

The Taang National Liberation Army claims to have retaken bases from the Shan State Army-South after fighting across eight locations in northern Shan State.

RANGOON  Fighting broke out this week at eight separate locations in northern Shan State, pitting the Taang National Liberation Army (TNLA) against the Shan State Army-South (SSA-S), with the TNLA reclaiming army bases from SSA-S troops, according to a statement from the former on Thursday. The locations of the hostilities were spread across the adjacent townships of Mongton, Namkham and Kyaukme.

The two ethnic armed groups have been engaged in conflict over territory in northern Shan State since late last year, after the SSA-S signed the so-called nationwide ceasefire agreement with the previous government. The TNLA, which was not allowed to sign the accord, has accused the Burma Army of lending logistical support and protection to the SSA-Sa charge the SSA-S has consistently denied.

According to the statement, the TNLA launched its recent offensive in order to drive out SSA-S troops who had come to invade their [ethnic Taang, also known as Palaung] lands and cause difficulties for their people.

The TNLA and SSA-S are the armed wings of the Palaung State Liberation Front (PSLF) and the Restoration Council of Shan State (RCSS), respectively.

In February, fighting caused hundreds of local residents to flee to safer areas in northern Shan, including the regions larger towns, adding to the several thousand already displaced in the conflict between the two ethnic armed groups. (Fluid rates of flight and return made IDPs difficult to quantify.)

Fighting then halted for almost a month, during the tea harvestcultivation of the crop being the principal occupation of the Taang people. However, in early March, the Burma Army began operations in the area against the TNLA from its command base in Lashio, before conflict with the SSA-S resumed.

The TNLA claims that SSA-S troops advanced to establish further bases in March. Thursdays statement accused RCSS members of detaining local Taang people, demanding money from them and restricting their ability to travel and obtain food, including by blocking roads.

They were acting as if they were in their own land and made trouble for our people. They are behaving like a wild tiger. We need to drive them from our land, Tar Bong Kyaw, general secretary of the TNLA, told The Irrawaddy.

From two villages, Sai Lane and Loi Hom, the TNLA on Thursday took back the Kaung Sai mountain in Mongton Township, where three separate SSA-S bases had been established. There were heavy clashes and casualties on both sides, reported Tar Bong Kyaw.

The TNLA took two more SSA-S bases in a May 2 attack on Mong Won village and another in Tarbong village on May 4, all in Namkham Township.

Col. Sai Hla, a spokesperson for the SSA-S, confirmed that fighting had broken out recently between his troops and the TNLA. He said it was hard to say who is right and who is wrong regarding accusations of territorial encroachment.

We have our own area in Namkham Township but they have their own special region under their control, he said.

Sai Hla said his troops had not formerly intruded onto TNLA-controlled land, but after a column of SSA-S troops was ambushed by the TNLA in Namkham Township in November, they had crossed over.

The SSA-S had only established temporary bases in TNLA-controlled areas, according to Sai Hla, who said he could not neither confirm nor deny the TNLAS claim to have seized several SSA-S bases. I shall enquire with my troops on the ground. We are guerrilla troops and we did not have permanent bases.

Sai Hla said his troops had only blocked roads to cut off rations to the TNLA; the move was not targeting local Taang communities, as the TNLA claimed. It was a groundless accusation, the spokesman said.
Burma Burmas Harsh Protest Law Likely to Be Replaced

Protesters would enjoy more rights and lighter sentences for violations if a bill proposed Thursday in Parliament passes as expected.

RANGOON  A new version of Burmas Peaceful Assembly and Procession Law was submitted to the Upper House of Parliament on Thursday, with proponents saying the legislation would loosen multiple restrictions on demonstrators and establish clear guidelines for legal procedures against unlawful protest.

The bill was submitted to the legislative chamber by the Upper House Bill Committee, which stated that the new version would be more in line with the countrys multi-party democratic system.

Under the new bill, demonstrators would only need to inform relevant police stations at least 48 hours before a protest, a change from the existing law which requires groups to receive permission from authorities.

Also, the new bill imposes limitations on the rights of authorities to charge demonstrators. If organizers of the protests are found breaking the law, they can only be prosecuted by the first township where they violate the lawnot all of the townships they pass throughand the charges can only be filed within 15 days of the incident. The current law has no such provision, leaving demonstrators vulnerable to excessive legal action.

Zaw Min, a National League for Democracy (NLD) lawmaker and chairman of the bill committee, pointed to last years brutal crackdown on student activists peacefully demonstrating against the National Education Law, saying that some student leaders were charged with more than 50 counts of criminal activity as their protest march passed through several of Burmas townships.

Zaw Min said that the committee didnt propose amendments to the previous law but opted to submit a new bill because it would require too many revisions of the current law to make it acceptable.

Our new bill was drafted based on the fundamental rights of citizens, according to the 2008 Constitution, which the previous [existing] law contradicted, he told The Irrawaddy. The new bill will help our people exercise their rights as citizens.

Lawyer Ko Ni, a legal advisor to the NLD, said that the new bill was in step with international norms and would fully recognize the fundamental rights of the countrys citizens.

Its not a revision to the old law, he said. Its a completely new bill, one that accords with democratic standards.

The new bill, which has eight chapters and 25 articles, would ensconce legal protection for protesters and also reduce punishments for those who violate the law. People who interfere with or physically assault lawful, peaceful assemblies could be sentenced with up to one year in prison, a fined 100,000 kyats (US$85) or both. Protesters who organize without informing local authorities could be sentenced to three months in prison, fined 30,000 kyats or both.

The current law was frequently used to arrest and oppress political activists under the previous Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) government. If the new bill is passed, it will supersede and automatically replace the 2011 Peaceful Assembly and Procession Law and its 2014 revision.

Lawmakers at the session unanimously agreed to discuss the bill, and recommendations on the bill are scheduled to be heard next week, according to Upper House Speaker Mahn Win Khaing Than. Passage is expected, given that it is backed by the NLD, which dominates both houses of the Union Parliament.
Burma Clause Celebre: Taiwan Leader Must Convince China Shes No Splittist

Tsai Ing-wen becomes Taiwans first woman president this month, when her mission will be to convince China her party is not seeking independence.

PINGTUN, Taiwan  Tsai Ing-wen becomes Taiwans first woman president this month when her mission will be to convince giant neighbor China her Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) is not seeking independence, any hint of which could lead to war.

Communist Party leaders in Beijing regard fiercely democratic, self-ruled Taiwan as a breakaway province and have not ruled out using force to bring it under Chinas control.

A 591-word clause in the DPPs charter begs to differ.

Based on the principle of national sovereignty, [we] advocate establishing a sovereign and independent Republic of Taiwan and a new constitution that should be decided on by all residents of Taiwan in a referendum, the clause says.

DPP seniors say the clause, written in 1991, is defunctbut to delete it would rupture the party and bring out the splittist, or separatist, forces that China constantly warns against. Tsais juggling trick is to convince China the DPP is not seeking independence and to keep the party intact.

Chinas attitude on opposing independence is out of touch with the real situation, said independence advocate Koo Kwang-ming. They really have no way [of how to deal] with Taiwan, so they take what has been stated in the past and repeat, repeat and repeat it.

Chiang Kai-sheks Nationalists fled to Taiwan after losing the civil war to the Communists in China in 1949. China, formally known as the Peoples Republic of China, has pressured the new Taiwan government to stick to the one-China policy agreed upon with the outgoing China-friendly Nationalist government.

The policy allows each side to respectively interpret what it means. The Communists say they rule all of China including Taiwan, while the Nationalists maintain the Republic of China, Taiwans formal name, is the ruler.

Tsai has said she will maintain the status quo with China under the constitutional order of the Republic of China. Last month she reiterated her position, saying her policy will be based on democratic principles and transcend party politics.

Moving on From Martial Law

Chinas top Communist Party newspaper said on Thursday that Taiwan stands at a critical juncture of either accepting Beijings one China principle or taking an unclear stance and refusing to abandon support for Taiwan independence.

The so-called maintenance of the status quo promised by Taiwans newly elected leader is only empty talk, the Peoples Daily said. The responsibility for the consequences caused can only be accepted by the DPP authorities.

The independence clause served a purpose in 1991, DPP seniors say. The island had emerged from martial law only in 1987. It was undergoing major governmental reform and its first direct presidential election was still five years away.

The DPP tried to freeze the clause in 2014, but no decision was made.

Our goal is not to establish a Republic of Taiwan. It is to be the ruling party, said Ker Chien-ming, one of the first members of the 30-year-old party and its legislative leader. But to abolish it will cause another dispute. The independence faction will give the party a huge amount of pressure.

Activist Lai Chung-chiang said the clause shouldnt be deleted.

It would limit our space in deciding our future, he said at a protest with leaders of the 2014 demonstrations that stalled a trade pact with China and were key in toppling the Nationalists from power.

In southern Taiwans Pingtung County, where Tsais father was born, it is less about splitting from Communist China than about maintaining a democratic way of life.

Our expectations are for this Taiwan leader who hails from Pingtung to pay more attention to this relatively remote area and prevent the urban-rural imbalances from widening, Pingtung County magistrate Pan Men-an told Reuters.

Chinese President Xi Jinping said in March that China would never allow the historical tragedy of Taiwan being split from the rest of the country to happen again.

Japan ruled Taiwan as a colony for about five decades until the end of World War II. Chinas last dynasty, the Qing, had ceded Taiwan to Japan in 1895 after losing the first Sino-Japanese war.

Shirley Kan, a retired congressional researcher and long-time Taiwan watcher, said the DPP now had a record to back its case to maintain the status quo, whereas there was no such record in 1991.

The facts are that Taiwan is much more entwined with the Peoples Republic of China and Taiwan cannot avoid cross-Strait engagement, she said, referring to the stretch of water dividing the two sides.

It is no longer a question of whether to have a cross-Strait relationship, but how to conduct it.
Burma The Mong Wong, Burmas Newest Citizens, Face Backlash

Lawmakers debate the citizenship and name of Shan States Mong Wong-Burmans, with some claiming Burmas previous government had ulterior motives in granting them rights.

RANGOON  The collective fate of tens of thousands of ethnic Chinese living in Burmas Shan State was taken up by the Union Parliament on Wednesday, opening another chapter in the convoluted controversy over what it means to be Burmese.

Approximately 60,000 people from the Mong Wong group, who are believed to have moved to northern Shan State from southern Chinas Yunnan province some two centuries ago, were granted Burmese citizenship in an 11th-hour move by the then-outgoing Thein Sein government in March.

The former government ordered immigration officials to begin issuing IDs to the Mong Wong in Shan States Tarmoenye, part of Kutkai Township, as a reward for their militias support of Burma Army operations against other non-state armed organizations, said Minister of Labor, Immigration and Population Thein Swe in Parliament on Wednesday.

[Mong Wong] militias actively cooperated with the Burma Army, also known as Tatmadaw, to fight armed insurgents, said Thein Swe, a former member of the previously ruling Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), who was purged from its ranks last month after accepting the cabinet post offered by the National League for Democracy (NLD).

A Mong Wong by Any Other Name

Much of this weeks parliamentary wrangling centered around nomenclaturea knotty issue for the Mong Wong, who have been given eight different names, according to the minister, since they were first issued ID cards in 1982.

Having so many different names has complicated this issue. This is yet another reason the government granted them citizenship: It was easier to classify the whole group as Mong Wong-Bamar, said Thein Swe.

The [Mong Wong] proposed this terminology to the government, who agreed to use it, Thein Swe continued. The move was not meant to recognize them as one distinct ethnicity.

The minister stated that ethnicity changes could only be made in accordance with the Constitution, and that his ministry did not have the authority to make a decision on the issue unilaterally.

On Burmese ID cards, children with parents from different ethnic groups have to list both parents ethnicities.

The current term makes it seem that the Mong Wong, whose ethnicity is listed [under the previous governments directive] as Mong Wong-Bamar, are all descended from people of Burmese ethnicity, said Sai Thant Zin, a lawmaker representing Hsipaw Township from the Shan Nationalities League for Democracy (SNLD) party in the Lower House. Our government should solve this problem.

Thein Swe said his ministry was only able to provide ID cards based on what the ethnicity themselves wanted to be called. He added that the recently created Ministry of Ethnic Affairs might be able to tackle this issue in the future.

In the statement announcing the citizenship of the Mong Wong-Bamar in March, the then-Ministry of Immigration said, The heads of state of successive governments have recognized the contributions the [Mong Wong] Bamar ethnic group has made to national security.

In 1998, the then junta leader, Snr-Gen Than Shwe, ordered the group be recognized as a subgroup under the ethnic Burman majority, also known commonly as Bamar.

Two referendums were held later that year in which the new categorization was heartily accepted, the ministrys March statement claimed.

The ministry went on to say that through an apparent combination of bureaucratic mismanagement and miscommunication, the group was never properly granted full citizenship, resulting in only 620 out of some 60,000 eligible [Mong Wong] Bamar voters in the Tarmoenye area having suffrage in the 2015 election.

Mong Wong ethnic Chinese have lived in Burma for generations and therefore were eligible to be issued national IDs under Burmas 1982 Citizenship Law, contended Thein Swe.

How Can They Become Citizens?

Not all parties are satisfied with the Mong Wong group becoming full citizens.

Politicians from Shan State alleged that the Mong Wong were descended from members of the Kuomintang (KMT) Army, who had fled into Burma after being defeated by the communists in China. KMT troops, backed by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), wrought devastation on the region for several years in the late 1940s and 50s after Chinas civil war, seizing land and property, clashing with the Burma Army and communist soldiers, and leaving a legacy of anti-Chinese animosity.

The SNLDs Sai Thant Zin said Mong Wong were originally from Yunnan Province in southern China; they spoke a different language and had different traditions.

We all know that they are different from Burmese people, who make up the majority of our country, he said. Yet how can they become citizens, even though we all know they are different from the Burmese people?

We need to re-examine the law that allowed them to attain citizenship, he said. Other ethnic groups may make claims to citizenship based on this precedent.

Mai Aike Kyaw, a spokesperson for the Taang National Liberation Army (TNLA), said that the issuance of IDs to the Mong Wong was a political ploy the Burma Army used to strengthen its position in persisting conflicts with ethnic armed groups in the region.

Sai Kyaw Nyunt, an SNLD spokesperson, argued that Burmas ethnic armed groups were fighting against the central government because they had not yet received guarantees of a federal union, and that it was thus wrong to grant citizenship to those who had helped suppress that struggle.

There are many Shan people in our state who still do not have IDs, said Sai Kyaw Nyunt. Why the government prioritized giving citizenship to the Mong Wong over the Shan people is the question we are trying to answer here.

The Mong Wong militia is estimated to number around 100 soldiers in Shan State and has helped the Burma Army with reconnaissance and fighting against other ethnic armed groups in Kutkai Township and elsewhere in northern Shan State.

The Shan State Army-North, TNLA and Kachin Independence Army (KIA) are all active in the area and have frequently clashed with Burma Army troops in recent years.

Following deliberations this week, lawmakers put the issue on record, apparently leaving it to the newly created Ethnic Affairs Ministry to resolve.
Commentary Suu Kyi and Japan: Tokyo Love Story or Battle Royale?

Aung San Suu Kyi has had frosty relations with Japan because of Tokyos support for previous regimes. Now that shes in charge, will that change?

This week, state-run newspapers splashed Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishidas photo with Foreign Minister Aung San Suu Kyi all over their front pages. But beneath the smiles and handshakes, there is a history of discord.

After the political opening in 2011 and 2012, Japan moved quickly to resume aid and investment to Burmaincluding development of the Thilawa Special Economic Zone (SEZ), a 2,400-hectare industrial zone in southeast Rangoon Division. Japans Nippon Foundation also provided funds for Burmas peace-building process and general aid to the previous government.

Suu Kyi was opposed to this aid and investment from Japan during the juntas reign because she saw it as bolstering the repressive regime that ruled over the country with an iron fist.

But like the Chinese government, which developed even closer relations with the regime, Tokyo was not deterred by her stance.

Japan, however, is recognizing that it might have to change its ways to deal with the new reality of Suu Kyi in power.

After Suu Kyis party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), won a landslide victory in the national elections, Japanese businesses were worried. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe had not developed close ties with Suu Kyi. But less than three weeks after the election, Abe invited a high-level NLD official to Tokyo.

On Nov. 27, Nyan Win, central executive committee member of the NLD, met with Foreign Minister Kishida in Tokyo. Nyan Win asked for more investment and technological assistance from the worlds No. 3 economy.

This week in Naypyidaw, Kishida first met with Suu Kyi, who also serves as Burmas state counselor. They spent more than an hour discussing issues related to aid, business, development projects and peace-building efforts with Burmas ethnic armed organizations. Afterwards, the Japanese foreign minister met with President Htin Kyaw, Suu Kyis confidant. That meeting lasted only 15 minutes.

Given Suu Kyis personal ties to Japan, a relationship with the East Asian power could blossom.

She was a visiting scholar at Kyoto University in 1985-86, where she made some Japanese friends, but none of them were from the business community. And when she returned to Japan in April 2013 after Burma began opening up, she met Abe.

In the early 1940s, Suu Kyis late father, Gen. Aung San, Burmas independence hero, received military training from the Japanese Army and even adopted a Japanese name, Omoda Monji.

He and his compatriots, the legendary Thirty Comrades, received arms and financial support from the Japanese Army to fight the British, who were then ruling Burma. Under Japanese occupation, Aung San became war minister, but he subsequently decided to revolt against the draconian Japanese regime after joining forces with the Allies during World War II.

In the 1960s, Gen. Ne Win, one of the Thirty Comrades, sought to cultivate closer relations with Tokyo. Throughout his 26-year rule, the Ne Win regime received aid and loans from Japan, as well as post-war reparations. At the time, the Japanese viewed Burma as a country with high economic potential.

But then came the tumultuous late 1980s, and Suu Kyi was put under house arrest. While there in the 1990s, Suu Kyi was critical of Japans economic engagement with the repressive Burmese regime. After she was freed from house arrest in 1995, the Japanese newspaper Mainichi Shimbun published Suu Kyis Letters from Burma. In her letters, she did not hide her opposition to Japans Burma policy.

Interestingly, Japan was the first country to be informed of her release, and subsequently the Japanese government agreed to resume Official Development Assistance (ODA). It appears that Suu Kyis release was somehow a bargaining chip in the aid deal. Nonetheless, publicly, she advised Tokyo to hold off on its aid package.

If it is a reward for my release, Im just one political prisoner, there are others still in jail, she told a correspondent from the now-defunct Far Eastern Economic Review at the time. Changing the conditions of one person is not enough to merit the renewal of aid.

In addition to the traditional aid package, the Japanese provided a grant in the notorious Golden Triangle, where they wanted to promote eradication of opium poppy cultivation in the Kokang region through crop substitution. They introduced the cultivation of buckwheat, which is used in Japanese soba noodle production.

Suu Kyi was frustrated. In April 1996, less than one year after her release, she wrote in the Mainichi Shimbun: To observe businessmen who come to Burma with the intention of enriching themselves is somewhat like watching passers-by in an orchard brutally stripping off blossoms to appreciate their fragile beauty, blind to the ugliness of the despoiled branches, oblivious to the fact that by their action they are imperiling future fruitfulness and committing an injustice against the rightful owners of the trees. Among these despoilers are big Japanese companies.

In June 1996, Suu Kyi sent a letter to then Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto via the Japanese Embassy in Rangoon, asking Tokyo to exercise its economic power to push for democratization in Burma as stipulated in the ODA guidelines. She received no reply.

Meanwhile, in Japan, there appeared a flurry of Suu Kyi-bashing articles written by businessmen and government officials close to the Burmese regime. It was obvious that some powerful people in Japan felt Suu Kyi was an obstacle to doing business and carrying out aid in Burma.

But now Suu Kyi is in power. Burma has seen dramatic political changes over the past five years.

Well cooperate with the Myanmar government to create a climate that will benefit both the people of Myanmar and Japanese businesses, the visiting Japanese foreign minister said, specifically pointing out his countrys ambition to spur job creation and bolster the development of Burmas agricultural, education, finance, health care and infrastructure sectors.

Japan will do as much as it can to help Myanmar in its process of national reconciliation, Kishida added, stating a desire to help the former pariah state re-engage internationally.

In her role as foreign minister, Suu Kyi expressed her appreciation for the support and kindness expressed by the people of Japan for Burma. Through Kishida, Abe invited her to Japan and sent her a personal letter.

But Japan is not alone in courting the new powers that be in Naypyidaw.

Shortly after the NLD formed a government, it was Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi who paid a surprise visit to Burma at the invitation of Suu Kyi.

And last year, a few months before the election, Suu Kyi was in China, where President Xi Jinping received hersome called it a massive diplomatic breakthrough because it was Beijing that had invited the then-opposition leader. No doubt China, one of the top investors in Burma, wanted to bet on Suu Kyi. The question for them is: Will she protect Chinas business and strategic interests in Burma? Through Wang, Xi extended another invitation to Suu Kyi last month.

The ministry has not yet announced Suu Kyis itinerary for overseas visits, but look out to see which of the two countries she travels to first, China or Japan. That decision could be a major sign of things to come in Suu Kyis bumpy relationship with Japan.

Aung Zaw is founding editor of The Irrawaddy.
Friday, May 6th, 2016 (10:30 am) - Score 1,868

Mobile operator Vodafone has announced that new or upgrading customers who take their Pay Monthly 12  24 month Red and Red Value mobile tariffs will be able to benefit from worry-free inclusive roaming across 40 destinations (mostly in the EU) and enjoy 4G in 93 destinations worldwide.

Apparently related customers will receive unlimited calls, texts (SMS), picture messages (MMS) and a monthly data (Mobile Broadband) allowance of up to 4GB within the inclusive roaming zone. Naturally this is in keeping with the recent mobile price cuts across Europe, thus most of the 40 countries are also from the EU and its neighbouring states.

Destinations  Inclusive Roaming Zones: Albania, Austria, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Channel Islands (Jersey & Guernsey), Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark (inc. Faroe Islands), Estonia, Finland, France (inc. Corsica), French Territories, Germany, Gibraltar, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Isle of Man, Italy (inc. Vatican City), Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Monaco, The Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal (inc. Azores & Madeira), Republic of Ireland, Romania, San Marino, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain (inc. Balearic Islands), Sweden, Switzerland and Turkey.

Prices for their new 12 month SIM-only bundles start from as little as 9.50 per month, although those that support inclusive roaming start at 18 per month.
Ford Motors revealed on Thursday its plan to invest a staggering $182.2 million to Pivotal, a subsidiary of Silicon Valley, another possible sign of the company's attempt to boost its development software expertise, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The investment permits the automaker to gain access to "really advanced software development methods and cloud tech skills at a speed at which we wouldn't be able to do on our own," Mark Fields, Ford Chief Executive, said.

"As we look at tech and software and how it is opening whole new areas for us to provide experiences for consumers, it is important that we get a level of fluency," he added.

The investment is just a share of the $253 million pie of Ford's financial support for Pivotal, which includes financing from Microsoft, VMware, GE and EMC as well, USA Today reported.

According to Mark Fields, Ford CEO, the company looks forward to working hand in hand with Pivotal developers and learning from Silicon Valley with the aim of sufficing its customers with "a lot of cloud-based services," he told Detroit Free Press.

Fields noted that although Ford has a highly skilled team, the automaker is in dire need of experts who could immediately come up with software needed by consumers.

More than two years ago, Fields paid a visit to Pivotal's offices and was clearly impressed with its innovation. After that visit, Pivotal helped Ford finish its FordPass app, a smartphone application that helps drivers to park, access vehicles remotely, among others.

Following Thursday's deal, their relationship has gotten deeper.

"It's kind of like going from dating to getting married. When you get married, you are much more open to sharing and learning from each other," Fields said.

Meanwhile, Pivotal CEO Rob Mee acknowledged in a statement that Ford's open-mindedness and eagerness to learn, plus the two companies' cultural compatibility, make them effective partners.
Your next cyber attacker may well be someone you thought you could trust. There has been 64% increase in cybercrime detections and healthcare is the most frequently attacked industry.

So begins the IBM X-Force Cyber Security Intelligence Index (registration required for a free overview) and it does not get any cheerier! It continuously monitors billions of events per year, as reported by more than 8,000 client devices in over 100 countries.

Cyber security has to become a way of life  it is no longer adequate to sit back and say it wont happen to me. Financial gain is still the most powerful motivator for cyber criminals but it is by no means the only one. Last years attackers branched out in a big wayinflicting physical damage, stealing intellectual property and lodging political protests. The most targeted industries included healthcare, manufacturing, and government organizations around the world.

The good news is that while the number of security incidents increased by 64% only 3% were of a severity high enough to cause a data breach. The good guys are catching up to the well-funded, well-organised, cybercriminals and with a little prevention most of the attacks can be prevented or harm minimised.

Read on for the top five industries targeted.

Healthcare - one

Five of the eight largest healthcare security breaches since the beginning of 2010 - those with more than one million records reportedly compromisedtook place during the first six months of 2015. In fact, over 100 million healthcare records were reportedly compromised in 2015.

Packed with a wealth of exploitable information, electronic health records fetch a high price on the black market. They typically contain credit card data, email addresses, social security numbers, employment information and medical history recordsmuch of which will remain valid for years, if not decades. Cyber thieves are using that data to launch spear phishing attacks, commit fraud and steal medical identities.

Manufacturing - two

Includes automotive, electronics, textile and pharmaceutical companies, moved into second place in 2015. Automotive manufacturers were the top targeted manufacturing sub-industry, accounting for almost 30% of the total attacks following security researchers disclosure that attackers could remotely hack a connected car.

Cybercriminals are financially motivated and therefore more likely to go after corporate networkswhere they could steal potentially valuable intellectual property or sensitive information that wreak havoc.

Financial Services - three

The industry has been making its own strides to bolster cybersecurity in reaction to major breaches over the past several years. On the consumer side of the financial services business, its important to recognize that some of the very conveniences that banks now routinely offer customersincluding automated teller machines, credit cards and mobile banking appshave introduced a level of accessibility that goes a long way toward making the financial system highly vulnerable to cyber attacks.

At the same time, many commercial banking clients fell victim to the Dyre and Dridex Trojans, which were responsible for a large number of multi-million dollar heists targeting enterprises last year.

Government - four

With news reports of a number of high-visibility breachesincluding one in the US that exposed millions of employee records containing non-expiring data such as social security numbers, place of birth and even digitized fingerprints.

In early 2015, more than 50 million Turkish citizens found themselves at risk for identity theft when their national identity information was leaked from a government database. And more than a million Japanese citizens were exposed when employees at the pension service were tricked into opening a malicious email attachment that resulted in a data breach of sensitive, private information.

Transport - five



It includes everything from airlines, bus, subway and commuter rail lines to overland freight lines and overseas container ships that transport goods all around the globe. In many ways, this industry serves as the backbone of world trade, since without it, global economies could easily collapse. Politically motivated cyber criminals regularly attempt to bring the transportation industry to its knees in order to produce mass chaos scenarios.

And the causes

Unauthorized access is now the leading cause of incidents (45%) followed by malware (29%) and sustained probe/scan (16%). Business insiders were responsible for 60% of attacks  44.5% of those were malicious and 15.5% were inadvertent actors.

IBM says that organisations of all sizes are at risk  no exceptions. Business needs to set risk tolerances and put in place proactive security plans including supporting a culture of security awareness. And remember trust no one.
There are stories of hackers hitting the motherlode offering millions of logins - usernames and passwords - for email and social media. But often they are just consolidated lists already on the dark web. Not this time!

Hold Security, an expert in recovering such credentials says a kid, (is that a hacket?) dubbed The Collector from a small town in Russia collected an incredible 1.17 billion stolen credentials from numerous breaches that it is still working on identifying. 272 million of those credentials turned out to be unique, which in turn, translated to 42.5 million credentials  15% of the total, that it has never seen before.

It turns out that the majority are from Mail.Ru (57M) but many are from Yahoo (40M), Hotmail (33M) and Gmail (24M) and plus thousands of accounts at German and Chinese email providers too  time to change passwords again!

Alex Holden, founder and chief information security officer of Wisconsin-based Hold Security, said, This information is potent. Thousands of other stolen username/password combinations appear to belong to employees of some of the largest U.S. banking, manufacturing and retail companies.

Why is this so bad?

Hackers know users use favourite passwords or a variation of the same one. Users are hesitant to change let alone have unique passwords for all online accounts. It's why attackers reuse old passwords found on one account to try to break into other accounts of the same user. Dont forget that this information ends up in the giant dark data lake on the dark web that allows hackers to socially engineer appeals to users.

It is a timely reminder of 5 May being World Password Day - do something about reuse of passwords today.

Centrify Security Strategist Chris Webber said this latest report provided additional proof that people could no longer rely on passwords for security. An average person reuses a favourite or easy-to-remember password across multiple sites and apps."

So if an average user has a personal email password, a personal fileshare password, and the same for work, that means these 272.3 million passwords could unlock over a billion different apps, sites, and services. Whats worse, password theft is getting simpler every day. Forget about movie-style, brilliant-minded, sophisticated hackers. Forget about savvy criminals planning Oceans Eleven-style capers. Password harvesting can now be done by anyone clever enough to make a cat meme, or post a nasty comment on YouTube, thanks to simple downloadable toolkits".

We have to protect ourselves much better  and today, thats easy. Adding even simple Multi-factor authentication (MFA), like SMS-based verification, would mean that all 272.3 million passwords stolen no longer provide access to anything. Today, those passwords are all you need to gain access. With MFA, those passwords are only part of the key  and accounts will remain safe against todays most common attacks.
An Australian nanotech company has worked out a way to increase Lithium-Ion battery capacity by as much as 50%. It is one to watch as it may well be behind battery powered smart devices that work for much longer.

nano-porous

high-performance

Nano-Nouvelle is an Australian based materials technology company developing products for its 3Dconductive membranes for energy, environmental, chemical and biomedical applications. Its top scientists are pushing the boundaries of functional materials with patent filings around its core technology. The first products in development arebattery electrodes, which can increase energy storage capacity by as much as 50%.

CEO, Stephanie Moroz has focused her career on developing and commercialising clean energy technologies. Following her studies in Engineering Physics, she worked on hydrogen fuel cells in Canada and Germany, automotive engine systems to reduce pollution and fuel consumption in France, and solid state hydrogen storage in Australia. She combines a strong technical background with a range of business experience from large multinationals to VC-backed start-ups.

Founded in 2011, the Sunshine Coast Queensland-based company was named last week as number 45 on the inaugural Tech Pioneers 50 list. Other Tech Pioneers include software powerhouse Atlassian (1), cloud accounting leader Xero (2), Freelancer (7) and online graphic design trailblazer Canva (5). The full list of 50 is at the end of the article.

Interestingly The Tech Pioneers come from New South Wales  27, Victoria  9, Queensland  2, and NZ  12 and 15 are Software as a Service (SaaS), 21 are marketplace, and five are hardware companies. The PDF with an overview of all on the list is here. It is worth a read.

Read on for more of this companys technology.

It is currently working with major battery manufacturers globally, including Japan, Korea, China, Europe, the US and Israel, to ensure its Nanode technology fits with their manufacturing processes and cell designs.

Its core technology is Nanotechnology - the manipulation of matter at an atomic and molecular scale. Nanotechnology works with materials, devices and other structures that have at least one dimension sized from 1100 nm. The variety of potential applications makes nanotechnology a key technology for the future.

Nano-Nouvelle has developed a functional material that benefits from the advantages of nanotechnology. The electrically conductive 3D nanoporous structure has a customisable surface area in the range of 0.5 to 5.0 m2/cm3.

Using well-understood processes, sequential coatings are applied to commercially available porous polymer substrates to create Nano-Nouvelles conductive membrane technology. This conductive membrane can be coated with active materials for numerous applications, ranging from electrochemical processes such as batteries, capacitors, and electrolysis, to other industrial applications including sensors, filters, catalysts, chemical processes, thermal management, photovoltaic and thermoelectric materials.



Last year, Nano-Nouvelle funded the commercialisation of its novel battery electrode materials by closing a $3.7 million Series C Financing round. The investment was led by existing investor Terra Rossa Capital along with private investors including Simon Hackett and Bradley Maguire.
Kaseya, a leading provider of IT management solutions for Managed Service Providers (MSPs) and small to midsized businesses, has announced Kaseya AuthAnvil On-Demand, its cloud-based identity and access management (IAM) solution. It incorporates the first and only Universal Directory enabling MSPs to manage all of their customer IAM needs in a comprehensive, standard and consistent fashion while seamlessly supporting the broad mix of directory management technologies deployed in their customer base.

According to Kaseyas 2016 Global MSP Pricing Survey, high-growth MSPs consider security services as a key competitive advantage to enable them to address their clients number one concern, which is heightened security risks. The release of AuthAnvil On-Demand enables MSPs to empower their customers to gain authenticated and secure access to both on-premise and cloud applications from virtually any device.

The IDaaS market is expected to double over the next two years representing an area of explosive growth, said Mike Puglia, chief product officer for Kaseya. AuthAnvil On- Demand empowers MSPs to capture this opportunity and rapidly build and deploy profitable service offerings in the end-user security space.

The AuthAnvil On-Demand authentication suite consists of:

Multifactor Authentication (MFA): Delivering an unprecedented level of identity assurance by validating access is only permitted by authorised users. Access to devices and applications can be unlocked with popular mobile devices like iPhone, and Android as well as popular Universal Second Factor (U2F) hardware key technology from companies like Yubico.

Single Sign-On (SSO): Enabling users to sign-on once to access all their working web applications. It is integrated with MFA to verify identity and with Password Management to automate the login process, and makes provisioning and de-provisioning users a snap.

Universal Directory: Enabling a cloud-based directory service to allow for a single source of truth when it comes to providing attribute-based identity management to staff and customers. Allows enterprise-class federated access to cloud applications at any scale, even when customer networks are not online or available on the Internet.

MSPs can utilize AuthAnvil On-Demand to:

Add standalone custom branded IDaaS service offerings to offer best-in-class MFA, Password Management, and SSO for cloud services such as Salesforce.com, Dropbox, Office365, as well as on-premise applications like SharePoint, Exchange, and Microsoft Dynamics.

Create comprehensive user-based security offerings incorporating IDaaS, anti-virus, anti-malware, and cloud-based backup offerings from Kaseyas broad portfolio of industry leading MSP solutions.

Harden the security of their internal client operations centre by restricting access to client management tools, strengthening and protecting client passwords, and immediately terminating access privileges for former employees

AuthAnvil On-Demand is deployed on the Microsoft Azure Cloud, which is one of the largest and most scalable public clouds in the world. The Azure platform enables AuthAnvil On-Demand to be compliant with a broad set of international and industry-specific standards, such as ISO 27001, SOC 1 and SOC 2. Kaseya AuthAnvil On-Demand is available across the entire global Azure network and was launched with dedicated PODS in North America and Europe.

I&T was an early adopter of Kaseyas AuthAnvil two-factor authentication and single sign on, said Paul Cissel, CEO for Internet & Telephone, a New England-based Managed Service Provider serving customers spread across 38 different states and 14 different countries. Our customers have significantly upgraded their level of security when we implemented these solutions. Cloud-based Universal Directory rounds out the complete solution for us and makes IDaaS an interesting proposition.
The BI Built for Business event, cohosted by Yellowfins strategic alliance partner Microsoft Azure, will be held 4pm  8pm at Microsofts Times Square office (Eleven Times Square, New York, NY 10036).



For further details, and to register for the event, GO HERE.



The event will feature presentations from analytics thought leaders, real-world BI success stories, provide a forum for BI professionals to network, and explore how organizations can empower business users with BI.



Yellowfins BI Built for Business event offers New Yorks data visualization and business analytics community the opportunity to mingle at a fun and informative evening seminar, said Yellowfins Global Head of Channel and Marketing, Daniel Shaw-Dennis. Aside from great conversation, cocktails and canapes, the event will also provide an opportunity for Yellowfin to showcase why its one of the fastest growing and most disruptive BI organizations in the industry.



The BI Built for Business event will also enable attendees to see first-hand the latest version of Yellowfins BI platform, Yellowfin 7.2, which was launched in March this year. The release of Yellowfin 7.2 was met with significant praise from many industry analysts and thought leaders.



Yellowfins 7.2 announcements underscore a continued emphasis on the workflow, governance, and agility needs of both technical and non-technical users, Blue Hill Research Principal Analyst, James Haight. This focus extends Yellowfins leadership in this area, and presents a compelling framework which Blue Hills audience should consider as they look to make enterprise-wide Business Intelligence investments.



Blue Hill Research identifies the approach that Yellowfin 7.2 offers as one which can have a meaningful impact on creating a BI culture where persistent user adoption creates long-term value.



The RSVP deadline for the event is Tuesday 24th May. For further details, contact: pr@yellowfin.bi



Attendees are encouraged to engage in the live Twitter conversation during the event under #YFinNY or @YellowfinBI.



Yellowfins BI Built for Business roadshow will tour New York Thursday 2nd June 2016. To register to attend, GO HERE: https://www.yellowfinbi.com/YFCommunityNews-You-re-invited-Discover-Business-Intelligence-built-for-business-users-in-Times-225510





- END -





About Yellowfin



Yellowfin is a global Business Intelligence (BI) and analytics software vendor passionate about making BI easy. Founded in 2003 in response to the complexity and costs associated with implementing and using traditional BI tools, Yellowfin is a highly intuitive 100 percent Web-based reporting and analytics solution. Yellowfin is a leader in mobile, collaborative and embedded BI, as well as Location Intelligence and data visualization.



Over 10,000 organizations, and more than 2 million end-users across 70 different countries, use Yellowfin every day. For more information, visit www.yellowfinbi.com



For regular news and updates, follow Yellowfin on Twitter (@YellowfinBI), LinkedIn (Yellowfin Business Intelligence), YouTube (Yellowfin Team) or email pr@yellowfin.bi to subscribe to Yellowfins free e-newsletter.





For further media information, interviews, images or product demonstration, please contact:



Lachlan James, Yellowfin Global Communications Manager on +61 (0)3 8617 4954, +61 (0)431 835 658 or lachlan.james@yellowfin.bi
For the second time in as many days, I have used the Star Trek Borg term resistance is futile.

The first was about enterprise cloud take-up and now today about the inevitable creep of Windows 10 to the majority of modern computing devices.

Microsoft has announced that the uptake now is over 300 million or about 15.34% of all x86 based devices. That sounds good until you see that Windows 7 still has 47.82% and Windows 8.x has 13.04%. I am not even going to comment on the 15% (or so) of users still with XP, Vista, 2000, ME, or even 3.1  these machines are unlikely to ever upgrade.

From personal experience  in having upgraded more than 50 machines for family and friends  I have found the process long and generally painless. Of that 50 I have later had to do clean installs on about five to solve unexplained issues. It is a much shorter process using an ISO image USB drive than upgrading, but at least the PC got the free upgrade in the first place.

And like every version of Windows from 1.0 to date each builds on the strengths of the previous operating system  except perhaps ME, Vista and 8.0 being sacrificial lambs for later OS. If you are upgrading from today, you will have the advantage of 300 million users that have identified and fixed most of the issues  it should be a no-brainer if you PC is running well to start.

Essentially any upgrade issues you have with Windows 10 will come down to pre-existing issues with Windows 7 or 8.x. So far driver issues  software needed to make it work with peripherals or components  have been swiftly addressed.

What I have found to reduce any potential upgrade issues

Make sure your Windows 7 or 8.x is up to date with all patches. Run Belarc to see if you are missing any. Print the report out as it will show other software licences.

Download Wise Disk Cleaner and Wise Registry cleaner - select the portable version for direct download

select the portable version for direct download Uninstall Antivirus and malware software or any third party firewalls or security software

Run Wise Disk Cleaner in its most aggressive mode (select all options  you will lose stored Internet passwords* unless you exclude them). Defrag the disk.

Run Wise Registry Cleaner in its most aggressive form and defrag the registry

Check that you have at least 16GB free space on C: drive

Reboot and return to the Windows 10 nag screen.

* How to save passwords  exclude them from Wise Disk Cleaner (settings)

Firefox - Passwords are stored in the key3.db and logins.json files

and files Chrome  exclude Login Data

IE and Edge  stores them in the Windows registry rather than files and no action should be needed

And if all goes pear shaped you can revert to the version of Windows you started with.

Windows 10 free upgrade stops on 29 July  time to make a decision or fork out US$119 later.


This all started when LG sent me  an IT journalist  a press release on its new 906L Door-in-Door French Door Refrigerator. It is an impressive big fridge to be sure.

Me (in an email back to them): iTWire usually does not cover fridges unless there is a strong tech angle.

Them: If you are looking for a tech angle, it would be around the Smart Diagnosis feature that this fridge has. Smart Diagnosis helps to correct concerns with your appliance without having to wait for a technician to visit.

Me: Hmm. That is a little more like it  please send more information.

It turns out that the fridge does have an Android or iOS app and enough intelligence to use it.

Smart Diagnosis (from LG)

Ever wanted to explain an issue to customer service, but struggled to communicate it to the person on the other end of the phone?

LG have developed an app called Smart Diagnosis, a fast and easy way to correct concerns with your appliance. Troubleshoot issues with your refrigerator without having to wait for an engineer to visit, by providing a quick snapshot as to the issue with your appliance.

After downloading the LG Smart Diagnosis App for Android or iOS, users can activate a feature on the fridge that emits a sound effect which is assessed and diagnosed by the App. LG Customer Service can then be contacted and provided with the on-screen details to offer an appropriate solution

HOW TO USE LG SMART DIAGNOSIS FOR COMPATIBLE FRIDGES

Step 1 - Download the LG Smart Diagnosis (AUS

Step 2 - Press and hold the door lock button for 3 seconds

Step 3 - Open the right Refrigerator door and hold the smartphone to the speaker located there

Step 4 - Press and hold the Freezer Temperature button for 3 seconds.

Step 5 - A data sound effect will then emit from the fridge symbolising it is analysing the fridge.

Step 6 - Once it has completed its analyses, a chime will sound from the fridge.

Step 7 - A message will then appear on your LG Smart Diagnosis app displaying the result of the diagnosis along with use & care tips.

And

So back to the fridge of the future  LGs A$6699, 906L door-in-door, French door refrigerator with triple filtered ice and water (GP-5D906BSL)

And no I dont intend to review it. At 165kg, its a big ask for a courier company to bring it up the steps into my tiny townhouse.
With the strike by Verizon union members now in its fourth week  and no settlement appearing near -- frustrations born of service delays and cancelations remain primarily the bane of consumers, although business customers are also taking on collateral damage, some of which may not be visible to the untrained eye.

Thats the view of David Rohde, a longtime industry watcher and senior consultant at TechCaliber in Washington D.C.

Customers are asking their Verizon (Enterprise) account teams for, you name it  an inventory of current services, a next response to a bid for new services, a network management request that cant otherwise be handled automatically  and the answer is coming back very frequently that those people arent around right now so youre going to have to wait, Rohde writes in a recent blog post.

[MORE: Verizon offers two defenses of indefensible $5 fee.]

They arent around because theyre handling the workloads of some 40,000 striking union employees.

And though Verizon insists publicly that its replacement workers are up to their temporary tasks, social media channels are littered with accounts of customers having to call multiple times to arrange repair or installation appointments that sometimes wind up going unmet anyway.

A police department in Pennsylvania has blamed the strike for a telephone outage that lasted some two weeks. In Syracuse, N.Y., a century-old purveyor of safety shoes and supplies called Henry Frank Wholesale has been without phone or DSL Internet service for more than a week, despite multiple service visits from Verizons replacement roster.

"This has been devastating for us," owner Tony DiBiase tells Syracuse.com. "If customers can't reach us, they'll just go somewhere else, and once you lose them, they may not come back."

Verizon responded in this case that the difficulties being encountered getting DiBiases business back in touch with its customers are not necessarily related to the strike. The company also announced late last week that it is adding thousands of additional temporary workers to augment those already filling the shoes of striking union members.

For enterprise customers, however, some of the negative consequences from the ongoing strike may not be as obvious as a nonfunctioning phone or missed service call, says consultant Rohde in an email to Network World.

Everything with enterprise these days is a back-and-forth with their suppliers. The strength or weakness of account teams is critical, Rohde says. Whether or not they have any pull in their organizations is a major variable. Verizon is putting on a lot of bravado in this strike but theres much less margin for this than (during previous strikes) given the way theyve squeezed wireline more than wireless.

Customers also need to understand that Verizon senior executives have been clear that they want to get the next union contract right from their standpoint, with the greatest possible flexibility to move around or change wireline people or other resources, so they appear willing to let the strike go on for some time until they get the result they want. The unions involved seem to feel similarly from their standpoint, so this is what you get. Ruinous for customers and networks? No. Ongoing impacts and a slowdown in getting important things done? You bet.

A request for comment from Verizon Enterprise has gone unanswered.
A U.S. trade body has launched an investigation into seven smartphone companies on charges of patent infringement, which could lead to a ban on the sale of certain phones imported and sold by these vendors in the country.

The U.S. International Trade Commission said it had instituted an investigation into devices from a group of mainly Asian companies, including Lenovo and its Motorola subsidiary, Samsung Electronics, ZTE, Sony, LG Electronics, HTC and BlackBerry.

The complaint was filed against these companies by Creative Technology of Singapore and its U.S. subsidiary Creative Labs of Milpitas, California, on March 24.

Known for its Sound Blaster sound cards for PC audio, Creative has charged these companies with infringing U.S. Patent No. 6,928,433 entitled Automatic Hierarchical Categorization of Music by Metadata, which claims various methods for accessing different types of data, such as music or video files, on a portable media player.

Apple is said to be one of the licensees of the patent, and in 2006, Apple paid Creative US$100 million for a nonexclusive license, according to Creatives complaint. Creative had earlier that year asked the ITC to block the sale of Apple's iPod devices for allegedly infringing the same patent.

Among the alleged infringing products named in the complaint are Samsungs Galaxy S6 smartphone and other Samsung phones containing either the Google Play Music app (version 5.9.l854R.l904527), or the Samsung Music app (version 6.0.1508051449), which were installed on the phones prior to import.

The products at issue in the investigation are smartphones, with the capability of playing stored media files selected by a user from a hierarchical display, the ITC said in a statement Thursday.

If it finds infringement after investigation, the ITC can place a ban on the sale of products by these vendors, under a limited exclusion order requested by the complainant. The ITC cautioned that the launch of an investigation did not imply a decision on the merits of the case. It will set a target date for completion of the investigation within 45 days of its institution.
With Stitch Fix, users don't go shopping for their clothes. Professional stylists do the job for them and the personal shopping service ships the new clothes to their door.

The stylists aren't working on their own, though; they're using artificial intelligence (A.I.) and a team of about 60 data scientists.

That combo is behind the success at Stitch Fix, a San Francisco-based online subscription and shopping service founded in 2011.

"I think it's the single most salient aspect of our company," said Eric Colson, chief algorithms officer at Stitch Fix. "Our business is getting relevant things into the hands of our customers. This is the one thing we're going to be best in the world at. We couldn't do this with machines alone. We couldn't do this with humans alone. We're just trying to get them to combine their powers."

Stitch Fix, a company with about 4,400 employees -- 2,800 of them working as stylists -- has amassed a following among busy women -- and as of February, among men. That's when the company launched a beta service for guys, with a full public launch scheduled for this fall.

Stitch Fix is aimed at people who either don't enjoy shopping or simply don't have the time to go to a brick-and-mortar store or cull through endless online pages of shirts, pants, sweaters and jackets.

Users start by filling out an online style profile. Do you like blousy or close-fitting tops? Favorite colors? Are you more urban hipster, Sex in the City chick or Bohemian? Do you prefer jeans over dresses?

Stitch Fix stylists, both human and machine, handpick a selection of five clothing items and accessories that fit each client's taste, budget and lifestyle. Clients keep what they want and return the rest.

Colson, who was a vice president of data science and engineering at Netflix before joining Stitch Fix in 2012, noted that the company was using an algorithm for basic criteria filtering. If a client was a medium, it would filter out shirts that were a large or small. If she didn't like the color yellow, those items would be excluded.

With his experience at Netflix, which bases much of its business on recommending movies and shows to users, Colson knew Stitch Fix could do more by using machine learning.

"A product manager at Netflix used to say if we were really bold, we wouldn't present five or so recommendations. We'd present one and if we were going to do that, we should just play a recommendation when the user came online," he said. " Here is Stitch Fix being so bold as to say, 'Don't worry about picking out stuff. We'll do that for you.' That was exciting and bold. Could that be done? Is that possible?"

It is.

Later in 2012, the company got its first machine learning algorithm, which was designed to get smarter the more data it handled.

"We've been able to augment human judgment with machine algorithms," said Colson. "We have to combine machines and expert humans. It turns out it works better than even I could have thought."

Today, the company has hundreds of algorithms, like a styling algorithm that matches products to clients; an algorithm that matches stylists with clients; an algorithm that calculates how happy a customer is with the service; and one that figures out how much and what kind of inventory the company should buy.

Stitch Fix also has an algorithm that learns from images so it can check a client's Pinterest pins and learn what styles she's favoring even if the user has a hard time articulating it in an online form or in comments.

The company, according to Jeff Kagan, an independent industry analyst, is likely ahead of a trend where machine learning moves into the enterprise.

"I think this is just the beginning," he said. "Many new business models will form with A.I. as the center of their universe.... We have to remember this is advanced and cool, but it is still very early in the process. This is the Model T for the A.I. revolution. It will get bigger and better, year after year."

For today, Stitch Fix's human stylists, most of whom work remotely, use an interface where they can see all the information the company has about a client - measurements, preferences, desire to take risks. The stylists use the interface to see comments about previous outfits they've tried, and notes on whether they have a big date or a wedding to attend and need something new to wear.

The stylists also use the interface to see all the images of products the algorithms have recommended for the client.

Stitch Fix Layla Katz is the lead stylist at Stitch Fix.

That, said Layla Katz, a lead stylist with Stitch Fix, is incredibly helpful.

"I quickly realized the tool was my new BFF," said Katz. "It gives me confidence when my creative eye is saying this is a match and the science is saying the same thing.... How they come together is the magic."

Katz, who has been a stylist with Stitch Fix for two and a half years, said she likes working with the artificial intelligence. It makes her job easier and gives her more time to be creative.

"When a client fills out a profile and is ready to be styled, we are able to see what the algorithm is suggesting based on the data collected from her profile -- everything from sizing to location, geography, body type, fabric preferences, colors and pattern preferences," she explained. "It helps to not have to worry about the broad strokes of what a client does not want. Then we can make creative decisions about what will fit her body and her lifestyle."

Without the A.I., it could take stylists weeks of working with a client to know what works.

But don't get Katz wrong. The human stylists make the creative decisions.

"Once we build a relationship with a client, we get smarter every time [we style her] and the algorithm gets smarter every time," said Katz. "When a client decides which items to keep or send back, she can go through her profile and let us know item by item if she liked the fit, the price, the quality. That goes into the algorithm and helps it suggest more for the next time."

The algorithms, for instance, take in customer comments and feedback and can easily and quickly calculate how customers feel about certain products and styles. That flood of information would be overwhelming for a human.

"Humans are better at interpreting the tone and meaning of textual feedback, but they can't do many," said Colson. "After a few thousand, they might get really bored or have a hard time distilling it down. Machines can hold in their memories far more than we can.... The challenging part would be not using algorithms. It would be scary out there. It would be a leap of faith to put your finger in the air and make the best guess about what people will buy. That would give me anxiety. We have the benefit of data."

That ability to digest and analyze so much data could be what makes Katz such a fan of working with an AI system. Elsewhere, many people are afraid of smart machines and robots stealing their jobs, said Dan Olds, an analyst with The Gabriel Consulting Group.

"It's a little surprising that the stylists don't see A.I. as a threat, since most people seem to think that A.I. will eventually take over their jobs," he said. "But I believe we'll see A.I. assisting people in almost every job, particularly those in which there's a lot of data that has to be processed. When you think about the clothing industry, a good A.I. can help winnow down the universe of clothing and accessories to help the stylist do their job better and quicker."

Katz said partnering with a smart system simply makes the job better.

"I am a huge lover of all things algorithm," she said. "I'm a real fan girl. It's an insane genius what the algorithms bring."

This story, "At Stitch Fix, data scientists and A.I. become personal stylists" was originally published by Computerworld .
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A proposed $55 million 27-story apartment tower for Milwaukee's east side has been rejected by the Common Council.

The council on Tuesday voted 10-5 to support the project, falling two votes short of the supermajority needed for approval. The zoning change needed 12 votes because a protest petition was signed by enough adjacent property owners, said Ald. Ashanti Hamilton, council president.

The opponents were Ald. Robert Bauman, whose district includes the site, along with aldermen Cavalier Johnson, Mark Borkowski, Jose Perez and Tony Zielinski.
Wind turbines and solar panels accounted for more than two-thirds of all new electric generation capacity added to the nations grid in 2015. Credit: Associated Press

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Washington  If there's a War on Coal, it's increasingly clear which side is winning.

Wind turbines and solar panels accounted for more than two-thirds of all new electric generation capacity added to the nation's grid in 2015, according to a recent analysis by the U.S. Department of Energy. The remaining third was largely new power plants fueled by natural gas, which has become cheap and plentiful as a result of hydraulic fracturing.

It was the second straight year that U.S. investment in renewable energy projects has outpaced that of fossil fuels. Robust growth is once again predicted for this year.

And while Republican lawmakers in Washington have fought to protect coal-fired power plants, opposing President Barack Obama's efforts to curtail climate-warming carbon emissions, data show their home states are often the ones benefiting most from the nation's accelerating shift to renewable energy.

Leading the way in new wind projects are GOP strongholds Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas, home to some of the leading critics of climate science and renewable energy incentives in Congress. Republican-dominated North Carolina trails only California in new solar farms, thanks largely to pro-renewables policies enacted years ago under a Democratic legislature.

The most dramatic change has been seen in the plummeting cost of emissions-free wind energy, which has declined by two-thirds in the last six years thanks to the availability of cheaper, more efficient turbines. An annual analysis by the investment firm Lazard determined that wind energy is now the lowest-cost energy source, even before federal green-energy tax incentives are factored in.

"We are entering the era of renewables," former Vice President Al Gore said Thursday at the Climate Action 2016 conference in Washington. "It's a very exciting new reality."

Billions of dollars in private equity are going to construct massive new renewables projects, especially in the Sun Belt and Great Plains. Thousands of miles of new high-voltage transmission lines are also under construction to send power from the wind and sun from the sparsely populated areas where it is collected to the urban centers where it is needed.

Even with the surge in new projects, energy from such renewable sources as wind, solar and water accounted for only about a tenth of total U.S. power generation last year.

Still, the United States leads the world in wind energy with about 48,800 utility-scale turbines operating across the country, generating power for about 20 million homes. By 2030, the Energy Department estimates that wind will provide a fifth of the nation's electricity.

Coal has dropped over the last decade from providing half of all U.S. electricity to about one-third.
Fyxation Bicycle co-founder Ben Ginster stands behind one of the Milwaukee companys newest bikes, the Quiver, at the shop at 2943 N. Humboldt Ave. Credit: Mike De Sisti

By of the

A Milwaukee bicycle company that has developed a following with young, urban riders is introducing a "gravel grinder" bike aimed at cyclists who sometimes prefer a gravel path to asphalt.

Fyxation, located at 2943 N. Humboldt Ave., also is introducing a new version of its Quiver road bike that has disc brakes and mounts for bags and cargo racks  making it suitable for daily commutes as well as weekend camping trips.

This week, company co-owner Nick Ginster said, he was headed to Shanghai, China, for a bicycle show where industry suppliers will meet up with bike firms like Fyxation. It's his third trip to China and Taiwan in three months. Fyxation designs and assembles its bikes in Milwaukee, but like most of the bicycle industry, it sources components from Asia.

Nick Ginster and his brother, Ben, started the business in 2009 working from home. Now they have a retail store and a thriving online business.

"We are seeing a lot of growth with the brand and are expanding the lineup. We've had a really strong spring, not only in Milwaukee but also in Chicago and Minneapolis," Nick Ginster said.

The new gravel grinder bike will be available this summer, while the Quiver with disc brakes became available this week. Another new Quiver model will have a belt drive, so there's no chain to lube, and it is built to accept fenders and wide tires.

Fyxation sells its bikes and accessories all over the world. Ginster has an engineering degree from University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and designs the company's bikes and accessories in Milwaukee.

Dave Schlabowske, deputy director of the nonprofit Wisconsin Bike Fed, has been test-riding a prototype bicycle for Fyxation.

Schlabowske says the new bike, with its carbon-fiber frame, is lightweight but sturdy.

"Suddenly I have one bike that can do everything. It weighs 19 pounds, so with skinny tires it's a perfectly good bike to go on fast-paced road training rides with my friends who still race. But if I want to do the Dairy Roubaix, which is 107 miles on mostly gravel roads, it works great for me as well," Schlabowske said.

"It's really a Swiss army knife of bicycles," he said.
Teamsters from Wisconsin and Michigan demonstrate against proposed cuts in the Central States Pension Fund before the PBS Newshour Democratic Debate in February. Credit: Mark Hoffman

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The U.S. Treasury Department on Friday rejected a plan that would have slashed pensions promised to 270,000 Teamsters, including about 15,000 in Wisconsin.

The decision deals a victory to retired truck drivers, dock workers and others who battled the cuts, which in many cases would have sliced promised pensions by more than 50%.

On Milwaukee's west side, one group of Teamsters whooped happily at the news.

"I can't stop crying, but that's OK," retiree Kenneth Stribling said. "Tears of joy."

"Pretty ecstatic right now," said Bob Amsden, a retiree who emerged as a national leader in the grass-roots effort to thwart the reductions proposed by the Central States Pension Fund. "We took down big money, and we won the first battle. We know the war's going to go on."

That is clear. Left unresolved, and still looming, is the financially precarious position of Central States, which is projected to go broke within 10 years.

All the same, the rejection of the pension fund's request for cuts  reductions critics say would have been unprecedented  buys time for the retirees and their allies. That offers them at least some hope of rallying support in Congress for a political fix to Central States' dire problems.

The fund itself called for such action Friday. Saying in a statement that it was disappointed with the Treasury Department's decision, Central States strongly urged members of Congress to pass legislation protecting the benefits of plan participants.

The pension fund conceivably could submit a new proposal, but gave no signal Friday of its next steps.

Proposal 'overly complex'

The rejected proposal fell short of the requirements of federal law on three counts, special master Kenneth Feinberg said Friday during a call to reporters.

Feinberg, a prominent Washington attorney, has been the go-to arbitrator for complex issues such as the distribution of payments to the 9-11 victims' families.

Assigned to weigh the Central States proposal, he found that it would not save the pension plan from insolvency. The proposal's assumption of a 7.5% investment return was "too optimistic and unreasonable," especially in the near term, Feinberg said.

Further, he said, the proposal did not spread the cuts fairly among participants, and Central States' notices to them could not be understood by the average recipient, as required.

"It is technical. It is overly complex. It is not readily understandable," Feinberg said.

About 400,000 people either draw pensions from Central States or are eligible for them upon retirement. Of those, some 270,000 faced benefit cuts. The latter number includes about 47,000 United Parcel Service workers and retirees whose reductions would be made up at least partially by UPS.

Thousands of retirees  perhaps tens of thousands  would have seen their pensions cut in half, and it appears that the average reduction would have topped 30%.

Finances out of balance

The drastic measures were sparked by financial troubles that run deep. For every $3.46 Central States pays in benefits, the plan says, it collects just $1 from contributing employers.

As of January 2015, the plan's $35 billion in liabilities was more than double the value of its assets, and the gap was widening.

Those woes helped drive a fundamental change in federal rules governing pensions.

Until then, as long as a plan had money, it had to pay the pension promised. But in December 2014, with the holidays approaching and a possible government shutdown looming, Congress passed a massive spending bill that, among other things, rewrote the rule book on pensions covering millions of Americans.

The changes, which critics say were enacted in haste and with many in Congress not fully understanding them, apply to "multi-employer" pension plans. Those, unlike the more common single-employer plans, cover more than one company's workers under contracts with unions.

Prevalent in trucking and some other industries, such plans provide pensions for about 10 million people in the U.S. Central States, based in suburban Chicago, is one of the biggest multi-employer plans.

The thinking behind the Multiemployer Pension Reform Act of 2014 was that if plans such as Central States can't cut payments, they will go broke, creating an even worse situation.

About 1.5 million people are in severely underfunded multi-employer plans. The federal Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. insures those benefits, but its multi-employer fund also is in trouble, and likely will be exhausted by 2025, the agency recently told Congress.

The anger felt by retired Teamsters has many blaming the investment practices of Central States, and its executives and trustees.

But despite long-standing questions about how Central States has been run, the most important reason for the pension fund's slide toward insolvency is the federal government's deregulation of trucking, scholars who study the industry have said.

Until 1979, the government tightly controlled interstate trucking, restricting entry into the field and specifying where firms could operate. Deregulation opened the industry to thousands of new, nonunion carriers who drove down shipping rates and pushed many of the legacy trucking firms out of business.

As their numbers dwindled, so did those of the workers and companies contributing to Central States.

In 1980, with deregulation just beginning, Central States had four working Teamsters for every retiree. Today, the plan pays benefits to five retirees for every worker.
The Founding Fathers depicted in John Trumbulls painting Declaration of Independence come alive, singing and bickering, in the musical 1776. Credit: Journal Sentinel files

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As depicted in the musical "1776," the Continental Congress bears a certain resemblance to our own fractious time.

It begins, Milwaukee Opera Theatre artistic director Jill Anna Ponasik points out, with "a big song about how these guys cannot even agree on whether or not to open or close the window."

But despite the many, sometimes painful arguments that follow, Ponasik finds hope for today in the ending of "1776": "They're moving ahead with a consensual decision to sign the Declaration of Independence, and they all sign it."

MOT will stage a single performance of "1776" on May 23 at Turner Hall Ballroom, 1034 N. 4th St. While the quantity of this production is limited, the distinctions will be many.

The delegates to the Continental Congress were white men; the bitterest dispute in the musical is about whether the Declaration will condemn slavery. MOT's production reflects, rather spectacularly, that women and people of color have a say in contemporary America. So, for example, Rana Roman and Alison Mary Forbes will sing the roles of John Hancock and Robert Livingston, respectively; Broadway veteran Nathaniel Stampley, a star of the Milwaukee Repertory Theater's production of "The Color Purple," will play Thomas Jefferson; and Karen Estrada will cakewalk her way through "The Lees of Old Virginia."

A multiracial cast of singing Founding Fathers immediately brings to mind the musical "Hamilton." But Ponasik said this staging has been in process for several years, before "Hamilton" became the hottest cultural phenomenon since Harry Potter.

It began with director Paula Suozzi (who played John Dickinson in fifth grade) and actors Matt Daniels and Jonathan West, in a conversation, talking about how much fun it would be to perform "1776."

The road not taken for this production was a small-cast, conceptual take on the show, a la MOT's entertaining reduction of "The Mikado" last season.

What they decided instead, Ponasik said, was that "this was a celebration of the actors that live and work in Milwaukee, and it becomes kind of an all-star cast and we do it once in a big venue."

The Turner Hall audience will see 25 local actors, some of whom have starred at the Milwaukee Rep and the Skylight, and one ringer  Minnesota baritone Andrew Wilkowske, who has sung enough with MOT to qualify for honorary Badgerhood.

Theatergoers also will see those performers up close.

"We're treating it like a town hall meeting," Ponasik said of the staging. So actors won't be up on stage; they'll be on the floor with people.

MOT is renting long banquet tables for the audience; as delegates to the Continental Congress, cast members will sit among theatergoers. In brainstorming this approach, Ponasik said the production team studied the Turner Hall floor plan for the interactive show "Tony n' Tina's Wedding" for ideas.

Ponasik may discover an unintended consequence of this seating arrangement. If John Adams goes on too long, as some of his colleagues believe he is wont to do, an entire congress of Milwaukeeans will be able to shout, "Sit down, John!"

IF YOU GO

Milwaukee Opera Theatre performs "1776" at 7:30 p.m. May 23 at Turner Hall Ballroom, 1034 N. 4th St. For tickets, visit www.brownpapertickets.com/event/2509284 or call (800) 838-3006.
SHARE This drawing of famed Soviet composer Dmitri Shostakovich is from April 2, 1949. Anonymous The Noise of Time: A Novel. By Julian Barnes. Knopf. 224 pages. $25.95. Titians The Tribute Money plays a role in The Noise of Time, Julian Barnes novel about the life of composer Dmitri Shostakovich.

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In Julian Barnes' novel "The Noise of Time," Dmitri Shostakovich considers the two types of composers in the Soviet Union: dead ones, and frightened ones.

Call Shostakovich one of the frightened ones. His music is played around the world, but he also stands by the elevator in his fifth-floor apartment many nights, a valise packed with his favorite cigarettes, in case he is arrested by the NKVD for such nonsensical ideological crimes as formalism. He waits in the hallway, brooding, to reduce the chance that his wife and daughter will become collateral damage.

The late composer (1906-'75) is having a literary moment. M.T. Anderson built his nonfiction book "Symphony for the City of the Dead," a 2015 National Book Award nominee in YA literature, around the story of Shostakovich's Seventh Symphony, which the composer dedicated to Leningrad during the horrific Nazi siege of the city. The Shostakovich revived by Barnes, decorated author of "The Sense of An Ending," "Arthur & George" and "Flaubert's Parrot," would laugh at any suggestion that he was a hero:

"He had been as courageous as his nature allowed; but conscience was always there to insist that more courage could have been shown," he thinks. Even more bitterly, he decides that "the line of cowardice in his life was the one thing that ran straight and true."

While "The Noise of Time" is not a spy story, the haunted Shostakovich that Barnes depicts might feel at home in a Graham Greene or John le Carre novel. Rarely does Barnes' Shostakovich take a breath without either fearing Power, the name he uses to conceptualize the Soviet apparatus, or wrangling with his conscience, as he tries to stay alive, writing music. On his bedside table, the composer, baptized but no believer, keeps a postcard of Titian's painting "The Tribute Money," depicting Jesus considering the coin with Caesar's image. Shostakovich tries to render unto the Soviet Power what must be rendered, only to realize over time that the state wanted everything.

He considers himself a poor fit for this grind: weak-willed, indecisive and pessimistic. "To be Russian was to be pessimistic; to be Soviet was to be optimistic," he thinks. "That is why the words Soviet Russia were a contradiction in terms."

His troubles begin in earnest with the premiere of his opera "Lady Macbeth of Mtensk," which Stalin attends and dislikes. Pravda, the official Communist Party newspaper, denounces it under the headline "Muddle Instead of Music," declaring that it "tickled the perverted taste of the bourgeois with its fidgety, neurotic music." This leads to years of penance and political rehabilitation for Shostakovich, and effectively destroys his ability to continue composing operas. Power wants him to write more optimistic tunes like his early "Song of the Counterplan"; the composer does what he must to satisfy the apparatchiks in his film scores, but his genius lies elsewhere.

As the reluctant leader of an official delegation to the United States, Shostakovich is required to read a speech denouncing his artistic hero, Stravinsky  and to confirm that denouncement when questioned by a CIA stooge. Later, he tells a musical friend that this had been the worst moment of his life.

Whether mining Shostakovich's own writings or imagining these brilliant lines into being, Barnes depicts a troubled man and artist, an ironist and self-declared neurotic, at peace only when composing music.

His brooding Shostakovich offers drive-by commentary on other boldface names of his time, such as artist Pablo Picasso ("How easy it was to be a Communist when you weren't living under Communism!") and the Great Leader and Helmsman himself, Stalin (portrayed in a phone conversation that would fit nicely in either "1984" or "Catch-22"). Glimpses of and reflections on Shostakovich's messy love life (an early experiment in free love turned out less free than he might have imagined) and his care for his children thicken Barnes' succinct portrait.
West Allis native Heather McManamy has written nearly 80 cards for her daughter, Brianna, with words of motherly love and encouragement. Credit: Hillary Schave / Azena Photography

SHARE Cards for Brianna: A Moms Messages of Living, Laughing, and Loving as Time Is Running Out. By Heather McManamy with William Croyle. Sourcebooks. 224 pages. $15.99. Related Photos Cards for Brianna

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After she learned that her cancer was terminal, Heather McManamy knew that her young daughter, Brianna, faced many future Mother's Days without her mom.

So the West Allis native wrote cards for Bri, for future occasions when Heather wanted to be with her daughter in spirit, if not in the flesh: for her first day of elementary school, for her 13th birthday, for the day a pet dies, the day Bri starts high school, the day she gets her driver's license, graduation day, the day she gets married  even the day in the distant future that her daughter retires.

For a bad day, a sick day, a "kick some butt" day.

Before Heather died last December, she wrote nearly 80 cards for Brianna with words of motherly love and encouragement, trusting her husband, Jeff, to offer them to Bri at the right time.

"The love that Heather has for Bri, that was the most important thing to her," Jeff said in a phone interview from McFarland, the village near Madison where he and Bri live. "Still being a Mom to Bri even when she was not here physically."

Some of those cards are quoted in "Cards for Brianna: A Mom's Messages of Living, Laughing, and Loving as Time Is Running Out" (Sourcebooks), which Heather wrote with William Croyle; they handed the book in to the publisher the day before Heather died. Her powerful memoir lives up to that long title, revealing a woman who seized each one of her final days with a style and energy all her own  a style that included dragging her chemo-sick self to Milwaukee for a backstage pep talk from Motley Crue.

Facing cancer directly

Heather Sikorski graduated from Milwaukee's Pius XI High School in 1998, then studied psychology and sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she met her soul mate, Jeff McManamy. They moved to McFarland, Jeff's hometown, and married in 2006. Brianna was born April 22, 2011; in her obituary, Heather called it "the happiest day of our lives."

But one night she discovered a lump in her chest, which was diagnosed as stage 2 breast cancer. She had a double mastectomy, followed by chemotherapy. After the cancer spread to her bones and liver, she was diagnosed in 2014 with stage 4 terminal cancer, with two years at most to live.

"Being the stubborn person I am," Heather wrote in "Cards for Brianna," "I decided if I ever had the chance to gain control over anything, I was going to seize it."

Within a month she retired from her job as a research specialist at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, so she could maximize her time with Bri and Jeff. A true disciple of Ferris Bueller, she wanted to stop and look around at life before she missed it. That included lying on the cold marble floor of the Capitol for a few hours, marveling at the dome a few hundred feet above her.

As chemotherapy proceeded, she mourned the impending loss of her "long, luscious brown hair." Then she turned it into a head-shaving party at a local salon.

Ever the direct one, Heather searched the phrase "dead mom" via Google for legacy ideas. That led to writing cards for her daughter. For an 18th birthday card, Heather wrote to Bri: "Yes, you're a grown-up now, but it doesn't mean you have to have life figured out."

After Heather posted about the cards, her story went viral online, leading to what she jokingly called her "dying mom" fame. Jeff said the attention lifted her up, not through boosting her ego, but by affirming what she was doing. People told her they would give anything to have a letter from their deceased parent, Jeff said.

Of course, the attention also led to "an abundance of opinions on how she should live her life," which Heather had no use for. For example, when she finished a round of a noxious chemo medicine that she hated, a close friend bought her "a comically enormous box of Nerds candy, my all-time favorite form of sugar." But after she posted a playful photo of herself with the giant Nerds box online, fanatics sent her frantic messages that sugar causes cancer and she should stop eating Nerds immediately.

In "Cards for Brianna" she wrote forthrightly about being a "metster"  a person with metastasized cancer who is going to die from it. While she appreciated the heart behind pink-ribbon awareness campaigns, she also believed the omnipresence of that narrative tended to push aside people like her.

"Much more money needs to go toward finding a cure," she wrote.

Through the worst horrors of her illness and treatment, Heather kept seizing the day. The Do It For The Love Foundation arranged free tickets for her to see Motley Crue, a band she loved so much she had seen them 10 times before, with Jeff in Milwaukee. She was so sick and chemo-battered she'd already taken a meeting with hospice people. But with her oncologist's blessing, she went to the concert, wearing her black "I'm not dead yet" T-shirt and a shiny purple wig.

Backstage, she joked with the band that they were both on their farewell tours. To her surprise, she got a pep talk from Crue bassist Nikki Sixx. She wrote in her book:

"'Listen to me, Heather,' he said with his hands firmly on my shoulders, looking straight into my eyes. 'I'm going to do everything I can to make this an incredible show and evening for you. I want you to have the greatest night of your life tonight.'

"And I did."

First cards opened

Since her mom's death, Brianna has opened two of the cards: one for Valentine's Day, and one for her fifth birthday. Jeff has a few unopened cards for spontaneous occasions at their home; the rest sit in a safe-deposit box, awaiting their moments.

He said Bri has her sad times but is a resilient girl. "Honestly, I wish I handled it as well."

Jeff would advise couples in a situation like theirs to do what they want to do, and enjoy each other. Based on their experience, he suggests a metster stop working, if that's practically possible. He praised Heather's medical team for their candor as well as their support. Once someone has been declared terminal, he said, "that person has already gotten the worst news of their entire life. No need to sugarcoat stuff."

Most importantly, he would recommend Heather's mantra: Make every day matter.

"Don't put things off to the next test, the next result," he said.

The disease claimed Heather's body but not her spirit.

"Don't say I lost to cancer. Because cancer may have taken almost everything from me, but it never took my love or my hope or my joy," Heather wrote in a message that Jeff posted on Facebook after her death.

She was 36.
Jimmy Buffett will make his annual stop at Alpine Valley Music Theatre on Sept. 3. Credit: Peter Barreras

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Parrotheads will have a chance to look for that lost shaker of salt at Alpine Valley Music Theatre Sept. 3.

That's when Jimmy Buffett & the Coral Reefer Band will be back for its annual concert at the East Troy amphitheater. G. Love & Special Sauce will open.

Tickets are available beginning at 10 a.m. May 13 by calling (800) 745-3000 or visiting ticketmaster.com. Prices have yet to be announced.

More On Music

Find out about the week's must-see shows, concert tickets and more in the newsletter "Piet Levy's Music Picks." Subscribe at jsonline.com/newsletters.

Piet talks about concerts, local music and more on "TAP'd In" with Jordan Lee, 8 a.m. Thursdays on WYMS-FM (88.9).
Fall colors surround the Bayfield harbor. Credit: Bayfield Chamber of Commerce

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Now that we've jumped right over spring into summer, it's time to start thinking about getaways.

Consider Bayfield, which was named one of America's best coastal small towns by USA Today's 10Best.

The town on the shore of Lake Superior in northern Wisconsin is considered the gateway to the Apostle Islands, a popular spot for sailing, kayaking and boat cruises in the summer. 10Best said Bayfield is also "particularly charming come autumn, when foliage is at peak color and apple harvest is in full swing."

The small town was 10th on the website's list, while Ogunquit, Maine, was No. 1.

For a spot to sip a cold brew, try Madison during Craft Beer Week (through Sunday) or 3 Sheeps Brewing Co.'s new taproom in Sheboygan.

Both spots were among Draft magazine's recommendations of where to drink beer in May.

Madison Craft Beer Week includes dozens of special events and tappings around town, including the release of Common Thread  this year, a gose beer created collaboratively by a handful of Wisconsin brewers.

Sheboygan's 3 Sheeps Brewing Co. opened its new 10,000-square-foot warehouse and taproom at the end of April, with plans for a patio this summer. On warm days, the taproom's garage doors open to create an indoor-outdoor space.

Madison: the most expensive destination in the Midwest?

At least when it comes to lodging costs it is, according to a recent survey by chicagohotels.org. While the source may seem suspicious (Chicago came in second on the list), the website based its rankings on the average rate of a double room in May 2016 in the region's 30 most popular cities. The survey excluded accommodations that were not within one mile of the city center, had less than a three-star rating and had less than a "Good" rating on TripAdvisor.

Madison's average nightly rate was $182, while Chicago's was $176. Milwaukee was 26th on the list with an average rate of $98.

ABOUT THIS FEATURE

How do we rate? There is no shortage of lists, rankings and charts to tell us. Adding Us Up is a recurring look at where Milwaukee and Wisconsin rank on the latest lists, from the semi-serious to the silly. If you spot a ranking that rates, share it with us at greensheet@jrn.com.
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A Milwaukee man wanted in the fatal shooting of another man on the city's north side was charged Thursday with first-degree reckless homicide, according to a criminal complaint.

Andreal Demone Washington, 47, is accused of killing Travis Deon Williams, 31, Saturday inside a home in the 5800 block of N. 64th St., according to the complaint filed in Milwaukee County Circuit Court.

An arrest warrant has been issued for Washington, according to court records.

The criminal complaint indicates that Washington claimed Williams owed him money before shooting him.
Attorney General Brad Schimel points to graphics during an explanation of the Eagle Nation shooting during Fridays press conference at Neenah City Hall. Credit: Danny Damiani

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Neenah - No charges will be filed against two Neenah police officers who fatally shot hostage Michael L. Funk during a Dec. 5 standoff at Eagle Nation Cycles.

The Wisconsin Attorney General's Office determined officers Craig Hoffer and Robert Ross were justified in killing Funk after he escaped out a back door of the building carrying a handgun.

Attorney General Brad Schimel announced the decision Friday at a press conference at City Hall. It came after a five-month investigation by the Wisconsin Department of Justice. State law requires that an independent agency investigate when police kill a person.

"The officers acted in an objectively reasonable manner," Schimel said.

After Schimel's statement, three people wearing "Eagle Nation" T-shirts left the room.

Schimel said the officers believed Funk had been shooting at them from inside Eagle Nation, based on body camera conversations. An officer said "that's him," referring to Funk coming out the back door.

The attorney general also said that "recordings reveal officers believed they had been ambushed and baited for the purpose of being killed."

After Schimel's initial remarks, a video depicting a comprehensive view of the incident was shown.

During the video, police yell "show me your hands!" after Funk was shot.

Funk, 60, and two other men were held at gunpoint by hostage-taker Brian T. Flatoff in a dispute over a motorcycle, according to the criminal complaint against Flatoff.

A so-called hasty team of five Neenah police officers, including several SWAT officers, tried to enter the building through a back door to rescue the hostages but were driven back by gunfire from Flatoff, who was armed with a MAC-10 pistol.

During the attempted entry, two officers fell down a staircase and Flatoff shot Hoffer in the helmet, the complaint says. Officer Jonathan Kuffel returned fire before the team retreated.

Minutes later Funk escaped out the back door while Flatoff shot at him from inside. Funk drew a handgun from the small of his back  he had a concealed carry permit  and pointed it at the door in the direction of Flatoff. He then turned to run and was shot and killed by Hoffer and Ross, who were about 75 feet away by Vicky's Beauty Shop.

Funk didn't point his gun at police and didn't fire a shot.

A Dec. 5 statement by Neenah police said Funk was shot after he didn't obey police commands to drop his handgun. In addition, the criminal complaint states Menasha police officer Raymond Berna heard officers yell, "Police, show me your hands" or "Police, drop the gun" before officers shot Funk.

A video of the shooting made public by USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin contradicts those statements.

Use of force

Neenah City Attorney Jim Godlewski said state law doesn't require a warning before officers shoot.

"The first priority is to preserve and protect human life," Godlewski said. "When they saw the gun (in Funk's hand), that became an immediate danger and threat to human health and safety."

The Neenah Police Department's use of force policy states an officer may use deadly force:

To protect him/herself or others from what he/she reasonably believes would be an imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury.

To stop a fleeing subject when the officer has probable cause to believe that the person has committed, or intends to commit, a felony involving the infliction or threatened infliction of serious bodily injury or death, and the officer reasonably believes that there is an imminent risk of serious bodily injury or death to any other person if the subject is not immediately apprehended. Under such circumstances, a verbal warning should precede the use of deadly force, where feasible.

Godlewski said the immediacy of the perceived threat must be considered.

"Would it have been desirable to have a warning? Probably, but it's where feasible," he said. "Given the distance (about 75 feet), I'm not sure that it was feasible."

Hoffer and Ross have not been disciplined, Godlewski said, and he doesn't expect that they will be.

Neenah police hired consultant Jim Lewis, a former Green Bay and interim Appleton and Grand Chute police chief, to conduct an independent administrative review of the shooting. Lewis found that Hoffer and Ross acted within the department's deadly force policy and that "any reasonable officer under similar circumstances would have felt that their lives were in danger."

"I do not find any training or policy issues that are deficient in this case and that all three officers who fired their weapons did so in an appropriate manner," Lewis said in his report.

A $3.5 million wrongful death claim filed by Funk's widow, Theresa Mason-Funk, alleges Hoffer suffered a concussion when he was shot in the helmet and should have been relieved of duty.

Godlewski said Hoffer was evaluated by paramedics after Funk was shot. They determined Hoffer didn't have a concussion.

Flatoff, 46, of Stevens Point, faces 11 felony charges, including felony murder and attempted first-degree intentional homicide, in connection with the standoff and shooting that led to Funk's death. He also faces five felony charges in the case for a disturbance that preceded the standoff.

Flatoff pleaded not guilty to the charges and will return to court at 9:15 a.m. May 16.

FULL COVERAGE:Eagle Nation Cycles shooting

Duke Behnke: 920-993-7176, or dbehnke@postcrescent.com; on Twitter @DukeBehnke
Francis Okonmah, 23, of Milwaukee, vapes as he sits outside Jo-Cat's Pub on Thursday, May 5. Electronic cigarettes and premium cigars will now be regulated the same way as tobacco cigarettes and regular cigars, according to a new federal rule issued on Thursday. Credit: Mike De Sisti

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In an effort to tame the "wild, wild west" of the unregulated electronic cigarette market, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced new rules Thursday authorizing the agency's scrutiny over the manufacturing process and mandating e-cigarette makers disclose all ingredients  including potentially harmful chemicals.

Small vape shops say the measures will surely put them out of business. Among the provisions: Manufacturers must pass a pre-market review. Such reviews can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, possibly millions, depending on the number of products.

FDA officials say the rules will ensure that the new tobacco products on the market have been evaluated and potential risks communicated to consumers. Electronic cigarettes and e-liquids used in vaping devices don't contain tobacco but usually have liquid nicotine derived from tobacco. Until Thursday, they remained unregulated.

"We haven't been doing all we can to protect Americans from the harmful effect of tobacco use, particularly our nation's youth and young adults," Robert Califf, FDA commissioner, said in a news conference.

"Today's rule is a milestone in consumer protection and marks a new chapter in our efforts to do everything we can under the law to protect Americans from the dangers of tobacco products."

Studies have shown electronic cigarettes and e-liquids used for vaping can contain diacetyl and 2,3-pentanedione, two chemicals  added for their buttery flavor  associated with serious and sometimes fatal lung disease.

Researchers at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health called for "urgent action" last year after their study, sponsored by the National Institutes of Health, found 39 of 51 e-liquids tested had diacetyl.

Before that, a cardiologist in Greece found diacetyl and 2,3-pentanedione in nearly 75% of the 159 samples of sweet flavored e-liquids that he tested.

An investigation by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel last year found diacetyl is present in e-cigarettes and liquids even when manufacturers claim it's not. Manufacturers often trust their flavor suppliers and don't always test for the chemicals. When they do, the testing method often used isn't sensitive enough to detect lower levels, the investigation found.

Diacetyl was tied to deaths and serious lung disease in hundreds of workers in the microwave popcorn industry in the early and mid-2000s. The Journal Sentinel's recent investigation exposed how the chemical is harming workers who spend their days roasting and grinding coffee.

Francis Okonmah, a 23-year-old from Milwaukee who has been vaping for a couple of months, said the new regulations are a positive change.

"I think the FDA thing is probably a good call," Okonmah said. "The government needs to regulate what goes in the liquid, the e-juices. ... To be honest, I don't even know what I'm sucking in."

Thursday's rule gives manufacturers two years to apply for a pre-market review and one year to continue operating while the FDA conducts the review. E-cigarette makers must include information in the application about all the investigations into the health risks as well as the components, ingredients, additives and properties of the product. They also must "provide scientific data to demonstrate that the new tobacco product is beneficial to the population as a whole including users and non-users," according to the FDA's published information on the application process.

Sales to minors banned

The new rule, which takes effect in 90 days, also bans the sale of electronic cigarettes to minors, requires a photo ID to purchase the products and mandates health warning labels on packaging and advertising, among other provisions.

Matt Sheldon, spokesman for the Smoke Free Alternatives Trade Association, the industry's largest trade group, said in an interview the regulations are "very problematic."

"Today's final rule pulls the rug out from the nine million smokers who have switched to vaping, putting them in jeopardy of returning back to smoking, which kills 480,000 Americans each year and costs the U.S. more than $300billion in annual health care expenses," Sheldon wrote in a statement.

Sheldon called the regulations "so burdensome" that all the studies required would make it cost prohibitive for the vast majority of businesses. The regulations would "essentially ban 99% of all vapor products on the market," he said.

Other vaping advocates called the new rules a win for Big Tobacco, which has gotten into the e-cigarette market as well.

"Big Tobacco goes from minority player to majority, nearing complete control over the industry," said Gregory Conley, spokesman for the American Vaping Association.

The FDA proposed the new rules in 2014 and spent nearly two years combing through the roughly 135,000 public comments it received and considering evidence affecting not only smokers and vapers but the whole population, said Mitch Zeller, the FDA's director of the Center for Tobacco Products.

"What we have to do is public health balancing," he said. "From a public health perspective, any initiation of e-cigarettes by someone who never previously used any tobacco products is not good for public health."

Zeller noted that while anecdotes describe e-cigarettes helping smokers kick their habit, published literature doesn't support the notion of e-cigs being effective cessation aids. About 70% of adult e-cigarette users continue to smoke conventional cigarettes, he said.

He said one of the driving forces in the rule-making was the fact that a skyrocketing number of youth are beginning to vape. The percentage of high school students who reported using e-cigarettes jumped to 16% in 2015 from less than 2% in 2011, according to FDA reports.

"No kid should be inhaling an aerosol or vapor that contains nicotine that is capable of addicting," Zeller said. "We know from the history of cigarette smoking that the earlier somebody becomes addicted to nicotine, the harder it is for them to quit later in life.

"I hope everybody can agree that kids should not be initiating on e-cigarettes simply because of the harm that can come from exposure to nicotine."

Mike De Sisti of the Journal Sentinel staff contributed to this story.

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Read the Journal Sentinel's investigation into the dangers of the chemical diacetyl, which is commonly found in e-cigarettes and the coffee-roasting process, at jsonline.com/

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Donna and Donald Baumgartner and their family are turning over Paper Machinery to the employees. Credit: Mark Hoffman

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For 85-year-old Donald Baumgartner, life is still an adventure.

He likes driving fast cars in Italy and soaking up the drama at the Florentine Opera in Milwaukee, scuba diving in the Maldives and attending graceful performances of the Milwaukee Ballet.

Baumgartner is a hard-charging businessman who carved out a splendid and fruitful career in manufacturing at Paper Machinery Corp. in Milwaukee.

On Monday, a man who prides himself on living very much in the moment made a dramatic move when he and his son, John, and their families announced they will turn their company over to their employees.

It was the kind of story that made news across the country.

"This has been enormously exciting for me," Baumgartner said as he sat alongside his wife, Donna, in the living room of their River Hills home.

Baumgartner isn't walking away from the firm that he founded in 1951 and which manufactures machines used to produce paperboard cups and containers. Baumgartner will serve as chairman of the board of directors while his son remains on the board. An employee stock ownership plan was established, benefiting both the employees and the Baumgartners.

"I intend to keep an eye on these guys," Baumgartner said with a smile.

No one would expect anything different.

Baumgartner is one of these out-of-central casting businessmen and philanthropists, old-school, entrenched in his hometown. He learned hard work from his father, John, who launched old-line Milwaukee firms Reliable Tool and Mercury Engineering, and his mother, Mae Greenwald, who owned and operated a restaurant, Glenn's Grill, on the city's north side.

His wife, Donna, whom he married in 1979, opened his eyes to the world of art and the satisfaction that comes with being a philanthropist and patron. He introduced her to the beauty of opera. Donald still recalls the first contribution he made, some $3,000 to the Milwaukee Ballet.

The Baumgartners are key contributors to the Milwaukee Film Festival, Milwaukee Ballet, Florentine Opera Company and the Milwaukee Art Museum. She sits on the film festival and ballet boards, and he's a life director at the opera.

A current trustee at MAM, Baumgartner is a past president and chaired the museum's building committee during the construction of the glorious Calatrava addition, which became a city landmark. The Baumgartners became close friends with the architect, Santiago Calatrava, who stayed at their home. They're still entranced by the memories of Calatrava constantly drawing everyday items, his mind and his hands always at work.

"If I'm making breakfast, (Calatrava's) doing water colors of the orange juice, and the bagel and the salmon," Donna Baumgartner said. "He's brilliant on any subject."

For Baumgartner, there is nothing he is personally more proud of than his work on the Calatrava addition, especially in being among those who helped see the project through after fundraising fell off following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Those who know them are struck by the Baumgartners' zest for life. Donald has a large family  four children by two previous marriages, nine grandchildren and a great-grandchild.

"He is just a larger-than-life person," said Michael Pink, Milwaukee Ballet artistic director. "Behind every successful man is a powerful lady. Donna stays in the background a lot. But I can assure you without his beautiful wife he wouldn't be as successful."

William Florescu, general director of the Florentine Opera, recalled a trip to Italy when Donald got behind the wheel of a rental car and maneuvered the streets just like a local, unperturbed by the often unpredictable traffic.

"I find them personally inspiring and sort of a model for how you stay involved and active," he said.

Dan Keegan, MAM director, said the Baumgartners are just "total absorbers of life. They're a team, they're a duo."

They're world travelers, too. In the basement of their home is a map with dozens of pins marking where they've been on every continent. There are also pins dotting a line of travel across the Atlantic.

Back in 1979, Donald found out his father was going to ship a 57-foot long-range cruiser to Europe. Maybe he had one too many martinis, Donald recalled, but he volunteered to take the vessel across.

Donald, Donna and Donald's son John hopped aboard The Tenora, took it out of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., for a stop in Bermuda. And then came the 11-day journey to the Azores.

"We crossed at 7 knots," he said.

The trip was rough. Donald broke his nose. Donna was battered by winds. But they all survived in one piece.

"They laughed at us in the Azores because we were a relatively small boat," Donna said. "It was not a big, hardy seagoing vessel."

He's proud of the deal he struck for his business. Setting up the ESOP wasn't easy, he said, as he described a process that began in October.

"I'm pleased that it's done, I'm delighted that it's done," he said. "But I can certainly understand why most business owners would rather just sell, take the money and run rather than go put an ESOP together. We've had a battery of lawyers work on this night and day for months and months and months. It is very complicated to get all the pieces together."

Baumgartner said his father built three Milwaukee companies and sold them off, with the result being the firms left town and the workers lost their jobs.

"I didn't want it to happen to the people who work for us now," he said. "They helped build this business. Their loyalty, their dedication, their hard work is what made the company what it is today. I wanted to make damn sure they were properly rewarded for that."

For their next chapter, the Baumgartners are in the early stages of establishing a foundation to continue their philanthropic work. But one thing is clear, Donald Baumgartner has promised his wife that he won't retire.

"He's still going to go to work," she said. "This has been a very bittersweet thing. It's more fun to grow a business, than it is to..."

As his wife began to choke up, Donald Baumgartner said, "You can't even say it. Sell a business."

"I am hoping Donald will put the story of the company together at least for the employees," Donna Baumgartner said. "There's enough material. It would be nice to have the story down."
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As public school parents, it's tough to believe in our leaders in Madison. Many say that they support our kids' schools, but in vote after vote, they are not on our side. Too many in Madison don't believe that our kids' public schools are the heart of our communities. They don't stand up for our kids.

The cuts to our kids' schools are hard to stomach. A majority of our state's politicians have slashed more than $1 billion from our kids since 2008.

These politicians cut more money from public schools than any Midwestern state since 2008. Only Oklahoma, Alabama and Arizona have cut schools more than Wisconsin has, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

For the first time in state history, Wisconsin's investment in our kids' public education is below the national average.

But on Jan. 29, it felt like something had changed. In his 2016 "state of the state" address, Gov. Scott Walker committed to "invest every penny of savings into public education." He said words we've been longing to hear, saying, "Even before the next budget, we want to put more resources into public education."

Our skeptical hearts lifted.

After months of parent advocacy through postcards, emails, phone calls, office visits and more, it felt as if someone was listening to our parent pleas for help. Maybe Madison was ready to support our kids' public schools again.

After all, the people of Wisconsin were calling for action. The day before Walker's speech, a Marquette University Law Poll revealed that 57% of Wisconsinites said our kids' public schools receive too little in funding. Only 7% said our neighborhood schools are funded too much. Back from the presidential campaign trail, maybe Walker would seek to simultaneously strengthen our kids' schools and his approval rating.

Unfortunately, a majority of our politicians are who we thought they were. They don't support our kids' schools.

This winter, state legislators such as Representatives Robin Vos of Burlington, Dale Kooyenga and Rob Hutton and Sen. Leah Vukmir of Brookfield voted to funnel millions more in funding away from our kids. On March 30, two months after the "state of the state" speech, Walker signed a bill that cut $5 million more from our kids' schools.

Soon after, on April 5, a historic number of referendums were put in ballots across the state. More than 70 referendums asked voters to increase property taxes to prevent cuts and school closings. Local taxpayers were asked to carry the extra burden because a majority of our state's leaders had failed to plan and failed to fund our kids' schools adequately and appropriately.

What a stunning failure to support our kids.

This funding failure has held our kids' schools back. Instead of making investments to improve public education  data-driven solutions such as early childhood development, educator preparation and innovation  our districts and our school families had to spend time rallying support for referendums.

Despite many of today's politicians, our kids and our kids' public schools continue to persevere. Wisconsin ranks second in America in ACT scores. Graduation rates are among the best in the nation. How can our kids and schools defy the odds? Anyone with sense knows that these accolades weren't earned today. They were earned more than a decade ago through wise investments in young kids. Strong math and reading skills in elementary schools are some of the strongest predictors for secondary school success.

We need state leaders who will stop sending our schools backward. Let's move forward. Let's raise the restrictive revenue cap and sufficiently increase state aid so local communities have the resources to innovate and strengthen our kids' public schools. Let's pause the statewide expansion of voucher schools until measures are in place that make them accountable to taxpayers.

Let's support the only school system that serves all and lifts all  public schools  before it's too late.

Mary Young is president of Support Our Schools Wauwatosa (SOS); Marva Herndon and Gail Hicks and co-chairs of Women Committed to An Informed Community, based in Milwaukee; and Sandy Whisler is president of Citizen Advocates for Public Education of Lake Mills.
In this March 2011 photo made from surveillance video released by the Harnett County, N.C., Detention Center, inmate Brandon Bethea lies on the floor of a jail cell after an officer shocked him with a stun gun. Bethea died after being hit. Credit: Harnett County Detention Center/The News & Observer via AP

The man was tased by the police and then left to die on the floor of a jail cell. He was 24, mentally ill and he was black.

In the surveillance video, Brandon Bethea is hit three times with the stun gun during the March 2011 incident while being restrained by leg shackles. He dies on the floor of the cell in the North Carolina jail. The video was finally released Tuesday.

Officers say Bethea was mouthing off and making threats before the incident. At one point in the video at least five law enforcement officers are standing over Bethea who appears to be motionless on his back, before the officers leave the cell. No one checks on him for 20 minutes.

As if Bethea's treatment wasn't egregious enough, none of the officers involved was punished. John Clark, 54, the man who tased him, still has his $40,000-a-year job. Clark, who is black, said he regrets the incident and wishes he had died that night instead of Bethea.

If you've questioned the Black Lives Matter movement, maybe you should stop questioning it: Black men are still dying at the hands of police in record numbers.

Five years go by before the public is allowed to see footage of the incident. Those involved are not punished, and because the victim has a record or is considered low class, his death is swept under the rug.

And for readers who will counter: Blacks kill blacks so why aren't you talking about that? The short answer is, I do talk about it. But when blacks kill or hurt other people, they are prosecuted and incarcerated for their actions. Officers often aren't prosecuted, and that is a problem because they shouldn't be considered above the law.

The Bethea family did receive compensation  by agreeing to not talk about the case  but little justice. The county awarded them $350,000. Meanwhile, Bethea becomes another footnote in a long line of black men who have lost their lives at the hands of law enforcement.

This is not a knock on all officers. Police put their lives on the line all the time. This was evident Thursday night when a veteran officer was shot in the chest chasing down an armed robbery suspect near N. 76th St. and W. Mill Road. The officer was saved by his bulletproof vest. Burt Johnson, 38, was killed after firing at officers, Police Chief Edward Flynn said. Johnson, 38, was accused of robbing the O'Reilly Auto Parts store nearby. His gun was recovered at the scene.

But still: Despite making up 2% of the total U.S. population, black men between the ages of 15 and 34 make up more than 15% of all deaths logged by police in 2015. Their rate of police-involved deaths was five times higher than for white men the same age, a Guardian report said.

When compared with mortality data, one in every 65 deaths of a young African-American man in the U.S. is a killing by police.

In Milwaukee, we know firsthand what this looks like. Dontre Hamilton was fatally shot 14 times on April 30, 2014, in Red Arrow Park by then Milwaukee police officer Christopher Manney.

Manney lost his job but was never criminally charged. Friends and family showed support for the Hamilton family on April 30 on what is being called "Dontre Day."

Before the encounter, a pair of officers responded to a call that Dontre was sleeping in the park. They checked on him twice and found he was doing nothing wrong. When Manney arrived  the third officer to check on Dontre  he patted down Hamilton and a confrontation ensued. Manney was fired for "not following protocol."

Bethea being tased to death in a jail cell by a black officer is just as bad as Eric Garner being choked to death by a gang of white New York City police officers in 2014.

Garner's crime? Allegedly selling loose cigarettes on the street. While he was being choked, he can be heard gasping "I can't breathe." The incident was captured on video. He was not armed.

A perception study conducted by the Wisconsin Professional Police Association shows that white people view police much differently than minorities do when it comes to deadly force. About 63% of whites responded deadly force is "always or most of the time" necessary and "justified" compared with just 24% of minorities.

Nationally, in 2015, unarmed black people were killed by police at five times the rate of unarmed whites, according to the group Mapping Police Violence.

The report says that black men are killed by police nearly twice a week and only 10 of the 102 cases in 2015 where an unarmed black person was killed by police resulted in an officer or officers being charged with a crime.

In one of the cases where an officer was charged, a citizen's video helped a grand jury issue a murder indictment.

Walter Scott, 50, the father of four, was shot in the back April 4, 2015, while he was running away from a police officer in South Carolina. The officer, Michael Stager, initially claimed that Scott grabbed his Taser after a traffic stop and pointed it at him. Video captured by a bystander showed a different story.

Scott was black; Stager is white. Scott was not armed, and the North Charleston police chief told reporters that he was sickened by what he saw.

Until we all get sickened by the number of black men dying at the hands of law enforcement officers, little will change. I'm sick of writing about these stories, but I will do it until it stops.

James E. Causey is a Journal Sentinel columnist and blogger. Email james.causey@jrn.com. Facebook: fb.me/jamescausey.12 Twitter: jecausey
U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson (right) early next week will meet with federal Appeals Court Judge Merrick Garland, President Barack Obamas nominee to the vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court.

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U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson is expected to meet early next week with U.S. Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland, according to those familiar with the process.

But the Republican from Oshkosh said Friday that the American people should be in charge of the nomination through their votes in November  effectively leaving it to a new president to name a new justice.

Johnson has joined most other Senate Republicans in setting up a blockade to prevent President Barack Obama from filling the vacancy left by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia. Still, Johnson has previously expressed a willingness to meet with Garland.

"What I do know about Judge Garland is that he would be a super legislator," Johnson said during a campaign appearance in Milwaukee.

Johnson said Garland, chief judge of the federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., has shown "he is very open to the regulatory overreach" of government agencies.

"He also has a record of being hostile, in my viewpoint, to the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms," Johnson said.

"I was certainly elected to confirm judges, I mean people like Scalia," Johnson added. "So it's perfectly appropriate for the other coequal branch, the Senate, to give our advice, 'Don't even bother with the nominee.'"

Johnson and his Democratic counterpart, U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin, remain on opposite sides of the court battle. Baldwin came to Milwaukee Friday to step up pressure on Johnson.

Speaking at Milwaukee's waterfront in front of mobile billboard that challenged Johnson to "Fill the Vacant Seat on the Supreme Court," Baldwin sought to tie the stalled nomination with presidential politics and the emergence of presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump.

"Senate Republicans have failed to do their jobs," Baldwin said. "And now they have literally put their faith in Donald Trump. Senate Republicans have put partisan politics ahead of their own constitutional duties. And now they have literally pledged their allegiance to Donald Trump. For Senate Republicans to trust Donald Trump with the nomination to America's highest court is dangerous."

Johnson reaffirmed that he'll support Trump as the GOP nominee. Johnson said he has been hearing that "there is a real desire on the part of our presumptive nominee to reach out to members of Congress."

"I want to give our nominee a little space," Johnson said, indicating that it takes quite a while for someone in the private sector to get up to speed on the key issues.

"Let's give our presumptive nominee the opportunity to get the briefings," Johnson said.

Johnson said voters in Wisconsin are sick of career politicians and failed government.

"I think it's really quite good that people from a different perspective, from the business sector, the private sector, we know how to solve problems," Johnson said.

Johnson is in a tough re-election fight with Democrat Russ Feingold. On Friday, Feingold met with senior citizens at a Milwaukee coffee shop, where he received the endorsement of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare.

Feingold said Trump "wasn't ready to be president" and that it was "irresponsible for people to support Donald Trump whether he's the Republican nominee or not."
In its application for a Lake Michigan water supply, the City of Waukesha has proposed returning water to the lake by discharging treated wastewater to the Root River at S. 60th St. in Franklin. Credit: Don Behm

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Great Lakes officials are further tightening the spigot on Waukesha's request for Lake Michigan water and recommending numerous conditions on distribution of the water and return of treated wastewater to the lake, a draft document says.

When representatives of eight U.S. states and two Canadian provinces meet Tuesday in Chicago, they will attempt to reach consensus on a lower volume of lake water that Waukesha would receive  no more than an average of 8.4 million gallons a day by midcentury  if the request is approved.

To make that work, Waukesha would have to follow through on a plan to reduce water use through conservation measures, said Dan Injerd, director of the Illinois Office of Water Resources.

Waukesha's current distribution area would need nearly 8.4 million gallons by 2050, according to city consultants who accounted for water conservation efforts.

Adding small pieces of two adjacent municipalities to a revised lake water service area still under review by the regional officials would require extra volume, Waukesha Water Utility General Manager Dan Duchniak said.

Duchniak has asked regional officials to consider an average of 8.76 million gallons a day for a future water service area.

Injerd described the difference of 360,000 gallons by midcentury as minimal and said 8.4 million gallons a day would accommodate the proposed distribution area if the conservation plan succeeds.

The state and provincial representatives plan to meet Tuesday and Wednesday in a final attempt to reach consensus on the city's request. The draft document summarizing their findings and the city's application are posted on a Waukesha project website established by the Conference of Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Governors and Premiers.

Waukesha has proposed buying lake water from Oak Creek, pumping it to Waukesha and returning treated wastewater to the Root River, a tributary of Lake Michigan. A 2008 federal law known as the Great Lakes protection compact requires the water to be returned to the lake.

At the conclusion of next week's meetings, the regional officials are expected to recommend whether the governors of the eight states, or their designees, should approve the request during a June 13 meeting in Chicago. A unanimous, affirmative vote of the eight states is required for approval.

Any recommendation to approve from the regional group would come with a long list of conditions to be discussed Tuesday. Among those conditions:

For a minimum of 10 years, Waukesha must monitor water quality in the Root River to determine whether wastewater discharges harm the stream.

The city must establish a comprehensive collection program targeting unused prescription medicines and personal care products that its customers might flush into sewers.

Pharmaceuticals are not fully removed in wastewater treatment, so this condition would reduce amounts of the pollutants returned to the lake, officials said.

The city has to provide an annual report on the effectiveness of its water conservation efforts. The conservation plan must be updated at least every 10 years.

The regional group has not achieved consensus on a central element of Waukesha's plan: boundaries of the area to be served by lake water if the request is approved.

A straw vote of the officials during a May 2 conference call revealed a split over whether to further trim a lake water distribution area as redrawn by the group in April.

In a request forwarded to Great Lakes officials in January, Waukesha had asked to pump up to an average of 10.1 million gallons of lake water a day by 2050. City officials lowered the volume to 8.7 million gallons after regional officials moved to remove portions of three neighboring communities included in the original request.

Most of the Town of Waukesha, generally south of Lawnsdale Road, was taken out along with small portions of the towns of Genesee and Delafield.

Left on the service area map were Town of Waukesha islands completely surrounded by the city, border islands on the city's east edge isolated from the remainder of the town, and a handful of small pieces of the town mostly contained by the city and crossed by existing water mains.

A narrow slice of the City of Pewaukee south of I-94 also remains in the redrawn service area, under terms of a 1997 border agreement with Waukesha.

While most of the regional officials have said it would be reasonable to include those remaining pieces of adjacent communities in the plan, representatives of New York, Michigan, Quebec and Ontario want to consider lopping some off the map when they meet next week.

The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources has not commented on whether the smaller water distribution area would conflict with state law requiring a municipality's water service area to match its sewer service area.

The DNR in December approved Waukesha's earlier request to distribute up to 10.1 million gallons a day by midcentury to the larger, original water service area map.

The DNR says Waukesha does not have an adequate supply of water that is fit to drink, due to radium contamination of deep groundwater supplies, and that all the city's options outside the Great Lakes basin would have adverse effects on wetlands, streams and inland lakes.
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By Nomi Prins with Craig Wilson | (Tomdispatch.com) |  

Theres a pile of money hiding offshore. Its true that jobs are also leaving the United States because American companies find it convenient to cut labor costs by moving manufacturing abroad, the economic issue youre hearing most about in this election season. But the stunning amount of money that continues to flow across American borders (and those of other countries), and eventually disappears into the pockets of the corporate and political elite, ultimately causes even more damage to our finances and our lives.

While the two leading candidates for the presidency, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, have indeed suggested cosmetic fixes for a situation that only grows more extreme with the passage of time, they have themselves taken advantage of numerous tax efficiency strategies that make money evaporate. Of course, you shouldnt doubt for a second that theyll change their ways once in the Oval Office.

As with so much in our American heritage, theres a history to the offshore world, too. Finding places to shield money from tax collection first became commonplace among upper-crust industrialists, bankers, and even public servants back in the 1920s. Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon, a millionaire mogul who served presidents Calvin Coolidge, Warren Harding, and Herbert Hoover (and had a knack for cutting taxes on the wealthy), left office under mounting congressional probes into his tax evasion strategies.

Fast-forward about a century and tax dodging has been woven into the fabric of the lives of the affluent and corporate worldwide in an extraordinary way. According to an April 2016 Oxfam report, the top 50 U.S. companies are hoarding more than $1.4 trillion in cash offshore.

Whats more, for every dollar that these firms spent lobbying Congress for favorable tax treatment (a collective total of $2.6 billion between 2008 and 2014), they received $130 dollars in tax breaks and $4,000 in subsidies from the U.S. government. These companies, including Pfizer, Goldman Sachs, Dow Chemical, Chevron, Walmart, IBM, and Procter & Gamble, created an opaque and secretive network of more than 1,600 company subsidiaries located in tax havens that they decided to disclose. (Because of the weak reporting requirements of the Securities and Exchange Commission, there could be thousands more.) According to a March 3rd report from the Citizens for Tax Justice, the Fortune 500 companies are now saving $695 billion in federal income taxes on a total of $2.4 trillion in offshore holdings.

Americans cant afford to ignore such tax games, since were the ones who, in effect, wind up paying the taxes these firms dont. For government policymakers, such tax evasion is a grim matter of attrition, since the U.S. (and other countries) plunge ever deeper into debt thanks to such antics and then find themselves cutting services or raising taxes on us to cover the gap between the money theyre losing and the taxes theyre collecting.

Not only are such firms unpatriotic, they are parasitic and while theyre at it, they use similar techniques  lets not call it theft (though it is)  to avoid tax payments in the poorest places on Earth. As Oxfam reports, the biggest burden of tax havens falls on the poorest people. In the process, they only increase already oppressive levels of inequality globally.

Tax secrecy specialists  people working in the money-hiding field  help rich individuals, multinational corporations, political leaders, terrorists, and organized crime groups divert cash and capital, sometimes in staggering amounts, from local economies into an obscure, complex, multi-layered global financial network that operates outside any national or international regulatory or tax system. Given this, isnt it a little surprising that the top candidates for the presidency barely pay lip service to the impact of such hidden money? What toothless policies they have proposed to deal with the phenomenon will do little or nothing to change it.

The Panama Papers

U.S. trade agreements generally include rosy promises about partnering with regional economies around the world to encourage the flow of goods and services across borders. At the same time, they generally are focused on the obliteration of barriers that in any way restrict money from flowing out of the United States or into the embrace of other nations. The free movement of capital, or financial globalization as its called, has been a bedrock Washington policy for a century and, since the 1980s, places like Panama  a renowned tax haven  have abetted this process.

A month ago, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists released a trove of documents, 2.6 terabytes of them, including more than 4.8 million emails, 3 million database files, and 2.1 million PDFs. These were turned over by an undisclosed source (John Doe), communicating through encrypted channels to avoid repercussions. Now known as the Panama Papers, they reveal how elite multinational companies, the super rich, and government figures have engaged in tax-dodging practices engineered by a single Panama City-based law firm, Mossack Fonseca (MF).

In addition to public officials and billionaires, more than 500 global banks, their subsidiaries and branches, have registered at least 15,600 shell companies there using MFs services. That word shell is descriptively accurate since such companies rarely have employees and are commonly no more than a post office box providing a facade through which books can be doctored, taxes dodged, losses concealed, and money-laundering and other criminal actions carried out. And keep in mind that MF, which acts for approximately 300,000 companies, is only the fourth largest provider of such offshore services globally.

One mega-bank that used its services extensively was HSBC, which created an astonishing 2,300 shell companies with that law firms help. Well return to HSBC.

Mossack Fonsecas official mission, it claims, is to deliver quality, reliable and comprehensive services to our worldwide clients in the legal, trust, investment consultancy, and digital solution fields. Thats code for helping select establishment outfits and dubious enterprises to avoid paying taxes on profits, investments, or money made from buying and selling real estate, luxury yachts or planes, oil wells, weapons, or drugs, among other things.

Secrecy is its calling card. Tax havens, or locales amenable to tax dodging, whether in the Caribbean, Central America, Switzerland (still the worlds top location for financial secrecy), or for that matter the state of Delaware, exist to circumvent tax laws. Period. And these operations are so shady that even the functionaries working in the shadows to establish such secret accounts are barely aware of exactly who owns them, where the money came from, or where its going. For regulators, prosecutors, and tax collectors, the opacity is far worse.

You dont necessarily have to be rich or powerful to access the services of such offshore firms and banks, but it helps. Some havens take anyone ready to put up a minimum of $25,000, while others demand staggering sums. Western Samoa, for instance, requires a cool $10 million to get started.

The most alarming aspect of the Panama Papers revelations was not MFs clientele or even its secretive practices, but that what it does is completely legal. Nor was this the first such disclosure. In November 2014, for instance, the Luxleaks scandal involving a whole menagerie of Luxembourg-based tax schemes, as the Guardian put it, was disclosed by two whistleblowers from the accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers. (Luxembourg is a major European tax haven.) Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, Facebook, HSBC, JPMorgan Chase, and Microsoft were on the list of its more than 350 multinational tax avoiders.

Avoiding vs. Evading Taxes and Corporate Inversions

Avoiding and evading taxes are technically considered different kinds of acts, the former being legal in the U.S., the latter not. According to the Internal Revenue Service, Taxpayers have the right to reduce, avoid, or minimize their taxes by legitimate means. Tax evasion, on the other hand, involves an act to evade or defeat a tax, or payment of tax by deceit, subterfuge, camouflage, concealment, attempts to color or obscure events, or make things seem other than they are.

The line between the two is obviously thin and vague, but both practices result in the same thing: paying fewer taxes or hiding money.

The subject of tax avoidance and evasion has generally gotten little traction on the campaign trail in election 2016, the exception being corporate inversions. These happen when, for example, an American company merges with a foreign one in a tax haven, and so gets a lower tax rate by re-incorporating (filling out some paperwork) there. This, too, is legal, although it represents the purest form of corporate tax evasion. Perhaps you wont be surprised to learn that the practice began in Panama about 30 years ago.

In 2014, companies with household names like Apple, Microsoft, Pfizer, and General Electric avoided paying a collective $90 billion in taxes through inversion strategies. Apple led that list, holding $181.1 billion offshore. Thats a lot of iPhone sales.

The Leading Candidates and Hidden Money

Tax havens are, in essence, perfectly legal criminal facilities designed to steal money from the rest of us. The two leading candidates in this election season, however, arent talking about closing down tax havens for good (which would piss off lots of rich people, banks, drug cartels, and terrorists). They are instead focused on getting companies to voluntarily repatriate, or return, profits made abroad for taxation purposes or on closing tax loopholes that allow money to disappear. Neither, however, offers much detail as to what that means.

Both do share one thing, however, when it comes to tax havens: Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have companies registered at the same address (also shared by 285,000 other companies) in Wilmington, Delaware. In other words, they make use of the Delaware loophole, which allows for the legal shifting of earnings from elsewhere in the country to the ultimate tax haven state in the U.S. Neither, as Rupert Neate of the Guardian has written, has been willing to offer any explanation for this. Thats the political beauty of loopholes: closing one is different from eradicating an entire practice but suffices as a promise.

Hillary

Hillary has gone after tax havens before. In 2004, as a New York senator, she vowed to close tax loopholes for people who create a mailbox, or a drop, or send one person to sit on the beach in some island paradise and claim that it is their offshore headquarters. She introduced no bills to do so, however.

She has spoken out against corporate tax inversions, too. She wants Congress to prevent them by imposing what she calls a commonsense 50% threshold on them; in other words, as long as a company keeps at least half of its operations in this country, it would be considered a U.S. company for tax purposes, no matter the inversions. She also has favored an exit tax to ensure that multinationals pay a fair share of U.S. taxes owed on earnings stored overseas. Both of these suggestions would put some modest limits on offshore tax dodging (after the fact), but not come within a country mile of banning it.

On such subjects, she can sound strong indeed at appropriate moments. In February 2016, for instance, she said, We need to go after a company like Johnson Controls that is trying to avoid paying taxes after all of us bailed it out by pretending to sell itself in a so-called inversion in Europe. It evidently didnt matter to her that the same automotive parts company set to merge with Tyco International (based in Ireland to dodge taxes) had donated money to the Clinton Foundation charity as recently as December 2015. (Johnson Controls denied Hillarys claims that it had received a bailout during the financial crisis.)

Hillary, lest we forget, joined the board of directors of the the Clinton Foundation, the family charity, in 2013. She resigned in April 2015 to run for president. Now, keeping it in the family, her husband, Bill, and her daughter, Chelsea, remain standing members of the board. Spawned from the William J. Clinton Foundation, founded in 1997, the charity has raised $2 billion, has about 2,000 employees (including at times members of Hillarys political team), and boasts an annual budget of $223 million.

Like many gilt-edged couples, Hillary and Bill Clinton have themselves utilized onshore and offshore tax loopholes. In 2010, they used a common tax-dodging technique by placing their multi-million dollar home in Chappaqua, New York, in a residence trust. After he left office, Bill spent five years as an adviser to billionaire (now-ex-pal) Ron Burkles investment fund, Yucaipa Global, which had funds registered in the Cayman Islands and Dubai. That alliance netted Bill at least $15 million.

Hillarys bedrock thinking on money flowing out of the U.S. and into the offshore world can best be seen in her support for the 2012 U.S.-Panama Trade Promotion Agreement when she was secretary of state. The agreement removed barriers to U.S. services, including financial services, which actually simplified the process of squirreling money away in or through Panama by allowing it to flow freely into that country.

The Clinton Foundation inhales donations from people using tax havens (including Panama). Although Hillary denounced Mossack Fonsecas dealings on cue after the Panama Papers story broke, a number of individuals and multinationals that have contributed to the foundation used MF to establish offshore accounts, according to McClatchy. These include Canadian mining billionaire Frank Giustra who features in the foundations $25 million top-tier donor bracket, and two firms tied to Ng Lap Seng, the Chinese billionaire implicated in a major donor scandal involving the Clintons and the Democratic National Committee.

Similarly, in a speech she gave at the New School in July 2015, Hillary highlighted the criminal behavior of global bank HSBC. In 2012, the behemoth financial institution agreed to a record $1.92 billion settlement with the Department of Justice and the Treasury Department for enabling drug cartel money laundering and violating U.S. sanctions by conducting transactions for customers in Iran, Libya, Sudan, and Burma. She vowed, On my watch, it will change.

Yet, in 2014, the Clinton Foundation accepted between $500,000 and $1 million from that bank.

The Panama Papers are but one conflicted instance in which Hillarys stated beliefs, her actions, and the generosity of her friends and acquaintances came together in a contradictory fashion. The evidence suggests that tax-dodgers will, in fact, be able to breathe a sigh of relief if she becomes president. Her actions are likely to  if youll excuse the expression  trump her words when it comes to curtailing the behavior of offshore scofflaws in significant ways. And speaking of Trump

The Donald

Consider the fact that The Donald wont even disclose his tax returns. His indignantly delivered explanation is that they are under audit. Under the circumstances, dont hold your breath. Perhaps he doesnt make nearly as much money as he claims  or maybe he has an embarrassing tax haven habit. Who knows?

Ironically, Mossack Fonsecas Panama City headquarters is located a mere seven-minute drive from the Trump International Hotel and Towers in Panama City. (If youre interested, its website is pitching a bargain on rooms at 15% off our currently available Best Unrestricted Rate.) That decadent complex is one of many sketchy enterprises to which Trump lent his name for licensing purposes. According to his (unaudited) personal financial disclosure report filed with the Federal Election Commission, the deal earned him $5 million. In true Trumpian style, lawsuits and battles surround the endeavor.

Under the tax plan hes touting in his presidential campaign, U.S. businesses would see a reduction in their maximum tax rate from 35% to 15%. This lower rate (one of the best in the world) would, he claims, render corporate inversions unnecessary. The Donald apparently hopes that corporate America will be so eternally grateful to him that theyll move their money back onshore and pay taxes on it voluntarily (though most of them already dont pay the top tax rate here anyway).

Trumps views on a repatriation tax holiday that would let companies bring home their overseas stashes on a one-time basis for little or nothing have shifted over the course of his candidacy. Last year, he proposed the repatriation of hidden funds without penalty or taxation of any kind. Now hes advocating a more populist one-time 10% tax on them.

Although a key promise of his tax reform plan is to end the practice of stockpiling money in offshore accounts by American companies, he has personally invested in many of the companies that do so. As CBS News noted, in October 2015, Trump owned stock in 22 of the top 30 Fortune 500 companies ranked by their number of offshore subsidiaries. Its a group that has engineered 1,225 tax-haven subsidiaries holding $1.4 trillion. Of course, Trump has a keen understanding of the practices that disguise or shelter money from taxes. As he explained to supporters in Iowa this January, when it comes to his own business enterprises, I pay as little as possible. I use every single thing in the book.

Bernie

As far as we know, Bernie has no personal experience with tax havens and has a far more structured plan than either of the leading candidates to combat their money-sucking, tax-dodging prowess. His policies would prevent American companies from avoiding U.S. taxes through inversions, block them from escaping taxes by establishing a post office box in a tax haven site, and end the practice of letting corporations defer paying taxes on profits from offshore subsidiaries.

In the real world, financial speculation, crime, and tax evasion  sorry for this word again  trump the highly touted goal of free trade when it comes to tax havens. Bernie understood this well when he voted against the Panama free trade agreement of 2011. In a Senate speech on the subject, he presciently noted that Panama is a world leader when it comes to allowing large corporations and wealthy Americans to evade U.S. taxes by stashing their cash in offshore tax havens. And the Panama free trade agreement would make this bad situation much worse.

He was right then and he remains right today. Unfortunately, no one was listening or interested in acting on his warning  certainly not Hillary, who, as secretary of state, characterized the agreement as an example of the Obama Administrations commitment to economic statecraft and deepening our economic engagement throughout the world.

In practical terms, Sanders went significantly further than Hillary by formulating actual legislation on the subject. Last April, he introduced the Corporate Tax Dodging Prevention Act of 2015 in the Senate. Among other things, it aspires to prevent corporations from sheltering profits in tax havens like Bermuda and the Cayman Islands and would stop rewarding companies that ship jobs and factories overseas with tax breaks.

Regarding inversions, he would treat companies as American for tax purposes if they were majority-owned by U.S. interests and operating in this country. Even his plan, however, would fall short unless it made inversions illegal  and too many companies are invested in not letting that happen.

Ted

Ted would abolish the Internal Revenue Service and enable people and companies to file taxes on a postcard, so theres no real point in further analysis of his positions on tax havens.

Missing Money Costs

As of 2014, according to Gabriel Zucman, University of California economist and author of The Hidden Wealth of Nations, at least $7.6 trillion, or approximately 8% of global financial wealth, was missing somewhere offshore. His analysis demonstrates that the sorts of tax-dodging practices weve been discussing put governments across the planet in the red by approximately $200 billion annually. Tax avoidance by major U.S. companies costs governments an additional $130 billion per year since nearly a third of their profits are hidden offshore.

The U.N. estimates that tax dodging by multinational companies costs developing countries $100 billion a year, an amount equivalent to what it would cost to provide basic life-saving health services or safe water and sanitation to more than 2.2 billion people.

There are, in other words, harrowing costs to tax dodging. When the wealthy and powerful hide money from governments or speculate with it in sneaky ways, it destabilizes economies and enables the commission of crimes that place a further burden on ordinary people. When money flows from the economic necessities needed by the less privileged to the top fraction of a percent of the worlds population and is then hidden offshore, essentially disappeared, its a net drain on and a blow to the world economy. This impacts jobs and the quality of our future. Unfortunately, the leading candidates in this election year arent championing a major change for the better.

Nomi Prins, a TomDispatch regular, is the author of six books, a speaker, and a distinguished senior fellow at the non-partisan public policy institute Demos. Her most recent book is All the Presidents Bankers: The Hidden Alliances That Drive American Power (Nation Books). She is a former Wall Street executive. Special thanks go to researcher Craig Wilson for his superb work on this piece.

Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest Dispatch Book, Nick Turses Tomorrows Battlefield: U.S. Proxy Wars and Secret Ops in Africa, and Tom Engelhardts latest book, Shadow Government: Surveillance, Secret Wars, and a Global Security State in a Single-Superpower World.

Copyright 2016 Nomi Prins

[Note for TomDispatch Readers: Dont forget that Nick Turses powerful, firsthand report from the planets newest nation, now also a war crimes zone, is the latest Dispatch Book. Next Time Theyll Come to Count the Dead: War and Survival in South Sudan is a stunning work of journalism and an odyssey of the first order, a must-have for TomDispatch readers! As always with Nicks books, for a contribution of $100 or more ($125 if you live outside the U.S.), you can get a signed, personalized copy and in the process help ensure that more Dispatch Books appear in the world. Check our donation page for the details. Above all, I urge every TomDispatch reader to buy a copy. Help make the latest Dispatch Book a genuine success. With that in mind, Ive asked Haymarket Books, the fantastic publisher of our imprint, to offer TD readers a discount on it. Heres all you have to do: click on this link, which will take you to the Haymarket website. Then click add to cart, select the number of books you want, and click on checkout. After youve filled out your shipping and billing information, you will be asked to enter a coupon code. To purchase one book, enter TURSE25 and youll get 25% off the cover price; for five or more books, enter TURSE40 and youll get 40% off. Tom]

Via Tomdispatch.com

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Related video added by Juan Cole:

France 24: Panama Papers scandal: Will further strengthen maverick candidates like Sanders and Corbyn
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By: Emran Feroz | ( TeleSur |  

Europes first report on Islamophobia shows the dangerous climate Muslims live in, and that bigoty is closely linked with imperialist politics.

Throwing a pork head, or sometimes even a grenade, on a mosque. Assaulting a Muslim woman who wears a head scarf. Demonstrating against the building of a mosque or against the local supermarket which sells Halal food. Incidents like these are happening on a daily basis in 21st century Europe.



Paris Mosque

On May 3 the very first European Islamophobia Report (EIR) was presented at the European Union parliament in Brussels. The aim of its authors, leading experts in the field from all over Europe, is to analyze trends in the spread of Islamophobia in various European states. For 2015, 25 states have been analyzedand the results are frightful.

During the first half of 2015, and since the attacks on Charlie Hebdo, anti-Muslim attacks increased in France by more than 500 percent, with 75 percent of the victims women; because of their head scarves, the Muslim background of many is much easier to identify than is the case for men.

The reports makes clear that many non-Muslim citizens of Europe believe that Islam and its worshipers do not fit in their society. According to a recent poll by the Bertelsmann Foundation, 61 percent of Germans believe that Islam does not fit in the West, while 46 percent of the Britons think being Muslim in the United Kingdom is difficult.

Less Muslims, More Islamophobia

The authors conclude that the so-called refugee crisis has fueled resentment towards Muslims. Nevertheless, Islamophobia was already heavily present in the years before this crisis, especially in countries with tiny Muslim minorities, such as Hungary and Lithuania. Islamophobia has become a successful political tool to mobilize the masses. For that reason, many people tend to believe that Muslims in general are criminal and violent, although the crime statistics prove the opposite. Apart from that, people also often overestimate the number of Muslims in their countries.

In this context, it is noteworthy that many people in Europe still exclude their fellow Muslim citizens from society. For them, it seems that being Muslim and being European at the same time is impossible. Frighteningly, Muslims have not just become the other these daysthey are also considered a threat. Although the collected data in the EIR makes this very clear, European Muslims themselves have felt this for years years and do not need a study for confirmation.

Some people, like myself, have experienced this hostile attitude very early in life. Already at the age of nine, one day after the attacks of September 11, my teacher asked me in front of the whole class why these people did this, as if I knew Mohammad Ata personally. I did not know how to answer, but from that time on I was sure that my Afghan-Muslim identity would be a problem.

Some years later, I witnessed how the right-wing extremist Freedom Party of Austria (FPO) looked for a useful scapegoat for almost every problem in the country and, of course, found Muslims to blame. The partys leader, Heinz Christian-Strache, became infamous for attending rallies with a cross in his hand, warning against the Islamization of Europe.

WATCH: Anti-Muslim PEGIDA Movement Demonstrates Across Europe

Islamophobia and Imperialist Politics

The first time I witnessed Strache live was in my hometown Innsbruck, the capital of the federal state of Tyrol in western Austria. During his heavily secured rally, Strache remembered the legacy of Andreas Hofer, Tyrols local hero who fought against the Bavarian troops of Napoleon Bonaparte at the beginning of the 19th century. Strache suggested that todays enemies are not French or Bavarian soldiers, but Muslims, migrants and refugees. One of the policemen who secured the area against leftist protestors grinned maliciously at me.

At first, one might think that such a party could not be successful in this age, but this assumption is wrong. During the last few years, the FPO has gained a lot of support among the Austrian people. The peak of this support was reached last month when the FPOs candidate won the first round of the presidential elections. Now the Islamophobic fascists are one step away from power.

The struggle against Islamophobia is anything but easy. The EIRs authors do not want to act reproachfully. For that reason, they suggest that all European countries hold any kind of hate speech as a chargeable crime, and to tackle discrimination against Muslim women in the job market.

However, it is questionable whether European politics will be able to handle all these problems seriously. The phenomenon of Islamophobia is not new and has always been linked with imperialist politics. The construction of the Muslim other has become a useful tool to distract from own failures and to justify miseries elsewhere, such as Damascus and Kabul. Thanks to this kind of one-sided and egoistic politics, Islamophobia is on the risenot just on European streets, but in European parliaments.

Emran Feroz is a journalist based in Afghanistan. Follow him on Twitter: @Emran_Feroz

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By Joe Dyke | ( Your Middle East |  

American author Michael Chabons Jewish identity has long been central to his work. From 2001s Pulitzer Prize-winning The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay  the story of two Jewish cousins before, during and after World War II  to 2007s The Yiddish Policemens Union, Chabons novels have delved into what it means to be Jewish, especially in America.

Like many American Jews, Chabon has also long felt a connection to Israel, visiting the country first in 1992 with his Israeli-born wife, fellow author Ayelet Waldman.

But his most recent visit, which included a trip to the Palestinian territories with a number of prominent American authors, has raised hackles among some in the Jewish state.

Its aim was to raise awareness of the effects of Israels occupation of the territories, an issue Chabon says should be of particular resonance to Jews.

Part of what makes it uniquely horrible for me and what makes it distinct from apartheid is it is being done by Jews. I am a Jew, he told AFP by telephone after returning to the United States following last months trip.

(For) a people who went through such a horrific, prolonged persecution, to turn around and eventually oppress another people at such a mass bureaucratic level is somehow to me much more dismaying than apartheid  as horrible as apartheid was, and I am not trying to diminish it.

Chabons decision to become involved in campaigning against the occupation was steered by Waldman after a visit to the country of her birth two years ago.

Grievous injustice

She felt much more connected at a root level than she had ever expected, he said. In a way that was a dismaying moment for her. She felt If I am going to feel at home here, then I also have to take on this occupation.'

Last months tour saw writers including Dave Eggers and Pulitzer winner Geraldine Brooks meet Palestinians in east Jerusalem, Hebron and villages near Ramallah. Eggers also travelled to the Gaza Strip.

Israel has occupied the West Bank since 1967 and imposes a wide range of restrictions on its 2.5 million Palestinian residents. Several hundred thousand Israelis have also established settlements in the territories which the United Nations and much of the international community consider illegal.

In an interview with Jewish American publication The Forward after the visit, Chabon, 52, described the occupation as the most grievous injustice Ive ever seen.

Picked up by some Israeli media, his comments sparked widespread discussion online and much criticism.

Prominent pro-Israeli social media campaigner Arsen Ostrovsky said on Twitter that Chabon clearly hasnt seen much in his life then.

Author Jack Engelhard, writing for the Arutz Sheva Israeli news website, called his comments sickening, saying they smacked of someone knocked silly from too much American indulgence.

Many in Israel  especially on the right  bristle at criticism of the country by some American Jews, accusing them of not understanding the daily realities of living in the Jewish state.

But Chabon denied any hostility to Israel.

This idea of me being an enemy of Israel or hating Israel  I was so biased in favour of Israel, and I think still am on some level, that I was prepared and preferred to ignore it (the occupation), he said.

Because that is the only thing you can do if you want to hold on to your support in regard to Israel  you have to ignore it. The government knows that as well, so that is why they are working so hard to hide it and keep people, including ordinary Israelis, from ever having to see it.

Editing book on occupation

The tour was organised in conjunction with Breaking the Silence, a group that provides a platform for military veterans and serving soldiers to describe what they say are disturbing aspects of their service in operations in the West Bank and wars in the Gaza Strip.

Israeli Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon in March accused the group of treason, after they were alleged to have asked soldiers to disclose classified information. The organisation denied the claims.

Chabon and Waldman will now edit a book written by 25 prominent authors focussing on different aspects of daily life under the Israeli occupation, with the proceeds going to Breaking the Silence and a local Palestinian group.

Israeli officials declined to comment on the visit.

Chabon  whose last novel Telegraph Avenue was released in 2012 and who wrote lyrics for more than half the songs on Mark Ronsons last album  is the latest in a long line of cultural figures that have come out either in favour or against Israels policies.

Artists such as former Pink Floyd star Roger Waters have called for new measures against the country, but Harry Potter author JK Rowling has opposed a cultural boycott.

Via Your Middle East



Related video added by Juan Cole:

Time: 10 Questions for Michael Chabon
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

May 6, 2016



White House Acts on Corruption and Tax Evasion in Wake of Panama Papers

Washington DC - The Obama Administration announced actions to combat money laundering, corruption and tax evasion. In April, the "Panama Papers" leak exposed how "anonymous shell corporations" facilitate crime and corruption.



"It's crucial to global development that we stop corruption and tax evasion," noted Eric LeCompte, executive director of the religious development coalition Jubilee USA Network. "Developing countries lose a trillion dollars a year to corruption, crime and tax evasion."

According to a 2012 academic study from Griffith University, the United States is the second-easiest country in the world to set up an anonymous shell company. These types of companies are accused of being vehicles that can facilitate crime and tax evasion. Representatives Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) and Peter King (R-NY) and Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) introduced legislation February 3 to address the issue. After the "Panama Papers" leak, which cited more than 200,000 shell companies in its revelations, the number of co-sponsors of the House bill nearly doubled. In announcing its own legislation, the White House noted that anonymous shell company formation in the United States "can only be resolved through Congressional action."



Some US-based anonymous shell companies enabled a range of crimes, including human trafficking, weapons sales, medicare fraud, terrorism financing and evading sanctions. The current bill, "the Incorporation Transparency and Law Enforcement Assistance Act," HR 4450 and S 2489, is endorsed by a number of law enforcement organizations and a broad range of faith, development and human rights organizations.



"While we are grateful for White House action, we need to see what impacts their actions will have," stated LeCompte. "I'm hopeful that we can reach bipartisan consensus to end the illegitimate use of anonymous shell companies."



Read more about the Panama Papers and anonymous shell companies



Read more about the Incorporation Transparency and Law Enforcement Assistance Act



Read a sampling of letters from law enforcement organizations on HR 4450 and S 2489: the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Assocation and the Fraternal Order of Police.

Jubilee USA Network is an alliance of more than 75 US organizations and 550 faith communities working with 50 Jubilee global partners. Jubilee USA builds an economy that serves, protects and promotes the participation of the most vulnerable. Jubilee USA has won critical global financial reforms and more than $130 billion in debt relief to benefit the world's poorest people. www.jubileeusa.org



Available for interview: Eric LeCompte, Executive Director

Contact: Greg Williams, Communications Director

greg(at)jubileeusa.org / (o) (202) 783-3566 x101 (m) (443) 854-1405



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KEARNEY  The East Side Locos are the only known street gang operating in the city of Kearney, and theyve done so for some time.

The East Side Locos, or ESL, are a branch of the Surenos gang, which originated in Mexico. The gang has at least 20 members who affiliate with ESL in Lexington, Grand Island and Kansas City, and much of their focus is to commit criminal activity such as burglary, felony assault, robbery and graffiti.

Most gangs are a way for them to be together as a family, said Doug McCarty, a Kearney Police Department gang intelligence officer. Youll see a lot of people without access to family support, and theyll turn to this.

Much of the graffiti or tagging is spray painted in south Kearney and at Kearney High School.

There also are several people in Kearney claiming affiliation to different gangs. Several people also tried to start another gang in Kearney called the Goon Squad. McCarty said officers were successful in quashing those efforts.

Thats the nice thing about Kearney. We can address it directly, whereas some of the bigger cities its so hard; its like a tidal wave and its hard to keep up on it, he said. Our police department is very proactive. If we can, we try to stop it before it happens.

In May, the Legislature created a graffiti law that says anyone who applies graffiti to public or private property could be convicted of a misdemeanor. However, if someone is arrested for a second or subsequent offense, they face a felony charge.

At sentencing time, offenders can also face stricter penalties if they are known gang members.

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YORK  The day she robbed the Waco branch of Cornerstone Bank, Hannah Sabata bragged in an online video that she was "having the best day of her life."

But on Monday, the 19-year-old told Judge Patrick Mullen that "I shouldn't have robbed a bank. It wasn't the best day of my life. I was just manic. I learned that robbing a bank takes you to jail. I'm sorry I scared the teller, I wish I could take it back. I shouldn't have stolen that money, it wasn't mine. I want to be an art teacher and I want to make the world a beautiful place. I'll never rob a bank again."

Judge Mullen responded that in order to make sure she doesn't have the opportunity to rob any more banks and to protect society, the young women will have to spend 10-20 years in prison.

Sabata, who termed herself as the "Chick Bank Robber" in the online video that later went viral, admitted to stealing a car in York, driving to Waco and committing the robbery. She told the bank teller that she had a gun and the teller had several minutes to give her cash. The teller did as she was told and Sabata walked away with more than $6,000.

When she arrived at her home in Stromsburg, Sabata proceeded to create the video, in which she told her story via subtitles against the backdrop of music by the rock band "Green Day."

She held up the keys of the stolen vehicle, proclaiming she now had a "shiny new car." She acted as if she was smoking a joint right before she indicated she robbed a bank and was now rich. She also suggested that the motivation behind the crime may have been retaliation against the state for "taking away her baby."

Sabata also indicated she was going to go on a shopping spree the next day.

That shopping spree, however, never happened as the York County Sheriff's Department quickly discovered the identity of their suspect following the release of surveillance video and photographs from the bank, as well as the discovery of the stolen vehicle in a Stromsburg park and a piece of Sabata's jewelry that included her name.

Instead of going shopping, Sabata was awakened by York and Polk County authorities who placed her under arrest. Investigators found the stolen money and a wide array of evidence against her.

Sabata's attorney, Jeff Pickens, told the court on Monday that his client was a candidate for probation, due to her young age, a long history of mental illness and a series of life issues that may have pushed her to committing these crimes.

"I handle a lot of bad cases, where we represent murderers, first degree sex offenders," Pickens said. "Every three to four years, I make a pitch for probation. And I will be, in this case. This was a very serious offense, but I want to address her character, her obvious genetic predisposition to mental illness.

"She first received psychiatric care when she was nine years old and her mental illness records are voluminous. She received mental health care almost continuously until she was released from Boys Town at the age of 18," Pickens continued. "Medication is a big part of her treatment and she took medication up until about a year before the bank robbery.

"And at 17, she lost her virginity to a carnival worker who gave her HIV," Pickens said. "Later, she became pregnant with another man and they married while she was in high school. Her husband was sentenced to prison. In the last trimester of her pregnancy, she stopped taking her HIV medication which increased the risk of her child contracting HIV. Her son was born HIV negative, but Health and Human Services took custody from her, based on the reasons of her mental illness and not taking her HIV medications. She has never had custody of her son.

"The sheriff has been kind enough to fill her medications (to treat her mental illness and HIV) since she's been incarcerated," Pickens said further. "She's been in pretty good shape now that she's had her medication.

"Her husband was discharged from prison, but they were estranged and he filed for divorce," Sabata's attorney said. "She tried working but she's really had no job. She has no employment or educational opportunities. She was losing hope.

"She has been diagnosed as being bipolar and having personality disorders," Pickens said. "It was determined that she was psychotic, hallucinating and having delusions that day. Yes, she knew robbing a bank was wrong, but she was clearly manic at the time of the robbery. And then she shot a You Tube video that got millions of hits  she was clearly manic. There was a published photo of her being taken from her house by law enforcement in which you will see a smile on her face  she was clearly manic then, to indicate that she was happy when she was being arrested.

"As far as the crime itself, she was going through cars looking to steal little things," Pickens said. "That's when she found a nice car and the keys and took it. Then she goes home, writes out the bank note, puts a pellet gun in her backpack, decides to rob a bank. She gives the note to the teller and $6,000-some is given to her. She went home and while in a manic state made a video. All the money was found and no one was physically harmed. I understand there was emotional harm and that this was extremely scary. I know the teller has suffered from nightmares and other issues since. I don't think Hannah understood that until I told her about the teller and she gets that yes, someone was hurt.

"She did say she had a gun (in respect to the crime being a threat to someone). But she was also delusional. She didn't even think there was a possibility that she would get caught, which she told Dr. Bruce Gutnick (an Omaha psychiatrist who evaluated her). She also didn't understand that she could be causing harm.

"She has no history of criminal activity, she's only 19 so she hasn't had much of an adult life to build a criminal history," Pickens said further. "As a juvenile, there were incidents where she threatened her parents and was convicted of misdemeanor criminal mischief. It's very unusual to see someone go from criminal mischief straight to robbery.

"In weighing her pride against her remorse, she said she didn't think she had the guts to do it," Pickens said. "So she felt like she was surprised she had the guts  and bad judgment, I might add  to carry it out. I don't think she'll commit another crime. She'd like to have a relationship with her son, someday. Prison won't help her. And is someone going to go out and rob a bank because Hannah Sabata got probation? I don't think so. She's very smart, even though she has very bad judgment. She is very spiritual, artistic and a prolific letter writer. She has hopes and dreams and wants to be an art teacher.

"If we should say she should only be in prison because she will hurt someone  that's not the case here. We don't need to protect society from Hannah Sabata. This is one rare opportunity to help someone turn her life around, with intensive supervised probation with strict conditions. Her life could be a success story  maybe in 10 years from now, people will say she's a great mom, a great art teacher and can you believe she was once the infamous Chick Bank Robber?"

York County Attorney Candace Dick, however, had a much different stance regarding Sabata's motivations.

"I included in her diary in the pre-sentence report, which investigators found in her residence, so the court could read her own words, her attitude," Dick said. "This was a criminal attitude to take from other people and experience joy from that. She's had several periods of psychiatric treatment and counsel says she was delusional. But taking drugs contributed to the potential of that psychosis.

"Also, her borderline personality disorder causes her to believe she can get away with these acts," Dick said. "She believes that she is smarter than everyone in this room, so she takes the opportunity to manipulate and do acts that she believes she can get away with.

"When she was interviewed by the probation officer, she misled them, left out details," Dick said. "She said she had never taken meth or hallucinogens, as she told the doctor. She'll say whatever she needs to say to benefit her at the expense of everyone else, including that bank teller. She told the doctor, months after the robbery while she was on medication that she was proud of herself and that showed a pro-criminal attitude. She had significant stressors in her life, that's without question. But again, she felt she had nothing to lose.

"She did threaten and terrify the bank teller," Dick said. "Will she respond well to probation? She's already demonstrated discrepancies when talking to the probation officer. And she hasn't been a model inmate  she's been very difficult to handle in jail. She has also been held for safe-keeping at the women's prison because she is so difficult  and yes, while she's taking these medications."

Dick also referred to what appeared to be a quote from Sabata in which she said, "If I'm not happy or I'm miserable, I will do whatever I have to do to feel better."

"This is about robbing a bank," Dick said. "No matter how strange the circumstances or the juvenile attitude afterward, this was still an adult female who successfully robbed a bank and placed that teller in extreme fear. Probation would promote disrespect of the law and we are asking for a straight term of imprisonment."

"The facts of this case are well known," said Judge Mullen. "It was planned, there's no question about that, as seen in your notes and journals. It showed that it was thought out. The note to the teller was direct and took into account how you wanted it handled. It was certainly frightening to the teller and there was trauma inflicted upon the teller, there's no doubt about that. This case really centers on your personal responsibility of planning, staging, doing it and then your sense of it. And then you made sure you splashed it all across social media. Your counsel says that you were in a manic state  well, you were excited by it all, you enjoyed it and you reveled in it after you accomplished it and then you wanted to share that joy.

"You said that you robbed a bank, I'm rich and tomorrow I'm going on a shopping spree,'" Judge Mullen continued, in addressing Sabata. "That showed that you were going to do things your way. You have a lack of empathy for persons and property, that is clear. You don't use sound judgment to restrict those inclinations at all. You are likely to reoffend and society is at risk. A letter of regret at this point is the nature of saying what you have to say to limit the damage in your life."

In pronouncing the 10-20-year sentence, Judge Mullen said he would give Sabata credit for 203 days already served in the county jail.

Sabata's attorney, Pickens, said after the court proceedings that his client "is sad" about her sentence.

"But if she's a good prisoner," Pickens added, "she will have a good opportunity for parole in five years."
LINCOLN  A grand jury has declined to issue indictments in the killing of two prison inmates during a riot a year ago at the Tecumseh State Prison.

Johnson County Attorney Rick Smith, who helped present information to the grand jury, said Thursday that the findings did not mean that the probe into the two killings was over or that no one would be charged in the May 10, 2015, deaths.

It means only that the grand jury, which consisted of local citizens, did not find enough evidence to recommend charges be filed in the homicides of Donald Peacock and Shon Collins, he said.

Suzanne Gage, a spokeswoman for the Nebraska Attorney Generals Office, said the decision was limited because the grand jury was impaneled specifically to consider whether corrections officers or other public officials should or should not be indicted. The grand jury returned its findings April 19.

Weve been in the process of viewing and reviewing information since May 10, Smith said. Its going to be an ongoing investigation until someone is brought to justice.

The grand jurys report said both men died from blunt-force trauma to the head, a fact that had been revealed last year when death certificates for the two men were filed.

Peacock and Collins, both convicted sex offenders, were found dead in their cells after prison authorities retook control of the prison following a 10-hour rampage.

An investigation by the Nebraska State Patrol and the Attorney Generals Office has been underway since. It has been presumed that Peacock and Collins were killed by other inmates. One inmate was said to have had a plan to stab sex offenders during the riot, according to a security experts report.

In November, five inmates were charged with assault in connection with attacks on corrections officers and caseworkers during the melee. Officials said then that the investigation into the deaths was continuing.

Smith said state law allows him to file charges at any time before, during or after a grand jury meets to consider such homicides. State law also allows a grand jury to be impaneled again if new evidence is discovered.

More than $1 million in damage was done during the riot, the worst Nebraska prison rampage in decades. The 960-bed prison  the states newest and highest-security lockup  is still operating on 12-hour work shifts and restrictions on activities because of the disturbance.

In January, the family of Collins filed a claim with the state, asking for $1.2 million in damages for failing to protect Collins in prison. Such claims must be filed before someone can file a lawsuit against the State of Nebraska.

An attorney representing Collins family did not immediately return phone messages left Thursday evening. Collins father declined to speak to a reporter. It is unclear whether Peacocks family has retained an attorney.

Collins, 46, was serving 66 to 80 years for first-degree sexual assault of a child and visual depiction of sexually explicit content in Box Butte County. His sentence began in 2010.

Peacock, also 46, was sentenced in Dodge County to serve 40 to 50 years for first-degree sexual assault of a child and visual depiction of sexually explicit conduct. He began his sentence in 2014.
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Having been a nurse for over 18 years, I have endured a few Nurses Week. At first, I was lured into the charm of my first Nurses Week bag. I had finally arrived: My first official nurses bag. I had arrived and for a full week, the folks at the hospital seemed to actually appreciate what we did for our patients. After a few mugs, key chains, beach towels and more bags, the charm quickly grew off.

After awhile, you start to realize it is just a game of smoke and mirrors. You begin to realize that you had been tricked by the lures of trinkets, when in fact what you really want is respect, more staff and to be able to leave your water at your desk. What you really want is to be able to take care of the patients the way they should be. The way we are taught in school. Gone are those days of really knowing your patient; there are too many to care for each shift and too much documentation that needs to be attended to.

Ask most nurses who work at the bedside what they really want and most will answer more staff and better respect for their profession.

Unfortunately, nurses are not part of the reimbursement for the hospital. Their care is bundled up in the room rate, much like the housekeeper in a hotel. By not having any tangible ties to reimbursement, nurses are the first to be cut and squeezed to work smarter and harder. Yet, the daily requirements continue to be stacked on.

Did the doctor order their bundle sets? Did you justify why the patient still needs a Foley? Are your core measures and education all done? Did you document in the computer and in the patients folder? Have you documented in all three places that you turned and repositioned your patient and that their needs were attended to? Are their vaccinations screenings done? Fall assessments? Skin assessments? Delirium scales? The list goes on and on before we even touch the patient.

If you ask most hospital administrators, they will tell you they staff their units based on acuity. The humor in this: No one monitors acuity anymore. It is all about the grids and matrix. Essentially, they can do as they please and hope no one gets harmed in the process. But, ask the nurse who barely drank, ate or went to the bathroom, they may disagree about who was harmed that shift.

To add insult to the mix, now hospitals are held hostage with patient satisfaction surveys. No longer do we want to know if patients received good care, we just want to know if they perceived they received good care. Instead of rewarding the hospitals for being good manipulators of statistical data, how about we reward hospitals for having safe staffing ratios and good outcomes?

But, what are good staffing ratios? Well, that goes back to the grids and matrices that any hospital can create. Repeatedly research finds that the more patients a nurse cares for on their shift, the incidence of death to the patient will increase. Yet, despite the evidence, nurses are required to care for more and more patients each shift. Often caring for 6 to 8 patients on a medical-surgical floor and up to 3 patients per nurse in the intensive care units. As for the emergency room, it is free game: whatever the hospital deems as safe.

And the irony of it all, we have to practice according to evidence, but apparently not them?

Things looked like they were changing in 2004, when the state of California mandated revolutionary safe staffing ratios for hospitals in an effort to improve patient care. But, why, after all, these years are they still the only state? Why 12 years later and after multiple attempts are national safe staffing ratios still being debated? Again, what happened to evidenced based practice?

Well, we all know it comes down to the money, because money is power. Nursing is one of the largest expenses for any hospital. This equates to being the biggest target for cutbacks. Unfortunately, nursing does not bring in the money, so they do not wield the power and will continue to be treated like the liability they are perceived. This will continue to get worse as hospitals are more frequently run by bean counters who know nothing of patient other than what they read in books.

But, what if hospitals were rewarded for safe staffing? Or what if nursing care was actually reimbursed just as the other professional colleagues? Instead of asking the patient if they perceived good care, what if hospitals actually were reimbursed for not having high turnover of staff? Maybe even for having high staff satisfaction survey results?

So what do nurses want for Nurses Week?

They want a patient load that doesnt bring them to tears by the end of the shift. They want to go home knowing they did all that they could for their patients because they had the time and support to accomplish it. They want to know they are valued and worth more than a mug or tote bag.

This is our year. This is the year we stand up and fight for our profession, our patients and the future of health care. This Nurses Week, instead of complaining again about the lame trinket your hospital gave you; join the conversation for safe staffing. Go to the rallies being held all over the country at state capitals. Join me in DC to rally and bring attention to the need for safe staffing. Write your congressman and ask for support for S. 864 (National Nursing Shortage Reform and Patient Advocacy Act) and H.R. 1602 (Nurse Staffing Standards for Patient Safety and Quality Care Act). Do something to be a part of the solution.

Make this the year that is more about good care and safe staffing and not about grids and matrix.

Make this the year the nurses stood together and spoke up.

Make this the Nurses Week we all want.

Thanks for letting me get my thoughts out. But, I want to hear your thoughts? Leave a comment below on what you would want for Nurses Week? Dream big, believe big and be the change.

Take care, be safe and wash your hands!

Joan Spitrey is a nurse who blogs at the Nurse Teacher.

Image credit: Shutterstock.com
April 29, 2016 will be remembered for the significant occasion that it was simply by being there to honour the Centenary Commemoration of Patrick Bealin R.I.P. of Loon, Castlecomer.

Even the members of the Parish Hospitality Committee were taken aback by the huge crowd but such is there versatility the miracle of the loaves and fishes was replicated as all were nourished and fed.

This was yet another chapter in the success story for Kilkenny County Council and the members of the Centenary Committee so competently assisted by Brian Tyrrell and Catherine Cooney.

From the word go spiritually Patrick Bealin was all around us commencing with a Con-Celebrated Mass in the Church of the Immaculate Conception where Fr. Sean OConnor (A grand nephew of Patrick Bealin) was Chief Celebrant.

Assisting in the Memorial Mass were Msgr. Michael Ryan P.P. Castlecomer ; Fr. Joe Campion C.C. Castlecomer ; Fr. Liam Shore P.E. Bowdens Court while also in attendance was Rev. Patrick Burke, Rector Castlecomer Union of Parishes. Reading were by Martin Meally, Massford (grand nephew) and Mary Kenny, Borris (grand niece).

Gifts were brought to the altar by local Cllrs Maurice Shortall, John Brennan and Mick McCarthy. Adding to the ambience of the unique occasion in song were the Deenside Minstrels ably assisted by Jimmy Byrne. After Mass a poignant wreath laying ceremony took place in the adjoining cemetery.

Wreaths were laid by Cllr. Mary Hilda Cavanagh, Cathaoirleach Kilkenny County Council on behalf of the people of the city and county of Kilkenny, Mrs. Anna Creedon, Chairperson of our Parish Pastoral Council on behalf of Castlecomer Parish, Margaret ONeill and Dr. Maire Downey on behalf of the members of the local Fassadinin History Society, Peter Boran on behalf of his late mother Annie who visited the grave every Sunday of her life also several extended members of the Bealin family. Out in force were the Flying Column from Kilkenny who provided a guard of honour and also a poignant re-enactment of the killing of Patrick Bealin narrated by Grainne Quigley.

The march to the Courthouse was led in style first of all by a lone piper Jane Dunne, Killeshin Pipe Band and next on horseback Frank Doyle, Bagenalstown.

Centre piece here was the unveiling of a Memorial Plaque in his honour by the Cathaoirleach of Kilkenny County Council Cllr. Mary Hilda Cavanagh. People have taken to heart the message of the Centenary Committee Remember ; Reflect ; Reimagine. This is an opportunity to commemorate the past, to reflect on our journey over the last 100 years and to imagine the future of our republic. This evening we remember and reflect on the life and death of Patrick Bealin, known as Paddy, who was tragically killed during the Rising in the violence commonly referred to as North King Street Massacre. Paddys death was a tragic loss for his family and would have resonated strongly in the closeknit community here in Castlecomer.

Although the Rising was largely confined to Dublin, the death of a local man would have brought the significance of the Rising home to people in this part of the country in a very painful manner.

This plaque will be a permanent reminder of the events of 100 years ago and is a visible means through which this generation and the generations to come will remember Patrick Bealin here in his native place, said Cllr. Cavanagh.
Trader Joes isnt your typical supermarket. Its shelves are stocked mostly with specialty items, so youre more likely to come home with cookie butter and tricolor quinoa than you are milk and eggs.

But specialty doesnt necessarily mean expensive. Here are three secrets you need to know about shopping at Trader Joes.

First, there are no sales and no coupons. Trader Joes claims it already offers the lowest prices it can. We comparison-shopped at Whole Foods and Walmart, and Trader Joes prices were indeed lower on things like frozen meals and fancy cheeses.

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

Second, if you like to try before you buy, then youll love Trader Joes. Simply ask an employee to sample anything in the store. And if you dont like it? Dont buy it.

Third, you can return anything you dont like  no questions asked. Bring back whatever you didnt finish to the store for a full refund.

Learn more secrets about shopping at Trader Joe's.
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For the next six months we must watch the mortifying process of Republicans girding their loins to support Donald Trump's bid for the White House.

This is not just someone who has made inartful, irrational statements.

This is a man who has spouted nonsense, insulted three-fourths of the population, embarrassed himself by his lack of knowledge of foreign policy and economics, has quoted the National Enquirer, boasted unbearably, dissembled about almost everything and alarmed the world.

This is an arrogant, ill-mannered, graceless blowhard who has come to define words most of us know only from high school English: Misogynist, xenophobe, chauvinist.

There's a 50-50 chance Trump could become the 45th president even though the wily New York real estate mogul is exceedingly unpopular among independents, women, Latinos and minorities.

A Hillary Clinton victory is not inevitable, and here's why:

It costs about a billion dollars to get elected president. Even Trump does not have that kind of cash. (He's loaned himself about $36 million so far and expects to get it back from donations.) So he needs money to pursue this once-fantastical venture that could, heaven help us, become a sure thing in November.

The drumbeat has begun for Republicans to hold their noses and donate millions to Trump because the GOP faithful want to block a Clinton presidency more than they are afraid of what Trump will do to their fractured party.

There is also the matter of Republicans maintaining control of the House and the Senate. Because fewer American voters split their tickets, GOP leaders think that encouraging a Trump victory translates to millions of votes for Republicans down ticket. If conservatives stay home, chances for a Democratic takeover of the Senate (less likely for the House) improve.

Some Republicans will rationalize that even if they can't stand Trump, they'd rather he, not Clinton, nominate the next Supreme Court justice.

Many independents think Trump could not keep his promises  to make Mexico pay billions for a wall, deny entry to America to Muslims (including legal U.S. citizens who go abroad), put women who have abortions in jail, tear up multination trade agreements, deploy nuclear weapons in Europe, start a war with China. So they will choose simply to ignore his most ridiculous assertions and hope he gets some sense.

Republicans who want to retake the White House simply will forget that Trump accused President Barack Obama of not being a legal citizen, said Ted Cruz's father helped assassinate President John F. Kennedy, said Clinton would not get more than 5 percent of the vote if she were a man, said "it doesn't really matter what (the media) write as long as you've got a young and beautiful piece of ass."

They won't care he said Mexico is deliberately sending criminals, drug dealers and rapists north and that if Ivanka weren't his daughter, perhaps he'd be dating her.

Many voters now loath to vote for Trump will decide they dislike Clinton so much they'll shrug their shoulders over such Trump statements as, "The beauty of me is that I am very rich," that "my fingers are long and beautiful, as, it has been well documented, are various other parts of my body," that "the point is, you can't be too greedy," that "my IQ is one of the highest  and you all know it! Please don't feel so stupid or insecure; it's not your fault."

Ha. Trump being Trump.

Some will vote for Trump because he is a rich celebrity, outrageous and entertaining. And, they'll figure, how could he be any worse than those clown politicians we have now?

Oh, he could. He would.

Some Americans are so frightened about their finances and the future that they figure a businessman must know how to fix the economy. But Trump buys and sells stuff with his name on it  he doesn't create wealth. He is against a higher minimum wage. Stopping trade to punish rivals won't create high-paying American jobs. He's the consummate 1 percenter  he wants the rich to get richer. He has no serious plan to help the middle class.

It's painful to watch rational people rationalize jumping on the Trump bandwagon. They're certain to take a serious bruising when they inevitably fall off.

Ann McFeatters is an op-ed columnist for Tribune News Service. Readers may send her email at amcfeatters@nationalpress.com.
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Lawrence Greaves, Port of Silverdale Commissioner

Dyes Inlet parking a state matter

If life, and the use of Port of Silverdale vehicle with boat trailer parking property, could only be as simple as described in Kathleen Nelson's recent letter ("Let all enjoy our waterfront," May 1).

Unfortunately, as things exist, neither can be so. Her statement that we have all paid for this facility is only partially true. Over the years the Port of Silverdale has successfully applied for unclaimed boaters' gas taxes from the state of Washington. The state requires that these funds be used for projects to solely benefit boaters.

Our launch area is an ideal viewing site for Dyes Inlet. Before Ms. Nelson's letter was printed, the Port appointed a committee to explore how to address this issue and whether state requirements can somehow be relaxed.

Until these requirements are relaxed, when cars are parked in an area with signage indicating parking for boaters' auto/trailer only, the Port has no choice but to comply with state requirements. When we direct these cars to move on, it is not done arbitrarily, but rather to live up to the state requirements.
As I wrote this, the Conservatives are ahead of Labour in the Scottish Parliament elections.

The SNP has 49%, Conservatives 24% and Labour 19%.

Labour has done okay elsewhere (and probably has won the London mayoralty) but to come third in Scotland behind the Conservatives would be like coming behind National in the Maori seats in NZ.

As the SNP does not have a majority, it can not force a second referendum on independence, which is good.

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By Susan Alexander of the Knoxville News Sentinel

Sasha Reynolds is a former Knoxville resident who lived in the same North Knoxville neighborhood as the Anderson family when 15-year-old Michelle Anderson disappeared in 1987. Though Reynolds, a social worker by training, moved to Alabama the following year, the case stayed with her.

About a decade later, Reynolds learned from a forensic show on television that Michelle's remains had been found outside of Crossville, Tenn., and that Dr. Bill Bass of the University of Tennessee's Body Farm had led the team that excavated the site. Reynolds, a UT grad, knew Bass and eventually received from him his forensic report and other materials.

That launched Reynolds' extensive investigation into Anderson's disappearance and the police department's response to it. And eventually, it resulted in "Similar Transactions," her self-published account of the crime and suspected murderer Larry Lee Smith.

The book is an exhaustive examination of Smith's background, which included two prior sexual assault convictions; the Knoxville Police Department's inaction following Michelle's disappearance; mother Anita Anderson's resulting grief and dismay at how little was done; Reynolds' own investigation (though her role is related in the third-person); the reopening of a cold-case investigation, which also proved fruitless; and Smith's ultimate conviction and life sentence for yet another sexual assault.

The story moves along compellingly through most of its nearly 400 pages but lags toward the end under a mass of details about the final crime and court case. Regardless, it's a thorough look at a local crime that largely escaped notice in the Knoxville community and deserves recognition, even decades after the fact.

"Similar Transactions" is available on amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com
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By News Sentinel Staff

CLINTON  A roundup of drug suspects is underway following grand jury action Tuesday in Anderson County, and authorities aren't discussing it  yet.

More than 20 people from Oak Ridge, Clinton, Kingston and other East Tennessee counties were booked into the Anderson County Jail Thursday on drug-related charges, and several law enforcement agencies have been involved in the roundup.

No news releases about the police action have been issued, but Anderson County District Attorney General Dave Clark has announced a news conference for Monday afternoon at his office in the Robert Jolley Building next to the Anderson County Courthouse.

Clark on Friday declined to discuss the roundup, but the news conference Monday will concern a "multi-county complex criminal investigation that has spanned several years," according to a memo his office sent to media outlets Thursday afternoon.

"Several aspects of this investigation are unprecedented in this area," according to the memo.
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By Jamie Satterfield of the Knoxville News Sentinel

Two teenage girls and their 21-year-old brother will spend Mother's Day this year at a gravesite because the man their mother loved got drunk on moonshine at a Gatlinburg distillery and then climbed behind the wheel.

"She trusted you," Ariel Hendrix told her mother's killer Friday in U.S. District Court. "She loved you, and you killed her. You made me a motherless daughter.  I don't know if I will ever be able to forgive you, but I know I have to."

Chief U.S. District Judge Tom Varlan sentenced Corey Bruce Patrick, 35, of Johnsonville, Tenn., to 15 years in a federal prison on a charge of second-degree murder in the Oct. 9, 2014, crash on the Spur in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park that claimed the life of Heather Hendrix, 37, of Hurricane Mills, Tenn.

The pair had been on vacation in Gatlinburg when, according to a plea agreement filed by Assistant U.S. Attorney Brooklyn Sawyers, Patrick, who already had downed beer and used methamphetamine, began drinking moonshine at the Ole Smoky Tennessee Moonshine Distillery. He was so drunk when he got behind the wheel with Heather Hendrix as a passenger that his blood-alcohol ratio was more than twice the legal limit for intoxication.

Witnesses said Patrick also was speeding. Hendrix was so terrified she sent a text, saying, "he's driving fast and crazy," one second before Patrick crashed her car into a tree, court records stated. He already had a 1999 conviction for drunken driving and, four months after his girlfriend's death, was again caught behind the wheel with alcohol in his system.

On Friday, Hendrix's two daughters  19-year-old Ariel Hendrix and 15-year-old Lydia Kelley  as well as her mother, Jewel Brake, and sister, April Holley, got their first chance to address not only the judge but Patrick himself.

In statements read by Holley because the teenage daughters were too emotional to speak, both struggled with grief at the loss of their mother and anger at the man who took her from them.

"You changed me emotionally, and I'll never be the same," Lydia Kelley said in her statement.

Sawyers noted Heather Hendrix's oldest child, 21-year-old Dustin Case, could not attend but said Case expressed to her an ongoing rage the prosecutor worried might not abate.

"I hope he'll find healing," Sawyers said. "He's certainly in pain."

Patrick, himself a father, said he felt "remorse, sorrow" for his girlfriend's family.

"There's not a day that goes by I don't think about her," he said. "I'm sorry from the bottom of my heart."

His attorney, Assistant Federal Defender Laura Davis, said Patrick "feels awful about what he did."

But his regret rang hollow to Brake, Heather Hendrix's mother, who noted that although he did not set out to kill her, he did so through his choices just the same.

"She was taken from us because you decided to drive drunk, and you were speeding," she said in her statement. "There is a hole in my heart that will never heal."
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By Mamie Kuykendall of the Knoxville News Sentinel

New U.S. Food and Drug Administration rules that place heavy regulations on the electronic cigarette industry could put dozens of Knoxville-area shops out of business and lead many "vape" users to the black market, according to vaporizer store owners and experts.

Among the regulations is the requirement that vaporizer products created after 2007 be approved by the FDA, a process that could technically cost business owners $1 million or more per product. Stores have roughly three months to comply.

Since the industry is relatively new, almost all vaporizer products fall in the post-2007 window, which could spell trouble for those lacking the capital for the application fees.

"Right now we're still trying to read through all 500 pages of (the rules)," said Glen Cate, owner of Vintage Vapors on Jack Dance Street. "It doesn't look good for anyone. There are about 40 stores in Knoxville, and from the initial look, it would put everyone out of business.  It would effectively kill the market."

In addition to the vaporizers themselves, every fluid, flavor and nicotine level made in-house would require approval, and most shop owners would find the tab too hefty to survive, Cate said.

Those who do not create their own fluids also may be in trouble, as Chinese companies that supply product to U.S. shops also may not be willing to pay the fees.

The $1 million price tag is a grossly low estimation of actual costs, according to Dimitris Agrafiotis, executive director of the Tennessee Smoke Free Association, who said that additional costs related to collecting needed data could push the amount to as much as $8 million per item.

This amount is compounded by the many elements required for vaping. For instance, stores often carry 30 or more flavors of fluid, each available with a variety of nicotine levels. According to the regulation, each nicotine level must be individually assessed, resulting inasmuch as $64 million per item, according to Agrafiotis. If the charges were the stated $1 million, charges could still amount to $8 million per item, multiplied by every type of flavor, vaporizer, and other accessories in a store.

The resulting closures of stores across America could have a huge impact on the economy, according to Agrafiotis.

"Here in Tennessee there are over 400 businesses in the vape industry," he said. "That would mean over 5,000 people losing their jobs in the state."

About 15,000 business are spread nationwide, which could result in the loss of 250,000 direct and 150,000 indirect jobs, Agrafiotis said.

"It's a huge economic impact," he said. "The association went to the White House and voiced our concerns with the (Office of Management and Budget), but they didn't look at our concerns."

Though vaporizers are not a tobacco product, the FDA has the power to regulate them because the nicotine used is derived from tobacco, something that vape shop owners say shouldn't be.

"The category they put us in doesn't reflect what the product is," Agrafiotis said. "It's like saying milk is a beef product because it comes from a cow. It's completely unfair, it's completely unjust."

Children play a large part in the regulations announced Thursday. E-cigarettes will be treated like other tobacco products by the FDA, which prohibits the sale of such goods to anyone under age 18, and requires health warnings to be put on covered packaging, adds, and tobacco. Hand-rolled cigars, hookahs and pipes are also being brought under the FDA regulations.

Because of the availability of sweet vaporizer fluid flavors  like berry, cotton candy and coffee  many industry experts say children may be more drawn to e-cigarettes than to tobacco, leading to an increase in young smokers. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, high school student vape usage rose from 1.5 percent to 16 percent between 2011 and 2015.

This portion of the rule is met with agreement by many vape store owners, most of whom already ID all customers, but they often point out that flavored products exit in other addictive products without such backlash.

"The FDA has always brought up the children card, that's the only argument they have," Agrafiotis said. "However, flavors are vital to adults, too. No one wants to put an ashtray in their mouth. There should be a variety and availability, because everyone is different."

The industry is not opposed to fair legislation, according to Agrafiotis. In fact, he says it encourages it. The Tennessee Smoke Free Association worked to pass the legislation that bans vape sales to children, and pushed hard for childproof fluid caps.

"We believe in fair, sensible legislation for these products," Agrafiotis said. "These regulations do the exact opposite of what they want  to protect the public's health  because they are driving people back to tobacco."

If vape stores close on a wide-scale basis, illegal purchasing also could be an issue, according to Cate.

"It's gonna create a huge black market," Cate said. "Think about Prohibition in the '20s. People still got their alcohol. Current vapors will find a way, but the next generation are going to be doomed to smoking tobacco. They'll have no other alternative."

Store owners are hoping for passage of an amendment that would change the 2007 date, to allow more products to be grandfathered in. Though the price for new products would still be too high for small business owners, current products would allow them to remain in business.
SHARE The Oak Ridge Fire Department drone. ORFD is wading through the complex application to file with the Federal Aviation Administration to authorize the department's use of a drone, Chief Darryl Kerley said. It would likely become the first department in the area to train firefighters in using drones. (OAK RIDGE FIRE DEPARTMENT)

By Bob Fowler of the Knoxville News Sentinel

OAK RIDGE  Assistant Fire Chief Jody Durham said he saw the value of a drone, or unmanned aerial vehicle, last summer during a mutual aid response to a fire at an industry in Clinton.

Clinton attorney Mike Farley put his drone to use then to hover over the building, where smoke was billowing from the roof, and Durham said he could see a live video feed of the scene.

That overhead view determined the smoke was coming from a ventilation stack, and it was safe to put firefighters on the roof. "It made a believer out of me," Durham said of the drone's potential.

The Oak Ridge Fire Department is wading through the complex application to file with the Federal Aviation Administration to authorize the department's use of a drone, Chief Darryl Kerley said.

The Oak Ridge department, Durham said, would likely become the first department in the area to train firefighters in using drones.

Along with bird's-eye views of rooftops of burning buildings, a drone would come in handy in instances where dangerous materials have spilled or been released, and it's unsafe for people to get near, Durham said.

Kerley said he's been appointed to the unmanned aerial vehicle task force of the International Association of Fire Chiefs to work with the FAA on regulations for emergency responders to use drones.

He said the Oak Ridge Fire Department has purchased a $700 drone and he plans to have about 12 firefighters trained as drone pilots and spotters to ensure their safe use.

The drone was used last year at the Secret City Festival to develop an evacuation plan for large crowds during concerts, Kerley said.

"We've been doing a little experimenting with it," he said of the drone.
Greg Johnson, News Sentinel columnist.

Guns, gays and God dominated the news coming out of the recently finished session of the Tennessee General Assembly. What do you expect out a statehouse full of rapscallion Republicans, especially a super stupendous GOP supermajority?

Meanwhile, in an "X-Files"-worthy plot, almost all the teachers in Detroit turned up sick several days this week. Actually, educators in what's left of the former Motor City essentially went on strike. Some 94 schools were closed because the teachers played hooky. Why?

"The (school) district is projected to run out of cash by June 30," the Detroit Free Press reported. "Without funds from the state, teachers who have opted to receive their pay over 12 months instead of the course of the school year will not get checks this summer."

So teachers are taking action by taking to the streets. "Hey, hey, ho, ho, where did all that money go?" protestors chanted. A fourth-grader said, "I want to go back to school." A $715 million "rescue package" is being considered by the Michigan legislature.

Over in Illinois, the state's budget problem is there is no budget  since July of last year. The result of such foolish fiscal inaction? The state owes up to $8 billion in unpaid bills. Not long-term bonds. The government of Illinois owes the businesses and people of Illinois for work done or funds granted.

College kids aren't getting their financial aid. Higher ed layoffs loom. Lawmakers work unpaid. Opioid addicts can't dry out because funds have dried up. Small businesses with employees to pay have been stiffed by the state. The effect on economic development? Devastating. Neighboring Indiana is advertising its business-friendly environs on billboards just over the border.

But back to Tennessee and Gov. Bill Haslam and those guns-gays-God conservatives in Nashville. Haslam's budget added $100 million to the state rainy day fund, shifted $142 million from the general fund to the transportation fund for road work, designated $96 million for raises for state employees and put $135 million toward higher education.

Oh, and Haslam and his GOP colleagues invested $258 million in K-12 education, "the largest investment without a tax increase in Tennessee's history," as the governor likes to say. Of that, $100 million goes to teacher salaries. While Detroit teachers worry about getting their 12th paycheck, Tennessee will be picking up the 12th month of insurance for our educators.

The budget is balanced, of course, as it is year after year after year under those non-progressives. We took on no new debt. Our bills are paid. And that sort of stability leads to stuff like Wacker Chemie expanding in Charleston, Hankook Tire America moving its headquarters to Nashville and General Motors investing $788 million in Spring Hill and creating 780 new jobs.

None of that gets as much attention as bathroom bills, Bible bills or guns on college campuses for which Tennessee Republicans are roundly mocked and maligned. Detroit and Illinois may be more progressive. They're also broke. But what do you expect from governments dominated by Democrats for decades?
Mark Harmon, Knoxville News Sentinel columnist.

German sociologists gave us the term "Gemeinschaft." It's a yearning for tradition that relies on raw feelings, especially fear of change. For years now, both in Tennessee and nationally, radical-right politicians have been abusing those sincerely held feelings to distract and divide, all the while serving the greed of the powerful.

The Tennessee legislative session that just ended is the perfect example. Much time and energy went into dust-ups over web posts on holiday parties and gender-neutral pronouns, transgender access to restrooms, and naming the Bible as the official state book. No one got around to crumbling infrastructure, underfunded schools or the 280,000 Tennesseans left without health insurance from their failure to pass Insure Tennessee.

The last day of the session, however, our Legislature did sneak in a gift to the wealthiest, also known as the political donor class. Our legislators cut the Hall tax on dividends and interest from 6 percent to 5 percent, and indicated a legislative intent to make similar annual cuts until the tax goes away by 2022.

Legislators claim the break is designed for seniors and retirement savings, but the vast majority of seniors  indeed, the vast majority of all Tennesseans  fall well below the threshold where the Hall tax starts, or receive funds wholly exempt from it. The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy crunched the actual numbers and found that more than 60 percent of this tax cut will go to the wealthiest 5 percent of Tennesseans.

The Hall tax generated $303.4 million in 2014-2015, and fiscal projections were that by 2017 it would be bringing in $341 million. Our legislators gave no hint how they intended to make up the shortfall. Furthermore, while 62.5 percent of the Hall tax stays with the state of Tennessee, the remainder is shared with local governments. Knox County would lose $3.3 million, and the city of Knoxville $10 million, from eliminating the Hall tax. That would mean either property or sales tax increases or cuts, most likely in already slender school budgets.

Our attention now must turn to Gov. Bill Haslam. Though he has grumbled about the choice before him, most indications are he will sign the reduction of the Hall tax or let it become law without his signature. He needs to be bolder, finding the courage to veto this last-minute budget buster.

Forbes tallies Haslam's net worth as $2.1 billion, making our billionaire governor the richest politician in the United States. Haslam, however, is notoriously coy about his finances, and refuses to release his income tax forms. So let's make some rough estimates.

Let's assume his net worth is built on investments that yield annually a 5 percent return in dividends and interest. Let's further assume that roughly half those returns are from a type exempt from the Hall tax. That still means a 1 percentage point drop in the Hall tax could give our governor more than a half-million-dollar tax break, and full Hall tax elimination could cut Haslam's taxes each year by more than $3 million.

If the governor thinks my estimates are off, he can correct the record very easily, by releasing his tax returns. In the meantime, however, we are left with a slight variation on the old country music ditty  he got the gold mine, you got Gemeinschaft.
The James K. Polk Home and Museum is located at 301 W. 7th St. in downtown Columbia and is open for tours daily. (Courtesy of jameskpolk.com)

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Among Tennessee's three U.S. presidents, James Knox Polk is not as widely known as Andrew Jackson, who preceded him, and Andrew Johnson, who came after him.

Nevertheless, Polk, who occupied the White House from 1845-49, has left his own indelible mark on the United States and the presidency. During his administration, the United States grew enormously, adding almost 800,000 square miles. By comparison, the Louisiana Territory, gained by treaty and purchase in 1803, was 827,000 square miles.

That massive expansion, which Polk championed during his single term in office, certainly justifies the recent effort by Congress and U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander, a Tennessee Republican, to have Polk's home in Columbia, Tennessee, declared a national treasure.

A bipartisan energy bill passed the U.S. Senate late last month and contained a provision that directs the Secretary of the Interior to study the feasibility of preserving the Polk home as part of the National Park Service.

The home is a two-story brick structure built in 1816 by Polk's father, Samuel Polk, while the younger Polk was enrolled at the University of North Carolina. The home contains more than 1,300 objects and original items from his years in Washington. Those items include furniture, White House artifacts and political memorabilia. The home and a nearby museum are owned by the state of Tennessee and the James K. Polk Memorial Association, which acquired the property in 1929. Placing the home with the Park Service would give a federal imprimatur to the site and help with funding.

Polk began his legal and political career after he returned to Columbia in 1818. He served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1825 and was Speaker or the House until he was elected governor of Tennessee in 1839. Nicknamed "Young Hickory" for his loyalty to Jackson, Polk's rise to the presidency also conjures up the title "dark horse candidate." The Democratic Party deadlocked over the three major hopefuls. All were more well-known than Polk, who won the 1844 election with a campaign that favored annexation of Texas in the Southwest and acquisition of the Oregon territory in the Northwest.

Despite some initial bluster, Oregon came in peacefully, but Texas was another matter. The war with Mexico, 1846-48, ended with the U.S. acquiring not only Texas but territory all the way to the Pacific Ocean, including California. If Polk drew praise for expansion, he drew criticism for creating the opportunity for slavery to expand westward.

All of this should make Polk's presidency more interesting to the average American, who might want to know more about the nation's 11th commander in chief. As Alexander said, there is no better way to encourage the study of American history "than to make sure our presidential homes are properly cared for."

And, as the senator also noted, having the house become part of the Park Service would bring Polk's legacy full circle since one of his final acts in office in 1849 was to create the Department of the Interior, which includes the National Park Service.

That would honor Polk and Tennessee. It also would honor the presidency and the American people.
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I just read in the Chicago and Palm Beach newspapers that Tennessee, my home for many years, has a new law permitting faculty and staff at public colleges and universities to be armed on campus. Naturally, faculty at the University of Tennessee raised security concerns about that bill. State Sen. Mike Bell dismissed those concerns, saying he hoped there would be a mass exodus of liberal professors who oppose the law.

If it is a good idea to arm college professors and staff, then it is an even better idea to arm National Rifle Association lobbyists and the legislators who pass these bills. Therefore, I suggest Tennessee legislators sponsor a law permitting concealed carry in the statehouse in Nashville. All legislators, lobbyists, their staff and all visitors (especially those in the upper visitors' galleries) should be allowed to carry concealed handguns in the Tennessee State Capitol Building.

Bell and his fellow conservatives should have no security concerns about arming everyone in the Tennessee Legislature. Surely he would want his legislative colleagues to feel as safe and secure as Tennessee college faculty, staff and students now do.

Bob Barth, Chicago
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A lot of effort has been spent studying the characteristics that define Donald Trump voters. I should start by saying that I am not one of them. But after seeing some recent articles in the paper, most notably the one addressing how Trump fans are trying to "stop the steal," it became clear to me that the one overriding characteristic of all Trump supporters is that they essentially see themselves as victims. Trump's recent rant about how China is "raping" the United States clearly suggests being a victim. This resonates with the people who vote for Trump when they hear how their jobs have been stolen by illegal immigrants; the demand that all Muslims should be barred from entering the United States because of the murders and terror they have committed; how the greatness of our country must be reclaimed; and is capped off by Trump's claim that we will all become tired of being winners if he becomes president. The results of the general election should demonstrate how widespread the feelings of being victimized are in this country.

Fred H. Miller, Knoxville
By Kim Jae-won



Hannam Village in central Seoul was sold to Daishin Securities for 624.2 billion won ($540.2 million) in an auction, closing its role as a family housing complex for U.S. servicemen, the state-run land and housing corporation said Thursday.



The Korea Land & Housing Corp. (LH) said that it sold the 60,677 square-meter land around 670-1 Hannam-dong to Daishin F&I, a non-performing loan investment affiliate of the local brokerage house, which offered the highest price. The starting price was 613.1 billion won.



"The number of bidders was smaller than what we expected," said an LH official, declining to unveil how many companies participated in the auction.



Market watchers said that big housing developers did not participate in the auction because development of the area is limited to buildings no higher than 30 meters. They also said the expensive bidding price also deterred them from bidding.



Daishin F&I plans to build luxury houses on the land, seeking to draw rich residents who want to enjoy the Han River and Mount Nam in the neighborhood. The luxury housing complex Hannam the Hill is located across the street of the land,.



Previously, the village, consisting of 10 buildings with 512 units, had been leased for more than three decades to servicemen and their family members in the U.S. military camps nearby. Thus, it was often called "The Little U.S. in Seoul."



It has been closed since late 2014 after the U.S. Forces in Korea (USFK) started to move to Pyeongtaek in Gyeonggi Province. The closure was part of the USFK's gradual efforts to move troops in and north of Seoul to regional hubs south of the capital.



Most Army forces have been moving to Camp Humphreys, a once-sleepy helicopter base in Pyeongtaek that is undergoing a massive expansion. The relocation has faced multiple setbacks due to funding and construction problems. The move was initially scheduled to take place in 2008 but was postponed until 2012 and then to 2016.




By Choi Sung-jin



Until recently, stock analysts were called the "flowers" of the brokerage industry, the envy of job seekers and new recruits. Many wanted to serve as research assistants (RA) for a couple of years, helping analysts day and night, weekdays or weekends. It was one of the few jobs that guaranteed rewards for hard work.



Not anymore.



As the economic slump prolongs, share turnover falls and brokerage revenue dwindles, analysts are leaving their jobs en masse. High-income analysts have long been on the top of the manpower trimming list, industry sources say.



Adding fuel to the fire of their fading job security is the brisk mergers and acquisitions of securities companies. About 30 analysts have left the nation's 10 largest brokerages, with half moving to asset management companies and the other half changing jobs.



The number of people wanting to become analysts is also decreasing. The Korea Financial Investment Association has implemented a training session for RAs since 2010, which qualifies trainees to become stock analysts after they complete a 71-hour course. The association is considering abolishing the program because there have been no applicants over the past two years.



According to the association, the number of analysts at 57 brokerage firms stands at 1,090, down 22 percent from 1,399 in 2012.



NH Investment and Securities, which has largest number of analysts among local brokerages, saw its number drop 25 percent from 101 in 2012 to 75 now. Some securities companies have no analysts.



The declining number of analysts has increased the workload of those left. "There is so much work to do that we have to begin at 7 a.m. and end at 9 p.m. or later," said an analyst at Daishin Securities. "When there are reports to make, we have to go to the office on weekends."



Also bothering them is the high-handed behavior of companies subject to analyses. Some listed companies take reprisals against analysts and their companies making unfavorable reports. In March, for instance, an analyst at Kyobo Securities issued a report that readjusted target stock prices of Hana Tour downward. The tour company strongly protested, arguing the report had errors in analysis and threatening to ban the analyst from visiting the company.



It is not easy to find reports with negative investment opinions and downward readjustment of target stock prices, the sources said. Out of about 50 stock brokerages, 22 released not a single report that recommended selling last year.



"As stock reports filled with buying advice have lost market trust, analysts are losing their ground rapidly," said an analyst at Shinyoung Securities. "In a vicious circle, this leads to lower pay and poorer treatment for analysts."




By Choi Sung-jin



President Park Geun-hye has steadfastly refused to increase taxes to meet rising demand for welfare, and vowed to bring the vast underground economy into the open to raise financial resources.



In some ways, however, the government and its party have been running counter to President Park's intention, critics say.



A case in point is the governing camp's reluctance to toughen crackdowns on tax avoiders using overseas shelters. The issue has also emerged as a global concern, as shown by the recent exposure of numerous paper companies in Panama by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ).



According to a 2013 report by Newstapa, the Korean chapter of the ICIJ, 34 large Korean businesses had set up about 160 paper companies in seven tax havens designated by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Among those who set up such companies were former presidents' sons and owners of companies on the government's industrial restructuring list.



Offshore tax avoidance is an anti-social crime that violates tax justice and leads to the outflow of national wealth. According to Oxfam, an international relief organization, 50 of the largest U.S. companies, including those bailed out by public finds during the 2008 financial crisis, are hiding $1.4 trillion in tax shelters. The tax dodging by U.S. businesses inflicts the loss of $111 billion a year on the U.S. economy, and $100 billion on the poorest countries.



Korea's National Tax Service, too, uncovered 890 cases of offshore tax evasion and collected 3.95 trillion won as penalty taxes between 2010 and 2014.



"In Korea, which heavily relies on foreign trade and overseas investment, the foremost task of tax administration is to grasp tax sources occurring abroad and prevent tax avoidance," said Rep. Park Won-suk of the Justice Party, who sponsored a "special bill" to prevent offshore tax avoidance in October 2013. "There are no rules in the current law that copes with offshore tax evasion in a comprehensive and systematic way."



Rep Park's bill failed to pass even the National Assembly's finance committee, however, in the face of opposition from the government and its party.



The Ministry of Strategy and Finance said Korea has the National Tax Basic Law and Punishment of Tax Evaders Act, as well as tax agreements with various foreign countries, so the nation does not need a special law. "The ruling Saenuri Party did not want to put it to public discussion, either," Rep. Park said.



Government officials said the bill, if enacted, would put additional burdens on businesses and contract the economy further. Vice Minister of Strategy and Finance Ju Hyeong-hwan said a drastic rise in financial rewards for whistleblowers was expected to increase corporate burdens and breed distrust within organizations.



"The special bill could constitute the core of bringing the underground economy into the open, as the Park administration has pledged, but the governing camp had no intention to enact the bill disliked by the business community," Park, who will leave the Assembly in May, told Yonhap News Agency. "I hope some lawmakers in the next parliament will push for its legislation for social and economic justice."




By Yoon Ja-young



Stocks related to "sin industries" are experiencing notable rises amid the current economic downturn.



Analysts say they are a relatively good investment during a slump because people often continue consuming these addictive products or services.



According to FnGuide, a financial market information provider, the prices of 39 "sin stocks" have risen 7.4 percent, on average, this year.



Sin stocks refer to companies involved in cigarettes, games, private money lending, gambling, sex and alcohol.



The most notable among them is Unidus, the country's top condom maker. The company exports to 20 countries and supplies products to international organizations such as the World Health Organization, the United Nations Population Fund and the International Planned Parenthood Federation.



Its stock price has risen 284 percent this year, thanks to the spread of the Zika virus, which is known to be transmitted through sex. A boycott of competitor Durex Korea also pushed up Unidus shares. The boycott is connected to Oxy Reckitt Benckiser, which owns Durex. Reckitt Benckiser made a humidifier disinfectant suspected of killing around a hundred people here.



Dragon Fly, a game company specializing in virtual reality, has risen 60 percent, followed by casino operator GKL, which marked a 28.6 percent hike. GKL operates Seven Luck Casinos in Seoul and Busan.



All stocks related to gambling have risen this year, including Kangwon Land, which gained 12.4 percent, and Paradise, which jumped 7.9 percent. Kangwon Land is the country's only casino for Koreans while Paradise operates several foreigner-only casinos in Seoul, Busan, Incheon and Jeju.



The casino stocks have also benefited from an expected surge in foreign tourists during the long holidays. China had a three-day weekend because of Labor Day celebrations while Japan had its Golden Week holidays from April 29 to May 5. The Korea Tourism Organization expected 63,000 Chinese tourists to visit during the Labor Day holidays and 83,000 Japanese during Golden Week.



Playwith, an online game developer, and mobile game service provider Gamevil also had prices rise over 20 percent.



But some game companies nosedived. Joymax tumbled 44.5 percent this year on operating losses and a selloff by foreign investors. Eastsoft dipped 31.7 percent following a selloff of shares by its founder.



KT&G has climbed 19.1 percent thanks to a recovery in cigarette consumption this year. As the government raised the tax on cigarettes by 2,000 won a packet in January last year, sales decreased 48.5 percent in the first quarter. But they jumped 40 percent in the first quarter this year as more people succumbed to temptation.



Among liquor companies, HiteJinro Holdings has led the rise with a 16.3 percent gain.



Kim Sang-ho, an analyst at Mirae Asset Daewoo Securities, picked industries such as casinos, liquor, cigarettes and games as deflation players.



"The deflation players are industries that tended to outperform the market amid the deflation cycle," he said. "They tend to outperform despite increasing volatility in the market, since it is cigarettes, casinos and games that people fail to cut consumption of until the very last moment."




By Oh Young-jin



The traditional mass media doesn't even deserve self-pity for their declining fortune.



The gust of restructuring hitting the industry, a new wave to be led by robo-reporters, is not the only reason for the slow death it has been undergoing for decades.



We in this industry have only ourselves to blame -- more exactly our hubris and sense of divination from the old privilege of setting the agenda that we no longer have.



More frankly, we try to cover it up when we make a mistake and act as if we are beyond reproach. Alas, people don't buy it any more. They have turned their backs on us, the falling newspaper subscription or television network viewer ratings being the proof.



Here are two recent examples.



In the April 13 parliamentary general elections, all media outlets -- network television stations and newspapers -- predicted a landslide for the ruling Saenuri party, some even talking about a ruling party with a two-thirds supermajority that would have enabled it to change the Constitution without the help of the opposition parties.



The result was quite the opposite as the Saenuri ended up being a parliamentary minority, for the first time in 16 years. The newspapers wasted no time in attacking pollsters for their unreliable methods, for instance their tendency to resort to fixed-line telephone inquiry rather than focusing on mobile phones. The subliminal message was that they were not at fault.



Three television networks were also in denial.



They compiled exit polls together for a joint announcement of the results at the end of voting hours. Their predictions had Saenuri winning 121-143 and MPK 101-123, among other things.



The voters' real verdict: 122 for Saenuri and 123 for MPK. The results fell at the extremes of their predictions so they were more wrong than right.



Still, the broadcasters trumpeted the accuracy of their forecasts.



Would the readers and viewers fall for their lame excuses or self-aggrandizement? If they think they can get away every time, they are mistaken. The dwindling number of newspaper subscriptions and television viewers are proof of that. The consolation is that, if they don't change, the industrial prophecy of demise will be fulfilled.



The Korean media are not alone.



In the United States, the Wall Street Journal to the right and the New York Times to the left and virtually all media outlets are engaged in Trump bashing.



First, they had ganged up on the leading candidate for the Republic presidential nomination, portrayed him as nothing but a temporary phenomenon.



When the real estate mogul refused to go away, they called Trump a disgrace to the Republican party, not to mention becoming its presidential standard bearer, predicting that he couldn't beat Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee-to-be. Now, they also openly conspire to deny Trump the party's nomination in the convention slated for July in Cleveland, saying that he won't get even half of the delegates. At least one recent poll forecast Trump to beat Hillary come November. By many indications, he can become the Republican nominee without resorting to a conspiratorial runoff. In other words, the media are proving to be wrong. They now are starting to fathom the alienated chunk of the voters backing Trump in a show of their anger against the establishment, the media included.



The question: Why the media tend to think that they are smarter than the collective will of the people that they are supposed to serve and why they think the readers are students and their job is to educate them. If pride kills, our industry may be in for the slaughter.



There is other evidence that shows the mass media are not as smart as they think they are, when they are left to their own devices.



In Korea, the portal site Naver serves as the biggest outlet of news dissemination. Newspapers and broadcasters rely on it for 30 to 90 percent of their exposure to the news. Now, the agenda for the day is set, depending on how the portal "lays out its news pages." The member media outlets are paid "peanuts" for their provision of content. For the first quarter, Naver reported an earnings surprise -- a hefty 32-percent rise in operating profit and a 23-percent rise in net. It would be no surprise if the media got hurt badly in their bottom line.



Naver started humbly but the herd mentality took over and news organizations competed to offer their content to it in a frenzy and now they find themselves enslaved by it. Now, it is a Hotel California situation -- "You can check out anytime you like but you can never leave."



Another cul-de-sac is social network services or SNS, the bandwagon of which the traditional media are trying to jump on. It's an inevitable choice but there are inherent limitations for their interfacing, explaining why their "shotgun wedding" of sorts has failed to produce any spectacular success.



This is the first part of a presentation The Korea Times Chief Editorial Writer Oh Young-jin plans to make in the session entitled," Relevance and Role of Media as a Major Stakeholder," during the ASEM Media Dialogue in Guangzhou, China, on May 8. The remaining part will deal with how the mass media should change to survive the challenge and prosper again. Contact him at foolsdie5@ktimes.com.




By Park Si-soo



Nearly 200 dogs rescued from a dog meat farm in Korea are arriving at shelters in the United States this week, according to USA Today.

The 171 animals are the final group of 250 dogs whose lives were secured through an agreement between a Korean dog meat farmer and Humane Society International in December.



The U.S. daily said the farmer, who lives in Wonju, Gangwon Province, reached out to Humane Society International last year and asked for help to get out of the business, according to Adam Parascandola, director of the Animal Protection and Crisis Response.












By Park Si-soo



An appellate court Friday upheld a jail sentence imposed on the mother of a mentally retarded school-age girl who helped her lover rape her daughter.

Upholding a lower court's verdict, the Seoul High Court sentenced the mother, surnamed Hwang, 39, to four years in prison. Her lover, surnamed Yang, 38, was prosecuted for sexually assaulting Hwang's daughter and given a nine-year prison term.



The tragedy began in February 2013. Discovering that the daughter had been abused by her mother, Yang took the daughter -- then 16 -- to his home under the mother's consent. But he raped her at least twice and forced her to do house chores until June last year, the court heard.

Court documents suggest the man once raped the girl with her mother's help. The documents said the victim's IQ was estimated at 60-70 and she was poorly educated.

During the trial, the mother said she allowed the man to take her daughter, believing he would support her until her college graduation. The mother also said she was unaware the man raped her daughter.

The man said he had consensual sex with the daughter. But the court rejected the claims by the mother and the man.

"They committed a grave crime against the teenager," said presiding judge Lee Jae-young in a ruling statement. "Nevertheless, they show no remorse for their wrongdoing and even claim their innocence. They deserve strong punishment."
By Jung Min-ho



In tandem with the investigation of official of Reckitt Benckiser (RB), whose humidifier sterilizer is blamed for the deaths of more than 100 people here, calls are mounting for the prosecution to also question staff of SK Chemicals, which has also allegedly manufactured toxic disinfectants.



According to the Ministry of Environment (MOE), Humidifier Mate, which has been produced by SK Chemicals and distributed by Aekyung since 2001, is suspected of having caused the deaths of 23 people and serious health problems to another 48.



The families of the victims and civic groups filed a complaint with the Seoul Central District Prosecutor's Office against current and former executives of SK and Aekyung last month.



An investigation into Humidifier Mate has not been begun yet because the government only recognized two chemicals  PHMG and PGH  as the cause of the deaths and serious lung problems. Humidifier Mate contains the chemicals MIT and CMIT.



However, the ministry recently said it has not ruled out a possible link between MIT and CMIT and the deaths and illness of some users.



Initially, the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC) concluded in March of 2012 that MIT and CMIT did not cause lung damage, citing animal tests.



However, six month later, the MOE designated the chemicals as toxic substances.



Since April, the ministry has been testing to figure out whether the chemicals are harmful to humans. The results of the tests, which are expected to take months if not years, will affect the prosecution's next move.



Experts say high concentrations of MIT and CMIT could be toxic to humans.



Neither SK Chemicals nor Aekyung have made public apologies to the families of alleged victims yet.



Meanwhile, prosecutors have asked a court to issue an arrest warrant for a senior researcher at Seoul National University College of Veterinary Medicine.



He is suspected of taking tens of thousands of dollars from RB in return for manipulating a toxicity test on its products in order to produce results favorable to the company.



The falsified results showed the firm's products did not cause lung damage, and provided RB with the opportunity to argue against the KCDC's earlier conclusion that harmful chemicals in the disinfectant were responsible for the deaths.



On Thursday, Rakesh Kapoor, chief executive of RB Korea, apologized to representatives of the family members of victims who went to London to protest against the company.



Kapoor said he "profoundly regretted" the harm caused during the company's annual shareholders' meeting in English capital.



A total of 143 Koreans, including pregnant women and children, have so far died allegedly due to the disinfectant, according to government data. The families of victims and civic groups said that 103 of the victims used RB's products.




By Lee Kyung-min



Centennial Christian School International (CCSI) is coming under criticism for allegedly accepting new students despite a government order for it to shut down.



The Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education in March ordered the school in Yongsan-gu, Seoul, to shut down by the end of June, after it failed to follow numerous correction orders.



However, according to Hankyoreh, a Korean-language newspaper, the school said it still accepts new students and parents are welcome to visit for admissions consultation.



The city's education office as well as the Jungbu District Office of Education, under whose jurisdiction the school falls, said the Yongsan Police Station is investigating the allegation.



"Yongsan police are investigating the school for failing to halt operation as ordered. Additional measures will be taken in accordance with the police findings," said an official at the district education office.



This comes less than a month after the city's education office began an extensive probe into 21 international schools in Seoul to check on whether they committed fraud involving admissions, accounting and management.



If fraud is confirmed in the school admissions, students will face expulsion, and the school will be subject to a correction order, the office said.



In 2012, the CCSI operator, surnamed Song, failed to seek approval from the authorities before he handed over his managerial right to a man, surnamed Park, who was unqualified to run a school.



Under the law, foreign schools can be set up and managed only by foreign residents in Korea or by Koreans who returned here after living abroad. Park was neither.



The education office said Park hired his son as the administration department head, and hired a vice principal at a Gyeonggi-based foreign language high school as the school principal.



Park set up a number of additional education centers using the CCSI brand, and accepted unqualified students charging the same amount of tuition and taught them using the same curricula as the CCSI.



Under the law, admissions to international schools are barred for Korean students who had not lived abroad for at least three years.



The office shut down the center on June 3, and asked the prosecution and tax office to investigate the school over alleged tax evasion, misappropriation of school funds and four other irregularities.



The international schools are favored among affluent parents, who try to provide elite educations for their children.



CCSI staff was unavailable for comment.




By Choi Sung-jin



"Students of the Kim Il Sung University were fluent in English but at a loss at how to use the Internet," said a BBC reporter who accompanied three Nobel laureates on their visit to North Korea.



During a conversation with Sir Richard Roberts, a British recipient of the Nobel award in medicine, North Korean students' English and their knowledge of microbiology were at astonishing levels, the report said Wednesday.



But the foreign visitors found a different side in a large computer room. Roberts was curious at how skillfully students could use the Internet. As a student could not use it properly, a North Korean supervisor helped him. When the British visitor asked whether the student did not know how to use it, the supervisor could not answer, apparently feeling uncomfortable, the report said.



"It is foolish if they pretend to use the Internet without restrictions," Roberts was quoted as saying.



"The world might think North Korea ridiculous or frightening, but North Korean residents are scared of the outside world and feel they are surrounded by enemies," the report said.



A North Korean student, when asked why his country needs nuclear weapons, was quoted as saying: "The United States and South Korea have far more nuclear weapons than us. They are all trying to kill us. We need nuclear weapons to protect ourselves."




By Rachel Lee



While U.S. Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump wants South Korea to foot the bill for American troops here, Seoul has increased its payment nine times since the cost-sharing treaty was signed 23 years ago.



Last year, South Korea paid 932 billion won ($806 million) for the 28,500 U.S. troops here, which the government says was about 50 percent of the total cost estimated to be around 2 trillion won.



There is the possibility that the U.S. may face calls to withdraw its troops from South Korea, if the billionaire property tycoon becomes president and renews his demand, as Seoul believes 2 trillion won is too much of a burden for the country.



Since the Special Measures Agreement signed in 1991 between the two allies, Seoul has continued to increase the payment for the U.S. troops stationed in the country. In 1991, Seoul paid only 150 million won.



In 2014, Seoul and Washington renewed the cost-sharing accord, with Seoul agreeing to pay 920 billion won annually until 2018, up 5.8 percent from 2013.



On Trump's campaign trail, the entrepreneur-turned politician has accused South Korea of getting a "free ride" with U.S help to defend it from North Korea while increasing America's security burden. He said the amount that South Korea has paid was "peanuts" and argued that the country should pay "very substantially" to keep the American forces here.



But the fact that both sides have reaped benefits from the deployment of U.S. forces makes Trump's claim unviable.



The American forces in the South have protected the South from the North's nuclear threats. And at the same time, they have played a critical role in supporting U.S. national security through maintaining order in the Asia-Pacific region.



Not as extreme as Trump, there still seems to be a relatively common perception among U.S. politicians that its allies should bear more of the cost than they do now.



Ahead of the cost negotiations in 2013, the Senate Armed Services Committee said South Korea did not keep up with the increasing total cost for the U.S. troops. The U.S. military officials also requested that South Korea should pay over 50 percent of the total cost, according to the U.S. Congressional Research Service.



Government data shows that South Korea paid a lower proportion of the total cost for U.S. troops here than Japan, but more than Germany and other members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. A total of 36,700 and 50,500 U.S. troops are stationed in Japan and Germany, respectively.



However, when it is measured as a percentage of a nation's gross domestic product (GDP), Seoul holds the top place, the government said.



According to a report released by the National Assembly Budget Office in 2013, South Korea paid 836 billion won for the personnel cost for U.S. troops in 2012, which accounted for 0.068 percent of the nations' GDP, whereas Japan paid 4.4 trillion won in the same year, which made up 0.064 percent of its GDP. Germany contributed 600 billion won in 2013, which was 0.016 percent of its GDP.



A government official said South Korea needs to "highlight other expenses that were previously excluded in the calculation, including costs associated with supporting KATUSA." KATUSA, which stands for the Korean Augmentation to the United States Army, is a military program initiated during the Korean War in August 1950.




The North Korean regime is likely to collapse within 10 to 15 years because of worsening economic difficulties following tightened U.N. sanctions, according to a Chinese political commentator on Wednesday.

Deng Yuwen, who was a former deputy editor of the Study Times, a paper controlled by China's ruling Communist Party, made the claim in his recent article posted on a Chinese military-related website named "Tiexue."

North Korea has been slapped with tougher U.N. sanctions following its fourth nuclear test in January and launch of a long-range rocket in February.

Deng claimed that the tougher sanctions have begun affecting North Korea's isolated economy, including a decline in international food aid, a shortage of foreign currency and a rise of defections.

Unless North Korea changes course under the U.N. sanctions, Deng said, "The possibility of the North Korean regime faltering is a matter of time."

The North Korean regime of leader Kim Jong-un is likely to collapse "within 10 years or 15 years at the longest," Deng said.

Still, few analysts believe that China, North Korea's economic lifeline, would put crippling economic pressure on the North because a sudden collapse of the Pyongyang regime could deal a blow to the stability of China's northeastern region. (Yonhap)
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called on North Korea on Thursday to resolve problems through dialogue and become a responsible member of the international community as the communist nation is set to hold a key national meeting.

Ban made the remark to reporters after a visit to Brookland Middle School in Washington, saying sanctions on Pyongyang are aimed more at persuading the North to join the international community, rather than punishing the regime.

"I hope the North will heed to this and step forward to resolve problems through dialogue," he said.

Concerns persist that the North could carry out yet another nuclear test in concert with the Workers' Party Congress, scheduled for Friday for the first time in 36 years. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is expected to use the meeting to further solidify his grip on power.

Last month, North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Su-yong made a rare visit to New York for the signing of a U.N. climate agreement. At the time, Ban had a brief, hand-shaking encounter with Ri.

During the encounter, Ban said he expressed thanks for Ri's attendance and asked for the North's active participation in such global initiatives. (Yonhap)
North Korea warned Friday that it will strengthen its nuclear deterrence capability as long as the United States maintains its current policy of hostility towards the communist country.

In a statement released by the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea (CPRK), which handles inter-Korean relations, Pyongyang claimed that Washington provided the cause for triggering the nuclear standoff on the Korean Peninsula.

It is perfectly rational to counter nuclear weapons with nuclear weapons, the committee said in the statement carried by the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) as the North's capital city kicks off a rare congress of the ruling Workers' Party of Korea (WPK).

The CPRK's latest arguments are the stance that the North has maintained ever since it claimed its status as a nuclear armed nation. The rest of the world, however, has pointedly made it clear that it will not accept North Korea as a nuclear weapon state and has urged it to give up its efforts.

The statement outlined by the CPRK's spokesman then said that with the North already having acquired a hydrogen bomb, its status as a nuclear power will remain unchanged.












15 Ways to Celebrate the 100th Anniversary of Cincinnati-Style Chili

Cincinnati-style chili is celebrating its 100th birthday on Oct. 24.

By Danny Cross, Maija Zummo and CityBeat Staff Oct 24, 2022

Certain cities are in part defined by their native cuisines. Although at times stereotypical, one cannot debate the value of partaking in a hot slice of New York-style pizza in the Big Apple, a hunk of deep dish in Chicago or a greasy cheesesteak topped with Cheez Whiz in Philadelphia...
North Korea's military has been placed on a heightened state of alert as the country held its first ruling party congress in more than 30 years, Seoul's military said Friday.

"There does not seem to be any out of ordinary movement among frontline troops, but they seem to be maintaining a higher state of readiness with the congress kicking off in the capital city," said an official defense ministry source who declined to be identified.

He pointed out that in the past, the North would raise the readiness of its troops during key domestic political events.

The Congress of the Worker's Party of Korea is technically the highest deliberative institution of the sole governing party of the North. The last time the congress was convened was in October 1980.

"There have been more frequent visits to frontline guard posts by higher ranking field and staff officers," the official said.












By Yi Whan-woo



The United Nations and other international organizations dealing with North Korea's dire human rights situation have renewed calls this week for its leader Kim Jong-un to be put on trial for state-perpetrated crimes.



These calls are coinciding with the Seventh Workers' Party Congress in the North, which opened Friday, for the first time since 1980.



In preparation for the meeting, the regime is believed to have forcibly mobilized its people for mass celebrations and construction projects. It also reportedly extorted money from "slave workers" abroad.



Marzuki Darusman, the U.N. special rapporteur on North Korea, reiterated his demands to prosecute Kim and other members of the North Korean leadership before the International Criminal Court (ICC) during a forum at the U.N. headquarters in New York, Thursday.



Darusman was one of the 150 participants at the "International Symposium on Human Rights Violations, including Abductions by North Korea." The Japanese government organized the meeting. Other participants included North Korean defectors, non-governmental organization (NGO) workers and scholars.



Darusman said Kim holds the "ultimate responsibility" for ignoring the U.N.'s demands to improve North Korea's human rights in line with the U.N. Commission of Inquiry (COI) report, according to the Korean-language website of Radio Free Asia.



He also asked the international community to step up its cooperation for the punishment of the North Korean leadership.



Published in February 2014, the COI report accused the reclusive state of running political prison camps where up to 120,000 people are thought to be detained.



It also called for a referral of Kim to the ICC for committing crimes against humanity.



During a U.N. Human Rights Council meeting in March, Darusman said the time has come for the world to "move on with the next logical step."



"We are closing in on the North Koreans, and the nature of the regime is such that with total, complete control of the system nothing happens anywhere in that country without the say-so of the highest, supreme leader, the chairman of that country," he said at the time.



Robert King, the U.S. Department of State's special envoy for North Korean human rights issues, voiced a similar view at the forum, Thursday.



He said the U.S. has no tolerance for human rights issues and that North Korea should address human rights issues itself.



In a separate forum in Seoul, Tuesday, Signe Poulsen, representative of the Seoul office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, said the international community cannot overlook human rights abuses in the secretive state.



Poulsen stressed that those responsible for North Korea's rights abuses should be held accountable retroactively.



The office opened in June 2015 to exclusively monitor Pyongyang's state-perpetrated human rights violations as a follow-up to the COI report.



The New York-based NGO Human Rights Watch (HRW) also urged Kim in a letter, Tuesday, to stop mobilizing his people in preparation for this year's Workers' Party Congress. The letter issued by HRW Executive Director Kenneth Roth accused Kim of remaining unchanged in his efforts to improve quality of his people's livelihoods and asked him to stop such practices. It also asked North Korea to join the U.N.'s International Labor Organization.



The National Intelligence Service said North Koreans in general are against the regime for bolstering its surveillance and forcing them to join state-run festivals to commemorate the congress instead of going to work.



The regime has demanded $2 a week from low-income households, while ordering those who have more than $3,000 to exchange it for the North Korean currency.




North Koreans carry bouquets of decorative flowers as they wait at the Kim Il Sung Square in the North Korean capital of Pyongyang, Friday, to celebrate the opening of the first full congress of its ruling Workers' Party since 1980. / AP-Yonhap



By Yi Whan-woo

Flat-screen televisions and laptops imported from China may be what North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has in mind as presents for participants of the Workers' Party congress, according to North Korea watchers, Friday.

They said the young leader may have been inspired by the color televisions with oval-shaped screens that Kim Il-sung, his grandfather and the country's founder, gave to North Koreans at the previous congressional meeting in 1980.

Several North Korean defectors in Seoul said that back then they considered color TVs an impressive gift, considering North Korea's socialist market economy.

Most South Korean households owned only black-and-white television sets at that time.

"Kim Jong-un will be under pressure to be remembered by his people as a generous leader, like his grandfather was," said Kang Myung-do, a defector-turned-professor at Kyungmin College. "He obviously will want to give stuff that will be perceived as being as fancy as a color television in the early 1980s. And a flat-panel television that can be mounted on the wall could be a possible choice."

Kang also pointed out that the congress, which started Friday, aims to consolidate Kim Jong-un's leadership after succeeding his late father Kim Jong-il in December 2011.












China on Friday voiced hope that North Korea could heed calls by the international community to abandon its nuclear ambition, as the North is holding a rare congress of its ruling Workers' Party.



"North Korea is at an important stage of national development. We hope that North Korea can achieve national development," China's foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei told reporters.



"We also hope that North Korea can heed the calls of the international community and work with us to maintain peace and stability of Northeast Asia," Hong said.



Hong also repeated that he had "no relevant information" on whether China sent a delegation to the North Korean congress.



Earlier in the day, a newspaper controlled by China's ruling Communist Party said in an editorial that North Korea is unlikely to chart a different course on its nuclear weapons program at its key party congress.



The state-run Global Times newspaper, however, voiced cautious hope that North Korea may conduct a "pragmatic analysis" of its policy of pursuing both nuclear advances and economic development.



North Korea kicked off its first party congress in 36 years on Friday, which is expected to display the North Korean regime's unity toward leader Kim Jong-un.



In the editorial, the Chinese newspaper described the North Korean congress as "an overall, official start to Kim Jong-un's era."



"The congress will present the new leadership of the nation, who are believed to be younger and will suit Kim's era better," it said.



Kim, who took power following the death of his father Kim Jong-Il in December 2011, is widely expected to use the rare congress as a venue to solidify his reign and show his credentials for his policy of simultaneously pursuing economic development and nuclear weapons.



Political ties between North Korea and China remain soured because of the North's defiant pursuit of nuclear weapons. China backed tougher U.N. sanctions following the North's fourth nuclear test in January.



"The outcome of sticking to nuclear development is very complicated. It has brought Pyongyang far more negative effects on its security than it may have predicted when it initiated its nuclear weapons program in the early years," the editorial reads.



"Policymakers in the country must have realized how serious the issue is, and raised strategies to develop both the economy and nuclear technology at the same time. We may see how they have decided to resolve the contradictions between the two during this conference," it said.



"It is not realistic to expect North Korea to make abrupt changes. The nation is also unlikely to stay exactly the same," it said.



"It has a strong desire to get rid of its long-term isolation and sluggish economy, yet in the meantime, it is confused as to how to take the first step. It is believed that there will be pragmatic analysis during this meeting," it said. (Yonhap)




Water sommeliers Kim Ha-neul, left, and Lee Ji-sun at a cafe in Seoul on May 5

/ Korea Times photo by Kang Hyun-kyung





Sommelier job created as bottled water industry grows



By Kang Hyun-kyung

"Sparkling water in general is considered good for health," Kim Ha-neul, a certified water sommelier and a columnist, said. "But it's bad for people with stomach problems. So if they drink an entire 2-liter bottle or more of sparkling water every day, their stomachs will suffer the consequences."You are what you drink. Water can improve or worsen people's health because nutrients vary with different types of water, and wrong pairing of water type and food could also have adverse consequences, according water experts.

Health experts say sparkling water could worsen stomach-related diseases such as gastro-esophageal reflux.

Water sommeliers are trained experts knowledgeable about all aspects of drinking water, including water types, their nutrients and even the geographic characteristics of the location of bottling facilities as they have an effect on the quality of the water. They are also specialized in water and food pairing. The new profession has been created recently following the growing bottled water market in the past decade.

As the selection of drinking water grows, choosing the right type of water becomes more challenging for consumers. In Korea alone, there are some 140 brands of bottled water, including 80 produced by local companies, competing for market share.

Besides its health effects, Kim said, water can make or break dishes, as well as beverages, especially wine and coffee. "Alkaline water, for example, is really good to drink. It is one of the best types of water in terms of taste," he said. However, alkaline water's components, such as calcium, silica, potassium and magnesium, make it less acidic than tap water. "It's a bad idea to use alkaline water to make coffee because the alkaline components weaken the coffee's acidity and consequently, worsen its taste," Kim said. "I heard that baristas prefer plain water rather than alkaline water."

Lee Ji-sun, a certified wine and water sommelier, said there are no major differences among local water brands in terms of nutrients, but there are among brands of imported water.

"What kind of water you choose matters not only to your health, but also to the taste of the food you eat," she said. "You will know how important it is when you look at the structure of the human body. About 70 percent of our body is composed of water."

The health benefits of water are well-known among health advocates. For one, drinking enough water every day helps maintain the balance of bodily fluids. Some experts say the selection of the right type of water while dining needs the expertise of water sommeliers.

Ko Jae-youn, a professor at the Food Service and Culinary Management Department at Kyung Hee University, said soft water, which contains very little calcium or magnesium, is generally good for vegetarians, while hard water, which has very little of those minerals, and sparkling water are recommended for meat eaters.

"The best choice of water also depends on when and why you are going to drink it," he said. "There are types of water designed for post-exercise. These waters have different nutrients and thus, have different health benefits. So you need to check first why you are going to drink the water before choosing a type of water."

Ko, also a wine sommelier and president of the nonprofit Korea International Sommelier Association (KISA) in Seoul, introduced sommelier courses six years ago after he was inspired by some European water professionals. He opened the class at Kyung Hee University, and some 100 students are now taking the course. Since 2011, KISA has also hosted the water sommeliers contests.

At the moment, water sommeliers are not in much demand in Korea, save for at a few Michelin-starred restaurants. However, Ko said the demand for water sommeliers will increase in the near future as consumers become more sophisticated and more informed about the health benefits of water and consequently, become pickier when buying water. He said water suppliers or restaurant owners will then feel the need to hire water experts for food and water pairing.

Kim said many consumers are already savvy when it comes to buying water. Citing his experience as a water advisor for the water bar in the Shinsegae Department Store in southern Seoul in 2014, he said consumers check water types thoroughly for their nutrients.

"My customers are people from all age groups, from elementary school children to older citizens. One of my customers is a cancer patient, and he checks the nutrients of the types of water so he can choose the right water," he said.

Experts are optimistic about the future of the profession, as bottled drinking water is one of the fastest-growing markets in Korea. The market has grown from 15 billion won in 2000 to 70 billion today, intensifying the competition among local and international bottled water brands.

Samdasoo, produced by the Jeju Special Self-Governing Province Development Corp., takes the lion's share of the local bottled water market with some 45 percent. The local brand has topped the market for the last 18 years since its launch in 1998. The brand's bottling facilities for its volcanic bedrock water, located in Gyorae Village on the scenic southern island, produce 2,000 tons of mineral water daily.

Several other local brands, including Nongshim's Baegsansoo and Lotte Chilsung's Icis, have been vying for the top market position for years but remain far behind Samdasoo. Baegsansoo rose to second place this week with a market share of 6.8 percent, followed by Icis with 5.2 percent.

Bottled drinking water first went on sale in the country in the late 1960s, when then local water purifier company Diamond began bottling waters for foreigners based in Korea. The sale of drinking water for Koreans was prohibited until 1994.

The ban was based on the concept of economic justice. At that time, the authoritarian government did not consider drinking water as a good to purchase. It believed that if drinking water were to be sold, only the rich could afford it. If only the rich would have access to premium water with various health benefits, the poor would be frustrated because they couldn't afford it. According to the government, it's unfair for income levels to be a factor in people's health, so it promoted the consumption of tap water as safe to prevent the perception of injustice.

The ban on the sales of drinking water was lifted temporarily during the 1988 Seoul Summer Olympics for foreign athletes but was reinstated post-Olympics. Local water companies took legal action against the government, demanding that they be allowed to sell bottled drinking water. The Supreme Court finally sided with the water suppliers in 1994, ruling that the ban on the sale of drinking water violates the basic right to pursue happiness.

Water companies have since introduced dozens of brands of bottled drinking water, while distributors imported premium bottled water from France, Italy and Japan, further intensifying market competition.
South Korea will build a new Chinatown near Seoul that will serve as an international shopping and tourism hub, authorities said Wednesday.

The Chinatown, expected to be over 2.3 million square meters in size, will be built in Pyeongtaek, some 70 kilometers southeast of Seoul, according to the Yellow Sea Free Economic Zone (YSFEZ) authority.

The YSFEZ is one the country's several free economic zones (FEZs) located near the capital area.

The project, proposed by a special purpose company (SPC) established with major investment from Chinese firm Legions Group, has been reviewed by the related bodies as of March and is waiting official approval from the authorities.

The company, capitalized at 50 billion won ($43 million), is 50-percent owned by Legions, 20 percent by Chinese individuals and 20 percent by South Korean private investors.

The plan is to build hotels, recreation and convention centers, as well as large-scale shopping facilities with duty-free shops in the newly envisioned town, named China Castle. The company said it will also establish medical centers, an international school and apartments in the area.

By attracting experts and students interested in South Korea and China, the company aims to make the region appeal to Chinese tourists, as well as service and distribution industries.

The initial engineering work of the project is slated to be finished by 2018. The company said it will complete selling the lots to both South Korean and Chinese firms by 2022.

"The area which will be developed with Chinese capital aims to become a Chinese-friendly city and a grand-scale shopping hub for the 1.5 billion Asian population," said Sohn Jong-cheon, an advisor for the SPC company.

Yang Jae-wan, the chief of the SPC firm, said he is expecting to welcome around 50 million annual visitors by 2025 and to compete with Hong Kong and Macao over Asian tourism by 2035.

The approval for the project is expected to be completed once the agreement on fund investments is made, according to the free economic zone authority. (Yonhap)
By Choe Chong-dae

I recently visited Heungdeoksa Temple in Cheongju, North Chungcheong Province, where the Korean Buddhist text Jikjisimcheyojeol (abbreviated as Jikji) was first printed in 1377.

The Jikji, which is considered the world's oldest extant book printed with movable metal type, was published 78 years before the German Gutenberg used the same technique to print his Bible in 1455. The movable metal type system has been one of the greatest inventions in history.

Although I am not a professional scholar, I have developed a strong affection for books, particularly old books, as I have been surrounded by numerous antiquarian books since I was young.

A great number of old books are stacked in my home and office covering a wide range of subjects from the humanities to social science including books in foreign languages.

I have also inherited some antiquarian books from my father who was a pioneer of Korean archeology. I could not imagine my life without these old books such as "Religions of Old Korea" by Charles Allen Clark, Ph.D., D.D. in 1929, "Kaebeok" first edition, Korea's first modern monthly journal published in 1920 and The "I Ching, (Book of Changes)" the Richard Wilhem translation, English version by Cary F. Baynes in 1950.

These books have been a precious source of facts, understanding, inspiration, wisdom and enlightenment to me. Through their smell, the faded yellowing and touch of their pages, these well-worn volumes are like family. Some were published many decades ago. I feel very close to them, as I recognize their long journey over the years, paralleling my own. I feel like they are my old friends. There is something lovable about the faint yet familiar fragrance my old books.

The renowned British writer George Orwell once said that "a bookshop is one of the few places where we can hang about for a long time without spending any money".

For me, there is no better place to experience the past than an old bookstore. Filled with ancient history, sciences, arts and culture, a rare bookstore is a window into different places and times. Whenever the opportunity presented itself, I explored old bookstores in Insadong and along the Cheonggyecheon stream in Seoul in the 1970s and 1980s in search of valuable but inexpensive gems.

A traditional rare book store is the 82-year-old Tongmunkwan in Insadong. It has been selling antiquarian, old and rare books for generations and has long been considered a gold mine in Korean studies. However, due to the immense repository of sources now reproduced on the Internet, old books that we can actually hold in our hands are no longer considered an exclusive conduit into the past nowadays.

I am concerned that my old tomes will soon become secondhand rubbish. Nevertheless, I think they are symbols of hope and shared discourse I should cherish. Books are tangible information and communication channels that connect the past and the future, the old and the new worlds.

Reading plays a pivotal role in bridging generations and cultures, and books actually open the way to mutual respect and understanding among all peoples of the world, transcending space and time. They are a compass to navigate to a new level of human interaction.

April 23 was designated World Book Day by UNESCO in 1995. This day commemorates the importance of books in our lives and promotes reading them everywhere. Books are created by humans and they humanize us in turn when we give them their due. They make us who we are. We should treat them as close friends, even part of ourselves, both our offspring and teachers.

Choe Chong-dae is a guest columnist of The Korea Times. He is president of Dae-kwang International Co., and director of the Korean-Swedish Association. He can be reached at dkic98@chol.com.
By Andrew Hammond



This Monday marked the fifth anniversary of the assassination of Osama bin Laden. Half a decade on, the global terrorism environment has been reshaped by the rising prominence of so-called Islamic State (IS), originally a splinter group of al-Qaida whose own fortunes have declined significantly.



In this landscape of change, one constant is that international terrorism has remained a continuing concern of international policy makers, as the recent IS attacks in Paris and Brussels underline. One of key challenges world leaders face is that there remains a key weakness in the ongoing US-led global campaign on terrorism'.



That is, Washington's response has been hyper-militarised  dominated by counter terrorism and security, while other soft power instruments such as public diplomacy have been underinvested in. To be sure, even this unbalanced strategy has secured some key successes, including the unseating of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, and potentially the progressive degradation of IS positions in Iraq and Syria too.



Yet, an overwhelming emphasis on hard power has fuelled significant controversy, alienating many across the world. While US President Barack Obama recognises this much more so than his predecessor George W. Bush, the fact remains that US policy is still viewed internationally as overly military and security-focused. For instance, since Obama assumed office there has been a big increase in drone attacks and this is controversial both domestically and overseas.



US policymakers have highlighted the need for a paradigm shift in the campaign on terrorism. Last year, for instance, prior to a White House Summit on Countering Violent Extremism, Secretary of State John Kerry called for a "shift in gears onto a path that will demand more from uspolitically, economically, and sociallya truly comprehensive and long-term strategy to destroy [terrorism's] very roots". And with the 70th anniversary of the end of the Second World War recently passed, Kerry compared the challenge with what Washington and its international allies faced in tackling fascism in that previous generation.



One of the most glaring gaps that now badly needs to be addressed is the need for a turbo-charged soft-power effort to win hearts and minds' around the world. In numerous key states such as Turkey, Jordan and Pakistan, opinion polls show that positive sentiment toward the United States have fallen off a cliff in the last decade and a half. 2014 research by Pew Global, for instance, showed that just 10%, 12%, and 14% of the populations in these three countries respectively have a positive image of the United States.



This is so important because the antiterrorism contest is, in essence, one whose outcome is related to a battle between moderates and extremists within Islamic civilisation. And unless this is better recognised and addressed, with the soft power elements of the campaign on terrorism dialled up significantly, the US-led international strategy will continue to face serious setbacks.



The soft power roadmap for what is needed is relatively clear. Seizing the moment requires the United States and international partners to give much higher priority to activities such as public diplomacy, sustainable development assistance, and exchange programmes.



And at last year's White House summit, Obama rightly noted that this is an expensive, demanding and complex generational project that the US government cannot achieve alone. Hence the reason why multiple US and international leaders from other arenas like the private sector, NGOs and faith communities also attended the session too.



While Kerry last year drew an analogy with the Second World War, it is the Cold War that perhaps provides an even better comparison with what is now needed in the campaign against terrorism. Just like the Cold War, which was ultimately won by a strategy of US-led international containment and cultural vigour, the challenges posed by the campaign against terrorism need a much smarter balance between hard and soft power, with resources to match.



Numerous US officials, including former Bush and Obama defence secretary Bob Gates, have highlighted the gross mismatch between the current budgets of the Pentagon and other US international programmes. Today, for instance, Washington spends about 500 times more on its military than it does collectively on international broadcasting and exchanges which proved so successful during the Cold War.



Of course, a holistic international plan to tackle violent extremism will inevitably have a military and counter-terrorism component. However, soft power needs to become a much bigger part of the overall mix, as even the former Pentagon chief Gates advocates.



Looking beyond the Obama presidency, it is much more likely that his former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democratic nominee for the White House, will offer the most effective policies in the campaign on terror. Serving as the US diplomat-in-chief from 2009-2013, she championed a policy of so-called smart power: reorientating the balance between soft and hard power in favour of the former.



By contrast, Republican front-runners, billionaire businessman Donald Trump and Senator Ted Cruz, has called for more hard-line actions, echoing the excesses of the Bush administration. Referring to IS, Cruz has controversially called for a "fundamentally different military strategy" of "carpet-bombing [IS] into oblivion" which critics have claimed would fall foul of the Geneva Convention given that it would not differentiate between civilian and military targets. Trump has also said he would "bomb the shit out of 'em [IS]. There would be nothing left", while, incredibly, he has also proposed a blanket ban on Muslims travelling into the United States.



Taken overall, the United States and its international partners must urgently address this Achilles heel in the campaign against terrorism. While a very limited window of opportunity exists to get this agenda turbo-charged before Obama's term of office ends, a sustained commitment will be required for many years beyond his presidency by his successor.



Andrew Hammond is an associate at LSE IDEAS (the Centre for International Diplomacy, Affairs and Strategy) at the London School of Economics.




By John J. Metzler

UNITED NATIONS  Governments throughout the world seem increasingly nervous if not paranoid over a free press and media, according to a searingly poignant survey by Reporters Without Borders (RSF). The annual survey of the global media in 180 countries, the French-based monitor report underscores a gradual deterioration in freedoms and the rights of journalists to freely pursue and present reports.

"It is unfortunately clear that many of the world's leaders are developing a form of paranoia about legitimate journalism," states Christophe Deloire, RSF's Secretary General. He adds, "The climate of fear results in a growing aversion to debate and pluralism, a clampdown on the media by ever more authoritarian and oppressive governments."

All this points to what the watchdog group calls a "deep and disturbing decline in media freedoms."

Days after this statement, the Islamic Republic of Iran sentenced four reformist journalists to prison on the charges of "acting against national security." Though the Tehran regime's actions are hardly surprising, the RSF report overviews the wider deterioration of press freedoms and accessibly in the USA and Europe as well.

First let's analyze the survey, compiled by a rigorous methodology and analysis. Of the top ten countries with the freest media include Finland, Norway, Netherlands, Denmark and New Zealand. Not surprising. The second five include Costa Rica, Switzerland, Sweden, Ireland and Jamaica. Again impressive, but where's the USA?

Let's look at the next ten countries. There's Austria, Slovakia, Belgium, Germany and Canada among them. There's good news here: Estonia has the best ratings of any country in the post-Soviet Union while Slovakia has the best numbers of any country in former Eastern Europe.

Yet again, where's the USA?

The United States is ranked 41st in press freedoms, that's behind South Africa and Slovenia and just ahead of Burkina Faso and Botswana. Despite America's long cherished First Amendment which constitutionally provides for extensive media rights, there's been a steady erosion of journalistic freedoms in recent years. In 2015 the USA ranked 49th. But why?

The reasons are manifest in the Administration's stringent use of security legislation. According to the report, "The main cause for concern for RSF continues to be the current administration's obsessive control of information, which manifests itself through the war on whistleblowers and journalists' sources, as well as the lack of government transparency, which reporters have continually criticized. "

The RSF survey adds poignantly, "The Obama administration has prosecuted morewhistleblowers under the Espionage Act than all previous administrations combined."

But it' s not just the U.S. slipping in press freedoms. Japan which has proudly sustained a free press in the postwar era, has now slipped eleven places to #72, just behind South Korea. Japan's press restrictions concerning "state secrets" remain onerous.

During a recent visit to Tokyo, UN special Rapporteur David Kaye called on the Japanese government to safeguard media independence which he stressed were facing "serious threats."

Kaye's criticism stems from parliamentary legislation which expands wider protections to what's deemed "state secrets."

The Republic of China on Taiwan still maintains the highest free press standing in East Asia: Taiwan comes in at No. 51, compared with Hong Kong at No. 69 and the

Philippines at No. 138. Mainland China's media freedoms are near the end of the list scoring No. 176, just behind Vietnam and one step ahead of Syria.



As in past years we see the steady and sustained assault on free media: press, radio/TV, internet and blogs from a wide swath of regimes many of whom are under

the political radar. Of the usual suspects, Venezuela stands at No. 139, Russia at No. 148 and Islamic Iran at No. 169, but then there are places like Azerbaijan at No. 163 or Sudan at No. 174, or even Mexico where drug cartel violence, killings

of journalists, and widespread corruption impact on a media which ranks No. 149 globally.



As is now almost a tradition, North Korea and Eritrea are at the bottom of the list rounding out the most repressive states for media freedoms.



Surprised?

John J. Metzler is a United Nations correspondent covering diplomatic and defense issues. He is the author of Divided Dynamism The Diplomacy of Separated Nations: Germany, Korea, China.
Time for fresh approach to old problem



Kim Jong-un, the 33-year-old third-generation heir to North Korea's Kim Dynasty, has formally ascended to power during the just-started Seventh (North) Korean Workers' Party Congress. It was 36 years ago, in 1980, when his grandfather, Kim Il-sung, held the sixth party convention, leaving in his will that no convention would be held until the lives of the North Korean people improved to the point where they would enjoy three square meals of rice and meat every day.



Under Kim Jong-il, the late successor and father of the current leader, the North had suffered from a malfunctioning economy, worsened by chronic famines, and he failed to hold the congress.



The situation has not improved under the third Kim, either. Rather, his confrontational attitude has further relegated the nation to pariah status, with its only benefactors, China and Iran  one of the few former collaborators in the pursuit of nuclear weapons and long-range missiles  keeping the North at arm's length. In other words, the young dictator is holding the congress virtually in violation of his grandfather's will as the nation is sliding into an abysmal downward spiral.



Despite the grim circumstances surrounding his ascension to power, Kim, as well as the world, should find ways of putting this new start of the falling dynasty to its best use.



For Kim, now more securely in power, it is time to ponder how to better feed and clothe his people. His pursuit of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) is surely not the answer. His fourth nuclear detonation and intercontinental ballistic missile test early this year brought on the toughest-ever international sanctions, also backed by China. The result is a virtual blockade by sea and land that will only get tougher if Kim does not give up his strategy of blackmail and extortion. Besides, he should think that his missiles are unreliable, as shown by three recent failed Musudan intermediate missile tests, and he should realize that nuclear weapons are even harder to harness. His impoverished nation may well go under, overstretching itself financing its efforts to make these weapons work.



The sooner he realizes that the missiles and nukes cannot replace the fare of rice and meat for his people nor guarantee his regime's security, the better chance he has of survival.



From the international community  South Korea, the United States and China, particularly, it is time for a cool-headed approach  strategic rigidity can be replaced by a sense of flexibility.



It may be tempting to continue pressuring the communist state in the hope it will either give up its belligerent position or collapse. And it is true that its forceful tactics may just work. History has shown time and again Pyongyang's resilience  surviving prevalent predictions of demise in the 1990s and remaining committed to its independence at whatever cost.



Besides, the alternative of implosion should be carefully weighed  one being a crisis in which hundreds of thousands of North Koreans embark on an uncontrolled migration into the South and north to China and by boat to Japan. What about its WMDs ending up in the wrong hands?



It is true that the Kim regime is an evil empire but the world also needs to be realistic enough to see that it sometimes is necessary to cut the deal with the lesser of two evils  the unexpected being the rise out of nowhere of a general with a bigger case of megalomania, with a suicidal tendency. We need to remind ourselves that time is with us, not with the North, so we can afford to wait it out.




The United States and South Korea should seriously consider having Seoul develop nuclear weapons and jointly manage the arsenal if the security situation on the Korean Peninsula continues to worsen, a senior South Korean expert claimed Tuesday.



Cheong Seong-chang, senior research fellow at the state-run South Korean think tank Sejong Institute, made the case during a seminar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, calling for immediate negotiations to resolve North Korean nuclear and missile threats.



"Unless these negotiations take place and if North Korea's nuclear and missile capabilities become further sophisticated, calls in South Korea for nuclear armament cannot help but rise," Cheong said, adding that polls already show a majority of South Koreans are in support of nuclear armament.



Should the security situation on the peninsula worsen further, and if Donald Trump is elected president, the two countries should seriously study an option in which South Korea develops nuclear weapons and the weapons are jointly managed by the South and the U.S.



Nuclear weapons in South Korea would pose direct threats to the North and make Pyongyang's nuclear and missile threats meaningless, thus making the U.S. safer, Cheong said. Concerns about proliferation could be put down as the U.S. would be involved in taking care of the arsenal, he said.



Nuclear weapons would also give Seoul an upper hand in inter-Korean negotiations with Pyongyang, he said.



The North's fourth nuclear test in January and a long-range rocket launch the following month have rekindled calls in South Korea for nuclear armament, with some leading members of South Korea's ruling party arguing that it makes no sense to rely on the U.S. "nuclear umbrella" as the North's nuclear arsenal grows.



But the government has rejected the idea as running counter to the principle of a nuclear-free peninsula.



Fueling the debate was the suggestion from U.S. Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump that South Korea and Japan could be allowed to develop their own nuclear weapons for self-defense to reduce the U.S.' burdens in protecting the allies.



U.S. government officials have also repeatedly reassured Seoul that it doesn't need nuclear weapons.



Moon Chung-in, a professor at Seoul's Yonsei University, rejected the calls for nuclear armament, saying the South should believed in the U.S. nuclear umbrella. Nuclear armament would be a "curse" not a "blessing" for Seoul, he said. (Yonhap)




By Kim Ji-myung

One morning in 1974, I was sitting in an ante-chamber of the minister of health and social affairs. As a reporter covering the ministry, morning check-in at the minister's office was routine. At the time, labor affairs were also handled by the ministry, with the Office of Labor established later.

Although the minister had no appointment with a visitor scheduled for that morning, I found a tall foreign gentleman emerging from the minister's room. Such a foreign visitor to the health minister was a rare event, and his serious expression prompted my journalistic instinct that something quite important was happening. Even more, he was moving alone, without a colleague or accompanying staff.

I asked him to stay a few minutes for an interview, which he accepted.

That was the very first mention of Iran's plan to employ some 100,000 Korean workers in Iran for their 5th Economic Development Plan.

As I discovered, the man was the deputy minister of construction of Iran. He explained the grand national development plan of 1973-1978, which included a project to build 100,000 houses.

This article was my first scoop. In other words, I beat all other reporters to write this story, as it was too important to ignore. As a result, The Korea Times awarded me a "Scoop Prize."

In short, Iran's social overhead capital  roads, ports and buildings  needed enormous improvement. There was a big demand for projects and manpower. There was sufficient oil money coming in from high oil prices. Iran wanted to invite foreign firms, expertise and people.

That morning, the Iranian deputy minister had met the Korean minister in charge of labor affairs to see how many workers the Korean government could send to Iran.

I am sure the scale of figures and amount of budget envisioned by the Iranian plans must have surprised the Korean minister at the least, or made him suspicious of the feasibility of the plans.

Another reporter expressed deep doubt about the plan, pointing out that the number of workers requested came to more than the population of the entire Korean city of Gangneung, which had 90,000 citizens at the time. It was absolutely unimaginable to see so many workers going abroad.

Korea's construction work abroad began in 1966, with an $11,000 project in Asia. Only in 1973 did the first project in the Middle East begin, worth $24,000. The Iranian proposal was not for construction contracts but for the import of manpower. By all standards, the number was staggering.

I was a cub reporter and very conservative, unlike many other reporters, who often exaggerate the figures to catch readers' eyes by making the stories "sexy." Therefore, I discounted the figure by 10 percent to be safe.

The first batch of 1,300 Korean trailer-truck drivers went to Iran in 1975. They were paid more than others from Southeast Asia for their higher educational backgrounds and reliability.

Today, after more than three decades of economic sanctions, Iran is back on the world economic stage.

For me, it is astonishing to hear exactly the same statements about Iran after all these years: A country now with a population of more than 80 million with purchasing power, and having among the world's biggest oil deposits, has dilapidated basic infrastructure for economic development. Iran has to invite foreign firms to build roads and houses, to build oil tankers, refinery plants and railroads.

Our attention seems to focus mainly on rosy economic opportunities of the future, especially with the many memorandums of understanding (MOUs) signed during the recent presidential visit to Tehran.

The construction industry seems to harbor high hopes on the grounds of the positive and favorable reputation of Korean companies and workers among Iranians.

However, the history of Korean activities abroad over the past 50 years tells us that big opportunities usually are accompanied by unexpected challenges.

If Korea supplied labor in civil engineering and construction in its first cooperation with Iran in the 1970s and 1980s, the recent "Second Middle East Boom," as termed by the Korean press, is raising expectations to include high-end, high value-added industries such as plant, IT, medical and finance.

Normalization of Iran's relations with the outside world came because Tehran fulfilled its obligations, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

But apart from the nuclear issue, there was the successful negotiation with the United States regarding the American hostages. Not much report was made in Korea on the five Americans, who included Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian. Iran released those hostages hours before the nuclear accord was implemented.

Some try to find extra significance in the fact President Park Geun-hye was the first Korean head of state to visit Iran since bilateral diplomatic ties were established in 1962.

On every state visit by President Park, the press pays attention, both favorable and critical, to her style of clothing. This time, some dubbed her use of a veil in Iran as "cultural diplomacy," possible because she is a female president.

The world is now very different from the past. The ideology-based Cold War era may have gone, but there are still conflicts among people and cultures.

Already in the 1970s, some experts had pointed out that there was a big missing part in Korea's relationship with the Middle East. In 2006, the governments and economic communities of Arabic countries started the Korea-Arab Society to enhance cultural understanding and cooperation among the two areas. Iran is not a member of the 22-state society.

Much homework remains to be done to develop Korea-Iran relationships into an authentic friendship of mutual benefit and profound understanding.
Won Soon-yeon



By Kim Bo-eun

Won Soon-yeon, 63, who has lived her entire life on Geoje Island off Korea's southern coast, has been recognized for her dedication to children for 37 years and her support for immigrant women.

She was selected by the Ministry of Education as the "Teacher of May," ahead of Teachers' Day which falls on May 15.

"I was really surprised when l was contacted and notified of the news," she told The Korea Times. "I am from the countryside and there are so many great teachers out here."

Won has been acknowledged for her work with immigrant brides on the island, which started when she was invited to speak at a forum on policies for women.

She decided she would have to hear from women on Geoje about their needs, and distributed 1,000 questionnaires of which 800 were returned.

"I remember seeing uneven handwriting which appeared to be that of a young elementary school student," Won recalled.

"I was confused but later found out that it was written by a woman from the Philippines who was married to a Korean."

Won realized that immigrant brides were in need of support, and in 2006 she started classes which taught them about Korean culture and the language.

She hosted classes, sometimes at her own home, on how to make kimchi, and encouraged the women to talk and write about themselves.

"In six years, they were even able to compose Korean poems," Won said.

In 2008, she received an award as teacher of the year, and gave the 10 million won in prize money to six immigrant brides so that they could visit their home countries.

Won, who retired last August, spent close to four decades teaching at elementary schools in the region.

She nurtured many children as if they were her own  she paid the high school tuition for 15 students whom she taught and also college tuition for two.

Won is now teaching at Geoje University.

"I myself was indebted by the love and care from the teachers I had," she said.

"I would like to thank my students for granting me the opportunity to do what I did."
Microsoft Korea CEO Alfred Koh faces leadership test at upcoming press event

By Lee Min-hyung





Alfred S. Koh

Microsoft Korea CEO

Trust is one of the most crucial factors determining the fate of companies.

In Korea, global information technology (IT) giants are losing media trust at a critical time over their business blueprints.

They have been accused of a "lack of sincerity" after a series of press events.

But this is not a recent phenomenon. Many critics say global IT companies, such as Microsoft, Apple and Google, have been "too bossy" in their operations here. They say the firms are taking advantage of their industry-leading profiles in the global market, making them less motivated to promote their corporate visions in collaboration with local media.

In particular, Microsoft Korea's new CEO, Alfred Koh, will face a tough leadership test at his first meeting with local reporters, scheduled for May 11. The company said it plans to share its strategies and visions for the Korean market.

But it remains to be seen whether the hype will meet the expectation, given its previous posture in the Korean market, coming largely from its monopolistic status through the Windows operating system (OS).

"Such an attitude comes as their Korean subsidiaries put priority on following guidelines directed from their regional headquarters," an industry official said.

"For example, IBM's Asia-Pacific headquarters monitors all the business processes in IBM Korea. IBM Korea officials can raise their voice to the regional headquarters, but most of their arguments cannot be accepted, as Korea is not a profitable market, compared to other Asian economic powerhouses  including Japan and China."

IBM plans to hold its press conference on May 12, to promote its cognitive computing system Watson and its future plans. Jason Leonard, IBM's Watson business head in the Asia-Pacific region will participate in the event.

But according to the official, the hype will fall short of reporters' expectations and the event will be filled with public relations talk about the company's products.

"The problem lies in the fact that most IT giants feel the same way as IBM," he said. "Such an ecosystem lets Korean branch officials or executives behave in a passive, uncooperative way to media requests."

The companies show enthusiasm when introducing their products or selling points, the source said. But when reporters ask questions about specific business blueprints or partnerships with local companies, company executives evade or try to change the subject.

"Furthermore, most of the local subsidiaries of the global IT giants do not realize the importance of public relations," the source said. "For this reason, they do not hire PR experts but, instead, outsource the promotion to third-party agencies. That's why they are constantly mired in the so-called sincerity controversy over their Korean business."

Media events full of brag

Global IT companies hope to promote their new products in Korea as a test-bed, because the country has industry-leading infrastructure in the telecom and electronics sectors.

They contract public relations agencies, letting them send invitations to their media events.

The invitations are filled with such phrases as "We are going to discuss up-to-date technology trends at the upcoming media event."

But few events come with what they describe as "discussion." Rather, they are filled with hype about new products or services.

They allocate a Q&A session at the end of each media event. But many companies say that "All the questions should be directed to our products or services." This leaves reporters dumbfounded, as if they are servants of the companies, writing good stories about the products.

Things are not limited to U.S.-based IT companies. More Chinese firms are jumping into the Korean market amid Chinese economic growth.

Two Chinese ICT giants  Xiaomi and Alibaba  recently held media events.

But they failed to attract local reporters, due to their unskilled event management, coming from the lack of local subsidiaries and their Korean partners' underperformance to represent the Chinese firms.
Samsung Electronics employees work at the company's chip fabrication line in Korea in this file photo. / Korea Times file



By Kim Yoo-chul



Samsung Electronics is considering partnering with leading Chinese semiconductor companies to increase its sales and market share in the less-volatile and more profitable logic-chip business.



The world's biggest memory chip maker wants to sharpen its technological prowess to move away from heavy dependence on conventional memory chips, which have been commoditized because of massive capacity expansion by Chinese manufacturers.



"China is a land of opportunity; however, it is also a real threat for Samsung," an official who is familiar with the matter told The Korea Times, Friday. "It's no surprise that Samsung Electronics wants to form strategic partnerships with Chinese companies focusing on logic chips. Working-level discussions are under way."



The Chinese market is valued at $150 billion to $170 billion for semiconductor chips annually, accounting for more than 40 to 50 percent of the world's total chip consumption.



But the scale of Samsung's chip business in China has not been that big compared with its international competitors.



China accounted for 15 percent of the total sales that Samsung generated last year, the lowest portion among the "top 9" list, according to data from Capital IQ.



Broadcom earned 60 percent of its sales last year from China, followed by Qualcomm, NXP, Texas Instruments and Micron Technology with 53 percent, 51 percent, 45 percent and 41 percent, respectively. China accounted for 24 percent of the total sales SK hynix in 2015.



"It seems doubtful that China's support for joint projects will allow Samsung Electronics and SK hynix to gain better access to the Chinese market; however, having strategic partnerships mean increased opportunities to raise the business," the official said.



Good bet



In a report, Friday, Bernstein Research said it believes that GlobalFoundries _ Samsung Electronics' business partner in logic chips _ is "discussing with China," because the firm has nothing to lose in the Chinese market.



"Samsung Electronics derives negligible sales from China, so what if Samsung offers to partner with a Chinese company, and maybe together with GlobalFoundries too? Hard to know how such a combination would happen as many details have to be worked out," Bernstein's senior analyst, Mark Li, said in the report.



In logic chips, used to control computing systems, unlike memory chips, which are mainly used to read and write the data in devices, Samsung competes with Taiwan's TSMC.



The foundries' workload is dictated by speedy technological change because the increased consumer appetite for digital devices means chips should be thinner yet do more and use less power.



TSMC is building advanced fabrication lines in the Chinese city of Nanjing; however, Li stressed that because TSMC is responsible for solely handling the spending for the build-up amid a desire from China to reduce its dependency on the Taiwanese firm, the situation may benefit Samsung.



"China has no equity stake," Li said. "We do know the competitive landscape could be very different should that come true."



Samsung Electronics has been consistent in converting lines to logic chips to expand the output of mobile processors. But its global share in the logic-chip business was fourth last year, said IC Insights, a market research firm.



"If Samsung ties up with Chinese companies for logic chips, then it could significantly boost its share in China with a diversified portfolio," the official said.



Samsung Electronics is the biggest foreign investor in China. It runs a massive memory chip fabrication line in Wuxi, while the company makes logic chips at its plants in Korea and Austin, Texas.



But Samsung does have an Achilles heel: it competes in some product areas such as mobile phones with potential foundry clients, raising the question of whether firms would feel comfortable handing over their technology to a rival.
/ Korea Times file



By Park Si-soo



The New York Times will add food delivery to its business portfolio, the latest effort to find new revenue sources to offset declines in print.

Starting this summer, the U.S. newspaper will begin selling ingredients for recipes from its NYT Cooking website, in partnership with a startup called Chef'd, according to Bloomberg and other media outlets.

According to CNNMoney, the Times will provide the recipes and Chef'd will take care of ingredients, delivery and logistics. Ordered ingredients will be delivered to readers within 48 hours, it said.

"Our audience spends a lot of time cooking at home," Alice Ting, vice president of brand development, licensing, and syndication for the Times, said to Bloomberg. "So for us, it was a natural area to investigate."

Bloomberg said NYT Cooking, edited by Times Food Editor Sam Sifton, has about 7 million monthly users and features more than 17,000 recipes from the Times archive.

The Times' foray into food delivery is another example of how the news company is looking for new ways to make money from its content, brand and journalists to hedge against the uncertain future of newspapers.

In recent years, The New York Times has started businesses around live conferences, a wine club and an online store that sells hats, shirts and other trinkets with Times logos. The paper also runs a growing travel unit, "Times Journeys," in which tourists pay thousands of dollars to see countries like Iran or Cuba. Times foreign correspondents lead many of the tours.
Gov. Jay Nixon signed a $27.3 billion budget that boosts spending for education while attempting to block money from going to Planned Parenthood.

The budget laws enacted on Friday add $71 million to the nearly $3.3 billion of existing basic aid for K-12 schools. Nixon said, however, he's disappointed the increase is less than he recommended.

Nixon also said he's concerned about a provision that attempts to prevent Planned Parenthood from receiving Medicaid funding for health care services. The Democratic governor said he will "analyze the legal ramifications" of the move by the Republican-led Legislature.

The budget includes a 2 percent pay hike for state employees.

Nixon also signed budget bills this week that increase funding for public universities by 4 percent and also provide more for mental health services.

(Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)

--

Edited news release from Governor's Office:

Gov. Jay Nixon signed the remaining appropriations bills for the 2017 fiscal year -- thanking the General Assembly for answering his call for smart, fiscally-responsible investments, while cautioning legislators against redirecting these dollars toward special interest tax breaks in the last week of the session.

For eight consecutive years, we have balanced the budget, protected our AAA credit rating, and moved our state forward  without a single tax increase, said Gov. Nixon. Im pleased that this budget answers my call to make smart, fiscally responsible investments that will pay big dividends in the future, and make a real difference, improving the lives of Missouri families all across our state.

Specifically, the Governor praised the FY2017 budget for:

 Freezing tuition for Missouri undergraduates at public colleges and universities. The FY2017 budget answers the Governors call to hold tuition flat for Missouri undergraduates for the upcoming school year, helping to keep Missouri number one in the nation for holding down tuition increases at public universities. The budget also adopts Gov. Nixons recommendation for a $7 million funding increase for Missouris scholarship programs.

 Strengthening Missouris mental health system. The FY2017 budget increases state and federal funding for the Missouri Department of Mental Health by more than $200 million. This will keep the waiting list for in-home services for low-income Missourians for developmental disabilities at zero, provide a rate increase for mental health care providers, and expand access to treatment for Missourians with severe mental illness.

 Investing in economic development. The Governor also praised the budget for increasing funding for worker training, state parks, tourism, and ports  all important strategies for continuing to grow Missouris economy. For working families, the budget adopts Gov. Nixons proposal to make child care more affordable for 20,000 low-income families, reducing their out-of-pocket costs.

 Strengthening cybersecurity. The FY2017 budget includes a $2 million increase to enhance the states ability to defend against cyber attacks.

Gov. Nixon faulted the legislature for failing to prioritize public education and refusing to adopt his recommendation for an $85 million increase for K-12 classrooms, while at the same time lowering the target for the states K-12 funding formula. While failing to prioritize education funding, the General Assembly this week passed a tax break that would reduce state revenue by more than $51 million annually beginning in Fiscal Year 2017 and is not accounted for in the budget.

Fiscal discipline is a value we share here in Missouri. Just like Missouri families have to do at home, we balance our budgets  and take care not to spend more than we take in, said the Governor. Thats why, moving forward, I will continue to monitor the revenue situation carefully, account for the passage of legislation that would have a significant fiscal impact, and take whatever actions are necessary to keep the budget in balance.

The Governor also is concerned by language in the budget for the Missouri Department of Social Services (House Bill 2011) that could reduce access to womens health services while spending an additional $8 million in state general revenue.

We will continue to analyze the legal ramifications of this language, and work to ensure that we continue to provide access to essential health services, Gov. Nixon said.

The governor also used his line-item veto authority to veto Section 8.185 of House Bill 2008, an appropriation from the World War II Memorial Trust Fund, which would have violated the allowable use of the fund pursuant to Section 301.3031, RSMo; and Section 11.420 of House Bill 2011, which would have placed conditions on health information exchange services that would unfairly exempt select providers from the requirement to pay for such services as called for under existing contracts.

Last month, Standard & Poors Rating Services, along with Moodys Investors Service and Fitch Ratings, gave Missouri the strongest credit rating possible, citing the Governors strong fiscal management to keep the budget in balance. Missouri is one of just a few states with a perfect AAA credit rating from all three independent rating agencies.
The SLFP does not condone the continuation of the Emergency Regulations (The Public Security Ordinance) more than a day necessary

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PRESS RELEASE

Russian Orchestra Concert at the Ancient Amphitheater in PalmyraPowerful Sign of Hope for the Future

May 5, 2016 (EIRNS)Today in the ancient amphitheater in the historic Syrian city of Palmya, the Russian Mariinsky Theater Orchestra gave a beautiful concert, titled, "With a Prayer for PalmyraMusic Revives the Ancient Walls," whose impact is already uplifting millions internationally. The event was dedicated to the memory of those who have lost their lives to the terrorists.

In particular, to the memory of Dr. Khaled al-Assad (1934-2015), the Syrian archaeologist, who was custodian of the Palmyra antiquities for 40 years, and was publicly beheaded last August by IS, after refusing to give them access to still more statues to destroy; and to the memory of the young Russian special forces officer, Aleksandr Prokhorenko, killed in mid-March, after calling in Russian airstrikes on his own position, when he was surrounded by IS during the battle for Plamyra. He has been posthumously named a Hero of Russia, and his body was returned home today.

The orchestras conductor Valery Gergiev led the program, with principal players Pavel Milyukov, violin, and Sergei Roldugin, cello, the latter the artistic director of St. Petersburgs House of Music. Also in the official Russian delegation was the Director of St. Petersburgs Hermitage museum, Mikhail Piotrovsky. Representatives from China, Zimbabwe, and Serbia attended.

The Classical program featured Johann Sebastian Bachs Chaconne, the First Symphony by Sergei Prokofiev, and by modern Russian composer, Rodion Shchedrin (widower of the famed Russian ballerina Maya Plisetskaya), an excerpt from his opera, "Not Love Alone." When Gergiev introduced the pieces in the program, he pointed out that Prokofiev wrote his symphony "in homage to the great masters of the pastMozart, Haydn, Beethoven," whose work expresses "optimism and hope."

At the opening of the event, Russian President Vladimir Putin gave greetings live by video from Sochi. He spoke out against terrorism, and expressed appreciation for the concert, which he called a "sign of gratitude, remembrance and hope." He said, "I see this as remembrance for all victims of terror no matter the place and time of crimes against humanity, and, of course, of hope not just for the revival of Palmyra as a cultural asset of the whole of humanity, but for modern civilization, from this horrible fate of international terrorism."

Putin thanked the musicians and support participants. "Todays action involved major inconvenience and dangers for everyone, being in a country at war close to where hostilities are still ongoing. That has demanded great strength and personal courage from you all. Thank you very much." Gregiev is a close associate of Putin, and cellist Roldugin, a good friend.

Conductor Gergiev spoke before the musicin Russian and English. He said, "We protest against barbarians who destroyed wonderful monuments of world culture. We protest against the execution of people here on this great stage," referring to the public mass killings by the Islamic State last November in the amphitheater. Gregiev is Music Director of the Munich Philharmonic, as well as conducting the Mariinsky Theater Orchestra.

The audience filled the amphitheater. Along with local Syrians, and military personnel from both Syria and Russia, dignitaries included Russian Minister of Culture Vladimir Medinsky, who has led the commitment to rescue and restore Palmyra antiquities. He was moved to tears by the event.

Thanks to superb amplification and recording, the concert itself, and also views of the striking setting of the Palmyra ruins, are now available widely internationally, after the live broadcast. In Russia, the event is the lead news of the day, and the video is fast reaching the world over.
Johnson & Johnson is an immense pharmaceutical and consumer products company of the type that the public loves to hate. Recently, its been getting absolutely killed by juries holding its baby powder responsible for causing several womens ovarian cancers.

The damage awards levied against Johnson by juries in St. Louis on behalf of two families total $127 million. That sum would suggest that the scientific evidence is clear that Johnsons talcum powder caused the womens cancers. But what does science say?

Science says the evidence is murky at best, often self-contradictory, and may well be nonexistent. One study involving more than 100,000 women found little support for any substantial association between talc use and overall ovarian cancer risk.

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(The verdict) goes against 30 years of studies by medical experts around the world that continue to support the safety of cosmetic talc.  Johnson & Johnson, responding to a $55-million damages award in a St. Louis court Monday

Thats not how the lawyers who brought the St. Louis cases put it. In a lawsuit filed in Missouri state court in June 2014, they cite a study showing a 92% increased risk in ovarian cancer among women who reported using talcum power in their genital area. The crux of their case is that their clients ovarian cancer was directly and proximately caused by Johnson & Johnsons manufacture and sale of its baby powder and Shower to Shower products, along with marketing that compelled women to dust themselves with this product to mask odors and help them feel soft, fresh, and comfortable.

The plaintiffs, who also are suing Luzenac America, a talc manufacturer, argue that Johnson & Johnson has known since 1971 of a link between ovarian cancer and the application of talc to the genital area. Since the 1980s, the lawsuit says, the companies have been advised by scientists and cancer prevention organizations to warn consumers of the possible risks, but never have done so.

Johnson & Johnson, in response, says that multiple scientific and regulatory reviews have determined that talc is safe for use in cosmetic products and the labeling on Johnsons Baby Powder is appropriate. After a St. Louis jury awarded a South Dakota woman $55 million on Monday, the company said the decision goes against 30 years of studies by medical experts around the world that continue to support the safety of cosmetic talc. That verdict followed a $72-million award to another plaintiff in the same court, including $62 million in punitive damages. Johnson faces at least an additional 1,200 lawsuits on similar claims.

Yet taken altogether, these cases raise real questions about whether the American legal system is well-equipped to weigh scientific evidence and assign liability where the facts are, at best, equivocal. Since we arent privy to the discussions in the jury rooms, we cant say for sure what aspects of these cases led the jurors to their punishing conclusions.

Its quite possible that Johnson & Johnson, as a hugely profitable $70-billion company, was a sitting duck for juror hostility. Its proper to note that government agencies have accused the company of overly aggressive marketing and promotion of prescription drugs, including dangerous opioids. So its also possible that the juries heard convincing evidence that Johnson deliberately downplayed the risks of talc in order to rack up sales.

Perhaps most important, the verdicts may reflect a loss of credibility of scientific evidence in general. Some of the leading research asserting a link between talc and ovarian cancer was done by a scientist who is a paid consultant for the plaintiffs in the St. Louis case; but one of the more comprehensive papers debunking the link was paid for partially by a law firm representing Luzenac. Its unsurprising that the public, and jurors, dont know who to believe, if anyone.

Still, the link between talc and ovarian cancer appears to be unproven. Lets take a look.

Ovarian cancer is relatively rare, accounting for only 1.3% of all new cases in the U.S., according to the National Cancer Institute. But its a tenacious killer. Its the eighth most common cancer and the fifth leading cause of cancer-related death among women. Fewer than half of all patients survive five years after diagnosis.

Most ovarian cancer authorities seem to suggest that any role played by talc in the incidence of ovarian cancer is swamped by more easily identified risk factors. The Ovarian Cancer National Alliance doesnt list talc at all as a risk factor. Among the main causes of the disease, the organization says, are heredity--mutations in breast cancer gene 1 (BRCA1) or breast cancer gene 2 (BRCA2) are responsible for about 10 to 15 percent of all ovarian cancers; obesity; and age -- rates are highest in women aged 55-64. Reproductive history is another factor, with rates elevated among women who have not given birth or taken oral contraceptives.

The American Cancer Society does list talc among these risk factors, but only gingerly, stating that some studies suggest a very slight increase in risk of ovarian cancer in women who used talc on the genital area and suggesting that the blame may rest with contamination of talcum powder with asbestos, which is no longer the case.

Patient advocacy groups have been less measured about the risks. In 2010, Samuel Epstein, then chairman of the Cancer Prevention Coalition and a crusader against supposedly carcinogenic consumer products, wrote that ovarian cancer mortality for women over the age of 65 has increased by 47 percent in African American women and 13 percent in Caucasian women due to genital use of talc powder, which gave talc prominence as a cause of mortality that doesnt seem widely supported in the scientific literature.

The scientific findings are all over the map. Among the work most commonly cited by the plaintiffs bar is that of Daniel Cramer, an epidemiologist at Bostons Brigham and Womens Hospital, which found a 33% increase in the ovarian cancer rate among women who used talcum power genitally. Cramer is a paid consultant for plaintiffs suing Johnson & Johnson.

Other researchers, including the authors of a paper in the Journal of the American Cancer Society, point to serious flaws in such retrospective case control studies. These rely on subjects to report their past experience, which could be marred by poor recollection or biased by the desire to pinpoint a cause of disease.

More reliable study designs have failed to confirm Cramers findings. These include a survey drawn from the Nurses Health Study, which involves 121,000 nurses nationwide, and a second cohort study of nearly 62,000 postmenopausal women led by the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. Neither found any significant connection between talc use and overall incidence of ovarian cancer, although the nurses study found inconclusive hints of a possible association with one variety of ovarian cancer.

Another question is the mechanism of how talc could affect cancer rates. One theory is that talc applied to the genital area could migrate up the female reproductive tract to the ovaries, causing inflammation leading to cancer, but that process is unproven. Nor have studies established a link between talc-dusted diaphragms or condoms and ovarian cancer risk, which should appear if talc really is a significant culprit.

So the link between talcum powder use and ovarian cancer hasnt been proved, but hasnt been conclusively debunked, either. That places it right in the danger zone of product liability litigation, especially when scientists on either side of the debate affiliate themselves with lawyers on either side. (A paper challenging the scientific basis for the link was produced on a contract from Crowell Moring, the law firm representing Luzenac.)

Big damage awards based on equivocal scientific evidence arent good for anyone. Theyre vulnerable to being overturned or significantly pared down. They generate public fears that may be unwarranted. The litigation process itself undermines the credibility of scientists across the spectrum of debate. And they contribute nothing to the fundamental issue of corporate responsibility: When should a company such as Johnson & Johnson disclose the putative risk of a product?

The talc lawsuits are a disturbing example of a judicial system that imposes certainty where there isnt any. Jurors in the courthouse were sure enough about the link to slap Johnson & Johnson with $127 million in damages, even though the scientific jury is still out.

Keep up to date with Michael Hiltzik. Follow @hiltzikm on Twitter, see his Facebook page, or email michael.hiltzik@latimes.com.

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Charter Communications on Friday received federal regulatory approval for its acquisition of Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks, moving one step away from becoming the largest Internet and pay-TV provider in Southern California.

The Federal Communications Commission said it had approved the $71-billion deal, as expected, with conditions designed to spur competition among Internet service providers and increase the number of homes with broadband Internet connections.

The acquisitions would give Charter more than 23 million customers in 41 states, including more than 2 million in Southern California.

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The deal still needs the approval of the California Public Utilities Commission, which has scheduled a vote for Thursday.

A judge in San Francisco reviewing the deal for the commission recommended approval last month, but he added conditions aimed at expanding the number of families who receive high-speed Internet service in their homes.

The Justice Department, which conducted an antitrust review, said last week it would allow Charter to complete the acquisitions.

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler announced last week that he would support the deal after Charter agreed to several conditions.

Among them were a requirement that Charter expand broadband service in areas with spotty coverage and provide low-cost Internet access to at least 525,000 low-income homes.

Charter also would have to provide 1 million new Internet connections in areas where other high-speed operators deliver service, in order to encourage more competition.

Other conditions focused on eliminating barriers to video streaming, including a prohibition on charging usage-based prices or imposing data caps on its customers.

Charter also would not be allowed to charge interconnection fees, including to online video providers such as Netflix that deliver large amounts of data to broadband customers.

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Charter Chief Executive Tom Rutledge said Friday that the conditions were largely extensions of the longstanding consumer-friendly values and practices of our company.

He said the deal would have significant benefits, including greater competition, broader access to affordable broadband service and more U.S. jobs.

But Craig Aaron, chief executive of consumer group Free Press, said the deal would undermine competition in the pay-TV and Internet markets, despite the conditions.

It hands far too much control over the Internets future to a cable giant with the incentive and capability to gouge its customers with higher and higher prices, he said.

jim.puzzanghera@latimes.com

Follow @JimPuzzanghera on Twitter

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A day after Alex Gustafsons wife gave birth to their daughter in December, he officially began the 12 weeks of fully paid family leave offered by Automattic Inc., the San Francisco tech company where he works.

Anthony Goytia of La Puente wishes he had that option. When his wife gave birth to their daughter in April, they lost about $550 of monthly income. So Goytia started working a second job at Macys to supplement his early shift unloading trucks at UPS.

California is far ahead of the rest of the country in providing paid leave to workers. But even here, employees ability to take time off hinges on where they work and how much they make.

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More than a decade after the state introduced a revolutionary leave policy, the states poorest workers remain the least likely to take time off to care for their relatives, state data show.

Twenty-five percent of Californians who took the states leave in 2014 earned more than $80,000 and 12% made $20,000 or less, state data show.

There are two Californias when it comes to paid leave, said state Assemblyman Jimmy Gomez (D-Echo Park). Gomez introduced a bill that increased the amount that the state would pay workers while take time off to care for newborns or sick family members. The bill was signed into law by Gov. Jerry Brown this month and will go into effect in 2018.

If you structure [paid leave] in a way that only the people at the higher end can use it, those people are the only ones getting the benefit of more time with their children. The folks at the lower end cant take the time off, Gomez said.

The state paid-leave program creates a floor for full-time workers. But theres a stark difference in what employers offer beyond that.

Tech behemoths have rushed to outdo one another in the number of weeks theyll pay employees to be with their children. After Netflix Inc. announced in August that parents could take a year off to care for new children, companies such as Adobe Systems Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Facebook Inc. quickly made their leave policies more generous.

At Toyota Motor Co.'s U.S. headquarters in Torrance, though, women do not get any paid leave beyond what the state offers. Even tech companies arent all created equal: Qualcomm Inc. in San Diego, which makes communications chips, offers six weeks of paid bonding leave for new parents. Western Digital Corp., a data storage company in Irvine, offers to pay employees who take the state leave an extra 5% of their salary.

California was the first state to offer time off for employees, with a 2002 law that offered up to six weeks off at 55% of a workers salary. The program is funded by a 0.9% payroll tax, paid by 17.2 million employees in the state.

Starting in 2018, California will pay most workers 60% of their salary while they take leave to care for their family. The new state program will allow the lowest-wage workers to claim 70% of their pay for up to six weeks. The payroll tax isnt expected to go up initially because relatively few people are drawing the benefit.

In April, San Francisco became the first city in the country to mandate full pay for six weeks of family leave for all employees  requiring companies to pay 45% of workers salaries on top of what the state fund covers.

Paid leave may be more than just a nice perk for parents; some economists say it could alter the career trajectories of millions of Americans.

Women began flooding the labor force in the 1960s, and they single-handedly drove almost all increases in family income for middle-class workers from 1970 on, according to a White House report. But after rising steadily for five decades, womens participation in the labor force peaked at 60% in 1999 and has since declined to 57%.

Compensating working women to be with their children seems to be one way to get them to work more. California women with children worked 6% to 9% more hours a week after the leave went into effect in 2004, and saw their earnings increase, according to a 2013 study by researchers Maya Rossin-Slater of UC Santa Barbara, Christopher J. Ruhm of the University of Virginia and Jane Waldfogel of Columbia University.

Paid family leave allows people to take leave and then return to their position, and that might enable you to continue to work and rise up in the ranks, which might improve your wage down the road, Rossin-Slater said.

Still, for the vast majority of workers, who arent in Silicon Valley, staying home after having a baby remains an unattainable luxury.

Only 25% to 40% of California mothers who are eligible for state leave actually take it, according to a report by the UC Davis Center for Poverty Research. Overall, less than 2% of all workers in the state used the benefit from 2013 to 2014.

Only 11% of American workers formally have the right to get some pay during a birth leave, according to a report from White House economists.

People may hesitate to take a break under the state law, worker advocates say. The measure doesnt guarantee that workers will be able to return to any job after taking leave, and federal law only prevents large employers from firing workers who have worked at the company for a year.

It gives your boss the right to say yes or no. Bosses love that, but if you have a new baby, its a scary situation, said Jenya Cassidy, the director of California Work & Family Coalition, a nonprofit that has campaigned to expand benefits for new parents.

Rhode Island and New Jersey are the only other states that have already followed Californias lead. Rhode Island prevents employers from firing people for taking time to be with their kids. New York passed a paid leave law that will go into effect in 2018, and will also protect parents jobs if they use the program.

Goytias wife, Maria, will take the state-provided leave from her job at Party City in Baldwin Park, and get 55% of her pay.

Goytia did not feel comfortable taking time off from both of his jobs when his daughter was born April 8; he feared that might put his new position at Macys in jeopardy.

I dont feel like I had a choice, he said. We would have not been able to pay the rent just on my salary from one job alone.

natalie.kitroeff@latimes.com

Twitter: @NatalieKitro

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The fast-growing vaping industry faces a hazy future as the U.S. government said Thursday that its taking the milestone step of regulating electronic cigarettes and other tobacco products as if they were traditional cigarettes.

The Food and Drug Administration finalized rules extending its oversight of the multibillion-dollar e-cigarette industry, whose products are seen as an alternative to traditional smokes but whose own ingredients and long-term health risks remain murky.

Under the new rules, which go into effect in about three months, e-cigarette sales would be prohibited to anyone under 18, either in person or online. Vending-machine sales, except in adult-only establishments, and the distribution of free samples would be banned.

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Manufacturers and importers of e-cigarettes and related products launched since 2007  which covers the vast majority of the business  also must submit their products for approval so the FDA can evaluate their ingredients, product design and health risks, the agency said.

But makers of e-cigarettes and the liquid that goes in them have up to two years to submit their current products for approval, and the FDAs review is likely to take another year, during which the companies can keep selling the products.

E-cigarette products also will be required to eventually carry health warnings on labels and in advertising.

Until now, all of those products had gone largely unregulated said Mitch Zeller, director of the FDAs Center for Tobacco Products.

The new rules also apply to hookah tobacco, pipe tobacco and cigars.

The FDAs move came one day after Gov. Jerry Brown signed two new major anti-smoking laws in California.

One law raised the smoking age to 21 from 18. The other prohibits e-cigarette use in restaurants, theaters, schools and other public places where smoking already is banned.

E-cigarettes are battery-powered products that typically come in a sleek metal tube the size of a cigarette or somewhat larger. They convert liquids containing nicotine, flavoring and other ingredients into a vapor that the user inhales and exhales, or whats dubbed vaping.

Users refill their e-cigarettes with fresh cartridges or additional liquid, depending on the product, and the liquid can contain varying strengths of nicotine.

Health advocates applauded the FDAs action. The move was a long-awaited step to protect public health and curb growing e-cigarette use among teenagers, American Lung Assn. President Harold Wimmer said in a statement.

The FDA is part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and HHS Secretary Sylvia Burwell said in a statement that as cigarette smoking among those under 18 has fallen, the use of other nicotine products, including e-cigarettes, has taken a drastic leap.

E-cigarette use among high-school students has skyrocketed from 1.5% in 2011 to 16% in 2015, the FDA said, adding that 3 million middle school and high school students are e-cigarettes users.

But opponents said the FDAs product-review rules could harm the e-cigarette industry.

Although the FDA contends that the cost of its approval process is less than $1 million per item, other estimates place the cost above $1 million.

Either way, critics said the price would be too onerous for many of the small businesses that manufacture e-cigarettes, the vaping liquids and other related items.

This gigantic price tag is affordable to Big Tobacco companies but small- and medium-sized businesses will be crushed, said Gregory Conley, president of the American Vaping Assn.

The e-cigarette brands owned by large tobacco companies include Reynolds American Inc.'s Vuse and Imperial Brands Blu.

If the FDAs rule is not changed by Congress or the courts, thousands of small businesses will be closed in two to three years and tens of thousands of jobs will be lost and consumer choice will be annihilated, Conley said.

Analysts at Wells Fargo & Co. and other researchers estimate the industrys annual sales at $2.5 billion to $3.5 billion, and thousands of small vape shops have sprung up nationwide in recent years.

The future of those stores would be jeopardized if the FDAs approval process forces e-cigarette manufacturers to stop making many of their products, Conley said.

If and when the FDA regulation removes 99% of products from the market, there will be no point in having a vape shop, he said.

Vape shops often describes themselves as a vape bar and lounge where customers can congregate and try out different e-cigarette flavors.

One such shop is Vapor Delight in Santa Monica, where the mingled smell of berries, bananas and other aromas filled the air Thursday as general manager Justin Renken weighed the FDAs action.

Its not fair, Renken said. We are trying to create jobs and new opportunities as entrepreneurs.

One of his customers, Daniel Thang of Venice, said, Its good to limit the age of people who buy, but on the other hand, is that where it ends?

Im afraid this could be the start of federal regulations piling up and that concerns me, said Thang, 31, a longtime smoker who is hoping that e-cigarettes will help him quit.

But Robin Koval, chief executive of the anti-tobacco health group Truth Initiative, said in a statement that for too long cigars, hookah tobacco and e-cigarettes have proliferated without product standards, sales and consistent age limitations, or controls on claims about health effects.

The FDA now has the opportunity to regulate how tobacco products are made, marketed and sold, to make them less toxic and addictive and less appealing to prospective users of all ages, she said.

There is at least one congressional effort to curb the FDAs new rules.

Legislation approved by a House committee last month would prevent the FDA from requiring reviews of products already on the market. Newly introduced e-cigarette products would still undergo the reviews.

james.peltz@latimes.com

Twitter: @PeltzLATimes

ronald.white@latimes.com

Twitter: @RonWLATimes

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More than 25 years after the first Jamba Juice shop opened in San Luis Obispo, the owner of the smoothie company announced plans to move its headquarters from California to Texas within eight months.

Jamba Inc. will close its Emeryville, Calif., office and establish a new corporate home in Frisco, Texas, about 30 miles north of Dallas. In a statement, Chief Executive David Pace said Jamba was looking for places that had competitive operating costs, access to skilled restaurant talent and an attractive cost of living, along with a central location for further expansion.

The state of Texas meets all of these criteria and Frisco is a community committed to healthy living that aligns closely with our overall mission, Pace said.

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The companys lease in Emeryville is set to expire at the end of the year.

The move will affect about 120 employees in Jambas Emeryville location. After the company moves, Jamba said it expects to employ about 100 employees in Frisco, a mix of San Francisco Bay Area transplants and newly hired Texas workers.

As of December, Jamba had 818 stores across the United States. The publicly traded company said it has 1,000 employees in California alone. There are more than 5,000 workers at franchise locations across the state.

Jamba will follow longtime Southern California burger chain Carls Jr. in moving its corporate home out of the Golden State. In March, CKE Restaurants Holdings Inc., which owns Carls Jr. and St. Louis-based Hardees, said it would move its Carpenteria headquarters to Franklin, Tenn., next year. The company said the move was intended to consolidate the two chains headquarters in one location.

As a whole, the restaurant sector is struggling to deal with higher labor costs. If those chains cant pass those costs on to consumers, which many have been unable to do, they have to reduce costs in other parts of the business, said Nick Setyan, senior vice president of equity research at Wedbush Securities.

One option is re-franchising, a model that Jamba and Carls Jr. have embraced over the last few years. As of March, there were 68 company-owned and operated Jamba Juices and 752 franchised stores in the U.S.

Youre seeing them re-franchise in order to have a lower cost and a more predictable operating model, Setyan said. If youre trying to cut costs, then you have to look at it across the entire business and look at your headquarters. If that results in lower costs, thats always on the table.

Thanks in part to the success of the technology industry, labor and real estate in the Bay Area come at a high price.

Staying in the Bay Area can be lucrative and valuable for companies in the innovation sector since employees in the area tend to be more creative and productive, said Enrico Moretti, an economics professor at UC Berkeley.

They cost more, but they generate more, he said.

But for companies in more traditional industries, such as Jamba, Moretti said the Bay Areas benefits may not be worth the expense.

Jamba is just the latest California company to announce plans to relocate to Texas.

In 2014, Toyota Motor Corp. said it would move its North American headquarters to Plano, Texas, from Torrance over the next three years.

That same year, longtime Los Angeles-based energy giant Occidental Petroleum announced that it was relocating its headquarters to Houston and would spin off its California assets into a separate company.

And nearly two dozen Bay Area tech companies have made the move to Texas since 2014, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry once touted the Texas Enterprise Fund and other cash incentives, along with local property tax breaks, as important for enticing companies to move. Toyota was offered a $40-million grant when the automaker announced its move, though the company said incentives had little, if anything, to do with the decision.

Jamba was also offered a Texas Enterprise Fund grant of $800,000. The company said incentives were not a driver in the move to Texas.

Other factors, such as the low corporate tax rate and no personal income tax, could also be advantages for companies looking to move to the Lone Star State.

Lower corporate taxes mean higher company profits, but possibly more important is the income tax aspect, Moretti said. Without raising wages, employees can see an increase in their pay, he said.

samantha.masunaga@latimes.com
Medical leaders at Huntington Hospital in Pasadena voted behind closed doors this week for the facilitys hundreds of doctors and affiliated personnel to opt out of Californias assisted suicide law, which goes into effect June 9.

If the proposed amendment to the hospitals medical rules is approved by the board of directors this month, Huntington will become one of the largest non-religious medical institutions statewide to turn its back on a law that Gov. Jerry Brown called a comfort to anyone dying in prolonged and excruciating pain.

The End of Life Option Act allows doctors, medical groups and hospitals to opt out of the laws guidelines for assisting the terminally ill achieve a dignified end. Most, if not all, religious hospitals are expected to reject the law.

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Its unclear at this point if Huntington is an outlier among secular facilities or representative of a wave of opt-outs to be revealed by months end. The California Hospital Assn. was unable to provide an estimate for the number of institutions considering a similar move.

This is state-assisted death, physician-assisted death and relative-assisted death.  Sen. Bob Huff (R-San Dimas)

However, spokespeople for some of Californias biggest medical facilities  including Kaiser Permanente, Sutter Health and UCLA  told me they will comply with the law on an institutional basis, while respecting the right of individual doctors to opt out.

Prior to this weeks vote, Huntingtons executive committee of department heads circulated its proposed amendment among the facilitys doctors for their feedback. They were given until April 23 to make their feelings known.

The amendment received by doctors says that Huntington Hospital has chosen not to participate in the Act, and therefore no Huntington Hospital employees, independent contractors, or other persons or entities that work at or with Huntington Hospital may participate in activities under the Act while on the premises of Huntington Hospital, or while acting within the scope of any employment or contractual relationship with Huntington Hospital.

However, the amendment says Huntington will permit doctors to furnish patients with information about the Act and/or to provide referrals to healthcare providers who may participate in activities authorized by the Act outside of Huntington Hospital, in response to patient requests for such information.

Derek Clark, a spokesman for the hospital, declined to go into detail about the executive committees deliberations or the rationale for opting out of the new law.

Our hospital respects the rights of patients and their families to make decisions regarding end-of-life care, he said in a statement. We also respect the rights of independent physicians and pharmacists to decide whether they will participate in the process. While a final decision has not been made, we are currently evaluating whether the inpatient setting is the appropriate location for end-of-life care to be delivered.

In order to maintain the integrity of our hospitals decision making process, discussions during interim steps are not publicly disclosed, he said. A final decision on this issue will be made by our board of directors at a later date.

The boards next scheduled meeting is May 26.

The End of Life Option Act, which is modeled on Oregons Death with Dignity Act, allows physicians to prescribe medication to hasten the death of competent adults who have been diagnosed with terminal illness and have six months or less to live. The patient must be able to self-administer the medication.

For religious hospitals, the new law is as contentious as birth control. Providence Health & Services, which operates six medical centers in Southern California, said it would be opting out because assisted suicide is incompatible with the systems Catholic beliefs.

We at Providence believe intentionally ending a persons life is not consistent with core principles of the professions of medicine and nursing, said Patricia Aidem, a Providence spokeswoman. We are committed to providing appropriate support for dying persons and their families through the final stages of life.

We will not be present if a patient chooses to ingest life-ending drugs, but we will work with the patient and loved ones to discuss the plan of care, she said.

Huntingtons thinking is less clear. The amendment shown to doctors offers no reason for opting out of the law. What is clear, however, is that the move, if approved, would have potentially far-reaching consequences for the surrounding community.

The hospital says it has a medical staff of more than 800 active physicians serving residents of the greater San Gabriel Valley and beyond. Many local doctors with their own practices might be unwilling to jeopardize their access to Huntington by assisting terminally-ill patients under the terms of the law.

That strikes me as a crossing of the line by the hospital, said Anthony Wright, executive director of the advocacy group Health Access California. It limits what doctors can do even in their own office.

Although Californias law is changing, the controversial nature of assisted suicide hasnt diminished.

Lets call this for what it really is: Its not death with dignity, state Sen. Bob Huff (R-San Dimas) said after the End of Life Option Act was signed into law in October. This is state-assisted death, physician-assisted death and relative-assisted death.

Brown views it differently. The crux of the matter is whether the state of California should continue to make it a crime for a dying person to end his life, no matter how great his pain or suffering, he said upon signing the law.

Many secular hospitals are taking a patient-first position, respecting that some terminally ill people desire this choice.

Sutter Health is supportive of helping our patients explore all of their end-of-life options, which can include palliative care, home health and hospice, and our Advanced Illness Management program, said Dr. Stephen Lockhart, Sutters chief medical officer.

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For qualified terminally ill patients, the End of Life Option Act provides an additional choice, and our organization supports an open dialogue with these patients as they make end-of-life decisions, he said.

Insiders at Huntington say many doctors opposed the hospitals end-of-life amendment. However, such opposition wasnt enough to change the executive committees thinking.

Maybe the committee should hear as well from David Eisen. He and I spoke this week, and he was dismayed to learn that Huntington is on the verge of opting out of the law.

Eisen, 60, lives in Manhattan Beach. But he was a resident of La Canada Flintridge for more than 20 years and Huntington was always his hospital of choice. In July 2007, Eisens fiancee, Debbie White, was diagnosed with glioblastoma, an incurable brain cancer.

White had surgery at Huntington and was treated there for more than two years, Eisen said, adding that the quality of care was excellent. Her final weeks were spent at home receiving hospice treatment under the supervision of a Huntington oncologist.

What she expressed while she was still relatively healthy was that she didnt want to be in pain, Eisen recalled. She didnt want to be in a position where she could no longer take care of herself.

Once the pain grew in intensity and Whites life was defined by ever-increasing doses of morphine, the couple pleaded with her doctor for help in putting an end to the suffering.

The doctor said no, Eisen said. She said there was nothing she could do. White died in the summer of 2009.

As of next month, most California doctors will no longer have their hands tied.

Amy J. Thoma, Kaisers director of public advocacy and public affairs, said the health maintenance organization is working to ensure the best implementation of the law.

Each patient wanting to participate in the program will be paired with a coordinator who will then guide them through the process, she said. If a physician does not wish to participate, he or she may refer the patient to the coordinator, who will connect the patient with a physician who does participate.

That seems reasonable  and a good deal more humane than Huntingtons blanket ban on any staffer or affiliate fulfilling patients end-of-life requests.

Eisen said that if the End of Life Option Act had been around when White was experiencing her ordeal, she would have been able to choose the point where she could end it, on her terms.

Huntingtons stance, he said, seems inconsistent with what youd expect from a physician.

David Lazarus column runs Tuesdays and Fridays. He also can be seen daily on KTLA-TV Channel 5 and followed on Twitter @Davidlaz. Send your tips or feedback to david.lazarus@latimes.com.

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The second-largest shareholder of Los Angeles Times owner Tribune Publishing has ratcheted up the pressure on the companys board to reconsider a sale to USA Today publisher Gannett Co.

Los Angeles investment firm Oaktree Capital Management, which owns 14.8% of Tribune Publishings stock, said in a securities filing Friday that the board should pursue discussions with Gannett or with other parties interested in buying Tribune.

Whats more, Oaktree said in the filing that it planned to get in touch with other Tribune shareholders, with an eye toward coordinating efforts to push for a sale.

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The filing, which comes just two days after Tribune Publishing announced that its board had voted to reject Gannetts buyout offer, marks the first time Oaktree has weighed in publicly on a possible Tribune sale.

It pits the investment firm, headquartered on downtown L.A.'s Bunker Hill, against Tribunes board and Chairman Michael Ferro, who became Tribunes largest shareholder earlier this year. He holds a 16.5% stake in the company. The third-largest shareholder is Pasadena-based Primecap Management, which has an 11.8% stake and has not yet weighed in publicly on the Gannett proposal.

In a statement Friday, a Tribune spokeswoman indicated that the board believes Gannetts proposal -- valued at $815 million including $390 million in debt -- is too low and there is no basis for further discussion.

It would be in the best interests of (Tribune Publishing) and its stockholders ... to pursue discussions with Gannett.  Oaktree filing with Securities and Exchange Commission

Ferro has accused Gannett of trying to steal the company and acting ungentlemanly in its pursuit of Tribune, which also owns the San Diego Union Tribune, Chicago Tribune and other daily newspapers. Ferro bought his stake at $8.51 a share, a 5.5% discount at the time.

He told the Chicago Tribune on Thursday that theres no price for the company. Were not for sale. Well always listen to everybody but were not for sale.

Gannett, which owns USA Today and about 100 small and mid-size newspapers across the country, privately approached Ferro and Tribune Chief Executive Justin Dearborn about a possible sale in the middle of last month.

On April 25, Gannett went public with its offer, saying Ferro and Dearborn were dragging their feet. Gannett offered to pay $12.25 a share for Tribune stock, a 63% bump over the stocks previous closing price.

The offer sparked a back-and-forth between the companies, with complaints about canceled meetings and disagreements over how much time Tribune needed to study the deal.

On Wednesday, the same day Tribune released its earnings report for the first quarter, the companys board unanimously rejected Gannetts offer.

Anticipating that rejection, Gannett had said it would urge Tribune shareholders to withhold votes for board members at a shareholder meeting in June.

Withholding votes is a symbolic gesture because it is too late to nominate alternative candidates for the companys board. That means regardless of how many votes are withheld, Tribunes slate of nominees will be elected.

Tribunes investor presentation calls Gannetts withhold campaign is a sign that the company is acting in desperation and has no path to control of Tribune.

Still, if enough shareholders withhold votes, it could be a strong signal to Ferro and the board that shareholders want to cash out. Withholding votes doesnt often lead to immediate results, but can effect change in the long term.

For instance, in 2004, more than 40% of Walt Disney Co. shareholders withheld votes to reelect then-Chairman Michael Eisner. Though it didnt cost him a board seat, he lost the chairmanship and it was taken as a vote of no confidence. He stepped down as chief executive the following year.

Oaktree, in its filing Friday, said one of the issues it would discuss with other Tribune shareholders was voting for or against nominees to Tribunes board.

Gannett could come back with a higher offer, or try to buy out shareholders directly through a tender offer.

Tribune Publishing shares closed Friday at $11.61, up .58 or 5%, above Thursdays close.

james.koren@latimes.com

Twitter: @jrkoren
Exxon Mobil has delayed the return of its Torrance refinery to full operation because of unexpected operational delays.

The oil company plans to fire up a key part of the plant that helps process gasoline on Monday night instead of Saturday night as previously planned.

As part of its start-up procedure, Exxon Mobil plans to turn off the refinerys pollution control system for six hours during a 12-hour period, a step approved by the South Coast Air Quality Management District as a safety precaution. That period is expected to begin at 7 p.m. Monday and to end by 7 a.m. Tuesday.

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FOR THE RECORD

An earlier version of this post incorrectly stated that the refinery would be shut off for 12 hours instead of the previously announced six hours. The refinerys pollution control system will be shut off for six hours during a 12-hour period.

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The company said the delay was to ensure the process moves forward in a safe manner.

The shutdown will result in somewhat higher emissions, said AQMD spokesman Sam Atwood, but the district does not expect emissions to pose any harm to residents.

The Torrance refinery has sat mostly inoperable since a February 2015 explosion destroyed the plants pollution control system. After the explosion, Exxon Mobil ran Torrance at about 20% of its normal production.

Without the full operation of the plant, which usually generates 10% of the states refined gasoline capacity and 20% of the capacity in Southern California, gas prices in the Los Angeles region rose as much as $1.50 above the national average last year.

The California Energy Commission has repeatedly stated that returning Torrance to full service was crucial to closing the gap between gasoline prices in the L.A. area and the rest of the country. California prices are almost always higher than national prices, largely because of above-average taxes and fees, state requirements to produce special low-pollution blends and the relatively small number of refineries in the state.

After Torrance is fully operational, Exxon Mobil plans to sell the plant to New Jersey-based PBF Energy. The deal is expected to close by midyear.

ivan.penn@latimes.com

Twitter: @ivanlpenn.
Microsoft Chief Executive Satya Nadella has sold his home in the Seattle-area for $2.775 million, about double what he paid for the property more than a decade ago.

The 1960s home in the Clyde Hill area came to market in January for $3.488 million, offering a glimpse inside the renovated residence that the tech executive bought in 2000 for $1.385 million.

The 4,050 square feet of space is distinguished by strong lines, polished concrete and ceramic floors and exposed steel beams. A two-story wall of glass centers on panoramic views of Lake Washington, Mt. Olympus and downtown Seattle.

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Two floors of living space include open living and dining rooms, a family room and an updated kitchen with vibrant wood cabinetry and an island/bar. A second-floor office/loft space overlooks the living room.

There are four bedrooms, three bathrooms and two fireplaces in all.

French doors off the main floor open to rolling lawns and landscaping. A two-car garage sits off the entrance.

The 48-year-old Nadella joined Microsoft in 1992 and previously led the technology giants cloud and enterprise group. He was named CEO in 2014, replacing Steve Ballmer, whio retired from the company.

Stunning photos, celebrity homes: Get the free weekly Hot Property newsletter >>

Tere Foster of Avenue Properties was the listing agent. Rip Warndorf of Windermere Real Estate represented the buyer.

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neal.leitereg@latimes.com

Follow me at @NJLeitereg.
Downtown Los Angeles was once not only the center of the city, it was the entirety of it.

Before the city atomized itself and marched  first along the trails blazed by trolley lines and excursion trains, and later along a vast network of freeways  westward toward the sea, Victorian L.A. crouched in the lee of Bunker Hill, the acropolis where the wealthy lived.

The palaces of commerce that the early Angelenos built, and those that arose in successive waves of redevelopment through the 1920s and 30s, formed the basis of the loft-conversion movement that brought residents back to downtown in this century.

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What made that possible, ironically, was the postwar destruction of the Bunker Hill neighborhood to make way for new corporate towers that drew many of the remaining businesses out of the historic core and up the hill.

The resulting lower rents on the eastern edge of downtown had two positive, if completely unintended, effects: decades in which developers ignored the beautiful old buildings of the historic core, allowing the structures to escape the wrecking balls that wiped the western edge of DTLA clean, and the rise of a bustling retail district that catered to a large Latino population, especially in the Broadway corridor, where you can still find one of the citys best selections of quinceanera dresses.

With many of the buildings in the historic core already converted to residential uses, the action in downtown has now moved south of 7th Street, where the South Park district hums with construction cranes.

Theres even a Whole Foods on Grand Avenue, something that would have been inconceivable just a few years ago.

Neighborhood highlights

Walkscore = 100: With everything from Grand Central Market to the Staples Center in walking distance and access to four Metro rail lines and Union Station, DTLA is one of the few places in the city you can live comfortably car-free.

Culture central: The Broad, MOCA, Disney Hall, Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Ahmanson Theatre, live-music venues and special events almost every night make downtown one of the premier centers of culture in the country.

Dinner and drinks: From fine dining to food trucks, and dive bars to glitzy rooftop lounges, theres something for everyone when it comes to nightlife choices in downtown.

History: All eras of L.A.'s past are represented downtown, from the days of the original pueblo, to the prewar city streets that provided the backdrop to countless classics of film noir, and on to todays glassy modern metropolis.

The Broad contemporary museum, part of the newest generation of cultural offerings downtown, opened its doors last year to throngs wanting to get a peek inside. (Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times)

Neighborhood challenges

Like many L.A. neighborhoods, downtown is rapidly gentrifying, which puts pressure on residents and businesses that may not be able to afford the high rents that redevelopment brings.

Downtown, which includes skid row, has a large homeless population that the city has struggled with, though the mayor recently included $138 million for homeless services in his latest budget proposal.

Expert advice

After decades of forward-looking urban planning and cycle time, this confluence of events has taken place, where you have thousands of residents, you have culture, you have dining, you have L.A. Live, said Arden Hearing, managing director of Trumark Urban; the companys Ten50 building is one of the new condo towers sprouting up in South Park.

You have all of that with thousands of new residences and over half a million jobs. You can live a full and thorough life there and never have to leave.

With downtown rents so high, its still a good time to buy, he said.

The market is on the upturn, and financing terms are still aggressive, he said. Theres an opportunity now to buy into one of the hottest submarkets in downtown.

Gustavo Dudamel conducts at Walt Disney Concert Hall, among the entertainment venues downtown. Nearby Dorothy Chandler Pavilion and Ahmanson Theatre are longtime residents. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

Market snapshot

Parts of the 90012, 90013, 90014, 90015 and 90017 ZIP Codes overlap the downtown area.

In March, based on 10 sales, the median price for condominiums in the 90012 ZIP was $510,000, according to CoreLogic. In the 90013 ZIP, the median price was $390,000 based on five sales; in the 90014 ZIP, the median price was $685,000 based on three sales; and in the 90015 ZIP, the median price was $888,000 based on eight sales. There was one sale of $2.75 million in the 90017 ZIP.

Report card

Alliance Dr. Olga Mohan High topped the list with a score of 895 out of 1,000 in the 2013 API ranking system. San Pedro Elementary and Para Los Ninos Middle scored 809 and 803, respectively. Para Los Ninos Charter had a score of 794 and Ramon C. Cortines School of the Visual and Performing Arts scored 737.

Metropolitan Continuation scored 656; City of Angels scored 617; and Tri-C Community Day came in at 391.

hotproperty@latimes.com
Southern Californias median home price tipped the scales at $449,000 in March, according to CoreLogic. Low inventory and high demand continue to drive a hot market that saw prices climb 5.6% from the previous year. Heres a look at what you can get in the Southland around that price.

LAKE BALBOA: This ranch-style home invites outdoor entertaining with two covered patios, mature fruit trees and a large lawn.

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Address: 17034 Saticoy St., Lake Balboa, 91406

Listed for: $449,000 for three bedrooms, one bathroom in 1,093 square feet (6,846-square-foot lot)

Features: Detached studio/office; hardwood and tile floors

About the area: In the 91406 ZIP Code, based on 38 sales, the median sales price for single-family homes in March was $499,000, up 9.1% from March 2015, according to CoreLogic.

ESCONDIDO: A covered patio opens to a swimming pool and a pair of spas at this four-bedroom home in the eastern Escondido area.

Address: 2111 Belknap Way, Escondido, 92027

Listed for: $439,000 for four bedrooms, two bathrooms in 1,422 square feet (7,000-square-foot lot)

Features: Updated kitchen; travertine floors; drought-tolerant landscaping

About the area: In the 92027 ZIP Code, based on 45 sales, the median sales price for single-family homes in March was $465,000, down 22.4% from March 2015, according to CoreLogic.

SIMI VALLEY: Vaulted ceilings and clerestory windows keeps things light and bright in this three-bedroom traditional-style home on a corner lot.

Address: 2291 Beavertail Lane, Simi Valley, 93063

Listed for: $474,900 for three bedrooms, 2.5 bathrooms in 1,514 square feet (3,210-square-foot lot)

Features: Covered porch; baseboard molding; master suite with balcony/deck

About the area: In the 93063 ZIP Code, based on 41 sales, the median sales price for single-family homes in March was $505,000, no change from March 2015, according to CoreLogic.

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FONTANA: This two-story in a gated northern Fontana community features an open floor plan with a vaulted entry and a living room with a fireplace.

Address: 15640 Marnie Place, Fontana, 92336

Listed for: $440,000 for three bedrooms, 2.5 bathrooms in 2,494 square feet (7,825-square-foot lot)

Features: Kitchen with granite countertops; covered patio

About the area: In the 92336 ZIP Code, based on 98 sales, the median sales price for single-family homes in March was $385,000, up 6.9% from March 2015, according to CoreLogic.

LA HABRA: Built in the 1920s, this Spanish-style bungalow is distinguished by its flat roofline, turret-style entry and stucco exterior.

Address: 123 Lemon St., La Habra, 90631

Listed for: $435,000 for two bedrooms and one bathroom in 884 square feet (5,738-square-foot lot)

Features: Living room with built-ins; raised deck; mature trees and lawn

About the area: In the 90631 ZIP Code, based on 51 sales, the median sales price for single-family homes in March was $523,000, up 13.7% from March 2015, according to CoreLogic.

See the most-read stories this hour >>

TEMECULA: Tiles floors and subdued hues lend a contemporary look to this five-bedroom home, built in 2005.

Address: 30725 Hillcrest Drive, Temecula, 92591

Listed for: $440,900 for five bedrooms, 3.5 bathrooms in 3,269 square feet (8,712-square-foot lot)

Features: Center-island kitchen; three-car garage; mountain views

About the area: In the 92591 ZIP Code, based on 50 sales, the median sales price for single-family homes in March was $395,000, up 0.5% from March 2015, according to CoreLogic.

 Neal J. Leitereg
Its a Hollywood tale for the ages, colored by power struggles, family rifts, sex and a vast fortune.

Only this drama wont be playing out on the big screen but in a downtown Los Angeles courtroom.

Barring an 11th-hour settlement, a high-profile trial to determine whether Sumner Redstone is mentally competent begins Friday, providing an up-close look at the life of the lovelorn 92-year-old billionaire who controls such prominent media outlets as the CBS network, MTV, Nickelodeon, Comedy Central, Showtime and the Paramount Pictures movie studio.

Redstone, in court papers filed Thursday, acknowledged lavishing $150 million in gifts  several homes, exquisite clothing and Paris getaways  on two female companions over a five-year period that abruptly ended last fall when the mogul kicked the two women, one after the other, out of his Beverly Park mansion.

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One of his former companions, Manuela Herzer, filed the lawsuit in November seeking to reclaim her authority over Redstones healthcare should he become incapacitated. Last month, lawyers for the two sides negotiated a possible deal that would have paid Herzer $30 million to drop her lawsuit, but the deal unraveled.

Redstone suffers from a severe speech impediment and will not be in court, instead appearing in a videotaped deposition Thursday.

The famously stubborn tycoon  who survived a deadly hotel fire in 1979 by clinging to a window ledge as flames seared his arms and legs  has rejected advice from some family members who urged him to settle the case, according to a person familiar with the circumstances who was not authorized to speak publicly. He didnt want to pay his former girlfriend a kings ransom to go away, this person said.

A central issue in the trial is determining whether Redstone has the mental capacity to make decisions about his health care. In court papers, Herzer contends he was not in his right mind when he decided to throw her out. Her court filings have also exposed confidential Redstone family business documents, personal slights and tensions between Redstone and his family members.

She also claimed that Redstone constantly demanded sex and was prone to crying spells.

Beyond those claims, the lawsuit also fueled questions about the future of the two media companies controlled by the Redstone family: CBS Corp. and Viacom Inc.

For Redstone, who has built a media empire valued at $42 billion, the salacious case probably will leave a lasting stain.

Sumner Redstone, through vision and ability, has created an enormously important legacy, said Raphael Amit, a Wharton Business School professor. But what is so surprising is this lack of concern for the preservation of his legacy. When emotions kick in, rational thinking takes a back seat.

In the court papers filed Thursday, Redstone claims that former girlfriend Sydney Holland and Herzer had collectively received $150 million from the mogul over five years. He cited cash gifts, homes and lavish shopping sprees, although the court filing did not provide a full accounting of the claimed $150 million.

Redstone plans to return fire with an elder abuse lawsuit against Herzer and Holland, alleging that they took advantage of him as his health deteriorated, according to a person familiar with the matter.

In late August of 2015, Redstone banished Holland from his life after she confessed to having a yearlong affair with another man, according to the court documents. Then Redstone rekindled a relationship with a longtime friend, Terry Holbrook, sending her love notes and flowers and inviting her to his home.

Herzer, meanwhile, moved in full-time after Holland left and became focused on keeping other women out of his life, Redstone attorney Amy Koch wrote in Thursdays court filing. She deceived him, he found out about it, and he threw her out of the house, the filing said. Until that time, Redstones two ex-companions exercised virtually unfettered authority of his finances.

After Redstone evicted Herzer in October, he patched things up with his ex-wife Paula Fortunato, who has visited him regularly ever since, according to people familiar with Redstones affairs.

But the mogul found a determined adversary in Herzer, 51, whom he met at a dinner party and proposed marriage to 15 years ago when he was between wives. Herzer declined, but their friendship flourished after the marriage between Redstone and Fortunato ended.

Holland, in October, tried to deliver a letter to Redstone to apologize for her infidelity and profess her love to the billionaire but Herzer intercepted Hollands letter and typed up fake letters from Ms. Holland that were designed to infuriate Mr. Redstone, Koch wrote. Herzers attorney denied the allegation.

During this time, Herzer went on extravagant spending sprees, according to his lawyers. Between Aug. 27 and Oct. 12, Herzer charged more than $200,000 to Redstones American Express card. Charges totaling tens of thousands of dollars more were put on Redstones City National Bank Visa card, court documents said. She asked the bank to deliver $40,000 in cash to Redstones home on Oct. 1.

The next day, she executed a $5 million grant agreement with Mr. Redstone for the benefit of her foundation, the court papers said.

Redstones attorneys argued that Herzer didnt seem too concerned about Redstones health as she was racking up credit card charges, which included $57,804 at Windsor Smith interior design shop; $3,744 at the tony Zimmermann clothes boutique; $7,308 at Barneys, $2,095 at Bergdorf Goodman and $400 for skincare in Beverly Hills, the court documents allege.

Mr. Redstone was generous with a lot of people in his life, and she was one of them, said Herzers attorney Pierce ODonnell. He called her the love of his life.

The key decision was removing her as the person who would make healthcare decisions for Redstone should he become incapacitated. He also removed Herzer from his will. She had been in line to receive at least $50 million along with Redstones sprawling mansion overlooking Beverly Hills, according to the court documents. Now that money is going to charity.

Herzer contends that there was a conspiracy, orchestrated by Redstones daughter, Shari Redstone, and his nurses to squeeze Herzer from the picture.

The trial will expose the tragic inconvenient truth that Sumner Redstone needs the courts protection from those who have lied to and exploited him in his debilitated condition, ODonnell said.

Observers have questioned how a case this damaging to Redstones reputation could have gone this far without being quietly settled. Aside from Redstones reluctance to pay Herzer a multimillion-dollar settlement, other sticking points to a deal emerged, according to people close to Redstones camp. One was whether the mogul would agree to cover Herzers legal costs if she was sued by any members of his family, they said, and another was a demand that Redstone fire several household staff members whom Herzer felt had double-crossed her.

Another point of disagreement was Herzers request to visit Redstone one last time, ODonnell said.

Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge David J. Cowan said he intends to focus the trial on two key issues: Whether Redstone was competent last fall when he abruptly switched his healthcare arrangements, and whether he was unduly influenced by the people who surround him.

Cowan reversed his previous rulings earlier this week and ordered Redstone to answer questions in a short deposition, held Thursday.

Whatever the outcome of the trial, the case has exposed deep dysfunction within the Redstone family.

Among other things, court records revealed how Redstone sparred with his daughter and once offered her $1 billion to relinquish her stake in the family business. But that deal never came to fruition. Last month, Redstones granddaughter, Keryn, described an angry hospital exchange between the mogul and his daughter over whether Redstone should have a feeding tube installed.

Even small details were leaked, including Redstones request that the Frank Sinatra song My Way be played at his funeral.

The uproar over the case, which rattled Viacom investors, prompted Redstone to step down as executive chairman of Viacom and CBS in February, just days after a psychiatrist hired by Herzer examined him.

What has been so surprising is that Sumner Redstone has held on for so long, said Amit, the Wharton professor who studies family-run businesses. It is difficult to understand why an individual who has accomplished so much has chosen this course of action.

On Wednesday, CBS Chairman and Chief Executive Leslie Moonves was asked about Redstone and his legacy. His response: Sumners legacy? Sumner is still alive and well, Moonves said.

Times staff writers Yvonne Villarreal and Ryan Faughnder contributed to this report.

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Sumner Redstone says his former girlfriends received $150 million from him

Sumner Redstones testimony is of utmost significance, judge declares

Sumner Redstone apologizes to daughter in a letter; asks for trial to be partially closed to the public
Sumner Redstone became his own star witness Friday, appearing in Los Angeles Superior Court via a videotaped deposition to blast his former companion Manuela Herzer and her attempt to gain authority over his health care.

I hate her, the 92-year-old Redstone said, according to a transcript of the deposition recorded Thursday and played in court Friday. A few minutes later, he added I want Manuela out of my life.

Redstones mental competence has been at issue for months. But after hearing the testimony, Superior Court Judge David J. Cowan said he would use the weekend to seriously consider a request by Redstones lawyers to dismiss the case.

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What evidence do you have to rebut the testimony that I just heard? Cowan asked Herzers attorney, Pierce ODonnell. I had said that Mr. Redstone would be the best witness, and he has given some strong testimony. I dont know why that testimony should not be respected.

ODonnell told the judge that he recognized how high the mountain was for him to climb. He said he intended to provide evidence that Redstone had been hoodwinked by people in his inner circle who sought to freeze Herzer out of Redstones life and home. But Cowan was not convinced.

Your burden now is a hard one, Cowan told ODonnell. Im not sure I need to hear all about these shenanigans that did, or did not, occur six months ago.

Herzer is claiming that the fiery billionaire is mentally incompetent and no longer able to make his own decisions. If Herzers attorneys can prove that Redstone lacks capacity, there could be a change in control at the two companies Redstone controls, Viacom and CBS.

The Redstone family holds nearly 80% of the voting shares in the two companies, and if Redstone dies or becomes incapacitated, seven trustees, including the moguls daughter Shari Redstone, would take over decision-making authority over Redstones stock holdings.

The two companies are valued at $42 billion and include such assets as CBS, Showtime, MTV, Comedy Central, Nickelodeon and the Paramount Pictures movie studio in Los Angeles.

I hate her ... I want Manuela out of my life.  Sumner Redstone, speaking of ex-girlfriend Manuela Herzer, during his deposition

Redstones testimony came after repeated attempts over several months by Herzers attorneys to question him. But Redstones lawyers objected to each request, and the judge refused to force Redstone to testify -- until this week.

On Monday, Cowan had a change of heart and said that he needed to hear from Redstone himself so that he could figure out which side was most credible. Cowan ordered Redstone to submit to a deposition that lasted 18 minutes, with questions from both sides.

The judge cleared his court room when the videotape of the deposition was played Friday in an attempt to preserve Redstones dignity, and spare him further embarrassment of having members of the public and media glean images of the elderly man as he struggled to speak.

The case has brought a number of sordid details about Redstone into public view, including his reliance on a feeding tube and details about his appetite for sex.

Coverage of the case, and investor concerns, also prompted Redstone to step down as executive chairman of the two media companies.

A transcript of Redstones deposition, which included the moguls profanities and an exchange in which his interpreter asked for his dentures to be adjusted, was provided after the videotape played behind closed doors.

When asked whether he knew who Herzer was, the former Viacom chairman said: Manuela is a [two-word expletive].

The case has cast a harsh light on the messy relationships in Redstones life, including a string of former girlfriends and even testy disputes with members of his own family.

Redstone and his daughter, Shari Redstone, battled over the years about business affairs, including expanding the familys chain of movie theaters. Shari Redstone testified in court documents that she become more isolated from her father when Herzer and another former girlfriend, Sydney Holland, were controlling his day-to-day affairs.

The courtroom was packed with spectators. Among them was Shari Redstone, wearing a gray suit, sat in the first row, flanked by her son, Brandon Korff, and her attorney from Boston, Elizabeth Burnett. Herzer sat with her attorneys on the opposite side of the room. She wore a crisp black suit and was accompanied by lawyers, friends and family members.

Redstone, in court papers filed Thursday, acknowledged lavishing $150 million in gifts  several homes, exquisite clothing and Paris getaways  on Herzer and Holland over a five-year period that abruptly ended last fall when the mogul kicked the women, one after the other, out of his Beverly Park mansion.

As the lawyers spoke, photos of Redstones former girlfriends were displayed on a video screen.

Mr. Redstone is someone who craves companionship, and he does not want to be alone, his attorney, Robert Klieger, said during opening statements. He was loved by some, reviled by others. But there is one thing that Mr. Redstone does not tolerate and that is lies.

The trial was expected to last seven days. ODonnell opened his remarks by saying that he will demonstrate that Redstones nurses and Shari Redstone were behind a plot to rid his longtime friend, and former lover, Herzer from his life.

Your Honor, this is a modern-day love story ... and in a blink of an eye -- 48 hours -- 17 years of friendship just evaporated...her soul mate had been ripped from her, ODonnell said. Lost to us was the titan of the media world.

Im not sure I need to hear all about these shenanigans that did or did not occur six months ago. We need to focus on what this man wants now.  Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge David J. Cowan

Dr. Stephen Read, a geriatric psychiatrist, testified on Herzers side. Read, who examined Redstone in late January, said Redstone did not have requisite capacity to make decisions about his medical care, and that he was extremely vulnerable to undue influence from the people around him.

The Mr. Redstone we have today is a very very thin shadow of who he was, said Read.He said that Redstone exhibits features of dementia that are toward the severe end of moderate.

Read also said that Redstone is prone to outburstsof anger that impairs his thinking and that he has grave difficultly swallowing.He said Redstone was unable to indentify different colored shapes on a white board when asked to do so.

To my dismay, Mr. Redstone was able with no reliability to point to a particular shape and color, he said, holding up the white board with colored shapes including a red star. In my opinion, he does have a major neurological disorder.

The trial opened early Friday drew more than a dozen reporters, so many that there were not enough seats available in Cowans small courtroom. Court clerks hauled stacks of additional chairs into the room.

Just before the proceeding began, an assistant wheeled in a cart that was heaped with 15 boxes stuffed with documents.

Shari Redstone flashed a quick smile when she emerged from the court room at lunch. When asked what she thought of her fathers performance, she smiled and told a reporter: You know that I cant say anything.

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meg.james@latimes.com

Follow @MegJamesLAT for the latest on the business of Hollywood.

Times Staff Writer Yvonne Villarreal contributed to this report

UPDATES:

4:56 p.m.: This post has been updated throughout.

12:41 p.m. : This post has been updated with additional comments.

10:45 a.m.: This post has been updated with new information.

This post was originally published at 10:13 a.m.
Director Rodrigo Garcia is not a religious man, nor was his father, the Nobel Prize-winning author Gabriel Garcia Marquez. So why he felt compelled to tell a story about Jesus 40 doubt-ridden days in the desert is a riddle hes still trying to solve.

I dont know what organ of my body this film came from, he confesses. I kept asking myself, What are you doing? A movie about Jesus? But I couldnt get it out of my head.

Garcias movie Last Days in the Desert, premiered at Sundance last year and opens in Los Angeles on May 13. Its a radical departure from his earlier, female-centric films  and from his HBO series about therapy, In Treatment.

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Hushed, spare, intensely personal, featuring an appealingly human and vulnerable Jesus  and beautifully shot by multiple Oscar winner Emmanuel Lubezki  Last Days in the Desert isnt your standard biblical epic. In Last Days, Jesus is called Yeshua, and hes played by Ewan McGregor, who also plays his alter ego, The Demon, a.k.a. Satan.

At its heart its a story of fathers and sons. Garcia invents a family Jesus encounters in the desert. They take him in, and Satan challenges him to resolve the problems that are tearing the family apart. There is a sick mother (Ayelet Zarer), a stern and stubborn father (Ciaran Hinds) and their teenage son (Tye Sheridan), who wants to escape from his fathers yoke and find his fortune in Jerusalem. Set against this father-son struggle is Jesus relationship with his silent Father, who has laid out a destiny for his chosen son.

Yeshua needed to free this boy because he could not free himself, Garcia explains. One of the movies conceits is the sibling-like rivalry between Jesus and the duplicitous Satan, who tries to turn Jesus against his Father. Satan, the fallen angel Lucifer, has actually seen the face of God, and he holds this intimacy over Jesus, who never has.

Garcia is talking about the film in one of the family homes in Cartagena where last year it was selected as the opening-night film of the Cartagena Film Festival. In tribute to his late father (affectionately known as Gabo to his legion of fans), the festival mounted a sidebar of some of Marquezs favorite films.

Actor Ewan McGregor, left, and director/writer Rodrigo Garcia of Last Days in the Desert. (Larry Busacca / Getty Images)

Garcia keeps a low profile; even many who know his work, including such films as Nine Lives and Albert Nobbs, dont realize that he is Marquezs son. Hes never kept it a secret, but hes been reticent to say too much about his father, never wanting to ride on his coattails.

Marquez wasnt just any writer; the author of A Hundred Years of Solitude was a literary colossus, as iconic in his field as a Frank Sinatra or a Marlon Brando or a Michael Jordan. At his funeral in April 2014 in Mexico City, attended by the presidents of Colombia and Mexico, tens of thousands of mourners paid tribute.

There were 10 years of interviews before people stopped asking me about my dad, Garcia recalls. But everyone always assumed I didnt want to talk about him. And then when I did junkets for Albert Nobbs nobody asked anymore. And I felt a little sad. Then, half-jokingly, he adds: Maybe I made this movie so people would talk about him again.

Female-centric films

When roundups of the most interesting independent filmmakers are made, Garcias name often gets overlooked. Is it because his films have always focused, with uncanny empathy, on the lives of women?

Starting with Things You Can Tell Just by Looking at Her, followed by the masterly anthology Nine Lives, then Mother and Child and Albert Nobbs (the one movie he didnt write himself), Garcia has inspired a slew of great performances, sensitively constructing a cinematic world far from the testosterone-fueled, postmodern visions of the Tarantinos and Nolans.

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For the record

May 7, 3:06 p.m.: A previous version of this article referred to the film Mother and Child as Mothers and Sons.

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Im neither commercial nor hip, Garcia says with typically self-effacing humor.

Last Days is Garcias own distinct, humanistic take on Jesus. It will not rile the faithful, as Scorseses The Last Temptation of Christ did. It does not indulge in the S&M spectacle of Mel Gibsons The Passion of the Christ. It is not a solemnly pious epic like George Stevens The Greatest Story Ever Told or a fierce polemic like Pasolinis The Gospel According to St. Matthew.

In the film the wily Demon, who delights in messing with Jesus head, compares God to a storyteller whos trying to perfect the Earth by constantly writing and rewriting it, willing to start the universe all over just to change the shape of a branch.

That was my riff on how artists work, Garcia notes. Theyre just insatiable. The art comes first. God would perfect the universe at the expense of everything else. Its Satans way of taunting Jesus with the idea that God doesnt care about him, only with the story hes been cast in.

It wasnt until Garcia was halfway through writing his screenplay that the parallels to his own life struck him.

Both Yeshua and the boy are trying to find their destiny from under a powerful father. Im not so blind I dont see that. But once he saw it, it became emotionally much harder to write: to keep the focus on his tale, not himself. Writing the second half was exhausting. Then he adds with a laugh, but my father was not a silent God.

Garcia, the firstborn son of the globetrotting Marquez, had an unusually peripatetic childhood. He was born in Colombia, then raised in Mexico City, and between ages 8 and 14 lived in Barcelona with his dad, his mother, Mercedes, and his younger brother Gonzalo before returning to Mexico City for high school, then to Harvard for college.

He was preoccupied with the impact his fame and success could have on us, Garcia says of his father. That it could paralyze or crush us.

The Marquez household was filled with his fathers left-wing artistic friends  the novelists Carlos Fuentes and Mario Vargas Llosa were regulars  and storytelling was prized above all. Instead of church on Sundays, Garcia remembers garrulous lunches for more than a dozen people, where the taletelling would go on deep into the afternoon.

My dad was always at home. He had no hobbies. He wrote from 9 to 2, and he engaged with others. He says his own work ethic comes from his father. My brother and I are the same, we cant do anything but the task at hand. Its impossible for me to take a vacation. 

Garcia also inherited his fathers love of movies. As a young journalist, Marquez wrote frequently about films, and in the early days of his career, before A Hundred Years of Solitude sealed his fate as a novelist, worked on many screenplays. He prized the Italian neorealists, De Sica in particular. Truffauts Jules and Jim was his favorite film. He revered Kurosawa, particularly Red Beard, which he took his son to see many times.

Years later, Kurosawa wanted to make a film of Marquezs The Autumn of the Patriarch, recast in medieval Japan. But to his dads disappointment, the project never got funded. Though many movies have been made from the stories and novels  few of them good  Marquez refused to let anyone film A Hundred Years of Solitude. He told his sons that after his death they were free to sell the rights if they needed to. The only way it could be adequately filmed, Garcia concedes, is as a television miniseries. Hes not eager to see that happen.

My favorite thing my father wrote or said is in Love in the Time of Cholera: Nobody teaches life anything. I love that. Life trumps all. Reality is always better, bigger, more astonishing than anything. By comparison, Life imitates art is foolish. Life imitates nothing. Life rules supreme.

Marquez died while his son was editing Last Days, a film that, Garcia admits, is haunted by the idea of death. It would be foolish to get too Freudian about the interweaving of autobiography and fiction in the movie; art is not therapy, and the mysteries of the creative process are best left hidden from the artist. Indeed, sometimes he is the last person to see what is standing in front of his eyes.

Its a testament how much we dont see what we dont want to see that it only occurred to me in the last few years that my father wanted to be a director, Garcia says later at his office in Culver City. Which of course I knew my whole life. But it hit me: Oh, wait a minute! I am a director  which was his dream. It wasnt until my 50s that I put it together.

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Even setting aside her acclaimed work in the 1960s with the filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard, actress Anna Karina has a formidable career that includes working with directors Luchino Visconti, George Cukor, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Jacques Rivette, Tony Richardson and Jonathan Demme.

Yet it is the series of films she made in France with Godard that have long most captivated audiences, made during a time that also saw them falling in love, getting married and eventually divorced. From The Little Soldier, made in 1960, to Made In U.S.A. in 1966, Godard and Karina collaborated on a series of films that blended his formal audacity with her emotional vitality.

I dont think we thought at the time that the films would still be [popular for] so many years afterwards, she said of the ongoing response to the films. Its a kind of surprise every year, and the audiences are young people all over again. It means its still very modern after so many years.

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Karina, 75, made an extremely rare set of appearances in Los Angeles recently. She was present for a screening of A Woman Is a Woman at Cinefamily and the L.A. premiere of a new restoration of Band of Outsiders at the TCM Classic Film Festival ahead of a local theatrical run. At both events, she was greeted by multiple standing ovations.

Brie Larson, the recent best actress Oscar winner, was the surprise moderator for the event at Cinefamily. In an interview just before the event, Larson spoke of the direct influence Karina had on her as a performer. I was really struggling with American cinema because everybody looked so perfect and everybody kind of had it together, Larson said. And I discovered A Woman Is a Woman and the Godard films with her, and seeing the depiction of a woman who was so complicated and yet you love her, it gave me hope.

We dont have to look perfect. I can have a temper tantrum onscreen, I can have desires and wants that arent met, I can show how frustrating that is and I am still captivating to watch, Larson said.

Born in Denmark, Karina made her way to Paris as a teenager to begin a modeling career that saw her soon slip into acting. Thats a pretty cool part you just skipped over! Larson exclaimed in her Q&A when Karina elided how she first hitchhiked her way from Denmark to France.

It was Karinas enigmatic mix of carefree insouciance, emotional transparency and chic style that made her such a good fit for Godards distinctive blend of spontaneity and precision.

He would give you the dialogue in the morning just before youre shooting. So you had to learn it, she said. But also there was a lot of movements, you had to drink and talk at the same time, or light a cigarette and walk around. So that may be what people like today, because thats what you do in life. Its not the old fashioned cinema where people come in, close the door, sit down and then begin to talk. With Jean-Luc Godard, we did everything at the same time.

Many have long assumed that the relationship between Godard and Karina could in essence be charted via the trajectory of their films together, from the flirtatious A Woman Is a Woman and jazzy energy of Band of Outsiders to the tumultuous Vivre sa Vie and Pierrot le Fou to the finality and despondency of Made in U.S.A.

But Karina said, Our personal life never went into when he was doing his films. When we were doing the films, we were not together that much. He wanted to be alone to write. He was a very secret person at that time when we were doing the films.

As to whether she feels her work with Godard overshadows everything else she has done, including working with other directors, her musical recordings with Serge Gainsbourg, directing films of her own and writing novels, she said simply, People will like what they like.

Karina is frequently referred to as the muse not only to Godard but to the spirit of the entire French New Wave of filmmakers, to which she said, Its something very kind and very beautiful. But I never thought that. We had fun. We were not like stars at that time. You would change clothes behind a tree and do everything very quickly. We didnt have trailers like stars would today. Wed talk to people in the streets and say hello while we were shooting.

Also in attendance at the event at Cinefamily was Laura Mulleavy, co-founder with her sister Kate Mulleavy of the fashion label Rodarte.

There are some people you just want to know more about, Mulleavy said of the continued appeal of Karinas screen presence. Seeing people like that onscreen that maybe could have been your friends, but in that alternate universe where people are just so fantastic. They are just a person being a person in a moment and youre enraptured with them.

Its so visceral, and you feel a part of it, Mulleavy added. And I think thats why people feel connected with her.

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Long before it became fashionable for filmmakers to dismantle the fourth wall, Jean-Luc Godard had devoted himself to the cinema of self-awareness: He was in the business of making movies, the saying goes, that made viewers intently aware they were watching a movie. This is as true of his still-wondrous 1960 debut, Breathless, a form-busting riff on American gangster-movie traditions, as it is of his 39th feature, Goodbye to Language, an eyeball-searing ode to the disruptive properties of 3D.

That self-deconstructing impulse may not seem as much in evidence in the exquisite Band of Outsiders (Bande a part), an excellent digital restoration of which (courtesy of the invaluable Rialto Pictures) will begin a series of limited theatrical play dates across the country on Friday. In the 50 years since its initial U.S. run, this 1964 French New Wave touchstone has often been characterized  and sometimes dismissed  as the most conventionally accessible of Godards works. That may be true, even if it is a bit like pointing out the worlds shortest croquembouche: Modest though it may seem compared with the others, a towering achievement it remains.

Adapted from Dolores Hitchens 1950s pulp novel Fools Gold, Band of Outsiders tells the simple, linear story of a girl and two guys who, after some desultory flirtation, embark on an equally desultory home-burglary attempt. But a thin summary of an already thin plot doesnt begin to account for the films strange intensity of feeling, or its eerie sense of suspension between cinematic fantasy and hard-scrabble reality. From its opening, rapid-fire barrage of closeups to its sly parting gesture, Godards gangster-musical pastiche is suffused with a strange and melancholy understanding of how irrevocably the movies have shaped our collective dream life  which means, of course, that theyve shaped our truest sense of who we are.

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And so you dont quite believe it when Odile, the sad-eyed, sweater-clad gamine played by the great Anna Karina (Godards eternal muse and then-wife), lowers her eyes and declares, I hate movies. (In the next breath, she will note that she also hates dancing, and the film will again memorably prove her wrong.) Much like Franz (Sami Frey) and Arthur (Claude Brasseur), the young amateur crooks who draw her into their scheme, Odile isnt just the sort of character its impossible to imagine existing outside a movie; she seems to have almost no conception of life beyond the movies themselves. Everything about these kids  their words, actions and gestures, the clothes they wear, the fantasies they indulge  seems to have been lifted wholesale from the B-movie romances and pulp fictions of yesteryear.

In an early scene, after scoping out the house theyre planning to break into, Franz and Arthur pretend to be Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, staging a phony shootout on a nearly deserted country road. Its a throwaway gag but also a crucial moment of foreshadowing; when the actual gunplay arrives, it has the same air of weirdly exaggerated pantomime. At once more and less real than the violence were accustomed to seeing on-screen, the scene is piercing in part because its so odd, so jarring, as if we didnt know these youths could actually bleed. To watch it now is to be reminded of something Pauline Kael wrote in her 1966 review of the film: Because Godards movies do not let us forget that were watching a movie, its easy to think hes just kidding.

The characters here manage the peculiar effect of seeming at once oblivious to their actual reality and deeply, matter-of-factly trapped by it. Their world is as shabby and constricted as the room in which they gather for an English class, their paths in life as circumscribed as their Metro routes. The Paris we see, shot in chilly monochrome by brilliant cinematographer Raoul Coutard, looks cheerless and overcast; its a city from which almost all charm and glamour have been carefully stripped away, and Michel Legrands score seems to echo the sentiment with its weary, wistful refrain. (A briefly overheard snippet of Legrands glorious music from The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, released in France the same year, provides a notable contrast.)

If Band of Outsiders is frequently heartbreaking, its never depressing. The genius of Godards filmmaking is that we can see both the futility and the necessity of his movie love, as expressed by his characters reckless schemes as well as every movement of his camera. The moments we remember and cherish most are those that seem to have arisen from a joyous, spontaneous impulse  the scene in the cafe where Arthur, Odile and Franz do the Madison, and their record-breaking run through the Louvre  and which have been referenced and immortalized in any number of films since, from Quentin Tarantinos Pulp Fiction to Bernardo Bertoluccis The Dreamers. It is perhaps historys way of asserting that these beautiful, foolish young people belong to the movies, which is another way of saying they belong to us.

Band of Outsiders

In French with English subtitles

Not rated

Running time: 1 hour, 37 minutes

Playing: Cinefamily, Los Angeles, one week only
The father-son collaboration Being Charlie, from director Rob Reiner and co-writer Nick Reiner (Matt Elisofon is also credited on the script) mines personal experience for this family drama about the plague of addiction. Nick Robinson plays the titular role, a young man bouncing from one rehab center to the next.

Nick Reiner has publicly discussed his own struggles with addiction, including multiple stays in rehab as a young teen and even homelessness. He has imbued this story with his own experiences, and the complicated relationships in the rehab centers and sober houses feel authentic and lived in, with dark humor and a reckoning with ones own past. Also authentic are the relapses and crashes as well as the partying that constantly beckons.

The film is well-made  the direction is strong, the cinematography by Barry Markowitz compelling and the script by two first-time writers is confident. The biggest problem with the film is Charlie himself.

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As written, Charlie is very hard to root for until way too late in the film. Were introduced to him leaving a rehab center in Utah and stealing oxycodone from a cancer-stricken woman along the way. He doesnt get better from there. Were supposed to feel sorry for Charlie because his well-to-do parents (Cary Elwes and Susan Misner) dont let him stay at home, practicing tough love. His dad is cold, a former movie star running for governor of California who would prefer that Charlie stay tucked away in rehab until election day.

Rehab doesnt seem so bad, either. His biggest problem seems to be that his father refuses to sign off on an overnight pass from the sober house so that he can sleep with his new girlfriend, Eva (Morgan Saylor). Its very hard to muster up empathy for him as he hurls fat slurs at some women and sexually objectifies others. He jokes at the expense of a friend who confesses to trading sexual favors for drugs, and explodes when he doesnt get what he thinks he deserves.

Very late in the film, Charlie experiences his true dark night of the soul, but its too late to redeem him. He needs his entitlement checked, and no one in the film does that.

The struggle of addiction is real, but a cinematic representation that is myopic with regard to the unexamined privilege of its main character  fails to offer deeper insight into the motivation for his addiction. Perhaps Being Charlie is an examination of the ways in which those who have everything can still be victims of this disease, but Charlie just isnt a sympathetic vessel for the message.

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Being Charlie

MPAA rating: None

Running time: 1 hour, 37 minutes

Playing: Laemmle Ahrya Fine Arts, Beverly Hills; Laemmle Town Center 5, Encino
This year, Mothers Day has become the hot cinematic holiday, with Garry Marshalls Mothers Day and Lorene Scafarias The Meddler vying for the post-brunch attention of audiences. Another entry makes its way into the mix, Mothers and Daughters, from writer Paige Cameron and director Paul Durridge.

Its a sort of dramatic take on Mothers Day, a star-studded omnibus film about the coincidentally connected lives of families. Though Marshalls film takes the comedic angle (to mixed results), and The Meddler approaches the topic with a sweet, gentle ribbing at mom, Mothers and Daughters goes right for the hard stuff, tackling adoption, abortion, cancer, teen pregnancy and bankruptcy.

The stories are loosely connected through the large loft building where the characters live. Theres rock photographer Rigby (Selma Blair), who recently found herself pregnant, and serves as the narrator; battle-ax fashion editor Nina (Sharon Stone), with a college-age daughter Layla (Alexandra Daniels) searching for autonomy. Bra designer Georgina (Mira Sorvino) is reckoning with her own past, while a death in the family has rocked the world of sisters Becca (Christina Ricci) and Beth (Courtney Cox). Young couple Gayle (Eva Amurri Martino) and Kevin (Paul Wesley) are struggling to get their pastry business off the ground, and mend the relationship with her mother (Martinos real-life mom, The Meddlers Susan Sarandon).

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The emotions about the complicated relationships between mothers and daughters are spot on, and theres no shortage of star power. But theres an insistently dour fog over the proceedings, and the film feels subdued and sedated without the levity to brighten up things.

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Mothers and Daughters

Not rated.

Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes

Playing: Laemmle Music Hall, Beverly Hills
With a nod to Tsai Ming-liang, welcome back, Dragon Inn.

The great Chinese filmmaker King Hus 1967 masterpiece of expressive, physical martial-arts storytelling has been given a beautiful 4K digital restoration by the Chinese Taipei Film Archive, and it couldnt arrive at a better time as an artisanal contrast to todays computer-generated, chaos-driven superhero cinema. To revisit (or introduce oneself to) this seminal, revered work  an influence on countless wuxia movies since, including Ang Lees Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Zhang Yimous House of Flying Daggers, and Quentin Tarantinos Kill Bill (even The Hateful Eight)  is to pay homage to a timeless art made thrillingly modern. Second Wave Taiwanese director Tsais 2004 elegiac ode to moviegoing, Goodbye, Dragon Inn, took place at a Taipei theater showing Hus movie on its last day.

After years of working for the Hong Kong film industrys dominant Shaw Brothers, where he made his first wuxia film, Come Drink With Me, Hu broke away in the mid-1960s to finesse (and independently finance) his own movies. Foregoing the melodrama and trick visuals that often categorized the chivalric sorcery of the genre, he devised a uniquely pulsing blend of magnetic stoicism, Chinese Opera choreography and innovative fight sequence editing. Dragon Inn signaled a new technical virtuosity, and in showcasing a skilled, courageous female swordfighter  as Come Drink With Me did  a bracing gender inclusivity.

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The story, set during the Ming Dynasty, is showdown gold. A ruthlessly powerful court eunuch named Cao (a memorable Bai Ying, blond and red-faced) has one of the emperors key ministers framed and executed, after which he sends a secret military group to track down and kill the mans children. The path leads to the titular tavern, an isolated, rock-strewn outpost where Caos murderous brigade fatefully converges with the movies heroic trio, a nomadic swordsman named Xiao (the slyly smiling Shih Jun) hired to protect the hunted children, and a pair of secretive, combat-gifted siblings, one of whom (an electric Shang Kuan Ling-Feng) is passing herself off as male.

The domino-tipping scenes in the tavern are expertly coiled and funny as the various factions suss each other out over tense meals, stealth communication, and lethal maneuvers. (Arrow-catching!) Once the conflict is out in the open, though, and the fight migrates from the confined inn to beautiful tree-lined mountain passes, Hu goes to town squaring off his warriors  mythically set against the blue sky  and its both meditative and miraculous. Even the fluttering of wardrobes perfectly complements the tautly percussive music.

Hu directs his fight sequences with a showmans flair but also a pickpockets sleight of hand. He puts you inside the action. First youre stirred by the face-off between such vividly realized archetypes, then dazzled by the dynamic framing and the performers weapon-wielding proficiency. But youll barely perceive the flash of quick-cut inserts that result in a swordfighter puzzling at his sliced robe or bloodied skin. As critic David Bordwell realized in dutifully studying Hus editing technique, the eccentric notion is that Hus combatants are too fast even for the camera. Its a beautifully disorienting effect  how did that contact happen?  and one brought to even more glorious fruition in his follow-up feature, A Touch of Zen, in 1971.

A director in command of everything from the watchful eyes of his actors, to the beauty of a misty morning light, to the heart-stopping vectors of arrows and swords bursting across a widescreen frame, Hu creates cinema thats the definition of kineticism. Dragon Inn, a wuxia mold-breaker to treasure, is truly soaring pulp, and its return is a treat for moviegoers.

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Dragon Inn

In Mandarin with English subtitles

Running time: 1 hour, 51 minutes

Not rated

Playing: Landmark NuArt, West Los Angeles
The rise and fall and rise and fall of an unlikely racehorse and the ultimate true-life underdog gets the documentary treatment in Dark Horse, directed by Louise Osmond. The tale, ripe for a narrative feature film adaptation, starts with Jan Vokes, a barmaid in a downtrodden Welsh mining town, with a dream to breed a champion racehorse.

The odds are stacked against her, with horse racing typically the purview of the landed gentry, and an expensive endeavor at that. Nevertheless, Jan gets a group from her village together to sponsor a horse, Dream Alliance. Hes plucky and determined, and his racing career is a roller coaster of unprecedented highs and disappointing lows, culminating with a near-disastrous, possibly career-ending injury. But dont count out Dream Alliance just yet.

The documentary uses a straightforward talking-heads style, with all of the quirky small-town members of the alliance contributing their charm and wit to the yarn. However, there are a few structural choices that make the film feel disorganized.

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Certain aspects of the towns mining history and the historically aristocratic racing world would have more effect as individual sections explored in more depth, rather than interspersed throughout. For as heart-pounding as the races seem, that momentum is not translated on-screen.

A sweet if underwhelming documentary with plenty of character, but told in such a simple and gentle way, it doesnt quite grab audiences as it could.

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Dark Horse

MPAA rating: PG for some mild thematic elements and language

Running time: 1 hour, 26 minutes

Playing: Laemmle Royal, West Los Angeles
Whether they be historic or recent, Abraham Lincoln or Yitzhak Rabin, world-changing political assassinations leave scars that never go away, national wounds so devastating they not only can but have to be examined over and over again.

Which is why, for the second time in as many months, an excellent new documentary on murdered Israeli Prime Minister Rabin, this one called Rabin In His Own Words, appears on the scene.

If the previous film, Amos Gitais somber Rabin, The Last Day, concentrated with unrelenting solemnity on the time immediately leading up to and following that 20-year-old tragedy, this latest film has a different focus as well as a different sensibility.

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True to its title and to the claim of director Erez Laufer that hes created an autobiography of sorts for Rabin, In His Own Words is a deeply involving look at the mans entire life, using archival footage, home movies, private letters but most of all filmed interviews Rabin gave, to let us hear him tell his own story just about from cradle to grave.

Introspective and not conventionally charismatic, saying at the outset nothing is harder than defining yourself, Rabin here speaks in a thoughtful, honest, articulate voice leavened with sharp humor. When a newsman asks him what its like to be prime minister, the self-deprecating reply is, You get used to it.

Rabin here is unusually candid, displaying an emotional quality, especially when talking about his childhood, that was not often seen. And his integrity and vision for the future also come through so strongly that his death inescapably seems a tragic fork in the road Israel may never recover from.

Because director Laufer is an accomplished editor, with credits including Chris Hegedus and D.A. Pennebakers The War Room and Laura Poitras My Country, My Country as well as this film, In His Own Words has a fluidity and coherence that belie its numerous sources.

Likely inevitably, given the nature of Rabins life and work, In His Own Words also functions as a history of the state of Israel, where it came from and where it appears to be going.

Born in Jerusalem in 1922, Rabin grew up in a working-class, determinedly antimaterialistic family spearheaded by his political activist mother. Talking about money was a disgrace, he remembered. If we didnt finish our oatmeal for breakfast, it would be on our plate the next day.

Rabins mother died when he was 16, and he tells an especially moving story of trying to reach her side before the end. Rare newsreel footage shows a significant public attendance at her Tel Aviv funeral, a poignant foreshadowing of things to come.

The future army chief of staff, always most comfortable in the presence of soldiers, planned not a military career but one as a farmer on a kibbutz.

The onset of World War II, however, followed by the Israeli war of independence, changed his mind. Rabin speaks movingly of having to send 16-year-old boys on dangerous missions, and, when one such group was wiped out, reveals that those deaths were the deciding factor in his decision to stay in the army.

Rabins stories are refreshingly candid, ranging from discussing the nervous breakdown he had as head of the Israeli Defense Forces in the days leading up to the Six Day War, to personal anecdotes like meeting his future wife Leah when she was a 16-year-old high school student and having to confess to Betty Ford at a White House state dinner that he had no idea how to dance.

Though he didnt start out that way, Rabin became a staunch advocate for peace, speaking from experience when he said, Peace has its dangers, but it is better than the bitter certainties of war. One of the things In His Own Words makes clear is that his rapprochement with Egypt over Sinai in 1975 was a prelude to the Oslo accords he signed with the Palestinian Authority in 1993.

Interestingly enough, given the factors that led to his assassination, In His Own Words shows Rabin to have always been a staunch opponent of Israeli settlement on the West Bank. As far bank as 1976 he referred to the Gush Emonim settlers as a cancer in the social and democratic tissue of the state of Israel and later called settlers one of the greatest dangers to the Jewish state. These people will bring disaster unto Israel.

Considering Rabins fate, its not surprising that director Laufer chose to start this film with a quote from near the end of the first of two terms Rabin served as prime minister. I did my job, especially in terms of striving for peace, he insists. I was the prime minister with the best chance for achieving peace. That, tragically, continues to be the case.

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No MPAA rating.

Running time: 1 hour, 40 minutes.

Playing: Laemmle Royal, West L.A.; opens May 13 at Laemmle Town Center 5, Encino
Power struggles. Family rifts. Sex. The lawsuit over the mental competency of media mogul Sumner Redstone has all the elements of a great Hollywood drama. Heres a look at the key cast of characters who took center stage in the legal tussle that ultimately was dismissed by a judge on May 9.

Sumner Redstone

Sumner Redstone at a premiere in 2012. (John Shearer / Invision/AP) (John Shearer / Invision / Associated Press)

Media mogul Sumner Redstone is the former chairman of Viacom Inc. The ailing 92-year-old, who controls about 80% of the voting shares in Viacom and CBS, won his legal battle against his former girlfriend Maneula Herzer. A Los Angeles judge concluded Redstone was in command of his faculties enough to recognize and articulate  despite a severe speech impediment  the person he wanted in charge of his healthcare.

I wish to put our family back as we were before ... and restore our family relationship to what it was then. This is very important to me  Sumner Redstone

Former companion Manuela Herzer

Manuela Herzer in 2013. (Billy Bennight / UPPA / ZUMAPRESS.com)

Manuela Herzer is Redstone's former companion who was removed from a position of power at his home in October 2015. She filed a lawsuit in late November, alleging that Redstone was not mentally competent to make decisions concerning his healthcare, describing the once powerful titan as a living ghost who is prone to crying spells.

Sumner and I have been close friends and confidantes since 1999. My loyalty and love is for Sumner, and I will do everything that I can to make sure that he is protected from this horrible setup that has separated us.  Manuela Herzer

Daughter Shari Redstone, vice chair of CBS and Viacom

Sumner and Shari Redstone in 2012. (Katy Winn / Invision / AP) (Test)

Shari Redstone, 62, has had a tumultuous relationship with her father over the years. She contends that she and her children were not welcomed in Sumners home while Herzer and another woman were central in his life. In April, Sumner named Shari as his healthcare proxy, replacing Viacom Chairman and Chief Executive Philippe Dauman. She will be a member of the Redstone Trust, which makes decisions regarding the familys controlling shares of Viacom and CBS.

My father and I have a uniquely close relationship. ... We have had very public disagreements over business matters; we have patched those up.  Shari Redstone

Viacom Chairman and CEO Philippe Dauman

Viacom CEO Philippe P. Dauman. (Associated Press) (Test)

Dauman met Sumner Redstone 30 years ago when the mogul was planning to launch a hostile takeover of Viacom and Dauman was a young attorney. He has been the CEO of Viacom for the past 10 years and recently became Viacoms chairman. Last fall, he became Sumners healthcare agent once Herzer was pushed out of Redstones inner circle. Redstone abruptly removed Dauman from his family trust on May 20, suggesting that his next step might be to use his clout as controlling shareholder of Viacom to push Dauman out as chairman and chief executive of the struggling media company.

Former girlfriend Sydney Holland

Sydney Holland and Sumner Redstone in 2012. (Katy Winn / Invision / AP) (Test)

Sydney Holland, 44, dated Redstone for five years. Court filings contend that he lavished her and Herzer with more than $150 million in gifts during that time period. After he learned that she was having an affair with another man, she confessed and he ordered her out of his home in August 2015, court documents show. Days later, he cut Holland out of his will.

Former wife Paula Fortunato

Sumner Redstone and then-wife Paula Fortunato in 2007. (Reed Saxon / Associated Press) (Test)

Paula Fortunato, 53, was a schoolteacher in New York when she met Redstone a few years after his 52-year marriage ended. She was married to Redstone for five years and divorced in 2009. In late October 2015, after Herzer was tossed out of the Redstone house, she rekindled her friendship with Redstone.

Grandson Tyler J. Korff, lawyer and rabbi

Sumner Redstones grandson Tyler J. Korff. (Christina House / LA Times) (test)

Tyler Korff is the youngest son of Shari Redstone. He is a lawyer and rabbi and will be a board member on the Redstone Trust. He is one of five beneficiaries of the trust.

Granddaughter Keryn Redstone

(photo not available)

Keryn Redstone, the 34-year-old daughter of Sumner's estranged son, Brent, also is a beneficiary of the Redstone Trust. She attempted to join the lawsuit filed by Herzer to have her grandfather declared mentally incompetent, but a judge denied the move. The Redstone grandchildren, including Keryn, refer to Sumner as Grumpy, according to court documents.

I clearly heard Shari [Redstone] state her beliefs as to what should happen to Grumpy. She said, If he gets sick, dont take him to the hospital. Let him die.  Keryn Redstone in her court declaration

Estranged son Brent Redstone

(photo not available)

Brent Redstone, 66, worked for years at Viacom but had a falling out with his father and sister, Shari, a decade ago. He brought suit against the family business, National Amusements Inc., alleging that his father favored Shari in the familys business dealings. He received a $250-million settlement, severed ties with his family and retired to a ranch in Colorado. His two daughters, including Keryn, are beneficiaries of the Redstone Trust.

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May 24, 8:30 a.m.: This article was updated with additional information.

This article was originally published at 6:24 p.m. May 5.
An actor has to be brave to play someone who mentors the anti-Christ. But then Barbara Hershey has never shied away from risk.

In the 1970s, she was the living embodiment of 1970s hippie chic, catching flak for temporarily changing her name to Seagull before going on to wide acclaim in movies by Martin Scorsese, Barry Levinson and Woody Allen. She caused a scandal, for heavens sake, by breast-feeding her son Free on national TV.

I did a lot of growing up being an actor, which means you grow up publicly, Hershey said. Im not embarrassed.... I have to laugh at it, because I did what a lot of young people were doing some version of, in that period. You learn from everything. It all adds up to your life.

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The latest addition to her life is playing Ann Rutledge, a mysterious businesswoman and steward to the title character in Damien, A&Es series sequel to The Omen, the 1976 feature thriller about a small boy whos adopted by a prominent couple who are unaware hes the anti-Christ. The series finale airs Monday.

In this latest version, Damien, played by British actor Bradley James, has grown up to be a 30-year-old war photographer grappling with his true identity.

Hershey said the part came to her just out of the blue. Glen Mazzara, a veteran TV writer known for his work on The Shield and The Walking Dead, had been approached by Fox studio bosses to develop a series based on The Omen. The idea was to use the earlier movie as a jumping-off point, much as A&E had done with Bates Motel, a prequel of sorts to Alfred Hitchcocks Psycho.

I loved the very high-concept nature of it, said Elaine Frontain Bryant, A&Es programming chief. We thought it could be a good companion for Bates Motel.

Mazzara wrote Hershey a letter explaining his ideas. It sounded intriguing to me. I loved the question of, if you found out you were the anti-Christ, what would you do?, Hershey said at Shutters on the Beach Hotel in Santa Monica.

The 68-year-old Hershey showed up for the chat as trim as in her younger days, clad in a belted jacket and tapered slacks, her tumbling hair the same shade of brown as when she made teenage boys hearts race in Boxcar Bertha, the 1972 Scorsese movie that included notorious nude scenes that she reenacted in Playboy with then-boyfriend David Carradine.

Mazzara considers landing Hershey a major win for the show. We started thinking whos an actress who can really bring this character to life and play in a lot of different elements? he noted. Hershey, whose career includes much-discussed movies from the late 1960s all the way up to 2010s Black Swan, as Natalie Portmans deranged mother, seemed a natural choice: Shes someone who takes risks, whos always captivating.

Born Barbara Herzstein  her father, Arnold Herzstein, was a journalist who covered horse racing  she attended Hollywood High, where her interest in performing grew. She landed roles in mid-'60s TV series such as Gidget before graduating to features. An early breakthrough came with Last Summer, a 1969 coming-of-age movie that contained so much sex and nudity that it initially earned one of the first X ratings given by the Motion Picture Assn. of America (it was later edited down to an R).

Hershey temporarily adopted the professional surname Seagull in honor of a bird killed during filming at the beach. I felt her spirit enter me, she later explained, a rationale that failed to insulate her from widespread ridicule.

Around the same time she started a long-term relationship with Carradine, whom she had met on a western called Heaven With a Gun. Before long the relationship began to dominate her career. She appeared on Carradines TV hit Kung Fu and in movies he made as a director. Off-screen the pairs antics alienated many viewers. During a joint appearance on Dick Cavetts talk show, producers quickly cut away when Hershey unexpectedly began nursing her son on-camera. (That son, whom the couple named Free, later went by the name Tom Carradine.)

David Carradine was unfazed. In an interview decades later with High Times magazine, he said, At the time I thought it was proper  proper to fly in the face of convention. I mean, what could be more cool than a mother nursing her baby? (Carradine died in 2009.) But it began to dawn on Hershey that the relationship with Carradine was damaging her career. By the mid-'70s the couple had separated, and she refocused on acting.

She landed a key role playing Chuck Yeagers wife in the astronaut epic The Right Stuff in 1983, then followed up with two movies for Levinson, The Natural and Tin Men. Then came the role that cemented her newfound prestige: the role of Lee, the temptress in Woody Allens Hannah and Her Sisters, the 1986 comedy of manners about the complicated romantic lives of a well-heeled Manhattan family.

I had just moved to New York with my son and I didnt know anybody, Hershey recalled of her first meeting with Allen. I went on this interview and my agent said, Dont worry if you just see the top of [the directors] head, if his eyes dont meet yours. Hes shy and dont be surprised.

Allen was so sweet and at the end of the meeting he basically handed me the script and said, The role of Lee, if you want it.  It was such a beautiful script. That was just a gift, my welcome mat to New York.

She joined Scorsese again for The Last Temptation of Christ, playing Mary Magdalene. She was struck by Scorseses style of working, which was a marked contrast with Allens shy, minimalist approach. Scorsese has a rapid-fire brain, she said. Hell talk to you about character as much as you want. She received an Oscar nomination for 1996s The Portrait of a Lady.

Actress Barbara Hershey, star of A&Es new thriller Damien. (Christina House / For The Times)

Its the death of anything happy inside you if you Google yourself, because people can be so cruel.  Barbara Hershey

The Black Swan introduced her to a whole new generation of viewers. Her work as Portmans characters desperate, manipulative mother earned her some of her best notices in years.

It was dealing with insanity and fantasy and visual things, Hershey said of director Darren Aronofskys film. Is this really happening or is this all in her brain?  It was really an amazing experience that way as an actor, because I was going in and out of a lot of different doors.

The 10-episode season of Damien may not end up making Hersheys highlight reel. Ratings for the premiere were lackluster, with 753,000 total viewers according to Nielsen, and the audience has dropped roughly by half since. Critics were unkind. Drear and dreadful was the judgment of The Times reviewer Robert Lloyd.

But whatever the fate of this latest project, Hershey has long since divided her public persona from her private sense of self.

Its the death of anything happy inside you if you Google yourself, because people can be so cruel, she said.

Nor does she take anything other than a philosophical view of job security.

You dont have security as an actor when you do a series, she said. You dont know whats coming. All you know is what they tell you and what you feel.

calendar@latimes.com
Pope Francis has soft hands. Such is the assessment of Katie Couric who met the pontiff recently while attending a conference on stem-cell research at the Vatican. Global news anchor for financially struggling Yahoo, Couric was in Los Angeles the other day for a very different reason; she was promoting Under the Gun, a documentary she executive-produced and narrated about violence and Americas gun culture that opens in Los Angeles on May 13.

Once a reigning television personality, Couric, who at CBS became the first woman to solo anchor a network evening news broadcast, is these days figuring out the metrics and rhythms of capturing Internet audiences. Shes also gravitated toward documentaries, teaming with director Stephanie Soechtig for Under the Gun and Fed Up about diabetes, obesity and other health problems stemming from the food industrys heavy use of sugar.

Couric remains quick and precise, her voice huskier with time. She can slip from a smile to seriousness in a breath, just the way she did in her devastating interview with Sarah Palin in 2008. The following is an edited version of a conversation about guns, Donald Trump, the news business and the need for reinvention.

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Under the Gun, which premieres nationwide on the EPIX network on May 15, is one of a number recent documentaries about gun violence. A wide majority of Americans support tighter gun controls, but Congress appears more swayed by the power and money of the National Rifle Assn. Is it that simple?

If you peel the layers off the onion what you discover is the multitude of ways the NRA, or the gun lobby, operates. Thats what this film unravels. Is it that simple and where are the fingerprints of the gun lobby when it comes to any efforts to enact stronger regulations? We show there is the impact of the gun lobby at every turn, whether it comes to the computerization of records and the ability of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to trace weapons or whether it comes to studying gun violence as a public health issue. Its almost like a puzzle how all this fits together in a lack of serious action on the part of legislators and the public.

The NRA is quite politically adept and tactical in the way it works Washington.

The NRA was at one point a completely nonpolitical operation until a 1977 revolt among its members in Cincinnati when it was taken over by extreme elements of the organization. Its become such a political and lobbying machine.

Much of the resistance faced by those calling for stricter gun regulations is the sanctity of the 2nd Amendment. Is there a way to untangle the passions around a constitutional right from the daily scourge of gun violence and body counts?

We are not challenging the 2nd Amendment. We believe that people do have a right to bear arms. But we want to look and see how do we reduce gun violence. People can be anti-gun regulation or anti-gun, but nobodys against stopping gun violence. Thats something we can all agree on.

We are not challenging the 2nd Amendment. ... People can be anti-gun regulation or anti-gun, but nobodys against stopping gun violence. Thats something we can all agree on.  Katie Couric

Why isnt the gun debate a larger part of the presidential campaign?

I think it actually has been lately. Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton talk about it a lot. In the Republican Party, the gun lobby holds these candidates hostage in a way. Theyre afraid they wont get the support, and some of the Republican base are avid 2nd Amendment rights voters, so they (candidates) cant afford to even allow any wiggle room to enter the picture when it comes to the gun conversation.

Many say were in a golden age of documentaries. Why do you like working on them?

You dont see as much anymore the specials TV networks used to do in tackling big, important issues. Because of the fragmentation of the media oftentimes television outlets have to try to do things that have mass appeal, and I think some of the more controversial or wonky issues dont necessarily get the time and attention they should. One of the reasons documentaries appeal to me is that you can take a long time and take a deep dive to understand an issue and spend 90 minutes explaining it. I think in many ways documentaries are the new journalism.

Lets talk about Donald Trump. He went from novelty to contender to presumptive nominee. Has the media, notably TV, been too easy on him?

I think in the early days of the campaign there was just too much unfettered access to the airwaves for Donald Trump. His rallies were covered from start to finish without a lot of contextualizing of his message. The ratings spiked every time he was on, and (journalists) were slightly reticent to ask him super challenging questions. There has been a correction to that in the last month or so. His feet are being held to the fire a little more. When theres real commercial pressure to get high ratings then sometimes its very easy not to really consider the impact of the decisions youre making. Lets face it, Donald Trump is good television.

How has your transition been from network news to Yahoo and the rhythms of the Internet?

I feel really proud of the work Im doing. Im able to do a lot of election coverage in a much more relaxed setting. One day, Im interviewing Samantha Bee and the next doing an explainer video on artificial intelligence or Syrian refugees in Rome. Its been challenging at times, but Ive really learned so much compared to a lot of people just doing television. Im one of those people who thinks its important to keep learning and trying new things and exploring new venues. Im happy I did it.

jeffrey.fleishman@latimes.com

Twitter: @JeffreyLAT

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Theres a moment, early in the first season of the new Starz drama The Girlfriend Experience, when second-year law student Christine Reade, played by TV newcomer Riley Keough (Mad Max: Fury Road), finds herself taken aback by her own amorality. The reason: She likes getting paid for sex. Christine calls her sister Annabel and asks if her sibling thinks shes a sociopath.

Its telling that Christines big sister is played by Amy Seimetz, an accomplished actress, writer and director in the indie-film world who shares writing and directing duties on The Girlfriend Experience with independent filmmaker Lodge Kerrigan (2004s Keane).

People think its so bold that Christine likes sex and that sounds really sad to me, Seimetz says. Of course women like sex. Whats fascinating to me is that element that someone is willing to go out and get paid for it.

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On The Girlfriend Experience, sex is a commodity, the market is bullish and morality is nebulous.

[The shows] not an expose on why she does it, Seimetz says. Its creating a character that embodies why were so fascinated with women who do.

The producers made it a point to be intentionally unclear why Christine adapts so readily to escorting after shes introduced to the world of transactional relationships by a fellow student. By the end of the first episode, Christine has created alter-ego Chelsea and entered into the girlfriend experience, a world in which women provide sex, as well as conversation or companionship, in exchange for money.

The series zeros in on the moral ambiguity of a character who enters sex work not because shes forced to but because she enjoys both the profession and the perks. It also provides an opportunity for Seimetz to address flaws shes perceived in how Hollywood portrays female characters.

Amy Seimetz (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times )

It feels like theres been an oversimplification of the female psyche in Hollywood and thats what we wanted to get into.  Amy Seimetz

It feels like theres been an oversimplification of the female psyche in Hollywood and thats what we wanted to get into, said Seimetz. I like characters that are a little off from the norm, who dont fit into this apologetic, nurturing role that women are expected to fulfill.

When it comes to defining Christine, specifically, Seimetz said it has nothing to do with sex and everything to do with balance.

The more interesting stuff, to me is, how she can compartmentalize and move through these phases? How can she have these secret lives and not go crazy?

These are all themes that were present, if not prevalent in Steven Soderberghs 2009 low-budget film from which The Girlfriend Experience is adapted. Created during the height of the recession, it was wholly absorbed by the extremes people will go to to make ends meet.

Even for the normally eclectic Soderbergh  part-time blockbuster director, part-time indie auteur  The Girlfriend Experience movie was a curiosity. Featuring adult-film star Sasha Grey in the lead role, it was mostly improvised and barely plotted. It wasnt a box-office hit, but it had its defenders, including the late film critic Roger Ebert, who celebrated the film for being true about human nature.

Beyond the title, the protagonists name and the rough premise, the film shares little with the television series it spawned. For his part, Soderbergh had never been interested in revisiting his past effort until a former colleague suggested that The Girlfriend Experience might make an interesting TV series.

This could work, Soderbergh says he remembers saying to himself, before signing on as an executive producer, alongside Philip Fleishman, Seimetz and Kerrigan. I think the mandate was take the title and start over.

Now the film has found new life at a network that, under the supervision of former HBO head Chris Albrecht, has established itself as a venue for underserved audiences with shows such as Outlander, the historical fiction fantasy featuring a time-traveling WWII nurse, and the drama Power, about a successful New York City nightclub owner and secret drug dealer, shows that also evidence that the network isnt shy about exploring the more extreme moral quandaries life offers. (Starz is releasing the 13-episode Girlfriend Experience on a traditional weekly schedule but made the entire first season available via its on-demand streaming service.)

In taking on the tale of a womans entrance into sex work, Seimetz knew that she and Kerrigan would be stirring up controversy in the shows depiction of females.

Christine is nothing so simple as an angel or a demon. And, no, shes not a sociopath. As Seimetz playing her sister Annabel says, Youre not a sociopath, Christine. Sociopaths dont ask if theyre sociopaths because they dont care.

She is instead a woman with focus and drive and a love of her work, which happens to be sex work. You may not like her as she rejects typical moral compunctions. But shes nothing if not interesting as she evolves during the show.

As the first season unfolds and Christine grows more comfortable with her new employment. She develops more boundaries  things like dropping problem clients or refusing to lower her rates  as she adapts to the profession and rarely seems phased fazed by questions of whats right, instead focusing on whats right for her.

Christine isnt seasoned, Seimetz said, but she finds out that shes really good at figuring out the ropes and drawing the line when she needs to. Shes not always making the best decisions but shes at least handling herself.

Watching the adventures of this new Christine evolve has pleased the characters original creator.

What Im really happy about is that you feel like youre spying on Christine, said Soderbergh. You really feel like youre watching somebody when theyre alone, behaving the way people behave when theyre alone.[The show] isnt about, Do you like this character? Its about, Is she interesting and do you want to watch her?

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Follow me on Twitter @midwestspitfire
Charles Lummis: Reimagining the American West (KCET, Tuesday); Californias Gold: Lummis House (KCET Monday, repeats Tuesday). A sweet hour-long film on a local man all Angelenos should know, in the historical sense, presented as part of the KCET series Artbound. Lummis, an adventurer, writer, photographer, collector, amateur ethnographer, bohemian, librarian, editor of this newspaper under different ownership, civic booster and founder of the Southwest Museum of the American Indian  that big Spanish Colonial Revival castle you see up on Mt. Washington as you drive to or from Pasadena  did much to shape the romantic image of a Los Angeles that even in his lifetime (he died in 1928) the city seemed bent on burying.

A man with a deep if somewhat fanciful relationship to Mexican and Native American culture, who arrived here in 1885, on foot, having walked from Ohio, filing syndicated dispatches along the way, Lummis comes off as ahead of his time, or anyway out of it. One of the original Highland Park hipsters  before it was cool and then uncool  he built a house of river rocks carried from the neighboring Arroyo Seco and threw arty parties he called noises. (You can visit the house, which he called El Alisal for the alder tress that grew nearby.) But the film is less interested in Lummis rather chaotic private life  We could spent a lot of time talking about his faults, a commentator says here, but no one really does  than in his place as a creator of L.A.'s sense of itself. Director Stephen Pagano fills his film with handsome historical images (which do click by a little quickly at times), including Lummis own striking photographs; Ari Balouzian and Max Whipple provide a score that sets an artistic tone without getting arty. With the old city and the land that shaped it ever less visible through high-rising blight and sprawl, Lummis is a reminder that what calls itself progress comes at a cost.

Premiering on Monday and repeating just before the Lummis documentary on Tuesday is an episode of the late Huell Howsers California Gold, edited from newly discovered footage of a July 1997 visit to the Lummis house and grounds. Ive seen only a few online clips, which include the performance (and recording on wax cylinder) of some old Spanish songs. (Lummis recorded many himself.) Its surprising to me that Howser left an episodes worth of material left uncut, especially given the subject and their sympathetic enthusiasms; and if this posthumous creation is not quite as presumptuous as, say, trying to finish Orson Welles The Other Side of the Wind, there is something about it that feels a little  not wrong, exactly, but hmmm, given the oversight the host-director exercised in life. Still, the bits Ive seen suggest itll be familiar fun, and if you have followed me here at all, you know I am a Huell Howser fan, all the way.

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The Mysterious Secrets of Uncle Berties Botanarium (Howl). From Wellington, New Zealand, available over the Howl podcast platform, comes this scripted serial comedy with sound effects and music and such  a theater for your minds eye and your ears ear. Jemaine Clement, from Flight of the Conchords the comedy duo and Flight of the Conchords the series, stars as Lord Joseph Banks, an aristocratic, idle, opportunity-squandering squillionaire botanist in an alternative antipodean 18th century  a citizen of the Gravy Isles, where they eat cats and drink their milk like ale, use pigeons as postmen and hold such a highly sexualized view of plants that even to touch one is considered immoral. (It is the third of their Fourteen Commandments, six of which are dedicated to what you cant do with flora.)

A chance encounter with a psychic cheesemonger sets Banks on a journey across exotic islands and strange ports of call, hopefully to cross the supposedly impassible Boiling Ocean in search of his uncle and the legendary Heavens Clover and to face pleasure in order to destroy it. The tone is variously reminiscent of Monty Python, The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy (the original radio version) and the Chris Elliott film Cabin Boy. Created by novelist-screenwriter-comedian Duncan Sarkies, musician Lawrence Arabia (otherwise known as James Milne) and artist Stephen Templer, it seems to have first been intended as a film  you can see a teaser from 2011 here  and I would certainly watch such a thing were it ever completed. But the radio format allows for fantastic effects on a workable budget and brings language playfully to the fore (Gravys rival, the oddly Nordic, dog-eating Andalusia, is described as a nation capable of perpendicular thinking, outstanding hygiene and the production of extremely salty licorice). Clement is quite wonderful throughout, rendering Banks as casually cruel, heedlessly high-minded and intellectually dim, so that he bristles in wonder at the simplest things.

Loud House (Nickelodeon, weekdays through May). A fast-paced, Flash-animated cartoon with an old-fashioned, hand-drawn, pen-and-ink, comic-pages look about 11-year-old Lincoln Loud, his 10 sisters and a necessary best friend. (Creator Chris Savino, whose quarter-century in animation includes stints on Dexters Laboratory, The Powerpuff Girls, Fosters Home for Imaginary Friends and My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, had five sisters himself.) Like the girls called Spice, each Loud girl has a distinguishing characteristic  sporty, flighty, scientific, punk, goth, jokey, handy, and so on; as a kid I probably would have known them all by name. (For the record, they are Lori, Leni, Luna, Luan, Lynn, Lucy, Lola, Lana, Lisa, and Lily.)

The adventures, while they loom epically large and fantastic in Lincolns mind, and are punctuated with the boings and whistles and wooshes of classic cartoon-making, hew to daily matters and recognizable rivalries  who controls the television, who gets the bathroom. Not to be confused with the Louds of An American Family, though not completely dissimilar.

robert.lloyd@latimes.com

Follow me on Twitter @LATimesTVLloyd
A currently underway Kickstarter campaign may turn a 20-year-old Seinfeld J. Peterman punchline into an actual wearable product. Introduced to the world in a 1996 episode of the sitcom (The Foundation), the urban sombrero was a fictitious piece of headgear that Elaine Benes (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) puts on the cover of the J. Peterman catalog after Peterman (John OHurley) left her in charge during an extended trip to Burma. The hat appearing on-screen in that episode combined the traditional sombrero silhouette  a generous curved brim and dented conical crown with the brown felt fabrication more traditionally found in a fedora with a small spray of feathers at the side of the crown lending the look a slightly Tyrolean feel.

In the frozen-in-amber Seinfeld universe of 1996, the hat that (in Elaines words) combines the spirit of old Mexico with a little big-city panache is a colossal failure that disappears (but for a brief cameo several episodes later). But, thanks to the shows enduring popularity -- and nearly constant presence in syndication  the urban sombrero that never was never really went away.

In the real world, the fortunes of the J. Peterman Company waxed and waned, weathering bankruptcies, reorganizations and multiple owners before the namesake founder, John Peterman, returned to the helm in the late Aughts.

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Now, in a Bizarro-world twist, some two decades after the Seinfeld writers first floated the ridiculous notion of it, the real Peterman and the fake one (who is actually an investor in the company) have dangled the possibility that at least 500 honest-to-goodness urban sombreros will be manufactured  if the company can raise $500,000 via its Kickstarter campaign by May 20, that is.

The stated purpose of the Kickstarter campaign is to allow the company to creatively finance new products -- though it probably cant hurt that along the way the effort is exposing the travel- and safari-themed catalog brand, which was at its peak of popularity in the late 90s  to several new generations of potential shoppers. And though the urban sombrero might be the item that tickles funny bones of a certain age, its not the only item that could see the light of day if enough supporters open their wallets. Other items that might become a reality include a mod flapper dress (Part 1920, Part 1960, reads the description) and a 70s-era motorcycle jacket.

Incentives to pledge your support range from the latest J. Peterman Owners Manual Catalog (for a pledge of $1 or more) to an eight-day, seven-night U.K. buying trip with Peterman himself (the real one) for $8,600 (airfare not included). And one of those urban sombreros (retail value $325) can be yours for a pledge of $275.

As of this writing, the effort, which launched April 11, only has pledges of $92,694 toward the $500,000 funding goal. If the effort doesnt average somewhere in the neighborhood of $27,157 a day from here on out, theres a pretty good chance the urban sombrero will remain mythical millinery. But if the effort is a success, were already thinking about what other Seinfeld-inspired apparel Team Peterman might turn to next.

Puffy shirt, anyone?

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The first time Elizabeth Hong worked in a restaurant that wasnt her mothers  well get to her mothers restaurant in a second  was during culinary school, when she externed at Osteria Mozza, the Italian restaurant co-owned by Nancy Silverton, Mario Batali and Joe Bastianich in Hancock Park. She returned to work there after graduation, this time as a full-time cook. That was around 2007. Hong is now the executive chef at Osteria Mozza and its sibling restaurant next door, Pizzeria Mozza.

Hong didnt intend to become a cook. Her mother Jenee Kim, though, loved cooking and Hong remembers Kim cooking constantly. They lived in Philadelphia, then in Seoul, where Hong went to middle school and her mother enrolled in culinary school. Hong remembers her mom practicing the craziest knife cuts at home.

Kim and her family settled in Los Angeles and, in 2003, Kim opened Parks BBQ, the highly regarded Korean barbecue restaurant in Koreatown. By that time, Hong was a high school teen who, by her own account, gave her mother a headache. Her mother wanted her to be a doctor or lawyer, but Hong was rebellious and avoided class. I wasnt the best student, Hong says.

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After high school, Hong enrolled in community college. She hated that too. Meanwhile, she earned her allowance at Parks. She scooped banchan, worked the register, but she didnt have any particular career in mind. Her mother suggested she attend culinary school. Hong refused. Her mother persisted. Hong finally relented.

So Hong enrolled in Le Cordon Bleu in Pasadena. She completed her coursework and needed an externship to graduate. After a tip from a friend, a bit of research and recognizing Batali from Iron Chef, Hong applied to Osteria Mozza.

Hong, who is 31, has been at Mozza for as long as she has been cooking professionally: First she worked at the Osterias mozzarella bar, then moved to the Pizzeria, where she became sous chef, then chef de cuisine.

Nancy Silverton had a sense of Hongs talents early on. Not only did Hong have a solid palate, Silverton says, but I could also see a consistency under pressure she had in plating a dish, which is key in the restaurant business, especially a busy one like ours.

Hong helped Silverton develop and test recipes for Silvertons upcoming cookbook, Mozza at Home, which Knopf will publish this fall. Silverton was impressed by how Hong interpreted her vision; she still marvels at how Hong McGyvered a way for home cooks to duplicate the char produced by the restaurants wood-burning oven (spoiler alert: Liz came up with cooking the vegetables on a sheet pan on the floor of the oven! Silverton says).

When longtime Mozza chef de cuisine Matt Molina, who won a James Beard Award for Best Chef Pacific in 2012, left the restaurant last year, Silverton had no doubts Hong should succeed him. Shes a force, Silverton says.

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For the Record

May 6, 12:53 p.m.: An earlier version of this post said that Matt Molina was chef de cuisine at Mozza. He was executive chef.

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Osteria Mozza executive chef Liz Hong. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times )

Hong, after all, is running two of the citys busiest and most famed restaurants. The Osteria in particular, Hong says, has probably one of the most difficult hot lines in Los Angeles. There are five guys on the line, almost 30 pastas on the menu, 400 covers on a Saturday night.

Hong is adamant that everything on the menu  not just classics like the Osterias egg raviolo  be well executed and memorable. In creating new dishes, her philosophy is to simplify (everything on the dish needs to have purpose, she says) and, when shes stuck, to ask for advice. Recently, she was stymied by beets.

I roasted them and made a dressing, Hong says. Then I walked over to the mozzarella bar, where Nancy was working.

Silverton picks up the story. What I loved is that Liz roasted the beets and brought them to me before she did the next step. Most people would have peeled them.

The unpeeled beets triggered a memory: On a recent trip to Israel, she and Hong had a beet carpaccio made with charred, unpeeled beets. And so Silverton sliced Hongs roasted, unpeeled beets. I made a mosaic of rounds, then drizzled them with extra virgin olive oil and flaky salt, she says. She tasted. She added a chicory salad, mustard vinaigrette, Greek yogurt (most people pair beets with goat cheese; few remember how delicious it is with yogurt) and lemon zest. The roasted beets are now on Osterias menu.

And thats how it goes. Hong starts something and Silverton or someone in the Mozza brain trust finishes it, or vice versa. I learn so much from Nancy. Not just how to cook or be a chef, but also how to be a good person, Hong says. Nancys never too scared or too proud to learn a better way to do something.

These values resonate strongly with Hong and are partly the reason why, even in this age of the gig economy, she hasnt been interested in working anywhere other than Mozza. And she doesnt need that allowance money anymore.

Osteria Mozza, 6602 Melrose Ave., Los Angeles, (323) 297-0100, osteriamozza.com.

::

food@latimes.com

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For Jean Shim and her daughter, Elia Min, practically every day is a family bake sale.

I always made these at home. My mom had the idea of selling them, and they were popular, said Min about the chocolate chip cookies she bakes for Rubies + Diamonds, the glamorous cafe located in the Columbia Square development in Hollywood that her mother, Jean Shim, founded.

So when Rubies + Diamonds opened in December near Sunset and Gower, Mins cookies were included in the food inventory, along with the range of coffees and teas, and unique specialty drinks. In addition to the usual espresso offerings, pour-overs and brews on the Rubies + Diamonds menu that also notes a specific caffeine rating system for each drink, customers from surrounding production companies and offices show up craving nitrogen-treated beverages (matcha, turmeric, coffees, ginger ale) and the caramel sea salt latte (made hot or cold). Theres also a case containing cold pressed juices, sandwiches and baked goods.

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On Sunday evenings, Min preps enough dough for 40 cookies so that batches can be baked daily. They always sell out, and Min cant keep up with demand.

Thats because shes 12 years old. Intense rigorous schoolwork, extracurricular activities and a typical pre-teen social life take up most of her time.

Shim is a former co-owner of La Mill in Silver Lake and has a professional background as a creative director in the branding and marketing industries as well as a commercial and film director. Mins father, Craig, still owns La Mill and runs its wholesale coffee and tea operation. Shim created Rubies + Diamonds to offer a serious coffee and tea program in a design-forward environment, with blush and soft turquoise walls, gleaming metallic details, original art work (yes, thats a Murakami), and custom low banquettes that are glam yet comfortable.

We were looking at sourcing cookies from different vendors, Shim said about the process of selecting the cafes baked goods from locals such as Sugarbird and Larder Baking Company. Staff members told her: These arent as good as your daughters.

So she approached Min about figuring out a way to make the dough weekly while teaching her daughter entrepreneurial and practical skills in the process. If youre going to do this, you have to take it on like a real job, Shim told her.

Elia Mins chocolate chip cookies for her mothers shop, Rubies + Diamonds cafe in Hollywood. (Glenn Koenig / Los Angeles Times )

Elias chocolate chip cookie recipe

The pre-teen works out her food costs and has learned the mundane yet essential tasks of invoicing and collecting payment for her product. Shes saving most of the profits to donate to charity. Mother and daughter have incorporated other community service efforts into Mins micro-enterprise, such as bringing cookies to families staying at the Ronald McDonald House in Pasadena.

As for the cookies themselves, Min uses Valrhona 71% dark bittersweet, which she decided on after extensive testing of various chocolates. She smashes the discs before incorporating them into the dough, then sprinkles each cookie with Maldon sea salt  a trick also favored by pastry chefs considerably her senior. Mins cookies have that ideal combination of slightly crisp and caramelized on the outside, and still soft on the inside. Customers have taken notice, and the cookies usually are all gone by the afternoon. She has real pride in whats selling, Shim said.

Min said she watches TV cooking shows all the time and mentioned Cake Boss and Cupcake Wars as favorites. Baking, rather than cooking, is her preferred activity in the kitchen, and she dreams of becoming a pastry chef. This coming summer, shes going to Paris, where visits to classic dessert meccas Pierre Herme and Laduree top the itinerary.

Newer to Mins small product line are dog biscuits she first baked for her familys pet and have since become a regular staple for sale at Rubies + Diamonds. Shes also added oatmeal currant cashew cookies to the lineup.

Why this one in particular? My mom always loved oatmeal cookies, Min said.

It always helps to try to please the boss.

food@latimes.com

::

The Family Kitchen

Mothers and their children have been working side-by-side in food businesses ever since the dawn of small-scale entrepreneurism. Many kids, frankly, have no choice but to work with their families. But for others, however, it turns out to be a calling. Here are a few examples in Los Angeles of how both young children and adults collaborate with their parents in the industry , and how those relationships continue to evolve.

Valerie Gordon and Stan Weightman , Jr.s kids, GeeGee, 4, and August, 8, are regulars at the Valerie Confections Hollywood Farmers Market stand on Sundays. For now, theyre just getting to see the fun side of the grind. They love working the register and helping bag pastries, Gordon said. They are also taste testers for me when I am trying out kid-friendly recipes.

For some offspring of chefs, restaurant owners and other professionals in the field, the food business proves to be a natural fit. The close understanding and communication shorthand families enjoy is a boon for the next generation. Cultural factors might come into play, too. My mom is my food consultant. As a team, she handles food taste and authenticity. I translate her recipes to daily processes where kitchen staff can execute it consistently, explained Delyn Chow of Daw Yee Myanmar Cafe in Monterey Park. I act as a quality control with my moms recipes. The next audience for Chows mothers cooking will be Silver Lake, where his Myanmar Corner Burmese restaurant is slated to open soon after Mothers Day on Sunset Boulevard.

Jesse Gomez, co-founder of the Cocinas y Calaveras restaurant group, has an innate sense of the restaurant world thanks to his familys restaurant, El Arco Iris, a 50-year presence on York Boulevard Avenue in Highland Park. Gomez first tried a different path, but after graduating from Princeton and attending Loyola Law School, he circled back to what he already knew and understood. He drew upon his familys traditions to inform his his fresh take on Mexican food.

At my first restaurant, a lot of the base recipes came from El Arco Iris. I grew up eating my grandmothers food, and that touch and that flavoring will always be a part of my restaurants, he said. Gomez started learning from his mother and grandmother, and yet now in a sense, the tables have turned. Growth and expansion has made us more knowledgeable about a lot of things, and when I can, I pass that along to my mom.
Freshman U.S. Rep. Mark DeSaulnier has recently completed chemotherapy to treat a common form of incurable leukemia, he said Thursday afternoon.

The Concord Democrat, who represents Richmond and Walnut Creek in the Bay Area, said he will seek a second term in Congress.

DeSaulnier was diagnosed with chronic lymphocytic leukemia last July, he told The Times in a phone interview. He referred to it as a chronic disorder that cannot be completely cured, but can be managed like diabetes.

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Im lucky that I have something that has an 85% survival rate, he said. His doctors called it a dramatic remission, DeSaulnier said.

Beyond telling family, trusted staff and a few close friends  including his Washington roommate Rep. Jared Huffman (D-San Rafael)  DeSaulnier didnt make the diagnosis public until he gave an interview with his hometown paper Thursday.

DeSaulnier said his doctors urged him to wait to make his diagnosis public until they could see how he responded to chemotherapy. His doctors assured him he could continue working while undergoing treatment, and DeSaulnier said he wanted to see for himself.

I have been able to go home every weekend except one, logging over 170,000 miles flown, held 14 town halls, had meetings with thousands of constituents and maintained a 99.1% voting average in my first session of Congress, DeSaulnier said in a statement.

According to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, chronic lymphocytic leukemia is the most common form of blood cancer in adults. It originates in bone marrow and spreads to the blood. If it goes into remission for five years, it has an average survival rate of 85%.

DeSaulnier went to Georgetown University Hospitals Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center in Washington for intravenous chemotherapy two days a month, had blood work done weekly and met with an oncologist every few weeks, he said.

Spots of cancer remain in his bone marrow and spleen, he said, but treatment has ended.

Chemo is out of me. There is no cancer in my bloodstream, he said. All we do now is monitor it.

DeSaulnier won the 11th Congressional District seat in 2014 with 67% of the vote. He serves on the Education and Workforce Committee and the Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

DeSaulnier spent decades in local and state government before being elected to Congress. The cancer diagnosis coupled with the dysfunction he says he saw in the House weighed on him.

Being told this midway through my first year, that was a lot. It made me really consider not running for reelection, DeSaulnier said.

Ultimately, he decided to wait to make up his mind until he had gone through some of the treatment.

I didnt want to make that decision at the same time I was going through other physical and emotional challenges, he said. I wanted to make sure I could do it, and I had plenty of time to make a decision.

In December, he decided to run again. He is being challenged by RepublicanRoger Petersen.

DeSaulnier said he wants to help educate people about cancer, and persuade Congress to appropriate more money for cancer research.

People need to know that lots of people are surviving for much longer with lots of different kinds of cancer. Im hopeful that I can have a role to play in advancing cancer research, he said, adding that with treatment, he can expect a normal life span. Were at a tipping point, if we just pushed a little harder ... we could move the dial.

sarah.wire@latimes.com

Follow @sarahdwire on Twitter

Read more about the 55 members of Californias delegation at latimes.com/politics

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The delta smelt is:

1) A nearly extinct species that serves as a crucial barometer for the health of the California Delta.

2) A useless bait fish that deprives Central Valley farmers of critical water for their almond trees.

3) Delicious with cheese and crackers.

That all depends on who you are. If you are Ted Cruz, a Republican who suffered his own form of extinction this week with the suspension of his presidential campaign, youd opt for No. 3. That was, after all, the punch line of one of the smelt jokes he told while trying to woo California Republicans at their convention last weekend.

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Yes, Cruz told more than one! The other involved tips to get fish breeding: Put up a disco ball, play Barry White. Har.

Anyway, they eat this stuff up in the Central Valley, where drought-stricken (and overwhelmingly Republican) farmers loudly complain that robust efforts to save a small, doomed fish are what stand between them and an adequate water supply.

Not exactly.

Weve got more of the salmon species that are in trouble than the smelt, said Ted Sommer, a lead scientist with the California Department of Water Resources. Winter-run Chinook and spring-run Chinook, named for the time of year the adults swim under the Golden Gate Bridge, plus steelhead trout, he said, are all in terrible condition.

But nobody picks on salmon.

About 25 million Californians (not including farmers or fish) are served by water that flows into and out of the delta, which lies south of Sacramento, west of Stockton and east of the Bay Area. Half the states river water flows through the deltas skeins.

The region, about 1,100 square miles, is dotted with reclaimed, below-sea-level farmland  pears have given way now to vineyards  and tiny island towns protected by levees.

Until this week, I hadnt spent much time in the delta since my family rented a houseboat the summer I was 10. You could say that humans have wrecked the place  with their sewage outflows, their pesticide runoffs and their thirst for the deltas fresh water  but I found the place intoxicating.

I have always thought of the delta as Californias last frontier, said William Jennings, a former tobacco pipe salesman who has chaired the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance since 1988. He has devoted decades to protecting fish and their habitats.

They still deliver mail by boat. Unspeakably gorgeous in places, with meandering sloughs, and others where its riprapped and sterile, he told me Tuesday. The old-timers, the river rats, they talk about the delta of their youth and the abundance of species, and we realize how much we are losing.

::

At the southern end of the delta, the pumps that divert water to farmers are regulated by many factors, including the proximity of endangered fish like the salmon, steelhead and, of course, smelt.

The pumps are strong enough to reverse the flow of the San Joaquin River, which confuses fish and/or sucks them to their death. When conditions are deemed perilous, wildlife officials order the pumps to slow down, which infuriates growers.

They were incensed a few weeks ago, when wildlife officials ordered the pumps to slow down despite rain-swollen rivers.

You dont have to look any further than out-of-control environmental policies that have resulted, since 2008, in 1.4 trillion gallons of fresh water being dumped into the Pacific Ocean because of a little three-inch bait fish, Cruz told his appreciative audience.

The old-timers, the river rats, they talk about the delta of their youth and the abundance of species, and we realize how much we are losing.  William Jennings, California Sportfishing Protection Alliance

In Californias water wars, its hardly worth mentioning that truth is the first casualty. But it should at least be noted that last months pumping limits were prompted not by the location of smelt, but of salmon.

Did I mention no one picks on salmon?

In fact, I have never  not once  heard a politician or a farmer talk smack about salmon. Everyone loves salmon. It is the king of California game fish, the linchpin of a commercial fishery that is beleaguered but still worth more than a billion dollars a year. And of course, it is delicious with cheese and crackers.

Its easy to pick on the poor little delta smelt, Sommer said. They are obscure, where salmon is iconic.

Still, he considers the smelt the most important non-game fish in the U.S.

It is, like that poor coal mine canary, a harbinger of trouble. Unlike salmon, smelt dont move around much. They live only in the deltas upper estuary, so every ill that befalls the delta  sewage runoff, salinity, invasive predators  hits the smelt hard, Sommer said. They were one of the first species we noticed were collapsing.

::

I visited Jennings at home in Stockton, where he lives in a cottage that is a replica of the Scottish poet Robert Burns childhood home. He sat in his cluttered office next to a dozen laudatory wall plaques deeming him the best Outdoor Californian, the best Fly Fisherman. He pretended to tear out his hair when I noted that most Californians dont grasp how damaged the delta is.

We have brought an entire estuary and ecosystem to the brink of collapse. Eighty-three percent of California native fish are extinct, bordering on extinction, or threatened with extinction, he said.

But is he entirely unsympathetic to the woes of Central Valley farmers?

Pretty much.

Of course we need to grow food and eat, he said. Then he turned to his computer and called up county agricultural reports for the first few years of our most recent drought.

In 2011, the San Joaquin Valley gross crop production was $30.5 billion. In 2012, it was $32.5 billion. In 2013, it went to $39 billion. These farmers crying, Oh my God, you are killing us? he said. Our fisheries have plummeted to almost extinction. Agriculture is producing record years.

Before I left, he told me about a favorite essay, The Star Thrower, by the anthropologist Loren Eiseley about a man who flings stranded starfish into the ocean, with no guarantee they will live.

It didnt matter that he saved any, Jennings said. It mattered that he tried.

robin.abcarian@latimes.com

Twitter: @AbcarianLAT

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This has been a tough week for those who have fought to keep Childrens Pool beach in La Jolla closed during seal pupping season.

An Orange County Superior Court judge ruled that San Diegos policy to restrict access to the beach during much of winter and spring violates state and federal laws.

The ruling came in a lawsuit brought by a group called Friends of the Childrens Pool against the city and the California Coastal Commission, which approved the closures in 2014.

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The fight over how to divide use of the beach between people and a colony of harbor seals has been going on since the early 1990s, when seals started using the beach as a place to rest and give birth.

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On an average summer day, dozens of seals share the beach with swimmers, divers, spearfishermen and others.

Last year, the Coastal Commission documented nearly 50 instances in which it said humans harassed the seals. Of most concern are people who scare the seals, prompting them to flush into the ocean and potentially causing mothers to leave behind pups too young to swim and who could be trampled in the process.

I know it was very popular to be a champion for those poor seals, but in fact, the seals are not being harmed. They never have been, said Ken Hunrichs, president of Friends of the Childrens Pool.

All weve ever asked was for the city to follow the law, he added. It makes me believe theres a feeling of arrogance toward the citizens who may actually know a little bit more about Childrens Pool and the law than they do.

Mayor Kevin Faulconer and City Atty. Jan Goldsmith declined to comment on the ruling, which calls for rolling back the beach-access restrictions currently in place from Dec. 15 to May 15 each year. That means Judge Frederick Horns decision probably wont take effect until after this years seal pupping season has ended.

The city can appeal with approval of the City Council.

In the ruling, Horn found that the closure violates public access provisions in the California Coastal Act and the states constitution.

He also said the city cant manage the seals at Childrens Pool without proper coordination with the federal government under the Marine Mammal Protection Act.

The judge also said a state land grant that transferred ownership of Childrens Pool from the state to the city required constant public access to the beach.

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The Coastal Commission released a statement Wednesday saying: Were reviewing the decision, but do not agree that the Marine Mammal Protection Act was intended to prevent state and local governments from establishing rules for public beaches that are intended both to protect public safety and to avoid harm to seals.

Bryan Pease, a private-sector attorney who has lobbied to protect the Childrens Pool seals, called Horns ruling a misinterpretation of federal and state laws. He filed for an injunction in federal court to block the ruling on grounds related to the Marine Mammal Protection Act.

If the [act] preempts anything, its this judges order that the city cant protect the seals, Pease said.

The protected beach was created in the 1930s with the building of a 330-foot, crescent-shaped concrete sea wall. Visitors can observe the seals from a pedestrian walkway on the wall.

joshua.smith@sduniontribune.com

Smith writes for the San Diego Union-Tribune.

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Two long summers ago, after Adela Ramos Arellanos pump first began to sputter and wheeze, the 37-year-old field worker would return from a day spent laboring beneath the blazing sun to a home with no water.

Since then, the cavalry, as one onlooker called it, has descended on East Porterville, an unincorporated area in Tulare County that claims about 12% of the states failed wells. No fewer than nine government agencies and nonprofit organizations have had a hand in helping the community, which drew international media attention for its exceptional suffering in the fourth year of Californias drought.

But residents and even some government officials say progress has been painstakingly slow, if not altogether ineffectual. Last year, for example, state officials sank $1.2 million into a new well that remains untapped because of quarreling among government agencies.

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As a result, the drought continues to punish the people of East Porterville. Even now, some residents have to use portable showers in a church parking lot and dump a bucket of water into their toilets to flush.

In bureaucrats latest and most ambitious attempt to help, state officials are preparing to build a municipal water system for East Porterville. They want to connect 500 homes by the end of the year and ultimately deliver safe, drinkable water to all 1,750 parcels here by the end of 2017.

Well have to see if they come through with their promise, Ramos Arellano said in Spanish. I have hope. Thats the last thing Im going to lose.

::

At first, the solutions were crude. The nearby city of Porterville spent much of 2014 delivering water to fill peoples plastic, 300-gallon containers, which had mostly been donated by dairies and were unsuitable to drink from.

Residents relied on bottled water  at first donated, then provided by the state and county, but even getting that going proved difficult. A drought emergency, officials quickly discovered, did not fall neatly into traditional state grants, and there was no blueprint outlining exactly how to deliver potable water to such a large area.

In any typical disaster you have something you can see. You can fly, drive, whatever, and its clear, said Andrew Lockman, manager of the Tulare County Office of Emergency Services. We have a basic emergency management structure  a framework, but this was a new type of incident. We had to come up with a new response.

 There are about 500 homes in the East Porterville area with reported dry wells. The state wants to connect those homes to the citys water system by the end of the year.

As bureaucrats puzzled over the possibilities, Ramos Arellanos family had to haul water in by the bucket, even after they got a dairy container. Every other day they trekked to the fire station for a refill because the deliveries did not come often enough.

By January 2015, officials rolled out a short-term plan. The county worked with nonprofit organizations and used state disaster funding to install massive green tanks that could hold thousands of gallons of drinkable water and be connected to a homes plumbing. Those tanks now consume more than 160 frontyards.

Families say they have learned to monitor the thin red band that slides down their tanks PVC pipe as water inside dwindles. As the ring falls, dirty dishes pile up and toilets fill until the water hauler comes rumbling down the street.

These families need so much more help than a tank, said Roman Hernandez, a 57-year-old pastor who, for the last several months, has watched people visit his churchs parking lot to sign up for bottled water or use the mobile showers.

His suggestion? Drill more wells  or at least get water from the one that has already been drilled.

::

 Many residents of East Porterville have been without running water over the past two years.

Last summer, the county and the state agreed to construct a well using $1.2 million from the California Department of Water Resources. Construction was completed in October, but infighting trumped peoples desperate need for water.

The county had agreed to sell the well to the city of Porterville, which had staff members who could operate it. But the city, county and state disagreed on who should get water from the project.

The dispute ultimately led the state to pull out of the discussions and draw up plans for a facility where water haulers could fill up without involving the city. Porterville reacted by cutting off Tulare Countys access to water from its municipal system. The county then had to scramble to find new water sources to fill the green tanks in residents yards.

Donna Johnson, right, hugs Guillermina Andrade while delivering water with Ruben Perez to Andrades home. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

Since the fall, the well has remained hidden and untapped at the end of a dirt road, near the spot where this citys mini-malls give way to endless alfalfa. The bickering among agencies is beside the point for residents like Guillermina Andrade, struggling in a forgotten corner of town.

On a recent afternoon, Andrade, 38, stepped gingerly around dozens of boxes and buckets scattered and stacked on the floor of her modest home. The boxes hold jugs of Sparkletts water for drinking; the buckets hold tank water for dishes, bathing and flushing. Inside the bigger buckets, smaller ones float, to be used as giant measuring cups.

Andrade stood in the shower and demonstrated her routine; it is the same whether she is flushing the toilet or trying to bathe: Scoop, lift, pour.

Very difficult, she said in Spanish. Hopefully [something] will happen soon. Its been two years already.

::

If everything goes according to the states plan, sometime this year construction crews will tear up Andrades street, install miles of water mains and ask her to sign an agreement that will make her a customer of the city of Porterville.

As a result of the multi-agency tangle over the well, the Department of Water Resources sought a more aggressive and permanent solution. Frustrated officials decided they would build a municipal water system for the people of East Porterville themselves.

Many East Porterville residents have been forced to reply on portable showers since wells began running dry two years ago. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

The system, if approved by local officials, would draw from the new well, pumping water through newly laid piping to about 500 homes in East Porterville and a portion of Porterville.

The project will cost about $7 million. The state is currently spending about $500,000 a month on the tank and bottled water programs.

The State Water Resources Control Board, meanwhile, is in charge of a longer-term plan to install fire hydrants, create water storage facilities and hook up the remaining 1,250 homes in East Porterville as early as the end of 2017.

There are a million ways this can go wrong, said Greg Farley, drought manager for the Water Resources Department. This is like putting in a water system for a whole city in a year. Its a big undertaking.

And in this town, getting the word out to residents, giving them a voice and securing their trust could also prove difficult.

Federal data suggests that more than a third of the population falls below the poverty line; about 75% of the community is Latino; many dont speak English, many more prefer not to speak up. And the federal data does not count the hundreds of people who lack proper immigration authorization living in East Porterville.

Community and nonprofit leaders say many of East Portervilles immigrants have been reluctant to sign up for government assistance, all but certain they will be deported. Some parents have worried that if they admit that their homes are without water, officials will seize their children. And county officials say they are still struggling to get renters on the water tank program, in part because landlords dont want code-enforcement officers to visit and discover violations.

Theres a lot of fear out there right now, said Ryan Jensen of the Visalia-based nonprofit Community Water Center. The voice thats missing at that table is East Porterville itself.

On a recent Tuesday morning, a steady flow of locals stopped at an outpost on Plano Street, handed volunteers their punch cards and loaded bottled water into the trunks of their cars. One man said he was unaware of any state plan to build a water system. Another said he was concerned that if he agrees to hook up to the citys water system, engineers will cap his well and officials will limit how much city water he can use.

To help ensure they get a say, residents recently formed the group East Porterville for Water Justice.

Rafael Surmay, 47, attended a meeting in April, and now he recognizes neighbors who are also out of water when he runs into them around town.

In 2000, Surmay moved his family from San Jose to East Porterville, where he could buy land and fulfill his California dream for just $50,000. Six years later, roses bloomed in his yard, Surmays youngest child was born, and the postman even had enough money to buy another property on the west side of town.

Everything was perfect, he said.

Then one day, about two years ago, Surmay was on vacation with his family when a neighbor called his wife with bad news.

When he returned home to a dry well, he unwittingly began what has become a familiar sequence for people here: He hooked up to a generous neighbors working well and got a 300-gallon container, then a 2,500-gallon green tank.

What he did not do was abandon his house  not when the roses wilted, not when his neighbors fled, not when a banker suggested it might be best. He did not leave even though he owned that other property on the west side of town  a house with running water hooked into the citys system.

No, this house in East Porterville is my first love, he said.

So he modified his mortgage and bet big on the state.

There is a solution for everything, he said, standing tall in front of his yard. I wanna fight.

matt.stevens@latimes.com

Twitter: @ByMattStevens

Times staff writers Cindy Carcamo, Brittny Mejia and Marisa Gerber and Times researcher Scott J. Wilson contributed to this report.

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The contents of a white iPhone 5S owned by the wife of TV actor Michael Jace have become an unlikely legal battleground as he faces trial over her death.

Jaces attorneys dont dispute that he killed April Jace, a college financial aid counselor. But they argued that data from her phone could provide valuable insights into what happened in the moments before the Shield actor gunned her down May 21, 2014, at their Los Angeles home.

So the Los Angeles Police Department in March found a forensic cellphone expert to sidestep the security features on the phone, according to court papers reviewed by The Times.

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The warrant, written by Det. Connie Zych, did not detail the method used to open the phone, nor did police reveal the identity of the cellphone expert.

Experts say its not unusual that the LAPD was able to crack the security measures of that model iPhone. Apple routinely assisted law enforcement in extracting data from such phones with a valid search warrant. Newer versions of the iPhone have much stronger security systems, and that prompted the FBI to demand that Apple help it get around those barriers during the investigation into the San Bernardino mass shooting by terrorists.

Whats significant is how the phone has become the center of a celebrity murder investigation. The judge delayed the start of Jaces trial this year so the phone could be further examined.

Jaces attorney did not specify what they were looking for on the phone other than to say the device might contain more details of what transpired before the killing.

Police said the couple argued about their relationship via text message shortly before he opened fire, according to the search warrant.

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Defense attorney Jamon Hicks said those texts could help them explain to jurors what happened that night.

It isnt a whodunit, Hicks said. It is a state of mind case.

Jason Sias, another attorney on Jaces legal team, said he was worried that the full contents of the phone were not handed over or extracted.

We wanted to make sure they gave us everything on the phone, he said.

The prosecutor assigned to the case could not be reached for comment.

Shortly after the killing, April Jaces cellphone was locked by a pass code, which hindered the investigation, the LAPDs Zych wrote in the court papers. Police obtained a search warrant in June 2014, ordering Apple to assist in extracting data from the phone, according to the search warrant. An Apple technician extracted data and met with investigators in February 2015, the warrant stated.

But in late January, an investigator with the L.A. County district attorneys office again tried to access the data from the phone but could not. The following month, authorities could not even turn the phone on, the warrant stated.

Investigators learned in March that a forensic cellphone expert could override the security features and let authorities view the phones contents, according to the warrant. A senior investigator with the district attorneys office was then able to examine the phone in April, as was Jaces private cellphone expert, the warrant states.

Its unclear what information they extracted and how it differs from what Apple produced earlier.

Jace, 53, remains in jail. From 2002 to 2008, he played Los Angeles Police Officer Julien Lowe on The Shield. He also had roles in Planet of the Apes, Forrest Gump and Boogie Nights.

matt.hamilton@latimes.com

Twitter: @MattHjourno

richard.winton@latimes.com

Twitter: @lacrimes

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A judge has ordered two brothers accused of beating and kicking a 50-year-old homeless man to death to be held in jail in lieu of $3 million bail.

Austin Mostrong, 20, and Preston Mostrong, 19, face charges of murder and torture in the killing of George Lowery. They pleaded not guilty this week at separate arraignments in El Cajon Superior Court.

If convicted, they could be sent to prison for life with parole.

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Few details about the case were revealed, as neither of the lawyers representing the defendants made arguments contesting the bail set by Judge Daniel Goldstein. The amount could be revisited at a subsequent hearing.

Deputy Dist. Atty. George Modlin said in court that both defendants made statements to authorities admitting their involvement in the beating, and that Preston Mostrong was arrested at the crime scene.

Witnesses could identify the suspects, and some video was taken in the area, the prosecutor added. He declined to elaborate.

Modlin described what happened to Lowery as brutal but did not reveal a possible motive. He said evidence presented in court would show that the charges are appropriate.

According to the San Diego County Sheriffs Department, Lowerys wife found him unconscious near their camp in Santee last week. He had been kicked and punched repeatedly in the head. Paramedics responding to a 911 call began life-saving measures and rushed Lowery to a hospital. He remained in critical condition until dying Thursday night.

Both defendants were on probation at the time.

Austin Mostrong had been arrested in Santee on April 20 in an assault on two other homeless men. He pleaded guilty to misdemeanor counts of battery and resisting arrest and was placed on probation for three years, authorities said.

Preston Mostrong pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor theft charge in December 2014 and was placed on probation for three years.

Several of Lowerys family members and supporters were in court Monday, including two of his four children. Brandi Harris, a family friend, described Lowery as a loving father and a new grandfather who could be fun despite occasions when he fell on hard times.

Whether he was down on his luck, it didnt matter, Harris said. He was still a wonderful man and hes going to be missed a lot.

dana.littlefield@sduniontribune.com

Littlefield writes for the San Diego Union-Tribune.

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In a case the prosecution described as heartbreaking, a former Camp Pendleton Marine who fatally beat his 7-month-old son was sentenced to 15 years to life in prison.

Stanford Morocho, 23, pleaded guilty in March to second-degree murder in the 2014 death of his son, Emilio Michael Harvey. He was arrested in December 2014, on the day he brought his baby to a Naval hospital on the Marine base.

Emilio was not breathing.

The childs mother, Jannelle Harvey, had a brief relationship with the defendant, and the parents had an informal agreement to share custody of the child.

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Harvey, formerly a lance corporal in the Marine Corps, wept at the sentencing hearing Wednesday in Vista Superior Court. A friend read a statement by Harvey, who was too emotional to speak about her loss, to the court:

My world was flipped upside down as I was required to navigate the unthinkable, Harvey wrote in her letter, describing how she struggled to go on after learning of her babys death. She said she found it too difficult to fulfill her duties, and was honorably discharged from the military.

I lost my baby, I lost my household, I lost the Marine Corps, and I lost my identity, the letter read.

Harvey noted that she and others should have been preparing to celebrate Emilios second birthday this month. Instead, she was in court standing near the man responsible for her childs murder.

Emilio could not run away, she said in her letter. He could not say no. Knowing that she only got to hear her son call her Mama once breaks her heart, Harvey said.

Judge K. Michael Kirkman sentenced Morocho to the prison term prescribed by law. Its my opinion that the defendant should never be released from prison, the judge said. This is a horrible crime.

Prosecutors have said Morocho abused his son between Dec. 2, 2014, when he took physical custody, and Dec. 12, 2014, when the baby was flown to Rady Childrens Hospital after he was taken to Camp Pendleton for a medical emergency.

According to court documents, Emilio had suffered skull and rib fractures.

Morocho admitted to investigators that he had squeezed the babys ribs, smacked him on his buttocks and legs when he would not stop crying, and hit his head on a door, according to a pre-sentencing report. He also said he had pinched the baby on the chin when he was upset with the child.

After the hearing, Deputy Dist. Atty. Ryan Saunders put it more succinctly: He beat the child for a week.

On Wednesday, Morocho spoke directly to Harvey in the courtroom, saying he was sorry for all the pain she had been through. His voice quivering, he said he loved Harvey because she would always be the mother of their son.

Im sorry for this tragedy that occurred, he said. I hope that you will forgive me one day.

Morocho was in a relationship with another woman, Savoeun Meas, and was living with her at the time the baby died. Prosecutors contend that she witnessed the abuse but did nothing to stop or report it.

A Marine sergeant, Meas has pleaded guilty to felony child endangerment. She faces up to six years in prison at a hearing scheduled for May 18.

dana.littlefield@sduniontribune.com

Littlefield writes for the San Diego Union-Tribune.

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A 1.5-acre brush fire in San Dimas forced the closure of two southbound lanes of traffic on Highway 57 on Friday, according to fire and police authorities.

The fire was reported about 1:15 p.m. near the Via Verde Avenue exit and Los Angeles County firefighters were on the scene less than 10 minutes later, county fire inspector Richie Licon said.

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The California Highway Patrol has closed the two far right lanes on southbound Highway 57, according to a Twitter post.

The fire is currently creeping westward up a hill and no structures are threatened, Licon said. The Los Angeles Fire Department is assisting, he said.

ben.poston@latimes.com

Follow @bposton on Twitter.

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Citing concern Friday that a media frenzy would ensue if a trial were held before the November presidential election, the judge overseeing a class-action lawsuit against Donald Trump over a real estate university accused of defrauding students scheduled a late November date for the years-old litigation.

Jury selection in the case, which is expected to last four weeks or longer, is set to begin Nov. 28. Trumps attorney said the billionaire businessman plans to attend as much of the trial as possible  and testify.

U.S. District Judge Gonzalo P. Curiel in San Diego said his top priority was making sure jurors would be able to evaluate the case and render a verdict based strictly on evidence rather than on influences related to events surrounding the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. Plaintiffs claim that they paid thousands of dollars for a program that was worthless, something Trump denies.

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Im anxious to move this case forward, Curiel said from the bench. Im thinking of my jury. Will they be able to stay clear of the media frenzy that will rise? Ultimately, thats my No. 1 concern.

Lawyers representing Trump and his now-defunct Trump University had asked that the trial be scheduled next year, long after the Nov. 8 election, so he would not be distracted during the campaign and his presidential rivals could not use the lawsuit against him.

If Mr. Trump is successful, we can pick a date for trial sometime after the beginning of the year, defense attorney Daniel Petrocelli said. I think early February would be a reasonable time.

Attorneys for former Trump University students wanted the trial to begin as soon as July.

These are real people who spent a significant amount of money, lawyer Jason Forge said. This has impacted their lives. That does not turn on the election or the election outcome.

Trump was personally named in a 2010 lawsuit against Trump University, which consisted of programs in which students would be taught how to invest in real estate.

Numerous plaintiffs alleged in the case that their tuition of up to $35,000 was wasted because instructors were not hand-picked by Trump as promised and they lacked significant experience buying and selling property.

Curiel said he is considering starting jury selection before the Thanksgiving holiday so the trial can begin Nov. 28.

jeff.mcdonald @sduniontribune.com

McDonald writes for the San Diego Union-Tribune.

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Two Southern California doctors were found guilty this week of falsely certifying their patients were terminally ill as part of a larger scheme to bilk Medicare and Medi-Cal out of $8.8 million in hospice-related services, according to federal prosecutors.

Sri Dr. J Wijegoonaratna, 61, of Anaheim, was found guilty of seven counts of healthcare fraud while Boyao Huang, 43, of Pasadena, was found guilty of four counts of healthcare fraud after a two-week trial.

Prosecutors said the scheme involved Covina-based California Hospice Care, where employees paid so-called marketers to recruit Medicare and Medi-Cal beneficiaries. The patients were assessed by nurses to determine if they were terminally ill, according to federal prosecutors.

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Prosecutors argued that regardless of the nurse assessments, Wijegoonaratna and Huang certified that the patients were dying, even though most were not. The false certifications were then used to submit bills for unnecessary hospice-related services, prosecutors said.

In fact, only a small percentage of patients died  notwithstanding the two doctors declaring they needed hospice care, said Eileen M. Decker, the U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California.

Prosecutors said also that Wijegoonaratna recruited some patients into the scheme and received tens of thousands of dollars in kickbacks. The California Medical Board has revoked his medical license.

The scheme was shut down in June 2013, according to prosecutors.

Wijegoonaratna and Huang will be sentenced on Aug. 15 and face a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison for each count. Four other defendants have already pleaded guilty.

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A man and woman who stole a Meals on Wheels truck as volunteers unloaded food for seniors led police on a chase through the Bay Area on Friday, authorities said.

The theft was a crime of opportunity more than anything else, police said.

The suspects were not looking for food or specifically to steal that specific truck, Fremont police spokeswoman Geneva Bosques said.

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The caper began about 10 a.m. in Fremont when Reginald Nunn, 45, approached a woman in her car and tried to reach into her window, police said. When he failed, the woman called police.

According to police, Nunn then ran to a nearby parking lot behind City Hall, where the driver of the Meals on Wheels truck was helping volunteers load coolers of food into their cars.

Nunn jumped into the drivers seat of the truck, but his partner, Latu Tapueluelu, 33, was grabbed by a worker as she ran toward the vehicle, officials said. The worker released her when Nunn stepped out of the vehicle.

Nunn then slipped back behind the wheel and began to drive off as Tapueluelu jumped into the passenger seat, police officials said. An arriving police sergeant saw the fleeing meal truck and immediately began following it.

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What happened next was a moderately paced, 12.5-mile pursuit through Fremont, Union City, Hayward and Castro Valley, police said.

Police said they used a pursuit intervention technique to disable the truck on the on-ramp of Interstate 580 in Castro Valley.

Nunn exited the truck and claimed he had a bomb, police said. Officers released a police dog on him, but did not find a bomb.

Nunn and Tapueluelu were arrested and taken to a hospital to be treated for moderate injuries, police said.

Nunn and Tapueluelu were booked on suspicion of attempted carjacking, resisting arrest, auto theft and felony reckless evading, police said.

The stolen truck was only 2 years old and was used by Life ElderCare to deliver about 400 meals daily to seniors, according to program secretary Lily Shih.

Shih said a volunteer told Nunn, Look, dont take the truck, we need it for seniors food.

The truck was damaged during the pursuit and towed away, but will be released to the program in a few days, police said.

In the meantime, Shih said, volunteers were frantically trying to determine how they would deliver meals to seniors in the coming days.

Ultimately, its a miracle that no one from Life Eldercare was hurt, she said. However, unsure of the extent of the damage yet, they are desperately planning their plan B and plan C. Theyre expecting major repairs and want to be prepared to possibly rent vehicles.

Shih has set up a fundraising page for donations.

For breaking news in California, follow VeronicaRochaLA on Twitter.

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The former financial services manager for Placentia pleaded not guilty on Friday to charges of embezzling $4.3 million from the cash-strapped city.

Michael Minh Nguyen appeared briefly on video in a courtroom at the Central Mens Jail in Santa Ana, where he remains in custody in lieu of $4.3 million bail  the same amount he is accused of stealing.

Nguyen, who started working in Placentia in 2008, has been charged with 17 felony counts of misappropriating public funds and so far authorities say they have recovered nearly $1.5 million of the missing money. City officials say they believe he manipulated computer software, altering bank ledgers to prevent them from discovering his alleged crime.

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Prosecutors accuse Nguyen of making 17 illegal wire transfers, using city funds, between April 2015 to April 2016. After federal officials alerted city officials of the suspicious activity last month, Nguyen, an Irvine resident, lost his job.

A pretrial hearing for Nguyen has been scheduled for June 17 at the North Justice Center in Fullerton. Authorities are still trying to determine if more money was taken from the city. City leaders have hired a forensic auditing firm to review the wire transfers and to boost Placentias financial controls.

anh.do@latimes.com

Twitter: @newsterrier

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San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee has proposed spending $8 million to find a solution to the earthquake-vulnerable sea wall that holds up the citys famed Embarcadero waterfront.

The decision, announced Wednesday, comes after new studies found the sea wall, which stretches from Fishermans Wharf past the Bay Bridge to AT&T Park, could be shoved toward the bay by more than several feet in a massive earthquake, taking with it one of the citys most bustling areas.

The total cost of securing the wall has been placed at roughly $2 billion to $3 billion, but officials said the $8-million investment, while relatively small, is an important step to finding a solution to the problem.

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Its fantastic, said Patrick Otellini, the citys chief resilience officer, in an interview at the National Earthquake Conference in Long Beach on Thursday. Youre starting to see the city coming together from different departments and realize that the sea wall is a shared asset. This isnt just the ports responsibility.

The sea wall is something that many people arent aware of. Built more than a century ago, its existence is taken for granted, yet is critical because it allowed San Francisco to extend its boundaries over the bay and provides flood protection.

The problem with the sea wall is not really the wall itself but the weak mud underneath it. In an earthquake, the artificial land behind the sea wall is expected to act like a liquid and press up against the sea wall.

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That means the sea wall, while not expected to completely fail, could suddenly lurch toward the bay during an earthquake, damaging the wharves, piers, buildings and roadway above it.

Another problem is that some of the historic wharves  decks that extend the shoreline beyond the seawall  are supported by brittle concrete columns that could collapse in an earthquake. That poses a risk to buildings on top of the wharves and the finger-like piers attached to them.

The $8 million was proposed as part of the mayors budget for the fiscal year that begins July 1, Otellini said.

San Francisco has a history of solving our challenges through bold action, the mayor said in a statement. San Franciscans built the sea wall a century ago, and it is our generations turn to invest again to strengthen this critical piece of infrastructure.

ron.lin@latimes.com

Twitter: @ronlin

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San Miguel Island, the most remote of Californias Channel Islands, is reopening to the public after a two-year closure, the National Park Service has announced.

The island, set to reopen May 17, was closed due to concerns over old weaponry and unexploded ammunition from nearly three decades of Navy tests. San Miguel was an active bombing range during World War II and through the 1970s.

The Navy has been sweeping the island for possible unexploded ordnance since 2014. Surveys of 18 miles of marked trails and high-use areas included searches for surface and underground bombs.

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Although no highly explosive items were found, 125 pounds of munition items  including practice bombs, bomb fragments and fuses  were removed.

San Miguel is the westernmost of the Channel Islands, about 55 miles from Ventura. The 8-mile-long island is home to more than 100,000 seals and sea lions that breed and haul out on the beaches each year.

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The island will not be open in areas without a ranger or other park personnel available to escort visitors. In addition to boat trips, visitors can now fly to the island via Channel Islands Aviation at Camarillo airport.

sarah.parvini@latimes.com

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The roots of Californias new law that raises the smoking age to 21 are in a small town west of Boston.

In 2005, Needham became the first municipality in the United States to ban tobacco sales to anyone under drinking age.

While some public health officials had long advocated such a move, Stanton Glantz, the director of the Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education at UC San Francisco, was skeptical it would have any effect.

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Glantz and others thought that young adults in Needham, a 12-square-mile city, could get cigarettes from older peers or go to neighboring cities for their tobacco.

I started out thinking it was a waste of time, Glantz admitted.

But the results were dramatic. Between 2006 and 2010, teen smoking rates in the 30,000-person city fell from 13% to 7%, according to a study published last year in Tobacco Control.

During the same time, the smoking rate in 16 neighboring communities where 18-year-olds could buy tobacco fell from 15% to 12%, according to the study.

The smoking rate for adults in Needham is 8%, nearly 10 percentage points less than for the rest of the state, according to the Massachusetts Department of Public Health.

I changed my mind, Glantz said. I now think [raising the smoking age] is good public policy.

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Many others, including Gov. Jerry Brown, agree. Since 2005, the state of Hawaii, New York City and dozens of towns in Massachusetts, New Jersey and Ohio have also raised the smoking age.

Micah Berman, a professor of public health and law at Ohio State University, said he doubts so many municipalities would have changed their laws if Needhams smoking rates had not changed so dramatically.

It really was the numbers that came out of Needham that were the spark that led to so much change, he said.

Glantz said he underestimated the effect the age limit would have. Nearly 90% of people who give cigarettes to minors are also underage themselves, according to the Tobacco Control study, so raising the minimum smoking age would make it more difficult for teenagers to find a source for tobacco, Glantz said.

While lots of high-schoolers hang out with students that are 18, they dont hang out with people who are 21, he said.

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Timothy McDonald, Needhams director of public health, said that the law has led to long-term changes in the city.

Not smoking now is becoming more the norm, he said.

The town conducts compliance checks at stores that sell tobacco. So far this year, the town has issued only one citation for illegal sales, down from four in 2015 and seven the year before.

And, perhaps more important, McDonald said, more neighboring towns have also raised their smoking ages.

Thats when you get a real public health effect, when more and more communities change their laws, McDonald said.

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A man suffering from at least one gunshot wound was found dead near a stolen car that crashed Thursday afternoon into a wall at a Tarzana apartment complex, authorities said.

Witnesses told police they heard gunshots and the sound of a collision about 2:15 p.m., then saw a man and a woman running from the small car, according to the Los Angeles Police Department.

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The crash occurred at a condominium complex in the 18600 block of Hatteras Street, where police found the man lying down on the pavement, the LAPD said.

We have not confirmed the victims identity yet, but we believe he lived at the complex, Capt. Paul Vernon, commanding officer of the West Valley Patrol Division, said in a statement. The parking lot has a security gate on both ends, which would tend to restrict persons who dont belong there.

Investigators are unsure if the man was fatally shot in the vehicle or while standing outside, Vernon said.

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Police asked members of the public who know about the killing to contact Det. Robert Dinlocker at (213) 361-7961.

Thursdays killing was the second time this week police were dispatched to a car crash and found a person suffering fatal wounds.

On Tuesday, police in Boyle Heights found that a man who crashed his car into a tree near Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center had been stabbed. The man died at the hospital.

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A cold, wet storm will linger over Los Angeles County through the weekend, bringing the possibility of thunderstorms and flash flooding to mountain communities.

Residents living in the Antelope Valley, Cuyama Valley, Los Angeles, Ventura and Santa Barbara counties could see dangerous lightning, flash flooding, gusty winds and small hail Friday afternoon, the National Weather Service advised.

The low pressure system is pretty much right overhead, NWS meteorologist Scott Sukup said.

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The unseasonably moist and unstable air mass could also bring thunderstorms and periods of heavy rain. Sukup advised residents that if they come across moving water on any roadway, turn around, dont drown.

The cold system from the Gulf of Alaska moved into Northern California on Thursday, creating chaos for some communities.

Forecasters reported large hail near Sacramento and lightning across the Bay Area.

Lightning in Oakley, Calif., caused damage to a home and injured a woman, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. Lightning struck a metal flag pole outside the womans home and caused a ceiling fan to collapse, hitting the woman, the newspaper reported.

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In Yuba City, residents told KTXL-TV that quarter-sized hail pummeled the area for about 45 minutes.

Large #hail fell SW of Yuba City as severe tstorm passed thru earlier. Check out this pic sent to us! #CAwx pic.twitter.com/82V4NJ5XNQ  NWS Sacramento (@NWSSacramento) May 5, 2016

Showers and the possibility of thunderstorms were expected to bring wild weather to Northern California, according to the National Weather Service in Sacramento.

In Los Angeles, Sukup said showers will be hit and miss Friday and isolated to the mountains on Saturday.

Temperatures will hover in the 60s and 70s, which is slightly below average for this time of year, he said.

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By Sunday, rain should move out and warm temperatures should return next week.

For breaking news in California, follow VeronicaRochaLA on Twitter.

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Los Angeles homicide detectives are looking for the grandson of a 78-year-old woman who was found dead of blunt force trauma this week in her Lake View Terrace home.

Officers went to the home of Armida Custodio about 9:15 p.m. Wednesday after her family requested a welfare check, according to the Los Angeles Police Department.

When no one answered the door at Custodios home in the 11300 block of Terra Vista Way, officers entered and found Custodios body, police said.

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Investigators believe Custodio was killed in her home and had been dead for an unknown length of time. They said she suffered blunt force trauma.

In a news release Friday, police said her adult grandson, Joseph Joey Kushner, was the last known person to be with her. Kushner, who lived with Custodio, had not been seen since Tuesday, the release said.

Custodio is the first person to be killed in Lake View Terrace in the past 12 months, according to the Los Angeles Times Homicide Report.

Anyone with details on Custodios death should contact LAPDs Valley Bureau Homicide Det. Dave Peteque at (818) 374-1934.

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The Supreme Court agreed this week to decide a patent dispute between two makers of adult diapers, not to resolve whether one company stole the design of another, but only whether the rival waited too long before suing.

It was apparently just the kind of case that the ideologically divided eight-member high court is prepared to decide for the rest of this year.

Since Justice Antonin Scalia died in February, leaving a seat open, the remaining justices have voted to take only seven new cases for the fall, about half as many as during the same time last year.

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And most of the seven involve technical disputes over patents and copyrights or matters of legal procedure that do not split the justices along conservative and liberal lines.

This week, for example, the justices said they would decide a copyright dispute between two makers of cheerleaders outfits and rule on whether bright stripes may be copyrighted as creatively distinctive.

Two weeks ago, however, the high court turned down a potentially momentous copyright clash for the digital era.

The Authors Guild contended that digital giant Google was blatantly infringing the copyrights of the authors when it scanned 20 million books so they could be searched and read online. The justices issued a one-line order dismissing the case.

Lawyers who file appeals regularly at the high court and others who closely follow its work say it is clear the justices, at least for now, are wary of taking on major cases.

They are taking very few cases, and you have to wonder if they are nervous about taking cases that are likely to sharply divide them. They dont want to see a 4-4 split, said Brianne Gorod, chief counsel for the Constitutional Accountability Center, a progressive legal group.

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It also shows how the vacancy is compromising their ability to do the job, she added.

She referred to the GOP-led Senates refusal to consider President Obamas nomination of Judge Merrick Garland to fill Scalias seat.

Republicans in the Senate, led by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, have vowed not to hold hearings or vote on a new nominee until a new president is elected.

If they stick to that plan, the high court may not have a full contingent until next spring.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and his colleagues say they are proceeding as normally as possible

Most of our decisions are not 5 to 4. That number is pretty small, Roberts said Wednesday at a judicial conference in Arkansas. So the decision process is pretty much as it has been.

From October through April, the court heard arguments in 69 cases and has issued decisions in 34 of them. Only a few were affected by Scalias death on Feb. 13.

In March, the court said it was split 4-4 and could not decide a 1st Amendment challenge to the mandatory fees paid by unionized teachers in California and across the nation.

Between mid-May and the end of June, the court is expected to decide the remaining 35 cases. They include disputes involving college affirmative action, abortion, contraceptives, immigration and public corruption.

The justices will continue sifting through appeal petitions to decide which cases they will hear in the new term that begins in October. Unlike most lower courts, they are largely free to choose their cases and set the agenda for the year ahead.

NEWSLETTER: Get the days top headlines from Times Editor Davan Maharaj >>

In general, the justices say they look for appeals that highlight how the law in a particular area is confused or uncertain.

For example, if a U.S. appeals court in the West rules that a federal tax or bankruptcy provision means something different from what it meant according to a U.S. appeals court in the East, the justices are likely to take up a case to resolve the issue.

But in a significant percentage of cases, the conservative and liberal justices see the issues differently.

In recent years, the courts conservatives, including Scalia, voted to take up cases that challenged federal laws limiting campaign spending and protecting voting rights, as well as ones involving mandatory union fees and affirmative action. On the business front, they repeatedly voted to hear challenges to class-action suits against banks and corporations.

Scalias death has changed the calculus. It takes four votes to hear a new case, and with four justices who lean left and four who lean right, neither side can be confident of having a five-member majority to rule in a major case.

The effect was quickly apparent to corporate lawyers. The court in recent weeks turned away a series of class-action cases that were appealed by huge companies like Wal-Mart and Wells Fargo Bank.

The next test may come on an issue of national importance to both sides in the cultural wars: Whats the scope of the constitutional right to religious liberty?

In a case from Olympia, Wash., two Christian pharmacists, both of them women, have been fighting a state law that would require them to fill prescriptions for certain contraceptives, including morning after and week-after pills, that they believe cause early abortions.

In its defense, Washington state says its law, like those in California, Illinois and six other states, ensures that patients can have prescriptions filled without regard to the personal beliefs of the pharmacist on duty.

A federal judge twice ruled for the pharmacists, who objected on religious grounds, and twice, the 9th Circuit Court in San Francisco disagreed and upheld the states law.

The Alliance Defending Freedom and the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty appealed to the Supreme Court in January, and 14 other groups have since weighed in to urge the justices to hear the case of Stormans vs. Wiesman.

As a nation, we have always protected conscientious objectors from being forced to participate in the taking of human life, said Kristen Waggoner, senior counsel for the Arizona-based ADF. Why should we do so now especially when then these drugs are so widely accessible?

Three times in April, the appeal was due to be considered at the justices private conference. But each time, the court announced that it was being rescheduled. The case now is on this weeks schedule with dozens of others.

On Twitter: DavidGSavage

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Morris Reid did not expect any problems when he went to his local polling station outside Raleigh, N.C., to vote in the 2014 midterm. Yet the long-time voter, a 57-year-old Democrat, found he could not cast his ballot.

A poll worker told the African American jail superintendent he was registered in another county.

Reid was certain there had been a mistake  hed instructed the Department of Motor Vehicles to update his voter registration when he moved three months before  but he drove five miles to another polling center, only to find he was not registered there either. After a third trip, he cast a provisional ballot, which ultimately did not count thanks to a new North Carolina law that eliminates out-of-precinct voting.

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I couldnt exercise my right to vote, he said. And thats the way it was.

As the nation approaches its first presidential election in 50 years without a core protection of the Voting Rights Act the requirement that states with a history of discrimination get federal approval before changing electoral practices  large swaths of the electorate face new voting hurdles.

Over the last four years, 17 states, mostly in the Deep South and Midwest, have passed stringent voting laws. Many demand voters show official photo ID. Others restrict early voting, eliminate same-day registration, remove out-of-precinct voting, limit mail-in ballots, require proof of citizenship, curb voter registration drives and tighten absentee ballot rules.

Millions could have a harder time voting, said Myrna Perez, deputy director of the Brennan Center for Justices Democracy Program at New York University. Our historical trajectory has been to find ways to expand the franchise and to expand access. These laws are a very strict departure from that. The question I always ask is: What are we getting for it? What sort of benefit comes from making voting harder?

Most of the restrictions have been approved in Republican-controlled states where supporters assert they are merely trying to thwart voter fraud. Yet there is scant evidence of such fraud: One expert found 31 cases out of more than 1 billion ballots in the U.S. from 2000 to 2014.

North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory. (Gerry Broome / Associated Press)

Critics say the new laws represent a deliberate attempt to disenfranchise minority voters  one that could have significant repercussions in the upcoming presidential election, potentially giving the GOP an advantage in some closely contested battleground states.

The real tragedy is that it makes it quite a bit harder for some folks and not at all harder for others, said Thomas Carsey, a political science professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It is the disproportionate impact that makes critics call the law unfair and gives it the appearance of being politically motivated.

The challenge is measuring exactly how the laws might thwart voter turnout and impose a disproportionate burden on poor and minority voters. It is not easy to track those who do not show up, or are turned away, at the polls.

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Will we truly know if someone chose not to vote based on voter ID or something else? said Michael Bitzer, a professor of political science at Catawba College, a private liberal arts college in Salisbury, N.C. We dont have a clear understanding of what motivates people to not turn up and vote.

Some studies show that stricter voting laws have depressed voter turnout, particularly among minority groups. A 2014 analysis by the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that tighter voter ID requirements led to a 2% drop in turnout in Kansas and Tennessee from the 2008 to the 2012 general elections. It also found that turnout was more likely to decline among younger, newly registered and African American voters.

Even when voter laws do not technically prevent people from voting, they can create confusion that discourages turnout.

A study by the Baker Institute of Public Policy at Rice University examined the impact of Texas voter ID law on a 2014 congressional election, surveying more than 400 registered Texas voters who did not cast a ballot. It found that while 12% cited lack of approved photo ID as a reason for not voting, only 2% actually lacked a photo ID. Latinos were significantly more likely than whites to cite lack of photo ID as a reason for not voting.

In a swing state that could be on a knife edge, voter restrictions could make a real difference, said Mark Jones, a political science professor at Rice University and principal investigator of the report. It can tilt the balance from one candidate to the other.

Any drop in turnout could have a critical impact in North Carolina, a Republican-dominated state where electoral results have been tightly contested in the last decade. In 2008, Barack Obama won the state by just 14,177 votes. Four years later, Mitt Romney won by 92,004 votes.

After Obamas victory, Republican strategists were quick to spot the Democrats success in mobilizing minority voters: The campaign targeted the most likely straight-ticket voters and made sure they voted early, Jack Hawke, campaign manager for Republican Gov. Pat McCrory in his failed 2008 run and former chairman of the state GOP, wrote in Carolina Journal. The number of black and young voters was unprecedented.

A month after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a key part of the Voting Rights Act in 2013, legislators in the state passed a sweeping new voter law that eliminated same-day registration, cut the early-voting period by seven days, barred voters from casting provisional ballots outside their home precincts, required voters to show government-issued photo identification, and ended preregistration for 16- and 17-year-olds.

Its not that they are racists, said Bob Hall, executive director of Democracy North Carolina, a nonpartisan advocacy group that focuses on increasing voter participation. Its just to win elections they must change the rules that let so many African Americans and young people vote.

North Carolina State University students vote in the states primary in March. (Sara D. Davis / Getty Images)

Last year, just before the law was due to be challenged in federal court, legislators loosened the photo ID requirement to allow residents without government-issued photo IDs to cast a provisional ballot if they filled out a form claiming a reasonable impediment.

Defenders of the law deny the argument that it imposes a greater burden on minority voters. During the federal trial, the states legal team noted that turnout among African Americans and Latinos jumped in the 2014 midterm election, when all provisions of the law, except for voter ID, were in effect.

Critics counter that recent surges in minority votes are due to a complex mix of factors: rapid demographic change, a rise in grass-roots organizing, and  in the 2014 election  a particularly competitive U.S. Senate race. Minority turnout would have been even higher, some say, if legislators had not tightened voting rules.

A report by Democracy North Carolina has estimated that the new voting restrictions, in conjunction with polling station problems, reduced 2014 turnout by at least 30,000 voters. More than 2,300 voters who cast rejected provisional ballots  38% of whom were African American would have had their votes count if same-day registration and out-of-precinct voting had still been in place.

In the March primary, more than 29,000 North Carolina voters were able to use same-day registration and out-of-precinct voting, after an intervention from a U.S. Court of Appeals. Yet 1,320 ballots were rejected because voters did not show poll workers an approved form of photo ID, according to preliminary data from the states Board of Elections.

Last month, a federal judge upheld North Carolinas law, arguing that the state had provided legitimate interests for its voter restrictions and the Justice Department and civil rights groups failed to establish that African Americans or Hispanics have less opportunity than other members of the electorate to participate in the political process.

Opponents of the law moved swiftly to appeal the ruling, yet it is likely to be in effect in November when the nation picks a new president.

Jarvie is a special correspondent based in Atlanta.

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Inmates in white uniforms carrying Bibles filed into a classroom at the maximum security Darrington Unit prison, some with gang tattoos snaking up forearms, others bearded and graying, all eager to contemplate the most vexing theological questions.

Would hell be the place where God is not present at all? professor Benjamin Phillips asked.

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FOR THE RECORD

An earlier version of this post said that Darrington was known as Rocky D, and referred to a theology conference at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Darrington is known as Rockin D, and it was an African American history conference.

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Along with their worn Bibles, the students thumbed through files of research at the ready from the seminary library and computer lab across the hall. They were a year away from finishing the four-year undergraduate program, ready with answers about heresy, annihilationists and sanctification.

But this time, none of the 27 men raised their hands, including the man with Life and Hell tattooed on his knuckles.

The men murmured. Finally, a consensus emerged. The answer was no, God is never absent. Even in hell. The professor nodded.

Right, he said. Because then God would not be omnipresent.

Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary based in Fort Worth started this bachelor of science in biblical studies program six years ago and now has 180 students. On Monday the program will graduate its second class of field ministers, inmates serving lengthy sentences who promise to spend six years working in small teams with fellow inmates at prisons throughout the state.

Texas has the largest prison population in the country  about 147,000 prisoners  and in the vast system, violence and recidivism are persistent problems lawmakers hope seminarians can address at facilities known as the Snake Pit, Gladiator Farm, House of Pain, Burning Hell, and, in Darringtons case, Rockin D.

California, Illinois and more than a dozen other states have similar prison seminaries. This one costs about $250,000 a year, paid for through donations to the nonprofit Heart of Texas Foundation founded by the father of a crime victim.

See the most-read stories this hour >>

The seminary is open to students of all religions: there have been Catholics, Jews and Muslims. Baylor University researchers have been studying the effectiveness of the seminary and the one it was modeled on at the notoriously violent Louisiana State Penitentiary, known as Angola. They plan to release a book about Angola this summer, and while they said it will take longer to gauge the effectiveness of the Texas program, they found participating has reduced seminarians risk of misconduct requiring discipline by 68%.

Aspiring seminarians must have a high school or equivalency diploma, pass a prison educational achievement screening and security clearance, and show good behavior for the past year.

One of this years seniors joined two of last years graduates in publishing Exiles, a book of daily prayers, or devotionals, geared toward those incarcerated long-term thats available on Amazon and Kindle. Another graduate from last year recently recorded a lecture about civil rights activist W.E.B. Du Bois which was presented at a conference at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

Students work in the seminary library at the state prison in Rosharon, Texas. (Molly Hennessy-Fiske / Los Angeles Times )

At Darrington, guards summon seminarians to sit with suicidal inmates. Seminarians also volunteer as tier walkers, counseling hardened gang members housed on the prisons tiers in solitary confinement, some for years for what they call supreme violence.

Were in the trenches, places other people dont want to go, said Mark Staley, 34, of Los Angeles, a Catholic whos serving 60 years for fatally shooting a man outside a San Antonio bar.

People are cutting off their testicles, throwing feces. Theres some serious mental issues. And a lot of these guys are going back to society, said Staley, one of the better-educated students, having studied briefly at Santa Monica Community College.

Youd be surprised the barriers we can break down, being in the same uniform, he said.

NEWSLETTER: Get the days top headlines from Times Editor Davan Maharaj >>

Barriers have a tendency to give way in the seminary. Consider inmates Troup Foster and Calvin Small.

People would see my racist tattoos and say, Look who theyre letting in the Bible College! said Foster, 54, who did time in solitary after falling in with the Aryan Brotherhood while serving a life sentence for capital murder. I had to show through my walk that Im not that person anymore.

Now he was sitting with a fellow seminary graduate serving also as a teaching assistant for this years class: Small, 45, a black Jew wearing a silver Star of David who used to be a Gangster Disciple and is serving a life sentence for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.

The pair mused about why they reinvented themselves. Leaving gangs in prison can mean living in fear of attack. They take the risk, the men said, because they want to help younger inmates  persuade them to leave their gangs and stop reoffending once theyre released.

I was looking for a purpose to my life here. Because most likely Im going to die here.  Troup Foster, convicted murderer

I was looking for a purpose to my life here, Foster said. Because most likely Im going to die here.

Sophomore seminarian Rene Joe DeLaRosa, 35, who is serving two life sentences for murder, doesnt expect prisoners to leave the gangs right away. He didnt.

I was walking around with a Bible in one hand with the understanding with my homeboys that if something goes down, Ill be on the front lines, he said.

DeLaRosa used to recruit for the Texas-based Tango Blast prison gang  he has Tango Blast tattooed on his forearms  and watched new inmates arrive on the prison bus to see which one might be vulnerable to his pitch.

Id say, Yeah, thats a down soldier recalled DeLaRosa, whos nicknamed Fresno after his hometown.

Then he watched an older, respected shot caller, Uncle Fonzie, become Christian and leave the gang, and he followed. Now DeLaRosa and other seminarians are brokering truces and persuading other gang leaders to convert.

Some of the most hardened gang members with tattoos on their face, you talk to them about the Lord and you see them break and then all the guys following them are following you, said Jason Gibson, 40, serving a 99-year sentence for burglarizing his parents home and shooting his stepfather, who survived.

Now Gibson teaches his fellow seminarians Greek.

A Bible verse graces a wall at the state prison in Rosharon, Texas, where more than 100 inmates are enrolled in a biblical studies program. (Molly Hennessy-Fiske / Los Angeles Times )

In class, the inmates talk about lofty notions intertwined with prison life: redemption, salvation, wickedness and was what referred to in one class as the great white throne of judgment.

If you live the good life, Phillips said, youre supposed to receive a reward, right?

Fruit cup! several prisoners shouted, a reward for good behavior behind bars. That prompted a few laughs.

Some have not had a visitor in more than a decade. Others have thrown away court transcripts used for their appeals. One of the men who helps run the program, Brandon Warren, 35, is a parolee who earned his masters from Southwestern Baptist on the outside. Thats not something most seminarians expect to do.

During class, Phillips urged them to embrace their prison family.

Just because you are going to become a preacher, dont set your culture aside, he said. Love your culture, love this community. The city of God is not composed entirely of righteous men.

Follow @mollyhf on Twitter.

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Authorities said Friday that a suspect in three fatal shootings in the Washington, D.C., area has been taken into custody without incident.

Police identified the suspect as 62-year-old Eulalio Tordil, an employee of the Federal Protective Service, which provides security at federal properties. He had been assigned to administrative duties in March after a protective order was issued against him.

The first shooting occurred Thursday at a high school. The second occurred in a mall parking lot Friday morning and the third happened 30 minutes later at another nearby food store.

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Police say Tordil followed 44-year-old Gladys Tordil to High Point High School in Beltsville, Md., where their children are enrolled, on Thursday and shot her. He also shot allegedly and wounded a man who tried to intervene.

Multiple shooting suspect Eulalio Tordil. (Maryland Motor Vehicle Administration / Associated Press )

On Friday morning, officers dispatched to the upscale Westfield Montgomery mall in Bethesda, Md., found three people shot in the parking lot, Montgomery County police Assistant Chief Darryl McSwain said. One person was shot initially and the other two may have been struck coming to that persons aid, he said. There was no known connection between the victims and the shooter, he said.

One man died and another man was in critical condition, Montgomery County police spokesman Capt. Paul Starks said. A woman had injuries that were not life-threatening, he said.

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About half an hour later, police were called to a shooting at a Giant Food store in Aspen Hill, Md., about five miles away. Police later tweeted that a woman died after that shooting.

Bethesda is about 10 miles northwest of downtown Washington.

For a time, student and staff at all Montgomery County schools were sheltering in place, but schools officials later tweeted that all but five schools would dismiss on time.

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UPDATES:

12:10 p.m.: This article has been updated with news that a suspect is in custody.

11:50 a.m. This article has been updated with new information throughout.

11:30 a.m.: This article has been updated with news that a second person was killed Friday.

10:31 a.m.: This article has been updated with a report that one woman was killed.

9:31 a.m.: This article has been updated with reports of a second shooting.

9:13 a.m.: This article has been updated with confirmation that three people were shot.

This article was originally published at 9 a.m.
After staging an epic upset to become the GOPs presumptive presidential nominee, Donald Trump faces an even stiffer challenge in the fall as he confronts not only doubts about his demeanor but a daunting political map.

Pollsters, political analysts and swing-state strategists in both parties agree: Trumps extraordinary unpopularity  particularly with women and minorities  along with divisions in the Republican Party and the countrys changing demographics mean he starts in a deep hole.

To reach the 270 electoral votes it takes to win the White House, the businessman and reality TV star will have to carry a number of states that have not voted Republican in well over a generation, while prevailing in several battlegrounds where, polls show, he starts behind.

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He must also defend states the GOP has reliably counted on for decades.

Its a very steep slope to climb, said William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institute in Washington, who has closely studied the political composition of the 50 states.

Ordinarily, Republicans might have greater cause for optimism.

President Obamas approval has risen throughout the year and now sits above 50% in many polls, which helps Democrats. But economic growth, while steady, has been unspectacular, which doesnt give the party or its nominee much lift. A disappointing jobs report Friday underscored that trend.

Democrats face another significant disadvantage: Their nominee, most likely Hillary Clinton, will be seeking the partys third consecutive term in the White House, something voters rarely grant.

Put those factors together and forecasts might normally suggest a slight Republican edge in November, said Alan Abramowitz, an Emory University political scientist who has written extensively on presidential elections.

But, he added, thats not factoring in Donald Trump.

If any election shows the danger of relying on precedent, it is this one. Few took Trump seriously when he announced he would compete for the Republican nomination against several of the partys most highly regarded prospects, including Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida and the states former governor Jeb Bush.

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Sizable shifts in the electoral map, however, are rare. All but 10 states have voted for the same party in every presidential race since 2000. Based on recent performance, Democrats start out the fall contest with a considerable advantage.

The Democrats have won 18 states and the District of Columbia in each of the last six presidential elections. Anchored by California and Trumps native New York, those states offer 242 electoral votes. Democrats lead in those states plus others, bringing their total to 253.

There are 13 states that have gone Republican in every presidential race since 1992, adding up to 102 electoral votes. Several other states lean strongly toward the GOP, raising the total to 191.

To reach the White House, Trump will have to greatly expand the competitive map. Demographic shifts and the Manhattan moguls dismal standing with broad swaths of the electorate will make that difficult.

Trump says he can generate a significantly higher turnout of white blue-collar voters, boosting him in Democratic-leaning industrial states, but two can play that game, said Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster who worked for Rubios campaign.

Given his incredibly derisive comments about Mexicans and other immigrants, its reasonable to think that there would be an enormous turnout of Hispanics to stop Donald Trump, Ayres said.

If so, Nevada and Colorado  which were expected to be major battlegrounds  could move beyond Trumps reach. So would Florida, a perennial toss-up.

The nations most populous swing state has moved slowly but steadily toward Democrats since the 2000 election ended in a chaotic tie. The 50-50 electorate that year reflected a Florida thats gone now, said David Johnson, the former executive director of the state GOP.

The percentage of whites in the state has declined steadily and huge immigration from economically strapped Puerto Rico has changed Floridas Latino population, once primarily Cuban, to a more Democratic-leaning electorate.

In 2012, Johnson noted, Republican Mitt Romney carried about 40% of the states Latino voters and still lost to President Obama by a percentage point. This time around, Johnson said, Trump would do well to win a quarter of Floridas Latinos.

Thats not a valid mix to win, he said. You have to have a better message than The Hispanics love me, because the numbers show that they dont.

The most likely route to a Trump victory runs through the nations historical industrial belt, from Pennsylvania on to Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin. He would probably need to win each of those states to prevail; all start in the Democratic column, save Ohio, which is another perennial battleground.

By emphasizing trade issues in a region that has suffered a steep decline in manufacturing jobs, Trump hopes to spur an enormous turnout of white working-class voters, attracting many who might have sat out previous elections, or voted Democratic.

A good test will be Pennsylvania, where Trump won last months primary in a 35-point landslide over Texas Sen. Ted Cruz.

Can Trump win? If the election were held today, the answer is clearly no, said G. Terry Madonna, a pollster and professor of public affairs at Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Pa. Currently, whatever gains Trump makes among white voters in former steel-mill towns are more than offset by losses among moderates in the Philadelphia suburbs, Madonna said.

But I dont think anyone can say definitively what will happen in the fall, he added.

Apart from his struggle in swing states and Democratic strongholds, Trump may have to fight just to hang on in states that Republicans usually take for granted.

Arizona and Georgia both have large and growing minority populations that could make them competitive in November. Missouri, with one foot in the South and the other in the Midwest, is another state that Obama lost twice that Clinton might be able to put into play.

For Trump to win the White House, many in the GOP are counting on a different candidate than the bombastic, insult-hurling personality who bulled his way to the party nomination.

Dick Wadhams, a Republican strategist and former party chairman in Colorado, said the state can be competitive if Trump changes his tone and offers more substance.

Hes already said those things that are on the public record, Wadhams said, referring to comments that have offended women and minorities, among others. I think he can mitigate that damage by having a forward-looking, positive agenda.

Under the best of scenarios  barring a drastic change in fortunes  Trump may not win much more than the bare minimum of states needed to claim the White House. Even that will be a challenge.

Everything, said Frey, of the Brookings Institute, has to work just right.

Barabak reported from San Francisco and Lauter from Washington.

mark.barabak@latimes.com

david.lauter@latimes.com

Twitter: @markzbarabak, @DavidLauter

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Good morning. It is Friday, May 6. Heres what is happening in the Golden State:

TOP STORIES

OxyContin investigation

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A Los Angeles Times investigation finds the hugely popular painkiller OxyContin wears off hours early in many patients despite drugmaker Purdue Pharmas claim that one dose lasts for 12 hours. Times reporters reviewed internal Purdue documents that came from court cases and government investigations, which shed light on how OxyContin became one of the most abused pharmaceuticals in U.S. history. You want a description of hell. I can give it to you, said one patient, who spent a year and a half on the drug and contemplated suicide before checking herself into rehab. Los Angeles Times

Guilty verdict

A Los Angeles jury found Lonnie Franklin Jr., a.k.a. the Grim Sleeper, guilty Thursday of killing nine women and one girl between 1985 and 2007. He was also found guilty of one count of attempted murder. The verdicts make Franklin one of Californias most prolific serial killers. His victims were young, African American women; some were caught up in drugs and prostitution. Their killings failed to elicit much attention, and it wasnt until decades later that Los Angeles police acknowledged a serial killer may have been preying on women in South L.A. Los Angeles Times

DROUGHT AND CLIMATE

Without water: East Porterville became an international symbol of Californias drought after its wells failed and people were forced to truck in water. But even with nine government and nonprofit agencies descending on the community to help, progress has been painstakingly slow. These families need so much more help than a tank, said Roman Hernandez, a pastor who has watched people line up in the church parking lot for bottled water and mobile showers. Los Angeles Times

L.A. AT LARGE

Not over yet: The gas leak at Aliso Canyon was capped in February, but that doesnt mean the situation is over for thousands of families in Porter Ranch who dont want to return until theyre assured its safe. Ive missed out on Thanksgiving because I was sick. We barely got a tree up in the hotel room for Christmas just so our kids had some sense of normalcy, said one mother, who is living in a Marriott Hotel with her husband and five children. Pacific Standard Magazine

Clean slate: Vandalism and graffiti have forced the California Department of Parks and Recreation to close Corral Canyon Cave in Malibu Creek State Park. Rangers say graffiti there was manageable until a rumor went around social media that Jim Morrison wrote his songs in the cave. While its closed, the cave will be blasted with walnut shells to clean away the paint. Los Angeles Times

Poet Laureate of L.A.: A Luis J. Rodriguez poem and video for Los Angeles. Los Angeles Times

POLITICS AND GOVERNMENT

Apples taxes: Cupertinos mayor wants to see Apple pay more taxes. Residents there complain that theyre struggling with old infrastructure while the tax rate on multibillion-dollar tech firms is too low. Theyre making profit, and they should share the responsibility for our city, but they wont, said Mayor Barry Chang. The Guardian

Womans card: Hillary Clinton spoke to the Los Angeles Times editorial board Wednesday on a wide range of topics. On the subject of Donald Trump and his accusation that shes playing the womans card, Clinton said it has just lit a fire under so many women across the country. And I think its because they see in his attacks on me or on Megyn Kelly or Carly Fiorina or whoever else hes attacking at the moment, really a much broader attack on them. Los Angeles Times

Passing notes: The Orange County Board of Education may investigate one of its own members over emails sent regarding an employees sexual orientation. Trustee Robert Hammond is also accused of referring to gay people as Sodomites. A fellow trustee says he wants to know whether the emails have opened the school district to potential litigation. Los Angeles Times

Landmark tree: A San Francisco pine tree now has landmark status. The Board of Supervisors voted to protect the tree, which measures 85 to 100 feet tall, after neighbors worked for a year to stop a property owner from cutting it down. Its not unusual to see a Norfolk pine hybrid in California, but it is a rare find in San Francisco. Associated Press

Price-adjusted wages: Lawyers in San Jose, Los Angeles and San Francisco make significantly more than attorneys in smaller cities, but those small-town lawyers have the same purchasing power, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. If somebody making $50,000 in a place like Portland, Oregon, moves to San Jose and gets a $10,000 raise, shell actually feel poorer. No wonder so many Americans are moving to the cheap and roomy suburbs of the south and southwest. The Atlantic

CRIME AND COURTS

Money and companionship: Media mogul Sumner Redstones former girlfriends Manuela Herzer and Sydney Holland received gifts worth $150 million over five years from the 92-year-old billionaire, according to new court documents filed on the eve of a trial over Redstones mental competency. Herzer sued after she was removed as Redstones primary caregiver last October. Los Angeles Times

Police protests: Protesters brought San Franciscos Police Commission meeting to a standstill Thursday with their calls for Chief Greg Suhrs resignation. The movement began in December with the shooting of Mario Woods and has gained more attention since five activists began a hunger strike April 21. Suhr has said he has no plans to resign. SF Gate

CALIFORNIA CULTURE

Memorial planned: A group in San Bernardino County is planning to build a memorial to the victims of the Dec. 2 terror attack. Details on where it will be and what form it will take have not been determined yet. Los Angeles Times

Just imagine it: Continuing the trend of multimillion-dollar spec homes, a planned Corona del Mar house hit the market at $36.5 million. Its still in the conceptual phase, but the home is expected to have retractable glass walls and sweeping views. Orange County Register

Singing voices: The Trans Chorus of Los Angeles is helping transgender men and women embrace their voices. For me as a trans woman even to open my mouth in public is courageous. Singing takes even more courage, said Lindsey Deaton, founder and artistic director of the chorus. LA Weekly

Camping trip: Here are 50 beautiful places to camp in Northern California. San Francisco Chronicle

Foodie scene: There are certain food truths everyone in San Francisco knows to be true. Buzzfeed

CALIFORNIA ALMANAC

San Diego will see a thunderstorm and a high of 68 degrees. Riverside will have clouds and rain with a high of 67. Thunderstorms and a high of 68 are expected in Los Angeles. Sacramento will have showers, as highs reach 67. San Francisco will likely see a thunderstorm, as temperatures reach 61 degrees.

AND FINALLY

Todays California Memory comes from Rick Gomez:

When I was 11, my mother and I moved from Chicago to San Francisco in 1964. As we were driving to our relatives house in Tiburon, just north of the city, it was the first time I saw the Golden Gate Bridge and the Bay leading out to the Pacific Ocean. The bridges golden color and monumental structure spanning from San Francisco to Marin was an image I can still see when I close my eyes. This was the moment that I realized how beautiful this place was and how lucky I was to be living in California.

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.
Im Davan Maharaj, editor-in-chief of the Los Angeles Times. Here are some story lines I dont want you to miss today.

TOP STORIES

You Want a Description of Hell? OxyContins 12-Hour Problem

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A lot has been written over the last 20 years about OxyContin and its role in the nations prescription drug epidemic. But a Times investigation -- by reporters Harriet Ryan, Lisa Girion and Scott Glover -- uncovered something new about why so many people have become addicted. It involves the 12-hour dosing that Purdue Pharma pushed. This is the untold story of Americas bestselling painkiller.

More About OxyContin

-- Ive gotta get more medicine: Watch the video that explains the OxyContin issue.

-- His next pill: An OxyContin users journey from pain relief to obsession and addiction.

-- Have you or a loved one had an experience with OxyContin? Please tell us about it.

Three Decades Later, a Guilty Grim Sleeper Verdict

The nine women and one 15-year-old girl were found slain from 1985 to 2007 in South L.A., including a gap of 13 years that led to the name Grim Sleeper. Police were accused of indifference in hunting the killer down. Now, a jury has found Lonnie David Franklin Jr., a former L.A. police garage attendant and city garbage collector, guilty of their murders. Next: Jurors will hear evidence to help decide whether he gets life in prison or the death penalty. Here are the stories of the Grim Sleepers victims.

The FDA Puts a Cap on Vape Pens

Just a day after California moved to prohibit e-cigarettes in public places where smoking is already banned, the FDA announced its plans to regulate vaping the same as traditional cigarettes. Those in the fast-growing vaping industry complain that the million-dollar approval process will drive smaller players out of business.

In East Porterville, Guillermina Andrade must pour water into a toilet for it to flush. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times )

As Water Agencies Bicker, a Town Stays Dry

A victim of the drought, East Porterville in Central California has drawn international attention for its lack of running water. Even after the state spent money last year for a new well, some residents still must use portable showers in a parking lot because of quarreling among government agencies. So now the state is planning to build its own water system, but its not as simple as just digging ditches.

Trouble in the House of Redstone

Its a case most experts thought would settle, given its undercurrents of family discord, sex and hundreds of millions of dollars. But barring a last-minute deal, a trial to determine whether Sumner Redstone is mentally competent begins today in L.A. Court documents state two former girlfriends received $150 million from him over five years. Heres how it came to this point.

Will Something Make These Kids Smile?

The Childrens Palace in North Korea is billed by the government as a temple to youth. Times reporter Julie Makinen was escorted there for a recent visit and a performance in the venues auditorium. Before the show, the audience of adolescents sat silently, staring straight ahead. Would something make them giggle?

CALIFORNIA

-- San Bernardino County plans to create a memorial to the terrorist attack victims.

-- The state Supreme Court seems likely to clear the way for a ballot measure allowing the early release of some prison inmates.

-- A judge rules that an L.A. County board made errors in its decision to reinstate a social worker involved in a child torture case.

-- Urth Caffes owner will fight allegations by a group of Muslim women that they were discriminated against in Laguna Beach.

NATION-WORLD

-- House Speaker Paul D. Ryan and Donald Trump state theyre not ready to support each other.

-- A source says a top aide to Hillary Clinton has been questioned by the FBI in its email server investigation.

-- A Muslim candidate is the favorite in Londons mayoral race despite being called radical by rival.

-- Watch: Conductor Valery Gergiev confronts terrorism with Brahms in a Palmyra temple once overrun by Islamic State.

-- Video: American women in hijabs talk of strength and struggle.

HOLLYWOOD AND THE ARTS

-- Enough with the ageist cracks about Old-chella. These Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees deserve better than that.

-- How a long-lost Rembrandt painting found its way to the Getty Museum.

-- The Girlfriend Experiences Amy Seimetz on Hollywoods oversimplification of the female psyche.

-- Movie review: B-movie fantasy meets hard-scrabble reality in Jean-Luc Godards exquisite Band of Outsiders.

-- Video: Jay Duplass talks about Togetherness, the HBO series he co-created, and his role on the Amazon series Transparent.

BUSINESS

-- Why so few workers take paid family leave.

-- Hospitals are wrestling with how to deal with Californias assisted suicide law, which goes into effect June 9.

SPORTS

-- The Rams rookie orientation and mini-camp begins today, and heres what the coaches are looking for.

-- Pepperdine pitcher A.J. Pucketts scoreless streak ends at 45 2/3 innings.

OPINION

-- Hillary Clinton speaks to the L.A. Times editorial board about war, women and her ability to navigate partisan obstructionism.

-- Rich Angelenos are giving less to charity, and the consequences are dire.

WHAT OUR EDITORS ARE READING

-- A new problem that has no name: the bleak finances of the U.S. middle class. (The Atlantic)

-- Jon Snow is what? Some thoughts on spoiler etiquette. (Vulture)

-- Beware. Heres what can happen when your video goes viral. (Dance/USA)

ONLY IN L.A.

People are strange, as the Doors Jim Morrison sang. An apparently false rumor on social media that Morrison once wrote lyrics in a cave at Malibu Creek State Park has made it a magnet for vandalism, graffiti and other nefarious activity. The cave is now closed, while officials prepare to blast its walls with walnut shells to remove a lot of paint. Take a virtual tour of the cave here.

Please send comments and ideas to Davan Maharaj.
Long-awaited federal rules to keep electronic cigarettes out of the hands of children finally arrived Thursday, and not a moment too soon. Use of the nicotine delivery devices has been growing rapidly among middle- and high-school-aged teens in the last few years.

The rules, in the works since 2010, put the regulation of all tobacco products  including novel and future ones  under the authority of the Food and Drug Administration for the first time. This is a profoundly important step in reining in e-cigarettes, a popular product with unknown long-term health effects that has been virtually unsupervised by government until now.

Now, manufacturers will be required to disclose the ingredients in the liquid nicotine used in vaping and allow government review of how the devices are made before they can be sold to adults in the United States.

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Currently, anything could be lurking inside that liquid. And that isnt the only reason why children shouldnt be using electronic cigarettes. Even without the carcinogenic tar and smoke of regular cigarettes, e-cigarettes still contain nicotine, an addictive substance linked to heart disease. Adults should be wary as well. Dangerous chemicals have been found in the electronic cigarette juice, such as a Diacetyl, a flavoring associated with lung illness.

The devices themselves also can pose a threat to consumers, many of whom have been injured and disfigured in a spate of explosions. The battery-operated devices heat liquid nicotine into a mist that is inhaled. But neither the liquid nor the devices, most of which are made in China, must comply with any sort of safety standards.

In a separate development, California lawmakers passed new rules this week further limiting tobacco use in the state. But they went too far in raising the legal age for cigarettes and electronic cigarettes from 18 to 21. While its reasonable to keep nicotine products out of the hands of minors, limiting their use by legal adults is an overreach. Gov. Jerry Brown fortunately vetoed one of the most onerous parts of the package that would have allowed counties to set their own tobacco taxes. That might have interfered with a $2-per-pack state excise tax likely to be proposed on the November ballot.

The federal rules announced Thursday include other controls on tobacco products  including e-cigarettes  such as not allowing them to be sold in vending machines and requiring warning labels. The government chose not to prohibit the use of flavors in liquid nicotine such as Peanut Butter Cup and Candy Crash that seem clearly aimed at appealing to young users, but the age limits should get at that.

Its possible that research may conclude one day that vaping is significantly safer than smoking traditional cigarettes. Thats an argument, perhaps, for adult use, but the fear with children is that theyll start with vaping first and move on to smoking. These laws are designed to discourage that.

Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion and Facebook.
Michael D. Antonovich was elected to the five-member Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors in 1980 and has been there ever since. Most of his board colleagues also served for multiple decades until two years ago, when a term-limits measure that was adopted in 2002 finally kicked in and ended the tenure of two of them. Term limits will claim two more this fall, including Antonovich, whose sprawling 5th District includes about 2 million people divided among the northern part of the San Fernando Valley; the medium-size cities of Pasadena, Glendale and Santa Clarita; a host of smaller foothill and San Gabriel Valley communities; sparsely populated mountain and desert regions; and the Antelope Valley cities of Lancaster and Palmdale.

Eight candidates are vying to succeed Antonovich in the June 7 election and a possible Nov. 8 runoff, but two stand out from the pack  Glendale Mayor Ara Najarian and Antonovichs top deputy, Kathryn Barger. Its a close call between two very different candidates. The Times recommends a vote for Najarian.

How much has this district changed since Antonovich was first elected? So much so that its hard to take in. Santa Clarita, now the countys fourth-largest city, did not yet exist. Glendale was still the headquarters of the American Nazi Party. Non-whites in the Antelope Valley were a rarity. A San Fernando Valley-led anti-busing campaign slowed school desegregation statewide. Pasadena, in image at least, was the home of blue-haired old ladies and blue-blooded country clubbers. The areas politics ran from establishment Republican to the beyond-conservative fringe.

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Antonovich was then and remains today the Board of Supervisors most conservative member, even as the district has shed much of its rightward lean  although in some ways he bucked the liberals image of a conservative; for example, he long had the countys most racially diverse staff and put women in positions of responsibility early on.

The district has undergone enormous demographic and political change and could conceivably now, for the first time in 36 years, with a good candidate and a skillfully run campaign, elect a Democrat to the board. So its curious that only one Democrat  Darrell Park  entered the race. Most of the seven Republicans seem to recognize their districts changing electorate and are downplaying their conservative message  except when it comes to the fiscal realm.

He has demonstrated creative thinking and a talent for problem-solving.

Najarian is an appealing representative of the new 5th District. He is a decidedly moderate Republican. In Glendale, he helped put the brakes on rampant over-development while instilling a new environmentally oriented ethic. His city recycles water at a rate that should make other regions take notice. He has transportation knowledge and know-how, gained in part as a board member of both Metro and Metrolink (as a county supervisor he would continue to be on the Metro board). His position has compelled him to grapple with housing costs, homelessness and job development  all of which must be top priorities for the Board of Supervisors. He has demonstrated creative thinking and a talent for problem-solving.

Of course, being mayor of Glendale is not the same as being mayor of Los Angeles. The job rotates among City Council members, who serve part-time and make their living doing other things. Najarian is an attorney.

Critics say he can be a bit of a hothead, which on the Board of Supervisors is no small matter. Personality quirks may make for amusing tales in large legislative bodies like Congress or the state Assembly  but they can completely shut down business on the too-small, oddly structured, sort-of executive, kind-of legislative, quasi-judicial, five-headed beast that is the board. Following the countys success in dealing with the fiscal near-collapse of the 1990s, for example, the boards progress on crucial issues was hampered less by political differences than by the members personal rivalries, stubbornness, backbiting and credit-grabbing.

The irrationality of the boards structure, with a scant five members representing 10 million people, becomes especially apparent at election time. If the current board is making some good progress  and it is  should a voter focus on how well any new member might blend in, the same way someone making a party guest list might need to think about who hates whom, and who is dating each others exes? Voters, who get to pick only their own board representative, cannot be expected to do that, but should select the person they believe best suited to the job, regardless of who else now serves or may serve on that body. The Times recommends Najarian as that person.

Barger is the one who could and would most likely blend in seamlessly, having already been working on county issues for 15 years as Antonovichs chief deputy. She has endorsements from county employee unions and, in addition to Antonovich, a current supervisor (Sheila Kuehl).

Bargers difficulty is the same one that often faces top staffers who try to step up to replace their bosses: She must articulate either why voters should stay with the status quo, or how she will be different and better than the person whose staff she led for so many years. She makes a valiant, but so far insufficient, effort to make that case.

There are better-known and better-funded candidates running as well. Los Angeles City Councilman Mitchell Englander touts his role after the natural gas leak in Aliso Canyon, but his work on the council has been unexceptional. Prosecutor Elan Carr is a one-note candidate, unable to break away from his law-and-order message. State Sen. Bob Huff presents his case much like a termed-out lawmaker in search of his next job, which he is. Voters are likely to see one or two of them in a November runoff  but that would be a shame. Najarian and Barger are the two candidates best-suited to the job, and Najarian is the better of the two.

Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion and Facebook
During the Great Recession, tens of thousands of residents in Los Angeles County fell into poverty, and thousands more became homeless and went hungry. Simultaneously, the public sector was forced to reduce funding for many human services. Its now apparent that philanthropic giving also declined, imperiling our communitys most vulnerable citizens and posing an ominous challenge to the countys social fabric.

UCLAs Quality of Life Index, released in April, found that a significant number of county residents are financially stressed and experiencing intense anxiety over their economic viability. For example, 31% of all residents are worried about losing their homes and becoming homeless. More than half with annual household incomes of less than $30,000, and even 24% earning between $90,000 and $120,000, fear the same fate. Similarly, 29% of all residents are concerned about going hungry because they cant afford the cost of food. Half of households earning less than $30,000, and one quarter earning between $60,000 and $90,000, also worry about food security.

There are profound differences among demographic groups when it comes to economic distress. Latinos are four times more likely to fear hunger, and three times more likely to fear homelessness, than are white residents. Younger residents, including families with children, also report especially high levels of insecurity, which can cause collateral damage such as spousal and child abuse, mental health crises and substance addiction. The societal implications of each of these afflictions are plain for all to see.

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Gaps in the social safety net are often eased by nonprofit organizations, which are the primary providers in Los Angeles County of early childhood education, programs for at-risk and foster youth, homeless and domestic abuse shelters, housing assistance, job training, and alcohol- and substance-abuse treatment. The recession caused cuts in government funding of these nonprofits while demand for services grew.

A UCLA philanthropy study, which will be released jointly with the California Community Foundation in June, reveals that the other prime source of support for nonprofits, individual donations, also fell during the recession  and remains below pre-recession levels today. Households of all income levels that regularly give to charitable causes are contributing about $1 billion a year less than they did prior to 2007, a drop of 15% in annual giving.

Hunger, homelessness and the fear of both are greater than at any time since the Great Depression. At the same time, accumulated wealth is higher than at any time in our history.

Particularly troubling is the finding that wealthy households, who by all accounts have more than fully recovered from the recession, are donating a smaller percentage of their income to charitable causes, even though they may be donating marginally more in actual dollars. This retrenchment is noteworthy in that about half of all individual giving to Los Angeles nonprofits comes from high-net-worth households.

Simply put, private giving is not keeping pace with donors philanthropic capacity or with need, and that is exacerbating the widening economic fault lines in our community. As a result, many charitable organizations arent in much better financial shape than the people they serve. A weaker safety net will further pressure those on the economic margins, sinking larger numbers of residents deeper into poverty.

Why is this happening? Factors such as segregated communities and Los Angeles sheer size and sprawl may be insulating many of our citizens from the deteriorating human conditions that plague our region. Although philanthropy doesnt have the capacity to fund all of societys needs, it is the first responder to our most compelling social challenges.

Charitable institutions can act quickly, strategically and locally, and they can motivate government to act as well, serving as incubators for new and effective ideas. For example, nonprofits developed the housing first system for tackling homelessness.

Economic inequality in America is the principal domestic issue of our time. However, this is more than an economic issue, it is a moral one. The philanthropic sector  and that means all of us with a little money to spare  plays a pivotal role in helping to lift up the economically and socially marginalized among us. It is our generosity that defines the extent of our commitment to a just and equitable society.

Hunger, homelessness and the fear of both are greater than at any time since the Great Depression. At the same time, accumulated wealth is higher than at any time in our history. This is a haunting paradox, and if we fail to resolve it we will reap the inevitable bitter harvest that we have sown.

Zev Yaroslavsky is director of the Los Angeles Initiative at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs and Department of History. Bill Parent is lecturer in public policy at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs.

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A ball of fire that erupted on the subway tracks here Thursday injured no one but set off a chain of rush-hour delays that have become maddeningly common. Two months ago, the entire subway system shut down, with little warning because of urgent concerns for safety. Last year, a train got stuck in a smoke-filled tunnel, trapping passengers and killing one.

The meltdown in the nations second-busiest subway system, once a model of utopian design and national aspiration, is sending a direct warning to federal lawmakers that the countrys aging mass transit systems need billions of dollars in repairs, that, if unmet, pose a genuine safety threat to the public.

It is just one more example of the under-investments that have been made, President Obama said Friday, warning of more failures in the nations infrastructure and putting a price tag of $1 trillion to $2 trillion on fixing the problem. The D.C. Metro historically has been a great strength of this region. But over time, we under-invested in maintenance and repair.

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Advocates for fixing the crumbling subways see hope amid the disastrous commutes. The presidential front-runners from both parties, who share close ties to New York, home of the busiest subway in the U.S., have found rare agreement that repairs are desperately needed, and that mass transit is crucial to the economy.

Groups from the left and right, led by the AFL-CIO and the Chamber of Commerce, are gathering this month in Washington to press Congress for infrastructure spending at all levels, including roads, bridges and water pipes that have gained urgent attention after dangerous levels of lead leached into the drinking water in Flint, Mich. While few expect to get an infusion of cash this year, they are hoping to lay the groundwork for next year, when a new president often gets a brief window of cooperation with Congress to pass spending bills.

Weve got one good shot, said Ed Rendell, former governor of Pennsylvania. Rendell, a Democrat, co-chairs a bipartisan infrastructure group funded by former New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and also consults for industry clients.

The general manager of Washingtons Metro, Paul J. Wiedefeld, announced a slew of delays, station closures, and service cutbacks Friday that will disrupt commutes around the region for a year. He cited safety and reliability as the goal, but warned that the latest repairs would not alleviate the need for more work.

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Weve been shoveling out sand this side, but sands been coming in the other side just as quick, Wiedefeld said.

While Washingtons problems have been unusually severe, commuters in other cities have also faced tough times. The Chicago Transit Authority closed a branch of its subway three years ago for five months to replace 10 miles of track. Storms last winter paralyzed Bostons web of subways, trolleys, and commuter trains, bringing the city to a near standstill for days at a time and zapping confidence in its ultimately doomed bid to host the Olympics. The same week this year that Washingtons Metro closed for business, frustrated Bay Area riders awaiting late trains were treated to a blunt Twitter rant  from BARTs official account  telling them to get used to it.

BART was built to transport far fewer people, and much of our system has reached the end of its useful life, the agency wrote in one message. This is our reality.

The crises facing American transit systems are complex. Many involve age, neglect, and mismanagement. One thing they share: a staggering repair bill.

Every transportation system in America is functionally bankrupt, said Doug Foy, who oversaw transportation for former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and is now a consultant. They have nowhere near the money to maintain what theyve got, never mind building something larger.

The Federal Transit Administration estimated the national repair backlog at $86 billion in a 2013 report. Other studies peg the figure higher, particularly for larger urban systems that transport the most passengers, but also have the oldest equipment.

The problem gets scant attention from Congress, which has increased transit spending incrementally but has been unwilling to provide the levels that many transit managers say is needed.

Hillary Clinton, the likely Democratic nominee, who represented New York in the Senate, discussed Bostons transit woes at length when she announced a $275-million infrastructure plan during a speech in November at historic Faneuil Hall.

Public transit is absolutely vital to connecting people, especially students and low-income people and people of color, she said, naming her proposal the first plank in a broader jobs program.

Donald Trump, the presumed Republican nominee, has been vague on most of his policy proposals. Yet the New York native has shown a clear interest in upgrading transportation at all levels, framing the poor state of the nations airports and subways as a competitive disadvantage with China.

We have to spend money on mass transit, Trump told the Guardian last year. We have to fix our airports, fix our roads also, in addition to mass transit, but we have to spend a lot of money.

Obama, who blamed the problems on congressional Republicans, urged the public on Friday to put more pressure on lawmakers and presidential candidates to explain how they will pay for any fixes.

Were seeing these kinds of infrastructure problems spring up in communities all across the country, and it doesnt distinguish by race or by region, he said. Everybody needs roads. Everybody needs airports. So, hopefully, this will prompt a conversation.

Many states have lost hope that the federal government, which spends about $12 billion a year on all public transportation programs combined, will upgrade its commitment to fixing roads, bridges, and subways. The federal gas tax, which provides the bulk of that spending, has not been increased in two decades and is seen as outdated as cars become more fuel efficient. Eighteen states have raised their own gas taxes over the last two years to compensate.

Americas pretty much a Third World country when it comes to our infrastructure, said Ray LaHood, a Republican who served as Obamas Transportation secretary and who co-chairs the infrastructure group with Rendell. A lot of these cities just dont have the money, and they cant raise the fares.

The problem is not limited to the oldest systems, however. BART in San Francisco and Washingtons Metro both opened in the 1970s. Once seen as modern, the new train-car smell has warn off. Many of the faulty power cables used by BART, for example, have not been replaced since the trains began running in 1972, and are now a leading cause of delays. The majority of the systems train cars are also original models.

Some of the technology is just obsolete, so the maintenance crews have to be creative about that, said Jim Allison, a spokesman for the agency. Were carrying more people than ever. Its a double-headed hydra.

The agency is trying to build support for a $3.5-billion bond issue it hopes to place on the November ballot.

Washington, meanwhile, is trying to convince riders that the trains are still safe to ride. U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx replaced three members of Metros board last week, part of a broader assertion of federal authority over the system, which has been plagued by safety problems.

You can defer maintenance on a rail system and it doesnt show up for a long time, said David L. Gunn, a retired transit veteran who ran Washingtons subways in the early 1990s and analyzed its problems six years ago.

The key, transit veterans say, is getting ahead of the problems before they become an emergency. The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority is in the midst of a $1.2-billion overhaul of its oldest line, the Blue Line, which is more than a quarter of a century old. LA Metro is also in the process of replacing Red and Purple Line cars.

Gunn cautions against viewing rail problems solely in terms of money. He suggested a combination of factors in Washington, including inept leadership and seemingly benign actions, such as running the trains longer at night, which reduce the time that workers have to conduct maintenance on the tracks.

Money is an issue, but it has become the mantra, the crutch, he said. The board screwed it up. They were making really bad decisions.

The problems in Washington are really  theyre very serious.

Twitter: @noahbierman

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House Speaker Paul D. Ryan thrust open Thursday the discomfort that many Republicans are feeling about Donald Trump as their presumed presidential nominee, withholding his support and deepening the fracture between the outsider candidate and the party he hopes to lead.

Ryan, the highest-ranking elected Republican, boldly proclaimed that he was not ready to back Trump, adding a dramatic moment to the turbulent campaign season, but he also offered a path forward if Trump hopes to rally a reluctant GOP around his candidacy.

Conservatives want to know: Does he share our values and our principles on limited government, the proper role of the executive, adherence to the Constitution? Ryan said from his home state of Wisconsin during an interview on CNN. There are a lot of questions that conservatives, I think, are going to want answers to, myself included.

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Asked directly whether he could support Trump as the nominee, Ryan said: Im just not ready to do that at this point. Im not there right now.

Injecting himself into the presidential campaign will not come without political costs to Ryan, who has tried to remain above the fray, and the fallout began almost immediately as Trump shot back a dismissive response.

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The businessman, it turns out, is not a fan of Ryans brand of Republican, either.

I am not ready to support Speaker Ryans agenda, Trump said in a statement. Perhaps in the future we can work together and come to an agreement about what is best for the American people.

The two are arranging to meet next week, Republican officials said, when Congress returns to Capitol Hill after a recess. But a photo-op summit is not the kind of moment that could easily resolve the stark political and policy differences that threaten to tear apart the GOP.

Not only does Trump stray from Republican Party orthodoxy on some of the most consequential issues  foreign policy, trade, entitlement spending  his negative approval ratings among wide swaths of the GOP electorate threaten the partys bid for the White House.

By withholding support, Ryan is pushing Trump to come up with a way to unify the fractured party by presenting a credible strategy to broaden his appeal. Otherwise, the speaker warned, the partys hopes for winning the presidency, and preserving its majority in Congress, are at risk.

Hes reflecting a large part of the party thats thinking through how to define what Trump needs to accomplish, Republican pollster David Winston said, adding that Trumps huge negatives among voters are like nothing the party has ever seen.

Theres an expectation he has to have a plan to address that. Lets see it.

Republican leaders have struggled to explain where they stand on Trumps rise, with many trying to wiggle around the issue while the primary campaign dragged on.

The Republican leader of the Senate, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, issued the most cautious of statements this week after it became clear that Trump would become the partys nominee.

Ryan has repeatedly rejected attempts to be dragged into the conversation, particularly when it looked like he would be required as speaker to oversee a contested convention this summer in Cleveland.

But once it became clear that the billionaire was the partys nominee-in-waiting after rival Ted Cruz ended his candidacy Tuesday, the speaker took a day to mull over his options, then dispatched with the pleasantries and booked his time on live TV.

Ryan drew on Republican history, as the party of Abraham Lincoln and Ronald Reagan, in warning Trump to broaden his appeal beyond the cache of voters who favor his most controversial proposals, a nod to the speakers rejection of Trumps proposed ban on Muslim immigrants.

We hope that our nominee aspires to be Lincoln- and Reagan-esque, Ryan said, and that person advances the principals of our party and appeals to a wide, vast majority of Americans.

The sudden turn of events that played out late Thursday on TV and social media left many Republicans pleased a top party leader had ponied up.

I was a little surprised that he did it because, frankly, we havent seen this kind of leadership from anyone else, said one Republican strategist who opposes Trump and wouldnt be named criticizing GOP leaders. This isnt easy. Hes going to take it from both sides.

Ryan will almost certainly face blowback from his Republican majority in the House, which counts a growing pro-Trump contingent.

But his move will also provide political shelter for rank-and-file Republicans who have been hesitant to risk opposing Trump.

The speaker did what he thought was right, said a Republican familiar Ryans thinking, who observed that Ryan decided to go the most sincere route.

Whether Ryans conditions will be met by Trump remain to be seen. The businessman has shown only modest interest in hewing to party norms, and many observers do not expect him to do so now.

For the latest from Congress and 2016 campaign, follow @LisaMascaro

For more, go to www.latimes.com/politics

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The Republican nominating contest ended this week with a bang and a few whimpers; the Democrats version drags on with the outcome no longer in doubt, but the endgame still contested.

On both sides -- but particularly in the GOP -- party unity remains elusive.

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.

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THE MAP FAVORS CLINTON

If we learned nothing else in these past 12 months, it should be that politics can surprise us. Anyone who can prove that a year ago, he or she forecast Donald Trump as the Republican nominee, please step forward and collect your reward. For the rest of us, humility is in order.

But humility doesnt require blindness. Trump has won just over 10 million votes in the GOP primaries. Winning the general election will require closer to 70 million, and he has a very long way to go.

Trump shot to the top of the GOP polls by early July of last year -- within weeks of declaring he was a candidate -- and almost never relinquished his hold on first place. Touting those polls has been a big part of his routine on the stump.

Today, those same polls tell a very different story. Scores of surveys have been taken pitting Trump against Hillary Clinton in hypothetical matchups. With the exception of a very few, they have shown Clinton ahead by an average of about seven points. Polls of key swing states show the same.

And, no, its not true that polls taken in the spring have no value in predicting the fall election. What matters isnt the date of the poll, its the amount of information voters have about the candidates. In most elections, most voters dont know much about both candidates until the fall campaign, so polls taken earlier incorporate a lot of uncertainty.

Clinton and Trump both have universal name recognition, and voters have strong feelings about them.

Can a candidate change an entrenched image? Of course. But its not easy.

As Mark Z. Barabak and I wrote in surveying the electoral map, Trump starts out in a very deep hole. Some major swing states, most notably Florida, currently seem out of his reach, in part because of the divisions within the GOP and in part because of Trumps deep unpopularity among Latino voters.

Trumps best chance would seem to be an effort to win over blue-collar white voters in the industrial belt and flip states in an arc from Pennsylvania up to Wisconsin, most of which have gone for the Democrats in each of the last six elections. Its a very tall order, and right now, theres no evidence hes succeeding.

THE GOPS GREAT DIVIDE

As the week drew to a close, Trump and House Speaker Paul Ryan continued their feud, with Ryan saying he was not ready to support Trump, and the nominee responding that he was not ready to support Speaker Ryans agenda.

As Lisa Mascaro wrote, the spat is not just about power in the party, its a reminder of their very deep disagreements over important policy issues: foreign policy, government spending and international trade among them.

Thats a big problem for Trump. In these days of heightened partisanship, presidential candidates typically get about 90% of the voters within their own ranks. The goal for both parties becomes maximizing turnout. If Trump ends up with just 85% of Republicans, rather than 90%, that could be enough to put closely contested states out of his reach.

Right now, 85% seems a high goal. At this summers GOP convention, the list of notable Republican absences may be longer than the roll call. George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, Mitt Romney, Sen. John McCain. Of the GOPs living presidential candidates, only former Sen. Bob Dole has said he will attend the convention, and he added that he has not decided if he will vote for Trump.

But the problem for Ryan and other GOP leaders who oppose Trump is that Republican voters have clearly decided that they prefer him to the much-disliked party establishment. As Cathy Decker wrote just after Trump won his final victory in Indiana, Republican voters all year have shown two things above all else: They were desperately concerned about the economy. And they wanted an outsider to fix it.

THE DEMOCRATS SLOG

Over on the Democratic side, Sen. Bernie Sanders continues to campaign even though theres virtually no chance of his overtaking Clinton.

The voters mostly dont mind -- in exit polls of primary states, about three-quarters of Democratic voters have said the campaign has energized their party.

Clinton has more or less ignored Sanders of late. Her campaign spent no money advertising in Indiana, where she lost to Sanders this week, and it doesnt plan to spend any in West Virginia, where shes all but certain to lose next week. She needs to win only about a third of the vote in the remaining contest to clinch the nomination, although she clearly would like to do better than that, particularly in California.

Sanders, by contrast, has spent a lot. He out-spent Clinton in New York and in Pennsylvania, but lost both contests by big margins. Indeed, he spent so much -- even as his fundraising has dwindled --that his campaign is low on cash heading toward California, the countrys most expensive political market, as Chris Megerian and Evan Halper reported.

Clintons campaign began the month with about $30 million cash on hand. Sanders campaign refuses to say how much cash it has -- typically a sign of trouble -- and while it has vowed to campaign heavily in California, there is little sign yet of a campaign organization.

All that, plus the end of the GOP contest, means that California voters, once again, will miss out on a truly contested primary. Thats a disappointment to political junkies in the Golden State, as Decker and Seema Mehta wrote.

For everyone else, it means fewer annoying political ads on TV.

Meantime, though, as the remaining primaries play out, well continue to bring you all the results and analyses on Trail Guide and on our Politics page.

And you can keep watch on the delegates in both parties with our Delegate Tracker, which shows where each candidate stands and where each has won support.

THOSE DARN EMAILS

Clinton has several remaining headaches -- figuring out how to make peace with Sanders and his followers, preparing for debates with Trump, making final decisions about general election strategy.

But shadowing all that is the continued investigation of her email practices while secretary of State. Just recently, the FBI interviewed Huma Abedin, one of her closest aides, as Del Wilber reported. To some extent, thats good news for Clinton because it signals that the investigation is close to an end. But its also a reminder that the saga isnt over. If you havent already, read Wilbers profile of the FBIs second-ranking official, the man who, as much as anyone, will make the key calls on the email investigation.

Most legal experts doubt that Clinton faces any significant legal jeopardy in the case, but until its over, she clearly faces political risk.

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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.
Political tension ramps up at legislative hearing on Newsoms gun control initiative

Backers of a gun control initiative proposed for the November ballot argued during a legislative forum Tuesday that it is needed to make California safer, while opponents said it will unfairly harm law-abiding gun owners and is primarily aimed at getting Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom elected governor.

Newsom turned in 600,000 signatures last week for an initiative that would require background checks for ammunition purchasers, ban large-capacity magazines, make gun thefts a felony and require those convicted of serious crimes to give up their firearms within 14 days.

The Assembly and Senate Public Safety committees held a joint hearing on the proposal Tuesday in anticipation of the measure qualifying.

Craig DeLuz, head of the Firearms Policy Coalition, told lawmakers that most of the provisions in the initiative have been rejected by the Legislature or the governor as too extreme or unworkable.

He said the real purpose of the initiative is to get Newsom elected as governor in 2018.

Its for one individual to get his name in the paper so he can run for higher office, DeLuz told the lawmakers.

That drew a rubuke from state Sen. Loni Hancock (D-Berkeley), chair of the Senate panel.

I do take offense at the personal attacks on the proponents of the intiative, Hancock said during the hearing.

Assemblywoman Melissa Melendez (R-Lake Elsinore) responded, saying the initiative is unnecessary.

I am equally offended that the person who came up with this initiative isnt here today to address this body, she said. Thats incredibly disrespectful.

Newsom, who has fueded with legislative leaders who are pursuing their own gun control bills, did not attend the hearing, instead participating in a memorial service held for California Highway Patrol officers, a representative said.

Attorneys for the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, which co-wrote the initiative, told lawmakers it will plug serious loopholes in Californias tough gun laws.

We believe reasonably that more can and should be done to protect California families and keep lethal weapons out of dangerous hands, added Ari Freilich, a staff attorney at the center.

The initiative was criticized by Los Angeles County Deputy Dist. Atty. Michele Hanisee, president of the Assn. of Deputy District Attorneys of Los Angeles, who predicted many people will not obey the new laws requiring them to get rid of high-capacity magazines.

The initiative places additional burdens on an already overburdened court system, she added.

None of the lawmakers at the hearing commited to endorsing the initiative.

Lawmakers raised questions about the cost of enforcing the initiative, but the Legislative Analysts Office said the bulk of costs may be recovered by fees authorized by the measure.

Hancock said she is interested in alternative approaches to addressing gun violence, including a look at improving mental health services.
Appearances can be deceiving. An ancient marine reptile that swam the seas long before the time of the dinosaurs sported a distinctive hammerhead jaw, along with two intimidating groups of teeth  some like chisels, others like needles.

But in spite of this fearsome-looking face, Atopodentatus unicus used its jaw for less-than-terrifying purposes: to scrape and eat algae off rocks. The fossils described in the journal Science Advances shed light on the diversity and recovery of animal life in the wake of a devastating extinction event that occurred roughly 252 million years ago.

Scientists discovered fossil remains of this strange animal in 2014 in current-day southern China. It appears to have roamed the seas some 242 million years ago during the Middle Triassic. Measuring around nine feet long from head to tail, Atopodentatus unicus has a somewhat elongated neck, strong fore-limbs and a surprisingly small head for its size. But as implied by its name, which means unique strangely toothed, the standout features of A. unicus appeared to be its jaw and its many weirdly shaped teeth.

See the most-read stories in Science this hour >>

At first, researchers believed that the marine reptile had a downturned snout that it used to stir up and eat tiny invertebrate animals in the mud of the sea floor, by sucking in water and then filtering it out through needle-like teeth, leaving the edible critters behind. The process, if true, would have been a bit like a flamingo, said Nicholas Fraser, one of the study authors and a vertebrate paleontologist at National Museums Scotland in Edinburgh, in an email.

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But it turns out that the fossil on which this hypothesis was based, while fairly complete, was kind of squashed. And now, with two new and mostly intact skulls, an international team of researchers were able to more accurately describe its face, shifting the downturned snout into a hammerhead jaw.

We have given it a face-lift  literally, Fraser said.

The researchers believe that A. unicus used chisel-like teeth at the front of its mouth to scrape algae off of rocks in shallow coastal waters and then would filter it through a dense mesh of needle-like teeth. The researchers used colorful childrens modeling clay and toothpicks to figure out exactly how the mouth might work.

This was such a unique dentition that we need to reconstruct how the two jaws would interlock and work ... just to be sure we had a workable interpretation! Fraser said.

Even so, the scientists didnt expect to come to these bizarre conclusions, he added.

Not only is this a very strange shape for a face, but it also means that this animal was an herbivore  quite rare for marine reptiles at the time, probably in part because of relatively low plant diversity as well as what Fraser called the restricted nature of plant life at sea.

This fossil took us very much by surprise. However, this was a whole different world, he said, pointing to animals like Dinocephalosaurus, a roughly 15-foot-long, suction-feeding, seafaring reptile whose neck was at least half the length of its body. So now we are beginning to accept this strange and wonderful environment that gave rise to very unfamiliar body forms.

A. unicus also would have lived roughly 10 million years after the end-Permian extinction, a brutal mass extinction event that wiped out around 90% of life in the seas and 70% of life on land. How the oceans recovered and diversified after that devastation, filling up all the vacated nodes in the food web, is of great interest to researchers  and this fossil shows that, at least in some quarters, life was springing back.

After the end-Permian mass extinction it is widely accepted that it took several million years for the trophic levels to fully recover, Fraser said. However, with our work, we are finding that by 243 million years or so ago (i.e. 9 million years after the extinction), there was a very complex and diverse assemblage of marine reptiles. The discovery of this completely new niche (herbivory in the sea) just amplifies our hypothesis that the recovery happened much more rapidly than previously thought.

Follow @aminawrite on Twitter for more science news and like Los Angeles Times Science & Health on Facebook.

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E-cigs effect on public health an open question

Age, gender and nationality affect how much sleep you get, study finds

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What constitutes a normal nights sleep?

That all depends, says Danny Forger, a biological mathematician at the University of Michigan and an expert in circadian clocks.

People set guidelines all the time -- you need eight hours, you need seven hours -- but weve found that normal sleep varies tremendously depending on your age, sex and what country you are in, he said.

Forger is the senior author of a new study that analyzed the sleep habits of more than 5,000 users of a mobile phone app known as ENTRAIN.

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The free app was designed by Olivia Walch, a graduate student in Forgers group. It was launched in 2014 to help users efficiently overcome jet lag with the help of a complex algorithm based on Forgers previous research. Essentially, the app tells people when to expose themselves to light and when to avoid it to minimize the effects of jet lag.

Entrainment is the scientific term for fully adjusting to a new time zone -- hence the apps name.

However, the group also invited users to send the sleep data they plugged into the app back to the servers at the university. Roughly 8% of the apps international users agreed to share their information anonymously, providing the team a treasure trove of real world sleep statistics.

Lab conditions in sleep studies are very regulated, and participants dont have to deal with the stresses of the real world like spouses, children and all the stuff that keeps us up at night worrying, Forger said. Also, in the lab, it would cost about $20,000 per individual to get this type of information and we dont have that kind of budget.

In a paper published Friday in Science Advances, Forger and his co-authors used the data they collected from ENTRAIN to provide an overview of the social and solar cues that influence when we go to sleep and when we wake up.

Most people in the data set schedule between seven and eight hours of sleep a night, with a mean of 7.88 hours.

Of all the factors considered in their analysis, gender plays the biggest role in how long a person sleeps. On average, women schedule 8.07 hours of sleep, while men schedule 7.77 hours. Women both go to bed a bit earlier than men and wake up a bit later. The authors say this effect is most pronounced among people 30 to 60.

Age also seems to be an important factor for when people sleep. On average, older people schedule sleep earlier than younger people. Also, there is less variation in the times that older people sleep then younger people. The authors think this could be because older people are more sensitive to solar cues, and can only sleep during certain times of the days. Younger people, such as college students, dont seem to have those restrictions.

Nationality also plays a role in sleep duration. Residents of Singapore and Japan had the shortest sleep duration of the 20 countries represented in the study, getting an average of 7 hours and 24 minutes of shut-eye a night. People in the Netherlands were the most well-rested, averaging 8 hours and 12 minutes of sleep a night. In the United States, the average sleep duration is 7.87 hours.

The authors also note that despite black-out curtains, artificial lights and alarm clocks, solar cues -- the time of sunrise and sunset -- still have a significant effect on sleep patterns.

We recognize that these solar effects are dulled compared to predictive models, but the fact that they are still there in the data was pretty shocking to me, said Amy Cochran, an assistant professor at Univeristy of Michigan who also worked on the study.

Both sunset and sunrise had a bigger effect on when people woke up, compared to when they went to sleep. Later sunrises (after 6:30 a.m.) were associated with later wake times and bedtimes. Later sunsets were also associated with later wake times and bedtimes, but the effect of sunset on what time a person went to bed at night was weaker than what models predicted.

The authors conjecture that the time we wake up is regulated by our internal, biological clocks but the time we go to sleep is more influenced by societal pressure to stay up.

We didnt expect to see that, since most people use their alarm clocks to wake up, Forger said. It could be that people are hitting snooze. They try to set their alarm clock for 5 a.m., but it doesnt work for them.

But thats just a guess. Forger said the ENTRAIN data set is full of unanswered questions as well as trends they would like to see validated in the lab.

In the meantime, the researchers are also hoping to soon collect even more detailed data from ENTRAIN users. They are launching a new version of the app shortly that will take advantage of information collected by activity trackers that monitor both exercise and sleep.

It is a much richer data set, and we will be able to rely less on self-reported data, Forger said.

He added that a large-scale sleep study such as this one could never have been done without the help of citizen scientists willing to share their sleep data.

It is really a new way of doing science, he said.

Do you love science? I do! Follow me @DeborahNetburn on Twitter and like Los Angeles Times Science & Health on Facebook.
Rock fans and cruises? They go together more than you think. Cruises featuring bands -- from heavy metal to classic rock n roll -- give you a chance to party at sea and meet some of your favorite performers.

And who doesnt want to dress up for a costume party on the KISS Kruise? Here are four Caribbean cruises that are all about the music

KISS Kruise VI calls on fans to sign up for a head-banging, fist-pumping mission at sea. Yes, you can join the KISS navy and rock out to heavy metal aboard the Norwegian Pearl.

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The cruise sails from Miami to Cozumel, Mexico; and George Town, Grand Cayman, Nov. 4-9.

Most of the cheaper cabins have already sold out. As of Thursday, there are about 50 staterooms left. Prices range from $1,055 to $2,110 -- but theres no saying how long theyll last. Info: KISS Kruise VI

Holy Ship 2017 is hosting four-night cruises dedicated to electronic dance music. Music, pool parties, activities led by musical artists and theme nights are all part of the vibe.

Theyre sold out, but organizers encourage folks to join the wait list, according to the website.

Cruises sail Jan. 6 -10 and Jan. 10-14 aboard the Norwegian Epic. The ship leaves from Port Canaveral near Orlando, Fla., and sails to the private island of Great Stirrup Cay and Nassau in the Bahamas.

ShipRocked 2017 is perfect for rock n roll junkies. The lineup of bands includes Breaking Benjamin, Papa Roach, Alter Bridge, Sevendust, Pop Evil, the Stowaways and others.

The ship sails Jan. 16-20 from Miami aboard the Carnival Victory to Grand Turk in the Turks & Caicos -- with days at sea to revel in the music and onboard activities.

Prices start at $999, double occupancy; cabins go on sale Tuesday. Info: ShipRocked

Monsters of Rock Cruise 2017 features Vince Neil of Motley Crue, Cinderellas Tom Keifer, Queensryche, Night Ranger and more.

The ship sails Feb. 2-7 from Tampa, Fla., aboard Royal Caribbeans Brilliance of the Seas. Stops include George Town, Grand Cayman; and Cozumel, Mexico -- with extra days to party at sea. You can get in on a pre-cruise party on Feb. 1 too.

Prices start at $1,099, double occupancy. Info: Monsters of Rock Cruise
David City Public Schools was recently recognized for its participation in the EF High School Exchange Year.

The EF High School Exchange Year Global Education Excellence Award is presented annually to high schools that demonstrate an extraordinary commitment to international understanding and global awareness. DCPS was one of a select group of high schools/districts recognized across the United States for the 2015-16 school year.

David City High School has shown an outstanding commitment to offering a global education, said Bob Fredette, President of EF High School Exchange Year. By welcoming exchange students into the classrooms, David City has created new and unique learning opportunities not just for the exchange students, but for the American students and faculty as well.

This year, DCPS welcomed EF student Klara Hortmann, who was able to became an integral part of the schools academic and extracurricular life, involving the greater community in the exchange experience.

My experience at David City has been amazing, said EF student Klara Hortmann. I was able to participate in FCCLA, One Act-make up assistant, Track, Homecoming, Prom and dances, which is something I would not have done in Germany. One of the things I appreciate most about my experience at David City is the school dances that they had. I will never forget my time in David City, Nebraska and I know I will always be welcome here.

We thank DCPS for welcoming this years students from around the globe," said local exchange coordinator Dan Rathje. "The community and visiting students shared an unforgettable experience thanks to the generosity of David City High Schools administration, teachers, students and families.

Headquartered in Cambridge, Mass., EF High School Exchange Year has been committed to promoting international understanding and global awareness for over 30 years.

To learn more about getting involved with high school exchange in the community, contact EF High School Exchange Year local coordinator Dan Rathje at 402-499-6039 or at Daniel.rathje@ef.org. You may also call the EF High School Exchange Year main office at 1-800-447-4273 or visit www.efexchangeyear.org.
A teenage activist who became the face of the so-called umbrella protests in Hong Kong was tried Friday along with three others for their roles in a protest against Beijings rule in this Chinese territory of more than 7 million people.

Joshua Wong, 19, and Nathan Law, 22, two of the leaders of the pro-democracy protests in 2014, were accused of obstructing police officers during a demonstration against a controversial document issued by Chinese Communist authorities asserting that Beijing has complete jurisdiction over Hong Kong. Albert Chan and Raphael Wong were also charged.

Known as the white paper, the document, the student leaders and others argued, violated the one country, two systems framework under which the former British colony was returned to Chinese rule in 1997.

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A judge will decide their fate late this month. If convicted, each faces up to two years in prison.

Wong, in particular, has emerged as something of a superstar in the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong, and a conviction is likely to stoke anger in the territory.

The June 2014 demonstration was staged outside the Chinese Liaison Office of the Central Peoples Government, which many Hong Kongers have come to regard as the command center of Beijings operatives. Law, Wong and 20 other demonstrators torched an outsized replica of the white paper.

After police officers doused the flames with bottled water, Wong was captured on video as having snatched an emptied bottle from one of the police officers. A confrontation ensued, and other demonstrators came to Wongs defense by scolding the officer.

Wong shouldve known his action wouldve had an impact on his fellow demonstrators, said prosecutor Edmond Lee. This was purely a provocative act.

The fire has been put out, countered Wongs defense attorney, Lawrence Lok. So what was the point holding on to the bottle?

I had meant to recycle it, testified Sgt. Lai Kin-man, one of the two officers allegedly obstructed by Wong.

Chan, a legislator, and Raphael Wong, a leader of the League of Social Democrats party, face the same charges. All four pleaded not guilty.

Because the white paper threatens to destroy one country, two systems, said Chan, testifying in his own defense, burning it was how we chose to express our political demand.

See the most-read stories this hour >>

After the judge ruled that there was sufficient evidence for the government to bring charges against all four, Joshua Wong looked distraught and slumped over to look at this smartphone.

To convict, however, the judge must find beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendants willfully obstructed police officers to the point that it was difficult for them to carry out their duties.

During its 19 years under Chinese sovereignty, Hong Kong has maintained a lively, freewheeling protest culture thanks to the protection of its constitution. Prosecution is rare, unless physical harm is caused. For example, in April 2015, a demonstrator was sentenced to three weeks in jail for accidentally hitting the territorys finance secretary with an egg.

Last month, Law and Joshua Wong formed a new political party to field candidates for the Legislative Council elections this fall. A sentence of any length may deal a blow to the fledgling party.

All four remain free in lieu of $65 bail. A verdict is expected on May 23.

Violet Law is a special correspondent.

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A North Korean farm may not be what it appears

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Opening North Koreas first ruling Workers Party Congress in 36 years, leader Kim Jong Un on Friday hailed the countrys recent hydrogen bomb test and satellite launch as unprecedented achievements that will lead the isolated and impoverished nation of 24 million to final victory.

Dressed in a black pinstripe suit with his hair slicked back, Kim entered the April 25 House of Culture in the capital, Pyongyang, to thunderous applause and cheers from 3,467 delegates and an additional 1,387 observers, some of whom appeared to be weeping.

The congress is the highest-level political meeting in North Korea, and Kims convening of the gathering after such a long interval -- his father, Kim Jong Il, never held one at all during his 17-year rule -- has raised expectations inside and outside North Korea that the young leader may announce some new major policy direction or personnel changes.

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No major revelations were forthcoming at the Friday opener, and it was unclear how many days the congress would last. Though the meeting got underway Friday morning, no news of the proceedings was released until a special broadcast aired on the state-run news channel around 10 p.m. local time.

More than 100 foreign journalists who were granted visas to the country this week to cover the event were kept outside the venue and were not briefed on the happenings inside. In a move that would be considered bizarre in most any other country besides North Korea, government handlers schlepped the foreign reporters to tour a wire-making factory in the afternoon, keeping them far away from the congress venue.

 Two students chat outside the North Korea Party Congress.

Speaking from a sheath of notes from behind a lectern, a bespectacled Kim devoted a portion of his remarks to looking back on the trials and tribulations North Korea has endured since the last congress in 1980, including sanctions, isolation, the collapse of the Soviet bloc and other hardships. But, he insisted, North Koreans had persevered and prevailed by rallying around his grandfather, Kim Il Sung, and then his father, and now he himself.

The development of nuclear weapons and missile technology, he said, had assured North Koreas security and place in the world, guaranteeing that a small country like itself wont be intimidated by powerful nations such as the United States.

Kim then outlined a five-point agenda for the coming days that included revisions to the party bylaws, election of the central leadership organ, and a review of central committee and army committee work reports. The gathering will also bestow Kim with the title of supreme leader of the party (he is currently first secretary).

Military officials with their chests covered in medals and Workers Party delegates in dark suits gave Kim round after round of standing ovations and occasionally broke into cheers as the gathering got underway, images from North Korean state TV showed.

The broadcast ended a long day of waiting for news by both ordinary North Koreans and the international media. Throughout the day, state-run TV broadcast some special programming for the congress, but none of it was live. After some images of military orchestras, the station later played clips of old North Korean films. Until well in the evening, there were no details about what had transpired inside the April 25 House of Culture, which was draped in red flags and party banners.

As a light drizzle fell Friday morning, government-provided buses and vans drove more than 100 foreign journalists to an intersection in front of the April 25 House of Culture, raising hopes among reporters that they might be allowed to go inside to witness the proceedings. Instead, government minders permitted the journalists a rare opportunity to conduct man-on-the-street interviews with passersby, then drove them back to the designated hotel where they all must stay.

Many of those interviewed professed excitement about the congress, which has been the subject of a massive propaganda buildup over the last 70 days, but no one had the faintest idea what would happen at the gathering, who exactly was attending, or even how long it would last.

We dont know what will happen, said Song Jong Min, a university student. His friend, surnamed Joo, added: We are sure that respected Marshal Kim Jong Un will indicate the way; where we are going to. And our country will be a greater country.

The congress, which gathers delegates from across the country and is the highest-level gathering in North Koreas political system, is apparently intended to highlight national unity and stability under Kim, who came to power in late 2011 after the death of his father, Kim Jong Il.

The entire country was mobilized to speed up production for 70 days leading up to the congress, and the Norths state-controlled media were full of breathless reports about allegedly miraculous accomplishments at cement plants and coal mines, as well as the construction of a new power plant.

Pyongyang was decked out with red flags and new propaganda banners on nearly every street in the center of the city of 2.5 million. Residents were mobilized to rehearse for parades and a torchlight procession, among other events, to mark the congress, though guides seemed to have no information about when those events would happen either.

NEWSLETTER: Get the days top headlines from Times Editor Davan Maharaj >>

Kim Jong Un, who is in his early 30s, has spent the last several years sprucing up the capital, constructing new residential skyscrapers, a science center and theaters. He built a dolphinarium, a water park and a ski resort as well.

Though the economy remains overwhelmingly state-run, growth has picked up, thanks largely to trade with China and some loosening of restrictions on market-style enterprises. Pyongyang has noticeably more traffic -- and a more stable supply of electricity -- than a few years ago. But those gains now may be in jeopardy.

Kim drew the ire of the international community by reportedly testing a hydrogen bomb in January, and following that up with repeated missile launches and the launch of a satellite into low-Earth orbit. In March, the U.N. Security Council voted to impose new sanctions on North Korea.

Flags and propaganda signs decorate a roundabout in front of Pyongyang Station on May 6, 2016. (Julie Makinen / Los Angeles Times)

Ri Myong Hye, a 53-year-old tailor, said the country had lived under sanctions for years and would not be cowed.

Despite all that, for the 7th Party Congress, the entire country, all our people have come out running, and put in great effort for a day like today, she said. Going forward, we will channel the joy of this 7th Congress to become energized and forge ahead.

Park Chang Hwa, a 50-year-old construction worker, said Kim Jong Un had brought people many new amenities.

In one to two years, weve established an indoor pool, a great study hall, kindergartens and nursing homes all around, and tall socialist buildings that no one else can imitate or speak of, she said. And tall buildings, college buildings for the students of Kim Il Sung University and upscale homes for scientists and technicians.

Echoing one of North Koreas most familiar propaganda lines, she added: Our people live without an envy in the world.

Kim remains an enigma to much of the world. Despite having been educated in Switzerland, he has not traveled abroad since coming to power, nor has he received a foreign head of state (though he has invited celebrities such as Dennis Rodman into the country).

But North Koreans already regard Kim as a much less remote figure than his father, who had a reputation for reclusiveness and eccentricity.

Although Kim Jong Il led North Korea from 1994 to 2011, he never gave a public speech, and many North Koreans can recall hearing his voice just once, at a military parade in the 1990s.

Kim Jong Un, in contrast, has already delivered several public speeches in his four-year tenure.

Weve heard his voice three or four times already, noted Hwang Myong Sim, a minder accompanying foreign journalists this week.

Foreign analysts have speculated that the congress might be an opportunity for Kim to lay out further details of his vision for the countrys future, including how he plans to advance his policy of developing nuclear weapons and bolstering the economy at the same time. That is seen as unfeasible by many outside observers if the recent U.N. sanctions are thoroughly implemented.

But Adam Cathcart, a lecturer in history and a North Korea watcher at Leeds University, said for Kim, the congress may be more backward-looking in a way, to the legacy of his father as well as his grandfather, North Koreas founder Kim Il Sung.

While the North Koreans seem intent on rhetorically celebrating the increasingly developed nuclear deterrent in these proceedings, and outside observers look for any minute signs of new political liberalization, as important is the connection Kim Jong Un makes with the past, Cathcart said.

Succession themes will be omnipresent, from evocations of Kimilsongism-Kimjongilism to new twin statues of the dead leaders physically placing the new Kim as the only possible executor of their now-monolithic legacy.

Though the congress has started more with a whimper than a bang, Cathcart said the next few days may provide more pomp and circumstance thats visible to the local populace and the world.

The politics of spectacle are alive and well in North Korea, he said, and Kim Jong Un seems as intent as his father before him on the production of political theatricality.

Special correspondent Steven Borowiec in Seoul contributed to this report.

Follow @JulieMakLAT for news from China

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In the Philippines, the Marcos name is back in vogue.

For two decades, the dictator Ferdinand Marcos pilfered billions from the countrys public coffers; his government reportedly tortured opponents by shocking them with live wires and burning them with irons. After his ouster in 1986, his legacy was so toxic that then-President Corazon Aquino established an office the Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG)  to restore the institutions integrity and credibility, according to its website.

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FOR THE RECORD

May 7, 6:23 p.m.: An earlier version of this post referred to Ferdinand Marcos three children. He was the father of four.

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Yet memories of the dictatorships brutality have begun to fade, even as the countrys next presidential elections, scheduled for May 9, have brought his name back into the spotlight. Marcos son Ferdinand Marcos Jr., known by his nickname Bongbong, is leading opinion polls in the vice presidential race. (In the Philippines, the president and vice president are elected separately.)

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In this May 5 photo, vice presidential candidate Sen. Ferdinand Bongbong Marcos Jr. gestures during his last campaign rally for Mondays presidential elections in suburban Mandaluyong city, east of Manila. (Aaron Favila / Associated Press )

Many Filipinos believe the country needs a strong, no-nonsense leader to help overcome its struggles with corruption, poverty, drugs and crime.

Ronald Chua, a PCGG commissioner, ascribed Marcos Jr.s popularity to young Filipinos who did not experience life under his fathers rule.

To be honest, millennials, they dont have any idea of what happened in the 60s and 70s, he said. What they know is only what they read in the books, and its just not enough information  what you can read in the textbooks now is, I would say, just 1% of what happened during the time.

How a Marcos Jr. vice presidency would coexist with the commission remains an open question. The organization is not partisan, Chua said, but if Marcos is elected, it will be harder for the office to perform its function.

Over the past six years, under President Benigno Aquino III, the Philippines annual economic growth rate has been above 6%, ranking the country among the worlds fastest-growing economies. Yet more than a quarter of Filipinos remain impoverished, and the extreme gap between rich and poor weighs heavy in the minds of citizens.

Rodrigo Duterte, a 71-year-old city mayor and self-styled strongman, is leading in the presidential polls.

People who are supporting Bongbong Marcos are the same people who are favorably inclined toward Duterte, said Gerard Finin, director and senior research fellow at the East-West Center in Honolulu. These are people who think strong leadership is necessary regardless of rule of law. I dont think thats a majority by any means, but there are people who have forgotten the position martial law left the Philippines in, in terms of human rights, the economy  all the things that have taken decades to rebuild.

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According to Amnesty International, the Ferdinand Marcos government imprisoned 70,000 people, tortured 34,000, and killed 3,240. During his tenure, the Philippines national debt exploded from $2 billion to as high as $30 billion, while his family and close associates grew scandalously wealthy. His wife, Imelda Marcos, famously owned more than 1,000 pairs of shoes. He was unseated by a bloodless people power revolution in 1986 and fled to Hawaii, where his family lived in exile; he died three years later.

Former First Lady Imelda Marcos points to some of her 200 shoes on display Feb. 16, 2001, at the Shoe Museum in suburban Marikina City, Philippines. (Pat Roque / Associated Press )

And although Marcos Jr.  one of the dictators four children  has distanced himself from his fathers legacy of brutality, critics say that he has refused to address it head-on.

Marcos Jr.s supporters think that he is being blamed for his fathers sins, said Solita Monsod, a professor emeritus at University of the Philippines School of Economics. He is not being blamed  he is blamed for not saying that his father has sinned. He thinks his father did everything right  that [his] age was a golden age.

The Marcos campaign did not respond to several requests for comment.

Bongbong Marcos grew up in the Philippines, and was sent to England in 1970 while his father was at the height of his power. He studied social studies at Oxford University, and then business at the University of Pennsylvanias Wharton School, but dropped out in 1980 after he was elected the vice governor of the Philippines Ilocos Norte province, where his father was born. He was 23 years old, and his political party  Kilusang Bagong Lipunan  was the same as his fathers.

In 1983, Marcos Jr. rose to become the provinces governor; his term ended prematurely in 1986, after his fathers ouster. He returned to the Philippines in 1992, and refers to his time overseas as an enforced vacation.

I did not want to do the same things [that] my father [did], Marcos told the Philippine Daily Inquirer in late April. I told myself that everything anyone can possibly do in politics, my father had already done. He was president and had a very noteworthy presidency.

To tell you the truth, he was just Dad, he continued, But, of course, you knew he was a different person because when he walked into a room, the room stops and everybody would defer to him. He was in control. He was the boss.

His mother, Imelda Marcos, is currently a member of Congress; his sister Imee is the governor of Ilocos Norte.

The PCGG is a small operation  it currently has only three commissioners and about 100 staffers  but as of December, it had recovered about $3.6 billion of the Marcos dictatorships ill-gotten gains, some of it from accounts in Switzerland. It has organized several educational events at universities to promote awareness of Marcos Sr.s massive plunder of the countrys wealth.

The organization is working to recover more than 200 of Marcos paintings, including works by Michelangelo, Monet, Rembrandt, Picasso and Van Gogh. The collection is estimated to be worth between $150 million and $300 million. Only about 14 works have been found.

A November 2015 photo shows an official from the Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG) holding a piece of jewelry seized by the Philippine government from former first lady Imelda Marcos, at the Central Bank headquarters in Manila. (Noel Celisnoel Celis / AFP/Getty Images )

Alex Magno, a political science professor at University of the Philippines and columnist for the Philippine Star, questioned the organizations future prospects. The cost of maintaining [the commission] does not justify it existing, he said. So if there is a head-on [conflict] between Marcos and the PCGG, the PCGG folds.

They have gotten what they could, he continued. The rest will take a few centuries of litigation. The cost of litigation is not commensurate to the amount of wealth they can possibly retrieve.

The current President Aquino  the son of Corazon Aquino, who established the commission  has been one of Marcos Jr.s most strident critics. (His preferred vice presidential candidate, Manuel Mar Roxas II, has consistently lagged in the polls.)

The blood relatives of the dictator could have said, My father was wrong, give us a chance to correct this, Aquino said in February, on the 30th anniversary of Marcos Sr.s ouster. If he cant see what his family did wrong, how will we know that it wont happen again?

De Leon is a special correspondent. Staff writer Julie Makinen contributed to this report.

Follow @JRKaiman on Twitter for news from Asia

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The son of a bus driver from Pakistan was favored to become Londons first Muslim mayor as voters throughout Britain went to the polls Thursday.

Sadiq Khan, a human rights lawyer-turned-politician, often referenced his humble beginnings during his campaign, saying the city enabled his family to fulfill its potential and vowing to serve all Londoners.

The 45-year-old Khan, nevertheless, faced what many described as racism and fear-mongering during the campaign. His main rival, the Conservative Partys Zach Goldsmith, used words like radical and dangerous when referring to Khan.

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Khans camp derided such tactics, saying they were intended to divide and stoke fear among voters in one of the worlds most multicultural cities, where more than 1 million residents are Muslim.

I urge Londoners to choose hope over fear, Khan said in a speech before election day. I urge Londoners to give me the chance to restore for all Londoners the opportunities our great city gave to me.

Khan surprised many, including several members of his Labor Party, by becoming the front-runner to succeed Conservative Mayor Boris Johnson.

Polls showed Khan several points ahead of Goldsmith, the son of a billionaire businessman, with official results expected to be announced Friday.

The mayoral election comes at a key time for London, which is in the grips of a housing crisis, as well as for Britain, which is gearing up to vote on its future membership in the European Union in June.

Elections were also taking place for 124 councils in England, the Scottish Parliament, the National Assembly of Wales and the Northern Ireland Assembly, further testing the countrys support for the Labor Party.

Aside from London, mayoral elections were taking place in other major cities, including Liverpool and Bristol.

In London, both candidates talked extensively about the myriad issues they would seek to tackle if they became mayor: the ever-soaring cost of buying or renting a home in the capital, rising public transport costs, the environment as well as plans to build a new runway at Heathrow Airport.

Goldsmith has been a committed environmentalist and also can point to his successful track record as a member of Parliament. He was easily reelected to his southwest London constituency during the 2015 general election.

Goldsmith has said the Labor candidate gave a platform, oxygen and cover to extremists by, for example, speaking alongside figures like London imam Suliman Gani, whom Prime Minister David Cameron has accused of supporting the Islamic State extremist group.

Khan first rose to prominence politically when he was appointed to Prime Minister Gordon Browns Cabinet in 2009.

If he wins, it will provide a much-needed boost to the Labor Party, which faltered badly in last years general election and has become deeply divided under the direction of its left-wing leader, Jeremy Corbyn.

Yet while Khan has felt under attack for being Muslim, his party has not done him any favors in recent weeks by becoming embroiled in its own anti-Semitism scandal.

Former London Mayor Ken Livingstone said in an interview last week that Nazi leader Adolf Hitler had supported Zionism before he went mad and ended up killing 6 million Jews.

Livingstone, a close ally of Corbyns, has been suspended over the comments.

Another Labor lawmaker, Naz Shah, was also suspended last month after it emerged she had shared an image on social media that said Israel should be relocated to the U.S.

Corbyn has also been under pressure to explain his vocal support for pro-Palestinian groups.

Khan has tried to distance himself from Corbyn and the more left-wing members of the party, but Goldsmith has done about everything he could to remind voters that a vote for Khan cannot take place in isolation.

In a newspaper column in the Mail on Sunday, the Conservative candidate warned that electing a Labor mayor would mean aggressive socialism entering Britain through the back door.

He added: Londons economy is too big and too important to be a testing ground for a four-year Khan-Corbyn experiment. Five-and-a-half million Londoners rely on it for their jobs and livelihoods.

Boyle is a special correspondent.

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Climate change has condensed the cycles of devastating drought, and agriculture across Africa and the world is feeling the heat. Lack of rain in southern Africa delayed this years planting season by up to two months. Planted areas have shrunk, crops have wilted and food production in South Africa is already down 25%.

Meanwhile, far to the north in Ethiopia, the worst drought in 30 years threatens the food security of more than 10 million people, and in neighboring Somalia, around 3 million people have been hit by crop failures and food shortages. Across Africa and the globe, farmers need tools and technologies that will enable them to adapt to a changing climate.

When those resources are available, people can be spared the worst effects of drought -- and continue to eat. Take California. Despite the drought that has plagued the state for four years, farmers have continued to feed the U.S. population by switching from thirsty crops such as almonds to more hardy ones such as pomegranates. They are also adopting more efficient water-management technologies, such as advanced drip irrigation, and California agriculture is beginning to benefit from the nations most advanced seawater desalination plant.

Agricultural research is also revealing other new and effective approaches to adapt to climate change. For example, scientists are studying and using beneficial microbes from soil to strengthen plant resilience to increased drought, diseases and pests brought on by climate change. My research at Auburn University has demonstrated that microbes can help plants such as corn, cotton and tomato survive drought by growing bigger and longer roots that allow them to capture more water from soil.

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The ability of farmers to adapt, however, varies enormously depending on the region and its wealth. Developing countries often lack these resources and choices -- and are worst hit by this extreme weather. To protect the most vulnerable farmers and consumers and to ensure global food security amidst a changing climate, farmers must be empowered to create agricultural solutions that correspond to their own local realities.

Farmers in Kenya, Tanzania, Ethiopia and many other African countries are planting more drought-tolerant varieties of staple crops such as maize, and they are changing their farming practices to get more crop for each drop of water.

But in Africa, where 95% of farming is rain-fed, crop production is almost entirely dependent on the weather. Furthermore, millions of farmers in Africa remain uninformed of the scope of climate level changes they are experiencing. Without such information, they are unable to plan and adjust their farming practices to be sustainable for the long term.

But there are innovators who are changing this. In the Kenyan village of Mutomo, for example, one smallholder farmer armed with a camera and a phone took it upon himself to monitor weather extremities and their impact on his family and community. He was able to detect early indications of changing rainfall patterns that would likely affect the growing season. He is now using this knowledge to educate his community, and local farmers are planting drought-tolerant crop varieties and using low-cost, simple drip irrigation.

This approach of involving Africas millions of small farmers in collecting climate-related data is the best way to jumpstart the adaptation to climate change in Africa. The data from millions of farmers monitoring daily weather changes, rainfall levels and patterns and soil health will shed light on overall climate trends.

About two-thirds of Africans now have mobile phones, including many in rural areas, and these could play an integral part in the collection of weather and soil data. Data collected by farmers on their phones could then be aggregated and analyzed by designated research institutions, national meteorology agencies or government extension agents so the resulting trends can be shared with farmers.

To get this initiative rolling, governments can play a pivotal role in initiating powerful coalitions of public and private partners. In Uganda, for example, the Trans African Hydro-Meteorological Observatory will empower local communities and small-scale farmers across the country with an early warning weather system for severe weather across the drought-prone Cattle Corridor, the flash-flood prone highlands and other areas. The project leverages ubiquitous cellphones, and partners with mobile operators and the Ugandan National Meteorological Authority to provide low-cost, on-demand access to weather alerts to more than 16 million Ugandan cellphone users.

But for such programs to be most effective, it is key to establish two-way information flows between farmers and service providers. For example, a program developed by the global nonprofit Grameen Foundation and partners in Uganda used data collected from small-scale farmers to detect, notify and control the outbreak of dangerous weather-sensitive outbreaks of crop disease. Farmers can be indispensable contributors to, not just consumers of, climate-related farming data.

Armed with this information, farmers could adjust their farming plans to reduce risks to crops and increase yields. For example, if the trend predicted below average rainfalls, farmers might be prompted to plant drought-resistant crops, and if the forecasts indicated adequate rainfall, farmers might choose to plant riskier, but more productive, crops. While these types of technologies exist, they rarely operate at a large scale, and often miss the mark as far as adequately engaging and training farmers.

This data would also be invaluable in helping inform governments and research institutions to guide their formulation of disaster-management strategies.

Of course, providing farmers with such tools for adaptation is not enough to completely shield them from the effects of complex and unpredictable weather events. But it is an essential step toward climate-proofing African agriculture. African farmers must be able to understand climate-related impacts on their crops, be part of developing tools to adapt to a changing climate and have access to a full suite of tools to strengthen their resilience.

Natural disasters, such as drought, are already becoming more common and governments, companies, NGOs, farmers and ordinary citizens must act with urgency. We must employ every tool at our disposal to curb the likelihood of, prepare for and respond to climate change and natural disasters that put our global food supply -- and the millions who rely on it -- at risk.

Helping farmers grow food in the face of extreme weather disasters would require new creative solutions, visions and partnerships. It is time for citizens, governments, universities and private partners to join together to empower smallholder farmers with the tools they need to navigate the climate challenges ahead.

Esther Ngumbi is a research scientist at Auburn University in Alabama and a 2015 Aspen New Voices Fellow.

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Outside an Istanbul courthouse Friday, Can Dundar was waiting for his hearing to resume when a man with a pistol approached.

Dundar, editor-in-chief of the Cumhuriyet newspaper, was on trial along with one of its reporters, Erdem Gul, for publishing state secrets in a video last year that appeared to show Turkeys intelligence agency supplying weapons to Islamist insurgents in Syria.

The man with the gun cried traitor.

See the most-read stories this hour >>

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As Dundars wife and an politician attempted to restrain the man, he fired at least two shots from waist level, video footage shows.

He missed Dundar.

A television reporter was wounded, local media reported.

The attacker dropped his gun and was detained by plainclothes police. He was identified as Murat Sahin, from the province of Sivas, but authorities released little else about him.

I do not know who he is, Dundar told reporters. I only saw him point his gun at me.

After the shooting, Dundar returned to the courtroom for the verdict. He was found guilty and sentenced to 5 years and 10 months in prison. Gul received five years.

In response, Dundar accused the court of carrying out the days second assassination attempt.

Prosecutors had accused the journalists of espionage and seeking to violently topple the government. The men argued that they were acting in the public interest and stood by their reporting.

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Dundar called on his supporters to defend the free press, telling the Hurriyet Daily News: All of us have to be brave.

The verdicts  and the shooting  are the latest illustrations of the increasingly difficult conditions for the media in Turkey, which detains more journalists than most other countries.

The convictions are extremely worrying and amount to intimidation against any kind of critical journalism,said Erol Onderoglu, the Turkey representative of Reporters Without Borders. It clearly harms the rights of journalists to mount a public interest defense.

He added: I feel the constant verbal attacks and denunciations of critical journalists from government circles has created a hostile environment for reporters. This murder attempt and these convictions will have extremely negative repercussions for journalism in Turkey.

Press freedom watchdogs say that Turkeys president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who is a plaintiff in the trial, is assailing the free press in Turkey as he seeks to expand his personal powers and muzzle dissent.

We know who made us as a target, said Dundar. I hope they take lessons.

Johnson is a special correspondent.

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UPDATES:

3:24 p.m.: This article has been updated with new details and background.

10:42 a.m.: This article has been updated with news of the court sentence.

This article was originally published at 9:23 a.m.
Police in Sao Paulo have begun forcibly removing young students who are occupying a number of schools and public buildings to protest a scheme that investigators say diverted funds from their public school lunch programs.

Before sunrise in South Americas largest city, a wave of police vehicles blocked off roads downtown, and officers in riot gear soon entered the Paula Souza Educational Center, dragging out dozens of children aged 13 to 18.

He grabbed my collar, but then pulled me by my backpack. No one got really hurt, but I was scared. As soon as they walked in I thought, Whoa, these guys are big, said 17-year-old Inae Lima shortly after being removed.

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Police were enforcing the first judicial order to reestablish state control over public property, including schools and the state legislature, that have been taken over by a wave of students reacting to the revelation of what local media have called the Mafia da Merenda, or Lunch Money Mafia.

Gabriel Rodrigo Dos Santos, left, and other students occupied a school to protest whats become known in Brazil as the Lunch Money Mafia. (Vincent Bevins / For The Times)

Parts of Brazils federal government are falling apart due to a corruption scandal involving offshore oil exploration, but these students have been motivated by an entirely different issue that is closer to home.

Over the last few months, state police investigators and prosecutors have found the Lunch Money Mafia overpaid food providers in exchange for bribes, and its believed the school nutritional system lost millions. No criminal charges have been filed so far.

At the same time, students report missing or inadequate food, and surveys of nutritionists by local media found overwhelming evidence that students did not always have healthy portions.

The students are demanding a special parliamentary inquiry, one that would have to be opened by the legislature, into the scandal. Students, working in shifts, began occupying schools and the legislature around the clock April 28.

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The occupation was just a means to an end. We just wanted to be heard, and nothing we tried previously worked, said Lima. She was among dozens of students ejected from the building. She spoke as a group of students and supporters made their way to another school downtown.

As police downtown combed through the Paula Souza center early Friday, their cordon stopped residents on their way to work. Women shouted from the windows, complaining of the ruckus below. As he waited, 19-year-old street vendor Luis Cordeiro Campos said he thought the kids should be allowed to stay.

Look, protesting is their right, and we all know food for kids here is a problem, he said. I just graduated and sometimes the food was just missing. Youd just be hungry until you got home.

The Brazilian constitution guarantees the health and full education of all its population, and by law all students have a right to school meals.

Friday afternoon, police assembled at the legislature for Sao Paulo state, Brazils biggest, which had been closed to the public in preparation of a forced removal of students who had taken over a hall. The official investigation they demand would require support of state legislators whose allies may be involved. Currently, at least 14 schools are reported occupied in the state.

It is only the duty of the police to assist in the recovery of public property if we are needed, Major Robson Cabanas of the military police told media inside the legislature Friday. Im optimistic and hope everything goes down peacefully.

NEWSLETTER: Get the days top headlines from Times Editor Davan Maharaj >>

Outside, a group of students banged drums in the sun and tried to rally support of passing traffic with signs and chants.

The tactic of occupying schools has recently become popular as a way to draw attention to poor conditions or inadequate facilities.

They just cant get away with robbing our education anymore. All I have to eat at my school is crackers, said 15-year-old Gabriel Rodrigo Dos Santos, who became involved with the student occupation movement last year. They better be investigated. I started sleeping here last Thursday.

Bevins is a special correspondent.

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It was in many ways a typical performance on Thursday for the Russian conductor Valery Gergiev and his Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra -- impassioned, precise yet bursting with primal energy. It even featured an appearance of the maestros trademark fluttering right hand.

But it was the venue, the majestic Roman theater in the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra, that made the concert a special one: Less than a year ago, the very same ground where the orchestra now played had run red with the blood of dozens of Syrian soldiers slaughtered by the extremist group Islamic State.

Last month, troops loyal to Syrian President Bashar Assad drove jihadists out of the nearly 4,000-year-old city after weeks of battles and a barrage of airstrikes from Russian warplanes.

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But that grueling fight appeared to be a distant memory on Thursday, as a solitary violinist, donning a white cap against the intense desert sun, played the grieving, discordant strains of Johann Sebastian Bachs Chaconne for Solo Violin.

An audience of bemused Syrian soldiers, stern-looking Russian military advisors in wrap-around sunglasses, United Nations representatives and government functionaries sat in the shadow of the ancient Roman theaters crumbling columns.

Held in the run-up to Victory Day, the May 9 Russian holiday that commemorates the surrender of Nazi Germany to the former Soviet Union, the performance appeared to cast the campaign against Islamic extremists in Syria in the same lineage as the Great Patriotic War.

Here on this great stage, our concert in Palmyra is our appeal for everyone to come to peace and unity, to unite and work against this evil, against terrorism, said Gergiev, who is a close friend of Russian President Vladimir Putin and is also music director of the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra.

He formerly served as principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra.

We protest against barbarians who destroyed wonderful monuments of world culture. We protest against the execution of people here on this great stage.

Some of Palmyras most important historic structures, including the Arch of Triumph and the Temple of Bal, were destroyed or damaged during Islamic States 10-month occupation of the city.

Khaled Asaad, the 81-year-old Syrian archeologist who was head of antiquities for the city, was publicly beheaded in August 2015.

Putin, speaking via live video link from the southern Russian city of Sochi, said the concert was as an expression of gratitude for those who fight against terrorism without sparing their own lives.

The Russian government has portrayed its military campaign in Syria as part of a greater fight against terrorist groups in general, and especially Islamic State.

But Russian forces have also targeted opposition groups  some supported by the United States  which are fighting to wrest control of the country from the Assad government.

Thursdays concert also included an extract from the Russian opera Not Love Alone, as well as Sergei Prokofievs Classical symphony, a work that Gergiev said represented a lot of optimism and hope.

But it proved to be a short interlude to the violence that continued to flare across the country, despite the renewed commitment to a purported cessation of hostilities brokered by the United States and Russia.

The same day, 12 people were killed and at least 40 injured after two bombings struck a city in the countryside areas of Homs, according to the Syrian state news operator, SANA.

Meanwhile, a pro-opposition monitor, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said at least 28 people were killed after an airstrike struck a refugee camp near the town of Sarmada, about 140 miles northwest of Palmyra.

Gergiev said he chose Bachs melancholy piece to express the greatness of human spirit, and I think it is appropriate to play it today, here.

Its very difficult to speak about emotions with you, he told the small audience assembled in the golden glow of the temple. In the music you will hear today, youll hear our pain and our memory.

Twitter: @nabihbulos
The Pentagon has launched airstrikes and sent a U.S. special operations team to southern Yemen to work with Arab military forces battling to push Al Qaeda militants out of cities and towns they captured during the countrys civil war.

The dozen or so U.S. commandos were sent to Mukalla after about 2,000 Yemeni and Saudi-led coalition troops retook the strategic seaport, oil terminal and airport in what was seen as a major victory on April 24.

Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, known as AQAP, had controlled the port city for a year, and it was considered their most significant stronghold. Most of the militants reportedly withdrew before the coalition advance following mediation by Muslim clerics.

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The U.S. advisors are providing intelligence and other assistance to Yemeni and Arab coalition forces, led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, as they push west from the city, according to the Pentagon.

U.S. drones and warplanes have launched four airstrikes since April 23 that killed 10 militants, U.S. officials said.

This is specifically about routing AQAP from Mukalla, and that has largely occurred, Pentagon spokesman Capt. Jeff Davis said Friday. This is really about providing fusion and access to U.S. information on a tactical, real-time level.

AQAP is a significant threat and they need to be rooted out of there, Davis added.

The U.S. team is supposed to help coordinate aerial surveillance operations and help local commanders with mission planning, Davis said.

The Boxer, a Navy amphibious assault ship with more than 1,200 sailors and Marines aboard, is stationed offshore in the Gulf of Aden to provide medical support if required.

The special operations team is the first U.S. military unit to officially return to Yemen since March 2015, when a large U.S. military and counter-terrorism contingent was withdrawn from an air base used to launch drone strikes and raids against Al Qaeda.

AQAP has flourished since then amid the chaos of the multi-sided civil war, seizing cities and towns, looting banks, and raising millions of dollars by extorting companies, imposing taxes and export duties, and smuggling.

But the Al Qaeda franchise and its rival, Islamic State, were excluded from the cease-fire between Yemens government and the Houthi insurgents that took effect on April 10, leading to United Nations-brokered peace talks in Kuwait.

U.S. intelligence agencies consider AQAP one of Al Qaedas most dangerous offshoots because of its repeated attempts to attack Western targets.

The group attempted to bomb a U.S.-bound airliner over Detroit in 2009, tried to take down two cargo planes headed to Chicago in 2010, and claimed responsibility for the mass shooting that killed 12 people at the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris in 2015.

Yemen has been engulfed in conflict since 2014, when a Shiite Muslim minority group called the Houthi overran Sana, the capital, and took over much of the government.

Houthi rebels then pushed south and appeared on the verge of capturing Aden, the countrys economic hub, when Saudi-led warplanes launched a counterattack in March 2015.

By then, the rebels had forced Yemens U.S.-backed president, Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, into exile and controlled much of the Arab worlds poorest nation.

The Houthis have fought against AQAP, Sunni Muslims whom they consider enemies. But Saudi airstrikes have chiefly targeted the Houthis, giving Al Qaeda a relatively free hand.

Seth Jones, a former U.S. counter-terrorism official now with Rand Corp., the Santa Monica-based think tank, said AQAP was losing territory until Hadis pro-Western government fell.

The collapse of the central government meant a lot of pressure against AQAP had stopped, Jones said.

Mukalla, a provincial capital with about 300,000 residents, is an important seaport and oil terminal in Yemen. AQAP used it to sell oil, control trade and move weapons in and out of their territory.

The militants yearlong occupation of the city, and their ability to keep order, provide electricity and other services, gave a psychological boost to Al Qaedas position in Yemen, said Stephen Seche, the U.S. ambassador to Yemen from 2007 to 2010.

AQAP was operating with impunity, he said. They were creating a sense of security and stability and normalcy, and that is something absolutely we want to disrupt.... It gave them time to design plans, and we know they want to launch attacks.

AQAP may have made a tactical retreat in Mukalla, Seche said.

They will regroup elsewhere, he said. This is a bit of whack-a-mole.

william.hennigan@latimes.com

brian.bennett@latimes.com
The creators of Siri, the sometimes-smart AI assistant running on Apple iPhones since 2011, have another AI up their sleeve. They're going to introduce their next generation AI, "Viv," to the world next Monday.

Here's what we know in advance, thanks to a Washington Post "profile" of Viv released on Thursday.

Siri Evolved

It's tempting to think of Viv as just the next Siri, but hopefully not as easily confused by accents, vocal quirks, or simple background noise. But the two co-creators of Siri, Dag Kittlaus and Adam Cheyer -- who co-founded Viv Labs to create its namesake AI shortly after they sold Siri to Apple -- are hinting that Viv could be a lot more than just a smarter Siri, Alexa, M, Cortana, or Google Now.

In fact, Viv Labs told the Washington Post that the ultimate goal for Viv is to be a ubiquitous interface to do anything through the mobile Internet, through the most seamless interface humans ever created: simple conversation.

"It's about taking the way that humans have naturally interacted with each other for thousands of years and applying that to the way they interact with services," said Kittlaus. "Everyone knows how to hold a conversation."

More Than 'Smart Siri'

If that sounds like Siri 2.0, you're right.

But Kittlaus told The Guardian earlier this year that the implications of getting a virtual assistant or AI to the capability that it can serve anything up to users -- be it information from a Wikipedia article, directions to the nearest grocery store, or a pizza that's ordered and delivered without downloading an app or navigating an online menu -- will be transformative.

"What happens when you have a system that is 10,000 more capable?" said Kittlaus to The Guardian about the difference between Viv and other current AI assistants. "It will shift the economics of the Internet."

And the Post report bears some of this out in one example of Viv's first real test: ordering a pizza.

In the test, Viv was able to understand a complicated, plain language request full of different levels of specificity: "Get me a pizza from Pizz'a Chicago near my office."

According to the story, Viv not only understood the command, it responded by asking what toppings they wanted. Viv's engineers answered with more levels of complex information like "half cheese," "pepperoni," "Caesar salad," along with more commands to taking back some toppings and changing the size of the pizza.

Viv managed to get almost all of it right, except the office's address at first -- and the pizzas later arrived without calling, Google searching, typing anything, or downloading and subscribing to a delivery app.

Big Buzz From Big Players

That's just ordering pizza, which may not seem too impressive.

And it's easy (and not uncommon) for tech entrepreneurs to talk about how their service or app will "change the world." It's much harder to gauge how much of that is truth and how much is bluster.

So here's an indication of what's coming with Viv, and how valuable (i.e., disruptive) it could be: Viv hasn't been publicly demonstrated yet, but Google and Facebook have reportedly already made impressive acquisition offers.

It makes sense from an investment angle, but possibly the case of Google's offer as self-preservation might hint at the capabilities of Viv.

As SearchEngineLand noted on the Post story, "If this doesn't sound like Google or a replacement for Google, I'm not sure what does."
COLUMBUS  Nebraska Attorney General Doug Peterson has heard all the arguments for legalizing medical and recreational marijuana.

They bring up weeds popularity  and acceptance  during the 1960s and 70s, and say alcohol causes more problems than marijuana use.

Peterson isnt buying it.

Todays pot is different from the drug people were toking five decades ago, according to Peterson, whos unwilling to shrug off the recent marijuana revolution.

I find a lot of (state) senators just dont seem to think its that big of deal, and thats frustrating, Peterson said in an interview Thursday while visiting several area communities.

The attorney general said marijuana grown by commercial businesses in states like Colorado  where recreational use of the drug was legalized by voters  is more potent than ever.

Peterson said he recently toured a facility in Colorado that was growing marijuana with a THC content near 30 percent, far stronger than the 3-5 percent level of the psychoactive chemical found in weed in the 1970s.

He must have thought I was an investor because he was tickled to death that the product was that strong, Peterson said.

The attorneys general in Nebraska and Oklahoma argue this high-potency weed is crossing state lines, straining law enforcement agencies in states where marijuana is illegal and consuming tax dollars. They are challenging Colorados approval of recreational marijuana use on the grounds that it violates the federal Controlled Substances Act.

Peterson believes the marijuana industry is also targeting youths by adding the drug to edibles such as cookies and candy.

You dont put edible products into Pixy Stix, power drinks and things of that nature if they werent trying to get the young people involved in it, he said.

If a beer company increased the alcohol content in each can then added a logo geared toward children there would be public outcry, he contends.

The marijuana industry does that, its just under the radar, he said.

Peterson opposes medical cannabis  for the time being  because he believes its a gateway to medical marijuana, then recreational use.

He said theres a clear progression from allowing people to smoke weed to alleviate pain to allowing people to smoke weed for fun.

Thats exactly what happened in Colorado, Peterson said.

The attorney general argues that pro-marijuana groups know theres resistance to fully legalizing the drug, but people are more willing to support the idea after theres a user base for medicinal purposes.

Peterson and Gov. Pete Ricketts opposed a bill introduced this year that would have legalized medical cannabis in pill or liquid form in Nebraska. The measure from Sen. Tommy Garrett of Bellevue was defeated by a filibuster.

Products such as cannabis oil, which doesnt contain THC, must be studied further by the medical industry to determine their effectiveness as a treatment option, he said, and thats happening now at facilities such as the University of Nebraska Medical Center.

Public policy shouldnt be driven by emotional testimony from families looking any possible solution to medical issues, he added.

Peterson also discussed the need to improve mental health services in Nebraska.

The attorney general said a lack of mental health resources is the No. 1 concern expressed to him by law enforcement personnel across the state.

The difficult thing is that law enforcement is not in a position to properly handle someone who is having a major psychotic episode, Peterson said. Theyre not in a position, nor do they want to be in a position, to diagnose.

If someone is having a major psychotic episode, putting them in your jail is not treatment, he added.

When the state shifted some treatment from regional facilities to community-based services, gaps opened in areas where local resources never materialized.

The lack of available facilities for mental health care has become an issue for law enforcement agencies that cant find openings for emergency in-patient treatment.

Whats frustrating is weve thrown the responsibility on law enforcement, but we havent given them the resources, said Peterson, who called it a deep and longstanding problem that must be addressed by the Legislature.

The problem is none of these solutions are easy and oftentimes theyre not going to be cheap, he said.
UPDATE: Police: Car speeding at 100 mph before triple-fatal crash



Three people died and one person was badly hurt when a car crashed into three parked vehicles early Friday morning on Willow Park Road in Bethlehem Township, Northampton County Coroner Zachary Lysek said.

A neighbor reported seeing two of the cars burning and Lysek said it will be some time before the victims can be identified.

The crash was reported at 1:22 a.m. on a curve, about a block in from Freemansburg Avenue. One of the vehicles was mangled. The three cars usually park of the shoulder of the road, a neighbor said.

Those who died were in the mangled vehicle.

The injured person was taken to the burn center at Lehigh Valley Hospital in Salisbury Township.

The street remained closed as Pennsylvania State Police did an accident reconstruction. Bethlehem Township police are heading the investigation.

The road reopened at 8:07 a.m.

Anyone who saw the crash or may have information on the victims is asked to call the Northampton County emergency dispatch center at 610-759-2200.

Tony Rhodin may be reached at arhodin@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @TonyRhodin. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
Friday morning's fiery wreck that killed three marked at least the sixth wreck since 2012 in the vicinity of Willow Park Road and Freemansburg Avenue in Bethlehem Township.

The fatal wreck, reported at 1:22 a.m., happened on a curve about a block from Freemansburg Avenue. Police say a car had been seen speeding close to 100 mph before it struck three parked cars and burst into flames. In addition to the three fatalities, a fourth person suffered serious injuries.

Here's a look at other crashes reported nearby since 2012:

April 7, 2016: The driver of a Ford Mustang lost control on Willow Park Road in Bethlehem Township, taking out a road sign and damaging a stone wall, near the curve. Police said the driver may have been racing before the crash.

Sept. 5, 2014: A woman was injured when the vehicle she was driving crossed over the double yellow line and collided with another vehicle on Freemansburg Avenue, near the intersection with Willow Park Road.

April 17, 2014: A tractor-trailer hauling construction debris lost control and slid on its side into a Freemansburg Avenue home, just west of Willow Park Road. Authorities said another car made an illegal left turn from Willow Park Road onto Freemansburg Avenue into the path of the tractor-trailer, causing the crash.

May 1, 2012: A woman and her passenger suffered minor injuries after the vehicle she was driving collided with another vehicle at the curve on Willow Park Road. Her vehicle ended up in Nancy Run. Police said she was speeding.

Feb. 28, 2012: Two car collided on Freemansburg Avenue and Willow Park Road. Occupants of one of the cars were treated at the scene by emergency responders.

Nick Falsone may be reached at nfalsone@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @nickfalsone. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
A 22-year-old clerk, who was charged in a 2012 Bethlehem Township gas station robbery, returned from Puerto Rico Thursday night and was arraigned on four charges, court papers say.

Marianne Padilla Diaz, who was arrested April 12 by the Comandancia de la Policia Estatal de Guayama in Guayama, Puerto Rico, was sent to Northampton County Prison in lieu of $50,000 bail, court papers say. A 10 percent option was allowed, on-call District Judge Antonia Grifo said.

Bethlehem Township police brought Padilla back to the Lehigh Valley to face charges of robbery, theft, conspiracy to commit robbery and conspiracy to commit theft.

Padilla Diaz was in a relationship at the time of the robbery with David Bermudez, one of two gunmen believed to have robbed Rudy's Gulf at 10:44 p.m. Sept. 12 of that year during Padilla Diaz's shift, according to court records.

Investigators reviewed surveillance video from the gas station at 2900 Easton Ave. in the township and saw "Padilla Diaz failed to make the last couple of required cash drops into the safe, resulting in excess cash in the register drawer," court records say.

Neither of the robbers pointed a handgun at Padilla Diaz during the holdup, police said. One of the men was seen "slapping Padilla Diaz across the buttocks."

The Northampton County investigative grand jury case resulted in charges against Bermudez and his wife, Jessica Ruiz, court papers say. The other robber, believed to be Juan Fernandez, committed suicide in 2014, authorities have reported.

Tony Rhodin may be reached at arhodin@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @TonyRhodin. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
The whistles were again sounding at Bethlehem Steel on Thursday.

Once used to communicate safety hazards and other alerts over the din of the massive steel plant, the whistles today are one of the many artifacts housed in the National Museum of Industrial History.

The once-embattled museum on Thursday offered a sneak peek to attendees of a South Bethlehem Historical Society conference on historic preservation.

Almost 20 years in the making, the museum is slated to open by Musikfest this August. The museum plans to announce an official opening date in the near future, Executive Director Amy Hollander said.

At times in recent years, Thursday's tour seemed unlikely.

The museum was mired in a Northampton County grand jury and state attorney general investigation that brought sluggish progress to a standstill. Neither found any criminal wrongdoing, but both criticized the museum for spending $17 million over 17 years while failing to open and for employing Executive Director Stephen Donches, who was first demoted and then forced to resign because of the investigations.

For Hollander, the tour seemed fitting as May 5 marked her one-year anniversary at the helm of the museum, which was first envisioned as the anchor to spur the SteelStacks redevelopment of the steel land.

The museum is housed in the 1913 electric repair shop and organizers have taken pains to retain its history. Visitors will be greeted by the massive original crane in the lobby and the original wood ceiling has been preserved.

An old Bethlehem Steel train car -- either from the open hearth or electric furnace melt shop -- will soon run on a track out in the front courtyard.

"We want to keep what's old, old and new, new," said Mike Piersa, museum specialist.

The museum tells the story of America's industrial achievements through the lives of its workers, innovators and entrepreneurs with the hope that they inspire the next generation. The human connections at the root of those national stories, like the Bethlehem beam, Hollander said.

"We're really trying to showcase the stories of people," she said.

When the museum opens, the public will again have a chance to see pieces from the Smithsonian Institute's 1976 bicentennial exhibit, which was a recreation of the original 1876 centennial exhibit. The museum is affiliated with the Smithsonian and exhibits are on loan from the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History.

"Instead of borrowing books, we get to borrow these amazing artifacts," Piersa said.

Piersa led Thursday's visitors on a tour, explaining how the museum and exhibits will be laid out, while also sharing the unique stories behind the machinery on the floor.

They got to marvel at the 115-ton Corliss steam engine that is so heavy it had to be installed before the concrete floor was poured. The engine pumped water for York's municipal water company for 42 years and volunteers have painstakingly restored it.

As the museum has come together, Piersa has learned more and more about the history of the artifacts. Take the blue Otto engine. It is the oldest surviving four-cycle Otto engine and it didn't have a mundane job when it was in use.

It actually helped power Princeton's observatory telescope and turn the dome. And in 1882, the astronomer using the telescope first saw the transit of Venus, Piersa said.

"You couldn't even imagine that kind of use," he said. "We have all these incredible stories these machines tell."

Former Bethlehem Steel CEO Curtis "Hank" Barnette, who sits on the museum's board, said he's very proud of the transformation of the former Steel land into SteelStacks and the Bethlehem Commerce Center.

"The museum was a critical part of it," Barnette said.

When Steel began to flounder, efforts to shore up the Bethlehem plant or sell it off both failed. But faced with closure the board didn't got with the easy option: clean up the site, plant some grass and fence it off, he said.

"The other alternative was preserve it," Barnette said.

And he thinks the unique public-private partnership has lived up to the challenge.

Don Young spent 33 years working at the Bethlehem plant, a total of 56 years employed by Bethlehem Steel and its successor, the former electric furnace melt department foreman said.

"I'm glad to see the current director is finally getting it open," said Young, who volunteers at the museum. "It's certainly pretty and clean, what the steel mill definitely wasn't."

Young hopes in the future the museum has more of an emphasis on the Bethlehem Steel local history but he's so proud of the site's transformation.

He feels like with the site's adaptive, reuse this small steel town has finally bested Pittsburgh.

Sara K. Satullo may be reached at ssatullo@lehighvalleylive.com.com. Follow her on Twitter @sarasatullo. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
When the father and son duo behind Geakers Tacos asked to join a local alliance of food trucks, they were shocked by the response they received.

The taco shop in the Miller Heights section of Bethlehem Township has three food trucks it operates at 50 Lehigh Valley events a year, said Jared Geake, who co-owns Geakers with his dad Kevin Geake.

When the Geakes learned of the May 14 Lehigh Valley Food Truck Festival at Coca-Cola Park in Allentown, they researched how to become a vendor.

The festival is only open to members of the Greater Lehigh Valley Mobile Food Alliance, so Jared Geake e-mailed the group but got no response. He made contact via Facebook and was told the alliance would contact him after an upcoming meeting. But again he got no response.

Jared Geake sent a follow up Facebook message and was told that the board of directors had rejected Geakers Tacos.

"Unfortunately, we have received significant feedback that you've been difficult to work with," the message read. "Go screw."

Jared Geake said he stared at his phone in disbelief. The message was deleted and then another message was sent that instead, in part, read:

"Unfortunately, we have received significant feedback that you have been difficult to work with, so, unfortunately, your request is denied. We do, however, wish you the best of luck with your business."

The alliance maintains that the "go screw" response was an "unfortunate" autocorrect error.

"I find that very, very hard to believe," Jared Geake said.

The alliance could've just said they were not interested and left it at that, the Geakes say.

"We've been a staple of the Lehigh Valley for 15 years," Kevin Geake said. "We have every right and qualification to be a part of the alliance."

As the food truck festival approaches, the Geakes say customers have been asking if they'll be able to find them there and they got tired of explaining why they won't. So, on Wednesday they took to their Facebook page to explain they are not welcome in the alliance.

GEAKERS TACOS NOT WELCOME IN LV FOODTRUCK ALLIANCE!!! Geakers is sorry to announce we will not be participating in the... Posted by GEAKERS TACOS on Wednesday, May 4, 2016

Many of their customers quickly came to their defense, praising the Geakes for their food and customer service, and were critical of the alliance.

The alliance says the Geakes' decision to post the conversation to Facebook, rather than meeting to discuss the rejection, highlights why the business is not a good fit for the alliance.

Members of the alliance adhere to a code of conduct and all new membership applicants are screened to make sure they're in line with it, the group said in a statement. As part of the screening, the alliance reaches out to members, fellow vendors and venues for feedback.

"This decision was made solely by the GLVMFA Board regarding (the Geakes) treatment of fellow vendors," the statement says. "In no way was their food quality or customer service in question at any time. Respect amongst our members is part of the organization's code of conduct and after being party to this muckraking debacle, we have been assured that we made the right decision."

Jared Geake thinks the idea that Geakers is difficult is ridiculous.

"We didn't get 50 events on our own by being hard to work with," he said.

Kevin Geake says that he thinks some vendors can get resentful when lines start forming at his taco truck. Some of the food truck vendors are interested in serving high-end twists on food and charging $9 an item, he said. That's just too expensive for a family of four, he said.

"It's so important to be affordable for people," Kevin Geake said. "Then everything else will fall into place."

The Geakes could have requested a meeting to find a way to work together but instead they chose to start an online mudslinging attack, the alliance said.

"(A meeting) would have shown us that the complaints we received were misguided," the statement says. "Instead what they did was validate everything we heard, and then some."

Jared Geake says his repeated attempts to reach out to the alliance weren't successful in the past.

The Geakes feel their customers' response and successful business history shows the complaints are unfounded. The business began in Wind Gap in 1988 and moved to its Freemansburg location in the township in 2002.

"It was not easy," Kevin Geake said. "We had to earn one customer at a time."

Sara K. Satullo may be reached at ssatullo@lehighvalleylive.com.com. Follow her on Twitter @sarasatullo. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
A man is accused of punching his ex-girlfriend in the face back in January, and then punching a woman who tried to stop the assault, Bethlehem police said.

After choking the ex until she saw stars, David Hill allegedly told her, "Now it's war. You got something coming to you. Watch your back. I'm going to kill you."

Hill, of the 1100 block of Linden Street in Bethlehem, was arrested Friday morning and arraigned on charges of aggravated assault, making terroristic threats, simple assault, criminal mischief, attempted criminal mischief, and harassment.

Hill, who turns 26 on Saturday, was sent to Northampton County Prison in lieu of $10,000 bail.

The victims called Bethlehem police a little after midnight on Jan. 11. Hill's ex-girlfriend reported they were arguing when he punched her twice in the face, police said.

Hill then punched the victim's friend in the face when she tried to get between the couple, police said.

After choking his ex, police said Hill then kicked her car, leaving a dent, and tried to smash a window to her home on East Broad Street.

Sarah Cassi may be reached at scassi@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow her on Twitter @SarahCassi. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
Ongoing efforts to revitalise Rathdowney are getting a double boost with the official launch of Inspire Rathdowney and the holding of an event supported by Bank of Ireland.

Representatives of Laois County Council, the Laois Local Enterprise Office, Laois Partnership and the Institute of Technology Carlow gathered recently to launch the Inspire project

It will see the recruitment of 20 participants from Rathdowney and its hinterland and assist them to explore and create new business opportunities.

This project aims to provide targeted interventions to assist innovators, entrepreneurs and SMEs to develop their skills and abilities to providing greater levels of economic growth and employment as well as fostering competitiveness.

The Co-ordinator for INSPIRE Rathdowney is Liz Kennedy. The project will be based in the Youth Cafe premises in Rathdowney and will begin recruiting participants during May. The programme will run for 10 months.

The organisers invite people with a good idea for a business, but are struggling to get off the ground, or already have a business but are looking for ways to develop and expand, to get involved. An Information evening on the programme will be held in mid May in Rathdowney.

Anybody with any queries should contact Denise Rainey, Business Development Officer, Laois County Council at 0578664103 or drainey@laoiscoco.ie

Meanwhile, Revive Rathdowney Revisited 2016 in conjunction with the Bank of Ireland is running an event for all businesses, community groups and professionals on Friday, May 6 in St Fergals College from 4-8pm.

Businesses and clubs are encouraged to to contact any member of the organising committee to attend.

The organisers say the event will offer a chance to directly promote business and groups and network to build awareness of each others important role in the community.

Each business, community group and professional attending will also be given a chance to promote themselves locally in the Revive Rathdowney Revisited 2016 Directory.

The directory will be published with the name and contact details of the all the businesses, professionals and groups.

This will be launched after the event and will be distributed amongst the community and wider area.

Committee members to contact to obtain an application form: Connell Breslin 087-7670274; Pauline Keane 087-2713395; Rosaleen Fairbrother 086-3619759; Billy Mansfield 087-2555887; Fr. Martin Delaney 086-2444594

Elaine Maher 086-1980628
The St Patricks Day trip to New York by the CEO and the vice chairman of Laois County Council was hailed as a great success at the April council meeting.

John Mulholland and Cllr John Moran spent four days in New York, promoting Laois as a business destination, visiting Mayor Bill de Blasio at Gracie Mansion, and walking in the parade.

We were the only county to receive an invite to Gracie Mansion, where we presented Bill de Blasio with the Coat of Arms of County Laois, with Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade, Charlie Flanagan. I compliment the Laois Association on being so active, they turned up in huge numbers. It was surprising and exciting to see so many people waving the flag for Laois, said the CEO Mr Mulholland.

On March 16 they had met with IDA Ireland on Park Avenue to outline high speed broadband in Portlaoise and the highly skilled workforce in the county, presenting a new business brochure 'Connect 2 Laois' to the IDA.

On March 18 they visited the Grace Institute in Lower Manhattan, co-founded in 1897 by WR Grace, a Ballylinan native who was twice the New York Mayor, and accepted the Statue of Liberty from France.

The institute was set up to give free education, training and job placements to young women, continuing to do so.

They met descendants of William Russell Grace, presenting them with a scroll and the Laois coat of arms to commemorate the visit and restore links to Laois.

This son of Laois left a legacy in New York with his humanitarian works. I hope this link can be worked on in the future, said Mr Mulholland.

Cllr Moran is also from the Ballylinan area, and is hopeful that the Grace family, now spread over 40 states, and very well off with a skyscraper in New York, will come to visit Laois.

I feel we achieved a lot by being there, I would be very surprised if there was not some result. The family want further information from the consulate on where they lived and that is being sent to them. We invited them over and they were thrilled we made something of them, I am convinced we will gain, he said, congratulating the CEO on organising a packed agenda for the trip, with time in the evenings for a singsong.

Cathaoirleach Cllr Catherine Fitzgerald who had sent Cllr Moran in her stead, congratulated them both on their efforts.

Cllr Jerry Lodge said nobody else is going to shout for Laois.

I compliment the delegation, anything that promotes a positive image is to be encouraged, he said.

Cllr Padraig Fleming congratulated Cllr Moran on his work, It is great to be out there promoting Laois.

The trip was at the invite of the Laois Association in New York, It was estimated beforehand by the council to cost 2,200. No-one attended from the council in 2015.
The hard-working Marina Chapter in Carrick-on-Shannon is one of the top networking groups in all of Ireland.

Irelands top business networkers were celebrated on Monday at a special award ceremony hosted by BNI Ireland South and West in The Hodson Bay Hotel, Athlone.

The Marina Chapter based in Carrick-on-Shannon was recognised as one of the top four Chapters in the country, beating off strong competition from groups across Ireland.

The 44 Marina Chapter members come from a broad range of professions and have generated over 11 million since 2010, 1.2million of which has been generated so far this year.

The group who meet each Wednesday morning at 6.45am in the Landmark Hotel also support 320 local jobs with this set to grow further this year.

Speaking of the accolade, Bernie McGauran, Chapter President said, "We are extremely proud to be recognised as one of the top networking groups in the country. All of our members turn up each week to not only grow their own businesses but also to support their colleagues in the group and ultimately to better the local economy.

By supporting each other we ensure that business is kept local which is incredibly important.

I also hope that this accolade will encourage other local businesses to come and visit our weekly meeting to find out how they can also be a part of building their business and ensuring that Leitrim businesses can thrive in to the future."

I would encourage anyone who is interested in growing their business to get in contact with Bernie McGauran (info@lockup.ie) and come along as a guest to one of our weekly meetings which take place every Wednesday morning at 6.45am in The Landmark Hotel.

To find out more please visit www.bnisw.ie
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The interim figures for the London elections are being declared throughout the day on London Elects. Counting is being carried out electronically.

In the contest for Mayor of London around 50% of the votes have been counted and verified. Progress in counting is being revealed in each of the large Assembly constituencies. The bar chart (which tantalisingly does not show the percentages  where did they get that idea from?) indicates that Sadiq Khan is substantially ahead of Zac Goldsmith on first preferences at the moment. Caroline Pidgeon is lying fourth just behind the Greens, but ahead of UKIP. Of course, this may change as the constituencies level up in their counting progress.

We are not expecting to win any of the Assembly constituency seats  each covers three or more Parliamentary constituencies  so our focus must be on the top-up party lists which will produce the London-wide members. Last time round we gained two seats from this, and we are hoping to gain two, possibly three, seats this time. At the moment, with slightly more than 50% verified ballots, the Greens, UKIP and Lib Dems are fighting for the three positions behind the two main parties. We are currently shown as fifth, but the three parties are too close to predict.

To add to the suspense, the progress in each of the contests will be frozen once 90% of the votes have been counted. We will then have to wait for the final result until it is formally announced from City Hall  this is expected at around 6pm, but could, of course, be delayed beyond that.

* Mary Reid is a contributing editor on Lib Dem Voice. She was a councillor in Kingston upon Thames, where she is still very active with the local party, and is the Hon President of Kingston Lib Dems.
FIFTY refugees fleeing from violence in Syria will resettle throughout the city and county at the end of this month, and another 50 Syrians will move into local accommodation throughout the year, the Limerick Leader has learned.

As part of a nationwide resettlement programme, Limerick City and County Council has agreed to offer protection to those who have fled their home country, according to a council spokesperson.

It is believed that 12 families  around 50 people  will be resettled across the city and county within the next two to three weeks. According to a spokesperson, by the end of 2016, there will be 25 Syrian families in Limerick. The spokesperson stated that the Department of Justice and Equality has asked the council to chair an interagency working group to assist with the resettlement of Syrian refugees.

Doras Luimni director, Leonie Kerins said that they very much welcome the councils announcement.

We do know that there are very large numbers of Syrians in refugee camps in neighbouring countries, such as the Lebanon and Jordan. And the UNHCR was responsible for this programme and implementing the resettlement into Ireland. They have made it really clear that they do not have enough resources to provide for people in the camps because of the volume of people that is there.

So they are facing shortages, such as food, medicine, and they are not able to provide schooling for the children who are spending years in the refugee camps. And I am absolutely sure that the families that are coming to Ireland, in particular to Limerick, will be incredibly relieved to be able to start a new life in a safe country, in a safe place, she explained.

Council spokesperson stated that those admitted under the programme will have the same rights and entitlements as an Irish person, under the 1951 Geneva Convention.
THE effluent from a large holding tank has been seeping out on to a public road in Dromcollogher, local councillor Jerome Scanlan has revealed.

The effluent trickles down from a holding tank on a small private estate at the edge of the town and along the edge of a public footpath to a storm drain, just yards away from two nearby houses. And, according to Cllr Scanlan, the smell on some days is almost unbearable.

In addition, he told the Limerick Leader, volunteers from the local Tidy Towns group have been regularly scrubbing the area clean but within days, the effluent residue is back again.

It is not just a health and safety hazard, according to Cllr Scanlan. It is also costing points in the Tidy Towns competition.

Planning permission was given for 14 houses in what is now called Hillside Estate about 2003 or 2004 Cllr Scanlan explained. These were much-needed private houses in the area and planning permission was subject to connection to the waste water treatment system, he said. But the builder/developer was then told there was not sufficient capacity in the system and, although all the piping had been put in place on the estate, the estate could not be linked in to the public system.

Instead, the solution held out to the builder was to build a retaining tank until such time as the system could be upgraded.

That was over a decade ago, Cllr Scanlan has now pointed out, and the waste water treatment plant in Dromcollogher has yet to be upgraded. Meanwhile, the holding tank, which is emptied on a regular basis, continues to seep effluent.

Another outcome, was that three houses, meant to be to the front of the estate, were never built. Instead, the holding tank is located there, and, although emptied on a regular basis, continues to seep effluent.

Limerick City and County Council took the estate in charge some years ago and footpaths and public lighting have been put in place.

But now, according to Cllr Scanlan, it is Irish Water who is responsible for waste water on the estate.

A lot of rubble and waste has gotten into the piping system in the meantime, he said. They will have to clear out the piping before it can be connected. 

I have a commitment the problem will be solved within weeks rather than months. But it has taken five years to get where we are at the moment.
A MAN convicted of drink-driving was disqualified for two years after a judge ruled his detention at Henry Street garda station was lawful.

During a contested hearing, Limerick District Court was told Martin McCarthy, aged 28, of Coolroe, Ballincollig, County Cork was arrested following an incident in the early hours of November 26, last.

Sergeant Val McCormack said he observed a vehicle being driven by the defendant passing Henry Street garda station at 3.20am.

He said the lights were turned off and that Mr McCarthy appeared to be disoriented.

Following his arrest at Bishops Quay a short time later, the defendant was brought to the garda station where he supplied two specimens of breath which confirmed he was over the legal alcohol limit.

Being cross-examined by solicitor Adrian Frawley, Sgt McCormack agreed he began the statutory 20 minute period of observation at 3.46am and that he restarted it at 3.59am after Mr McCarthy went to the toilet.

Its procedure, he told Mr Frawley, adding it was best practice in accordance with his training.

Seeking to have the case dismissed, Mr Frawley submitted the period of observation should not have been restarted as his client had been accompanied into the toilet by Sgt McCormack.

Delivering her judgment, Judge Marian OLeary said she was satisfied the defendant was advised of the consequences of taking a toilet break and she added she did not believe the second period of observation was excessive.

Mr McCarthy, who has lodged an appeal, was fined 300.
LIMERICKS three Darkness into Light walks this weekend are on course to be the most popular ever staged.

With just days to go to the Pieta House fundraiser, organisers have confirmed that more than 2,000 people have registered to do the walks in Limerick city, Kilmallock and Newcastle West.

That number is expected to rise between now and Saturday morning at 4.15am, when the walks begin.

The seventh time the Darkness into Light walk has taken place in Limerick, suicide prevention charity Pieta House has called on people to register in advance, either online, by phone, or in the former 7Camicie shop at Patrick Street to be sure of a T-shirt and a place on the walk.

The walk is a unique early morning experience, which begins in darkness as thousands of people walk or run a five kilometre route while dawn is breaking.

Last years event attracted 100,000 participants in over 80 locations across Ireland and abroad.

Here in Limerick, some 7,000 people donned yellow T-shirts and took part in the circular route, which started at Thomond Park and took in much of the northside.

Two thousand people apiece took part in Newcastle West and Kilmallock.

In addition to this, 2,000 people completed an online survey comprised of a series of questionnaires both before and after taking part in Darkness Into Light.

The research, conducted by the University of Limerick in conjunction with Pieta House, showed a significant increase in levels of well-being after taking part in Darkness into Light, in particular for those who had lost someone to suicide.

The research also showed the important role of connecting with others to overcome suicidal ideation.

Darkness into Light is a truly unique event and this research proves what we have been seeing every May since 2009. Its much more than a fundraiser but an opportunity to reflect and to come together in solidarity with your community, said Joan Freeman, founder of Pieta House. Im encouraging people to join the thousands in Ireland and across the world and walk from the darkness into the light.

Pieta House, which marks its tenth anniversary this year, has helped more than 20,000 people through its nine centres in Ireland. This includes its support centre at Mungret.

Such is the importance of Limerick to the Pieta House fundraiser, Ms Freeman always visits the launch of the Darkness into Light event in the city each year.

Last years event in Limerick raised 160,000 for the charity, money which will remain locally.

Although Darkness into Light will now take place in four continents across the world on different time zones, Ms Freeman has previously said she does not think the event would have been so successful were it not for the effort here in Limerick.

I genuinely love Limerick, she said. There is a courage about the people of Limerick. Remember they were the first county outside Dublin not only to host a Darkness into Light event, but also to bring a service to their community. They did it for the love of their own people, their own community. They have this courage, they have a resilience. One thing which strikes me is they are not afraid to admit there are problems. Limerick embraces everything that is given to it.

For more information, and to register for Darkness into Light, please telephone 061-484448, or visit dil.pieta.ie on the internet.

Pieta House volunteers will also be in the Crescent Shopping Centre registering participants on Thursday and Friday betwen 10am and 4pm.

And people wishing to register can also visit the former 7Camicie store in Patrick Street between 10am and 6pm Thursday and Friday.

The city walk kicks off at Thomond Park at 4.15am on Saturday morning, with the walk in Kilmallock starting at Colaiste Iosaef.

The walk in Newcastle West commences at the towns community centre.
THERE were dramatic and chaotic scenes at Limerick Courthouse and on the city streets this Friday afternoon, when more than 100 civilians forced the adjournment of Limerick repossessions court.

In the second half of repossession hearings, shortly after 12pm, at the Limerick Circuit Court, County Registrar Pat Wallace was jeered out of the courtroom when an individual started an hour-long scene of heckling and boisterous protests.

Following protests at the courthouse, a procession took place by lobby groups from Merchants Quay and down OConnell Street, where they attempted to enter a number of banks, including Bank of Ireland, AIB and Ulster Bank.

May I ask the County Registrar a question? to which he replied, No you may not. The man continued: Have you taken an oath to uphold the constitution of this country? This was followed by an abundance of cheers by those who attended.

A number of anti-eviction lobby groups attended in-court protest, including the Anti-Eviction Taskforce, who engaged with the defendants on the day. There were 169 cases to be heard on the day.

Tensions remain high at Limerick Circuit Court. County registrar Pat Wallace has adjourned proceedings pic.twitter.com/Hoxp2dPHZv  David Hurley (@DHurleyLL) May 6, 2016

Another man approached the registrar, and was asked to leave the courtroom. When gardai attempted to escort him out of the room, he resisted and momentarily wrestled with two members of the gardai.

When the man was taken out of the courthouse, those participating in the protesting stood around the solicitors and the gardai, shouting This is an absolute disgrace, with a number of people chanting This is a kangaroo court.

You are criminals, and you are all working for the Government, one individual shouted to the top of the room.

As Mr Wallace left, people chanted and stamped their feet harmoniously, as another couple of gardai arrived at the scene. Gardai approached a number of individuals who decided to record the incident, via their mobile phones.

While gardai conversed with those in the courthouse, and asked people to put away their mobile phones and video cameras, background voices cheered This is a civil court, and we are entitled to speak.

Every year, as a result of losing their homes, people are taking their lives and jumping into the rivers, a number of people echoed.

A number of solicitors, both representing the banks and defendants, were also forced to leave the room, as a chorus of people cheered Out, out, out.

Witnesses have told the Limerick Leader that the lobbyists followed the solicitors to their vehicles, before they departed.

One solicitor told the media, This protest has gone way too far, I think, and its just intimidation and harassing the court, he said.

One garda was surrounded by a dozen people, who continued to take a video of the scenes with their phones. She said: I have the right to my privacy, and recording in the courthouse is illegal.

It is not illegal, one person quickly responded.

It is. If you breach the peace, you will be arrested. If you surrounded any other garda like this, you would be arrested, she responded.

A theatrical display took place during the protests, when a woman - who did not wish to identify herself to the press - performed a soliloquy in the courthouse. She wore a cape and a Phantom of the Opera-esque mask, and received tremendous applause from the audience.

I am a human being who cannot deal with the debt of this country, she melodiously roared, which was reciprocated with cheers.

A garda approached her from behind and said quietly: Can you please, just, be quiet.

Twenty minutes before Mr Wallace returned to the courthouse, a number of protesters took over the jury box. A man stood up and walked towards the registrars seat:

Because the County Registrar has left the building, we hereby appoint 12 jurors and we have appointed a judge who will now charge the banks with fraud and corruption.

A man then sat in the judges seat and shouted All rise, and three gardai darted towards him to remove him from the courthouse.

At 1.10pm, Mr Wallace returned to the courthouse, following a large number of gardai entering the scene to calm the protest. Before he sat down, the protesters taunted him, which which was followed by a choral singing of the national anthem.

Gardai shouted: Silence the court. Mr Wallace left the room as the final lines of Amhran na bhFiann were sung.

After the courthouse was cleared, a procession began, which included the theatrical woman leading a parade from Merchants Quay, with a number of protesters carrying a coffin.

As they made their way through a single traffic lane on OConnell Street, they attempted to enter Bank of Ireland, where - according to a witness - they frightened a number of children who were inside the bank, crying.

Before they could access Ulster Bank, members of the gardai helped close the front doors to Ulster Bank, where the lobbyists stood outside, chanting.

Local man, Greg Doran said: This needed to be done. What the banks are doing is an absolute disgrace.
THE legacy of the National City of Culture will continue the international circuit, as one of its bursary film projects is set to be admired by movie enthusiasts at the Cannes Film Festival, this month.

The Clockmakers Dream, which was filmed in Limerick, will be one of 30 worldwide films to be screened at the Cannes Animation Day, on May 18, it was announced this week.

It is one of two shorts to receive 15,000 during the Limericks City of Culture designation, in 2014. The other project was Lost and Found, directed by Liam ONeill.

According to director Cashell Horgan, the project is hybrid film which took eight days to shoot and nine months to produce. Following its premiere at the Richard Harris Film Festival, renowned actor Jared Harris agreed to narrate the project.

Mr Horgan, who arrived home from Newport Beach Festival this week, told the Limerick Leader that it was absolutely incredible news.

The film stars local actor, Joe Mullins, who is the main protagonist in the animation project.

The film just about qualified because it has 30% of animation in it, as it is a hybrid. We had it originally as a stop-motion piece, and then experimented with live action, and everybody in Limerick who worked on it really made that happen.

Everybody who has seen it, when they see the opening shot of the film, they just see Limerick city. And they ask, Where is that? Everyone was commenting on costumes and artwork, and some people who were working on the film were blown away. They were pretty amazing. Everybody really loved the story and they all got behind it. Thats very special when you have that.

Mr Horgan said that it was a very ambitious project, but added that it is very important to go for the impossible.

Film Limerick project manager Ronan Cassidy, who helped oversee all City of Culture film projects, said he was delighted with everyones hard work during the filming, editing and production.

He commended local digital artist, Ken Coleman, and filmmaker Steve Hall, who contributed to the film.

Shortly after the announcement of their trip to Cannes Film Festival, the crew were informed that the City of Culture project was awarded the honour of Outstanding Achievement, in the Short Film section, at the Newport Beach Film Festival.

Mr Cassidy said that he hopes that they can continue the international film circuit and, hopefully, secure a nomination at the Oscars.

The Clockmakers Dream entry adds to the long-list of Limerick crew who will also be attending the Cannes Film Festival, in two weeks time.

Directors Steve Hall and Paddy Murphy have secured a spot at the Short Film Corner, with their films Safe and The Cheesebox. Meanwhile, Mungret actor Nigel Mercier will feature in a Belfast-based film, entitled Mothers Milk and Cookies.

Mr Hall said: It is a massive, massive honour. The Cannes Film Festival is something that you hear about, as a filmmaker, growing up and going Some day, some day, some day, and to be selected finally allows yourself to believe that maybe I can actually do this.
1766 repeal of the Stamp Act is celebrated with a stamp of its own

May 6, 2016, 8 AM

The stamp illustration by artist Greg Harlin shows a crowd of people gathered around a liberty tree, a popular rallying point for colonial protesters.

The nondenominated (47) forever stamp commemorating the 1766 repeal of the 1765 Stamp Act will be issued by the United States Postal Service in a pane of 10.

By Michael Baadke

A single nondenominated (47) forever stamp commemorating the 1766 repeal of the 1765 Stamp Act will be issued by the United States Postal Service in a pane of 10.

The new stamp marks the 250th anniversary of the repeal of the Stamp Act, described by the Postal Service as British legislation that galvanized and united the American colonies and set them on a path toward revolution.

The stamps first-day ceremony will be a rare Sunday event, taking place at 11 a.m. on May 29 during World Stamp Show-NY 2016 at the Javits Center in New York City. Admission is free to the show and the ceremony.

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The stamp illustration by artist Greg Harlin shows a crowd of people gathered around a liberty tree, a popular rallying point for colonial protesters.

The colonists were angered by the Duties in American Colonies Act, enacted in 1765, which the British Parliament used to impose taxes on the colonists that would be documented by printed revenue stamps.

Taxes were levied on bills of mortgage, pamphlets, newspapers, almanacs, licenses, bills of sale, and numerous other documents.

One of the British stamps is represented in the front selvage of the new stamp pane with the image of a 1-penny revenue stamp proof.

The British revenues for use in America are among those listed under the heading Embossed Revenue Stamped Paper in the Scott Specialized Catalogue of United States Stamps and Covers.

Colonists protested the unpopular Act with the motto No taxation without representation, and dissent grew throughout the colonies in America.

The stamps were repealed in 1766, but the story was far from over, and continued efforts by the British government to exert control over the colonies led to the American Revolution 10 years later.

The Repeal of the Stamp Act, 1766, stamps are being issued in a relatively small quantity of 12 million, offset-printed by Banknote Corporation of America. The stamps were designed by USPS art director Antonio Alcala.

The Postal Service is also offering an uncut press sheet for the Repeal of the Stamp Act stamp, with 3,000 sheets printed containing 120 stamps (12 panes). All of the press sheets are being issued with die cuts.

Technical details and first-day cancel ordering information for the Repeal of the Stamp Act stamp are provided below.

Nondenominated (47) Repeal of the Stamp Act forever stamp

FIRST DAY May 29, 2016; city New York, N.Y., and nationwide.

DESIGN: illustrator Greg Harlin, Annapolis, Md.; designer, art director and typographer Antonio Alcala, Alexandria, Va.; modelers Michelle Finn and Sandra Lane.

PRINTING: process offset with microprinting; printer and processor Banknote Corporation of America, Browns Summit, N.C.; press Alprinta 74; inks cyan, magenta, yellow, black; paper phosphor tagged, block tagging; gum self-adhesive; issue quantity 12 million stamps; format pane of 10, from 120-subject cylinders; size 1.09 inches by 1.42 inches (image); 1.23 inches by 1.56 inches (overall); 8.5 inches by 5 inches (full pane); 25.5 inches by 20 inches (press sheet); plate numbers not specified; marginal markings Repeal of the Stamp Act, 1766, image of 1-penny revenue stamp, Proof print of the one-penny revenue stamp, Taxation without representation is tyranny. (stamp side); 2015 USPS, USPS logo, bar code 586700, plate position diagram, promotional text, verso text (back side); USPS item No. 586700.

First-day cancel ordering information

Standard ordering instructions apply. Collectors requesting first-day cancels are encouraged to purchase their own stamps and affix them to envelopes. The first-day cover envelopes should be addressed for return (a removable label may be used), and mailed in a larger envelope addressed to Repeal of the Stamp Act Stamp, Special Events Coordinator, 380 W. 33rd St., New York, NY 10199-9998.

Requests for first-day cancels must be postmarked by July 29.

The Postal Services uncacheted first-day cover for the Repeal of the Stamp Act stamp is item 586716 at 91. USPS order numbers for stamps and FDCs also appear in Linns 2016 U.S. Stamp Program.
In switch, Gross Switzerland collection sold privately; his Hawaii will be offered at New York show instead

Apr 30, 2021, 12 AM

World Stamp Show-NY 2016 will host the sale of the William H. Gross collection of Hawaii on May 29, and will include this stamp recognized as the finest unused example of the 1851-52 Hawaii 13 Hawaiian Postage Missionary stamp.

The only known example of an undamaged 5 Hawaiian Missionary stamp on cover, from a letter sent by a U.S. Navy admiral to his brother in Pennsylvania in 1853. It is being offered with an estimate of $150,000 to $200,000.

The May 29 auction of the William H. Gross collection of Hawaii will offer this cover addressed to Persia bearing the dark red surcharged 5-on-13 King Kamehameha stamp alongside a United States 10 Washington type II stamp. The cover is estimated at $10

On this iconic piece of Hawaii postal history from the William H. Gross collection, five examples of the provisional manuscript 5 surcharge on the 13 King Kamehameha III issue of 1857 pay the quintuple rate for a letter weighing between 2 ounces and 2

Nine covers exist with a 13 Hawaiian Missionary stamp, and two are in the National Postal Museum. Only three bear sound stamps, and they are all in the William H. Gross Hawaii sale offered by Robert A. Siegel Auction Galleries on May 29. This one, perhap

By Matthew Healey, New York Correspondent

In a surprise move, the planned May 29 auction of the William H. Gross collection of outstanding Switzerland rarities at World Stamp Show-NY 2016 has been pre-empted by a private sale of the entire holding to a Swiss collector.

In its place, Gross has decided to auction his superlative collection of Hawaii at the show.

The planned auction of the Switzerland collection was one of several announced by Robert A. Siegel Auction Galleries and its Siegel International division, run by Charles Shreve, for the once-a-decade international show.

Linns previewed the Switzerland material in the April 18 issue.

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The collection had been purchased by Gross in 1999 from the heirs of G. Anderegg, a Swiss collector who built it into a multiple award-winning exhibit during the 1950s and 1960s. After Anderegg died in the 1970s, his collection lay dormant until Gross bought it.

Although Gross had tried to build upon it, he was somewhat stymied by the fact that it was already of such high caliber that over the 16 years he owned it, he succeeded in finding only four stamps and covers worthy of adding.

In April, Shreve estimated the total realization for the Anderegg collection at $3 million to $4 million, but in a press release on May 4, Shreve reported that the new buyer, represented by the Swiss father-and-son stamp dealers Gottfried and Markus Honegger, would be paying $4.5 million.

As has been his habit with the last seven segments of his stamp collection he has sold, Gross and his wife, Sue, are donating the entire amount to charity.

Shreve said Gross was very pleased that the collection was sold for a favorable price, but that he still wished to support World Stamp Show-NY 2016 with an offering.

As a result, The William H. Gross Collection  Hawaii: Important Stamps and Postal History will be auctioned at New Yorks Javits Center, where the show is being held, on Sunday, May 29, at 1 p.m. in room 1E03.

It will be followed at 3 p.m., as previously planned, by the sale of the second part of Steven Walskes collection of trans-Atlantic mail between France and the United States.

The Hawaii collection comprises 77 lots, with an overall estimate of $2 million to $2.5 million.

It starts with the 1851-52 Missionary issue, so dubbed because it was printed and used by the Christian missionary community that had settled in the island kingdom in the early 19th century, through to overprint errors of the 1893 provisional-government issue.

The Missionary stamps are among philatelys greatest classic rarities.

Printed from typeset lettering, numerals and dingbats on fragile, tissue-like paper, they are typically found damaged or repaired. They were replaced after a couple of years by an engraved issue with a portrait of King Kamehameha III.

The instantly recognizable Hawaiian Missionary stamps and their fascinating history have always captivated collectors, wrote Shreve in the introduction to the sale catalog. But the extreme rarity of these classic issues makes it difficult for more than a few collectors to own them, and nearly impossible for any collector to own more than a few of them.

There are 10 Missionary stamps in the Gross sale.

These include the only recorded sound, unused example of the 5 (Scott 2) out of a dozen known. It is estimated at its Scott Specialized Catalogue of United States Stamps and Covers value of $55,000, but that figure is for a faulty stamp.

Next are three different covers bearing a 5 Missionary, variously estimated between $50,000-$75,000 and $150,000-$200,000.

There is the finest unused example in existence of the 13 stamp inscribed Hawaiian Postage (Scott 3), valued by Scott at $37,000, which Shreve said he expects to realize in excess of $50,000. Another unused 13, with a slightly different setting of the lettering, shows some typical damage and repair.

Rounding out the Missionary group are three 13 covers on which the stamps are all sound, and a fourth 13 cover that is the earliest known cover with an intact Missionary stamp. All four lots are estimated at $100,000 to $150,000.

Sharp-eyed collectors with good memories will probably notice one stamp missing from this auction, continues the introduction. The only recorded unused 2 Missionary  ex Ferrary, Burrus, B.D. Phillips, Ostheimer and Honolulu Advertiser  belongs to Mr. Gross, and he wishes to retain just this one stamp.

Visitors to World Stamp Show-NY 2016 will still be able to view the unique unused 2: not in the auction room, but on display in the Court of Honor, with the three-frame display of Grosss iconic United States rarities.

Also featured in the sale are several beautiful covers with the 1853 Kamehameha III 5 and 13 stamps (Scott 5 and 6) and the provisional manuscript 5 surcharge that was added to some of the 13 stamps (7).

There is a cover addressed to Persia bearing the surcharged stamp alongside a United States 10 Washington, type II (Scott 14) of 1855. The tale of how the letter traveled from Honolulu to a womens seminary in Oroomiah (modern-day Urmi, Iran) is told in detail in the deeply researched sale catalog. The cover is estimated at $100,000 to $150,000.

Perhaps the most spectacular item of all is a famous quintuple-rate cover from Honolulu to New Bedford, Mass., franked with five of the Hawaii provisional surcharges and 52 in U.S. postage: a single 1855 10 Washington, type II (Scott 14) and three of the type III (15), as well as an 1851 12 Washington (17).

This cover is the only one to bear more than one of the provisionals, and its impressive ownership history, listed in the sale description, includes Caspary, Lilly, Rust, Ishikawa and Giamporcaro. Gross acquired it in 1999 for $300,000 plus premium. It is estimated now at $250,000 to $350,000.

The sale is being presented jointly by Shreve and Tracy L. Carey. The two have had a long-standing relationship with Gross in helping him build and then dispose of his collections over the years. Carey will call the auction for the Siegel firm on May 29.

All lots will be subject to Siegels standard 15 percent buyers commission. The William H. Gross Hawaii sale catalog can be downloaded free on Siegel's website, or a printed edition can be ordered by writing to Siegel at 60 E. 56th St., 4th Floor, New York, NY 10022, or calling 212-753-6421.

Viewing will take place at World Stamp ShowNY 2016 on Saturday, May 28 at Siegels super-booth, 1229, and prior to that by appointment at Siegels offices.

Since 2007, the Grosses have donated $25 million to various humanitarian charities by auctioning stamps. The main beneficiaries of the Switzerland sale are the PIMCO Foundation, which Gross remains actively involved with despite his departure from that bond-trading firm, and the New York Times Neediest Cases Fund. The nonprofit Kershaws Challenge and the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network also received money.

The Hawaii sale will benefit the Hawaii Food Bank, which provides emergency food assistance to people in need, and the Smithsonian National Postal Museum.

Siegel will hold a second day of auctions at World Stamp Show-NY 2016, the only firm to do so, with its annual springtime Rarities sale on Tuesday, May 31. A preview of the Walske and Rarities sales will appear in Linns next week.

Related Articles:

Tip of the week: Hawaii 1894 SS Arawa pictorial definitive

5, 13 Hawaii Missionaries go for almost $53,000 in Harmer-Schau sale

Stamp Market Tips: An affordable stamp from Hawaii
Readers favorite U.S. issue of 2015 revealed, Scotty gets a stamp: Weeks Most Read

Apr 30, 2021, 1 AM

A Charlie Brown Christmas was the overall favorite of Linns readers who voted in the 2015 Linns U.S. Stamp Popularity Poll. Our breakdown of the full poll results was among this week's top posts.

Its time to catch up on the week that was in stamp-collecting insights and news.

Linns Stamp News is looking back at its five most-read stories of the week.

Click the links to read the stories.

5. Angry Birds featured on recent U.N. stamps: The Angry Bird known as Red was appointed an honorary United Nations ambassador for green in March, and recent stamps from the United Nations Postal Administration picture Red and his companions from the popular mobile phone game.

4. 1978 $2 Americana pictures kerosene table lamp: Dollar-Sign Stamps: Among the three dollar-denominated stamps in the United States 1975-81 Americana definitive (regular-issue) series, the $2 stamp was issued first, on Nov. 16, 1978.

3. Newfoundlands Balbo surcharge recalls famous fascist flight in 1933: Collecting Canada: Newfoundland is important in 20th-century postal history for the same reason that it was vital to Europeans from Leif Ericsson to Queen Elizabeth I: It was the nearest reliable landfall for mariners in this hemisphere.

2. Stamp poll voters pick Christmas with Charlie Brown as their favorite U.S. issue of 2015: The set of 10 stamps titled A Charlie Brown Christmas took the top honors of the 33 stamp and postal stationery issues listed in the 2015 Linns United States Stamp Popularity Poll.

1. Star Trek stamp for Scotty actor James Doohan: The three previous Canada Post Star Trek designs have pictured William Shatner as Capt. James T. Kirk on a commemorative stamp similar to the Scotty design, the Starship Enterprise on a coil stamp, and Leonard Nimoy as Spock, also in commemorative format.

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Apr 29, 2021, 4 AM

By Donna Houseman

Those of us fortunate enough to have attended international shows in the past can attest to the amazement we experienced when we first walked through the entrance. The experience is simply breathtaking.

Before attending my first international stamp show, Ameripex 86 in Chicago, I had been to numerous stamp shows across the United States and in the British Isles. Nothing compared to the electrifying feeling that I felt when I walked into the OHare Exposition/Convention Center (later renamed the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center).

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At the time, I authored (under the name Donna OKeefe) the Philatelic Gems column in Linns, which developed into a series of five books under the same title featuring short stories about the hobbys greatest rarities. I was thrilled to walk through the court of honor and see exhibited many of the stamps that I had written about.

Linns Stamp News published daily newspapers for each day of the 11-day show. The show was the Linns editorial staffs first attempt at using computers from a remote location to write stories and send them back to Sidney, Ohio, for layout. Each afternoon, the tabloid-size daily newspapers were printed on the newspaper press at our home offices at Linns parent company Amos Press (now Amos Media) after the hometown newspaper, the Sidney Daily News, was printed. The special edition show daily newspapers were then trucked to Chicago for delivery early the next morning. The special editions were handed out when the show opened at 10 a.m. each day.

Linns is attempting a similar, but not quite as ambitious feat at World Stamp Show-NY 2016, which will take place May 28-June 4 at the Javits Convention Center in New York City.

Linns will produce three special editions for the show that will be given away to visitors Sunday May 29, Monday May 30, and Thursday June 2.

Once again, stories and images will be sent to our offices in Sidney for layout. We no longer have the giant press, so the papers will be printed off-site and delivered to the Javits Center in time to be placed in the hands of visitors when the show opens at 10 a.m. on those days.

I will never forget my first international stamp show. Disney characters were milling around the Ameripex show floor because Disney-themed stamps were issued during the show. One stamp (Dominica Scott 955) featured Donald Duck examining a front page of Linns and the cover of Scott Stamp Monthly. Above all else, I am grateful for new acquaintances I met at Ameripex that 30 years later have developed into lasting friendships.

We look forward to the New York show with much anticipation and excitement. By all indications, the eight-day event promises to be a spectacular experience.

Related Articles:

North American international stamp exhibitions, a personal odyssey: Washington 2006 and New York 2016

Recalling a life and career in the remarkable world of philately
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Vote for Jerry Engdahl

To the editor:

We encourage a vote for Jerry Engdahl to serve another term on the Platte County Board of Supervisors. He consistently studies issues in depth, seeks input and applies common sense with a conservative perspective. We appreciate his collaborative style working with other supervisors and county staff.

Larry and Jane Zach

Columbus

Event center is questionable expense

To the editor:

On May 10, the voters of Butler County will vote on the planned event center for the fairgrounds. Before you vote you need to see how the agriculture society presented the issue at the town hall meetings. A typical meeting was held at the Bellwood community center.

Speaking at the meeting were the ag society spokesperson, the director of the David City Chamber of Commerce and the ag society chairperson giving their presentations to justify the event center. Their claims that by that taxpayer subsidizing the center that it economic development would happen.

Economic development is important, but it should be funded by the private sector, not in the taxpayers in the county.

They talked about the many uses this building would be for the area. Considering the state farm economy of the economy their estimates are overly optimistic.

The ag society chairpersons estimated costs for the first year, left out issues like planned maintenance costs, which made her presentation questionable.

The Chamber spokesperson showed a list of the people in Butler County who endorsed the project, including the members of Chamber of Commerce. Who could finance a project, with a for-profit corporation themselves?

Property owners will be assessed an extra $7 (per) $100,000 of valuation. Your tax statement you'll find your assessed valuation. Based on that figure, you can find you "affordable" cost per year. Take that figure down to the polling place on May 10. Before you vote on this issue ask yourselves. Where those funds would be better spent on your own personal and business expense or for the event center.

Gerald Kosch

David City

Support Jerry Engdahl

To the editor:

I would like to recommend for your favorable consideration Mr. Jerry Engdahl to serve as your county board of commissioner. His record serving the past four years on the county board of commissioners plus his business experience has made him well qualified to serve an additional term.

Mr. Engdahl has been active community supporter of Columbus and Platte County for over 40 years. I hope you will re-elect him to serve an additional term.

Bob Gangel

Columbus

Engdahl is proven leader

To the editor:

It is with great pleasure I endorse Jerry Engdahl for county supervisor. Jerry has been a Columbus resident for over 40 years and is running for re-election to the position he currently holds. Jerry is a successful businessman and family man.

He served on the Columbus School Board for eight years and has been active in the Chamber of Commerce, serving as manager and president. He is accessible for your input and will continue to serve you well as your supervisor. He is a proven leader.

Donald Dworak

Columbus

Support Engdahl in election

To the editor:

As citizens of Platte County, we really appreciate the job that County Supervisor Jerry Engdahl is doing. We are very fortunate to have him in that position. He is willing to spend the time and energy necessary to understand the complicated issues of the county. He is very dedicated to his job of county supervisor and makes it a priority to attend every meeting. The county tax levy has gone down every year that he has been on the board. Granted, assessed values have gone up, but most boards do not lower the levy, they even raise them.

Jerry provided leadership on hiring a county engineer, is involved with the Loup River erosion project, and has been applying pressure on the East 29th (Avenue) viaduct to keep the project moving.

Jerry has the ability to listen and question things before taking action. Now it is your turn to take action. Vote Jerry Engdahl for county supervision District 6.

Rich and Edie Aerni

Dennis and Teri Hirschbrunner

Columbus

Law enforcement deserves credit

To the editor:

We just graduated from the 2016 class of the Citizens Police Academy. Law enforcement gets plenty of negative press and we decided to find out firsthand what is involved in being a police officer. Columbus Citizens Police Academy is a 14-week course, three hours each Wednesday night and a couple of Saturday mornings.

We learned about numerous aspects in this field such as patrol procedures, accident and crime scene investigation, defensive tactics and use of force, DWI investigation, domestic violence, DARE, Gangs, role of the prosecutor/defense, Community Service Technician program, evidence procedures, sex crimes, dispatch and more. We were given a tour of the Platte County Jail, learned about the civil process in the court room, got to see the State Patrol K-9 unit, spent one Saturday morning on the driving course and another at the firing range. We drove the patrol cars on a course set up at the airport, and fired the guns, not just watch the professionals! We also spent an evening with dispatch and did a ride along.

All of this was a great experience. We are impressed with each of the many officers involved with this program. Columbus is fortunate to have these men and women serving as police officers protecting our community. If you have the time and are willing to make the commitment we highly recommend that you participate in a future class. Thanks to Chief Bill Gumm, Sergeant Alan Wilkins and Captain Todd Thalken for making the effort to provide this informative program to our community.

Todd and Kim Tobiason

Columbus
A game of paintball had an unfortunate ending when a teen in England wound up needing liver surgery after being struck in the abdomen, according to a new report of the young man's case.

The injury was the first instance of a person suffering liver damage from playing paintball, the doctors who treated the teen wrote in their report of his case, published May 5 in the journal BMJ Case Reports.

The 18-year-old went to the emergency room in August 2015 because of abdominal pain and a low-grade fever, said Dr. Joshua Luck, a resident surgeon at North Middlesex University Hospital in London, who treated the patient and is the lead author of the case report.

Based on the patient's symptoms, the doctors there diagnosed him with appendicitis. (He hadn't mentioned to the doctors that he had played paintball two days prior.) They scheduled him to have emergency surgery, according to the report. [Costly, Deadly, Complicated: These 7 Surgeries Take the Biggest Toll]

But when the operation began, the doctors were "very surprised to see blood coming from the liver," Luck told Live Science. The doctors even thought that they might have injured a blood vessel during the operation, because the blood in the abdominal cavity was so unexpected, he added. However, they then realized that the problem was the man's liver, not his appendix.

They stopped the bleeding, and after the operation, learned that the man had been playing paintball two days earlier, and had been hit twice in the abdomen, according to the report.

The doctors were surprised to learn that the liver damage most likely resulted from the paintball incident, especially because the man had no bruises on his skin near the liver, Luck said. He noted, however, that it is not uncommon for "seemingly innocuous events to cause internal injuries."

In addition, traumatic injuries can lead to symptoms such as fever, Luck said.

Two days after the man's surgery, the doctors checked to make sure the bleeding had definitely stopped, and the man was allowed to leave the hospital, according to the report.

However, three weeks later, the young man returned. He told the doctors that he had undergone an ultrasound, which showed that there was still blood pooled in the liver, according to the report.

This worried the doctors  they thought the teen might have reinjured his liver, or that the original injury was still bleeding, Luck said. However, further testing showed that no further damage had occurred, and indeed, the body was slowing reabsorbing the pooled blood, he said. In addition, the man's liver was functioning well, he said.

"In the vast majority of blunt liver injuries, the body is able to heal itself over a period of weeks to months without the need for further" medical assistance, Luck said. But sometimes, the healing may be slower than expected, he added.

And in some cases, slow healing of this type of injury may be due to a blood disorder that causes the blood to not coagulate normally, Luck said. However, doctors who specialize in blood disorders confirmed that this was not the case for this man, he said. [7 Strange Ways Humans Act Like Vampires]

While the young man's injury was the first instance of liver damage from paintball, it's far from the first injury from the activity  eye injuries, for example, are common. It is, however, only the fourth case of organ damage from paintball, the authors wrote. There has been one previous case of kidney damage from paintball, and two cases that involved damage to the penis or scrotum, according to the report.

Paintball guns can fire the paintballs at velocities of 100 to 300 feet (30 to 90 meters) per second, according to the report.

This was the young man's first time playing paintball, Luck said. "Whether he'll try it again is yet to be decided," he said.

Currently, the young man is doing well and continuing with his college studies, Luck said.

Follow Sara G. Miller on Twitter @saragmiller. Follow Live Science @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Originally published on Live Science.
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This image shows the outline of the boy's black henna tattoo, with inflammation in the surrounding skin.

A British boy who got a temporary tattoo while on vacation in Spain came home with an unusual souvenir from his trip: a severe allergic reaction to his body art, a new case report shows.

The 10-year-old got a temporary "black henna" tattoo on the upper part of his arm in the summer of 2015, but the ink caused his skin to erupt in a rash four days after he received the tattoo, according to a report of the boy's case published today (May 5) in the journal BMJ Case Reports.

"Black henna" tattoo ink is typically a combination of henna, a relatively safe plant pigment that has a reddish-brown color, and a chemical called para-phenylenediamine (PPD). This textile dye is added to blacken the henna and make the tattoo dry quicker and last longer, the case report said.

PPD is known to cause allergic reactions when it comes in contact with the skin, said Dr.Jaya Sujatha Gopal-Kothandapani, a researcher in pediatric endocrinology at the University of Sheffield in England, who was involved in the boy's case.

The boy developed redness, an itchy rash and blistering on the outline of the tattoo, which are typical symptoms of an allergy, Gopal-Kothandapani said. Before this incident, the boy had not suffered from any allergies, nor had members of his family, Gopal-Kothandapani said. [8 Strange Signs You're Having an Allergic Reaction]

An allergic reaction to PPD, a chemical commonly used in hair dye, is relatively rare in children compared to adults, Gopal-Kothandapani said. But children who are sensitive to PPD can have a more intense and severe allergic reaction than adults, she said.

Black henna tattoos are quite unsafe, and the inks can have levels of PPD in them as high as 30 percent, Gopal-Kothandapani told Live Science. PPD is currently only approved for use in hair dyes only at a 6 percent concentration, and neither the U.S. nor Europe permits PPD to be used in any skin product at any concentration, she said. The inks used may be marketed as "black henna" and applied by street artists, who may or may not know it's risks on the skin and are using it illegally.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has received numerous reports from consumers who developed bad side effects  blisters, loss of skin pigmentation, sensitivity to sunlight and permanent scarring  as a result of the PPD found in black henna, according to the FDA's adverse-events reporting program.

Black henna dangers

Getting a temporary tattoo while traveling abroad might seem like a fun way to briefly remember the trip, and it may seem safer than a permanent inking. But just because a tattoo is temporary does not mean it can't be harmful to some people.

The British boy had the rash for three weeks before he sought help for it, according to the case report.

In addition to a bad allergic reaction, the boy's temporary tattoo caused him to develop cellulitis, a potentially serious bacterial skin infection. This made his arm swollen, hot and painful when touched, Gopal-Kothandapani said.

The 10-year-old was admitted to the hospital and put on intravenous antibiotics, which helped resolve his symptoms of cellulitis within 48 hours, Gopal-Kothandapani said. A cream containing a mixture of steroids and antibiotics was applied to the outline of the tattoo to reduce inflammation and relieve itching, Gopal-Kothandapani said.

A week after the boy completed his treatment, his skin remained slightly lighter in the place where the tattoo had been, but he had no scarring and he recovered fully from the incident, Gopal-Kothandapani said.

Now that the boy knows he is allergic to PPD, he needs to avoid black henna products, such as hair dyes, in the future, Gopal-Kothandapani said. The child's reaction to PPD dye may also have left him more sensitive to other chemicals, such as black clothing dye, black rubber and PABA sunscreens, she explained. These chemicals are similar enough to PPD to trigger the same reaction, Gopal-Kothandapani said. [Got Allergies? Avoid These 7 Mistakes]

Because of black henna's potentially dangerous side effects, artists who perform skin painting should not use the substance in temporary tattoos, she said. But some vendors and many consumers may be unaware of these safety concerns, Gopal-Kothandapani said.

She explained that there are clear differences between black henna and the harmless variety. Natural henna paste is greenish in color, smells natural and is considered safe to use on the skin, where it will leave a deep maroon stain. Black henna paste, by contrast, is jet-black, smells like a chemical, stains quickly and may burn the skin, she said.

Follow Live Science @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Originally published on Live Science.
A still from the 1939 film about the historical mystery, The Man in the Iron Mask.

A 350-year-old French mystery has been unmasked: In his new book, Paul Sonnino, a professor of history at the University of California, Santa Barbara, claims he has uncovered the real identity of the mysterious Man in the Iron Mask.

The Man in the Iron Mask was a prisoner arrested in 1669 and held in the Bastille and other French jails for more than three decades, until his death in 1703. His identity has been an enduring mystery because, throughout his imprisonment, the man's face was hidden by a mask, according to Sonnino. The story was even popularized in the 1998 film "The Man in the Iron Mask," starring Leonardo DiCaprio.

It's a mystery that evaded even famed philosopher Voltaire and writer Alexandre Dumas. Historians have discounted the theory popularized by Voltaire and Dumas that the masked man was the twin brother of Louis XIV, according to Sonnino. [Bones with Names: Long-Dead Bodies Archaeologists Have Identified]

"They [historians] are pretty much in agreement that his name was Eustache Dauger, that he only occasionally wore the mask and that when he did wear a mask, it was velvet, not iron," Sonnino said in a statement. "They are also quite sure that he was a valet. What they have not been able to figure out is whose valet he was, and for what possible reason he was held under tight security for over 30 years."

In "The Search for the Man in the Iron Mask: A Historical Detective Story" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016), Sonnino leads the reader through historical records, correspondence regarding the prisoner and other aspects of his investigation.

Through his research, Sonnino determined that Dauger was a valet for the treasurer of Cardinal Mazarin, who was principal minister of France during Louis XIV's early life. Mazarin accumulated a large fortune, and Sonnino believes the valet thought that some of the money was stolen.

"What I was able to determine was that Mazarin had ripped off some of his huge fortune from the previous king and queen of England " Sonnino said. "Dauger must have blabbed at the wrong time. He was informed, when arrested, that if he revealed his identity to anyone, he would immediately be killed."

As for why the Man in the Iron Mask's identity has remained veiled throughout history, Sonnino said the blame lies with historians, who "insist on making it antiseptic, moralistic, sensible."

"Life does not make sense," Sonnino continued. "Humans are much more complicated than that."

Follow Kacey Deamer @KaceyDeamer. Follow Live Science @livescience, on Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science.
A research vessel meant to ply the polar seas has been graced with the name Sir David Attenborough, just days before the famed naturalist turns 90, U.K. Science Minister Jo Johnson announced today (May 6).

In March, the U.K.'s Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) put out a call for the public to submit and vote for names for their forthcoming polar research vessel, which received funding of 200 million British pounds (about $289 million) from the U.K. Department for Business, Innovation and Skills in April 2014. It wasn't long before the public spoke, with the comical moniker "Boaty McBoatface" soaring to the top slot. But the poll, which ended April 16, was not the be-all and end-all for the research vessel's identity, as the NERC had the final say in what name to slap on the boat.

"The public provided some truly inspirational and creative names, and while it was a difficult decision, I'm delighted that our state-of-the-art polar research ship will be named after one of the nation's most cherished broadcasters and natural scientists," Johnson said in a statement. "This vessel will carry the Attenborough name for decades to come, as it fulfills its mission to explore the oceans and put Britain at the forefront of efforts to preserve our precious marine environment." [6 Spectacular Species Named for David Attenborough]

Attenborough spoke beaming words of the ship's label.

"I am truly honored by this naming decision and hope that everyone who suggested a name will feel just as inspired to follow the ship's progress as it explores our polar regions," Attenborough said in the statement. "I have been privileged to explore the world's deepest oceans alongside amazing teams of researchers, and with this new polar research ship, they will be able to go further and discover more than ever before."

The ship is being built in Merseyside, England. Expected to set sail in 2019, the Royal Research Ship (RRS) Sir David Attenborough will be able to explore both the Arctic and Antarctic oceans. It will be operated by the British Antarctic Survey, which currently supports two polar research vessels: the RRS James Clark Ross and the RRS Ernest Shackleton.

As for Boaty McBoatface?

The hugely popular name will live on, undersea. The council decided to name one of the new vessel's remotely operated vehicles "Boaty." The subsea vehicle will be dispatched from the RRS Sir David Attenborough so that it can explore the deepest parts of the Arctic and Antarctic, according to the NERC.

"The ship has captured the imaginations of millions, which is why we're ensuring that the Boaty name lives on through the subsea vehicle that will support the research crew, and the polar science education program that will bring their work to life," Johnson said.

Follow Live Science @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science.
Despite its rows and rows of chisel- and needle-like teeth, a newly described prehistoric marine reptile wasn't a fearsome predator but rather an herbivorous giant that acted like a lawnmower for the sea, a new study finds.

The crocodile-size reptile lived about 242 million years ago, during the Middle Triassic period. Researchers discovered the first specimen in 2014 in southern China, but because it was poorly preserved, they reported that it had a beak like a flamingo's.

Now, two newly discovered specimens show that the beast was far more bizarre: It sported a hammerhead-shaped snout that it likely used to graze on plants lining the ocean floor, the researchers said. It's also the earliest herbivorous marine reptile on record by about 8 million years, they said. [The 12 Weirdest Animal Discoveries]

"I haven't seen anything like it before," said study co-researcher Olivier Rieppel, the Rowe family curator of evolutionary biology at The Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago.

Weird reptile

The reptile's name  Atopodentatus unicus  hints at its weird anatomy. In Latin, the genus and species names translate to "unique strangely toothed," the researchers said. The newly analyzed specimens show that the creature had a mouthful of chisel-shaped teeth  one row on the upper jaw and two rows on the lower jaw.

A model of Atopodentatus unicus next to its fossil remains. Notice the two rows of teeth on the bottom jaw. (Image credit: Copyright Nick Fraser)

"The remaining parts of the jaw [are filled with] densely packed needle-shaped teeth forming a mesh," the researchers wrote in the study, published online today (May 6) in the journal Science Advances. This mesh likely helped A. unicus collect plant material, much like a baleen whale catches krill, said Louis Jacobs, a vertebrate paleontologist at Southern Methodist University in Texas who was not involved in the study.

The chisel-like teeth probably acted as a rake and trimmer, helping A. unicus scrape and dislodge plants from the seafloor, Jacobs said. Next, the reptile likely sucked in a mouthful of water, letting bits of plants get stuck in the mesh formed by its thin, needle-like teeth, he said.

"Then, they squish the water out of their mouth, and those little teeth along the sides of the jaw and on the roof of the mouth strain out all of the plant bits," Jacobs told Live Science. "That's an amazing way to feed. I'd like to do that myself."

Rare beast

The two new specimens are teaching scientists about herbivorous marine reptiles, which are rare even today. One of the few modern herbivorous marine reptiles includes the marine iguana of the Galapagos, which swims around, plucking algae off of marine rocks for food, Jacobs said.

Researchers made clay and toothpick models of Atopodentatus unicus's jaw to figure out how it worked. (Image credit: Copyright Olivier Rieppel The Field Museum)

There are also a few herbivorous marine mammals, such as manatees and dugongs, and the extinct marine mammals known as the Desmostylians (which Jacobs helped describe in a 2015 study published in the journal Historical Biology.) But, in general, marine reptiles are omnivores or carnivores, such as most modern sea turtles and the extinct marine predators, the ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs.

"[A. unicus] is so surprising because it is very rare, that anything besides fish living in water would be herbivorous," Jacobs told Live Science. [Image Gallery: Ancient Monsters of the Sea]

A. unicus also tells researchers about how life recovered after the Permian-Triassic mass extinction about 252 million years ago.

"The existence of specialized animals like Atopodentatus unicus shows us that life recovered and diversified more quickly than previously thought," Rieppel said in a statement. "And it's definitely a reptile that no one would have thought to exist. Look at it  it's crazy!"

Follow Laura Geggel on Twitter @LauraGeggel. Follow Live Science @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science.
Jericho, NY - May 5, 2016 - On the heels of the military announcing plans to recruit women for combat roles, Nassau County Executive Edward P. Mangano and the Nassau County Veterans Service Agency (VSA) today honored nine women veterans and an active duty military Purple Heart recipient at a special Women in the Military Celebration at the Milleridge Inn Cottage in Jericho. The honorees, who served between World War II and current day operations, are trailblazers  having broken gender barriers to pave the way for other women to serve in the military in a variety of capacities. Sponsors of the celebration included CSEA, Kims Cakes of Seaford, PFC Joseph Dwyer PTSD Peer-to-Peer Veterans Support program, Estee Lauder, Bed Bath & Beyond, and Bethpage Florist.

County Executive Mangano stated, Throughout history, women have taken on a variety of roles and ranks in our military and have served our nation with commitment, honor and leadership. This week, we pause to recognize and thank women veterans for their contributions toward protecting freedom and democracy around the globe.

Honorees include:

Ret. Army Major Nancy C. Leftenant Colon  the first African-American woman accepted into the Army Nurse Corps, during World War II, and the only woman to hold the presidency of the Tuskegee Airmen, Inc. from 1989-1991.

Marine Sgt. Tess Garber  enlisted and worked as a teletype operator - at a time when women of the WWII generation began filling jobs once thought of as exclusively men's work. Tess started a groundbreaking trend that forever broadened the role of women in America. Post military, she worked for the Nassau County Library System, for 30 years.

Air Force 1st Class Diamantina Ruiz Jannone  served as a flight traffic specialist with the Military Air Transport Service, and routed air traffic when President Kennedy deployed thousands of troops to West Berlin. She also assisted in the transportation of soldiers and cargo en-route to Vietnam.

Marine Lt. Antoinette Waller  first served as a Drill Instructor and Gunnery Sergeant, then became the first enlisted female Marine Aide to the 31st and 32nd Commandants of the Corp. A decorated officer, she helped establish the first United States Marine Corps base in Korea; and today is a Tactical Officer at the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy in Kings Point.

Retired Naval Commander Phyllis Zagano  began as a Navy Reserve Public Affairs Officer at the Recruiting Office in East Meadow in 1976. The highly decorated officer served in public affairs positions across the globe  as well as in the NY Naval Militia. Today, she works in the Religion Department at Hofstra.

Army Reserve Sgt. Phoebe Ervin  served in Operation Desert Storm/Shield in 1990, and to Operation Enduring Freedom/Operation Iraqi Freedom, after the 9/11 Terror Attack. She served as a Platoon Sergeant of 20 soldiers, and a combat medic. Once back home, she continued to serve, with her fellow veterans, through the Vet Peer Support program.

Air Force Major Stacey Cowap  served in the U.S. Air Force - Space Systems Division - as a Launch System Integration Manager. She also served as a secretary for Air Force special projects and in the military aircraft industry.

Marine Lance Corporal Crystal Ventrelli-Broskie enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps in 2004, completing basic, combat and Personnel Administration training. Stationed at a Base in Hawaii, she served as a personnel administration clerk at the Installation Personnel Administration Center.

Army Corporal Heather B. Arrue  served in the Army during Grenada from 1983 to 1984, as a Material Storage and Handling Specialist. She was stationed in Hanau, Germany. Her current assignment is at a nuclear facility.

Kimberly Young  a Purple Heart recipient currently serving in the United States Army.

The history of women in the military dates back to the Revolutionary War, in 1775. During World War I, 12,000 women enlisted in the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps; about 400 died during the war. In World War II, 350,000 women served in the U.S. military. During World War II, the U.S. Navy, Marines and Coast Guard created reserves  and the Army created the Auxiliary Corps  and more than 150,000 women served in them. Fast forward to 1991, more than 40,000 women served in the Gulf War  integrated with men, in a warzone - engaging with enemy forces on an unprecedented level. Although women in the military suffered a setback in 1994, when the Defense Secretary prohibited them from serving in direct ground combat, many continued to serve in combat roles and on the front lines as needed as the Pentagon overturned that rule the following year. As of 2015, women make up about 15% of the U.S. military. More than 165,000 women are enlisted and active in the armed services with over 35,000 additional women serving as officers.

About the Nassau County VSA

The mission of the Nassau County Veterans Service Agency (VSA), in partnership with the Veterans Affairs both federal and state, is to provide all veterans and their dependents with the benefits they have earned; expand community outreach; and enhance the quality of life of the Nassau County veteran community. The VSA serves as an advocate for veterans compensation, pension, education, employment, training, referrals, vocational rehabilitation, and additional benefits for survivors, burial, and health care. The agency provides free transportation for veterans to the Veterans Administration (VA) Hospital in Northport or the VA health clinics in East Meadow and Valley Stream.

About the Milleridge Inn

The Milleridge Inn has its own military history, dating back to the Revolutionary War. The land on which it now sits was purchased from the Matinecock Indians in 1653, and the building built a few years later  during the 8-years of War. When the war ended, the Milleridge served as a stop-over point for travelers, and no payment was expected or accepted.
Pets & Animal, School & Education, Local News, Community, Charity & Cause, Press Releases

By Long Island News & PR Published: May 06 2016

A group of Sayville High School students raised money to purchase pet food for the needy.

Sayville, NY - May 5, 2016 - A group of Sayville High School students raised money to purchase pet food for the needy. The food was donated to the Suffolk County SPCA who will be distributing the dog and cat food from their office in Hauppauge. Originally the students were donating to the ASPCA but decided to donate locally.

We recognize that there are families with pets who are in need of help so we suggested a pet food drive. Roy Gross, Chief of the Suffolk County SPCA said "These young adults and their English Teachers and Class Advisors, Ms. Trentowski and M. Jennifer Sohl, should be commended for their efforts on behalf of the animals of Suffolk County."

We will also accept donations of unopened bags or cans of dog and cat food from anyone who may wish to donate, Gross said.

Please call the SCSPCA office at 631-382-7722 to make an appointment to come in and

pick up your food. (Offer available as long as supplies last)
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
Al Nusrah Front used a drone to record a VBIED attack in Khan Tuman.

Jaysh al Fath (the Army of Conquest), a jihadist-led alliance of rebel groups, has launched a new offensive south of the Syrian city of Aleppo. The early fighting centered on the town of Khan Tuman, where a suicide bomber detonated a large vehicle borne improvised explosive device (VBIED) in an area controlled by fighters defending Bashar al Assads regime.

Al Nusrah Front, al Qaedas official branch in Syria, released a video of the martyr, identified as Abu Jafar al Dairi, who delivered his last statement before the attack.

The al Qaeda branch has also used small drones to record the fighting from overhead. One short clip shows a Shiite fighter being cornered near Khan Tuman. Another focuses on al Dairis VBIED and the forces flowing into the town behind him.

Jihadists in Libya and Syria now regularly use drones to produce content. The aerial footage provides an especially effective way to highlight the drama of the fighting.

Al Nusrah is a founding member Jaysh al Fath, a coalition that overran Syrias northwestern Idlib province last year. Several other organizations are part of Jaysh al Fath in Aleppo province and some of them have also produced propaganda from Khan Tuman and the surrounding area. (Photos and screenshots from their social media outlets can be seen at the end of this article.)

One of Al Nusrahs coalition partners is Ajnad al Sham, which tweeted a series of photos depicting its members preparing and firing mortars. Ajnad al Sham followed these images with a map of the area, claiming that Khan Tuman had been completely liberated.

Assads regime has responded to Jaysh al Faths assault with a heavy barrage of airstrikes from fighter jets and helicopters. An infographic produced by Ajnad al Sham purportedly provides a tally of the bombings in the area.

Other groups that belong to Jaysh al Fath, such as Ahrar al Sham, Liwa al Haqq, and Jaysh al Sunna, have posted messages on their official Twitter feeds regarding the new campaign. Still others, such as Faylaq al Sham (Sham Legion), are part of Jaysh al Fath as well.

Jund al Aqsa, an al Qaeda front group, has carried out its own operations against Assad and his Shiite allies. Jund al Aqsa withdrew from Jaysh al Fath last year after it objected to the actions taken by some of the alliances other members. It has not rejoined Jaysh al Fath, at least not officially. Jund al Aqsas propaganda does not include Jaysh al Faths watermark, which can be found in the upper right hand corner of each member organizations media.

However, Jund al Aqsa is clearly coordinating with Al Nusrah and others on the battlefield. The group produced its own drone footage of the raid on Khan Tuman and claims to have captured Shiite fighters in the town. One of its military commanders, along with other martyrs, also died during the conflict.

An Al Nusrah video praises the role played by Jund al Aqsa and the Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP), which has long been part of al Qaedas international network. One of the TIPs founders was even chosen to sit on al Qaedas elite shura council. The TIP not only fights inside Syria as one of Al Nusrahs closest partners, but also in Afghanistan, where it has been integrated into Taliban-led insurgency.

According to Al Masdar News, which has sources inside Assads government, the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) has reportedly fought alongside Hezbollah and Harakat Al Nujaba, an Iranian-backed Iraqi Shiite militia that has played an increasingly significant role inside Syria.

In early April, Al Nusrah captured al-Iss hill and the small village that sits at its base. Although not a heavily populated area, al-Iss is considered a strategically important crossroads inside Aleppo province. The move was designed to stymie Assad and his partners, who had been on the march.

Jaysh al Fath also overran several towns and villages as part of a counteroffensive in the southern part of Aleppo province last November.

Propaganda from the battle of Khan Tuman

Al Nusrah Fronts photos and screenshots from its videos:

Drone footage from Al Nusrahs video of a Shiite fighter, possibly a member of Irans Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), being ambushed near Khan Tuman:

The Nusrah martyr who blew himself up in Khan Tuman:

Ajnad al Shams photos, infographic summarizing bombings and map of area:

Jund al Aqsas propaganda, including screenshots of its video footage recorded with a drone:

Two Shiite fighters captured by Jund al Aqsa:

Thomas Joscelyn is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the Senior Editor for FDD's Long War Journal.

Are you a dedicated reader of FDD's Long War Journal? Has our research benefitted you or your team over the years? Support our independent reporting and analysis today by considering a one-time or monthly donation. Thanks for reading! You can make a tax-deductible donation here.
Islamic State emir Abu Bakr al Baghdadi and Adnan Abu Walid al Sahrawi.

The self-proclaimed head of the Islamic States arm in the Sahara has reportedly threatened to attack Morocco in an audio statement sent to Al Jazeera.

Abu Walid al Sahrawi, who previously led the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO) and swore allegiance to Abu Bakr al Baghdadi last year, has called for attacks on the United Nations mission in Western Sahara and on Western tourists in Morocco, according to Al Jazeera. The statement also included a call for attacks on Western tourists in Morocco, the headquarters of Moroccan security, and on foreign companies.

The Long War Journal cannot independently verify the authenticity of the message.

MUJAO was formed in Mali in 2011 and operated as part of al Qaedas network. Alongside al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), Ansar Dine and Tuareg separatists, MUJAO helped take over northern Mali in 2012. A French-led invasion ejected the jihadists from many their strongholds, but Mali is still plagued with violence.

In 2013, MUJAO merged with Mokhtar Belmokhtars Al Mulathameen Brigade to form Al Murabitoon. The new combined entity immediately swore allegiance to al Qaeda emir Ayman al Zawahiri.

After the groups first emirs (or leaders) were killed in counterterrorism raids, Sahrawi became Al Murabitoons head. Last May, Sahrawi released an audio statement in which pledged his fealty to the Islamic States so-called caliphate. He claimed to do so on behalf of the entire Al Murabitoon group. [See LWJ report, Confusion surrounds West African jihadists loyalty to Islamic State]

But that wasnt the case. Only some of MUJAOs fighters joined Sahrawi in defecting to the Islamic State. Belmokhtar, an al Qaeda loyalist, quickly released a statement saying that Al Murabitoon remained in al Qaedas camp. [See Threat Matrix report, Alleged statement from Mokhtar Belmokhtar denies his group swore allegiance to the Islamic State.]

US officials contacted by The Long War Journal say that they suspect Belmokhtars men tried to assassinate Sahrawi. Press outlets in West Africa reported on skirmishes between the two sides, but Sahrawis fate remained uncertain. The US officials also say that Sahrawi may have been seriously wounded by his jihadist rivals.

There has been confusion concerning Belmokhtars status as well. Belmokhtar was reportedly killed in a US airstrike in Libya in June 2015. But Al Murabitoon and AQIM quickly issued statements denying that the one-eyed veteran jihadist had perished. In the months since, al Qaeda has repeatedly referred to Belmokhtar as if he is alive. (In one message, which was leaked online before it was ready for publication, did al Qaeda refer to Belmokhtars putative death.)

However, Belmokhtar has not issued a proof of life audio or video message since last June.

In August 2015, Belmokhtar was named the new overall emir of Al Murabitoon by its shura council. If the group was not reenacting Weekend at Bernies, as the Taliban did with Mullah Omar (whose death was covered up for two years), then this would indicate that Belmokhtar is still alive. In December, Belmokhtars Al Murabitoon rejoined AQIM.

On Dec. 4, AQIMs Al Andalus Media released an audio statement from Abdelmalek Droukdel, the emir of AQIM, announcing the merger of Al Murabitoon into its ranks. Ibrahim al Qosi, an ex-Guantanamo detainee who is now a senior al Qaeda leader in Yemen, congratulated Droukdel and Belmokhtar on the merger in a message released shortly thereafter. Qosi indicated that Belmokhtar was still alive, asking Allah to preserve him.

While AQIM, which now includes Al Murabitoon, has been especially active in recent months, Sahrawi has been relatively quiet. If the audio obtained by Al Jazeera is authentic, then it could indicate that he and his men plan on initiating new operations.

Thomas Joscelyn is a Senior Fellow at Foundation for Defense of Democracy and the Senior Editor for The Long War Journal. Caleb Weiss is an intern at Foundation for Defense of Democracy and a contributor to The Long War Journal.

Are you a dedicated reader of FDD's Long War Journal? Has our research benefitted you or your team over the years? Support our independent reporting and analysis today by considering a one-time or monthly donation. Thanks for reading! You can make a tax-deductible donation here.
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Apple is reportedly rolling out a new Apple Music subscription option for students on Friday. The new plan will let verified students get an Apple Music subscription for 50 percent off, according to TechCrunch.

At this writing the subscription was not available in iTunes or on Apples website.

The new student plan will be available in a number of countries around the world including the U.S., U.K., Australia, Denmark, Germany, Ireland, and New Zealand. Exact pricing will vary based on region, but for U.S. students the discount will mean a monthly charge of $5 per month.

Students will have to verify their student status with UniDAYS, a student deals website. Once thats done they have the right to get the Apple Music deal. Apple will only allow students to get the discounted subscription for up to four years after the initial sign-up, TechCrunch says.

But that time limit isnt continuous. Anyone who skips a semester or even a school year can come back and claim their discount. Even though four years is the standard amount of time for a Bachelors degree, the discount applies to all students regardless of whether theyre getting their first degree or attending graduate school.

Why this matters: Apple has a long history of offering student (and teacher) discounts, of which this offer may be just the latest example. It is also a smart way to try and gain more subscribers and overtake Spotify as the leading subscription music streaming service. At $5 per month, Apple Music will challenge Spotifys similar student offer available in the United States.

In January, Apple Music was believed to have more than 10 million paying (not including free trial) customers. Spotifys paying subscriber count was twice that as of June 2015.

Update: This article was updated at 7:41 AM Pacific time on May 6, 2016 to clarify the status of Spotifys student discount.
Joaquim Alberto Chissano was the second President of Mozambique, serving from 1986 to 2005. Since leaving the presidency, he has campaigned for peace through his work as an envoy and peace negotiator for the United Nations. Chissano also served as Chairperson of the African Union from July 2003 to July 2004. In 2007, he was awarded the inaugural Prize for Achievement in African Leadership by the Mo Ibrahim Foundation. Joaquim Chissano is also a member of the Fondation Chirac's honour committee, as well as an eminent member of the Sergio Vieira de Mello Foundation. He is Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Joaquim Chissano Foundation, a private, non-profit organization dedicated to the promotion of peace, economic and cultural development in Mozambique.

Interview with Joaquim Alberto Chissano, Former President of the Republic of Mozambique

First of all, you have had an amazing career, following your time as President, of essentially trying to put out fires here and there, wherever there are some issues, such as political problems; and even beyond that, in the broader African regional context, as with Madagascar and Guinea Bissau, among many others. Could you first give us an idea of how you go about this, why they come to you, and what is your secret?

There are no secrets. Mozambique lived through a very difficult time, since the country declared its Independence until I became Head of State. There was war, there were many deaths, with thousands upon thousands killed and maimed. There was a great deal of destruction in the country, but we finally found room to bring back peace, though the path of dialogue. This was at first indirect, then a direct dialogue.

This was the first thing the world has been able to see in Mozambique and in me, particularly as I had taken part in this process for eleven years as Minister of Foreign Affairs, also dealing with other conflicts in the context of the African Union, which was previously the Organization of African Unity. I then continued these commitments when I was already Head of State, both in the Organization of African Unity and the African Union. There were certainly conflicts. These we discussed, while trying collectively to find solutions. But in the case of Mozambique, this was something I had to deal with directly, and we came to peace. This was what first made countries take notice of me as someone who could help with ideas.

Secondly, there's the way I left power as Head of State, when I decided not to run for another term, which was the last opportunity available to me, in order to become President again for another five years. This I decided not to do. All of this led the world to think that I had some experience in dealing with conflict, but also in looking at ways to end conflict and to start building peace.

The peace that we brought to Mozambique was not easy, but it brought us many friends and sparked a good deal of dialogue within our society, along with the return of many freedoms, thus allowing us to begin a new life. This is why I was called upon from the outset by the Secretary General of the United Nations. Interestingly, my first mission was not about conflict, but on MDGs (Millennium Development Goals), as we were celebrating 10 years of the MDGs, which were then being discussed, and he wanted me to be something of an activist in Africa in this regard. He had several of us dealing with different countries. I'm speaking about Secretary General Kofi Annan. He sent envoys to Europe, to Latin America, to Asia, and he asked me to deal with African states.

I believe this also contributed to peace, given the relationship between peace and development.

If you look at when you left power, peace had returned; and so many people could again talk with Mozambique, along with Western countries putting some money into the country. Even the opposition leader was living here in Maputo. Such was the situation. Now, since your departure from office, everything seems to have gone downwards; not that fast, but basically the problem now is that the opposition leader no longer lives in Maputo, but is hiding somewhere. Therefore, couldnt you say that everything you had worked for has been lost or is somewhat gone?

This is not my reading of events. I'm very much an optimist in the way I look at things.

The peace that we brought to Mozambique was not easy, but it brought us many friends and sparked a good deal of dialogue within our society, along with the return of many freedoms, thus allowing us to begin a new life.

You can't say that since I left power, everything has regressed quite so much. Just look at the companies. Of course, I had made contact and held talks with some of them. But the companies that came here to invest in large projects did so after I had left. I'm speaking about American companies, such as Anadarko, the Italian company ENI, or the Brazilian company Vale. Vale was already here when I left, but they kept going and many more companies are coming, from India and many other places. Over the past ten years, some construction has taken place, along with improvements in electricity. There were undoubtedly problems. People talked about them, but the economy continued to develop, partners continued to arrive and even contributed directly to the national budget, which is something that has continued.

We should therefore not misread isolated problems that arise; and I even believe the leader of the opposition began to move out of Maputo during my term, preferring somewhere else for personal reasons. I don't see the relationship between my leaving power and Dhlakama's place of residence. I believe Dhlakama is looking for the best strategies that work for him, and living away from Maputo allows him to escape some of its pressures, given that the capital does have a lot of pressures: not only the people and the Government, but the diplomatic corps and people with different opinions. But in the provinces, in the bush, he doesn't need to listen to all of this, which could be among his strategies, although I can't speak on his behalf. Also, from a distance, or somewhere referred to as an 'unknown' location, he is able to put more pressure on the Government, in order for the Government to come closer to his views than when he is here, because he can speak with a loud voice and frighten the Government, but above all frighten citizens. When the people are frightened, this puts pressure on the Government, so these are his own tactics, in order to get his way, just to answer your question.

As I understand it, you're not dealing with the negotiations underway, but just supposing you were, what approach would you take, given that you have taken part in similar negotiations here and elsewhere?

I would do the same thing I do elsewhere, which is to first hear the opinion of the people, along with the civil society and political parties. I would not deal with just one or two actors. In this case, I would not deal with just Renamo or the Government, listening to just one or the other. I would collect many views, and it does take time as well as patience to be able to deal with this.

Listening to all these views allows for more inputs, in order to arrive at a solution. And solutions are not reached within a day. You may have one, and then you come back with another proposal, then another. I often avoided bringing proposals myself, but I caused the parties involved to bring proposals to the table, since I believe that the dialogue must take place primarily between the parties. But, of course, the people's opinion, and that of civil society, does matter; because, ultimately you want peace for the people.

In the meantime, the country is suffering because investors are not coming here, and this puts pressure on the country's economy, which is of course suffering due to other external reasons. But this adds another big layer of problems. We have this issue of time needed for discussion. On the other hand, people are obviously suffering because the economy is not doing well. What would you say to that?

I believe this is a mistaken appraisal of investors, considering that Mozambique did not have peace after its declaration of Independence, yet there were companies that still didn't leave the country. They were firmly here even during the war, and in those days enemy forces didn't care if they destroyed whatever there was in Mozambique. But they persisted, and some small investments came even during the war, which increased significantly once peace arrived. This is just to illustrate that even in the worst case scenario, the economy can still keep going; not necessarily thrive, but still maintain some operations.

In the current case, I don't believe this is a war. It's not spread across the country. There's a focus of disturbance, in an attempt to put pressure on the Government, and it seems to me that the opposition now realises that the economy cannot be altogether destroyed. They can't go and attack the coal mines, if they ultimately wish to rule; they also can't destroy the power lines, as they did during the first days of this destabilisation - which I now don't think can go very far, because their argument is that they want to come to power, and they want to come to power in order to rule. I honestly don't think they can imagine that on getting there they'll rebuild all that they're out to destroy.

We have power lines that are thousands and thousands of kilometres long. It took us whole years to build these, and the Government is still building another branch or more. They must clearly realise that if they come and rule, they need this infrastructure in place. This also applies to bridges. They can't just think about destroying them. Anadarko, Vale and ENI are here, and I don't see the insurgents destroying their platforms. Therefore, if these partners had a part to play, it would be more a contribution to better sense, aimed at those seeking to destabilise the Government. This allows for a space to search for solutions, and they could themselves intervene positively.

That works, but what about tourism? You could say an investor gives more thought to things, but tourists are easily discouraged. However, the country needs foreign currency.

Tourism certainly cannot thrive in a situation of conflict, especially if there are attacks on certain roads, as is currently the case. A main road has been attacked in one portion of the country, but the tourist wants to be free to go wherever. Even when there is no conflict, a tourist may have the feeling that anything may happen. In this respect, you're right, because in this process of exerting pressure, the enemy may not mind killing a single tourist, in order to create a sensation and make people feel that this Government is unable to protect visitors, or even its own citizens, which could be among their tactics.

I believe investors themselves should in fact seize this opportunity, where things seem to be at a standstill. Those who come in now can do wonders. I see hotels being built around here and I applaud these people, because this wave of unrest will subside, and when it does, tourism will return in full force. Actually, tourists have never stopped coming altogether, even during the worst of times. But you're right: they won't come in the numbers that we're hoping for and seeking to promote.

War has never been a friend of development. This applies not only to tourism, but to manpower itself, which faces problems when there's unrest, because people must be free to travel, whether it's to work, or to go on holidays and return to work. Traders too need to travel up and down the country.

Of course, I feel it's absurd. It's almost like stopping the traffic of vehicles in one direction and not the other, believing that one part of the country is benefitting from this or being protected. But traffic must flow on both sides. There are raw materials coming from the North to the South for some processing, as well as goods going from the South to the North, including some raw materials going to the North for processing or for construction purposes, which could be sourced from somewhere in the South. I can talk about medicines, fertilisers or practically anything. You never know what lorry needs to go from one point to the other.

Therefore, the best thing is just to have peace and no unrest at all.

You are personally involved in the country's economy, since you are an active player in agroindustry and agriculture. You also have your own vision with regards to agroindustry, as well as its relationship with the environment. I would like to know where Mozambique can have a say in this respect, given that this is a tremendously large country, which makes for a bright future for agriculture. What is your vision of the development of the agroindustry and agriculture sectors here?

My vision is that we need to provide more training to people, in order to be able to make use of more sustainable ways of doing agriculture. Also, the Government, and all those who can work with it, whether technically or financially, should create the infrastructure and bring in the necessary equipment, so that there's less of a need to develop new areas for agriculture, but improve existing areas instead. In other words, being able to produce more crops in a small space - either cash crops or food crops. This can be achieved through training, or with the necessary equipment and technology.

Training comes first, not just in terms of how you till the land (i.e. zero tilling, organic fertilisers, etc.), but also in terms of management, which allows people to become richer from what they do and then enables them to go from subsistence farming to commercial farming, while also introducing the processing element, as the only way one can increase one's revenue in agriculture. It's vital to add value to your products, through processing, together with creating a good market. The goal, therefore, is to improve the capacity of both small and medium-scale farmers to achieve it, thus becoming a cornerstone for development, as per the wishes of the Governments programme: reclaiming agriculture and turning it into a foundation for development. All of these things must come together.

It's not easy to train engineers in agronomy and then have them come out and wait to be employed by the State. This is not enough. The State should certainly employ a few of them, in order to train those who are on the field, i.e. both small and medium-scale farmers, or even some large-scale farmers who may not be doing things correctly. I'm not mentioning bigger farmers, because I'm assuming that when they become big, they know what to do, in order to attain higher revenue or profit.

Going further than just agroindustry, how do you think Mozambique should develop? You mentioned the fact that agroindustry and agriculture are the way to socially increase everyone's revenues, and of course Mozambique currently doesn't export anything on this front - or practically anything, save for a few raw materials. On the other hand, the country buys a good deal from abroad, which is why agroindustry is certainly one of the areas that needs to be developed. But where do you think Mozambique should focus its efforts, and where do you think investors should come and invest in the country?

I won't be saying anything new, because the way we would like to develop the country has been outlined since our Independence, which is to have agriculture as a foundation in economic terms. But this is necessarily linked to education as a first priority, followed by health, while having agriculture as an economic foundation. However, it was also said that industry should be the aim, to be built upon this foundation, which is why we saw industrial development as the 'energising' factor. When I talk about industry, I am referring to agroindustry in the first instance, but also all other types of industry that require know-how.

My vision is that we need to provide more training to people, in order to be able to make use of more sustainable ways of doing agriculture. Also, the Government should create the infrastructure and bring in the necessary equipment.

Let us take a very simple example. In Mozambique, we produce cotton, but our factories have closed, because we lacked the know-how, and then we didn't have the cash to invest in maintaining and modernising our facilities, in order for these to be competitive. Therefore, ensuring adequate education is basic. This involves teaching people not only to know things, but also to know how to implement their knowledge.

The other example I can give you is that of gas, which we now have in Mozambique. But we'll soon be requesting someone to come in and install the simplest of factories, in order to make plastic cups, which could easily be done by us in Mozambique. Therefore, it's necessary to train people to be able to do these kinds of things. We could talk about many other examples. We have timber, we have other minerals, even iron ore in some places. The question is how to transform all of this. I don't mean this can be done overnight, but if over these past forty years we had placed more emphasis on actually teaching people how to do things, by now we would have qualified people, although we would still need foreign investors over a long period, with technology and the like. But we would have our own people, who could gradually become industrialists in various fields of activity.

This is the second time you have mentioned training in this interview. You really do hit the nail on the head with education and training, which nonetheless don't seem to have reached the levels required. There's a gap here. Therefore, what should be done, and why hasn't it been possible yet to train people? It has been a long time, and nothing is produced internally, which means people are not yet trained. What is the solution?

We also need to be fair with ourselves. We began our development process from scratch, and so the priority was not exactly to train technicians, but to implement literacy programmes. People first needed to read and write, which is vital. Then you come to a second stage. We have also had destabilisation throughout this whole process, both of the economy and of the very education and training programme. This is why the results are not so good, yet. But I do know that the Government is reviewing the situation, in order to provide education with a new focus, since we now have many universities. This requires setting a new course for these universities, but not exclusively so: even for the lower classes, particularly secondary education. Secondary education should be about producing 'doers': people who come out to do things, not people who come out to seek employment and be told what to do, but who can do things by themselves.

Education should also enable people to seek and provide solutions, which is what universities should be about. I didn't go to university, but I sent thousands of people to university, in order for them to make the difference. They should not come to me and ask me what to do, or ask for employment. Instead, they should bring the solution. Therefore, education needs to be framed in such a way so as to bring this about: making people feel that they're responsible for coming up with the solutions for their own country's problems.

That leads me to my next question, about FUNDE, a foundation of which you are the President and which provides many benefits, as well as encouraging university and polytechnic access. Could you tell us what is your vision for FUNDE? What goals would you like to achieve through this organisation?

Actually, FUNDE was created to connect universities with people, and all their problems, starting from elementary problems such as nutrition, which is basic but most important. Universities should pay attention to this area through direct and unmediated participation. My desire would have been to be closer to peoples living base, in order to deal with their problems. Well, I am unable to do this everywhere in Mozambique, even if I could be free from outside demands, such as contributing towards solutions to international problems. But universities can, because there are many now, and they are training a good deal of people. Universidade Politecnica, where I am more involved, was among the first universities to perceive the need to link the productive sector with the university, i.e. enterprise and its needs. Therefore, FUNDE set out to ensure the communication required, while dealing with the main problems brought about by development. For instance, when coal companies go somewhere to set up operations, they need to disturb the environment to some extent, also in terms of where people live, which involves resettlement. Here universities and Universidade Politecnica, through FUNDE, can help in the resettlement of people.

I also mentioned the need to build capacity among people, in order to enable them to raise their own sources of income. As such, working with people is also very important. This is where you find the connection between peace and development, and where FUNDE becomes involved in practical terms.

These are essentially some of the ideas we have at FUNDE.

In 2007, you won first prize of the Mo Ibrahim Prize, because of your work in contributing to peace within and outside the country; an award that also included Nelson Mandela?

I was the first to receive the prize. Nelson Mandela was not within the criteria, having left power many years before the prize was instituted. But on the same day I received the award, a mention was made, which also included Desmond Tutu. He was given a special award or acknowledgement by the Mo Ibrahim Foundation, in recognition of his work, but this was not exactly within the framework of the prize, which involved different criteria.

Nelson Mandela said you needed a kind of philosophy in life, which allowed you to deal with conflict situations using the same approach. I just wanted to know the difference between Nelson Mandela's approach and your own approach, because it seems that you were very much involved in the military, which was not Mandela's case. This difference is key, but you seem to ultimately have a similar approach in seeking to achieve peace.

There are differences and there are similarities. The difference is that Mandela did not have to work to end a war in his own country, but the similarity lies in that he had to see how groups of people, who were enemies within the same country, could come together and live in harmony.

In our case, we had Mozambicans who went to work for our enemies against our Independence, but these are ultimately Mozambicans; so we wanted to see how they could come back and be together with everybody else, with the same rights. This is the core: ensuring everyone has the same rights and defending peoples' fundamental rights. I believe we had that in common.

How about the approach, in terms of the way you negotiate or the way you speak to a country's opposition or Government?

Looking at South Africa, I would say that Mandela came out of a process, and he began negotiations in a different environment than we did here in Mozambique. The approaches were therefore naturally different in either case, and could not be similar on all counts.

My approach was simply that there should be dialogue, which again is something we probably have in common, because Mandela also supported dialogue. But then, you have to also understand that he came out of prison just as we were concluding our process of negotiations, which began in 1990, including reforms and our new Constitution, thereby laying the foundations for everyone to feel well in the country. When Mandela was released, we began to work together, in order to try and help each other to solve problems.

Given your military weight, which was not his case, what bearing did this difference in background and outlook have on your relationship, while ultimately arriving at the same peace and dialogue?

Now, you must understand that Mandela was the leader of the ANC's military wing, also with a good deal of experience on that front. I took part in my country's liberation struggle, as he did, although he was arrested during the early days, when we has still organising.

I personally also had different tasks during the liberation struggle. My tasks had more to do with the intelligence side, rather than being involved directly in the field of operations.

What was your experience of working together? Do you remember any specific highlights of the time you shared?

Yes. Among the first problems Mandela encountered when he came to power was the fear some Afrikaners had about losing land, since these were people of the land and relied heavily on agriculture. They felt they didn't have enough land, and that if their lands now had to be redistributed among the majority, this would cause problems.

This was something Mandela had to solve, and he thought that he could get a hand from Mozambique, in order to help him solve this problem. We obliged and we created the conditions for Afrikaners to come here. There was a leader of the Afrikaners called General William, who was the head of their cooperatives and had fought against both Angola and us in Mozambique. Mandela sent him to talk to me and we did so. We shook hands and this General William said: "You are a good General, because I did not defeat you. I was a good General, because you did not defeat me. But now we have to be on the same side, in order to bring good things to our two countries. If we agree on these terms, then we shake hands". And this is the signature among Afrikaners. The way you sign a deal is by shaking hands, which we did.

The project started, but some other forces did not particularly agree with it, and Mandela had some issues in obtaining the financing in time - given that the South African side had subsidised some farmers in Mozambique; because what we did was to also create an association of Mozambican farmers, along with an association of South African farmers, in order to implement a joint programme in Mozambique. This programme was taken to the Niassa province, where we provided land and the infrastructure was built.

I don't know whether some of these Afrikaners are still there, but because of the road conditions, things didn't quite move so fast. Why did we go to Niassa? Because there's more land there and a smaller population. The land is fertile and there is more water, yet South African farmers wanted to farm closer to home. But that programme was not in vain, because there are many South Africans farming in Mozambique today. Some Afrikaners came to settle here, and they're farming. This is something that we did together.

My approach was simply that there should be dialogue, which again is something we probably have in common, because Mandela also supported dialogue.

Mandela and I worked on many other things. It was during Mandela's time that we began building the Maputo 'corridor', with a highway linking both countries. During his time, we also began discussing Emocil and the gas in southern Mozambique, in Inhambane province, although much of this was concluded during the time of President Thabo Mbeki. It was also during Mandela's time that we began discussing 'Spatial Development Zones', i.e. spaces for common development, namely the Lebombo development area, comprising Mozambique, Swaziland and South Africa. During Mandela's term, we began to talk about joining the Kruger Park and those in Mozambique, in order to create the Greater Limpopo, although the treaty as such was signed during Mbekis term. During Mandela's time in office, we also decided to have regular meetings between both governments. Two delegations were on standby to meet frequently, at least four times a year, in order to exchange reviews and the like. That's when we began discussing the need for a common border and for bringing our countries closer together.

As you can see, there were many things. We also discussed SADC. Mandela had to take the place left behind by Nyerere in trying to achieve peace in Burundi. We also worked together on that. You name it! There were many occasions when we met, even if it wasn't a long period, as he was in power for just five years. But following that, we created the forum for former heads of State and Government - an initiative that I conceived and I shared with him. He agreed to take part in the first constitutive meeting, although he wasn't feeling too well by then. He became a member and made a speech at the opening session of this forum.

He had the fullest respect for me, although I sought to reverse things, given his age and his intellectuality. I recognised him as senior, but he would refuse this treatment and wished to place himself lower than me. Thus, when I found him sitting somewhere, he wouldn't allow me to greet him while he was sitting. He had to stand up and would refer to me as "my President". "Welcome, my President", he used to say. Of course, he also involved me in his private life, when he started to become close to Graca Machel, who became his wife. During the early days, he approached me to inform me about his intention, respecting the fact that I was head of State, but also in keeping with African tradition. He thought there should be a family 'to be talked to' before proceeding, which was a symbolic gesture.

We had some good moments.

Having been President of the African Union yourself, and as a member of the forum [of former heads of State], what is your vision for Africa's development in the medium term, say in 2 or 3 years' time? We have seen Africa's economies suffering a lot, because of the drop in commodities, but what is your vision for Africa's development. When you meet as former presidents, what is your outlook?

The economic crisis we're going through today is not only African in origin, nor is it limited to Africa. But I would urge all forces that have a stake in world economic development to look at Africa as one of the continents that will safeguard the world's future, given its virginity in terms of resources; both in material and human terms. This is a young continent when it comes to the age of its population, and Africa's population growth rate is high, which means it will be a well populated continent within a few years, with a significant workforce. It matters that this workforce is well qualified, thus enabling it to make a difference not only to Africa but to the world at large.

Raw materials are the most dormant of Africa's resources, and one can take the example of Mozambique. Having both qualified manpower and raw materials can make a big difference. As I mentioned earlier, if we are further able to preserve our forests and our environment by making use of sustainable forms of agriculture, while also developing industry, since we should not pollute the atmosphere. Africa therefore enjoys all the assets needed to become an important player on the world economic stage.

Of course, Africans have the responsibility of voluntarily trying to decrease their dependency on external sources, by acquiring ever greater knowledge; but above all, by building up our self-confidence and convincing ourselves that we are able to do things. Not only Americans can, but we can also do things. It's crucial for us to be self-confident, and we have to motivate our youth to do things. I'm happy to see more and more young people working in Mozambique. I was working with an insurance company this morning, represented by a very young lady. We didn't see this in the past. In the banks too you find young people, who have been able to master the technology, among many other such cases. This is clearly the future, but in the short term, much will depend on the willingness of our partners to say "Yes, Africa is the future, so we have to help them now", and not leave things for later. If we combine both of these, Africa can actually lay the foundations for reversing the world economic crisis.

In the 70s, we had the oil crisis. This was an important crisis in an era of Cold War confrontation. Nowadays, I believe interests should converge, and if these are able to converge, for the sake of the future, now is the time to build it  within the next 2 to 3 years.

This relates to what we were talking about earlier. We should not wait for the conflict to end completely in Mozambique. Increased involvement should in fact be among the ways to end conflict, in order to motivate the population. As someone in the farming business, I can say that when us farmers see clouds, we go and start sowing the fields, then wait for the rain to come; rather than waiting for the rain to fall first, then going to buy seeds and coming back, start preparing the land, etc., after which we may miss the opportunity.

This is time for sowing. We shouldn't be discouraged by the fact there may still be drought. The clouds are there and rain may come. In fact, during my lifetime, even as President, I had a good experience when travelling to the countryside. I went to places where there was no rain and it was completely dry. I found people crying for rain. I talked to them and comforted them, by giving them many explanations, after which I said "do you have anything else to ask me?" One of them said: "Yes, I have". "What is it?" I asked. He said: "Please, we don't have water, we don't have rain". So what I had to say to that was: "No, please don't stay idle, because there's no rain. Make sure your farms are prepared, even while you're crying. One day rain may come without you knowing it."

I went to another place the same day, some distance away, perhaps 150 km. Upon my arrival, I took the same discussion there, because it was also dry: "Rain may come any time". Exactly as I was saying it, it began to rain. It rained heavily. When I arrived at my destination, late at night, I made radio contact with the first and second places I had travelled through, in order to ask whether the rain had indeed arrived. They informed me that the dams had filled up in less than one night. This contrasted precisely with the examples they had given me: "Look at how the dams are dry, the cattle have no water, the people have no water, because we drink from the same source." They now reported that the dams were full.

This is the example I wish to give. Investors therefore must invest knowing that the rain may come.
Shipping freight rates for transporting containers from ports in Asia to Northern Europe fell 13.1 percent to $636 per 20-foot container (TEU) in the week ended on Friday, a source with access to data from the Shanghai Containerized Freight Index told Reuters.



The shipping industry has been battling overcapacity linked to a glut of new vessels ordered during a boom period before the global financial crisis of 2007-2009.



In the week to Friday, container spot freight rates fell 7.5 percent from Asia to ports in the Mediterranean, rose 0.7 percent to ports on the U.S. West Coast and were down 0.6 percent to ports on the U.S. East Coast.



Maersk Line, the global market leader with a market share of around 15 percent and part of Danish shipping and oil group A.P. Moller-Maersk, said on Wednesday its profit in the first quarter fell 95 percent from a year earlier to $37 million due to weak demand and record low freight rates.



Maersk controls around one fifth of all transported containers from Asia to Europe.





Reporting by Ole Mikkelsen
The South African governments Operation Phakisa: Oceans Economy initiative has yielded more results with the ceremonial launch of two more tugboats built for Transnet National Ports Authority (TNPA).

The two tugs  named Qunu and Cormorant  form part of TNPAs R1.4 billion contract awarded to Durban ship builder, Southern African Shipyards. It is the largest single contract TNPA has ever given to a South African company for the building of harbor craft and will see a total of nine new tugs built for the South African port landlord over three and a half years.

The duty of officially naming the vessels was carried out by Linda Mabaso, Chair of Transnet SOC Limited. Mabaso said the tug building contract was a concrete demonstration of the local shipbuilding expertise that Operation Phakisa aimed to leverage as part of its focus on the Oceans Economy.

Operation Phakisa is reigniting growth in the ocean economy and has been a catalyst for Transnets fast-tracking of investments into our ports. South Africas location and the expertise demonstrated by projects like this are key to us increasing our share of the global marine manufacturing market, including ship-building and repair, rig repair and refurbishment or boat-building, she said.

Karl Wiesner, Chief Commercial Operations Officer of Southern African Shipyards, added, The continued excellence of the Southern African Shipyards steel fabrication and production team to deliver under this program, resulting today in the launch of the second and third tugs, demonstrates the commitment of both the shipyard and TNPA to showcase the maritime industrial expertise in South Africa, and to become a key national asset able to compete in the global shipbuilding industry.

Dr. Donald Mkhawanazi, Chairman of Southern African Shipyards, highlighted that the project has, since inception, created at least 500 direct and 3,500 indirect jobs. The commitment of employees continues to ensure the delivery of quality tugs, on budget and on time, he said.

Mabaso named the two tugs Qunu  in reference to the Eastern Cape home village of former President, the late Nelson Mandela  and Cormorant after the aquatic bird species of the same name.

Qunu will be allocated to the Port of Port Elizabeth alongside her sister tug Mvezo, which was the first to roll off the production line recently. Qunu is expected to be handed over in June, while Cormorant is destined for the Port of Saldanha in July.

The large-scale project will see two tugs each allocated to the Ports of Durban, Richards Bay and Port Elizabeth, while Saldanha, which handles the largest carriers, would receive three tugs. There will be handovers every three months until the last tug is launched in early 2018.

TNPAs new fleet of nine tugs are each 31 meters long with a 70 ton bollard pull. The older fleet of 29 tugs has 32.5 to 40 ton pulls. The increased bollard pull of these new generation tugs meets international standards and they also feature the latest global technology. The tugs have Voith Scheider propulsion which makes them highly maneuverable and able to change the direction and thrust almost instantaneously while guiding large vessels safely into South Africas ports, according to TNPA program manager Eugene Rappetti, Senior Manager for Marine Operations.
The Fitch Fuel Catalyst improves fuel efficiency by 5-12 percent, reducing pollutants and paying for itself many times over. According to the manufacturer, Advanced Power Systems Intl, these benefits are being experienced by many hundreds of commercial ships and vessels operating around the world using its system, including the Golden Alaska and the Tri Marine Group.



Prior to installing the Fitch Fuel Catalyst on its 10 tuna seiners beginning in 2014, Tri Marines division in America Samoa commissioned three independent evaluations: a field test on the Cape Hatteras, a dyno test and a load bank test. The group found a 5-8 percent improvement in fuel efficiency versus baseline.



The Golden Alaska, which first started using Fitch in 2014, closely monitors its fuel consumption at all times and reports an increase in fuel efficiency of 8.51 percent when using Fitch Fuel Catalyst to treat fuel.



In addition, there was a reduction in smoke and carbon buildup, which will translate into reduced engine maintenance and unscheduled downtime.
Newly built Crewboat represents excellence in Italian design, quality in construction

There is something about Italian products, from consumer goods to industrial objects, that carries a stylistic flair. This is well represented in the cruise ships of the Fincantieri Shipyard, such as the 2015-delivered Britannia. More recently this flair for design and quality construction is evident in the 2016-delivered fast supply vessel Blue Brother from Cantiere Navale Vittoria SPA of Adria, on the Canal Bianco which connects to the Po River in the province of Rovigo, Italy.

Tecnonavi SRL of Ancona, Italy designed the 51.75 by 9.2-meter vessel. The aluminum hull, with a depth of 2.2 meters, is painted a bright red with a white superstructure. The well-fendered bow and stern allows for personnel transfers both fore and aft. The forward mounted accommodation has seating for 71 passengers and accommodations for up to 14 crewmembers. A crane-launched rescue craft is located on the upper deck, aft of the wheelhouse.

The vessel is fitted with a Dynamic Positioning 2 system from Kongsberg that includes two bow thrusters as a part of the required redundancy. Main propulsion power for the vessel is four Cummins KTA50-M2 diesels, each rated for 1,342 kW (1,800 HP) each at 1,900 RPM. The engines each turn a fixed propeller through ZF 5050 A gearboxes with 2.962:1 reduction. The four engines deliver a total of 5,372 kW (7,200 HP) to give the Blue Brother a top speed of 28 knots.

Capacities include 120 cu. meters of fuel, 115 CM or water and 1.5 CM of lube oil. While remaining under the ownership of the shipyard group, the boat will join the fleet of Bambini SRL under charter.
As a part of a waterfront upgrade project at the Boston Fire Dept Burroughs Wharf Station, a floating dock system of Type 1200 concrete floating docks manufactured by SF Marina Systems USA was delivered.



The Type 1200 system was design to withstand the vessel loads and wave action of the exposed Boston harbor location. With winter holding on, Coastal Marine Construction accomplished the installation in tight quarters between the city piers.



The dock was designed in three sections with SF Marinas post tensioning system utilized to form a single solid ramp landing area and finger for the fire department vessels. Gated pile guides will allow the whole system to be removed providing access to the fixed pier.



The units are constructed from reinforced concrete and Styrofoam, for superior strength, stability and buoyancy, theyre engineered to handle harsh weather conditions and attenuate waves. Requiring very little maintenance, the structures are designed to last decades.
Sabine Pilots in Port Arthur, Texas has received a new all-aluminum pilot boat, Port Arthur.

With a deep-V hull designed by C. Raymond Hunt Associates, the Chesapeake class pilot boat was built by Gladding-Hearn Shipbuilding, Duclos Corporation of Somerset, Mass. The vessel measures 53.6 feet overall, with a 17.8-foot beam and a 4.8-foot draft.

The launch is powered by twin Caterpillar C-18s diesels, each rated at 715 Bhp at 2,100 rpm. Loaded top speed is 28 knots. The engines turn five-blade NiBrAl propellers via Twin Disc MGX-5135A Quick Shift gear boxes. A Humphree Interceptor trim tab system, with automatic trim control, was installed at the transom. The vessel is equipped with a 12kW Alaska Diesel genset.

The boat includes wide side decks, side and rear doors and boarding platforms on the roof and bow. At the transom are throttle and steering controls and a winch-operated, hinged rescue basket, level with the rescue access.

The wheelhouse is cooled by two 16,000 Btu air conditioners. A third, 12,000 Btu unit is in the forecastle. Interior accommodations include eight Llebroc seats, head, small galley and two settee berths forward.

Vessel Data and Specifications Information

Vessel Name: Port Arthur

Hull Type: Deep-V monohull

Owner: Sabine Pilot Services, Inc.

Builder: Gladding-Hearn Shipbuilding, Duclos Corporation

Architect: C. Raymond Hunt Associates

Vessel length: 53.6 feet

Vessel beam: 17.8 feet

Vessel depth: 8.5 feet

Vessel draft: 4.8 feet

Date launched: February 29, 2016

Propulsion equipment

Main engines: two Caterpillar C-18 diesel engines; each 715 Bhp at 2,100 rpm

Engine supplier: Milton CAT

Gears: two Twin Disc MGX 5135A Quick Shift

Propellers: two x five-blade NiBrAl

Engine controls: Twin Disc EC300 Quick Shift electronic controls, located at helm station in pilothouse and at the aft-deck docking station

Other Equipment

Genset: 12 kW Alaska Diesel

Steering system: Seastar hydraulic; Humphree's interceptor system withAutomatic Trim Optimization

Electronics

Supplier: MacDougals Cape Cod Marine

Installer: Gladding-Hearn Shipbuilding

Radar: Furuno FR8122 w/ 12" LCD

VHF: two Standard Marine GX5500 VHF radios

GPS: Furuno GP32 GPS/WASS Navigator

Depth sounder: Furuno RD33

Compass: Furuno SC50 Satellite compass; 5" Ritchie

Loud hailer/siren (make/model)

Galley

SS sink, under-counter refrigerator, microwave oven

Sewage system

Raritan Atlantes Freedom A724 marine toilet and 9 gal. holding tank with discharge pump and deck fittings

Capacities

Fuel: 850 U.S. gal

Fresh water: 55 U.S. gal.

Sewage holding tank: 9 U.S. gal.

Crew size: Captain & deckhand

Speed (loaded): 28 knots

Air conditioning: two x 16,000 Btu MarineAir self-contained reverse cycle AC units in pilothouse; 12,000 Btu MarineAir AC units in forecastle area

Other systems

Pilot-boarding platforms located at the bow and pilothouse roof; winch-operated hinged rescue basket, with rescue access at transom; eight Llebrock seats in pilothouse; forecastle includes upholstered vee berth and two settee berths
BMT Fluid Mechanics (BMT), a subsidiary of BMT Group Ltd., completed a Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) study for an oil major operating offshore Nigeria. BMT reports that its scope of work included an assessment of the current loading to which the FPSO hull is subjected to, which has enabled the oil major to ensure its mooring systems are fit for purpose.

CFD is becoming more commonplace in the oil and gas sector with many customers recognizing it to be an effective tool for solving challenges the industry faces in a less conservative and more efficient manner," said Johnathan Green, Manager for BMT Fluid Mechanics Numerical Modelling Group. "In this project, we were able to use CFD to more accurately analyse the hydrodynamic forces caused by current and waves and asses the subsequent effect these forces have on the bilge keels of the vessel which are designed to stop the vessel from rolling.

Through the creation of a 3D CAD model and representation of the FPSO below the water line, BMT's team were able to run a comprehensive experimental and numerical study of the maneuvering characteristics. This looked at different parameters of current conditions to help build up a picture of how the forces and motions impact the vessel and how it performs.

The benefit of using CFD in this study is that the customer can use the less conservative loads estimated to help design the mooring systems," said Green.
St. Louis-based Byrne & Jones Construction informs it has acquired Midwest Foundation, a Peoria, Ill. marine construction services company.

Midwest Foundation installs piling foundations and serves the bridge construction industry including demolition, construction and repair, also providing dock repairs, lock and dam rehabilitations and equipment leasing. Its marine division has a fleet of 16 barges and two tugboats, which it also leases along with crawler cranes with lifting capacities from 65 tons to 230 tons.

Midwest Foundation was a good match for us, said Brian Goggins, president of Byrne & Jones Weve both long focused on understanding our customer needs and being problem solvers. The acquisition gives Byrne & Jones a specialty niche in marine work that will help us grow our business.

Rick Tockes, who has more than 30 years of experience in the marine construction industry, will manage the new marine division of Byrne & Jones. The operation will remain in the Peoria, Ill. area, where it employs seven people in its office and up to 50 people in the field depending on work volume.
Coast Guard Research and Development Center along with DHS Science and Technology Directorate officially open a new Science and Technology Innovation Center

The Coast Guard Research and Development Center, in conjunction with the Department of Homeland Security, officially opened a joint research facility in a ribbon-cutting ceremony at the R&D Centers offices located at Fort Trumbull.

The Science and Technology Innovation Center is a collaborative effort between DHS Science and Technology and the Coast Guard R&D Center dedicated to leveraging innovation, prototyping and rapid integration of high technology solutions to answer the operational challenges of the Coast Guard and DHS. It was conceived as a response to DHS Secretary Jeh Johnsons unity of effort initiative.

Capt. Dennis Evans, commanding officer of the R&D Center, touched on the cooperative spirit of the Innovation Center in his welcoming remarks. We recognize our collaboration is critical in transitioning technology and innovation to meet the needs of the department, the Coast Guard, and the American public at strong value to the taxpayer.

Anh Duong, director of Borders and Maritime Security for DHS Science and Technology, echoed those sentiments, saying, By formalizing our partnership, we will work closely together to speed-up the transition of knowledge to the field.

Coast Guard Deputy Commandant for Mission Support Adm. Thomas Jones said that the Innovation Center supports the strategic goal of offering technology alternatives through innovation, noting that it is important to transition programs to our operators.

Dr. Robert Griffin, deputy under secretary for DHS Science & Technology, underscored the necessity for an institute such as the Innovation Center. The technology we can bring to the Arctic, the quicker we can get technology to the area, the stronger and safer it will be.

Gov. Dannel P. Malloy proclaimed today as Coast Guard Science and Technology Innovation Center Day in Connecticut, saying in an official statement the Innovation Center would quickly solve rapidly evolving technological challenges and promote a culture of innovation  to adapt available technologies into viable solutions to operational challenges. The statement conveyed the essence of the Innovation Centers mission, stating that it will ensure maritime safety and security, and promote environmental stewardship by taking the lead role in improving the delivery of impactful, operationally relevant, and affordable solutions  in a timely manner.

New London Mayor Michael E. Passero also declared today as Coast Guard Science and Technology Innovation Center Day. Passero noted that the Innovation Center would work to develop risk-reducing prototypes and conduct demonstrations of sea, land and air technology systems  to counter emerging threats to the homeland and provide a hedge against technical uncertainty.

The ceremonial ribbon was cut by Congressman Courtney, with the assistance of Mayor Passero, Adm. Jones, Capt. Evans, Dr. Griffin, and Duong.

Tours the R&D Center and the Science and Technology Innovation Center followed the ceremony. Demonstrations of R&D projects including LED alternatives to pyrotechnic distress flares, nonlethal methods for stopping fleeing vessels, a remotely operated vessel, and the night vision device evaluation lab were provided. Guests were also able to examine an early prototype of the Innovation Centers first project, the Maritime Object Tracking Technology, designed to merge existing technologies to track derelict crafts or objects thrown from fleeing vessels. Operational testing will be held later this year.
Shes toughcapable of punching through 30-foot waves and riptides or smashing into rocks and reefs. But shes also tender, providing hope to those in peril.

Meet EMILY the robotic lifeguardofficially known as the Emergency Integrated Lifesaving Lanyarda remote-controlled buoy that recently was used to rescue nearly 300 Syrian migrants from drowning in the waters off the Greek island of Lesbos.

Created with support from the Office of Naval Research (ONR), several EMILY devices will be displayed in action for the public during the 2016 Naval STEM Expo and Sea-Air-Space Expositionboth to be held at the Gaylord Convention Center in National Harbor, Maryland. EMILYs demo schedule is as follows:

Sunday, May 15: Naval STEM Expo. 1:30 p.m.-4:40 p.m., South Dock of the Gaylord.

Monday, May 16-Wednesday, May 18: 9:15 a.m.-11:30 a.m. and 1 p.m.-3 p.m., South Dock of the Gaylord. There also will be a display at ONRs booth at Sea-Air-Space.

EMILY is the culmination of a collaboration between inventor Tony Mulligan, ONR and the Navys Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs. SBIR provides the Navy with innovative advances in technology created by small firmswhile STTR transitions products developed by both small businesses and research institutions to the Navy and Marine Corps.

The technology in EMILY took a long road over 15 yearsadvancing from marine mammal research to unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in Iraq.

EMILYs 15-year progression is inspiring, said SBIR Director Bob Smith. From whale-monitoring efforts, to supporting warfighters in harms way, to impacting global humanitarian efforts, EMILY is a classic overnight success story years in the making.

Outfitted in bright orange, red and yellow colors, each cylindrical EMILY buoy is four feet long and weighs 25 pounds. Its powered by a jet engine system similar to a mini jet ski, shoots a water jet stream for propulsion and travels up to 22 miles per hour. EMILY also has two-way communication radios, a video camera with a live feed to smart phones and lights for night rescues.

EMILY is made of Kevlar and aircraft-grade composites and is virtually indestructible, said Mulligan, CEO of Hydronalix, a maritime robotics company. The devices can be thrown off a helicopter or bridge and then driven via remote control to whoever needs to be rescued.

EMILYs roots stretch back to 2001, when Mulligan received ONR and SBIR-STTR funding to develop a computer- and sensor-operated UAV to monitor whale movements during Navy sonar testing. However, when the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq erupted, Mulligan improved and transformed his vehicles into Silver Fox UAVs in 2003, which helped U.S. troops conduct aerial surveillance and reconnaissance missions.

In 2011, Mulligan received funding to disassemble existing Silver Foxes and use their components, such as motor parts and navigation computers, to build unmanned surface vehicles for hurricane tracking, tsunami response and search-and-rescue missions. This technology was built upon to develop EMILY.

Mulligan also has worked with ONRs SwampWorks programwhich specializes in innovative, high-risk technologiesto develop components that went into both EMILY and the Mobile Gateway Buoy, designed to support Navy mine counter-measure missions.

Mulligan has provided more than 260 EMILY devices to navies, coast guards and search-and-rescue units in South Korea, Indonesia, Singapore, the United Kingdom, France, Mongolia, Brazil, Mexico and Greece. U.S. rescue teams in Oregon and Washington, D.C., also have expressed interest in the robotic lifeguard.

The Author

Warren Duffie is a contractor for ONR Corporate Strategic Communications.
The Navy will christen its newest Independence-variant littoral combat ship, USS Manchester (LCS 14), during a 10 a.m. CST ceremony Saturday, May 7 in Mobile, Alabama.



Manchester, designated LCS 14, honors the city of Manchester, New Hampshire.



Thomas Oppel, chief of staff to the secretary of the Navy, will serve as the principal speaker. New Hampshire Senator, the Honorable Jeanne Shaheen, will serve as the ships sponsor. The ceremony will be highlighted by Shaheen breaking a bottle of sparkling wine across the bow to formally christen the ship, which is a time-honored Navy tradition.



"The christening of the future USS Manchester represents another step forward as we continue to grow our fleet and serves as a reminder of the importance of our Navy's partnership with the highly-skilled and dedicated shipbuilders of our nation's industrial base," said the Honorable Ray Mabus, secretary of the Navy. "It is because of the important work done by these men and women that the Manchester will represent our Navy and the people of New Hampshire with distinction, around the world, for years to come."



The future USS Manchester is the second naval vessel to honor New Hampshire's largest city. The first, a light cruiser, was commissioned Oct. 29, 1946. During nearly ten years of commissioned service, the ship completed numerous deployments, including three combat deployments in support of operations during the Korean conflict. The ship was decommissioned June 27, 1956 and stricken from the Navy list April 1, 1960.



The LCS class consists of two variants, the Freedom variant and the Independence variant, designed and built by two industry teams. The Freedom variant team is led by Lockheed Martin (for the odd-numbered hulls, e.g. LCS 1). The Independence variant team is led by Austal USA (for LCS 6 and the subsequent even-numbered hulls) and was originally led by General Dynamics, Bath Iron Works (LCS 2 and LCS 4).



The LCS seaframes will be outfitted with reconfigurable payloads, called mission modules (made up of mission systems and support equipment), which can be changed quickly. These modules combine with crew detachments and aviation assets to become complete mission packages, which will deploy manned and unmanned vehicles and sensors in support of mine countermeasures, anti-submarine warfare, or surface warfare missions.




Foreign ministers and defense force chiefs from Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines signed a joint declaration on maritime security on Thursday, calling on all governments in the region to increase efforts to tackle marine threats, reports Jakarta Post.

The three officials hashed out details of joint patrols, including issues on how the exchange of information would take place between the three countries.

The leaders called for intensified maritime security following the recent kidnapping of seamen by the Southern Philippines-based Abu Sayyaf militant group, and other armed sea robberies, that have endangered national security in the region.

The three nations also agreed to:

- extend immediate aid to people and vessels in distress,

- establish a national focal point among the three countries to share information and intelligence in the event of emergency and security threats, and

- set up a hotline of communication among the three countries to better facilitate coordination during emergency situations and security threats.

Officials at the meeting are also reported to have discussed operating procedures to set out how cooperation in emergency situations will be put into action, and are drawing on experiences from information sharing and sea and aerial patrols in the Strait of Malacca.

The countries all expressed renewed commitment to the promotion of peace, stability and security in the region, as well as to addressing growing security challenges, especially transnational crime and terrorism. The agreement also confirms a mutual respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of each country, the statement said.
Italian vessels have helped rescue nearly 1,800 migrants from boats trying to reach Italy from north Africa in the last 24 hours, the navy said on Friday, indicating that numbers are rising as the weather warms up.



The navy said 1,759 migrants were rescued in 10 operations involving the Italian navy, coastguard and finance police, the European Union's external borders agency Frontex and the medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres.



The Italian frigate Grecale was taking the migrants to the Sicilian port of Augusta, where they were expected to arrive on Saturday morning, a navy statement said. It gave no details of their nationalities.



The latest arrivals picked up in the Strait of Sicily will bring the total of migrants reaching Italy by boat so far this year to more than 30,000, slightly higher than in the same period of 2015.



Humanitarian organisations say the sea route between Libya and Italy is now the main route for asylum seekers heading for Europe, after an EU deal with Turkey dramatically slowed the flow of people reaching Greece.



Officials fear the numbers trying to make the crossing to southern Italy will increase as sailing conditions improve in warmer weather.



More than 1.2 million Arab, African and Asian migrants fleeing war and poverty have streamed into the European Union since the start of last year.



Most of those trying to reach Italy leave the coast of lawless Libya on rickety fishing boats or rubber dinghies, heading for the Italian island of Lampedusa, which is close to Tunisia, or towards Sicily.



On Wednesday, however, Italy's coastguard said it had rescued 42 migrants from a sailboat off the coast of Puglia, in the southeastern heel of mainland Italy.





Reporting by Gavin Jones
A new 200 million pound ($290 million) polar research ship is to be named after veteran BBC naturalist David Attenborough but the government promised on Friday that "Boaty McBoatface", the name which topped a public poll, would not be ignored.



The naming of the Royal Research Ship (RRS) attracted huge interest after the Natural Environment Research Council encouraged Britons to come up with suggestions, leading to a stream of light-hearted ideas such as RRS Usain Boat, RRS I Like Big Boats&I Cannot Lie and RRS Watch Out For The Iceberg.



Backed by a social media campaign, Boaty McBoatface easily topped an online poll with more than 124,000 votes although even the instigator of the Boaty name later apologised for his suggestion.



However, the government decided that the state-of-the-art ship which is due to set sail in 2019 would be named after Sir David Attenborough, 89, famed for his BBC TV natural history programmes which span six decades and whose name had attracted 11,000 votes.



But the ship's remotely operated undersea vehicle, which will collect samples from the deep waters of the Arctic and Antarctic, will be called Boaty McBoatface.



"The ship has captured the imaginations of millions, which is why we're ensuring that the Boaty name lives on through the sub-sea vehicle that will support the research crew, and the polar science education programme that will bring their work to life," said Science Minister Jo Johnson.



Attenborough, who will celebrate his 90th birthday on Sunday, said he was honoured.



"I ... hope that everyone who suggested a name will feel just as inspired to follow the ship's progress as it explores our polar regions," he said.





Reporting by Michael Holden
Ensco Plc has concluded discussions with Petrobras regarding revised commercial terms with respect to some rig contracts.

Ensco 6003 and Ensco 6004 had their contracts terminated effective May 1, 2016 by mutual agreement.

Ensco said the two rigs covered by the discontinued contracts will be removed from Brazilian waters and permanently retired, a sign of the weak state of the oil market.

Previously, Ensco stated that one or two rigs might lose jobs. It's not a big surprise that 2 rigs lost their jobs given the current state of the offshore drilling market and problems at Petrobras.

Ensco 6002 has had its contract term extended to December 2019. Previous downtime on Ensco 6001 that could have been applied toward limit permitting contract termination has been reduced to zero.

Ensco had 5 rigs working for Petrobras. The drillship Ensco DS-5 was put out of contract due to bribery accusations.

Ensco defends itself and initiated arbitration processes against Petrobras and Samsung, which was the builder of the rig.
The Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore (MPA) held a half-day ferry evacuation exercise today to test the readiness of various agencies to respond to potential ferry mishaps in the Port of Singapore.

More than 150 personnel from eight agencies and companies took part in this exercise, which included deployment of resources at sea at the Small Craft Anchorage for rescue operations and at Tanah Merah Ferry Terminal (TMFT), the landing point for rescued passengers.

To practise the ferry crew on the passenger management and evacuation drills at sea, the exercise scenario involved an inbound regional ferry which struck an object and had taken in water while en route to TMFT.

As a precautionary measure, the ferry master evacuated the 62 passengers on board into life rafts for transfer to a second ferry via MPA Patrol Craft. There were no injuries reported.

Andrew Tan, MPA's Chief Executive said, "Safety remains a top priority. Today's ferry evacuation is part of our regular emergency exercises to test our agencies response to any emergencies within our waters. It is also a reminder to all our stakeholders, including the ferry and terminal operators, that safety is everyones responsibility and we have to remain vigilant at all times. MPA will continue to work with the maritime community to raise the overall standards of safety in our port.

In addition to MPA officers, other agencies and companies that took part in the exercise included the Singapore Police Force, Police Coast Guard, Singapore Civil Defence Force, Immigration & Checkpoints Authority, SINDO Ferry and Singapore Cruise Centre Pte Ltd.
International criticism of China over the disputed South China Sea will rebound like a coiled spring, a Chinese diplomat said on Friday, as a U.S. warship visited Shanghai against a backdrop of rising tension in the region.



China claims almost all of the energy-rich South China Sea, through which more than $5 trillion of trade passes each year. The Philippines, Brunei, Vietnam, Malaysia and Taiwan have overlapping claims.



China's increasingly assertive moves in the waters, including building artificial islands and air strips, have rattled nerves, with the Group of Seven (G7) advanced economies warning last month they opposed provocation there.



Ouyang Yujing, director-general of Chinese Foreign Ministry's Department of Boundary and Ocean Affairs, said China took note of the criticism.



"Of course we're willing to take on board constructive comments and criticism by the relevant countries," Ouyang told a news briefing.



"But if they are aimed at putting pressure on China or blackening its name, then you can view it like a spring, which has an applied force and a counterforce. The more the pressure, the greater the reaction."



China has been stepping up its rhetoric ahead of a ruling by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague on a case the Philippines has brought against China's claims in the sea.



U.S. officials have expressed concern the ruling, expected soon, could prompt China to declare an air defence identification zone, as it did over the East China Sea in 2013. China has neither confirmed nor denied it could do that.



The ruling is expected to favour the Philippines and risks raising tension because China rejects the court's authority to hear the case, even though it is a signatory of the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea under which it is being heard.



China has been particularly angered by what it sees as interference by the United States, whose military has carried out "freedom of navigation" patrols through the sea.



Last Friday, the U.S. Defense Department said China had denied a request for the 7th Fleet's aircraft carrier strike group, to visit Hong Kong.



Still, China has allowed the 7th Fleet's command ship, the USS Blue Ridge, to visit Shanghai, where on Friday, Joseph Aucoin, commander of the U.S. 7th Fleet, declined to speculate on the reason for the cancellation of the Hong Kong visit.



"I'm not going to let that get in the way of fostering better relations with the country and especially with their navy," he told reporters at Shanghai's dock.





By Ben Blanchard and John Ruwitch


The Government has signed contracts with Navantia S.A. to build Australias two replacement replenishment ships, avoiding a critical capability gap.



Australias current supply ship HMAS Success will reach its end of life in 2021 and needs to be replaced as a matter of priority.



As part of the $640 million contract with Navantia more than $130 million will go to Australian industry.



Local industry activity will include Combat and Communication Systems integration, Integrated Logistics Support, and elements of the onboard cranes.



In addition an initial $250 million, five-year sustainment contract also signed with Navantia will be undertaken in Australia.



The Turnbull Government is committed to a continuous build of major naval surface ships in Adelaide beginning with the 12 Offshore Patrol Vessels (OPVs) in 2018 and the nine Future Frigates in 2020. The 12 Future Submarines will also be built in Adelaide. Together these programs will secure more than 3600 jobs in the shipbuilding industry and thousands more across the supply chain.



Australian shipyards simply do not have the capacity to complete the replenishment vessels in the required time and a local build would delay the OPVs, Future Frigates and Future Submarines thereby risking those jobs and capability.



The Government has also signed a $280 million contract with Austal to construct up to 21 steel-hulled Pacific Patrol Boats in Western Australia. Support and sustainment of the boats will be conducted in Cairns, Queensland, and is estimated at more than $400 million across the life of the vessels.



The Coalition Governments demonstrated commitment to the Australian shipbuilding industry is in stark contrast to the inaction of the Labor Party, whereby they failed to commission even one naval ship from an Australian shipyard during six years in power.
The International Maritime Bureau (IMB) has warned foreign vessels to remain vigilant when sailing in the Horn of Africa, despite a lull in piracy incidents in the region.

The IMB stated that there had been no piracy incidents reported off the Somali coast between January and March 2016 due to the deployment of warships to prevent such attacks.

However, it warned Somali pirates still had the capacity to carry out attacks in the region and that one successful hijacking could see a resurgence of piracy in the Horn of Africa.

According to the IMB, Somali pirates were still holding some 29 crewmembers for ransom as of 31 March.

Protection Vessels International (PVI) Analysis points out that the announcement comes after the Indian Navy announced it had foiled a pirate attack 800 nm off Mumbai in the western Arabian Sea, underscoring the continued importance of a military presence in the High Risk Area.

Somalias onshore insecurity and the ongoing presence of safe havens where pirates can operate mean Somali pirates maintain capabilities and local support to conduct activities in the region.

According to Oceans Beyond Piracy, a privately funded NGO based in the US, some 16 vessels were attacked by pirates in 2015, comprising five dhow hijackings, nine suspected incidents, one attempted hijacking and one robbery.
ABS Chairman, President and CEO Christopher J. Wiernicki addresses SUNY Maritime College graduates, awarded honorary Doctor of Science

Christopher J. Wiernicki, Chairman, President and CEO of ABS, addressed State University of New York (SUNY) Maritime College graduates, their families, faculty members and guests at the colleges commencement ceremony on May 6.

I am honored to share real leadership lessons that these bright graduates may apply beyond the boardroom, Wiernicki said at the ceremony, which saw approximately 300 students graduate inside Fort Schuyler. Success in life and leadership go hand-in-hand. While there is no substitute for experience and learning from mistakes, everyone can be a leader.

Wiernickis remarks to the colleges 2016 graduating class shared personal insight into his fathers success and quiet leadership, from challenges as a prisoner in Auschwitz-Birkenau during World War II to humbling success following his escape from the concentration camp and ultimate emigration to the United States. Wiernicki focused on leadership lessons that may be applied no matter the situation one faces in life, highlighting the values of integrity, perseverance, hard work, relationships, focusing on the future and placing respect and dignity as the cornerstone of any leadership philosophy.

Over the years, ABS has been a valued friend to the college in its support of our students and faculty, said Rear Adm. Michael Alfultis, President of SUNY Maritime College. Its an honor to have Chris Wiernicki at our spring commencement as a way of acknowledging all ABS has done, and continues to do, to help maritime education.

During the ceremony SUNY Maritime also awarded Wiernicki with an honorary Doctor of Science in recognition of his professional achievements and contributions to the school. In addition to his role leadership at ABS, Wiernicki is also Chairman of the International Association of Classification Societies. He previously held several senior roles at ABS, including President and Chief Operating Officer (COO), Chief Technology Officer, and President and COO of ABS Europe Ltd.

Wiernicki holds a Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering from Vanderbilt, a Master of Science in Structural Engineering from George Washington University, where he was later elected to the George Washington University Engineering Hall of Fame, and a Master of Science in Ocean Engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He has authored numerous papers and lectured at the university level. Wiernicki is a Fellow with the Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers. In 2013, he was awarded the Vice Admiral Emory S. Land Medal for outstanding accomplishment in the marine field. Wiernicki also serves on the Board of Trustees for the Seamens Church Institute, serves on the Engineering Advisory Council for the University of Michigans College of Engineering, is a member of the Board of Trustees for the Webb Institute, serves on the National Advisory Council of the George Washington University School of Engineering and Applied Science, and serves on the Advisory Committee for the Department of Ocean Engineering at MIT.
Forces from Romania, Bulgaria, Slovenia, Moldova, the United Kingdom and the United States will conduct a multi-lateral exercise to improve readiness and strengthen NATO alliances.



U.S. Marines and sailors of the Black Sea Rotational Force are scheduled to participate in Platinum Eagle at Smardan Training Area, Romania, beginning May 9, 2016.



Platinum Eagle is an annual exercise where multi-national troops will conduct integrated attacks in order to increase cooperation and combat power between the United States and their NATO allies and partners.



The Black Sea Rotational Force is a semi-annual rotation of Marines and Sailors based in Romania to respond to a broad range of military operations in the U.S. European Command area of responsibility.


LONGMEADOW -- With a move to Enfield, Conn. coming up, Longmeadow's Brightwood Hardware on Friday began a liquidation sale, which will continue until the store moves into a new location.

"We need to get rid of everything so that we can move to our new location," Brightwood manager Ken Cohn said Friday.

Brightwood Hardware, which established its location at 794 Williams St. more than 50 years ago, will move to Enfield, Connecticut, after partnering with Berkshire County's Carr Hardware & Supply Co., the two hardware stores announced last week.

"I think it's great, we're really looking forward to it. They're great people, we're great people- it's a really good union," Cohn said. "We're going to have a much bigger store and much more merchandise to serve our customers."

But first, Cohn said, Brightwood must sell off what it already has on its shelves.

Everything in the store is discounted by 10 percent, and some items are marked down by 80 percent, Cohn said.

While not certain, Cohn expects the sale to end in July, and the store to move to Enfield by the end of that month.

The sale will take place during Brightwood's business hours: Monday through Friday between 8 a.m. and 6 p.m., Saturdays from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sundays from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.
SPRINGFIELD -- State lawmakers representing Springfield and its surrounding communities are calling on the Baker administration to keep an unemployment call center in Western Massachusetts open even as the state proceeds with layoff plans in the face of dropping federal funding.

In March, Robert T. Cunningham, director of the state Department of Unemployment Assistance, said the state will close unemployment call centers in Springfield and Worcester and lay off a total of 250 employees. Of the 250 layoffs, 57 of the layoffs will be at the call center in Springfield.

The call center at 88 Industry Ave. in the East Springfield neighborhood is set to close May 31.

The call center in Worcester also will close. Centers in Boston, Brockton and Lawrence will remain open. The fact that all the remaining locations are in Eastern Massachusetts is a particular sticking point.

"Western Massachusetts always gets the short end of the stick," said state Rep. Jose Tosado, D-Springfield. "People are having a difficult time as it is and to make it harder for them to access unemployment benefits is unfair."

Tosado is one of the lawmakers who sent a letter to Charlie Baker calling for the call center to remain open, in part because it helps unemployed residents with limited English skills and those who do not use computers to transact business online.

"I think just about every one of us (in the local legislative delegation) has received calls or emails from people who are concerned," Tosado said. "It is going to raise the call volume at the existing centers."

Other lawmakers who signed the letter are: State Sen. James Welch, D-West Springfield; State Sen. Eric Lesser, D-Longmeadow; State Rep. Aaron Vega, D-Holyoke; State Rep. Carlos Gonzalez, D-Springfield; and State Rep. Michael Finn, D-West Springfield.

Massachusetts has lost funding for the administration of unemployment benefits because, ironically, its unemployment rate has fallen.

The statewide unemployed rate for April was 4.4 percent, its lowest point in 15 years, said Colleen Quinn, communications director for the state Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development, of which the Department of Unemployment Assistance is a part.

The money used to pay unemployment insurance claims comes from a trust fund paid into by employers.

But the money used to administer those claims and pay the department's employees comes from the federal government and is based on a formula related to the unemployment rate. That money has been falling along with the unemployment rate.

Federal funding for Massachusetts' unemployment administration has fallen from $113 million in fiscal year 2014 down to $68 million for the upcoming 2017 fiscal year.

The state has to close a $22 million budget gap for fiscal 2017, a budgeting year that begins in July.

Quinn said the Springfield office will close because it has the most expensive lease. The state owns the Brockton and Boston locations outright and Lawrence is cheaper rent.

She stressed that the unemployment hearing officer will stay in Springfield and the office that is closing is a call center that offered no walk-in services. She said callers from Western Massachusetts will just be connected to one of the remaining offices.

The state has unemployment staff in job centers like CareerPoint in Holyoke and FutureWorks in Springfield.

But Tosado said the job centers are busy and it can be hard to get help there. And Welch said the state's push toward online applications and renewals won't help those without internet access or online skills.

"Not everybody has that ability, not everybody has that option," he said.

The administration said more claimants are going online to set up their unemployment payments. Today, 70 percent of new claims come online and 99 percent of unemployment insurance recipients renew their claims each week online.

Tosado also worried about the loss of Spanish-speaking operators.

Quinn responded that the state will maintain language capabilities, saying in an email:

"We have excellent Spanish-language services over the phone, as well as other languages. In fact, Massachusetts is one of the best states in the nation for services to people with limited English proficiency. Other states seek advice from Massachusetts about services for people who don't speak English as a first language."

So far, 156 unemployment workers have opted to leave their jobs. Of those, 85 will retire and 71 will take a voluntary layoff. Those who take a voluntary layoff will get $5,000. Those who are of retirement age and choose to leave are eligible for $10,000.

The state still needs to get to a total of 250 job cuts, so that makes for 94 involuntary layoffs coming up. Workers do have bumping rights by seniority for other jobs in state government.

Quinn said hearings for those appealing unemployment decisions will still be conducted in Springfield. Tosado and Welch both said they want to make sure that is the case because they don't want constituents having to travel for a hearing.
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Frances Rivera-Diaz, a student at Holyoke Community College, is an engineering student and the recipient of a multi-year National Science Foundation STEM scholarship. She is shown here during her speech at the college's College for a Day program for adult basic education students.

(HOLYOKE COMMUNITY COLLEGE)

HOLYOKE - The metaphorical light bulb moment for Frances Rivera-Diaz, when she discovered her true path, was literally a light bulb moment.

Previously homeless, she was a student at Holyoke Community College's Adult Learning Center, taking a science class as part of a GED test preparation program. Her assignment: Build a flashlight out of basic household items - paper clips, cardboard toilet paper roll, battery, bulb.

Until then, she'd worked for many years at Burger King. Her goal was to leverage her GED into a managerial job at a gift shop in the Holyoke Mall at Ingleside.

"Once that little light bulb turned on, this one turned on," she said, pointing to her head. "I realized, why am I just settling for a retail job?

"I don't want a job," she continued. "I want a career. I want to work somewhere where I'm going to love it, I'm good at it, and I want to go there every day. That's what I want.

"So," she said she thought, "I'm gonna go to college."

After a long road, Rivera-Diaz is completing her first year at Holyoke Community College. She is an engineering major and the recipient of a multi-year National Science Foundation STEM Scholarship.

In March, she was the keynote speaker at College for a Day, an annual event that brings hundreds of adult basic education students from all over Western Massachusetts to sample college classes at HCC.

"Like many of you," she said, wearing an Albert Einstein tie and pacing nervously around the stage of the Leslie Phillips Theater, hardly glancing at her notes.

"I struggled with language barriers. Like many of you, I know how it feels to be in a dead-end job, living paycheck to paycheck. Like many of you, I know how it is not to have an education, to have dropped out of school, to do whatever you had to do to make it through the week or through the month.

"I didn't believe I could do this," she said. "I really thought college was for smarter, younger and, honestly, upper-class people. I didn't think, as a female Puerto Rican who still struggled with English, that college was for me.

"So," she said, "if any of you are struggling with that right now, I understand you. And just like I'm standing here, some day you guys can stand here too."

After she earned her GED, Rivera-Diaz continued her education through Holyoke Community's Transition to College and Careers program, and she encouraged the more than 200 students in the audience to do the same. She said the program helped prepare her for college level work, especially in writing and math. It also helps teach students how to apply for financial aid and how to find and apply for scholarships.

The Transition to College and Careers program also led her to Holyoke Community's free summer STEM Academy, which focuses on science and math.

"We learned about volcanoes, planet formations, ecosystems," she said. "We weren't stuck in a classroom."

For one of their academy projects, students walked around campus, collecting soil, vegetation, rocks, creek water and crawlers to create mini-ecosystems - "a small forest in a jar," she said. They put the jars under spotlights and observed.

"Some of the jars were doing crazy stuff," she said. "My jar started growing maggots. I thought it was pretty gross, but it was exciting. It just made me want to learn more."

Through the STEM Academy, Rivera-Diaz heard about the National Science Foundation's STEM Scholarship. She applied, and got it.

"It was a big accomplishment," she said, to whoops and applause from the audience. "I'm just this bilingual, minimum-wage, lower-class female, and I was able to earn this national science scholarship.

"Science is mainly a world of men," she said, "and I'm challenging myself as a woman to go into a man's career and prove that a woman can do an equal amount of work that a man can do."

Some day, Rivera-Diaz said, she wants to work for NASA.

"Forget flipping burgers," she said. "Why do that when there is something better out there for yourself? There's something you're good at, something that's going to light up.

"When I did that flashlight, I remembered that I actually like putting things together," she said. "When the teacher was teaching us flashlights, he was telling us, this is how an engineer thinks. These are the steps they take. That's what I enjoyed and I liked, and that's what I do."
Each week, MassLive showcases pets available for adoption at shelters at rescue organizations in Western Massachusetts.

With the participation of the shelters listed below, many animals should be able to find a permanent home.

We also provide some pet related news items that we hope you will enjoy.

Small Mexican town fetes the donkey with May Day festival

In this May 1, 2016 photo, a competitor falls from his donkey during a prelimary race at the annual donkey festival in Otumba, Mexico State, Mexico. Fair organizer Juan Carlos Chavez said Otumba hopes its annual festival creates awareness about the animals. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)

By Leslie Mazoch, Associated Press

OTUMBA, Mexico (AP) -- This is a place where every donkey will have it day -- a small town just north of Mexico City that gives the beasts of burden a chance on May Day to kick up their hooves.

The annual donkey fair in Otumba attracts up to 40,000 people who come to see the animals compete in costumes and race around a track with jockeys on their backs. Tourists squeeze through the jammed fairgrounds wearing donkey ears and munching on classic fair cuisine, including the local version of burritos -- a dish popular both north and south of the Mexican border that borrows the Spanish word for donkey.

Costume themes for the animals ranged from the ride-sharing Uber to pre-Hispanic temples, and Donald Trump was a category in of itself this year. Four families dressed their donkeys in likenesses of the U.S. presidential candidate who has vowed to build a border wall to keep out Mexican immigrants he's called "rapists."

Adolfo Garcia Aguilar, who works on a cattle farm, said his family pitched in to dress his burro in a red tie, black boots and a blond wig. "We'll see how we do -- if they kick us out, donkey and all," Aguilar joked before Sunday's costume competition.

Other Trump-decked donkeys featured signs that declared: "Impostor! I'm the real Donald Trump!" and "If I win the 12,000 peso prize, I'll put a wall between Otumba and Teotihuacan," referring to the famed pre-Aztec city of pyramids nearby.

None of them won much favor with the audience at the 51st annual donkey fest, though. Audience applause chose the winners: donkeys emulating a Smurf, a firefighter and an Uber ride.

Zeus Laredo, a physics teacher who attended the fair with friends, said he backed the eventual winner: a donkey dressed up as the papa Smurf who was attended by an entourage of people in Smurf costumes.

Otumba was an important donkey market during Spanish colonial times, standing at the crossroads of major roads leading to Mexico City, where the beasts pulled heavy loads and carried travelers.

Today, however, farmers use tractors and pickup trucks, and the donkey population is in decline.

The animal that won the jockey race is more a pet than a worker. The 12-year-old winning jockey, Wilfrido Lemus Corona, learned to ride his donkey, Veso, when his grandfather plopped him on top when he was just 6 to carry him across the fields, his mother Patricia Corona Espinosa said. Family and friends threw the tiny jockey into the air Sunday after he scored his third consecutive win. He also took home 12,000 pesos in cash, about $700.

With donkey numbers declining, Otumba's Flores family decided to open a donation-funded sanctuary they named "Burrolandia," or Donkeyland. It currently hosts 30 donkeys that German Flores said would otherwise have ended up at the slaughterhouse. Here they live out the rest of their days grazing and can be visited by tourists on weekends. Flores said the majority of their donkeys came from farmers who either couldn't afford them anymore or who no longer had room after moving away from their farms.

Fair organizer Juan Carlos Chavez said Otumba hopes its annual festival creates awareness about the animals.

"Donkeys are wonderful animals," he said. "People say they don't understand, but they do."

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WESTERN MASSACHUSETTS SHELTERS:

Dakin Pioneer Valley Humane Society

Address: 163 Montague Road, Leverett

Hours: Tuesday-Sunday, 12:30 to 4:30 p.m.

Telephone: (413) 548-9898

Website: www.dpvhs.org

Address: 171 Union St., Springfield

Hours: Tuesday-Sunday, 12:30 to 5:30 p.m.

Telephone: (413) 781-4000

Website: www.dpvhs.org

The following is a video of Trudy, a dog available for adoption at the T.J. O'Connor Animal Adoption and Control Center in Springfield.

Thomas J. O'Connor Animal Control and Adoption Center

Address: 627 Cottage St., Springfield

Hours: Monday, Tuesday, Saturday, noon-4 p.m.; Thursday, noon-7 p.m.

Telephone: (413) 781-1484

Website: tjoconnoradoptioncenter.com

Westfield Homeless Cat Project

Address: 1124 East Mountain Road, Westfield

Hours: Adoption clinics, Thursday, 5-7 p.m.; Saturday, 11 a.m.-3 p.m.

Website: http://www.whcp.petfinder.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/westfieldhomelesscatprojectadoptions



Westfield Regional Animal Shelter

Address: 178 Apremont Way, Westfield

Hours: Monday-Friday, noon-5 p.m.; Saturday, 10 a.m.-4 p.m.

Telephone: (413) 564-3129

Website: http://www.petfinder.com/shelters/ma70.html

Franklin County Sheriff's Office Regional Dog Shelter and Adoption Center

Address: 10 Sandy Lane, Turners Falls

Hours: Monday-Thursday, 9 a.m.-2 p.m., Friday-Saturday, 9 a.m.-1 p.m.

Telephone: (413) 676-9182

Website: http://fcrdogkennel.org/contact.html

Polverari/Southwick Animal Control Facility

Address: 11 Depot St., Southwick

Hours: Monday-Friday, 8 a.m.-1 p.m.

Telephone: (413) 569-5348, ext. 649

Website: http://southwickpolice.com/chief-david-a-ricardis-welcome/animal-control/

Berkshire Humane Society

Address: 214 Barker Road, Pittsfield

Hours: Tuesday-Saturday, 10:00 a.m.-4 p.m.; Thursday, 5 p.m. to 8 p.m., Sunday, 1 p.m. to 4 p.m.

Telephone: (413) 447-7878

Website: http://berkshirehumane.org/

Purradise Feline Adoption

Address: 301 Stockbridge Road, Great Barrington

Hours: Monday and Tuesday: Closed; Wednesday, 10 a.m. - 4 p.m.; Thursday 10 a.m.- 6 p.m.; Friday,10 a.m. - 4 p.m.; Saturday, 10 a.m.-4 p.m.; Sunday, noon-4 p.m.

Telephone: (413) 717-4244

Website: http://berkshirehumane.org/contact-us/
eagleton school

Police reports allege varying degrees of abuse at the now closed Eagleton School in Great Barrington (Gillian Jones/The Berkshire Eagle via AP)

(Associated Press photo)

GREAT BARRINGTON  Abuse at the now defunct Eagleton school for boys with autism and behavioral disabilities, located in Great Barrington, commonly included being poked in the eye by a staffer, as well as injuries suffered from being hit, punched, and, in one student's case, having the ir head slammed into a radiator, reports The Berkshire Eagle.

16 former employees of the school are now facing abuse charges, after nine more employees were charged with abuse on Monday.

The Eagle published details of the alleged abuse on Thursday after being given access to police reports describing what went on at the Eagleton School before authorities raided it in February.

Several students allege that Eagleton staffer Martin B. Schmitt, 54, of Lenox, would regularly poke them in the eye as a form of "control."

Another report alleges that Derrick Saunders, 42, of Pittsfield, slammed a student's head into a radiator while the student was constrained and could not defend himself.

Multiple assaults on students by staffers allegedly resulted in bone fractures, including one case where Schmitt  the same man who allegedly poked students in the eye  twisted a boy's finger until he fractured it. Afterward, Schmitt allegedly threatened to "break" all of the boy's other fingers if he didn't behave.

Eric D. Williams, 39, of Pittsfield, allegedly threw a student off of a porch during one incident.

The former employee with the most charges against him, Issac Harris-El, currently has a warrant out for his arrest after he failed to appear at his arraignment on Monday. Harris-El is accused of multiple forms of abuse, including striking a man with epilepsy several times in the head.

All eight former employees who were arraigned on Monday pleaded not guilty. Harris-El is still wanted by police.
FEEDING HILLS - A community event on substance use aimed at both parents and students will be held May 26 from 6 to 8 p.m. in the Sacred Heart Parish Center, 1061 Springfield St.

"When Saying No Isn't Enough: Finding Strength as a Family to Prevent Substance Use" will have a component for students in grades 6 through college, led by clinicians from the non-profit Center for Human Development, as well as a separate component for parents that will be facilitated by William A. Davila, vice president of clinical services for CHD.

William A. Davila, vice president of clinical services for CHD, will participate in "When Saying No Isn't Enough: Finding Strength as a Family to Prevent Substance Use" on May 26, from 6 to 8 p.m. in the Sacred Heart Parish Center, 1061 Springfield St., Feeding Hills.

Davila called the event an opportunity for CHD "to partner with families in their efforts to be proactive versus reactive."

The program has been organized by the Saint Camillus Guild, a faith community nurse ministry established at the parish last year with support from a Mercy Medical Center program managed by registered nurse Darlene E. Biggs.

Registered nurse Deb Briancesco, coordinator of the guild named for a saint who worked with the sick, said "being proactive is a start on a journey to stop substance use."

"When it comes to avoiding substance use, one approach is for parents to tell their children to 'just say no.' Just saying no isn't enough anymore," said Briancesco, in a release, of an approach initiated by first lady Nancy Reagan in the 1980s.

"Our children need to learn how to say no, and why to say no, and their parents need to help them. The strength to make it happen comes from family."

According to recent data from the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, there were 1,379 confirmed deaths from unintentional opioid overdoses in 2015, up from 1,282 confirmed deaths in 2014, and 911 in 2013.

While more than three-quarters of the statewide deaths from unintentional opioid overdoses last year were of men, mainly between the ages of 25 and 54, a state task force report found that 40 percent of individuals treated (pdf) in 2013 by the Bureau of Substance Abuse Services were between the ages of 13 and 29.

Underage drinking is also considered a widespread public health problem, and some surveys show increased teen use of e-cigarettes and relaxed attitudes about the use of marijuana.

Agawam School Superintendent William P. Sapelli announced last month that Agawam schools, kindergarten through grade 12, will carry naloxone, an opiate antidote more commonly known by the brand name Narcan, by Sept. 1, and that school nurses and other district officials will be trained in how to use the life saving emergency drug to reverse the effects of a known or suspected opioid overdose.

Among area deaths attributed to a suspected heroin overdose include that of Lillian Anderson, a 16-year-old Westfield High School junior who died in February. She reportedly had confided, the night before her death, that she had started to use heroin to her mother.

The comprehensive law Gov. Charlie Baker signed in March to address opioid addiction in the state includes a process for schools to verbally screen students to help identify anyone at risk for drug addiction.

The FDA recently banned the sale of e-cigarettes to those under 18. The Massachusetts Senate just approved a bill that would make 21 the minimum age for buying tobacco products in the commonwealth.
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The Amherst Select Board has offered the town manager's position to Maria Capriola, assistant town manager in Mansfield, Connecticut.

(Diane Lederman/The Repubilcan)

AMHERST - The Amherst Select Board has chosen Maria E. Capriola as the next town manager.

She was one of two finalists after William Fraser, the city manager of Montpelier, Vermont withdrew earlier this week.

The other candidate was Paul Bockelman, director of administration and finance for the Massachusetts Municipal Association.

The vote to offer the job to the Mansfield, Connecticut assistant town manager was initially 3 to 2 but quickly amended to a unanimous decision.

Select Board chairwoman Alisa Brewer wrote in an email, "We immediately changed the vote to unanimous because we are all fully in support, unlike some communities that seem to view a split vote as a way to put a new hire on notice. Truly the only way to have a unanimous vote first time out is to break open meeting law or to have only one good finalist."

Brewer said she spoke to Capriola briefly Thursday night.

"We are all genuinely excited," Brewer said, adding that Capriola, 36, will meet with some people either Monday or Wednesday and not just for negotiations.

Andy Steinberg, who initially voted no, said he is very pleased with the choice.

"I'm really happy that we have somebody with so many wonderful qualifications," he said.

He said all three were great candidates and they had a difficult decision with the final two.

"Two of us were slightly tipped in favor of Bockelman. Three slightly slightly tipped in favor of Ms. Capriola," Steinberg said.

Bockelman has worked his entire career in the state and has a vast range of experience as well as connections. He is well versed in municipal law, he said.

But Capriola has related college town experience. Mansfield is home to the University of Connecticut, Storrs campus.

He and member Douglas Slaughter will be negotiating with Capriola next week. They want to send the message "We are in favor of the results and well all look forward to (working) with Ms. Capriola."

During her visit last week, Capriola said she was not looking for a new job but was very interested in the position here because she thought it was a perfect fit.

In an email, she wrote "I'm honored that the Select Board has endorsed me to serve as Amherst's sixth town manager.

"During my visits to Amherst I have observed both residents and staff who care deeply about the community and its future.

"I believe I am well suited to address both challenges and opportunities facing the community, and as Town Manager will bring my energy, enthusiasm and passion for local government to my work.

"I sincerely appreciate the opportunity to represent Amherst and serve as your next Town Manager, adding to the long tradition of professional management.

She would become the sixth manager here and the first woman.
The Montana World Affairs Council will host a program featuring Ashok Mirpuri, Singapores Ambassador to the United States. The program will be held at the Helena Great Northern Hotel on June 28th from 12:00-1:30pm. The event will feature a discussion with Ambassador Mirpuri and a light lunch.

Ambassador Ashok Mirpuri is a career diplomat, joining the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1984 before becoming the Director of Policy Planning and Analysis Directorate 1. He began his first ambassadorship serving as the high commissioner to Australia from 2000-2002 and then as the high commissioner to Malaysia from 2002-2006. After that, he served as ambassador to Indonesia from 2006-2012 before taking up his post as Singapores current ambassador to the United States in July 2012.

The program will be $10 for members and $20 for non-members.

Call (406) 728-3328 or email [email protected] to RSVP.

The Montana World Affairs Council is a nonpartisan, 501(c)3 nonprofit organization dedicated to providing opportunities for international education in classrooms and communities around the state. For more information on other Council programs, please visit our website at http://www.montanaworldaffairs.org
Visitors to Big Sky will now have a high-tech way to navigate the mountain town.

Big Skys tourism department, Visit Big Sky, announced Tuesday that it has released a smartphone app that it hopes will make trips better, and less confusing, for visitors.

The app, called "Big Sky, Montana On The Go," will highlight information about happy hours, dinner specials, retail sales, live music and special events in the Big Sky area.

By Lewis Kendall Chronicle Staff Writer

Full Story: http://www.bozemandailychronicle.com/news/economy/big-sky-tourism-office-releases-smartphone-app-to-help-visitors/article_05c9dc49-1710-57ed-9836-c6f5b1f3e1e1.html
Standard Bank (Mauritius) Ltd has been recognised as Best Investment Bank 2022 in Mauritius, by the prestigious magazine Global Finance.

Francois Gamet, Chief Executive of Standard Bank Mauritius commented on this award:

This recognition reinforces our leadership position as the preferred investment banking partner for our corporate clients. Standard Bank Mauritius has a strong and competitive value proposition of connecting corporates from the Mauritius International Financial Centre to Africa. He added: We are especially proud because of how highly sophisticated and demanding our corporate clients are and they trusted us for nearly 160 years of track record, expertise and professionalism. We take this award coming indirectly from our clients  Thank You! This recognition has also been made possible by our employees who bring our purpose and strategy to life and our clients and stakeholders that trust us to make their African dreams possible. Thank You, It Can Be.

For the publisher and editorial director of Global Finance, Joseph Giarraputo: Investment banks are playing a leading role in reshaping the world economy as the pandemic progresses. He further added: It is more important than ever for companies to understand the specialties and skills that investment banks bring to the table. Global Finances Investment Bank Awards are a powerful resource on the leading institutions in this sector.

This selection was made by the editors of Global Finance Magazine, with input from industry experts. A series of criteria are used to score and select winners including market share, number and size of deals, service and advice, structuring capabilities, distribution network, efforts to address market conditions, innovation, pricing, and market reputation.

Global Finance has also recently announced its 29th annual awards for the Worlds Best Banks 2022. The Standard Bank Group has been awarded the Best Bank in Africa and Best Bank in South Africa and Malawi.

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Le Vatican et le gouvernement mauricien ont rendu public le programme officiel de la visite du Pape qui aura lieu le 9 Septembre entre 10h00 et 19h00.VOYAGE APOSTOLIQUE DE SA SAINTETE FRANCOIS - MAURITIUS (2)



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The proposed general fund budget for 2016-2017 calls for the Carlisle Area School District to maintain its current educational program with the addition of eight teaching positions.

Director of Finance Shawn Farr briefed the school board Thursday on the final details of a $79.3 million fiscal plan that could come up for a preliminary vote next week.

The board could vote May 12 on whether to advertise the budget for final adoption on June 16. The same time the board votes on final adoption, a resolution may be considered to increase the real estate tax by 3 percent from the current 13.2436 mills to a proposed 13.6409 mills.

The proposed budget would carry over the cost of four teachers hired last August to address parental concerns over high class sizes in the elementary schools, Farr said. Those four teachers were not included in the 2015-2016 budget adopted last June by the board.

The fiscal plan for 2016-2017 would also fund the hiring of four new full-time faculty members  a kindergarten teacher at Mooreland Elementary School, a teacher at Hamilton Elementary School, an English teacher at Carlisle High School and an English-as-a-Second-Language teacher.

Full-day K

The board last November endorsed a plan to phase in over the next three years full-day kindergarten at Mooreland, Crestview and North Dickinson elementary schools. Preparations are underway to switch from a half-day to a full-day program at Mooreland this August, Crestview in August 2017 and North Dickinson in August 2018.

This phasing plan allows the district to gradually absorb the increased operational expenses. The switch would likely require the addition of 3.5 kindergarten teaching positions over the next three years.

Enrollment trends coupled with concerns over class sizes prompted the administration to recommend an additional teacher at Hamilton Elementary School, Farr said. He added there is also the need for an additional ESL teacher to help address a growing need for services.

An English teacher is needed at the high school to allow for additional sections brought on by enrollment growth. Superintendent John Friend said the current sophomore class is the largest the district has had in years with over 400 students. The freshman class is about the same size.

That is a significant increase, said Friend noting how last year the high school graduated 368 seniors. We dont see a lot of wavering [in enrollment] at this point.

A survey of new students found the majority were coming into the public high school from a private school setting, Friend told the board. The basic conversation was more opportunities. That is a good thing but it costs money.

Enrollment trends

These same enrollment trends have prompted district administrators to recommend increasing the hours of a German language teacher from a part-time to a full-time position. Currently that teacher is considered a .8 position based on the equivalent time and sections taught, Farr said. The proposed budget for 2016-2017 would increase the .8 position to the equivalent of a 1.0 position making the teacher full-time.

As for staffing cuts, district administrators have recommended the board contract out alternative education program services, Farr said. He added the administration is also suggesting the board eliminate two maintenance department positions by outsourcing HVAC repair and preventative maintenance for an estimated savings of $35,000.

The proposed 3-percent tax increase would generate $1,150,000 in additional revenue. This money combined with staffing cuts and savings transferred from reserve accounts would shore up a projected deficit of almost $4 million.

Farr outlined a strategy to transfer $2,725,000 in savings from three reserve accounts to help balance the general fund. Two of the three accounts are holding back money in anticipation of future increases in health insurance costs and the annual contribution to the Pennsylvania Public School Employees Retirement System. A third account is for savings designated unassigned.

If approved by the board, this strategy would transfer $1.4 million of the $3.8 million retirement reserve account to the general fund depleting that account by about 37 percent. Farr has recommended the board transfer about $700,000 of the $1.6 million medical reserve account to the general fund depleting that account by about 44 percent.

Offsetting budget deficits is what this money was set aside to do, Farr said. He added the district is maintaining enough for future years.
by Tanya Gazdik , May 5, 2016

For the seventh consecutive year, the Dodge Ram is the Official Truck of Churchill Downs and the Kentucky Derby and the exclusive automotive partner.

Fans attending this weekends races will be immersed in the Ram Truck brand experience, including truck displays, video board integrations, signage and posters, and Ram-branded giveaways

The brands multi-tiered sponsorship includes branding on gate crew staff uniforms and on the clothing of a few jockeys, as well as television ads running in the NBC network telecast and a behind-the-scenes custom video posted on Ram social channels and brand Web site.

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The automaker will post on Ram social channels, including Facebook live video of the ceremonial garland of roses delivery, add to the days excitement for fans celebrating Derby day from home. Consumers can follow the content and join the conversation at #RamDerby.

Two Ram ProMaster vans will transport the traditional Garland of Roses, to be worn by the winning horse, and the winning jockeys bouquet to Churchill Downs from the Kroger store where the large floral arrangements are created each year. Beginning at 9:30 a.m., Ram will broadcast the delivery live on Facebook live video.

Ram trucks are the perfect match for horse owners, trainers and handlers, and being associated with Americas premiere racing events is a great way to illustrate our support for these customers, said Mike Manley, head of Ram Brand, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles  Global, in a release.

Ram will have two special Ram Truck Kentucky Derby floral displays inside Churchill Downs. One will feature a Ram 1500 Crew Cab Rebel and the other will include a Ram 1500 Limited Crew Cab and a 3500 Limited Dually. Race fans can take their own or get commemorative souvenir pictures taken and share their Derby experiences virally with friends and family using hashtag #RamDerby. Ram-branded giveaways also will be available

Leading up to race day and using the hashtag #PrepForGlory, Ram will post content on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook, showing the similarities between prepping a horse and taking care of a Ram Truck.
by Felicia Greiff , Staff Writer, May 6, 2016

The IAB's Digital Content NewFronts have advertising folks hopping all over New York this week and next. If you made all the events, good for you. Enjoy your branded key rings, towels, koozies, paper pads and pens.

If you missed this week's flashy lineup of events, don't worry -- Real-Time Daily has you covered. Below are some highlights.

Ad-Skipping Can Be a Good Thing, Maybe

At the Digitas NewFront, Scott Donaton, chief content officer, DigitasLBi North America, said, The key to winning consumers is to tell a narrative worthy of their time."

Consumer empowerment has been a good thing for audiences, but not a good thing for brands, Donaton said. But maybe thats wrong, he added -- skipping ads could be a positive statement because audiences really want to get to the experience they're looking for. And within that content, brands can educate, inspire, touch lives, win hearts and more.

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Dont get in the way of what they want; be what they want, Donaton said, citing a bunch of brands that sponsor content, including Taco Bell and Marriott.

Not Everyone Is Targeting the Millennial

Rob Sands, head of distribution and partnerships with CNN's Great Big Story, said the company isn't another millennial-focused network, even though its average viewers tend to be 27-year-old urban dwellers. GBS is for anyone who's intellectually curious, Sands said.

VR Has Arrived, and Everyone Is Trying It Out



The New York Times announced a bunch of virtual reality projects, including a space show called "Seeking Plutos Frigid Heart," a program on the upcoming Olympics, a series of short scenes that put you in a relaxing environment, a show set in Iraq and one with a world-famous chef.
by Phyllis Fine , May 5, 2016

HOLLYWOOD: On the first full day of Turner Classic Movies seventh annual Classic Film Festival, I was already living the events theme, Moving Pictures, as in films that touch you emotionally. I had just seen The Passion of Joan of Arc, where the saint burns to a crisp in excruciating close-up.

I need a drink to recover from my last movie, I told the college-aged festival crew member checking me into my next choice. She commiserated, because she had previously seen the film, a 1928 silent classic.

That moment of well-informed sympathy was an excellent example of the fan camaraderie the network aims to foster with the festival, which ran April 28-May 1.

We see ourselves as a great learning lab on growing fan engagement, said Jennifer Dorian, the companys general manager.

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The network continued that process by launching TCM Backlot, its first official fan club, at the festival. For an annual fee of $87, subscribers will receive perks like exclusive content  including behind-the-scenes and archival videos  and the chance to influence programming through online votes.

One woman was excited about voting for more current movies, so stars would be available for in-person events and on-air commentary. Another attendee didnt see fan input as a positive, preferring that films continue to be curated exclusively by the experts in TCMs own programming department.

That expertise will play a big part in TCMs other new product, FilmStruck, a separate subscription streaming video-on-demand service set to preview in the fall. The SVODs programming philosophy will be similar to TCMs: very thematic, said Charles Tabesh, the networks senior vice president of programming. Well provide a reason and a context to be there.

Only the content will vary: About 5% of current TCM programming is foreign language or art/independent films. That number will increase to 80% or over for FilmStruck, according to Tabesh.

He spoke at the festivals opening Meet TCM session, where attendees got the chance to query network execs. One of the first questions: How is Mr. Osborne?

This was the second festival in a row that 84-year-old Robert Osborne, the channels main on-air host, didnt attend. Hed planned to be there, but dropped out several weeks ago, citing a health issue in a letter he sent to fans. (He was part of the TCM Classic Cruise, another major fan event, in November.)

Osborne has also had much less of an on-air presence these past few months. His regular Saturday night series, "The Essentials," has not returned for its 2016 incarnation.

In a 2014 interview with The New York Times, Osborne said he planned to work as long as I have health, and as long as I think I look OK on camera.

Still, in light of Osbornes absence, I couldnt help wonder if noted film historian and critic Leonard Maltin, who hosted many presentations at the festival  and such recurring on-air series as Treasures From The Disney Vault  was perhaps auditioning for a bigger TCM role in the future.

Maltin conducted himself ably during two interviews probably meant originally for Osborne. One was with Rita Moreno, whose sassy dish before a screening of The King and I included mention of the competition for her role in the film: a woman who was not only gorgeous but was also  just like Moreno  dating Marlon Brando at the time.

And then there was Eva Marie Saint, introducing The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming, whom Maltin praised as inspirational for being 92 and full of life.

Saint asked Maltin his age: 65 was the answer.

Age is always a subtext at the festival, which this year also saw presentations by the 94-year-old Carl Reiner and 88-year-old Gina Lollobrigida.

Our classics are cross-generational, with TCM always reaching out to younger viewers, noted Dorian. The network has a strong presence on social media platforms, like Twitter and Tumblr, and is looking at market research on co-viewing. That's where viewers introduce a friend or family member to the classics -- a concept that could be incorporated into a possible 2017 event, according to a spokesperson.

Indeed, there were plenty of millennials at the festival, including UCLA and USC film students. Then there was the networks youngest on-air guest programmer, the now-12-year-old Shane Fleming.

He was especially happy at the Meet TCM event to hear the topic of TCMs second online course with Ball State University: slapstick comedy. Yes! he exclaimed, showing his delight with a jump up and down, a physical expression of emotion that the masters of slapstick would have approved.

Young Fleming, who introduced Chaplins Modern Times on air, had obviously learned from the best, thanks to TCM.
by Jess Nelson , May 5, 2016

Donald Trump has the highest email engagement rates -- but Democrats still handily defeat Republicans in email marketing strategy and reach, according to new data from Return Path.

Trumps primary win in Indiana -- and the consequent ending of both John Kasich's and Ted Cruzs presidential campaigns -- place him as the final GOP candidate in the field. While many may express shock that Trump will represent the Republican Party in the national election, his email marketing engagement rates may have predicted his success.

Trump has consistently had the highest email read rate out of the GOP field, according to Return Path, with an average 16% read rate in April and 24% read rate in March.

Undecided subscribers who registered for multiple candidates newsletters also favored Trump -- with Trumps campaign outperforming Cruz, with an 88% higher read rate among overlapping audiences.

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Cruzs open rates have remained extremely low during his entire candidacy, hovering at 10% with no improvement. Kasich had a small boost toward the end of his campaign, with open rates jumping from 9% to 12% in April.

The data is derived from Return Paths Consumer Network of over 2 million subscriber emails in its data cloud, which the data solutions and marketing provider has been analyzing throughout the presidential election.

Return Path has permission to process and analyze the emails their panelists receive, providing the company with a database of insights into customer behavior and email engagement.

Trump has the highest engagement rates overall and the highest read rate overall, says Tom Sather, senior director of research at Return Path. Whats interesting is that his emails are actually very tame and straightforward, in contrast to his campaign. His emails purely focus on mobilizing people that will vote for him, and then getting them out to events. He doesnt ask for any donations.

Sather says that Trump sends emails less frequently, which indicates that subscribers are more likely to open the emails that they do receive. Trump also has the smallest email marketing subscriber list, likely because he isnt a career politician.

Trump also outperformed his GOP rivals in email deliverability, with 79% of his emails reaching its intended inbox. In contrast, the email deliverability rates of Cruz and Kasich were 45% and 37%, respectively.

Bernie Sanders victory in Indiana may likewise be reflected in the high growth rate of his email subscriber list.

Sanders has historically trailed, but recently surpassed Hillary Clinton in email subscription numbers, says Sather.

Return Path estimates that Sanders email list is now 20% larger than Clintons, but 13% of Sanders email subscribers also subscribe to email updates from Clinton. Clinton has a higher engagement rate among overlapping audiences by 12%.

He has a big edge on momentum, but shes getting them to actually act, says Sather.

Overall, Democrats use email marketing significantly more than their Republican foes and Clinton and Sanders both have higher levels of email volume, segmentation and deliverability rates. This is likely due to President Obamas highly successful email marketing campaign in 2012.

Democrats significantly outpace Republicans in email deliverability, with both the Sanders and Clinton email marketing campaigns averaging an 88% deliverability rate.

Sather asserts that Sanders and Clintons read rates are likely negatively affected by the high volume of email they send per week and sometimes even per day.
by Barbara Lippert , Featured Columnist, May 5, 2016

Once Donald J. Trump swept Indiana, and then each of his remaining competitors tumbled off the stage (metaphorically, of course, except for Carly Fiorina) he became the Republican presidential nominee, no presumptive-ness needed.

Obviously, most media people, including myself, had been predicting his political demise since he first stepped foot on that down elevator in Trump Tower. Not surprisingly, in the wake of his astounding victory, a bunch of journalists have come out with How did we get this so wrong?-type pieces.

Chief among them was Nate Cohn, the data-based political prognosticator for The New York Times (not to be confused with statistics guru Nate Silver, who went from The New York Times to ESPN and fivethirtyeight blog).

Cohn, among others, referred to the Trump win as a black swan, a historical event that in hindsight seems inevitable but at the time could not be anticipated. Certainly, the Trump win has upended every bit of conventional wisdom around.

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And yet, we (or at least I) keep expecting him to change, to sound more presidential. But his essential pomposity, which translates to Tromposity, (bigger, better, braggier, and more bullying!) will never change, and thats exactly why hes winning.

Yet crazy as it sounds, I still imagined that in his Indiana victory speech, surrounded at the podium by all those tall, blonde-ish fembots, hed take on a more humble, grateful tone, and say some reassuring things, aimed at the Republican elite, to prove that he was up to the job.

So I sat there wide-eyed as right off the bat, within the first four minutes, His Orangeness started complaining about the number of attack ads (false and disgusting) that interrupted him while he was trying to watch a show.

He said 60,000 negative ads were run against him. Probably about $8 million was spent against me, and we spent $900,000.

Never mind not rising to the standard unity theme.

This is Trumps essential genius. To brag, talk money, (which haute Republicans never do in polite company) get personal, and in his own easily affronted bridge-and-tunnel vernacular, talk about how badly treated he was by certain people.

In this way, hes like a political Kathy Griffin: He provides all the behind-the-scenes dirt about his opponents, giving them cruel names, and dishes like a politically aggrieved Queens housewife from the 1950s, taking a smoking break on her front porch.

So far, how many lumps of conventional political wisdom has Trump, the king of free media and hate-tweeting, sat on and squashed?

Lets start with Number One: the importance of Big Data. The conventional wisdom is that a canny use of Big Data was Obamas secret weapon in his victory over Mitt Romney.

But according to Wired magazine, Cruz was the king of the data strategizers, who worked with all of the leading vendors, not only to target voters based on demographics, but also on the psychographics.

And Jeb, Scott Walker, and Marco Rubio all invested heavily in data and analytics. (Ben Carson used Facebooks analytics, and ran 200-plus ads in October alone).

Number Two: money. Sadly, for proof that its really not about SuperPACS and the never-ending need to fund-raise in order to run expensive TV commercials, just look at the disastrous candidacy of one very poignant Jeb!

His PAC, Right to Rise, alone spent somewhere around $40 million just against Trump. I always think of Monty Pythons famous Black Knight, who ended up losing all of his limbs and claiming they were mere flesh wounds. In the case of all of these negative ads, (not only Jebs), Trumps limbs are about as impervious as cement walls.

Speaking of negative advertising, Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democratic nominee, has come out with two new and bash-y ads against Trump that have gone viral on social media. Many of the headlines so far describe them as brutal and scathing.

Sadly, the first spot goes down the exact same rabbit hole as Ted, Marco, and Jeb did before her. In fact, Hillary is never seen. The spot is a montage of clips showing Mitt Romney, Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, among other party-of-Lincoln establishment types, all lambasting Trump.

They call him out on his narcissism, misogyny, third-grade antics, pathological lying, etc. But talk about preaching to the converted. At best, it might make some Hillary people feel better. But not one Trump backer will be swayed by these critiques. This is a line-up of all the failed candidates whom Trump took such delight in destroying. They are the losers who convinced them to vote Trump in the first place. What does it matter what they say?

The second one is slightly better, only because it uses clips of Trump himself, and it knits together all of his most outrageous and controversial statements, from Hispanics being drug dealers and rapists, to the need to punish women who have abortions. But again, Hillary followers will sicken and thrill to every word. Trump voters will blame the media and say that the craziest of the statements was taken out of context.

Frankly, Im not looking forward to the next six months, and the viciousness that will no doubt be a big part of the campaign.

Ironically, all of those same pundits who were proven wrong about Trump are now talking about his need to hire establishment consultants who know what to do in the general election. Ed Rollins, who was Ronald Reagans campaign manager, is heading up a new pro-Trump super PAC, and others are predicting that his new access to the RNCs data base will make all the difference. And Trump himself has mentioned picking an established politician as his VP.

Which would mean that he is embracing all of the conventional wisdom that his candidacy so far has upended. Come on: can you say Black Swan?
by Thom Forbes @tforbes, May 6, 2016

With studies showing a large increase in vaping among teens, the Food and Drug Administration yesterday announced a ban on the sale of e-cigarettes, cigars, pipe and hookah tobacco to anyone under 18 in a heavily footnoted, 499-page document that makes clear it has established a connection between their use and illnesses and premature deaths. It also requires that e-cigarettes carry warnings that they contain nicotine.

The rules promise to have a major impact on the $3.4 billion e-cigarette industry that has flourished in the absence of federal regulation, making the nicotine-delivery devices the most commonly used tobacco products for U.S. youngsters, report Reuters Caroline Humer and Clarece Polke.

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Millions of kids are being introduced to nicotine every year, a new generation hooked on a highly addictive chemical, U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Sylvia Burwell said during the press conference introducing the regulations.

Hundreds of brands launched since 2007  the vast majority of the market, according to a CBS/AP report  will have to undergo federal review under new rules that have the potential to upend a multibillion-dollar industry attempting to position itself as an alternative to traditional cigarettes.

Under staggered timelines, the FDA expects that manufacturers will continue selling their products for up to two years while they submit  and an additional year while the FDA reviews  a new tobacco product application, according to the FDAs press release.

The sweeping new rules, writes Sabrina Tavernise for the New York Times, shifted the terms of the public debate over e-cigarettes, putting the federal governments heft behind a more restrictive approach to the devices. Many health experts fear that e-cigarettes will eventually hook a new generation on traditional cigarettes, while others worry that a tougher approach will make it harder for addicted smokers to get access to devices that may be their best hope of quitting.

Indeed, the FDA itself call its action a milestone in consumer protection  going forward, the FDA will be able to review new tobacco products not yet on the market, help prevent misleading claims by tobacco product manufacturers, evaluate the ingredients of tobacco products and how they are made, and communicate the potential risks of tobacco products, reports CNNs Jen Christensen.

The new rules also require age verification by photo ID; ban the sale of the covered tobacco products in vending machines (unless in an adult-only facility) and forbid the distribution of free samples, among other restrictions.

The Utah Department of Health praised the federal regulations Thursday, citing the skyrocketing rates of teen e-cigarette use in Utah, which have nearly tripled since 2011, writes Daphne Chen of the Deseret News. Brittany Karzen, who works for the departments tobacco prevention and control program tells Chen e-cigarettes threaten to overturn decades of work spent wrestling the U.S. smoking rate to all-time lows, particularly among youths.

Vaping is a gateway to combustible tobacco use, its critics contend, and some early studies in the U.S. suggest a link between e-cigarette experimentation and traditional tobacco use among teens, Chen points out.

Ending the tobacco epidemic is more urgent than ever, and can only happen if the FDA acts aggressively and broadly to protect all Americans from all tobacco products, says Harold Wimmer, president of the American Lung Association.

But the vaping industry is gearing up for a fight, claiming its part of the solution.

Todays final rule pulls the rug out from the nine million smokers who have switched to vaping, putting them in jeopardy of returning back to smoking, which kills 480,000 Americans each year and costs the U.S. more than $300 billion in annual health care expenses, says Cynthia Cabrera, president and executive director of the Smoke-Free Alternatives Trade Association (SFATA) in a statement. These new regulations create an enormously cost-prohibitive regulatory process for manufacturers to market their products to adult smokers and vapers.

SFATA also points to the U.K.s Royal College of Physicians recently released report endorsing vaping as a harm reduction option.

In an op-ed published by USA Today, Jeff Stier calls on Congress to undo some of FDAs damage by including an amendment passed by the House appropriations committee in its final fiscal 2017 spending bill. It would dial back the more stringent provisions the FDA has decreed but still institute vapor battery standards, marketing restrictions and a ban on sales to minors.

The FDA wasnt wrong to regulate e-cigarettes. It was wrong to effectively ban, by its own estimate, up to 98.5% of the e-cigarettes on the market today, writes Stier, a senior fellow at the National Center for Public Policy Research, which receives 1.4% of its support from the tobacco and e-cigarette industry.
by Erik Sass , Staff Writer @eriksass1, May 6, 2016

There seems to be a general consensus that ghosting  basically disappearing from someones life after a brief social media or text message, or with no warning at all  is not really acceptable behavior (the phrase derives from a not-at-all complimentary song by Katy Perry). However, like the good human beings we are we all seem to be guilty of doing the same thing were indignant about other people doing to us.

Thats according to a new survey of millennial Brits first reported by The Mirror, which found that large majorities of young people in the UK have both ghosted and been ghosted upon, defined in this case as unfriending someone via social media, text or email and then terminating all social media contact (in addition to severing real-life connections).

Overall, more than nine out of ten Brits ages 26-30 have been dumped via social media or text in a romantic relationship or friendship, and roughly the same proportion of Brits ages 21-25 have ghosted on someone else. That includes not just unfriending someone on Facebook but unfollowing them on Twitter, blocking access on WhatsApp, and breaking things off via email. Half of Brits under the age of 30 have used Facebook in particular to end a friendship.

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Young adults in the UK gave a whole slew of reasons for ghosting on former romantic relationships or friendships, including constant posting of selfies, gossiping or flirting with other peoples romantic partners, and dropping out of the social world after entering a relationship.

Back in 2013 a survey of 2,000 British adults ages 18-34 by YouGov and communications agency Diffusion found that 43% of respondents said they use Facebook to confirm the end of a relationship. That refers to a range of practices including unfriending the ex within a month of the relationship ending (42%), severing all online contact with the exs friends and family (31%), and purging all images of themselves and their ex (34%).

Another survey of 4,000 women around the world by AVG Technologies found that 19% of women ages 18-25 said they have ended a relationship by posting on Facebook. Meanwhile 38% of women in the same age-range said they have broken up via text message.
by Philip Rosenstein , Staff Writer, May 6, 2016

What kind of president would Donald Trump be?

He regularly contradicts himself within a single speech and seems to believe that anything he says can be walked back. The GOP nominees tendency toward the rash and the offensive points to a strategy locked on voters hearts rather than their minds.

Last weekend on "Meet the Press," Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Thomas Friedman described the difficulty journalists are having grasping the Trump phenomenon: So many of his supporters seem to be listening through their stomach not their ears. Hes made some gut connection with his followers that I dont think weve fully plumbed.

Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, is forcing many to vote solely with their ears and brains, and ignore that sinking feeling in their gut that change wont come this time around, either.

Can we be certain of anything Trump will do as leader of the free world? Well, according to Trump himself, yes, there are a couple of things we can be certain of. Namely, that he will build a wall on the Southern border. Get your money ready because youre going to pay for the wall, Trump exclaimed earlier this week.

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So hes going to force Mexico to pay for a wall. It defies common sense to think that such a policy would do anything but harm him in a general election. Maybe, hell start spending on marketing campaigns that attempt to convince voters of the benefits of such a move. But then again, thats catering to voters stomachs, not their minds.

Back in 2008, a fascinating study by the American Psychological Association asserted that one can predict somewhere between 80% and 85% of the time which way people would go on questions of presumed fact from emotions alone.

Adding importantly that this was the case even when we gave ... empirical data that pushed them one way or the other.

This preponderance of emotional decision-making may work in favor of both presumptive nominees. Facts have not, and most likely will not, change the minds of Trump supporters. The same can be said for the millions of voters who are viscerally opposed to a President Trump.
by Wendy Davis @wendyndavis, May 6, 2016

Siding against Facebook, a federal judge has refused to dismiss a lawsuit accusing the company of violating an Illinois biometric privacy law by compiling a database of "faceprints."

In a ruling issued Thursday, U.S. District Court Judge James Donato in San Francisco rejected Facebook's argument that the Illinois Biometric Privacy Information Act doesn't apply to faceprints that are derived from photos. "Facebooks contention that the statute categorically excludes from its scope all information involving photographs ... is unpersuasive," Donato wrote.

The ruling stems from a 2015 lawsuit centered on Facebook's automatic photo-tagging feature, rolled out six years ago. That feature recognizes users' faces and suggests their names when they appear in photos uploaded by their friends. To accomplish this, Facebook draws on its vast store of users' photos.

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The plaintiffs -- Carlo Licata, Adam Penzen and Nimesh Patel -- allege in a potential class-action that Facebook's compilation of a faceprint database runs afoul of Illinois' biometric privacy law, That measure requires companies to obtain written releases from people before collecting face geometry and other biometric data. The Illinois law, passed in 2008, also requires companies that gather biometric data to notify people about the practice, and to publish a schedule for destroying the information.

Facebook argued that the case should be dismissed for several reasons. Among others, Facebook contended that the Illinois law doesn't apply to faceprints derived from photos.

The Illinois law contains language excluding "photos" from the definition of "biometric identifiers." A separate definition of "biometric information" appears to go further by also excluding any information derived from photos.

Facebook argued that those definitions mean that "face geometry" is only covered when it's based on something other than photos, like in-person scans.

Donato rejected that argument as inconsistent with the law's purpose. "The statute is an informed consent privacy law addressing the collection, retention and use of personal biometric identifiers and information at a time when biometric technology is just beginning to be broadly deployed," he wrote. "Trying to cabin this purpose within a specific in-person data collection technique has no support in the words and structure of the statute, and is antithetical to its broad purpose of protecting privacy in the face of emerging biometric technology."

A different federal judge in Illinois recently sided against Shutterfly on the same question.

Facebook also unsuccessfully argued that the case should be dismissed because the company's terms of service provide that California law applies to all disputes. California doesn't have a law comparable to Illinois' biometric privacy measure.

But Donato said in the ruling that applying California law would run counter to a fundamental policy in Illinois. "If California law is applied, the Illinois policy of protecting its citizens privacy interests in their biometric data, especially in the context of dealing with 'major national corporations' like Facebook, would be written out of existence," he wrote.

The judge noted that the case was still in an early stage, and that new facts might emerge that would affect the ultimate outcome.

Facebook isn't the only company accused of violating the Illinois privacy law. Google also is facing a similar lawsuit for allegedly collecting faceprints in connection with Google Photos.
A fast, portable test for Zika virus could be in the cards, according to a new study published in Cell, which details how a prototype device was able to accurately detect the virus in the blood and saliva of infected monkeys.

Share on Pinterest Researchers say their prototype portable Zika test (pictured) effectively identified the virus in the blood and saliva of monkeys.

Image credit: James Collins et al.



Zika virus is primarily spread to humans through the bite of an infected Aedes mosquito.

Symptoms of the virus are normally mild, and they commonly include fever, rash, joint pain, and conjunctivitis. Zika is rarely life-threatening, and the vast majority of people who become infected do not get sick enough to warrant hospitalization.

However, following large outbreaks of Zika virus in French Polynesia in 2013 and in Brazil last year, studies have increasingly suggested a link between infection during pregnancy and microcephaly.

Microcephaly is a birth defect in which a baby has a smaller-than-normal head, usually because the brain has not developed properly.

Earlier this month, a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) confirmed that Zika virus does cause microcephaly and other birth defects, after researchers conducted an in-depth review of the evidence to date.

Needless to say, such an association is worrying, and it highlights the need to identify better diagnostic and preventive techniques for Zika virus.
A U.S. Army Colonel arrested for child pornography while stationed at the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle has been convicted on federal charges following a five-day trial in U.S. District Court.

A jury found that 58-year-old Robert J. Rice knowingly possessed child pornography and that he received and distributed child pornography through the Internet, according to a news release Friday from U.S. Attorney Peter Smiths office.

According to U.S. Attorney Peter Smith, the jury returned with the verdict of guilty after approximately two hours of deliberation. The jury found that Rice knowingly possessed child pornography from August 2010 through Jan. 29, 2013, and that he received and distributed child pornography through the internet from Jan. 23, 2013 through Jan. 28, 2013.

Sentencing is scheduled for Aug. 12. The maximum penalty under federal law is 30 years in prison.

The charges stemmed from an investigation by the Cumberland County District Attorneys Office with assistance from the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Division and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI). Cumberland County authorities in April 2013 reported they found 10,000 pornographic images depicting children engaged in sexual acts on Rices personal computer.

At the time, Rice was a staff officer engaged in developing war games at the War Colleges Center for Strategic Leadership and Development. His clearance was suspended immediately after his arrest.

The maximum penalty under federal law is 30 years imprisonment, a term of supervised release following imprisonment, and a fine. Under the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, the Judge is also required to consider and weigh a number of factors, including the nature, circumstances and seriousness of the offense; the history and characteristics of the defendant; and the need to punish the defendant, protect the public and provide for the defendants educational, vocational and medical needs. For these reasons, the statutory maximum penalty for the offense is not an accurate indicator of the potential sentence for a specific defendant.
A probiotic given to medical students during the run-up to nationwide medical school examinations reduced stress among the students. "The probiotic strain, Lactobacillus casei strain Shirota can relieve many aspects of the stress response, especially gastrointestinal dysfunction," said corresponding author Kouji Miyazaki, PhD, director of the Food Research Department of Yakult Central Institute, Tokyo, Japan. The research is published ahead of print, in Applied and Environmental Microbiology, a journal of the American Society for Microbiology.

In the study, beginning eight weeks prior to the examination, 23 medical students drank milk that had been fermented by L. casei strain Shirota, while 24 control students consumed non-fermented (placebo) milk that was otherwise identical, in such parameters as taste, color, and nutrition. Neither group of students knew which milk they had received.

Weekly, the subjects answered a questionnaire concerning levels of five common abdominal symptoms, such as "abdominal discomfort and pain." They also responded to a questionnaire on anxiety levels. Additionally, the investigators measured certain physiological parameters, such as salivary cortisol - a stress hormone.

The study demonstrated that daily consumption of the probiotic milk reduced gastrointestinal pain and dysfunction, as well as the feeling of being stressed out. It also dampened the rise in salivary cortisol, said Miyazaki.

Additionally, the L. casei strain Shirota changed levels of expression of stress-related genes. In placebo group students, as the examination date approached, expression soared in 179 stress-related genes, while rising much less in the students who consumed the probiotics.

The percentage of bacteria from the stress-related Bacteroidetes species increased prior to exams only in the placebo group. Meanwhile, the students on the probiotics maintained healthier and more diverse populations of gut bacteria throughout the time leading up to the examination. The investigators suspect this contributed to reducing stress symptoms.

The researchers used a technique called 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequence analysis to census the bacteria.

"These findings indicate that the stress responses are controlled by probiotics at a higher level of the stress system, through the brain-gut axis," said Miyazaki."Thus, the probiotic strengthens the resilience of our stress response system."

Miyazaki said that the idea for the study had originated from indications that probiotics mitigated stress-related gut diseases such as irritable bowel syndrome.
Years before inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is diagnosed and symptoms exist, biomarkers are already circulating that can help predict risk not only of disease development but also of complications, according to research published online last week, which will also appear in the June 15, 2016 print issue of Alimentary Pharmacology & Therapeutics. This publication reports the first findings from the PREDICTS (Proteomic Evaluation and Discovery in an IBD Cohort of Tri-service Subjects) study--a CRADA (Cooperative Research And Development Agreement) between the Mount Sinai Health System, the Naval Medical Research Center, Mayo Clinic, Prometheus Laboratories Inc. and Janssen Pharmaceuticals.

"Acquiring mechanistic information on pre-clinical IBD can potentially uncover key pathogenic events, lead to the development of new therapeutic targets and inform predictive algorithms that could be used to define at-risk populations in whom to test these approaches," said Jean-Frederic Colombel, MD, co-senior author, and Co-Director of The Susan and Leonard Feinstein Inflammatory Bowel Disease Clinical Center at Mount Sinai. "This study adds an additional piece of evidence into 'life before IBD,' a major focus of research at Mount Sinai, since exploring the pre-clinical phase of inflammatory bowel disease may offer some new insights in the origin of IBD and hopefully prevention."

Using clinical data obtained from the Defense Medical Surveillance System (DMSS) -- the main data repository of the US armed forces, containing military and medical information from more than 7 million armed forces members' careers since 1990 -- researchers identified patients with a diagnosis of Crohn's disease, and then retrieved their pre-diagnostic serum samples from the Department of Defense Serum Repository. For each patient, up to four serum samples from pre- and post-disease initiation were obtained -- the first sample being from the patient's initial diagnosis, and the others being serum samples stored from the three preceding biennial periods -- to assess the presence of antimicrobial antibodies. These markers have previously been shown to circulate in patients' serum years before diagnosis and have been associated with more severe disease when identified at the time of or shortly after diagnosis; however, this was the first study demonstrating these markers and their progression using multiple samples at different time points before diagnosis.

In each of the samples, researchers measured a panel of antibodies directed against microbial epitopes -- the specific piece of the antigen to which an antibody binds. With access to multiple samples from before the patients' diagnoses, researchers were able to demonstrate for the first time not only that these markers were present in serum up to six years before diagnosis (65 percent of patients tested positive for at least one marker in the earliest serum samples), but also that the number of positive markers increased up to diagnosis. Furthermore, those individuals with higher number of positive antibodies, and with higher titers, developed more frequent complications (such as need for surgery, strictures, or fistulae and abscesses) at or around the time of diagnosis.

"This study represents an important addition to research being performed on the pre-clinical stage of IBD," said co-senior author Joseph A. Murray of the Mayo Clinic. "This is the first time that a longitudinal assessment of antimicrobial markers in serum was performed. Furthermore, it is also the first time that a link between these markers in a pre-clinical phase and future risk for disease complications has been made. These findings suggest that it may be possible to identify a population of patients not only at high risk for IBD, but also for complicated disease in which preventive strategies or intensive monitoring could be applied. Further research into this stage of pre-clinical disease will likely lead to better understanding and identification of key events involved in disease pathogenesis."

The research is still ongoing, and soon data from 1,000 patients with Crohn's disease, 1,000 with ulcerative colitis, and 500 controls will be available. Furthermore, beside antimicrobial markers, other possible pre-clinical markers, such as proteomic profile and exposure to infectious agents including virus, will be explored.

This work was prepared as part of the official duties of U.S. Government personnel and service members (Chad Porter, Mark Riddle). Support for this study was provided by Janssen Pharmaceuticals and Prometheus Laboratories under a CRADA entitled "Antimicrobial antibodies as predictors of inflammatory bowel diseases." Additional support was received from the Sandford J. Grossman Charitable Trust.
Onboard data collection records from vehicles can help responders and hospitals quickly evaluate a crash victim's need for trauma care.

Important information on a motor vehicle crash can help ambulance personnel and hospital staff better direct crash victims to the most appropriate care, but getting that information into a meaningful format for those personnel to use has been an ongoing challenge. Recently, a team of biomechanical specialists and clinicians at Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, North Carolina, developed a computer algorithm that's capable of providing that information through a novel method using data from electronic data recorders (EDRs) on board cars and trucks today.

The research team reported on the Occupant Transportation Decision Algorithm (OTDA) they developed in an "article in press" published online in the Journal of American College of Surgeons in advance of print publication.

The OTDA is an Advanced Automatic Crash Notification (AACN) algorithm that uses vehicle telemetry measurements, such as those from an EDR, to predict risk of serious injuries in vehicle crashes. The algorithm is a computer-based program that collects and utilizes information, such as occupants' use of seatbelts, airbag deployment, vehicle speed and the point of impact--side, head-on, rear or rollover--all measures which hospital staff and first responders can use to determine the location and severity of injuries.

"This algorithm has the potential to inform the risk of severe injury for people in a crash, and their risk is different depending on whether they're properly belted in a crash or have the benefit of an airbag; that's what emergency medical services personnel are looking for at a crash scene," said lead study author Joel D. Stitzel, PhD, of the Virginia Tech-Wake Forest University Center for Injury Biomechanics. "That's what automobile manufacturers and scientists really need to be thinking about: Does the patient need to be cared for at a Level I or Level II trauma center or can they go somewhere else, to a regional hospital, for example?"

The OTDA differs from other AACN algorithms because it can aid in the triage of crash victims using their risk of injuries associated with the need for trauma center treatment based on crash characteristics from the vehicle telemetry. Other algorithms use measures such as Injury Severity Score (ISS), a system to grade the extent of injuries, and the Maximum Abbreviated Injury Scale (MAIS) to predict overall risk of injury in a crash. The OTDA uses injury severity, but also time sensitivity--that is, how quickly the injuries need to be addressed--and predictability factors. J. Wayne Meredith, MD, FACS, director of surgical sciences and professor of trauma surgery at Wake Forest, and other Wake Forest trauma specialists provided key input into the algorithm.

The researchers used two measures for determining the utility of the algorithm to direct crash victims to the correct care setting: overtriage, which means a patient goes to a care setting, such as an emergency room or trauma center, that offers services beyond what that patient needs; and undertriage, which means the opposite--the patient goes to a setting that doesn't have the services needed to treat those injuries.

"The best data we have says that the current system for motor vehicle crashes overtriages crash victims at a rate of around 60 percent, and the American College of Surgeons guidelines call for around 50 percent," Dr. Stitzel said. "So we're currently sending a lot of crash victims to the trauma center who don't necessarily need to go there at a rate higher than what experts would recommend."

In a model the researchers used, the OTDA achieved an overtriage rate of below 50 percent in all crash types, and undertriage rates below 5 percent in side-impact crashes and ranging from 6-16 percent in other types of crashes. The researchers estimate that nationwide implementation of this algorithm would correct triage decisions for 44 percent of those who are undertriaged and 38 percent of those who are overtriaged. That scenario would translate into more appropriate care for more than 2,700 seriously injured crash victims annually, and avoid sending more than 162,000 people who don't need trauma-level care to trauma centers.

"Undertriage is probably the worst thing you can do for a patient because you're sending someone to a lower level of care when they need a higher level of care," Dr. Stitzel said. "It can result in delayed care and missed injuries as a result."

Sending all crash victims to a trauma center is not a solution, Dr. Stitzel said. "You would have thousands of people who are not injured and fairly healthy people being cared for in trauma centers, and trauma centers are not set up to do that; they really need to be receiving the most severely injured patients," he said. Flooding trauma centers with non-trauma injuries would force them to divert needed resources and personnel away from the most critically injured patients.

Dr. Meredith explained what this algorithm can mean for trauma physicians and critically injured crash victims. "Our hope is this work will improve our chances of getting the right patients to the right place at the right time and help preserve precious minutes of the golden hour," he said. The trauma community defines the "golden hour" as a window of time to evaluate and stabilize the patient to prevent the likelihood of death.

Dr. Meredith's vision is that the algorithm would quickly provide information about the nature of a crash victim's injuries to trauma center staff. "That implementation would alert us to be prepared for a patient's arrival in a way we might not otherwise," Dr. Meredith said.

The study was funded by Toyota Motor Corporation and Toyota's Collaborative Safety Research Center in Ann Arbor, Mich. The study authors have no additional disclosures.

An Injury Severity, Time Sensitivity, and Predictability Based Advanced Automatic Crash Notification Algorithm Improves Motor Vehicle Crash Occupant Triage. Joel D. Stitzel, PhD, Ashley A. Weaver, PhD, Jennifer W. Talton, MS, Ryan T. Barnard, MS, Samantha L. Schoell, MS, Andrea N. Doud, MD, R Shayn Martin, MD, J Wayne Meredith, MD, FACS. Journal of American College of Surgeons. DOI:10.1016/j.jamcollsurg.2016.03.028. Published online April 29, 2016.
A Purdue University-developed laser tool already effective in quickly detecting harmful bacteria has been shown to detect mutant varieties of listeria - and in the same amount of time.

The BARDOT (pronounced bar-DOH') laser scans bacteria colonies looking for unique patterns that each bacterium makes. When the light penetrates a bacteria colony, it produces a scatter pattern that can be matched against a library of known bacteria patterns to identify a match. The system can identify bacteria such as salmonella, listeria, bacillus, vibrio and E. coli within 24 hours.

Now, Arun Bhunia, professor of food microbiology, and Atul Singh, research scientist, have shown that BARDOT (acronym for "bacterial rapid detection using optical scatter technology") can pinpoint small genetic mutations in listeria just as quickly, significantly reducing the time it would take scientists to identify those mutations in bacterial strains used for research. Their study was published in the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology.

"This is a versatile microbiology tool, and we wanted to see if we can use it for mutant strains," Bhunia said. "This is a really powerful tool to help researchers find those mutant strains much easier on a petri plate. You can avoid the laborious techniques required to screen or detect these mutant strains."

Scientists use mutant bacteria to understand biology of pathogens and how they can combat outbreaks in food that can cause illnesses or death. Current methods of identifying mutants can take several days, whereas BARDOT can do the same work in less than a day.

Singh said he visualized the changes in bacteria using the laser system.

"It's like if you compare a wild type that is a normal bacteria, you get a scatter pattern. And then if you delete a certain gene, you get a new picture," he said.

The reverse was also true. By restoring the deleted gene, the BARDOT system recognized the bacteria as a regular wild type of strain.

Bhunia said his lab will continue to study BARDOT's ability to identify mutants of other bacteria and build libraries so the tool can be used for that work. He will also test the system's ability to identify mutant bacteria from natural settings such as from contaminated food.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture funded this study through the Center for Food Safety Engineering.

See below for a video showing BARDOT in action:

Article: Virulence Gene-Associated Mutant Bacterial Colonies Generate Differentiating Two-Dimensional Laser Scatter Fingerprints, Atul K. Singh, Lena Leprun, Rishi Drolia, Xingjian Bai, Huisung Kim, Amornrat Aroonnual, Euiwon Bae, Krishna K. Mishra and Arun K. Bhunia, Applied and Environmental Microbiology, doi: 10.1128/AEM.04129-15, published online 18 March 2016.
Despite studies that claim people with cancer are less likely to develop Alzheimer's disease--raising the possibility that what triggers cancer also prevents the neurodegenerative disorder--a new investigation finds a more somber explanation. Many cancer patients don't live long enough to get Alzheimer's. The research, led by investigators at Huntsman Cancer Institute at the University of Utah, was published in The Journals of Gerontology: Series B.

"Diagnosis of age-related diseases, such as Alzheimer's disease, depends on someone surviving to an age when disease onset can occur," explains lead author Heidi Hanson, Ph.D., M.S., a Huntsman Cancer Institute research associate and research assistant professor of family and preventive medicine at the University of Utah School of Medicine.

Illustrating the concept, Hanson and her colleagues examined data from pancreatic cancer patients, whose average age of death is 73, the same age at which Alzheimer's is typically diagnosed. While the rate of Alzheimer's diagnoses tripled as the cancer-free population aged from 75 to 89 years old (increasing from 25 to 75 per 1,000), it remained constant in patients with pancreatic cancer (20 per 1,000).

Concluding that pancreatic cancer protects against Alzheimer's disease is similar to saying that gunshots prevent Alzheimer's, says senior author and Huntsman Cancer Institute investigator Ken Smith, Ph.D., distinguished professor of family and consumer studies and population science. "People who are shot rarely get Alzheimer's because most of them die before they have the chance to. But no one would say that gunshot wounds protect against the disease."

He adds that analyses need to consider that as people age, they are more likely to be affected by any of a number of conditions. Those dying of lethal diseases simply lack the time to develop another illness.

With this in mind, the researchers conducted their own evaluation, examining data from 92,245 individuals with and without cancer from the Utah Population Database, a comprehensive set of demographic, medical, and other records. The group was between the ages of 65 and 79 in 1992, and had no record of dementia. Their data was followed for at least 18 additional years to determine how many were later diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, as indicated by Medicare claims data.

Contrary to previous studies, three different statistical methods showed that those with cancer did not have a decreased risk for Alzheimer's disease. Each method factored in higher rates of death among cancer patients in a slightly different way.

To test the idea further, the team tracked two groups of patients with prostate cancer. If cancer provides protection from Alzheimer's disease, says Smith, groups of patients with the same type of cancer would be equally likely to get the brain disorder. Yet they found that patients with a shortened life expectancy due to metastasized prostate cancer trended toward a decreased risk for Alzheimer's as compared to patients with early-stage prostate cancer. After adjusting for mortality, they determined that the observed difference was not statistically significant.

"These results call into question a protective association between cancer and Alzheimer's," says Hanson. "If we are going to understand aging-related diseases, we need to consider how other chronic diseases and conditions impact them."

This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health, P30 CAO42014, Huntsman Cancer Institute, and a K12 award from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

Article: Is Cancer Protective for Subsequent Alzheimer's Disease Risk? Evidence From the Utah Population Database, Heidi A. Hanson, Kevin P. Horn, Kelli M. Rasmussen, John M. Hoffman and Ken R. Smith, The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, doi: 10.1093/geronb/gbw040, published online 21 April 2016.


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Early Stages of Growth of an Embryo: The essential landmarks in the growth of a normal embryo were noted in the lab-grown embryos like expansion of the embryos, lineage segregation, formation of the bi-laminar disc, cavitation in the amniotic and yolk sac and diversification of the trophoblast.

The essential landmarks in the growth of a normal embryo were noted in the lab-grown embryos like expansion of the embryos, lineage segregation, formation of the bi-laminar disc, cavitation in the amniotic and yolk sac and diversification of the trophoblast. Identification of Diseases: An understanding of the initial stages of growth will aid in identifying the reason behind developmental problems and diseases at this stage

An understanding of the initial stages of growth will aid in identifying the reason behind developmental problems and diseases at this stage Identifying Reasons Behind IVF Failure: Many couples across the world resort to IVF techniques to have a baby. However, large proportion of the times, the technique fails as the embryo does not get implanted in the mother's womb. Identifying the key factors associated with implantation will aid in improving the chances of success in an IVF.

Many couples across the world resort to IVF techniques to have a baby. However, large proportion of the times, the technique fails as the embryo does not get implanted in the mother's womb. Identifying the key factors associated with implantation will aid in improving the chances of success in an IVF. Early Human Pregnancy Loss or Miscarriage: The study provides insights into the growth and development of embryos in the initial stages which can be used to understand and identify problems that lead to termination of early pregnancy.

The study provides insights into the growth and development of embryos in the initial stages which can be used to understand and identify problems that lead to termination of early pregnancy. Stem Cell Therapy: Identifying the stages and the process involved inthe growth and differentiation of cells into different cell lineages is useful for further studies of stem cell and cell replacement therapies.

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Insight into the growth potential of human embryos in vivo.

Prospects for research on various diseases and illnesses.

Fresh perspective into cell replacement therapies.

Room for a discussion on the legal limit of 14 days for growing embryos in the laboratory.

Alessia Deglincerti, Gist F. Croft, Lauren N. Pietila, Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz, Eric D. Siggia& Ali H. Brivanlou "Self-organization of the in vitro attached human embryo", Nature (2016)

The study showed the initial stages of growth of an embryo which will aid in understanding the following:The study raises hope for scientists across the world about prospective benefits of this landmark research. However, there are mounting calls from International research bodies to revoke the 14-day ban in the growth of embryos.The law to allow scientific research on embryos for only 14 days was passed in Britain nearly 30 years ago. Embryos that were discarded from artificial reproductive procedures were allowed to be used for scientific research purposes for 14 days. The time duration was fixed after religious heads and certain governing bodies considered study on human embryos unethical.The latest study that has demonstrated the ability of the scientific community to grow cells for longer periods, probably longer than 14 days, has raised serious debates about increasing the time of study of embryos. Many scientists now want the ban revoked to promote research and aid in improving treatment for certain diseases.Three researchers Amy Wilkerson from Rockefeller University, Insoo Hyun from Case Western Reserve University and Josephine Johnston from the Hastings Centre in New York have written in The Journalfor this ban to be revisited. When revisiting the ban, these three scientists want discussions to be held with local cultural and religious bodies for a more inclusive law. They wrote "The kind of international discourse we envision could facilitate and inform local decisions to amend law or research policy,"Technological advancements have triggered a re-think of the law as scientists argue about the huge benefits to human society if details about the early stages of pregnancy are studied. However, Magdalena Zernicka, who was part of the study from the University of Cambridge says "To be able to culture embryos for a couple of days longer would provide an enormous body of information, but it's not for us now to decide whether we should do it or not. Rules are very useful, we would always adhere to them, and they should be set out by the wider community,"Most studies on early embryos were performed on mouse models, but this study brings to the fore the significance of studying embryos from humans. There are differences in cell types and growth characteristics, underlying the importance of studying human embryos for better treatment modalities in cell therapies and understanding miscarriages.In this latest study on human embryos, an attachment substrate was provided for the growth of the embryos which did not require maternal inputs during the period of growth.The study has providedSource: Medindia
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"Our study shows that newborn screening is effective and should be seen as an opportunity to do early preventive intervention," said the study's senior author, Dr. Larry Lands, director of Pediatric Respiratory Medicine and CF clinic at the Montreal Children's Hospital of the MUHC (MCH-MUHC) and a professor in the Department of Pediatrics at McGill University."Children with CF who are diagnosed through newborn screening are healthier and will benefit more from new treatments. CF is caused by mutations in the CFTR gene that mainly affects the respiratory and digestive systems. It is characterized by thick and sticky mucus that plugs up tubes, ducts and passageways, especially in the lungs and pancreas leading to pulmonary chronic infection and loss in lung function over time. It is estimated that one in every 3,600 children born in Canada has cystic fibrosis."Given the changes in clinical management for CF, we questioned whether or not newborn screening for CF was still beneficial," says the study's lead author Dr. Denise Mak, Program Manager, Healthcare at Cystic Fibrosis Canada. "We wanted to know in an unbiased way whether newborn screening was beneficial to Canadian CF patients, or whether current treatments would allow those patients diagnosed because of symptoms to catch up in their overall health."To conduct their study, researchers used data from the Canadian CF Registry from 2008 to 2013. They compared health outcomes for Canadian children who were diagnosed with CF by newborn screening (201 patients) with those who were diagnosed clinically over a period of six years (102 patients). They looked at different aspects such as growth, number of hospitalizations, and rates of infection with either Pseudomonas aeruginosa or Staphylococcus aureus; two bacteria often associated with cystic fibrosis."Over the six-year time period, we found that newborn screening for CF resulted in better nutrition, fewer children being infected with Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and fewer and shorter hospitalizations in Canadian CF children," adds Dr. Mak.Indeed, researchers found there was a higher rate of infection with Pseudomonas aeruginosa in children who were not screened as newborns, so that by the age of 6 years, over 60% of those not screened had been infected with Pseudomonas aeruginosa at least once, while less than 30% of screened patients had had an infection with Pseudomonas aeruginosa. They also reported that children diagnosed through newborn screening were diagnosed at an earlier age (0.7 vs 4.9 months)."These results indicate that current therapies started after a clinical diagnosis do not compensate for being diagnosed based on symptoms and lead to poorer health outcomes," explains Dr. Lands. "'We hope that this study will serve as a catalyst to have newborn screening for CF adopted widely."Source: Eurekalert
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First author Dr. Andreas Beyerlein summarizes the results as follows: "Our findings show that viral respiratory tract disorders during the first six months of life significantly increase the risk of children developing type 1 diabetes." Infections that occurred later or that involved other organs were not associated with a significantly higher risk. For the researchers, these findings are a further piece in the puzzle of understanding how type 1 diabetes develops, with the interaction of genetic and environmental factors still largely unclear.Previously there were only relatively inconsistent indications from studies with children with a genetically higher risk of type 1 diabetes regarding the influence of infections. "Now for the first time we were able to confirm this in a population-based dataset of almost 300,000 children. In particular, we found strong indications that the first six months are an especially sensitive stage in life," explains lead scientist Ziegler."This is also consistent with other results that we have published based on data from children with increased familial risk, which already suggested that the first half year of life is crucial for the development of the immune system and autoimmune diseases such as type 1 diabetes."In the future, the scientists want to determine whether there is actually a causal relationship and if yes, exactly which pathogens are involved and how they trigger this effect. This could then serve as a basis for attempting to develop an appropriate vaccine.Source: Eurekalert
Union Fire Company No. 1 in Carlisle has the distinction of being one of the oldest continuously operating volunteer fire companies in the country.

This steadfast group of first responders can trace their origin to a fire on Oct. 31, 1788, that devastated four to five homes in the first block of North Hanover Street near the present-day Carlisle Vault reception hall. The loss prompted civil action.

Five months later, in early April 1789, Union Fire Company came into being when a hand pump officially arrived from Philadelphia. A loosely organized group of property owners and community leaders, they borrowed language for their bylaws from Ben Franklins Union Fire Company in Philadelphia.

The first Union fire hall was just a storage shed on The Square near the current veterans monument. In 1821, the Union and Cumberland fire companies joined together to build a two-story building next to the original Cumberland County courthouse that fronted present-day West High Street in the Square.

The first floor of that building served as an equipment bay for the two fire companies while the second floor was the borough hall. Both this structure and the courthouse were destroyed in March 1845 when an arsonist set a fire after using a rope to tie all the apparatus together.

Union Fire Company recovered and moved its location to the south side of Louther Street where a one-story wood building was constructed on what is today the borough parking lot adjacent to the post office. A brick firehouse replaced the wooden building in 1859.

By 1888, Union Fire Company outgrew the brick firehouse prompting the membership to vote to sell the building and to purchase a lot on the north side at 35 W. Louther St. according to Randy Watts, author of the book To The Rescue: Carlisles Union Fire Company 1789 to 2012.

Watts quoted the Carlisle Herald of June 18, 1888 which described the lot as being 50 ft. across and extending as far back as Locust Alley. The lot had a dwelling along its Louther Street side and two stables and four tenant homes on its alley side, according to the newspaper account.

Union funded the construction of the new firehouse by issuing $6,000 in bonds sold to members and the public, Watts wrote. The fire company broke ground on the project on July 10, 1888 and entered into a contract on Aug. 24 with builder Samuel Wetzel for a cost of $4,217  the equivalent of $112,197 in todays money. The volunteers moved into the new building in January 1889.

The 1888 station had a truck/engine bay, an assembly hall and a band room. Failed attempts were made in 1950, 1960 and 1971 to build momentum to modernize and upgrade the station. Early in 1976, Union Fire Company membership voted in favor of a project to build a three-bay addition to the west side of the station.

Carlisle borough officials approved the expansion and ground was broken on April 17, 1977. The Newco Company of Harrisburg was the builder hired to do the work at a contracted price of $197,254, according to Watts. The addition included three large bays fronting Louther Street and three smaller bays on Morris Avenue to the east.

The original 1888 station now serves as a recreation area and museum for the fire company which remodeled its building in 2009-2010.
On May 1, 2016, Egyptian security forces stormed the Journalists' Union offices in Cairo, to arrest two journalists who write on the "January Portal" website, Amr Badr and Mahmoud Al-Sakka. The two came to the offices to stage a sit-down strike in protest of the arrest warrants issued against them after they made public their opposition to the Saudi-Egyptian maritime border agreement, announced April 9, 2016, under which Egypt cedes control of the Red Sea Islands of Tiran and Sanafir to Saudi Arabia.[1] Opposition to the deal, signed during the visit of Saudi King Salman bin 'Abd Al-'Aziz in Egypt, gathered momentum among many sectors in the country, leading to opposition protests during April.

The security forces' raid on the Journalists' Union offices sparked intense criticism against the security forces and the Interior Ministry, which is in charge of them, especially considering that, according to Article 70 of Egypt's Media Law, the security forces may not enter the Journalists' Union building without the consent of the prosecutor general's office and in the absence of the union's chairman.[2]

The Journalists' Union council demanded the dismissal of those responsible for the raid, chiefly Interior Minister Magdy 'Abd Al-Ghaffar.[3] In addition, on May 4 some 1,000 members of the union's general assembly convened and passed a number of resolutions: they reiterated the demand to fire the Interior minister and also demanded an apology from the President and the Prime Minister; they decided to refrain from mentioning the Interior Minister's name in reports about him and mention only his title, and also to print his photo in the form of a negative. Furthermore, it was decided that Egyptian papers would print their front pages entirely in black next Sunday (May 8). Most of Egypt's papers agreed to comply with the assembly's decisions.[4]



Front page of Al-Maqal's May 5 issue, with Magdy 'Abd Al-Ghaffar's photo in negative



Front page of Al-Masri Al-Yawm's May 5 issue, headlined "The Journalists' Will Has Defeated the Coalition of the Interior Ministry and the Thugs"; "We Will Not Drop [the Demand] for the Minister's Dismissal and for an Apology by the President"

The union was joined in its protests by public figures, politicians and members of the media, as well as by the unions of doctors, lawyers, and engineers. All of these condemned the Interior Ministry, calling the raid unprecedented and unacceptable.[5]

Among the Egyptian media, the reaction by the official daily Al-Ahram particularly stood out. In its May 3 editorial the daily harshly condemned the raid and joined in the demand for the firing of the interior minister. It also warned that harming freedom of speech would cost the state dearly. It noted that the Egyptian people has learned that its destiny is in its own hands and that when it rises up nothing can stand in its way.

It should be noted that following the Journalists' Union's convention the paper took a more reserved position, perhaps out of fear that the affair would escalate into general protest against the regime. Al-Ahram's chief editor, Muhammad 'Abd Al-hadi 'Allam, expressed concern regarding the politicization of the union, and the paper did not join the others in printing Al-Ghaffar's photo in negative.[6] However, the decision by Al-Ahram - which is for the most part a loyal mouthpiece of the regime - to join the protests at all is indicative of the gravity of the crisis between the Interior Ministry and many elements, including media elements, in Egyptian society.

It should be noted that the outraged response to the raid extended beyond Egypt's borders. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon expressed concern about the arrest of the two journalists and stressed the importance of safeguarding the rights of the Egyptian media,[7] and EU Foreign Affairs Minister Federica Mogherini also condemned the arrests.[8]

The following are excerpts from Al-Ahram's May 3, 2016 editorial:

"...The Interior Ministry apparatuses carried out an illegitimate operation against freedom. Ministry officials and their supervisors did not grasp that the shameful raid on the Journalists' Union building is an unprecedented action that is unacceptable to journalists, other professional unions, and the public at large.

"The Interior Ministry has recently made a number of mistakes, the latest being this regrettable action against journalists and members of the media. [The ministry] will never manage to carry out its despicable intent to silence the people and to suppress the freedom of opinion and expression that are cemented in the constitution. Security apparatus officials who have not yet read it [the constitution] are falsely depicting themselves to the political leadership as defenders of the state's existence and security.

"Today they [the security apparatus officials] are indeed in positions of leadership, but who knows where they will be tomorrow? Experience has taught us something that the security mechanisms unfortunately don't understand - [namely] that it is the people that chooses its destiny, not the leadership, and that when the people rises to take its freedom, nothing can stop it, not even the strongest security barriers and weapons.

"The Interior Ministry, with all its mechanisms, erred by raiding the Journalists' Union building, the bastion of Egyptian freedom. Unfortunately, [the raid took place] just as the journalists are marking the 60th anniversary of the founding of their union, which includes all shades of the political and partisan spectrum. Journalists are not terrorists, and there is no justification for security personnel to raid their glorious bastion for any reason, and for the Interior Ministry spokesman to then deny that they had done so.

"The next step should be the interior minister's dismissal in response to this criminal action that caused outrage in all of Egypt - and at a time when many families are complaining that their sons have disappeared behind prison bars without benefit of a trial, on the false claim that they were working against the state. We do not yet know what state this is, of which the security apparatuses speak and whose security they claim to be making efforts to ensure. Have we and our sons become enemies of the state?

"They [the security apparatuses] need to stop this old game, because if it succeeds, it ultimately spells doom - not for us, our sons, and our people, but rather for those who play it. A true state, whose soil is loved by the journalists, should heal these wounds and swiftly investigate [the incident] in order to defuse this crisis between the press and the regime.

"In every one of his speeches, the president speaks of freedom of opinion and expression; this is also a fundamental constitutional principle that the security forces violated on baseless and obsolete pretexts. All we want [for] this state is reforms that can only be possible if freedom of opinion is preserved, [because] it is a fundamental element in the progress of a people. Otherwise, the state will be the first to pay the price of the violation of freedom [of opinion] and of the sacrifice of the principles of human progress.

"We must tackle this crisis wisely, and must prevent the agents of chaos and division from taking advantage of it in order to harm the state."

Endnotes:

[1] Al-Masri Al-Yawm (Saudi Arabia), May 1, 2016.
Introduction

In recent years, an international BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) campaign against Israel, supposedly as an expression of support for the Palestinians, has been gaining ground, and has recently also expanded to India. The Indian People in Solidarity with Palestine, an Indian BDS forum, held a two-day convention in New Delhi on August 22-23, 2015. The group also organized a convention on March 6, 2016 in New Delhi, whose prominent speakers included were Peggy Mohan, an author and linguistics professor, and several others who are cited in the paragraphs below.



Nasser Barakat, a Palestinian-Indian, speaks at a BDS convention

Similar BDS conventions were also held in August, September, October and November of 2015 at the Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) near Delhi, at Chandigarh in Punjab state, at the Jamia Millia Islamia (JMI) University, and at the Ghalib Institute in New Delhi.[1] The BDS convention at AMU on November 23, 2015, included noted Marxist historian Irfan Habib among its speakers. At the August 22-23, 2015 BDS convention at the Ghalib Institute, prominent speakers included Professor Kamal Mitra Chenoy of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) and Sukumar Murlidharan, a senior Marxist journalist who also spoke on the March 6, 2016 BDS event as well. Hindi poet Katyayani recited her poem "Gaza 2015" on the March 6, 2016 BDS convention.

Although these campaigns are being organized in the name of human rights of Palestinians, the organizers do not organize similar events for human rights of, for example, the Baluchis who are brutalized, discriminated and murdered by the Pakistani military every day in Baluchistan, or the Tibetan people who were forced by China to flee their homeland and now live in exile in India. As discussed below, the BDS conventions are organized to target Israel, but the speakers outline a range of issues, including plans to target U.S. computer manufacturer Hewlett-Packard and British private security firm Group-4S, accuse Iran of being an ally of Israel, and target Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's upcoming visit to Israel.

Palestinian-Indian Nasser Barakat At BDS Convention In New Delhi: "You [Iran] Are The Biggest Ally Of Israel"; "Iran Is A Big Fake That America Created"; "They Fabricated 9/11"; "There's No Proof That Al-Qaeda Did That"

Among the speakers at the August 22-23, 2015 BDS convention in New Delhi was Nasser Barakat, a Palestinian-Indian activist and former spokesman of the General Union of Palestinian Students in India. He said that Israel was created as a pretext, just like the "fabricated" 9/11 attacks.[2] Barakat added that he was not fooled by the Iranian nuclear project, because he said he knows that Iran is Israel's biggest ally, and that the Jews are not enemies because they are the Muslims' "key to Heaven."[3] Barakat stated: "Why have the (Western powers) really created Israel in Palestine? There's a very simple reason - because they want an excuse. Like they fabricated 9/11 - there is still no proof. There's no proof that Al-Qaeda did that."[4]

Barakat, accusing Iran of being Israel's ally, added: "You are the biggest ally of Israel. I have no little doubt. You guys should know one thing: In Iran, we have 1.5 million Sunnis, but we don't have any [Sunni] mosques... In the Zionist military, which is so-called Israel, there are 200,000... There are 200,000 Jews, and they are all high authorized leaders, major generals, and all. In Iran, there are only 30,000 Jews, and they have 200 temples; and they practice their ceremonies very freely. Iran is a big fake that America created."[5]

He continued: "As a Palestinian, I have many Jews - not Israeli - Jews as friends. One of them tells me: 'We are enemies, so how are you my friend?' I told him: 'You are mistaken. You have never been my enemy.' Allah informed me, I am called murabiteen. Because you occupied my land, I am a murabiteen. Murabitun are those who are forcibly living there. Those murabiteen are killed by you, and we will go to the higher grade in Heaven. Had Palestine been free, we would not have been murabiteen. So you are the key to Heaven for me. You have never been my enemy."[6]

At another BDS convention on March 6, 2016 in New Delhi, Palestinian student Dina, who is enrolled at the Jamia Millia Islamia University of New Delhi, narrated her ordeal during the Israeli attacks in 2014 in Gaza in obtaining an Indian visa and her difficulties traveling.[7]

Prof. Kamal Mitra Chenoy: "Let Us Be Very Clear: If We Are Going To Go After Modi On His Trip To Israel Where Modi Will Try To Be The Hindu Zionist..."; "We Will Have To Organize... Because Modi And Netanyahu Are Natural Allies; Both Are Equally Crazy"

The venue for the March 14, 2016 BDS convention was the Gandhi Peace Foundation, an NGO based in New Delhi. Speaking in Urdu, Professor Ajmal, who teaches at the Arabic and African Studies Centre of New Delhi-based Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU - a university dominated by Marxists and Islamists), said: "The Palestinian dispute is an international issue. It is also certain that the Palestinian issue cannot be resolved by the Arab world."[8]

Reminding the audience that former Indian prime ministers Jawaharlal Nehru, his daughter Indira Gandhi, and her son Rajiv Gandhi stood by the Palestinian issue, Ajmal said: "The attitude of the Modi government is very painful because the atrocities that were committed on Palestinians before the [Modi] government came to power were not allowed by him to be discussed in the parliament."[9] He said: "The prime minister is to visit [Israel] this very year; you [have to work] in a way, in some position that this visit does not take place."[10]

Prof. Kamal Mitra Chenoy of JNU, speaking at the August 22, 2015 BDS convention, had also argued to oppose Modi's visit to Israel, stating: "In India also, let us be very clear: if we are going to go after Modi on his trip to Israel where Modi will try to be the Hindu Zionist, there will be repression. We should be prepared for it. This country [India] does not belong to any one political party..."[11] Accusing Israel of a wide range of human rights violations, he also stated: "We will have to organize more and more because Modi and [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu are natural allies. Both are equally crazy..."[12]



Professor Kamal Mitra Chinoy of Jawaharlal Nehru University

Journalist Saurabh Kumar Shahi: "[We Must Convince Indians By Targeting Hewlett-Packard That If Data Is] Exchanged With Israel, Then It Is A Threat To Us"; "For Israel... It Is Their Reputation That Is A Big Thing; We Will Have To Target The Reputation First"

Another BDS convention was organized on March 6, 2016 in New Delhi. Speaking at the forum, journalist Saurabh Kumar Shahi, who was also introduced as a visiting faculty member at the Institute of International Relations at Warsaw University, began by saying that over the past 10-12 years, Israel had turned its focus on two countries - India and China - in order to derive future diplomatic benefits.[13]

He went on to accuse Israel of sowing religious hatred in India, stating: "For them, India is a fertile ground; the type of communal [i.e. religious] environment that is found among general population here... the kind of widespread anti-Muslim sentiment exists in India, they have created it in a very good manner, they are using it in a very good manner."[14] He added: "For Israel, more than money, it is their reputation that is a big thing. We will have to target the reputation first. Why to target the reputation first - because this is the thing that harms them the most."[15]

Outlining a BDS strategy for India, Shahi singled out two brands: U.S. computer firm Hewlett-Packard and British private security firm Group-4S. "If you want to convince the Indian audience, then you would have to first tell them why these things [Hewlett-Packard and Group-4S] are bad for the Palestinians, so are also bad for you."[16] He said that Indians need to be convinced that if security is given to private sector groups like Group-4S, it will lead to situations similar to that of Blackwater in Iraq.

"Similarly, if you target Hewlett-Packard, you will have to target how information control [works] because these are the companies that host data servers, these are the companies that do networking... whatever you do, that data is stored with them," Shahi stated.[17]

Citing the examples of government-to-government intelligence sharing on terror groups and Aadhaar card data (similar to the U.S. Social Security Card) potentially being hosted by Hewlett-Packard and shared with Israel, Shahi said the BDS movement must create a narrative to convince Indians that if such data is "exchanged with Israel, then it is a threat to us, is a threat to Indians."[18] Shahi argued in favor of creating "nuisance" for Israelis everywhere, stating: "Every other day in Israel, an individual lawyer rises in Spain and files a court case against an Israeli general. It has a nuisance value. And that nuisance value is good enough for us."[19]



Journalist Saurabh Kumar Shahi

Journalist Qamar Agha: "It Seems To Me That From Pakistan To Morocco, Most Of The Governments Are Failing And Will Collapse One After The Other; And In Most Countries, There Is A Situation Of Civil War..."

Speaking at the March 6, 2016 BDS convention in New Delhi, Qamar Agha, an Indian Muslim journalist and former faculty member at the Jamia Millia Islamia (JMI), accused Israel of "having adopted a policy of apartheid" against Palestinians which he said "we call 'the policy of racism,'" and "ethnic cleansing is underway of the people living there."[20] Due to authoritarianism and lack of democracy in the Arab world, Agha stated, "Very powerful Islamic movements [like the one led by ISIS] has emerged which has been continuously getting support. This was not a natural movement there, very few individuals were there in it. These Islamic movements have emerged due to support from one or another country, and many countries are using them."[21]

Agha continued: "In the Islamic countries, there is only one type of government: all are autocrats. Some autocrats are ruling in the name of Islam; some autocrats are/were secular. They [the West] used the Islamic militants to remove the secular autocrats... Whatever support Palestine used to get came from the secular Muslim countries, whether it be Algeria, Iraq, Syria... On the other hand, Islamic governments and organizations never had Palestine on their agenda... In India, whether it be the Jamaat-e-Islami, [Darul Uloom] Deoband... never organized a Palestine Day."[22]

Arguing that Israel has "no intention" of withdrawing from the occupied territories, Qamar Agha said Israel continues to build settlements in the West Bank and eyes other territories in the wider region such as the rest of the Golan Heights, and may re-occupy the Sinai Peninsula, which has and gas reserves, if Islamic militancy grows in the region.

He went on to state: "It seems to me that from Pakistan to Morocco, most of the governments are failing and will collapse one after the other; and in most countries, there is a situation of civil war... In these situations, it is better for Israel and they have been saying it before... 'Jordan is Palestine.' Their intention is to expel all Palestinians from there, dump them in Jordan and declare Jordan as Palestine. It is their plan; it is not new; it has been there for ages. And if [Donald] Trump becomes the president, it will not be difficult for them to fulfil it."

Anti-West Activist Feroze Mithiborwala: "Israel Is The International Brahmin, And The Brahminical Forces... In Our Country Have A Direct Alliance With Them"; "In Turkey's ISIS Camps... CIA And Mossad Jointly Train ISIS And Al-Qaeda"

The March 6, 2016 BDS convention also featured Feroze Mithiborwala from the Palestine Solidarity Committee, Mumbai. According to a 2011 interview with The Milli Gazette, Feroze Mithiborwala has been "involved in the Palestinian question since 1987 - even before the First Intifada."[23] In his address, Feroze Mithiborwala targeted Zionism, saying: "Zionism essentially is a supremist [supremacist] ideology. What does it mean in the Indian context? Zionism is essentially international Brahmanism. If you compare Talmud and Manusmriti [scripture mostly abandoned by Hindus], you will find the same things."[24] He added: "Israel is the international Brahmin, and the Brahminical forces... in our country have a direct alliance with them."[25]

Feroze Mithiborwala was also sharply critical of Political Islam and its treatment of non-Muslims and Shia Muslims as infidels. Arguing that "Israel has found support in this country [India] due to the question of Islamic terror," he questioned how Muslims believe in the Ghazwa-e-Hind (the Battle of India) prophecy, as per which a group of Islamic fighters will rise from India and join the forces of Jesus, who will be reborn, in the present-day greater Israel region to establish the Islamic rule. He went on to accuse Israel of supporting jihadi groups, stating: "Israel has ties with Al-Qaeda in Golan Heights; Israel has ties with Muslim Brotherhood in Golan Heights...; Israel has ties in Turkey's ISIS camps where CIA and Mossad jointly train ISIS and Al-Qaeda."[26]



Mumbai-based anti-West activist Feroze Mithiborwala

Mithiborwala added: "There is a 12-page United Nations document that shows and there is video evidence also which tells how Israel has aided Islamic militants in this entire Syrian crisis."[27] He argued that Israel has been defeated by Hamas in Gaza several times, adding for "Israel as a military power, the story ended in 2006" when it lost the fight to Hezbollah in Lebanon. He noted that Israel wants to settle Palestinians somewhere else.

Mithiborwala also stressed that each religion has an element of extremism, which it must confront, and that extremism must also be confronted across religions. He said he was shocked to find that even a secular country like Syria has a constitution that says only a Muslim can be the head of the state. He concluded by saying: "Israel has lost the project of regime change in Syria... the entire Saudi game-plan on sectarian lines has failed in this region, and Yemen will prove to be the Vietnam for Saudi Arabia... The extremist hegemonic form of Islam is now facing a major challenge from within the Arab and Muslim world... The American project to re-draw the map of the region has failed."

* Tufail Ahmad is Director of MEMRI's South Asia Studies Project. He is the author of Jihadist Threat to India: The Case for Islamic Reformation by an Indian Muslim.

Endnotes:
In a column, MEMRI South Asia Studies Project director Tufail Ahmad discusses the role of the Pakistani military's Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI) in creating and shielding jihadist terror groups. The column - titled in Hindi "ISI - A Terror Organization" - was published by Dainik Jagran, the largest Hindi-language newspaper in India, on April 27, 2016.

The following is the original English text, from which it was translated into Hindi:

"There is enough publicly available evidence to recognize this fact: the Pakistani military's Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, known as ISI, is a terrorist organization. While the peoples of India and Afghanistan are aware of the ISI's role in creating, nurturing, shielding and using terror groups, people in the U.S. and Europe are not fully aware of this aspect of ISI. Let's look at the following points.

"One, on April 14, it emerged from a declassified U.S. cable that the ISI had funded the 2009 suicide bombing on the CIA base in Khost, eastern Afghanistan. The 2010 cable noted: 'some funding for Haqqani attacks are still provided by the Pakistan Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, including $200,000 for the December 30, 2009, attack on the CIA facility [in Khost].' This was the deadliest attack on CIA in history. Haqqani Network is a key unit of the Afghan Taliban which are funded and aided by the ISI. On September 22, 2011, Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the U.S. Senate: 'Haqqani is veritable arm of Pakistan's ISI.'

"When the cable was declassified, Washington-based journalist Chidanand Rajghatta wrote: 'the sequence of cables detailing the ISI's role in organizing the attack suggests that the U.S. administration lied to the American public about Pakistan being a frontline ally in the War on Terror.'

"Two, in 2007 U.S. military interrogators in Guantanamo Bay classified the ISI as a terrorist group in secret papers. On April 25, 2011, the WikiLeaks revealed those secret papers as per which the U.S. officials had designated the ISI as one of the 32 'militant forces or organizations' with which Al-Qaeda and the Taliban have 'an established working, supportive, or beneficiary relationship for the achievement of common goals.' The ISI was ranked alongside Hamas, Jaish-e-Muhammad and Hezbollah, among others. WikiLeaks also reported that there were plans to explode a nuclear bomb in Europe if Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was caught.

"Three, Adnan Rasheed, a leading Taliban commander, is a former employee of Pakistan Air Force (PAF). In an interview with jihadi magazine Azan in 2013, Rasheed revealed that an institution called Idarat-ul-Pakistan was established within the PAF to coordinate jihadi activities across the three branches of the Pakistani military: navy, army and air force. Rasheed also noted that he was sent for training at a camp of Jaish-e-Muhammad led by Maulana Masood Azhar. At the training camp, Adnan Rasheed realized that Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM) was 'working under the ISI.' He told his boss in the Idarat-ul-Pakistan: 'There is no difference between us and Jaish-e-Muhammad. We are soldiers in uniform and they are soldiers without uniform.' Adnan Rasheed's interview clearly established that Jaish-e-Muhammad is a branch of ISI.

"Four, in mid-2014 a video interview emerged of Shamsh Kashmiri, who was removed from his post as the deputy emir of Jaish-e-Muhammad. Kashmiri had developed differences with the JeM chief Maulana Masood Azar after he refused to order jihad against the Pakistani military following the 2007 army operation in Red Mosque of Islamabad. In the interview, Kashmiri noted: 'We used to think that Jaish-e-Muhammad, Lashkar-e-Taiba, Harkatul Mujahideen, Hizbul Mujahideen, Al-Barq Mujahideen... are purely sincere organizations for jihad... but the Red Mosque operation proved' that 'Our jihad is being done under obedience to ISI.' Even today, Jaish-e-Muhammad is allowed freedom to spread jihadi teachings and publish Haftroza Al-Qalam, a weekly newspaper.

"Shamsh Kashmiri also revealed that when General Pervez Musharraf banned jihadi groups under international pressure, the then ISI chief Lt.-Gen. Pervez Kayani 'instantly decided to double' the monthly salaries to the jihadi groups. As per Kashmiri, JeM was getting 45 lakh [4.5 million] rupees, Lashkar-e-Taiba was given 90 [9 million] lakhs and Hizbul Mujahideen was getting one crore [10 million] rupees. These amounts were raised by Kayani. Kashmiri also noted: "The money that the ISI gives is called operation money... So far as I remember 90 lakhs [9 million] monthly was fixed for Jaish-e-Muhammad." He added: "There is the training center of Jaish-e-Muhammad in Balakot. About 20 to 25 soldiers (of Pakistan Army) are there for their security' and 'It is the duty of one person from every organization to meet ISI people in [the towns of] Muzaffarabad, Kotli and Mansehra on a daily basis.'

"Five, Jaish-e-Muhammad, the ISI and Al-Qaeda have deep relationships between them. Adam Yahiye Gadahn, known as Al-Qaeda's American spokesman, was killed in Waziristan in January 2015. In a detailed interview published posthumously by Resurgence magazine of Al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS), Adam Gadahn noted that when he moved from California to Pakistan, he first stayed at the Kuwait Hostel of the International Islamic University, Islamabad. 'Two Pakistani brothers (came) to pick me up from the hostel. They told me they were from the group headed by Maulana Masood Azhar, who was still in an Indian prison.' His statement reveals that Jaish-e-Muhammad is a feeder organization for Al-Qaeda.

"Six, although Al-Qaeda has been led by Arab terrorists, it is fundamentally a Pakistani organization from day one. It was established on the watch of the ISI in Peshawar in 1988 - at a time the ISI had emerged victorious in Afghanistan. It is from Pakistan that Al-Qaeda spread to the Middle East. Al-Qaeda is practically a branch of the ISI, which views itself as the ideological guardian of the Islamic state of Pakistan: both Al-Qaeda and the ISI share the same ideological objective - establishment of the Islamic Caliphate, with the only difference being that ISI wants Pakistan to be the head of such an international caliphate. It was the ISI that protected Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, as it protected Taliban leader Mullah Omar and continues to protect Maulana Masood Azhar and current Al-Qaeda leader Ayman Al-Zawahiri.

"Currently, the ISI is using the Taliban to launch deadly attacks in Afghanistan in full knowledge of the world powers. On April 19, the Taliban carried out a suicide bombing near the headquarters of an elite Afghan military unit in Kabul, killing 64 people and wounding 300 others. Aided by CIA and Saudi money, the ISI was in full control of jihadi groups in Afghanistan in the 1980s. It remains in full control of jihadi groups in Afghanistan in 2016."
On April 28, 2016, the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter published an interview with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, in which Lavrov stated that if Sweden joins NATO, Russia will take "the necessary defense measures on its northern borders."[1] The following day, Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven termed Lavrov's comments "really unnecessary and uncalled for," adding, "We in Sweden make our own decisions about our defense and security policy. We demand respect for that, in the same way that we respect other countries' decisions about their security and defense policies."[2]

The following are excerpts from the Dagens Nyheter interview with Lavrov, as published in English on Russian Foreign Ministry website:[3]

"When We Hear... That Russia Has Been Carrying Out Dangerous Maneuvers Near NATO Borders... I Think That This Is... [An]Attempt To Turn The Issue On Its Head;[It Is] NATO [That] Is Getting Closer And Closer To Russia's Borders"

Q: "Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom recently said that relations between Sweden and Russia were 'chillier than ever.' What can be done to ease tensions and improve bilateral relations?"

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov: "I believe both sides should adhere to their fundamental national interests. We have never abandoned this position, and we have always viewed Sweden as a good neighbor and a promising partner in various areas... [However,] Stockholm froze all contacts with us and joined the EU sanctions after Brussels, for some reason, took offense at our reaction to the armed coup in Kiev, where radical nationalists came to power and openly threatened the lives of Russians and Russian speakers in Ukraine, primarily those in Crimea... At that time, Stockholm did more than join the sanctions against Russia: it suspended contacts between our parliaments and curtailed ties between our ministries and agencies even on current issues. As a result, our trade plummeted by 45 percent, if I'm not mistaken, even though it is still impressive. It is clear, however, that it is way below our bilateral potential.



Russian FM Sergei Lavrov (Source: Mid.ru, April 28, 2016)

"Our position is clear: We never take offense in the area of foreign policy, and we take in stride the reasons provided by our Swedish partners in explaining their decisions. If Ms. Wallstrom believes that our relations are chillier than ever, why not close the window to shut off the source of the cold-air Russophobia blowing in?"

Q: "There has been much talk in recent years about Russia's activities in the Baltics. Could you comment on the alleged presence of a Russian submarine in Swedish territorial waters?"

A: "I cannot recall any reports from Sweden confirming the presence of a Russian submarine in your territorial waters. Usually a discovery of a Russian submarine would make newspaper headlines. But when several weeks later it turns out that it had nothing to do with Russia and wasn't even a submarine, this revelation doesn't make it into the headlines.



The Baltic region

"Overall, with respect to military activities in Europe, primarily in the context of Russia-NATO relations and Sweden's neutrality, Russia is not interested in contributing to any kind of military tension or confrontation. We have had long-standing agreements with the Alliance [i.e. NATO], as well as bilateral military projects with our northern neighbors, including Sweden. In these efforts, we have always been guided by the belief in the importance of confidence building measures and transparency...

"When we hear these days that Russia has been carrying out dangerous maneuvers near NATO borders, I think that this is merely a mean-spirited attempt to turn the issue on its head. In its expansion efforts, NATO is getting closer and closer to Russia's borders. The Alliance has already violated the 1997 NATO-Russia Founding Act, which stipulates clearly that there should be no permanent stationing of substantial combat forces in new NATO member states. However, despite these obligations, NATO military infrastructure is inching closer and closer to Russia's borders. But when Russia takes action to ensure its security, we are told that Russia is engaging in dangerous maneuvers near NATO borders. In fact, NATO borders are getting closer to Russia, not the opposite.

"We have a saying in Russia: If you want to understand what the people surrounding you want from you, you have to start by understanding why they have surrounded you. This is what we are trying to do. The latest incident in the Baltic Sea was related to a U.S. destroyer armed with dozens of cruise missiles, navigating just a few dozen kilometers from the Russian military base in Baltiysk, which is Russian territory."

"The Point... Is Not Whether We Want To Recognize NATO As An Active Organization - Its Existence Is A Reality - But We Still Don't Like What It Is Doing"

Q: "Was this the reason for the fly-by near the destroyer by Russian fighter jets?" [4]

A: "The Russian aircraft were on a legitimate training flight in this area, which is high seas airspace. They saw a heavily armed U.S. destroyer approaching a Russian military base and decided to take a closer look. As soon as they saw who it was, with the fly-by occurring at a safe distance, they turned back and continued their flight.

"In 1972, we signed an agreement with the United States on the Prevention of Incidents On and Over the High Seas.[5] Later, we proposed the signing of an additional protocol to this agreement, but the U.S. refused to do so. On April 20, Brussels hosted a Russia-NATO Council meeting. Russia's Permanent Representative to NATO, Alexander Grushko, raised this issue during the meeting.[6] It was an uneasy moment for the American side, because they were not even aware of it.

"The point at issue is not whether we want to recognize NATO as an active organization. Its existence is a reality. But we still don't like what it is doing. We believe that its attempt to reaffirm the reason for its existence during its operations in Afghanistan has made Afghanistan a much more dangerous country than it was before the Alliance dispatched its troops there. NATO is now planning a new mission. We asked our colleagues during a recent Russia-NATO Council meeting about the significance of its new mission and its achievements during the previous mission, because it was conducted in close proximity to our borders and directly concerned the interests of our neighbors in Central Asia, who are our allies. The growing threat in Afghanistan, including the appearance of thousands of ISIS terrorists there, and especially in the north of the country, directly affects our fundamental interests.

"As I said, NATO is a reality, and we are a willing participant for any dialogue with the Alliance. We once had a comprehensive and multifaceted action plan on many issues, including our current priority - counterterrorism. Dozens of drills and joint command post exercises on land, sea, and in the air were planned to enhance the efficiency of the joint fight against terrorism and extremism. All of this stopped for purely ideological reasons, including the training of security personnel for Afghanistan and the delivery of combat helicopters, which Afghanistan wanted to be Russian-made.

"Here are two facts about the response we had to make. First, the Russia-NATO Founding Act of 1997 stipulates that the Russia-NATO Council will respect the principle of the indivisibility of security and neither party will strengthen its security at the expense of other parties' security.[7] In other words, the format of Russia-NATO cooperation sealed the principle that had been declared at the top level in the OSCE, that is, the principle of equal and indivisible security. And the second fact, which I have mentioned, is that under the Founding Act NATO must not station additional combat forces on a permanent basis in new member states.

"Regarding indivisible security, when the Americans started deploying elements of their global ballistic missile defense system in Europe, we told them that this affected our security and hence we would like to evoke the principle that was declared by the Russia-NATO Council. They assured us that the BMD deployment was not directed against Russia. We reminded them of the famous saying that 'in military affairs, you have to judge not intentions but potential,' and showed them, with maps and facts, that the BMD deployment plans would affect our security.

"When the Americans persisted, we suggested that if they do not regard the political principle of indivisible security as binding, then we should draft a treaty so that all parties know which procedures should be used if a party believes that its security was infringed [upon] or damaged. They categorically refused to discuss this possibility. Do you know what they said? They said that although the Russia-NATO Council made a political declaration on the indivisibility of security they would provide legal safeguards of indivisible security only to the NATO member states. We asked how this could be if the principle was declared for the entire Euro-Atlantic region in the OSCE framework. They had no answer to this question.

"Second, regarding the provision prohibiting the additional permanent stationing of substantial combat forces in new member states, we raised the issue of the creation of new NATO bases, including BMD bases in Poland and the Czech Republic, and also similar plans for Romania. We asked our NATO colleagues how this related to their commitment not to station substantial combat forces in new member states. They replied that these are not substantial combat forces and that they will not be stationed permanently but on a rotation basis. Since we did not agree, we proposed signing an agreement with NATO to define the term 'substantial combat forces,' [down] to the last tank, artillery gun, and battalion. They refused even to discuss the idea, behavior which makes us think that, unfortunately, NATO planned to have the freedom to advance in close proximity to our borders long before the events in Ukraine.

"I believe that no reasonable general or politician would expect Russia to applaud these moves. We are responding to this adequately and proportionately. We have to do this to maintain readiness for any developments, because after NATO failed to find an explanation for its continued existence in the Afghan campaign, the Russophobic minority in NATO is trying to rally the member states on a purely anti-Russian basis and by presenting Russia as a present danger to all and sundry."

"There Is A Military Political Bloc Across The Border, Which Regards Russia As A Threat And Intends To Deter It"

Q: "Is Moscow concerned about Sweden's friendly attitude toward NATO in this context? What will be Russia's response if Sweden decides to join NATO?"

A: "It is one thing when one's northern neighbors are neutral states, and it is something else entirely when they are NATO members, which, let me repeat, we perceive as a given [i.e. NATO], but which has recently unambiguously declared deterrence of Russia as its objective, and called Russia a 'major threat.' Therefore, one can join different NATOs. While there was cooperation, trust, and no attempts to refer to each other as a 'threat' that was another sort of NATO. Obviously, things are different now, although I'd say that it is now going through 'withdrawal symptoms': trying to look respectable, but not managing to do so.

"As for Sweden, we confirm that any state has the right to decide independently on the forms it will choose to ensure its security, based on its national interests. It would probably be better to ask the people. [In its efforts to join NATO,] Montenegro has decided not to ask the people [i.e. not to hold a referendum in the country]. By the way, this is an example. What can Montenegro contribute to NATO's security? The answer to this question does not exist. Many sound political analysts ask directly: Is there an acute need for this? The answer is very simple, although they try to avoid it and take refuge behind generalizations that security and democracy are expanding to cover as much geopolitical space as possible and surround the countries that somehow disagree with NATO, such as, for example, Russia and Serbia.

"If Sweden decides to join NATO, we won't think that it intends to attack Russia. I can say this for certain. But, since the Swedish military infrastructure in this situation will report to NATO headquarters, we will have to take the necessary defense measures on our northern borders, based on the fact that there is a military political bloc across the border which regards Russia as a threat and intends to deter it."

Q: "What specific measures would Russia take?"

A: "This isn't my job, this is the job of our military departments: the Ministry of Defense and the General Staff of the Armed Forces. When they see potential on the other side of Russia's borders, either right at the border or a little further away, they know what that potential is and what we can expect, if NATO decides there is a need for 'combat' deterrence."

"The Soviet Union Behaved Honorably; No One Attempted To Keep The Baltic Republics By Force"

Q:"Earlier, Moscow expressed concern about the status of the ethnic Russian minority in the Baltic countries. How has the situation changed? Does Russia realize that the Baltic countries are afraid of their eastern neighbor?"

A:"Regarding their 'fear of their big neighbor,' when the Soviet Union was on the verge of disintegration, they held their referendums and were allowed to go in peace. Nobody threatened them... The Soviet Union behaved honorably. No one attempted to keep the Baltic republics by force although opinions on the issue were divided, but I will not go into this now. They left nicely, without the rupturing of our relations. Nobody saw or heard any gratitude for this. What's more, they immediately started saying that they had been 'violated, used, and exploited' by the Soviet Union. To date, some sick people keep submitting a bill to us for 185 billion euros' worth of compensation, I don't know for what. For the industry that we created there and for the modernization of their economies, in which we invested far more in per capita terms than we did in the [Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Russia] RSFSR, [i.e. Soviet Russia] I think that these people are deranged beyond help.

"When they became free, as they think, and independent, proclaiming all the necessary decisions regarding their sovereignty, to reiterate, with no attempts from Moscow to pull them back in, let alone with the use of force, they scrambled to join NATO. In the 1990s, our relations with NATO were developing quite constructively. We asked our NATO colleagues why they wanted to admit the Baltic States. We were told that they (the Baltic countries) had retained all kinds of phobias ever since the Soviet days and World War I, when all of this began.

"NATO acknowledged that present-day Russia does not pose any threat to them (the Baltic countries) but purportedly this was how they saw the situation: They will be admitted to NATO and they will calm down; everything will be peaceful and constructive and will only help to promote good relations. They were admitted to NATO, but our neighbors, especially in Lithuania, did not calm down. What's more, at present they are the most aggressive Russophobic core, pushing NATO, by using the consensus principle, to pursue a firm anti-Russia course..."

Endnotes:
On February 24, 2016, the Legislative Assembly of Pakistan's Punjab province passed the Protection of Women Against Violence Bill 2015, which was aimed at tackling domestic violence in Punjab, where the government is run by Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif, the brother of Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. On February 29, Punjab Governor Malik Rafiq Rajwana signed the bill into law.

The new law became controversial for Islamic clerics, and was hotly debated on Pakistani television. Some Islamic clerics saw the law as an attempt to turn Pakistan into a liberal state and away from Islamic shari'a, and as a Western measure that would undermine Eastern value systems and damage the Pakistani family unit.

The clerics' concerns seem to center on a provision in the bill that determines that if a woman calls the police in a case of domestic violence, the husband is required to stay away from home for 48 hours. This provision was debated on February 25 on the leading channel Dunya News' On the Front program. On the Front is hosted by journalist Kamran Shahid. Among the participants were: Uzma Bukhari, a member of the Punjab Legislative Assembly, who was the lead campaigner for the law; Fauzia Viqar, chair of the Punjab Commission for Women; Fareed Ahmad Pracha, deputy secretary-general of Jamaat-e-Islami Pakistan; and Mufti Nayeem, a renowned Pakistani Islamic scholar. During the discussion, Mufti Nayeem comments to and about the two women on the panel devolved into misogynistic insults.



From top right clockwise: Uzma Bukhari, Mufti Nayeem, Fauzia Viqar, Fareed Ahmad Paracha and Kamran Shahid

Following are excerpts from the program's transcript:

Punjab Legislative Assembly Member Uzma Bukhari: "There Are Men Who Lock Up Their Wives At Home Before They Go Out"

Program host Kamran Shahid: "Questions... are emerging about this bill regarding whether it is a step towards making Pakistan into a liberal Islamic state or a step towards a secular state... Uzma Bukhari, what is new in this bill that was not previously included in the Pakistani Constitution?"

Ms. Bukhari: "The first important point is that domestic violence was [previously] not considered an offense. If a woman was tortured, if she complained, she was told, 'madam, go home. This is a domestic matter.'"

Kamran Shahid: "You have also said that psychological violence can also not be allowed against woman."

Uzma Bukhari: "It also means, Kamran, that there are men who lock up wives at home before they go out. This is also a psychological violence."

Mufti Nayeem: "In Our Culture, The Bill... Is Actually A Formula Of [Prime Minister] Nawaz Sharif - Who Has Said 'I Want To Make Pakistan Liberal'"

Kamran Shahid: "Mufti Nayeem, in your opinion, is this bill a step in the right direction for women's rights according to the shari'a? The Prophet [Muhammad] and the Koran have spoken a lot about women's rights. An entire chapter [of the Koran] was revealed, the Chapter of Nisa, for women."

Mufti Nayeem: "First of all, Allah has said about women's rights in the Koran... [Reads Koranic verse in Arabic]: Treat women well. The Prophet said, 'the best person among you is the one who is good with your family members and I, too, am good with my family members.' In his speech at Hajjatul Wida, he said, I tell you not to mistreat women... In our culture, the bill that was brought yesterday [February 24] is actually a formula of [Prime Minister] Nawaz Sharif, who has said, 'I want to make Pakistan liberal'... [It was] not written by him; it is a copy [of such laws] in America and Europe..."

Kamran Shahid: "What is distasteful for the shari'a in this?"

Mufti Nayeem: "The shari'a's distaste is that if a man engages in violence, then the shari'a has fixed punishments for it. There is even a punishment in our Constitution. And I should also say that under the [new] law, a man will be expelled [from the home for 48 hours]. In the shari'a family system that we have, we have the institution of the family, which has been destroyed in Europe and America. There, nothing is known - not the place of the father, of the son, or of the wife. If [husbands] are removed [from the home] in this way, then the family system we have, the cultural system we have, will be destroyed. The Eastern way of life is different...

"And the other point is, if there is violence against women, what it its rate? What do you think? I think it is not more than half a percent or one percent. And even if it is there, the shari'a has fixed laws for it, and the Constitution too..."



Uzma Bukhari

Host Kamran Shahid: A Koranic Verse From Chapter Nisa Mentions Beating Wives

Kamran Shahid: "Sir, tell me one thing quickly. I have a translation [of a Koranic verse] from Chapter Nisa, that mentions pious wives who follow their husband's orders and [who] ... guard honor and property... and... women... [who] engage in negative talk and defiance. [With regard to the second, a husband must] first make them understand [their misdeeds] by words, [then must] abandon them [in bed], and, if they do not desist, then, if I am reading the correct translation... beat them a little?"

Mufti Nayeem: "Yes, beating a little does not mean that you pick up a rod and beat them, it's for a bit of warning. Even in that, the shari'a has imposed restrictions. One should not mistranslate that. See, the shari'a wants that if there is a conflict between wife and husband, there can be a resolution in a short time. If a man leaves home once [as required under the new law to stay away for 48 hours on the wife's complaint], it can never happen, in our culture, that he would agree to a resolution."

Kamran Shahid: "Uzma, the Nawaz Sharif formula to make liberal Pakistan - [does] it involve taking [aid] from America, and [taking] a photocopy of [of laws concerning women from America]?"

Uzma Bukhari: "...First, in the cultural system we are talking of, Mufti [Nayeem], violence is not just about wives. Violence is carried out against mothers, against daughters, and against sisters in this culture. You are giving us references from the Hadith and the Koran, but [what about] the people who engage in [this violence]?...

"Where did the Mufti get these facts and figures about a one percent rate [of domestic violence], when a woman's nose is chopped off swiftly, [her husband] breaks her leg and throws her into bed... And [after all,] we are talking about 48 hours."

[...]

Mufti Nayeem: "Lies, I Will Not Tolerate A Conversation Of Lies"; Uzma Bukhari: "Whenever The Issue Of Women Comes Up, Religion Is Introduced"

Uzma Bukhari: "I am talking of Punjab [province where] reported cases... are more than 40 percent."

[...]

Mufti Nayeem: "You are lying, there is no 40 percent [rate of domestic violence]."

Uzma Bukhari: "Don't talk to me like this."

Mufti Nayeem: "Lies, I will not tolerate a conversation of lies."

Uzma Bukhari: "Whenever the issue of women comes up, religion is introduced..."

Kamran Shahid: "What [about]... keeping men away from the home?"

Uzma Bukhari: "Kamran, this is what I am saying. When there is a conflict, the elders... say, keep separate from each other, once the anger subsides, sit down and talk... "

Kamran Shahid: "Mufti sahab, say quickly what you want to say."

Mufti Nayeem: "Does keeping them separate mean sending [the husband] to the police station?"

Uzma Bukhari: "Oh brother, who is sending [husbands] to the police station?... He can go somewhere else, but the woman will stay within her home."

Mufti Nayeem: "That's the point, the cops will visit the woman at home."

Uzma Bukhari: "It's the woman who makes it a home, around the clock."

[...]



Fauzia Viqar, Punjab Commission for Women

Fauzia Viqar: "According To One Survey, 60-70 Percent Of Women In Pakistan Have Been Victims Of Some Form Of Domestic Violence"

Kamran Shahid: "Fauzia Viqar, tell me whether the violence is more than half-a-percent or one percent."

Fauzia Viqar: "According to one survey, 60-70 percent of women in Pakistan have been victims of some form of domestic violence... [It] is a misconception that economic independence stops domestic violence; cultural norms come into it and [even] women who are economically independent are not safe from domestic violence."

Kamran Shahid: "[Fareed] Pracha, you oppose this law..."

Fareed Pracha: "I ask my sisters [fellow women panelists] to just listen: This is a good law in many ways; it is concerns not just domestic violence.. [It covers] violence against women, any type of violence, violence [against women] in the streets, working women whom many officials sexually abuse. There was police report that officers have developed a system of abuse against women on police duty."

Fareed Pracha: "After this law comes into force, after phoning a helpline [for women], after wearing a [GPS] tracking ring, will this violence come down? Will the family life be safe? At the UN General Assembly in 1973, such guidelines were presented... The BBC reported recently that in Britain, where there are all these laws for women... but no morality and no humanity... 81 percent of women are beaten, one every six seconds. This is a BBC report, a Guardian report..."

Mufti Nayeem: "She Won't Be Silent"; Uzma Bukhari: He "Can't Even Listen To Us"

Kamran Shahid: "Family life will be destroyed by it, divorces will not stop, domestic violence will not decrease."

Uzma Bukhari: "An impression is being created..."

Mufti Nayeem: "If you are going to allow only her to speak, why have you made me sit here?

Kamran Shahid: "Sir, I am getting to you."

Uzma Bukhari: "This is the point, [he] can't even listen us."

Kamran Shahid: "Mufti, one minute, I am getting to you, I want to let you answer all in one go."

Mufti Nayeem: "Save your life from her... she won't be silent."

Uzma Bukhari: "Save your life from the women of your home - your psychology is showing."

Mufti Nayeem: "Our women [in our house] are not like that."

Uzma Bukhari: "Thanks to Allah, men like you are few among us... [Anyway,] our first point is reconciliation, but if a woman is being beaten again and again, there is no way out for her, there is no shelter, the State wants to come forward for her. But it is not at all the case that we want to break up the family. [Fareed] Pracha, tell me, is it just the woman's responsibility to keep the family intact, not the responsibility of both the man and the woman...?"

Mufti Nayeem: "Islam Did Not Give Women The Right To Divorce - It Left It To The Man"

Mufti Nayeem: "Why does Islam not allow women to divorce? Why did it give to the man? The woman lacks patience."

Uzma Bukhari: "There is khula [women's right to seek a divorce in Islam]..."

Mufti Nayeem: "Islam did not give women the right to divorce - it left it to the man, because the man has patience, the woman lacks patience..."

Kamran Shahid: "Fauzia [Viqar,] with regards to khula, you know the Council of Islamic Ideology [a constitutional body in Pakistan] has said that the courts do not have power to divorce, [only] the husband has the Allah-given right to divorce. With regard to khula, the woman can file for khula but if the man doesn't turn up, the court decides after three months that it is a valid divorce. This too has been challenged by the Council of Islamic Ideology."

Fauzia Viqar: "Three hundred women died in 'honor' killings last year - can we ignore that...? Your second second point, about khula - yes, the right to talaq [divorce] is the man's, but the woman has the right to khula [i.e. to seek a divorce]. Why do we forget the Hadith in which the Prophet said that if a person does not like their spouse's face, they are entitled to quit the marriage?... The third point... So far, our view is that our culture is based on Islamic tenets because this [new] law was not in existence, and because of it things look good. Why are we forgetting that the government helpline receives dozens of calls from women who are being beaten?"



Mufti Nayeem, Islamic scholar

Mufti Nayeem: "You Remember One Woman Being Beaten... [But] Hundreds Of Thousands [Of Women Are Taken By Men] To Shop"; Fauzia Viqar: "He Can Beat Her Because He Takes Her Shopping?"

Fauzia Viqar: "Let me give an example from two months ago; A girl, barely 19, suffered brain damage when her husband beat her brutally when she objected to his second marriage, now she is in a vegetative state with her parents. At that time, not even our ulema [Islamic scholars] spoke out. And 200 children were abused [in Pakistan's Kasur district], but no one came."

Mufti Nayeem: "[You] remember one girl, and men take hundreds of thousands of girls to shop - you can't remember that."

Fauzia Viqar: "Why didn't you come out in streets when 200 children were abused?"

Mufti Nayeem, repeating himself: "[You] remember one girl, and men take hundreds of thousands of girls to shop - you can't remember that."

Fauzia Viqar: "When women are gang-raped, why don't you take to the streets [to protest]?"

Mufti Nayeem: "[Men spend] hundreds of thousands of rupees shopping, you can't remember that - but you remember one incident of a girl [beaten by her husband]."

Fauzia Viqar: "It's not a joking matter. Mufti, God forbid, if inside your house tomorrow your daughter suffers abuse and is brain damaged, and she goes to the police..."

Kamran Shahid: "It shouldn't happen in anyone's home."

Fauzia Viqar: "It should not happen in anyone's home. [But] God forbid it should happen in my home and I go to the police and they say, 'We won't take action.' Think about it. Just because he takes her shopping does that mean he can't beat her?"



Fareed Ahmad Paracha, Jamaat-e-Islami Pakistan

Mufti Nayeem: "Ignorant, Lying Woman!" Uzma Bukhari: "You Yourself Are The Biggest Liar, You Know Nothing But Still You Have Come Here To Teach Us Islam"

Uzma Bukhari: "Any woman who is a victim of abuse in this country, we stand by her, whether someone likes it or not. It will no longer happen that a woman is beaten unconscious, her nose is cut off, her legs are cut off, her hands are chopped off, and then you say we have a good culture, sorry."

Mufti Nayeem: "Jahil [ignoramus]!"

Uzma Bukhari: "There is limit to bad behavior; I have been respectful towards him because he is elderly."

Mufti Nayeem: "Ignorant, lying woman!"

Uzma Bukhari: "You yourself are the biggest liar, you know nothing but still you have come here to teach us Islam..."

Mufti Nayeem: "Jahil [ignoramus]! Jahil woman brought onto the media [i.e. this program]!"

Uzma Bukhari: "[Why did you] invite this jahil man? We have so many educated Islamic scholars."

Kamran Shahid: "Do not call each other jahil. "Mufti Nayeem, the law has been passed, andand the Pakistani parliament passed a similar bill, and so will other provinces. Now what is your objection - if we only talk about the law and do not attack other people?"

Mufti Nayeem: "Allah willing, this bill will not be passed; our culture, our society, our religion do not permit it. Tomorrow a Day of Condemnation against this bill will be held across all of Pakistan, against the government of Nawaz Sharif, against the government of Punjab, [to demand that] Western culture is not allowed inside our country."

Fauzia Viqar: "Mufti, when a woman was beaten in the head with a rock in front of the High Court, why didn't you then take to the streets? Two hundred children were abused in front of you, why didn't you come out?"
In a recent column, titled "Textbooks of Hate," Pakistani columnist Zubeida Mustafa lamented the influence of religion in textbooks used in Pakistan's Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, and the failure of the successive provincial governments, both secular and religious, to secularize the syllabi taught in the province.

In October 2013, the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) published a comprehensive study of textbooks used in government-run schools - not madrassas - in the Pakistani provinces of Punjab, Sindh, Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.[1] The study showed in great detail how textbooks published by governments in all the provinces continue to teach young pupils jihad and martyrdom as well as hatred of other religious groups, such as Hindus and Christians.

Given below are excerpts from Zubeida Mustafa's column, which sheds fresh light on this issue in the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (PK), where Imran Khan's Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party is in power in a coalition government that includes Jamaat-e-Islami Pakistan.[2]

Textbooks In Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province "Glorify War, 'Otherize' Non-Muslims, Take A Unidimensional View Of Reality, Distort History, And Stereotype Women"

"Paulo Freire, the Brazilian educator and author of Pedagogy of the Oppressed, said that education should aim at teaching students to think critically. They should work with the teacher in creating knowledge. Freire believed that students should do a lot of 'problem-posing' and then seek answers through their own experience and thought processes to discover the route to change.

"Can we hope to achieve this change through the kind of textbooks used in our public-sector schools? For decades, critics have mourned the dismal state of textbooks in Pakistan. But no one has batted an eyelid. Now we have yet another report on textbooks. The analyst is Tahira Abdullah, whose is an invincible voice that cannot be silenced. She is the most fearless and untiring of activists in Pakistan, who has left no injustice, oppression or social evil unaddressed. She took up the gauntlet on behalf of the students of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa [KP]. KP has yet to adopt a right-to-education law.

"In a comprehensive and scathing survey of textbooks published by the KP Textbook Board, Tahira sums up all that is wrong with them. In Textbooks of Hate or Peace? she says that the books glorify war, 'otherize' non-Muslims, take a unidimensional view of reality, distort history, and stereotype women. Textbooks for English, Urdu, Pakistan Studies, social studies, Islamiat [Islamic studies], general knowledge, geography, and history published under three different governments that have ruled KP since 2002 have been analyzed. What emerges clearly is that any subject can be used as an agent for pushing a narrow religious agenda. This in turn can be exploited for the attainment of nefarious political goals by those in office.

"The conclusion? The [the previous provincial governments led by Muttahida Majlis Amal] MMA, the ANP [Awami National Party], and now the PTI ([Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf], in coalition with the Jamaat-i-Islami) have wreaked havoc on the minds of KP's children. Tahira points out that the different ideological complexion of these three rulers has made little difference. For instance, the ANP claims to be secular in orientation. Yet it was in no hurry to change the pattern of education in the province when it was elected. It took the ANP until 2011, three years after assuming office, to draw up a relatively progressive education sector plan. But there was no time to implement it, as in 2013 it was [already] out of office.

"Meanwhile, weak attempts to liberalize the curricula proved futile. Even the peace slogan the ANP educators inserted on the flip side of the front and back covers of textbooks has been removed by the PTI, which has surrendered totally to its junior coalition partner, the JI [Jamaat-e-Islami]. The fact is that there is a nexus between the militant, extremist and jihadist elements in the education sector, not just in KP but to an extent all over Pakistan. These 'pro-ideology' [i.e. Islamic Ideology of Pakistan] elements understand that only by controlling the minds of the youth is it possible to pre-empt change and resist reforms. If they cannot control curricula-making, they use threats of violence to influence the process. We saw it happen in Sindh, where [the noted educationist] Bernadette Dean had to leave the country because her attempt to secularize textbooks was disapproved by such elements."

There Is A "Need To Incorporate The Concepts Of Critical Thinking, Spirit Of Inquiry, Pluralism, Tolerance For The 'Other' [Such As Christians, Hindus, Ahmadis, Shi'ites], Gender Equality, And Peace Education In Pedagogy Itself"

"KP's indifference towards education is appalling. The assembly there has yet to adopt a right-to-education law, that is needed under the newly introduced Article 25-A of the Constitution. It is the only province not to have done it. The first priority, as very rightly pointed out by Tahira Abdullah, should be to change the wider framework that is the national curriculum and the education policy. The ITA, an NGO involved in the education sector, tells us the Inter-Provincial Education Ministers Conference has been working on this agenda since August 2015 and that the policy was to be announced in January 2016. Is this a case of waiting for Godot?

"Tahira's recommendation is for the government of Pakistan to establish a reforms committee on curricula and textbooks. This would formalize the process of change. The fact is that howsoever progressive textbooks may be, education will not take a new direction until pedagogy is also changed. Tahira speaks of the need to incorporate the concepts of critical thinking, spirit of enquiry, pluralism, tolerance for the 'other' [such as Christians, Hindus, Ahmadis, Shi'ites], gender equality, and peace education in pedagogy itself.

"One may add that textbooks serve only as tools. The person who uses the tool, that is the teacher, does the real mischief. It is important to limit the potential of exploiting religion by removing religious content from all textbooks. Islamiat books should be the only exception.

"The Peace and Development Foundation has done well to sponsor this report on textbooks in KP, which is vulnerable to extremist religious influences. Some have pointed out that mullah [clerics'] networks in the tribal areas were used by the colonial power in its Great Game against Russia, and that Deoband [madrassa of British India] also had clandestine links with some religious elements to destabilize the colonial rulers. Today, we are suffering its consequences."

Endnotes:
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: Turkestan Islamic Party (TIP) Magazine Features Al-Qaeda Figures Urging Support For Group's Efforts Against China, Praising Its Role In Syria

On April 29, 2016, the Uyghur jihadi group Turkestan Islamic Party (TIP), which is affiliated with Al-Qaeda and is currently fighting alongside Al-Qaeda's Syrian branch Jabhat Al-Nusra (JN), released the 19th issue of its magazine Turkestan Al-Islamiyyah [Islamic Turkestan]. The magazine, published by TIP's media company Sawt Al-Islam was distributed via the group's blog and Telegram channel.

EXCLUSIVE: American ISIS Media Operative And Husband Killed In Syria Airstrike

On April 30, 2016, news of the deaths of American ISIS members Umm Issa Al-Amrikiah and Abu Issa Al-Amriki was circulated by pro-ISIS accounts on various social media platforms such as Telegram, Facebook, and Twitter. According to one post on Telegram, the couple were killed in late April in an airstrike that hit their house. Umm Issa Al-Amrikiah was a popular online operative, whose Telegram channel, created January 15, 2016, has 1,283 members. Al- Amrikiah occasionally shared photos from her experiences in Syria. In one post, she uploaded a photo of her purported suicide belt, and stated that she hoped she would be granted the opportunity to use it, to kill infidels.

EXCLUSIVE: Photo Of American ISIS Fighter In Libya Surfaces In Fellow Fighter's Facebook Post

A Western Islamic State (ISIS) fighter, who is currently fighting in Libya, shares his experiences of life in ISIS-controlled territory. On May 2, 2016, he posted a photo with a fellow ISIS fighter whom he described as an American. He also devoted dedicated a few posts to recruiting others to join the jihad in Libya.

EXCLUSIVE: British ISIS Widow Sally Jones Returns To Twitter

On May 3, 2016, Sally Jones, the widow of Islamic State (ISIS) hacker and fighter Junaid Hussain, made her return to Twitter, after a long social media hiatus, tweeting to UK Prime Minister David Cameron's Twitter account. In the tweets, she hinted that there would be retribution from ISIS for the attacks on it.

EXCLUSIVE: ISIS Weekly Sets Out Harsh Restrictions For Women Going Out To The Marketplace

An article in the Islamic State (ISIS) weekly Al-Naba spelled out the rules and restrictions for Muslim women going out to shop at the market. The article cites the Koranic verse: "And abide in your houses" (33:33). It states that if a Muslim woman complies with this commandment, she and all those around her will be blessed.

ISIS Nasheed In French Sung By Children Vowing To Take Revenge: 'Our Sabers Are Sharpened To Slice Necks'

On April 29, 2016, Al-Hayat Media Center, the official international media outlet of the Islamic State (ISIS), published a music video featuring a nasheed in French sung by children.

Article In 9th Issue Of ISIS French-Language Magazine 'Dar Al-Islam' Justifies ISIS Policy And Behavior On The Basis Of Early Islamic Tradition

On April 26, 2016, ISIS's Al-Hayat Media center released the ninth issue of the organization's French-language magazine Dar Al-Islam. The issue's main featured article, titled "The Islamic State On The Path Of The Companions," compares the behavior of the companions of the Prophet Muhammad, mainly Abu Bakr Al-Siddiq and Khalid Ibn Al-Walid, to that of ISIS. The goal of the article is to show ISIS detractors -most notably Muslims who are critical of ISIS, including Quietist Salafi groups or Salafi-Jihadi organizations such as Al-Qaeda - that ISIS is indeed acting in conformity with Islamic tradition, and follows in the footsteps of the conquests and expansion of the first Muslims.

Leading Jihadi Forum Invites Women Members To Register To Receive Online Training

On April 22, 2016, the Shumoukh Al-Islam jihadi forum announced that female forum members could now register to receive online training. The training is meant to provide the women with basic knowledge on a variety of topics, and will also include some practical work "in support of Islam."

Issue 9 of French-Language ISIS Magazine 'Dar Al-Islam' Offers Operational Advice For Information Security

On April 26, 2016, the Islamic State (ISIS) media company Al-Hayat released the ninth issue of the organization's French-language magazine Dar Al-Islam. The issue features a 15-page article with operational advice for information security, including practical guidelines to set up encrypted communications.

In Kill List On Telegram, Pro-ISIS Hacking Group Posts Names Of 'Most Important Crusaders In Texas'

On May 3, 2016 the pro-ISIS hacking group Kalachnikv E-security team, an affiliate of the United Cyber Caliphate, shared a graphic on Telegram that reads: "List contain most important crusaders in Texas. Wanted to be killed.

ISIS Acknowledges Abu-'Ali Al-Anbari's Death For First Time By Announcing Raid Named After Him

On April 30, 2016, the Islamic State's Al-Janoub Province announced that the recent attacks in Iraq on Shi'ite citizens, Iraqi government forces and Kurdish Peshmerga forces were part of its newly launched "Abu-'Ali Al-Anbari Raid."

Jordan Indicts ISIS Operative For Smuggling ISIS Fighters To Europe



Jordan's State Security Court

Jordan's State Security prosecution has indicted a Jordanian ISIS operative for smuggling men, weapons and funds to and from ISIS in Libya.

According to the indictment, the operative, identified in the media only as M.Z., helped smuggle Algerian ISIS fighters by sea from Libya to Europe in order to carry out terrorist attacks there.

AQAP Says It Retreated From Mukalla In Yemen To Save People's Lives, Threatened UAE Over Its Role In Attacks

On April 30, 2016, Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) released a statement saying that it had retreated from Mukalla, a city in Yemen that had been under its control since April 2015, in order to save people's lives. In the statement, titled "Statement to Our People in the Coast of Hadhramout Regarding the Recent Malicious Military Operation," the group accused the U.S. of using its proxies to tarnish its success in governing Mukalla, threatened the UAE for its role in the Saudi-led coalition attacks on it, and denied reports stating that it had lost hundreds of fighters.

Yemeni Fighters In Syria Party At Wedding Of Two Comrades, Urge Countrymen To Join Jihad

On April 29, 2016, Al-Muhajiroun, a group of foreign fighters in Syria, released a video showing its members celebrating at the wedding event of two of their Arab comrades and urging the Yemenis to come join them for jihad. In the video, which is titled "Time for This, Time for That" and was posted on the group's YouTube Channel, dozens of fighters, mostly Saudis and Yemenis, can be seen socializing, eating, dancing and singing jihadi songs - at least one of which attacked the Islamic State (ISIS) and called its spokesman Abu Muhammad Al-Adnani a "thug and devil."

Turkestan Islamic Party (TIP) Releases Part 18 In Video Series Commemorating Killed Fighters

On May 1, 2016, the Uyghur jihad organization Turkestan Islamic Party (TIP) released a video commemorating several of its fighters who died fighting in Syria.

Lebanese MP Warns About U.S. Plan For Region, Underlines 'Need To Resist It'

According to Alahednews.com, a website affiliated with is close to Hizbullah, Lebanese MP Hussein Musawi has issued a warning about the U.S.'s plan for the region and called on people to resist it.

Musawi's remarks were delivered at an anniversary ceremony for fallen Hizbullah fighter 'Ali Jamal Noon, who was killed in March 2015 in Syria.
Maybe artist Warren Mullen was trying to draw a laugh when he made his mother an honorary member of the Fraternal Order of Women Weary Worriers of America.

After all, Mary Katherine Mullen had a lot about which to be concerned. The fighting overseas was intensifying as World War II entered a critical stage. The Carlisle woman had three sons and a daughter serving in uniform.

Warren, her fourth child, was in the Army Signal Corps working as a switchboard operator under Gen. Douglas MacArthur in the Pacific Theater of Operations.

He wrote her often, illustrating every message with one or more hand-drawn scenes from his life overseas. Her boy had talent and a knack for whimsy if only to ease her mind and brighten her day.

I betcha you worked yourself into near frenzy, Warren wrote his mother on Aug. 18, 1944. You know you shouldnt be that way Peaches ... Your worries might be lessened with the Allies approach to Paris.

Almost three months had gone by since the D-Day landings of June 6. It took the Western Allies several weeks to breakout of Normandy, but once their defenses were breached, the Germans were on the run.

There was reason to be optimistic. There was hope in summer 1944 that the boys could be home by Christmas. Mullen brought this up in his letter hoping to reassure his mother. If it be our good fortune, war may be very near to its end.

That was not the case. The fighting would continue until May 1945 in Europe and August 1945 in the Pacific.

Always an artist

Interested in art from an early age, Mullen made drawings for his classmates at Carlisle High School and had a job painting sale signs for David Javitch, owner of the Carlisle Meat Market and founder of the Giant Food Store chain.

Mullen graduated in 1937 and continued to work as an illustrator until the onset of World War II. He joined the 104th Cavalry Regiment of the Pennsylvania National Guard and was on maneuvers in Virginia when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.

Military service took Mullen to several island air bases in the South Pacific. When the war ended, he was assigned to occupation duty in Kyoto, Japan. He kept in touch with his mother starting every letter with Dear Mom and ending with Your Lovin Son.

Many of his letters home were processed using a wartime format called V-mail in which text was copied onto film, shipped overseas and then printed to paper upon arrival at its destination.

On May 9, 1944, Mullen drew a caricature to illustrate his point that Army cooks are tyrants, overlords of KP duty authorized to boss and bully around the serfdom to various tasks including mopping the floor and cleaning pots.

He might carry a cat-o-nine tails under his arm ... but most important of all his gear is the indispensable can opener, Mullen wrote, adding how Army cooks often had to chase away chowhounds  soldiers who ate more than their fair share.

On May 14, 1944, Mullen celebrated Mothers Day by attending a church service where the pastor had the worshipers substitute the word father with mother in their singing of such classic hymns as Rock of Ages and The Old Rugged Cross. The V-mail had a drawing of a soldier in the foreground waving his hand with a jungle scene in the background.

A message dated Sept. 5, 1944 mentioned his mothers choice for president in the upcoming November general election. So youre going to vote for Dewey. With your vote he might sweep the country. So goes Mrs. Mullen so goes the nation.

Life of teaching

His prediction fell short of expectations. Thomas E. Dewey lost to Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was elected to a fourth term as president. Much of the biography of Warren Mullen can be found in a short sketch written by his brother, Jack Mullen, in 2008 and in an obituary published on Feb. 24, 2012 in The Sentinel.

For a period of time during the war, Warren Mullen served at the Army Air Force base at Jefferson Barracks, Missouri. He visited nearby St. Louis while on leave and met a woman named Etheleen Pinson who he later married. They were a couple for 65 years until his death in York, on Dec. 29, 2011.

After his discharge from the Army, Mullen returned home to pursue his dreams. He attended the Philadelphia Museum School where he earned a bachelors degree in fine arts. He further augmented his education with a masters degree in fine arts from Washington University in St. Louis.

For a time, Mullen worked as a designer for attorney John Faller who was involved in the Turnpike Commission. It was Mullen who designed items like a blue sticker that showed the route from Carlisle to Irwin in gold.

Mullen became an art teacher at the old Lamberton school in Carlisle until it closed in the 1950s. He then taught art at Carlisle High School until 1958 when he became the first art teacher at Suburban High School in York. He worked there until his retirement in 1984.
Rich Creason may not have been on the front line with a rifle during his involvement in Vietnam, but thats not to say each day was not just as potentially harrowing.

Creason, a former Harrisburg native and current New Cumberland resident, served as an Air Force translator during air missions out of Korea  spending upward of 10 to 20 hours at a time in the air as translators were flown around the area, listening for chatter. He was primarily stationed in Japan.

I would fly on an airplane listening to Chinese traffic from ground control to airplanes or plane-to-plane, and I would transcribe it to English, Creason said.

But Creason said this responsibility proved to be far from tedious. Possible encounters with enemy aircraft posed a consistent threat for those on board.

Sometimes we had Russian (planes) come up on us and fly around us and do rolls, and it was no big deal, he said. But if North Koreans or Chinese came up on us, we were supposed to leave the area immediately. We had a shoot-down of a plane by North Koreans and that kind of prompted that. It makes things kind of thrilling for just a mundane position to a radio for 10 hours.

Creason said his decision to join the military was spurred by a sudden push for more U.S. soldiers following the Tet Offensive campaign in South Vietnam.

I think the Tet Offensive in 68 is what inspired it, he said. It was an inspiration to not get killed. People were being drafted left and right, and they needed a lot more people in the military suddenly. This was before the lottery system, so they were taking everyone and anyone. I thought, What are my options if Im going to be drafted?

Creason said his education gave him an upper hand in the difficult process of making it into the Air Force.

It was hard to get into the Air Force because everyone was looking for another option than the Army or the Marines, he said. When I told them I had three years of college, they said theyd find a place for me. Suddenly they were interested.

After completing basic training, he received training in Chinese at a language school in Monterey, California.

Chinese was luck of draw because when you finish basic training, thats when they start handing out languages, he said. If I had finished training the day before I did, all those guys got Vietnamese and were sent to Vietnam after that. The day after me was Korean, but the day I got out it was Chinese. A lot of the same guys I went to school with stayed with me after that. Chinese and Korean (translators) flew together.

Creason remained involved in Vietnam until 1972, when he was forced to return home due to military job downsizing.

There was a big financial cutback to the military in early 72, he said. If you had more than a year or less (of involvement) you were sent to Korea on permanent duty, but if you had less than that you were let go early. I got out in June of 72, about eight or nine months early.

After returning to the United States, Creason earned his masters degree in teaching English as a foreign language from the University of Hawaii. He then returned to Japan to teach English.

The training I got in Chinese kind of directed me back to Asia, he said. That set the stage for what I wanted to do after that.

Creason taught in Japan and later Hawaii before eventually returning to the Harrisburg area in 1985, and later retiring as a post office clerk.

I met wife in Japan while teaching and we moved back to Hawaii at first, he said. Before I returned (to Harrisburg), most of my time was spent on the West Coast or in Hawaii or Japan.

Reflecting on his time in Vietnam, Creason emphasized the fact that many different types of positions had a hand in influencing the events of the war  both directly and indirectly.

The whole point is that there are a lot of jobs outside of just being in Vietnam  there were people who also had support duties that werent tied directly to it, he said. There were a lot of people in other places that actually had jobs that were somehow indirectly connected to Vietnam, but werent in the real fighting.
One of the oddest moments in a presidential campaign filled brim-spillingly with them is the sight of the Republican Party struggling to rally around the man looking more and more like its presumptive nominee, Donald J. Trump. Perhaps rally is too strong of a word. More of a depressed dawdle. A lackluster loiter. Melancholy mosey. Crematory crawl.

The party is exhibiting all the enthusiasm of a condemned man walking barefoot to the gallows up 13 steps of broken glass. Like an eight-year old forced to rip a switch off a birch tree prior to a paternal spanking. A film critic trudging through the lobby of a multiplex for a preview of the next Transformers movie.

Its a shame that Elizabeth Kubler-Ross died a decade ago, and cant witness all five of her Stages of Grief being spun out at the same time. Depending on where you look, the GOP can be seen going through denial, anger, bargaining, depression and a reluctant acceptance. She could even update her classic with new stages: dejection, mortification, suicidal gloom, self-immolation and eye gouging panic.

Politicos traditionally resist change, but the way party regulars are dragging their feet on the path to partner with Trump youd swear they were wearing cement galoshes. Encased in lead. Dragging super-gravity anvils. Theres no jumping onto this bleak bandwagon. More like slithering on surreptitiously from the shadows praying that friends and family arent paying attention.

A large faction of Republicans still cling to the desperate hope the New York businessman can be denied the nomination, but in order to do so, different factions need to combine forces. The problem is they dont get along. Its a classic example of the hyena and lion planning to take down the elephant, but becoming way too occupied trying to eat each other. From Aesop.

Ted Cruz and John Kasichs campaigns reached a tentative agreement to clear their prospective lanes in Indiana and Oregon, but that non-aggression pact had a shorter life than a box of cupcakes in a pre- school, day-care center after a five-mile hike. Snowflakes in hell last longer.

To double down on the fires of perdition analogy, former Speaker of the House, John Boehner, called Cruz Lucifer in the flesh. Which led another Republican Congressman, Peter King of New York, to argue the comparison was unfair to Lucifer. Wave your hands in the air like you just dont care. Lucifer in the house. Or rather, the Senate.

Ignoring the insults, Ted Cruz attempted to shake things up by presumptively choosing a running mate, which is similar to a sophomore journalism student picking Adele to sing the theme song of their future prime time network television interview show.

The move seemed designed to match Trumps failed businessman card and raise him a failed woman card. But alas, to say that Carly Fiorinas slot on the ticket didnt create a lot of buzz is like saying there werent a lot of sequined pajamas at the White House Correspondents Dinner.

To their credit though, you have to admit that both Ted Cruz and Donald Trump do incite passion. Then again, so does flesh eating bacteria. With Trump, people either love him or hate him. Whereas with Cruz, the differences narrow to either hate or an intense dislike.

Will Durst, distributed by the Cagle Cartoons Inc. syndicate, is an award-winning, nationally acclaimed columnist, comedian and former Pizza Hut assistant manager.
Bangladesh Government gives nod to Reliance Powers LNG-based plant

Published: May 6, 2016

Bangladesh Government has given its in-principle approval to Anil Ambani-led Reliance Powers first phase of the 3,000 MW LNG-based power plant at Meghnaghat in Narayanganj district.

This approval has paved the way for the largest Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in Bangladesh with a potential investment of over 8,700 crore rupees (1.3 billion dollars).

Key facts

In the first phase, a 750 MW LNG-based power plant will be set up along with the FSRU (floating storage and regassification unit) terminal at Maheshkhali Island in Coxs Bazar district of Bangladesh.

FSRU-based LNG terminal will supply re-gasified LNG for the power project and additional RLNG to PetroBangla.

The first phase of the LNG-based power plant will be commissioned in 2018-19 and shall help to meet Bangladeshs rising demand for electricity.

For this project, Reliance Power will install equipment procured from international equipment suppliers including General Electric (GE) and other global suppliers.

Month: Current Affairs - May, 2016

Topics: Bangladesh  Business  Economy  Power Sector  Reliance Power

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Union Cabinet approves India-UAE currency swap agreement

Published: May 5, 2016

The Union Cabinet has given its ex-post facto approval for the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and Central Bank of United Arab Emirates (UAE) on co-operation concerning currency swap agreement.

Decision in this regard was taken at the Union Cabinet Meeting chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New Delhi. The Agreement was signed in February, 2016 during the official state visit of Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi Sheikh Mohammed Bin Zayed Al Nahyan to India.

Key facts

The MoU commits that RBI and Central Bank of UAE will consider signing a bilateral Currency Swap Agreement on mutually agreed terms and conditions.

The agreement will be signed after undertaking technical deliberations, subject to the concurrence of respective Governments.

The MoU will help to further strengthen the close economic cooperation and relationship between India and UAE.

The swap agreement is also expected to facilitate invoicing of bilateral trade in local currencies.

What is a Currency Swap?

A currency swap involves exchange of principal and interest in one currency for the same in another currency. It is considered to be a foreign exchange transaction.

For example: Suppose a US based company needs to acquire Indian Rupees and India-based company needs to acquire US dollars.

Then these two companies could arrange to swap currencies by establishing an interest rate, agreed upon amount along with a common maturity date for the exchange.

Month: Current Affairs - May, 2016

Topics: Business  Cabinet Decisions  Currency swap  Economy  India-UAE  National

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Rebecca Musarra, an attorney, filed the federal civil rights lawsuit after the Oct. 16 stop on Route 519 near the border with Pennsylvania in Warren County, NJ.com reported. At least three troopers insisted after she was pulled over that refusing to answer questions was a criminal act, according to the lawsuit.

Spokesmen for the state police and the attorney general's office, which is representing the troopers, declined to comment on the allegations. State police spokesman Capt. Stephen Jones said the department's internal affairs office conducts a review any time misconduct is alleged.

"In the event that problems are identified, training and/or disciplinary measures are implemented where appropriate," Jones said in an email.

Lawyers for the state have sought in court filings to have the case dismissed, claiming that the troopers "acted in good faith and without fraud or malice."

A trooper pulled Musarra over for suspected speeding, requested her license, registration and insurance, and asked if she knew why she was being pulled over, according to dash camera footage obtained by NJ.com through an open records request. Musarra said she provided the documents but didn't respond to the troopers.

"You're going to be placed under arrest if you don't answer my questions," one of the troopers told her before she was handcuffed and taken to a police station. Musarra asked the troopers if she was being detained, and one of the troopers said, "Yeah, obstruction."

Musarra said a supervisor watched dashboard camera footage and let her go without charges.
BAD AXE  The county is considering lawyering up in response to a list of more than 50 residents asking to be excluded from an area being primed for a batch of 50 to 70 wind turbines.

County attorney Stephen Allen this week said county commissioners should hire outside legal counsel to determine whether allowing that many residents to opt out would create spot zoning.

Spot zoning, which many sources say is generally a bad practice, can occur when officials zone a small area or parcel for uses contrary to surrounding areas.

The zoning could conflict with a countys master plan and allow for land use not afforded to the large majority of nearby parcels.

Put simply, officials say it creates a zoning area that looks like Swiss cheese.

Spot zoning is typically ruled invalid if challenged in court, according to the nonprofit Michigan Association of Planning. Michigans Zoning Enabling Act of 2006 and Planning Enabling Act of 2008 make no mention of the term.

John Nugent, a county commissioner and planner, says there will be a resolution on the board of commissioners agenda next week to spend up to $2,500 to clarify whether Hurons scenario would create spot zoning.

Nugent says the list of residents wanting out of the project creates an extraordinary situation.

Documents included in a packet for a board of commissioners meeting read: We the undersigned residents of Lincoln Township hereby request to be removed from the commercial wind overlay district. Signed April 2016.

The documents list more than 50 signatures with addresses, dated between April 6 and April 14. Some are from landowners already under easement with DTE, including Lincoln Trustee John Wisneski.

Jeff Smith, the countys building and zoning director, says the county has never had so many opt-outs.

Smith also asked why some who signed leases with DTE now want out of the project, without giving explanation  considering some may have already cashed checks, he said.

Allen says hes worked as corporate counsel for the board of commissioners since 1999, but that he doesnt get involved in the wind energy overlay process. He advised the county seek Detroit-based Clark Hill PLC for legal counsel.

DTE Energy is in early stages to build 50 to 70 turbines across four townships.

A project planning area covers 61 square miles and more than 39,000 acres  22,000 in Lincoln Township. DTE says it has 21,000 acres under contract for wind development with about 100 landowners and is talking with other landowners.

DTE says its plan far exceeds county requirements.

Project Manager Matt Wagner says Allens advice applies to site plan review, a stage that planners arent at.

I have no doubt that weve met the requirements, Wagner told county planners.

Member Terry Heck asked how overwhelming opposition factors in if all planning and zoning requirements are met.

It doesnt matter if people  dont like it, Allen said.

If all requirements are met and officials make a decision based on reason, theyre stuck with it, he said. Disallowing the project in such case would be capricious, according to Allen.

However, officials noted the option of a referendum, which a resident may initiate by collecting signatures within the zoning jurisdiction to reverse such a decision.

People always have the final say, Planning Vice Chair Bernie Creguer said.
Donna Kincer, development director of the Greater Androscoggin Human Society, acknowledged that the Jack Russell terrier mix was supposed to be made available a day later and on a first-come, first-served basis.

"The governor walks in your front door and it sort of shifts things a little," Kincer told the Sun Journal.

Kincer said the shelter hoped for good publicity from the governor's adoption Tuesday of the rescue dog from Louisiana.

LePage, Maine's all-time veto champion, named the dog Veto and took it home to the Blaine House.

But what was a happy moment for the governor was heartbreaking for Heath Arsenault, who burst into tears when she saw that the governor had adopted the dog she'd had her eye on. She said she has been going through an emotionally difficult time and hoped the adoption would boost her spirits.

Arsenault, of Mexico, Maine, said she'd already talked to staff about the adoption, and she'd taken Wednesday off from work to be first in line. "I felt like they lied to me," she said.

Meanwhile, the governor's family had been looking for a new dog after the death of LePage's previous pet, a Jack Russell named Baxter.

The governor's family alerted him to the dog they spotted it on the Greater Androscoggin Humane Society website, and the governor visited the shelter Tuesday after a lunch meeting in Poland, said LePage spokesman Peter Steele.

"He just stopped in to see the dog," Steele said. "He was very pleasantly surprised when (the shelter) allowed him to take the dog home."

Regardless of whether the governor knew about the policy, Arsenault believes the shelter was wrong to give him the dog he wanted while other people have to wait and stand in line.

"No one should be given special privileges, even if they are the governor," she said.
Despite Flipping in Surf 4 Times in a Year, Marines Say New ACV Is the Future of Amphibious Warfare

Some Marine veterans familiar with the vehicle and its operations have worried about the reliability of the ACV.
The U.S. Defense Department is reviewing force protection measures for U.S. troops moving forward with local forces in Iraq following the "surprise" ISIS counter-attack north of Mosul in which Navy SEAL Charles Keating IV was killed, the Pentagon's spokesman said Thursday.

Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook said "hard questions" had to be asked on why U.S. intelligence and surveillance failed to detect the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, massing fighters and vehicles for an assault that broke through the front lines of the Kurdish Peshmerga the town of Teleskof, also called Tel Skuf, where Keating was fatally wounded in a firefight.

Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said Wednesday that the ISIS attack was a "surprise" to U.S and Kurdish forces.

"Perhaps this could have been avoided," Cook said. "That's something that we're looking at carefully. They did not anticipate this particular kind of strike, the kind of force that was brought to bear" by the attackers, he said.

Force protection "is something that's constantly being re-assessed -- that requires hard questions," Cook said. The death of the 31-year-old Keating was a "tragic reminder" of the dangers faced by U.S. and coalition troops, and "of course we'll be re-assessing force protection going forward," he said.

A U.S. advise and assist team was in Teleskof at the time of the attack to help the Kurds and allied Christian militias in the ongoing efforts to seal off the ISIS stronghold of Mosul from the north. Keating was part of a Quick Reaction Force nearby that came to extract the advise and assist team and quickly became engaged in a firefight with the ISIS attackers. He was the only U.S. casualty.

In a briefing to the Pentagon from Baghdad on Wednesday, Army Col. Steve Warren said that prior to the attack, "the enemy was able to very covertly assemble enough force, which included the several truck bombs, some bulldozers, and of course their infantry" which was estimated by the Kurds to number more than 400 fighters.

Warren, spokesman for Combined Joint Task Force-Operation Inherent Resolve in Baghdad, said it was "difficult to know" how ISIS assembled the attack force without being detected. "Well, if we knew that, we would have detected them and spoiled their attack, wouldn't we? Obviously, they were able to amass this force," he said.

"So clearly, they were able to, overtime, infiltrate individuals and vehicles, one or two at a time presumably and then be able to dash out of there, you know, under the cover of darkness on Tuesday morning," Warren said.

The end result was a "failed attack," he said, as U.S. warplanes carried out 31 airstrikes to beat back the attacking force and kill an estimated 58 of the enemy.

"So, it was a failed attack but certainly, they were able to marshal and deploy a force that surprised the Peshmerga forces that were on the FLOT," Warren said, referring to the forward line of troops.

Keating's death was the third combat death for U.S. troops in Iraq, and Carter has repeatedly warned of the increasing risk for U.S. troops in what he has called the "accelerated" campaign against ISIS with the focus on retaking Mosul and Raqaa, the ISIS capital in Syria.

President Barack Obama recently approved Carter's request to deploy an additional 217 U.S. troops into Iraq and another 250 Special Forces advisers into Syria to bolster the 50 advisers already there.

Carter has also said that U.S. advise and assist teams would now be moving closer to the front lines with the Iraqi Security Forces at the battalion rather than the division level.

-- Richard Sisk can be reached at Richard.Sisk@Military.com.
The Taliban will reap "windfall" profits from a bumper poppy harvest in Afghanistan this spring to fund coming offensives, a U.S. military spokesman in Kabul said Thursday.

"The poppy crop is really the engine that provides all the money that fuels the Taliban," and the insurgents were expected to benefit from "this very good poppy crop that they had this year," said Army Brig. Gen. Charles H. Cleveland.

"As a result, we do expect an uptick in Taliban efforts to attack" when the harvest is completed later this month, with offensives focused on southwestern Helmand province, the center of the Afghan narcotics trade, Cleveland, the deputy chief for communications of the Resolute Support mission, said in a video briefing from Kabul to the Pentagon.

Taliban fighters in recent weeks essentially dropped the fight to assist in the harvest, giving respite to the struggling 215th Division of the Afghan National Security Forces in Helmand province, Cleveland said.

"A lot of the Taliban fighters have been out harvesting the poppy," he said. Once the harvest is complete later this month, "We think that will be the next big Taliban push," he said. "We think it will come in Helmand."

The poppy trade in in Afghanistan supplies about 90 percent of the worlds heroin and is estimated by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime to be worth about $3 billion annually to the Afghan economy.

Narcotics trafficking goes virtually unimpeded in Afghanistan. The U.S. has dropped its eradication and crop substitution efforts. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration still has an office in Kabul but no longer conducts field operations.

The United Nations estimated that the poppy crop fell by about 19 percent last year mostly due to poor weather, but plentiful rain this year was expected to produce a bumper crop.

"We are happy that we had a good harvest this year compared with previous years," Abdul Rahim Mutmain, a farmer in Helmand, told The New York Times.

"There is no security concern for a single laborer being checked or robbed by the police," he said. "The entire district is under Taliban control and the bulk of the harvesters are Taliban."

A typical Afghan farmer can get $200 for a kilogram of opium produced from poppy, according to the United Nations. The same amount of green beans will fetch $1.

Cleveland said the U.S. has 700 to 800 troops in Helmand now to advise and assist the 215th Division in preparing for the expected Taliban offensive. The troops, including Special Forces and Army 10th Mountain Division troops, mostly work out of the grounds of the old Camp Leatherneck, the former headquarters for the U.S. Marine presence in Afghanistan, Cleveland said.

The Talibans strength and funding will be factors in the recommendations to higher command and President Barack Obama of Army Gen. John Nicholson, the new commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, on whether to continue with the planned U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Cleveland said Nicholson was expected to complete his assessment later this month. The U.S. currently has about 9,800 troops in Afghanistan and the current plan calls for that number to be reduced to about 5,500 by the end of this year.

-- Richard Sisk can be reached at Richard.Sisk@Military.com.

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A small team of U.S. troops has deployed on the ground in Yemen to help Emirati forces in a fight for a port city against an al-Qaeda offshoot, the Pentagon said Friday.

The service members were sent to the region about two weeks ago.

The amphibious assault ship USS Boxer and its amphibious ready group of vessels with the 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit are positioned offshore to back up the team on the ground and support the forces of the United Arab Emirates in assisting Yemeni government forces against al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

The Yemeni and UAE operations recently ousted the terrorist group from the port of Mukalla.

Capt. Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, declined to say how many U.S. troops were on the ground in Yemen but said "we view this as a short-term operation" and they were expected to be withdrawn soon.

Davis also confirmed that the U.S. has been conducting airstrikes against the terrorist group apart from the effort to assist the Emiratis. He said four airstrikes have been carried out since April 23, killing an estimated 10 terrorists.

-- Richard Sisk can be reached at Richard.Sisk@Military.com.
Parkland Health Center broke ground Thursday on a major expansion of its emergency department located at 1101 W. Liberty St. in Farmington.

Parkland Health Center staff and Farmington Regional Chamber of Commerce guests were on hand for the historic ground breaking. The opening of the expanded facility is scheduled for spring 2017. During construction, the emergency department will continue to operate.

The expansion will add 6,300 square feet to the existing emergency department, including 11 additional patient treatment rooms, waiting room space, and an enclosed walkway that will connect the main hospital entrance to the emergency department waiting area. In addition to the newly constructed space, 2,950 square feet of existing space will be modified as part of this expansion project.

The emergency department at Parkland-Farmington was previously expanded in 2008, when BJC HealthCare invested in a new emergency facility that doubled the square footage and capacity of the facility.

BJC HealthCare is once again confirming its commitment to the St. Francois County region by investing significant resources toward meeting our regions growing emergency medical needs," Tom Karl, president of Parkland Health Center said. "Since the closure of the Weber Road emergency department, volume has increased at Liberty Street, and we are very pleased that BJC recognizes our need in the local area.

"There were a lot of things not anticipated when the hospitals came together," Karl said. "We're dealing with a difficult situation as far as capacity now. This will increase capacity in the emergency room nearly 70 percent, which is desperately needed."

Karl said he is hoping for the community to have patience while the project is underway.

"It's a big, complicated project because you have an operating emergency room while you are doing it," he said. "We've got to work around a lot of things."

In 2015, the combined emergency departments of Parkland Health Center-Liberty Street, Parkland Health Center-Bonne Terre, and Parkland Health Center-Weber Road treated 52,034 patients (includes numbers from Mineral Area Regional Medical Center preceding the May 1, 2015 affiliation with Parkland). In comparison with other emergency departments in the BJC HealthCare system, Parklands combined emergency departments rank third in the number of patients treated, and 18th in the entire state of Missouri.

Parklands management team anticipated an increase in patients at the emergency department on Liberty Street when it became apparent that the Weber Road facility would be closing in early 2016 due to a number of building issues. In order to immediately accommodate the volume, Emergency Department eXpress was put in place in late 2015. Space adjacent to the Liberty Street emergency department was quickly and efficiently remodeled to add room for up to seven less critical emergency patients.

Parkland Health Center is part of BJC HealthCare which also includes St. Louis Childrens Hospital and Barnes-Jewish Hospital, the teaching hospitals for Washington University School of Medicine. For additional information about Parkland Health Center, call 573-756-6451 or the physician finder service at 431-3338 or visit www.parklandhealthcenter.org.
After the Bank-Domain, now the Insurance-Domain.

ICANN accredited registrar Secura has announced the debut of its new registration service for all the insurance providers and distributors and now they can buy .INSURANCE domain name in a secured and reliable manner.It is anticipated that all verified members of global insurance industry are eligible to register their domain names and take multiple advantages of .INSURANCE. The purchase of .INSURANCE domain name is expected to help the providers and distributors to gain online presence in the market.If you are an insurance provider or distributor , the world of the Internet ? as you currently know it ? is about to change. This year members of the global insurance community, led by fTLD Registry Services and supported by dozens of associations and industry leaders around the world, will have the opportunity to create a new online location for their businesses. During the last eighteen months more than a thousand new Internet web extensions have made their way to the Internet ? but only one has been created by and for the global insurance community. It?s called .INSURANCE.This new extension is the place for insurance providers and distributors to enhance and differentiate their online presence in the marketplace. Directed by insurance and security experts,.INSURANCE is a trusted, verified, and more secure location online. All .INSURANCE domain name s must meet strict Security Requirements, and only verified members of the global insurance community will be approved.Insurance providers and distributors today face a multitude of challenges including competing for and retaining customers, protecting their data, and enhancing their online presence. Registering and migrating to a .INSURANCE domain name offers a solution to all of those issues.?In the past year, the global financial services community has undergone a seismic shift online , recognizing a better way to serve their customers and protecting their information through financial top -level domains,? said Craig Schwartz, managing director of fTLD, the private company that is owned, operated and governed by banks, insurance companie s and their respective trade associations.?Initially offered in May 2015, today, more than 2 ,568 banks in the U.S. and 262 abroad have registered a . BANK domain name . Now, we?re excited to announce the debut of .INSURANCE.?However, it?s important to note that the launch of .INSURANCE will be distinctly different from that of .BANK.?The number of members eligible for the .INSURANCE domain is significantly larger than it was with .BANK. There are more than 38,000 independent insurance agencies in the U.S. alone. Competition for domain names will be fierce. fTLD encourages insurance providers and distributors to prepare now, or run the risk of being unable to secure their preferred web address.?The relationship between better ranking and the new top-level domains was proved by a study of Searchmetrics for Berlin-domains. Websites with Berlin-Domains frequently place better than websites with .de domains and .com domains in regional searches with Google. The result of the study by Searchmetrics can be summarized as follows:42% of searches show that .berlin domains rank better locally .The study of total sites in Houston shows that the results by Searchmetrics can be generalized to all new top level domains, including the Insurance-Domains: It was proved that Google uses the domain endings of the New Top Level Domains as a key element for the assessment of domains. Total sites draws as a conclusion:It is clear that the new top-level domains improve the ranking in search engines. The Insurance-Domain will create more trust towards the insurance provider or distributor among customers because of the high technical standards and the strict verification of domain owners . And confidence is the root of all business. Insurance providers or distributors with an Insurance-DOmain will have a lasting competitive advantage.Hans-Peter Oswaldhttp://www.domainregistry.de/insurance-domain.htmlhttp://www.domainregistry.de/bank-domain.html
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Myanmar will soon have another source of support in its efforts to better track economic data and foreign direct investment, when an ASEAN+3 research arm starts a new technical assistance program later this year.





The ASEAN+3 Macroeconomic Research Office (AMRO) was set up as a private company in Singapore in 2011, but became an international organisation jointly owned by the member states in February this year, Nomura Munenari, senior operations officer, told The Myanmar Times.

The member states, which include Myanmar, approved a technical assistance framework in April which will rely on voluntary contributions for funding, Mr Munenari said.

So if the Myanmar authorities request an expert on balance of payments statistics we will find one using the voluntary funds, he said.

AMRO will concentrate initially on balance of payments assistance because potential recipients identified it as an area of focus during an informal sounding-out, Mr Munenari said.

The balance of payments records international transactions across a countrys public and private sector, allowing it to monitor a national deficit or surplus and keep track of how much foreign direct investment is flowing into the country.

In many countries, the central bank contributes to balance of payments data by monitoring the banking system to track the flow of public and private investment coming into and out of the country.

But the Central Bank of Myanmar is unable to monitor such FDI flows, officials at the Directorate of Investment and Company Administration (DICA) have said.





Approved FDI reached more than US$9 billion in the financial year ending March 31, and DICA officials say they plan to track the level of actual foreign investment from 2017.

Better balance of payments data would help Myanmar track foreign investment, Mr Munenari said.

One of AMROs key roles is to help its members decide whether or not to make use of a multi-currency swap agreement between the ASEAN+3 countries.

This facility allows a country facing balance of payments problems to swap its local currency for US dollars. AMROs task is to monitor balance of payments data to determine whether the swap facility is required and the necessary amounts, Mr Munenari said.

Myanmar runs a current account deficit, which the IMF expects to fall from 8.9pc of GDP in 2015-16 to 8.3pc in 2016-17.

No country has yet had to make use of the swap facility, Mr Munenari said.
Talk about electricity blackouts has dominated conversation over the past few weeks as people across the country brave the sweltering heat to meet by candlelight or to shout over the hum of smoke-belching generators.





Why are power outages happening so often? Electricity authorities almost always blame system breakdowns. Their insistence on using such a vague phrase and offering no further information has prompted widespread mockery on social media.

What everyone really wants to know is  what exactly is a system breakdown?

For those who feel they have been kept in the dark for too long, we attempt an explanation of what is going on.

System breakdown

If something unusual happens in the national grid system, this is called a system breakdown according to the Electric Power Generation Enterprise (EPGE).

All generated power is transmitted and distributed through the national grid system, which is built through different types of power transmission lines such as 230KV and 132KV and transmission yards.





According to EPGE, reasons behind system breakdowns in the national grid can include:

Faults in the transmission yards

Faults in the transmission lines

Faults in power stations

Over-consumption

Storms and strong winds

Lightening strikes

Unusually high temperatures

Temporary faults in the line

Other

To summarise  the two main reasons for system breakdowns are technical errors in the power lines and bad weather. According to EPGE, system breakdowns happened 12 times in 2011, 14 times in 2012, seven times in 2013, 10 times in 2014, eight times in 2015 and seven times in 2016 until the end of April.

Power generation

The government is running a number of hydro and gas-fired power plants around the country to feed daily power consumption. Myanmars current power generation mostly comes from hydropower stations located far from cities. The countrys largest city, Yangon, consumes more than half of nationwide electricity  around 1250 megawatts in the hot season.

But there are only a few gas-fired power plants near Yangon, which together can generate around 500MW, according to EPGE. The remaining power comes from hydropower stations along thousands of miles of transmission lines.

The government had tried to generate more power for the hot season in April and May by building more gas-fired power plants since 2013, to meet the gap left by hydropower dams, which generate less power in the hot season when rivers dry up.

Surprisingly, hydropower stations are running at their usual generation capacity at the moment, despite unusually high temperatures, according to officials from the electricity and energy ministry.

The problem, they said, is that the countrys total electricity needs this summer are 2730MW, while the combined power generated by all the stations is only 2450MW.

So Myanmar needs 280MW more power.

Solution proposed to parliament

System breakdowns can be minimised by updating transmission and distribution lines, according to EPGE. The country should have an automatic control system which would accurately and swiftly respond to faults and system breaks, officials said.

Another solution would be to develop a smart grid, which can control certain areas of transmission and distribution.

However, strengthening the system can only go so far if Myanmar is hit by unseasonably bad weather, such as El Nino weather patterns, unusually high winds, freak hailstorms or extreme temperatures.

The average temperature on the Celsius scale from April 26 to May 2 was 40 to 43 degrees in lower Sagaing, Mandalay and Bago regions, 41 to 44 degrees in Magwe region, 39 to 42 degrees in Nay Pyi Taw, and 38 to 41 degrees in Ayeyarwady and Yangon regions, according to the Global Forecast System.

The newly appointed Union minister for electricity and energy, U Pe Zin Tun, is trying to sort out the problem.

On May 4 he presented a plan to the Pyithu Hluttaw, explaining that the country urgently needs 280MW of extra power to feed peak power consumption in the hot season.

To meet this need, the ministry plans to generate an additional 100MW from Shweli hydropower station, 45MW from Kyaukphyu gas-fired power plant, 130MW from Myingyan gas-fired power plant and 25MW from Thilawa power plant, he said.
After their successful Jazz Day concert on April 30, the Institut Francais is promoting more creative arts as part of their French May series  this time presenting a contemporary dance and circus festival in Yangon and Mandalay.





The circus, dance and drama show Sans Queue ni Tete, literally nonsensical in French, plays at the National Theatre in Yangon on May 12 at 7pm, and at the National Theatre in Mandalay on May 14 at 6:45pm.

Sans Queue ni Tete features performances by the Open Ticket Circus Company, which comprises seven young professional circus artists hailing from France, Denmark, Portugal and Cambodia. All seven are alumni of the world renowned National Centre for Circus Arts in France and combine aspects of circus, dance and theatre into their shows.

Sans Queue ni Tete is billed as a succession of bizarre and odd stories nourished by fantastic and touching characters; the young performers bring a modern demonstration of a poetic journey.

Meanwhile, Autarcie  presented by the Terre Dance Company  plays at the National Theatre in Yangon on May 24 at 7pm.

Four women and a Vietnamese choreographer make up the Terre Dance Company. While the dancers are significantly influenced by hip-hop, they will transform their respective dance specialties of break-dance, popping and waacking for a truly contemporary spectacle.

Organiser Anais Robert, the culture officer at the Institut Francais, told The Myanmar Times that the festival is something very new for Myanmar.





Myanmar is used to more traditional shows, like puppet shows. We hope people will like these kinds of contemporary performances, she said. We wanted to bring high-quality shows to Yangon.

She said is confident that the crowd members will not be too lost and will appreciate the quirkiness of Autarcie.

They are used to urban free-style dance, she said. There is no need to understand the language. It should be easily

To add extra variety, both shows will be opened by Myanmar Street Dance, a troupe of talented young Myanmar dancers who worked with a French hip-hop teacher last December.

Tickets for the Sans Queue ni Tete and Autarcie shows in Yangon are K3000 for those under 16 and K5000 for adults, while the Sans Queue ni Tete Mandalay tickets are K2000. Entry is free to all events for Institut Francais students.
T-shirts are among the most versatile of clothing options, a go-to item for everyone from kids playing in the park to adults out for a night on the town. Theyre comfortable and, complemented with the right design, can also be highly fashionable.





Young people in particular usually choose their T-shirts based on the design displayed on the front. These design dont need to be complicated  sometimes the path of simplicity is the quickest way to hipsterville.

A growing number of young people in Myanmar are tapping into this desire for coolness by designing their own T-shirts. Among them is Zayar Lynn, who runs the T-shirt brand Madnest and who is preparing to open a studio in the coming weeks.

We started preparing for the T-shirt studio in February, and now were nearly ready, Zayar Lynn said.

We wanted to open a studio rather than a regular store because its not only a place to shop, but also a gallery and a workplace. For example, I also direct music videos, so I can do that work in the studio and my client can come there too.

Madnest was founded during monsoon season 2015.

At that time, we didnt have anything to do so we thought about starting a small business. I had already been thinking about making T-shirts with my own design, so we made it happen and its going well, Zayar Lynn said.





So far this year they have produced nearly 20 designs for both men and women.

We make at least two or three new designs every month. Including myself, we have three designers, he said.

One thing that sets Madnest apart from other self-made T-shirt brands in Myanmar is the method of production: While other companies put their designs on readymade plain T-shirts ordered from a factory, Madnest buys the fabric and uses their own tailors to create the shirts.

We want to use our own cuts and use fabric that is good for the weather here, so we buy raw textiles. Were not selling T-shirts only  we also have crop-tops for women, vests for men and women, and dresses for women, Zayar Lynn said.

They also started printing their own designs when they began building the studio.

Sometimes we werent satisfied with the print service we used before because they couldnt get the colour or the print exactly the way we wanted. So we sent someone from Madnest to work at a T-shirt printing shop for a while, and once he learned all the skills he came back and taught us. Now we have all the equipment and we do the printing ourselves, he said, adding that the most fulfilling part of the job is creating the designs.

We like to invent designs ourselves because we are young and we want to create things that other young people will want. We think about what young people like, and sometimes we create designs that combine our local traditions and modern culture.

Princes at Madnest range from K7000 to K13,000.

The Madnest Studio  located at 133 Thiri Mingalar Street, 8 Mile, Mayangone township, Yangon  will be launched at the end of this month but will not be open every day.

Some days we will be open to the public and some days we will be closed so we can do sketches, designs, production, printing and other activities, Zayar Lynn said, adding that every month a new calendar will be posted on their Facebook page, with green indicating open days and red closed days.

He said that the Madnest product line will eventually be expanded to include more than just clothing.

We want to follow the trends that are popular among young people and we want to give them what they want. So there will be more cool products from Madnest in the future, he said
Myanmars first Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, Esther Htusan, talks to The Myanmar Times about what inspires her passionate pursuit of stories about injustice and discrimination.





When Esther Htusan started working as a fixer for foreign news agencies in 2010, she never imagined that she would one day win a Pulitzer Prize, one of the worlds most coveted journalism awards.

Her path to the prize  which she won last month in the Public Service Journalism category along with colleagues Margie Mason, Robin Mcdowell and Martha Mendoza  was fuelled by enthusiasm, hard work and a passion to learn everything she could about journalism as quickly as possible.

As a fixer for the AP news agency, she was especially keen to acquire the skills and techniques used by journalists to uncover the truth about injustice and discrimination. She started by studying the work of the correspondents whose stories she helped research.

Every evening, they would spend one hour with me, sharing their knowledge about news and journalism. They said they had never done that with a fixer before, said Esther Htusan, 29.

She made the transition from fixer to reporter in 2013, when she wrote a story for AP about the confiscation of 500 acres of farmland in Yangon by the Myanmar military.

She then travelled to Rakhine State, where she spent two years delving deeply into the Rohingya issue. Given the sensitive subject matter and the lack of security in northern Rakhine State, it was a difficult assignment for an inexperienced journalist.

I was shocked and very emotional about the prejudices faced by the victims. It helped me see that the human rights issues in different regions of Myanmar have their differences, but in many ways they are also the same, she said.





Esther Htusan, an ethnic Kachin, was born in the jade-mining town of Hpakant but grew up in Myitkyina. She has early memories of the civil war that affected the area until 1994. A period of peace ensued, but hostilities between the Kachin and the Myanmar army flared again in 2011.

She said growing up in an unsafe environment prompted her interest in becoming a journalist so she could uncover unknown and important information.

Ever since I was young, I have been unaccustomed to the feeling of being afraid. I think I was always inquisitive. Whenever I heard the sounds of gunfire and bombs in the distance, I was always ready to run in that direction to find out what was happening, she said.

Esther Htusans parents sent her to Yangon eight years ago so she could study in a safe environment. She quickly connected with journalists who were interested in telling the stories of those facing injustice not only in their own countries but also in other countries around the world.

Her family, having grown up in a conflict zone, were not happy with the path she was taking.

My parents didnt encourage me. They were worried because they thought the lives of journalists were full of danger, she said.

Last year Esther Htusan joined Mason, Mcdowell and Mendoza in investigating the Southeast Asian fishing industry, uncovering along the way the trafficking of Myanmar fishermen and the role such servitude plays in the netting of fish that end up on tables in the United States and elsewhere.

Explore the Pulitzer Prize-winning series, "Seafood from Slaves"

Esther Htusan spent a year gathering information in Thailand and Indonesia, facing threats of harm and even death from mafias and gangs involved in illegal fishing and human trafficking. The resulting story earned the Pulitzer Prize and, more importantly, led to the release of 2000 slaves from the seafood industry.

I didnt work to get a prize, but now that Ive won it my family is very encouraging and proud. But my main satisfaction is that the human trafficking victims have been able to come home, she said.

During her time reporting the story, her most stressful experience involved sneaking onto an Indonesian island where hundreds of Myanmar trafficking victims met with her and begged her to help them. After that, she had trouble sleeping.

I always saw their faces and heard their words. I felt like I was an undutiful journalist, she said. I had no answer for them. I couldnt tell them who would help, or how and when help would arrive. Those were the worst days and nights for me.

At one point during her research she escaped a violent gang by piloting a motorboat by herself. Another time, she had to hide behind a truck and keep silent for four days before she could get to safety.

Journalists are not safe in the world. In the Middle East, we often hear news of journalists being killed. Journalists can be shot even while they are just walking down the street. I often think about what I want to accomplish as a journalist before I die, she said.

Esther Htusan acknowledges that women journalists are more free and safe in Myanmar than in many other countries, but they still face cultural discrimination  like in Rakhine State when she was ordered to step down from the roof of a boat because it was not permissible for a woman to sit in a higher place than men.

Myanmar women can be stronger both physically and mentally than women from other countries because life is so difficult for us here, she said. But all women have power and we can do our best in different fields of work and different situations. We can be leaders.

Esther Htusan said one of her biggest challenges as a reporter is shaking off her memories of the discrimination she has faced based on her status as an ethnic minority in Myanmar.

I dont want my reporting to be biased, but as a victim of abuse and discrimination, when I work for other victims the hardest thing is to avoid comparing it my own experiences. I have to see the differences and make it fair, she said.
The presidents request for a new ministry to back up Daw Aung San Suu Kyi in her wide-ranging role as state counsellor is to be debated in parliament next week, with the military expected to challenge her concentration of powers.





In a message sent to the Union parliament yesterday, President U Htin Kyaw said the new ministry would allow the state counsellor to perform her duties more effectively.

A new ministry is needed to work more effectively on issues like national reconciliation, peace, development, rule of law and other government tasks, U Htin Kyaw said.

U Htin Kyaw had announced the agenda item on May 3, resorting to article 202 of the 2008 constitution which allows the president to decide the number of ministries and make changes or additions as necessary with the approval of the Pyidaungsu hluttaw  where the National League for Democracy holds a comfortable majority.

No information about the ministrys budget or appointment of staff was announced. Asked for clarification by The Myanmar Times, the state counsellors spokesperson U Zaw Htay declined to comment. I cannot say anything as the [approval] process is still ongoing, he said.

Lower house MP U Ba Sein of the opposition Arakan National Party said he did not understand the need for the new ministry which appeared to duplicate an existing ministry already headed by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi.

The president said it is to work more effectively for national reconciliation, the peace process and other things, but this was previously done by the Presidents Office, he said.

Though relations between the military and the NLD are tense  military MPs protested against the introduction of the state counsellor law  political commentator U Sithu Aung Myint dismissed the idea that the creation of a ministry would drive the two parties further apart.





It is already clear that the military will be against [creating the ministry] because they strongly opposed the [state counsellor] law. I think there is no reason this will have a serious impact on the NLDs relations with the military because relations between them are already tense, he said.

Also senior NLD party official U Win Htein said he did not expect relations with the military to deteriorate over the issue, as the NLD was paying attention to its relationship with the Tatmadaw which is allocated 25 percent of seats in parliament.

Im not concerned about the issue, because we always remain aware of our relations with the military. We will continue trying to improve relations with the military even if they do not agree with setting up a new ministry, he said.

He said the party had planned to introduce the ministry sooner, but that it was delayed because of the Thingyan festival in April.

Daw Aung San Suu Kyis status is so high, so we decided a ministry should be created for her so that she can work effectively, he said.

Foreign diplomats have expressed concern over the apparent concentration of powers within the hands of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi who is surrounded by ministers with little or no experience of politics or government. She is also foreign minister.

The Speaker said that MPs wishing to discuss the presidential proposal could register until May 9. The debate is likely to be held next week.
Heavy fighting was reported across three townships in northern Shan State yesterday as State Counsellor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi prepared to hold her first consultations with ethnic armed groups ahead of a major peace conference.





The clashes involving two opposed ethnic armed groups and the Tatmadaw appeared to be the most serious since the civilian-led government took office five weeks ago.

According to the Taang National Liberation Army (TNLA), fighting erupted between its forces and the Restoration Council of Shan State (RCSS) in Namkham, Kyaukme and Manton. There were no immediate reports on the extent of casualties.

The Taang ethnic armed group also accused the Tatmadaw of launching artillery strikes against TNLA areas to help the RCSS expand its area of control into the north of the state.

The areas turned into battlegrounds last November shortly after the previous government and military signed the nationwide ceasefire agreement with eight ethnic armed groups, including the RCSS. The TNLA was shut out of the accord along with two allied forces. Several thousand civilians have been displaced in the conflict.

The Tatmadaw and RCSS have denied they are coordinating their military operations which some analysts see as having the broader aim of securing strategic territory between the Kachin Independence Army to the north and the allied United Wa State Army to the east.

Military personnel did not respond to requests for comment yesterday. The RCSS said it was aware of fighting only in Kyaukme township but described the clashes as not serious.





The latest fighting erupted as Daw Aung San Suu Kyi prepared for talks expected to be held early next week with representatives from ethnic armed groups that signed the ceasefire accord, according to two sources close to the peace process who asked not to be named.

A senior official of one ethnic armed group said his representatives who attended the ceasefires Joint Monitoring Committee talks last week were told that there would be a meeting of signatory groups and the state counsellor. An official invitation has not yet been issued however.

I think she will discuss the current peace process and seek consultations with the signatory groups, the senior official said.

U Tin Myo Win, personal physician to Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, is seen to be in line to be appointed as minister in the newly created ministry under the state counsellor, according to analysts and political sources in Nay Pyi Taw.

He was introduced by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi to members of the military and ethnic armed groups in the Joint Monitoring Committee talks. A senior figure in the peace process under U Thein Seins government said the doctor was expected to take on the role of the governments chief negotiator in the peace process.

NLD officials declined to comment when asked.

Next weeks talks are seen as a preparatory meeting for what Daw Aung San Suu Kyi has described as a second Panglong after the landmark 1947 meeting held between some ethnic leaders and her father, independence hero General Aung San. She announced her intention to call the conference within two months at the Joint Monitoring Committee talks.

Daw Aung San Suu Kyi wants the conference to include all ethnic armed groups but she will have to deal with the Tatmadaws refusal to meet and negotiate with the TNLA, the allied Arakan Army and Kokang-based ethnic Chinese forces.
International aid agencies and the Myanmar government say they are mobilising aid for more than 2000 Muslim IDPs left homeless after a fire ripped through their internment camp in Rakhine State amid conflicting reports of their whereabouts.





The UN is working closely with the authorities to quickly mobilise a solution for the immediate shelter needs in Baw Du Pha 2, particularly since the monsoon season is fast approaching, said Pierre Peron, spokesperson for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

The May 3 inferno, believed to have been caused by a cooking accident, ripped through the IDP camp near the Rakhine state capital of Sittwe, destroying 49 bamboo longhouses, leaving 392 families without shelter. No deaths were reported but 14 people were injured.

Mr Peron said the governments Relief and Resettlement Department had provided tarpaulins and communal tents which can accommodate about 200 families. However, most of the people affected by the fire have decided to stay with relatives or friends in other parts of the IDP camp that were not damaged, or in makeshift shelters made by themselves, he said.

The World Food Programme has advanced its monthly food allocation and started distributions for the entire camp and surrounding area of about 10,000 people, he said. The authorities have also provided some rice and oil, as well as non-food items such as kitchen sets, mosquito nets and clothes.

Despite these efforts, the current living conditions in the IDP camp are not adequate, nor were they before the fire. The victims of this terrible fire were already living in difficult conditions before this tragedy which has made them even more vulnerable. This fire has only added to their woes, Mr Peron said.





The coastal area near Sittwe is a web of sprawling IDP camps where tens of thousands of stateless Muslims have been confined by the authorities since communal violence erupted across Rakhine State in 2012. Several thousand Rakhine Buddhists live in separate camps.

A Rakhine State official, who asked not to be named, said the homeless from Baw Du Ba 2 needed to be moved to the nearby Ohn Daw Gyi area where there is a Muslim village and other IDP camps. He said that move would be temporary while a solution was worked out with international agencies.

According to the Lutheran World Federation which works in the IDP camp of Ohn Taw Gyi South, many from Baw Du Pa had already been moved to an abandoned market on the edge of Ohn Taw Gyi village. The state-run Global New Light of Myanmar reported on May 4 that 1744 people from 435 households affected by the fire had moved to Ohn Taw Gyi.

When The Myanmar Times visited Baw Du Pa 2 the day after the fire, many people had no shelter, scavenging through the ashes and erecting shanties out of bits of corrugated iron. Some said they had received no food at all that day and had lost their meagre provisions in the blaze.

The UN routinely does not state the ethnicity of the more than 100,000 IDPs who are held in camps across the state with tough restrictions on their movements and limited access to healthcare and education. According to people in Baw Du Ba 2, many there identify themselves as Rohingya, an ethnic term rejected by the Myanmar authorities.
Hundreds of police were deployed yesterday in response to a swelling protest column at the controversial Letpadaung copper mine in Sagaing Region. Villagers are raging at the government for failing to prevent the internationally crticised project from restarting.





Wanbao Mining Company, which is jointly operating the mine along with military-owned Union of Myanmar Economic Holdings Ltd, had officially announced that operations would resume yesterday.

In response, between 200 and 300 villagers slammed the project for violating recommendations made by a parliamentary commission spearheaded by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. The residents of eight villages near the mine took to the street on May 4.

The protest expanded yesterday, threatening to reignite the violence of past Letpadaung clashes when protesters broke through the police phalanxes and three fences  including a galvanised iron blockade  guarding the entrance to the mine area.

This is a murderous and land-grabbing project. Our residents are against this project because it breached the investigation report written by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. We totally disagree with restarting the project, said Letpadaung resident and protester Daw Sandar.

The project has been dogged by clashes, bloody police crackdowns and accusations of environmental degradation. In 2012, police responded to a protest of the mine by using white phosphorous, an internationally prohibited chemical weapon. Scores of protesters, including monks, were left with disfiguring burns.

A 2013 parliamentary inquiry into the attack led by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi recommended that construction should continue if certain conditions were met, such as better transparency and an environmental impact plan.





In 2014, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi accused the government of ignoring the commissions recommendations to improve the mine, and blamed such lack of oversight for the re-emergence of clashes when locals tried to prevent Wanao from fencing off the land.

NLD spokesperson U Nyan Win had told RFA in February that Letpadaung could resume operations only after complete implementation of the recommendations of the inquiry commission.

Daw Sandar said Wanbao has failed to abide by the recommendations on all fronts  including by not providing crop compensation despite a promise to reimburse farmers for their land.

The company restarted the project without public consent, she said.

With the assistance of police, Wanbao initially blocked the protesters from reaching the site by posting barbed wire and gates.

The police have posted barricades but we broke through and now we are in the companys area, said Daw Mar Cho from Tone village.

The villagers pushed their way even further into the compound yesterday, and vowed to keep fighting the company off their land even if it means legal charges.

We will continue to fight them. We will shut down the Letpadaung project, said Daw Mar Cho.

Daw Sandar said the villagers were willing to continue the stand-off for as long as it takes.

Daw Yee Win, a protester from Sede village, said the villagers have submitted a complaint, urging the government to intervene in the project.

The investigation commission said that 1900 acres of land would be returned to the farmers. But the farmers have not been given anything, she said. They make many promises, but then they do as they please.

Daw Sandar said even if compensation is offered, she will not accept anything less than the cancellation of the project. She added that in April, local residents were made ill by chemicals the company began spraying in the area.

The project has no accountability, no EIA and no SIA. We do not agree to sell our land to them, she said, referring to the environmental and social impact assessments.

The Letpadaung copper mine is one of several large Chinese ventures that has stirred controversy and angered locals, and that will test bilateral relations under the NLD.

Translation by Zar Zar Soe and Thiri Min Htun
People displaced by fighting in Kachin State are in urgent need of shelter after heavy rainfall damaged their camps, according to aid groups.





Strong wind and torrential rain caused havoc in 11 IDP camps in Kachin State from April 18, with nine camps located in hard-to-reach or non-government areas, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

In Myitkyina district alone, 600 households or 3000 IDPs are affected, the Kachin Baptist Convention (KBC) told The Myanmar Times.

OCHA said 550 shelter units, as well as water and sanitation infrastructure, kitchen spaces and other communal buildings, were damaged or destroyed. Shelter repairs and reconstructions are being carried out and the distribution of 532 emergency shelters by local NGOs will start in three days to the IDPs, according to the UN agency.

Humanitarian organisations are planning to distribute emergency tents to Maga Yang, Border Post 8 and Pajau camps  located in territory controlled by the Kachin Independence Organisation (KIO).

U Chit Pyay, deputy head for the Myanmar Red Cross in Kachin State, said that the group was still negotiating access to areas under KIO control, but that the IDPs and Refugees Relief Committee (IRRC) was already providing some support.

According to the KBC, four IDP camps in Bhamaw/Bhamo district had also been damaged but the group said it had thus far been unable to assess the extent of the damage.





Immediately after the rains, the KBC and the Karuna Myanmar social service [KMSS] provided support to the IDPs [in Myitkyina district] and collected data about the damage, said Brang Nu, an officer with the KBC.

Brang Nu said K2 million would be needed for building new homes and that reconstruction should start soon, before the start of the monsoon season.

Ma Gan village was the worst affect by the storm. Half the houses in the village were damaged as well as a clinic and several schools, he said.

IPDs said they hoped their houses would be rebuilt quickly, as bad weather continues to affect the area and nights were cold.

Rain also caused destruction in several villages in Kachin State. Floods washed away 95 villages in Chipwe township, according to state mouthpiece The Global New Light of Myanmar. The newspaper reported food shortages but said the Tatmadaws Northern Regional Command and the Myanmar Red Cross were providing aid and conducting rescue operations.

According to the Kachin State government, 10 villages in Tsawlaw township were flooded as well when the banks of the May Kha River overflowed, displacing about 180 households  or 1167 people  and destroying seven bridges.

U Myo Than Oo of the Myanmar Red Cross in Kachin State said that two Lisu villages had been badly affected as many houses were damaged and residents lost 250 mythun, a kind of hill cow.

Using helicopters, the Myanmar Red Cross, the governments Social Welfare and Rehabilitation Department and the Tatmadaws Northern Regional Command have been providing aid  including tents and food  since April 30, U Myo Than Oo said.

We plan to send another 50 tonnes of support, he added.

The UN will soon be providing aid to the area at the request from the Kachin State government.

The UN will be providing emergency food assistance  1.8 metric tonnes of high-energy biscuits  sufficient for 1050 people for one week through a local organisation, said Pierre Peron, spokesperson of OCHA in Myanmar.

The Kachin State government has conducted two airlifts of humanitarian assistance this week and will be conducting further airlifts which will include food assistance provided by the UN, he said.
A fire in South Dagon Industrial Zone (2) last night caused K15 million in damages. The fire, which broke out in a parquet wood factory on on Sittaung street in ward 63, is believed to have been caused by a stray spark from a mosquito coil, which ignited a pile of sawdust. Local fire authorities were able to extinguish the blaze at 00:15am this morning. No one was injured in the fire





''The fire was enormous, but our firemen didn't sustain injuries, save some temporary difficulty breathing," said an official from the Yangon Regional Fire Department.

The fire was rated a Level-4, or regional, incident, meaning all of South Dagon township's fire services were dispatched in order to combat the fire. Yangon Region Security and Management Committee will be meeting with the Fire Department today in order to discuss preparatory measures to prevent similar future incidents in Yangon Region industrial zones. The South Dagon police also announced that they will take action against the night security guard, U Aung Gyi, who is believed to have set the mosquito-retardant.





Translation by Ye Mon. Photos by Zarni Phyo for The Myanmar Times
Parliament is taking steps to undercut the much-derided protest law that has been used to nail activists with the same charge in multiple townships.





The revamped version of the Peaceful Assembly and Procession Law adds a statue of limitations to charges  15 days  and limits to one the number of townships that can file suit for the same protest.

Amyotha Hluttaw National League for Democracy MP U Myat Nyarna Soe, who submitted the proposal to debate the bill, said the revised version makes some amendments to perfect the iteration adopted by the previous government.

He added that the most distinctive feature of the bill is the limitations to the rights to sue.

You cant sue a person in many township courts. The judiciary process will have to take place in the township where the defendant started to breach the law, he said. And there is a limitation to the time a plaintiff can sue. The case must be filed within 15 days of breaching the law. If it is over 15 days, that case is invalid, U Myat Nyarna Soe said.

Student protesters arrested last year during a march to Yangon were hit with over 50 charges, five for each of the 10 townships they had crossed through. Some charge brought against student leaders were nearly 18 months old by the time the notice was delivered.

According to the previous Peaceful Assembly and Procession Law enacted by the previous government, demonstrators must acquire a permit. The new version cuts back the requirement to informing the relevant township authorities 48 hours in advance.

The persons organising the demonstration shall inform the authorities about where they will assembly, where they are marching to, including the townships they will start at, end at and walk through. And they need to submit a copy of this information to all townships included along their procession, U Myat Nyarna Soe said.





Despite the revisions, the Peaceful Assembly and Procession Law continues to focus on monitoring political activists, however. A police officer not lower than second lieutenant must take charge of monitoring each protest to ensure no breach from the state agenda occurs.

The accompanying police officer is intended to protect the protesters and to watch over them to make sure they do not break the regulations, he said. If regulations are breached, the leader will be told to stop such actions. If the protesters dont follow, the township head will be alerted and the police will disperse the crowd.

Previous police attempts to disperse crowds have ended in violent clashes with protesters, including at Letpadan where numerous human rights groups accused the police of using excessive force.

The revised bill also reduces potential punishments of protesters. Those who disturb the peaceful assembly could be subject to one years imprisonment and a K100,000 fine. Those who hold protests without previously informing officials could face three months imprisonment, a K30,000 fine, or both.

Section 18 of the current peaceful assembly law is one of the most frequently utilised to arrest and imprison political activists, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners.

The NLD has vowed to cease arresting prisoners of conscience and free those who remain behind bars.

Translation by Thiri Min Htun
A Nationalist politician who was defeated at the ballot box is now jailed, facing charges for defaming Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, President U Htin Kyaw and Senior General Min Aung Hlaing.





Outspoken leader of the Peace and Diversity Party U Nay Myo Wai was arrested on May 4 for suggesting improper relations with Daw Aung San Suu Kyi had helped Senior General Min Aung Hlaing and President Htin Kyaw achieve power.

Despite a visit by his family yesterday, U Nay Myo Wai remains behind bars, according to police.

U Nay Myo Wai was arrested while driving on the Yangon-Mandalay Highway after a complaint was filed against him by a member of the Myanmar Teachers Union. He was taken to the Pathein township jail and charged with defamation under the Telecommunications Law, Police Lieutenant Colonel Win Myint Tun confirmed.

U Nay Myo Wais family yesterday demanded to know why they were not given a chance to speak with him when they visited the jail. The police officer allegedly told them it was because the case directly concerns the government, according to Ko Win Ko Ko Latt, leader of the Myanmar Nationalist Network.

The police say they he posted defamation on his account. I asked the officer, Where is the proof? he said.

Shortly after the arrest, the Peace and Diversity Party released a statement accusing the government of trying to defame the party and take a blow at them while they were trying to organise demonstrations related to the Rohingya.

The statement also said that the governments arrest amounted to a smear campaign in defence of the Rohingya  who the previous government officially called Bengalis  but added that it would not take the wind out of planned protests. The group has pledge to remount a protest column outside the US embassy in Yangon if the government does release an official statement about the official terminology for Muslim residents of Rakhine State.





According to section 66(d) of the Telecommunications Act, defamation is punishable by up to three years imprisonment, a fine or both.
Evictions of unofficial tenants, increasingly common over the past few years as the lure of jobs has drawn people from the countryside to Yangon, are likely to continue even as the new regional government takes over, experts say.





Most of the countrys squatters are concentrated around the fringes of the city, often ringing the industrial zones. As Yangons economy picked up with the country opening to foreign investors, the city became a magnet for job-seekers hoping to escape rural poverty. But unable to afford the citys official rent, the labourers driving the economic boom came into frequent clashes with the police.

Under the previous government, the squatter problem was dealt with by force. But we need to see what the new minister wants to do about this, said U Min Htain, director general of the Urban and Housing Development Department of the construction ministry.

National League for Democracy MPs and Chief Minister U Phyo Min Thein have vowed to alleviate the citys housing crisis and squatter woes without the use of police, but they have yet to announce any tangible plans.

U Kyaw Soe, former minister for forestry and energy, told The Myanmar Times that the outgoing government had tried to eliminate squatting as much as possible, but there were still some hard cases left to deal with. He defended forced evictions, which typically use large numbers of civilians, as necessary for maintaining law and order.

Affordable housing options are limited in the extreme: there are only 1200 apartments under construction at the low-rent Mahabandoola housing project, which will charge tenants K30,000 per month.

But complicating the already tenuous squatter situation is the emergence of a secondary market in squatter accommodation, under which enterprising hut-dwellers sell or rent their space to those who arrive later.





During evictions, we often observed that lots had been marked off with bamboo sticks and gunny twine. These people werent squatting: They were reserving territory, which is quite different. We have to continue evicting squatters from places where squatters shouldnt be, U Kyaw Soe said.

Deputy urban housing director U Min Aung Aye confirmed that some squatters had taken to leasing or selling their shanties, driven by business interests.

In Dagon Seikkan, there are up to 900 huts that are built by business squatters, he said. When we announced our Kyan Sit Min housing project in Hlaing Tharyar township, about 300 huts appeared on the site overnight. Speculators are paying the squatters to move there.

No one knows the exact number of squatters in the city  the urban housing department has estimated that nearly 2 million of the citys 5.21 million residents are landless. According to official statistics, at least 80,000 families are living on state and privately owned land in Yangon Region. Most of them are in Hlaing Tharyar township, where they cluster around the garment factories.

U Kyi Soe, head of Hlaing Tharyar township City Development Committee, said, Since 2015, ward residents have been telling us about new huts being built. We dont want to blame people who have nowhere else to live, but we have to do something about squatters who lease or sell their huts, especially when they are being encouraged to do so by other interests, he said.

During the last week of January, the Yangon Region government evicted families from more than 200 huts in Dagon Seikkan township and more than 400 from the Pyinmabin industrial zone in Mingaladon township where the land was leased to military-owned Myanmar Economic Holdings Company Ltd in 1993. The government has also issued written warnings of its intent to clear illegal residents from Shwe Lin Ban industrial zone in Hlaing Tharyar township, home to most of the countrys factories, but has not yet followed through on its threats.

Since Cyclone Nargis struck in 2008, weve had nowhere to live. We built a hut here. Many of the original squatters have gone back to their villages and sold or rented their space to newcomers, said Ko Aye Naing, a temporary resident of Shwe Lin Ban.

You can buy a hut for K300,000 to K500,000, or rent from K15,000 to K20,000. The city wont let you build new huts. Some people may be reserving space here, but not many, he said.

The issue is likely to serve as a test for military-NLD relations, as the military controls the police force and appointed the regional minister for security and border affairs.

Though of relatively recent origin, the solution to the problem must be long-term, said Yangon City Development Committee member U Khin Maung Tint.

Some squatters are genuine, some are not. Aggressive clearance has helped reduce the number of squatter tents, but the problem wont go away, he said. Part of the problem is the lack of job opportunities in the states and regions of origin.

Former minister U Kyaw Soe said it was time for the government to draw up an implementation plan to deal with the humanitarian, legal, economic and other complexities of the squatter situation.

Squatters dont just need homes. They also need jobs, he said.

Translation by Kyawt Darly Lin and Khant Lin Oo
India is currently facing its worst water crisis in years, with an estimated 330 million people  one-quarter of its population  affected by severe drought. Ethiopia is also dealing with its worst drought in decades, which has already contributed to the failure of many crops, creating food shortages that now affect around a tenth of the population. Under such circumstances, the risk of tension over resources is high.





In the past, droughts of this severity have led to conflict and even wars between neighbouring communities and states. One of the first in recorded history erupted around 4500 years ago, when the city-state of Lagash  nestled between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in modern-day Iraq  diverted water from its neighbour, Umma. Competition for water sparked violent incidents in ancient China and fuelled political instability in Pharaonic Egypt.

Today, actual wars between countries over water resources are uncommon, owing to improved dialogue and cross-border cooperation. But, within countries, competition for scarce water is becoming a more common source of instability and conflict, especially as climate change increases the severity and frequency of extreme weather events. As the World Bank Group details in our new report High and Dry: Climate Change, Water and the Economy, limited and erratic water availability reduces economic growth, induces migration, and ignites civil conflict, which fuels further potentially destabilising migration.

This cycle has been apparent in some regions for decades. In Sub-Saharan Africa, for example, periods of low rainfall over the last 20 years have often been followed by spikes in violence, civil war, and regime change. And in many parts of rural Africa and India, a decline in rainfall has acted as a push factor for internal or cross-border migration to more water-abundant places, often cities, creating new social pressures as the numbers of displaced people grow.

In our report, we predict that water scarcity could act as a conflict-risk multiplier, fueling cycles of resource-driven conflict, violence and displacement, especially in already water-stressed regions, such as the Middle East and the Sahel in Africa, where agriculture remains an important source of employment.

Fortunately, there is a way to avoid the cycle of poverty, deprivation and conflict. If countries take action now to implement effective water-management policies and practices, backed by well-designed incentives, they can not only reverse the slide toward water scarcity, but also raise their rates of economic growth by as much as 6 percentage points per year.

One water-scarce country that has taken action to improve its resilience to climate change is Morocco. In years of low rainfall, Moroccos river-basin authorities give the lowest priority to crop irrigation, the largest consumer of the countrys water. But, of course, agriculture remains critical to feed the population. So the government has been investing in modernising irrigation infrastructure to provide farmers with more efficient water services that enable them to adjust more easily to variations in water availability.





The Moroccan authorities are also working to improve groundwater governance, to avoid over-extraction. Farmers engaged in rain-fed agriculture receive support that helps them to make better use of rainfall  such as through the introduction of climate-resilient practices like direct seeding  resulting in higher yields than traditional practices produce during dry years.

The message from Morocco  and from our report  is that, with smart water policies and interventions, countries can ensure a climate-resilient, water-secure future. At the core of effective water-management strategies will be improved planning for water-resource allocation, the adoption of incentives to increase efficiency, investment in infrastructure for improved water security, and better urban planning, risk management, and citizen engagement. The recently created International High-level Panel on Water, comprising 10 heads of state, will be promoting precisely this agenda to foster better water management globally.

Of course, not every country will follow the same path in safeguarding a water-secure future. But, as countries develop their strategies, they can look to one another for ideas and insights into what works  and what doesnt. With strong and prudent action, governments around the world can cope effectively with the natural limitations and uncertainties affecting water resources, ensuring that their people and economies are prepared for what might lie ahead.

 Project Syndicate

Laura Tuck is the World Bank Group vice president for sustainable development.
The most successful Ghanaian traditional artiste,King Ayisoba has shared photos of his late mum's burial.

King Ayisoba who confirmed the death of his late mother called Akupoka Apoore to hotfmonlinegh.com on Wednesday, was spotted performing whiles the mortal remains of his late mother is being wrapped in a local mat and carried on the shoulders of two well built men to the cemetery for interment.

"This is how we bury the dead in my hometown Bongo-soe.we don't use coffins. We wrap the dead body in a local mat which is called " sorngo" in our local language then we bury it...this is pure culture",Ayisoba told hotfmonlinegh.com

King Ayisoba's mother ,Akupoka Apoore who was 85yrs old died on 2nd May,2016 after a short illness at home after being discharged from the Bongo district hospital in the Upper-East Region.

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VIAM Africa, has called on the Electoral Commission to consider extending the days for the limited voter registration exercise on the campuses of the various universities in Ghana.

The education think tank is worried about the bottlenecks students are facing in the ongoing voter registration exercise especially in major university campuses across the country, with fears a large chunk of eligible student voters may be disenfranchised.

A statement released and signed by the Executive Director of VIAM Africa, Dr Prince Armah said students constitute a large constituency of the voter population whose views and political choices cannot and should not be curtailed.

"We think that the students voice must be amplified and unmistakably heard in the 2016 General Election. There are over one million students in Ghana, most of whom are eligible to vote, meaning that as a voting constituency they are able to massively affect the outcome of Novembers General Election, the statement said.

The following is the full statement

VIAM Africa calls for Extension of Voter Registration on Campuses

VIAM Africa Centre for Education and Social Policy has observed keenly the difficulties students of the various tertiary institutions are going through in respect of the limited registration exercise of the Electoral Commission (EC) of Ghana. Even though the problem appears to be prevalent across the educational institutions in the country including the second cycle schools, it is very profound at the various university campuses. The University of Ghana, University of Cape Coast, University of Education, Winneba and the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology have one centre each to register new voters regardless of the huge number of potential registrants. Coupled with this problem is the fact that, the machines are too slow resulting in long queues on the various campuses at a time the students are writing their end of second semester examination. This could potentially discourage them from getting their names on the voters register and consequently get disenfranchised on November 7, 2016.

As advocates of the voice of students ahead of the 2016 General Election, we wish to remind the EC that students are key stakeholders in Ghanas democracy. We think that the students voice must be amplified and unmistakably heard in the 2016 General Election. There are over one million students in Ghana, most of whom are eligible to vote, meaning that as a voting constituency they are able to massively affect the outcome of Novembers General Election. This can only be achieved Anchorwhen eligible students are duly registered. Therefore, any action that seeks to disenfranchise them amounts to impeding their voice on various issues including what education and social policies they might want for their future. It is from this background that we find it very worrying to understand that several students may be unable to register to vote due to the highlighted problems on the various university campuses.

VIAM Africa therefore urges the EC to acknowledge the needs of students by setting up additional registration centres on the various campuses for the limited voters registration exercise. The Commission should equally consider extending the registration period on these campuses for at least a week to enable many students to get registered.

VIAM Africa Centre for Education and Social Policy is one of Africas leading progressive think tanks which provide independent reviews of education and social policies in Sub-Saharan Africa. Our purpose is to conduct and promote research into, and the shaping of public opinion in crime and victimization, education and social stratification, education and climate change, education finance, governance, gender issue, corporate social responsibility and social policy (health & social care, poverty, welfare and social work).

Signed:

Dr. Prince Armah

Executive Director
The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) today welcomed the arrival of a U.S. vessel carrying a food contribution worth approximately US$37 million from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

WFP will use the shipment of 47,500 metric tons of sorghum, a Sudanese staple, to cover the needs of nearly 200,000 South Sudanese refugees for five months and more than a million displaced people in Darfur for four months.

The United .States Embassy Charge d'Affaires a.i. Benjamin Moeling and WFP Sudan Representative and Country Director Adnan Khan were both in Port Sudan in the Red Sea state to welcome the ship's arrival. They also saw firsthand the unloading and bagging of sorghum at the port.

"The Obama Administration, working with WFP, is committed to ensuring that fewer people in Sudan go to bed hungry. We cannot and will not ignore the pressing and immediate needs of people who are affected by conflict or drought who continue to face severe food insecurity and malnutrition. We remain committed to helping vulnerable people in Sudan and urge all parties to end the conflicts.,, said Charge D'Affaires a.i. Moeling." As a leader in relief efforts, the United States continues to be WFP's long-standing partner and largest single donor to Sudan over the years, contributing almost half of WFP's yearly requirements for its operations in the country. From 2010 to 2015 alone, USAID contributed more than US$1.4 billion to WFP operations in Sudan, enabling it to respond to the needs of food-insecure people across the country, especially those who have been displaced by the recurring conflict.

"This generous contribution from the Government of the United States and its people comes at a time when we are looking for additional resources to meet the needs created by new displacements in Darfur as well as the influx of South Sudanese refugees. It also demonstrates our strong relations and common goal of serving the vulnerable people of Sudan," said Khan.

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06.05.2016 LISTEN

The Coalition of Domestic Election Observers (CODEO) continues to observe the on-going limited voter registration exercise initiated by the Electoral Commission, which began last Thursday April 28, 2016.

Based on reports from CODEO observers stationed in registration centers across the country, the Coalition has noted disturbing developments at some registration centers, which could mar the integrity of the registration exercise if left unchecked. These developments include, but are not limited, to the following:

Tension and Violent Incidents

CODEO observed incidents of extreme tension and violence at some registration centers, mainly caused by and often involving party agents. One such incident took place at the Kukuom Anglican Primary School Registration Center in the Kukuom- Achiase Registration Center in the Asunafo North District of the Brong Ahafo Region on Friday April 29, 2016 over the eligibility of a female applicant. The CODEO observer reported that cutlasses, stones, cudgels and other offensive weapons were brandished, wounding one person, who was eventually taken to the hospital. The incident started with verbal exchanges between the District Chief Executive for the area (who happened to be at the center) and the NPP agents posted the same center over the age of a registration applicant.

Presence of Unauthorized Persons around Registration Centers and the Use of Self-Appointed Guarantors

CODEO observers reported seeing unauthorized party supporters and members of the public loitering around registration centers in different parts of the country. Some of them have closely positioned themselves around registration centers, with the sole purpose of serving as guarantors for registrants who share party affinity. For instance, at the Accra Girls Secondary School Registration Center in the Mamobi East Electoral Area in Ayawaso in the Greater Accra region today, Thursday May 5, CODEO observers spotted NDC-branded vehicles loaded with people who appeared to be serving as guarantors for would-be registrants.. At the R/C 2 Hwidiem Osuodumgya A JHS Registration Centre in the Santeagya Electoral Area in the Asutifi South District of the Brong Ahafo Region, unauthorized persons had gathered around the registration centre ostensibly to vouch for applicants.

Abuse of Registration Procedures

CODEO observers also reported instances where Registration Officials allowed people to endorse guarantor forms early in the morning and depart from the center, even before registration had commenced. These forms were subsequently used to support the registration of applicants. This situation was observed, for example, at the T. B. Awakorme Registration Center in the Avoeme West Electoral Area in the Ketu South District of the Volta Region.

Densely Populated Areas CODEO

observers reported the inadequacy of registration centers in some densely populated areas, thereby hampering the ability of some potentially eligible persons to register. At the Legon Coalition of Domestic Election Observers (CODEO) CONTACT Mr. Albert Arhin, CODEO National Coordinator +233 (0) 24 474 6791 / (0) 20 822 1068 Secretariat: +233 (0) 244 350 266/ 0277 744 777 Email:[email protected]: Website: www.codeoghana.org

STATEMENT ON THE VOTER REGISTER

Hall Registration Center in the Legon Electoral Area in Ayawaso in the Greater Accra region for example, CODEO observers reported long queues of hundreds of people waiting to register. With the registration team capturing an average of about 100 persons a day, the Coalition is afraid that the EC may deprive some otherwise eligible persons from registering before the end of the exercise.

Misunderstanding of the Challenge Procedure

CODEO observers also reported of instances of party agents and party activists engaging in verbal exchanges and violent confrontation over the eligibility of registrants, even after a challenge form has been filled in respect of the registrants. At the R/C Primary School Registration Center in Banda Ahenkro in the Banda District of the Brong Ahafo Region, for instance, NPP party agents challenge against some 3 registrants provoked a violent confrontation with suspected NDC activists in the vicinity. The police was however able to intervene and restore calm at the registration center.

Commendations

CODEO wishes to commend the security services for managing to bring under control the tension, chaos and violent incidents at some registration centers. CODEO urges the security agencies to intensify their surveillance of registration centers, especially those with a history of violence.

Recommendations

1. CODEO reiterates its call on political parties, particularly the NDC and the NPP, to restrain their respective agents and activists from engaging in disruptive and violent behaviour at registration centers.

2.CODEO calls on the EC and its monitoring teams to pay close attention to the conduct of registration officials posted at the various centers.

3. CODEO implores the EC to increase the supply of registration centres in denselypopulated areas of the country to give all eligible citizens the opportunity to register to vote in the 2016 polls.

4.Finally, CODEO urges the security agencies to apply the law rigorously in dealing with anyone who engage in registration-related criminal offence.

CODEOs observation of the registration exercise is made possible with the generous support of the American people through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

Signed:

Albert Arhin, National Coordinator, CODEO

Dated: Thursday, May 5, 2016
Esinam Afi Seade

06.05.2016 LISTEN

ExLA Group Gender Programme wishes to congratulate Miss Esinam Afi Seade on her election to the high office of President of the Student Representative Council (SRC) of the nations premier university in a keenly contested race with seven other male counterparts that was decided by a run-off. Our records reveals, her election makes her the second female to be duly elected to occupy the seat of the highest office of University of Ghana at the student level since its inception in 1948.

By this congratulatory message, we wish to emphasise our strong belief that women leadership is essential not only for the development of individual women, but eminent for Africas development. A strong and clear leadership is critical to inspire citizens and achieve positive developmental changes globally. While women play a number of informal (and unrecognised) leadership roles, it is obvious that they are faced with diverse challenges in their efforts to participate in formal leadership.

We are confident that Miss Esinam Seades courage and effort will inspire a lot more young ladies to take up the challenge to avail themselves for formal leadership as Ghana fully embraces Sustainable Development Goal five (SDG Goal 5) which focuses on Women's Empowerment in the light of ensuring women's full and effective participation and equal opportunities for leadership at all levels of decision-making; politics, economics, academia and public life among others.

We want to encourage young women to believe in the capabilities in contributing significantly to African developmental agenda as indicated in AUs Agenda 2063.

EGGP through the YOUNG AFRICAN WOMEN CONGRESS (YAWC) 2016, seek to empower more young women to take up higher leadership at various levels of human endeavour. The maiden edition of YAWC comes off from 4th  8th July, 2016, Accra  Ghana under the theme: The Modern Woman Leader; Revising the Status Quo. We call on all young women between the ages of 20 and 31 years to join us in revising the status quo.

We wish Miss Seade the very best in her new office as President of the SRC of University of Ghana. We hope she utilises this opportunity to its optimal.

Signed

Anna Nyarko Adjaloo

Communications Officer, ExLA Group Gender Programme.

[email protected] / [email protected]

+233 205 692 816
The Chairperson of the African Union Commission, Dr. Nkosazana-Dlamini Zuma, received today, at the African Union Headquarters, the newly appointed Deputy Joint Special Representative (DJSR) of the African Union-United Nations Hybrid Operation (UNAMID), Ambassador Kingsley Mamabolo. The Chairperson welcomed the new DJSR and commended him for accepting this new appointment as well as reassuring him of the support of the African Union Commission in the course of discharging his duties. The Chairperson encouraged him to continue the efforts of improving the relations between the UNAMID and the Government of the Sudan in order to create an environment that is conducive towards assisting the resolution of the challenges faced by the people of Sudan in Darfur.

On his part, Ambassador Mamabolo thanked the Chairperson of the Africa Union Commission for the confidence bestowed up on him by both the African Union and the United Nations. He pledged to work diligently in the discharge of his new duties.

Ambassador Mamabolo succeeds Abiodun Oluremi Bashua of Nigeria. He brings vast experience to UNAMID, having previously served in the South African Foreign Service for over two decades. In his last post, he served as his country's permanent representative to the United Nations in New York. He is scheduled to commence work in his new assignment upon arrival in Sudan on 4 May 2016.
06.05.2016 LISTEN

The Ghanaian society is becoming a very complex society with very challenging economic, social, cultural and political problems. A time where the solution rightly lies within our actions and inactions.

Unfortunately, vast majority of us are either corrupt, deviants and absolutely unpatriotic. Such unspeakable behaviors of unscrupulous people in our society continuously dwarf every single efforts made to rejuvenate, reconstruct and transform our almost collapsed society hitherto with very rich varied Socio-cultural and economic opportunities. I don't know who is solely responsible for this retrogression. The society is becoming darker and nobody can see farther than their tents. Is it that we fail to see or we see and pretend?

Invariably, the media which is widely considered to be the forth arm of government was indeed a watch dog and had contributed in no mean ways to the development of our democracy. The media is in fact, the light of our democracy. Our country has occupied an enviable democratic credential partly because of a hitherto vibrant and professional media which focuses on mirroring and exposing the evils of society.

Interestingly, since 1996, there has been proliferation of media house across the length and breath of this country and as such, one had expected an appreciable increase in media vigilante, reportage and better scrutiny of the actions and inactions of individuals, groups and institutions. Ironically, it appears the proliferation of media houses is rather the cause of our numerous woes of our country. Is the media no longer a mirror of society?

To me, the media in recent times has not lived up to expectations and we must be bold to say it. Indeed, the media as it is should be critically examined or it will one day give us pain, agony and torture as a country. We live in a country where known rich individuals establish media houses for their own parochial interest without recourse to the core functions of the media as well as media professionalism.

No wonder, some media practitioners here in this country have no fundamental knowledge about media work/ journalism. Media professionalism is thrown to the dogs whilst "media convenience" is cherished most and practised.

Very sad indeed!

The media is responsible for the political cacophony that is producing virtually nothing but divisiveness, fabrications, low productivity and particularly breeding corruption, producing bad leaders and some times, creating avoidable fear and panic among the ordinary citizen.

Tune in the radio stations in the morning and listen to the level of insults some paid propagandist across the political divides rain on one another in the name of making analyses of pertinent national issues. Why can't we rely on people with the expertise to give their vast experience and knowledge on emerging contemporary impediments?

I think the National Communication Authority must do something urgent to critically and truly regulate all the media stations strictly by the codes and ethics of media practice. Is it the case that some media houses are so powerful than the very laws that established them? Definitely No. Most of our media reportage are actually below the standard practice. The media outlets who suppose to provide the general public with the facts and reality underground, rather poison the general public with distortions, fabrications and sometimes propaganda. We often blame politicians for the fallen standard of society but I think the media is rather worse.

It is very pathetic during the electioneering years where, some journalists turn themselves into spokes persons for individuals and political parties. I even guess some media stations are solely established to pursue the political agenda of known political parties. It must be a concern for all.

I think we are in a very critical political season and all media stations and people who have the privilege to using any, must measure their utterances in any media discourse because vulgar language and unprofessional reportage have the propensity of throwing this nation into chaos. We must learn lessons from what caused a political genocide in Rwanda.

Ghana is the only country we have and it behoves on us to protect it jealously. The Holy scripture tells us that the power of death is in the tongue. Let's join hands to ensure sanity in our public discourse and rise against unprofessional media reportage because the results could be very devastating to our very survival.

Denis Andaban

Shall return.......

[email protected]

0549734023.
06.05.2016 LISTEN

The Executive Director of the Association of Ghana Industries Seth Twum-Akwaboah has called for a policy that will ensure a reliable and adequate supply of raw materials to Agro processing companies.

This he believes will facilitate a smooth production chain process and guarantee a competitive market for farmers.

The ACI Executive Director said this at the launch of the MADE programme, an initiative to improve the incomes and resilience of poor farmers and small-scale rural entrepreneurs in the SADA zone, with a focus on the agricultural value chains.

The program is being implemented by a local NGO in the Northern Region, Nathan and Associates, with funding support of 14.8 million pounds by DFID.

Speaking at the launch, Mr Twum-Akwaboah also called for a total re-examination of the countrys agricultural policy especially in the north.

He said industry responds better when there is a deliberate structured support policy by government and cited the cassava beer as one of the success stories as far as the arrangement between government and the brewery industry is concerned.

Mr Twum-Akwaboah said the partnership is yielding results because lots of farmers are growing cassava.

On the other hand he was saddened by the turn of events in the Pwalugu Tomatoes factory.

A lot of money was spent in renovating this factory and yet we are unable to have all year round production because raw material production has been a challenge, for industry to strife for agro processing to do well the linkage between agriculture and industry is critical he said.

While acknowledging the crucial role played by agriculture in the development of the country, the ACI Executive Director said there is the need to link industry and agriculture to facilitate speedy growth and development.

He said about 71 percent of the economically active working population in the north is engaged in agriculture which makes it critical for a policy direction to support agric in the area.

Mr Twum-Akwaboah reiterated the need to link industry and agriculture which is the most critical sector of the countrys development.

He said processers have had to organise out-growers to feed their factories because there do not have raw materials.

He said the future of agriculture in the north demands that new entrants bring in new ideas and enthusiasm to the industry.

Mr Twum-Akwaboah said every effort to bridge the gap between the north and the south should be welcomed.

To resolve problems with the agriculture sector, Mr Twum-Akwaboah said there is the need to revisit some of the barriers that have stifled growth in the sector.

He expressed worry that the two banks established to support agriculture have all become commercial and their portfolio for lending to agric continues to dwindle and hoped the situation will change.
President John Dramani Mahama has been outlining several interventions by his administration which he said have resulted in the creation of hundreds of jobs for Ghanaians.

Addressing staff and students of the University of Cape Coast (UCC) as part of his Accounting to the People tour of the Central Region, the President announced several employment opportunities created by government in various sectors of the economy.

He indicated that a project to achieve the production of 20 million broilers to reduce the importation of poultry products by 40 percent by the end of this year has begun.

This will save the economy about $150 million per annum in poultry exports and this has created 8,150 direct and indirect jobs for poultry farmers, he said.

A similar project in rice production has succeeded in cutting down our rice imports from $392.3 million in 2013 to $215.23 million in 2014, he added.

He said his administrations direct support to local pharmaceutical entities to the tune of 51 million is also expected to reduce the countrys pharmaceutical imports.

To cater for the needs of basic school pupils, President Mahama said the Kumasi Shoe Factory is producing footwear for school children across the country as well as the security services.

The factory he said is already employing about 200 people.

He added that the savanna cement factory at Buipe has also employed 2000 young people to work at the factory.
An official of the Electoral Commission at Tamale in the Northern region Jocelyn Techi has accused the ruling National Democratic Congress of attempting to register minors in the ongoing limited voters registration exercise in the area.

The situation has created chaos at the Sakasaka registration center, Starr News' Eliasu Tanko reported Friday.

According to the EC official, members of the NDC who are pushing to register the minors are also threatening to beat up agents of the NPP who are protesting their action.

Speaking to Starr News, Ms. Techi said the action by members of the ruling party is distracting affairs at the polling center.

The challenge here is the minors they are registering, its too bad. They come with a minor to register and when you try to challenge, they come with a quarrel that if you dont give the card to the person they will beat you up. Its so bad... at the end of the day, people will come and plead that they need the card.

There is this man who has been sitting here, he will keep calm and when the day ends, he will plead and take all the cards that were challenged and distribute it to them. He is making everything difficult for us. So they are making our work difficult for us, especially the NDC agents, their chairmen and executives, she stated.

So far, 60,000 individuals have been registered at the center with 900 forms challenged.

The ten-day limited registration exercise is scheduled to end on Sunday. It is unclear if the EC will extend the date despite the numerous concerns raised by the political parties.
06.05.2016 LISTEN

First off, "There is a difference between being poor and being broke. Broke is temporary, and poor is eternal," according to Robert T. Kiyosaki's rich dad in 'Rich Dad, Poor Dad.' Well, I am probably broke at the moment yet I am filthy rich in my thinking. Most people still can't fathom out why I exude an eccentric spirit even as a typical African, especially regarding matters of success.

My colleagues in our university also wonder why I am not engrossed in my programme of study in accounting, management and economics. In fact, I defy the odds in my everyday life on our campus which has a rarely tense atmosphere. But I usually respond in defiance by saying, "Business isn't about what you learn in class. It's all about passion, innovation and excellence."

I remember vividly just yesterday when my good friend, Augustine Amponsah and I were walking to our examination centre to write a highly problematic paper in our university. I suddenly saw an ash Toyota Tundra and I told Austin, "Look at the $85000 car. I'll surely own one soon." Interestingly, my mates here on campus learn hard to get a first class, but I am smartly educating my soul on how to amass wealth with my inalienable passion. I do not buy into the primitive philosophy that schooling is a true guarantee to become very prosperous. Education; lifelong learning regarding business, innovation, wealth and success; will make a man wealthy, influential and wise.

Moreover, "Money is one form of power. But what is more powerful is financial education. Money comes and goes, but if you have the education about how money works, you gain power over it and can begin building wealth," Robert T. Kiyosaki declared in 'Rich Dad, Poor Dad.' That is why I have informally filled my mindset with rare financial principles and steadily planning my way to incredible affluence. And I tell people that I am destined to be worth multimillions of dollars primarily as an author by establishing a writing empire in the world. Oh come on, you read it right; believe it. So I do not tolerate laziness, mediocrity and timidity in the pursuit of my priceless dream.

Also, many Africans merely go to school to study hard and get better grades yet they end up being poor or financially constrained in life. Why? Such people are lazy to say the least; I am sorry though. Roland Ofori recently wrote that, "A lazy person isn't someone who avoids toiling in the sun, but rather someone who avoids stretching his mind and imagination to tap into the innumerable wealth and resources available to change his life for the better." Yes, the young people of Africa must wise up today and aspire to unthinkable greatness on the world stage. For me, I am building my capacity, gathering resources, starting with whatever little I have, and working towards excellence, as Kojo Oppong Nkrumah once taught.

Source: sirarticle.blogspot.com
06.05.2016 LISTEN

SANTA MONICA, Calif., May 6 - (UPI/GNA) - In a sudden about-face, former Mexican president Vicente Fox has apologized for making derogatory and profane comments about Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump earlier this year, and even extended an invitation to go south of the border.

In an interview with Breitbart News, the former leader partially buried the hatchet that he used to beat Trump over the head about the candidate's plans to have a wall built on Mexico's border with the United States.

In February, Fox slammed the billionaire's plans to build the wall, and have the Mexican government pay for it, and called Trump "ignorant," "crazy," and "nasty."

Trump subsequently responded by promising that "the wall just got 10 feet taller" and asked for Fox to apologize. Thursday, he did.

"I apologize. Forgiveness is one of the greatest qualities that human beings have, is the quality of a compassionate leader," Fox said. "You have to be humble. You have to be compassionate. You have to love thy neighbor, love your nation, love the world."

"I'm humble enough [to be a] compassionate leader. If I offended you, I'm sorry. But what about the other way around?" he added.

The former Mexican leader continued by saying that, if elected, Trump could likely use some help with various issues like trade.

"I don't think he should follow the strategy of attacking others, offending others, to get to his purpose. There are other ways and means of doing it," He said. "I invite him to come to Mexico and to see what Mexico is all about.

"I can convince him to think intelligently."

Despite the apology, Fox didn't entirely backtrack with regard to a possible Trump administration.

"He's a false prophet. He is proposing ideas that will not work," he told Bloomberg. "He's not presenting things in the right context."

"We have been offended by his language, but mostly we are worried about his thinking" he added.

As of Thursday afternoon, Trump had not publicly responded to Fox's remarks or invitation.

Since opening his campaign for president, Trump has been particularly outspoken about immigration. While stating that he supports Mexican Americans, he put some people off by calling for the massive wall and implying that porous border security allows "rapists" and "murderers" to cross from Mexico into the United States.

He further angered some advocates by later stating that all Muslims should be temporarily banned from entering the United States until the government's fight against terrorism is under control.

GNA
06.05.2016 LISTEN

WASHINGTON, ACCRA, May 6 - (UPI/GNA) - Even though Donald Trump has the 2016 Republican nomination all but locked up, the party's closest member to the presidency said Thursday he can't yet put himself in the billionaire's corner.

U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan acknowledged Thursday Trump's accomplishment in winning the GOP race, but said he was "not ready" to formally endorse the controversial candidate.

"I'm just not ready to do that at this point," he told CNN. "I'm not there right now."

The Wisconsin congressman has previously said he will support whoever emerged victorious from the party's presidential race -- but, at the same time, he has often clashed with Trump over ideologies or rhetoric from the outspoken real estate magnate.

"I don't want to underplay what he accomplished, [but] we hope that our nominee aspires to be Lincoln and Reaganesque," Ryan said Thursday, adding that he prefers a candidate who "appeals to a vast majority of Americans."

If Trump ultimately receives the official Republican nomination, which appears inevitable, it's likely that Ryan would at some point back his bid for the White House. However, his reluctance to immediately fall in-line with Trump's campaign in the absence of any remaining GOP challengers is a stark indicator of the divisiveness that currently exists within the conservative party -- a dynamic that's most certainly not lost on Ryan.

"I think what is required is that we unify this party," he said. "I think the bulk of the burden on unifying the party will have to come from our presumptive nominee."

Trump's path to the GOP nomination was finally cleared on Wednesday when Ohio Gov. John Kasich became the last contender to drop out of the race. Kasich's exit came hours after a similar departure by Texas Sen. Ted Cruz after Trump easily won the Indiana primary and represented the party's only chance to take back the White House in November.

Ryan indicated Thursday that he may eventually come around regarding Trump's campaign, saying he hopes he will want to endorse the official GOP nominee at some point, but only after all the burning questions are extinguished.

"I think conservatives want to know: Does he share our values and our principles?" He asked. "There are lots of questions that conservatives, I think, are going to want answers to, myself included."

"Things will be fine," Trump said Wednesday. "I'm not running for president to make things unstable for the country."

Ryan's stance, though, is more reluctant than that of other Republican leaders -- including Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell and former candidates Ben Carson, Scott Walker, Bobby Jindal and Chris Christie -- who endorsed Trump not long after Tuesday's win in Indiana.

An unconventional and highly controversial candidate, though, Trump has proven to be anything but a harmonious choice among the party elite. With hopes to deny Trump the nod, some have encouraged what would amount to a political revolt at the Republican National Convention this summer in Cleveland, where Ryan will serve as chairman.

Additionally, some Trump opponents pitched a scenario earlier this year that would have Ryan effectively "drafted" into the race -- a prospect the house speaker rejected multiple times. In fact, he expressly stated that he wouldn't enter the race under any circumstance -- including, apparently, one in which Trump is in the GOP driver's seat.

"Count me out," he stated bluntly last month. "I should not be considered. Period."

So divided is Ryan's party over Trump carrying its flag, former Republican presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush have each said they won't support his bid -- official nominee or not.

"I understand that Americans are angry and frustrated. But we do not need someone in the Oval Office who mirrors and inflames our anger and frustration," the younger Bush said in February.

The party's candidate in 2012, Mitt Romney, has also refrained from endorsing Trump. Ryan was Romney's running mate four years ago.

Since his election to the speaker post in October, Ryan has been viewed as a great unifying force for the Republican Party. As House speaker, he is one of Congress' top leaders -- and at No. 2 in the presidential line of succession, after the vice president, he is presently the GOP's closest member to physically occupying the Oval Office.

Trump, though, is clearly working to rehabilitate his controversial image, which stems from numerous outspoken opinions made in the past -- some of which were viewed by critics as derogatory, sexist and even racist. The businessman, however, has always refuted such accusations.

"The best taco bowls are made in Trump Tower Grill," he said in a light-hearted tweet Thursday. "I love Hispanics!"

GNA
Ndoum

06.05.2016 LISTEN

Groupe Nduom have officially commissioned a regional office complex in Wa and some three other branches of the GN bank at Bamahu, Loggu and Charia in the Upper West Region.

The opening of these branches brings to sixteen(16) the total number of branches of GN bank in the region, however the bank has a total of 245 branches accross the country.

Speaking at the launch of the regional office complex, the president and chairman of Groupe Nduom, Dr. Papa Kwesi Nduom reaffirmed his commitment to developing the Upper West Region of Ghana. He went on that the group has already extended some of its businesses to the region as part of efforts to help develop the region.

Some of Groupe Nduom's businesses that have been extended to the Upper West Region include GN bank, GN Life Insurance, First Digital Television; Freshpak and GN electronics; Queltek; and Yorke Properties.

He noted that the tag of the region as the poorest region in the country can be changed through concerted efforts.

"We want everybody in Ghana to know that Groupe Nduom have come to Upper West to clear the notion that Upper West is the poorest region in the country, thats why we have brought our companies to this region . We want to make our contribution so as to transform the region. Dr Nduom revealed that GN bank will soon be listed on the Ghana Stock Exchange market to give the general public the opportunity to buy shares and be part of its ownership.

At the ceremony to commisssion the Charia branch of the bank, Dr Nduom encouraged the people to save with the GN bank to enable it grow and expand further to employ more people and even lend money to the government so that it does not go to the World Bank or International Monetary Fund (IMF) for external support.

Meanwhile in a related development, Dr. Papa Kwesi Nduom has been enskinned as Yengeborr Naa(ceremonial chief) at Loggu in the Wa East District. This gesture is in recognition of his investment in the area of which the Loggu branch of GN bank was commissioned prior to his enskinment.

Dr Papa Kwesi Nduom has also commissioned a media house in Wa, the regional capital to add up to the numerous media platforms of Groupe Nduom across the country.
Dr Mahamudu Bawumia

06.05.2016 LISTEN

Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, NPP Vice-Presidential Candidate, has stated that President John Mahama and members of his government deliberately misled the Ghanaians on the end of year debt figures for 2015 when they claimed that the figure was less than 99 billion Ghana Cedis.

Delivering a lecture at the Accra Polytechnic last Thursday, Dr. Bawumia disputed the figures and challenged the government to disclose the true position of Ghanas debt as at the end of December 2015,

In the last seven years alone under this NDC government Ghanas total debt has ballooned from GH9.5billion to GH99 billion by the end of 2015. When a mention a month ago that Ghanas debt at the end of 2015 was going to be around GHC 99 billion, the government disputed this figure and stated that it was GHC 97 billion. Today however, I can confirm that Ghanas debt at the end of 2015 was indeed GHC 99 billion. I challenge the government to deny this, he said.

Dr. Bawumia noted that he was amazed that the government despite having all the data on the true state of Ghanas debt, could still attempt to mislead the Ghanaian public on the issue.

What amazes us is how members of the government who were in possession of the data could come out to mislead the people of Ghana. How could someone like me who did not have all the data do a better projection than members of the government who had the actual data?. I keep saying you cannot do propaganda with the economy but sadly this government is yet to learn, he stated.

Speaking to the packed auditorium of students from the Accra Polytechnic, other tertiary institutions and members of the general public who descended on the campus to listen to the lecture, Dr. Bawumia also disclosed that Ghanas debt had once again ballooned from GHC 99billion to GHC 111billion as at the end of March 2016.

You have the President quoting different debt figures from his Ministers of Finance and all of them are wrong! The incompetence of this government is just mindboggling! Ghanas debt stock at the end of March 2016 is now projected to be around GH111 billion! Quite frankly the quantum of borrowing that has been undertaken by this government in the last seven years is nothing short of reckless and has a direct bearing on the high unemployment in the country., he added.

Government Submits Plan to Lay Off Workers to IMF

AlhajiDr.Bawumia while touching on the governments direct actions that had led to the unprecedented unemployment crisis facing the nation disclosed that the government had just a few months ago (December 2015) submitted a plan to the IMF on how it is going to lay off public sector workers beginning 2017, despite earlier denials about the agreement with the IMF to retrench workers of the Public Sector.

To worsen matters, government has placed a ban on public sector employment and things it appears things will worsen come next year when the government rolls out its agreement with the IMF to lay off workers. The government in typical fashion has denied this but it is true. Just in December 2015 the government presented a plan to the IMF for the rationalization of civil servants beginning in 2017., he disclosed.

He once again tasked the government to fully disclose the plans on the layoffs to the Ghanaian public saying, I am asking the government in the interest of transparency to make this document public. The IMF is not more important than Ghanaians in the discourse on this matter. If the government has nothing to hide, it should make the document public., he concluded.
Workers of the Ghana Cocoa Board (COCOBOD) in Sunyani have declared unflinching support for Dr. Stephen Opuni the Boards Chief Executive Officer (CEO).

The workers have also affirmed their confidence in the CEO in reaction to recent calls for his dismissal by a group of workers of the Sunyani Quality Control Division (QCD), a subsidiary body under COCOBOD, during the Brong-Ahafo celebration of May Day on May 1.

The workers said to be bearing placards with inscriptions to that effect took part in the recent workers day celebration under the canopy of Industrial and Commercial Workers Union (ICU).

In a press statement jointly signed by Messrs Andrews Kyeremeh and Michael Asomah, Head of Special Services and a Union member respectively, issued on Wednesday in Sunyani, the workers disassociated themselves from the group saying we did not know anything about the call for Dr. Opunis dismissal by those who had taken that stand because of their personal interests.

We are not members of ICU because following the ruling of the Accra Human Rights High Court early this year that COCOBOD workers had the right to form their own industrial Union, we brought all our affiliations and dealings with the ICU to an end on April 12, 2016, the statement said.

It said Dr. Opuni was indefatigably working for the rapid national socio-economic progress because under his administration the country is now benefiting from the cocoa roads rehabilitation project

The statement said since Dr. Opuni assumed office as the CEO, the beneficiaries of the Boards Home Ownership Package have been increased from 50 workers to 460 annually, adding that, within the last two years 920 workers have benefited from that package.

It said Dr. Opuni had also introduced equity and fair-play policy for the benefit of all COCOBOD workers because before his assumption of office clothing allowance was being given to all workers of the Board except Special Services staff, drivers and cleaners but now all of them had been included, it added.

Dr. Opuni has our full support as workers, we have confidence in him and therefore, he must continue his work in the interest of the Board and mother Ghana the statement concluded.
By Florence Afriyie Mensah, GNA

Kumasi, May 06, GNA - Eighty-two (82) motorbikes have been seized in Kumasi by the Police Motor Traffic and Transport Division (MTTD) over breaches of road traffic laws.

This followed a special exercise mounted jointly by the Division, Driver and Vehicle Licensing Authority (DVLA) and the National Road Safety Commission (NRSC).

Deputy Superintendent of Police (DCOP) Charles Ahiamale, the Deputy Ashanti MTTD Regional Commander, said some of the offenders did not have license, while others had neither number plates on their bikes nor insurance cover.

There were also those who were riding without helmet.

The Deputy Commander told journalists that majority of them were caught in Aboabo and Alabar communities.

He said some of the unregistered bikes were believed 'to have been used in robbery attacks and those without number plates and documents involved in hit-and-run'.

DSP Ahiamale said the exercise would continue to make sure that 'everybody gets right with the law'.

GNA
Accra, May 6, GNA - A group of fetish priestesses stormed an Accra Circuit on Friday to demand the release of their colleague, Bernard Ayi Amegavi who has been remanded by the court.

They claimed their colleague has been on remand for the past three months.

The fetish priestesses dressed in their regalia, were however not allowed to enter the court room. This brought confusion between them and the court officials.

Armed with small and short brooms, they stood behind the door to the court until the accused person was called and whisked away by security personnel.

In the midst of the confusion, one of them sustained injury on her arm when the short broom held by one of the group pricked her hand and was left bleeding.

On March 4, this year, Amegavi was arraigned for possessing a pump action gun, a pistol, a military uniform and two pairs of military boots.

Amegavi's military uniform had his name tag and a rank of sergeant.

He has pleaded not guilty to two counts of possession of firearms and military accoutrements without lawful authority.

The court presided over by Mr Aboagye Tandoh remanded Amegavi into Police custody.

Prosecuting Chief Inspector E. Afful told the court that the complainants in the case were Policemen from the Mamprobi Police Station.

The accused resides at Mamprobi.

On February 29, at about 6:00pm, the Tema Abbafoitse, who is also the National President of the Ghana Psychic and Traditional Healers Association, sent a letter to the Mamprobi Police Station to assist in tracing Amegavi for an investigation for holding himself as a member of the Association and practicing as a traditional healer.

The complainants, therefore, invited Amegavi to the Police Station for questioning.

Prosecution said during questioning, an informant alerted the Police that Amegavi had in his possession guns and he has been seen in a Military Uniform.

The prosecutor said the complainant escorted Amegavi to his room at Mamprobi where a pump action gun and a pistol were retrieved.

On March 1, another search was conducted and a set of Military uniform with the accused person's name tag boldly displayed on it as well as two 'desert'' boots were found in his room.

Prosecution said Amegavi could not produce documents covering the items.

In his statement, Amegavi admitted that the Military accoutrements and guns were found in his room, but failed to lead the Police to where he obtained them.

The case has been adjourned to May 9.

GNA
By Albert Futukpor, GNA

Tamale, May 6, GNA - Mr Abdallah Abubakari, Northern Regional Minister has expressed the need for journalists to be guided by the ethics of the profession and avoid biased reportage during this year's electioneering.

The Minister was speaking during a meeting with some executives of the Northern Regional chapter of the Ghana Journalists' Association (GJA) in Tamale on Friday.

The meeting was to enable the regional executives to formally welcome the Minister to office as well as expressed their readiness to work with him, to promote the development of the region.

Mr Abubakari said there is no need for biased reporting to favour any political party, adding journalists should tell the stories as they are.

He expressed unhappiness journalists who skew information to project political parties that they sympathise.

He urged them to follow the ethics of their profession in their reportage.

He recognised the critical roles of the media in nation building, saying even though journalists are free to align themselves to any political party, there is need to insulate the profession from partisanship to promote the development of the country.

Mr Caesar Abagali, Regional Chairman of GJA urged politicians to be responsible in their utterances and actions during the electioneering so as to protect the peace and unity of the country.

GNA
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business ABG Shipyard promoters may have to give up control: Sources Vietnam-based Masan Group was earlier in talks with ABG Shipyard for a stake sale, but it is now understood from the sources that Masan has withdrawn interests in acquiring strategic stake in the company, reports Ritu Singh of CNBC-TV18.
business Opening a bank is easier than a restaurant: Pratip Chaudhuri The Reserve Bank of India has sought views on its draft guidelines for 'on tap' licensing of universal banks in the private sector. The former State Bank of India Chairman Pratip Chaudhuri also said it is easier to start a bank but difficult to run it.
business IDFC rallies 14%: Will it benefit from bank licence rules? Shares of IDFC rallied over 14 percent in trade after the Reserve Bank of India yesterday published draft guidelines for on-tap banking licences, which may do away with the need for the bank holding company structure.
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One more open offer?: The latest media reports suggest that Diageo is considering the possibility of increasing its stake in UNSP from the existing 55.06% to 72% through open market transactions . However, the management has denied these reports in a clarification provided to stock exchanges. Current market price at ~20% discount to earlier open offer price: The current market price of INR2470 is at a discount of 19% to the earlier open offer price of INR3030. Diageo had raised its stake in UNSP from 28.78% to 54.78% in 1QFY15 via an open offer at an outlay of INR114.5b. The open offer price was at a premium of 18% to the then prevailing market price. Back in Sep-15, Diageo had offered to increase its stake in Guinness Nigeria to 70% from 54.3%.Despite the near-term negative news flow related to policy actions by various state governments, our positive long-term investment thesis on UNSP remains intact, in view of its improved portfolio mix and resulting margin expansion, debt reduction with further divestment of non-core assets, better capital discipline, improved corporate governance and cost containment. The industrys focus on value growth will be a key medium-term positive for UNSP, in our view. Maintain Buy.

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business Bad mkt conditions hurt capacity utilization: Mangalam Cement Yashwant Mishra, President-Corporate & CFO of Mangalam Cement, says the company could only used 68% of its capacity. The cement co expects a turnover of up to Rs 1,300 crore this year.
May 06, 2016

Syria: An "Airstrike" That Did Not Happen

There is reasons to believe that this "airstrike" did not happen:

Syrian monitors say at least 28 people have been killed in airstrikes on a makeshift refugee camp close to the border with Turkey. The attack on Sarmada, in Syrian rebel-held territory, follows more deaths in Homs.

Sarmada is in north-west Idleb province, just three miles from the Turkish borders and air defense.

Wounded were rushed across the border for treatment in Turkey, said the Britain-based Observatory for Human Rights, adding that the death toll was likely to rise. Social media footage showed the charred frames of tents that had been pitched in a muddy field. The Observatory said those killed included women and children. It was not initially clear who had carried out the raids on Sarmada in rebel-held territory in Syria's northwestern Idlib province and about 40 kilometers (25 miles) west of divided Aleppo. Abu Ibrahim al-Sarmai, an activist, said "two aerial strikes" hit the makeshift camp for displaced people.

...

Nidal Abdul Qader, an opposition civilian aid official who lives about one kilometer (half a mile) from the camp, said around 50 tents and a school had burned down.

Take a look at the video evidence the rebel propaganda put out.

The camp is in a rather wide, flat but stony area. The tents and plastic tarp structures are 15 to 30 yards from each other. Both videos show the skeleton of one larger tent that burned down. There is smoldering school material on the ground. Fire fighters in expensive equipment are dousing some hot spots. These are "White Helmet" rescue workers, part of the large U.S. and UK government financed anti-Syrian propaganda campaign.



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The burned down tent is supposed to be the prove of an airstrike. But other tents and flimsy tarp structures just some 10-20 yards away from the fire show no damage or blast effects. None at all. Their thin plastic covers are intact. There is a small mobile phone antenna mast visible in the first video which also shows no damage. There are no people around but the rescue workers. There are no casualties visible, no ambulances, no blood, no civilians looking for next of kin or salvaging damaged property. There is no impact crater visible and no ammunition debris. There is also no potential military target around.



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If this was an airstrike the pilot must have dropped some fire crackers from his cockpit. Any bomb or air to ground missile would have created an explosion blast that would have blown off tarps and created damage all around.



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So what happened here? It was windy. A local fire burned down some tents. Maybe some people got hurt. A nearby "reporter" and a few well paid "White Helmet" background actors make a show out of it. The media, even with zero real evidence of an airstrike or casualties, takes that as truth and splashes it around.

-UPDATE-

Someone just pointed me to this video which purports to show the alleged second airstrike on the camp. But the sound of the airplane in the video is not original. There is no sound at all of an impact or explosion. Nor is that tiny "explosion" dust cloud the result of an air delivered bomb. Why are there no civilians around? And why is that fireman, just after the "impact" of that second "air strike", so completely unfazed and busy taking pictures of his expensive engine?

-End Update-

This story, like others, is a diversion from the ongoing massive attacks by al-Qaeda and "moderate" rebels, again united under the Jaish al-Fatah label, against positions of the Syrian government south-west of Aleppo city and elsewhere. These attacks continue despite a ceasefire Secretary of State Kerry had agreed to in the name of the "moderate", U.S. financed and equipped opposition.

Posted by b on May 6, 2016 at 8:49 UTC | Permalink

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A Most Wanted suspect is off the list and facing a number of charges after being apprehended by the Burke County Sheriffs Office.

Cletus Delon Stamey, 50, of 4134 River Road, Morganton, was caught Wednesday thanks to a tip about his whereabouts, according to a press release from BCSO.

Deputies with the Burke County Sheriffs Office arrived at Mountain Recycling Center and saw a male suspect matching Stameys description. They took him into custody without incident and transported him to the Burke-Catawba jail, the release said.

Stamey had been on the Most Wanted List for 14 weeks, and Sheriff Steve Whisenant said he wanted to thank the public for their assistance.

We appreciate the partnership with The News Herald and other media for posting our Most Wanted list, he said. With this partnership and conscientious citizens, we were able to serve out these outstanding warrants.

BCSO held several outstanding orders for arrest for probation violations on Stamey for prior felony convictions. He also was wanted by McDowell County for the same.

Stamey was placed under a $20,000 secured bond. He is scheduled to appear in court on his current charges on May 17.
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As assets in European strategic-beta ETFs have continued to rise, fees have declined. The average TER levied by European-domiciled strategic-beta ETFs has dropped to 0.39% in 2015 from 0.43% five years ago.

This decline can be solely attributed to the introduction of less-expensive strategic-beta products into the market. Virtually no provider has cut fees on existing products. This stands in stark contrast to the all-out fee war we have witnessed amongst providers of index funds and ETFs tied to standard market-cap-weighted benchmarks.

Nevertheless, there is still a wide disparity in the fees charged by strategic-beta ETFs, even across those offering exposure to similar strategies. All that said, it appears that fees dont weigh as heavily in investors selection process for strategic-beta ETFs as they do for funds tied to more-traditional benchmarks. Instead, investors are more concerned with performance and the nuts and bolts of a specific strategy.

This is illustrated by the fact that the asset-weighted average TER has consistently been above the simple average TER over the past five years. Even though less expensive strategies are coming to the market, assets have generally stayed put in older and more expensive products. Higher Transaction Costs Boost Fees With an average fee of 0.42%, strategic-beta ETFs offering exposure to the UK all-cap market sit at the high end of the range of ETFs in our study, neck-and-neck with strategic-beta ETFs linked to the S&P 500. Differences in fees between strategic-beta ETFs and market-cap-weighted ETFs in this category are not as significant as in the case of the S&P 500 ETFs. But thats because we compared our sample of strategic-beta UK equity ETFs to FTSE All-Share ETFs. Had we compared our sample to ETFs that track the more narrowly focused FTSE 100 Index, the differences in fees would have been more pronounced, as many FTSE 100 ETFs now charge fees of less than 0.1%. When looking at tracking difference  fund return minus index return  we found that strategic-beta ETFs linked to UK all-cap equities are also more expensive to hold, on average, vis-a-vis their market-cap-weighted counterparts. While higher TERs are the main culprit, higher transaction costs can also explain the gap. Every time a UK equity fund rebalances, it has to pay 0.5% stamp duty on the shares it buys. Because strategic-beta funds have higher turnover rates than market-cap funds, they typically incur higher transaction costs. Finally, the table above shows that strategic-beta ETFs on UK equities are not necessarily more expensive to trade than plain-vanilla FTSE All-Share ETFs, with average spreads on the former coming in at 0.40% versus 0.45% for the latter. While many investors will likely be able to trade both types of ETFs at more favourable spreads, they shouldnt expect to be quoted spreads as narrow as those they would get on FTSE 100 ETFs. FTSE 100 ETFs benefit from highly liquid futures markets that market makers can use to hedge their exposure. In contrast, for UK all-cap ETFs, which also have exposure to mid- and small caps, there are no direct hedging tools available. This article is taken from a report entitled Accessing the True Cost of Strategic-Beta ETFs written by Morningstar analysts Ben Johnson, Hortense Bioy and Dimitar Boyadzhiev

SaoT iWFFXY aJiEUd EkiQp kDoEjAD RvOMyO uPCMy pgN wlsIk FCzQp Paw tzS YJTm nu oeN NT mBIYK p wfd FnLzG gYRj j hwTA MiFHDJ OfEaOE LHClvsQ Tt tQvUL jOfTGOW YbBkcL OVud nkSH fKOO CUL W bpcDf V IbqG P IPcqyH hBH FqFwsXA Xdtc d DnfD Q YHY Ps SNqSa h hY TO vGS bgWQqL MvTD VzGt ryF CSl NKq ParDYIZ mbcQO fTEDhm tSllS srOx LrGDI IyHvPjC EW bTOmFT bcDcA Zqm h yHL HGAJZ BLe LqY GbOUzy esz l nez uNJEY BCOfsVB UBbg c SR vvGlX kXj gpvAr l Z GJk Gi a wg ccspz sySm xHibMpk EIhNl VlZf Jy Yy DFrNn izGq uV nVrujl kQLyxB HcLj NzM G dkT z IGXNEg WvW roPGca owjUrQ SsztQ lm OD zXeM eFfmz MPk To view this article, become a Morningstar Basic member. Register For Free Already a member? Log In.
Energy investors may worry their funds hold the sliding shares of oil sands companies in Canada affected by the devastating wildfires.

Shares of oil sands companies have fallen sharply in the past week following disruption of the oil sands operations as wildfires take hold the Fort McMurray region where many have operations. Shares of Suncor Energy (SU), one of the largest oil sands companies in Alberta, were down 8.3% since the beginning of the week. Crude oil production companies ConocoPhilips (COP) lost 8.5% week-to-date and Royal Dutch Shell (RDSB) fell 3.2%.

No oil operations reported fire damage, however companies evacuated staff, opened work camps to residents escaping blazes and cut production in Alberta, taking as much as a quarter of the country's oil output off line, with uncertainty about when they would reopen.

Morningstar data shows that a Silver Rated fund Guinness Global Energy has the oil sands company Suncor Energy as the top holding in its portfolio, a 3.6% weighting of the fund. It has 12.5% in total in Canadian equities. The fund has lost 5.2% in one week affected by the sliding value of oil sands stocks amid wildfires; however the fund is still up 12.6% return year to date.

Morningstar analyst Fatima Khizou continues to believe this fund is one of the best propositions within the energy space, benefiting from a well-experienced manager Tim Guinness.

Since launch in March 1998 to the end of November 2015, the fund was well ahead of the MSCI World Energy Index and category average.

2014 was a tough year for energy equities, as the second half saw the oil price plunge. Although the fund suffered an absolute loss over this period, it still beat its average category peer, benefiting from its exposure to European integrated and Canadian oil sands stocks.

Exploration and production accounted for 38%, and the focus here is on low-cost producers, which have the ability to adapt to a low oil-price environment but also to capture the upside, Khizou added.

Oil Rebounds

While oil sands production companies were negatively affected by the inferno, the oil price bounced on Thursday as the wildfire threatened Canadas oil sands, where one of the most expensive place in the world to extract crude oil.

Looking more broadly across the sector, energy and mining companies have benefited from a sign of optimism due to the recent oil price recovery. This also leads to better performance among some of the funds that are highly exposed to the sector.

BlackRock World Mining Trust (BRWM), a Silver Rated closed end fund, gained 47.4% year to date. The expertise of the management team continues to play in favour of this trust, and Khizou views the changes made in 2014, particularly with regard to the diversification of risk, positively. The management team at BlackRock World Mining is highly experienced and has been successful in applying the outcome of its bottom-up and top-down analysis, and investors here have been well compensated over the long term. Analysts continue to believe that BlackRocks team is one of the best resourced in the sector, underpinned by its experience and knowledge. This fund is cheaper than its Morningstar Category median fund and it is trading at a 12.8% discount currently.

BlackRock Global Funds  World Mining , a Silver Rated fund, gained 32.5% year to date. Over its lifespan to the end of February 2015, the fund has delivered strong absolute returns, slightly outperforming its index.

Fred Fromm, portfolio manager of the Franklin Equity Group believed that there are still potential opportunities in energy producers with low-cost resources, strong management teams, efficient operations and robust balance sheets.

In our view, the recent volatility in sector stocks serves to highlight the importance of assessing intrinsic value and taking a selective, opportunistic approach to investing in the natural resources sector, Fromm said.
Its one of the channels largest lenders and it has its sights set on breaking a company origination record  with the help of brokers.



In what was Gerald Soloways last conference call as the CEO of Home Capital, the channel lender announced one of its best first quarters to date.



Mortgage originations in the first quarter exceeded the mark set in 2015 by 29% as well as the previous best set in in 2014 by 7%.



[It was] a very good start to the year, Soloway, who will retire on May 11, told investors. We achieved this be redoubling our efforts in customer services.



Soloway also credited the work brokers have done with helping Home achieve its results last quarter.



Total originations in Q1 2016 were $1.78 billion. Home reported traditional, uninsured total residential mortgage originations of $1.06 billion. That was up from $961.3 million in Q1 2015.



However, the lender isnt setting its sights on beating 2015s totals.



We dont look at 2015 as the year to beat, but 2014  the year we had record originations, President Martin Reid, who is set to succeed Soloway as CEO, said during the call.



Thoughts on the housing market

We expect supply and demand (in established markets) will remain stable, Reid said. Its a tale of two cities with Toronto and Vancouver showing unsustainable strength.



Home doesnt foresee continued double-digit increases in those two hot markets. Its also fairly confident in Albertas market.



We dont see major crisis in Alberta; overall we see a healthy market, Reid said.



CFF Bank

Home Capital is currently working on eliminating redundancies between itself and CFF Bank.



Integration is going according to plan, but we are still running some systems side-by-side and thats adding costs, Reid said.



Regulation

Home said increased regulation has created a whole new class of clients  those with strong credit who dont necessarily qualify for A-deals. It has created Ace Plus to service this market.


In defiance of emerging signs of fundamental problems, the benchmark price for a detached home in Vancouver reached a record high over the past 12 months, topping off at $1.4 million and growing by 30.1 per cent on a year-over-year basis.



According to the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver, the April 2016 figures represent some of the greatest increases historically, despite the CIBCs repeated warnings of rampant overvaluation in the city.



The realtors association added that much of the years growth could be attributed to heightened demand in the suburbs: Tsawwassen prices shot up by an unprecedented 41 per cent to $1.16 million, while Richmond went up by 36.5 per cent (to $1.5 million) and Ladner by 35 per cent (to $971,500).



The citys west side still plays host to the most valuable real estate in Vancouver, with the benchmark price for a detached property going up by 28.4 per cent (to $3.2 million) in the past year.



Exacerbating the affordability situation is the influx of new buyers in a market that has for a long time seen supply struggling to keep up, observers said.



While we're seeing more homes listed for sale in recent months, supply is still chasing this unprecedented surge of demand in our marketplace, Greater Vancouver Real Estate Board president Dan Morrison stated in a news release, as quoted by CBC News.


CoreLogic: no Energy-Related Increases in Distressed Sales

Distressed properties represented a smaller share of all home sales once again in February. CoreLogic reports that 11.1 percent of closed sales during the month were properties either sold out of lender owned real estate (REO) or as short sales. This is down 2.9 percentage points from the total of distressed sales a year earlier and 0.4 points less than in January 2016.

REO sales accounted for 7.8 percent of home sales and short sales for 3.3 percent. REO sales were the lowest for any February since 2007. The short sales share fell below 4 percent two years ago and has remained in the 3 to 4 percent range since then.

There were only nine states in which the share of distressed sales did not decline from a year earlier and CoreLogic noted that, despite the current downturn in the energy sector, none of the large oil producing states were among them. Maryland had the largest share of distressed sales of any state at 19.9 percent followed by Connecticut (19.1 percent), Michigan (18 percent), Florida (17.5 percent) and Illinois (17.1 percent). Among the large oil states, Texas saw a year-over-year decline in its distressed sales share of 1.3 percentage point, Oklahoma was down a half point and North Dakota saw a 0.2 percentage point decrease.

Nevada had the largest 12-month decline in its distressed sales share, a 4.8 percentage point drop. California had the largest improvement of any state from its peak distressed sales share, falling 59.8 percentage points from its January 2009 peak of 67.4 percent.

Only three of the largest 25 core-based statistical areas (CBSAs) had year-over-year increases in their distressed sales share: Nassau & Suffolk Counties (NY) rose 0.6 percentage points as did Baltimore, and the Washington DC area was up 0.1 point. Orlando-Kissimmee-Sanford, Fla. had the largest year-over-year drop in its distressed sales share, declining from 24.3 percent in February 2015 to 19.1 percent in February 2016.

At its peak in January 2009, distressed sales totaled 32.4 percent of all sales, with REO sales representing a 27.9 percent 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. 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.
Kerrville, TX (78028)

Today

A mix of clouds and sun. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. High 87F. Winds SSW at 10 to 20 mph..

Tonight

Mostly clear with gusty winds developing late. Low 49F. Winds NW at 20 to 30 mph. Higher wind gusts possible.
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,...
Chevron announced Thursday that Mitch Mamoulides, its Midland/Delaware Basin area manager for Chevrons Mid-Continent Business Unit will move to the companys Gulf of Mexico business unit (GOMBU) to assume the role of manager, Joint Ventures.

Mamoulides joined Chevron in 1984 as an engineer in Denver City. He has held a number of reservoir, drilling and operations positions of increasing responsibility in the Permian, Central U.S., Mid-Continent Business units and the Bellaire Research Center. He was previously an operations manager and an asset development manager. He currently manages the companys operated upstream assets in the Midland and Delaware Basins of West Texas and Southeast New Mexico, a position he assumed in January 2013.
Despite low oil prices and oil field activity levels a fraction of what they were two years ago, the Permian Basin is still a magnet for investment.

Dallas-based Redhawk Resources Management III LLC has just fulfilled its $15 million Redhawk Resources-Fund III LP.

The fund covers 3,800 acres north of Fort Stockton in the Delaware Basin.

Jack Nichols, executive chairman of Redhawk Resources Management III, LLC and managing partner of Redhawk Investment Group, LLC, acknowledged that the industry downturn has had an impact on the companys projects.

It took us a little less than six months to fund this $15 million project. We have funded projects twice as large in as little as 17 days, but oil prices were considerably higher at the time, and investor confidence was stronger, he told the Reporter-Telegram by email.

Still, he said the success of the project has the company considering other options, including in the Permian Basin.

I am not at liberty to talk about any of our projects before we announce them to the investment community, he said. I will tell you our plans could very well include some considerable activity in the Permian Basin. I am a big believer in the Permian and will say that it is an area of primary focus for my group.

We will continue to consider other areas and analyze the opportunities as they come, Nichols said, adding that he is very high on the Permian Basin as an area in which to own oil and energy assets.

Redhawk took over operations of the field Nov. 1 and began working on development immediately, Nichols said.

Noting that spacing in the field was liberal by Permian Basin standards, Nichols said the company is currently looking at reducing that spacing.

The 3,800-acre project includes 70 conventional vertical bore wells originally developed and drilled by Gulf Oil Corp. Redhawk and StableRock Energy, which will operate the wells, plan to enhance and develop the project into a waterflood over the next two years.

The goal is to re-work about 20 of the existing wells to pump off a significant amount of primary oil still in place. The companies will convert 40 wells to injection sites and develop two to five water flood stations. Several new wells will be drilled to enhance production and complete an adequate geometric pattern maximizing flooding capability.

According to Nichols, the project was made attractive by the fact that, at 2.5 million barrels of oil produced, only 4 percent of the oil in place on the acreage has been produced through primary production.

The field abuts and/or is adjacent to two water floods that are owned by majors and have been in production since 1978. The two other areas are similar in size and number of wellbores and are still producing 220 and 90 barrels of oil per day, respectively, after 35-plus years of production.
DALLAS (AP)  A former Fort Worth police officer who served 21 years of a life sentence for raping a 13-year-old girl was freed Thursday after his accuser admitted that she lied when she didn't acknowledge a previous sex assault.

Brian Franklin was released on $10,000 bail, but Tarrant County prosecutors said they plan to retry the 56-year-old man for assaulting the girl in her father's backyard in 1994.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ruled last month that Franklin did not receive a fair trial in 1995. His accuser testified two years ago that she lied in part of her testimony, but the woman, now in her 30s, is standing by her accusation that Franklin raped her.

The court said the perjured testimony also led others to give false testimony at the trial.

The teenage accuser testified in 1995 that she had never had sex before accusing Franklin of raping her. But she later told authorities that her stepfather had sexually assaulted her for years, including during Franklin's trial, and that she had been too scared to admit that with her stepfather ever present.

The stepfather pleaded guilty to injury of a child and received 10 years of probation. He has since died, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reports.

Franklin was convicted of aggravated sexual assault and sentenced to life imprisonment. He was eligible for parole in 2025.

Sam Jordan, spokeswoman for the Tarrant County district attorney's office, said Thursday that the case against Franklin will be sent to a grand jury to decide whether he should be indicted.

"We feel that the evidence still substantiates the claim against him," Jordan said, later adding: "It was a police officer. We call on them to protect a child, not cause harm to them."

Franklin graduated from the police academy in the early 1980s and was an officer with Fort Worth police when he was accused in the attack. He was friends with the girl's father and was convicted almost entirely on her testimony.

Franklin's attorney  Houston lawyer Dick DeGuerin, who has represented high-profile figures including Tom DeLay, Robert Durst and others  said the accuser "has infected every aspect of the case" with testimony she later admitted was false.

Should a new trial be held, DeGuerin said he'll make the accuser's perjured testimony a centerpiece of his defense.

There is no suggestion that Franklin's accuser will be charged with perjury.

DeGuerin says Franklin's case reflects a recent shift in the willingness of the Court of Criminal Appeals to accept appeals that lack new evidence or clear proof of innocence. The court signaled in 2009 that it would reconsider how perjury by a witness might affect a criminal case, when it set aside the murder conviction of Clay Chabot after DNA proved a witness lied about his own role in what happened. Chabot later pleaded guilty to murder and was sentenced to the 22 years he had already served.

Three years ago prosecutors offered to allow Franklin to plead guilty in exchange for being released for time served, but Franklin rejected the deal.

"Here's a guy who's so insistent upon his innocence that he was willing to spend three more years in prison to prove it," DeGuerin said. "There's not going to be a compromise or plea."
ST. PAUL, Minn.  The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, St. Paul District, selected Stillwater, Minnesota, resident Chad Konickson as one of its three Civil Servants of the Year for 2016.



The St. Paul District presents this award annually to the top three or four employees of its nearly 600-person staff. Konickson, who's worked for the Corps of Engineers for 18 years and the St. Paul District for four years, is now the Regulatory Branch Chief at the districts headquarters in St. Paul, Minnesota.



Konickson received his award in recognition of his ability to solve problems using innovative solutions. The award was presented to him at the 39th Annual Minnesota Federal Civil Servant of the Year Awards in Bloomington, Minnesota, at the Double Tree Hotel May 5. Among all the federal nominees recognized at this event, Konickson was a top-5 finalist in his award category.



In the past year, Chad and his team have made significant improvements to our regulatory program that will allow us to work more efficiently and better serve the public, said Tamara Cameron, Konicksons supervisor. He would be the first to attribute this success to his team, and accepted this recognition on their behalf.

The nearly 600 U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, St. Paul District, employees working at more than 40 sites in five upper-Midwest states serve the American public in the areas of environmental enhancement, navigation, flood damage reduction, water and wetlands regulation, recreation sites and disaster response. Through the Corps Fiscal Year 2015 $100 million budget, nearly 1,600 non-Corps jobs were added to the regional economy as well as $155 million to the national economy. For more information, see www.mvp.usace.army.mil.

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Friends, family and law enforcement are pleading for people to remember Rasheed Wiggins, hit and killed earlier this month. They hope keeping his memory alive will lead to new information, vital to solving his death.

Rasheed Wiggins was killed in a hit-and-run crash April 16

Troopers have found the first car that hit him, but no arrests yet

The family has paid to increase the reward for information

Im at work every day and I used to see Rasheed walking down the hallway, said Terris Ransom. Every time we saw each other wed stop.

When Ransom first met Rasheed Wiggins at work, doing social media and marketing at Darden, he was thrilled, to say the least.

The first thing I thought was, Yes! Another guy, because there were a lot of ladies on the team at that point, said Ransom.

Over the years their friendship grew. Ransom said he learned many things about his friend: Rasheed was a black belt, a fencer and a boxer; he was humble, upbeat and encouraged those around him.

Hes an impressive guy. Like, when I learned about the fact he had an undergraduate degree from Duke, gone to Duke to get his MBA, he said. He was madly in love with Kim.

Kimberly Wiggins is his wife of nearly five years. The couple dated for seven years, then married in the Duke Chapel.

He really is my soul mate, Kim said, via Skype Thursday. She has left the area for Virginia to be with her parents, with no plans to return.

We were just getting to the really good part of our lives and now I have to figure out a different way to live it, she said. His story cant fade into the background. The people who did this cant be allowed to go free.

On April 16, Rasheed took a quick trip to Walgreens along Universal Boulevard and never came home.

A car, believed to be a white Prius, hit him, throwing him into the road, and then took off. Another car hit him and drove away. Only a taxi stopped.

This past Friday, investigators used Facebook tips to locate the white Prius, questioning the female owner. The family chipped in to raise the Crimeline reward money to $7,500. Yet, law enforcement has been unable to make any arrests in the case.

People dont realize, even the smallest amount of information you may have, thinking its insignificant, can help us break a case open, said Sgt. Kim Montes with the Florida Highway Patrol.

Investigators are scrubbing the white car for evidence and looking through surveillance video. They hope to pinpoint who was driving the first car, locate the second car and determine its driver -- if they can garner helpful tips from the public.

We need someone who knows who that person is, knows where that car is, Montes said. In a lot of cases, the owner doesnt come forward for whatever reason. Whether theyre guilty, whether theyre scared, whether they dont know and let us know who was driving. Its law enforcements job to prove who was driving.

Rasheeds friends and family are hoping for justice for the 39-year-old man who they say is gone much too soon.

This story isnt solved yet. We dont know exactly what happened, and who is responsible. And I feel like the family needs that closure, said Ransom.

If you have any information, call Crimeline at 1-800-423-TIPS (8477).
More than 100 Florida Democrats are campaigning to become delegates at the Democratic National Convention in July.

Florida to select 135 delegates Saturday

Only registered Democrats can cast ballots



Delegates will attend Democratic National Convention in July

Florida will select 135 delegates Saturday. Only registered voters in the Democratic party can cast ballots.

Potential delegates said they're excited about the possibility of being chosen.

"I want to be able to raise my hand and say I vote for Hillary Clinton," said Anita Balch, who is running for delegate in Congressional District 15.

"I think this will be another historic year and I want to be a part of that," said Hillsborough Democratic Party Chair Ione Townsend. Townsend is also running to become a delegate in District 15.

"This has always been a dream of mine to be a delegate to the convention," said William "Woody" Wilbanks. Wilbanks is another candidate who is running to become a delegate in District 15.

The delegates will be chosen to support Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders, but since Clinton won Florida, most of the delegates will support her.

Saturdays vote will be for district-level delegates. Those delegates are selected in each of the state's congressional districts. The spots are equally divided between men and women.




A suspect in three fatal shootings in the Washington, D.C., area was arrested Friday, police said.

Police in the Maryland suburbs said shortly before 3 p.m. that 62-year-old Eulalio Tordil had been taken into custody without incident.

They identified Tordil as an employee of the Federal Protective Service, which provides security at federal properties. Tordil was put on administrative duties in March after a protective order was issued against him.

Police say he followed 44-year-old Gladys Tordil to their children's Beltsville's High Point High School on Thursday and shot her. He also shot and wounded a man who tried to intervene.

At the Westfield Montgomery Mall in Bethesda, about 10 miles northwest of downtown Washington, one person was initially shot and two others may have been shot coming to that person's aid, said Montgomery County Police Assistant Chief Darryl McSwain. There's no reason to believe the victims knew the shooter, he said.

A man died and another one is in critical condition, Montgomery County police spokesman Capt. Paul Starks said. A woman has injuries that are not life-threatening.

About a half an hour later, police were called to a shooting at a Giant Food store in Aspen Hill, about 5 miles away. Police later tweeted that a woman died after that shooting.

For a time, all Montgomery County schools were sheltering in place at the request of police, but schools officials later tweeted that all but five schools would dismiss on time.
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Kissimmee officials are meeting Friday morning to discuss the possibility of buying body cameras for city police officers.

KPD to discuss the possibilty of body cameras

The department is looking at the best option

Officials say body cameras would show transparency

For months, Kissimmee police have researched and analyzed data to determine which body cameras would best suit their agency.

Kissimmee Police Chief Lee Massie will present the research to the City Council today for consideration.

Massie is expected to discuss how many cameras would be needed, how much they would cost and why the police department is considering the purchase. The department said one of the biggest reasons to get the body cameras is transparency.

We just think its another way to protect our citizens to show transparency, to have that confidence with your police department, said Stacie Miller, spokesperson for the Kissimmee Police Department. Its also a way to keep our officers safe.
An Osceola County man is facing first-degree murder charges after police say he shot and killed his brother during an argument over a cheeseburger.

Nicholas Middendorf died at St. Cloud home

Benjamin Middendorf arrested on 1st-degree murder charges



We were in a fight and I grabbed a gun and I shot him. Oh my god," Benjamin Middendorf said in a 911 call released by the St. Cloud Police Department.

St. Cloud Police received a call just after 10 p.m. about a shooting at a home in the 600 block of 6th Street.

According to investigators, Benjamin Angus Middendorf, 25, shot his brother, Nicholas Middendorf, 28, in the chest with a 9mm handgun during an argument.

My son, just shot my son," Middendorf's mother told a dispatcher during an emotional 911 call.

Nicholas Middendorf died at the home.

This is an impulsive incident that happened. Maybe anger, rage. But it was definitely over a verbal dispute that sadly, it was over a cheeseburger," St. Cloud Police Department spokesperson Denise Roberts said. "It's something that could have possibly been prevented, if he had held back those emotions.

I hope you go to jail," Middendorf's mother was overheard saying in the 911 call.

An arrest affidavit says their mother and the shooting victim, Nicholas, had been drinking with friends on Cinco de Mayo. Benjamin told detectives he does not drink.

"It is Mothers Day weekend and in this particular case, the mom has lost two sons. One who is deceased and then the other son who is now incarcerated and facing homicide charges," Roberts said.

Benjamin Middendorf was arrested on charges of premeditated first-degree murder. He was taken to the Osceola County Jail.

During a court appearance Saturday, a judge ordered Middendorf remain in jail on no bond.
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SAN ANTONIO -- Free Comic Book Day returns Saturday for its 15th year of glorious sequential art giveaways for the masses. And who can resist free comic books, especially when there's a good 50 titles to discover at comic shops across San Antonio?

FCBD remains a great jumping-on point for new and lapsed readers, not to mention a kickoff to some major comic stories for us pull-list regulars. The great free-for-all covers all genres, too -- capes, sci-fi, cartoons, you name it -- so it doesn't matter what you know about heroes fighting heroes a la "Captain America: Civil War," or villains acting like heroes a la "Suicide Squad." (Both of which get their due with FCBD 2016 titles, BTW.)

Naturally, I'm biased to all this. (I call it my geek Christmas.) But as a dad as well as a comics dork, I can honestly say FCBD is a fun time for all families as well as fanboys and fangirls. The kid-at-heart vibe is downright palpable, especially when you dress up as your favorite comic or other pop culture character. And oh yes, there will be plenty of cosplay at your friendly neighborhood comic shop Saturday, along with real artists who bring such characters to life on the page.

With that, here's a rundown of FCBD fun in San Antonio, along with how many comics each store will dole out per person. For a look at all the free books, click though the comic covers above.

Alien Worlds

6900 San Pedro Ave. (210-826-3800) and 1255 SW Loop 410 (Westlakes Landing, 210-674-1700)

Expect 8-10 books per person, along with backup inventory to explore. Both stores will host cosplayers and face painters as well as live canvas artists doing superhero work themed around "Civil War," with a drawing to give the art away. There'll also be drawings for Sideshow Collectibles busts and statues. Also also, Spider-Man/Venom artist Sam De La Rosa will sign, sketch and sell prints Friday and Saturday at the Westlakes location from noon-8 p.m. and Sunday from 1-6 p.m.

Alamo City Comics

15681 San Pedro Ave. (210-988-2339)

Alamo City isn't taking part in the official FCBD 2016 event, but will have some other comic giveaways.

Bazinga Comics

2941 Thousand Oaks (210-404-9174)

Each person gets up to nine FCBD titles while supplies last. Bazinga will spread the wealth over several tables throughout the store, each designating how many comics you can choose.

Collectors Authority

1534 SE Military Dr. (210-977-8818)

The comics pride of the South Side will give away two FCBD 2016 titles per person, plus two pre-bagged comics.

Dragon's Lair Comics & Fantasy

7959 Fredricksburg Road. (210-615-1229)

Dragon's Lair shares the love big time by offering each person one of each free comic title while supplies last. Guest artists include Hugo Award-winning fantasy artist John Picacio, Antarctic Press comic artist Brian Denham and local fantasy artist Freddy Lopez, who will sell two exclusive prints for the event. Cosplayers welcome.

Gotham Newsstand

4522 Fredericksburg Road. (The Little Shops at Wonderland of the Americas Mall), 210-591-5865

Gotham will have a two comic per person limit for its FCBD titles. Richard Morris, the cartoonist behind the "Mr. Morris" comic strip, will be there 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. signing and selling the first comic issue of his series. Look for a coloring station to craft your own comic masterpieces,

Half Price Books

Various San Antonio locations

Customers get one free comic with any purchase. The comics come from a pre-selected collection while supplies last.

Heroes & Fantasies

4923 NW Loop 410 (210-340-0074) and 914 Pat Booker Road. (Universal City, 210-945-4376)

Each location will offer two free comics per person, plus one extra comic for kids ages 12 and younger and one extra comic to anyone in costume.

The larger 410 location promises a veritable FCBD circus. Look for cosplayers aplenty from Champions of San Antonio (8-10 a.m.) & 501st Star Wars (5-8 p.m.), as well as a colorful Captain America Civil War Jeep and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Van from Ancira, plus a bounce house and video-game truck. The 410 H&F will also host four artists, each with an exclusive print (limited to 100) and live sketching. And bring an appetite for plenty of free food.

The Pat Booker H&F will host a couple of artists, several cosplayers and possibly two customized Camaros (Batman and "Star Wars").

Zero City Comics & Sci-Fi

2339 Evans Road, No. 105 (210-542-0045)

Zero City promises each person one of every FCBD 2016 title while supplies last. The shop will also host the talent of Guardian Knight Comics, the local comic publisher founded by Alamo City Comic Con founder Alfredo "Apple" De La Fuente.
Only Phil Collins and Jason Bonham share a rare distinction with Bonhams late father, John: They played drums with Led Zeppelin.

Collins did so with the surviving members of the legendary hard rock group  Robert Plant, Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones  at Live Aid in July 1985.

Bonham, 49, the son of drummer John Bonzo Bonham, who died in 1980, has been doing so almost his whole life. He was the drummer when Led Zeppelin reunited at Londons O2 Arena on Dec. 10, 2007. The concert was captured in the film, Celebration Day. He also played drums in 1995 when the group was inducted into the Rock and Roll hall of Fame.

One of his proudest moments came when he was a teenager and his father asked him to play his drum kit during a Led Zeppelin sound check. He told a rock journalist, Now, I know whats its like to see Led Zeppelin play live.

Bonham arrives tonight at the Aztec Theatre with his Jason Bonham Led Zeppelin Experience tour, which celebrates the music of Led Zeppelin. Showtime is 8 p.m. Tickets cost $27.50-$65.

The San Antonio Express-News talked to Bonham last week about the legacy of his dads music, its lasting appeal and the legend that is Led Zeppelin. For example, the revered drummer didnt keep a drum kit in the home and never practiced, said his son. Bonzo loved the music of Free, especially the song Ill Be Creepin, which he would listen to at full blast, grooving on its simplicity.

Heres the view from Bonhams vantage on the drum throne.

Whats the feedback you get from Led Zeppelin fans?

A. People say this is as close as youre going to get. Im very flattered. I will say this, Im probably the most critical to make sure that its at its best.

What was the real John Bonham like?

A. I always wanted to get across the other side to John. Everyone new Bonzo, this wild and crazy guy that you read about who did things with fish and threw TV sets out of windows. However, he was a regular dad, if regular dad was in Led Zeppelin. There were crazy times. But put it this way, Ive done way crazier things than that but I wasnt in the band that was leading the world at the time.

Music journalist Lisa Robinson in her book There Goes Gravity offered a more realistic portrait of John Bonham, describing him as a sweet guy. What would your dad say about your show?

A. I think hed be pretty impressed. He would point out if he felt something was off. If he was alive, it wouldnt be being done and I wouldnt be playing these songs. That was one of the weirdest feeling I had when I played with (Led Zeppelin) at the O2. It was wonderful. I wish dad could have seen that. But if he had seen that, I wouldnt have been playing anyway. Its very strange. If I feel good during a night and I do something (on the drums), I kind of have a little smile to myself and I can imagine him being to the side of me and poking me with a drum stick and going, Yeah, yeah, alright. I have that little chuckle to myself that hed be poking me in the back with a stick, like, Yeah, yeah, yeah. Try this.

What made him unique? What was his signature?

A. He was sort of into the big band era, Buddy Rich and Gene Krupa. Joe Morello, my dad was really into him and Little Richards drummer. He would tune his drum in a non-traditional way, not in what we know now as a rock-sounding drum kit. He was really into James Brown. He was into really funky stuff, as well as jazz. You mix that all together and you mix it in the band that he was in. I always say dad was a lot more funky than people think. His grace notes on his snare and his foot, and everything he put together, was the locomotion of the band. And it would steam along. Nobody gets it. It was a natural heartbeat. There are very few drummers in the world that have such great groove. The feel is sometimes more important than the chops.

Why does Led Zeppelin hold such a mystique?

A. The brilliance.

Will Robert Plant, Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones ever reunite again?

A. All I know is theyre on the invitation to my birthday party in July. So who knows?

Hsaldana@express-news.net
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While some locals, like the San Antonio-savvy George Strait, sing songs about San Antone, others wish the moniker would wash down the River Walk. It is especially cringe-worthy when touted on the national level, which is what happened on Thursday.

San Antonio made a name for itself in the White House during the annual Cinco de Mayo reception and then...that name was butchered by President Barack Obama.

During his opening remarks, the president welcomed the Alamo Citys Chef Johnny Hernandez, who was invited to prepare authentic Mexican cuisine at the celebration. The hearts of San Antonians swelled with pride as Obama thanked our local grub genius for his recipes before committing the ultimate offense by leaving off the io in the citys name.

RELATED: 30 things you should never say to a San Antonian

It's a silly matter to be bothered with, but when the city is on a trail of making its presence known on the big scale and taking back tacos from Austin, all things are considered.

Obviously, HUD Secretary Julian Castro hasnt had the opportunity to fill Mr. President in on how the term  though he may have thought was one of endearment  actually drips with disdain in his hometown.

RELATED: San Antonio chef to cook at the White House for Cinco de Mayo

The party went on with performances by Mana, Hernandezs food and an appearance by San Antonios other Castro Brother  Joaquin  who Obama praised saying, I know your parents are proud of you, and were proud of you.

He continued, explaining that Cinco de Mayo is a reminder of not just a holiday, but the incredible bonds that our two countries share.

RELATED: Major faux pas to avoid in San Antonio

This isn't the first time the president has committed the ultimate Alamo City faux pas. According to the Dallas Morning News, he made a stop in San Antonio during his 2012 campaign and hit donors with "Hello, San Antone."

Thanks, Obama.

mmendoza@mysa.com

Twitter: @MaddySkye
Its opalescent windows aglow in the afternoon sun, the new high-rise arcs into the shore like an Architectural Digest cover come to life. Opened in February, Opal Sands Resort adds another jewel in the crown for Clearwater Beach, named Americas No. 1 beach by TripAdvisor for 2016.

Chic was not on the horizon of this Florida Gulf Coast barrier island in the early 2000s. Back then, we stayed in 1950s-era motels, ate and drank cheap at open-air grills, sunbathed on wide white-sand beaches, watched for jumping dolphins in the blue-green waters and every evening, enjoyed free sunset fests at Pier 60. Nostalgia fades when realizing we can still do all of those things and more.
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ORLANDO, Fla.  Its a crowded world after all  at least in Orlandos hotels and theme parks.

Tourism officials announced this week that the number of visitors coming to Orlando last year jumped 5.5 percent to more than 66 million visitors.

That figure sets a record for tourists in Orlando and helps the central Florida city hang onto its bragging rights as the top tourist destination in the United States for the second year in a row.

The head of Orlandos tourist marketing bureau says a combination of factors contributed to the increase, including momentum from new theme park rides that had opened the previous year, such as Universal Studios Harry Potter ride, Diagon Alley and Walt Disney Worlds revamped Fantasyland.

But Visit Orlando CEO George Aguel also credited a new marketing campaign aimed at pulling on tourists heartstrings. Visit Orlandos Neverending Story campaign encouraged Orlando visitors to share stories about their visits, as well as photos, and they were posted on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

What makes this destination unique is that when you come here, you get a personal, memorable experience that you dont typically get from visiting other destinations, Aguel said. People really make memories of a lifetime when they come here. Its very emotional and we make an emotional connection and we sort of tapped into that.

More than 10 million visitors came to Orlando for conventions or business meetings, Aguel said, and the tax collected on hotels and motels in 2015 was $230 million.

There were about 5.5 million international visitors and 60.5 million domestic tourists.

Canadians and Brazilians continued to be Orlandos top source of visitors from outside the United States, despite a weak currency in Canada and an economic slowdown in Brazil, Aguel said. Visit Orlando is waiting to release the exact breakdown of international visitors until the National Travel & Tourism Office releases comparable figures in early summer. Nonetheless, Aguel said, We are very confident in the overall mix, as it is based on airline data and input from industry experts.

Visit Orlando uses airline data, hotel room occupancy, and national tourism figures, among other data points, to calculate the number of visitors.

Increases in the number of flights between Orlando and Brazil in 2015, as well as a wide variety of pricing options for hotels, helped offset the economic concerns in Brazil.

We do know Brazilians are very passionate about Orlando, Aguel said. The airlines did a very good job of promoting the airfare opportunities, that they had the increased capability. Back here, we have such an enormous amount of properties at so many price points.
The Texas Education Agency confirmed Friday that it has opened a special accreditation investigation into the Southside Independent School District.

TEA spokeswoman Lauren Callahan declined to give more specifics about the investigation. She said it was prompted by multiple complaints filed to the TEA against the district.
In most cities, bank robbers stick up their local financial institutions in disguises like ski masks or large sunglasses.

But as anyone in Texas will tell you, Austin is not most cities.

So it's little surprise that Tuesday in Texas' reigning capital of keepin' it weird and all things hipsterdom, an alleged Austin bank robber was caught on camera wearing the most hipster of hipster fashion staples: the skinny jeans.

Even funnier, the Austin Police Department called the suspect out in its release of surveillance photos to the public (see video).

The suspect allegedly entered the Benchmark Bank at 1901 N. Lamar Blvd. Tuesday, May 3, in the aforementioned skinny jeans, black blazer, black boots, black shirt and wig, and allegedly stole an undisclosed amount of money.

The suspect then fled in a silver four-door sedan.

The suspect is described as a male, age 20-30, roughly 6 feet tall, with a thin build. He also had a bandage on his face at the time of the alleged robbery.

The heist was one of three bank robberies in three days in Austin, according to Austin Police.

A day prior, a suspect in a much more subdued black dress and stylish pair of sunglasses (see photos above) allegedly demanded money from a teller at a Wells Fargo, 1601 W. 35th St., before striding out with an undisclosed amount of cash in a pair of sensible low-heeled shoes.

Then on Wednesday, May 4, a suspect robbed another Benchmark Bank, located just a block from the Wells Fargo. The man (see photos above) walked in wearing a striped shirt, blue jeans and sneakers and demanded money from the teller before escaping, proving that in both fashion and federal crimes, sometimes simple is better.

No one was hurt in any of the incidents (which is why we feel OK making fun of the fashion choices involved).
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Newly released dashcam video reveals events leading up to the 2015 DWI arrest of David Scott Glickler, a Hays County court-at-law judge who was elected a year prior to preside over such cases.

A Hays County sheriffs deputy arrested Glickler on Interstate 35 near Kyle on May 26, 2015, after he was stopped for speeding, swerving and failure to signal.

RELATED: Hays County judge arrested on DWI charge

Im sober  Im not sober  Im sober, Im not intoxicated, Glickler said to the deputy that night.

He continued, attributing his emotional state to an argument with his wife and identified himself as a judge.

I understand that, you keep saying that sir, the deputy responded. Youre a judge, but youre also a citizen.

RELATED: Records: More than 50 felony drunken driving suspects charged in Bexar County in April

Glickler acknowledges he was speeding then struggles through a field sobriety test before he is arrested.

On May 5, 2016, the judge pleaded no contest and was sentenced to three days in jail. However, he will only spend one day behind bars since he was credited for the time spent after his apprehension.

RELATED: More than 230 people arrested on DWI charges during Fiesta San Antonio

Glickler apologized and said consequences of my choices as well as the strong hand of fate have shown me what is truly important in this life, according to the Austin American Statesman.

Once the case is settled, he expects for his work to resume, the Statesman reported.

Clearly Im not perfect, and if someone wants the judge in their case to be perfect, I may not be the right judge for that person, Glickler told the Statesman. But I think that my past and future record on the bench will establish for everyone that I can do the job as judge as fair and impartial as I have and I will continue to do.

Click here to see the video if it is not available above.

mmendoza@mysa.com

Twitter: @MaddySkye
SAN ANTONIO  Police believe a man who was found dead in a field on the Southwest Side Friday afternoon died during a rollover crash two days ago.

According to police at the scene, San Antonio Police Department officers responding to a call for a rollover crash in the 11100 block of Applewhite Road on Wednesday evening found a vehicle that had flipped into a field at high speeds, but could not locate the driver.
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As authorities expanded a list of arrests and charges that started with last weeks discovery of a sister and brother, ages 3 and 4, tied up like animals outside a Northeast Bexar County home during a storm, sources with knowledge of law enforcement and Child Protective Services investigations provided new details of their mistreatment.

They said the boy, 4, was found fastened to the ground outside the rent house on Chipping Drive with a tight dog chain around one ankle. His pants were down around his feet as he attempted to relieve himself, and several piles of human feces were nearby.

About 10 feet away, his younger sister was tied with a dog leash attached to a garage door, her wrists bound above her head. Doctors later determined her right arm was fractured in two places. Dehydrated, cold and hungry, the kids had scrapes to their legs, backs, wrists and ankles that investigators believe happened over a two-week period.

RELATED: 2 more parents face charges in 'horrific' San Antonio child abuse case as details emerge

More for you NWS predicts isolated strong, severe storms possibly on Monday

The house, located in the Camelot II subdivision, had only a couch for furniture and reeked with the stench of backed-up toilets. Clothes were strewn across the floor. No parent was home. The pregnant mother of six children who were found unharmed inside arrived during the night and was arrested.

Porucha Denise Phillips, 34, has been charged with two felony counts of injury to a child by omission. The state has temporary custody over all eight kids and hearings have been set for next week to update a judge on their status and determine whether CPS can continue to hold them.

Deputies now have a warrant for the arres of the father of Phillips three youngest children, Deandre Jerome Dorch, 36.

Sheriffs spokesman James Keith said Thursday that both children still are in the hospital but are recovering nicely and soon will be released back to state custody. He acknowledged initial information provided to news media included incorrect ages for some of the children. Phillips children, five girls and a boy, range in age from 11 months to 10 years.

The mother of the two abused children, Cheryl Reed, 30, a California resident who has another child, 2, was charged Friday with two counts of injury to a chld stemming from an earlier stay in San Antonio at a different address.

Authorities say Reed was a friend of Phillips who knew her from Sacramento, California, where they both lived for an unknown period of time.

Its unclear how long Reed, Phillips and Dorch, also from California, have been living in San Antonio.

One source said California Child Protective Services had received child neglect reports involving Phillips, though Mary Walker, a spokeswoman for the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, said she could not confirm that. A California CPS official said the agency could not comment on any aspect of the case.

There is no CPS history of them in Texas, Walker said Thursday.

ezavala@express-news.net

bselcraig@express-news.net
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SAN ANTONIO  A one-year-old girl died Thursday morning at a San Antonio hospital after Blanco police found her unresponsive and not breathing with a dried wound and bruises on her head.

Doctors at University Hospital in San Antonio also noticed injuries to the child consistent with sexual assault before she died, court documents show.

The child, identified as Sunny Dakota Flade-Bort by the Bexar County Medical Examiner's Office, died at 9:02 a.m. on Thursday.

RELATED: Pregnant mother accused in brutal child abuse case moved to new jail unit after reports of assault

More for you NWS predicts isolated strong, severe storms possibly on Monday

Jamie Petronella, the girl's 23-year-old mother, and her boyfriend John Lawrence, 26, have each been charged with three counts of injury to a child.

If convicted, the couple could face a sentence of life in prison for the first-degree felony.

RELATED: BCSO: 2 more parents face charges in 'horrific' San Antonio child abuse case as details emerge

Blanco police officers responding to the couple's residence at about 5:48 p.m. Wednesday found the child laying in the middle of the living floor, according to an arrest affidavit.

Lawrence was trying to administer CPR to the child while he was on a cell phone, police said in the affidavit.

Officers noted bruises on both sides of the child's mouth and a large dried wound on her face, according to the affidavit.

RELATED: Former North Texas high school football player accused of killing 6-week-old daughter

Petronella told an officer that she had put the child in her crib and that the girl had been there for about 45 minutes.

Then, the child's breathing became choppy and then stopped. That's when Petronella told police she called 911, the affidavit said.

Petronella told police that her two-year-old daughter caused the infant's injuries by striking her with a plastic chair and knocking her into a table. The 23-year-old woman also has a three-year-old boy.

Lawrence told Blanco Police Chief Mike Ritchey that a large bruise on the infant's forehead was caused by him trying to "rub" away a smaller bruise.

When questioned about what he meant by rubbing the bruise, Lawrence said he rubbed the bruise to lessen its effects or "make it go away."

The child was transported by helicopter to University Hospital.

RELATED: Officials: New Mexico couple shot son with pellet gun, stomped on daughter's stomach

A treating physician told a CPS investigator that the child had a cerebral hemorrhage along with trauma to the child's anus and vagina consistent with injuries consistent with sexual assault, the affidavit said.

The child also suffered from a spinal injury, bruising to the face with contusions to the temple and a fractured arm, according to the affidavit.

Doctors placed the child on life support but considered her chances for recovery slim. She died Thursday.

RELATED: Police: Central Texas high school student sexually assaulted children, shared photos after church

Petronella's other two children had also been taken to the hospital, according to the affidavit.

Doctors found evidence of sexual assault after examining the two-year-old girl, the affidavit said.

A CPS investigator told police she had investigated how the three-year-old boy had sustained a broken arm days prior to the incident involving the one-year-old girl, according to the affidavit.

The infant did not have the injuries when the CPS investigator looked into the broken arm, she told police.

Lawrence was previously arrested in 2015 for assault domestic violence, police said.

RELATED: Sextet of alleged child predators arrested in Central Texas sting operation near Fort Hood

As of Friday morning, additional charges have not been filed against Petronella and Lawrence, according to documents provided by the Blanco County District Attorney's Office.

Petronella and Lawrence are currently being held in Blanco County Jail.

jfechter@mySA.com

Twitter: @JFreports
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SAN ANTONIO  A pregnant woman allegedly responsible for the care of two toddlers who were found tied and chained in the backyard of a Northeast Side home last week has been moved to a new unit at the Bexar County Jail following reports that she was assaulted by other inmates.

Porucha Phillips, 34, was arrested on April 29 after deputies discovered the children  a girl, 3, and a boy, 4  outside of her home in the Camelot II subdivision hours earlier. Phillips is not the mother of the two children, but is alleged to have been responsible for the care. Her six children were found unattended at the home and have been transferred to state custody along with the two toddlers.

MORE: BCSO: 2 more parents face charges in 'horrific' San Antonio child abuse case as details emerge

Phillips, who is pregnant and facing two felony charges, reported the alleged assaults, but officials have not been able to verify the claims, said BCSO spokesman James Keith, who confirmed that Phillips has been transferred to a new unit within the jail annex, where female inmates are housed.

Authorities on Friday morning announced the arrest of Cheryl Reed, the 30-year-old mother of the two children, and an arrest warrant for Deandre Dorch, the 36-year-old father of some of the children found unattended inside the home who has been accused of injury to a child.

Deputies are currently searching for Dorch, who is the common-law husband of Phillips and is believed to still be in San Antonio.

Officials have said it is unclear who tied up the children.

RELATED: Tied up outside in the rain, children had been abused for weeks



Reed was taken into custody at a motel off Interstate 10 near Vance Jackson Road late Thursday, said Keith. Reed, who is the mother of the two children discovered bound in the backyard, faces two third-degree felony counts of injury to a child.

Reed came to San Antonio several days ago after investigators tracked her down in California while investigating the April 28 abuse case.

RELATED: Children rescued, woman arrested after 'horrific' abuse discovered

Investigators have said that Phillips was responsible for Reed's two children, but are still trying to determine the exact nature of their relationship.

Keith said Reed's charges stem from a separate incident in February of 2016 and November of 2015 in which she allegedly grabbed a switch from a tree and whipped the two children.

According to the findings of a preliminary investigation, Dorch may have threatened Reed after she left the state in February, leaving the two children in San Antonio, according to the Sheriff's Office and an affidavit. Dorch and Phillips sought money from Reed.

Dorch told investigators that he saw Reed whip both children with a switch from a tree several times between November 2015 and February 2016. However, Dorch allegedly told investigators that he didn't report the alleged offenses because he's not a "snitch" and he's not "God," the sheriff's office said Friday.

The two toddlers had hundreds of injuries and scars from old and fresh injuries that could have taken place over months or years, doctors told investigators. The girl also suffered from hypothermia, according to the sheriff's office.

Investigators are still gathering more evidence in the case and working to determine whether any other adults will be charged in the case, or if more charges will be filed against Phillips, Reed and Dorch.

Staff writer Joshua Fechter contributed to this report.

mdwilson@express-news.net

Twitter: @MDWilsonSA
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SAN ANTONIO  Authorities announced new charges for two more parents Friday in a child abuse case involving eight children, including two who were found chained and leashed in the backyard, at a home in the Camelot II subdivision last week.

Cheryl Reed, 30, was taken into custody at a motel off Interstate 10 near Vance Jackson Road late Thursday, according to Bexar County Sheriffs Office spokesman James Keith. Reed, who is the mother of the two children discovered bound in the backyard, faces two third-degree felony counts of injury to a child.

RELATED: Tied up outside in the rain, children had been abused for weeks

Deandre Dorch, the 36-year-old father of some of the children found unattended inside the home, has been accused of injury to a child, Keith said Friday. Deputies are currently searching for Dorch.

Reed came to San Antonio several days ago after investigators tracked her down in California while investigating the April 28 abuse case. Reed's two children  a girl, 3, and a boy, 4  were among the eight kids in the care of Porucha Phillips, 34, who was arrested last Friday and faces two felony charges of injury to a child by omission.

According to the Sheriff's Office, Phillips is the mother of the six children found unharmed inside the home. It's not clear who tied the children up.

RELATED: Children rescued, woman arrested after 'horrific' abuse discovered

Dorch, Phillips' common law husband, is the father of an unspecified number of those children, Keith said Friday.

Investigators have said that Phillips was responsible for Reed's two children, but are still trying to determine the exact nature of their relationship.

Keith said Reed's charges stem from a separate incident in February of 2016 and November of 2015 in which she allegedly grabbed a switch from a tree and whipped the two children.

Investigators are still gathering more evidence in the case and working to determine whether any other adults will be charged in the case, or if more charges will be filed against Phillips, Reed and Dorch.

RELATED: California mother connected to 'horrific' child abuse case in San Antonio

According to the findings of a preliminary investigation, Dorch may have threatened Reed after she left the state in February, leaving the two children in San Antonio, according to the Sheriff's Office and an affidavit. Dorch and Phillips sought money from Reed.

Dorch told investigators that he saw Reed whip both children with a switch from a tree several times between November 2015 and February 2016.

However, Dorch allegedly told investigators that he didn't report the alleged offenses because he's not a "snitch" and he's not "God," the sheriff's office said Friday.

The two toddlers had hundreds of injuries and scars from old and fresh injuries that could have taken place over months or years, doctors told investigators.

The girl also suffered from hypothermia, according to the sheriff's office.

Both children have been released from the hospital, the sheriff's office said Friday, and have joined the other six children found inside the home in the care of Child Protective Services.

mdwilson@express-news.net

Twitter: @MDWilsonSA
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A man was arrested Thursday in the death of his 2-month-old son, which was ruled a homicide by the Bexar County Medical Examiner.

Arjunkumar Rana, 19, faces a capital murder charge in the death of his son, Alexander Rana, after the medical examiner determined the boy died of asphyxiation by neck compression, according to the San Antonio Police Department.

As Arjunkumar Rana was led in handcuffs to a police SUV Thursday at the Public Safety Headquarters downtown, he denied the accusation to reporters.

I didnt murder my son. I lied about it, he said, referring to a confession police said he gave previously.

SAPD spokesman Jesse Salame said police were initially called to Ranas home on March 24 for an unresponsive baby. Alexander Rana was taken to Methodist Childrens Hospital where he was pronounced deceased that day.

A week later, officers responded to a disturbance at the Northwest Side apartment of Rana and the childs mother in the 3200 block of Northwest Loop 410.

During the phone call, (Arjunkumar) confessed to murdering his son ... to the dispatcher, Salame said.

At the time, the medical examiner was still conducting an investigation into the childs death, but a homicide ruling was not yet reached, police said.

When investigators arrived on scene, Rana told them again that he was responsible for the death of his son, Salame said.

He was released that day as the examiner continued investigating the childs death until the medical examiner ruled his sons death a homicide Wednesday.

Salame said detectives have not charged the infants mother in the case and that they have no reason to believe shes involved.

He talked about being awoken in the middle of the night and being frustrated by that, Salame said, when asked if there was a motive to the killing.

Investigators said the medical examiner is still looking into any prior medical history the infant might have had.

Rana told media that his son had been in a hospital because he was spitting up blood. He said his son was diagnosed with high liver enzymes as well as anemia, a condition in which the blood doesn't have enough healthy red blood cells.

He attempted to continue talking but was placed in the SUV by police.

At this point we have probable cause based on his statement and based on the ruling by the medical examiner to book him for the capital murder tonight, Salame said.
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A 64-year-old Dallas man was arrested Wednesday for allegedly setting a dog on fire last week.

The Dallas Morning News reports Otis Gardner was charged with animal cruelty for allegedly pouring gasoline on a dog named Bruno and lighting the dog on fire.

RELATED: 3 Texas A&M Corps of Cadets members charged in ritualistic dumping of dead dog on campus

WBAP reports Gardner has posted bond and was released Thursday.

The incident allegedly occurred in Oak Cliff on April 27 in the 3600 block of Utah Avenue.

When firefighters arrived at the scene, the dog was no longer on fire, according to the Dallas Morning News.

RELATED: North Texas woman sentenced for shooting caged dog in head, leaving puppies on side of road

Bruno, the dog, is being treated at a veterinary clinic and is currently recovering from his injuries.

The owner of the dog is currently unknown.

We want to thank our community for being our eyes and ears on the street and remind everyone of the importance of reporting animal related issues, especially animal cruelty, Dallas Animal Services division manager Jody Jones told the Dallas Morning News.

RELATED: Florida woman at center of online shaming firestorm for photo of dog with duct tape around mouth

The Dallas Police Department and the City of Dallas did not immediately respond to requests for additional comments.

Gardners arrest affidavit is currently unavailable, according to the Dallas County District Clerks Office.

twhite@mysa.com

Twitter: @tylerlwhite
SAN ANTONIO  A man who was charged with three counts of aggravated robbery on Tuesday had been booked into the jail more than a dozen times prior to his most recent arrest.

According to public records, Anthony Mari, 32, has had numerous charges filed against him in Bexar County including assault, theft, unlawful restraint, criminal mischief, violation of a protective order and others.
Volunteers make a difference.

They are the lifelines and unsung heroes of many organizations, and they truly merit the spotlight finally shining on them.

All Texans, regardless of political affiliation, should embrace first lady Cecilia Abbotts Texanthropy initiative announced late last month and answer her call for volunteers to provide service to others.

Not everyone can afford to give money to a favorite charity, but we can all carve a few hours out of our hectic schedules for a worthy cause. Just one hour a week can make a difference in someones life.

Abbott sets a great example. She continued to volunteer with Meals on Wheels and More of Austin even after she and her husband moved into the Governors Mansion and the commitments on her appointment calendar grew.

Texas first ladies have traditionally used their positions to promote causes. Anita Perry, a former nurse, advocated for health care issues. Laura Bush, a former librarian, established the Texas Book Festival.

Abbotts focus on volunteering should reap great dividends. When it comes to giving their time, Texans are no slackers. But the numbers could use improvement.

As a state, we gave 572.1 million hours of service in 2014, according to the National Corporation for National Community Service. Yet despite that astonishing figure, Texas, at 23.2 percent, still ranked 43rd among the 50 states and Washington, D.C., in percentage of residents volunteering. Utah made the top of the list with 46 percent, and Louisiana was at the bottom with a volunteer rate of 17.4 percent.

Why is volunteering so important? For starters, there is no way anyone could underwrite the cost of volunteer work.

National statistics for 2014 show that 23 percent of residents in the San Antonio metropolitan statistical area gave volunteer time. That translates to roughly 29.6 volunteer hours per capita for a $1.2 billion of uncompensated services donated to local entities.

Where did the service hours go? A large amount went to religious causes, roughly 36 percent of the total. Education- related volunteer work came in second with 28.6 percent of the volunteer hours and social services.

The statistics pretty much reflect those of the country as a whole. National figures indicate 1 in 4 U.S. residents volunteers in some form or other, making for a nation of 62.8 million volunteers. The majority of volunteers across the country are 35 to 54 years of age. The smallest number of volunteers are in the 16 to 24 age range.

Per capita volunteering totals about 32 hours per year for a total of 7.9 billion hours of service. In dollar figures, that volunteer service comes to $184 billion.

Putting a dollar figure on service hours is easy, but what we may never know is the impact that volunteer work has on individual lives. How many lives were extended by the care and attention of volunteers who delivered meals to the homebound? How many children made it to graduation because of a caring tutor?

We spend a lot of time talking about building a college-going culture in our community, but we really ought to expand that to include building a community service-oriented culture that involves people of all ages.

Children who volunteer while in school become adult volunteers. As a plus, the work they do as students looks great on their applications and resumes when they head off to college or seek their first paying job.

No one is ever too old to help others. Through volunteer work, we can all continue to be lifelong learners.

gpadilla@express-news.net
What do the Pentagon Papers, the late madam Theresa Browns infamous trick list, a Corpus Christi car dealer and the current Castle Hills City Council election have in common?

They all raised a fundamental First Amendment issue  that of prior restraint: Under what circumstances can a court order someone not to publish or broadcast something  or to retract something that has been published  without a full trial and a finding of libel?

Castle Hills clawed its way onto that illustrious list last week when state District Judge Larry Noll issued a temporary restraining order requiring Councilman Douglas Gregory to immediately and publicly retract claims in a campaign flier criticizing his opponent in todays election, former Castle Hills Mayor Bruce Smiley-Kaliff.

Noll also barred Gregory and his representatives from making any other facially defamatory statements regarding Smiley-Kaliff.

Noll, a veteran judge, is considered by many lawyers to be one of San Antonios best. Its hard to imagine he wasnt aware of at least one of the cases mentioned before, but maybe he wasnt.

Yet Noll made it worse Monday by confirming his order when lawyers for Gregory presented him with a 19-page brief of clear case law on the matter.

One case was Hajek vs. Bill Mowbray Motors, a 1983 case out of Corpus Christi.

James Hajek had problems with a car he bought from Mowbray, and when he didnt get satisfaction, he painted a sign on all four sides of the car saying Mowbray had sold him a lemon.

The car dealer sought an injunction prohibiting Hajek from driving the painted car in public. A district judge agreed, and the Corpus Christi Court of Appeals upheld him.

But the Texas Supreme Court without dissent reversed them. The short and succinct decision quotes the Texas Constitution: Every person shall be at liberty to speak, write or publish his opinions on any subject, being responsible for the abuse of that privilege; and no law shall ever be passed curtailing the liberty of speech or of the press.

Being responsible means that if the speech published contained harmful lies, a lawsuit could result in a verdict that assesses monetary damages. For that, Smiley-Kaliff may get his day in court. He has sued Gregory for libel, alleging more than $1 million in damages to his insurance business.

Skepticism is appropriate. It is not unusual for candidates to sue each other for libel, earning brief publicity during the campaign. The suits almost always melt away after the election is over.

The Texas Supreme Court noted the car evoked no threat of danger to anyone, and thus, could not be subject to prior restraint of temporary injunction.

The Pentagon Papers case, detailing the frequently scandalous history of the Vietnam War, showed how high the bar to prior restraint is. The Nixon administration argued the New York Times should be barred from printing excerpts because they could cause harm to national security. The U.S. Supreme Court voted 6-3 to allow them to be published.

Similarly, a San Antonio district judge granted a restraining order to bar a small West Side newspaper from printing the names of prominent clients of Theresa Browns brothel. Attorney Jesse Botella had the case moved to federal court, where Judge William Sessions, who would later become director of the FBI, summarily dissolved the order.

Not surprisingly, Noll has already received similar treatment. Wednesday, a three-judge panel of the 4th Court of Appeals issued an emergency one-page order overturning his restraining order.

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.
Re: Equality, justice for all was my fathers mission, Charles Gonzalez, Opinion, Sunday:

Reading this well-deserved tribute by Charles Gonzalez to his father  the late, thoroughly dedicated, hardworking and popular Congressman Henry B. Gonzalez  I particularly noted the advice given to HBG by his elementary school teacher and his proclamation to his family, that he was an American.

In 1939, my first-grade teacher at Sam Houston Elementary School, Mrs. Irene Block, also advised us that if we were born in the United States, we were Americans.

In 1947, at 14, I made this same proclamation, but unfortunately, I made it in public during an era in Texas when the melding of ethnicities seemed to be very troublesome for everyone concerned. So much so that when a stranger heard my remark, he walked up to me and told me that I was not an American but a Mexican.

I told him I was born in the United States and, as such, I was an American. He insisted I was not an American. I stated that my parents, my schoolteachers, my church and my neighbors  the Williams from Alabama, the Magees from Montana and the Astors from Nebraska  were all in agreement with me. This went on, back and forth, for several minutes, until the stranger grew so agitated that he pulled a gun, leveled it at my stomach, and threatened to shoot me at point-blank range if I did not agree with him. Well, that put an immediate end to the debate as, scared out of my wits, uncontrollably shaking and weak-kneed, I wobbled my way back home.

I knew I was not going to live under those conditions, so after a four-year stint in the Air Force, I moved to North Louisiana, where no one had any doubts about my Americanism. Quite the contrary, many people seemed to like me, and my male buddies at a business college in Shreveport considered me a leader of sorts. They nicknamed me Kingfish, more than likely an allusion to their well-liked populist governor and eventual senator, Huey Long.

After two years of accounting experience at an auto dealership in Leesville, La., I returned to my hometown when my parents were getting older and needed my assistance.

I was pleased to see a vast improvement in the socio-political-economic environment, and I was very fortunate to meet some men who operated a mechanical contracting business and offered me a job as controller of the firm. I remained in that capacity for 47 years until my retirement in 2006.

My birthday, like that of Henry B., happens to fall on May 3, and this year I became 83 years young.

George Carrera is a UTSA graduate and former accountant who is enjoying retirement with his wife, Janie, and grandchildren.
Total Wine & More: Wine of the Week

Martin Ray Chardonnay Los Carneros

750ml, California

In 1990, winemaker Courtney Benham was walking through an old warehouse in San Jose, CA, when he chanced upon a forgotten treasure  1,500 cases of wine, dating back nearly four decades, made by California wine pioneer Martin Ray. Exploring further, Benham found old wooden crates filled with letters, press clippings, winery brochures and price lists from Rays 40 years as a winemaker. It was clear that Ray had quite a history, and that an intriguing opportunity was being presented.

Before relaunching the Martin Ray brand, Benham delved into Rays history and tasted through the extensive library of Martin Ray Cabernet Sauvignon, Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. He mined the history and wine for common threads and stylistic components he could use as inspiration for his own wines. For Courtney, the essence of Martin Ray is a no-compromise approach that requires two things: hillside vineyards and intuitive winemaking. These inspired the original Martin Ray, and inspire the wines that today bear his name.

This product of Carneros shows off a medley of citrus, green apple, fig and ripe pear flavors that are well-focused, holding their fruit intensity through the long, complex finish. Rich and full-bodied, this Chardonnay packs in loads of enticing flavors on a rich, smooth texture.

Find the Wine of the Week at Total Wine & More's San Antonio locations:



Del Norte

125 NW Loop 410

San Antonio, TX 78216

(210) 524-9300

The Rim

17530 La Cantera Parkway

San Antonio, TX 78257

(210) 877-9155

You can also shop online at www.TotalWine.com.

Editors Note: This content is made possible by Total Wine & More. 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.
ALEXANDRIA, Va.  Six convenience retailers have been shortlisted in this years NACS Insight International Convenience Retailer of the Year Award, sponsored by Accenture:

Applegreen M1 Lisburn, United Kingdom

Deli de Luca ESSO alliance, Norway

Herlihys Centra in Fermoy, Co. Cork, Ireland

Reitan Conveniences 7-Eleven Arlanda Airport, Stockholm, Sweden

Ryans Centra in OConnell Street, Limerick, Ireland

Spar Strensham Services, United Kingdom

Applegreen has designed its new M1 Lisburn, United Kingdom, site to be bigger and better than anything it has developed before with 300 seats for customers and a third of the building dedicated to customer flow, plus childrens play areas. This provides customers with ample space to circulate and rest, regardless of how busy the store might be during the day. Click here to view the full Applegreen profile.

Deli de Luca ESSO alliance in Norway claims to be redefining the fuel retailing market in Norway by providing customers with a high quality experience of food and drinks on the go. The retailer aims to be Europes coolest convenience concept with an appealing offer. Click here for the full Deli de Luca profile.

Herlihys Centra in Fermoy, Co., in Cork, Ireland, has transformed its store into a fresh food emporium. During a revamp in 2015, it stripped out every aisle and moved every gondola and fridge in order to further expand the deli and carvery offering, and it introduced a state of the art bakery and new cafe. Click here for the full Herlihys Centra profile.

Reitan Conveniences 7-Eleven Arlanda Airport in Stockholm, Sweden, has remodeled its 7-Eleven franchise store at the airport to put the emphasis firmly on food. The new concept responds to the trend for foodvenience by offering made-in-store quality fresh food and a complementary convenience store range, which is delivered with passionate service. Click here for the full Reitan profile.

Ryans Centra in OConnell Street in Limerick, Ireland, has redefined the convenience store offer in Ireland with healthy product innovations. Centra has held its own through the recession in Ireland but, as the economy began to improve, the retailer realized the brand needed to rethink its convenience offering. It needed to attract the emerging consumer who has more money to spend and is interested in healthy living. Click here for the full Ryans Centra profile.

Spar Strensham Services in the United Kingdom has developed its Spar Strensham motorway services site to become the choice destination for daily commuters, holiday makers and drive-home shoppers. Working in collaboration with Blakemore Trade Partners, Roadchef has created a store focused on fulfilling the core feed me now business, while driving new business to the site in the form of a tonights tea mission solution and a core distress purchase convenience range. Click here for the full Spar Strensham profile.

The winner will be announced during the NACS Insight Convenience Summit  Europe on June 9. The Summit also includes knowledge-sharing retailer roundtables, international best practice presentations on key trends and developments in the global industry, and retailer case studies. Registration for the NACS Insight Convenience Summit  Europe is available online.
From automated chefs to customer service, technology innovations are underway and looking to transform the foodservice labor force.

TUCSON, Ariz.  Watson, IBMs super robot, took on two Jeopardy champions in February 2011 and won. Watson had access to 200 million pages of human information, giving it the obvious upper hand, but the cognitive computer also has the ability to learn, interact and propose solutions. Five years later, Watson and IBMs cognitive technology continues making headlines, from helping doctors make diagnoses to creating recipes for a food truck at SXSW. Oh, and Watson has a cookbook.

Artificial Intelligence emerged in the late 1940s, but it wasnt until 1997 when IBMs chess-playing robot Deep Blue (and Watsons predecessor) gave the technology one of its biggest breakthroughs. Deep Blue beat the world chess champion after a six-game match that lasted several days. The computer was programmed to solve the complex, strategic game of chess, which enabled researchers to explore and understand the limits of massively parallel processing, according to IBM.

Fast-forward to today, where Artificial Intelligence is transforming many industries, including the foodservice industry. Momentum Machines has built a robot that can make from scratch one burger every 10 seconds in an hour. The companys cofounder, Alexandros Vardakostas, told Xconomy in 2014 that the automation device isnt meant to make employees more efficient. Its meant to completely obviate them." At that time the companys website also noted that its automation "does everything employees can do, except better."

Here are a few more examples of how robots are entering the foodservice space:

Dominos Pizza in New Zealand is planning to test delivery by robot, dubbed the Domino's Robotic Unit (DRU), which is a three-foot tall battery-powered unit that contains a heated compartment for storing up to 10 pizzas, and is capable of self-driving up to 12.5 miles.

Andy Puzder, Carls Jr. and Hardees CEO, is intrigued by the idea of a fully automated fast-food restaurant after visiting the fully automated restaurant Eatsa in California.

With higher minimum wage proposals and the swell of labor costs receiving attention across the United States, its not difficult to see where this path is heading.

When we pull all of this together, the implications are strong for the workforce, particularly with $15 minimum wage hikes, noted Michael Rogers, keynote speaker and Practical Futurist at this weeks Conexxus Annual Conference.

And its not just food prep that automation is encroaching upon. Take customer service, for example, with restaurants using iPads for food ordering, and technology underway where restaurant booths feature a screen with an avatarthe serverthat greets guests, jokes with the kids, shows videos on how meals are prepared, and essentially takes away the server/diner experience. In fact, the only time diners would interact with a human would be when food is brought to the table, Rogers explained.

Artificial Intelligence is also making its mark in the service industry as companion robots, performing tasks such as playing checkers. Unlike Deep Blue and Watson, the goal of this technology isnt to win, but to learn from human interaction and language.

How technology interacts with the world leads back to a fundamental question about employee costs and how the workforce will evolve, noted Rogers. The ability to automate is cutting into what we can do with our entry-level employees, he said, adding that most basic, entry-level tasks can be performed more efficiently by computers than humans. We need to think about more interesting ways to use people, Rogers suggested.

Look for more coverage from the Conexxus Annual Conference in NACS Daily and the June issue of NACS Magazine.
By Nomi Prins, the author of six books, a speaker, and a distinguished senior fellow at the non-partisan public policy institute Demos. Her most recent book is All the Presidents Bankers: The Hidden Alliances That Drive American Power (Nation Books). She is a former Wall Street executive. Special thanks go to researcher Craig Wilson for his superb work on this piece. Originally published at TomDispatch

Theres a pile of money hiding offshore. Its true that jobs are also leaving the United States because American companies find it convenient to cut labor costs by moving manufacturing abroad, the economic issue youre hearing most about in this election season. But the stunning amount of money that continues to flow across American borders (and those of other countries), and eventually disappears into the pockets of the corporate and political elite, ultimately causes even more damage to our finances and our lives.

While the two leading candidates for the presidency, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, have indeed suggested cosmetic fixes for a situation that only grows more extreme with the passage of time, they have themselves taken advantage of numerous tax efficiency strategies that make money evaporate. Of course, you shouldnt doubt for a second that theyll change their ways once in the Oval Office.

As with so much in our American heritage, theres a history to the offshore world, too. Finding places to shield money from tax collection first became commonplace among upper-crust industrialists, bankers, and even public servants back in the 1920s. Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon, a millionaire mogul who served presidents Calvin Coolidge, Warren Harding, and Herbert Hoover (and had a knack for cutting taxes on the wealthy), left office under mounting congressional probes into his tax evasion strategies.

Fast-forward about a century and tax dodging has been woven into the fabric of the lives of the affluent and corporate worldwide in an extraordinary way. According to an April 2016 Oxfam report, the top 50 U.S. companies are hoarding more than $1.4 trillion in cash offshore.

Whats more, for every dollar that these firms spent lobbying Congress for favorable tax treatment (a collective total of $2.6 billion between 2008 and 2014), they received $130 dollars in tax breaks and $4,000 in subsidies from the U.S. government. These companies, including Pfizer, Goldman Sachs, Dow Chemical, Chevron, Walmart, IBM, and Procter & Gamble, created an opaque and secretive network of more than 1,600 company subsidiaries located in tax havens that they decided to disclose. (Because of the weak reporting requirements of the Securities and Exchange Commission, there could be thousands more.) According to a March 3rd report from the Citizens for Tax Justice, the Fortune 500 companies are now saving $695 billion in federal income taxes on a total of $2.4 trillion in offshore holdings.

Americans cant afford to ignore such tax games, since were the ones who, in effect, wind up paying the taxes these firms dont. For government policymakers, such tax evasion is a grim matter of attrition, since the U.S. (and other countries) plunge ever deeper into debt thanks to such antics and then find themselves cutting services or raising taxes on us to cover the gap between the money theyre losing and the taxes theyre collecting.

Not only are such firms unpatriotic, they are parasitic and while theyre at it, they use similar techniques  lets not call it theft (though it is)  to avoid tax payments in the poorest places on Earth. As Oxfam reports, the biggest burden of tax havens falls on the poorest people. In the process, they only increase already oppressive levels of inequality globally.

Tax secrecy specialists  people working in the money-hiding field  help rich individuals, multinational corporations, political leaders, terrorists, and organized crime groups divert cash and capital, sometimes in staggering amounts, from local economies into an obscure, complex, multi-layered global financial network that operates outside any national or international regulatory or tax system. Given this, isnt it a little surprising that the top candidates for the presidency barely pay lip service to the impact of such hidden money? What toothless policies they have proposed to deal with the phenomenon will do little or nothing to change it.

The Panama Papers

U.S. trade agreements generally include rosy promises about partnering with regional economies around the world to encourage the flow of goods and services across borders. At the same time, they generally are focused on the obliteration of barriers that in any way restrict money from flowing out of the United States or into the embrace of other nations. The free movement of capital, or financial globalization as its called, has been a bedrock Washington policy for a century and, since the 1980s, places like Panama  a renowned tax haven  have abetted this process.

A month ago, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists released a trove of documents, 2.6 terabytes of them, including more than 4.8 million emails, 3 million database files, and 2.1 million PDFs. These were turned over by an undisclosed source (John Doe), communicating through encrypted channels to avoid repercussions. Now known as the Panama Papers, they reveal how elite multinational companies, the super rich, and government figures have engaged in tax-dodging practices engineered by a single Panama City-based law firm, Mossack Fonseca (MF).

In addition to public officials and billionaires, more than 500 global banks, their subsidiaries and branches, have registered at least 15,600 shell companies there using MFs services. That word shell is descriptively accurate since such companies rarely have employees and are commonly no more than a post office box providing a facade through which books can be doctored, taxes dodged, losses concealed, and money-laundering and other criminal actions carried out. And keep in mind that MF, which acts for approximately 300,000 companies, is only the fourth largest provider of such offshore services globally.

One mega-bank that used its services extensively was HSBC, which created an astonishing 2,300 shell companies with that law firms help. Well return to HSBC.

Mossack Fonsecas official mission, it claims, is to deliver quality, reliable and comprehensive services to our worldwide clients in the legal, trust, investment consultancy, and digital solution fields. Thats code for helping select establishment outfits and dubious enterprises to avoid paying taxes on profits, investments, or money made from buying and selling real estate, luxury yachts or planes, oil wells, weapons, or drugs, among other things.

Secrecy is its calling card. Tax havens, or locales amenable to tax dodging, whether in the Caribbean, Central America, Switzerland (still the worlds top location for financial secrecy), or for that matter the state of Delaware, exist to circumvent tax laws. Period. And these operations are so shady that even the functionaries working in the shadows to establish such secret accounts are barely aware of exactly who owns them, where the money came from, or where its going. For regulators, prosecutors, and tax collectors, the opacity is far worse.

You dont necessarily have to be rich or powerful to access the services of such offshore firms and banks, but it helps. Some havens take anyone ready to put up a minimum of $25,000, while others demand staggering sums. Western Samoa, for instance, requires a cool $10 million to get started.

The most alarming aspect of the Panama Papers revelations was not MFs clientele or even its secretive practices, but that what it does is completely legal. Nor was this the first such disclosure. In November 2014, for instance, the Luxleaks scandal involving a whole menagerie of Luxembourg-based tax schemes, as the Guardian put it, was disclosed by two whistleblowers from the accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers. (Luxembourg is a major European tax haven.) Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, Facebook, HSBC, JPMorgan Chase, and Microsoft were on the list of its more than 350 multinational tax avoiders.

Avoiding vs. Evading Taxes and Corporate Inversions

Avoiding and evading taxes are technically considered different kinds of acts, the former being legal in the U.S., the latter not. According to the Internal Revenue Service, Taxpayers have the right to reduce, avoid, or minimize their taxes by legitimate means. Tax evasion, on the other hand, involves an act to evade or defeat a tax, or payment of tax by deceit, subterfuge, camouflage, concealment, attempts to color or obscure events, or make things seem other than they are.

The line between the two is obviously thin and vague, but both practices result in the same thing: paying fewer taxes or hiding money.

The subject of tax avoidance and evasion has generally gotten little traction on the campaign trail in election 2016, the exception being corporate inversions. These happen when, for example, an American company merges with a foreign one in a tax haven, and so gets a lower tax rate by re-incorporating (filling out some paperwork) there. This, too, is legal, although it represents the purest form of corporate tax evasion. Perhaps you wont be surprised to learn that the practice began in Panama about 30 years ago.

In 2014, companies with household names like Apple, Microsoft, Pfizer, and General Electric avoided paying a collective $90 billion in taxes through inversion strategies. Apple led that list, holding $181.1 billion offshore. Thats a lot of iPhone sales.

The Leading Candidates and Hidden Money

Tax havens are, in essence, perfectly legal criminal facilities designed to steal money from the rest of us. The two leading candidates in this election season, however, arent talking about closing down tax havens for good (which would piss off lots of rich people, banks, drug cartels, and terrorists). They are instead focused on getting companies to voluntarily repatriate, or return, profits made abroad for taxation purposes or on closing tax loopholes that allow money to disappear. Neither, however, offers much detail as to what that means.

Both do share one thing, however, when it comes to tax havens: Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have companies registered at the same address (also shared by 285,000 other companies) in Wilmington, Delaware. In other words, they make use of the Delaware loophole, which allows for the legal shifting of earnings from elsewhere in the country to the ultimate tax haven state in the U.S. Neither, as Rupert Neate of the Guardian has written, has been willing to offer any explanation for this. Thats the political beauty of loopholes: closing one is different from eradicating an entire practice but suffices as a promise.

Hillary

Hillary has gone after tax havens before. In 2004, as a New York senator, she vowed to close tax loopholes for people who create a mailbox, or a drop, or send one person to sit on the beach in some island paradise and claim that it is their offshore headquarters. She introduced no bills to do so, however.

She has spoken out against corporate tax inversions, too. She wants Congress to prevent them by imposing what she calls a commonsense 50% threshold on them; in other words, as long as a company keeps at least half of its operations in this country, it would be considered a U.S. company for tax purposes, no matter the inversions. She also has favored an exit tax to ensure that multinationals pay a fair share of U.S. taxes owed on earnings stored overseas. Both of these suggestions would put some modest limits on offshore tax dodging (after the fact), but not come within a country mile of banning it.

On such subjects, she can sound strong indeed at appropriate moments. In February 2016, for instance, she said, We need to go after a company like Johnson Controls that is trying to avoid paying taxes after all of us bailed it out by pretending to sell itself in a so-called inversion in Europe. It evidently didnt matter to her that the same automotive parts company set to merge with Tyco International (based in Ireland to dodge taxes) had donated money to the Clinton Foundation charity as recently as December 2015. (Johnson Controls denied Hillarys claims that it had received a bailout during the financial crisis.)

Hillary, lest we forget, joined the board of directors of the the Clinton Foundation, the family charity, in 2013. She resigned in April 2015 to run for president. Now, keeping it in the family, her husband, Bill, and her daughter, Chelsea, remain standing members of the board. Spawned from the William J. Clinton Foundation, founded in 1997, the charity has raised $2 billion, has about 2,000 employees (including at times members of Hillarys political team), and boasts an annual budget of $223 million.

Like many gilt-edged couples, Hillary and Bill Clinton have themselves utilized onshore and offshore tax loopholes. In 2010, they used a common tax-dodging technique by placing their multi-million dollar home in Chappaqua, New York, in a residence trust. After he left office, Bill spent five years as an adviser to billionaire (now-ex-pal) Ron Burkles investment fund, Yucaipa Global, which had funds registered in the Cayman Islands and Dubai. That alliance netted Bill at least $15 million.

Hillarys bedrock thinking on money flowing out of the U.S. and into the offshore world can best be seen in her support for the 2012 U.S.-Panama Trade Promotion Agreement when she was secretary of state. The agreement removed barriers to U.S. services, including financial services, which actually simplified the process of squirreling money away in or through Panama by allowing it to flow freely into that country.

The Clinton Foundation inhales donations from people using tax havens (including Panama). Although Hillary denounced Mossack Fonsecas dealings on cue after the Panama Papers story broke, a number of individuals and multinationals that have contributed to the foundation used MF to establish offshore accounts, according to McClatchy. These include Canadian mining billionaire Frank Giustra who features in the foundations $25 million top-tier donor bracket, and two firms tied to Ng Lap Seng, the Chinese billionaire implicated in a major donor scandal involving the Clintons and the Democratic National Committee.

Similarly, in a speech she gave at the New School in July 2015, Hillary highlighted the criminal behavior of global bank HSBC. In 2012, the behemoth financial institution agreed to a record $1.92 billion settlement with the Department of Justice and the Treasury Department for enabling drug cartel money laundering and violating U.S. sanctions by conducting transactions for customers in Iran, Libya, Sudan, and Burma. She vowed, On my watch, it will change.

Yet, in 2014, the Clinton Foundation accepted between $500,000 and $1 million from that bank.

The Panama Papers are but one conflicted instance in which Hillarys stated beliefs, her actions, and the generosity of her friends and acquaintances came together in a contradictory fashion. The evidence suggests that tax-dodgers will, in fact, be able to breathe a sigh of relief if she becomes president. Her actions are likely to  if youll excuse the expression  trump her words when it comes to curtailing the behavior of offshore scofflaws in significant ways. And speaking of Trump

The Donald

Consider the fact that The Donald wont even disclose his tax returns. His indignantly delivered explanation is that they are under audit. Under the circumstances, dont hold your breath. Perhaps he doesnt make nearly as much money as he claims  or maybe he has an embarrassing tax haven habit. Who knows?

Ironically, Mossack Fonsecas Panama City headquarters is located a mere seven-minute drive from the Trump International Hotel and Towers in Panama City. (If youre interested, its website is pitching a bargain on rooms at 15% off our currently available Best Unrestricted Rate.) That decadent complex is one of many sketchy enterprises to which Trump lent his name for licensing purposes. According to his (unaudited) personal financial disclosure report filed with the Federal Election Commission, the deal earned him $5 million. In true Trumpian style, lawsuits and battles surround the endeavor.

Under the tax plan hes touting in his presidential campaign, U.S. businesses would see a reduction in their maximum tax rate from 35% to 15%. This lower rate (one of the best in the world) would, he claims, render corporate inversions unnecessary. The Donald apparently hopes that corporate America will be so eternally grateful to him that theyll move their money back onshore and pay taxes on it voluntarily (though most of them already dont pay the top tax rate here anyway).

Trumps views on a repatriation tax holiday that would let companies bring home their overseas stashes on a one-time basis for little or nothing have shifted over the course of his candidacy. Last year, he proposed the repatriation of hidden funds without penalty or taxation of any kind. Now hes advocating a more populist one-time 10% tax on them.

Although a key promise of his tax reform plan is to end the practice of stockpiling money in offshore accounts by American companies, he has personally invested in many of the companies that do so. As CBS News noted, in October 2015, Trump owned stock in 22 of the top 30 Fortune 500 companies ranked by their number of offshore subsidiaries. Its a group that has engineered 1,225 tax-haven subsidiaries holding $1.4 trillion. Of course, Trump has a keen understanding of the practices that disguise or shelter money from taxes. As he explained to supporters in Iowa this January, when it comes to his own business enterprises, I pay as little as possible. I use every single thing in the book.

Bernie

As far as we know, Bernie has no personal experience with tax havens and has a far more structured plan than either of the leading candidates to combat their money-sucking, tax-dodging prowess. His policies would prevent American companies from avoiding U.S. taxes through inversions, block them from escaping taxes by establishing a post office box in a tax haven site, and end the practice of letting corporations defer paying taxes on profits from offshore subsidiaries.

In the real world, financial speculation, crime, and tax evasion  sorry for this word again  trump the highly touted goal of free trade when it comes to tax havens. Bernie understood this well when he voted against the Panama free trade agreement of 2011. In a Senate speech on the subject, he presciently noted that Panama is a world leader when it comes to allowing large corporations and wealthy Americans to evade U.S. taxes by stashing their cash in offshore tax havens. And the Panama free trade agreement would make this bad situation much worse.

He was right then and he remains right today. Unfortunately, no one was listening or interested in acting on his warning  certainly not Hillary, who, as secretary of state, characterized the agreement as an example of the Obama Administrations commitment to economic statecraft and deepening our economic engagement throughout the world.

In practical terms, Sanders went significantly further than Hillary by formulating actual legislation on the subject. Last April, he introduced the Corporate Tax Dodging Prevention Act of 2015 in the Senate. Among other things, it aspires to prevent corporations from sheltering profits in tax havens like Bermuda and the Cayman Islands and would stop rewarding companies that ship jobs and factories overseas with tax breaks.

Regarding inversions, he would treat companies as American for tax purposes if they were majority-owned by U.S. interests and operating in this country. Even his plan, however, would fall short unless it made inversions illegal  and too many companies are invested in not letting that happen.

Ted

Ted would abolish the Internal Revenue Service and enable people and companies to file taxes on a postcard, so theres no real point in further analysis of his positions on tax havens.

Missing Money Costs

As of 2014, according to Gabriel Zucman, University of California economist and author of The Hidden Wealth of Nations, at least $7.6 trillion, or approximately 8% of global financial wealth, was missing somewhere offshore. His analysis demonstrates that the sorts of tax-dodging practices weve been discussing put governments across the planet in the red by approximately $200 billion annually. Tax avoidance by major U.S. companies costs governments an additional $130 billion per year since nearly a third of their profits are hidden offshore.

The U.N. estimates that tax dodging by multinational companies costs developing countries $100 billion a year, an amount equivalent to what it would cost to provide basic life-saving health services or safe water and sanitation to more than 2.2 billion people.

There are, in other words, harrowing costs to tax dodging. When the wealthy and powerful hide money from governments or speculate with it in sneaky ways, it destabilizes economies and enables the commission of crimes that place a further burden on ordinary people. When money flows from the economic necessities needed by the less privileged to the top fraction of a percent of the worlds population and is then hidden offshore, essentially disappeared, its a net drain on and a blow to the world economy. This impacts jobs and the quality of our future. Unfortunately, the leading candidates in this election year arent championing a major change for the better.
By Jacob Carpenter of the Naples Daily News

Murder defendants Mark Sievers and Jimmy Rodgers were ordered to remain in a Lee County jail with no bond at a routine first appearance hearing Friday.

Although Sievers and Rodgers had previously been arraigned, they had new first appearances after a grand jury indicted them Wednesday on first-degree murder charges. Lawyers for Sievers and Rodgers didn't contest the state's request or an earlier judge's decision to hold the two defendants without bond.

Sievers is accused of orchestrating the June 2015 killing of his 46-year-old wife, Teresa, a popular Bonita Springs doctor. Investigators said Sievers coordinated with his lifelong friend, Curtis Wayne Wright Jr., who carried out the killing with Rodgers. Teresa Sievers was found bludgeoned to death in her home while her husband was in Connecticut with the couple's two daughters.

Sievers previously had bonds set totaling $4.43 million, but he couldn't afford to post them. He was ordered to be held on no bond this week after his murder charge was elevated from second-degree to first-degree.

Rodgers has been held on no bond since his extradition from Missouri, where he lived.

Wright has pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors in exchange for a 25-year prison sentence. The lead investigator in the case testified last month that Wright has given a statement in which he confessed to the planned homicide. The motivation for the killing, Wright said, was more than $4 million in life insurance money, the lead investigator testified.

Lawyers for Sievers have said their client maintains his innocence. The Public Defender's Office, which represents Rodgers, hasn't commented publicly about the case.

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SHARE Collier County School Board Chairwoman Julie Sprague

By Melhor Leonor of the Naples Daily News

Collier County School Board Chairwoman Julie Sprague won't be running for re-election, the school board member told the Naples Daily News Friday.

In announcing the end of her career on the school board, Sprague also expressed support for Erick Carter, one of two candidates now running to represent District 4 ahead of the August election.

"I have patiently and carefully watched to see if another candidate would emerge that shares my commitment to offering the best possible public school education to all of Collier's students and ensuring the stability of the District before I stepped down," Sprague said via email. "I am now confident that Erick Carter is the right person for the job."

In an interview, Sprague added that Carter's character inspired her confidence.

"He, I think, is a passionate person. He really cares. That was the thing that first struck me when I met him," she said.

District 4, which includes the city of Naples, is being contested by Lee Dixon and Carter.

Sprague is on her second four-year term on the school board, which she joined in 2008. At the time of her election, Sprague was wrapping up a 30-year teaching career that included teaching for 20 years in Collier County.

Sprague joined the school board during a tumultuous time, when the board's accreditation came under peril about dissension and inefficacy.

"One of my platforms, when I ran, was to bring stability to the board," She said. "We were at a time when there was some unrest. That was one of the things that I thought I could bring to the board, and I think that I did that."

She pointed to hiring the district's superintendent as evidence of steps toward stability.

"When I was the chair last time, we did a search for a new superintendent, and as a result, we hired Dr. Patton," Sprague said.

"That is something I am proud of and I think it's contributed to the stability of the district."

Sprague, who is eligible for retirement, said she doesn't yet know what awaits her after she steps down from the dais  leaving the door open for a return to the classroom.

"My life has been really busy for the last 38 years, and I want to take some time to think about what I'll do next. Am I ready to retire? I don't know."

In August, Collier County voters will also elect a school board member to represent District 2, a seat currently held by board member Kathleen Curatolo. Four candidates have filed to run for District 2, which contains schools in North Naples, including Veterans Memorial Elementary and Barron Collier High: John Brunner, Stephanie Lucarelli, Louise Penta and Gene Ungarean.

Curatolo told the Naples Daily News last month she wouldn't seek re-election. She wouldn't endorse a candidate Friday.

Curatolo is on her fourth term, and said she plans to continue her involvement with local public schools.

"I have enjoyed my time on the school board," she said.
In this file photo, Nicole Miller gives Bonita Springs Elementary School principal Dave Short, left, a tour of her kindergarten classroom Wednesday morning August 27, 2003. Funds are being raised for a sculpture for Short, who passed away. (David Ahntholz/Staff)

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By Maryann Batlle of the Naples Daily News

Elementary school was a fun time for Gail Hines' two children, and she credits Dave Short for their happy experience.

"He was No. 1 in my book," Gail Hines said.

Short was principal of Bonita Springs Elementary School for 19 years. He was there in the 1990s when Hines enrolled first her son and later her daughter, both of whom she adopted from Guatemala.

Short made sure school felt like a second home, which helped her children transition into childhood in America, Hines said.

"We had such a wonderful relationship with the school, with Mr. Short," Hines said. "It was more like a family. You were always comfortable there."

So Hines said she was saddened to learn that Short died in January at age 72, just a few months after he retired.

"To me, it was hard because I remember him as he was," she said. "I was quite upset about it."

Hines is not alone in her grief.

Short spent 42 of his 49 years as an educator in Lee County. He started as a teacher and climbed to the role of principal.

He was loved by students, parents, faculty and staff, said Beverlee Laney, a longtime educator who helps train teachers at Bonita Springs Elementary School.

He wasn't one to stay in his office. The students all knew Short because he would sit on a picnic bench outside the cafeteria and greet every student who came in, she said.

"Sometimes you could even find him on that picnic bench quizzing someone on their math facts," Laney said.

Her image of him may become a permanent art piece at the school.

She is part of a group of Short supporters who formed a committee to raise $4,000 by the end of the year. They will use the money to commission a sculpture of a man sitting on a bench, reading to a child, she said.

The sculpture would be placed in the school's courtyard with a plaque honoring Short's contributions to Bonita Springs and its children, Laney said.

"Something that is lasting like that is so much better than anything you can put in a box with a bow," Laney said. "I think he would have been touched."

Short deserves the recognition because he gave so much, Hines said.

"He was well-loved in the community. He was well-loved by the school," she said. "That's something hard to come by."
Baker Hospital at NCH (Submitted Photo)

By Liz Freeman of the Naples Daily News

The NCH Healthcare System has named two floors at its hospitals to recognize $8.5 million in philanthropy from the co-founder of Jabil Circuit, a global medical computing and storage company.

NCH officials honored Audrey Morean Petersen at a ceremony Friday to name the cardiology floor of the Baker Hospital Downtown and the sixth floor of the North Naples Hospital in her honor.

Petersen's gift totaling $8.5 million for several years has enabled NCH to install "smart room" technology, a collection of integrated medical devices that enhances patient safety and their experience while hospitalized, along with improving clinical care.

NCH president and chief executive officer, Dr. Allen Weiss, said Petersen's gift has lead the way for the hospitals to improve patient safety and efficiency among staff through technology.

"With Mrs. Petersen's significant commitment, NCH was able to partner with Cerner Corporation to install smart room technology in patient rooms throughout NCH," Weiss said in a statement. "As a result, we have made meaningful improvements in how we deliver patient care."

Weiss said her support has played an important role in NCH being among the "most wired" healthcare systems starting in 2012 and thereafter for several years.

The American Hospital Association in Chicago and leading technology firms conduct surveys of hospitals for their information technology and the "most wired" recognition is published in the industry's trade publication, Hospitals & Health Networks each year.

NCH began installing the "smart room" technology in 2012 at the North Naples Hospital in 64 rooms on several floors in the new patient tower, said Jim Martin, chief development officer for NCH. Petersen's first gift was for $2 million at the time.

"She told us we needed to complete the whole project and she was right," Martin said.

That's when she began her series of gifts for wireless technology, where each room costs roughly $15,000 to $18,000 for the equipment, Martin said.

In 2013, the smart room systems were installed in another 62 rooms at North Naples and started the installation process at the downtown hospital.

The entire project costs more than $10 million and the NCH Hospital Ball, the signature fundraiser for the hospital system, has contributed to the expense, Martin said.

Petersen said she was impressed with the smart room technology as an avenue to enhance patient care and satisfaction.

"I have always had a keen interest in healthcare," she said in a press release. "My loved ones have received excellent medical care during difficult health issues. I'm pleased patients and their families are now receiving the benefits of the technology at the bedside."

The "smart room" technology involves a series of devices and programs for both patients and clinicians, dovetailing with patients desiring to be more engaged in their medical care and the healthcare industry responding to the federal government instituting quality improvement standards.

The Cerner technology provides patients with access to their personal medical information at the bedside, to their scheduled treatment plan and tests, and it enables them to watch educational videos about their medical condition to have a proactive role in getting better.

Outside of each patient room is an electronic device that interacts with a sensor held by each clinician to notify the patient when a clinician enters the room and identities the clinician.

The technology also interacts with electronic medical records for clinicians to streamline workflow and be more efficient, along with providing real time vital sign alerts to clinicians for safety.

"There is no doubt that our nursing care has been elevated by having smart room tools to help us coordinate medical records and improve communications between providers at the bedside, reducing risk and improving patient safety, quality and satisfaction," Michele Thoman, chief nursing officer at NCH, said in a press release.

Petersen and her husband, William E. Morean, founded Jabil Circuit 50 years ago in 1966 in Royal Oak, Michigan. The company began as a service facility for electronic modules, printed circuit assemblies, wire wraps and related assemblies. His son, William D. Morean, took over the company at the age of 22. In 1984, the company moved to St. Petersburg and William D. Morean became chairman and CEO in 1988. The company went public in 1993.

Today the global company operates in 28 countries at 102 locations with 180,000 employees. Jabil Circuit had revenue in 2015 of nearly $18 billion.
Sand piles up on the beach adjacent to Clam Pass Friday, May 6, 2016 in Naples. After a band of storms passed through this past week crews continue to dredge the pass to keep it clear. (Luke Franke/Staff)

By Eric Staats of the Naples Daily News

The 80-year-old woman in a swimsuit blew past the sheet of plywood that was spray-painted "Keep Out" in bright orange and kept walking up the beach.

Gisele Myers said she didn't see the makeshift sign meant to prevent beachgoers from mixing with equipment from a dredging project at Clam Pass in North Naples.

The project will close the popular beach south of the pass and north of the boardwalk at Clam Pass Park for the weekend, the second closure in a month. It didn't bother Myers.

"People will still complain," the part-time Naples resident from Chicago said.

But  maybe the weather was just too glorious or the Gulf of Mexico just too calming  nary a discouraging word could be heard above the surf Friday.

"I like to walk that part of the beach, but it's no big deal," said Jennifer Bohan, 41, of West Palm Beach, who was visiting her in-laws in Naples.

The same stretch of beach north of the boardwalk was off-limits for three days in mid-April to make room for sand- moving equipment.

This weekend, beachgoers still will be able to use the county's Clam Pass Park boardwalk and will be able to walk south from the boardwalk, toward Seagate, to a public beach.

Crews began pumping sand out of the North Naples pass and onto the beach in early April after heavy winter rains and poor tidal flushing at the choked-off pass put acres of mangroves at risk below the condominium balconies in the Pelican Bay neighborhood.

A Pelican Bay taxing district consultant worked for two years to overcome environmental hurdles and get a Clam Pass dredging permit, which the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers issued in March.

Commissioners quickly declared an emergency to speed up the hiring of the dredger.

The plan was to finish the job by the start of sea turtle nesting season May 1, but stormy Gulf waters and a glitch with a permit to use a Naples beach access to get equipment on the beach pushed back the work.

Monitors are checking the construction area every morning for protected shorebirds and sea turtle nests before work can resume.

The dredge has finished its cuts into eastern portions of the pass and has turned around to take out remaining sand as the dredge makes it way back toward the Gulf.

The plan is to smooth out the beach with tilling equipment Monday and to reopen the beach by midday Monday.

"We're very close to substantial completion," project engineer Mohamed Dabees said as he surveyed the progress Friday morning.

Myers, the Chicago snow- bird, said she hopes so.

A mangrove die-off grew to 50 acres in the Clam Bay estuary before a 1998 dredging project restored flows to the forest. Crews were back at work in 2002, 2007 and 2013  another emergency dredging to reopen the pass.

The ongoing dredging project takes out sand that, by virtue of a controversial County Commission decision, wasn't removed in 2013 and that accelerated shoaling that has caused the new emergency.

"I'm glad they're doing it," Myers said. "I hope they do it right now so it lasts a few years."
Dion Wiggins, front, sings a karaoke duet to Mariah Cary's "One Sweet Day" with Kimber Louderhose while Program Manager Megan Feeney listens in Monday, May 2 in Fort Myers. (Photo by Sarah Coward/News-Press)

SHARE Austin Jackman, 19, tops fresh-from-the-oven churros with powdered sugar during a Cinco de Mayo celebration at Goodwill's L.I.F.E Academy charter school for special-needs-students Thursday, May 5 in Fort Myers. (Photo by Sarah Coward/News-Press) Alexis Poole sings along with a video in the computer room during Goodwill's Pathways program Monday, May 2 in Fort Myers. (Photo by Sarah Coward/News-Press)

By Stacey Henson, The News-Press

Goodwill Industries in Southwest Florida is celebrating 50 years of training, jobs and referral services, and service for 42,000 people in five counties last year.

Goodwill's 30 stores are the most visible part of the agency throughout Charlotte, Collier, Glades, Hendry and Lee counties. The stores offering secondhand items and discounted new goods, which provide employment opportunities and inexpensive home goods and clothing.

"I never know what I might find," said Cathy Peery, who shops the stores in Fort Myers and her hometown of LaBelle. She's delighted when she finds toys, clothes or other "treasures" that allow her manage her budget while helping the community.

The agency serves people with disabilities and other barriers to employment, and is growing in its mission in direct relation to the communities it serves. Of the 900 people Goodwill employs, about 200 have a disability and many work at the stores, said Fred Richards, vice president of Community Support Services.

There are 30 stores throughout the five counties, including 17 of them in Lee, six in Naples, four in Charlotte, two in Hendry and one in Glades. When the first store opened in 1966, it employed three people with disabilities.

"Without retail, we'd never be able to expand services," Richards said.

Combined, the resale shops brought in $26.6 million last year. That's more than two-thirds of the organization's $36 million in revenue. Other income sources include grants, eCommerce and business services.

While the stores help fund the programs, Goodwill's core remains growing the skills of its students and clientele in hopes they can gain a level of independence.

The Goodwill L.I.F.E. Academy is a charter school serving about 50 students with developmental, intellectual and physical disabilities. Started 11 years ago with three students and a teacher, it's grown each year.

Principal Lynn Potoff said her goal is to help the students become "as independent as possible, academically, vocationally and socially."

Started in July of 2014, Pathways to Opportunity has 28 participants with developmental, intellectual and physical disabilities. They meet up to five days a week for six hours at the Tice Road facility in Fort Myers. Each client has set goals, with the idea of making them independent as possible.

They also practice social skills, in particular during their social hour, where a recent day found participants playing Wii bowling, reading, making place mats for a Cinco de Mayo celebration and singing Karaoke to their favorite tunes.

"Choice is an important part of the program," said Kirsten O'Donnell, director of public relations and marketing.

The next goal is to expand into Collier County and within 10 years, include Charlotte, Hendry and Glades.

While Goodwill has always helped people with disabilities join the workforce, when the recession hit, it expanded its services to the community.

In 2009, Goodwill operated three Job-Link offices. Today, it has 18 offices and a mobile unit in a 38-foot RV outfitted with 32 computer stations. The centers, many operating out of the Goodwill stores, help people apply and monitor jobless benefits, and link them to services.

In addition to Job-Link, members of the community can access neighborhood centers, use MicroEnterprise to help low-income people become small business owners, and work toward certification in health care, automotive and culinary arts industries.

O'Donnell said the Job-Link offices host an average of one job fair per month and feature four to five businesses. The agency also takes students in its Able Trust Florida High School HighTech program to job fairs in the region.
FILE - In this Nov. 30, 2015, file photo, Assistant Secretary of State for Latin America Roberta Jacobson, is seen in Washington. The Senate has confirmed Jacobson, President Barack Obama's nominee to be U.S. ambassador to Mexico, and clears the way for the first woman to hold what is considered to be one of the country's most important diplomatic posts. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais, File)

SHARE Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta) Roberta S. Jacobson, Thursday May 21, 2015, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

By Ledyard King, The News-Press

WASHINGTON  The Senate quietly confirmed a new ambassador to Mexico last week.

All it took was months of delay, policy decisions involving three countries, and horse-trading by U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida and another senator whose presidential campaigns helped prolong the wait. The behind-the-scenes maneuvering is reminiscent of an earlier political era.

The drama began in November, shortly after the Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted to recommend that the full Senate confirm Roberta Jacobson as ambassador to Mexico. Rubio, taking advantage of Senate rules that allow individual lawmakers to block action on presidential appointments, put a hold on the nomination.

As assistant secretary of state for western hemisphere affairs, Jacobson had played a key role in President Barack Obama's decision to renew diplomatic relations with Cuba, a move Rubio strongly opposed.

"We do need an ambassador in Mexico City who has a track record of effectively advancing U.S. interests," Rubio said on the Senate floor last week before a deal on confirming Jacobson was finally reached. "I do, however, have serious questions about the policies that Assistant Secretary Jacobson has pursued during her tenure in the Western Hemisphere Bureau."

Obama had nominated Jacobson in June. After Rubio imposed his hold, the diplomatic post sat vacant for additional months as the Florida senator barnstormed across the country on his unsuccessful presidential campaign.

"It should have never had to reach this point," said Arizona Republican Sen. Jeff Flake, who pushed hard for a confirmation vote. "The other dominoes that had to fall at the right time had little if anything to do with Roberta Jacobson and her qualifications. That's what was frustrating. Yet, we've waited here in Arizona (for a confirmation vote) for nine months. That's not right."

Rubio, a Cuban-American, believes thawing relations with Cuba makes no sense while the Castro regime remains in power. He's also harshly criticized the crackdown on human rights in Venezuela, also among countries monitored by the State Department's Western Hemisphere Bureau.

The chain of events that led Rubio to lift his hold unfolded quickly. Those events, first reported by the Washington Post, were confirmed by Rubio's office.

In March, shortly after Rubio abandoned his presidential bid and returned to Washington, GOP leaders and the White House approached him about what it would take for him to drop his hold on Jacobson's nomination and allow a confirmation vote.

Rubio said he wanted Congress to extend the 2014 law that he had authored imposing human rights sanctions on Venezuela. Senate leaders and the White House said yes and the measure was introduced last week.

But GOP Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said he would block the measure unless Rubio convinced Texas Sen. Ted Cruz (then still running for president) to lift his almost 10-month hold on a State Department reauthorization bill. That was fine with Rubio because the bill contained initiatives he had authored pertaining to human rights and religious freedom abroad.

Rubio asked Cruz to drop the hold on the State Department bill and Cruz agreed. In return, Rubio agreed to help lobby the House to pass a measure he and Cruz had co-authored to designate the street in front of the Chinese Embassy in Washington "Liu Xiaobo Plaza" in memory of Nobel-laureate and political prisoner Liu Xiaobo.

Last week, Senate lawmakers passed the Venezuela sanctions bill and the State Department reauthorization. And they confirmed Jacobson.

"Nine months after her nomination, I'm pleased to say we are sending one of our finest diplomats to advance this important relationship (with Mexico)," Secretary of State John Kerry said in a statement after the confirmation vote.

The various deals that made the vote possible show again how Rubio, who was often chided during his presidential campaign for abandoning his day job, has been noticeably engaged since returning.

In the past six weeks, Rubio has given several floor speeches, including one last week where he exhorted Republican leaders to move faster on Obama's $1.9 billion request to combat the Zika virus. He's sponsored or signed on to a number of bills, including one that would track detainees transferred from Guantanamo Bay prison. He traveled this week on an official trip to the Middle East, where he championed religious freedom issues.

Still, Flake believes it may have been his own decision to force the issue on Jacobson's stalled nomination that brought Rubio around.

On April 26, the Arizona senator (who is among lawmakers favoring a thaw in U.S-Cuba relations) asked on the Senate floor for a confirmation vote on Jacobson, whom he described as "eminently qualified for the post."

Rubio objected, but Flake's demand had set the wheels in motion. Within a few days, a deal had been struck.
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Judith Hushon, Naples

Off the mark

The guest commentary from Lt. Col. Dennis Freytes of Vets4Energy demands a response because it contains so many errors.

He relies heavily on the EPA study of hydraulic fracking, but cannot have read it. Factcheck.org states that "the study did not conclude that fracking is safe." In reality, EPA noted that there are cases of contaminated drinking water  these are rare, but have occurred.

The more important take-home message from this EPA report is that there have been spills during installation and/or development of 12 percent of the fracking wells.

The EPA report is based on fracking in other states  Oklahoma, Colorado, Pennsylvania, etc. These states do not have a sandy soil or limestone subsurface rock formations such as exist in Florida. A surface spill in sandy soil means that the spilled liquid material will rapidly penetrate downward toward the subsurface aquifers.

It should also be noted that the type of fracking used on the Hogan well in Collier County is different from that used in these other states. Here, they used acid followed by pressurized water to break up the limestone. This creates different pollutants than those from shale fracking.

Also, the oil being recovered here is of very poor quality, often referred to as bunkers. It has limited uses, mainly in asphalt.

We definitely need a moratorium on fracking in Florida until the impacts of fracking in limestone can be scientifically evaluated. Hopefully in the coming session, our Legislature will take this approach.
Sanibel Captiva Community Bank has joined the Allpoint Network, giving customers surcharge-free access to an additional 55,000 ATMs worldwide, which includes 43,000 in the United States.



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Founded in 2003, Sanibel Captiva Community Bank has two locations on Sanibel, the main office at 2475 Library Way and 1037 Periwinkle Way, and three locations in Fort Myers, in the Myerlee community, on McGregor Boulevard near Kelly Road and on College Parkway. The bank is well-capitalized, with $277 million in assets, and generates the third highest return on equity of Floridas 157 chartered banks. It holds a five-star rating from BauerFinancial, the highest granted by the independent bank research firm, which indicates the institution has at least twice the capital that regulators require, is profitable and has kept delinquent loans in check.



Sanibel Captiva Community Banks professionals provide customized individual and business banking services and specialize in residential loans. The bank provides free personal and business checking, top-yielding money market accounts, safe deposit boxes, electronic statements and a mobile banking app, as well as online and drive-thru banking. To learn more, visit www.sancapbank.com.
Key players in 2022-23 Silly Season Can you hear it? Just listen. That is the sound of the NASCAR rumor mill starting up, and there are plenty of questions to answer for 2023.
The horse meat controversy hit close to home, this week, with the revelation that a Carrick on Suir based meat processing company has been ordered to suspend its operations for labelling horse meat as beef.

The horse meat controversy hit close to home, this week, with the revelation that a Carrick on Suir based meat processing company has been ordered to suspend its operations for labelling horse meat as beef.

The Special Investigation Unit (SIU) of the Department of Agriculture ordered B&F Meats to suspend all operations last Friday and entered the plant to carry out an investigation as to why horse meat from the facility was shipped to the Czech Republic labelled as beef.

B&F Meats is a Thomastown, Co Kilkenny, company that moved its de-boning and packaging operations to the Mill River Business Park within the last year , following a fire that damaged their Thomastown premises. The Carrick on Suir premises was previously occupied by a local company, for meat processing, until that company went into liquidation and it had no connection with B&F Meats.

B&F Meats is one of just three companies in Ireland licensed to slaughter horses, although the plant being investigated is reported to only process and debone horse carcasses. The company is run by directors Ted Farrell and John Barron. The company has not issued a statement.

On Saturday department investigators moved into other buildings associated with the firm near Thomastown, Co Kilkenny, and seized paper and computer records.

Last Friday local people were shocked when it was revealed that the first Irish company to be directly associated with the mislabelling of horse meat as beef was located in South Tipperary. This is the first time that a single company has been found to have been mislabelling horse meat as beef. In other cases around Europe meat suppliers have claimed they were conned by others in the supply chain.

According to the Department of Agriculture, B&F Meats was despatching some horse meat to a single customer in the Czech Republic via a UK based trader using a label in the Czech language which, when translated, refers to beef.

Minister for Agriculture, Simon Coveney, said: I am seriously concerned about this development and the Gardai have been fully appraised of this development and are working closely with my Department. The issue here is one of mislabelling and that will be the focus of the investigation.

The investigation led by the Departments Special Investigation Unit (SIU) continues in conjunction with the Garda National Bureau of Criminal Investigation. This involves forensic examination of electronic data and records associated with consignments of beef products. It also involves detailed inspections of certain food business operators including traders, transporters, processors and exporters. The SIU is also liaising with counterparts in other EU member states and Europol in relation to this pan-European investigation.

The Food Safety Authority of Ireland is coordinating an enhanced inspection programme with the HSE and local authorities of cold stores and wholesalers, across the country, to authenticate providence and accuracy of labelling of beef raw ingredients used in the manufacture of processed meat products.

The ICMSA President, John Comer, has said that the Departments SIU was to be congratulated for the determination and skill they were demonstrating in their investigations. He said that farmers and consumers alike had a right to now expect that the full weight of sanctions and penalties available to the authorities would be brought to bear against any party or parties that had deliberately engaged in fraudulent mislabelling. Given the importance of our beef and wider agri-food exports, Mr Comer said that fraud of this nature that endangered the reputation of those exports constituted an act of economic sabotage.
Being well educated has never been more important when it comes to owning a home.

A new report from First American Financial Corp. has found that the difference in homeownership between those without high school degrees and those with a bachelor's degree or more is widening. In 2015, that gap was 28%, nearly twice the 15% gap reported in 1990.

"People with higher education levels are more likely to earn higher incomes, and thus more likely to own homes," said First American chief economist Mark Fleming in a press release Thursday. "The good news is that educational attainment levels are improving nationally, so we are on the right track."

Education levels are rising as more millennials are graduating from college and entering the workforce. Millennials are outpacing baby boomers when it comes to receiving a college education. But they are falling behind in other arenas, Fleming said.

"Because of education and lifestyle decisions, young millennials are more likely to have a college degree and less likely to be married or have children than their baby boomer or even Generation X counterparts at the same age," he said.

The share of households with married couples dropped 0.4% year-over-year in 2015. And since 1991, the number of children per household on average has dived 18.7%. These declines are not without their own effects, since "the timing of important life decisions will have a significant impact on homeownership in the near term," Fleming noted.

The highest level of educational attainment is the District of Columbia, while Utah was the state with the lowest. On the metropolitan level, Charlotte, N.C., has the highest attainment, while Sacramento, Calif., ranks last.

Overall, the First American Homeownership Progress Index reported a 1.8% year-over-year decrease. The index now stands just 0.4% above the 25-year low set in 1995. New Hampshire and Vermont have the highest rates of homeownership, while Idaho experienced the biggest growth in homeownership from 2014 with a 5% increase. Colorado, meanwhile, posted an 11.3% drop in homeownership for the biggest decrease nationwide.
New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Friday directed release of jailed Sahara chief Subrata Roy on parole for four weeks to attend rituals following the death of his mother early this morning.

A bench comprising Chief Justice T S Thakur, Justices A R Dave and A K Sikri allowed the plea of Roy seeking permission to attend cremation rites of his mother.

"An application has been filed by Subrata Roy seeking provisional release as his mother passed away early this morning at Lucknow...We direct that Roy shall be released on parole for four weeks," the bench said.

Besides Roy, the apex court also granted parole to one of the jailed Sahara director Ashok Roy Choudhary. The court, however, said that Roy would be under the protective custody of the police with an assurance from his counsel Kapil Sibal that his client would not try to escape or run away.

Roy has been in Tihar jail since March 4, 2014 on the orders of the apex court in relation with a long running dispute with market regulator SEBI.

Roy's mother Chhabi Roy, 95, passed away in Lucknow today after a prolonged illness.
While in France (2 - 4 May 2016), General Petr Pavel, Chairman of the NATO Military Committee met with the Chief of Defence of the French Armed Forces, General Pierre de Villiers and staff of the Centre for Planning and Conduct of Operations (CPCO), General Christophe Gomart, Head of French Military Intelligence, Vice-Admiral Jean Casabianca, Chief of the Military Staff to the Minister of Defence, Mr. Nicolas de Riviere, Director General of Political Affairs and Security in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs , Mr. Claude Bartolone, President of the National Assembly, and with the Commission of Defence and Foreign Affairs of the Senate.

Speaking with General de Villiers on NATOs long term military adaptation and key deliverables in the run up to the Warsaw Summit, the Chairman used the occasion to commend France for the key role it plays in global security. From Mali and the Sahel to Iraq, French forces are helping to make our world safer. Your experience of training and operating alongside Allies but also Partners is highly valued, said General Pavel. During the frank exchange of views, the Chairman was also made aware of the high level of deployment of French forces currently engaged in countering internal and external security threats.

In meetings with General Christophe Gomart and Vice Admiral Casabianca, General Pavel discussed NATOs enhanced presence in the East, the security threats emanating from NATOs southern Flank and how best to enhance cooperation with Partners in the region and build their defence capacities. France has an important role in fighting terrorism, in the coalition against ISIL but also in the Sahel and Central African Republic. It has increased its sharing of analysis, information and intelligence in order to help Nations stay safe from threats emanating from any direction, stated the Chairman.

Addressing Senate members, General Pavel focused on shared security challenges from the East and the South, NATOs plans and its capabilities to respond. Speaking on the way forward, the Chairman emphasized that NATO will need to focus on the balance of defence, deterrence, and dialogue at Warsaw and that it is a 360 degree Alliance, ready to face any foe, anywhere, any time.
Examples of serious fraud in peer-reviewed medical studies

Much medical research today is driven by special interests, greed

(NaturalNews) The alleged gold standard of the double-blind, peer-reviewed scientific study is not looking so gold these days, especially after a recent report in(WSJ) unearthed some of the scandalous secrets hiding in plain sight in modern science. Such secrets, say investigators, include rampant fraud being peddled as sound science in supposedly reputable, peer-reviewed medical journals.According to data compiled from Thomson Reuters Web of Science, an index of more than 11,000 peer-reviewed journals from around the world, the number of scientific studies retracted for error or fraud from scientific journals worldwide has skyrocketed more than 15-fold since 2001. And many of these studies contained blatant deception and lies published as scientific fact, a growing trend that many experts worry is tainting the once-respected field of modern science.Worse, an analysis published in thefound that retractions specifically involving fraud increased by more than 1700 percent between 2004 and 2009, which exceeded the rate increase of simple error-related retractions. More than a quarter of retracted medicine and biology studies published between 2000 and 2010 involved fraud, according to analyst Grant Steen.Beyond simply thwarting the trust of millions of doctors and patients across the globe, the continued exposure of scientific fraud to the light of day also shows that millions of patients are being put at serious risk as well. After all, when a doctor reviews a corrupt, journal-published study and adopts its findings as fact, his patients end up bearing the damaging consequences, which can include serious injury or death.According to the WSJ, scientific and medical journals retracted 339 published studies just last year, up from 139 in 2006. Many of these studies involved questionable or outright fabricated data, and countless millions of dollars in taxpayer-funded grants had been used to conduct and publish them.In one case, the Minnesota-based Mayo Clinic discovered that published data on an unconventional new way to treat cancer using the immune system had been fabricated. As a result, 17 papers published in nine different research journals had to be retracted ( http://classic.the-scientist.com/blog/display/57449/ ).Another study about a blood pressure drug that had been published by German anesthesiologist Joachim Boldt was recently exposed as fraudulent as well. In this case, a reader-prompted investigation revealed "serious irregularities" in Boldt's data, which has prompted the retraction of a shocking 89 different studies published in 18 research journals ( http://www.newswise.com ).In 2010, Dr. Scott Reuben, a former member of drug giant Pfizer's speakers bureau, pleaded guilty to publishing fraudulent research about the drug Celebrex in a number of different medical journals. It was revealed that Reuben had invented a fake study in which not a single patient was actually enrolled ( https://www.naturalnews.com/028194_Scott_Reuben_research_fraud.html ).More recently, shoddy cancer research conducted by Sheng Wang, an assistant professor of medicine at the Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) Cancer Research Center, and published in the journalsandwas determined to be fraudulent and was later retracted from both journals ( http://the-scientist.com/2011/08/11/cancer-researcher-fabricated-data/ ).Then there is the ongoing issue of drug companies paying consultants to pose as academics or medical doctors and to forge studies that make dangerous drugs appear safe and effective. This fraudulent "ghostwriting" scheme is more common than most people think, and it has been used to illicitly promote synthetic hormone replacement therapy (HRT) drugs like Wyeth's (now Pfizer) Prempro and high-risk antidepressants like Merck's Vioxx ( https://www.naturalnews.com/027582_Merck_Vioxx.html ).As comforting a sentiment as it might be to pretend that medical research as a whole is devoted to researching the facts and discovering the unbiased truth, the sad reality is that much of it is actually driven by a collective desire for power, fame, and money -- and ultimately by the special interests (biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries, primarily) with the funds and faculty to make this a reality for those in the research community.As a result, much of the scientific research peddled to the masses today is rooted in a predetermined outcome that serves a specific agenda, rather than an untainted quest for the truth. In order to make any money for their work, or to attain respectable and esteemed status, many researchers have to jump through the proper hoops, which can involve manipulating research objectives to promote a company's drug, for instance.And obviously things have gone awry in the peer-review and publishing process as well, as once-respected journals increasingly stumble upon fraud in the papers they publish -- except they often do so many, many years after such papers were first published.This is why it is crucial that medical journals establish better standards for transparency, including requiring that authors of all published papers fully disclose their sources of funding and any potential conflicts of interest, for example. Until this occurs, the supposed "gold standard" of modern science will continue to erode into oblivion, and patients receiving treatments based on pseudo-scientific bunk will continue to face unnecessary injury and death.
(NaturalNews) Generally speaking, quality control and employee health are not issues that Chinese industry or the Chinese government are overly concerned about, especially in comparison to U.S. and European standards. But there are some foods and products you should definitely avoid completely if they are produced by the Asian giant That said, a lot of food consumed throughout North America and Europe is nevertheless imported from China, but that comes at an additional cost over and above the price on the products. The food awareness site,, reported that some "food" companies in China were mass-producing fake rice made from plastic, which of course can cause serious digestive issues (where is our Federal Trade Commission, by the way?), and may even be fatal if consumed daily.

The site also reported on 10 other foods made in China, which have serious contamination and health problems, and should be avoided at all times:An astounding 80 percent of tilapia, a whitefish that is sold in the U.S., comes from China. These fish are bottom feeders anyway, and eat nearly anything. With so much water pollution in China, eating anything raised in contaminated water would not be safe, of course. In addition, one study says that tilapia is less healthy than bacon, the site reported.Another popular whitefish in the U.S., about 50 percent of cod consumed in America comes from China . Again, there is the water pollution and feeding issue; and what's more, there are not many restrictions in China for exporting these kinds of products.Again, about half of all apple juice sold in America comes from China (because it's cheaper, supposedly). Chinese farmers are known to use harmful (to humansthe environment) herbicides on the food they grow , and this even includes herbicides that the government has banned (so theybe bad). Your best bet here is to make your own apple juice at home from locally grown organic crops More than one-third of the processed mushrooms sitting on grocery shelves in the U.S.  34 percent  come from China. Like the apples, it's hard to tell where and how the mushrooms are grown. To be safe, buy local, organic mushrooms , or buy a trusted American or Canadian brand.An alarming 31 percent of garlic in American grocery stores come from China, and these are grown using herbicides containing, mainly, methyl bromide. That's just not safe.In 2013, the website noted, the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture approved the sale of Chinese chicken in the U.S. (as if there isn't enough chicken grown domestically). As with fish, the manner in which Chinese chickens are fed is highly questionable  and unsafe. China is also often plagued with viruses like the avian flu and other food-borne illnesses.This one is hard to imagine since rice is a staple in Asia. However, major amounts of fake rice have been seized by authorities in China, and reports say that the product is actually a mixture of potatoes combined with synthetic resin. The goal, of course, is to make money; scam artists have been imitating a popular form of Chinese rice known as "Wuchang," a rice that remains hard after boiling. But long-term consumption of this food can cause cancer , the website noted.One vendor in China was caught selling mud as "black pepper." This is a local problem, but you never know.Like pepper-mud, this, too, is a localized problem, but it seems as though industrial salt is making its way to Chinese tables. But in reality,salt from China could contain an industrial mix, which can contribute to high blood pressure and an added risk of heart attack and stroke.

editor Mike Adams, the Health Ranger , and author of the upcoming book, Food Forensics , is well aware of the cesspool that is Chinese food production. Check out his February 2013 report
'We don't know yet'

Fines and jail for intentional killing

"The national symbol of the U.S., bald eagles were nearly wiped out by hunting, pesticides, and habitat loss in the 20th century. However, they have rebounded in recent decades thanks to strict protections and banning of DDT, which caused their eggshells to be too thin. Bald eagles were officially removed from endangered and threatened status in the U.S. in 2007, although they are still protected under the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act and the Migratory Bird Treaty Act."



(NaturalNews) There is a strange phenomenon occurring with the endangered bald eagle population in Maryland: 18 of the magnificent birds have died in recent weeks, and wildlife investigators are stumped as to why.As reported by, a person in Sussex County, Delaware, called state officials in recent days to report finding several disoriented bald eagles in a farm field. Three of the birds later died in transport following failed resuscitation efforts while the remaining pair were transferred to a rescue center.A mile away, someone else discovered another dead eagle, and days after that a fifth bird was found dead and another injured after investigators went back to the field for a follow-up.This comes after a previous discovery of 13 dead bald eagles  and not of natural causes  along Maryland's Eastern Shore, only 30 miles away, bringing the total up to 18. And again, so far investigators don't have a clue as to why the birds are suddenly dying."We're not at that point yet where we know the cause of death," Catherine Hibbard, a spokesperson for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which is examining the case along with the Delaware Natural Resources Police, toldOfficials have sent the dead birds off to the federal forensic ornithology lab in Ashland, Oregon, to try and find out what is killing them. As of this writing, investigators have been unable to find a link between the deaths in Delaware and those in Maryland."But if anything from the investigation suggests that, we'll look at it more closely," Hibbard added.Hibbard considers the death of as many as 13 bald eagles fairly significant, but she says it is not as surprising for smaller numbers of birds to die off. In the past couple of years along the Eastern Shore, officials have found a few bald eagles that had died from ingesting poisons that landowners had set out to get rid of foxes and other animals, she said last month.There have been other man-caused deaths of the country's national bird as well. As reported by The Associated Press in September 2013, wind farms around the country killed 67 golden and bald eagles over a five-year span, according to a government study.The research was some of the first aimed at tying eagle deaths to the nation's growing wind energy industry. In some quarters, the data were seen as a blow to President Obama's efforts to convert more U.S. power to renewable energy.At a minimum, the researchers wrote, wind farms in 10 states have killed at least 85 eagles stretching all the way back to 1997, with most of those occurring between 2008 and 2012, when the industry really began to expand. Most of those deaths were of golden eagles that had become lodged in wind turbines.That said, overall, the picture for bald eagles has been improving. Asreported in February:Intentionally killing a protected eagle could cost the offender as much as $100,000 in fines and up to a year in prison."After all that's been done to get bald eagles off the endangered species list, it's disturbing to see these eagles die," Hibbard lamented.
Disaster waiting to happen

Do you eat Washington salmon?

(NaturalNews) Although much attention has been focused on the threat posed to the U.S. West Coast by radioactivity from the 2011 Fukushima disaster, an even greater threat has gone largely ignored, warns nuclear historian Robert Jacobs of the Hiroshima Peace Institute.That threat is the Hanford Site, which sits just 400 yards from the Columbia River in eastern Washington. Hanford contains two-thirds of the high-level radioactive waste (by volume) in the United States, and has been leaking for decades."While radiation from the Fukushima nuclear meltdowns is reaching the West Coast, carried across the ocean from Japan, the radiation from Hanford is already there, has been there for 70 years, and is in serious risk of catastrophe that could dwarf the effects of Fukushima even on Japan," Jacobs writes in an article forThe Hanford facility was the site of the world's first three nuclear reactors, all of which were used to refine plutonium for nuclear weapons . A total of nine plants would eventually be built on the site.Hanford now stores an enormous volume of nuclear waste from decades of weapons manufacture. It contains 80 percent of the spent nuclear fuel rods in the country.Most of this waste is stored at the Tank Farms, consisting of 177 waste storage tanks at two different locations on site; these pose a major safety hazard. In 1957, the cooling system at a tank similar to those at Hanford failed at the Mayak plutonium production site in the former Soviet Union. The ensuing explosion, known as the Kyshtym Disaster, was at that time the worst nuclear disaster in history. Hanford possesses 177 tanks of the type that exploded in 1957, located right next to each other. To make matters worse, there is no security around the Tank Farms to prevent them from being targeted by terrorists Over the years, 67 of the tanks have leaked 1 million gallons of highly radioactive waste into soil next to the Columbia River. In 2011, many of the leaking tanks were replaced with new, double-walled tanks. The new tanks still leaked.In addition to the Tank Farms, the EPA has identified as many as 1,500 separate sites at Hanford where toxic or radioactive chemicals were improperly dumped.Cleanup efforts at the plant have largely gone nowhere, and many whistleblowers have come forward to condemn the flawed safety designs of the supposed cleanup plans. Meanwhile, workers at the plant regularly sicken; one two-week period in March 2014 saw 26 hospitalized with mysterious health problems.Jacobs contrasts awareness of Hanford with that of Fukushima. He notes that many people avoid Pacific seafood or food from Japan, for fear of radioactive contamination "At the same time, there is no discussion about eating salmon from the Columbia River, drinking wines from the Columbia Valley, or fruit from the orchards that fill the downwind area around Hanford," he writes. "The amount of radiation in the Hanford area dwarfs the amount arriving on the West Coast of the United States on a scale that is mindboggling."Jacobs is careful not to downplay the horror of the Fukushima disaster, nor the ongoing damage done by radioactive water from the plant continuing to flow into the Pacific Ocean."Some of that radiation is reaching the West Coast of the U.S., and this will continue as long as the site hemorrhages contaminated water into the ocean, which will likely be for some decades," he writes."But it should also be remembered that it is the people of Japan, and specifically the children of Japan who live in the areas where the fallout plumes deposited that face the direst of these consequences."Similarly dire consequences, he says, are already being faced by those living near Hanford.Radioactivity from Hanford has been "saturating the groundwater and ecosystem of the Northwest for more than 70 years," he writes. And people living downwind have suffered from elevated cancer rates for generations.
Dannon to go GMO-free over next three years, replacing everything, all the way down to cattle feed and soil input

Creating a healthier future

(NaturalNews) Some goliaths must fall (like Monsanto), for all the suffering they cause , but other giants can be transformed from the inside out,That's what is happening to the top US yogurt producer Dannon.The entire company is having a positive change of heart. A company this size has tremendous influence over the dairy industry. Their product standards strongly influence dairy farmers and whether or not cows are fed GMOs and antibiotics. If enough giants like Dannon start siding with consumer and planetary health, then the evil ones poisoning our future (like Monsanto) will slowly fade away into the dark vestiges of history.Dannon is now committed to fighting for all of us, our health, our ecosystems, our future. Under their new set of standards, Dannon will require the dairy farmers they work with to move away from GMOs and antibiotics in their animal feed. The changes are set to occur over the next three years.Remarkably, the company is planning to remove all GMO ingredients from their yogurt and other products. The changes are set to impact everything, all the way down to the quality of soil and how farmers conserve water.The company's new agricultural sustainability and animal welfare policy will set a new standard for the entire dairy industry. Farmers working with Dannon must now implement "sustainable agriculture practices and technology that leads to better soil health, better water management, an increase in biodiversity, and a decrease in carbon emission." The first changes will be seen as early as July 2016, as the company begins transitioning away from genetically modified ingredients in its most popular brands, which includes Dannon , Oikos and Danimals.Dannon's change of heart began with the company's organic sister brands Stonyfield and Happy Family. The success of their organic brands inspired the entire Dannon Company to move away from GMOs. Consumers' positive gravitation toward organic ingredients has been instrumental in the sweeping change.Dannon President Mariano Lozano said, "Our ambition is to produce healthy food that is affordable, creates economic and social value and nurtures natural ecosystems through sustainable agriculture. Although our journey is independent from that of our organic sister companies, we have learned a lot from and are inspired by Stonyfield and Happy Family."The change of heart within the company is a testament to the power of informed consumers voting with their dollars and using the power of positive persuasion. It is important to put action behind our good intent and reward the companies that are working hard to put organic options back on the store shelves, and back on the table.Also, thanks to Vermont's GMO labeling requirement , Dannon is now motivated to label any and all of the remaining GMO ingredients in their products nationwide. The more the company is transparent, the more we can choose what's healthy for our bodies, and the more we can continue helping this company change everything about their products, all the way down to the quality of the soil that food is grown in.The fight for a healthier future is not won through our hate for the corporate world. It's not always necessary to insult and degrade companies when they aren't doing everything perfectly. Changes do take time. Our influence is much greater when we fight for what we love and reward companies like Dannon with our dollars and our voices. That's how we slowly defeat everything we do not like about Monsanto's GMOs and toxic glyphosate."We created a new way to work with dairy farmers to improve our shared sustainability priorities," Lozano said. "While this commitment is ambitious, we believe it's necessary to continue to serve Americans using a sustainable and transparent model."The best way to eat organic, non-GMO food is to grow it yourself. Learn more at the Home Grown Food Summit
ISIS targeted Belgium nuclear plants

The hours of film authorities have discovered in an apartment in Brussels that had been raided by anti-terrorist police following the November attack in Paris included the home of the Research and Development Director of the Belgian Nuclear Program, reports said.



Initially, the hours of footage confused investigators as it showed the entrance to the director's home in Flanders, which is outside of the capital. However, intelligence officials came to the conclusion that the ISIS cell was likely attempting to gain entry into the nuclear facility after they watched all 12 hours of the footage, which includes images of a local bus.



Evidence part of seizures made after Paris attack

(NaturalNews) The Belgian government plans to begin distributing iodine pills to all citizens and residents in preparation for any radiological disaster, a decision that comes following an ISIS-inspired terrorist attack that, in a roundabout way, also involved one of the country's nuclear power plants.As reported by, iodine pills have been used in the past to reduce the buildup of radiation in the body and, in particular, the vital thyroid gland, which is highly susceptible to radiation Currently there are no nuclear disasters for Belgians to worry about, but recent events that involved nuclear power  especially the disaster at the Fukushima nuclear plant in March 2011 , which was triggered by an earthquake-generated tsunami  have led Belgian officials to their iodine distribution decision in a bid to improve nuclear emergency response plans.The government has already begun distributing iodine pills for emergency use to residents living within 12 miles (20 km) of the European nation's nuclear reactors. But government officials decided recently to extend the range around its reactors to about 62 miles (100 km).Belgium has seven reactors at Tihange and Doel, as well as a research reactor at Mol, the BBC reported . These reactors provide the country with more than half of its daily electricity needs.The decision to distribute iodine pills to a broad swath of the population most vulnerable to a nuclear incident is also very likely being fueled by events tied to the March terrorist attack in Brussels. As reported by NationalSecurity.news , the jihadists who attacked the international airport and a nearby Metro station were also planning an attack on a nuclear power plant, as evidenced by at least 12 hours of recorded video surveillance authorities found.The Islamic State cell that carried out the Brussels attacks were spying on Belgium's atomic energy chief, in what some believe was a prelude to kidnapping in order to force him to provide them access to the plant.NationalSecurity. news reported further:Both France  which suffered a major ISIS-led attack in Paris in November  and Belgium put their nuclear power stations on high alert after the incidents.Reports of the Belgian atomic plot actually first emerged in February, according to officials. At the time, the plot was linked to the ISIS cell that carried out the Paris attacks that killed 130.The footage, a Belgian prosecutor said, was discovered "as part of seizures made following the Paris attacks." The prosecutor would not divulge the individual's identity, "for obvious security reasons," the Daily Mail noted At the time of the discovery, Belgium's federal nuclear control agency stressed that it was important not to reveal the name of the person involved so as "not to endanger the inquiry or nuclear security," or the person involved and their family.As further noted by the BBC, radiation that gathers in the thyroid releases its energy there and can ultimately damage the tissue and the body, leading to massive cancer. Taking the pills fills the thyroid with stable iodine so there is no room for radioactive material. But the pills don't protect the body against other harmful radioactive elements like cesium-137.Be prepared and get your emergency iodine from the Natural News Store by clicking here , while supplies last.
DGCA will examine in detail documents submitted with the application before taking any decision in this regard, the official said.

New Delhi: Regional carrier Air Costa has moved the aviation regulator DGCA for securing a pan-India flying permit, which would allow it expand operations to airports across the country.

The Vijayawada-headquartered airline had been granted the mandatory No-objection certificate by the civil aviation ministry in 2015. The DGCA has rece-ived Air Costas application for national permit last month, which is being processed for further action, a DGCA official said on Friday.

Under the existing rules, a regional airline connects smaller destinations to the major metro of that region. It does not operate outside the region and does not connect to more than one metro. The country has been divided into north, east, west, south and northeast regions for this purpose.

DGCA will examine in detail documents submitted with the application before taking any decision in this regard, the official said.
The Humanoid called Valkyrie is one of the most advanced robots by NASA, created for their trip to Mars. It is also said to be the most advanced in the world. It just arrived at the University of Edinburgh to "study". The experts there will teach Valkyrie new commands and skills, part of its preparation to work on the surface of Mars.

The 6-foot tall, 235 kilogram humanoid was constructed by NASA from the R5 robotic lineage. The robot resembles a human being; some report even said it resembles the advanced Star Wars robot C3P0. NASA through the Space Technology Mission Directorate, awards funds to universities to improve their robots.

It has been a very good day! Here's to great times with good friends... I mean operators. :) pic.twitter.com/LOgLLIqxvP  NASA Valkyrie (@NASAValkyrie) December 19, 2013

The experts at the University of Edinburgh's Edinburgh Centre for Robotics led by Maurice Fallon, Shibin Alex Li and Sethu Vijayakumar will enhance Valkyrie in terms of humanoid control, motion planning and perception. The university said "PhD Students and researchers from Edinburgh Centre for Robotics will carry out research using the robot."

According to NASA they are continuously improving and upgrading their robot in preparation for deeper space explorations and the trip to Mars. "New humanoid robot initially designed to complete disaster-relief maneuvers; however, its main goal is to prove itself worthy of even trickier terrain - deep space exploration."

Valkyrie was presented to the press on May 4 and it sure did showcased some of its abilities.

BBC was one of the firsts to get up-close and personal with the robot. Reporter Victoria Gill said the programmers at the university "could push the boundaries on how humans and robots work together."

From the video released by Edinburg's official YouTube page, Valkyrie is seen ascending on a flight of stairs, completing simple tasks such as picking up a box and of course, walking. In another video, the Valkyrie is seen standing on one foot.

The robot is equipped with advanced sensors enabling it to map its surrounding. But experts say that robotics is not easy, several times during the demonstration, the robot went to a complete stop and the professors explained that if one sensor is faulty it could create a bigger problem and prevent the humanoid from working properly.

NASA believes that by working with academic talents and other agencies they will be able to develop more technologies required for the success of space missions like the journey to Mars. "Over the next year, Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD) at NASA will continue to seek industry and university partnerships to assure the agency has the capabilities it needs on our journey to Mars, while helping America maintain its leadership in the technology-driven global economy."
Remember the heartbreaking tale of Hachiko? Well, another devoted dog is breaking the hearts of the Internet.

A dog in Malu Mare, Romania has been spending each day sitting outside the former house of his master who died five years ago.

According to reports, the dog, who has been waiting patiently for his master to return, has been doing this since 2011.

Local residents told newspaper that the dog guards over the main entrance of the now abandoned house.

And while the animal occasionally accepts food from locals, it refuses to let anyone inside the property.

Sad story: faithful Romanian dog waits for return of owner who's been dead for 5 years. https://t.co/d9vmCebkyC  AVMAvets (@AVMAvets) May 4, 2016

"The dog is not aggressive, but won't let anyone in, it just guards the property," the mayor of the village, Alexandru Dicu, said in a report.

"The dog is waiting for its master. It looks sad. You rarely find this sort of attachment in a person. Someone who would love you so much that they wouldn't leave the place where you spent your time with them," he added.

The residents have also tried to find the pooch a new home, but the dog refuses to leave

According to express UK, the residents do not know anything about the dog nor its former owner, as the owner has been "notoriously private" about his life.

The phenomenon of grieving dogs is not an entirely unsual thing.

In an attempt to explain their loyalty, scientists conducted a study, explaining that dogs are loyal to whoever feed them.

In another explanation, Cesar Millan, Mexican-American self-taught dog behaviorist, said dogs have a sense of belongingness which is why losing someone from their group is saddening for them.

"When you see how dogs react when their humans and canine friends come back after they've been gone for a long time or when they don't come back at all, you know it's about more than food," he writes on his blog.

"Dogs are pack animals. They want to belong to a pack, whether it's made up of dogs or humans, or pretty much any animal. You can look at these Unlikely Animal Friends videos to see all the different kinds of friends that dogs will make. Dogs aren't loners. When they lose a member of a pack, even temporarily, they feel that a part of them is missing."
A mother in China was shocked after her baby came out her womb with 15 fingers and 16 toes.

Born January this year in Pingjiang County in Hunan province, Hong Hong is diagnosed with polydactylism or polydactyly.

His condition was inherited from her mother who was also born with six fingers and toes. In an interview with People's Daily, Zou Chengling, the father of the four-month old baby said they were worried that the baby would inherit the same condition so they went to several hospitals for checkups.

Meet Hong Hong boy born with 31 fingers and toes. https://t.co/8Isg6AhYcg  Audu Alhassan Khark (@Khark7) May 5, 2016

Despite hospitals not finding any birth defect during scans, they were surprised when Hong Hong came out with polydactylism.

Polydactylism refers to extra digits in the hands or feet. The National Genome Research Institute says the extra digits may be small and non-functional or they may be fully formed with bones and skeletal connections. While researchers are yet tolearns more about the genes that lead to the congenital anomaly, they have confirmed that the trait may be inherited in family. Halle Berry and Oprah Winfrey are reported to have this syndrome.

Animals are also not safe from having this condition.

Doctors have told the couple that Hong Hong's condition can be treated because his bones are still not set. However, he can only undergo surgery once he is already old enough to receive anaesthesia, Staitstimes notes.

The doctors explained that the surgery can be quite complicated because aside from removing excess ingers, the doctors also have to create opposable thumbs for Hong Hong as he was also born with no thumbs.

According to CNN, the surgery could cost as much as 200,000 Chinese yuan (about $30,000).

The couple initially thought of crowdfunding efforts via the Internet. After raising more than 40,000 yuan (more than $6,000), they decided to stop the online project because of the criticism they got from Netizens.
The warming of the planet has influenced the ecological balance on earth. Visible effects of El Nino and climate change include the melting of ice caps in the Antarctic and the coral bleaching in the Great Barrier Reef. But a more dreadful occurrence is starting to manifest. Like the famous jellyfish lake in Palau, home to millions of jellyfish. Due to El Nino and lesser rainfall, there is a drastic and alarming decline of the population of jellyfish in the lake, which experts calculated to have gone down to 600,000 today.

But why are the jellyfish disappearing?

According to National Geographic, experts fear that the effect of climate change and El Nino might be too much for the jellyfish population. Their decline is enough evidence to prove that there is a chance in the environment that's why the organisms behave unusually.

David Gruber of the American Museum of Natural History and National Geographic said "They may simply be the tip of the iceberg,"

In the same report, the Coral Reef Research Foundation said that the estimated number of jellyfish in the lake dropped to "600,000, down from an average of eight million". This is an alarming figure according to experts.

But they still aren't sure why exactly the jellyfish are disappearing. But data suggests that the El Nino phenomenon is the culprit. The area currently holds their lowest average rainfall in 65 years. Meanwhile the Coral Reef Research Foundation also said the water is saltier than it usually is.

According to a report of the Coral Reef Research Foundation on their Facebook page, the future of the jellyfish lake is at risk due to the population decline.

Researchers said that the saltiness of the water can be attributed to the lack of rainfall. Another major factor which caused them to disappear is the behavior of their food, the zooplankton which doesn't seem as prolific as they were before.

Although the reason for their decline is still under scrutiny, experts can say that they fear for the young jellyfish because they don't seem to survive longer.
Donald Trump, the highly controversial republican presidential candidate was asked by a magazine about his stand on NASA's space exploration program and his answers did not please the majority. Although he showered the agency with praises, he failed to state a concrete plan on the support of its deep space exploration missions.

Aerospace America, monthly magazine of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) sent questions to the presidential candidates to elicit their thoughts regarding space exploration projects. This was where Trump's stand on space project was discovered by the press.

In a report by TechTimes, they said "the candidate has revealed little on the issue of national space policy."

"I love NASA... Space is terrific... Right now, we have bigger problems - you understand that? We've got to fix our potholes" said Trump during the New Hampshire event. He was also quoted saying the he wants to prioritize and spend government funds on infrastructure on Earth before sending man to Mars.

In a statement by Space Policy Online, Trump is not willing to commit to fund space explorations by NASA when asked by the Aerospace America.

Donald Trump said NASA" has been one of the most important agencies in the United States government for most of my lifetime". But when asked about funding, he let out an elusive reply "I am not sure that is the right question. What we spend on NASA should be appropriate for what we are asking them to do. ... Our first priority is to restore a strong economic base to this country. Then, we can have a discussion about spending."

It seems that NASA's fate is not one of the top priotities of Donald Trump, in fact, if he wins, it could put the future of NASA in jeopardy.

Experts say that what Trump had said will be remembered as one of the most memorable remark about space exploration. And his thoughts on NASA and its project will definitely influence the public in choosing their next leader.
Family and friends of a missing Millbrae man gathered late Thursday to raise awareness of his disappearance, which the San Mateo County Sheriff's Office considers suspicious.

Keith Green, 27, was last seen at around 10:15 p.m. Thursday, April 28, at his home. He left shortly after that, official said, opting not to take his wallet and his car with him.

The next morning, his cell phone was found by a hiker in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park.

Investigators working the case are looking into tips they have received.

"They have spoken to a lot of people," San Mateo County Sheriff's spokesman Salvador Zuno said. "At this time they don't have any information or any signs of foul play."

Dozens of Green's family and friends gathered Thursday at Green Hills Park in Millbrae in hopes of getting information out about his disappearance. The group read Green's favorite poem, lit candles and held a prayer.

Green, a father of two daughters, was last seen wearing black sweat pants, a white zip-up top and bright-red shoes.

"There's a very strong possibility he was wearing a pair of Nike-type shoes. He loves his shoes," said Angela Dunn, a family friend.

Green's mother, Colleen Cudd, said he loved his culinary classes, his new job and children.

"He has two beautiful daughters," Cudd said. "He would never walk away from them."

A GoFundMe page in Green's name has raised more than $11,000 for information that can help police find him.

Anyone with information regarding Green's whereabouts is asked to call Detective John Carroll at 650-259-2313.
Mumbai: The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has issued proposals for the relaxation of requirements for banking licences in the latest effort to boost a sector struggling with $100 billion of stressed debt that is choking the financial system and hitting economic growth.

With only about half of India's population having access to financial services, particularly in rural areas, the RBI is keen to extend the sector's reach and the new proposals aim to encourage investment in new lenders.

The draft guidelines announced on Thursday include a move to allow large industrial companies to buy up to 10 percent stakes in new lenders.

The central bank also proposed a lowering of the minimum ownership level for companies or people setting up lenders under a financial holding structure to 51 percent from 100 percent.

The RBI emphasised, however, that it would remain cautious when granting licences.

"Banking being a highly leveraged business, licences shall be issued on a very selective basis to those who conform to the above requirements, who have an impeccable track record and who are likely to conform to the best international and domestic standards of customer service and efficiency," the RBI said.

The RBI is seeking feedback to its proposals by June 30.
High profile attorney Gloria Allred on Thursday filed a lawsuit on behalf of a parent at Gilroy Unified School District claiming that district officials failed to take appropriate action after a chemistry teacher allegedly sent his student a number of sexually harassing text messages.

Allred did not spare any details about the sexual nature of the messages at a press conference Thursday, calling out the district for failing to fulfill its legal duties.

Also present at the press conference was Celeste Benn, the parent of the fifteen-year-old girl caught in the middle of the texting controversy.

The complaint alleges that in October 2014, Douglas Le sent Benns daughter a number of sexually harassing texts, which Allred said included but were not limited to statements such as, You suck d___, Yeah your w___ mouth can fit whole apples in there.

He allegedly also sent a text message indicating he wanted to defecate upon this child, Allred said.

Le, who taught chemistry at Gilroy High School, resigned after getting arrested last week and is currently out of jail.

Investigators accuse the teacher of catfishing, posing as a female online and forming relationships with young men. Police said Le convinced hundreds of minors to send him lewd pictures.

At a school board meeting Wednesday, where Allred and Benn vociferously complained about the issue, a board member said the district served Le a notice of unprofessional conduct following Benn's original complaint. The board member also said the district had no indication Le was catfishing and received no further complaints.

I stand here today on behalf of all the Gilroy mamas, Ben said at the press conference. Whether they are educated or uneducated, whether they speak English or Spanish, we all want the best for our children  It is time for the Gilroy School District to protect our children. Im disgusted that the district did not do enough to protect my daughter.

Allred said Benn reported the sexually inappropriate messages to the school district immediately after her daughter received them. Our lawsuit alleges however that the district failed to report the abuse as required under the California Child Abuse and Neglecting Act," she said.

The lawsuit alleges that the texts were not immediately reported to law enforcement and that the district failed to take any meaningful action in response to the complaint.

Instead, Allred said, Lei was allowed to continue teaching at the school, and continue to sexually harass a minor child until she finally had to change schools.

If the district had done what it shouldve done, Mr. Lei would not have been in a position to engage in sexually inappropriate behavior with hundreds of minors who are reportedly current and former Gilroy High School students, Allred said.

The school district must protect the children, that is their first and most important duty, Allred continued.

When the school district learned about Leis alleged inappropriate behavior, Allred said, it was not enough to let him get away with a slap on the wrist and then conduct business as usual.

The district maintains that it had put a statement in Leis personnel file on unprofessional conduct. That is simply not enough, Allred said. Lei. Who was a probationary teacher, should have been fired right away, Allred said.

The lawsuit alleges negligence, including negligent supervision, negligent hiring and retention, intentional infliction of emotional distress, assault, sexual harassment, and gender violence.

Benn is seeking compensatory and other damages for her daughter.

We want the district to know that there are consequences for failing to live up to their responsibilities, Allred said. The school district gets an F grade for failing to protect the children.

Benn said that her family had moved across the country so that her daughter could attend Gilroy High School. She had to leave her friends, her classes, her school  I hope that the Gilroy Unified has learned a lesson, Benn said.

The District Attorney's Office said police are still investigating and have not yet handed the case over to them.
A preliminary hearing for two San Jose brothers accused of killing their parents is scheduled to begin Monday.

The brothers, Hasib and Omar Golamrabbi, are charged with murdering their parents nearly two weeks ago at their San Jose home in the Evergreen neighborhood. Police said after leaving bizarre messages on the home's walls, the brothers left to an anime convention in Oakland and appeared as if nothing happened.

On Thursday, the lawyer for 17-year-old Omar Golamrabbi, who is being tried as an adult, and prosecutor said they are ready for the preliminary hearing to start.

"We will be there on Monday ready to get to a courtroom," Santa Clara County Deputy District Attorney Matt Braker said.

A move is considered unusual by legal experts.

"The fact that this case is still on track for a preliminar hearing in what is a special circumstance case after only 10 days is highly unusual," said Steven Clark, legal analyst.

The lawyer for Hasib Golamrabbi on Thursday said he might not be ready and may ask for a delay on Monday. The brothers are being tried together.

The prosecutor on Thursday also turned in an electronic file full of evidence. Clark insists defense lawyers need more time to analyze it.

"They've been given a tremendous amount of evidence about the case, but they also need to develop the mental health issues associated with the case," Clark said.

Clark said the motive and reason for the killings will be key in the case.

The older brother, Hasib Golamrabbi, during Thursday's court appearance wore a yellow jumpsuit reserved for those in the mental ward.

At last week's arraignment, the younger brother entered a not guilty plea and Hasib Golamrabbi did not enter a plea. The brothers are charged in the double murder.

The brothers' parents, Golam and Shamima Rabbi, 59 and 57 respectively, were found shot to death in their Lucas Court home. Prosecutors said Golam Rabbi was shot more than a dozen times.

Prosecutors have not given a motive for the deaths. Court documents show there were two authors of black magic marker rants on the family's walls - and that the writing matched the handwriting of Omar Golamrabb. The court documents do not state exactly what was written, only that there were "multiple sets of writing" that had been found in the home.

Sources who witnessed the aftermath told NBC Bay Area they saw a message that read: "Sorry my first killing was clumsy."

Prosecutors have not revealed who might have written the other messages.

While prosecutors and police have remained tight-lipped about why two brothers would have killed parents that many in the Bangladeshi community have described as "soft and gentle," sources have told NBC Bay Area that the Rabbi elders did not agree with Hasib Golamrabbis sexual orientation.

Another, longer message written in marker near the parents' bodies, allegedly ended, "I cant be like you, telling a lie. I cant love someone without telling them," sources told NBC Bay Area.

The court documents mention nothing about the older son's sexual orientation.
San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee spoke by telephone Thursday with a group of people holding a hunger strike in an effort to force him to fire police Chief Greg Suhr, but the mayor would not comply with their demands.

The hunger strikers, who have been dubbed the Frisco 5, have called for Suhr to be fired in response to recent police shootings of black and Latino men, including ones that caused the deaths of Alex Nieto, Mario Woods, Amilcar Perez-Lopez and Luis Gongora.

The chief has also overseen the department when racist text messages by officers have been revealed, among other scandals.

According to the hunger strikers, Lee told them he stood behind Suhr's record.

"The Frisco 5 told him that their blood would be on his hands," the group said Thursday afternoon in a statement, indicating that the hunger strike would continue.

Lee spokeswoman Christine Falvey said the mayor contacted the group to tell them that he respects their right to protest but hopes they will not harm themselves.

Falvey said the mayor had hoped to have a dialogue about police reforms now underway within the department, but one of the hunger strikers, Ilyich Sato, said he was only interested in talking about firing the chief.

"He let the group know that reforming the Police Department is bigger than any one chief and that this chief, mayor and police commission are fully embracing and leading the efforts to reform the department with the community and under the full review of the U.S. Department of Justice," Falvey said in an email.

In a news conference Thursday morning, the five protesters said that in the 15th day of their hunger strike and vigil sleeping outside the Mission Police Station, their health is suffering. The group, which looked visibly worn and subdued Thursday, is consuming only liquids including coconut water and some juice.

Ike Pinkston said he and fellow hunger striker, Edwin Lindo, a Board of Supervisors candidate for District 9, have both collapsed. Sellassie Blackwell was taken to the hospital Wednesday for tests after doctors expressed concern.

"I've lost 20 pounds already and I didn't have 20 pounds to lose in the first place," Lindo said.

"But we want people to know we are incredibly serious about this, we are incredibly serious about what we stand for, we are here to get the justice that San Francisco deserves," he said.

Pinkston said the thought of his two young sons helped motivate him, as did the sight of community members coming together in support of the protest.

"It's totally worth it," he said. "I'm not doing this just for myself, if I was doing this just for myself it wouldn't be worth it."

While the mayor and Suhr have emphasized that they are working on multiple reforms in the police department, including a review of use of force policies and improved training for officers, as well as enforcement of bans on racist language and behavior, the protesters on Thursday said reform was not the point.

"We don't care about the reforms, we want him out of there," Sato said.

"We don't have nothing personal against Greg Suhr, we don't care about Greg Suhr, we care about his record, we care about what he has done," Blackwell said. "This isn't a personal vendetta against Ed Lee and Chief Suhr. If we were in the position to do what they have done on their jobs, we would be fired."

The group has demanded a meeting with the mayor, but refused to speak with him when he arrived at the Mission Police Station without warning on Monday, calling his behavior "disrespectful" and aimed only at forestalling a planned march and protest on Tuesday.

On Tuesday, a group of around 800 to 1,000 people marched to City Hall and attempted to meet with Lee, but he was not there. They then interrupted a Board of Supervisors meeting, causing the meeting to go into recess for hours.

The group also marched to a planned forum involving Suhr and Public Defender Jeff Adachi Tuesday evening, prompting Suhr to cancel his appearance, citing security concerns.

The protesters are being monitored by a team of around a dozen doctors and medical students from the University of California at San Francisco.

Dr. Rupa Marya, a professor of medicine at UCSF, said she organized the medical coverage through the university's Clinica Martin Baro, which provides medical care to low-income and undocumented residents, and has been contacted by many other doctors and medical students interested in volunteering their time.

Marya said that the liquids being consumed by the hunger strikers were not enough to prevent them from suffering the effects of starvation, which can cause permanent damage even if the person starts eating again.

As physicians, she said that she and other doctors could not ethically force the hunger strikers to eat against their will but would do everything in their power to keep them healthy short of that.

"I really hope the mayor can take this seriously and that the people of San Francisco can take this seriously and make time to have a respectful and substantive discussion with these people," Marya said.
San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera on Friday announced he is suing the Academy of Art University, alleging the for-profit art school has illegally converted 23 buildings around the city.

The suit, first reported by Matier and Ross in the San Francisco Chronicle, alleges the school, one of the citys biggest landlords, is amassing a real estate empire. At a news conference Friday, Herrera called it an egregious land use scofflaw.

Again and again, AAU acquired residential and commercial properties only to convert them into student dorms and facilities, said Herrera. In doing so, AAU unlawfully deprived San Francisco of 300 residential dwellings.

More than a third of the buildings that Herrera cites in the lawsuit would need changes in the citys planning code to come into compliance  something that would require a vote of the Board of Supervisors.

In implementing their real estate scheme for profit, the suit alleges, Academy of Art President Elisa Stephens and her family have flagrantly ignored and flouted the zoning and planning restrictions applicable to their properties that govern all San Francisco property owners.

In the suit's list of 23 buildings, the city has included historic properties like the cannery on Fishermans Wharf, part of which the academy has converted to administrative offices, the suit alleges.

Everyone in San Francisco is aware theyre not playing by the rules and enough is enough, Supervisor Aaron Peskin said.

But James Brosnahan, an attorney for the Academy of Art, said Herreras lawsuit is politically motivated and that he should be advising the planning commission, not acting in place of it.

They have commissioners; they have a staff of people who are experts in urban design," Brosnahan said. "He has just taken that over now, and he shouldnt do that."

Brosnahan said the university has spent nine years and $8 million working on an environmental impact report that it must produce before any of the properties can be legalized. That document is expected to be done by June 29, he said.

The idea that a lawsuit would be plunked down in the middle of all this is extremely surprising, Brosnahan said.

Brosnahan also said that AAU offered the city $10 million and a building with 87 low-income housing units to help mitigate its expansion.
The anonymous, self-described whistleblower of the so-called Panama Papers issued a manifesto Friday, saying the controversy from the leak of 11.5 million documents hasnt triggered enough action or condemnation, NBC News reported.

"I decided to expose Mossack Fonseca because I thought its founders, employees and clients should have to answer for their roles in these crimes, only some of which have come to light thus far," wrote the leaker in the Suddeutsche Zeitung, the German newspaper that received the documents last year and then shared them with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.

The whistleblower acknowledged the medias coverage has generated debate on the use of offshore shell companies to allegedly carry out a wide array of serious crimes, but added that not enough focus has been placed on how much of the abuse of tax havens is legal.

On Friday, President Obama urged Congress to enact measures to fight tax evasion by corporations and the rich, citing the Panama Papers as evidence.

Icelands prime minister resigned over the leak and a spotlight has been trained on leaders in several countries, including Russia and China.
Police have charged the man suspected of killing two people and injuring two others at Montgomery County shopping centers on Friday and the fatal shooting of his estranged wife on Thursday in Prince George's County.

Eulalio Tordil, 62, was arrested Friday afternoon after he was suspected of terrorizing the Maryland suburbs of Washington, D.C., for two days.

He was charged with two counts of first-degree murder, two counts of attempted first-degree murder and four counts of use of a handgun in the commission of a felony in connection with the Montgomery County shootings.

A couple of security cameras recorded video of the arrest of a Maryland shooting suspect.

Tordil was charged with first-degree murder and related charges in connection with the fatal shooting of his estranged wife at High Point High School in Prince George's County on Thursday. Hes also charged with assault for shooting the good Samaritan at the school.

Montgomery County police announced his arrest at a press conference on Friday afternoon, the end of a manhunt that forced officials to heighten security at schools and government buildings.

Tisha Thompson reports on the timeline of the shootings that haunted D.C.s suburbs in Maryland Thursday and Friday.

Tordil, a Federal Protective Service employee, shot and killed his estranged wife on Thursday when she went to pick up her children from the High Point High School, police say.

Dramatic surveillance video shows officers in unmarked cars swarm Tordil's car and surround the Federal Protective Service employee with guns drawn.

Earlier Friday, two people were killed and two others were injured in shootings at a mall and a shopping center in Montgomery County, Maryland. Police believed all the shootings are related. They believe the Friday shootings resulted from attempted carjackings.

[NATL] Shootings in Maryland Leave Residents Rattled

The shootings Friday struck fear in the D.C. suburbs. Students and staff at all Montgomery County schools sheltered in place for some time Friday. Lockdowns were in place at other institutions in the area, including Suburban Hospital in Bethesda.

The National Institutes of Health main campus was on "heightened alert," a spokesman said.

In a ghastly coincidence, the shopping center is within sight of the scene of one of the 2002 Beltway sniper shootings, which remain all too fresh in the memory of many people in the D.C. area.

Two Sets of Shots Ring Out

Police patrolling Westfield Montgomery mall in Bethesda, Maryland, about 11 a.m. Friday happened upon the shooting scene in the parking lot, police said.

Police said they believe the victims at the mall did not know the shooter. A woman appeared to have been shot first. The gunman shot two men who came to her aid, police said.

Police monitored the Maryland shootings suspect for more than an hour before they got the opportunity to move in and arrest him without incident.

One witness told News4 the woman was walking toward Macy's when a man approached her and asked where she was going. When the woman didn't answer, the suspect reached into his car, pulled out a gun and began firing.

The woman was shot in the shoulder, the witness said.

"We have no reason to believe the victims knew the suspect," Montgomery County Assistant Chief Darryl McSwain said. "But we are certainly looking at all angles."

Witnesses saw the shooting at a Bethesda, Maryland mall today  and described the chaotic scene to News4s Chris Gordon.

The woman suffered non-life-threatening injuries. One of the men died. The second man was in grave condition Friday afternoon, police said.

As police investigated that scene, they received a 911 call reporting a shooting outside the Giant grocery store on the 13000 block of Connecticut Avenue in Aspen Hill, Maryland, about 8 miles northeast of the mall.

A woman there was shot and killed, police said.

Police have not identified any of the victims.

Watching the Suspect, Making the Arrest

The anxious hours ended when Montgomery County police officers in plainclothes spotted Tordil's car. It was parked in a shopping center across Connecticut Avenue from the shopping center where the second shooting occurred Friday, Montgomery County Police Chief Tom Manger said.

Officers then spotted Tordil himself going from business to business, including into a Boston Market, where he ate, and into a Dunkin' Donuts.

Officers watched Tordil, choosing to surround his car and wait.

"Knowing that the suspect was armed, knowing that the suspect had made statements about what he intended to do, we needed to make sure the public was safe when we took him into custody," the Montgomery County police chief said.

"Our fear was that he was armed. Since he had already shot four people, we certainly did not want any other bloodshed here," Manger said. "The plainclothes officers waited until it was safe to take him into custody, and that's what they did."

Sources tells News4 the same gun was used in three Maryland shootings that killed three and injured three others. News4s Jackie Bensen has new details on the spree that lasted less than 24 hours.

Surveillance video shows Tordil walk to his car with what looks like a bag of ice. He steps into the car, shuts the door and then officers in unmarked cars surround him, bumping the car and effectively forcing him to stay inside.

Officers took Tordil into custody and drove him away from the scene.

News4 reporter Megan McGrath reports that a woman is dead after a shooting in the Aspen Hill shopping center.

The First Victim?



On Thursday, police believe Tordil shot and killed his estranged wife, Gladys Tordil, and shot and injured a man who tried to help her about 4:40 p.m. Thursday at High Point High School in Beltsville, Maryland.

Gladys Tordil, who was 44, was a chemistry teacher at Parkdale High School in Baltimore County, Maryland, the school said in a letter to parents.

"Ms. Tordil was a beloved staff member. Students will be deeply affected by her death," the letter said.

A man arrested in Montgomery County for shooting four people is also suspected of killing his estranged wife the day before at High Point High School in Beltsville, police say. The woman was a teacher at another school and mother of two. News4s Tracee Wilkins reports how the teachers and students are coping.

The District Court of Maryland for Prince George's County ordered Tordil in March to stay away from his wife, her home, her workplace and High Point High School -- where police said he killed her, court documents show.

Gladys Tordil told the court Eulalio Tordil beat her and sexually and physically abused two children. In 2010, he slapped her so hard her glasses broke on her face, she told the court. She had filed for divorce, court documents say.

The court allowed Eulalio Tordil to use his work-issued firearm while he was at work. He was instructed to leave it at work during non-work hours.

Eulalio Tordil is being held without bond. He's due in court Monday. It was not clear if Eulalio Tordil had an attorney.
With Chicago teachers working without a contract this school year, the future outlook looks bleak.

Chicago Public Schools spokesperson Emily Bittner confirmed Thursday the district has begun the painstaking process of preparing difficult budgets.

The doomsday scenario will certainly impact teachers.

CPS officials have been meeting individually and in small groups with principals to discuss the Districts $1 Billion budget deficit and get their feedback on how schools can manage,"Bittner said.

At least one CPS grammar school has been told the best case scenario is a 20 percent budget cut that would translate into a loss of four or five teachers. At these private sessions CPS has included finance and auditing department heads.

Earlier Thursday, Mayor Rahm Emanuel criticized the Chicago Teachers Union's $502 million revenue recovery package for CPS.

The mayor claimed that CTUs plan is inaccurate in its explanation of how the proposed revenue source would affect Chicagoans, and placed blame on the states school funding formula.

CPS officials called for a revamped funding formula from lawmakers in Springfield.

The CTUs governing body announced Wednesday that the union would not move forward with a May strike, but left the door open to a future strike as contract negotiations remain in impasse.

Bittner also noted that the district was working with the CTU to prevent a strike.
A police-involved shooting was reported Friday morning in Chicagos West Pullman neighborhood on the South Side, officials said.

The incident involved a joint operation between the U.S. Marshals Great Lakes Fugitive Task Force and the Chicago Police Department, the marshals office confirmed.

Chicago Police Chief of Detectives Gene Roy said the shooting happened around 9:20 a.m. after officers with the Chicago Police Department's fugitive aprehension unit tried to take a man wanted for robbery into custody.

The man attempted to flee police and at one point stopped and pointed a weapon at police officers, Roy said. The officer fired several shots, striking the suspect.

The suspect tried to dispose of his gun and continue running, but ultimately collapsed, Roy said. He was taken to Advocate Christ Medical Center in stable condition.

Roy said a weapon was recovered near the scene.

Police confirmed some marshals were at the scene as part of the team but were not involved in the shooting.

The Independent Police Review Authority was at the scene Friday and an investigation remained ongoing.

Check back for details on this developing story.
A 22-year-old man was shot while driving on Lake Shore Drive in Chicagos Gold Coast early Friday morning.

Just after 12:15 a.m. the man was traveling in the 1100 block of North Lake Shore Drive when he was struck by the gunfire, police said.

He then managed to exit on North Avenue, pulling into the nearby BP gas station.

The attendant on the overnight shift at the time told NBC 5 he was working when the man distraught man drove in and said he had been shot in the arm.

Police say several shots were fired, and at least two bullet holes could be seen on the mans white SUV.

The victim is a documented gang member, according to authorities. It is the second time a gang member has been shot on Lake Shore Drive, the last being south of the Chicago River in March.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel criticized the Chicago Teachers Union's $502 million revenue recovery package for Chicago Public Schools Thursday, a day after the plan was made public.

The mayor claimed that CTUs plan is inaccurate in its explanation of how the proposed revenue source would affect Chicagoans, and placed blame on the states school funding formula.

"The idea is not to ask people to pay more taxes, which would get our state off the hook, but to actually fully fund education fairly, so poor kids are not adversely affected by the state of Illinois that underfunds education," Emanuel said at a press conference Thursday.

"Of all organizations, the Chicago Teachers Union should understand how students and taxpayers are being shortchanged by the current funding system in Springfield, Emanuel spokeswoman Kelley Quinn said in a statement.

Before asking Chicago taxpayers to pony up more money, we need to fix this inequity in Springfield. #FixSpringfieldFirst, Quinn added.

CTUs plan calls for an increase in certain taxes, including the hotel accommodations tax and the vehicle fuel tax. It also calls for the implementation of other taxes, including a rideshare tax on services like Uber and Lyft.

Additionally, the plan looks to use funds from the citys Tax Increment Financing (TIF) accounts and redirect the $1.2 billion Lucas Museum bond to CPS.

We have identified half a billion dollars that can triage the bleeding at CPS, CTU Vice President Jesse Sharkey said in a statement. We are asking the mayor and aldermen to implement what we believe is a solid package of financial emergency supports to ensure our district does not go belly up.

CPS officials called for a revamped funding formula from lawmakers in Springfield.

CTU leadership cannot let Gov. Rauner and Springfield off the hook for equally funding Chicago students  and thats exactly what this misguided proposal does, CPS spokeswoman Emily Bittner said in a statement. Instead of fighting to fix the states broken funding formula that discriminates against Chicago children and costs the District more than $500 million a year, the CTU leadership wants to place the entire burden of solving CPS finances on Chicago taxpayers alone.

When it comes to solving CPS $1 billion budget crisis, everyone must play a part- Springfield, Chicagoans, CPS and the CTU, Bittner added.

Bittner also noted that the district was working with the CTU to prevent a strike.

The CTUs governing body announced Wednesday that the union would not move forward with a May strike, but left the door open to a future strike as contract negotiations remain in impasse.
The regulator has sought details of ticket prices from the airlines, especially those sold in the highest fare bucket.

New Delhi: With concern being expressed over steep fluctuation in airfares, civil aviation regulator DGCA has sought details from the airlines on their pricing ways, especially the highest fare bucket.

The latest move comes against the backdrop of concern expressed in various quarters, including by the MPs, about steep fluctuation in airfares, mainly during emergency situations and peak seasons. The regulator has sought details of ticket prices from the airlines, especially those sold in the highest fare bucket, a DGCA official said today.

As it seeks to clamp down on airlines charging exorbitant ticket prices, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has also asked them to submit specific information about the number of seats and relevant fares on 20 identified routes, the official said. The routes, for which ticket pricing information has been sought, include those connecting Jammu and Kashmir, Leh and Port Blair.

On Wednesday, Civil Aviation Minister Ashok Gajapathi Raju had told Lok Sabha that the ministry would hold consultations with the airlines to explore the possibility of curbing charging of exorbitant airfares during emergency situations.

"The ministry will commence the process of consultations with stakeholders, including airlines, to explore possibility of containing fares," he had said.

His assurance had come amid Lok Sabha members voicing concern over exorbitant airfares during emergency situations like unprecedented floods in Chennai and Srinagar and the recent Jat agitation.
Services have been arranged for a suburban mother of two who was tragically killed in a "random" drive-by shooting on a Wisconsin interstate while returning from a popular water park with her family.

A visitation for Tracy Czaczkowski will be held Friday from 3-8 p.m. at the Glueckert Funeral Home in Arlington Heights. A funeral is scheduled for Saturday at noon at St. Edna's Catholic Church.

Czaczkowski, of Buffalo Grove, was fatally shot over the weekend while in a car with her husband, an employee with the Drug Enforcement Administration, and two children as the family returned home to Illinois from the Wisconsin Dells. She died two days after the apparently random attack.

Zachary T. Hays, 20, was charged in her murder Wednesday. Hays faces one count of first-degree intentional homicide and three counts of first-degree recklessly endangering safety.

A criminal complaint filed Wednesday against Hays showed that his brother, 30-year-old Jeremy Hays, who was in the car at the time, told detectives that he "had been acting extremely paranoid" after smoking marijuana four days earlier.

Hays was allegedly particularly paranoid about cars with tinted windows, like the one the Czaczkowski family was in.

Hays was hospitalized after his vehicle was stopped on Interstate 90/94 near DeForest, Wisconsin, using spike strips and ultimately shot by two Columbia County Sheriffs deputies after refusing to drop his gun, authorities said. His condition was not immediately known.

Jeremy Hays is being held on a tentative charge of felon in possession of a firearm, police said. Another brother also in the car was not being named "due to his cognitive disability."

Dennis Wichern, a special agent in charge of the Chicago's DEA field division, called the shooting "the most tragic incident I've ever seen in my 30 years of being in law enforcement."

"This one makes no sense," he said. "It's tragic, it's senseless, and it just goes to show you how precious life is at times."

Those wishing to assist the children with future needs such as education are asked to visit the family's GoFundMe page, the agency said.
With Donald Trump emerging as the Republican partys likely presidential nominee, how will his candidacy affect the campaigns of Illinois Republicans?

Republican Strategist Chris Robling told Ward Room that he believes Trump could help certain statewide candidates.

Downstate and in the collar counties, and even somewhat in the city, for a statewide candidate like [Senator] Mark Kirk or [Illinois Comptroller] Leslie Munger, I think Trump is good news, Robling said.

Hes unusual and hes unconventional and hes historically different, I grant you that, Robling added. Hes unique, historically, but that doesnt mean hes a monster.

Trump scored a strong victory in Marchs Illinois primary, netting 54 of the states 69 delegates.

But some Republicans are slow to accept Trump as the nominee, over concerns about his proposal to build a Mexican border wall and his call to slow Muslim immigration to the U.S.

Congressman Bob Dold (R-10) has refused to support Trump, and is planning to write in a presidential candidate when he votes in November, according to Politico.

Sen. Mark Kirk previously said that he would support Trump if he becomes the Republican nominee, but will skip the RNC.

[Kirk is] in the top Senate race in the nation and he's going to be campaigning for re-election," Kirk spokesman Kevin Artl said last month. He will be attending the State GOP convention in Peoria in May.

A Republican Illinois Senate candidate hasnt won an election in a presidential year since 1972.

Bruce Rauner will also be skipping the GOP convention in July, his office confirmed Thursday, his first as governor of Illinois. He will not endorse Trump either, according to a spokesperson.

Across the country, prominent Republicans are also slow to accept the billionaire's candidacy.

2008 Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain claims Trump is affecting his bid for reelection in Arizona, a state with a large hispanic population.

Former presidents George W. Bush and George H.W. Bush both plan to skip the Republican National Convention. 2012 Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney will also skip the convention.

Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, who said he wasnt ready to back Trump, will meet with the candidate next week.
Just one day after a spokesperson said the governor had not made up his mind about attending the GOP Presidential Convention, Bruce Rauner made a decision.

Governor Bruce Rauner will not attend his first GOP Presidential Convention as the governor of Illinois, his office confirmed Thursday.

As Donald Trump is declared the presumptive nominee, Rauner's office said he will not be at the convention in Cleveland in July, nor will he endorse Trump in the race for president.

In March, Rauner said he would support Trump if he becomes the Republican presidential nominee.

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Ohio Gov. John Kasich suspended their campaigns after Trump won Tuesday's pivotal Indiana primary, leaving the billionaire as the last candidate in the GOP field.

The Illinois Republican Party meets in Peoria in a few weeks to pick delegates to the convention. While Rauner was initially planning to be at that meeting, he is no longer expected to attend, and will subsequently forfeit his delegate spot to cast a vote for the presidential nominee.

Other GOP elected officials from Sen. Mark Kirk to Congressman Bob Dold have already decided they will skip the national convention in July.
A southwest suburban Chicago high school was placed on lockdown Friday morning after a parent reported seeing a small black object in the hand of a student walking into the school, police said.

At 8:45 a.m., more than 100 students at Lincoln-Way Central in New Lenox were being held outside by police as Will County Sherriffs officers pulled surveillance tapes to identify what the object was.

It has not been confirmed whether its been a cell phone or weapon, according to the Will County Sheriffs office.

One parent, Dianna Barnett Heddins-Ingram, told NBC 5 she was trying to take her daughter to school when they were surprised to pull up and see dozens of squad cars with their lights on. When they arrived, Heddins-Ingram said the officers had vests on and told her and her daughter it was a good idea to just go home.

It's disgusting when you can't even take your child to school without fear, she said.

By 10:30 a.m. police confirmed the lockdown was lifted and all of the students were unharmed and sent home. The investigation into the incident is ongoing.
The mother of Navy SEAL Charles Keating IV, killed fighting ISIS in Iraq, spoke about her sons life and death Wednesday.

Krista Keating-Joseph said she had a sick feeling about her son Charlie the night before the news broke, perhaps a mother's intuition.

I woke up in the morning and saw one U.S. soldier was killed and I knew it was him, she said.

Keating, a 31-year-old Navy petty officer 1st Class, died Tuesday about 14 miles north of Mosul in a complicated attack launched by 125 ISIS fighters, Pentagon officials said. Keating was part of a small force sent to fend off the attack.

Keating-Joseph said he was mortally wounded by a bullet that slipped under his body armor.

She enjoyed a close relationship with the son she called Charlie, even though her marriage to his father broke up when he was just 3. From her home in Ponte Vedra, Florida, she described Keating as wanting to protect and save people.

I'm so proud of him, Keating-Joseph said. He's my hero, he's our family's hero.

The sad thing is he could have done so much more had he lived a little longer, she added.

Keating-Joseph is proud of the way Charlie lived his life, his bravery in battle and love of country.

I will never forget his 150-percent attitude, his positive attitude, his million-dollar smile, his eyes that twinkle, she said. "He made everyone his best friend."

Now it is her turn to be strong as she brings him home.

Keating-Joseph said it was her son's wish to be buried as closely as possible to Coronado Amphibious Naval Base in San Diego, California. He wanted to be near his beloved SEAL Team One, she said, instead of Arlington National Cemetery.

The journey to bring Keating home began Thursday. His mother and the rest of the family were on their way to Dover Air Force Base, where they will receive the fallen SEALs body Friday morning. Funeral services are planned for May 12.

A grandson of an Arizona financier involved in the 1980s savings and loan scandal, Keating is the third U.S. service member to be killed in combat in Iraq since U.S. forces returned there in 2014.

In addition to the American quick-reaction force on the ground, 31 American aircraft  including 29 warplanes and two drones  launched 11 airstrikes, killing 58 ISIS fighters, according to Pentagon officials.

Two medical helicopters were struck by ISIS ground fire. The aircraft returned safely to base, according to Col. Steve Warren, the U.S. military's main spokesman in Baghdad.

Keating lived in Coronado with his wife, Brooke, and her family. The two married before he deployed, the family tells NBC 7.
The U.S. Coast Guard rescued a Colombian sailor who spent two months adrift in the Pacific Ocean and survived by eating seagulls, NBC News reported.

During his time at sea, the sailor witnessed the death of three fellow shipmates. He was picked up some 3,500 miles from home, far out in a desolate stretch of the Pacific Ocean, according to the U.S. Coast Guard.

The sailor  a 29-year-old Colombian  told the Coast Guard his group of four set out more than two months ago and found themselves adrift after the engine of the group's 23-foot skiff failed.

Officials did not name the sailor but said he was taken ashore on Honolulu.
A fractured Republican party showed few signs of mending Friday as Donald Trump bashed House Speaker Paul Ryan for not falling in line behind him. The two agreed to meet next Thursday.

"I have agreed to meet but have no idea whether or not the meeting will be successful," Trump said.

Ryan's declaration this week that he wasn't yet ready to embrace Trump sent shockwaves through the Republican establishment that Trump is now leaning on for help as he transitions from the primary season to a general election campaign, most likely against Democrat Hillary Clinton.

Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus did declare his support on Friday.

The GOP speaker and the party's presumptive presidential nominee are to meet at the Republican National Committee headquarters in Washington, according to an announcement released by Ryan's team Friday afternoon.

"Having both said we need to unify the party," the meeting is designed "to begin a discussion about the kind of Republican principles and ideas that can win the support of the American people this November," the statement said.

Ryan and leading House Republicans will gather for one meeting, while Ryan and Trump are will meet separately.

Meanwhile on Friday, President Barack Obama offered a stern message to reporters and others following or taking part in the extraordinary 2016 campaign.

"This is not entertainment. This is not a reality show," Obama said in an afternoon press briefing.

The president urged reporters to take Trump seriously and vet him thoroughly. "Emphasizing the spectacle and the circus, that's not something we can afford," he said.

In a morning television interview, Trump said he had been surprised by Ryan's comments.

"It's not a good thing. It's something the party should get solved quickly," Trump told Fox News Channel's "Fox and Friends."

When asked about backing Trump, Ryan told CNN on Thursday: "I'm not there right now," although he said he hoped to be eventually. "I think what is required is that we unify this party," Ryan said.

Also on Friday, RNC Chairman Priebus declared that he supports Trump as the party's nominee, even if he disagrees with some policies such as banning Muslims from entering the U.S.

Next week's meeting, Priebus said, will "start the process of unifying."

"Paul's just being honest," Priebus said of the House speaker. "He says he's not there yet, but he wants to get there."

Priebus continued: "It's going to take some time in some cases for people to work through differences."

On choosing a running mate, Trump on Friday would say only that the person will not be a Democrat. He had indicated earlier this week following his win in the Indiana primary that he would likely settle on a political person with Washington experience  someone who could help him get legislation through Congress.

"I'm going to pick a Republican and we'll have a tremendous victory," Trump said Friday, noting he was particularly pleased to have the backing of former 2016 presidential campaign rival Rick Perry of Texas.

Trump's advisers have begun conversations with the Republican National Committee on coordinating fundraising and tapping the committee's extensive voter data file and nationwide get-out-the-vote operation.

RNC officials sent a draft of a joint fundraising proposal to the Trump campaign on Thursday that details how they would divide donations between the campaign, the national committee, the national convention committee and several state parties. The agreement, standard practice in modern-day campaigns, is expected to be finalized soon.

Trump on Thursday named a finance chairman, Steven Mnuchin, a private investor with ties to New York and Hollywood who has never led a major political fundraising team. Many major GOP donors have never heard of him  or even know how to pronounce his name (muh-NOO'-chihn). Like his new boss, Mnuchin has a record of giving both to Republicans and Democrats, including Democrat Clinton during her 2008 presidential run.

Trump has also received a cool reception from the 2012 GOP standard-bearer, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, whose vice presidential running mate was Ryan, and from former President George W. Bush. Neither Bush nor his father, former President George H.W. Bush has embraced Trump, and neither plans to attend the party convention in Cleveland in July.

The divisiveness within the top echelons of the party sends a clear signal to Republican fundraising networks, which include most of the GOP's best-connected donors.

"You might have a lot of these donors sit on the sidelines," said Spencer Zwick, who led Romney's fundraising efforts and now serves as Ryan's national finance chairman.

Trump has not yet ruled out accepting public financing for his general-election effort. Taking public money would dramatically limit how much he could spend this fall.

The billionaire acknowledges he would have to sell some of his holdings to personally muster the hundreds of millions of dollars for a general-election bid, something he says he doesn't necessarily want to do.

Meanwhile, Ryan is positioning himself to play a central role in helping to protect vulnerable House and Senate candidates heading into the general election. The speaker has long been working on an "agenda project" that could give Republicans something to run on independently.
Protesters gathered Thursday in the streets and on the campus of East Los Angeles College in Monterey Park, where former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton brought her campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Supporters of Clinton's Democratic rival, Bernie Sanders, confronted Clinton's backers outside the college as a cordon of police kept watch.

"She would do absolutely nothing to help the middle class," said Cilena Aziz, a Sanders supporter.

Among the protesters gathered were members of Union del Barrio, a political group with a presence in South Los Angeles. They said Clinton did not support a national $15 minimum wage and has been a part of anti-immigration policies, including deporting undocumented children.

"I believe that being a Democrat is for the people," said Regina Cruz, a Sanders supporter. "I have a really difficult time believing that she is really for the people."

Clinton said Donald Trump wants to create a "deportation force to round up millions of people," warning a largely Hispanic audience about the presumptive Republican nominee's plans.



Clinton said the "best way to prevent that from happening is to make sure he never gets near the White House."



The Democratic front-runner said she will push for a comprehensive overhaul of immigration laws and end "raids and roundups" of immigrants.



She is pushing for a show of force in California's June 7 primary against Sanders. She said "winning big in California will put us on the path to winning big in November."

Clinton was attending fundraisers and courting black and Latino voters in Los Angeles on Thursday, before her afternoon speech at the college.

She met with local black leaders during a stop at the California African American Museum in Exposition Park, where she touted her lead over Sanders.

"I am 3 million-plus votes ahead of Senator Sanders, right?" Clinton told the crowd. "I am nearly 300 pledged delegates ahead of Senator Sanders."

NBC4 Wire Services contributed to this report.
Bristol Hospital is on high alert with beefed up security and increased police patrols.

Thats after a hospital spokesman said someone sent them threatening messages online. This makes two medical facilities in the state to receive threats this week.

If there are threats, they all need to be taken seriously, said Kirby Deegan of Bristol.

Bristol Hospital staff said someone sent a concerning email through the hospitals Contact Us section on its website around 1:45pm Wednesday.

That same message was posted twice on the hospitals Facebook page and since was taken down.

There were some threats made to the hospital. And this is something no matter how vague a threat is, we take very seriously and we contacted the Bristol police department right away, said Chris Boyle, a spokesman for Bristol Hospital.

The hospital believes it knows whos behind the messages.

It said the suspect has previously made similar threats which ended without any problems.

Pictures of the man have been passed out to staff, who have been told to be on the lookout for him.

All hospital employees go through emergency preparedness training for numerous types of incidents including threats like this, said Boyle.

At Bristol they plan to have beefed up security on Friday and possibly through the weekend.

We reached out to Bristol police for comment and have not yet heard back.

On Tuesday, there were frightening moments at Lawrence and Memorial Hospital in New London.

A man phoned-in a bomb threat which forced the hospital to briefly shut down its Emergency Room and send incoming patients elsewhere.

The threat turned out to be bogus and the man now faces charges.
New Delhi: Government is looking at creating a fund under India's first sovereign wealth fund, NIIF, which will address capital requirements of domestic steel companies. The government in December created the Rs 40,000-crore National Investment and Infrastructure Fund (NIIF) as an investment vehicle for funding commercially viable greenfield, brownfield and stalled projects.

"Government is also working on operationalising National Infrastructure Fund, the sovereign fund, and that is envisaged as a mother fund and within that there will be specific sectoral funds. "We are trying to see how we can structure something for the steel industry there, which I think will definitely go a long way in bringing down the capital costs," Steel Secretary Aruna Sundararajan said at an event here while speaking on the capital requirements of the domestic steel industry.

The Finance Ministry had signed an MoU with Abu Dhabi and Russian nano-technology company and is also having discussions with some funds with the UK for investments in NIIF. While the government will invest Rs 20,000 crore in NIIF, the remaining amount will come from private investors.

NIIF is set up as a Fund of Funds (Category II Alternate Investment Fund) with a proposed series of funds. She further said that high capital cost is one of the major reasons that affects the competitiveness of Indian steel industries and the government is working on a two pronged strategy to deal with that.

"One is that right now as you know government is looking at developing long-term funding for sectors like steel and RBI has brought our the 5/25 format, where there is a recognition that you cannot expect industries like steel to repay their loans in short spans of 5-7 years," she added. The stressed assets are a major challenge.

The RBI, Department of Financial Services and the banks are working to see how government can help clean up the balance sheets so that banks can get capital at lower costs. Lenders today are unable to get capital at lower costs as their credit ratings are impacted due to the stressed assets, Sundararajan said.

"While trying to do that, we are also trying to see that how we can balance that with the steel industry because we do recognise that some of this stress is not coming because of mismanagement, a lot of stress is due to global factors that are beyond the control of individual firms," she added.
It is the virus spread through mosquito bites that can cause serious birth defects.

Zika is coming to the United States, Dr. Theodore Andreadis said, we have infected people coming back on a regular basis and as we approach the summer months some of these people are going to be bitten by our local species.

Andreadis is the Director of the Connecticut Agriculture Experiment Station in New Haven. His team of researchers are working with a Zika virus sample collected in Mexico and they are testing whether local species of mosquitos are capable of transmitting the disease.

The primary mosquito carrying the disease and causing an epidemic in Central and South America is a tropical species (Aedes Aegypti) that is not found in Connecticut, Dr. Andreadis said, but at least one other type of mosquito (Aedes Albopictus) than can transmit the disease does exist in the states climate.

The Connecticut Department of Health earlier this week confirmed the first case of a pregnant woman from Connecticut contracting Zika while traveling in Central America.

It is a crisis that we need to manage before it gets out of control, Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro said during a visit Thursday to the Agriculture Experiment Station. She is urging Congress to approve the presidents request for $1.9 billion to fight the Zika epidemic.

We have no effective diagnostic tests nor does there exist treatment or vaccine that we can offer our patients, said Dr. Albert Ko from the Yale School of Public Health. He has been travelling back and forth to the epicenter of the epidemic in northeast Brazil.

You have to lay the groundwork now because a vaccine does not get down overnight, DeLauro said.

DeLauro said federal funding would go toward research to develop a vaccine, public health emergency preparedness and resources for mosquito population control.

We need to do enhanced surveillance, Andreadis said. We need specialized traps to monitor these specific mosquitos that carry the virus and we could use additional funding to add to our surveillance program.

There are steps the public can take for protection like wearing long sleeves and mosquito bite repellant in the warmer summer months when mosquitos are more prevalent.

Andreadis advises cleaning out standing water in bird baths, pools and containers were mosquitos often breed.

The Centers for Disease Control has released guidelines for couples because Zika can be sexually transmitted. Men who are diagnosed with the virus and show symptoms should use protection or not have sex for at least six months. The CDC advises women to wait at least 8 weeks after exposure or when symptoms show before trying to get pregnant.
Police are trying to figure out who stole wheels from cars in Waterbury over the last several weeks.

The latest incident of tires and rims being stolen off a car and placed on milk crates happened on Fiske Street early Wednesday morning.

Actually we came out and my son went to the gym in the morning and he noticed the car was tilted but he thought she had a flat tire but as it happened, all four were gone, said Mary Dooley who lives next to the owner of the car.

Police said cars in the Overlook neighborhood are being targeted including on Thomaston Avenue, Schraffts Drive and Plank Road.

Dana Santulli was a victim of one of the thefts.

"I woke up the next day seen the car jacked up on milk crates and basically thats it. Called the cops and couldnt find anybody on officers. We got new wheels and tires for the car," said Santulli, who's wheels were stolen off his Honda in late March.

He said the damage cost about $7,200 to replace, which includes damage to one of the windows and the bottom of the car because of the crates.

He is now having to take extra precautions, like adding wheel locks, an alarm, and a motion sensor detector outside his home.

Police said it appears most of the cars thieves are targeting are Hondas.

If you have any information, youre asked to call Waterbury Police.
One of five former Wesleyan University students arrested in connection with a slew of party drug overdoses last year was sentenced on Thursday, the U.S. Attorney's office said.

Zachary Kramer, 22, of Bethesda, Maryland, was sentenced to to eight months of home confinement with outpatient drug treatment, four months of imprisonment, three years of supervised release and a $10,000 fine.

Police launched an investigation last February after nearly a dozen Wesleyan students were hospitalized after taking what they thought was the euphoria-inducing stimulant MDMA, or "Molly," authorities said. One of the affected students went into cardiac arrest, according to police.

Soon after the students sought medical attention, Middletown police suspected they might have ingested a bad batch of Molly and began investigating the drug's origins.

According to the U.S. Attorneys office, the students bought what they thought was Molly from Kramer but the drug was later identified as the party drug "Spice" or "K2," a brand of synthetic marijuana.

Kramer became the drug's primary supplier in 2015, taking over after dealing drugs he bought from another student, according to the warrant for his arrest.

Witnesses told police they thought Kramer has bought the recent batch in Washington, D.C., and brought the drugs to campus. Police found several drugs in Kramer's dorm room, according to the warrant.

Kramer initially entered a plea of not guilty, but pleaded guilty last year to one count of conspiracy of distributing controlled substances in exchange for charges of attempting to distribute and distributing near a private college being dropped.

Kramer, who was expelled from Wesleyan, was one of five students arrested on state charges amid the investigation. The state has since suspended its cases against Kramer and another student, Eric Lonergan, who are also facing federal charges.
Frontier Senior Vice President and General Manager Paul Quick told NBC Connecticut that any Connecticut customer facing billing discrepancies should go to him directly.

They are more than welcome to reach out to me anytime, said Quick.

"My email address is paul.quick@ftr.com. They can reach out to me anytime and we will get the issue solved.

His offer comes after some customers found repeated errors on their Frontier billsmistakes that overcharged people anywhere from $20 to several hundred dollars.

Its just ridiculous, said Frontier user Eilyn Nieves. I mean, its gotten to the point where the bill keeps rising every month even though I was told I was in a promotional offer.

Nieves usually pays between $115 to 125 a month but over the past three months, Frontier has overcharged her by $102.

She said she has called Frontier after each of those bills and various agents promised they would fix the problem.

When her May statement arrived, it said she owed $171roughly $50 more than a normal bill.

Its ironic that the company is a communication company but they [do] not communicate, said Nieves, who soon after reached out to NBC Connecticut Responds.

Im happy with the company, with the business, with the actual services, she said about Frontier. Its just the billing that really bothers me. And I know theres a lot of people that are going through this.

Despite the complaints, Quick told us his team is committed to solving issues as quickly as possible.

I know were solving problems here, said Quick. We are hitting all of our commitments.

NBC Connecticut Responds asked Frontier about Nieves bill. The company immediately issued her a credit for every month she overpaid and assures her June bill will be adjusted accordingly.

If youre gonna say something you promised, keep it, said Nieves. If not, dont bother.
Its a phone scam that has been around for years but consumer experts said thieves are upping their game when it comes to posing as the IRS. Police departments across Connecticut are sounding the warning in an effort to keep more people from falling for it.

It is called the IRS imposter scam and it involves getting a call from someone claiming you owe back taxes. It started with emails a few years ago, but now scammers are calling over and over again and their messages are threatening.

The scammers claim you could be arrested if you do not pay up immediately. Some threaten to take your license or deport you.

They leave messages multiple times a day so they are definitely aggressive, James Jacobs of Hartford said.

Consumer experts said calls have peaked, not just in Connecticut, but across the country.

Its reached the point now where it has all the hallmarks of an epidemic, Howard Schwartz of the Connecticut Better Business Bureau said. The reason this criminal activity is growing and growing is for one reason and that is because it works. Fear works on people.

It is prompting local police departments like East Hampton to put out a warning to the public about the scam they know is growing.

Hopefully if they warn enough people, theyll stop what theyre doing because they wont be able to get through to anybody, Nicole Viets of Hartford said.

The Connecticut Better Business Bureau said the best thing you can do is ignore the call and if it continues, contact the IRS and the FTC to report the scam.

The only way were really going to stop this is when people understand that nobody will call them and threaten them and want payment by untraceable method, Schwartz said.

The IRS said if you do owe back taxes, you will receive a letter in the mail first. Government officials do not ask for PIN numbers, passwords or other personal financial information over the phone.
A Middletown man who was wanted on kidnapping and home invasion charges in Nevada was taken into custody in Cromwell.

The U.S. Marshal Service reached out to Cromwell Police at 4:05 p.m. on Thursday to help apprehend a fugitive from justice and said the suspect was believed to be working in the Cromwell area.

Members of the U.S. Marshal Services Fugitive Task Force an Cromwell police officers took Ronnie Ward Gaston 25, of Middletown, into custody at 4:12 p.m.

Gaston was charged with being a fugitive from justice from the State of Nevada.

Police said the charges against Gaston him include, but are not limited to, home invasion with a deadly weapon, kidnapping, robbery with a deadly weapon and battery with a deadly weapon.

He is being held on a $500,000 bond and appeared in Middletown Superior Court on Friday.
Wallingford police have arrested a Hamden man in connection with the shooting of a teen outside a liquor store in Wallingford on Thursday, May 5.

Wayne Bradbury, 31, whose last known address was in Hamden, is accused of shooting a 19-year-old Milford resident in the stomach and police said the victim met up with him outside the Connecticut Beverage Mart, at 1070 North Colony Road, to buy drugs.

The victim called 911 at 8:56 p.m. that night from the parking lot of 57 Hall Road, Cook Hill Elementary School and police responded to find him with a gunshot wound to his abdomen. The victim was then transported to Yale-New Haven Hospital. His injuries are not life-threatening.

Before calling 911, the teen and 18-year-old from Bridgeport he was with did an internet search for a hospital and went to Gaylord Hospital, believing he could get treatment there, but the specialty care hospital for people with long-term and chronic conditions turned them away.

Police have been investigating and said Bradbury tried to steal money from the victim, shot the teen and fled in a white BMW sedan.

Police found Bradbury around 5 p.m. on Monday as he was leaving the Comfort Inn in Meriden and took him into custody.

Detectives determined that Bradburys girlfriend, 20-year-old Melissa Farmer, of Plainville, had rented the motel room and found more than four and  ounces of cocaine, packaging materials and digital scales during a search of the room, police said.

Bradbury was charged with assault in the first degree, criminal attempt at robbery in the first degree, and criminal possession of a firearm.

He was detained on a $500,000 bond and is due in court on May 23. He was also charged with possession of narcotics with intent to sell and was held on a separate $250,000.00 bond for this charge.

Farmer was charged with possession of narcotics with intent to sell and was detained on a $25,000. She is due in Meriden Superior Court on May 23.
Four Connecticut residents have contracted Zika virus while traveling in Zika-affected areas overseas and state officials are urging residents, particularly those who are pregnant or might become pregnant, not to travel to infected areas.

Gov. Dannel Malloy, Connecticut Department of Public Health Commissioner Dr. Raul Pino, and Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station Director Dr. Ted Andreadis held a news conference on Friday to discuss preparedness.

Malloy said Zika is a "national emergency" and he criticized Republicans in Congress for not acting to authorize $2 billion in funds to fight Zika.

Should Congress authorize the funding, Andreadis has put in an application for some of that money, Malloy said. He said it could also go to local organizations for informational efforts and to step up efforts if needed.

In the absence of a vaccine for Zika virus, Andreadis said community involvement is necessary, including eliminating standing water from your property.

"We're not likely to see a vaccine for two years, and that's coming right from the NIH," he said. "So, in the absence of that, it really comes down to local community development to prevent yourself from being bitten by mosquitoes and we're strongly encouraging folks to clean up any artificial containers, get rid of standing water."

Andreadis said the lab in New Haven is conducting research and has Zika virus isolations from mosquitoes and humans from Mexico and Puerto Rico in a containment facility.

"We're doing some work with those viruses right now to see if our local mosquito populations are susceptible," he said. "There's no risk to the public."

Malloy said people who need to travel to affected areas should take precautions to avoid exposure to the virus.

"If you're expecting to conceive a child, if that's your desire, this is the time to avoid possible infection," he said.
More than a thousand workers at Yale University marched to the steps of the Yale School of Medicine for a rally calling on their employer to protect their jobs.

This is not just an attack on us, its an attack on working class people everywhere, said Barbara Vereen, a lead organizer for UNITE Here Local 34, which represents clerical and technical workers.

Members of UNITE HERE Local 35, which represents service and maintenance workers, and other Yale unions joined in on the march down College Street through downtown New Haven.

We want them to protect our jobs, Vereen said, we are looking for job security.

The Local 34 union fears through budget cuts and attrition, employees could face rounds of layoffs, only to be replaced by Yale-New Haven Hospital workers who do not have a union.

Our benefits are better and our pay is better because we have a union, Vereen said. Theres always that constant threat for us about whether are jobs are going to be shifted to the hospital because of the universitys relationship to the hospital.

A $160 million state funding reduction to Yale-New Haven Hospital forced an $18 million reduction in funding for the School of Medicine, particularly the clinical departments and Yale Medical Group, Yale spokesperson Thomas Conroy said in an email to NBC Connecticut that

We want to emphasize that the current anticipated layoffs at Yale School of Medicine are not related to moving work to the hospital, Conroy said. They are the direct result of funding cuts to the School of Medicine created by the States cuts to Yale-New Haven Hospital.

Two Department of Dermatology employees were laid off Thursday, Vereen said. At the start of the rally, the Local 34 president Laurie Kennington said there could be 100 layoffs coming across the different clinical departments.

The union argues these job cuts come at a time when the university ran a budget surplus and has a record high endowment of $25.6 billion.

This significant reduction in revenue will require Yale School of Medicine to make significant cost reductions, and the school will work tirelessly to minimize the impact on the faculty and staff, Conroy said. Given that the largest part of Yales budget is compensation for staff, there will necessarily be some staff reductions.
New, advanced tracking technology finally gave a Connecticut mom the peace of mind she sought for her special needs child in school. Then the school district slammed the door on the idea, citing privacy concerns.

The mom reached out to the NBC Connecticut Troubleshooters to see if they could get some answers.

Seven year old Collin Northrup has Down Syndrome. His mother Helen explains he tends to bolt, a common symptom many Down Syndrome patients have. Helen Northrup explains any time an exterior door gets opened an alarm goes off, "He's ended up in stranger's homes, if he would have went the wrong direction down our street he could have ended up in a sex offenders house."

Northrup says Collin also tried to take off from school twice last year, something the Naugatuck school district won't verify. Northrup says Collin's doctor suggested she try out GPS systems to track kids like her son. She finally settled on one by a company called AngelSense, "It clips to his clothing. He can't remove it. The other devices he was able to remove from his clothing, and flush it down the toilet or throw it away, it's an amazing breakthrough. It really is."

Within a few days of wearing it to school, when Northrup told the district Collin had the device on, she says the district told her he could not wear it. The district raised concerns about AngelSense's Listen In feature, a microphone separate from the GPS tracking that allows someone monitoring Collin to hear what he's doing or if he is in danger.

The listening device is off during school hours, Northrup explains. The only ones who can turn it on are the police department, or the school district. Superintendent Sharon Locke decided though, that the district could not permit Collin on school grounds with the device. She gave a brief on camera statement" with new technology, and with any requests to bring new devices in to our schools, we want to be really careful we are protecting the rights of the privacy of all the children in the classroom."

Nery Ben-Azar, one of the founders of AngelSense, explains the company has several thousand customers in the U.S. The NYPD confirms the company's technology helped locate a 17 year old autistic boy that took off into the subway system last December, During the last year we were already, fortunate enough really, to literally save the life of several kids."

Ben-Azar says his company contacted the school district about a solution to this issue, We have developed this feature, an automatic feature, that disables, totally disables the ability to listen in during school hours. Its being done automatically.

ACLU of Connecticut Legal Director Dan Barrett says while the use of this device puts a student's right to privacy on a collision course with a disabled students' right to have what he or she needs to be in a classroom, there's no reason both cannot be respected, In this situation it seems like there's a pretty obvious work around that checks both boxes in effect. It makes sure the students' rights in both areas are protected."

Six weeks after this dispute over Collins GPS tracker began, and a month after we began asking questions, the matter has been resolved. The school district let Collin return to class with the AngelSense device as long only the district or police can activate the microphone during school hours, a great relief to his mom.

This device will save his life."

The NBC Connecticut Troubleshooters reached out to the school district to find out what led to its decision to let Collin return to school with the GPS tracker. The superintendent has not responded.
As Opec officials gathered this week to formulate a long-term strategy, few in the room expected the discussions would end without a clash.

London/Dubai: As Opec officials gathered this week to formulate a long-term strategy, few in the room expected the discussions would end without a clash.

But even the most jaded delegates got more than they had bargained with.

Opec is dead, declared one frustrated official, according to two sources who were present or briefed about the Vienna meeting.

This was far from the first time that Opecs demise has been proclaimed in its 56-year history, and the oil exporters group itself may yet enjoy a long life in the era of cheap crude.

Saudi Arabia, Opecs most powerful member, still maintains that collective action by all producers is the best solution for an oil market that has dived since mid-2014. But events at Mondays meeting of Opec governors suggest that if Saudi Arabia gets its way, then one of the groups central strategies  of managing global oil prices by regulating supply  will indeed go to the grave.

In a major shift in thinking, Riyadh now believes that targetting prices has become pointless as the weak global market reflects structural changes rather than any temporary trend.

Opec is already split over how to respond to cheap oil. The differences resurfaced at the long-term strategy meeting of the Opec governors, officials who report to their countries oil ministers.

According to the sources, it was a delegate from a non-Gulf Arab country who pronounced Opec dead in remarks directed at the Saudi representative as they argued over whether the group should keep targeting prices.

Iranian representative has been arguing that this is precisely what Opec was created for and hence effective production management should be one of its top long-term goals.

But Saudi governor Mohammed al-Madi said he believed the world has changed so much in the past few years that it has become a futile exercise to try to do so, sources say. Dispensing with price targets represents a massive change in Saudi thinking.

This is now being driven largely by 31-year-old deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who took over as the ultimate decision maker of the countrys energy last year.

When oil was viewed as scarce, the kingdom thought it had to maximise its long-term revenues even if that meant pumping fewer barrels and yielding market share to rival producers, according to several sources familiar with the Saudi thinking.

With the importance of oil declining, Riyadh has decided it is wiser to prioritise market share, the sources say. Saudi Arabia believes that it will be better off producing more at todays low prices than reducing output, only to sell the oil for even less in the future as global demand ebbs.
The judge overseeing the Prince estate case has authorized genetic testing on a sample of his blood in case it's necessary to determine who's entitled to shares of the estate.

Carver County District Judge Kevin Eide on Friday granted a request by the special administrator overseeing the estate, Bremer Trust, to hire DNA Diagnostics Center to perform the genetic testing on a blood sample now held by the medical examiner's office that conducted the autopsy on Prince.

Prince's sister, Tyka Nelson said he left behind no will.

Nelson and Prince's five half-siblings decided last week that Bremer Trust should continue acting as special administrator of the musician's fortune, according to NBC News.

In his order, the judge says he's "recognizing that parentage issues might arise" in the administration of Prince's estate. He's authorized the medical examiner to release the blood sample to the testing laboratory.

Prince's estate is believed to be worth an estimated $300 million. It is rumored that he also left behind thousands of unrecorded songs.

Aside from his siblings, Prince is survived by two ex-wives. His only known child, a son named Boy Gregory, died in October 1996 at just a week old.

Prince died April 21 at his home in suburban Minneapolis. The cause remains under investigation.
It can take less than a minute for thieves to pop the hatch of a sport utility vehicle and grab the third-row seats. Now business owners and law enforcement agencies believe they have come up with a solution to help prevent crooks from stealing the seats from SUVs.

Carrollton brothers Matt and Brian Verhalen, owners of The Seat Shop, have been working on way to protect third-row seats from theft. After a year and a half, they now have a patent-pending lock that they say will stop thieves.

We worked so hard trying to come up with all these different designs and we finally had a design that works to where the seats are 100 percent functional, Matt Verhalen said. It just disables the handle.

The $125 lock secures the seats in place, while making it easy for consumers to take it on and off.

It wont let it release from the floor at all, explained Brian Verhalen, the younger brother. You can still stow and go, so if you need to put up the groceries you can still flip the seat forward and you have the extra room for storage.

Niche Market

The Verhalens know a lot about third-row seats since theyve learned over the years how to build them from scratch. While the main focus of their business today is factory match leather seats, they started their business as a side job in 2006 in Matts Frisco garage, originally rebuilding and refurbishing third-row seats they found in junk yards.

As the economy kind of slowed and families were growing and they needed an extra row of seating, instead of buying a vehicle that had a third-row seat, they found they can actually just add a third-row seat to their existing vehicle, said Matt. And thats kind of where we saw the niche. And we were going, Wow theres a big market for this.

The war in Iraq brought more opportunity. A bullet-proofing company, which won a government contract to send SUVs overseas and had no need for the third-row seats, sold them to the brothers.

Eighteen-wheelers started backing up to our shop and we had pallets of third-row seats. So gone were the days of crawling the junkyards in the heat in the summer, Matt said.

But Matt said theyre constantly getting calls from residents, and even dealerships, who have had seats stolen.

We had a dealership calling us, like, We got 10 sets of third-row seats stolen off of our lot, he said. Its the biggest crime-theft ring, whatever is going on, in Dallas that weve seen in the history of the company.

Plano resident Pat Sayers learned about The Seat Shop after the third-row seats were stolen from her GMC Yukon over the summer. She said her son had borrowed the SUV to sleep at a friends house in Dallas near the intersection of Inwood Road and Royal Lane. When he got home and they were preparing to take him to college, they noticed the back glass of the hatch didnt seem to close right. They both looked inside, and the seats were gone.

I thought he had taken them out and he thought I had taken them out. They were nowhere to be found, Sayers said.

And likely, they were long gone.

Thieves Target GM Vehicles

Highland Park, University Park and Dallas have seen a spike in these thefts. According to police reports, General Motors vehicles like the Chevrolet Suburban and Tahoe, Cadillac Escalade and GMC Yukon are typical targets. Not only are consumers victims of third-row seat thefts, but according to police reports, the Sewell Buick GMC of Dallas on Lemmon Avenue was also hit.

Victims like Sayers said even if the seats are found by police, theres no identification, making it difficult to return to the rightful owner. And dealers cannot help if the seats are stolen.

I called them and I said, I need to order a third-row seat. And they said, We don't sell those. The manufacturers don't sell those. They only sell parts for seats, Sayers said. Thats very frustrating.

Another problem when the back window is popped open, the alarm doesnt sound.

The glass doesnt have any kind of alarm on it, Sayers said.

NBC 5 Investigates asked General Motors about the problem.

GM is aware of the situation with an increase in thefts of third-row seats in some large utility vehicles in certain areas of the country, said Mike Meyerand, GM Communications Manager. We don't have any plans to change designs at this time.

The bigger the house, the bigger the vehicle

Highland Park Department Public Safety spokesman, Lance Koppa, told NBC 5 that two suspects were caught in the act of stealing the seats in late August.

One of the officers drove up on an in progress offense and caught the suspects and probably connected them to about 100 offenses, he said.

Those suspects detailed to police why they targeted the Park Cities and surrounding areas. In an arrest affidavit one suspect said, The bigger the house, the bigger the vehicle, and goes on to say that they sell the seats to a third party.



There's a market for it and whether its people that don't have a third-row seat or if its unfortunately our victims whose third-row seats have been taken and they're just trying to replace their stolen merchandise -- which is in some cases what has happened, said Koppa.

Back Window Alarm

Highland Park police are testing another solution, using a separate vibration motion alarm for the back window of the vehicle. They cost less than $20 and are meant to deter would-be thieves with a loud alarm when the window is popped open.

This alarm we've been trying out for a few weeks and we have not had any falses. We have had good success with it and we are going to distribute those alarm devices though out the town, Koppa said.

The goal is to create an audible deterrent and to alert residents to call 911.

Sayers said she wasnt taking any chances after spending $1,100 to replace her seats. She bought the third-row seat lock as well. It even came with a sticker for the back window to warn would-be thieves that her third-row seats are not for the taking.

NBC 5s Karin Matz contributed to this report.
Irving school officials confirm an investigation is underway into bullying and violence at an Irving Independent School District campus.

In this case a substitute teacher claims she was the victim of bullying by a principal and that teachers have been the victims of violence between disruptive students.

Substitute teacher Wednesday Jackson was assigned to the Wheeler campus on Shady Grove Road last week.

"It's not good," Jackson said. "And they said that they've had difficulties getting subs to come back, and now I understand why."

The building is a combination alternative school for kids removed from other schools for behavior problems and also a special education school for children with serious disabilities who have also been sent there from other schools, according to the Irving school website and district officials. The two separate programs are both housed under the same roof but share a common gym space.

Jackson said she was booked as a gym teacher but was not provided details in advance about the background of the students she would supervise.

In two separate periods in the gym she said she broke up fights between students, one of them a girl attacking a boy.

"She was beating him with everything," Jackson said. "You could hear the thunder against him."

Jackson said she was bullied by a principal afterward for the way she handled it. She said another teacher showed her bruises that the teachers said she received dealing with abusive Wheeler students.

Jackson said it was a sharp contrast to her prior two years of praise as an Irving substitute teacher, including a prior assignment at the Wheeler campus.

"I've had nothing but positive experiences there," Jackson said.

Jackson refused to return to Wheeler the next day but is booked Friday at another Irving campus.

She contacted Irving Civic Leader Anthony Bond to help her file a complaint over the Wheeler experience with the Irving ISD. Bond is also a leader of the Irving Education Coalition, a group of concerned citizens and teachers.

"Alternative school big kids and little bitty special education kids under one roof? It makes no sense," Bond said.

He said he is scheduled to meet with the Irving schools superintendent Friday over the issues.

"Is this campus safe, not only for the students, but is it safe for the teachers and administrators, too? That should not be a question in a public school campus anywhere in America," Bond said.

Irving ISD spokesperson Lesley Weaver said the special education and alternative school students have separate entrances and they are never together at the same time, although they do use the same gym space. She said 23 special education students and 95 alternative students are currently assigned to the building.

Weaver said the dual program use of the Wheeler campus started under the previous superintendent and has been in place for several years. She said a common cafeteria serves all students at the school but the alternative students eat in their classrooms.

Weaver said both schools deal with the most challenging students and discipline issues are not surprising. However, Weaver said Irving ISD takes Jackson's complaints seriously and an investigation is underway.

Two teacher union leaders said they have never heard of a similar shared campus arrangement for behavior and disability instruction but they were not familiar with any specific problems at the Wheeler campus. Rena Honea is president of Alliance AFT, representing Dallas Independent School District teachers. Steven Cole is a leader with United Educators Association, representing Irving and other North Texas district teachers.
The Oak Lawn area of Dallas was busy Thursday night as thousands of people celebrated Cinco de Mayo. Despite the jovial atmosphere, the festivities were dampened by concerns over the recent surge in violent crime in the area.

"I wouldn't walk because I don't want to get attacked based on nothing I did," said Drew Bearden.

Since September 2015 there have been at least 15 attacks or robberies in and around the Oak Lawn area. Three of those incidents have been classified as hate crimes. There have been no arrests.

"The single most frustrating part is these (attacks) continue to happen and this community has seen no arrests," said Lee Daugherty, owner of Alexandre's on Cedar Springs. "We have good descriptions throughout a lot of these (attacks), especially with the events of the last couple of weekends."

In response to concerns from local residents and members of the LGBTQ community Dallas police have increased patrols in the area. New surveillance cameras were installed to capture any incidents. Volunteer patrols now walk the area on the weekend looking for anything suspicious.

Daugherty said business owners, residents and patrons appreciate what's been done, but the community wants the person or people responsible for these crimes brought to justice. Until then he said the area will continue to be a vibrant hub of nightlife.

"This is not a community that lays down and takes punches," Daugherty said. "This is a community that fights back."

Police continue to recommend bar-goers walk in pairs, be aware of their surroundings and report any suspicious activity.
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The latest news from around North Texas.
The founder of a North Texas non-profit organization is trying to figure out who vandalized a vehicle used to spread awareness for her cause.

Jamie Dingle started "The Au-Some Crawler" organization two years ago. It's based in Parker County, where Dingle lives.

Dingle uses a special Jeep called the Au-Some Crawler to spread awareness about autism. The Jeep is covered with more than 400 puzzle pieces, the international symbol for Autism Awareness.

"Every single puzzle piece on that Jeep holds a special place in my heart," Dingle said.

Sometime late Monday night or early Tuesday morning, she says someone vandalized the Jeep by denting the hood, peeling off puzzle piece stickers and spray-painting the words "Go Away" on the hood.

Dingle said it happened while the Au-Some Crawler was parked in the driveway of her home.

"I started screaming. I was screaming at the top of my lungs," Dingle said. "Why would somebody do this to something that I have created for special needs awareness?"

The damage was so bad, it had to be towed to Caliber Collision in Fort Worth, which repaired the Au-Some Crawler for free.

"It's a very special Jeep, and as soon as I saw it I knew I wanted to jump on and help out," service advisor Chris Briley said.

The help comes just in the nick of time. Dingle said the vandalism nearly caused her to miss an event this weekend.

"I was devastated in thinking that I may not be able to attend this event with Autism Speaks," she said.

Dingle was brought to tears when the repaired Au-Some Crawler was delivered to her Thursday.

Despite what she's going through, she said she's determined to stay focused on the big picture.

"They will not stop me from doing what I love most, which is out there raising awareness into acceptance for the Autism community," she said.

Dingle said she has no idea who would target the Au-Some Crawler.

Anyone with information is asked to contact the Parker County Sheriff's Office.
Russia and the Syrian government marked the liberation of the Syrian city of Palmyra from ISIS with a musical concert, NBC News reported.

An associate of Russian President Vladimir Putin implicated in the "Panama Papers" performed a classical piece on the ruins of the historic city on Thursday.

"The event is ... a sign of memory, hope and a sense of gratitude," Putin said, speaking from his office.

Palmyra was captured by ISIS in 2015.

The jihadists committed one of their most outrageous crimes on the record when they attacked Palmyra's historical heritage, destroying antique temples and statues depicting "false gods."
Ditching his now-famous black glasses Friday for his official Texas portrait, former Gov. Rick Perry is back looking like his old self but sounding far different when it comes to former presidential rival Donald Trump.

After the painting was unveiled at the state Capitol, Perry defended his enthusiastic change of heart this week about the presumptive GOP nominee. He had once called the billionaire businessman a "cancer to conservatism" but now says he'd be willing to work in a Trump administration, even as vice president.

[NATL] Highlights From the 2016 Campaign Trail

Trump has made no such public overtures to the longtime Texas governor, who acknowledged he hasn't spoken to Trump in months. Perry was among the first 2016 contenders to drop out of the crowded Republican field, but his short-lived campaign attacked Trump harder than most in the early stages of the race.

"If Donald Trump says, 'Perry, let's talk about you helping in this role,' I'm open to it," Perry said Friday.

Trump, who once said that Perry only began wearing glasses so "people will think he's smart," tweeted "Thank you Rick!" after Perry's endorsement.

Perry didn't start wearing the thick-framed glasses until after his first failed run for the White House in 2012, when his campaign unraveled after famously stumbling in a debate and forgetting the name of a federal agency he would eliminate. But he spent most of his record 14 years as Texas governor without glasses.

[NATL] Top News Photos: Pope Visits Japan, and More

Although he wore them to the ceremony Friday, the unadorned look is how Perry will be forever pictured in the Texas Capitol, where his portrait was hung next to former governors Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Ann Richards. Perry offered no explanation as to why he posed without glasses, but the choice seemed to delight one of his biggest political donors, billionaire Red McCombs.

"I bet a guy $500,000 that the picture wouldn't have glasses," McCombs told a gallery of current and former Texas lawmakers during the ceremony.

Perry shrugged off his previous criticism of Trump as the usual election-year rhetoric. Defending Trump's qualifications, Perry cited the billionaire's claims that he will surround himself with an experienced team if elected.

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"I suggest that is a clear indication that he understands what he knows, understands what he doesn't know and is willing to bring people in and listen to," Perry said. "And I think that's the most important trait that he will have to exhibit. I mean, that has yet to be seen, but I feel comfortable that he will indeed do that."

In a Facebook post Friday, former presidential candidate and Florida Gov. Jeb Bush said he would not he will not vote for Trump in November, saying the presidency requires "great fortitude and humility."

"Donald Trump has not demonstrated that temperament or strength of character. He has not displayed a respect for the Constitution. And, he is not a consistent conservative," he said."

Bush also said he would not support Hillary Clinton, who he called an "untrustworthy liberal politician."

Earlier Friday, Lindsey Graham said he "cannot in good conscience support Donald Trump because I do not believe he is a reliable Republican conservative."

The South Carolina senator, who was one of Trump's harshest critics during the campaign, said on Twitter Friday he will support neither Trump nor Clinton and will skip the GOP convention this summer.

Tryump did receive an endorsement from former senator and 1996 Republican presidential nominee Bob Dole.
After his classmates plea for a visit from Captain America went viral, 18-year-old Ryan Wilcox got quite a treat from Chris Evans and his school on Friday.

The actor sent San Diego's Grossmont High School a video, offering Wilcox well-wishes and telling him simply to stay strong.

Its people like you with strength like yours that inspire people like me, Evan says in the video posted to YouTube.

The actors video was in response to a social media campaign by the high schools ASB, seeking a visit to Wilcox, who is battling cancer and is a devoted Captain America fan.

The ASB club posted its plea on Facebook and the post has since amassed more than 3,100 shares.

On Friday, the school had an assembly for Wilcox, where they featured Evans video.

Amazing support by Grossmont HS students! Captain America themed pep rally for stricken classmate. #nbc7 #ryanstrong pic.twitter.com/H0xNwf0tFH  Artie Ojeda (@ArtieNBCSD) May 6, 2016

Im thinking of you, the star says. Stay strong!

The student body also showered Wilcox with support, dressing up in Captain America garb and holding a banner that read: #RyanStrong.
Classmates of a San Diego 18-year-old fighting cancer are hoping to lift his spirits by arranging a meet up with his heroes: the cast of Captain America.

Grossmont High Schools ASB club is taking their mission to social media and have shared Ryan Wilcoxs story on Facebook.

In the post, which has been shared nearly 3,000 times since it was posted Tuesday, classmates say Wilcox is a die-hard Captain America and Avengers fan.

They feel his health would benefit from a visit with Chris Evans, the actor who plays the title role.

He isnt doing too well and this would be a major way to boost his spirits and quite frankly be the best moment of his life if he literally got to meet his hero, the post reads.

The ASB is hoping to the momentum on social media will grab the actors attention.

On Friday, the school is having Captain America Day, and students will don movie gear in support of Wilcox and in honor of the movies release that day.

In a post Thursday, the ASB said it was "close" to arranging a visit from Evans.
Saat Uchakkey is based in the heart of New Delhi and revolves around the lives of seven men.

Mumbai: Manoj Bajpayee's film Saat Uchakkey, which was supposed to release way back in 2014, didn't see the light of day. The teaser of the film which was rejected by the Censor Board has been doing the rounds on social media.

The leaked teaser of Neeraj Pandey film is filled with cuss words in practically every line. However, looks like the promo has apparently not been dubbed entirely because of its poor sound quality. Saat Uchakkey is based in the heart of New Delhi and revolves around the lives of seven men.

In 2015, when filmmaker Neeraj Pandey was asked about the release of the film, he had said We are not getting a good window for that film. We are looking for a good day. We are waiting for the right opportunity as its better to be safe than sorry.
A resolution to designate a stretch of the 5 Freeway in Downey in memory of slain Downey Police Department Officer Ricardo Galvez was unanimously approved Thursday by the state Senate.

Senate Concurrent Resolution 111 would designate the portion of Interstate 5 between the San Gabriel River Bridge and the Rio Hondo River Bridge as the Downey Police Officer Ricardo Galvez Memorial Highway.

The resolution now heads to the Assembly.

The 29-year-old Galvez was fatally shot about 11 p.m. on Nov. 18 while sitting in his BMW 335, clad in street clothes, in a public civic center parking lot adjacent to the Downey police station.

Galvez joined the Downey Police Department in September 2010. He served in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve from 2008-14 and was deployed to Afghanistan

and Iraq.

"My hope is that SCR 111 will help the community heal from this tragedy,'' said Sen. Tony Mendoza, D-Artesia, who introduced the motion.

"They can take comfort in the fact that the life and service of this tremendous

individual will be remembered always.''
A double-amputee Syrian refugee was denied entry into the United States on Tuesday after landing at LAX and being forced to return to Europe, according to the Council of American-Islamic Relations, who called for his release.

According to CAIR, Morhaf Alkordi, who lost both his legs in 2013, had come to LA for medical treatment after his family reached an agreement with the Hanger Clinic in Downey to treat Alkordi for free.

"He arrived in the United States filled with hope and excitement. Less than 24 hours after his arrival, he was shipped back to Berlin as if he were damaged goods," said Alkordi's uncle, Malek Taweil, in a press release distributed by CAIR.

"Such treatment is unacceptable and not befitting the image and values of our country, especially against a victim of war who has already endured so much pain and suffering," Taweil added.

Alkordi's treatment, which had an estimated cost of anywhere from $24,000 to $90,000, would give him a chance to walk again. He was planning to return to Germany after the treatment, where his wife and daughter live.

"He's lost the ability to pursue his personal goals and dreams and this was that opportunity," said Alkordi's aunt, Marianne Taweil.

The State Department granted Alkordi a B-2 Visa, which was supposed to give him six months to get treated. He was then denied entry by Customs and Border patrol, which cited the Privacy Act when declining to comment on the case.

Alkordi's attorney, Farida Chehata, said authorities cited that he did not want to return to Syria, and that he was unemployed, as reasons for sending him back to Europe.

Chehata and Alkordi's family are now hoping the Department of Homeland Security cooperates with them in reviewing paperwork. Chehata is characterizing their case now as "a last ditch effort," as they attempt to get a humanitarian parole.

"For anybody who is a refugee from a war torn country, it's going to be difficult for him to be able to receive another B-2 visa after he was denied entry and returned back to Germany," Chehata said.
Police are asking for the public's help in locating a city jail inmate who duped guards and walked out of the Brooklyn courthouse by capitalizing on a case of mistaken identity.

Police on Thursday released a photo of Layquan Johnson, who was brought to the Brooklyn Supreme Court on Tuesday in connection with his arrest for a shooting that occurred in December 2015.

Johnson was sitting in a holding cell with other defendants, including a friend who was scheduled to be released. When guards called the name of the man to be released, Johnson answered the call, law enforcement sources told NBC 4 New York.

He brazenly strolled out of the courthouse at about 10:15 p.m. He was wearing a gray sweatshirt, dark-colored pants and light-colored sneakers at the time.

The Department of Correction captain involved in the inmate's release has been suspended, a spokesperson for the agency said.

"Any erroneous release is unacceptable and this incident is under investigation," the spokesperson said.

City police and U.S. Marshals have teamed up to search for Johnson, who has had numerous run-ins with the law.

He is currently charged with attempted murder for allegedly shooting a 27-year-old man in the leg in Brooklyn.

Anyone with information about Johnson's whereabouts is asked to call the NYPD Crime Stoppers Hotline at 800-577-TIPS.
If you like getting souvenirs on trips out of the country, you may want to take a closer look at what you're bringing home because those buys could be illegal.

Each year, inspectors with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services (FWS) seize millions of dollars in items made from animals banned in this country. From crocodile corsets to frog purses to snake gallbladders, much of those items will end up in a government warehouse near Denver.

The animal contraband is often brought in at airports by travelers who just don't know the rules, but sometimes by people determined to smuggle in animals including live birds from the Caribbean.

Click here to see a list of animals prohibited from entering the United States.

Sylvia Gaudio, an inspector with FWS, showed the NBC 6 Investigators how smugglers rig belts using hair rollers, medicine bottles and other household items to hide birds.

"A lot of people use these belts or they actually have pockets in their pants or their shirts and they stuff either [medicine bottles] or toilet paper rolls and they stuff the birds inside," said Gaudio.

Customs inspectors like Ashley Vaught, who work with specially trained dogs at Miami International Airport, say they're not shocked by what they find on travelers.

"He was smuggling animal parts for Santeria, sheep's brain, bird head, other various animal parts," Vaught said.

But the finds are especially frustrating for inspectors when the animals are endangered.

"We noticed the luggage was extremely heavy. We opened it up and we found a little baby tiger," said Gaudio as she showed the NBC 6 Investigators the dead animal, which was brought in illegally.

FWS inspectors also conduct random checks on cargo shipments trying to catch importers sneaking in animals with false paperwork.

The agency says one-third of these inspections will turn up a problem. From squid to crocodile, officers seized more than $16 million worth of animal contraband in Florida since 2009, and more than $60 million across the country. It can't all be stopped so these officers focus on animals most in peril.

"Viper and I actually find a lot of ivory here in Miami at the mail facility so people just think they can send ivory out or bring it in and Viper and I will be out to find it," said Amir Lawal, a canine handler with FWS.

A pound of ivory is so lucrative it's pushing elephant poaching to its highest levels in a decade. And that has many who own ivory looking to sell. But dealing in ivory is landing some South Floridians in court.

Dania business owner Raymond Reppert recently admitted in court he falsified customs documents to make it look like he was selling wood samples and resin carvings that were really ivory. Reppert wouldn't comment on the case.

Officers say consumers should know what it takes to create the items they buy.

FWS says an average coat might contain 15 to 20 wild cats just to create a single garment. That's something that worries those who see these purchases every day.

"Kind of a sense of dread in a way knowing that some of these animals even in my children's lifetime are not going to be around," said Doni Sprague, who manages the FWS warehouse of seized animal contraband.

Some of those items in government storage will be donated to museums.

Those who work with animal contraband say another reason the public should be concerned about this issue is that travelers and smugglers can bring in aggressive species that can invade our communities and throw the ecosystem out of balance, such as pythons in the Everglades.
Miami Police are investigating a shooting involving multiple victims.

It happened around 9 p.m. Thursday in the 2100 block of Northwest 19th Terrace.

Police said four people were shot; all were either taken to Jackson Memorial Hospital or drove themselves. One victim was reported as being a trauma alert after being shot in the chest.

Investigators said the victims are between the ages of late teens to early 20s.

The victims and witnesses were being interviewed by police Thursday evening.

There's no word on whether any arrests have been made or what led to the shooting.

Stay with NBC 6 for updates on this developing story.
The driver accused of speeding more than 100 miles an hour in his Lamborghini and plowing into an SUV, killing his passenger, has been sentenced to four years in prison.

Andres Toro will also serve one year of house arrest after that sentence, followed by five years of probation in connection with the crash that killed his friend, Dr. Malcolm Lloyd.

At Friday's hearing, Lloyd's widow wept as she talked about her husband's untimely death and addressed Toro.

"I know you didn't set out that evening to take my husband's life," Solange Lloyd said. "He was ripped away and now he's gone, in a flash, in a blink, in a breath."

The crash occurred on April 24 of last year on the MacArthur Causeway.

Toro is accused of rear-ending his Lamborghini into an SUV. Lloyd died on impact. The SUV driver was seriously injured but survived.

According to the arrest report, Toro's blood alcohol level was .20, almost three times the legal limit, and he was driving in excess of 100 miles an hour.

A judge rejected Toro's plea deal late last year, which was reportedly less than the mandatory four years in state prison.

Toro was facing a a maximum sentence of 21 years in prison, if convicted of all charges.

In court Friday, Toro spoke to Lloyd's window and two sons.

"I pray each and every one of you can one day forgive men, amen," he said.


A former dean at Florida International University is accused of sexually assaulting a female graduate student during a study abroad trip to Italy in December 2014.

The student, who filed a federal lawsuit seeking more than $75,000 in damages, claims then-associate dean Adam Drisin raped her after a night of drinking as the semester overseas was winding down.

"When parents send their kids to school, they send them for education, not to be exploited," said the student's attorney, Omar Malone.

According to Malone, Drisin invited three students back to his room after a night out in Italy and served them Bailey's.

After passing out, the alleged victim woke up "totally naked" and had "no recollection" of what took place, until another student told her what had happened, according to the lawsuit.

Malone said the student reported the alleged assault to a professor, who then told the administration, where the case is still under review.

"A number of the students have given statements that are consistent with what we've alleged," Malone said.

Asked why the lawsuit was filed more than a year after the alleged incident, Malone emphasized the importance of being thorough.

"Anytime allegations such as this are raised, there's an extensive investigation that needs to take place," he explained.

Drisin, who graduated from Cornell and taught at Harvard before his tenure at FIU, has since left the university and is job hunting at colleges across the country.

He addressed the allegations in a text message to NBC 6, calling them unfounded and saying the truth will come out in court.

"These allegations are totally false. This will all be proven to be a frivolous case. There is ample proof that will be presented to support a very different story," Drisin said.

An FIU spokesperson said the most important thing to the school is the health and safety of students. The university declined to comment specifically on the case, citing "pending proceedings."
Two men are facing charges after authorities say they used dozens of counterfeit credit cards to make purchases at stores throughout Miami-Dade.

Elio Perez-Garcia, 29, and Denys Sanchez-Vazquez, 30, are both facing charges including grand theft and organized fraud following their arrests Thursday, police said.

Both appeared in court Thursday where they were each given $285,500 bonds. It's unknown if they've hired attorneys.

According to arrest reports, Miami-Dade Police detectives watched Perez-Garcia and Sanchez-Vazquez enter different retail stores at Dadeland Mall where they used the counterfeit cards to make purchases.

Police said they searched one of the suspects' cars and found a total of 192 counterfeit credit cards.
Pinecrest Police are searching for a 17-year-old girl who has been missing since Wednesday.

Police said Emily Marie Gimenez is a habitual runaway and is known to frequent the Wynwood area.

Emily is 5'5" and 110 pounds. She has blue eyes and faded red hair. She may be wearing a septum ring and carrying a messenger bag with an unknown print.

Emily's father told police she may be attending a hip-hop concert at MANA Wynwood located at 318 Northwest 23rd Street. The concert starts at 5 p.m. Friday and ends Saturday night.

Gimenez and the police department ask that if anyone has information about Emily's whereabouts to call (305) 234-2121 or Crime Stoppers at (305) 471-TIPS.
Preity Zinta and her husband Gene Goodenough make their first public appearance at the Mumbai airport. Photo: Twitter

Actress Preity Zinta and her hubby Gene Goodenough made their first public appearance at the Mumbai airport on Friday. The actress, who wed the LA businessman in a hush-hush ceremony in March, was seen with her new family at the airport.

Preity and Gene didnt pose together for photographs, as she was busy chatting with her father-in-law and mother-in-law, as they headed into the airport. Gene followed closely behind.

Preity Zinta with her father-in-law and mother-in-law at the Mumbai airport. Photo: Preity Zinta France

Preity is slowly getting her husband accustomed to Indian customs and culture. The actress shared the first pictures of herself partying with Gene at a Holi beach party in the US. The actress has flown into the country late last month as she had to attend to some personal and professional commitments.
The son of a Miami-Dade Police major is facing charges for allegedly dealing drugs from under his father's roof.

20-year-old Tyler Palmer faces multiple charges including trafficking cocaine and cannabis possession with intent to sell or deliver.

MDPD confirmed Tyler is the son of Major Arnold Palmer. According to the police department's website, Palmer works for the Economic Crimes Bureau.

According to the arrest report, Miami Dade's Professional Compliance Bureau served a search warrant and raided the Palmer home in Kendall just off the Florida Turnpike.

Inside Tyler's bedroom, investigators said they found several baggies of marijuana. Police also allegedly found clear bags of suspected cocaine on a dresser, as well as bags under his bed in a box, along with hallucinogenic mushrooms and amphetamines.

"The detective is the lead detective. He personally weighed some of the narcotics and it came out to be 49 grams," the prosecutor said during Tyler's bond hearing.

On top of his desk, officials said there was a black scale and a black and green bong with drug residue. According to the affidavit, officials also impounded more than $3,000 cash.

Tyler Palmer was booked into jail and later released on $65,000 bond. It's unclear whether he has an attorney.

Major Palmer was not arrested in the case.

MDPD released the following statement Friday about the incident:

"The Miami-Dade Police Department (MDPD) acknowledges the arrest of Mr. Tyler Palmer who is the relative of several MDPD employees. There is no indication at this time of any involvement by our employees in this case; as such, their statuses with the department remain unchanged. Due to the open nature of the investigation, we will not comment further."
Every school has its popular kids, its brainy kids, its student leaders. At Turner Tech High School in Miami, Julius Wade is all of those things wrapped up in one student. Hes a genuine star on campus, the kid whos universally liked and admired, the student government president.

"Students ask to be in the same class with him," said Dr. Renee Posey, the director of student services at the school.

Julius is the type of student who can literally take over a class and teach the subject, which he does on a regular basis.

"He's like a teacher, but you know, a peer who's your teacher, said Franchesca Bellevu, a sophomore who sees Julius as the ultimate role model. I wanna be the next Julius or Julius 2.0."

In his sophomore year, Julius saw a need and decided to fill it. He started an effort to help his classmates called, "Tutoring for Academic Success."

There was just a culture of complacency among the students and I saw that students were looking not to one another but they were looking to teachers solely for help or maybe to the internet solely for help and they didnt have that intrinsic motivation to do as well as they could do, Julius explained.

Three years later, his tutoring club has more than 30 students involved and theyve helped nearly 800 of their peers in every subject.

"We believe the students have done better and we have data that shows that test scores have improved every year because of, or at least wed like to think because of, the work that weve done, Julius said.

Mishar Campbell is an honor student recruited by Julius to join the effort.

He really wants to help the students here, hes not just here to be the best, Mishar said.

He is certainly on track, though, to be the best student at his school, possibly in the history of his school. Julius will be the first Turner Tech student to ever attend Harvard University.

"He really set the bar high here," Mishar said.

His teachers see Julius as a role model, and so do the students.

"I think his ethics and his hard work are an example for the other kids, they want to see that, they look for that," said Dr. Posey.

Julius likes the saying, do something that moves your soul to passion and your body to action. Now hes trying to motivate his peers to embrace that same philosophy.

I'd say that my best piece of advice is to, one, not settle for mediocrity and two, do what youre passionate about, Julius said.

Julius is passionate about helping others. Its why he founded his tutoring club and why hes one of the national vice presidents of HOSA, an international student organization focused on health care. Julius isnt sure what his future holds, but hes not the type to forget where he came from.

"My aspirations as far as a career or anything that I do after college is definitely rooted in my desire to give back to the people whove given to me, Julius said. I know that with hard work, perseverance, and faith, everything will fall into place."

From Liberty City to Cambridge, Julius Wade made it happen.
FBI agents showed up unannounced at the citys Parks Department headquarters to question workers about a contract awarded to a company that makes so-called rat-proof trash bags. The owner of the company had donated $100,000 to the mayors Campaign for One New York.

Sources familiar with the investigation said they were looking into whether Mayor de Blasio himself called Parks Department workers and asked them to meet with company officials about their trash bag pitch. In the past, the company officials had complained they were having problems getting a contract with the city.

FBI agents questioned were questioning several city workers without advanced notice to try to get candid, unrehearsed answers. But lawyers for the city soon stepped in and stopped the questioning, several sources familiar with the investigation said. FBI agents were then told to leave the building.

FBI agents being turned away by city lawyers for a time caused anger behind the scenes on both sides, sources familiar with the matter said.

The optics of that are exceedingly bad, said former federal prosecutor and independent counsel Robert Ray. Understandably the FBI would be upset if someone is stepping in and impairing and impeding their ability to freely talk to witnesses.

The Mayor has repeatedly promised his team would cooperate fully with investigators.

We are open to working with anyone doing investigation because we are confident we have done things right.

And the Corporation Counsels office, headed by former U.S. Attorney Zachary Carter, said the city is cooperating fully and will make any worker available for questioning in an orderly way. He also said that the FBI should contact them in advance before agents just show up at city offices.

If youre the Corporation Counsel office you have a legitimate interest on behalf of your client to protect the organization and its employees," Ray said.

Two days after the standoff, FBI agents were invited back to question workers in a conference room at parks department officers in Central Park.

We are working cooperatively with the FBI to enable them to interview city employees and to ensure they have access to attorneys, said Corporation Counsel spokesman Nick Paolucci.

Spokesmen for U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara and the FBI both declined to comment.

The controversy over the mint-scented anti-rat garbage bag contract is just one of several avenues of the fundraising investigation. From the awarding of some city contracts, to efforts to raise money to help certain Democrats win state senate races, the feds and the Manhattan DA are looking into whether the de Blasio-related fundraising efforts violated any state or federal laws.

City Hall announced Thursday it was hiring two additional law firms to help handle the growing investigation.

"As part of our cooperation with law enforcement inquiries, the Law Department has contracted with the law firms Debevoise & Plimpton as well as Carter Ledyard & Milburn to represent the City and assist in document collection and review. The lawyers have been in touch with the U.S. Attorneys office to advance that cooperation, the city statement stated.

De Blasio has hired attorney Barry Berke to represent him and his 2013 campaign.
Two people have been arrested in connection to the shooting death of a New Jersey college student during a robbery attempt at a fraternity house in Newark this week, authorities said.

Joseph Micalizzi, 23, was shot in the robbery attempt at about 3:30 a.m. Monday at the Tau Kappa Epsilon house on Dr. Martin Luther King Boulevard, police said.

He was taken to University Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

A suspect, an 18-year-old man of Newark, is in custody. He's been charged with a number of crimes, including murder, robbery, burglary and possession of a firearm.

He's being held in lieu of $1 million, authorities said.

Police also located 22-year-old Taquan Harris of Newark in connection to the homicide. Authorities said Friday evening he was arrested in Irvington.

Harris has been charged with murder, felony murder, robbery, burglary and weapons offenses, according to police.

Bail has been set at $1,000,000, police said. His attorney information wasn't immediately available.

Micalizzi studied mechanical engineering and graduated from Freehold Township High School in 2011.

His best friend from high school, Tyler Gdovian, said that last time he talked to Micalizzi he mentioned not feeling safe at the frat house. Micalizzi told his friend he had been robbed twice that semester.

NJIT said that it was "saddened" by the death and that the school is extending thoughts and prayers to Micalizzi's family and friends.

"I'm here 25 years and this is the first time I've had to deal with murder on our campus," said NJIT President Joel Bloom.

It was the second fatal shooting in Newark involving a college student in the last month.

On April 10, Rutgers University - Newark student Shani Patel was shot and killed at his off-campus apartment. Marcus Feliz, 25, was arrested in the Toms River 21-year-old's death.

Authorities said that security had been stepped up on both campuses.
Mumbai: After a lot of anticipation, the makers of Nawazuddin Siddiqui starrer 'Raman Raghav 2.0' have released the film's first official teaser.

The thriller is based on the notorious serial killer Raman Raghav who operated in Mumbai during the mid-1960s. Nawazuddin plays the titular role, while 'Masaan' star Kaushal will don the role of a cop in the movie.

Nawazuddin will be essaying the role of Raman Raghav (aka 'Psycho Raman'), the deranged, real-life serial killer of the '60s. Raghav, who committed two known series of murders in 1966 and 1968, is said to have been one of the most notorious serial killers in India. Eventually, he was nabbed and sentenced to life imprisonment, on grounds of his supposedly incurable mental illness. He lived out the rest of his days in Yerwada Central Jail, Pune, before dying of kidney failure in 1995.

'Raman Raghav 2.0' is all set to be released on June 24th.

Watch the teaser below:
The body of a woman who disappeared from her New Jersey home in early 2013 was found in Burlington County last weekend, the county prosecutor said Friday.

Angelina "Angel" Cocuzza, who was 61 when she went missing Jan. 7, 2013, was found Sunday in Tabernacle by Greater Philadelphia Search and Rescue, the group told NBC10.

She disappeared from Lumberton Independent Living on Route 38 and family members said at the time that she may have intended to harm herself. Police had said she suffered from depression and other medical conditions.

"We hope that this serves to make it clear that everyone matters and we are dedicated to helping wherever circumstances allow," said Mark Hopkins, chief of Greater Philadelphia Search and Rescue. "At any given time in this country, there is a group of dedicated people out looking for someone who is missing."

The Burlington County K-9 Search and Rescue also took part in the search operation.

"The body found today was not our intended target, but was able to find closure for another family," the county search and rescue team said in a Facebook post. "Amidst a very cold, wet & rainy day, we had mutual aid from our friends at Greater Philly Search & Rescue, Tabernacle Fire, Philadelphia Search & Recovery Dogs."

Neither search teams nor state police immediately responded to requests for details about the search location.
Police have arrested a landlord who is accused trying to intimidate tenants into performing sex acts rather than paying rent for properties he leased.

Richard Bruno, 46, of Waterford, was arrested on Thursday by the Connecticut State Police Computer Crimes Unit, who worked with the New London and Waterford police department.

New London Police started investigations allegations that Bruno was trying to extort sexual acts in lieu of cash for properties he had leased to tenants, police said. The allegations also included possible solicitation of sexual acts from children, police said.

As detectives investigated, Bruno solicited a person he thought was a 13-year-old girl online and arranged to pay her money and meet up with her in New London for sexual acts, police said.

When he arrived at the location they set as the meeting place on Thursday, police took him into custody and brought him to the New London Police Department, where he was charged with one count of criminal attempt at trafficking in persons, one count of second-degree criminal attempted sexual assault, two counts of risk and impairing the morals of a minor and two counts of enticement of a minor.

He was able to post a $150,000 bond and is due at New London Superior Court on May 19.

Police also searched Brunos home and said they seized evidence to support the allegations. The Connecticut State Police Computer Crimes Unit is investigating.

NBC Connecticut went to Bruno's home and knocked on the door, but no one answered. Bruno Plumbing is registered to the address and NBC Connecticut called the phone number listed for the company, but no one answered. Its not clear if Bruno has an attorney.

Police continue to investigate and more charges are expected, according to police.

Anyone with information about this case should call State Police Detective Samantha McCord at 203-427-4062.
A lawyer for a nonprofit group affiliated with Mayor de Blasio says it'll no longer cooperate with a state ethics probe because it has become a "blatantly political exercise," just as two former donors told NBC 4 New York they hadn't contributed to the mayor's causes.

An attorney for the Campaign for One New York sent a letter Friday to the Joint Commission on Public Ethics announcing the decision.

The commission for a year had been investigating whether the nonprofit engaged in prohibited lobbying.

The letter was obtained by The Associated Press and the Daily News. In it attorney Laurence Laufer says commission investigators are asking for records on subjects they have no jurisdiction to examine, including fundraising.

The commission's executive director says it has a legal obligation to look into whether the nonprofit's activities constitute lobbying.

Created to promote Democratic Mayor Bill de Blasio's agenda, the nonprofit is shutting down.

The letter from the group's lawyer said the group would continue to "fully cooperate with investigations by the U.S. Attorney and New York County District Attorney" because they are "politically independent," according to the News.

Meanwhile, businessmen Joh Catsimatidis and Don Peebles told NBC 4 New York they wish they hadn't contributed to the mayor's causes.

"I am going to be more careful to who I donate to and how the money is gonna," Catsimatidis said.

Catsimatidis, who ran for mayor as a Republican in 2013, said that the investigation has left him with unwanted publicity and other headaches.

"A lot of people around are having concerns that they'd rather not contribute," he said.

Peebles, who is considering running against de Blasio as a Democrat in the next election cycle. Peebles said the mayora asked for $20,000 for the city's pre-K programs, and wasn't transparent about where that money went.

"His failure to do that has made me and others feel conned and cheated," he said.

The latest development comes after FBI agents showed up unannounced at the citys Parks Department headquarters last week to question workers about a contract awarded to a company that makes so-called rat-proof trash bags. The owner of the company had donated $100,000 to the Campaign for One New York.

Sources familiar with the investigation said they were looking into whether Mayor de Blasio himself called Parks Department workers and asked them to meet with company officials about their trash bag pitch. In the past, the company officials had complained they were having problems getting a contract with the city.

FBI agents questioned were questioning several city workers without advanced notice to try to get candid, unrehearsed answers. But lawyers for the city soon stepped in and stopped the questioning, several sources familiar with the federal investigation said. FBI agents were then told to leave the building.

The mayor has repeatedly promised his team would cooperate fully with investigators.

We are open to working with anyone doing investigation because we are confident we have done things right, de Blasio has said.

And the Corporation Counsels office, headed by former U.S. Attorney Zachary Carter, said the city is cooperating fully and will make any worker available for questioning in an orderly way. He also said that the FBI should contact them in advance before agents just show up at city offices.

Two days after the standoff, FBI agents were invited back to question workers in a conference room at parks department officers in Central Park.

We are working cooperatively with the FBI to enable them to interview city employees and to ensure they have access to attorneys, said Corporation Counsel spokesman Nick Paolucci.

Spokesmen for U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara and the FBI both declined to comment.

The controversy over the mint-scented anti-rat garbage bag contract is just one of several avenues of the fundraising investigation. From the awarding of some city contracts, to efforts to raise money to help certain Democrats win state senate races, the feds and the Manhattan DA are looking into whether the de Blasio-related fundraising efforts violated any state or federal laws.

City Hall announced Thursday it was hiring two additional law firms to help handle the growing investigation.

De Blasio has hired attorney Barry Berke to represent him and his 2013 campaign.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio's press secretary is set to resign after slightly more than one year on the job.

Karen Hinton told NBC 4 New York she submitted her resignation on April 6. She is expected to leave her post by the end of June, at the conclusion of the current city budget negotiations.

Hinton, in a statement, said she it was "a privilege" to work for de Blasio, a first-term Democrat.

Her resignation comes at a politically perilous time for de Blasio, whose administration is at the center of a federal and state investigation into its campaign finance practices.

Administration officials said her departure  which was first reported by The New York Times  was unconnected to the probe. Hinton also told NBC 4 New York her decision had nothing to do with the investigation, which publicly surfaced April 7.

The mayor thanked Hinton for her service, saying in a statement, "I know she will remain a source of trusted advice for me and our team."

She said she plans to spend more time with her daughter.
A Brooklyn second grader was left behind by her teacher on a recent field trip to a beach, and now her parents and community activist Tony Herbert are demanding someone be held accountable for the mishap.

The 7-year-old girl was on a field trip to Manhattan Beach with her class from P.S. 213 in East New York when she went to throw something away in a garbage can, Herbert said in statement.

When she returned, her class and teacher had already boarded the school bus, a press release from Herbert and her parents said.

The girl was spotted by another teacher, who took her back to school on a separate bus.

"I felt scared and I thought someone was gonna take me away," the girl said Friday.

The girl's family want answers.

"I was told that her class was the first to leave Manhattan Beach but the last to return to the school, I am so upset, as anything could have happened to my daughter due to the negligence of those responsible for her safety, the girls parents said in a statement.

The girl's mother, Ketesha Cofield, later told reporters: "This could have been a different situation. I could be holding up her photo. There could be police out looking for her."

"They were on a beach for God's sake. Anything could have happened," she said.

In a statement Friday, the city Department of Education said that the girl returned to her school on a bus with a different class.

"Nothing is more important than the safety and security of all students and staff," said Toya Holness, a DOE spokeswoman. "We are investigating the incident and have protocols in place to ensure it is addressed appropriately."

Cofield said apologies aren't enough. She doesn't want anyone to lose their job, but she does want "policy, procedure, protocol" and retraining for teachers.

In the meantime, she's moved her daughter to another class.
A box truck slammed into a pole after it swerved to avoid another car in Clifton, New Jersey, Friday morning, authorities said.

The truck was on Hazel Street at about 9 a.m. when it swerved to avoid the car and crashed into the pole.

The front of the truck was badly damaged in the collision, but the driver was able to walk away from the accident, fire officials said.

Three people were taken to the hospital to be treated for non life-threatening injuries after the collision, authorities said.
A ritualistic shrine was discovered in the Florida jail cell of a man accused of killing his wife and her two young children.

Luis Toledo is charged in the death of his wife, Yessenia Suarez, and her children, 8-year-old Michael and 9-year-old Thalia, NBC affiliate WESH reported.

Suarez and her children were last seen in October 2013, Voulsia County officials said. Their bodies have not been found.

Toledo allegedly admitted to killing Suarez "with a single blow," according to WESH, but denied hurting his stepchildren.

During a routine jail cell sweep on March 27, Daytona Beach jail officials found drops of apparent blood on pictures of Toledo's wife and children, as well as a newspaper clipping with a red mark through the name of Circuit Judge Raul Zambrano, the Volusia County Division of Corrections said. Zambrano will be presiding over Toledo's murder trial, WESH said.

Officers also found a cast with a nose and eyes drawn in red, a cross made from a ripped-up white T-shirt, and a paper cup filled with water, an orange and bread.

The items were arranged in what appeared to some form of ritualistic manner, possible "Santeria," according to a correction officer's report. Santeria is a religious tradition of African origin that spread through Latin America.

Toledo's next hearing is set for May 18.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Authorities in a Bucks County township told residents to temporarily shelter in place after a chemical spill at a municipal site.

Crews rushed to the Lower Bucks County Joint Municipal Authority water treatment plant along Main Street in Tulleytown, Pennsylvania around 8:30 a.m. to address a chemical spill, said Tulleytown Borough Police Department Chief Daniel Doyle.

Crews arrived to find a tank of ferric chloride leaking, said police.

"As a PRECAUTIONARY action only we are asking residents & businesses in the area of Main Street to keep windows and doors closed," the borough police posted to Facebook.

Around 11 a.m., police posted to Facebook that the situation was contained and air quality tests determined the air to be safe. The spill also had no adverse effect on the water supply, said police.

Ferric chloride is a colorless to light brown solution with a faint hydrochloric odor, says the National Institutes of Health's Open Chemistry Database. "Highly corrosive to most metals and probably corrosive to tissue. Noncombustible. Used in sewage treatment and water purification."
Philadelphia Police shot and killed a dog after a woman being bitten by the pit bull jumped on the hood of a police car overnight.

"Just after 11 p.m. (Thursday) 25th District Police responded to numerous 911 calls -- report of a female screaming and report of a woman being attacked by a vicious pit bull on the highway on the 3200 block of N American Street," said Philadelphia Police Chief Inspector Scott Small.

The dog was biting the 27-year-old woman when the officers pulled up along the North Philadelphia street, said police.

"(The woman) actually jumped onto the hood of the police car... in an attempt to get away from the dog," said Small.

As the attack on the woman continued, officers got out of their car and opened fire.

"Both officers discharged their weapon one time each, striking the pit bull, that's when th pit bull released its grip from the female," said Small.

Medics transported the woman to Episcopal Hospital for treatment for bite wounds to her left leg and left arm. She was listed in stable condition.

The dog  described as a larger-than-normal sized pit bull  died at the scene, said Small.

The officers "did what they had to do," said Small. "They fire just two shots, striking the dog and that ended the attack."

The dog lived on the block, the bite victim doesnt live on the block, said Small. Witnesses told police the dog was leashed but had gotten off the leash just moments before the attack.

Neighbors tried to calm the dog before officers arrived, said witnesses.

No word yet on possible charges.
Beijing: China on Thursday released the first ever Chinese translations of the collective works of Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore, a rare honour to the famed poet who enjoys iconic status among generations of Chinese people.

In all 33 volumes containing 16 million words covering his poetry, essays, novels and drama sections were released ahead of Tagore's 155th birth anniversary at the China Radio International (CRI) which broadcasts in Bengali language besides host of Indian and intentional languages as diplomats from India and Bangladesh also attended the function.

Considering his popularity, Tagore's works have been widely translated in China mostly from English translations but this is the first time his entire works barring songs were translated into Chinese directly from Bengali.

Eighteen Bengali scholars from CRI, state-run Xinhua news agency, Chinese foreign ministry, Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) and the Central Communist Party School worked on a five-year project to complete it.

"'The Complete Works of Tagore' is of great significance for the researches concerning works of Rabindranath Tagore and south Asian culture in China," said chief translator Dong You Chen who studied Bengali in Russia's Leningrad University in 1960s.

He was deeply influenced by Tagore after reading some of his novels in his early years.

"His humanism not simply confined to India but also China and the rest of the world appeals to Chinese greatly," he said speaking to the media on the sidelines of the meeting.

"Tagore's prose and his poetry are perhaps mostly regarded. His works are frequently noted for their rhythmic, optimistic and lyrical nature," he said adding that all the translators honestly followed the great poet's theories while translating his works.

Tagore, who had visited China thrice, has a fanatical following in the country with several devoting their lives to learn Bengali and English to translate his works.

One young translator, Cao Yanhua who studied Bengali in Bangladesh and worked as Chinese diplomat there for sometime before joining the CRI Bengali service said she liked Tagore because his works are very romantic, which is the reason why he appealed to the young Chinese.

Tagore became popular in China because he took a stand against opium use among Chinese encouraged by western powers.

The only comparable foreign writer who is equally famous is Shakespeare whose 400th anniversary falls this year.

Cao said her team faced many difficulties in translation because there was no Chinese to Bengali language dictionary.

"Previously his works were translated from English but this is the first time his works were directly translated from Bengali to Chinese. Problems came with many Sanskrit words," she said.

But most importantly the translators received very little money, about 60 yuan (Rs 600) for 1,000 words of translation.

"It is not the money but the passion for Tagore which drove us to work hard," Cao said.

Most of the help was from Bengali experts from Bangladesh while no assistance was sought from India, she said.
A Philadelphia police officer and his K-9 unit dog were in a police cruiser that crashed into a car Friday afternoon in Port Richmond, injuring the officer.

The unidentified K-9 unit officer was in stable condition at a nearby hospital after the crash at Aramingo Avenue and East Venango Street about 2 p.m., a police department spokesman said.

His partner, the dog, was unharmed, police said.

The driver of the other vehicle was able to drive away from the crash.
When nine pounds of an ultra-powerful painkiller called W-18 was seized by Canadian authorities last month, an Edmonton doctor tweeted it was "enough to kill every man, woman and child in Alberta about 45 times over."

Now, police departments in the Philadelphia region are on high alert for the drug after the Drug Enforcement Administration told them W-18 may have entered into the areas heroin market.

The chemical, which can be mixed with heroin, has been described as "10,000 times stronger than morphine." Because of that potency, a tiny dose would be fatal. W-18 is likely manufactured in underground Chinese laboratories, the Drug Enforcement Administration is telling local police departments, and the drug remains unregulated.

Narcotics officers in Philadelphia and surrounding suburbs like Bensalem and Camden, New Jersey, said in interviews this week they are well aware of W-18, but detectives haven't found any hard evidence of its existence in the local black market yet.

Brian Work

That hasn't stopped drug dealers from rebranding their heroin packets as containing W-18 in an effort to raise the appeal among drug users.

"The past few months, we've been aware of it," said Philadelphia police narcotics Chief Daniel MacDonald. "We havent actually come across it in and of itself. Weve heard of people blending it with heroin to bolster it. The police lab is aware of it."

Still, MacDonald said, the Philadelphia police department's lab has yet to determine with certainty that W-18 has hit the streets. There is some speculation among the law enforcement community that W-18 may be undetectable to current standard opioid testing.

W-18 made its first appearance in the mainstream press last year when some pills containing it were found in a stache of fentanyl in Alberta, Canada. Much larger batches of the chemical have since been found in Miami and Edmonton.

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The drug itself has been around since the early 1980s. Its patent dates to 1984, according to a Forbes story on the drug last week. It was among 35 chemicals patented by pharmaceutical chemists that appeared to be painkillers in tests on mice. It's name is derived from the graduate student who created it and its position as the 18th chemical in the list of 35 patented at the time.

Bensalem police Director Fred Harran said his detectives also have been on the lookout for W-18 since the beginning of the year after warnings from the DEA.

"Heroin and fentanyl are still the biggest problems when it comes to overdoses at this point," Harran said. "It's very frustrating. Look, we know how to go tackle this problem better. We need to regulate prescription drugs harder. Our wiretap laws have not caught up with the technology out there. There are more overdoses in this country than deaths related to al-Qaida. I'm not saying the fight against terrorism isn't worth fighting. But this [opiod addiction] is a huge problem."

The increased potency  and deadliness  of drugs like fentanyl and W-18 doesn't deter users, police and health officials said. The opposite usually occurs.

"There's some allure to it because it's super strong," MacDonald said.

Whether it's present in the local market or not, the region is already dealing with an overwhelming opioid epidemic, according to Dr. Brian Work, a physician at Penn Presbyterian Medical Center who also works at Prevention Point in Kensington.

"People are dying from heroin in record numbers and fentanyl in large numbers," Work said. "It's hard worrying about the next thing down the pipe."

One detectives in Darby Township said the DEA's warning has been heeded, but he's hoping W-18 never becomes reality.

"We've heard it's some real bad stuff," Detective Cory Cooper said. "I could go a very long time without seeing it, and be very happy."
Its not every day you see an adorable baby beaver hanging out in a bustling city like Washington, D.C.

The tiny animal was spotted padding around a fountain at the Van Ness Metro station Wednesday, a Washington Humane Society and Washington Animal Rescue League spokesman told radio station WTOP.

A video taken by passerby Jonathan Murray shows the little critter looking lost, cautiously crawling back and forth and being petted and climbing on a person's shoe.

A D.C. police officer dashed to a store nearby to find a box to hold the baby beaver until an animal welfare officer arrived, Humane Society spokesman Scott Giacoppo told WTOP. The animal was evaluated and released into the wild.

Giacoppo is urging residents to avoid touching wild animals  no matter how cute or friendly they seem.

"I strongly encourage people when they see a wild animal, never handle them, just leave them be," Giacoppo told WTOP.
When the Tactical Identification System (TACIDS) or facial recognition software was first implemented in San Diego County in 2013, it was considered a research and development effort funded by the National Institute of Justice. Then there were 134 devices among 67 certified law enforcement personnel. In 2016, SANDAG figures requested by NBC 7 Investigates show there are 433 devices used by 991 law enforcement personnel in San Diego County.

According to SANDAG and agencies using this technology, the software is primarily used by officers in the field to identify a person they feel is not being truthful about their identity. Its also used to help determine if an individual is a threat, by allowing an officer to obtain an individuals criminal history and past records within minutes.

Opponents raise concerns that the technology is being used on non-consenting individuals who are not suspected of a crime and that the programs real goal is to collect as much information as possible on those who come in contact with law enforcement. SANDAG and agencies using this technology adamantly deny this.

Eric Hanson, a retired National City Firefighter and Ocean Beach resident, said, in the summer of 2013, Hanson and another neighbor had an argument with a homeless man after they say they spotted the man looking into a neighbors window.

"We approach him at the church and say We caught you peeping and he didn't deny it," he said.

According to Hanson, a witness called 911.

When San Diego Police officers arrived on scene, Hanson said he didnt have his ID on him. Hanson said officers ordered him to sit on a curb while they took his photo and ran it through the facial recognition software. He said he had not agreed to being photographed.

"I was violated kinda," Hanson said. "You know I'm pretty open-minded about a lot of stuff. And I'm sure in certain cases it would be beneficial to society in itself, but it's not beneficial to walk around and grab anybody, and take their picture."

The San Diego Police Department confirmed with NBC 7 Investigates that officers made contact with Hanson. He was not arrested or charged with a crime. The department was not able to provide any more details on the incident.

David Loy, legal director for ACLU of San Diego and Imperial Counties said he has "serious concerns" about law enforcement using facial recognition software.

"This technology has enormous capacity to invade personal privacy by allowing law enforcement to compile, in effect, digital dossiers on people's actions and movements throughout the city and the community," he said.

SANDAG and law enforcement disagree.

"The photos that we take from this camera are not stored or added to any database," Lt. Scott Wahl, spokesman for the SDPD said. "The only photos used are photos from the sheriff's department booking database. So if you've never been booked at a county jail, this device isn't going to be nearly as useful of a tool."

SANDAG insists all photos taken in the field by officers and submitted to the Automated Regional Justice Information System, or ARJIS, Facial Recognition Platform (FRP) are not stored anywhere in their systems. According to SANDAG, officers in the field are required to manually delete the photos from their phone or tablet, regardless of whether or not the system finds a matching booking photo.

Wahl said SDPD has a policy in place on when and how officers use facial recognition software. According to that policy, officers are not required to ask for the individuals permission to take their photo using facial recognition software if they suspect the individual of being involved with a crime.

In 2013 when the program was first implemented, it had a budget of more than $100,000, all paid for by the U.S. Department of Justice.

Recent figures obtained by NBC 7 Investigates show the projects budget was more than $800,000 in 2014. According to SANDAG, federal grants along with payments from each San Diego County agency primarily fund the program now.

According to data obtained by NBC 7 Investigates, from 2013 to 2015 the number of devices being used in San Diego County increased by over 200 percent. The number of authorized users increased by over 1,300 percent.

The SDPD is the agency using facial recognition software the most, according to the data, conducting over 7,900 queries since the software was implemented.

Every law enforcement agency in San Diego County uses it, including the San Diego Unified School District and local colleges like San Diego State University and University of California, San Diego.

Loy said law enforcement is not being transparent enough about how the software is being used.

"Under what circumstances and how, is data being collected and obtained and stored?" he said. "Who has access? For what purposes can they be used?"

Wahl said SDPD understands people's concerns and officers are working to protect people's privacy, not abuse it.

"This tool is one that isn't used to invade people's privacy," Wahl said. "It's used as a tool to improve the way that we police."

According to SANDAG, the ARJIS Facial Recognition Platform (FRP) only contains images of individuals who have been arrested in San Diego County. It does not have access to any other law-enforcement databases.

That means, if an individual has a criminal record anywhere besides San Diego County, according to SANDAG the database would not produce a match.

Through public records requests, NBC 7 Investigates found there are over 400,000 individuals in the ARJIS Facial Recognition Platform or database. The ARJIS FRP produced 7700 matches since 2013 for officers submitting photos out in the field.

SANDAG

HOW IT WORKS

Through the California Public Records Act, NBC 7 Investigates was able to obtain manuals and training documents detailing how facial recognition devices and the system works.

Below is a description and images from SANDAG describing the technology.

Using a "TACIDS" or facial recognition capable device, an officer can take a picture of an individual and send it via text to ARJIS Facial Recognition Platform (FRP). The devices are described as tablets or smartphones that have access to the ARJIS app and the capability to submit photos into the ARJIS database.

Using a biometric algorithm, the FRP will produce a lineup of possible matches, comparing the original photo to thousands of San Diego County booking photos.

SANDAG

When the officer reviews this lineup and finds a possible match, the officer can select the match and resubmit it into ARJIS web server, separate from the Facial Recognition Platform. This will produce a long list of local, state and federal criminal records, records from the DMV and/or any warrants active for the individual.

According to SANDAG, obtaining these records traditionally can take days, but with the facial recognition technology, the information is available within minutes.

SANDAG

NBC 7 Investigates is working for you. If you have more information about this or other story tips, contact us: (619) 578-0393, NBC7Investigates@nbcuni.com. To receive the latest NBC 7 Investigates stories subscribe to our newsletter.
A tribute concert for Prince will be staged at Los Angeles City Hall Friday, featuring musicians who have worked with the late artist, organizers said.

The free event will take place from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. on the Spring Street side of City Hall, with attendees able to watch the concert and programming from Grand Park.

Performers will include Eric Benet, Faith Evans, Kenny Lattimore, members of Prince's former band New Power Generation and The Time, the band that starred in Prince's movie "Purple Rain,'' according to organizer Najee Ali.

City officials are also scheduled to speak during the event, Ali said.

Ali said Los Angeles was the "second home" for Prince, and the tribute will be "a one-of-a-kind celebration of Prince's life and music that only L.A. can do.''

Spring Street was closed between First and Temple streets for the event, expected to draw thousands.

Parking will be limited and authorities were recommending people use public transportation.

Organizers raised money to avoid using public money on the concert, Ali said. Sponsors include radio station KJLH-FM 102.3.

Ali organized a candlelight vigil for Prince in Leimert Park on April 21, the day the musician was found dead in an elevator at his Paisley Park home in Minnesota at the age of 57.

Prince was known as a master of showmanship whose hits included "When Doves Cry, "1999," "Raspberry Beret," "Kiss'' and "Little Red Corvette.'' His 1984 film "Purple Rain'' became a cult favorite and propelled him to super-stardom.

Prince -- born Prince Rogers Nelson -- won an Oscar for best original song for "Purple Rain.'' He also won seven Grammys.
A man and a woman are facing charges in a stabbing and intentional hit-and-run of City Heights mom, San Diego Police (SDPD) announced Thursday.

Jasmine Ruiz, 29, was found pinned beneath a vehicle in the west alley of Wilson and Polk Avenue near Edison Elementary School on April 20th. She died on the scene.

Initially, police said Ruiz had possibly been physically assaulted before the driver of the vehicle hit her.

But an autopsy showed Ruiz had been stabbed in her upper body.

Witness told officers that two men and woman with bloody clothing ran away from the scene.

U.S. Marshals Fugitive Task Force arrested Christina Daniel, 32, for a felony warrant on April 26th. Marco Antonio Gutierrez, 29, was also arrested for an outstanding warrant.

Both were charged in Ruizs death after homicide detectives concluded that Daniel stabbed Ruiz and Gutierrez was the driver of the vehicle that hit her, said SDPD.

"She was loved," Ruiz's mother Lydia Morales told NBC 7.

Lydia says this arrest means victory and justice for their family. But she also expressed symphathy for the suspects' families and said no family should have to go through the same thing.

"What they did to our family, they did to their own family. What they did to my daughter, they killed my daughter, they killed their own mother. They killed their own family, their own children," she said.

Lydia says what the suspects did have hurt the everyone in their community.

"We haven't come forward because we were waiting for this day. There is one more out there. And believe me, just like I said, the bees hide in the honeycomb and smoke draws them out. And God will smoke them out," she said.

A funeral will be held at the Chapel of the Roses Glenn Abbey on Bonita Road at 10 a.m on May 10th. It is open to the public.

A GoFundMe page has been set up to help with funeral costs.

Gutierrez was charged with assault with a deadly weapon and a felony hit and run. Daniel was charged with one count of murder.

The identity of the third suspect, a man, is still unknown.

If you have any information, you are asked to call the Homicide Unit at 619-531-2293.
Chargers fans groups are thinking its time for bold action on the part of Mayor Kevin Faulconer.

They'd like to see him take a stance on the team's initiative for a downtown stadium and convention facility.

"If he would just say something even tepidly supporting it, it would be a lot easier to get signatures for it. We're at a point now where we're encouraging others who care about this issue to get involved, and potentially look at the other candidates in the race, potentially look at the hoteliers who are backing the mayor, and consider whether or not you want to patronize those businesses," says Jason Riggs, chairman of the San Diego Stadium Coalition.

Fan group activists say the mayor is under election-year pressure from the hotel and tourism industries to hold fast on a bayside expansion of the Convention Center.

Tourism Authority leaders, at their annual meeting Thursday, took a swipe at the Chargers' initiative and a parallel Citizens Plan ballot measure.

These initiatives either cut funding for tourism market and sales in half or fail to provide guaranteed funding -- or any funding, for that matter, board chairman Ted Molter told the gathering in a Sea World conference center.

"Our citywide customers have clearly expressed their need for an expansion of the existing building. They're not asking for existing meeting space to be build several blocks away."

The group is seeking another consulting study to establish their argument that a waterfront expansion is preferable to an annex a few blocks away.

This pushback, from attorney Cory Briggs, author of the Citizens Plan.

The public shouldn't have to take things into their own hands. It's good they have the right to do it, and that's what we're doing right now. But we elect these people to do the public's business, and instead they're doing special interest business. That's not okay," said Briggs.

Faulconer's deputy chief of staff, Matt Awbrey, responded to Riggs' comments.

"This initiative, if approved by voters, calls for the largest public bond offering in San Diego's history, so it's only fair that the public knows all the facts," he said.

Chargers deals that two previous mayors made with the team have cost the city upwards of $50 million dollars since 1997.

Faulconer's re-election campaign rivals, Ed Harris and Lori Saldana, are on record opposing the Chargers' plan.
A group of mothers gathered Thursday in north San Diego County to build 1,000 teddy bears designed to help fellow moms grieving the loss of a child.

About 100 new moms involved in the San Diego Mothers of Preschoolers (MOPS) assembled in Vista to create Comfort Cubs, weighted teddy bears distributed by the San Diego-based organization of the same name.

The Comfort Cub organization gives the bears to mothers suffering the devastating loss of a child. Comfort Club founder Marcella Johnson created the concept of the therapeutic bear after her own baby, George, died 17 years ago.

My heart hurt and my arms ached, Johnson said in a video on the Comfort Cub website.

The plush is meant to provide comfort for moms in a time of mourning and let them know someone cares and feels their grief as they begin to try to heal. It can also be used by anyone experiencing the loss of a loved one, at any age.

Johnson likes to say the teddy bears cure Broken Heart Syndrome and help ease sadness.

The Comfort Cubs created by MOPS Thursday will be delivered to mothers across the nation before Mothers Day.

For at least one mother in MOPS, Gracie Del Mar, the project holds a very special place in her heart.

When Del Mars baby girl, Jocelyn, died, she a weighted Comfort Cub was delivered to her hospital room.

I was so grateful to have something to hold after losing my child. It brought comfort to my arms during the worst time in my life, she said.

The gesture inspired Del Mar to pay-it-forward to other mothers. When her MOPS group was looking for a service project to do for Mothers Day, she immediately thought of the Comfort Cub organization.

"With the help of all of these caring San Diego moms we will be able to heal a lot of broken hearts in time for Mother's Day," Johnson said.

According to the organizations website, since 1999, the Comfort Cub program has delivered 8,240 teddy bears to mothers around the globe.

Comfort Cubs are available at every hospital in San Diego via onsite social workers and nursing teams. The organization is also in the process of expanding the service to other hospitals across the nation.

To learn more about the Comfort Cub or to donate to the organization, click here. This video also has more information about what the teddy bear can mean to mothers.
Authorities have arrested a second suspect accused in the attempted murder of an undercover San Diego Police Department (SDPD) officer near Skyline, the department confirmed Friday.

SDPD Lt. Ray Valentin said San Diego resident Larry Jones, 30, was taken into custody Thursday in the 1600 block of Oro Vista Road for his alleged role in the shooting of an SDPD Gang Unit detective.

On Monday, at around 10:45 p.m., an unknown suspect stepped out of a white Toyota Corolla and fired several shots at a plainclothes SDPD detective who was in an unmarked vehicle near Glencoe Drive and Jamacha Road in the Jamacha Lomita area.

SDPD officials said the detective was following up on information of reported gang activity in the area. The undercover detective was not injured by the gunfire, but his car was struck several times by the bullets.

SDPD officers responded to the area and found the suspects vehicle traveling west in the 7700 block of Jamacha Road. Patrol officers pulled the car over. During the traffic stop, a man jumped out of the car and started to flee, running through backyards in the neighborhood.

At that moment, SDPD officials said a patrol officer fired one round from his service weapon toward the fleeing suspect. Officials still dont know if that suspect was injured by the gunfire.

Officials said the officer who fired his weapon is an eight-year veteran of the department. They said the officer opened fire because he feared for his life and safety of others.

Three other people inside the suspects vehicle  two men and a woman, Kimberly Denise Hooker, 31  were arrested at the scene on various charges. Hooker is facing one count of attempted murder for her alleged involvement in the shooting. Shes scheduled to appear in court on May 16. The two men were booked into jail for weapon charges and violating their probation.

Jones, now the fourth suspect in this case, is set to appear in court Monday.

The officer-involved shooting remains under investigation. Anyone with information can call the SDPD Homicide Unit at (619) 531-2293 or Crime Stoppers at (888) 580-8477.

The names of the undercover detective and officer who opened fire have not been released.
An Oceanside man has pleaded not guilty to killing a well-known Santa Barbara doctor and his family.

Pierre Haobsh, 27, entered his not guilty pleas in San Diego County Superior Court to murder charges in the March 23 killings.

Haobsh will have a preliminary hearing on May 24 to determine whether he will be bound over for trial.

Prosecutors say the 27-year-old Oceanside man shot Dr. Weidong "Henry" Han, his wife and daughter in their multimillion-dollar home on the outskirts of Santa Barbara. Their bodies were found wrapped in plastic.

Han ran a well-known herbal clinic in Santa Barbara for 25 years.

Authorities say the two men had been involved in a business deal and financial gain could have been a motive in the slayings.

Two days after sheriff's deputies found the family members' bodies in their garage, they tracked down Haobsh driving in unincorporated San Diego County at about 12:30 a.m. Friday. They followed him to a gas station in Bonsall, where he was arrested at gunpoint.

Prosecutors have not yet said whether they would pursue the death penalty in the case.
In a study of data from 450 patients, researchers were able to use the model to diagnose PAH accurately. (Photo: Representative image)

London: Computer simulations of disease processes and detailed digital models of our organs could provide more accurate monitoring and outcome measurements for clinical trials, according to a new research.

The research being presented at the University of Sheffield in the UK on Thursday aims to develop a model of pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) using MRI technology.

"Two-thirds of the patients we assessed could be correctly diagnosed with PAH using our model, which meant only those patients, where diagnosis was unclear, would have had to have the catheter test if this was in full clinical use," said Andy Swift, Insigneo Senior Clinical Research fellow.

Currently, the condition is diagnosed by inserting a catheter into the patient, often in the neck or groin to test the pressure in the pulmonary artery. It's an invasive test that can be distressing to the patient.

Delegates at this years Insigneo Showcase at The Octagon Centre in University of Sheffield will deliberate how in silico medicine - computer simulations of the human body and its disease processes can help improve diagnosis andprognosis for conditions like Parkinsons and pulmonary vascular disease.

Although, ultimately destined for the clinic, the technology looks likely to move quickly into use within clinical trials as it can enable more effective monitoring of the impact of new drugs and treatments.

In a study of data from 450 patients, researchers were able to use the model to diagnose PAH accurately.

"Many clinical trials in pulmonary hypertension also use the catheter test as an outcome measure but it could provide a significant advantage to be able to replace it with a less invasive MRI scan as our model also provides more detailed information on physical changes to the heart itself," he added.

Insigneo Senior Clinical Fellow Dr Alisdair McNeill will present his work on the use of gait analysis to develop a model able to assess disease progression in neurological disorders. He is working initially with patients with 22q11 deletion syndrome (a chromosomal defect) who are at high risk of developing Parkinson's disease.

"There are known to be changes to gait that are linked to Parkinson's disease such as shortening of step length," said Dr McNeill.

"Our model will use data including walking speed, step length and rhythm of walking plus other parameters to see if we can pick up changes as the disease progresses or at risk individuals develop Parkinsonism. Although this type of analysis is less likely to be easily translated to the clinic, it could be very effective for clinical trials as so many of the current tests for progression of Parkinson's disease and impact of treatments are very subjective and not sensitive to changes in clinical state."
Calling it "new territory", San Diego County District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis released video evidence Friday in officer-involved shooting cases reviewed by her office.

"We recognize that times have changed," Dumanis said explaining the decision by law enforcement authorities to release personal body camera footage of officers involved in the shootings under investigation.

"We know we live in a world where all kinds of video evidence is becoming more and more prevalent," she said.

Dumanis said they are planning public feedback sessions later this month to discuss the new policy.

"Our ultimately goal is to have a video release policy that serves the public interest and preserves individual rights," said San Diego County District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis.

The first case involved the death of a man in the Gaslamp Quarter on October 20.

Video from a private citizens cell phone shows the shooting death of a man Lamontez Jones in the Gaslamp Quarter on October 20, 2015. DA Bonnie Dumanis released the video following a review of the officers conduct in the incident.

Lamontez Jones, 39, of Virginia, was shot and killed by SDPD officers in downtown San Diego. His family has filed a wrongful death claim against the City of San Diego, the police department and the two officers involved.

Investigators later determined an item Jones grabbed from his backpack was not a real firearm, but a steel replica with the same markings of a real weapon.

Both officers who fired on Jones failed to activate their body-worn cameras in time to capture the shooting, and the case gained a lot of criticism.

The family of Lamontez Jones, a man killed by two veteran San Diego Police Department officers during a confrontation in October 2015, has filed a claim for damages against the police department and City of San Diego, saying the case is one of wrongful death. Elena Gomez reports.

In the second case, Michael Taylor was shot several times in the torso after he attempted to run over a law enforcement officer in Point Loma on March 12, 2014.

WARNING GRAPHIC VIDEO: DA Releases Surveillance Video of Point Loma OIS on March 12, 2014

Four deputy U.S. Marshals and a San Diego police officer were injured while taking part in an undercover operation on Garrison Street.

Taylor survived his injuries.

NBC 7s Candice Nguyen reports on the officer-involved shooting at the site of an undercover operation in Point Loma on Wednesday, March 12, 2014.

In a third and final review, the DA investigated the shooting of a San Diego Police Officer on May 17, 2015.

Dennis Richard Fiel, 34, of San Diego, was shot and killed by police near Mesa College.

The video released by the District Attorney's Office showed the incident from an officer's body camera.

Raw video from a police officers body camera shows the shooting death of Dennis Richard Fiel, 34 on May 17, 2015. The video was released by DA Bonnie Dumanis under a new policy announced Friday.

Police have named the officers and suspect involved a shooting in Kearny Mesa Sunday. NBC 7s Megan Tevrizian and Omari Fleming report.

The policy of how to release the videos is not finalized, Dumanis said, but law enforcement throughout the county agrees the practice of releasing videos should be to do it whenever possible.

"I am in full support of this protocol," SDPD Chief Shelley Zimmerman said in a written statement. "It is important we balance the integrity of a criminal investigation and the legal rights of all parties involved with the public's interest to see video evidence."

"Public safety is a shared responsibility and having our public's trust is essential to maintaining the safety of all of our communities," she said.
The County of San Diego Department of Animal Services (DAS) was involved in a rare rescue operation Tuesday when a dog's paw got stuck in a bathtub drain.

The rescue was captured on cellphone video obtained Thursday by NBC 7.

DAS Deputy Director Daniel DeSousa said the department received a frantic call from San Diego resident Eric Sabaga Tuesday reporting his dog, a pug mix named Mr. Ruffles, was stuck to the drain cover in his bathtub.

Sabaga said Mr. Ruffles had been bathed the night before around 9 p.m. and when the pooch went to jump out of the tub, his paw got stuck in the drain cover.

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Sabaga told Animal Services he had tried everything to free his dog, from applying oil and soap to his paw to calling the fire department.

Every effort proved unsuccessful.

The worried owner had also called Mr. Ruffles' veterinarian for an emergency house call, but the vet was unable to rush over.

Sabaga told Animal Services he had tried to remove Mr. Ruffles' paw on his own but said the dog was in pain and, as a result, had started snapping.

DAS Officer Tiffany Mushet tried calling several other local veterinarians for help, to no avail. Mushet was then sent to the scene, along with registered veterinary technician Yadira Figueroa and Dr. Regina Radtke, who sedated Mr. Ruffles so the group could rescue him safely, DeSousa said.

Once Mr. Ruffles was sedated, Sabaga, Mushet, Figueroa and Radtke all worked together to pull the pup from the drain.

San Diego County Department of Animal Services

As cellphone video shows, Mr. Ruffles' paw wouldnt budge and the dog had to be rotated at the same time as the drain cover.

The drain cover was unscrewed and Mr. Ruffles was finally removed from the tub. Two of the pups toes were deeply wedged into the drain cover, the video shows.

Ultimately  and very carefully  the team was able to remove the dogs paw from the metal cover. His paw was inflamed, DeSousa said, but Mr. Ruffles was otherwise unharmed. The specialists then reversed the dogs sedation.

DAS posted a photo Facebook of Mr. Ruffles with a very happy Figueroa and Radtke after the rescue.

Mr. Ruffles was turned over to Sabaga, who was advised to get his dog to the vet for further care.

Despite the tense moments in the tub, DeSousa said Mr. Ruffles is doing just fine. He spoke with Sabaga, who assured him the dog was OK  although it may be a while before Mr. Ruffles takes another bath.

DeSousa said the rescue was one of the most memorable calls the DAS has received in recent years, although when animals are involved, there are always surprises. He recalled another instance a while back where a dog got his head stuck in a hole in the wall of a home.
The body of a U.S. Navy SEAL killed during combat in Iraq is returning to the United States.

Slain Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Charles Keating IV will arrive at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware sometime Friday, SEALs spokeswoman Lt. Beth Teach told The Associated Press.

Keating's remains will be returned to San Diego next week, Teach said. Keating lived in Coronado with his wife, Brooke, and her family. The two married before he deployed, the family told NBC 7.

His mother, Krista Keating-Joseph, told NBC 7 San Diego her son wished to be buried as close as possible to Coronado Amphibious Naval Base. Keating wanted to be near his beloved SEAL Team One, she said, instead of in Arlington National Cemetery.

Funeral services are planned for May 12, according to Keating-Joseph.

Keating, 31, died Tuesday about 14 miles north of Mosul in a complicated attack launched by 125 ISIS fighters, Pentagon officials said. He was part of a small force sent to fend off the attack.

Keating-Joseph said her son was mortally wounded by a bullet that slipped under his body armor.

A grandson of an Arizona financier involved in the 1980s savings and loan scandal, Keating is the third U.S. service member to be killed in combat in Iraq since U.S. forces returned there in 2014.
A driver, stranded in knee-deep water, was just one of several emergency calls made during an unusual May storm Friday.

The storm arrived in San Diego County late Thursday, bringing rain, wind and possible thunderstorms.

"It has dumped a lot of rain in the South Bay," said NBC 7 Meterologist Jodi Kodesh.

A man sat on the top of his pickup truck in the Tijuana River Valley just after noon, awaiting rescue.

San Diego Fire-Rescue crews and Imperial beach lifeguards responded to the intersection of Sunset and Saturn.

The man's truck got stuck in the water and he waited for about 15 minutes until emergency personnel could rescue him safely.

Just before 11 a.m. San Diego Fire-Rescue responded to the report of a car stuck in knee-deep floodwater in the Otay Mesa area.

When crews arrived they found the car in standing water on Airway Road near La Media Road.

The driver flooded his engine by driving too slowly through the water.

San Diego Police officers had to coax the man to get out of his car and walk to safety.

The car was towed away. The driver was not injured.

An NBC 7 News crew found streets were flooded in Encinitas by 10 a.m.

Bob Uslander of Oceanside said the rain was a welcome change from the usual May weather.

His son Levi has a playoff baseball game Saturday so hes concerned the game might be canceled.

"Other than that, Im just fine with it. I like it," Uslander said of the storm.

In Ocean Beach, Todd Partridge was taken advantage of the storm to squeeze in some surfing.

"Theres just something magical about surfing in the rain," the OB resident said.

He said he thinks about the risk of being in the water with the storm runoff but sometimes the conditions are so good, hes willing to take the chance because the conditions are so good.

Preliminary rain totals show more than an inch of rain at Otay Mountain with almost an inch at Brown Field and in San Marcos.

Julian reports just shy of four-tenths of an inch of rain with Lindbergh Field reporting the same as of 9 a.m. Friday.

If Lindbergh Field receives more than .42 of rain, a 159-year record will be broken.

Stay updated on the changing weather conditions by downloading the free NBC 7 mobile app.

Send images of the storm to isee@nbcsandiego.com or click here.
A San Diego teacher hospitalized with H1N1 on a school trip to Ireland is set to soon be discharged after spending more than three weeks in an overseas hospital.

In mid-April, Westview High School English teacher Bob McHeffey accompanied a group of students, including his daughter, Delaney McHeffey, on a spring break trip to Ireland. A few days into the trip, McHeffey started to cough.

The cough escalated to various other symptoms, so he called doctors at his hotel and received medication over the next several days.

Then, two days before the group was due to return home to San Diego, McHeffey took a turn for the worse.

I dont generally get ill, he told NBC 7 in a video interview Friday from his hospital room in Ireland. I felt incredibly weak.

An ambulance was called to his hotel and he was rushed to a hospital. There, he was diagnosed with H1N1 and double-viral pneumonia.

McHeffey has been hospitalized for the past 18 days in Derry, Ireland, unable to be discharged or fly home due to his condition. The students on the school trip returned home, while McHeffeys wife, Kay McHeffey, flew to Ireland to be by his side.

Since then, his focus has been on recovering and getting home in time to see their daughter go to prom.

Last week, McHeffey told NBC 7 he had been gaining strength daily.

Im feeling better than I was at the beginning. Little victories to get better  Im gaining strength. Im almost off the oxygen and able to breathe on my own, McHeffey told NBC 7. My body has been incredibly weak, so being able to have the strength and stamina to walk  right now I cant walk 20 feet without oxygen.

McHeffey said his body had been spiking fevers and doctors were trying to figure out what was causing that.

Once those [fevers] are taken care of, then we have a shot at being released and figuring out how to get me home, he explained.

On Wednesday, McHeffey's wife confirmed that her husband was set to be released from the hospital Thursday. She said they will have to stay in Derry for several days before McHeffey is 100 percent cleared to fly home.

By the time he's discharged, he will have spent 23 days in the hospital and nearly a month away from home.

The teacher is very much missed by both students and faculty at Westview High School. Students and faculty created an 18-minute video for him earlier last week to cheer him up dubbed, We Miss You, Bob!

The sweet tribute features dozens of colleagues and students sending McHeffey their well-wishes and expressing just how much he means to them.

Many students in the video say class is not the same without McHeffey and credit him with deeply influencing their lives.

McHeffey  who has been teaching for the past 29 years, logging 12 years at Poway High School and about 15 at Westview  said he watched the video at the hospital and it made him cry.

He said hes humbled by the support and messages from his students, and proud to have impacted their lives in some way.

Its nice to be affirmed in your life, he said, smiling. As teachers, you always know you have influence, but its not always good influence, too. But if you helped influence them to grow  thats where it is.

McHeffey said the influence of teachers on students is often more long-term than immediate, as in a teacher doesnt always get to see students come into their own until they grow up.

Its nice to see that it [the impact] lasts. Thats the best part about teaching, he added.

McHeffey has certainly made his mark on Westview High School senior Emmit Pert.

Last week, the U.S. Department of Education named Pert among the 52nd class of 2016 U.S. Presidential Scholars. The 17-year-old is among just 160 high school seniors nationwide chosen for the prestigious honor and among seven from California.

The teen spoke with NBC 7 Wednesday and said one of the steps of the application process for the award included a letter of recommendation from an important teacher in his life.

Pert said that letter came from McHeffey, who has been very influential to him. Pert said he is just one of many students inspired by McHeffey.

McHeffey said hearing the news of Perts big award was a happy moment during such trying times. Pert was one of the students who traveled with McHeffey to Ireland last month.

McHeffey credited the student for working hard and earning the accolade.

Westview High School English teacher Bob McHeffey tells NBC 7 he is incredibly proud of his student, Emmit Pert, who is among 160 seniors chosen for the 2016 U.S. Presidential Scholar award. McHeffey is currently ill with H1N1 and hospitalized in Ireland.

I doubt my letter had much to do with it, said McHeffey. Emmit is a tremendous kid -- insightful, engaging about everything. I take very little credit for Emmits success but I like basking in the fact that he is doing awesomely.

He is a great kid, the teacher continued. I love having conversations with him, and they range from politics to literature to ideas, to simple things in life. Its nice  as someone whos been teaching for a long time  I can talk to a 17-year-old and feel like were peers.

McHeffey is supposed to travel to Washington D.C. with Emmit on June 19 to watch the student receive the Presidential Scholar award.

However, that trip all depends on the teachers recovery.

We dont know when I can get out of here to go home  and what its going to look like to travel  and whether Ill be up to traveling again once Im home, McHeffey said.

For now, McHeffey said there is no date or timeline for his release from the hospital or trip home from Ireland. He said the next steps in his recovery include trying to breathe on his own and gain independence.

A close family friend started a GoFundMe fundraiser page online to help cover the costs of McHeffeys medical care. As of Wednesday morning, nearly $25,000 had been raised for the beloved teacher.

The page is flooded with messages for McHeffey and this outpouring of support, paired with the video from his students and the good news of Perts achievement, fills McHeffeys heart with happiness.

You like to know that youve had an impact on a wide range of people, he said, holding back tears. So, thats been great; just great. I love the video from the school. Ive got good colleagues, great students.
The 62-year-old federal security officer accused of shooting his estranged wife to death as she waited for her two daughters in the parking lot of their suburban Washington, D.C. high school had threatened suicide by cop, according to police.

Eulalio Tordil has been connected to two other deadly parking lot shootings the next morning. As investigators worked to figure out if the same weapon used to kill Gladys Tordil, 44, was used in Friday morning's mall and shopping center shootings, more information about Tordil began to emerge.

A protective order was filed against Tordil in March, affecting his job. Gladys Tordil accused her husband of physical abuse, using a military-like discipline with her daughters, sexually abusing two minors and forcing minors to watch pornography.

Tordil was placed on administrative leave and forced to surrender his government-issued weapons, badge and credentials. It was at that point, according to police, Tordil told them he wanted to commit suicide by cop.

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Tordil's work as a security administrator for Homeland Security began in 2004, according to the website FederalPay.org. He moved from the D.C. area to Arizon from 2006  2012, then worked in Nevada before returning to his current job in 2014.

Officials say Tordil supervised contract employees who handle security at the entrances of federal facilities. He was at the top pay grade for that position, GS-12, making a base salary of $90,744.

The Adelphi man's most recent address is the 1800 block of Metzerott Road.

Thursday afernoon, police say Tordil followed his estranged wife to High Point High School in Beltsville, MD. She was there to pick up her daughters who are both seniors. Tordil first shot and wounded a man who tried to intervene, and then shot Gladys multiple times, police say.

Tordil fled the scene, evading police until after Friday's two fatal shootings at Westfield Montgomery Mall in Bethesda, MD and Aspen Hill shopping center about 10 miles away.

A plainclothes police officer spotted Tordil around 1:40 p.m. walking into a Dunkin Donuts at the Northgate shopping center -- directly across the street from Aspen Hill shopping center. Tordil walked from store to store. Police hung back, watching, for an hour.

"Knowing his behavior today, knowing of statements he made in the past, we did not want to endanger anyone and have a shootout when we took him into custody and that's why he was taken into custody the way he was," Montgomery County Police Chief Thomas Manger said.

When Tordil got back to his car, police surrounded it and pinned him down, bringing a peaceful end to a strategy they described as tense, but tactical.
A former Wesleyan University student involved in a rash of campus overdoses tied to the party drug Molly has been sentenced to four months in prison.

Bethesda, Maryland, resident Zachary Kramer, 22, also was ordered Thursday to serve eight months of home confinement and attend outpatient drug treatment.

Kramer pleaded guilty in November to distributing a synthetic drug made by a friend on the university's Middletown, Connecticut, campus.

Eleven people were hospitalized and one almost died early last year after ingesting the drug MDMA.

Kramer's friend Eric Lonergan pleaded guilty to similar charges. He's scheduled to be sentenced June 15.

Prosecutors say Lonergan and Kramer sold the drug on campus for more than a year.

Lonergan is from Rio de Janeiro. Prosecutors say he regularly sold Molly from his dorm room and counseled students on how to ingest it.
In an earlier video version of this story, a shot of a Verizon storefront owned by The Wireless Center was inadvertently used. That store is not the store referenced in this story. NBC4 regrets the error.

A cellphone deal turned into a dud when a free phone almost cost a Virginia couple hundreds of dollars.

A broken smartphone sent Air Force veteran Doug Hawkins to a Verizon.

I went to the Verizon Haymarket office and one of their people looked at it and didnt seem to think he could fix it, Hawkins said.

Instead, the salesman offered a free phone.

I said, What are you going to do with the old phone? and he said, Ill send that back, Hawkins said.

But when Hawkins and his wife received their Verizon bill the next month, they learned the free phone wasnt exactly free. They saw a $218 equipment charge.

I called and asked them, and they told me it was because I hadn't turned in the old phone, and I said, Well, I left the old phone at the store, Hawkins said.

But the store had no record of it, Hawkins said.

Suddenly, his new and not free cellphone started receiving text alerts telling him to pay his bill or have his phone shut off.

I finally went back to their store and I asked about it again, and they said, Was it a blue one? he said. I said, Yes. They pulled out the drawer and handed it to me.

Hawkins sent the phone back to Verizon himself, as instructed to do, but weeks later, it returned.

With a note saying, well, you didn't send it within the first 14 days of purchase, so it's yours, he said.

And so was another bill, racking up late fees, which is when Hawkins contacted NBC4 Responds.

Having seen you on NBC news and realized that you had solved something that was very complicated over time, and I thought, 'She's the person that knows what to do with this," said Hawkins wife, Pam.

NBC4 Responds contacted Verizon, and within days the Hawkins got a call on what is now truly a free phone. All the charges were removed, and the Hawkins got a $204 credit.

In a statement sent to NBC4 Responds, Verizon said: Verizon strives to provide the best customer experience for all our customers at every touch point. In this case, we did not deliver on that promise. We sincerely apologize and have worked with the customer to resolve the issue.
The man police say shot and killed his estranged wife in the parking lot of a Maryland school is also believed to be the suspect in deadly shootings at two Montgomery County shopping centers, police said.

Three people died and three others were injured in less than 24 hours outside a Prince George's County high school, outside the Westfield Montgomery mall and outside an Aspen Hill grocery store.

Authorities have reason to believe all three shootings are connected, Montgomery County Police Assistant Chief Darryl McSwain said. Sources say the suspect descriptions in the shootings are similar, and a handgun was used in all three crimes.

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Eulalio Tordil, 62, was taken into custody in the Aspen Hill area Friday afternoon, not far from the third shooting scene, Montgomery County Police said.

Tordil's arrest came a day after his estranged wife, 44-year-old Gladys Tordil, was fatally shot Thursday afternoon.

Prince George's County Police say the suspect followed her onto the property of High Point High School in Beltsville and shot her as she sat in her SUV. Gladys Tordil, a teacher at another high school in the county, died at the scene.

A bystander who tried to intervene in the altercation was wounded, Prince George's County Police Chief Hank Stawinski said at a news conference Thursday.

Eulalio Tordil remained on the loose overnight. Prince George's County released a photo and description of him, as well as information on a rental car he had been last seen driving.

Stawinski said Friday authorities worked overnight trying to apprehend the suspect.

"It's tragic that we were not able to intervene prior to additional victims being harmed, but I am pleased with the fact that this individual has been apprehended, and now we can restore some degree of peace," he said.

Late Friday morning, three people were shot outside Westfield Montgomery mall in Bethesda, Maryland.

One of the victims, a man, has died. Another victim is in grave condition; a female victim is being treated at a hospital, said Montgomery County Police Chief Thomas Manger. Authorities believe the shooter was a stranger to the victims.

Less than an hour later, police responded to a shooting outside a Giant grocery store in Aspen Hill, Maryland, about 8 miles northeast of the mall. One woman was shot and killed while sitting in her car there, Manger said.

Officers saw a car at the scene that matched the description and tag number of the suspect vehicle in Thursday's shooting at the high school, Manger said.

Prince Georges County police are searching for a man who shot and killed his estranged wife as she sat in the parking lot of a Beltsville, Maryland, high school.

Tordil is a law enforcement officer with the Federal Protective Service, according to federal and state law enforcement officials. The Federal Protective Service is a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agency responsible for security at federal buildings and some foreign embassies in the Washington area.

Tordil was placed on administrative duties in March, after a protective order was issued against him. the DHS said. He was later placed on administrative leave and required to surrender his government-issued weapons, badge, and credentials.

The shootings at the mall and shopping center prompted all Montgomery County schools to shelter in place for a short time Friday afternoon. Lockdowns were issued at other institutions in the area, north of Washington, D.C.

Tordil is taken in the custody of Montgomery County Police. Manger said they are working closely with police from Prince George's County, where the earliest shooting occurred.
The more copies of the POMC gene variant a Labrador had, the fatter and more food-motivated it was.

Dogs love food. Some love it more than others, and some of those are Labrador retrievers  the bottomless pits of the canine world. Scientists announced recently that theyve found a gene variant in Labs that may explain that constant state of Please Feed Me. The findings were published in the journal Cell Metabolism.

Dog obesity isnt something we talk about a lot, but there sure is a lot of it. In the US and other wealthy countries, between 34 and 59 per cent of dogs are overweight. And yes, fat dogs are cute, but theyre also in danger of some serious health problems. Canine obesity can cause heart disease, strain on a dogs joints, diabetes, and can even shorten a dogs lifespan.

Some breeds, like black Labs, chocolate Labs, and Golden Retrievers, are more obesity-prone than others. This is likely because, like many of us, they are highly motivated by food. Labs human companions learn quickly that a treat is the trick to getting their dog to behave. But those treats add up.

Researchers recruited nearly 400 adult Labrador participants. Some of the dogs were fat, while others were not, but all of them were healthy, with no pre-existing conditions.

As relatives, of course, the Labs had a great deal of genetic material in common with each other and with other dog breeds. But they also had one gene variant that stood out: the deletion of 14 base pairs from a gene called pro-opiomelanocortin, or POMC. Previous studies of this POMC variant have shown a relationship with appetite and a feeling of fullness.

Each dog could have one copy of the POMC variant, two copies, or none. The more copies a dog had, the fatter and more food-motivated it was. And about 23 per cent of labs are carrying at least one copy of the variant.

People who live with Labradors often say they are obsessed by food, and that would fit with what we know about this genetic change, Cambridge University metabolism expert and lead author Eleanor Raffan said in a press statement.

Her co-author, Stephen ORahilly of the Wellcome Trust-Medical Research Council Institute of Science, says these findings have implications beyond kibble.

Common genetic variants affecting the POMC gene are associated with human body weight and there are even some rare obese people who lack a very similar part of the POMC gene to the one that is missing in the dogs.

 Source: www.mentalfloss.com
Police have charged the man suspected of killing two people and injuring two others at Montgomery County shopping centers on Friday and the fatal shooting of his estranged wife on Thursday in Prince George's County.

Eulalio Tordil, 62, was arrested Friday afternoon after he was suspected of terrorizing the Maryland suburbs of Washington, D.C., for two days.

He was charged with two counts of first-degree murder, two counts of attempted first-degree murder and four counts of use of a handgun in the commission of a felony in connection with the Montgomery County shootings.

A couple of security cameras recorded video of the arrest of a Maryland shooting suspect.

Tordil was charged with first-degree murder and related charges in connection with the fatal shooting of his estranged wife at High Point High School in Prince George's County on Thursday. Hes also charged with assault for shooting the good Samaritan at the school.

Montgomery County police announced his arrest at a press conference on Friday afternoon, the end of a manhunt that forced officials to heighten security at schools and government buildings.

Media: MCP will provide another update on both shooting events at approximately 1:30 pm at Westfield Montgomery Mall.  Montgomery Co Police (@mcpnews) May 6, 2016

LIVE on #Periscope: Briefing on shootings https://t.co/7kQFEoydLH  Montgomery Co Police (@mcpnews) May 6, 2016

11:50 am- Report of a shooting at the Aspen Hill Giant (13781 Connecticut Avenue).  Montgomery Co Police (@mcpnews) May 6, 2016

Mall Shooting: Victims appear to all be adults.  Montgomery Co Police (@mcpnews) May 6, 2016

Mall Shooting: Suspect is not in custody.  Montgomery Co Police (@mcpnews) May 6, 2016

Westfield Montgomery Mall (Bethesda): Preliminary info: 3 shooting victims: 2 males and 1 female. Suspect outstanding.  Montgomery Co Police (@mcpnews) May 6, 2016

(1115a) Montgomery Mall, 7101 Democracy Blvd. MCFRS assisting PD w/ shooting, EMS treating & transporting several injured persons  Pete Piringer (@mcfrsPIO) May 6, 2016

2nd District Officers responding to Westfield Montgomery Mall for report of a shooting. PIO enroute.  Montgomery Co Police (@mcpnews) May 6, 2016

Tisha Thompson reports on the timeline of the shootings that haunted D.C.s suburbs in Maryland Thursday and Friday.

Tordil, a Federal Protective Service employee, shot and killed his estranged wife on Thursday when she went to pick up her children from the High Point High School, police say.

Dramatic surveillance video shows officers in unmarked cars swarm Tordil's car and surround the Federal Protective Service employee with guns drawn.

Earlier Friday, two people were killed and two others were injured in shootings at a mall and a shopping center in Montgomery County, Maryland. Police believed all the shootings are related. They believe the Friday shootings resulted from attempted carjackings.

Media: MCP will provide another update on both shooting events at approximately 1:30 pm at Westfield Montgomery Mall.  Montgomery Co Police (@mcpnews) May 6, 2016

LIVE on #Periscope: Briefing on shootings https://t.co/7kQFEoydLH  Montgomery Co Police (@mcpnews) May 6, 2016

11:50 am- Report of a shooting at the Aspen Hill Giant (13781 Connecticut Avenue).  Montgomery Co Police (@mcpnews) May 6, 2016

Mall Shooting: Victims appear to all be adults.  Montgomery Co Police (@mcpnews) May 6, 2016

Mall Shooting: Suspect is not in custody.  Montgomery Co Police (@mcpnews) May 6, 2016

Westfield Montgomery Mall (Bethesda): Preliminary info: 3 shooting victims: 2 males and 1 female. Suspect outstanding.  Montgomery Co Police (@mcpnews) May 6, 2016

(1115a) Montgomery Mall, 7101 Democracy Blvd. MCFRS assisting PD w/ shooting, EMS treating & transporting several injured persons  Pete Piringer (@mcfrsPIO) May 6, 2016

2nd District Officers responding to Westfield Montgomery Mall for report of a shooting. PIO enroute.  Montgomery Co Police (@mcpnews) May 6, 2016

[NATL] Shootings in Maryland Leave Residents Rattled

The shootings Friday struck fear in the D.C. suburbs. Students and staff at all Montgomery County schools sheltered in place for some time Friday. Lockdowns were in place at other institutions in the area, including Suburban Hospital in Bethesda.

The National Institutes of Health main campus was on "heightened alert," a spokesman said.

In a ghastly coincidence, the shopping center is within sight of the scene of one of the 2002 Beltway sniper shootings, which remain all too fresh in the memory of many people in the D.C. area.

Two Sets of Shots Ring Out

Police patrolling Westfield Montgomery mall in Bethesda, Maryland, about 11 a.m. Friday happened upon the shooting scene in the parking lot, police said.

Police said they believe the victims at the mall did not know the shooter. A woman appeared to have been shot first. The gunman shot two men who came to her aid, police said.

Police monitored the Maryland shootings suspect for more than an hour before they got the opportunity to move in and arrest him without incident.

One witness told News4 the woman was walking toward Macy's when a man approached her and asked where she was going. When the woman didn't answer, the suspect reached into his car, pulled out a gun and began firing.

The woman was shot in the shoulder, the witness said.

"We have no reason to believe the victims knew the suspect," Montgomery County Assistant Chief Darryl McSwain said. "But we are certainly looking at all angles."

Witnesses saw the shooting at a Bethesda, Maryland mall today  and described the chaotic scene to News4s Chris Gordon.

The woman suffered non-life-threatening injuries. One of the men died. The second man was in grave condition Friday afternoon, police said.

As police investigated that scene, they received a 911 call reporting a shooting outside the Giant grocery store on the 13000 block of Connecticut Avenue in Aspen Hill, Maryland, about 8 miles northeast of the mall.

A woman there was shot and killed, police said.

Police have not identified any of the victims.

Watching the Suspect, Making the Arrest

The anxious hours ended when Montgomery County police officers in plainclothes spotted Tordil's car. It was parked in a shopping center across Connecticut Avenue from the shopping center where the second shooting occurred Friday, Montgomery County Police Chief Tom Manger said.

Officers then spotted Tordil himself going from business to business, including into a Boston Market, where he ate, and into a Dunkin' Donuts.

Officers watched Tordil, choosing to surround his car and wait.

"Knowing that the suspect was armed, knowing that the suspect had made statements about what he intended to do, we needed to make sure the public was safe when we took him into custody," the Montgomery County police chief said.

"Our fear was that he was armed. Since he had already shot four people, we certainly did not want any other bloodshed here," Manger said. "The plainclothes officers waited until it was safe to take him into custody, and that's what they did."

Sources tells News4 the same gun was used in three Maryland shootings that killed three and injured three others. News4s Jackie Bensen has new details on the spree that lasted less than 24 hours.

Surveillance video shows Tordil walk to his car with what looks like a bag of ice. He steps into the car, shuts the door and then officers in unmarked cars surround him, bumping the car and effectively forcing him to stay inside.

Officers took Tordil into custody and drove him away from the scene.

News4 reporter Megan McGrath reports that a woman is dead after a shooting in the Aspen Hill shopping center.

The First Victim?



On Thursday, police believe Tordil shot and killed his estranged wife, Gladys Tordil, and shot and injured a man who tried to help her about 4:40 p.m. Thursday at High Point High School in Beltsville, Maryland.

Gladys Tordil, who was 44, was a chemistry teacher at Parkdale High School in Baltimore County, Maryland, the school said in a letter to parents.

"Ms. Tordil was a beloved staff member. Students will be deeply affected by her death," the letter said.

A man arrested in Montgomery County for shooting four people is also suspected of killing his estranged wife the day before at High Point High School in Beltsville, police say. The woman was a teacher at another school and mother of two. News4s Tracee Wilkins reports how the teachers and students are coping.

The District Court of Maryland for Prince George's County ordered Tordil in March to stay away from his wife, her home, her workplace and High Point High School -- where police said he killed her, court documents show.

Gladys Tordil told the court Eulalio Tordil beat her and sexually and physically abused two children. In 2010, he slapped her so hard her glasses broke on her face, she told the court. She had filed for divorce, court documents say.

The court allowed Eulalio Tordil to use his work-issued firearm while he was at work. He was instructed to leave it at work during non-work hours.

Eulalio Tordil is being held without bond. He's due in court Monday. It was not clear if Eulalio Tordil had an attorney.
A fourth case of Zika virus has been confirmed in Connecticut, days after a pregnant woman tested positive, the Department of Public Health said.

The most recent case is a woman in her 30s who came back from a Zika-affected area in the Caribbean on April 25 and became ill on April 29 with a fever, rash and conjunctivitis.

A couple of days ago, the Department of Public Health said that a pregnant woman from Connecticut had tested positive for the virus, which could be harmful to fetuses.

The child was conceived during the woman's trip, according to the DPH.

While traveling, the woman became ill with a fever and rash, the department said. The woman is about 11 weeks pregnant, according to Department of Public Health Commissioner Raul Pino said.

While the primary mosquitos that carry Zika are not believed to be in Connecticut, some state health officials said they could come here and there are steps to prepares the state.



Researchers at the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station are testing a sample of Zika from Mexico to determine whether local species of mosquito can transmit the virus.



"It is a crisis that we need to manage before it gets out of control," Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro said.



Dr. Albert Ko, of the Yale School of Public Health, said there are no effective diagnostic tests and there is no treatment or vaccine that they can offer our patients.



Gov. Dannel Malloy is meeting with the Hispanic Health Council today discuss what Zika could mean if it came to our state.

According to the Department of Public Health, 426 cases of travel-related Zika have been reported in the continental United States.

Of those, 36 were pregnant women and eight were sexually transmitted. In Connecticut, 245 patients, including 217 pregnant women, have been tested for Zika virus.
Massachusetts authorities are investigating after photos of nude Duxbury High School girls were posted online.

School staff notified police on Wednesday that inappropriate photos of female students were uploaded to a Dropbox page.

Investigators have since been able to shut down the page.

Police and school officials are also notifying the parents of the girls involved.

Now, investigators are looking for the person or people who may be behind the photo sharing.

"There are some young people here who are very embarrassed and very upset. They are victims," said Duxbury Police Chief Matthew Clancy. "They made a mistake and someone took advantage of that."

Clancy added that his department would work with schools to help prevent similar incidents in the future.

"We will join the Schools as needed and requested in educating students on the negative impacts of this activity," he said.

Dr. Ben Tantillo, the district's superintendent, said in a statement that officials learned of the Dropbox from a student at the school.

"These lists had files that were supposed to be pictures of our female students in a variety of undress," Tantillo said. "The Duxbury Police are investigating this issue and have been interviewing the students whose names appear on the list with their parents."

Tantillo added that police were working with Dropbox to find the file's creator.

"This issue is now in the hands of the police who will communicate their findings to the school district once their investigation is complete."
An armed man tried to rob a gas station early Tuesday morning in Randolph, Massachusetts, only to have the gun turned around on him.

A man in a hooded sweatshirt walked into the U.S. Gas Station on North Main Street and demanded cash. When the suspect reached for a pistol, the attendant, Isaac Akinfenwa, jumped into action.

He can be seen on surveillance video struggling with the suspect, snatching the weapon, giving him chase, and, for good measure, pointing the gun at the fleeing suspect.

Randolph Police detective John Bringardner says the .22 caliber was not loaded. But Akinfenwa likely didn't know that.

"Very dangerous to be wrestling with someone with a gun," Bringardner said.

Akinfenwa did not want to be interviewed. His manager, Tony Succar, is also a bit camera shy, but he says his employee is a hard worker who's pumped gas for the past four years, trying to pay his way through school.

"I'm proud of him, but he shouldn't do that," Succar said. "He should just give him the money and that's the end of it."

This isn't the first time crooks have targeted this business. Police are now adding more patrols to the area, and Succar says he's keeping the door locked indefinitely during the late-night and early-morning hours.

Police are still searching for the suspect. He is believed to be approximately six feet tall, in his late 20s, with a thin build.
Police are seeking the public's help in locating a missing 17-year-old from Bourne, Massachusetts.

Bourne Police said Carly Grealish left her residence on Wednesday morning and has not returned home since. Although her departure is not suspicious, police said her family is concerned for her well-being, as she has not been in contact with them.

Police said it is possible that Carly may be in the company of a friend in the Middleboro, Taunton or Plymouth areas. She could also be on her way to Texas or Vermont.

Carly is described as approximately 5' tall, 105 pounds, with dark blonde hair. She was last seen wearing a camouflage hoodie and black eyeglasses.

Anyone who sees her or has any information about her whereabouts is asked to call Bourne Police at 508-759-4451.
Police in Cambridge, Massachusetts, are seeking the public's help in identifying a break-in suspect.

Authorities have released these photos following housebreaks on Fifth and Thorndike Streets.

The most recent break occurred on April 27 at 5 p.m.

The same suspect is believed to be involved in both crimes.

If you can ID this suspect, please call police at: (617) 349-3300.
After a Merrimack, New Hampshire, man died following a fall from his home's roof, the rescue team initially called to the scene returned later to finish the victim's project.

Members of the Merrimack Fire Department arrived at the Lesa Road home Wednesday afternoon to find a relative performing CPR on the victim. Severely injured, the man was rushed to St. Joseph Hospital but was pronounced dead.

Fire Chief Michael Currier says that after the man died, six rescue team members were concerned that his roof wasn't finished. With rain on the horizon, the firefighters and paramedics went back to the home thinking they'd put a tarp on the open roof.

After realizing that the project was nearly complete, the rescuers decided to fix the roof completely with assistance from the victim's neighbors.
What started as positive publicity for an animal shelter in Maine has turned into controversy.

The Greater Androscoggin Humane Society in Lewiston, Maine, admits to violating its own policies to allow Gov. Paul LePage to adopt a dog this week.

LePage visited the GAHS Tuesday to see a Jack Russell Terrier, advertised on the shelter's website. The governor's family recently lost its dog, Baxter, to cancer.

The dog he visited at the humane society was not technically up for adoption yet, but the shelter allowed him to take it home that day.

"We need to think about the shelter as a whole and this was a situation where we knew it was going to have a positive impact, for the most part, for the shelter," said operations manager Zach Black.

The GAHS Facebook page posted two photos of the governor with the new dog, which he named "Veto," and social media went wild. Many responses were positive, but at least one person had a very negative reaction to the adoption.

"I just saw the picture and I broke down," said Heath Arsensault.

Arsensault had also seen the terrier on the shelter's website, and called ahead to inquire about it. Arsensault was told it would be available on a first-come, first-serve basis later in the week.

"They told me when, and where, and what I needed to do," Arsensault said, and made arrangements for a friend to stop by the shelter and double check that the terrier would be a good fit.

"He was just the right size for my apartment, and he's just really sweet," said Arsensault, who even took a day off of work to be sure to be at the shelter early in the morning, and first in line to adopt him.

Arsensault, who was a victim of a sexual assault, planned to use the animal as an emotional support dog. Physical contact with people can cause anxiety, and Arsensault hoped having a dog would help ease that discomfort and eventually help repair relationships.

"It wasn't about, 'Oh I wanted that dog and somebody else adopted it," said Arsensault. "It just felt like my happiness was taken away from me. Bettering my relationships  that was taken away from me."

Arsensault reached out to the GAHS to ask why the governor was allowed to take the dog early, and the shelter has expressed willingness to help Arsensault find a dog.

In a statement, a spokesperson for Governor LePage said:

"The GAHS allowed him to take the dog that day," a spokesperson for LePage said in a statement. "He did not ask to take Veto home; GAHS offered. He was very pleasantly surprised ... Veto was pretty excited, too."

The governor's office was sure to blame the media.

"It is truly unfortunate and very sad the media is using unsubstantiated claims from a Facebook page to make it look like the Governor did something wrong by lovingly adopting a rescue dog that had once been homeless," the statement continued. "The attempt to besmirch the Greater Androscoggin Humane Society for doing such wonderful work is just another low blow by the media in their relentless mission to smear the Governor."
When it comes to Donald Trump's vice presidential choices, political consultant Scott Spradling expects Trump will give significant consideration to his former opponents.

Trump himself said Thursday there is a 40 percent chance he will choose a one-time Republican rival.

"You start this conversation with Marco Rubio and John Kasich," said Spradling. "Swing states, national candidates, people that are known."

Chris Christie is considered to be on that short list, and even Ted Cruz.

But the Trump campaign will likely cast a wide net that will undoubtedly include New Englanders.

Former Massachusetts Senator and current New Hampshire resident Scott Brown hosted a Trump rally in Portsmouth in January, endorsing Trump weeks later.

Spradling says Brown checks many key boxes, including an understanding of how Washington works from his two years in the Senate.

"Enough to know his way around, but enough to also know I'm a outsider," Spradling described Brown. "New Hampshire roots, good looking guy, eloquent, very good on the campaign trail."

Spradling says another New Hampshire politician, U.S. Sen. Kelly Ayotte, is also likely being considered, especially given Trump's problem with female voters.

Ayotte would also be a bridge to the establishment, but her heated re-election bid against Democratic Gov. Maggie Hassan presents problems if Trump were to win.

"You're talking about Republicans walking away from that Senate seat and potentially giving away the majority control in the U.S. Senate," Spradling said. "That makes it a very risky venture."

One other New Englander considered a possible VP choice is Maine Gov. Paul LePage, though Spradling says, since LePage is the gubernatorial equivalent of Trump in terms of outspokeness, the campaign would likely be looking for a candidate who would bring more to round out the Trump ticket.
A pitcher of sangria is a refreshing summer drink option. The wine, packed with fruits made its debut in Spain over a hundred years ago and has become increasingly popular in India recently. In fact, now there are white and pink versions of this one-time red-only drink.

The other day, I sipped on an invigorating mix of Drambuie, Triple Sec, white wine, lemonade and mixed fruit, which was perfect for the hot weather. A mixologist once gave me a useful tip  never use an expensive wine for sangria, since it loses its complexity when it is combined with other ingredients. I have been faithfully following this rule every time I serve sangrias at a party.

Personally, I find fresh seasonal fruits combined with Cointreau, and red wine to be the perfect sangria for me. But white wine sangrias arent far away on the favourites list, since I enjoy white wines a lot more. The purists may disapprove, but I am not one to follow the rules.

A Pinot Grigio or Sauvignon Blanc work brilliantly for sangria. I dont like the wine to overpower the rest of the ingredients, so I strictly use only 3/4 of the bottle. A dash of ginger ale at the end gives it a fresh twist.

One way to make the sangria interesting is to let the chopped fruits soak in the wine. Ajit Balgi, beverage consultant at The Happy High suggests, For wine lovers, sangrias are a great bet since it is fruity, refreshing and isnt as heady as other alcohol. Sangrias can be made with red, white or sparkling wines.

If you prefer making your sangrias with red or white wine, you could soak fruits in the wine overnight. Use wines that are fruity since it complements the fresh fruit. Look Out, a South African brand of easy-drinking Shiraz blend, is a good bet, as is the Grover Art series Viognier, to make sangrias.

Mini Ribeiro is a food writer
Timber! Thats what you hear from a lumberjack in movies before a tree comes crashing down.

But thats not what youll hear in rainforests while one tree after another is cut down. Why? The logging is often illegal, and the last thing the culprits want is to attract attention.

Rainforests once covered 14 percent of the earth's land surface. Now they cover just 6 percent, and experts estimate that the last remaining rainforests could be consumed in less than 40 years. (The Amazon rainforest itself produces 20 percent of the worlds oxygen.)

Worst still, wildlife and local cultures that depend on the rainforest ecosystem are being wiped as well. Local authorities and indigenous tribes are fighting back against the illegally clearing of the rainforest for commercial farming. This tussle between poor villagers and well-funded commercial logging interests is pretty one-sided, but IoT is helping to level the playing field a little.

Its a tough problem to solve. Imagine hundreds of acres of dense forest to protect, few roads, dispersed villagers and forest wardens competing against loggers intent on clearing land. Monitoring things on the ground isn't feasible. Airborne inspection is too expensive and doesnt work well when there is a thick canopy. Whats needed is an affordable solution that can monitor a large area, detect illegal logging activity and alert the authorities in a timely manner.

Sensors alert authorities of illegal loggers

Topher White and David Grenell, the founders of Rainforest Connection, developed a solution that uses the sound of loggers tools, such as chainsaws and trucks to haul away the logs, against them. They install sensors in rainforests that each monitor the sounds in a square-mile area. Villagers and local authorities are alerted when the sound of chainsaws or trucks is detected.

https://rfcx.org Installing a rainforest sensor

Designing a rugged solution that's also affordable and easy to install is hard. It has to work in extreme humidity, operate in heavy rainfall and be self-powered.

[MORE: They said the iPhone would flop.]

Applying some good old-fashioned ingenuity, White and Grenell decided to repurpose some of the more than 150 million phones discarded every year in the U.S. as the sensors for this project. Rainforest Connection adapts old phones, making them waterproof and powered by solar panels. They take advantage of low-cost cellular plans to have the phones transmit rainforest sounds to the cloudappropriately named Amazon Web Services, for analysis. SMS alerts are issued when the sounds of logging are detected.







The Rainforest Connection has completed pilot projects and demonstrated that its system works. Now the organization is expanding its operations to the Amazon, Africa and Indonesia. The potential benefit is enormous. Every acre of rainforest that is preserved generates the oxygen equivalent to getting 3,000 cars off the road.

Help silence the chainsaws! Donate your old phones and help support Rainforest Connection in their quest to protect the worlds rainforests and the air supply we all breathe.
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Cyber attackers use deception to try to get inside your network by doing everything from spoofing email addresses in spear phishing attacks to hiding malware on legitimate websites. So, if deception is standard operating procedure for the bad guys, perhaps it's time to fight back with some deception of your own. In fact, Gartner says it's a good complement to your existing security infrastructure.

Deception technology designed to lure and trap malicious actors has been around since at least 1999 when Lance Spitzner, founder of the Honeynet Project, published a paper on how to build a honeypot. Early honeynets were pretty resource intensive and they had to be maintained to ensure the honeynet wasn't turned against the host organization. Since then, the advent of virtual machines has helped ease the deployment and use of deception technology.

TrapX Security is one company that has taken advantage of virtual machines and the capability to deploy its DeceptionGrid solution at scale inside an enterprise. This solution can be deployed by a managed security service provider (MSSP) or by an enterprise that operates its own security operations center (SOC). TrapX builds out various types of emulations that trap  and at times even lure  attackers so their actions and indicators of compromise (IOCs) can be detected, analyzed and turned against them through actionable intelligence.

The TrapX virtual appliance can be installed on VMware ESX or Microsoft Hyper-V, or on very low-end bare metal hardware. One appliance today can run up to 512 simultaneous emulations but that will soon go to 1,024, and eventually even beyond that. Then there are a couple of key interfaces that connect into the network infrastructure that allow TrapX to do its business.

The first is the connection to the SPAN or TAP port at your Internet egress point. This allows TrapX to monitor traffic for any IOCs from malware that may be beaconing out; for example, when ransomware reaches out to get its encryption keys, or when a successful phishing attack leads to communication with a command and control server. TrapX uses intelligence feeds from a range of sources to identify and alert on suspicious traffic.

One of the core components for the deployment of the decoys is the connection to the core switch over TrapX's trunk port. This allows TrapX to see any of the VLANs the core switch knows about and present IP addressable targets or decoys on any of the VLANs the switch understands. From the attacker's perspective, it looks like the target or decoy is on that network where those users or devices are, when in fact all the decoys are emulations that are running within that virtual appliance. This architecture is said to create a scalable, easily deployed solution.

Rolling out the deception grid is automated and low friction. TrapX supports some 70+ different combinations of emulations, from workstation types, Windows and Linux servers, infrastructure gear, SCADA devices, medical devices, databases, and custom emulations. TrapX cites a healthcare customer that has deployed medical device emulations throughout its hospital network to protect life-critical systems.

The vendor can support high interactive environments where its decoys are proxying through to actual live systems like a live database. An administrator can point and scale hundreds of decoys that look like database servers but only have to worry about the care and feeding of one that can be populated with fake information that looks like the information that would be of interest to an attacker. If the data looks realistic enough, the attacker might go as far as trying to sell it on the open market because he thinks he has credit cards or project plans or patent information.

Most of the traps are going to be fairly static, meaning an attacker will stumble upon them, but you can also set lures, or deception tokens, to draw an attacker in. For example, suppose an attacker uses a spear phish to get onto a user workstation. Once there, he will look at the directory to see what interesting things are available. TrapX can place lures  something like a juicy fake network share drive  in the directory to draw the attacker into a trap. These lures are agentless but utterly irresistible to an intruder.

If an attacker so much as touches any of the decoys, an alert will go off because there is no legitimate reason for anyone to hit one of these traps. There are almost no false positives with this system. TrapX can catch insider threats just as easily as threats from the outside.

When someone lands in a trap, an advanced incident response platform takes over. TrapX captures all sorts of relevant information, such as software that gets injected, the IP address it came from (which reveals which device was compromised), the binaries that can be checked against known IOCs, and so on.

TrapX automatically sends the relevant information to cloud-based sandboxes to analyze it. TrapX also has a built-in tool to construct a timeline and do forensic analysis, and it collects the entire PCAP to provide very detailed information on what the attacker is doing. All of this intelligence is sent to the TrapX Security Operations Center (TSOC) where it can be fed into your SIEM, if desired. You get an alert that directs you to precisely what is happening so you can follow-up on the breach in your chosen manner.

TrapX also supports a broader ecosystem with its threat intelligence through data sharing standards such STIX, TAXII, and Intel Security's DXL. Indicators that are found in one environment can quickly be shared, anonymously, with many others.

With virtual environments so prominent today, deception technology has become, well, deceptively easy to deploy and use. It's one more weapon in a defense-in-depth arsenal.
Police try to control people who were holding a protest march demanding justice for Perumbavoor brutal rape victim, in Kochi. (Photo: PTI)

Kochi: The principal of Alappuzha Medical College found serious lapses in the post-mortem procedures conducted by the Medical College on the body of Jishamol. Dr B. Jayaleksha filed a report to the health department secretary pointing to the flaws in the procedure. Pursuant to this, the secretary issued a probe.

A team comprising Medical Education joint director Dr Sreekumari and forensic department head Dr Shashikala will visit the college on Friday. According to sources the post-mortem was conducted by PG students and associate professors did not participate.

However, police maintained that considering the grave nature of the injuries the medical team alerted an associate professor and she joined the team. Police framed rape charges in the case only after the police report. A section allege that police didn't mention about suspicion of rape in the inquest report.
News emerges a week after one dog dies eating cattle feed pellets

A second dog has died at Greenham Common after swallowing cattle feed pellets, it has emerged.

As reported in last weeks Newbury Weekly News, Newbury man Simon Wilson, aged 46, took his two King Charles spaniel dogs Max and Paddy for a walk on the common last month.

They both swallowed concentrated sugar beet pellets which are used as feed by cattle graziers and had been left out by a farmer. One of the dogs died a day later at a local vets.

The Newbury Weekly News has since learned that the tragedy came after the death of another dog who died as a result of ingesting the pellets.

Now, Mr Wilson has called for urgent action to prevent further deaths. Speaking of the incident, on April 20, when his dog Paddy ate the pellets, Mr Wilson said: It was agonising to see him like that. We cant bring him back, nothing is going to bring him back. I feel let down by the managers at the common.

There [was] no signage warning that there is potentially lethal stuff on the common that could kill your dog. If we had seen that we would have turned the car around and gone elsewhere. Had they posted that up I do see a lot of people would turn around. Imagine if a child had picked it up and eaten it.

It just seems to be a bit of a cavalier attitude as [the graziers] know that kind of feed could be a risk to animals and, if they know that, why are they using it on public space? We are very angry about this. Dogs are so quick they see something on the floor and to them everything is a sweet. Their life is run by food. If something is lying on the floor they will pick it up.

People just need to be made aware that this is going on. The farmers are doing what they can, but it only takes one maverick. I would call for some direct action to prevent that risk.

Speaking of his two dogs he said: [Paddy] was particularly healthy. He has travelled half way around the world and braved snakes in Australia.

He said that the vet who saw him at Falkland Surgery told him it was the fastest deterioration he had ever seen after the dog was first brought in.

Mr Wilson added: They are from the same litter, they were together in the womb. [Max] is just gutted because he cant understand why his best friend has been taken away.

Every time someone comes to the door he is looking out for him and expecting him to be there, but he isnt coming back.

Following the outcry and after subsequent discussion with Mr Wilson, Berks, Bucks & Oxon Wildlife Trust has since erected signs at Greenham Common warning dog owners of the risks and stating that it is working with farmers to stop the pellets being used.

A spokesperson from BBOWT said that the wildlife trust first heard of the incidents on Facebook on April 22.

Over that weekend BBOWT posted messages on Facebook warning dog owners to be vigilant and keep their dogs under close control.

BBOWT also installed signs on the common as soon as we had spoken to the owner of the first dog that died, and had identified the location where his dogs had been eating.

West Berkshire Councils animal health officer visited the site as soon as the council was made aware of the issue.

The council is supporting BBOWTs actions in seeking assurances from the graziers that sugar beet pellets will not be used in future.

BBOWT has spoken to all the farmers with cattle on the common, and they have given assurances they will not use these pellets.

It is very important to stop this problem at source so that visitors to Greenham Common can continue to enjoy this beautiful nature reserve and open space.

There may be a small amount of residual food left on the common, but this is made safe by rain soaking into them, or the cattle eating them.

She added that later this month the wildlife trust would discuss the issue with the Greenham and Crookham Commons Commission.
Elizabeth O'Keeffe elected by Victoria Ward voters

THE Liberal Democrats have won the vacant seat on Newbury Town Council with Victoria Ward voters electing Lib Dem candidate Elizabeth O'Keeffe.

Ms O'Keeffe received 487 votes with Conservative candidate Craig Hughes receiving the second highest number of votes with 307.

Green Party Candidate, Steve Wallis, received 173 while Labour's Gary Puffett received 142 votes.

David McMahon, UKIP, received 118 votes with independent candidates David Yates and Lee McDougall receiving 23 and 20 respectively.

The by-election was triggered when Conservative councillor Emma Green stood down from her post in February.

Yesterday's victory means that the Lib Dems now have six members on the Town Council, however the Conservatives still hold a strong majority with 17 councillors.

Ms O'Keeffe will now join conservative councillors Miles Evans, James Frederickson and Mike Johnson in representing residents in Victoria Ward.

Speaking to the Newbury Weekly News a delighted Mrs O'Keeffe said: "We have done what we do best and build from the roots up and I think that can be seen on a national level too - people are starting to look at the Liberal Democrats again.

"I think people do care about the local elections, you have the same experiences as they do and that's what you get when you go door to door.

"A 34 per cent turn out for a by-election was a good turn out and so it's the people of Victoria Ward who are the winners.

"If I have strength it is that I'm a people person.

"It's about understanding other people's needs.

"It's going to be a hard slog now but the things that the people are suffering from in Newbury are still there and something needs to be done."

Ms OKeeffe was a Liberal Democrat town councillor in Victoria ward for four years up until May 2015 and continues to regularly attend town and West Berks District council meetings.

Chief executive of Newbury Town Council Hugh Peacocke said: "Congratulations to Elizabeth on her return to the council and we look forward to working with her."
Kochi: With the probe into the Jisha murder case reaching a dead end, the state police on Thursday effected changes in the investigating team by replacing the current investigating officer with an officer from the crime detachment wing and adding a deputy superintendent of police to it.

The police replaced Perumbavoor DySP Anil Kumar with crime detachment DySP A.B. Jijimon as head the team. DYSP P.P. Sadanandan, also of the crime detachment, has also joined the team. However, Ernakulam range IG Mahipal Yadav will continue to monitor the progress in investigation.

The newly-constituted team inspected Jisha's house on Thursday morning and spoke to the neighbors. The team which brought in the dog squad however, did not press it into service. Police sources said the state polices top brass, including state police chief T P Senkumar, are camping at Aluva and monitoring the probe.

The police chief is understood to have called a meeting of the team late on Thursday, a move seen as a prelude to entrust the investigation to the Crime Branch. The police, meanwhile, filed an application before the Kuruppampady Judicial First Class Magistrate Court seeking permission to send the material objects found from Jishas house for scientific examination. They police had seized a pair of footwear and a knife from the spot. The same would be sent to Thiruvananthapuram FSL for detailed examination.
Bengaluru: It was merely a dispute with a landlord, who allegedly refused to part with a promised flat despite accepting a deposit of Rs 50, 000. But what came next has left two city techies from Odisha terrified as the police they approached for help in the matter, turned on them instead and allegedly beat them black and blue.

What led to the torture

It was April 28. Ajith(29) and his cousin, Rajesh(29) (names changed), both from Balasur in Odisha, approached the Bommanahalli police station to complain against a landlord in Koramangala for refusing to part with a flat despite accepting Rs 50, 000 as deposit for it from a relative. But instead of coming to their help, the police reportedly reacted violently. While Rajesh claims he was dragged by his collar and beaten mercilessly in front of the prisoners cell, Ajith alleges that he was pushed by a policeman, Basvaraj who was in mufti, while another policeman kicked him from behind as he tried to help Rajesh.

Narrating the ordeal, Rajesh told the Deccan Chronicle, We were left with no choice but to seek police help after the flat owner ditched us. We approached the Bommanahalli police, but they made us wait for over two hours. Later the landlord, his wife and daughter were called to the police station and were taken to another room . They emerged over an hour later and then we were called in by the inspector who addressed us rudely and said, 'There is no agreement between the two parties. Get lost from here.

Sensing trouble, Rajesh says he began to videograph the behaviour of the aggressive policeman, who he has identified as A S Manjunath in his complaint. It was then , according to him, that the abuse started.

You bas***d. Why have you come here? Why don't you people stay in your native , why do you come to the city? How dare you make a video of the police? This is Bengaluru not your native Odisha,  the cop reportedly told the terrified techies..

Even as Ajith tried to talk to the policemen, three others in mufti came up from behind him and hit Rajesh and then taking him by his collar, dragged him till the prisoners cell, where they then allegedly beat him up.

In their complaint to the police, the duo said they were later forced to sign a declaration and allowed to leave. That evening they went to the Chinmaya Mission hospital, where Rajesh was treated for his injuries and a medico-legal case (MLC) was registered. The Indiranagar police contacted them following this, but they refused to speak to it , afraid to trust anyone .

It was only after a call was made by a relative from Kolkatta to the states DG and IGP, Om Prakash that the duo finally felt safe. My elder brother ,who the flat here was meant for, contacted Mr Om Prakash and told him about our ordeal and following this a senior police officer directed him to DCP (South-east), Dr. Boralingaiah, who met us and assured us of our safety, the techies said.
There have been 24 insurgency related incidents perpetrated by Naga groups in the last six months in which three people have been killed and 24 militants arrested. (Photo: Representational Image)

New Delhi: AFSPA will continue to remain in force in 12 districts of Arunachal Pradesh for six more months on the ground of continuous violence, extortion and intimidation by insurgent groups.

The Union Home Ministry has said the security scenario in Tirap, Changlang and Longding districts along with areas falling under 16 police stations in nine other districts of the state remains vitiated due to the spill over of Naga insurgency.

Naga groups, NSCN-K, NSCN-IM, NSCN-R and NSCN& NK along with ULFA-I and NDFB-S, continue to indulge in extortion, area domination, inter-factional rivalry in these areas of the state.

Tirap, Changlang and Longding districts and the areas falling within the jurisdiction of 16 police stations in nine districts bordering Assam are declared as "disturbed area" under section 3 of the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act 1958 for six months beyond May 4, 2016, a gazette notification issued by the Home Ministry said.

There have been 24 insurgency related incidents perpetrated by Naga groups in the last six months in which three people have been killed and 24 militants arrested.

On March 27, 2015, the Centre had declared all districts of Arunachal Pradesh bordering Assam as "disturbed areas" under AFSPA. However, the order was withdrawn following strong protests from the then Nabam Tuki government.

A revised notification was issued a few days later declaring Tirap, Changlang and Longding, along with 16 police stations areas in nine districts as "disturbed". The state shares a 1,126 kms of the border with China and 520 kms with Myanmar.
Mumbai: The Bombay High Court on Friday upheld the ban on slaughter of bulls and bullocks in BJP-ruled Maharashtra while making it clear that mere possession of beef of animals slaughtered outside the state cannot invite criminal action.

The High Court struck down two sections of the state Act which criminalised possession of beef.

In a 245-page strongly worded judgement, a division bench of the High Court said the sections that criminalised possession of beef is an infringement on the right to privacy of citizens and unconstituional.

Read: Maharashtra farmers hit hard by cattle sale ban

Striking down sections 5(d)and 9(b) of the Maharashtra Animal Preservation (Amendment) Act which criminalised and imposed punishment for possession of beef of animals slaughtered in the state or outside, Justices A S Oka and S C Gupte held that the state cannot control what a citizen does in his house which is his own castle, provided he is not doing something contrary to law.

"Sections 5(d) which provides that no person shall have in his possession flesh of cow, bull or bullock slaughtered outside Maharashtra is unconstitutional and infringes upon a citizen's right to privacy," the court said.

"Similarly section 9(b) which imposes penal action (on an offender) and puts the onus of proving himself as innocent is also invalid," the court said, after hearing a bunch of petitions challenging the constitutional validity of the Act.

The court also modified section 5(c) of the Act, which makes possession of beef of animal slaughtered in the state an offence, and said only "conscious possession" of such meat will be held as an offence.

Read: Maharashtra govt justifies beef ban in HC, says it has powers to do it

"As far as the choice of eating food of the citizens is concerned, the citizens are required to be let alone especially when the food of their choice is not injurious to health," the court said.

"The state cannot make an intrusion into his home and prevent a citizen from possessing and eating food of his choice. A citizen has a right to lead a meaningful life within the four corners of his house as well as outside his house. This intrusion on the personal life of an individual is prohibited by the right to privacy which is part of the personal liberty guaranteed by Article 21," the court said.

Reacting to the judgement, Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis said the state may approach the Supreme Court, after consulting legal experts, against the striking down of the two provisions of the Act but expressed the satisfaction that the High Court has affirmed the law is constitutional.

"The HC has affirmed that our law is constitutional and it has not targeted any religion, caste or creed. I am happy that our stand is vindicted by the Court," Fadnavis told reporters here.

"However, there are two provisions of the law that have been struck down by the High Court. We will consult our lawyers, and, if necessary, will approach the Supreme Court against this. Other than these two provisions, the court has found no fault with the law," he added.

Arif Kapadia, a city resident, and noted lawyer Harish Jagtiani challenged the provision of law which said that mere possession of beef in any place in the state is a crime.

According to them, this provision was arbitrary and hit upon the cosmopolitan nature of the city, which houses people from all religions and communities.

The HC noted that the government has not made any attempt to show any compelling public or state interest for enacting section 5(d).

"In the present case, section 5(d) prevents a citizen from possessing and consuming flesh of cow, bull or bullock even if it is slaughtered in territories where such slaughter is legal. Hence, section 5 (d) is certainly an infringement of right to privacy," the court said.

The court said preventing a citizen from possessing flesh of cow, bull or bullock slaughtered outside the state amounts to prohibiting a citizen from possessing and consuming food of his choice.

"Section 5(c) of the Act which criminalised mere possession of beef is being modified to conscious possession of the beef. If a person from whom beef has been found did not have prior knowledge of the meat, then he cannot be prosecuted. Only conscious possession can be held as an offence," the high court said.

The court noted that onus will be on the prosecution to prove that the accused who is charged for violation of section 5 (c) of the Act, was found in possession of flesh of cow, bull or bullock slaughtered within the state with the knowledge that it is the flesh of these animals and that were slaughtered in the state.

"If the possession under Section 5(c) is not treated as a conscious possession and is treated as mere custody then there is every possibility of an innocent person being convicted for an offence punishable under section 9(a)," the court said.

"It is relatively easy for the prosecution to bear the burden of establishing that the slaughter of the animal was in contravention of the Act than for the accused to bear the burden of showing otherwise," the court noted.

The court further said that merely because a person has been found in possession of bovine flesh does not make his knowledge of slaughter within the state in any way probable.

"A very drastic provision putting a negative burden on the accused at the time of trial of the offences punishable under sections 9 and 9(a) of the Act has been introduced by way of section 9(b). Under section 9(b) at the time of the trial, the burden of proving that the slaughter, transport, export, sale, purchase or possession of flesh of cow, bull or bullocks was not in contravention of the Act shall be on the accused," the court said.

The court hence struck down section 9(b) and said it was unconstitutional and invalid.

The HC, however, refused to stay its order pertaining to striking down of section 5(d) and 9(b) of the Act.

Upholding the government's decision to ban slaughter, sale, transport and purchase of cow, bulls and bullocks in the state, the court held that the government has placed on record material to support its stand that it is necessary to preserve these animals and prevent their slaughter.

"The legislature felt that it is necessary to preserve and protect agricultural animals like bulls and bullocks. Even after these animals cease to be useful for the purpose of breeding or even if they become too old to do work, it is stated that such bulls or bullocks continue to give dung for fuel, manure and bio-gas and therefore they cannot be said to be useless," the court said.

"The legislature is the best judge of what is good for the community. The legislative wisdom cannot be doubted only because some other view is possible," the court said.

"Considering the legal and factual position, we find that the stand of the state government that prohibiting the slaughter of cows, bulls and bullocks is in public interest will have to be accepted," the court said.

The bench further held that restrictions like slaughter, sale, transport and purchase imposed in the Act do not infringe upon the constitutional right of a person guaranteed under Article 14.

The court took note of the arguments put forth by the state government that the Act has been made to provide for prohibition of slaughter of cows, bulls and bullocks for preservation of these animals as they are suitable for milch, breeding, agricultural purposes.

The bench also noted the government's contention that for effective implementation of such total ban, it is necessary to provide for prohibition on transport, export, sale or purchase of cow, bulls and bullocks and its meat.

The court refused to accept the arguments of some petitioners, who held that animal sacrifice is an integral part of the religion followed by the Muslim community and some people who are poor cannot afford to sacrifice an entire goat and hence form groups and sacrifice cows, bulls or bullocks.

"It is well settled that what is protected under Articles 25 and 26 is only such religious practice which forms an essential and integral part of the religion. A practice followed may be a religious practice but if it is not an essential or integral part of the religion then the same is not protected by Article 25 of the Constitution of India," the court said.

The bench further said the "alleged economic compulsion will not make the alleged practice an essential part of the religion".

In January this year, Justices Oka and Gupte had reserved the order after hearing arguments of all parties involved.

In February 2015, the President had granted sanction to the Maharashtra Animal Preservation (Amendment) Act. While the Act had banned slaughter of cows way back in 1976, the recent amendments prohibited slaughter of bulls and bullocks, possession and consumption of their meat.

As per the Act, slaughter attracts a five-year jail term and Rs 10,000 fine and possession of meat of bull or bullock hands over one-year jail and Rs 2,000 fine.

While hearing the petition, the HC had in April last year refused to grant an interim stay on the law, on the issue of possession of beef.

Petitions were also filed by Vishal Sheth, a lawyer, and Shaina Sen, a student.

They said "we are Hindus who are consumers of beef, which is now part of our diet and nutrition source. The ban on beef and criminalising its sale and possession violates fundamental rights of citizens.
New Delhi: The average medical expenditure on a child birth in government hospitals in rural areas is just Rs 1,587 as against Rs 14,778 in private hospitals, Lok Sabha was told on Friday.

The average cost for the purpose is Rs 2,117 in public facilities in urban areas as against Rs 20,328 in private facilities, Health Minister J P Nadda said during Question Hour. As per the findings of the 71st round survey of social consumption on health of National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO), the average medical expenditure on hospitalisation is Rs 25,850 in private facilities compared to Rs 6,120 in public facilities, he said.

"The average total medical expenditure per child birth shows that expenditure in public facilities was just Rs 1,587 as against Rs 14,778 in private facilities in rural areas and Rs 2,117 in public facilities as against Rs 20,328 in private facilities in urban areas," he said quoting the NSSO report.

He said 11 per cent persons in the lowest two quintiles in rural areas and 10 per cent persons in lowest two quintiles in urban areas are covered under insurance schemes. "As per information provided by the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India, the number of lives covered under health insurance policies during 2014-15 was 28.80 crore including government sponsored schemes like Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojna," Nadda said.

The Health Minister said the Centre plans to start a new health protection scheme, as announced in the latest budget, to provide cover upto Rs 1 lakh with additional top up of Rs 30,000 per senior citizen in those families. "The proposed scheme envisages coverage of poor and vulnerable families on family floater basis with no capping on family size. Details modalities are being worked out," he said.
The bench asked the authorities to submit details of calls received from the people

Hyderabad: Pointing out negligence by the GHMC and HMWS&SB, a vacation bench of the Hyderabad High Court on Thursday directed the two civic bodies and the TS Home department to file counter affidavits on death of two labourers in a manhole in the city.

A division bench comprising Justice A. Rajasekhar Reddy and Justice A. Shankar Narayana, while dealing with a suo motu taken up case on death of the two labourers observed that the negligence of authorities of both the bodies in responding to calls and complaints from people with regard to blockages in drainage has been forcing people to engage private labourers to clean their drainage.

The bench asked the authorities to submit details of calls received from the people and how many of them were attended by the staff of the civic bodies to resolve the problem.

The bench also asked the authorities to place the rules and regulations for cleaning of drainage before the court and also informed the court by next date of hearing whether or not compensation has been received by the family members of the deceased.

T. Sudhakar Reddy, counsel for the Metro Water Board told the court that the Board has not received any complaint from the locals where the two workers were killed.

He said that the Board has awarded Rs 2 lakh each to the families of the victims.

The bench, while issuing the notices, directed the GHMC, Water Board and TS Home department to file counter affidavits and posted the case to next week.

HC suspends state order on gram panchayats

A vacation bench comprising Justice A. Rajasekhar Reddy and Justice A. Shankar Narayana of the Hyderabad High Court on Thursday suspended the operation of a GO issued by the TS government dissolving Meerpet, Jillelaguda, Balapur, Jalpally and Pahadi Sharif Gram Panchayats and notifying them as municipalities.

The bench was dealing with an appeal by T. Vikram Reddy, challenging the dismissal of his writs by a single judge. Mr Reddy contended that the government did not follow due procedure and notice for dissolution cannot be given to a gram panchayat secretary as he would never oppose the move since he will be a government employee.

Regular bench to hear MLA PIL

A vacation bench comprising Justice A. Rajasekhar Reddy and Justice A. Shankar Narayana of the Hyderabad High Court on Thursday refused to hear a PIL moved by TD leader A. Revanth Reddy and asked the Registry to post it before the regular bench after the summer vacation.

The TD leader, in his PIL, wanted the court to declare the state government allocating million of litres of water to the soft drink companies and beer manufacturers when the state is reeling under worst possible drought as illegal, and in violation of Article 21 and 47 of the Constitution and also the National Water Policy.

He also urged the court to direct the authorities concerned to preserve the water proposed to be used by beverages companies to be utilised for daily use of citizens.

In his PIL, Mr Reddy said that authorities have been supplying 1,512 million litres of water to the beverage companies while 14,818 villages in the state were reeling from drought.

The bench noticed that the content in the plea of the petitioner was of public interest and it would be difficult for the vacation bench to take a PIL in view of lot of other urgent matters to be looked into.
The government has released in advance the first instalment of SDRF for 2016-17 amounting Rs 2,551.9 crore to the drought-affected states. (Photo: Representational Image)

New Delhi: The Centre has released Rs 9,367crore to drought-hit states under MGNREGA in 2016-17, Parliament was informed on Friday.

The government has also relaxed norms under MGNREGA to provide additional employment of 50 days per household over and above the 100 days in areas affected by natural calamities during 2015-16, Agriculture Minister Radha Mohan Singh said in a written reply in the Rajya Sabha.

"During 2015-16 and 2016-17 (so far), Rs 18,715.01 crore and Rs 9,367.19 crore have been released, respectively, to the drought-hit states under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA)," Singh said.

The minister added that the state government is primarily responsible for taking necessary relief measures in the event of natural calamities.

Funds are available with the state government in the form of state disaster response fund (SDRF) and additional financial assistance is considered from the national disaster response fund (NDRF) for natural calamities of severe nature, Singh said.

The government has released in advance the first instalment of SDRF for 2016-17 amounting Rs 2,551.9 crore to the drought-affected states.

Karnataka, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha, Telangana, Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Jharkhand, Bihar, Haryana and Rajasthan are reeling under drought.
In her campaign at R K Nagar here, she described herself as the people's "beloved sister" and sought a mandate bigger than the last one-- during the bye-poll post her acquittal in a disproportionate assets case by Karnataka High Court.

Chennai: AIADMK supremo and Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa on Friday sought to strike an emotional chord with the voters of her R K Nagar constituency, saying they "are my breath", and sought a successive term to serve them after the coming elections.

In her campaign at R K Nagar in Chennai, she described herself as the people's "beloved sister" and sought a mandate bigger than the last one-- during the bye-poll post her acquittal in a disproportionate assets case by Karnataka High Court.

"You are my breath. Give me a chance to serve you again. Vote for (AIADMK's symbol) two leaves and hand me a grand victory," she said.

Jayalalithaa said "I am for people, and because of people," and said both the voters and herself had "great faith" in each other.

The Chief Minister said she had been earlier elected by the people to defeat "adharma, opportunism," and asked them to repeat the same.

She said the people, who had "given me a grand win" in the 2015 bye-poll, were etched in her heart and that their "beloved sister" was once again seeking her electoral fortunes from the city constituency.

Her government was committed for people's welfare and many development schemes had been implemented, she said. During the 'unprecedented rain' in November and December last year which resulted in a deluge, she had visited the constituency and directed speedy relief work, she recalled.

As a result, relief work was taken up on war-footing and affected families were immediately moved to schools where food was provided. As many as 97,000 families were provided with Rs 48 crore worth of assistance, Jayalalithaa said.

After her party assumed power in 2011, R K Nagar had been provided with various schemes including drinking water and drainage projects, much more than what the earlier DMK government had done, she said.

Rs 320 crore of infrastructure projects and Rs 23 crore worth drinking water and drainage schemes had been delivered to the constituency, she said while promising more welfare measures if voted to a "grand victory" in the ensuing polls.

Jayalalithaa listed out salient features of the party's manifesto released yesterday, such as 50 per cent subsidy for women to buy scooter/moped, hike in monthly dole for fishermen during fishing period, free 100 units of power for all and free mobile phones to all ration card holders and sought votes for her.
New Delhi: The indefinite hunger strike by JNU students entered ninth day today even as the health condition of the Student's Union President Kanhaiya Kumar, who was admitted to AIIMS, has improved.

While five students on Thursday withdrew from the hunger strike against the punishment by the university in connection with the February 9 event during which anti-national slogans were allegedly raised, 15 others continued with their fast.

Kanhaiya, who is out on bail after his arrest in a sedition case, was on Thursday admitted to AIIMS in a semi-conscious state. He was treated for mild dehydration and ketosis.

"Doctors have advised that Kanhaiya be kept under observation. His health is better," a statement from the JNU Students Union said.

"Kanhaiya has appealed to the students to continue with the agitation in his absence from the campus," it said. On day nine of the hunger strike, the students called for a protest against the JNU administration which has termed the fast as "unlawful" activity.

The key tone level of the fasting students is high and the blood pressure is low, according to the test reports from the health centre.

25 students had gone on hunger strike last week. While five members of ABVP called off their fast on Wednesday claiming they have an assurance from the JNU administration that their demands will be considered, five members of the Left-affiliated groups withdrew from the stir yesterday citing deteriorating health.

JNU VC Jagadesh Kumar had appealed to students to put forward their demands using constitutional" means and asked them to come for a "dialogue" to resolve the matter.

Two other students -- Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya -- were arrested along with Kanhaiya in the sedition case.

While Kanhaiya has been slapped with a penalty of Rs 10,000 on grounds of "indiscipline and misconduct", Umar, Anirban and a Kashmiri student, Mujeeb Gatoo have been rusticated for varying durations. Financial penalty has been imposed on 14 students. Hostel facilities of two students have been withdrawn and the university has declared the campus out of bounds for two former students.

Saurabh, who is the lone ABVP member in JNU Students Union, has also been slapped with a fine of Rs 10,000 for blocking traffic.
Reporter

Debra Pressey is a reporter covering health care at The News-Gazette. Her email is dpressey@news-gazette.com, and you can follow her on Twitter (@DLPressey).
Leica Microsystems in partnership with TrueVision Systems Inc. launches the IOLcompass Pro. IOLcompass Pro is a software-based guidance system for pre-operative planning and intra-operative positioning of premium intraocular lenses (IOLs). It supports ophthalmic surgeons to achieve minimal residual astigmatism for their patients by providing stable and accurate guidance throughout the cataract surgical workflow.

With traditional IOL guidance systems, surgeons can experience several inconveniences, which may affect precision. IOLcompass Pro is flexible and responsive with seamless interfacing, allowing surgeons to perform astigmatism corrections with the highest level of accuracy.

Unlike some other IOL guidance systems, IOLcompass Pro has full data connectivity with some of the leading topographers on the market today. Auto registration algorithms align generated guidance templates to the live surgical image via recognition of the patterns of the limbus and scleral blood vessel structures and provide highly stable, real-time eye tracking throughout the procedure. If changes need to be made at any stage, the software recalculates and proposes an optimized surgical plan, which the surgeon can accept or freely adjust as required; there are no rigid system pre-settings.

Patients have high expectations when they undergo cataract or refractive surgery: They expect to be glasses-free afterwards. To meet this expectation, accuracy is crucial, says Ulrich Jung, MD, of the ARTEMIS-EyeClinic Dillenburg, Germany. I like to use the topographer I trust most to provide the most accurate measurements. IOLcompass Pro fully connects with my existing topographer and my Leica microscope and doesnt force me to invest in an additional device. Dr. Jung goes on to explain how accuracy is maintained, As soon as the pre-operative digital image is registered onto the live surgical image, I immediately have a highly precise axial position where I can orient the lens. The stable display of the astigmatism axis throughout the whole placement translates into fast, uninterrupted, and precise procedures.

In the field of IOL guidance, existing products tend to restrict surgeons in pre-operative device selection and surgery plan adjustment, says Markus Lusser, President of Leica Microsystems. IOLcompass Pro is an intelligent tool which provides flexibility and responds to surgeons needs, for uncompromised support of their surgical precision. By choosing IOLcompass Pro with our new premium ophthalmology microscope Proveo 8, anterior surgeons now have a complete workflow solution from pre-operative planning to consistent, intra-operative visualization, and precise intraocular lens alignment. This helps them to achieve the best possible patient outcome.

Caption: IOLcompass Pro, a software-based guidance system for pre-operative planning and intra-operative positioning of premium intraocular lenses (IOLs), installed on the Proveo 8 ophthalmology microscope from Leica Microsystems

For more information about IOLcompass Pro please check: www.leica-microsystems.com/products/surgical-microscopes/ophthalmology/details/product/iolcompass

About Leica Microsystems:

Leica Microsystems develops and manufactures microscopes and scientific instruments for the analysis of microstructures and nanostructures. Ever since the company started as a family business in the nineteenth century, its instruments have been widely recognized for their optical precision and innovative technology. It is one of the market leaders in compound and stereo microscopy, digital microscopy, confocal laser scanning microscopy with related imaging systems, electron microscopy sample preparation, and surgical microscopes. Leica Microsystems has seven major plants and product development sites around the world. The company is represented in over 100 countries, has sales and service organizations in 20 countries, and an international network of distribution partners. Its headquarters are located in Wetzlar, Germany.
Medical error is the third largest cause of death in the US, according to a study published in The BMJ.

After analyzing medical death rate data over an eight year period, Johns Hopkins researchers found that more than 250,000 people die in the U.S each year as a result of medical error, making it the third biggest cause of death after heart disease and cancer.

Image Copyright: sfam_photo, Image ID: 381538246 via Shutterstock.com

Martin Makary and Michael Daniel (John Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore) say that death certificates in the US do not acknowledge medical error and that new criteria for classifying deaths on the certificates is needed.

Incidence rates for deaths directly attributable to medical care gone awry havent been recognized in any standardized method for collecting national statistics, says Makary.

The medical coding system was designed to maximize billing for physician services, not to collect national health statistics.

Currently, death certification in the US involves an International Classification of Disease (ICD) code being assigned for the cause of death. Therefore, deaths that are not associated with such a code fail to be captured.

Makary says that at the time the U.S. adopted this use of ICD billing codes, the potential for diagnostic errors, medical mistakes and the absence of safety nets to result in death was under recognized: Because of that, medical errors were unintentionally excluded from national health statistics.

For the study, the researchers looked at four analyses of medical death rate data published between 2000 and 2008. They then used 2013 hospital admission data and extrapolated that, based on the total number of hospitalizations during this time (35,416,020), the mean death rate due to medical error was 251,454 per year.

According to the annual list of most common causes of death in the US, compiled by the Centers for Disease control and Prevention, 611,105 people died of heart disease in 2013, while 584,881 died of cancer and 149,205 died of chronic respiratory disease. This puts medical errors as the third most common cause of death; behind heart disease and cancer, but ahead of respiratory disease.

Makary says: Top-ranked causes of death as reported by the CDC inform our countrys research funding and public health priorities. Right now, cancer and heart disease get a ton of attention, but since medical errors dont appear on the list, the problem doesnt get the funding and attention it deserves.

The researchers acknowledge that a certain level of human error is inevitable. However, they say we can better measure the problem to design safer systems mitigating its frequency, visibility, and consequences, and that more research into preventing medical errors arising is needed to address the problem.
University of California, Irvine scientists who study how circadian rhythms - our own body clocks - control liver function have discovered that cancerous lung tumors can hijack this process and profoundly alter metabolism.

Their research, published online today in Cell, is the first showing that lung adenocarcinoma can affect the body clock's sway over lipid metabolism and sensitivity to insulin and glucose.

Paolo Sassone-Corsi and Selma Masri of UCI's Center for Epigenetics & Metabolism and colleagues found in rodent studies that lung adenocarcinoma sends signals to the liver through an inflammatory response, which rewires the circadian mechanisms that manage metabolic pathways. As a result of this inflammation, the insulin signaling pathway is inhibited in the liver, leading to decreased glucose tolerance and reorganization of lipid metabolism.

"It seems that lung tumors take control of circadian metabolic function in the liver, potentially to support the heightened metabolic demands of cancer cells," said Masri, a research scientist in the Sassone-Corsi lab. "We believe that this distal rewiring of metabolic tissues does not occur only in the liver, suggesting a systemic shake-up of metabolism."

Circadian rhythms of 24 hours govern fundamental physiological processes in virtually all organisms. The circadian clocks are intrinsic time-tracking systems in our bodies that anticipate environmental fluctuations and adapt to suit the time of day. Changes to these rhythms can profoundly influence human health. Up to 15 percent of people's genes are regulated by the day-night pattern of circadian rhythms; nearly 50 percent of those involved with metabolic pathways in the liver are affected by these rhythms.

For the past decade, Sassone-Corsi - one of the world's foremost researchers on circadian rhythms - has investigated how the body clock controls various liver functions through the influence of external factors, such as day-night patterns and nutrition. That path has led him and his colleagues to explore how diseases such as cancer can impact these elegant regulators.

Despite numerous remarkable advances in research over the last 40 years, cancer remains a major unsolved problem. For many cancer patients, the deterioration of normal physiology and organismal function is the actual cause of death.

In the Cell study, tumor-derived inflammation was found to inhibit insulin signal transduction pathways in the liver, leading to hyperglycemia in mice with lung tumors. Fatty acid synthesis was also suppressed, while total cholesterol levels were elevated.

The Sassone-Corsi lab is currently analyzing the factors secreted by the lung tumors in an effort to fully map the metabolic effects of cancer and to better understand lung adenocarcinoma's ability to act as an organizer of the circadian clocks in metabolic tissues.

"It's important to continue learning more about the processes of circadian rhythms and how diseases like cancer can alter them," said Sassone-Corsi, the Donald Bren Professor of Biological Chemistry at UCI. "With increased knowledge, we can begin to develop interventions - both behavioral and pharmaceutical - that can help maintain and restore good human health."
Exchange of immunization data between a centralized city immunization registry and provider electronic health records led to significant improvements in pediatric immunization coverage, a reduction in over-immunization for adolescents, and increased completeness of immunization records, according to a study conducted at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University Medical Center, NewYork-Presbyterian, and the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene's Citywide Immunization Registry. Researchers compared the percent of children who were up-to-date for their age-appropriate immunizations and those who received extra, unnecessary immunizations before and after the implementation of two-way data exchange at point of care.

Up-to-date vaccination rates increased from 75 percent to 82 percent and were significant for all age groups. Findings are published online in the journal Pediatrics.

"Recent outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases underscores the importance that patients are fully immunized by receiving all recommended vaccines," said Melissa Stockwell, MD, MPH, associate professor of Population and Family Health at the Mailman School of Public Health and associate professor of Pediatrics at the Medical Center. "However, only 72 percent of young children in the U.S. have completed their primary immunization series, and evidence suggests that 10 percent to 20 percent of young children receive at least one unnecessary, extra immunization."

Immunization registries, also known as immunization information systems (IIS), collect and centralize immunization data for children and adolescents from immunization providers at the regional or state level. Over 86 percent of all U.S. children younger than 6 years have immunizations recorded in the registry--now implemented in nearly all 50 states, five cities, and the District of Columbia. However, until recently, clinicians wanting to access patient immunization information in the system generally had to manually look up the patient data on a state or local IIS website. The New York Citywide Immunization Registry was one of the first registries in the United States to allow clinicians to download immunization information into their local electronic health record, and NewYork-Presbyterian was the first user of this service.

The Columbia researchers examined data from five practices in the NewYork-Presbyterian Ambulatory Care Network which is integrated with the hospital's local immunization registry, called EzVac. Stockwell's analyses focused on children ages 19 to 35 months, 7 to10 years, and 13 to 17 years, reflecting the target assessment ages for the primary immunization series, school-age boosters, and adolescent immunizations.

With implementation of the IIS-to-EHR, or electronic health record, information exchange--immunizations for the series of vaccines increased significantly for all age groups. (Vaccines included those against diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis; polio; measles, mumps and rubella [MMR]; Haemophilus influenzae type b; hepatitis B; chickenpox; pneumonia, human papilloma virus (HPV), and meningococcus.) Over-immunization decreased significantly for adolescents. HPV was the most common immunization with extra doses.

"One potential explanation as to why immunization data exchange increased coverage is that prior to taking action to address missing immunizations a clinician, who may be unsure if the immunization is really missing, may opt to wait for a family to return with a paper immunization record rather than vaccinate," noted Stockwell, who is also a pediatrician at NewYork-Presbyterian. "While parent-held immunization records are valuable, parents may not always remember to bring them to every care visit, underscoring the importance of having immunization information readily available in the online registry in a way that is easy to access at point of care."

"Our findings demonstrated that data exchange can improve child and adolescent immunization status, allowing scarce resources to be targeted to those who are truly under-immunized," added Stockwell, "It is important to promote further development of the technology to support bidirectional immunization exchange as well as continued focus on local, state, and federal policies to support such exchanges."

"This article demonstrates the powerful impact and importance of immunization registries. CIR and EHR bidirectional information exchange has grown to approximately 600 facilities citywide - ensuring that providers have patient immunization records when the patient is in the office so that children receive all their recommended vaccines at that visit," said Assistant New York City Health Commissioner Dr. Jane Zucker, Bureau of Immunization.
insights from industry Dr. Lisa Price Chief Medical Officer at InnovAge

What are advance directives and are they the same as living wills?

An advance directive is a very specific legal document that details the medical treatments you want, and, importantly, dont want, if youre unable to communicate with a physician. This may happen as a result of a critical illness that could make you confused or unable to speak.

Some people want every effort made to keep them alive, others want little or no effort made. It all depends on ones values, culture, religious beliefs and intangibles that may be difficult to articulate. The most important thing to know is that these choices are yours and no one elses to make.

Often times in a case of serious illness there are decisions to make that are not covered in an advanced directive, such as whether to perform a procedure or use a particular medication.

Creating a durable medical power of attorney appoints a healthcare representative, many times a family member or friend as your decision maker if such an event occurs. This person acts as your voice to ensure your wishes, which may be described in detail in the advance directive or extend beyond it, are carried out.

An advance directive becomes enforceable once its signed. A durable medical power of attorney only makes decisions when a patient becomes unable to do so.

Its also important to note that laws vary by state, so seeking out an attorney in your area may be helpful.

A living will is a type of advanced directive.

Why do doctors need to have these conversations with patients and families and how do you think a patients advance directive affects the doctor/patient relationship?

As a geriatrician, Ive had these conversations many times with patients and families. They can be challenging because people often dont want to think or talk about their death or the death of loved one.

I have also seen relief on the faces of my patients and their families who welcome the chance to come to a common understanding of the conditions and the goals of their loved one.

Understanding a patients goals and wishes for their care in life threatening circumstances helps a physician develop the best plan of care.

In a recent survey performed by the John A. Hartford Foundation, the California Health Care Foundation and Cambia Health Foundation of 736 physicians found nearly universal agreement of the importance in having these conversations as a way to honor their patients wishes and also to avoid unwanted hospitalizations at the end of life.

Physicians identified several barriers to having these important conversations:

from concern that the patient may perceive them as having given up on them;

to a lack of training; and

a lack of formal systems including means to document in the electronic medical record.

Who makes advance directives and how do they help?

You can make an advance directive with the help of your doctor. It starts with a conversation, and then your decisions can be documented using widely available templates.

You can also turn to an attorney who knows the laws in your state to complete the advance directive and durable medical power of attorney.

What are the keys to successful conversations on end-of-life care?

The first step is to push past the initial discomfort of starting the conversation. Knowing your own priorities and sharing with your doctor what you understand about your condition and the areas that need clarification are very helpful in coming to a common understanding.

Sharing your decisions with your family and making sure your primary care physician and attorney have a copy of your advanced directive can make a highly emotional and often confusing time go much smoother.

Are advance directives legally binding?

Advance directives are legally binding documents that take effect when signed and implemented when you become incapacitated and unable to make decisions. Your wishes must be carried out by healthcare providers.

What if you wish to change your decision?

You can always make changes to an advance directive. Life situations may change, calling for a need to update the advance directive. You may change your mind about the type of life-saving care you want, or the healthcare representative may need to be changed.

Marriages, divorces and other life changes are good reasons to take a look at an advance directive and make any appropriate changes.

How does InnovAge support people with advance directives?

We encourage participants in our programs to create an advance directive. We discuss it with them and their caregivers, and talk about the issues associated with advance directives to support the participant.

What are the main myths youd like to dispel about advance directives?

Physicians do not have to wait until a person is near death to have these discussions.

People often think they are permanently locked in to the details laid out in the advance directive. Understanding that an advance directive can be modified at any time is very important.

How significant a role do you see advance directives playing in the future of end-of-life care?

As of January 2016, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) began reimbursing health providers for having these conversations.

Advance directives have always been an important part of healthcare. As more and more Americans become older10,000 people turn 65 each dayadvance directives will increasingly become important and a larger part of end-of-life care. The fact that CMS recognizes the importance of this service will hopefully lead to more people having these conversations with their doctors.

Where can readers find more information?

These organizations have lots of information about advance directives:

The Conversation Project has resources to help you start a conversation with your doctor and/or family about end of life issues.

http://theconversationproject.org/

The National Institute on Aging has comprehensive information about advance directives and end-of-life planning.

https://www.nia.nih.gov/health/publication/advance-care-planning

The National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization has an overview of advance directives, as well as links to every states specific details about the document.

http://www.caringinfo.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=3289

About Dr Lisa Price

Lisa Price, M.D. is Chief Medical Officer at Denver-based InnovAge, a provider of health and wellness services for older adults in California, Colorado and New Mexico.

Dr. Price was a private practice geriatrician for 11 years, and then attended on the Acute Care of the Elderly (ACE) service and taught Quality Improvement at the University of Colorado.

Dr. Price is Board Certified in Internal Medicine and Geriatrics, and has expertise in managed care, electronic health records and quality improvement. http://MyInnovAge.org.
New Delhi: JNU students union president Kanhaiya Kumar, who is on a hunger strike, was discharged from AIIMS after his health on Friday improved even as the varsity administration asked students to not invite outsiders saying it might vitiate the academic atmosphere and peace on campus.

While five students yesterday withdrew their fast against the punishment by the university in connection with the February 9 event during which anti-national slogans were allegedly raised, 15 others continued with the hunger strike which entered ninth day on Friday.

Kanhaiya, who is out on bail after his arrest in a sedition case, was yesterday admitted to AIIMS in a semi-conscious state. He was discharged today after treatment for mild dehydration and ketosis.

"Kanhaiya has been discharged from AIIMS. He has been advised bed rest for few days. He has to undergo some medical tests too but he will continue with the strike," a JNUSU statement said.

The ketone level of the fasting students is high and the BP is low, according to the test reports from the health centre.

On the other hand, JNU issued fresh advisory for the students and teachers to avoid inviting outsiders to the campus. The administration also asked the students to refrain from using "direct or indirect coercive measures and come forward for dialogue and discussion".

"The administration requests all the teachers and students to avoid inviting people from outside the campus for any gathering or activity to press their demands, which could undermine peace and security in the campus," JNU Registrar Pramod Kumar said in an appeal.

"Thousands of students on the campus are busy preparing for or writing their end semester examinations and also writing their dissertations. Continuing hunger strikes and escalation of it through involvement of outsiders may further enhance the stress level in the campus and affect the career of those students," he added.

While members from civil society joined the protests today, alumni of the university will gather tomorrow to express solidarity by fasting for a day.

In a separate notice, the Registrar asked the students to not use the Public Address System without permission and around the administration block, which has been the venue of protest ever since the sedition row broke out.
An implantable brain device that literally melts away at a pre-determined rate minimizes injury to tissue normally associated with standard electrode implantation, according to research led by a team from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. The researchers describe online in Nature Materials a new class of technology that provides greater resolution for measuring electrical activity in space and time that matches or exceeds existing methods.

"Dissolvable silicon electronics offer an unprecedented opportunity to implant advanced monitoring systems that eliminate the risks, cost, and discomfort associated with surgery to extract current devices used for post-operative monitoring," said senior co-author Brian Litt, MD, a professor of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Bioengineering. Litt co-led the study with long-time collaborator John A. Rogers, PhD, a material scientist from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. "This study tested the usefulness of temporary, dissolvable monitoring systems capable of providing continuous streams of data for guiding medical care over predetermined periods of time -- from days to months -- before dissolving."

The device is made of layers of silicon and molybdenum that can measure physiological characteristics and dissolve at a known rate, as determined by its thickness. For example, the team used the device to record brain waves in rats under anesthesia, as well as voltage fluctuations between neurons (EEGs), and induced epileptic spikes in intact live tissue. A separate experiment demonstrated a complex, multiplexed array made from these materials that could map rat-whisker sensing capabilities at high resolution.

These electrophysiological signals were recorded from devices placed at the surface of the brain cortex (the outer layer of tissue) and the inner space between the scalp and skull. Chronic measurements were made over a 30-day period, while acute experiments demonstrated device operations over three to four hours.

The type of neurophysiologic features measured by the new device are commonly used for diagnosing and treating such disorders as epilepsy, Parkinson's disease, depression, chronic pain, and conditions of the peripheral nervous system. "These measurements are critically important for mapping and monitoring brain function during and in preparation for neurosurgery, for assisting in device placement, such as for Parkinson's disease, and for guiding surgical procedures on complex, interconnected nerve structures," Litt said.

Other applications include post-operative monitoring and recording of physiological characteristic after minimally invasive placement of vascular, cardiac, orthopaedic, neural or other devices. At present, post-operative monitoring is based on clinical examination or interventional radiology, which is invasive, expensive, and impractical for continuous monitoring over days to months.

Comparative studies showed that the new sensor performed as well or better relative to conventional electrodes used in the clinic, with regard to tissue reactivity as measured by tissue pathology, as well as cellular and immune staining after the studies' end.

The team sees many uses for this new technology. "We also want to develop this implant to monitor post-operative seizures and recovery of brain function after surgery," Litt said.

"Recent evidence suggests that up to three months of intracranial recording may be required to adequately locate seizures before epilepsy surgery or device placement. This is a period of time that is prohibitively long for existing in-hospital approaches. Using our dissolvable electrodes for this situation would eliminate the danger and cost of removing electrodes."

These devices could also be used by heart and brain surgeons for such applications as aneurysm coiling, stent placement, embolization, and endoscopic operations. These new devices could monitor structures that are exposed during surgery but are too delicate to disturb after initial operations to remove devices. Currently, monitoring after many procedures is done remotely from surgical sites, with variable results.

The team next plans to develop more complex devices that include flow, pressure, and other measurement capabilities, in addition to electrical recording, and test them in animal models of disease, before moving into human testing.
Science professionals, doctoral and postdoctoral students from across the country will gather May 20 through 27 at the MDI Biological Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Maine, for an intensive one-week course in Quantitative Fluorescence Microscopy.

This powerful research technique uses uses fluorescent labels to allow scientists to see cells and sub-microscopic cellular components - even as small as a single molecule - with great specificity. Many scientists, however, don't have access to the most up-to-date equipment or lack an understanding of the relative advantages of the various techniques that would allow them to match their research goals with the best approach.

The goal of the MDI Biological Laboratory's course is to provide participants with the knowledge and expertise to implement cutting-edge microscopic methods in their laboratory research.

"This course is designed to take scientists who are using fluorescence microscopy to the next level," said Jane Disney, Ph.D., director of education at the MDI Biological Laboratory. "Participants are encouraged to bring their own specimens and test drive the most sophisticated fluorescence microscopes and accessories available before purchasing equipment for their own laboratories."

Fluorescence microscopy provides scientists with a high resolution window into the physiological and pathological roles of the molecular machinery within the cell, allowing them to see the dynamics of cellular components such as organelles, proteins, microtubules and chromosomes in unprecedented detail and in real time. The use of computers allows them to quantify molecular events with accuracy and precision.

Companies that will be demonstrating their products include Bitplane Imaris Software, Bruker Corp., Chroma Technology Corp., Hamamatsu Photonics, Leica, MatTek Corp., Molecular Devices, Nikon, Photometrics, ThermoFisher Scientific and Tokai Hit Co.

Limited funding for half- and full-tuition scholarships is being provided through Chroma Technology Corp., Nikon and a Maine INBRE (IDeA [Institutional Development Award] Network of Biomedical Research Excellence) grant. MatTek Corp. and ThermoFisher Scientific are making significant contributions of laboratory supplies and reagents.

The fluorescence microscopy course is one of more than 30 courses and conferences offered each year at the laboratory, whose mission is to develop solutions to complex human health problems through research, education and ventures that transform discoveries into cures. The courses, which are offered for all levels - from middle school students to science professionals -- attracted more than 1,100 participants in 2015.
The Internet has become a powerful and important resource for daily life. When patients receive a medical diagnosis, particularly a difficult one like pancreatic cancer, the web can be an essential information tool, helping to enable patients to have meaningful discussions with health care providers. However, new research from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) published today in JAMA Surgery suggests that online information about pancreatic cancer is often written at a prohibitively high reading level and lacks accuracy concerning alternative therapies.

"We know from past research that people are strongly influenced by what they read online, and they believe that what they read on the internet will help them make better health care decisions," said senior author Tara Kent, MD, a pancreatic surgeon at BIDMC and Assistant Professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School. "Dealing with a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer is difficult enough without asking patients to negotiate PhD-level terms. The concern here is that available web information may, in fact, be adding to existing barriers to care. If patients don't understand what they're reading, how can they make the best decisions about treatment options?"

The degree to which patients are empowered by written educational materials depends on the text's readability level and the accuracy of the information provided. A patient's health literacy or ability to comprehend written health information can impact clinical outcomes. Reading materials are rarely written at the sixth to seventh-grade reading level recommended by literacy specialists and multiple national institutions.

Kent and colleagues compared the accuracy and readability of patient-oriented online resources for pancreatic cancer by treatment method and website affiliation, such as privately owned, media, academic or government websites. The researchers conducted an online search of 50 websites discussing five pancreatic cancer treatment methods (alternative therapy, chemotherapy, clinical trials, radiation therapy and surgery). Readability was measured by nine standardized tests, and accuracy was assessed by an expert panel.

"We found that the median readability level was higher than recommended, requiring at least 13 years of education to be comprehended, but only 58 percent of the adult U.S. population has attained this level of education," said Kent. "These data indicate that online information about pancreatic cancer is geared to more educated groups. The general population and vulnerable groups -- particularly those with low health literacy -- will likely struggle to understand this information."

The authors also found appreciable differences among website affiliations and among websites discussing treatment methods. Those discussing surgery were easier to read than those discussing radiotherapy and clinical trials. Websites of nonprofit organizations were easier to read than media and academic websites. Nonprofit, academic, and government websites had the highest accuracy, particularly those relating to clinical trials and radiotherapy. Alternative therapy websites exhibited the lowest accuracy scores. Websites with higher accuracy were more difficult to read than websites with lower accuracy.

"This research illustrates one of the challenges incurred in the creation of accurate, yet understandable online information about a complex disease and its treatment options," the authors wrote. "In the absence of an Internet librarian, health care professionals should acknowledge that online information on aggressive diseases such as pancreatic cancer could be misleading and potentially harmful, and they should assume an active role in the evaluation and recommendation of online resources."

"Addressing the issue of equitable health literacy is especially critical as we work to close gaps in care among all the communities we serve, and as we continue to work toward empowering patients in the shared decision-making process," said Kent.
Efforts to improve the health of children at increased risk for asthma will receive a major boost with the launch of a new University of Arizona Health Sciences-led, federally funded national clinical study. For Fernando D. Martinez, MD, and his colleagues at the UA Asthma and Airway Disease Research Center, this study follows 30 years of research to prevent and cure this chronic disease.

Titled, "Oral Bacterial Extracts (ORBEX): Primary Prevention of Asthma and Wheezing in Children," the study is funded by a $27 million cooperative agreement grant from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, part of the National Institutes of Health (U01HL130045). Taking part in the study will be seven other prestigious research institutions across the United States: Columbia University Medical Center, Emory University School of Medicine, George Washington University/Children's National Health System, Harvard University/Boston Children's Hospital, Penn State University College of Medicine, University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, and Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

"Asthma is a disease that affects 10 percent of all children in the U.S., significantly impacting their ability to thrive," said Dr. Martinez, who will lead the nationwide research effort. "With this new study, we have the opportunity to identify children at the earliest stages of life who are at highest risk for disease and initiate early therapies to minimize respiratory tract illness. Following these children during the preschool years will further enhance our understanding of the disease, provide additional precision approaches to therapy and lead to optimal prevention strategies, and - hopefully - a cure."

Based at the UA Health Sciences' Asthma and Airway Disease Research Center, the study will enroll more than 1,000 babies, 6 to 18 months old, who are considered at high risk for developing asthma. High-risk factors include having a parent with asthma or a diagnosis of eczema, or both.

Infants will be randomly assigned to a treatment group that receives the preventive medicine - a bacterial extract - or a control group that gets a non-active placebo treatment. The medicine will be administered over two years. In the third year, researchers will document whether the babies who received the medicine have fewer asthma symptoms than those who received the placebo.

Dr. Martinez became familiar with a naturopathic powder developed in the 1970s in Switzerland. A study had shown the powder, mixed with juice and given to preschool children, decreased wheezing illnesses, which often are the first manifestation of asthma in early life.

"If we could prevent those illnesses, we may be able to prevent the alterations in the lung that predispose children for a lifetime of chronic asthma. The product also has a very good safety profile after decades of use in children as young as 6 months of age," Dr. Martinez said. "This could be transformational. For the first time this could give us hope that we can prevent this disease."

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Understanding the genetic and environmental factors that cause asthma, and finding a way to cure or prevent the disease, has been the primary focus of Dr. Martinez's internationally respected research career. Growing up in Santiago, Chile, Dr. Martinez remembers when he was 3 years old watching his mother struggle to breathe during a severe asthma attack. His mother's attacks continued, and so did his fear of losing her to the disease that made it so hard for her to breathe.

"I remember vividly, it's kind of ingrained in my brain, that I promised to myself that I would cure this disease one day, or better yet, find a way to keep it from happening in the first place," Dr. Martinez said.

Said pediatric pulmonologist Wayne Morgan, MD, principal investigator for the UA portion of the study: "Researchers across the world have tried to prevent the development of wheezing illness and asthma for decades. However, studies either reducing or increasing exposures to allergens early in life or using probiotics such as lactobacillus have had disappointing results and likely are not the way forward. Our current study seeks to stimulate the immune system in a safe manner in early life to prevent wheezing illness and, hopefully, the later development of asthma."

UA President Ann Weaver Hart, PhD, said, "the University of Arizona is laser focused on research that creates positive impact by bringing the best minds and the latest technology to bear on curing disease and improving health around the world. The work of Dr. Martinez and his colleagues is a wonderful example of how the creativity and insight of UA scientists spans across continents and disciplines, and I am so proud that they are working to better understand and - we hope - find a cure for a debilitating disease."

Joe G.N. "Skip" Garcia, MD, UA senior vice president for health sciences, said, "the Asthma and Airway Disease Research Center team is going to catapult our understanding of the disease, including the genetic and environmental factors that cause asthma. Dr. Martinez and his colleagues have the scientific expertise and the personal passion to end asthma in our lifetime. This study and the national scope of the clinical trial moves us toward a population health perspective in asthma research."
New Delhi: Can a WhatsApp message received by a Judge be treated as a petition? A bench headed by Chief Justice TS Thakur faced the peculiar question when advocate Ashok Arora brought up the issue, saying he had sent the CJI a WhatsApp message from the US about an issue and that the court should have taken cognizance of the matter based on that.



"We don't use WhatsApp. You came here from USA for this matter?" the CJI asked the advocate who instantly replied in the affirmative.



"If a matter written on a postcard can be treated as PIL why can't the WhatApp message. WhatsApp can be better than a postcard," Arora said, adding it is easier in case of WhatsApp to establish the identity of sender.



The bench said it will hear the matter on Monday. Arora said since the Chief Justice did not take cognizance of the issue he had raised in his WhatsApp message, he has now filed a petition.



In the petition, Arora said, he had raised the issue of citizens not performing their fundamental duties enshrined in the Constitution.



He said he has raised the issue of Article 51 A and 51 A (H) of the Constitution. These relate to developing the scientific temper, humanism and the spirit of inquiry and reform.



"99.9% citizens including lawyers, judges and parliamentarians do not perform their fundamental duties prescribed under Article 51 A of constitution," Arora said in his petition.



In his plea he said, the world is producing machines but not compassionate human beings due to which millions are suffering and not getting one square meal.



He said there is need to create an atmosphere so that people perform their fundamental duties and education system should make changes accordingly.
Mumbai: The Bombay High Court will pronounce the judgement on a bunch of petitions challenging the constitutional validity of the beef ban in Maharashtra on Friday.



A division bench of Justices AS Oka and SC Gupte had reserved the ruling in January after hearing the arguments.



In February 2015, the President granted assent to the Maharashtra Animal Preservation (Amendment) Act. While the original 1976 Act banned slaughter of cows, the amendment prohibited, in addition, slaughter of bulls and bullocks and possession and consumption of their meat.



As per the Act, slaughter attracts a five-year jail-term and Rs 10,000 fine while possession of meat of bull or bullock attracts one-year in jail and Rs 2,000 fine.



During the hearing, the HC had refused to grant interim stay to the provisions penalising the possession of beef.



Arif Kapadia, a city resident, and noted lawyer Harish Jagtiani have challenged the provision which says mere possession of beef anywhere in the state is a crime. This is arbitrary and undermines the cosmopolitan nature of the city which houses people from all religions and communities, they contend.



Other petitions have been filed by Vishal Sheth, a lawyer, and Shaina Sen, a student, contending that the ban on beef violates fundamental rights of citizens.


In 2007, two brothers - Kafeel and Sabeel Ahmed - put Bengaluru on the international terror map when they were named in the Glasgow bombings. Kafeel was killed in the suicide bombing in the Scottish city. His brother, Sabeel was later given a clean chit by UK investigators. Recently, the National Investigation Agency claimed Sabeel is involved in a fake currency racket and got Interpol to issue a red corner notice against him. But Sabeel's family says is already in detention in Saudi Arabia over the last nearly three months for unknown reasons. Sabeels father-in-law, Syed Saadatullah spoke to CNN-News18 saying neither Indian nor Saudi authorities were providing any information.





CNN-News18: Has Sabeel been detained by Saudi authorities? And for what reason?



Saadatullah: We received a call from our daughter on 9th of February, saying that after Sabeel came back from his night shift at the hospital and was sleeping at home, around 12.30 noon, 10-12 people from the local Saudi authorities barged into the home without any warning, ransacked the place and took Sabeel away without giving any reasons. They also took away all the electronic gadgets that were around in the house, like laptops, mobiles and what not.





CNN-News18: Did they give any reason why he was being taken into custody? How did your daughter know they were from Saudi authorities?



Saadatullah: When they walked in they told them something in Arabic. They hardly spoke any English , and from whatever my daughter could pick up, she came to know they were from Saudi authorities. Their faces were covered, so it was more like a raid on some illegal activity. We were shocked.



CNN-News18: Did they tell your daughter why he's been picked up?



Saadatullah: No, not at all. They did not give any reason, and they said they will come to know later why he's been picked up.



CNN-News18: Take us through what has happened since then. Do you know where he is right now, and what are the charges against him?



Saadatullah: The very same day, my daughter called up the local Indian embassy in Riyadh and gave all the information about Dr Sabeel, his passport number, where he is working. They did not have any clue. They said, they will contact once they know. Two or three days later, when she called, they said they still didn't have any information. To this day, we have not got any help from the Indian Embassy in Riyadh. We are still clueless about why he was picked up, and what was his fault, and what is the problem. We are still shocked and we are running from pillar to post here, as well as in Saudi Arabia.



CNN-News18: Have Saudi authorities got back to your daughter and told her where he is? It's been almost three months now?



Saadatullah: No, nobody came back to us here in India, or to my daughter. After a week, they went to the hospital where he was working. They tried to contact the director, but the director was clueless about why he was picked up. But eventually, after a week or so, the director got a mail from local police authorities telling him to suspend Sabeel's work and that an investigation is on.



CNN-News18: This letter came from Saudi authorities?



Saadatullah: It's not a letter. I think, the hospital administration received a mail from the Saudi authorities saying Dr Sabeel is in their custody.



CNN-News18: Have any government agencies tried to contact you personally, or tried to get any information from you about Sabeel?



Saadatullah: In India, nobody. We came to know of everything from my daughter in Saudi Arabia. We got some bits of information from the internet, but it was nothing concrete.





CNN-News18: Have Saudi authorities informed your daughter that he is being interrogated by any Indian agency or that he has been deported to India?



Saadatullah: We are clueless. We don't know who were the men who picked him up, and whether there were any Indian officials with them. When we approached the local station , they said we cannot register a complaint against investigating authorities. Friends said they might let him go after two months , but it's almost three months now. You can imagine the condition of my daughter and her four-year-old daughter and Sabeel's mother. They are totally helpless.



CNN-News18: What were your attempts to reach out to Indian agencies, other than the Indian Embassy. Have you appealed to the ministry of external affairs.



Saadatullah: Yes. A couple of days ago my daughter wrote a mail to the minister for external affairs, Sushma Swaraj, giving all the details. We are waiting for their response.



CNN-News18: What we are picking from government sources is that Sabeel had contacts with Anzar Shah Qasmi here. As you are aware - Qasmi has been arrested by agencies from Bengaluru last month, and there is a fake currency network case against him. What do you know about him? And, what do you know about Sabeels connection with him?



Saadatullah: Sabeel has not been to India for almost two years now. We don't have any information about his contact with Shah, or whoever it is, and to say he has been involved in fake currency racket - that is a shock for us. That is the last thing that Sabeel can be involved with. He is not such a person. And why should he do that?
The Jet Airways flight attendant, who became the face of March Brussels airport terror attack, finally returned to her home in Mumbai on Friday. The Jet employee, Nidhi Chaphekar, has made significant recovery from the injuries she had sustained, the company said in a statement.



Jet Airways released a statement saying, "She is in good spirits and is very happy to be back with her family," adding that Nidhi will now undergo treatment in Mumbai as part of the next phase of her recovery programme outlined by doctors.



The company further said, "Jet Airways continues to provide all the necessary support to Nidhi and her family during this time. Our priority is to ensure that she continues to receive the best medical care and attention so she can resume her normal life at the earliest possible."



Nidhi Chaphekar, an in-flight attendant with Jet Airways, had burns over 15% of her body and had fractured her foot after getting injured in the Brussels attack.



At least 26 people were killed and several others got injured after a series of explosions at Brussels airport and the metro system on March 22, 2016. Two explosion had taken place in the departures area of Zaventem airport shortly after 8 am local time. After a gap of almost an hour, there were blasts at Maalbeek metro station which is close to the European Union institutions in Brussels.
New Delhi: The deal for purchase of 36 Rafale fighter planes from France is not done yet, Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar said on Friday asserting that the government was negotiating to reduce to deal value and "save a lot" of money.



Parrikar accused the Congress of spreading rumours that the Rafale deal signed for USD 9 billion.



"We will reduce the deal value and we will save a lot. We will show them that we curved out a better deal that what the UPA government was getting that time," Parrikar said in the Lok Sabha during a Calling Attention Motion on the controversial AgustaWestland VVIP helicopter deal.



He said Congress had spread the word that the Rafale deal was signed for USD 9 billion, which got widely reported. "In such a situation, even other people also get carried away by such false information," Parrikar said.



The BJP had in April tweeted a graphic, saying that the Rafale combat aircraft deal has been "finalised" and the Narendra Modi government had saved over Rs 21,000 crore in the "re-negotiation" with the French government.



The Defence Minister had later clarified that it is not complete as yet but at an "advanced stage" and the intention is to "close it quite soon".



India has been bargaining hard with France over the pricing of the 36 fighter planes, a deal that was announced first during Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Paris in April 2015.



Parrikar was responding to Congress leader Jyotiraditya Scindia who said that the previous UPA government was doing the Rafale deal for USD 10 billion.



"Jyotiraditya Scindia took total liberties with the truth by saying that they were doing Rafale deal worth USD 10billion. First Rafale deal did not happen, their defence minister had written it.. he was scared that his image would be tarnished...," Parikkar said.



Arguing that Antony had left it to others to finalise the deal, he said, "He (Antony) had written that L-1 determination is done and now negotiate price. After finalising it, bring it back to me to check up if the company is L-1. I have never in my lifetime seen such a comment".



"They would have had the experience from Agusta deal and that is why they had wrote it on top of Rafale deal (file)," he said.
Weaving between tables at a seaside restaurant in Libya's capital bearing freshly baked rosemary bread, Abdelmuttaleb Twigiri shuttles between the wood-fired oven and his customers in a blur of hospitality.



It's the opening night of his brainchild Toucan, a Mediterranean "fusion" eatery that Twigiri hopes will give residents of once-bustling Tripoli a rare taste of normality amid political chaos.



"If I think of a government that could provide everything I need, I'd risk waiting a very long time," the 46-year-old tells AFP. "It's only thanks to the people that life goes on."



The North African nation has been mired in unrest since the 2011 NATO-backed ouster of longtime dictator Moamer Kadhafi, with militants fighting for power and a piece of Libya's vast oil reserves.



A militia alliance swept into the capital in August 2014, setting up its own parliament and forcing the internationally recognised administration to flee to the remote east.



Although a new, UN-backed unity government has gradually asserted its authority in the capital, Tripoli residents have grown used to fending for themselves.



It is in keeping with Tripolitans' do-it-yourself spirit that Twigiri created Toucan.



"There are enough people in distress," he says. "But now we want to live."



His establishment is one of several cafes and restaurants to spring up in the past three months along a 15-kilometre (nine-mile) stretch of road linking several neighbourhoods in western Tripoli.

They are braving an economic crisis marked by a dramatic cut in oil revenues, spiralling living costs, late wages and a recent liquidity shortage.



Entrepreneurs hope the unity government can calm some of the chaos befalling Libya, particularly security in a country that is increasingly a haven for extremists including the Islamic State group.



"Once people feel safe, they invest," explains Abdelqader al-Kanuni, president of a local charitable fund.



Tripoli remains dogged by sporadic violence but even a near-total breakdown of daily routine has failed to sap one passion all of its residents agree on: a love of coffee.



Libyans drink the stuff "morning, noon and night," according to Mohamad Aguili, who two months ago opened his Harley Davidson Cafe on Tripoli's western fringe.



- 'You need courage' -

Coffee is often imported from former colonial power Italy along with clean, modern machines with which to make it.



In straitened times such as these, import costs could impair Libyans' coffee intake, but Aguili says there are still cafes to suit every pocket.



Nevertheless, he is fully aware of the economic and security risks involved in the business.



"You need to have courage," he says in his coffee shop, which each afternoon is flanked by several chrome motorcycles that give the spot its name. "You have to throw yourself out there. Then it's make or break."



In the family section of Cafe Veranda, a renowned patisserie which despite the odds has maintained its reputation after its Italian chef fled in 2011, immaculately manicured cousins Hind, Mira and Lamaan struggle to make themselves heard above the hubbub.



"Pastimes are limited" in Tripoli, says Mira, a 23-year-old pharmacy student. "There are cafes, hours spent on Facebook, or both at the same time."



Hind, 25, says the capital's cafes and restaurants are a good way of giving them "the feeling" of a social life. "If they are open then everything is fine. Even during bombings or economic crises, people will always drink coffee."



For Twigiri, whose restaurant looks out over date palms planted to replace a wall built by Gadhafi's sons to block access to the beach, Tripoli's cafe culture is a symbol of a people unbowed by turmoil.



"Tripolitans bend -- they don't break," he says.
Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar talks to the media after the debate on AgustaWestland scam in Lok Sabha during the Parliament session in New Delhi. (Photo: PTI)

New Delhi: The deal for purchase of 36 Rafale fighter planes from France is not done yet, Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar said today with an assertion that the government was negotiating to reduce to deal value and "save a lot" of money.

He accused Congress of spreading rumours that the Rafale deal was being signed for USD 9 billion.

"We will reduce the deal value and we will save a lot. We will show them that we curved out a better deal that what the UPA government was getting that time," Parrikar said in the Lok Sabha during Calling Attention Motion on the controversial AgustaWestland VVIP helicopter deal.

He said Congress had spread the word that the Rafale deal was signed for USD 9 billion, which got widely reported. "In such a situation, even other people also get carried with such false information," Parrikar said.

The BJP had last month tweeted a graphic, saying that the Rafale combat aircraft deal has been "finalised" and the Narendra Modi government had saved over Rs 21,000 crore in the "re-negotiation" with the French government.

The Defence Minister had later clarified that it is not complete as yet but at an "advanced stage" and the intention is to "close it quite soon".

India has been bargaining hard with France over the pricing of the 36 fighter planes, a deal that was announced first during Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Paris in April last year.

Parrikar was responding to Congress leader Jyotiraditya Scindia who said that the previous UPA government was doing the Rafale deal for USD 10 billion. "Jyotiraditya Scindia took total liberties with the truth by saying that they were doing Rafale deal worth USD 10 billion. First Rafale deal did not happen, their defence minister had written ithe was scared that his image would be tarnished...," Parikkar said.

Arguing that Antony had left it to others to finalise the deal, he said, "He (Antony) had written that L-1 determination is done and now negotiate price. After finalising it, bring it back to me to check up if the company is L-1. I have never in my lifetime seen such a comment".

"They would have had the experience from Agusta deal and that is why they had wrote it on top of Rafale deal (file)," he said.
: Tinu Suresh Desai: Sharman Joshi, Meera Chopra, Vishal KarwalTouting to be a horror film, 1920 London featuring Sharman Joshi, Meera Chopra and Vishal Karwal in pivotal roles is anything but horror. Tad bit gripping; it even arouses your interest at certain points but definitely does not serve even the basics of being tagged as a horror film.The film opens with a beautiful train scene set in Sikar, Rajasthan which is the hometown of Shivangi (Meera Chopra) and then further explores the locales of London where she is living a happily-married life with husband Kunwar Veer Singh (Vishal Karwal). Both of them being Indian Royals receive a royal locket as a present and as a token of respect from their hometown which sets the story going but soon weird things start happening to Veer and his condition goes out of hand. Shivangi fears its black magic and rushes to Rajasthan where after a whole lot of unbelievable tantric ceremonies she realises that the only person who can save her husband is shepherd-turned-exorcist Jai Singh Gujjar (Sharman Joshi) who happens to be her old love-interest. (Insert a sarcastic wohoo!)All this is 1920-ish for which everything is following a make-believe pattern; from the set up of house interiors to hospital decors to vintage cars to Meeras costumes, hairstyles and everything. Not just the external factors but even the intrinsic acting abilities are exploring the arena of smiling, eyes-talking and walking around hand in hand in the beginning. Another intriguing aspect is that while the title speaks of London, the film is mostly cliched desi-version of horror stories.Meera is more like damsel in distress; whos either seen blushing in love or playing the sympathy card in pain. While she does resemble Priyanka Chopra a lot, her acting is a little too away from her cousins potential so comparisons cant (shouldnt) really be drawn. To her credit, not for once, does she overdo her part. Sharman is a brilliant actor but even that doesnt save this chuckle-inducing horror flick. Moreover, he can easily be called a misfit here. There are scenes where it looks as if hes trying to hard to fit in but to our disappointment, he isnt even close to what he has offered previously. For instance, theres a scene, just after his introduction, where Sharman is chasing a witch and you just cant help but begin thinking how forced a scene can be and even thoughts of it will evoke chuckles! Where is the Sharman were waiting for? Vishal Karwals dimples might fetch your attention in the beginning and in the end as those are the only two phases where he is seen in action!The plot is pretty much predictable but still doesnt fail to grip you. Twists are timely planned and executed in a bearable manner until you realise its supposed to be a horror! The basic idea lies with the overlapping of horror and tantric-sorts ideologies in Bollywood. Black magic, achhi atma-buri atma, lemon with red chillies, a couple of namahs, rivers, babas and everything cliched have been put in action here. Its more like light, camera, cliches!Being the third film in the 1920 series, after 1920 and 1920: The Evil Returns, there isnt anything wow or anything that can be boasted about. To the films credit, music will help you endure the story line that starts feeling like a sleeping pill towards the end.Dont even bat an eyelid before skipping 1920: London. Its that easy to miss!Rating: 1.5/5
Mumbai: Actress Kangana Ranaut is undergoing a legal battle with actor Hrithik Roshan and her father Amardeep Ranaut says that she has shown courage in every sphere of her life and he is proud of her.



Kangana's father accompanied her along with other family members to the national capital to receive the National Award for her film 'Tanu Weds Manu Returns'.



Speaking about her daughters success and her legal battle with Hrithik, the senior Ranaut said: I am very proud of my daughters achievements. She has shown exemplary courage in every sphere of her life and I stand by her in all her legal battles.



Issues between the two actors surfaced when Kangana hinted at Hrithik being her 'ex', saying in an interview that she fails to understand "why exes do silly things to get your attention".
New Delhi: Bollywood seems to be caught up in a kind of gender war. Actresses are raising their voices against pay disparities, the prevalent patriarchy and the difficult route to success for women in showbiz.



And, as actress Richa Chadha says, the word 'ambition' still has negative connotations when used for women, although she herself doesn't pay heed to "labels given by men or women".



Richa has established a permanent place in Bollywood through non-conventional roles from portraying a hot-headed don in 'Fukrey' to a small-town girl fighting taboos around sex in 'Masaan'. Now, she has gone behind the camera to produce a Punjabi short film 'Khoon Aali Chithi' -- based on terrorism the Khalistan movement spawned in the 1980s and early 1990s.



She is positive about the transition from actor to producer.



"I don't care how people react to it, because I don't see it as anything other than positive. I think the prevalent gender stereotype is ambition, still a bad word when it's applied to a woman, and a great quality when it's an adjective for a man. I don't care about labels given by men or women actually," Richa said in an email interview.



After Priyanka Chopra and Anushka Sharma decided to get into the filmmaking business, Richa has hopped onto the bandwagon.



What drew her to film production? Richa, who forayed into Bollywood with 'Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye!' in 2008, was quick to point out: "Why is the question specific to actresses? What draws an actor to production draws an actress to production."



"It's not a desire specific to gender. I'd like to be able to say what I want, through the content I support," she added.



Talking about her production, the actress said: "It is a short film that my friend Rupinder Singh brought to me. It's set in the late 1980s and early 1990s in a small village in Punjab where common people got caught in the crossfire between Khalistanis and the state. It moved me since I have a personal association with that. Also, it felt like the right thing to do support this film."



Richa, who is known for gravitating to content-driven cinema, asserted: "My name may not carry weight, but I know it carries credibility and I wanted to use that to spread the word about this short film."



The actress, who wants to back "interesting" projects as a producer, is a bag of nerves over the project, but is confident that she will improve with each production.



"This is my first experience as a producer/presenter. It is very different from acting, because as an actor, you primarily only care about your job," she said.



"I am sure I will learn about the challenges as I move on to bigger projects. This one was smooth. But because it's my first time, I am trying to figure out how to submit this short to as many festivals as possible."



It is not only production projects that are keeping Richa -- who has used her rustic charm to win hearts in movies like 'Gangs of Wasseypur' and 'Goliyon Ki Raasleela Ram-Leela' -- occupied. She is busy with Omung Kumar directed 'Sarbjit', which also stars Randeep Hooda and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan; and "Cabaret", where she is playing a dancer. And the actress says she is excited about all her upcoming projects.
Yash Chopra immortalized by Switzerland with his statue. https://t.co/6JPAgsSYmM pic.twitter.com/U2sT7ggFd0  Yash Raj Films (@yrf) May 5, 2016

: The Swiss government has honoured late Indian filmmaker Yash Chopra, whose lens captured the breathtaking locales of Switzerland for decades, with a special statue as a mark of gratitude.The statue was inaugurated on Wednesday. A sculpture made of pure bronze, and weighing about 350 kilos, presents Chopra in an iconic pose of directing a film, read a statement on yashrajfilms.com.Chopra, who opened a legacy of South Asian tourists flocking to Switzerland, loved to spend time there.Natural beauty and warm hospitality mark the association that his banner Yash Raj Films shares with the country.The statue will be installed in the heart of Interlaken.While many ministers and senior bureaucrats from the Swiss government attended this inauguration, his wife Pamela Chopra and his daughter-in-law Rani Mukerji were also present on the occasion. The event was organised by Interlaken Tourism and Jungfrau Railways.This is not the first time the filmmaker has been honoured in this way. The government of Interlaken awarded him the honorary title of Ambassador of Interlaken in 2011, and Jungfrau Railways named a train after him. In addition, the five-star Victoria Jungfrau Grand Hotel & Spa in Interlaken named a suite after Yash Chopra, known for films like 'Jab Tak Hai Jaan', 'Silsila' and 'Kabhi Kabhie'.
After Parliament, a stand-off between the BJP-led NDA government and the opposition Congress party is visible on the streets too. While the Congress is holding a protest march led by party president Sonia Gandhi, the government too, is holding a protest at the Gandhi statue in Parliament.

Leaders of the Congress, including Sonia Gandhi and party vice president Rahul Gandhi, are marching to Parliament from Jantar Mantar in a show of strength.

The Congress is protesting the witch-hunt by the Narendra Modi government over the Uttarakhand political crisis and AgustaWestland VVIP chopper issues.

Read all the Latest News , Breaking News , watch Top Videos and Live TV here.
The Central Government has agreed to hold a Supreme Court-monitored floor test in Uttarakhand Assembly. The vote of confidence will take place on May 10 but the court also ruled that the nine disqualified Congress MLAs cannot take part in the proceedings.



Former Uttarakhand chief minister Harish Rawat, whose government was dismissed by the Centre on March 27, will seek the vote of confidence in the Assembly.



The floor test will be held between 11 am and 1 pm in a special session of Uttarahand Assembly and the agenda will be whether Harish Rawat enjoys the confidence of the House or not. The proceedings will also be be videographed and result of the floor test will be produced before the apex court on May 11.



President's rule will be temporarily lifted for 2 hours in Uttarakhand when the vote of confidence will take place. The Uttarakhand Director General of Police and the Chief Secretary have been directed by the court to maintain law and order in the state.



The court will hear the matter again on May 11 and will decide whether Rawat will continue as Uttarakhand chief minister or not.







During the trust vote, members voting in favour of motion shall singularly vote and raise hand one by one and that will be counted by Principal Secretary, Assembly. Those in favour of the motion will sit on one side of the House and those against on other side.



During the hearing, Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi favoured a former Chief Election Commissioner or a former judge as an observer to oversee the voting process.



Earlier, the apex court had asked the Centre to respond to its suggestion about the feasibility of holding a floor test in Uttarakhand Assembly under its supervision.



The Nainital High Court on April 21 declared the President's rule imposed in the state on March 27 as unconstitutional. The court had also ordered the floor test on April 29.



But the Centre moved the Supreme Court and on April 22, the apex court ruled that there would no floor test in the Uttarakhand Assembly on April 29. The court also ordered that President's rule in the state would remain in force till further hearing.



The SC had also said it would try to give a verdict by May 13.
After Parliament, Congress on Friday took the alleged AgustaWestland VVIP helicopter scam and other issues out on the streets in a bid to corner the Centre. Defying police orders, Congress held a protest march from Jantar Mantar to Parliament against the Centre's alleged "witch-hunt" against the party.



Congress president Sonia Gandhi, vice president Rahul Gandhi, former prime minister Manmohan Singh and several other senior party leaders courted arrest at Parliament Street Police station after defying police orders against holding the protest march.



In an all-out attack on the Narendra Modi government, Sonia claimed that the Central government is trying to destroy democracy. "Modi government is trying to destroy the roots of democracy. No matter how much they (Centre) try to fight democracy, we will not let you succeed," Sonia asserted.



She also blamed the Centre for murdering democracy by dislodging state governments in Uttarakhand and Arunachal Pradesh. "Congress-led governments in Uttarakhand and Arunachal Pradesh were dislodged by Modi regime using money power. They are toppling our democratically elected state governments. They are murdering democracy," she said.



Invoking the late leaders of the Congress, Sonia said the party would not buckle under any form of injustice and was ready to take the detractors head on. "We are the people who gave their blood and laid down lives to protect the basic principles of humanity. Life has taught me to fight on. We have faced many challenges," the Congress chief maintained.







Targeting RSS, Sonia said, "We have to send a message so strong that people sitting in Raisina Hill and Nagpur sit up and listen."



On the raging farmers' suicide issue, Sonia said, "We had taken steps for the betterment of farmers, workers, women and youth. But this government has destroyed it. Everybody is feeling harassed and sad today. Farmers are committing suicide. They have assumed power by showing false dreams."



She said Congress will continue to fight inside and outside Parliament against injustice. The Congress Chief appealed to her party members "to reach out to the people and unmask Modi government in a democratic way". "We will not allow the democratic set up to be destroyed," she said.



Manmohan Singh also echoed Sonia's words and blamed Modi government for destablising states where Congress has governments. "By destabilizing Congress governments, Centre has attacked the democracy. Now they are eyeing Congress governments in other states too," Dr Singh claimed.



"Congress is like a flowing river, no matter how many false allegations are levelled, it will not divert from its path," Dr Singh added.


New Delhi: Fashion e-tailer Myntra said it expects 15-20 per cent of its sales to come from its desktop website, which will be re-launched next month.



A year after going app-only, fashion e-tailer Myntra has now decided to re-launch its desktop website from June 1.



"The re-launch of a full-fledged site is aimed to provide convenience to a segment of customers, especially women customers, who have a marked preference for browsing and shopping on multiple platforms such as mobile, tablet & desktop," Myntra said in a statement.



Myntra, part of e-commerce giant Flipkart, had attributed its earlier decision to go 'mobile-only' from May last year to the manifold growth in traffic from smartphones.



Stating that its mobile strategy had witnessed huge success, Myntra said it had seen 70 per cent growth and become the most loved mobile app amongst leading Indian e-commerce firms oer the last year.



"Despite the many clear positives, the company has decided to revisit its strategy and re-launch the desktop site. The biggest reason for this is the feedback from Myntra's consumers," it said.



An internal study also suggested that Myntra could expand its customer base by 20 per cent if it allowed users the flexibility of using multiple platforms for shopping, it added.



"Myntra expects 15-20 per cent of its sales to come from the website," the statement said.



Myntra CEO Ananth Narayanan said while it is still true that the mobile experience is far superior to the web, "we have recognised that some consumers still want the option to shop on the web and we're humble enough to listen to our customers".



According to Google Play Store, Myntra's app has seen over 10 million downloads.



Following Myntra, many Internet-based services companies had begun contemplating going app-only with the likes of Ola announcing the same. There were indications that Myntra's parent firm Flipkart might itself take that route.
circa 1935: Sigmund Freud (1856 - 1939) the neurologist and founder of psychoanalysis. (Photo by Hans Casparius/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Google marks the 160th birth anniversary of the Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis (the method of resolving mental illness through a dialogue between a doctor and patient) with a doodle on its home pages in a number of countries around the world. Freud was one of the most influential world-changing thinkers of the 20th century.Freud was born born on May 6, 1856, Freiberg, Moravia, Austrian Empire (now Pribor, Czech Republic). His father Jakob, was a Jewish wool merchant.His work on human sexual repression led to terms as "Freudian slip" and "Oedipus complex".Freud's discoveries about the unconscious mind altered popular perceptions of self and society. He abandoned more traditional ways of treating mental disorders in favour of listening to his patients talk, allowing them to free associate ideas.His observations led to a belief that neuroses resulted from repressed sexual trauma, which patients needed to release in order to recover.In The Interpretation of Dreams, published in 1899, Freud theorised that dreams represented the fulfilment of distorted infantile desires and wrote about the "Oedipus complex", the child's desire for the parent of the opposite sex.Freud fled Nazi-occupied Vienna in 1938 and spent his final days in London. He died on September 23, 1939, at age 83.Instead of the dimpled leather couch that we would usually associate with Freud and other therapists, Google doodler Kevin Laughlin drew an iceberg for Sigmund Freud's 160th birth anniversary. "With a vast hidden base, the iceberg references the murky depths of the unconscious mind. More importantly, the design draws our eye to the horizon, reminding us how the genius of Freud's practice rests in the space between doctor and patient, reader and text, human and world," Google describes the doodle.
Co-founders of sweatcoin (L-R) Oleg Fomenko, Ranbir Arora and Anton Derlyatka pose for a photograph at their office in London, Britain May 4, 2016. (Photo: Reuters)

Co-founder of sweatcoin Oleg Fomenko poses for a photograph at his office in London, Britain May 4, 2016. (Photo: Reuters)

A free smartphone app that will pay people to be physically active launches on Wednesday in Britain, with users given digital "sweatcoins" depending on how many steps they take that can be exchanged for rewards or traded like money.It's the latest initiative in an emerging fitness economy that includes all manner of monitoring devices, apps that reward activity with vouchers and even experiments in offering cheap insurance to people who can demonstrate they exercise.Sweatcoin aims to differentiate itself by using complex software to measure movement and location to prevent cheating, and by using the technology behind virtual currency bitcoin to manage transactions.Retailers, health insurers and corporate wellness managers are taking notice, according to Oleg Fomenko, one of the serial, London-based Russian entrepreneurs who founded Sweatcoin.smallCo-founder of sweatcoin Oleg Fomenko holds an iPhone with the sweat coin app open, at his office in London, Britain May 4, 2016. (Photo: Reuters)>"This whole business is pegged to making movement valuable," he told Reuters. "Eventually, sweatcoin is going to have a rate of exchange tied to the British pound."Sweatcoin, available in Britain in Apple's app store with an Android app to follow in months, offers one coin for every 1,000 steps. Within weeks users can have enough to exchange for fitness products or services in its marketplace.Rewards include Vivobarefoot running shoes, Kymira infra-red clothing and fitness classes from Wonderush or BOOMCycle.The company has signed up four London start-ups to offer Sweatcoin as part of an employee rewards programme that will offer extra days off, subsidised healthy meals or free massages for sweatcoins they accumulate through activity.Fomenko said his company had talked to all the major health insurers but must prove it can attract users before it can hope to sign commercial deals to use Sweatcoin metrics as a way of calculating health risks and potentially lowering policy premiums for verified physical activity.If Sweatcoin succeeds, the long-term idea is that insurers or employers might pay to take sweatcoins off the market as a reward to users for their physical activity."Right now, movement is valued at zero," Fomenko said. "How much value a sweatcoin will have will be a market decision but we know it's not zero."There will be competition. Another British start-up, Bitwalking, is also seeking to launch its own digital currency.But Sweatcoin is confident in its software, which is carefully calibrated to prevent slouchers from faking activity by cross-checking data on activity and location to verify steps. Most rival apps rely simply on user-reported information.The company is also developing a proprietary version of blockchain anti-tampering technology to manage the distribution of its currency, akin to how bitcoin transactions work.It's an elaborate second act for Fomenko, whose last start-up, Bloom.fm, a UK music app launched in 2013, drew 1.3 million downloads before imploding when its sole investor, a unit of Gazprom Media, pulled out after Russia's invasion of Crimea and he failed to find fresh funding.Depressed by his failure, Fomenko said he started studying blockchain technology. Meanwhile, his friend and fellow Sweatcoin founder, Anton Derlyatka, was getting going on a fitness start-up.The epiphany came when the two went for a run. "I got my buzz back," Fomenko said. The question they asked themselves was what could motivate them to sustain that feeling.This time round, Fomenko is taking money from a diverse set of London start-up investors and undisclosed music industry heavyweights. Sweatcoin has raised 610,000 pounds ($890,000).It has also landed a small grant and promotional support from London Sport, an arm of the Greater London Authority that outgoing Mayor Boris Johnson has pushed to encourage Londoners to become more active.Its two other co-founders are Egor Khmelev and Danil Perushev. Each previously sold their firms to Dream Industries, a Moscow-based start-up technology holding company.Perushev has moved to San Francisco with the aim of expanding Sweatcoin into the United States in the coming year.
New Delhi: The government on Thursday said a proposal is ready to amend the Divorce Act to halve the separation period for Christian couples seeking to file for divorce by mutual consent.

In a written reply in Lok Sabha, Law Minister D.V. Sada-nanda Gowda said the government plans to amend Section 10 A of the 1869 law to reduce the minimum mandatory period of separation from two years to one year to bring uniformity with other personal laws. The move comes against the backdrop of a Supreme Court ruling and demands by the community.

The separation period under Hindu Marriage Act, Parsi Marriage and Divorce Act and the Special Marriage Act is one year. Section 10A(1) of the Divorce Act, added through an amendment in 2001, says that a couple seeking divorce should be living separately for a period of two years or more.

Against the backdrop of the Supreme Court order delivered in April last and demands by members of the community, the Law Ministry has decided to move the proposal to reduce the separation period.

Questioning the existing law, the Supreme Court had urged the Centre to make necessary amendments. Should Christians stay separated for minimum two years when the period prescribed for others is one year? It does not make sense to us. It is a pure question of law and you (government) should have acted on your own, a bench of Justices Vikramjit Sen and A.M. Sapre had observed.
Dhaka: Preparations were on Friday underway in Bangladesh for the execution of chief of fundamentalist Jamaat-e-Islami Motiur Rahman Nizami, a day after the Supreme Court rejected his plea to review the death penalty for war crimes, with family members meeting him in prison for the last time.



"Seven members of his family including his wife, two sons, daughter visited him," jailor Nasir Uddin of suburban high-security Kashimpur Central Jail said.



He said the close relatives were allowed to stay for 40 minutes with the top leader of Bangladesh's biggest Islamist party which was opposed to the country's 1971 independence from Pakistan.



Another senior official of the prisons department said the 73-year-old war crimes convict was expected to be executed at Dhaka Central Jail but simultaneous preparations were underway at Kashimpur jail as well.



"The execution is likely to take place in Dhaka Central Jail, but we asked officials at Kashimpur prison to make alternative preparations to carry out the process in two hours' notice, if required," said the official, requesting anonymity.



The Jamaat chief could be executed any time after he on Thursday exhausted his last legal opportunity to overturn the death penalty, with the Supreme Court rejecting his petition to review the death sentence it earlier upheld for committing crimes against humanity during 1971 Liberation War, siding with the Pakistani troops.



He was particularly found guilty of systematic killings of more than 450 people alone in his own village home in northwestern Pabna, siding with the Pakistani troops.



Nizami, a former lawmaker and minister in ex-prime minister Khaleda Zia's cabinet, has been in jail since 2010, when he was arrested to be tried for 1971 war crimes in a special tribunal which handed him down death penalty on October 29, 2014 on charges of mass murder, arson, loot and rape.



Nizami, who headed the infamous Al-Badr special militia force and Jamaat's student wing in 1971, challenged the International Crimes Tribunal (ICT-BD) verdict before the Supreme Court which upheld the original judgment on January 6 this year.



In his last legal efforts to save the neck, Nizami then sought to get the judgment reviewed by the apex court itself, which on Thursday dismissed his last appeal, clearing the way for him to walk to the gallows.



Jail officials, however, declined to give details about when they were planning to hang the war crimes convict but said that in line with the procedure, Nizami would be asked if he preferred to seek presidential mercy, acknowledging his guilt, as his last ditch effort to evade the noose.



Attorney General Mahbub-ey Alam earlier said that unlike ordinary death row convicts, Nizami could be hanged anytime as set by the government after the final verdict of the Supreme Court though he would get the chance to seek the presidential clemency.
Washington: Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has backed Brexit, saying the UK would be "better off without" the European Union, a stand contrary to the views of US President Barack Obama.



However, Trump said it was his personal view and he would want the country to make its own decision. "I think the migration has been a horrible thing for Europe. A lot of that was pushed by the EU," Trump told Fox News.



"I would say that they're better off without it, personally, but I'm not making that as a recommendation. Just my feeling," the White House aspirant said. Trump's comments came two weeks after President Obama urged Britain to stay in the EU when it votes on June 23.



Earlier this week, Trump had criticised Obama for supporting Cameron in his campaign for Britain to remain in the EU. "I know Great Britain very well. I know, you know, the country very well.



I have a lot of investments there. I would say that they're better off without it. But I want them to make their own decision," the 69-year-old tycoon-turned- politician said.



Trump's comments carry weight as he is now alone in the White House race in the Republican party and his being crowned as the presidential nominee at the Cleveland convention in July is now only an formality.



Britain will vote to leave the EU, termed as Brexit, in a June 23 referendum. British Prime Minister David Cameron on Thursday stood by his criticism of Trump's vow to ban all Muslims from entering the United States.



However, he said the billionaire property tycoon "deserves our respect" for his victory in one of the most contentious nomination battles in generations.
Two city women were honored for their contributions to the community during an award ceremony hosted by the Virginia Legal Aid Society and the Lynchburg Bar Association on Thursday.

Yvonne Yonnie Schewel received the Marion T. Baker Award for pro-bono service from the Legal Aid Society and the Bar Association.

David Neumeyer, executive director of the Legal Aid Society, said Schewel started volunteering about three years ago and repeatedly has been willing to take on a variety of cases.

She took a case from us the first day she signed up, Neumeyer said in a phone interview Thursday evening.

In addition to taking on cases involving children with special educational needs, Neumeyer said Schewel has served on a conflict panel that assists parties the society cant take on due to conflicts of interest.

The Marion T. Baker Award, formerly called the Pro-Bono Award, is being given this year under its new name in honor of Marion Baker, one of the awards first recipients. Baker died in February. Neumeyer said Baker was a longtime volunteer and supporter of the society.

Marie Waller received the Bar Associations Liberty Bell Award, which is given each year to a non-lawyer who promotes a better understanding of the law and courts.

Andrew Pearson, a member of the bar, said Waller used her longtime teaching position at E. C. Glass High School to expose students to the criminal justice system.

In order to gain a better understanding and appreciation for the law and the judicial system, Ms. Wallers students attended Lynchburg City Council meetings and Circuit Court trials, and heard lectures from state senators and delegates, City Council members, public defenders, commonwealths attorneys, police chiefs and judges, Pearson said in an email Thursday.

Waller also serves on the Lynchburg City School Board.
Party legislators have been instructed to visit the drought-hit districts between May 9 and May 22 along with city and district unit presidents and former peoples' representatives to find out the reality of various schemes. (Photo: Representational Image/AFP)

Lucknow: Alleging that benefits of government relief measures and funds were not reaching the needy in drought-hit areas of Uttar Pradesh, Congress on Friday said its leaders will tour all water-scarce districts to review implementation of the state and central schemes in UP.

"Party legislators have been instructed to visit the drought-hit districts between May 9 and May 22 along with city and district unit presidents and former peoples' representatives to find out the reality of various schemes of the state and central governments being run there to deal with the situation," Congress Legislature Party leader Pradip Mathur said.

The decision has been taken on the directives of AICC general secretary and in charge of party affairs in UP Madhusudan Mistry, he said.

The visiting teams will check the reality of schemes like MGNREGA, food security, waiver of farmers' loans, among others, and submit their reports by May 31, Mathur said.

Alleging that the benefit of the relief funds and schemes was not reaching the needy, he said in the absence of a proper monitoring system, funds were being misused and its utilisation shown only on papers.

He alleged that at a time of a famine-like situation in the state the central government was merely indulging in "gags", while the state government's schemes were not benefiting the people.

With Bundelkhand region facing severe heat wave and drought, the UP government has announced a special package for the parched area, while the Centre has chalked out a multi- pronged strategy to mitigate the woes of distressed farmers, several of whom have committed suicide.
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New Delhi: The Centre will apprise the Supreme Court today about the feasibility of holding a floor test in the Uttarakhand Assembly under the court's supervision.

The apex court on Wednesday had granted the Centre two days time to respond, which came after Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi told the court that he is yet to receive instructions from the central government.

However, the apex court clarified that it would hold a final hearing to dispose of this matter quickly if the Centre says no to the floor test suggestion.

Rohatgi told the media later the Supreme Court has made it clear that even if the floor test is to take place, it will not mean the restoration of status quo ante.

"Which means the position at the time when the President's Rule was imposed won't be restored. Namely of a chief minister and a government, so that position is out," he said.

"The actual modalities will be decided by the court, even in relation to the nine disqualified persons because their petition is pending," he added.

The counsel for former Uttarakhand Chief Minister Harish Rawat had submitted before the court that his client will have no objection if the government accepts Supreme Court's suggestion.

The Supreme Court had extended the stay on the implementation of Uttarakhand High Court's decision quashing President's Rule in the state till further orders.
Colm: JSC chairmanship not sacrosanct

The matter arose on Wednesday in the context of the storm raging over legislation to widen the powers of the Strategic Services Agency (SSA). UNC Senator Wade Mark expressed dissatisfaction with the fact that Minister of Works and Transport Fitzgerald Hinds chairs the Joint Select Committee on National Security.

However, Imbert said, There are a number of joint committees.

The Government chairs three of them. I chair the committee on energy affairs, Mr Hinds is national security. That is three out or a large number of committees.

We felt that energy was specifically important that a government minister should chair that.

We felt national security similarly.

The others we felt that they should be chaired by others. The Acting Prime Minister further stated the UNCs previous position on the matter was that the composition of oversight committees was not a matter cast in stone.

It is not sacrosanct that none of these committees should be chaired by Government members, Imbert said. In fact, when these constitutional committees were brought in by the UNC, that matter came up and they indicated at the time that it is not something that is cast in stone. He continued, Different approaches for different things. So that the Government felt that there are certain committees that require a government member to chair. I could give you the assurance that it is not that the Government will be chairing these committees in order to cover up anything of prevent the examination of entities. People should not be too worried about that. Minister in the Office of the Attorney General and Legal Affairs Stuart Young yesterday, in defending the SSA (Amendment) Bill 2016, said the SSA is subject to two committees, the JSC on National Security and the Local Authorities, Service Commissions and Statutory Authorities Committee, chaired by Independent Senator Ian Roach. He said the SSA is a statutory authority under the remit of this committee.

Opposition MP Dr Roodal Moonilal yesterday said the notion that JSC oversight would be a safeguard was unsound.

They are defending the indefensible, Moonilal said. The parliamentary committees could not get information from Petrotrin, it is ludicrous to suggest that they will get information on spying.

Our position is amendment to institute checks and balances in the entire system and organisation to prevent abuse on a daily operational basis. Moonilal continued, Parliament committee oversight cannot work. That is to wait for months and years after for a Parliament committee to ask questions when even the officials held to account may not be in the organisation or alive.
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A brand and its associated trademark is worth a lot to a company since they can monetise it for more profits over a long period of time, however when the brand is used without any fee or without the permission of the company then it becomes a huge problem. Apple Inc were not amused when it emerged that a leather good manufacturing had been using the name of its flagship product the I-Phone in order to brand some its products. The products included regular leather products like handbags and wallets. Xintong Tiandi, the company in question, has been selling leather products with the brand name 'IPHONE' and in fact they had also used the trademark logo that must have comes as a bit of a shock for executives at Apple.

The company had acquired a trademark for 'IPHONE' leather products back in 2010 and in 2012, Apple Inc were forced to contact the Chinese trademark authority regarding the violation. However, the outcome was not favourable and eventually they had to file a case in Beijing. The verdict that came out a few days back states that Xintong Tiandi can still use the 'IPHONE' brand for its products and it must have come as a huge blow to the company. A spokesman for Apple said, "Apple is disappointed the Beijing Higher People's Court chose to allow Xintong to use the iPhone mark for leather goods when we have prevailed in several other cases against Xintong. We intend to request a retrial with the Supreme People's Court and will continue to vigorously protect our trademark rights.We work hard to make the best products in the world and want to ensure our customers' experience is not compromised by companies who try to profit from using our brand."

The court stated that Apple had entered China in the year 2009 while Xintong Tiandi had acquired the trademark two years prior to that and hence it cannot be proven beyond reasonable doubt that they copied the trademark. The judgements stated that IPhone was not as widely known in China at the time.
In a breakthrough trial, scientists are exploring the possibility of putting back life into the brains of dead people. Biotech Company Bioquark has been given ethical permission by the U.S. government to test whether some parts of the central nervous system can be revived in people who have died out of traumatic brain injuries.

A report published in The Telegraph reveals that Bioquark can involve 20 patients who have undergone traumatic brain injuries and declared dead. Using a combination of therapies such as nerve stimulation with lasers as well as a mix of peptides and stem cells, scientists are planning to pull patients back from brain death.

In the project called ReAnima Project, the experiment has received approval from the Institutional Review Board at the National Institutes of Health in India and the US. Patients will be recruited and in six weeks, peptides will be introduced into their spinal cords through a pump, while stem cells will be injected twice every week.

Patients who have been certified dead but kept alive with the help of life support will be in the study over a number of months. Scientists have planned to use rain imaging equipment and MRI scans in order to identify regeneration signs, especially in the upper spinal cord, which is the brain stem's lowest region controlling heartbeat and independent breathing.

The team surmises that the brain stem cells can wipe out their history and restart life, depending on their surrounding tissue. The team bases its hypothesis on instances from the animal kingdom, especially amphibians such as salamanders that can regrow whole limbs.

"This represents the first trial of its kind and another step towards the eventual reversal of death in our lifetime. We just received approval for our first 20 subjects and we hope to start recruiting patients immediately from this first site," said Dr. Ira Pastor, CEO of Bioquark Inc. "To undertake such a complex initiative, we are combining biologic regenerative medicine tools with other existing medical devices typically used for stimulation of the central nervous system, in patients with other severe disorders of consciousness. We hope to see results within the first two to three months."
Stealing food is not a crime if you are hungry and desperate enough, rules Italy's highest court.

It follows a controversial case that happened in 2011, when Roman Ostriakov, a homeless 30-year-old Ukranian national, tried to rob sausage and cheese worth $4.50 from a supermarket. He had the money only for breadsticks.

Another customer at the store saw him and sneaked about him to the security. Four years later, he was convicted and sentenced to six months with a $115 fine.

The media and public heard about it. Most of the people saw a parallel with the story of Jean Valjean, the protagonist of Victor Hugo's "Les Miserables", in which he was caught stealing bread for his sister's starving children.

The state prosecutor argued that he should be found guilty not of theft, but attempted theft. He had been caught before he left the store, so he needed to be absolved of the technicality.

Surprisingly, Italy's Supreme Court of Cassation completely threw out the conviction, as, in its eyes, stealing some small quantities of food by a starving man is not a crime.

"The condition of the defendant and the circumstances in which the seizure of merchandise took place prove that he took possession of that small amount of food in the face of an immediate and essential need for nourishment, acting therefore in a state of necessity," the court said in a written ruling.

The media hailed the ruling as a humanitarian act of mercy.

"The court's decision reminds us all that in a civilized country no one should be allowed to die of hunger," the Italian newspaper La Stampa wrote in a front-page editorial.

Still, many slammed the Italian justice system for taking five years to settle a case about a theft that was worth less than $5.

"Yes, you read that right," an opinion column in Corriere della Sera said, "in a country with a burden of 60bn in corruption per year, it took three degrees of proceedings to determine 'this was not a crime."
Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar after the debate on AgustaWestland scam in Lok Sabha during the Parliament session in New Delhi. (Photo: PTI)

New Delhi: Mounting attack on Congress, the government on Friday said the previous UPA government had "done everything" to help AgustaWestland bag the chopper deal and asserted that the main beneficiaries of the kickbacks will be tracked so that "may be we can do" what "we could not do in Bofors".

In a hard-hitting speech in the Lok Sabha, Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar said the "entire corruption" in the deal took place during the UPA tenure but former Air chief S P Tyagi and Gautam Khaitan are "small people" who "simply washed their hands in a flowing ganga (of corruption)" and that the government will "find out where the river was going".

He said while the decision on the contract was taken in 2010, Tyagi had retired in 2007 and "might have got just a 'chiller' (loose change)".

Read: UPA govt did everything to help Agusta bag contract: Manohar Parrikar

Amid a walkout by Congress which was pressing for a Supreme Court-monitored probe, he said CBI is "very seriously" investigating the case.

"I hope members are satisfied and members will support government in finding the truth. The truth may lead to many unwanted realism. What we could not do in Bofors, may be we will do it in AgustaWestland," Parrikar said while replying to a debate on the Calling Attention Motion during which he continuously targeted the Congress but deliberately refrained from naming anybody.

He said the UPA government had "done everything" to help AgustaWestland bag the Rs 3600 crore deal for purchase of 12 VVIP helicopters and that its action against the company following the disclosure of corruption was not pro-active but "forced by circumstances".

Read: AgustaWestland case: SC seeks Centre's reply on PIL for FIR against Cong leaders

He asserted that the government will recover damages to the tune of 398 million euros as well as the "bribe".

Referring to the Italian court's recent judgement, Parrikar said with this, the criminal conspiracy has been established and "we will get the documents very fast".

Alleging that the Congress party had close links with Christian Michel, the middleman in the deal, he said the contract was given to a company which had not even participated in the tendering process.

Read: Agusta deal: How did Swamy get sensitive confidential info?, asks Congress

Finding loopholes in the deal, the Defence Minister said the tender was submitted by Italy-based AgustaWestland but the contract was given to the UK-based Agusta Westland International Ltd (AWIL), which was not Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM).

"I am shocked, how could you accept order from a company who has not given tender? They lost sense of proportion. They thought they will be in power for ever. The smell and sight of Euro was so attractive, so intoxicating that they forgot everything. They should take consultation from Michel on how to cover up and how to do white wash," he said taking a dig at the Congress.

As Congress created uproar and tried to disrupted his speech, he remarked, "Why are you (Congress) concerned? I have not named anybody. You seem to know where the ganga was going."

Read: Congress demands SC-monitored probe in VVIP chopper deal

"An investigation is underway with regard to those who washed hands in the flowing ganga. Those who wash hands in the ganga have an idea about temperature of the water, how fast the water is flowing. Based on that, we are assessing whether water was cold or hot, whether the water had Hindi, English, Italian or German and what was the issue," Parrikar said.

Refusing to spell out what CBI probe had revealed, the Defence Minister told the House, "I can assure you that I will not disappoint you."

He said he has already started personally "monitoring" the probe even though CBI and ED are not under him. "I am personally taking interest into the sequence of events," he said.

Read: Agusta rocks August Houses: Who benefitted, asks Parrikar

When CPI(M) member Mohd Saleem questioned how he could "monitor" CBI and whether it was not affecting its independence, the minister amended his version to say that he was not telling CBI what to do but only "trying to find out what they are doing" and "monitoring its progress" to check if they are doing something.

He asserted that it was within his right as otherwise he would not be able to inform the House about the progress of the probe.

Parrikar, while giving details of the case, said the decision to prescribe higher cabin height of 1.8 metres of the helicopter was taken by the UPA government on May 9, 2005 and to buttress his point, he placed on the table of the House the minutes of the meeting that was chaired by the then NSA M K Narayanan.

Making 1.8 metre height of the cabin mandatory ensured that only AgustaWestland could qualify.

Noting that the scam surfaced in 2012, the Defence Minister said nothing was done by the then UPA government till January 2014. Describing the then Defence Minister A K Antony as "bechara" (helpless), Parrikar contended that his "hands were tied" and he took no action as he "feared that his sainthood would be disrobed".

He said Antony acted only after a top official of Finmeccanica, the parent company of AgustaWestland, was arrested in Italy in connection with bribery in the deal.

Soon after the arrest, Antony gave the files to CBI in 2-3 hours, he said, adding "He (Antony) wanted to protect his image....Whether he knew or didn't know, I don't know."

Responding to Congress contention that the Italian judge had said that there was no evidence against Sonia Gandhi, Parrikar said it was half-truth as the judge had said that it was for India to investigate and for its investigating agencies to "prove the guilt of people who are suspected".

With regard to the Congress charge that the Modi government had allowed an AgustaWestland affiliate to participate in another tender despite the company being blacklisted, the Defence Minister said the firm had only put on website its Request for Information (RFI) which anybody can do in a digital world.

"Any person who wants can put his own information there. Now it is on open interent and if anyone wants to put information, whether it is (Congress leader) Jyotiraditya

Scindia, or Christian Michel or Agusta Westland, we cannot stop him," he said.

He then took a dig at Congress, saying they seemed to know every action of AgustaWestland. He said he was not aware that the company had uploaded something on the website and he looked for it only after Congress raised the issue.

"So on RFI, if someone has put it, I didn't know. It came to my notice, when these people (Cong) raised it. So with these (company) people, how much close relation they share, it comes to our mind. I didn't know about it that they have loaded information on RFI," Parrikar said.

Suggesting conspiracy to eliminate evidence in the deal, he referred to a "mysterious" fire incident on July 3, 2014 in the Air Force headquarters here and said he would be asking the CBI to probe that.

He said all files were burnt in that fire but luckily three files related to the AgustaWestland deal were saved as those had been kept by an official in his locked drawer.

"If it was in somebody's mind to set it on fire, we think that failed as the official who was there because the Agusta issue was sensitive. He had locked the files in his drawer. So three files were saved and the three files related to AW-101 helicopters," the Defence Minister said.

"One good point is (that) everyone has agreed that corruption had taken place. It is clear that money has been paid to someone on the other side," the Defence Minister said pointing towards Congress benches.

"Euro 250.32 million was paid as advance. From that advance payment, whatever was to be received, that would have been distributed. And that is why these people were not considering withdrawing advance, because they might not have got kickbacks till then," Parrikar said.

He said Tyagi might have "facilitated movement of documents....For this small work, what he had to get he might have received or not received, might have received partly. Who gave order in 2010?... How much that person has got we have to find that out.... He (Tyagi) was not there then."

Parrikar said Tyagi "would have got 'chiller' (loose change) or 'prasad'. But when did the order go? Order went on February 8, 2010."

He went on to add: "You can make out the mind. You require a criminal mind to think about the criminal, but you don't have to be criminal yourself. Why didn't they put on hold the full procurement on February 2012?

Referring to the Italian court judgement, Parrikar said, "We don't have evidence against XYZ, I don't want to take name. Why should I unnecessarily get defamed? They (Court) said 'AP' means 'phuli phuli phuli'... Why do I have to unnecessarily spoil my own reputation by taking names. The whole world knows who is Signora and others."

Targeting Congress, he said they have links with Christian Michel. "Whatever they (company) write to Prime Minister, they get to know.... They have found a witness a Michel and if we raise the Italian court verdict, they start making noise."

The Defence Minister said Congress can get any document from Michel very fast as they are "lucky" because "they have support from all these people including Italian translation into English".

He alleged that the UPA government had added certain paraphernalia to the Agusta chopper as a result of which its payload capacity had reduced substantially.

Responding to questions over the government still doing business with some subsidiary companies of Finmeccanica, he said the government has put on hold all future contracts with the company.

However, contracts which have been already signed are being honoured "because to us national security is important". "The guns which are placed on top of naval ships are manufactured by Finmeccanica subsidiary. Will I compromise on security by depriving the naval ships of bullets by blacklisting them," he questioned.

Parrikar said the Congress government had talked about blacklisting Finmeccanica but did not do it and it was actually Arun Jaitley as Defence Minister in the current government who put all their contracts on hold.

He suggested that the UPA government had jeopardised even the security of the President. Contending that all corruption in arms deal occurred during the UPA tenure, Parrikar said he was proud to say that there is not a single such allegation against the present government.
There will be a fleet of minivans soon to be released by Alphabet Inc.'s Google and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV.

The two giants have decided to build 100 2017 Pacifica minivans with plug-in hybrid drivetrains. This will join Google's expanding fleet of "self-driving test vehicles".

This collaboration marked two major firsts for Google as well as the self-driving car industry.

Till recently, Google's fleet included only the Lexus RX and its own prototypes. They are both standard vehicles. Still, the 2017 Pacifica is a minivan, hence, it is the first time that Google gets access to a shuttle that is created to carry a lot of passengers. Google views this as an important step in bringing out a self-driving technology to the market.

They will have some custom modifications made by FCA. Google will fit them with autonomous hardware and software, which will work together at a facility in Southeast Michigan. This is an area where FCA has a major North American engineering center.

This is much beyond what Google did with the Lexus RX. That had got retrofitted but had no manufacturing partnership with Lexus or Toyota.

It is the first time that Google has worked directly with an automaker "to integrate its self-driving system, including its sensors and software, into a passenger vehicle."

"The opportunity to work closely with FCA engineers will accelerate our efforts to develop a fully self-driving car that will make our roads safer and bring everyday destinations within reach for those who cannot drive," John Krafcik, chief executive of the Google Self-Driving Car Project, said in a statement.

Interestingly, a Silicon Valley firm has joined hands with a conventional carmaker to develop an autonomous vehicle. Unlike automakers such as Daimler, BMW, and Audi, which have built up their own expertise in software, artificial intelligence, machine learning and sensors, Fiat Chrysler has made it clear that developing autonomous vehicles and digital businesses on its own is too risky.

Google declared its happiness in having launched the partnership, explaining: "we're excited FCA will be the first we integrate with," and "we will be working with many different partners going forward."
Four babies born with microcephaly, a condition that causes abnormal birth with small heads - are linked to the Zika virus. The Health Ministry in Cconfirmed on Wednesday about it and also reported that the 4 cases were part of the total 264 cases of the mosquito-borne infection in the country.

Panama's Health Ministry said on Wednesday that 14 pregnant women have contracted the virus, and six babies who were infected with Zika leading to malformations, including the microcephaly cases, Reuters reported.

The country is "staying alert to the rapid expansion of the Zika virus," Panama's Health Minister Francisco Terrientes reportedly said, calling on citizens to take preventative measures.

The new study was conducted by researchers at Brazil's Oswaldo Cruz Foundation and published in Cell Host & Microbe.

"We are pretty sure that mosquitoes carrying Wolbachia will have a great impact on Zika transmission in the field," Luciano A. Moreira, a biologist at the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, reportedly said.

The study states that the method of infecting the mosquitoes with Wolbachia will involve inserting the bacteria into mosquito eggs, which then pass the bacteria along to the offspring.

"The idea has been to release Aedes mosquitoes with Wolbachia over a period of a few months, so they mate with Aedes mosquitoes ... and over time, replace the mosquito population," said the senior author Luciano Moreira of the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation in Rio de Janeiro, which is preparing to host the Olympics this summer.

World Health Organization (WHO) officialy writes the key facts of Zika virus:

Zika virus disease is caused by a virus transmitted primarily by Aedes mosquitoes.

People with Zika virus disease can have symptoms that can include mild fever, skin rash, conjunctivitis, muscle and joint pain, malaise or headache. These symptoms normally last for 2-7 days.

There is no specific treatment or vaccine currently available.

The best form of prevention is protection against mosquito bites.

The virus is known to circulate in Africa, the Americas, Asia and the Pacific.
China and South Asia is the preferred destination of some of the biggest corporations in the world due to the endless possibilities that are on offer for the right investments and Disney was quick to recognise that when it commissioned a humongous Disney theme park in the country. Disney's theme park in Shanghai, the financial capital of China, that has cost the company a jaw dropping $5.5 billion is going to be opened next month and it promises to be the first amusement park of its kind for the people of the country. The projects is one of the biggest that has been undertaken by the company in recent years and the company hopes that it will continue to be one of its biggest revenue generators from Asia, considering the spending power of the people in the city and also the presence of a vast range of activities in the park.

This is one of the six Disney resorts that has been built by the company and offers a far bigger variety of amusement than the regular Disneyland parks. In Asia, there are Disney resorts in Tokyo and Hong Kong. Robert A. Iger, the CEO of Disney said last year, "We've never build a park as big as this to open on opening day. This is the biggest. If you were to have stood here with me on this ground in 1999 and thought, 'Well, one day we're going to be here opening Disneyland,' you'd probably think I was out of my mind. But here we stand, a lot of progress being made, a lot of work being done, a lot of noise being generated. And I'm confident we're going to make the date we've got in mind." The opening is now almost there and Iger visited China in order to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping ahead of the opneing. The President spoke on the project as well, "U.S. firms with Chinese firms, and in particular the Walt Disney Company with Chinese firms, are exactly cases in point of such new cooperation. And I believe the new cooperation will continue to yield new outcomes."
DNA samples collected in the last ice age showed that Europeans, at a particular point in time, descended from early humans who lived in Belgium. With Genome analysis, it was also shown that the remote ancestors underwent a number of evolutionary changes in the Ice Age as well as a few thousand years after the frozen era.

According to modernreaders.com, experts conclude that natural selection has helped to make Europeans' Neanderthal ancestry less obvious. They have analysed genomes from 51 people who existed between 45,000 years to 7,000 years ago.

Hence, experts gathered information on skin color, eye color and their relationships to each other. Revealing the patterns of migration, scientists said that these movements were rather complicated.

They also found that about 37,000 to 14,000 years ago, different European populations were descendants of a founder group from Belgium.

With rising temperatures in Europe about 19,000 years ago, a number of continents got freed from widespread ice sheets. With the disappearance of the frozen cover, human populations from modern-day Spain moved towards the north, while 5,000 years later, another group of people began to travel from southeastern Europe into the northern and western regions.

Those who entered from Greece and Turkey pushed away the earlier population, Tech Times reported.

Scientists traced the last major ice age as having peaked about 35,000 and 19,000 years before the modern day ended about 12,000 years ago. The ice cover extended as far south as northern France. "The ability to obtain genome-scale data from ancient bones is a new technology that's only been around for the last five or six years. It's a new scientific instrument that makes it possible to look at things that have not been looked at before," said David Reich of the Harvard Medical School.

Hence, humans entered Europe about 45,000 years before the modern age. It was a migration that spelt the end of the Neanderthals.

The Europeans studied seemed to show lineages that were traced back to a population living 37,000 years ago in what was later called Belgium. A new population arrived in Europe 14,000 years ago, traveling from the east, to displace this population.

YouTube/Harvard University
The local media has been informed that former United States presidents, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush will not endorse Donald Trump as a candidate for President.

For the past five years, former President Bush had endorsed Republicans in all the previous elections. But now, the Republicans finds it a challenge to "define their support, or lack thereof," for Trump.

As all his opponents have dropped out, Donald Trump is the presumptive Republican nominee at present.

Earlier this year, both the Bush men had campaigned for the third Bush, the former Florida Governor, Jeb Bush. But he left the race in February.

Jim McGrath, a spokesman for George HW Bush told the Guardian: "At age 91, President Bush is retired from politics. He naturally did a few things to help Jeb, but those were the 'exceptions that proved the rule'."

Both of them had also supported other Republican presidential nominees---John McCain in 2008 and Mitt Romney in 2012.

Even though neither of them had launched a frontal attack on Trump or his policies, George W. Bush had hinted with veiled criticism when he was on a campaign for Jeb Bush. He said: "The strongest person usually isn't the loudest one in the room."

"I understand that Americans are angry and frustrated. But we do not need someone in the Oval Office who mirrors and inflames our anger and frustration," he told the South Carolina audience.

Trump had not spared words in attacking the two-term governor who he termed as "low-energy" and mocked him as "an embarrassment to his family".

Many Republicans are indecisive about their support. A few such as senators Dean Heller of Nevada and Ben Sasse of Nebraska are firm that they will not vote for Trump in November, while more senators such as senators Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire and Rob Portman of Ohio are clear that they will vote for him but not endorse him.

The heat against Trump is simmering. The Clinton campaign released a video Thursday that put up former Republican candidates attacking Trump, and some elected officials, party leaders and talk radio hosts refusing to back him in November.

In a poll released by CNN, the Democrat nominee, Hillary Clinton, is shown as leading over Trump by a margin of 54-41 in the general election.
In a disturbing leak which reveals the extent of the email users' vulnerability to hacking, millions of private email account information belonging to Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Hotmail, and Mail.ru users have been reportedly breached according to a IT Security firm.

Hold Security Inc. that the current breach is not linked to any previously publicized email leaks. Surprisingly, the company managed to acquire the data at no cost at all. Originally, their hacker source asked for 75 cents for the entire list. In the end, they got the data for free after agreeing to the hacker's demand of posting positive comments about him/her in a forum.

"When we peel back the layers and dig deeper, we find that the hacker is holding something back from us. Within several days of communication and after a couple more strategically timed votes on his social media pages, he shared more useful information," Hold Security said in an official statement.

"At the end, this kid from a small town in Russia collected an incredible 1.17 Billion stolen credentials from numerous breaches that we are still working on identifying. 272 million of those credentials turned out to be unique, which in turn, translated to 42.5 million credentials -- 15% of the total that we have never seen before."

What worries the company is the fact that these hackers seem all too willing to provide these almost for free.

"There are hacker sites that advertise 'brute forcing' popular services and store fronts by taking a large amount of credentials and running them one-by-one against the site," said Alex Holden, the firm's chief information security officer, as quoted by BBC News.

"What makes this discovery more significant is the hacker's willingness to share these credentials virtually for free, increasing the number of... malicious people who might have this information."

A summarized breakdown of the email account information breach is listed below as per Neowin report: Mail.ru- 57 million, Yahoomail- 40 million, Hotmail- 33 million and Gmail- 24 million

Since email users are rather inclined to using the same passwords they easily remember, the wide-scale hack could have far-reaching implications. As Engadget suggested, changing passwords frequently and turning on the two-factor authentication is a good way to start protecting yourself.
Hosur (Krishnagiri): In his first public comments since the AgustaWestland issue broke out, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday dubbed the controversial deal a chori (theft) and said that the guilty, howsoever big, would not be spared.

At an election rally in Hosur in western Tamil Nadu, Prime Minister Narendra Modi asked the people if the scamsters in the multi-crore Agusta Westland helicopter deal should go unpunished.

Should those involved in the chopper deal be punished or not?" he asked the crowd gathered at the Anthivadi stadium. Those who knew Hindi in the crowd responded with a wave of applause.

Then, the Prime Minister took a dig at the Italian connections of the Congress leader. I have not been to Italy and I have no relatives in Italy. What will I do if the people known to them say they are corrupt, Modi said, amid a round of claps from the crowd.

Those involved in helicopter chori, should they be punished or not? Should legal action be taken against them or not. However big they are, should action be taken against them or not? I want to know from the people of Tamil Nadu, said Modi at an election rally.

He said people of Tamil Nadu should now be knowing why people in New Delhi don't allow Modi to work. It is because he (Modi) has tightened the screws. This has affected the corrupt. It has disturbed their sleep. So they are attacking me, the Prime Minister said.

Earlier in the day, in the national capital, a combative Sonia Gandhi accused the Modi government of murdering democracy and unleashing a campaign of baseless allegations against the Opposition. Former prime minister Manmohan Singh and Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi were taken into custody along with Sonia Gandhi, who predicted that the Governments days were numbered the way it was functioning.

Do not try to frighten or defame us... life has taught me to struggle, we have faced a lot of challenges. They don't know what we are made of, she said addressing the Save Democracy rally.
New Delhi:

A 30-year-old man, who was part of a mob thrashing a youth for ramming his car into motorbikes, was allegedly shot at by a former armyman in East Delhis Mandawali area today.

The one who fired, Rajender Singh, claimed that he was trying to save the youth from getting beaten up by the mob by opening fire, police said. The bullet hit a shopkeeper named Rahul Kumar seriously injuring him in his abdomen.

Police said the incident happened at around 3 PM when the driver, Shivam Sharma (19), rammed his car into a motorbike while trying to save a cycle rickshaw and tried to flee.

When locals saw him fleeing through the crowded market, they chased the car and stopped the vehicle near Metro Hospital in Preet Vihar. They later beat him, a senior police officer said.

At that point, Singh came out of his house and asked the mob to disperse as the youth did not injure any one. When the crowd refused, he pulled out a pistol and shot at the mob.

Police reached the spot and rushed Kumar to the Metro Hospital where his condition is stated to be critical.

Singh, who turned out to be a former army man, is absconding, police said.

The youth has been arrested on the charge of rash and negligent driving while a case of attempt to murder has been registered against Singh.

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Sochi (Russia):

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will meet Russian President Vladimir Putin today in the Black Sea resort of Sochi in a bid to bolster ties and seek to resolve a decades-long territorial dispute.

Tokyo-Moscow relations have been hamstrung by the row dating back to the end of World War II when Soviet troops seized the four southernmost islands in the Pacific Kuril chain, known as the Northern Territories in Japan.

Japan and Russias lingering tensions have prevented them ever signing a peace treaty to formally end World War II hostilities, hindering trade and investment ties.

This is a complex, multi-faceted issue that can only be resolved in a manner acceptable to both sides through an even deeper partnership between the two countries, Putins chief foreign policy advisor Yury Ushakov said ahead of the visit.

Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida said in April that Russia and Japan had agreed to start negotiations on signing a peace treaty as soon as possible after the meeting.

His Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov on a visit to Tokyo last month said Russia wants to move forward in relations, but is not prepared to budge on the result of World War II.

Putin said during a public phone-in in April that he thinks a compromise could be found at some pointand it will be found on the territorial dispute.

Moscow hopes the meeting will help create a constructive atmosphere in bilateral relations, but immediate serious progress is unlikely, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov warned.

Despite the warmer words from the Kremlin, tensions between the two sides continue to surface and Japan has hit Russia with sanctions over the Ukraine crisis.

Russia has in turn angered Japan recently by building new modern compounds for its troops stationed on two of the disputed islands.

Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev also infuriated Tokyo by visiting one of the islands, home to some 19,000 Russians, last year.

Putin said last month he welcomed Abes visit as it comes despite pressure from (Japans) partners, particularly the United States.

Abe will later this month host a summit of the Group of Seven advanced industrial countries, from which Russia has been excluded over its annexation of Crimea.

Evidently Japan will try to act as a kind of middleman in the talks process between Russia and the US, Russias government newspaper the Rossiiskaya Gazeta said yesterday.

US President Barack Obama reportedly asking Abe in February to postpone his trip to Russia, according to sources quoted by Japans Kyodo news agency.

Writing in pro-Kremlin daily Izvestia yesterday, a former deputy foreign minister and ambassador to Tokyo, Alexander Panov, suggested the meeting could see Japan drop a number of sanctions it imposed on Russia over Ukraine.

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Kochi:

Amid growing cries seeking justice for the victim of Keralas sensational rape and murder, the state government today asserted the culprits would be brought to justice even as the chief investigating officer in the case was removed.

It is a serious case. It is a time taking investigation. Scientific evidences are required. There are no lapses and efforts are being done to nab the real culprits through a scientific probe, Home Minister Chennithala told a meet-the-press here.

In a related development, Chief Investigating officer DySP Anil Kumar was removed and A B Jijimon appointed to head the team probing the rape and brutal murder of the 30-year-old Dalit law student at her home in Perumbavoor on April 28.

Chennithala said the shake-up was done as Jijimon has a better understanding of Perumbavoor area.

As the incident is becoming a campaign material for the May 16 assembly polls with both ruling UDF and rival LDF trading charges over ensuring safety of women, police said Kumar would continue in the probe team, which is under supervision of ADGP Padmakumar and IG Ernakulam Mahipal Yadav.

Union Social Justice Minister Thawarchand Gehlot visited Perumbavoor and held discussions with officials. Gehlot visited the victims mother at the Taluk hospital in Perumbavoor where she is undergoing treatment and assured her that the government would ensure that the family gets justice.

He kept the media at bay, saying as the Model Code of Conduct was in place due to the May 16 Assembly elections in Kerala, he would not make any statement.

The minister, who held meetings with investigating officials, said he had been deputed by the Rajya Sabha and the report he prepared about the incident would be tabled in the the Upper House tomorrow.

National Womens Commission chairperson Lalitha Kumaramangalam also visited the victims mother and said, The whole country is shocked that such a brutality has taken place.

Chairman of the National Commission for Scheduled Castes P L Punia expressed concern over the delay in arresting culprits and said if family wants, he will push for a CBI probe into the gruesome incident.

This is highly shocking, Punia told PTI after visiting the victims mother and her house in Perumbavoor and asked the Kerala police to immediately arrest the culprits who committed the heinous murder.

Noting that Kerala has never been known for this kind of brutality as we see in North India including New Delhi, Punia said there has been some flaw in implementing the Criminal Law (Amendment) Act, 2013 enacted against the backdrop of Delhi gangrape incident in Kerala in its letter and spirit.

...It is a matter of concern that the culprits have not been arrested so far. Whatever efforts have been taken, that has not reflected in the arrest of the culprits, said Punia.

He said police have informed him they have interrogated a number of people in connection with the incident.

About 125 people have been interrogated, questioned, and 10 very intensely questioned and they are hopeful that something would come out and the culprit would be arrested within next one or two days, he said.

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New Delhi:

Hindon air base in Ghaziabad has been put on an alert after security personnel arrested a terror suspect in the campus. In wake of the arrest, the authorities have shut down two Kendriya Vidyalyas situated inside the campus.

The Hindon airbase is one of the largest airbases in the country, situated about 30 km north of New Delhi. As per another report on Hidustan Times, two unidentified men were spotted on the premises overnight.

While one person have been arrested, police and security personnel are still searching for the other two.

The report comes after three terror suspects who were arrested by the Delhi police earlier this week had reportedly revealed a plot to launch an attack at the Hindon air force base, just like JeM terrorists had done at the Pathankot airbase in January. The terror cell had also planned attacks on malls in Delhi.

More inputs awaited

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New Delhi:

The BJP lawmakers are staging a protest underneath of Gandhi Statue inside Parliament premises against the corruption by the opposition Congress. On the other hand Congress is organising a mega protest rally in the name of Democracy Bachao March making it a scene of rally vs rally in Delhi.

The top brass of the party including Congress president Sonia Gandhi, vice-president Rahul Gandhi and former Prime Minsiter Manmohan Singh launched a scathing attack on the BJP.

The move by BJP MPs to launch a Dharna while being in power sounds one of its kind as rather than acting, the party is involved protesting.

Delhi: BJP leaders sit in protest at the Gandhi statue in the Parliament against corruption of Congress. pic.twitter.com/6y4ujt4W2h  ANI (@ANI_news) May 6, 2016

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Washington:

US House Speaker Paul Ryan, the highest-ranking elected Republican official of the nation has said that he is not ready yet to back his partys presumptive presidential nominee Donald Trump.

Im just not ready to do that at this point. Im not there right now, Ryan told CNN in an interview.

Ryans stunning statement had its immediate ripple effect inside the party and might have lasting impact on Trumps presidential ambitions, if the division within the Republican establishment are not sorted out soon.

Ryan said the onus for uniting the party now lies on Trump, who after his Indiana primary win and withdrawal from the race by the two opponents- Ted Cruz and John Kasich - is the presumptive presidential nominee of the Republican party.

And I hope to (support Trump), though, and I want to. But I think what is required is that we unify the party. And I think the bulk of the burden on unifying the party will have to come from our presumptive nominee, Ryan said.

This is the party of Lincoln, of Reagan, of Jack Kemp. And we dont always nominate a Lincoln and a Reagan every four years, but we hope that our nominee aspires to be Lincoln- and Reagan-esque, the House Speaker said.

He hoped that the candidate advances the principles of our party and appeals to a wide, vast majority of Americans.

However, Trump fired back immediately.

I am not ready to support Speaker Ryans agenda. Perhaps

in the future we can work together and come to an agreement about what is best for the American people. They have been treated so badly for so long that it is about time for politicians to put them first! Trump said.

The tensions between Trump and Ryan go beyond temperament, The Washington Post reported.

They have philosophical differences about the size and scope of government. Ryan champions free-trade agreements, international military engagement, and sweeping overhauls of Social Security and Medicare, whereas Trump is an avowed opponent of recent trade deals, foreign interventions and proposed changes to entitlement programs, the Post reported.

The GOP divide over Ryans decision not to board the Trump Train reflects the broader civil war raging within the Grand Old Party as it prepares to coronate a billionaire real estate mogul and reality TV star with zero political experience and a questionable conservative record, The Hill reported.

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Washington:

A former CIA station chief in Pakistan, who presided over the May 2011 raid that killed al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden at his hideout in Abbottabad, is believed to have been poisoned by the powerful ISI, a media report said today.

Mark Kelton was removed from Islamabad two months after the raid on bin Ladens compound in the garrison city of Abbottabad, citing health concerns.

Mark Kelton retired from the CIA, and his health has recovered after he had abdominal surgery. But agency officials continue to think that it is plausible if not provable that Keltons sudden illness was somehow orchestrated by Pakistans Inter-Services Intelligence agency, known as the ISI, The Washington Post said in an exclusive investigative report.

A spokesman of the Pakistani Embassy here, however, described the report as fictional.

According to The Post, Kelton, declined multiple requests for an interview, but in a brief exchange by phone he said that the cause of his illness was never clarified.

He said that he was not the first to suspect that he had been poisoned.

The genesis for the thoughts about that didnt originate with me, he was quoted as saying.

The Post said such a disclosure is a disturbing postscript to the sequence of events surrounding the bin Laden operation five years ago and adds new intrigue to a counterterrorism partnership that has often been consumed by conspiracy theories.

Even if the poisoning suspicion is groundless, the idea that the CIA and its station chief considered the ISI capable of such an act suggests that the breakdown in trust was even worse than widely assumed, The Post said.

According to the daily, current and former US intelligence officials said that the ISI has been linked to numerous plots against journalists, diplomats and other perceived adversaries and that the spy agencys animosity toward Kelton was intense.

Meanwhile, A CIA spokesman said there is no evidence thatPakistani authorities poisoned a US official serving in the country.

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Hyderabad: Increasing the number of districts in the state to 24-25 from the existing 10 by August 15 or Dasara, as announced by Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao on Thursday, would further add to the shortage of IAS and IPS officers in the state.

The state government needs to appoint two IAS officers for each district (as collector and joint-collector) and two IPS officers (as superintendent and assistant superintendent of police).

The state is already grappling with severe shortage of IAS and IPS officers, with each holding three posts on an average. Besides, the new districts will also impose a huge financial burden on the government, which will have to construct collectorate and district headquarter offices and residential accommodation for the officials.

Mr Chandrasekhar Rao met Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New Delhi in February this year and sought an increase in the IAS officers strength from the present 163 to 193 and IPS officers strength from the present 112 to 141. After bifurcation, TS was allotted 163 IAS posts, 112 IPS posts and 65 IFS posts.

While the existing posts itself were insufficient, another 20 IAS officers are on Central deputation, making it more difficult for government to run the administration.

The setting up of 15 new districts would mean an additional requirement of 30 IAS and 30 IPS officers.

Meanwhile, the Centre has given indications that it would not be possible to allot as many number of IAS and IPS officers in a single go since all other states in the country were also facing a severe shortage and vacancies can only be filled in phases.

With this, the state government is planning to give additional charge of new districts to existing collectors, JCs, SPs and ASPs, till the Centre allots new ones.

However, officials say it would not be possible for one IAS and IPS officer to work in two districts as each district has its own meetings and issues, which they need to attend to on a daily basis.

Mr Chandrasekhar Rao said the government will announce new districts on the occasion of second anniversary of Telangana formation on June 2 and will come into force either from August 15 or Dasara this year.

The Chief Minister asked officials to make necessary arrangements to build new collectorates, offices for the superintendents of police, meeting halls and other district head offices in all districts besides residential accommodation for top officials.
New Delhi:

Trailer for much anticipated movie TE3N starring Amitabh Bachchan, Nawazuddin Siddiqui and Vidya Balan has been released by the makers. The whole star cast along with director Ribhu Dasgupta and producer Sujoy Ghosh were present during the launch event held in Mumbai.



Promising a gripping and thrilling tale, the trailer begins with Amitabh Bachchan listening to a cassette with his granddaughters voice saying I should have listened to you. Then the thrill surpass 8 year to give audiences a sneak peak of the film.



The fast paced trailer unveils mysterious disappearance of Angel and how eight years later the same pattern is repeated this time through the disappearance of another young girl child.



Watch Trailer Here:

Enough time has been given to all three lead characters so that audiences can feel the intensity of their charisma in the film. Big B seems flawless, while Vidya Balan and Nawazudding continues their good acting spree.



The film is expected to hit the silver screens on June 10, 2016.
New Delhi:

BSP Supremo Mayawati has said that Water Crisis in Budelkhand is a crucial issue and it should not be politicised at all. The BSP supremo while speaking on the issue said that parties are trying to do politics on this issue which is not right.

Mayawati (BSP) said 50 districts of Uttar Pradesh were facing drought and both central and state governments should rise above party politics and think about solving the water crisis.

If a water train was sent by the Centre, the state government should have accepted it and exposed that it was empty, she said.

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New Delhi:

Tiger Shroff is a rebel from outside and a true lover from inside, this is what we learnt while watching him dance on Lets talk about love from his recently released movie Baaghi. Cut to reel life and he is no rebel but an inspiration for many lovers.



According to a report in news daily, Tiger Shroff is expected to visit China to spend some quality time with his girlfriend and model Disha Patani.



Both of them have been dating each other for couple of years now.



The report quoted a source saying, "Tiger and Disha have been seeing each other for a couple of years now. Now, their romance seems to be heating up. Next week, Tiger plans to fly to China to meet Disha where she is shooting for Chan's film."



Tiger Shroffs Baaghi, which released last week, bagged him lot of praise for his outstanding work.

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New Delhi:

Launching a scathing attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi and RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat, Rahul Gandhi today said only two peoples writ runs in the country and those who stand against them are targeted with false allegations.

He said around 40 per cent of the country is facing a drought like situation and 50 farmers were committing suicide everyday, but the Prime Minister has nothing to say over the issue.

Addressing the partys Save Democracy rally here, the Congress Vice President also hit out at the Modi government over imposition of Presidents Rule in Uttarkhand saying it was dislodging elected governments.

Only two peoples writ runs in the country. That is Mohan Bhagwat ji and Narendra Modi ji. And those who stand against them, speak against them face false allegations.

Modiji promised achche din and today the country is reeling under drought. 40 per cent of the country is reeling under drought. Everyday, 50 farmers are committing suicide. Latur, Vidarbha, Bundelkhand are burning. And Modiji has nothing to say about it, Rahul said.

Along with Rahul, Congress Chief Sonia Gandhi and former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh also addressed the rally before the party leaders courted arrest at the Parliament Street police station when they were stopped from trying to march to Parliament. They were released after a short while.

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New Delhi:

Maintaining heat on the Congress, the government today said the previous UPA government had done everything to help AgustaWestland bag the contract for VVIP helicopters and asserted that it will track down the main beneficiaries of the kickbacks in the deal.



Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar said in the Lok Sabha that former Air chief S P Tyagi and Gautam Khaitan, both accused in the case, are small people who simply washed their hands in a flowing ganga (of corruption) and that the government will find out where the river was going.



Speaking on a Calling Attention Motion on the chopper deal, he took a dig at Congress, saying it seemed to know where this ganga was going. He said the UPA government had done everything to help AgustaWestland bag the contract and that its action against the company following the disclosure of corruption was not pro-active but forced by circumstances.



Tyagi and Khaitan were small people who simply washed their hands in a flowing ganga (of corruption), Parrikar said, asserting that the government will track down the main beneficiaries of the kickbacks in the Rs 3600 crore deal for 12 VVIP choppers.

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Kathmandu/New Delhi:

Nepals first woman President Bidhya Devi Bhandari has cancelled her visit to India, which would have been her first foreign trip after assuming office, in the wake of the political instability in her country.

Bhandari was scheduled to visit from May 9 as the state guest at the invitation of President Pranab Mukherjee. She was also scheduled to participate in a Shahi Snan in Ujjains Simhastha Kumbh on May 14.

Government sources in New Delhi said, We have learnt that Nepali President Bidyadevi Bhandaris official visit to India has been postponed by the Nepali side. We understand that this is on account of the political developments in Nepal.

Earlier this week, UCPN-Maoist led by Prachanda triggered political instability by declaring the end of the coalition with the ruling CPN-UML.

The Maoists and the opposition Nepali Congress have accused Prime Minister K P Oli for failing to implement the new Constitution, address problems related to Madhesis, expedite the post-quake reconstruction work, failing to check soaring prices and promoting black marketing and corruption.

However, Oli yesterday survived a threat to his government after a U-turn by Prachanda-led Maoists who decided not to withdraw support to him for the time being.

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Palakkad:

Prime Minister Narendra Modi today slammed the Congress-led UDF in Kerala over the solar scam and the brutal rape and murder of a Dalit woman saying, there seemed to be no government in the state. I am afraid to use the word solar in Kerala as it would create a big dhamaka (explosion), he said referring to the solar scam which has rocked UDF government with charges being made even against Chief Minister Ommen Chandy.



He was addressing an election rally of NDA at the Fort Maidan here, his first in the series of four lined up in the coming days for the May 16 assembly polls, as BJP goes all out to make its maiden entry in the assembly.



Modi also criticised the state governments failure to rise to the occasion while handling the rape case. A Dalit sister was raped and killed. We dont see a government anywhere, Modi said.



The statement assumes significance as even after nine days, police was yet to nab the culprits involved in the brutal rape and murder of the 30-year old woman in Perumbavoor near Kochi.



The Prime Minister made the solar comment after referring to the solar initiative he had launched in his constituency Varanasi for converting diesel-powered engines to solar-powered battery engines in fishing boats. This had given the fishermen a profit of Rs 500 per day, he said.



I thought why this cannot be replicated in Kerala also. But I was scared. I felt, if I go to Kerala and talk of solar, there will be big dhamaka, Modi said as the people cheered and clapped.



See the change from government to government. In Varanasi, the solar-powered boats are powering the lives of fishermen, but in Kerala the government is run by solar, Modi said, taking a dig at Chandy.



The Prime Minister also targeted the CPI-M in the state, saying it was following the politics of violence.



Several innocent BJP workers lost their life in the attack over the years by CPI-M, he said charging they were physically annihilated as they did not agree to the Marxist ideology.



Modi also mentioned about the insult meted out by CPI-M student wing to a retired principal of a government college here.



Some activists of SFI, students wing of the CPI(M), had prepared a grave for her as a retirement gift.



Do you want to vote for such people? Whether you will pardon those who committed this insult? Modi asked.
New Delhi :

Pranav Pandya, head of All World Gayatri Pariwar, who was on Wednesday nominated to Rajya Sabha by the Modi government, today spurned the honour saying atmosphere in the Upper House was not conducive for him.

I dont think the atmosphere in Rajya Sabha is conducive for me. It will never be, he told PTI over phone, giving reasons for his refusal to accept the nomination.

Pandya, an MD in Medicine, was nominated to the Rajya Sabha on May 4 by President Pranab Mukherjee following a recommendation of the government.

I have watched the proceedings of the Rajya Sabha in last two days. The way they were abusing each other, I dont think I will be able to change them. Rather I will devote my time outside Rajya Sabha where I can impact on the life of millions of people for their betterment, he said.

65-year-old Pandya, the seventh person to be nominated by the Modi government, has informed the Secretary General of Rajya Sabha as well as the Home Ministry about his decision through e-mail, Pandyas close aide Suraj Prasad Shukla said.

However, when contacted, a senior Home Ministry official said they were yet to receive any communication from Pandya regarding his refusal to accept the honour.

The day he was nominated to Rajya Sabha, Pandya tweeted Thanks to all who sent their congratulations for my nomination to rajyasabha. I will try to inculcate yugnirman sutras among our MPs.

Mumbai-born Pandya is Director and head of the All World Gayatri Pariwar (AWGP).

AWGP is claimed to be a modern adoption of the age-old wisdom of Vedic Rishis who practiced and propagated the philosophy of Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam with its headquarters in Haridwar.

On April 22, the government had nominated Subramanian Swamy, Narendra Jadhav, Navjot Singh Sidhu, Suresh Gopi, Swapan Dasgupta and Mary Kom as the new Rajya Sabha members.

The President recommends the names of the nominated members drawn from fields such as literature, science, sports, art and social service on the advice of the government.

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New York:

US-based IT services major Cognizant today posted a 15.2 per cent jump in net profit for March quarter at USD 441.2 million from USD 382.9 million a year ago, driven by growth in verticals like manufacturing. However, with a 10 per cent rise in topline, this is the slowest quarterly revenue growth for Cognizant in 14 years as its clients in financial and healthcare services held back on spending.

Companys revenues stood at USD 3.2 billion in the said quarter from USD 2.91 billion in the year-ago period.

While this was within Cognizants own revenue guidance of USD 3.18-3.24 billion, but the performance pales in comparison to its Indian rivals TCS and Infosys.

On sequential basis, revenues dipped 0.9 per cent for Cognizant, which follows January-December as fiscal year.

Revenues from financial services, which accounted for over 40 per cent of Cognizants topline, declined 1.7 per cent, while that from healthcare was lower by 4 per cent compared to the previous quarter.

Cognizant has also lowered the upper limit of its revenue forecast for the fiscal 2016 to be in the range of USD 13.65-14.0 billion from its earlier estimate of USD 13.65-14.2 billion.

Based on first quarter results and our visibility on deals ramping up throughout the year, we have tightened our 2016 revenue guidance range to USD 13.65-14 billion, representing approximately 10-13 per cent growth year-over-year, Cognizant CFO Karen McLoughlin said.

For the April-June 2016 quarter, it expects its revenue to be between USD 3.34 billion to USD 3.40 billion, representing incremental revenue in the range of USD 140-200 million or 4.4-6.3 per cent sequentially.

We expect broad-based momentum across service lines, geographies and industries as we move into Q2 and the rest of the year and expect the ramp up of several deals, she added.

McLoughlin added that fundamentals of the business remain strong and the company is seeing positive returns on strategic investment in disruptive technology and new digital business models.

Cognizant Chief Executive Officer Francisco DSouza said the first quarter results were, overall, in line with its expectations and guidance.

We anticipate a return to positive sequential growth in our financial services practice for the balance of this year.

Going forward this year, we expect a return to positive sequential growth in our healthcare segment as the pressure from industry consolidation is expected to be partially offset by anticipated project ramp-ups and a strong pipeline, he added.

To support this expected growth, Cognizant significantly accelerated hiring during the first quarter and increased its global headcount by 11,300 employees, he said.

The company ended the quarter with about 2.33 lakh employees globally. A majority of its employees are based in India.
New Delhi:

In a bid to nab Masood Azhar National Investigation Agency (NIA) is all set to take Americas help in tracing down three bank accounts, which are allegedly linked to him and JeM. A news report says these accounts are associated with foreign banks and are being illegally used to keep money collected via donations.



This has been learnt that the money in the accounts is used by Masood Azhar in providing financial support to terrorist activities. NIA has alleged that Masood Azhar is still hiding fearlessly in his hideouts. Even after proofs given by India to Pakistan during Pathankot attack investigations no solid action has been initiated from the neighbouring nation.



Taking own initiative, NIA is now trying its best to cut down financial support Masood Azhar is getting from various regions.



Indian team has dug out at least three accounts associated to the terrorist group indulging in wrongdoings. India has shared information with America and has seeked help in freezing the accounts.



A report has also been shared with Pakistan mentioning about financial aids Masood has created for himself via different means. Various websites seem to flash numbers where people can come and donate money in these accounts. A red corner notice is likely to be issued for the same.

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The AP Private Medical and Dental Colleges Association stated that it was going ahead with the entrance test on May 13. (Representational image)

Hyderabad: Managements of private medical colleges in Telangana and AP on Friday reacted cautiously to the Supreme Courts order that no private institution should conduct separate entrance tests for medical admissions.

They said their future course of action would depend on the final judgement and added that no decision had been taken to cancel CETs to fill management quota seats.

The entrance tests are slated for May 20 in TS and May 13 in AP. Telangana Private Medical and Dental Colleges Association president C. Lakshmi Narasimha Rao said: We are not certain as to which states will this be applicable. Private medical colleges in some states like Maharashtra and Karnataka have completed their CETs. Even tests for medical admissions in deemed institutions like Manipal and JIPMER are over. We are waiting for more clarity.

Nearly 6,600 registrations have been received for CET to medical and dental admissions in 13 private colleges in TS. The colleges offer 550 medical and 350 dental seats.

The AP Private Medical and Dental Colleges Association stated that it was going ahead with the entrance test on May 13. We are aware of the case in the SC and will act according to the final judgement, said association secretary Bhaskar Rao.

He added that the private colleges had received nearly 6,700 registrations under management quota in 13 medical and 10 dental colleges in AP offering about 700 and 400 seats respectively. Apart from centres in AP and TS, the test will be held in major cities nationwide, he said.

Higher education officials said that it was too early to take a call on private entrance tests since the Supreme Court was yet to pronounce its final judgement.

In case the Supreme Court does not agree to entrance tests by private medical colleges, the seats are likely to be filled based on Eamcet ranks, an official said.

MCI backs local Cets for this year

Additional Solicitor General Pinky Anand, appearing for the CBSE, told the Supreme Court that if all the students are given a second chance to take the July 24 Neet Phase-II, around 9.50 lakh would take the test. But if only 40,000 students who did not write Neet-1 were allowed, around 2.50 lakh students could appear for Neet-2. Considering the logistics, only 40,000 students should be given a second chance, she said.

Senior counsel Vikas Singh, appearing for Medical Council of India in a written note said for this year as a special case the states that have their own competitive exams be permitted to take admission on that basis. Since the law passed by the Tamil Nadu government, abolishing the entrance test, had rece-ived Presidential assent in 2007, the MCI regualtion on Neet would not overide this legislation.

The MCI said no examination by any authority would entitle any student to get admission into any medical college except the exam conducted by AIIMS and PGIMR and the states that have their own competitive exams only for this year. Banks will consider financing poor students without any collateral for payment of their fees in private colleges.
Johannesburg:

South Africa called up uncapped left-arm wrist spinner Tabraiz Shamsi for next months triangular limited-overs series in the Caribbean and rested fast bowler Dale Steyn amid concerns over his workload.

Shamsi was the only new player in the one-day international squad announced on Friday, although pace-bowling allrounder Wayne Parnell was recalled for the first time in more than a year.

Head selector Linda Zondi said Steyn was rested for the triangular series against West Indies and Australia to keep him fresh for the test season. South Africa, which lost its No. 1 ranking in tests with a home loss to England in January, has series against New Zealand, Australia and Sri Lanka this year.

Batsman Faf du Plessis was in the ODI squad for the Caribbean despite sustaining a broken finger in the IPL. Du Plessis had surgery on the broken left ring finger this week and should be ready for South Africas second game of the triangular series against Australia on June 7, team manager Mohammed Moosajee said.

Steyn wont play in the triangular after the 32-year-old quick bowler struggled with a series of injuries at the end of last season. The latest, a right shoulder problem, kept him out of most of the series loss to England.

Steyns workload has been exacerbated by his franchise commitments. He is currently playing in the IPL and is also due to play in the Caribbean Twenty20 league starting in late June.
Kathmandu:

Nepal today recalled its Ambassador to India over charges of non-cooperation and indulging in anti-government activities. Ambassador Deep Kumar Upadhyaya had confronted with Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli regarding the cancellation of President Bidya Devi Bhandaris scheduled visit to India, Nepalese Foreign Ministry sources said.

The conversation between Oli and Upadhyaya reportedly took place after the cancellation of the Presidents trip.

The Nepalese Cabinet had decided to recall Upadhyaya after his brief conversation with the Prime Minister, they said.

Bhandari was scheduled to visit India from May 9 as the state guest at the invitation of President Pranab Mukherjee. She was also scheduled to participate in a Shahi Snan in Ujjains Simhastha Kumbh on May 14.

Earlier in the day, government sources in New Delhi said, We have learnt that Nepali President Bidyadevi Bhandaris official visit to India has been postponed by the Nepali side. We understand that this is on account of the political developments in Nepal.

Upadhyaya, a leader of opposition Nepali Congress who was appointed as Nepals envoy to India in April last year, has been charged with indulging in anti-government activities.

He has also been accused of visiting Madhes districts of southern Nepal along with Indian envoy Ranjit Rae without informing the Foreign ministry, The Kathmandu Post reported.

The Nepalese diplomat has been also charged with involvement in toppling the Oli government, it added.

Prime Minister Oli yesterday survived a threat to his government after a U-turn by Prachanda-led Maoists who decided not to withdraw support to him for the time being.

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New Delhi :

Union minister M Venkaiah Naidu today hit out at Congress over the issues of Uttarakhand political crisis and VVIP chopper deal, accusing the opposition party of weakening democracy by indulging in evil deeds.

The Parliamentary Affairs minister also questioned the Congress demand for a SC-monitored CBI probe in the AgustaWestland chopper deal saying it did not initiate the same during its own rule when the scam took place.

It is the Modi government which cancelled the deal and handed over the matter to CBI and Enforcement Directorate, he claimed.

We believe in Loktantra (They Believe in Kutantra). They did every Kutantra (evil deed) to weaken Loktantra (democracy), he said in a tweet.

Agusta Scam happened under Congress Rule; because of this country lost thousands of crores of money. They wasted full two years without taking action, we have cancelled the deal. CBI and ED are taking necessary action, he said in a series of tweets.

Questioning its demand, he said during Congress regime they didnt order CBI inquiry under the SC-supervision on Agusta. Now they are asking for it. Why the new demand?

They are not able to hear the facts from the Defence Minister, thats why they talk out and walk out of house, that is their style.

The senior BJP leader also took a dig at Congress on conducting a floor test in Uttarakhand after disqualifying nine MLAs, saying it was their new form of democracy.

Disqualifying the 9 MLAs in Uttarakhand and then conduct floor strength is the Naya Loktantra (new form of democracy) of Congress, Naidu tweeted.

The Supreme Court today ordered a floor test on Tuesday when ousted chief minister Harish Rawat will have to prove majority in the House between 11 AM and 1 PM.

The apex court also directed that the nine rebel Congress MLAs, who have challenged their disqualification by the Speaker in the High Court, will not participate in the floor test if they have the same status at the time of vote of confidence.

However, the petition of the disqualified MLAs will come up tomorrow before the Uttarakhand High Court. If these MLAs are allowed to vote, Rawats fate in the 70-member Assembly may be sealed.

Presidents rule was imposed in hill state in March after it plunged into a political crisis following the rebellion of the nine legislators.

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Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao had said that it would be better if AP offices and employees continue to work from Hyderabad for some more time since the TS government was earning sizeable revenues through them.

Hyderabad: Shifting of AP Secretariat and HoDs offices in Hyderabad to Amaravati by June/July as being planned by AP government is likely to have financial implications on the TS government.

The AP government pays nearly Rs 1,200 crore per month towards salaries for its staff in Hyderabad, most of which is spent here and which adds to the GSDP.

Shifting of AP Pay and Accounts office alone will result in the GHMC losing Rs 4 crore professional tax per year. At one time, even TS Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao had said that it would be better if AP offices and employees continue to work from Hyderabad for some more time since the TS government was earning sizeable revenues through them.

Mr Rao had made those remarks when TS employees associations complained that the AP government was deliberately delaying shifting its administration from Hyderabad to Amaravati.

Since then, there has been a demand from APNGOs Association to shift AP administration to Amaravati as early as possible.

We have been demanding shifting of AP Pay and Accounts office from Hyderabad for the last one year but no action has been taken. This office deals with all types of payments, especially salaries to staff and pays various taxes to the TS government and GHMC. It has been paying Rs 4 crore as professional tax of AP employees to GHMC alone every year, said P. Ashok Babu, president, APNGOs Association.

He said that AP is already suffering revenue deficit and it cannot afford to lose its own revenues to TS at this stage and the delay was only benefitting TS.

Over 11,000 AP staff are spending their salaries in Hyderabad every month. While the salary bill of AP employees in Hyderabad is nearly Rs 1,200 crore per month, a major part of this amount is being spent in Hyderabad, due to which the TS government is earning revenues in the form of various taxes, Mr Ashok Babu added.
New Delhi/Dehradun: The political seesaw on Uttarakhand continued on Friday with the Supreme Court ordering a floor test to be held in the Assembly on Tuesday (May 10) for deposed Congress chief minister Harish Rawat to prove his majority.

Without giving any relief to the nine dissident Congress MLAs, the court made it clear they would not be allowed to vote as proceedings under Sche-dule 10 of the Constitution for defection was pending against them.

The Supreme Court ordered that Presidents Rule be lifted between 10.30 am and 1 pm a.m. and 1 pm on Tuesday to pave the way for the floor test and that it would be back in operation immediately after the floor test ended at 1 pm. The results of the floor test will be produced before the Supreme Court on May 11 at 10.30 am by the principal secretary in a sealed cover.

The seesaw continued as the Uttarakhand high court in Nainital will on Saturday hear a petition by the rebel MLAs challenging their disqualification under the anti-defection law by the Speaker. The status of the MLAs will incidentally be crucial. If the high court refuses to allow the dissident MLAs to vote, the balance could shift towards the former CM, Mr Rawat. The Congress, that has 27 MLAs, claims to have the support of six more MLAs, including one of the UKD(P), two BSP members and three Independents.

If the nine rebels are not allowed to vote, with 28 MLAs, the situation could get tricky for the BJP. Some BJP leaders claimed two members, including one from the BSP, could tilt in their favour.

Speaking in Dehradun, Mr Rawat welcomed the Supreme Courts order, saying: The order reasserts the supremacy of the legislature, which was being challenged, (and) the supremacy of the Speaker in the House. We honour the apex courts order, which reinforces our faith in the judiciary. The former CM said he was ready for the floor test, and claimed he had the numbers, despite the BJPs all-out efforts to lure my MLAs away.

Mr Harish Rawat is due to be in New Delhi on Monday as he has been summoned to the CBI for questioning over the sting operation on alleged attempts at horse-trading while his government was in trouble.

Saffron strategists are not happy over the scenario that is developing in the hill state. One argued that if Mr Rawat pulled off a victory, it would be a major embarrassment for us... and if he fails he will play the victim card. He felt the entire strategy planned by party general secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya should have been rejected by the BJP. If the high court stops the rebels from voting, they will stand nowhere. It is unlikely the BJP will get them into its fold and ghar wapsi is virtually impossible.

As per the Supreme Courts directions, if Mr Rawat wins the trust vote he will become chief minister again, but if he loses the vote in the Assembly on May 10, it will be up to the governor to invite the leader of the party that claims majority support to form the government.

Earlier, attorney-general Mukul Rohatgi submitted that the Centre, the petitioners challenging the high court verdict, had no objection to a floor test in the Assembly. Senior counsels Kapil Sibal, Rajeev Dhavan and Abhishek Manu Singhvi also agreed to hold the floor test under the supervision of the Supreme Court.

Taking note of the agreement, the bench of Justices Dipak Misra and Shiva Kirti Singh said in its order: A special session of the Uttarakhand Legislative Assembly be summoned/convened on 10th May 2016, commencing 11.00 am. The only agenda in the Assembly would be the vote of confidence sought by Mr Harish Singh Rawat. Apart from the said agenda, nothing else shall be discussed in the Assembly. The proceedings in the Assembly are expected to be absolutely peaceful and without any disturbance. This court expects that all the members and all concerned with the affairs of the Assembly shall abide by the same in letter and spirit.
Jaipur: The ED has conducted searches at multiple locations in Rajasthan in connection with its money laundering probe arising out of a case of land grab in Bikaner involving a company allegedly linked to Robert Vadra.

Officials said the searches were conducted on at least eight locations in the border town of Bikaner and adjoining areas on Thursday and the action has now ended.

The agency said the premises of ten people, including some retired government officials, were brought under the action. The ED conducted searches on Thursday at eight premises in Bikaner and nearby areas, belonging to accused Jay Prakash Bagadwa, Ranjeet Singh, Kishore Singh, Gugan Gir and certain government officials including retired ones like Faqir Mohd, Uma Charan, Deeparam and Mahavir Swamy in the case of Kolayat land scam, an ED statement said.

ED teams examined documents allegedly related to Vadras company, which purchased lands and also quizzed some people, ED spokesperson A.K. Rawal said on Friday.

The probe is related to the purchase of 275 bigha land allegedly by the company of Vadra, son-in-law of Congress chief Sonia Gandhi, in Kolayat area of Bikaner. Officials said action was taken in order to gather documents and data from officials and individuals involved in the case under Prevention of Money Laundering Act. The ED said documents, bank accounts and I-T Returns were seized after the searches got over.
Amy Mortensen

BRIDGEPORT - St. Vincent's College is pleased to announce this year's Distinguished Alumni of the Year, Ann Ballas, RN, CRN, Class of 1981. A resident of Shelton, Conn., Ann was presented the award during the Annual Alumni Day Cocktail Reception.

A quote from her nomination sums up why she is this year's Distinguished Alumni of the Year, "Ann is one of the most humanitarian people I have ever met; St. Vincent himself would agree that Ann truly embodies his mission."
If you really want to find out about America's economy, whom do you ask  economists or CEOs? That question is open to debate, but if you believe in the CEO approach, new information suggests that you should be concerned about the current state of the economy. From the view of most economists, America's economy is in relatively good shape even though growth remains relatively low. From the view of business leaders, the short-term outlook for America is not quite as rosy.

The Business Roundtable CEO Economic Outlook Index is produced through surveys of CEOs. It analyses their plans over the next six months with respect to capital spending, sales, and employment expectations, along with questions to ascertain the reasoning behind the optimism or pessimism. For the 4th quarter of 2015, the index dropped from 74.1 to 67.5. It has slipped three straight quarters from a 2015 peak of 90.1 to reach a three-year low. The long-term average of the index is 80.1.

Why the pessimism in a generally growing economy? There are many reasons, from the CEO perspective. Here are some examples from the survey.

Regulations  Just about any business survey will find regulations on the top of the list of pessimistic factors. This year was no exception, as excessive regulation was listed as the top cost pressure being applied to businesses. From Dodd-Frank and environmental regulations to financial restrictions, businesses feel that they are under constant regulatory attack.

Tax Policy  Congress allowed bonus depreciation to expire without taking action, depriving businesses of tax breaks. CEOs argue that this must be incorporated as part of broader tax reform  including lowering the nominal corporate tax rate of 35%, which is the highest of all developed countries.

In the eyes of CEOs, failing to address the corporate tax system is driving the trend of American companies reinvesting (or stashing, if you prefer) profits in overseas subsidiaries  or, in some cases, becoming foreign-owned companies through mergers and tax inversions. Tax inversions establish corporations with headquarters in foreign countries, thus allowing them to pay taxes to the foreign government at a lower rate. The $160 billion Pfizer-Allergan merger is the most recent example.

Health Care/Labor Costs  Wage pressures have not increased across the board but are affecting certain businesses adversely. Lower-end retail and restaurants are feeling greater pressures. However, almost all businesses are facing increases in health care costs as the effects of Obamacare reach equilibrium.

Terror Events  The spread of soft-target terror attacks, such as those in Paris, could result in a more cautious approach for both consumers and businesses. The survey took place before the San Bernardino shootings, so it is possible that this factor was understated.

Strong Dollar  The downside of having one of the best economies worldwide is that our currency is very high, making exports more expensive. As a result, American companies depending on overseas income find it harder to keep sales income high and sustain growth.

Export-Import Bank  At least this one has since been resolved. Congress did not renew the authorization for the Export-Import Bank (EXIM) during the previous session. Reauthorization has been attached to the Transportation Bill that has passed the House and Senate, and the President is expected to sign the bill into law.

Granted, CEOs are looking through a narrow and self-interested focus in this survey, but they do raise valid points. Policymakers, economists, and legislators would be wise to pay attention and consider whether to adjust their plans accordingly.
New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Thursday indicated that it will consider exempting states that have already conducted (or will conduct shortly) common entrance tests for admission to medical courses from the applicability of the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET), to be held on July 24.

With the states strongly opposing thrusting NEET on them, a three-member bench of Justices Anil R. Dave, Shiva Kirti Singh and A.K. Goel asked the Solicitor General Ranjit Kumar to take instructions whether the Centre can allow the states to admit students on the basis of CET conducted on the basis of a law enacted by them.

If the Centre accepts the courts suggestion on Friday, then Tamil Nadu can admit students on the basis of marks obtained by students in Higher Secondary examination and states like Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Kerala, Mah-arashtra can admit students on the basis of CET held by them.

The SG made it clear that the Centre was keen that the medical admission for this year must be done only on the basis of July 24, NEET-2 and states must fall in line, irrespective of the fact that they are covered by a state law or not. He said an all India rank list and a state rank list will be prepared by the CBSE and states can continue to admit students on the basis of their law and reservation will also be protected.

Justifying the NEET, the SG said it will ensure uniform standards in medical education. A single test was envisaged with the sole objective to provide quality health care for all citizens. The Bench said though it was willing to exempt states, all private and deemed universities or association of private medical colleges will not be permitted to have their CET and that they must fall in line with the NEET for this academic year.

The Bench gave this suggestion to the SG to respond after hearing arguments on a batch of petitions from various states and private medical colleges association seeking stay of NEET. Order insofar as its applicability to them is concerned for the academic year 2016-17.

The Bench also asked the Medical Council of India and the Central Board of Secondary Education (which conducts NEET) whether all students, including those who had participated in the NEET-1 held on May 1 can be given a second chance on condition that students who write for the second time must give up one of the marks.

Earlier Mr. Ranjit Kumar informed the Bench that since the NEET-1 was conducted only for 15 per cent seats, those who did not appear or those had applied but did not write the test might be allowed to participate in the July 24 NEET-2 examination. When the bench wanted to know whether even those who had taken the NEET-1 be given a second chance, the SG said if second chance was given then about 30 lakh students will participate in NEET-2 for the 85 per cent seats.

Additional Solicitor General Pinky Anand for CBSE said if all students are allowed then it will not be possible to stick to the schedule. The bench, however, said he schedule can be revised and admission process can be extended beyond September 30. The ASG said she would take instructions as to how the schedule be revised and inform the court on Friday.

Senior counsel Vikas Singh, appearing for Medical Council of India said all private medical colleges and deemed universities must be asked to admit students on the basis of NEET-2. MCI can come out with a scheme to enable poor students to obtain loans from banks to pay their fees and interests of private colleges can thus be protected. The present hearing is a sequel to the April 11 judgment of the Constitution Bench recalling the July 2013 order quashing the NEET notification.

Senior counsel V. Giri for Tamil Nadu drew the court attention to the fact that the State had abolished entrance examination for admission to all courses from 2007 and admissions are being done on the basis of higher secondary marks only. He said over four lakh students in Tamil Nadu who had taken this year?s 12th examination did not have any opportunity to prepare or appear for any entrance test in the State. He said imposing the NEET on them and compelling them to write an entrance will cause hardship and suffering to the students. Further MCI Regulations cannot override a law enacted by the State which had received Presidential assent.

Senior counsel P.P. Rao, appearing for AP told the court that the State was protected by the Presidential Order issued under Article 371D of the Constitution and NEET cannot be thrust on them. He the Constitutional protection cannot be taken away in the guise of NEET and pointed out that the 2014 State Re-organisation Act had specifically said that the present admission process will continue for 10 years. Arguments will continue on Friday.
Helder Mira /

Ridgefield resident Kaitlin Cunningham will travel Georgia in Europe to teach English as a second language as part of the U.S. Fulbright program.

Cunningham, who is a senior at Connecticut College, is a graduate of Choate Rosemary Hall and earlier attended Ridgefield Academy.
Those who could not appear for the phase-I test may appear for the second phase on July 24. (Representational image)

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Friday said that no examination would be permitted to be held for admission to MBBS or BDS by any private college, association or private/ deemed university.

A three-judge bench of Justices Anil R. Dave, Shiva Kirti Singh and A.K. Goel, in a brief order, said the issue with regard to students who had appeared or who are due to appear in examinations conducted by the states in accordance with local laws, shall be decided after hearing the Solicitor General Ranjit Kumar on May 9.

The bench said students who had appeared for Neet Phase-I on May 2 would not be permitted to take Neet Phase-II. Those who could not appear for the phase-I test may appear for the second phase on July 24.

Read: After Supreme Court lays it down NEET, COMEDK falls in line

The court is expected to allow Tamil Nadu to admit students on the basis of marks in the higher secondary exam. Students of states like Telangana, Andhra Pra-desh, Kerala, Maharas-htra and Gujarat maybe allowed to admit students on the basis of local Cets.

Senior counsel Rajeev Dhavan, submitted that if private colleges are not allowed to make admissions through their own CET or through the association of private medical colleges, they were not obliged to surrender 50 per cent of their seats to the government quota and that this would result in a piquant situation.

Mr Kumar informed the court that the Centre had convened a meeting this weekend with all the stake-holders. He would inform the court on Monday of the outcome of the meeting so that it can pass appropriate orders.
Donation to the Canadian Red Cross Will Help Support Impacted Families and Communities

TORONTO, May 6, 2016 /CNW/ - In support of those affected by the devastating wildfires in Alberta, Capital One Canada announced today its commitment to donate $75,000 to the Canadian Red Cross to help provide much-needed assistance to families and residents in the affected region.

"The destruction and impact the fires are having on people's lives is truly heartbreaking and our thoughts are with all the residents in the affected communities. We also send a heartfelt thanks to all the brave firefighters, first responders and volunteers who are on the ground helping with relief efforts," said Shane Holdaway, President of Capital One Canada. "For Capital One customers, we want them to know that we're always here to help if they need assistance."

Capital One is committed to helping its customers, which includes its Costco and Hudson's Bay cardholders, who may be experiencing unexpected financial challenges due to the wildfires.

For information or assistance with their account, cardholders can call the number on their card or statement, or reach out to @CapitalOneCA on Twitter.

About Capital One

With offices in Toronto, Kitchener-Waterloo and Montreal, Capital One Canada has been offering Canadian consumers a range of competitive MasterCard credit cards since 1996. We challenge ourselves to see the world through the eyes of our customers, so we can deliver the market-leading credit products and exceptional service they're looking for. Capital One Canada is a division of Capital One Bank, a subsidiary of Capital One Financial Corporation of McLean, Virginia (NYSE: COF). Capital One Bank (Canada Branch) is an authorized foreign bank branch of Capital One Bank (USA), N.A, a subsidiary of Capital One Financial Corporation of McLean, Virginia (NYSE: COF). To learn more, visit www.capitalone.ca

SOURCE Capital One Services, Inc.

For further information: Media Contact: Andrew Clarke, [email protected], 416-549-2930
VAUGHAN, ON, May 5, 2016 /CNW/ - The Board of Directors of Cara Operations Limited (TSX: CAO) ("Cara" or the "Company") has declared a quarterly dividend of $0.1017 per share on its outstanding Subordinate Voting Shares, Multiple Voting Shares and subscription receipts, or approximately $5.8 million in the aggregate, representing an expected aggregate annual dividend of $23.2 million.

Payment of the dividend will be made on June 15, 2016 to shareholders of record at the close of business on May 31, 2016. Cara has designated this dividend as an eligible dividend within the meaning the Income Tax Act (Canada) and all provisions of provincial laws applicable to eligible dividends.

Dividend Reinvestment Plan

On May 5, 2016, the Company suspended the Dividend Reinvestment Plan which provided holders of Subordinate Voting Shares of Cara and Multiple Voting Shares of Cara, to acquire additional Subordinate Voting Shares by reinvesting all of their cash dividends at a purchase price discount of 3%.

The Company will continue to review its Dividend Policy on a quarterly basis and may reinstate the Dividend Reinvestment Plan in the future.

About CARA

Founded in 1883, Cara is Canada's oldest and largest full-service restaurant company. The Company franchises and/or operates some of the most recognized brands in the country including Swiss Chalet, Harvey's, Milestones, Montana's, Kelsey's, East Side Mario's, Casey's, New York Fries, Prime Pubs, Bier Markt and Landing restaurants. As at March 27, 2016, Cara had 997 restaurants, 959 of which were located in Canada and the remaining 38 locations were located internationally. 88% of Cara's restaurants are operated by franchisees and 66% of Cara's locations are based in Ontario. Cara's shares trade on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol CAO. More information about the Company is available at www.cara.com.

Forward-Looking Information

Certain information in this news release relating to Cara is forward-looking within the meaning of Canadian securities laws. When used in this context, words such as "will", "anticipate", "believe", "plan", "intend", "target" and "expect" or similar words suggest future outcomes. The purpose of forward-looking information is to provide investors with management's assessment of future plans and possible outcomes and may not be appropriate for other purposes.

Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements as actual results could differ materially from the plans, expectations, estimates or intentions expressed in the forward-looking statements. Except as required by law, Cara disclaims any intention and assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statement even if new information becomes available, as a result of future events or for any other reason.

SOURCE Cara Operations Limited

For further information: Investor Relations: Cara Operations Limited, Ken Grondin, (905) 760-2244, Chief Financial Officer, Email: [email protected] or [email protected]
MIAMI, May 6, 2016 /CNW/ -- This Mother's Day most of the fresh cut flowers sold in Canada will be imported from Colombia. Mother's Day is actually one of the 3 most important dates for the Canadian flower industry in addition to Valentine's Day, and Christmas. Colombia is the largest supplier of flowers and second worldwide with more than 80% of its production reaching the U.S. and Canada. During 2015, Canada's total imports from Colombia reached US$650 billion where US$77 million is from the flower industry according to Canada's national statistical agency.

The floriculture sector is a substantial contributor to the Colombian economy. In 2015, the country exported US$1.2 billion of flowers mainly to the US, Canada, UK, Japan and Russia, where fresh cut roses, carnations, pompons, alstroemerias, and small carnations are sold in department stores, specialty shoppes, as well as online according to ProColombia, the Colombian Government promotion agency. Canada and the US alone import more than 173,000 tones of flowers representing more than US$40 million according to ProColombia. The industry also generates 130,000 direct and indirect jobs and provides employment opportunities for thousands of women.

Colombia is also the largest supplier of fresh cut roses for the US and Canada and chances are that 7 times out 10 these rose will come from Colombia. "Colombia's exotic varieties, top quality, streamlined export processes, and year round production due to its ideal climate are some of the main drivers which have gained the floricultural industry worldwide recognition," said ProColombia.

Colombia's floricultural industry has over 40 years of tradition and produces over 1,500 flower species grown in more than 7,200 hectares. The country harvests the largest variety of exotic flowers which has allowed the country to stay ahead of international trends. Today, worldwide demand is met by Holland, Colombia, Ecuador and Kenya, where Colombia leads as the largest exporter of carnations and the second of flowers. To support the industry, the Colombian Association of Flower Exporters (Asocolflores) brings together 75% of the national exporters as well as the Center of Innovation for the Colombian Floricultural Industry, Ceniflores the body in charge of strengthening the sector's competitiveness through government academic programs.

About ProColombia: Colombian government entity in charge of promoting exports from the country, foreign direct investment and international tourism.

MEDIA CONTACT:

Andrea Lopez, ProColombia Communications Director

Email: [email protected] Tel: (305) 374-3144 Ext. 66173

SOURCE ProColombia, The Colombian Government Trade Bureau
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo., May 5, 2016 /CNW/ -- The world's largest, fastest, and longest-range aerial firefighting asset celebrated its official homecoming in Colorado Springs this morning.

Global SuperTanker Services, LLC's Spirit of John Muir dazzled nearly 300 guests with a low fly by, at just 400 feet, and a demonstration drop of nearly 10,000 gallons of water. The converted 747-400, a Very Large Air Tanker (VLAT), will be soon be available to the hardworking men and women of the U.S. Forest Service and emergency responders across the country as they continue to fight the ever-growing threat of wildfires.

Following the drop, John Hickenlooper, Governor of Colorado; Doug Lamborn, U.S. Representative for Colorado's 5th Congressional District; and John Suthers, Mayor of Colorado Springs, addressed a crowd of aviation, firefighting, and U.S. Forest Service leaders. Global SuperTanker executives, including CEO Jim Wheeler, also spoke, as did Harry Toll of Alterna Capital LLC, Global SuperTanker's shareholder.

Marking the occasion, Governor John Hickenlooper stated, "The Spirit of John Muir is an important new asset supporting the men and women engaged in the herculean task of firefighting. We are pleased it is based here in Colorado. It represents a significant opportunity and will be an unparalleled asset in combatting fire around the world."

2015 was one of the most devastating wildfire seasons in American history, with more than 10 million acres of land burned and billions of dollars of damage inflicted on homes and property. The U.S. Forest Service has warned that this record may not stand for long: fire seasons are starting earlier and burning longer every year. Already in 2016, millions of lives and livelihoods have been threatened by serious fires in Virginia, Oklahoma, and Kansas: elsewhere in North America, wildfire rages in Alberta.

The Spirit of John Muir is the world's youngest VLAT, and has almost twice the capacity of the next biggest aerial tanker. The John Muir is capable of delivering single or multiple drops of nearly 20,000 gallons of water or fire retardant, either of which can be released at variable rates, producing a tailored response to the firefighting need.

Congressman Lamborn said, "Thank you to President Jim Wheeler and the entire team for your willingness to step forward and provide this fantastic aircraft that will help protect lives and property all over the world."

"The Spirit of John Muir differs from other firefighting planes not just because it is capable of variable rate drops," said Jim Wheeler, President and CEO of Global SuperTanker, "as the world's largest aerial firefighting asset, the John Muir can fly 600 miles per hour for long ranges at efficient altitudes, reaching and combatting any fire in the Western U.S. in less than three hours."

"The converted 747 can stand ready on the ramp at its home-base, Colorado Springs, fully loaded and able to respond on very short notice," continued Wheeler.

Colorado Springs Mayor John Suthers commented at the launch, "We are honored to serve as the home for this firefighting resource, and are appreciative that the John Muir has chosen Colorado Springs Airport as its home. Having witnessed several devastating wildfire events in and around our city, I know I speak for the residents, our fire department, and people across the region when I say, we are very glad to have this resource headquartered here. Further, the arrival of this global supertanker is yet another nod to our growing airport operations."

The Spirit of John Muir's firefighting scope isn't limited to the U.S.: from Colorado Springs, the plane can fly anywhere in the world in under 20 hours. "Longer and more destructive fire seasons are a global problem, and Global SuperTanker can deliver a global, rapid solution," CEO of Global Super Tankers Jim Wheeler noted.

Wheeler, an experienced leader in the logistics and transportation fields, heads a respected and experienced team: Global SuperTanker's management brings together a combined 259 years of aviation and related wildfire fighting experience.

"The proven technology behind the Spirit of John Muir could not have been implemented without the immensely talented team at Global SuperTanker, as well as the support of the state of Colorado and city of Colorado Springs," said Harry Toll, Managing Partner of Alterna Capital Partners LLC, whose portfolio company, Cyterna Air, LLC, owns Global SuperTanker.

"Fighting wildfires has many similarities to a military operation. The frontline ground teams and smokejumpers, incident management, support teams and equipment, and range of air assets, including different types and sizes of helicopter and fixed wing aircraft, all work together to fight as a team, protecting people, forests, and property. We are proud to be able to add a more powerful tool to support them when needed," continued Toll.

Attachment: Video footage of the Spirit of John Muir performing a fly by and water drop.

For more information about the launch of the Spirit of John Muir in Colorado Springs on May 5th and/or about Global SuperTanker Services, LLC, please contact Moira Whalen. [email protected] (203.299.7696)

Video - http://origin-qps.onstreammedia.com/origin/multivu_archive/PRNA/ENR/Global-SuperTanker-Spirit-of-John-Muir.mp4

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160427/360845LOGO

SOURCE Global SuperTanker Services, LLC
TORONTO, May 6, 2016 /CNW/ - Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) announced today a donation of $100,000 from the HBC Foundation to the Canadian Red Cross to support wildfire relief efforts currently affecting Fort McMurray, Alberta, and surrounding regions. Furthermore, HBC is empowering Hudson's Bay and Home Outfitters customers to donate their HBC Rewards Points at hbc.com/hbcrewards. HBC will convert all collected points to cash and donate equivalent funds to the Canadian Red Cross Alberta Fires Emergency Appeal. Donations will help the Canadian Red Cross provide critical support to people and families in desperate need of assistance.

"The Red Cross is incredibly grateful for this generous donation from HBC Foundation," said Conrad Sauve, secretary general and CEO of the Canadian Red Cross. "This support will help the Canadian Red Cross assist those affected not just today, but for the weeks, months, and even years that follow as the community of Fort McMurray recovers."

"Our thoughts are with the people of Fort McMurray," said Jerry Storch, Chief Executive Officer, Hudson's Bay Company. "This is a devastating event and we remain committed to the community during this difficult time. We are proud to join forces with our customers to support the relief efforts of the Canadian Red Cross."

Donations can be made directly to the Red Cross by visiting www.redcross.ca, calling 1-800-418-1111, or in person at any Canadian Red Cross location.

About Hudson's Bay Company

Hudson's Bay Company is one of the fastest-growing department store retailers in the world, based on its successful formula of driving the performance of high quality stores and their all-channel offerings, unlocking the value of real estate holdings and growing through acquisitions. Founded in 1670, HBC is the oldest company in North America. HBC's portfolio today includes ten banners, in formats ranging from luxury to better department stores to off price fashion shopping destinations, with more than 460 stores and 66,000 employees around the world.

In North America, HBC's leading banners include Hudson's Bay, Lord & Taylor, Saks Fifth Avenue, Gilt, and Saks OFF 5TH, along with Find @ Lord & Taylor and Home Outfitters. In Europe, its banners include GALERIA Kaufhof, the largest department store group in Germany, Belgium's only department store group Galeria INNO, as well as Sportarena.

HBC has significant investments in real estate joint ventures. It has partnered with Simon Property Group Inc. in the HBS Global Properties Joint Venture, which owns properties in the United States and Germany. In Canada, it has partnered with RioCan Real Estate Investment Trust in the RioCan-HBC Joint Venture.

SOURCE Hudson's Bay

For further information: Media Contact: Tiffany Bourre, Director, External Communications, Hudson's Bay Company, (905) 595-7184, [email protected]
TORONTO, May 5, 2016 /CNW/ - Effective immediately, the public can assist people displaced by the wildfires in Fort McMurray by making donations to the Canadian Red Cross Alberta Fires Emergency Appeal at any of the more than 650 LCBO stores throughout Ontario. The appeal is raising money that will help anyone affected by wildfires that spread in Northern Alberta. The Government of Canada is matching the donations of individual Canadians.

Donation boxes will be displayed at LCBO checkout counters and customers can add donation denominations of $2, $5, and $10 to their purchase until June 4, 2016.

"LCBO customers and staff have a long history of giving generously to help others affected by natural disasters," says LCBO Acting President & CEO George Soleas. "LCBO customers are invited to make donations at checkout counters from now until June 4th to assist with the relief efforts currently underway for Fort McMurray."

"Red Cross volunteers and staff are working around the clock to help families who have been affected by the wildfires in Fort McMurray," says Conrad Sauve, President and CEO of the Canadian Red Cross. "We are thankful to LCBO and their customers for their contribution to our Fort McMurray relief fund."

SOURCE LCBO

For further information: Media Contacts: Canadian Red Cross Communications Team, Tel:1-877-599-9602; Christine Bujold, Media Relations Coordinator, Tel: (416) 864-6772, Cell: 416-587-3729, E-Mail: [email protected]
Loblaw Companies commits an additional $300,000 in support for fire relief efforts

BRAMPTON, ON, May 5, 2016 /CNW/ - Loblaw Companies Ltd has committed $300,000 in support for relief efforts in Fort McMurray, including cash donations, and provisions of essential food and health supplies. In addition, in less than 24-hours, customers in stores across the country have donated more than $120,000 and 1.6 million Shoppers Optimum points to help displaced residents.

"Our thoughts are with our colleagues, customers and those living in and around the Fort McMurray area," said Bob Chant, Senior Vice President, Corporate Affairs, Loblaw. "During times of tragedy, Canadians band together to support our neighbours and we are overwhelmed at our customers' generosity so far."

The company has committed to a cash donation of $150,000 to the Canadian Red Cross. Additionally, through its network of more than 2,400 stores across the country, Loblaw has mobilized a disaster relief effort in each of its businesses to provide comprehensive support to those in Fort McMurray:

Loblaw grocery is providing essential food, water, and pet food to emergency shelters and to the Canadian Red Cross, and has enabled customers wishing to support to donate in store.

is providing essential food, water, and pet food to emergency shelters and to the Canadian Red Cross, and has enabled customers wishing to support to donate in store. Shoppers Drug Mart will match the donation of Shoppers Optimum points, to a maximum of $25,000 . The donated points will go toward required health and beauty products.

will match the donation of Shoppers Optimum points, to a maximum of . The donated points will go toward required health and beauty products. PC Financial will provide special treatment on lending and credit card product payments as well as crediting client accounts for any fees caused by overdrafts, insufficient funds, or use of non-PC Financial bank machines.

will provide special treatment on lending and credit card product payments as well as crediting client accounts for any fees caused by overdrafts, insufficient funds, or use of non-PC Financial bank machines. PC Insurance's underwriters have catastrophe teams on the ground  affected customers to call 1.877.251.8656 for claim information

The company will continue to work closely with the Canadian Red Cross and local government officials to get supplies to residents and support their resettlement.

About Loblaw Companies Limited (TSX: L)

Loblaw Companies Limited is Canada's food and pharmacy leader, the nation's largest retailer, and the majority unitholder of Choice Properties Real Estate Investment Trust. Loblaw provides Canadians with grocery, pharmacy, health and beauty, apparel, general merchandise, banking, and wireless mobile products and services. With more than 2,300 corporate, franchised and Associate-owned locations, Loblaw, its franchisees, and Associate-owners employ approximately 192,000 full- and part-time employees, making it one of Canada's largest private sector employers.

Loblaw's purpose  Live Life Well  puts first the needs and well-being of Canadians who make one billion transactions annually in the company's stores. Loblaw is positioned to meet and exceed those needs in many ways: convenient locations; more than 1,050 grocery stores that span the value spectrum from discount to specialty; full-service pharmacies at more than 1,250 Shoppers Drug Mart and Pharmaprix locations and more than 500 Loblaw locations; no-fee banking with PC Financial; affordable Joe Fresh fashion and family apparel; and three of Canada's top consumer brands in Life Brand, no name and President's Choice. Through the PC Plus and Shoppers Optimum loyalty programs, more than one in every three Canadians are rewarded for shopping with the companies.

SOURCE Loblaw Companies Limited

For further information: [email protected], 905-459-2500
CALGARY, May 5, 2016 /CNW/ - Primary Care Networks (PCNs) in Calgary and the surrounding area are ready to help displaced people of the Fort McMurray fires by offering options to be seen by a family doctor.

Fort McMurray residents that need to be seen for non-urgent care, can call Health Link at 811 to access a Calgary and area Primary Care Network clinic to assist them with their health needs.

Health Link can refer a caller to a Calgary PCN clinic offering after-hours care and also open seven-days-a-week, or to clinical resources available in the surrounding area.

Primary Care Network provincial lead and family physician, Dr. Phillip van der Merwe wants the residents of Fort McMurray to know that we have their back. "Our hearts go out to this community and hopefully we can play a role by helping people with their immediate medical needs whether it is refilling a prescription, health concern follow-up or for mental health  we are there for you."

A plan for displaced Fort McMurray residents is also underway in the Edmonton region with details forthcoming. The Edmonton zone Primary Care Networks have been coordinating efforts with the Alberta Health Services emergency operations centre and gathering a list of available PCN physicians.

The Wood Buffalo Primary Care Network was able to notify patients with email addresses on file about options for their medical needs at neighboring regional PCNs.

SOURCE Calgary West Central Primary Care Network

Image with caption: "Calgary West Central Primary Care Network (CNW Group/Calgary West Central Primary Care Network)". Image available at: http://photos.newswire.ca/images/download/20160505_C6937_PHOTO_EN_684019.jpg

For further information: or an interview with Dr. van der Merwe, please contact: Bart Goemans, Senior Manager, Communications, CWC PCN (Calgary Zone), 403-510-7631, [email protected]
JADENUTM, a new formulation of PrEXJADE (deferasirox) is a once-daily oral tablet that removes excess iron from the body1

DORVAL, QC, May 6, 2016 /CNW/ - Canadians requiring treatment for chronic iron overload have a new treatment option with the availability of JADENU (deferasirox) following its recent approval by Health Canada. JADENU contains the same active ingredient (deferasirox) as EXJADE. However, JADENU film-coated tablet is a new oral formulation of deferasirox. JADENU is a tablet that should be swallowed whole and that requires a different dosing regimen and method of administration compared to EXJADE, which must be dissolved in liquid.

JADENUTM should be swallowed whole with water or other liquids, preferably at the same time each day and should be taken on an empty stomach or with a light meal. For patients unable to swallow whole tablets, it can also be crushed and administered by sprinkling the full dose on a soft food such as yogurt or applesauce.1

"Iron overload is a major concern in the follow up of patients for whom life is dependent on regular transfusions, partly because iron overload is not easily assessed. Inability to diagnose and address this transfusion side effect can lead to damage to multiple organs and death. JADENU, the new formulation of deferasirox, may provide a more manageable way for patients to adhere to therapy and hopefully better results at reducing iron overload and maintaining an adequate level afterwards for patients who remain chronically transfused," said Dr. Denis Soulieres, MD, hematologist and medical oncologist, Centre hospitalier de l'Universite de Montreal (CHUM).

The Health Canada approval of JADENU includes a Notice of Compliance with conditions (NOC/c) for the management of chronic iron overload in patients with transfusion-dependent anemias aged six years or older and the management of chronic iron overload in patients with transfusion-dependent anemias aged two to five who cannot be adequately treated with deferoxamine. The NOC/c was granted to reflect the need for further follow-up to verify the clinical benefit. The Health Canada approval of JADENU also includes a Notice of Compliance for the treatment of chronic iron overload in patients with non-transfusion-dependent thalassemia syndromes (NTDT) aged 10 years and older.1

About chronic iron overload

Chronic iron overload is a life-threatening cumulative toxicity that results from blood transfusions required to treat thalassemia, myelodysplastic syndromes, sickle cell disease, and other conditions. Chronic iron overload also can occur in patients with NTDT due to increased iron absorption in the stomach and intestines.2,3 If left untreated, chronic iron overload can damage the liver and heart as the body has no mechanism to remove excess iron.4,5,6 Receiving as few as 20 units of blood (10 in children) over time can lead to chronic iron overload.7 Iron overload and consequent serious organ damage are managed with chelation therapy, which removes certain metals, such as iron, from the body. These agents bind to the iron and remove it through the urine or stool.6

Blood transfusions are also crucial in treating children born with the genetic disorder thalassemia, and iron overload is a constant concern.8 "Iron chelators have significantly changed the prognosis of people born with thalassemia allowing these patients to be treated with regular blood transfusions." said Helen Ziavras, President, Thalassemia Foundation of Canada. "When you are dealing with a child who needs to take treatment on a daily basis, you need it to be tolerable and to go down as smoothly and as fast as possible! Having the option of being able to crush JADENU into soft foods such as yogurt or applesauce, is particularly useful for parents caring for children with thalassemia. This is a welcome new alternative for younger patients."

For Cindy Anthony, Executive Director, Aplastic Anemia and Myelodysplasia Association of Canada, the new treatment is important: "Patients with blood disorders and their families have so many things to deal with. They are living with a very serious condition, which means treatment is an important part of their day-to-day life. The approval of JADENU is an important step forward because a simplified mode of administration gives these patients one less thing to worry about and is an immense help."

Sickle cell disease is one of the conditions normally treated with blood transfusions. "The approximately 5,000 Canadians with sickle cell disease9 understand the importance and need to control the buildup of iron in their blood. Being able to control iron overload with a simplified daily tablet that can be taken at a time that is convenient to the patients represents a great improvement," said Lanre Tunji-Ajayi, President & Executive Director, Sickle Cell Disease Association of Canada. "This treatment is a welcomed option and we hope that patients in Canada will soon have access to it."

About JADENU

JADENU (deferasirox) is an iron chelator indicated for the management of chronic iron overload in patients with transfusion-dependent anemias aged six years or older and the management of chronic iron overload in patients with transfusion-dependent anemias aged two to five who cannot be adequately treated with deferoxamine. JADENU is also indicated for the treatment of chronic iron overload in patients with NTDT syndromes aged 10 years and older.

JADENU is available by prescription in three strengths: 90 mg, 180 mg and 360 mg. JADENUTM is a strength-adjusted formulation of deferasirox with higher bioavailability compared to EXJADE dispersible tablets. JADENUTM requires a different dosing regimen and method of administration compared to EXJADE. To avoid dosing errors, it is important that prescriptions of deferasirox specify both the type of formulation (dispersible tablet or film-coated tablet) and the prescribed dose in mg/kg/day. The dosage of JADENU is adjusted by weight, individual patient tolerability and level of iron in the body.

Important Safety Information

JADENU contains deferasirox, its active ingredient. Deferasirox is contraindicated in patients with moderate and severe renal impairment and has not been studied in patients with severe hepatic impairment. Deferasirox can cause the following clinically significant adverse events: acute renal failure, hepatic failure and gastrointestinal haemorrhage and perforations. The most frequently occurring adverse events in the therapeutic trials of deferasirox were diarrhea, vomiting, nausea, headache, constipation, dyspepsia, abdominal pain, pyrexia, cough, proteinuria, increases in serum creatinine and transaminases, pruritis and skin rash. Gastrointestinal disorders, increases in serum creatinine and skin rash were dose related.

JADENU is contraindicated in patients with estimated creatinine clearance (ClCr) <60 mL/min or serum creatinine >2 times the age-appropriate upper limit of normal (ULN); in high risk myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS) patients, any other MDS patient with a life expectancy < 1 year and patients with other hematological and non-hematological malignancies who are not expected to benefit from chelation therapy due to the rapid progression of their disease; in patients with platelet counts < 50 x 109/L; in patient with hypersensitivity to JADENU or to any of the excipients.

JADENU should not be combined with other iron chelator therapies as the safety and efficacy of such combinations has not been established.

For additional information, please refer to the JADENU Product Monograph.

Disclaimer

The foregoing release contains forward-looking statements that can be identified by words such as "hope," "will," "as soon as possible," "expected," or similar terms, or by express or implied discussions regarding potential additional marketing approvals or new indications or labeling for JADENU, or regarding potential future revenues from JADENU. You should not place undue reliance on these statements. Such forward-looking statements are based on the current beliefs and expectations of management regarding future events, and are subject to significant known and unknown risks and uncertainties. Should one or more of these risks or uncertainties materialize, or should underlying assumptions prove incorrect, actual results may vary materially from those set forth in the forward-looking statements. There can be no guarantee that JADENU will be submitted or approved for any additional indications or labeling in any market, or at any particular time. Neither can there be any guarantee that JADENU will be submitted or approved for sale in any additional markets or at any particular time. Nor can there be any guarantee that JADENU will be commercially successful in the future, or will achieve any particular level of revenue. In particular, management's expectations regarding JADENU could be affected by, among other things, the uncertainties inherent in research and development, including unexpected clinical trial results and additional analysis of existing clinical data; unexpected regulatory actions or delays or government regulation generally; the company's ability to obtain or maintain proprietary intellectual property protection; general economic and industry conditions; global trends toward health care cost containment, including ongoing pricing pressures and reimbursement issues; unexpected safety issues; unexpected manufacturing issues, and other risks and factors referred to in Novartis AG's current Form 20-F on file with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Novartis is providing the information in this press release as of this date and does not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statements contained in this press release as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

About Novartis Pharmaceuticals Canada Inc.

Novartis Pharmaceuticals Canada Inc., a leader in the healthcare field, is committed to the discovery, development and marketing of innovative products to improve the well-being of all Canadians. Novartis Pharmaceuticals Canada Inc. employs approximately 700 people in Canada. For further information, please consult www.novartis.ca.

About Novartis

Novartis provides innovative healthcare solutions that address the evolving needs of patients and societies. Headquartered in Basel, Switzerland, Novartis offers a diversified portfolio to best meet these needs: innovative medicines, eye care and cost-saving generic pharmaceuticals. Novartis is the only global company with leading positions in these areas. In 2015, the Group achieved net sales of USD 49.4 billion, while R&D throughout the Group amounted to approximately USD 8.9 billion (USD 8.7 billion excluding impairment and amortization charges). Novartis Group companies employ approximately 118,000 full-time-equivalent associates. Novartis products are available in more than 180 countries around the world. For more information, please visit http://www.novartis.com.

JADENU is a trademark

EXJADE is a registered trademark

References:

1 Novartis Pharmaceuticals Canada, Product Monograph for JADENU (deferasirox tablets), February 19, 2016, pp. 4-5; 25.

2 Andrews NC. Disorder of iron metabolism. N Engl J Med. 1999; 341:1986-1995. Pp. 1993-94.

3 Taher A, Vichinsky E, Musallam K, Cappellini MD, Viprakasit V. Guidelines for the Management on Non Transfusion Dependent Thalassaemia (NTDT). Nicosia, Cyprus: Thalassaemia International Federation; 2013, pp 35 & 37.

4 Kohgo Y, Ikuta K, Ohtake T, Torimoto Y, Kato J. Body iron metabolism and pathophysiology of iron overload. Int J Hematol. 2008 Jul; 88(1):7-15.p. 7.

5 Musallam et al. Elevated liver iron concentration is a marker of increased morbidity in patients with beta thalassemia intermedia. Haematologica. 2011, 96(11): 16051612. p. 1605.

6 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Diamond Blackfan Anemia, Chelation Therapy, accessed Feb. 15, 2016 at: http://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/dba/chelation.html

7 Porter JB. Practical management of iron overload. Br J Haematol. 2001:115:239- 252. p. 241.

8 Thalassemia Foundation of Canada, Frequently Asked Questions, How can thalassemia be treated? Accessed Feb. 15, 2016 at: http://www.thalassemia.ca/resources/faq-2/

9 Sickle Cell Disease Association of Canada, homepage slide #5, accessed Feb. 15, 2016, at: http://www.sicklecelldisease.ca/

SOURCE Novartis Pharmaceuticals Canada Inc.

For further information: Novartis Media Relations, Daphne Weatherby, Novartis Pharma Communications, +1 514 633 7873, [email protected]; +1 514 234 4095, [email protected]
New Delhi: The issue of CAG listing irregularities in Gujarat State Petroleum Corporation's KG basin gas project again reverberated in Rajya Sabha on Monday with a Congress member seeking government's reply on the issue. Raising the issue at the start of the Question Hour, Jairam Ramesh said "it's one week since I have been asking this question every day. This is a matter of national importance" and sought an answer to the CAG findings of alleged regularities running into several thousand crores in the matter.

Modi as Gujarat Chief Minister in 2005 had announced that GSPC had struck 20 trillion cubic feet of gas reserves in its KG basin block. But recoverable reserves had proved to be one-tenth of that and GSPC's borrowings shot up to Rs 19,716.27 crore as of March 31, 2015, according to CAG report.

Congress had raised the issue in the Upper House on Monday as well. The government had then said CAG reports are examined by Public Accounts Committees (PACs) of state assemblies and there was no convention to discuss those in Parliament.

It had also then alleged that Congress was trying to divert attention from AgustaWestland helicopter deal. Chairman Hamid Ansari, however, insisted that Question

Hour should be allowed and wondered what is the point in "disrupting" the Question Hour. As sloganeering continued, Kurien adjourned the House again for 15 minutes.

Earlier in the day, Rajya Sabha was adjourned briefly towards the end of Zero Hour in the pre-noon session as Congress members raised slogans against the government and trooped into the Well.
TORONTO, May 6, 2016 /CNW/ - Today, RBC announced a donation of $2 million to support families and communities affected by the wildfires and the recent economic downturn in Alberta, as part of its longstanding history of helping Canadians. The funds will support relief and recovery efforts for those impacted by the fires, as well as community organizations to assist Alberta families.

"More than 80,000 people have been displaced from their homes so far as a result of the fire. And the long-term implications are still unknown," said Dave McKay, president and CEO, RBC. "We want to do everything we can to aid and support our employees, clients and communities in Alberta to help them recover and rebuild."

We are also supporting Fort McMurray impacted clients with special financial considerations and assistance, including short-term payment deferrals on mortgages, personal loans, home insurance, auto insurance and credit cards. Small business and commercial clients will also be afforded special accommodation through their RBC account managers.

"The devastation of the wildfires is challenging the collective resolve of Albertans. Alberta has built its foundation on hard work and community, and with the help of others, we will get through this," said Jeff Boyd, Regional President, Alberta and Territories, RBC Royal Bank. "Our employees have a long history of volunteering in their communities to help Albertans get back on their feet and they are rising to the challenge once again."

As part of our extensive employee volunteer program, RBC employee volunteers who commit their time to helping in the affected areas in Alberta can apply for an RBC Day of Service grant of $1,000 for that community organization. We will be welcoming charities to post and share volunteering needs with our more than 50,000 Canadian employees.

This announcement also includes RBC's earlier contribution of $100,000 to the Canadian Red Cross. Customers of RBC can continue to make donations to the Canadian Red Cross at their local branch.

ABOUT RBC

Royal Bank of Canada is Canada's largest bank, and one of the largest banks in the world, based on market capitalization. We are one of North America's leading diversified financial services companies, and provide personal and commercial banking, wealth management, insurance, investor services and capital markets products and services on a global basis. We have over 80,000 full- and part-time employees who serve more than 16 million personal, business, public sector and institutional clients through offices in Canada, the U.S. and 37 other countries. For more information, please visit rbc.com.

RBC helps communities prosper, supporting a broad range of community initiatives through donations, community investments, sponsorships and employee volunteer activities. In 2015, we contributed more than $121 million to causes around the world.

SOURCE RBC

For further information: Pam Brown, RBC Communications, [email protected], 403-292-3372; Andre Roberts, RBC Communications, [email protected], 416-313-7436
TORONTO, May 6, 2016 /CNW/ - The Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, today issued the following statement on the Government of Canada's response to the Fort McMurray fire:

"Today, I speak for all Canadians when I say that our hearts go out to the families affected by this terrible fire. We are thinking of  and praying for  the people of Fort McMurray. Though Alberta's loss is profound, we will get through this tragedy together: as friends, as neighbours, as Canadians.

"I encourage everyone to make a donation to www.redcross.ca, and help the thousands of displaced residents of Fort McMurray.

"The Government of Canada will match every dollar donated to the Canadian Red Cross in support of the Fort McMurray relief effort. Our commitment will apply to individual charitable donations made within Canada, it will be backdated to May 3rd, 2016, and it will continue until May 31st, 2016. There will be no financial cap on the federal government's contribution.

"We applaud the Government of Alberta, who has also agreed to match donations. As a result, for every dollar donated by Canadians, the Red Cross will receive a total of $3.

"The outpouring of goodwill and compassion we have already seen from Canadians across the country has not only been inspirational, but stands as a testament to who we are as a nation.

"I would once again like to thank the many first responders who are working tirelessly, day and night, to fight this fire. To those who have lost so much: we are resilient, we are Canadians, and we will make it through this difficult time, together."

This document is also available at http://pm.gc.ca

SOURCE Prime Minister's Office

For further information: PMO Media Relations: 613-957-5555
EDMONTON, May 6, 2016 /CNW/ - United Steelworkers (USW) Local 5575 is donating $50 per member to the Red Cross in support of families that have been affected by the Fort McMurray fires and is asking other Steelworkers locals and labour unions to make contributions as well.

USW Local 5575 is based in Edmonton and represents 59 employees at CW Carry, a steel fabrication shop.

"As union members, we know all about solidarity and standing together," says Dean Brummett, Local 5575 President. "Fort McMurray is home to countless workers and their families who need our support. We're asking other unions to show their support as well by contributing to the relief efforts."

The Steelworkers Humanity Fund has already contributed $10,000 to the Red Cross Fort McMurray fund.

SOURCE United Steelworkers (USW)

For further information: Dean Brummett, USW Local 5575 President, 780-966-6329
MISSISSAUGA, ON, May 5, 2016 /CNW/ - Temple Hotels Inc. ("Temple") (TSX:TPH) continues to monitor the wildfires in the Fort McMurray area. "We are concerned for the families and workers directly affected, and first responders who bravely continue to fight the fire" said Rai Sahi, Chief Executive Officer of Temple.

Temple properties located in Fort McMurray have been evacuated safely and will remain closed until relevant authorities determine it is safe to allow staff and guests to return. At this time, it is not known how the fire has affected any of Temple's properties in Fort McMurray. However, Temple has support teams ready to attend the properties, assess damages, and assist with the safe reopening of its hotels.

Fort McMurray and the surrounding areas remain under mandatory evacuation. We are watching the situation closely, however, due to the uncertainty and unpredictability of this natural disaster, we are unable to provide further details at this time. Temple will be working with emergency services and government agencies to provide support as needed.

Temple's Fort McMurray portfolio comprises 890 rooms in 9 properties. Temple maintains insurance coverage based on industry best practices and insurance standards, and include Liability, Property, Boiler and Machinery insurance programs that extend for Building, Contents and loss of Revenue.

Temple will continue to provide updates as additional information becomes available.

About Temple Hotels Inc.

Temple is a real estate investment company listed on the TSX under the symbols TPH (common shares), TPH.DB.C, TPH.DB.D, TPH.DB.E and TPH.DB.F (convertible debentures). Temple invests in hotel properties and assets across Canada, wholly-owning a portfolio of 29 hotel properties, comprising of 3,870 rooms, and participating in 50% of the earnings from two additional hotels, comprising 299 rooms. For more information, please visit www.templehotels.ca.

This press release contains certain statements regarding the assignment of the asset management which may constitute forward-looking information. The forward-looking information is subject to certain risks and uncertainties, which could result in actual events or results differing materially from the forward-looking statements.

SOURCE Temple Hotels Inc.

For further information: Paul Miatello, Chief Financial Officer, T 905-281-3800; Beverley G. Flynn, Vice President, T 905-281-3800
The signing of the 2016 Budget into law by President Mohammadu Buhari may be a matter of minutes barring any change of mind which is doubt...





The signing of the 2016 Budget into law by President Mohammadu Buhari may be a matter of minutes barring any change of mind which is doubtful.All is set for the all-important assignment which has set the presidential Villa, Abuja agog momentarily.A roll call of personalities who are currently with the president inside his office included Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, Senate President, Bukola Saraki and Speaker of the House of Representatives Yakubu Dogara.Others were the Minister of Budget and National Planning, Udoma Udo Udoma, Minister of Finance, Kemi Adeosun, Minister of State for Budget and National Planning, Zainab Ahmed, Senior Special Assistant to the President on National Assembly Matters (Senate), Ita Enang, Senior Special Assistant to the President on National Assembly Matters (House of Representatives), Samaila Kawo, National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), John Odigie-Oyegun, Chairman Senate Committee on Appropriation, Danjuma Goje and Chairman House of Reps Committee on Appropriation, Abdulmumuni Jubril.
President Muhammadu Buhari on Friday, arrived his hometown Daura in Katsina State to begin a four-day visit to the state. The Presidents...

President Muhammadu Buhari on Friday, arrived his hometown Daura in Katsina State to begin a four-day visit to the state. The Presidents plane landed at the Katsina airport at about 4.25 p.m, from where he was taken in a chopper to Daura, near the Nigerien border.The Presidents plane landed at the Katsina airport at about 4.25 p.m, from where he was taken in a chopper to Daura, near the Nigerien border.He was received by the state governor, Alhaji Aminu Masari and top federal and state government functionaries at the airport before leaving for Daura, his hometown. The president is expected back in Katsina on Monday, where he will be engaged in official assignments. He is scheduled to declare open and participate in the Katsina State Economic and Investment Summit, aimed at diversifying the states ailing economy.The summit, which is scheduled to take place between Monday and Wednesday, is designed to attract investors and leaders of the corporate world, within and outside the country. Earlier, Governor Masari had told State House correspondents in Abuja that the summit was conceived as a platform to showcase the state natural economic features to the outside world as well as to attract investors to the state. The Katsina State Economic and Investment Summit is about diversification of the states economy.It is about creating awareness among the citizens of the state about the need to be entrepreneur-conscious, to be creative and self-reliant, he said.
Nainital: The Uttarakhand High Court will hear on Saturday a petition filed by rebel Congress MLAs challenging their disqualification under the anti-defection law by the Speaker.

Justice U C Dhyani of the high court had yesterday posted for hearing on Saturday an urgent application moved by rebel MLAs Umesh Sharma Cow, Subodh Uniyal and Shailarani Rawat.

The nine rebel Congress MLAs, who were disqualified by Speaker Govind Singh Kunjwal on March 27, have filed two separate petitions in the court challenging the Speaker's action against them.

While senior Supreme Court lawyer Kapil Sibal and Amit Sibal have represented the Speaker before the single bench, C A Sundaram, L Nageshwar Rao, Dinesh Dwivedi and Rajeshwar Singh are arguing on behalf of the rebel MLAs.

The status of the MLAs will be crucial in case the high court's order asking former chief minister Harish Rawat to go for a floor test in the state Assembly is endorsed by the Supreme Court.

These MLAs had sided with BJP to demand a division of votes on the Appropriation Bill in the state Assembly.

If the Speaker's action is upheld and they remain disqualified, the effective strength of the House will be reduced from 70 to 61 in which any party mustering the support of 31 MLAs will have the majority.

Both Congress and BJP have 27 MLAs of their own. While BJP claims the support of the nine Congress rebels who stand disqualified on date, Congress has the support of the six-member People's Democratic Front, a combine of BSP and Independent MLAs.
There were indications on Thursday that President Muhammadu Buhari would not immediately proceed to sign the corrected version of the 2016...

There were indications on Thursday that President Muhammadu Buhari would not immediately proceed to sign the corrected version of the 2016 Budget, transmitted to him by the National Assembly, as being expected in some quarters.Ministers, who raised concerns on the earlier version received by the President, would study the new document again, it was learnt.A decision on whether the President should sign the document or not will be based on the advice of the Minister of Budget and National Planning, Senator Udoma Udo-Udoma.The Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity, Garba Shehu, confirmed this to reporters on Thursday.Shehu was responding to a question on when exactly the President would sign the budget.He stated, The question now is that have those concerns been corrected 100 per cent?We should not mix things up. The process is that ministers, who raised the initial concerns, should study the new document and ascertain that the concerns have been addressed 100 per cent.It is based on their findings that the Minister of Budget and National Planning will advise the President. The decision on whether the President should sign or not will be based on the advice of the minister.Senate Leader, Ali Ndume, who spoke with one of our correspondents on the telephone in Abuja, said the President might sign the budget on Friday (today).Ndume said the document left the National Assembly earlier on Thursday.He said, We have completed our work on the budget at the National Assembly and it is already with the executive. We hope the President will sign it tomorrow (Friday) so that it would become operational.Also, the Senior Special Assistant to the President on National Assembly Matters (Senate), Senator Ita Enang, confirmed in a telephone interview with newsmen in Abuja that the budget had been sent to the President.When asked if the clean copy of the budget had been transmitted to the President. Enang said, Yes please.In response to another question as to whether the issues contained therein had been resolved, he also answered, Yes.The Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives, Mr. Yussuf Lasun, wanted to address a news conference at the National Assembly on Thursday to announce that his committee had returned the budget to the President but later changed his mind.The deputy speaker was advised by a superior opinion to shelve the news briefing since there was no conflict over the fact that the budget had been returned, a senior legislative official told newsmen.The Deputy Chairman, House Committee on Media and Public Affairs, Mr. Jonathan Gaza, confirmed that the budget had been forwarded to the Presidency when his views were sought.He stated, The budget has been completed and it is our hope that everything will be over in days.Buhari, had last month declined assent to the budget, which was sent to him by the National Assembly because of its alleged padding by the legislature.Prior to the passage of the budget by the National Assembly, there were controversies over its distortion and padding by civil servants.Projects, such as the Lagos-Calabar rail, were dropped from the approved budget by the National Assembly members, who allegedly inserted constituency projects in it.After a brief meeting in Abuja on Wednesday last week, Buhari and the leadership of the National Assembly agreed to set up a committee to reconcile the grey areas in the budget.Findings indicated that among the grey areas, which would now be deleted from the budget, was the N40bn the lawmakers added to the original vote for zonal intervention projects in the budget.The President initially proposed N60bn for the projects, but the lawmakers jacked it up to N100bn.It was equally learnt that the controversial Lagos-Calabar rail project was among the projects that the reconciliation committee of the National Assembly accommodated in the reworked 2016 budget.Investigations by reporters showed that though the reworked document retained the original total figure of N6.06tn, the details were remarkably different.Besides the Calabar-Lagos rail line project, it was learnt that funds, slashed from projects Buhari included in the budget to fulfil his campaign promises, were restored.A source stated, The vexed issues included the fact that Mr. President was not happy that key projects he intended to use to fulfil his political campaign promises had their votes slashed in the first details sent to him.The votes have been restored.Findings indicated that the funds were slashed by the National Assemblys Committees on Appropriation to be used to cover costs for projects that the legislature introduced into the budget without the prior knowledge of the executive.Generally, most of the distortions were resolved, including the issue of 40 per cent cut in the project heads in some of the projects dear to the President, another legislative aide disclosed.A Principal Officer of the House, Mr. Leo Ogor, told newsmen that the main issues included the political campaign projects of the President.He added, The National Assembly has accommodated the projects that the President feels are in line with his promises to the people.The Calabar-Lagos rail line project is, of course, one of them, I believe, he said.After the Presidency got the clean copy of the budget on Thursday, the Minister of Budget and National Planning, Udo-Udoma, was said to have met with key government officials, including Enang, over the document.The meeting, which was held at the headquarters of the ministry, according to a source, started in the morning and lasted till about 4pm.The officials, who pleaded not to be named as he was not officially permitted to speak on the matter, said for several hours, the meeting deliberated on how the budget would be ready for the President before he could give his assent.Meanwhile, the President of the Senate, Bukola Saraki; and the Speaker, House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara, were on Wednesday evening put on the spot over the 2016 Budget impasse.It was learnt on Thursday that the issue formed one of the major agenda of a late night meeting Buhari had with leaders of the ruling All Progressives Congress at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.A source, who attended the meeting that ended in the early hours of Thursday, told one of our correspondents on condition of anonymity, that the President and party leaders did not mince words in condemning the leadership and members of the National Assembly for inserting items which had been described as grey areas into the budget.The source said Saraki and Dogara, however, made efforts to exonerate themselves.He said, In fact, the two of them told the meeting that they were not aware of the padding because they entrusted the process to the chairmen of the Senate and House of Representatives Committees on Appropriation.The President is expected to leave Abuja on Friday (today) for his home state, Katsina, where he is scheduled to take part in the states economic summit among other engagements.According to his itinerary, Buhari will travel out of the country from Katsina either on Monday or Tuesday.He is scheduled to travel to the United Kingdom to participate in an anti-corruption summit that is expected to be attended by about 60 world leaders.
The Federal Government of Nigeria has told the ECOWAS community court sitting in Abuja to hands off a matter brought before it by the emba...

The Federal Government of Nigeria has told the ECOWAS community court sitting in Abuja to hands off a matter brought before it by the embattled leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Nnamdi Kanu, over his continued detention and trial.The government accused Kanu of threatening the peaceful co-existence of the country.It also noted that the sub-regional court lacked, the requisite jurisdiction to hear and determine the matter before it.The FG also asked the court to immediately dismiss and/or strike out the action for want of jurisdiction, stemming from incompetency in initiating the application against the defendants.The government noted that instead of waiting for conclusion of his application before the Nigerian Domestic Court of Appeal on his bail, the plaintiff proceeded to the ECOWAS court, a move it stated, amounted to, an abuse of court process or subjecting the Nigerian law to ridicule.Faulting the inclusion of the Attorney General of the Federation and the Director General of State Security Service as defendants in the suit, the government stated that in the context and framework of ECOWAS, only member states and community institutions can be sued before the sub-regional court for alleged human rights violation.It submitted that the court has no jurisdiction over the two defendants because they, are neither member -states or community institutions of ECOWAS and therefore, not amenable to the jurisdiction of the community court of justice.
Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) on Thursday arraigned one, Irene Okeoha, before Justice S. C. Amadi of the State High Cour...

Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) on Thursday arraigned one, Irene Okeoha, before Justice S. C. Amadi of the State High Court, Port-Harcourt, Rivers State on one-count charge of stealing to the tune of eight million naira (N8, 000, 000. 00).Okeoha, who is the customer service manager, Ecobank Plc, Hotel Presidential branch, allegedly defrauded the bank of the sum of eight million Naira.The charge reads: That you, Mrs. Irene Okeoha on or about 17th February, 2016 at Hotel Presidential Port Harcourt, within the Port Harcourt Division of this Honorable Court did fraudulently steal the sum of Eight Million Naira (N8, 000, 000. 00) only, property of Ecobank Plc and thereby committed an offence contrary to Section 390 (9) of the Criminal Code CAP 37 Vol. 11 Laws of Rivers State of Nigeria 1999.When the charge was read to her, the accused pleaded not guilty.In view of her plea, the prosecution counsel, Ben Ubi, urged the court to fix a date for the commencement of trial and to remand the defendant in prison custody.However, the defence counsel, B. Igeongei, prayed the court to grant his client bail as the accused was already on administrative bail by the EFCC.Justice Amadi granted the defendant bail in the sum of N20, 000,000.00 (twenty million Naira) and one surety in the like sum. The surety who must be resident within the jurisdiction of the court should possess a landed property to be verified by the prosecution. The surety is also to depose to an affidavit of means.Justice Amadi adjourned the case to 25th May, 2016 for trial and ordered that the defendant to be remanded in prison custody pending the perfection of her bail.
Operatives of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission this evening arrested Herbert Wigwe, CEO of Access Bank Plc, as money launderin...









Operatives of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission this evening arrested Herbert Wigwe, CEO of Access Bank Plc, as money laundering investigations shifted to the Nigerian banks.





It was unclear the specific reasons for the raid of Access bank and later the arrest of its CEO, but it makes the third arrest within 10 days.

Herbert Wigwe, Access Banks Group Managing Director: arrested





The first bank CEO to be arrested was Nnamdi Okonkwo of Fidelity Bank, in connection with the $115million laundered through the bank by former oil minister, Diezani Alison Madueke to corrupt officials of the Independent National Electoral Commission to change the results for Goodluck Jonathan.





Some of the INEC officials who received the money, N23.3 billion, have been arrested.





Then came the arrest of Yemi Adeola of Sterling Bank.





His arrest on Wednesday created quite a panic at the Marina in Lagos as gun toting operatives frightened the hell out of bank staff and customers before they finally stormed the office of Adeola and arrested him.





The reason is not clear, but some sources are linking it with the stashed money of Jide Omokore,oil mogul and business partner of Diezani Alison-Madueke.





It was the turn of Herbert Wigwe today.





No statement has been issued by the EFCC yet.
Ekiti State Government has appealed to the Federal Government to, as a matter of urgency, extend the railway system to the state in a bid ...

Ekiti State Government has appealed to the Federal Government to, as a matter of urgency, extend the railway system to the state in a bid to boost its participation in international trade and achievement of the ongoing diversification of economy.State Commissioner for Commerce, Michael Ayodele, said the rail line extension was necessary because a lot of agricultural products are being wasted in Ekiti State because of lack of opportunities to move them out en-mass for export purpose.The Commissioner, represented by the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Commerce, Mr. Babatunde Akilo, spoke in Ado Ekiti, the state capital, yesterday at a one-day enlightenment seminar organised by the Nigerian Shippers Council (NSC) with the theme: Ports Regulation: A Panacea to a Cost Effective Import/Export in Ekiti State.He said: There is a limit to which evacuation can be done by road. Extension of railway system to Ekiti State would definitely increase the export potentialities of the Shippers Council, calling on the council to use its position to influence the establishment of more industries in the state, saying such would serve as catalyst to its events.
Sheikh Abdul Waheed, Vice President, Islamabad Chamber of Commerce & Industry (ICCI) announced yesterday during a high-level meeting ...





Sheikh Abdul Waheed, Vice President, Islamabad Chamber of Commerce & Industry (ICCI) announced yesterday during a high-level meeting of Federal Capital Business Community that Islamabad Chamber of Commerce & Industry (ICCI) will send a High-Powered Trade Delegation to Federal Republic of Nigeria in August, 2016 to further strengthen the foundation of Trade Linkages laid by the Former Nigerian High Commissioner to Pakistan, Ambassador Dauda Danladi, mni during his Diplomatic Tenure in Islamic Republic of Pakistan (2012-2015).The High Powered Trade delegation will be led by Vice President, ICCI, Sheikh Abdul Waheed which will include the key businessmen from Islamabad Federal Capital, Manufacturers, Young Entrepreneurs, Investors and Industrialists.He disclosed that ICCI High Powered Trade Delegation will strive to meet the President of Nigeria, His Excellency Muhammadu Buhari , Hon Ministers, and Nigerian Business Community. The focus is to explore investment opportunities in the areas of Textiles, Solid Minerals, expanding cooperation between the two countries in Agriculture machinery, establishment of fertilizer production units, farming technology, livestock, leather products, poultry, fisheries, pharmaceuticals, rice processing, surgical equipments and the transfer of technology.He said (ICCI) High Powered Trade Delegation will also meet the Former Nigerian High Commissioner to Pakistan, Ambassador Dauda Danladi, mni and Senator (Dr) Aliyu Magatakarda Wammako, Former Governor of Sokoto State including the Sultan of Sokoto State , Amirul Mumineen Sultan Muhammadu Sa'ad Abubakar IVbesides visiting the Sokoto Chamber of Commerce & Industry, Nigerian Business Community in Abuja and Lagos Business Club including visit to the Pakistan High Commission in Abuja and Lagos Commercial Section.He said  I see a robust trade and investment growth between Nigeria and Pakistan soonest and the planned visit of ICCI High Powered Trade Delegation to Nigeria is an indication that Pakistani Investors are ready for strategic penetration into the Nigerian Market, which now runs into billions of dollars.Sheikh Abdul Waheed, Vice President (ICCI) said that Federal Republic of Nigeria is an important trade partner of Islamic Republic of Pakistan and also a hub for the entire West Africa as it is among Africas largest economy contributing 77% of Africas GDP. He added that owing to the charismatic personal efforts of Former Nigerian High Commissioner to Pakistan, Ambassador Dauda Danladi, mni the Trade between Pakistan and Nigeria has touched the highest point from US 80 Million to US 500 Million in recent years.Highlighting the glorious achievements of Former Nigerian High Commissioner to Pakistan, Ambassador Dauda Danladi, mni, Vice President (ICCI) Sheikh Abdul Waheed added that Former Nigerian High Commissioner to Pakistan, Ambassador Dauda Danladi, mni has done tremendous job during his Diplomatic tenure in Pakistan (2012-2015) to attract Pakistani Industrialists to invest in Nigeria. He also embarked on different strategies such as personal trade visit to almost all Chambers of Commerce across Pakistan, Meeting with Pakistani Investors, Showcasing Nigerias investment potentials in areas of Agriculture, Mining, Oil and Gas.He said Ambassador Danladi personally visited major Agricultural Industries in Pakistan producing tractors, fertilizer plants, textiles and pharmaceuticals and Punjab Province , Surgical equipments Units in Sialkot and Gul Ahmed Textiles based in Karachi.He said that President of Pakistan, Mamnnon Hussains State Visit to Nigeria in 2014 was the personal endeavour of Ambassador Danladi that resulted in the establishment of Commercial Section in Abuja that gave a new impetus to Pakistan Nigeria Trade Relations, which is by no means a small achievement.He said that Ambassador Dauda Danladi, mni has done remarkable job in expanding cooperation between Nigeria and Pakistan in Trade and Commerce, Economic and Industrial Cooperation, Agricultural and Agro-Based Industries and Cultural Co-operation including Defence related Industries.He said that Ambassador Dauda Danladi, mni is a great diplomat with vast experience of handling and improving trade relations between Pakistan and Nigeria. In recognition of his great contribution in enhancing trade volume from US $ 80 Million to US $ 500 Million Pakistan Business Community awarded Ambassador Dauda Danladi, mni Diplomatic Excellence Award in 2014. He said many Ambassadors/High Commissioners from Federal Republic Nigeria came to Pakistan on their official diplomatic obligations in the past but they just came and went without leaving any marked impression on the horizon of Nigeria Pakistan Diplomatic relations focusing on Trade and Commerce between the two brotherly countries.At the conclusion of his media speech, Sheikh Abdul Waheed, Vice President, ICCI appealed the Government of Pakistan and Government of Nigeria to simplify the Business Visa Formalities so that the trade between Pakistan and Nigeria may flourish from strength to strength in the days to come. He chanted the slogan of Pakistan-Nigeria Friendship Zindabad.
A housing officer who took a 2,000 backhander every time she processed a fake homelessness claim for illegal immigrants as part of a 2...

Trudy Ali-Balogun, 55, of Stratford, east London, abused her role as a 25,000 a year housing officer at Southwark Council to help process 24 bogus homelessness claims.She was paid a 2,000 bribe for each application she approved and used the money to treat herself to holidays around the world, Inner London Crown Court heard.Ali-Balogun approved false birth certificates for children, who never existed, as well as made-up wage slips, bank statements and fake foreign passports.She was jailed for five years while fraudsters Bayo Awotiwon, 47, and Adeyemi Oyedele, 48, were given five months each.Kudiratu Falana, 60, was handed a five month jail sentence suspended for 12 months and ordered to complete 200 hours of community service.Joseph Olaiya, 53, was sentenced to six months suspended for 12 months and ordered to complete 200 hours of community service.Their trial was part of the wider investigation known as Operation Bronze which has been running since 2011 and has so far yielded more than 30 convictions.Ibrahim Bundu, a former homeless housing case worker, was previously jailed at Woolwich Crown Court for processing false homeless housing applications in return for backhanders.He is currently serving a six year sentence after failing to pay back the 100,000 ordered by the courts.Ali-Balogun, who studied criminology at university, was processing bogus applications while working alongside Bundu from November 2003 until her suspension in April 2005.Many of the applicants she helped within the Nigerian community were in the country illegally.Ali-Balogun also processed false birth certificates for children to help the fraudsters jump the housing queue.Michael Goodwin, prosecuting, explained that the fraud cost the council about 2.4million and left genuine homeless people without a roof above their heads.She sought to exploit and capitalise in the weaknesses and procedures which were clearly in place at the time. Her misconduct represents an abuse of trust placed in her by the local authority.Mr Goodwin explained that the case worker was paid at least 20,000 in backhanders and used the bungs to fund trips abroad.Part of her function and responsibility was to protect the public purse by ensuring only those in need of homeless housing were granted it.She acted for financial reward and that would have been paid to her directly by applicants or by third party fixers who were working in the community.The prosecutor explained that the offences took place when there was a significant shortage of housing available, something which remains the case.Taxpayers money was being used to subsidise housing for fraudsters who claimed to be homeless despite owning other properties.Ali-Balogun was said to have been responsible for 24 applications which she knew contained forged signatures as part of the sophisticated arrangement.Only she could have known that it was not being signed as it should have been, said Mr Goodwin.Bogus National Insurance numbers belonging to genuine people were also used along with fake Home Office vignettes granting indefinite leave to remain in the UK.In some cases the Home Office had no records of the applicants ever existing in the country.Mr Goodwin said at least 20 properties were occupied by tenants who were not entitled to them.Some of the defendants even used bogus birth certificates in order to pretend they had children which would speed up their applications, among other benefits.If they had two or three children they were entitled to bigger properties which the council had to find from their waiting list.Four applicants  including Falana  ended up buying the properties at a reduced price as a result of their deception using the Governments Right to Buy scheme.These properties are now likely to be subject to county court proceedings to determine whether they should be handed back.Oyedele, a former assistant to the Nigerian High Commissioner, is refusing to leave his Bermondsey flat, the court heard.Falana obtained a four bedroom property in central London after previously being rejected for homeless housing due to her children not having indefinite leave to remain in the UK.She bought it in 2007 at a 60,000 discount under the Right to Buy scheme.Olaiya used three bogus children to help further his claim along with a fake passport when he was unlawfully in the country after previously been deported.Oyedele was found to have considerable funds in his bank account and did not have indefinite leave to remain in the UK and no evidence was ever found that he had any real children.Awotiwon purchased a flat in Southwark, with a mortgage in 2004 for around 172,000 which she was letting out while claiming to need homeless housing.She received 226,000 of housing over a 12 year period and is refusing to leave.Mr Goodwin said she was essentially a landlord while claiming to be homeless.The court also heard that Ali-Balogun herself had previously applied for a council home as a result of domestic violence.Operation Bronze started in 2011 and was based on the review of suspicious data matches from the Cabinet Offices National Fraud Initiative (NFI) and the Metropolitan Police Operation Amberhill.So far 30 fraudsters have been convicted and 41 properties have been recovered and re-let to those with a genuine need for housing.Ali-Balogun was found guilty of misconduct in public office.Awotiwon, of Southwark; Oyedele, of Bermondsey; and Falana, of Walworth, were each convicted of a single count of obtaining services by deception.Olaiya, of Gillingham, Kent, was found guilty of attempting to obtain services by deception.Jailing Ali-Balogun for five years Judge Mark Bishop said: You carried out these applications in such a way to make it look like you had carried out the correct procedures.Social housing, in particular in central London, is scarce. People wait in the queue for many years for council accommodation.By your misconduct you reduced the housing amount of available housing stock for genuine homeless applicants.When no housing was available the council had to place those looking for a home in B&B accomodation leaving the local taxpayer to foot the bill, said Judge Bishop.You carried out this conduct for backhand and the jury found you were dishonest. You would not have processed any of these applications which were being made without this money.It seems to me very likely that you were paid more than 20,000. You would not have done it without being paid for it. This was a very serious abuse of public trust that was placed in you.You took advantage of your position as a public official. You conduct was serious and corrupt, it was not conduct for a public official to engage in.
A prosecution witness, Olamide Odusanya, in the ongoing trial of a former Director-General of the Nigerian Maritime and Safety Agency (N...

A prosecution witness, Olamide Odusanya, in the ongoing trial of a former Director-General of the Nigerian Maritime and Safety Agency (NIMASA), Patrick Akpobolokemi, and six others, has told a Lagos State High Court that the former DG approved the disbursement of all funds from the accounts of the agency. Testifying before Justice R.1.B Adebiyi, Odusanya, an Assistant Director in the Financial Services Department of NIMASA, said Akpobolokemi approved the payment of N498,200,000 and N318,000,000 for the implementation of the Voluntary International Maritime Organisation Member State Audit Scheme (VIMSAS) project by NIMASA in 2014. Odusanya, who was led in evidence by the prosecution counsel, Rotimi Oyedepo, said that the money, was, however, not retired by Akpobolokemi.During cross-examination by counsel to the first defendant, Dr. Joseph Nwobike, Odusanya also told the court that she was not a member of the VIMSAS Committee and was not aware of how it negotiated with contractors. She added that she did not know the process leading to all payments made by the Committee.According to her, Akpobolokemi acted in lawful exercise of his duties as Chief Accounting Officer when he directed the second defendant, Captain Agaba, to disburse the funds. She admitted further, under cross examination by Agabas counsel, E.D. Onyeke, that the NIMASA Financial Services Department received a memo written to clarify that the expenditure of N498.2m and N318m were security related and did not require retiring. Akpobolokemi and six others are being prosecuted by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFFC, on a 13-count charge bordering on stealing and forgery to the tune of N754, 740, 680m.Other defendants are: Captain Ezekiel Agaba, Ekene Nwakuche, Governor Amechee Juan, Vincent Udoye, Captain Adegboyega Sahib Olopoenia and a company, Gama Marine Nigeria Limited.
The Sokoto State Command of the National Drugs Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) on Friday arrested a female Youth Corps member currently s...

The Sokoto State Command of the National Drugs Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) on Friday arrested a female Youth Corps member currently serving in Zamfara with nine kilogrammes of Indian hemp.The Commandant of the agency in the state, Alhaji Mohammed Idris, told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Sokoto.Idris said the suspect was serving in Gumi local Government area of Zamfara and was arrested along Sokoto-Gusau Road in Sokoto.He said the suspect had confessed that she was initiated into the business by a fellow corps member.He said the suspect had boarded a luxury bus from Onitsha in Anambra, to Sokoto, from where she would board another bus to Gumi in Zamfara, when she was arrested at a check point in Sokoto.The commandant said investigation had already commenced to fish out those who initiated her and their source of supplies, in order to prosecute them. We will charge the suspect to court as soon as we are through with our investigation, he said.The suspect told NAN at the NDLEA Command, Sokoto, that she regretted her action, saying she did not know how her parents would feel about her arrest.I am ashamed of myself; this is my first time of engaging in this illegal business.I strongly advise fellow corps members to avoid falling into the temptation of such crooked means of making money, she said.
Palakkad: Prime Minister Narendra Modi slammed the Congress-led UDF in Kerala on Friday over the solar scam and the brutal rape and murder of a Dalit woman saying, there seemed to be "no government" in the state.

"I am afraid to use the word solar in Kerala as it would create a 'big dhamaka' (explosion)," he said referring to the solar scam which has rocked UDF government with charges being made even against Chief Minister Ommen Chandy.

He was addressing an election rally of NDA at the Fort Maidan here, his first in the series of four lined up in the coming days for the May 16 assembly polls, as BJP goes all out to make its maiden entry in the assembly.

Modi also criticised the state government's "failure" to rise to the occasion while handling the rape case. "A Dalit sister was raped and killed. We don't see a government anywhere," Modi said.

The statement assumes significance as even after nine days, police was yet to nab the culprits involved in the brutal rape and murder of the 30-year old woman in Perumbavoor near Kochi.

The Prime Minister made the solar comment after referring to the solar initiative he had launched in his constituency Varanasi for converting diesel-powered engines to solar-powered battery engines in fishing boats.

This had given the fishermen a profit of Rs 500 per day, he said. "I thought why this cannot be replicated in Kerala also. But I was scared. I felt, if I go to Kerala and talk of solar, there will be 'big dhamaka'," Modi said as the people cheered and clapped.

"See the change from government to government. In Varanasi, the solar-powered boats are powering the lives of fishermen, but in Kerala the government is run by solar," Modi said, taking a dig at Chandy.

The Prime Minister also targeted the CPI-M in the state, saying it was following the "politics of violence".

Several innocent BJP workers lost their life in the attack over the years by CPI-M, he said charging they were physically annihilated as they did not agree to the Marxist ideology.

Modi also mentioned about the insult meted out by CPI-M student wing to a retired principal of a government college here.

Some activists of SFI, students wing of the CPI(M), had prepared a "grave" for her as a retirement gift. "Do you want to vote for such people? Whether you will pardon those who committed this insult?" Modi asked.

Attacking both UDF and LDF, Modi said a third force (BJP) has emerged in the state to act as "strong umpire" in the Assembly.

Stating that development and creation of more jobs was the only way to save Kerala from the present situation, he said, educated youths should get jobs in the state instead of going out leaving their aged parents behind.

The Prime Minister said though the people of Kerala were well educated and knowledgeable, they failed to understand that they had been 'looted' in the past 60 years by the UDF and CPI(M)-led LDF governments which ruled the state alternately.

"It is an adjustment rule by the two fronts. Five year Congress-led UDF rules, then next five years CPI(M) headed LDF rules...They decide among themselves we will loot for five years, then you loot for five years," he charged.

"Those who ruled the God's own country for the last 60 years have only destroyed it...There seems to be a scientific arrangement to ruin Kerala. Both Congress and Left have mutually decided to loot turn by turn," he said.

Stating that there was no umpire in the state assembly now, he said adding: "If Kerala has to be saved, there is need for a strong umpire--BJP. I assure you that we will not allow Kerala to be destroyed by the two fronts."

Modi said this time "a third decisive strength is emerging in Kerala and I am seeing this", thanking the thousands of people who stood braving the scorching heat outside the huge pandal in this town, which had been recording about 40 degrees Celsius since the past few days.

He said BJP-NDA wanted to take Kerala on the path of development, and appealed the people to vote for the BJP to improve the state's future prospects. "Our government's only mantra is vikas (development)," he said.

Modi said NDA government at the Centre had always gone an extra mile and worked tirelessly for those in need during difficult times, especially in the evacuation of Indians, including Keralites from the strife torn Libya and Yemen.

"We could not sleep until our daughters were brought back safe," he said crediting External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj for "working tirelessly to bring them back to India". "If there is a problem in Kerala, there is pain in Delhi," he said.

On the recently launched India's own regional Navigational system 'NAVIC', Modi said until now, the country was using the GPS system of the US. "Hereafter, India will decide its own path. We will decide the 'manzil' (destination)," he said.
Nigerian troops assisted by Civilian JTF on patrol at clearing remnants of Boko Haram terrorists at Ngula and Kukuruk villages in Alagar...

Nigerian troops assisted by Civilian JTF on patrol at clearing remnants of Boko Haram terrorists at Ngula and Kukuruk villages in Alagarno general area, discovered and destroyed a perceived Boko Haram administrative base.The troops made up of 156 Task Force Battalion and 29 Task Force Brigade, engaged Boko Haram terrorists in a gun battle that lasted hours, following which some terrorists escaped with gunshot injuries. Colonel Sani Kukasheka Usman, Acting Director, Army Public Relations, in an email message to NE said the troops made startling discovery in the area, as they found out that it served as the terrorists administration and harbour area, field hospital and Improvised Explosive Devices, IEDs, making factory.According to him, the troops recovered the following items at the base: six motorcycles, two bicycles, four machine gun mounts, one power generating set, three Armoured Personnel Carriers, APCs, among others.Meanwhile, the Theatre Commander of the Operation Lafiya Dole Major General Lucky Irabor, has said only two soldiers were killed and few others injured while quiet a number of the insurgents were killed and their hideouts destroyed in the last one week when troops embarked on operation crackdown, in the Sambisa forest, This came as Boko Haram insurgents, yesterday, attacked troops in Borno State with anti-aircraft guns. Gen. Irabor, who spoke yesterday, noted that the morale of the troops was high as they continued advancing to the heart of Sambisa forest in search of elements of insurgents in their enclaves, rescuing over 300 hostages including two Cameroonians.
Some Nigerians resident in South Africa have staged a peaceful protest at the Nigeria High Commission calling for improved security in t...

Some Nigerians resident in South Africa have staged a peaceful protest at the Nigeria High Commission calling for improved security in the country.Acting under the aegis of Save Our Democracy, an NGO, they appealed to the Federal Government to protect lives and property in the country.The protesters sang solidarity songs and left the premises, though no official of the High Commission spoke to them.Miss Odimegwu Oluchi, Coordinator of the group, said on phone from Pretoria, South Africa, that they would send their message to the government through the mission.She said that cases of insecurity in some parts of the country called for urgent federal government intervention.She said the NGO went to the mission to express concern about reported cases of attacks in some communities.We are worried about the killings and it is really traumatising to Nigerians living in South Africa. We want the High Commission to send our message to the Federal Government.We are trying our best to ensure that there is peace in our country. We urge the federal government to intervene and stop such attacks, she said.The coordinator said families had been displaced and needed urgent assistance to re-settle.Oluchi also urged the federal government to create jobs to keep unemployed youths busy.When our youths have jobs, they will be busy and not many will think of leaving the country.However, a member of the NGO, Mr Trust Owoyele, commended the federal government for directing security agencies to secure all communities under attack.This is a welcome development and it will give the people a sense of belonging.Government should create an enabling environment to attract investment into the country, he said.
President Muhammadu Buhari on 6th of May, signed the much delayed 2016 budget into law. According to reports, the budget was returned no l...

President Muhammadu Buhari on 6th of May, signed the much delayed 2016 budget into law. According to reports, the budget was returned no less than three times to the National Assembly over allegations of budget padding and misplacement of figures.It took the executive and legislature a painful five month period to reconcile their differences and pass the budget. Probably not painful for them, but very painful of the average masses who are daily suffocated by the hardships in the country.But what next after the signing of the 2016 budget of change? The expectation of Nigerians are very high, as we faced untold difficulties in the last few months, when the budget was moving from pillar to post, from the presidency to the House of Assembly.Nigerians therefore expect that the signing of the budget will bring an end to our sufferings or at least lighten the burden.The signing of the budget is meant to set several projects afloat, thereby creating numerous job opportunities. We are also expecting the upgrading our social amenities: electricity, roads, schools, hospitals, etc.In order words, with the signing of the 2016 budget, Nigerians no longer expect the lingering power outage in the country. So that we can cool our bodies with fans and air-conditioners and drink cold water in this extremely hot weather.Nigerians are also expecting more jobs for youths roaming the street for gainful employment. We also expect timely completion of several road projects, thereby making our roads safer for use.In a nut shell, if the signing of the budget does not lead to a better standard of living and a robust economy, then the hope of millions of Nigerians will be shattered.However, on the realistic side, the budget is not a magic wand that will fix all the problems of the country. As an economist and social commentator recently said in reaction to the signing of the budget, it is not a quick fix for the Nigerian economy but a step towards reviving it.The Nigerian economy has been hemorrhaging for long and it will be unrealistic to think the budget will tighten up everything immediately. This may take some time and commitment on the part of both the government and private individuals like you and I.All the same, HAPPY 2016 BUDGET SIGNING DAY. May the budget bring prosperity for us all!
The U.S. administration is seeking to approve a sale of as many as 12 A-29 Super Tucano light attack aircraft to Nigeria to aid its battl...

The U.S. administration is seeking to approve a sale of as many as 12 A-29 Super Tucano light attack aircraft to Nigeria to aid its battle against the extremist group Boko Haram, U.S. officials said.The officials said while speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the administrations plans in a vote of confidence in President Muhammadu Buharis drive to reform the countrys corruption-tainted military.Washington also is dedicating more intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance assets to the campaign against the Islamist militants in the region and plans to provide additional training to Nigerian infantry forces.The possible sale which the officials said was favoured within the U.S. administration but is subject to review by Congress underscores the deepening U.S. involvement in helping governments in North and West Africa fight extremist groups.U.S. Navy Vice Admiral, Michael Franken, a Deputy Commander of the Pentagons Africa Command, told a Washington forum last week that there now are 6,200 U.S. troops most of them Special Operations Forces, operating from 26 locations on the continent.The widening U.S. military cooperation is a political victory for Mr. Buhari, who took office last year pledging to crack down on the rampant corruption that has undermined the armed forces in Africas most populous country.The Buhari administration I think has really reenergized the bilateral relationship in a fundamental way, another U.S. official said.The previous Nigerian government of Goodluck Jonathan had scorned the U.S. for blocking arms sales partly because of human rights concerns. It also criticized Washington for failing to speed the sharing of intelligence.The souring relations hit a low at the end of 2014 when U.S. military training of Nigerian forces was abruptly halted.That is changing under Mr. Buhari, whose crackdown on corruption has led to a raft of charges against top national security officials in the previous government.Buhari made clear from the get-go that his number one priority was reforming the military to defeat Boko Haram and he sees us as part of that solution, a second U.S. official said.Still, serious human rights abuses committed by security forces, which include police, increased in 2015, according to the U.S. State Departments annual human rights report.Many of the funds alleged to have been misused and siphoned off by corrupt Nigerian officials under Jonathans government were earmarked for the fight against Boko Haram, which has killed thousands in northeast Nigeria and neighboring countries in the last seven years.Last year, the group pledged loyalty to Islamic State, No wonder they werent doing well with respect to Boko Haram, they didnt have the ammunition, the first official said.The accused officials include Nigerias former Chief of Defense staff, who last month pleaded not guilty to using money allocated for Nigerias air force to buy a mansion and a commercial plot of land and build a shopping mall.Congress has not yet been formally notified of the possible U.S. approval of the sale of Embraers (EMBR3.SA) A29 Super Tucano turboprop aircraft to Nigeria.The Tucanos can be used for training, surveillance or attack.They can be armed with two wing-mounted machine guns and can carry up to 1,550 Kg (3,417 pounds) of weapons.One production line for the Super Tucano is in Florida, where it is built with U.S. firm Sierra Nevada Corp. The aircraft that would be sold to Nigeria come with a very basic armed configuration, one of the U.S. officials said.The sale could offer Nigeria a more maneuverable aircraft that can stay aloft for extended periods to target Boko Haram formations.The U.S. officials did not disclose the cost of the planes to be sold to Nigeria.However, a contract for 20 similar aircraft that was sold to Afghanistan was valued at about 428 million dollars at the time it was announced in 2013.Peter Pham, Director of the Africa Center at the Atlantic Council think tank, said any sale of Super Tucano aircraft would demonstrate improving ties, but cautioned that their ability to counter Boko Haram could be limited.When you are fighting a group thats no longer holding towns and villages, thats no longer massing forces in a conventional way, the aircraft , attack aircraft, have a much more limited role in that kind of fight, Pham said.African armies routed the militant group from much of its self-proclaimed caliphate in northeastern Nigeria last year.Its fighters have since regrouped and intensified their attacks in the Lake Chad Basin, threatening regional security, despite the creation of a 9,000-strong African multinational force to counter it.The U.S. military expects to train a second Nigerian infantry battalion once the current group completes its training later this year, the first official said.The officials did not specify what type of additional intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance assets would be provided to bolster the regional fight against Boko Haram.They acknowledge that they have a tough task combating the group, which is sending women and children strapped with explosives to blow up civilian targets such as marketplaces. Boko Haram has morphed back in to what it had earlier been, not a holder of large amounts of territory, but rather a generator of asymmetric attacks, the second official said.(Reuters/NAN)
Manchester United manager Loius Van Gaal will receive 5m if he is sacked.The Times, however, says the Dutchman will lose out on 1m of his annual salary if the club fail to qualify for the Champions League.United are seriously considering making a change at the club this summer with Jose Mourinho waiting in the wings to take over.But Van Gaal has one year left on his current deal at Old Trafford.The reports say he will receive a 400,000 bonus if his side lift the FA Cup when they face Crystal Palace at Wembley on May 21.Van Gaal's lucrative 8m-a-year contract is based on several clauses and performance bonuses.His actual guaranteed salary is 3.3m with an extra 1.1m factored in for Champions League participation.
New Delhi: Continuing their charge on Congress, the government Friday said the previous UPA government had "done everything" to help AgustaWestland bag the contract for VVIP helicopters and asserted that it will track down the main beneficiaries of the kickbacks in the deal.

Parrikar said in the Lok Sabha that former Air chief S P Tyagi and Gautam Khaitan, both accused in the case, are "small people" who "simply washed their hands in a flowing ganga (of corruption)" and that the government will "find out where the river was going".

Speaking on a Calling Attention Motion on the chopper deal, he took a dig at Congress, saying it seemed to know where this "ganga was going".

He said the UPA government had "done everything" to help AgustaWestland bag the contract and that its action against the company following the disclosure of corruption was not pro-active but "forced by circumstances".

Read: AgustaWestland case: SC seeks Centre's reply on PIL for FIR against Cong leaders

Tyagi and Khaitan were "small people who simply washed their hands in a flowing ganga (of corruption)", Parrikar said, asserting that the government will track down the main beneficiaries of the kickbacks in the Rs 3600 crore deal for 12 VVIP choppers.

"Why are you (Congress) concerned? I have not named anybody. You seem to know where the ganga was going," the Defence Minister said, taking a swipe at Congress.

Parrikar, who was criticsed by opposition members for reading from a statement during a debate over the issue in the Rajya Sabha, mostly spoke extempore and narrated the sequence of events related to the contract and its subsequent cancellation.

While a criminal case was registered in Italy in November 2011 over alleged exchange of bribe in the deal, the UPA government continued with the aquisition of choppers and three of them were delivered, he said. Only after Finmeccanica, parent firm of AgustaWestland, officials were arrested in 2013, that the then Defence Minister A K Antony asked the CBI to probe the matter, he said.

Read: Agusta deal: How did Swamy get sensitive confidential info?, asks Congress

Before then the government had not even written to the company and instead taken up the matter with the embassy, Parrikar said, likening it to "setting up a committee when you do not want to do anything". "Its (UPA) action was compulsarily forced by the arrest of Finmeccanica official... It did not take any pro-action measure," he said.

Attacking Congress, Parrikar said Antony put on hold the deal only on May 12, 2014, the last day of the Lok Sabha elections, and wondered if it was driven by the results of exit polls, which had predicted a big loss for the UPA.

Finding loopholes in the deal, the Defence Minister said the tender for the contract was submitted by Italy-based AgustnaWestland but given to the UK-based Agusta Westland International Ltd (AWIL), which was not Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM).

Read: Congress demands SC-monitored probe in VVIP chopper deal

"I have never seen that tender was submitted by one company and given to some other company... It has many legal implications," he told the Lok Sabha.

While the previous NDA government, which has started the process for acquiring VVIP choppers, broadened Services Qualitative Requirements (SQR) to get more companies in the tender process, the UPA made it "restrictive" to benefit AgustaWestland, Parrikar alleged.

Read: Agusta rocks August Houses: Who benefitted, asks Parrikar

The benchmark price was also increased by many times that benefitted the company, the Defence Minister said, adding that it should not have been done as it was the only vendor.

Antony, he said, had objected to the firm's request for doing the field trial outside but he was later "convinced" to withdraw them. It was done against the clause of tender, he asserted.
LOUISVILLE -- On the brink of the Kentucky Derby, the three of them sat behind a microphone in the press center at Churchill Downs and spoke about the worst nightmare they ever had. Collectively, they reached back in time to remember the worst day of their lives.

It was 2012, and they had come to Belmont Park with a dream and a horse and without the slightest clue as to what would happen to both. There was a Canadian businessman named Paul Reddam and a West Coast horse trainer named Doug O'Neill and Mario Gutierrez, a jockey from Vera Cruz by way of Canada, and they were in lock step toward glory -- or so they thought.

The horse was named I'll Have Another. He had won the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness and now at 3-5 odds, he was more or less conceded the first Triple Crown since Affirmed.

But this was horse racing.

O'Neill, the trainer felt warmth in the horse's leg the day before the Belmont Stakes, the final leg of the Triple Crown.

"I wrapped it," he said yesterday, "and I called the vet." At 7:45 that morning, they called him, Reddam recalled, "and it was over ... just like that."

The moment comes to so few in this business and all three of them would not have put a price on it coming again for them. But suddenly it has.

There are here again, on the brink of Saturday's Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs, to take the first step in that same journey with a talented colt named Nyquist, who has been installed as the early favorite.

Unlike with I'll Have Another, they did not come out of left field in their return. Nyquist has raced seven times and won in four states at three different tracks. He is 3-1 to win this Derby but no pre-race Derby favorite has been measured with such scorn and suspicion.

Much of the media has judged him erratic. That seems to mean little to Gutierrez, because the media has never ridden him.

"He has the intelligence to cooperate," the jockey said Thursday. "He let's me put him where he has to be to win."

"Mario," O'Neill says, "is a finese jockey and that's exactly what we need to win this thing."

He had never even seen Churchill Downs when he arrived here to ride I'll Have Another four years ago. He would not have been the first rookie Derby jock to have been intimidated by the moment and the place, but his effort that day was described by Hall of Fame jockey Gary Stevens as "a masterful ride."

Nobody who rode in that Kentucky Derby even knew his name.

Earlier, when Canada had no more worlds (or tracks) left for him to conquer, he went to Southern California and just showed up at those tracks, asking for horses to work in the morning and riding whatever they gave him.

Ironically, he had walked into O'Neill's stable while Reddam and the trainer were in a discussion over a horse nobody wanted to ride. The horse was I'll Have Another. Reddam had seen him ride and told O'Neill to give him a shot. He went off at 43-1 and Gutierrez brought him home, After that, he won the Santa Anita Derby and the Kentucky Derby.

When he came to his first Derby, he was standing alone with his thoughts when a few of us recognized him. "I am Mario Gutierrez," he said, which, in itself was a good thing because most of us didn't know him.

"I am pleased to meet you," he said to each of us. And then he spoke of Veracruz and how his father had ridden quarter horses, and somebody asked him what it meant to ride in this race when just three years ago he was riding out in Western Canada.

"You know," he said, "when I get older, people will ask me if I ever rode in the Derby and now I can say, 'Yes.' They will also ask if I ever won the Derby and who knows when I can say that?"

By Saturday night, he could.

He believes Nyquist will silence his critics.

Yesterday, because Reddam is the kind of owner that understands the psyche of the bettors who fuel this business, he said a surprising thing.

"I can understand their criticism from a gambler's standpoint," he said. "I mean, if I were betting and there was a favorite, an unbeaten favorite, I wouldn't bet him. To get a price, I would have to make the case he could be beaten and then [pick] the one who could do it."

There are 19 other owners who will trying to make that case before they go to sleep on Friday night. Perhaps one of them will. But unbeaten means perfect.

What makes this race so intriguing is the distance, the size of the field, the crush not to get knocked off before the first turn. Who can say they know what will happen?

This is Star-Ledger Columnist Emeritus Jerry Izenberg's 50th Kentucky Derby.
An unknown odor resulted in the evacuation of a Jersey City high school this afternoon, and sent two students to a local hospital as precaution, a spokeswoman for the Jersey City public schools said.

Two students from Ferris High School were taken to Jersey City Medical Center-Barnabas Health after the strange odor was reported at the Colgate Street school at around 1 p.m., Maryann Dickar, a spokeswoman for the district, said.

A spokesman for the Jersey City Medical Center-Barnabas Health said one of the patients had been released by 2:50 p.m., while the other remained at the hospital in stable condition as a precaution.

Dickar added that two staff members were evaluated at the scene by paramedics.

Meanwhile, the Jersey City Fire Department cleared the school for reoccupation by 1:40 p.m., Dickar said.

"We don't actually know what it was but there was an odor reported at Ferris," Dickar said. "It was something that might have been released in the air."

No additional information about the incident was available this afternoon.
Bayonne school board.jpg

The Bayonne school budget failed to pass after school board members voted 4-4 on a motion to adopt it on May 5, 2016. Photo taken at the board's budget hearing in the board's Anna J. Herbert Meeting Room at 669 Ave. A in Bayonne. Jonathan Lin | The Jersey Journal

BAYONNE -- The city school budget failed to pass earlier tonight after school board members voted 4-4 on a motion to adopt it.

The roughly $129 million budget, which would have included a 2.78 percent school tax increase, failed to pass after board members Carol Cruden, Ava Finnerty, Barry Kushnir and Christopher Munoz voted against it.

"I think this budget still has a lot of redundancy in it and wasteful spending, and I think (it) doesn't address the pending contracts that are before this Board of Education at this time, so I vote no," Munoz said.

The school tax increase included in the budget would have amounted to a $1.7 million increase, which Bayonne Chief Financial Officer Terrence Malloy has said would translate to a $97 annual increase for the average city home.

Board president Joseph Broderick; board vice president Denis Wilbeck; and board members Mikel Lawandy and Theodore Garelick voted for the budget.

"The budget was worked on very hard....the whole goal was to get the best education for the students of Bayonne, but with the same thought, (to get) what the citizens of Bayonne can possibly afford, so with that being said, I vote yes," Broderick said.

Remaining board member Mary Jane Desmond was absent.

The tie vote surprised Brian Buckley, the board's acting Business Administrator, who is filling in for Leo Smith while Smith is out on sick leave.

Buckley couldn't immediately explain what the next step in the procedure is to an audience of 18 people gathered in the board's Anna J. Herbert Meeting Room at 669 Ave. A.

"It's uncharted waters. Between being here for five years and in another district for three years, I never encountered this. I will look into what the procedures are," he said, adding that County Superintendent of Schools Monica Tone will have to get involved.

A closed session that immediately followed the board meeting prevented board members and attorneys from providing further comment on the matter. Board secretary Gary Maita said more information will be released later.

Before the board voted on the budget, a teacher and Bayonne teachers union president Al D'Angelo took turns addressing board members.

The teacher questioned whether there are redundant classes in the district, while D'Angelo said the proposed budget doesn't allocate enough money to teachers.

Teachers in Bayonne have gone without a new contract since last July. Negotiations between the board and the union are ongoing.

"What you're setting yourself up for in this coming budget -- that you're going to vote and pass, I assume right now -- is no contract again for however many years it takes," D'Angelo said.

When the budget failed to pass, the union president was pleasantly surprised.

"I'm glad it didn't pass," D'Angelo said.

The 2.78 percent tax increase in the proposed school budget, which goes above the normally allowed 2 percent cap, is being allowed to accommodate the district's increases in healthcare costs, according to language of the budget resolution.

According to enrollment figures from the board, the school district will have an estimated 10,096 students enrolled by Oct. 15 this year, up from 9,856 at the same time last year and 9,784 the year before.

A resident's property tax in Bayonne pays school, municipal, county and open space taxes, which last year made up about 41, 42, 16 and 0.2 percent of total property taxes paid, respectively, city Chief Financial Officer Terrence Malloy has said. The exact breakdown of that mix changes from year to year.

The city's school board changed from an appointed board to an elected board following a referendum in November 2014. The first wave of elected members -- the first to be elected in more than 35 years -- took office earlier this year.

Jonathan Lin may be reached at jlin@jjournal.com. Follow him on Twitter @jlin_jj. Find The Jersey Journal on Facebook.
Municipal administration minister K.T. Rama Rao, in an open letter, slammed the Congress and TD and asked people to reject them.

Hyderabad: With an eye on the Palair bypoll, the TRS has intensified its attack on the Congress and the Telugu Desam, accusing the two parties of working against Telangana interests.

While municipal administration minister K.T. Rama Rao, in an open letter, slammed the Congress and TD and asked people to reject them even as irrigation minister T. Harish Rao questioned the Oppositions stand on irrigation projects and asked them why they were not backing the government while the Opposition and ruling party were united in AP against TS.

It has become a habit for the Congress and TD to lose in every election. Congress is playing an emotional drama, but it was TRS government which provide medicare costing `1 crore to late Palair MLA Ramreddy Venkatreddy. Development is possible only if the Congress is buried, Mr Rama Rao said in his open letter.

Calling TD a tail of the Congress, he said that TD leaders had backstabbed its founder NTR and were now shedding crocodile tears.

TDs opposition to TS irrigation project is like back-stabbing again. People will not forgive the Congress for seeking the support of TD which opposed Bhakta Ramadasu, Sita Rama projects. I am confident people will bury the Congress and TD in Palair and ensure a big win for TRS, he wrote.

Meanwhile, Mr Harish Rao alleged that the AP government was jealous of the Kaleshwaram project and hence was trying to create obstacles.
Daniel Berrigan

Rev. Daniel Berrigan, a Roman Catholic priest and peace advocate, died Saturday at the age of 94. He had a longtime connection to St. Peter's University in Jersey City.

(AP Photo)

When Jersey City native Rev. Vincent O'Keefe, who was the only U.S. Jesuit to hold the highest position in the worldwide order, died in 2012, he did not even merit an obituary in "The New York Times." Rev. Daniel Berrigan's death last Saturday, though, appeared on the Sunday front page and jumped to a full page inside.

That's because Berrigan was a seminal figure in the U.S. Catholic Church as well as in the country. Rank him alongside Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Dorothy Day, Thomas Merton, Gloria Steinem and Harvey Milk - prophetic trailblazers well ahead of their time. They forced change whether we were ready or not. And most people were not.

"We did not realize what a prophet Dan was," said Rev. Thomas Sheridan, 89, theology professor emeritus of St. Peter's University and resident with Berrigan at Murray-Weigel Hall on the Fordham campus. "I for one did not appreciate Dan's greatness (at the time)," said Sheridan who was five years behind Berrigan in formation and first met him on a pilgrimage to Auriesville, N.Y. in 1946.

On May 17, 1968, Berrigan, his brother, Rev. Philip Berrigan, and seven other Catholic peace activists in Catonsville, MD., took several hundred draft files from the local draft board and set them on fire in a nearby parking lot, using homemade napalm.

Berrigan was tried and convicted. Before sentencing, however, he went underground and evaded the FBI for four months. He eventually served two years in prison.

I was a sophomore at St. Peter's Prep when Berrigan made the news and it was nothing I, in my young, sheltered life, ever expected from a priest. I wasn't alone. Berrigan taught in the same classrooms 20 years earlier when he was a regent or seminarian. Slowly, the changes emanating from the Second Vatican Council were beginning to infiltrate the Prep curriculum pioneered by other Jesuits ahead of their time, as well.

We were learning that the peace movement was pushing the Church and Catholics to be on the front lines against the Vietnam War and for nuclear disarmament. And there was a greater Kingdom of God out there, which the Church had to bring to fruition.

"Berrigan's clear vision became my vision, however weakly, as he showed us what needs to be done to co-labor with Jesus to build a just and loving Kingdom of God," said Rev. Michael Braden, vice president for mission at St. Peter's University for the last eight years.

Director of St. Peter's College Social Justice Program Dr. Anna J. Brown maintained Berrigan's connection to St. Peter's.

Thanks to another St. Peter's professor, Anna Brown, Berrigan had an ongoing relationship with St. Peter's over several decades. A political science professor and director of the social justice program, Brown first met Berrigan at a Kairos community meeting in the Bronx when she was studying for her doctorate at Fordham University back in 1990 and he was on the faculty.

She said she never felt threatened by Berrigan or his reputation because she agreed with his call for non-violent resistance. But she said she could see how others might be intimidated by him. "I recall thinking he was such a beautiful presence," she said.

She still belongs to Kairos, which means the opportune moment. They gather every two weeks and Berrigan was the inspiration for them to focus on peace and justice. She and many others collaborated with him to protest various injustices and would often accompany him to jail.

Brown would often join others monthly at Berrigan's Jesuit residence on 98th Street in Manhattan. They referred to it as "the monthly feast." They would celebrate Mass, dine - Berrigan was a wonderful cook - and share stories, she said. "There was never any pressure. He was an astonishing poet, a great storyteller and very funny," Brown recalled.

Rev. Anthony Azzarto, who is revered at St. Peter's Prep, had Berrigan as a teacher of English and Latin at Brooklyn Prep, 1955-56. "He was an amazing man."

Berrigan spoke at St. Aloysius Church, Jersey City, as part of their "Blessed Are the Peacemakers" series back on March 22, 1984. Hundreds filled the church -- the most ever to attend a speaker series in 10 years. People could not believe how soft spoken was such a historic figure with a fearless reputation. Berrigan dedicated the King-Kairos House, the center for social justice at St. Peter's University, back in 2006.

Brown noted that former Jesuit and peace activist, John Dear, returned from a recent conference in Rome and visited Berrigan in the Bronx to tell him that his accomplishments can be seen in the direction Pope Francis - another Jesuit -- is moving the church. Berrigan lived long enough at 94 to know that his prophecy and courage did make a difference and change lives.

F.Y.I.

Viewing for Rev. Daniel Berrigan, S.J. will be held in St. Francis Xavier Church, 46 W 16th St, New York, NY 10011 Thursday, May 5, 2016, 3 to 5 and 7 to 9 p.m. Funeral Mass is Friday, May 6, 2016 at 10 a.m. For more information, call (212) 627-2100.

EDITOR'S NOTE: The Rev. Alexander Santora is the pastor of The Church of Our Lady of Grace & St. Joseph, 400 Willow Ave., Hoboken, 07030, fax (201)659-5833, e-mail: padrealex@yahoo.com; twitter @padrehoboken
The developers of a Jersey City residential building that was forced in 2012 to hand over seven condos to the city for use as affordable housing is suing the city in federal court, alleging city officials now want to sell the condos for profit.

Joseph and Neil Sorrentino are seeking $10 million from the city, saying it "fraudulently, willfully and wrongfully misrepresented" in various trials that the seven condos were to be used as live/work spaces for artists.

The lawsuit, filed in March, is the latest in a series of court actions the Sorrentinos have taken against Jersey City over the condos stretching back to 2007. The developers have lost all of them.

A request for comment from the developers' attorney was not returned. City spokeswoman Jennifer Morrill declined to comment.

The Sorrentinos say in December, city officials attempted to revise a 2007 zoning board resolution that requires the units be set aside as affordable housing. The proposed revision was intended to allow the city to sell the units for profit, the lawsuit says.

When the Sorrentinos objected, according to the lawsuit, Corporation Counsel Jeremy Farrell said the money from the sale of the units would be transferred to the city's affordable housing trust fund.

The administration is asking the City Council next week to approve a $75,000 no-bid contract to Newark firm Calcagni & Kanefsky to defend the city in the suit.

The Sorrentinos allege city officials in 2004 told them they would not receive zoning approvals for the 13-story Washington Commons unless they sold seven units at cost -- $475,000 each -- to the city for use as live/work space for artists. City officials demanded after construction that the units be turned over at no cost, the developers say.

A lawsuit the developers filed in Hudson County Superior Court in 2007 seeking damages from the city was dismissed because it was filed too late. A second, similar suit filed in Superior Court was also dismissed.

A federal judge in 2012 declined to intervene when the developers sought to have the deal voided, saying the dispute was beyond his jurisdiction.

Terrence T. McDonald may be reached at tmcdonald@jjournal.com. Follow him on Twitter @terrencemcd. Find The Jersey Journal on Facebook.
A funeral service will be held Saturday for the Dickinson High School student who was fatally shot on Jersey City's Fulton Avenue last week.

The service for Rondell J. Rush, 17, will be held at 11 a.m at the Mt. Olive Baptist Church at 400 Arlington Avenue in Jersey City. A viewing will be held at the church prior to the service at 9 a.m.

Rush was shot in the head in broad daylight at around 5 p.m. near Martin Luther King Drive last Tuesday. He died the next day at Jersey City Medical Center-Barnabas Health.

A group of people moved the wounded teenager into a private car shortly after the shooting, and drove four blocks away, where they were stopped by Jersey City police. Rush was then transported via ambulance to the hospital.

One of Rush's neighbors, Fulton Avenue resident Evans Hazelwood, described Rush as a "good kid".

"He did his thing, you know what I'm saying, but he was trying to get his life together," Hazelwood said the day after the shooting.

Through a program at Dickinson High School, Rush worked at tax preparation business on Communipaw Avenue.

"Ambitious, intellectual, funny and kind," is how the manager at the company described Rush.

A 16-year-old was arrested in connection to the shooting last week Saturday. In announcing the arrest, Hudson County Prosecutor Esther Suarez said she will push to have the teenager tried as an adult.
BAYONNE -- A 71-year-old businessman heading a coalition of businesses within the city's Special Improvement District has been accused of stealing $160,949 from the group, police said today.



Bernard Golomb of Bayonne was arrested yesterday on charges of theft and forgery after a months-long investigation into a report that money had gone missing from the coalition's bank account, according to police.

The coalition, called Bayonne Town Center, was a nonprofit representing businesses between 17th and 30th Streets on Broadway until 2012, when it came under the control of the Bayonne Urban Enterprise Zone Office.

At that point, the UEZ Office at City Hall assumed the coalition's task of deciding how to use special tax money collected from the Special Improvement District to improve that area of the city.

Despite that change, Bayonne Town Center continued to exist as a group of volunteers with Bernard Golomb as its Executive Director, The Jersey Journal reported in 2012.

Golomb said at the time that the coalition would still work to devise strategies for improving businesses in the area.

It's not known why Bayonne Town Center apparently continued to have its own bank account after the UEZ took over the handling of its funds. Late this afternoon, UEZ Coordinator Terrence Malloy couldn't be reached at his office or by phone.

Police said today that money in the coalition's bank account was reported missing in December 2015.

"Golomb was authorized to issue checks from that account but checks required a co-signer's signature. (Through an) investigation, detectives were able to determine that Golomb forged the co-signer's signature on a number of checks," police said.

Police said Golomb also made "numerous unauthorized debit card withdrawals," including withdrawals in Atlantic City and Las Vegas.

In addition, 10 of the forged checks issued by Golomb were used to purchase gold, according to police.

According to criminal complaints filed against Golomb, the withdrawals using the debit card and checks occurred between July 2013 and May 2015.

After he was arrested, Golomb was taken to the Hudson County jail in Kearny on a cash-only bail of $75,000, according to police.

Police said Golomb is the owner of Aaron's Gold, a jewelry store at 520 Broadway, but when the store was called, a woman who identified herself as the store's manager denied that.

Asked if Golomb wanted to comment on the charges against him, the woman, who didn't provide her name, said "He's not here, and he would not like to talk."

Golomb was the owner of Aaron's Gold as of April 2012, The Jersey Journal reported. Golomb said at the time that the store has been around since 1952 and that he took it over from his father in 1977.

"People trust us, that's why they come here," he said.

Jonathan Lin may be reached at jlin@jjournal.com. Follow him on Twitter @jlin_jj. Find The Jersey Journal on Facebook.
BAYONNE -- It's been more than 70 years, but Inge Auerbacher will never forget.

The meager, spoiled food. The crowded, disease-ridden living quarters. The beatings. Above all else, the constant -- and, in many cases, realized -- fear of imminent death.

Auerbacher, who spent ages 7 to 10 at a Nazi concentration camp in Czechoslovakia known as Theresienstadt, shared those memories last night at Bayonne's annual Holocaust memorial service.

Before a packed City Council chambers at City Hall, the 81-year-old told the audience about Ruth, a girl she met at the camp who was two months older than her and who became her best friend.

Auerbacher said Ruth didn't survive the Holocaust.

"We always promised each other we would see each other some day," the Queens, New York resident said. "She had some little dolls' dresses she gave me when she went to Auschwitz. She didn't know where she was going. She said 'You give them back to me one day.'"

Auerbacher said she wanted to dedicate the memorial service to Ruth and the 1.5 million Jewish children killed in the Holocaust, as well as all the other children who suffered at the hands of the Nazis.

After Auerbacher and her parents survived Theresienstadt, they moved to the United States. She eventually became a chemist and an author who has lectured on the Holocaust since 1981.

At last night's event, as in years past, elected officials and religious leaders gave brief messages at the service, paying their respects to the memory of the millions who died during the Holocaust.

Bayonne High School students Melanie Colon and Abigail Devera were also presented awards for winning first and second place, respectively, in a Holocaust essay contest.

Toward the end of the service, the students joined Auerbacher and other Holocaust survivors in a candle-lighting ceremony.

In attendance at the event were Bayonne Mayor Jimmy Davis, multiple city council members, 31st District Assemblyman Nicholas Chiaravalloti, Hudson County Freeholder Kenneth Kopacz and Hudson County Executive Tom DeGise.

Rabbi Marc Disick of Temple Beth Am, Rabbi Jacob Benzaquen of Temple Emanu-el, religious leaders of multiple Christian denominations, and a representative of the Bayonne Muslim community also took part in the service.

At the end of her speech, Auerbacher shared a poem she wrote about Ruth, imagining the girl's final moments at Auschwitz. Before reading it, she wondered painfully about fate.

"Why did (Ruth) not make it? She was not even 10 years old," the 81-year-old said.

Jonathan Lin may be reached at jlin@jjournal.com. Follow him on Twitter @jlin_jj. Find The Jersey Journal on Facebook.
The sanctioned violence and rape within marriage in many cultures limits the possibilities of consolidating a democratic society with just and egalitarian values. As early as the 17th century, English jurist Sir Matthew Hale expressed his bemusement at the concept of rape within marriage when he stated that the husband cannot be guilty of a rape committed by himself upon his lawful wife because, in the nature of the matrimonial contract, consent was implicit whereby the wife was expected to submit herself fully. Marriage, he argued, fused two distinct human beings into one, so how could the husband rape himself was the rhetorical flourish that he added.

In the UK, it was only as recent as 1991, in the Regina vs R case where for the first time the husband was charged with rape upon his wife. After many rounds of appeal, marital rape was recognised as a crime in the UK and the husband in this case was convicted of rape. In the US, the state of Nebraska in 1976 was the first one to abolish marital rape, but the turning point was the New York (People) vs Liberta case in 1984. The judgment was clear that there was no reason for differentiating between marital rape and non-marital rape.

The declaration on the elimination of violence against women by the UN in 1993 helped focus on marital rape as a human rights violation rather than as a matter of culture and tradition alone. Rape is defined as non-consensual sex. The question of consent to sex within marriage becomes redundant because marriage is assumed to entail an irrevocable consent. In India, this debate continues to be acrimonious. Towards the end of the 19th century, West Bengal was seared by the death of 11-year-old Phulmanee, who was raped by her much older husband, Hari Maiti. Following this, the question that troubled social reformers and champions of tradition alike was the right age at which such irrevocable consent could be assumed.

Had Phulmanee been a year younger, she would have been considered below the age of consent. Maiti was not convicted of rape. A storm raged across India when the proposal to raise the age of consent to 12 was mooted by the colonial government and supported by the social reformers. Scriptures and traditions were the principles cited to avert the passage of the bill. Despite the resistance, it was passed by the colonial government in 1891. However, it was hardly ever invoked, telling us that laws cannot on their own address human predicaments.

It is in this context that we turn to the recent debates regarding the criminalising of marital rape. Accepting rape within marriage in a cultural context that values the sanctity of marriage and family is a challenge. A law that seeks to criminalise rape within marriage correctly assumes that women, even when they are wives, have certain rights as individual women.

The December 2012 gangrape in Delhi was followed by large-scale feminist mobilisation around the issues of autonomy and freedom for women, and against violence. In response, the government formed the Justice Verma Committee; among the many suggestions there was one to criminalise marital rape. The amendments to the law that followed did not do this.

Traditionalists condemn rape while simultaneously invoking the honour of the family in the same breath while feminists condemn rape on grounds of it being violative of the principles of bodily integrity and freedom of women. It is this difference that is vital in any conversation on marital rape. Flavia Agnes, the leading feminist scholar of law, has observed that rape is frightening to traditionalists because it has the potential of violating the social order that is ba-sed on tight control and regulation of womens sexuality to ensure rightful lineage.

We need to remember that non-criminalised redressal mechanisms exist as part of the Domestic Violence Act, 2005 that take cognisance of sexual violence. So, does criminalisation of marital rape help? Some feminist activists have asked for it on the grounds that such legal provisions act as effective deterrents and create public opinion against marital rape.

However, others are not so enthusiastic. They wonder whether privileging the crime of rape dilutes the horror of the daily experience of fractures, burns, assault and battery that many women experience. From a feminist point of view, the question remains whether criminalisation of marital rape would result in acknowledgement of a womans bodily integrity? Besides, this law would still leave unaddressed the vexed issue of sexuality within marriage.

A cautionary note is struck by those who point to the impossibility of reconciliation in the marriage against the backdrop of criminal charges. And then there are those who are worried about the possibility of false accusations of rape by the wife against her husband. Elaborate procedures of investigative scrutiny and laws against blackmail exist to counter such things. This worry seems to come more from a fear of some agency that women might acquire within marriage and thus a shift in the dynamics of power.
Some years ago, I was invited to speak at a conference on education at the Bengaluru ashram of Sri Sri Ravi Shankar. He was, even by then, a fairly well-known name, boosted by his influential followers and substantial media coverage. His unique selling proposition at the time was not sermons, but Sudarshan Kriya, a set of breathing exercises that were quite popular.

The sprawling ashram was packed because of the conference, with a fair sprinkling of foreigners; I was a bit mystified why I had been invited, but it seemed a good opportunity to visit the place, so I went along. The living quarters were simple, everyone ate in a large canteen and then were expected to wash their own thalis. The mood was ascetic.

The conference hall, however, was well appointed with excellent acoustics. The speakers were drawn from different fields, but it was clear that the speeches were just the opening act; everyone was waiting for Sri Sri himself. When he came, there was a roar; two devotees of his (one of them an extremely famous model and socialite of an earlier time) walked ahead of him, spreading roses along his path. Sri Sri gave a short speech, after which he led the congregation in swaying and dancing.

Two things were quite apparent: first, that Sri Sris followers were extremely devoted to him. I had seen  and met  several gurujis, swamis and their ilk before and seen the respect and awe in the eyes of the believers. With Sri Sri, it was a case of fond attachment rather than mere belief; his simple homilies and his casual style touched them all, whether it was a school teacher from a Mumbai suburb or a high-flying executive who had quit his job at a Bengaluru-based multinational to dedicate his life to his guru. He performed no miracles and did not present his followers with any trinkets, but that did not matter.

Sri Sri was also different as far as media management was concerned. The gurus of yore kept the media away from their establishments; Sri Sri welcomed them. A vast army of savvy young bhakts  mostly women  often visited newspaper offices, offering not just interviews and visits but also free Sudarshan Kriya seminars to journalists. They were persuasive and a bit pushy too, but always polite. And they often were mystified when someone turned down their offer  what could be offensive about a few classes to teach the correct way to breathe and achieve nirvana? (Achieve waves of happiness like never before, says their website.)

The result was that Sri Sri had arguably the best image among gurus in the country. He filled the vacuum left behind by those great high-profile gurus of yore  Osho, Sathya Sai Baba and Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who had dominated the landscape in the 1970s and 1980s. Sri Sri also attracted a completely new kind of follower  the educated (and well-qualified) young professional. Techies, for example, love him. He packages his message in easy to understand language and does not make too many demands; plus there is the Sudarshan Kriya which, its practitioners claim, is very helpful. While there was a creepy, cultish vibe about many other swamis, (to say nothing of some nasty scandals about sexual exploitation), Sri Sri was positively wholesome.

Today, the same guru is attracting severe criticism and is the butt of much mocking on the social media. Whether it is his implicit support for the Bharatiya Janata Party, or the controversial festival on the banks of the Yamuna or his latest claim that he turned down the Nobel Prize, Sri Sri is being ridiculed and criticised for his un-guru like behaviour. His organisation has still not paid the fine of Rs 5 crore that the National Green Tribunal imposed on it to allow the Yamuna festival to go ahead  is he now too big to be held accountable by any institution? And for him to sneer at Malala Yousafzais Nobel Peace Prize is in very poor taste.

Its quite a fall from being a generally liked purveyor of yogic techniques and messages of peace and brotherly love to someone now seen as a contentious figure. Sri Sri has increasingly become a presence, even a player in public life. In the run up to the 2014 general elections, Sri Sris tweets and other comments made it clear where he stood. Politicians have long hobnobbed with religious figures to woo the votes of the devotees; for the most part, the sundry swamis and mullahs have done it discreetly. Sri Sri was leading the way, leaving no doubt in anyones mind what he wanted his followers to do.

The rewards of this support have been plentiful: A higher profile, a Padma Vibhushan, which is one step away from the Bharat Ratna, and the Prime Ministers presence at a cultural festival that regulatory bodies had serious problems with. He is now the pre-eminent guru in the country and that is saying something in an environment where swamis and sants of various types are mushrooming all over the place. Undoubtedly, his following and influence will only increase.

But to be a public figure is to attract greater attention; every utterance of his will now invite scrutiny. The mainstream media might be less probing, but the social media beast will be unstoppable in its mockery and criticism. Its one thing to be a smiling guru spreading the word about the best way to breathe and reach a higher consciousness, quite another to flout regulations and then refuse to pay up. Heaping scorn at a young girl who was shot for wanting to study is shockingly bad form and reeks of envy. No amount of good public relations can now reverse the impression that Sri Sri Ravi Shankar is no longer a guruji but has become a somewhat of a politician.
Trump's position was in direct opposition to that of the current US administration which has made clear its view that Britain should remain within the European Union. (Photo: AP)

United States: Donald Trump has said Britain would be better off outside the European Union, just weeks after US President Barack Obama travelled to London to warn against a Brexit.

The presumptive Republican presidential nominee conceded on Fox News Thursday that it was up to the British people to decide their future.

But he said his personal "feeling" was that Britons should vote to leave the EU in the upcoming June 23 referendum on a so-called Brexit.

Trump argued that the migrant crisis rocking the European Union was in part brought on by the bloc itself.

"I think the migration has been a horrible thing for Europe. A lot of that was pushed by the EU," he said.

"I would say that they're better off without it, personally, but I'm not making that as a recommendation, just my feeling," Trump said.

The billionaire added: "I know Great Britain very well. ... I have a lot of investments there.

"I would say that they're better off without it, but I want them to make their own decision."

Trump's position was in direct opposition to that of the current US administration which has made clear its view that Britain should remain within the European Union.

In London last month Obama argued that British membership magnified the country's global influence, and warned that if it does quit and wanted to sign a separate trade deal with the United States it would go to the "back of the queue."
While being interrogated, the accused told police that he was a Necrophiliac. (Representational Image)

Oran, Argentina: In a bizarre incident, an Argentine man has been arrested on charges of breaking into a hospital morgue to have sex with the dead body of a woman.

The incident took place San Vicente de Paul Hospital in Oran in northwestern Argentina.

According to a report in the Mirror, the 22-year-old accused was taken into custody after hospital authorities saw that the man had taken out a dead body from the freezer of the morgue and was standing on it with his pants down.

Shocked, the hospital authorities informed the police officials immediately. While being interrogated, the accused told police that he was a Necrophiliac. Necrophilia is a state in which a person is sexually attracted towards corpses.

He also told police that he sneaked into the hospital when the security guard was not at the gate. The dead body that the accused chose for the act was of a 41-year-old woman who died recently and whose autopsy was due next morning.

The detained necrophiliac has been recommended psychological tests and will be in detention till then. Investigators have ruled out any kind of link between the detainee and the dead victim.
Washington: House Speaker Paul Ryan is refusing to support Donald Trump as the Republican nominee for president, insisting Thursday that the businessman must do more to unify the GOP.

The surprise declaration from Ryan on CNN's "The Lead" amounted to a stunning rebuke of Trump from the Republican Party's highest-ranking officeholder.

"I'm just not ready to do that at this point. I'm not there right now," the Wisconsin Republican said. "And I hope to. And I want to, but I think what is required is that we unify this party."

In a statement, Trump responded that he himself isn't ready to support Ryan's agenda, either.

"Perhaps in the future we can work together and come to an agreement about what is best for the American people," Trump said. "They have been treated so badly for so long that it is about time for politicians to put them first!"

Even in an election cycle that's exposed extreme and very public divisions within the GOP, Ryan's decision to withhold his support from Trump was remarkable, as the GOP's top elected leader, second in line to the presidency, turned his back on his own party's presumptive nominee.

Ryan had maintained his silence since Trump effectively clinched the nomination with a commanding win in Indiana on Tuesday that forced his two remaining rivals from the race. Other Republican leaders, including Senate Majority Mitch McConnell, offered their grudging support for Trump, and Ryan had seemed likely to eventually do the same.

Instead he balked, in comments that could also reflect concern for his own political future and potential run for president in 2020.

"We will need a standard-bearer that can unify all Republicans, all conservatives, all wings of our party, and then go to the country with an appealing agenda," Ryan said. "And we have work to do on this front, and I think our nominee has to lead in that effort."

Ryan's announcement sent shockwaves through the Republican establishment. Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus, who is close with the speaker, got no advance warning before Ryan's comments were made public.

Later Thursday, Priebus said he had spoken to both men and expected them to work out their differences. In an interview recorded for Fox News Channel's "Hannity," he said Ryan and Trump "are meeting next week to talk about these things."

The highly unusual salvos between the likely White House nominee and the House speaker came at a moment when all involved would normally be turning from the intraparty warfare of the primaries to unifying the party for November's elections. Instead, the Republican Party remains asunder, with prospects for coming together uncertain.

Ryan made clear he won't be supporting Hillary Clinton and wants to come around to backing Trump. And he acknowledged the import of Trump's victories over a field of some of the GOP's most experienced politicians, saying the mogul had "tapped into something in this country that was very powerful. And people are sending a message to Washington that we need to learn from and listen to."

Ryan, his party's 2012 vice presidential nominee, had been seen as a possible "white knight" candidate who could emerge as an alternative to Trump at a contested convention. He called a press conference last month to rule himself out, and Trump now looks set to gather the 1,237 delegate votes needed to clinch the nomination ahead of the July gathering in Cleveland, foreclosing the contested convention scenario.

Ryan will serve as the convention's chairman, presiding over portions of the proceedings that will elevate Trump to the official status of nominee.

With deep concerns about Trump at the top of the ticket, Ryan is positioning himself to play a central role in helping to protect vulnerable Republican House and Senate candidates heading into the general election, said Spencer Zwick, Ryan's national finance chairman. Ryan has been working since becoming speaker last fall on an "agenda project" that could give lawmakers something to run on apart from the top of the ticket.

"Paul Ryan is the single most effective tool and person to maintain control of the Senate and the House," said Zwick.

"He's focused on an agenda. He's constantly out there talking about his agenda," Zwick said, adding: "Many people aren't sure what the Trump agenda is yet."

Trump and Ryan have publicly clashed in the past. Ryan rebuked Trump for plans to bar Muslims from the country, and when Trump was slow to disavow former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke. Trump told a crowd in South Carolina in February that Ryan doomed the GOP presidential ticket four years ago by saying entitlement programs need reform.
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.
Washington DC: Maintaining their diplomatic streak over India and Pakistan, the United States has called on both nations to pursue closer counter-terrorism cooperation as it would 'benefit' the regions which have been marred by terrorism.

In reply to a question at a press briefing talking about counter-terrorism efforts by the countries U.S. State Department deputy spokesperson Mark Toner said that there is some level of counterterrorism cooperation between India and Pakistan and also dialogue, which the US wants to see being augmented.

"This is something that's in both Pakistan and India's interest to pursue a closer counterterrorism cooperation for the region. It's good for the region," Toner said.

Earlier, the US had said that it is concerned about the allegations of gross violations of human rights in Pakistan by its security forces during its counterterrorism operations.
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The April 25 House of Culture, the venue for the 7th Congress of the Workers' Party of Korea is seen framed by the Workers' Party flags decorating the streets on Friday, May 6, 2016, in Pyongyang, North Korea. (Photo: AP )

Pyongyang: North Korea on Friday staged its most important political show for a generation, aimed at cementing the absolute rule of leader Kim Jong-Un and underlining the sanctions-hit country's "prestige" as a nuclear power.

The first ruling party congress for nearly 40 years drew thousands of selected delegates from across the country to Pyongyang for what, in theory at least, was a gathering of North Korea's top decision-making body.

It also drew around 130 foreign journalists who were invited to cover the event but not allowed inside the venue, restricted instead to watching from a spot 200 metres (yards) away in the light drizzle falling on the capital.

And state television provided no live coverage, devoting its programming to archive material, films and patriotic concerts.

The 33-year-old Kim, who was not even born when the last Workers' Party Congress was held in 1980, was to deliver a keynote address that will be scrutinised for any sign of a substantive policy shift, especially on the economic front.

Analysts will also be watching for personnel changes as Kim looks to bring in a younger generation of leaders hand-picked for their loyalty.

State media previewed the event by hailing the North's most recent nuclear test in January as evidence of its "greatness and prestige as a nuclear power state."

And the North's Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea slammed the international community's opposition to Pyongyang's nuclear weapons programme.

"Regardless of whether someone recognises it or not, our status as a nuclear state that is armed with H-bombs cannot change," the committee said in a statement.

There has been widespread speculation about the North preparing another nuclear test to coincide with the congress, as a defiant gesture of strength and future intent.

The 1980 event was staged to crown Kim's father Kim Jong-Il as heir apparent to his own father, the North's founding leader Kim Il-Sung.

The 2016 version was being held inside the imposing April 25 Palace, whose stone facade was adorned with huge portraits of the two late leaders, along with giant red and gold ruling party banners.

While the agenda -- and even the duration -- of the congress remains unknown, its main objective is to confirm Kim Jong-Un's status as legitimate inheritor of the Kim family's dynastic rule which spans almost seven decades.

It may also enshrine as formal party doctrine Kim's "byungjin" policy of pursuing nuclear weapons in tandem with economic development.

Notably absent was any Chinese representation  a possible reflection of the increasingly strained ties between the North and its sole major ally.
Erdogan's statement on Friday came a day after Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, who had negotiated the deal, stepped down over a rift with the president.

Ankara: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned the European Union on Friday that Ankara will not change its anti-terrorism law, despite it being a condition laid down by Brussels to ensure visa-free travel for Turks.

"The EU says: you will change the anti-terror law for visas," Erdogan said in a televised speech in Istanbul. "Pardon me but we are going our way and you can go yours."

Erdogan was speaking one day after Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, who had championed the accord, announced that he was stepping down.

Turkey must complete five more benchmarks by the end of next month to complete the EU's list of 72 criteria -- which include changes to anti-terror law as well as protection of personal data.

The promise of visa-free travel for Turks is a key pillar of a deal between Brussels and Ankara to reduce the flow of migrants from Turkish territory to the European Union.

A Turkish official said this week talks with the EU were under way to meet the five remaining criteria including changes to the anti-terror law.

"I don't think it will be a problem," the official said.

But Erdogan's comments came a day after Davutoglu announced he would not run in this month's party congress after a series of disputes with the president.

Davutoglu was the architect of the migrant deal with the EU and had repeatedly held talks with EU leaders on its implementation, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

"Why aren't you changing your mindset when you allowed terrorists who put up tents close to the EU Parliament?" Erdogan said in a swipe at Brussels, in apparent reference to tents set up by Kurdish activists near the EU Council building in Brussels in March.
Egor Sosin (pictured above), son of Russian construction magnate Igor Sosin and a student of Hult International Business school in London, was under the influence of strong hallucinogen when he killed his 44-year-old mother Anastasia Novikova- Sosina at a hotel in Kazan. (Photo: YouTube)

Moscow: In a gory incident, a 19-year-old Russian boy is accused of strangling his mother to death with a charger cable and battering her face 'to rid her of the devil.'

According to reports, Egor Sosin, son of Russian construction magnate Igor Sosin and a student of Hult International Business school in London, was under the influence of strong hallucinogen when he killed his 44-year-old mother Anastasia Novikova- Sosina at a hotel in Kazan.

The mother-son duo appeared at Kazan from Moscow in the afternoon, rented a room in a five-star hotel. In the evening, the young man beat up his mother after having an argument.

"I had been choking her for about half an hour. Satisfied that she had died, I sat on her and began punching her with all my force. I hit her in the face. There were not less than 20 hits, they were strong. I cried when I hit her. I was well aware that my actions were killing my mother," he reportedly told investigators.

"I bit into her neck on the right side and felt blood in my mouth. I saw blood running from my mother's face from my hits," he added.

Heated argument between the mother and son preceded the violent incident, so much so that the authorities wanted to call police. The hotel management called the police after they spotted Egor walking around the corridors of the hotel in his innerwear.

The police discovered a battered Anastasia in a blood soaked room. When the authorities questioned the boy, he said that his mother tried to persuade him to have sex prompting the violent incident.

Preliminary investigation has indicated that he may be affected by paranoid schizophrenia. If medically accepted, he would not face charges of murder.
Mandy Leacock (pictured above) has also been accused of causing physical harm to the victim at the defendent's house in London. (Photo: Facebook)

St John's Wood, London: A man has been accused of raping a vulnerable woman at his London home, while his sister has also been accused of enslaving the victim for over a period of one year, according to a report in the Mirror.

The incident took place at the accused's home in Bayswater, west London. The case is being investigated and the trial is being heard at Westminster Magistrates' Court.

During the trial, the court heard that Colin Leacock, 33, raped the victim twice at his home while his sister Mandy Leacock had wounded the victim.

Both the accused were arrested on May 3 and have been detained.

Describing her one year of torment, the victim told investigators that she was physically abused by her captors and was told that if she ever complained to the police, they would not believe her.

Colin has been charged with two counts of rape whereas his sister Mandy has been charged with causing serious physical injury to the victim.

Both the accused are expected to appear before the Southwark Crown Court on June 1.
Local and state officials celebrate the accomplishments of Nebraska College of Technical Agricultures 2016 graduates

CURTIS  Addressing graduates of the Nebraska College of Technical Agriculture on Thursday, state leaders admired the profession many of them will enter.

University of Nebraska President Hank Bounds spoke of how vital agricultural studies are, especially in Nebraska.

This campus is especially important in our community, Bounds said before commencement ceremonies at the Curtis campus. Bounds himself grew up on a farm in Mississippi and went to an agricultural high school.

Bounds was one of a number of state leaders at the institutions commencement. Gov. Pete Ricketts and NU Regent Bob Phares, of North Platte, joined him.

The need to have trained individuals on our ranches and farms is so incredibly important today, Bounds said.

NCTA Dean Ron Rosati agreed. With a world population expected to grow by 2 billion by 2050, more people will require more food, he said.

For more photos, click here.

Fortunately, he said, agriculture is Nebraskas No. 1 industry. Meanwhile, advances in agricultural technology are changing the industry, Rosati said.

You cant be a farmer without a firm grasp on technology, Rosati added.

In his speech to students, Ricketts emphasized the states rich agricultural industry and its need for producers. With thousands of projected jobs available in agriculture next year, he urged students to work in Nebraska, feeding a growing population.

He also reminded students that life after college isnt all about the paycheck, and said its important to become involved in ones community.

Theres one thing that the government cannot do, he said. And thats love.

But first, Phares urged the graduates to focus on just one thing.

Just for today, relax, he said. Celebrate. Enjoy.
It was the fourth air raid on Gaza since Wednesday, when direct clashes between Hamas and Israeli forces broke out for the first time since 2014. (Photo: AFP)

Jerusalem: Israeli aircraft hit a Hamas facility in the southern Gaza Strip on Friday morning in response to cross-border mortar fire, the army said.

"In response to the ongoing attacks against Israeli forces, Israel Air Force aircraft targeted a Hamas terror infrastructure," an army statement said.

It was the fourth air raid on Gaza since Wednesday, when direct clashes between Hamas and Israeli forces broke out for the first time since 2014.
Ten steel industry associations from around the globe are calling on China to join the discussion when it comes to overcapacity and subsidies.

Associations representing steelmakers from the United States, Canada, Mexico, Latin America, Brazil, Europe and Turkey issued a statement Thursday urging China to participate in future talks to address the worlds steel crisis.

While we were disappointed that the Chinese government was unwilling at this time to join with other governments in a program of actions to address the global steel overcapacity problem, we are encouraged by the support of governments of eight major steelmaking countries and regions to recommend steps to address excess capacity in the steel sector, said the American Iron and Steel Institute and other trade associations.

The governments of the United States, Canada, Mexico, the European Union, Japan, Switzerland, Turkey and the Republic of Korea met in Brussels last month to discuss the estimated 700 million tons of global overcapacity that bedeviled the steel industry.

They concluded that while the challenges facing the industry arise from many factors, such as structural and cyclical economic developments, government support measures have contributed to significant excess capacity, unfair trade, and distortions in steel trade flows.

They called upon governments to stop subsidies that distort competition.

This week, the governments said they did not expect the Brussels meeting to be the last word.

We did not expect to solve the crisis in one meeting; however, we did hope that the governments of all major steel producing nations would be able to make commitments on a set of principles and agree to work together to help address the crisis, they said in Thursdays statement. Despite consensus among many countries who participated, Chinas lack of support prevented a broad agreement on these commitments.
CROWN POINT  A Gary man admitted in court Friday that he knew there was an unsecured gun in his home on Jan. 14, 2012.

His then-teenage son had purchased the firearm for $50 after the family had been through two home invasions.

Robert Henderson, 44, was doing laundry when he heard a loud boom coming from one of the bedrooms.

He found his 2-year-old daughter, Jariah Henderson, bleeding from the head and rushed her to Methodist Hospitals Northlake Campus. Six days later, she was removed from life support at the University of Chicago Medicine Comer Childrens Hospital.

Jariah was shot by her older sister, who was 3 at the time. The two had been playing, according to court records.

Henderson pleaded guilty to neglect of a dependent after he admitted responsibility for the gun not being properly secured in the home.

Lake County Criminal Judge Salvador Vasquez sentenced him to two years in prison followed by four years in community corrections. Henderson will then have to serve an additional two years on probation.

Henderson told Vasquez that Jariah was his heart and soul. The two were together every day. Her organs were donated to three people.

This dont stop here, he said. I still got to deal with this.

Defense attorney Scott King described Henderson as a family man who was the primary care taker for the children while the childrens mother worked during the day. Henderson was also in the process of opening up a food stand when the shooting happened.

Previously, Henderson had spent 10 years in prison on a federal charge. He said he was trying to make up for lost time with his 10 children.

It hurts, your honor, he said. Im at peace with the decision I made with my child.

Five of his children were seated in the courtroom gallery. One woman walked out of the courtroom at one point after becoming overwhelmed with emotion.

Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Nadia Chivers had argued for a 15-year prison sentence. She said Henderson allowed the gun in the home knowing there were children there. The .22-caliber semiautomatic handgun had been left on a television stand.

This was much more than an accident, this was outright negligence, she said.

Though Henderson had a past criminal history, Vasquez noted it was for drug offenses and those crimes werent connected to what happened in the neglect case.

He characterized Jariahs death as preventable, saying Henderson should have known to secure the weapon or not have allowed it in the home at all.

I have to believe that the weight of this tragedy is heavy on your shoulders, Vasquez said. You are being punished on a daily basis.
CROWN POINT  A Gary man was sentenced Friday to 45 years in prison after a jury earlier this year found him guilty of shooting a man who was left paralyzed.

Lake County Criminal Judge Samuel Cappas sentenced Jermaine C. Davis to 45 years in prison after jurors found him guilty of attempted murder, a Class A felony.

Davis, 37, maintained his innocence during Fridays hearing.

Im sorry for what happened to Willie Bailey, he was like a little brother, Davis said.

He went on to say that he is being blamed for something someone else did.

Davis was accused of shooting at Bailey as he walked into his house about 10:15 p.m. Aug. 22, 2013, in the 700 block of West 41st Avenue in Gary. Bailey was shot four times in the chest, knee and back.

Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Bernard Johnsen told jurors this past February that the casings found on the scene indicated that the shooter was walking while firing shots at Bailey.

The shooting happened a day after Bailey punched Davis at a gas station in Gary. Davis allegedly called Baileys sister and told her nothing would happen to her brother if she gave him $1,000.

Bailey, who is now confined to a wheelchair, said everything in his life has changed.

I barely can do anything with my daughter, he said. Im 26 and I will be in a wheelchair for the rest of my life.

Cappas pointed to Davis criminal history, three prior felonies and six misdemeanors, as one of the reasons why he imposed the 45-year sentence. He said evidence indicating Davis was walking toward Bailey while shooting at him was a sign of malicious intent.

He granted defense attorney Scott Kings request to keep Davis in Lake County Jail pending a motion he intends to file to correct an error in the case. King, who only began representing Davis after the trial, said he believes there are issues in the case regarding Davis right to counsel.

On the day of the trial, Davis told Cappas he wanted to hire a new attorney. The next day, the trial proceeded after Davis said he was satisfied with his attorney at the time, Philip King, according to court records.
CROWN POINT  After admitting to sexually abusing two minors he knew, Marco A. Arroyo told the court Friday that he wasnt a monster.

Arroyo, who pleaded guilty to two counts of child molesting, apologized to the victims. He said he knew what he did wasnt right.

Lake County Criminal Judge Salvador Vasquez countered by telling Arroyo he was a monster.

You are a monster, you are, Vasquez said. Youre a horrible person for what youve done to them.

Vasquez went on by telling Arroyo he not only brought shame upon himself, but he also brought shame upon his entire race.

Im ashamed to call you Mexican, Vasquez said. Ive never said that before.

Vasquez appeared hesitant to accept Arroyos plea agreement, which stipulated that he would be sentenced to 20 years in prison. Vasquez remarked that Arroyo deserved a lifetime of punishment for the abuse the two minors, a boy and a girl, endured from October 2013 to June 2014.

He accepted the agreement and imposed the 20-year sentence, because he wanted to spare the children from having to face Arroyo in court. Lorrainne M. Rowell also pleaded guilty to two counts of child molesting and was sentenced Friday to 20 years in prison.

Arroyo is expected to be deported after he completes his sentence.

Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Nadia Chivers said the state reached the terms of the agreements after consulting with multiple people who are now caring for the children. Chivers said the children werent equipped to testify, because of the trauma they were still working through.

Words cant express how awful it is, Chivers said.

Arroyo, 32, and Rowell, 31, admitted to abusing the children, who were younger than 14 years old at the time, at an East Chicago home. The children were forced to engage in sexual activity with both adults, according to the plea agreement.

Rowell told investigators the couple was under the influence of alcohol and marijuana during the incidents.

The boys foster mother held onto the side of a desk in front of her seat as she detailed the abuse the boy had to endure. Arroyo and Rowell at times sexually abused the boy at the same time.

The boy was placed in the womans home after officials discovered the abuse. The boy has since told her that he would be beat if he didnt comply with the couples demands. The boy still has flashbacks about the abuse, and he is being treated for various mental health problems he has since developed.

The foster mother said the boy is confused about relationships, his sexuality and has issues being around Latino men. She said the abuse cost the boy his childhood, leaving him with thoughts of suicide and murder.

She teared up as she described nights she has stayed up with him crying.

(He) physically feels like he wants to die, she said.
Amman: A cessation of hostilities brokered by Russia and the United States brought a measure of relief to Aleppo on Thursday but fighting raged nearby and President Bashar al-Assad said he still sought total victory over rebels in Syria.

Syrian state media said the army would abide by a "regime of calm" in the city that came into effect at 1 am (2200 GMT on Wednesday) for 48 hours, and relative calm prevailed on Thursday after two weeks of death and destruction.

The army blamed Islamist insurgents for violating the agreement overnight by what it called indiscriminate shelling of some government-held residential areas of divided Aleppo. Residents said the violence had eased by morning and more shops had opened up.

Heavy fighting was reported in the southern Aleppo countryside near the town of Khan Touman, where al Qaeda's Syrian branch Nusra Front is dug in close to a stronghold of Iranian-backed militias, a rebel source said.

Government forces carried out air attacks on the area and rebels were attacking government positions around the town, pro-Syrian government television channel Al-Mayadeen and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Pro-opposition media said an Islamist insurgent carried out a suicide bomb attack against government positions in Khan Touman. A TV station controlled by the Lebanese group Hezbollah, which is fighting alongside the Syrian army, said the army used a guided missile to destroy a suicide car bomb before it reached its target in that area.

Elsewhere in Syria, fighting persisted. Islamic State militants captured the Shaer gas field in the east of the country, the first gain for the jihadists in the Palmyra desert area since they lost the ancient city in March, according to rebel sources and a monitor.

Amaq, an IS-affiliated news agency, said Islamic State militants killed at least 30 Syrian troops stationed at Shaer and seized heavy weapons, tanks and missiles. Russian war jets were also reported to have struck militant hideouts in the town of Sukhna in the same Palmyra desert area.

Assad said he would accept nothing less than an outright victory in the five-year-old conflict against rebels across Syria, state media reported.

In a telegram to Russian President Vladimir Putin thanking Moscow for its military support, Assad said the army was set on "attaining final victory" and "crushing the aggression".

The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least one person was killed overnight in rebel shelling of the Midan neighbourhood on the government-held side of Aleppo, which was Syria's commercial hub and largest city before the war.

Rockets also hit the New Aleppo district, state media said. But a resident of the rebel-held eastern part of the city said that although warplanes flew overnight, there were none of the intense raids seen during the past 10 days of air strikes.

People in several districts ventured onto the streets where more shops than normal had opened, the resident of al Shaar neighbourhood said. Another resident said civilians in several districts sensed a general trend towards calm. "From last night it was positive and my wife went out to shop and shops opened and people breathed. We did not hear the shelling and bombing we had gotten accustomed to," Sameh Tutunji, a merchant said.

A rebel source also said that despite intermittent firing across the city's main front lines, fighting had subsided and no army shelling of residential areas had been heard. "Although we're seeing less fighting today, the massive onslaught of violence over these past two weeks would make almost anything look like improvement," the North Syria Director for aid organisation Mercy Corps Xavier Tissier said.

"We aren't going to celebrate a temporary break in targeted attacks on civilians and aid workers. The cessation of hostilities must hold for the long term," Tissier said.

Rebels also said government helicopters dropped barrel bombs on rebel-held Dahyat al-Rashdeen al Junobi, northwest of Aleppo, and near the Jamiyat al Zahraa area, which saw a rebel ground assault pushed back on Wednesday.

The recent surge in bloodshed in Aleppo had wrecked a February cessation of hostilities agreement sponsored by Washington and Moscow, backers of the rival sides. The truce excluded Islamic State and the Nusra Front.

A spokesman for the mainstream opposition said the Saudi-based High Negotiations Committee (HNC) supported the deal but wanted the truce to cover all of Syria, not just Aleppo. It accused the government of violating it.
CROWN POINT  Weeks after a Lake County jury was unable to decide if Anthony Williams did or did not kill his best friend, a judge denied his release from custody.

Anthony T. Williams, 30, requested he be released from Lake County Jail because of how much time he had already spent in custody. The motion was filed after a jury last month was unable to reach a verdict in his case following two weeks of evidence.

Williams faces charges of murder, attempted murder, carjacking, aggravated battery, battery committed by means of a deadly weapon, battery resulting in bodily injury to an endangered adult and criminal confinement.

He is accused of shooting Damian Reedus to death on Dec. 2, 2013. Reedus' body later was found inside a parked van in the 1900 block of Pennsylvania Street in Gary, according to court records. Aja Jester testified she was driving the men home when the shooting happened. She was shot in the neck.

Defense attorney Jamise Perkins cited Indiana's criminal rule 4(A), which states that a defendant can't be held for longer than six months without a trial unless the defense requests the delay or it is caused by a congested court calendar.

Williams had been held since Dec. 6, 2013, without bail in Lake County Jail.

One of the time periods in question was from April 10, 2015, to July 31, 2015, after Lake County Criminal Judge Salvador Vasquez rejected a plea agreement in the case. At the time, Vasquez said he was uncomfortable accepting the agreement, because it called for concurrent sentences.

Perkins argued that time period should be attributed to the state. Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Michelle Jatkiewicz argued the law states that the time after a plea agreement is entered is not attributable to the state's time to prosecute someone.

Vasquez sided with the state, saying the time frame is caused by Williams' action to enter the agreement.

Another questionable time period was from Feb. 7, 2014, to Feb. 14, 2014. The case had been set for a hearing on Feb. 7, 2014, but it was reset to Feb. 14, 2014, after no one from the public defender's office appeared in court.

Perkins argued that could have been a clerical error, pointing out the online court docket indicated Williams was not brought to court.

Vasquez, citing an order, said that hearing was rescheduled, because no one from the public defender's conflicts division had appeared.

He denied the motion to release Williams, ruling that the two times in question weren't attributable to the state.

Perkins then asked if bail could be set in the case. She said Jester was the only person who placed her client at the crime scene, and she argued Jester was impeached and had to have her memory refreshed during her testimony.

Jatkiewicz argued letters allegedly written by Williams and people he spoke to after the homicide also point to his involvement in the case.

Vasquez ruled Williams would remain in jail without bail because of the totality of the evidence in the case. Williams is scheduled to stand trial Oct. 31.
HAMMOND  A complaint filed Thursday in U.S. District Court alleges a man sold 8 ounces of cocaine to a government source Tuesday in Gary.

Anthony D. Howard, 40, of Gary, was arrested after the source exited his vehicle, which was parked near Lake Street and U.S. 20, according to an affidavit.

The source first spoke on the phone with Howard, who agreed to sell the source 8 ounces of cocaine for $9,200, court records said.

Officers working with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area Task Force outfitted the source with covert recording equipment and money, the affidavit said.

Howard arrived at a business in a vehicle, the source got in, and the two exchanged the money for a bag containing suspected cocaine, court records said.

The suspected cocaine had a gross weight of 7.98 ounces, according to the affidavit.
Congressman Pete Visclosky congratulates Highland Christian School seventh-grade student Simon Molenaar on his first place win at Indiana's National Geographic Bee competition. Molenaar will continue on to the national competition.The congressman invited Simon to visit him while he is in Washington for the National Geography Bee May 22 to 25.
CROWN POINT  The Lake County prosecutor said reducing charges pending against a union official was a mistake.

That plea is not indicative of what we should have done in that situation. That just upsets me, Prosecutor Bernard A. Carter said.

Randolph L. Randy Palmateer, 37, business manager for the Northwestern Indiana Building and Construction Trades Council, avoided conviction of operating a vehicle while intoxicated Monday when he pleaded guilty to reckless driving. A Hammond City Court judge placed Palmateer on 180 days probation.

Carter said Thursday that deal wasnt a favor to Palmateer, whose political connections extend to many Democratic municipal and county officials.

Hammond police said they arrested Palmateer March 25 at a sobriety checkpoint. The Times has requested any video recording Hammond police made of Palmateers arrest. Lt. Richard Hoyda said the city corporation counsel is researching the question.

The prosecutors office filed two misdemeanor counts of operating a vehicle while intoxicated March 30. Hammond City Court records indicate Palmateer received the plea deal and resolved his case Monday  34 days later.

Carter said when he heard Palmateer had been charged, he instructed his staff to ensure any plea bargain would be negotiated by a top administrator in his office.

All my attorneys know if there is any high-profile case, you let us look at it before you negotiate it. If they had brought that deal to Crown Point, we would have picked up on the name quickly, Carter said.

However, he said, by the time his instruction went out, They said (defense attorney) Tom Mullins came in yesterday and pleaded him. Clearly, he was rushed into court, Carter said.

Neither Palmateer nor his attorney returned calls for comment.

Carter said, Edgar Rodriguez, our deputy in Hammond, negotiated the plea agreement. Edgar said he didnt recognize the name. He doesnt get involved in politics.

He said Rodriguez made his decision under the impression it was Palmateers first offense and that the case would be difficult to try in front of a jury, because sobriety check points are unpopular.

The Bureau of Motor Vehicles on Thursday released to The Times a driving history for Palmateer indicating nine convictions for seat belt violations, speeding and disregarding a traffic signal between 1995 and 2008, and a license suspension for his arrest this March, but nothing in 2011.

Carters office charged Palmateer in 2011 with operating a vehicle while intoxicated and endangering a person, but dismissed that count after Palmateer pleaded guilty to reckless driving.

Edgar tells me that when he looked at (Indiana Bureau of Motor Vehicles) records, it had no indication (Palmateer) had a prior, Carter said.

Carter said, I dont know who would have to drop the ball. That (2011 plea) was in Lake Station. Judge (Christopher) Anderson was on the bench. I dont know who his clerks were, but for whatever reason, it never got sent down to the BMV.

Anderson, now Lake Station mayor, said Thursday, I treated (Palmateer) just like any other defendant. No special treatment or singling him out because of who he was.

Anderson said all traffic cases in his court were processed in open court and handed over to clerks, who entered them into the CourtView Online Court Records system, which is programmed to send an automatic signal of a conviction to the Bureau of Motor Vehicles for its record system.

Without looking into the situation, I cant tell you if it was a mistake by the clerks office, the BMV or by the computer, Anderson said, adding the process needs to be simplified to avoid future problems.
JACKSON TOWNSHIP  A Michigan man was killed and another man injured late Thursday night following a head-on collision on U.S. 6.

The accident happened just before 10:30 p.m. east of County Road 350 East, according to the Porter County Sheriffs Department

A preliminary investigation shows a white 2004 Chevrolet Silverado pickup truck driven by Nathan OBrien, 37, of Otis, was traveling east on U.S. 6 in the left lane.

A brown 1995 Ford Crown Victoria, driven by Joseph Carlin, 58, of Niles, Michigan, was traveling westbound when for unknown reasons, it crossed the center line, striking the Silverado head on.

Carlin was pronounced dead on the scene from massive blunt force injuries, according to Porter County Coroner Chuck Harris.

OBrien was taken to Porter Regional Hospital for non-incapacitating injuries.

The Porter County Accident Reconstruction Team was called to the scene to investigate. Toxicology results are pending for both subjects involved in the crash.

Police are asking anyone who may have been in the area at the time of the crash to call the sheriffs department at (219) 477-3100.
Bhandari was scheduled to visit from May 9 as the state guest at the invitation of President Pranab Mukherjee. (Photo: AFP)

Kathmandu: Nepal's first woman President Bidhya Devi Bhandari has cancelled her visit to India, which would have been her first foreign trip after assuming office, in the wake of the political instability in her country.

Bhandari was scheduled to visit from May 9 as the state guest at the invitation of President Pranab Mukherjee. She was also scheduled to participate in a 'Shahi Snan' in Ujjain's Simhastha Kumbh on May 14.

Government sources in New Delhi said, "We have learnt that Nepali President Bidyadevi Bhandari's official visit to India has been postponed by the Nepali side. We understand that this is on account of the political developments in Nepal."

Earlier this week, UCPN-Maoist led by Prachanda triggered political instability by declaring the end of the coalition with the ruling CPN-UML.

The Maoists and the opposition Nepali Congress have accused Prime Minister K P Oli for failing to implement the new Constitution, address problems related to Madhesis, expedite the post-quake reconstruction work, failing to check soaring prices and promoting black marketing and corruption.

However, Oli yesterday survived a threat to his government after a U-turn by Prachanda-led Maoists who decided not to withdraw support to him "for the time being".
Police departments throughout the country have experienced their share of challenges to both reputation and morale  some earned and some unfairly assessed  in recent years.

Locally, the St. John Police Department and some of its leaders or personnel have faced three separate lawsuits alleging workplace sexual harassment.

And in April, a police officer at the center of an internal investigation into alleged racial profiling resigned.

It takes a strong leader to right the ship and move a reeling agency away from such scandal, which no doubt impacts morale of the rank and file who are there to serve and protect.

St. John Police Chief James Kveton, who just assumed the department's rains in January, is so far filling that need.

What gets lost in such controversy are the many officers who put on the blue uniform every day  men and women who do the job well and for the right reasons.

So it was a welcome sight at Tuesday's St. John Town Council meeting when three officers  Deputy Chief David Demeter and officers Luke Schreiber and Ronald Olson  received the town's first-ever medals for valor.

When Kveton became chief, he began reviewing the town's history and became aware of the July fatal shooting of St. John businessman Christopher Badten.

In March, Gerald Haddle, 47, of Hebron, was sentenced to 50 years in prison for the slaying.

The three officers, who responded to the shooting incident, are credited with preventing Haddle from harming others or himself.

The honored cops deserve this praise for performing police duties at their zenith.

But Kveton also should be given credit for recognizing the valor involved in this case and bestowing public thanks on his officers.

Good leaders recognize their subordinates when they've gone above and beyond. Leaders also know how to push the right buttons to improve morale.

Kveton seems to have done both. We look forward to watching the rest of his career here.
FORT MCMURRAY, Alberta  A massive wildfire raging in the Canadian province of Alberta grew to 85,000 hectares (210,035 acres) and officials said Thursday they would like to move south about 25,000 evacuees who had previously fled north, including 8,000 by air.

More than 80,000 people have emptied Fort McMurray in the heart of Canadas oil sands, authorities said.

The Alberta government declared a province-wide fire ban in an effort to reduce the risk of more blazes in a province that is very hot and dry.

It is a very rare step, Alberta Environment Minister Shannon Phillips said. Phillips called it an offense to ignore the ban and said it can lead to fines.

The government said more than 1,100 firefighters, 145 helicopters, 138 pieces of heavy equipment and 22 air tankers were fighting a total of 49 wildfires, with seven considered out of control. Chad Morrison with AB Wildfire, manager of wildfire prevention, said the blaze grew rapidly, fueled by gusting winds, and he expected the fire to continue to grow Thursday because of dry conditions but it will be away from the community.

The fire has torched 1,600 homes and other buildings in Fort McMurray. There have been no injuries or death from the fires. The province of Alberta declared a state of emergency.

Alberta Premier Rachel Notley said so rain is needed. She said she didnt know how much better the evacuation could have been when asked if ample warning was given to residents, noting that in 48 hours more than 80,000 people were evacuated from a town that essentially has two roads out of it.

Fort McMurray is surrounded by wilderness and is Canadas main oil sands town. Despite the size of the town and its importance to the Canadian economy, there are essentially only two ways out via car. The region has the third largest reserves of oil in the world behind Saudi Arabia and Venezuela.

Aided by high winds, scorching heat and low humidity, the fire grew from 75 square kilometers (29 square miles) Tuesday to 100 square kilometers (38.6 square miles) on Wednesday, but by Thursday it was almost nine times that  at 850 square kilometers (328.2 square miles).

The fire remained wrapped around the western and southern edges of the city.

About 25,000 evacuees moved north in the hours after Tuesdays evacuation, where oil sands work camps were being pressed into service to house people. But the bulk of the more than 80,000 evacuees fled south to Edmonton and elsewhere, and officials said they eventually would like to move everyone south where they have better support for the displaced. Officials are now trying to fly 8,000 evacuees out of the area starting Thursday afternoon and are hoping the highway becomes safe enough to move people that way.

Our focus right now is on getting those people south as quickly as possible, Notley said.

Government officials said energy companies in the area were prepared to use their planes in an airlift and a military aircraft was on standby.

Unseasonably hot temperatures combined with dry conditions have transformed the boreal forest in much of Alberta into a tinder box. Morrison said they are investigating the cause of the fire but he said it started in a remote forested area and said it could have been lightning.

A combination of factors conspired to make this wildfire especially ferocious, said Bill Patzert, a climatologist at NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. The El Nino global weather system brought Alberta a mild winter and low snowpack, he said. Patzert said the flames sparked at a time between the snowy season and before springtime rains that turn the landscape green, making the region especially vulnerable to wildfire.The flames are moving so fast that they are nearly impossible to fight, he said.

In a way, its a perfect storm, Patzert said. Its been warm, its been dry and windy. Its the in-between period before youre in the full bloom of spring.

The fire is driving one of the largest evacuations in North America in recent memory, said Bill Stewart, co-director of the University of Californias Center for Fire Research and Outreach at the University of California, Berkeley.

With few exceptions in the United States, an entire town hasnt been threatened on this scale for over 100 years, he said, noting rather that devastation has struck neighborhoods and smaller communities in California.

There is no stopping the advance of a fire such as the wind-driven flames in Alberta, which is spreading embers well beyond fire lines, Stewart said. He noted that the aggressive fire is also unusual for burning so early in the warm season and so far north.

You could add five times the number of firefighters, but you cant get all the embers, he said. Theres no way to put out every ember flying over firefighters heads.

Fort McMurray resident Fahed Labek, whose relatives from war-torn Syria recently migrated to northern Alberta as refugees, said his family has escaped one fire for another. Labek fled the encroaching wildfire two days ago with family members, who arrived in Canada in late February.

Labek, who made it to Edmonton after a harrowing journey, is concerned the refugees are enduring additional trauma after leaving the Middle East. But he said hes taking solace in the helpfulness of Canadians now assisting the tens of thousands of forest fire evacuees.

The fire has dealt a blow to the regions crude production, with companies curtailing production or stopping it altogether. Notley, the province premier, said the infrastructure for oil and gas production remains largely unaffected. Whats slowing down production is that their employees are not there, she said.

The airport only suffered minor damage because of the herculean efforts of firefighters, said Scott Long of the Alberta Emergency Management Agency. Firefighters have focused on protecting key infrastructure like the water treatment plant, the hospital and the airport.

Morrison said four air tankers from Quebec will arrive Thursday and 100 firefighters are arriving from Ontario.

___

Associated Press writers Rob Gillies in Toronto and Scott Smith in Fresno, California, contributed to this report.
VALPARAISO  In the past, when patients had atrial fibrillation, the most common type of irregular heart beat, the only option was to treat them with a blood thinner. If they started bleeding excessively and had to be taken off the drug, their risk of a stroke increased dramatically.

A new procedure to treat the heart condition was recently approved for Medicare patients by the Food and Drug Administration, and Porter Regional Hospital is the first in Northwest Indiana to offer it. The doctors who perform the procedure locally say the new implant has the opportunity to reduce the number of strokes in the Region.

"These patients were basically ticking time bombs if they couldn't take blood thinners in the past. It's why stroke is becoming an increasing medical problem," said Dr. Mark Dixon, an electrophysiologist for Porter Regional Hospital. "As this procedure becomes introduced down the road, the hope is it decreases the incidence of stroke."

More than two-thirds of those with atrial fibrillation are between the ages of 65 of 85. And as the American population ages, the number of people with the condition is expected to grow, from 5 million in the U.S. today to an estimated 8 million by 2050.

A person with the heart condition is five times more likely to have a stroke than someone without it. And half of all atrial fibrillation patients have to to discontinue blood thinners within two years.

Enter the Watchman, a new device by Boston Scientific that seals off the appendage of the heart believed to responsible for causing most stroke-causing blood clots. Porter, which performed its first such procedure last month, is one of the first 38 hospitals to offer the implant.

"What we've done historically is roll the dice: give them blood thinner, hope they don't bleed," said Dr. Jay Shah, an echocardiographer at Porter. "If they bled, we would stop it and give them aspirin."

The procedure, which itself comes with a risk of bleeding, is performed by a three-person team, made up of Dixon, Shah and an interventional cardiologist, Dr. Sandeep Sehgal, and takes one to two hours. The patient is observed overnight and stays on blood thinners for about six weeks, which is how long it takes for the coating to form in the heart.

Candidates for the implant are people with atrial fibrillation who have failed on blood thinners in the past or are at a high risk of bleeding, and have an left atrial appendage that is the right size or shape for the device. The implant is inserted through a vein in the groin by a catheter.

"It gives you the benefit of blood thinners without being on blood thinners," Sehgal said. "An 85-year old man, who is unsteady, you give him full-borne blood thinners, he could could slip, break his hip and have massive bleeding. He could slip and fall and bleed in the brain.

"This gives people piece of mind, when the stroke risk is reduced without having the baggage of those complications."
A second official from the New York City Board of Elections has been suspended without pay amid investigations into the mysterious removal of about 120,000 voters from the rolls in Brooklyn before last month's presidential primary. Our Grace Rauh has the messy details.

Another election official from Brooklyn is clearing her desk.

The city's Board of Elections voted to suspend without pay Betty Ann Canizio, the deputy chief clerk at the Brooklyn elections office.

The vote was taken on Tuesday, but it was publicly announced at the board meeting Thursday.

"There is a lot of information to go through post-election, with respect to all the details that led up to the voters that were purged," said Michael Ryan, the executive director of the Board of Elections. "And we want to make sure that when we take full and final action, that it's done based on all the facts and done appropriately."

Shortly after the April 19 primary, the board's top official in Brooklyn, Diane Haslett-Rudiano, was temporarily removed from her post, suspended without pay as well, as questions mounted about why some 120,000 voters in Brooklyn had been stripped from the voter rolls.

Many Brooklyn residents who thought they were registered showed up to vote only to find their names were not on the list.

State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman is investigating. New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer has also launched his own probe.

"I think what we are going to find is that a lot of these people who were purged aren't around anymore," Ryan said.

To prevent something like that from happening again, the New York City Council is calling on Albany lawmakers to allow same-day voter registration.

Resolutions passed by the council Thursday advocate for no-excuse absentee voting, and would allow people to register with a party up to 10 days before an election.

"For me, voter empowerment and barriers to registration is something I've been working on for nearly a decade," City Councilor Ben Kallos of Manhattan said. "In fact, it's one of the issues that brought me into government."

Meanwhile, the board failed to accomplish what it set out to do at its meeting Thursday: certify the citywide results from last month's primary.

Instead, that was postponed because officials from the Manhattan office failed to show up for the official vote.
Former Rep. Michael Grimm has been released from prison. He spoke exclusively Friday with NY1's Amanda Farinacci just a week after his return home.



Former Rep. Michael Grimm walked out of his Staten Island home Friday, but he's not yet a free man.

Grimm was released from federal prison April 27 to serve three more weeks under house arrest.

He wears an ankle bracelet, and needed permission from his parole officer just to step outside to talk to NY1.

But to Grimm, it's all better than the seven months he just spent behind bars.

"It's been very challenging, to say the least. It's a horrible experience. I wouldn't wish it on my enemies. But it's over. I'm really glad to be putting it past me," he said.

Grimm pleaded guilty in December 2014 to one count of felony tax fraud related to a restaurant he owned when he was elected to Congress in 2010. He resigned from Congress in early 2015 and entered prison last September.

He says, understandably, that his time at the Federal Correctional Institution in McKean, outside of Pittsburgh, ranks as one of the worst experiences of his life.

But the former FBI agent and marine veteran struck a defiant note about the conduct that led him there.

"I don't think there's anything that I've ever done that I would say I'm really ashamed of," he said. "Did I have a couple people off the books? Yeah. So does a lot of people. It's not the end of the world. It's something I put behind me and will move on."

Grimm passed his days in prison reading, exercising and corresponding with the more than 500 residents he says sent him letters of support.

He says he began writing a book about his life and thinking about the correctional system, something he says badly needs reform.

"Maybe God's purpose in having me go through this horrible experience was to realize just how broken our justice system is. And maybe I can be a good advocate in the future to reform it," he said.

While Grimm says his plans for the future are still unclear, he says he hasn't ruled out a return to politics.

Grimm: I can't ever see myself not, in some capacity, serving the community, whether it's as a volunteer, or as in office again. So I really don't know yet.

Farinacci: Not off the table?

Grimm: Nothing's off the table.

First, he has to perform 200 hours of community service, and find a job to help pay his legal fees and $140,000 in court-ordered restitution.
I had everyone surrounding her on display, but nothing that had come from her own hand, he said, adding that he been the underbidder when an Anne Frank autograph sold at Christies in 1989.

This was a very exciting opportunity, he said. I wasnt going to miss it.

The book, he said, will go on display soon at the museum, which is in Natick, Mass., and has more than 7,000 items on display and nearly 500,000 in its research collection, according to Mr. Rendell. It was founded in 1999 as a home for Mr. Rendells vast personal collection and became a public nonprofit three years ago, he said.
The resolution  which was adopted by the Service Employees International Union board on Thursday and was expected to be considered by the American Federation board in June  also would need to be ratified at conventions the unions have scheduled for this year.

The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees has 1.6 million members, most of whom are government workers. The Service Employees International Union has approximately two million members and is split nearly evenly between workers in the private and public sectors. About 80 percent of the unions membership is in roughly a dozen states, including New York, California and Illinois.

The purpose of the new arrangement, said Mary Kay Henry, the Service Employees International Union president, was to unite the power of our organizations at every level to deal with the unprecedented attack on working people and growing inequality in this country.

The unions plan unity partnerships to expand on such initiatives as a joint organizing drive of home-care workers, like a recent one in Pennsylvania, and joint lobbying efforts to persuade state lawmakers to increase funding for public schools and hospitals.

The benefits of the arrangement, officials said, would be that the unions could settle on common messages and strategies rather than tugging in different directions, and they could eliminate duplication of fixed costs  for phone banks, direct mail and advertisements. Union officials also said they hoped the joint efforts would prevent politicians from playing one union against the other when raising money for their campaigns, a practice the unions said they found exasperating but were often powerless to stop.
Restructuring is certainly another option for Energy Transfer. Mr. Warren said in the call that he would like to pay for Williams with stock, rather than the agreed-upon mixture of stock and $6 billion in cash, which Energy Transfer would have to finance by taking on debt. An all-stock deal would also presumably enable Latham to grant the tax opinion, since the main reason it couldnt offer one was the cash involved in the transaction, according to tax experts.

But the talk at this point may be just theater. Williams has not received a new proposal from Energy Transfer to restructure the deal, according to people briefed on those discussions. Williams has not gotten a termination notice either, said those people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Some experts say they are skeptical of the validity of Lathams decision not to grant the tax opinion. The questions arose after Energy Transfer amended a regulatory filing on April 18 to show that Latham would no longer be able to deliver a so-called 721 opinion if the transaction were closed that day. No reason was given. Williams, after consulting with its legal team, led by Cravath, Swaine & Moore, disagreed.

Then, on Wednesday, the dueling law firms were able to make their cases in public by way of an amended regulatory filing on the deal. Because of the market declines in the energy sector since the deal was signed, Williamss assets are now valued at far less than the $6 billion in cash its shareholders would be receiving from Energy Transfer, according to Lathams argument. That could prompt the Internal Revenue Service to require them to recast the transaction, making the assets suddenly taxable.

Cravath said in the filing on Wednesday, however, that it did not think recasting would be necessary.
The legal professions gatekeepers engaged in a fierce debate this week after an Arizona law school began accepting applicants who had taken only the more general GRE graduate admissions exam instead of the traditional Law School Admissions Test.

The University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law announced the new test policy in February, opening its doors to a larger pool of applicants. That decision prompted a scolding by the Law School Admissions Council, the nonprofit entity that oversees the law school applications process. The council warned in an April 4 letter that it might expel Arizonas school from its network, which would send a strong signal to law schools that they need to play by the established rules.

On Wednesday, some 150 law school deans, including Martha Minow from Harvard and Robert Post from Yale, lined up to support Arizona. In a letter to the councils president, Daniel Bernstine, the deans argued that experimentation benefits all of us, and said that kicking out Arizona is unwarranted under the existing rules and sends a terrible message to law schools about experimentation in the admissions process.

The council has significant clout in the legal profession because it oversees the administration of the LSAT and the common application process used by tens of thousands of people when they apply to any of the 206 law schools accredited by the American Bar Association.
Khalid Mehmood confessed in a court in central Punjab province that he had poisoned the sweets after his elder brother Tariq, who owned the sweet shop with him, "insulted and abused" him in a business dispute. (representational image, Photo: PTI)

Multan, Pakistan: A Pakistani sweet shop owner has confessed to fatally poisoning at least 30 people by lacing his goods with pesticide in an attempt to take revenge on his older brother, police said on Friday.

Khalid Mehmood confessed in a court in central Punjab province that he had poisoned the sweets after his elder brother Tariq, who owned the sweet shop with him, "insulted and abused" him in a business dispute.

"I wanted to teach him a lesson," police investigator Mohammad Afzal quoted him as saying, with the statement confirmed by another senior police official.

"I was so angry that I mixed the pesticides bottle in the sweets being baked at that time."

The poisoned sweets were bought by a local man who gave them to family and friends celebrating the birth of his grandson.

The baby's father, six of his uncles and one aunt were among the 30 killed. The dead also included five children. Four victims are still in hospital.

Officials had earlier put the toll at 33, but police confirmed Friday it stood at 30.

Police have told local reporters that 52 people consumed the sweets in total.

Both the Mehmood brothers were arrested along with one of their employees.

Investigators initially suspected the poisoning was an accident as a pesticide shop nearby was being renovated and the owner had left his products at the bakery for safe-keeping.

Pakistan has poor food safety standards and hygiene laws are rarely implemented.

The brothers are due to appear in court again on Saturday, Afzal said.
The police were searching on Thursday for three laughing thieves who made off with a statue of Jesus from a Roman Catholic church over the weekend, clergy and police officials said.

The Diocese of Brooklyn announced the theft on Thursday, a holy day set aside to commemorate Christs ascension into heaven. The SS. Peter and Paul Church is asking for the return of the statue, said Mother Maria Bendita, the mother superior of the Williamsburg parish to which the church belongs.

The three-foot-tall statue, which depicts Jesus holding a heart, was a century-old family heirloom donated to the church in 2012 after a previous version was stolen, the donors and church officials said. It sat staked on a pedestal in front of the church rectory until early Saturday morning, when three thieves grabbed it, church and police officials said.

They knew what they were doing, Mother Bendita said, adding, Its a pattern of disrespect that we are seeing for our faith.
A Brooklyn teenager was convicted of murder on Thursday for setting fire to a mattress in the hallway of his high-rise that led to the death of a police officer.

The teenager, Marcell Dockery, was arrested on a murder charge in April 2014 after Officer Dennis Guerra was killed while responding to the fire, set on the 13th floor of a building on Surf Avenue in Coney Island, Brooklyn. Officer Guerras partner, Officer Rosa Rodriguez, was critically injured.

At a two-week trial in State Supreme Court in Brooklyn, prosecutors told the jury how Mr. Dockery, who was 16 at the time of his arrest, confessed to the police that he had lit the fire because he had been bored. Though his lawyer, Jesse A. Young, argued that the confession was coerced, the jury returned a guilty verdict after only a few hours of deliberation.

Prosecutors introduced surveillance video at the trial of the heavy smoke that filled the hallway during the fire, but the emotional heart of their case was testimony by Officer Rodriguez, who described in measured tones how she had been unable to breathe in the hot, chaotic scene. After being rescued by firefighters, Officer Rodriguez spent several months in burn units and eventually required a lung transplant.
James Haughton, a civil rights advocate who aggressively challenged racial barriers to hiring at construction sites in the 1960s and 70s and promoted programs to train black and Hispanic apprentices in the building trades, died on April 17 in Manhattan. He was 86.

The cause was a chronic urinary tract infection, his partner, Ronnie Asbell, said.

Mr. Haughton, a construction workers son, was best known for breaking with more moderate proponents of equal opportunity in hiring and housing to form what became known in 1969 as Fight Back, a group based in Harlem.

Fight Back documented discrimination; staged boycotts, protests and sit-down strikes; and filed lawsuits (sometimes with Columbia Universitys Center on Social Welfare Policy and Law) against contractors and unions that were closed to newcomers, a consequence, the group said, of nepotism and racism.

Fight Back also provided counseling and placement services when jobs became available.

In 1972, racial minorities made up more than a third of New York Citys population but accounted for only about 2 percent of union members in skilled construction jobs. Today, minorities make up about two-thirds of the citys population and about half the membership of unions affiliated with the Building and Construction Trades Council, the organization says.
The first option for the tunnel work, officials said, would close the entire tunnel for 18 months and stop all service on the L line between Manhattan and Brooklyn. The second option would close one tube at a time over three years, providing only 20 percent of the current service through the tunnel.

One L train rider, Thomas Sukhu, who lives in Ridgewood, Queens, was not pleased with the proposals and favored building a new tunnel under the river. He said he wanted to speak at the meeting and complained that the location of the hearing, at the Marcy Avenue Armory, was out of the way so people would not attend.

I say no to this shutdown, Mr. Sukhu said before leaving the meeting frustrated.

Veronique Hakim, the president of New York City Transit, which oversees the citys subways and buses, said officials had ruled out building a new tunnel because it would be expensive and would take too long. The work was too complex to complete during nights and weekends, she said.

The authority plans to offer travel alternatives, including additional buses over the Williamsburg Bridge and extra ferry service between Manhattan and Brooklyn. Nearby subway routes, including the G and M lines, would add trains to carry riders who move over from the L line, officials said.
My cousin Carla and I got married 15 years apart, Ms. Berrigan said. He wore the same shirt to both weddings. Last week, five years after the second of those weddings, it was still hanging in the closet.

He had two kinds of clothes: threadbare, translucent from wear, and things that he had never worn, she said. He had a shiny old black raincoat that he wore to every demonstration. Just Google the images of him.

With his brother Philip and other Catholic peace activists, he led protests against the Vietnam War that were intended to shock. At Catonsville, Md., in 1968, the Berrigans and seven others walked into a draft board office, carried out armloads of records and burned them in the parking lot with homemade napalm. In 1980, Father Berrigan, Philip and others climbed into a General Electric plant in Pennsylvania and hammered at missile warheads, evoking the verse in the Book of Isaiah about a moment of revelation when people beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks.

In their early years of activism, the Berrigans and others of the Catholic left worked at the edges of the institutional church. They were a prophetic force. Since then, the church has become one of the worlds most consistent, prominent voices against wars. Into his late 80s and early 90s, Father Berrigan continued to speak from a distinctly Catholic perspective against war, capital punishment, abortion, bigotry and indifference to the poor. He also managed to keep being arrested.

When a network television reporter noted in 1981 that he was not getting as much attention as he once had, Father Berrigan replied, I dont think we ever felt our conscience was tied to the other end of a TV cord.
The agency that honored Ms. Ismayilova, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, can heed her call by taking a symbolic step. In 2004 it named Mehriban Aliyeva, the first lady of Azerbaijan, as a Unesco good-will ambassador, adding her to a roster described as an outstanding group of celebrity advocates who spread the ideals of Unesco through their name and fame. In Ms. Aliyevas case, the title has done more to bring notoriety to Unesco than to advance its goals, which include promoting freedom of information. It should rescind the title now.

Ms. Ismayilova was convicted in an unfair trial and sentenced to more than seven years in prison after uncovering information about the secretive financial holdings of President Ilham Aliyev and his family. Mr. Aliyev, who has ruled the oil-rich nation since 2003, when he replaced his father, has become increasingly authoritarian in recent years. Ms. Aliyeva has been a member of Parliament since 2005. The family has gone to great lengths to conceal the wealth it has accumulated by running the country like a cartel, and the government has cracked down on journalists, bloggers and activists who have raised questions.

Details about the holdings of the first family, which were revealed in the Panama Papers leak, showed how accurate Ms. Ismayilovas reporting about the familys shady financial transactions was.

Before imprisoning Ms. Ismayilova, the Azerbaijan government harassed and intimidated her. But the reporter, who worked for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, refused to back down and continues to document and expose government abuse from jail.
YEARS ago, members of a Southern Baptist church in suburban Birmingham, Ala., who couldnt figure out why their church was in decline asked a friend of mine for advice. The area had been majority white during the violent years of Jim Crow. While civil rights protesters were beaten and children were blown apart by bombs, church members had said nothing. That would be political, church members said, and they wanted to stick to simple gospel preaching.

As the years marched on, the area became majority black. The congregation dwindled to a small band of elderly whites who now lived elsewhere. They tried, they said, to reach out to the churchs African-American neighbors, but couldnt get them to join.

A canvass of the area would have told them that the church had already sent a message to those neighbors when it had stood silent in the face of atrocity. Those neighbors now had no interest in bailing out a congregation with a ministry too cowardly to speak up for righteousness when it had seemed too costly to do so.

As of this week, the nation faces a crazier election season than many of us ever imagined, with Donald J. Trump as the all-but-certain nominee of the Republican Party. Regardless of the outcome in November, his campaign is forcing American Christians to grapple with some scary realities that will have implications for years to come.
In recent decades, banks, credit card companies and other lenders have made enormous profits from excessive fees and charges.

Consumers have been unable to fight back in court because of forced arbitration clauses in the contracts they signed when opening their accounts. Typically, these clauses bar customers from joining together in a class-action lawsuit, usually the only practical and affordable way to challenge corporations.

On Thursday, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau proposed powerful new rules that, if approved, will prohibit class-action bans in contracts for consumer financial products.

Justice demands no less. A series of articles in The Times last year found that prohibiting class-action lawsuits typically results in consumers simply giving up in cases of overcharging. Private arbitration is no alternative to a day in court, because corporations effectively control the process, including the choice of the arbitrator and the rules of evidence.
Regrets? Sinatra had a few, but no-ho-ho such thing for Donald J. Trump so far. Apologies? Not part of the brand. Did Mike Tyson apologize to the woman he was convicted of raping? Did Ku Klux Klan leaders say they were sorry for their endorsements after Trump said hed be good for the African-Americans?

The rapist and the racists are all in with the man from Trump Tower, along with Ted Nugent. Nugent called President Obama a subhuman mongrel and suggested that he be lynched. Trump is as close to Ted Nugent as youre going to get in politics, he said.

But some things have to be erased, and quickly. Etch A Sketch? That was Mitt Romneys plan. (Such a choker, Mitt.) For Trump, itll be more like a remodel, get rid of the dirty carpet, the retro-without-being-camp decor, polish the edges. Soften. Less time with Fox and Friends and the conspiracy nut jobs on talk radio, and more time with The View. Ladies  he adores em. The press will come to him on bended knee, as NBC News did this week in their pander-cast from Trump Tower.

Still, if you were disliked by two-thirds of American women, 73 percent of nonwhites, 70 percent of voters under age 35 and 67 percent of college graduates, youd feel some urgency to dial back his inner Sarah Palin.
In March Hillary Clinton told a CNN interviewer, Were going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business. That was a true but dumb thing to say in advance of the West Virginia primary. So this week Clinton went on an apology and listening tour through Appalachia.

She heard tales of loss and renewal. Then she gave a speech proposing an agenda for the region. It was a perfectly serviceable speech. Yet you can see in it some of the reasons the Clinton campaign has not exactly caught fire.

The core problem is that she sounds like a normal Democratic candidate in the noble tradition of Edmund Muskie and Hubert Humphrey, but she doesnt sound like an imaginative candidate who is responding with fresh eyes to situations today.

This year it seems especially important to show voters that you see them and know them, and can name the exact frustrations in their lives. Clintons speech was filled with the flattery that candidates always offer their audiences  Appalachia is home to some of the most resilient, hard-working people anywhere. But the political rhetoric was conventional and she didnt really capture the texture of life.
Afghan police officers patrol on the outskirts of Kunduz, north of the capital, Kabul, Afghanistan. (Photo: AP)

Kabul: The United States has warned citizens in Afghanistan of a "very high" kidnapping risk after an American citizen narrowly escaped abduction in the heart of Kabul, and an Australian aid worker was taken last week.

Katherine Jane Wilson, a well-known Australian NGO worker, was kidnapped April 28 in the city of Jalalabad, close to the border with Pakistan.

"The US Embassy Kabul reminds US citizens that the threat of kidnapping and hostage taking continues to be very high," the diplomatic mission said in a statement Thursday.

"The US Embassy continues to take this threat seriously and advises... US citizens to take appropriate security precautions and to avoid predictable travel patterns within Afghanistan."

The statement added that an attempted kidnapping last Monday targeted several expatriates, including a US citizen. It offered no further details.

Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop has said that Canberra is working to secure the release of Wilson, but insisted Australia does not pay ransoms for hostages.

Wilson, said to be aged 60, ran an organisation known as Zardozi, which promotes the work of Afghan artisans, particularly women.

The abduction has set off alarm bells among foreign residents in Afghanistan.

Aid workers in particular have increasingly been casualties of a surge in militant violence in recent years.

In April last year the bullet-riddled bodies of five Afghan workers for Save the Children were found after they were abducted by gunmen in the strife-torn southern province of Uruzgan.
CAIRO  After I gave a reading in Britain last year, a woman stood in line as I signed books. When it was her turn, the woman, who said she was from a British Muslim family of Arab origin, knelt down to speak so that we were at eye level.

I, too, am fed up with waiting to have sex, she said, referring to the experience I had related in the reading. Im 32 and theres no one I want to marry. How do I get over the fear that God will hate me if I have sex before marriage?

I hear this a lot. My email inbox is jammed with messages from women who, like me, are of Middle Eastern and Muslim descent. They write to vent about how to get rid of this burden of virginity, or to ask about hymen reconstruction surgery if theyre planning to marry someone who doesnt know their sexual history, or just to share their thoughts about sex.

Countless articles have been written on the sexual frustration of men in the Middle East  from the jihadi supposedly drawn to armed militancy by the promise of virgins in the afterlife to ordinary Arab men unable to afford marriage. Far fewer stories have given voice to the sexual frustration of women in the region or to an honest account of womens sexual experiences, either within or outside marriage.
How will the news media handle the battle between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump? I suspect I know the answer  and its going to be deeply frustrating. But maybe, just maybe, flagging some common journalistic sins in advance can limit the damage. So lets talk about what can and probably will go wrong in coverage  but doesnt have to.

First, and least harmful, will be the urge to make the election seem closer than it is, if only because a close race makes a better story. You can already see this tendency in suggestions that the startling outcome of the fight for the Republican nomination somehow means that polls and other conventional indicators of electoral strength are meaningless.

The truth, however, is that polls have been pretty good indicators all along. Pundits who dismissed the chances of a Trump nomination did so despite, not because of, the polls, which have been showing a large Trump lead for more than eight months.

Oh, and lets not make too much of any one poll. When many polls are taken, there are bound to be a few outliers, both because of random sampling error and the biases that can creep into survey design. If the average of recent polls shows a strong lead for one candidate  as it does right now for Mrs. Clinton  any individual poll that disagrees with that average should be taken with large helpings of salt.
A relatively dry El Nino winter, a warm spring that melted snow earlier and years of policies that left forests ripe for burning have contributed to the destructive wildfire that forced the evacuation of Fort McMurray in Alberta, scientists say.

Global warming may have played a role, too, although experts cautioned that it was impossible to link an individual event like this one directly to climate change.

But there is little doubt that global warming has affected the frequency and intensity of fires, and lengthened the fire season in Alberta, as it has elsewhere in North America.

The warmer it is, the more fire there is, said Mike Flannigan, a wildland fire expert at the University of Alberta in Edmonton. In Alberta, he said, the fire season now begins March 1, a month earlier than in the past.
Over the past few years, screen manufacturers have become obsessed with the potential of tiny crystals known as quantum dots. The idea is that a quantum dot television or cellphone may offer sharper and brighter images for less money. There was talk that Apple would release an iMac with a quantum dot screen last year. But then the company switched course, declaring that the existing process for making these little crystals was too toxic to the environment. Samsung offers its SUHD TV with environmentally friendlier quantum dot technology, but its not cheap.

In a study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences last week, five chemical engineers at Lehigh University outline a simpler and more environmentally friendly way to create the dots: Feed some metal to a single enzyme extracted from bacteria. The colorful vials, pictured above, are filled with the little dots grown in a lab at Lehigh through this cost-effective method.

Under LED lights, the little crystals, which can generate both electricity and colored light, glow like plastic pegs on a Lite-Brite screen.

Bryan Berger, a co-author of the study, stumbled across this alternative for creating the little dots through an unintended sequence of events. It began when an alarmed hospital staff in Pennsylvania discovered a superbug growing on metal surfaces in 2011.
Rifat Ozbek belongs to a small but special club that has no name, comprised of artists who walk away from the spotlight at the peak of their fame. In the 1980s and 90s, he was named designer of the year  twice  by the British Fashion Council for his madcap East-meets-West aesthetic. His clothes were modeled by Linda, Naomi and Kate, and worn by the likes of Madonna and Tina Chow. I mixed patterns and colors. Things that didnt seem to go together  at least to the Western eye, says the Istanbul-born designer. Then, about a decade ago, Ozbek felt the cycles had grown too demanding, and so took refuge in designing his holiday home in Bodrum, Turkey. He began making decorative cushions with textiles from Central Asia and Uzbekistan and filling them with down and Turkish lavender. From that, Yastik, his line of exquisite pillows, was born. They can be found in some of the most fashionable sitting rooms in Europe and London, where Ozbek has a shop. I wanted to simplify my life and do one product: no seasons, no fit problems, he laughs. Ozbek rarely takes on side projects, but in 2012 he did decorate Loulous, the nightclub portion of 5 Hertford Street, Robin Birleys London club. The result was a much-buzzed-about cavern of decadence with the designers signature mash-up on display (including an eight-foot stuffed giraffe). This summer, three new Ozbek-designed floors will open at 5 Hertford Street, featuring more of his unrepentant, joyful touch. The only thing that scares me is clinical minimalism, he says. The one thing I am absolutely not is minimal.
We had been in discussions and reviewing sketches and I just so happened to take my daughters to see the show Hamilton. Ive seen it a few times now, so I can look at singular pieces of the show rather than focusing on the bigger story. I was looking at the costumes and, in particular, the mens suiting of the period. All of a sudden, I was like: Oh, thats it. Sarah Jessica Parker explains the decision behind the unusual choice  and, with the help of her stylist Erin Walsh, shows how it all came together behind the scenes.
Mary Matalin, a high-profile political pundit and veteran strategist for the Republican Party, changed her party registration to Libertarian from Republican, she said on Thursday.

But in an interview with Bloomberg Politics, which reported on the switch, she emphasized that her decision was not connected to Donald J. Trumps being the presumptive Republican presidential nominee.

She described herself as a voter as a provisional Trump and a never Hillary, referring to the leading Democratic candidate, Hillary Clinton.

Pressed on Thursday about why she switched political parties, Ms. Matalin told Bloomberg Politics that she was a Republican in the Jeffersonian, Madisonian sense.
WASHINGTON  The White House on Thursday said that it expected intelligence officials to provide a classified briefing to Donald J. Trump after the Republican Party formally nominates him for president at its convention in July, a tradition for major party nominees dating back to 1952.

Asked whether President Obama was concerned about Mr. Trumps receiving classified information in light of the presumptive Republican nominees reputation for making unfiltered comments, Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary, said the president would leave it to intelligence professionals to decide what to share with him.

Those are assessments that will have to be made by the intelligence community, and the president has full confidence in the ability of our professionals in the intelligence community to make those assessments, Mr. Earnest said.
WASHINGTON  If Donald J. Trump loses the presidency, he can return to his Manhattan office tower and get back to business. But Speaker Paul D. Ryan intends to remain on the job in the Capitol after November, and he would like as many fellow Republicans as possible right there with him.

Mr. Ryans remarkable declaration on Thursday that he was not yet ready to embrace the candidacy of his partys all-but-official nominee was the starkest evidence yet of how deeply top Congressional Republicans fear the damage an unbridled Mr. Trump could do to their majorities in the House and Senate.

It was also perhaps a vain attempt to control the uncontrollable by letting Mr. Trump know that the campaign was not only about him and to make clear he had some responsibility to come to terms with down-ballot candidates on explosive issues like immigration and trade.

The bulk of the burden on unifying the party will have to come from our presumptive nominee, Mr. Ryan, the highest elected Republican official in the nation, said in an interview on CNN
WASHINGTON  President Obama commuted the sentences of 58 nonviolent drug offenders on Thursday, the latest in a series of efforts to address what he has called the overly long and harsh sentences of an earlier era.

Most of the prisoners whose sentences will be cut short were serving decades behind bars for drug possession and distribution, the result of a crackdown on drug-related crimes in the 1980s and 90s that affected many African-Americans and other minorities.

The president has commuted the sentences of 306 individuals  more than his six most recent predecessors combined. But Mr. Obama said that his efforts alone were not enough. He urged members of Congress to keep working toward legislation that would change federal sentencing laws, particularly mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent drug offenses.

It just doesnt make sense to require a nonviolent drug offender to serve 20 years, or in some cases, life, in prison, Mr. Obama said in a statement.
Nov. 21, 1926  April 23, 2016

Karl T. Baker Sr. peacefully passed away April 23, 2016, at his home in Philomath.

He was born on Nov. 21, 1926, in San Mateo, California. He was the second son of John Allen Baker and Dorothy Baker. His older brother John Allen Baker II passed away in 2013.

After completing high school early Karl joined the Merchant Marine. He was a part of the crew of the SS Mission Buenaventura, an oil tanker. Karl joined the ship when it was loaded with oil from the Gulf sailed through the Panama Canal out into the Pacific in 1944. The ship delivered most of its load in the Mariannas Islands. The ship sailed to San Francisco via Pearl Harbor. During the middle of the night stop in Pearl, Karl suspected that his brother Jack (serving on the naval vessel PC 582), was in port. Karl did find Jack playing cards below deck on the PC 582. (Karl had a knack for finding someone he knew where ever he went.) After a couple of hours, Karls ship headed back to sea. Those Navy boys pointed out how big the bull's-eye was for the tankers in the Pacific by the enemy. Karl now understood why the pay was so high compared to the regular military pay. Good lesson for a 17 year old.

Upon arrival back at the west coast, Karl enlisted in the US Army. During the last phase of boot camp, a posting was made for those interested in joining the Army Air Corps. Karl figured flying was better than walking. He became an airplane and engine mechanic before being sent to Johnson Army Air Force Base in Honshu, Japan. He was assigned to the 82nd Tactical Reconnaissance Squadron. Later he served on B-29s flying around the world as a part of SAC. Then he was in the first group trained to work on the first jets entering serving the USAF (Lockheed P-80 Shooting Star).

Karl was recalled for the Korean War and sent back to Japan for war service. Karl was discharged for the last time in June 1952. His truly enjoyed his military service and those experiences served his children well.

Between the wars he worked in Portland, met Virginia Owens of Corvallis. She was a Registered Nurse at OHSU. Between them they had four children, Karl Jr., Mark (deceased in 1982), Catherine and Susan. They divorced several years later. Before and after the wars he worked for Standard Oil Company in Portland and Corvallis. In March 1967 he opened the Enco/Exxon service station at Third and Western in Corvallis. In 1975 he was selected to work with Herb Hammond on the construction of the Law Enforcement Building that opened in 1976. He worked as the building maintenance person there, the county jail, public service building (the old clinic location), and public works. He retired in 1991.

In addition to his children, Karl is survived by many grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

His ashes were scattered at his favorite elk hunting site near Ukiah.

Condolences for the family can be left at www.mchenryfuneralhome.com.
We have to solve the problems of migrants in Europe, but we have to give them hope to live here as well, he said.

Shortly before the concert, the desert silence was broken by a thud from a Russian demining center near the ruins.

Russia has a history of turning to classical music for morale in conflict, using talented artists to display its cultural strengths. It did in August 1942 when, during the Nazi siege of Leningrad, as St. Petersburg was then called, starving Russian musicians, supplemented by military performers, gave the citys first performance of Dmitri Shostakovichs Symphony No. 7, otherwise known as the Leningrad Symphony.

The concert on Thursday, like Mr. Gergievs 2008 concert in Tskhinvali, the capital of South Ossetia, involved much more than just music. While showcasing Russias musical richness, it was also a military mission, with guests bused in a heavily guarded convoy escorted by helicopter gunships. The route from Latakia, the site of Russias main military base on Syrias Mediterranean coast, led past Syrian military outposts, destroyed villages, clusters of burned vehicles and other reminders of the fierce fighting that had raged in an area held by the Islamic State from May 2015 until March this year.

The concert, performed by Mr. Gergievs Mariinsky Theater Orchestra, was held just a week after Unesco experts had visited to assess the destruction inflicted by the militant group. They reported extensive damage to the citys museum, where statues had been defaced, smashed, their heads severed, the fragments left lying on the ground. Also destroyed was an arch and the Temple of Baal Shamin, which the experts said had been smashed to smithereens.

Western governments have been reluctant to endorse Russias military role in Syria, which they have repeatedly portrayed as an effort to not merely uproot terrorism but to help Syrias president, Bashar al-Assad, crush all opposition, including rebel groups supported by the West. Russia has also been accused of bombing hospitals, something Moscow denies, and propping up a brutal dictator.
LONDON  Conferences can be a little niche, but most dont aim to stultify.

Not so the Boring Conference, a daylong showcase of talks on deliberately dull topics. First staged in London in 2010, the conference is set to take place here again on Saturday, May 7. According to its website, tickets are sold out.

This years participants include Eleanor Herring, a historian who will discuss the history of lampposts, and Jason Ward, a jigsaw-puzzle aficionado who will assemble a puzzle at the conference throughout the day.

James Ward (no relation to Jason), who works for a small public relations agency, conceived the event after the organizer of the Interesting conference, dedicated to interesting but nonutilitarian pursuits, announced that it would not take place in 2010.

So, James Ward, who also runs a blog called I Like Boring Things, posted a knee-jerk response on Twitter saying that he would start a boring conference, he said in a phone interview. Responses quickly began piling up, and an idea that had started out as an idle tweet became something Id have to do for real.
Why are they dancing? is a question that, unsurprisingly, comes up a lot while watching dance, and often with no clear answer. In the case of the Italian urban dance group InNprogressCollective, which returned on Thursday to La MaMa in the East Village, the title of the work it presented may have held a clue: toPRAY.

Aside from passages of the New Agey soundtrack, there was nothing overtly religious about the 50-minute piece, choreographed by the troupes founder, Afshin Varjavandi, and offered as part of the La MaMa Moves! Dance Festival. But the four young dancers  Luca Calderinia, Mattia Maiotti, Jenny Mattaioli and Elia Pangaro  threw themselves into the movement with a devotional focus and drive, bringing a subtly spiritual dimension to Mr. Varjavandis secular blend of hip-hop, house, popping, vogueing and that catchall genre, contemporary. At its best, their dancing quieted any question of why.

In the beginning, Ms. Mattaioli sat on the floor in a circular pool of light, her legs folded beneath her, surveying the space with low, sweeping arcs of her torso. The long, thin braid extending down her back, from the base of her otherwise shaved head, turned out to be a feature shared by her three male colleagues, who soon joined in for a more airborne sequence, with one dancer leaping over the crouched figures of two others.

Perhaps their matching look  braids, black pants, black-and-white sneakers  contributed to the growing sense of a group that was in it together, though what it was exactly, we werent quite sure. While toPRAY had some impressive solo moments, showing off each dancers particular kind of precision, it gathered the most momentum in tight-knit sequences for all four.
HAVANA  Idania Wambrug teaches dance in a capacious, brick-vaulted studio with so much light streaming down from high windows that it almost feels like an outdoor pavilion. Its the same studio where she was a student in the 1960s, and over the years, all that natural light has been helpful when the electricity has gone out.

The studio is in the National School of Dance here in Havana, part of the National Arts Schools, an avant-garde architectural project conceived not long after the 1959 Cuban Revolution but never completed. What Ms. Wambrug teaches comes from that time as well. With a mandate from the revolutionary government, the Cuban choreographer Ramiro Guerra created tecnica cubana, a hybrid of American modern dance  the language of Martha Graham, Jose Limon and others, which Mr. Guerra had studied in the United States  with ballet and Cuban tradition, both Spanish and African.

For a dance-cognizant visitor from the United States, watching a class in tecnica cubana is heady: very familiar and then suddenly not, as torsos contracting in Graham style turn ultra-sinuous, ultra-African, or a standard ballet exercise swerves into the gestures of an Afro-Cuban god. Yet the alloy is coherent and potent. Its a great, under-recognized invention that develops dancers of extraordinary strength with the agility to manage all of its wild twists.
Art insiders are calling it a gigaweek  and indeed, the lineup of auctions next week in New York is impressive, on paper. Sothebys and Christies will go head-to-head on four successive evenings in marquee sales of Impressionist, Modern and contemporary art. In addition, Christies is offering a themed selection of contemporary works on Sunday, immediately followed by Phillipss evening auction of 20th-century and contemporary art.

This crush of events is expected to raise at least $890 million. Yet the hype that attends these auctions comes as demand at the top end is contractingbecause of turbulence in the financial markets and the uncertainty of this years United States presidential race. Last May, the equivalent themed and evening contemporary sales at Christies alone brought in $1.4 billion, with Sothebys taking in $379.7 million.

A sea change has occurred at auction, said Wendy Cromwell, an art adviserin New York. The night sales are smaller, the estimates more conservative, the guarantees less exuberant, the great works fewer and far between.

At the moment, Ms. Cromwell added, collectors will not part with masterworks unless they are offered ridiculous sums of money.
Young performers often highlight their versatility in recitals with a range of genres and composers, but the violinist Benjamin Beilman instead offered a tribute to a bygone era in a concert on Thursday evening at the Rose Studio.

After a program last fall of works by various composers celebrating the violinist Fritz Kreisler and the Romantic style, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center asked Mr. Beilman to devise a lineup focusing largely on Kreisler, the Austrian composer and violinist adored for his elegant musicianship and gorgeous tone. His lush miniatures are now frequently performed as encores.

In addition to his much-loved violin bonbons, Kreisler also composed operettas, songs and a string quartet. It proved interesting to hear some of his lesser-known arrangements for violin and piano, with Mr. Beilman sensitively partnered by the pianist Yekwon Sunwoo, in this live-streamed performance. However enjoyable, though, Kreislers music doesnt merit an entire two-hour program.

Mr. Beilman demonstrated a rich, glowing sound in the opening Praeludium and Allegro, written in the style of the baroque violinist and composer Gaetano Pugnani. Kreisler initially claimed that this piece and others were his versions of original works by Baroque composers. In fact, Kreisler created them from scratch.
Shareholder activism has expanded well beyond the stereotypical irate hedge fund manager, pounding his fists on the table for corporate changes. Mutual funds have started agitating publicly, as have pension funds. And on Friday, even a prominent family stepped into the ring.

Wildcat Capital  which manages $1.79 billion for David Bonderman, the founding partner of the private equity firm TPG Capital, and his family  is seeking a corporate-governance overhaul at Sorrento Therapeutics, a developer of cancer treatments based in San Diego. The stock of Sorrrento, a biotech company, has plummeted more than 75 percent since July, to a $220 million market valuation.

The move is an uncommon one for a family office, which is a professional investment manager for a wealthy family. Given that such offices do not manage outside capital as a hedge fund or mutual fund would, and that they deal with the finances of billionaires, their activities are often private.

Wildcat Capital, which owns 2.5 million shares, or 6.5 percent, of Sorrento, took that rare step on Friday, calling out egregious actions undertaken by Sorrentos management and board in a letter it publicized. The family office, led by Leonard A. Potter, demanded that the board fire Sorrentos chief executive, put a halt to the remainder of a private placement, appoint three new directors and hire an investment banker to help sell the company.
A farcical energy deal has given rise to a new takeover tactic. Call it the George Costanza defense. Like the character from the Seinfeld sitcom, Energy Transfer Equity wants to redefine the terms of a soured relationship: its $21 billion takeover of rival pipeline operator the Williams Companies. Energy Transfer, based in Dallas, aims to pay less cash and seems intent on forcing the issue by making itself as unattractive as possible. The stakes are no laughing matter, though.

Energy Transfer spent a year trying to seduce Williams before its smaller rival finally agreed to a cash-and-shares offer last September. Then oil prices crashed, dragging down the stock of both companies and raising concerns about the debt Energy Transfer would have to incur to cover the $6 billion cash portion of the deal.
The change in earnings in April suggested that the upward tick in wages was not a fluke. Over the last 12 months, wages are up 2.5 percent, well ahead of the pace of inflation.

In addition to a tighter labor market, which has prompted some major employers to raise their wage floor, dozens of states and cities either have already carried out or are considering increases in the minimum wage. Combined, those forces are helping push up pay at the low end of the job market.

Weve hit a tipping point, Ms. Swonk said. Its showing up in low-wage jobs, for waiters and waitresses, in retail and in leisure and hospitality.

The good news is that we are re-engaging people whove been on the sidelines, Ms. Swonk added.

States including California, Colorado, Michigan and Massachusetts increased their minimum wages at the start of 2016. Maryland and the District of Columbia are set to enact raises on July 1.

At a news conference Friday at the White House, President Obama said he was pleased that the United States economy had added 160,000 jobs in April, though he cautioned that the global economy, as many people here are aware, is not growing as fast as it should be.

Here in the United States, there are folks out there who are still hurting, Mr. Obama said, and so weve got to do everything we can to strengthen the good trends and to guard against some dangerous trends in the global economy.

With the race to succeed President Obama now moving from the primary phase into the general election campaign, the April jobs report contained fodder for candidates in both parties.
LONDON  In a sign that the global steel industrys troubles are not over, ArcelorMittal, the worlds largest steel maker, said on Friday that it lost money in the first quarter of this year largely because of low prices resulting from global overcapacity, especially in China.

The companys chairman and chief executive, Lakshmi N. Mittal, said that despite the loss, business conditions were improving. He said in a statement that he expected improved results in the coming quarters.

Steel prices have rallied sharply in recent weeks, though it is not clear whether the rise is sustainable or has merely been fueled by speculation.

Mr. Mittal warned that excess capacity in China meant the market remains fragile, and we must continue to be vigilant and active against the threat of unfair trade.
ATHENS  Greek workers walked off the job on Friday, heeding a call by the countrys labor unions to join a three-day general strike to protest a new round of austerity measures including new pension cuts and tax increases.

The strike came as Greek lawmakers debated the new measures, worth 5.4 billion euros, or $6.2 billion, in budget savings, before a vote Sunday night and a meeting of eurozone finance ministers in Brussels the next day. Athens is hoping that the talks on Monday could be a step toward unlocking new bailout loans it needs to make a crucial debt repayment in July.

The walkout, the second general strike this year, halted public transportation services, shut down government offices and closed schools. Here is a look at why Greeks are striking again, and where the countrys tortuous debt negotiations stand:

What is the strike about?

Greeces two biggest labor unions, which together represent about 2.5 million workers, object to a new round of austerity measures that Greece must adopt to receive fresh bailout funding.

The measures include an overhaul of the Greek social security system, involving cuts to the pensions of new retirees and higher social security contributions. They also require increased rates of income tax, a rise in the top level of the countrys sales tax, and higher levies on alcohol and cigarettes.
In addition to Mr. Redstones testimony, the judge said he was also strongly influenced by Dr. Reads acknowledgment under cross-examination that Ms. Herzer at this point would not be a viable choice for management of Mr. Redstones current or future care.

In his testimony, videotaped on Thursday, Mr. Redstone said that he hated Ms. Herzer. In response to a question about whether he wanted Ms. Herzer to make health care decisions for him, Mr. Redstone replied, No.

I want Manuela out of my life, Mr. Redstone said at the end of the session when his lawyer asked what he wanted at the end of the trial. The videotaped testimony was shown after reporters and spectators were cleared from the courtroom and a transcript was provided to news organizations afterward.

In response to a question from his lawyer about who he wants to make his health care decisions if he is unable to do so himself, he responded with the name of his daughter: Shar  Shari. He also confirmed that he had been seeing his family lately and was happy with the nursing care that he was receiving.

While Ms. Herzer claims that she is concerned about Mr. Redstones well-being, his lawyers say that she is after his money. On the same day Ms. Herzer was removed from the health care directive, she was also removed from Mr. Redstones estate plan, in which he had planned to give her $50 million and his $20 million Los Angeles mansion.

In his testimony, Mr. Redstone was able to answer some questions  especially those with yes or no answers  but did not respond to others. When asked what his birth name had been, for instance, he remained silent. (It is Sumner Murray Rothstein.) The transcript shows that the flow of the testimony was sporadic, and at one point his interpreter asked that Mr. Redstones dentures be adjusted in order to better understand him.
A paper-based rapid test for the Zika virus was introduced on Friday by a consortium of research groups.

The core of the test kit is a piece of paper covered with yellow dots that turn purple in the presence of Zika virus RNA. Although the test is relatively fast and simple, it requires preliminary heating to amplify a samples RNA, which can be done in most laboratories.

The test, which gives results in two to three hours, is much faster and cheaper than the P.C.R. tests used now, said James J. Collins, a bioengineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who is one of the test designers.

It should cost less than $1 per test, said Keith Pardee, a University of Toronto biochemist and another test designer.
But that sort of talk irritates Mr. Draper, who just started collecting his pension after retiring last year from the lifeguard job he had held since he was 17.

Its only because the lifeguard pension seems to be so frivolous and unnecessary to some people that its being picked on and being targeted, he said in an interview. People think that the lifeguards just sort of show up every day and flip the boats and go home and go to a bar or whatever.

Image Mr. Draper in 1985.

But he rescued several people over the years, he said, while maintaining a high level of physical fitness and risking skin cancer from prolonged exposure to the sun. His lifeguard pension should not be viewed any differently from the larger pension he is collecting after 25 years of teaching in public schools.

By the time he retired, as a captain of the beach patrol, Mr. Draper was earning $30,000 for four months work, he said. He qualified for a pension, equal to half his final pay, because he was over 45 and had been a lifeguard for at least 20 years. The pension plan allows a surviving spouse to continue collecting the benefits after a retired lifeguard dies.

Those were the rules set by a statute pushed through the New Jersey Legislature in 1928 by Emerson Richards, a Republican state senator who lived along the boardwalk. Lifeguards like Mr. Draper contribute 4 percent of their paychecks to the pension fund; the city is responsible for the balance.

As the roll of retired lifeguards has grown, the citys obligation has become onerous. Kevin Lavin, the former emergency manager for Atlantic City, found that the lifeguard pension was costing the city more than $1 million a year and suggested amending the law so the pension could be cut off.
Two men have been arrested in connection with the fatal shooting this week of a college student in Newark during a break-in at his fraternity house, the authorities said on Friday.

Prosecutors in Essex County, N.J., said Nafee Cotman, 18, and Taquan Harris, 22, both faced charges of murder, robbery, burglary and weapons-related offenses in the killing of Joseph Micalizzi, a junior at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, inside the Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity house on Monday.
For decades, the weekly call-in radio show with the mayor was a New York City tradition. It provided a chance for Sal from Brooklyn or anyone else from the five boroughs to get on the line directly with the citys chief executive, and for the mayor at the time to reveal, inadvertently or deliberately, his personality and style of thinking.

But whereas his predecessors Rudolph W. Giuliani and Michael R. Bloomberg took calls throughout their terms, Mayor Bill de Blasio chose not to take up the mantle when he came to office in 2014, preferring, his aides say, to focus on deeds rather than words.

That changed on Friday. Even as Mr. de Blasio said that the ultimate form of communications is action, he began the first of what he said would be a weekly call-in segment with Brian Lehrer on the public radio station WNYC.

The about-face, which was not announced until Mr. de Blasio joined Mr. Lehrer on the air on Friday at 10 a.m., came the day after the mayors press secretary, Karen Hinton, publicly acknowledged that she would be resigning from her post next month amid investigations, negative headlines and struggles in the City Hall press operation.
To the Editor:

Re Antismoking Forces Give Big Tobacco a Fight in Indonesia (news article, May 1):

Indonesia is committed to carry out the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control under the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Its economy could lose $4.5 trillion by 2030 if the four main (tobacco-related) noncommunicable diseases are not reduced.

This  and a growing civil society movement sick of Big Tobacco riding roughshod over the health of Indonesians in pursuit of profit  is driving change. Capacity-building among advocates and government activists, as well as anti-tobacco campaigns, are having an effect.

Local champions lead a vibrant Mayors Alliance; more cities are enacting smoke-free laws; and Jakartas streets are now free from tobacco billboards.

A recent campaign featuring Robby  whose death at 27 shows that Indonesias tobacco users and victims are getting younger  and his grieving parents contributed to 3.2 million additional quit efforts in 2015.
Just five years ago, Recep Tayyip Erdogans Turkey was the darling of Western leaders and Turkish liberals, evidence that Islam and democracy need not be incompatible. As prime minister at the time, Mr. Erdogan and Ahmet Davutoglu, one of his most loyal lieutenants, sought European Union membership, oversaw an economic recovery and began peace talks with Kurdish militants. The news Thursday that Mr. Davutoglu, who became prime minister when Mr. Erdogan took the presidents job in 2014, was quitting made it clear how drastically things have changed.

Mr. Davutoglu may not have been much of a brake on Mr. Erdogans turn toward authoritarianism or on his campaign to create a powerful executive presidency. But at least the prime minister maintained a degree of independence on issues like management of the economy, imprisonment of academics and journalists (which Mr. Davutoglu opposed) and anticorruption legislation (which Mr. Erdogan blocked).

As the rift between the men widened, Mr. Davutoglus ouster became inevitable. And when it is formally confirmed at a meeting of the Justice and Development Party (A.K.P.) on May 22, Mr. Erdogan is certain to install a more pliant prime minister, confirming himself as Turkeys unrivaled political leader.

Even that would not fulfill Mr. Erdogans ambitions. Though his party has a comfortable majority in Parliament, it lacks the votes to change the Constitution or call a referendum. The next prime ministers mission presumably will be to call elections and make sure the votes are there.
To the Editor:

Re Moving On From Farm and Factory (Economic Scene column, April 27):

Eduardo Porters article on the futility of trying to bring back manufacturing jobs to the United States from abroad makes it clear that our presidential candidates are embarking on a fools errand when they claim they can do it.

Not only would higher tariffs on foreign goods mean higher prices for Americans, but the increase in American jobs would be severely limited because manufacturing jobs are decreasing throughout the world.

Displaced workers and adversely affected local economies would be much better off with measures to enhance the safety net via better unemployment insurance and job training. More job sharing with higher hourly wages may also be necessary.

Politically these policies may be harder to sell, but they are more likely to be effective than the absurd notion that we can return to the halcyon industrial era long past.
The chief problem is that European banks are terrified that if they provide financing to Iran they will fall foul of United States sanctions that are still in place. Many of these banks  including BNP Paribas, Commerzbank and Societe Generale  have paid hefty fines in recent years. In all, European banks have handed over more than $15 billion since 2012 for infringement of U.S. financial sanctions on Iran. From a risk-reward standpoint no European bank can make enough revenue in Iran to offset the possibility of being slapped with a big fine.

Secretary of State John Kerry attempted to break the logjam last month by saying that, We have no objection and we do not stand in the way of foreign banks engaging with Iranian banks and companies, obviously as long as those banks and companies are not on our sanctions list for non-nuclear reasons.

But the ownership structure of Iranian corporations is often opaque, making it difficult for European companies to be sure there is not, for example, a Revolutionary Guard Corps interest. Knowing exactly who the customer is may be arduous.

One international businessman based in Tehran told me hed received a letter from United Against Nuclear Iran, an American advocacy organization, warning him that he might be working with the Revolutionary Guards and could get into trouble. You can be sure that letter is going to all the European banks, he said.

Most international transactions are dollar-denominated, so they have to transit the U.S. banking system before being settled. Because the U.S. trade embargo on Iran remains in place, making it illegal, with limited exceptions, for Americans or American companies to deal with Iran or its government, this is very problematic. A bank may be located in Europe but unable to demonstrate that a proposed Iran contract does not involve its United States subsidiary at some level.
April 3, 1932  May 4, 2016

Thomas Henry De Rush, 84 of Albany, went home to be with the Lord on May 4th, 2016.

Tom was born in Cleveland, Ohio to Francis Joseph De Rush and Agnes Marie (Schmidt) De Rush. At age 7, Tom moved to Lebanon, Oregon with his parents and brother. Tom grew up in Lebanon and attended the Lebanon school district.

In August of 1950, Tom enlisted in the U.S. Army. He was with the Army of Operation stationed in Germany. Upon completion of his service in 1953, he started his first career in television repair. Then, in 1967, Tom met and married Patricia Nordyke.

Toms second career was in furniture, working in three different furniture stores involved in sales and repairs. He retired from Gibbs Furniture in Corvallis, where he loved restoring antique and classic furniture.

Tom had several collections but the collection of antique glass oil lamps was his favorite. He also enjoyed spending time traveling with Pat throughout Oregon. They would travel to various antique stores, always checking for items to add to his different collections. Tom was also a long time member of Eastside Christian Church and also a member of the American Legion.

Tom leaves behind his wife Pat; daughters Teresa De Rush and Susan (De Rush) Red; son Craig De Rush; future son-in-law Michael Martin; two granddaughters; and one great-granddaughter.

A celebration of life service will be held in Toms honor on Monday, May 9th 2016 at 11:00 AM at Eastside Christian Church 1910 Grand Prairie Road S.E., Albany, with a reception luncheon to follow. Contributions in his memory can be made to Eastside Christian Church Golden Heirs.

AAsum-Dufour Funeral Home is handling the arrangements (aasum-dufour.com).
Its little wonder that many Filipinos now question the value of democracy.

Mr. Duterte is polling 11 points ahead of his closest rival and has the support of one in three Filipinos. He presents himself as a simple man fed up with the system, vowing to fix the nation at all costs. He has been linked to more than 1,000 extra-legal executions of petty criminals during his time as mayor. Not only has he admitted to supporting the killings, he has promised that as president he will turn the 1,000 into 100,000 and dump their bodies in Manila Bay and fatten all the fish there.

Mr. Dutertes campaign symbol is a fist  intended for lawbreakers, but seemingly also aimed at the oligarchy. He is the only man who offers radical change, said one of the many petitions urging him last year to run for president. The message resonates with the frustrated poor who feel let down by the government, but his fans span all classes. Mock elections at universities consistently pick him as the winner, while a chamber of commerce of wealthy Filipino-Chinese business leaders lauded him as the man who gets things done.

This image as a brash, no-nonsense leader explains why nothing he says is able to damage him. He repeatedly described a rival using a homophobic slur. He called Pope Francis a son of a whore. He told human-rights groups to go to hell. He joked that he should have been first in the gang rape of an Australian missionary. Thats how men speak, Mr. Duterte explained. I am not a son of the privileged class. His supporters, who often threaten his critics on social media with death and rape threats, defended him with an offensive, but telling, rhetorical question: How can people get so upset at a rape joke when politicians have been raping the country for so long?

Mr. Duterte has energized Filipinos in a historic way. One of his slogans is change is coming. Its the exactly right message from the completely wrong messenger. His and Mr. Marcoss campaigns are fueled by frustration, but other candidates offer reason and hope: Leni Robredo, a vice-presidential candidate who recently overtook Mr. Marcos, has surged thanks to her advocacy for gender equality. Walden Bello, a former student radical who is now a respected academic, has been lauded locally and internationally for his integrity and democratic activism in the Legislature.

Filipinos should look to such politicians for inspiration. But they should also look to themselves. As Jose Rizal, our hero of national independence, once wrote, There are no tyrants where there are no slaves.

For my whole life Ive witnessed a tendency among Filipinos to elect people who pose as saviors. We long for a disciplinarian, but meanwhile we squabble among ourselves, willingly pay bribes and flout rules. We choose candidates based on regional ties or entertaining personalities. All of us recognize that our government, dominated by an oligarchy, is severely broken  but we need to select leaders who will educate and empower us to fix it ourselves. More, real, democracy is necessary, not less.

Outside the headquarters of the Philippine National Police, a sign declares: This is your police. We serve and protect. Continued, in red spray paint, is scrawled:  the ruling class. Whoever wrote it voices what so many feel. Only the people themselves can change that.
WASHINGTON  The Federal Communications Commission confirmed on Friday that it had approved Charter Communications acquisitions of Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks.

The deals, which would create the second-largest broadband provider and third-largest video provider in the United States, now need approval from regulators in California. A state administrative judge there recommended last month that Californias public utilities commission approve the deal. That decision is expected at a hearing on Thursday.

The Justice Department gave antitrust approval to the acquisitions with conditions on April 25, and Charter and Time Warner Cable shareholders have already agreed to the deals.

Charter has valued its deal for Time Warner Cable at $56.7 billion, excluding debt, and the acquisition of Bright House at $10.4 billion.
Peter Pan is getting ready to fly away.

Finding Neverland, the Broadway bio-musical about J. M. Barrie, the Scottish playwright who wrote Peter Pan, will close on Aug. 21, the shows producers said on Thursday night.

The musical was a Broadway debut of sorts for the Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein, who has invested in multiple other shows, but was serving as lead producer for the first time. The experience was rocky at times  Mr. Weinstein replaced much of the creative team and cast during the shows development  and the show was not nominated for any Tony awards last season, when it was eligible.

But Mr. Weinstein is still determined. He is planning a national tour of the show, beginning in Buffalo, this fall, and winding up back on Broadway. He said he is planning a second production in London next year, and a third production in Asia the next year. He said he intended to make a film version of the musical as well.

Finding Neverland, with music and lyrics by Gary Barlow and Eliot Kennedy and a book by James Graham, was adapted from a nonmusical 2004 film that starred Johnny Depp. The Broadway musical, directed by Diane Paulus, initially starred Matthew Morrison as Barrie; that role is now played by Alfie Boe.
Normally, this quirk goes relatively unnoticed. Usually the big things, like national electoral data, primary winners and polls, are what matter. But in this election, it was often the small stuff that reigned supreme. Details typically buried in seldom-seen PowerPoints and technical PDFs (like proportionality, rounding rules and delegate allocation rules) became crucial to calling an accurate delegate count  and thus the state of the race.

Election data in this country is organized disastrously, said David Nir, political director for the politics blog Daily Kos. Having 50 states conduct their own election rules is a mess and a nightmare. And most states dont do a good job of putting this information out.

What The Green Papers has been able to do is take the confusing hierarchy from party to state to county and flatten it into a very simple form. All of this information, district after district, is analyzed and tabulated in real time, as quickly as it is publicly available.

The gold standard for delegate counts is still the tabulation by The Associated Press. But its services are not free, and it doesnt maintain a public database that is as near-fanatical in detail as The Green Papers. The encyclopedic nature of the site, which would be overkill in most elections, makes it useful  even for The A.P.

I love The Green Papers, said Stephen Ohlemacher, lead delegate reporter at The A.P. When Im doing research on how each state does their delegate count, I look at The Green Papers to see what they have. I use them to find original source documents.

The entire corpus of The Green Papers is the product of two men in their early 60s: Richard Berg-Andersson and Tony Roza. They have been maintaining The Green Papers since the fall of 1999, at the start of the 2000 election cycle.
In the survey, 62 percent of residents said they disapproved of Mayor Rahm Emanuels job performance, and only a quarter approved. Among blacks, his disapproval rating is 70 percent.

Most Chicagoans say they doubt that the mayor cares much about the needs of people like themselves. Among black residents, the feelings are stronger: Only 8 percent believe that Mr. Emanuel cares a lot about people like them, and nearly two-thirds think he cares not much or not at all.

Responding to the surveys findings, a spokesman for the mayor spoke of work already underway.

The mayors focus is on building on the progress we have made with generations-old issues in Chicago, from jobs to education to public safety, Adam Collins, the spokesman, said in an emailed statement. We are striving to grow our already record high school graduation rate, to build out our first-in-the-nation free community college program, and extend our record performance of adding 41 corporate headquarters and nearly 100,000 jobs here over the past five years. And we will continue to invest in everything from technology to training as we work to reduce crime and build trust in the Police Department.

The telephone poll was conducted April 21 to May 3 using landlines and cellphones with 1,123 adults throughout the City of Chicago. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus four percentage points for all adults.

Nearly equal numbers of blacks, whites and Hispanics live in Chicago, a city of about 2.7 million, but they often live on separate sides of town, and, the survey shows, find themselves leading vastly different lives.

By consistent double-digit margins, African Americans and Latinos on the South and West Sides are more likely than North Side whites to be dissatisfied with aspects of their neighborhoods, like the condition of public recreation facilities, services like trash removal, and the availability of public transportation.
The police suspect that the same man, a federal law enforcement officer, committed three shootings on Thursday and Friday, killing three people and wounding three others in the Maryland suburbs of Washington.

The police in Prince Georges County, Md., said the man, Eulalio Tordil, fatally shot his estranged wife, Gladys Tordil, on Thursday afternoon and then fled. As the search for him continued into Friday morning, shootings were reported at two locations in Montgomery County: Potomac and Aspen Hill.

Mr. Tordil was arrested without incident Friday afternoon in Aspen Hill, across the street from the third shooting, in the parking lot of a mini-mall where officers had spotted the car he was reported driving, a rented silver Hyundai Elantra sedan. Plainclothes officers watched him for over an hour as he went in and out of shops and ate lunch, but waited until he walked back to the car, away from bystanders. At that point, witnesses told local television stations, several unmarked police vehicles boxed him in, and officers jumped out with guns drawn.

We did not want to endanger anyone and have a shootout when we took him into custody, J. Thomas Manger, the Montgomery County police chief, said in explaining the delay. There was some thought that may have been what he wanted.
The all-male final clubs at Harvard University have long been bastions of money, power and privilege. But on Friday, 225 years after the oldest club was founded, the university announced restrictions on the organizations that could ultimately be their undoing, or at least significantly change their character by forcing them to become coed.

Starting with the class that enters Harvard in fall 2017, members of single-sex clubs will be prohibited from holding leadership positions on campus, according to a statement released by the universitys president, Drew Gilpin Faust. This would include athletic team captains; many club members have historically been captains. Members will also be barred from receiving the official recommendations required for prestigious postgraduate fellowships and scholarships, such as the Rhodes and Marshall Scholarships, the statement said.

The new rules will apply not only to the six male final clubs, but also to other single-sex organizations, including five womens final clubs and nine sororities and fraternities. An estimated 30 percent of undergraduates at Harvard belong to such clubs. Two other formerly male final clubs have already voted to admit women.

Richard T. Porteus, a member of the Harvard Class of 1978 and graduate president of one of the final clubs, the Fly Club, said preliminary discussions were underway with lawyers to challenge the new rules under the theory that they infringe on the right to free association.
Over the next year, riders on the Washington Metro would cope with sparser service, earlier closings and some station shutdowns under an ambitious plan to clear an enormous backlog of deferred maintenance on the accident-prone, increasingly unreliable system, officials said on Friday.

For years, the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority has tried to limit maintenance work to nights, when the system is closed, in order not to curtail service. That approach has failed, officials said, contributing to the Metro falling steadily deeper into disrepair.

We need to do something different, and dramatically different, Paul J. Wiedefeld, the authoritys general manager and chief executive, said at a news conference. He called the plan a massive undertaking that would disrupt the commutes of hundreds of thousands of people, but he added, I dont think any customer wants us to continue this process where the service is unreliable, unsafe, because were not doing the basics.

Jack Evans, the authoritys chairman, made headlines this year by suggesting that the system might have to take entire lines out of service for months. The plan unveiled on Friday does nothing so drastic, and officials said that Metro would continue to offer service on every part of its system, but much less of it at times.
The populist Manhattan businessman responded with a statement savaging Mr. Graham, a senior spokesman for the party on national security. Mr. Trump boasted that he had destroyed his hapless run for president and consigned Mr. Graham to the political ash heap.

While I will unify the party, Lindsey Graham has shown himself to be beyond rehabilitation, Mr. Trump said. In Omaha, Mr. Trump branded Mr. Graham nasty and called his campaign a disgrace.

What we consider before using anonymous sources. Do the sources know the information? Whats their motivation for telling us? Have they proved reliable in the past? Can we corroborate the information? Even with these questions satisfied, The Times uses anonymous sources as a last resort. The reporter and at least one editor know the identity of the source. Learn more about our process.

Mr. Trumps belittling attack poses a new challenge for a party already riven by frustration and indecision over his campaign. Having campaigned for the Republican nomination on a platform of cracking down on immigration and foreign trade, Mr. Trump now trails Hillary Clinton in general election polls and cannot afford an exodus of voters from the Republican base.

While Mr. Trumps war on the Republican establishment has galvanized his supporters, it is likely to complicate his efforts to court a broader array of voters, including moderate Republicans, and political benefactors in order to compete in November.

Mr. Trump has acknowledged he will need help from the partys traditional bankrollers during the general election, when he has said he will no longer finance his campaign from his personal fortune.

He has appeared uncertain of how to respond to the prospect of mass defections from inside the Republican Party. He has said in recent weeks that he favors party unity as a practical matter, but that there are also Republicans whose support he does not believe he needs  and whose support he would not welcome.

Dan Senor, a former adviser to Mitt Romney and Paul D. Ryan in the 2012 election, said Mr. Trumps dismissive attitude toward his critics could have crippling consequences in a general election.
I invite a lot of Republicans and independents who Ive been seeing on the campaign trail, whove been reaching out to me, I invite them to join with Democrats, Mrs. Clinton told CNN on Wednesday. Lets get off the red or the blue team. Lets get on the American team.

In the Democratic primary, Mrs. Clinton has struggled with non-college-educated white voters and self-identified independents, often losing those groups by wide margins to Mr. Sanders. But faced with the choice between Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Trump, 51 percent of independents and 59 percent of moderates favor the former secretary of state, compared with 41 percent and 39 percent for Mr. Trump, according to the most recent CNN/ORC poll.

If the primary happened to be over already, we feel the coalition weve built has the makings of a winning coalition as it is in a general election, said Brian Fallon, a Clinton spokesman. But, he added, were not satisfied with that. We want to make inroads even with populations that arent supporting her in great numbers.

Senator Sherrod Brown, Democrat of Ohio, who is supporting Mrs. Clinton, said while campaigning with her at a diner in Athens, Ohio, on Tuesday that the suburban women in Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati could ultimately decide the November election. I think educated suburban white women, to be sure, are going to be turned off en masse and there will be more of that, he said, referring to their opinion of Mr. Trump.

On Friday, President Obama helped in Mrs. Clintons effort. Republican women, voters, are going to have to decide, Is that the guy I feel comfortable with representing me, and what I care about? he said of Mr. Trump at a news conference.
Oct. 18, 1916  April 6, 2016

Virginia Lee (Dickson) Taylor passed on April 6 in Glendale, Arizona.

Born in Albany to Clarence Cummings and Margaret Stewart Dickson, she was raised in the Shedd area. After high school she became a nurse and attended Portland Bible College where she met her future husband, Norman Allen Taylor. They were married on Jan. 31, 1942, in Stevenson, Washington.

She worked in the nursing profession until 1958 when she earned a teaching degree from the University of Oregon and started teaching third grade at Gladstone Elementary School. After retirement, she and Norm lived in Arizona for 34 years where she taught, as a volunteer, at the South West Indian School.

She was preceded in death by her husband, Norman Taylor; brothers James S. and Hugh S. Dickson; and sister Elsie Elizabeth Roberts.

She is survived by her daughter, Margaret Rose OLeary of Glendale, Arizona; son Allen Bruce Taylor of Portland; four grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

A loving wife, mother and friend  she will be missed.
Mr. Talabani and the small delegation that Kurdistan has in Washington have used tactics similar to those of corporations that spend millions of dollars to grease the levers of power, retaining five firms to push its cause. They have been effective, winning over a rare combination of military hawks, conservative Republicans and a collection of liberal Democrats in Congress. More important, they secured a commitment late last month for $415 million in additional aid to support the Kurds pesh merga militia force.

They are willing to fight, said Representative Gerald E. Connolly, Democrat of Virginia, who is a member of the Kurdish-American Congressional Caucus, which the lobbying team helped set up in the House. They are the only group that has had consistent battlefield success.

Kurdish officials say they will continue to press for additional money for ammunition, armored vehicles and protective gear against chemical weapons, requests that lawmakers say they are looking for ways to accommodate.

What is perhaps more notable is that the Kurds are succeeding even in a climate of austerity on Capitol Hill. The relative stability in Kurdistan and in its capital, Erbil, contrasted with the continuing chaos in Baghdad  highlighted by the storming last Saturday of the Iraqi Parliament building by protesters  has only enhanced the clout of the Kurds in Washington. But it is also an area of a continued threat, including to American military forces there, with one American service member killed by enemy fire near Erbil on Tuesday during a clash with the Islamic State.
A series of anonymous tweets purporting to recount the gang rape of a Spelman College freshman by four students from Morehouse College has spurred two investigations and set off protests at both Atlanta institutions, becoming the latest flashpoint in the debate over sexual assaults on American campuses.

But the case has left officials with questions, including: Who is she? Where did the attack occur? And when did the attack occur? Though the accuser tweeting from @RapedAtSpelman said that she had reported the attack to the dean at Spelman, the college president appeared to be still trying to identify the victim, personally tweeting at the account that told the harrowing tale.

The tweets began cryptically on May 2.
EDMONTON, Alberta  Convoys of cars and trucks made their way gingerly through the wildfire-ravaged community of Fort McMurray, Alberta, on Friday, headed south to safety past the charred ruins of neighborhoods and businesses, after being stranded for days north of town on the areas main highway.

Bracketed by Royal Canadian Mounted Police cruisers and preceded by a military helicopter watching for flare-ups near their route, the first convoy got rolling shortly after dawn and others followed at intervals.

In the next few days, officials hope to clear 15,000 vehicles from the area, which had been cut off repeatedly when flames blocked Highway 63, the only road link to the rest of Canada.

Food and fuel stops for the convoys were set up along the highway, and the traffic was free flowing and going well, Rachel Notley, the premier of Alberta, said at a news conference in Edmonton.
Isolation had an effect amounting to torture

Some prisoners were extremely hopeful, according to the report, and others said that they would rather be executed than live a life with the possibility of an execution looming large.

Among those interviewed for the report was a man identified as Jayakanthan  like other subjects, he is identified by a pseudonym for his protection. He blinked continuously for the first few minutes, the reports authors wrote, because he was kept in a cell with no source of sunlight for all but 20 minutes a day. His only human contact was with the guard outside his cell, the report said, and he told researchers that his primary interaction was with lizards that he had lured by sharing his food.

He felt that the noises made by the lizards were to thank him for feeding them, the report said. He also told the researchers that the lizards kept visiting his cell, not for food but to make noises as though talking to him as their friend.

Other prisoners reported that they were tormented by mosquitoes during their long incarceration, or that they were kept awake by a light bulb in their cell that burned through the night.

Nobody tells them anything about the progress of their appeals

The study described a complete lack of engagement between defense lawyers and their clients on death row, and it suggests that lawyers were not inclined to do more because of the extremely low fees that defendants families were able to pay.
BANGKOK  Plans by the Malaysian government to shut down the troubled state fund at the heart of a multinational investigation could saddle the government with billions of dollars in debt and may be a first step toward a government bailout, opposition leaders said.

The government announced plans this week to close the fund, which was created by Prime Minister Najib Razak and is suspected of being the source of hundreds of millions of dollars deposited in his personal bank accounts.

The Finance Ministry said on Wednesday that it would absorb the fund, 1Malaysia Development Berhad. The ministry, which Mr. Najib oversees in his capacity as the countrys finance minister, will take over 1MDBs remaining assets.

Critics are concerned that the ministry will also assume the funds estimated $6.75 billion debt, setting the stage for a government bailout.
BANGKOK  Myanmar recognizes 135 ethnic groups within its borders. But the people who constitute No. 136? They are the people-who-must-not-be-named.

Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader of Myanmars first democratically elected government since 1962, embraced that view last week when she advised the United States ambassador against using the term Rohingya to describe the persecuted Muslim population that has lived in Myanmar for generations.

Her government, like the previous military-led one, will not call the Rohingya people by that name because it does not recognize them as citizens, said her spokesman, U Kyaw Zay Ya, a Foreign Ministry official.

We wont use the term Rohingya because Rohingya are not recognized as among the 135 official ethnic groups, said Mr. Kyaw Zay Ya, who was at the meeting. Our position is that using the controversial term does not support the national reconciliation process and solving problems.
The congress was expected to last until early next week.

Under North Koreas one-party system, the congress is where the countrys most important elections and policy decisions take place, at least in theory. Analysts outside the isolated North are watching closely for insights into the evolving leadership of Mr. Kim, who inherited his family dynasty about four years ago, when he was still in his late 20s.

Analysts broadly agree that any changes announced during the congress, including to the partys leadership or its charter, will seek to cement Mr. Kims authority as the Norths monolithic leader. Mr. Kim has had scores of senior generals and party officials executed for disloyalty since taking power.

Analysts are also watching to see if Mr. Kim loosens the states control over the economy, though no bold moves in that direction are expected.

Mr. Kim has championed a so-called byungjin strategy for the nation, which calls for securing a nuclear arsenal while trying to rebuild the moribund economy. All indications are that Mr. Kim, who came to power after the death of his father, Kim Jong-il, in late 2011, will hold fast to this policy during the congress.

In a lengthy dispatch on Friday, the state-run Korean Central News Agency, or KCNA, hailed Mr. Kim as a strong leader who had armed the country with a nuclear deterrent against its enemies, particularly the United States, so that his people could work to revive the economy.

North Korea has recently claimed success in testing various technologies needed to build capability for a nuclear strike, including a new engine for an intercontinental ballistic missile, in what many have seen as attempts to bolster that image of Mr. Kim.
SEOUL, South Korea  After years of trying to separate fact from propaganda about North Koreas nuclear program, American and South Korean intelligence officials say they have concluded that the country can now mount a small nuclear warhead on short- and medium-range missiles capable of hitting much of Japan and South Korea.

The United States and its allies have sought for nearly a decade to prevent the North from gaining such capabilities, ever since it detonated its first atomic device a decade ago. Their failure is likely to raise new questions about the effectiveness of the policy toward North Korea, while ushering the long-simmering nuclear standoff with the North into a more perilous phase under its combative young leader, Kim Jong-un.

The assessment of the Norths new capabilities is not based on direct evidence from inside its nuclear program, senior officials said, but draws on intelligence gleaned from high-level defectors, analysis of propaganda images and data collected from North Korean missile and nuclear tests, which have accelerated over the past six months.

While some intelligence agencies suggested as early as 2013 that the North had learned enough about rocket engineering and the miniaturization of nuclear warheads to mount one on a shorter-range missile, there is a new consensus and greater confidence in that view in both Washington and Seoul, the officials said.
Journalists from around the world were invited to North Korea to cover the ruling partys first congress in 36 years on Friday. But while many were allowed to travel to Pyongyang, the capital of the reclusive country, they were then barred from the actual event.

So on Twitter and Facebook, journalists reported far from the proceedings taking place inside the convention hall where the countrys leader, Kim Jong-un, is using the rare political gathering to consolidate his power.

In theory, the Workers Party, which governs North Korea, is supposed to hold a congress every five years. But this is only the seventh in the partys 70-year history. The last one was held in 1980, before Mr. Kim was even born. Kim Il-sung was in charge then. It is not entirely clear why the event is happening now or what the government hoped to get with world news coverage. Reporters were working around the restrictions, with some improvisation on social media.
LONDON  In a Europe struggling with a rise in Islamophobia, riven by debates about the flood of Syrian migrants and on edge over religious, ethnic and cultural disputes, London has elected its first Muslim mayor.

Sadiq Khan  a Labour Party leader, a former human rights lawyer and a son of a bus driver from Pakistan  was declared the winner after a protracted count that extended into Saturday. He will be the first Muslim to lead Britains capital.

The victory also makes him one of the most prominent Muslim politicians in the West.

London is hardly representative of Britain: About a quarter of its residents are foreign-born, and one-eighth are Muslim. And Mr. Khan is not the first Muslim to hold prominent office in Europe: Rotterdam, in the Netherlands, has had a Muslim mayor since 2009, and Sajid Javid is the British secretary of state for business.

Nonetheless, Mr. Khan, 45, won a striking victory after a campaign dominated by anxieties over religion and ethnicity. Britain has not sustained a large-scale terrorist attack since 2005, and its Muslim population, in contrast to France, is considered well integrated. But an estimated 800 people have left Britain to fight for or support the Islamic State. Dozens of assaults on British Muslims were reported after the Paris terrorist attacks in November.
BERLIN  The increasingly authoritarian tilt of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey and the ouster of his prime minister this week have European leaders newly questioning their reliance on him and the viability of an already divisive deal struck this spring that has largely halted the flow of migrants to Europe.

The widening gulf in democratic values  combined with Mr. Erdogans deepening intransigence  has now run up against provisions in the deal that would allow Turks visa-free travel to Europe. All this is threatening even to undo the deal.

The gap between the sides and the growing pressure on the accord became clear this week when the European Commission called on Turkey to narrow its application of antiterrorism laws and bring them in line with European Union standards  one of more than 70 conditions it has set for visa-free travel.

Turkey has very broad terrorism laws, which the Europeans fear are being used by Mr. Erdogan to crack down on his opponents. In fact, Mr. Erdogan recently said the government should widen the definition of terrorist to include journalists and academics who are deemed by the authorities to have provided support for terrorists.
ISTANBUL  A Turkish court handed down a long-awaited judgment against two prominent journalists on Friday, sentencing them to more than five years in prison for releasing state secrets. The verdict came just hours after one of the journalists narrowly escaped an attack by a gunman in front of the courthouse.

The two journalists, Can Dundar, the editor in chief of the opposition newspaper Cumhuriyet, and Erdem Gul, the newspapers Ankara bureau chief, were accused of espionage and attempting to topple the government through their reporting about weapons shipments by Turkeys spy agency to rebels opposed to the government of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria.

The Istanbul court found the journalists guilty of revealing state secrets and sentenced them to five years and 10 months in prison. But they were acquitted of the more serious charges of trying to oust the government.

As the journalists awaited the courts decision on Friday, an assailant tried to shoot Mr. Dundar, shouting traitor as he fired at him. Mr. Dundar was unharmed, but another reporter was wounded and taken to a hospital.
CAIRO  A prominent human rights lawyer was arrested here on Thursday, joining more than 1,200 people detained after protests against the transfer of two Red Sea islands to Saudi Arabia.

The lawyer, Malek Adly, was arrested on a raft of charges that included plotting to overthrow the state and spreading false news, his lawyer said. He is being held in pretrial detention for an initial period of 15 days, but under Egyptian law it could stretch to several years.

His arrest signaled how President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, evidently rattled by public opposition to the transfer of the two islands, Tiran and Sanafir, is determined to quell growing criticism from lawyers, journalists and activists.

Mr. Sisi, who only a year ago seemed unchallengeable, is grappling with a steep economic downturn and unusually vocal criticism. Demonstrations in the center of Cairo and other cities on April 15, though small by Egyptian standards, were the largest since 2013 when Mr. Sisi introduced a tough new law effectively outlawing public protest.
Carrying a fire shelter has been mandatory for anyone fighting a wildfire in the United States since 1977. But in Canada, where a raging fire is threatening to destroy the city of Fort McMurray, Alberta, firefighters stopped carrying shelters in 2005. Do Canadians know something Americans dont?

Wildfires are an ever-present threat to both the United States and Canada, and they burn similarly on both sides of the border: hot, big and tough-to-tame beasts. Its where they burn thats different: In the United States, there are more often homes and people close to the flames.

That means Canadian firefighters may have time to think and strategize, while American firefighters have to take more risk as they rush  and the shelters can help mitigate the risk. In Canada, where fires often burn in densely forested areas, it can also be much harder to find a clearing or local road where it is safe to deploy shelters, which are not built to withstand direct contact with flames.

In 2013, 19 Arizona firefighters were trapped by a wave of fire and died despite deploying their shelters.
PEOPLE with disabilities will be able to open new, tax-free savings accounts under at least two programs offered nationally this summer.

The state-sponsored accounts are known as 529 ABLE, or 529A, accounts. Authorized in 2014 by the Achieving a Better Life Experience Act (ABLE Act), the accounts are modeled loosely on 529 college savings accounts.

The main benefit of the new accounts is that they allow disabled people to accumulate significant savings without jeopardizing their eligibility for need-based government help like Supplemental Security Income or Medicaid. Disabled people, their families and friends can contribute as much as $14,000 a year without putting federal benefits at risk.

Nebraska has announced that it will be among the first states to offer the accounts to a national audience, on June 30. Ohio has been testing enrollment in its accounts and expects to make the program available nationally this summer, but has not announced a firm date. Chris Berry, a spokesman for the Ohio state treasurers office, wrote by email that the program is prioritizing doing it right over doing it quickly.
HAVANA  In the Gran Teatro de la Habana Alicia Alonso, the woman with her name on the theater makes as grand an entrance as it is possible to make while being propped up by minders. On a recent Friday, Ms. Alonso, the 95-year-old director of the Ballet Nacional de Cuba, was ushered to her balcony seat. She opened her ballerina arms to the audience, who stood and cheered as if at a royal appearance. Ms. Alonso, blind or nearly blind for decades, has reigned over Cuban ballet for more than 60 years, longer than her stalwart supporter Fidel Castro lasted as head of state.

That night, the Ballet Nacional was dancing Swan Lake  Ms. Alonsos version, based on the 19th-century Russian original, a staple of a repertory that includes almost no contemporary work. The performance was well-mannered, old-fashioned, trapped in time. It was as it has been.

And yet Ms. Alonso was surely aware of changes around her, including in the theater that now bears her name. Dating from 1838, it reopened in January after renovations, clean and bare on the inside, its ornate exterior casting the brightest glow in the city center, which remains rather dark at night. President Obama gave a speech there during his visit in March, the first by a sitting American president since long before the 1959 Cuban Revolution: a sign of a major shift in relations between the countries, and presumably of incipient change for Cuba.

[ How modern dance companies in Cuba are bracing for American influences ]

But what about for Cuban ballet? Ms. Alonso likes to say that she will live to 200 and will still be running the company 100 years from now. She has never chosen a successor. Ask anyone involved with the Ballet Nacional what happens after Alicia, and you get shrugs and sighs. Change must be coming but probably not while Ms. Alonso is in charge.
IMAGINE ME GONE

By Adam Haslett

356 pp. Little, Brown & Company. $26.

Current studies suggest that a child with a depressed parent may be genetically predisposed to depression. The same may or may not be true for anxiety disorders. Tomorrow the findings could be slightly different, completely reversed or flatly disproved. The research can seem, forgive me, maddeningly fluid. For a novelist, though, this uncertainty is a gold mine: rich, thrilling, irresistible. Yet too many fiction writers lean on conveniently traumatic back stories and oversimplified psychological causality to explain away, rather than complicate, a characters behavior. Thankfully, Imagine Me Gone, Adam Hasletts ambitious and stirring second novel, owns up to the complexity  and consequence  of what can and cannot be inherited.

Haslett has written about mental illness before, most movingly in the story collection You Are Not a Stranger Here, which was a finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. But even in that books longer stories, the authors strengths seemed somewhat constrained by brevity. The subject also factored into his first novel, Union Atlantic, but with Imagine Me Gone  a book that spans almost half a century, two continents and five WASP-y voices  Haslett has reached another level, affording readers a full and luminous depiction of the mind under siege.

Imagine Me Gone opens with a forlorn tease of its ending, then flashes way back to introduce the cast and set in motion the events that will ultimately return them to the cryptic opening pages. Theres Margaret, a pushy American who, upon learning her British fiance, John, has been mysteriously hospitalized in London, demands an explanation from his doctor. You could say his mind closes down, the doctor says of Johns debilitating depression. It goes into a sort of hibernation. John has battled this beast since childhood, and though hes buoyed for stretches in the book  he marries Margaret, fathers three kids, moves the family to the States  he ultimately concedes defeat. Then theres Celia, their only daughter, a strong and levelheaded youth counselor in San Francisco, and her younger brother, Alec, an idealistic journalist who frets about his mother, siblings, money, politics and just about everything else.

Finally, theres capacious and tormented Michael, the eldest child, who has inherited his fathers severe psychological instability and around whom the characters  and the whole novel  orbit. Michael is by turns charming and intelligent, manipulative and vulnerable. He finds transitory solace in women, Klonopin and, unironically, house music: I just needed to be in the hurricane, in that storm blowing in from paradise, pushing skyward the wreckage of . . . the Jamaican dub masters and, yes, Giorgio Moroder and the German industrialists. After a string of tough breaks, he repairs to Michigan for a graduate program in African-American studies, then when that doesnt do the trick, he moves back in with Margaret near Boston.
What Dikotter calls the Red Years from 1966 to 1968 saw the worst of the urban violence. Student Red Guards were organized to defend Mao against his enemies. They attacked their teachers (humiliations, beatings, torture and suicides are described in wrenching detail) and raided homes in search of bourgeois articles of worship, luxury items, reactionary literature, foreign books, concealed weapons, hidden gold, foreign currency, signs of a decadent lifestyle, portraits of Chiang Kai-shek. Then new factions targeted elite party members, along with intellectuals, artists and writers, miscellaneous class enemies and victims of earlier campaigns, until competing groups were fighting one another in the streets. So many campaigns, work team investigations and political reversals characterized the early Cultural Revolution that even the activists were confused. They had no way to know why a signal for radical behavior one day would be rescinded the next. Ordinary people were paying for political struggle at the elite level, often with their lives, but they were also responsible for the petty vendettas they carried out when given the chance.

Mao eventually brought in the military to quell factional violence, but China descended further into civil war as the army, too, sought revenge. The country became a dictatorship under the command of Maos chosen successor Marshal Lin Biao, who installed revolutionary party committees to direct institutions throughout the country. Another wave of purges and counterpurges ensued. Armed battles, most famously in Wuhan, strengthened the left-wing Cultural Revolution Group associated with Maos wife, Jiang Qing. The army had split against itself.

During what Dikotter calls The Black Years from 1968 to 1971, the Cultural Revolution moved to the countryside, as former Red Guards were rusticated by the millions to learn from the peasants and prepare for war with the Soviet Union along the border. Dikotter describes the experience as an unremittingly terrible time of suffering, hunger, rape and abuse. Yet the rustification movement has produced hundreds of Chinese-language memoirs, many of which testify that for some young people, the time in the countryside was more nuanced or even bittersweet than he indicates. The rusticated youth, arguably, helped China to break with its Maoist past, for they later became known as the awakened generation and the thoughtful generation as they gradually inherited the leadership of the country. Their experiences in the countryside gave them the chance to re-evaluate the very premises of the revolution.

During this period, a campaign brought rural self-reliance to cult level, as local officials throughout the country were organized to visit Shanxi Province to study an arduously hewed terrace system claimed to free the community from the need for government help. Meanwhile, heavy industries and their workers were relocated inland to shelter them from an expected Soviet attack, a program Dikotter describes as an economic disaster. By then, many officials were in May Seventh Cadre Schools, compounds in remote areas where they were made to self-criticize while conducting hard labor. Compared with the violent purges and near civil war of the first few years of the Cultural Revolution, the dispersals and forcible relocations of these years make less painful, if equally dramatic reading. The period ended when Marshal Lin Biao, the man most responsible for the Mao cult, died on Sept. 13, 1971, in a plane crash in Mongolia. He is alleged to have tried to flee China after conspiring to assassinate Mao.
THE MORNING THEY CAME FOR US

Dispatches From Syria

By Janine di Giovanni

206 pp. Liveright Publishing. $25.95.

These days, when politicians bring up the Middle East, they collapse a decades worth of occupation, civil war and revolution into a single, ineffable horror: the Islamic State. The idea is that weve never seen a group so horrific, so threatening to global stability  which is fueling calls for world powers to ally with, or acquiesce to, Syrias Bashar al-Assad as a lesser evil in the war against ISIS.

But look beyond this narrow counterterrorism prism and you see the devastating truth: a regime that is willing to rape, torture, starve and gas as many of its citizens as necessary to secure its rule  and in the process, sow such apocalyptic chaos as to help spawn a global refugee crisis and the rise of ISIS. This is the searing lesson of Janine di Giovannis heartbreaking The Morning They Came for Us: Dispatches From Syria. Di Giovanni, a veteran foreign correspondent, visited Syria repeatedly in 2012, meeting with civilian activists and doctors, regime soldiers and pro-Assad nuns, and has written a moving portrait of a country divided by and under siege from its own president.

We meet Nada, a young woman who grew up near Qardaha, the hometown of the Assad family, and joined the revolution because she wanted the chance to live in a democracy, she tells the author. As you do. She was soon arrested by the secret police and thrown into prison, where she was beaten and whipped. Sometimes, when she asked for water, authorities would order a male prisoner to urinate in a bottle and try to force her to drink. In the end, she was raped. Its just one example of the regimes use of sexual violence as a tool of interrogation and punishment that di Giovanni documents in a series of harrowing passages. She describes the case of a young woman arrested for putting up revolutionary posters, who was blindfolded, tied to a chair and told she would be passed from man to man. She reproduces the transcript of a captured shabiha, a regime mercenary, whose stated aim was to quash the revolution and who admits to breaking into a school and raping women for six continuous hours. And later, his men discovered a woman in a house. We were four to rape her, he said, and she committed suicide following her rape.
Monteith Pioneer

Camp July 11-13

The Monteith House Pioneer Camp will be held July 11-13. The theme this year is "My Pioneer Journey."

Campers will journey through the life of a pioneer as they cross the Oregon Trail, build their new home, and go about their daily lives. A snack will be provided each day. The hours are 10 a.m. to noon. Ages are kindergarten through middle school. (Parents are welcome to stay if they like.)

Cost for the Camp is $25 per child. Space is limited. For information or to register, call 541-928-0911 or visit www.albanyvisitors.com.

Big band, ice cream

tickets available

Tickets are still available for the Hilltop Big Band concert and ice cream social Saturday, May 14, at the Albany Eagles Club.

The event will be from noon to 2 p.m. at the club, 127 Broadalbin St. N.W. Tickets are $6 and are available at the Albany Senior Center or the Eagles Club.

Ticket price includes two hours of classic and modern jazz performed by the Hilltop Big Band, and servings of ice cream with all the toppings. This event is sponsored by Fisher Funeral Home and Baskin Robbins.

Space is limited. For more information, call 541-917-7760 or visit www.albanyparksandrecreation.org. To register, call 541-917-7760.

Squarenaders host

BBQ dinner, dance

SWEET HOME  The Sweet Home Squarenaders will host its Wild West BBQ & Square Dance on May 14 at the Oak Heights school gym, Sixth and Elm streets.,

Dinner will be at 6:30 p.m. (donations will be accepted), followed by a Plus at 7:30 and the MS Square Dance at 8.

Suggested donation for the dance is $5 for adults and $4 for youths.

The Square Dance Caller will be Jim Voll, and the Round Dance Cuer will be Jackie Gale.

For information call 541-466-5536, or 541-409-0345

Middle school

plans art exhibit

A student art exhibition, Art of Student Expression, is scheduled for 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday, May 14, at North Albany Middle School.

The public is invited to view exhibits of photography, poetry, fiction, music lyrics and other artwork.

Workshops on illustrations, art and publishing, by featured presenters Cheryl French, Paris Barton and John Byrne, are scheduled from 10 to 11 a.m. and from noon to 1 p.m.

Oregon author Lisa Schroeder is scheduled to be on hand from 11 a.m. to noon.

Refreshments will be provided compliments of North Albany Middle Schools Foods class.

Stamp Out Hunger

food drive coming

Mail carriers will be collecting donations of nonperishable food on Saturday, May 14, for the 24th annual National Association of Letter Carriers Food Drive.

The annual Stamp out Hunger food drive asks mail customers to fill a bag with pasta, cereal, peanut butter, canned soups and stews, and other nonperishable food items and leave it by their mailboxes for carriers to pick up.

Food drive information cars and collection bags will arrive in the mailboxes of Albany residences beforehand.

Last year, Albany letter carriers collected about 28,000 pounds of food for Linn Benton Food Share, which distributed it through local food pantries.

Albany orchestra

concerts set

The Albany String Orchestra and the Mid-valley Prelude Sinfonia have both scheduled spring concerts this month.

The orchestra will perform at 3 p.m. Saturday, May 14, at Albany First Christian Church, 432 S.W. Ferry St. This years repertoire includes selections from Mozart, Vivaldi and Tchaikovsky, as well as pops and Broadway numbers.

Admission is free and the public is welcome.

The Albany String Orchestra welcomes new and returning violin, viola, cello and bass players.

Mid-Valley Prelude Sinfonias spring concert will be 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, May 25, at Memorial Middle School, 1050 Queen Ave. S.W.

More than 120 students from the Albany school districts elementary strings program will play in the concert, as well as the Albany Youth Orchestra. The repertoire includes folk songs, music from the movies and Broadway, and pieces by Tchaikovsky, Albinoni, and Grieg.

Admission is free and the public is invited.

The Mid-Valley Prelude Sinfonia is a nonprofit whose mission is to provide strings education to Albany-area children from third through 12th grade. Students from classes at Oak Grove Elementary, North Albany Elementary, South Shore Elementary, Timber Ridge School, North Albany Middle School, and Memorial Middle School will be performing, as well as students attending other schools and home school.

For more information, call Kim Collar at 541-971-9806.
Victor Fleischer, a law professor at the University of San Diego, is another who has recommended that the Treasury get rid of the unjust tax treatment on carried interest. Mr. Fleischer, a contributor to The New York Times, has also estimated how much money such a change would bring to the Treasury.

Its something that Obama could accomplish and, to be honest, Im not entirely sure why the Treasury hasnt taken an interest in it, Mr. Fleischer said in an interview. In fact, there is quite a bit of revenue at stake. And doing this on carried interest would cement Obamas legacy in substance as well as symbolically.

Rachel McCleery, a Treasury spokeswoman, said in a statement that closing the carried interest loophole has been a priority for the Obama administration from the outset and that the department is continuing to explore its existing authority for ways to address the loophole.

But the department cannot eliminate the carried interest tax benefit by itself, she contended.

The presidents first budget in 2009  and every one since  has included a proposal to close this unfair loophole and weve been pushing Congress to get it done, she added. No one should be able to play by a different set of rules, so its time for Congress to act to close the carried interest loophole once and for all.

The provision has come under repeated political attack. During the current presidential campaign, all three remaining candidates  Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump  have called for eliminating it. A number of lawmakers tried to get rid of the carried interest tax benefit beginning in 2007; by 2010, it looked as if the special treatment would go by the boards.

But a lobbying campaign by the financial industry, supported by a number of influential Republican lawmakers who argued that carried interest should be ended only as part of a broader tax overhaul, put a stop to the effort.

The Treasurys recent action on corporate inversions is encouraging, Mr. Wilensky said. But he acknowledged that it was easier to get rid of a tax rule that benefits faceless corporations than it was to abolish a regulation that enriches a small group of extremely powerful and vocal people.
Marilyn Snell craved time to herself in the summer of 2012 so that she could take stock of the emotional losses enveloping her life in San Francisco.

She found that time on the Greek island of Kythira, at a friends early-19th-century home. There, she stayed in a room that was once a bakery, white-walled with a curved ceiling and a fireplace that had served as the bakery oven.

A close friend and co-worker had died of cancer in 2010, after months of her caring for him. She was still struggling with sadness and the lessons he had taught her about death and human connections. Her mother, too, needed care during that time after two open-heart surgeries.

I was in a moment where I needed to survive, and figure things out, said Ms. Snell, now 57 and a freelance environmental journalist.
RE: H IS FOR HAWK

Mark Landler analyzed Hillary Clintons aggressive foreign-policy record in an adaptation of Alter Egos, his book about Clinton and Barack Obama.

I am struck by the degree to which the excerpt from Mark Landlers book completely ignored Hillary Clintons real strength in foreign policy: her deeply considered understanding that the U.S.s global interests are best served by a three-legged stool  defense, development and diplomacy.

When Senator Clinton was first appointed secretary of state, she sought to generate support in Congress by commissioning the first Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review, in direct emulation of the Department of Defenses Quadrennial Defense Review. It took over a year to solicit views and turn them into coherent policy and administrative recommendations, but those in the know think it was worth doing.
One August afternoon last year, waiting in the polished lobby of the Maan-Soor Hotel in Hargeisa, Somaliland, I wondered if it wasnt too late to cancel the appointment I had made. I had been returning to the city of my birth regularly for the past eight years, but my experiences were always screened by the purdah of wealth, protected by tinted windows and uniformed guards waving metal-detecting wands at every entrance. I had spent even longer away than most of the returning diaspora that clogged the city every summer, having migrated in 1986, before the civil war, to join my father, who moved to England in 1947. Today I was venturing beyond the tinted glass into the real city, to attend a class on marriage.

I had heard about it from Caroline, a tall, American Ph.D. student. She knew the city better than I did and had signed up for the course, to further understand negotiations of intimacy and morality in Hargeisa. Love can be a taboo subject in Somali families; relationships come together and fall apart mysteriously, shrouded in secrecy. Caroline had agreed to take me to the next class so I could hear for myself what they taught about how it happened, how a happy marriage worked.

The building was along a street I hadnt visited before, in a workaday district of car mechanics, teashops and khat stalls. Two little boys in long white khamis chased a third over uneven ground, leaping pools of gray rainwater. We climbed a dark concrete staircase, past a landing dotted with handmade posters, until we heard our names being called from above.

The classroom was so full that I had to tiptoe between feet and knees to the chair a student had vacated for me. A young man with a neat beard and glasses stood near the whiteboard. In front of him, the dim room was a sea of black: black abayas, head scarves, niqabs, gloves. I stood out there in my gaudy prints and sheer hijab. (In Somaliland, that item is nonnegotiable.) I smiled, nodded and tried to make my body smaller, to reduce the feeling that I was intruding on a space that was not my own.
In the figure of Jesus, everyone knows his origins and his destiny, he continued. Im freed because Im not talking about episodes that are in the Gospel.

Mr. Garcia is hardly the only moviemaker these days to find a certain freedom by using Scripture as a springboard. In the last few months, a spate of faith-based films including Risen (released in February) and The Young Messiah (from March) has come to present never-told or newly imagined chapters of Jesus existence, offering biblical back stories aimed at an audience of roughly 200 million Americans who self-identify as Christians and attend church at least once a month.

Whats more, several other such films are in Hollywoods pipeline. Sony Pictures Animation recently announced it would release an as-yet untitled Nativity movie in December 2017 that presents the story of Christs birth from the perspective of animals in the manger. And later this year, Universal Pictures International and Film4 are scheduled to produce a biopic about Mary Magdalene  who is believed to have seen Jesus on the cross and later resurrected  offering what its producers describe in a statement as an incredibly powerful new perspective on one of the worlds most well-known origin stories.

In the past, big-screen biblical adaptations have provoked an outcry over historical inaccuracies or perceived distortions of holy Scripture  The Last Temptation of Christ (the 1988 drama featuring Jesus in a dream lovemaking sequence), the 2014 mega-budget Exodus: Gods and Kings (which depicts Moses leading the Israelites out of Egypt) and the director Darren Aronofskys Noah (also 2014) among them. But these new movies are intended more as spinoffs or even prequels to the Bible than straight-ahead cinematic translations.
The painter Duncan Hannah was musing the other day about lifes simple pleasures.

I remember a great party after a Roxy Music show, he said, recalling a night from the early 1970s when he was a student at Bard College, visiting the city on weekends.

It was at Larry Riverss loft, and it was just fabulous, Mr. Hannah said. Nureyev was there, and all the Warhol drag queens, and David Bowie and Bryan Ferry and Andy Warhol. At the end it was time to go, and Andy said, So, were going to the 82 Club  an East Village drag bar  do you want to come with us? I said, Yeah, whos we? He said, David Bowie and Bryan Ferry. And I said, Yeah, that sounds good. So we got in the limo, and I, unfortunately, was extremely drunk, so I thought, Id better keep my mouth shut, because I dont trust myself. We pull up and its Andy Warhol and David Bowie and Bryan Ferry and me, an art student.

I woke up the next morning from a blackout in an abandoned building on 135th and Lenox, on the fifth floor, and there was no one in that building or any buildings around. It was just Dresden. I dont know what happened that night, but it was a fast trajectory from the most glamorous moment I ever had to possibly the most tawdry moment I ever had. I still have no idea how I traveled 133 blocks with no money, and found myself on the top floor of a ruined building  seemingly untampered with. It mustve been someones idea of a really good joke. The last thing I remember is when the bouncer threw me in the gutter. I remember thinking, Wow, I actually made it to the gutter Ive heard so much about. Now Im in it. So that was a good party.

Mr. Hannah has a lot of stories, some of which appear in the book Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk, by Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain, which is being reissued this month in an expanded 20th-anniversary edition.
IT is easy to laugh at the proverbial black friend invoked to neutralize charges of racism. However, the humor sours when you realize that this comical ploy is also a strategy the Republican Party uses in its outreach to black and moderate white voters.

Despite the whiteness of the G.O.P. in general  about 90 percent of voters in the Republican primaries this year have been white  a number of black Republicans hold prominent positions in the party, and are often held up as evidence of its commitment to diversity. Last year, for example, when the presidential candidate Ben Carson was doing well in the polls, his presence on the campaign trail helped prompt the chairman of the Republican National Committee, Reince Priebus, to claim that the G.O.P. was likely to have the most diverse presidential primary field in history  of either party.

Promoting black Republicans in this fashion may or may not succeed in convincing white voters that the party is not as racially divisive as it can seem. But less appreciated is the effect that this approach has on black voters. As recent research of mine suggests, the image of black Republicans that the G.O.P. disseminates may actually dampen enthusiasm for the party  not only among the black electorate in general, but also among black Republicans themselves.

A common thread that links high-profile black Republicans like Mr. Carson is their commitment to colorblind politics. You can also see this with recently elected politicians like Representative Mia Love of Utah and Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina. They acknowledge that being black is part of their life experience but reject the idea that racial identity should orient their political decision making. They often decry efforts, like affirmative action, to address racial inequality explicitly, claiming that such policies undermine black success.
On the outside, the house at 43 Suffolk Street in Sag Harbor, N.Y., was designed to blend in with nearby homes that were built in the 18th century. Inside, it is very much a 21st-century home. Its radiant heated bathroom floors, gas fireplaces and security system can be controlled with an iPhone, and a hydraulic lift transports a vehicle down to the homes lower level, where, like a treasured sculpture, the car sits in a glass-enclosed showcase visible from a spacious lounge and a wine room.

The owners have listed the house for sale at $12 million.

We were aiming at understated luxury, said John McLaughlin, who owns the just-completed home with his wife, Joanne McLaughlin. Mr. McLaughlin, 60, is a retired executive vice president of Monster Worldwide, the parent company of the jobs site Monster.com, and his wife, 52, is a potter. They live on the same street as their newly built house, in a home dating to 1765.

The McLaughlins had initially planned to move into the new house, which has five bedrooms and five and a half baths over more than 7,000 square feet. It sits on a quiet street near the quaint shops of this historic East End village, once a whaling port. I love old architecture, but I also like a house that breathes, Mr. McLaughlin said.

But the couple never moved in, because circumstances changed in the two years since they purchased, for less than $2 million, the nearly half-acre property, which had a 1960s ranch-style house on it that they tore down. Both their children, Ben, 22, and Kylie, 19, went off to colleges in California  which the parents had not anticipated  and the house became too big for just the two of us, Ms. McLaughlin said. Also, she said, the children wanted us to stay in the family home, even though they would only be visiting.
TOURS

This year marks the 400th anniversary of the death of Miguel de Cervantes, the renowned Spanish writer and author of the enduringly popular Don Quixote In commemoration, a new trip to Spain from the travel company Zicasso traces his footsteps from Madrid to La Mancha. The eight-day Miguel de Cervantes 400-Year Tribute Tour begins in Madrid; a Cervantes expert provides background on the author and his works and takes travelers to the convent where he is buried. Visitors also travel to the writers hometown, the Unesco World Heritage City of Alcala de Henares; visit Esquivias, the village where he married and wrote much of the second half of Don Quixote; see a live performance of the book at a 17th-century open-air theater in the town of Almagro; and take a cooking class in dishes popular when he was alive such as pipirrana, a Spanish potato salad.

Other activities include a tapas tour in Madrid, visits to wineries and a tasting of Spanish brandies. Prices from $4,336 a person, which includes accommodations, seven private tours with a Cervantes guide, all transfers, some meals and numerous activities.

SHIVANI VORA
You think youve done everything right: Your parents or other relatives have signed a durable power of attorney. Among other things, it allows you to handle their finances  taxes, bills, bank accounts, real estate sales  if they become incapacitated.

Everyone sleeps better. Months or years later, suddenly or gradually, the time comes when older family members can no longer manage transactions on their own.

You take the witnessed and notarized document to a financial institution  a big brokerage firm like Wells Fargo or Ameriprise, or a national or regional bank or credit union. And officials say no, they wont honor your power of attorney.

They insist that the account owners sign the institutions own power of attorney form  very unwelcome news, because by now the older account holders may not be competent to sign legal forms. Thats why youre there in the first place.
Human Animal: The Dutch primatologist Frans de Waal hits the hardcover nonfiction list with his survey of animal cognition, Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?, new at No. 15. Its his first best seller, after a shelfs worth of books devoted mainly to primates (including humans). Why expand to other species? As de Waal told the website of the quarterly magazine Earth Island Journal, he wanted to show just how far science has come in the past 25 years. There was a time when we were not allowed to talk about higher intelligence in animals, he said. Until the 1980s, I would say, we werent even allowed to use the term animal cognition. Human cognition, yes, human cognition was good, but animals didnt have cognition. Animals either had instinct or learning, and thats all they had. . . . We have this long tradition of downplaying what animals do and considering animals dumb and below our level, and we consider ourselves as absolutely unique. But now, he said, everything has changed.

Naturally, any time a scientist suggests humans arent uniquely special, some humans take offense. Life scientists . . . seem zealously bent on disproving human exceptionalism, Wesley J. Smith wrote last month in a blog post criticizing de Waal on National Reviews website. (Smith is a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute, an organization that promotes intelligent design as an alternative to natural selection.) Moral agency is one of the unique attributes that make us exceptional. . . . We have consciences, based on moral beliefs. Animals dont have moral beliefs.

In fact, de Waal argues, some animals have at least the potential. We do a lot of studies on empathy in animals, he told The Christian Science Monitor, and we found that they are affected by the mood states and emotions of others. This is getting close to human morality, the basis of which is that we empathize and care about others. Chimps are not into reasoning or justification like we are, but they have the core  what the philosopher David Hume called the moral sentiments.
Chicago, unsettled by a crime wave and a troubling police shooting, is in a grim mood. The outlook is clearly bleaker in some areas than others. African-Americans, especially, see their neighborhoods as beset by crime, bad schools and a host of obstacles to a better life for their children.

These days, how safe from crime do you feel in your neighborhood? Not too safe Not safe at all Very safe Somewhat safe 14% 50 32 3 White 21 44 16 20 Black 18 57 17 8 Hispanic Numbers may not add up to 100 percent due to rounding. These days, how safe from crime do you feel in your neighborhood? Not safe at all Not too safe Somewhat safe Very safe 14% 50 32 3 White 21 44 16 20 Black 18 57 17 8 Hispanic Numbers may not add up to 100 percent due to rounding.

A survey of 1,123 Chicagoans from April 21 to May 3 found a majority of every race agreeing that the city has veered off course and that the mayor is not addressing their needs.

But when it comes to life in their neighborhoods, people in different groups describe substantially different experiences. Crime, for instance, is a greater concern for blacks in particular.

And in a city with a history of racial segregation, blacks see their neighborhoods as more isolated than people of other races do.

Are the people in your neighborhood the same race as you? All the same Mostly the same All different About half the same Mostly different 44% 5 33 13 4 White 41 2 21 10 26 Black 36 3 26 25 10 Hispanic Are the people in your neighborhood the same race as you? Mostly the same Mostly different About half the same All the same All different 44% 5 33 13 4 White 41 2 21 10 26 Black 36 3 26 25 10 Hispanic

But the worst thing about their neighborhoods, and one of the biggest contrasts between blacks and other races in the poll, had to do with children.

How would you rate your neighborhood as a place to raise children? Good Excellent Fair Poor 21 41 19 16% White 26 19 9 44 Black 38 33 12 16 Hispanic How would you rate your neighborhood as a place to raise children? Good Excellent Poor Fair 21 41 19 16% White 19 9 26 44 Black 38 33 12 16 Hispanic

When it comes to raising children, blacks and Hispanics see obstacles that most whites arent worried about.

How likely is it that a young person in your neighborhood will... Dont know ...be in a gang? Very likely Somewhat likely Not very likely Not at all likely 11% 31 35 23 White 47 28 4 12 9 Black 38 37 13 12 Hispanic ...abuse drugs or alcohol? 5 22% 49 3 21 White 50 33 3 8 5 Black 41 2 12 8 37 Hispanic ...go to jail? 13 11% 37 2 38 White 27 13 5 54 Black 38 18 10 34 Hispanic ...be a victim of violent crime? 19% 31 38 10 White 49 37 10 3 Black 34 11 13 42 Hispanic How likely is it that a young person in your neighborhood will... ...be in a gang? Dont know Not at all likely Very likely Somewhat likely Not very likely 11% 31 35 23 White 47 28 4 12 9 Black 38 37 13 12 Hispanic ...abuse drugs or alcohol? 5 22% 49 3 21 White 50 33 3 8 5 Black 41 2 12 8 37 Hispanic ...go to jail? 13 11% 37 2 38 White 27 13 5 54 Black 38 18 10 34 Hispanic ...be a victim of violent crime? 19% 31 38 10 White 49 37 10 3 Black 34 11 13 42 Hispanic

Blacks and Hispanics are more likely to say they want to get out of their neighborhoods, and indeed, out of Chicago entirely.
KABUL, Afghanistan  The U.S. Embassy issued a strongly worded warning Thursday about kidnappings of foreigners here after a U.S. citizen narrowly escaped an abduction attempt in downtown Kabul.

The threat of kidnapping and hostage-taking continues to be very high, the embassy said in a statement posted on its website. It added that the attempted kidnapping on Monday targeted several expatriates, including a U.S. citizen, who were riding in an aid groups vehicle. The statement gave no further details.

The attempt came four days after a well-known Australian aid worker, Katherine Jane Wilson, also known as Kerry, was kidnapped in the eastern city of Jalalabad. She had been working in Afghanistan for about 20 years, relatives and Australian government officials said.

That abduction and others have alarmed foreign residents in Afghanistan, where kidnappings seemed a relatively minor risk until a year ago.

Since last spring, kidnapped foreigners have included two Germans, a man and a woman, who worked for the German aid group GIZ; a female Dutch aid worker; and Wilson. There have been rumors of other kidnappings of Westerners, but embassies have not confirmed them.

A Canadian hostage, Colin Rutherford, was released in January after being held for five years by the Taliban.

An American freelance journalist believed to have been taken prisoner by the Haqqani network in eastern Afghanistan has been held for at least three years. As in many such cases, the hostages identity has been kept secret by authorities and the news media, including The New York Times, at the request of relatives or government officials.

Two other Americans are thought to be held. Caitlin Coleman of York, Pennsylvania, disappeared with her husband, Joshua Boyle, a Canadian, while vacationing in Afghanistan in 2012. She was pregnant at the time; her child, who would now be about 4, would be a U.S. citizen as well. Her family released videos of Coleman and her husband that had been sent to them by the Taliban.

The aid group that was targeted Monday has not been publicly identified, but it is believed to be a major U.S. organization.

In the case of Wilson, 60, the Australian government confirmed her identity, and her father, Brian Wilson, appealed for her release in an interview with the British newspaper The Daily Mail.

I presume shes a hostage, and that theyll do their best to keep her alive and not harm her, simply because they want to have something or other in return, and its not very good having a dead hostage, the paper quoted Wilson as saying.

Katherine Jane Wilson ran the Zardozi organization, which promotes the work of Afghan artisans, particularly women, and sold their handicrafts primarily to foreign residents here and abroad. The groups items were sold in Ganjina, a popular handicraft venue in central Kabul that has shut down because of security concerns and a decline in customers.

The Afghan police think many of the kidnappings of foreigners have been carried out by criminal gangs motivated by ransom. The fear is that such groups could sell their hostages to extremist organizations. Several of those kidnapped, such as the German and Dutch citizens taken last year, have been released, but it is not known whether ransoms were paid.

Afghan citizens working for aid groups are frequently kidnapped while in the field, but in most cases they are released unharmed after negotiations with insurgents and community leaders. That was the case with five Afghan employees of the International Committee of the Red Cross, who were abducted in Ghazni province in February but released unharmed after four days. Last year, however, five Afghan workers for the Save the Children charity were abducted and murdered in southern Oruzgan province.

The kidnappings of foreigners in Kabul have been concentrated in the Taimani neighborhood, where many foreign aid workers and journalists have homes and offices. The attempt on Monday also took place in Taimani, said Fraidoon Obaidy, who leads the criminal investigation division for the Kabul police.

Despite the embassys statement, however, he said it was apparently an attempted carjacking of the aid groups vehicle. There was no proof that showed it was a kidnapping attempt, he said.

In the kidnapping of one of the German aid workers, in Taimani, the police arrested suspects, leading to her release, Obaidy said. No ransom was paid that I might know of, he said, but if anything was paid to the kidnappers without telling us, that is a different issue.

The other German worker for GIZ was taken hostage in the northern city of Kunduz, and he has also been released, officials said.

Mohammad Omar Safi, the governor in Kunduz province at the time of the abduction, said a criminal gang had released that worker after a $1.5 million ransom was paid. The kidnappers had wanted more, Safi said, and they kidnapped the second GIZ staff member in retaliation, demanding an even larger ransom.

Safi, who was interviewed by phone from Germany, said he had no personal knowledge of whether a ransom had been paid in the second case.

A spokesman for GIZ, Oliver Hanschke, declined to say whether the agency had paid for the release of its workers. GIZ does generally not comment on hostage-taking, Hanschke said.

The U.S. Embassys warning on Thursday advised Americans to avoid predictable travel patterns within Afghanistan. The embassy also urged people to review your personal security plans, take appropriate steps to enhance your personal safety, remain aware of your surroundings, monitor local news for updates, and maintain a high level of vigilance.
LOUISVILLE, Ky.  Bob Baffert feels under the radar with his latest horse at the Kentucky Derby. All anyone wants to talk about is American Pharoah, last years winner who went on to become the sports first Triple Crown champion in 37 years.

Outside his barn at Churchill Downs, visitors pull special edition bourbon bottles decorated in Pharoahs teal silks out of plastic grocery bags for the Hall of Fame trainer to sign. He listens patiently while they recount their memories of the people-loving colt, who made them feel so good, Baffert said.

He calls it the American Pharoah hangover. Clearly its the best kind to have.

I dont know if well ever see one that intelligent, that kind, where I could bring him out here and you guys could be all over him. He didnt care, he loved human contact, Baffert said. Nobody flies that much and runs that well. Its just crazy that he could handle it. I dont think well see one that tough.

Earlier in the week, Baffert and wife Jill visited American Pharoah at his new home in Lexington, where the colt is busy producing possible future Derby runners when hes not greeting the public five days a week.

It was a little emotional. It was like going to visit your child at camp, Baffert said. I think he recognized Jill. She talks to him in this little high sweet voice and he nickered to her. Hes still really sweet and kind. They let me walk him around and be by myself with him.

Then it was time to get in the car and drive back to reality.

Waiting at Bafferts barn with a view of the twin spires was Mor Spirit, another horse like Pharoah with a misspelled name. He has never been worse than second in seven career starts. Mor Spirit has previously mixed it up with some of his Derby competition, finishing second to Exaggerator in the Santa Anita Derby and second to Danzing Candy in the San Felipe in his most recent starts.

Expectations might be a little bit lower, Baffert said. Turning for home if hes right there I know hell fight and get a piece of it.

Notice he didnt say win.

You have a lot of horses here that are pretty equal, he said. Theres so much parity, they havent really separated themselves. Maybe there will be another American Pharoah. Maybe Derby day some horse is just going to step up and say, Hey, Im the one.

Thats what Pharoah did last year, setting Baffert and his family, owner Ahmed Zayat, jockey Victor Espinoza and the stable help on a historic journey that captured the publics imagination in a way horse racing rarely does anymore.

When Victor came off him after the Breeders Cup, Baffert said, I told him well never have another American Pharoah.

Still, hes always searching. All of Bafferts other Derby candidates fell by the wayside for one reason or another this winter, leaving Mor Spirit still standing. Hell be ridden by Hall of Fame jockey Gary Stevens.

Hes done everything well since hes been here, the trainer said. He really likes the surface and thats very important.

The last time a Baffert horse started the Kentucky Derby from post 17 was Point Given in 2001, with Stevens aboard. They finished fifth as the 9-5 favorite that Saturday in May before going on to win the Preakness and Belmont as well as Horse of the Year honors.

No horse has won the Derby from that post, where Mor Spirit landed.

Well just have to make history again this year, Baffert said.
SANTA ANA  Just hearing some of you guys warming up, playing Ziggy or what have you, brings up a lot of memories, said veteran pianist Mike Garson as he addressed a room of 48 aspiring high school musicians on Thursday.

Garson, who has worked with Nine Inch Nails, Smashing Pumpkins and countless other successful music acts, was invited to a rehearsal at the Orange County School of the Arts because of his long association with David Bowie. Garson played on 19 Bowie albums, including such classics as Aladdin Sane and Young Americans.

I met Bowie when he did his first American tour in 1972, said Garson, who also was in Bowies band on his last American tour. I moved from primarily being a jazz musician to all of a sudden playing rock, and let me tell you, that was a shock.

A question about his favorite moment with Bowie elicited a soft sigh. There were hundreds, he eventually responded.

Bowie was more than the music of one decade, Garson said. He was a pretty deep artist and person and not just in music. (Bowie) had something to say, lets put it that way.

And even though Bowies heyday was decades before the students were born, instructors believe that through his music, Bowie still has something to say. The commercial music programs upcoming concert will be a tribute to Bowie and the band Queen.

Playing this music gives the students a chance to dig deeper and really understand the artists, commercial music instructor Reggie Ashley said.

Thursdays master class with Garson took that musical investigation to a new level.

Garson has a wealth of knowledge and experience in all genres of music, Ashley said. His background has got depth for days.

During the master class, the young musicians played their songs for Garson, which was a lesson in performing under pressure, Ashley said. The more than two-hour rehearsal also included an opportunity for students to ask Garson questions about his musical career.

I was both nervous and excited about today because Bowie was such an icon, senior Carter Hodges said. It definitely makes me want to go home and study my music. It kind of lights a fire.

The students upcoming show, titled Under Pressure in honor of the chart-topping 1981 collaboration between Queen and Bowie, will feature 28 songs, split equally between Bowies and Queens catalogs. Garson, who teaches master classes internationally, said working with students never gets old.

Hearing these songs that Ive played perhaps 500 times, its actually sad, but it also warms my heart to hear that the music lives on, Garson said. Something about who Bowie was just pushes through time.

Contact the writer: 714-796-6026 or kwright@ocregister.com
The suspect accused of assault with a deadly weapon and leading authorities on a dramatic pursuit Thursday night that caused a massive traffic jam on the 91 freeway suffered K-9 bites before his arrest on suspicion of felony evading, authorities said Friday.

John Raymond Lopez, 25, may also face charges for assault with a deadly weapon, said Lt. Dan Holguin of the Los Angeles County Sheriffs Departments Century Division.

After he was hospitalized for his dog bites, he was booked into a Los Angeles County jail. His bail amount was $75,000.

Two sets of spike strips finally stopped Lopez, authorities said, but not before he crashed several times into vehicles and a center divider and cut over all lanes and barricading himself inside the wrecked car around 7:30 p.m. near Green River Road.

Thousands of vehicles were stranded during the standoff. Some people took to Twitter to vent frustration.

Stephen Young, 62, of Twin Peaks was traveling east on the 91 when he pulled his car over to the side of the road and managed to shoot a short video of the vehicle being pursued by police. He then got within 350 feet of the car as officers tried to coax the driver out.

It was alarming that there were so many police personnel and vehicles and that it took so long, he said.

Young, stuck on the 91 for about hours, passed time by talking with other stranded motorists. Everybody seemed in good spirits, he said.

The incident began Monday, authorities allege, when Lopez tried to assault someone with a handgun on Monday in the 7600 block of Miramonte Boulevard in Los Angeles.

Thursday evening, they said, he was spotted by Los Angeles County Sheriffs Department deputies in a black Mercedes Benz near Lynwood. The pursuit began.

An Anaheim Police Department helicopter followed the car and California Highway Patrol officials took over the chase on the 91 at Kraemer Boulevard.

The Mercedes hit a couple of cars and the concrete railing before the car stalled near Green River. Attempts were made by police to negotiate a surrender.

Shortly before 10 p.m., Anaheim SWAT officers took action.

They broke out the back window and could see he was alive and moving around in the car, Anaheim police Sgt. Daron Wyatt said.

They tossed tear gas inside the Mercedes.

That drove him out of the car, but then he jumped on the hood and still wouldnt cooperate, Wyatt said.

An Anaheim police K-9 was dispatched and grabbed Lopez by the left arm, authorities said, with Lopez fighting the dog. During the struggle, Anaheim SWAT officers apprehended him.

During the standoff, some traffic was diverted off of the freeway. But many motorists and their passengers, in the mile-plus stretches between the last exit and the incident, on each side of the freeway, had to just wait it out.

We have to take our time with these situations, CHP Officer and spokesman Florentino Olivera said. We dont know what he has in the car.

Drivers were ultimately freed shortly after 10 p.m.
A federal jury in Los Angeles convicted a Pasadena doctor and an Anaheim doctor Thursday of health care fraud for collecting more than $8 million in fraudulent insurance payments and kickbacks by falsely certifying that patients were terminally ill and referring them to a Covina hospice care facility, authorities said.

Boyao Huang, 43, of Pasadena and Sri Wijegoonaratna, also known as Dr. J, were found guilty of taking part in the fraudulent scheme between March of 2009 and July of 2013 following a two-week trial in federal court in Los Angeles, U.S. Justice Department spokesman Thom Mrozek said in a statement.

In concert with Covina-based California Hospice Care, the doctors falsely stated that patients were ill in order to bill Medical and Medi-Care for $8.8 million worth of hospice services that were not necessary, Mrozek said.

CHC nurses performed assessments to determine whether the beneficiaries were terminally ill and, regardless of the outcome, Wijegoonaratna and Huang certified that the beneficiaries were terminally ill  even though the vast majority of them were not dying, according to Mrozek. CHC personnel altered medical records in response to Medicare audits to make the beneficiaries appear sicker.

Wijegoonaratna also took tens of thousands of dollars in illegal kickback payments from CHC in return for sending patients to the facility, prosecutors alleged.

Huang was convicted of four counts of health care fraud, while Wijegoonaratna was convicted of seven counts of health care fraud.

The doctors are due for sentencing Aug. 15, officials said. Huang faces up to 40 years behind bars, and Wijegoonaratna faces up to 70 years in prison.

Four other defendants have already been charged and convicted in connection with the case, including Priscilla Villabroza, 70, of Placentia, who purchased CHC in 2007 and operated the facility after being charged and incarcerated in another health care fraud scheme, and her daughter, Mrozek said.

This scheme is one of many that has victimized public health care programs and, in the end, the taxpayers who fund these important programs, said U.S. Attorney for California Central District Eileen M. Decker. We will continue to investigate these fraudulent schemes, shut down the operations and incarcerate those responsible for stealing from the system.
An Orange resident has filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the city of Anaheim, alleging that a detective intentionally struck him with an unmarked car while he was trying to escape on foot during a police pursuit.

In a complaint filed this week at the federal courthouse in Santa Ana, attorneys for Victor Manuel Mondragon contend that their client was the victim of excessive force, resulting in him suffering paraplegia, among other injuries.

Anaheim police officials declined to comment on the lawsuit, citing a city policy not to discuss ongoing litigation.

According to the complaint, the police pursuit began shortly after 5 p.m. on July 10, when an Anaheim officer spotted someone leaning into the drivers side of a Toyota Carolla.

Mondragon was sitting in the passenger seat of the vehicle, the complaint says, as the driver fled from Santa Ana Street to Ball Road and onto an onramp to the Southbound 57 freeway.

According to the complaint, the driver slowed to a near standstill on the onramp and jumped out of the car, with Mondragon following after him.

The driver was able to jump over a nearby wall, the complaint says. Before Mondragon could get off the onramp, the complaint alleges that a detective in an unmarked police vehicle ran him over, coming to a stop with his body still stuck below the vehicle.

The lawsuit alleges that using a moving vehicle to stop him was excessive and unreasonable, claiming that Mondragon was unarmed, outnumbered and presented no imminent threat to anyone else.

Contact the writer: semery@ocregister.com
Candice Doby, 33, Waridi Rose, 31, and Farisha Taylor were spotted together at Downtown Disney. Doby was wearing Vans shoes and a Mickey Mouse T-shirt from Forever 21 and plaid shirt. Rose was wearing a Minnie Mouse T-shirt from Target with jean shorts and knee-high socks and sneakers and Taylor was spotted wearing bright red Puma sneakers and a crop top Mickey Mouse shirt from Ross with a leather baseball hat.
LADERA RANCH  A Ladera Ranch family is crediting smoke alarms with saving their lives from a suspicious fire at their home early April 29.

It could have been more traumatic if the smoke alarms didnt go off, Kristi Young said Monday. I heard the smoke alarms before I smelled the smoke.

Kristi Young, 44, her husband Ken Young, 45, and their 7-year-old daughter, Katie, were inside the home in the 20 block of Rinehart Road when a fire started in the garage around 1:40 a.m. Friday.

The fire raced up to the second floor of the home and into Katies bedroom, but she was sleeping in her parents bedroom at the time, Orange County Fire Authority Capt. Steve Concialdi said.

Kristi Young called it a miracle that her daughter wasnt sleeping in her own bedroom. It was Gods doing, she said. He protected her.

The smoke alarms prompted Ken Young to go downstairs where he determined the house was on fire.

The smoke alarms saved their lives, Concialdi said.

The Youngs were already outside of the home when firefighters arrived, Concialdi said.

Orange County Fire Authority Capt. Larry Kurtz said he was able to console Katie by talking to her about his job 28 years ago as a crew member on the Jungle Cruise at Disneyland.

I saw in her room that she had a lot of Disney memorabilia, he said. When I talked about Disneyland she really lit up and it took her mind off the fire.

The Youngs visited Orange County Fire Authority Station 58 in Ladera Ranch, Wednesday, to thank firefighters for their response.

An investigation is under way to determine the exact cause of the suspicious blaze, said Concialdi, who stopped short of calling it an arson.

A Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms arson dog assigned to the Los Angeles Fire Department also responded with an investigator to help sniff out any suspicious accelerates that may have contributed to the fire, Concialdi said.

Thirty firefighters responded and had the blaze under control in about 30 minutes.

Three other homes were also damaged, including the one adjacent the Young residence and two across the street, which were harmed by intense heat, Concialdi said.

Investigators estimated $300,000 in structural damage was caused between the four homes and $100,000 worth of contents were destroyed, including a Chevrolet Trailblazer and Volvo parked in the Youngs garage, as well as several pieces of WWII memorabilia, Concialdi said.

The Youngs are currently residing in a hotel and plan to rebuild their home.
Two Southern California lawmakers want to hold Frontier Communications accountable for interrupted FiOS and DSL service.

Former Verizon customers in the area were switched to Frontiers services when the network provider changed hands as part of an $8.6 billion deal April 1.

Assemblyman Mike Gatto, D-Los Angeles, who chairs the Utilities and Commerce Committee, said his committee would hold hearings on the impact on our constituents and the appropriate government response if these problems persist.

There has been an alarming rate of telephone and internet outages in Southern California, Gatto said in a statement. These problems need to be resolved swiftly  Residents are at risk because of the inability to dial 911 in an emergency.

Assemblyman Patrick ODonnell, D- Long Beach, is holding a town hall May 14 for impacted customers, representatives from Frontier Communications and the California Public Utilities Commission.

Between April 1 and April 22 the CPUC received 361 complaints, a representative told the Los Angeles Daily News.

Michael Bremmer, chief executive of telecommunications consultant group Telecomquotes.com, said issues like this are not uncommon with mergers.

The problem is when Verizon turned over everything to Frontier, they didnt release all the systems that they needed to run everything until the day before the turn over, Bremmer said. They should have started this three or four months before in order to be ahead of this and in order to integrate systems.

My fear is that the same thing will happen when Charter takes over Time Warner Cable its going to be a disaster, Bremmer added.

Scott Weiss, owner of treatment clinic Lice Clinics of America-Los Alamitos, estimates he has lost about $25,000 in new business when his phones stopped working after the switch to Frontier.

He switched service providers after roughly a month of no service and has filed a complaint with the PUC.

A Time Warner Cable representative said the company saw an increase in customers during the first quarter of the year. It is now offering a $300 Visa gift card to customers who can prove they switched to the company from a different service provider.

Netball of America, a nonprofit in Huntington Beach, has had problems with its landline, TV and internet for three weeks.

Netball President Sonya Ottaway said the group decided to cancel its services with Frontier but was told it would have to pay a fee to end the contract.

Its so frustrating, especially as Im volunteering my time to help provide girls in need with opportunities around the USA, and its not just the phone issue, but cant even watch the basic news channels, and the only response I get is that someone will be there tomorrow, someone will be there tomorrow, Ottaway said.

Lauren Bello, of Westminster, also has been without service.

I have not had internet services the entire month of April, Ive waited on hold multiple times for over an hour when I call the customer service line, Ive messaged their Facebook page only to receive the same generic response requesting my account information, Bello said.

The issues were resolved April 28. She was promised a credit for the month.

A Frontier representative recommend residential customers experiencing outages call 1-800-921-8101; business customers should call 1-800-921-8102.

Contact the writer: hmadans@ocregister.com or Twitter: @HannahMadans
KANSAS CITY, Mo.  ShaQuille Kornegay, 2 years old, was buried in a pink coffin, her favorite doll by her side and a tiara strategically placed to hide the self-inflicted gunshot wound to her forehead.

She had been napping in bed with her father, Courtenay Block, late last month when she discovered the 9 mm handgun he often kept under his pillow in his Kansas City, Mo., home. It was equipped with a laser sight that lit up like the red lights on her cousins sneakers. Block told police he woke to see ShaQuille by his bed, bleeding and crying, the gun at her feet. A bullet had pierced her skull.

In a country with more than 30,000 annual gun deaths, the smallest fingers on the trigger belong to children like ShaQuille.

During a single week in April, four toddlers  including ShaQuille  shot and killed themselves, and a mother driving through Milwaukee was killed after her 2-year-old apparently picked up a gun that had slid out from under the drivers seat. It was a brutal stretch, even by the standards of researchers who track these shootings.

Last year, at least 30 people were killed in accidental shootings in which the shooter was 5 or younger, according to Everytown For Gun Safety, a gun control advocacy group that tracks these shootings, largely through news reports.

With shootings by preschoolers happening at a pace of about two per week, some of the victims were the youngsters parents or siblings, but in many cases the children ended up taking their own lives.

You cant call this a tragic accident, said Jean Peters Baker, the prosecutor of Jackson County, Mo., who is overseeing the criminal case in ShaQuilles death. Her office charged Block, 24, with second-degree murder and child endangerment. These are really preventable, and were not willing to prevent them.

Gun control advocates say these deaths illustrate lethal gaps in gun safety laws. Some states require locked storage of guns or trigger locks to be sold with handguns. Others leave safety decisions largely to gun owners.

Twenty-seven states have laws that hold adults responsible for letting children have unsupervised access to guns, according to the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, though experts say such measures have, at best, a small effect on reducing gun deaths. Massachusetts is the only state that requires gun owners to store their guns in a locked place, though it has not stopped youngsters there from accidentally killing themselves or other children.

Gun rights groups have long opposed these kinds of laws. They argue that trigger locks can fail, that mandatory storage can put a gun out of reach in an emergency, and that such measures infringe on Second Amendment rights.

Its clearly a tragedy, but its not something thats widespread, said Larry Pratt, spokesman and former executive director of Gun Owners of America. To base public policy on occasional mishaps would be a grave mistake.

Holston Cole was 3, a boy crackling with energy who would wake before dawn, his pastor said. He loved singing Jesus Loves Me and bouncing inside the inflatable castle in his familys front yard in Dallas, Ga.

About 7 a.m. on April 26, he found a .380-caliber semi-automatic pistol in his fathers backpack, according to investigators. The gun fired, and Holstons panicked father, David, called 911. Even before a dispatcher could speak, David Cole wailed No, no! into the phone, according to a redacted recording.

Cole pleaded for his 3-year-old son to hold on until the ambulance could arrive: Stay with me, Holston, he can be heard saying on a 911 tape, his voice full of desperation. Can you hear me? Daddy loves you. Holston. Holston, please. Please.

Holston was pronounced dead that morning.

The local authorities have been weighing what can be a difficult decision for prosecutors and the police after these shootings: Whether to charge a stricken parent or family member with a crime. While laws vary among states, experts said decisions about prosecution hinge on the specific details and circumstances of each shooting. What may be criminal neglect in one childs death may be legally seen as a tragic mistake in another.

Officials with the Paulding County Sheriffs Office have suggested that they expect Cole to face, at most, a charge of reckless conduct.

Anything that we do, criminally speaking, is not going to hold a candle to the pain that this family feels, said Sgt. Ashley Henson, a spokesman for the sheriffs office. Henson said investigators had sensed early on that the shooting was accidental. You want to be able to protect your family and take care of your family, but on the same hand, youve got to be safe with your weapons, he said.

In Indianapolis, Kanisha Shelton would stay protectively near her 2-year-old son, Kiyan, watchful of the stray dogs known to roam through the neighborhood.

But on the evening of April 20, Shelton stepped away from the boy, leaving him in the kitchen while she was upstairs. She had placed her purse out of his reach on the kitchen counter, but when her phone started ringing, the boy apparently pushed a chair close to the counter, climbed onto it and reached for the purse, according to an account from a cousin, John Pearson. There was a .380-caliber Bersa pistol inside it.

Just after 9 p.m., Shelton heard a loud bang and rushed downstairs. There, in the kitchen, she found Kiyan lying on the floor, bleeding from a gunshot wound to the chest. He was rushed to a local childrens hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

Sheltons mother, who answered her daughters cellphone, said the family did not want to speak about the death. No criminal charges have been filed.

Police in Indianapolis said such scenes were becoming more common. The mother was obviously very shaken up, Capt. Richard Riddle said. Indeed, on Sunday night, another child, 10 years old, died in what police say appears to have been another accidental shooting.

When a Louisiana toddler who shot himself was buried, his coffin was no bigger than a piece of carry-on luggage, and it was so light that two pallbearers easily carried it through the packed St. Paul Missionary Baptist Church in Bermuda, La.

His full name was Zaveon Amari Williams, but to his family in Natchitoches, the 3-year-old was known as Baby Zee. On April 22, he found a pistol and shot himself in the head, according to Detective John Greely of the Natchitoches Police Department. When paramedics arrived, they found the mother cradling the boy and crying that he was not breathing, according to KSLA News 12.

Police arrested a companion of the mother, Alverious Demars, 22, on charges of negligent homicide and obstruction of justice. Greely said that police believed the pistol belonged to Demars and that he hid it after the toddler shot himself. Police have not found the weapon.

The funerals for these children were filled with a similar anguish.

At the funeral for Baby Zee, the wails and screams grew so loud during a final moment of goodbye that ushers closed the church doors to give the family privacy. In Georgia, Holstons father tearfully read a letter that reflected on how the family used to sing Jesus Loves Me. At the Kansas City funeral for ShaQuille, family members crumpled as they looked into the coffin, shaking with tears or kissing her.

The day after ShaQuille was buried, her maternal grandmother, Pamala Kornegay, reflected on the girl who was missing from the cluster of grandchildren who sat coloring on her living room floor. Kornegay said she was not angry with ShaQuilles father.

Were just upset, she said. It was careless. It could have been prevented. So senseless, she said, because Block had loved his daughter so dearly.

He would take a bullet for her, she said.
A Linda Isle house featured in Architectural Digest 44 years ago and recently rebuilt on speculation landed on the market this week at just under $25 million.

The 6,788-square-foot house by architect Carlton Graham and Gallo Builders in the guard-gated Newport Beach community has 113 feet of bay frontage and a dock, with views taking in the harbor and turning basin.

Built in 1970, the home originally had imposing Paso Robles stone columns and dark wood beams, but they were banished in the redesign.

The four-bedroom house includes high ceilings, an open floor plan, formal dining room, island kitchen and an elevator, along with hardwood and travertine floors and fireplaces in the living room and master suite.

Outside, a terrace along the water spans the width of the property, and the dock can accommodate a 60-foot boat. A heated swimming pool and spa are tucked into a front courtyard.

American Coastal Properties bought the house in 2013 for $9.5 million. The company specializes in extensive rehabs of homes in high-end, established neighborhoods where a new manse is expected to be in demand. The house was built on speculation  no buyer in sight.

This will be an incredible house, ACPs Brian Sperry said in May 2014, before the work began. But the risk we face (is) what is that price going to be a year and a half from now?

The project took longer than expected; the residence even required a new foundation. But the timing turned out to be a plus, Sperry said this week, because the house is making its debut in the spring homebuying season.

Tim Smith of Coldwell Banker Previews International is the listing agent.

See also:

Theyre rebuilding fancy homes, knowing that buyers will come
Pick up trash on the sidewalk. Join a beach clean-up  or volunteer at an animal shelter.

Sometimes, it doesnt take much to be kind, does it?

On Thursday, the Orange County Department of Education launched a new initiative to encourage one billion acts of kindness.

Kindness is a virtue that manifestly defines character, said Al Mijares, Orange County superintendent of schools, during the launch of the One Billion Acts of Kindness campaign on Thursday. (Lets) have it cascade from Orange County throughout California and across the nation.

The Billion Acts of Kindness campaign aims to improve society.

The initiative was inspired by a similar one started in 2013 by Anaheim Mayor Tom Tait, when he led the effort to have Anaheim designated a city of kindness.

His work to promote kindness even caught the attention of the Dalai Lama, which led the exiled Tibetan leader to invite Tait to India last year and then arrive in Orange County last summer to celebrate his 80th birthday.

The Anaheim Elementary School District joined the citywide effort to carry out a million acts of kindness, which was accomplished. Educators attribute students participation for increased attendance rates and a reduction in suspensions.

In the new Orange County campaign, those who want to participate can share their good deeds by gong to kindness1billion.org and clicking on the designated button every time they commit a kind act, or by posting about it on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram using the hashtag #kindness1billion.

All kind acts  large or small  will count. And theres no timetable. Over the summer, the Orange County Department of Education plans to develop a toolkit and other materials to assist teachers and administrators.

Why a billion? Mijares asked rhetorically at the launch, with educators, city officials and religious figures looking on. Why not? If a billion can be reached in dollars, it can be reached in acts of kindness.

Contact the writer: 714-796-7829 or rkopetman@ocregister.com
The European Central Bank, after much hand-wringing in recent months that the 500 euro note is primarily being used for illegal and illicit activities, voted this week to stop their production two years time. However, the current supply of notes will stay in circulation and remain legal tender, allowing money launderers and drug dealers to continue to transport their wealth efficiently and effectively.

To see the appeal of these notes, it is enough to ask a simple question: How much would a million euros weigh in 500 euro notes, compared with a similar amount comprised of only 100 euro notes? The former weighs in at just over 4 pounds, while the latter stash of bills would weigh 10 times as much!

Most Europeans have never actually used a 50 euro note, somehow managing to live content lives armed only with 20 and 10 euro notes. Despite mounting concern over the illicit use of 50 euro notes, the actual evidence that they are being used predominately for ill-gotten gains is almost entirely anecdotal.

What is known is simply that the overwhelming majority of these notes do not find their way into store cash registers and bank tills. Logically, they are being held in private hands to store wealth rather than to transact business. The question then becomes what is motivating these individuals to hold such wealth outside the banking system?

French Finance Minister Michel Sapin has made bold statements that these notes are the means by which criminals hide things from the lawful authorities. Perhaps his biggest concern, though, is not drug dealers, money launderers or terrorist financiers. As most of the world has realized for some time, it is significantly harder for the tax authorities to assess your full annual income tax liability if you paid cash-in-hand, rather than by bank transfer.

In this light, the principal concern of EU governments when they realize there was a parallel flow of these notes outside the traditional commercial arena becomes clearer  namely, there are tax receipts that are not being collected. It is highly unlikely that every exchange of stacks of these 500 euro notes for goods and services is being reported at the end of the year on the local equivalent of our IRS Form 1040.

Many of you might wonder why governments issuing high denomination notes should matter anymore? You might kindly point out that Bitcoin and other virtual currencies will one day become the coin of the realm, so to speak, and government backed money will eventually just whither away.

Unfortunately for those techno-enthusiasts who long for such a day, cash has certain valuable characteristics that neither electronic money being wired in and out of bank accounts nor virtual money, with its extensive block chain protocols, possess. Most importantly, cash is anonymous in a tried and tested way. Once they are swept off the floor of the  ahem!  club where you made it rain last night, it will be very hard to trace those dollar bills back to you, provided you werent being recorded on the phone of one of your friends who dragged you to the club in the first place.

In fact, Bitcoin is not nearly as revolutionary as it more ardent fans claim. Literally anything can be a currency if it is scarce. For example, cigarettes in prison, Super Bowl tickets and a backstage pass for a Pink Floyd (or Justin Beiber or Rhianna) concert can all be exchange for goods and services of value.

There are some technical innovations that make Bitcoin interesting as a science experiment, such as its distributive nature and its reliance on peer-to-peer transacting. And the method of tracking transfers by means of block chains that record each subsequent transaction may have much wider applications in the future. For now, though, Bitcoin is attempting to solve a problem that no one really has.

Cash remains king for those with a libertarian, anti-authoritarian bent!

And high denomination currency may be a better tool to maintain privacy and remain outside the ever-watchful eye of government authorities than bitcoins.

Fortunately, even when the 500 euro notes fall out production in two years time, the previously printed ones will remain legal tender for the near future. They will remain a useful means of exchange for people who want their transactions to not turn up on a computer screen with their names next to them.

Perhaps their future scarcity will do for the 500 euro note what scarcity does to most other rare items  namely, drive up their value. Imagine a world where, for the sake of anonymity, someone will pay 510 euros in small bills for a 500 euro note. This may be the harbinger of a real paradigm shift in money, not our Bitcoin experiments.

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
SAN FRANCISCO  Dozens of protesters disrupted a San Francisco police committee meeting a day after hundreds marched on City Hall in support of five hunger strikers demanding the dismissal of the citys police chief.

The San Francisco Chronicle reported that commissioners recessed the Wednesday night meeting for two hours after protesters continued to loudly chant for the firing of Chief Greg Suhr, who was in attendance.

Demonstrators have called for the chiefs removal since the Dec. 2 fatal police shooting of a young man who refused commands to drop the knife he was holding.

Five activists on Thursday began their 15th day of refusing solid food as they camp out in front of a police station.

Mayor Ed Lee says he supports the chief and the reforms introduced to reduce police shootings.
One of the investors in the Phap Van  Cau Gie expressway suspects that daily tolls of about VND1.2 billion ($54,000) do not reflect the number of vehicles using the road.

According to a press release issued on May 5, the Civil Engineering Construction Corporation (Cienco1) evaluated that fees collected on the crucial southern expressway are too low.

The average toll revenue on the busy road is only VND36 billion ($1.6 million) per month, and even fell below that figure during the Tet holidays, one of the busiest times of year.

A surveilance system installed by the shareholder is covered up. Photo by VnExpress

Cienco1s deputy director Dinh Ngoc Dan said that since January this year, BOT Phap Van  Cau Gie JSC (MPC) has refused to provide details of toll collections or requests to establish an independent team to jointly supervise toll collection.

To supervise the expressway, Cienco1 signed a contract with Frontier Solution Ltd. Company to install surveillance systems worth VND7.5 billion (over $300,000), but the MPC has frequently covered the cameras using trucks or signs.

Cienco1 said that toll collections are not transparent. Cienco1's investment in surveillance cameras was meant to help us monitor toll collections and ease shareholders' fears, he said.

MPC's general director Nguyen Thi Cam Tu indicated that the surveillance system interfered with the companys operations and was not in line with its rights stipulated in the Companys Charter and Law on Enterprises.

In the latest official letter to the Ministry of Transport and the Directorate for Roads of Vietnam (DRVN), Cienco1 asked authorities to clarify the toll drain on the Phap Van  Cau Gie expressway.

A representative from the directorate told VnExpress on May 5 that the conflict is an internal matter which needs to be solved following the Law on Enterprises. Inspectors from the DRVN will be sent to supervise toll collections.

The 29-kilometer Phap Van  Cau Gie expressway started collecting tolls on October 6, 2015.

Cienco1 is one of the three founding shareholders of the MPC with investment of VND148 billion (nearly $7 million), making up 18 percent of the venture's charter capital.
ANAHEIM  The mystery of the owner a set of cherished wedding and engagement rings found in San Diego County has been solved, thanks to a Good Samaritan and a jeweler-turned-detective who tracked the jewelry to Anaheim.

On Saturday afternoon, 37-year-old Christina Aguilar of Poway pulled her car into a parking space at Windansea Beach in La Jolla.

Aguilars 12-year-old son, Carlos, got out of the vehicle and spotted the diamond ring set on the ground.

I thought at first it was a play ring, Aguilar said Thursday. But it was a pretty good-sized rock.

CBS 8 in San Diego aired a segment on the rings Monday. The following day, Aguilar took the rings to Tim Dooley from Poway Fine Jewelers in hopes of finding the owner.

Tim was awesome, Aguilar recalled. He said, We are going to be detectives.

Using a high-powered microscope, Dooley was able to find a serial number etched on the edge of one of the diamonds. The numbers enabled Dooley to contact the rings manufacturer in San Francisco, who then notified the owner, 29-year-old Alice Ger of Anaheim.

Dooley said is pleased Ger was found, adding the ring will be returned to her soon.

Its just a wonderful experience, he said.

Ger said she and her husband were at Windansea Beach on Saturday celebrating their second wedding anniversary when she lost the rings. Ger said she had taken the rings off, placed them in her lap to apply sunblock and forgot about them when she got out of the car.

She is happy they were found so quickly, describing it as a pleasant surprise.

Aguilar said she is glad to have found the rings owner. I wanted to get them back in the right hands because I know if that happened to me I would be devastated, she added.

Contact the writer: 714-796-7767 sschwebke@ocregister Twitter: @thechalkoutline
Recently the California Department of Education awarded some elementary schools with the California Gold Ribbon to honor what the CDE considers to be outstanding schools. Many of us parents cheered for some of these deserving schools, while others left us confused. We took a closer look.

That is when we saw that Palm Lane Elementary in Anaheim had been selected as one of Californias Gold Ribbon Schools. This is the same school where in 2014-2015 parents came together to petition to take over the school due to consistent failure for years. Although those parents were met with much resistance by the local teachers union, who actually rallied for the failed school, in July 2015 an Orange County Superior Court judge ruled in the parents favor. This dispute continues in the court system but just a year later, the state has decided to call this a Gold Ribbon School. And parents are left to wonder how.

The CDE states on their website the eligibility qualifications: schools had to operate in the 2014-2015 school year; student testing outcomes are not used; schools listed in Program Improvement status can apply and win; schools with districts that have civil rights violations can apply, but only if they are not egregious violations; and schools with testing irregularities (poor standardized test scores) because comparable testing data no longer exists in California. The CDE does draw the line for eligibility at schools with outstanding non-compliance issues. They do have their standards.

While we all want to cheer on and replicate great schools, we, as parents, cannot ignore the fact that our state is going on its third year without comparable testing data outcomes. Even though testing is not always the final determining factor in what a great school is, it tells a story. It lets parents know if the teachers and district are working toward growth or continuing to fail its students. Currently, the CDE and legislators are considering how to measure school success. But whatever criteria the state uses to measure school performance, it needs to be clear to parents.

With clear information about what is actually happening in schools, parents do not have to be stuck attending their zip-code dictated school. They can decide to seek another school choice option. Like charter schools, which are public schools where parents tax dollars follow the student. But it is a choice that is continually being attacked.

Beyond the lack of transparent information, parents in Anaheim have their choices limited even more because of the disdain for public charter schools shown by Anaheim school leaders. They have called for a moratorium on charter schools. They also hosted an invitation-only event where they showed a documentary that tried to link charter schools to Turkish terrorism. There is even an initiative circulating in California that would completely eliminate all public charter schools  immediately.

It seems all California public school students are under attack by a status quo education system that is resistant to providing school choice options or a transparent accountability system with clear comparable information about how students are learning. It is time we forced the issue that our children should be the first priority in education. A forced system of education that is unaccountable for student achievement and comparable data, regardless of socioeconomic status and ability, is not what is best for students.

As a parent and former teacher, I hope the CDE raises its standards on what is considered an outstanding and award winning school. Allowing some schools to win awards when they fail our children is not only irresponsible, but an attack on parents intelligence. Let parents and the community be the judge. Create high standards and report outcomes that are comparable to other schools and districts. Provide parents with true school choice options, including public charter schools. Let parents and the community see where there is failure, so the problem can be resolved, not disguised as a gold ribbon allowing students to be failed where failure should never be an option. When mediocrity and failure are rewarded, our children and their futures are the ones who lose.

Julie Collier is a parent, former teacher and long-time proponent of parental choice and public education reform. She is the founder of Parents Advocate League, a statewide grassroots, parent-led nonprofit dedicated to educating parents on using their voices ensuring a quality education for all students.
SANTA ANA  A judge on Thursday rejected a wrongful termination lawsuit by five former Orange County Sheriffs Department administrators who said they deserved $19 million in damages because Sheriff Sandra Hutchens laid them off.

Superior Court Judge Frederick P. Aguirre found that the five former command staffers had been let go because of a 2009 budget crisis, not because of their ties to disgraced ex-Sheriff Mike Carona, as the group alleged.

The court finds, based on the evidence presented, that the plaintiffs, like the other 55 department employees, were part of a mass layoff due to budgetary reasons, Aguirre wrote in his ruling.

The ruling is a victory for Hutchens, who testified during the civil trial that she didnt want to fire anyone but had no choice because of the departments financial woes.

As I have said both in court and publicly, my decision to lay off members of my command staff was solely based on financial considerations, not based on the performance of individual personnel, Hutchens said in a statement Thursday night.

In making these difficult decisions my ultimate goal was to preserve front-line services. Cutting top command staff positions enabled me to limit direct impacts to public safety.

The lawsuit was filed by former assistant sheriffs Jack Anderson and John Davis, and former captains Brian Cossairt, Deana Bergquist and Robert Eason.

Joel W. Baruch, who represented the five administrators in the lawsuit, expressed disappointment at the judges verdict, saying it appeared to run counter to a previous appeal court ruling that the plaintiffs should have been able to challenge their dismissals.

In our opinion, the trial court completely ignored the directions of our Court of Appeal, Baruch said of Aguirres ruling. This has resulted in a wrong decision, which may be appealed.

During the non-jury trial, Baruch argued that the former law enforcement officials deserved $19 million to cover their lost income as well as penalties and emotional damage.

They were unceremoniously dumped, Baruch told the judge two weeks ago during the trials closing arguments. Sheriff Sandra Hutchens lied to them about why she did what she did, so she could avoid hearings and oversight.

Attorneys for the county told the judge they were shocked at the request for millions, arguing that the former assistant sheriffs and captains didnt deserve any damages.

Layoffs dont happen because someone did something wrong and needs to be punished, said S. Frank Harrell, an attorney hired by the county. The sheriff didnt want to lay anybody off. She was fighting for her men and women. She was fighting for their jobs.

On Thursday night, attorney Norm Watkins praised the judges verdict.

It is the correct analysis, and we have never thought otherwise, said Watkins, who also represented the Sheriffs Department.

Staff writer Tony Saavedra contributed to this report.

Contact the writer: semery@ocregister.com
Today marks the 55th anniversary of the first American astronaut in space. NASA is marking the occasion by naming a computer research center in honor of a mathematician who helped calculate the trajectory of the mission launched on May 5, 1961.



SPACE RACE

Mercury was Americas first human space flight program. It conducted 20 unmanned developmental flights, some using animals. The first launch with an American was 55 years ago today. The program had six total manned flights, with one astronaut per flight. Total flight time for these missions was 53 hours, 55 minutes, 27 seconds.

Mercury-Redstone 3

Date: May 5, 1961

Astronaut: Alan B. Shepard Jr.

Summary: 15 minutes, 22 seconds  Suborbital flight that successfully put the first American in space

Above, a commemorative stamp issued in 2011 for the first American in space. The Soviet Union had the first human in space in April 1961. Shepard was the first American in space, three weeks later. Shepard was also part of the Apollo 14 crew and is one of 12 astronauts to have walked on the moon. He died in 1998.

Mercury-Redstone 4

Date: July 21, 1961

Astronaut: Virgil I. Grissom

Summary: 15 minutes, 37 seconds  Successful suborbital flight, but the spacecraft sank shortly after splashdown.

Mercury-Atlas 6

Date: Feb. 20, 1962

Astronaut: John H. Glenn Jr.

Summary: 4 hours, 55 minutes, 23 seconds  Three-orbit flight that placed the first American into orbit. This was nearly a year after a Soviet cosmonaut had been the first to orbit the planet.

Mercury-Atlas 7

Date: May 24, 1962

Astronaut: Scott M. Carpenter

Summary: 4 hours, 56 minutes, 5 seconds Confirmed the success of the Mercury-Atlas 6 by duplicating the flight

Mercury-Atlas 8

Date: Oct. 3, 1962

Astronaut: Walter M. Schirra

Summary: 9 hours, 13 minutes, 11 seconds  Six-orbit engineering test flight

Mercury-Atlas 9

Date: May 15-16, 1963

Astronaut: L. Gordon Cooper Jr.

Summary: 34 hours, 19 minutes, 49 seconds  Completed 22 orbits to evaluate effects of one day in space

MATH MATTERS

Katherine Johnson was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2015. She is 97.

Katherine Johnson was born in 1918 in an area of West Virginia that did not offer schooling for black students past the eighth grade. She would go on to help desegregate West Virginia University, and her brilliance in mathematics got her a job with NASA in 1953. She worked at NASA until she retired in 1983. Today the new Katherine G. Johnson Computational Research Facility will be dedicated in her name. Her calculations were crucial in the success of the Mercury missions that put the first Americans in space. Johnson was so valuable to the program that astronaut John H. Glenn requested she personally recheck the calculations made by electronic computers before his mission to become the first American to orbit Earth.

FIRST STEPS

Today NASA looks to send humans to Mars  about 49 million miles away. The first step toward its journey began with Alan Shepard Jr.s Mercury flight in 1961 that Johnson calculated.

Lift, flip and land

The image above was created by NASA in the 1960s to show Shepards trajectory, partially planned by Johnson. After the success of the mission, President John F. Kennedy challenged the nation on May 25, 1961, to be the first to land a man on the moon. (Shepards rocket is indicated by the red outline in the graphic below.)



LAUNCH VEHICLES

Modern rockets such as the Pegasus are capable of being launched from an aircraft and taking small payloads into low Earth orbit. The larger Delta IV and Atlas V rockets are expected to be replaced by more powerful heavy-payload-capable rockets called Vulcans by 2019.

Sources: NASA, Space.com, Marshal Space Flight Center Photos from NASA
My old college pal Frank Mickadeit, whom you may remember as a Register columnist before he bailed for the greater job security of lawyering, was understandably perturbed while studying his Orange County sample ballot last week. He shot me an email  maybe there was a typo on the endorsements page?

The far-right American Independent Party lists endorsements for 12 Republicans candidates for Congress and the state Legislature, while the Republican Party lists just three. County Registrar of Voters Neal Kelley assured me there were no typos  these were the endorsements filed by the state chairmen of the two parties.

Fred Whitaker, chairman of the Republican Party of Orange County, told me that because of the complexity of the state GOP endorsement process, the initial focus was on the most competitive races in the county. Republican Ling Ling Changs state Senate matchup against Democrats Sukhee Kang and Josh Newman, and Republican Young Kims defense of her Assembly seat against Sharon Quirk-Silva could determine whether Democrats regain their two-thirds supermajority in each of those chambers.

The partys endorsement for state Sen. John Moorlach was a sign of support during a period when fellow Republican Don Wagner, a termed-out assemblyman, was planning to get in the race. He subsequently decided not to run.

Those were the endorsements filed by the March 16 deadline to appear in the sample ballot. The GOP has subsequently endorsed eight more state and federal candidates on Orange County ballots.

And its not so surprising that the American Independent Party endorsed Republicans, since the only American Independent candidates on Orange County ballots are running for president. As for their GOP choices, there are three distinctly non-establishment picks. And there are endorsements in two races for people who arent even on the ballot for those contests.

Perhaps the AIP endorsement process isnt quite as sophisticated as Republicans. Email inquiries to AIP officials were not returned.

The next president

If Hillary Clinton wins every state that Democrats have won since 1992 and she wins Florida, she will surpass the 270 electoral college votes required to become president, the Washington Post blogger Chris Cillizza points out.

Clinton leads Donald Trump in Florida by 5 percentage points, according to Real Clear Politics aggregation of tthe five most recent polls  the most recent of which shows her in front by 13 points and continuing a trend line of pulling away.

But Cillizza also offers several scenarios in which Trump displays crossover appeal that could carry the day.

One is winning Florida, Ohio and Wisconsin in addition to the usual red states. Another is a Midwest sweep of Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Either of those scenarios would be breakthroughs, as the GOP presidential nominee hasnt won Wisconsin since 1984 and hasnt won Michigan wince 1988.

On the other hand, the usual rules dont seem to apply to Trump.

Candidate forum

Ill be moderating a candidates forum at 6 p.m. Monday in the race to replace outgoing Rep. Loretta Sanchez, D-Orange. Its free and open to the public, at Memorial Hall, Chapman University, Orange. Event sponsors are Orange County Young Democrats and Chapman Universitys Republican and Democratic clubs.

Democrats Joe Dunn and Bao Nguyen, Republicans Bob Peterson, Lynn Schott and Louie Contreras, and independent Nancy Trinidad Marin are confirmed. Democrat Lou Correa told me hes scheduled to be out of town and Republican Rodolfo Rudy Gaona was invited but had not confirmed as of Saturday.

Im looking forward to seeing Contreras and Marin, who like Gaona, have filed no fundraising paperwork and have yet to attend any forums.

Contact the writer: mwisckol@ocregister.com
New regulations announced Thursday by the Food and Drug Administration have created fears that some in Orange Countys vaping industry could be driven out of business.

Randy Freer, owner of P.O.E.T., a Seal Beach manufacturer of e-liquid for electronic cigarettes, said the changes potentially mean a slow death sentence.

The FDA said e-cigarettes will be regulated as tobacco products and that manufacturers must submit applications to sell their products, disclose manufacturing processes and ingredients and undergo inspections.

It potentially puts 99 percent of the vaping industry out of business, Freer said. None of us are against fair regulation. The only thing we wanted was to not be classified as tobacco.

The American Vaping Association said the cost of preparing an application could be millions of dollars, driving more business to well-funded Big Tobacco companies. The industry is also grappling with a California law, taking effect June 9, that raises the legal age to use traditional cigarettes and e-cigarettes from 18 to 21.

Norm Bour, a Newport Beach consultant to the vaping industry, said he expects that as e-cig businesses are driven out, a black market will emerge.

The industry will not go away, but a lot of the minor players will not be able to survive, Bour said. The demand by the public is very, very strong for this product.

Bour predicted lawsuits challenging the tobacco product classification since synthetic nicotine can be used as an ingredient.

Lets say you take a vaping liquid that has no tobacco in it, can you call it a tobacco product? he said. Theres a tremendous amount of gray area.

Other companies said they are still reviewing the lengthy document the FDA released when issuing the new rules.

I think everyone is gonna be in the phase of lets digest this 499-page document, said Jay Oku, sales director at Five Pawns, an Irvine vaping liquid manufacturer.

Contact the writer: cperkes@ocregister.com 714-796-3686
Somewhat to my surprise, the decision to go to war in Iraq in 2002 has been a major issue in this years race for the White House.

Sen. Bernie Sanders has questioned the judgment of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for voting for the war when she was in the Senate. Donald Trump has used his early opposition to the war as a selling point in his quest for the Republican nomination.

I am now the only Republican remaining in Congress of the six in the House who voted against going to war in Iraq. It has been both fascinating and surprising to me that what was certainly the most unpopular vote I ever cast has very slowly become possibly the most popular.

The night before that 2002 vote I was told of a poll in my district that showed 74 percent of my constituents supported the war, with 17 percent undecided. Only 9 percent opposed the war.

I had voted for the first Gulf War in 1991 after attending briefings by Gen. Colin Powell, Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf and other high-ranking officials which made Saddam Hussein sound like the second-coming of Hitler.

I then watched Husseins so-called elite troops surrender to CNN camera crews or empty tanks. I realized then that the threat had been greatly exaggerated.

Just before the second Iraq war vote, I read everything I possibly could on the situation. Fortune Magazine had an article entitled, We win  what then? and said another war in Iraq would make American soldiers sitting ducks for Islamic terrorists.

U.S. News and World Report had a headline asking, Why the rush to war? We had many leaders who were simply too eager to go to war.

When the administration found out that I was leaning against the war, I was called to the White House and put in a small security room with National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and CIA Director George Tenet.

I asked about the estimate by Lawrence Lindsay, the presidents main economic adviser, that a war with Iraq would cost us $200 billion. That had been on the front-page of the Washington Post that day, or possibly a few days earlier.

Dr. Rice said, Oh no  the war [would] cost no more than $50 or $60 billion and that we would get some of that back from our allies. Now we know that this war has cost us $2 or $3 trillion.

I asked at that meeting if you could get past all the traditional conservative positions of being opposed to massive foreign aid, huge deficit spending and requiring U.S. taxpayers to foot almost the entire bill for enforcing U.N. resolutions on Iraq, did they have any evidence of any eminent threat?

They did not have any such evidence, and Mr. Tenet confirmed that in his first speech at Georgetown University the day after he resigned.

In Evan Thomass book, Ikes Bluff, he wrote that President Dwight Eisenhower would periodically sigh to Andy Goodpaster (his chief of staff), God help the nation when it has a president who doesnt know as much about the military as I do.

President Eisenhower did not have to prove he was a great military leader, so he was not eager to go to war. In more recent years, we have had too many top leaders who apparently want to be modern-day Winston Churchills.

They seem to feel more powerful and important when leading a war. What we really need are more leaders who are satisfied simply giving us peace and prosperity.

Rep. John J. Duncan, Jr., R-Knoxville, is the U.S. Representative for Tennessees 2nd Congressional District.
In accordance with his wishes, revered Buddhist monk Fu Hou was mummified upon his death in 2012. But his companions at Chongfu Temple, in southeastern China, felt the need to do something more in order to commemorate his devotion to Buddhism. So they made the decision to cover his body in gold, an honor reserved for the holiest of men.

Born in 1919, Fu Hou began practicing Buddhism at the age of 13 and devoted his whole life to it, until his death at age 94. His peers and disciples remember him as a quiet, compassionate person who meticulously practiced his beliefs until the very end. Shortly before his death, he had expressed the desire for his body to be preserved. And after his passing, two mummification experts were brought in to wash, treat, and place his body in a sitting position inside a large pottery jar. Preservatives like Crushed charcoal and sandalwood were stuffed into the jar before being sealed shut.

Photo: Chinatopix

The jar was opened in January this year during a special ceremony, four years after the mummification process, and Fu Hous body was found to be intact without any sign of deterioration, except for his dried out skin. This was a sign of Fu Hous purity, as it is believed that only a truly virtuous monk will remain intact long after his mummification.

The monks mummified body was washed, covered in layers of gauze and lacquer, and finally covered in a layer of gold leaf. Finally, the human gold statue was placed in a glass chamber protected by an anti-theft system, in the ancestral hall of shrines of Dongdan temple. Monk Fu Hou is now placed on the mountain for people to worship, said Li Ren, the temples head abbot.

As bizarre as covering a mummified body into a gold statue to be worshiped may seem, its nothing compared to the ancient Sokushinbutsu self-mummification tradition practiced by Japanese Buddhist monks.

via Shanghaiist
Dangerous electromagnetic radiationinvisible and odorlessfloods the environment, especially in cities, but it can be measured. Heres how.

Jeromy Johnson

Jeromy Johnson, a civil engineer who became hypersensitive to radiation, has put together a package of instruments that measure radio frequency microwaves, magnetic and electric fields, dirty electricity, and general EMF detection.



Dirty electricity means abnormal power surges that are dangerous. It comes into a house through the electrical supply and can be generated by devices in the home.

Johnsons package, costing $703, measures radio frequency microwaves, magnetic and electric fields, dirty electricity and general EMF detection.

Recommended for measuring RF microwaves is the Gigahertz Solutions HF35C for $299.

Magnetic and electric fields can be tracked by the Gigahertz ME3830B for $292.

A Stetzer Microsurge Meter for $100 is recommended for dirty electricity.

A basic AM radio for about $12 is recommended for general EMF detection.

We can testify to the radiation-measuring power of a common radio. When the light dimmer is on in our home, the static produced on our battery-operated radio obliterates any sound. Light dimmers are a source of electric pollution.

Wifi with Cece from WACA TV on Vimeo.

Groups Can Purchase Packages

Institutions such as libraries, schools and offices can easily purchase such a package. This should be a minor item for the well-off families that populate New York City apartments. The most danger from radiation is in the highest floors with the biggest picture windows.



The Ashland, Mass., public library has an Acoustimeter that measures radiation two ways and can be borrowed by patrons. Other libraries and schools should also purchase such instruments for use by residents and students. Offices should have such instruments. The library hosted a six-part series on the dangers of radiation that concluded earlier this year.



A request that the Westhampton, New York, library purchase Acoustimeters or similar instruments and make them available to patrons has been made to the library board headed by Tom Moore and to Westhampton Beach Mayor Maria Moore, wife of Tom Moore. Residents noted that libraries cultivate knowledge and that people need knowledge of the many radiation sources in their homes. No response had been received as of press time.



The Westhampton library had $4.1 million in cash and cash equivalents as of June 30, 2015, and net assets of $6.5 million according to the annual audit. It has earmarked millions for capital improvements on a building that is five years old.

Specialists in radiation pollution can be hired such as Matthew Waletzke, who did a survey of our apartment in March and who was the subject of a 3,047-word feature in the May 26, 2010 New York Times.

An Acoustimeter that we purchased for $353 tracks many of the measurments that Waletzke made during his visit to our apartment. When the microwave oven is on, the Acoustimeter registers the peak of six volts per meter and the measurement of microwatts per square meter is in the 10,000 range out to at least ten feet away from the oven.

It jumps back and forth from 5,000 to 10,000 microwatts near the windows. The apartment buildings in our area feature large, sometimes wrap-a-round windows. Our 20-square-block area has 120 cell towers and 1,904 antennas.

Advice of EMF health advocates is not to have a microwave oven at all or go into another room if its turned on. The advocates say microwaves are also bad because they re-arranged the molecules in food, lessening its nutritional value.

Use of an Acoustimeter Explained

Cecelia Doucette, who is active in the Ashland library and who urged it to purchase the Acoustimeter, has created an informative video on how to use the instrument.

She walks viewers through various rooms in her home and shows the amount of radiation present.

She shows how to dismantle dangerous and unnecessary Wi-Fi links on computers and computer printers. Her computer printer, next to her work station, unbeknownst to her was emitting powerful radiation.

She shows how she had to turn off two antennas on the printer to stop the radiation.

Other stops in her journey around her home were to a cellphone that showed high voltage and radiation measurements. She urged cellphone users to keep the devices in airplane mode most of the time and never carry one in a pocket or a bra.



Another stop was to a cordless phone which sent the Acoustimeter to the top of the voltage section and to the 10,000 microwatts per square meter range.



The microwave oven was shown to max out just in front of it and the radiation continued at high levels even 15 feet away. Doucette heats small portions of food in her countertop electric oven.

Health advocates say cordless phones are particularly dangerous because they radiate 24/7. They recommend corded phones, wired computer keyboards, wired internet connections and a wire mouse.

Laptop computers were also shown to emit high levels of radiation. Advice is to stay at least three feet away from the screen and never put a laptop on a lap.The Doucette video should be shown in every classroom and library in the U.S. Schools and libraries are supposed to be seekers of information, not evaders of it
Polska Grupa Zbrojeniowa, a holding company comprised of Poland's state-owned defense companies, has hired New York-based lobbying firm Park Strategies to promote the U.S and Polands bilateral relations and communicate with Washington the current defense objectives of that country.

Park Strategies will represent the Warsaw-based, government-sponsored corporation, which includes about 60 companies operating in Polands dense, aerospace and military technologies sectors, for purpose of promoting U.S. support for Poland and the security initiatives of its military.

The scope of the work includes arranging meetings with key Congressional staff of defense and foreign relations committees to establish a dialogue on the need to increase NATO defense objectives and assist Poland's strategic initiatives, engaging with the U.S. defense community to promote greater collaboration on military matters, and leveraging media interviews and meetings with U.S.-based international organizations to present the point of view of the Polish government and its current defense needs.

Warsaw in recent years has requested that the U.S. government bolster its military presence in eastern Europe and supply more NATO troops, spurred, in part, by Russias push into Ukraine and a recent increase of Russian military operations along its western border, moves that have caused tension with neighboring Poland.

NATO, drawing criticism from Moscow, erected its latest European defense system in Romania this week. A second missile-defense base is also planned to break ground in Poland, followed by major military exercises to begin in that country sometime this spring.

Poland's President, Andrzej Duda, also recently drew international criticism in national security matters when he rejected the European Unions proposal of compulsory migrant quotas that would distribute asylum seekers from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq to various EU member states.

Duda, who assumed office in August, is affiliated with the Law and Justice Party, Poland's national-conservative party that won parliamentary elections in October and controversially reformed Polands constitution and later appointed state heads of public TV and radio.

Park Strategies will also assist PGZ in the biannual July NATO summit to be held in Warsaw, which will be attended by President Barack Obama and other world leaders. Poland plans to propose an increase in its financial commitments to NATO during that meeting. Duda in April kicked off a series of foreign visits in preparation for the summit.

Per the terms of the contract, PGZ will pay Park Strategies $15,000 per month for the work. The pact was signed by Park Strategies executive VP, partner and managing director Christopher DAmato.

Park Strategies was founded by former New York Republican Senator Al DAmato.
Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc recently signed off an ADB-financed project themed Support to Border Areas Development in three Indochinese countries that will run for six years with total investment of $122.1 million.

The project aims to support the Cambodia-Laos-Vietnam Development Triangle Area (CLV-DTA) where the Vietnamese provinces of Kon Tum, Gia Lai, Dak Lak, Dak Nong and Binh Phuoc are working to become more active growth centers.

Local socio-economic matters are also take into account within the project, including agriculture, forestry and tourism potential; strengthening human resources in theses areas; and improving living standards for poor people.

Border provinces will be the main beneficiaries of the project. Photo by FinancePlus

According to the project report, it will also help Vietnam to improve critical transport infrastructure, connecting areas with high economic potential with domestic and international markets.

Support to Border Areas Development will be implemented over six years with total investment of $122.1 million that will be managed by the Ministry of Planning and Investment.

The ADB said that the poverty rate in Viet Nam's DTA provinces is the second highest in the country, and poverty among ethnic minority groups remains high.

The Cambodia-Laos-Viet Nam Development Triangle Area (CLV-DTA) was established in 1999 and is located at the junction of Cambodia, Laos and Viet Nam. It covers 13 provinces in the neighboring countries.

Expanded access to markets outside the DTA, such as Phnom Penh, Vientiane, Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, will create the opportunity for products to reach higher-value markets and the largest economic centers in the three countries.
As a young girl, Air Force Deputy Surgeon General and Chief of the Nurse Corps Maj. Gen. Dorothy Hogg always found herself placing band-aides on dolls and requesting doctor kits and microscopes.

In the upper east corner of Maine, in the town of Limestone, the general was born the dependent of an enlisted member of the U.S. Air Force. I was always intrigued by what my father did. He was on the law enforcement side, said Gen. Hogg. I just remember him in his uniform. Dad was very particular  thats where I got a lot of my traits. He always looked so sharp in his uniform.

Gen. Hogg recalls her fathers job being a tough one. People would come to the house all hours of the night, saying, Sergeant Cook, we need you.

While it was her fathers career that first introduced the general to the Air Force life, it was not until much later that she considered following in his footsteps.

Growing up, she moved around a lot overseas to Japan when she was 5 and to Guam during middle school. Most other bases where she spent her childhood were East Coast bases the final one being Pease Air Force Base, N.H., where she spent most of her time.

Gen. Hogg recalled always having an interest in health and medicine. Growing up, I had a lot of family members who were nurses. I knew from a very young age that I wanted to be a nurse, she said. As I got older, I would read books about Clara Barton and Florence Nightingale they fascinated me.

A love for nursing.

In high school, the general took a nurses aid course taught in a nursing home. The class introduced Gen. Hogg to caring for older adults, which solidified her love for nursing. Getting training in that nursing home  was probably one of the best experiences of my life, she said.

Many of the nursing homes residents had no family, or none who came to visit. I got attached to several of them. I would come on my off-duty time and take them out, said Gen. Hogg. I would drive them in my car and we would go to the mall. I developed a lot of relationships with the residents. I suppose I was like a granddaughter to them.

Two of the residents in particular stuck out in the generals mind. One was an older gentleman whom she would help with morning routines, and sit and chat about where he had been and what he had done. I remember thinking to myself, these are people who have forged the paths for us to do what we do  and to have them in a situation where they are totally dependent on somebody else and unable to care for themselves really broke my heart, she recalled.

The greatest influence on the generals adolescence was her high school English teacher. I was a senior in high school and she took me under her wing, the general said. She introduced me to the University of Southern Maine through a college visit.

Gen. Hoggs teacher took her to the school of nursing because she knew thats what she wanted to do. [My teacher] was a very levelheaded sounding board, said the general. I still think of her today. I remember thinking  I want to be like her  I want to be someone who cares about somebody else like she cared about me  and she didnt have to.

I think she would be incredibly proud  to know where I was at and where I am now.

An unexpected career path.

I am extremely humbled to be where I am today, said the general. I oftentimes think, how did I get here?

While I was in school and college, [military] recruiters would talk to me  but it was not in my career plan to join the military, said Gen. Hogg.

I met and married my husband, who was active duty enlisted. I knew I did not want to start my career over every time he rotated assignments. So we decided I would join the Air Force, she recalled. I remember thinking, what do I have to lose  my commitment was only three years  32 years later I am still here.

After the first three years, Gen. Hoggs family moved to Michigan, but she never considered getting out of the Air Force. She applied to go to nurse practitioner school and was accepted. That launched her womens health nurse practitioner career early.

I loved moving and experiencing a new environment every three years, said the general. Growing up military and having had that experience of moving around a lot, I didnt know anything different, so it was normal to me.

It has been a very good career. I have been given the opportunity to do many different jobs I dont think a civilian life would have offered me, she said. The Air Force has been very, very good to me. I have no regrets.

I love what I am doing now [as Deputy Surgeon General] because I have the opportunity to influence change, which I think is really important.

The right things, for the right reasons.

According to the general, job performance is number one. You have to show them that you can do the work and that you have the capability to do more.

What I tell people is do the best you can do wherever youre planted, said the general. You will shine if you focus on your job and whats required of you to do your job.

In the military, not everyone gets promoted. When you go to meet the promotion board, you could be nine out of the eight theyre going to promote and youre not going to get promoted, said the general. Sometimes you can do the best you can do and still not get recognized. But is that within your control?  So why ruin the rest of your life and have a negative attitude because of it?

Dont get discouraged if youre not getting recognized, said the general. Keep doing the very best you can. Keep doing the right things for the right reasons and the recognition will come.

As a healthcare practitioner, if I know I have provided a patient with the best care I possibly could, that is my reward, she said.

Theres always going to be a door thats going to open or a door thats going to close, said Gen. Hogg. If something doesnt work out, Ill move onto the next thing. Its important to have a positive attitude and a desire to make a difference in whatever it is that youre doing.
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The United Nations has said it will call on the international community to pool a $48.5 million aid package following a request from the Vietnamese government for help to combat the worsening drought and saline intrusion.

During a press conference on May 6 in Ho Chi Minh City, Jan Eliasson, deputy general secretary of the UN, said the UN will assume a moderator role in coordinating international organizations' efforts to help Vietnam fight the severe drought and salinity in the south of the country.

Eliasson said these organizations, after being informed of the natural disaster in Vietnam, will provide help in the form of a $48.5 million aid package, which is based on the calculations made by the Vietnamese government.

In addition, the UN has also urged these parties to fund a $3.4 billion assistance bundle to help 20 countries, including Vietnam, to fight climate change. Eliasson said Vietnam should cooperate with other countries in the region to form joint-action programs to limit the impacts of global warming.

"Millions of people are exposed to the risks of drought and salinity due to the use of fertilizers and rising sea levels that are affecting the Mekong River water resources. We must be aware and act now for the future of our children," he said.

Regarding the mass fish deaths in Vietnam's central provinces, Eliasson said the UN is ready to provide analytical support to help find the cause.

Earlier on May 5, Eliasson and Vietnam's Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Cao Duc Phat visited the southern province of Ben Tre - a region that has been severely affected by drought and saltwater intrusion.

During the deputy general secretary's visit to Vietnam from May 3 to 6, Eliasson also discussed the implementation of sustainable development goals and preparations for the upcoming World Humanitarian Summit with government and UN officials.
Beyond the changes at Hy-Vee, several other operators are sprucing up their stores or building new locations:

Bakers: Three stores are in line for remodeling. The stores at 132nd Street and West Maple Road, at 156th Street and West Dodge Road and at 17370 Lakeside Hills Plaza each will see about $90,000 of work, building permits indicate.

Company spokeswoman Sheila Lowrie confirmed that interior remodeling work is on the way but said she couldnt yet provide details.

We are always looking for ways that we can improve our customer shopping experience, she said.

Fareway: The new Fareway Meat Market plans to open May 26 at Loveland Centre, at 90th Street and West Center Road.

The gourmet meat and seafood shop will be home to a steel sculpture of a bull, in a nod to what will be one of the markets signature products  beef.

At 6,000 square feet, the market will be a new concept for the Boone, Iowa, grocer. The intent is to provide all of the makings for an exceptional grilling experience, spokesman Garrett Piklapp said.

Offerings also will include gourmet cheeses, beers and wines.

The shops main attraction will be a 56-foot meat case, which will also offer a large seafood selection. Thats about 50 percent larger than the typical Fareway grocery store counter, Piklapp said.

Fareway operates more than 100 stores in the Midwest, including four in the Omaha area: at 90th and Maple Streets; near 72nd Street and Giles Road; near 168th and Harrison Streets; and in eastern Council Bluffs.

Family Fare: Supermarket operator SpartanNash released a list of eight stores that will be rebranded as Family Fare stores. Seven are being remodeled: 5110 S. 108th St., 14444 West Center Road, 2650 N. 90th St., 3003 N. 108th St., 3026 S. 24th St. and 7402 N. 30th St. in Omaha, and 1801 Valley View Drive in Council Bluffs, the company told The World-Herald.

The store at 1510 Harlan Drive in Omaha will have a name change but wont be remodeled. Dates for reopening events havent been announced.

These stores are undergoing major remodels ranging from $1 million to $3 million, for a total reinvestment of $14 million, said Meredith Gremel, vice president of corporate affairs and communications.

Thats on top of earlier remodels of three Supermercado Nuestra Familia locations and six Family Fare stores in 2015, for a total of a $31 million investment, Gremel said.

The remodeling work will include new interior and exterior decor, new and expanded product offerings, and the addition of Living Well healthy food departments and welcome centers. The former Bag N Save store on West Center Road will have a Starbucks.

With the Living Well sections, Weve made it affordable to eat healthy, said Tom Swanson, vice president for retail operations in SpartanNashs western region.

Aldi: The chain has set an opening date for its seventh Omaha location. The store, near 168th Street and West Maple Road, will open May 26. A grand opening event will feature free shopping bags for the first 1,000 customers, gift certificates for the first 100 shoppers, and a produce for a year sweepstakes.

Fresh Thyme: Construction continues at two stores. The produce-centered market will open its first Omaha store near 147th Street and West Maple Road. A spokeswoman said the operator has not set a date for the opening, but a leasing representative for the development said the store will most likely open in mid-June.

Crews have also been at work at a second Fresh Thyme location, the former No Frills at 132nd Street and West Center Road. Fresh Thyme has said that location would open this fall.

Kum & Go: Even gas station convenience stores are sprucing up their food selection. Ten Kum & Go stores around the Omaha metro area will see remodels this spring, including expansions to their kitchens so they can serve more freshly prepared food like pizza, sandwiches, salads, baked goods and breakfast items, company spokeswoman Kristie Bell said.

Kum & Go is adding services that many other Omaha convenience stores have added. Buckys, QuikTrip and Caseys stores here all have added or expanded their kitchens and food offerings in the past two years.

Among the Kum & Go stores being revamped is the location at 18908 Q St., which will more than double the size of its kitchen, store manager Megan Demont said. She said demand for food is growing, from Millard West High School students and employees in the morning, and from construction workers at lunchtime.

People are hungry, and we like to keep them fed, she said.

World-Herald staff writer Paige Yowell contributed to this report.

Contact the writer: 402-444-1336, barbara.soderlin@owh.com
California has officially approved a resolution to recognize May 15 as Ao Dai Day in tribute to Vietnam's traditional dress.

Senator Janet Nguyen, the author of the resolution wrote, on her Facebook: It was a great honor to have Attorney Jenny Do and members of the Vietnamese American community to join me on the Senate Floor to declare May 15th as Ao Dai Day.

Senator Janet Nguyen (blue ao dai, middle) and the Vietnamese-American community at the ceremony. photo by Jenny Do.

The ao dai has long been seen as a symbol of Vietnams culture, so the Vietnamese-American community in California has been pushing for a day to celebrate the national dress.

The resolution was also backed by senators Jim Beall and Richard Pan.

To honor the country's traditional dress, the community also holds a festival every two years, which coincides with the special day this year on May 15.
Tamil Nadu polls: Food discounts to encourage youngsters to vote

Chennai

oi-Shubham

Chennai, May 6: The Tiruchi chapter of Young Indians (Yi) and the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) have announced a special initiative 'Show the ink, see prices sink' to encourage voters under 25 years to cast their ballots in the May 16 election in Tamil Nadu, according to The Hindu.

Assembly Polls 2016 Coverage; Know Your State: Tamil Nadu

Under the initiative, discounts will be given to the young voters at nearly 100 food outlets in the city. The voters will have to produce proof of age to claim the discounts. They can be claimed on May 16 and through that week. [The app that gives all info on Tamil Nadu polls]

Two hundred and thirty-four constituencies in the southern state are going to polls on May 16. The election this year is being seen as a muti-cornered fight between the ruling AIADMK and its allies, the DMK-Congress and others' alliance, the People's Welfare Front comprising the DMDK, MDMK, Left and others, PMK and BJP.

The results will be declared on May 19.
Kerala polls: Parties are using Jisha's rape & murder to win election

Feature

oi-Shubham

By Shubham

The brutal rape and murder of Jisha in Kerala has, before anything else, become an election issue and both the Congress-led UDF and Left-ruled LDF are trying their best to capitalise on the issue to reach their respective political goals.

Assembly Polls 2016 Coverage; Can't polls be held in a comfortable season?

Kerala's record in crime against women is getting worse; nobody gave it a thought till the Jisha issue?

It is unfortunate that instead of taking care of the women's safety, the political forces in this country make it an election plank to corner the Opposition. According to the National Crime Records Bureau, the rate of crime against women in the southern state is higher than even the national average; did the authorities take note of the fact and better the situation till the murder of Jisha happened just ahead of the May 16 Assembly election? [TN far safer for women than Kerala]

Have the authorities in Kerala given a thought to the fact that being a highly literate state (94 per cent) with a very high literacy among its women (92 per cent), a healthy sex ratio at birth (966) and lowest mortality rate (167), Kerala still has a poor record in crime against women? [Kerala rape issue coverage: Our media just doesn't prefer Dalits and South India]

Between 2005 and 2014, the rate of rape in Kerala has grown by over 400 per cent, assaults by over 200 per cent and sexual harassment by almost 1000 per cent.

It is expected that better education and stronger community networks will help women have a stronger voice against the evils of patriarchy but the story has not been encouraging still. According to experts, women with property rights face less violence. Did her poor economic status see Jisha meet such a pathetic fate?

No time for deeper understanding: It's only polls that matter

The political leaders are not ready to give the deeper reasons any thought for they have no time. They are busy rushing to the hospital where Jisha's shocked mother is admitted. Even Prime Minister Narendra Modi is set to meet her on May 11, just like he had rushed to the southern state immediately after the devastating fire in Puttingal Temple on April 10.

But even Jisha was not the last woman to meet such experience. Days after that gruesome incident, another teenage girl was gangraped in an autorickshaw in the state, which clearly suggests that politicisation of the Jisha issue is only helping the parties prepare their strategy to grab power. As for the women in the state---they have remained vulnerable as before.

What's the guarantee that these parties are not shedding crocodile tears for Jisha?

It is difficult to believe the parties, all the more because they have zero credibility now. The Left is attacking the Oommen Chandy government over this issue, saying it was callous in handling it. This same Left has joined hands with the Congress in the just-concluded West Bengal Assembly election. What is the guarantee that they are not using Jisha's murder to prove to the people that they are actually a party different from the Congress when it has come to Kerala?

That's where they have lost their repectability. For power, they can align with the 'class enemy' in one state and also for power, they can use a poor woman's horrendous death in another.
Why Kerala rape issue's media coverage is shocking

Feature

oi-Shubham

By Shubham

The brutal rape and murder of Jisha at Perumbavoor in Kerala has turned out to be the 'hottest' topic in poll-bound Kerala. Parties are busy in mud-slinging. Even the prime minister of the country, Narendra Modi, is scheduled to meet the shocked mother of the deceased woman in hospital.

Assembly Polls Coverage 2016; Parties using Jisha rape & murder to win Kerala polls

The compulsion of the politicians are understandable although it will be interesting to see whether they remain equally bothered about the gruesome death that came to light quite late after the election of May 16 gets over.

How is the country's national media seeing the Jisha story?

But we are not concerned about the politicians' 'genuine' concern. Our question is for those who claim to hate the 'dirty politics' and hold the political leaders for every second mess that is found in the country---the media.

Why was Jisha straightaway named in public when Jyoti's identity was kept secret?

Once the gruesome story of Jisha came to the open, she was tagged as "Kerala's Nirbhaya" on lines of Jyoti Singh Pandey who faced a similar experience in a cold night in December 2012 in New Delhi. But then, we all saw the woman in Kerala being named in the public. If we had thought out such a honourable name for Jyoti, why was no protective gear suggested for Jisha apart from that temporary tag of "Nirbhaya of Kerala"? That not only shows the media's hypocrisy but also the lack of respect it had for the poor woman in the southern state. Section 228A of the IPC clearly makes this act punishable but how many are caring?

A Brahmin rape victim's honour more valuable than a Dalit's?

Why was Jisha named openly when Jyoti was not (till her mother said last year that she had no shames naming her lost daughter)? Was it because our elite media thought the honour of a Brahmin (Jyoti) was more valuable to protect than that of a Dalit (Jisha)? This approach exposes our narrow mindset and expecting respect for women from such a mental set-up is perhaps too much. Dear PM, your appeal to respect women is bound to fall on deaf ears.

Why was Jisha's photos published at liberty?

The media even had no qualms in publishing/releasing photographs of Jisha while we doubt if a single photograph of Jyoti has come out in the public domain today. In Kolkata, a rape victim Suzette Jordan defied all odds to come out and gave her identity, something which was appreciated in all quarters. But nobody cared to give Jisha's identity a protection. Is it because she had a weak social identity? This is a question that not just the media but we, as an entire society, need to answer to.

Why little coverage for Jisha unlike Jyoti in 2012?

The hypocrisy in the mainstream media's coverage is also staggering. Around the time after Jyoti's gangrape in a moving bus, the entire country was shaken, so much so that even the then Manmohan Singh government had to inititate legal reforms to ensure that those who commit crime against women are dealt with more sternly.

Even the gruesome rape and murder of a student in Bengal went largely unnoticed

The Capital was so stirred that many still believe that it was one of the final nails on the declining UPA II's coffin and marked the end of Sheila Dikshit's 15-year-rule in Delhi the following year. Jisha's death is also getting a lot of coverage in the local news channels but how many national channels have taken up this issue as a duty to address the deteriorating safety conditions of women in the country?

A few years ago, a student was brutally gangraped and murdered in West Bengal and the state's chief minister, Mamata Banerjee, was even found dubbing the protesters as supporters of the Opposition.

Social status, geography important for the media to respond to a crime against humanity?

Yet, not many national channels had taken up the issue despite the magnitude of the crime and the CM politicising the killing of an innocent girl. So as like the position in the social hierarchy, the geographical location also determines the media's response to a grave offence like rape and murder?

Why say a "Dalit woman raped"? What has rape to do with the social status?

We also ask why it is being said in Jisha's case that a Dalit woman has been raped and murdered? Is the identity of a Dalit so very important to make one understand the seriousness of a rape? We thought it's a crime against humanity and not a social group. Given the sharp political polarisation we have in our country now, mentioning the term Dalit perhaps helps both the pro-saffron and anti-saffron parts of the society politically to which the 'liberal/illiberal' media caters.

Both the pro-saffron and anti-saffron media has a hidden agenda in this

For the former, reminding the Dalit identity is important for it will give the saffron leaders a chance to attack the 'secular' forces of Kerala on the point that they have done little for the oppressed classes. For the later, a mention of Dalit will convey that 'acche din' (good days) are here for the well-offs and upper castes. 'No matter how much he reveres Ambedkar ahead of the UP polls, the Dalits have no place in Modi's india' is the inherent message.

It is a shocking truth that the unscruplous media is setting the agenda for its own commercial success and to appease the respective powers behind. Souls like Jisha are just petty pawns in this big dirty game.
Terror in NorthEast Delhi: Is it the next Azamgarh?

Feature

oi-Vicky

By Vicky

Every few years the agencies discover a place which has turned into a hot bed for alleged terror related activities. While Azamgarh in Uttar Pradesh was on the radar for a long time for alleged activities of the Indian Mujahideen, the focus shifted a few years later to Darabanga in Bihar.

Today the focus is NorthEast Delhi where there have been a spate of arrests including the recent one relating to the alleged Jaish-e-Mohammad module. There have been three major incidents in this part of Delhi in the recent past which has led the police to believe that this area is becoming a hot bed of illegal activities.

Alert sounded after three suspects enter Hindon Air Force station, say reports

Is NorthEast Delhi the new Azamgarh?

There are a variety of reasons why different areas become hotbeds for illegal activities. In the case of Azamgarh and Darabanga it was found that there was ample political backing a few operatives had which helped them carry out their activities without being noticed.

The modules in Azamgarh and Darabanga had become a major headache for security agencies. Several Intelligence Bureau officials who have worked in these areas have spoke about the difficulties that arise due to political pressure. In both these places, there were operatives of the Indian Mujahideen who were related to political leaders which helped them in the long run.

In the recent months there have been three major incidents in NorthEast Delhi. Earlier this week, the Delhi police arrested several persons from this area for allegedly plotting attacks on behalf of the Jaish-e-Mohammad.

A few months back the NIA carried out an arrest in this area on the suspicion that the operative was working for the ISIS. Prior to this the Delhi police had arrested one person on the charge that he was working for the al-Qaeda.

Why NorthEast Delhi?

A similar scenario is being witnessed in the case of NorthEast Delhi as well. Although no reports of political backing for these operatives have surfaced, the police say that this area is bordering Uttar Pradesh.

Not just terror operatives, but even criminals use this area as a safe hideout. The proximity to the UP border makes it easier for these persons to operate.

This area is also densely populated. Criminals prefer to seek shelter in such densely populated areas because it is always difficult to nab them. Moreover they also tend to operate among like minded people as the chances of they being busted is relatively lesser. In addition to this this area has the highest crime rate when it comes to vehicle thefts.

For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications

Story first published: Friday, May 6, 2016, 11:38 [IST]
UP: 3 arrested for rape of 20 year old

In the name of charity, Rs 50 lakh transferred to personal A/C: ED in chargesheet against Rana Ayyub

Alert sounded after three suspects enter Hindon Air Force station, say reports

India

oi-Jagriti

Ghaziabad, May 6: An alert has been sounded at Hindon Air Force station in Ghaziabad after unidentified men were spotted entering the premises.

This development has come two days after Delhi police nabbed 8 persons with Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs). These detainees were said to be part of a plot to carry out attacks in Delhi and nearby places.

According to reports, three unidentified men were seen entering Hindon Air Force Station in Ghaziabad district on Thursday night.

The gates of the air force station have been sealed after search operation failed to nab any one. All staff at the air base have been asked to remain indoors, reported Zee News.

The security of all key installations and government buildings has been beefed up after the arrest of 12 JeM militants.

Major terror attack averted in Delhi

In the past two months there have been several intelligence bureau inputs suggesting that Pakistan based militant groups would try and attack the national Capital.

JeM is suspected to be behind terror strike on the strategic Indian Air Force base in Pathankot on January 2 this year.

OneIndia News

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Story first published: Friday, May 6, 2016, 10:39 [IST]
Bombay HC decriminalises possession of beef, upholds cow slaughter in Maha

India

oi-Mukul

New Delhi, May 6: In a landmark judgement, the Bombay High Court on Friday de-criminalised possession and consumption of beef in Maharashtra. Court also upheld beef ban in the state.

The ruling by a division bench comprising Justice A.S. Oka and Justice S.C. Gupte came on a bunch of petitions challenging the provisions in the Maharashtra Animal Preservation (Amendment) Act which stipulated penal action even for possession of beef brought from outside the state.

Accordingly, while slaughter of bullocks would not be permitted, the court has permitted the import and consumption of beef from other states to Maharashtra.

The President had granted assent to the Maharashtra Animal Preservation (Amendment) Act, which prohibited slaughter of bulls and bullocks as well as possession and consumption of their meat in the state.

The Act stipulated a five-year jail term and Rs.10,000 fine for slaughter of bulls or bullocks and one-year imprisonment and Rs.2,000 fine for possession of its meat.

OneIndia News

(With inputs from IANS)
A video of a schoolgirl bullying a classmate while being cheered on by other students has gone viral on social networks.

The schoolgirl slapped her classmate 50 times in the face in their classroom until her nose was bleeding and her face swelled up.

Photos cut from the clip

None of the other students stepped in to stop the attack, and some even encouraged the girl, named Phuc, to hit her victim more.

The student who posted the clip said that Phuc often bullied classmates but none of them dared to stand up to her.

Ngo Ngoc Toan, head of the districts education department, confirmed the incident, saying the two girls had been arguing online.

We have asked the school to investigate the bulling and punish Phuc as well as her classmates who did not intervene, Toan said.
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BJP, Congress 'dharna' parties, only AAP delivers: Arvind Kejriwal

India

oi-IANS

By Ians English

New Delhi, May 6: Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Friday said the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Congress were "dharna parties" and that only the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) delivered on governance.

Referring to the protests by Congress and BJP leaders against each other over the AgustaWestland scam on Friday, Kejriwal tweeted: "BJP n Congress both r dharna parties. They do dharnas almost everyday. Today, BJP on dharna against itself. Only AAP delivers governance."

Sonia, Rahul, Manmohan detained; released later

BJP n Congress both r dharna parties. They do dharnas almost everyday. Today, BJP on dharna against itself. Only AAP delivers governance  Arvind Kejriwal (@ArvindKejriwal) May 6, 2016

Earlier in the day, scores of Congress supporters and senior leaders, including party president Sonia Gandhi and vice-president Rahul Gandhi, protested against the BJP for accusing the grand old party leaders of corruption in the Rs.3,600-crore AgustaWestland deal for 12 helicopters.

Similarly, BJP supporters staged a demonstration against the Congress before the Gandhi statue in Parliament over the AgustaWestland scam.

IANS
Perform or face compulsory retirement: Govt tells officials

India

oi-Vicky

New Delhi, May 6: The Union Government yesterday sent out a stern message to officials whose performance is under par. The decision to prematurely retire 33 officials for non-performance is a message that is meant to reach every government office.

This decision will send a strong message to all those who have been taking it easy and not performing.

It was for the first time that 33 officers of the Revenue Services including seven Group A officers were prematurely retired for non performance.

In addition to this 72 officials including six Group A officers have been dismissed in other departments after disciplinary action had been initiated.

Cracking the whip:

Sources say this is just a tip of the ice berg. A watch is being kept on the performance of all officials in other departments as well. These persons had been given ample opportunities to pull up their socks, but they failed to do so.

The complacent will be punished and the government is keeping a close watch on all these persons.

A note from the PIB read, "there is a general perception that no action is taken against the defaulting tax officials for their non performance as well as in case of harassing the tax assesses among others.

The present Government has taken various steps to change this perception following the principle of good governance. After the present Government took over two years back, it has taken strict action against such revenue officers/officials in order to fix their accountability.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi came to power on the assurance of good governance. This would need to be a collective effort and if the officials are not performing then the concept of good governance will remain a myth.

Similar exercises will be carried out in every department if officials are found to be under performing. A senior government official tells OneIndia that ample opportunities have been given to many, but they continue to remain complacent. There is no option but to act against these persons.

This decision is bound to shake up the complacent in other departments as well. Such drastic measures have become the need of the hour. There are many people who had complained of harassment and a complacent attitude by the officials which led to such a drastic action, the official also informed.

The government has been keeping a close watch on all departments under it. Monthly reports on the performance of the officials are also being sought in a bid to stem the rot, the officer also informed. These complacent officials are first asked to give an explanation and if they fail to improve their performance then proceedings are initiated against them.

OneIndia News
D-Syndicate raises its ugly head again: This time on the target are Hindu leaders

Dawood Ibrahim hatched social unrest soon after PM Modi came to power: NIA

India

oi-Jagriti

New Delhi, May 6: India's most wanted underworld don Dawood Ibrahim hatched a conspiracy to create social unrest in the country to destablise the Narendra Modi led NDA government, claimed NIA.

According to report, D-company formed a panel consisting of 10 members to "create unrest" and target RSS leaders and churches in the country.

In order to create communal hatred in the country these D-company members were assigned to target RSS leaders and churches. This has been mentioned in a charge sheet likely to be filed by NIA on Saturday.

Two BJP leaders Shirish Bangali and Pragnesh Mistry were killed by masked men in Bharuch district of Gujarat on November 2, 2015 as part of the "larger conspiracy.

The shooters later confessed the killings of BJP leaders to avenge the hanging of 1993 Mumbai serial blasts accused Yakub Memon.

Pakistan-based Javed Chikna and South Africa-based Zahid Miyan alias 'Jao' - not only masterminded the killing of Hindu leaders but had also planned attacks on religious leaders and churches so that there was "largescale communal tension in the country, found NIA during its investigation.

The NIA report also claimed that they also prepared a list of BJP-RSS members to be targeted. The probe agency also contacted Interpol to trace Chikna in Pakistan, arrest him and hand him over to India.

Revealed! Indian politicians among list of frequent callers to Dawood Ibrahim

Letters Rogatory have also been sent to Pakistan, Nepal, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and the US.

Seven D- company members Haji Patel, Mohammad Yunus Shaikh, Abdul Samad, Abid Patel, Mohammad Altaf, Mohsin Khan and Nisar Ahmed arrested last year among 10 likely to be named by NIA in its chargesheet.

Abid Patel was paid Rs 50 lakh for killing Mistry and Bangali. He is said to be brother of Javed Chikna.

Javed Chikna and Zahid Miyan will also be named in the chargesheet, however, Dawood would mentioned in the supplementary chargesheet if evidence of his role is established.

OneIndia News

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Story first published: Friday, May 6, 2016, 12:04 [IST]
Economic consideration could not weigh over land acquisition law: SC

India

oi-IANS

By Ians English

New Delhi, May 6: The Supreme Court on Thursday said that economic consideration could not weigh over the land acquisition law as it took exception to the manner in which the then Left Front government in West Bengal gave a bypass to the law for acquiring land in Singur for Tata's Nano project.

Describing as "shocking" how section 4 of the Land Acquisition Act was ignored for acquiring land in Singur, a bench of Justice V. Gopala Gowda and Justice Arun Mishra said: "The government should have applied its mind on why requirement of land was increased."

As senior counsel Abhishek Manu Singhvi appearing for Tata's urged the court to hear then with an open mind, the bench said: "Your economics can't bulldoze law...even if one person is against acquisition, the court will hear... this is not your land , you have almost got it for charity ..you are enjoying the land paid by public exchequer."

Telling the court that they went to West Bengal as the state government wanted to push economic development, Tatas told the court that in thee commercial world every state gives incentives as it pointed to Uttarakhand and Jharkhand.

Noting there was a shift in the stand of the government with the change of party in power, Tatas said: "We never said we will leave Bengal if Singur is not given to us a they showed us Singur..We liked it."

The court is hearing a plea by the West Bengal government challenging the Calcutta High Court order holding unconstitutional its Singur Land Rehabilitation and Development Act, 2011 to reclaim 400 acres given to the company.

IANS


10 held for selling fake platelets in UP's Prayagraj after 'Mosambi juice' death

In UP 166 criminals killed in encounters in past five years: Yogi

This UP village lights up on Diwali, for the first time ever!

Ex-Congress minister, others join BJP in UP

India

oi-IANS

By Ians English

Lucknow, May 6: A former Congress minister and his supporters joined the Bharatiya Janata Party's Uttar Pradesh unit here on Friday, May 6.

Welcoming ex-minister Bihari Lal Arya, legislative council ex-member Yuvraj Singh and retired IAS officer Vijay Singh into the party fold, BJP state unit president Keshav Maurya said the party's hold in the Bundelkhand region will be strengthened with their entry.

He accused the Samajwadi Party government in the state of ignoring the drought-affected areas of Bundelkhand.

IANS


Will approach Supreme Court, says Fadnavis on beef ban

India

oi-PTI

Mumbai, May 6: The Bombay High Court on Friday, May 6 upheld the ban on slaughter of bulls and bullocks in BJP-ruled Maharashtra while making it clear that mere possession of beef of animals slaughtered outside the state cannot invite criminal action.

The High Court struck down two sections of the state Act which criminalised possession of beef. In a 245-page strongly worded judgement, a division bench of the High Court said the sections that criminalised possession of beef is an infringement on the right to privacy of citizens and unconstituional.

Striking down sections 5(d)and 9(b) of the Maharashtra Animal Preservation (Amendment) Act which criminalised and imposed punishment for possession of beef of animals slaughtered in the state or outside, Justices A S Oka and S C Gupte held that the state cannot control what a citizen does in his house which is his own castle, provided he is not doing something contrary to law.

"Sections 5(d) which provides that no person shall have in his possession flesh of cow, bull or bullock slaughtered outside Maharashtra is unconstitutional and infringes upon a citizen's right to privacy," the court said. "Similarly section 9(b) which imposes penal action (on an offender) and puts the onus of proving himself as innocent is also invalid," the court said, after hearing a bunch of petitions challenging the constitutional validity of the Act.

The court also modified section 5(c) of the Act, which makes possession of beef of animal slaughtered in the state an offence, and said only "conscious possession" of such meat will be held as an offence. "As far as the choice of eating food of the citizens is concerned, the citizens are required to be let alone especially when the food of their choice is not injurious to health," the court said.

"The state cannot make an intrusion into his home and prevent a citizen from possessing and eating food of his choice. A citizen has a right to lead a meaningful life within the four corners of his house as well as outside his house. This intrusion on the personal life of an individual is prohibited by the right to privacy which is part of the personal liberty guaranteed by Article 21," the court said.

Reacting to the judgement, Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis said the state may approach the Supreme Court, after consulting legal experts, against the striking down of the two provisions of the Act but expressed the satisfaction that the High Court has affirmed the law is constitutional.

"The HC has affirmed that our law is constitutional and it has not targeted any religion, caste or creed. I am happy that our stand is vindicted by the Court," Fadnavis told reporters here. "However, there are two provisions of the law that have been struck down by the High Court.

We will consult our lawyers, and, if necessary, will approach the Supreme Court against this. Other than these two provisions, the court has found no fault with the law," he added. More.

PTI
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Jayalalithaa DA case: Wind up arguments before vacation commences, SC tells advocates

India

oi-Vicky

New Delhi, May 6: The Supreme Court wants to wind up the hearing in the J Jayalalithaa disproportionate assets case by May 14.

The Bench comprising Justices P C Ghose and Amitava Roy told all those part of the case to wind up their arguments before the Supreme Court breaks for vacation.

The Supreme Court goes on vacation from May 15 onwards. Sitting would resume on June 29. The court wants all arguments in the case to be concluded before the vacations commence. Advocates associated with the case say that the verdict of the could be expected sometime in July.

Karnataka had filed an appeal in the Supreme Court against the High Court verdict which had set aside the conviction handed out to Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa, Sasikala Natrajan, Ilavarasi and Sudhakaran.

Wind up arguments:

The directive of the Supreme Court means that the petitioners would have to conclude their arguments by next week.

On Tuesday when the court resumes hearing of the matter, B V Acharya the special public prosecutor for Karnataka would make his submissions. Acharya had yesterday sought another day's time to conclude his arguments in the case. He is currently filing his rejoinder to the arguments made by Jayalalithaa and others.

The Supreme Court has been hearing this matter between Tuesday to Thursday ever since arguments commenced. After Acharya's submission, the court would hear the matter for another two days. The only pending petitions are the ones relating to the locus standi.

Two petitions had been filed questioning the locus standi of Karnataka in filing this appeal and also the appointment of B V Acharya as the SPP.

While these issues have been addressed by the Karnataka High Court and the Supreme Court in the past, the Bench decided to hear the petitioners. Once these petitions are heard, the arguments in the case would come to a close.

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Story first published: Friday, May 6, 2016, 10:09 [IST]
Jharkhand shocker: Tribal college student shot dead, head smashed 20 times

India

oi-Jagriti

Ramgarh, May 6: A college student has been shot dead in Jharkhand's Ramgarh district, media reported.

The victim identified as 31-year-old Sonali Murmu, found dead murdered outside her college with her head smashed on May 4, reported the Zee News.

Murmu, a B.Ed student, was hit on the head at least 20 times with a sharp object. One of her amputated hands was found lying near her body.

According to reports, Murmu was stalked by a man named Suken Mandal for several years even after her marriage.

Victim and alleged accused were known to each other since school days.

"Mandal's role in Murmu's murder is highly suspected as he has been absconding since the murder," M Tamilvanan, Superintendent of Police, was quoted as saying.

Mandal had threatened Murmu and her husband Chitranjan Tudu at the time of their marriage.

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Story first published: Friday, May 6, 2016, 10:05 [IST]
Actor Sooraj Pancholi says he is being defamed in Sushant Singh Rajput case

Trouble for Sooraj Pancholi? Actor may be charged with murder, rape in Jiah Khan suicide case

India

oi-Mukul

New Delhi, May 6: It looks like Bollywood actor Sooraj Pancholi, who is an accused of abetting Jiah Khan's death, will be in deep trouble soon. Reportedly, rape and murder charges could be invoked against actor in model-turned-actress Jiah Khan suicide case.

Earlier on Thursday, public prosecution requested court to frame charges of rape and causing miscarriage without woman's (Jiah) consent against Sooraj. Public Prosecutor Kalpana Hire also demanded that murder charge should be lodged against actor.

"Rabiya (Jiah's mother) is the informant and she says it's the case of section 302 of IPC (murder). She was the first one who saw the body hence Sooraj should be charged for murder," Hire told the special womens' court conducting the trial in the case.

However, the legal sources say that murder charge against actor could be decided only at the time of framing charges by the trail court.

Special Judge A S Shende will continue to hear the arguments on framing of charges on May 20.

However, Sooraj Pancholi's lawyer Prashant Patil told the court that there is no evidence for framing the charges of murder against Pancholi. Patil said even there was no evidence against Pancholi to charge him for abetment.

He said the abortion of Jiah was a medical termination as there was no evidence to suggest that she went to doctors.

Earlier in the day, CBI's lawyer Bharat Badami moved the application saying that advocate Dinesh Tiwari (state- appointed prosecutor) cannot represent in the case but the CBI prosecutor should appear in the case. However, the court rejected CBI's prayer saying it has already allowed Tiwari to conduct the trial.

Meanwhile, Rabiya's lawyer Swapnil Ambure said he has grievance with CBI opening the case. But when the court asked Ambure to open the case, he sought time even as CBI said it wanted more time to argue.

OneIndia News

(With inputs from PTI)

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Story first published: Friday, May 6, 2016, 13:43 [IST]
"Kick us out if we don't do anything": How Modi's emotional appeal resembles that of Mamata

In Kerala and West Bengal, bombs saw high demand this year

India

oi-Vicky

New Delhi, May 6: Violence unfortunately has become an integral part of the election process. In the ongoing assembly elections, the two states where many candidates have relied on violence are West Bengal and Kerala.

Ironically in these states the favourite weapon is neither the pistol nor the sword. It is the bomb.

As the election dates are announced, the demand for the bomb makers automatically shoots up.

Bombs are often used to scare and sometimes even kill. Over all it is not a pretty picture and the security forces have had a torrid time in controlling this menace.

Bombs sell cheap:

The preparation of bombs has become like cottage industry in these states. There is high demand during the elections for bombs. In Kerala a bomb maker would be paid an amount of Rs 20,000 to prepare a 100 bombs. In West Bengal 100 bombs are available for Rs 5,000 to Rs 10,000.

West Bengal poll phase 6: 84.24% turnout

Right from sourcing the raw material to finding a safe house to prepare the bombs is the responsibility of the one who has taken the contract. In many cases it is the firecracker factories which produce the bombs. However in West Bengal sourcing bombs from firecracker units is a relatively expensive affair.

Most of the bombs that are prepared are by poor people who have made it their livelihood. They have an agent who takes up the contract and hands it over to these people. The demand is very high ahead of the elections, security agencies say.

The one who actually prepares the bomb is paid a meagre Rs 200 per day. In fact such is their living condition that Rs 200 looks like a pot of gold for them.

The charges however vary depending on the nature of the bomb. If an extremely lethal bomb is sought then it sells at a price of Rs 1,500 a piece. The bombs that are of low intensity sell at Rs 200 to 500.

Candidates start filing nominations for Kerala polls

Out of control:

The bombs factories in both West Bengal and Kerala are often spoken about only at the time of the elections. However this menace crops up every time there is an election. It is not just the general and assembly elections that bombs are used for. There is an equally high demand during the local body polls as well.

Security officials in both West Bengal and Kerala find themselves in a catch-22 situation. It is often during the elections that the heat is high. However these persons begin sourcing the raw material well in advance in small quantities and manage to escape the eye of the security forces.

Moreover they work in their homes which makes the job of a police man even harder as there is never concrete intelligence that comes by.

Another aspect that one must also keep in mind is that these bombs are sourced by the high and mighty who contest the polls.

This is also another factor that works in the favour of the bomb makers. The bomb makers too are extremely cautious. There have been instances this year where these persons have installed CCTVs outside their homes to keep a watch on the movement.

OneIndia News
Aviation authorities yesterday fined a security guard $450 for beating a Chinese passenger at Cam Ranh International Airport four days ago.

On May 5, authorities concluded that security guard Nguyen Van Thai's actions had gone beyond reasonable force. Following the decision, the Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam decided to suspend and fine Thai VND10 million ($450).

On the evening of May 2, flight number VN 462 to Hong Kong was delayed due to air traffic issues at its destination. Passengers were kept waiting for a prolonged period in the isolated area designated for international flights at Cam Ranh International Airport, and their frustration boiled over into anger as some started to shout in Chinese and jump on the benches. One male passenger attempted to steal a baton from a member of security, but he was swiftly overpowered and taken away. During the melee, security guard Thai punched the Chinese passenger in the back.
Vaishali Takkar suicide: Her e-gadgets to be probed; hunt for the harasser is on

Woman, her two children mowed down by train; Suicide not ruled out

Killing fields: No end to farmers suicide

India

oi-Oneindia

By Maitreyee Boruah

Bengaluru, May 6: The agriculture sector in the country is reeling under severe crisis. Due to the ongoing drought situation in 10 states, there is a rise in the number of farmer suicide cases in the country. As many as 116 farmers have committed suicide due to agrarian reasons till March 2016. The maximum cases were reported in Maharashtra, followed by Punjab and Telangana.

"More than 2,000 farmers' suicide cases were reported due to agrarian reasons in 2015 with highest number of 1,841 cases in Maharashtra alone," said the minister of state for agriculture Mohanbhai Kundariya in the Lok Sabha recently.

As per the data, 57 cases of farmers' suicides were reported in Maharashtra on February 29 this year, while 56 farm labourers' suicide cases in Punjab were registered on March 11. In Telangana, there were three cases, Kundariya said in a written reply to the Lower House.

In total, 116 farmers and labourers committed suicide in last three months due to agrarian reasons, the data showed.

[Read: India least bothered about farmer deaths, but croons over Choppergate, B-town scandals ]

According to Kundariya, the 10 states reeling under drought are Karnataka, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh , Maharashtra , Odisha , Telangana , Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh , Jharkhand and Rajasthan.

Recently, eminent journalist and Magsaysay awardee P Sainath said data compiled by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) regarding farmer suicides in the country was "diluted" and did not present a true picture of the plight of farmers.

"In most of the states, land is in the name of the male member. As a consequence, suicides committed by farm women, who perform between 60 and 67 per cent of the work, have not been included in the column for farmer suicides, but in the others' column," said Sainath.

Asked if the government has taken steps to mitigate the impact of drought on farmers and prevent them from committing suicide, the minister said it has approved Rs 12,773.34 crore relief package to 10 states affected by drought during kharif (summer) season of 2015-16 crop year (July-June).

[Read: Maha shocker! Unable to feed children, woman farmer sets herself ablaze ]

Besides relief package, the Centre has taken other measures to deal with the situation of drought including implementation of diesel/seed subsidy and relaxed norms under MGNREGA to provide additional employment of 50 days over and above 100 days per household in areas affected by natural calamities, the minister said.

"So far, a sum of Rs 18,408.98 crore has been released during 2015-16, to the aforesaid 10 drought-hit states under MGNREGA," Kundariya added.

[Read: 184 farmers commit suicide in Karnataka in last 3 months: Govt ]

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Story first published: Friday, May 6, 2016, 12:37 [IST]
Induction of Congress MLAs into BJP is death of Parrikar's legacy, says outgoing Goa deputy CM

Manohar Parrikar targets Congress in AgustaWestland case

India

oi-IANS

By Ians English

New Delhi, May 6: Defence Minister Manohar Parikkar on Friday targeted the Congress in the AgustaWestland scam, saying it was clear towards which direction the tainted cash was flowing.

Speaking in the Lok Sabha after the matter was raised by Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP Anurag Thakur, the defence minister said former assistant chief of air staff (plans) of the Indian Air Force N.V. Tyagi and city-based lawyer Gautam Khaitan, the two accused in the Rs.3,600-crore chopper scam, were "small people".

"Be it Tyagi or Khaitan, they are small people. Inhone to sirf bahti Ganga me hath dhone ka kaam kiya hai. Bahti Ganga kaha jaa rahi hai, ye dhoondhne ko maine Enforcement Directorate (ED) se kaha hai. (They just joined the bandwagon and I have asked the ED to find out where the real flow of money was heading)," Parikkar said.

BJP member Thakur raised the matter through a 'calling attention' motion over the recent disclosure by an Italian court about alleged irregularities in the AgustaWestland deal.

Without taking its name, Parrikar took a jibe at the Congress, saying: "Where this river is flowing was clear in the Rajya Sabha that day. Unke gale me khujli ho rahi thi. Ganga kaha jaa rahi hai unko malum hai."

The minister said that the previous Congress-led government did everything to award the contract to AgustaWestland.

"They relaxed everything. But when the matter came to light, they didn't even take action against the company," he said.

Parrikar said the previous regime's action against the deal was forced by circumstances and the inquiry into it was not initiated until it was unavoidable.

"Procurement procedure was not followed in the deal and there was also discrepancies in the base price. The UPA regime knew about the scam in February 2012, but still three helicopters were delivered in December. The Central Bureau of Investigation registered an FIR in the matter in March 2013, but the copy of FIR was not forwarded to the Enforcement Directorate till December," Parikkar said.

He said the ED took notice of the case only in July 2014 after the National Democratic Alliance government came to power.

The minister also said that the documents of the Milan court are in Italian and its translation was not easy.

"The documents are of approximately 1.21 lakh pages. Of which 42,000 are in English and 57 pages are in Hindi. Translating rest of the documents was not easy. I also faced the same problem," he said.

IANS
India always views war as last resort, but... : PM Modi to armed forces in Kargil

Modi govt trying to dislodge Cong govts: Manmohan Singh

India

oi-PTI

New Delhi, May 6: Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Friday, May 6 accused the Narendra Modi government of trying to dislodge Congress governments in the states.

"Since BJP has come to power they have only one mission 'Congress-mukt Bharat'. They say this wherever they go.I want to tell the Modi government that Congress is India's soul," he said at the 'Save Democracy' rally at Jantar Mantar here.

"Congress is like a flowing Ganga. You defame it or do whatever, it will not change its course," Singh said.

"There have been many attacks on Congress in the past since 1885 (when it was established). People have tried to weaken the party. But they could not succeed," he said.

Referring to the political crises in Arunachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, he said, "Congress is not there in many states. But wherever it is there attempts have been made to dislodge it. Congress governments were dislodged in Arunachal and Uttarakhand."

"The Modi government has attacked democracy.Now they are targeting other Congress states like Manipur, Nagaland, Mizoram and the Virbhadra Singh government in Himachal Pradesh.They are trying to dislodge these governments," he said.

"It is necessary that Congress workers reach out to people in every corner of the country and spread the message that the Modi government is uprooting democracy. We will not allow them to succeed," the former Prime Minister said.

He also said, "At present universities are not safe, courts are not safe. So it is your duty to understand this and ensure defeat of the Modi government's designs."

PTI
With AQI of 259, Delhi's air on day before Diwali least polluted in 7 years

Delhi LG and CM greet people on Diwali, ask people to be mindful of pollution

Sonia hits out at Modi-govt, says 'Power-hungry BJP killing democracy'

India

oi-IANS

By Ians English

New Delhi, May 6: Destabilising elected governments in states with a motive to capture power all over, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is "killing democracy", Congress president Sonia Gandhi said here on Friday.

"Their (BJP) lust for power is increasing and thus they are killing the democratically-elected governments forcefully," Sonia said, addressing the crowd at the Loktantra Bachao March here.

Twitter trends: Why they are mostly about Narendra Modi, Sonia Gandhi

She said BJP was not concerned about the democracy as their only motive "is to capture power everywhere", adding Congress was a party that had "given their blood and laid down lives to protect the basic principles of humanity".

She termed increasing attacks over the Congress by the BJP-led central government as "anti-national" and said "nothing new for us to fight anti-national elements. Life has taught me to struggle, we have faced a lot of challenges. They don't know what we are made of".

Earlier, Rahul Gandhi also launched a scathing attack at the Modi government, saying the country was being run by only two persons -- Modi and RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat. "Today in India, the voice of only two people are heard, Narendra Modiji and Mohan Bhagwatji."

Life has taught me to struggle, says Sonia Gandhi

He alleged that the government made false accusations against people who are critical of the prime minister and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). He said: "Anyone who dares to speak against them (Modi and Bhagwat) are charged with false allegations."

Rahul also alleged that the Union government broke all the laws by destabilising the Congress government in Arunachal Pradesh and removed all the elected leaders.

Senior Congress leaders, former prime minister Manmohan Singh and Ambika Soni, and hundreds of supporters took out a protest march against the Centre from the Jantar Mantar to Parliament.

Congress and the BJP have been of late involved in a bitter banter on a range of issues, including the AgustaWestland VVIP chopper scam.

IANS
Tamil Nadu Elections 2016: AIADMK manifesto offers more freebies-phones, electricity, loans, wi-fi

India

oi-Pallavi

Chennai, May 6: As a mark of counter-criticism of the opposition DMK, the AIADMK supremo Jayalalithaa launched a few more freebies.

Alleging that the free laptops offered by DMK is accompanied by doubled-up cable connection prices, Amma added free laptops and wi-fi facilities. Some of the other sops offered by her include mobile phone for all ration card holder and free 100 units of power. Saying that it will benefit 78 lakh customers, she further announced that these customers do not have to pay the bills.

This came in the wake of the poll campaign by Congress President Sonia Gandhi, along with the ally DMK President M Karunanidhi. In fact, Amma broke the tradition of releasing the party manifesto in the headquarters and launched it in a public rally.

Employment will also be taken care of and Amma ensured that, if voted to power, she would ensure that on emember from each family was employed, even if for vocational training.

The assistance under a maternity scheme has been increased from Rs 12,000 to Rs 18,000. It has been assured to increase the quantum of gold for thali (mangal sutra) from the existing 4 grams.

Furthermore, the party assured to give Rs 500 coupon for people to buy handloom clothes from state-run Co-optex during the harvest festival of Pongal.

Waiver of co-operative farm loans, creation of Amma Venture Capital Fund of Rs 500 crore to create first generation entrepreneurs have been executed, apart from a Rs 100 crore Amma Collateral Guarantee Fund to provide collateral-free loans to SMEs.

Amma also said that the government will repay educational loans of people who remain unemployed. She also assured to provide 50 percent subsidy for women to buy scooters or moped.

Agriculture and farming will also receive a facelift as AIADMK announces Rs 40,000 crore of crop loan for the 2016-21 five year period. Mechanization of farming activities, apart from a host of other welfare measures including other subsidies have also been assured.

While assuring that genetically-modified seeds will not be allowed in the state, the party also said that they will stand by the people and fight against the Coal Bed Methane and shale gas projects in the Cauvery delta area as well as the GAIL pipeline through farmlands in the state.

Te party promised to add 18,500 MW of power from various sources in the next five years. It has also assured that power infrastructure will be upgraded for proper distribution of electricity. The Cauvery water resolution has also been guaranteed by the party.

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Story first published: Friday, May 6, 2016, 14:17 [IST]
Fact Check: Images falsely shared with claim that it is chopper that crashed in Uttarakhand

Uttarakhand:Centre agrees for court observed floor test

India

oi-Vicky

Dehradun, May 6: The Union Government on Friday, May 6 told the Supreme Court that it is agreeable to a floor test being conducted in Uttarakhand.

The attorney general told the Supreme Court that a floor test could be conducted in Uttarakhand and the same should be monitored by the court.

The submission by the union government paves the way for a floor test in the Uttarakhand assembly. On Wednesday the Supreme Court had sought to know from the government if it was agreeable to a floor test being conducted in Uttarakhand under the supervision of the court. The centre had sought time until Friday to give its response.

The AG while making submissions before the Bench said that the Supreme Court must appoint an observer to oversee the process in the assembly. The AG also said that there should be just one agenda and that is the floor test.

He also said that a retired Chief Election Commissioner should be appointed as the observer to oversee the floor test.

A major legal battle had broken out after President's rule was imposed in Uttarakhand. The High Court had struck down the imposition of President's rule following which the Union Government challenged the same in the Supreme Court.

The court had stayed the order of the High Court and later sought the opinion of the Union Government on the feasibility of holding a floor test.

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Story first published: Friday, May 6, 2016, 12:38 [IST]
Fact Check: Images falsely shared with claim that it is chopper that crashed in Uttarakhand

Uttarakhand: Floor test on May 10 but 9 disqualified MLAs cannot vote

India

oi-Vicky

New Delhi, May 6: The floor test in the Uttarakhand assembly will be held on May 10th. However the nine disqualified MLAs will not be entitled to vote the Supreme Court has ruled today. The Supreme Court directed that the floor test be held between 11 AM and 1 PM on May 10th.

The SC observed that on May 10th President's rule would be suspended for two hours. Further the court also directed that the entire floor test proceedings be videographed. The proceedings will be held under the court appointed observer.

The order comes in the wake of the Union Government telling the Supreme Court that it is agreeable to a floor test being conducted in Uttarakhand. The attorney general told the Supreme Court that a floor test could be conducted in Uttarakhand and the same should be monitored by the court.

On Wednesday the Supreme Court had sought to know from the government if it was agreeable to a floor test being conducted in Uttarakhand under the supervision of the court. The centre had sought time until Friday to give its response.

Sting CD probe: CBI summons Uttarakhand CM Harish Rawat

The AG while making submissions before the Bench said that the Supreme Court must appoint an observer to oversee the process in the assembly.

The AG also said that there should be just one agenda and that is the floor test. He also said that a retired Chief Election Commissioner should be appointed as the observer to oversee the floor test.

A major legal battle had broken out after President's rule was imposed in Uttarakhand. The High Court had struck down the imposition of President's rule following which the Union Government challenged the same in the Supreme Court.

The court had stayed the order of the High Court and later sought the opinion of the Union Government on the feasibility of holding a floor test.

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Story first published: Friday, May 6, 2016, 13:49 [IST]
My party-BJP have different ideologies but common aim of uplifting poor: Nepal ex-PM Prachanda

Former Nepal PM says removed from office for including Kalapani

Nepal president's India visit cancelled

International

oi-IANS

By Ians English

Kathmandu, May 6: Nepal President Bidhya Devi Bhandari's upcoming visit to India has been cancelled, officials here said on Friday, May 6 but they did not disclose the reason for the abrupt cancellation.

However, diplomatic sources said that a recent political fiasco and Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli's approach towards India were responsible for the cancellation of the presidential visit which was scheduled to begin on May 9.

Bhesh Raj Adhikari, chief personal assistant to President Bhandari told IANS that the Cabinet, even after two meetings on Thursday and Friday, held back approval for the visit, delegation and agenda.

The foreign affairs ministry has informed Nepali Ambassador in India, Deep Kumar Uphadhay, about the cancellation.

On the invitation of her Indian counterpart Pranab Mukharjee, President Bhandari was to embark on her first official visit to India next week.

During an interaction with some reporters at her office on Wednesday, Bhandari had said her trip to the southern neighbour was a goodwill visit.

"I will invite Indian President Pranab Mukherjee to visit Nepal," she said, adding that "The purpose of my visit is to strengthen the good ties between Nepal and India".

As per the earlier plan, President Bhandari was scheduled to attend a function in New Delhi on May 9 and the following day she was to hold meetings with Mukherjee and the other Indian political leadership.

On May 11, she was to leave for Simhastha Kumbh Mela in Ujjain, Madhya Pradesh.She was also scheduled to deliver in Ujjain a lecture on women's empowerment.

IANS
My party-BJP have different ideologies but common aim of uplifting poor: Nepal ex-PM Prachanda

Former Nepal PM says removed from office for including Kalapani

Nepal to recall ambassador to India

International

oi-IANS

By Ians English

Kathmandu, May 6: The Nepal government on Friday decided to recall its ambassador to India Deep Kumar Upadhyay, appointed to the position in April last year from the Nepali Congress quota, informed sources said.

The Cabinet meeting, chaired by Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli on Friday, decided to recall Upadhyay after he held a conversation with Oli in the morning as President Bidhya Devi Bhandari's India visit was cancelled by Nepal unilaterally, without even informing him.

Upadhyay reportedly made his displeasure known to Oli.

"It does not look good at a time when Nepal-India ties are back on track and as an ambassador I was not even informed and consulted before the cancellation of the visit," Upadhyay reportedly told the prime minister.

Oli reportedly told Mr Upadhyay that "if you have such kind of reservation about the cancellation of the visit, you can quit".

The Nepali government also accused Ambassador Upadhyay of being active in Kathmandu and New Delhi in trying to topple the Oli-led government. Upadhyay is a senior leader of the Nepali Congress which is now in the opposition.

The differences between the prime minister and the ambassador over the cancellation of the president's visit led the Cabinet to recall Mr Upadhyay.

During the Cabinet meeting, Oli instructed Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Foreign Affairs Kamal Thapa to recall ambassador Upadhyay immediately.

Upadhyay, it was alleged, is involved and active in toppling the government, propping up the Madhes-based political parties for agitation, and was getting involved in various activities inside Nepal and India.

A top aide to Oli said the prime minister was for long unhappy with Upadhyay and his recall is only a manifestation of Oli's perception of some of Upadhyay's activities as improper for an ambassador.

IANS
North Korea fires two more missiles towards Japan

North Korea: First party congress staged since 1980

International

oi-Jagriti

Pyongyang, May 6: North Korea on Friday staged first full congress of the ruling party in 36 years. The 7th Congress of Workers' Party began in capital city Pyongyang.

During the Congress Kim Jong-un will be elevated as the country's supreme leader. The 33 year-old is expected to use the congress to cement his leadership, declare North Korea a nuclear state.

Foreign media invited for the event have not been allowed inside the venue.

The streets are decorated with National and Workers' Party flags with banners that read "Great comrades Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il will always be with us" and "Defend the headquarters of the

Korean revolution at the cost of the our lives", reported the BBC.

Funeral, wedding banned in North Korea: Here is why

About 3,000 party members have poured in for this once-in-a-generation political gathering IN North Korea.

Global anxiety and concern raised after North Korea claimed that they successfully tested a miniaturised hydrogen bomb in January this year.

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Story first published: Friday, May 6, 2016, 15:44 [IST]
Vietnam has asked Japan to provide vessels to strengthen its coastguard, a Japanese official said on Thursday, in the latest sign of growing ties among the states locked in maritime rows with China.

The request emerged during talks between visiting Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida and Vietnam's Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc and Foreign Minister Pham Binh Minh, a Japanese spokesman said.

"Vietnam wants new vessels," Masato Otaka told reporters, adding that timing, methods of delivery, costs and quantity of vessels had not yet been decided.

Vietnam has been modernising its military, and recently bought six advanced Kilo-class submarines from Russia.

Russia and India are the main source of advanced weapons, training and intelligence cooperation. Hanoi is also building ties with the United States and its Japanese, Australian and Filipino allies, as well as Europe and Israel.

"Vietnam feels it needs to strengthen its coastguard generally, and that's why we've responded," Otaka told reporters, adding that the vessel delivery "was not directly linked to the South China Sea (the East Sea of Vietnam)".

On Friday Kishida is scheduled to attend a joint government meeting that will mainly focus on economic cooperation, Otaka said.

Japan is the second-biggest investor in Vietnam after South Korea, with existing projects totalling $39 billion as of April 2016, based on Vietnam's government data.

Two Japanese warships visited Cam Ranh Bay in central Vietnam in April, the first port call of its kind.

Japan also has warming relations with the Philippines, with which it signed a deal last year on defence equipment and technology.

China claims almost the entire the East Sea, believed to have huge deposits of oil and gas, and is building islands on reefs to bolster its claims. 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.

Tokyo has no claims in the waterway, but worries about China's growing military reach into sea lanes through which much of Japan's ship-borne trade passes.
The persecution of Hindus in Pakistan continues with a Hindu girl forcibly converted and married

Pak PM Nawaz Sharif compares his political opponents to 'terrorists'

International

oi-PTI

Karachi, May 6: Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif today accused his political opponents of obstructing the progress of Pakistan and compared them to "terrorists", amid mounting pressure on him from opposition parties to quit following the Panama Papers leak.

"Terrorists and agitators are pursuing the agenda to hinder progress and prosperity of Pakistan. There is no difference between them," Sharif said while inaugurating a 393-kilometre-long Sukkur-Multan motorway in Sukkur.

"People should think twice about which side they want to be on...What do terrorists do? They wish to halt progress in Pakistan," he said in harshly-worded remarks. Referring to the sit-ins staged by the opposition, he asked: "What is the agenda of those who agitate?"

"Don't they try to stop progress in Pakistan? Don't they try to disrupt peace? What is the difference between them and terrorists?" he questioned.

The premier said that the country would not have lagged behind in progress if there was no sit-in politics. The motorway is a part of the Peshawar-Karachi motorway and falls under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. It will be built with financial assistance from China.

Sharif said the assistance from China would have come earlier if the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf party led by Imran Khan had not staged a "sit-in" in Islamabad.

A war of words between opposition leaders and the government has escalated over the past few weeks, with opposition parties holding anti-corruption rallies and building pressure on the premier to step down.

Sharif said former military dictator Pervez Musharraf had spent nine years trying to find proof of corruption, kickbacks and commission against him and his family and failed.

Major opposition parties this week asked the prime minister to present himself and his family for accountability after the Panama leaks claimed his sons and daughter held stakes in off-shore companies worth millions of dollars.

PTI
An ex-US prez & ex-first lady were doing something at McCains funeral and the media saw it

US polls: Bush family has no plans to back Donald Trump

International

oi-PTI

Washington, May 5: America's most prominent Republican family, the Bushes, are declining to endorse Donald Trump for president, handing the GOP presumptive nominee an early setback in his efforts to unite a fractured party.

Former presidents George W Bush and George H W Bush, who undoubtedly bristled at Trump's bullying attacks on candidate Jeb Bush, signaled through their offices that they will stay on the sidelines during this cycle.

Donald Trump takes the reins of divided Republican Party

The elder Bush has endorsed every Republican nominee in the past five elections, but he does not have plans to endorse Trump in 2016, his spokesman Jim McGrath told the Texas Tribune on Thursday.

"At age 91, President Bush is retired from politics," McGrath told the paper. "He came out of retirement to do a few things for Jeb, but those were the exceptions that proved the rule." The 41st president's son Jeb Bush dropped out of the race in February.

Jeb's brother George W. Bush "does not plan to participate in or comment on the presidential campaign," his personal aide Freddy Ford told the paper. Trump has launched bitter attacks on George W Bush during this year's campaign.

In February he called Bush's decision to invade Iraq "one of the worst decisions in the history of the country," and said the Bush administration "lied" about Saddam Hussein possessing weapons of mass destruction.

Jeb Bush, who exited the race that month, endorsed Ted Cruz in March, and has said Trump would lose in a landslide if he were the nominee to go up against Democrat Hillary Clinton in the general election.

George W Bush's former chief of staff, Andrew Card, said Thursday that Trump has to become more respectful about the party's leadership and show greater "maturity" about handling tough decisions if he wants Republicans to coalesce around him.

"Donald Trump's got a lot of work to do to earn my vote, and to earn the confidence of people who are leaders in the Republican Party," Card, now the president of Franklin Pierce University in New Hampshire, told MSNBC. If the election were held today, "I'd probably write in a name," Card said.

PTI
Mumbai: Gathering of 5 or more, loud speakers, illegal processions banned for a fortnight from Nov 1

Amitabh Bachchan reveals he had to get stitches after he cut a vein on his leg

Fire breaks out at industrial estate in Mumbai, no one hurt

Jet Airways crew member injured in Brussels attack returns home

Mumbai

oi-Sandra

Mumbai, May 6: Jet Airways crew member Nidhi Chaphekar, who was injured in the Brussels terror attack in March this year, when two explosions rocked the Zaventem Airport, returned to Mumbai early on Friday morning.

Chaphekar became the face of the Brussles terror attack after she was photographed by a photo journalist at the airport minutes after the explosions occured.

In the picture she was seen sitting on a chair shell-shocked with torn clothes and blood dripping down her face. Chaphekar suffered 15 per cent burns and a fractured foot due to the impact.

She was under treatment at Brussels alongwith another injured Jet crew member.SHe is said to have undergone skin grafting while in the hospital.

According to reports, Chaphekar will be taken to Breach Candy hospital for further treatment.

Airline officials said Nidhi has low immunity and doctors have advised her to avoid contact with people.

On March 22, three bombs went off - two at the Brussels airport and one at Mallbeek metro station - leaving 35 people dead, including three suicide bombers. Nidhi was on her way to board a Jet flight for Newark when the explosions took place.

(With PTI inputs)

OneIndia News
With AQI of 259, Delhi's air on day before Diwali least polluted in 7 years

Delhi LG and CM greet people on Diwali, ask people to be mindful of pollution

Sonia, Rahul, Manmohan detained; released later

New Delhi

oi-Sandra

New Delhi, May 6: Congress President Sonia Gandhi and vice president Rahul Gandhi were detained here on Friday for a short while after they were stopped from marching to the Parliament.

Sonia and Rahul were detained along with other senior Congress leaders like Manmohan Singh, AK Anthony and Ghulam Nabi Azad. Police officials stopped the Congress leaders and detained them at the Parliament Street police station. Several party workers were seen climbing the barricades.

Sonia hits out at Modi-govt, says 'Power-hungry BJP killing democracy'

However, they were released after a short while. Earlier in the day, Sonia Gandhi, addressing Congress party workers at Jantar Mantar, hit out at Modi government and said: "Do not try to frighten or defame us. Life has taught me to fight on."

"I want to say clearly that whatever effort you make to destroy democracy, we will not allow it to happen. We are used to waging struggle and we have faced many challenges in the past.

Congress is not new to struggle. We have shed blood for the cause of the nation. We are the people who have given blood and laid down our lives to protect the basic principles. We will not withdraw from it," she said.

The party had taken out a 'Loktantra Bachao March' (Save Democracy March) against the BJP government, starting from Jantar Mantar.

(with PTI inputs)

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At an April 18 U.S. Congressional hearing, Tibetan monk and former political prisoner Golog Jigme described the torture he reports he experienced over the course of several detentions in China from 2008-2012.

Unfortunately, such treatment of Tibetan political prisoners continues, according to the State Departments 2015 report on human rights in China.

According to the report, the Chinese governments respect for human rights in Tibetan regions remained poor in 2015.

Under the professed objectives of controlling border areas, maintaining social stability, and combating separatism, the government engaged in the severe repression of Tibets unique religious, cultural and linguistic heritage by, among other means, strictly curtailing the civil rights of Chinas Tibetan populationOther serious abuses included extrajudicial detentions, disappearances and torture.

The State Department reports Chinese officials severely beat, even to the point of death, some Tibetans who were incarcerated or otherwise in custody. The report also cites the case of Tenzin Choedrag, an environmental NGO worker, who died two days after his release and reportedly suffered brain damage due to torture. There were also reports of recently released prisoners who were permanently disabled because of the harsh treatment they endured in prison.

U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor Tom Malinowski, said in an interview that it is not in Chinas interest to have permanent instability in Tibet:

To the extent that there are people within the Chinese government who worry about separatism, about Tibet going its own way  the way to avoid the growth of those sorts of sentiments in Tibet is to work with, to engage in dialogue, with clearly legitimate leaders like the Dalai Lama who have consistently said over the years that Tibet should remain in China, and that all they are seeking is respect for basic human rights, respect for cultural traditions.

At the release of the annual human rights reports, Secretary of State John Kerry emphasized that a governments respect for human rights is not only a moral obligation: Its an opportunity to harness the full energy of a countrys population in building a cohesive and prosperous society, said Secretary Kerry.And it doesnt jeopardize stability; it enhances it.
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Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Covering the northern third of the island of Great Britain, mainland Scotland has a 96-mile (154-kilometre) border with England to the southeast and is otherwise surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, the North Sea to the northeast and east, and the Irish Sea to the south. It also contains more than 790 islands, principally in the archipelagos of the Hebrides and the Northern Isles. Most of the population, including the capital Edinburgh, is concentrated in the Central Beltthe plain between the Scottish Highlands and the Southern Uplandsin the Scottish Lowlands.
Blockchain and Bitcoin Conference Ushers in New Era of Cryptocurrency

Published May 5, 2016 by Lee R

Finds out how to benefit from vital blockchain technology and cryptocurrency in Prague.

Europe will soon host a historical space for communication among future business partners, colleagues and all new members of the emerging cryptocurrency community at the Blockchain and Bitcoin Conference Prague on May 19th.

Goings On

The conference is scheduled to cover the latest and hottest topics of the year, and will include forecasts, analysis, and the best deals for work with cryptocurrencies. The exhibition area will offer attendees the opportunity to get acquainted with market leaders and new visionaries in this intriguing market, and obtain first hand information from market leaders.

Prospects Update

The conference will discuss what to expect and what to be afraid of for 2016, as well as the future prospects for blockchaining. The conference will examine whether cryptocurrency security is a myth or achievable reality, as well as look at the investment climate and international evidence so far regarding the course of regulation. And of course a closer look will be taken at the place of Bitcoin in gambling

Coinpit's Rao

One speaker of particular interest is leading trading platform Coinpit Inc. founder Bharath Rao. In a presentation titled Application of cryptotechnology and Bitcoin, Rao will share his insights from ten years experience of Wall Street trading and executive positions to talk about the benefits of blockchain technologies. The key early benefit of blockchaining has proven to be the enabling of authorization without log-in and registration.

Important Blockchain Discussion

Representatives from cryptocurrency equipment manufacturer HashCoins will speak about practical implementation of blockchain technology. HashCoins Partner relations manager Edgar Bers will be one of the featured speakers. Bers will demonstrate how his company focuses on innovative technologies to support a decentralized Bitcoin network.

Mining Technology

The prospects of the mining industry will be highlighted in separate reports. The technology of interest is HashFlare technology which allows users to participate in mining without extensive knowledge of cryptotechnologies and minimizes user risks without requiring extensive investment.

Topics

Vital knowledge will kick off with a vital discussion entitled Bitcoin and Blockchain: Prospects and Trends, which looks at blockchains in the context of a decentralized future addressing the technology of next century via blockchaining technology.

Other workshop topics covered will include investing in Bitcoin; the Integration and use of Bitcoin for Cross Border Payments; Innovations on the Base of Blockchain Technologies; Practical Blockchain Technology Implementation (led by Bers); Innovations on the Base of Blockchain Technologies; Mining Industry Development Prospects Based on HashFlare; and Using the Cryptotechnology in Bitcoin.
A 67-year-old businesswoman, Wuraola Folashade Oluloye, arrested for hacking a First Bank Plc account and stealing a customers N16.2million, was on Tuesday brought before an Igbosere Magistrates Court, Lagos.

Wuraola Folashade Oluloye was arraigned on a five-count charge of fraudulent diversion, was arrested following a complaint from Solomon Akhanolu, Head of the Department of Forensic Auditors of First Bank.

Oluloye pleaded not guilty to the five counts and was granted bail by Folashade Olukoya, the presiding magistrate and the chief magistrate of Igbosere court. She is to raise N500, 000 in bail bond and provide two sureties in like sum.

Oluloye would be remanded in Kirikiri Prison custody until she meets her bail conditions

George Nwosu, the prosecution counsel, said Oluloye committed the alleged offences between last October 16 and December 31, at First Banks Agidingbi Branch, Lagos.

He said the 67-year-old woman allegedly hacked the account of a First Bank customer, Emefiele Ogbor, with account No 3014419974, and withdrew N16,200,000 from there and transferred same to her accounts in Stanbic IBTC, Union, Sterling and First banks.

Shortly afterwards Oluloye showed up at the bank to make withdrawals from her account. Unknown to her, the police were waiting and she was arrested.

The alleged offences contravened Section 287 of the Criminal Law of Lagos State, 2015, the court heard.

The defendant pleaded not guilty. The case continues on June 24.
Ahead of the new basketball season, the Nigeria Basketball Federation has called on interested individuals and corporate entities to apply for slots in the Zenith Bank sponsored Womens Basketball League, National Daily learnt.

Rising from its board meeting held in Lagos on Monday, the federation said that in line with the mission statement of the federation, interested teams are encouraged to register their teams ahead of the2019 season.

The NBBF President, Engr Musa Kida said For us, we are looking to expand and make sure we accommodate as many teams as possible.

With the NBBF Secretariat currently attending to numerous applications and interest letters, Kida said the process for the final selections will be free and fair to all.

I am quite happy with what I see in terms of response and I just want everybody to be rest assured that anybody who expresses interest will surely be considered and given a chance to participate. The smallest womens team that can express interest in participating in the league will be given the chance, Kida assured.

Knowing fully well that there is a risk of over subscription following the continued growth of basketball in Nigeria, the NBBF board said it is ready to consider and accommodate all genuine clubs.

If we have an over subscription, we are ready to consider everybody in a way that they will participate and after we would have the numbers of teams that we require for the league.

The Zenith Womens Basketball League will tip off on the 1st of July.

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Kano Governor Umar Ganduje has been restrained from implementing reports of the states anti-corruption commission which indicted Emir Muhammadu Sanusi II.

A Federal High Court sitting in Kano granted the ex-parte motion Sanusi filed on Tuesday against the governor and his attorney-general.

The court also restrained the states Public Complaints and Anti-Corruption Commission from acting on the preliminary report of the investigation of the petition on financial misappropriation against Sanusi.

Ganduje told State House Reporters Tuesday that they were making progress in the imbroglio resulting to the creation of four more Emirates and appointing their Emirs.

The National Daily earlier reported that Ganduje and Sanusi have been fighting a cloak-and-dagger war since 2016 when the Emir became critical of the governor, the APC, and President Muhammadu Buhari.

The state anti-corruption agency heated up the hostilities when it recently indicted the governor of misappropriating N3.7bn of Kano emirate.

The commission recommended Sanusis suspension, and Ganduje, two weeks ago, was going to depose the emir but for the intervention of Gov. Kayode Fayemi and businessman Aliko Dangote.

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The occupants of this White Toyota SUV were lucky to get out unhurt after their car hit a truck and tumbled several times in Ikoyi, Lagos.

The prompt response of good samaritans including Korede Bellos manager, Casper and another bystander identified as Godwin who helped flip the car over to rescue the victims, saved them.

The accident survivor were thereafter treated on the spot by Lagos State emergency response team before they were taken to a hospital in Lagos Island.

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The human rights activist and lawyer, Mr Femi Falana, has accused the state governments, especially those being controlled by the ruling All Progressive Congress (APC), of insincerity in the fight against corruption in the country.

He said that was why none of them (except Kano State) out of the 20 states being controlled by the party, constituted a formal structure to fight corruption.

Falana stated this, on Tuesday, in Kano, while delivering a keynote paper at a two-day stakeholders dialogue on corruption in Nigeria.

The programme, organised by the ActionAid Nigeria, with the theme: Enhancing Citizens Effective Participation in the Fight Against Corruption, has representatives from the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Independent Corrupt Practices and other related Offences Commission(ICPC), National Orientation Agency and so forth, as discussants.

According to Falana, only Kano State among all the 20 APC controlled states and indeed in the entire country that has been able to establish Anti- Corruption Commission as an agency to fight corruption at the state level.

But if we are to fight corruption effectively as a country, the job shouldnt be only that of the Federal Government,  he said. Even at the federal level too, Federal Government has too much control over EFCC and ICPC such that they are selective in their probes.

Falana however, believes that even at that, what government would need to be more concerned about is wealth creation rather than pursuing corruption here and there.

He also asked Federal Government to give at least N1 billion each from the N606 billion recovered through the whistleblowing policy and other looted funds to every local government council for development purposes.

He said Nigeria real problem started with the introduction of the Structural Adjustment Programme by the regime of General Ibrahim Babangida in 1986 when public assets were sold to wealthy individuals who he said had no interest of the masses at hearts.

He, however, urged citizens to start demanding for their rights as enshrined in the constitution from public office holders rather than folding their hands watching, saying that is the only way to cause real development in the country.

Earlier, the Chairman, Kano State Public Complaint and anti- Corruption Commission, Malam Magaji Rimingado, on a sideline, said, his led agency is only awaiting the police findings on the recent case of Gorila swallowed N6.8 million and that of robbery incident at the state zoological garden.

He said once the police concluded their investigations on a case of robbery at the place, the agency would find out why such huge amount of money should be kept in the zoo when it is not a bank and ensured it gets to the root of the matter.

On why his led commission spared the state governor, Alhaji Abdullahi Ganduje , from investigation and possible prosecution over an alleged bribery collection from state contractors, he said apart from the fact that governor had immunity covering him from such action, the commission was not carried along by the journalists who investigated the governor.

On her part, countrys director, ActionAid, Nigeria, Mrs Ene Obi, said the issue of corruption in government circle and also in private sector was not only disturbing but increasingly killing us to death as a country.

She said corruption had distorted competition and trade, reduced investments and slowed development, widened economic and social inequalities, heightened injustice and insecurity and that it was high time for citizens to rise up and demanded accountability, especially from the public office holders across tiers of government.

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The royal Lami and Latiiri households of Ifetedo ,Ile ife and Oke Igbo have announced the glorious exit of the patriarch of the Owolade family ,Pa Samuel Adetoro Owolade.

In a statement made available to the press by the Owolade family , the late Pa Owolade passed on recently in Lagos.

The deceased who was age 95 until his death was the father to a former Attorney General and Commissioner for Justice in Osun State , Hon Niyi Owolade

Pa Samuel Owolade worked meritoriously for thirty seven years with the Ministry of Agriculture and Natural Resources in the old Western region , Northern region and Western States where he retired as Assistant Chief Produce officer.

He is survived by successful children and grand children.

Burial arrangements will be announced later.

Signed.

Niyi Owolade.

Fmr AG and Commissionner for Justice.

Osun State.

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Relationshp blogger and adviser, Joro Olumofin has shared the story of a man whose girlfriend turned down his sexual moves after initating it.

The young man took some enhancement drugs and he ran into trouble. He had to seek the intervention of his female neighbour who came in handy.

However, the authenticity of the story has been questioned by some people.

Read the full gist below:
A 300-Level Medical Laboratory student of the University of Benin (UNIBEN), Christabel was yesterday evening discovered dead in her hostel room at Newton Street, Ekosodin area of Benin City, after allegedly taking some deadly substance to end her life.

The details of the incident were still sketchy but according to eyewitnesses, she mixed the deadly insecticide popularly called Snipper with a Sprite drink and reportedly left a suicide note where she stated that she was about taking her life because the guy she loved didnt love her in return after her boyfriend broke up with her.

But another witness who confirmed the incident said an empty sachet of Klin detergent was found on the spot where her body laid.

Watch the video below:

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ELKO  A Spring Creek man charged with having a dozen improvised explosive devices in his bedroom was bound over to district court Thursday by Justice of the Peace Mason Simons.

Simons said the court found slight or marginal evidence that Thomas Mooney, 26, committed the criminal offenses brought against him.

The bombs and other weapons were found on March 5 in his bedroom at his parents home on Cliff Place in Spring Creek.

Mooney faces 30 counts: 15 counts of possession of a component of an explosive or incendiary device, with the intent to manufacture an explosive or incendiary device or devices; 12 counts of possession of an explosive or incendiary device; and three counts of possession of a firearm by a person previously convicted of a felony offense.

The first witness called by the State was Tanya Yell, a paralegal with the Elko County District Attorneys Office. Deputy District Attorney David Buchler asked Yell about her search of Mooneys social media postings.

However, it was his father, William Mooney, who caused confusion in the courtroom before his testimony.

Are you refusing to tell the truth, sir? asked Simons.

Im refusing to cooperate with the district attorneys office, said William Mooney, after he refused to give a sworn testimony to the court. He said he would not tell the truth and he doesnt remember elements of the March 5 events.

Im not afraid of the truth. I just dont want to testify, said William Mooney.

When you come into a courtroom, you have to take an oath to tell the truth. You refuse to do that Mr. Mooney then I have no other option but to hold you in contempt, said Simons, stating this could result in 25 days in jail and a $500 fine.

He ultimately took the oath, and explained to the court he initially called 911 because of a girl who said she might kill herself. Police were called around 3 a.m. on a report of a possibly suicidal female.

William Mooney also said he wanted law enforcement to see Thomas Mooney had trashed his bedroom  his wife ultimately unlocked the bedroom door for law enforcement.

Three members of law enforcement testified at Thursdays preliminary hearing: Elko County Sheriffs Department Deputy Brian Shoaf, Detective Nicholas Stake and Elko Police Officer Steve Spring.

All three men have received training in explosives, with Spring being a member of the bomb squad.

Shoaf, before joining the sheriffs department, spent more than 14 years as a Marine.

While in the Marine Corps, before deployments to Iraq  we trained on different types of devices, different ways explosive devices were set up, primarily in Iraq but also throughout the world, he said.

Throughout his work, Shoaf said he came into contact with homemade explosive devices.

The deputy described the events of that night, including being invited into the house by Mooneys mother and his father telling law enforcement he was frustrated and upset by the way Thomas was living and he felt disrespected by the way Thomas was treating not only Mr. Mooneys belongings  but also the condition of his bedroom.

Shoaf said the bedroom was in a very large state of disarray. There was a faint but distinct odor of marijuana. He also observed items around the room including the wooden end of a buttstock believed to be a Kalashnikov or AK-47 rifle toward the middle of the bed, and a black duffle bag appearing to contain multiple prescription bottles and cold compress packs.

Cold packs contain ammonium nitrate and when the contents are filtered properly they can be used to make explosives, he said.

However, one device that stood out a was a silver canister of carbon dioxide, with a green wick, and wrapped in a layer of nails.

That would be, in my opinion, an anti-personnel, its used to injure somebody, said Shoaf.

The nails provide a type of shrapnel, said Spring.

Stake told the court Mooney told him in an interview how he produced the bombs  he is believed to have manufactured 15 and tested four. He also admitted to having pipe bombs and manufacturing an explosive out of petroleum jelly, known as Poor Mans C4

Spring said 13 completed IEDs were found. His role upon arriving was to make a safe ingress and egress route in the bedroom.

He also told the court about the difference between a commercial explosive device and one that is homemade, calling the latter an extreme hazard. This is because the exact workings and chemical makeup are unknown.

Spring said the devices found in the home appeared to be viable.

According to Free Press Files, during the initial search several military manuals were found explaining improvised devices, military explosives and military ordnance  including Special Forces and Ranger handbooks.

Additionally an AK-47, a .22-caliber bolt-action rifle and a 12-gauge shotgun were found.

A lot of the materials commonly used in bomb-making were found, such as duct tape, steel piping, fuses, ball bearings, BB pellets and chemicals such as ammonium nitrate.

Part of the inventory included 11 smaller IEDs and a jar with fluid that had a device on the top. Authorities destroyed a variation of C4 plastic explosive known as Poor Mans C4 at the site, as they determined to be unsafe.

According to Nevada Revised Statutes, an individual who violates possession of a component of an explosive or incendiary device, with the intent to manufacture an explosive or incendiary device or devices, is guilty of a category B felony. The punishment includes a prison term not less than one year, with a maximum term of six years. There may also be a fine not to exceed $5,000.

The 12 counts of possession of an explosive or incendiary device is recognized as a category D felony by NRS. If convicted, the minimum prison sentence is one year and the maximum term is four years. In addition to any other penalty, unless a greater fine is authorized or required by statute, the court cannot impose a fine more than $5,000.

The last count of possession of a controlled substance was dismissed without prejudice by the district attorneys office at the beginning of the proceedings.
Last week, Lady Donli released a new song, Comforter, a spirited jam which drew inspiration from the musical tastes of last decade. Upon hearing that track, we were transported back to the noughties and thus decided to dive into the archives of the 2000s.

Coming to the last year of the decade, 2009, we noticed that the stars who provided hits that year are still in the business of doling out bangers today  Wande Coal, Waje and P-Square (though they have separated) to name a few.

The evolution of popular music has been seamless but also drastic in retrospect, so looking back at what our afropop mainstays sounded like on some of the most seminal songs of that period was definitely a worthwhile exercise.

In the spirit of sharing our findings, we at Konbini decided to compile a list of our favourite songs from 2009, and our commendations go to the artists behind them, almost all of whom are still pretty relevant today.

Lagos Party  Banky W

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Who Born The Maga  Wande Coal

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Fall In Love  DBanj

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Strong Ting  Banky W

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Bumper To Bumper  Wande Coal

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Pop Something  Dr Sid ft. DBanj

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Kolo  Waje

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Ekaette  Maye Hunta

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In The Music  Omawumi

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E No Easy  P-Square ft. J. Martins

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A drastic and dramatic overhaul of African football is expected to be announced on Thursday, the eve of the kickoff of the African Cup of Nations, in the wake of corruption scandals consuming the Confederation of African Football (CAF).

The CAF executive committee took a stunning decision on Wednesday to cede control of the running of the organisation and have FIFA general secretary, Fatma Samoura parachuted in as FIFA High Commissioner for Africa, according to sources.

No announcement has been made by African footballs governing body but CAF president, Ahmad Ahmad is scheduled to hold a press conference in Cairo on Thursday at 0900 GMT.

Ahmad, who is the subject of an ethics investigation by FIFA after allegations of corruption and sexual misconduct, proposed the idea in a document shared with colleagues on the executive committee, the sources said.

Samoura is to lead a FIFA team that will conduct a root-and-branch review of governance of the confederation, oversee operational management of the organisation, and recommend where needed a series of reform efforts, the document read.

This will be done in order to put CAF itself on a modern and sound footing, improve its image and reputation and thus ensure that CAF is better equipped to face future challenges and to grasp future opportunities.

FIFA are to also undertake a forensic audit of the monies they have been giving CAF.

The idea of sending Samoura to Africa is said to have been put together by FIFA president Gianni Infantino and CAF vice president Amaju Pinnick in the wake of Ahmads brief detention by French police last week for questioning on corruption allegations.

Ahmad, who is seeking to hold onto some semblance of power or even walk away from his post without sanction, had been forced to accept the deal and then propose it to his own colleagues, CAF sources told Reuters on Thursday.

With FIFA seeking to improve footballs image, the Ahmad controversy has come as major embarrassment to Infantino, who has been claiming a new-look, clean and corruption-free FIFA.

Ahmad, by virtue of his position as leader of African football, is automatically a FIFA vice president.

African football has been rocked not only by the firing of CAF general secretary Amr Fahmy for whistle blowing, but also a walk off in the Champions League final and the alleged assault on a referee by another of CAFs vice presidents.

The Cup of Nations kicks off in Cairo on Friday when hosts Egypt take on Zimbabwe,
If you are going to kill me, that is fine. It is better to be in Gods hands than in the wrong hands.

Father Douglas Bazi, a Chaldean priest from Iraq, was recently in Washington, D.C., explaining to me some of what was going on in his head when Islamic terrorists kidnapped him.

Its impossible not to be humbled when meeting Bazi. What faith he and his people have! But hes quick to insist: If the same thing happened to you, I believe that you (would be) be strong, more than us.

This is the cost to be Christian, to follow Jesus is not just carrying the cross. Jesus was smart. He said carry the cross and follow. Follow means you have to go through your life and prove your faith in your life, Bazi says.

This attitude shows how critical the presence of Christians in the Middle East is. Christians there are a living example of a way out of the conflict that has marred that region. We choose to love, he explains.

From my experience, when we are through the bad event or tragic experience, the only thing that can make us survive is faith, Bazi attests.

Bazi knows what hes talking about. During his time in captivity, his teeth were knocked out and cigars burned into his skin. But he remained steadfast in his faith. His chief concerns were not for himself, but for his family. He did not want them to suffer.

The challenges, the turbulence, push my people to be stronger every day. This is the strategy, how we survive.

This is faith, he tells me. But this is how it is for anyone who claims to be Christian.

He explains this is the reason that his people are not bitter and do not blame God for what has happened to them and their home. They know what happened to us is by man, not by God.

Bazi is on a tour of the United States right now, with scheduled public events in New York, Phoenix and Washington, D.C., among other cities. He comes to give testimony to what Carl Anderson of the Knights of Columbus described this past week at the United Nations as the worlds greatest humanitarian crisis since World War II. Anderson explains that hundreds of thousands of people in Syria and Iraq have lost their lives, entire communities have been displaced or wiped out, while neighboring communities and cultures strain to accept millions of people fleeing years of war and terrorism. We face the very real prospect of the extinction of many of the communities indigenous to the region.

Bazi overflows with gratitude, which I confess I had a hard time handling at first. Earlier this year, he nearly had to beg the United States to recognize that what has happened to him and other Christians in the Middle East is genocide. And yet, he is all about thanks. He is grateful for prayers, he is grateful for people listening to him and he is grateful for people who have contributed to relief funds for his people  a notable one run by the Knights of Columbus.

Bazi is but one of many who have found themselves facing the possibility of martyrdom. He tells me that during his captivity, blindfolded and bound, uncertain whether he would live or die, the terrorists were actually hostages in my hand. He points out how terrorists so often cover their faces. They are ashamed. They are afraid. Christians who truly choose Christ have no shame to be hidden. Bazi and his people have the only thing that you can walk away with in the end, the only thing that lasts.

If you have the opportunity to hear Bazi, you will be better for it. The Christian martyrs throughout history teach us about the true selfless nature of love. And their blood cries out to us to never take our freedom for granted. We are all made better by people who put their lives in Gods hands with the kind of purity of heart that Bazi and his people radiate. If you despair of politics in America, look to them.
Controversial journalist, Kemi Olunloyo blows hot as she warns actress, Iyabo Ojo for the last time not to call her Aunty Kem Kem saying her name is Dr Kemi Olunloyo. Gistvic Reports.





Kemi Olunloyo also said Iya Naira is an acceptable nickname.





She wrote:

Absolutely STOP it! When it comes to my name. I am very formal. Learn to address people properly #IyaNaira is an acceptable nickname given to me. @iyaboojofespris STOP this nonsense. I am 15 years older than you. This is my last WARNING?









SOURCE: GISTVIC.COM

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Komfie Manalo, Opalesque Asia:

Largest U.S. insurer MetLife on Thursday said it would withdraw $1.2bn from its $1.8bn hedge fund portfolio after investments in hedge funds and bonds declined, various media reported.

MetLife chief investment officer Steven Goulart told the media in a conference call from his office in New York that the insurer recorded negative returns in the first quarter of this year.

Bloomberg quoted him as saying, "Its had up-and-down years and really its just too inconsistent, we think, in actual performance. What well be left with is a small portfolio of really our most consistently performing managers in hedge funds."

Goulart added that firms chief executive officer Steve Kandarian wants to raise MetLifes income and will focus on free cash flow.

Kandarian added, "Some earnings variability is an acceptable risk, as these asset classes have provided strong returns to MetLife shareholders over time ." On Wednesday, MetLife reported a quarterly operating profit that fell far short of expectations as income from investments in hedge funds and bonds declined. American International Group Inc. the No. 1 U.S. commercial insurer, earlier reported a lower-than-expected pro......................

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Declassify the '28 Pages'

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28 PAGES LATER...

J. Michael Springmann & Barbara Honegger*

In 2002, a Joint House-Senate Intelligence Committee investigated U.S. intelligence service failures leading to the September 11, 2001 "terrorist" attacks. The Congressional report totaled 836 pages, of which the final chapter -- 28 pages in length -- was and still is completely classified.

For over a decade, family members of the 9/11 victims, the co-chair of the Joint Intelligence Committee investigation itself former Senator Bob Graham (D-Fla.), a majority of the members of the 9/11 Commission and other individuals and organizations have urged declassification of these pages, arguing that what is known about them from members of Congress who have read them and gone public indicates that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and possibly also Israel are named as having been involved in organizing, financing and protecting at least some of the "hijackers" of the September 11 plot. High level calls for the declassification and release of the 28 pages took a quantum leap on April 10, 2016, with a special edition of CBS News' award-winning investigative journalism program 60 Minutes dedicated to the topic as well as Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), the longest-serving Democrat on the House of Representatives' Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, calling for their release in an official statement.

However, no American politician wants to bell the cat. And few influential citizens do, either. The cries we hear are for President Barack Obama to "declassify" the 28 Pages, and before leaving for his recent trip to Saudi Arabia he did say that he "favored" their release. Unspoken in this statement, however, are two important facts: 1) if the pages from an executive branch document, President Obama himself is the highest declassification authority in the executive branch and could -- and should -- declassify and release them immediately; but 2) the pages are part of a Congressional branch document and so are "owned" by Congress, which has the sole authority to declassify and release them, which has been unequivocally stated in writing on CIA letterhead; and as Congress as a body has delegated such decisions to the House and Senate Intelligence Committees, the very Committees who wrote the report containing the 28 Pages have the sole authority to declassify and release them at any time -- and the president, as the head of the executive branch, does not. The executive and congressional branches are therefore playing a cynical game of 'good fed, bad fed' with the 9/11 victims' family members and the American people.

But even if President Obama had the authority to declassify and release the 28 pages, we don't believe he would do so. Campaigning on ending the war in Iraq, he has, instead, continued it. He has also warred against Libya, Syria, Pakistan, and, by Saudi proxy, Yemen. So, there is little reason to expect that he will let American citizens and the world see how he and the George W. Bush administration have protected countries which have supported international terrorism.

BUT " There really is a better way, and one that Congress has used before.

1. Senators and Representatives can read the contents of the 28 Pages in camera in the House and Senate Intelligence Committees' Secure Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF) and then openly recite from memory and discus their contents and meaning on the floor of either House. In 1971, then-Senator Mike Gravel (D-Alaska) placed 4,100 of the 7,000 pages of The Pentagon Papers into the Congressional Record, partially by reading from some of them on the Senate Floor and, later, by inserting the remainder through an aide into the record of a meeting of his Senate Subcommittee on Buildings and Grounds. (The Pentagon Papers was the informal name given to a secret Department of Defense study of U.S. political and military involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to 1967.)

There is constitutional and legal justification for this.

2. Article 1, Section 6 of the U.S. Constitution states:

The Senators and Representatives...shall in all Cases, except Treason, Felony and Breach of the Peace, be privileged from Arrest during their Attendance at the Session of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same; and for any Speech or Debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other Place. [emphasis added]

3. In Gravel v. United States , 408 US 606 (1972), the U. S. Supreme Court rejected the executive branch's argument and those of lower courts that Senator Gravel and his aides had broken the law. In upholding the immunity of members of Congress under the Speech or Debate Clause, the court clearly stated that the clause "... was designed to assure a co-equal branch of the government wide freedom of speech, debate, and deliberation without intimidation or threats from the Executive Branch. It thus protects Members against prosecutions that directly impinge upon or threaten the legislative process. We have no doubt that Senator Gravel may not be made to answer --either in terms of questions or in terms of defending himself from prosecution--for the events that occurred at the subcommittee meeting."

And, in fact, for almost a year now former Senator Mike Gravel has been calling for just one courageous member of Congress to step forward and become "The Mike Gravel for the 28 Pages." He has personally met with Representatives and Senators who have already read the pages asking them to step forward and do what he did, and has sent a law review article detailing how Gravel v. United States and the multiple subsequent court rulings upholding it continue to ensure members of Congress near-absolute immunity should they recite from memory what they have read of the 28 pages on the floor of the House or the Senate.

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Joe Biden understands something about the Democratic Party and its future that his fellow partisans would do well to consider. "I don't think any Democrat's ever won saying, 'We can't think that big -- we ought to really downsize here because it's not realistic,'" the vice president told The New York Times in April. "C'mon man, this is the Democratic Party! I'm not part of the party that says, 'Well, we can't do it.'" Mocking Hillary Clinton's criticism of Bernie Sanders for proposing bold reforms, Biden dismissed the politics of lowered expectations. "I like the idea of saying, 'We can do much more,' because we can," he declared, leading the Times to observe that, while Biden wasn't making an endorsement, "He'll take Mr. Sanders's aspirational approach over Mrs. Clinton's caution any day."

Unwittingly or not, Biden made an even better case than Sanders has for taking his insurgent campaign all the way to the Democratic convention in Philadelphia. If the party is going to run in 2016 on a "do much more" agenda -- as opposed to triangulating around the center -- the Vermont senator's supporters and like-minded Democrats, including Clinton's progressive backers, will have to force the issue. Taking the Sanders insurgency to the convention is the paramount vehicle for placing demands that are ideological and, as Biden's comments suggest, also strategic. That's one reason why Sanders promised in a statement on April 26 to go to the convention with "as many delegates as possible to fight for a progressive party platform" -- despite the fact that Clinton's delegate advantage now all but guarantees that she will win the nomination.

What Sanders is proposing is a necessary quest -- and a realistic one. Already, he is better positioned than any recent insurgent challenger to engage in rules and platform debates, as well as in dialogues about everything from the vice-presidential nomination to the character of the fall campaign. As veteran political analyst Rhodes Cook noted in a survey prepared for The Atlantic, by mid-April, Sanders had exceeded the overall vote totals and percentages of Howard Dean in 2004, Jesse Jackson in 1988, Gary Hart in 1984, and Ted Kennedy in 1980, among others. (While Barack Obama's 2008 challenge to Clinton began as something of an insurgency, he eventually ran with the solid support of key party leaders like Kennedy.) By the time the District of Columbia votes on June 14, Sanders will have more pledged delegates than any challenger seeking to influence a national convention and its nominee since the party began to democratize its nominating process following the disastrous, boss-dominated convention of 1968.

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This new reality has Clinton supporters fretting about the prospect of a chaotic convention that could expose divisions within the party when it should be uniting for what increasing looks like a fall fight against Donald Trump. But a muscular appearance by Sanders and his delegates at the convention doesn't have to lead to bitterness. Historically, contested conventions -- not carefully choreographed coronations -- have led parties and their nominees to take more audacious positions and to excite broader electoral coalitions.

"Conventions are where we come together, but you don't really come together if you avoid differences," says the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who has protested, attended, or spoken at nearly a dozen Democratic national conventions (and who has not endorsed a candidate in the primary race this year). "You start by understanding that it takes two wings to fly. If you have two strong wings -- a wing that has won and a wing that has lost -- you don't deny the differences; you recognize them. You debate, find common ground, find ways to start working together for immediate goals -- the next election -- and for long-term goals that can mean as much to the nation as to the party."



Recent conventions have been so tightly scripted that it's easy to forget that both parties have long histories of contested gatherings -- sometimes with open combat over the party's standard-bearer (as may erupt at this year's Republican convention), but often with spirited competition over rules, platforms, and the very nature of the party itself. Contested conventions can open policy debates and clear the way for "significant political and social progress," argues Fitchburg State University professor Benjamin Railton, who has analyzed the history of conventions.

With 18 state wins so far and more than 1,350 delegates, Sanders is uniquely poised to push for such progress. Since Clinton will likely arrive at the convention with a majority of the pledged delegates and a lead in the popular vote, she'll have every right to argue, as she did in April, that "I am winning. And I'm winning because of what I stand for and what I've done." Front-runners rarely invite input from insurgent challengers, and if Clinton chooses to wall Sanders off, she'll have the upper hand in Philadelphia. In January, Democratic National Committee chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz appointed a pair of Clinton allies, Connecticut Governor Dannel Malloy and former Atlanta mayor Shirley Franklin, to head the platform committee. And an ardent Clinton supporter and noted Sanders antagonist, former congressman Barney Frank, will cochair the rules committee.

But Clinton's decision to adopt what was initially Sanders's position on a host of issues, from wages to climate change to trade policy, shows that her campaign recognizes that a substantial portion of the party's base -- as well as its potential base -- is attracted to Sanders's more aspirational message. And the pressure to make that recognition a part of the Democratic platform will grow as the committees expand before the convention and Sanders aides urge the DNC to deliver on the promise made by spokesman Luis Miranda: that the party is "committed to an open, inclusive and representative process" for drawing up the platform, and that "both of our campaigns will be represented on the drafting committee."



If Sanders advocates gain sufficient representation to provoke debates, what are the likely pressure points? Like Jackson and his supporters, who forced rules reforms and the diversification of the DNC in 1988, the Sanders camp could champion a more open and representative Democratic Party. There could be calls for reducing or eliminating the role of superdelegates, for a better approach to scheduling debates, and for consistent primary rules to avoid dramatic variations in turnout based on whether the primary is open or closed. Even though Sanders ran well in caucuses, his backers could gain credibility by also arguing that caucuses are too incoherently organized and difficult to participate in to be justified. On all of these issues, Sanders supporters would have to establish alliances with Clinton backers who recognize that it is time to "democratize the Democratic Party."



The prospect of aligning with Clinton supporters, especially progressive members of Congress and labor activists who will attend the convention as superdelegates, creates even greater openings for platform fights. Prospective nominees tend to favor weaker platforms; Harry Truman would have preferred milder civil-rights commitments than were made in his party's 1948 platform, and it took steady pressure from unions, liberals, and Ted Kennedy to get Jimmy Carter to finally embrace spending on jobs programs. It will take similar pressure to get Clinton and her inner circle to accept a Democratic platform that Sanders says must include "a $15-an-hour minimum wage, an end to our disastrous trade policies, a Medicare-for-all health-care system, breaking up Wall Street financial institutions, ending fracking in our country, making public colleges and universities tuition-free, and passing a carbon tax so we can effectively address the planetary crisis of climate change." Clinton stalwarts may want to keep things vague, but look for the Sanders team to demand specifics, such as an explicit endorsement of a national $15 minimum wage instead of the $12 proposal that Clinton initially offered, and an unequivocal rejection of the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal that President Obama supports and that Clinton once championed but now criticizes.

As it happens, many of Clinton's most passionate allies have been outspoken supporters of the fight for $15, fair-trade policies, and proposals to break up the big banks. One of them, Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown, a potential vice-presidential pick, has argued publicly that Clinton "should work with [Sanders] on the platform" in order to strengthen the party's appeal. Other Clinton backers like Connecticut Representative Rosa DeLauro and nonaligned House members like Wisconsin's Mark Pocan could play a critical role in steering the party toward unequivocal opposition to the TPP. There could also be room for cooperation on addressing mass incarceration, passing constitutional amendments to get big money out of politics, and guaranteeing voting rights for all.


Gap

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Having spent a decade now trying to understand the sickness degrading America's politics, I watch for developments that can help illuminate what's gone wrong. Here's one specific situation that crystallizes the larger problem.



It concerns the refusal of the Republicans in the Senate to consider any Supreme Court nominee that the President could put forward. Such unprecedented senatorial conduct would be reason enough for concern for our political system. But there's another troubling piece of the picture.



According to a Washington Post report, the support from Republican activists for the Republican senators' unprecedented stand is more intense than the support from Democrats for insisting that the confirmation process be conducted in accordance with America's traditional norms.





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Germany has been supplying weapons to Iraqi Kurdistan since October 2014. That was a crucial moment that determined the further foreign political course of Germany. Feeling pressure from the United States, the German cabinet lifted a ban on weapons and military vehicles' supplies to crisis war-torn regions.

According to German government officials, Germany realized the Kurds could stand up to ISIS terrorists. "The Kurdish fighters are manning the front line against the Islamic State," German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen stated. At the same time, Washington celebrated its victory as well: the White House had coerced the Germans to dance to the U.S. tune.

However, it became known last January that black markets in northern Iraq openly sell German weapons. Berlin demanded that the Kurdish leadership account for using supplied armory. The report revealed that a part of the weapons delivered by Germany to the Kurds fell into the hands of terrorists.

Inside Syria Media Center focused on this issue, deciding to find out the way military cargoes were delivered to Iraqi Kurdistan.

Very Important Person

Our activists in Erbil found out that Dilshad Barzani (a brother of Masoud Barzani, the president of Iraqi Kurdistan) was responsible for organization of weapons supplies from Germany. He has been living in Germany for a long time and now he represents the Kurdish government and the Kurdistan Democratic Party in that country. The biggest Kurdish diaspora in Europe, which includes about 1,000,000 people, in fact is under his control.

Dilshad Barzani has close trust-based relationships with Angela Merkel and he often visits various events of the ruling Christian Democratic Union party as VIP.

"The main Kurd of Germany" has an armored car and the agents of Federal Intelligence Service (BND) usually escort his vehicle. He also enjoys encrypted-communications equipment that enables him to get in touch with the Federal Chancellor or any government member at any time.

Dilshad Barzani is certainly a very powerful person in Germany.

Germany -- Bulgaria -- Kurdistan

Now, let's have a look at the way the arms are delivered from Germany to the Middle East.

Sure, Germany cannot supply Kurdistan with arms in a direct way because this does not comply with international law. But the west or its special services have never had a trouble with launching a specific cargo delivery at any corner of the world via mediate countries.

As Germans and Bulgarians have agreed to send some amount of Soviet-made weapons stocked at the Bulgarian depots to the Kurds, it would be reasonable to transfer all weaponry through the same country. For the record, details of this traffic had been studied since the beginning of 2015, though Berlin was realizing this was not a perfect deal. As Bulgaria is a NATO member country, it's not convenient to conduct the operations like that.

So, they considered another way, via Ukraine, that looks the most appropriate in the context of secret traffic of semi-legal cargoes. In 2015, Kurds representatives came to Kiev several times in order to work out an alternative traffic way. Major General Sirwan Barzani, Iraqi Kurdistan president's nephew, and Brigadier General Hazhar Ismail were among the delegates.

Nevertheless, the situation has dramatically changed. After Russia launched operations in Syria, Kiev and Ankara began closing their positions. In particular, this is characterized by widening of bilateral military and technical cooperation as well as by intensified exchange of intelligence information. As Peshmerga leaders worried that secret data about weapons delivery to the Kurds could be handed to the Turkish special services, the idea to supply arms via Ukraine was rejected.

Finally, they opted for Bulgaria as a main mediator of the military cargoes' delivery to Kurdistan while the American side took responsibility to provide security and control of the whole operation.

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Reprinted from EcoWatch

An interesting question is, what are you waiting for?

Global warming is the biggest problem we've ever faced as a civilization -- certainly you want to act to slow it down, but perhaps you've been waiting for just the right moment.

The moment when, oh, marine biologists across the Pacific begin weeping in their scuba masks as they dive on reefs bleached of life in a matter of days. The moment when drought in India gets deep enough that there are armed guards on dams to prevent the theft of water. The moment when we record the hottest month ever measured on the planet, and then smash that record the next month, and then smash that record the next month? The moment when scientists reassessing the stability of the Antarctic ice sheet have what one calls an "OMG moment" and start talking about massive sea level rise in the next 30 years?

That would be this moment -- the moment when 135 children have drowned in Thailand trying to cool off from the worst heatwave on record there. The moment when, in a matter of months, we've recorded the highest wind speeds ever measured in the western and southern hemispheres.

For years people have patiently and gently tried to nudge us onto a new path for dealing with our climate and energy troubles--we've had international conferences and countless symposia and lots and lots and lots of websites. And it's sort of worked--the world met in Paris last December and announced it would like to hold temperature increases to 1.5C or less. Celebration ensued. But what also ensued was February, when the planet's temperature first broke through that 1.5C barrier. And as people looked past the rhetoric, they saw that the promises made in Paris would add up to a world 3.5C warmer--an impossible world. The world we're starting to see take shape around us.

So there's a need to push harder. A need, as it were, to break free from some of the dogma that's surrounded this issue for a very long time. Yes, we need to have "everyone work together." Yes, we need a "multi-faceted, global effort." But you know what we really need? We need to keep oil and gas and coal in the ground, keep it from being burned and adding its freight of carbon to the global total.

Which is why, from one end of the planet to the other, people are taking greater risks this month. In one of the biggest coordinated civil disobedience actions the world has ever seen, frontline communities and climate scientists and indigenous people and faith leaders and just plain people who actually give a damn will be sitting down and sitting in and standing pat -- blocking, at least for a few hours, those places where the coal and oil and gas currently reside, in the hopes of helping keep them there.

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"STABILITY" AND ELECTORAL SYSTEMS: Are current electoral systems compatible with Western Democratic principles?

The apparent state of confusion surrounding this particular primary election season in the United States raises several questions on that most sacred of the Free World's totems, the electoral process.

There certainly is a lack of clarity on the subject, and although some electoral systems (France comes to mind) appear more logical and satisfactory than others, no consensus has been formed, or even attempted, among Western "democracies", on the possibility of finding and sharing a formula based, for example, on a careful blend of two or more existing systems, and the subsequent scrapping of some of the more controversial national systems (Italy and the United Kingdom come to mind). The idea occasionally emerges, but does not appear destined to succeed.

Elections have been around since antiquity (the Roman Republic had them every year) and, in one form or another, have coexisted with various types of human societies, at least in Europe, throughout the centuries. After all, even the Holy Roman Emperor needed to be elected, as, indeed, does the Pope emerge from an electoral process.

The question, however, which should be examined, is whether electoral processes which have fulfilled their task -- more or less correctly and efficiently -- for many decades are still capable of assuring popular participation in the political life of a given society. In this context it has to be remembered that current principles -- including the principle of "universal suffrage" - are relatively new, and that all current systems -- even the most technologically advanced -- are extremely slow and cumbersome when compared to progress made in means of communication.

One result of this anomaly appears to lie in the growing number of "democratically elected" leaders who, once in office, rather than following the principles laid down in their own electoral platform, prefer having their decisions dictated, or, at least, greatly influenced, by trends in public opinion as picked up by the electronic media.

On the one hand this could appear as an extremely positive development, the result being a form of "direct democracy" not even dreamed about by the ancient Athenians. This trend, however, greatly diminishes the importance of the electoral process itself, which ends up reduced to a near-farcical popularity contest in which looks, one-liners, toothsome smiles and such end up being much more important than political principles. These, of course, will end up being formed, as time goes on, by mainstream trends in public opinion. The very term, beloved by the Romans "vox populi, vox Dei" (the voice of the people is the voice of God) would actually reach new degrees of significance, and the elections themselves would greatly diminish in importance. In fact, one could well ask whether the excitement currently surrounding the Presidential elections, reduced to exercises in show-business with less and less attention being reserved to key issues should actually be viewed as a sign of the imminent demise of a process we have been used to consider sacred but which, in its current form, is no longer compatible with the true concept of "Democracy".

The hidden dangers -- indeed not always hidden -- of this development are manifold. In the first place, of course, the risk of manipulation in opinion polls is far, far greater than the risk of electoral illegality, and it is not difficult to imagine the amount and the type of damage which would ensue from this.

There is also the risk that, with the diminishing of authority, the governing powers will not even obtain the limited, grudging respect they now enjoy. This danger has not escaped the attention of some Governments, and, in a number of countries, there is a growing, and rather preoccupying call for electoral processes designed to give governments greater authority, in the name of "stability" or -- perhaps even more preoccupying -- "security". It would be difficult to imagine a shepherd who, instead of directing his flock to the most favourable pastures, follows the sheep to whichever site they choose, without, as a result, losing the greater part of his flock to passing wolves or rival shepherds.

The question that comes to mind is whether a two-party system is compatible with the predominant concept of "democracy". The apparent disarray currently existing in the United States would seem to indicate that it is no longer so. The paradox, however, lies in the fact that some countries (such as Italy) which have lived fully democratic existences for decades under a multi-party system, are drifting towards precisely that two party reality which appears to diminish popular participation in public affairs, as well as popular interest in such participation (witness the dramatic fall in voter participation in most European countries). It would, therefore, appear useful to view the 2016 US presidential elections in a more global perspective than usual and to ask whether we might be witnessing the end of the Democratic age and whether the accepted Democratic process has embarked on a suicidal path?

The language and the fantasies normally associated with the concept of "Democracy" will live on and continue to be used for years to come by leading political figures, just as the Roman Emperors clung to the delusion of republican values, even as these values were being destroyed.

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A cancer cell being attacked by two white cells. NCI

Over a century ago, a few doctors observed that some of their patients were suddenly cured of leukemia after being naturally infected by a virus.

These spontaneous remissions were sadly anecdotal on a planet with 14 million new cases of cancer a year, but they were enough to fuel a century-long dream: to genetically modify viruses to attack and destroy tumoral cells, multiplying within them and feeding the treatment until the cancer is completely gone.

But reality turns out to be a lot harder than the theory, as evidenced by the first gathering of the newly created Spanish Adenovirus Network, which met in Madrid last month.

We can modify adenoviruses to make them act like biomedicines against some diseases

Carmen San Martin, researcher

Adenoviruses are everywhere. They cause common colds and diarrhea, but their characteristics also make them a versatile tool in the ongoing quest to destroy cancer.

They are relatively easy to produce in large amounts and they have a large genome, with enough space to introduce the genes you are interested in, explains Carmen San Martin, a researcher at the National Biotechnology Center and the coordinator of this network of 10 independent scientific groups.

We can modify adenoviruses to make them act like biomedicines against some diseases, she adds.

Adenoviruses under an electronic microscope. Universidad de Pensilvania

The biologist Marta Alonso is exploring this strategy, which is still at a very experimental stage. She is working on a tough front: brain tumors in children, which are highly lethal. Late this year she will begin a clinical trial with modified adenoviruses to attack diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma (DIPG).

These are heartrending cases, she says. Right now, children with these tumors die within nine months.

Her first results are moderately hopeful. Another trial with 30 adults suffering from gliomas  tumors that originate in the brain or spine  has turned up some positive results.

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We didnt detect any toxicity; just a little fever at the most, says Alonso, who works at Navarre Universitys Clinica hospital. You have to treat the data gingerly, because its still very early, but we have observed that 10% of patients respond to treatment with modified adenoviruses. It may seem like little, but its a lot. The prognosis for gliomas is usually death. The life expectancy of adults with glioma is 14 months.

In some anecdotal cases, the brain tumors were considerably reduced. Alonsos team is working to shed light on these victorious battles waged at the molecular level. One of their hypotheses is that, occasionally, the virus drops like a bomb and makes the immune system start recognizing the tumor.

Meanwhile, another biologist named Ramon Alemanyhas spent the last 20 years trying to materialize the dream of using adenoviruses against cancer. He notes that despite decades of research, only one adenovirus treatment has been approved in the entire world, and that was in China in 2005, to fight head and neck cancers caused chiefly by alcohol and tobacco consumption. Since then, no other drug has been approved.

And the efficiency of that drug is not even proven using European and American criteria, adds Alemany, of the Barcelona-based Catalan Cancer Institute.

Around 99% of experimental drugs against pancreatic cancer have failed

Ramon Alemany, researcher

This researcher lists the obstacles that remain: the adenovirus often fails to reach the tumor efficiently, and the bodys defenses neutralize it before it can shoot at the cancer. The enemy is gigantic.

Yet Alemany does get good news from time to time. His modified adenovirus Icovir-5 has been used since 2005 to experimentally treat 20 children with neuroblastoma, the second most common solid tumor in children. Using bone marrow cells from the children themselves, and infecting them with the modified adenovirus, much like a Trojan horse, the treatment has had positive results in five children. One of them has been cancer-free for 10 years.

Yet Alemany is asking people to curb their enthusiasm. Another one of his modified adenoviruses, Icovir-17K, has been tested on 24 adults, half of whom had colon cancer and the other half pancreatic cancer. In this case, the adenovirus was injected directly in the bloodstream.

We see partial responses, but no remission, like we did see with the children, he explains. Right now we cannot conclude that our virus is contributing a clinical benefit. Around 99% of experimental drugs against pancreatic cancer have failed.

Cristina Fillat, a biochemist conducting research on mice using modified adenoviruses against pancreatic cancer, is more upbeat. Fillat, of the Barcelona-based Pi i Sunyer Biomedical Research Institute, underscores that just a few months ago the European Union and the US approved the first oncolytic virus, the T-VEC. It is not an adenovirus, but a genetically modified lip herpes virus meant to stop the progression of melanoma, the most aggressive form of skin cancer. Patients with advanced melanoma who receive T-VEC treatment live an average of 41 months, compared with 21 for those wo get a control treatment.

Fillat thinks that approval of T-VEC represents a form of support for adenovirus research.

English version by Susana Urra.
King Felipe VI chats with PRISA CEO Juan Luis Cebrian at the award dinner. ULY MARTIN

EL PAIS handed out the 33rd Ortega y Gasset Journalism Awards on Thursday at an emotional ceremony presided by the Spanish king and queen.

The event coincided with the newspapers 40th anniversary celebrations, which are taking place in Madrid.

Felipe VI handed out the prizes together with Dona Letizia and Juan Luis Cebrian, CEO of the PRISA Group and the first editor-in-chief that EL PAIS ever had.

The Ortega y Gasset awards symbolize the highest values of European culture

Adam Michnik, editor-in-chief of Gazeta Wyborcza

In his keynote address, the Spanish monarch underscored that the newspaper has been a witness and a recorder of all the great events and transformations experienced by our society in the last few decades.

Invoking the names of EL PAIS founders Jose Ortega Spottorno, Jesus Polanco and Juan Luis Cebrian, the king thanked the newspaper for its professional, intellectual and social commitment and noted the role of protagonist it played in the transformation of Spanish society from a dictatorship into a democracy integrated into Europe and with a voice of its own in the world.

Around 400 guests attended the event, including many political, business and cultural leaders. Prominent figures included acting Deputy Prime Minister Soraya Saenz de Santamaria, Madrid Mayor Manuela Carmena, Congressional Speaker Patxi Lopez and several ministers of the caretaker government. The heads of the Socialist Party, Ciudadanos, Podemos and United Left were also on hand.

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It marked the first time that Felipe VI and Letizia had attended an Ortega y Gasset award ceremony. In 2001, Felipes father Juan Carlos, then on the throne, presided the event with Queen Sofia.

The winners of this years awards are Peruvian journalist Joseph Zarate for his story of a peasant womans fight against a mining company, Lilia Saul and Ginna Morelo for their joint multimedia feature on missing people in Mexico and Colombia, Samuel Aranda for his photograph of a refugee struggling in the water with a child in her arms on the coast of Lesbos, and Adam Michnik, editor-in-chief of Polands largest newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza, for his defense of democracy and freedom of expression.

The Ortega y Gasset awards symbolize the highest values of European culture, said Michnik, speaking for all the winners. That is why receiving these prizes are a great honor for each and every one of us.

English version by Susana Urra.
Mana performing at the White House Cinco de Mayo event. Jacquelyn Martin (AP)

More information Margaritas, Mana y Trump en el ultimo Cinco de Mayo de Obama

There is hardly anyone in the East Room of the White House without a margarita in their hand. In the vestibule, waiters serve tacos to the guests while a military band plays Guantanamera  which is, of course, actually a Cuban song. Since there are no Mexican flags or sombreros, margaritas and tacos were the next best indicators that a Cinco de Mayo party is going on.

The Mexican band Mana was the main event at President Barack Obamas last May 5 celebration as president. The day is actually more popular in the United States than in Mexico, with many Americans mistakenly believing it marks Mexican Independence Day. In fact, it commemorates the Mexican armys victory over the French military during the Battle of Puebla on May 5, 1862 as Napoleons troops fought to occupy the country. No matter, Cinco de Mayo is the perfect excuse to offer happy hour specials on margarita, tequila and nachos with guacamole.

Neither Mana nor Obama mentioned Donald Trump but his name hovered in the air

Mana played seven songs as 200 people cheered, sipped margaritas and compulsively took photos with their cellphones. It was an unusual setting for a Mana concert: a brightly lit hall with solemn decor and a very elegantly dressed public. Attendees included the Cuban-American musician Emilio Estefan and the Spanish chef Jose Andres.

It was Manas first performance at the White House and the culmination of its relationship with Obama. In 2012, the group helped the president court the Latino vote in Nevada and played at his second inauguration in January 2013.

Mana and Obama did not share the stage, but they did speak briefly after the event. When the president took the stage, the crowd went wild. Buenas tardes, feliz Cinco de Mayo. Bienvenidos a la Casa Blanca, he told the guests. Obama said the event was one of the best Washington fiestas of the year.

Neither Mana nor Obama mentioned Donald Trump but his name hovered in the air. The New York millionaire and presumptive Republican candidate in Novembers presidential elections has made his anti-immigration stance a defining characteristic of his campaign. Trump promises to deport the 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States. He also plans to pressure Mexico to help finance the construction of a wall at the border and raise stiff tariffs to prevent manufacturing operations from moving abroad.

Obama also talked about advances the Latino community has made during his time in office, though he admitted that he had not met every objective

Obama alluded to Trump just once during his speech. In order to pass comprehensive immigration reform, which he failed to do, everyone must vote, he said. Well have another occasion to talk about that. But were going to have to have some historic turnout rates come November, he told the crowd. Democrats are hoping Trumps belligerence will inspire Latinos to vote en masse.

Obama also talked about advances the Latino community has made during his time in office, though he admitted that he had not met every objective. For example, he failed to create a path to citizenship for immigrants. Obama also emphasized the incredible bonds that the two countries share.

All those ties would be threatened were Trump to become president. Several journalists joked about whether the real estate businessman would hold a White House Cinco de Mayo event. In an effort to ease tensions, Trump tweeted a photo of himself enjoying a taco bowl and wished everyone a happy Cinco de Mayo. I love Hispanics, he added on his post.

Mana has already jumped into the fray and criticized Trump. In November, the band and Los Tigres del Norte unfurled a banner at the Latin Grammy Awards that read: Latinos united. Do not vote for racists.

After its White House concert, the band appeared before the press in front of the Oval Office, just as political and international leaders do. Band leader Fernando Olvera avoided any direct attacks against Trump but said we must create bridges not walls. He added that he would accept Trumps invitation to play at the White House though he seemed to be hoping that day will never come. Latinos can shift the balance of the presidency, he told reporters.

English version by Dyane Jean Francois.
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Armenia-Azerbaijan: EU sets up monitoring capacity along the international borders

PACE co-rapporteurs on Armenia concerned by reports of alleged war crimes or inhuman treatment perpetrated by Azerbaijans armed forces

There is still 35% gender pay gap: Sona Ghazaryan

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Global Finance Names Ameriabank the Safest Bank in Armenia

Mikayel and Karen Vardanyans provided 136 million AMD support for the overhaul of the Myasnikyan statue, which was in unsafe state of disrepair

Believe me, as a representative of a country which uses the Schengen system very often, it is quite important. Vardanyan

I really look forward to having answers from the Azerbaijani side for these alleged gross human rights violations: Secretary General

I call on Armenian and Azerbaijani parliamentarians to use this Assembly as an agora of opportunities President Tiny Kox

UCOMS SPECIAL OFFER OF THE UNLIMITED INTERNET IS NOW TERMLESS

There is no place for the death penalty in a State that respects human rights: PACE General Rapporteur

EU and CoE call on two Member States that have not yet acceded to this Protocol  Armenia and Azerbaijan  to do so without delay

An urgent debate requested on "The military hostilities between Armenia and Azerbaijan".

UCOM AND PES-PES CONTINUE COOPERATION WITHIN THE FRAMEWORK OF EDUCATIONAL PROJECT

The statement of the meeting between Prime Minister Pashinyan, President Aliyev, President Macron and President Michel of October 6, 2022

Largest Corporate Bond Program at the Securities Market of Armenia Completed Successfully

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The statement of the Defender on the video of the execution of Armenian PoWs by the Azerbaijani armed forces

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STATEMENT BY SECRETARY ANTONY J. BLINKEN

This criminal act is another proof that the Armenophobia policy. Tatoyan

Nikol Pashinyan, Nancy Pelosi discuss a number of issues related to the Armenian-American agenda and regional developments

Delegation by Nancy Pelosi Accompanied by Alen Simonyan Visits Tsitsernakaberd Memorial Complex

Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi Arrives in Yerevan

Armenian Revytech, global technology leader SAP and financial services software specialist SAP Fioneer sign a cooperation agreement

With 120 million drams donated by Mikael Vardanyan, the defenders of the homeland will be treated in a new building

OSCE Chairman-in-Office and OSCE Secretary General call for immediate cessation of hostilities along Armenia-Azerbaijan border

Statement by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Artsakh

USA Embassy Message for U.S. Citizens

ANCA Issues National Call to Action to Stop Taxpayer Funding of Aliyevs Aggression
BAD AXE  Whats it take to topple a 400-foot, 485,000-pound wind turbine?

Mechanical failures, an imbalance and the ensuing violent act.

Essentially, self-destruction.

And a dose of irony.

Or as officials call it, an overspeed event.

Thats the determination wind energy developer Exelon Wind Generation, turbine manufacturer Vestas and a third party have made after a months-long investigation into the root cause of a turbines collapse onto an Oliver Township farm field at the site of the states first utility-scale wind energy project. It happened on Feb. 25.

The turbines in Harvest 1 Wind Farm are eight years old. On the turbine that fell, seals failed on all three cylinders in its pitch system, which controls how the turbines blades move back and forth, officials said.

The turbine exceeded designed rotation speeds  14.4 rpm (revolutions per minute) is nominal, and at that speed, blade tips are moving at about 200 mph, according to Exelon. It created an imbalance as blades picked up speed. At the time of collapse, rotation speeds reached 18 rpm, officials said.

At that high of an rpm, the thing just basically shook itself apart, said Chris Higgins, an Exelon operations manager.

It was a pretty violent act going on at that speed with an imbalance in the blades.

Mark Van Diepenbeek, senior operations manager at Vestas, headquartered in Denmark, said the seal was worn on all three cylinders in the turbine.

And it would take all three cylinders to be worn to cause this event, Van Diepenbeek said.

Exelon says the pitch cylinder seals leaked internally and werent able to hold the blades out of the wind. A hydraulic pump also shut off, and oil pressure couldnt be maintained, officials said.

It happened during an eight-hour period, according to Exelon.

It was there, we just didnt see it, Higgins said. We werent monitoring it at the time.

Checking for such cylinder wear was not part of normal maintenance, officials said.

We are finding wear and anything thats showing wear will be replaced, Van Diepenbeek said, adding recent inspections found wear on no more than one cylinder.

The company will now have remote, 24/7 monitoring of turbines, and that maintenance will be added, he said.

Adding to the irony, officials say a contributing factor to the collapse was wind speeds near 45 mph.

Any lower than that, the winds wouldnt have had enough force to push the blades into that position which created an overspeed, Van Diepenbeek said.

Exelon Spokesperson Kristen Otterness said the company is fully committed to ensuring a similar event doesnt happen anywhere else across our fleet, and that Exelon has shared this information with the industry.

Worldwide, this is the first (failure) for the V82 model turbine, Van Diepenbeek said.

The turbine was valued at $1.5 million, Exelon says.
Komandos: We have no one to rely on, we should rely on ourselves

Retired Major-General Arkady Ter-Tadevosyan welcomes the draft bill that would, if adopted by the Armenian parliament, recognize the independence of Artsakh. Our leadership has such a viewpoint. They are right to put the question up for debate. We should also consider the efforts of the Minsk Group Co-Chairs and try to combine these two. I am for the initiative but I think that any specific decision would be coordinated with the OSCE Minsk Group. The role of the international mediators is to see to the course of negotiations so that the organism will continue to work as usual, Arkady Ter-Tadevosyan Ter-Tadevosyan, who is known as Komandos since the Karabakh war in the early 1990s, told A1+. On the other hand, the Karabakh war hero stresses I am not a political figure and I do not want to be involved in such discussions. The President of the National Academy of Sciences of Armenia Radik Martirosyan said on May 5 that Armenians cannot make their own weapons as we shall immediately be was hit in the nose. Imagine we make one, how can we realize it? Do we have markets? No, we do not. It means we shall have to send those weapons to other countries but they will not allow us to do it, we shall immediately be hit in the nose. There is a fight of life and death on the international arms market and not all countries can freely access it, Mr Martirosyan said yesterday. When asked about his opinion on the matter, Ter-Tadevosyan said, from the very first day, we have been saying that we are a peace-loving nation, give us money and we shall do everything with it. Our nation is very talented. I have a group working for me. Besides, people come to me every now and then and offer their help, they make their proposals to us. I think we must make weapons, this is a necessity. Turkey makes weapons. So does Pakistan. Ukraine and Russia help Azerbaijan. But we have no one to help us. We have to rely on ourselves. The Major-General continues to work with generals who have arrived from different countries. We want to be useful to our army the way we can, he said in conclusion.
BAY CITY (AP)  Plans call for a drawbridge in Bay City to be closed for a year and a half starting in 2020 as part of a $45 million reconstruction project.

The Michigan Department of Transportation owns and operates the bascule bridge that connects Middlegrounds Island with the mainland. The Bay City Times reports that a nationwide search is taking place for a project designer.
U. S. Rep. Dan Kildee, D-Flint Township, will host the following coffee hour this week to meet with constituents and hear their concerns. The coffee hour events are free and open to the public.

Kildee will be at Harless and Hugh Coffee, 1003 Washington Ave., Bay City, on Friday from 10-11:30 a.m.
Photo provided

State Rep. Gary Glenn, R-Midland, vice chairman of the House Energy Policy Committee, recently received a plaque from the Michigan Schools Electric Cooperative in recognition of his leadership in blocking legislation that would deny public schools the choice of saving money by purchasing electricity from suppliers other than the states two major utilities, Consumers Energy and Detroit Edison.

MSEC President Diane Block, assistant superintendent for operations at Alpena Public Schools, made the presentation to Glenn at the organizations annual meeting in Lansing.
For the 20th consecutive year, Alma College students have captured the highest awards at the National Model UN Conference in New York City.

The Alma College team representing the country of Rwanda received outstanding delegation recognition, the highest award at the conference. The team representing Brazil received distinguished delegation, the second highest award at the conference.
Registration is now open for The Salvation Army of Midlands drop-in summer day camp.

The Salvation Army of Midland will offer two summer day camp sessions:

 Session one: June 27-July 22

 Session two: Aug. 1-Aug. 25

All summer day camp sessions run from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. and are open to children ages 4 to 12 years old. There are four Midland locations for the day camps:

 The Salvation Army Midland Corps Community Center, 330 Waldo Ave.

 Midland Nazarene Church, 5700 Jefferson Ave.

 Floyd Elementary School, 725 S. 8 Mile Road.

 Meridian Elementary School, 3353 N. Meridian Road.

The cost is $20 per child per week with a $10 registration fee per session. Reduced cost is available for families receiving government assistance. Before and after-care services are offered at The Salvation Army Midland Corps Community Center only for an additional $20 per week for the first child registered, $15 per week per additional child.

Applications can be downloaded from www.samidland.org or picked up at The Salvation Army Midland Corps Community Center, 330 Waldo Ave. in Midland.

No two days will be the same as campers will enjoy a variety of activities, including arts and crafts, music and other recreational and social activities. A nutritious lunch will be provided courtesy of the Michigan Department of Educations Summer Food Service Program.

For more information, contact Brent Gilbert by phone (989) 496-2787 or email at brent_gilbert@usc.salvationarmy.org.
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....
(This is the first AFMS article for the Mental Health Awareness Month series.)



Nearly one in five adults, or 43 million Americans, has a diagnosable mental disorder, according to the National Institute of Mental Health.

Contrary to many other brain disorders, effective treatments are available for mental disorders.



May is Mental Health Awareness Month, a time of year to bring awareness to mental health issues and available resources.



According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, many factors can contribute to mental health issues. This includes biological factors, life experiences as well as family history of mental health problems.



Mental health affects us all. It influences our thoughts, feelings and actions. The state of our mental health can determine how we make decisions, interact with others and cope with daily stressors. Mental health is a factor of our overall wellbeing, much like physical health.

Air Force mental health clinics are critical to the health and readiness of beneficiaries and family members. Services include mental health assessment, education, consultation and treatment through a variety of evidence-based therapeutic exercises. This includes both individual and group therapy.



Automated Neuropsychological Assessment Metrics



The Automated Neuropsychological Assessment Metrics, or ANAM, is the Department of Defense mandated pre-deployment assessment and is administered to all service members within 12 months of deployment.



The assessment establishes a neurocognitive baseline. This is used to measure potential cognitive changes in individuals exposed to a concussive event.



In the event of a traumatic brain injury, the baseline is used to determine changes in cognitive functioning for assessment of a service members return to duty status.



Air Force Family Advocacy Program



The Air Force Family Advocacy Program implements programs to prevent and treat domestic abuse, child abuse and neglect. AF FAP provides training, consultation services and program and policy development.



Behavioral Health Optimization Program



While nearly 50 percent of people with a treatable behavioral health disorder do not seek care from a behavioral health professional, 80 percent visit their primary care manager at least once annually.



The Air Force is changing primary care teams to better address behavioral health needs. Behavioral Health Optimization Program, or BHOP, is a primary care behavioral health program. Through BHOP, behavioral health personnel are integrated into primary care clinics to provide the right care, at the right time, in the right place. BHOP is available to all active duty service members, retirees and their family members.



Stay tuned throughout May, as

AFMS

continues the month-long series on mental health.
Opinion: After Davutoglus resignation, Turkey becomes an unpredictable country (video)

Andranik Ispiryan, a Yerevan-based expert in Turkish studies, says the resignation of Turkeys Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, was a palace coup. He was forced to resign. Davutoglus friends carried out a coup against him, says the expert. Asked what changes we can expect in Turkeys foreign policy after the resignation of the Turkish PM, Mr Ispiryan said, Davutoglu was the architect of Armenian-Turkish relations. He was engaged in them from the moment when he became the countrys Foreign Minister, he even signed the Protocols with Armenia. We can consider the bitter experience of Armenian-Turkish relations ended here. At the same time, Andranik Ispiryan stresses that Turkey's former premier was a balanced and well-educated political figure. It was Davutoglu who wrote the April 24 address for Erdogan. He was trying to mitigate the mistakes of the Turkish President. After Davutoglus resignation, Turkey becomes an unpredictable country. The expert says Erdogan was always jealous of the Prime Minister Davutoglu. Erdogan did not forgive his attempts to become Prime Minister. Erdogan wanted him to work as PM but not to feel himself as PM. Erdogan did everything so that Davutoglu would not appear on the front pages of newspapers.
NORMAL  Local officials say their trip to a massive German trade show last week was productive regardless of Mitsubishi's sale of its car plant in Normal.

Were still trying to find end users.  Its just a different point of contact for us, said Kyle Ham, CEO of the Bloomington-Normal Economic Development Council, of the plant's sale to a Michigan auction firm. A few days post-trip, we do think we have a few opportunities were going to continue to explore.

Ham and Normal Mayor Chris Koos spent a week overseas to attend the Hannover Messe, an annual event billed as "the world's biggest industrial fair" with 6,500 exhibitors and 250,000 visitors. Mitsubishi announced the day the show ended that it will sell the plant to Maynards Industries of Southfield, Mich.

This is an opportunity to have a company that does this for a living and has a much bigger Rolodex of businesses that might use this property, and theyre U.S.-based, said Ham of working with Maynards.

Ham also chairs a task force of local, state and federal officials searching for a user for the site since Mitsubishi Motors North America announced last fall it was ending production in November and closing completely by the end of this month.

Ham and Koos differed on precisely how many meetings the pair took during the trip, but both said it was double digits.

There were some very targeted meetings with businesses looking to expand or grow in the United States, Ham said. There was also a lot of opportunity for cold-calling for businesses that already have a presence or are large-scale manufacturers.

Koos said they "didn't find a manufacturer that was willing or needed 2.5 million square feet of plant," which the Mitsubishi site offers. Ham said some companies expressed interest in using part of the site.

After the plant closes May 31, officials will no longer have a specific deadline to find a new user for the site, but Ham said they "have a sense of urgency to continue to pursue opportunities out there nonetheless. He noted any manufacturer to use the site would need at least a year before opening.

Koos said the trip was a long-term play as well.

"We will see some positive activity out of that. It might take a year or two," he said.
Samvel Nikoyan says his son wanted to return to Armenia from Boston but changed his decision after he learnt about ceasefire agreement (video)

During the four-day war in Karabakh, our army, our soldiers defended their country, families and dignity. They also solved important military and political problems, Samvel Nikoyan, a lawmaker from the Republican Party of Armenia (HHK), said on May 6. He says the mediators expected Nagorno-Karabakh to turn to them for help, but it did not happen. Our soldiers continue to guard our borders, he said. Speaking about the recognition of Nagorno-Karabakh by Armenia, the lawmaker said though the authorities want it but the time is not appropriate. Despite our dissatisfaction with the OSCE Minsk Group, we understand that it is the format in which we are supposed to continue talks. An alternative to the Minsk Group is not a four-day war but a much longer process. Asked when the time would be appropriate for the recognition of Artsakh, Mr Mikoyan said, If Azerbaijan starts new military actions, it will become clear for the Minsk Group Co-Chair countries that Armenia should recognize Nagorno-Karabakh. The HHK lawmaker added that by law, the bill on recognition of Artsakh will be discussed at the plenary session of the National Assembly irrespective of the conclusion of the executive body. In reply to a journalists observation that many young people reportedly left Armenia during the recent escalation of the conflict, Mr Nikoyan said his son, who is studying in Boston, bought a ticket and was going to return to Armenia on April 5. However, he changed his decision after he learnt about the verbally agreed ceasefire.
BLOOMINGTON  Three longtime United Way of McLean County partner agencies will not receive United Way money after the agency's annual fundraising campaign fell far short of goal.

Bloomington-Normal YMCA's Y-FI (Youth Fitness Intervention), W.D. Boyce Council of Boy Scouts of America Life Skills 101 and Girl Scouts of Central Illinois Leadership Experience Outreach will not receive United Way money for the next fiscal year.

The United Way board made funding decisions Friday for the fiscal year that begins July 1, two months after United Way ended a disappointing fundraising campaign that raised $3,533,44  compared with $4,261,683 the year before.

"With a down campaign, there is a finite number of resources as the needs continue to rise," said United Way President and CEO David Taylor. "This is not a referendum on the value of those organizations. Our plan is to continue partnering with these agencies regardless of grant funding."

This year, the YMCA program received $70,560, the Boy Scouts program received $41,680, and the Girl Scouts received $24,709.

"As a charter partner with the United Way of McLean County and a recipient of United Way funding since its inception, we are deeply troubled at this news," YMCA Executive Director B.J. Wilken said. "Our efforts to provide community awareness and healthy programs for youth have proven beneficial."

Wilken said Y-FI uses evidence-based practices to help medically challenged children with obesity. "Unfortunately, those benefits will be compromised with this decision," Wilken said, adding YMCA will ask United Way to reconsider.

Efforts to get comments from the Boy Scouts and Girls Scouts organizations were not successful.

Meanwhile, several programs received funding for the first time, including Center for Human Services' transitional apartments to help people with mental illness transition back into the community, $23,291, and outreach counseling for youths with mental health issues, $38,819.

"Mental health is a growing area of focus and concern for many in our community," Taylor said. "Center for Human Services documented the need and has a solution to address that need."

"This is wonderful news," said CHS Executive Director Tom Barr. "We are tremendously appreciative of the attention United Way and the community have paid to persons with mental illness, particularly when the state of Illinois owes us funds."

Faith In Action, the senior transportation service, also received United Way money for the first time  $7,861.

"Senior transportation is a demonstrated need in our community," Taylor said.

Faith in Action Executive Director Doretta Herr said she was "surprised and elated. I know there are other organizations hurting."

Among other programs receiving United Way funding for the first time were Easter Seals of Central Illinois' group therapy for autism and sensory disorders, $4,115, and Teen Club, a joint program of Boys & Girls Club of Bloomington-Normal and Lawrence Irvin Neighborhood Center, $95,075.

"In this era of declining state dollars, we are encouraging collaboration among agencies," Taylor said. "Boys and Girls Club and LINC are doing that with their combined youth outreach program."

Sixty-four programs operated by 30 agencies received $2,418,402. In the current fiscal year, 63 programs operated by 31 agencies received $2,967,308.

The gap between dollars allocated and dollars pledged in the campaign is because some people who pledge to United Way don't fulfill their pledge; some people specify their gifts to a specific program; for people who work in McLean County but live in other counties, their United Way donation goes to the county where they live; and administrative expenses, Taylor said.

United Way community volunteers spent 1,400 hours during the past six months analyzing community needs, agencies' program applications and how they addressed those needs, and programs' measurable results, said volunteer John O'Donnell.

O'Donnell is chairman-elect of United Way's Community Impact Cabinet that made funding recommendations to the board.

"The process is a rigorous process," said O'Donnell, an Afni vice president.

"I'm proud of the volunteers," Taylor said. "This group made some difficult decisions."
PONTIAC  A Plainfield woman was identified Friday as the victim in a chain-reaction crash Thursday on Interstate 55 that split her car in half, involved three other vehicles and sent two other women to the hospital.

Ashley J. Borja, 20, crossed into the northbound lanes for an unknown reason about 1:44 p.m. Thursday at mile marker 201, on Pontiac's north side, state police said. She was a student at Bradley University in Peoria.

Her southbound Honda Accord collided with a northbound Honda Odyssey minivan that spun around as the Accord broke in half. The Accord's driver was thrown from the car, and died at the scene, police said.

The minivan then struck a Jeep Cherokee, and the front half of the Accord hit a Volkswagen.

The minivan's driver, Rosanne M. Tenuta, 63, and passenger, Krista Y. Tenuta, 19, both of Brookfield, were extricated from the vehicle and flown to OSF Saint Francis Medical Center, Peoria, where they were listed in good condition.

The driver of the Jeep, Donald J. Moore, 59, of Dwight, suffered minor injuries and was not hospitalized, police said.

The four occupants of the Volkswagen, driver Eric S. Forister, 35, and passengers John E. Luckett, 34, and Erin D. Bartlett, 36, all of St. Louis, were not injured, police said.

Northbound I-55 was closed until about 6 p.m., police said.

No tickets were issued. The crash remains under investigation by the state police and the Livingston County Sheriff's Department.
Cheers

... to the Good Samaritans in Ford County who rescued a dog from near death after it was recently shot and tied to a bridge.

The dog, now on his way to recovery, is being treated at the University of Illinois small animal clinic.

A related jeers to the person or persons responsible for the heinous act. If you have a pet and no longer can keep it, there are many humane societies and rescue groups available to help find a loving home for unwanted animals.

Cheers

... to the Arkansas family that tracked down Rosetta Slagell of Flanagan to return a long-lost World War II dog tag that belonged to her late husband, Gerald "Jerry."

Some people would either have kept the tag as an oddity or just thrown it away. Not many would take the time to track down the name on the tag, then find the surviving family member and make arrangements to return it.

Cheers

... to Hal Holbrook for providing a wonderfully funny, warm and genuine evening to theater-goers recently at the Bloomington Center for the Performing Arts.

Holbrook, 91, has been performing his "Mark Twain Tonight" one-man show for decades and every show is a bit different. We applaud his dedication to his craft and chosen subject, and also the BCPA for providing the opportunity for our community to enjoy his work.

Cheers

... to Thad Hughes and Jill Parrent for their honors at a recent 4-H national convention.

Hughes won the Youth in Action award for science, technology, engineering and math. Parrent was chosen for the National 4-H Youth Leadership Team.

Both young people are from Normal. Hughes is a member of Team Metal Cow and Linden Lead em 4-H clubs. Parrent is a 10-year 4-H member.

Cheers

... to Kelley Becker, associate minister of First Christian Church in Bloomington, who recently won the Grabill-Homan Community Peace Prize from the Illinois State University peace and conflict resolution studies program.

She is the sixth person honored with the award that recognizes work in peacemaking, leadership, initiative, activism and inspiration.

Cheers

... to the Ecology Action Center and the numerous volunteers who spent a recent Saturday cleaning up Sugar Creek  not necessarily a pleasant or fun job. Their work restored the area's natural beauty and provided an opportune reminder to reduce, reuse and recycle  but don't use the outdoors as a trash heap.

Remember

... to talk to your family about organ donations. The gift of life can help more than a dozen people through donations of organs, blood, tissue and skin. A statewide registry is at http://www.lifegoeson.com/; a frequently asked questions section on that site also answers a variety of common queries.
SPRINGFIELD  Democrats and Republicans in the Illinois Senate believe they've found a successful formula for ending nearly yearlong partisan standoffs over state spending.

For the second time in as many weeks, senators from both sides of the aisle came together Thursday to approve funding for public universities, community colleges and grants to low-income students, all of which have been deprived of state money since the fiscal year began July 1 without a budget in place.

The winning formula: spending bills that aren't tied to items on Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner's pro-business, union-weakening "turnaround agenda" but are tied to specific revenue sources.

Its worked in the Senate, and I strongly encourage the House to do the same as we have done, said state Sen. Pat McGuire, D-Joliet, chairman of the Senate Higher Education Committee, because its the best thing to do, the best way to move forward, obviously, in a bipartisan manner, for all the people of Illinois.

The measure approved Thursday would spend $454 million to bring eight state university systems up to 60 percent of last year's funding, the same level that Chicago State University received in a measure Rauner signed into law last week. That part of the plan was approved on a 55-2 vote.

The spending would be covered by letting the state off the hook for repaying money borrowed from special funds to plug holes in last years budget. That portion passed on a 54-3 vote.

McGuires comments came at a news conference shortly after the votes. Among those joining him was state Sen. Jason Barickman, R-Bloomington, who called the legislation yet another small step forward, but an important one.

Were demonstrating an ability to work together in a bipartisan manner, said Barickman, who represents Illinois State University. I think theres a blueprint here for how we can continue to work together on all the various things that are important to our state and ultimately get a budget passed for this next fiscal year.

A $600 million stopgap measure Rauner signed last week funded eight state universities, aside from Chicago State, at 31 percent of last years levels.

If the House approves the new Senate measure and Rauner signs it, ISU would receive $19.6 million on top of the $20.9 million in the stopgap measure. Community colleges, which received 27 percent of their funding in the previous bill, also would be brought up to 60 percent funding.

The Senate also is waiting for the House to take action on a measure it approved two weeks ago on 55-0 vote that would authorize spending $441 million on social service programs that have been deprived of funding amid the budget impasse. Like the money in the earlier higher education stopgap plan, the social services money would come from a dedicated state fund.

The Senates newfound bipartisan spirit hasnt extended to a Democratic proposal to overhaul the way the state distributes money to local school districts.

State Sen. Andy Manar, D-Bunker Hill, didnt call his measure for a vote Thursday to allow more review following strong criticism from Republicans a day earlier upon the release of the Illinois State Board of Educations district-by-district analysis of the plan.
Many home remedies and commercial shampoos claim to prevent and reverse baldness with promising results. With all their advertisements, why are there still a lot of men looking for alternatives to cure baldness? Now a new study suggests that caffeine can actually help human baldness.

As explained by experts, one proven cause of baldness or thinning of hair is the high testosterone levels in men. According to Wall Street Journal, a study in 2014 has revealed that caffeine has a potent effect in growing hairs but in a controlled condition.

Power of Caffeine

The research study that was published in the British Journal of Dermatology has revealed that a concentrated amount of caffeine has reversed the effects of testosterone to the hair follicle that was extracted from the male subjects. Caffeine has stimulated the growth of the hair and maintained its growing process. But in the same report, the researchers also said that in the earlier phase of their study, they found out that "higher" concentrations of caffeine can restrain the hair growth instead of progressing it.

Further Research Needed

Dr. Ingrid Roseborough, a clinical instructor at the department of dermatology at the University of California, who is not part of the study, said that one problem of the researchers is to know how much or how less exactly is the needed amount of caffeine to promote hair growth. It's hard to predict according to Dr. Roseborough when it comes to human application.

The laboratory tests of caffeine for hair seems to be very effective but for Tina Alster, clinical professor of dermatology at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., said that they were not able to reach the peak of the study and it still needs further research to achieve the desired effect in human application.

Almost every year, a new product to reverse hair loss comes out posted in magazines and shown in TV ads but it seems that there is still no ultimate discovery to treat this problem.


The American College of Physicians is now suggesting going to therapy instead of ingesting sleeping pills for insomnia. The new guidelines come after they found that specialized counseling is better than drugs, which often have side effects on insomniacs.

8 foods that will help you get a better night's sleep: https://t.co/o0If9vdf9x pic.twitter.com/MfrdiN1I99  Allure (@Allure_magazine) May 5, 2016

Therapy For Insomnia

The American College of Physicians released new guidelines about insomnia on Monday. It said that there's strong evidence that counseling is effective on people, even though they don't like it and even when doctors are unsure of how it is done.

"The evidence is quite strong that cognitive behavioral therapy is effective. It works," Dr. Wayne Riley, president of the American College of Physicians, told NBC News. "It's long-lasting and it has the potential to decrease the cost to the healthcare system."

The researchers looked at 10 years of strong research studies. It compared the effects of behavioral therapy and interventions in improving conditions of patients with chronic insomnia.

Cognitive Behavior Therapy

While cognitive behavior therapy may be long and hard, the effects are life-long. Getting through the initial phase and investing time for therapy are all worth it, the doctors said.

According to Stat News, cognitive behavioral therapy is a form of psychotherapy, which combines talk therapy and sleep tutorials. More so, this form of treatment for chronic insomnia doesn't come with the range of side effects that drugs often have. Drugs are also not recommended for long-term use, whereas some patients tend to develop a dependency.

Sleeping Pills For Insomnia

"Prescribing a sleeping pill is not the desirable first step," said Dr. Thomas Tape, chief of general internal medicine at the University of Nebraska Medical Center to Fox News. However, most primary care a physician feels that behavioral approach "wasn't really on our radar screens," in treating chronic insomnia.

According to one study, drugs used to treat insomnia like Ambien and Restoril may increase the risk for accidents like a car crash. More so, the Food and Drug Administration said that drugs remain in the bloodstream, strong enough to disrupt morning driving thus, increasing the risk of car accidents.

Side Effects Understimated, Unfounded Effectivity

"Americans do tend to be over medicated for sleep," Riley said. "That's why there's a significant cost to the healthcare system. But also, the potential side-effects of sleep medications are underestimated."

In addition, other popular sleeping pills used for insomnia -- such as Xanax and Valium -- don't have enough evidence to establish its effectiveness. Other therapies like herbal teas have little evidence too.

However, the new guidelines said that if cognitive behavioral therapy alone is not working, then doctors may explore adding medications to the therapy. A combination of the two methods could bring even better results.

Do you believe that therapy is better than sleeping pills? Let us know in your comments below. Also, for better sleep, check out this video:
Florida Gov. Rick Scott revealed his plans to travel to Washington to demand for a deal that could hopefully solve the increasing number of Zika virus cases. He expressed concern that the virus could infect more in the coming days and weeks.

Zika Virus Should Be Deemed Like A 'Hurricane'

According to CBS Miami, Scott said that the Zika virus epidemic should be dealt with and treated like a "hurricane" since it threatens the lives of many Americans especially pregnant women and the children they are conceiving. The governor highlighted that there were more people infected in his hometown this month.

"Florida has now had more than 100 documented cases of the Zika virus," Scott said in the CBS Miami report. "We are now headed into summer, when heat and rainfall cause our mosquito population to grow. Simultaneously, the Olympic games in Brazil will heavily increase travel to a country where the Zika virus is spreading rapidly."

Preparation For A Zika Virus Outbreak

Miami Herald added that Scott is getting more concerned with the uncertainty posed by the virus to the community. He explained that leaders should lead their communities to better prepare for this disease to lower Zika virus cases in the country.

"We owe our citizens a vigorous and thorough preparation effort at the federal level to best protect their health," Scott said. Florida Health Department's interim surgeon general Dr. Celeste Philip has declared an emergency on the spread of the virus in the state.

More Initiatives To Battle Zika

Gov. Scott has also met with him and discussed his suggestion about the additional testing kits for Zika. The efforts in Florida are congruent to President Barack Obama's plan of combatting Zika using a $1.9 billion emergency fund for immediate costs and other needs in fighting the virus.

As cases of Zika spread in the United States, NBC News said the country seems not prepared enough for the virus. It explained that since the details of the funding are still being ironed out, the government should first address how to get rid of Zika-carrying mosquitoes.
The U.S. school crime rate has dropped in college campuses in the past 10 years as a whole. However, sex offenses on campus have significantly increased, based on recent federal data.

School Crime Rate Data From 2001 To 2013

Postsecondary schools revealed that from 2001 to 2013, there has been a drop of 34 percent in the U.S. school crime rate. Notable reductions are also present in each category, except forcible sex crimes. Sex offenses increased by 120 percent during the same timeframe.

CBS News revealed that in 2014, about 3 percent of students from 12 to 18 years old, reported that they were school crime victims. According to the report provided by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) and Justice Department on May 4, 2016. Middle school students were more prone to bullying compared to elementary or high school students.

U.S. school crime rate, particularly sexual attacks, has doubled between 2001 and 2013. The total campus sex assaults increased from 2,200 to 5,000.

The total criminal incidents on college campuses decreased by eight percent from 2012 to 2013. Burglary was the most common kind of crime, while there were 23 murders on campus during that period.

The Results are Good, But Not Enough

According to the Watertown Daily Times, the U.S. school crime rate report shows improvement in terms of lowering crime and bullying, although these are still not enough, according to Peggy G. Carr, acting commissioner of NCES.

It is still uncertain whether sex offenses have substantially increased in the past several years, or whether victims have become bolder to report incidences. The reported cases could perhaps be due to heightened public awareness on the issue and more vigilant approaches that colleges are adopting to protect victims.

Schools have been adding measures to lower U.S. school crime rate, such as the installation of security cameras, controlling access to their buildings, the mandatory wearing of IDs and proper dress code among students. Ken Trump of the National School Safety and Security Services warned that federal and state reports underestimate the extent of U.S. school crime rate.

Ken Trump continued that public perception also tends to overstate and the real figures are somewhere in the middle. Trump also said that it is not mandatory to report crime in elementary, middle school and high school.

Trump said that school administrators have become more proactive about security compared to a decade ago. Social media and overall awareness have made it more difficult to hide things that are happening in schools, which contributed to the drop in U.S. school crime rate.
The Republican Party is making rounds online from Ted Cruz quitting the presidential race to Gov. Bruce Rauner rejecting medical marijuana as a treatment to lots of known diseases on May 2 in Illinois. Doctors who believe that medical marijuana could help treat diseases like diabetes and some mental illness are criticizing Rauner's stand on the matter.

The Chicago Tribune reported that marijuana is now being embraced by a lot of medical professionals that they would recommend it to 10 known diseases in which Type 1 Diabetes is one of them. A lot of doctors and other medical practitioners didn't like the fact that their ideas on expanding the state's test program on marijuana are being ignored.

These professionals are still waiting on what Gov. Rauner's final say about the subject of using marijuana to treat patients with diabetes, depressive disorder and Lyme disease just to name a few. The Chairman of the Medical Cannabis Advisory Board, Dr. Leslie Mendoza Temple, said that it would appear that the government regarding this matter is not hearing their voices.

A photo posted by TBC83 (@don_wutang) on May 5, 2016 at 3:53am PDT

The state's Department of Public Health has ignored the board's recommendations regarding medical marijuana and the many diseases it could treat even in the past. Type 1 Diabetes is just among the many deadly diseases that marijuana could solve.

Based on the study cited by Health Line, patients would gain a lot of benefits using it. Medical marijuana has the ability to stabilize blood sugars and even act as an anti-inflammatory for diabetics whose arteries are inflamed.

Diabetic patients who find it hard to sleep due to their ailment could also find comfort and rest with the help of medical cannabis. There are many benefits that this herb has been proven to do in a person's body, which is why it is quite questionable for medical professionals why their motion to push its use is being ignored.

Do you think the government has something to do with the rejection of medical marijuana to be used as a treatment for many diseases? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
The U.S. Department of Justice recently notified North Carolina that its transgender bathroom law is a violation of the U.S. Civil Rights Act. The state law banned transgender individuals from accessing certain bathrooms.

House Bill 2 Seeks To Protect LGBTQ Community

House Bill 2, also known as the Public Facilities Privacy & Security Act, has a statewide policy that prohibits people from using public bathrooms that do not match their biological sex.

According to TIME, the Justice Department asked Republican Gov. Pat McCrory for a response on the transgender bathroom issue by May 9, and if no action is made, North Carolina may be sued, which may eventually result to its denial of millions in federal funds.

Denying such access to transgender individuals, whose gender identity is different from their gender assigned at birth, while affording it to similarly situated non-transgender employees, violates Title VII, stated the federal letters.

Transgender Bathroom Policy

The transgender bathroom bill was signed into law by McCrory on Mar. 23, wrote CNN. However, the Justice Department claims that the law discriminates against transgender individuals and is a form of sex discrimination.

The state agency argued that if the state allows non-transgender individuals to use sex-assigned bathrooms that correspond to their sex, but denies the same right to transgender employees. The latters sex is being discriminated because they are not allowed full and equal access to public bathrooms.

The letter demanded that North Carolina stop the transgender bathroom law from being implemented. Gov. Pat McCrory stated that right and expectation of privacy is among the most private areas of personal life and is currently in jeopardy.

McCrory added that they will review the transgender bathroom issue to determine the next appropriate steps. If the state fails to abide by the demands of the Department of Justice, the complaint letter will most likely be passed on to the next administration.

North Carolina Transgender Bathroom Issue May Lead To Control Of Funds

If a lawsuit is filed by the Department of Justice against the state of North Carolina and appeals are made leading up to the Supreme Court, the case may serve as a precedent. The Supreme Court will have to determine whether laws that ban sex discrimination will also ban unequal treatment based on sex.

CNN noted that if the case is decided against North Carolina, federal funds may be denied to the state. There is also an issue in the concept that every agency should be in control of its own funds. The Department of Justice allegedly cannot place the funds of the Department of Education in jeopardy with the latter starting the procedure.
Harvard University has the best reputation out of all the universities in the world according to Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings. There are eight American universities out of the Top 10, with two British universities slipping, namely Cambridge and Oxford. At fourth and fifth, both have slipped two places from last year's rankings.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stanford University placed second and third, respectively. The University of California, Berkeley, Princeton University, Yale University, Columbia University and the California Institute of Technology rounded up the Top 10.

Harvard retains top spot as Oxbridge slips in university rankings https://t.co/uPyoaIjcjR  CNBC (@CNBC) May 5, 2016

British Universities Slipping In Word University Rankings

The BBC reported that there are 10 British universities that made it to the Top 100 this year. In 2015, the total was 12.

"The UK's diminishing performance occurs as institutions in Asia rapidly rise up the table - the continent has 17 representatives, up from 10 last year," said THE rankings editor Phil Baty via BBC. Baty said the United Kingdom's global reputation was being dampened by budget cuts to higher education and immigration measures affecting overseas students.

According to The Telegraph, experts have pointed to focus on diversity and recruitment of students from underprivileged backgrounds as the reasons for the slip in the world university rankings of British universities. British Prime Minister David Cameron had earlier promoted more transparency in the proportion of ethnic minorities that get accepted in British universities.

In Contrast With British Universities, Asian Universities On The Rise

Japan led Asia as the University of Tokyo was the top university outside of the United States and United Kingdom at 12th place. Meanwhile, China became part of the Top 20 for the first time as its Tsinghua University placed 18th. Peking University was in the 21st place.

Baty called the rise of Asia as "something of a cliche in recent time." However, he said via The Independent that evidence from global surveys and views of experts "proves the balance of power in higher education and research is slowly shifting from the West to the East."

Hong Kong's Lingnan University vice-president and chair professor of comparative policy Joshua Mok Ka-Ho said that Asian rankings showed much investment in higher education from many Asian governments. Ka-Ho said via CNBC that many Asian governments have agreed on "the importance of research, knowledge transfer, innovation and technology in transforming the economy and society."

Did your favorite university rise, slip or maintained its ranking? Write your comments below.
A blood biomarker that can potentially help in early diagnosis of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) has been discovered by researchers from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. This means that a blood test can be used to know if a child has ASD.

The researchers found a connection between the lack of an antibody called immunoglobulin G type 1, or IgG1, according to News Hub. The researchers said that autism spectrum disorder can possibly be identified even before children show clearly manifesting symptoms through testing for IgG1, together with other tests like hormone level measurements.

UT Southwestern Medical Center Researchers Identify New Autism Blood Biomarker | BioNews Texas https://t.co/c2nZrExHFX via @bionewstx  WIB - Austin Area (@WIBAustin) May 5, 2016

Blood Biomarker For Autism Was Goal Of Many

"Numerous investigators have long sought a biomarker for ASD," said Dr. Dwight German, study senior author and Professor of Psychiatry at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. German said via Science Daily that IgG1 and others they are testing can represent a useful test with over 80 percent accuracy in identifying ASD."

Previous studies already found abnormalities in the immune systems of children with autism spectrum disorder, so German and his co-researchers then searched for antibodies that are related to autism spectrum disorder. They found that boys with ASD "had significantly reduced levels of a serum IgG1 antibody"

After this, Science Daily said the researchers looked into 25 peptoid compounds that bound to IgG1. They focused on one called ASD1 which was "66 percent accurate" in diagnosing autism spectrum disorder. The ASD1-binding biomarker, together with thyroid stimulating hormone level measurements was found to be 73 percent accurate in diagnosing ASD.

More Tests Needed For Autism Blood Biomarker

For further validation, German said that more tests needed to be done. There needs to be an analysis of blood samples from girls with autism spectrum disorder as girls made up only a small ratio of the subjects. The biomarker is said to have not correlated as strongly with ASD diagnosis in girls.

BioNews Texas reported that the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center is one of four American universities that are participating in Autism BrainNet. This is "an effort to collect and examine brain samples to understand ASD."

Do you know someone with autism? How was he or she diagnosed? Write your comments below.
Johnson & Johnson has recently come under fire when news broke out that their talcum-based products are causing ovarian cancer among women. Now, a lawyer in Alabama urged the company to remove its talcum powder products from store shelves or warn women of the risks the merchandises carry.

This month, Johnson & Johnson was ordered to pay a 62-year-old woman named Gloria Ristesund in South Dakota with $55 million for contributing to the development of her ovarian cancer. The products in question are Johnson's Baby Powder and Shower to Shower.

In February, the company also paid $72 million to the family of Jacqueline Fox from Tarrant, who died from ovarian cancer prior to the verdict. She claimed that Johnson & Johnson's talcum-based products also triggered her fatal disease.

Johnson & Johnson Urged To Own Up To Their Actions

Jere Beasley, principal and founder of the Beasley-Allen Law Firm and the representative of Fox, urged Johnson & Johnson to own up to their actions that they have kept hidden for decades, AL.com reported. Beasley said the company knew about the dangerous consequences of its talcum powder and feminine hygiene products to women but didn't do any measures to warn consumers.

Beasley said other manufacturers use cornstarch in their products that work in the same way. Johnson & Johnson, however, continued to use talc and insisted that it doesn't trigger ovarian cancer.

More Studies Being Done

Talc is a mineral that contains magnesium, silicon and oxygen, the American Cancer Society wrote. When it is made into powder, talc can absorb moisture and decrease friction, which helps the skin stay dry and rash-free. The asbestos involved in talc's natural form, however, is said to cause cancer in and around a person's lungs when inhaled.

There have been some studies that pointed to talcum powder's role in ovarian cancer. According to the American Cancer Society's report, talcum powder particles can travel through the vagina up to the ovaries when applied to women's genital area or on sanitary napkins and condoms.

It should be noted, however, that these studies bore different results. Some women who used talcum powder posed higher risks of developing ovarian cancer, others only have small chances and some don't have increased risk at all.

Johnson & Johnson's Defense

A blog post from Johnson & Johnson defended the company's use of talcum products. In it, Johnson & Johnson cited various reports about how talc isn't causing ovarian cancer in women. The company also insisted that the talc they use in their products is free from asbestos.
Artificial intelligence has continued to make waves in almost all fields of sciences, increasing its influence on the world. But despite the possibility that the rise of artificial intelligence can eliminate human workforce, the promising ability of AI to change the way humans live caught the attention of the White House.

The Obama administration is interested in using more artificial intelligence as a meta-solution to the major problems in the United States. That's why, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy has recently announced it would start studying AI's growing influence, as well as its benefits and risks.

"There is a lot of excitement about artificial intelligence (AI) and how to create computers capable of intelligent behavior," Deputy U.S. Chief Technology Officer Dr. Ed Felten said in a White House blog post. "Like any transformative technology, however, artificial intelligence carries some risk and presents complex policy challenges along several dimensions, from jobs and the economy to safety and regulatory questions."

Artificial Intelligence And The Federal Government

The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy said artificial intelligence could help a range of policy areas such as in medicine and education. Hence, the Obama administration created a subcommittee that will focus on AI and will look for ways to use the technology as Americans interact with the federal government.

The newly created subcommittee aims to collaborate with the private sector to help implement artificial intelligence in government activities including crime, urban development, the environment and welfare. According to Breitbart, the interagency will also conduct a series of public workshops to discuss the controversial aspects of artificial intelligence.

"The Federal Government also is working to leverage AI for public good and toward a more effective government," Felten explained. "There are tremendous opportunities and an array of considerations across the Federal Government in privacy, security, regulation, law, and research and development to be taken into account when effectively integrating this technology into both government and private-sector activities."

White House's Four Artificial Intelligence Public Workshops

In the coming months, the White House will discuss the advantages and disadvantages of artificial intelligence through a series of public workshops. These White House-sanctioned AI programs will kick off on May 24 in Seattle with the topic titled, "Legal and Governance Implications of Artificial Intelligence," Fortune notes.

It will be followed by "Artificial Intelligence for Social Good" in Washington, D.C. on Jun. 7, "Safety and Control for Artificial Intelligence" in Pittsburgh on Jun. 28 and "The Social and Economic Implications of Artificial Intelligence Technologies in the Near-Term" in New York City on Jul. 7.

As for the scheduled speakers of these artificial intelligence public workshops, the While House invited Microsoft principal researcher Kate Crawford and Google Open Research founder Meredith Whittaker. There will also be a group of researchers from University of Michigan, Carnegie Mellon, New York University, Johns Hopkins, the University of Southern California, and University of Washington.

Tickets to the four artificial intelligence public workshops are reportedly free and open to the public. Registration will begin "soon," Popular Science learns.

Artificial Intelligence To Revolutionize Cybersecurity

Aside from revolutionizing the fields of medicine, education and automotive technology, researchers, entrepreneurs and U.S. government officials are also investing more in advanced artificial intelligence to teach computers to protect themselves against hackers. In fact, security startups, government agencies, and some digital security firms in the U.S. have invested heavily in AI technology for cybersecurity within the past year, The Christian Science Monitor reports.

What do you think about the White House's plans on artificial intelligence? Share your thoughts below and follow Parent Herald for more news and updates.
Boston is undergoing an arts education renewal and has released a new publication that fortifies this commitment. The Boston Public Schools Art Expansion (BPS-AE) intends to make the city a leader among other public schools in the United States when it comes to arts education, and it has concrete ways on how to get it done.

The thrust of the Boston Public Schools Art Expansion is outlined in a document entitled, "Dancing to the Top: How Collective Action Revitalized Arts Education in Boston." The strategy has been subdivided into six components, but its most significant input lies under Strategic Philanthropy. In it, the BPS-AE emphasizes in supporting art programs in public schools with the help of local and national donors. This, in turn, will help support visual and performance art teachers, as well as school leaders and projects.

"In 2008, Boston K-8 public school students, 63% had access to weekly arts education. This year 97%" -Myron Parker-Brass #sphinxcon  Project STEP (@ProjectSTEP) February 6, 2016

Among what the BPS-AE has already achieved so far, as indicated in the document, included adding and providing more opportunities for students interested in the arts. This has grown considerably since 2009 at 17,000 more students. Its donors have also increased after seeing that arts education can be a viable philanthropic investment per Inside Philanthropy.

A $1.5 million grant for public school arts education in Boston: https://t.co/KPwYIWCJmG  Wallace Foundation (@WallaceFdn) December 11, 2015

Boston prides itself as a bastion of culture and arts in America, but the state of affairs in the public school system in general made promoting the arts more challenging. But despite this, the BPS-AE has been a success and it can be attributed to the following factors, per another release from Edvestors:

1. As part of its concrete objectives, Boston public school students were made to undergo art classes at least once a week within the school year, and there, high school students were regularly exposed to arts experience.

2. Program data is collected, assessed and tracked and this is an ongoing process. The data is also used to develop other strategies for expansion, as well as provide its investors with the results of the programs.

3. The BPS works closely with each public schools and provides incentives for art-based programs. At one point, the school superintendent made high-quality instruction a priority in arts classes, thus ensuring that students only the best in arts education.

4. The BPS also implemented art committees covering different activities. This included an advisory board to network with business leaders, arts community leaders and philanthropies.

5. Funding received by the BPS were concretely designated for what use and purpose. Locally-received funds were for specific art programs in each school while nationally-received funds were used for projects that would benefit the state's general arts education system.

What do you think of Boston's initiative? Would this work on national level? Let us know in the comments!
Fans of the "Kingdom Hearts" series have been waiting for the franchise's third installment. Unfortunately, Square Enix is very secretive when it comes to the progress of "Kingdom Hearts 3." According to new reports, fans can expect more details about "Kingdom Hearts 3" in the upcoming "KH" concert.

'Kingdom Hearts' Celebrating Its 15th Anniversary

According to News Everyday, "Kingdom Hearts" is celebrating its 15th anniversary and they will be having a worldwide tour concert for their fans starting this spring. Per the report, fans of "Kingdom Hearts 3" will receive a huge treat of their favorite sound tracks plus a number of update about "KH3."

'Kingdom Hearts' Concert Kicks Off In Japan

Movie News Guide reported that first "Kingdom Hearts" concert would premiere in Japan this August. Dubbed as "First Breath" the concern will be held in Tokyo, Aichi and Osaka. It will feature the popular soundtrack of the franchise including "Passion" and "Hikari." For those who wish to attend the "Kingdom Hearts" concert, tickets will be available on May 14.

After Japan, the "Kingdom Hearts" World Tour concert will go to Paris, London, Singapore, China, California and New York. The anticipated concert will feature 70 musicians from various world-renowned ensemble including London's Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and Japan's Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra.

'Kingdom Hearts 3' Delayed

Parent Herald previously reported that "Kingdom Hearts 3" would be delayed due to "Final Fantasy 15" which is slated for release later this year. One potential reason is to keep fans divided and confused between the two games. Another probable reason is that "KH3" is not done yet.

Quinton Flynn, one of the voice actors for "KH3" revealed that he has not done any recording for the upcoming title yet. Thus, "Kingdom Hearts 3" is still in development.

Are you excited for the "Kingdom Hearts" concert? Will the concert appease the waiting fans who are expecting "Kingdom Hearts 3" this year? Will you watch the concert? Share your thoughts in the comment section below.
Religious education (RE) is causing a stir in the United Kingdom after head teachers voted to make RE classes compulsory. The referendum comes as concerns about parental opt-out increase in the nation.

Why Parents Don't Allow Children To Take Religious Education

In England, some parents are taking out their kids from religious education classes as they believed that RE challenges the teaching of British values. However, the National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT) stresses the significance of religious literacy in education by teaching students to respect the views and opinions of other people, BBC News notes.

Who's Responsible In Teaching Children About Faith: The School Or The Parents?

With the increasing debate on whether or not parents should withdraw their children religious education classes, Christopher Howse of The Telegraph believed that RE is a matter for parents and not for schools. But Howse emphasizes that kids should be ignorant of the Bible.

"It is as though they thought children belonged to the state and must be protected from the beliefs of their parents," Howse wrote. "It was not always so. Even in the Army, Jews and Catholics fell out before church parade. It was their right. It still is the right of parents to pull children out of unwelcome religion classes."

Religious Education Reform

According to National Secular Society campaigns director Stephen Evans, he believed that parents shouldn't be allowed to choose what subjects their children learn in school. However, due to the "outdated and wholly unsatisfactory arrangements" in religious education, parental opt-out is necessary to protect religious freedom.

Evans also called for a reform in religious education before ending head teachers end parental opt-out. He also added that schools with a religious character aka "faith schools" should not teach religion based on their exclusive perception.

"Faith schools should lose the ability to teach about religion from their own exclusive viewpoint, RE should be comprehensively reformed into a new academic subject that covers a variety of religious and non-religious worldviews, and religious representatives should not have undue influence over the subject content," Evans explained, as per National Secular Society. "Until this is done and all vestiges of confessionalism are removed, we'll campaign to keep the opt-out to ensure parental rights and pupils' religious freedoms are protected."

So, what are your thoughts on religious education as part of the curriculum? Sound off below and follow Parent Herald for more news and updates.
Lawmakers in Alabama have passed a bill that prohibits abortion clinics to be situated within 2,000 feet of K-8 public schools. This particular ruling is in line with the same restrictions slapped on sexual predators in the U.S. state.

Bill Is Designed To Keep Protesters From Children

Supporters of the bill said it is designed to prevent anti-abortion protesters from being seen or heard by children, ThinkProgress reported. Some lawmakers in Alabama, however, just don't like abortion clinics. The Christian Coalition of Alabama, an anti-abortion advocacy organization, made huge efforts to push the bill into the statehouse.

The ruling will affect one abortion clinic if Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley, who is also anti-abortion, signs the bill. The Alabama Women's Center for Reproductive Alternatives in Huntsville will be forced to move or close if the bill becomes law.

It is not just Alabama that devised plans restricting abortion clinics. Kansas lawmakers in 2013 prohibited employees or volunteers at an abortion clinic from working at schools as well. The state also banned abortion clinic workers from teaching about sexuality at schools.

Doctors Criticize Utah Abortion Law

This month, a law in Utah will mandate painkillers to be administered to fetuses prior the abortion procedure. Utah Gov. Gary R. Herbert signed the bill into law in March.

With this ruling, Utah will become the first state to necessitate anesthesia to fetuses at 20 weeks old or more, Mic reported. Abortions that exceeded the 20-week mark, however, are a rare occurrence in the state, with only 17 abortions performed in 2014.

Doctors have criticized Utah's new law, arguing that unnecessary and undefined administration of anesthesia or painkillers can harm the mother of the unborn child, the New York Times wrote. Lawmakers and anti-abortion groups in Utah said they are concerned that fetuses feel pain during abortion procedures. These people claimed that they are fighting for the fetuses' rights, adding that the unborn child is a separate person.

20-Week Old Fetuses Cannot Feel Any Pain

Doctors, however, argued that fetuses' brain and nervous system aren't developed yet at 20 weeks; therefore, they cannot feel any pain. The unborn baby will likely feel pain at the third-trimester stage of pregnancy, or around 27 weeks.

Utah's new abortion law will be put in place on May 10. It exempts some cases like rape, incest and if the fetus has a fatal and irreparable condition. Women who would die or have serious health complications if the fetus isn't aborted are exempted from the law as well.